On the Analogies Which Obtain Between the Natural and the Spiritual Husbandry
Mark 4:26-29
And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;…


A man may be qualified for practically carrying forward a process, of whose hidden steps and of whose internal workings he is most profoundly ignorant. This is true in manufactures. It is true in the business of agriculture. And it holds eminently true in the business of education. How many are the efficient artizans, for example, in whose hands you may at all times count on a right and prosperous result; but who are utterly in the dark as to the principles of that chemistry in their respective arts by the operation of which the result is arrived at. And how many a ploughman, who knows best how to prepare the ground, and who knows best how to deposit the seed for the object of a coming harvest; and yet, if questioned upon the arcana of physiology, or of those secret and intermediate changes by which the grain in the progress of vegetable growth is transformed into a complete plant ripened and ready for the use of man, would reply, in the language of my text, that he knoweth not how. And, in like manner, there is many a vigorous and successful educationist, who does come at the result of good scholarship, whether in Christianity or in common learning — and that without ever theorizing on the latent and elementary principles of the subject upon which he operates — without so much as casting one glance at the science of metaphysics — a science more inscrutable still than that of physiology; and which, by probing into the mysteries of the human spirit, would fain discover how it is that a truth is first deposited there by communication, and then takes root in the memory, and then warms into an impression, and then forms into a sentiment, and then ripens into a purpose, and then comes out to visible observation in an effect or a deed or a habit of actual performance. There are thousands who, in the language of our text, know not how all this comes about, and yet have, in point of fact and of real business, set the process of it effectively agoing. We cannot afford at present to trace all the analogies which obtain between a plant from the germination of its seed, and a Christian from the infancy of his first principles. We shall, in the first place, confine ourselves to one or two of these analogies; and, secondly, endeavour to show how some of what may be called the larger operations of Christian philanthropy admit of having a certain measure of light thrown upon. them, by the comparison which is laid before us in this parable between the work of a teacher and the work of a husbandman.

I. IN THE AGRICULTURAL PROCESS THERE IS MUCH THAT IS LEFT TO BE DONE BY NATURE AND IN A WAY THAT THE WORKMAN KNOWETH NOT HOW; NOR IS IT AT ALL NECESSARY THAT HE SHOULD. He puts forth his hand and sets a mechanism ageing — the principles of which he, with his head, is wholly unable to comprehend. The doing of his part is indispensable, but his knowledge of the way in which Nature doeth her part is not indispensable. Now, it is even so in the work of spiritual husbandry. There is an obvious part of it that is done by the agency of man; and there is a hidden part of it which is independent of that agency. What more settled and reposing than the faith which a husbandman has in the constancy of Nature. He knows not how it is; but, on the strength of a gross and general experience, he knows that so it is. And it were well in a Christian teacher to imitate this confidence. There is in it both the wisdom of experience and the sublime wisdom of piety. But, again, it is the work of the husbandman to cast the seed into the ground. It is not his work to manufacture the seed. This were wholly above him and beyond him. In like manner, to excogitate and to systematize the truths which we are afterwards to deposit in the minds of those who are submitted to our instruction, were a task beyond the faculties of man. These truths, therefore, are provided to his hand. What his eye could not see, nor his ear hear, has been brought within his reach by a communication from heaven; and to him nothing is left but a simple acquiescence in his Bible, and a faithful exposition of it. Our writers upon education may have done something. They may have scattered a few superficial elegancies over the face of society, and taught the lovely daughters of accomplishment how to walk in gracefulness their little hour over a paltry and perishable scene. But it is only in as far as they deal in the truths and lessons of the Bible that they rear any plants for heaven, or can carry forward a single pupil to the bloom and the vigour of immortality. And as we have not to manufacture a seed for the operations of our spiritual husbandry, so neither have we to mend it. It is not fit that the wisdom of God should thus be intermeddled with by the wisdom of man. But again — we do not lose sight of the analogy which there is between the work of a spiritual and that of a natural husbandman — when, after having affirmed the indispensableness of casting into the ground of the human heart the pure and the simple Word, we further affirm the indispensableness and the efficacy of prayer. Even after that, in the business of agriculture, man hath performed his handiwork by depositing the seed in the earth — he should acknowledge the handiwork of God, in those high and hidden processes, whether of the atmosphere above or of the vegetable kingdom below, which he can neither control nor comprehend. By the work of diligence which he does with his hand, he fulfils man's parts of the operation. By the prayer of dependence which arises from his heart, he does homage and recognition to God's part of it. And we are not to imagine that prayer is without effect, even in the processes of the natural economy. The same God who framed and who organized our great mundane system has never so left it to the play and the impulses of its own mechanism as to have resigned even for one moment that mastery over it which belongs to Him; but He knows when to give that mysterious touch, by which He both answers prayer, and disturbs not the harmony of the universe which He has formed. It is when man aspires upwards after fellowship with God, and looks and longs for the communications of light and of power from the sanctuary — it is then that God looks with loudest complacency upon man, and lets willingly downward all the treasures of grace upon his soul. It is said of Elijah that, when he prayed, the heaven gave rain and the earth brought forth her fruit.

II. We now come to the second thing proposed, which was to show HOW SOME OF WHAT MAY BE CALLED THE LARGER OPERATIONS OF CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY ADMIT OF A CERTAIN MEASURE OF LIGHT BEING THROWN UPON THEM BY THE COMPARISON MADE IN THIS PARABLE BETWEEN THE WORK OF A CHRISTIAN TEACHER AND THE WORK OF A HUSBANDMAN. And first, it may evince to us the efficacy of that Christian teaching, which is sometimes undertaken by men in humble life and of the most ordinary scholarship. Let them have but understanding enough for the great and obvious simplicities of the Bible, and let them have grace enough for devout and depending prayer; and, on the strength of these two properties, they are both wise unto salvation for themselves, and may become the instruments of winning the souls of others also. It is well for the families of our land that the lessons of eternity can fall with effect even from the lips of the cottage patriarch. But this brings us to the last of those analogies between the natural and the spiritual husbandry which we shall at present be able to overtake — an analogy not certainly suggested by the text, but still close enough for the illustration of all which we can now afford to say in defence of those parochial establishments which have done so much, we think, both for the Christianity and the scholarship of our people. A territorial division of the country into parishes, each of which is assigned to at least one minister as the distinct and definite field of his spiritual cultivation — this we have long thought does for Christianity what is often done in agriculture by a system of irrigation. You are aware what is meant by this. Its use is for the conveyance and the distribution of water, that indispensable aliment to all vegetation over the surface of the land. It is thus, for example, that by the establishment of duets of conveyance the waters of the Nile are made to overspread the farms of Egypt — the country through which it passes. This irrigation, you will observe, does not supply the water. It only conveys it. It does not bring down the liquid nourishment from heaven. It only spreads it abroad upon the earth. Were there no descent of water from above, causing the river to overflow its banks, there is nothing in the irrigation, with its then dry and deserted furrows, which could avail the earth that is below. On the other hand, were there no irrigation, many would be the tracts of country that should have no agriculture and could bang no produce. Let not, therefore, our dependence on the Spirit lead us to despise the machinery of a territorial establishment, and neither let our confidence in machinery lead us to neglect prayer for the descent of living water from on high.

(Dr. Chalmers.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;

WEB: He said, "The Kingdom of God is as if a man should cast seed on the earth,




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