convenience, they will straightway cast off their faith, and, by their unyielding obduracy to all subsequent appeals, show how stony their hearts really are beneath the soft envelope. Such people will weep in their comfortable rooms over the miseries of others, but will rarely bestir themselves to aid the objects of their compassion. They delight in talking of what they mean to do; but, if any opportunity for action should obtrude itself, usually find that they have need to attend to some private care, or social duty, which must take precedence of the Lord's business. These are they which spring up on all sides in times of revival, and cast the greatest dishonour upon Christ by their apparent conversion and ostentatious zeal: for they quickly fall away, and practically, if not avowedly, disown the faith for which they had professed themselves ready even to die. Their inner selfishness is firm as a rock, but, unstable as water in all other things, they cannot excel, and will be found at last without the gates of the golden city.

The mind of the third class of hearers is of a different order. These can think and feel deeply; but they can do so in regard to other matters besides the love of God in Christ. In their heart the word lies amid various seeds and roots, which will presently spring up into the deceitful pleasure-seekings of early life, the cares of middle age, and the desires of other things rather than God. Nor is the range of the last-mentioned temptations confined to such spheres as ambition, political power, intellect, love, hatred, or covetousness, can afford; they may be

discovered in very unsuspected quarters. In some cases, for instance, they war against the soul by inducing a quiet indulgence of appetites, to which many yield, by no means so far as to provoke the rebuke of their fellows, but just so much as to incline their bodies to an apparently well-meaning indolence and complacency, which, while it lasts, most effectually bars out the powers of the world to come. But, whatever their individual bent, the wheat and thorns grow up together in persons of this class. They would be Christ's, but will not give up the world: they persist in striving to serve two masters; and, since they cannot hate the one, find themselves quite unable to cleave to the other: they do not follow the Lord with a whole heart; therefore He will not accept them, and, at last, altogether withdraws the pleadings of His Spirit. Then the thorns choke the word, and cover its withering remains with their luxuriant growth. Fruit may have begun to appear, but it is never brought to perfection: these are they who are almost saved, but lost.

Lastly, there are some who, humbled and brokenhearted through a sense of their own sinful condition, receive the word with gratitude. These, realizing the horrors from which they have been rescued, are willing to give up all things for the love of the Lord Who redeemed them; to deny themselves daily, to take up their cross and follow Him; to count not their lives dear, if they may but finish their course with joy. In the hearts of such the word grows by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that they are en

abled to be witnesses for their Saviour, and to do works which shall be their joy and crown in the day of His appearing.

A solemn thought is suggested by the mention of the rates of increase-"some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty." Less than thirtyfold the Lord does not recognize: it is for every true Christian to ask himself whether the seed sown in him can yet have borne this minimum of fruit in the conversion and edification of others; nay, whether he has had any proof whatever that he is in the faith by the fulfilment in him of the Lord's saying;-"He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

To these four classes of hearers the Gospel began to be preached, first by the Lord Himself, and afterwards by His disciples. The latter commenced their labours at Jerusalem, and added three thousand souls to the Church on the very first day of their mission. So active, indeed, were they and their converts in spreading the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, that, in less than thirty years, Paul could speak to the Colossians of the hope of the Gospel, "which ye heard, which was preached in all creation under heaven." And to the truth of this statement even Heathen writers bear ample testimony. For example, Tacitus mentions the arrest of a "vast multitude" of Christians at Rome only a year or two later than the date of the Epistle to the Romans. And about seventy years after the crucifixion, Pliny, in his famous letter to Trajan, affirms that "the contagion "

of Christianity had then seized, not merely on the cities of Bithynia and Pontus, but even on the villages and country places.

Thus was the world sown in the first age of the Church and during this time the prominent characteristic of the followers of Christ was an earnest propagation of their faith in every land; though, after all, their efforts were baffled by the generally unfavourable conditions of the human heart, and achieved but a very partial success.

THE PARABLE OF THE TARES.

The

In the second parable there is also a Sower of good seed; but he is followed by a malignant enemy, who comes while men are sleeping, scatters tares upon the wheat, and then steals away unperceived. tares used for this evil purpose are still too well known in Palestine, and so nearly resemble good wheat in their growth, that it is almost impossible to distinguish them from it until the ear begins to ripen, when their fruit becomes black instead of yellow. In due time this proof of the admixture appears, and the servants of the lord of the field inform him of it, and ask if they shall go and pull up the noxious weeds. But he, after explaining that an enemy has done the mischief, tells them that the crops are now so inextricably mingled that they must be left to grow together until the harvest, when the reapers shall separate them, and shall bind the tares in bundles to burn them, and gather the wheat into the garner.

This parable is also interpreted by the Lord Himself. The field is the world, and the enemy the Devil: but the meaning of the seed is not the same as in the first parable; for it no longer signifies doctrines, but persons. "The good seed are the children of the Kingdom; and the tares are the children of the Wicked One." The latter are those hypocrites who are found to be suitable instruments for developing the deep and treacherous designs of Satan; who, though they know not Christ, will foist themselves among Christians, and make it the business. of their lives to spread corruption either in doctrine or behaviour.

Many such men crept into the Church even in apostolic times; but it is the history of the second and third centuries which affords the most terrible proof of the Lord's foreknowledge. During that period multitudes of grievous wolves entered stealthily into the fold, not sparing the flock; and many arose speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. Then heresies began to spring up on all sides, heresies of every imaginable form and hue, and resulting in sects which in manifold ways weakened or altogether destroyed the power of the word of God, and provided an attractive but useless religion for every kind of intellect and disposition. The universal Church became corrupt, and has never thrown off the taints of this epoch: to the present day every Christian sect bears traces of them upon its tenets or ritual.

Only those who are acquainted with the literature