Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

³ But here comes in that Paul, and he is sent to the Gentiles. And this he does not conceal in setting forth the grace, which he had specially and peculiarly received. For he says in his Scriptures, that he was sent to preach the Gospel where Christ had not been named. But because that first harvest was past already, and all the Jews who remained are no harvest, let us consider that harvest which we ourselves are. For it has been sown by Apostles and Prophets. The Lord Himself sowed it.

For He was in the Apostles, seeing that Christ also Himself reaped it. For they are nothing without Him; He is perfect without them. For He says Himself to them, “For without Me, you can do nothing.” What then does Christ from henceforth sowing among the Gentiles say? “A sower went out to sow.” “There” are reapers “sent out” to reap, “here” an unwearied sower “went out” to sow. For what fear did it cause him, that “some seed fell on the way side, and some on rocky places, and some among thorns”?

If he had been afraid of these unmanageable grounds, he would never have got to the good ground. What is it to us, what affair of ours is it to be disputing now of the Jews, and talking of the chaff? This only concerns us, that we be not “the way side,” nor “the rock,” nor “the thorns,” but “the good ground.” Be our heart well-prepared, that from it may come the “thirty,” or the “sixty fold,” or the thousand, and the “hundred fold;” some more, some less; but all is wheat. Let it not be “the way side,” where the enemy as a bird may take away the seed trodden down by the passers by.

Let it not be “the rock,” where the shallow soil makes it spring up immediately, so that it cannot bear the sun. Let it not be the “thorns,” the lusts of this world, the anxieties of an ill-ordered life. For what is worse than that anxiety of life, which does not suffer one to attain unto Life? What more miserable, than by caring for life, to lose Life? What more unhappy, than by fearing death, to fall into death? Let the thorns be rooted up, the field prepared, the seeds put in, let them grow unto the harvest, let the barn be longed for, not the fire feared.