Sermon XXXVI.
A sower went out to sow his seed.
—St. Luke viii. 5.
You all know, my brethren, what this seed is, and who it is that sows it; for our Lord himself explains the parable, and you have just heard the explanation.
The seed, he says, is the word of God; and it is God that sows it. And what is the word of God? Protestants tell us that it is the Bible; and their idea of sowing it is to leave a copy of it with everybody, whether they can read and understand it or not. That is not the way, however, that the Divine Wisdom has followed. He has put his word, of which the Bible is no doubt a great part, in the hands and the heart of his church, and told her to preach it to all nations—not to leave copies of it with them.
The word of God is, then, the religious instruction which you are all the time receiving, mainly from the priests of the parish to which you belong. It is God that gives it to you through them. It ought to bring forth fruit a hundred-fold, like the seed falling on good ground. You ought not only to hear it but to keep it. Do you?
What was the sermon about last Sunday? Don't all speak at once. Well, I am not going to tell you, though I am pretty sure that many of you will never know unless I do. And if you don't remember the last one there is not much chance that you remember the one before that. In fact, I have no doubt that there are plenty of people in the church at this moment who do not remember any sermon at all. All that they ever listened to—or did not listen to—in the many years they have been going to church, went in, as the saying is, at one ear and out at the other.
And yet you talk enough about what you hear, some of you at least. You make yourselves a standing committee to decide on the merits of the various preachers that you sit under. You say to each other: "What a fine discourse that was!" or, perhaps: "That was the worst sermon I ever heard." But what either of them was about it would puzzle you to tell. Your ears were tickled, or they were not, and that was all.
Perhaps you think I am rather hard on you. You will say: "Father, surely you cannot expect our memories to be so good. And then we hear so much that one thing puts out another." Well, there is some truth in that. Even if you try to remember I know you will forget a good deal; but the trouble is that you do not try.