in
the sickle," since the final harvesting of souls is the prerogative of
God? The perplexities of the critics arise from their attempt to find in
the parable a literalism never intended by the Author. Whether the seed
be planted by the Lord Himself, as when He taught in Person, or by any
one of His authorized servants, the seed is alive and will grow. Time is
required; the blade appears first and is followed by the ear, and the
ear ripens in season, without the constant attention which a shaping of
the several parts by hand would require. The man who figures in the
parable is presented as an ordinary farmer, who plants, and waits, and
in due time reaps. The lesson imparted is the vitality of the seed as a
living thing, endowed by its Creator with the capacity to both grow and
develop.

6. The Mustard Plant.--The wild mustard, which in the temperate zone
seldom attains a height of more than three or four feet, reaches in
semitropical lands the height of a horse and its rider (Thompson, _The
Land and the Book_ ii, 100). Those who heard the parable evidently
understood the contrast between size of seed and that of the fully
developed plant. Arnot, (_The Parables_, p. 102), aptly says: "This
plant obviously was chosen by the Lord, not on account of its absolute
magnitude, but because it was, and was recognized to be, a striking
instance of increase from very small to very great. It seems to have
been in Palestine, at that time, the smallest seed from which so large a
plant was known to grow. There were, perhaps, smaller seeds, but the
plants which sprung from them were not so great; and there were greater
plants, but the seeds from which they sprung were not so small."
Edersheim (i, p. 593) states that the diminutive size of the mustard
seed was commonly used in comparison by the rabbis, "to indicate the
smallest amount such as the least drop of blood, the least defilement,
etc." The same author continues, in speaking of the grown plant:
"Indeed, it looks no longer like a large garden-herb or shrub, but
'becomes' or rather appears like 'a tree'--as St. Luke puts it, 'a great
tree,' of course, not in comparison with other trees, but with
garden-shrubs. Such growth of mustard seed was also a fact well known at
the time, and, indeed, still observed in the East.... And the general
meaning would the more easily be apprehended, that a tree, whose
wide-spreading branches afforded lodgment to the birds of heaven, was a
familiar O