n smooth by the feet of travellers skirts the edge,
or, perhaps, runs by way of short cut through the middle of the field.
The seed that falls there, left exposed on the surface, is picked up and
devoured by birds. Behold in one picture God's gracious offer, man's
self-destroying neglect, and the tempter's coveted opportunity!

The analogy being true to nature is instantly recognised and easily
appreciated. There is a condition of heart which corresponds to the
smoothness, hardness, and wholeness of a frequented footpath, that
skirts or crosses a ploughed field. The spiritual hardness is like the
natural in its cause as well as in its character. The place is a
thoroughfare; a mixed multitude of this world's affairs tread over it
from day to day, and from year to year. It is not fenced like a garden,
but exposed like an uncultivated common. That secret of the Lord, "Enter
into thy closet," and "shut the door," is unknown; or if known,
neglected. The soil, trodden by all comers, is never broken up and
softened by a thorough self-searching. A human heart may thus become
marvellously callous both to good and evil. The terrors of the Lord and
the tender invitations of the Gospel are alike ineffectual. Falling only
upon the external senses, they are swept off by the next current; as the
solid grain thrown from the sower's hand rattles on the smooth hard road
side, and lies on the surface till the fowls carry it away. The parallel
between the material and the moral here is more close and visible in the
original than it appears in the English version. But our language is
capable in this instance, like the Greek, of expressing by one phrase
equally the moral and the material failure: "Every one that hears the
word of the kingdom and does not take it in" ([Greek: me synientos]).
The cause of the failure in both departments is, that the soil, owing to
its hardness, does not take the seed into its bosom.

The seed is good: "The word of God is quick and powerful;"--that is, it
"is living, and puts forth energy."[9] Like buried moistened seed it
swells and bursts, and forces its way through opposing obstacles. A
heart of clay, smoothed and hardened on the surface, may hold it out for
a lifetime; but a heart of stone could not keep it down, if it were once
admitted, for a single day.

[9] [Greek: Zon gar ho logos tou Theou, kai energes.]--HEB. iv. 12.

"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world;" "If
any man