The Pulpit Commentary on Mark 4:30-34

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

The power of ideas.

I. THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS THE KINGDOM OF IDEAS. All forms of the true, holy, and good are included in this kingdom. Life would be intolerable, amidst the greatest physical comfort, without ideas. Our spirit is born to love and live among them. Novelty of ideas is the condition of change for the better in every life-department.

II. IDEAS ARE SELF-MULTIPLYING. Start a beautiful pattern in trade; it gives birth to a whole creation of beauty. Cast in a golden hour a seed of truth or love into the general mind; up springs a flower, whose seed will presently be in all gardens (see Tennyson's poem). Do a noble deed, speak a word from the full voice of the heart; an infinity of echoes will awake; a thousand imitators will arise. Let us speak in these parables of nature to the many; and for the few let us analyze and elicit their wider meaning. For the truths of the seen are less than those of the unseen. Illustrations light up a truth not understood; but their value is transient. The truth escapes from this or that clothing into other forms.—J.

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