03.02. THE TARES

THE TARES Matthew 13:24-30; Matthew 13:36-43 In this parable Christ warns His servants against expecting to see in this world that unmixedly good condition of society which will at length be brought about in the world to come. The kingdom of heaven is to have universal sway, it is to stand without rival and without mixture of evil, but the time is not yet. Those who are themselves within this kingdom must beware of acting as if the final judgment were already passed. At all times those who believe in God have been perplexed by the fact that this world is so far from a condition of unmingled good. Is it not God’s world? He could not sow bad seed. Whence then the tares? Sometimes this has pressed very heavily on the faith of men. It seems so unaccountable a thing that the field of God should not produce an unexceptionable harvest. We believe that God created the world, and created it for a purpose, and originated whatever was needful for the accomplishment of this purpose. Whatever has proceeded from Him can have been only good. No degenerate or noxious grain can have escaped His hand. And yet, look at the result. How difficult in some parts of the field to see any fruit of God’s sowing; how mixed everywhere is the evidence that this is God’s field. Is it not the ill-cultivated patch of a careless proprietor, of the ill-conditioned, unworkable tract on which the wealthy owner has not wasted the labor which might better be expended elsewhere! Has God mistaken the capabilities of His field, or does He not care to develop them? or does He like this mingled crop? Does He not sympathize with His servants when they grieve over this sad waste? Has murder a horror only for us? does falsehood excite no indignation but in us? are violence and lust, disease and wretchedness matters of indifference to God? What do we see in the world? Centuries of folly, passion, toil, and anguish; countries desolated by the vices of their inhabitants; diseases which the most skilful cannot alleviate, nor the most callous view without a shudder; sorrow and sin more bitter, more cruel, more appalling than any disease. And this is the lot of God; here He delights to dwell. On no field of all His possessions has He spent more. Well may we join with the servants and say, “Sir, didst not Thou sow good seed in Thy field? From whence then hath it tares?” But Christ comes and inaugurates a new order of things, and all evil will disappear from earth. Man’s natural condition is but the dark background on which the saving grace of God may display its brilliant effects. God Himself comes and dwells with men, rolling back the heavy darkness with the light of His presence and wisdom, infusing His own life into all. Now will the earth yield her increase. Alas! the failure of the harvest of God is in many respects even more conspicuous in the Church of Christ than in the non-Christian world. The very method adopted to redeem the failure of the original creation seems itself also to be in great part failure. We are perplexed when we find wild and useless vegetation in the outlying wilderness, but when we enter the garden of God, and within that redeemed enclosure still find weeds and disorder, our perplexity deepens into dismay. Yet the fact is that, with scarcely an exception, all the useless and pernicious plants found outside Christendom are found also within. Where is there to be found a more passionate greed of gain, or a more self-indulgent luxury, or a more thoroughgoing worldliness than among the masses of the trading Christian races? The gambling, the unscrupulous hasting to be rich, the cruel and heart-hardening selfishness that abound in our own society are only made more deceptive and dangerous by being crossed with plants of heavenly origin, and by disguising their true nature under the flowers of Christian utterances, occasional charities, seeming repentances, and ineffective purposing of better things. Lust and villainy, fraud, malice, cruelty, — these noxious plants flourish within as without the Christian pale. And it is within Christendom we must look, if we would see some of the worst species of human iniquity. One is ashamed to read the history of the Church. Beside the good corn whose full ear bends in humble maturity of service, the deadly plant of delusive self-righteousness rears its pretentious and empty head. Ignorance, fear, and self-seeking have imitated every Christian grace, till the whole ground is covered with an overgrowth that hides from the eye the healthy plants of Christ’s own sowing. Insincerity, superstition, obscurantism, intolerance, pious fraud, the prostitution of the highest interests of men to aims the most contemptible and vile, the disguising of a rotten character under a professed faith and hope of the most elevating and glorious kind, — these are the plants which flourish in the garden of God. All that is double, all that is mean, all that is craven, all that is shallow and earthly in human nature, seems to be stimulated by this cultivated soil. The field which was to be the nursery of free souls who, with eyes unsealed to see the true beauty of eternal goodness, should devote themselves with courage and generosity to the common good, has become a paddock in which the timorous seek refuge from a future they dread, and in which every low desire thinks it may burrow with impunity. Looking at Christendom as it actually is, we may well ask, Is this what Christ sowed? Is this what He has produced on earth? Is this the kind of Christendom He intended? “Sir, did’st not Thou sow good seed in Thy field? From whence then hath it tares?” The explanation of this disappointing state of matters is given in the words, “An enemy hath done this.” It is not the result of Christianity, but of agencies opposed to Christianity. To sow a neighbor’s field with noxious seed is in some countries a common device for venting spite or wreaking vengeance; and a more villainous injury can scarcely be imagined. It blasts hope; it is a long grievance, daily meeting the eye and wearing out the spirit till the harvest; it spoils the crop and injures the soil. It seems to say that all this time, from day to day, I have an enemy who hates me, so that there can be no truer joy to him than that which gives me sorrow. He cannot be happy if I am. My happiness is his misery; my misery his greatest happiness. This is his spirit, the spirit of the Evil One, by whomsoever shown; a spirit not wholly absent from our relations with other men, but betrayed even when we suppose ourselves to be animated with righteous indignation or warrantable revenge.

There is something characteristically devilish too, in the deed being done “when men slept;” when the sun has gone down and the wrath of man begins to quiet and cool; when men of right mind are resolving not to act in heat, or be provoked to unworthy and low-toned iniquities, but to think over their matters; when they are perhaps dreaming that they are once again boys together, and walking folded in one another’s arms; when the stillness and solemn grandeur of night rebuke the loud clamor and petty wranglings of men; when, at least, a pause is given to sin, this spirit’s malignity tires not, but like the beasts of prey is roused to a livelier activity, and recognizes the darkness and quiet as his peculiar season. In him there is no folding of his hands from evil, no wearying, no hesitation in his course, no questioning whether, after all, this is not too bad, no desire to mingle with it a little good, no desire of rest or forgetfulness, but the grateful memory of past wickedness inciting him to new iniquities.

Such being the state of the field, and such its cause, what are the servants to do? “Wilt Thou that we go and gather out these tares?” Men are ever for prompt measures. “Lord, wilt Thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” Few understand the sparing of profligate cities for the sake of ten righteous men. We inwardly grudge that there should be so little difference now manifested between God’s treatment of the righteous and the wicked; and that it should only at intervals appear that the former are His peculiar possession. Did our feelings rule the world, we should allow very few tares to appear. We cannot wait, but must anticipate the harvest. This and that other effective propagator of falsehood, would it not be well if he were out of the way? Would not good men come to a quicker and more fruitful maturity, were they not continually damaged by the blighting influences of skeptical literature, worldly society, superficial religionists?

“Let both grow together until the harvest,” is the law of the Master. Again and again the Church has, in the face of this parable, taken upon her to root out infidels and heretics. The reasoning has been summary: We are Christ’s, these men are Satan’s, let us destroy them. All such attempts violently to hasten the consummation, and to make the field of the world appear uniform, have most disastrously hindered the growth of true religion. The servants have wrought a more frightful desolation and barrenness in the field than anything which could have resulted from the existence of the tares.

It is, indeed, not always easy to know how far we should act upon the acknowledged fact of a man’s ungodliness. In this country there is a strong feeling against opinions which are believed to be dangerous; perhaps it may be said that the animosity excited by a man’s profession of atheism is more vehement and active than that which immorality excites. And though, happily, we do not now go so far as to remove such persons from the world, we do not scruple to visit them with serious social and civil disabilities. Now this parable emits the law regarding such persons. It does not say the world is as it ought to be; it does not say there is no distinction, or a very insignificant one, between good and bad men, or between Christians and atheists; but it enjoins upon us the necessity of refraining from acting upon this distinction to the injury of any. Punishments must be inflicted by society on its injurious members, but not on the score of their ungodliness or unprofitableness in Christ’s kingdom. The distinction between a criminal and a benefactor of his country may not be so great as between a ripe Christian and a full-blown atheist; but while we are compelled to act upon the former distinction, and pluck up the criminal from his place, and banish him from our society, the latter distinction is not fully manifested, and must not be fully acted upon in this world. The man who habitually swears, or leads a grossly immoral life, or propagates infidelity, may do a great deal more harm than the starving boy who steals a loaf; but we are called upon to punish the latter and not the former. And in so far as we damage the prospects, or asperse the good name, of any man because we consider him “tares,” and not wheat, in so far we fly in the face of this parable. The reasonableness of this method of delay is sufficiently obvious. Within the Church itself it is often impossible even to be as sure as the servants of the parable were that there is darnel sown among the wheat, or at least to discriminate between the wheat and the darnel. An opinion, or a practise, which is at first sight condemned as scandalous or full of danger, may turn out to be sound and wholesome. But if no time be allowed it to grow, if it be summarily pronounced tares, and thrown over the hedge, the good fruit it might have borne is thrown away with it. Truth may be in the minority — always is at first in the minority; and if, as the servants view the field, they merely take a vote as to what is wholesome and what poisonous, they are likely enough to do evil rather than good. And even where it is certain that evil has sprung up in the Church, it is a further question whether it should be summarily removed. This parable, it is true, is not the guide for the action of the rulers of the Church towards its members; but, indirectly, a warning against hasty action is given to those in authority. False doctrine may sometimes be more easily got rid of, if it be regarded in silence, or with a few words of convincing exposure, than if it be signalized with assault. No man who had any regard for his field would carry a seeding thistle through every part of it, and give it a shake in every corner. But our Lord Himself in the parable assigns two reasons for this abstinence from immediate action. First, you are not to root up tares, because you will inevitably root up good corn with them. It is almost impossible to pull up a single stalk of corn by the root; you may break it off, but if you take up its root you are almost sure to bring away with it a number of other stalks and a mass of soil. The one root refuses to be detached from the rest — a striking representation f of what happens when injury is inflicted on any member of society. You cannot injure one man and one only. In him you strike his children, his friends, his followers if he be a man of influence. No man is so forlorn that none will be made lonelier by his death, or be embittered or saddened by his misfortune. We live for the most part in little circles, bound one to the other by indissoluble relationships, nurtured from one soil, and matured by common interests and feelings. And these circles are not separate from one another, but some member of your circle belongs also to another; and so the whole world is linked together, and you cannot put forth your hand and strike any man whose pain shall not be felt by others, nor thrust him from you without repelling all who are attached to him. And of those who are attached to him, are you sure there are none who belong to the kingdom, no little blade springing up by his root, which, did you let it grow, would abound in fruit? For, that a man is evil himself, is no proof that all his connections are evil. On the contrary, an ungodly man will often cling to those who belong to the kingdom, as if somehow they must find entrance for him along with themselves. A father who cannot change his own ways nor yield the opinions of his youth, seeks to protect his children from the influences that destroyed himself, and to atone for his own barrenness by their productiveness. Some who are held as by a terrible fatality from winning the kingdom, will yet entreat others to use violence to enter it. Even the most profligate have commonly some one ripe and living soul devoted to them, who could wish that himself were accursed for their kinsmen according to the flesh. But this first reason rests upon the second: and that is, that the time is coming when the distinction between the wheat and the tares is to be acted upon. Only let a man accept the account here given of the end of the tares, and he will have very little desire to anticipate or hasten that end. When God says, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” we feel that the darkest injustice and wrong-doing will be adequately taken account of. When we reflect that what has roused our indignation has also been observed by God, and will be dealt with by Him, not only is our indignation mitigated, but, in view of the judgment of God, our pity is moved towards the transgressor. We were about to punish as if we were the offended party, as if we saw the matter in all its bearings and could justly judge it, and as if we had the right punishment at hand; but when this final judgment looms in sight we see how different are God’s judgments and God’s punishments from ours, and an awful pity possesses us. Believe that the bar of God lies across the path of each of us, believe that a veritable sifting of men is to be, and that all men are to be allotted to suitable destinies, and compassion will extinguish every other feeling you may have cherished towards the wicked. The position in which we in this life are is full of awe, and fitted also to engender in us the tenderest feelings one towards another — growing up as we are side by side, but with destinies perhaps immeasurably wide asunder; here for a little united root to root, and yet, it may be, severed to all eternity. Could any position be better calculated to banish from our minds all indifference to one another’s prospects, all sullen and revengeful feelings, all variance and hatred, and to quicken within us a true affection and compassion, a considerate and helpful tenderness? The bearing of this parable, then, on ourselves cannot be mistaken. Wheat and darnel, it says, are almost identical in appearance, and are, in the meantime, treated as if the one was as valuable as the other; but let them grow, and the fruit will prove that the root principle of the one is different as possible from the other; the one is good food, the other poison. And they will eventually be treated accordingly. Everything must ultimately find its place according to its nature; not according to its appearance, nor according to any pretensions put forward in its behalf, but only and simply according to its own real character and quality. Each of us is growing to something, and from some root. No one may be able to say — perhaps you yourself are unable to say — to which kind and to what root you belong; perhaps you cannot confidently affirm what it is to which you are growing, but beneath all appearances there is in you a real character, a root that determines what you shall grow to. As we grow up in society together, one man is in the main very like another. Of two of your friends, it may be the one who makes least profession of religion that you would go to in a difficulty in which much generous help and toil are needed. Take a regiment of soldiers or a ship’s crew, and you may find the ungodly as brave and self-sacrificing in action, as observant of discipline as the others. There may be little to show that there is a radical difference in character; sometimes, of course, this difference is very rapidly manifested, but in general there is so much similarity as to make it notorious that the Church is not distinctly marked off from the world. Society does resemble a field in which the wheat and the darnel are still in the blade, and can be discriminated only by a very careful observer. So that, first, this is apt to make the darnel think itself as good as the wheat. If we merely look at appearances we are apt to think that, take us all round, there is not much to choose between the wheat and us. We see in truly Christian people evil tempers, a revengeful, tyrannical, ungenerous spirit, we detect bitterness and meanness in them, sometimes sensuality, and a keen eye for worldly advantage, and we are encouraged to believe that really we stand comparison with them very favorably. So no doubt you do. The world would be insufferable if all men had the spirit which many Christians show. But that is not the point. The question is not whether you are not at present, to all appearance, as useful and pleasant a member of society as they; but the question is, whether there is not that in them which will grow to good, and whether there is not that in you which will grow to evil. Do you, that is to say, sufficiently consider this parable, which most frankly admits that at present, so far as things have yet grown, there may be no very marked difference between the children of the kingdom and others, but at the same time emphatically declares that the root is different, and that, therefore, the life is really of a different quality, and will in the long run appear to be different? The question is, what is your root? What is it that is producing the actual life you are making, and the actual character you are growing into? What is the motive power? Is it mere desire to get on, or craving for a good position among men? Is it respect for your own good name? or are you a child of the kingdom? Are you the result of the word of the kingdom? that is, is your conduct being more and more animated and regulated, and is your character being more and more formed, by the belief that God calls you to live for Him and for eternity? Do you like this world really better than one in which you have a hope only of spiritual joys, of true fellowship with God, and holiness of heart? Can you make good to your own mind, that in some quite intelligible sense you are rooted in Christ, and grow out of Him? It is the root you live from which will eventually show itself in you, and determine your eternal position.

Again, the urgency of the call to Christ is deadened by the fact that we are not treated differently at present. Men argue: we get on well enough now, and the future will take care of itself. But this is to brush aside at a blow all that we are told of the connection of the present with the future. This state bears to a coming world the relation which seed-time bears to harvest. No violence will be done to you at present to convince you that you are useless to God. No judgment will be declared, no punishment inflicted — that were out of season, for in this life we are left to choose freely and without compulsion, whether we desire to be in God’s kingdom or not. In this life you must judge yourself and do violence to yourself. But this argues nothing regarding the future life. It is only then a beginning is made of treatment corresponding to character.

Lastly, not only is the darnel apt to think itself as good as the wheat, but the wheat is apt to think itself no better than the darnel. You can never outstrip others in good as you would like. You are troubled because they seem to be as regular, as zealous, as successful in duty as you. Possibly, too, they are not only as judicious in conduct, as generous, as true, of as good report as yourselves, but, moreover, exercise a healthier influence than you do on those they live with. Some natural infirmity of temper has fixed its indelible brand on you, something which makes you less attractive and less influential than you might otherwise be. Or perhaps you are choked by uncongenial surroundings, kept down in growth by the tares around you, often betrayed into sins which better company would have made impossible. Are you somehow continually kept back from growing to all you feel you might grow to? Is there good in you that has never yet been elicited? Look then to the end, when “the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Be sure only that there is that in you which will shine forth if the hindrances and blinds are removed. There is no change to pass on the wheat; but only the tares shall be taken away, and it will stand revealed, good corn. Bring forth your fruit in patience: maintain the real distinction between good and evil, and at last it will be apparent.