CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 4:29. But as soon as the fruit is mature, straightway he putteth forth the sickle, etc. Cp. Joel 4:13 (LXX.). See also 1 Peter 1:23-25; Revelation 14:14-15.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 4:26-29
The parable of the growing corn.—It is remarkable that St. Mark alone should report this parable, and it is more than remarkable because it is the only parable which he alone has reported. It is very brief, has no interpretation attached to it, and looks at first sight not unlike some of the other parables. Yet it appears to me to supply an essential link in the chain of parabolic teaching. The side or aspect of the kingdom of God to which it refers is one which could not be passed over. If I understand it aright, it forms a needful companion or counterpart to the parable of the tares (Matthew 13:24-30). Each of them lays stress upon a different part of the common process of husbandry. In the one the end operations of sowing and reaping, into which enters the personal action of the Son of Man, are made conspicuous and insisted on at length, while the intervening months of growth are referred to only to add that then the crop must be “let alone.” In the other the contrary occurs. The initial and terminal operations of the husbandman constitute no more than a frame to the picture. They are named merely to shew us the better how the farmer did nothing for the remainder of the time; while the process described at length is the slow, gradual growth and ripening of the plants under the spontaneous action of the fruit-bearing earth. Thus the two parables are seen to complete each other. The one in Matthew brings out how voluntary extra-natural agents act upon the kingdom of Christ from above or from beneath, but chiefly at the beginning and the end of its career. This one in Mark brings out the natural agencies whose unhindered action determines the advance of the kingdom from its beginning to its end. Let us now examine our parable in detail. Its central words form a key to the whole: “The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself.” In other words, what is here taught is not the vitality of the seed, nor the activity of the two sowers, but the productiveness of the soil. Only commit a seed to the earth, and “the earth will bring forth fruit of herself.” The growth of a wheat-field is a long and tedious process. Grain has its own laws, according to which it must germinate and shoot: you cannot make it grow otherwise than God appoints. It has its successive stages through which it is bound to pass: you cannot have an ear before its stalk is tall. It lies exposed to atmospheric influences, both bad and good: you cannot, with all your husbandry, hinder the wind from causing it to strike deeper root, or the frost from nipping its too tender shoots. In fact, the farmer can do very little in the matter. Only the great earth, stored by God with the chemical conditions of fruitfulness, and lying ever open by day and night to God’s atmospheric influences—to rain and dew, to sun and wind, to frost and electricity—only this wonderful earth carries on the process. In spite of so much that appears to war against the plant, damping the farmer’s hope, somehow the earth never fails after all to “bring forth fruit of herself.” In all this may be discerned, I think, three leading features of resemblance to the progress of Christ’s kingdom in the world.
I. The kingdom of Christ has had to pass through those stages of imperfect growth which are common to other systems existing in human society.—It need hardly be said that the Church did not burst upon the world a finished organisation—perfect when it was first set up. Our Lord did no more than sow a few men into Palestine society with a few religious truths in their hearts. These truths, being alive with a Divine force, made the men live. Life proved contagious, and spread. It sought expression through common forms, and the multitude became a community—a Church. It has been really growing on ever since. There has been progress. Christendom has not passed through so many changes in vain. Was it no progress when the seed Christ scattered in the early sowing-day struck its roots through the old dying Greco-Roman world, and out of it drew whatever it could find of nutriment in its philosophy, its law, or its literature? That fat soil of classic civilisation was the prepared ground in which, beneath the hot sun of ten persecutions, Christianity was designed to grow deep-rooted and full-bladed. Was it no further progress when out of this rich growth a new world shot up, and through the Middle Ages modern Europe was formed like a tall flowering stalk held aloft upon the base of the older world? Has there been no progress since then? The religion of the Anglo-Saxon race is the most promising ear on the Church Catholic, and it has been rapidly filling for the last three centuries. It has drunk in contributions from every quarter: from the growth of municipal and national freedom; from the resuscitation of letters; from the discovery of America and India; from modern widening of knowledge and stimulation of the inventive arts. Perhaps we are standing already on the border of the world’s ripening age—if not actually within it. Already we see enough to surmise that by-and-by the kingdom will have run its course and the harvest of the earth be ripe. These two will synchronise. This world cannot last a day longer nor end a day sooner than the close of the Church’s development. “When the fruit is brought forth, immediately He putteth in the sickle.”
II. Throughout all its stages the Christian community is affected by every secular influence at work beside it, just as anything else would be.—What is this but to say that “the field is the world”? Human society as it exists in the world forms the soil into which Christianity has been cast. The current modes of thought form the atmosphere it has to breathe. The forces which in each land or age have told on ordinary history have told upon the Church. At one time it has been crushed by violence, and at another fanned to slumber in the lap of luxury. False philosophies have tainted its doctrine, and lax manners affected its discipline. The passion or the pride that inflames rival parties has often rent its unity; often, too, have political alliances essayed to cement the fragments. It has borrowed much from other forces in social history, as well as lent much to others. Rude in rude ages; learned among the learned; it has become all things to all men. Yet in this common soil and atmosphere of earth the kingdom of Christ has, on the whole, thriven. Propagated by human hands, it has drunk of the rain of heaven. Wealth has served its ends, and literature fought its battles, and adventure run its errands. Civilisation has organised its strength, and commerce pioneered its way. Whatever good gifts God gave to earth have in some measure aided the advance of His kingdom; and the history of the nations has been at the same time in great part the history of Christianity. Thus on the whole the kingdom grows. It may be hard to see how at any given moment. Stand beside a field of springing corn on a blustery March morning; you fail to see how such tender sprouts are to be brought nearer harvest by the blasts that beat them. So at few moments of the Church’s progress could the saints of the day trace the tendency of all the forces at work upon the cause of Christ. Yet let the short-sighted and fainthearted Christian take courage. It is a fruitful earth after all. As surely as the weeks of spring and summer do on the whole ripen our fields, so surely will all the ages contribute to fill the garners of heaven.
III. The parable implies not merely that natural forces act on the kingdom of Christ, but that they are allowed to act themselves out freely without personal or supernatural interference on the part of the Great Husbandman. When it is said, “The kingdom is as if a man … should sleep and rise, night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how,” it is just the ordinary life of the farmer as he goes about his other tasks which is described. The point is that that ordinary life of the farmer between sowing and reaping is, speaking roughly, one of entire cessation from all direct action upon the field. Sowing and reaping are human interferences with the processes of nature. As compared with the self-sown wilderness, where each seed is allowed to shell itself out upon the untilled ground, a field is an artificial thing. Now these two artificial interferences of man symbolise the supernatural acts of God which mark the opening and the close of the Christian history. He did interfere with the sterility of the world to clear a space and sow a new crop of spiritual men and women. The advent of Christ with all that He accomplished personally or through His messengers to found His Church constituted one stupendous miracle. Supernatural interposition of God to work in the human field is the true description of the life of Christ. What wonder if accessory miracles hung about His steps and lingered round the feet of His immediate ministers? By such signs and portents was he who had long ruled in open day with his possessions and sorceries and oracles driven to sow mimic seed secretly by night. But when that first great operation of the Sower from heaven was ended miracle ceased. The higher and the lower agents alike retired for a long while behind the screen of natural instrumentality. The field of Christian history was left to the sun and the wind and the rain. Henceforth—till we near the end, when again Divine hands interpose—everything in the development of the faith progresses in obedience to those orderly laws which regulate the progress of truth from mind to mind or from age to age. It may be said, “How can we speak of the Lord Jesus as quitting charge or activity within His field? Nay, as even asleep and ignorant how it grows? Is it not He who is always at work within every Christian heart, sustaining by His Spirit the life of His saints, and guiding to His own issues the destinies of His Church?” Unquestionably. Only He does so very much as He causes corn to grow in the field. He is as full of care and as rich in effort for His own cause as ever. Yet He never reaches a hand out of the cloud to dispel the tempest of persecution or kill the worm of heresy. He works, it is true; but it is along the lines of nature, and through the complex mechanism by which the world is guided. On the one hand, the informing Spirit of the Church operates through ordinary channels of intelligence and moral influence; on the other hand, the common providence of God overrules, but nowhere overrides, contingencies. And to these two factors He has left His Church. So far, therefore, as any direct or personal interposition to modify the action of natural forces is concerned, He is like the farmer who, from seedtime to harvest, lets his field alone. “Till harvest,” I say. For there is a second advent before us, when the order of the world is again to be broken through—this time with a view to be broken up. When the ripe fruit of the kingdom shall offer itself to the sickle, then will the Sower reappear.—J. O. Dykes, D.D.
Spiritual growth.—This parable is a brilliant example of the perfect naturalness of our Lord’s teachings and the way in which He shews the underlying connexion between the two worlds, natural and spiritual. At first sight it might seem as if there were but few points of comparison between these two—between the work going on, for example, in the corn-field and the work going on in the human soul; for while trees and shooting corns have power of growth, they have no power of will; whereas man has both. And it is this power of will which is the determining factor in character and destiny. And yet, though these worlds are so dissimilar, there is an underlying unity; and it is this unity our Lord brings out in this parable. The central thought seems to be that God’s Divine power is at work in God’s own kingdom. “The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself”—not of herself apart from God, but of herself apart from the man who sows the seed. He does his work, he sows the seed, and he goes on his way; and after he has done his part he sleeps by night and rises by day, and the seed springs up and grows, he knows not how.
I. The kingdom of God.—It is not that rule over the creatures which God as the Creator exercises, but that which is based on the mediatorial kingdom of Christ. It is the kingdom into which the poor in spirit enter, which is reserved for them who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; it is the kingdom which is for those who are pure in heart, who are born again of the Spirit of God; it is the kingdom which comes not by observation; it is a kingdom into which all men pass by repentance and faith; it is mysterious in its beginnings, silent in its growth, like the seed springing up from very small beginnings and growing to great things; and it is potent in its action, like the leaven in the meal. We are to pray for its coming, and yet it is always coming. Wherever there is a just thing taking the place of an unjust, wherever righteousness prevails over unrighteousness, wherever men are growing more kindly and true, wherever legislation is becoming more Christian, where commerce is baptised with the Spirit of Christ, where literature is guided by a Holy Spirit of God, when family life becomes ennobled and purified, when men come into holier and truer relations with one another and with their God in heaven, this kingdom is coming. We may well pray for its coming, for when it comes the old trouble and sorrow and conflict of the centuries will vanish like an idle dream. Then, what hope have we that this kingdom will come? What is our consolation in regard to it amidst all discouragements of the time? Our Lord says, The same hope and the same encouragement that the man has who casts his seed into the ground. Everywhere men are dependent upon a great power which is working behind them; every day God brings the succession of day and night, so that men may carry on the work of their life. Every year comes the stately march of the seasons, or else there would be no harvest for men. Why, there is a standing miracle which would overwhelm us if we were not used to it every year—of that shooting of life in field and forest which the spring-time brings! So even in regions nearer to ourselves. Your very children spring up and grow you know not how. So we are to take this thought into the activities of the Christian Church. In this day of material progress and triumph we are apt to look rather at the organisations than at the Spirit which breathes through them; at what men do rather than at what God does behind; and our Lord here puts to us this great central fact. John Wesley’s dying words are words of comfort for the Church in all the centuries: “The best of all is, God is with us. If He were not, our hope would be scant indeed.” But He is. He is, in history, bringing new and strange and wondrous movements, developing a nation’s life. He is in the Church of God convincing men of sin, carrying on the great work of building up men in the image of Jesus Christ.
II. The need of patience.—In carrying on this great work of bettering the world, elevating it higher, there is the element of time which must be taken into account. “The husbandman waiteth long and is patient.” The earth says to him, “Give me seed, give me time, and I will give you fruit.” And so it is in regard to the great things of the spiritual life. Everywhere we find that what is done is the result of long and complex forces. The more important a thing is, the longer time does it take. A man may be converted in a moment of time; but after he has turned right round the development of that life must needs take many long years of discipline before it reaches the height for which God intended it. Salvation means not merely delivering a man from sin, from every evil thing, but building him up to all nobleness; not merely the putting aside of what is weak and sinful, but the attainment of all that is noble and true; and is always the work of time. You can make a man a present of some material things in a moment, but you cannot give him patience, you cannot give him purity, you cannot give him humility, in a moment of time. Faith gets grip and strength through stress of suffering; wisdom is the child of experience.
III. Spiritual continuity.—Our Lord says there is a natural law of continuity in the spiritual life as there is in other things. “First the blade.” We can never do without any of the intervening stages—never expedite the processes of God either in nature or in grace. Men are coming to see that everywhere this law prevails; history is coming to be regarded not as a mere set of isolated facts chronicled together in the manner of annals, but that the thought and the life of the past generations are living in the present, and shaping its thought and purposes, that the growth of opinion and the influence of thought are felt over and over again in succeeding generations. So it is in regard to the spiritual life; perfectly natural, perfectly simple and beautiful in its action is the life of God in the soul.
1. There is the green blade trembling in the breeze, the type of spiritual life in the young disciple. There seems at first very little in the way of positive Christian life. It is but a green blade touched by the wandering breeze; it seems very little; but if God’s Spirit is in it, it will grow to greater things.
2. There is another stage, and it seems sometimes as if very little value could be attached to it except for what comes afterwards. Sometimes a man thinks he is losing ground, going back, when in point of fact God is training him for higher services and leading him to the heights of the Christian life. It is through the depths that we go to the heights.
3. There is another time yet. The time of the full ripe corn in the ear—the time which Bunyan sets before us in the picture of the land of Beulah, where the birds are for ever singing, the angels come and go, and you can see the city far away, its heights gleaming in the sunshine. There is a time when we think not so much of doctrines, though they have their importance, as we think of that which is behind the teaching—the living God; when we have not so much many motives as one motive—love to Christ; when we feel more and more that He has been with us leading and guiding us; when we come out of the struggle not merely talking of the trouble but of the mercy which has been shown to us while we passed through it; when some things have fallen off from us that we thought important for us, and we get more and more to the central verities of eternal truth; when Christ becomes to the trusting soul all in all!—John Brown, D.D.
Harvest lessons.—Our Lord was very fond of drawing His parallels and illustrations from the garden and the field. This will be found a great help to those whose occupations lead them to be much abroad, and to take notice of the various appearances of nature as she works out the processes of vegetation.
I. The harvest suggests grateful thoughts of the good providence of God.—
1. We almost see Him “opening His hand and filling all things living with plenteousness.” What a family has He to provide for! Not only mankind, but “all sheep and oxen,” etc. (Psalms 8:7-8). “These wait all upon Him,” etc. (Psalms 104:27). Nor wait in vain (Psalms 145:15-16). Well, therefore, does the psalmist call upon “beasts and all cattle,” etc., to “praise the name of the Lord” (Psalms 148:10; Psalms 148:13).
2. But the lower animals have neither understanding to know God, nor yet voice to praise Him. Man has both. Man is placed in this magnificent world, to be the interpreter of the whole creation. He is the priest of the temple, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable unto God.
3. Man is not only most capable of praising God, but he has also most cause to do so. Of all living things, he is maintained at the greatest cost.
II. The harvest reminds us of the faithfulness of God.—Once He brought a flood upon the earth; and for that year no sower went forth to sow, and no reaper put in his sickle. But after that He declared that it should never be so again (Genesis 9:9-17).
2. Such is God’s promise; and those who have little respect for anything else He has said place entire reliance on this. They plough and they sow in perfect confidence that God will send heat and cold, sun and rain, everything that is necessary to produce a harvest.
3. Some years may be less favourable than others; some countries may be visited with a partial or even entire failure of the fruits of the earth; but the promise never fails. After a year of scarcity comes a year of extraordinary abundance, or the deficiency of one country is supplied by the excess of another.
4. There is only just enough uncertainty in these things to make serious people sensible of their absolute dependence upon Him who giveth all (Jeremiah 5:24; Deuteronomy 11:17).
III. The harvest reminds us of the instability of man.—
1. “One generation passeth away,” etc. (Ecclesiastes 1:4). We know, indeed, that the earth itself has its appointed time, and that the end of one harvest will be, to be burned up by that fire which shall consume the earth and all that is therein (2 Peter 3:10). Still, as compared with the rapid succession of its inhabitants, the earth may be said to “abide for ever,” yielding its fruit to the different generations of men, which quickly come and as quickly disappear. What a mortifying reflexion—that the very ground we tread on, even the dust we shake off our feet, is in this respect better than ourselves!
2. Harvests measure our lives. Thousands will not live to see another harvest; nay, thousands are going out of the world, at this very season, while the provision of another year is being gathered in. They sowed, and others are reaping; or they reaped, and others have entered into the fruits of their labours.
IV. The harvest makes us think about death.—
1. Death is the great reaper. When he “putteth in his sickle,” all heads bow down. His harvest is confined to no particular season. His are the only crops that never fail.
2. To the Christian death is no longer the “king of terrors.” He is cut down because he is ripe. He has passed through all the stages of spiritual growth and godliness—“first the blade,” etc. Then, when God judges that the fruit is perfectly formed in him—“the fruit of the Spirit, which is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth”—immediately He Himself “putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.”
3. When the corn is fit to cut, it is a pity to let it stand any longer; and when a soul is ripe, it is equally desirable that it should be “taken away from the evil to come,” and lodged in a place of safety beyond the changes and chances of this mortal life.
V. The harvest speaks to us of the resurrection and judgment.—
1. The resurrection parallel is developed by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:35-49.
2. The judgment may be considered in two lights.
(1) It is God’s harvest (Matthew 13:30; Revelation 14:14-19).
(2) It is man’s harvest also (Galatians 6:7; 2 Corinthians 5:10). This life is the seed-time of our whole existence. “The harvest is the end of the world”; and then shall every man “eat of the fruit of his way,” etc. (Proverbs 1:31). “He that soweth to his flesh,” etc. (Galatians 6:8). Let the censorious and uncharitable hear this (Matthew 7:2). Let the unmerciful and unrelenting hear this (James 2:13). Let the covetous hear this (James 5:2-3). Let the despisers of the gospel hear this (Proverbs 1:24-28). But as to those who are sowing, not to the flesh, but to the spirit, all that they have need of is that which every sower must possess—patience; that, “after they have done the will of God, they may receive the promises.”
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 4:26-29. Rise and progress of religion in the heart.—
1. Religious impressions sometimes take their rise in the heart from small and apparently accidental circumstances. An observation casually made in conversation, the perusal of a book, one of those occurrences which we call accidents, or some serious misfortune, may be the means of either giving a man the first instruction in practical piety, or of causing him seriously to feel the importance of religion.
2. By whatever means the good seed is first sown in the heart, if it there meets with a congenial soil, a very short time will elapse before its existence and power begin to be perceived. As the tendency of natural vegetation is upwards, so the first aspirations of the regenerate soul are directed towards heaven. Its hopes and wishes rise gradually above the earth: under the fostering warmth of Divine grace holy dispositions spring and grow up in the man’s heart, he knoweth not how: his leaf withereth not: it is protected against the storms and blight which might infest it in its tender condition, so that the sun shall not burn it by day, neither the moon by night.
3. There remains one final labour of the husbandman before he can enjoy the full reward of all his anxieties and toils. “When the fruit is brought forth,” and fully ripened, the stem which unites it to the earth must be severed before it can be laid up in his barns. “Immediately,” therefore, “he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.” Maturity in spiritual growth is not always measured by length of years. Whenever the truly religious man is cut off, apparently in the flower of his age, we must regard the event as one of the mysteries which we understand not, as a dispensation, afflicting indeed to those who are left to mourn his loss, but not so to him, to whom “to die is gain.” Conclusion:
1. This parable gives no excuse for slothfulness or negligence to the spiritual husbandman, but rather a season for constant exertion.
2. This parable instructs us all to be ready to receive religious instruction, as well as to impart it.—Prof. T. Chevallier.
The development of good and evil.—This parable is frequently explained of the silent and secret growth of grace in the individual character of God’s servants, and of the final storing up of the wheat of earth in the garner of heaven. But surely the parable embraces a far wider horizon of thought, and concerns the method of God’s procedure in the kingdom of Christ to the end of time—namely, the principle of allowing the full development of both evil and good until the hour strikes for judgment. In illustration of this our Lord sets forth the general laws of vegetable life on earth, which are analogous to the laws of spiritual development:
(1) the law of growth or full development from germs;
(2) the law of silent, gradual, unperceived increase; and
(3) the law of crisis or ripeness, followed by the sickle and the harvest, the cutting down, either for storage or burning. The practical use, then, of this parable is to meet men’s incredulity or doubt as to the reality of God’s government on earth; which may arise, and often does arise, in the minds of Christ’s followers from taking too short views, from looking at the world as already a finished thing, and therefore as an unintelligible chaos, a field where good and bad grow hopelessly together; to meet this incredulity and doubt by the assurance that the fixed method of the Divine government is not hasty and sudden harvesting and uprooting, but to allow all germs of both good and evil to develop and mature; and then, when the time of full ripeness arrives, to put in the sickle—to postpone the crisis till “iniquity is full,” and heroic righteousness in resistance is also at the full—and then to bring in sudden judgment and retribution.—E. White.
Lessons.—
1. Though the sower sleep after his labour, yet the process of germination goes on night and day.
2. Simple beginnings and practical results may be connected by mysterious processes: “he knoweth not how.” There is a point in Christian work where knowledge must yield to mystery.
3. As the work of the sower is assisted by natural processes (“the earth bringeth forth of itself,” etc.), so the seed of truth is aided by the natural conscience and aspiration which God has given to all men.
4. The mysteriousness of processes ought not to deter from reaping the harvest. The spiritual labourer may learn from the husbandman.—J. Parker, D.D.
The Word of life in the figure of a grain of wheat.—
1. Its internal energy of life.
2. Its growth according to laws.
3. Its gradualness.
4. Its progressive stages.
5. The certainty of its development.—J. P. Lange, D.D.
Divine surprises.—The little green growth, as it forces its way through the soil, is not prepared for the great surprises of its own development; it is not prepared for the beautiful verdure of the green field caused by its own shooting up, nor even then for a still further development; for now comes the ear with its promises of even farther development—with its promises of great usefulness, of some time furnishing food for the eater. And even then greater surprises are still in store; for the ear can scarcely guess—this little ear of wheat not yet developed, just heavy enough to bend the stem on which it is growing—it is scarcely prepared for the still further surprises of the full wheat, or corn, in the ear; and men and women, following this same thought, begin to realise that there is within them something of Divine, God-like possibility.—S. R. Fuller.
Growth.—If you, as an individual soul, are not bigger, fuller of Divine power and inspiration, than you were five or ten years ago, it is because this process of growth has been hindered or thwarted by your own rebellious interference—as if the farmer who has sown the seed should untimely scratch away the earth and hinder the germ’s expansion, or later on, heedless of law, should walk rough-shod over this early verdure and thwart its development.—Ibid.
Gradual progress towards perfection.—Like those wondrous insects of the branching coral, who, beneath the waters of the vast Southern Ocean, lay their slight foundation, ever adding a little, and still a little more, while, as years pass on, the work goes on increasing, till the little unperceived atom stands forth a fair island, bursting with tropical luxuriance of fruit and foliage—so should it be with us. The seed is sown within our hearts. The Heavenly Husbandman—the Builder also—is at work within. Leave Him who sowed to do His holy will. And it shall work mightily within you—moulding, leavening, forming, building, spreading, springing up and growing, as none “knoweth how,” till there loom forth within the chaos of the natural heart the glorious form and lineaments of “the Perfect Man, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” Himself.—Dean Butler.
Mark 4:26. “The kingdom of God” is a phrase more easy to understand than to explain. It is God’s government over the world; the Church chosen out of the world; the authority exercised over each soul; the spiritual progress of the community, of the truth, of any special member. It is God’s dealings with men as seen from above. In it all outward things are included. But it is still an inward thing. Its hidden nature is illustrated here by comparisons taken from the growth of seeds. The grain is lost to our sight, and the growth is too gradual to be seen. But we need only fresh senses to which the earth shall be transparent, and the smallest increase visible, in order to see them. And so the effects of God’s Word and Providence are only invisible because of our infirmity. We know very little about the soil; one is good, another bad; one will grow such things, another such; and wise men know a little about its parts, and how they act. And just such a knowledge it is that we have of men. We distinguish them roughly, and know practically what to expect from them, and our philosophers have analysed characters and mental processes. It is upon such soil that the facts of the gospel are cast as seed out of which is to grow the plant of holiness. But God does not leave the soul alone. Just as Providence works in the natural soil, bringing it into a fit composition, providing vegetable and animal growths, and checking each when it has done its work, so that the soil when left alone grows more and more fertile, so is Providence working with the souls of men, and by the myriad accidents of life moulding and forming them. We cannot tell, when we speak, how our words may be taken. We cannot tell, from the way they are taken, what their ultimate effect may be. Now this may operate to discourage and chill. We all like to see how our work is getting on; we all strive to help on our own purposes. But this parable is meant to encourage us all. We must leave much to other powers, and cannot order all things as we would: other men will not obey us; we cannot make them listen; we cannot order our own circumstances or theirs; and yet they are ordered. We must leave them to Him that ordereth, i.e. God.—Bishop Steere.
Mark 4:28. Blade, ear, and full corn.—
1. “The blade” begins in a small shoot. That shoot is but the elongation or enlargement of the germ which is found at the rough end of a grain of wheat. This is elongated by the addition of fresh cells, which continues until the blade is fully formed. Now the idea of Jesus, sown in a suitable mind, develops in the same way by growing first into enlarged knowledge, idea after idea being added until a new form of thinking is unfolded. New ideas of God, of ourselves, of our fellowmen, arise. We think differently of life’s duties, experiences, and purposes.
2. “The ear” is the case in which the corn is formed; it is preparatory to the fruit, and determines it. The ear is thus the purposes of good in the will. The new thought and knowledge, under the warm love of the soul, begins to form purposes, to propose ends, which are but Christian thinking passing into Christian aims. At first these plans will give little promise of being realised; they will be rather suggestions of what might possibly be. But the sun of love in the soul shines upon them with glowing warmth, and the ear puts forth its modest blossom. That blossom is the joy that comes of such purposes; there is a pleasure in contemplating the possibility of bringing a practical result out of our new thoughts and plans. When the blossom, or joy, has fully developed, then is the time for the fruit to begin to form. The vital principle of good which is in the joy, as the pollen is in the blossom, finds its way into the will, and there it grows into action—the plans for mending our life and the world take practical shape—at first, however, only imperfectly.
3. “The full corn” is the reproduction of that which came to us as seed—that is, our lives yield a result which is the reproduction of the character of Jesus. This third stage is only partially reproduced in the best of men in this life; but it will be perfectly attained. There is no Christ-given thought which shall not also become Christ-like endeavour; and there is no Christ-like endeavour which shall fail to become an attained practical result.—R. Vaughan.
Encouragement for Christian workers.—
1. We should never be discouraged in Christian work, of whatever kind, by what seems a slow growth.
2. We should never be discouraged in our efforts for Christ’s kingdom by adverse circumstances; nor by any unexpected combination of them, and their prolonged operation.
3. Good influences are linked to good issues in this world, as the seed to its fruitage.
4. God is within and behind all forces that tend to enlarge and perfect His kingdom, as He is beneath the physical forces which bring harvest in its season, and set on the springing seed its coronal.
5. Finally, let us remember what the glory of the harvest shall be, when it is reached, in this developing kingdom of God; and in view of that let us constantly labour, with more than fidelity, with an eager enthusiasm that surpasses all obstacles, makes duty a privilege, and transmutes toil into joy.—R. S. Storrs, D.D.
Growth in the spiritual world, as in the natural, is spontaneous, in the sense that it is subject to definite laws of the spirit over which man’s will has small control. The fact is one to be recognised with humility and thankfulness. With humility, for it teaches dependence on God—a habit of mind which brings along with it prayerfulness, and which, as honouring to God, is more likely to ensure ultimate success than a self-reliant zeal. With thankfulness, for it relieves the heart of the too heavy burden of an undefined, unlimited responsibility, and makes it possible for the minister of the Word to do his work cheerfully, in the morning sowing the seed, in the evening withholding not his hand; then retiring to rest to enjoy the sound sleep of the labouring man, while the seed sown springs and grows apace, he knoweth not how. Growth in the spiritual world, as in the natural, is, further, a process, which demands time and gives ample occasion for the exercise of patience. Time must elapse even between the sowing and the brairding—a fact to be laid to heart by parents and teachers, lest they commit the folly of insisting on seeing the blade at once, to the probable spiritual hurt of the young intrusted to their care. Much longer time must elapse between the brairding and the ripening. That a speedy sanctification is impossible we do not affirm; but it is, we believe, so exceptional that it may be left altogether out of account in discussing the theory of Christian experience. Once more, growth in the spiritual world, as in the natural, is graduated; in that region as in this there is a blade, a green ear, and a ripe ear.—A. B. Bruce, D.D.
Order of growth.—Not only does the corn always go on growing, but it always observes the same order and succession in its growth—“first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” This is an order which is never reversed or altered; it is always the full corn in the ear which is the last to shew itself. And so it is with the heart. First, it is always repentance and sorrow for sin; then, faith in Jesus Christ; then, without losing these, any more than the grain loses the protection of the blade and the ear, it goes on to holiness of life, and a sure hope in God’s promises; and last of all to love—love the ripened corn, the fulfilling of the ear.—H. Harris.
The beauty of early piety.—How refreshing to the eye is the garb of green with which the field is clothed, when the tender blade has first sprung up! But a short time back all lay in a state of ruggedness and an unseemly mass of clods. And not less grateful to the eye of those interested in the spiritual welfare of others are the first dawnings and buddings of faith and love in the Christian’s heart, when the “good seed” puts forth its first increase in those around us. How pleasing to witness the young and tender plant of righteousness putting forth the buds and leaves of Christian advancement! How pleasing to observe the gradual increase of piety, of Christian feeling, of prayer, of love, and of joy, bursting forth and ripening into full experience for the coming harvest.—J. L. F. Russell.
Mark 4:29. God’s sickle.—The physical world contains evidence of such periods of catastrophe and new creation. The ages of universal fire and molten elements were ended by the creation of life on the globe, at some time in the past eternity, as Prof. Bonney demonstrates in his Hulsean Lecture. And many times since, locally if not universally, there have been epochs of change, of “new heavens and new earth,” of new forms of life, vegetable and animal, of vast destruction and wholly new formation of land and sea, with their inhabitants. The history of the world of mankind during the historic period furnishes many examples of this law of the kingdom of God. When the harvest is come, He putteth in the sickle. The old world grew up from a single pair, and developed its good and evil. At length evil prevailed, “and the flood came and took them all away.” Again the world started with a single family, and again evil and apostasy prevailed. Then God added a fresh element to human history in the family of Abraham. When evil increased judgment descended on them, as also on Egypt, Assyria, Edom, Babylon, Tyre, Persia, Greece, Rome. Jerusalem itself was destroyed, and the Jews were scattered. The Jewish vintage of evil was ripe for the wine-press. The same law has ruled in the Gentile modern world. The bloody vintage came for the Roman Empire in the fifth century, for Eastern Christendom in the seventh, by the hand of the Mohammedans, and later by the Turkish Power. It came later on for European wickedness in the French Revolution. And it is coming again in the great battles and tribulations of the last days, when the clusters of the Vine of the Earth shall “be cast into the wine-press of the wrath and fury of Almighty God.” Right-doing and Wrong-doing are ripening on every side. Every nation on earth, every soul on earth, is ripening as wheat for the harvest in the garner of God, or as a cluster of the vine of the earth for the wine-press of His wrath. This “sharp sickle” hovers in the sky suspended by an Almighty Hand. But it is there, and it is visible to the spiritual eye; often it takes a lifetime to demonstrate fully the real characters of men. The evolution requires space for development in relation to individual character. St. Paul sums up all these facts in 1 Timothy 5:24-25.—E. White.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 4
Mark 4:26-27. Fruit in after-days.—An old man was once at work in the field, his mind occupied only with things of this world. Suddenly his thoughts wandered back to his early days, and he remembered how on one occasion the minister, before pronouncing the parting blessing, had paused, and reminded the ungodly that upon them no blessing would rest, but the wrath of God instead. The remembrance of that solemn warning—uttered seventy years before—filled the old man’s heart with terror, and led him to seek the Lord with all his heart. Thus the words disregarded at fifteen saved at eighty-five, long after the speaker had passed away from the ministry of earth.
Christian growth imperceptible.—It is the work of a long life to become a Christian. Many, oh! many a time are we tempted to say, “I make no progress at all. ’Tis only failure after failure; nothing grows.” Now look at the sea when the flood is coming in. Go and stand by the sea-beach, and you will think that the ceaseless flux and reflux is but retrogression equal to the advance. But look again in an hour’s time, and the whole ocean has advanced. Every advance has been beyond the last, and every retrograde movement has been an imperceptible trifle less than the last. This is progress, to be estimated at the end of hours, not minutes. And this is Christian progress. Many a fluctuation, many a backward motion, with a rush at times so vehement that all seems lost. But if the eternal work be real, every failure has been a real gain, and the next does not carry us so far back as we were before. Every advance is a real gain, and part of it is never lost. Both when we advance and when we fail, we gain. We are nearer to God than we were.
Mark 4:28. Slumbering seeds.—A gentleman tore down an outbuilding that had stood for many years in his yard. He smoothed over the ground, and left it. The warm spring rains fell upon it, and the sunshine flooded it; and soon there sprang up multitudes of little flowers, unlike any growing in the neighbourhood. Where the building had stood was once a garden, and the seeds had lain in the soil without moisture, light, or warmth all the years. So soon as the sunshine and the rain touched them, they sprang up into life and beauty. So ofttimes the seeds of truth lie long in a human heart, growing not, because the light and warmth of the Holy Spirit are shut away from them by sin and unbelief; but after long years the heart is opened in some way to the heavenly influences, and the seeds, living still, shoot up into beauty. The instructions of a pious mother may lie in a heart, fruitless, from childhood to old age, and yet at last be the means of saving the soul.
The law of gradual advance.—No nation comes to eminence in character, and to a corresponding supremacy in position, with out many and painful preparatory processes. There is “first the blade, then the ear; after that, the full corn in the ear.” First, naturally, come the means of subsistence; then, conveniences; then, elegancies; and only after long and still-advancing struggle the great achievement of a perfected civilisation. The cavern, or the cabin; then, the house; then, the village; and afterward the city, with palaces and piers, and consecrating temples. The spoken word, and the spontaneous song; then, literature in its permanence; and not till long afterward that literature in its various and copious departments, of eloquence, science, philosophy, poetry, and the history which includes and perpetuates all these. First, industry; then, art. First, hollow logs, and timorous barks; and afterward great ships, that spread their wings on every wind, or made the seas to pause and throb as the pulsating energy thunders above them. First, a tribe; and then—when years and generations have passed, when soldiers have fought, and statesmen have planned, when religions have diffused their spirit through society, and reciprocating industries have knit together, when homes have been established, and families have been organised, and parents have transmitted their qualities to their children—then a great, enlightened, and peaceful commonwealth, rich in all manhood, replete with resources, and inwardly compacted in vital union: this is the method of all civilisation; this is the history of nations.