The First Mortgage

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... Parajle Of The Sower. He showed how that gold, And great riches untold, Were but naught, unless he were obeyed; The ravens were fed By his Father, he said, And the lillies with beauty arrayed. He spoke of a field, And the crops it did yield, Of a fellow who went out to sow; He spoke of the ground, That the fellow had found, Of the wayside, where nothing could grow. In most beautiful words He told of the birds--No doubt heard the songs that they sung--To supply their own needs, They picked up the seeds, And then flew away to their young. Of the seed that was sown, Some fell on a stone, In a place 'mongst the rocks, and the clay; It quite rapidly grew Till the dry winds blew, And then quickly it withered away. Some fell among thorns That were hard as the horns Of oxen that long had been yoked. It tried hard to grow, But it could'nt, you know, Because by the thorns it was choked. And some of the seed Struck a rich place, indeed--Was matured from the bottom to top; And some of the rest Was not equally blest, But still, made a very fair crop. And then Christ explained, How the truth when retained, Produced a most wonderful yield; But the Devil has horns, Resembling the thorns That choked out the grain in the field. Another man sowed, But before the seed growed, An enemy came unawares; By the moon's pale light, In the midst of the night, This enemy scattered some tares. the mustard seed and the kingdom. 171 The field was the world Where the seed had been hurled, When the sun shone so clear and so bright; The Devil, I'm sure, No such light could endure--Hence he sows the tares in the night. Christ told of a seed, Which produced first a weed Like the grass that is nipped by the cows; But grew to such length, Such size and such strength, That the...