rt, as if by a mountain in the foreground, and
they can afford us no help.

"The field is the world:" in the prevailing confusion we hold to this,
as the ship to her anchor in a storm. Men should remember when they
explain away the meaning of the term "world," and teach that it
signifies the Church, that they are dealing not with a parable, but with
the explanation of a parable given by the Lord. The parable is
professedly a metaphor; but when the Lord undertook to tell his
disciples what the metaphor meant, he did not give them another metaphor
more difficult than the first. I venture to affirm that the expositors
would have found it easier to show that the "field" is the Church than
to show that the "world" is the Church. According to their view, it
results that the Lord proposed to interpret his own allegory, but only
gave on this point another allegory somewhat more obscure. The
outrageousness of the conclusion proves the premises false. In
affectionate tenderness to the twelve, the Lord Jesus undertook to
translate a figurative expression which puzzled them into a literal
expression which the feeblest might be able to comprehend. The "field"
is the metaphor, and that metaphor interpreted is the "world;" it does
not need to be interpreted over again. This Teacher means what he says.
He points to this globe, man's habitation, and mankind its inhabitants
in all places and all times.

Into this world Christ, the Son of man, the Son of God, cast good seed.
The children of the kingdom are the good seed: in the beginning men were
made in God's likeness, and placed in his world. Thereafter and
thereupon an enemy stealthily and maliciously sowed tares in the same
field. The enemy is the devil; and the tares which he by his sowing
caused to spring in the field are the children of the wicked one. In the
first instance, the Day in which the sower spread good seed in his field
was the day in which God made man upright: the Night in which the enemy
sowed tares was the period of the temptation and the fall. Both these
antagonistic processes are carried on still. The Son of man sows the
good seed day by day in the world, and night by night the enemy sows his
tares. Especially and signally in the fulness of time the good seed,
more completely developed, was again committed to the ground in the
ministry and sacrifice of Christ; and again the wicked one renewed and
increased his efforts to counteract and destroy it. These two, oppos