Mark 4:26-29 And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;… When a man is building a house he can see it as it goes on. That is an outside matter. There is seam after seam, row after row of stone or brick. Gradually the form of the window or the door rises. The second story, the third story, the building up to the roof appears. He can see it day by day. A man goes into his garden and plants, for spring, the early lettuce, or radish, or whatever it may be. He may sit up all night with spectacles and a lantern, but he will not see anything going on; and yet there is something going on which is vitally connected with the whole operation of vegetable development. The seed has not been in the ground an hour before it feels its outward husk swelling by imbibing moisture. It has not been for ten hours in the warm soil before it begins to feel that the material in the seed itself is chemically affected, changed. Many a seed has not been twenty-four hours in the ground before there is an impulse in it at one end to thrust down a root, and at the other end to thrust up a plumule, or the beginning of a visible stalk; but it makes no noise. It is like Solomon's Temple; it is a structure that is built without the sound of a hammer; and whatever it may come to, all the earlier processes of germination and development are invisible and are silent; for if you take it out into the light it will not grow. The seed needs warmth, moisture, and luminous darkness — that is to say, considerable darkness, and yet a little invisible light. So it is with the spiritual life. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;WEB: He said, "The Kingdom of God is as if a man should cast seed on the earth, |
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