WE are staying for a few months in a house which has a neglected garden. It is early spring; the old fruit trees are full of blossom and of beauty, and the currant and gooseberry bushes are laden with promise; but as we look upon the soil we see weeds — weeds everywhere. The paths are covered with them, the flower-beds are choked with them, and the kitchen garden is burdened with them. Amateurs we are, but no pressed gardener shall touch these weeds — attack them ourselves with our own hands we will, for we are determined to learn a lesson in weeds.
Nothing can grow while these weeds hold their own, and since they have had their own way for a year or more, they are defiant in the extreme. Like inbred sins, they are not easily mastered. The paths offer hard work, but it is a disgrace to walk on weeds — go they shall. The incessant clack of the hoe sounds like labor in vain. Now a welcome shower has come, and what looked like a hopeless task has changed altogether. That shower by its softening influences has gently said to us, “Pull them out!” So on our knees we go, and take to our fingers rather than the hoe. “Pull them out — root and all?” Yes, unless God the Spirit soften the soul we can make little way against weeds on the hard, well-trodden path; and when He does so work, our surest way of working is upon our knees. Get to the root — get to the root, every gardener of the Lord who would attack weeds. Weeds! weeds! Weeds in the mind, weeds in the head, weeds in the heart! Half the practical lessons of life are about weeds.
So the early spring days passed. We dug and hoed, and then we sowed our borders.
But even before our seeds had sprung up came the weeds also; and as the seeds arose to battle with the weeds we knew not the good from the bad, hence the seeds suffered and the weeds multiplied. The seeds were foreigners; the weeds were natives to the soil, and well at home in it. But after a while, what with rake and with fingers, the weeds were slowly brought under, and now the seeds begin to hope. Weeds are always growing. Neglect weeding, fellow Christian, and yours will be but a Door show of fruit in the coming day. Now, weeding, at least spiritually speaking, is humbling work; hence it is not popular — there is nothing to show for it! — for it is but getting rid of the bad. Yet leave a bad propensity alone and it will flourish, and by-and-by choke the growth of the good seed in you. Weeds and good seeds will not flourish together.
One of the children would water the weeds in his little garden, and his answer always was, “I sowed seeds there.” Few of his seeds came to maturity — the weeds won the day; and a sore disappointment was it to witness the supposed sweet-scented flower pulled up by the roots, and left to wither. Yet not such a trial as is that of the Christian who has nourished evil thoughts and ways for years, and at length discovers that what he regarded as good seed were only weeds!
Weeds have such roots. Pull them up, dig them up, hoe them and cut them in pieces, still, after all is done, fibres of them will rain in the ground, and then after a shower of rain the very piece of ground over which most labor was spent, will be seen to be dotted all over with fresh weeds — little ones, and looking like innocent plants, truly. But let these little ones alone, and see then where the good seed will be! Attack the beginnings of evil, Christian, in your heart. Each day you let a sinful way alone it will root deeper into you, till by-and-by, it may be, you will say, as do some, “Oh! there’s no harm in that!” and your heart will be hardened. Beware “lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” Beware of little weeds, for little they never remain. Up they must come! Mortify your members you must. The works of the flesh are manifest. Thistles are thistles, whether just showing above ground or ten feet high; little and large, all came from the soft thistle down!
Little weeds have large roots. See what moisture, what life these weeds suck out of the ground. A great deal goes on underground, unseen to mortal eye, before the witness of even one green shoot appears! Sow a seed, and just when the pale green shoot shows itself dig it up, root and all, and probably the fibres will be found to occupy a space in the soil nearly as large as your fist. Thus it is with what comes out of man — his evil thoughts, and words, and ways have all of them great roots in his soul, which God sees. Man judges by the fruit, as it is written, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matt. 7: 20.) God judges by the root as well as by the fruit. “The Lord seeth not as man seeth;... the Lord looketh on the heart.” (1 Sam. 16:77But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7).)
This garden, so long neglected, has taught us an old lesson on weeds and it reminds us of a remark made by one farmer to another, and overheard as the train rushed through young cornfields, some of which were yellow with weeds: “They are so deep in that they will cost pounds the acre to get them out!” A neglected soul is full of bad habits, full of self-indulgence, full of the fruits of the flesh. It will cost much to get them out!
It cannot suffice us, who are indeed Christ’s, just to know that we are Christ’s, we must live as Christians; and, remember, a great part of the Christian life is the getting out of the weeds.
One cheerful word before we dismiss this subject. It is now early summer, and we again take up our pen to confess that our hoeing and digging have not been in vain. The paths may now be trodden without reproach, the borders are freed from their former masters, and there is a good crop of various vegetables in the kitchen-garden. Where there were weeds, now there is fruit. But as we look upon the changed scene, the memory of the clack, clack of the hoe rings in our ears, and preaches this sermon on weeds — “Get rid of them.”