Worldly cares nursed by indulgence into a dangerous strength are further like thorns growing in a corn field, in that they interpose a veil between the face of Jesus and the opening, trustful look of a longing soul. It is the want of free, habitual exposure to the Sun of righteousness that prevents the ripening of grace in Christians. Unless we turn our eye often upward, and expose the struggling, springing seed of faith to the beams of the Redeemer’s love, there will be no steady growth of grace, and no ultimate fruit of righteousness. It is thus that insinuating, overspreading, domineering cares quench both hope and holiness: they hinder the simple, tender, confiding look unto Jesus which is necessary to the increase or maintenance of spiritual life. The love of Christ freely streaming down from heaven through the Scriptures and by the ministry of the Spirit, when freely admitted into an open, willing heart, by degrees turns fear into hope, doubt into faith, and the feeble struggle of a child into the strong man’s glorious victory; as unimpeded sunlight converts the minute mustard seed into a towering tree, and the tender sprouts of spring into the golden treasures of harvest. A thickly woven web of cares and pleasures interposed between the soul and the Saviour is a chief cause of failure in “God’s husbandry.”
Nor is the harvest safe although the thorny shade that overhangs it be not completely impervious and constant. Fitful glances of sunshine now and then will not bring the fruit to maturity. Stand beneath the branches of a forest tree on a day that is at once bright and breezy: you may observe on the ground at your feet a curious network of flickering light trembling and dancing about in perpetual motion. The sunbeams that penetrate at intervals through openings among the agitated branches are barren though beautiful. The grass that gets no other light grows slim and pithless, bearing no seed-knot on its slender top. Sunlight admitted now and then through apertures in the leafy awning is not sufficient for the processes of nature; the grain field must get its bosom opened without impediment permanently to the sun. It is thus that snatches of spiritual exercise do not avail to promote the growth, or even to preserve the life of grace in a heart that in the main is habitually overshadowed by a crowd of overgrown imperious worldly cares. Evening and morning you may open the Bible and bend the knee, but the tender plant of righteousness in your heart is not effectually revived by these brief and fitful glances. Before the drooping leaves have had time to feel the genial warmth, another cloud has closed the orifice and left them again in the chill damp shade. Even the Lord’s day, as a gap left open between earth and heaven, is not by any means so wide as it seems; for the memory of the past week’s business and pleasure stretches over on the one side, until it meet, or almost meet, the anticipation of the next week’s business and pleasure, so that even on the Sabbath the world still overshadows the soul of its votary. Shut out, except at short and uncertain intervals, from the Light of Life, he passes through the summer of his probation with a well-proportioned but empty form of godliness; and the Lord, when he comes at the close to gather the wheat into his garner, finds on that portion of the field only the rustling chaff of a hollow profession, instead of the fruit unto holiness that grows on living souls.
Some lessons suggest themselves in connection with this portion of the parable, and claim a brief notice at our hand.
1. As the thorns are indigenous and spring of their own accord, while the good seed must be sown and cherished; so, vain thoughts, lodged in our hearts from the dawn of our being, have the advantage of first possession, and get the start of their competitors in the race for supremacy. Lurking unobserved between the folds of nature’s faculties, before the understanding is developed, they come away early and grow rapidly, and obtain a firm footing before the saving truth, the seed of the kingdom, has burst the kernel and broken through the ground. Crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts; begin that work early, and persevere in that work to the end.
2. As long as the weeds live they grow. Every moment, until they are cast out of the field, they spread themselves more widely over its surface and drain away more of its nutritive juice. Delay is dangerous. If it be painful to pull out the root of bitterness from your heart to-day, it will be more painful to-morrow. Take for example the love of money: we know well that though money is a useful servant it is a hard master; be assured if it get and keep the mastery of a soul, its little finger in the end will be thicker than its loins were at the beginning. Avarice chastises its slave in middle life with whips; but if he abide its slave, it will chastise him when he is old with scorpions.
3. The thorn is a prickly thing; it tears the husbandman’s flesh, as well as destroys the fruit of his field. In like manner the care of the world and the deceitfulness of riches lacerate the man who permits them to grow rank in his heart. The vain man is continually meeting with slights, or suspecting that his neighbours are about to offer them. The miser is always losing money, or trembling lest he should lose it in the next transaction. The world itself knows, and in its proverbs confesses, that around the most coveted pleasures are set sharp thorns, which wound the hand that tries to pluck the rose.
4. It was where the seed and the thorns grew together that the mischief was done. If the grain is permitted to occupy alone the heart of the field, the thorns that grow outside and around it may constitute a hedge of defence, not only harmless but useful. There is a place for cares, and for riches too,—a place in which they help and do not hinder the kingdom of God. Kept in its own sphere, the lawful business of life becomes a protecting fence round the tender plant of grace in a Christian’s heart. Permit not the thorns to occupy the position which is due to the good seed. Not as rivals within the field, but as guards around it, earthly affairs are innocent and safe. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
5. When the husbandman perceives a huge prickly weed in the midst of his field robbing and overshadowing the corn, he sends his servant to cast out the intruder. In such a case, a bare spot is left where the thistle grew; but at this stage experiences diverge and travel on different lines towards opposite results. In some cases the blank is soon made up again, and the corn waves level like a lake over all the field, so that none could tell where the thistle stood: in others, the blank caused by the removal of a rank weed remains a blank throughout the summer, presenting to the reapers in harvest only a spot of bare ground. Why do opposite effects proceed from similar operations? Time was the turning point. In the one case the weed was torn out at an early period of the summer; in the other case it was torn out too late.
We have often seen a soul placed in imminent danger by the overgrowth of cares or pleasures that threatened by their rankness to choke the seed of the word; and we have afterwards seen that soul delivered from the danger, by a stroke of God’s providence that plucked out the weeds in time. Many of the saved both in earth and in heaven now praise the Lord, because he tore the idols from their hearts and spared not for their crying. The love of Christ that had been planted in their youth, and had, though hard pressed, still kept hold, soon spread again and occupied all the empty space, whence the fortune, or fame, or living treasures dearer still, had been plucked. When he came to himself, that disciple, afflicted sore but comforted again, clearly saw and gladly sang the mercy and judgment joined together that had cleared the room for Christ in his heart. But examples of an opposite experience, here and there one, stand on the edge of life’s crowded highway, ghastly as the pillar of salt on the plain of Sodom, burning into the soul of the passenger the warning word, “Be in time.” An old man has, by the hand of the Lord in providence, been stripped of all his treasures. These treasures, whether they were in themselves the noblest or the meanest,—for when a man made in the likeness of God abandons himself to the worship of an idol, it matters little whether the idol be made of fine gold or of dull clay,—these treasures possessed and filled his heart. Round them his understanding and affections had closely clasped, so that his whole nature had taken the mould of the object which it grasped. In this attitude the man grew old: the faculties of his mind became hard and rigid like the members of his body. The bosom, no longer pliable to open by gentle pressure, was rudely rent, and its portion in one lump wrenched away. A deep, broad, dark chasm, like the valley of the shadow of death, was left: and the chasm remained dark and empty to the end; for neither the affections of the old man’s soul nor the joints of the old man’s frame would fold round another portion now. Ah! the cares and pleasures that drove Christ from the heart may be cast out too late for letting Christ come in again to occupy the empty room. “Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.” “To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”
IV. The Good Ground.—Guided by the Great Teacher’s own interpretation, we have travelled through the series of successive obstacles which hinder the growth and mar the fruitfulness of God’s word in the hearts of men,—travelled through, weeping as we went. At the close of this sad but instructive journey, a beauteous sight bursts into view: it is a field of ripe grain on a sunny harvest day. The ground was ploughed, and the seed sank beneath it from the sower’s hand in spring; the earth was soft and sapful to a sufficient depth, and the roots of the springing corn found ample room to range in; the soil was clean, and its fatness, not shared by usurping weeds, went all to the nourishment of the sown seed: therefore in the balmy air and under the beaming sun it is ripe to-day, and ready to fill the reaper’s bosom. It is a refreshing, satisfying sight; but, fair though it be, we shall not now linger long to gaze upon it. By the parable the Master meant mainly to teach us what things are adverse to his kingdom. Having learned this lesson from his lips, we go away grateful for his pungent, deeply-traced, and memorable warnings, without pausing to examine minutely the glad prospect to which our thorny path has led. The traveller who has come safely through many dangers by flood and field, narrates at large, with burning lips and throbbing heart, the varied toils of the journey; but his home,—he does not describe, he enjoys it.[10]