Seed to the Sower, and Bread to the Eater
‘*As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth nob thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater; so sLall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth.” — Isa. Iv. 10, 11. “Now he that ministereth seed to the sower, both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed, sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness.” — 2 Cor. ix. 10.
The principal lesson of these scriptures may, on the whole, be most conveniently ascertained and enforced by considering, —
I. The Facts in Nature from which the analogy is taken; and —
II. The Spiritual Purpose for which the analogy is employed.
I. The Facts in Nature from which the analogy is taken.
1. God’s part in the process: he gives (1.) Seed; and, (2.) Rain.
(1.) He gives Seed. If the annual growth of seed is not itself a perpetual miracle, it is the perpetual evidence of a miracle that has once been wrought. Although its constituent materials are scattered in great abundance around us, all the men of all the world could not make a seed. If all the seeds which the world contains were crushed at one time, as some are crushed for bread, a loud, but helpless, hopeless wail would rise from earth to heaven. Without a new miracle, as decisive in kind as the creation of a world, the race could not be preserved. At present, grains are silently elaborated out of materials which abound in earth, and air, and water. The elements, mixed without fire or crucible, combine in their proper proportions; there is no deficiency, — no excess. When completed, each grain has life, and the power of reproducing life, down through a thousand generations.
In all the examples with which we are acquainted, whether by personal observation within our own sphere, or the testimony of others beyond it, grain gTOws from seed by the ordinary processes of nature. If in a single case it should grow without a seed, the fact would be confessed a miracle. But it is self-evident that the first seed did not grow from a seed; therefore the existence of a single grain of wheat is evidence, altogether resistless, that a miracle has been wrought. Philosophy humbly adliibits its signature to the declaration of Scripture, that God gives seed to the sower. And not only seed in general, but every species in particular, is a divine gift; “God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body” (1 Cor. xv. 38). Species and genera do not interchange in nature; it is as much beyond our power to make wheat spring from barley as to make it spring from nothing.
(2.) He gives Rain. Although the grain has been formed with the capabilities of growth and reproduction in its nature, it cannot grow and reproduce its kind unless it meet with influences, external to itself, fitted to call forth its latent powers. It must have earth, air, light, and moisture: wanting any one of these, all the inherent capabilities of the seed would go for nothing: it would never grow. In the text, moisture by means of rain, the most obvious of these indispensable fellow-workers, stands as representative of the whole. The grain is wonderfully prepared, by its internal structure, for sending forth a bud charged with germs of its kind a hundredfold; but these would lie dormant as a stone unless the earth that covers them were moistened with water. Wheat has lain beyond the reach of air and moisture in Egyptian tombs, without germinating, probably two thousand years; and has, it is said, immediately sprung and reproduced itself, when again committed to the humid earth, as if unconscious of its long slumber. The internal structure and the external appliances are both alike necessary to reproduction; and God provides both in fitting time and measure.
In reasoning with idolaters who did not possess the Scriptures, Paul appeals to this obvious trace of the Creator’s goings: “He left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts xiv. 17). Conversely, when God designs to chastise a people with the scourge of famine, it is not necessary to destroy the seed: in this form the stroke sometimes falls, as in Ireland a few years ago, by the direct and rapid decomposition of the seed which constituted the principal food of the inhabitants; but generally when famine comes, it is caused by the want of rain. Either method is equally effective. It is with partial and limited success that we speculate on the causes of scarcity. We may sometimes succeed in tracing them a few. steps higher than the ground; but both the lines penetrate the clouds above us, and lie beyond our view in the hands of “a faithful Creator ‘^ (1 Pet. iv. 19).
2. Man’s part in the process: he sows and eats.
In all the arrangements of the Mundane system there is a marked adaptation to the physical and moral discipline of man. In nature as well as in grace, it might be written, “All things are for your sakes’’ (2 Cor. iv. 15).
One could imagine a globe like the earth so constituted that all its crust, to an indefinite depth, should consist of matter fit to be the food of man. It would be a jovial world for a savage, if he had nothing more to do than go to the end of his hut in the morning, wath a spade and sack, and quarry as much food as would supply his family for the day ;- but in all probability none but savages would grow in such a world. As a dwelling-place and exercise-ground for the human family, the earth is better as it is. By giving “seed to the sower,” and so providing bread to the eater, our Father in heaven has consulted better for all the interests of his children: by requiring their consent and co-operation he promotes them to the dignity of fellow -workers with himself. The apparatus in nature for the production of human food is like a vast and complicated piece of machinery, moving in exquisite harmony, and possessing indefinite power; but it clanks empty and produces nothing, until men come forward and feed it. The Creator’s preparations do not feed men, wdthout men’s foresight and labour: this is not the defect, but the perfection of the plan.
Sowing and eating are closely related; if a man did not sow, he could not long continue to eat; and if he did not eat, he could not long continue to sow. By his forethought and toil from spring to autumn, he is enabled to eat in plenty throughout the succeeding year; and in the strength of this food he undergoes the fatigue necessary for bringing the next harvest to perfection. God gives seed: but he gives it only to the sower. He does not deposit a continent of food within reach of human animals that they may eat and drink and die; the sustenance of man is as certainly and as obviously the gift of God, as under such an arrangement it would have been, but the gift is so fashioned as to stimulate the activity of the receiver and bring to perfection all his powers.
II. The Spiritual Purpose for which the analogy is employed.
Hitherto we have been occupied with the preparatory work of setting up the types: we now proceed to turn them over and press them home, in the hope of leaving a legible page where simple learners may obtain a lesson on the Way of Life. The letters are in themselves instructive as the works of God in nature; but their chief value lies in their fitness as instruments for recording and unfolding the mind of the Spirit in redemption. For that purpose they were used even by Isaiah; for that purpose too they were gathered up and reset by Paul, in a new edition of Isaiah’s gospel. The narrative of natural events is introduced expressly as a vehicle for conveying a higher truth: it is written, ‘’As the rain cometh down, .so shall my word be.”
The natural process has, in all its principal features, its counterpart in the kingdom of grace. There also, God’s gifts and man’s labour combine in producing the beneficial result.
1. God’s part: he gives Seed and Kain.
(1.) Seed. His word is compared frequently, emphatically, specifically, to grain, both in its quality of seed, and in its quality of food. From the lips of the Great Teacher we learn that the seed which the sower goes forth to sow is the word of Gcd. The spiritual seed is as exclusively God’s gift as the natural. Men could no more make a real gospel, endowed with life and reproductive power, than they could make a grain of wheat capable of growing. The curse came heaviest upon the moral aspect of the world; of itself it bringeth forth only thorns and thistles. Examine the various systems of religion which men have invented; these are the things that grow of themselves on a soil that sin has blighted. They are both unsightly in appearance, and noxious in nat’dre. Can a man gather grapes from these thorns? Can a soul live on any of the abominations of idolatry? You might as well expect your child to live and thrive, if instead of bread you gave him a stone, — instead of a fish a serpent. In both departments permanence ai)d plenty are secured by a process of sowing and reproduction in which man must be a fellow- worker; but in the origin of both God acts alone. He took no creature into his counsel when he gave to the seed of grain and to the seed, of the word “a body as it pleased him.’’ In framing the plan of redemption and bestowing the “unspeakable gift,” God is absolutely sovereign and free.
On the day of Pentecost, soon after the Lord had ascended into heaven, the Spirit, appropriately symbolized as “a rushing mighty wind,” suddenly caught up the seed at Jerusalem and spread it in many lands. In Greece and Africa, in Spain and Italy, in Arabia, Persia, and even India, fields whitened to the harvest. There has been no such “rushing mighty wind” since; but here and there, from time to time, the Spirit has come, and in greater or smaller measure wrought the same result, as if to proclaim to each generation that we are not straitened in him.
But soon after that first and greatest sowing, a long cold, barren winter came upon the church. Those who assumed the charge of the word gradually ceased to live upon it as bread, and therefore ceased to sow it as seed; gradually ceased to sow it as seed, and therefore obtained less and less of it to live upon as bread. The priests of Home sometimes boast that Protestants are indebted to them for preserving the Bible till the fifteenth century. In one sense, not to their credit, they were the means of preserving it. The priests of ancient Egypt, for some object which we cannot now fully understand, but perhaps with allusion to the resurrection, were wont to wrap up some grains of wheat with the embahned body in the rocky tombs. This seed, when removed from its sepulchral imprisonment of ages, has been of late sown; and if those who conducted the experiment were not deceived, it grew and multiplied, thanks to its own wonderful vitality, not to the wisdom of heathen priests, who wrapt the living in the cerements of the dead. Such was the service which Kome durino the middle aoes performed for the Bible. Ignorant of its value, the monks occupied their leisure in fancifully decorating and perfuming it. Having dressed it as a corpse, they buried it in their cloisters. While it lay there during those dreary centuries it did not bless the world, but it retained its own vitality; and when its grave was rent by the earthquake commotions of the Keformation, it became seed again in the sower’s hand, and bread to satisfy hungering nations.
(2.) Kain. Seed, after it has been given by God and sown by man, is not more entirely dependent for growth on rain from heaven, than the word preached is dependent on the ministry of the Spirit. As the power lay in God’s hands at first, and it was of his own free will that he gave his word as seed; so he retains the power in his own hands still, for the seed which has been committed to earthen vessels will never and nowhere spring until the Spirit be poured out like rain on the dry ground. Some fields have been of late greatly refreshed; this is “a sign from heaven” that God remembers his promise, and loves to answer prayer. The gift lies absolutely in his hands; let us own and honour his sovereignty — he delights to bestow the gift; let us plead in the spirit of adoption, and count on the kindness of a Father’s heart. He who gives “rain from heaven and fruitful seasons,” is able to refresh his heritage when it is weary. Perhaps if we were as sincere, and hearty, and persistent in our longing for the Spirit to quicken the seed of the word in human souls as for the rain to moisten our fields in spring, the spiritual husbandry of the nation would prosper as well as the natural.
2. Man’s part. To the sower seed is given; to the eater bread. A specific place has been divinely assigned to man in the administration of the gospel, like the place which he occupies in the processes of nature; here, too, he must sow and eat, eat and sow.
(1.) He must sow. The seed of the word has not been created in our days. The law was not spoken amidst fire and smoke from the mountain-tops of our land; the man Christ Jesus did not go out and in among our villages in the days of our youth, preaching the kingdom of heaven. The gospel began in another part of the earth, and thence it was brought to this country many ages before we were born. The seed was faithfully sown by our forefathers; they often sowed in tears, and it is owing to their courage and diligence that we now reap in joy.
Some countries where the gospel was planted early and flourished long are now completely desolate. If one generation has failed to sow, the next generation perish for want of food, whether the failure was due to violence from without or indolence within. Both physically and morally each generation depends on the one that preceded it; this is the will of God and the constitution of the world. The growth, and even the continued life of the child is left dependent on the parents; at a time when it can neither judge nor act it lies at their mercy, and they may be neither intelligent nor kind. In a similar way, intellectually and morally, the generation rising up is moulded by the generation now in the ascendant.
One person and one people grow up with Christianity as their religion, and European learning as the staple of their intellectual education; another person and another, people grow up with Brahminism as their religion, and Asiatic fables as the food of their minds; under the divine sovereignty, indeed, the diversity is permitted, but instrumentally it is all due to the sowing of far-removed progenitors. Each generation of men is a link in a hanging chain; it hangs in the link above itself, and bears up those that are below. When any one gives way, all that are beneath it falL
Why should people stumble so much at the doctrine of the fall in the person of our first progenitor? — it is not a new or strange thing. The doctrine that sin came into the world by one man, and that we all became sinners and sufferers by our connection with one who died long before we were born, is a stumbling-block to many when they meet it in the Scriptures; but they meet the same thing in the world every day. This people are in a good position religiously, intellectually, and economically to-day, because their forefathers sowed the good seed; and that people are in a bad condition, because their forefathers neglected to sow it. Speculate as you may about the reason or the effect of it, but there it is.
In Asia Minor, for example, where John preached the love of Christ, and true Christians for several generations were nourished by the bread of life, the children are now taught to believe the imposture of Mahomet, because many hundred years .ago their forefathers, through spiritual declension or external violence, ceased to sow the seed of the word. It is as foolish to deny the doctrine as it would be to kick against the fact. To stand upon the brink and look down into these depths is not fitted to gratify our pride: may it increase our humility! What we enjoy we did not make. The source of our privileges is the sovereign love of our Father in heaven, and the faithfulness of our fathers on earth is the channel by which they have reached us. We have nothing that we did not receive.
The inference is obvious: having gotten bread to eat through the faithfulness of our fathers, let us sow the seed for the benefit of our children. We are a link in the middle of the chain: if we fail, our followers perish. We are our children’s keepers; if we do for them what our witnessing forefathers did for us, they will rise up and call us blessed.
In the spiritual as well as in the natural harvest reaping is a joyful thing; but the sowing is often a painful process. Those who bear the precious seed often go forth weeping; but all the brighter on that account is their joy when they bear the ripened harvest home, (Psalm cxxvi.) A deeper love for souls would make Christians mourn more over the low estate of the world; this sorrow would send them out to sow; the seed sown with tears comes quickly away, and yields a large return. “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
(2.) He must eat. As in the natural, so also in the spiritual department, we sow the food on which we live, and live upon the seed which we sow. The same word is the seed which the sower sows, and the bread which the eater eats.
If any one should sow every day and never eat, he would fade away and die: the strange phenomenon would be presented of a man providing food for others, and dying for want himself. In the natural husbandry no such case occurs; in the spiritual husbandry it occurs frequently, although perhaps it may not proceed far; in point of fact, he who does not live on the word as his soul’s food, will not long continue to sow the word for the good of the world. The spiritual food is supplied to us after the analogy of the natural. God does not give the children of his family a heap of sustenance, which without labour will last their lifetime; bestowed in the form of seed, it is enjoyed always fresh and new. The exercise of sowing produces a healthful appetite for eating; and the appetite for eating stimulates to the labour of sowing. In this circle the new world goes round. “Work out your own salvation’’ —” for it is God that worketh in you.’’
There are two ways of treating the seed. The botanist splits it up and discourses on its curious characteristics; the simple husbandman eats and sows; sows and eats.
Similarly there are two ways of treating the gospel. A critic dissects it; raises a mountain of debate about the structure of the whole, and relation of its parts; and when he is done with his argument, he is done. To him the letter is dead; he neither lives on it himself, nor spreads it for the good of his neighbours. He neither eats nor sows. The disciple of Jesus, hungering for righteousness takes the seed whole; it is bread for to-day’s hunger, and seed for to-morrow’s supply.
But the scientific botanist may also be a husbandman; and wise is he, if he use his technical knowledge of the seed in sowing it more skilfully. He who examines most keenly the letter of the word, may get the spirit too. Criticism is lawful and useful when it helps us to live upon every word of God. Those who have most learning must at last come down to the level of those who have none. As might have been expected under the government of our Father in heaven, that which is necessary to life is within the reach of all; the gospel preached to the poor is an acknowledged evidence that Christ has come. The philologist and the theologian must go down and stand beside the unlettered peasant, and there, with him and like him, eat and sow the word of eternal life. The greatest scholar who only dissects seed will die of hunger soon; while the simplest countryman who eats and sows it will live and prosper. Beware of resting in a hard dry dissection of doctrines; after all our museum knowledge of the structure of the seed, we shall die in the midst of plenty, unless the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ become the daily bread of our souls.
Two men come to the judgment-seat of Christ. One says, Lord, I found the seed which thou didst send from heaven; I examined its wonderful structure and demonstrated its divine origin; I separated and classified and named all its constituent elements; my labours confirmed the friends, and convinced the enemies of the truth. The other says. Lord, I found thy seed; being hungry, I fed on it; being anxious for the future, I sowed it; of the harvest which it produced I ate more abundantly myself, and distributed to all my neighbours. That man dies of want; this man lives and transmits life to succeeding generations,
“Then Jesus said unto them, Yerily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Then said they unto him. Lord, evermore give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shalL never thirst” (John vi. 32-35).
There is bread enough; ‘’Blessed are they that hunger!”