Behold, a sower went forth to sow."This is the first, the fundamental parable which furnishes the key to the right understanding of all the rest:"Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables ?" (Mark 4:13).The use of parables is to convey what is spiritual by the ordinary things of this life.

The parable of the sower carries us back to the beginning of life. Just as in nature it is by the sowing of seed that life is first introduced into a barren soil, so it is by the infusion of truth that life eternal is formed in the human soul. In the natural world, sowing is not the first process. The ground in its natural state is not adapted to the reception and growth of seed. It may be covered with a dense forest, or with tangled growth, which has to be cut down or rooted out. Stones may cover its surface, needing to be cleared away. Marshes may be there, requiring to be drained away. Then the plow must follow, making deep its furrows, and breaking up the soil in which the seed sown may send its root downward and its stem upward for a harvest. But it is a significant circumstance that our Lord does not begin His parabolic teaching with any of these preparatory processes. The ax of all the holy prophets and godly men of old had done that, and the last of them, the Forerunner, had by his baptism completed the work. The time of grace had come now. " The winter is past, the rain is over and gone; . . . the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land" (Cant. 2:11, 12).

It is in these circumstances that the sower goes forth to sow; and most beautifully does our Saviour in this parable symbolize the character in which He Himself, the great Sower, appeared on earth. The function of the sower is not destructive, but constructive. His mission is not to remove anything from the soil, to destroy anything in it or on it, but to cast something into it that it does not in itself possess-something that has life and will impart life. And by the development of this seed in the soil the wilderness is converted into a garden, the barren soil yields a harvest, and the owner of the land has profit and delight.

Thus was it with our blessed Lord. The analogy applies to Him in the most perfect way. He came to impart that which would give life to any who received it. "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live" (John 5:25). He came not to destroy men's lives, but to save; not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might have life. Men had become separated from their source of supply, and they must first become livingly connected with Him before they can yield any fruit acceptable to God or profitable to themselves. All man's cultivation of this barren soil, in the absence of truth, was as if the farmer should content himself by plowing and harrowing his field without putting seed into it. Our Saviour came to sow in the prepared, but barren soil of man's heart, the seed of holiness and truth, and it is yielding fruit which delights the heart of God, and will appear in all its beauty in the eternal day.

The function our Lord fulfilled and assigned to His apostles, He assigns to His servants still. They are sowers going forth to sow. To the kings and rulers He has committed the sword-the government of the world. But His people are to be sowers- ministers of salvation, not of destruction. They are to contend against evil, not by using the weapons of this world, nor of the cynic and the satirist, but by sowing the peaceable fruits of righteousness. If they confine themselves to protesting against the evil in the world, they will have no fruit. Thus it is always. The effect of destructive means for the accomplishment of good is usually startling, but it is not enduring. Such agencies do not supply anything to occupy the place of that which they take away; and, as nature abhors a vacuum, it hastens to fill up the unoccupied space with the old and habitual. We are told that the common clover of our fields, tender as it looks, is actually rooting out the New Zealand flax, with its strong, woody roots and fibrous leaves, which the ax and hoe of the settler have failed to do. And so the love of Christ alone, implanted in the soul of a once degraded and barren sinner, can displace the evil, and produce in him that godliness which has promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. Oh that we may learn the intended lesson from this feature of Christ's parable, and that, instead of setting ourselves at destroying the tares-at pulling down evil-we may show a more excellent way! See Rom. 12:21. E. H. V.

(To be continued, D. V.)