Verses 1-23
Chapter 52
Prayer
Almighty God, our life is in thy right hand, and thou dost care for us with daily care. By the good hand of our God upon us we have been enabled to continue unto this time, and on this holy morning the sacred song is upon our lips, and our hearts are lifted up in hallowed desire, and in our soul is there a goodly expectation. We have brought our morning psalm to sing it together in the courts of thine house, that in many voices thou mayst hear what each voice would say, that in the multitude of our expression thou mayst hear what the individual heart doth feel. We pray thee to take our common song as our personal tribute and to regard our common prayer as the desire of every heart.
Thou hast done great things for us whereof we are glad: all the things thou doest are great, there is nothing small with God, nor trivial, nor of little account: the very hairs of our head are all numbered, our steps are watched, thou dost listen to the beating of the heart, our tears thou dost put into thy bottle, and our names are graven on the palms of thine hands. We will make mention of the lovingkindness of the Lord, and mightily praise him with glowing song, because of his patience and thoughtfulness, and his eternal regard for all that ministers to our soul's health, and to all that prepares for the soul a glorious destiny.
Every man before thee would praise the Lord: there are no silent hearts in the sanctuary. In every eye is the light of a holy expectancy, in every spirit is the moving of a fervent desire. O thou who dost create in the heart of man those emotions and desires and upward movements of the soul, grant unto us great answers that shall fill our life with gladness and clothe our whole course with the light of heaven.
We are emboldened to say all this, and to tell thee the whole story of our heart, because of what we have been taught by Jesus Christ thy Son. He is our way and only way to the Father, he dwelt in thy bosom through all eternity, he came forth to reveal thee to the sons of men, he gave himself, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God he was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification, and he ever liveth to make intercession for us. Me draws our hearts into great supplication and broad and urgent desire, he inspires no little petitions, he creates a great expectancy, and gladdens it with infinite satisfaction. His blood is our hope, his cross is our refuge, his grace is cur strength. Lead us into all the path of Christ, give us the fearlessness of honesty, give us the patience of earnestness, and enable us to wait with all filial diligence until the light shineth upon us in full revelation.
Help us to read thy book with the eyes of the heart, that we may see its inner beauty: help us to listen to thy gospel with the hearing of the soul, that no tone of its tender music may be lost. Comfort us with all helpful solaces, that shall quiet us and yet inspire us with strength. May the time of our sojourning here be passed in the fear of love, in the law of light, and in the delight of thy statutes, which are our songs in the house of our pilgrimage.
Speak to every heart, breathe thy benediction upon every life, let a great comfort give us a glowing love in the soul that shall be satisfied with nothing but the presence of the great God. Pour out thy Holy Spirit upon us. Holy Spirit, dwell with us, sacred guest of humble hearts, abide in the sanctuary of our love, guide and lift up and strengthen with all heavenly energy our whole life, and when the days of our travelling are done, and we come to the last river, give us safe crossing and a broad welcome into the city. Amen.
The Picture Gallery of the Church
Jesus Christ shows us how to deal with a great multitude in preaching the gospel of the kingdom. "The same day went Jesus out of the house and sat by the sea side, and great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship and sat, and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them in parables." Do not expect great multitudes to follow connected discourses. Crowds must be caught by points rather than by arguments. In speaking to the crowd, I find that the Master spoke many things many things to many hearers. That is the great law of successful speech to multitudes. Yet the many things were about one thing the subject never changed. The one thing was the kingdom of heaven, the many things were the many parables. There was unity in variety, and there was variety in unity. The subject was the kingdom of heaven, and the illustrations were brought from every quarter of life and nature.
We enter then upon a new phase of the divine preaching. Hitherto it has been doctrinal and hortatory, now it is imaginative and pictorial. These marvellous parables are the picture-gallery of the Church: the parable shows what is usually called the ideal side of the kingdom. This is the painter's art. The painter is not a copyist or a literalist: he does not transfer a tree to his paper or his canvas, he puts meanings into his work which grow upon the mind and hold it in new fascinations evermore. The amateur daubs flat paint upon flat canvas, and the canvas is but the heavier for the lifeless load. The true painter makes the paint throb, and fills the canvas with the electricity which burns in his own hand.
We never get all the meaning of the parables: we never get all the meaning of any truth. The parables bear inspection for ever: they have revelations suited to the morning light and to the noontide glory and to the mystery of the solemn gloaming. To all the ages of the fathers they have been uttering their music, yet their music comes today with swells of power and cadences of persuasive pathos which our fathers never heard. Do not suppose that you have read all the parables and have gone through them. There may be men who have littleness of mind sufficient to enable them to get done with the parables once for all; on some of us they grow, and they are bigger and brighter and tenderer every day. The parables sent from heaven are always new, so is the preacher sent from God he is always new, fresh, dewy, original, vital. His words may be the same, but there is a new colour in them; his is not a monotony of artistic iteration the actor's perishable art it is the marvellous boom and emphasis, or equally marvellous whisper and suppression of vitality.
Never man spake like this man. He never uttered the same word twice in the same tone, therefore he was no actor. The actor repeats, the preacher sent from God creates. His echo is as original as his voice: the fragments fill more baskets than the loaves filled. This is not to be explained in words: it has no other self in the dictionary; it is felt, and the heart, glowing with wordless delight, grips and loves the tender meaning. Herein the sanctuary must always be the first of all places upon the earth for permanence, for durability, for abidingness, for the unwearable substance of truth. Other men come and go like spasms that cannot be reckoned, but the preacher, the parabolist, sent from heaven abides always. The more he is needed, the more he is. This is the secret of living in God.
These words are to be taken as introductory to all that may be given me to say upon these wondrous parables. In the parable before us we have a great advantage over many others, for we have not only the parable but the explanation. Jesus gives both the text and the sermon. We have the same thing put from the inside and from the outside. It will be my business to show that we have here the key of all the parables in other words, this comment upon one will give a hint as to the right method of commenting upon all others.
This, then, is a solemn moment in the spiritual education of some of us who really care for these matters; it is the day on which the key is handed out. If I can master this parable of the sower, all the parables are mine. Let me show you how all the parables firmly base themselves on great human fads and social parallels, and how true they are to all that is known to be true among ourselves. Let me strip these parables of all ghostliness and other worldliness so far as it might affright the soul, and show you how these parables are all great human truths, lifted up into heavenly lights and bearing upon them interpretations of divine things. You can never get to the top of any ladder the foot of which is not upon earth. Let me show you that these parables are ladders, well fixed upon the earth at the one end, and rising up into all the mystery of heaven upon the other. Can I succeed in this? If so, I shall give you rich gifts, gold and gems, treasures more precious than rubies, and today will be a birthday in the soul of every man. Holy Spirit, writer of all the parables, in light, in colour, in the forest, on the sea, in the heavens, on the green earth, come and re-write them every one, as to their spiritual meaning and force, upon every honest heart!
This representation of the kingdom of heaven is true of all kingdoms that are themselves true. The proof is easy you need not the divine, technically so-called, to explain and establish this gracious doctrine. The marvellous fact connected with the kingdom of heaven is this, that it takes up all other kingdoms into itself and shows that in so far as they are true, they do but illustrate on incomplete lines what itself would do upon the whole lines of universal thinking and acting. Do not get into the notion of imagining that religion is something separate from life. Avoid the priestly superstition, the soul-damning fanaticism that religion is something separate and isolated from all the courses of thinking and loving and service familiar to us as men. It is the last expression of all that is best and dearest in our own consciousness, experience, and aspiration, like as a father, like as a shepherd, like as a nurse, like as a mother, by such analogues does the kingdom of heaven shine forth its tenderest glowing and meaning upon the eyes that want to see the gracious revelation.
This parable of the sower and the seed belongs to every kingdom that is true. It belongs to the kingdom of knowledge. No man ever yet went forth to teach mankind letters, philosophy, science of any sort, but came home a living exemplification of this very parable. This is not a priest's conundrum, this is not an ecclesiastical enigma to be answered only by ecclesiastical genius this is the world's experience in all its teachers, schools, wise propagations, and healthy progress. Therefore it is true at the other end because it is true at the end with which we ourselves are minutely and practically familiar.
Is there any man here who ever undertook to conduct in his country a great reform? Any man who has been interested in the education of the people, in the conversion of the people from great vices, in the enlightenment and general progress of society call himself Atheist, or Secularist, or Agnostic, or Non-Theist, or what he please? I will give him his report in the very words of this parable, and he will say, reading the parable as a report, "This exactly represents my own experience as a propagandist of wise ideas, and as an educator of the people." There is nothing therefore magical here: the kingdom of Heaven claims no more than any other kingdom, except in so far as itself is more. All the boats go on the same sea, but some draw more water than others. Herein no ghostly claim is set up, there is no mystery, or magic, or curious wand-waving in this strong human teaching. The fate of the upper kingdom is the fate of every kingdom that is good. It goes forth with risks and experiments and comes back with disappointments and satisfactions.
Read your Bibles in the light of this suggestion, and the old Book will flame with a new glory. The mischief for which I blame the priests of every age is that the Book has been separated from all the literature of the world, and locked up with a death's head in a closet of its own. Read in the right way, it expresses the experience of the world in the language of Heaven; taken from the right point of view, it combines all that is most precious, tragical, contradictory, noble in human souls and human experience.
This view of human society is true to fact in every age of human history. This classification is universal; the men of this parable are the men of today and the men of every day. These are not waxen figures made eighteen centuries ago, and which have melted in the process of the suns these are living figures, breathing men and women, sitting in these pews today, and who will sit in the pews of every church till the bell of time announces the day of doom. We have in all ages those who hear the Word and understand it not, those who joyfully receive the Word, and having no root in themselves, endure only for a little while; those who hear the Word, but are overmastered by the world and by the deceitfulness of riches: those who hear the Word and understand it, and grow in great plentifulness of precious fruit. Is this a priestly thing, an ecclesiastical picture, to be seen only on Sundays, when the church door is open? These are the men that are encountered by every one who attempts to instruct his fellow-creatures. Here, for example, is the lecturer upon some department of science. What have you to say, sir? You have fifty pupils or students attending your lectures from time to time what account do you give of them? These are not religious curiosities, these are not Christian fossils, these are the men that are living and breathing around us all the day. Teacher of manufactures how is it with you in your great place? What about your apprentices and workmen do they all take the word with equal ease? Do they instantaneously see your points and receive your instructions? Are not there men in your warehouse, your factory, the dull of mind, those who see a thing for a moment, and say they see it, and go out and forget it in an hour; and those who receive your instructions and are led away the moment they get fifty yards from the premises, and are found with the time-spender and with the drunkard, and with the gambler, or with the lounging idler; and are there not those in your place of business who are honest of heart and quick of mind, and who take up your instructions and reproduce them in honest labour?
This parable is true about the kingdom of heaven because it is true about your school of lecturing and about your place of business. The foot of this ladder is upon the earth; therefore its head may be in heaven. See how by one outputting of his hand Jesus Christ grasps all sorts and conditions of men; not one is missed; they are all here; he lays hold of the whole occasion; there is nothing magical here, nothing ghostly or terrifying this Man grasps and expresses the reality of things. Never man spake like this Man; therefore he stands today crowned above all others, mightiest in power, tenderest in gentleness a Shepherd, a King, a Father, a Brother, a Root out of a dry ground, the Flower of Jesse and the Plant of renown. Read his words in the light of these human analogies and parallels, and you will begin a course of proving and testing which will satisfy the commonest or the most cultured mind of the soundness of the foundations upon which the Christian kingdom rests.
What is true of the kingdom and what is true of human society as represented in this parable is true of the results which are here indicated. The results can be tested in every section of the human family. The proof of this is not to be found in the Church only. Why, I find it in your families, as you yourselves do. The family is one, the teaching is one, the seed is the same, the care taken of all the little creatures is the same care none is esteemed above another; but the same patience and love and light, anxiety, solicitude are expended upon the whole six. Now let me look at them. Would it be possible to find six souls more diverse? One of your sons seems to have had no instruction at all has he had any? Say you, "Certainly; he had precisely the same instruction that the others received." "Well, but," I say, "look at him careless, thoughtless, all but mindless." Say you, "That is true, and it is a mystery to me, for I take as much care of him as I take of the others." Take another: you gave him instruction along with the others, and he has forgotten every word you ever said to him. Say you, "Because he no sooner gets out of the house than somebody lures him away from the path upon which he started. If this boy were promised a coin of silver ay, when he was younger, if any one had tempted him with three marbles he would have forgotten every instruction his mother gave him as to the day's duty." And this pride of the family, gem of all, thoughtful, loving, wise, industrious, his mother's other self, his father's all but idol the seed was sown in this case in good ground, and has brought forth an hundredfold.
This is the parable over again. Certainly, and there is no other parable. This is the one report; it was read eighteen hundred years ago, or rather spoken, from the ship; it has been read in all the missionary halls in Christendom year after year ever since, and the last report that will be read in those halls will be this parable modernised. The tone, the music will be the same, the figures only will be changed; there will be no change in the inner and vital substance until, indeed, the time shall come when Christ shall have the heathen for his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession when there will be but one sentence in the report; that sentence, "Hallelujah, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." But until that report be rendered, this parable will continue to be the basis upon which every secretary of every society, the head of every school, the lecturer of every college, the leader of every reform will base his annual report.
I see this, of course, most plainly in the matter of Churches. The sermons are the same, the labour of a lifetime is the same what is my report about you? Precisely what I find in this parable: I cannot get away from the lines of this parabolical representation of you all. I have uttered common prayer, I have spoken to the congregation, as a whole, year after year, I have done my best to arrest attention and satisfy pious expectation what is the result today? This parable, and nothing but this. Some seed has fallen by the wayside, and has been picked up; some in the stony places, a joy for a moment or two, great delight whilst the service lasted, but there was no deepness of earth, and it soon withered away. Some has fallen among thorns, and some of the seeds have fallen upon good ground. I need not any learned and ingenious mind to expound this parable to me or prove its underlying truth. It is the picture of every ministry, philanthropic, educational, and religious.
The explanation given in Mat 13:15 is awful, yet satisfactory. "For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and should understand with their hearts, and should be converted, and I should heal them." They suffer the consequences of their own acts. Observe the expression, "Their eyes have they closed." It is not "Their eyes have I closed:" the action was their own, and they suffer the results of their own perversity. Be not deceived: God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
The twelfth verse is fulfilled in every man's history. "For whosoever hath to him shall be given, and he that hath not from him shall be taken away even that he hath." We lose what we do not use, we forfeit what we do not employ, what we put away falls into desuetude, and is cankered and is lost. To him that hath exercised his muscle more muscle shall be given; from him who hath not exercised his muscle shall be taken away even the muscle which he began to have. We cannot keep things at a standstill: it is always gaining or always losing: a man is not the same at the end of twenty years as he was at the beginning. No man is the same at the end of a sermon as he was at the beginning of the discourse: new responsibility has entered into his life, a new chance has operated in his thinking, a grand opportunity has been presented to him which he has either accepted or neglected.
These laws and principles have been regarded as great mysteries, whereas they are among the common facts of human history. This is the sovereignty of unchangeable law, this is the law of the garden and of the field, it is the law of study, it is the law of action and of prayer. Wherever you find any operation you find this law, wherever you find any capacity you find the reason of it in the man himself, wherever you find stupidity you find it in the action of the man himself. The light would stream over the whole house if we would open the windows: Heaven's angels would sing to us if we would but listen. But if we close our eyes and stop our ears and fill our hearts with vanities and lies, we cannot wonder that the holiest revelations fall upon us like rains upon the wilderness, or pass unrecognised in the stupor of our sleep or in the absorption of our worldliness.
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