impaired. As to the subduing influence of this holy leaven, centuries crowd around us to bear witness of the past, and prove that wretchedness and haggard misery and sin have fled before the influence of the leaven planted by the Spirit of God in the hearts of the few. Let us labour especially to leaven the young. Let us pray that this leaven may be hidden in the hearts of the teachers of our schools, and that the Spirit of God may hide it in every child's heart. The children of to-day are the good seed of the future ages, that will grow up into glorious harvests, or the trains of gunpowder lodged in subterranean mines, that will explode and devastate the earth. To train up a child in the way he should go, is the highest and most instant of all duties; and he cannot have felt the leavening influence of the gospel in his heart, who feels careless or indifferent to so momentous a duty.

Thus ultimate success in the coming future is the prefiguration of the parable. Our labour is not in vain; we have the earnest of success within us, and the certainty of a glorious future before us.

135

LECTURE IX.

THE FUTURE SEPARATION.

Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them : but gather the wheat into my barn. . . . . Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; the enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. 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; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.-MATT. XIII. 24-30, and 36-43.

"THE Son of man," is the lowly and beautiful epithet which Jesus appropriates for himself. He is indeed the only perfect Man, the realization of the original idea of manhood, the only spotless, beautiful, and perfect flower that the soul of humanity ever developed. But, while he was the Son of man, and thus the perfect Man, he was no less truly the Son of God. The one was witnessed in his tears, and

sorrows, and sufferings, and death. The other was manifested by his miracles, his words, his attributes, his victories, his ascension.

The seed here are not truths in their separate form, but truths incorporated and embodied in living and responsible men, the seed in its development,-in short, living principle in beautiful and consistent practice. Thus Jeremiah speaks of sowing with men as with seed. So, in Hosea ii. 23, "I will sow her." Likewise, in Zechariah x. 9, I will sow them among the people." The seed does not remain after the tree has grown; it becomes the stem, and unfolds its power and properties in the living branches.

This seed was sown by the Son of man in his "field." This field is not the world, but plainly the visible church. It was the world before the seed was sown,-the outfield in which no preparatory process had been begun; but, on being ploughed, and cultivated, and hedged in, and sown, that part of the world became the separated district, the sequestered and consecrated place—in short, what we call the visible church. This is plain from the very nature of the description contained in the parable; for it is nothing new to discover that good and bad are in the world, nor the possibility of a desire to root out the bad and separate them from the good at all inconceivable to any who have watched the world's plans of self-regeneration; but it is a new and striking announcement, and to some an incredible one, that in the visible church there should be a mixed multitude,-tares and wheat; that the weeds of earth should mingle with the flowers of paradise, and the poisonous plants of the Fall with the fragrant and beautiful productions of the kingdom of grace.

The enemy that sowed the tares is said to be "the devil." Satan, in this as in other things, always imitates.

and counterworks the mission of Christ. Wherever there is any clear manifestation of Christ, there Satan invariably sets up a corresponding imitation and mimicry. He imitated the miracles of Moses in rapid succession; and he raised up lying prophets, the mimics of the true, ever as the former appeared; he imitated the incarnation by demoniacal possessions. He is most successful, not as an undisguised enemy, but as a pretended friend, or when he combines the voice of Jacob with the hands of Esau,. the brass of Cæsar with the superscription of Christ, sowing the evil where the good has been previously sown; confounding light and darkness, good and evil; busiest where Christ is, and concentrating his greatest efforts to corrupt just where there is witnessed the greatest proof of the presence and the blessing of God. Satan is exhibited. in this parable as a person. He is not, as the skeptic alleges, a mere metaphor; the parable itself is the metaphor, the explanation of it here given is strictly and historically literal. Every thing predicated of him evidences personality. He entered into Judas: he filled the heart of Ananias; he is the god of this world, blinding the eyes of them that believe not; he is the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience." All these expressions denote an active and aggressive person; they cannot be predicated of a mere influence. In the Apocalypse, there is a full description of the awful part that Satan plays in counterworking the gospel, and in the winding up of this world's great and stirring drama.

He sowed tares" in the field. The tare is not a plant totally different from the wheat, and so easily distinguishable from it, but a sort of degenerated wheat-in short, a bastard and spurious wheat. It is well known that the uncultivated vine brings forth inferior grapes; and the best and purest wheat is spoken of as degenerating into a

The wheat and Thus, the sinner

sort of inferior wheat, called "tares." tares were, then, essentially the same. is not a being different from the saint: both were originally pure in Adam; but in one there is the taint of sin, in the other there is the effect of grace. God remakes the one; Satan and sin marred and made the other. Satan does not create the children of darkness a new race; he wastes, and stains, and defaces merely what God originally made pure. The worst of men may be converted: Satan never can be. There is no depth in the deepest degradation to which man can fall, out of which he may not be extricated. The tare, so long as it is so, is the planting of the wicked one. "I never knew you," is the language of Jesus addressed to those who are represented here by the tares. The wheat is the sowing of God.

The time in which the tares were sown, was the nighttime, while men slept. This perhaps denotes that during the apathy and indolence of the rulers of the church, Satan has sown or scattered wicked ones in the midst of it. 2 Peter ii. 1: «But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction." Or it may denote no censure upon any, but that during the necessary sleep that all must have, Satan seized the opportunity, and sowed broadcast the seed of a crop of tares. His deeds are evil, and the darkness is their congenial element. We often meet with this question: If transubstantiation or purgatory be an error, show when and where the error was introduced. If you cannot show when and where, then you must accept those dogmas as true. This is false reasoning. It is not a question of chronology, but a question of truth. Those tares-transubstantiation and