the land round the lake of Gennesaret are reflected in the parable of
the sower. But we must go deeper than that to find its occasion. It
was not because Jesus may have seen a sower in a field which had these
three varieties of soil that He spoke, but because He saw the
frivolous crowd gathered to hear His words. The sad, grave description
of the threefold kinds of vainly-sown ground is the transcript of His
clear and sorrowful insight into the real worth of the enthusiasm of
the eager listeners on the beach. He was under no illusions about it;
and, in this parable, He seeks to warn His disciples against expecting
much from it, and to bring its subjects to a soberer estimate of what
His word required of them. The full force and pathos of the parable is
felt only when it is regarded as the expression of our Lord's keen
consciousness of His wasted words. This passage falls into two
parts--Christ's explanation of the reasons for His use of parables,
and His interpretation of the parable itself.

I. Christ was the centre of three circles: the outermost consisting of
the fluctuating masses of merely curious hearers; the second, of true
but somewhat loosely attached disciples, whom Mark here calls 'they
that were about Him'; and the innermost, the twelve. The two latter
appear, in our first verse, as asking further instruction as to 'the
parable,' a phrase which includes both parts of Christ's answer. The
statement of His reason for the use of parables is startling. It
sounds as if those who needed light most were to get least of it, and
as if the parabolic form was deliberately adopted for the express
purpose of hiding the truth. No wonder that men have shrunk from such
a thought, and tried to soften down the terrible words. Inasmuch as a
parable is the presentation of some spiritual truth under the guise of
an incident belonging to the material sphere, it follows, from its
very nature, that it may either reveal or hide the truth, and that it