He that heareth the word, and under-standeth it. — The process is not merely an intellectual one. He takes it in, discerns its meaning. The phrases in the other Gospels express the same thing, “hear the word and receive it” (Mark), “in an honest and good heart” hear and retain it (Luke). Even here, however, there are different degrees of the holiness which is symbolised by “bearing fruit” — “some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty” — varying according to men’s capacities and opportunities.
It is allowable to fill up the outline-sketch of interpretation which thus formed the first lesson in this method in the great Master’s school. (1.) It may seem strange at first that the disciples were not told who in the work of the kingdom answered to “the Sower” of the parable. The interpretation is given in the parable of the Tares (“the Sower of the good seed is the Son of Man”), and, in part, it may be said that this was the one point on which the disciples were not likely to misunderstand Him; but in part also, we may believe, this explanation was not given, because, though the parable was true in the first instance of Him and of His work, He meant them to learn wisdom from it for their own work. True, they were reaping what they had not sown (John 4:38), yet they too were in their turn to be sowers as well as reapers. (2.) It is obviously one important lesson of the parable that it teaches us to recognise the possible existence of “an honest and good heart” (the first word meaning “noble,” “generous,” rather than “honest” in our modern sense) prior to the preaching of the word. Such characters were to be found in those living under the Law, or without the Law (Romans 2:14), and it was the work of the preacher to look out for them, and win them to something yet higher. What made the ground good, is a question which the parable was perhaps meant to suggest, but does not answer. Theologians may speak of “prevenient grace.” The language of John 4:37-38 leads us to think of the work of “the Light that lighteth every man.” Here also the law holds good that “to him that hath shall more be given.” (3.) It lies in the nature of such a parable that it represents the phenomena of the spiritual life only partially. It brings before us four classes of hearers, and seems to assume that their characters are fixed, incapable of change, issuing in results which might have been foreseen. But if so, then the work of the “word” thus preached would seem to be limited to order and progress, and the idea of “conversion” — the change of character — would almost be excluded. We must therefore supplement the parable in its practical application. The soil may be improved; the way-side and the stony places and that which contained the thorns may become as the good ground. It is the work of every preacher and teacher to prepare the soil as well as to sow the seed. In the words of an old prophet, which might almost seem to have suggested the parable itself, they are to “break up the fallow ground and sow not among thorns” (Jeremiah 4:3).