Correspondence Lessons.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume XVII, Issue 1, 1 July 1926, Page 5

Correspondence Lessons.

Lesson 68. PARABLES. Jesus often taught people by telling' them stories to make them think. A parable is a story with two meanings—the one is just the simple story itself and that is all that unthinking people listen to ; the other meaning is the lesson that wise men learn from the story. Jesus did not tell the meaning of all His stories, but He did explain to His apostles the meaning of one of them, so that afterwards they would be able . to think out the meaning of the others. This one was the parable of the sower. You will find it m the beginning- of Chapter 13 of St. Matthew 's Gospel. I think . Jesus must have been teaching the people close by where a man was sowing seed m a field. There was a path running through the field, and there were rocks here and there m the field just covered with a little soil. Jesus said, a sower went forth to sow. When he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Some seed fell on the rocky ground, the soil on the rocks was warm and the seeds grew up quickly but they could not push their roots down deep because of the rock. When the sun

was hot, the soil on the rocks got dry, and the little plants withered away. Some of the seeds fell m soil that' was full of the seeds of thorns like blackberry seeds or sweet briar seeds and when they grew up the thorn seeds came up faster and stronger than they did and choked the good plants. But some seed fell on good ground and grew up and bore ears of corn some with a . hundred seeds on them, some with sixty and some with only thirty. Jesus did not tell the people the meaning of the story, He wanted to make- t'hejn . think it out for themselves;. Thoughtless people would not bother to learn, but wise people would think about it and try to understand. There are a very great many people who will never learn the truth, because they will not trouble to think. Lots of Christians to-day have all sorts of strange ideas, because they have never thought things out for themselves but have taken the ignorant ideas of other people as true and they will not bother to think. God has given us our brains to think with and He wants us to use them. Jesus' apostles did want to know the truth, so Jesus explained thisparable to them m order that they might be able to think out the meaning of other parables for themselves. If your teacher shows you how to do one sum, you can think out for yourself how to do other sums like it. This is how Jesus explained -.-, the parable of the sower : When ainan hears the Gospel — the message of God— but his heart is hard like the path, and he does not let it sink into his mind and think about it, the devil comes and makes him forget all about it. The message is lost like the seed which the birds ate up. Some people are shallow minded, they never think seriously; they are glad to receive the message of God, they talk a lot about religion for a while but soon they get tired of it and it has no real effect on their lives. After a while their religion dies, it withers away like the little plants on the rocky ground.. . There are many people like this. They love singinghymns without really meaning what they sing, and perhaps hearing sermons on Sunday* they talk very piously but they do not live as Christians on Monday or other days. Their religion is not real. When they are asked to do hard work for God, or to givn to God,- or to-fast, or to bear trouble or to stand up for their religion a gainst people who laugh at it ■ or i%v-?ecute them for it, they do not stand the test. They will not do what is rirM if they lose money by doingit, will not go to church to v.o ' ' • God if the weather is too cold o' ; hot or if it is inconvenient or giv ; ..^m trouble. Their hearts are,

like the shallow soil on the rocky ground. Then there are other people whose Hearts are like the soil, full of thovn seeds. When they hear God's message they make up their minds to live good Christian lives, but they soon forget. During the week they are busy with their work and think of nothing but getting money, or they have so many things to think about, the pictures or parties or dances or golf and lots of other things. They let these things fill their minds so much and think them so important that God's work and prayer and charity and such things are crowded out. Their love of these things is much stronger than their love of God. Very often when Sunday comes again they go for a picnic, or to visit their friends and forget to worship God altogether. Then there are people who are really m earnest. They are like the good ground. When they hear God's message they think about it and they try to do what God tells them. They bring forth fruit; that is, they do good deeds and kind actions, they go to their Communion, they give to charity and to help God's Church, they give to missions. Some cannot do as much as others but they do as much as they can. Lesson 69. MORE PARABLES. THE TAKES. When we talk about "Tares" we mean vetches, or plants that have little pea pods on them. Farmers sow them among the oats for feed for the cows m spring. The parable of the tares is not about this kind of tares. The tares that Jesus • spoke about were a kind of wild wheat that was a weed and was good for nothing. The story Jesus told about them was this: A farmer sowed good seed m his field; but during the night an enemy came and sowed wild wheat seeds m the field. When they grew tip they looked just like the good wheat plants, but by and bye they began to put forth their heads of seed. Then the farmer 's servants saw that they were tares, and they came to him and said, "Didn't you sow good seed m your field? How is it, then, that there are Tares growingthere 1 Shall we go and pull up the tares?"; but the farmer answered "No! If you try to pull up the tares you will tread on the good wheat, you will disturb its roots and you will perhaps make mistakes and pull up the wheat instead of the tares. Let them all grow together until harvest time and then I will tell the reapers, when they cut the corn, to pick out the. tares and burn them, but to gather the wheat into my! barn." In those days people used to cut corn with a sickle; gust a little bit at, a

time, they had no reaping machines like ours. It was not hard to pick out the tares. Jesus told his apostles the meaning of this parable too. He said the field was the whole world. He Himself was the farmer. The good seed was the children of His Kingdom, the bad seed was the wicked people, His enemy was the devil. The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels. This parable is not an exact picture of the things it teaches; however wicked a man is he can become good if he repents of his sin and. is converted to God; and however good a man is, he must always keep m touch with God by prayer and communion or else the devil will make him wicked. Even God's children may ' become Avorse than those who have never been baptised if they give up loving God and do not come for the strength of the Holy Ghost m Confirmation, and neglect their Communions and run after worldly things instead of God. Learn verse 2 of Hymn 271: "0 Jesus, I have promised to serve Thee to the end." THE MUSTARD TREE. This parable is about the Church. Jesus said a man took a little grain of mustard seed and planted it, and it grew into such a big plant that the birds came and rested on its branches. God's Church Avas very small when Jesus told this story; there Avere only the tAvelve apostles and a few more disciples. But although the Church grew, when Jesus rose from the dead there were only about a hundred and tAventy who came to a meeting that St. Peter called. So God's Church Avas like a grain of mustard seed. When Jesus sent doAvn the Holy Ghost on Whitsunday, St. Peter Avent out and preached and three thousand more were baptised. From that time the Church grew very quickly, The more the devil tried to stop it, the faster it grew. Now there are Christians m nearly every country m the world. There are about a hundred million Anglican Church people and there are many more Roman Catholics, and a very great many besides who belong to the Churches of Russia and Greece and so on. The Church has become a very great tree. Lesson 70. PARABLES (Continued). THE LEAVEN, This parable, too, is about the Church. A woman took some yeast aad Bhe mixed it with some flour, and made dough. Have you seen yeast? It is all frothy. That is because a lot of gas is formed m it and the gas makes it bubble up. If you mix. yeast with flour the yeast maEes the dough;

"rise." When it is "warmed the dough gets bubbly, the yeast blows bubbles all through it until it swells up and is ever so much bigger than' before. When it has swelled up enough mother puts it m the oven and bakes it and then we call it "bread." The story means that the Church was only small to start with, like a little drop of yeast, it started m Jerusalem but soon began to spi'ead all over the world; It is still spreading now wherever we send missionaries. Even people who do not themselves become Christians, learn to respect real Christian people and to copy the good things they do. So the " influence '*' of the. Church and Christians spreads everywhere. THE HIDDEN TREASURE, ETC. I will tell you a few more of Jesus' stories;' they are very short ones. The Hidden Treasure. A man hid a treasure m a field. By and bye another man was digging m the field and he found the treasure; but the field was not his, so he could not take the treasure home; but he went home and sold everything that he had and then went and bought the field and the treasure became his own. When a heathen man finds out what glorious treasures of joy and happiness there are m the Christian Church, he gives up everything m order that he may be baptised and become an ' ' inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven." The greatest treasures hidden m the Christian Church are the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost and the Body and Blood of Jesus, which He gives us m the Holy Communion. The Merchant and the Pearl. This story has the same meaning as the last one. A merchant was buying beautiful pearls, by and bye he saw one more beautiful than all the rest but -he had hot enough money to buy it, so he sold all his other pearls to get enough money to buy this one. The Draw Net. Have you seen fishermen fishing with a long net ? Sometimes they have two boats. The net is several feet wide and many yards long. It is all rolled up on a platform at the back of one of the boats. The net has' lead weights all along the bottom edge, and big corks all along the top edge. The fisherman m the second boat has a rope joined on to the net m the first boat, he rows away till he pulls the end of the net off the platform and gradually he has pulled all the net into the sea. The corks are floating on the top of the water and the lead is on the sand at the bottom; then^ the fishermen row towards the shore and jump out of their boats on the sand. One fisherman pulls one; end of tbfc net and the other pulls the other -end, v and so the net is drawn up on the -

shore, and the fishes are taken out of it. Jesus said that the Church is like a net, it is cast into the world and gathers m fish (men) of every kind, good ones and bad, ones. That is. what it is always doing. By and bye at -the Judgment Day the good fish will oe taken by Jesus to be with Him but the bad ones will be thrown away.