The master sower

Contents

Page.

I. Seed Sown, .. 5

II. The Heart Waxed Gross, 12

II. THE HEART ItfAXED GROSS

THE seed sown in various soils does not invariably ripen into fruit of Christian character. There are conditions in which it does not grow at all. The fault of unproductiveness is not in the pure seed of Christ-truth, when it falls where there is no soil. A man's heart — out of which are the issues of his spiritual life — in some measure determines his acceptance or his rejection of the Christ-truth, when it is fairly presented to the attention of his moral nature.

The seed which Christ sows is not defective. The moral principles of the gospel are faultless. The faults which we recognize in men are not to be attributed to the original proclamation of the gospel by the Master, nor to any deficiency of the seed of divine truth which the Son of God is sowing in the hearts of men. Other sowers have mixed the seed of error with the pure seed sown by the Master Sower ; and error has its seasons of growth.

In the Parable of the Sower, it was admitted in advance that a class of men on the earth would effectually resist the gospel of Christ, in so far as their non-resistance to evil prevents the moral renovation which the Savior proposes for free moral agents. 12

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Thus says Christ : " As he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it." Very much of the seed of divine truth is sown and wasted in gross or incorrigibly vicious hearts. It is not incredible in the circumstances of the case, that, as the Savior says, " to those by the wayside cometh the devil, and taketh the word out of their hearts."

The Savior thus describes the devil's opportunity : " This people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them." The hearts that have waxed gross open the wayside for Satanic influence, and viciously invite "evil ones" to help them against Christ.

The saying of Christ, " Then cometh the devil, and taketh the word out of their hearts," suggests a theory of evil simultaneously with the heavenly proclamation of salvation for man. Jesus Christ comes to earth with glad tidings of heavenly good for mankind. The heavenly truth meets the opposition both of earthly and of super-earthly evil. The Son of God inaugurates a spiritual kingdom. The records of the inaugural processes of this kingdom of Christ indicate commotion of an opposing diabolical kingdom. The reign of diabolism is opposed to the Son of God entering upon his kingdom.

There are "evil ones," decidedly averse to the salvation of men. There is a kingdom of darkness, with a measure of power for evil. This much appears on the surface of the gospel records. Will it all disappear, as our eyes get accustomed to the Christ-light? Let us see.

Jesus believed in the existence of devils. The belief of Jesus is the knowledge of Jesus. He spoke of demoniacal possession of the spirits and bodies of men as matter of fact. His exorcism of evil spirits was not a solemn farce. He was not playing with the superstitions of men, and giving to this phase of his divine work a misnomer.

The dawn of the glorious Sun of righteousness on earth gave this lower world a glimpse of angels of heaven, singing triumphantly, " Glory to God in the highest." The advent of Christ's kingdom on earth gave a glimpse of Satan's kingdom of evil. For a short time the exultation of angels on high and the consternation of devils below were alike visible. The extremes of good and evil in the universe, for a moment — an era in the moral history of the universe — viewed each other with pity and hatred. A new world — the earth — had reached the crisis of its moral history.

The land chosen of God for the manifestation of the Son of God is the land chosen by Satan as the proper theater for demon manifestation. The nation chosen of God for the transmission of the body of his truth is the nation chosen by the adversary in which to organize the forces of evil. The Son of

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God makes the fiercest hostility of demons against the truth the peculiar signal of their existence.

It is a fact that sin has repeatedly made devils of men on earth. Devils incarnate have hated moral goodness with all the malignity that may be attributed to fiends of hell. They have opposed with evil arts the purest principles of religion. They have applauded the basest and most destructive passions of the human soul at the point of the soul's most humiliating moral degradation. At the instigation of these human devils, vice and cruelty have tortured humanity. Belief in the existence of devils within the sphere of human life and beyond, is forced upon the soul that has made a desperate struggle for true life.

The animus of the effectual resistance of men against Christianity ceases to be a secret when laid bare by the Revealer in words which expose the resister's success as his shame : " His heart has waxed gross."

It is no triumph for men that animalism has rendered the human soul so gross that no fine image of Christ is impressed therein. It is a shame to have no sensitiveness of spirit for moral purity. It is a natural degradation for a human creature to quench spiritual aspirations and to permit deterioration of the texture of his soul by gross indulgence of his appetites.

The Divine Author of the Scriptures might have given still plainer evidence of their divine authority. As men's ears became dull of hearing, and their eyes closed, the voice of Jehovah might have sounded louder, and divine appearances might have been more vivid. Those whose hearts had waxed gross might have been frightened into some ceremonial observance of religion or some spiritless form of godliness; but with all this, we have no reason to suppose any less resistance of the sensual mind to the moral purity of Christ.

Jesus might have conciliated vast numbers of the Jews of his time by laying before their eyes the foundation of a mighty carnal or political kingdom. These people could come eagerly to the baptism of John. They had no insurmountable objection to a ceremonial repentance. They failed to comprehend a spiritual kingdom of the Divine Redeemer. They did not wish to have their hearts changed. These descendants of Abraham were enraged on hearing Jesus rebuke their unholy lives, and their dependence for divine favor on the bare fact of their being the children of Abraham. For this reason there was to their minds a biting irony in the words of Jesus : " Ye must be born again."

These degenerate Jews are distinctly told that they have no place in the kingdom of the Son of God, the Messiah, except they be born, not of water alone — not baptismal regeneration — but also of the Holy Spirit. Nothing but a genuine repentance and a washing of spiritual regeneration would suffice. Their Pharisaic nonentities of religion

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could not be the basis of Christ's kingdom. The mission of the Redeemer's kingdom was of grander scope than Pharaisaic eye could scan. The greater number of this people, whose hearts had waxed gross, scornfully repudiated the idea of conversion from Jewish prejudices to a Christlike spirit.

In the corrupt hearts of the generation of Jews who opposed Christ, devils had a striking opportunity for snatching away the seed of divine truth. There was the infernal advantage of these gross hearts' deep-rooted aversion to the moral quality of the fundamental principles of the New Testament. A natural cause of their rejecting Christ is traceable to their long-cherished prejudices against anything like the spirit of the new covenant. In their hearts that had waxed gross was the moral reason for their being rejected of Christ. They would not repent nor believe with their hearts unto righteousness.

The Scriptures teach that there is a dark, personal background of evil — a term in the series of phenomena of evil back of earth and humanity — which explains something of the evil of humanity, and explains the easier terms of salvation offered to men ; easier than any of which we have any hint in the Scriptures as offered to superior intelligences who have sinned nearer the throne, in the midst of brighter manifestations of the divine government, and in the heavenly light without external solicitation to sin against God.

Why is it that highly cultivated minds reluctantly accept the theory that evil spirits have access to the minds of men on the earth? Is it not that Christian culture contracts the area of diabolical manifestation? Just as culture, with Christian virtue, tends to destroy such fields of demon manifestation as that in Judea in the time of Christ, so — without suspicion of casting dishonor on the veracity of the Gospel record — it gives less and less attention to the subject of " demoniacal possession," choosing rather, with the diction of culture, to speak of evil as it is manifested in the lives of wicked men whose hearts have evidently and responsibly u waxed gross."

The darkness of sin is not yet dissipated from the earth. The turbulence of rebellion against the government of God has not ceased. There is still gross wickedness, unaccountable if attributed to humanity alone. A multitude of human hearts that have waxed gross and greedily consent unto sin, consent as unto devils.

The human heart's resistance against the Son of God is a matter of practical observation, whatever forces of evil may accompany or are antecedent to this resistance. A clear consciousness of evil is a demonstration just as plain as a visible devil. If men will sincerely and valiantly give battle to all evil, it is a matter of comparatively little importance how much credit or discredit Satan may have.

III. Beauty And The Beast

A MULTITUDE of men throughout Christendom utterly fail to recognize the divine beauty of Christian character. This is not to be viewed as a failure of Christ, as if there were no beauty of the Son of God that he should be admired of men. Why, then, is the glorious beauty of the Christ-character thus unrecognized and rejected?

There are those who do not lift the eyes of the soul above the horizon of Judea. They see Christ only in the dim religious sense exercised by a pagan just converted from the grossest of his superstitions. The Christ is viewed by thousands as a fossilized specimen of being, half-human, half-divine, or as a divine automaton moving in a distant age — a pantomimic rebuke of the present age, with its inability exactly to reproduce the surroundings of the cross on Calvary. Such minds imagine that they have attained to all the significance of the Christ-character, while such attainment is a divorce of their lives from the harmless spirit of their age, resulting in ugly distortions instead of the clear spiritual beauty of real Christian character.

Criticism in religion has some points of resemblance with criticism in art and literature. A man's unfavorable judgment concerning the beauty of the Christ-character is not to be accepted independently of his moral taste. The moral taste may have been grossly neglected and vitiated. The Divine Spirit may have been carelessly slighted. The man who has persisted in disobeying his moral convictions and spiritual instincts has done violence to his moral and spiritual nature. His inattention to these convictions and instincts leads, at last, to lack of moral perception; and the very light of God's countenance, shining with promise of blessing to the soul, is rejected as offensive.

There is a process of vitiating the moral taste through infidelity to the ordinary principles of natural religion. The vitiated moral taste turns away from Christianity, not so much on account of lack of divine authority of the gospel — the question of authority may not have been examined at all — as on account of the souPs distaste of moral purity.

The principles of Christianity are to give character to men, along with the impressions made by the natural environment of human life on earth. There is nothing in the Scriptures to indicate that the individuality of every human being may not be as distinct as the individuality of Jesus.

If Jesus Christ, clothed with flesh and blood, were present to the vicious man of this generation, he would still make a disagreeable impression in this mind, and men might still be found with disposition to " crucify the Son of God afresh." So the Christ

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stood before the carnal Jews of old, who despised and rejected the divine beauty and purity of his character.

The incarnation of divinity in the person of Jesus Christ needs not be repeated in every generation of men on earth. One such incarnation serves the complete religious purpose of God. This Christ is to be enshrined in the hearts of believing men. This crucified One ever liveth to make intercession for mankind. The one incarnation conformed to the religious condition and natural surroundings of the Hebrew people eighteen centuries ago. No conformity with the natural condition of the people of any land or any age will render Jesus Christ any more agreeable to the vicious heart so long as the vicious heart uuyieldingly confronts the divinely holy life of Jesus. It is not a sufficient justification for one to declare that the holy principles of Christianity are unlovely and unattractive. Let one consult his perverted moral taste for the peculiar reason of his aversion to the beauty of holiness.

When Christ comes, responsive to the moral need of humanity, he often wooes in vain the free heart that viciously rejects spiritual beauty. In vain Christ attests his heavenly mission by heavenly works in the presence of the malicious spirit that persists in saying, "He hath a devil."

It is an ugly feature of moral depravity that man has often converted into a symbol of cruelty the very cross on which Heaven's holy sacrifice was made. The teaching of Jesus — beautiful in holiness — has been perverted by vile men to serve the purpose of beastliness.

During several centuries of the history of the Church the greater part of the records of genuine Christian life was lost in the cloud of absorbing superstitions; thrown into the shadow of controversies about the non-essentials of religion; suppressed by the fury of persecution, — so that many Christians, in devout sympathy with the mind of Christ a thousand years ago, we may easily conceive, quietly and beautifully ripened for heaven while making no conspicuous figure in the history of their times. The pens of only a few divinely inspired men have preserved for us the record of the divine beauty of Christ. Many writers, busy with the history of useless wars, abominable superstitions, and degrading idolatries, left to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John the sweet story of Jesus. Witness crafty Josephus, studious historian of the Jews, devoting but a brief paragraph to Christ — if indeed he penned that — at the very time that Christ was stirring the whole Jewish world, and while his Messianic demonstrations were fresh in the memory of living men !

Just as in the past, so in the present, there is a modesty of the Christian character which veils its beauty from the gaze of the vulgarly vicious. The least beautiful profession of Christian love is often most immodestly conspicuous. It is restrained by

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no shyness of spiritual modesty. The sweetest voice of piety is too gentle, too refined, with too much of the music of heaven in it, for ears dulled to the " still small voice of God," or for souls that will not hear what the Divine Spirit saith.

We are sorry for one who sees no beauty whatever in the loveliest Christian character, while he looks for beauty in every direction except in a Christian life responsibly his own; while he fails to conceive of himself putting on beautiful garments of righteousness; while he does not yearn for something in the realm of spiritual possibilities inexpressibly more beautiful than a sinful life.

The crying want of the soul, blinded by persistent habits of vice, is conscious fitness for the heaven of Christ. This is a consciousness of character joined with the grace of Christ; this is character which looks with chaste hope toward the heaven which Christ proposes as the ultimate home of the redeemed soul ; this is heaven, radiant with the glorious beauty of Christian holiness; this is a glorious spiritual beauty, seen by the eye of faith in the Son of God, who walked the earth in the beauty of heavenly sinlessness.

IV. Fighting A Friend

THERE is a zeal for God, in the name of Christianity, that too frequently breathes the spirit of misanthropy. This zeal too often regards the " unregenerate " as possessing no natural virtues whatever. It is an unfortunate mistake of piety when such virtues are not recognized in the natural man. Christian piety can afford to recognize in these natural virtues some trace of the influence of Christ. They may be regarded as open doors of the heart, for Christ to enter and take possession of the entire man.

The keen perception of the unregenerate man sometimes discovers that the narrowly regenerate hate the sinner rather than the sins. It is unfortunate that the sinner does not always detect the misanthrope in the guise of religion. It is sad that the sinner is so slow in recognizing, at the door ajar, the Divine Friend of sinners.

We hopefully look in the future for a better and better physical basis of spiritual or Christian life. We look for less bitter fancies of Christ, as in hostile opposition to the instincts of manhood. We expect science — especially social science — to become more and more the faithful ally of healthy Chris- 24

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tianity. We expect the energy of the Spirit of Christ to flow harmoniously with the full free current of natural vitality in healthy Christians. We do not expect that the idiosyncrasies of distorted nervous systems will always be regarded, by any great number of people, as the fittest representation of the choicest piety.

Many a sick man sees clearly what his weary hands and feet and brain can not perform. He may be able to exhibit only the passive virtues of the Christian profession ; but, in so doing, he completely triumphs over the morbid conditions to which many other men surrender. Still, we may say that there is in the world not a little of unhealthy Christianity. This unhealthy Christianity confronts while it does not relieve — but rather aggravates — the moral insanity of the vicious who persist in looking upon Christ as an aggressive enemy rather than a friend.

The man who all his life spurns the gospel as a rule of conduct of life has no just conception of Jesus as his best, Divine Friend. He sees no friendliness in strictures on the bad course of his life. He suspiciously regards the declaration that he shall stand before the judgment-seat of Christ as a vengeful threat of severe morality. He burns with indignation that a rule of holy conduct should be imposed on him. A conviction of vice takes possession of his mind that Christ is an oppressive Master, He does not cherish the pleasing idea of salvation from sin. He nurses angry thoughts of the prohibition of vice; and these thoughts trouble his mind. He has no delightful anticipation of heaven ; he has, instead, dark foreboding of unrest of soul. He will not realize that the powers of evil are leagued against him. He imagines that powers of heaven, led on by Christ, are leagued against him. Instead of condemning himself, for his. own sin, he condemns his offered Savior, and sullenly bows his head to the fatality of sin, when he might hopefully lift his eyes toward glorious Christian destiny.

There is a fault in the Church which is repeatedly uncovered by revivals, but which is yet far from being corrected by the superficial, transient, vaporous religious sensations that characterize too many revivals. The fault is fortified in habits of thought that hold on to the extravagances of weak minds in the heat of sensational revival as of the very essence of religion. To obviate the fault involves one of the most perplexing problems that engage the attention of the evangelical Churches. The problem is : How shall we rise to a higher plane of Christian thought — retain pure and simple spiritual power — make smaller the mass of those who effectually resist the gospel of Christ, all at the same time ? The solution of the problem has much to do with the class of people who get wrong ideas of the gospePs opposition to their lives through observing the incongruity between the

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ordinary life of the Church and the extravagantly sensational life of the Church.

Genuine Christianity is the very embodiment of God's rich love toward the very men who fight the Savior as their enemy. There is nothing disagreeable in a souPs clear conception of the love of God as manifested through Christ. There is a character of Christian piety that gladly recognizes a sweet undertone of the voice of God's love in the very thunders of Sinai. There is a touching voice of divine love in the bitter cry of the self-sacrificing Son of God on Calvary. There is a moral grandeur in the freedom of a human soul, and there is a splendid pity and a tone of heavenly love in the invitation of Jesus calling that free, but sinful and wandering soul back to God.

Human life is not worth living on earth if there is no law emanating from the All-wise, pointing rational creatures to higher possibilities of life in the direction which immortal powers may safely take. Is there not some law of highest communion with God? Is there not some law that marks the way to the highest heavenly life ?

The law side of our idea of God does not necessarily interfere with the love side. Law directs; love blesses. Sinai is wreathed with fire ; Calvary is stained with blood. Sinai calls attention to divine authority ; Calvary calls attention to divine compassion, and holy, divine love. The law is necessary ; the active love that the Spirit of Christ inspires is the fulfilling of the law. Lovelessness is lawlessness ; it fights, it spurns Christ, who is the embodiment of divine love.

A multitude of people on the earth persist in regarding Christianity as an oppressive system of religion, opposed to all the sweetest instincts of their natural lives. They do not pause to consider that a redeemed soul's love of God in Christ is most wonderful emancipation from oppressive bondage to sin. They make no virile effort to gain genuine spiritual liberty. They do not cherish a pleasing thought that the religion of Jesus is divinely designed to set them free. How free indeed is he who is bound only with silken cords of love !

Jesus, the Son of God, is a strikingly natural expression of God's love toward mankind. He walks, talks, and dines with men. He talks sweetly and gently of the Father's house on high. He does not interfere in the least with the legitimate, harmless daily business of men. He illustrates and sanctifies the common friendship of men.

Jesus had indeed a special and exalted mission on earth which no ordinary human being could perform. He is King of kings, and Lord of lords; but that is not permitted to obscure his sympathies w T ith ordinary human life. He notices the beautiful flowers in his path. He loves little children; he takes them in his arms and blesses them. He is moved with compassion at the sight of a multitude faint and hungry. He is filled with a most natural

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but righteous indignation at the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. His presence at a wedding sanctifies the family, and implies a benediction on the brightest temporal hopes of youth.

The life of Christ with men is a divinely human expression of God's sympathy with humanity. It is to familiarize our souls with the idea of God, and to encourage our approach to him as the Divine Friend of mankind.

It is most strikingly emphasized in the gospel that Jesus Christ is the Friend of sinners. He is "a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother." They who resist Christ as they resist a foe, have a misconception of the friendship of God in Christ. It may have appeared to their minds only as a figure of speech. It may have been associated with the cant of men who have never made an idea of religion clearly intelligible nor agreeable to their " fellow-sinners." The divine friendliness that breathes in freshness and purity in the New Testament has a right to manly recognition.

Think of Jesus as locking arms with one, walking with him along some pleasant, familiar path, as he walked with the early disciples, in the midst of precious home-scenes, talking with familiar, friendly tone on such a theme as this : " Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!" Such is the gentle friendliness of Him who teaches with divine authority. Happy the man who cherishes sympathies with this Son of God; who casts aside the weapons of his carnal fight; who takes the proffered friendly, Divine Hand, and realizes an inspiration of life which makes him, a sinful creature, more godlike, while, at the same time, not less manly !

SINFUL PLEASURES.

THE pleasures of human life on earth, in relation to the life-claims of the Christian religion, present the following three peculiarly noticeable phases :

1. Innocent pleasures. God is good to give us life which spontaneously yields sweet, pure enjoyment. There are pleasures of human life which the most scrupulous conscience can not look upon as transgressions of moral law. They are not dragged into theological discussions; they can not soil the soul. They whisper sometimes to the soul of the worst man that lives, like zephyrs from Eclen. They force no blush to the cheek of innocence; they send no tingling pain along the nerves; they make no sighs nor tears.

The class of persons who resist the religion of Christ have no complaint against the Divine Law T - giver with reference to any experiences of these innocent pleasures. Their resistance to the Christ is not so innocent.

2. Questionable pleasures. Christ gives his followers occasion to think in the midst of enjoyment of life. There are honest differences of opinion among real Christians concerning amusements.

One Christian's innocent tastes may be utterly unlike the innocent tastes of another equally conscientious Christian. There may be various shades of opinion concerning the moral quality of amusement as amusement. Various associated ideas will influence our opinions, more or less, concerning this or that mode of pleasure. Some will be calmly thoughtful over questions of lawful pleasure; some will fret ; some will mourn ; some will be censorious; some will be charitable; some will be neutral.

It is not this phase of questionable amusements that troubles the class of people who resist the religion of Christ. In their case there is no such painstaking of conscience. They are not anxiously debating on the debatable ground of worldly amusements ; they are fighting the divine authority which invades the territory of pleasures unquestionably hostile to the divine government, and inimical to the peaceful interests of mankind.

3. Positively evil pleasures. There are evils which yield pleasurable sensations, and are at the same time hurtful to mankind, and always contrary to the law of God. Pleasurable sensations without a firm basis of moral principle are deceptive. The nerves may be made to lie to the soul. A class of people find enjoyment in excesses of what they are pleased to call " liberty " — it is, in plain truth, licentiousness. The senses are intoxicated with that which defiles the soul, and life is an effervescence of low animal spirits.

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A nation whose pleasures are vitiating the blood, and whose children grow only to become frivolous men and women, can not hope to live forever among the nations of the earth. If such a nation shall not have a regeneration, it must die. This whole world of mankind can not forever survive a general abandon to pleasure, reckless of all law of God. Universal vice in the course of a few generations would sweep the race of men from the face of the earth as by the waters of a deluge.

The pain and grief of the Holy Son of God on Calvary are a terrible rebuke to the reckless pleasures of sin. The world needs this spectacle of submissive, sacrificial suffering on the cross. It is suffering vindicating divine law. It is Heaven's awful rebuke to earthly pleasure defying divine law. We can not fathom all the mystery of that suffering on the Calvary cross ; we do not understand all the rationale of its virtue. Doubtless that tragedy on the cross was designed for other than human eyes; for higher and deeper and broader than human thought in its present state; for history reaching farther than human history in time; for emotions deeper than can be stirred in the heart of humanity while dwelling on earth.