236 Richard Fuller's Sermons.
Sower, Jesus teaches us why, when the Gospel is preached, no impressions are made, or it' made, why they are unproductive. I find among the Jewish doctors a classification of those who hear the words of wisdom somewhat similar to that before us. They, too, divide the listeners into four kinds, one of which I fear would take in some of this audience ; I mean those who are compared to a seive, which lets through all the fine flour, and retains only the bran and dirt. In accounting for the failure of the truth, Jesus declares that it cannot be imputed to God. This supposition would be impious. No. God "would have ail men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth." Nor is there any weakness in the truth itself, which "is able to make us wise unto salvation through faith which is in Jesus Christ." The unfruitfulness of the truth is owing entirely to our own hearts, which Jesus compares to different sorts of soil.
On a former occasion, two of these kinds of ground passed under our review; the hard, beaten pavement on the highway ; and the thin superficial layer of mold spread upon a rock.
We are now dealing with the field infested by thorns, which gives more promise than either of the other two. For, after all, rank, green weeds present a more encouraging spectacle than utter barrenness; and a deep, rich soil, overgrown with brambles, needing only careful husbandry and extirpation, is far more hopeful than a mere upper coating of earth with an impenetrable barrier underneath it so that the roots cannot supply nourishment and the hasty vegetation withers quickly away. And this is true as to the classes of hearers who are compared to these different kinds of ground. In the first class the word of God produces no effect. In the second there are only transient feelings. The hearers now before us not only receive the word, but retain it, and have the appearance of spiritual vitality; but, alas, all the promise they give comes to nothing, miscarries. They bring forth no fruit, at least, " no fruit to perfection." And the causes of this unproductiveness are given us by Him who well knows what is in the human heart. The reason of failure is in ourselves ; in the lusts and passions which Jesus compares to thorns and weeds, the
