The tares.
The parable of the soils showed the various results of sowing the same good seed according to the various conditions of soil on which the seed tell; now this parable of the tares disregards differences of soil, but treats of different kinds of seed sown by different hands. Thus it introduces us to something worse than the failure of good work, to the existence of evil influences in the world.
I. CHRISTIAN PEOPLE ARE THE GROWTH OF SEED SOWN BY CHRIST IN THE WORLD. In his explanation of the parable our Lord tells us three things about this branch of his teaching.
1. Christ is the Sower. All good spiritual life springs from him.
2. The field is the world. Christ is no narrow ecclesiastic confining his interests to the Church. Nor has he the parochial mind. His gospel is for the whole world. Christians are to be "the salt of the earth."
3. The good seed represents the "sons of the kingdom," i.e. Christian people. Christ is not satisfied with teaching ideas; he aims at growing souls. His harvest is not of thoughts and doctrines, but of men and women.
II. BAD MEN ARE LIKE TARES SOWN BY SATAN.
1. Evil influences are at work is the world. There is worse than the negative failure of good seed. Weeds spring up; nettles and poison plants take their place in the garden of nature. The world as we know it has been sown with the seed of sin. Here is positive evil, alive and propagating further evil.
2. These evil influences are due to the great enemy of souls. A malignant power, the enemy of Christ and of mankind, is busy sowing evil.
3. The fruit of these evil influences is seen in the lives of bad people, it is not in false doctrine but in wicked living that the greatest mischief is manifested. The aim of Satan is to grow a crop of noxious characters.
III. THE SERVANTS OF CHRIST ARE FORBIDDEN TO USE FORCIBLE MEANS FOR THE EXTINCTION OF EVIL LIVES. This parable has often been abused by being applied to Church discipline, a subject with which it has nothing to do, seeing that "the field is the world"—not the Church. What it excludes is the violent uprooting of bad men from the world. If it is to be pressed to a literal application, it may be thought to forbid capital punishment. But as it deals with religious relations it is rather aimed at persecution; e.g. it is absolutely opposed to such action as that of the Spanish Inquisition. The violation of its precepts has vindicated our Lord's warning. The wheat has been rooted up with the tares. Too often persecution selected the very sons of the kingdom for its victims. This may be done honestly, by a horrible blunder; we cannot well distinguish between the blades of wheat and those of the plant that simulates it. At present it is premature to judge men finally, for characters are not yet developed.
IV. THERE WILL BE A FINAL JUDGMENT AND DOOM OF THE WICKED.
1. This will happen at the end of all, when characters have fully ripened, when the harvest is come. Even now the harvest is anticipated by the reaper Death, and after death there is the great judgment. The liberty of the present is no guarantee against the great doom of the future. Evil cannot flourish forever.
2. This will be in the hands of God. It is not for man to use violent measures against his fellow man; but God and his angels will search into all characters, and the issue must be fearful for those who have permitted themselves to become as the rank growth of Satan.—W.F.A.