Verses 30-32
The Fool's Vineyard
By such allusions the Bible constantly shows us how much the generations of mankind resemble one another. In every age the sluggard and the fool have had a place, as well as the labourer and the wise man. In this respect the village has been as the great city, the great city as the greater kingdom, and the kingdom itself has been a world in miniature. Truly, then, we may go back to old scenes and read the unequal and troubled story of our own life. That which is now hath already been; and as for our originalities, the ancients knew them, and pronounced them stale. Any difference that may appear in the history of the world or in the development of human life is rather a difference of incident than of essence. Let us see if many modern experiences have not been anticipated by this dreary scene of the fool's field, as it was looked upon by the wisest man of his age.
The scene shows that if we will not have flowers and fruits, we shall certainly have thorns and nettles. Let us clearly understand that we are living under an economy which we cannot change, and to which we must submit with grace, or which in its turn will avenge itself upon our negligence and unfaithfulness. We cannot set aside the laws of nature. On they roll, grinding all things that come in their way, or making all things beautiful that were intended by the Creator to assume the image and aspect of loveliness. We can neglect the laws of nature, but we cannot set them aside and expect to realise the advantages of obedience. Man must give in, for law never will succumb. We cannot say to nature, "I am going to sleep, so you must stand still until I awake." There is a law of growth in the very ground: we may co-operate with it, and turn it to our advantage; we may, so to speak, throw the reins of our discipline upon it, and turn it to good uses; but, though we sit down and fold our hands slumbrously, that great law will go steadily on, and thorns and nettles will show how inexorably it proceeds. It is the same with the character of man. We cannot simply do nothing. Life has its laws. We may pay them no heed, but they will assert themselves notwithstanding, and show by painful proofs that neglect is crime. A man may resolve, for example, not to cultivate his mind. He says he will be a child of nature; he will leave himself to the development of external and internal forces, without any exercise of his own will; he will have no purpose about himself, but at the end will be precisely what nature chooses to make him. Is his mind then simply a blank? Impossible! The weeds of false notions, the thorns and nettles of prejudice, the undergrowths of superstition, will prove his intellectual indolence, and he who would not carry the generous bounty of harvest shall be weighted with noxious and worthless plants. Nature will do nothing for a man except with the man's own co-operation, and even that co-operation must be modified, cultivated, rearranged day by day, and only as the result of faithful devotion to the altar of wisdom will nature cause all her issues to result in strength and nobleness of manhood. A man may purposely neglect to cultivate his moral nature. He says he will leave all that to the forces that are above him and around him, and they can make of him just what they please. He despises religious service and exhortation; he holds in contempt all ideas of self-control; he derides the suggestion that he should consider the religious aspects of the uncertain future; he says in one decisive sentence that he has made up his mind to have nothing whatever to do with religion. What then? Can he keep himself in a strictly negative condition? Is it possible for an atheist to have no religion? Is he at the end of ten years the innocent lamb that he proposed to himself to become? Look at his false ideas, his superstition, his narrowness, his want of veneration, his superficial judgment, and see how far he has succeeded. We must understand that there will be growth even if we do not attend to cultivation. There is a great law of production evermore in operation. We can use it for our highest purposes, or we can neglect it, and it will avenge our neglect by weeds, thorns, thistles, and all manner of worthless growths. It is impossible to stand still. It is impossible to become merely nothing. There is no law of negation in God's well-ordered universe. If men would consider this they would be wise; failing to consider it, we can account for nearly all the folly in the world.
The scene clearly shows that the sluggard and the fool cannot hide the results of their neglect. Every man is a living witness to the life which he lives, how secretly soever he may conduct that life. In this case the results were observed and reported. We must see more or less of each other's work. We are in the same world a small and crowded world it is, too we belong to one another we hold mutual rights of inquiry in short, we cannot hide ourselves from our fellow-men. We cannot confine the results of a wasted life within our own bounds. The drunkard says he injures nobody but himself, than which there is no greater fallacy in all human misthinking. The man deludes himself with the notion that he only is suffering pain of body, wreck of mind, loss of understanding, and forfeiture of property: he little thinks that every child he has will suffer for the outrage of appetite of which he stands convicted. His children will be tainted in health, and will be clouded or dwarfed in mind, in consequence of their father's excesses. The spendthrift says he is only spending his own money; but in this sense of the term no man has any money of his own to spend. Every penny we hold we should hold in a spirit of trusteeship, and our object should be to discover how much good we may do with it; for it we waste it, not only is the money itself gone but our mental economy is injured, our moral integrity is impaired, our sense of honour has undergone modification or collapse. It is impossible to tell a lie without injuring other people. It is impossible to disobey the laws of cleanliness without affecting the health of society. In the deepest, largest, truest sense, no man liveth unto himself; every breath we draw would seem to affect the atmosphere in which we live. This being the case, we have not a right to do as we please with what we call our own. First of all, there is nothing which we can call our own. Life itself is not. Life is a precious trust. We have to account for life in some cases even to our fellow-men. In ordinary intercourse we see again and again proofs of the fact that society will not allow us to do what we please with our own. Surely a man may say that his own child is his, and his only; but such is not the fact; no man has a child which is exclusively his own; the child sustains not only family but social relations; if you were to attempt to lay violent hands upon your child's life society would arrest you and forbid you, and, if you persisted in your foul purpose, society would imprison you, or, if you succeeded in it, society would hang you. You cannot do what you like with your own life. If you were to attempt to take it, society would again arrest you and show you that your life is not your own. Let your garden become covered with weeds, let those weeds come to seed, and when the seed is blown into other people's gardens, see if they do not protest. Surely, a man may say, I have a right to neglect my garden if I please, and let it grow whatever may come by nature. But even your own neighbours would protest against this superficial and mischievous notion. The neighbours would say, If you have a right to injure your own garden, you have no right to injure ours, and no man can let weeds come to maturity in his garden without injuring the gardens of the whole neighbourhood. We are bound together by singular but vital ties, and we cannot touch one of the filaments by which society is connected without sending a thrill to the very centre of social existence. What is true of weeds growing in gardens is true of other nuisances. You may not even build a chimney that will throw its black smoke over your neighbours' property. Society claims a right of judgment. Public sentiment insists upon being respected. There is not only a written law of protection but an unwritten law of protection; and indeed written laws would have no force and effect but for the laws that are unwritten: it is the spiritual judgment, the moral sentiment, the indwelling and all-ruling conscience that settles and determines public law.
The scene shows how possible it is to be right in some particulars and to be grievously wrong in others. The legal right of the slothful man to the possession of the field might be undisputed. The vineyard might have fallen into the hands of the fool by strictly lawful descent. So far, so good. The case is on this side perfectly sound. Yet possession was not followed by cultivation, and possession without cultivation is of necessity diminution. It is not enough to possess; we must increase. We must make the world a thousand times larger than it is; not in mere miles, but in its power of production. The man who had one talent buried it, and although he restored it, yet was condemned as a negligent, unfaithful, and wicked servant. We do not, if we are wise, allow even a house to fall into decay. There is no right of abuse. Let this be clearly understood; it applies to the whole compass of life: there is no right of abuse in property, in social usage, in social confidence, in personal cultivation. Society holds us all as trustees and stewards, and demands an account of our procedure. Is that dog yours? Surely a man may call a dog his own. Nothing of the kind. Society will protest against its starvation or other cruel treatment. Only let society know that even a dog which you call your own is cruelly treated, and you will find that society will assert its rights and bring you to punishment. You have not a right to be unclean, to be ignorant, to be careless of life; on that line no rights have ever been established. We have only the right to hold property for the good of others, to hold it for cultivation, to hold it for multiplication, in order that social life may be benefited and strengthened by its appropriation. Coming to examine these things in a practical light, apart altogether from theories and exhortations, we see that we are living in an economy that is self-watchful, self-guarded, and self-avenging. It is a solemn and awful thing to live.
The scene shows that even the worst abuses may be turned to good account. "Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction." So even the fool may be accounted a teacher, through no will or purpose of his own. The good man is an eloquent example; the bad man is a loud warning. Keep your eyes open, and you will read moral lessons everywhere; watch the men who go regularly to business, who are faithful to their engagements, who are steadfast, sober-minded, zealous in all goodness, and you will see to what rich estate they will come, not necessarily rich in mere money, but morally and spiritually rich, blessed above all things with a contented and thankful mind. You will see that the finest possessions may be wasted: property, talent, influence, opportunity, may all be thrown away. There is no wealth which may not be utterly exhausted. Beware! even mountains may be levelled even rivers may be dried up. The fool thinks that there is no limit to his wealth, but his very thinking so brings it the more quickly to an end. We prosper in true wealth only by care as to details. A leak will ruin a reservoir. There are many men who pay much attention to what they consider the larger and more important affairs in life, but who allow little things to take their own course. In the result such men are proved to have acted a foolish part. If they had acted from the other point that is to say, if they had been careful about little things they would have found that the great things would have fallen into happy economical arrangement. In looking abroad upon society in all its action, you will see that wickedness always moves in the direction of destruction. It must do so. Remember the awful words, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," not die in the sense of a mere threat, but die as a necessity cannot help dying. Sin is the broad and open way to destruction. "He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." All indolence must go down down in moral fibre, down in moral volume, down in moral dignity; all wickedness not only goes down, as if a step at a time, but rolls and plunges down with an infinite and irresistible velocity. All sin forces itself in the direction of perdition. In all this reasoning we are not relying upon our invention or imagination; we are simply writing sententiously the history of the whole world. The proofs which the Christian teacher has to adduce are not always to be found in books, are not always concealed in learned languages, but are often lying upon the wide page of daily life. No man well considers facts, realities, circumstances, within his own knowledge, who does not see that there is a great law in nature and in life, binding and ruling all things, and eventuating in solemn and impartial judgment. How did the wise man know that the man was void of understanding? What right had he to speak of another man as a fool? He spoke because he saw the state in which the vineyard was. We know a man by his surroundings; we know him by his habits; we know him by the very tone of his voice: there is character in everything. Society cannot help judging every one of its members. Does not this social judgment point to a higher arbitrament? Is there not an outline even in all natural economies of great spiritual realities and holy ministries? It is because wise men have diligently considered the bearing of these things that they have felt no difficulty in passing from what is called the material to what is denominated the spiritual. The road has been clear and open, and has invited the pilgrimage of reverent travellers. It is because we have seen sin that we hate it; it is because we have seen righteousness that we are prepared to affirm that all the worlds are related to one another, and that all laws originate in a sublime moral purpose, and that all life is ultimately to be brought not only to social but to divine and unalterable judgment. A man may so live as to be pronounced void of understanding; he may so act as to be pronounced a fool. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Prayer
Almighty God, who can answer thee when thou dost arise to shake terribly the earth? Then are we filled with fear, and cry unto thee for pity, for no answer is found in our mouths concerning thy righteousness and judgment. In such hours thou dost teach us how little and frail we are; and yet in our feebleness thou dost show us how great, we may become by living and moving and having our being in thee, drawing our strength from the fountain of all true power, and living evermore under the benediction of the all-ruling God. But these things are too high for us; we cannot attain unto them; they rise above us and defy our pursuit: what then hast thou done that we may know thee, and approach thee, and look upon thee with the eyes of love? Thou hast sent thy Son, Emmanuel God with us. He took not upon him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham; he is bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and he condescends to speak our language as if it were his own, and to teach us through the words we know the best. He speaks to us of light and love and peace; of forgiveness, and release, and joy, and holiness: we understand thy Son, this Man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them, turning their common food into sacramental flesh, and their wine into a token of his blood. We love the Saviour; we wonder at the gracious words which proceed out of his mouth; we see him on the hill, and hear him teaching the disciples; we watch him in the house, and mark all his gentle ways; we see him surrounded by sinners, taking up little children and blessing them; going onward to the Cross, his soul exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. We know the power of his resurrection, having had fellowship with his sufferings; now we have peace with God, being justified by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ. Henceforth we would know no man but Jesus; we would crown him Lord of all; we would wait for his law, we would do his bidding, we would imitate his example, we would fill our memory with his words and enrich our hearts with his promises. This is our one desire, that we may be found not having on our own righteousness, but being clothed with the righteousness of Christ as a man might be clothed with a garment: then shall we be accepted in the Beloved, we shall know that all things are for Christ's sake, yea, the very church, beautiful in virginity, beautiful with the comeliness of heaven. Enable us to do what appeals to us as thy law and bidding; may we be found constant in our faith, undivided in our consecration, simple in our motive, endeavouring to realise in all things the purpose and decree of heaven. We are of yesterday, what can we know? Tomorrow we shall be gone, what can we do? Help us by thy Spirit to see how every moment may be turned to account, how every breath may become sacred as a prayer, and how our whole life may be lifted up in practical and loving aspiration. Pity us in our sinfulness; wash us, O thou Christ of God, anointed from all eternity, in thine own blood: then shall we be without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, the very miracle of thy grace. Holy Spirit, teach us; teach us all the innermost things of the sanctuary; lead us past the first gate, and the second gate, even unto the holy of holies, and having seen what is there, the very secret of God, the very mystery of eternity, we shall be solemn for ever, yet glad with ineffable joy. Come to us, thou Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we shall have strength and rest and hope and joy; we shall have all things, and abound. We commend one another to thy care whilst we tarry at thine altar. Some are sad of heart; some are tired of labour that brings no profit; some are weary because the road is long and the burden is very heavy; others are distracted and disappointed and bewildered because whatever they do comes back upon them only in mockery: some are full of joy because they are the companions of prosperity and honour; when they go abroad success goes with them; when they return at eventide they have to pull down their barns and build greater, so plentiful is the harvest of the day. Look upon us whatever our state. May we not faint in the day of adversity, and thus show that our strength is small; may we not boast in the day of prosperity, and thus in our presumption lose our faith. May we feel that all things work together for good to those whose hearts are in the heart of God. Be with our sick, and heal them at least with hope which is better than health of body. Be with our loved ones who have gone abroad to find honest bread under other skies. Watch over them and bless them night and day. If they are in sore straits, do thou send an angel of deliverance. The Lord thus direct us, guide us, enrich us, sanctify us, wash us in the precious blood of his own dear Son, and make us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. Lord, hear our cry, and thy hearing shall be as an answer of peace. Amen.
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