Note 54 — Chapter VI · THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS.1

Mark, who (iv. 1) depicts the same scene by the sea-side, as Matthew, has in connexion with it only three parables, of which the first and third correspond to the first and third of Matthew, but the middle one is commonly deemed peculiar to Mark.54 Matthew has in its place the parable wherein the kingdom of heaven is likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, the enemy came and sowed tares among it, which grew up with the wheat. The servants know not from whence the tares come, and propose to root them up; but the master commands them to let both grow together until the harvest, when it will be time enough to separate them. In Mark, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a man who casts seed into the ground, and while he sleeps and rises again, the seed passes, he knows not how, from one stage of development to another: and when it is ripe, he puts in the sickle, because the harvest is come. In this parable there is wanting what constitutes the dominant idea in that of Matthew, the tares, sown by the enemy; but as, nevertheless, the other ideas, of sowing, sleeping, growing one knows not how, and harvest, wholly correspond, it may be questioned whether Mark does not here merely give the same parable in a different version, which he preferred to that of Matthew, because it seemed more intermediate between the first parable of the sower, and the third of the mustard-seed.