Note 10 — I. THE SOWER.
Reading edition
It is not intimated by the parable that our Father the Husbandman finds any of the good ground in us: the ground, like the tree in another analogical lesson of the Lord, is not good until it is made good. It is beyond the scope of this parable to explain how the ground is rendered soft and kept free from thorns. The Teacher was content in this lesson to tell us what the good ground produces; we must discover elsewhere in the Scriptures whence its goodness is derived. “...The similitude from nature is no longer applicable to the mystery of the kingdom of heaven; as a parable, it has already reached its limits, when the truth goes beyond the similitude. There is a miraculous seed superior indeed to all natural seed, so powerful that by its growth it can and will choke all thorns. Nay more, it can also break through the rock in striking its root down into the earth, and can make that to be again a field of God which was a way for the feet of the prince of this world.”—Stier in loc.