Tolerance Continued...

Sermon: Tolerance

1867

From the book: Discipline and Other Sermons

by Charles Kingsley

...And all the while the words stood written in the Scriptures which they professed to believe; "Nay, lest while ye root up the tares, ye root up the wheat also."

They had been told, if ever men were told, that the work was beyond their powers of discernment; that, whatever the tares were, or however they came into God's field the world, they were either too like the wheat, or too intimately entangled with them, for any mortal man to part them. God would part them in his own good time.

If they had trusted God, they would let them be; certain that he hated what was false, what was hurtful, infinitely more than they; certain that he would some day cast out of his kingdom all things which offend, and all that work injustice, and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie; and therefore, if he suffered such things to abide awhile, it was for them to submit, and to believe that God loved the world better than they, and kenw better how to govern it.

But if, on the contrary, they did not believe God, then they would set to work, in their disobedient self-conceit, to do that which he had forbidden them; and the certain result would be that, with the tares, they would root up the wheat likewise.

Note here two things. First, it is not said that there were no tares among the wheat; nor that the servants would fail in rooting some of them up. They would succeed probably in doing some good; but tey would succeed certainly in doing more harm. In their short-sighted, blind, erring, hasty zeal, they would destroy the good with the evil.

Their knowledge of this complex and miraculous universe was too shallow, their canons of criticism were too narrow, to decide on what ought, or ought not, to grow in the field of him whose ways and thoughts were as much higher than theirs as the heaven is higher than the earth.

Note also, that the Lord does not blame them for their purpose. He merely points out to them its danger; and forbids it because it is dangerous; for their wish to root out the tares was not 'natural.' We shall libel it by calling it that. It was distinctly spiritual, the first impulse of spiritual men, who love right and hate wrong, and desire to cultivate the one and exterminate the other.