ripened grain represents
alternately in Scripture, these two distinct though analogous
conceptions, it is the latter and not the former which this parable
adopts and employs. The reapers are the human ministers of the word, and
the reaping is their successful ingathering in conversion here, not the
admission of the redeemed into glory at the end of the world.

No other conclusion is compatible, either with the scope of the lesson
or the facts of the case. The sower in this story neither helps the seed
to grow nor understands how the growth proceeds. The parable is spoken
in order to show that, while men are employed at first to preach the
word and at last to gather the fruits in the conversion of their
brethren, they can neither perform the converting work nor trace the
footsteps of the quickening Spirit in the secrets of a human heart. By
this similitude the Lord represents the extent and the limits of human
agency in the progress of his kingdom.

Having made our way through the difficulties of the parable, and found
the key-note of its interpretation, we turn again to its terms for the
sake of observing and applying the practical lessons which it contains.

The sower sows the seed; the seed is the word; the hearts of those who
hear it are the field. Parents make known the Gospel in their families,
ministers in the congregations, teachers in the schools. These sowers
lose sight of the seed from the moment that it drops into the ground. It
sinks and disappears; they must go away and leave it. They sleep by
night,[57] and attend to other matters by day; they cannot see how it
fares with the Gospel in a neighbour's soul. They cannot put their hand
to the work at this stage to help it: the seed must be left to itself in
the soil.

[57] Here, as in the case of the tares, the sleep of the husbandman
implies no culpable negligence either in the natural or spiritual
sphere. "Sind wir am Tage recht wach; dann, moegen wir Nachts ruhig
schlafen."--_Draeseke, vom Reich G._

At this point the likeness between the natural and the spiritual is
exact and obvious. When you have made the Gospel of Christ known to some
in whom you are interested, you are precisely in the position of the
agriculturist who has committed his seed to the ground. If you think of
the matter when you lie down, or when you awake, you discover, perhaps
with pain, that you do not know whether the seed is swelling and
springing or not: and that though