now is the day of salvation." "To-day, if ye
will hear his voice, harden not your hearts."

IV. THE GOOD GROUND.--Guided by the Great Teacher's own interpretation,
we have travelled through the series of successive obstacles which
hinder the growth and mar the fruitfulness of God's word in the hearts
of men,--travelled through, weeping as we went. At the close of this sad
but instructive journey, a beauteous sight bursts into view: it is a
field of ripe grain on a sunny harvest day. The ground was ploughed, and
the seed sank beneath it from the sower's hand in spring; the earth was
soft and sapful to a sufficient depth, and the roots of the springing
corn found ample room to range in; the soil was clean, and its fatness,
not shared by usurping weeds, went all to the nourishment of the sown
seed: therefore in the balmy air and under the beaming sun it is ripe
to-day, and ready to fill the reaper's bosom. It is a refreshing,
satisfying sight; but, fair though it be, we shall not now linger long
to gaze upon it. By the parable the Master meant mainly to teach us what
things are adverse to his kingdom. Having learned this lesson from his
lips, we go away grateful for his pungent, deeply-traced, and memorable
warnings, without pausing to examine minutely the glad prospect to which
our thorny path has led. The traveller who has come safely through many
dangers by flood and field, narrates at large, with burning lips and
throbbing heart, the varied toils of the journey; but his home,--he does
not describe, he enjoys it.[10]

[10] It is not intimated by the parable that our Father the
Husbandman finds any of the good ground in us: the ground, like the
tree in another analogical lesson of the Lord, is not good until it
is _made_ good. It is beyond the scope of this parable to explain
how the ground is rendered soft and kept free from thorns. The
Teacher was content in this lesson to tell us what the good ground
produces; we must discover elsewhere in the Scriptures whence its
goodness is derived. "...The similitude from nature is no longer
applicable to the mystery of the kingdom of heaven; as a parable, it
has already reached its limits, when the truth goes beyond the
similitude. There is a _miraculous_ seed superior indeed to all
natural seed, so powerful that by its growth it can and will choke
all thorns. Nay more, it can also break through the rock in striking
its root down into the earth, an