The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 2 — Section 33

i'llustrntion of sowing-time. The sowing-time of God's truth, God's will, God's love and grace, in the midst of a hard, and unprepared, and shallow, and ill-preoccupied world-with nevertheless some better, some more promising material, in it. III. THE ILLUSTRATION ITSELF 1N DETAIL. It consists of the statement of the ways in which men would act on the "hearing" of the" Word of God." Four leading ways are described, 1. That of the man who is said (in Christ's own interpretation of his parable) "not to understand" the Word spoken; i.e. he has no sympathy with it, he possesses no instinct for it, finds awakened within him no response whatever. This is the man whose receptive state amounts to nothing. As the trodden path (all the moro trodden and more bard as it is comparatively narrow) across the ploughed field is approached again and again by the bountifully flinging band of the sower, a.s be paces the acres, even it receives of the good seed, but its callous surface finds no entrance for it, offers it no fertilizing or even fertilized resting-place, and yet others, who at least better know its value, for whatsoever reason, sec it, seize it, and bear it off. 2. That of the man who" anon with joy receives" the Word. But it is a vapid a:id shallow joy, It does not last, it does not grow; its very root withers. The coating of hardness is not, as in the callous pathway, visible to the eye at first, for it is jnst concealed and covereil over by a slightest layer of earth, just below which the hardness is not simply like that of" rock," but it is rock itself. There is nothing that bas such a root where- with to root itself as the Word of God, and this needs deep earth. Not the birds of the air, not Satan and his evil emissaries, take this seed away, before ever it could show a symptom of its own vital force, at any rate; this has shown its vitality, and has detected, discovered, and laid ruinously bare to sight the unsustaining, because itself unsustained, power to feed life, of that other element, that other essential in the solemn matter. 3. 'J'hat of the man "who hears the Word, but the cares of this world, and the [seductive] deceitfulness of riches, and the [crowding] desires of other things," i.e. other things than the Word, "choke that Word, and it becometh unfruitful," or, if not unfruitful altogether," it bringeth no fruit to perfection." It iH the seed, still the good seed, lost, wasted, mocked of its glorious fruit, because ,hat same Ii beral, scattering, Sower's hanil has not grudged it, to earth, that is all the while attesting its own rich- ness, quality, force, by what is growing out of it, but is untilled, undressed, unweeded -thorns, briers, brambles, aud all most precocious growths suffered to tyrannize and usurp its best energies I How often have men moralized, and justly, that the clever- ness of the sinner, and his wisdom in his generation, and his dexterity and resources when pushed to the last extremities, would have made the saint, and the eminent saint, had his gifts, instead of being so prostituted, so miserably misdirected, been turned in the right direction, fixed on the right objects I But short far of flagrant vice, true it is that the absorbing things and the seductive things and the crowding competition of desires of things of this world, have, millions of times untold, choked the Word. No room, no time, no care, no energy, has been left for the tbingd of eternal value, immortal wealth, present holiness. 4. That of the man who "heareth, and understandeth, who also beareth fruit;" or again, "who in an honest and good ·heart, having heard the Word, keeps it, aud brings forth fruit with patience." It is the seed, that pricelessly good seed, which now at last has found its appropriate earth. It falls not on the hard pathway; it falls not on the treacherous, deceptive, depthlessness, all radhmt with light and sun though it be; it falls not on the soil bearing at the same time incontest- able evidence of two things-its own power to grow, and its own doomed state to grow the things " whose end is to be burned." It falls "into the good ground. n ,ve are in the preHcnce of the mystery, not of" who made us to differ," but of how and why he who made us to differ, did so. The practical part of the question is plain for every one who has an eye to see. Every man must give account of himself at the last; and every one must now prepare for that account. What sign of "goodness," what 'Blightest germ of" goodness," what instinct, ns it may seem, and power of" goodness," any man's heart, passing thought, life may just suggest-if it be but like a suggestion -must be reckoned with now, improved now, solemnly consecrated now, and the mystery will still for the present be left mystery. Dut the facts and the results and the blessedness will speak for themselves. And the kingdom of heaven be rcceivin~ its fairer and fairest illustration, instead of its darker aDll darkest illustrations. That kingdom will be the more a "coming" kingdom.-B, JIIATTHEW-IL • l)  3~ THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. :UAT1'llEW. [en. nu. 1-68.