Mark 4

Mark 4:28-29

THE OF A ’S LIFE Mark 4:28-29. is a theory which is suggested by the gradations of natural life, but is far from being proved; in fact, it is clearly disproved by those same gradations. We cannot accept all that Henry Drummond said touching the evolution of physical life, but we do agree heartily to his assertion, “That the phenomena of the spiritual world are in analogy with the phenomena of the natural world, requires no re-statement.” Since Plato enunciated his doctrine of the Cave, or of the twice-divided line; since Christ spake in parables; since Plotinus wrote of the world as an image; since the mysticism of Swedenborg; since Bacon and Pascal; since “Sartor Resartus” and “In Memoriam”, it has been all but a common place with thinkers that “the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made”.Carlyle said, “All visible things are emblems. What thou seest is not there on its own account. * * * Matter exists only * * to represent some idea and body it forth.” Without discussing whether that be so, we will all agree that our Master was able by parables drawn from Nature to illustrate, parallel and impress the experiences in grace. And while this little parable of the corn-stalk was used by him in illustration of the growth of the Kingdom, perhaps no one will deny that it as perfectly applies to the evolution of a Christian’s life.Sometime since a man gave a brief talk on the childhood of the soul, the manhood of the soul, and the paternity of the soul, illustrating by the call of Samuel as reported in the third chapter of the book bearing his name; and also by the speech of the volunteer, Isaiah, “Here am I; Here am I, send me”; and his later statement, “Behold I and the children whom the Lord hath given me”. The talk was brief, and evinced little preparation on the part of the speaker, but the underlying thought greatly impressed us, and strongly suggested the text, “First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear”. We wish to do three things, if possible—trace the parallelism between the evolution of the cornstalk and that of a Christian’s life; impress the processes by which this evolution is accomplished, and in the end to show how beautifully these processes wrought, and how perfectly this parable is illustrated in the life of the true Christian.THE BLADE. “For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade” (Mark 4:28). Every farmer easily understands this figure. There is a period in the earliest life of the corn-stalk when only a single shoot appears. To be sure in that tiny bundle there are wrapped embryonic leaves or blades, but they do not appear. In looking upon the shoot you seem to see a single blade and you know that the growth has begun. Mother Earth has quickened the grain and there is more than the pulse of life—that life voices itself in growth and becomes evident to the eyes of men. There is no earnest of the end, no harbinger of the husbandman’s fruit until this beginning is made. And the same truth applies with reference to the soul. There is no promise of the prophet so long as the child Samuel is shrouded in darkness and sound asleep.

In that darkness and in that slumber he may be growing in body, for sleep is a tonic, and night is suited to the storing up of physical energies. But in slumber and darkness the soul makes no beginning.God’s call is essential to its childhood. As the warm ground quickens the grain and causes it to put forth a blade, so the call of God must energize the soul that has been dead in trespasses and in sins, and wrapped in the darkness of unbelief, and the record is “that the Lord called Samuel”. That voice meant to Samuel’s soul what the voice of Jesus meant to Lazarus’ body—life; only with Samuel’s soul it was the beginning, while with Lazarus’ body it was the resumption. And it was the very beginning of which Christ spake to Nicodemus when He said, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God”. Men sometimes talk about the natural good in man, about the latent germ of righteousness which only needs to be cultivated a little that it may break forth into beauty.

But God’s prophets, including His own Son, taught no such thing. They believed in natural law in the spiritual world, and consequently that the soul had its beginning in birth; that it was a new creation in Christ Jesus. “First the blade”.

God forbid that we should ever depart from that doctrine—“First the blade”. Samuel was the symbol of the childhood of the soul because the voice of God has broken his slumber, and he answered, “Here am I”. It is only a child’s answer. It is only the lisp of an infant, but, thank God, it is the beginning—it is the blade.Louis Albert Banks tells how a little child listened to a minister preach a plain sermon from the text, “And they brought him to Jesus”. On her way home she said to her father, “I like that sermon very much.” “Well,” queried the parent, “whom are you going to bring to Jesus?” She thought a moment, and then lifting her little face to his, replied, “I think, papa, that I will just bring myself to Him.” “First the blade”.First the infant answer, “Here am I”.A beginning once made—a ready response to God’s call insures His revelation. You know what the blade does.

It responds to the touch of the sun; it responds to the down-pour of rain; it responds to the mild kiss of the dew-drop, and its very response is what we call its growth. The soul that responds to God is a growing soul, growing in knowledge of the truth; and to it God will give more and more of His revelation, even as the sun grants more and more of its light to the expanding stalk.

It is written in the Word, “If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know of the teaching” (A. S. V.).I knew a brilliant lawyer to be converted by putting that text to the test. It brought him from the darkness into the light. And, better still, it led him from light into light; for, having learned that God revealed Himself to the responsive soul, he kept open mind and open heart for God, and the Father poured His truth into him, and His revelations through him. I sometimes wonder whether the child Samuel furnishes a full solution to the mystery of the present-day boy-evangelists.

If they are as capable as current reports at times indicate, is it a mystery of nature, or merely an evidence of grace — a proof that God is in search of men who are willing to be mouth-pieces for Him? And when He finds even a child who is willing to be for Him what the plain pipe is to the reservoir, a transmitter of blessings, a carrier of the Water of Life, He accepts him, and gives him such revelations as astound the unbelieving and the unwilling.You know it is a significant fact that when Christ made choice of His Apostles, who were to be the prophets of His Gospel, He selected from the unlettered a majority of them.

And the only satisfactory explanation of His conduct in the matter is the circumstance that He must have seen in these responsive souls who would make the best mediums of His Word and will. Just how; far God carries this revelation, when He finds a mind more and more responsive, I do not know. And, if I did, and dared to say, many would doubt. If you read Arthur Pierson’s “Miracle of Missions”, you will remember his report of William Murray’s work for the blind of China, how that man of God wrought day and night, and with every considerable system of mnemonics to reduce those more than four thousand intricate Chinese characters in some such way that the blind might learn them, and come to read the Word of God through the sense of touch. But his endeavors were in vain, and the half million blind Chinese seemed destined to remain in the dark touching the Truth of God. He had often prayed for guidance in the matter, and asked to be made the medium of truth to these people.

One day he laid down for a rest, and as he closed his eyes, he saw outspread before him a system of mnemonics of which the world had never heard, and by which he was able to reduce those 4000 characters to 408 distinct syllables. That is what God did for a man who was anxious to be a medium, to the people, of the Divine mind.

And if you would know what was done through him for the blind of that country, follow Pierson in his further report of this same modern miracle. If, in the childhood of the soul, man would only learn to say, “Here am I”, as the young corn-shoot says to the wind, to the rain, and to the sun, spiritual development would be as rapid and as easily marked as farmers note the growth of their fields of corn. The blade is a beautiful thing, but it loses its beauty unless it is pushing on towardTHE EAR. “First the blade, then the ear”. The ear as employed here is not to be regarded as the mature fruit of the corn-stalk, but as that point in the process where cob and grain are formed; but neither is perfectly filled. It is the crucial time for corn. And when the soul has passed its infancy and begins to take permanent shape; begins to give promise of manhood in Christ Jesus, it approaches also the time of the utmost concern. I think Isaiah stood in that position when he heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us”? It was God’s call for a man and that very call involved all the problems incident to the man-approaching period in the soul’s development.

Isaiah’s answer indicates his appreciation of this act, “Here am I, send me”.In the evolution of a corn-stalk the ear-period is a dependent period. Those who are familiar with the fields will tell you so.

In the early season the corn is not so much dependent upon sun and rain. It can endure considerable drouth and suffer little from either heat or cold, and in the later season, when the grain is hardened, it is indifferent alike to cloud and sun. But in the earing season, it is not so. The rains must fall upon it, and the sun must deal gently with it, or fruitlessness will be the result.But no ear of corn was ever so dependent upon sun, air, or ground, as the forming soul is dependent upon God. Perhaps Jesus meant that when He spoke to His disciples in the 15th of John. They were not babes then. They had been with Him for three years; they had sat at His feet and learned of Him. They had become preachers by His appointment.

They had seen even the devils “subject unto them”. They must have felt that they were approaching the stature of men in Christ, and by that very consciousness, they may have been tempted to trust themselves. And so Jesus said to them,“I am the True Vine. * * As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me. “I am the Vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing. “If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered” (John 15:1; John 15:4-6). What a lesson on the dependency of the soul, at a very time when it is tempted to trust in its own strength. “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him; rooted and built up in Him”. There is one truth that can never be too much emphasized and that truth is man’s dependence upon God. Silence concerning that fact is an irreparable mistake, if the minister makes it; and failure to see it is fatal alike to preacher and layman.The earing period is also the potential period. It is the time when the stalk contains its utmost of power, and I think also it is the time when the soul contains its utmost of power. A man’s happiest days may be his later ones, when the fruits of his life are so evident as to cheer his heart and make him glad. But a man’s days of power date back of that time to a period when everything is formative with him; when his own character was taking on its permanent shape, and when everything he touched he transformed.

Just as the stalk at earing-time transforms light, heat, moisture, and even the granite rocks into golden grain, so the soul in its approach to a full stature in Christ Jesus ought to transform everything it touches into fruits for God, and it will, if it be “rooted and grounded in Him”, “for all things are possible to him that believeth”.The earing time is also a time when the Divine plan is being perfected. If you walk through the corn fields in late summer you find the fast-filling ears conforming to a type.

That type represents a Divine plan, for God has appointed what the cornstalk shall produce. And, in Christ Jesus the soul finds a pattern toward which it approaches in proportion as it attains unto manhood. And I insist that that pattern is never approached by any other than the Christian—the man who has his development in Christ Jesus, the evolution of whose life is in consequence of the indwelling Christ.You may remember that Mozley has illustrated this thought by his two pictures—the one a cultured worldlian, the other a growing Christian. He says, “Take an ordinary man of the world—what he thinks and what he does; his whole standard of duty is taken from the society in which he lives. It is a borrowed standard. He is as good as other people are.

He does in the way of duty what is generally considered proper and becoming among those with whom his lot is thrown. He reflects established opinions on such points.

He follows its lead. His aims and objects in life are taken from the world around him, and from its dictation.” On the other hand “there is a certain character and disposition of mind of which it is true to say, ‘Thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.’ There are those who stand out from among the crowd * * with an impress upon them which bespeaks a heavenly birth”; and he goes on to show that society does not account for them. The spirit of the world does not explain them and the only explanation possible is the one the Apostle Paul gave, namely, “that God is working in them both to will and to do of His good pleasure”, and again, “that they are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God had before ordained that they should walk in them”. It is such characters, few in number as they are, that keep the Church of Jesus Christ commanding the respect of the world, and that save Christianity from having “Ichabod” written above it.John Watson spake truly when he said, “There are three steps in the Santa Scala which the race is slowly and painfully ascending: Barbarism, where men cultivate the body; civilization, where they cultivate the intellect; holiness, where they cultivate the soul.” The brutal crowd may applaud the successful prize-fight; the cultured may praise the accomplished scholar; but God’s commendation is reserved for him who, through Jesus Christ, attains unto holy living.