broad
among them, he saw, he felt, the parallel between the sowing of Nature
and the sowing of Grace. Into that mould, accordingly, he threw the
lesson of saving truth. Grasping the facts and laws of his own material
world, and wielding them with steady aim as instruments in the
establishment of his spiritual kingdom, in simple yet majestic terms he
said, "Behold, a sower went forth to sow."

Whether a sower was actually in sight at that moment in a neighbouring
field or not, every man in that rural assemblage must have been familiar
with the act, and would instantly recognise the truth of the picture.
The sower, with a bag of seed dependent from his shoulder, stalks slowly
forth into the prepared field. With measured, equal steps, he marches in
a straight line along the furrow. His hand, accustomed to keep time with
his advancing footsteps, and to jerk the seed forward with considerable
force, in order to secure uniformity of distribution, cannot suddenly
stop when he approaches the hard trodden margin of the field. By habit
the right hand continues to execute its wonted movement in unison with
the sower's steps as he is turning round; and thus a portion of the seed
is thrown on the unploughed border of the field and the public path that
skirts it. Birds, scared for a moment by the presence of the man, hover
in the air till his back is turned on another tack, and then, each eager
to be first, come swooping down, and swallow up all the grain that found
no soft place where it fell for hiding in. Even if it should happen in
any case that no birds were near, the seed that fell on the way side was
as surely destroyed in another way: the alternative suggested in Luke's
narrative is, that "it is trodden under foot of men."

But while the portion of the seed that fell on the way side was thus
certainly destroyed, it does not follow that the rest came to
perfection: "Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth:
and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:
and when the sun was up they were scorched; and because they had no
root, they withered away." The stony places are not portions of the
field where many separate stones may be seen lying on the surface, but
portions which consist of continuous rock underneath, with a thin
sprinkling of soft soil over it. Here the young plants burst through the
ground sooner than in spots where the seed found a deeper bed: but when
the rains of spring hav