Parables of the Christ-life | Page 9

same Spirit shall we be enabled to walk in His steps, and
to rejoice in ... sufferings ... and fill up ... that which is lacking of the
afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake, which is the
Church.'" [footnote*:"The Message of the Cross"--Mrs. Penn-Lewis.]
Yes, it is a broken spirit that we need--a spirit keeping no rights before
God or man, longing to go down, down, anywhere, if other souls may
be blessed. It is an indefinable thing, this brokenness, and yet it is as
unmistakable when it has been wrought, as that of the seed-vessel in
the field.
God has His promise for those "who sow in tears": those to whom to be
a channel of Divine communication to the world means soul burden
and travail. It is they who are bound to "reap in joy."
And as we look at these broken-up seed-vessels, we can read a warning

as to our dealings with others, as well as the lesson to ourselves. If such
brokenness as this is the condition of God's power upon us, what of the
danger of making much of the instruments that He uses? If we do so
even in thought, it will unconsciously show itself in manner and tone,
and the subtle influence may reach them and be used of the devil to
build again in a moment that which God had been long breaking down,
and so stay the tide He had at last with infinite pains set free. "Who
then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed,
even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered;
but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything,
neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase."
* * * * * *
And now we can turn at last to see in our picture-book the result of all
this fading and stripping and breaking: no outcome as yet that will
catch the eye of sense, yet full of eternal possibilities.
What a marvel it is, this seed "endynamited" for its ministry! Just an
atom of whiteness, folded up in its smooth brown shell. Opposite p. 35
you see the two tiny specks in the splitting pod; does it not seem
incredible that anything can come out of them? Could we imagine
anything more insignificant? And yet they are brimful of a vitality that
will last (given the necessary conditions) "while the earth remaineth,"
through harvest after harvest in ever-widening circles.
Equally unimportant from the point of view of "the natural man" is the
heavenly seed that God gives His people to scatter. "The things of the
Spirit of God ... are foolishness unto him." "The kingdom of God
cometh not with observation." His beginnings are always very feeble
things.
It is out of the hour of its greatest apparent extremity, moreover, that
the seed launches out to its ministry. There was a time, a few weeks
earlier, when you could, if you examined it, trace the future plant in
embryo; the two seed-leaves and the rootlet were all visible in shades
of exquisite green; but all this dries up when maturity comes, till there
is not a sign of life left in it. Everything that is brilliant and beautiful is

withdrawn and shrouded in the "bare grain" when we strip off the
sheath and hold it in our hand: everything has gone down in defiant
faith to the last ebb. Nothing is left to it, as far as we can discern, but
the invisible, miracle-working power of God. Shall we not learn of the
dried-up seed, to rejoice when in our seed-sowing we are shut up to
God alone--when every shade of hope and promise to the eyes of sense,
have faded like the baby seed-leaves in the germ? "So is the kingdom
of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep,
and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he
knoweth not how."
To sow heavenly seed means to give way to Him in the promptings that
are sure to come as soon as He finds us broken enough for Him to be
able to send them. It is a direct passing on of that which comes to us
from God, stripped of all self-effort: the message spoken "not in the
words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost
teacheth": the work done "striving according to His working which
worketh in us mightily": the prayer that knows not what it should pray
for as it ought, and yields itself to His "intercession for us with
groanings that cannot be uttered." These are the things which, small as
they are in this world's count, have