Matthew 13:28

28. Wilt thou… we go and gather them up Ought not the wicked to be destroyed from the face of the earth? Why are they permitted to exist?

Does it not almost make atheists of us to see how God permits them to live and prosper? No; for the permission is for them to live to develope; and so God will not eradicate them out of the earth, and good men must not expect to be able to persecute them to destruction.

Eastern farmers maintain that tares are degenerate wheat, affirming that a field is frequently sown with wheat and the seed comes up tares. Dr. Thomson explains this singular fact thus:

“I suppose that several separate causes conspire to bring about the result. First, very wet weather in winter drowns and kills wheat, while it is the most favourable of all weather for tares. In a good season the wheat overgrows and chokes the tares, but in a wet one the reverse is true. The farmers all admit this, but still they ask, Whence the seed of the tares? we sowed ‘good seed.’ To this it may be answered: The tare is a very light grain, easily blown about by the wind; that a thousand little birds are ever carrying and dropping it over the fields; that myriads of ants are dragging it in all directions; that moles, and mice, and goats, and sheep, and nearly every other animal, are aiding in this work of dispersion; that much of the tares shell out in handling the grain in the field; that a large part of them is thrown out by the wind at the threshing-floor, which is always in the open country; that the heavy rains, which often deluge the country in autumn, carry down to the lower levels this outcast zowan (tares) and sow them there; and these are precisely the spots where the transmutation is said to occur. It is my belief that in these and in similar ways the tares are actually sown, without the intervention of an enemy, and their presence is accounted for without having recourse to this incredible doctrine of transmutation.”

Root up also the wheat Commentators sometimes understand by this that we are forbidden to persecute heretics in the Church, for we may be mistaken in men’s characters and put innocent men to death. Now, first, this is a poor reason against persecution. Second, it is not the Church but the world which is symbolized by the field. Third, by this mode of interpretation the servants are both men and a part of the wheat at the same moment. And, fourth, the reason supposed is not the reason expressed in the text. The reason in the text is not that they might mistake wheat for tares, and so pull it up. It is that, in the violence of the work, both would be pulled up, and the field be destroyed. The destruction of probationary sinners would be the destruction of the probationary system.

It is no doubt true that the tares when first springing up strongly resemble the wheat, so as to be easily mistaken for it; but not after a little growth. Dr. Thomson expresses the real point, when he says: “Very commonly the roots of the two are so intertwined that it is impossible to separate them without plucking up both. Both, therefore, must be left to grow together until the time of harvest.”