Bible Commentaries

Chapter52

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 Matthew 13:1-23

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 Matthew 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.

Chapter58

Review of the Thirteenth Chapter

The subject of this chapter is the kingdom of heaven. Connect this circumstance with the fact that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and ask yourselves what is the connection between a kingdom and salvation. The kingdom of heaven has a great part to play in the work of evangelising the nations. A purpose that goes out to take hold of kingdoms must itself be a kingdom. You cannot lay hold of worlds with a weak hand. You may affect the immediately surrounding by trifling circumstances, but if you are going to lay your grasp upon all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them you must have a force equal to the occasion. Jesus Christ proposes to take hold of all kingdoms and to transform them into his own excellence, and fill them with the glory of his own excellent name. The kingdom of heaven, therefore, is a royal truth; it is a royal power; it is not one among many competitors, it stands alone and must absorb and sanctify all rivalries. Do not lower the occasion; realise its grandeur and rise to its appeal.

In this chapter Jesus Christ gives the word "kingdom" a new meaning and application. Up to this time it was an imperial term only or a geographical expression. Kingdom was a quantity bounded and named by the consent of other powers or held against them by superior force. It was a mere term in geography, in government, in statesmanship; in Jesus Christ's hands it becomes a heavenly claim, a divine power, a sacred sovereignty of impulses, thoughts, and purposes, so that all that is merely geographical drops off, and all that is heavenly clothes the royal word.

So far I could go well. I am stopped just there by an unusual punctuation, the discrepancy between the speaker and the subject. A peasant talking about a kingdom—the rhyme is broken! A homeless wanderer using the highest terms in human speech—who can account for the discrepancy? I am not troubled by the discrepancy which the critics find in dates and places and small incidents, but a discrepancy like this may well take the rest out of my heart, and fill that heart with a grievous discontent. The world was too big for the speaker: he did not, from a human point of view, look a king until he was looked at the second time, and watched the clock round, and the year round, and not until the spirit was instructed in the mysteries of his truth did this personality take upon it its wondrous visage and colour. Why, really, it is no discrepancy at all: the discrepancy was in me and not in Christ. I find that this is an eternal truth; that evermore the speaker is to be nothing, and the subject is to fill the heavens. Why, herein is the very glory of Christianity—that it absorbs all other little piping eloquence in the infinite redundance of its own thunder, and that our personality as revealers of the kingdom is nothing as compared with the majesty and glory of the thing that is revealed. Unhappily, even Jesus Christ himself, as you see at the end of the chapter, was not able so to control the thinking of the people who heard him as to fix it upon the subject. They, little creatures, could rise no higher than the speaker, and they mocked him because of the discrepancy that was in reality an argument and a vindication.

In reading this chapter as a whole I am struck with four things. First of all, from the nature of the kingdom of heaven you may learn, without a single word being said upon the subject, the nature of the kingdom of darkness. It is not necessary to describe the kingdom of darkness: what you and I, as Christian teachers, have to do, is to describe the kingdom of light. This was Christ's most wise and subtle method of teaching—not to paint hell—to refer to it in great graphic sentences as if in haste to be done with it, but with great elaboration and pomp of simplicity to reveal the infinite kingdom of God's truth and light and purity. Every parable that is spoken here admits of being turned in the directly opposite quarter, so as to reveal that about which it says nothing. Thus—the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man who sowed good seed. Then the kingdom of darkness is like unto a man who sowed bad seed, seeds of death, seeds of unhealthiness, seeds of disease, seeds of error. Learn thus from the kingdom of heaven what the opposing kingdom is.

Again—the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure. Then the kingdom of darkness is like unto a bubble in the air: it is just the opposite of the kingdom of heaven: if the kingdom of heaven is treasure, the kingdom of darkness is an empty though gilded bubble, floating on the quiet breeze. Snatched, it is destroyed; there is nothing in it. It is wanting in substance, in positive and applicable value, it does not enrich life, it is weight without gravity, a burden without value, a kingdom truly, but a kingdom of disappointment.

Again—the kingdom of heaven is as leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal. Then the kingdom of darkness is as poison which a man took and secretly injected into the veins of a sleeper until the whole was poisoned. The kingdom of heaven is a great force that secretly and silently works out the soul's regeneration: the kingdom of darkness is as the sting of the tsetse fly; the tsetse fly seizes the ox, stings the noble brute, and in course of time the flesh swells and discolours, the skin falls off, and the strong one is thrown down in weakness and in death. The kingdom of darkness, therefore, is not a weak power, it is not an ineffective ministry: it also works, often silently and secretly, but it is working out the soul's destruction.

Or thus—the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net cast into the sea and gathers of every kind. The kingdom of darkness is as a net thrown into the sea and gathers its own kind only—a narrow kingdom, debasing whatever it touches, catching for the purpose of holding in vile captivity, netting and ensnaring that it may slay. Thus the parable is more than it seems to be. It teaches by contrast; it has a far-spreading edge of meaning. In describing truth you need not describe falsehood: in so far as your description of truth is correct, you are really, in the most suggestive and graphic manner, describing that which is false.

This subtle influence of colour was often felt in Christ's ministry. He used sometimes to speak as if he were addressing an absent congregation. Subtle speaker, wise assailant, he was addressing the absentees, they thought, till they thought again, and then suddenly they said, "He means us." He told them about a man who had a property in the distance, and sent his servant to gather the fruits or the revenues, and the servant was not received well, and another servant was sent, and another, and last of all he sent his son also, and then he said, "What will he do to those husbandmen;" and they, thinking that the husbandmen were a thousand miles away, said, "He will slay them," and suddenly it burst upon their obtuse minds that all the while he was talking about them That is the best use to make of the absentees.

On another occasion he was speaking his great truth, letting it fall where it might be applicable, and a man at the other end of the table said, "Take care: in speaking thus thou revilest us also," and the man having seized the hot iron, had more of it than he covenanted. It was thrust into him, for Christ turned and said, "Woe unto you also, ye lawyers," and in that also he stretched a band and caught another set of offenders within its righteous captivity.

Let us learn from our great Prototype, our divine Master. We shall fall into some kind of dislike and criticism mayhap, still let us diligently and lovingly put our feet into his footsteps, and we shall come to the same desirable ends as to our great spiritual mission and teaching.

The next thing that strikes me in reading this chapter is that the great teacher did good rather by revelation than by criticism. He did not spend his time merely in denunciation. You must have a higher kingdom to offer, if you want to make a profound and permanent impression upon the age. It is not enough to provoke mere antagonism: I do not go out to deny any man's propositions or contentions, and rest myself in so doing: if I cannot reveal as well as criticise, I am as a bird with one wing. Christianity is a Matthew 13:24-43

The Tares and the Wheat

We found that the parable of the sower has its proofs in human history, and being true in human society, we had no difficulty in understanding its application to the kingdom of heaven. Our test inquiry regarding all these parables, is—How do they fit the circumstances which are now round about us? Are they little pieces of ancient history, graphic enough as bearing upon the time to which they specially refer, or are they parts of all history, running contemporaneously with human development from age to age, always new, always just written, the ink never dry? The first parable which we have just studied fits the circumstances of today perfectly: let us see whether the second fits them equally well. It should be pointed out that in adopting this method of criticism we are keeping strictly within the limits of the parables themselves, because Christ does actually liken the kingdom of heaven to earthly persons and earthly things. We study the parables at the earthly end. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a sower, like unto a merchantman, like unto leaven, like unto a net, like unto a treasure hid in a field—so he gives us the earthly end as well as the heavenly end, and we can thoroughly examine the one and thus enable ourselves wisely to judge the other. Let us follow these same lines of inquiry with regard to the parable of the wheat and the tares.

This parable is an exact picture of all endeavours to do good in the world. We have not got one inch beyond this parable today, with all our improvements and amplifications of service and readjustment of methods. The account which could be given of all educational, philanthropic, patriotic, Christian endeavour is within the four lines, so to say, of this mixed parable. It enters into a good man's heart to publish good ideas or to assist useful reforms: he lectures in public and in private, he freely spends his time and his money in spreading the views and principles which he holds: he establishes schools and publishes literature, he lays himself out in every way to enlighten and benefit the public. Do you suppose that such a man will be allowed to go on without an enemy following him and sowing tares in the wheat-field of his noble and beneficent endeavour? He will be followed by the enemy, the enemy will awaken suspicions, he will question the man's motives, he will assail the man's reputation, he will throw doubt upon the man's integrity, in a thousand ways open to vicious ingenuity he will endeavour to thwart and baffle the purposes of the good man's heart. Is this true, or is it not—to-day? Is the good man living and is the enemy dead, buried, gone for ever and forgotten? Do not the light and the shadow always go together? There is no ghostly mystery here: you cannot point to a wheat-field in which no tares are sown.

Take your own education. Your father and your schoolmaster and your friends all have endeavoured to sow the seeds of a good understanding in your mind and heart—yet what do we see in your life? Your very education turned to bad purposes, your very training made to add to your efficiency in doing that which is wrong. How came those tares into the field? Your mother did not sow them, nor your father, nor your teacher, nor your most loving friend—whence came those tares? An enemy hath done this.

Look at your prosperity, man of business: how riches have been showered upon you. When you were poor and little in your own eyes, men liked you because you were then gentle, sympathetic, approachable: you had a heart that could be approached, and that could show itself in all the tenderness of loving sympathy to those who were in circumstances requiring the medicament of your love and patient care—but with your riches there has come what men call presumption, or self-confidence, or haughtiness: you are no longer gentle, simple, tender, sympathetic, accessible. How did these tares come into the field? An enemy hath done this.

It is always the same. No man can preach without having the enemy at his heels; the enemy is as busy as the preacher; the enemy is now preaching to you as certainly as I am endeavouring to preach to you. Some of you are buying and selling, some of you are now wool-gathering, some of you are a thousand miles away, some of you are writing to-morrow's letters, doing to-morrow's business and answering to-morrow's questions, and when all is over you will awake as out of a confused dream that has a kind of religious haze about it. The enemy is working as well as the preacher, he is suggesting all kinds of doubts, difficulties, and suspicions, prompting all kinds of questions that will break in upon an implicit and loving and loyal obedience, directing your attention to little points and to transient accidents—the occasion rather than to its solemn purpose—which is to lift the soul into the light, and to gird it with the very strength of God. The enemy will lure you into considerations of place and colour, of manner and length of service, and into a thousand little petty, frivolous discussions, and will succeed if he lure the mind away from the sovereign purpose of the occasion—which is to make you pray. And at the end of the whole, with broken mind, confused, bewildered head and heart, neither upward nor downward in its look, but halting, we may have to say, "An enemy hath done this." So the parable is not ghostly and magical, but has its base upon the lines of our common consciousness and experience, and as it is awfully true at the one end it may be equally true at the other.

The inquiry which was made by the servants is the inquiry which is made today. The servants of the householder came and said unto him, " Matthew 13:31

The Grain of Mustard Seed

Is it true that there is a conquering force in vitality? Do really good things always grow, and in their expansion offer hospitality and defence to others? May what is here said of the kingdom of heaven be said of every other kingdom that is true, grand, pure, and beneficent? If Matthew 13:33, Matthew 13:47-50

Let me try to reveal the kingdom of heaven today under two aspects. It has already come before us under the image of the sower, the parable of the tares, the grain of mustard seed, the treasure hid in a field, the pearl of great price—by this time surely we ought to be well acquainted with this kingdom of heaven, yet it is the eternal mystery as surely as it is the eternal revelation. Jesus Christ now gives us two more opportunities of knowing still more clearly what his great kingdom is. He condescends to paint two more pictures, a woman hiding leaven in three measures of meal, and a man casting a net into the sea.

"The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened." It follows then that the kingdom of heaven, like all other truth, is penetrating in its influence. It goes forward to its work little by little: it never rests—it cannot rest until it has covered the whole space of its opportunity. It can never give in—all things must go down before it, not violently, but certainly. No great or true idea can be in the human mind without penetrating that mind through and through, and passing on to other minds and completing the same subduing process there.

Not only is it penetrating, but it is gradual in its process and advancement. Great ideas do not seize the mind all at once and rule it with undisputed domination. One by one, little by little, a man here and a man there—such is the rule of this gradualness. But it never goes back, though appearances may seem sometimes to indicate the contrary. The movement of truth is always forward. The truth was never so fully, broadly, and benignly established in the human mind as it is this day. You can quote a thousand instances to indicate the badness of the race, its love of error and its pursuit of corruption, and every instance that is quoted may be perfectly right, within its own limits. Nevertheless the kingdom moves, the penetrating influence gradually asserts itself. How long will it continue to assert itself? Till the whole is leavened. The time is fixed in the parable, the date is here marked down in plain figures, if we have eyes to read it. This is a dated promise, and the date is "till the whole is leavened."

Have we any parallels in our own life that will enable us to seize, more completely, the gracious and generous meaning of this parable? We have a parallel, certainly, in the education of the mind. No mind is educated in one day: education is not something thrust upon a man which he can seize in a moment and make his own without a long transaction. You cannot tell how you were educated: there is no specific day in our human life upon which we can say we were then educated, in any complete or final sense of the term. We may have vivid memories of certain days, but education is not a day's work, it is not a time work, it is an eternal process. How the light came upon the mind, how the new idea seemed to strike us with instancy and startling suddenness—yet when we came carefully to look into it we found that it was the culminating point of a long process, and that but for the process the culmination never could have supervened. Watch your child's progress in letters, and it will be impossible for you to indicate any time at which he became a scholar. Jesus Christ says, "Just the same in my kingdom: it is not one sermon, one book, one act of prayer, but the repetition of many a process through the whole space of the lifetime. It is not one shower that makes the summer, it is shower upon shower, baptism following baptism in gracious intermission and yet in gracious persistency." It is thus we grow.

We have a parallel not only in education, but in the deepening and ripening of all great convictions. If you will search into the history of your mind, you will find that some of your convictions have taken a long time to form: there were prejudices to be overcome, there were defects to be made up, there was information to be gained, there were experiments to be conducted—for a long time you wondered and hesitated, you oscillated between two opposite points, you knew not to which point you would at last gravitate and where you would "finally" settle, and yet there did come a point in your thinking and deliberation at which you said, "This is right, I see it at length, and for ever I will take my stand here."

It was so in your appreciation of character, it was so in your decisions of a literary and commercial kind, it was so in the election of your companionships, it was so in the change of your most profound and solemn opinions; it was Matthew 13:44-46

Treasure and Pearls

These parables may be taken together, as expressing two sides of the same truth. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field." There were no banks in ancient times, such as we have now, and therefore persons possessed of property of a valuable kind were wont to hide it in fields and in out-of-the-way places. The figure is that of a man who comes upon joy unexpectedly. He was not looking for treasure, but in digging his field he came upon it without anticipation, and therefore his joy was the greater. How far and in what sense do these parables correspond with what we know of life generally? Can we not confirm the doctrine that the joys of surprise are amongst the keenest of our delights? The joys that we anticipate are often dulled by the fact that we have discounted them: we knew that they were coming, we had often talked about them, imagination had set them in false lights and in preposterous relations, so that when they really did come they were less than our expectancy, and so they became disappointments rather than pleasures.

Understand, then, the place of surprise in the divine economy. We are to come upon things unexpectedly, we are not to wear them out before we handle them, their presence and their use and their value come to us instantaneously, and because we knew nothing about them our joy is the greater. If you expect your friend to leave you a large estate, and he leaves you something less than you had anticipated, the property actually brings dissatisfaction with it; but if you expected nothing, and he left you one green field, the bequest would occasion great joy in your heart, nor altogether because of the value of the bequest, but because it came upon you without the slightest hint or expectation.

Now the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field: it is a continual surprise. God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. Herein is our expectation itself foiled. We cannot raise our expectancy to the height of this heaven, but expectation is not forbidden herein in consequence of that solemn and glad fact. We dream of heaven, and talk of it, and set our poets to work to strike their harps to sweeter and higher strains and tones, because, when we have formed our own heaven in the innermost and highest places of our fancy, it falls, short of the reality only by infinity.

This is the testimony of every student of the Bible. Every page is a field in which there is hidden treasure—so say the men who have toiled longest in those holy fields. They are the men who are entitled to testify: such men are filled with amazement, new light startles them, unheard music holds their soul in glad enthralment, presences rise before them and angels wrestle with them in power that is meant not to destroy but to save and to bless, so that the old man in closing his Bible says, "The last vision was the brightest, the last song was the sweetest;" says Matthew 13:33, Matthew 13:47-50

Let me try to reveal the kingdom of heaven today under two aspects. It has already come before us under the image of the sower, the parable of the tares, the grain of mustard seed, the treasure hid in a field, the pearl of great price—by this time surely we ought to be well acquainted with this kingdom of heaven, yet it is the eternal mystery as surely as it is the eternal revelation. Jesus Christ now gives us two more opportunities of knowing still more clearly what his great kingdom is. He condescends to paint two more pictures, a woman hiding leaven in three measures of meal, and a man casting a net into the sea.

"The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened." It follows then that the kingdom of heaven, like all other truth, is penetrating in its influence. It goes forward to its work little by little: it never rests—it cannot rest until it has covered the whole space of its opportunity. It can never give in—all things must go down before it, not violently, but certainly. No great or true idea can be in the human mind without penetrating that mind through and through, and passing on to other minds and completing the same subduing process there.

Not only is it penetrating, but it is gradual in its process and advancement. Great ideas do not seize the mind all at once and rule it with undisputed domination. One by one, little by little, a man here and a man there—such is the rule of this gradualness. But it never goes back, though appearances may seem sometimes to indicate the contrary. The movement of truth is always forward. The truth was never so fully, broadly, and benignly established in the human mind as it is this day. You can quote a thousand instances to indicate the badness of the race, its love of error and its pursuit of corruption, and every instance that is quoted may be perfectly right, within its own limits. Nevertheless the kingdom moves, the penetrating influence gradually asserts itself. How long will it continue to assert itself? Till the whole is leavened. The time is fixed in the parable, the date is here marked down in plain figures, if we have eyes to read it. This is a dated promise, and the date is "till the whole is leavened."

Have we any parallels in our own life that will enable us to seize, more completely, the gracious and generous meaning of this parable? We have a parallel, certainly, in the education of the mind. No mind is educated in one day: education is not something thrust upon a man which he can seize in a moment and make his own without a long transaction. You cannot tell how you were educated: there is no specific day in our human life upon which we can say we were then educated, in any complete or final sense of the term. We may have vivid memories of certain days, but education is not a day's work, it is not a time work, it is an eternal process. How the light came upon the mind, how the new idea seemed to strike us with instancy and startling suddenness—yet when we came carefully to look into it we found that it was the culminating point of a long process, and that but for the process the culmination never could have supervened. Watch your child's progress in letters, and it will be impossible for you to indicate any time at which he became a scholar. Jesus Christ says, "Just the same in my kingdom: it is not one sermon, one book, one act of prayer, but the repetition of many a process through the whole space of the lifetime. It is not one shower that makes the summer, it is shower upon shower, baptism following baptism in gracious intermission and yet in gracious persistency." It is thus we grow.

We have a parallel not only in education, but in the deepening and ripening of all great convictions. If you will search into the history of your mind, you will find that some of your convictions have taken a long time to form: there were prejudices to be overcome, there were defects to be made up, there was information to be gained, there were experiments to be conducted—for a long time you wondered and hesitated, you oscillated between two opposite points, you knew not to which point you would at last gravitate and where you would "finally" settle, and yet there did come a point in your thinking and deliberation at which you said, "This is right, I see it at length, and for ever I will take my stand here."

It was so in your appreciation of character, it was so in your decisions of a literary and commercial kind, it was so in the election of your companionships, it was so in the change of your most profound and solemn opinions; it was Matthew 13:51-58.

Jesus Christ uttered a gospel which was meant to be understood. Do not create more mysteries than he himself created. Jesus Christ took his disciples, so to say, into co-partnery in divine teaching: this circumstance is never to be forgotten in estimating the value and force of the Christian argument. There is to be no needless mystery. Mystery comes as a necessity, and is not to be introduced by clever persons as a merely intellectual puzzle. This kingdom of heaven was meant to be understood, to be grasped by the human mind, and to be reproduced in human speech and in human life.

Observe, the disciples did not understand the parables until they went to Jesus Christ himself for an explanation. They followed him into the house, and said, "What did that parable mean?" The Parabolist became the Expositor. He is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. In reading these parables, turn up the expectant heart after every one of them, and say, "Lord, what is the meaning?" and he will withhold from your understanding nothing that is needful to the thorough illumination of every word he has spoken and that was intended for reduction to practical life.

Keep within the truth you do understand, if you would be mighty as speakers. That is the secret of impression and of consequences of the best and most enduring kind. It is not given to every man to understand equally the whole revealed word: one man hath a gift of tongues and can speak all languages in the sanctuary; another man hath a parable, in the interpretation of which he is almost a genius; a third is a speaker of consolations, his face was meant to represent them, and his voice, itself a mystery, was intended to convey solaces to the heart with all the witchery of celestial music.

This is the rule in all life, pulpit life, market-place life, theological, commercial, literary, artistic, musical—keep within the limits of your understanding; do not let the sparrow try to fly as high as the eagle, and do not let the child's little paper-boat go far out upon the sea, if ever it is meant to be brought home again. There are portions of this Bible which none of us understand: there are whole pages and books here that I can make nothing of. To some, perhaps, it may have been given—but I have not had time to inquire into their credentials—to expound the mysterious prophecies of the word; to others it may have been given to follow its typology with such intelligence as to be able to write under every type exactly what it signifies. I have not been conducted into those remote schools, I cannot tell you anything about prophecies and dates, and the interpretation of beasts and vials and trumpetings and apocalyptic signs—but this one thing I know, that Jesus Christ is the Saviour and Teacher and Hope of the world. Within that limit do we range here, and if we have gone in and out and found pasture abundant, the praise be his who made the pasture so luxuriant and bade us to the enjoyment of his hospitality.

Having understood these mysteries so far, what was to be done? No sooner did the disciples answer, "Yea, Lord," than he said unto them, "Therefore------." This man's words come one after the other in most gracious and logical continuity. They no sooner admitted their understanding than out of that admission he struck the spark of a final parable. He was the Life, to touch him anywhere was to extract virtue from his being. The intellect that had conceived these parables, so varied, so resplendent, so exact in all their adaptations to circumstances, was not tired. Omnipotence cannot be tired, omniscience cannot be exhausted. So when the disciples said, "Yea, Lord," their very admission was turned into another parable. "Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder," a parable after the parables, a sermon after the sermons, There was no ending to this man's teaching, the word was not its measure: after every word there followed an infinite ghostliness of possibility and suggestion. Let us look at this final parable.

"Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." A householder who has treasure: Jesus Christ claims for all the scribes of his following substantial truth. They do not utter mere phrases of their own making or utter sentiments which are the measure of their own sighing and desire only. In the Church of God there is a positive quantity, a subjective truth, a content that, so to say, can be seen, handled, felt, known, as a personal possession, an individual inheritance. Look at this circumstance most carefully, those of you who are anxious to know what Christianity really comprehends and purports to be. It is not a sigh, it is not a sentiment, it is not a rhapsody—there is nothing of the nature of mere fantasy in it. It has solid doctrines, grand conceptions of the divine being, broad and luminous revelations respecting human nature, great, solid, massive gospels as to the redemption of the race from the presence, power, tyranny, and torment of sin, and infinite hope which it can only indicate by words not earthly, but which fall infinitely short of the reality as God himself understands it. But a word has been given us which overpasses earth, time, death, tomb, shadow, and shines yonder as heaven.

So there is range enough in this divine revelation. If viewed poetically only, it is a grand and complete conception. It is not a broken arc, it is not a segment that mourns a loss which it can neither define nor fill up—it is a great complete circle, equally strong, and equally luminous at every point of its infinite circumference. So the Word of God is called bread: it is known amongst men as the water of life, of which, if a man drink, he shall thirst no more. The result of the appropriation of Christian truth and blessing is rest—rest in the soul, peace in the mind, calm in the heart, and no man within my knowledge has ever tasted the value of this treasure, and entered with conscious joy into its proprietorship, that has owned to one pang of disappointment. Matthew 13:58

One would have thought that no difficulties would have stood in the way of such a preacher as Jesus Christ. The Man who could work miracles could surely clear all obstacles out of his path. So it would seem to our ignorance; but so it was not in reality. Jesus Christ complained of difficulties, and confessed his inability to remove them. Those difficulties assume a peculiar significance when we remember that Jesus Christ seemed to have all the elements that both deserve and command success. His miracles were confessed and admired on every hand. He was beyond all question the most popular speaker of his day, characterised by marvellous graciousness and completeness and wisdom of address; so much so that the most learned wondered and the most illiterate understood, and those who were most ignorant felt the coming upon them of a new and very welcome light. Still, this man, worker of miracles and speaker of beautiful speeches, failed, in a sense which I shall presently explain, in his ministry. He did not numerically fail: great multitudes thronged him on the hill-side, and along by the sea-shore; the popularity of numbers was triumphant—it was never so seen in Israel. Yet every heart was a difficulty, every man was a stumbling-block, and in many cases the doctrine was wasted like rain upon the barren sand. At one place even his miracles were powerless; at that place he could do but few mighty works—their unbelief was greater, so to speak, than his faith, and he did not there many mighty works because of their unbelief.

Have we any consciousness or experience on our own part which answers to this in any degree, and helps us to understand it? You preachers have, for you know that there are some towns in which you cannot preach. Personally I know that right well. There are some towns in which I find it utterly impossible to say what I have prepared to say. I may, indeed, utter the words, but they come back upon me, and bring no blessing or answer of human heart along with them. They have struck a wall and rebounded and come home, and I cannot get rid of them as gospels and as benedictions. You singers know it. There are some rooms in which you cannot sing: you are choked, suffocated—nothing in the construction of the room answers to your voice; you have no co-operation in the walls, in the ceiling, in the floor—everything is dead against you, and you who can in other places, under kindlier circumstances, sing to the delight of your friends, and even to the satisfaction of critics, are not at all yourselves under circumstances which seem to depress and disable you. We all know it. There are some men to whom we cannot talk. Conversation is still-born when they are present. I want to say something, but I can not; I have propositions to make, but I cannot make propositions to dead walls or to gravestones. I have sorrows to tell, I have griefs for which I want some human sympathy, but I cannot unburden myself to the men who are round about me on this occasion or on that. We all know the meaning of this temporary disability and disennoblement, so that we who have power under other circumstances are unable to do any mighty works there because of some want, some antipathy, some occult and unnameable cause that shuts us up and makes us barren alike of intellectual conception and verbal expression and force.

Well, it was much the same with Jesus Christ upon another plane, that is to say, upon a much higher level. He was not the same Christ always. The conditions being prepared and equal, how his speech rolled like a river—the people welcoming him, eager to hear him, giving him heart-room. Why, he seemed to talk himself up into heaven, and thence to distribute the very bread of life and water from the river of God. Such is he power of sympathy; so true is it that faith works miracles, that good hearing creates good speaking, that social sympathy elicits the whole fulness of the heart, all its secret and mystery and blessedness of love.

How was it that Jesus Christ failed in his ministry? Some reasons are given in the sacred narrative. First of all, the people said, "We know this man. We do not know whence he gets his wisdom. Is not this the carpenter's son—is not his mother called Mary, and his brethren James and Joses, Simon and Judas; and his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?" And they were offended in him. There was a kind of wild logic in their reasoning, a kind of maniac intelligence about their grim philosophy—they said: "The cause is not equal to the effect. We can measure this man. We know almost his birthday. We know his father and his mother and his business and his training, and all about him, and there is not in him, so far as we know his antecedents, anything to account for a wisdom that overlaps our rabbinical theology and our doctrinal philosophy. There is not in him enough to account for the wonders which he flings from his fingers and breathes from his lips."

Do not let us altogether despise these people, because we repeat their error to-day. My brethren, we repeat all the old errors; there is no originality in folly. Our fathers killed the prophets, and we build the sepulchres of the dead men and kill other living men, that our posterity may have grave-digging and tomb-building to attend to in their time. Do not believe all the nonsense you hear talked about heroic lives and splendid boys, who have triumphed over this and that and the other, and do not join the mob when they clap their untrained hands in clamorous and thoughtless applause about those boys now dead. Ask them how they treat the boys that are living in their own streets, and who are trying heroically and quietly to repeat the miracles which they have paid a shilling entrance-fee to clap in the great hall. Let us see what we do ourselves, and not be gloriously heroic over dead people.

Jesus Christ therefore shared the common fate. "There is his father, there is his mother, there are his kinsfolk—from whence hath this Man this wisdom? It is guessing, it is conjecture, it is audacity, it is blasphemy: it cannot be accounted for," and there is nothing people get so angry with as mystery of a supernatural kind. They feel as if they ought to know it; they are intelligent people, they are upon boards of direction, they are ministers of churches, they are office-bearers in high institutions, and they ought to be able to understand everything of the kind. Here is a case in which the spiritual power is in excess of the social antecedency and the social surroundings: therefore ignore it, deny it, contradict it, offend it, disable it, put it down. Rude reasoning, with just as much logic about it as you have seen occasional light in a lunatic's eye.

Well, there is another reason of failure—the utter bondage to the letter. The people to whom Christ spoke were literalists. I do not despise the letter, only I do consider that it is not all. The kingdom of heaven is as a grain of mustard seed, the least among seeds, but when it is sown and fully developed, it becomes a very great tree. So with the letter. It is necessary; we cannot do without it; but it is not to be held in the hand, but is to be planted as a seed, and is to bring forth all the poetry of bad and blossom and fruit, and is to afford lodgment for singing-birds, ay, room enough to give habitations to God's birds, not one of which he overlooks or neglects. When Jesus Christ said, "Beware of the leaven," "O," they said, "that is because we have not brought any bread with us;" and it distressed the Saviour to think that after all his teaching, they could give no higher interpretation to his figures—nay, they ceased to be figures before such unimaginative minds. When he said, "Except a man eat my flesh, he cannot live," they said, "How can a man give his flesh to eat?" and it distressed God's Christ to hear such literalistic criticism. You cannot interpret religious truth without the religious imagination—that wondrous power which keeps the literal and yet comes out into apocalyptic visions and interpretations, and glorifies the letter until its raiments shine and its face glistens with a light brighter than the sun. When Jesus Christ said "bread," the people thought he meant bread. When he said, "I could give thee water to drink, which, having drunk, would cause thee never to thirst again," the woman said, "Then let me have it," not knowing that he spake of his heart's life and the Holy Ghost, the inner baptism, the satisfaction of the soul's thirst. Wherever this literalism is, in any congregation, the ministry will be a failure, unless, indeed, the ministry itself is a piece of literalism, and then it will be a double failure.

The third cause of the non-success of our Lord's preaching was the spirituality of the man and of the doctrine. This was the greatest difficulty of all. The Jews sought the more to kill him because he had not only broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father. "The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life.—The Son of man, which is in heaven." There was a strange ghostliness about the doctrine of Christ. It had earthly aspects of extreme and indestructible beauty, but the people were afraid to acknowledge the fascination, lest, by their admissions, they should be hurried to conclusions that would make them Christians. Jesus had always something beyond. He never said, "This is the point at which I want you to stand still." His plan of educating his church is God's plan of educating the world. The promise come, the promise realised, a higher promise still is spoken. The prize seized, a grander prize is offered, and thus God "allures to brighter worlds and leads the way."

The people having seen this to be part of his method were very careful how they conceded anything or made any admissions without looking well around the circle of consequences. They learned caution by experience. At first they were clamorous in their applause, but by-and-by they came to understand that applause was not enough. Then they came to hostility. They found it was one of two things then, and it is one of two things now—either worship or hatred. There are men about whom you have no strong opinion; they are what are called nice, pleasant men, very agreeable persons, individuals whom you might pass by the thousand in the street, and take no notice of—altogether without specialty or accent. But when Christ comes, it is one of two things; it is, worship him, love him, give him all; or it is, crucify him, crucify him. So the people were going to give applause. "Well done," said they; "repeat that miracle, show us another sign, renew the testimony of tokens;" and Jesus said, "You have had enough of this; I have wrought miracles enough to save the world if miracles ever would save it; now you must think, love, trust, repent, believe." At that point the great division was set up. The people said, in effect, "His parables are intellectual gems, his voice is full of varied and thrilling music, his language is nothing short of a Divine election of words, his retorts are keen and final, his miracles are mighty and beneficent, he is indeed the supreme wonder of our land." Jesus Christ said, "That will not do; so far, so good, if good; so far, so bad, if the rest be not added." There was partial faith, no doubt. Many of the Jews believed on him, and said, "When Christ cometh will he do more miracles than these which this man hath done?" That reasoning would seem to point to this man as the Messiah. Many of the people, when they heard these sayings, said, "Of a truth this is that prophet." All the people were amazed, and said, "Is not this the Son of David?"

So there was an acknowledgment of peculiar influence and special powers. Was Christ satisfied? A very beautiful trait of his character comes out here. An impostor would have been intoxicated with the applause; Christ declined it. The people said, "Never man spake like this man." The people would have taken him by force to make him a king, the people delighted in his miracles, and made him famous concerning them. Was this enough? Alas! it brought the expression of an infinite distress into Christ's face. There is some applause that damns a man, there is a liking for a ministry which crushes the minister. What did Christ want? To see of the travail of his soul! To applaud his miracles was to annoy him, to speak about what he had done was to give him offence. He said, "Do not speak about it; miracles spoken about lose their meaning. Tell no man; go home to thy friends and think." He was afraid that the people's applause would end in itself, in mere admiration, and in merely spreading for him a high-sounding name as a kind of consecrated juggler. He knew human nature, and he said, "Be quiet about the miracles; go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel." When the miracle was wrought, he said, "Go home and say nothing about it." We cannot be trusted with too many miracles, they unsettle our intelligence, they were not meant as other than alphabetic and indicative. If we make more of them we invert and spoil the purpose of Christ. Christ spoke of his soul—the travail of his soul, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death." Please his soul, and you give him sincere and pure delight.

But surely Jesus Christ kept in hand all whom he did succeed in getting to hear him and like him? No. Many escaped from his grasp. "From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." He was a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel. That is a marvellous circumstance in our Lord's life. He had difficulty in getting any: he did not keep all whom he did get. He was despised and rejected of men. Can we wonder that we hear in our own day of ministers who have to complain of similar non-success? Do you know how ministers of Christ are now spoken of in this matter of failure and success? I will tell you, but do not repeat what I tell you. The common inquiry is, "How is he getting on?" and the frequent reply is, "They are not filling—they are not filling. He does not fill the place. He does not keep up his congregation. The place was not so full as I have seen it. I think there is a falling away." Why I have even heard some lunatics say that the collection was not quite so large as it used to be! Ah, me! my Christ, my God's Christ, it is the old criticism over again, and it will be the old crucifixion. God grant that it may be the old resurrection! We are wrong in our standards, false in our reckoning. I do not complain of the criticism. I thank God that for five-and-twenty years I have been standing in the midst of a crowd as a Christian minister, and therefore I make no personal references in the matter, but there are higher standards than Numbers , money, patronage, gifts, or anything that is outside and secondary. Do not let us despise these; they are most useful and necessary, and if any man here has the gift of speech and can eulogise these things soberly and fully, I will accept his statement and will replace my own with his description. Only let us know that Jesus Christ had to suffer from exactly this same cause. "From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." Did he then cease to walk? He hardened his face and went to the Jerusalem of his destiny. Keep steadily on thy purpose, and never mind who comes or who goes, be thy face towards God's will, and God will see that no stone can keep thee in the grave.

A falling-off of physical power there may be in your minister: alas! he cannot always be young. Time makes insidious advances upon us all. As there came a time in our boyhood when words suddenly revealed their full meaning to us, so there are special moments in our after life when a man says, "Why, I am no longer young." Who cares for the aged minister—who cares for the minister whose vigour is gone! Even a decline of intellectual force is possible: the man is not so ready and strong as he used to be. Once he answered the occasion as powder answers fire—now he is more torpid, he has farther to come, his sleep is of another kind, and steals more fatally over his brain. Who cares for him in that withering time? Always some—thank God.

But this physical decline, or intellectual falling away, is not the cause; the real reason may be deeper, and may actually be the supreme honour of the minister, as it was in the case of Christ. When did the disciples fall away and walk no more with Christ—when his power of working miracles was gone, when his power of inventing and delivering beauteous parables had declined? The cause lay deeper: do not let us hasten over it, but rather let us consider it deeply. From what time was it, then, when many of his disciples went back? It was when Jesus was most spiritual in his teaching. Hear the testimony. He began to say, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and as I live by the Father, so he that eateth me even he shall live by me." It was THEN that the disciples said, "This is a hard saying: who can hear it?" Jesus hearing that objection went further, and said, plainly, "No man can come unto me except it were given unto him of my Father." From THAT TIME many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him. Why? Because the miracles were less glittering and notable? No. Because the parables fell off in intellectual beauty and force? No—but because the ministry became more spiritual. Just so now. When and why do the people love the minister? Which are the sermons which are little liked? I know. What are the sermons that will empty any church in London? O, my friends, belonging to this place or to that, for we gather here from many religious centres, how is it with you? Are you still hungering for little stories, striking anecdotes, pretty parables—are you still delighted with small rhetorical toys cut with a jack-knife and painted red and blue, or do you want the inner truth, Christ's flesh to eat, Christ's blood to drink, a baptism of the Holy Ghost, keen, piercing insight into the inner mysteries of God's invisible kingdom? From that time, from the moment he became intensely spiritual, his disciples walked no more with him.

I heard a great organist play. He played from Handel, and the people answered with feeble enthusiasm of hand and foot. He played from Mendelssohn and Beethoven, and there was the same acquiescence in fate—it was to be so, and was taken as such. He played a piece full of scenic representation, the village dance, the storm brewing, rolling, shattering the heavens—then the quiet, gentle hymn: it was most pictorial, most vivid and graphic, and the people answered as with a roar. The organist said to me afterwards, on being complimented on the reception of the piece in question, "Well, it was somewhat ad captandum." He was not pleased with the compliment. It was a beautiful piece, a rare and wonderful piece—but Handel and Beethoven, these were masters, so to speak, who opened the infinite. Alas! who cares?

Now this review of Christ's failure destroys two sophisms. First, that earnestness is always successful. O, the cant that is talked about earnestness! Was Christ earnest?