AN enemy hash done this! What? Spoiled the fair beauty of the flourishing young corn, by sowing weeds all over the field! Now this would be a shameful thing to do on a farm, and we can imagine the farm servants coming one morning to the farmer, saying, "Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field?" and then telling him, "But now it is full of weeds!" Presently master and men go to the field, and lo, the weeds are springing up as thick as the wheat!
What a loss this would be at harvest. None but a spiteful foe could work such ill as to take the trouble to go, step by step, all over the field sowing tares; how he must hate the owner of the field to work such ill!
Look at our picture; see the man at work. It is quite a different scene from that of which we spoke on pages 28 and 29. This man has chosen the night-time for his toil, and he is laboring out of the hatred of his heart. We read the thirteenth chapter of St. Matthew's gospel, and first we see the Sower go forth to sow, and the Sower is Jesus, the Lord. "The good seed" which He sows "is the word of God," and "the field" wherein He sows "is the world." Let there be good ground, good seed, and God's blessing, and there shall be a grand harvest.
But "His enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat." "The enemy who sowed them is the devil"; he hates the Lord, he hates the good seed, and spoil the work of the gracious Sower he will if he can.
Seeds are small things, which when cast over the ground are hardly observable. Satan takes little lies and casts them into men's hearts, and by-and-by they grow up to be great tares. "Hath God said?" was the first evil seed he sowed in the human breast, and, oh! how great and numerous have been the questions, whether God does really mean what He says, from that first day.
It takes a long time to sow over a field: the enemy had done his work leisurely; but at length the servants awoke, to find the tares springing up all over the wheat field! Had the servants been watching, they might have driven the enemy away; but he worked while they slept, and now at whatever part of the field we look, where the good seed has been sown, we see the tares also. Side by side they grow up in the nursery, in the school, in the church or the chapel. What shall be done? The householder replies, "Let both grow together until the harvest.”
The harvest draws near. The tares will not be gathered into the barn; they will be bound up in bundles by themselves. They will be sorted out from the wheat, and will be gathered together and be burned. Then will be seen the end of such as having professed to be God's people are after all only professors. They looked like the real and true, but real and true they never were.
“The good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one." How solemn are these words of the Lord Jesus!
“The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity." May each of us be among "them" who "in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.”
The solemn parable of the tares needs our earnest attention, and especially in this our present day, when so many profess to be Christians, and yet so few really receive Christ! Let us each earnestly inquire, Have I indeed received His words? Am I the wheat? Such as have received into the heart Satan's words, and believe him, are the tares.