Weeds in Society by Herald; Presbyter

California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 3, 1874

Weeds in Society.

By Herald; Presbyter

I DON'T know of any kind of labor which requires as much patience as weeding. Nor of any which so tempts one to moralize. I am weeding. Well what is a weed? Here is a poppy from the hills. There are millions of them in some of the wheat fields, and the farmers try hard to exterminate them. They call them weeds out in the country and pull them up or plow them under. But this poppy I am cultivating with great care. Beside it is a bunch of alfalfa. The farmer who has a field full of such bunches rejoices greatly. Thousands are cultivating the alfalfa, and hoping that it will enrich them with five crops of hay in a year. But I pull it up, as it grows beside and over shadows my wild poppy. I call the alfalfa a weed in my grounds. Why is it a weed to me and not to the farmer? and why is the poppy a weed to him and not to me? What is a weed? Webster says it is "any plant that is useless or troublesome;" but alfalfa is not useless. Many weeds are valuable as medicines. This is not a good definition, and the lexicographer seems to suspect as much, for he adds this note: "The weed has no definite application to any particular plant or species of plants. Whatever plants grow among corn, or grass, or in hedges, or elsewhere, and which are of no use to man, injurious to crops, or unsightly or out of place, are denominated weeds." Well, we stumble on a definition at last. A weed is not necessarily "unsightly;" it may be beautiful. It is not necessarily injurious; it may be useful. But it is everywhere and always a plant out of place—a plant, however ornamental or valuable in itself, that is where it is not wanted. Poppies are out of place in a wheat field, and alfalfa is out of place in a garden. Hence we will pull up in one locality what we would cultivate in another.

There are weeds in society, weeds in our churches, weeds in congress, in all our legislatures and conventions. Men out of place—intelligent, amiable, conscientious, yet useless, because they are not in the sphere to which they are adapted. I knew a man years ago who was a very good shoemaker, but thought he ought to be a lawyer. So he changed his lap-stone for a Blackstone, and instead of an honest and useful mechanic he became a miserable pettifogger. Out of his place, he had just brains enough to stir up strife and become as great a nuisance as the Canada thistle. I have known other men who were highly gifted and cultured, but who would not use their talents for the good of society, who would not let their foliage shed and refresh the weary, or the blossoms of their genius ripen into the fruits of useful deeds. Such men in their selfish seclusion are plants out of place. If any of our readers feel that they are useless, it may be that they are like the alfalfa in my garden; that they have drifted out of their true sphere and need only to get where they really belong and try to do their duty there in order to be both useful and happy. There are not a few Christians over here and elsewhere who are weeds because they neglect to occupy that position in the church and in the great benevolent movements of the day to which they are called by the providence and Spirit of God. They grow, they prosper in material things, but they bear no fruit, and choke the plants around them that try to be useful. Sad will be the reckoning hereafter with those who have luxuriated as weeds in the richest soil of this life.—Herald and Presbyter.

Be just before you are generous.