THE SEED SOWING OF SIN by E. A. Sutherland

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal., Kansas City, and New York · Nov 29, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, Nos. 48, 49.

THE SEED SOWING OF SIN

By E. A. Sutherland

By E. A. Sutherland.

[President of Battle Creek College, Mich.]

"WHATSOEVER a man soweth, that shall he also reap," is the divine expression of a truth daily before our eyes. Since the fiat of the Creator on the third day of the first week of time, that all herbs and trees should bear seed after their own kind, all life has followed silently the ceaseless round of the circle then begun. No oak mistakes and bears an apple seed; no grain of wheat planted ever grew an ear of corn. Throughout the animal world the same unerring law is seen. This law of seed-bearing strikes directly across the man-made theories of evolution, for it is as unchanging as the Eternal that like produces like.

So near is glory to our dust that the creative power is placed in the reach of all forms of life, and that creative power, whether used for a good or evil purpose, is still a manifestation of the life of God. It is a question in men's minds why, if God is good and only good, evil can exist. Holland answers the question thus:—

"God seeks for virtue, and, that it may live, It must resist, and that which it resists must live."

The Creator in the beginning made all things good, and sin is but a falling short, a lack of development, a perversion of the good. The perfection of character demands complete harmony with the will of God, which, taking us out of self, carries every power to a state of perfection of which none of us has dreamed.

To refuse to allow this perfect will of God to be fulfilled in us is sin. It was thus that Lucifer fell. He wished not for conformity, and that moment imperfection marked his character. Man was led into the same error, and, failing to follow on, has never reached the sphere God had in store for him.

I can not better explain it as it appeals to my mind than by the rose which, putting forth a perfect bud, is blighted by a worm. The bud unfolds, but every petal is disfigured. The wheat which we now call a perfect stalk, a perfect grain, may be perfect when measured by our sin-marred standard, but when it is placed beside that first stalk which came forth in obedience to the word of God, it stands a mean and shriveled dwarf.

Before the Fall the petals never fell; there was no death; all parts of the flower continued to develop into the beautiful fruit. I have tried to picture an apple as it must have been originally. Not only did the ovary of the flower fleshen and enlarge, but about the part now called the apple grew the thickened petals, another luscious layer, adding beauty as well as wealth of meat; and then, enwrapping all in a coat of living green, were the new-grown sepals, which, instead of withering and clinging to the base of the

fruit, a constant reminder of the cutting short of life by sin, grew on into a third and outer layer of the fruit. Imagine the kernel of wheat in its perfect development, and what must it have been!

When man ate, he found the grains and fruits exactly met the needs of his body,—no waste matter to clog the living machinery, no woody fiber which proved indigestible, but all went on to maturity.

The thorn and thistle are but blighted forms of leaves or stems or flowers. So, the world over, the things which we admire and praise, and say that they are perfect, are but struggling toward that former grandeur. The noxious weeds which men strive to eradicate from the earth are but degenerate plants of worth, held in their present condition, like many a member of the human family, by the iron bands of sin.

O, to lose the death-like grip with which we cling to earthly things and conditions, and to grow upward with that rapid flight which marked the life of Christ! There is but one secret in the perfection of character seen in the Man of Calvary, and that is his self-surrender till the powers of darkness found nothing in him—found it an impossibility to crush the rising of his soul. There is implanted in each heart this longing after the Divine, and no man or woman in the depths of sin but what sometimes feels the impulse to creep from under that load and rise to the sphere of perfect manhood as seen in God.

What, then, was the meaning of the parable?— "The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also." Matt. 13:24-26.

The seeds of truth are sown in every heart, but there comes the stupor of sleep, the lack of active submission, and during those dormant periods a growth of weeds begins.

Sin is not a new creation—it is but a perversion of the good, and the greatest sins are but the greatest virtues turned into an evil channel, checked in the full development.

The very acids of unripe fruit may be turned by sunshine into sweetest flavors. The life so full of spirit and life; the generosity which becomes a fault; the very powers most winning, may, nay, often do become the very means of self-destruction. The women walking the streets of our cities at night are but undeveloped and perverted forms of beings created with the design of peopling heaven. The man in the gutter, or the brute who entices a fellow-being into sin, is the dwarfed and blighted form of the being created in the image of God. O, the sorrow that must fill heaven at the sight of the swarming masses of people who might be noble and true!

Here is a most practical question to each of us as we face the realities of life: When am I, when are you, planting seeds of sin? when are we failing to cultivate the vine which should bring forth grapes, but, to the disappointment of the vine-dresser, brings forth wild grapes?

There is strength in the fact that Christ was a plant of earth, and that of Him it could be said that "He grew."

Mothers and fathers have often to meet this question; for their children come into the world bearing an imperfect stamp in mind and body. The child begotten in passion becomes heir to innumerable traits of character which fill the world with drunkards and debauchees. The wrong is repeated in an exaggerated form in the second generation, and the words of God ring through the world, that "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." Diseases too horrible to mention are the results of some implanted seed of evil. Leprosy, which to ancient Israel was a fit symbol of sin, and which needs but the slightest contact to spread itself, does not too strongly represent the quick spreading of the contagion of sin.

That consumption now causes one-seventh of the deaths of the world, and annually carries to the grave over 1,000,000 human beings, illustrates in a most forcible manner the divine words which foretell the effect of non-conformity to the laws of nature and of God. Deut. 28:15-22.

With the child sin takes root very easily. The soil is well prepared, and oftentimes necessary precaution is not taken to prevent it. The babe in the hands of an evil-minded nurse learns habits of impurity; the child grows older, and day by day he strengthens the evil propensities by an exciting diet, food prepared by a mother who thinks she loves her family, and yet who is slowly digging their graves; the youth enters the school-room, associates with others of an evil imagination, and the harvest is seen on our streets to-day. Hearts defiled with sin, thoughts that run wild into forbidden channels, lives led astray—this is the reaping. Picture to yourself as it looks when viewed from above,—self-love, "covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof." 2 Tim. 3:1-5.

It would seem that every sin against God and our fellow-men, every violation of moral as well as civil law, is here detailed in the ingathering of these last days.

"While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat." It is time to keep awake; for resting does not prevent the tares from reaching maturity and scattering seed for a second crop.

The rooting out must come by crowding the ground with the choicest seed, by vigilance, not spasmodically, but constant and unremitting. It is a curious fact that weeds either develop earlier than plants among which they grow, in order to scatter seed while the ground is still prepared to yield nourishment, or they develop so much more slowly that after the harvest of fruits they take advantage of the resting season given the land, and get the start, as it were, in the matter of growth.

You have probably noticed that noxious weeds are usually well provided with facilities for scattering and fertilization. If the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light, it is certainly true that in sowing and harvesting, the seeds of sin seem to have the advantage.

Men try to argue that the world is growing better, when, according to God's Word, the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah are the order of the day. When it seems impossible to redeem the land from the crop of evil, God proves the possibility by choosing hearts, and, in the midst of evil, rearing plants of purity, which, like the pond-lilies, lift heads of purest white above a turbid mass of water. The home and the school,—these are the places for this growth. Parents and teachers,—these are the instruments for the cultivation of the soil.