Choked with Thorns

‘And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it.’ — Luke viii. 7.

COME fell among thorns, and the soil was unable to sustain both. That is the principle. The capacity and resources of life are limited. We recognize the principle in the department of the mind. Here is a general medical practitioner. He has studied with equal attention every organ and function of the body, and in no particular direction has his study brought forth fruit unto perfection. His mental resources have been distributed over too many subjects to make it possible for him to be distinguished in relation to any. But take a specialist, who has limited his study to one particular organ — say the eye or the ear. By the concentration of his resources his knowledge comes to maturity. The mind-stuff is not thinned out in the creation of a large number of mental weaklings: it is husbanded

for the sustenance of one strong and influential product. The specialist grows one plant in his mind soil: the general practitioner grows many.

Our Saviour declares that the same principle is operative in the human heart. The heart resources are limited. If we distribute them over many things, we shall ’ bring forth no fruit unto perfection, Every additional thing we plant reduces the general strength. He wants us to be specialists, and to grow wheat only. But we are very prone to attempt to grow wheat and thorns, and the result is a religious life at once weak, languid and sickly. The wheat is enfeebled and robbed of its sustenance by the introduction of thorns. We cannot grow good wheat, if we also grow thorns. What kind of thorns do we grow? The Master names three.

i. ‘The cares of this world.’ There is a small but very fatal species of this thorn called Fretfulness. Once fretfulness establishes itself in the heart, the task of uprooting it is analogous to the task of uprooting chickweed from your garden. It is small, but most prolific, and makes a terrible drain upon our resources. We are very prone to forget the devastating power of little frets. Two hundred and forty pennies

will run away with a pound quite as effectually as eight half-crowns; and there are people, who have not eight big anxieties in the life draining away their strength, but who have Iwo hundred and forty little frets; and these accomplish the same impoverishment. There is an immense amount of moral energy and force extracted from the heart by sheer fretfulness. Many a man who gives way to the jevil may trace his collapse to the exhausting influence of fretfulness. There is a word af the psalmist, which indicates startling noral insight, and reveals a profound moral ruth. ‘Fret not thyself ... to do evil.’ That is what fretting leads to — evil doing I We an so reduce our moral force by fretfulness, no strain and weaken our spiritual garrison, lhat the citadel of our heart becomes a defenceless structure, and the tempter has easy entrance and possession, and leads us away captive at his will. Fretfulness diminishes spiritual force. It sucks away the thought and energy which ought to feed religious impulse and endeavour. To return to the Master’s figure, it is a thorn among the wheat. It drains away the food-stuff from the higher nature, and disables us from bringing forth any good impulse to perfection. a. ‘The deceitfulness of riches.’ Here

is another thorn. Fretfulness cheats the heart of the thought which ought to feed the spiritual life. Riches, in most subtle deceitfulness, cheat the soul of the same bread. How do riches deceive men? Men are deceived as to when a normal and healthy desire for wealth passes into avarice. Their thought becomes so absorbed in the pursuit of wealth that they have none left to determine their moral whereabouts. While they are increasing in one kind of wealth, they are being secretly despoiled of another. The tempter puts gold into their hands, and while they are riveted in contemplation he strips the gold from their hearts. He deals with men much in the same way as we sometimes deal with little children. There is your little one, who has somehow or other got hold of your gold watch, and is playing with it on the hearthrug. The problem is, how to get it away. You do not make a violent grab at the treasure. You take something else of most trifling value, and seek to engage the child’s attention by that; and while the attention is diverted, the greater treasure is quietly taken away. That is how we are treated by the devil. He diverts us with a toy, and then despoils the heart. ‘While men slept, the enemy came.’ Riches

seduce our thought, and we lose our souls. The Master calls this ’ deceitfulness of riches’ a thorn which sucks up the thought, the attention, the aspiration, the resolution; and so good impulse does not grow and come to maturity: it dies down and passes away.

3. ‘The pleasures of this life.’ This is another of the impoverishing thorns — voluptuousness of living, sensational living, a living in sensation, a living in the external senses, in the outside of the life. The pleasures of the senses are not to be despised, but we are not to abide in them. The passages in your house may be very beautiful, but you do not live in them. The passage leads into the living rooms, and there you abide. We are tempted to abide in the passages of life, in the body, to have our thought absorbed by the flesh, and to have no thought and prayer in the secret place. ‘She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.’ She has strayed so long in the passage that the fire has gone out in the living room. She has dwelt so long in the senses that the fire has gone out in the heart. That is our snare — to give so much thought to the ‘pleasures of this life’ that we have none for ’ the pleasures at God’s right hand.’ That is the thorn which chokes the wheat.