Then saith he unto his disciples. — No where in the whole Gospel record is there a more vivid or more touching instance of the reality of our Lord’s human emotions. It is not enough for Him to feel compassion Himself. He craves the sympathy of His companions and disciples, and needs even their fellowship in prayer. A great want lies before Him, and He sees that they are the right agents to meet it, if only they will pray to be made so; or, to put the case more clearly, if only they will pray that the work may be done, whether they themselves are or are not the doers of it.
The harvest truly is plenteous. — This is the first occurrence in the record of the first three Gospels of the figure which was afterwards to be expanded in the two parables of the Sower and the Tares, and to reappear in the visions of the Apocalypse (Revelation 14:14-19). We find, however, from the Gospel of St. John — which here, as so often elsewhere, supplies missing links and the germs of thoughts afterwards developed — that it was not a new similitude in our Lord’s teaching. Once before, among the alien Samaritans, He had seen the fields white as for the spiritual harvest of the souls of men, and had spoken of him that soweth and him that reapeth (John 4:35-36).