sowing still followed in many
countries, consists in the sower throwing the grain by handfuls against
the wind, thus securing a widespread scattering. Running through the
Galilean fields, were pathways, hard trodden by feet of men and beasts.
Though seed should fall on such tracts, it could not grow; birds would
pick up the living kernels lying unrooted and uncovered and some of the
grains would be crushed and trodden down. So with the seed of truth
falling upon the hardened heart; ordinarily it cannot take root, and
Satan, as a marauding crow, steals it away, lest a grain of it perchance
find a crack in the trampled ground, send down its rootlet, and possibly
develop.

Seed falling in shallow soil, underlain by a floor of unbroken stone or
hard-pan, may strike root and flourish for a brief season; but as the
descending rootlets reach the impenetrable stratum they shrivel, and the
plant withers and dies, for the nutritive juices are insufficient where
there is no depth of earth.[619] So with the man whose earnestness is
but superficial, whose energy ceases when obstacles are encountered or
opposition met; though he manifest enthusiasm for a time persecution
deters him; he is offended,[620] and endures not. Grain sown where
thorns and thistles abound is soon killed out by their smothering
growth; even so with a human heart set on riches and the allurements of
pleasure--though it receive the living seed of the gospel it will
produce no harvest of good grain, but instead, a rank tangle of noxious
weeds. The abundant yield of thorny thistles demonstrates the fitness of
the soil for a better crop, were it only free from the cumbering weeds.
The seed that falls in good deep soil, free from weeds and prepared for
the sowing, strikes root and grows; the sun's heat scorches it not, but
gives it thrift; it matures and yields to the harvester according to the
richness of the soil, some fields producing thirty, others sixty, and a
few even a hundred times as much grain as was sown.

Even according to literary canons, and as judged by the recognized
standards of rhetorical construction and logical arrangement of its
parts, this parable holds first place among productions of its class.
Though commonly known to us as the Parable of the Sower, the story could
be expressively designated as the Parable of the Four Kinds of Soil. It
is the ground upon which the seed is cast, to which the story most
strongly directs our attention, and whi