======================================================================== WRITINGS OF WILLIAM ARNOT by William Arnot ======================================================================== A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by William Arnot, compiled for study and devotional reading. Chapters: 90 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TABLE OF CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. 1.00. The Parables of our Lord 2. 1.00.1. Introduction. 3. 1.01. The Sower 4. 1.02. The Tares 5. 1.03. The Mustard Seed 6. 1.04. The Leaven 7. 1.05. The Hidden Treasure 8. 1.06. The Pearl 9. 1.07. The Draw 10. 1.08. The Unmerciful Servant 11. 1.09. The Vineyard Labourers 12. 1.10. The Two Sons 13. 1.11. The Wicked Husbandmen 14. 1.12. The Royal Marriage Feast 15. 1.13. The Ten Virgins 16. 1.14. The Entrusted Talents 17. 1.15. The Seed Growing Secretly 18. 1.16. The Two Debtors 19. 1.17. The Good Samaritan 20. 1.18. The Friend at Midnight 21. 1.19. The Rich Fool 22. 1.20. The Barren Fig-Tree 23. 1.21. The Excuses 24. 1.22. The Lost Sheep 25. 1.23. The Lost Coin 26. 1.24. The Prodigal Son 27. 1.25. The Prudent Steward 28. 1.26. The Rich Man and Lazarus 29. 1.27. Unprofitable Servants 30. 1.28. The Importunate Widow 31. 1.29. The Pharisee and the Publican 32. 1.30. The Servants and the Pounds 33. 2.00. THE LESSER PARABLES OF OUR LORD 34. 2.01. The Lesser Parables of Our Lord 35. 2.01.01. The harvest field and the harvest labourerer, Part 1 36. 2.01.02. The harvest field and the harvest laboureres, Part 2 37. 2.01.03. The fields white already to harvest 38. 2.01.04. Liberty 39. 2.01.05. True, yet tender - tender, yet true 40. 2.01.06. The food that Jesus loved and lived on 41. 2.01.07. The food that Jesus gave to his own 42. 2.01.08. The two families - the natural and the spirtual 43. 2.01.09. Trees of righteousness ,Part 1 44. 2.01.10. Trees of reighteousness, Part 2 45. 2.02. Lessons of grace in the language of nature 46. 2.02.01. Adam a type of Christ 47. 2.02.02. Epistles of Christ 48. 2.02.03. Christians the light of the world 49. 2.02.04. A comprehensive confession 50. 2.02.05. Rooted in love 51. 2.02.06. Drawn and dragged 52. 2.02.07. The fixed compass 53. 2.02.08. The Good Shepherd 54. 2.02.09. Personal adorning 55. 2.02.10. the salt of the earth 56. 2.03. Readings in First Peter 57. 2.03.01. Peter, an apostle 58. 2.03.02. Aposttolic benediction 59. 2.03.03. The heirs and their inhheritance 60. 2.03.04. Mighty to save 61. 2.03.05. The latter end is peace 62. 2.03.06. Rejoicing in tribulation 63. 2.03.07. Salvation by substitution 64. 2.03.08. No cross, no crown 65. 2.03.09. Jesus in the midst 66. 2.03.10. Obedient children 67. 2.03.11. Bought with a price 68. 2.03.12. Love on the spring 69. 2.03.13. Man and his glory 70. 2.03.14. "Christ in you the hope of glory" 71. 2.03.15. The bane and the antidote 72. 2.03.16. Living stones 73. 2.03.17. "On either side one; and Jesus in the midst" 74. 2.03.18. "The Lord's peorpe, the Lord's treasure" 75. 2.03.19. The way and the fruits of redemption 76. 2.03.20. The warfare 77. 2.03.21. The witness of a pure life 78. 2.03.22. The scritpures sanction civil authority 79. 2.03.23. The dignity of man 80. 2.03.24. No respect of persons 81. 2.03.25. The brotherhood 82. 2.03.26. Love the brotherhood 83. 2.04. Life in Christ 84. 2.04.01. Life in Christ 85. 2.04.02. Christ and the sacraments - the sprit and the body 86. 2.04.03. Faith and a good conscience 87. 2.04.04. The prodigal 88. 2.04.05. No cross, no crown 89. 2.04.06. The relation between doctrine and life 90. S. Fruitful in Every Good Work ======================================================================== CHAPTER 1: 1.00. THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD ======================================================================== THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. by William Arnot WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. I. NEW EDITION, COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME, LAWS FROM HEAVEN FOR LIFE ON EARTH: Illustrations of the Book of Proverbs. Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 7s. 6d. II. ROOTS AND FRUITS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. Crown 8vo. Price 7s. 6d. III.THE RACE FOR RICHES, AND SOME OF THE PITS INTO WHICH THE RUNNERS FALL. Foolscap 8vo. Price 1s. 6d. T. NELSON AND SONS. LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. By the REV. WILLIAM ARNOT. LONDON: T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW; EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK. 1874. CONTENTS. * INTRODUCTION, 11 1. The Sower, 43 2. The Tares, 75 3. The Mustard Seed, 101 4. The Leaven, 111 5. The Hidden Treasure, 128 6. The Pearl, 144 7. The Draw-Net, 160 8. The Unmerciful Servant, 185 9. The Vineyard Labourers, 204 10. The Two Sons, 223 11. The Wicked Husbandmen, 237 12. The Royal Marriage Feast, 254 13. The Ten Virgins, 282 14. The Entrusted Talents, 299 15. The Seed Growing Secretly, 312 16. The Two Debtors, 326 17. The Good Samaritan, 341 18. The Friend at Midnight, 357 19. The Rich Fool, 369 20. The Barren Fig-Tree, 378 21. The Excuses, 387 22. The Lost Sheep, 402 23. The Lost Coin, 422 24. The Prodigal Son, 427 25. The Prudent Stewardand Lazarus, 451 26. The Rich Man, 465 27. Unprofitable Servants, 483 28. The Importunate Widow, 497 29. The Pharisee and the Publican, 509 30. The Servants and the Pounds, ======================================================================== CHAPTER 2: 1.00.1. INTRODUCTION. ======================================================================== INTRODUCTION. We have been accustomed to regard with affectionate veneration the life-work of the Reformers, and the theology of the Reformation. Of a later date, and in our own vernacular, we have inherited from the Puritans an indigenous theology, great in quantity and precious in kind,—a legacy that has enriched our age more, perhaps, than the age is altogether willing to acknowledge. At various periods from the time of the Puritans to the present, our stock of sacred literature has received additions of incalculable value. So vast and varied have our stores become at length, that an investigator of the present day can scarcely expect to find a neglected spot where he may enjoy the luxury of cultivating virgin soil: so ably, moreover, have our predecessors fulfilled their tasks, that a modern inquirer, obliged to deal with familiar themes, cannot console himself with the expectation of dealing with them to better purpose. It does not follow, however, that a contribution to the literature of theology is useless, because it neither touches a new theme, nor treats an old more ably. The literature of one century, whether sacred or common, will not, when served up in the lump, satisfy the craving and sustain the life of another. The nineteenth century must produce its own literature, as it raises its own corn, and fabricates its own garments. The intellectual and spiritual treasures of the past should indeed be reverently preserved and used; but they should be used as seed. Instead of indolently living on the stores which our fathers left, we should cast them into the ground, and get the product fresh every season—old, and yet ever new. The intellectual and spiritual life of an age will wither, if it has nothing wherewith to sustain itself, but the food which grew in an earlier era; it must live on the fruits that grow in its own time, and under its own eye. Nor will a servile imitation of the ancient masters suffice. A mere reproduction, for example, of the Puritan theology would not be suitable in our day; while the truth, which constitutes its essence, remains the same, it must be cast in the moulds of modern thought, and tinged with the hues of modern experience. Engineers surveying for a railway lay down the line level, or as nearly level as the configuration of the surface will permit; but an engineer’s level is not a straight line; it is the segment of a circle,—that circle being the circumference of the globe. The line which practically constitutes a level bends downwards continually as it goes forward, following the form of the earth, and at every point being at right angles to the radius. If it were produced in an absolutely straight line, it would, in the course of a few miles, be high and dry above the surface of the earth, and entirely useless for the practical purposes of life. Such would sacred literature become if in blind admiration of the fathers, the children should simply use the old, and not produce the new. As we advance along the course of time, we are, as it were, tracing a circle; and he who would be of use in his generation, must bend his speculations to the time, and let them touch society on the level at every point in the progress of the race. To throw a new contribution into the goodly store does not, therefore, imply a judgment on the part of the writer that the modern theology is better than the ancient. We must make our own: it concerns us and our children that what we make be in substance drawn from the word of God; and in form, suited to the circumstances of the age. Still further, the accumulations of the past should be used by those who inherit them, as a basis on which to build. It is the business of each generation to lay another course on the wall, and so leave the structure loftier than they found it. The Bible, like the world, is inexhaustible; in either department hosts of successive investigators have plied their tasks from the beginning, and yet there is room. Some observations are here submitted, more or less strictly introductory to a treatise on a specific branch of Scriptural exegesis—the Parables of Our Lord. I.—ANALOGY. As the husbandman’s first care is neither the fruit nor the tree which bears it, but the soil in which the tree must grow: so an expositor, whose ultimate aim is to explain and enforce the parables of Jesus, should mark well at the outset the fundamental analogies which pervade the works of God, and constitute the basis of all figurative language, whether in human teaching or divine. The Maker and Ruler of the universe pursues an object, and works on a plan. His purpose is one, and he sees the end from the beginning: the variations, infinite in number, and vast in individual extent, which emerge in the details of his administration, are specific accommodations of means to ends. The material and moral departments of the divine government are, like body and soul of a human being, widely diverse from each other; but one Master administers both with a view to a common end. The two departments are different in kind, and therefore the laws which regulate the one cannot be the same as the laws which regulate the other; but in both one designer operates towards one design, and therefore the laws which regulate the one must be like the laws which regulate the other. From the duality of creation, there cannot be identity between the physical and moral laws; but from the unity of the Creator there must be similarity. Nor is it only between the two great departments of the divine government generically distinguished, that analogies may spring: within either department, analogies innumerable may be found between one species and another, and even between individuals of the same species. Between two parts of the material world, or two portions of human history, or two processes of mental effort, analogies may be traced, as well as between the evolutions of matter and the laws of mind. It is not strictly correct to speak of the similitudes which we have been accustomed to admire in literature, as “creations of genius;” the utmost that is competent to genius is to observe and exhibit the similitudes as they lie in nature. An observing eye, a suggestive mind, and a loving heart constitute all the necessary apparatus; with these faculties in exercise, let any one stalk abroad upon the earth among his fellows, and analogies will spring spontaneously around him, as manifold and as beautiful as the flowers that by daylight look up from the earth, or the stars that in the evening reciprocate from heaven the gentle salutation. Analogy occupies the whole interval between absolute identity on the one hand, and complete dissimilarity on the other. You would not say there is an analogy between two coins of the same metal, struck successively from the same die; for all practical purposes they are identical. Although the two objects are thoroughly distinct, as all their sensible qualities are the same, we are accustomed to speak of them not as similar but the same. In order that a comparison may be effective either for ornament or for use, there must be, between the two acts or objects, a similarity in some points, and a dissimilarity in others. The comparison for moral or æsthetic purposes is like an algebraic equation in mathematical science; if the two sides are in all their features the same, or in all their features different, you may manipulate the signs till the sun go down, but you will obtain no useful result: it is only when they are in some of their terms the same and in some different, that you can bring fruit from their union. We stand here on the brink of a great deep. For wise ends the system of nature has been constructed upon a line intermediate between the extremes of sameness and diversity. If the measure of difference between classes and individuals had been much greater or much smaller than it is, the accumulation of knowledge would have been extremely difficult, or altogether impossible. It is by the combination of similarity and dissimilarity among sensible objects that science from its lowest to its highest measures becomes possible. If all animals, or all plants had been in their sensible qualities precisely the same, there would have been of animals or vegetables only one class: we could have had no knowledge regarding them, except as individuals: our knowledge would at this day have been less than that of savages. Again, if all animals or all plants had been in their sensible qualities wholly dissimilar—all from each, and each from all, it would have been impossible to frame classes; our knowledge, as on the opposite supposition, would have been limited to our observation of individuals. In either case Zoology or Botany would have been impossible. Man, endowed with intelligence, could not, in such a world, have found exercise for his faculties. It would have been like a seeing eye without a shining light. The power would have lain dormant for want of a suitable object. Ask the Botanist, the Naturalist, the Chemist—ask the votary of any science, what makes accumulated knowledge possible; he will tell you, it is the similarity which enables him to classify, accompanied by the diversity which enables him to distinguish. Wanting these two qualities in balanced union there could be no analogy; and wanting analogy, man could not be capable of occupying the place which has been assigned to him in creation. 1 In suggesting probabilities and throwing out lines of inquiry, analogy is of unspeakable value in every branch of science; in sacred apologetics its specific use is to destroy the force of objections which may be plausibly urged against facts or doctrines otherwise established; but it is as an instrument for explaining, illustrating, fixing, and impressing moral and spiritual truth that we are mainly concerned with it here. God’s word is as full of analogies as his works. The histories, offerings, and prophecies of the Old Testament are figures of better things which have been brought to light by the gospel. The lessons of the Lord and his apostles teem with types. Almost every doctrine is given in duplicate: the spirit is provided with a body; a body clothes the spirit. Every fruitful vine has a strong elm to which it clings; every strong elm supports a fruitful vine. One important use of analogy in moral teaching is to fix the lesson on the imagination and the memory, as you might moor a boat to a tree on the river’s brink to prevent it from gliding down during the night with the stream. A just analogy suggested at the moment serves to prevent the more ethereal spiritual conception from sliding out of its place. In practical morals analogy is employed to surprise and so overcome an adverse will, rather than merely to help a feeble understanding. In this department most of the Lord’s parables lie. When a man is hardened by indulgence in his own sin, so that he cannot perceive the truth which condemns it, the lesson which would have been kept out, if it had approached in a straight line before his face, may be brought home effectually by a circuitous route in the form of a parable. When the conscience stands on its guard against conviction you may sometimes turn the flank of its defences unperceived, and make the culprit a captive ere he is aware. The Pharisees were frequently outwitted in this manner. With complacent self-righteousness they would stand on the outside of the crowd, and, from motives of curiosity, listen to the prophet of Nazareth as he told his stories to the people, until at a sudden turn they perceived that the graphic parable which pleased them so well, was the drawing of the bow that plunged the arrow deep in their own hearts. A man may be so situated that though his life is in imminent danger, he cannot perceive the danger, and consequently makes no effort to escape. Further, his mind may be so prejudiced that he still counts the beam on which he stands secure, although a neighbour has faithfully given warning that it is about to fall; it may be that because he stands on it he cannot see its frailty. Let some friend who knows his danger, but wishes him well, approach the spot and hold a mirror in such a position that the infatuated man shall see reflected in it the under and ailing side of the beam that lies between him and the abyss. The work is done: the object is gained: the confident fool, made wise at length, leaps for life upon the solid ground. Although the faculty of perceiving and understanding analogies is inherent in humanity, and consequently co-extensive with the race, it is developed in a higher degree in some persons and in some communities than in others. The common opinion, that the inhabitants of mountainous countries possess this faculty in a higher measure than the inhabitants of the plains, seems to be sustained by facts. Within the borders of our own island it is quite certain that the Scotch and the Welsh employ figures more readily and relish them more intensely than the English. How far the difference may be directly due to the physical configuration of the country cannot perhaps be accurately ascertained; but doubtless the mountains contribute indirectly to the result, by rendering access more difficult, and so producing a greater measure of isolation and simplicity. It is an acknowledged and well-known fact, moreover, that the inhabitants of eastern countries are more prone to employ figurative language than the peoples of western Europe; but it is difficult to determine how far this characteristic is due to the meteorological and geographical features of the continent, and how far to hereditary peculiarities of race. Looking merely to the physical features of their country, you might expect that the inhabitants of Palestine would possess in a high degree the faculty of suggesting and appreciating analogical conceptions; the peculiar history and jurisprudence of the people must have tended powerfully in the same direction. Accordingly, as might have been expected from the circumstances of the nation, it appears in point of fact on the whole face of the Scriptures, that as the institutes of the commonwealth were symbolical, the language of the people was figurative. They were at home in metaphor. It was their vernacular. The sudden and bold adoption of physical forms in order to convey spiritual conceptions, did not surprise—did not puzzle them. “Ye are the salt of the earth,” “Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together,” fell upon their ears, not as a foreign dialect, but as the accents of their native tongue. It might easily be shown that no other characteristic connected with the form of the Scriptures could have done so much to facilitate their diffusion in all climes, and in all ages, as the analogical mould in which a large proportion of their conceptions is cast; but this is scarcely denied by any, and is easily comprehended by all. In another point of view, less obvious, and not so frequently noticed, the prevalence in the Scriptures of analogical forms, attaching spiritual doctrines to natural objects and historic facts, has served a good purpose in the evidences and exposition of revealed religion. The more abstract terms of a language are not so distinctly apprehended as the more concrete, and in the course of ages are more liable to change. The habit, universal among the writers of the Scriptures from the most ancient to the latest, of making abstract moral conceptions fast to pillars of natural objects and current facts, has contributed much to fix the doctrines like fossils for all time, and so to diminish the area of controversy. All the more steadily and safely has revealed truth come down from the earliest time to the present day, that it has in every part of its course run on two distinct but parallel tracks. II.—PARABLES. The parable is one of the many forms in which the innate analogy between the material and the moral may be, and has been practically applied. 2 The difficulty of constructing a definition which should include every similitude that belongs to this class, and exclude all others, has been well appreciated by expositors and frankly confessed. The parables of the New Testament, after critics have done their utmost to generalize and classify, must in the end be accounted sui generis, and treated apart from all others. The etymology of the name affords us no help, for it is applied without discrimination to widely diverse forms of comparison; it indicates the juxtaposition of two thoughts or things, with the view of exhibiting and employing the analogy which may be found to subsist between them; but several other terms convey precisely the same meaning, and therefore it cannot supply us with the distinguishing characteristic of a class. As far as I have been able to observe, hardly anything has been gained at this point by the application of logical processes. The distinctions which have been successfully made are precisely those which are sufficiently obvious without a critical apparatus; and in regard to those comparisons which bear the closest affinity to the parable, and in which, on account of the rainbow-like blending of the boundaries, logical definitions are most needed, logical definitions have most signally failed. Scholars have, for example, successfully distinguished parables from myths and fables; but this is laboriously to erect a fence between two flocks that in their nature manifest no tendency to intermingle; whereas, from some other forms of analogy, such as the allegory, the parable cannot be separated by a definition expressed in general terms, which shall be at once universally applicable and universally understood. Into all parables human motives and actions go as constituents, and in most of them the processes of nature are also interwoven. The element of human action is generally introduced in a historic form, as “a certain man had two sons;” but some of the similitudes of Scripture, which by general consent are reckoned parables, lack this feature, as for example, the Lost Sheep. 3 “What man of you, having an hundred sheep?” For my own part, while there are some that, on the one hand, I can with confidence include, and some that, on the other, I must with equal confidence keep out, I see not a few lying ambiguous on the border. My judgment inclines to what seems a medium between two extremes,—between the decision of some German philosophical expositors who are too critical, and the decision of some English practical preachers who are not critical enough. I would fain eschew, on the one hand, the laborious trifling by which it is proved that the parable of the Sower is not a parable; and, on the other hand, the unfortunate facility which admits into the number almost all similitudes indiscriminately. I shall adopt the list of Dr. Trench,4 thirty in number, as being on the whole a fair and convenient medium; although I could not undertake to demonstrate that these only, and these all possess the qualities which in his judgment go to constitute a parable. Some that are included can scarcely be distinguished by logical definitions from some that are excluded; but so far am I from considering this a defect, that I deem it a necessary result of the impalpable infinitesimal graduation by which the fully-formed parable glides down into the brief detached metaphorical aphorism, in the words of the Lord Jesus during the period of his ministry. Certain figurative lessons, differing from the parable on the one hand, and the allegory on the other, may be found scattered up and down both in the Scriptures and in secular literature, whose distinguishing characteristic is, that they are not spoken but enacted, and which I am disposed to regard as more nearly allied than any other to the parables of our Lord. They seem to constitute a species of simple primitive germinal drama. Some examples occur in the history of the Hebrew monarchy before the period of the captivity. At Elisha’s request, Joash, King of Israel, shot arrows from a bow, in token of the victory which he should obtain over the Syrians. Left without instructions as to the frequency with which the operation should be repeated, the king shot three arrows successively into the ground, and paused. Thereupon the prophet, interpreting the symbol, declared that the subjugation of the Syrians would not be complete (2 Kings 13:1-25) Another specimen may be observed, shining through the history in the reign of Jehoshaphat, when a prophet named Chenaanah made a pair of iron horns, and flattered the King of Israel by the symbol that he would push the Syrians till he should consume them (2 Chronicles 17:10). About the time of the captivity, and in the hands of Ezekiel, this species of parable appears with great distinctness of outline, and considerable fulness of detail. When a frivolous people would not take warning of their danger, the prophet, godly and grave, took a broad flat tile, and sketched on it the outline of a besieged city, and lay on his left side, silently contemplating the symbol of his country’s fate (Ezekiel 4:1-17) The strange act of the revered man attracted many eyes, and stirred new questionings in many hearts. Equally graphic is the representation of Israel’s captivity, in the dramatic parable recorded in Ezekiel 12:1-28, where the prophet personally enacts the melancholy process of packing his goods, and escaping as an exile. From the subsequent history, we learn that this significant act arrested attention; the people gazed in wonder on the sign, and anxiously inquired into its meaning. It is eminently worthy of notice that the lavish and bold imagery of Ezekiel effectually served the immediate purpose for which it was employed; it attracted the people’s regard, explained the prophecy to their understandings, and fixed the lessons in their memories. It is true, indeed, that they did not repent; but this only shows that parables, even when dictated by the Spirit, have not inherent power to convert; even God’s word may, through the hearer’s sin, remain a dead letter in his hand. It emerges incidentally in the history that the preaching of Ezekiel was eminently popular; crowds came out to hear and see. The ultimate spiritual success lies in other hands; but in as far as the instrument is concerned, it is proved, from the experience of this ancient prophet, that the mastery of analogies draws the people round the preacher’s feet, and brings his lessons into contact with their minds and hearts. In modern times, much argument is employed to prove that the drama may be pure in itself, and effectual as a moral educator,—argument which, however excellent it may be in theory, has hitherto proved impotent in fact. But from the beginning it was not so; Ezekiel was a dramatist; he acted his prophecies and his preachings on a stage. The warnings were in this form clearly articulated, and forcefully driven home; if they failed to produce the ultimate result of repentance, the obstacle lay not in the feebleness of the instrument, but in the wilful hardness of the subject whereon the instrument was plied. Dramatic representation in the simplicity of its infancy was a golden vessel of the sanctuary, employed in the service of God; long ago it was carried away into Babylon, and profanely used as a wine cup in the orgies of idols. Whether it shall ever be wrenched from the enemy, purified, and restored to the service of the temple, I know not. In the general history of the world, the most interesting parable of this class that occurs to my memory is one attributed to a North American Indian in conversation with a Christian missionary. The red man had previously been well instructed in the Scriptures, understood the way of salvation, and enjoyed peace with God. Desiring to explain to his teacher the turning point of his spiritual experience, he had recourse, in accordance, perhaps, with the instincts and habits of his tribe, to the language of dramatic symbols rather than to the language of articulate words. Having gathered a quantity of dry withered tree leaves, he spread them in a thin layer, and in a circular form on the level ground. He then gently laid a living worm in the centre, and set fire to the circumference on every side. The missionary and the Indian then stood still and silent, watching the motions of the imprisoned reptile. It crawled hastily and in alarm towards one side, till it met the advancing girdle of fire, and then crawled back as hastily to the other. After making several ineffectual efforts to escape, the creature retired to the centre, and coiled itself up to await its fate. At this crisis, and just before the flames reached their helpless victim, the Indian stept gravely forward, lifted the worm from its fiery prison, and deposited it in a place of safety. “Thus,” this simple preacher of the cross indicated to the missionary,—“Thus helpless and hopeless I lay, while the wrath due to my sin advanced on every side to devour me; and thus sovereignly, mightily, lovingly did Christ deliver my soul from death.” III.—THE PARABLES OF THE LORD. Metaphorical language, as we have seen, is deeply rooted in the fundamental analogy which subsists between the several departments of our Creator’s work; and the parable is a species of figure which, for all practical purposes, is sufficiently distinguished from others, although it is scarcely possible to isolate it by a complete logical definition. Nor is it enough to say that those specimens which are found in the record of Christ’s ministry belong to the species; they may be said to constitute a species by themselves. The parables which are known to literature beyond the pale of the evangelic histories are either very diverse in kind, or very few in number. The practical result is, that while we treat the parable as a distinct species of analogical instruction, we must treat the parables spoken by the Lord as a unique and separate class. As the Lord’s people in ancient times dwelt alone, and were not reckoned among the nations, the Lord’s parabolic teaching stands apart by itself, and cannot with propriety be associated with other specimens of metaphorical teaching. Logically as well as spiritually it is true, that “never man spake like this man.” But, when setting aside all other forms of comparison, we confine our regard to the parable, and, setting aside other specimens, we confine our regard to the parables spoken by the Lord, other questions arise concerning the internal and reciprocal relations of these peculiar compositions; should they be read and considered as so many independent units miscellaneously scattered over the evangelic record, or should they be classified according to the place which belongs to them in a system of dogmatics? or can any method of treatment be suggested different from both of these extremes, and better than either? It is doubtless competent to any inquirer to frame the doctrines which the parables illustrate into a logical scheme, and in his exposition to transpose the historical order, so that the sequence of the subjects shall coincide with his arrangement. This method is lawful in regard to the parables particularly, as it is in regard to the contents of Scripture generally; but, as a method of prosecuting the inquiry, I think it loses more on the side of topical and historical interest than it gains on the side of logical precision. As the Bible generally is in its own natural order, both more engaging and more instructive than a catechism compiled from it, although the compiler may have been both skilful and true; the parables of the Lord, in particular, taken up as they lie in his ministry, are both more interesting and more profitable than a logical digest of the theology which they contain, however faithfully the digest may have been made. Any one may observe, as he reads our Lord’s parables, that some of them are chiefly occupied with the teaching of doctrine, and others with the reproof of prevailing sins; but when on the basis of these and other subordinate distinctions, you proceed to arrange them into separate classes, you are met and repelled by insurmountable difficulties. When Bauer, for example, has arranged them in three divisions, dogmatic, moral, and historic, he is compelled immediately to add another class called the mixed, as dogmatic-moral and dogmatic-historic, thereby proving that his logical classification has failed. 5 By abandoning, for the purposes of exposition, the order in which the parables have been recorded, and adopting a classification on the basis of contents or form, some incidental advantages are obtained; especially some otherwise necessary repetitions are avoided, and some subordinate relations are by the juxtaposition more easily observed; but the loss is, I apprehend, much greater than the gain. The temptation to bend the freely-growing branches of the parable, that they may take their places in the scheme, is by this method greatly increased; while historical sequences and logical relations, lying more or less concealed in the record, are in a great measure thrown away. Accordingly, I prefer the method of maintaining in the exposition the order which the evangelists have adopted in the narrative. Besides the advantage of preserving in all cases the historical circumstances whence the parable sprung, we discover, as we follow this track, several groups associated together by the Lord in his ministry, for the sake of their reciprocal relations, and reverently preserved in their places by the evangelical historians. The seven in Matthew 13:1-58, and the three in Luke 15:1-32, constitute the chief of those dogmatic groupings formed to our hand in the ministry of the Lord. I refer to them here as examples, but defer the exposition of their sequences and relations, until it can be presented with greater advantage in connection with the examination of their contents. A question, on some of its sides difficult, meets us here, regarding the reason why the Lord employed parables in the prosecution of his ministry. On the one hand, it is certainly true, as may be proved from all history, that comparisons between material and moral facts or laws, spring up naturally in human converse; and further, that the truth expressed in parables, if not in all cases immediately palpable, is better fitted both to arrest attention at first, and to imprint the lesson permanently on the learner’s memory. But the use and usefulness of the parable in this respect are obvious and undisputed; it makes spiritual truth more attractive and more memorable. The difficulty does not lie on this side; it adheres to a second function of the parable, in some respects the opposite of the first,—the function of concealing the doctrine in judgment from closed eyes and hardened hearts. In some instances and to some extent, the parables, while they conveyed the doctrine to one portion of the audience, concealed it from another. In those cases “they are like the husk which preserves the kernel from the indolent, and for the earnest.”6 It is the method, not unknown in other departments of the divine government, of making the same fact or law at once profitable to the humble, and punitive to the proud. Not only the Lord’s word, but also the Lord himself, partakes of this twofold character, and produces these diverse effects; the same rock on which a meek disciple surely builds his hope, is also the stone over which scoffers stumble in their final fall. The judicial or penal function of the parable was indicated by the Lord in express terms when he explained the meaning of the sower in private to his own disciples (Matthew 13:11-17; Mark 4:10-13). In these cases, however, the wilful blindness of men’s hearts appears as the sin which brought down the punishment, and the obstacle which kept out the blessing. Every word of God is good; but some persons maintain such an averted attitude of mind, that it glides off like sunbeams from polar snows, without ever obtaining an entrance to melt or fructify. To one of two persons who stand in the same room gazing on the same picture in the sunlight, the beauty of the landscape may be fully revealed, while to the other, on account of a certain indirectness of position and view, it appears only as an unpleasant dazzling glare. So, of two Jews who both eagerly listened to Jesus, as he taught from the fishing-boat on the Lake of Galilee, one found in the story the word of the kingdom, refreshing as cold waters to a thirsty soul, while the other, hearing the same words, perceived nothing in them but incoherent and tantalizing enigmas. For the right comprehension of the parables in particular, as of revealed truth in general, a receptive heart is a qualification even more peremptorily and essentially necessary than a penetrating understanding. “If any man is willing to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God” (John 7:17). Each of the parables contained some characteristic, or presented some aspect of Christ’s kingdom. His kingdom was not of this world, and therefore it was intensely distasteful to the carnal Jews of that day. The idea did not readily enter their mind; and when it did in some measure penetrate, it kindled in their corrupt hearts a flame of persecuting rage. It was necessary that the Lord should, during the period of his personal ministry, fully develop and deposit the seed of the kingdom; but it was necessary also that he should remain on earth until the set time when his ministry as prophet should terminate in his offering as priest. Now, if he had at any period displayed all the characteristics of his kingdom in terms which the mob and their rulers were able to comprehend, the persecution that ultimately crucified him, would have burst prematurely forth, and so deranged the plan of the Omniscient. It was necessary, for example, in order to provide consolation for his own disciples in subsequent temptations, that the Lord should predict his own death and resurrection; but this prediction, when uttered in public, was veiled from hostile eyes under the symbol, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). More generally, it was necessary that such features of the kingdom as its spiritual character and its expansive power should be made known to true disciples for their instruction and encouragement, but hidden for a time from persecutors in order to restrain their enmity. Parables served the twofold purpose. Tender, teachable spirits caught the meaning at once; or, if they failed, they asked and obtained an explanation from the Master in private; while those who had not the single eye, were for the time left in darkness. It was their own hardness that kept out the light; their own hardness was employed as the instrument whereby judgment was inflicted upon themselves. 7 IV.—THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PARABLES. Of the parables in particular, as of the Scriptures generally, it is true that faith is necessary to the full appreciation of their meaning. That you must understand the Scriptures in order to have faith, and have faith in order to understand the Scriptures, is indeed, a circle; but it is not a vicious circle. As you approach from without, you may perceive that the Bible is the word of God, and that the Christ whom it reveals is the Saviour of sinners; standing now on your new position, and recognising your Instructor as also your Redeemer, you will discover in his word a length, and breadth, and height, and depth, which were formerly concealed. In our day, as well as when the parables were first spoken, it is to his own disciples that their true meaning is made known. Another cognate requisite to the true spiritual comprehension of these divine sayings, is sympathy with the view which Jesus took and gave of human nature in its fallen state. He spoke and acted not only as the Teacher of the ignorant, but also as the Saviour of the lost: if we do not occupy the same stand-point, and look upon humanity in the same light, we shall stumble at every step in our effort to comprehend what the Speaker meant. These two qualifications are supreme; and they apply alike to divine revelation as a whole, and to each of its parts; there are others which are important though subordinate, and which bear more specially on the particular department of Scripture exegesis with which we are here engaged, the Parables of the Lord. 8 1. The faculty of perceiving and appreciating analogies. It is certainly not necessary that an interpreter of Scripture should be a poet; but to possess in some measure that eye for parallels which constitutes the basis of the poetic faculty, is a most desirable qualification for one who proposes to help his neighbours in the study of the parables. It is, indeed, true that a man who possesses only a very small measure of this or of other mental gifts, may read these lessons of the Lord with spiritual profit to himself; but the pictorial theology of the New Testament is not safe in the hands of a teacher who is signally defective in the faculty to which it specially appeals. Learning, and zeal, and faith combined may, in this department, expend much labour to little purpose, for lack of power to perceive the point of the analogy. But, on the other hand, 2. A stern logic is as necessary as a lively imagination. Deficient in the analogical faculty, you cannot in this department go quickly forward; but deficient in the logical faculty, you will go forward too fast and too far. We need a well-spread, well-filled sail; but we need also a helm to direct the ship in the path of safety. Restraining, discriminating judgment, is as necessary as impulsive power. Every one who possesses even a moderate acquaintance with the literature of this department will, I am persuaded, acknowledge the justice of this observation. Some expositors of the parables, especially in more ancient times, remind one of the Great Eastern in the Atlantic when her rudder was disabled. There is plenty of impelling force, but this force, for want of a director, only makes the ship go round and round in a weltering sea. From the pages of those commentators, whose imaginations have broken loose, you may cull fancies as manifold, as beautiful, and as useless as the gyrations of a helmless ship in a stormy sea. 3. Some competent acquaintance, not only with the Scriptures, but also with the doctrines which the Scriptures contain, arranged in a dogmatic system, is necessary as a safeguard in the interpretation of the parables. A scientific acquaintance with natural history is necessary not only in order to an intelligent appreciation of the contents of a museum, but also in order that you may turn to good account your miscellaneous observation of nature; in like manner, although a correct exegesis of Scripture supplies us with our only true dogmatics, the knowledge of dogmatics, scientifically arranged, contributes in turn to a correct exegesis. This remark has been drawn from me by my own experience in the study of this department of theological literature. If we would avoid the mistakes into which his own contemporaries fell, we must read the Lord’s parables in connection with the fuller exposition of divine truth which he commissioned and inspired the apostles to give. Except in some cases where an explanation is subjoined, or the circumstances exclude all uncertainty, it is not safe for us to lean on a parable as an independent evidence of a dogma. The pictorial illustrations and the more direct doctrinal statements of Scripture should go together for reciprocal elucidation and support. More especially it is extremely dangerous for a theologian, when he has a purpose to be served and an adversary to be refuted, to grasp a parable in the sense which suits his view, and wield it as a weapon of offence; in such a case he will probably do more execution upon himself than upon his antagonist. The importance of this point will be more fully seen when we consider the parables in detail. 4. Some knowledge of relative history, topography, and customs should be at hand for use; but, at the same time, these things should be resolutely kept in their own place. They may be good servants, but they are bad masters. Through a signal defect in the knowledge of oriental antiquity, an interpreter may permit some beautiful allusions to slip through his hands unperceived; but, on the other hand, it ought to be frankly conceded, and, if necessary, firmly maintained, that the profitable use of our Lord’s parables does not depend on rare and difficult erudition. If a deficiency in this department infers the risk of baldness in the exposition, a redundance supplies a temptation to pedantic display. It is one thing to place some ancient eastern custom in such a position that a ray of light from its surface shall pleasantly illumine a feature of the parable that was lying in the shade, and all another thing to make the parable a convenience for the exhibition of a scholar’s lore. With more immediate reference to the exposition herewith submitted, it is enough to intimate that it is neither a compend of criticism, nor merely a series of sermons. I have endeavoured to combine the substance of a critical investigation with the direct exhortation which becomes a minister of the gospel, when fellow-sinners constitute his audience, and the Bible supplies his theme. On the one hand, no important difficulty has been consciously slurred over without an effort to satisfy the judgment of a studious reader; and, on the other hand, no opportunity has been omitted of pressing the gospel of Christ on the consciences of men. THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. THE GROUP IN Matthew 13:1-58. “The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side. And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them in parables.”—Matthew 13:1-3. I In Matthew’s narrative, the first specimen of that peculiar pictorial method which characterized the teaching of our Lord, is not an isolated parable occurring in the midst of a miscellaneous discourse, but a group of seven presented in one continuous and connected report. Nor is the grouping due to the logical scheme of the Evangelist; we have here, not the historian’s digest of many disjointed utterances, but a simple chronological record of facts. In this order have these seven parables been recorded by the servant, because in this order they were spoken by the Lord. It does not in the least detract from the soundness of this judgment to concede that some of them were spoken also in other circumstances and other combinations. There is no ground whatever for assuming that one of our Lord’s signal sayings could not have been spoken in one place, because it can be proved that it was spoken at another. From the nature of the subjects, and the form which Christ’s ministry assumed, it might be confidently anticipated that the parables and other sharply relieved similitudes would recur, in whole or in part, in different discourses and before different assemblies: with this supposition accordingly the facts agree, as they may be gathered from a synopsis of the several narratives. Among the later German critics, it is distinctly conceded by Lange that these seven parables were spoken by the Lord in the order of Matthew’s record, although some of them appear to have been spoken also at other times. If it could have been proved that none of the parables had ever been spoken a second time, the circumstance would have constituted a non-natural and inexplicable phenomenon. A measure of logical order and reciprocal relation has always been observed in this cluster of parables. While some of the relations, and these the most important, are so obvious that they have been observed alike by all inquirers, in regard to others a considerable diversity of opinion has prevailed. Some, in the sequences of the group, look only for various phases of the kingdom, presented in logical divisions and sub-divisions: others find here, in addition, a prophetic history of the Church, like that which the Apocalypse contains. For my own part I am disposed to confine my view to that which I consider sure and obvious,—the representation of the kingdom of God in different aspects, according to a logical arrangement, not pronouncing judgment regarding the soundness of the prophetic view, but simply passing it by, as being from its nature difficult and dim. The first six readily fall into three successive well-defined pairs, and the seventh stands clearly designated by its subject as an appropriate conclusion. The first pair exhibit the Relations of the kingdom to the several classes of intelligent creatures with which, as adversaries or subjects, it comes into contact: the second pair exhibit the Progress of the kingdom from small beginnings to a glorious issue: the third pair exhibit the Preciousness of the kingdom, in comparison with all other objects of desire: and the remaining one teaches that the good and evil which intermingle on earth will be completely and finally separated in the great day. Thus— I. Relations 1. The Sower; the relation of the kingdom to different classes of men. 2. The Tares; the relation of the kingdom to the wicked one. II. Progress 1. The Mustard-seed; the progress of the kingdom under the idea of a living growth. 2. The Leaven; the progress of the kingdom under the idea of a contagious outspread. III. Preciousness 1. The Hid Treasure; the preciousness of the kingdom under the idea of discovering what was hid. 2. The Goodly Pearl; the preciousness of the kingdom under the idea of closing with what is offered. IV. Separation The Draw-net; the separation between good and evil in the great day. It is not a valid objection to this division that in several cases, if not in all, the subjects reciprocally overlap each other; it is, in the circumstances, natural and necessary that they should. Thus, in regard to the first pair, the work of the adversary appears in the sower, and the contact of believers with unbelievers appears in the tares; but I think these are in either case incidental and subordinate, while the leading idea of the first is the reception given to the gospel by different classes of men, and the leading idea of the second is the wile of the devil in his effort to destroy the work of Christ. We must, however, beware of giving too much and too minute attention to the sequences and mutual relations of the parables. Most of them, in point of fact, are found in the narrative as isolated lessons, each complete in itself and independent of others. Even in this group, although the connections are interesting and obvious, they are not essential. The meaning of each specimen may be substantially discerned without reference to its place in the series. By studying each apart you may learn the lesson well; but by studying all together you may learn the lesson better. On the face of the narrative it appears that the first four were addressed to a multitude congregated on the margin of the lake, and the last three more privately to a smaller circle of disciples in a neighbouring house; but there seems no ground for supposing that the two portions were separated from each other by any considerable interval of time or space. I freely concede that there is some ground for the distinction between the more outward and obvious aspects of the kingdom presented in the first four, and the more inward and experimental matters which, in the last three, were subsequently communicated to a more private circle; but the distinction, though real and perceptible, does not appear to me so fundamental and so deeply marked as to justify those who make it the turning-point of their exposition. There is a parallel which the thoughtful reader of the Scriptures will not fail to observe, although a prudent expositor will beware of attempting to trace it too minutely, between the seven parables of this chapter and the epistles to the Seven Churches of Asia, in the beginning of the Apocalypse. The two groups agree in this, that both represent by a series of examples various features of the kingdom, and various obstacles with which it must contend: they differ in that, while the examples given in the Gospels are pictures drawn by the imagination, the examples given in the Apocalypse are facts taken from history. But as all the characteristics and vicissitudes of his Church were present to the Head from the beginning, it was as easy for him to exhibit an image of its condition through the ministry of Matthew, as to record examples after they emerged in fact, through the ministry of John. In both cases—alike in the pictures presented to the Galilean crowd and the registered events sent to the Asiatic Churches—the Master’s design is to exhibit the kingdom on all its sides, that the observer’s view, whether of beauties or of blemishes, may be correct and full. I subjoin for the reader’s information the view of those who see in this series of parables the subsequent historical development of the Church, as it is briefly and clearly expressed by Lange: “We ... trace in the parable of the sower a picture of the apostolic age; in the parable of the tares, the ancient Catholic Church springing up in the midst of heresies; in the parable of the mustard-bush resorted to by birds of the air as if it had been a tree, and loaded with their nests, a representation of the outward Church as established under Constantine the Great; in the leaven that is mixed among the three measures of meal, the pervading and transforming influence of Christianity in the mediæval Church among the barbarous races of Europe; in the parable of the treasure in the field, the period of the Reformation; in the parable of the pearl, the contrast between Christianity and the acquisitions of modern culture and secularism; and in the last parable a picture of the closing judgment.” The parallel which the same critic institutes between the seven parables of this group and the seven beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, is an attractive study, and some of the coincidences are obvious and beautiful; but this line of observation should be jealously kept subordinate to the primary substantial lesson which each parable contains. On the one hand, I desire that these secondary and incidental views should not by their beauty draw to themselves a disproportionate share of our attention; and on the other hand, I am disposed to respect every earnest, sober, and reverential suggestion which any believing inquirer may throw out, regarding the lateral references and under-current secondary meanings of the Lord’s discourses; for they possess a length and breadth, and height and depth, which will exercise the minds of devout disciples as long as the dispensation lasts, and pass all understanding when it is done. FOOTNOTES 1. But in order to employ analogy with effect more is needful than to make sure that the two objects or acts compared are similar without being identical: the design for which a comparison is made enters as an essential element, and decisively determines its value. Between two given objects an analogy may exist, good for one purpose but worthless for another. Given two balls, spherical in form and equal in size, the one of wood and the other of iron; and let the question be, Do these two objects bear any analogy to each other, real in itself and capable of being usefully employed? The question cannot yet be answered: we must first ascertain for what purpose the comparison is instituted. The two balls are like each other in form, but unlike in material; whether is it in respect of their form or their material that you propose to compare them? If one of them rolls along a gently inclined plane, you may safely infer that the other, when placed in the same position, will follow the same course; for although different in other features they are similar in form. But you cannot infer that because one floats when thrown into the water the other will float too, for in respect to specific gravity there is no similarity between them. Again, let two pieces of wood, cut from the same tree, be brought together, the one a cube, the other a sphere; you may safely conclude, if one swim in water that the other will swim too, because though of diverse forms they are of the same specific gravity; but you cannot conclude, if the one roll on an inclined plane, that the other will roll also, because though of the same specific gravity they are diverse forms. Two objects may be compared for the purpose of inferential analogy, although in nine of their qualities they are wholly dissimilar, if they resemble each other in one, and that the quality with respect to which the comparison is instituted. Again, although two objects be similar in nine of their properties, and dissimilar only in one, no useful analogy can be instituted between them if the object for which the comparison is made save with respect to the one point in which they are dissimilar. An acquaintance with such simple rudiments would go far to correct blunders both in the construction and the exposition of analogies.[1] 2. Christ made it his business to speak in parables; and, indeed, one may say, the whole visible world is only a parable of the invisible world. The parable is not only something intermediate between history and doctrine; it is both history and doctrine—at once historical doctrine and doctrinal history. Hence its enchaining, ever fresher, and younger charm. Yes, parable is nature’s own language in the human heart; hence its universal intelligibility, its, so to speak, permanent sweet scent, its healing balsam, its mighty power to win one to come again and again to hear. In short, the parable is the voice of the people, and hence also the voice of God.—Die Gleichniss-reden Jesu Christi, von Fred. Arndt, vol. i. 2.[2] 3. It is not, however, by the universal consent of critics that even this is admitted as a genuine parable. Schultze boldly excludes it; but he excludes also all the group in Matt. xiii. except the Tares. By one arbitrary rule after another, he cuts down the whole number of our Lord’s parables to eleven.—A. H. A. Schultze, de parabolarum J. C. indole poetica com. Men have good cause to suspect the accuracy of their artificial rules, when the application of them works such havoc. Better that we should have no critical rules, than adopt such as separate on superficial literal grounds, things that the judgment of the Church and the common sense of men have in all ages joined together as substantially of the same class.[3] 4. Notes on the Parables.[4] 5. In reference to Bauer’s classification, Limbourg Brower (de parabol. Jesu.) observes that the distinction between parables that are dogmatic and parables that are moral cannot successfully be maintained, because of the intimate union maintained in the discourses of Jesus between the revelation of truth and the inculcation of duty. This remark, in connection with its ground, is decisive not only against the particular division to which it is applied, but to all divisions, in as far as they pretend to be logically distinct and complete.[5] 6. Gerlach in Lange.[6] 7. In Matthew (Matthew 13:13) he speaks in parables, “because (???), they seeing, see not:” and in Mark (Mark 4:12), and Luke (Luke 8:10), “that (???) seeing they might not see.” Two different objects were effected at the same time, and by the same act, corresponding to those two terms; it is true that the Lord employed parables, as one employs pictures to teach a child, because his auditors were children in understanding; and it is also true that he veiled his doctrines under metaphor in order that those who were children in understanding but in malice men, might not perceive his drift, and so might not violently interfere to suppress his ministry. Thus according to the explanation which he gave at the moment, “Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath” (Matthew 13:12).[7] 8. The Parables of the Kingdom are, as it were, a picture gallery, and we walk up and down it, examining each picture by itself. We must not forget, however, that these are heavenly pictures that hang around us,—that heavenly things are here exposed to view. A heavenly interpreter walks by our side: we must have a heavenly sense if we would grasp the meaning of what we hear and see. If our study quicken this sense within us, so that it shall grow clearer and sharper before every picture, a rich treat awaits us, for the heavenly Gallery is great.—Dräseke, vom Reich Gottes, i., 270.[8] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 3: 1.01. THE SOWER ======================================================================== I. THE SOWER. “The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side. And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow; and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: and when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: but other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.... Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower. When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side. But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended. He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”—Matthew 13:1-9; Matthew 13:18-23. The parable is, in our language at least, so uniformly associated with this name, that it would not readily be recognised under any other designation; but “The four kinds of ground” (viererlei Acker), the title which seems to be in ordinary use among the Germans, is logically more correct, inasmuch as it points directly to the central idea, and expresses the distinctive characteristic. At this period a great and eager multitude followed the steps of Jesus and hung upon his lips. A certain divine authority, strangely combined with the tenderest human sympathy, marked his discourses sharply off, as entirely different in kind from all that they had been accustomed to hear in the synagogue. Finding that instincts and capacities hitherto dormant in their being were awakened by his word, “the common people heard him gladly.” At an earlier hour of the same day on which this parable was spoken, the circle of listeners that encompassed the Teacher had become so broad and dense, that his mother and brothers, who had come from home to speak with him, were obliged to halt on the outskirts of the crowd, and pass their message in from mouth to mouth. In these circumstances, the Preacher’s work must have been heavy, and doubtless the worker was weary. Having paused till the press slackened, he privately retired to the margin of the lake, desiring probably to “rest a while;” but no sooner had he taken his seat beside the cool still water, than he was again surrounded by the anxious crowd. At once to escape the pressure and to command the audience better when he should again begin to speak, he stepped into one of the fishing-boats that floated at ease close by the beach, on the margin of that tideless inland sea. From the water’s edge, stretching away upward on the natural gallery formed by the sloping bank, the great congregation, with every face fixed in an attitude of eager expectancy, presented to the Preacher’s eye the appearance of a ploughed field ready to receive the seed. As he opened his lips, and cast the word of life freely abroad among them, he saw, he felt, the parallel between the sowing of Nature and the sowing of Grace. Into that mould, accordingly, he threw the lesson of saving truth. Grasping the facts and laws of his own material world, and wielding them with steady aim as instruments in the establishment of his spiritual kingdom, in simple yet majestic terms he said, “Behold, a sower went forth to sow.” Whether a sower was actually in sight at that moment in a neighbouring field or not, every man in that rural assemblage must have been familiar with the act, and would instantly recognise the truth of the picture. The sower, with a bag of seed dependent from his shoulder, stalks slowly forth into the prepared field. With measured, equal steps, he marches in a straight line along the furrow. His hand, accustomed to keep time with his advancing footsteps, and to jerk the seed forward with considerable force, in order to secure uniformity of distribution, cannot suddenly stop when he approaches the hard trodden margin of the field. By habit the right hand continues to execute its wonted movement in unison with the sower’s steps as he is turning round; and thus a portion of the seed is thrown on the unploughed border of the field and the public path that skirts it. Birds, scared for a moment by the presence of the man, hover in the air till his back is turned on another tack, and then, each eager to be first, come swooping down, and swallow up all the grain that found no soft place where it fell for hiding in. Even if it should happen in any case that no birds were near, the seed that fell on the way side was as surely destroyed in another way: the alternative suggested in Luke’s narrative is, that “it is trodden under foot of men.” But while the portion of the seed that fell on the way side was thus certainly destroyed, it does not follow that the rest came to perfection: “Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: and when the sun was up they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.” The stony places are not portions of the field where many separate stones may be seen lying on the surface, but portions which consist of continuous rock underneath, with a thin sprinkling of soft soil over it. Here the young plants burst through the ground sooner than in spots where the seed found a deeper bed: but when the rains of spring have ceased, and the sun of summer has waxed hot, the moisture is quickly exhaled from the shallow stratum of soil, and forthwith the fair promise dies. But yet another slip there may be “between the cup and the lip:” even from the seed that falls on deep, soft ground, you cannot count with certainty on a rich return in harvest. Although the plants should without obstruction strike their roots deeply into the soft, moist earth, and rear their stalks aloft into the balmy air, they may be rendered barren at last by the simultaneous growth of rivals more imperious and more powerful than themselves. Unless the grain not only grow in deeply broken ground, but grow alone there, it cannot be fruitful: “Some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up and choked it.” Besides those plants that are more correctly denominated thorns, we may include under the term here all rank weeds, varying with countries and climates, which infest the soil and hurt the harvest. The green stalks that grow among thorns are neither withered in spring, nor stunted in their summer’s growth; they may be found in harvest taller than their fruitful neighbours; but the ear is never filled, never ripened, and the reaper gets nothing in his arms but long slender straw adorned at the top with graceful clusters of empty chaff. The roots of the thorns drank up the sap of the ground, while their branches veiled off the sunlight, and thus the good seed, starved beneath and overshadowed above, although it started fair in spring, produced nothing in the autumn. As Truth is one and Error manifold, so in regard to the seed sown, the story of failure is long and varied, the story of success is short and simple: “Other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.” The design of the picture is to reveal the various causes which at different times and places render the husbandman’s labour abortive and leave his garner empty. This done, there is no need of more. The seed, when none of these things impeded it, prospered as a matter of course, under the ordinary care of man and the ordinary gifts of God. Three distinct obstructions to the growth and ripening of the seed are enumerated in the parable. The statement is exact, and the order transparent. The natural sequences are strictly and beautifully maintained. The three causes of abortion—the way side, the stony ground, and the thorns—follow each other as the spring, the summer, and the autumn. In the first case the seed does not spring at all; in the second it springs, but dies before it grows up; in the third, it grows up, but does not ripen. If it escape the way side, the danger of the stony ground lies before it; if it escape the stony ground, the thorns at a later stage threaten its safety; and it is only when it has successively escaped all three that it becomes fruitful at length. In this case, the Lord himself gave both the parable and its explanation; he became his own interpreter. The Master takes us, like little children, by the hand and leads us through all the turnings of his first symbolic lesson, lest in our inexperience we should miss our way. The Son of God not only gave himself as a sacrifice for sin; he also laboured as a patient painstaking teacher of the ignorant: he is the Apostle as well as the High Priest of our profession. His instructions have been recorded by the Spirit in the Scriptures for our use; we may still sit at his feet and listen to his voice. He has taken his seat on the deck of a fishing-boat while the waters of the lake are still, and is discoursing to a congregation of Galileans from the neighbourhood who stand clustering on the shore. Let us join the outskirts of the crowd and hear that heavenly Teacher too. He speaks in parables: he fixes saving truth in the forms of familiar things, that it may be carried away and kept. We look with lively interest on the scene which these words conjure up before our eyes; but we should look on it reverently: it has not been given to us as a plaything. Gaze gravely, brother, into this parable, for “thou art the man” of whom it speaks: it reveals the way of life and the way of death to thee. If a traveller who possesses an accurate map of his route turn aside from it and perish in a pit, it will not avail him in his extremity to reflect that he carries the correct track in his hand. Alas! a literary admiration of the parable-stories which Jesus told in Galilee will not avail us, if we do not accept himself as our Saviour from sin. From the Lord’s own exposition here and elsewhere recorded, we learn that the seed is the word of God; that the sower is the man who makes it known to his neighbours; and that the ground on which the seed falls is the hearer’s heart. The main drift of the parable concerns the ground, and to it accordingly our attention must be chiefly directed. The lesson, however, is drawn, not from the inherent, essential properties of the soil, but from the accidental obstructions to the growth of grain which it may in certain circumstances contain: some notice, therefore, of the seed and the sower in their spiritual signification is not only profitable at this stage, but peremptorily necessary to the full apprehension of the instruction which the parable conveys. Seed has been created by God and given to man. If it were lost, it would be impossible through human power and skill to procure a new supply: the race would, in that case, perish, unless the Omnipotent should interfere again with his creating power. For spiritual life and food the fallen are equally helpless, and equally dependent on the gift of God. The seed is the word, and the word is contained in the Scriptures. When we drop a verse of the Bible into listening ears, we are sowing the seed of the kingdom. The seed is the word, but the Word is Christ: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ... and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” (John 1:1-51.) Christ is the living seed, and the Bible is the husk that holds it. The husk that holds the seed is the most precious thing in the world, next after the seed that it holds. The Lord himself precisely defines from this point of view the place and value of the Scriptures,—“They are they which testify of me” (John 5:39). The seed of the kingdom is himself the King. Nor is there any inconsistency in representing Christ as the seed while he was in the first instance also the sower. Most certainly he preached the Saviour, and also was the Saviour whom he preached. The incident in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16-22) is a remarkably distinct example of Christ being at once the Sower and the Seed. When he had read the lesson of the day, a glorious prophetic gospel from Isaiah, “he closed the book, and gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” As soon as he had taken from the Scriptures the proclamation concerning himself, he laid them aside, and presented himself to the people. The Saviour preached the Saviour, himself the Sower and himself the Seed. In the beginning of the Gospel, when the chosen band of sowers first went to work upon the ample field of the world, taught of the Spirit, they knew well what seed they ought to carry, and were ever ready to cast it in where they saw an opening. One of them, and he the greatest, formed and expressed a determination to know nothing among the people save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. Twice in one chapter (Acts 8:1-40), we learn incidentally, but with great precision, what kind of seed Philip the Evangelist carried always in his vessel, and cast into every furrow as he passed along. When a large congregation assembled in the city of Samaria to hear him, “he preached Christ unto them;” and when, on a subsequent occasion, he was called to deal with an anxious inquirer alone in the desert, “he opened his mouth and began at the same scripture”—He was led as a lamb to the slaughter—“and preached unto him Jesus.” This is the seed sent down from heaven to be the life of the world. The Sowers, although they have become a great company in these latter days, are still, like the reapers, “few” in relation to the vastness of the field. The Lord’s message to Ananias of Damascus concerning Saul, immediately after his conversion, graphically defines the office of a minister as a sower of the seed: “He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15). A vessel for holding Christ and dropping that precious seed into human hearts wherever an opening should appear—this is the true idea of a minister of the Gospel. Nor is the work confined to those who, being trained to it, and freed from other cares, may thereby be capable of conducting it on a larger scale. As every leaf of the forest and every ripple on the lake, which itself receives a sunbeam on its breast, may throw the sunbeam off again, and so spread the light around; in like manner, every one, old or young, who receives Christ into his heart may and will publish with his life and lips that blessed name. In the spirit of the Lord’s own precept regarding the harvest, we may all be encouraged to adopt and press the prayer that our Father, the husbandman, would send forth sowers into his field. We turn now to the Ground, and the various obstacles which there successively meet the seed and mar its fruitfulness. I. The Way side.—“When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.” A path beaten smooth by the feet of travellers skirts the edge, or, perhaps, runs by way of short cut through the middle of the field. The seed that falls there, left exposed on the surface, is picked up and devoured by birds. Behold in one picture God’s gracious offer, man’s self-destroying neglect, and the tempter’s coveted opportunity! The analogy being true to nature is instantly recognised and easily appreciated. There is a condition of heart which corresponds to the smoothness, hardness, and wholeness of a frequented footpath, that skirts or crosses a ploughed field. The spiritual hardness is like the natural in its cause as well as in its character. The place is a thoroughfare; a mixed multitude of this world’s affairs tread over it from day to day, and from year to year. It is not fenced like a garden, but exposed like an uncultivated common. That secret of the Lord, “Enter into thy closet,” and “shut the door,” is unknown; or if known, neglected. The soil, trodden by all comers, is never broken up and softened by a thorough self-searching. A human heart may thus become marvellously callous both to good and evil. The terrors of the Lord and the tender invitations of the Gospel are alike ineffectual. Falling only upon the external senses, they are swept off by the next current; as the solid grain thrown from the sower’s hand rattles on the smooth hard road side, and lies on the surface till the fowls carry it away. The parallel between the material and the moral here is more close and visible in the original than it appears in the English version. But our language is capable in this instance, like the Greek, of expressing by one phrase equally the moral and the material failure: “Every one that hears the word of the kingdom and does not take it in” (?? ?????????). The cause of the failure in both departments is, that the soil, owing to its hardness, does not take the seed into its bosom. The seed is good: “The word of God is quick and powerful;”—that is, it “is living, and puts forth energy.”9 Like buried moistened seed it swells and bursts, and forces its way through opposing obstacles. A heart of clay, smoothed and hardened on the surface, may hold it out for a lifetime; but a heart of stone could not keep it down, if it were once admitted, for a single day. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world;” “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink;” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;”—these and many such great solid seed-grains rain from heaven upon us in this land: shall we close all the avenues to our hearts and so leave that seed lying on the surface till the enemy carry it away? or shall the groanings which cannot be uttered, the convictions of sin in the conscience, rend at length the seared crust, that the seed may enter and occupy the life for God? If privileged and professing hearers of the Gospel come short of the kingdom, the fault lies not in the seed—the fault lies not often or to a great extent even in the sower, although his work may have been feebly and unskilfully done. If the seed is good, and the ground well prepared, a very poor and awkward kind of sowing will suffice. Seed flung in any fashion into the soft ground will grow; whereas, if it fall on the way side, it will bear no fruit, however artfully it may have been spread. My father was a practical and skilful agriculturist. I was wont, when very young, to follow his footsteps into the field, further and oftener than was convenient for him or comfortable for myself. Knowing well how much a child is gratified by being permitted to imitate a man’s work, he sometimes hung the seed-bag, with a few handfuls in it, upon my shoulder, and sent me into the field to sow. I contrived in some way to throw the grain away, and it fell among the clods. But the seed that fell from an infant’s hands, when it fell in the right place, grew as well and ripened as fully as that which had been scattered by a strong and skilful man. In like manner, in the spiritual department, the skill of the sower, although important in its own place, is, in view of the final result, a subordinate thing. The cardinal points are the seed and the soil. In point of fact, throughout the history of the Church, while the Lord has abundantly honoured his own ordinance of a standing ministry, he has never ceased to show, by granting signal success to feeble instruments, that results in his work are not necessarily proportionate to the number of talents employed. Nor does the cause of failure, in the last resort, lie in the soil. The man who receives the Gospel only on the hard surface of a careless life, is of the same flesh and blood, endued with the same understanding mind and immortal spirit, with his neighbour who has already become a new creature in Christ. Believers and unbelievers are possessed of the same nature and faculties. As the ground which has been trodden into a footpath is in all its essential qualities the same as that which has been broken small by the plough and harrow, so the human constitution and faculties of one who lives without God in the world are substantially the same as those which belong to the redeemed of the Lord. It was the breaking of the ground which caused the difference between the fruitful field and the barren way side. So those minds and hearts that now bear the fruits of faith were barren till they were broken; and those on which the good seed has often been thrown, only to be thrown away, may yet yield an increase of a hundredfold to their owner, when conviction and repentance shall have rent them open to admit the word of life. Felix the Roman governor was a specimen of the trodden way side. His heart, worn by the cares of business and the pleasures of sin passing in great volume alternately over it, presented no opening for the entrance of the Gospel. Paul accordingly, when called to preach before him, did not, in the first instance, pour out the simple positive message of mercy: he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come; thus plying the seared conscience with the terrors of the Lord, in the hope of breaking thereby the covering crust and preparing a seed bed for the word of life. But the earth, in that case, was as iron, and refused to yield even to an apostle’s blow. From the heart of Felix the message of mercy was effectually shut out. The jailer of Philippi was doubtless equally hard in a more vulgar sphere, but his defences were shattered: in that night of visitation his heart was rent as well as his prison, and over the openings, while they were fresh, the skilful sower promptly dropped the vital seed, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” The word entered, and its entrance gave life. At this point the parable addresses its lesson specifically to those who have lived without God in the world, and who have lived in the main comparatively at ease. They have not a real heart-possessing, life-controlling religion, and they have never been very sorry for the want of it. They have no part in Christ, and no cheering hope for eternity. They are not ready to die; and yet they cannot keep death at bay. They know that they ought to care for their souls, but in point of fact they do not care; they know there is cause to be alarmed, and yet they are not alarmed. They neither grieve for sin nor love the Saviour; yet perhaps a dark cloud-like thought sometimes sweeps across their brightest sky—We have not yet gone in by the open door of mercy, and while we are delaying it may be suddenly shut. The case might be understood well enough by those whom it concerns, if the same amount of attention were bestowed upon it that is ordinarily devoted to other branches of business. See the hard dry road that runs along the edge of a corn field: you are not surprised to find it barren in a harvest day; you know that grain, although sown there, would not grow, and you know the reason. The reason why the Gospel does you no good may be as clearly, as surely seen. Cares, vanities, passions, tread in constant succession over your heart, and harden it, so that the word of Christ, though it sound on the surface, never goes in, and never gets hold. Think not that the saints are by nature of another kind: they were once what you are, and you may yet become what they are, and more. “Break up your fallow ground.” Look into your own heart’s sin until you begin to grieve over it; look unto Jesus bearing sin until you begin to love him for his love. Tell God frankly in prayer that your heart is hard, and plead for the Holy Spirit to make it tender. The saints already in rest, and disciples in the body still, were once a trodden way side like yourself, as hard and as barren. Place your heart, as they did, without reserve in the Redeemer’s hands; bid him take the hardness out and make it new. Invite the Word himself to take up his abode within you; throw the doors widely open that the King of Glory may come in. When Christ shall dwell in your heart by faith, a godly sorrow underneath will soften every faculty of your nature, and over all the surface fruits of righteousness will grow. II. The Stony Ground.—A human heart, the soil on which the sower casts his seed, is in itself and from the first hard both above and below; but by a little easy culture, such as most people in this land may enjoy, some measure of softness is produced on the surface. Among the affections, when they are warm and newly stirred, the seed speedily springs. Many young hearts, subjected to the religious appliances which abound in our time, take hold of Christ and let him go again. This, on the one hand, as we learn by the result, was never a true conversion; but neither was it, on the other hand, a case of conscious, intentional deceit. It was real, but it was not thorough. Something was given to Christ, but because all was not given the issue was the same as if all had been withheld. In the rich young man the seed sprang hopefully, but it withered soon: he did not lightly part with Christ, but he parted: he was very sorrowful, but he went away. A Christian parent or pastor, diligent in his main business and fervent in prayer for success, observes at length in some young members of his charge a new tenderness of conscience, an earnest attention to the word, a subdued, reverential spirit, with frequency and fervency in prayer. With mingled hope and fear these symptoms are watched and cherished: the symptoms continue and increase: the converts are added to the Church, and perhaps their experience is narrated as an example. This is not a deception on the part of either teacher or scholar: it is a true outgrowth from the contact of human hearts with the word of life. Man, who looks only on the outward appearance, cannot with certainty determine in whom this promise of spring will be blasted by the summer heat, and in whom it will yield a manifold return to the reaper. When you cast your eye over the corn field soon after the seed has sprung, you may not be able to detect any difference between one portion and another; all may be alike fresh and green. But, if some parts of the field be deep soft soil, and other parts only a thin sprinkling of earth over unbroken rock, there is a decisive difference in secret even now, and the difference will ere long become visible to all. Come back and look upon the same field after it has lain a few days without rain under a scorching sun: you will find that while in some portions the young plants have increased in bulk without losing any of their freshness, in others the green covering has disappeared and left the ground as brown and bare as it was when the sower went forth to sow upon it. Where the earth is soft underneath, and so permits the roots to penetrate its depths, the towering stalks defy the summer’s drought; but where the roots are shut out from the heart, the leaves wither on the surface. If the law of God has never rent the “stony heart” and made it “contrite,” that is, bruised it small, you may, by receiving the Gospel on some temporary, superficial softness of nature, obtain your religion more easily and quickly than others who have been more deeply exercised; but you may perhaps not be able to hold it so fast or retain it so long. Testing trials are the method of the divine government, discipline the order of Christ’s house. He that endureth to the end shall be saved, but he that falls away in the middle shall not. The fair profession that grows over an unhumbled heart “dureth for a while,” but does not endure to the end. When tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, the religion which reached no further than the surface cannot maintain its place there; it withers root and branch. The inward affection, such as it was, and the outward profession together disappear. From him that hath not shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have. In the earlier centuries of the Christian era the profession of faith, when lightly assumed, was frequently and suddenly scorched off the so-called Christian’s lips by the pitiless persecution of heathen governments: in subsequent ages, and down even to our own day, Papal fires have burned fiercely in many lands, and before them every faith has faded except that which is of God’s own planting, and grows in the secret depths of believing souls. Nationally for several generations we have enjoyed freedom; but let us beware. The divine law, “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12), has not been repealed. Nor is this merely a caveat thrown in to keep our theology correct; it is a present and pressing truth. In every season and in every climate the sun of persecution is hot enough to kill the religion which grows in accidentally softened, natural affections, over a whole and unhumbled heart. Experience incontestably establishes the fact, although it may be difficult for philosophy to explain the reason of it, that slight persecutions have often been as effectual as the heaviest in blasting the deceptive appearance of religion, which, under favouring circumstances, grew for a time in the life of an unrenewed man. In point of fact, a sneer from some leading spirit in a literary society, or a laugh raised by a gay circle of pleasure-seekers in a fashionable drawing-room, or the rude jest of scoffing artisans in a work-shop, may do as much as the fagot and the stake to make a fair but false disciple deny his Lord. Young disciples, whose faith and hope are bursting through the ground, should be, not indeed distrustful of the Lord, but jealous of themselves. “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” Deeper sense of sin, clearer views of the Gospel, warmer love to Christ,—these are the safeguards against backsliding. Strive and pray for these. Do not keep Christ on the surface; let him possess the centre, and thence direct all the circumference of your life. “Whosoever will save his life,” by keeping its central mass all and whole for himself, “shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake,” opening and abandoning it to Christ from its circumference to its core, “shall find it.” It is then only his own, when he has without reserve absolutely given it away. It seems to have been after the manner of the seed on stony ground that king Saul’s faith grew and withered. It came away quickly at first, and presented a goodly appearance for a while; but the ground, broken and softened on the surface by Samuel’s ministry and the call to the kingdom, was rocky underneath, and the rock was never rent. When he was seated on the throne, with the thousands of Israel coming and going at his word, he began to feel the restraints of piety irksome, and to count the rebukes of the aged prophet rude. The sun of prosperity scorched the green growth of religious profession that had suddenly overspread his outward life. Michal, his daughter, better acquainted, probably, with the kingly airs of his later than with the pious confession of his earlier days, seems to have partaken of his inward hardness while she had no share of his superficial piety. Like him, she was ungodly in the depths of her soul; but unlike him, she disdained to wear the outward garb of godliness. When she exerted all the force of her irony in order to make her husband David ashamed of his own zeal in dancing before the Lord, she truly reflected the inner spirit though not the external profession of her father’s court. That taunt from the supercilious, curling lip of the royal princess, who had honoured him by consenting to become his wife, was a burning ray of persecution streaming on David’s defenceless head. If his religion had been confined to the surface, while the pomp and circumstance of royalty occupied his heart, it would have died out then and there, as the tender sprouting corn, whose roots rest on a rock, dies out under the scorching sun of Galilee. But David’s faith was deep, and it ripened rather than withered under the scornful glance of the worldly-minded princess, as corn, growing in good ground, fills better and ripens sooner where the sky is cloudless and the sun is fierce. That deep-seated stony hardness of heart which defies all the efforts of human cultivators is often broken small by the hand of God. It appears that Lydia, through natural temperament or association with Christians, or both together, had attained some measure of spiritual susceptibility, for she confessed the truth and attended the prayer-meeting by the river side; but the seed of the word which had sprung on the surface of her life had not yet struck its root so deep as to withstand persecution if it should arise. She is described as a woman who sold purple and worshipped God: she had an honest business and a true religion, and were not these enough? No; the next fact of her history was the cardinal point of her life,—“whose heart the Lord opened that she attended to the things that were spoken of Paul.” The seed from that skilful sower’s hand went in and took possession, but it entered at an opening made by the power of God. Whether the rock was rent by the dew of the Spirit dropping silently, or by some stroke of Providence falling on her person or her material interests, we know not. If ordinary providential methods were employed, we know not, of the many instruments that lie close to the Ruler’s hand, which he was pleased to use in that particular case. Perhaps the child of this honest and religious woman died, and her bosom, bereft of its treasure, rent with aching. Perhaps, on the day that Paul was there, she came to the meeting for the first time in widow’s weeds, and the stroke that tore her other self away had left a wide avenue open into her heart. Perhaps,—for small instruments do great execution when they are wielded by an almighty arm,—an adverse turn of trade had left the hitherto affluent matron dependent on a neighbour’s bounty for daily bread. Were other dealers, less scrupulously honourable than herself, underselling her in the market? Was her foreman unsteady? for, being a woman, she must needs depend much on hired helpers. Or did a living husband grieve her more than a dead one could? By some such instrument, or by another diverse from them all, or without any visible agent, the Lord opened Lydia’s heart, and the word of life entered in power. Henceforth she was not her own; Christ dwelt in her heart by faith, and her life was devoted to the Lord her Redeemer. Deep in that broken heart the seed is rooted, and now no temptation, however intense and long-continued, shall be able to blanch its green blade or blast its filling ear. Lord, increase our faith. When trouble comes, whether under the ordinary procedure of God’s government or more directly from his hand, whether in the form of bodily suffering or spiritual convictions, possess your soul in patience and wait for the end of the Lord. “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Hebrews 12:11). III. The Thorns.—In the application of the lesson this term must be understood not specifically, but generically. In the natural object it indicates any species of useless weed that occupies the ground and injures the growing crop: in the spiritual application it points to the worldly cares, whether they spring from poverty or wealth, which usurp in a human heart the place due to Christ and his saving truth. The earthly affections in the heart which render religion unfruitful in the life are enumerated under two heads,—“The care of this world,” and “the deceitfulness of riches;” the term riches includes also, as we may gather from Luke’s narrative, the pleasures which riches procure. Both from our own experience in the world and the specific terms employed by the Lord in the interpretation of the parable, we learn that all classes and all ranks are on this side exposed to danger. This is not a rich man’s business, or a poor man’s; it is every man’s business. The words point to the two extremes of worldly condition, and include all that lies between them. “The care of the world” becomes the snare of those who have little, and “the deceitfulness of riches,” the snare of those who have much. Thus the world wars against the soul, alike when it smiles and when it frowns. Rich and poor have in this matter no room and no right to cast stones at each other. Pinching want and luxurious profusion are, indeed, two widely diverse species of thorns; but when favoured by circumstances they are equally rank in their growth and equally effective in destroying the precious seed. In two distinct aspects thorns, growing in a field of wheat, reflect as a mirror the kind of spiritual injury which the cares and pleasures of the world inflict when they are admitted into the heart: they exhaust the soil by their roots, and overshadow the corn with their branches. 1. Thorns and thistles occupying the field suck in the sap which should go to nourish the good seed, and leave it a living skeleton. The capability of the ground is limited. The agriculturist scatters as much seed in the field as it is capable of sustaining and bringing to maturity. When weeds of rank growth spring up, their roots greedily and masterfully drain the soil of its fatness for their own supply; and as there is not enough both for them and the grain stalks, the weakest goes to the wall. The lawful, useful, but feeble grain is deprived of its sustenance by the more robust intruder. Under the ground as well as on its surface, might crushes right. Robbers fatten on the spoil of loyal citizens, and loyal citizens are left to starve. Moreover, the weeds are indigenous in the soil: this is proved by the simple fact of their presence, for certainly they were not sown there by the husbandman’s hand. The grain, on the other hand, is not native; it must be brought to the spot and sown; it must be cherished and protected as a stranger. The two occupants of the ground, consequently, are not on equal terms; it is not a fair fight. The thorns are at home; the wheat is an exotic. The thorns are robust and can hold their own; the wheat is delicate and needs a protector. The weeds accordingly grow with luxuriance, while the wheat stalks in the neighbourhood, cheated of their sustenance under ground, become tall, empty, barren straws. 2. Thorns and thistles, favoured as indigenous plants by the suitableness of soil and climate, outgrow the grain both in breadth and height. The outspread leaves and branches of the weeds constitute a thick screen between the ears of corn and the sunshine. Under that blighting shadow, although the stalks may grow tall and the husks develop themselves in their own exquisite natural forms, no solid seed is formed or ripened. On the spot which the thorns usurped, the reaper gathers only straw and chaff. How vivid on both its sides is the picture, and how truthfully it represents the case! The faculties of the human heart and mind are limited, like the productive powers of the ground. Neither the understanding nor the affections are endowed with an indefinite capacity of reception. The soil, even where it is rich and deep, may be soon exhausted, especially where the more gross and greedy weeds have taken up their abode. You are convinced of sin and begin to cry for pardon; you plead the Redeemer’s sacrifice and righteousness; you grieve over your own backsliding, and come anew to the blood of sprinkling; the twin emotions, confession and prayer, struggle together in your breast, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” Thus far, it is well. The field has been broken; the seed has been covered in the ground; the covered seed has sprung; the sprung seed has grown apace and now seems near maturity. The evil spirit that seeks to spoil this fair promise seldom comes in the form of speculative unbelief. When you begin to fall away, you do not begin by abjuring your religion, or denying the Lord. You do not pull the grown but unripe corn up by the roots and cast it over the hedge: the harvest is marred in a more secret and silent way. The kingdom of the wicked one, cunningly in this matter imitating the kingdom of God, “cometh not with observation.” Weeds spring up among the wheat. At first they are small and scarcely perceptible; the inexperienced, apprehending no danger, are put off their guard. The first leaves which these bitter roots put forth are generally smooth, tender, and apparently harmless, giving to the inexperienced eye no indication of their rough and ravenous nature. But these thorns, if they are not watched, curbed, and killed, may yet cause the loss of the soul. If you are poor, anxieties about work and wages, clothes and food, wife and children, become the thorn plants, harmless in appearance at first, which in the end may choke the seed of grace in your heart. If you are rich, the pleasure which wealth may purchase, or love of the wealth itself, may become the bitter root, which in its maturity may overpower all spiritual life within you, and leave only chaff, to be driven away in the great day of the Lord. Watch and pray: these cares and pleasures present themselves at first in humble and submissive guise; it is by their gradual growth that they are enabled to inflict a deadly injury. Their roots, if not checked, silently drain all the sap of your soul, and the kingdom of God within you, although never formally abjured, is permitted to sink into decay. Your time, your memory, your imagination, your affections, your thoughts, late and early,—all that constitutes your life, instead of being devoted first to the kingdom of God and his righteousness, are usurped and absorbed by the things that perish in the using. When you betake yourself to the word, to prayer, to communion, your heart, already searched, drained, scourged by the greedy roots of rank earthly lusts, is a sapless, impoverished, shrivelled thing, where faith in God and loving obedience to his law can no longer grow. Thus perish many bright promises; and high above the ruin, living and abiding for ever stands the word of Christ a witness against all who have been undone by neglecting it, “No man can serve two masters.” Worldly cares nursed by indulgence into a dangerous strength are further like thorns growing in a corn field, in that they interpose a veil between the face of Jesus and the opening, trustful look of a longing soul. It is the want of free, habitual exposure to the Sun of righteousness that prevents the ripening of grace in Christians. Unless we turn our eye often upward, and expose the struggling, springing seed of faith to the beams of the Redeemer’s love, there will be no steady growth of grace, and no ultimate fruit of righteousness. It is thus that insinuating, overspreading, domineering cares quench both hope and holiness: they hinder the simple, tender, confiding look unto Jesus which is necessary to the increase or maintenance of spiritual life. The love of Christ freely streaming down from heaven through the Scriptures and by the ministry of the Spirit, when freely admitted into an open, willing heart, by degrees turns fear into hope, doubt into faith, and the feeble struggle of a child into the strong man’s glorious victory; as unimpeded sunlight converts the minute mustard seed into a towering tree, and the tender sprouts of spring into the golden treasures of harvest. A thickly woven web of cares and pleasures interposed between the soul and the Saviour is a chief cause of failure in “God’s husbandry.” Nor is the harvest safe although the thorny shade that overhangs it be not completely impervious and constant. Fitful glances of sunshine now and then will not bring the fruit to maturity. Stand beneath the branches of a forest tree on a day that is at once bright and breezy: you may observe on the ground at your feet a curious network of flickering light trembling and dancing about in perpetual motion. The sunbeams that penetrate at intervals through openings among the agitated branches are barren though beautiful. The grass that gets no other light grows slim and pithless, bearing no seed-knot on its slender top. Sunlight admitted now and then through apertures in the leafy awning is not sufficient for the processes of nature; the grain field must get its bosom opened without impediment permanently to the sun. It is thus that snatches of spiritual exercise do not avail to promote the growth, or even to preserve the life of grace in a heart that in the main is habitually overshadowed by a crowd of overgrown imperious worldly cares. Evening and morning you may open the Bible and bend the knee, but the tender plant of righteousness in your heart is not effectually revived by these brief and fitful glances. Before the drooping leaves have had time to feel the genial warmth, another cloud has closed the orifice and left them again in the chill damp shade. Even the Lord’s day, as a gap left open between earth and heaven, is not by any means so wide as it seems; for the memory of the past week’s business and pleasure stretches over on the one side, until it meet, or almost meet, the anticipation of the next week’s business and pleasure, so that even on the Sabbath the world still overshadows the soul of its votary. Shut out, except at short and uncertain intervals, from the Light of Life, he passes through the summer of his probation with a well-proportioned but empty form of godliness; and the Lord, when he comes at the close to gather the wheat into his garner, finds on that portion of the field only the rustling chaff of a hollow profession, instead of the fruit unto holiness that grows on living souls. Some lessons suggest themselves in connection with this portion of the parable, and claim a brief notice at our hand. 1. As the thorns are indigenous and spring of their own accord, while the good seed must be sown and cherished; so, vain thoughts, lodged in our hearts from the dawn of our being, have the advantage of first possession, and get the start of their competitors in the race for supremacy. Lurking unobserved between the folds of nature’s faculties, before the understanding is developed, they come away early and grow rapidly, and obtain a firm footing before the saving truth, the seed of the kingdom, has burst the kernel and broken through the ground. Crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts; begin that work early, and persevere in that work to the end. 2. As long as the weeds live they grow. Every moment, until they are cast out of the field, they spread themselves more widely over its surface and drain away more of its nutritive juice. Delay is dangerous. If it be painful to pull out the root of bitterness from your heart to-day, it will be more painful to-morrow. Take for example the love of money: we know well that though money is a useful servant it is a hard master; be assured if it get and keep the mastery of a soul, its little finger in the end will be thicker than its loins were at the beginning. Avarice chastises its slave in middle life with whips; but if he abide its slave, it will chastise him when he is old with scorpions. 3. The thorn is a prickly thing; it tears the husbandman’s flesh, as well as destroys the fruit of his field. In like manner the care of the world and the deceitfulness of riches lacerate the man who permits them to grow rank in his heart. The vain man is continually meeting with slights, or suspecting that his neighbours are about to offer them. The miser is always losing money, or trembling lest he should lose it in the next transaction. The world itself knows, and in its proverbs confesses, that around the most coveted pleasures are set sharp thorns, which wound the hand that tries to pluck the rose. 4. It was where the seed and the thorns grew together that the mischief was done. If the grain is permitted to occupy alone the heart of the field, the thorns that grow outside and around it may constitute a hedge of defence, not only harmless but useful. There is a place for cares, and for riches too,—a place in which they help and do not hinder the kingdom of God. Kept in its own sphere, the lawful business of life becomes a protecting fence round the tender plant of grace in a Christian’s heart. Permit not the thorns to occupy the position which is due to the good seed. Not as rivals within the field, but as guards around it, earthly affairs are innocent and safe. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” 5. When the husbandman perceives a huge prickly weed in the midst of his field robbing and overshadowing the corn, he sends his servant to cast out the intruder. In such a case, a bare spot is left where the thistle grew; but at this stage experiences diverge and travel on different lines towards opposite results. In some cases the blank is soon made up again, and the corn waves level like a lake over all the field, so that none could tell where the thistle stood: in others, the blank caused by the removal of a rank weed remains a blank throughout the summer, presenting to the reapers in harvest only a spot of bare ground. Why do opposite effects proceed from similar operations? Time was the turning point. In the one case the weed was torn out at an early period of the summer; in the other case it was torn out too late. We have often seen a soul placed in imminent danger by the overgrowth of cares or pleasures that threatened by their rankness to choke the seed of the word; and we have afterwards seen that soul delivered from the danger, by a stroke of God’s providence that plucked out the weeds in time. Many of the saved both in earth and in heaven now praise the Lord, because he tore the idols from their hearts and spared not for their crying. The love of Christ that had been planted in their youth, and had, though hard pressed, still kept hold, soon spread again and occupied all the empty space, whence the fortune, or fame, or living treasures dearer still, had been plucked. When he came to himself, that disciple, afflicted sore but comforted again, clearly saw and gladly sang the mercy and judgment joined together that had cleared the room for Christ in his heart. But examples of an opposite experience, here and there one, stand on the edge of life’s crowded highway, ghastly as the pillar of salt on the plain of Sodom, burning into the soul of the passenger the warning word, “Be in time.” An old man has, by the hand of the Lord in providence, been stripped of all his treasures. These treasures, whether they were in themselves the noblest or the meanest,—for when a man made in the likeness of God abandons himself to the worship of an idol, it matters little whether the idol be made of fine gold or of dull clay,—these treasures possessed and filled his heart. Round them his understanding and affections had closely clasped, so that his whole nature had taken the mould of the object which it grasped. In this attitude the man grew old: the faculties of his mind became hard and rigid like the members of his body. The bosom, no longer pliable to open by gentle pressure, was rudely rent, and its portion in one lump wrenched away. A deep, broad, dark chasm, like the valley of the shadow of death, was left: and the chasm remained dark and empty to the end; for neither the affections of the old man’s soul nor the joints of the old man’s frame would fold round another portion now. Ah! the cares and pleasures that drove Christ from the heart may be cast out too late for letting Christ come in again to occupy the empty room. “Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.” “To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” IV. The Good Ground.—Guided by the Great Teacher’s own interpretation, we have travelled through the series of successive obstacles which hinder the growth and mar the fruitfulness of God’s word in the hearts of men,—travelled through, weeping as we went. At the close of this sad but instructive journey, a beauteous sight bursts into view: it is a field of ripe grain on a sunny harvest day. The ground was ploughed, and the seed sank beneath it from the sower’s hand in spring; the earth was soft and sapful to a sufficient depth, and the roots of the springing corn found ample room to range in; the soil was clean, and its fatness, not shared by usurping weeds, went all to the nourishment of the sown seed: therefore in the balmy air and under the beaming sun it is ripe to-day, and ready to fill the reaper’s bosom. It is a refreshing, satisfying sight; but, fair though it be, we shall not now linger long to gaze upon it. By the parable the Master meant mainly to teach us what things are adverse to his kingdom. Having learned this lesson from his lips, we go away grateful for his pungent, deeply-traced, and memorable warnings, without pausing to examine minutely the glad prospect to which our thorny path has led. The traveller who has come safely through many dangers by flood and field, narrates at large, with burning lips and throbbing heart, the varied toils of the journey; but his home,—he does not describe, he enjoys it.10 While all the ground that was broken, deep, and clean in spring and summer, bears fruit in harvest, some portions produce a larger return than others. The picture in this feature is true to nature; and the fact in the spiritual sphere also corresponds. There are diversities in the Spirit’s operation; diversities in natural gifts bestowed on men at first; diversities in the amount of energy exerted by believers as fellow-workers with God in their own sanctification; and diversities, accordingly, in the fruitfulness which results in the life of Christians. While all believers are safe in Christ, each should covet the best gifts. No true disciple will be contented with a thirtyfold increase of faith, and patience, and humility, and love, and usefulness in his heart and life for the Lord, if through prayer and watching—if by denying ungodliness and worldly lusts—if by sternly crucifying the flesh and trustfully walking with God, he may rise from thirty to sixty, and from sixty to an hundredfold in that holy obedience which grows on living faith. FOOTNOTES 9. ??? ??? ? ????? ??? ????, ??? ???????.—Hebrews 4:12. [9] 10. It is not intimated by the parable that our Father the Husbandman finds any of the good ground in us: the ground, like the tree in another analogical lesson of the Lord, is not good until it is made good. It is beyond the scope of this parable to explain how the ground is rendered soft and kept free from thorns. The Teacher was content in this lesson to tell us what the good ground produces; we must discover elsewhere in the Scriptures whence its goodness is derived. “...The similitude from nature is no longer applicable to the mystery of the kingdom of heaven; as a parable, it has already reached its limits, when the truth goes beyond the similitude. There is a miraculous seed superior indeed to all natural seed, so powerful that by its growth it can and will choke all thorns. Nay more, it can also break through the rock in striking its root down into the earth, and can make that to be again a field of God which was a way for the feet of the prince of this world.”—Stier in loc. Among the many incidental and collateral applications of which this parable is susceptible, one of the most interesting and instructive is—That every man has within himself the elements of all the four kinds of ground. The conception is thus presented by Fred. Arndt: “At the outset, the word of God finds all in the first unreceptive condition; we go away without experiencing its power, and remain in a state of nature, unconverted. Next, the word begins to take effect upon us, and we are awakened. Oh now the word of the Lord burns with a holy glow in our hearts! We give ourselves over with our whole souls in those first days of love. We have found heaven; we have seen it opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man. But this condition does not endure. The fightings begin from within and from without, and the flame is quenched. The heart becomes cold and empty. The life of faith becomes silent and slow in its course. We become languid in watching and prayer; the love of the world and its sinful pleasures awakes again; and before we are aware, we are trying to serve both God and the world. Then the war bursts out: this moment God is above us, the next beneath us, and we get no rest until we have renounced the world, and surrendered our heart and life to God wholly, and to God alone. Thus we pass, in the faith-school of the Holy Spirit, through all the four classes, deceiving ourselves and being deceived, until at last, after many a bitter experience, we strike upon the narrow way, and through the strait gate.”—Die Gleichniss-reden Jes. Chr.[10] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 4: 1.02. THE TARES ======================================================================== II. THE TARES. “Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.... Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; the enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”—Matthew 13:24, Matthew 13:36-43. A As the main design of the first parable is to exhibit the kingdom in its relation to unbelieving men, who, in various forms and with various measures of aggravation, ultimately reject it; the main design of the second is to exhibit the kingdom in its relation to the wicked one, who endeavours, by cunning stratagem, to destroy it. In either case there is a conflict: in the first, the conflict is waged chiefly between the word, which is the seed of the kingdom, and the various evil dispositions which impede its growth in the hearts of men; in the second, the conflict is waged chiefly, as in the mysterious temptation in the wilderness, between Christ, man’s Redeemer, and the devil, the adversary of man. In the first parable the obstacles to the progress of the kingdom lay in the heedlessness, the hardness, and the worldliness of men; in the second, the old serpent is the opposer, and wicked men are wielded as instruments in his hands. The picture is sketched from nature; the lines are very few, but each contributes a feature, and all, together, make the likeness complete. A Galilean countryman, after having fenced and ploughed and cleaned his field, has watched the condition of the soil and the appearance of the sky, until he has found a day on which both were suitable for the grand decisive operation of the season, the sowing of the seed. With anxiety, but in hope, this critical and cardinal act is performed; the seed is committed to the ground. It was “good seed” that the careful husbandman cast among the clods. If the last season’s crop was of inferior quality, he and his children have cheerfully lived upon the worst, that the best might be reserved for sowing; if the last crop was scanty, the family were content with a less plentiful meal; and if none of the previous year’s produce was well ripened, better grain has been bought in a distant market, that at all hazards a sufficient quantity of good seed may be secured for the coming season. Those only who have lived among them, and shared their lot, know how much the poor but intelligent and industrious cultivators of the soil will do and bear in order to preserve or obtain plenty of “good seed.” The great crisis of the season is now past; and the husbandman, wiping his brow as he glances backward upon his completed work, goes home at sunset with limbs somewhat weary, but a heart full of hope. The next portion of the picture is of a dark and dismal hue. When the farmer and his family, innocent and unsuspicious, are fast asleep, a neighbour, too full of envy for enjoying rest, stalks forth into the same field under cover of night, and with much labour scatters something broadcast over its surface. He is secretly sowing tares, with the malicious design of damaging or destroying the wheat. As soon as the deed of darkness is done, he creeps stealthily back to his own bed, and in the morning, when he meets his fellow-villagers, does his best to put on the air of an innocent man. Weeks pass; showers fall; the seed springs and covers all the ground with beautiful green. The owner visited his field from time to time in spring, and thought it promised well. But at that period of the summer, still a good while before harvest, when the ears of the grain begin to appear, some of the farmer’s servants, looking narrowly into the quality of the crop, discovered that a large proportion of it was darnel. Forthwith they reported the sad intelligence to their master, and requested permission to pluck out the intruders. It was agreed among them that good seed had been sown, and the darnel or false wheat was by common consent and without hesitation set down as the work of an enemy. As to the treatment of the disaster now that it had occurred, the master’s judgment was clear, and his order explicit: to pull out the darnel at this stage, as the servants proposed, would hurt the wheat more than help it; both must be permitted to grow together till the harvest; they may be safely and effectually separated then. Some interesting questions connected with the natural objects claim our regard in the first instance, before we proceed to investigate the spiritual significance of the parable. What are the tares? The original term does not elsewhere occur in Scripture, and in the total absence of examples for comparison, it is somewhat difficult to ascertain its precise signification. The word and the thing which it signifies have exercised the learning and ingenuity of expositors both in ancient and in modern times. On such a subject as this it is on the line of natural history rather than philology that the investigation should mainly proceed; there, from the nature of the case, surer results may be obtained. Through the increased facility of making local inquiries which has of late years been enjoyed, it is now known, and apparently with one consent acknowledged by intelligent inquirers, that the seed which the malicious neighbour sowed in order to injure the produce of the field was Lolium temulentum, or darnel, a kind of false wheat to which the Arabs of Palestine at this day apply a name (zowan) which bears some resemblance to (???????) the original word in the Greek text. 11 It has long narrow leaves and an upright stalk, and is indeed in all respects so like the wheat, that even an experienced eye cannot distinguish the two plants until they are in ear: the distinction then is manifest, and any one may observe it. The grains of the darnel are not so heavy as the wheat, and not so compactly set upon the stalk. They are poisonous, their specific effect both in man and in beast being nausea and giddiness. The remark of Schubert in his “Natural History,” quoted by Stier, that “this is the only poisonous grass,” is deeply significant in relation to the spiritual meaning of the parable; it suggests the reason why the Healer selected this plant as the symbol of sin. But another question meets us here, more obscure and difficult than either the appearance or the characteristic effects of the darnel,—the question whether it is originally a specifically different plant, or only wheat degenerated. Some maintain that it is wheat which, by some mysterious causes in the processes of nature, has fallen, as it were, into a lower type. This view imparts additional fulness to the parable in its spiritual application. So interpreted, the picture exhibits not only the low estate of the sinful, but also the fact that they have fallen from a higher. In such cases, however, there is some danger lest the beauty and appropriateness of the conception should entice us to receive it on insufficient evidence. The fact that some plants in certain adverse circumstances tend to degenerate, and in certain favourable circumstances to attain a higher type, is well known in natural history; but it seems questionable whether these changes ever take place to such an extent, and in such a uniform method, as must be assumed if we take darnel for degenerated wheat. Agriculturists in Palestine believe and declare, that, when the season is wet, the wheat which they sow in certain fields in spring grows as zowan in harvest. It is difficult for one who is accustomed to observe the uniformity of nature in the reproduction of each species from its own seed, to believe that transformations so great are accomplished at a single step. An American writer, one of the latest authorities, and, in respect to his abundant opportunities of observation, one of the best, bears witness that he has often seen the wheat and barley fields overrun with darnel, and that the native owners stoutly declare that the good wheat which they sowed has been changed into the false in the process of growth during a single season; but he intimates at the same time that he believes the men are mistaken, and that the presence of the darnel must be attributed to some other cause, and accounted for in some other way. 12 The suggestion that the same peculiarities of season which destroy the sown wheat may favour the springing of the darnel, that had lain in the ground dormant before, may possibly account for the present experience of the Syrian cultivators; or the effects may be in whole or in part due to other causes of which we are not cognizant; but the solution of this question is by no means essential to the right interpretation of the parable, and therefore we shall not prosecute the investigation further in this direction. Dr. Thomson gives unequivocal testimony, at the same time, that at the present day no instance is known of the growth of darnel among the wheat being caused by the malicious act of an enemy. This, however, as he distinctly owns, does not prove that the transaction depicted in the parable had no foundation in fact. It must have happened substantially in history, otherwise it would not have been introduced as a supposition into these lessons of the Lord. Some travellers have stated that this species of crime is known in India; but I do not set much value on the discovery of precisely identical facts in modern times. The existence of the representation in this parable is, simply as a matter of rational evidence, a tenfold stronger proof that the facts in their essential features actually happened, than any quantity of analogous cases drawn from other countries in later times. It is of greater importance to note that the malice which endured the toil of sowing tares in a neighbour’s field grows yet, and grows rankly in human breasts. In different ages and regions, that spiritual wickedness may clothe itself in bodies of diverse mould and hue, but it is in all times and places the same foul and malignant spirit, acting according to its kind. The same spirit that sowed darnel among wheat at night in a corn field of Galilee, two thousand years ago, will set fire to a stackyard, or hamstring the horses, or shoot the overseer from behind a hedge in our own day, and, alas! in some parts of our own land. As in the highest good, so in the deepest evil, there are diversities of operation by the same spirit. When we take into account the changes of fashion which occur both in clothing and in crime, we have no reason to be sceptical as to the ancient fact, and no difficulty in obtaining a modern specimen. From the results already gained, it appears obvious that the translation “tares” in our English version is unfortunate: it not only fails to represent clearly the state of the fact, but leads the reader’s mind away in a wrong direction. To an English reader the term suggests a species of legume, which bears no resemblance to wheat at any stage of its progress. By the use of this word the characteristic feature of the picture is greatly obscured. Had the plant which sprung from the envious neighbour’s seed been a legume, its presence would have been detected at the first, and it could have been separated at any stage. The darnel, on the contrary, cannot be distinguished from wheat until both are nearly ripe, and the process of separation, whether in the field or on the threshing-floor, is much more difficult. Again the Lord becomes his own interpreter: at the request of the disciples he explained to them in private the meaning of his allegory. The points are great, few, and clearly defined. In this journey the Master has kindly gone before us; reverently, trustfully, we shall follow his steps. “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world.” It is in connection with the “field” that the greatest difficulty has occurred, the greatest mistakes have been made, and the deepest injury has been done. Few words of Scripture are more plain; and yet few have been more grievously misunderstood and wrested. At the entrance of the inspired explanation, the expositor, bent on the defence of his own foregone conclusion, takes his stand, like a pointsman on a railway, and by one jerk turns the whole train into the wrong line. “The field is the world,” said the Lord: “The field is the Church,” say the interpreters. It is wearisome to read the reasonings by which they endeavour to fortify their assumption. Having determined that the field is the Church, they are compelled immediately to address themselves to the great practical question of discipline. If they were prepared to admit that there should be absolutely no discipline—that no man should be shut out from communion, however heretical his opinions or vicious his practice might be, their task under the general principle of interpretation which they have adopted would be very easy. The command is clear, cast none out of the “field,” however fully developed their wickedness may be, until the angels make the separation between good and evil at the consummation of all things. If the field means the Church, the exclusion of the unworthy by a human ministry is absolutely forbidden. But the expositors are not willing altogether to abandon discipline. They maintain, on the one hand, that this parable deals with and settles the question of the right to eject unworthy members from the communion of the Church; and on the other hand, that while it condemns excessive and puritanical strictness, it permits and justifies the ejection of those who are manifestly unworthy. Most of the commentaries that have come under my notice betray on this point weakness and inconsistency. If by this feature of the parable the Lord gives a decision on Church discipline, he forbids it out and out, in all its forms, and in all its degrees. The separation suggested, he permits not to be attempted at all, until he shall charge his angels to accomplish it at the end of the world. In my judgment, to contend for the right of excluding some of the ranker tares, after admitting that this parable bears upon the subject of ecclesiastical discipline, tends not only to perplex the student, but to throw a reflection on the authority of the Word. I see only two doors open: either cease to hold that the field is the Church, or cease to claim the right of excluding any from communion. Good old Benjamin Keach, in a portly volume on the parables, addressed “to the impartial reader,” and sent “from my house in Horsley Down, Southwark, August 20, 1701,” indicates with clearness and simplicity his own judgment; but, overawed by authority, seems afraid at the sound of his own words: “The field is the world; though it may, as some think, also refer to the Church. Marlorate saith by a synecdoche, a part for the whole, it signifies the Church; though this seems doubtful to me, and I rather believe it means the world.” The second of two reasons which he submits as the grounds of his opinion is,—“Because tares, when discovered to be such, must not grow among the wheat in the Church, but ought to be cast out, though they ought to live together in the world.” Here Keach reasons most naturally, and indeed irrefragably, against the interpretation that the world is the Church, from the monstrous consequence to which it necessarily leads. I am beyond measure amazed to find the general stream of interpretation, as far as I have had an opportunity of examining it, ancient and modern, German and Anglican, flowing in this channel. When I find the great and venerated name of Calvin contributing to swell this tide, I am compelled to pause and examine the subject anew; but my judgment remains the same. We must call no man master on earth; one is our master in heaven. It is not necessarily presumption in one of us to oppose the judgment of the great and good of a former age, especially on such a subject as this. In regard to all the relations between the Church and the civil power, we are in a better position for judging than either the early Reformers or the Continental and Anglican theologians of the present day. The general progress made since the time of Calvin in the historical development of the Christian Church, and the particular experience through which Christians in Scotland have in later times been led, greatly contribute to elevate our stand-point in relation to the discipline of the Church, and its right to freedom from civil control. As a child on the house-top can scan a wider landscape than a man on the ground, although the child may have been indebted to that man for his elevation; so we may own the Reformers as in a right sense our teachers, and yet on some subjects form a sounder judgment than they. Although no new revelation has been made since the Lord’s apostles were removed from the earth, the Church does under the government of her Head, advance from age to age; and the principle embodied in the declaration, “The least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matthew 11:11), emerges still in manifold subordinate fulfilments. As to the greatest modern scholars of Germany and England, the accepted and even lauded Erastianism in which they are steeped is a beam in their eye, which dims and distorts their sight when they look in the direction of the Church with its constitution and discipline. While on other subjects their insight is such that we may be content to sit at their feet, the view on this side is from their stand-point cut off short, as if by a mountain in the foreground, and they can afford us no help. “The field is the world:” in the prevailing confusion we hold to this, as the ship to her anchor in a storm. Men should remember when they explain away the meaning of the term “world,” and teach that it signifies the Church, that they are dealing not with a parable, but with the explanation of a parable given by the Lord. The parable is professedly a metaphor; but when the Lord undertook to tell his disciples what the metaphor meant, he did not give them another metaphor more difficult than the first. I venture to affirm that the expositors would have found it easier to show that the “field” is the Church than to show that the “world” is the Church. According to their view, it results that the Lord proposed to interpret his own allegory, but only gave on this point another allegory somewhat more obscure. The outrageousness of the conclusion proves the premises false. In affectionate tenderness to the twelve, the Lord Jesus undertook to translate a figurative expression which puzzled them into a literal expression which the feeblest might be able to comprehend. The “field” is the metaphor, and that metaphor interpreted is the “world;” it does not need to be interpreted over again. This Teacher means what he says. He points to this globe, man’s habitation, and mankind its inhabitants in all places and all times. Into this world Christ, the Son of man, the Son of God, cast good seed. The children of the kingdom are the good seed: in the beginning men were made in God’s likeness, and placed in his world. Thereafter and thereupon an enemy stealthily and maliciously sowed tares in the same field. The enemy is the devil; and the tares which he by his sowing caused to spring in the field are the children of the wicked one. In the first instance, the Day in which the sower spread good seed in his field was the day in which God made man upright: the Night in which the enemy sowed tares was the period of the temptation and the fall. Both these antagonistic processes are carried on still. The Son of man sows the good seed day by day in the world, and night by night the enemy sows his tares. Especially and signally in the fulness of time the good seed, more completely developed, was again committed to the ground in the ministry and sacrifice of Christ; and again the wicked one renewed and increased his efforts to counteract and destroy it. These two, opposite in origin and in nature, are commingled and interwoven in all the ordinary relations of life. The children of the wicked one and the children of the kingdom live together in the world, eat of the same bread, and breathe the same air, and look upon the same light. In the Galilean field, which the Lord employed as a type with which to print his lesson, portions might be seen where, owing perhaps to peculiar wetness and sourness in the soil, the wheat had wholly disappeared, and the darnel grew alone; in other parts, probably where the soil was warm and dry, the good seed had gained the mastery, and the false scarcely showed its head; and in a third quarter the good and bad might appear in equal numbers and equal strength. Such precisely is the aspect of the world. Large portions of it have been heathen from a higher date than that to which history ascends; large portions, which were Christian long after the apostolic age, have been overrun and laid waste by the blind but strong system of Mahomet; while in other parts a vigorous Christian life appears, although even there the good seed must maintain a struggle against bitter roots below and poisonous fruit rearing its head on high. I accept, therefore, in all simplicity, the Master’s own definition: I see in the field of the injured husbandman a picture, not of the Church in the world, but of the world in which the Church must for the present live and labour. The ingenious effort made by a recent Swiss expositor13 to find a middle path only serves to show how heavily the difficulties of the common interpretation press on those who maintain it. Having confessed, according to the terms of the text, that the field or ground is not the Church, but the world, he proceeds, with a very strong animus against what he calls puritanism or separatism,14 to argue in the usual way against every attempt to purify the visible Church except by the exclusion of persons who are notoriously heretical or vicious. The grounds on which he pleads against separation from the impure, in as far as this parable is concerned, are—(1.) That there was no need of a revelation to make known the universally acknowledged maxim that bad people should be tolerated in the world; (2.) That, according to the terms of the parable, the farmer sowed wheat in his ground, but did not sow the whole of his ground—so that the ground may be the world, and the portion sown, or the wheat field, may still represent the Church; (3.) That the parable of the fishing-net confirms this interpretation; and (4.) That in the world there was no wheat until the preaching of the gospel reached it, and consequently the mixture is in the church, and not in the world. The first of these grounds seems most unfortunate; for corrupt ecclesiastics, from an early age to the present day, have ever shown themselves ready to cast those whom they call heretics, not out of the Church only, but out of the world:15 the second is a refinement too narrow for building any conclusion upon: the third applies a mistaken view of one parable to support a mistaken view of another: and the fourth is the second in another form. After having in effect explained away his own admission, that the field is the world, and not the Church, he freely concedes in the close that the openly heretical and vicious should not be tolerated within the Church. But I ask what right has he to exclude those whom, according to his exegesis, the Lord commanded his ministers to tolerate in the Church? In the intimation that it was while men slept that the mischief was done, I cannot find any covert reproof of an indolent ministry in the Church. It was night: all the community had retired to rest. The species of criminal which the parable depicts was not numerous,—the crime was not of daily occurrence. It was neither the practice nor the duty of the people, after they had toiled all day in their fields, to watch their work by night, to protect it from possible injury. The expression, “while men slept,” is intended merely to indicate that the evil-doer took advantage of the darkness to cover his deed: accordingly, in the interpretation no specific meaning is attached to this feature of the parable. In regard to the servants, and their proposal instantly to pull up the tares, the interpretation is attended with difficulty. With some eminent ancient expositors I am convinced that, if not exclusively, yet primarily and chiefly, the servants who offered to make the separation are the angels. The parable stretches far into both time and space: it comprehends the world, and the successive dispensations of God there. Morning stars sang together when they saw beautiful worlds starting into being at their Maker’s word: the same high intelligences must have been surprised and grieved when they saw God’s fairest work marred by sin. It is like the impulse of beings perfect in holiness, but limited in knowledge, to offer themselves on the instant as willing instruments to cast the defilers out. Pleased, doubtless, with their instinctive zeal for holiness, but comprehending his own purposes better than they, the Lord declined the proffered ministry. At the same time he intimated that the separation which the servants suggested was not refused, but only postponed. His plan required that good and evil, now that evil had begun, should mingle in the world till the end. At the close of the dispensation, when the Son of man shall come in his glory, he will give the commission for a final separation to the angels who shall constitute his train. It seems to be generally assumed by modern expositors, that while the reapers who shall separate the tares from the wheat in harvest are angels, the servants who offered to weed out the tares while they were yet green are the human ministers of the visible Church. Archbishop Trench, for example, says: “These servants are not, as Theophylact suggests, the angels (they are the reapers, ver. 30); but men, zealous, indeed, for the Lord’s honour, but zealous with the same zeal as animated those two disciples who would fain have commanded fire to come down from heaven on the inhospitable Samaritan village” (Luke 9:54). I think the learned author is mistaken here, and that the preponderance of evidence lies on the other side. The subject is interesting, and will repay the labour of investigation. Here two questions, distinct, yet closely connected, constitute the case: on the answer which may be given to them the decision will turn. One relates to the persons, and the other to their acts: Are the “servants” who propose to pull up the tares in summer, and the “reapers” who are commanded to make the separation in harvest, the same, or different persons? and is the separation proposed by the servants substantially the same in kind with that which is ultimately effected by the reapers, or is it different? I think the servants and the reapers are substantially identical. The troop of servants who haunt a rich man’s house, and the band of labourers who reap his patrimonial fields, stand far apart in our land and our day. Not so, however, in the establishment of a Galilean householder eighteen hundred years ago. When you take into view the habits of society at the date and on the scene of the parable, it will appear certain and obvious that the servants who proposed to weed the fields in summer were, in part at least, the same persons who would be sent to reap the fields in autumn. The reapers might be a more numerous band than the servants who were employed throughout the year, but to a large extent the constituents must have been the same. In another parable (Luke 17:7-10), a servant, who has been ploughing or feeding cattle, is obliged, after he returns from the field, to gird himself and wait on his master at table. This shows conclusively that the division of labour which obtains among us was unknown then in Galilee. The master does not, indeed, say to the servants who made the proposal, I will employ you in harvest to accomplish the separation: the form of expression is, “I will say to the reapers;” but reapers and servants were of the self-same class, and in all probability to some extent the same individuals. The second question can be more easily answered. The separation which the reapers ultimately effected is essentially the same with that which the servants at an earlier period proposed. It is an actual, material, final separation of the tares from the wheat. It results that there is no solid ground in the parable for the assumption that those who proposed to make the separation at an earlier date represent men, while those who were employed to accomplish it afterwards represent angels; and that the separation which the Lord prohibited was spiritual, while that which he permitted was physical. In regard to the separation which he sanctioned, the Lord interprets what the operation is, and who are the operators; whereas, in regard to the separation at an earlier date proposed, he gives no interpretation. Instead of beginning by giving my own assumption as to the meaning of the uninterpreted part, I go first to the part that is interpreted to my hand, and from the point which is illuminated I get light thrown back on the point which was left in the shade. The reapers, I know, are the angels; and the servants were the same, or at least the same class of ministers, proposing to accomplish the work at an earlier date. The separation which was actually effected in the harvest represents, we know, the personal and local as well as moral and spiritual separation of the good and the evil; thence I conclude that the separation which the same ministers, or the same class of ministers, had previously offered to make was personal and local as well as moral and spiritual. The proposed and the accepted separations were precisely the same in kind and degree; they differed only in their dates: while, therefore, one of the two is interpreted to my hand, I have no right to attach to the other an interpretation totally different. The assumption that the separation which the Lord prohibited was only a spiritual sentence, while the separation which he permitted was actual, local, complete, and final, derives countenance neither from the parable nor its interpretation. It appears to me, then, that the Lord’s direct and immediate design in this parable is, not to prescribe the conduct of his disciples in regard to the conflict between good and evil in the world, but to explain his own. Knowing that their Master possessed all power in heaven and in earth, it was natural that Christians of the first age should expect an immediate paradise. Nothing was more necessary, for the support of their faith in subsequent trials, than distinct warnings from the Lord, that even to his own people the world would remain a wilderness. Accordingly, both in plain terms and by symbols, he faithfully, frequently intimated that in the world they should have tribulation, but that all should be set right at last. On both sides they needed, and on both sides he gave, the instruction, that in this life they must lay their account with a mixture, but that after this life they would escape. Left to their own imagination, they would readily have expected that their omnipotent Head would so rule over the world, and so instruct his ministers, whether stormy winds or flaming fires, that evil, as soon as it showed its head, would be weeded out of his people’s way: but with this parable and other cognate lessons in their hands, they would not be surprised at any amount of success which the enemy might be permitted to obtain; they would possess their souls in patience, and wait for the end of the Lord. The parable condemns persecution, but it seems not to bear upon discipline at all. In its secondary sense, or by implication, it protects the wicked from any attempt on the part of the Church to cast them out of the world by violence; but it does not, in any form or measure, vindicate a place for the impure within the communion of the Church of Christ. Arguments against the exclusion of unworthy members, founded on this parable, are nothing else than perversions of Scripture. Elsewhere Christians may clearly read their duty in regard to any brother who walks disorderly; elsewhere they may learn how to counsel, exhort, and rebuke the erring, and, if he remain impenitent, how to cast him out of communion by a spiritual sentence; but in this parable regarding these matters no judgment is given. While the “Notes” of Dr. Trench on the parables are generally judicious and valuable, his exposition of this and one or two others that are cognate is injured by a secret bias towards the forms in which he has been educated,—a bias that is natural and human, but not on that account less hurtful. The body of the vast and venerable institution of which he is at once a chief and an ornament, stands so near, and bulks so largely, that where it is concerned his usual acuteness fails him. The general announcement at the commencement of the parable, that it concerns the kingdom of heaven, he seems to think is sufficient proof that the “field” must mean the kingdom of heaven or the Church. It does, indeed, concern the kingdom of heaven, for it shows that when that kingdom has, by the Son of man, been introduced into the world, many things spring up and mingle with it there to mar its fruitfulness; but it betrays an unaccountable confusion to argue formally that because the parable concerns the kingdom of heaven, therefore, of all the features which the parable contains, “the field” must specifically represent that kingdom, in the face of the express testimony of Scripture that the field represents a totally different thing. The parable of the mustard-seed concerns the kingdom too, but does the “field” in that parable therefore mean the Church? No. The mustard-seed that grew in the field means the Church, and the field means the world in which the Church is planted. So in this parable the only thing that represents the Church, or aggregate of individual believers, is the mass of the wheat stalks that sprang from the good seed: the good seed are the children of the kingdom, and the field is the world in which these children live and labour. Looking minutely to the phraseology employed, we find that the kingdom of heaven is not said to be likened unto a field, but unto a man that sowed seed; pointing to the Lord himself as the head, and the good seed as his members, and the wide world as their place of sojourn, till he take them to himself. Dr. Trench remarks further on this point, that the use of the term “world” need not perplex us in the least; and perhaps he was led to make that assertion because the use of the term did perplex him much. His solution of the difficulty is this: “It was the world, and therefore was rightly called so, till this seed was sown in it; but thenceforth was the world no longer.” If it has any meaning at all, this sentence must mean that what was the world yesterday becomes the Church to-day, when some seed is sown, when some children of the kingdom are in it. Does the whole world become the Church when one country is christianized? or is it only the portion christianized that becomes the Church? If so, how many Christians must be in a given portion of the world, to constitute that portion the Church? If there were three of the true seed in Sodom, was Sodom the Church? or did not the three constitute the Church in Lot’s house, while the world raged around it like the troubled sea? Some of Stier’s remarks are good: “The parable moves in quite a different sphere from that of the question concerning Church discipline.” “The householder forbids and will not allow what the servants wish. These would have all the tares removed entirely from their place among the wheat, from the kingdom of Christ (Matthew 13:41). But because the field is the world, that were equivalent to removing the bad out of the world (slaying the heretics),” &c. The conclusion of the whole matter is, that whatever separation the parable forbids, it forbids entirely: if it speaks of discipline, it says there shall be none; so that they are wholly out of their reckoning who lean on it for the condemnation of what they consider excessive strictness while they would retain the power of excluding the worst from communion. But, in truth, the parable has nothing to say on the subject. When we have made our way through the discussions that have accumulated round it, we return to the text in its simplicity, and grasp its plain positive truth, “The field is the world.” It was all empty; nothing good grew there, until the seed was brought from heaven and sown. The nation, the family, the soul that has not Christ, is poor, and wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked. “The good seed are the children of the kingdom.” They are bought with a price and born of the Spirit; they are new creatures in Christ and heirs of eternal life. Expressly it is written in reference to Christ’s disciples, “All things are for your sakes” (2 Corinthians 4:15). For their sakes the world is preserved now, and for their sakes it will be destroyed when the set time has come. The darnel is permitted to grow in summer, and in harvest is cast into the fire,—both for the sake of the wheat. Because Christ loves his own he permits the wicked to run their course in time; but because Christ loves his own he will separate the wicked from the good at last. The tares are the children of the wicked, and “the enemy that sowed them is the devil.” Some people doubt, and some positively deny, the existence of the devil; but one thing is clear, the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of the Father, has no doubt on that point. He believes in that doctrine and teaches it: he teaches it to the multitude on the margin of the lake, and to the select circle of his followers in a private dwelling. Lively and energetic are the remarks of Fred. Arndt on this subject: “Yes, Jesus says, in dry, clear words, ‘The enemy that soweth them is the devil.’ But surely there is not any devil? Who says that? The Son of God, the mouth of eternal truth, who knows the realm of spirits even as he knows this visible world,—who is the highest reason and the deepest wisdom, yea, even Omniscience itself,—he believes it. He holds it reasonable to believe in it. He teaches what he believes. Dost thou know it better than he, thou short-sighted being, thou dust of yesterday, thou child of error and ignorance? He says it, and therefore it is eternal truth. ‘But is it not intended to be taken figuratively?’ Well, suppose it were meant figuratively, we can only comprehend the figures of actually existing things, and the figurative representation of the devil would imply his real being: but here in the text the speech is not figurative; the expression stands not among pictures and parables, but in the interpretation of a picture and a parable.”16 Whence hath it tares? inquired the servants. Already in those days they had begun to probe the question around which the conflict of ages has been waged—the origin of evil. One thing in the answer of the Lord is fitted to pour a flood of comfort into our hearts when they are agitated by the difficulties of this tremendous problem,—“an enemy hath done this.” Evil does not belong originally to the constitution of man, nor has God, his maker, introduced it. Our case is sad, indeed; for we learn that an enemy whom we cannot overcome is ever lying in wait seeking how he may devour us. But what would our case have been, if evil, instead of being injected by an enemy from without, had been of the essence of the creature, or the act of the Creator? Our condition would have been one of absolute and irremediable despair. What a strong one, who is our enemy, has brought in, a stronger, who is our friend, can cast out—will cast out. Be of good cheer; believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. How grand is the view which this picture discloses, when in the interpretation of it we closely follow the Master’s steps! It is, indeed, a parable concerning the kingdom of heaven. The whole world belongs to the King; he has placed his children in it, and commanded them to multiply till they people all its borders. The enemy has introduced among them evil persons, and within them evil thoughts. It is not a part of the omniscient Ruler’s plan to remove, by the ministry of either angels or men, all the wicked at once from his world. For his own purposes, which are only in part discernible by us, he permits the good and the evil to mingle and contend with each other until the fulness of time, as he left the Canaanites in the land to chastise and exercise his chosen people. When the tares prosper, the wheat languishes: when the wheat prospers, the tares languish. Evil men have lived in God’s world ever since sin began: evil thoughts and deeds will be found in God’s children as long as they remain in the body. The angels are not sent to-day to make such a separation as would leave the children of the kingdom nothing to do, or to bear. If you desire the heavenly to prosper within you and around you, fight with the proper weapons against the devilish: if you desire the devilish within and around you to languish and decay, cherish the heavenly. As David’s house waxes stronger, Saul’s house will wax weaker. When Christ gets more of the world and of our hearts, the devil will get less. THE MUSTARD-SEED, AND THE LEAVEN. In the first two parables the kingdom of heaven is represented in conflict with its enemies; in the next two it stands alone, putting forth its inherent life and power. There we learn the strength of its adversaries, and here we learn its own. There we saw the efforts made to check the progress of the kingdom; and here we see the progress which, in spite of these efforts, the kingdom makes. There the combat is exhibited, and here the victory. Devils and men, conscious conspirators or unconscious tools, did their utmost, as explained in the first pair of parables, to strangle the kingdom in its infancy, or to overpower it at a later stage; but the kingdom, as we learn from the second pair, shakes its assailants off, emerges unhurt from the strife, and goes forward from strength to strength, until it has subdued and absorbed all the world. I have seen clouds gathering at dawn on the eastern horizon, with dark visage and a multitudinous threatening array, as if they had bound themselves by a great oath either to prevent the sun from rising or afterwards to quench his light; but through them, beyond them, above them, slowly, steadily, majestically rose the sun, nor quivered from his path, nor halted in his progress, until by the power of his mid-day light he had utterly driven those clouds away, so that not a shred of their tumultuous assemblage could any more be seen on the clear blue sky. Such and so impotent in Christ’s hands are the adversaries of Christ’s kingdom, although they seem formidable to men of little faith: such and so glorious will be the final victory of the King, although even his true subjects may fret and fear over his incomprehensible delay. The coming of the kingdom is like the morning, as slow, but as sure. As smoke is driven before the wind, so shall the Redeemer in the day of his power drive away all those adversaries, whether within his people or without, that now impiously say, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” Christ’s disciples are on the winning side, whatever may be the present aspect of the world. “He that believeth shall not make haste.” The two parables which now claim our attention, although closely allied, are not in meaning and application precisely identical. Both show the progress of the kingdom from a small beginning to a glorious consummation; and both indicate that this growth, as to cause, is due to its own inherent unquenchable life, and as to manner, is silent, secret, unobserved. Thus far these two are in the main coincident; but besides teaching the same lesson in different forms, they teach also different lessons. The parable of the mustard-seed exhibits the kingdom in its own independent existence, inherent life, and irresistible power; the parable of the leaven exhibits the kingdom in contact with the world, gradually overcoming and assimilating and absorbing that world into itself. Both alike show that the kingdom increases from small to great; the first points to the essential, and the second to the instrumental cause of that increase: in the mustard-seed we see it growing great because of its own omnipotent vitality; in the leaven we see it growing great because it uses up all its adversaries as the material of its own enlargement. FOOTNOTES 11. “The Land and the Book,” by Dr. Thomson. T. Nelson & Sons.[11] 12. “The Land and the Book.” Note by Principal Fairbairn in translation of “Lisco on the Parables.”[12] 13. Die Parabeln des Herrn, für Kirche, Schule, und Haus, erklärt von Dr. De Valenti. Basel, 1841.[13] 14. It is quite possible that the separatists whom De Valenti scolds, with more warmth than elegance, may deserve his censure; for severe restrictive measures adopted by governments to suppress religious dissent have frequently the effect of deteriorating its character, on the principle that oppression makes a wise man mad.[14] 15. Lange (in loc.), having quoted Gerlach to the effect that this prohibition refers to extremes of ecclesiastical discipline, for the purpose of excluding all unbelievers and hypocrites, and constituting a perfectly pure Church, timidly replies: “We can scarcely agree with him that it contains no allusion to the punishment of death for heresy.... It is well known that Novatianism, on the one hand, and the Papal hierarchy, on the other, have addressed themselves to this work of uprooting despite the prohibition of the Lord, and that the Romish Church has at last ended by condemning to the flames only the best wheat.... The auto da fés of the middle ages were only a humble caricature and anticipation of that fiery judgment.”[15] 16. Die Gleichniss-reden Jesu Christi, von Fried. Arndt.[16] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 5: 1.03. THE MUSTARD SEED ======================================================================== III. THE MUSTARD-SEED. “Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”—Matthew 13:31-32. We are familiar with the mustard-plant both in a wild and in a cultivated state in our own country. Although not the smallest, it is by no means the largest of our herbs. On this point it is necessary to recall and keep in mind the fact that when a given plant is indigenous in a southern climate, the corresponding species or variety that may be found in more northerly latitudes is generally of a comparatively diminutive size. I have seen a mahogany-plant cultivated in a flower-pot, the best representative that could be obtained here of those forest patriarchs in tropical America which constitute the mahogany of commerce. The diminutive proportions of our mustard-plant prove nothing regarding the magnitude of the herb which bears the corresponding name in Syria. We know, in point of fact, that it grows there to a great size at the present day. “I have seen it,” says Dr. Thomson, “on the rich plain of Akkar as tall as the horse and his rider.”17 Irby and Mangles found a tree growing in great abundance near the Dead Sea possessing many of the properties of mustard, which they suppose must be the mustard of the parable; but this suggestion seems incompatible with the main scope of the representation, for its turning-point lies in this, that a culinary herb became great like a tree. That a forest tree should be large enough to afford shelter to the birds, is nothing wonderful; the parable is hinged on the fact that the garden herb (???????) became a tree (???????). But in this case an investigation exact and minute into the natural history of the plant is by no means necessary to the appreciation and explanation of the parable. It is not needful to determine what amount of credit is due to the witness who declared that he had seen a man climbing into the branches of a mustard-plant, or how far the fact, if real, was uncommon and exceptional. This plant obviously was chosen by the Lord, not on account of its absolute magnitude, but because it was, and was recognised to be, a striking instance of increase from very small to very great. It seems to have been in Palestine, at that time, the smallest seed from which so large a plant was known to grow. There were, perhaps, smaller seeds, but the plants which sprung from them were not so great; and there were greater plants, but the seeds from which they sprung were not so small. But the circumstance that most clearly exhibits and indicates the appropriateness of the choice, is the fact that the magnitude of the mustard-plant, in connection with the minuteness of its seed, was employed at that day among the Jews as a proverbial similitude, to indicate that great results may spring from causes that are apparently diminutive, but secretly powerful. The expression, “If ye had faith as a grain of mustard-seed,” employed by the Lord on another occasion, is sufficient to show that both the conception and its use were familiar to his audience. The spiritual lesson of the parable diverges into two lines, distinct but harmonious. By the kingdom of heaven, as it is represented in the growth of the mustard-plant, we may understand either saving truth living and growing great in the world, or saving truth living and growing great in an individual human heart. In both, its progress from small beginnings to great issues is like the growth of a gigantic herb from the imperceptible germ that was dropped among the clods in spring. I. The kingdom of heaven in the world is like a mustard-seed sown in the ground, both in the smallness of its beginning and the greatness of its increase. The first promise, given at the gate of Eden, contained the Gospel as a seed contains the tree. It fell among Adam’s descendants as a mustard-seed falls between the furrows, and lay long unnoticed there. With the Lord, in the development of his kingdom, a thousand years are as one day in the growth of vegetation. A man who in his childhood observed the seed cast into the ground, may live long and die old before the plants have reached maturity; but the seed of the kingdom has not lost its life, the God of the covenant has not forgotten his own. At the appointed time he will visit his husbandry, and fill his bosom with its fruits. Never to human eye did the seed seem smaller than at the coming of Christ. The infant in the manger at Bethlehem is like a mustard-seed—an atom scarcely perceptible in the hand, and lost to view when it falls into the earth. Yet there lay the seed of eternal life—thence sprang the stem on which all the saved of mankind shall grow as branches. Israel was feeble among the nations—a little child writhing in the grasp of imperial Rome; Judea and Galilee, with the heathenish Samaria between, constituted his beat throughout the brief period of his public ministry. The range was short in its utmost length, narrow in its utmost breadth. In a map of the world of ordinary size, the spot that indicates Palestine can scarcely be seen; yet from that spot radiated a power which is at this day actually paramount. The Christ who seemed so small both in private life at Nazareth and in the public judgment-hall of Pilate at Jerusalem, is greatest now both in heaven and in earth. Christendom and Christianity are both supreme, each in its own place and according to its own kind. This world already belongs to Christian nations, and the next to Christian men. So great has the religion of Jesus grown, that its body overshadows the earth, and its spirit reaches heaven. As the leaves and branches of a tree tend to assume the form and proportions of the tree itself, so subordinate parts in the development of God’s kingdom follow more or less closely the law of the whole kingdom—a progress secret, slow, and sure, from a diminutive beginning to an unexpected and amazing greatness. Take, for example, the history of Moses, which is a vigorous branch shooting out from the mustard-tree under the ancient dispensation. The branch, a part of the tree, is, like the tree itself, small at first and great at last. A poor Hebrew slave-mother, counting her own “a goodly child,” as every true mother will to the end of time, strove, by a strange mixture of ingenuity and desperation, to preserve him from the cruel executioners of Pharaoh. When she could no longer hide him in the house, she laid him in a wicker basket, and set it afloat in an eddy of the Nile. How small the seed seemed that day! A slave’s man-child, one of many thousands destined by their jealous owners to destruction, cast by his own mother into the river, that he might not fall into the more dreaded hands of man—how small that germ was, and yet how great it grew! From heaven the word had gone forth, “Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it.” On the mighty stream, and the cruel men who frequented it, the Maker of them both had laid the command, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophet no harm. From that small seed, accordingly, sprang the greatest tree that grew in those old days upon the earth. Moses, the terror of Pharaoh, the scourge of Egypt, the leader of the Exodus, the lawgiver of Israel—Moses in his manhood was to the foundling infant what the towering tree is to the imperceptible seed from which it springs. The operation of the same law may be observed in later ages. In the Popish convent at Erfurt a studious young monk sits alone in his cell, earnestly examining an ancient record. The student is Luther, and the book the Bible. He has read many books before, but his reading had never made him wretched till now. In other books he saw other people; but in this book for the first time he saw himself. His own sin, when conscience was quickened and enlightened to discern it, became a burden heavier than he could bear. For a time he was in a horror of great darkness; but when at last he found “the righteousness which is of God by faith,” he grew hopeful, happy, and strong. Here is a living seed, but it is very small an awakened, exercised, conscientious, believing monk, is an imperceptible atom which superstitious multitudes, and despotic princes, and a persecuting priesthood will overlay and smother, as the heavy furrow covers the microscopic mustard-seed. But the living seed burst, and sprang, and pierced through all these coverings. How great it grew and how far it spread history tells to-day. We have cause to thank God for the greatness of the Reformation, and to rebuke ourselves for its smallness. Through the grace of God it made rapid progress at the first, and by the passions of men it was arrested before its work was done;—not arrested, but impeded; it is growing still, and growing more vigorously in our own day than it has done in any generation since its youth. But the present time supplies examples of the kingdom’s growth from small to great, as distinct and characteristic as any period since the apostles’ days. The revivals of these times are vigorous off-shoots from the great stem of Christ’s kingdom in the world, and the part observes the same law of increase that operates in the whole. Trace any one of the local awakenings back to its source, and you will discover that the interest in spiritual, personal religion, which now overtops and overshadows all other interests in the neighbourhood—which has led many wanderers back to Christ’s fold—which has caused friends to sing aloud for joy, and enemies to stand mute in astonishment—which has emptied jails and filled prayer-meetings—which has changed the wilderness into a garden, and drawn wondering witnesses from distant lands—sprang from some upper or lower room in which two or three unnoticed and unknown believers were wont to meet at stated times for prayer. Many of those small but living seeds have burst through the ground and made themselves known by their magnitude; and many similar seeds are lying hid to-day under the capacious folds of our vast and earnest industry. May great trees spring from these small seeds in the Lord’s good time! Robert Haldane in Geneva, with his Bible in his hand and a group of students around him, is a modern example of the same law in the growth of the kingdom. II. The kingdom of heaven in a human heart is like a mustard-seed, both in the smallness of its beginning and the greatness of its increase. In the grand design of God, moral qualities hold the first place; physical magnitude is subordinate and instrumental. We may safely accommodate and apply to space the principle which the Scripture expressly applies to time: One man—as a sphere on which his purposes may be accomplished and his glory displayed—one man is with the Lord as a thousand worlds, and a thousand worlds as one man. There is room, brother, for the whole kingdom of God “within you.” In one sense, it is most true, we ought to abase, but in another we ought to exalt ourselves. We should reverence ourselves as the most wonderful work of God within the sphere of our observation. The King, as well as the kingdom, finds room in a regenerated man. Here the Lord of glory best loves to dwell. In this inner and smaller, as well as in the outer and larger sphere, the kingdom of heaven, following the law of the mustard-plant, grows from the least to the greatest. All life, indeed, is, in its origin, invisible; and the new life of faith is not an exception to the rule. The Lord himself, in the lesson which he taught to Nicodemus, compared it in this respect to the wind. In its origin it is imperceptible; in its results it is manifest and great. To wash seven times in Jordan seemed a small thing to the Syrian soldier, and such it really was; but when his leprosy was cleansed, and his flesh restored like that of a little child, he perceived that a great effect had sprung from simple means. The little-child look unto Jesus which the Gospel prescribes for the saving of the soul seems to the wisdom of this world as inadequate to heal a leprosy as the waters of the Jordan seemed to Naaman; yet from that small seed springs the tree of life, with all its beautiful blossoms of hope, and all its precious fruits of righteousness. The first true, deep check in the conscience because of sin; the first real question, “What must I do to be saved?” the first tender grief for having crucified Christ and grieved the Spirit; the first request for pardon and reconciliation made to God, as a child asks bread from his parents when he is hungry;—the kingdom, coming in any of these forms is small and scarcely perceptible; but it lives, and in due time will grow great. Be of good cheer, ye who have felt the word swelling and bursting like a seed in your hearts. That plant may not yet have attained maturity in your life, but greater is He who shields it than all who assail it: the enemy cannot in the end prevail. He who hath begun a good work in you, will perfect it until the day of Christ. You could not make a living seed; but God has given it. Thus far all is well, but you are as helpless at the second stage as you were at the first; you have no more power to make the seed grow than you had to make the seed. The Author and Finisher of this work keeps it from first to last in his own hands. It is He who gives rain from heaven and fruitful seasons. The small seed of the kingdom has fallen on your hearts, and been hidden in their folds; it has taken root, and sent up into your lives some tender shoots of faith, and hope, and love. It is well; thank God for the past, and take courage for the coming time. The plant is small now; it will be great hereafter. It is small on earth; it will be great in heaven. Weed it and water it, sun it and shelter it. Be diligent on your own side of this great business, and God will not withhold his power. Cultivate the kingdom in your own hearts, and count on the blessing from on high to make it prosper. From the tender, diminutive life of grace, the life of glory will in due time grow. When painters have drawn their figures in light, they throw in dark shadows beside them, that the positive forms may thereby be more prominently displayed. So, beside the kingdom of heaven, under the aspect of its growth from small beginnings, let us throw in the outline of the kingdom of darkness, that thereby the glory of light may be better seen. Although one kingdom differs from another in character and aim, all kingdoms are like each other in the method of their operation. The kingdom of darkness, like the kingdom of light, grows gradually from very small to very great. The kingdom of Satan hangs on and follows Christ’s kingdom like a dark shadow, and the shadow depends upon the light. The first sin against God was a very small seed, but the tree which sprang from it was the fall of man. “Thou shalt not eat,” is a small point—its smallness has sometimes supplied unbelievers with wit, if not with argument—but on that point a door was hung, which, turned this way, opened heaven and shut hell; turned that way, opened hell and shut heaven. In its beginning the kingdom of evil was small; but from that small seed a mighty tree has grown. 18 As there is no sin so great that the blood of Christ cannot blot it out, so there is no sin so small that it cannot destroy a soul. A little sin is like a little fire: stand in awe of the spark, and rest not till it is quenched. As Christ our Lord is tenderly careful of spiritual life when it is feeble, and cherishes it into strength, we should sternly stamp out evil while it is yet young in our own hearts, lest it spread like a fire. He will not quench the smoking flax of beginning grace, and we should quench with all our might the smoking flax of sin. He commanded the Church in Sardis to “be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die” (Revelation 3:2). The counterpart and complement of that command is binding, too, upon his disciples: Be watchful, and weaken—if possible, kill outright—the germs of evil that are springing from unseen seeds within your own heart and around you in the world. “The God of peace will bruise Satan under your feet shortly:” He will bruise Satan, but Satan must be bruised under your feet. FOOTNOTES 17. The Land and the Book, p. 64.[17] 18. “Good is like the mustard-seed; from small it becomes great: evil resembles it not less. Here, too, the great springs from the small. An evil thought, when once it has made its way into a poor soul, may become mighty enough to cast it into hell.”—Dräseke vom Reich Gottes, ii. 238.[18] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 6: 1.04. THE LEAVEN ======================================================================== THE LEAVEN. “Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”—Matthew 13:33. In the mustard-seed we saw the kingdom growing great by its inherent vitality; in the leaven we see it growing great by a contagious influence. There, the increase was attained by development from within; here, by acquisitions from without. It is not that there are two distinct ways in which the Gospel may gain complete possession of a man, or Christianity gain complete possession of the world; but that the one way in which the work advances is characterized by both these features, and consequently two pictures are required to exhibit both sides of the same thing. The thought which is peculiar to this parable, the specific lesson which it teaches, is, the power of the Gospel, acting like contagion, to penetrate, assimilate, and absorb the world in which it lies. The kingdom grows great by permeating in secret through the masses, changing them gradually into its own nature, and appropriating them to itself. The material frame-work which contains the spiritual lesson here is, in its main features, easily understood. Immediately below the surface, indeed, lie some hard questions; but all that is necessary is easy, and the discussion of difficulties, although it may well repay the labour, is by no means essential. The chief use of leaven in the preparation of bread is, as I understand, to produce a mechanical effect. A certain chemical change is caused in the first instance by fermentation in the nature of the fermented substance, and for the sake of that change the process is in certain other manufactures introduced; but along with the chemical change which takes place in the nature of the substance, a mechanical change is also effected in its form, and for the sake of this latter and secondary result fermentation is resorted to in the baking of bread. The moist, soft, yet dense mass of dough, is by fermentation thrown into the form of a sponge. Owing to the consistence of the material, the openings made by the ferment remain open, and consequently the lump, which would otherwise have been solid, is penetrated in every direction by an innumerable multitude of small cavities. Through these the heat in the oven obtains equal access to every portion of the dough; and thus, though the loaf is of considerable thickness, it is not left raw in the heart. Other methods, essentially different from fermentation, are in modern practice adopted in the preparation of bread; but by whatever means channels may be opened for the admission of heat to every particle of the dough, the result is practically the same as that which is obtained by leavening. The operator converts the mass of solid dough into swollen, light, porous, spongy leaven, by introducing into it a small quantity of matter already in a state of fermentation. It is the nature of that substance or principle to infect the portion that lies next it; and thus, if the contiguous matter be a susceptible conductor like moistened flour, it spreads until it has converted the whole mass. The knowledge of this process is not so universal amongst us as it was then in Galilee, or is still in many countries, because baking by fermentation, especially in the northern division of the island, is not much practised in private families. In countries where bread is prepared by that method, and every family prepares its own, the process is, of course, universally familiar. The three measures of meal, which together make an ephah, were the understood quantity of an ordinary batch in the economics of a family, and as such are several times incidentally mentioned in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. See, for example, the preparation of bread by Sarah, as it is narrated in Gen. xviii. The various suggestions which inquirers have made regarding the specific significance of the three measures of meal, are interesting and instructive. As they do not directly traverse the lines of the analogy, they are entitled to a respectful hearing; but the subject is subordinate, and the meaning must ever be comparatively obscure. Whether the three measures are understood to point to the three continents of the world then known, or to the three sons of Noah by whom the world was peopled, or to spirit, soul, and body, the constituent elements of human nature, an interesting and useful conception is obtained. Each of these suggestions contains a truth, and that, too, a truth which is germane to the main lesson of the parable. The same historic incidents which show that three measures were the ordinary quantity, show also that the women of the house were the ordinary operators. Baking the bread of the household was accounted women’s work; as men ploughed and sowed in the field, women kneaded and baked at the oven. An inversion of this order would have been noticed as incongruous, and presented a difficulty. Exceptions may be found, both in ancient and modern times, but the representation in the text proceeds obviously upon the ordinary habits of society. On this account, although I willingly listen to interesting and ingenious speculations regarding the significance of the woman who hid the leaven among the meal, I cannot accept them as the foundation of any positive doctrine. I am jealous, not without cause, of ecclesiastical tendencies and prepossessions in the interpretation of the parables. It is quite true that both in the discourses of the Lord and in the epistles of his followers, reference is made sometimes to the community or communities of believers constituted as a Church; but the Church in the Scriptures is a much simpler affair than it is in ecclesiastical history. Moreover, in these lessons which were taught by the Lord in the beginning of the Gospel, we find much about the individual man, and about the aggregate of mankind, but little about the Church in its visible organization. Accordingly, while I endeavour to keep my mind open for everything that the Scriptures bring to the Church, I am disposed to shut the door hard against anything that I suspect the Church is bringing to the Scriptures. When the woman who kneaded the dough, and the woman who lost and found the silver coin, come forward, backed by much learned authority, saying, We are the Church, I stand on my guard against deception, and carefully examine their credentials. A man took the mustard-seed and sowed it in his field; a woman took the leaven and hid it in three measures of meal. The two parables are in this respect strictly parallel; in both alike an ordinary act in rural economy is performed, and in either it is performed by a person of the appropriate sex. The converse would have been startling and inexplicable. Whatever the operator may represent in the sowing of the seed, the operator in the hiding of the leaven represents the same. To neglect the strict parallelism between the two cases, and attribute some meaning to the selection of a woman as the operator in the one, which the selection of a man in the other does not convey, is, as I apprehend the matter, to forsake the main track of the analogy, and follow by-paths which lead to no useful result. The same divine hand that dropped the word of eternal life as a mustard-seed into the ground, also hid the word of eternal life as leaven in the ephah of flour. Looking to the spiritual significance of the two parables, we have in both cases the same act, and in both cases, therefore, the same actor. 19 A question of deep interest and considerable difficulty arises from the fact that here, and here only, the greatest good—the kingdom of God in the world—is unequivocally compared to leaven, whereas this similitude, in all other places of Scripture where it occurs, either stands indefinitely for progress of any kind, or expressly represents the energy of evil. I assume without argument that in this parable the diffusion of leaven through the mass represents the diffusion of good in the world, although here and there, both in ancient and modern times, an inquirer appears who understands the leaven in this place to predict the prevalence of false doctrines and practices in the Church. This interpretation no man would voluntarily adopt in the first instance, for it is obviously incongruous with the signification of the kingdom in every other parable of the group; but some have permitted themselves to be driven into it by a difficulty that threatens on the opposite side. Because in other portions of Scripture they find leaven employed as an emblem of evil, they think themselves obliged to take it as a representative of evil here. But the difficulty which is presented by the use of a type to denote good, which is elsewhere employed to denote evil, must be fairly met and explained: to escape an imaginary difficulty we must not plunge into a real mistake. I am convinced that here, as in many similar cases, that which at first sight and on the surface wears the appearance of harshness, will be found, on fuller consideration, to contain a new beauty, and impart additional power. It is obvious, in the first place, from the references made to it both by the Lord and his apostles, and especially from the iteration of the same maxim by Paul in two distinct epistles, that the similitude was current and familiar among the people as a proverb. It is conceded, that apart from this parable, wherever its application is expressly indicated, it is employed to designate the progress of evil; but it ought to be borne in mind that Paul has twice, in the same words, enunciated the universal proposition, “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (1 Corinthians 5:6; Galatians 5:9). By expressly mentioning the leaven of malice and wickedness in connection with this proposition, he leaves room for the supposition that there may be also a leaven of truth and holiness. In like manner, the Lord in another place warns his followers to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy; but he nowhere says that leaven is hypocrisy. Leaven does, indeed, illustrate the method in which falsehood spreads; but it may, for aught that is said in the Scriptures, illustrate also the manner in which truth advances, when it has gotten a footing in the world or in a man. If truth and error, though opposite in their nature, are like each other in their tendency to advance, as if by contagion; and if error is in this respect like leaven, then truth must be in this respect like leaven too. When two things are in a certain aspect like each other, and one of them is in the same aspect like a third thing, the other must also be like that third thing, provided the point of view remain unchanged. Leaven represents evil not in its nature, but only in the manner of its progress; and in this respect the symbol is equally applicable to the opposite good. This argument, indeed, may be carried one step further. It is not enough to show that no loss of meaning is sustained by the application of this analogy to a new and opposite class of facts; a positive gain thereby accrues. The circumstance that in all other places of Scripture in which the symbolical meaning of leaven is specifically applied, it is, in point of fact, employed to designate the progress of evil, instead of obscuring, rather reflects additional light on the comparison as it is used in this parable. The Teacher who speaks here is sovereign. By him the worlds were made, and by him redemption wrought. In both departments he executes his own will: when he speaks, he speaks with authority. Observing that the principle which ordinarily enters and pervades human hearts is evil, a leaven of hypocrisy, he does not submit to that state of things as necessary and permanent: this is, indeed, the condition of the world; but he has come to change it. Such is the direction of the current, and the proverb which compares moral evil to a leaven correctly describes its insinuating and persevering course; but here is one who has power to turn the river of water so that it shall flow backward to its source. Corruption has, indeed, spread through the world as leaven spreads through the dough, but here is Truth incarnate, another leaven, introduced into the mass, having power to saturate all with good, and thereby ultimately to cast forth evil from the world. The kingdom of darkness, for example, comes secretly,—the wiles of the devil constitute his policy and secure his success; the kingdom of God, although opposite in essence, is similar in the method of its advance, for it “cometh not with observation.” The wheat and the darnel were opposite in character and consequences as light and darkness, but they were precisely alike in the manner of their growth. The loyal army adopts the same tactics which the rebels employ, while it strives to defend the throne which they are leagued to overthrow. Thus, it is not enough to say that although the diffusion of evil in God’s intelligent creatures is like the diffusion of leaven in the dough, Jesus may notwithstanding employ the same analogy to indicate how grace grows: we may proceed further and affirm, as Stier has ingeniously suggested, that because evil has often been compared to leaven in the manner of its advance, Jesus adopts that similitude to illustrate the aggressive, pervasive power of the truth. Boldly, as a sovereign may, this Teacher seizes a proverb which was current as an exponent of the adversaries’ successful stratagems, and stamps the metal with the image and superscription of the rightful King. The evil spreads like leaven; you tremble before its stealthy advance and relentless grasp: but be of good cheer, disciples of Jesus, greater is He that is for you than all that are against you; the word of life which has been hidden in the world, hidden in believing hearts, is a leaven too. The unction of the Holy One is more subtle and penetrating and subduing than sin and Satan. Where sin abounded grace shall much more abound. The appropriation by Christ and to his kingdom of a similitude which had previously been applied in an opposite sense may be illustrated by many parallel examples in the Scriptures. 20 Of these, as far as I know, the different and opposite figurative significations of the serpent are the most striking and appropriate. The conception of secret motion, followed in due time by a surely planted effectual stroke, which is associated with the faculties and habits of a serpent, Christ found appropriated as a type to express the power of evil: but he did not permit it to remain so appropriated; he spoiled the Egyptian of this jewel, and in as far as it possessed value, enriched with it his own Israel. The serpent, as a metaphor, was in practice as completely thirled to the indication of evil as leaven had been, but Jesus counselled his disciples to “be wise as serpents.” A similar example occurs in the parable of the unjust steward: it teaches that the skill of the wicked in doing evil should be imitated by Christians in doing good. Christ acts as king and conqueror. He strips the slain enemy of his sharpest weapons, and therewith girds his own faithful followers. Whatever wisdom and power may have been employed against them, wisdom and power inconceivably greater are wielded on their side. We shall be better prepared to appreciate for practical purposes the peculiar meaning which the symbol bears in this parable if we advert, in the first place, to its ordinary meaning in other parts of Scripture. Both in the typical worship of the Old Testament and in the doctrinal teaching of the New, leaven is ordinarily employed to denote the insinuating, contagious advance of sin. When the Hebrews were instructed to cast all leaven out of their houses during the solemnities of the Passover, their lawgiver meant to teach them by type that in worshipping God through his ordinances they should cast all malice and wickedness out of their hearts. In like manner, when the great Teacher warned his followers to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees, he meant that they should eschew on the one hand the lie of self-righteous superstition, and on the other the lie of libertine unbelief. The Apostle Paul, too, while he does not forbid another use, employs the conception, in point of fact, to illustrate the presence and power of sin. Evil is a mysterious, self-propagating principle, like leaven. In the fact of the fall a piece of this leaven was hidden in the mass, and all mankind have consequently become corrupted. The leaven of sin that touched humanity at the first has infected the whole. The fact of a universal corruption appears in all history, and its origin is explained in the beginning of Genesis. The whole lump has been leavened: break off a bit at any place, at any time, and you will find it tainted. “The innocence of childhood” is a fond, false phrase, employed to conceal the terrible reality: there is no innocence, no purity, except that which comes through the gift of God, the sacrifice of Christ, and the ministry of the Spirit. Idolatry, for example, is a leaven that must have been small in its beginning, but at a very early date it had grown great. The world was idolatrous when Abraham was called out to become the nucleus of a religious nation; and even his descendants, though constituted as a commonwealth expressly for the purpose of maintaining the worship of the true God while all the world beside had sunk into idolatry, were, through contact with the contaminating leaven, frequently overrun by the same sin. It became necessary that they should be poured from vessel to vessel, and tried as by fire, in order to keep them separate. Small and apparently harmless Popery began: with the power and perseverance of a principle in nature it spread and defiled the Church. How completely that leaven penetrated the lump may be seen everywhere throughout Europe, in the architecture, sculpture, paintings,—in the laws, habits, and language that have come down from the middle ages to our own day. The evil spirit of the Papacy has intruded into every place; into the councils of kings, into the laws of nations, into the births, marriages, and deaths of the people. Between ruler and subject, between husband and wife, between parent and child, comes the priest, gliding in like water through seamy walls, sapping their foundations. Into the inmost heart of maid, wife, mother, creeps the confessional, tainting, souring, defiling society in its springs,—a leaven of malice and wickedness, a leaven at once of Pharisee and Sadducee, a superstition that believes everything in alliance with a scepticism that believes nothing, and all combined to conceal the salvation of God and enslave the spirits of men. Beware of the leaven of the Papacy. Other things of grosser and more material mould follow the law of leaven in their progress from small to great, until they obtain the mastery of a community or a man. Such, for example, are the use of ardent spirits in Scotland and the use of opium in China. A hundred years ago how small was either bit! but being a bit of leaven, when it is once introduced it creeps stealthily forward, the appetite growing by what it feeds on, until it dominates, and in some cases utterly destroys. These creeping leavens stain the beauty and waste the strength of nations. Some tribes of Indians in North America have been annihilated mainly by this process; and at this day the Canadian Parliament, through a benevolent law, sanctioned by the Sovereign, entirely prohibit the sale of spirits to the Indians, and thus save from extinction the remnants of the tribes that live under our protection. Those subtile and powerful material agents which create abnormal appetites and influence the moral habits of a whole people, afford ample room for gravest thought both to Christians and patriots. The fact acknowledged in Scripture, and manifest in all experience, that evil has transfused itself through humanity like leaven, serves to bring out in deeper relief the comforting converse truth which Christ has embodied in this parable. The universal diffusion of corruption in the world becomes a dark ground whereon the Lord may more vividly portray the progress and final triumph of holiness. Good introduced among the good is not much noticed; but when good assails, overcomes, and transforms evil, its power and beauty are conspicuously displayed. Employing the sad facts already stated as shadows filled in to make the lines of light more visible, I shall proceed now to express and enforce positively some of the practical lessons which the parable contains. 1. Christ, the Son of God, became man and dwelt among us. Behold the piece of leaven that has been plunged into the dead mass of the world! “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). The whole is not leavened yet, but the germ has been introduced. The meaning of Immanuel is, “God with us:” the incarnation is the link that binds the fallen to the throne of God. One without sin and with omnipotence has become our brother,—has taken hold of our nature, and will keep hold of it to the end. He will not fail nor be discouraged. To him every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess: the prophecy has been written, and the history will follow. In the meantime, while we wait for the accomplishment of the promise, we may obtain from this parable some glimpses of the method by which the change will be effected at last. Leaven consists in, or at least causes, fermentation. The name suggests the mechanical process of boiling. The most sublime and awful scenes which nature has ever presented have been produced in this way. When great masses are affected, a boiling becomes unspeakably grand and terrible. This earth, now so solid beneath, and so green on the surface, seems to have been once a boiling mass. Those mountains that cleave the clouds are the bubbles that rose to the surface and were congealed ere they had time to subside again: there they stand to-day, monuments of the fact. The moral government of God is like the natural. The Maker’s method, when he would bring down the high things and exalt the low, is to throw in an ingredient which will produce fermentation. He can make the world of spirit fervid as well as this material globe. The earth is shaken by moral causes. The Gospel sends a sword before it brings peace. Wars and rumours of wars rend the nations, and make men’s hearts melt within their breasts. In some cases it is obviously Christian truth plunged into the mass that agitates the nations; and if we were able to discern the links of cause and effect a few degrees further into the fringes of the cloud that encircles God’s throne, we would perhaps see the same central fact setting in motion more distant forces. Our life is so short, and our range of vision so contracted, that we cannot observe the progress which the kingdom makes. Sometimes, and in some places, it seems to recede; but when the end comes it will be seen that every step of apparent retreat was the couching in preparation for another spring. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. The captive’s chains shall be broken, whether they bind more directly the body or the soul, although the ancient political organizations of Europe, and the more recent fabrics of America, should be torn asunder and tossed away in the process, as foam is tossed from the crest of a wave upon the shore. “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him” (Psalms 2:9). 2. Converted men, women, and children are let into openings of corrupt humanity, and hidden in its heart. There they cannot lie still: they stir, and effervesce, and inoculate the portions with which they are in closest contact. In this respect the lesson is the same with that which is taught in those other short parables of Jesus,—“Ye are the light of the world. Ye are the salt of the earth.” Nor is the conception essentially different from that of Christ or his word dropped into the lump of humanity; for Christians have no life and no expansive power, except in as far as Christ dwells in their hearts by faith. They are vessels which contain the truth, and when these vessels are hidden under the folds of families and larger communities, the word of life, which is within them, touches and tells upon their neighbours. The most recent experience of the Church exhibits the kingdom spreading like leaven, as vividly, perhaps, as any experience since apostolic times. By contact with one soul, already fervid with new life, other souls, hitherto dead, become fervid too. One sinner saved, his heart burning within his breast, as he consciously communes with his Saviour, touches a meeting and sets it all aglow; the prayer-meeting thus moved touches the congregation and throws its settled lees into an unwonted and violent commotion; this assembly, all throbbing with the cry, What must we do to be saved? infects a city; and the city so infected communicates its fervour to the land; and a nation thus on fire kindles another by its far-reaching sympathy beyond intervening seas. Thus some portions of the world have been thrown into such a state of effervescence, by the leaven of the Gospel hidden in their heart, that for a time the sound of praise for sin forgiven has risen in the highways and market-places, louder than that other old, strong cry, What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed? The leaven, like gravitation, follows the same law on smaller spheres that it follows on the larger. Brother infects sister, and sister brother; parent child, and child parent; shopman shopmate. We often lament the contagious influence of evil, and it is right that we should; but it is an unthankful, unhopeful spirit, that thinks and speaks of the dark side only. Oh, thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? The new life which Christ has brought into the world is a leaven too. Working on the same method, but backed by a mightier power, good will yet overcome evil,—life will destroy death. Life from the Lord and in the Lord, though small at first as to the number of persons whom it animates, will increase until it fill the world. It will absorb surrounding death, and in absorbing quicken it. He that sat upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). 3. There is yet another branch of the practical lesson which ought not to be overlooked: The life of faith, when it is hidden in the heart, spreads like leaven through the man, occupying and assimilating all the faculties of his nature and all the course of his life. The whole lump of the individual must be leavened, as well as the whole lump of the world. Christ will not be satisfied until he get every man in the world for his own, and every part of each. Whatever amount of ground there may be for the judgment of some expositors that the three measures of meal in the parable represent spirit, soul, and body, the constituents of human nature, certain it is that if the leaven of the kingdom is deposited in the heart, it will not cease until it has interpenetrated the human trinity and conformed all to the likeness of Christ. In the new creature, as in the new world, “dwelleth righteousness.” That which is now laid on the conscience of Christians as a law will yet emerge from their life as a fact,—“Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” From a circumstance not expressly mentioned in the parable, but obviously contained in the nature of the case, springs a thought of tender and solemn import. The piece of leaven was hid in the meal, and the whole quantity, in consequence, was converted into leaven; but the leaven will not spread through meal that is dry; the meal is not susceptible, receptive, until it is saturated with water. Within some persons, some families, some congregations, some communities, the leaven of truth has been deposited for a long time, and yet they are not moved, they are not changed. The leaven remains as it came, a stranger; all around, notwithstanding its presence, is still, is dead. It is when the Spirit is poured out as floods that the leaven of the kingdom spreads with quickening, assimilating power. I will pour out my Spirit upon you, saith the Lord: the promise is sent to generate the prayer, as a sound calls forth an echo. Behold, I come quickly, says Christ: Even so, come, Lord Jesus, respond Christians. Catch the promise as it falls, and send it back like an echo to heaven. I will pour out my Spirit upon you: Pour out thy Spirit, Lord, FOOTNOTES 19. To the question what the woman specially represents in the parable, Dräseke answers, “The grace of God.”—ii. 263.[19] 20. “Thus in different passages the lion is used as a figure of Satan, but also of Christ; the serpent as a figure of the enemy, but also of the wisdom needful to the apostles; birds as a figure of believing trustfulness, but also of the devil catching away the word.”—Lange in loc.[20] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 7: 1.05. THE HIDDEN TREASURE ======================================================================== V. THE HIDDEN TREASURE. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.”—Matthew 13:44. These two parables, the hidden treasure and the costly pearl, are even more closely allied to each other than the two which precede them. Generically they teach the same truth; but they teach it with distinct specific differences. It will be most convenient to notice in connection with the first, the lessons that are common to both; and in connection with the second, the points of distinction between them. These twin parables, then, exhibit on the one hand the intrinsic preciousness of the Gospel, and on the other the high esteem in which that precious thing is held by a spiritually quickened man. They set forth first how valuable the kingdom of God is, and next how much it is valued by those who know its worth. These two, along with the concluding representation of the general judgment, were spoken, not to the multitude on the shore of the lake, but more privately to a smaller audience in a neighbouring dwelling. Many expositors believe that they can discern a difference in the nature and treatment of the subjects between the first four and the last three, corresponding to the different circumstances in which the two portions of the group were severally delivered. It is thought that those which were addressed to the multitude in public represent the kingdom in its more general and external aspects, as was suitable in a miscellaneous audience; while those which were addressed privately to the circle of disciples represent the kingdom more especially in its intrinsic nature and individual, personal application. I would not presume to affirm that there is no ground for this distinction; but I think it is a mistake to make it the hinge on which our view of the whole group must turn. I suspect there are things in the parable of the sower which require, for their appreciation, the faith and experience of true disciples, as much as anything that the parable of the hidden treasure contains; and, on the other hand, that the lessons suggested by the treasure were as necessary and appropriate to the mixed multitude as those which are taught by the sowing of the seed on different kinds of ground. The necessity of personal appreciation and acceptance of the Gospel, which is the main lesson of this parable spoken privately in the house, is pre-eminently a word in season to those that are without. That lesson, accordingly, the Lord and his apostles were wont to teach in promiscuous assemblies. While, therefore, I notice the fact that the three later similitudes of this group were given to a smaller circle after the crowd had dispersed, I am not able to say that the reason of the change is evident in the nature of the subjects. Had these three also been spoken from the fishing-boat to the promiscuous assemblage on shore, I would not have been able to affirm that the themes seemed less appropriate to the audience, or less in accordance with the Teacher’s method at other times. I look with interest into the distinctions which some have drawn between the four exoteric parables addressed to a miscellaneous assembly, and the three esoteric parables spoken to a more select and more sympathizing few; but to me they do not appear to be of substantial importance in the interpretation. The treasure may have been gold or silver or precious stones, or a combination of all three: it may have been anything of great value that lies in small bulk, and is not liable to decay,—such a treasure as may lie buried under the earth for a long period without any diminution of its worth. In oriental countries and in ancient times treasures were hid in the ground more frequently than in our land and our day; but it is probable that even there and then the subterranean wealth was tenfold greater in the popular belief than it was in reality. Two distinct causes, or classes of causes, lead to the concealment of treasure under ground: the feeble bury their wealth when they are oppressed, and the guilty when they are scared. As a general rule, we may assume that the treasure which is found buried in the earth has been placed there either by honest men when the law was feeble, or by dishonest men when the law was strong. The two classes of persons who bury gold are the robbed and the robbers. In both cases, the treasure which is intentionally and intelligently buried is liable to be lost through the removal or death of those who were in the secret. Such secreted and lost wealth is afterwards from time to time found by those who build houses or cultivate the soil. In all lands and ages some such hoards have been actually discovered, and many such have been imagined and expected by the credulous. The conditions of the treasure that may be buried under ground exist in substances widely different from gold and silver and precious stones. On the west coast of Scotland, a few years ago, some men, while engaged in digging fuel from a moss, found at a great depth large quantities of tallow carefully sewed up in raw ox-hides, and in good preservation. In troubled, lawless times, a clan had ravaged their neighbour’s territory: not having had time to drive away the cattle, they had buried the only portion of the spoil that could be preserved, intending to return when the danger was past and carry it away. The opportunity of realizing the booty had never occurred, and the clansmen had carried the secret with themselves to the grave. In modern times, treasures a thousand-fold more valuable than any that have ever been hidden by human hands are frequently discovered under the earth, and wealth correspondingly great obtained by purchasing the field in which they lie. The much disputed and now celebrated mineral at Torbanehill, near Bathgate, in the county of Linlithgow, affords a good example. A person discovered that a coal or other mineral substance of great value lay in the ground. Without revealing, perhaps not knowing to the full extent the value of his discovery, he forthwith concluded, not precisely a purchase, but a long lease of the ground for mining purposes. When his bargain was securely made, he began to bring up the precious substance. As a raw material for the manufacture of gas and oil, it was found precious beyond all precedent. The original proprietor then raised an action for the dissolution of the lease. The action has been several times renewed in various forms, and its fame has resounded through all Europe. Meantime the prudent discoverer of the treasure and purchaser of the field is reaping a rich harvest from his transaction. In North America, both in the States and in Canada, similar facts have often of late years emerged, especially in connection with oil springs and copper mines. Some men have obtained enormous wealth by purchasing for a small price a piece of ground in which a seam of copper lay, and selling it again when the fact was verified. A question has been raised and discussed at greater length, I think, than its importance warrants, regarding the conduct of the man who found the treasure and hid it again till he had secured the field—whether the act was fair or unfair. The parables of the Lord are allowed to flow like a mountain stream in its natural channel. In those at least that are metaphorical, the narrative does not undertake to prescribe what should be, but to represent what is probable in human history. The fact as narrated may or may not be an example worthy of imitation. 21 The moral lesson is found, not by looking directly at the story, but by looking at the shadow which the material case projects on the spiritual sphere. The conduct of the person in the picture may be good, bad, or indifferent; the spiritual lesson is not affected by the moral character of the act which is employed as a leaden type to make it visible. As the lesson on a printed page is not affected by the baseness or the pureness of the metal which constituted the type, provided always that the form of the type were appropriate; so the doctrine left for us after the parabolic picture has passed is not dependent for its purity on the material of which the type was formed. The shifty dishonest factor, and the indolent unrighteous judge of subsequent parables, occur as conspicuous examples. The picture is obviously true to nature. When a man became aware that a great treasure lay under ground at a certain spot, he concealed his knowledge of the fact, and took measures to obtain possession of the field. Believing that this hidden wealth was greater far than all that he possessed in the world, or could ever hope to acquire by the ordinary produce of his property, he sold all that he had without a grudge, in order to make sure of the prize. The love of his own possessions, whether hereditary or acquired, whether lands or money, was overbalanced and so destroyed by the estimate which he had formed of the hidden treasure. The new and stronger affection neutralized and blotted out all previous predilections for what was his own. He sold all that he had, and bought the field. The turning-point is here; and here, accordingly, the story is abruptly broken off. There is not a word regarding the subsequent steps of the important and critical transaction. How much he gained by his bargain; whether the validity of the purchase was disputed in a court of justice by the former proprietor, on the ground of a concealment of facts by the buyer;—these and all similar points are designedly veiled off. If they had been introduced, they would have served only to lead the investigator into a wrong track, and the meaning of the Master would thereby have been lost. The story advances in broad and manifest accordance with nature, both in its main line and in its subordinate accessories, until it has reached and passed the point which marked its goal: then the curtain suddenly drops, resolutely concealing all the rest, and so compelling the reader to fix his regard on the great essential lesson, instead of dissipating his energies on a multitude of interesting but unnecessary speculations. Such is the material framework which sustains the spiritual truth,—such the trellis which bears up the fruitful vine: having first gone round it to survey its construction and its form, we now approach it to gather for our own use the ripe fruit that hangs within reach on every side. 1. There is a treasure, placed within our reach in this, world, rich beyond all comparison or conception,—a treasure incorruptible and undefiled and unfading. “God is love,”—behold the fountain-head, where an exhaustless supply is stored: in the Gospel of Christ a channel has been opened through which streams from that fountain flow down to this distant world. In the Son of God incarnate divine mercy reaches our nature, and supplies our wants. Through the ministry of the Spirit, in the earliest promise and in subsequent prophecy the refreshing water was brought into contact with parched lips. A heavenly treasure lies on this poverty-stricken, bankrupt, accursed world, sufficient to enrich every one of its poor and miserable and wretched and blind and naked inhabitants. 2. The treasure is hidden. In early ages it was concealed under certain veils, constructed of design in such a manner that through their half-transparent folds a halo of the unseen glory should excite the hopes and attract the steps of every generation. The promise given at the gate of Paradise contained the treasure, but contained it wrapped up in allegoric prophecy which nothing but subsequent fulfilment could completely unfold. Down through the patriarchal and prophetic ages it continued a hidden treasure, although the new life of the faithful was secretly sustained by it all the while. Even when Christ through these parables taught his disciples in Galilee, his kingdom was still hidden. A few fishermen, and here and there a ruler, had discovered the precious deposit, and had drawn from it enough to enrich themselves for ever; but to the multitude it was still unknown. Under the form of a man—under the privacy and poverty of a Nazarene, was the fulness of the Godhead hid that day from the wise and prudent of the world. The light was near them, and yet they did not see; the riches of divine grace were brought to their door, and yet they continued poor and miserable. But even after the Lord had fully declared his mission, and finished his work,—after he had died for our sin, and risen again for our justification,—after his disciples through the ministry of the Spirit had published the glad tidings in many lands,—the treasure still lay hidden. It was near, and yet out of sight. Those who find it, find out at the same time that they have been almost treading on it for years, and yet ignorant of its existence and its worth. Saul of Tarsus had been often near it, before he found it for himself. When Gamaliel lectured on the Mosaic sacrifices, the attentive, clear-headed and ardent pupil, was on the very point of discovering where the treasure lay; but though often near it, he never fell on it until that day when he fell to the ground near Damascus. Felix was near it when, shut in between his own sin and God’s righteousness, he trembled at the sight of the judgment-seat, like an angel with a drawn sword right before him on the narrow path. Agrippa was near it when, caught and carried away ere he was well aware by the close, clear reasoning of a true preacher, he was almost persuaded to be a Christian. Still men may be walking near the treasure of eternal life,—walking over it, and yet miss it: the treasure that they trod upon remains hidden, and they remain poor. 3. The hidden treasure is at last found. It is noticed by all students of the parables, that on this point there is a marked distinction between the experience of the man who found the hidden treasure, and that of the merchant who found the pearl of great price. It is probable that this man was not aware that there was any treasure in that field: he seems to have been neither looking for it nor expecting to find it. He was probably employed in some other work, and prosecuting some other object. He may have been a labourer toiling there for his daily bread; or he may have been engaged in making a road or digging for the foundation of a house, when the treasure, concealed in a troubled time, was exposed to view. He found what he was not seeking: he was seeking a bit of bread, and stumbled upon a fortune. The merchant, on the contrary, who fell in with the precious pearl was travelling with the express purpose of discovering goodly pearls and buying them. He obtained what he was seeking; but obtained a pearl of greater value than he had previously seen, or expected ever to see. Outwardly at least, and on the surface, a similar distinction seems to obtain between one man’s experience and another’s, in regard to the manner of finding the treasures of divine grace. Some seem to find the Saviour when they are not seeking him; and some, after deliberately and consciously seeking him long, are rewarded at length. It is the former of the two classes with whom we are more directly concerned in the exposition of this parable. Looking abroad upon the past history or the present experience of the Church, we observe that some suddenly stumble, as it were, upon salvation, when they neither expected nor desired to find it. Not a few have come to laugh, and remained to pray. Many authentic cases are recorded of persons who entered the house of God bent on making sport of the preacher, and who went away believing in the Saviour whom he preached. A youth has left his home in the country and plunged into a great capital to push his fortune, and has found there, what he did not seek, pardon of sin and peace with God through the Saviour. Another has gone to India as a soldier, dreaming of war and victory, and honour and wealth; but has returned a meek disciple of Jesus, glory to God and peace with men radiating like sunlight from all his spirit and all his life. A young female, chafed and fretting under the enforced dulness of a sober home, has received and accepted an invitation which promises to set her free from restraint for a time, and permit her to flutter at will in the midst of a fashionable throng. At the threshold of the prepared festivities a message meets her,—a message charged with a mighty sorrow, which drives the crowd of joyful anticipations forth from her heart, as a swollen stream bears down the dry leaves of autumn. She is thrown aside in solitude, in emptiness, in agony. In the silent night, and in the aching emptiness of her soul, the knocking of Christ from without is for the first time heard. The weary heart opens at last, and lets the Stranger in. She has found a treasure which, though often near her before, had hitherto escaped her notice. From the peace of God in which she now dwells she looks out from time to time on the pleasures of sin which she formerly chased, and borrows from the experience of ancient Israel a phrase best fitted to express her mind,—“The Portion of Jacob is not like them.” The history of the Church is studded with such examples: the hearts of believers, when they are ready to faint, are cheered from time to time by such good news from countries far and near. It is a reproof to us, but a glory to the Lord, that he is often found of those who sought not after him. Perhaps the man in the parable was digging for stones when he fell upon the treasure: they who find the true riches meet often with a similar surprise. 4. The next feature that claims attention is the instant ardent effort of the discoverer to make the treasure his own, now that he knows what it is and where it lies. In the parable, the man conceals his discovery, because he knows that if the secret leak out, the owner will not part with his field at any price. One can easily imagine the scene and the act that enlivened it. A labouring man, digging for some purpose in a field alone, in the progress of his hard and humble work lays open one side of a glittering golden store. As soon as the first tumult of emotion has subsided, he gathers his wits and goes into action. First of all he throws some earth over the exposed portion of the treasure; then he looks cautiously round to ascertain whether any witness was near enough to observe his motions. He proceeds next, probably, to ply his ordinary task on another spot with an indifferent air, that he may not attract attention. The place where the treasure lies, the place that he loves best, he carefully avoids: he comes not once near it again until he has paid the price, and secured the titles of the property. Too much has been made of the subordinate circumstances here. A person in the position of this man could not do otherwise than he did, without abandoning all hope of obtaining the prize. To blab it out, would have been to throw it away. If he had talked about it, the fact would have proved that he did not care for it. The concealment is not an essential feature, but a subordinate circumstance of the parable. It was resorted to, not for its own sake, but as an obvious means of obtaining a desired end. The hiding of the treasure is introduced into the picture simply to mark the man’s estimate of its worth and his determination at all hazards to obtain it. In the spiritual department a similar end is pursued, but the adoption of similar means there would not tend to insure success. In the nature of the case it is not necessary to conceal the spiritual treasure from others in order to secure it for yourself. Although the world should discover it, by an intimation from you, and enrich themselves out of it, you would not therefore obtain less. It is thus a vain labour to search, as many do, for something in the spiritual sphere corresponding to the concealment by the discoverer in the story. The best way of interpreting that feature is to represent by it a soul’s high appreciation of divine mercy and earnest desire to obtain it, and then allow the feature to drop out of sight, like the husk after the ripened grain has fallen from it and been secured. It has been said that one of the rarest kinds of knowledge is to know when to hold your peace. Many know well how to speak; few know when to be silent. A similar experience emerges here: many have an excellent faculty for opening up the parables, and tracing every feature up to all its springs, and down to all its consequences. The power of attributing a distinct spiritual import to every light and shadow of the picture is common; but the faculty of permitting a subordinate accessory to drop when it has fulfilled its office, and following stanchly on the main track, is comparatively rare. You may, indeed, find instances in which a man, awakened and persuaded of the preciousness of Christ, has kept all silent within his own breast until he has made his own calling and election sure; but in these cases the secrecy is by no means prompted by a fear that to publish the secret were to lose the treasure; and in many other examples the discoverer, during the continuance of his efforts to obtain possession, publishes the secret to the world, and enters at last into his heritage in presence of many witnesses. The discoverer of Christ’s preciousness is like the discoverer of hid treasure, in his ultimate aim, but not in his mediate methods. Concealment would not help him to possession, and therefore he does not uniformly or necessarily take pains to conceal. 5. He parts with all in order that he may acquire the treasure. This is the turning-point of the parable, and the turning-point too of that which the parable represents,—the conversion of sinners,—the saving of the lost. The picture, being framed of earthly materials, fails on one point to represent the idea of the Lord. When the man had converted all his property into money, and offered the net proceeds for the field, his offer was accepted as adequate, and the property was conveyed to him in return for value received. The transaction which takes place in redemption between a sinful man and God his Saviour is essentially different. Although it is true on the one side that in accepting pardon we must and do surrender all to Christ, pardon is, notwithstanding, bestowed as a free gift. Our self-surrender does not in any sense or measure give to God an equivalent for that which in the covenant he bestows on his own. The same two things occur, indeed, in the natural and in the spiritual spheres, but they occur in the reverse order. The price which the buyer offers induces the possessor to give him the property; on the contrary, on the spiritual side it is the free gift of the treasure by the Proprietor that induces the receiver to part with all that he has to the Giver. In one aspect the acquisition of the treasure which enriches a soul is a purchase which a needy man makes by the surrender of all that he has, and in another aspect it is a free gift bestowed by God for Christ’s sake upon him who had nothing to give in return. In as far forth as it is a purchase which a sinner makes, this parable represents its nature; but in as far forth as it is a gift given on the one side and accepted on the other, this parable is silent. It contains no feature capable of presenting salvation in that point of view. 6. Mark, now in the close yet another specific feature of the material fact which has its counterpart in full on the spiritual side. It is intimated that when the man had discovered the treasure, “for joy thereof” he went and sold all, in order to buy the field that contained it. This “joy” is an essential element in the case. If it is wanting the business will at some stage certainly miscarry, the transaction will never be completed. One love in a human heart cannot be overcome and destroyed except by another. Love, among the affections of our nature, is one of those high born nobles who refuse to be tried or superseded except by their peers. Love of the world will not yield to fear, even though the fear be a fear of God’s anger. You cannot overcome and cast it out until you bring against it another and greater love. A man has joy in his possession, and lives without God in the world: he is a god unto himself. He cannot and will not surrender his joy, such as it is, to any summons except to that which a greater joy sends in. When the preciousness of peace with God through the blood of Christ is revealed to him, the “joy thereof” becomes so great that all his gold becomes dross, and all his fine gold dim in his own esteem. This new joy is so weighty that it tosses up the scale in which all his former delights lay, as if they were only the small dust of the balance. A young rich man came running once to Jesus, as the owner of the field that contained the treasure of eternal life, and entered gravely into terms for the purchase. He would give so much for it, but the owner held it high: “All that thou hast,” this is the price, and there is no abatement. The young man did not close with that offer, and did not complete the transaction. He went away; but what was the state of his mind as he departed? “He went away sorrowful.” Ah! the secret is out. Although he desired, in some sense, to obtain what he called eternal life, the “joy thereof” had not been kindled in his cold, calculating heart. His love of earthly riches was too strong to yield to the suggestions of prudence, or the fear of a future judgment. The love of the old portion will yield to nothing but love of the new; and love of the new he had never felt. The case of Paul supplies an exact contrast. A learned Pharisee, conscious of a power that would one day place the highest dignities at his disposal, he was a man of great and manifold possessions. A curious and interesting inventory of his goods has been preserved like a fossil in the Scriptures (Php 3:5-6). These things he highly valued and fondly loved; but another and opposing love came against them, and the strong man succumbed to the stronger. “What things were gain to me, these I counted loss for Christ:” he parted with all and purchased the newly discovered treasure; but it was “for joy thereof.” He went into the transaction not driven by dread, but drawn by the expectation of a greater joy. It is thus that men buy an incorruptible treasure; it is thus that men win Christ. They deceive themselves who try how cheaply they may get to heaven,—how much of their idol they may retain and yet be safe in the judgment. The man who was “sorrowful” when the two portions were set before him for his choice, “went away.” As long as peace with God in his Son, labelled with its price, “All that you have,” makes us sorry that the boon is held so dear, we will never obtain the boon: when the sight of it, price and all, sends a flash of more than earthly joy into the soul, then we shall bound forward, leaving all behind, and win Christ. FOOTNOTES 21. It is otherwise, of course, in those that are directly moral, as the Good Samaritan; they are not metaphors to be translated, but examples to be imitated.[21] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 8: 1.06. THE PEARL ======================================================================== THE PEARL. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.”—Matthew 13:45-46. So closely allied are these two parables, that if we had regarded repetition as a formidable blemish in our lessons, we would not have proposed to expound them separately and successively. The two lines are coincident throughout their whole length, except at one point; but there the diversity is broadly marked, amounting in one aspect to a specific contrast. In view of this difference on the one hand, and of the example of the Lord on the other, I think it right to open and apply the parable of the pearl as fully as if the parable of the hidden treasure had not gone before it. We need and get not only different pictures of the same objects, but also the same pictures repeated in different colours and on different grounds. One eye may be more touched and taken by this colour, and another by that, although the outline of the objects be in both cases essentially the same. Thus, the conception of a treasure found may convey the meaning more impressively to one mind, and the conception of a pearl purchased may convey it more impressively to another; and so, although the lesson of the second parable had been more nearly identical with that of the first than it is, it would not have been expedient to dismiss it with a cursory notice. By a full examination of the principle under the picture of a precious pearl, we shall obtain the advantage which in moral questions, as in material operations, is often unspeakably great, of a second stroke on the same spot. The usefulness, and even the necessity of this method is acknowledged by all teachers, in whatever department they may be called to exercise their office. The same reasons, moreover, which induced the Master to reduplicate his lesson demands that we should also reduplicate ours: it is our part both in matter and in method to follow his steps. Pearls seem to have borne a higher value in ancient times than they bear now, both absolutely and in comparison with other kinds of jewels. Romantic ideas prevailed regarding their origin and their nature; but it is well worthy of remark that the parable passes in silence all that was false or fanciful in the ideas of the ancients regarding the production and the medicinal virtue of pearls. There is not a word about their origin in a drop of dew, or the colour imparted to them by the brightness or darkness of the heavens at the moment of their conception: the only circumstance regarding the pearl which the Lord employs in his instructions is its high price. He seizes the obvious and universally known fact, taking no notice of the fanciful theories with which it was connected. This fact possesses a value in relation to Apologetics which intelligent students will readily appreciate. It is instructive and suggestive to compare the Scriptures on such subjects with other books both ancient and modern. Take, for example, a passage from the comment of Benjamin Keach, which gives both the conceit of the ancients and the endorsement of it at a comparatively recent era. “Pearls,” naturalists tell us, “have a strange birth and original. Pliny saith, Shell fish is the wonderful geniture of a pearl congealed into a diaphanous stone, and the shell is called the mother of pearl. Now at a certain time of the year this shell fish opens itself, and takes in a certain moist dew, after which they grow big until they bring forth the pearl. By which it seems they have their birth from heaven in a marvellous manner.” Planting his foot upon this story, the worthy expositor gravely and devoutly prosecutes the parallel; but already, although it is only a century and a half old, his speculation serves only to provoke a smile. The comment, written in England a hundred and sixty years ago, is antiquated and set aside by the light of the present day; but the parable, spoken in Galilee eighteen hundred years ago, stands in the middle of the nineteenth century, enduring in safety the scrutiny of adversaries, and ministering to the delight of friends, as fair and fresh as on the day of its birth. “Whence hath this man this wisdom?”22 Pearls are the product of certain species of shell-fish, both marine and fluvial. The cause and manner of their formation have not even yet been completely ascertained. They do not constitute any part or organ of the creature that contains them. They are not found in every shell, nor of the same size and shape in any two. They are eccentric and accidental, probably also morbid excrescences, thrown out by some individuals of the species in irregular forms and at uncertain times. They probably owe their origin to the presence of some minute foreign substance within the shell, which is distasteful to its occupant. Not being able to cast out the intruder, the feeble but diligent inhabitant covers it with a sort of saliva, which hardens over it into a substance similar in consistency and sheen to the interior surface of its own shell. The act of covering a base substance of any shape with gold or silver by the process of electrotype is in human art an analogous operation. When the material, distilled in imperceptibly minute portions from the living mollusc, has chemically agglomerated round the original kernel, the pearl is made. The creature having covered the irritant atom with a coating at once hard and smooth, can now endure with equanimity its presence within the shell. Thus unconsciously it manufactures those indestructible and much coveted jewels, for the sake of which its own life is sought and taken by man. In modern times pearl fishing has become a business, and is prosecuted on a great scale in several far separated regions. Perhaps the increase of production, through superior methods and instruments, may, here as elsewhere, have contributed to depreciate the value of the article. 23 I suppose diamonds occupy now the place that was held by pearls in ancient times. While a vast number of goodly diamonds are in circulation, affording occupation to many dealers, here and there one is found which alone constitutes a fortune of almost fabulous amount for its owner. One that was brought from India a few years ago, and is now in the possession of the Queen, has a history extending upward several generations. It passed, like provinces, from potentate to potentate by natural inheritance or the fortunes of war. If it had fallen into the hands of any private person, it would have made him an object of wonder on account of his wealth, even in presence of modern accumulations. The history and fame of the Kooh-i-noor supply the best illustration of this parable that I know. Conceive a merchant with a moderate capital setting out on a journey with the view of collecting diamonds for sale in the home market. In the course of his travels, in the interior of India it may be, he discovers a diamond such as the Kooh-i-noor in the hands of a countryman. The possessor may know generally the value of diamonds, and know that this one in particular is of greater value than any that had ever come into his hands; yet, because it is unique, and he has nothing in his experience wherewith to compare it, he may dispose of it for a tenth of its value. If the best diamond that the seller had ever seen were worth twenty thousand pounds, he might value this one at forty thousand; and that price the buyer might cheerfully pay down, although it constituted all his property, knowing that at home the prize will command four hundred thousand. Thus, without supposing ignorance on the one side or dishonesty on the other, you have a transaction which will enrich the merchant at once and enable him to retire in affluence. This is the sort of transaction that is supposed in the parable. It was a natural and probable supposition at a time when information did not spread so quickly as in our time, and when pearls held as to value the place which diamonds occupy in modern merchandise. It is true that the merchant went abroad expressly for the purpose of seeking goodly pearls; yet this pearl was to him an unexpected and surprising discovery. He had provided funds sufficient to purchase many pearls; but when he met with this one, its value was such that he could not make an offer for it until he had returned to his home and converted all his property, including the pearls that he had previously purchased, into money. In this parable as well as in that of the hidden treasure, an object is discovered of a value hitherto unknown and unsuspected. But the lesson here is in one important respect different from that of the preceding parable, and the point of distinction is, that there a man stumbled upon a treasure when he was in search of meaner things, while here the merchant finds in kind the very object which he sought, but finds it in measure far surpassing all his expectation or desire. Well might the merchant return and convert all his estate into money that he might purchase this jewel; for if it were once in his possession, as there could be no rival, he might command his own price. None but monarchs could aspire to the possession of such a treasure, and these would compete with each other at his desk for a gem that could not elsewhere be obtained. 24 The application of the parable is, intellectually at least, a short and easy process. It is not precisely the case of a man who finds the kingdom of God when he is seeking something else: neither is it the case of a man who first thoroughly knows the worth of that kingdom and then sets out in search of it. There is no such example: no man knows its worth before he obtains it. The merchant knew the value of pearls and set out in search of them, but such a pearl as that which he found he had never seen before, and never expected to see. So, although a man has some spiritual perceptions and spiritual desires; although by a deliberate judgment he determines to seek the life-eternal in preference to all the business and pleasures of the world, he does not at the outset understand how exceeding rich the forgiving grace of God is. Nay, he thinks, when he first begins his search for salvation, that it may be accomplished by the union of many attainments, such as men may possess. Precious pearls and a number of them indeed; but still such pearls as he has often seen in the possession of other merchants, and such as he has in former times had in his own store. He goes out with cash in hand to buy pearls, but he leaves his house and land still his own. He expects to acquire many excellent pearls and retain all his property besides. He did not conceive of one that should be worth all he had, until he saw it. It is thus that people under convictions set out in search of something that will make them right before God. They want to get righteousness and temperance, and a good case for the judgment to come. In their search they come to the Gospel; they get a glimpse beneath the surface; they see protruding from beneath the folds something that surprises them. Can that be a pearl? No; that is larger than any pearl ever was or can be, and brighter; surely that cannot be a true pearl. What? Pardon of sin to sinners without stipulating for a price in their own repentance and righteousness,—peace with God and sonship given free to the chief of sinners before he has done anything to deserve it,—all sin forgiven, and that now and that free, and no condemnation thenceforth, but the place and the favour of God’s sons! and these not only to some who stand out from their fellows as great and good, but these to me,—from God to me to-day as surely as if there never had been a human being on the earth but myself, and the errand of Christ had been only and all for me! These glimpses stagger the man at first; he thinks they are too good to be true. It is as if some one should tell a skilful pearl merchant that under yon covering lay a pearl a thousand times more precious than any he had ever seen before: of course the merchant is incredulous, and demands a sight of it. Then a portion of the covering is removed, and a glittering disc is partially revealed, so vast and so lustrous, that instantly and instinctively the merchant feels, If that be a pearl it is more precious a thousand-fold than any that I have ever seen: but at the same time he secretly fears it is not a pearl, and that, not for want of the true pearly lustre, which his eye has been well educated to detect, but because of its very greatness and goodness. The process in his mind is not that it does not seem a genuine pearl, but that if it were a pearl it would be so inconceivably great and precious that he must conclude there is some deception. But when it is more fully revealed and more thoroughly inspected, he finds that it is indeed a true pearl. Instantly he determines to part with all he has that he may obtain it: he parts with all that he has, and makes it his own. He has not only made a successful bargain, as other merchants may do, or as himself may have done at other times: he has in one moment enriched himself beyond all conception that he formerly entertained. His merchandise has been brought to an end. There is no need now for more buying and selling in order to acquire wealth; his fortune is made. This is really very like the process that goes on in a human spirit when an anxious inquiry about salvation terminates in finding and closing with Christ the Saviour. The expectations with which the inquirer set out were very low. If he could get his sense of guilt somewhat lightened that he might begin anew and endeavour to please God; if he could get the fear of wrath diminished, and some assurance that the Judge would not visit him to the full extent for all his sins;—he does not venture to expect more. Expressly he had no conception of all in one: he thought of a multitude of good religious attainments, which, when added together, would make him, if not rich enough, yet as good as any of his neighbours. Some low and little thing he went out to seek, and, lo! he came upon all the fulness of the Godhead bodily treasured up in Christ, and all that fulness offered in return for simple surrender of himself. Surprised by the greatness of the treasure, he suspects at first that there must be some mistake; but when he becomes convinced of its reality, his resolution is instantly taken, and the transaction irrevocably closed. Like the merchant rejoicing in his fortune is a believer who has found peace with God: henceforth he is rich. He does not need now to huckster in small bargains between his conscience and the divine law every day, and struggle to diminish the ever-increasing amount of guilt by getting small entries of merit marked on the other side of the page. All this is past. He is in Christ Jesus, and to him, therefore, there is now no condemnation. The treasurer of the Ethiopian Queen was precisely such a merchant. Before he left home he evidently counted himself poor, and longed to possess the true riches: before he left home he was aware that a man is not profited although he gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul. It was an oppressive sense of poverty that compelled him to travel. He occupied the highest office in a kingdom; he stood on the steps of the throne, and had charge of the royal treasury; but he counted himself poor notwithstanding. He must go in search of more precious pearls than these. Peace of conscience, righteousness, hope for eternity,—these are goodlier pearls than any that can be found in Ethiopia; and the man undertakes a journey to Jerusalem to try if he can find them there. Disappointed there, he was on his way home, seeking still for the pearls, and seeking near the very spot in the Scriptures where the one priceless pearl lay, when Philip met him. By the Evangelist’s skilful help he found it then and there; but when he found it at last, it was much more precious than he had ventured to expect. “He was led as a lamb to the slaughter.” “Of whom speaketh the prophet this?” inquired the Ethiopian, “of himself, or of some other man?” Some subordinate benefit he was contemplating,—the suffering of some good man, perhaps, as an example to his brethren. Even that, as being something that might contribute to the peace of his soul, he was glad to hear of, and would gladly buy, that he might add it to his stock of goodly pearls. But when Philip, beginning from that scripture, “preached to him Jesus,” he found that the lamb led to the slaughter is the “Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.” The worth of the pearl turned out to be immeasurably greater than the merchant had previously been able to conceive. He exchanged all for it on the spot, and went on his way rejoicing. He did not require to go from country to country any more in search of goodly pearls. He was rich,—rich toward God. 25 I think all speculations about the whiteness and purity and lustre of the pearl as an ornament should be set aside, as being an attempt to bring a meaning out of the parable which its Author did not put into it. Obviously the merchant did not buy it in order to wear it. If after giving all that he had for the pearl, he had hung it on his neck, where could the poor man have found food and clothing? No; the pearl is presented here in one aspect only,—as being “of great price.” It was worth much—it was a fortune to a merchant; but when you speak of it as an ornament on the wearer’s brow, you turn aside from the line of the parable, and miss its meaning. The true lessons of the parable, as I understand them, are briefly these:— 1. It represents the experience, not of a careless or a profane man, who stumbles suddenly upon the Gospel when he was in search of other things, but of one who is awakened, and has begun to seek the true religion, endeavouring to add attainment to attainment sincerely, according to his light. His conscience is uneasy. He has tried the old specific, “All these have I kept from my youth up;” but it no longer avails to soothe his spirit. “What lack I yet?” burst from his breast in broken sighs. There is truth in the man, though not wisdom. He is honestly seeking the way, and the Lord leads him. He is seeking; he shall find. 2. It represents the unparalleled, inconceivable richness of God’s mercy in Christ, taking away all a sinner’s sin, and bestowing on him freely the place and privileges of a dear child. 3. It represents that these riches lie, not in an accumulation of goodly attainments, such as men are wont to traffic in, but in one undivided, indivisible, hitherto unknown and unimagined treasure. 4. It represents that the inquirer, the instant he discovers that this one incomparable, all-comprehending treasure exists and is offered to him, cheerfully, eagerly, unhesitatingly gives away all that he possesses, in order to acquire it. That is, he gives all for Christ, and then enjoys all in Christ. Let me suppose myself a merchant, travelling in a foreign country in quest of pearls. I have found and secured several lots that I count good. I have still capital remaining sufficient to purchase many more; I therefore continue my search. One day I meet a man who shows me a pearl more precious than any that I had ever seen before. At a glance I perceive that it is worth all I possess twenty times told. I say to the owner, and say it with a beating heart, fearing that he will despise my offer, “I shall give you all I possess for this pearl.” He accepts my offer; he gives me the pearl into my own hands, and I consign over to him all that I have in the world: first, all the pearls that I have bought in my journey; next, all my remaining capital; then houses, lands, books,—all. I sign the deed with a throbbing heart, not from fear, but from abounding joy. My act does not intimate that I value lightly my possessions and rights: it intimates that my new portion is, in my esteem, so greatly good, that it will repay all my outlay, and give me a fortune beside. So when I abandon my repentance, and my prayers, and my services and gifts—when I sign away all my expectations on account of all religious attainments, and accept Christ alone as my soul’s portion—my act does not intimate that I count little on the various graces of the Spirit in a disciple’s life: it means that in Christ and with him I have all good things in measure infinite, in duration eternal. If our suggestion regarding the cause and manner of the pearl’s growth is correct, the kingdom of God in the Gospel of his Son was generated in the same way: the pearl and the pearl of great price have the same natural history. Some foreign, hurtful thing falls on the creature’s life. Forthwith the irritation which that invader produces causes the creature to throw out and over the disturber that which forms a covering round it—hiding, smothering, annihilating the originating evil, and constituting over it and in place of it a gem of the tenderest, gentlest beauty—impenetrable, imperishable, glorious. So sin, a corroding drop, a dark, deadly, vexing, torturing thing, fell upon God’s fair creation, threatening to inoculate it with a poison that should leaven the whole lump, and change its beauty into corruption. But around the dark sin-spot, and because the sin-spot was there, divine love showered down, like the impalpable silver gathering on its object in the electrotype, embracing, surrounding, covering, killing the evil and bitter thing that threatened to destroy the works of God. Death was swallowed up in victory. The Son of God came into the world because sin was on it. He, the Holy One, took sin into his bosom, that he might quench it in his own embrace. It was sin that summoned the Saviour to the world, and gave shape to the Gospel of God. To the devil’s wile in Eden, as the occasion, though not the cause, unfallen angels and ransomed men will for ever be indebted for that specific work of their Creator which will most attract their eyes and inspire their songs. On one side they behold mercy, in spotless, unmingled white; and on the other side they behold judgment, darker, indeed, yet equally resplendent. But here in the midst, in the person of God incarnate, they see mercy and judgment meeting—the pearl of great price—where two different and apparently opposite glories mysteriously and beauteously mingle and play. Death swallowed up in victory; sin embraced and so destroyed in the person of Immanuel; sin lost in the holiness and love that agglomerated round it;—this pearl will shine in heaven with a glory that excelleth, when the sun and stars shall have fallen like unripe figs from the sky. FOOTNOTES 22. For the sake of its bearing on the divine authority of the Scriptures, and the questions that are agitated at the present time, I subjoin a similar example, extracted from a lecture which I contributed to the Exeter Hall series of 1860-61:— “A very remarkable expression occurs in the Apocalypse (xvi. 18) bearing on the work of preparing the earth for man, before man was made: ‘And there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake and so great.’ There the advent of man, as an inhabitant of the earth, is formally given as an epoch after which great earthquakes did not occur. It is well known now that earthquakes must have rent this globe before the birth of man, which make all that have occurred since sink into insignificance; but how was John, the fisherman of Galilee, led to employ, eighteen hundred years ago, a phraseology which the researches of our own day have now for the first time shown to be philosophically exact? Speaking of this verse, and quoting it freely, John Bunyan (“Reign of Antichrist,”) says, ‘For the earthquake, it is said to be such as never was, so mighty an earthquake and so great.’ He thought the phrase, ‘since men were upon the earth,’ was equivalent to ‘never:’ so he wrote and fell into the blunder. Who led John the Apostle safely past the mistake into which John Bunyan fell?”[22] 23. I have been informed by a British merchant who, under license from the government of India, conducts the pearl fishing in the Bay of Kuratchee, that the method pursued is to bring the shells to shore as they are brought up from the bottom of the sea until a considerable quantity has been accumulated, disposed in a series of small contiguous heaps, and that then the men stand round the heaps, open the shells, and search for the pearls. So much loss accrues from the dishonesty of the men and the facility of secreting a treasure that lies in such a small bulk, that the proprietor of the fishing has had under consideration a suggestion to sell the heaps of shells by auction to the natives, and permit them then to make the best of their bargain. Whether this method of preventing peculation has been actually adopted, I have not learned. Our own Scottish rivers are frequented by a large bivalve mollusc, which produces true pearls, although their size and number have never been sufficient to attract capitalists or sustain a steady trade. I do not know how others operate in other localities, but here is a method which I either invented for myself or borrowed from a neighbour, and practised with considerable success on the river Earn in Perthshire when I was a boy:—Provide a long straight rod, thin and broad and rounded at the point after the manner of a paper-cutter. Jump into a light fishing-boat, and bring it right over the oyster bed when the sun shines brightly and no ripple disturbs the surface of the water. Bring the boat into such a position with respect to the sun that your own body, bending over the gunwale, will throw a shadow on the immediately subjacent surface. Through that shaded spot you see the bottom with great distinctness, and can distinguish there the objects of your search lying invitingly still, and open, and unconscious. The depth may be from six to twelve feet. The molluscs lie bedded in the mud, with one edge above the ground, and that edge slightly open. Push your rod now gently down in a perpendicular direction,—for if you permit an angle the different degrees of refraction in the air and water will make your straight rod crooked, and you will egregiously miss your object at every stroke,—until its point is within an inch or two of the opening between the shells of the mollusc, and then quickly plunge it in. Hold it still there for a few seconds until the creature has time to close and bite the rod, you may then pull it up at your leisure. Throw your capture into the bottom of the boat, and proceed in the same manner with the next. When you have collected a sufficient store, sit down and open them one by one with a knife, feeling carefully with your thumbs for the little hard round knots among the velvet folds. These knots, when extricated from the fleshy lobes that cover them, turn out to be pearls, in form more or less globular, and in sheen more or less bright. You rejoice more or less, accordingly, in your capture. The day on which a good pearl was found became a day to be remembered in the family group. The price of the finest never rose above a shilling or two; but as riches are relative, and must be estimated by comparison, these were treasures to us, and the sight of a large bright pearl suddenly shining out of the shell was enough to set a boy’s heart a-beating in those early days. During a drought in the summer of 1863 the small river Doon, in Ayr shire, fell so low that some pearl-beds in pools, that had not been noticed in other seasons, were exposed to view, and placed within reach: the consequence was that the people in the neighbourhood, old and young, betook themselves to pearl fishing, and that with considerable success. Among other facts circumstantially related in the local papers at the time, it was stated that one poor woman, during the sickness of her husband, gained as much by the sale of her pearls as made good the loss of her husband’s wages for a whole month. In the course of this summer (1864), and since the preceding notes were written, a considerable amount of pearl fishing has been carried on in certain rivers in the northern districts of Scotland, and efforts have been made to organize a regular trade.[23] 24. Although their place is not the highest now, yet pearls even in our own day are sometimes found of a value so great that the history of an individual is recorded and its praises published through the world. The following, for example, are the terms of a paragraph taken from a British journal of last year:—“One of the finest pearls in the world has been found in the bay of Panama. It is of a perfect pear shape, and of the finest water.”[24] 25. Das ist Philippus element, Er übt sein Predigtamt, Lebendig wird das Pergament, Des Mohrenfürsten Herze brennt, Sein dunkles Auge flammt. Denn was er im Juwelenschrein Kandaces nimmer sah, Die eine Perle, himmlischrein Die köstlicher als Edelstein, Er fand am Weg sie da. Kari Gerok.[25] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 9: 1.07. THE DRAW ======================================================================== VII. THE DRAW-NET. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”—Matthew 13:47-50. Great variety obtains in the size and structure of fishing-nets; and great variety, too, in the manner of using them. Some are stationary, fixed to poles in the sea or the estuaries of rivers; some are dropped in a straight line into the water, and allowed to remain there suspended until a shoal of fish, endeavouring to pass, become entangled one by one in the meshes; others are shot in a semicircular form into the sea, and immediately drawn back by both extremities simultaneously to the shore. It is this last mentioned species of net that is employed in the parable. Its depth is comparatively small, but its length is great. One side is kept close to the bottom by weights, and the other side drawn towards the surface by corks or bladders. Thus when spread it stands erect like a wall in the water, enclosing a large space. As soon as it has been spread, the fishermen begin to draw it at both ends slowly and steadily towards the land. As the enclosed semicircle gradually diminishes, the captured fishes, having still room for motion, retire before the advancing prison wall, until they are at length confined within a very narrow space, and drawn into shallow water. There is then a violent flutter for a few moments, and the whole are laid helpless on the sand. Then begins that operation on which the Master has here mainly fixed his eye, and to which exclusively he directs attention in his own exposition. When the fishermen have at last drawn the net wholly out of the water and secured its contents on dry land, they sit down to examine leisurely the worth of their capture, and to separate the precious from the vile. The good they gather into vessels for preservation; the bad they simply throw away. The net surrounded and brought to land every living creature that fell within its sweep, and was not small enough to escape through its meshes. Some of these are in their own nature and at all times unfit for food; others are useless at particular seasons. Every one who has watched the operations of fishermen on the shore is familiar with the appearance of star-fish and other low forms of marine life, which are drawn out by the nets, and cast away upon the sand. Large predatory fishes of a low type are also sometimes caught, when they venture too near in search of prey. In some instances, moreover, fishes that are dead and partially decayed are brought up in company with the living, and these are of course cast out as vile. The central figure of the parable, round which the other features congregate only as fore or back ground accessories—the central figure is, A group of fishermen, panting from recent exertion, sitting on a knoll close by the sea-side, with the newly-drawn net lying in a soaking heap at their feet, picking up one by one the fishes that are fit for food, and putting them on one side into baskets, and casting the rest away. The men are skilful, experienced, and cool; they have no interest in forming an erroneous judgment, and they are not liable to fall into mistakes. The separation between good and bad is made without partiality and without hypocrisy; it is deliberate, accurate, inevitable. At the close, not one good fish has been cast away, and not a bad one has been admitted into the vessels. It is of great importance to note that when the Lord undertakes to explain this parable, he determines for us the spiritual meaning of the last act only of the fishermen’s labours, and passes in silence all the rest. I do not conclude from this fact that the earlier features of the scene possessed no spiritual significance, or that their meaning cannot be ascertained. But it is undeniable that when Christ himself gives the meaning of his own parable, the part that he leaves unexplained cannot be as surely and clearly understood as the part which he has explained: and further, the portion of a parable on which he maintained silence while he explained another part, is not for us in the same position as another parable of which he has not given an exposition at all. Some of them are so transparent that he did not count it needful to give the interpretation; in other cases, such as the sower, he gave the signification of the whole; in a third class of cases, to which this parable belongs, he explains one feature of the picture, and maintains silence regarding the rest. Now it is precisely the portions left without explanation in parables partially explained, that must in the nature of the case be to us most uncertain. It may be assumed regarding them that their spiritual meaning is either self-evident, and therefore required not a comment, or of subordinate importance, and therefore did not obtain one. In this case it is certain, from the diversity of opinion that prevails regarding them, that these portions are not easily understood: there remains only the other alternative, that they are not essential. Our view of the grand lesson which the Master taught from the closing act of the fishermen, is very little affected by the opinion which we may form regarding the preparatory portions. Those who differ widely regarding the significance of trees and animals that occupy the background of a picture, may notwithstanding agree entirely regarding the meaning of the picture itself. Although we entertain various views in respect to the spreading and drawing of the net, we come all, under the Master’s guidance, to substantially the same view of the separation between good and evil which was accomplished when the net was brought to shore. Upon this point the Lord fixed his eye and expressed his mind. He has made it so plain that there is not room among Christians for serious diversity concerning it. A river in Africa is known and navigated in its lower reaches near the sea. Ships from many nations frequent the estuary, and obtain cargoes of oil, and wax, and fruit from the inhabitants on its shores. But a question, meantime, arises among geographers regarding the source of this river in the interior of the continent, and the direction of its current before it reaches the navigable portion near the ocean. One believes the river rises in the north, and flows mainly southward; another contends that it springs in a mountainous ridge far to the eastward, and flows in a westerly course to the Atlantic. In defect of an actual exploration, there is room for differences of opinion; and differences have accordingly sprung up. The right is better than the wrong even here; but the importance of the point is, in a commercial point of view, secondary. Waiting till time shall afford the materials for decision, the disputants meanwhile frequent the deep estuary in company, and grow rich by the merchandise which it supplies. Thus we all understand, from the Lord’s own transparent, decisive exposition, the last, the deepest, the most profitable portion of the parable. While we endeavour reverently to investigate the portions that are still uncertain, we should rejoice with thankfulness that where agreement was most necessary, the Great Teacher has made it impossible to differ. After this explanation, I need not hesitate to admit that the view of the parable, in its earlier and unexplained portions, which on the whole most commends itself to my judgment, differs essentially from the expositions that are generally given. With modest, grave, watchful spirit should one student of the Scripture suggest and another receive, an interpretation of any portion different from that which has been given by the earnest, accomplished, and devout scholars, who in various countries and times have sought to discover the mind of the Spirit. On the other hand, to suppress a judgment, in deference to human authority, would be disloyal to the Lord and contrary to the principles of Protestants. The view commonly entertained is, that the net is the Church, or, as some express it, the Bible and the ordinances of religion; while the fishermen who spread and draw it are the apostles in the first instance, and afterwards the ordinary ministers of the word. If the net is the Church, and its drawers the Church’s ministers, the whole question of discipline is immediately raised. This parable, accordingly, like that of the tares, has been impressed into their own service by the opponents of discipline both in ancient and modern times. We emphatically repeat here, what we formerly stated in connection with the cognate parable, that no consistent argument can be maintained in regard to discipline from this scripture, except an absolute and entire repudiation of all effort, by a human ministry and in this present world, to keep any person or class of persons without the pale of the visible Church on account of their opinions or their conduct. Very few, however, venture to take this ground. The ordinary method is to contend for some measure of Church order—for the right and duty of excluding some of the worst—and then to lean on this parable for an argument in favour of a lax and against a stringent administration. We submit that to take your stand on this parable, and thence contend for the exclusion to some extent of the evil from the pale of the Church, is to trample all logical and critical laws under foot. This scripture manifestly either forbids all effort to discriminate in this world, or says nothing at all on the subject. I shall now state, as distinctly and fairly as I can, some of the difficulties and inconsistencies which adhere to the common interpretation of the net and its drawers, and convince me that it is not the true interpretation. 1. It makes those who draw the net through the water, and those who separate between good and evil on the shore, not the same, but different persons, and persons of different classes,—the one representing men ministering to the Church in time, the other angels executing judgment in eternity; whereas, both from the terms of the narrative and the ordinary practice of fishermen, we know that the same persons who draw the net to shore afterwards divide between the worthless and vile of its contents. The net “was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.” There is no ambiguity here; the drawers are also the dividers. I suppose none will take advantage of the impersonal form in which the casting of the net is expressed, and assume that while one class, representing a human ministry, cast the net into the water, another class, representing ministering angels, drew it to land and divided its contents; for it would be, contrary to all analogy and propriety, to assume that the Lord introduced into his picture a feature that is never found in fact. There is no such thing in reality as one set of men throwing the net into the water, and then retiring from the scene, while another set of men draw it out. The ordinary interpretation assumes, contrary both to the letter of Scripture and the custom of men, that when ministers of flesh and blood have spread the net, and drawn it toward the shore, enclosing a multitude good and bad of their brethren, they disappear and take no part further in the transaction. Another party, representing the angels, now fasten on the net, and pick out the good from the bad. A late German expositor, learned, suggestive, and devout, Olshausen, yielding to the inexorable logic of the case, concedes that the drawers of the net and the dividers of the fish are not diverse, but the same. He turns, however, to the other side for a solution of the difficulty. Instead of simply proceeding to determine the unknown by the known;—instead of owning that as angels separate the good from the evil on the shore, they must have also thrown and drawn the net, he explains away the specific signification of angels, and supposes that those who minister the Gospel in time are employed, under the general designation of angels, to separate between good and evil in the world to come. This solution will not readily commend itself to British students of the Scripture. The fact therefore remains, that the ordinary exposition of the parable, in this part of its progress, is palpably at variance with the structure of the parable itself, and the facts on which it is founded. 2. In the visible Church, the profession, at the very least, is to enclose the good within the communion of saints, or to rescue the evil by making them new in the act of entrance; whereas the net is let down at a certain spot to sweep indiscriminately all within its circle to the shore. It makes absolutely no distinction between good and bad; it can discriminate only between great and small. The net is laid down in the sea along a certain line: twelve inches beyond that line fishes good and bad are swimming, which it does not touch; while an inch within that line are fishes good and bad which it draws indiscriminately to the shore. I can perceive no likeness between this and the kingdom of heaven, if you understand thereby the visible Church and the efforts of the ministry. 3. One of the chief practical lessons which expositors ancient and modern have drawn from the parable, under this view of its meaning, is extremely incongruous, and even grotesque. Churchmen cling to it as a sheet anchor in controversy with Nonconformists. If this notion were adopted only by mediæval monks and modern Romanists, I would reckon it unworthy of notice; but it is received and uttered again as genuine at this day by grave and learned Protestant theologians of Germany, and notwithstanding the solidity and good sense which characterize his “Notes” generally, is formally reproduced in its boldest form by Dr. Trench. 26 The practical lesson, then, which these expositors draw from the parable is, that disciples of Christ are not justified in leaving an organized Church with which they were connected, and forming a Christian community beyond its pale, on the ground that unworthy members are tolerated within its communion. This is, indeed, not the true state of the question as between the Established Episcopal Church in England and the early Nonconformists; the Puritans did not spontaneously retire, they were ejected by the hand of power because they refused to comply with new ordinances imposed upon the Church of Christ by human authority. But although the state of the question were conceded, the argument completely fails. If this lesson against separation is justly deduced from the parable, there must be in the natural object some parallel more or less distinct which suggests and supports it. What is that parallel, and where does it lie? Translate the spiritual lesson, which men profess to find, back into the material facts, and observe the straits into which your mistake has brought you. The parallel obviously must be,—The good fishes that are enclosed within the net, or those that count themselves good, should not leap out because star-fish and molluscs are enclosed along with them. Either this is the parallel on which the lesson leans, or it has no foundation at all; but there is no such thing in nature, and no such representation in the parable. The fishes when they are once enclosed within the net cannot break out; and even if they could, they would break out not because they were confined in low company, but because they were confined. The good would fain be free; and the bad too. From first to last the net is to all its inmates and to all alike a dreaded prison. I do not descry a solitary feature of resemblance between the parable at this stage and the doctrine regarding Church discipline which the expositors deduce from it. 27 4. The sea, according to the interpreters, being the world, and the net being the Church, I want to know what is meant by drawing the net to land. To be drawn from the sea to the land must mean to be led, willing or unwilling, from this life into eternity; for both good and bad are brought to the shore; then and there the separation takes place which all acknowledge to be final. But are the members of the visible Church alone drawn out of this life into the other world? Do the ministers of the Gospel occupy themselves in dragging their brethren away from the world? Here, too, the interpretation is inconsistent with the facts of the case and the representations of the parable. These difficulties in which the common interpretation is involved, go far to prove that it must be erroneous; a true principle of exposition would surely not lead its adherents into such straits. The real key, if it were found, might be expected to open the lock without wrenching its parts asunder. Although for my own part I would be content to take the plain and undoubted doctrine which the closing scene of the parable contains, and leave the earlier stages of it as the Lord left them, without attaching to them any definite and distinct significance, I am prepared at the same time to suggest a totally different interpretation of the net drawing the fishes to land, for the consideration of those who love to search the Scriptures. I shall state the principle of interpretation which commends itself to my judgment, and leave everyone to judge for himself whether it will consistently and profitably explain all the facts. The net is not the visible Church in the world, and the fishes good and bad within it do not represent the true and false members of the Church. The sea is the world. The net, almost or altogether invisible at first to those whom it surrounds, is that unseen bond which, by an invisible ministry, is stretched over the living, drawing them gradually, secretly, surely, towards the boundary of this life, and over it into another. As each portion, or generation of the human race, are drawn from their element in this world, ministering spirits, on the lip of eternity that lies nearest time, receive them and separate the good from the evil. I shall enumerate here some of the reasons which commend this interpretation, and notice some of the objections which may be urged against it. Among the reasons which commend it,— 1. It assumes, according to the facts of the case and the express terms of the scripture, that the same persons who draw the net also separate the worthy from the worthless of its contents on shore. 2. In owning this along with Olshausen, it owns also that the angels who separate the good from the evil at the end of the world are angels, and does not with him explain them away into the human ministry of the Gospel. 3. It is perfectly congruous with the habits of fishermen and the character of the instruments which they employ. As fishers drop the net over a certain space, and, without making any pretence of discriminating between good and bad, drag all within that space to shore; so the invisible agents whom God employs in his universal administration, whether laws or angelic spirits or both combined, make no distinction between good and bad, when by successive castings of the net, as it were, they enclose section after section, generation after generation of human kind, and draw them slowly, silently, but inevitably to the edge of this life, and over it into the unseen world. I scarcely know in the whole range of nature an analogy more true and touching than this. When you allow that the angels cast and draw the net as well as divide its contents, the incongruities disappear, and the picture starts into life, true to the original. The fishes, enclosed within the net when it is first thrown out, but still swimming in the sea, not aware that the net is round them, are intensely like a human generation, with the sentence of death hanging over them, yet living and moving freely, and looking for many days. As the circle of the net grows narrower the fishes gently give way before it, and so enjoy for a little longer the sensation of floating at liberty in the water; and it is not until they touch the ground that they become thoroughly alarmed. The struggle then is sudden, earnest, short, unavailing. Thus are mankind, without respect to their vice or their virtue, indiscriminately drawn to the margin of this world’s life, and, willing or unwilling, thrown into an unknown state beyond. 4. If any struggles are made against the encircling net during the slow, solemn process of drawing—any efforts on the part of the captives to leap out into freedom, they are made, not by one kind in displeasure at being shut up with another, but by every kind indifferently in displeasure at being shut up at all. Like the indefinite terror of mute fishes when they feel the net coming closer in, is the instinctive alarm of human beings when the hand of death is felt gradually contracting the space in which the pulses of life are permitted to play. I shall now notice and endeavour to estimate the principal objections, as far as I am able to anticipate them, which may be urged against the interpretation that I have suggested. 1. The Lord at another time, in calling some of his apostles, said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). He did; and I think it is by a mistake in instituting an analogy between that fact and this parable that interpreters have been led into a wrong track. Some expositors have made a similar mistake in regard to the parable of the leaven, and the one error will throw light upon the origin and nature of the other. Observing that the Lord in another place represents the doctrines of the Pharisees and the Sadducees as a leaven, some have concluded that the leaven in the parable also must point to the spread of error, and have expounded it accordingly. All judicious critics, however, clearly see and distinctly explain in that case, that the leaven which was in other instances employed to represent the diffusion of evil, was in the parable employed to represent the prevalence of good. Although leaven in one of the Lord’s discourses pointed to hypocrisy and unbelief, they teach, and teach correctly, that leaven in another of his discourses points to the progress of saving truth. The same discrimination should be exercised here. It is quite true that the Lord at one time, and in one discourse, compared the ministry of apostles in winning souls to the labour of fishers in the ordinary exercise of their craft; but that does not prevent him from employing at another time the universal sweep of the draw-net to represent the silent, slow, and sure encompassing of human kind, which draws them, good and bad alike, by instruments and agencies which they do not see and cannot resist, from this troubled sea of time toward the shore of the unknown eternity. Because the conception of capturing fishes in the Sea is at one time in the Lord’s discourses employed to indicate the benevolent labour of the Gospel ministry, it does not follow that you are compelled to construe that conception in the same way wherever it occurs, although the circumstances manifestly render the application incongruous and contradictory. Let it be observed, moreover, that when the apostles in respect of their work are called fishers of men, not one feature in the process of fishing is specified in detail. Nothing is introduced but the general conception of a fisherman catching fishes in the sea. This conception in the abstract contains nothing incongruous with the labour of the apostles. As long as you abide by the bare general term “fisher,” the analogy, as applied to “apostle,” is obvious and the meaning easily recognised; but the moment you descend into the details of a net, and the mixture of good and evil, you plunge into inextricable confusion, if you persist in maintaining an analogy between the detailed process of fishing and the labour of apostles for the kingdom of Christ. The general conception of fishing, as it appeared to the mind of speaker and hearers on the margin of the Lake of Galilee, diverged into two dissimilar branches as soon as it descended into practical detail. The fishermen prosecuted their avocation sometimes with line and baited hooks, sometimes with boat and nets. Fishing with line and hook, a process of watching, selecting, discriminating, whereby the fishes are one by one enticed and taken, readily spontaneously leaps up before the imagination as a line parallel with the work of an evangelist, bent on winning souls; but fishing by the draw-net absolutely refuses to be fashioned into an analogue of the evangelistic work. The Lord in his teaching said that fishers were like apostles; but he never said that the process of fishing by the draw-net resembles the efforts of his ministers for the conversion of the world. Of the two methods of fishing which were familiar to the parties, one is in some of its main features analogous to the new employment into which Jesus called the twelve, and the other is totally dissimilar. When I read, therefore, that an apostle is a fisher of men, I shall think of the selecting, discriminating method of casting a hook into the water; and when I learn from this parable that the separation between the good and bad of the net’s contents upon the shore represents the separation between good and bad men by the ministry of angels in the unseen world, I am not compelled—I am not permitted to believe, contrary to all analogy, that the Church encloses all, like the net, without an effort, a hope, a desire to discriminate, and that the ministers of the Church, like the fishermen, drag their brothers unwilling out of the world to the judgment-seat. 2. But has not the Lord said in this parable, as in all the rest of the group, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea? He has; yet the fact does not prove that he meant to represent the Church by the net, and the labour of apostles by the spreading and drawing of the net. The formula, “The kingdom of heaven is like,” relates to the parable as a whole, and not specifically to that feature of the parable which lies next to it in the record. For the evidence of this proposition it is not necessary to go further than the two immediately preceding parables. In one, “the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure;” in the other, it “is like unto a merchant-man.” If, instead of looking to the picture as a whole, you insist on finding the analogue of the kingdom or the Church specifically in the net, you must, in like manner, in the parable of the pearl, find that the Church is specifically compared to a man, whereas in the preceding example it was compared to a treasure. In these examples it is demonstrated that the analogy instituted refers to the picture as a whole, and not to the single feature that first occurs in the narrative. 28 The Lord intimates in the introductory formula that he intends by this parable to give yet another lesson regarding the kingdom of heaven; and it must be determined otherwise than by the mere juxtaposition of the clauses, on what aspect or period of the kingdom he will by this similitude throw light. Six consecutive lessons on the subject have already been given. He has taught already what hinders the kingdom in the deceitfulness of human hearts, and the machinations of the wicked one; what its inherent power is, and what its contagious all-pervading influence; what is its value in the estimate of those who know it, and how much they willingly part with in order to obtain the treasure. What new and additional characteristic of the kingdom does the Master teach his disciples in the seventh and last parable of the group—the parable of the draw-net? The closing lesson about the kingdom relates to the closing scene of the kingdom—the separation of the wicked from the good on the great day. From the order of the subjects in the series you might expect this; from the picture actually presented you are logically led to infer this; but, especially, you know this from the spontaneous explanation then and there given by the Lord. Although, according to his usual method, he completed the parabolic picture, filling up the fore and back grounds with the objects that naturally lay there, yet when he comes to the interpretation, he passes in silence all these preparatory features, and tells the meaning of the last only—the separation of the wicked from the just through the ministry of angels at the end of the world. Yes, as the Lord said, this parable sheds light on the kingdom, but the portion of the kingdom on which the light falls is the close. It brings out in strong relief the final separation between those who remain distant and those who are brought nigh. In view of the decisive fact that the Lord gives an interpretation, and does not interpret the casting and drawing of the net to mean the visible Church and its operations—does not interpret the casting and drawing of the net at all, I cannot assent to the demand that the general formula of introduction common to all the seven parables should be held to determine what specific portion of the extended picture, or whether any, represents the Church in relation to the character of its members and the duty of its ministers. When God in his work of creation determined to give this globe a “lesser light,” to mitigate the necessary darkness of its night in the absence of the sun, he provided an orb which serves that purpose, and more. Although only one of its sides is turned towards the earth, the moon has another side formed in full. For light to the earth the Creator needed only a disc; but in order to provide it he made a sphere. In a similar manner the Lord has acted in the parable, when he desired to give his disciples a lesson upon the separation which takes place at the close of the dispensation; He made the orb full, although he illumined only one side of it by his own interpretation. If any one is disposed to hold me to the letter of this similitude, and say that the uninterpreted portion of the parable is left, like the further hemisphere of the moon, deep in the shade, and beyond our view, I frankly consent to be so held. I agree that those portions of the parable should be considered to us of uncertain significance. We may lawfully and profitably examine them, and test every proposed explanation, and profit by every good lesson that may be obtained; but we ought absolutely to abandon all attempts to find there an authority for any doctrine or any duty. I think when the Lord has explained a part of one of his own parables, the portion of it which he has left unexplained is in a different position from a parable which he has not explained at all. When he gives any interpretation, his silence has a meaning as well as his words. If he had meant to determine by a particular feature of this parable any important doctrine or duty, we may rest assured, when he did undertake to give an explanation, he would not have left that part altogether unexplained. On the whole, I think the earlier portion of the parable is debatable ground; it is left in the shade; there is room for difference of opinion in regard to it. In some aspects it may suggest useful reflections as a picture of the good and evil mingled in the Church; in other aspects it may suggest solemn thoughts as a picture of successive generations being gradually drawn from life’s moving sea to eternity’s stable unknown shore. I believe that profitable lessons may be obtained from it in both of these, and perhaps in other aspects; I believe that the disciples do not sin, and the Master is not displeased, when to one inquirer it suggests this lesson, and to another it suggests that, as long as all is done in charity, and according to the analogy of the faith. I have suggested a line of thought, which I believe to be relevant and profitable; but I would not dare to plant my foot on this exposition as the ground of any doctrine or any duty. It is because others, both in ancient and modern times, have pretended to find on the unillumined side of this parable a light to guide Christians authoritatively in points that vitally affect the kingdom of Christ, that I have entered at so great length into the inquiry. I confess frankly that I count it a good and necessary work to wrench this scripture from the hands of those who, whether in ignorance or conscious partiality, use it as an instrument practically to blot out the line which the Lord has elsewhere drawn between the Church and the world. It is not necessary now to refute formally the fond, feeble notion, that this parable proves the sinfulness of dissenting from the Church of England, established by the State and prelatic in its government. Even although we should concede that the visible Church and the character of its constituents are the subjects with which the parable deals, it would be childish trifling on the part of a Churchman to quote it as of authority against Nonconformists. In the same Bible stands the precept, “Come out from among them and be ye separate;” and the Nonconformist has as good a right, that is, no right at all, to quote it as of authority by itself against a Churchman. The matter cannot be settled, on either side, by general announcements like these, although they are selected from the Scriptures. Every case must be judged upon its own merits. The question whether a dissenter has separated from a corrupt community in order to obey his Lord, or has rent the Church to gratify his own pride, must be determined in each case by an appeal to the facts: no solution satisfactory to intelligent Christians, or to grown men, can be reached by superciliously throwing a text in your neighbour’s face. This remark is made upon the supposition that the parable bears upon the point, which I think is more than doubtful. Those who gravely counsel the fishes to abide peacefully within the net, and not to leap out pharisaically and schismatically because foul fish abound within the same enclosure, certainly show themselves incapable of appreciating the analogies of nature, whatever may be their familiarity with ecclesiastical affairs. We subjoin two practical lessons; the first, though in itself self-evidently true, depending for its suggestion here on the special view of the net which we have submitted; the second founded directly on the word and enforced by the authority of the Lord. 1. We of this generation, a miscellaneous multitude of old and young, good and evil, move about at liberty in the wide expanse of life, as fishes move about in the deep broad sea; but certain mysterious, invisible lines, have been let down into the water, and are silently, slowly creeping near, and winding round us. The net at first has a vast compass: a fish within its circle has as much room as it needs, and cares not for distant danger. Even when the cords begin to come near, he moves out of their way, and for his own comfort embraces warmly the opinion that these cords do not constitute a net. They are some loose things,—certain species of sea-weed, such as he has often seen before. He has gone round them or through them often and easily: he will do so again. But these approach persistently, and still from the same side: they lie between him and the open sea: to avoid them he must move in-shore. Getting now a nearer view, he descries some new features of the danger. These lines are crossed and knitted in a manner all unlike the sea-weed threads that streamed so long and straight and loose in the tide-way. A secret foreboding of some unknown doom arises: the alarmed captive, having now no further room to retire, darts wildly sea-ward, and is caught in the inevitable meshes of the encircling net. After a moment of violent but feeble struggle, he is laid still and dumb on the shore. It is a picture touchingly, terribly exact of our own state. The net has been spread around us: the sharp knitted lines gradually approach and touch us. Shrinking from the clammy contact as we would from living snakes, we retire before them, and still find room. But the lines appear again, always on the same side. Our space grows narrower as we recede, from year to year, from week to week, from day to day, until at length we graze the ground and strike upon the eternal world. That net cannot be removed or evaded; but it may be changed, so that you would not fear its approach. When we become new creatures in Christ, death approaching us becomes a new creature too, as the image in a mirror changes with the object that stands before it. This dreaded net becomes like a warm, soft, encircling arm, pressing a frightened infant closer to a mother’s breast. 2. Good and bad alike are drawn in company toward the shore, but the good and bad are separated when they reach it. No lesson can be addressed to men more touching, more piercing than this. Nor is its penetrating power diminished by any deficiency of authority in the word that presses it home. It is the word of the Lord; not spoken in parables, but expressly given as the meaning of the parable that had been spoken. Its force is not weakened by any quiver of doubt in the Christian brotherhood as to the Master’s mind. All Christians hear this word and understand it alike: the whole assembly, when they hear it, bow the head and worship. On the authority of our Redeemer, and in terms so transparent that they afford no room for doubt, we learn that on the shore to which we are silently, surely moving, a separation infallibly exact and irrevocably final will be made between the evil and the good. As to the positive punishment into which the impenitent will be cast, while I simply receive all the words of the Lord, I shall take care not to obtrude many of my own. He spoke of matters beyond the cognizance of sense, and beyond even the range of imagination, and therefore in the nature of the case we cannot fully understand his words. But He who utters this solemn warning knows what we understand by “a furnace of fire,” and by “wailing and gnashing of teeth:” he intends to convey to us, regarding sufferings that are not only unknown, but in our present condition to us unknowable, as clear and deep and awe-inspiring an impression as our minds are capable of receiving. He leads our minds in that direction as far as they can follow; and, for the rest, darkness will cover it until “that day.” In the direction downward unto death, as well as upward unto life, the word holds good, “What thou knowest not now, thou shalt know hereafter.” Either line, when it crosses the border of this life, “passeth all understanding.” I suppose it is as completely impossible for a human heart to conceive what God hath prepared for them that hate him, as to conceive what he hath prepared for them that love him. It is eminently noteworthy here, that the clearest, most articulate, and most emphatic announcements regarding the positive punishment of the wicked in a future world which the Scriptures contain, were spoken, and spoken repeatedly, by the lips of the Lord Jesus. Wherefore? Did the love of the Redeemer sometimes wax cold? Did even he, through the provocations that he met in his ministry, sometimes forget to be gracious? No; never at any time did his heart melt more with tenderness for men than when he proclaimed that the wicked shall be cast into outer darkness. He not only intimated, as in this parable, that such sentence would be pronounced, but declared that himself would pronounce it: “When the Son of man shall come in his glory ... then shall he say unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:31). He who uttered these words pitied and loved sinners; he loved them while he spoke these words; he loved them although he spoke these words;—because he loved them, he spoke these words. The thing which these words declare is true: Christ did not change the eternal law of God that evil shall not dwell in his presence: since this law remains beyond the line of the present world to meet every man as he enters eternity, it was kind to give us warning. It would have been unkind, and therefore unlike the Lord, to conceal the dreadful fact, and leave unwarned sinners to learn it first by feeling it. It was love, overflowing love in the heart of our Brother, that drew these warnings repeatedly from his lips. The reason why he tells us that the wicked shall be cast away, is that we may never be cast away. The good Shepherd would compel the sheep to flee to the fold by sending out his terrors, when they refused to be more gently led. There is a machine in the Bank of England which receives sovereigns, as a mill receives grain, for the purpose of determining wholesale whether all are of full weight. As they pass through, the machinery, by unerring laws, throws all that are light to one side, and all that are of full weight to another. That process is a silent but solemn parable for me. Founded as it is upon the laws of nature, it affords the most vivid similitude of the certainty which characterizes the judgment of the great day. There are no mistakes or partialities to which the light may trust: the only hope lies in being of standard weight before they go in. I gratefully recognise tender, overflowing love, in the faithful testimony of Christ regarding the punishment of the wicked: it is meant to compel sinners now to take refuge in his righteousness. 29 FOOTNOTES 26. “They [this and the parable of the tares] convey, too, the same further lesson, that this fact [the actual intermixture of evil in the visible Church] does not justify self-willed departure from the fellowship of the Church, and impatient leaping over or breaking through the nets, as here it has often been called; but the Lord’s separation is patiently to be waited for, which shall surely arrive at the end of the present age.”—Dr. Trench, Notes on the Parables, p. 133. This is a style far too loose for a critical exposition of Scripture. If the actual presence of tolerated impurity within the Church does not justify a “self-willed” departure from her communion, does it justify a departure that is not self-willed, but a solemn separation in order to carry out the will of the Lord? The assumption that the separation of the English Nonconformists was “self-willed,” of course begs the whole question.[26] 27. While Stier and Trench seem to start with the same principle of interpretation on this subject, they are led ultimately to opposite practical results. Trench, as we have seen, gathers from the parable that the pure, or those who consider themselves pure, are not justified in leaping out of the net at their own pleasure; that is, the Nonconformists should not go and constitute conventicles beyond the pale of the Establishment. Stier, on the contrary, represents the evil as endeavouring to break out of the net, but unable to accomplish their purpose: “Many a leviathan is caught, and although he would fain get out, yet cannot break the net.”—Stier in loc.[27] 28. The argument on this point is well stated by Limburg Brouwer. His conclusion is: “Accedit quod ????????? illud, (??????? ? ????????, ?.?.?.) saepe ita comparatum est, ut proprie non conferendum sit cum solo illo subjecto, quocum ab auctore connectatur, sed potius cum universa re narrata.”—De Parabolis Jesu Christi, 153.[28] 29. Arndt closes his exposition of this parable with a hymn, which I subjoin, not only for the sake of the doctrinal statement regarding the ground of a sinner’s hope contained in the first verse, but also, and still more, for the union of simplicity and solemnity in the conception of future punishment contained in the second:— Christi Blut und Gerechtigkeit, Das ist mein Schmuck und Ehrenkleid; Damit will ich vor Gott besteh’n Und zu der Himmelsfreud’ eingeh’n. Hilf, Gott, dass yeder kommen mag, Wo tausend Yahr’ ist wie ein Tag: Vor dem Ort uns, O Gott, bewahr’, Wo ein Tag ist wie tausend Yahr’! Christ’s blood and righteousness Shall be the marriage-dress, In which I’ll stand At God’s right hand Forgiven, And enter rest Among the blest In heaven. Help, Lord, that we may come To thy saints’ happy home, Where a thousand years As one day appears, Nor go, Where one day appears As a thousand years For woe. [29] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 10: 1.08. THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT ======================================================================== VIII. THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. “Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellow-servants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. And his fellow-servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow-servants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.”—Matthew 18:23. This parable, and that of the Good Samaritan, as has been justly suggested by Fred. Arndt, although historically separate, are logically related, like two branches that spring from one stem: together they express a Christian’s duty to his brother in respect of injuries. When a brother inflicts an injury on you, forgive him; when a brother suffers an injury from another, help him. Forgiving love is taught in this parable; helpful love in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The immediate occasion of this parable is obviously Peter’s question, “How oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?” but how Peter’s question springs from the preceding context does not so readily appear. The Natural History of the process in that apostle’s mind was probably something of this sort: The Master had instructed his disciples how they should act in the event of a brother doing them an injury: three distinct steps are indicated, rising one above another like courts of appeal; first, a private remonstrance; if that prove unavailing, then a remonstrance in the presence of one or two witnesses; and lastly, an appeal to the Church. These rules are very specific, and together constitute a complete code on the branch of the subject to which they refer. In the matter of dealing with an offending brother with the view of bringing him to a better mind, you can no further go: if all these efforts fail, you must separate yourself from the offender, lest by continued intimacy you should seem indifferent to his sin. After this the Lord proceeds to give instruction on other subjects, and especially on united prayer. Peter, I suppose, had allowed his mind to be so completely occupied with the question of forgiving injuries, that he failed to follow his Teacher when the lesson glided into another theme. I could suppose him to have been so busy with the thought of injuries received, and the difficulty of forgiving them, all the time that the Lord was discoursing on united prayer, that he scarcely observed his Master’s words. All the more readily might this happen, if the impetuous fisherman had a quarrel with some of his neighbours on hand at the very time, and was exercised in conscience about the duty of bringing it to a close. At the first pause, the current which had been for a time flowing under ground, burst out on the surface. Taking up and again abruptly introducing the subject which had been for some time dismissed, he asked, as if unconscious that the theme had been changed during his reverie, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?” He wanted to have a number specified, beyond which he should not be bound to forgive repeated offences. In suggesting seven he seems to have had in his mind some Pharisaical formula: probably he thought the allowance was liberal, and expected to be approved for his magnanimity. The formula, seventy times seven, while it serves to intimate that there is in the law no limit to the exercise of a forgiving spirit, seizes upon Peter’s narrow proposal and makes a show of it openly. It is possible that he may have fallen into a mistake here through the misapprehension of a lesson on the same subject given by the Lord. He may have heard the Master teach, as at Luke 17:4,—“If he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him.” But evidently the number seven in that discourse has substantially the same meaning with seventy times seven here: seven times a day, even when literally understood, includes as much as the absolute seventy times seven. The doctrine in both cases is that it is not lawful to set any limit to the principle and the practice of forgiving injuries. To repeat, expand, and enforce this lesson, the parable is introduced. The kingdom of heaven is like a man king—??????? ???????. Expressly the divine is in this respect analogous to the human. This ruler proposed to take account of his servants. It was not the final reckoning, but a periodical balance. A king is in this respect like a merchant: he takes account from time to time of his own affairs, and the intromissions of his servants. “Short counts make long friends.” These servants were not slaves, the property of their master; for afterwards it is assumed that he may sell them, not as an ordinary right, but as the special penalty incurred by an insolvent debtor. A king, in ancient times and oriental regions, entered into pecuniary transactions with his servants on a great scale. One man, who owes all to the personal favour of the sovereign, is the governor of a wealthy province. Bound by no written law, and living at a distance from the seat of government, that servant possesses always the power, and too frequently seizes the opportunity of oppressing the people on the one hand, and defrauding the royal treasury on the other. In many cases fortunate or powerful dependants farmed the taxes of a district, paying, or at least promising to pay, a certain sum yearly to the supreme government, and obtaining authority in return to levy contributions on the inhabitants for their own behoof, sometimes almost according to their own pleasure. Vast sums passed through the hands of these great officers, and vast sums also remained in their hands that should have passed through them. The amount specified in the parable—ten thousand talents—is very great, of whatever species you may suppose the talent to be. The inquiry which has been prosecuted with a view to determine precisely the value of the talent in this case is difficult, and does not lead to any certain or important result. The question is interesting to Biblical scholars and antiquarians, but the solution of it is by no means necessary to the perception or the application of our Lord’s meaning in the parable. The sense is completely obtained by taking the ten thousand talents as a vast but indefinite sum. A hundred talents of silver constituted the hire of a great army, 2 Chronicles 25:6; and notwithstanding the lavish use of gold in the construction of the Tent-Temple in the wilderness, only twenty-nine talents were employed in all (Exodus 38:24). Besides the distinction between gold and silver, other variations occur in the value of a talent, depending upon time, place, and other circumstances. In any view of its worth, however, the disparity between the sum which this servant owed to the master, and the trifling amount which a fellow-servant owed to him, is as great as the imagination can effectually grasp; larger numbers would not sensibly intensify the impression. “One was brought to him:” this servant would not have come to the king of his own accord; but he could not escape the interview and the reckoning. Aware of his enormous debt, he would fain have kept out of his master’s way, but could not. God looks on the heart, and grasps the conscience, whether the man will or be unwilling. The punishment is very severe, but in accordance with law and custom. No complaint is made against the sentence as if it were unjust in principle, or excessive in degree: the culprit appeals only to the mercy of the judge, and thus the righteousness of the verdict is tacitly acknowledged. His promise to pay means nothing more than his desire to escape. He made the promise, not in the expectation of being able to perform it, but as the most likely means of escaping from punishment. His worship was prompted by selfish fear, not by filial love. He did not know his master’s heart: he thought he would gain his object most readily by leading the king to expect payment in full. The king did not grant his servant’s request: he did more; he forgave that servant all. The absolved debtor, as soon as he obtained his liberty, went out, and met a fellow-servant, who owed him an hundred pence. I suppose, if that fellow-servant had come to him while yet he was in his master’s presence, he would not have dared to act the tyrant; but “out of sight, out of mind.” He forgot his own prayer, and his lord’s compassion. He grasped the fellow-servant by the throat and threw him into prison, until he should pay. 30 The amount is comparatively small, as is fit between servant and servant: the smallness of the debt brings the cruelty of the creditor out in high relief. His neighbour’s pleading is expressed in the same terms as his own: the sound should have reminded him of his duty. Fellow-servants observing the outrage were at once indignant and compassionate. They informed their master. The master displeased, pronounced his condemnation in full. He who showed no mercy to his brother, received judgment without mercy for himself. Before proceeding to the exposition of the parable in its spiritual meaning and application, I shall submit a remark of a general character, bearing on the parables at large, as well as on this in particular, which can be made more conveniently now than at the close. The more I examine the structure and use of the parable in the teaching of the Lord, the more I am convinced that men make a great mistake when they betake themselves to a single feature of the natural scene as a defence of some specific and controverted dogma. The rule may be made absolute, or if there are exceptions they are few, that the parables are intended to expand, illustrate, and enforce what is elsewhere clearly taught in the Scriptures, and not themselves to constitute the grounds or evidences of the doctrines. But to whatever extent such a general rule may be applicable, it is most certain that those who run to a corner of a parable and take their stand on it, as impregnable evidence of some doctrine which they hold, are in all cases egregiously mistaken. The controversies, for example, on the question of Church discipline, which were made to turn on the tares among the wheat, and the net that caught all kinds of fishes, are a mere waste of words. Those parables do not afford material for the decision of the question; they do not speak to the point. In like manner, when theologians gravely refer to this parable in order to prove that after a man’s sins have been all freely forgiven by God, he may yet fall from grace, and the guilt of all his sins be laid upon him at the last, they waste their own time, and trifle with the scripture. True, in this picture you see one whose great debt was all freely forgiven by the master brought back into judgment, and made answerable for the whole amount; but this incidental feature of a human procedure will not bear the weight which men would fain lay on it. This king, whose conduct is represented in the parable, is expressly called a man king. No doubt his procedure in that case is employed to illustrate some laws of the kingdom of heaven; but this is done by analogy. Analogy is not identity; the very essence of it lies in coincidence in some points, with diversity in others; if the two were identical, there were no longer an analogy. Take two pictures of a person printed from the same negative photograph; you do not say they are like each other, they are the same. It is most dangerous to fasten on any point of the depicted human procedure, and found on it the affirmation that the divine must be precisely the same. But besides this general consideration demanding caution, there is enough in the parable itself absolutely to refute the notion, that God may forgive a man all his sins, and thereafter lay these very sins all to his charge. It is indeed said in the earlier portion of the parable that the lord of that servant forgave him the debt; but it is as clearly indicated in the close that the debt was not forgiven. The man was cast into prison until he should pay it all; he was held bound for all the original debt, and was punished accordingly. If he was forgiven all that debt, not one penny of it can afterwards be placed to his account; and if it is afterwards placed to his account, the fact proves that it had not been forgiven. The meaning of the phraseology must be determined by the necessary conditions of the fact. That word of the king, “I forgive thee,” was not a discharge; if it had been, mere justice demanded that the debt discharged should not be charged again. The fact that it was all charged again, proves irrefragably that it was not discharged. The meaning in the light of the facts must be that these terms were offered by the king. His terms are free forgiveness, bestowed in sovereign love by the giver, and accepted in grateful love by the receiver. The servant, as is shown by his conduct, did not accept these terms, and so there was no transaction. The key-notes of the parable are found at the beginning and the end. It was spoken in order to show that a man should set no limit to the forgiveness of injuries; and in order to show this, the parable goes into the deep things of God. It shows that the motive power which can produce in man an unlimited forgiveness of his brother, is God’s mercy forgiving himself. At the close it lays down the law, that the act or habit of extending forgiveness to a brother, is a necessary effect of receiving forgiveness from God. If you get pardon from God, you will give it to your brother; if you withhold it from your brother, you thereby make it manifest that you have not gotten it from God. As the king determined to take account of his servants during the currency of their work, and before the final winding up of their engagement, so the King Eternal in various ways and at various periods takes account of men, especially of those who know his word, and belong externally to his Church. One by one the servants are brought into their Lord’s presence. The messenger that brings them may be a commercial crisis, a personal affliction, or a revival in the neighbourhood. The King has many messengers at his command, and he employs now one and now another to bring a professing Christian forward to his presence. When one who has contrived to keep out of the way, both of his own conscience and of God, is at length compelled to open his heart to the Omniscient, and fairly look into it himself, he discovers that his debt is unspeakably, inconceivably great. The sum of ten thousand talents in the picture is not an exaggeration; it does not indicate all the guilt which God detects in the conscience, and which the awakened conscience detects in itself. It is a dreadful moment when a sinner is brought face to face with God, and charged with his guilt; it is then that the law performs its terrible yet merciful work of conviction. The first purpose that springs in the heart of the alarmed transgressor is to satisfy the demand: Give me time, and I will pay all. Whether he deliberately expects to be able to pay it may be doubted; but one thing is clear, he thinks that nothing else will appease the Master, and he makes the promise accordingly. This is, in point of fact, the first proposal of an alarmed conscience, “I will pay thee all.” The natural history of the process is here. God does not hold the convicted transgressor to his own rash promise. Treating the criminal, not according to his desert, but according to his need, the Judge announces the terms of his own covenant—a pardon immediate, complete, and free. “The same servant went out:” the moment of close dealing between God and the soul has passed: the man who has trembled at the sight of his sin, and the prospect of judgment, has heard the Gospel, and gotten a respite. He goes out from that solemn and searching communion: he is released for the moment from the presence of the Judge, and from the sense of his sin. He glides again into the world. He has not been converted; he has only been frightened. He has not been forgiven; he has only been respited. He has not accepted God’s grace, and therefore is not under law to God. The fright is past, and faith has not taken its place. The heart, after terror had driven the evil spirits out, does not open to the Lord, and therefore the evil spirits come back, and possess the empty room in sevenfold power. As soon as he comes in the way of temptation, the unsubdued carnality of his soul asserts its life and power. A fellow-servant who has in small matters offended him, begs for pardon, as he had done from God, and begs in vain. He shows no mercy; the fact proves that he has not himself accepted the mercy that was offered by God. If the channel of his heart had really been inserted into the fountain-head of mercy for receiving, mercy would infallibly have flowed in the way of giving, wherever the need of a brother made an opening; if the vessel had been charged, it would certainly have discharged. No compassion flowed from that heart to refresh a fellow-creature in distress, because that heart had never truly opened to accept mercy from God; the reservoir was empty, and therefore the outbranching channels remained dry. 31 Beyond all question, the design of the Lord in this parable is to enforce the duty of forgiving one another. In teaching this lesson, he touches matters greater than itself; but these occupy here only a secondary place. The drift of the parable is to take off the artificial limit laid by Peter, and by the Pharisees before him, on the disposition to forgive an offending brother, and to leave it limitless,—infinite, as far as the faculties and the time of men can reach. I think the substance of the lesson may be expressed in these two words, the practice and the principle of forgiving injuries. These two are in effect the ultimate act and the secret power that produced it. They are at once distinguished and united in that new commandment which Jesus gave to his disciples,—“That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 13:34). The first part of that commandment tells what they ought to do, and the second part tells what will make them do it. It is when they place themselves under the power of Christ’s forgiving love to themselves, that they are impelled in turn to forgive each his brother. The duty corresponds to the moving machinery, and the motive to the stream of living water which makes the machinery go. 1. The PRACTICE of forgiving injuries. The terms employed indicate clearly enough that the injuries which man suffers from his fellow are trifling in amount, especially in comparison of each man’s guilt in the sight of God. There is a meaning in the vast and startling difference between ten thousand talents and a hundred pence. Even when the injury is the greatest that human beings are capable of inflicting on the one side, and enduring on the other; even when an enemy has killed the body and ceased then, because he has no more that he can do, it is still a measurable thing. Love in a finite being’s heart may swell high over it, and exult in bestowing forgiveness on the murderer with the victim’s dying breath. In the beginning of the Gospel a vivid example of that very thing stands recorded: “Lord,” said Stephen with fainting heart and failing breath, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” Great as the injury was, according to earthly measurements, the imperfect love that lived in a man’s heart was more than a match for it, and the martyr with his dying breath forgave his murderers. But how rare are those injuries that rise to this extreme height! Most of the injuries with which we are called to deal are small, even in relation to human capacity: they are very often precisely of the size that our own temper makes them. Some people possess the art of esteeming great injuries small, and some the art of esteeming small injuries great. The first is like a traveller who throws a great many stones out of the burden which he carries, and so walks with ease along the road; the other is like a traveller who gathers a great many stones on the way-side, and adds them to his burden, and is therefore soon crushed by the load. But more than this: the foolish man who made his burden heavier, retains the redoubled weight upon his back; while the wise man who made his burden lighter, contrives to throw off even the smaller weight that remained. The same spirit that induced the suffering Christian to diminish his estimate of the injury, induces him to forgive even that which remains, and thus he gets quit of it altogether; for to forgive it, is equivalent to throwing it away, in as far as it had power to burden or irritate you. On the other hand, the same spirit which in an irritable man magnified and multiplied the actual injury which he received, prevents him from forgiving the great and exaggerated mass; thus in effect he is crushed under the accumulated weight of all the real injury he has sustained, and all the imaginary injury he has added. The compassionate, loving man, who counted the great injury small, was relieved even of that small remnant by forgiving it: the selfish, unloving man, who counted a small injury great, could not forgive his neighbour, and so was compelled to bear the heavy burden on his heart. In this case that sublime rule of the Scripture takes effect: “To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.”32 But we must carefully discriminate here, and ascertain what the Lord means by forgiving a brother. There should not be a little, narrow, grudging forgiveness; it should be large, loving, and free. But parallel with forgiveness there must be faithfulness. Faithfulness to the evil-doer himself, and to the community, comes in here to modify, not the nature, but the outward form of forgiving. For example, there is no virtue in simply permitting a man to wrong you as often as he chooses,—forgiving him and doing nothing more. In the immediately preceding context the Lord has taught that the injured should tell the injurer his fault. Tell him faithfully in secret his sin: if he repent, thou hast gained thy brother: if he do not listen, tell it in the presence of two or three witnesses: if he is still obdurate, tell it to the Church: and if he refuse to hear the Church withdraw from his company; let him and all the world know that you do not make light of his sin. Again, in some kinds of injury, it becomes your duty for the sake of the community to aid in bringing the criminal to justice. To bring the discipline of the righteous law upon the criminal, is not revenge: to shield him from its stroke is not love. So far from being necessarily inconsistent with forgiveness, such faithfulness in action may be associated with a Christ-like love to the sinner, and a thorough forgiveness of his sin, as an injury inflicted upon you. Here is a side on which there is much room for advancement: let us forget the things that lie behind us on this path, and reach forward to higher attainments. In as far as Christians unite faithfulness and tenderness in their treatment of evil-doers, they become “imitators of God, as dear children.” 2. The PRINCIPLE of forgiving injuries. Suppose that the methods for practice are accurately laid down, where shall we find a sufficient motive? Suppose that an unexceptionable machinery has been constructed, whence shall we obtain an adequate force to set it in motion? From an upper spring in heaven the motive power must flow; it can be supplied only by God’s forgiving love, on us bestowed and by us accepted. When, like little closed vessels, we are charged by union with the fountain-head, forgiving love to erring brothers will burst spontaneously from our hearts at every opportunity that opens in the intercourse of life. The express command of Him who redeemed us is, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” In teaching his disciples how to pray, he linked their promise to forgive with their plea for forgiveness, so that no prayer of theirs should rise to heaven for receiving pardon unless it were accompanied by an engagement expressed or implied to bestow pardon: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” But there is much more in the connection between receiving and bestowing forgiveness than can be expressed by the conception of yielding to the pressure of a motive. It is not only obedience to a command enjoined; it is the exercise of an instinct that has been generated in the new nature. The method in which this and other graces operate is expressed by an apostle thus: “It is no more I that live, but Christ that liveth in me.” When Christ is in you, he is in you not only the hope of glory, but also the forgiving of an erring brother. A traveller in Burmah, after fording a certain river, found his body covered all over by a swarm of small leeches, busily sucking his blood. His first impulse was to tear the tormentors from his flesh: but his servant warned him that to pull them off by mechanical violence would expose his life to danger. They must not be torn off, lest portions remain in the wounds and become a poison; they must drop off spontaneously, and so they will be harmless. The native forthwith prepared a bath for his master, by the decoction of some herbs, and directed him to lie down in it. As soon as he had bathed in the balsam the leeches dropped off. Each unforgiven injury rankling in the heart is like a leech sucking the life-blood. Mere human determination to have done with it, will not cast the evil thing away. You must bathe your whole being in God’s pardoning mercy; and these venomous creatures will instantly let go their hold. You will stand up free. Two wheels protrude from a factory, and are seen in motion on the outer wall by every passenger. They move into each other. The upper wheel is large, the under small. From without and at a distance, you cannot tell whether the upper is impelling the under, or the under moving the upper. This question, however, might be settled by an inspection of the interior. By such an inspection it would be found that the larger and higher wheel communicates motion to the lower and smaller. If the upper wheel, which communicates the motion, should stand still, so also would the lower: but more than this,—if the lower wheel, which receives the motion, should by some impediment be stopped, the upper wheel also would stand still. It is in some such way that God’s goodness in forgiving freely for Christ’s sake our sins, impels us to forgive from the heart those that have trespassed against us. The power is all from above; yet, though we by our goodness do not set the beneficent machinery in motion, we may by our badness cause it all to stand still. It is not our forgiveness accorded to an evil-doer that procures forgiveness to ourselves from God; the opposite is the truth: yet our refusal of forgiveness to a brother prevents the flow of pardon down from God to our guilty hearts. Such is the structure of the covenant. It is only a small part of that covenant that we can comprehend; but, as far as we are able to perceive its provisions, behold, they are very good! While a few acres of cold barren moorland constitute all your heritage, if a neighbour encroaches on it by a hair’s-breadth, you assert your right and repel the aggression: possibly you may, in your zeal, accuse him of an intention to trespass, if you see him digging his own ground near your border. While your property is very small, you are afraid of losing any of it; and perhaps you cry out before you are hurt. But if you become heir to a broad estate in a fertile valley, you will no longer be disposed to watch the motions of your neighbour, and go to law with him for a spadeful of moss that he may have taken from a disputed spot. Thus, while a human soul has no other portion than an uncertain shred of this uncertain world, he is kept in terror lest an atom of his property should be lost; he will do battle with all his might against any one who is, or seems to be, encroaching on his honour, or business, or property: but when he becomes a child of God, and an heir of an incorruptible inheritance—when he is a prince on the steps of a throne, he can afford to overlook small deductions from a possession that is insignificant in itself, and liable to be taken away at any time without an hour’s warning. In this aspect it is eminently worthy of notice that the disciples, when their Master on another occasion (Luke 17:3), taught them a similar doctrine on the forgiveness of injuries, immediately exclaimed, “Increase our faith.” They seem to have been surprised by the extent of the demand, and conscious of their inability to meet it. As soon as the duty of forgiving injuries was laid before them in its true magnitude, they were brought to a stand; but they had sense to know wherein their weakness lay, and simplicity to seek in the proper quarter for renewed strength. It was a true instinct that led them, then and there, to plead for an increase of faith. A wider, freer channel for the inflow of God’s compassion into their own hearts,—this is what they need in the emergency, and this is what they get from the Lord. The miller, finding that some of the lumps are large and hard, and that the mill-stones are consequently almost standing still, goes quietly out and lets more water on. Go you, and do likewise. When injuries that seem large and hard are accumulated on your head, and the process of forgiving them begins to choke and go slow under the pressure, as if it would soon stop altogether; when the demand for forgiveness grows great, and the forgiving power in the heart is unable to meet it;—then, enter into your closet and shut your door, and pray to your Father specifically for more experience of his forgiving love; so shall your forgiving love grow stronger, and overcome every obstacle that stands in its way. Your heart, under the fresh impulse of pardon to you through the blood of the covenant, will toss off with ease the load of impediments that obstructed for a time its movements, and you will forgive even as you have been forgiven. FOOTNOTES 30. Die am meisten geschont sind erweisen sich als die Schonungslosesten. Unter den Flügeln der Zärtlichkeit wird die Grausamkeit ausgebrütet. (Those who get most mercy give least; and cruelty is hatched under the wings of tenderness).—Dräseke vom Reich Gottes, ii. 141.[30] 31. Dräseke expresses the same conception in his own peculiarly terse and antithetic way:—So gewiss kein Gottesreich ohne die Schulderlassung die wir empfangen; so gewiss kein Gottesreich ohne die Schulderlassung die wir leisten. (As certainly as there is no kingdom of God without the forgiveness which we receive, so certainly there is no kingdom of God without the forgiveness which we bestow.)—ii. 147.[31] 32. Fred. Arndt puts the lesson warmly and well; his appeal is in substance this:—“A man without compassion has all against him, God and the world; and meets as many adversaries in judgment as he had associates in life. Woe to him who is arraigned in secret by the tears of the feeble and oppressed! The sighs which he has pressed out, the plaints which he has generated, cry up to heaven against him, and their echo clangs horrid from heaven down again upon the life of the loveless and revengeful.... And can we sleep in peace another hour, as long as there are men upon the earth with whom we live in unpeace and enmity? Cannot be written the happiness, the inward bliss of the peaceful and peace-making. Revenge, indeed, seems often sweet to men; but, oh, it is only sugared poison, only sweetened gall, and its after taste is bitter as hell. Forgiving, enduring love alone is sweet and blissful; it enjoys peace and the consciousness of God’s favour. By forgiving, it gives away and annihilates the injury. It treats the injurer as if he had not injured, and therefore feels no more the smart and sting that he had inflicted. Forgiveness is a shield from which all the fiery darts of the wicked one harmless rebound. Forgiveness brings heaven to earth, and heaven’s peace into the sinful heart. Forgiveness is the image of God, the forgiving Father, and an advancement of Christ’s kingdom in the world. Your unalterable duty is clear: as surely as we are Christians, men who have experienced great compassion, who see in every man a brother in Christ, and are going forward to God’s righteous judgment, so surely we must forgive. Of no commandment will the fulfilment be demanded of us with such stringency, no divine rule so strictly enforced as this, without the slightest exception to leave a loop-hole of hope to the transgressor. If we forgive not those who injure us, neither will our heavenly Father forgive us; and this would be the greatest calamity that could befall us in time and in eternity.”—Die vergebende Liebe; oder Gleichniss vom Schalksknecht.[32] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 11: 1.09. THE VINEYARD LABOURERS ======================================================================== IX. THE VINEYARD LABOURERS. “For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the market-place, and said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last; for many be called, but few chosen.”—Matthew 20:1-16. A Again the heavenly kingdom is compared to the proceedings of a human householder. While in fertile plains, like Esdraelon, the grain-field was the Hebrew husbandman’s chief care, on the mountain sides, the vineyards were the most valuable property, and required the greatest amount of labour. The steepness of the slopes on which the vine grows best, greatly increases the owner’s toil. In many cases the terraces must be supported by strong stone walls; and not only must the manure be carried on men’s shoulders up the steep, but in some cases even the soil itself is carried up in the same way, and laid upon the bare rocks. Different kinds of work are required in vineyards at different seasons. In spring they prepare the soil; in summer they prune and tie up the vine branches; and in autumn all the joyous labour of the vintage comes suddenly on. Looking to the circumstance in the parable, that the labourers who began early counted much on having borne the heat of the day, we might be inclined to suppose that the scene is laid in the middle of summer; but the fact that the householder required so many labourers and hired all that he could find, points rather to the vintage in the end of autumn. The master went out early in the morning to hire labourers. There was some spot, doubtless, recognised both by masters and men, as the common meeting-place for those who needed work, and those who needed workmen,—the Cross or the Buchts33 of that place and day. This husbandman at once engaged all the men that he found, and sent them into his vineyard to begin work at six in the morning,—the first hour of the Jewish day. The terms were arranged beforehand,—a penny a day. The Roman denarius is reckoned equal to sevenpence half-penny of our money; but obviously it was considered the ordinary rate of a labourer’s wages at the time. Again at nine o’clock the husbandman went to the market-place, and finding some unemployed men, sent them also to work in his vineyard. Again at mid-day, and yet once more at five o’clock in the afternoon he went out, and finding men on each occasion loitering about the market-place, he sent them also into the vineyard. In these cases, however, as was meet when the day was broken, the master did not promise any specific rate of wages; and the men, thankful for an opportunity of turning to some profitable account a day which would otherwise have been wholly lost, were content to accept whatever he might be pleased to give. About six o’clock in the evening,—earlier or later according to the season of the year and the consequent duration of daylight at the time,—work in the vineyard ceased for the day, and each labourer, called forward in turn by the steward, received his wages in the master’s presence. 34 The steward, acting doubtless under special instructions, called first the men who had entered the vineyard at five, and quitted it at six, and gave each a penny for his hour’s work. Surprised by the munificence of their employer, these men retire towards their homes with silent gratitude. Afterwards those who had laboured one-half, and those who had laboured three-fourths of the day, were called in succession, and each received also a penny. Last of all came the men who had laboured from morning till night. They had been standing near, and had observed that all their fellow-labourers, not excepting even those who had been employed only an hour, received the same uniform reward, each man a penny. As this process was going on, they cherished in silence the expectation that when their turn should come, they would receive more of the master’s money, because they had done more of his work. But the steward, evidently acting on precise orders, gave each of these men also a penny, and no more. No longer able to conceal their disappointment, although they were well aware that they had no legal claim for more than they had received, they broke out into murmurs against their employer. Of course, he closed their mouths in a moment: he had completely fulfilled his agreement with them, and they had no right to interfere with his spontaneous generosity, whenever and towards whomsoever he might choose to exercise it. Here, again, the key-notes of the parable are found at the beginning and at the end. The direct and immediate occasion of the discourse lies in Peter’s question at the Matthew 19:27, “We have forsaken all and followed thee: what shall we have therefore?” But as the parable sprang from Peter’s question, so Peter’s question sprang from an antecedent fact. To that fact, accordingly, we must look as the true ultimate root on which the parable grows. As Jesus was going about in the Father’s business, attended by the twelve, a young man came running forward to him, bending the knee in token of reverence (Mark 10:17), and asking, “Good master, what good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” Accommodating his lesson to the condition of the learner’s heart, the Lord saw meet, at the close of his discourse, to lay a specific cross on this promising disciple, in order at once to reach and eradicate the specific disease that threatened the life of his soul,—“Sell all that thou hast, and come, follow me.” The young man loved the world more than Christ: compelled to make his choice, he cleaved to the portion that he loved best. When by the sovereign act of the Lord he was placed in such a position that he could not enjoy both portions, he parted with the Saviour and clung to his wealth. Peter and the rest of the apostles listened and looked on, during this decisive interview: they gazed after the youth, perhaps with tears, as he slowly and sorrowfully withdrew. But their Lord did not leave the impressive fact to sink into their minds in silence: He interposed at the moment, to print the lesson permanently on their hearts, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven!” “Then answered Peter;”—as usual this impetuous man burst suddenly into a speech upon the point in hand, before he had well considered what he was about to say. For one thing, there is no deceit in Peter’s question; he thinks aloud, and his thought is one of intense and undisguised self-conceit. The spirit of the Pharisee was there, “Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men.” His heart at this moment was undisguisedly mercenary; his eye was on the main chance. We have done and suffered so much for God; what return may we expect for our services? That young rich man would not part with his portion in this world, in order to follow Christ: Peter, thereupon, made a most comfortable comparison between himself and the undecided youth, and expressed a hope that his own great devotion would not be overlooked in the day of reward. I sometimes think the Papists acted wisely in making Peter the first Pope. He serves better as a type for them than any one of the twelve, unless they had gone all the way and chosen Judas. None of the true men were so forward as Peter in giving their judgment, or so frequently wrong. The reply of our Lord to Peter’s self-righteous demand is twofold. First, he owns and reiterates the truth that all labourers in his kingdom will be rewarded; and next corrects the abuse of that principle into which a self-pleasing human heart is apt to fall. In the discourse recorded at the close of the nineteenth chapter, he teaches the cheering truth that the Lord will richly reward the services of his people, and in the subsequent parable gives to them and us a solemn admonition against the error into which Peter had been for the moment betrayed. The positive doctrine regarding compensation for all sacrifices and wages for all work needs only to be read in the memorable words of Jesus, as the evangelist has recorded them here. Notwithstanding the incrustations of ignorant self-righteousness that now and then covered and disfigured their faith, these Galileans have in very deed left all for Christ, and shall all in very deed receive from Christ a hundred-fold. Even Peter’s own decisive life-act,—his consecration to Jesus, was a higher and purer thing than his own foolish words at this time would represent it to have been. It was not with a mercenary eye to a subsequent equivalent that he left his nets and followed Jesus. That self-devotion in the simplicity of faith will be gloriously recompensed, notwithstanding the subsequent slips that dishonour the disciple and grieve the Master; but Peter, and through him all men, must be clearly taught that work done for the sake of the reward is not owned in the kingdom of heaven. 35 Every one that hath forsaken earthly possessions for Christ’s sake shall receive an hundred-fold, and shall inherit everlasting life,—“But many that are first shall be last, and the last first.” This short antithetic sentence is the very gate by which we enter into the meaning of the parable; if we rightly comprehend it, we rightly comprehend all. It is necessary to determine here the connection between this sentence and the doctrine, which is taught in the immediately preceding verses. While the Lord undertakes that service and sacrifice in his cause will be rewarded, he warns his disciples in the next breath that those who labour longest, or produce the greatest quantity of work, do not in every case, and necessarily, receive the highest reward. In his kingdom the reward is not measured only and always by the length of the service or the quantity of work; many who are first as to the amount of work done will be last as to the amount of recompense received. A lesson drawn from this scriptural principle may be legitimately addressed to those who are not within the kingdom, but I think the Master in this parable primarily intends to draw distinctions, not between those who are within and those who are without, but between two classes of genuine disciples,—between those who simply trust in the Lord and serve him in love, and those who, although also in the main believers, allow the leaven of self-righteousness to creep in and mar the simplicity of their faith. 36 It is not said that those who are first in the quantity of work shall all or uniformly be last in the measure of reward, but “many” that are first shall be last. Some who are foremost in the amount of service may also be most free from the self-righteous spirit, and some who have laboured least may also receive least if they do their little under the influence of a hireling’s selfishness. The meaning is, that although you be first as to length of time and quantity of labour, if the leaven of self-righteousness mingle in your offering, you will be lowest in the Master’s esteem, and least in the day of reward; whereas, although you be last in point of time, and least in point of service, if you receive all from Christ’s mercy, and render all in love to Christ, you will be higher in the end than some who seemed more energetic and successful workers. “For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder,” &c. This picture will illustrate the truth which has been declared; the householder represents Christ, the vineyard his kingdom, and the labourers his servants. The main lesson of the parable concerns, not the way of redemption, but the service which the redeemed render to their Lord. The wages of the labourer represent the rewards which Christ confers upon his servants, but this must be taken with certain explanations and limitations, especially these two,—(1.) That the reward is partly a thing now begun, and partly something that is completed in heaven; (2.) That the value of the reward depends essentially on the disposition of heart with which the workman receives it. It is not necessary to determine whether the labourers who were first hired, and who laboured all the day, represent the Jews under the first dispensation, or those in the Christian Church who individually are converted in early youth, and continue in Christ’s service throughout a long life, or those who, from special talent, or zeal, or opportunity, do and suffer most for the Lord and his cause. The all-day labourers may represent all these classes, each in turn, and especially the last. We must not understand exclusively by “the first” those who began first in point of time. The term indicates rather those who are first in the sense of being chief or greatest; it points especially to those who were first in rank as having endured the greatest amount of loss, and done the greatest amount of work in Christ’s cause. In the parable it is true those who were first sent into the vineyard, in point of time, were chief among the labourers as to the quantity of labour contributed, but the time is only an accident. The matter truly brought into view is not the time, but the quantity of work. Time is here employed simply as a measure of quantity, for it is obviously assumed throughout that all the men performed equal amounts of labour in equal times. It conduces greatly to a clear conception of the whole lesson when you think of the first and last as indicating those who did and suffered most in Christ’s cause and those who did and suffered least. Those who toiled only one hour or other larger fraction of a working day had no contract as to amount of wages; they entered the vineyard and laboured without a bargain. They did not know what wages they would be paid with, but they knew what master they were working for; they were prepared to accept whatever he might be pleased to bestow. In this respect they correctly represent the truest of Christ’s disciples—those little-child Christians whom he sets up as a pattern for others. Those, on the other hand, who were first in point of time, and therefore first in point of quantity, made their bargain before they began. This is like disciples who slide back in some measure from the simplicity of faith and allow a mercenary motive to mingle in their devotions. Especially is it like Peter when, contrasting his own large sacrifices with the refusal of the young man to sacrifice anything, and counting himself first, while he looked down on others as last, he cunningly inquired,—Lord, what shall we get for leaving all and following thee? In answer to his egotistical inquiry, he is informed in plain terms that he is one of those first who shall be last. This, however, according to all the analogy of Scripture, is not, in regard to Peter or any individual disciple, an absolute prediction of what shall be, but a warning of what may be if the same spirit remain. Our Scottish forefathers at the period of the Reformation suffered much for Christ; some pined long in prison, some died at the stake. These were first, and we who contribute a few pounds to a missionary society, or teach a Sabbath school, or visit some poor families, are last in respect to the quantity of our doing and suffering in the Saviour’s cause. But if any of those first were proud of their sufferings, they will be last in the reward; and whosoever of these last give their mite in simple love to the Lord that bought them, will be first when he comes to bring home his own. Such is the structure of the parable that it must express the difference by giving one labourer not an absolutely but a comparatively greater amount of wages than another. The last are recompensed at a higher rate than the first, yet all go home with the same sum of money. But although the labourers are all equal in the absolute amount of wages received, the last are made higher than the first by a distinct addition to the pecuniary recompence—that is, a contented, loving, thankful mind. See the two groups of labourers as they severally wend their way home that evening. As to amount of money in their pockets, they are all equal: but as to amount of content in their spirits there is a great difference. The last go home each with a penny in his pocket, and astonished glad gratitude in his heart: their reward accordingly is a penny, and more. The first, on the contrary, go home, each with a penny in his pocket, and corroding discontent in his soul: their reward accordingly is less than a penny. Those who know how great a gain is godliness with contentment, and how small a gain is even godliness, when discontent is eating into it like rust, will allow that, while the labourers first and last alike had each his penny, yet the last were first and the first last in the real value of their reward. Considering that Peter is evidently designated as one of the first who shall be last, I cannot understand the parable otherwise than as showing differences among the disciples of Christ,—differences in simplicity of spirit while the labour lasts, and consequently in the value of the reward when the labour is done. As all the labourers get the wages of a day, so all who are represented by them, inherit the kingdom: but as one star differeth from another star in glory, so shall it be when Christ comes to gather all his own. They will wear the brightest crowns who thought most of their Redeemer’s goodness, and least of their own sacrifice and work. The latter clause of Matthew 20:16, “for many be called, but few chosen,” being evidently attached to the parable as its application by the Lord, demands our earnest attention. 37 If we should understand by it, that many hear the call of the Gospel, but few are chosen by God and admitted through regeneration into his family, it would not be possible, as far as I can perceive, to assign to it any proper connection with the lesson of the parable. But by the terms in which this sentence is introduced, it is clearly intimated that it is the very conclusion and kernel, so to speak, of the doctrine which the parable was intended to convey. Whether we shall be able to understand it or not, it certainly must be something precisely in the line of the preceding instructions. In that direction we must seek for its meaning; for it is manifestly introduced as a gathering up in short and condensed form of all that the parable contained. The exposition suggested by Bengel is simple, consistent, and clear; and it is, I think, correct. Taking the term “called” as signifying not all to whom the call of the Gospel is addressed, but those only who are effectually called,—not those who only hear, but those who also obey the call,—taking the term in this sense, which is a sober and scriptural view, he finds that this is not a distinction between saved and lost, but between two classes of the saved. The called and the chosen are both true disciples of Christ, and heirs of eternal life, and yet there is some distinction between them. Chosen must here therefore mean, what it did sometimes mean in ancient times, and does often mean still, the best of their kind. We constantly speak of choice or select articles, meaning the most excellent. The phrase, whether used proverbially before Christ’s time or not, is in nature and structure proverbial. He either found it a proverb and used it, or he made it a proverb there and then, for such it essentially is. It seems to have been employed by the Lord on more than one occasion, and differently applied at different times. As we might say among a great number of manufactured articles, all true and genuine, “few are first-rate;” so, among a great number of real disciples, few stand out unselfish, unworldly, and Christ-like, honouring their Lord, and making the world wonder. Most, even of those who are disciples indeed, and shall inherit eternal life, are so marred by self-righteous admixtures, and unsanctified temper, and conformity to the world, that their light is dim and their witness inarticulate. Peter, for example, was one of the called, in that he heard and obeyed Christ, and was saved; but he was not a chosen or choice disciple, when he demanded of his Saviour what he should get for what he had done; or when in the hour and power of darkness, he denied all connection with Jesus of Nazareth. Alas! though there are many Christians, how few there are who forget the things behind, and press forward till they reach the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. 38 Some obvious practical lessons may be appended to the exposition. 1. Judge not. Let a man examine himself rather than his neighbour. When Peter saw the young man refusing to make a sacrifice for Christ, he complacently remembered his own sacrifices, and thought he had done remarkably well. Ah, Peter, Satan desires to have thee that he may sift thee as wheat; but what by the Master’s rebukes addressed to him, and what by prayers poured out for him, he will be saved; yet so as by fire. You left all, you say, to follow Jesus; and how much was that? a share in a boat and some nets, both probably the worse for wear. Ah, Peter, if you had been as rich as this young man, I am not sure whether you would not have done as he did,—gone away, sorrowful indeed, but away from Jesus! Disciples of Christ that are poor, should beware of judging the disciples who are rich. You were enabled to break the tie that bound you to the earth; and you see a neighbour struggling with the yoke still on his neck. Be not high-minded but fear. The line that bound you was a slender cord; the line that binds that brother is a cart rope. He, if he is set free at a later day, may be first in the day of reward, and you last. 2. All whom the Lord meets and calls are sent to work, and all go. From the moment they meet the Master till the evening of life’s labour-day, they work for him. They not only labour for the Lord, they labour “in the Lord.” Thus it is not a pain but a pleasure; it is their meat and their drink. God needs not our work, but we, for our own sakes, need work in his kingdom. He can find other servants; but if we refuse his call we shall never find a “good Master.” 3. The true spirit of a worker is love to the Master, and to the work for the Master’s sake. The moment that a thought of merit glides into the servant’s heart, it brings him down, not indeed from the number of true disciples, but from the highest to the lowest class there. Among the motives that, in these matters, sway a human heart, there are two forces equal and opposite: one is a humble, broken-hearted consciousness that you deserve nothing, and receive all free; the other is a self-righteous conceit that your valuable services deserve a great reward. If this latter spirit is the main spring of your activity, it determines your position to be altogether outside of the circle of true believers; if it intrudes more or less as a temptation, and tinges with self-righteous blemishes a substantial faith in Christ, it reduces you from the highest to the lowest rank of disciples, and from the first to the last in the final award of those who serve the Lord. In one of its aspects the lesson of this parable is parallel with that which is taught by the experience of the penitent thief. Both greatly magnify the patience and long-suffering of God: they record and proclaim, each in its own way, that there is hope at the eleventh hour. But in such a case, a perverse carnal mind frequently turns the grace of God into lasciviousness. Because the mercy of our Redeemer is stretched to the furthest verge of safety to leave room for the outcast to enter, when on the darkening evening of the day of grace he flees at last from the wrath to come; souls cleaving to the dust, take the liberty of stretching their expectations a little further than Christ stretched his offer, and find the door shut, when they come too late. Ah, when the tender Saviour of sinners, by his parable, and the experience of the thief, gives you encouragement to come, although you are late; beware lest you take from his words wrested an encouragement to be late in coming. FOOTNOTES 33. The name of a great trysting place for selling cattle and hiring men and women on the eastern outskirts of the city of Glasgow, where the two operations resemble each other too closely for the credit of our institutions or the safety of society.[33] 34. By law, wages for the work of the day must be paid the same evening (Deuteronomy 24:15).[34] 35. These two are thus united and distinguished by Dräseke,—“Although the kingdom of God is God’s gift in the souls of men, yet without a worthiness in men it can neither begin nor continue, neither reveal nor develop itself. And again, although our worthiness is necessary, we nevertheless obtain the kingdom, not through the merit of works, but from the fulness of grace, yea, from that alone. In short, the kingdom demands workers; hirelings it disdains (das Reich verlangt Arbeiter; Söldlinge verschmäht es).... Thus it stands shut against the hireling, open to the worker. Not as though the kingdom needed thy labour. He who makes the winds his messengers and the flames his servants, can do without thy hand-work, O little man. Thy labour avails not; but that thou shouldest be a labourer, that thou shouldest have a mind for God, and through that mind shouldest elevate thy life into a free and joyful service of him—that avails.”—Vom Reich Gottes, ii. 40, 42. Remarkable is the construction of the chain by which this writer connects the poor unemployed men who were standing idle in the market-place with the ever-during, ever-increasing satisfaction of their souls in eternity. So verlangt das Reich Arbeiter, nicht Söldlinge. Es beruft die Arbeitlosen. Es stellt die Bernfenen an. Es beschäftigt die Angestelleten. Es übt die Beschäftigten. Es belohnt die Geübten. Es genügt den Belohnten. Und Gnüge währt ewig; wächst ewig.—ii. 51.[35] 36. On the other hand the text, Luke xiii. 30, although precisely similar to this in form, distinguishes, as may be seen from the context, between those who are within and those who are without.[36] 37. While in some cases the application of the parable which the Lord himself makes at the moment is full and perspicuous, it is in other cases like the parables themselves, and doubtless for good reasons, short, sententious, and partially veiled. In some cases the subjoined doctrine must be read in the light of the parable itself ere it can be understood. “Majus vero et certius auxilium interpreti paratur in illis locis, in quibus ipse Jesus sensum parabolarum explicat, quod quidem modo luculentius, ut in orationibus Mat. XIII. modo paucis tantum verbis fit. Saepe enim praemittitur vel subjungitur ab eo doctrina per parabolam prolata, quae tamen ipsa interdum paulo obscurius exprimitur, ita ut nisi per parabolam ipsam intelligi non possit.”—Schultze de par. 86.[37] 38. In the transaction with the young man from which this parable remotely springs, an analogous expression is employed to indicate a chosen or choice disciple; “Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast,” &c. (Matthew 19:21) The term “perfect” in that text seems to be entirely parallel with “chosen.” The meaning of both is determined by the main drift of the parable; and the meaning thus given accords with the analogy of faith. Another remarkable confirmation of this exposition is found in the use of the same term, ????????, in Revelation 17:14. The word in that passage must have the same meaning that we have attributed to it in the parable. Two reasons, a supreme and subordinate, are given to account for the victory of the Lamb,—his own omnipotence, and the trustworthy character of the instruments whom he employs. “The Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful;” ?????? ??? ???????? ??? ??????. If you understand here by ????????, chosen by God in the eternal covenant, the logical arrangement becomes obscure. It would be strange if, in enumerating the qualifications of soldiers, one should represent first that they were summoned to the warfare, next that they were chosen for that purpose before, and last that they were stanch in the battlefield. If this had been the meaning of ???????? it must have stood first in order. The fact that it stands second suggests another explanation. Take it, in the sense which it readily assumes and frequently bears, and the order of the series becomes at once transparent. The soldiers were “called, and choice, and faithful.” They were enlisted in the cause, excellent in character, and found unflinching when the fight began.[38] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 12: 1.10. THE TWO SONS ======================================================================== X. THE TWO SONS. “But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him.”—Matthew 21:28-32. From this parable, in connection with that of the labourers in the vineyard, we incidentally learn that among the cultivators of Palestine in those days there was the same admixture of large and small farms which prevails in our own land. In order to provide for the structure of the preceding parable, an agriculturist is introduced who cultivates on a large scale. Group after group of labourers are hired wholesale, and sent successively into the vineyard; in the evening a steward pays each labourer under the general instructions of his chief. There in a few strokes you have the picture of an ancient Israelitish magnate, owning a broad estate and affording employment to a multitude of dependants. In the parable which is now under review, we have a picture equally distinct, but representing another class of countrymen. This is neither on the one hand a great proprietor, nor on the other a landless labourer. Here is a man who has a stake in the country, a portion of ground of size sufficient to provide for the wants of his family; but his farm cannot afford employment and remuneration to a gang of labourers; the work must be all done by the owner himself and his children. This is a desirable condition of life, and the class who occupy it are valuable to society. There, in the middle, they are sheltered from many dangers to which their countrymen on either extreme of social condition are exposed. Woe to the country in which there are only two classes,—the greatest and the smallest,—the large proprietors and the floating sea of labourers. The strong fixed few and the feeble surging many are to each other reciprocally dangerous. Give me a country dotted all over with homesteads, where father and mother, sons and daughters, till their own ground and eat the fruit of their own labour. “To the first he said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard.” The first was none other than the one whom the father first met that morning. To have intimated whether he was the elder or the younger, would have introduced a disturbing element, and obscured the meaning of the lesson. There is no question here between elder and younger, or between Jews and Gentiles. At all events, if those who maintained a place within the theocracy are distinguished from those who stood without its pale, we must conceive of the Father approaching on this occasion from without towards the centre, coming in contact first with those who were excluded as aliens, and afterwards reaching the inner circle, who counted themselves the seed of Abraham. This son, rebellious in heart, and not trained to cover his disobedience under a smooth profession, meets his father’s command with a rude, blunt refusal. I think the humble husbandman had received a similar answer from the same quarter more than once before. This is not the first unseemly word which the young man had spoken to his father: neither himself nor his wickedness has grown to maturity in a day. The habit of dishonouring his parents had sprung from a seed of evil in his infancy, and grown with his growth until he and it had reached full stature together. The father seems not to have spoken a word in reply. Probably he knew by experience that an altercation on the spot would only have made matters worse: perhaps he sighed, perhaps he wept as he turned gently round and went away. I do not know how often and how long he had meditated on the grand practical question for a father, when he should be severe, and when he should show indulgence. May God guide and help parents who have disobedient sons; they need much patience for bearing, and much wisdom for acting aright. “But afterward he repented and went.” There is much in these few simple words. He repented; perhaps his father’s silent grief went to his heart at length and melted it. He saw himself in his true colours, and loathed himself for his sin. The son, who probably obtained a glimpse of his father’s tears, wept himself in turn, and, as the best amends he could make, went silently into the vineyard, and did a good day’s work there. Thus, when Jesus, suffering, bearing reproach before Pilate’s judgment-seat, looked on Peter sinning, Peter went out and wept. When he was called to suffer for Christ, he had rudely answered, “I will not;” but afterwards he repented and went—to work, to witness, to suffer, to die for the Lord whom he loved. Perhaps the father, from beneath the cottage eaves, saw the son on the brow of the hill toiling in the noon-day heat,—saw and was glad. The value of a day’s labour was something; but it was as the small dust of the balance in comparison with the price he set on the repentance and obedience of his child. I suppose there was a happy meeting at night when the son came home. I suppose the father was a happy man as he saw the robust youth wiping the sweat from his brow, and sitting down to his evening meal. “He came to the second, and said likewise.” The second son had an answer ready, sound in substance and smooth in form. It was a model answer from a son to his parent: “I go, sir,” said the youth, without hesitation or complaint. I am not sure that the father was overjoyed at the promptness and politeness of this reply: probably he had received as fair promises from the same quarter before, and seen them broken. At all events, this young man’s fair word was a whited sepulchre; he did not obey his father. Whether he fell in with trivial companions on his way to the vineyard, and was induced to go with them in another direction, or thought the day too hot and postponed the labour till the morrow, I know not; but he said, and did not. It was profession without practice. The tender vine-shoots might trail on the ground for him till their fruit-buds were blackened; he would not put himself to the trouble of tying them up to the stakes, although the food of the family should be imperilled by his neglect. Now comes the sharp question, “Whether of them twain did the will of his father?” The answer is all too easy. The light is stronger than is comfortable for those owl-eyed Pharisees, who were prowling about like night-birds on the scent of their prey. The sudden glance of this sunbeam dazzles and confounds them. In utter helplessness, they confess the truth that condemns themselves; they say unto him “The first.”40 In the first example the Lord represents chief sinners repenting; and in the second, the form of godliness without its power. The publicans and harlots, who had forsaken their sins and followed the Saviour, sat for the first picture; the chief priests and elders, who concealed their thirst for innocent blood under a mantle of long prayers and broad phylacteries, sat for the second. Let us look first to the two distinct and opposite answers, and next to the two distinct and opposite acts. The answers.—That of the first son, “I will not,” was evil, and only evil. It is of first-rate practical importance to make this plain and prominent. Looking to the son in the story, we see clearly that the answer was outrageously wicked: it was an evil word flowing from its native spring in an evil heart. Looking next to the class of persons whom that son represents, we find they are the openly and daringly ungodly of every rank in every age. This son, when he rudely refused to obey his father, meant what he said; he was not willing to obey, and he plainly said so. This represents those who have neither the profession nor the practice of true religion; they neither fear God nor pretend to fear him. At this point, among certain classes, a subtle temptation insinuates itself. In certain circumstances, ungodly men take credit for the distinct avowal of their ungodliness, and count on it as a merit. They are not, indeed, submissive in heart and life to the will of God; but they do not tell a lie about the matter; they make no pretension. The frank confession, that they are not good, seems to serve some men as a substitute for goodness. By comparing themselves complacently with fellow-sinners of a different class, they contrive to rivet the fatal error more firmly on their own hearts. Observing among their neighbours here and there a rank hypocrite, they compare his sanctimonious profession with his indifferent sense of honesty, and congratulate themselves that they are not hypocrites. Well, brother, suppose it were conceded that you are not a hypocrite; what then? If you have lived unrepenting, unforgiven, unchanged; if with your whole heart and habits you have departed from the living God, and not returned to him through the Mediator,—will all be atoned for and made up by the single fact that to all your other sins you did not add the cant of a hypocrite? It is true, a hypocrite is a loathsome creature; but his badness will not make a profane man good. When he is cast away for his hypocrisy, it will be no comfort to you as you keep him company that it is for open ungodliness, and not for lying pretensions to piety, that you are condemned. Hypocrites are, indeed, excluded from the kingdom of God; but it is a fatal mistake to assume that, provided you are not a hypocrite, you will be welcomed into heaven with all your vices on your back. I scarcely know a more subtle or more successful wile of the devil than this. Many strong men are cast down by it. You don’t pretend to be good; well, and will that save you? What comfort will it afford to the lost to reflect that they went openly to perdition, in broad daylight, before all men, and did not skulk through by-ways under pretence that they were going to heaven? The answer of the other son was evil too, if you look not to its body, but to its spirit. There is no reason to suppose that it was, even at the moment, an act of true obedience to his father. “He said, I go, sir; and went not:” he said one thing, and did another, an opposite; but there is no ground for believing that he meant to go when he promised, and afterwards changed his mind. His smooth language was a lie; and his subsequent conduct showed, not that he had changed his mind when his father was out of sight, but that he concealed it while his father was present. It is worthy of notice, that although the first son changed his mind after he had given his answer, there is no intimation of any change having passed on the second son, between his answer and his act. By its silence on this point, the narrative leads us to infer that the purpose of the disobedient son was the same while he was promising well as when he acted ill. The course of the life flowing full in the direction of disobedience, proves that the expression of the lips which ran in the opposite direction, was a lie; it was like a glittering ripple caused by a fitful breeze, running upward on the surface of the river, while the whole volume of its water rolls, notwithstanding, the other way. Thus is even the worship of hypocrites worthless: Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. The want of the subsequent obedience shows that the promise was not true. Thus at first both these sons were in a false and unsafe position. Their characters were not the same,—were not similar: they differed in thought and word; but the difference, in as far as their answers were concerned, indicated only varieties of sin. Legion is the name of the spirits that possess and pollute the fallen; but all the legion do not dwell in every man. Different temptations tinge different persons with different hues of guilt. At the time when the father uttered his command, the character of the first son was bold, unblushing rebellion; the character of the second was cowardly, false pretence. The one son neither promised nor meant to obey; the other son promised obedience, but intended not to keep his word. In the first instance, therefore, there is no ground for preferring the one to the other. While they stood severally in their father’s presence, and before either had repented of his sin, they were both, and both alike evil. The blasphemer has no right to boast over the hypocrite, and the hypocrite has no right to boast over the blasphemer. In either case it is a body of sin, but there is a shade of difference in the colour of the garments. The one pretends to a goodness which he does not possess; and the other confesses, or rather boasts, that he is destitute of goodness. They measure themselves by themselves; and therein they are not wise. The one thinks his smooth tongue will save him; and the other counts himself safe because he has not a smooth tongue. We come now to the ultimate act of either son. The first, after flinging a blunt refusal in his father’s face, repented of his sin. The turning-point is here. A change came over the spirit of the man, and a consequent change emerged in his conduct: his heart was first turned, and then his history. The honesty of his declaration—the absence of duplicity in giving his answer, would not have justified him before either God or man. He repented; he turned round. He grieved over his sin; he was sorry that he had disobeyed his father. Repentance immediately brought forth fruit after its kind. He went into the vineyard, and laboured there with a will all day at the kind of work which he knew would please his father. These two things go always in company, and together make up the new man—they are the new heart and the new life. The grieved father would weep for joy, as he looked up the precipitous hill-side on which the terraced vineyard hung, and saw there the head and hands of his son glancing quickly from place to place among the vine plants. Thus there is joy in heaven—deep in the heart of heaven’s Lord—over one sinner that repenteth. Among the vines that day work was worship: the resulting act of obedience—fruit of repentance in the soul, was an offering of a sweet-smelling savour unto God. The other son promptly promised, but failed to perform. The first was changed from bad to good, but the second was not changed from good to bad. No change took place in this case, and none is recorded. It is not written, that having promised, he afterwards repented and did not go. His promise was not true; at the moment when it was made, the youth did not intend to work, and therefore it required no change of mind to induce him afterwards to spend the day in idleness. This son represents, in the first instance, those Pharisees who were then and there compassing the death of Jesus. They ostentatiously professed that they were doing God service; yet they were spreading a net for the feet of the innocent, and preparing to shed his blood. Wearing broad phylacteries, making long prayers, and offering many sacrifices, they were, notwithstanding, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. With their lips they honoured God; but in works they denied him. These, in as far as they are here represented, were evil first and last. In the second son we have an example, not of a man who meant to do good changing his mind and ultimately doing evil, but of a man who, notwithstanding his fair profession, meant evil at the beginning and perpetrated it in the end. Nor are these lessons of the Lord limited to one private interpretation: the lesson of this parable was not exhausted when the Pharisees died out. As surely as the thorns, and the tares, and the lilies to which Jesus on various occasions alluded in his lectures, grow on the ground at this day, and have grown there through all the intervening generations—so surely the various classes of human character which he rebuked, warned, or encouraged in his ministry, have their representatives going out and in amongst us in the present day. It is meant that in this glass all the self-righteous to the end of the world should see themselves; their profession is fair, but their life is for self, and not for God. In the stratified rocks many species and genera of plants and animals are found in a fossil state which are not found in the flora or fauna of our present earth; but the human characters that were fixed and stamped as by photograph in the Scriptures are not so far removed from the men and women who now live on the earth. No species has become extinct; and even the minuter characteristics of distinct varieties remain legible still. Here spring two distinct warnings to two distinct classes, with corresponding encouragements attached, as shadows follow solid bodies in the sunlight;—to the Publicans and Harlots first, and next to the Pharisees of the day. 1. There is a class amongst us answering to those publicans and sinners to whom Jesus was wont to address the message of his mercy. Alas, they may be counted by thousands and tens of thousands in the land! They are the drunkards, the licentious, the profane, the false, the cruel,—those who abandon themselves to a vicious life, and do not take the trouble of attempting to hide their sin under a cloak of sanctity. They gratify every lust, and crucify none. They live without God in the world. The key-note of their being is, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. To all this class the parable proclaims a warning. A rank, soporific superstition has crept over these free and easy spirits,—a superstition as dark and deceitful as any of the inventions of Rome. Men seem actually to persuade themselves that their very wickedness will supply them with a passport into heaven. They seem to expect that they will be made pets in the great day, because they made no pretension to saintship; and that they will be fondled by the Judge as they have been by their boon companions, because hypocrisy cannot be reckoned among their sins. It is a false hope. Free thinking, free living brother, if I saw you about to put to sea in a ship which I knew to be affected with dry-rot in the timbers of the bottom, I would warn you with all my energy, that I might save your life: when I see you preparing to launch into eternity leaning on a lie, I cry vehemently, Beware, lest you be lost for ever! Without holiness no man shall see God. The absence of a hypocritical pretension to holiness will not be accepted instead of holiness. All who go away to the judgment-seat without holiness will be shut out of heaven—alike those who thought they had it, and those who confessed that they had it not. It was all right at last with the profane son in the parable; but mark, he repented and obeyed. God’s invitation to the wicked is, Turn and live; but the promise contains in its bosom the counterpart threatening, If you turn not you shall die. It was not the bold, frank declaration of disobedience that made the first son all right: it made him all wrong. It was his change,—his passing out of that state, as if he had passed from death unto life, that saved him. FOOTNOTES 39. “He now constrains them, in the first parable, to declare their own guilt; and, in the second, to declare their own punishment; and as they had now decided to put Him to death, He describes to them, in the third parable, the consequences of their great violation of the covenant and ingratitude,—the destruction of their ancient priesthood, and the triumphant establishment of his new kingdom of heaven among the Gentiles.”—Lange in loc.[39] 40. At an earlier stage of the same interview, when a question regarding the ministry of the Baptist was addressed to them, fearing the consequences which an answer might involve, they had sought shelter under the plea of ignorance. As they gained nothing by their duplicity on that occasion, they may have been unwilling to try the same policy again; and, accordingly, they give frankly the obvious answers to the questions that resulted both from this and the succeeding parable.[40] But to this class the parable speaks encouragement as well as warning. So great is God’s mercy in Christ that even you are welcome when you come; the gate stands open; the Redeemer from within is calling chief sinners in, He has pledged himself to cast no comer out because of his worthlessness. Nor does the freeness of his grace prove that the prodigal’s sins are small; it proves only that the forgiving love of Christ is great. 2. There is still a class corresponding to the Pharisees, and to these the Lord in this parable conveys both warning and encouragement. The essence of the Pharisaic character, under every variety of form, consists of these two things,—an exact and laborious observance of external religious duties, and a heart satisfied with itself while it is devoted to the world. The species is described for all times and places in the Apocalyptic Epistle to the Church in Sardis: “Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead” (Revelation 3:1). There is a profession of godliness wanting its power; Christ’s name comes readily to the lip, but the god of this world possesses the heart and controls the life. There is encouragement to the Pharisee as well as to the publican to turn and live. There is no respect of persons with God; the Pharisee was as welcome to Christ as the publican, if he would come. A Pharisee and a publican went up to the temple at the same hour to pray; the publican returned to his own house pardoned and at peace with God, while the Pharisee went home still unreconciled and under condemnation: but wherefore? Not that God was more willing to forgive the publican than to forgive the Pharisee; but because the Pharisee did not ask forgiveness. He would have obtained it if he had asked it: his self-righteousness was his ruin. Thus in the end of this parable, the Lord intimates to the Pharisees that the outcasts whom they despised are entering the kingdom of heaven before them. This does not mean that the way is made more easy, the gate more wide, to the licentious and profane than to the hypocrite,—it intimates merely that in point of fact the profane were then and there hastening in through the gate which stood open alike for all, while the self-righteous were standing aloof. The intimation, moreover, is made, not in order to keep these Pharisees back, but to urge them forward. The Lord desires to provoke them to jealousy by them that were no people. These despised outcasts are going in before you; arise and press in now, lest the door be shut. It was not because they were publicans and harlots that they were saved, but because they believed and repented under the preaching of John; and it was not because the others were Pharisees that they were still unsaved, but because even with the example of fellow-sinners repenting and believing before their eyes, they, thinking themselves righteous, would not repent and believe. God delights as much to receive a Pharisee as to receive a publican. When a self-righteous man discovers himself at last to be a whited sepulchre, and counting his own righteousness filthy rags, flees to Christ as his righteousness, he is instantly accepted in the beloved. If I could be admitted, in the body or out of the body, to a vision of the saints in rest, I would like to creep near the spot where two saved sinners chance to meet,—the man who wrote this narrative of Christ’s ministry, and the man who preached Christ to the Gentiles. I would fain listen for an hour to the conversation of Matthew the publican and Saul the Pharisee when they meet in the mansions of the Father’s house. Their loving argument, I could imagine, would sometimes run high. Matthew will contend that the grace of their common Lord has been most conspicuously glorified in his own redemption, “for,” he pleads, “I was all evil and had nothing good, I had neither inside purity nor outside whitening. I had neither the seemly profession without nor the holy heart within. I was altogether vile; and in me therefore is the grace of God glorified most.” Paul, on the other side, will contend, with his keen intellect perfect at last, that he was the chief sinner, and that consequently in his redemption a more decisive testimony is given to the abundance of the Saviour’s grace. After describing his own hardness and blindness and unbelief, he will add, as the crowning sin of man, the crowning glory of God,—While I was thus the chief of sinners, I gave myself out as one of the greatest of saints. It may be hard to tell whether of the two mountains is the more elevated; but one thing is clear,—both are covered by the flood. The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us,—the profane and the self-righteous alike,—cleanseth us from all sin. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 13: 1.11. THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN ======================================================================== XI. THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. “Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: and when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir: come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons. Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them. But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet.”—Matthew 21:33-46. When a proprietor has determined to appropriate as a vineyard a portion of ground which had previously lain waste, or been employed for some other purpose, his first care is to plant the vines. As some time must necessarily elapse before the young plants begin to bear fruit, he may prosecute the other departments of his undertaking at leisure. In due time, accordingly, he constructs a fence around the field to keep out depredators, whether men or beasts; digs a vat for receiving the juice, and prepares an apparatus above it for squeezing the clusters quickly in the hurry of the vintage; builds a tower as at once a shelter for the keeper and an elevated stand-point for the watcher by night or day. In the case which this parable represents, the owner did not continue to reside on the spot and cultivate his own vineyard; “he let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country.” This lease, granted by a non-resident proprietor, throws an interesting light on the habits of the place and the time. In regard both to the tenants and the terms, the information, though very brief, is very definite. The vineyard was let not to one capitalist, who might employ labourers to do the necessary work, but to a kind of joint-stock company of labourers who proposed to cultivate the property with their own hands for the common benefit. It was stipulated, moreover, that the rent should be paid not in money but in kind. It is the system known in India at this day as ryot-rent; the cultivator undertakes to give the owner a certain fixed quantity yearly from the produce of the farm, and all that is over belongs to himself. The structure of the parable in its later stages presupposes a country in which the central government is paralyzed, and the will of the strongest has usurped the place of law. With us it requires an exercise of imagination to conjure up a scene in which these events could possibly occur; but in those regions such anarchy was not uncommon then,—is not uncommon now. It is probable that the annals of our own empire in India could supply some parallel conflicts between the privileged superiors and the actual cultivators of the soil. The proprietor, being personally absent from the country, employed agents to demand his stipulated share of the produce at the proper season from the tenants in possession. The tenants, presuming on the distance of the superior, and the difficulty which he must necessarily encounter in any attempt to enforce his rights, not only refused to fulfil the conditions of their lease, but also assaulted the messengers who made the demand; they beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third. Obviously, they determined from the first to retain the whole produce of the vineyard for themselves. They do not seem to have laid their plans with much care: there is more of passion than of policy in their conduct. It is the ordinary practice of those who break the laws of God or of man, to grasp madly a present pleasure, and refuse to think of coming vengeance. Having heard of the treatment which his agents had received, the proprietor despatched another party more numerous, with the view probably of overawing the refractory peasants by a display of strength; but the second mission was as cruelly and contemptuously rejected as the first. The proprietor, still unwilling to bring matters to an extremity, adopted next an expedient which he hoped would subdue the rebellion, without imposing on him the necessity of punishing the rebels. Keeping out of sight for the moment his rights and his power, he appealed confidingly to their hereditary reverence for the family of their chief; he sent his son, and sent him unarmed, unattended. The conduct of the husbandmen at this point is unintelligible, if you suppose that the country enjoyed a regular government, and that the men had deliberately adopted a plan. In order to account for the circumstances, you must suppose that the central government was paralyzed, and that these men were as stupid as they were wicked. Great criminals are often blind to their own interests: their blunders generally lead to their conviction. The murder of the heir by these greedy tenants, in the vague hope of obtaining the property, is a probable event. To show that the scheme was not skilfully devised, does not by any means prove that the crime was not actually perpetrated. The owner was absent; no display of irresistible power was made to their senses; they were not in the habit of nicely considering the remote consequences of an act, and an overmastering passion completely paralyzed at that moment a judgment which was feeble at the best. From this point the close of the tragedy is self-evident; the Lord accordingly does not further prosecute the narrative. Here the Pharisees are invited to pronounce judgment upon themselves; nor do they hesitate to accept the challenge. Whether in simplicity, as unconscious of the Teacher’s drift, or in exasperation as knowing that by this time his drift appeared to the whole company all too plain, may not be certain; but in point of fact they gave the answer without abatement and without ambiguity: “He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard to other husbandmen which will render him the fruits in their season.” No serious difficulty occurs in the interpretation of this parable, and, consequently, no considerable differences of opinion have arisen among interpreters regarding it. The main lines of the lesson cannot be mistaken; but there is need of careful discrimination in some of the details. Frequently in the Scriptures the seed of Abraham, called by God and endowed with many peculiar privileges, are compared to a vine, or to the aggregate of vines in a vineyard. I shall here point to three examples of this usage, in order to show that, notwithstanding an obvious general resemblance, they differ from each other and from this parable in the specific purposes to which they severally adapt and apply the analogy:— 1. Isaiah 5:1-7 : “Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill. And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down. And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.” The vineyard, with its slope to the southward, and rich soil, and careful cultivation, and secure defences, and convenient apparatus, represents the people whom God chose and cherished. The drift of Isaiah’s parable is to show the exaggerated wickedness of that favoured nation. The vineyard brought forth wild grapes,—those sour grapes which set on edge the teeth of him who tastes them (Ezekiel 18:2). Israel lived like the heathen, and thus the care bestowed upon them was thrown away. As a punishment for its ungrateful return, the vineyard was laid waste; the kingdom and polity of Israel were destroyed by the decree of God, and through the instrumentality of the king of Babylon. 2. Ezekiel 15:2-5 : “Son of man, What is the vine tree more than any tree, or than a branch which is among the trees of the forest? Shall wood be taken thereof to do any work? or will men take a pin of it to hang any vessel thereon? Behold, it is cast into the fire for fuel; the fire devoureth both the ends of it, and the midst of it is burnt. Is it meet for any work? Behold, when it was whole, it was meet for no work: how much less shall it be meet yet for any work, when the fire hath devoured it, and it is burned?” Here Israel is compared, not to a vineyard, but to a single vine; and the special characteristic selected for purposes of instruction is the uselessness of the vine tree as timber. Cultivated only for the sake of its fruit, if it prove barren, it is not only no better than the trees of the forest, but much worse. Forest trees are useful in their own place, and for certain purposes; but a vine, if it do not bear fruit, is of no use at all. No man can make a piece of furniture from its small, supple, gnarled stem and branches. The wood of the vine is fit for nothing but to be cast into the fire, and, therefore, a fruitless vine takes rank far beneath a forest-tree; thus an apostate and corrupt Church is a viler thing than the ordinary secular governments of the world. Such obviously and notoriously is ecclesiastical Rome to-day. 3. Psalms 80:8-15 : “Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river. Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her? The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it. Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine; and the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself.” Again Israel is represented as a vine; but in this case the features brought into prominence are its former flourishing condition and great extent compared with its present desolation. By the removal of the protecting fence, the wild beasts of the forest were permitted to trample at will on its feeble and lowly boughs. The picture sets forth the ruin of Jerusalem through the withdrawal of God’s protecting hand, and the consequent irruption of hostile nations. In all these cases the vine, or aggregate of vines, represents the privileged persons who constituted the kingdom of Israel or Church of God, as it then existed in the world. In the first example, the wickedness of Israel is represented by the bitterness of the fruit which the vineyard produced; in the second, the unprofitableness of Israel is represented by the want of fruit on the vine; and in the third, the sufferings of Israel are represented by the inroads of the wild beasts upon the wide spread, tender, unprotected vine. Our parable differs from all three as to the point where its lesson lies. It is not a case in which a favoured vineyard produces bad fruit; it is not a case in which a vine bears no fruit; it is not a case in which a vine that might otherwise have been fruitful is trampled down by wild beasts for want of a fence. It is a case in which, after the vineyard has brought forth its fruit, the cultivators who have charge refuse to render to the owner the portion of the produce which is his due. The difference is important: it determines clearly the main line in which the interpretation of the parable should proceed. By the vineyard with all its privileges, I understand the ordinances of Israel as appointed by God, and the people of Israel in as far as they were necessarily passive in the hands of their priests and rulers. The husbandmen manifestly represent the leaders, who at various periods had usurped a lordship over God’s heritage. Extraordinary ambassadors were sent from time to time in the owner’s name, to demand the stipulated tribute,—prophets such as Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, men not of the number, or in the confidence of the ordinary rulers, but specially commissioned by the Supreme, to approach them with reproof and instruction. The established authorities of the nation, exercising their office for their own pleasure or profit, rejected the counsel and assaulted the persons of the messengers. Some were imprisoned, some driven into exile, and some put to death. Successive embassies, sent in successive ages, met with similar treatment, until, in the fulness of time, Christ the Son became the messenger of the covenant. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. Already those Jewish rulers who listened to this parable, were laying their plans to cast this greatest prophet out of the city, and to crucify him. The owner of the vineyard said, “They will reverence my son.” The expression is natural and appropriate in the lips of a human proprietor; but obviously when it represents the purpose of God, it means only that such reverence was claimed, and such reverence was due. The omniscient knew beforehand that the Jewish rulers would not yield even to this last and tenderest appeal. The expectation of the husbandmen that when they should have murdered the heir, the property should become their own, does not point to any definite, well considered plan by which the wicked expect to gain a permanent portion by rejecting the Gospel; it indicates merely the blunt determination of the carnal mind to grasp and enjoy God’s bounties while it despises and rejects his grace. To crucify Christ by the hands of the Romans, or to crucify him afresh through unbelief, was and is a short-sighted policy. When the Lord of the vineyard cometh he will destroy those wicked men, and will let out the vineyard unto others. The interpretation of this turning-point is given to the Jewish rulers in full, and without concealment. “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matthew 21:43). The polity of the Jews was crushed by the Romans, and the charge of the Church fell into other hands. The “nation” that has succeeded to the kingdom is constituted on a different principle, and held together by different bonds. It is not after the flesh, but after the spirit that citizenship is obtained in the Christian commonwealth; henceforth, the partakers of Abraham’s faith are the seed of Abraham to whom the covenant of promise pertains. The worship and ordinances of God’s house were transferred to the apostles and their followers, neither as Jews nor as Gentiles, but as the disciples of Christ. A new nation (?????) is constituted of those who are born again; of those the kingdom consists, and under their charge its affairs will be carried on until the Lord come again. The personal and permanent application of the lesson is obvious. A rich vineyard, planted and fenced to our hand, has been let out to us by the Maker and Owner of the world. Civil and religious liberty, the Bible and the Sabbath, the Church and its ministry, have been provided and preserved for us by our Father’s care. We are permitted to enjoy all for our own benefit, under deduction of a tribute to the Giver. Our offerings cannot directly reach him, but he has made them payable to the poor. When Christ the messenger of the covenant stands at the door and knocks, a worldly heart within refuses to admit him. The carnal mind is enmity against God, and therefore resists the claim which the Mediator bears: its language is, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” The lesson bears also upon the gradual corruption of the Christian Church in the first centuries, and the absolute apostasy of the lordly hierarchy at Rome. At the Reformation the kingdom was in part taken from that faithless priesthood; but they retain vast multitudes in bondage still. The Lord reigneth; and the time will come when every yoke shall be broken, and the Church set free to serve the Lord alone. The vineyard will one day be delivered from the tyranny of usurping tenants, and its fruit fully rendered to its rightful Lord. Ah, my country, I dread the punishment of thy unfaithfulness! The same righteous God, who cast out the Jews and admitted the Gentiles, reigneth still. On the same principle he has taken the kingdom from Asia Minor and Greece, and given it to this island of the sea. Alas, if we render not to him the fruits of his vineyard, he may take our privileges in judgment away, and give them to another nation, perhaps to Italy—emancipated, regenerated Italy (Romans 11:19). This parable is remarkable for the codicil taken from the Old Testament and attached to it by the Lord on the spot and at the moment. The picture of the tenant vine-dressers usurping possession—driving off the owner’s servants and slaying his son, although transparent in its meaning and pungent in its reproof, does not contain all that the Lord then desired to address to the Pharisees. It pleased him to employ that similitude as far as it reached; but when its line had all run out, he seized another line that lay ready in the Scriptures to his hand, and attached it to the first, that by the union of the two he might make the reproof complete. The first type taken from human affairs is not broad enough to represent the kingdom of God at a crisis of its conflict. The son whom the proprietor sends on an embassy to the vine-dressers, points to Christ sent by the Father to his own Israel. The terrestrial fact serves to show that the son was put to death by the rebels in possession, but there its power is exhausted; it has no means of exhibiting the other side of the scene,—that this son rose from the dead, and now reigns over all. The parable, when it came to its natural conclusion, left the lesson which it had begun to teach abruptly broken off in the midst,—left a glory of the Lord unrevealed, and a terror to wicked men unspoken. That he might proclaim the whole truth, and leave his unrepenting hearers without excuse, the Lord proceeded then and there to demand of them, “Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner?” The parable of the husbandmen has already shown that the Son was rejected by the favoured people to whom he was sent; and this grand text from the Old Testament Scriptures, which the Scribes well knew, shows further that he whom the official but false builders rejected and cast down, was accepted and raised up by God. Whom they refused, dishonoured, and slew, him God raised up and made King upon his holy hill of Zion. 41 It is a dreadful discovery for those husbandmen to make, that the Son whom they murdered lives, and has become their Lord. Nothing is more appalling to criminals than to be confronted with their victim,—living and reigning. Hence the agony of Joseph’s faithless brothers when they discovered that Joseph was their judge. Herod beheaded the Baptist in the intemperate excitement of a licentious feast, that he might keep before his nobles the word which he had rashly pledged to a fair, false woman: but Herod was not done with John when John’s body, tenderly buried by his disciples, lay silent in the grave. Many times by night and day the king saw that gory head again lying on the charger—it would not go out of his sight. The creaking of a door, or the sighing of the wind among the trees, seemed the footfall of the Baptist stalking forth to reprove him. When an attendant reported to Herod the miracles of Christ, reporting at the same time that some took Jesus of Nazareth for Elias, and some for another prophet, he had his own opinion on the point; he knew better, and in a whisper, with pale face, and starting eye-balls, and trembling limbs, he said to his informant,—“It is John the Baptist whom I beheaded” (Mark 6:14). It is a fearful thing for his murderers to fall into the hands of this living God. It is a fearful thing to see him whom you have crucified afresh coming in the clouds to judge the world in righteousness. Further expanding this conception regarding the chief corner stone, the Lord transfers from another scripture (Isaiah 8:14-15), the prophecy spoken of old on this very point,—“And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.” We seem to mark here a change in the character of Jesus. Sterner and more stern he becomes, as in his prophetic office he approaches the subject of his own kingly judgment. His eyes pierce these hypocrites, and they quail before him. As his witnessing approaches its close, he draws the two-edged sword from its sheath and holds it before the time over the naked heads of his enemies, if so be they may even yet fear and sin not. For his own holy purposes he lays aside for a moment his gentleness, and appears as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. The last days of the Mediator’s ministry on earth are now running: it must now be decided whether his own will receive or reject him. The leaders of Israel stood before him, with all their crooked purposes revealed to his eye; the plot was ripening to take his life away. Laying aside the style of a meek Beseecher, he assumes the aspect of a just Avenger; already we seem to see the wrath of the Lamb gathering on his brow. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry; as yet, his wrath is kindled but a little; in that day, it will burn like fire. Why has it been kindled a little before the time? Mercy has lighted this premonitory fire. This terror of the Lord, like all the others that he sends in the day of salvation, is employed as the means of persuading men. He not only receives all who come at his invitation, but sends out foreshadowings of judgment to drive from their unbelief those who refuse to yield to gentler means. Many of the forgiven, on earth and in heaven, are ready to tell that after they had long resisted his tender invitations, they were overcome at last by gracious terrors launched against them by a loving Saviour. The Jews were familiar with these ideas connected with the corner stone. The prophecy in the aspect of a promise they readily understood, but here the other and opposite side of it also is displayed. The picture—for it is by itself a short parable—represents a great stone at rest. In Alpine valleys, close by the root of rent, rugged, precipitous mountains, you may often see a rock of vast dimensions lying on the plain. In magnitude, it is itself a little hill; and yet it is only a stone that has fallen from the neighbouring mountain. Suppose a band of living men should rush with all their might against that stone, they would be broken and it would not be moved. If they retire and repeat the onset, the rock lies still in majestic repose, while their feeble limbs are mangled on its sides, and their life-blood sinks into the soil at its base. The next part of the conception, which the imagination can easily form at will, is precisely the reverse of the first. The rock rises now into mid-heaven, hovers over the assailants for a while, and then falls upon their heads. Here, as in the other case, the human adversaries of this rock are destroyed, but their destruction is wholly different in degree and kind. In the first case, they were broken; in the second, they are grinded to powder. 42 The words in the original are very specific, and the translation is remarkably accurate. The term employed to indicate the injury which men inflict upon themselves when they resist the Redeemer in the day of grace, conveys the idea of the crushing which takes place when a man strikes swiftly with all his force against a great immoveable rock; the term which indicates the overwhelming of Christ’s enemies by his own power put forth in the day of judgment, conveys the idea of the crushing which takes place when a great rock falls from a height upon a living man. The one calamity is great in proportion to the weight and impetus of a man; the other calamity is great in proportion to the weight and impetus of a falling rock. Both the rejection of Christ by the unbelieving in the time of grace, and the rejection of the unbelieving by Christ when he comes for judgment, are bruisings; but the second is to the first, as the power of a great rock is to the power of a man. The first bruising, caused by a man’s unbelieving opposition to Christ under the Gospel, may be cured; but the grinding accomplished by the wrath of the Judge when the day of grace is done can never be healed. There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin. There are only two ways. This stone lies across our path from edge to edge. It is not possible to be neutral, so as to be neither for Christ nor against him: we must either accept or reject the Son of God. In the prophecy to which the text refers (Isaiah 8:14-15) it is intimated that “He shall be for a sanctuary, but for a stone of stumbling.” The mighty one stands on our life path, and we cannot pass without coming into contact with him. If we flee to him for refuge, he is the sanctuary in which we shall be safe; if we fall on him, in a vain effort to escape, we shall stumble, and fall, and perish. As a general rule, it is in the present life that he bears the weight of sinners striking against him; and in the life to come that those who rejected him here, must bear the weight of his judgment. But some do not relish this doctrine; those who heard it directly from the lips of the Lord resented it keenly, and many resent it still when it is taught from the Scriptures. In our day men do not often expressly find fault with the teaching of Jesus as it is recorded by the Evangelists: they prefer to blame the ministers who take up and echo their Master’s words. People fondly grasp one side of God’s revealed character and use it as a veil to hide the other from themselves. The tenderness of God our Father is employed to blot out from view the wrath of God our righteous Judge. Since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were; where, therefore, is the promise of his coming? A great rock is lying on the plain: the cultivators have ploughed and the cattle have grazed round it since the flood. Standing beside it, and reverting to its possible history, you give scope to your imagination and ask, What if it had fallen, or should yet fall on me? The bare conception makes you shudder: you are fain to shake off the reverie and compose yourself by the reflection that the rock, fixed to the spot by the laws of nature, cannot move to harm you. But the Judge of the quick and the dead, though likened to a stone as to crushing power, is not like a stone in its silent still inertia. He liveth and abideth for ever. He bears now,—has borne long. The Almighty God does not move himself to hurt those who are his enemies, any more than the rock which has slept half buried in the valley many thousand years. But he will not thus bear for ever: he will come to judge the world. He will come as the lightning comes: then blessed will all be who shall have put their trust in him, while he waited, through the Gospel, to be gracious. “When the Son of man cometh” the second time, “shall he find faith on the earth?” He will then find only the faith which his first coming generated; for his second coming creates no new faith. Then, it is not “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved;” but “a fearful looking for of judgment.” FOOTNOTES 41. What wise one of this world,—what human reason would have conceived, under the cross, that this man suspended between two malefactors, and despised by all, would one day receive the worship of the whole world? This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.—Heubner in Lange.[41] 42. The expression is chosen with reference to the mysterious stone in Daniel 2:34-35, which grinds to powder the image of the monarchies; that is, to Christ who unfolds his life in the kingdom of God and grinds the kingdom of this world to powder.—Lange.[42] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 14: 1.12. THE ROYAL MARRIAGE FEAST ======================================================================== XII. THE ROYAL MARRIAGE FEAST. PART I.—THE WEDDING GUESTS. “And Jesus answered, and spake unto them again by parables, and said, The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage. But they made light of it, and went their ways, out to his farm, another to his merchandise: and the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all, as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests. And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding-garment: And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding-garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.”—Matthew 22:1-14. T This parable stands connected both historically and logically with the two which immediately precede it: especially between the guests here invited to the feast and the husbandmen to whom the vineyard was entrusted, there is a close resemblance in privileges enjoyed, in perversity manifested, and in judgment incurred. Yet the lessons, though in some respects parallel, are to a great extent distinct; and though both traverse partially the same ground, the latter carries the argument some steps further forward than the former parable. A question has arisen and been largely canvassed, on the relation between the parable and one43 recorded in Luke 14:16-24 regarding a certain man who made a great supper and bade many. Around this subject much useless and some mischievous debate has accumulated. The criticism which assumes that only one discourse on the subject was spoken by Jesus, and that consequently two reports of it differing from each other, cannot be both correct, is impertinent and trifling. It is a pedantic literalism contrary to experience and to common sense. It rests upon the assumption that a public Teacher who taught the common people daily, on the margin of the lake and in private dwellings, in the Temple at Jerusalem and in the sequestered villages around, never repeated with variations in one place the substance of a lesson which he had given in another. Even in the immense profusion of nature every plant is not in all its features different from all others; two individuals or species are found in some respects the same and in some respects different. The two walk together as far as they are going the same way, and separate when each approaches his own peculiar and specific terminus. This combination of identity and difference pervades creation; and you may observe the same characteristics in the scheme of Providence. Two men during a portion of their life-course suffer the same troubles and taste the same joys; but at a certain point in their progress their paths diverge, and they never meet again in a common experience. Look even to the history of any citizen whose life is public, and you will find that by speech, or writing, or act, he prosecutes his objects by a mixture of sameness and diversity. His address in the high court of the nation, and his address to his rustic constituents in a distant province, will be found in some features similar and in some different: yet the address in either case will be found an independent and consistent whole, corresponding to the character of the speaker and the circumstances of his audience. This “Teacher sent from God” was wont in later lessons to walk sometimes over his own former footsteps, as far as that track best suited his purpose, and to diverge into a new path at the point where a diversity in the circumstances demanded a variety in the treatment. This is the method followed both in nature and revelation,—the method both of God and of men. “A certain king made a marriage for his son,” the two important features here are the royal state of the father, and the specific designation of the supper as the nuptial feast of his son. It may be quite true, as some critics say, that because the greatest feasts were usually connected with marriages, the epithet “marriage” was sometimes applied to any sumptuous banquet; if in the Scriptures or elsewhere we should find a banquet denominated a marriage feast, while from the circumstances it appeared that no marriage had taken place, we should experience no difficulty in explaining the apparent incongruity. But in this case there is no reason for adopting the exceptional, and the strongest reason for retaining what is confessedly the ordinary and natural signification of the term. The conception of the Redeemer as the bridegroom, and his redeemed people as the bride, lies too deep in Scripture and protrudes too frequently from its surface to leave any doubt concerning the allusion in the parable. The feast, introduced into the story for the sake of its spiritual significance, is the marriage supper of the king’s son. The king sent forth his servants, not on this occasion to give the first invitation, but to warn those who had been previously invited that the time had come, and the preparations been completed. It is obviously assumed, and analogies are not wanting to justify the assumption, that those whom the king desired to honour were informed of that desire before the day of the feast, and that another message was sent to each, after everything was ready, requesting his immediate attendance in the palace of the king. This feature of the transaction is not explained or defended in the narrative; it is silently taken for granted as at least sufficiently common to be well understood. 44 This peculiarity of the invitation is important in connection with the severity of the punishment which was subsequently inflicted on the recusants. They did not repudiate the invitation when it was first addressed to them. By retaining it, and enjoying the advantage of being accounted the king’s guests during the interval, they pledged themselves to attend the marriage festival, and honour their sovereign by their presence. Their abrupt refusal at the eleventh hour, after all was ready to receive them, partook of the nature both of breach of engagement and disloyalty. “They would not come.” A second message was sent, more specific and more urgent: but the men met the importunate kindness of the king with contemptuous mockery: “they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise.” A portion of them carried their opposition beyond supercilious neglect into blood-thirsty enmity; “the remnant took his servants and entreated them spitefully and slew them.” “But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.” As far as appears from the narrative, those who affronted the king by neglect, and those who put his messengers to death, received the same punishment. Although the cruelty perpetrated by some of the conspirators was an aggravation of their guilt, the crime for which they suffered was one of which all alike were guilty,—the crime of despising the king’s invitation, and pouring contempt upon his authority. The transaction may have had great political significance. It was a combination among the aristocracy to thwart the king and dictate to him a line of policy. They meant by their absence in mass to leave him without support, that he might be compelled to court them on their own terms. In such a case only two alternatives are open to the supreme magistrate: he must either submit to the aristocracy and buy them back at their own price, or supersede them by a bold appeal to the common people. Suppose that in this country the Lords should by compact refuse to attend Parliament, for the express purpose of extorting concessions in favour of themselves by bringing the process of legislation to a stand: the sovereign, in that case, must either submit to the terms of the refractory nobles, or by prerogative create a new peerage from the plebean ranks. Such, on a minute scale and in a simple form, was the course adopted by the king in this ancient oriental drama. He destroyed their city: it was the king’s own city, but he loathed it because of the rebellion of its inhabitants. He took no pleasure in its streets and palaces when their moral glory had departed. The loss of so much property was a small loss; the gain for the discipline of unborn generations was unspeakably great. The overthrow of the city in which the rebels dwelt would make children’s children shudder at the thought of apostasy. The sacrifice of a material interest in order to afford sanction to moral laws is the highest wisdom of government, both human and divine. This principle was adopted on the largest scale after the first rebellion, when the earth was cursed for man’s sake. The king took his servants into his counsel. They had suffered in his cause, and he will not conceal from them what he is about to do. “Go ye therefore into the highways,”—the public places of resort, as well the city’s streets as the roads that traverse the country,—“and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.” In the first instance the invitation was limited to the class who had a prescriptive right to appear at court; when these by their perversity had excluded themselves, the king in his sovereignty extended the invitation generally to the common people,—to persons who previously possessed no right of admission, but who obtained the right then and there by the free act of the sovereign. The servants did as they were instructed. They understood and executed their commission according to its letter: they brought in “bad and good.” As they were not instructed to institute an inquiry into the character or social position of the persons whom they should invite, they made no distinction; they swept the streets to fill the royal halls. At this point the parable becomes logically complete, and its lesson may be exhibited apart from the addition regarding the wedding garment which immediately follows. It will be more convenient, accordingly, to prosecute the exposition of the earlier portion by itself, and leave the latter portion to be treated afterwards as substantially a separate lesson. The parable, as far as we have hitherto read it, repeats and extends the warnings previously given regarding the spiritual privileges which the Jews enjoyed and abused, the judgments which had been and still would be poured out upon the nation, and the successful proclamation of the Gospel to the Gentiles, when the natural seed of Abraham should have in rebellious unbelief rejected the offers of their Lord. The marriage festival made by the king in honour of his son, points manifestly to redemption completed in the incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ. Banquets had before this period been provided by the king, and enjoyed by the favoured circle of his guests; much advantage was possessed by the Jews over the Gentiles in every way, but especially in that to them were committed the oracles of God. But the feast depicted in this parable was the last and best; it was the way of salvation in its completed state. As the king made known his intention before it was carried into effect, and intimated to the guests that they would be summoned as soon as the preparations were complete; so a period of preparation, and promise, and expectation intervened between the incarnation and the sacrifice of Christ. To the Jewish commonwealth the promise was made in the birth of the babe at Bethlehem, and they were invited to be upon the watch for the moment when the kingdom should come in its power. When the fulness of time had come, the Lord himself undertaking the work as well as assuming the form of a servant, carried to the chosen people the message, “Come, for all things are now ready.” His immediate followers and their successors repeated and pressed the invitation. It is worthy of notice that the servants, when they went out with the commission of the king, did not announce the feast as a new thing, then for the first time made known; they spoke of it as that which was promised before, and actually offered them; they summoned those who had previously been fully informed that the feast was provided for their use. These favoured but unthankful people were not taken at their word; after the first refusal, another and more urgent invitation is sent. The successive reiterated mission of the servants to the class who were originally invited, may be understood to point to the ministry of the Lord and the seventy until the time of the crucifixion, and the second mission of the apostles after the Pentecost, and under the ministration of the spirit. Both invitations were neglected and rejected by the people to whom they were sent; Christ came unto his own, and his own received him not. Significant are the differences in the treatment which the message and the messengers received from different classes within the privileged circle of the first invited. We learn here the solemn lesson that though there is much diversity in the degrees of aggravation with which men accompany their rejection of the Saviour, all who do not receive him perish in the same condemnation. At first no distinction is made between class and class of unbelievers; of all, and of all alike it is recorded, “they would not come.” But when the offer became more pressing and more searching, a difference began to appear, not as yet the difference between the believing and the unbelieving, but a difference in the manner of refusing, and in the degrees of courage or of cowardice that accompanied the act. The greater number treated the message lightly, and preferred their own business to the life eternal which was offered to them in Christ; while a portion, not content with spurning away the offer, persecuted to the death the ambassadors who bore it. The fault of those who are first mentioned takes the form of indolent, frivolous neglect, rather than of active opposition. They were occupied with many other things, and therefore could not attend to this one; they were bent on prosecuting their own gains, and therefore set no value on God’s favour. 45 These two, ungodliness and worldliness, are always found in company; but it is sometimes difficult to determine which of the two goes first, and draws the other after it. You seldom meet a man who neglects this great salvation, and neglects also the gains and the pleasures of life. Those who forget God follow hard after another lord, although they may be unable to detect or unwilling to confess their own idolatry. No man can serve two masters; but every man practically serves one. It may not, however, be easy in any given case to discover whether a man pursues some particular pleasure because he is determined to abide far from Christ, or is kept far from Christ because his heart is pre-engaged to some worldly lust. In the case which the parable exhibits, this point has not been expressly determined. When the second and more urgent message arrived, demanding their immediate attendance on the king at the marriage of his son, those men departed in an opposite direction, each to his own business; but it remains an open question whether their hearts were first so glued to the farm and the merchandise, that they could not be persuaded to take from these engrossing pursuits as much time as would suffice to attend upon their sovereign; or whether there was first a determination to resist the sovereign’s call, and that they then introduced the business as an excuse, and fled to it as a welcome occupation. It may have been either or both; but in the circumstances I think it was primarily the latter of the two. In the hearts of those men lay a deep design against the authority of the king; but it would have involved serious risk to have flatly refused his reiterated invitation. They had actually incurred a grave responsibility, and they were disposed to lighten it somewhat by interposing a plausible excuse. Troubled, moreover, by the gravity of their step they were fain to seek refuge from reflection by plunging into the ordinary avocations of life. I think it was not an excessive zeal for agriculture and trade that really prevented them from attending on the king that day; but a consciousness of having conclusively offended the king that drove them for relief into agriculture and trade. On the spiritual side of the parable, in like manner, the excessive devotion to business which occupies some men, and leaves not a shred either of their hearts or lives for Christ, may be in many cases not a primary affection, but the secondary result of another and deeper passion. When Christ has often knocked at the door, and the inhabitant soul within has as often refused to open, there is no longer peace in the dwelling that has been barred against its Lord. He who has rejected the merciful offers of a merciful God, does not afterwards sit at ease; every sound that in moments of solitude falls upon his ear, seems the footstep of an angry God, returning to inflict deserved punishment. When one has distinctly heard the Saviour’s call, and deliberately refused to comply with it, he thenceforth experiences a craving for company and employment. He cannot endure silence or solitude. When he stands still, he seems to hear the throbbings of his own conscience terrible as the ticking of the clock in the chamber of death. To be alone is unendurable, because it is to be with God. To escape from this fiery furnace, he hastens to plough in his field or sell in his shop. In such a case, the worldliness, even when it runs to the greatest excess, is not the primary passion, but a secondary refuge,—the trees of the garden among which the fallen would fain hide from the Lord God. But in some cases the disease may first approach by the other side: love of the world may be the earlier matured and more imperious passion. The farm and the merchandise may become the soul’s first and fondest love; and that love possessing all the soul’s faculties, may cast or keep out Christ and his redemption. If you suppose those invited guests to have been previously wedded to the idolatry of covetousness, worshipping gain in secret as their god, you can easily comprehend how they should grudge a day taken from traffic in order to honour their king; so in the interpretation of the parable, when riches or pleasures increase, and the possessor sets his heart upon them, he has already obtained his portion, and will not cast it away for Christ; he will mock the messengers who bring the distasteful proposal. Among the invited guests, however, there is another class who treat the king’s servants in another way. The first class made light of the message; the second murdered the messengers. It is intimated that while the bulk of those to whom the Gospel was preached, neglected the offer and busied themselves with earthly gains, some rose against the preachers and persecuted them unto the death. These last, however, seem to have been in point of numbers an inconsiderable minority,—“the remnant entreated them spitefully and slew them.” There were persecutors in the earliest days of the Gospel, and there have been persecutors in every generation since. The Pharisees plotted that they might put Jesus to death: Saul of Tarsus at a later date was their willing tool in a desperate effort to quench the life of the infant Church in the blood of its members. After he was turned, and the mighty stream of his life compelled to flow like a river of water in the opposite direction, a constant succession of cruel men has been kept up in this restless, sin-stained world, whose life-work is to crucify Christ in his members. The unchanged, unrepenting hierarchy of Rome, successor not of Peter the apostle, but of Saul the persecutor, does yet all that it can and dare to treat spitefully and slay those servants of the king who invite them and the world to the marriage-supper of the King’s Son. But the crucifiers of Christ are not all shedders of human blood. Deadly enmity to the truth and its publishers may be manifested where stakes and fagots are out of fashion and inconvenient. The soul of the persecution which the parable represents lies in entreating spitefully the king’s messengers, because they loathed the invitation, and were irritated by the urgency wherewith the servants, remembering their sovereign’s command, felt themselves constrained to press it on every man they met. In our own day, it does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive the same spirit in the relish and readiness with which certain classes catch up a cry against any one who, not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, has discharged his commission in full. But when you add together both classes of open antagonists—those who shed the blood of Christians, and those who merely calumniate them, you have only a very small company before you. On the one side I see a little flock,—those who meekly receive Christ; on the other and opposite side I see also a little flock,—those who loudly proclaim by word and deed, “We will not have this man to reign over us:” but there is a multitude, whom no man can number, in the midst, who neither accept the king’s message nor persecute the servants of the king. The character of the company on either extreme is distinctly marked, and easily seen. Those have manifestly closed with Christ’s offer, and are accepted through faith; these, on the other hand, have considered the offer, and proved their rejection of it by killing its bearers. But the multitude in the middle have not taken a decisive part; they have remained apparently in a state of equilibrium. As yet they have not indeed actually and personally closed with the Redeemer as their own; but neither on the other hand have they determined and proclaimed that they will not accept him. They have not moved to either side to take a decisive part for or against the Lord. 46 This feature of their condition and their history helps to deceive and so to destroy them. If the condition of the world and the law of God were such that all would be safe in the great day who did not blaspheme Christ’s name, and mock his Gospel, and put to death his ministers, this multitude in the middle might remain where they are at ease. But this is not the state of the case; life and death for us depend on our knowing and not mistaking the state of the case here. To all the multitude in the middle the word of a merciful and faithful God proclaims, In order to be saved, it is necessary that you should arise, and turn to the right hand, and join the company there who have gladly welcomed the Son of God as their Saviour; but, correspondingly, in order to be lost, it is not necessary that you should arise from your state of indifference, and join the scoffer’s ranks. To be saved you must flee to the refuge; but to be lost, it is enough that you remain where you are. In the Theocracy, the Hebrew nation were the hereditary nobles. It is said of them in the Scriptures that they are a people near unto God (Psalms 148:14). They enjoyed a right of entry into the king’s presence. Having, in virtue of their birth-right, a perennial invitation to the royal festivals, they needed only a message as a matter of course, demanding their presence when the feast was prepared. The Gospel of grace complete in Christ is obviously the feast to which the house of Israel were in the fulness of time specially summoned. When they refused to come to the banquet, the Provider was displeased, but not put about: the Omniscient knows his way. He never permits his purposes to be thwarted: He makes the wrath of man to praise himself, and the remainder of that wrath he restrains. In the beginning of human life and of God’s moral government on earth, the enemy seemed to triumph. Creation was thrown out of joint; the being made in God’s image was defiled by sin. But although the garden of Eden was emptied, God was not left without a witness in the world: sin abounded, but grace did much more abound. In like manner, at a later stage of the divine administration when the favoured vine became barren, another was brought out of Egypt and planted in its stead. When Israel rejected Christ, God rejected Israel, and called another people to be his own. “We have Abraham to our father,” said the Jewish leaders to the Baptist when his lessons began to gall them, “We have Abraham to our father,” meaning thereby to intimate that they alone were the chosen people, and that failing them God would have no children on the earth. How did John answer this boast? “Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father; for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham” (Matthew 3:9-10). Although those privileged Hebrews rejected him, Christ did not remain a king without subjects, a shepherd without a flock. In the exercise of the same sovereignty through which he chose Abraham at first, he passed over Abraham’s degenerate posterity and called another family. This family was Abraham’s seed, not by natural generation, but in the regeneration through faith. Of these stones he raised up children to Abraham, when the natural children of the family had through unbelief shut themselves out. “Go to the highways:” Christ commanded his apostles to begin at Jerusalem indeed, but he did not enjoin,—did not permit them to continue holding out their hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people; the alternative was embodied in their commission, If the Jews do not receive you, go to the Gentiles. It becomes us to stand in awe before these deep things of God: their fall became our rising. In the channel through which a running stream is directed upon a mill wheel the same turning of a valve that shuts the water out of one course throws it into another, that had previously been dry; thus the Jews by rejecting the counsel of God shut themselves out, and at the same moment opened a way whereby mercy might flow to us who were afar off. The servants went out and did as they were bidden. Peter went to the house of Cornelius, and in that lane of the world’s great city found a whole household willing to follow him to the feast his royal master had prepared. Soon thereafter Paul and Barnabas, Silas, Titus, Timothy, and others traversed the continents of Europe and Asia, bringing multitudes of neglected outcasts into the presence and the favour of the king. “They brought in good and bad.” This is a cardinal point in the method of divine mercy, and therefore it is articulately inserted in the picture. The scene is taken from life in the world; the conceptions accordingly, and the phraseology correspond with the circumstances. In society at large, and in every section of society such as the rich or the poor, two classes are found distinguished by their moral character, and in ordinary language designated the good and the bad. The thought and the style of ordinary life are adopted in the parable, and every reader understands easily what is meant. Every great community has its virtuous poor and its vicious poor. The invitations of the Gospel come to fallen human kind, and to all without respect either of persons or of characters. Apart from Christ and prior to regeneration the distinction between bad and good is only an earthly thing: in God’s sight and in prospect of the judgment, there is none good, no not one. There are not two roads from earth to heaven: there is only one gate open, and by it all the saved enter. It is not the man’s goodness that recommends him to God’s favour: the worst is welcome through the blood of Christ, and the best is rejected if he approach by any other way. Nor does it follow thence that the Judge is indifferent to righteousness; that which the unreconciled offer to him as righteousness is in his sight sin; and the fact of offering it as a ground of justification aggravates the offerer’s guilt. PART II.—THE WEDDING GARMENT. We have here two parables in one. In their union and relations they resemble the two seed-stones which are sometimes found within one fruit, attached to each other, and wrapped in the same envelope, but possessing each its own separate organization, and its own independent germ of life. The parable of the prepared, offered, and rejected feast, and the parable of the wedding garment, although actually united in the Lord’s ministry and the evangelic record, are in their own nature distinct, whether you consider the secular scenes delineated or the spiritual lessons which they convey. When the wedding was furnished with guests the king came in to see them. The representation is in strict accordance with the relations of the parties and the customs of society both in ancient and modern times. When a citizen entertains his equals he must himself be first in the festal hall to welcome the guests as they successively arrive; but when a sovereign invites subjects to his palace he appears among them only when the company have all assembled. The instant that he entered the festive hall the king saw there a man who had not on a wedding-garment. Although this is the turning point of the parable, it is represented with extreme brevity. The great central facts are recorded with the utmost distinctness, but all the surrounding circumstances are in silence assumed: no explanation is given, and the reason doubtless is that no explanation is needed. Some customs and allusions connected with the scene remain obscure to us, after all that modern research has done to illustrate them, but the lesson which our Lord intended to teach stands relieved in clearest light and sharpest outline, like distant mountain tops when the sun has newly set behind them. Some points regarding which we might desire information are left in the shade, but in as far as the story is necessary to unfold and perpetuate the spiritual lesson, it is accompanied with no doubt and with very little difficulty. 1. The wedding garment was something conspicuous and distinctive. As soon as the king entered the room he detected the single man who wanted it in a great company of guests. 2. It was not a necessary part of a man’s clothing, but rather a significant badge of his loyalty. The primary use of the symbol was neither to keep the wearer warm nor to make him elegant, but to manifest his faithfulness. 3. The want of it was, and was understood to be, a decisive mark of disloyalty. The man who came to the feast without a wedding-garment endorsed substantially the act of those who had proudly refused to comply with the king’s invitation. It was the same heart-disobedience accompanied by a hypocrisy that would fain commit the sin and yet escape the consequences. 4. The question whether a wedding-garment was proffered to every guest as he entered, out of the royal store, is attended with some difficulty. The preponderance of probability seems to lie with those who think that these decorations were freely distributed in the vestibule to every entrant, in some such way as certain badges are sometimes given to every one of a wedding party amongst ourselves in the present day. But the point is not of primary importance. From what is tacitly assumed in the narrative it may be held as demonstrated alternatively that either the king gave every guest the necessary garment, or it was such that every guest, even the poorest, could on the shortest warning easily obtain it for himself. Two silences become the two witnesses out of whose mouths this conclusion is established,—the silence of the king as to the grounds of his sentence, and the silence of the culprit when judgment was pronounced. The judge does not give any reason why sentence should be executed, and the criminal does not give any reason why it should not. On both sides it is confessed and silently assumed that the guest had not, but might have had, the wedding-garment on. If there had been any hardship in the case the king would have vindicated his own procedure, and the condemned guest would not have remained speechless when he heard his doom. 47 From the circumstances in which that motley company was collected and introduced into the palace, we may safely conclude that no kind of clothing, however torn and mean, would have been counted a disqualification. Over the whole surface of the scene is spread the proof that nothing in the character or condition of the attire which a street porter or a field labourer might happen to wear, when he was intercepted on the highway by the king’s messengers, and hurried away to the palace without an opportunity of visiting his own home, could possibly have been a ground of exclusion. When such persons in such circumstances were invited to the banquet, assuredly the king was prepared to welcome them, as far as dress was concerned, precisely as his servants had found them. No man forfeited his place at that table on account of any defect in the quality or condition of the clothing which he wore when he unexpectedly met the messengers and was suddenly hurried away to the feast. Thus far, treading on firm ground, we tread surely. Alike from the facts of the case, from the analogy of others, and from the corresponding spiritual lesson as elsewhere declared in Scripture, we conclude with confidence that the wedding garment was a well understood distinctive badge, expressive generally of loyalty, and specifically constituting and declaring the wearer’s fitness for sitting as a guest at the marriage supper of the king’s son. In appearance it must have been conspicuous; but its value may not have been great. It was not the inherent worth of the material but the meaning of the symbol that bulked in the estimation of both the entertainer and his guests. It may from analogous cases be shown to be probable that a loyal heart could have easily extemporized the appropriate symbol out of any material that lay next at hand. Where there is a will there is a way. Italian patriots at the crisis of their conflict with multiform oppression, and while the strong yoke of the despot was still upon their necks, contrived to display their darling tricolor by a seemingly accidental arrangement of red, white, and green among the vegetables which they exhibited in the market or carried to their homes. Nay more, the loyalty of a loyal man may in certain circumstances be more emphatically expressed by a rude, extemporaneous symbol, hastily constructed of intractable materials, than by the most elaborate and leisurely products of the needle or the loom. In such cases, the will of the man is everything; the wealth of the man nothing. The meanest rag suddenly thrown across the shoulders, arranged so as unequivocally to express the wearer’s faith may be a better evidence of loyalty than the richest silks of the East. 48 Let us now endeavour to appreciate and express the spiritual lesson. True to nature on the earthly sphere the parable represents the invitation, the assembling of the guests, and the entrance of the king, as three several and successive acts; but in the processes of the spiritual kingdom these three operations advance simultaneously. Some are in the act of hearing the invitation,—some are accepting it and going to the feast,—some are sitting at the table under the inspection of the king,—all at the same moment. The process is like the habit of some species of fruit trees, on which flowers, green berries, and ripe fruit may be seen at the same time; the flowers of this season become the green berries of the next, and the green berries of this season become the ripened fruit of the next; and thus a constant succession is maintained. In like manner, as the generations pass, all the processes of Christ’s kingdom are simultaneously carried forward. The guests who have come at the call of the servants, and taken their places at the table of the king, are those who hear the Gospel and fall in with its terms,—who adopt Christ’s name and enrol themselves among his people,—who hope in his mercy and commemorate his death. Herein they are broadly distinguished from those who made light of the message, and those who persecuted the messengers; but it is not yet certain whether they are forgiven and renewed. The profession which they have made distinguishes them from those Jews who refused the invitation, and those Gentiles who have not yet heard it; but among those who thus far comply with the call, another distinction must still be made. That goodly heap must be tossed up and winnowed yet again, that the chaff may be driven before the wind, and only the wheat gathered into the husbandman’s garner. As in the parable, we are not informed what were the shape, size, colour, or material of the wedding garment, but only that it was necessary that every guest should wear it; so we do not find here any specific doctrinal instruction as to the method of redemption and the decisive characteristics of believers. We learn from the parable that every sinner must simply comply with God’s terms in order that he may be saved; and elsewhere in Scripture we are fully taught what these terms are. An abundant answer to the question, “What must I do to be saved?” is recorded by the Spirit: the only point regarding it which this parable teaches, is that a sinner must abandon his own method, and fall in with Christ’s. The meaning of the man who sat at the feast without a wedding garment seems to have been, “I am my own master, and I shall work my own way to heaven:” the meaning of the men who meekly wore it was, “We are not our own; we are bought with a price; our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, but the Lord is our righteousness.” Thus the lesson of the parable concentrates itself at last upon a point; but that point is the turning-point of life or death to men. Is any one disposed to complain that it stakes all upon an opinion? It does, and why not? One man’s opinion is that his own righteousness, especially when he has gotten time to improve it, may be safely presented in the judgment, and ought to satisfy the judge. Another man counts all his efforts vile, as lacking the vital element of love, and at God’s command places his trust wholly in Christ his substitute: the first does deepest dishonour, the second gives highest glory to God. A man’s opinion on a trifling subject, may be of trifling import; but a man’s opinion—his mind on how he may be just with God, is the greatest and most pregnant fact in creation. Opinion here is nothing less and nothing else than the attitude of a fallen creature towards his Maker and Judge: one opinion is the alienated heart of a rebel, another is the glad trustfulness of a dear child. If the head of a Hebrew family, on the dread night of the Exodus, had said within himself, What shall I gain by sprinkling a lamb’s blood upon my door-posts? Or, if a conspicuous mark be necessary, may not the blood of this animal suffice, that was killed for the use of my family in the ordinary way? If moved by some self-confident speculations regarding the constancy of nature, he had entered through the portals of the twilight into that awful night, he would have perished while his neighbours were preserved: not that a lamb’s blood had power to save, but because this man refused to take God’s way of being saved, and trusted in his own. 49 The rest may be expressed in few words. He saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment. Here, first of all, it is not intimated that ordinarily there is only one hypocrite in a large company of professors: it is no part of the Lord’s design in this parable to tell us whether the false members of the visible Church are many or few. The single point on which the Master has fixed his eye is the certainty that the false will be detected: the parable does not reveal their numbers, but it assures us that none of them shall escape in the crowd. If the representation had been that a large proportion, say a half or three-fourths of the guests, had been detected at the table without the appropriate symbol of loving loyalty to the king, the omniscience of the visitor, and the certainty of the criminal’s doom would not have been so clearly and strongly expressed. That the king’s eye instantly detects the undecorated guest, although he is only one in a multitude, is the most emphatic warning that could possibly be conveyed to the unbelieving. None who live without Christ in the world shall be permitted to glide into heaven with the crowd in the great day. The constancy of nature is sometimes wielded as a weapon of assault against revealed religion: it will one day strike a heavy blow on the other side. When a mixture of wheat and chaff is thrown up in the wind, the solid grains drop down on the spot, and the light chaff is driven away. You never expect, in such a case, that to please some fancy of yours, the solid grain will fly away on the wings of the blast, and the chaff drop down at your feet. The constancy of nature prevents. Well; by a law as constant and changeless—a law of the same God, reigning over the world of spirit, “the wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the righteous hath hope in his death” (Proverbs 14:32). He was speechless. The judgment will be so conducted that the condemned will be compelled to own the justice of their sentence. Conscience, brought again into contact with God, will be awakened and restored to the exercise of its functions; like a mirror it will receive and repeat the decree of the Judge. Persecutors were wont to gag their victims while they burnt them; it was found necessary to put iron on the tongues of the witnesses, to make them silent while they suffered. No such clumsy device is needed in the assize which the righteous God will hold upon the world. Conscience swelling within will stifle the complaint of the guilty. The courage of the despiser will fail: the last poor comfort of the blasphemer, to hurl against the judgment seat the last despairing, defiant word, will be taken away. The history of the fact written by divine prescience before the time, makes no mention of what the condemned will say. The record simply runs, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.” “Outer darkness:” tell us in detail what the condition the outcast will be, and what will be the constituents of their suffering? We cannot. Rome has impiously traded upon this weakness of humanity. She has parcelled out her purgatory, as we delineate this upper world on a map. This is the machinery whereby she is enabled to traffic in the souls of men. No; that condition lies in outer darkness; I cannot see through the veil, and tell the specific sufferings that lie beneath it. My Lord has told me that it is in outer darkness; but he has covered it from my sight. He hath done all things well. He often warns us that the wicked shall be cast away; but he never tells us the particulars of their torments. For teaching about this terror let me listen to his word; for safety from it, let me hide in his bosom. THE TEN VIRGINS AND THE ENTRUSTED TALENTS. Matthew 25:1-30 Both historically and logically the two parables, of the ten virgins and of the talents, are connected and constitute a group: in place they are contiguous, and in nature they are reciprocally complements of each other, making together a complete whole. De Valenti has by a happy generalization placed their relations in an interesting and instructive light. He points out that there are two kinds of almost-Christians, the bustling labourers, and the mystic-dreamers. One class tries to live on works without faith, and the other on faith without works. From opposite causes both efforts fail. The parable of the ten virgins addresses its warning to the Almost-Christianity which is all body with no spirit; and the parable of the talents addresses its warning to the Almost-Christianity which is all spirit with no body. These constitute a pair; or rather they are the right and left sides of one living lesson. Both represent the character and condition of the Church and its members, while they wait for the coming of the Lord; both apply decisive tests to a seemly profession, and thereby separate between the true and the false: but they differ in that the first searches the heart, and the second examines the life. The first test detects the want of secret faith; the second the want of active obedience. The parable of the ten virgins prepares and throws into the mass of Christian profession a solvent which serves to determine whether and where there is life in the Lord; the parable of the entrusted talents prepares and throws into the mass of Christian profession a solvent which serves to determine whether and where there is life for the Lord. These two,—the inward grace of faith and the outward life of obedience, constitute the two sides,—the right and left of the new man. To that new man as a whole both parables alike refer; but the one touches him for testing on the right side, and the other on the left. The first tests his works by his faith, and the second tests his faith by his works. The first goes directly to the root and inquires whether the tree is good or bad; thus determining what the character of the fruit must be; the second goes first to the fruit, and by its sweetness or bitterness ascertains the character of the tree. The parable of the ten virgins speaketh on this wise,—If there be true faith in the heart, there will be active obedience in the life: the parable of the talents speaketh on this wise,—If there be active obedience in the life, there must be a root of faith unseen whereon that good fruit grows. FOOTNOTES 43. No. XXI. of this series.[43] 44. I have witnessed a process closely analogous, in a small detached island of the Shetland group in which the message sent was an invitation, not figurative but literal, to come and hear the word of the kingdom. It had been previously intimated to the islanders that a minister of the Gospel from the south would preach to them on the occasion of his visit to the neighbouring mainland, as the largest island of the group is styled. When the minister and his friends succeeded at length in crossing the Channel, several children were dispatched as messengers in different directions to inform the people that public worship would immediately begin. In a very short time a congregation was assembled consisting of the whole population of the island.[44] 45. A melancholy interest adheres to the contrast between man’s heedlessness of God as expressed in this parable, ???????????, made light of it, did not care for it; and God’s regard for men as expressed in 1 Peter 5:7, ???? ????? ???? ????, he careth for you.[45] 46. These three different methods of treating the message were all exhibited simultaneously at Athens when Paul preached there: “Some mocked, others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.... Howbeit, certain men clave unto him and believed” (Acts 17:32-34).[46] 47. “It should be assumed that the guests were not instantly hurried into the festal hall, but that an opportunity was afforded to them of changing their dress. This, however, is not expressly asserted in the narrative, but may be gathered from the term ??????? (he was speechless) in ver. 12; and must be understood on this account also, that, otherwise the sentence in ver. 13 would stand exposed to the charge of injustice.”—Storr, de parabolis Christi, p. 113.[47] 48. A custom connected with funerals, which prevails in some districts of England, if not in all, approaches closely in some of its essential features to that which occupies the most conspicuous place in this parable. A scarf of black silk, large, conspicuous, and expensive, yet constituting no part of the proper garments of the wearer, is given by the person who invites, and worn by every one who accepts the invitation. A single person without the badge in the procession would be instantly detected, and the omission would, in the circumstances, be taken as proof of disrespect.[48] 49. I do not attach much value to the question which has been much canvassed here, whether the wedding garment specifically signifies Faith or Charity,—whether it points to what the saved get from God, or what they do in his service. To wear the garment at the feast means that the wearer takes God’s way of salvation and not his own; to want it, means that the wanter takes his own way of salvation and not God’s. This is the conclusion of the whole matter. If you suppose that the garment means evangelical obedience, you must assume that faith in Christ is the root on which obedience grows; if, on the other hand, you suppose that the garment means faith in Christ, you must assume that it is a living not a dead faith,—a faith that will work by love and overcome the world.[49] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 15: 1.13. THE TEN VIRGINS ======================================================================== XIII. THE TEN VIRGINS. “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.”—Matthew 25:1-12. Here is one of the larger and grander pictures in this gallery of various glory. It is sublime in its ample outline, and exquisitely tender in its details. It is charged with many precious lessons, which flow freely at the gentlest touch; and it is cruel to put it to the torture to compel it to give meanings which it never received from its author. The painful search for precisely identical customs in eastern countries and ancient times is here, for the most part, unnecessary and unprofitable. The usages incidentally photographed in such a parable as this are indeed true sections of the place and the time, but others, agreeing in general character though differing in detail, might have been substituted in perfect consistency with the circumstances. There is some elasticity even in Oriental manners. It is not probable that all marriages were conducted on precisely the same plan. There might, for aught I know, be a difference between a wedding among the rich and a wedding among the poor, and another difference between the method of celebrating a marriage in the city and the country,—in Galilee and Judea. In examining analogous cases, I would look for similarity of style rather than identity of individual features. Looking on the parable of the ten virgins as a grand original, I don’t trouble myself with the work of hunting for corroboration of its truth or explanations of its meaning in the form of identical observances recorded in other books. The more important portion of the nuptial ceremonies were performed at night. They consisted in a great measure of processions along the road and festivals within the dwelling. The out-door part of the pageant is of course conducted by torch-light. A small cup, filled with rags and resin, is affixed to a rod, that it may be held aloft. At the proper time the rags are lighted, and the flame is fed from time to time by pouring oil into the cup. Each processionist carries such a lamp, and the many separate lights dancing and crossing each other, and changing places as the bearers advance on the undulating and tortuous path, impart great liveliness to the joyful nocturnal scene. From the nature of the case there must be two successive processions, one in which the bridegroom with his friends goes for the bride to her father’s house, and another in which bride and bridegroom, together with the friends of both families, march to the future home of the married pair. There was more or less of ceremonial and feasting in either mansion. It is not certainly known, and the knowledge would not be important although it were obtained, whether the principal feast was held in the home of the bride’s father or in that of the bridegroom. It is probable that the practice in this matter varied according to the wealth of the parties and the capacities of the several mansions. In one case the father of the bride, and in another the bridegroom, might possess the more commodious dwelling, and be more able, in virtue of ampler resources, to entertain the company. I am not aware that there is any ascertained law or habit of the places and times demanding that the principal feast should be always given by the father or by the bridegroom. In this case there is nothing in the narrative that determines with certainty whether the bridegroom, when the ten virgins waited for him, was on his way for the bride to her father’s house or with her to his own. On the whole, the balance of probability inclines to the side of those who think that this is the procession coming for the bride rather than the procession returning with her. The particular expression, “The bridegroom cometh,” among other circumstances, points in this direction. Lange’s conception commends itself as probable that the virgins are in some sense representatives of the bride, that they go forth to meet the bridegroom, that he has come from afar, and that some unexpected delays have occurred on the journey. The house whose door was shut ere the foolish five came up was obviously the house in which the grand marriage festival was held: to be shut out of that house was to be shut out from the marriage. When the curtain rises and the scene is first displayed, we behold ten young women, adorned according to the fashion of the time, lingering in a group by the wayside at night in the warm climate of Palestine. They may have been the young companions of the bride, a selected ten, specially invited to meet the bridegroom on the way, and enter with him into the festal hall,—a group in character and constituents closely corresponding to the bridesmaids at our marriage feasts,—or they may have been the daughters of neighbouring families, sent by their parents, or going of their own accord, in compliance with the custom of the place, to offer a tribute of respect and affection to the bride and bridegroom on their marriage-day. This feature of the scene, although in itself subordinate and incidental, derives great importance from the subsequent development of the parable: it becomes the hinge on which the lesson turns. From the circumstance that a portion of the company neither came with the bridegroom nor waited in the house for his arrival, but went out to meet him, all the tender and solemn teaching of this parable has sprung. 50 Waiting long without employment, the group of maidens would stand, and sit, and recline by turns. Each holds a tiny torch in her hand, or has laid it on the ground by her side. As the night wears on, the conversation that had at first been animated, gradually dies away, and one by one the wearied damsels drop over into snatches of slumber. Before midnight they have all sunk into a continuous sleep. At midnight a cry arose, apparently from some more wakeful watcher in the neighbourhood, “Behold the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.” At this alarm the whole band awake simultaneously and spring to their feet. Each maiden hastily snatches up her torch; not one of them burns brightly now; some are flickering low, and some are altogether extinguished. In a moment, all those nimble young hands begin to ply the work of trimming the expired or expiring lamps. All alike are able to touch them skilfully, but the main want with every lamp is a new supply of oil. Some can supply that want at the moment on the spot, while others cannot. Those who had brought from home a supply of oil in separate vessels, found it easy to make the flame of their torches burn up as brightly as ever; but those who had neglected to provide such a supply could not with all their efforts revive the dead or dying light. “Give us,” said the five improvident maidens, “give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out.” The more thoughtful, and therefore more fortunate watchers, while they pitied their sisters, were afraid to part with any portion of their own stores, lest they should be left in the same hapless condition ere the procession should close: “Go to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.” Alas, this was now the only alternative! Away went those foolish virgins at the dead of night on the hopeless errand of buying oil for immediate use in the shops of the neighbouring town. The folly, however, lay not in this latest act; this was now their only resource. The foolish deed was done in the day time, and before the cry arose, Behold the bridegroom cometh. As soon as the foolish five had gone, the procession came up, and they that were ready fell into their places. The new accession, each bearing a flaming torch aloft, increased the grandeur of the scene. When the company reached the house, they all entered with the bridegroom, and the door was shut. Some time afterwards the five who had gone away in search of oil, returned and pleaded for admission; but they pleaded in vain. Within the house the glad festival went forward; but those who came too late were not admitted. The story at its close is indebted for its deep pathos, not to anything inherent in itself, but to the sublime lesson which it conveys. The Lord’s great parable, like the Lord’s great apostle, is “weak and contemptible” in its bodily presence; but the letters in which it writes its meaning are like his, “weighty and powerful.” A few country girls arriving too late for a marriage, and being therefore excluded from the festival, is not in itself a great event: but I know not any words in human language that teach a more piercing lesson than the conclusion of this similitude. The frame is constructed of common materials; the sublimity lies in the spiritual truth which that frame sustains. This conception, like that of the hen gathering her chickens under her wing, seems so common and so common-place, that we would not have ventured in dignified discourse to employ it; in the hands of Jesus the similitude becomes at once tender and terrible in the highest degree. At his word the world sprang from nothing; we need not be surprised to find that under his touch small things become great. I think no symbolic character should be attributed to the virgins, as such, in the interpretation of the parable; it is when they take their lamps and go forth to meet the bridegroom that they first acquire a spiritual significance. The whole group represent that portion of any community who hear the Gospel, accept its terms, and profess to be the disciples of Christ. The sincerity and depth of their profession will be tested afterwards; but in the meantime, both in their own opinion and that of their neighbours, they are all alike Christians. The structure of the parable required virgins in this place, in order that the picture might be true to nature; in the customs apparently of all times and all countries, this position at a marriage feast is assigned to young unmarried women. The ancient practice of the East is, in its essential features, reproduced among ourselves from day to day in the troop of virgins, dressed in white, who attend the bride on her bridal day. I cannot acquiesce in the view of those who see in the special condition of these watchers a symbol of the purity which becomes the followers of Christ, for I find, as I read onward in the parable, that while the ten were in respect to condition all equal, in as far as they represent spiritual relations, five are symbols of sincerity, and five are symbols of deceit. The condition of virgins which was common to all, cannot, without complete confusion of ideas, be made, within the compass of the same allegory, to signify both the true and the false. From the procession of virgins, therefore, I obtain no more than I would have obtained from a procession of men or matrons, if the habits of society had permitted such a representation to have been made. 51 They took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom; this represents an open, intelligent, and seemly profession of faith in Christ. As all the lamps burned at first with equal brightness, and no suspicion of a defect occurred either to the wise or the unwise, we learn that the profession which never had life may appear so well favoured for a time, that neither the false professor nor his converted neighbour may be aware of its shallowness. “To meet the bridegroom;” the parable and the discourse which precedes it, bear upon Christ’s second coming, and the attitude, which becomes his disciples in prospect of that decisive event. They who have been washed in his blood love his appearing. No difference between class and class was as yet manifest; but already the causes which subsequently wrought the separation had begun to operate in secret, and here accordingly they are recorded by the Lord; “five of them were wise, and five of them were foolish.” I stand in awe of this dividing word. While the whole band take part in the loyal exodus, and all seem equal in zeal and love, the Searcher of hearts already perceives and pronounces that some of them are wise unto salvation, and some are so foolish that they are throwing away their souls. That same Lord looks on the ten thousand times ten thousand who in our times go out to meet the bridegroom. There is not a more grand or a more beautiful spectacle on earth than a great assembly reverently worshipping God together. No line visible to human eye divides into two parts the goodly company; yet the goodly company is divided into two parts. The Lord reads our character, and marks our place. The Lord knoweth them that are his, and them also that are not his, in every assembly of worshippers. The distinguishing feature is now specifically set down,—the wise carried each a separate vessel containing a supply of oil, that they might keep the flame of their lamps alive, however long the bridegroom might tarry: the foolish, satisfied that their lamps were burning at the moment, laid in no supply for future need. This is the turning-point of the parable, and in the light of subsequent events its spiritual import may be determined with precision and certainty. The oil in the lamp, and the flame which it sustained, indicate a seemly Christian profession; this the virgins all possessed, and all alike. The quality that tested and divided them, lay not in the burning lamps but in the supply vessels. The oil, whether employed to anoint a person or to feed a flame, represents, in Old Testament typology, the Holy Spirit. That which the wise virgins carried in their vessels, as distinguished from that which burned in their lamps, points to the Spirit as a spirit of grace and supplication dwelling in a believer’s heart. All experienced convictions, and made profession, as is indicated by the lamps lighted and borne aloft; but some had nothing more than convictions and professions, while others had passed from death unto life and had gotten their life, through the Spirit’s ministry, “hid with Christ in God.” This will more fully appear as we proceed stage by stage with the interpretation. “The bridegroom tarried.” For a special purpose, the Lord represents that the bridegroom lingered till a much later hour than that at which the virgins expected him. The disciples, during their Master’s ministry and long afterwards, cherished a belief that the coming of the Lord and the end of the world would take place in their own generation. This expectation was, in its literal sense, incorrect; but it could not be corrected by an explicit announcement that for more than a thousand years all things should continue as they were; for such an intimation would have destroyed the expectant watchfulness which in the circumstances was salutary and even necessary. By that watchfulness the Christians of the immediately succeeding generation escaped the disasters which befell the Jews at the destruction of Jerusalem, and by it believers in subsequent times were kept more loose to the world and more close to Christ. In this parable, however, and elsewhere in the Scriptures, prophecies are recorded, which events subsequently explained,—prophecies which showed the Christians of a later age that while their Lord desires to keep them in an expectant attitude through all generations, his intention from the beginning was to permit a long period to intervene between his ascension and his return. The preparation which Christ desires and true Christians attain, pertains more to the inner spirit than to the anticipation of the external advent. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. At this point many interpreters endeavour to grasp a lesson regarding the tendency of even true disciples to slumber sinfully at their post, like their worldly neighbours. The lesson is in itself good, and comes readily to hand, but it is not taught in this text. Calvin has correctly conceived and clearly expressed the meaning of the sleep that oppressed the waiting virgins; it intimates the necessity that lies on all of going down into the ordinary affairs of this life. Disciples in the body cannot be occupied always and only with the expectation of their Lord’s appearing. Sleep and food, family and business, make demands on them as well as on others,—demands which they cannot and should not resist. If the coming of the bridegroom be delayed till midnight, the virgins must slumber; this is not a special weakness of individuals, it is the common necessity of nature. So, when life is lengthened in the body, we must attend to the affairs of this world. The coming of the Son of man may surprise one at his farm and another at his merchandise, but it does not follow, on that account, that it will surprise them unprepared. Now and then in the history of the Church a Christian has been found dead in his closet and on his knees. A few years ago, in a rural district of Scotland, an elder who was leading the devotions of a district prayer-meeting suddenly ceased to speak,—ceased in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a prayer. The worshippers opened their eyes, and observed that his head and breast leant heavily on the desk; they approached and found him dead. At the moment when the bridegroom came this watcher was wide awake, standing on tiptoe, and straining forward to catch the first glimpse of the glory that should herald his approach. When the bridegroom came this watcher went out to meet him, and went in with him to the feast: safe and happy he, but not he only. On the other side we hear sometimes of a merchant who died in his counting-house, his ledger, not the Bible, the last book he had read; of a miner killed in an instant by an explosion while he was picking coals in the bowels of the earth; of a soldier falling on a battle-field, while his right hand raised the sword to strike a foe; these were all slumbering and off guard when the bridegroom came. What of them? were they all shut out? Nay, verily. Some of them were shut out, and some were let in, according as they were carnal or spiritual when the decisive moment came. The new creature in Christ, who is surprised amid the toils of his daily calling, goes as safely into rest as his brother of the same family who is summoned over in the very act of prayer. The five wise virgins were stretched on the ground asleep, with their lamp fires dead or dying, when the cry arose, Behold the bridegroom cometh, and yet there was no surprise, and no damage. Although they were only awakened by his coming, they were ready to meet him when he came, and to enter with him into his rest. When the cry was heard all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. When life is closing behind, and eternity opening before us, we are all aroused. Every one who has a lamp hastens then to examine its condition and stimulate its flame: all who have borne Christ’s name search themselves to see whether they are ready for his presence. There is no visible distinction at this stage between those who have only a name that they live, and those who have attained also the new nature: all bestir themselves to examine the ground of their hope, and the state of their preparation. At this point the decisive difference which existed in secret long before emerges into view. The foolish virgins, having no oil in separate vessels, could not keep the flame of their lamps any longer alive. Both classes had a profession; the formalists had a profession and nothing more. Finding in the hour of their extremity that they had neglected their souls while the day of grace was running, they make a piteous appeal to believing neighbours for help, “Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out.” How true to nature is this picture! He who draws it knows “what is in man.” How fondly the empty, in such a crisis, lean on the full. Alas, even the full is but a little vessel filled by Christ. That vessel is not a spring; this saved sinner is not a saviour of sinners. He has gotten from his Lord all that himself needs; but he cannot supply a neighbour’s want. Brother, if the call come to you while you are not in Christ reconciled and renewed, though all the saints in heaven and earth stood weeping at your bedside they could not save you. If you neglect the Son of God while he stands at the door and knocks, in vain will you apply to a godly neighbour, after the day of grace is done. Taking into view generally the intimate relations which subsisted among that group of maidens, and in particular the unselfish tenderness which must have characterized the wiser five, we should expect to learn that they had generously resolved, at all hazards, to share their oil to the last drop with their unfortunate companions. But this, though consonant with nature in the external body of the parable, would have been incongruous with the spiritual truth which the parable has been framed to convey. In the structure of the parable provision is made for defining sharply the spiritual lesson, even at the expense of some measure of harshness left on one feature of the story. True Christians cannot impart a share of the grace that dwells in their own hearts to deluded formalists in their departing hour. On the spiritual side such a distinction cannot be made, and therefore the Master represents the wise virgins as distinctly and peremptorily refusing to share their store of oil with their improvident companions. 52 “Go to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.” The advice was the best that in the circumstances could be given. The mention of “them that sell” calls up all the scene of the preceding day. Oil was plentiful in the town; the five wise virgins having gone by daylight to the stores with their vessels, had experienced no difficulty in obtaining a supply. The same method was open to the rest: they failed to secure a store in the daytime, and then they tried in vain to make good the deficiency at midnight, after the merchants had retired to rest. This feature of the parable intimates that those who are found destitute at the coming of the Lord, enjoyed their day and their opportunity, but neglected them: they allowed the day of mercy to run out, and cried frantically for mercy after the merciful Saviour had wearied waiting and gone away. While the foolish virgins are absent on this errand, the bridegroom comes up. They that are ready go in with him to the wedding, and the door is shut. Christ calls away his own at some midnight hour when they are off their guard; but though surprised, they are not hurt. The five wise virgins were asleep when the approach of the bridegroom was announced, and yet they were ready to meet him. Their safety resulted not from their fluttering activity at that moment in the trimming of the lamps, but from their wise foresight on the preceding day. The salvation of a soul depends not on frightened earnestness in the moment of departure, but on faith’s calm closing with Christ, before the moment of departure comes. In the vessels of the wise there was store of oil, and it was easy for them at any time or place to refresh the fading fire of the torches which they bore. Deep in the hearts of those disciples dwelt the spirit of Christ, and the light of their profession which had shone brightly in a time of ease, burst into greater brightness in the hour of their extremity. An abundant entrance was administered to them,—an entrance into the joy of their Lord. The door was shut! Suffering, sorrowing believers, do you hear the clang of that closing gate! Be of good cheer, disciples; when your Lord and you go in, the door is shut behind you, and nothing shall enter that defileth. Heaven is for the holy, and for them alone; if it were open for all it would not be heaven. The foolish virgins went away after midnight to seek a supply of oil; but we are not informed whether or not they obtained it. The omission is significant; this word of Jesus gives no encouragement to delay in the matter of the soul’s salvation; not a ray of hope is permitted to burst through the gloom that shrouds these hapless wanderers. The sole lesson of the parable is a simple, sublime warning that sinners should close with Christ now, lest they should be left to invoke his name in vain at the hour of their departure. This parable is a voice from an open heaven promising all grace now, but refusing to promise any then. They came afterwards to the door and cried bitterly for admission, but the Lord answered from within, I know you not. As the omniscient he knew them; he was acquainted with all their ways. He knew them, for they had crucified him afresh by their neglect. But he did not know them, as he knew the poor bashful woman who crept near in the crowd and by her touch drew saving grace from his overflowing heart; he did not know them by feeling their weight, like John’s, leaning on his breast. 53 After the parable is finished the marrow of its meaning is given in one short sentence by the Lord: “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.” Let us take heed here, lest after all the pains we have bestowed on this scripture, we should miss the portion for ourselves with which it is charged. This parable was not spoken for the purpose of kindling an agony of repentance in the hour of death. It describes a sudden call, and an eager upstarting, and a fruitless effort, and a right prayer uttered too late, and final rejection, and a fearful doom,—but it reveals this dreadful close of a life, in order to show us what we should be and do before the close of life comes on. The end of the foolish five is unveiled in order that we may be wise unto salvation in the beginning of our days. The lighthouse reared on a sunken reef flings its lurid glare far through a stormy air and over a stormy sea, not to teach the mariner how to act with vigour when he is among the breakers, but to warn him back, so that he may never fall among the breakers at all. Even so, the end of the lost is revealed in the word of God, not to urge us to utter a very loud cry when the door is shut, but to compel us to enter now while the door is open. “Behold I stand at the door and knock.” His word to-day runs, Soul, soul, open for me: if that tender plea is echoed back from your closed heart in a beseeching Saviour’s face to-day, your cry, “Lord, Lord, open to me” will come back to you in empty echoes from a closed heaven. The foolish five came to the door only a little too late, but it was not a little damage that they suffered thereby. In the matter of fleeing to take refuge in Christ, to be late by a little is the loss of all. FOOTNOTES 50. The closest analogue that I know of the fact which plays so great a part in the structure of this scriptural lesson may be found in a custom which prevails at funerals in the rural districts of Scotland. When the distance between the house of the deceased and the cemetery is considerable, a common, perhaps I should say a uniform, practice is, that those friends of the mourning family who reside in the neighbourhood of the burying place assemble in a group at a convenient turning of the road, and wait till the funeral procession reaches the spot; they then silently fall into their places and follow the corpse to the grave. I like the analogy none the less that it is taken, not from a time of mirth, but from a time of weeping. The two cases coincide in all their features except one. In either example we have an occasion of absorbing interest to one family, and the sympathy of neighbours expressed by means of large assemblies and public processions. In a minor but characteristic feature there is an exact coincidence,—a portion of the sympathizing neighbours wait for the main body at a point on the path and fall into the line of march from that spot to the terminus. That the one is a joyful and the other a mournful group enhances rather than diminishes the value of the comparison.[50] 51. Lange’s view on this point seems sound and consistent; while both Olshausen and Stier endeavour with much pain but little fruit, to prove that the foolish represent true but defective disciples. “One part of the Church is living, while the other lives only in appearance, because it lives only to appearance.”—Lange.[51] 52. They turn themselves to the wise, whom, perhaps, they had lately laughed at, with the prayer: “Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out.” They betake themselves, if they are Catholics, to the dead saints, if they are Protestants, to the living, whom they have been accustomed to revere as their guides on account of their wisdom and grace, and plead, Help us, comfort us, pray for us, that we may be brought into a state of grace. In vain. They answer: Not so, lest there be not enough for us and you. What you desire is impossible. None of us has any surplus merit out of which he could give a portion to another.—Arndt, ii. 177.[52] 53. The concluding application is well expressed by Arndt:—“Perhaps the breaking heart grasps at the Bible; it has only spikes and nails, but no balm of consolation. Perhaps the dying man calls in those who have the care of souls; the words of comfort slide over the ears, while the Holy Spirit seals none of them upon the heart. Perhaps he partakes of the Holy Supper: ah, the feast is to him not a feast of blessings, but an eating of judgment. Perhaps he prays to the Lord himself: the Lord answers, I know you not. “Oh, it is sad to be so near heaven, and yet to be lost—to be almost saved, and yet altogether lost. Were it not the Lord who speaks here, Jesus Christ, the Life Eternal, the Judge of the living and the dead, our feeling would be mightily to resist the terrible conclusion of this parable, which cuts all and every hope clean away, and leaves not an If or a But behind, nor any other possible interpretation. But he speaks; and before his words every mouth is silent in fear and adoration. He writes into our breast, with a glowing iron pen, the warning word—therefore watch, &c. “Short is life; fleeting is time; quick is death; long is eternity. Therefore what thou desirest to do, do it quickly.”—Gleichnisse.[53] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 16: 1.14. THE ENTRUSTED TALENTS ======================================================================== XIV. THE ENTRUSTED TALENTS. “For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money. After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them. His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: and I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine. His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”—Matthew 25:14-30. The owner of a large property has occasion to leave the country for a time and reside in a foreign land. His possessions, consisting of “his own servants” and “his goods,” must necessarily be left in the country, and naturally he considers how he may so dispose of them during the interval that they may yield to him the largest profit at his return. Two distinct principles were open to his choice corresponding to the methods of day’s-wages and piece-work in modern social economics; he might either confide to his servants generally the management of his estate, and give them wages according to time, or give each a certain amount of capital, to be exclusively at his own disposal, promising to reward him according to his diligence and success. The latter method is obviously the one which contains a spring within itself constantly urging to diligence. With a set of slaves who are ignorant, degraded, and suspicious, this plan would not be practicable, but if the men possess a certain amount of moral principle, self-reliance, and intelligence, it is safest and best. The master accordingly, counting on the good-will and honesty of his dependants, frankly entrusts each with a certain amount of capital, graduated according to their capacity for business. Nothing is said in the record regarding the terms of the compact, but it is implied that these were clearly understood between the parties. The money was given in order that it might be laid out to the best advantage, primarily for the owner’s interest, and secondarily for the due remuneration of the faithful servant. This practice was carried to a great extent among the Romans; the owner of a skilful slave could make a greater profit by giving scope to the man’s energies than by confining him forcibly to menial occupation. It is by no means necessary to determine the precise character of the bond which united the servant to his master in this case. The circumstances of the parable will suit equally the supposition of absolute right on the part of the master and a voluntary contract between him and his servant for a limited time. Whatever may have been the amount of service due to the master at the time of his departure,—whether the whole life and energy of a slave, or a limited quantity of work from a servant,—that service was his property, and he desired to turn it to the best account. Two of the servants traded with the capital entrusted to their charge and doubled it ere the master returned; one from a morbid dread of his master’s severity, coupled with indolence in his personal habits, hid the money in the ground, thereby deliberately sacrificing his master’s profit in order that himself might incur no risk. The two who had successfully traded were commended and rewarded; the one who allowed his talent to lie idle was condemned and punished for his unfruitfulness, although no positive dishonesty was laid to his charge. 54 We are now ready to proceed with the exposition. The proprietor who went abroad represents Christ at the close of his ministry on earth leaving his disciples and ascending to heaven. His continued presence spiritually with his people is not inconsistent with this representation, for our parable deals with the bodily and the visible. His own servants, whom he called, like the ten virgins who went out to meet the bridegroom, represent the whole number of those who are called by his name and seem to be his disciples. The delivery of the master’s goods to these servants intimates that the Lord gives to every member of the visible Church all his faculties and opportunities. In this distribution different amounts are consigned to different persons. Here the representation obviously accords with the fact: of time, of intellect, of health, of learning, of wealth, scarcely any two persons possess a precisely equal portion. There is a clause here generally overlooked by expositors, but which must be intended to express some feature of importance,—“to every one according to his several ability.” We can easily understand it as it occurs in the story: the master, at the moment of his departure, graduated his gifts according to the abilities and acquirements of the servants that he might not throw a great responsibility on a weak man, or leave a man of vigour only half employed. What doctrine does this feature represent? Probably that, while all the gifts that a man possesses are bestowed by God, some, such as bodily constitution and mental capacity are conferred by God as governor of the world; while others are subsequently conferred by the Lord Jesus as the king and head of the Church. I am inclined to understand these latter gifts by the goods which the master bestowed on the eve of his departure; these gifts are in some way proportioned to the faculties of the receiver, so that one may not be oppressed and another left with inadequate occupation. The one who received most and the one who received a medium amount of gifts and opportunities proved both faithful, and both faithful alike. Although the first did absolutely more for Christ and the world than the second, both were equally diligent and faithful according to their means. Examples both of the likeness and the difference occur by hundreds day by day before our eyes. A disciple with greater and a disciple with smaller endowments labour in the Lord’s work with equal love, but the amount of fruit is greater where greater gifts and graces have been received and employed. We shall learn soon how the two cases are treated at the master’s return, but in the meantime we have observed what the two cases are. The servant who had received one talent went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money. The meaning of his conduct and its result we shall discover more fully when we reach the record of the reckoning; at present, and in general, we may understand that this man made no effort to serve his lord, but devoted himself exclusively to one aim,—that he might be able to stand at last on the plea that he had at least done his lord no harm. These three examples are obviously given in order to cover all cases: they represent an indefinite and all but infinite variety in the measure of the gifts. Two are represented to have been diligent and only one indolent, but no information is thereby given regarding the proportions of mankind in general or within the Church who shall be found faithful in the great day. Two cases were required in order to show that, where the diligence of the workers is equal, the result may, in quantity, be unequal; and a third case was required to show that, besides some who lack the power to do much, there are some who lack the will to do anything at all; the numbers have no other meaning. Another very important question is suggested here,—What is meant by the representation that the person who possessed only one talent became unfaithful, rather than the person who possessed two, or the person who possessed five? It is precisely analogous to the representation contained in another parable that one man, and not ten or twenty, came to the marriage-feast without a marriage garment. Most certainly it does not mean that those who have few talents are more liable to be unfaithful than those who have many; and yet something is gained by making the servant who had received one talent rather than the servant who had received five, the example of unfaithfulness. It does not mean, If you have only one talent you will be unfaithful; but it does mean, Although you have only one talent, you will be condemned for unfaithfulness if you do not employ it. The lesson is much more emphatically given than if the servant who received five talents had proved unfaithful. Much of the master’s property was entrusted to him: if he had permitted it to lie waste, and been punished accordingly, it might have been supposed that the essence of the guilt lay in the largeness of the loss. As it is faithfulness, without regard to the amount of capital at stake, that determines the sentence of approval; so it is unfaithfulness, without regard to the amount involved, that determines the sentence of condemnation. He who has least is bound to serve the Lord with what he has; and if he serve the Lord faithfully with little, he will be honoured and rewarded, while those who had greater gifts, but less diligence, will be cast out. Every one possesses some talents. He who has bestowed them expects that we shall diligently improve them. He has departed, but he desires that we should act as in his presence. In this respect he is never absent—“Lo, I am with you alway.” Now is the time for laying out our gifts in the Lord’s service; for it will be too late to begin, in terror, when he comes to judgment. “After a long time the Lord of those servants cometh and reckoneth with them” (ver. 19). The time is not long in the account of the Lord himself: his latest warning to the Church is, “Behold I come quickly;” and with him a thousand years are as one day. Nor is the time long to ungodly men; for in such an hour as they think not, the Son of man cometh. At whatever time he comes, he comes too soon for them who would give all the world, if it were theirs, that he should not come at all. But to the true disciples of Christ, especially in times of persecution, the period of his absence has often appeared long: they have often borrowed the unbeliever’s cry, “Where is the promise of his coming?” and used it with a new significance. But to saints and sinners, whether they long for his presence or loathe it, he certainly will come at length. The two who had received from their Lord unequal gifts, and had laid them out with equal faithfulness, give in their account with joy. They are equally approved; and either is rewarded with the fruit of his own diligence. The case of the unfaithful one, in accordance with the obvious design of the parable, is given with much greater fulness of detail than those of the faithful two. Permitting our comment on this point to mould itself after the proportions of the text, we shall look more narrowly into this man’s character and conduct. All the more willingly shall we devote the most of our attention to the darker side of the picture, that the evangelical obedience of the faithful servants may be most distinctly seen in the dark mirror of the opposite unfruitfulness. In the case of the unprofitable servant, as it emerges in the latter portion of the parable, three points demand our attention separately and successively,—the Reason, the Nature, and the Reward of his unfaithfulness. 1. The reason of his unfaithfulness, as explained by himself, is, “I knew thee that thou art an hard man,” &c. The naive confession of this man is a very interesting feature of the story, and a very precious lesson to us regarding the deep things of God. Through this opening light is thrown at once upon the spring of continued disobedience in human hearts, and upon the nature of the remedy which the ailment needs. Some persons take much pains to extol a good life at the expense of the mysteries of grace. They know not that they are endeavouring to break the upper links of a chain, while themselves are suspended on the lower. All the value of service rendered by intellectual and moral beings depends on the thoughts of God which they entertain; and the thoughts which they entertain of God depend on the attitude in which he presents himself to them—that is, upon the revelation of the Father in the person and work of the Son. Obviously the conception which this man had formed of his master’s character, was the direct efficient cause of his unprofitable idleness. The picture, at this point, represents a human heart secretly conscious of guilt, not reconciled through the Gospel, and dreading the wrath of the righteous Judge. When one is at peace with God in the Redeemer, perfect love casteth out fear; but here, in the absence of this reconciliation, perfect fear casteth out love. Love is the fulfilling of the law; and without love there can, in God’s sight, be no obedience. Thus, by a few links which can neither be obscured nor broken, active obedience is bound to faith in Christ. Where faith in the Mediator is wanting, God, as shown in a guilty conscience, is dreaded as an enemy; and such fear produces no obedience. You might as well sow stones in your field, and expect them to produce bread. It is not necessary to examine in detail the continuation of the unfaithful servant’s answer. When he had taken his ground on a sullen plea of not guilty which threw the blame upon his Lord, it was natural that he should endeavour to justify himself and fortify his position by specific averments of hard treatment; but the essence of his answer lies all in his first words, “I knew thee hard.” The meaning cannot be mistaken here. These words do not make known to us what the master’s character really was: the only thing which they determine is the servant’s conception of the master’s character. The servant’s conduct is, in point of fact, regulated not by what the master absolutely is, but by what he is in the belief and regard of the servant. The parable represents at once, with rich pictorial effect and strict logical exactness, the legal relation of sinful men to a righteous God, apart from the peace that comes through the Gospel. While you think of the Judge, recording now your thoughts, words, and actions, in order to render unto you what you deserve in the great day, you cannot love him, and you do not like to retain the knowledge of him in your mind. The Bible calls him good, and perhaps your lips have pronounced him good in your prayers and hymns; but what you really know of him in your heart is his hardness. This hard measure expected, haunts you like a spectre, and casts a dark shadow over your path. Whatever your ears may hear or your lips may speak, you know God only as the disturber of your joy in life, and the inexorable exactor of impossible penalties at last. The natural and necessary, as well as actual result of this knowledge or conception of the master, is the utter idleness of the servant. Tell a criminal in chains that by his own hands he must remove yonder mountain into the sea in the space of one year, on pain of death when the year is done, and the certain result will be that the wretched man will permit the appointed time to expire without removing a single atom of its mass; but on the other hand, let it be gently intimated to some emancipated slaves that their service in removing earth from that mountain to the sea will please their deliverer, and forthwith they will carry with all their might, their burden meanwhile being their delight, because they have thereby an opportunity of serving the Lord that bought them. Thus the idleness of one servant is explained, and the activity of others. 2. As to its nature, the disobedience was not active but passive; he did not positively injure his master’s property; he simply failed to turn it to profitable account. The terror of this servant was too lively to admit of his enjoying a debauch purchased by the treasure which had been placed under his charge. Fear is a powerful motive in certain directions and for certain effects; it makes itself felt in the heart, and leaves its mark on the life of a man. Like frost it has power to arrest the stream of energy, and fix it cold, stiff, motionless; only love can, like the sun of summer, break the chains and set the prisoner free to run his race rejoicing. The passive character of the servant’s fault greatly extends the sphere of the lesson, and increases the weight of its rebuke. If only positive activity in evil had been condemned, a multitude of the unfaithful would have escaped, or at least would have thought themselves exempted from the indictment. The bearers of poisonous fruit constitute a comparatively small class in the vegetable creation; the plants that bear no good fruit are much more numerous. Unfruitfulness includes both those that bear bad fruit and those that bear no fruit. The idleness of the servant who knew his master only as a hard man, reproves all except those who obey the Lord whom they love, and love the Lord whom they obey. 3. The reward of unfaithfulness is, “Take the talent from him and cast him out.” In both parts the sentence of condemnation corresponds to its opposite in the reception of those who had been faithful to their trust. These retain their employed gifts; from him the unused talent is taken away. These are received into their master’s favour; he is cast out of his master’s sight. It is worthy of remark that the execution of the sentence begins in time, and in its first stages lies within the reach of our observation. The portion of the sentence, moreover, which is inflicted in our sight, comes through the regular operation of law. The disuse of any personal faculty, surely, though gradually, takes the faculty away. Those who explain away the positive doctrines and facts of the Gospel, delight in representing that God does everything by the instrumentality of law. It is superstition, they say, to suppose that he will put forth his hand to arrest the mighty machinery of nature, with a view either to punish your guilt or reward your obedience. Here at least we can meet them on their own ground, and accept their rule. Let any member of the body, or any faculty of the mind lie dormant for a time, and by the very fact, its power is diminished or destroyed. It is a law of life that a talent becomes feeble in proportion as it has been left in idleness. It is not only true in point of fact that when we do not diligently lay out our gifts, the Giver recalls them; it is further true, that he recalls them in our sight by the silent operation of an inexorable law. To waste life in the hope of getting all made right by an energetic repentance at the close, is a very foolish and mischievous species of superstition; it is the exercise of a very strong faith, without any promise from God on which it may lean. You seem to expect that God will arrest the operation of his own laws in order to afford you every facility for living in sin. In the Scriptures we read of an interference with the natural laws—the sun standing still—in order that the enemies of the Lord and his people might be destroyed; but you expect a greater miracle;—you expect the Omnipotent to arrest the operation of his own laws, in order that his enemies may prosper now and escape at last. You expect that Jesus will work a miracle not to cast out the unclean spirit, but to maintain him in possession of a human heart. The disuse of the talent takes the talent away; this is the law of the kingdom; and it will not be changed in order to encourage the sinner in his sin. “For unto every one that hath shall be given,” &c. Obviously from the whole circumstances of the case, “to have” in this connection, means to possess and use aright. He who received only one talent was distinguished from him who received five, not by not having, but by not using. The law announced here is that they who employ well what they have, shall retain it all and receive more in addition; whereas they who do not rightly employ what they have, will be deprived of that which they possess but do not use. Fearing lest I should darken counsel by words without knowledge, I leave the positive penal infliction, which takes effect beyond the precincts of this life, without one word of comment, in the short and solemn words of the Scripture, “Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The sentence “Take it from him,” goes before the sentence, “Cast him out.” A sinner is given over to himself, before he is given up to judgment. The first prepares the way for the second death; the process is now going on by which the destiny is decided. Now is the accepted time; now either salvation or condemnation is wrought out. See the process and the path of death; the steps are few and well marked. I knew thee hard, and I hid thy talent; take it from him, and cast him out. The corresponding steps on the other side are, I tasted thy tender mercy, and lovingly laid thy talent out; give the faithful servant more, and lead him into the joy of his Lord. The stumbling-block at the outset that turned the unfaithful servant aside was his conception of the Lord as a hard master: it is the experience of the master’s love that impels the servant forward in the path of duty. When we know God in Christ, we know him reconciled to ourselves. Christ, therefore, is the way; by him we go in to the Father for acceptance, and by him we go out for needful work upon the world. Without me ye can get nothing from God; “Without me ye can do nothing” for God. FOOTNOTES 54. For the relation between the talents and the pounds, see the exposition of the latter parable,—the last of the series.[54] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 17: 1.15. THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY ======================================================================== XV. THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY. “And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.”—Mark 4:26-29. This is the only parable that is peculiar to Mark. The subjects contained in the fourth chapter of Mark are obviously the same, in the main, as those which occupy the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. The parable of the sower occurs in both at the beginning; and at several other parts they coincide. The parable of the seed growing secretly holds in Mark the place that the parable of the leaven holds in Matthew. We might, therefore, expect a close analogy between these two parables: and accordingly we find in point of fact that they exhibit the same characteristics of the kingdom, and convey the same lessons to its subjects. When a man has cast the seed into prepared ground at the proper season, he thenceforth leaves it to itself. He sleeps by night, and attends to other affairs by day, often looking to it indeed, and oftener thinking of it, but never touching it till harvest. By its own vitality it grows secretly, gradually until it arrives at maturity. Man interferes only at the beginning and at the end; in spring he sows, and in autumn he reaps, but throughout the interval between these extremes he lets it alone. The point on which the parable concentrates our regard is, that the growth of the plant, from the time of sowing to the time of reaping, proceeds according to its own laws, and in virtue of its own inherent power, neither visible to the owner’s eye nor dependent on his hand. In the interpretation of the parable certain great leading points must first be determined, and then all the rest will be safe and easy. There are two such points, one at the beginning and one at the end, which are in themselves uncertain; and one in the middle which, being itself determined by circumstances, serves to determine the other two. The question at the beginning is, Who is the sower? And the question at the end, What is the reaping? The point in the centre already fixed, on which the two extremities depend, is the growth of the seed without the aid, and even beyond the cognisance, of the sower. Look first to the question which meets an inquirer at the outset, Who is the sower? Obviously it has two sides and two only; the sower represents either the Lord himself, or the human ministry that he employs from age to age. Both representations are in themselves true and scriptural; it is by means of other features less ambiguous that we shall be able to determine whether of the two is adopted in this parable. Try first the supposition that the sower is the Lord himself; of him, in that case, it is immediately said that he sleeps, and rises night and day, and that the seed meanwhile springs up, he knows not how. This representation is palpably incongruous with the attributes and character of the Lord. The things that are hidden from us, both in the natural and spiritual growth, are open in his sight. Expressly it is said of Jesus, “he knew what was in man;” and we learn, from many circumstances in the evangelic history, that he knew the thoughts alike of plotting enemies and of fainting friends. The suggestion made by some that this part of the parable may be understood to represent the Lord’s ascension into heaven, after having sown the word in his own ministry, does not satisfy the demands of the case. We cannot, without doing extreme violence to the analogy, find a sense in which the divine Redeemer does not help and does not know the growth of his own grace in believing hearts. The germination and increase of vegetation without the intervention of the sower and beyond his ken, represent a helplessness and an ignorance so definite and complete, that we cannot, on any rule of sober interpretation, apply it to the omniscient and omnipotent Redeemer. The impossibility of accepting the first suggestion throws us necessarily back on the only other supposition that remains;—the sower in the parable must represent the earthen vessel to which the ministry of the Gospel has been entrusted,—the human agent employed in the work of the Lord. This will, of course, accord perfectly with the representation in the heart of the parable that he who sows the seed neither helps the growth nor understands its secrets; but does it accord also with the representation, in the end of the parable, that he who in spring sowed the seed, thrusts in his sickle and reaps the ripened harvest? Some, assuming that the reaping means the closing of all accounts in the great day,55 conclude that to represent the sowing as the ministry of men is incongruous with the reaping, which must, as they suppose, be the work of the Lord at his second coming. In this way they become involved between two impossibilities. If the Lord himself is represented as the sower the representation is inconsistent with the middle of the parable, in which it is declared that he neither aids nor understands the growth of the grain; if, on the other hand, men are represented as the sowers, the representation is inconsistent with the end of the parable, in which it is declared that they thrust in the sickle at the close of the dispensation and reap the harvest of the world. Now in order to escape from this double difficulty it is not necessary to put to the rack either the words or the thoughts of the parable. The path out of the difficulty is broad and straight; it is the path into it that is crooked and narrow. The question which demands solution here, and which, when solved, will solve all the rest, is, What is meant by thrusting in the sickle and reaping the ripened grain when the harvest has come? Apart from this parable two distinct significations may be attributed to the analogy, both alike true in fact, and both alike adopted in the Scriptures. In some cases the harvest and the reaping point to the end of the world and the awards of the judgment; expressly in the Lord’s own interpretation of the parable of the tares, it is said, “The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels” (Matthew 13:39). But in other cases the reaping of the ripened grain is employed to represent that success in the winning of souls which human ministers of the word may obtain and enjoy. Such is its meaning in Psalms 76:6, “He that goeth forth and reapeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” In the same sense it is employed by the Lord (John 4:35-36), “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already unto harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.” The same idea is expressed in terms, if possible, still more articulate, in Matthew 9:37-38. “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers unto his harvest.”56 But while the symbol taken from the reaping of ripened grain represents alternately in Scripture, these two distinct though analogous conceptions, it is the latter and not the former which this parable adopts and employs. The reapers are the human ministers of the word, and the reaping is their successful ingathering in conversion here, not the admission of the redeemed into glory at the end of the world. No other conclusion is compatible, either with the scope of the lesson or the facts of the case. The sower in this story neither helps the seed to grow nor understands how the growth proceeds. The parable is spoken in order to show that, while men are employed at first to preach the word and at last to gather the fruits in the conversion of their brethren, they can neither perform the converting work nor trace the footsteps of the quickening Spirit in the secrets of a human heart. By this similitude the Lord represents the extent and the limits of human agency in the progress of his kingdom. Having made our way through the difficulties of the parable, and found the key-note of its interpretation, we turn again to its terms for the sake of observing and applying the practical lessons which it contains. The sower sows the seed; the seed is the word; the hearts of those who hear it are the field. Parents make known the Gospel in their families, ministers in the congregations, teachers in the schools. These sowers lose sight of the seed from the moment that it drops into the ground. It sinks and disappears; they must go away and leave it. They sleep by night,57 and attend to other matters by day; they cannot see how it fares with the Gospel in a neighbour’s soul. They cannot put their hand to the work at this stage to help it: the seed must be left to itself in the soil. At this point the likeness between the natural and the spiritual is exact and obvious. When you have made the Gospel of Christ known to some in whom you are interested, you are precisely in the position of the agriculturist who has committed his seed to the ground. If you think of the matter when you lie down, or when you awake, you discover, perhaps with pain, that you do not know whether the seed is swelling and springing or not: and that though you knew its condition you could not reach it, to stimulate the process. It is out of your hands, and out of your sight. It is not, however, out of mind, when it is out of sight; and your own helplessness may draw forth a more eager prayer to the Almighty Helper. In this way it is when we are weak that we become strong; it is when we are made most keenly sensible of our own weakness that we cast our care most fully on the Lord. The law that shuts the sown seed out from us, shuts it in with God. One door closes; but the closing that hides the seed in its seed-bed from our eyes and separates it from our hands, leaves it open to His sight, and pliant to his power. The moment that the seed is sown, he takes it out of our sight, but then and thereby he brings it into his own. It is away from us, and with God. 58 The parable shows, with great perspicuity and certainty, both the extent and the limits of this withdrawal from human cognizance and help. In the main concern the exclusion is complete; but in some subordinate and incidental matters, it is only partial. As to the power of germination, and the knowledge of it, the sower is entirely shut out from the seed, both in the natural and spiritual departments. But as he may continue his care in nature, with much profit to the seed; so he may, in a subordinate capacity and in an indirect manner, do much to promote the growth of grace in the heart, after the Word has been addressed to the understanding. The exclusion of a minister, a teacher, a parent, from knowing and helping the growth of grace after the Gospel has been published, is like the exclusion of the farmer from his seed after it has been committed to the ground. He can help it, and does help it much by his care. He keeps the fences up, that the field may not be trampled by stray cattle: he keeps the drains open and the furrows clear, that water may not stand on the field, but run off as soon as it falls: he gathers off the stones, that they may not crush the seed, and pulls out the weeds that they may not choke it. In a similar way and with similar profit, ministers and teachers of the word may remove obstructions which would prevent its growth. Not only have we permission to do this: we are bound positively to do it. The parable excludes us indeed from further knowledge or power, after the word is made known, but it excludes as the farmer is excluded from his sown seed. We know the nature and extent of that exclusion. While the lesson relieves us from the responsibility of that which is beyond our power, it lays upon us the responsibility of that which is within our power. You may have seen a sown field in spring immediately after a great rain-fall; and you may have observed that a large portion of it, on its lower side, was smooth, and run together and caked, bearing all the marks of having been for some days under water. On the higher portions the wheat was springing, but on this portion, sown at the same time, the ground was bare. You examine the matter more minutely and discover that the drains that had been made for carrying off the surplus moisture, had been choked in the operations of the seed-time, and not cleared out again; and that consequently when rain fell heavily, it accumulated on the lower ground; and having soaked and soured it for several days, had killed the germinating seed beneath the ground. You go to the farmer and ask why he had allowed a large portion of his crop to be lost. Suppose he should say, My work was done, as soon as the seed fell from my hand into the soil; I can neither make it grow, nor understand how it grows; it was not in my province that the failure took place, and therefore the failure could not be my fault. No such specimen of hypocrisy is found in the kingdom of nature: no man could hold up his face before his fellow and cover his indolence by such an impudent plea. We must see to it, that we be not guilty of the same inconsistency in matters of greater moment. A parent or minister or teacher has committed the good seed of the word to the hearts of his young people, with all due solemnity and care; and thereafter permits them to be steeped in a flood of folly, which he could easily have drained away. The good seed is drowned in that deluge; but it is the sower’s fault. It is true he cannot make it grow by his care; but he can make it not grow by his carelessness. We cannot do the saving; but we can do the destroying. Many pains and many prayers are competent to the sower, although he cannot directly control the growth of the seed. When it grows, it grows independently of him; but when it fails, the failure may in part be due to his unfaithfulness. Further, when it is said that the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, the influences of heaven are not excluded, any more than the collateral care of the husbandman. We know how and in what sense the earth brings forth spontaneously, after it has received the seed into its bosom: if the sun were kept from shining, or the rain from falling on it, the earth would produce nothing. It is thus also with grace in the heart: the Spirit ministering the things of Christ is as necessary in the kingdom of grace, as rain and sunshine are in the kingdom of nature. Surrounding circumstances, moreover, tend powerfully to help or to hinder the growth of the new life. The seed grows indeed by its own vitality: the most favourable circumstances that are possible on earth could not produce a harvest of grace without the seed of the Word; but these circumstances go far instrumentally to help or to hinder the growth and ripening of the seed. The family of which you are a member, either as child or servant,—the Church with which you worship,—the companions with whom you associate,—the tone of the society in which your social life moves on,—the business that occupies your day,—and the amusements that refresh you when you are wearied;—these and many others affect for good or evil the growth of grace in Christians, as wet or dry, cold or warm seasons, affect the growth of the seed after it has been committed to the ground. Watch and pray; one of these small points may be the turning-point of your destiny. The seed grows gradually from stage to stage. Three stages are specified; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. This does not determine the time occupied in the spiritual process. In this respect there is not uniformity: the spiritual growth from spring to maturity sometimes requires more than one natural season, and sometimes is accomplished in less. In the first stage of growth, it is not easy to distinguish with certainty between the wheat and common grass; it is when the ear is formed and filled, that you know at a glance, which is the fruitful and which the fruitless plant There is a similar ambiguity, in as far as appearance is concerned, in the earliest outgrowth of convictions from the hearing of the word. Not that there is any uncertainty in the nature of the things: the wheat is wheat, and the grass is grass from the first: but an observer cannot so surely at first determine which is wheat, and which is merely grass. Thus, many hopeful impressions that appear for a while in the young, die away, and bring forth no fruit; but at later stages, a judgment may be formed with greater confidence. The plant assumes by degrees a more definite form, and a more substantial fulness: the fruits of the Spirit, green at first, but growing gradually more and more mellow, crown the profession of a Christian. Let us not deceive ourselves, in connection with the acknowledged secrecy of the Spirit’s work. The growing is an unseen thing; but the grown ripened grain is visible. It is the inner power that is hid; the fruit may be seen by all. There is indeed an invisible Christ, who is already within his people the resurrection and the life; but there is no invisible Christianity. How grace in the heart grows is an inscrutable mystery; when it is grown, it is known and read of all men. Your life, as to its source and supply, is hid with Christ in God: but your life, as to its practical effects, is a city set on a hill. There is a great difference between the light that you get and the light that you give. The Lord in heaven is the light of Christians; but Christians are the light of the world. The source of the mighty Ganges is secret; and that secret the superstition of the Hindus has converted into a religious mystery. But the Ganges is not a secret unseen thing, as it flows through the plains of India, fertilizing a continent. “The harvest is come.” It is not the end of the world; it is not even the close of a Christian life in the world. There is a ripening and a fruit-bearing while life in the body lasts: there is also a reaping and an enjoying of the harvest by those who sow the seed, or their successors. The announcement, “one soweth and another reapeth,” clearly implies that the same one who sows may also to some extent reap. There is part of both: a sower gathers some of the fruit of his labour in his own lifetime; and some of it is gathered by others after he has departed. Here is a lesson for ministers and teachers. The Lord, who sends them out to sow, expects that they will look and long for fruit, and be disappointed if it does not appear. When the case occurs, as occur it may, in which the sower is not permitted to reap, the delay, although not a ground of despair, should be a source of disappointment: the stroke will be felt painful, if there is life where the stroke falls. The giver of the seed expects that the sower, if he lives to see it ripening, will reap it joyfully. It is like the joy of harvest to see the Lord’s work prospering under our own hand. The Master seems to chide the inertness of his servants when he says, “the fields are white already to harvest.” If it were their meat, as it was his, to do the Father’s will, they would bound more quickly into the field, whenever they saw it whitening. Some lessons, partly encouraging, partly reproving, which lie in the parable, but have hitherto been either omitted or only incidentally touched in the course of exposition, may be now conveniently enumerated in the close. 1. The work of sowing and the joy of reaping advance simultaneously on the spiritual field. The labour of the husbandman in the natural sphere is all and only sowing at one season, all and only reaping at another: the seed of the word affords a different experience; in the kingdom of God there is no period of the year when you must not sow, or may not reap. These two processes are in experience very closely linked together. They become alternately and reciprocally cause and effect: if we were not permitted at an early period to reap a little, the work of sowing would proceed languidly or altogether cease; on the other hand if we cease to sow, we shall not long continue to reap. When the workmen are introduced into this circle, it carries them continuously round. 2. In any given spot of the field there may be sowing in spring, and yet no reaping in harvest. If there is no sowing, there will be no reaping; but the converse does not hold good; you cannot say, wherever there has been sowing, it will be followed by a reaping. The seed may be carried away by wild birds, or wither on stony ground, or be choked by thorns. “Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation.” 3. The growth of the sown seed is secret; secret also is its failure. It is quite true, there may be grace in the heart of a neighbour unseen, unsuspected by me; but the heart of my neighbour may be graceless while I am in its earlier stages ignorant of the fact. The gnawing of a worm at the root of one plant is for a time as secret as the healthful growth of another. “Lord, is it I?” I must not too lightly assume either in the natural or the spiritual husbandry, that everything is prospering that is out of sight. 4. Though the sower is helpless after he has cast the seed into the ground, he should not be hopeless; we know that the seed is a living thing, and will grow except where it is impeded by extraneous obstacles. “The word of God is quick (living) and powerful.” 5. In every case the harvest, in one sense, will come; on every spot of all the field there will be a reaping. If one set of ministers do not reap there, another will. Where there is not conversion, there will be condemnation. The regeneration is one harvest; the judgment is another. The angels are not sowers, but they are reapers. Where the men who sowed the seed find nothing to reap during the day of grace, those ministering spirits to whom no seed has been intrusted will be sent with a sickle to cut down and cast away. The first harvest is like the first resurrection; blessed are they who have part in it. In the ministry of the Baptist, the appointed preparer of his way, Christ comes from heaven to earth on the blessed errand of gathering his wheat into the garner: rejoice therefore, Christians; he has prepared for you a place, and he will bring you safely to it; but take heed and beware of hypocrisy; for see, while he comes to bring home the wheat, he carries a “fan in his hand” (Matthew 3:12). FOOTNOTES 55. Dr. Trench takes for granted, without a word of proof, or any evidence that he has even considered the question, that the reaping is the consummation of all things, the exclusive prerogative of the Lord.[55] 56. Bengel’s suggestion is ingenious and interesting, but contributes nothing towards the solution. “Sermo concisus. Mittet falce preditos, nam ????????????? est viventis cujuspiam.” He would understand the phrase “he putteth in the sickle” as a curt form of expression, intended to intimate that he sends out reapers with sickles to reap the grain; fortifying his opinion by the remark that the term “putteth in,” (??????????, “sends out,”) refers to a living person, and not an inanimate instrument. Countenance for this view might be found in Matthew 9:37 where ???????? equivalent to ????????????? is employed to indicate the sending forth of reapers. On the other hand, however, the passage, Revelation 14:15-16, goes decidedly against it; for there both ???????? and ???????, “thrust in” (the sickle) are certainly applied to the instrument itself, and not to the men who wield it.[56] 57. Here, as in the case of the tares, the sleep of the husbandman implies no culpable negligence either in the natural or spiritual sphere. “Sind wir am Tage recht wach; dann, mögen wir Nachts ruhig schlafen.”—Dräseke, vom Reich G.[57] 58. Like the seed, is the Word himself. He became flesh and dwelt among us; but he has ascended out of our sight. At the beginning he came into the world; and at the close he will return;—a spring and a harvest, but all the space between, he is out of sight.[58] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 18: 1.16. THE TWO DEBTORS ======================================================================== XVI. THE TWO DEBTORS. “And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat. And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him; for she is a sinner. And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith, Master, say on. There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged. And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also? And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”—Luke 7:36-50. An interesting and difficult question regarding the harmony of the Gospels generally attaches itself to the exposition of this parable. Each of the four Evangelists narrates that a woman anointed Jesus while he sat at table; and it becomes difficult to determine with certainty whether they refer all to the same event, or some to one event, and some to another. In the narratives features of similarity occur; leading to the one conclusion, and features of dissimilarity leading to the other. The prevailing opinion now is that Matthew, Mark, and John, speak all of the same fact, and that Luke speaks of another. I have thought it right to mention, that this question has been often discussed in connection with our parable; but I shall do no more. The decision of it here and now is by no means necessary: the interpretation of the parable does not in any measure depend upon it. It is an inquiry belonging to a different branch of Scripture exposition, and to discuss it here would tend to distract attention from the subject in hand. Assuming then without argument that Luke here records an event which is not mentioned by any of the other Evangelists, I shall proceed at once to examine its substance as the ground from which the parable directly springs. The husbandman at one time operates directly on the tree, and at another time directly on the ground in the neighbourhood; in both cases however, and in both alike, his aim is to increase the fruitfulness of the tree; it is thus that an expositor must in some instances turn his attention in the first place to the surrounding context which suggests and sustains the parable, as the best means of ascertaining the import of the parable itself. A Pharisee invited Jesus to a feast: he accepted the invitation and joined the company at the appointed place and time. A woman who had been of bad character in the town, as soon as she learned that he was there, entered the apartment where the guests reclined at meat, and stood at his feet behind him weeping. Her tears rained down on his feet; she wiped them off with her hair, and then anointed them with precious ointment. Let us endeavour to determine precisely the character of the several actors and the meaning of their acts. The Pharisee, having formed, on the whole, a favourable opinion of Jesus as a prophet in Israel, and being, as he supposed, in a position to act the patron, with benevolent intent, but with a high estimate of his own character and position, invited to his house and table the remarkable Nazarene, whose miracles and doctrines were in every one’s mouth. Doubtless he expected, also, that by closer contact, and by means of his own shrewd observation, he should be able definitely to make up his mind on the character of the new prophet, and so to favour or frown on him according to the result. While her actions only are recorded in the narrative, we may, by the light of the Lord’s subsequent declarations, also read without danger of mistake the emotions that were working in this woman’s heart. She had fallen into a course of vice, and consequently lost caste in the community. Knowing that she had lost the respect of her neighbours, she had lost respect for herself. From a sinful act she had glided into sinful habits. Perhaps remorse from time to time made her inwardly sorrowful; but she put on a bold countenance, and tried to laugh down rebuke. This woman, while in this state, crept one day to the outer edge of a crowd in the neighbourhood of the city, to satisfy her curiosity as to the cause of the concourse. In the centre stood Jesus of Nazareth preaching; and all the people in solemn silence hung upon his lips. She listened too, and heard some wonderful words; God loved the world; God pardons sin—pardons freely, pardons it all; pardons chief sinners; loves to pardon; has given his Son to seek and save; this is the Son, revealing the Father, and inviting the prodigal to return to the Father’s bosom. Hark; he says, “Come unto me all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Peeping through openings in the crowd, she might see the love that beamed in the preacher’s countenance, as well as hear the gracious words that came from his mouth. The woman’s heart is touched and taken; the woman is won. By that still small voice the devil’s chains are broken, the rocky heart is rent. When the congregation dissolves, she steals away to her house alone. There her eye falls on some gaudy ornaments, the instruments of her sin, and the badges of her shame. Whence this sudden strong loathing? Perhaps she grasps them convulsively and flings them on the fire, shutting her eyes that she may not see her tormentors. She sits down, and searches her own heart,—her own life. She discovers that it is altogether vile. Her own heart is the darkest, deepest pit out of hell; she is the chief of sinners. She never knew this before. She had often experienced twitches of conscience for particular acts of evil; but now her whole life and her whole being seem one dark, deep, crimson sin. What has done this? It was that word of Jesus; it was the pardon that he offered; it was the divine compassion that beamed on his countenance and glowed on his lips. She was melted. The old stony heart flowed down like water, and went away; and a new, tender, trustful, loving heart came up in its place. She is not the same woman that she was yesterday. She is a new creature in Christ Jesus; but she could not yet tell the name and describe the nature of the change that had taken place in her being, as a new-born child could not announce the fact and explain the nature of its birth. The infant will manifest its birth and life, by seeking sustenance from its mother’s breast; and when the child has grown, the grown man will reflect on his birth, and perhaps understand in some measure its nature and importance. Such was the passing from death into life in the experience of that woman. Conversion in our own day often takes place as secretly, and as soon. The word of the Lord that proved itself quick and powerful then, liveth and abideth the same for ever; and this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto us still. The natural history of conversion does not change with the lapse of centuries, any more than natural history in other departments; there were doubtless examples of secret regeneration in the time of our Lord and his apostles, as well as in our own time. He knew this woman’s case as well as he knew the case of the woman who pressed through the crowd to touch the hem of his garment. That woman, when she was healed, would have kept her case secret at the time if she could; she was put about and ashamed when she was called in public, and her experience proclaimed in the crowd. It suited the purpose of the Lord to make known her experience on the spot; that method he saw would do most for his kingdom. But in the case of this woman who was a sinner, he did not act in the same way. There are diversities in his operation. He foresaw an occasion when her repentance and faith could be turned to greater account; accordingly he postponed the public announcement of her forgiveness till then. True to the new instinct that had been planted in her heart, this saved sinner, as soon as she heard that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, grasped the richest offering she possessed and hastened to the spot. Her plans, I think, were not fully laid. The impulses of a bursting heart drew her to the place where her Redeemer was; but she had not foreseen all the difficulties, and consequently had not prepared the means of overcoming them. Arrived at the house, she entered the open door; and passing through the attendants, penetrated into the apartment where the company reclined at meat. The table stood in the middle of the hall, and sofas in a continuous line were placed near it on either side. On these sofas were the guests, not sitting as we do with their feet on the floor beneath the table, but reclining with their feet projecting a little behind, the sandals having previously been drawn off by servants, for coolness and comfort. Thus it was easy for one who entered the room, to walk up to any individual of the company and converse with him during the meal; and, so far from being out of the way and unnatural, it was the easiest and most natural of all things, that the woman, when she came to Jesus, should touch his feet. This was precisely the part of his body which she could most easily reach, and which she might bathe and anoint, while the meal proceeded, without difficulty to herself or inconvenience to him. We shall fall into a mistake if we think either that the act as here narrated was altogether accordant with the habits of the time and place, or altogether contrary to them; it was partly the one and partly the other. In the first place it was an act radically diverse from the intrusion of a stranger to anoint the feet of a guest sitting at dinner with his friend in our country and our day. Such an act among us would be so unprecedented, so difficult, so awkward, that it would shock every observer, if it were attempted, and bring the whole business to a stand. There and then, in as far as the entrance of a person unbidden is concerned, there was nothing to attract attention. There is abundant evidence that even at this day, it is common in the East for persons not of the party to enter the feast chamber during the progress of the meal, and sitting on seats by the wall, converse on business or politics with the guests that recline beside the table; and, further, from the position of the guests, it was not difficult, but easy to reach his feet. Thus far, all was accordant with use and wont. But as to the person who entered on that occasion, and the act which she performed, there was something strange and out of the way. It was fitted to attract attention, and to excite suspicion; and so indeed it did. A woman, coming in while the company sat at meat, and such a woman, habit and repute disreputable; and besides all this, the ardency of her emotions, and the familiarity of her acts, surprised the onlookers. I think it important to notice these two sides of the case; so much of it was according to use and wont, that the entrance of the woman by itself did not surprise and shock the company; and yet so much of it was strange, that the curiosity of the company was aroused, and their attention arrested. The circumstances of the incident on both sides, were thus calculated to promote the design of Jesus, to instruct and reprove. There was as much of the ordinary in the act as prevented it from shocking the feelings; and as much of the extraordinary as awakened the interest of the spectators. When she reached the feet of the Redeemer with the intention of anointing them in token of her adoring gratitude, her plan seems to have been deranged for the moment, by a sudden and uncontrollable flood of tears, as if the fountains of the great deep within her being had been opened, and grief and gladness, both at their height, had met and caused an overflow. From the position she had assumed those tears wet the feet of Jesus; and having no other towel, she, with a woman’s sudden instinct, dried them again with her long flowing hair. 59 “Now, when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him.” It was an acknowledged sign of a true prophet to be a discerner of hearts. Simon had this test before his mind, and was secretly applying it to determine the claims of Jesus. But another principle lay deep in the heart of the Pharisee, which he considered applicable to the case in hand: he counted, as a matter of course, that a prophet, while he might sit at table on terms of equality with himself, a good man, would not accept any mark of homage from a bad one. He believed that, by his knowledge of the town, he had gained advantage over the prophet of Nazareth, who was a stranger, and had found a ground on which he might reject his claims. Simon knew the character of this woman. Believing that Jesus, as a righteous man, would have spurned her away if he had known what she was, he thought he saw in the fact of his bearing with her an evidence that he was ignorant of her character. The reasoning was this. Either he knows what sort of a woman this is, or he does not. If he does not know, he is not a prophet, because he cannot discern spirits; if he knows, he is not a prophet, for he does not cast the disreputable person away. On either alternative, therefore, he is not a prophet. 60 I proceed now, under the direction of the Lord’s own words, to consider the spiritual meaning and the practical use of the narrative. The creditor is God, in whom we live, and move, and have our being—from whom we derive all, and to whom we must account for all; the debtors sinful men; and the debts the sins which they have severally done. Of the two, while both are in debt, one owes ten times as much as the other. A comparison of this proportion, with that which appears in the parable of the unmerciful servant, is interesting. Between the debt which the servant owed to his master, and the debt which a fellow-servant owed to him, there is no assignable proportion: so vast is the difference that we cannot form a definite conception of the relation. This is precisely what we should expect in order to show the disproportion, or want of all proportion, between sins against God and sins against a neighbour. In this parable, on the other hand, the debt in both cases is due to the master, and not in either due by one servant to another. We accordingly do not expect, and do not find a disproportion so vast; and yet, there is a great difference between the two sums. In the one case the debt is five hundred pence, and in the other fifty: the less is only one-tenth of the larger sum. Although there are aggravations in one case, and alleviations in another, I think the disproportion would not have been so great as in the parable it actually is, if it had been the design of the Lord here to teach us how much the guilt of one man may exceed that of another in the sight of God. From the circumstances of this case we may safely gather that these sums represent not the absolute quantity of sin-debt that stood against these men severally in the book of divine justice, but the estimate which they severally made of their own shortcomings. The fifty and the five hundred pence indicate the amounts which the debtors severally acknowledged, rather than those which the creditor might have claimed. The plan of providence in the present life permits every man to keep his own accounts of debt to God: no neighbour is empowered to record the items, and sum them up, and keep a record of their amount against you. The Romish priesthood attempt to usurp this prerogative, but in its purpose it is boldly unjust, and in its results miserably ineffectual. They ought not, in point of principle, to make the attempt; and they are not able, in point of fact, to accomplish their object. Every man keeps his own account book; and no other man dare or can look into it, except in as far as the owner opens it of his own accord for the inspection of his neighbour. Some teachers adopt this principle, with good effect, in the discipline of children at school. Each child has a book in which he marks, from day to day and from hour to hour, his own successes and his own failures; and according to this record the prizes are awarded or withheld. When the child is put upon his honour, it is expected that he will be honourable. Probably a large balance of advantage results from this contrivance where it is judiciously managed; but it is capable of telling two ways, and does tell in opposite ways with different persons. If the child deal fairly, the principle of truth within him will be strengthened by habit; but if he cheat, all of the sense of honesty that remained within him will soon be worn away. “To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken, even that which he hath.” But while each man is permitted to keep the account of his own sins against God, and no human being can rightfully possess a duplicate, there is a duplicate: another record is kept in the Book of God. That record is true; and woe to the self-deceiver who made false entries in his own favour all his life, when it is found that the two accounts will not tally in the great day. Simon the entertainer kept account of his own debt to God—his sins of omission and commission—and balanced them from time to time against a column of merits which he possessed. The balance, he confesses, was against himself, and the difference he set down as the amount due: it is expressed by fifty. The woman, on the other hand, had during a course of wickedness lost all reckoning, both of her own sins and of God’s mercies. Lately she had obtained a copy of the missing documents. A reflection of the charge had been suddenly thrown down from the archives of the Judge, upon the tablet of her own conscience. Without attempting to tax the account in her own favour, she accepted it in full, and expressed it by five hundred—ten times as much as the Pharisee had laid to his own charge. He, taking his own reckoning for authority, counted his liability light: she, taking her data from God’s law, counted her liability heavy. In the story, as it is constructed by the Lord for the instruction and reproof of Simon, the love of both servants to their master is caused, and consequently measured by, the forgiveness which they had received: one having obtained the remission of a small debt, loved the forgiver a little; the other, having obtained the remission of a great debt, loved the forgiver much. In any such case, however, love springs up strong in proportion, not to the absolute amount of the debt remitted, but to the estimate of its amount which the debtor himself has formed. This principle must be kept in view when we apply the lesson of the parable to Simon. The Scripture does not concede that the amount of forgiveness that he needed and obtained was in respect to that of the poor woman as fifty to five hundred: the Scripture does not even determine that Simon was, in point of fact, forgiven at all. In its application to the case in hand, the Lord’s instruction is equivalent to the conditional formula, If you have been forgiven fifty pence, and she five hundred, whether will she or you experience the more fervent gratitude to your common benefactor? This, I think, is the only true and consistent method of applying the parable to the experience of the woman and the Pharisee. The point on which all the weight should lean is not the absolute amount of guilt incurred by the sinner and forgiven by God, but the estimate made by the sinner of his own sin, and his consequent appreciation of the boon he receives when it is unconditionally blotted out. This view, besides being in itself right, possesses this practical advantage, that it steers entirely clear of the entangling question, If the greatest sinner, when forgiven, loves his Forgiver most, will not he be happiest at last who is the guiltiest now? There is no place here or elsewhere in the Scriptures for such a speculation: it is not admissible in any form. The conception which the parable produces when legitimately applied is at once beautiful and beneficent: love to the Saviour rises in the heart of a saved man in proportion to the sense which he entertains of his own sinfulness on the one hand, and the mercy of God on the other. Thus the height of a saint’s love to the Lord is as the depth of his own humility: as this root strikes down unseen in the ground, that blossoming branch rises higher in the sky. The woman did not speak of her own acts, either within herself or to her neighbours; but her acts are, notwithstanding, proclaimed and recorded. They are minutely catalogued (Luke 7:44-46), by the Lord himself. Nothing is lost on him; his ear is open, and his eye. As in providence not a sparrow falls to the ground without our Father’s permission and regard, so in the new covenant not a tear falls for sin indulged, not a sigh rises for deliverance from its pollution, without attracting the notice and obtaining the approval of the Sinner’s Friend. Love, burning as a night lamp silently in a penitent’s breast, or bursting forth in impetuous praise, or calmly supplying the motive power of a useful life—love in the heart of the forgiven sinner, serves and pleases the forgiving Redeemer. One point still remains unnoticed, needing indeed some notes of explanation, but capable of being easily and fully explained; it lies in these words of Jesus: “Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved much.” A question has been raised here, Did the woman’s love to the Lord cause him to forgive her, or did his pardon freely bestowed cause the forgiven woman to love him? To state the question is in effect to answer it. This announcement which Jesus makes in the close of his exposition is obviously meant to run in the line of the parable; but if you understand it to represent the woman’s love as the procuring cause of pardon from the Lord, it runs right in the face of the parable from first to last. The love of the servants, the lesser as well as the larger love, is not the cause but the effect of the Master’s kindness; and it would not only be out of harmony with the parable, but in sheer opposition to it in letter and in spirit, to understand it as countenancing the doctrine that the sinner’s spontaneous love to God merits and obtains forgiveness. Although, in sentences of this form, it is more common to express the effect in the first clause, and the cause, introduced by a For in the latter; yet the converse method is frequently employed and perfectly correct. You may say, Tan-waste is strewn on the street opposite this mansion, for a member of the family lies within it sick; or, A member of the family lies sick within this mansion, for tan-waste is strewn on the contiguous street. In the first instance you place the cause last, and in the second instance the effect, using precisely the same formula in both. Nor is it difficult to perceive why Jesus places the effect of forgiveness in the prominent position here, for it is the only thing that is visible to the Pharisee whom he desires to instruct. The pardon which this woman had obtained Simon did not and could not see; but her love being embodied in action was palpable to his senses. The energetic act of adoration was evidence of the heart-love from which it sprang. To this love accordingly Jesus points, and thence infers the existence of the great forgiveness which prompted it. In the end, He confirms and seals, by his own lips, the pardon which the repenting sinner had already secretly received. The Redeemer’s forgiving love to sinners is the only cause of all their love to him. “We love him because he first loved us.” Have you seen a broad, straight path of silver brightness lying by night upon a smooth sea, and stretching from your feet away until it was lost in the distance—a path that seemed to have been trodden by the feet of all the saints who have ever passed through a shifting world to their eternal home. Oh that silver path by night across the sea,—it glittered much: but it was not its brightness that lighted up the moon in the sky. Neither was it the love to Jesus trembling in a believer’s heart, that kindled forgiving love in him. We love him because he first loved us; the love that makes bright a forgiven sinner’s path across the world was kindled by the light of life in the face of Jesus; from him and to him are all things. There is a peculiarly wise and tender adaptation to our need in that feature of our Lord’s character, which consists in his desiring and appreciating our love. He is not a distant, cold, omnipotence. He lavishes love on the world, but he is disappointed when the world does not throw back a reflection of his own love, as the rippling sea throws up to heaven again, the light it got from heaven. When the ten lepers were cleansed, and one returned to lavish love on his healer, that healer, while he enjoyed the single penitent’s devotion, permitted a sigh to escape his lips, articulated in the sad pensive question, “Where are the nine?” I love the Lord for uttering that complaint. It proves to me that he counts it no intrusion when we burst in upon him with our glad thanksgiving. In the bold in-bursting of this woman; in her premeditated anointing, and unpremeditated tears, the Lord Jesus sees—tastes of the travail of his soul and is satisfied. FOOTNOTES 59. “She was forgiven much; therefore she loved much. As soon as she had learned that Jesus was at table in Simon the Pharisee’s house, her heart drew her thither to him, that she might offer him the expression of her gratitude and love,—of her adoration and her joy. She took with her a phial of ointment, the costliest that she possessed, found an entrance into the Pharisee’s house, and walked behind backs to the feet of Jesus, as he reclined at table on an elevated cushion. Arrived there, she is incapable of accomplishing her purpose. The thought of the greatness of her sin, and the greatness of the compassion of Jesus, broke her heart. She wept, and so unwittingly wet the feet of Jesus with her tears. Oh, salt, salutary tears! They are tears at once of repentance and gratitude. Now, she must first dry the Lord’s feet again. But for this she had not prepared herself; for this she had nothing but her hair. So she wiped them with her hair; and kissed the feet of Jesus, and then anointed them with ointment. All this was the manifestation of her inward burning love to the Lord.”—Arndt, ii, 85, 86.[59] 60. The dilemma is well put by Dr. Trench.[60] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 19: 1.17. THE GOOD SAMARITAN ======================================================================== XVII. THE GOOD SAMARITAN. “And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.”—Luke 10:30-37. Logically this parable may be conveniently associated with that of the unmerciful servant. They constitute a pair; that teaches us to forgive the injurer; and this to help the injured. On the almost pictured page of the evangelic history you may often observe two persons, sometimes in presence of a multitude, and sometimes far apart, engaged in close and earnest conversation. In most cases you discover, when you approach, that one of them is the Lord Jesus, and the other one of the lost whom he came to save. At one time it is a rich Jewish ruler, and at another a poor woman of Samaria; now, it is Nicodemus in a private house, and then Pilate in the judgment hall; here the Saviour, suffering, converses with the thief on the cross, and there the Saviour, reigning, calls to Saul as he is entering Damascus. Many of the precious words of Jesus which now constitute the heritage of the Church, were at first spoken in answer to friends or foes, during the period of his ministry on earth, or after he ascended into heaven. Thus the Lord’s word frequently took its form from the the character and conduct of those with whom he conversed. On their ignorance, or simplicity, or malice, his wisdom and goodness were cast for keeping till the end of time. The temper, and conceptions, and tricks of those Jews, like sand in a foundry, constituted the mould in which the pure gold of our Redeemer’s instructions was poured; and like the sand, when they had served that purpose, they were allowed to fall asunder, as being of no further use. Here is a case in which the question of a self-righteous Jew elicits and gives shape to the subsequent discourse of the Lord; here, accordingly, the meaning of the discourse depends, in a great measure, on the history in which it grows. At some pause in the Lord’s discourse, while the multitude still remained on the spot expecting further instruction, a certain lawyer who was watching his opportunity, interposed with the demand, “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”61 The question was not put in simplicity, with a view to obtain information, it was employed knowingly as an experiment and a test. Very many such questions were addressed to the Lord Jesus during the period of his public ministry by different persons, and with different motives. We may safely gather from the whole spirit of the narrative that this example, as to the character and motive of the questioner, was neither one of the best nor one of the worst. This scribe was not, on the one hand, like Nicodemus, a meek receptive disciple, prepared to drink the sincere milk of the word that he might grow thereby, nor was he like some, both of the Pharisaic and Sadducean parties, who came with cunning questions to ensnare and destroy. This man seems to have been from his own view point sincere and fair: his tempting aimed not to catch and betray, but simply to put the skill of the new Nazarene prophet to the test. The man was full, not of conscious malice against Jesus, but of ignorant confidence in himself. The scribe’s question is cast in the mould of the most unmitigated self-righteousness: “What shall I do that I may inherit?” &c. No glimpse had he ever gotten of his own sinfulness, no conception did he ever entertain of the publican’s prayer, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Taking the man on his own terms, and meeting him on his own path, the Lord replies by the question, “What is written? and refers him to the law.” The lawyer, a professed theologian, answers well. He gave a correct epitome of all moral duty, showing that love is the fulfilling of the law,—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself.” The Lord approved the answer, seemed to require as to profession, not another word, and closed for the time the colloquy with the simple announcement, “This do and thou shalt live.” A very great question crosses our path here, but we must not discuss it fully lest we should be diverted too far from our immediate object. This answer of the Lord we accept in all simplicity as the great universal cardinal truth in the case. Life was offered at first, and life is offered still as the reward of obedience. It is not safe, it is not needful to apologize for this statement or to explain it away; it is not in any sense contrary to evangelical doctrine. It is really true that the fulfilling of God’s law will secure his favour. Nor is this a thing merely to be admitted in its own place when it comes up; it is the truth that lies at the foundation, and on which all other truth leans. The basis of all is,—Obedience deserves life, and disobedience deserves death. Mankind have disobeyed; we have all sinned, and are therefore all under condemnation. Nothing but a perfect obedience can gain God’s favour. Hence the covenant, and hence the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ; hence the substitution of the just for the unjust. The Gospel is not an exception to the Law, “This do and thou shalt live;” the Gospel is founded on that Law. This Law Christ came not to destroy but to fulfil. “This do and thou shalt live:” whether by an emphasis on the word, or by an expressive glance at the moment in the speaker’s eye, or by the simple majesty of the truth declared, the scribe’s conscience was aroused and arrested. The questioner was not altogether comforted by the result of the conversation; he could not allow the matter to drop there. The reason why he continued the dialogue is expressly given; he was “willing to justify himself.” Justify himself! But who accused him? Not the Lord: he had only said, “This do and thou shalt live.” The man’s own conscience was awakened and at work: well he knew at that moment that he had not done what his lips confessed he should do; he had not loved God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself. It is interesting to notice the principle on which he proceeds to defend himself: conscious that love to neighbours is in his heart a very narrow thing, he conducts his argument so as to justify its narrowness. If he can show that his neighbours are limited to a small circle of relatives, with the addition perhaps of some chosen individuals beyond the line of blood, he may yet be able to live on good terms with himself as a keeper of the law; accordingly, in order to form a basis for his own defence, he inquires, “Who is my neighbour?” The parable constitutes the answer. But before we proceed to examine its contents, it is of great importance to observe that it is not a direct answer to the scribe’s question. It is the answer which the Lord saw meet to give, but it is not a decision on the case which had been submitted for adjudication. In his question the scribe contemplated other people, and speculated upon who had the right to receive kindness: the answer of Jesus, on the contrary, contemplates the scribe himself, and inquires whether he is prepared to bestow kindness. As to those who should receive our love there is no limit: the real subject of inquiry concerns the man who bestows it. The question is not, Who is my neighbour? but, Am I neighbourly? This is the line in which the parable proceeds. It does not supply the scribe with an answer to the question which he had put; but it supplies him with another question which he desired to evade. He is not permitted to ride off upon a speculative inquiry about the abstract rights of other men; he is pinned down to a personal practical duty. “A certain man went down from Jerusalem,” &c. It is a narrow, dreary mountain pass. By nature it is fitted to be a haunt of robbers; if there are any robbers in the country, they will certainly gravitate to this spot. In point of fact it was notoriously unsafe for travellers in that day, and it is equally dangerous still. A particular portion of the road acquired the name of the path of blood, and under the feeble government of the Turks, as well as in more ancient times, it has well deserved its appellation. The scene of the event therefore is laid in a place which is eminently suitable to its character: the audience who heard the story first would at once and fully recognise its appropriateness. Robbers assailed the solitary traveller, and after plundering him of his money, left him so severely wounded that he could do nothing to help himself, and must soon have died if he had not obtained help. Although it is not expressly stated, it appears from the whole complexion of the narrative that this man was a Jew. Indeed this is so obvious and so necessary that the point of the parable would be lost if it were otherwise: I think the nationality of the unfortunate sufferer is not stated, precisely because it could not be mistaken. “And by chance there came down a certain priest that way,” &c. By chance is an unfortunate translation here. It was not by chance that the priest came down by that road at that time, but by a specific arrangement, and in exact fulfilment of a plan; not the plan of the priest, not the plan of the wounded traveller, but the plan of God. By “coincidence” (???? ?????????) the priest came down: that is, by the conjunction of two things, in fact, which were previously constituted a pair in the providence of God. In the result they fell together according to the omniscient designer’s plan. This is the true theory of the divine government, and this is the account of the matter which the parable contains. 62 By previous appointment and actual exact coincidence that meeting took place between the hale comfortable priest and the wounded half-dead traveller in the bloody path between Jerusalem and Jericho. It is thus that all meetings take place between man and man. “The poor ye have always with you,” said Jesus to his disciples. It is not only that once for all the poor and the rich are placed in the same world: but day by day, as life’s current flows, by divine unerring purpose those who need are placed in the way of those who have plenty, and the strong are led to the spot where the feeble lie. We are accustomed to admire the wisdom and foresight that spread layers of iron ore and layers of coal near each other in the crust of the earth that the one might give the melting heat which the other needed; but the divine government is a much more minute and pervading thing. The same omniscient provider has appointed each meeting between those who are in want and those who have abundance; and for the same reason, that the one may give what the other needs, and that both may be blessed in the deed. But he who lays the plan watches its progress, and is displeased when men do not take the opportunity that has been given. When he has brought the strong to the spot where the weak are lying he is displeased to see them pass by on the other side. “Lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world.” Is that a pleasant promise? No; if after the Lord has led you to the spot where the needy are perishing, you pass by on the other side; it is a dreadful thing to have him beside us, looking on in such a case as this. We are led to suppose that the wounded man was not only unable to walk, but that he could not even move his head, so as to observe at a distance the approach of a traveller. Possibly the sound of footsteps was the first warning he received that a human being was near. Perhaps he started in terror lest it should be the robbers returning to take what remained of his life away. But as the priest came and looked upon him, he might well begin to hope. This is a man who is consecrated to the service of God; he is even now on his way from his turn of office in the temple. He who gets so near to God will surely show mercy to man. No: the priest passed by on the other side. We are not informed what his excuses were; but we may be quite sure he had plenty, and that they were very good. Those who seek a good excuse for neglecting the labour of love always find one. He was alone; he could neither cure the unfortunate man there nor carry him away. To make the attempt might bring the robbers down from their fastnesses upon himself, and thus he should only throw away a good life after a damaged one. Right well would he justify himself that evening as he told his adventure in the pass to his friends or his family in Jericho. Love saw no excuses for leaving the man lying in his blood, for it was not looking for them; but selfishness saw them at a glance, and would have created them in plenty if there had been none at hand. In like manner also a Levite came to the spot, looked for a moment on the sufferer, and passed on. At last a Samaritan came up; and when he saw the wounded man “he had compassion on him.” The root of the matter lies here: “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,” and the hand labours; the fountain is opened, and you may expect to see a flowing stream. Love in presence of human suffering takes the form of compassion; and love in all its forms tends to express itself in action: compassion issues in help. In this case evidently compassion was the secret force that produced all the subsequent beneficence: yet we must not too readily count that all is safe for practical efficiency, when in presence of a brother’s suffering this tender emotion begins to flutter about the heart. As the heart itself is deceitful, so also in turn are each of its affections; even those that in name and nature are good may swerve aside after they have sprung, and degenerate into selfishness. Probably both the priest and the Levite experienced some compassion as they looked on the pale and bleeding victim of lawless violence; perhaps they went away pleased with themselves on account of their tenderness, and somewhat angry with the wounded man for being wounded, and so hurting their sensibilities. The best things corrupted become the worst; and sometimes the sight of distress among poorer neighbours stirs into fermentation some of the worst elements of character in the comfortable classes. A little water may spring in the bottom of the well; but if it do not increase so as to fill the cavity, and freely overflow, it will become fetid where it lies, and more noisome than utter dryness. It is quite possible, as to emotion, to be very languishing over the misfortunes of others, and yet do the unfortunate as little good as the misanthrope who laughs at human sorrows. But while the spurious compassion is thus vile and worthless, the true is beyond expression beautiful and good. It breaks forth in power, and sweeps down whatever obstacles may be thrown in its way. In this parable the Lord expressly points to the fountain of compassion opened before he invites us to follow the stream of beneficence in its course. The nationality of the compassionate traveller is an important feature of the parable; he was a Samaritan. The Jews and Samaritans were locally nearest neighbours, but morally most unneighbourly. An enmity of peculiar strength and persistency kept the communities asunder from age to age. The alienation, originating in a difference of race, was kept alive by rivalry in religion. The Samaritans endeavoured to cover the defects of their pedigree by a zealous profession of orthodox forms in divine worship. The temple which they presumed to erect on Gerizzim as a rival to that of Jerusalem was naturally more odious to the Jews than others that were more distant in space, and more widely diverse in profession. Distinct traces of the keen reciprocal enmity that raged between the Jews and the Samaritans crop out here and there incidentally in the evangelical history, as in chapter ix. 54. Most certainly the Lord does not here intend to intimate that all the priests and Levites were cruel, and all Samaritans tender-hearted: to apply them so would be to wrest his words. This teacher grasps his instrument by the extremity, first one extremity and then the other, that his lesson may reach further than if he had grasped it by the middle. The honourable office, and even the generally high character, of priest and Levite will not cover the sin of selfishly neglecting the sufferings of a fellow-creature: self-sacrificing love is approved by God and useful to men as well in a Samaritan as in a Jew. There is no respect of persons with God. It is quite certain that there were benevolent priests and unkind Samaritans; and it is also certain that the Lord would not overlook kindness in the one, nor sanction cruelty in the other. The lesson was addressed to a Jew; and therefore the lesson is so constructed as to smite at one blow the two poles on which a vain Jewish life in that day turned—“they trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.” That high thing, the scribe’s self-righteous trust in his birth-right, the Lord will by the parable bring low; and this low thing, the mean position of a Samaritan in the estimate of the scribe, he will at the same moment exalt. He hath done all things well. 63 The Samaritan had compassion on the wounded man; and the emotion is known to be genuine by the fruits which it immediately bears: he bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine. These methods doubtless represent the opinions and practice of the time and place as to the treatment of wounds. They constituted the expression of the Samaritan’s painstaking compassion; and for our present purpose no further notice of them is needful. 64 The inn to which the patient was conducted must have been more than a khan built on the way-side, and left empty, a free shelter to each party of travellers who chose to occupy it for a night. It must have been something more nearly allied to our modern system; for there was a resident manager, who kept in store such provisions as travellers needed, and supplied them to customers for money. The Samaritan remained all night with his patient, and then intrusted the case to the care of the inn-keeper, paying a sum to account, and pledging his credit for the balance, if the expense should ultimately exceed the amount of his deposit. Two denaria (pence) were at the time and in the circumstances of value sufficient to meet the probable outlay. Now comes the searching question, “Which of these three thinkest thou was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” The scribe, shut up to one answer, gives it rightly, beginning perhaps to be dimly conscious of its bearing upon himself,—“He that showed mercy on him.” Here, as has been already noted, the tables are turned upon the questioner. The point on which attention is fixed is not, Who of all mankind have a right to receive kindness? but, Are you willing to show kindness, as far as you have opportunity, to every human being who is in need? The scribe desired to select a few who might rank as his neighbours, hoping that by limiting their number he might show kindness to each, without any substantial sacrifice of his own ease. The Lord shows him that love is like light: wherever it truly burns it shines forth in all directions, and falls on every object that lies in its way. Love that desires to limit its own exercise is not love. Love that is happier if it meet only one who needs help than if it met ten, and happiest if it meet none at all, is not love. One of love’s essential laws is expressed in those words of the Lord, that the apostles fondly remembered after he had ascended, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” “Then said Jesus, Go and do thou likewise.” Through the self-sufficient Jewish theologian the command is addressed to us. The direct form of the injunction intimates, what might be gathered from the nature of the case, that this parable is more strictly an example than a symbol. It does not convey spiritual lessons under the veil of material imagery: it rather describes a case of practical beneficence, and then plainly demands that we should imitate it. However various the required reduplications may be in their form, they are the same in kind with the sample which is here exhibited. Besides this more obvious and literal application, almost all the expositors find in the parable an allegorical representation of the world’s lost state and Christ’s redeeming work. In this scheme the wounded man represents our race ruined by sin; the robbers, the various classes of our spiritual enemies; the priest and Levite, the various legal and ineffectual methods by which human wisdom endeavours to cure sin; and the Samaritan shadows forth the Redeemer in his advent and his office. I mention this scheme in order to intimate that I cannot adopt it. From the nature of the things, there must be some likeness to our Redeemer’s mission, wherever a loving heart pities a fallen brother, and a strong hand is stretched out to help him; but beyond this general analogy I see nothing. I can derive no benefit from even the most cautious and sober prosecution of the details. I find in it a reproving and guiding example of a true and effective compassion; but I find nothing more. Nor should we think the lesson unworthy of its place, although it does not directly reveal the redemption of Christ; He who loved us, and whose love to us is the fountain and pattern of all our benevolent love to each other, counted it a suitable exercise of his prophetic office to teach his disciples their relative duties in life. The lesson of this parable is parallel with that other lesson, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”65 Some who experience a genuine love are so poor that when they meet a sufferer they cannot supply his wants. In such a case the Lord acknowledges the will, and knows why the deed does not follow. In the example of the widow’s mite he has left it on record that he does not despise the gift because of its smallness. Nay, further, he approves and rewards the emotion when it is true, although the means of material help be altogether wanting: “I was sick and in prison, and ye came unto me.”66 In the vast mass and complicated relations of modern society, it is extremely difficult to apply right principles in the department of material benevolence. On two opposite sides we are liable to err; and we ought on either side to watch and pray that we enter not into temptation. (1.) It would be a mischievous mistake to give money, food, and clothes to every importunate beggar who contrives to cross our path and present an appearance of distress. There are men, women, and children in our day, who trade upon their sores, and even make sores to trade upon. To give alms indiscriminately, in these circumstances, is both to waste means and propagate improvidence. But (2.) it is not enough to resist importunities which may proceed from feigned distress. Shut your hand resolutely against the whine of trained, unreal pauperism; but, at the same time, diligently search out the true sufferers, and liberally supply their wants. If from defective knowledge errors must sometimes be committed, better far that now and then a shilling should be lost, by falling into unworthy hands, than that our hearts should be drained of their compassion and dried hard by the habit of seeing human suffering and leaving it unrelieved. “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth;” it is better that his abundance should be diminished, by an occasional excess of disbursement, than that love, in which his life really lies, should wither in his breast for want of exercise. “The milk of human kindness” this compassion has been called; but let us remember that if no needy child is permitted to draw it, this milk will soon cease to flow. FOOTNOTES 61. “How eagerly would the critics seize on this passage, and pronounce the question of a certain lawyer to be identical with the narrative contained in Matthew 19:16, only differently reported—if St. Luke had not himself subsequently narrated that second incident (Luke 18:18)! This once more shows that many things could naturally, and would necessarily, occur more than once in the life of Jesus.”—Stier.[61] 62. The analogy between the meetings exhibited in this parable and the meeting of Philip with the Ethiopian (Acts 8:1-40) is interesting and instructive. In both cases the place is a desert, in both a man in great need and a man who has the means of supplying that need meet each other there. Here the want and its supply are material and temporal, there they are moral and spiritual. The man who fell among thieves on the way to Jericho suffered from bodily wounds, and the Samaritan who came to his relief appropriately applied material remedies: the Ethiopian treasurer, in that way towards Gaza which is desert, suffered in his soul, and the name of Christ was the ointment which Philip the evangelist poured into his wound. These two cases are indeed diverse, but as we learn from the Scriptures throughout, they proceed, both as to disease and cure, upon analogous principles, so that the knowledge of the one throws light upon the meaning of the other. The meeting in the desert near Gaza did not happen by chance, it was a tryst duly made and exactly kept, for “the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise and go toward the south,” &c. (Acts 8:26). The appointment for the meetings in the valley between Jerusalem and Jericho was as certainly made, although it has not been as expressly recorded.[62] 63. In the case of the ten lepers (Luke 17:16), which is not a parable, but a history, we learn that the one who experienced and expressed gratitude to God for his recovery was a Samaritan. Whether their low and despised condition had been to some extent blessed in making them more humble and receptive than their Jewish neighbours, we do not know; but, in point of fact, in the historical incident a Samaritan was more ready than the Jew to give praise to God; and in the construction of the parable a Samaritan is represented as also more beneficent to men. In connection with this case a striking example may be seen of the divine impartiality of the Scriptures. Some persons, with a view to objects of their own, take pleasure in representing ministers of religion as more self-seeking and less generous than those who make no religious profession. The contrast between the Levite and the Samaritan, if this case stood alone, might seem to support their theory. But there is no respect of persons or classes with God; you may learn from the Scriptures—and that, too, from the writings of the same apostle—that the Samaritans were not all kind, and the Levites not all hard-hearted. They were Samaritans (Luke 9:53) who would not permit Jesus and his disciples, when they were weary, to pass the night in their village; and he was a Levite (Acts 4:36) who was named Son of Consolation, and sold his property that he might distribute the proceeds among the poor.[63] 64. The Samaritan was riding; for he set the wounded man “on his own beast.” What of the priest and the Levite?—were they riding, or performing the journey on foot? If they were both pedestrians, while the Samaritan had a mule or an ass, it is obvious that the two parties were not on equal terms, and that consequently no fair test of their benevolence could in that transaction be obtained. On that very ground I think it is certain that they were riding as well as he. The parable is not a history, containing the simple facts of any given case, without respect to the lessons which the facts may contain; it is a picture, constructed according to its Author’s mind, and constructed for the purpose of expressing a particular lesson which the Author already had in his mind, and desired to teach. The doctrine which the Teacher intended to declare obviously requires that the two parties whose compassion is compared and contrasted should be on equal terms. The lesson which he meant to convey would slip through and be lost, like water through a leaky vessel, if the priest and Levite were walking when they found the wounded man: we must, therefore, if we would not do violence to the parable, assume that both were mounted. With this conclusion, resulting from the nature of the case, the expressions in their minutest details correspond. The journey of the priest is narrated in the same terms as that of the Samaritan: “A certain priest came down that way,” and “A certain Samaritan as he journeyed came where he was:” we never learn that the Samaritan had a beast of burden until he sets the half-dead traveller upon its back. There was no occasion for mentioning the priest’s mule, for he made no special or remarkable use of it.[64] 65. Dräseke has happily expressed the conception that to love is truly to live: “Wir finden hier demnach die Lehre: Willst du leben, liebe.”—Vom Reich G., ii. 130.[65] 66. “If the robbers had seized the Samaritan before he was able to accomplish his design, his work would have been accomplished in the sight of God;—and if the priest and Levite had given help on account of approaching spectators, it would have been of no value.”—Stier.[66] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 20: 1.18. THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT ======================================================================== XVIII. THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT. “And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”—Luke 11:5-10. In prayer, as in every other department of his ministry, the Lord Jesus gave his disciples both example and precept: he prayed in their presence, and taught them to pray. The order of events at the beginning of this chapter is worthy of notice: it was the Lord’s praying that led to the Lord’s Prayer. The disciples heard their Master praying, and requested him to teach them also to pray: in reply he imparted to them the brief germinal directory which the Church has been living on ever since, and which the Church will live on till her Redeemer come again. “As he was praying in a certain place;”—the scene here presented is sublime and mysterious. The Son of man—the Son of God in our nature, is praying to the Father, and his followers are standing near. Silently, reverently they look and listen. They bate their breath till the prayer is done, and then eagerly press the request, “Lord, teach us to pray.” They observed in their Master while he prayed a strange separation from the world, a conscious nearness to God, a delight in the Father’s presence, and a familiarity in communion with the Father, which seemed to them like heaven upon earth. Fondly desiring to partake of these blessed privileges, they besought their Master to show them the way. He complied with their request. He taught them as one teaches children—he put words in their mouths. Behold, the natural history of the Lord’s Prayer! Thus sprang that wonderful specimen-prayer, which serves at once as the first lesson for babes beginning, and the fullest exercise of strong men’s powers. 67 Having taught his followers first by praying in their presence, and then by dictating an example of prayer, he next gives them a specific lesson on importunity and perseverance in praying. This lesson he has been pleased to impart in the form of a parable—“And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend,” &c. The picture refers to a simple, primitive condition of society, and reveals corresponding social habits. We must abandon our own modern, artificial view-point, ere we can comprehend and appreciate the facts on which the parable is based. Some cottages, built near each other for common safety, are owned and possessed by the cultivators of the surrounding soil. Daylight has disappeared, and the inhabitants of the hamlet, wearied with their toil, have all retired to rest. Meantime a benighted traveller is threading his way to the spot expecting food and shelter in the house of his friend. It is midnight ere he arrives; for, footsore and weary, he has consumed many hours in accomplishing the distance between his resting-place at noon and his destination for the night. The inmates, hearing his knocking and recognising his voice, forthwith open the door and hospitably receive the traveller. But here a new difficulty occurs: the bread prepared for the household had satisfied their wants for the day, but none remained over. The last remnant had been consumed at the evening meal, and the family had retired to rest with the intention of providing early in the morning for the wants of the following day. They had not a morsel to set before the weary stranger. The head of the house, willing to undergo any amount of trouble rather than seem lacking in hospitality, determined to borrow even at that late hour the necessary supply of bread. To the door of his nearest neighbour, accordingly, he went, and knocked as the traveller had already knocked at his own. Between the two villagers a conversation now takes place, the one lying in bed within, and the other standing on the street without. The request is met at first by a polite but peremptory refusal. The hour is untimely; the children are asleep; unwonted movements in the house will awaken and alarm them: better that one stranger should fast till morning than that a whole family should be disturbed in the night. But the suppliant at the door has taken the matter much to heart. The customs of society elevate the exercise of hospitality into the highest rank of virtues: he was ashamed to be caught off his guard, and unable to comply with the cardinal social duty of the East. He knew not how to meet his friend and confess that he had no bread in his house; bread he must have, and will not want; he plies his request accordingly. He will listen to no refusal; he continues to knock and plead. To every answer from within, “I will not give,” he sends a reply from without, “I shall have.” It was for the sake of shielding his own sleeping family from disturbance at midnight that this neighbour had, in the first instance, refused; but now he discovers that the method which he had adopted to preserve the seemly stillness of night is the surest way of disturbing it. At first, that he might protect his sleeping family from disturbance, he refused; but at last, for the same reason, he complied. Although he would not give from friendship, he gave to importunity. This parable is remarkable in that the temporal and spiritual, instead of lying parallel throughout their length, touch each other only at one point. They are like two straight rigid rods laid one upon another at right angles; all the weight of the upper rod lies on the under at one spot, and therefore presses there with tenfold intensity. The comparison has been chosen, I think, precisely because of this quality. Because the analogy does not hold good in every feature, it better serves the purpose in hand: the point of comparison delivers its lesson all the more emphatically when it stands alone. When you have been convinced that God cares for his creatures, and have therefore begun, in the Mediator’s name, to pray;—when you have not only said a prayer in fulfilment of a commanded duty, but felt a want, and like a little child requested your Father in heaven to supply it, another lesson concerning prayer remains still to be learned—to persevere. When you have asked once—asked many times, and failed to obtain relief, you are tempted gradually to lose hope and abandon prayer. Here the lesson of the parable comes in: it teaches you to continue asking until you receive. Ask as a hungry child asks his mother for bread. It is not a certain duty prescribed, so that when you have performed it you are at liberty to go away. Nor is it, Ask so many times—whether seven or seventy times seven: it is, Ask until you obtain your desire. When the Lord desired specially to recommend importunity in prayer, he selected a case which teaches importunity and nothing more. He gives us an example in which unceasing pertinacity alone triumphed over all obstacles, and counsels us to go and do likewise when we ask good things from our Father in heaven. In this parable, as in that of the unjust judge, a human motive that is mean is employed to illustrate a divine motive that is high and holy. In both cases the reason of the choice is the same; and in both the reason of the choice becomes the explanation of the difficulty. An example of persevering importunity in asking was needed in order to become the vehicle of the spiritual lesson; but in human affairs such an example cannot be found among the loving and generous: you must descend into some of the lower and harder strata of human character ere you reach a specimen of the pertinacious refusal which generates the pertinacious demand. That feature of the Father’s government which the Son here undertakes to explain cannot otherwise be represented by analogies drawn from human experience. If the villager had been more generously benevolent, he would have complied at once with the request of his neighbour; but in that case no suitable example for the Lord’s present purpose could have emerged from his act. In order to find an example of persevering importunity, it was necessary to select a case in which nothing but persevering importunity could prevail. The terms are distinct and emphatic: “Though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.” The term ?????????, translated “importunity,” signifies freedom from the bashfulness which cannot ask a second time. The shamefacedness which prevents a modest man from importuning a fellow-creature for a gift, after the first request has been refused, is out of place in the intercourse between an empty but believing suppliant and the God of all grace. If this Jewish countryman in his perplexity had been ashamed to ask a second time, he would have failed to accomplish his object; but because he was not so ashamed, or at least did not permit the shame to drive him from his purpose, he obtained at length all his desire. Now, his conduct in this respect is specially commended to us for imitation in our prayer: “And I say unto you, Ask and it shall be given you.” As that man asked a gift from a brother, we should ask from God. This is the kind of prayer that Christ teaches us to address to God; and the Son who is in the bosom of the Father will rightly declare the Father’s mind. The lesson is in some of its aspects difficult. We have not experience—we have not faculties sufficient to make us capable of understanding it fully. Our Teacher might have maintained silence regarding it; or he might have said, as we often in substance say to little children, “What thou knowest not now, thou shalt know hereafter;” and this not from our unwillingness to teach, but from their incapacity to comprehend. But the Lord does not leave us wholly ignorant, because we are incapable of understanding all. He makes one point abundantly clear—that persevering importunity in prayer is pleasing to God and profitable to men. But the lesson is not easy: analogies drawn from sensible objects or human experience cannot express it fully. The two parables which bear upon it—the one now under consideration, and that of the unjust judge—touch only the edges of the theme. The human motive is in the one picture mean, and in the other wicked; yet these are the best analogies that can be found on earth for expressing this feature of our Father’s love. Knowing the defect of the analogy employed in the parable, the Lord has supported and supplemented it by a fact in his own history. The case of the Syro-phœnician woman (Matthew 15:21-28), although a historic event, serves also as an allegory. The two parables, one enacted and the other spoken, together make the lesson plain, as far as we are capable of comprehending it. In the mouth of these two witnesses the Lord has established his doctrine regarding importunate pressure in prayer. When I was a little child I often stood near a forge, and watched a blacksmith at work, admiring the strength and skill of the wonder-working man. He was wont to treat me kindly and bear with me patiently, although I sometimes stood in his way. At one time he would benevolently answer my childish questions; and at another, instead of answering, would continue to handle his tools with his strong, bare arms, throwing glances of tenderness towards me from time to time out of his deep intelligent eyes, but all in silence. When two pieces of iron, placed in the fire in order to be welded together, became red, I thought and said he should take them out and join them; but he left them lying still in the fire without speaking a word. They grew redder, hotter; they threw out angry sparks: now, thought I, he should certainly lay them together and strike; but the skilful man left them still lying in the fire, and meantime fanned it into a fiercer glow. Not till they were white, and bending with their own weight when lifted, like lilies on their stalks—not till they were at the point of becoming liquid, did he lay the two pieces alongside of each other, and by a few gentle strokes weld them into one. Had he laid them together sooner, however vigorously he had beaten, they would have fallen asunder in his hands. The Lord knows, as we know not, what preparation we need in order that we may be brought into union with himself. He refuses, delays, disappoints,—all in wise love, that he may bring the seeker’s heart up to such a glow of desire as will suffice to unite it permanently with his own. A father, when his son asks bread, does not give him a stone: when he asks a fish, does not give him a serpent. Thus, our Father in heaven gives good things to them that ask him. “The giving God” (??? ???????? ???? James 1:5), is one of his attributes. Why, then, do not all his children get whatever they ask, and when they ask it? One reason, doubtless, is, that the child, ignorant and short-sighted, often asks a stone or a serpent because they seem beautiful,—not knowing that the one is destitute of nourishment, and that the other will sting—and then frets when things are given to him wholly different from those which he desired and expected. Hannah asked a son; in that case God saw that the request was wise: the child asked bread, and the Father, after the needful trial of faith, bestowed it freely. Some have asked a son, not knowing that in their case the gift would have been a serpent. All their days they have wondered why the boon was denied, and have learned, perhaps, in the light of the great white throne when their days on earth were done, that He who cared for them shielded their bosoms more tenderly and effectually than themselves could have done, from one of the sharpest stings that pierce the flesh of living men. Abraham believed God, and every step of his life-journey was thereby made plain: some great mountains that stood in the path of the patriarch were obliged to get quickly out of the way as he approached. To him that believeth, all things are possible. At midnight, in the parable, the cry for help came, and prevailed. It is never out of season to pray, until you be out of life. He that keeps Israel slumbers not nor sleeps. Come we early, he is awake; come we late, he has not retired to rest. In prayer, the shamefacedness (????????) that shrinks from giving trouble should have absolutely no place. We trouble God by our sins, but not by our prayers. Is the sun burdened by the weight of the planets that hang on him as they run their course? Is he exhausted by the necessity of supplying them with the light in which they shine? Would you relieve him by covering some of them up, or blotting them out of being? The infinite God is not wearied by the weight of all the worlds he has made: the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not exhausted by giving a portion to each of his regenerated children of human kind. Ten lepers were healed by the word of Jesus, and of them one came back to give him praise. That man in his eagerness pushed aside every obstruction, and pressed through the crowd that encircled the great Teacher, demanding and engaging his attention. Did the interruption trouble the Lord? No. Who troubled him? Not the one who came, but the nine who remained at a distance. With a sigh the Lord said, “Where are the nine?” He grieved because they did not come back with praise: therefore he would have rejoiced if they had come. But if they who come to Christ to give thanks please him much, they who come to him asking gifts please him more; for in his own experience, and according to his own testimony, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Some additional light is thrown backward on the parable by the discourse that immediately follows. It was with the view of bringing out and pressing home the lesson from his own picture, that the Lord, in continuation of his teaching, said, “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you,” &c. Two things here are most wonderful;—one is, that needy men should require so many reasonings to induce them to ask good things from God; and the other is, that God should condescend to employ so many reasonings for that end. One who knew only the pertinacity with which the prodigal held to his hunger, and cold, and nakedness in a foreign land, would be apt to suppose that this son had been harshly treated in his father’s house, and that nothing but punishment awaited him on his return. But if such an observer had been able to witness the actual meeting of father and son when the exile returned at last, he would have learned from the fond reception which the yearning father gave to his erring child, that the son had all along grievously misjudged and misrepresented his father. Suppose, now, the angels, who desire to look into the provisions of the covenant of grace, should have discovered only these two things, the need of men, and the mercy of God, they would expect that all the fallen would flock back to his presence, like doves to their windows when the tempest comes on: but herein they would find themselves mistaken. That complaint which our Redeemer uttered describes in one stroke the essential characteristic of the lost,—“Ye will not come unto me, that ye might have life” (John 5:40). The Lord, who loves to bestow the blessing, reasons with us from our own experience. Children trust a father, and are not disappointed; why will you not confide in the Father of your spirits, and live? In the close of his lesson, he indicates that the best gift of God is the Holy Spirit, and that this gift he is most willing to bestow. More ready than a father is to give bread to a hungry child when it cries, is our Father to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him. Let us put him to the proof. Let us come at Christ’s bidding, and in Christ’s name: let us come boldly to the throne of grace. He who reigneth over all has sent for us, and bidden us come—bidden us ask. He will not dishonour his own promise: treat him as a father, and see whether he will not make you his dear child. In some respects these two,—this and the unjust judge,—are the most wonderful and most precious of all the parables. The rest present such views of divine grace as may be shadowed forth by the ordinary manifestations of human character and action,—such as a shepherd bringing back his sheep, or a sower casting his seed into the ground: but these two go sheer down through all that lies on the surface of human history—down through all the upper and more ordinary grades of human experience, and penetrate into the lower, darker, meaner things at the bottom, in order to find a longer line wherewith to measure out greater lengths and breadths of God’s compassion; as the shadow in the lake must needs be deepest where the heavens which it represents are highest. I know nothing more amazing, in all these lessons which Christ gave about the kingdom of grace, than the lesson which these two pictures teach about prayer. It is the same lesson that is embodied in one of the most memorable and mysterious of all the Old Testament facts—Jacob’s wrestling with the Angel. Sweet to the Angel of the Covenant was the persistent struggle of the believing man; and sweet to that same Lord to-day is the pressure which an eager suppliant applies to his heart and his hand. In all the Bible you will not find a word that expresses greater loathing than that which tells us how God regards the Laodiceans who asked as if they cared not whether they obtained or not: “Because thou art lukewarm, and art neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” The Lord loves to be pressed; let us therefore press, assured by his own word that the Hearer of prayer never takes urgency ill. FOOTNOTES 67. This seems, however, not to have been the first occasion on which he gave “The Lord’s Prayer” to the disciples; it is embodied in the Sermon on the Mount, which belongs to an earlier date. The learners were defective both in understanding and memory; and the Master gave them “line upon line.”[67] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 21: 1.19. THE RICH FOOL ======================================================================== XIX. THE RICH FOOL. “And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: and he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”—Luke 12:16-21. While Jesus was, in his wonted way, preaching the kingdom to a great multitude, one of the audience, taking advantage probably of some momentary pause in the discourse, broke in upon the solemn exercises with the inappropriate and incongruous demand, “Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me.” In regard to the matter in dispute between himself and his brother, this man probably had both an honest purpose and a righteous cause. For aught that we know to the contrary, he may have been violently or fraudulently deprived of his share in the inheritance of the family. In the answer of the Lord there is not a word that calls in question the justice of his claim. The question of right and wrong as between the brothers does not constitute an element of the case as it is presented to us; it is intentionally and completely omitted. Dishonesty is a simpler affair, and can be settled in very few words. Elsewhere it is disposed of in a very brief sentence,—“Thou shalt not steal.” But here a far more subtle sin is analyzed and exposed. The lesson is not, Take heed and beware of Injustice; but, “Take heed and beware of Covetousness.” The warning is directed not against the sin of obtaining wealth by unjust means, but against the sin of setting the heart upon wealth, by what means soever it may have been obtained: this reproof was doubtless a word more in season for the assembly of well-conducted Jews who listened that day to the preaching of Jesus, as it is a word more in season for the members of Christian Churches in this land, than an exhortation to beware of theft. The appeal so inopportunely made, shows incidentally that the people had begun to look on Jesus as a prophet, and to pay great deference to his word. Had he not been already in some sense recognised as an authority, this man would not have applied to him for relief. He was well aware that Jesus of Nazareth could bring no civil constraint to bear upon his brother; it was the moral influence of the prophet’s word that he counted on as the means of accomplishing his purpose: “Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me.” He had, perhaps, observed an amazing effect produced by a word from those meek lips; he had, perhaps, himself seen wicked men subdued by it, and heard from others that it had silenced a stormy sea. He may have marked its power in healing the sick and raising the dead. Forthwith he conceived the plan of enlisting this mysterious and mighty word on his own side of a family quarrel. If that word, he thought within himself, were exerted in my behalf, it would induce my brother to give to me the half or the third of the paternal estate, which I claim as my right. We cannot cast the first stone at this poor simpleton, who had no other use for the Redeemer’s word than to gain by means of it a few more acres of the earth for himself: in every age, some men may be found who hang on the skirts of the Church for the sake of some immediate temporal benefit. Nor is it difficult to understand the phenomenon: “No man can serve two masters;” practically each chooses one, and in the main serves him faithfully. If Christ is chosen as Lord and Master, Mammon and all other things are compelled to serve: if Mammon is chosen and seated on the throne, he will not scruple to lay heaven and earth under contribution for the advancement of his designs;—Mammon, when master, will take even the word of Christ and employ it as an instrument wherewith he may rake his rags together. How simple and helpless is the man who has allowed wealth to become his chief good! Here is an example of ungodly simplicity. Without any apprehension of a reproof from the Lord or his disciples, the poor man betrays all: in the public assembly he unwittingly turns his own heart inside out. Instead of addressing to the preacher the question, What must I do to be saved? showing that the truth had taken effect on his conscience, he preferred a request regarding a disputed property, showing that while the words of Jesus fell on his ears, his heart was going after its covetousness. He attended to the sermon for the purpose of watching when it should be done, that he might then do a stroke of business. We must not too complacently congratulate ourselves on our superior privileges and more reverent habits. If those who wait upon the ministry of the word in our day were as simple as this man was, some requests savouring as much of the earth as his would be preferred at the close of the solemnity. If human breasts were transparent, and the thoughts that throng them patent to the public gaze, many heads would hang down. From this untimely and intensely earthly interruption the parable springs: thus the Lord makes the covetousness as well as the wrath of man to praise him, and restrains the remainder thereof. A fissure has been made in the mountain by some pent-up internal fire that forced its way out, and rent the rock in its outgoing; in that rent a tree may now be seen blooming and bearing fruit, while all the rest of the mountain-side is bare. “Out of the eater came forth meat; out of the strong came forth sweetness.” This word of Jesus that liveth and abideth for ever is a green and fruitful tree to-day; but it was the outbursting of a scathing, scorching covetousness that formed the cavity, and supplied the soil in which the tree might grow. “The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully,” &c. The ground was his own: no law, human or divine, challenged his right. The ground was eminently fruitful; the unconscious earth gave forth its riches, making no distinction between one who used it well and one who abused it. On the fields of the covetous man the rain fell and the sun shone: God makes his sun to shine on the evil and on the good. It is not here—it is not now that he judges the world in righteousness. He giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not. Mark now what effect the profusion of nature and the beneficence of God produced on the mind of this prosperous man. It set him a thinking: so far, so good. The expression in the original indicates a dialogue, and a dialogue is a discourse maintained between two. Dialogue is, indeed, the original word transferred bodily into the English language: ??????????? ?? ?????—he dialogued in himself: his soul and he held a conversation on the subject. This was a proper course. When riches increase it is right and necessary to hold a consultation with one’s own soul regarding them: in like manner, also, when riches take themselves wings and fly away, a conversation between the same parties should take place regarding their escape. He said, “What shall I do, I have no room where to bestow my fruits?” The process advances most hopefully: hitherto, no fault can be found with this man’s conduct. So great had been his prosperity that he was at a loss for storage. His cup was not only full, but running over, and so running waste; his solicitude now turned upon the question how he might profitably dispose of the surplus. Taking it for granted, as any sensible man in the circumstances would, that something should be done, he puts the question, “What shall I do?” A right question, addressed to the proper person, himself. No other person was so well qualified to answer it,—no other person understood the case, or possessed authority to determine it. Listen now to the answer: “He said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater,” &c. This is the turning-point, and on it the poor man turns aside into error. When God’s goodness was showered upon him in such abundance, he should have opened his treasures and permitted them to flow: for this end his riches had been bestowed upon him. When rain from heaven has filled a basin on the mountain-top, the reservoir overflows, and so sends down a stream to refresh the valley below: it is for similar purposes that God in his providential government fills the cup of those who stand on the high places of the earth—that they may distribute the blessing among those who occupy a lower place in the scale of prosperity. But self was this man’s pole star: he cared for himself, and for none besides. Self was his god; for to please himself was practically the chief end of his existence. He proposed to pull down his barns, and build a larger storehouse on the site, in order that he might be able to hoard his increasing treasures. The method that this ancient Jewish self-seeker adopted is rude and unskilful. We understand better the principles of finance, and enjoy more facilities for profitably investing our savings: but the two antagonist principles retain their respective characters under all changes of external circumstances—the principle of selfishness and the principle of benevolence; the one gathers in, the other spreads out. The method of reserving all for self, is as unsuccessful as it is unamiable: it cannot succeed. The man who should hoard in his own granary all the corn of Egypt, could not eat more of it than a poor labourer—probably not so much. It is only a very small portion of their wealth that the rich can spend directly on their own personal comfort and pleasure: the remainder becomes, according to the character of the possessor, either a burden which he is compelled to bear, or a store whence he daily draws the luxury of doing good. The dialogue proceeds: the man has something more to say to his soul: “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years,” &c. He counts on riches and time as if both were his own, and at his disposal. The big barn is not yet built; the golden grain that shall fill it has not yet been sown: and even although no accident should mar the material portion of the plan, how shall he secure the “many years” that constitute its essence on the other side? Does he keep Time under lock and key in his storehouse, that he may at pleasure draw as much as he requires? Many years! These years lie in the future,—that is, in the unseen eternity. They are at God’s right hand—they are not within your reach. Why do you permit an uncertain element to go into the foundation of your hope? There is, indeed, nothing strange here. It is according to law: those who are taught of the Spirit understand it well. The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not. “Thou hast goods laid up for many years! take thine ease, soul; eat, drink, and be merry!” What simplicity is here! The case is in degree extreme; the letters are written large that even indifferent scholars may be able to read the lesson; but the same spiritual malady, in some of its forms and degrees, is still epidemic in the world: those are least exposed to infection who have their treasures laid up at God’s right hand. It is a useful though a trite remark, that there is great stupidity in the proposal to lay up in a barn the portion of a soul. The soul, when it is hungry, cannot feed on musty grain. Material treasures cannot save a soul from death. The representation in the parable, however, is true to nature and fact: it would be a mistake to attribute to a miser a high appreciation of the dignity of man. Covetousness, in its more advanced stages, eats the pith out of the understanding, and leaves its victim almost fatuous. This man, in a dialogue with his own soul, had settled matters according to his own mind. The two had agreed together that they would have a royal time on earth, and a long one. The whole business was comfortably arranged. But at this stage another interlocutor, whom they had not invited, breaks in upon the colloquy: “God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then, whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?” This is the writing on the wall that puts an end to Belshazzar’s feast, and turns his mirth into terror. The terms run literally, “Unwise, this night they demand from thee thy soul.” Those ministering angels and providential laws, represented by the drawers of the net in another parable, to whom the Supreme Governor has committed the task of gathering gradually the generations of men from this sea of time, and casting them for judgment on the borders of eternity—those ministering spirits, and principles pervading nature, arrive in their course this night at your door, and send the message into the midst of the merry festival, The master of this house is wanted immediately; he must arise and go, in obedience to the summons; he can neither resist nor delay. He may weep, tremble, rage; but he must go, and go on the instant. It is not the whole man, but only his soul that is wanted: his body will be left behind. But the body, though left behind, cannot claim, cannot use the goods. When the soul is summoned over into eternity, it cannot carry the hoarded treasures with itself, and the body left behind has no further use for them. A grave to rest in while it returns to dust is all that the body needs or gets; and the deserted wealth must advertise for an owner—whose shall it be? Our Lord Jesus has spoken these piercing words, not for the sake of the pain which they are fitted to inflict. He is the Healer68 of diseased humanity, and when he makes an incision he means to cure. This sharp instrument, at whose glance we wince and shrink precisely in proportion to the measure of our malady, he wields for the purpose of piercing the deadly tumour, and so saving the threatened life. “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Luke 12:15); and the man who places his life therein, loses his life. That is not his life; and if he take that for his life, he is cheated: when a merchant has given all for what seemed a goodly pearl, he has not another fortune in reserve wherewith to begin anew, if that for which he paid all his possessions turns out to be a worthless toy of glass. Our time, our life—this is our fortune, on which we trade for the better world: if these be spent,—be thrown away for what is not life, then life is lost. Riches are truly enjoyed when they are wisely employed in doing good; but hoarded as the portion of their possessor, they burden him while they remain his, and rend him at the parting. By way of contrast, the Lord mentions another kind of treasure, which satisfies now, and lasts for ever. Those who are “rich toward God,” are rich indeed, and all besides are poor: and this wealth is, in Christ, offered free,—offered to all. Seeing that an evil spirit possessed this man, the Lord in mercy applied his word to cast the evil spirit out, and make room for his own indwelling. When the spirit of the world refuses to go out at his word, he sometimes interferes as Ruler in providence, and tears out the intruder by his mighty hand: the kingdom of heaven that is “within you” also suffereth violence; and He who is most mighty comes sometimes with merciful strokes to take it by force. “Even so: come, Lord Jesus.” FOOTNOTE 68. Der Heiland—the Healer—is the ordinary epithet applied to the Lord Jesus in the religious phraseology of the Germans. The term is suggestive and comforting.[68] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 22: 1.20. THE BARREN FIG-TREE ======================================================================== XX. THE BARREN FIG-TREE. “There were present at that season some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: and if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.”—Luke 13:1-9. It is obvious that the massacre of the Galileans by Pilate was mentioned on this occasion, not for its own sake, but for the purpose of supporting a doctrine which the narrators held and desired to establish. Their meaning is echoed distinctly in the answer of the Lord. These Pharisees seem to have found grist for their own mill in all events and all persons; everything was turned to the account of their own self-righteousness. Peculiar sufferings seemed to prove peculiar guilt. The logical consequence they did not express, and perhaps did not distinctly frame even in thought; but they solaced themselves with it, notwithstanding: they were not visited by such calamities, and therefore it might be presumed they were not chargeable with such sins. The Lord expressly denied the truth of their silent, hidden inference, and fortified his teaching by reference to another analogous case,—the sudden death of some men through the fall of a tower. Leaving untouched the general doctrine that mankind suffer for sin, he clearly and emphatically teaches, that particular calamities do not measure or prove the particular guilt of those who suffer in them. Otherwise, it is obvious that God’s government begins and ends in this life; there is neither the necessity nor the evidence of a judgment to come. He indicated to the Jews that the sudden and unexpected destruction of those sacrificing Galileans, was but an emblem of the sudden and unexpected destruction that would overtake themselves if they were not converted in time, and shielded in mercy from the judgment that sin entailed. To repeat, expand, and enforce this lesson the parable is spoken: “He spake also this parable,”—the similitude is given in addition to the more direct instruction which had gone before, and for the same purpose. “A certain man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard.” This was not a seedling that had sprung accidentally within the fences of the vineyard, and through carelessness been permitted to grow: the language is precise, and indicates that the fig tree had been planted within the vineyard by a deliberate act of the owner. The husbandman planted the fig-tree that he might enjoy its fruit; and in order more effectually to secure his object, he selected for the tree the most favourable position. It is obvious both from the structure and design of the parable that the position of the fig-tree was the best that it could possibly have obtained. In countries where the vine is cultivated, not by a few wealthy proprietors with a view to an export trade, but by each family on a small scale with a view to the food of the household, to plant some fruit trees of other kinds within the same enclosure is the rule rather than the exception. The vineyard is not the luxury of the few, but a common necessity of life with the many. It becomes the most cherished possession of the permanent rural population. Its aspect is sunward, its soil is good, its fences are in order. Within this favoured spot the owner is willing to make room for one or more fig-trees, for the sake of the fruit which in such favourable circumstances he expects them to bear. 69 When the tree had reached maturity the owner expected that it should bear fruit; but that year, the next, and a third it continued barren. Having waited a reasonable time, he gave orders that it should be destroyed; since it produced nothing, he desired to utilize in another way the portion of ground which it occupied. The dresser of the vineyard is a person who has the entire charge, subject to the general instructions of the proprietor. He has long occupied this position, and is acquainted with the fig-tree from its infancy; he knows it, as a shepherd in a similarly primitive state of society knows his sheep. He has formed for it a species of attachment; and a sentiment akin to compassion springs up in his heart, when he hears its sentence pronounced. “Woodman, spare that tree,” is a species of intercession thoroughly natural and human. The intercession of the dresser, however, is not sentiment merely; it is sentiment completely directed and controlled by just reason. He does not plead for the indefinite prolongation of a useless existence. He asks only another year of trial: he intends and promises to take in the interval the most energetic measures for stimulating the barren tree into fruitfulness. If under these appliances it bear fruit, he knows the owner will gladly permit it to retain its place; if not, he will abandon it to the fate which it deserves and invites. No peculiar difficulty attends the exposition of this parable: the main features of its meaning are so distinctly marked, that it is hardly possible to miss them. The lesson is easily read; and when read, it is unspeakably solemn and tender. God is the owner of the vineyard and the fig-tree within its walls. Abraham’s seed, natural and mystical, are the fig-tree; and the Mediator between God and man is the Dresser of the vineyard, the intercessor for the barren tree. These points are all so obvious that there can hardly be any difference of opinion regarding them. One point remains, demanding some explanation indeed, but presenting very little difficulty,—the vineyard. The fig-tree was planted within the vineyard, and what is the doctrine indicated by this circumstance in the material frame of the parable? The suggestion that the vineyard means the world, in the midst of which Israel were planted, although supported by some honoured names, does not merit much consideration. In no sense is there any likeness between the vineyard and the world. The essential circumstances involved in the fact that the fig-tree grew within the vineyard are, that in soil, south exposure, care and defence, it was placed in the best possible position for bearing fruit. The one fact that it was planted in the vineyard indicates, and was obviously intended to indicate, that the owner had done the best for his fig-tree. The meaning is precisely the same as that which is more fully expressed in the analogous parable: “Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard,” &c. (Isaiah 5:1-7). In the prophet’s allegory, while in general the vineyard represents the house of Israel, the vine trees more specifically represent the people, and south exposure, soil, care, and defence, represent the peculiar providence and grace of God displayed in their history and institutions. “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant” (Isaiah 5:7); the plants represent the men, and all that the proprietor did in their behalf represents the goodness of God to Israel in redeeming them from bondage and giving them his covenant. On the same principle in our parable the fig-tree represents the people who were favoured, and the advantages of the vineyard represent the privileges which the people enjoyed. The intimation that this barren fig-tree grew within a vineyard, is a short method of informing us that it enjoyed a position on a very fruitful hill, and was there fenced, watched, and watered with the most patient care. Now, obviously, none of these things, in their spiritual signification, were enjoyed by Israel simply in virtue of their existence in this world. The Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Persians were placed in the world too, and yet they enjoyed no peculiar privileges,—could not be compared to a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. This feature of the parable, so far from merely intimating that Israel were placed in the world, teaches us that they were separated from it; they were protected by special providences in their history, and cherished by the ordinances of grace. The place of the fig-tree within the vineyard indicates that the people to whom God looked in vain for the fruits of righteousness, were distinguished from the nations by the peculiar religious privileges which they enjoyed: the favourable circumstances of the tree aggravated the guilt of its barrenness. Three successive years the owner came seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and found none. In regard to the specified period of three years, I do not think we gain much by a particular reference to the well-known natural process by which the fig develops simultaneously the fruit of this season and the germs of the next; for we do not know in this case whether the germs were never formed, or fell off before they reached maturity. I am not able to perceive that the number three has any necessary reference to the peculiarities of the fig; I think the same number would have been employed for the purposes of the spiritual lesson, although a fruit tree of another species had been taken as an example. Three years was a reasonable period for the owner to wait, that he might neither on the one hand rashly cut down a tree that might soon have become profitable, nor on the other permit a hopelessly barren tree indefinitely to occupy a position which might otherwise be turned to good account. While the lesson of the parable bears upon the Church at large, both in ancient and modern times, it is to individuals that it can be most safely and most profitably applied. Most certainly we enjoy at this day the advantages set forth under the figure of the favoured fig-tree. Besides the life and faculties which we possess in common with others, we have spiritual privileges which are peculiar to ourselves. Civil and religious liberty, the Scriptures, the Sabbath, the Church, place us in the position of the fig-tree within the vineyard, while other nations are more or less like a tree rooted in the sand, or exposed on the wayside. The God in whom we live has conferred these advantages upon us, that we might bear fruit unto holiness; and if we remain barren, notwithstanding all his kindness, he will give forth the decree to cut us down. In some he finds bad fruit, and in some no fruit, and even in the best, little fruit. He has not cast out the unfruitful, but has tenderly spared them. As the fig-tree greedily drank in the riches of earth and air, and wasted all in leaves, so the unconverted in a land of Christian light enjoy God’s goodness and employ it in ministering only to their own pleasures. The line of justice, stretched to the utmost,—to the utmost and more, snaps asunder at last: the sentence goes forth, Cut the barren tree down, and cast it out. This is the doom which guilt deserves and justice proclaims: if the sinful were under a government of mere righteousness, it would be inexorably executed upon all. Here is the turning point: here an intercessor appears,—an Intercessor who cares for man and prevails with God. The first part of his plea is, Spare: he appeals for a respite of definite and limited duration,—one year: less would not afford an opportunity for amendment, and more would in the circumstances confer a bounty on idleness. All who have under the Gospel reached the age of understanding, and are still living without God in the world, enjoy the present respite in virtue of Christ’s compassionate intercession. If that Mediator had never taken up the case, or should now abandon it, the sentence already pronounced would descend like the laws of nature and inexorably execute itself. It is Christ’s intercession alone, that stands between the unpardoned on earth, and the punishment which is their due. 70 But the Intercessor does more than secure for the sinful a space for repentance: He who obtains the respite takes means to render it effectual. The two chief applications employed in husbandry to stimulate growth and fruitfulness are digging and manuring: these accordingly the dresser of the vineyard undertakes to apply in the interval to the barren fig-tree. I think something may be gained here by descending into the particulars. One of these agricultural operations imparts to the tree the elements of fruitfulness, and the other enables the tree to make these elements its own. Digging gives nothing to the tree; but it makes openings whereby gifts from another quarter may become practically available. The manure contains the food which the plant must receive, and assimilate, and convert into fruit; but if the hardened earth were not made loose by digging, the needed aliment would never reach its destination. Similar processes are applied in the spiritual culture: certain diggings take place around and among the roots of barren souls, as well as of barren fig-trees. Bereavements and trials of various kinds strike and rend; but these cannot by themselves renew and sanctify. They may give pain, but cannot impart fertility: the spirit much distressed may be as unfruitful as the spirits that are at ease in Zion. These rendings, however, are most precious as the means of opening a way whereby the elements of spiritual life conveyed by the word and the Spirit may reach their destination. The Lord who pours in the food for the sustenance of a soul, stirs that soul by his providence, so that grace may reach the root and be taken in. As the constituents of fruit, held in solution by air and water, cannot freely reach the plant whose roots lie under a long unbroken and indurated soil, so the grace of God contained in the preached Gospel is kept at bay by a carnal mind and a seared conscience. It is when afflictions rend the heart, as a ploughshare tears up the ground, that the elements of life long offered are at length received. It is thus that providence and grace conspire to achieve the purpose of God in the salvation of men. In this work mercy and judgment meet; and saved sinners, on earth and in heaven, put both together in their song of praise (Psalms 51:1.) But a feature appears in the close, well fitted to arouse those who have hitherto presumed upon impunity and neglected Christ. Even this kind Intercessor does not propose that the unfruitful tree should be allowed indefinitely to maintain its place without changing its character: He spontaneously concedes that if this trial prove ineffectual, justice must take its course; “After that thou shalt cut it down.” When Jesus lets a sinner go, who shall take him up? But there is love even in this last stern word. Love intercedes for a time of trial,—an opportunity of turning; and love, too, after securing sufficient opportunity, lets go its hold and leaves all hopeless beyond. It is the terrible concession, “thou shalt cut it down,” issuing from the Intercessor’s lips, that gives power to the invitation, “Now is the accepted time.” To warn me now that if I let the day of grace run waste, even Jesus on the morrow of the judgment will not plead for me any more, is surely the most effectual means of urging me to close with his offer to-day. FOOTNOTES 69. In the valley of the Rhine where the vine is cultivated as the material of a great manufacture, and the staple of a foreign trade, fruit trees of other species are not admitted within the vineyard; but at Botzen in the Tyrol, where the habits of society are more simple and primitive, I have repeatedly seen fig-trees growing within the lofty wall of the carefully cultured vineyard, rewarding the possessor for his care with abundant fruit.[69] 70. I cannot see any force in the argument by which Stier endeavours to show that the interceding vine-dresser represents primarily the human ministry in the Church.[70] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 23: 1.21. THE EXCUSES ======================================================================== XXI. THE EXCUSES. “Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: and sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. So that servant came, and showed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.”—Luke 14:16-24. A chain of connected lessons, consisting of several links, immediately precedes the parable in the evangelic history; but we may appreciate all the meaning of the parable without reference to the circumstances in which it sprung. In some cases the connection with the context is such that light from the history preceding is necessary to elucidate the meaning of the lesson that follows; but it is not so here. Although one thing suggests another in the conversation which the Evangelist records, the lesson ultimately given is independent of the things that suggested it. Touched by the solemn teaching of the Lord Jesus, one of the company, well-meaning, but dim and confused in his conceptions, made the remark, “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.” Observing that this man and the Pharisees around him were clinging to the notion that to be invited to enter the kingdom is the same thing as to be in it, he spoke the parable to point out the difference, and to show that the invitation will only aggravate the doom of those who refuse to comply with it. He intends to teach the Jews, and through them to teach us, that those who are near the kingdom may in the end come short of it—that those who stand high in spiritual privileges may be excluded—may exclude themselves from the kingdom of God. Both in the natural objects employed, and the spiritual lessons which they convey, there is, at some points, a marked resemblance between this parable and that of the royal marriage; but the two, though similar, are manifestly distinct. “A certain man made a great supper and bade many.” In this case it is not a king but a person in a private station who provides the feast; and the occasion of the rejoicing is not the marriage of the entertainer’s son. It is an ordinary example of hospitality exercised by an affluent citizen. Both here and in the analogous parable of the royal marriage it is assumed, as at least not altogether incongruous with custom, that invitations should be issued some days before, and that the invited guests should a second time be warned by a messenger to repair to the banqueting house when the time drew near. This summons to attend immediately was sent out at supper time. We know that the term ??????? was in ancient times employed generally to signify the principal meal, without reference to a particular period of the day; and, from the circumstances of this case, it plainly appears that the feast was a dinner at an early hour, and not a supper in our sense of the word. At the moment when the warning reached him, the man who had bought a field intended to go and see it, and the man who had bought five yoke of oxen intended on that same afternoon to try whether they would go well in harness; these excuses, although not sincere, must in the nature of the case have appeared plausible, and consequently the feast must have been ready at an early hour of the day. It is implied that these men had tacitly, or in some other well-understood way, accepted the first invitation. They gave no intimation that they intended to decline—they gave the provider of the feast reason to expect their presence. Probably they were well pleased to be invited; if they met any of their poorer neighbours in the interval, it is probable they would take occasion to show their own importance. These common people in the town, and these labourers in the country, are not admitted as we are into good society. When the moment arrived they were unwilling; or rather they were so intently occupied with their own affairs, that the attractions of the feast were not powerful enough to tear them away. “With one consent” they all made excuses. The servant saw them separately and received their answers. There is no reason to believe that they met together and framed a plan to insult their entertainer. They acted all on the same method, although they did not act in concert. The creatures were of one kind, and though they answered separately they answered similarly. Off one carnal instinct—??? ???? (??????)—the excuses were taken, and accordingly, although spoken by different persons, and moulded by different circumstances, they were all of the same type. The first had bought a field and must go to examine his bargain; the second had bought live stock for his farm and must see them tried immediately; the third had married a wife, and held himself absolved for the time from the ordinary rules of society. They are fair samples of the things that occupy and engross men’s hearts and lives. The servant, having no authority to act, simply reported the facts to his master. The master was angry, and immediately invited all the poor of the neighbourhood to the feast. When many of the most destitute had assembled, the householder, not satisfied as long as there was room at the table, and a poor man within reach to occupy it, sent out another message still more pressing, to sweep into the feast all the homeless wanderers that could be found, the very dregs and outcasts of society. Satisfied when his house at length was filled, the owner announced that none of those who had made light of his invitation should now be permitted to partake of the feast. We are now ready to examine more directly the spiritual meaning of the parable, and as the lesson is in the main coincident with that of the royal marriage in its earlier portion, a brief exposition will suffice. In the Gospel, God has provided a great feast. Israel, or his Church at any period, are a privileged class, and enjoy, through his sovereign goodness, a perpetual invitation,—a standing right. The charge which the parable brings against this privileged people is, that they were satisfied with the honour of being invited, and refused actually to comply with the invitation. They were content with their name and their outward privileges, and would not in their own hearts and lives obey the Gospel; clinging to the form of godliness, they peremptorily denied its power. Not they who are invited, but they who partake of the feast, are blessed. To get the first invitation will be not a blessing but an aggravation of guilt, if you despise the Giver and refuse his gifts. The last invited shall be first in ultimate position if they accept the invitation, and the first invited will be last and lowest if they refuse to comply: the condition of men, ultimately, turns not on pardon to them offered, but on pardon by them received. The servant obviously represents the ministry of the Gospel in every form and in all times. The message is addressed in the first instance to them “that were bidden.” The Gospel was not first proclaimed to the heathen: begin at Jerusalem was the Master’s command, and that command was fulfilled in spirit and letter by his servants. To the lost sheep of the House of Israel the Lord came in person, and to them the apostles addressed their Lord’s words at the beginning of their ministry. The history of the event in the Acts of the Apostles corresponds exactly with the prophetic delineation in this parable: it was when the Jews rejected the Gospel, that the messengers turned to the Gentiles. The invitation addressed to the favoured circle first is, “Come, for all things are now ready;” all preceding dispensations were a preparation for Christ. When the fulness of time had come, those who had been all along brought up within the lines of the privileged people, were invited to behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. This is repeated in the experience of every generation, and every individual, that grows up within the circle of Christian ordinances, as soon as the mind comprehends the message of mercy. As each attains maturity, he is informed that all things are now ready; he is invited and pressed to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ that he may be saved. To “make excuse,” does not here mean to invent an excuse, and falsely state, as a reason, that which is, in point of fact, not the motive of the act. To make excuse, both in the original Greek ???????????? and in the English translation, signifies simply to plead to be excused. The grounds on which the plea is urged, may in any case be true or false; but in this case, it is highly probable that the grounds stated were in themselves facts, and that they were, in part at least, the true grounds of refusal. Whether the first would have gone to the feast, if he had not at that time bought a property, we do not certainly know. A man who is intensely unwilling to go, when one reason fails, will find or make another; but in this case, the probability is, that anxiety to see his purchase was the real, or at least, a real obstacle. The same observation is applicable to the other two examples. But although we concede that the obstacles are real, we do not thereby help the case of those who neglect the Gospel; we must go one step deeper into the strata of deceit that are piled over each other in a human heart. A secret unwillingness to partake of the feast may induce the invited to time his purchases, so that he may have a good excuse at hand, or at least to abstain from effort to regulate the incidence of other cares, so as to leave a time of leisure for the great concern. Here in the highest matters, as elsewhere in lower, “Where there’s a will there’s a way.” If the desire were pure and true,—the desire to attend the Giver, and receive his unspeakable gift, the field may be inspected and the oxen proved early in the morning, or postponed till the following day. Without supposing a conscious falsehood representing that transactions which had no existence stood in the way, you have the evil in all its bulk and all its virulence, when the deceitful heart tries to persuade neighbours, and to persuade itself, that the emerging necessities of earthly business interfered with the waiting on Christ for the salvation of the soul. We might be put on our guard against this species of deceit in the highest matters, by observing how readily we glide into it, in things of smaller moment. Deceits of every shade, from the lie direct to the most attenuated equivocation, spring in the complicated intercourse of modern society, like weeds in a moist summer on a fallow field. Assuredly, unless our hand be diligent in digging out these bitter roots, we shall not grow rich in the graces of the Spirit. You are invited to a neighbour’s house: you don’t like to go, and you determine that you will not go. Forthwith your wits go to work to discover an excuse, and you soon find that which you seek for: you must travel on business that day; or some other excuse equally convenient and plausible occurs. You are invited to the house of another neighbour; difficulties unforeseen spring up; but being bent on accepting this invitation, you brush them all aside, and contrive to reserve the evening for the company that you love. There is much danger of staining the conscience in affairs like these. The Lord requires truth in the inward parts: watch and pray. But the difficulty of the path should not make any disciple sad: the effort to walk circumspectly, when honestly, prayerfully, lovingly made, is pleasant and healthful exercise to the spirit. Neither on the natural nor on the spiritual side does the expression, “with one consent,” intimate that the parties met and consulted together regarding the terms of their answers. As birds of the same species build their nests of the same material and the same form, without deliberation or concert; so the carnal mind, being in its own nature enmity against God, produces, wherever it operates, substantially the same fruits. In an alienated heart there is an intense unwillingness to be or to abide near to God; and there is, consequently, great fecundity in the conception and production of partition walls to shield the conscience from the glances of his holiness. The three species71 of thorns that grew up and choked the word in this instance, are fair specimens of their class—fair samples from the heap. These and such as these slay their thousands still in the Christian Church. At this point, however, it is of very great importance to observe that all the transactions which are represented in the parable as having come between a sinner and the Saviour, are in themselves lawful; to overlook this would be to miss half the value of the lesson. In point of fact acts and habits of positive vice keep many back from the Gospel; but it is not with these cases that the parable deals—it is not to these persons that the Lord is here addressing his reproof. Everything in its own place and time; the lesson here is not, “A drunkard shall not inherit the kingdom,” but “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” When the material of the temptation is lawful and honourable the temptation is less suspected, and the tempted is more easily thrown off his guard. The field and the oxen must be bought and used; the affections of the family must be cherished; but woe to us if we permit these seemly plants to grow so rank that the soul’s life shall be overlaid beneath their weight! The mission of the servants successively to the streets and lanes of the city, and to the highways and hedges, with the urgent invitation to poor labourers and homeless beggars, the maimed, the halt, and the blind, is a vivid picture, given in prophecy, of what the Gospel of Christ does and will do in the world till the end of time. When many, and these the most wretched, are brought in redeemed and sanctified, the Lord is not satisfied; yet there is room, and the servants must go forth again to new, and if possible, more needy objects, with new, and if possible, more urgent appeals. “Whosoever will, let him come.” It is thus that the numbers are filled up in the kingdom of God; but let it be well observed that to be in a spiritually wretched state does not confer a favour or imply safety. These men were saved, not because they were spiritually very low, but although they were spiritually very low: they were saved, although the chief of sinners, because Christ invited them, and they came at his call. The more moral, and more privileged, who were first invited, would have been as welcome and as safe if they had come. THE LOST SHEEP, THE LOST COIN, AND THE PRODIGAL SON. Luke 15:1-32. The three parables of this chapter, like the seven in Matthew 13:1-58, constitute a connected series. As soon as we begin to look into their contents and relations, it becomes obvious that they have been arranged according to a logical scheme, and that the group so framed is not fragmentary but complete. We cannot indeed fully comprehend the reciprocal relations of all until we shall have examined in detail the actual contents of each; and yet, on the other hand, a preliminary survey of the scheme as a whole may facilitate the subsequent examination of its parts. A glance towards the group from a point sufficiently distant to command the whole in one view may aid us afterwards in making a minuter inspection of details; and, reciprocally, the nearer inspection of individual features may throw back light on what shall have been left obscure in the general outline. The three parables, then, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son, refer all to the same subject and describe the same fact; they contemplate that fact, however, from opposite sides, and produce, accordingly, different pictures. It is important to notice at this stage that the three parables of this group do not constitute a consecutive series of three members. In the logical scheme the stem parts into two branches, and the first of these is afterwards subdivided also into two: the lost sheep and the lost coin contemplate the subject from the same side, and in the main present the same representation. 72 The repetition is profitable, for besides the intensity which reiteration imparts, the two parables, although generically the same, are specifically different. Together they represent one side of the fall and the redemption of man, while the other and opposite side is represented by the parable of the prodigal. But while the first two represent the same aspect of the great event, they represent it with specific varieties of feature. This will be more distinctly understood when we shall have examined the parables in detail. In further indicating the relations which subsist between the two portions of the group, I shall, for the sake of shortness, speak only of the lost sheep and the prodigal, including under the first term also its twin parable of the lost money. The sin and the salvation of man,—the fall and the rising again, considered as one whole, is here contemplated successively from two different, and in some respects opposite points of view. As the result, we obtain two very dissimilar pictures; yet the pictures are both true, and both represent the same object. In as far as the departure is concerned, the two representations are coincident: it is only in regard to the return that they are essentially diverse. The sheep and the prodigal alike depart of their own accord, the one in ignorance and the other in wilful wickedness. Man destroys himself; but the hand of God must intervene for his salvation. 73 The conversion of a sinner is, on the contrary, represented by two different pictures. You cannot convey a correct conception of a solid body by one picture on a flat surface. The globe itself, for example, cannot be exhibited on a map except as two distinct hemispheres. To the right you have a representation of one side, and to the left a representation of the other; the two pictures are different, and yet each, as far as it goes, is a true picture of the same globe. In like manner, the way of a sinner’s return to God is too great and deep for being fully set forth in one similitude. In particular its aspect towards God and its aspect towards men are so diverse that both cannot be represented by one figure. On one side the Redeemer goes spontaneously forth to seek and bear back again the lost; on the other side the wanderer repents, arises, and returns. Here, accordingly, you see the shepherd following the strayed sheep, and bringing it back on his shoulders to the fold; and there you see the weary prodigal first coming to himself, and then coming to his Father. The first picture shows the sovereign self-moving love of God our Saviour; and the second shows the beginning, the progress, and the result of repentance in a sinner’s heart. These two similitudes represent one transaction: first, you are permitted to look upon it from above, and you behold the working of divine compassion; next, you are permitted to look upon it from below, and you behold the struggle of conviction in a sinner’s conscience,—the spontaneous return of a repenting man. Here is revealed the sovereign outgoing of divine power; and there in consequence appears a willing people (Psalms 110:3). It is not that one sinner is brought back by Christ, and another returns of his own accord: both features are present in every example. Of every one who, from this fallen world, shall have entered the eternal rest, it may be said, and will be said in the songs of heaven, both that the Lord his Redeemer, of His own mere mercy, saved him, and that he spontaneously came back to his Father’s bosom and his Father’s house. 74 It is proper to notice here also the immediate occasion in our Lord’s history whence these instructions sprung, as it belongs not particularly to the first parable, but generally to the whole group. This spark of heavenly light, like many others of similar beauty, has been struck off for us by a rude blow which the Jewish leaders aimed against the character and authority of Jesus. The publicans and sinners of the place,—the home-heathen of the day,—the people whether rich or poor, who had neither the power of religion in their hearts nor the profession of it on their lips,—came out in great numbers to hear this new prophet, Jesus of Nazareth. The word was new: “never man spake like this man” to these poor outcasts before. If at any time they sauntered into the synagogue, and hovered for a few moments on the outskirts of the congregation, the stray words that reached their ears from the desk of the presiding scribe, were harsh supercilious denunciations of themselves and their class. Hitherto their hearts had been like clay, and the Pharisaic teaching, as far as it had reached them, had been like fire: the clay in this furnace grew aye the harder. But now a new sound from the lips of a public teacher saluted their ears. They could not throw these words back in the speaker’s face, if they would; and they would not if they could. They permitted themselves to be taken, and led. To them Jesus speaks “with authority, and not as the scribes.” This word had power; and its power lay in its tenderness: it went sheer through their stony hearts, and made them flow down like water. Nor did he gain favour among unholy men by making their sins seem lighter than the scribes represented them to be: he made them heavier. He did not convey to the profane and worldly the conception that their sins were easily forgiven; but he fixed in their hearts the impression that God is a great forgiver. Touched and won by this unwonted tenderness, they came in clouds to sit at Jesus’ feet. The Pharisees counted their presence a blemish in the reputation of the teacher. As for them, they had always so spoken as to keep people of that sort effectually at a distance: the doctrine, they think, that brings them round the preacher cannot be sound. “This man,” they said, “receiveth sinners and eateth with them;” and they said no more, for they imagined that Jesus was convicted and condemned by the fact. The occasion of the parables becomes in a great measure the key to their meaning. These men, the publicans and sinners, are Abraham’s seed, and consequently, even according to the showing of the Pharisees themselves, lost sheep,—prodigal sons; and the Redeemer’s errand from heaven to earth is to seek and find and bring back such as these to the Father’s fold. If they had not strayed, it would not have been necessary that the shepherd should follow them in their wandering, and bear them home: if they had not in a far country spent their substance in riotous living, it would not have been necessary that they should return repenting to their Father. FOOTNOTES 71. I do not set much value on the elaborate and minute discussions which some expositors have raised regarding the distinct and specific significance of the several excuses. It is enough for me that they point to the possessions and the pleasures of life,—the possessions being distinguished into two kinds, the field and oxen, corresponding to the farm and the merchandise of the cognate parable.[71] 72. While the evidence that the main division is twofold, not threefold, lies chiefly in the nature of the several representations, the minute formulae by which the transitions of the narrative are effected, point in the same direction. The parable of the lost sheep is introduced by the phrase, “And he spake this parable,” (???? ?? ??? ?????????), and that of the prodigal by the corresponding, “And he said,” (???? ??). These two are thus balanced over against each other; but the only link between the lost sheep and the lost silver is, Either (?), indicating that the second does not introduce a new subject, but gives another illustration of that which was already expressed in the first.[72] 73. Bengel, in his usual pointed way, expresses the specific varieties which characterize the three successive views of men’s sin, as stupidity, want of self-consciousness, and the positive choice of evil by an intelligent but depraved being. “Ovis, drachma, filius perditus: peccator stupidus, sui plane nescius, sciens et voluntarius.”[73] 74. It is interesting to notice that the same twin doctrines which the Master here exhibited in parables were afterwards taught in the same relation by his servants. Take two examples, one a brief bold allegory, and the other an autobiographic fragment, both from the fervent heart and through the fruitful pen of the apostle Paul. (1.) “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his; and, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Timothy 2:19). The engraving on the upper side of this seal represents God’s part in a sinner’s salvation, and corresponds to the shepherd’s generous act; the engraving on its under side represents man’s part, and corresponds to the repenting and returning of the prodigal. (2.) “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect; but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus” (Php 3:12). The obscurity which adheres to the sentence as it stands in the English Bible is removed when, instead of “that for which,” you substitute the more direct and literal rendering, “for that,” meaning “because” or “inasmuch as.” The sentence should be read, “I follow after, if that I may (if so be that I may) apprehend, inasmuch as I also have been apprehended by, Christ Jesus,” (????? ?? ?? ??? ????????, ?? ? ??? ?????????? ??? ??? ??????? ?????). The apostle intends to state two connected facts; and to intimate that the one is the cause of the other. He is striving to grasp the Saviour; and what impels or encourages him to make the effort? His own experience that his Saviour has already in sovereign love laid hold of him. Christ has already come to this sinful man, in loving saving power, as the good shepherd came to the lost sheep; therefore the sinful man will arise and go to the Father like the repenting prodigal. The consciousness that like the lost sheep he has been grasped in the Redeemer’s arms does not induce him to abstain from effort as unnecessary; on the contrary, by inspiring hope, it nerves his arm and spurs him on. Because he feels that the Shepherd is bearing him, therefore he will arise and go.[74] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 24: 1.22. THE LOST SHEEP ======================================================================== XXII. THE LOST SHEEP. “Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. And he spake this parable unto them, saying, What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.”—Luke 15:1-7. Although by another saying of the Lord, it is rendered certain that hired, and even in a sinister sense “hireling,” shepherds were known at the time in the country, the presumption that the flock which this shepherd tended was his own property is favoured both by the specific phraseology employed in the narrative, and the special circumstances of this particular case. The size of this flock, consisting of only a hundred sheep, points rather to the entire wealth of a comparatively poor man, than to the stock of a territorial magnate. The conduct of the shepherd, moreover, is precisely the reverse of that which is elsewhere ascribed to the “hireling whose own the sheep are not.” The salient feature of the man’s character, as it is represented in the parable, constitutes a specific proof of his ownership,—“he careth for the sheep,” and that too with a peculiar and self-sacrificing tenderness. 75 We assume, therefore, according to the terms of the narrative in their literal acceptation, that this is a man “having an hundred sheep,”—that the sheep are his own. He is feeding them on pasture land far from cultivated fields and human dwellings. Hills impervious to the plough, and patches of vegetation interspersed through rugged stony tracts, have in all countries and ages constituted the appropriate pasture for flocks of sheep. These are indicated here by one word, “the wilderness.” The term is obviously used not in a strict but in a free popular sense; it means simply the region of pasturage, consisting generally of hills and moors, not suitable for being ploughed and sown. A flock of a hundred sheep, although small, is yet sufficiently considerable to render it impossible for the shepherd to detect the absence of one by merely looking to them in the lump and from a distance; he must have minutely inspected them ere he discovered that one was amissing. Knowing them all individually, he knows the one that has strayed; he loves them all as his children, and grieves when one goes out of sight. It was no mark of carelessness in the shepherd, as some have erroneously imagined, to leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness while he went to seek the one that was lost. The main body of the flock was left in its own proper place, where it is often left from morning till night by the most careful shepherd, even when he is not employed on the urgent duty of recovering wanderers. The shepherd knows the nature of the country in which the sheep is straying; and also the nature of the sheep that is straying there. He knows the roughness of the mountain passes, and the silliness of the solitary truant sheep; he divines accordingly what track it will take. He conjectures beforehand, with a considerable measure of accuracy, the pit in which it will be found lying, or the thicket in which it will be seen struggling. He follows and finds the fugitive. Wearied by its journey, and perhaps wounded by its falls, the sheep, when discovered, cannot return to the fold even under the shepherd’s guidance; he takes it on his shoulders and bears the burden home. He does not upbraid it for its straying; he does not complain of its weight. He is glad that he has gotten his own again, after it was “ready to perish.” Happy while he bears it homeward, and happy when he has gotten it home, he invites all his neighbours to share in his joy. Such is the simple and transparent outline of this ancient eastern pastoral scene; let us now endeavour to see in the symbol those lessons which it at once veils and reveals. The parable is spoken expressly for the purpose of determining and manifesting the character and work of the Son in the salvation of sinful men; it declares the design, the method, and the terms of the incarnate Redeemer in his intercourse with the creatures whom he came to save. But in the fact of accomplishing this its immediate object, it strikes also a chord which runs through the centre—constitutes, as it were, the medulla of the divine government in all places and all times. The parable spoken in order to afford a glance into the heart of Jesus, incidentally at the same time sketches the outline of God’s universal rule; as in drawing the figure of a branch you necessarily exhibit, in its main features and proportions, an image of the tree. This wider subject, certainly and accurately outlined, although incidentally introduced, demands some notice at our hand. Ever since scientific observation discovered the true system of the material universe, and so, as it were, changed those twinkling sparks of light into central suns, the rulers of tributary worlds, philosophy apart from faith has been, more or less articulately, scattering the question, at once a fruit and a seed of unbelief, How could the Creator of so vast a universe bestow so much of his care on one small spot? Some have been disposed to say, and perhaps more have been disposed to think, with fear or joy according to their predilection, that modern discovery is gradually putting the Bible out of date. A feeling, if not a judgment, has in some quarters arisen, that in view of the vastness of creation, the Scriptures ascribe to this globe and its concerns a share of its Maker’s interest disproportionately great. This phase of unbelief is refuted both by the necessary attributes of God and by the written revelation of his will. What relation, capable of being appreciated or calculated, subsists between material bulk and moral character? The question between great and small is totally distinct from the question between good and evil. Number and extension cannot exercise or illustrate the moral character either of God or of man. We should ourselves despise the mischievous caprice which should give to the biggest man in the city the honours that are due to the best. Right and wrong are matters that move on other lines and at higher levels than great and small, before both human tribunals and divine. There is, perhaps, as much reason for saying that this earth is too large, as for saying that it is too small, for being the scene of God’s greatest work. The telescope has opened a long receding vista of wonders, where the observer is lost in the abyss of distance and magnitude; the microscope has opened another long receding vista of wonders, where the observer is lost in the abyss of nearness and minuteness equally beyond his reach. Between the great and the small, who shall determine and prescribe the centre-point equidistant from both extremes, which the Infinite ought to have chosen as a theatre for the display of His greatest glory? In the divine government generally, as well as in revealed religion particularly, the aim is not to choose the widest stage, but on any stage that may be chosen to execute the Creator’s purpose, and achieve the creature’s good. A battle is fought, an enemy crushed, and a kingdom won on some remote and barren moor: no man suggests, by way of challenging the authenticity of the record, that a conflict waged between hosts so powerful, and involving interests so momentous, could not have taken place on an insignificant spot, while the continent contained many larger and more fertile plains: neither can the loss incurred by the sin of men, and the gain gotten through the redemption of Christ, be measured by the size of the world in which the events emerged. It is enough that here the first Adam fell and the second Adam triumphed;—that here evil overcame good, and good in turn overcame evil. There was room on this earth for Eden and for Calvary; this globe supplies the fulcrum whereon all God’s government leans. The Redeemer came not to the largest world, but to the lost world: “even so, Father.” “He took not on him the nature of angels.” In aggregate numbers they may, for aught we know, be the ninety and nine, while we represent the one that strayed; but though all these shining stars were peopled worlds, and all their inhabitants angels who kept their first estate, he will leave them in their places in the blue heaven afar, like sheep in the wide moorland, and go forth in search of this one shooting star, to arrest and bring it back. It is his joy to restore it to law and light again. Rejoice with great joy, O inhabitants of the earth! the Saviour Almighty has passed other worlds and other beings, some of whom do not need, and some of whom do not get, salvation,—has passed them and come to us. He has taken hold of the seed of Abraham, that we who partake of Abraham’s sinful flesh may partake also of Abraham’s saving faith. There is much in this mystery which we do not know, and in our present state could not comprehend; but we know the one thing needful regarding it,—that “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.”76 Having noticed cursorily that grand characteristic feature of God’s universal government to which the principle of the parable is applicable, we proceed now to examine more particularly the recovery of lost men by the Lord our Redeemer, to which the lesson of the parable is, in point of fact, specifically applied. 1. The shepherd misses one when it has strayed from the flock. The Redeemer’s knowledge is infinite; He looks not only over the multitude generally, but into each individual. When I stand on a hillock at the edge of a broad meadow, and look across the sward, it may be said in a general way that I look on all the grass of that field; but the sun in the sky looks on it after another fashion,—shines on every down-spike that protrudes from every blade. It is thus that the Good Shepherd knows the flock. Knowing all, he misses any one that wanders. He missed a world when it fell, although his worlds lie scattered like grains of golden dust on the blue field of heaven,—the open infinite. When the light of moral life went out in one of his worlds, he missed its wonted shining in the aggregate of glory that surrounds his throne. With equal perfectness of knowledge he misses one human being who has been formed by his hand, but fails to hang by faith upon his love. The Bible speaks of falling “into the hands of the living God,” and calls it “a fearful thing” (Hebrews 10:31); but an equally fearful thing happened before it,—we fell out of the bosom of the living God. He felt, so to speak, the want of our weight when we fell, and said, “Save from going down to the pit.” But the omniscience of the Saviour does not stop when it passes through the multitude, and reaches the individual man; it penetrates the veils that effectually screen us from each other, and so knows the thoughts which congregate like clouds within a human heart, that he misses every one that is not subject to his will. When the mighty volume is coursing along its channel towards the ocean, he marks every drop that leaps aside in spray. It is a solemn thought, and to the reconciled a gladsome one, that, as the shepherd observed when one sheep left the fold, the Shepherd of Israel, who slumbers not nor sleeps, detects every wandering soul, and in that soul every wandering thought. The Physician’s thorough knowledge of the ailment lies at the very foundation of the patient’s hope. 2. The shepherd cared for the lost sheep; although he possessed ninety and nine, he was not content to let a unit go. A species of personal affection and the ordinary interest of property, combine to cause grief when the sheep is lost, and to contribute the motive for setting off in search of the wanderer. In attempting to apply the lesson at this point, we very soon go beyond our depth. Our own weakness warns us not to attempt too much; but the condescending kindness of the Lord, in speaking these parables, encourages us to enter into the mystery of redeeming love on this side as far as our line can reach. In that inscrutable love which induced the Owner of man to become his saviour when he fell, there must be something corresponding to both of the ingredients which constituted the shepherd’s grief. There was something corresponding—with such correspondence as may exist between the divine and the human—to the personal affection, and something to the loss of property. When we think of the Redeemer’s plan and work as wholly apart from self-interest, and undertaken simply for the benefit of the fallen race, we form a conception of redemption true as far as it goes, but the conception is not complete. The object which we, from our view-point, strive to measure, has another and opposite side. For his own sake as well as for ours, the Redeemer undertook and accomplished his work. 77 “For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame.” When he wept over Jerusalem, mere pity for the lost was not the sole fountain of his tears. Those tears, like some great rivers of the globe, were supplied from two sources lying in opposite directions. As the possession of the ransomed when they are brought back affords the Redeemer joy, the want of the lost, while they are distant, must cause in his heart a corresponding and equivalent grief. It is true, that if we too strictly apply to the divine procedure the analogy of human affairs at this point we shall fatally dilute our conception of the generosity displayed in the Gospel; but on the other hand, if do not apply this analogy at all, we shall inevitably permit some of our sweetest consolation to slip from our grasp. To be merely pitied does not go so kindly or so powerfully about our hearts as to be loved; Christ’s regard for fallen men is not merely the compassion of one who is loftily independent. When an infant is lost in a forest, and all the neighbours have, at the mother’s call, gone out in search of the wanderer, it would be a miserably inadequate conception of that mother’s emotion to think of it as pity for the sufferings of the child: her own suffering for want of her child is greater than the child’s for want of his mother; and by the express testimony of Scripture, we learn that the Saviour’s remembrance of his people is analogous to the mother’s remembrance of her child. If you press the likeness too far, you destroy the essential character of redemption, by representing it as a self-pleasing on the part of the Redeemer; but if you take away the likeness altogether, you leave me sheltered, indeed, under an Almighty arm, but not permitted to lie on a loving breast. My joy in Christ’s salvation is tenfold increased, when, after being permitted to think that he is mine, I am also permitted to think that I am his. If it did not please him to get me back, my pleasure would be small in being coldly allowed to return. No: the longing of Christ to get the wanderer into his bosom again, for the satisfaction of his own soul, is the sweetest ingredient in the cup of a returning penitent’s joy. 78 3. The shepherd left the ninety and nine for the sake of the one that had wandered. I find no difficulty in the interpretation of the parable here. The doctrinal difficulty which some have met at this point, has been imported into the field by a mistake in regard to the material scene. The leaving of the ninety and nine in the wilderness, while the shepherd went out to seek the strayed sheep, implied no dereliction of the shepherd’s duty,—no injury to the body of the flock. In this transaction neither kindness nor unkindness was manifested towards those that remained on the pasture;—it had no bearing upon them at all. Nor is it necessary, at this stage, to determine who are represented by the ninety and nine. Be they the unfallen spirits, or the righteous in the abstract, or those who, in ignorance of God’s law, count themselves righteous, the parable is constructed for the purpose of teaching us that the mission of Christ has for its special object, not the good, but the evil. As the specific effort of the shepherd, which is recorded in this story, had respect not to the flock that remained on the pasture, but to the one sheep that had gone away, the specific effort of the Son of God, in his incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection, has respect, not to the worthy, but the unworthy. Thus the Pharisees were entirely at fault in regard to the first principle of the Gospel. They assumed that, because the publicans and sinners had gone astray, Jesus, if he were the true Messiah, would not have any dealings with them; without either conceding or expressly denying their assumption of superior righteousness—that being precisely the point on which he determined that then and there he would give no judgment—he intimates that the strayed sheep is the peculiar object of his care, and that because it is the strayed sheep, and he is the Good Shepherd;—he intimates, taking the Pharisees at their own word, that the sinners are the objects whom a Saviour should follow, and seek, and find, precisely because they are sinners. It concerns us more to know who are represented by the strayed sheep, than to know who are represented by the sheep that did not stray, for to the former class, and not to the latter, we most certainly belong. 4. How does the shepherd act when he overtakes the wanderer? He does not punish it—he does not even upbraid it for straying; his anxiety and effort are concentrated on one point—to get it home again. Would that guilty suspicious hearts could see through this glass the loving heart of Jesus, as he has himself presented it to their view! He takes no pleasure in the death of them that die. His ministry in general, and this lesson in particular, proclaim that Christ’s errand into the world is to win the rebellious back by love. You may suppose the truant sheep to have dreaded punishment when it was overtaken by the injured shepherd; but his look and his act when he came must have immediately dispelled the helpless creature’s fears. The Lord has held up this picture before us that in it we may behold his love, and that the sight of his love may at length discharge from our hearts their inborn obdurate suspiciousness. 5. The shepherd lays the sheep upon his shoulders. This feature of the picture affords no ground for the doctrine which has sometimes been founded on it, that the Saviour is burdened with the sinners whom he saves. His suffering lies in another direction, and is not in any form represented here. He weeps when the sinful remain distant and refuse to throw their weight on him; he never complains of having too much of this work in hand. The parable here points to his power and victory, not to his pain and weariness. The representation that the shepherd bore the strayed sheep home upon his shoulder, instead of going before and calling on it to follow, is significant in respect both to this parable and its counterpart and complement, the Prodigal Son. In as far as the saving of the lost is portrayed in this similitude, the work is done by the Saviour alone. First and last the sinner does nothing but destroy himself: all the saving work is done for him, none of it by him. This is one side of salvation, and it is the only side that is represented here. It seems hard to conceive how any converted man can be troubled by doubt or difficulty concerning this doctrine. Every one whom Christ has sought and found, and borne to the fold, feels and confesses that, if the Shepherd had not come to the sheep, the sheep would not have come to the Shepherd. If any wanderer still hesitates on the question, Who brought him home? it is time that he should begin to entertain another question, Whether he has yet been brought home at all? The acknowledgment of this fundamental truth, that salvation is begun, carried on, and completed by the Saviour alone, does not, of course, come into collision with another fundamental truth, which expatiates on another sphere, and is represented in another parable, that except the sinful do themselves repent, and come to the Father, they shall perish in their sins. 6. Far from being oppressed by the burden of his strayed sheep, the shepherd rejoices when he feels its weight upon his shoulder. His joy begins not when the work is over, but when the work begins. While the lost one is on his shoulder, and because it is on his shoulder, the shepherd is glad. The doctrinal equivalent of this feature is one of the clearest of revealed truths, and yet it is one of the last that a human heart is willing to receive. The work of saving, far from being done with a grudge in order to keep a covenant, is a present delight to the Saviour. This lesson falls on human minds like a legend written by the finger on dewy glass, which disappears when the sun grows hot; but when it is graven on the heart as by the Spirit of the living God, it is unspeakably precious. When I habitually realize not only that Christ will keep his word in receiving sinners, but that he has greater delight in bearing my weight than I can ever have in casting it on him, I shall trust fully and trust always. There is great power in this truth, and great weakness in the want of it. Let even an experienced Christian analyze carefully the working of his own heart, not in the act of backsliding towards the world, but in its best efforts to follow the Lord, and he will discover among the lower folds of his experience a persistent suspicion that the great draft which a sinner makes on the Saviour’s mercy will, though honoured, be honoured with a grudge because of its greatness. Look on the simple picture of his love which Jesus has in this parable presented—look on the words, “He layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing,”—look till you grieve for your own distrust, and the distrust melt in that grief away. 7. The shepherd on reaching home not only himself rejoiced, but invited his neighbours to rejoice with him over his success. To this last intimation of the parable the Lord immediately adds an express exposition of its meaning,—Luke 15:7, “I say unto you that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance.” In the parallel explanation appended to the next parable (Luke 15:10), an additional feature is expressed, “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth;” both obviously refer to the same fact, and should be taken together as one announcement. The kingdom of God recognises two successive homecomings in the history of every citizen. The exile discovered and borne back by the discriminating mercy of the Redeemer, comes home when through the regeneration he enters a state of grace; and he comes home under the leading of the same chief, when in the resurrection he enters a state of perfect glory. It is instructive and comforting to observe that, while both homecomings are joyful, it is of the first that the Lord expressly speaks when he intimates that over it himself and the hosts of heaven will rejoice. It is over the repentance of a sinner that a jubilee is held in heaven; they do not wait till the ransomed one shall appear in bodily presence near the great white throne. There is no need: the entrance into grace ensures the entrance into glory. The children will all get home. No slip can come between the cup of the Redeemer’s glad anticipation when a sinner is renewed, and the lip of his complete satisfaction when he welcomes the ransomed at length into the mansions of the Father’s house. In this brief but lucid exposition of his own similitude which the Lord gave at the moment, and the evangelist has preserved for us, something is taught first regarding the companions, and second regarding the measure of his joy. Both present points of interest which require and will repay more particular attention. (1.) In regard to the participation of the angels, in the Redeemer’s joy over the salvation of the lost, the intimations bear that there is joy “in heaven,” and “in the presence of the angels of God.” It seems unaccountably to those who look carefully into the terms of the record, to be universally assumed from these expressions that the angels, in the exercise of their inherent faculties, are in some way cognisant of conversion as it proceeds in human souls upon the earth, and that they rejoice accordingly when another heart melts, and another rebel submits to God. Capital has even been made out of this passage by Romanists in support of prayers addressed to unseen created spirits. All this proceeds upon an exegesis, which is, I believe, demonstrably erroneous. In order to settle all questions that can arise here, nothing more is necessary than a simple straight-forward examination of the terms. The rejoicing takes place “in heaven,” and “in presence of the angels” (??????? ??? ???????). This is not the form of expression that would naturally be employed to intimate that the angels rejoiced. Expressly it is written, not that they rejoice, but that there is joy in their presence,—before their faces. The question then comes up, Who rejoices there? In as far as the terms of the exposition go, the question is not expressly decided; but its decision can be easily and certainly gathered from the context. Both in the case of the lost sheep and in that of the lost money the comparison is introduced by the term “likewise” (????.) In this manner there is joy before the angels; in what manner? Obviously in the manner of the rejoicing which took place after the strayed sheep was brought home, and the piece of money found. He who sought and found the lost, rejoiced over his gain; but, not contented therewith, he told his neighbours about his happiness and its cause; he manifested his joy in their presence, and invited them to rejoice in sympathy with himself. It is after this manner that joy in heaven over a repenting sinner begins and spreads. We are not obliged,—we are not permitted to guess who the rejoicers are, or how they came by the news that gladdens them. The shepherd himself, and himself alone, knows that the strayed sheep is safe in the fold again, for he has borne it back on his shoulder: his neighbours did not know the fact until he told them, and invited them to participate in his joy. It is expressly in this manner, and none other, that there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. The angels do not become aware of the fact by a species of subordinate omniscience. He who saved the sinner knows that the sinner is saved; rejoicing in the fact, he makes it known to his attendants, and invites them to share in his joy. The gladness that thrills in the angels is a secondary thing, caught by sympathy from that which glows in the heart and beams in the countenance of Jesus. The Son of God the Saviour having won a sinner by the power of his love, and brought the wanderer back forgiven and renewed, rejoices on his throne over this fruit of his soul’s travail. Ere the ransomed sinner has risen from his knees or wiped his tears away;—ere he has had time to sing a hymn or sit down at the communion table on earth, the Lord in heaven, feeling life flowing from himself into that living soul, rejoices already in the fact, and calls upon his friends, whether the spirits of just men or angels unfallen, or both in concert, to participate in his joy. The Apocalyptic witness saw no sun in the new heaven; “the Lamb is the light thereof:” from that sun the light streams down on the sea of upturned faces that surround the throne, and the sympathetic gladness that sparkles in the members is a reflection from the gladness that first glows in the Head, as a separate sun glances on the crest of every wavelet, when the breeze is gentle and the sky is bright. (2.) The intimation that there is greater joy in heaven over the return of a single wanderer than over ninety and nine who never strayed, presents indeed a difficulty; but here, as in many other similar cases, the difficulty lies more in the way of the scientific expositor, whose task is to express the meaning in the form of logical definitions than in the way of the simple reader of the Bible, who desires to sit at the feet of Jesus, and learn the one thing needful from his lips. In this, as in many other portions of Scripture, a hungry labourer may live upon the bread, while it may baffle a philosopher to analyze its constituents, and expound its nutritive qualities. A devout reader may get the meaning of the parable in power upon his heart, while the logical interpreter expends much profitless labour in the dissection of a dead letter. Who are the just persons who need no repentance? The suggestion79 that they are the members of the Old Testament Church, who really possessed the righteousness of the Law, although they had not attained the righteousness of the Gospel, creates a greater difficulty than that which it proposes to remove. There is not any such essential difference between the righteousness of Abraham, who looked unto Jesus coming, and the righteousness of Paul, who looked unto Jesus come. The true solution I apprehend to be that in the mind of the Lord this declaration had a double reference. It expressed an absolute and universal truth, known to himself and to his enlightened disciples; and also, at the same time, took the Pharisees on their own terms, condemning them out of their own mouth. The parable was spoken expressly to the Pharisees, and spoken specifically in answer to their objection, “This man receiveth sinners.” They meant to intimate that it became the Messiah to shun the evil and associate only with the good. From their own view-point he exposes their mistake; even granting their assumption that themselves were the righteous, their sentence was erroneous. According to the principles of human nature, and the ordinary practice of men, they might have perceived that the chief care of the shepherd must be bestowed on the sheep that has gone astray, and his greatest joy be experienced when it has been discovered and restored. The Saviour’s delight over a publican’s return to piety should be more vivid than his joy over a Pharisee, who, by the supposition, has been pious all his days. Had the Lord then and there intimated to the Pharisees that they were deceiving themselves in regard to justifying righteousness,—that they needed repentance as much as the publicans, his word would have been true, but that truth, he perceived, was not suitable in the circumstances. It pleased him at this time not to fling a sharp reproof in their faces, but rather to drop a living seed gently into their ears, that it might find its way in secret to some broken place in their hearts. A certain portion of the truth he communicated to them; more they would not have received. The whole truth on this subject, if it had been bluntly declared, would have driven them away in disgust. Elsewhere the Master expresses his mind very clearly, “Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven;” but it pleased him on this occasion to teach another lesson, namely, that even although they were as righteous as they deemed themselves to be, the recovery of a lost one would afford the Redeemer a greater joy than the retention of the virtuous. Beyond expression precious is the doctrine unequivocally taught here that so far from receiving prodigals with a grudge, the Saviour experiences a peculiar delight when a sinner listens to his voice and accepts pardon at his hand. This doctrine we learn is divine; we know it is also human: almost every family can supply an example of the familiar principle that the mother loves most fondly the child who has cost her most in suffering and care. FOOTNOTES 75. In the nature of the case a great and incurable defect adheres to the method of employing a hired servant to keep a flock of sheep, without giving him a material interest in the prosperity of his charge. Such is the nature of the occupation, and such its sphere, that the servant is necessarily far and long removed from the master’s inspection, and if suspicion should arise, proof of unfaithfulness could hardly be brought home to the accused. It is the interest of the owner to contrive some method of linking the profit of the shepherd to the prosperity of the flock. It was by attempting to accomplish this object by a defective plan, that Laban afforded to Jacob the opportunity of prosecuting his subtle policy. While conversing lately with some shepherds on the Scottish Cheviots, I learned that masters and servants in that district arrange the matter easily to their mutual profit and satisfaction. The wages of the shepherd are not paid in money; a certain number of the sheep, between forty and fifty according to circumstances, are his own property, and their produce constitutes his hire. Thus his own interest is an ever present motive pressing the man to do his best for the flock, and so to do his best for the master.[75] 76. “Should not that great and glorious Shepherd, whose millions of bright sheep fill the universe, leave these millions in order to seek the slightest, poorest, most infirm of those who need his care, and without that care would utterly perish; does not his boundless love require him to go after it?” Stier, after quoting this sentence in reference to the parable from Kurz, Bibel und Astronomie, remarks, “This is a thought quite permissible in itself, but as an exposition of what Eternal Wisdom has spoken, it is not valid.” Here, however, the learned critic has incorrectly apprehended the state of the question. A secondary relation is as real in its own place as a primary. It is quite true that the parable, under the picture of the one sheep that strayed and the ninety-nine that remained on the pasture, points directly and immediately to two distinct classes of human kind; but it brings up as legitimately, although more remotely, the distinction, governed by the same principle, which has in God’s universal sovereignty been made between the human race on the one hand, and angelic spirits on the other. One expositor may legitimately confine his view to the more immediate and narrower sphere; but another may as legitimately take a wider range, provided he make and mark the necessary distinctions as he proceeds; as one inquirer in physics may limit his speculation to the solid body of this globe, while another, under the same general designation, may, with perfect logical exactness, include also the atmosphere that surrounds it.[76] 77. You may measure a square surface and find it to contain so many feet of superficial area: suppose you discover afterwards that it has depth as well as length and breadth; to take in also this new measurement does not diminish the old. If we discover that, for his own sake, the Redeemer accomplished his saving work, it was not on that account less for our sakes.[77] 78. “In the centre of all lies the profound thought, that in God and Christ love is one with self-interest, and self-interest one with love; no such contrariety existing between them as is found in the case of man.”—Stier, Words of the Lord.[78] 79. Made or adopted by Dr. Trench.[79] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 25: 1.23. THE LOST COIN ======================================================================== XXIII. THE LOST COIN. “Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.”—Luke 15:8-10. The three parables of this group, as has been already intimated, do not constitute a simple consecutive series of first, second, and third: the group consists of two parts, and the first part contains two parables. The saving of the lost is represented in the first division as it is seen from God’s side, and in the second as it is seen from man’s. In the first, the Saviour appears seeking, finding, and bearing back the lost; in the second, the lost appears reflecting, repenting, resolving, and returning to the Father. The two parables which constitute the first division are generically coincident, but specifically distinct. Both represent the side on which the sinner is passive in the matter of his own salvation, and the parable of the prodigal alone represents the aspect in which he is spontaneously active; but while the first two agree in their main feature, they differ in subordinate details. The second goes partly over the same ground that has already been traversed by the first, and partly takes a new and independent track of its own. 80 From the similarity of structure and the studied identity of expression in the two cases, I gather surely that the persons who seek and find the lost in those two parables both represent the same Seeker of lost men, the Lord Jesus Christ. On any other supposition, I cannot find a spot on which the foundation of a satisfactory exegesis can be laid. The introduction of the second parable by the particle either (?) in the eighth verse, prepares us to expect, not another subject, but another illustration of the same subject; whereas, when the Prodigal Son is introduced in the eleventh verse, the connecting link distinctly indicates a change of theme. 81 Assuming from the fact of its repetition that some feature or features of the lesson must be contained in the second picture which the first was not fitted to display; and finding in the possessors, with their misfortune, their success and their joy, no difference, but on the contrary, a studied balanced parallelism, I look for the distinction in the nature of the property which, in the two cases respectively, was lost and found. The sheep is an animated being, with desires, and appetites, and habits, and locomotive powers; when it is lost, it is lost in virtue of its own will and activity. The silver coin, on the other hand, is a piece of inanimate matter; and when it is lost, it is lost through its own gravity and inertia. When support fails, it falls to the ground. Here lies an inherent and essential difference between the two cases. It is through this opening mainly that light comes to me regarding the specific difference between the lessons which these two cognate parables respectively convey. The inquiry at present concerns this difference only, for the doctrine which is taught in common by both is abundantly obvious. While in both examples alike the property is lost and found again, the manner of the loss and the finding corresponds in each case to the nature of the subject. In the case of the living creature, the loss is sustained through its spontaneous wandering; in the case of the inanimate silver, the loss is sustained through its inherent inertia. The one strays in the exercise of its own will, and the other sinks in obedience to the laws of matter; the method of search varies accordingly. Both parables alike represent the sinner lost and the Saviour finding him; but in the one case the loss appears due to the positive activity of an evil will, and in the other to the passive law of gravitation. Not that, in the spiritual sphere, one sinner departs from God by an exercise of his corrupt will, and another is drawn away by the operation of an irresistible law; it is one transaction represented successively on two sides. The representations are different, but both are true. In the fallen, sin is both active and passive. The sinful select their own course and go astray in the exercise of a self-determining power; they also gravitate to evil in virtue of an inborn corruption, which acts like a law in their members. In connection with these two sides or features of sin, the two doctrines opposite and yet not contrary, the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man, meet and embrace each other in the work of redemption. To the disease of sin in both its phases,—as an active choice and an innate tendency,—the divine physician has prepared an antidote; He brings the wanderer home, and lifts the fallen up. Compare once more the lost sheep and the lost coin: in both the sinful are lost, and in both the Saviour saves; but there we see a spontaneous error, and here the effect of inherited corruption. These, when kept together like the right and left sides of a living man, constitute, in this matter, the whole truth: to tear them asunder is to kill both. The number of the coins is appropriately fixed at ten, while the number of sheep was a hundred. Ten sheep would not have required or repaid the care of a shepherd; and a hundred pieces of silver would not, in ordinary circumstances, have been at one time in the hands of a working woman. The difference of numbers is fully accounted for by the natural circumstances, and no benefit is obtained by squeezing from it a distinct spiritual signification. The numbers, I think, belong to the adjuncts of the material pictures, and they constitute only elements of disturbance when they are brought into the interpretation. The lessons which some draw from the preciousness of the metal on the one hand, and the image of the king which it bears on the other, although attractive and useful in themselves, are not relevant here. It is better to forego for the time even precious morsels of instruction, than to obtain them by doing violence to those exquisite analogies which the parables present. FOOTNOTES 80. Recognising in the lost coin mainly a repetition of the same lesson which the lost sheep contained, but justly anticipating from the mere fact of a repetition, that the second will present some features which were not contained in the first, Dr. Trench finds the expected difference in this,—that “if the shepherd in the last parable was Christ, the woman in this may, perhaps, be the Church.” After suggesting as an alternative that the woman may represent the Holy Spirit, he remarks that these two are in effect substantially identical, and finally rests in the conclusion that it is “the Church because and in so far as it is dwelt in by the Spirit, which appears as the woman seeking her lost.” This able expositor speaks with evident hesitation when he represents the Church as the seeker here; and accordingly we find him with a happy inconsistency affirming in a subsequent paragraph that “as the woman, having lost her drachm, will light a candle and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it, even so the Lord, through the ministrations of his Church, gives diligence to recover the lost sinner,” &c. I am willing to accept the phraseology of this sentence, but it is obviously at variance with the view which he had previously presented, and to which he recurs in the close, that in this parable it is the Church which seeks the lost, while in the preceding parable it is the Saviour. Further, if he maintain that the woman seeking the lost coin represents the Lord seeking sinners through the ministrations of the Church, he must also maintain that the shepherd seeking the lost sheep represents the Lord seeking sinners through the ministrations of the Church. If the Lord himself is in both cases equally the seeker, there is no reason in the text of Scripture, and Dr. Trench suggests none from any other quarter, why he should be represented as seeking through the ministrations of the Church in one case and not in the other. The letter of the word and the nature of the case peremptorily demand that the qualification regarding the instrumentality of the Church should be attached to both or to neither. In either case it remains that, in respect to the person who seeks the lost, these two parables teach precisely the same lesson. The house in which the coin is lost means, according to Dr. Trench, the visible Church: the result is that the Church (invisible) searches in the Church (visible) for sinners that have been lost there, and restores them when found to the Church, but whether the visible or invisible I cannot discover. The Church then calls upon the angels to rejoice with her over the recovery of the lost. This exposition seems confused and inconsistent; and it is a dim mysterious conception of “the Church” that constitutes the disturbing element.[80] 81. Nor do I see any force in the minute criticism by which Dr. Trench endeavours to make out that while the sheep were the shepherd’s property, the money did not belong to the woman. He says, “I have found my sheep which was lost;” while she says, “I have found the piece which I had lost;” but these are nothing more than varieties of expression. The absolute identity of the terms in which the two cases are introduced, proves that these seemly and slight variations of phraseology at the close, do not indicate a substantial difference. “What man of you having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them?” and “What woman, having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece?”—these questions, so carefully and completely parallel, conclusively show that, after making allowance for the necessary difference in the nature of the subjects, the two cases, in relation to possession, loss, and finding, are precisely the same.[81] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 26: 1.24. THE PRODIGAL SON ======================================================================== XXIV. THE PRODIGAL SON. “And he said, A certain man had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it: and let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard musick and dancing. And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out and intreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.”—Luke 15:11-32. Recall the relation that subsists between this parable on the one hand, and the two that immediately precede it on the other. These two divisions of the group contain two different and in some respects opposite representations. Both exhibit the salvation of lost men; but in the first, that deliverance appears as the effect of the Redeemer’s sovereign love and care; in the second, it appears to spring in the depths of the sinner’s own soul. There the wanderer is sought and found and borne back; here he spontaneously repents and returns. There the Saviour’s part is revealed; and here the sinner’s. These examples represent not two distinct experiences, but two sides of the same fact. It is not that some of fallen human kind are saved after the manner of the strayed sheep, and others after the manner of the prodigal son; not that the Saviour bears one wanderer home by his power, and another of his own accord arises and returns to the Father. Both these processes are accomplished in every conversion. The man comes, yet Christ brings him; Christ brings him, yet he comes. In the two pictures which we have last examined, the sovereign love and power of the Redeemer occupied the front, while the subjective experience of a repenting man was thrown scarcely visible into the back-ground; in the picture which is now under inspection the view is reversed—the subjective experience of the sinning man is brought full size into the centre of the field, while the compassion of a forgiving God, although distinctly visible, lies in smaller bulk behind. Among the parables that of the prodigal is remarkable for the grandeur of the whole, and the exquisite beauty of the parts. The sower is the only one that can be compared with it in comprehensive completeness of outline and articulate distinctness of detail. These two greatest parables, however, are thoroughly diverse in kind. The two chief elements which generally go into the composition of a parable are the processes of nature and the actions of living men—parables, in short, as to their constituents, are composed of history and natural history. In the tares, for example, both these elements are combined in nearly equal proportions. In the malicious sowing of the darnel, the zealous proposal of the servants, and the cautious decision of the master, you have threads of human motive and action running through the whole; but in the growth of the darnel, its likeness to the wheat in spring, and the decisive difference between them in the harvest, you have the processes of nature profusely intertwined. A parable is ordinarily woven of human action and the unconscious development of nature, as warp and woof. In the two greatest parables those twin ingredients are in a great measure separated: the sower is almost wholly composed of processes in nature, the prodigal almost wholly of human motive and act. This parable reveals one of the brightest glimpses of God’s character and way that men in the body can obtain. There are greater and less among the parts of God’s word as well as among the parts of his creation. Taking the discourses of the Lord Jesus, as the little child took the stars, for “gimlet-holes in heaven to let the glory shine through,” we find in the prodigal the largest of them all. It differs from other stars in the same firmament by its bulk and its brightness. Never man spake like this man; and nowhere else has even this man spoken more fully or more winsomely of man’s need and God’s mercy. Both the departure and the return—both the fall and the rising again, are depicted here. The lesson sweeps the whole horizon of time from the unfallen state at first to the glory that shall at last be revealed. The way is laid open with marvellous precision from the lowest state of sin and misery to a heavenly Father’s heart and home. Here a gate is opened by the Mediator’s hand, and no man can shut it, until the angel shall proclaim that time shall be no more. Here resounds a voice clear, human, memorable—a voice that all the hum of the world cannot drown, proclaiming to the lowest, furthest outcasts, and to the latest generations, “Whosoever will, let him come.”82 It is not necessary in this case to submit a sketch of the material frame-work: there it lies, and the simplest may see it for himself. The least learned may go round without a guide, and not miss any essential feature of the scene. In this case the bare reading of the story from the Bible leaves the image sharply outlined, and permanently impressed upon the reader’s mind. Assuming that the body of the lesson may be easily seen, let us proceed at once to seek for its soul in the spiritual meaning, which the picture covers and yet reveals. “A certain man had two sons:” one of the greatest difficulties meets us in the first line. It is evident that God, as specially manifested in the Gospel, is represented by the father; but who are represented by the two sons,—the elder, who remained at home, and the younger, who went away? On this point three distinct interpretations have been suggested: the two brothers of the parable may represent angels and men, Jews and Gentiles, or Pharisees and publicans. I do not think it is a profitable method to send these three into the field to fight until two are destroyed, and one is left in undisputed possession. I am convinced that we shall more fully and more correctly ascertain the mind of the Lord by employing them all than by selecting one. In representing the human figure, an artist may proceed upon either of two distinct principles, according to the object which, for the time, he may have in view. He may, on the one hand, delineate the likeness of an individual, producing a copy of his particular features, with all their beauties and all their blemishes alike: or he may, on the other hand, conceive and execute an ideal picture of man, the portrait of no person in particular, with features selected from many specimens of the race, and combined in one complete figure. The parable of the prodigal is a picture of the latter kind. It is not out and out the picture of any man; but it is, to a certain extent, the picture of every man. This prophecy of Scripture is not of private construction; and therefore it is not of private interpretation. As the ideal portrait is in one feature the likeness of this man, and in another the likeness of that man, while it is not throughout the likeness of any; so the elder and younger sons of this parable find at one point their closest counterpart in angels and men, at another in Jews and Gentiles, at a third in Pharisees and publicans, and indefinitely in as many pairs of corresponding characters as have been, or may yet be, found in the world. In the first act of the drama,—the departure of the younger son, the case of angels and men, presents by far the most exact counterpart to the case of the two brothers. Man is the youngest child of God’s intelligent family. Elder and younger remained together in the house awhile. You may observe sometimes in human families that the children who have reached the years of understanding at the birth of the youngest rejoice over the infant with a fondness second only to that of the mother. Thus the elder brother angels of our Father’s house,—the morning stars of creation, sang together over the advent of man. But the younger son did not remain in the house: having become alienated in heart from the Father, he was uneasy in his presence, and sought relief by going out of sight. In the description of the younger son’s conduct, we find a picture both of the first fall and of the actual apostasy of each separate sinner. “The younger said to his father, Father give me the portion,” &c. Only his words are preserved in the record; but we know that thoughts unseen in his soul were the seeds whence these words sprang. He desired to please himself, and therefore grew unhappy under the restraints of home. Bent on enjoying the pleasures of sin, he determined to avoid the presence of his father: alienated in heart, he becomes vicious in life. The same two elements go to constitute the character and condition of the sinful before he is reconciled to God. There is a lower and a higher link in the chain that binds the slave. There is a body of this death, and a soul: there is a spiritual wickedness in high places, and a bodily wickedness in low places. The one is guilt, the other sin: the heart is at enmity, and the life is disobedient. The younger son did not humbly sue for a gift from his father’s bounty: he claimed a share of the property as of right. The terms are significant; “Give me the portion of goods that falleth (?? ????????? ?????) to me.” The phrase faithfully depicts the atheism of an unbelieving human heart; the fool hath said in his heart, “No God.” He has become brutish: as swine gather the acorns from the ground, heedless of the oak from which they fell; alienated men snatch God’s gifts for the gratification of their appetites, and forget the giving God. This seeing eye, and this hearing ear, and these cunning hands, the irreverent son counts his own, and determines to employ them in ministering to his own pleasure. The father might justly have refused to comply with his son’s demand: although a certain part of the property might by law “fall” to the younger son at the death of the father, there was no law or custom that gave the youth a right to any of it during his father’s life. In this case, however, the father saw meet to let the young man have his own way; he threw the reins loose upon the neck of the prodigal. Although the father of his flesh could not see the end from the beginning, the Father of his spirit, in permitting his departure, already planned the glad return. “Not many days after:” weary of paternal restraint, he made off as soon as possible. He gathered all; for he needed all as a price in his hand to pay for his pleasure. He went into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. Even a large substance may in this manner soon be consumed; money and health waste away quickly when they are employed as fuel to feed the flame of lust. An interesting parallel to this portion of the parable occurs in Luke 12:45. A servant to whom much had been intrusted thought his master was at a great distance, and would remain a long time away; then and therefore he began “to beat the men-servants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken.” It is when a man is, or imagines himself to be, far from God that he dares to indulge freely his vicious propensities: and conversely, those who are secretly bent upon a life of sin, put God far from their thoughts, in order that they may not be interrupted in their pleasures. The crisis came. The “season” of pleasure did not last long; and the man who had “sowed to the flesh” was compelled to fill his bosom with an early harvest of misery. The hunger, nakedness, and shame that accumulated on the head of this wayward youth aptly represent the bitter fruits which sin, even in this life, bears as an earnest of the full wages in the second death, which it promises to pay its servants. His sufferings did not in the first instance turn him from his sin: human sorrow is not all or always godly sorrow. Although the prodigal was in want, he did not return to his father. Convictions and terrors in the conscience seldom bring the wanderer at once to the door of mercy: he generally tries in succession several other methods in order to obtain relief. As the prodigal attempted to keep body and soul together by the most desperate and loathsome expedients, rather than throw himself on his father’s compassion; so an alienated human soul, conscious of having wantonly offended a good God, and therefore hating deeply the Holy One, will bear and do the will of the wicked one to the utmost extremity of misery rather than come home a beggar, and be indebted for all to a father’s love. The picture, although drawn by the Master’s own hand, is necessarily drawn in the colours of external nature, and therefore it comes far short of the original, which is a spiritual wickedness. The cherished son of an affluent and honourable house in Israel has become the swineherd of a stranger in a famine-stricken land: the transition is as great as could be displayed on the limited stage of the present world; but when he who was made in God’s image and treated as God’s child is bound by the chain of his own passions, and indentured as a slave in the devil’s service, the fall is greater, as heaven is higher than the earth, and the world of spirit deeper than the world of flesh. “No man gave unto him:” when a son deserts the Father of lights, from whom every good gift comes down, his soul cannot be satisfied from other sources: the world’s breasts are dry, or yield only poison to the eager drawing of the famished child. There is a blank in the history here. The later stages of the prodigal’s misery are not exhibited in the light: fully exposed, they might have been shocking rather than impressive. Every height has its opposite and corresponding depth: as eye has not seen nor ear heard in all its fulness the blessedness that God hath prepared for them that love him; so neither can our faculties measure the miseries of sin, in their foretastes here and their fulness hereafter. How the prodigal fared under that veil, as his misery day by day increased to its climax, we know not; but at length he suddenly emerges another man. “He came to himself:” the wild foul stream that had sunk into the earth and flowed for a space under ground, bursts to the surface again, agitated still indeed, but now comparatively pure. We learn for the first time that the man has been mad, by learning that his reason is restored. It is a characteristic of the insane that they never know or confess their insanity until it has passed away: it is when he has come to himself that he first discovers he has been beside himself. The two beings to whom a man living in sin is most a stranger are himself and God; when the right mind returns, he becomes acquainted with both again. The first act of the prodigal, when light dawned on his darkness, was to converse with himself, and the second to return to his father. A man can scarcely find a more profitable companion than himself. These two should be well acquainted, and deal frankly with each other; in the case of the prodigal how disastrous was the estrangement, how blessed the reconciliation between them! The young man, during the period of his exile, was as much a stranger to himself as to his father. His return to himself became the crisis of his fate; from the interview sprang the burning thought, “I will arise and go to my father,” and the resolute deed, “he arose and went.” When he had determined to return, he returned at once, and returned as he was. Emaciated by prolonged want,—naked, filthy, hungry, he came as he was. He did not remain at a distance until by efforts of his own he should make himself in some measure worthy to resume his original place in the family; he came in want of all things, that out of his father’s fulness all his wants might be supplied. The signification of this feature on the spiritual side is obvious; it exhibits a cardinal point in the way of a sinner’s return to God. But while the repenting youth did not pretend to bring anything good to his father’s house, neither did he presume to bring thither anything evil: his poverty and hunger were brought with him, but the companions and instruments of his lusts were left behind. This is a distinctive discriminating feature of true repentance. In the act of fleeing to his father the prodigal leaves his associates, and his habits, and his tastes behind: and conversely, as long as he clings to these he will not—he cannot return to his father. In the narrative it is made evident that a return to his father was the son’s last resort; he did not adopt it—he did not even entertain it, until all others had failed. The grief which he must have known his unnatural exile caused in the bosom of the family at home did not move him: even want, when it came upon him like an armed man, failed to overcome his stubborn spirit. He will be the servant of a stranger rather than his father’s son; he would live on swine’s food, if it had power to sustain a human life, rather than sit at his father’s table. It was not till death stared him in the face that he consented to return. He encountered all extremities of privation rather than come home; no thanks to him, then, for coming at last. Yet he was received with an ardent welcome, and without upbraiding. The son’s sullen, obdurate, desperate resistance becomes a measure and a monument of the father’s forbearing, forgiving love. It is thus that sinful men return to God in Christ to-day; and thus that God in Christ to-day receives sinful men. Prodigals returning deserve nothing, and yet obtain all. Of even the last rag of merit that the imagination can conjure up—the merit of being willing to receive favour—they are utterly destitute. Though we do not come back to our father until all other resources have failed—although we come, as it were, only when we cannot help coming, he receives us with open arms; he takes the sin away, and does not cast it up. “When he was yet a great way off his father saw him.” He must have been looking out. Often, doubtless every day, his eye turned and strained wistfully in the direction of his son’s retiring footsteps. While that son was starving in a foreign land, his father was weeping at the window, longing for his return; when at last the prodigal appeared, the watchful father caught sight of his form in the distance, and ran to meet him. Behold again in this glass another feature of redeeming love! Jesus, looking down on Jerusalem, wept for sorrow, because its giddy multitude would not turn and live; if they had with one accord come forth to accept the pardon which he offered, he would have wept again for joy. In his tears, as well as in his teaching he showed us the Father. The reconciliation is immediate and complete. The parable reveals an extraordinary outburst of paternal tenderness. The son, melted, and in some measure confused by the undeserved, unexpected warmth of his reception, bethought of the speech which, at the turning point of his repentance, he had resolved to address to his father, and began to recite it as he had conned the words in exile:—“Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son;” but there stopped short, omitting the portion about being content with the position of a hired servant. Bengel suggests that the father may have cut the prodigal’s speech short by giving aloud an order to the servants for the kind and honourable reception of his child; but another thought, also suggested by the same acute and experimental expositor, brings out, I think, more truly the deep significance of the omission:—The son lying on the father’s bosom, with the father’s tears falling warm on his upturned face, is some degrees further advanced in the spirit of adoption than when he first planned repentance beside the swine in his master’s field. There and then the legal spirit of fear because of guilt still lingered in his heart; he ventured to hope for exemption from deserved punishment, but not for restoration to the place of a beloved sen. Now the spirit of bondage has been conclusively cast out by the experience of his father’s love; the fragments of stone that had hitherto remained even in a broken heart are utterly melted at last, as if by fire from heaven. He could not now complete the speech which he had prepared; its later words faltered and fell inarticulate. He could not now ask for the place of a servant, for he was already in the place of a son. 83 The father’s command regarding the son’s reception represents the complete reconciliation of the Gospel—the total oblivion of the prodigal’s past sins, and his admission into the favour and the family of God, as a dear child. Even the details at this point have been framed after the pattern of spiritual privileges as they are elsewhere represented in the Scriptures; and they admit, consequently, of being minutely examined and applied. The best Robe points to the Redeemer’s righteousness which the believer puts on, and wherein he is justified; the Ring is the signet of a king, the seal of the Spirit in the regeneration; the Shoes suggest that the sinner, forgiven and renewed, shall walk with God in newness of life; the Feast indicates the joy of a forgiving God over a forgiven man, and the joy of a forgiven man in a forgiving God. These two lessons Christ has tenderly and plainly taught in this parable,—first, that God receives and forgives a sinner who comes back repenting; and second, that he delights in the act of so forgiving repentant sinners: on these points no ambiguity is left, and no room for controversy. These features of our Father’s character, if they were fully perceived and frankly accepted, would soon change the face of the world. Guilt makes the guilty suspicious and distrustful. For the chief ailment of humanity the parable supplies a specific antidote: let the aspect of God’s character, which is here displayed, take possession of a sinful heart, and it is forthwith won. A young person is in want of employment; and a great man lives in the neighbourhood who could give him both work and wages. To this man the youth is advised in his distress to apply; but this is the man whom the youth has injured and offended,—the man whose just resentment he dreads. But it is known and reported that this possessor of great wealth is kind, generous, forgiving; that he does not retain resentment for injuries received; that he delights to bestow favour on those who have offended him. Convinced by these representations, the youth determines to venture, and accordingly sets out on his journey toward the great man’s house. As he approaches it, however, his limbs grow feeble, his heart beats high, and he lacks courage to go near and knock. He halts, and is about to turn back in despair. What would suffice to encourage the trembler at that moment, and bear him through? If then and there he could in any way be thoroughly convinced that the man whom he formerly injured, and therefore now dreads, is not only in general tender-hearted and open-handed, but is at that moment specifically thinking of this individual transgressor, grieving over his impenitence, watching from his window for his coming, yearning to receive his confession, and enjoy the blessedness in his own heart of forgiving and satisfying the penitent; this will be effectual; the youth will go forward to the door now with a firm step. It is such a conviction regarding the mind of God towards erring men that is needed, in order to bring them in clouds to his mercy-seat, like doves to their windows; and it is in order to work this conviction in our hearts that Jesus, who has authority to declare the Father, has given us the parable of the Prodigal Son. May the Spirit take this word, and make it in us quick and powerful. Here we are not left to deal with curious or doubtful speculation. Nothing in heaven or earth can be truer, surer, plainer than this. The view that Jesus gives is the true view of the Father, as he turns his face to-day toward the children of men. Here is a youth who has discovered suddenly that a disease has fatally stricken him, deep in the springs of life. After struggling some days against conviction, and clinging to false hopes, he has at length acknowledged that sentence of death has been passed. When the first tumult subsides, a species of calm succeeds,—the calm of earnest occupation with one over-riding and absorbing theme. The world, with its hopes and fears, is conclusively cut off: his business with time is closed. He has bidden farewell to the crowd that he has left behind, and has entered the solemn vestibule which at the other end opens on eternity. With all the energy of his being, he applies himself now to the question, Am I lost or saved? He looks alternately backward on his own life, and upward to God’s throne; both prospects trouble him. Backward he sees only sin; forward, only judgment. Himself seems the stubble, and the Judge a consuming fire. As these two approach, and their meeting seems near, he fears with an exceeding great fear, and cries with an exceeding bitter cry. He greatly wonders, meanwhile, that he never saw things in this light before. Now, in man’s extremity, is God’s opportunity to show him the Father. While the eyes of the body are closed in weariness, the mental vision remains active; and a picture appears, as if it were hung in light upon the wall. To the soul’s eye Christ appears, and appears in the act of revealing the Father. The Father whom Christ reveals runs forth to meet his prodigal son, falls on his neck, weeps, and kisses him. There is no upbraiding, no bargaining for terms. The returning son is forgiven, accepted, clothed, honoured, loved. He has all, and abounds. This is doubtless a true picture, the dying youth reflects, for it is Christ that displays it; but, alas, it brings no hope to me. I have stifled convictions, and lived for my own pleasure; and though I often heard of mercy, I never sought it, until I found that death was on my track. How can I expect that God should receive me, when I make him a do-no-better, for I never thought of seeking him until all my chosen idols had forsaken me, and I was left destitute? Brother, look; what good thing was in the lost son, that served to recommend him to his father? He would not remain at home; he could not enjoy his abundance as long as the father, whose face he loathed, abode under the same roof. He went away, that he might enjoy the pleasures of sin. He did not return while he had enough; he did not return when he began to be in want; he endured the extreme of misery and shame rather than return; he came back to his father only when all other resources failed;—and yet his father received him with great gladness. Sinner, look on this love,—look on it till you live in its light. It is not him that never departed, or came back while he yet had plenty, or came back soon, or came back with an improved heart,—it is, “Him that cometh I will in no wise cast out.” Those who from this parable conclude that God receives sinners into favour without a propitiation, and those who endeavour to escape from that conclusion by affirming that the father in the parable represents Christ, err equally, although on opposite sides. 84 The notion that a mediator is not needed, because a mediator is not here specifically represented, proceeds upon the assumption, obviously and inexcusably erroneous, that all truth must be taught in every parable. While occasionally visiting the printing works of the publishers as these sheets are passing through the press, I have observed the process of printing coloured landscapes by lithograph. One stone by one impression deposits the outline of the land; another stone, by another impression, fills in the sea; and a third stone, on a different machine, subsequently adds the sky to the picture. No observer is so foolish as to complain, while he sees the process in its earlier stages, that there is no sea or no sky in the landscape. It is thus with the parables in general, and with this group in particular. By the two first, certain portions and aspects of the scene are represented; and by the last one, when it is impressed on the same field, the remaining features are completed. Hitherto we have been occupied exclusively with the younger of the two sons; but the notice given in the first sentence of the parable prepares us for meeting with the elder in some significant capacity ere it close; and here, accordingly, he comes up to sustain his part. At the moment of the prodigal’s return, his elder brother was in the field, whether for his father’s profit or his own pleasure we are not informed. When he came home in the evening, and before he had entered the house, he heard the sound of the festival within. Surprised and displeased that a feast on so large a scale should have been instituted without his privity and participation, he assumed and maintained an attitude of haughty reserve. Instead of going in at once and seeing all with his own eyes as a son, he went to a servant, and in the spirit of an alien, inquired the reason of the mirth. Having learned the leading facts, instead of imitating his father’s generosity, he abandoned himself to selfish jealousy, and went away in a pet. The father, on every side true to his character, came out and pleaded with him to enter and share the common joy. Hereupon the true character of the soi-disant model son is revealed; he peevishly casts it in his father’s face, as a reproach, that he had never provided such a feast for his immaculate and superlatively dutiful child. The elder son, in his statement of the case, introduces an elaborately constructed double contrast between his brother’s experience and his own, which is peculiarly interesting in relation to the mercy of God and the methods of the Gospel. To the jaundiced eye of this sour-tempered pharisaic youth, it seemed that his father gave much to him that deserved least, and little to him that deserved most: to the profligate son, the fatted calf; to the eminently dutiful child, not even a kid. Here the hard, self-satisfied formalist, like Pilate and Caiaphas, preaches the Christ whom he did not know. The envious contrast portrayed by the elder son is a dark shadow which takes its shape from the Light of life. It is a law of the Gospel that nothing is given to the man in reward for the righteousness which he brings forward as his boast; but all is given to the man who has flung away his own righteousness with loathing as filthy rags, and come, “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked,” to cast himself on the mercy of God. The greatest gift is bestowed on the most worthless; for “God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). At this point the line of our parable touches that of the lost sheep, and thenceforth runs coincident with it to the close: it points to the same features of human character, and teaches the same principles of divine truth. In the first place, it repeats the answer already given in the two preceding parables to the question embodied in the complaint of the Pharisees,—“This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them.” The father announces with great clearness and fulness, the grounds on which he rejoiced more that day over the prodigal restored than over the elder son, who had never left home. It is a rule in human experience, universally understood and appreciated, that though a son never lost is as precious as one who has been lost and found, parents experience a more vivid joy in the act of receiving the exile back than in the continuous possession of a son who has been always in their sight. 85 In the meantime, it is very sweet to learn from the lips of Jesus that this law, which may be clearly traced on earth, penetrates to heaven, and there prepares for repenting sinners, not a bare escape from wrath, but an abundant entrance into the joy of their Lord. But while the parable thus demonstrates that even though the claim of the Pharisees were granted their objection falls to the ground, it most certainly does not grant that claim. So far from conceding that they needed no repentance, the Lord makes it evident that they kept company with the publicans in sin, and only differed in this, that they did not repent and forsake it. The elder brother, towards the close of the parable, presents a life-likeness of the Pharisees; in him they might have seen their own shadow on the wall. The self-righteousness, the pride, the peevishness, the jealousy of the elder brother in the close of the parable represent, in its most distinctive features, the character of the Jewish people and their leaders, in the beginning of the Gospel. One of their leading reasons for refusing to own Jesus as the Messiah was his manifested willingness to extend the blessings of redemption to the needy of every condition and every name. When the Lord reminded them that Elijah was sent past many suffering widows in Israel to relieve a stranger at Sarepta, and that Elisha left many lepers uncured among his own countrymen when he healed the Syrian soldier, they were so exasperated by the suggestion that God’s favour had already flowed out to the Gentiles, and might flow in the same direction again, that they “rose up and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong” (Luke 4:29). The same spirit burst forth when they were touched on the same tender point in the ministry of the apostles. Paul was permitted from the stairs of the fortress attached to the temple at Jerusalem to address an excited multitude on the faith as it is in Jesus. Loving the Hebrew tongue in which he spoke better than the Greek, which they had expected him to employ, they listened with interest and in silence to the story of his conversion through the appearing of the risen Jesus; but when in the progress of the narrative he found it necessary to inform them that the Lord his Saviour gave him a commission to preach the Gospel beyond the boundaries of Israel, saying, “Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles, they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live” (Acts 22:21-22). In this inveterate prejudice of the Pharisaic Jews against the admission of persons or communities other than themselves into the privileges of Messiah’s kingdom, we see the reason why the Lord gave his parable the turn which it takes in the extraordinary conduct of the elder brother. Counting that the kingdom belonged exclusively to themselves, the Jewish hierarchs violently resented every suggestion that pointed to the reception of strangers. It was to them that this series of parables was addressed; and to them, in immediate relation to their stupid and impudent cry, “He receiveth sinners!” But we have not exhausted this portion of the lesson when we have pointed out that those whom the elder brother represents fret proudly and peevishly against the admission of their neighbours into the kingdom: by that very fact they unconsciously but surely demonstrate that themselves have not entered yet. The spirit that in regard to self is satisfied, before God unhumbled, and towards men unloving, has no part with Christ: this is the proud whom God knoweth afar off, not the meek whom he delights to honour. Ah, woe to the man who serves God as that son served his father, with a mercenary mind and an unbroken heart,—who thinks his obedience praiseworthy, and would be surprised if it should go without reward. The elder son was lost as well as the younger; but as far as the parable reveals his history, he was not like him found again: he, like his brother, went astray; but unlike him, refused to come back. The father was grieved as much by the sullen, dry, hard, cold, dead formality of his elder son, as by the prodigal wastefulness of the younger, without getting the sorrow balanced by a subsequent joy. Whited sepulchre! what will thy residence in the house, and thy constant and punctilious profession avail thee while thou art planting daggers in thy father’s heart, and nursing vile hypocrisy in thy own? It is the empty open vessel that gets itself filled when it is plunged into a well of living water; the vessel that is full and shut, although it is overflowed by rivers of privileges, does not receive and retain a drop. Before God and under the Gospel, the turning-point of each man’s destiny is not the number or the aggravation of his sins, but the discovery of his own guilt, and the consequent cry out of the depths for mercy. That which really in the last resort hinders a man’s salvation and secures his doom is not his sin, but his refusal to know and own that he is a sinner. All the excesses of the prodigal will not shut him out of heaven, for he came repenting to the father; but all the virtues of the elder brother will not let him into heaven, for he cherished pride in his heart, and taunted his father for overlooking his worth. The ground on which the Laodiceans were condemned was not the sinfulness of their state, but their stolid satisfaction with the state they were in. “Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17). What although they were not rich;—if they had known their poverty, all the treasures of the Godhead were at their disposal: what although they were wretched;—all the blessings that are at God’s right hand were theirs for the asking. What although this son was prodigal;—there is a place for him in God’s favour,—a place for him in the mansions of the Father’s house for ever when he comes back repenting, confiding; but what although he never strayed—never missed a diet of worship or a deed of alms, the elder brother by holding to his own righteousness, rejects the righteousness which is of God by faith, and shuts himself out of the kingdom. Him who thought he was poor and miserable, and wretched, and blind, and naked, the father runs to meet with kisses of love and tears of joy: but him who thought himself rich and increased with goods, and in need of nothing, the father puts away, with the most piercing expressions of loathing which the whole Scriptures contain, “I will spue thee out of my mouth.” FOOTNOTES 82. A curious illustration of the bondage to which an indurated Erastianism has reduced many of the Protestant Churches of the Continent, is incidentally afforded in a remark made by Stier regarding the peculiar fulness and preciousness of this parable:—“That this parable, which Lange beautifully terms a gospel within a gospel, this universal text for preaching about the lost and recovered sons of our heavenly Father (and the hopelessly lost first-born to the rich possessions of the house), should be wanting in the pericopæ of the Sunday Kalendar, is an omission which is utterly unjustifiable on any ground whatever, which is not compensated by the insertion of the previous similitudes, and which of itself is ample reason for that reformation of the Kalendar which Palmer desires.”—Words of the Lord Jesus, in loc. The successors of Luther must, it seems, tread the mill from year to year on the same limited curriculum of texts which their Kalendar contains; and those of them who are weary of the restraint long in vain for an opportunity to preach on such a subject as the prodigal, for it is not set down in the bond. That Church surely is greatly defective both in godliness and manliness, that cannot or will not throw open all the Word of God alike, at all times, to its ministers and congregations in their Sabbath solemnities.[82] 83. The paraphrase of this Scripture, in a selection employed in most of the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, stumbles at this point, and misses the meaning of the text. Overlooking the mighty step of progress which the prodigal had made between the time when his accumulating convictions turned the balance first in favour of repentance, and the time when the last fragment of distrust melted away in the flood of a full reconciliation, the hymn represents the son as still pleading specifically to be sent away into the place of a servant, after the embrace, and the kiss, and the tears of his father had bestowed and triply sealed his sonship. “He ran and fell upon his neck, Embraced and kissed his son: The grieving prodigal bewailed The follies he had done.” “No more, my father, can I hope To find paternal grace; My utmost wish is to obtain A servant’s humble place.” No; after the meeting the youth did indeed say that he was not worthy to be called a son, but he did not say he had abandoned the hope or the desire of being reinstated. Yet, notwithstanding this and other errors that have crept into the collection, and the superior character of many that are excluded from it, no vigorous effort has been made to obtain a revision in order to exclude the faulty and introduce better in their stead. Conservative inertia—an instinct to keep unchanged what has descended to us from our fathers—is a great and curious power in human nature, operating both on Church and State. Although not creditable to the wisdom and courage of men, it is doubtless overruled for good by the providence of God.[83] 84. Stier’s observations on this point are excellent:—“The well-meaning efforts which are made to explain the absence of reference to the mediating propitiation of the Son of God in this instant exhibition of the Father’s mercy, are altogether needless; they rest fundamentally on false dogmatic views of this propitiation, as if there were not existing in the Father’s being the same love which is expressed in the Son,—as if the Father needed abstractly to be propitiated in order to entertain this love! We are not to seek Christ himself as mediator in the person of this father; nor (though Melancthon has strangely ventured to affirm it), afterwards in the fatted calf, as sacrificially slain. His place here is rather to be sought in his thus authoritatively testifying of the Father’s mercy. As Nitzsch excellently says:—‘If he seems to conceal himself here, he is all the more manifest there, where the Shepherd seeks the lost sheep. For the Son—who is neither an elder nor a younger, the eternal Son of the Father, one with him, his eye and his heart towards the lost—is come into this world, although invisible and unnamed in the parable, to reveal the Father where he had been ever invisible, and where no man knew him: and he is to the children of the law and the curse, not only a living herald of the propitiable—we shall rather say of the already propitiated—Father, but the (that is our) propitiation itself, and the way whereby every one of us may come back to God.’ The mediation of Christ is no more denied by this silence than the seduction of Satan was denied in the sinner’s apostasy at the beginning of the parable. We may also say with Von Gerlach that the ‘coming out of the father to meet his son, here figuratively exhibits the sending of the Son.’”—Stier in loc.[84] 85. This law may be illustrated by an analogous fact in the material department of creation. Lay a ball, such as a boy’s marble, on an extended sheet of thin paper, and the paper, though fixed at the edges and unsupported in the midst, will bear easily the weight: take now another ball of the same shape and weight, and let it drop upon the sheet of paper from a height, it will go sheer through. The two balls are of the same weight and figure; but the motion gave to one a momentum tenfold greater than that of the other at rest. It is in a similar way that the return of a lost son goes through a loving father’s heart, and makes all its affections thrill; while the continued possession of another son, equally valuable and equally valued, produces no such commotion either in the heart of the father or his home.[85] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 27: 1.25. THE PRUDENT STEWARD ======================================================================== XXV. THE PRUDENT STEWARD. “And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.”—Luke 16:1-9. On the face of this parable a difficulty presents itself, all the more formidable in that it lies not in the critical, but in the moral department. In almost all the other examples, the acts attributed to human agents are either morally blameless in themselves, or are manifestly exhibited in order to be condemned: but here, an element of injustice is inseparably mixed up with the prudence which is commended in the conduct of the steward. The difficulty lies in this, that the specimen of worldly prudence presented in order to suggest and stimulate spiritual prudence in securing the interests of the soul, is dyed through and through with the loathsome vice of dishonesty. It is not easy, at least for us, to gather the lesson which this man’s prudence contained, out of the dishonesty in which in was steeped. When we read the parable we may detect a feeling of surprise creeping over our minds, that the Lord, who had the whole world and its history before him whence to select his examples, should have chosen a specimen of worldly wisdom, damaged by an admixture of downright falsehood, in order to stimulate thereby the spiritual zeal of his own disciples. The three following observations will, in my judgment, explain and completely remove the difficulty:—(1.) The Holy One, precisely because he is perfectly holy, can come closer to the unholy than we who are infected with sin and susceptible of injury from contact with impurity. Jesus talked with the Samaritan at the well, and permitted the sinner to wash his feet with tears in Simon’s house. His own disciples and the Pharisees wondered by turns why he came so close to the unclean; but if they had been free from sin as he was, they could have handled it freely when in their ordinary ministry it crossed their path. Inflammable matter must be kept far from fire; whereas matter that is incombustible may, when a necessary cause occurs, safely pass through the midst of the flame. (2.) A shorter parable in another place presents and explains the same difficulty: “Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” Serpents are proposed to the disciples as examples to be imitated; but it is the wisdom only and not the hurtfulness of the serpent that their Master enjoins them to imitate. Foresight and dishonesty are not more closely or inseparably united in the character of the cunning steward than wisdom and hurtfulness in the nature of the serpent. In both alike the Master meant that one quality which is commendable should be selected for imitation, and the other quality which is vile should be cast away with loathing. (3.) The key-note of the parable is expressed in Luke 16:8 : “The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” The line of interpretation must be drawn through this point, and all the scattered features of the picture brought up or brought down to meet it. Thus the tinge of dishonesty that runs through the prudence of the steward, so far from rendering his case unsuitable for the purpose of the Lord, imparted to it additional appropriateness and point. The methods, as well as the ends of the worldly, were different from those of the spiritual. This example shows that, from the ungodly man’s own view-point, and according to his own maxims, he prosecutes his object with energy and skill. Let the Christian, with his clearer, purer light, prosecute his high aim by holy means with an energy and zeal similar to those which the ungodly exhibit in the pursuit of their gains or pleasures. It was the design of the Lord not simply to give his disciples generally an example of wisdom, but to give them specifically an example of the wisdom of the world—the wisdom that neither fears God nor regards man. An example of prudence taken from a good man’s history, and exercised under submission to the law of God, would not have suited the Master’s purpose so well as the one that has been chosen. It is important to notice at the outset, that in this instance the Lord addresses his instructions specifically to his own disciples. The three parables which are recorded in the preceding chapter were spoken to the Pharisees; immediately after these, and in continuation of the history, the evangelist intimates that “he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man,” &c. Besides those lessons which he gave to the multitude, teaching how the distant may come near, he gave this lesson to those who had already come near, in order to incite them to diligence in the course which they had chosen: this Teacher rightly divides the word of truth, giving to each his portion in due season. In this lesson the diligence of worldly men is employed to rebuke the slothfulness of Christians. Those who make perishing things their portion are thoughtful, inventive, energetic, decisive in prosecuting their object; how thoughtless and slow are the heirs of the kingdom in the work of their high calling! “A certain rich man had a steward.” We learn here, incidentally, how evenly balanced are the various conditions of life in a community, and how little of substantial advantage wealth can confer on its possessor. As your property increases, your personal control over it diminishes; the more you possess, the more you must entrust to others. Those who do their own work are not troubled with disobedient servants; those who look after their own affairs, are not troubled with unfaithful overseers. 86 This overseer cheated his master, and concealed the fraud for a time under the folds of complicated accounts; but, as in all similar cases, this career of wickedness came suddenly to an end. Some person discovered the facts and informed the proprietor. When suspicion was raised inquiry could not be resisted; and, when an inquiry was instituted, the crime could not be hid. The steward seems to have given up his case as soon as he was accused; he uttered not a word in his own defence. There was no proof on one side, and no denial on the other. The case was clear, and the process summary; sentence of dismissal was pronounced on the spot. But the proprietor was still in a great measure at the mercy of this unfaithful servant; the accounts were all in his hand, and the owner could not instantly resume the power which he had delegated. The agent accordingly was ordered to prepare and submit a balance-sheet, on which his successor might proceed to administer the estate. There was not much time for deliberation: the decree of dismissal had already passed, and as soon as the state of accounts could be made up, this once comfortable and important personage must be cast penniless upon the world. Now or never, he must do something for himself. With habits, both mental and physical, cast in another mould, he cannot win his bread as a labourer; and his pride revolted against the prospect of becoming a beggar on the spot where he had long been owned as master by the multitude. His resolution is quickly formed, and as quickly carried into effect. He will employ his present opportunity, so as to provide a refuge for himself in his future need: he will so deal with the money while it is still in his hand, as that he shall not be left destitute when he is driven from his place. In prosecution of his purpose, the steward summoned his master’s debtors one by one into his presence. He held their acknowledgments for goods received, or their signatures for the amount of rent which they had agreed to pay for their lands. Having in his hands the documents which bound the debtors, he might have read off from these the amount due by each; but it suited his purpose better to ask the obligants what sums they owed, and to proceed wholly upon their voluntary acknowledgments. The first owed a hundred measures of oil, the second a hundred measures of wheat. What these quantities may have been in relation to our standards is a question which possesses only a critical and antiquarian interest: it has no bearing on the interpretation of the parable, and therefore we pass it without further notice. The absolute amount of the debt has no influence on the meaning of the parable; the point which is really important is the proportion between the amount owned by the debtors and the amount exacted by the steward. Olive oil and wheat were two of the staple products of the country, and the obligations in regard to them may have been incurred either in transactions of a mercantile character, or in those which intervene between landlord and tenant. 87 The method of the overseer is short and simple: apart from considerations of morality, conscience, and divine retribution, it seemed a short road to the accomplishment of his purpose. He surrendered to the debtors their obligations, and received in return obligations for smaller amounts, in one case for fifty, and in another for eighty, instead of a hundred. These two cases are submitted as specimens: others were treated in a similar way. Of course the steward could not obtain from these debtors any obligation in his own favour for the portion remitted, which could be enforced in a court of justice; for the proof of the claim on the one side would have revealed his guilt on the other: but it was assumed between the parties that the benefit conferred should in due time be substantially acknowledged and repaid. The steward counted that in the day of his distress those men on whom he had conferred favours would receive him into their houses. 88 It was expected, moreover, that the proprietor, or the steward whom he might afterwards employ, could not exact more than the smaller sums, for which they possessed the acknowledgments of the parties. We could indeed conceive a case in which the injured owner could lead a proof of fraud in the transaction, and enforce from the obligants the original amounts; but it is not probable that, in an age when records were defective, and the two parties immediately connected with the fraudulent transaction deeply interested in concealing it, such a suit could be successfully carried through. 89 The lord, that is the injured proprietor, commended the unjust steward, because, or in that, he had done wisely. The difficulty here lies on the surface,—lies, as it were, in the sound; upon a close examination it vanishes. First of all, the lord who praised the steward is, as the translators have indicated by printing the word without a capital, not the Lord Jesus, the speaker of the parable, but the master, whom the cunning agent had robbed. Further, this praise obviously did not indicate moral approval. The master praised the servant when all was over, not for the faithfulness with which he had been served, but for the cleverness with which he had been cheated. The commendation which the master bestowed upon the servant was that of sharply looking after himself. It is the commendation which one whose house has been robbed during the night might bestow in the morning upon the robber, after noticing how adroitly he had opened the locks, and carried off the booty. This nefarious transaction was, from the perpetrator’s view-point, cleverly planned and promptly executed. It was no sooner said than done; delay might have ruined the steward’s prospects. He must have everything done before he is summoned actually to transfer his books to his successor’s hands. He provided in his own way for his own future need; the plan was well-contrived, and successfully carried into effect. This praise, but expressly and only this, the injured master bestowed upon the man. “And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.” Such is the lesson which the Lord draws from the picture. Difficulties, indeed, adhere to the phraseology in its details; but the interpretation, in its main line, is determined and made evident by landmarks which can neither be overlooked nor removed. The mammon of unrighteousness means the world with all its business and its possessions; mammon is denominated unrighteous, generally on account of the manner in which it is employed by worldly men, and specially on account of the case in hand, where a gross injustice was perpetrated without scruple, and as an ordinary matter of business. Alas, how prevalent is this form of unrighteousness still! Although justice in a large measure pervades and so sustains the vast commerce of the country, many mean tricks insinuate themselves between its mighty strata, corroding its fabric, and undermining its strength. In counselling the disciples to acquire for themselves friends from the mammon of unrighteousness (???????? ??????? ?????? ?? ??? ?????? ??? ???????), the Lord obviously adopts the terms of his spiritual lesson from the structure of the parable which conveys it. By remitting part of their debts the steward made the debtors his friends; he won them to his side, and made sure of their sympathy when his day of need should come. His prudence and skill were commendable, but the fraud which was mingled with them is neither approved by the Lord, nor prescribed as a pattern for the disciples. 90 Nor is it difficult to lift the pure lesson from the impure ground on which it lies. The steward could not reach his unrighteous object except by a crooked path; but the ends which a Christian strives to attain neither require nor admit the employment of falsehood. Use the world in such a way that it shall help and not hinder the interests of your soul and of the world to come. The position of the phrase, ??? ??? ?????? ??? ??????, in or for their own generation, near the end of the sentence, determines that it is applied equally to both parties. It is implied that both classes, the children of the world and the children of light, look after their own affairs; and it is intimated that the one class attends to its business more earnestly and more skilfully than the other. This man cleaves to the world as his portion, and that man has chosen the Saviour as his: but, in point of fact, he who has chosen the inferior object prosecutes it with the greater zeal. The superior energy of the worldling in the acquisition of gains is employed to rebuke the Christian for his slackness in winning the true riches. This is the main lesson of the parable. The specific form which the lesson assumes is,—Provide now for future need, and make the opportunities of time subservient to the interests of eternity. The characteristic features of the steward’s skill were, that when his dismissal was near, he occupied the short time that remained, and the resources still at his disposal, in skilfully providing for the future. We are stewards in possession still, but under warning; do we employ the time and the opportunities that remain in making our calling and election sure? Many precious possessions have been placed in our hands by the owner of all; health of body and soundness of mind; home and friends; good name or great riches, or both conjoined;—these and many others have been by their owner placed under our charge, that we should lay them out for him. Soon the stewardship will be taken from us. “When ye fail,”—that is, when we can no longer retain our hold of time and life; when flesh and heart are failing; when a mist comes over the eye, so that it can no longer see the circle of weeping friends that stand round the bed of death,—have we an everlasting habitation ready to receive the departing spirit? More particularly the practical question is, Have we disposed of earthly possessions and opportunities, so that they helped and did not hinder the acquisition of an incorruptible inheritance? There is a place and a use for temporal things in making sure of the life eternal. How constant has been the tendency of fallen humanity to run wildly into opposite extremes of error; because the Popish system gives worldly possessions too high a place in the concerns of the soul, we may readily fall into the error of giving them no place at all. We lean hard over against the superstition that expects by alms, and money paid for masses, to smooth the spirit’s path to peace beyond the grave; but when we have refused to make money directly the price of our admission into heaven, we have not exhausted our duty in regard to its bearing on our eternal weal. The property, and money, and occupations of time may instrumentally affect for good or evil our efforts to lay up the true riches. According as they are employed, they may become a stumbling-stone over which their possessor shall fall, or a shield to cover his head from some fiery darts of the wicked one. 91 Could it be truly said of any who are lost that the mammon of unrighteousness brought them to the place of woe? or, conversely could it be truly said of any who now stand round the throne in white, that the mammon of unrighteousness became the friend who introduced them to that everlasting habitation? I reply, this mammon is not and cannot be a cause either of being saved or being lost; but it, as well as all other things in time, may become instruments in the saving or destroying of a soul, according as it is wisely used or foolishly abused. For example, in the next parable, it was sin and not wealth that ruined the rich man; many richer men than he have walked with God on earth, and entered rest when they departed. Wealth was not his destroyer, yet he so used his wealth as to permit the wicked one to bind his soul with it as with chains over to the second death. On the other hand, it was neither the poverty nor the sores of Lazarus, nor both together, that saved him; many as destitute of money and as full of sores as he are never saved. Christ was this man’s Saviour,—Christ alone; yet, his poverty became in God’s hands, and through his servant’s faith, the instrument of shielding him from temptation and purging his dross away. In the same subordinate and instrumental sense in which the rich man’s wealth was his ruin, the poverty of the poor man saved him. But these results are not uniform—are not necessary; they may be—they often are reversed. The wealth of a rich man may help him heavenward, and the poverty of a poor man may press him down toward the pit. The cardinal point of the parable is, employ the mammon of unrighteousness—this world’s affairs all, with forethought, skill, decision, and energy, to further your own salvation; turn all to account for the gain of godliness. A ship leaves our shores bound westward to an Atlantic port: the wind, being from the north, beats on her right side all the way. She makes a quick voyage and reaches her destination in safety. Another ship at another time leaves these shores for the same destination: the wind, blowing from the south, beats on her left side. She wanders from her course and is shipwrecked. Whence these opposite results? Was the first ship saved because she met a north wind, and the second lost because she fell in with a wind from the south? Nay, verily: but because the one so received the wind, from whatever point of the compass it might blow, as to be impelled by it onward in her course: and the other, instead of wisely employing every wind to help her forward, allowed herself to drift before the wind that happened to blow. Mammon, the world—ah, is it not adverse to the interests of our souls? What then? Believer, adversary though it be, you may make it your friend. A skilful seaman, when once fairly out to sea, can make a wind from the west carry him westward! he can make the wind that blows right in his face bear him onward to the very point from which it blows. When he arrives at home, he is able to say the wind from the west impelled me westward, and led me into my desired haven. Thus if we were skilful, and watchful, and earnest, we might make the unrighteous mammon our friend; we might so turn our side to each of its tortuous impulses, that willing or unwilling, conscious or unconscious, it should from day to day drive us nearer home. The parable is in this peculiar, that in the moral lesson which the Master enforces at the close, he retains and employs the phraseology of the story. “Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,” &c. The meaning is by the context made plain, and the reader may translate the metaphor as he proceeds. The steward, while he remained in his place, so handled the property in his power as to secure for himself a home when he should be removed from his place: in like manner let men so use material possessions while they live on earth, that these very possessions shall be found to have helped them toward their eternal rest. When a man’s ways please God, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him. These things that are enemies, and that overcome many, you may make your friends; you may turn to them such a side, that every time they strike they shall press you nearer rest, and at their last stroke impel you through the narrow entrance into the joy of your Lord. FOOTNOTES 86. A case came up lately in an English court of justice, in which a certain duke prosecuted his butler for malversation in his charge. It appeared in evidence that the defalcation on the account for wine alone amounted to L. 1500. This fact incidentally reveals two things:—How great is the wealth of these British princes; and how little that wealth is under their own control.[86] 87. Probably the rents were paid in kind, and these were the arrears which the tenants acknowledged.[87] 88. Of the same nature were the long leases of ecclesiastical property in England at low rents, granted by the living incumbents, in consideration of a sum of money in name of fine paid to themselves.[88] 89. A case emerged lately in the courts of this country, in which a proprietor, who had lost very large sums by the unfaithfulness of his agent, prosecuted the parties for restitution, on the ground of the agent’s bad faith in the transactions. The case was protracted, and I lost sight of it before the solution was reached; but it is enough for my present purpose that a plea was actually raised to obtain from one debtor the price of a hundred measures of oil instead of fifty, which he acknowledged, on the alleged ground that the absconded steward had corruptly and for his own interest sacrificed the rights of his employer.[89] 90. The Emperor Julian adduced this parable in order to prove that the doctrines of Christ were adverse to good morals. This is precisely the place where the apostate, seeking reasons to justify his apostasy, will most readily find what he seeks.[90] 91. For example, their competence and the comforts which it brings shield women of the higher and middle classes in this country, in a great measure, from certain snares of the devil in which multitudes of their poorer sisters miserably fall. If those who enjoy this protection throw away their advantage by turning that which is a protection on one side into a temptation on the other, and so bring themselves to an equality over all with the less favoured classes, the fault is their own. It is proved by obvious facts that worldly possessions may be placed between you and temptation, as cotton bales and sand bags may be employed to ward off cannon shot from stone walls. They are capable of being turned to some account in advancing our eternal interests; for our inheritance in heaven, the world is useful, if it is rightly used.[91] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 28: 1.26. THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS ======================================================================== XXVI. THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. “There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died and was buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house: for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham; but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”—Luke 16:19-31. The intervening portion of history, contained in Luke 16:14-18, should not be permitted to conceal from us the intimate relation that subsists between this and the preceding parable. The application of the first for the reproof of covetousness, touched a besetting sin of the Pharisees, and stung them to the quick. Unable to bear in silence a rebuke which their own consciences recognised as just, they interrupted the preacher with rude derision. They attempted to shield their own open sores from painful probing by raising a laugh at the expense of the reprover. I suspect they reckoned without their host in this matter. This man spake with authority, and not as the scribes; the common people heard him gladly. His speech was too divinely grave, and too palpably true, to be turned aside by the clumsy wit of the men whom it condemned. Intermitting for a moment the thread of his parabolic preaching, he turned aside and addressed a few withering words directly to these uneasy interrupters. 92 When this episode was over, the Lord resumed his theme where it had been broken off. I think it probable, both from the terms of the narrative, and the nature of the case, that if these Pharisees had not been present, or if they had held their peace when the preaching galled them, the matter of verse 19th would have touched that of verse 13th—the parable of the rich man and Lazarus would have been connected in place as well as in purport with that of the prudent steward. When he had followed up the first parable with a pungent application regarding the abuse of riches, “the Pharisees, also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him.” To them, in reply to their jesting, he spoke the words Luke 16:14-18, and then resumed, in Luke 16:19, “There was a certain rich man,” &c. 93 At the beginning of the chapter, addressing his own disciples particularly, although some of the Pharisees were present, he had taught them from the case of the prudent steward to use the possessions of this world with a view to their bearing on the next; and now, to complete the lesson, he will teach them, by a terrible example, the consequences of neglecting that rule. But before we proceed to examine the parable in detail, it is important to determine generally regarding its nature whether it is an allegory in which spiritual things are represented by sensible objects, or simply an instructive example, historic or poetic, charged like other examples with moral warning and reproof. The parable of the sower is an allegory: the sower represents not a sower, but a preacher; the seed represents not seed, but the Gospel: whereas in the inner substance, as well as the outward form of the lesson, the good Samaritan is simply a good Samaritan, and the wounded traveller is simply a wounded traveller. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is not allegory; it belongs to the class of the Samaritan, and not to that of the sower. It is not like a type, which a man cannot read until it is turned; but like a manuscript, which delivers its sense directly and at first hand. 94 The description of the rich man is short, but full. He “was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.” He maintained a royal state and a prodigal expenditure. This excess of luxury was not confined to great occasions; it was the habit of every day. Here, as in other cognate parables, great wisdom is displayed in bringing the whole force of the rebuke to bear on one point. It is not intimated that this man made free with other people’s money, or that he had gained his fortune in a dishonest way. All other charges are removed, that the weight lying all on one point may more effectually imprint the intended lesson. To have represented him as dishonest or drunken, would have blunted the weapon’s edge. Here is an affluent citizen, on whose fair fame the breath of scandal can affix no blot. He had a large portion in this world, and did not seek—did not desire any other. He spent his wealth in pleasing himself, and did not lay it out in serving God or helping man. It is not of essential importance whether such a man miserably hoard his money, or voluptuously spend it in feasts and fine clothing. Some men take more pleasure in wealth accumulated, and others more in wealth as the means of obtaining luxuries. These are two branches from one root; the difference is superficial and accidental: the essence of the evil is the same in both—a life of self-pleasing—“without God in the world.” By a transition, purposely made very abrupt, we learn next that a beggar named Lazarus95 was laid at this rich man’s gate, full of sores. Whether the position was chosen by the man himself, or by his friends for him, the motive is obvious—it was expected that where so much was expended, perhaps also wasted, some crumbs might come the beggar’s way. “The dogs came and licked his sores;” perhaps the dogs, always plentiful in eastern cities, that had no master; perhaps the dogs that belonged to the rich man, and had turned aside to lick the beggar’s sores when their master rode past on the other side, and hid from the sight of misery within the drapery of his stately mansion. The act attributed to the dogs accords, as is well known, with their instincts and habits. It is soothing to the sufferer in the sensations of the moment, and healthful in its effects. When the beggar’s fortunate brother took no notice of his distress, the dumb brutes did what they could to show their sympathy. The stroke, though it wears all the simplicity of nature, is in the parable due to consummate art; the kindness of the brute brings out in deep relief the inhumanity of man. “And it came to pass that the beggar died.” Towards this point the narrative hastens. Here on the border is the hinge on which the lesson turns. The whole parable is constructed and spoken in order to show how this life bears on eternity; and to make eternity, thus unveiled, bear reciprocally on the present life. The death of Lazarus happened in the ordinary course of things: his sufferings came to an end. Not a word of his dust, whether it was buried, or how. Of design, and with deep meaning, the body is left unnoticed, and the history of his soul is continued beyond the boundary of life, as the real and uninterrupted history of the man: in the same breath and in the same sentence that intimates his death, we are informed that he was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom. The dying and the entrance into the rest that remaineth are expressed in one sentence, the two clauses connected by a copulative conjunction: the Lord means manifestly to teach us, as he afterwards taught the repenting malefactor on the cross, that there is no interval to his people between departing from the body and being with Christ. Nor did Jesus then reveal the immortality of the soul: the doctrine was already accepted, and he assumed it in his discourse as a truth known and acknowledged. Even the resurrection of the body was a commonplace among the immediate disciples of Jesus during the period of his ministry: “Thy brother shall rise again,” said the Lord to Martha. “I know that he shall rise again,” she replied, “in the resurrection at the last day:” this was a belief that she previously possessed. Abraham’s bosom, we may assume, was already an expression employed by the Jews to designate the place of the blessed beyond the grave. It accords much better with the Lord’s purpose and method to suppose that this phrase and the term paradise, which he afterwards employed to express the same idea, were adopted by him from the current custom, than that they were then first introduced. “The rich man also died and was buried.” Here, for once, the rich and the poor meet together: the beggar died, and the rich man died too. The same event happened to both, and in both cases the same terms are employed to record the events; but very remarkable is the difference introduced immediately after the article of death. What came after death in the case of Lazarus? He was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom. What came after death in the case of this rich man? He was buried. Perhaps as much could not have been said of Lazarus. The rich man was carried from a sumptuous table to a sumptuous tomb; and the poor man perhaps had not where to lay his head, when its aching had ceased at length. It may be that his body did not find a grave. His spirit found happy rest and holy company; and we can afford therefore to lose sight of the dissolving dust. First and last the one had excellent earthly accommodation, and the other had none; but conversely, he who had neither a house when living nor a tomb when dead, walked with God while the tabernacle stood, and went to God when it fell; whereas he who made the earth his portion got nothing for his portion but earth. It would be a mischievous perversion of the parable to suppose that because the one was rich he was cast out, and because the other was poor he was admitted into heaven: the true lesson is in one aspect the reverse proposition: an ungodly man is in the highest sense poor in spite of his wealth; and a godly man is in the highest sense rich, in spite of his poverty. We enter now, or rather have already entered, the region where the parable must needs glide, not indeed from the literal into the metaphorical, but from a foreground where every object is distinctly seen to a background where the real objects cannot be seen at all, and where, accordingly, only signals are thrown up to tell what is their bulk and their bearing. When the line of the instruction goes through the separating veil and expatiates in the unseen eternity, it must become dim and indistinct to our vision. The moment that the parable in its progress goes beyond the sphere of the present life, our effort to follow it is like the struggle of a living creature out of its element. Even when the Lord of that unseen world is our instructor, our conceptions regarding it are necessarily indirect, second hand, and obscure. In this region the capacity of the scholar is infantile, and, consequently, the ability of the teacher cannot find scope. While, therefore, those parts of the parable which lay within our sphere were direct and literal, the latter portion, lying beyond our sphere, is necessarily indirect and expressed by signs: consequently, though sufficiently precise in its larger leading features, it is, in its minor details, indistinct, inarticulate. “The beggar died;” this is sufficiently direct and literal: “and was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom,”—there we are already beyond our depth. The horizon is dim now, by reason of distance and intervening clouds. Equally obscure is the other line of information when it has crossed the boundary of time. The rich man died and was buried; this we clearly comprehend: but “in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment,”—these are events of the eternal world, shadowed forth in the language and according to the conceptions of the present. We perceive the direction in which they lie, and can understand the moral lesson which they contain, but the things themselves are shrouded from our intellectual vision in impenetrable darkness. Not perhaps intentionally in the structure of the parable, but necessarily, on account of the place where its scene is latterly laid, a veil thicker than that of allegory is wrapped around it. In accordance with the use of the word in classic Greek, and of the corresponding term in the Hebrew Scriptures, we might assume that “hell” (Hades) only indicates generally the world of spirits, as distinguished from this life in the body; while the expression “being in torment,” serves to determine the specific region or condition in that world to which the rich man was consigned: the term, however, wherever it occurs in the New Testament, seems to be applied, in point of fact, to the place of punishment, except in passages that are directly quoted from the Old Testament. Both were now in the world of spirits; but the beggar in that world was in Abraham’s bosom, and the rich man in torment. Both spirits near the same time passed from this world by the same narrow passage; beyond the boundary their paths diverged in opposite directions. Each went to his own place as certainly and as necessarily as vapour rises up, and water flows down. The ransomed man entered the Father’s house and joined the company of the holy; the ungodly gravitated, according to his kind, into the place of woe. Having lifted up his eyes, “he seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom, and he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me.” Deeper and deeper into the mystery we are led at every step. While the outline of the landscape is defined sufficiently for the purpose or affording a landmark to direct our course, all the lesser objects are entirely concealed by the distance. We must beware lest, in straining to get a glimpse of the invisible, we should mistake the flitting shadows that the unnatural effort sets afloat in the humours of our own eyes for the veritable objects of the spiritual world. Here I would fain arrest attention on one guiding and dominating consideration, which may become a thread to lead us safely through the labyrinth, saving us the trouble of working out difficult speculations, and averting from us the danger of injuring ourselves by falls in the dark. The Lord delivered and the evangelist recorded this parable for the purpose of teaching, warning, directing, not spirits disembodied in the other world, but men in the body here. “All things are for your sakes;” the great Teacher determined all his words and acts by a regard to the benefit of his people. Even when Lazarus died at Bethany, he said to his followers, “I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent that ye might believe;” his absence led to the resurrection of Lazarus, and that event, he foresaw, would confirm their faith. So here, his aim is not to show how much he knows of the separate state, or to astonish the world by the display of its secrets; it is to give men while they are in the body those views of the separate state which will tell most effectually in leading the wicked to repentance, and in establishing believers in the faith. Taking the Teacher’s aim as the determinating principle in the interpretation of his discourse, I gather that the dialogue between the rich man and Abraham does not describe absolutely what is possible and actually takes place in the world of spirits, as if it were addressed to an inhabitant of that world, but gives such pictures of it, or signs regarding it, as are intelligible to an inhabitant of this world, and as will best bring the realities of the future to bear with beneficial effect upon the present character of men. By a system of coloured lights we contrive to warn the conductors of engines on our railways of danger to be avoided on the one hand, and to intimate the line of safety on the other. The things regarding which the engineers get instruction are not within their view. A red or a white light are not like the things in the distance that are to be dreaded or desired; but a red or a white light displayed serves the purpose when the things themselves cannot be made known. There everything is determined with a view to immediate practical benefit. I think this helps me to grasp the difficult portions of the parable. The purpose of the Lord was not to display his own knowledge or gratify our curiosity. He ever acted as the Saviour of the lost; he never swerved from that aim. It was his meat to do the Father’s will, and to finish his work. In this particular case, accordingly, the object which he kept in view was not to convey to men in the body the absolute knowledge of a state, for knowing which their faculties are unfit, but to convey to them in time such shadows or signals of danger and safety as the actual state of matters in the unseen world truly suggested, and in such forms as that living men, from their view-point, and with their mixed constitution, could comprehend and appreciate. When this principle is permitted to dominate, the exposition of the dialogue becomes comparatively both short and easy. I do not know whether the saved are within view of the lost in a future state, or whether any communication can pass between them; I only know that this parabolic picture, constructed as from a view-point within the present world, is the exhibition best fitted to make the diverse conditions of the good and the evil beyond the grave effectual to warn and instruct living men in the body. If any one should curiously inquire about flame, what is its nature, and how it can hurt a spirit, I can give no information on the subject, and I can gather none from the parable. One thing I know, that this representation is a red light hung out before me, as I am rushing forward on the line of life—hung out to warn me of danger, and hung out by the hand of him who came to save the lost. I understand perfectly what the beacon means to me: it is my part to take the warning which it gives; and, as to the exact state of events and capabilities in the world to come, I shall learn all when I enter it. It may be quite true that there is not a flame like that which we are accustomed to see, and not a body, previous to the resurrection, that may be burned in it. But he who gave the word is my Friend; and he is true; I shall trust him. He knows what I understand by a flame; he knows how I am affected by the thought of the pain which it inflicts. Knowing all these, he has employed that word in order to apply the terrors of the Lord for my warning; he has done all things well. The minute features of the dialogue all serve to give point to the main conception. The request for a drop of water contributes to bring out the intensity of the suffering; the answer of Abraham shows that, beyond the boundary of this life, there is no hope of relief. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners—it was to this world he came; but no Saviour goes to that other world to win back the lost who have permitted the day of grace to run out. Christ is the way unto the Father; but there is no way of passing from death unto life, if the passage has not been made in this present world. Interpreting the rich man’s intercession for his brothers on the same principle, I do not know and cannot learn here, whether those who have passed through death into the next world unsaved, remember the character of the relatives whom they left behind on earth, or whether, remembering their condition, they will or can make intercession in their behalf. All that I gather certainly on the subject from this parable is, that although a brother may permit his brother to abide in sin without instruction or reproof, while all are living here and walking by sight; yet, if the fate that awaits the impenitent were adequately believed and realized, he who believed and realized it, could not refrain from effort to arouse the slumberers, and lead them to repentance. Again, as in previous parts, I am taught here not what I shall wish when I shall be in the world of spirits, but what I should do now while I am in the body and under grace. I should get the message sent to every heedless brother who is wasting his day of grace, while a messenger of flesh and blood may be found, and there is a way by which I may reach the objects of my solicitude. By aid of the same machinery—the dialogue between the rich man and Abraham—another lesson is brought from the world of spirits to the land of living men—the lesson that those who refuse to believe and obey under the means of grace which God has appointed in the Church, would not be more pliable if prodigies were shown to them by way of overcoming their unbelief. The conception, although conveyed by the lips of the rich man after he had gone to his own place, that a miracle of power would, if it were exhibited, bring alienated hearts submissively back to God, springs native here in time. It is the deceit with which many sing themselves to sleep—they would believe if one rose from the dead. There are two answers to it:—one is, it would not be effectual although it were granted; and the other is, even though it were fitted to accomplish the object, it will not be given. The conclusion of the whole matter is, delays are dangerous; “Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” Some lessons still remain, that invite our attention, and will repay it. 1. For mankind, after this life is done, another world remains, consisting of two opposite spheres or conditions, one of holiness and happiness, the other of sin and misery. The Jewish people and their rulers persistently demanded of Jesus that he would show them a sign from heaven; and this demand he as steadily refused to gratify. Unlike all false prophets, the Lord Jesus maintained silence in regard to the particular characteristics of the unseen world; but one thing in compassionate love he made known with abundant clearness, that there is an absolute and permanent separation between good and evil in the world to come, and that there are distinct places of rewards and punishments. Some people labour hard to shake from their own minds the belief in a place and state of retribution. To these I would affectionately suggest that to disbelieve it will not destroy it. Even in Scotland—the narrow end of an island nowhere very broad—I have met with persons well advanced in life, of good common education, and good common sense, who had never seen the sea. Suppose that these persons should have cause greatly to dread the sea, and should therefore ardently desire that there were no such thing in existence. Suppose further, that, in the common way of the world, the wish should become father to the thought, and that they at last should firmly believe that there is not a sea. Would their sentiment change the state of the fact? Sinners, to whom the name and nature of a place of punishment are disagreeable, have no more power to annihilate the object of their aversion than the shepherds of the Cheviots to wipe out the sea by a wish. The sea is near those men though they have never seen it; and, if they were cast into it, they would perish, notwithstanding their opinion. Ah! the thing which by God’s appointment is, cannot by our arguments be blotted out of being. 2. There is a way from this present life to the place of future misery, and also a way to the place of future blessedness. The way from this world to the place of woe was made by man’s sin; the way from this world to the place of rest was made by the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. By the one way you can glide easily down; by the other you may climb toilsomely, but surely up. The one goes with the corrupt affections; the other against them. But let it be remembered that the way of life, though hard, is not unhappy; the struggle, when once fairly begun, is a grand, gladsome thing. Forth from this world there are only two paths; by one or other of these two all men take their departure; on one or other of these two paths we all are treading now. We owe it to Christ that a way into safety has been opened for our sinful world: “I am the way, ... no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” 3. There is no way over from one of these future states to the other. The great gulf between them is fixed. This is the main fact of the parable, and hereon its greatest lesson grows. The great gulf is fixed, and after death none can change his place. This fact we now know without further revelation, and if we believe it not on the testimony of Jesus, neither would we believe it although one should rise from the dead to declare it. This parable, in some of its minute features, is to our vision necessarily obscure, because the scene is laid in the life to come, but its main outline is as clearly visible as any temporal object could be. It teaches with great perspicuity that when immortal spirits, at the dissolution of the body, are thrown into the eternal world, it is no longer possible that their place or their condition should be changed: those who will not learn from this word of Christ that the condition of the departed is for ever fixed at death will not learn it in time to profit by the lesson. 4. Our Lord has thus emphatically taught us that there is no possibility of passing from one state to another beyond the boundary of this life in order that he may thereby constrain us to make the needful transition now. The impassable gulf between the saved and the outcast in eternity is a dreadful sight; it was the compassionate Jesus who drew aside the curtain and exposed it to view, and it was his great love that moved him to make this revelation. There is a line that crosses our path a little way forward from the spot where we stand to-day—a line that divides our time from our eternity—invisible to our eyes, but known unto God. We never know as we advance what step of the journey will carry us over this line. Christ has told us that if we pass it unsaved we cannot obtain a change of condition beyond it; and he has revealed to us this truth in order that we might be induced now to make our calling and election sure. These terrors of the Lord are displayed in order to persuade men. There is no impassable gulf now between a sinner and the Saviour; the way is open, and the perennial invitation resounds from the Gospel, “Come unto me;” but to those who pass from this life without having obeyed that call, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, no more a refuge from judgment. This word of Christ is not of any private interpretation; it may have pointed to Herod or to the Pharisees in the first instance, but it was of the nature of a seed, and its applications multiply a hundred times a hundred fold down through the history of the world. We may find the rich man in this land to-day as certainly as in the circle that listened that day to the preaching of Jesus. We find the counterpart of this picture, not only in individuals, but in associated churches; and if Christians, both in their private and corporate capacities, are rich both in temporal means and spiritual privileges, they need not go far to seek for the Lazarus who is laid at their gate. Lazarus lies in the streets and lanes of our opulent cities; and, oh, he is full of sores! For his sake, for Christ’s sake, for our own sake, we must go out and show him kindness. Dives lost his opportunity,—lost it for ever: we must “haste to the rescue” lest we lose ours too. If we love the Lord, our love will stir and burst out and overflow in life. The life that will exercise itself in Christ-like charity must begin now; and if a new life in the Lord begin, it will reveal itself in love’s labour. If we are bought with a price and quickened by the Spirit, the beggar at our gate will soon discover the change. He will not be left longer to the mere promptings of natural instinct among his neighbours for the soothing of his sorrows; the warm skilful hand of intelligent and affectionate brotherhood will raise him up and minister to his wants. Lazarus, instead of having only a dog to lick his sores, will be compassed about with human affections, and all his wants supplied. As a diseased, miserable, neglected lazar world felt the coming of Christ, the poor and destitute of the world’s inhabitants will know when a loving, hopeful Christian comes within reach. Who touched me? might the huge world have said, if it had possessed intelligence, when God became man and dwelt among us. Who touched me? will the outcasts on the earth begin to cry as they awaken to consciousness, when a revived Church has visited them in their prison, and brought to them the bread of life. FOOTNOTES 92. From the introduction of a new subject abruptly in the 18th verse—the much agitated question regarding a man’s right to put away his wife—I think it probable that the interruption had been repeated and continued; that it took the form of a dialogue, the Pharisees throwing in what they considered a damaging question, and Jesus giving an answer by turns—a scene which is frequently repeated in modern missions among the heathen.[92] 93. Dr. Trench’s disquisition regarding the latent union between covetousness and prodigality, involving a proof that the discourse about the rich man was applicable to the Pharisees who were not of prodigal habits, although very good in itself, is scarcely relevant; inasmuch as it is not the parable of the rich man, but the reproofs intervening between it and the unjust steward that are expressly addressed to the Pharisees.[93] 94. It is true a figurative meaning has been applied to it, as to all the rest, both in ancient and modern times. In this case the lesson, when metaphorically rendered, possesses a remarkable measure of beauty, truth, and appropriateness. The rich man is the Jewish nation, by God’s gift rich in position and privilege, but selfishly keeping all to itself, despising and neglecting others. Lazarus represents the Gentiles, spiritually poor, naked, hungry, homeless, within reach of the privileged people, yet by them left destitute. Both die: the old dispensation runs out, and Jews and Gentiles are together launched into “the last times.” By apostolic messengers, the poor outcasts are now led unto the blessed privileges of the Gospel; these stones become children of Abraham; while the Jews, who enjoyed so good a portion in the former dispensation, are cast out. In this case, as in that of the Samaritan, it is easy so to turn the polished instrument in the light, that it shall throw off bright glimpses of great evangelic facts and doctrines. Perhaps the Lord, in constructing it, kept this capability in view; but we must take the parable as in the first instance and mainly a direct moral lesson, accounting its allegorical capabilities secondary, and to us uncertain.[94] 95. The name of the poor man is given, while the rich man is left nameless. Generally, Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, and, in particular, it does not imitate this world’s kingdoms in throwing the common people into anonymous heaps, and recording the names of only the great. I saw in an extension of the parish churchyard the graves of the two hundred men who perished in the pit accident at Hartley a few years ago. They were grouped in families of two, three, four, or five, and these family groups were arranged in extended rows; but all were nameless. Near them slept the dust of the hereditary owners of the soil under monumental marble, loaded with statuary and inscriptions. Subjects of Christ’s kingdom, “it shall not be so among you.” Nor is the law which obtains in the heavenly the direct reverse of that which obtains in the earthly kingdom; it is not the poor, but the “poor in spirit,” to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs. The names that are recorded in the Lamb’s book of life are neither those who have nor those who lack this world’s wealth, but those who are poor in spirit and rich in grace.[95] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 29: 1.27. UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS ======================================================================== XXVII. UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS. “Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him. And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith. And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you. But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.”—Luke 17:1-10. We are accustomed to observe a connection, more or less intimate, between the parable and the history that precedes it. Generally, some recent event, or some question by friend or foe, suggests the similitude. In almost every case we are able to trace the natural history, as it were, of the parable,—to determine what feature of the events or discourses preceding called up the image and gave it shape. Here the relation between the parable and the antecedent instruction is closer still: in this case there is not merely a connection, but an absolute union. The direct and the metaphorical are here successively employed to enforce one continuous lesson. The lesson is one: the first portion of it is delivered in simple didactic language, and the second in parabolic figure. Some instruments are made of two different kinds of metal, not mixed in the crucible, but each occupying its own separate place: one part consists of steel, and another of brass, soldered together, so as to constitute one rod. The nature of the work is such that steel suits best for one extremity of the tool, and brass for the other. It is in a similar way that two different forms of speech are employed here to impart one lesson: the discourse begins with literal expressions, and ends with a similitude. The passage Luke 17:1-10 as a whole, teaches the double truth, That God requires of men a complete obedience, and that even though a complete obedience were rendered, the master would not be laid under any obligation—the servants would have no claim to praise or reward. While the rule towards the close is made universal, in the beginning the demand is particular and specific—to bear meekly and forgive generously the injuries which neighbours may inflict in the multifarious intercourse of life. Besides the point which constitutes the main scope of the discourse, several matters of the very highest importance are incidentally involved, and must be noticed, each in its proper place. First of all, in order to prepare his disciples for meeting the trials that lay before them, he warned them that offences will come, and pronounced a solemn woe on those who should cast them in their neighbour’s way. Looking to his own—alike those who were then in his sight, and those who should believe on him down to the end of the world—he calls them, tenderly, little ones, and intimates that it would go ill with all who should dare to hurt them. This, however, appears to be laid down as a basis for the lesson which he intended at that time to teach, rather than the lesson itself. Speaking expressly for the benefit of his own followers, he was more concerned to teach them how to bear injuries than to command them to beware of inflicting injuries on others. The chief part of a Christian’s duty consists in bearing well; and when that part of his duty is successfully performed, it is more effectual in serving God and convincing men than any kind or degree of active effort. The disciple is like his Lord in this, that he conquers by suffering. Accordingly, the Teacher soon glides from the precept which forbids his people to inflict injuries, into the precept which teaches how they should bear injuries inflicted by others. “Take heed to yourselves:” this is his main design: towards this he was hastening; as a basis for this word, the previous injunction had been given. But, mark well, it is not after the manner of men that Jesus warns his disciples to take heed to themselves. He does not mean that they should be solicitous to protect themselves from receiving injury: he leaves that to the natural instincts of self-preservation, and warns them against danger on another side, where nature supplies no defence. He does not mean, Take heed lest you suffer by the stroke which an enemy may deal against you; he means, Take heed lest you sin in spirit and conduct when you suffer unjustly. You suffer one injury when a neighbour treats you unfairly: and another when you proudly, impatiently retaliate. The loss that you thus inflict on yourself is far heavier than the loss which has been inflicted by a neighbour: the little finger of the one damage is thicker than the loins of the other. After the outpouring of the Spirit at the Pentecost, we find these scholars far advanced in this lesson, which their Master taught them while he remained at their head. The believers of those days had, especially in the persons of Peter and John, been cruelly persecuted by the Jewish authorities, and when they met after their suffering to pray, their petition ran: “And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word” (Acts 4:29). An injury had been inflicted: they innocently suffered; and observe what in these circumstances they feared: not more suffering, but lest by the suffering they should be tempted to be silent or wavering when called to be witnesses of Christ. Not the pain they endured, but the right state of their own spirits under the endurance, exercised their minds, and stimulated their prayers. We must not suppose, however, that the Lord has commanded his disciples to bear injuries as a clod bears blows. Mere softness in yielding to the wicked is not a Christian grace; it is, on the contrary, a mischievous indolence: it suffers sin upon a brother: it deprives him of the benefit of reproof, and so encourages him to continue in his sin. “If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.” This Teacher does not obliterate the lines which separate righteousness from unrighteousness. He enjoins tenderness: but much as he loves to see that feature in his disciples, he places it second to faithfulness. The order of precedence as regards these two has been determined by royal ordinance—“first pure, then peaceable.” “Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another,” said the Lord at another time (Mark 9:1-50), plainly giving faithfulness the first place, and requiring that gentleness should press hard up behind. Rebuke the brother who does a wrong to you; if under your reproof and the working of the truth on his conscience, he be led to repentance and confession, forgive him in your heart, and express your forgiveness, that he may be encouraged and relieved. The precept “forgive” must, from the nature of the case, refer to the articulate expression of forgiveness; for in his heart and before God, a Christian forgives his enemy, although that enemy continue obdurate. Next comes the precept, given in similar terms already in another place (Matthew 18:15-22), regarding the repetition of injuries. The duty of forgiving a repenting injurer is not modified by the frequency of his sin; the form of the expression “seven times in a day,” is manifestly intended to intimate that there is on that side absolutely no limit. It is not the part of a Christian to count the number of the injuries he has received, and to refuse forgiveness after a certain point; it is his part to be of a forgiving spirit, and to give forth forgiveness to all like the sunlight. The example of the Lord is the pattern for his servants; “Love one another as I have loved you.” The conception of unlimited forgiving, which in Matthew’s narrative is expressed by “seventy times seven,” is here with equal emphasis expressed by “seven times in a day.” When we understand the terms as a formula for an indefinite number, we exclude the minute question, How could we believe a man sincere, who should seven times in a day do us an injury, and as often come and express sorrow for his fault? The words should not be literally taken; and besides if any one should trifle with his neighbour by frequent and manifestly false professions of repentance, his meaning would and should be read, not by his words, but by his conduct; the rule would and should be understood in its spirit, and not in its letter merely. Luke 17:5. “And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.” An interesting and instructive view emerges here, of the relation between faith and practice. When they heard the measure of the demand which their Master made upon them in the matter of bearing and forgiving injuries, the apostles felt instantly that the weight was heavier than they could bear. They had not in their hearts such an amount of patience and love, as would enable them to fulfil this commandment of the Lord. Having already learned that faith is the secret fountain whence the stream of obedience flows, they asked with equal simplicity and correctness that their faith might be increased. In this short prayer they assumed, first, that they already believed, asking for an addition to the faith which they already possessed; and second, that it is more faith that will produce more obedience; and third, that the faith which worketh by love is not of themselves, but is the gift of God through his Son. In all this, having been secretly taught of the Spirit, these apostles are deeply intelligent, and completely correct. The appetites are generally sure guides to living creatures for the sustenance of their life; and here the appetite of the new creature, points surely to the source of supply: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Both in the request of the scholars (Luke 17:5), and in the answer of the Master (Luke 17:6), it is distinctly assumed as a fundamental truth in religion, that faith lies at the root of obedience. When a requisition is made upon them for an amount of meek endurance and forgiving love which their own stores cannot supply, they cry not directly for more power of enduring and forgiving, but for more faith which will strengthen them on this side, and on all other sides at the same time. It is as if you had a cistern meant to supply twelve streams, running in various directions, from whose lip twelve conduits were accordingly led: and when water from one of these was suddenly wanted, you opened it but found that little or none could be obtained. You cry out for a new supply to the cistern; that supply given will fill this channel which is for the the moment in requisition, and all the other channels at the same time. Endurance and forgiving—more than we are able to bear and bestow—are at this moment required of us; but if we had more faith, we should exhibit more of these graces, and more of all graces. The Lord in his answer acknowledges that their inference is correct. By another form of expression, similar in character to the “seven times in a day,” he intimates that faith possesses an unlimited power of production in the department of doing. To intensify the result he employs a double hyperbole, as engineers employ two pairs of wheels to generate extreme rapidity of motion; the smallest spark of faith will overcome the greatest obstacles that may lie across a Christian’s path. Again, the same idea which appeared before in Matt. xvii. 20, is expressed here by a different figure: in both cases the Lord intends to intimate that what without faith is impossible, may with faith be done. In Matthew the impossible is represented by the removal of a mountain; in Luke by the planting of a sycamore in the sea. By these forms our Teacher conveys his meaning with amazing distinctness. The letters of his lessons thus sharply, deeply cut, remain indeed dead letters to those who have not experienced the grace of God; as letters of a book, the largest and loveliest lie meaningless before the eyes of a savage or a little child; but in either case, as soon as the scholar becomes capable of understanding, the meaning shines forth like light. It would be a great transition from our present position of impotence, if we should become able to remove a mountain, or plant a sycamore in the sea; such and so great is the transition when a man passes from death in sin to life in Christ; such and so great the difference between what he could bear, and hope, and do while he was at enmity with God, and what he can bear, and hope, and do when he is reconciled to God through the death of his Son. The particular requirement which on this occasion put the faith of the disciples under a strain greater than it was able to meet, was the endurance and the forgiving of injuries; but this Scripture must not be limited to a private interpretation; this is a specimen shown in illustration of a general rule. There are diversities of operation, under the providence of God our Father; now the faith of Christians is tested in one way, and then in another. At one time they are called actively to do a great work; and at another time passively to bear a great burden. The work required of one disciple is a mission to the dark places of the earth; and the work required of another is to bear patiently many years of pain and weariness, in his own home, it may be on his own bed. By both alike the kingdom of Christ may be advanced: from both equally when they are bruised,—the one by great effort, and the other by a heavy weight,—the odour of a holy temper may be diffused all around. We are not masters; we are servants. The Lord appoints to each his place, and his work. The lesson now passes into the parable. When he had pointed out how great is God’s claim, and how large faith’s performance might become in the life of a disciple, Jesus warns them, on the other side, that the greatest possible, the greatest conceivable attainment in the direction of a believing obedience, implies absolutely no independent merit in man; obedience, although it reached the utmost point of perfection, would still leave God indebted to man for nothing, and man indebted to God for all. “But which of you having a servant ploughing or feeding cattle.” The state of society which supplies the ground-work of this parable is in many respects different from that which prevails in modern Europe. It is especially important here to notice the difference in these two features:— 1. It is a simple pastoral life that constitutes the basis of this picture. The principle of division of labour exists there in its lowest stages of development. It is assumed as a common and proper thing to employ a shepherd or a ploughman in serving his master at table—a practice entirely unknown among us. 2. The servitude in the instance supposed was not a voluntary limited engagement, but a species of slavery: the master’s control was much more absolute and complete than it is among us. The servant’s toil might be, and probably in many cases actually was, on the whole, not heavier than that to which our hired servants are subjected; but the measure of the labour, both as to its endurance and its severity, depended there on the master’s will rather than on the servant’s freedom. The master, under the species of relation which then largely prevailed, could demand of his servant on occasion an amount and continuity of service which now is not demanded on the one side, and would not be rendered on the other. It should be noticed, however, that the service which is in the parable required and rendered, is both in character and quantity extreme. An ordinary example of a servant’s work would not have suited the purpose of the Lord; he needed a line stretched to its utmost limits. His purpose is to teach that the utmost conceivable amount of obedience on man’s part is not independently meritorious before God; and, in searching among temporal things for a suitable analogy, he selected a case in which the line stretched from one extremity to the other. When the servant has finished his day’s work on the pasture or in the field, at his return, and before he obtain either rest or food, he is compelled to wait upon his master at table. Even this extreme measure of work is required by the master and rendered by the servant as within the limits of their respective rights: the servant even in that case has done no more than was due. “So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all these things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants.” God has given all, owns all, has a right to all. We are his by right of creation, and his by redemption, when we are in Christ. Christians are not their own; they are bought with a price. Themselves, and their faculties, and their capabilities belong to God, their Creator and Redeemer. When they have rendered all their powers, and all the product of these powers, absolutely up to God’s will, they have done no more than rendered to him his own. “Will a man rob God? yet ye have robbed me” (Malachi 3:8). It is an aggravated sin to rob God of what is his; but it is no merit or ground of praise simply to refrain from robbing him; and this is all that the creature’s obedience would amount to, although it were complete. Our Master ordinarily makes our work easy; he is gentle, and easy to be entreated. “As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him:” but at his pleasure, and doubtless in deep ways for their good, he sometimes lays extraordinary burdens on his own. He may permit offences to come, trying your temper; he may permit sickness to overtake you, trying your patience; he may permit temptations to assail you, trying your faith even at its foundations; he may require of you great and varied activity, trying your willingness to run at his call. These burdens seem heavy, as the master’s demand of service in the house seemed heavy to the servant when he returned weary and hungry from field labour; but although we should bear them all with complete uncomplaining alacrity, we should acquire thereby no right to reward. There is absolutely no such thing as a surplus of merit in man. The imagination of it has ever been rife in man-made religions, as weeds spring thick and spontaneous from the ground; but never and nowhere is there any substantial foundation for this human conceit. It springs in the deepest ignorance, and it withers when the light of knowledge begins to shine. It rests on an entire misapprehension of the relations between God and man. If a man on ship-board, thinking that the ship was about to sink, on account of being too heavily loaded, should grasp the shrouds, and hang on them with all his weight, by way of lightening the ship, the bystanders would count him fatuous; and yet such is the folly of him who, getting all from God, imagines that he has conferred on God a favour by a surplus of goodness. I have seen grown people, in possession of all their faculties, able to read, if not further educated, when, in crossing a river by a ferry, they apprehended danger, applying both their hands to the side of the boat in which they stood, and, pushing with all their might, in order to push it towards a place of safety. This implies the grossest ignorance, or at least the total forgetfulness for the time of the most obvious and ordinary of the natural laws; and yet I have found that these persons had quite enough of wit to manage all their ordinary affairs, and to get along respectably in society. I think there is some analogy between this case and the case of those who, intelligent on other points, yet blindly imagine that they merit praise for not squandering God’s gifts that have been placed under their care. “When ye have done all, say, We are unprofitable servants”—servants whom the master did not need, and who contribute nothing to him. The question whether the Lord conceded that in point of fact any man ever does perfectly perform all his duty is out of place here; The Lord’s meaning is, even although a man should do all, he would still be destitute of merit before God; much more are those destitute of merit who come far short of perfection, and to this class belong all, even the best of the children of men. Means and opportunities of bearing evil and doing good are in providence conceded to every one of us; and the law announced in another parable holds good here; If we improve aright the talents which we possess, more will forthwith be entrusted to us. There is room for advancement; and, when grace is begun, it is sweet to grow in grace. If we had power to add cubit by cubit to our stature, we should have far to grow ere our head should strike the heavens; and in bearing meekly, and acting righteously, and living purely, we have room enough to expand: it will be long ere we have done all, and so our progress be stopped by striking the boundary. Forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth to those that are before, we may press on and ever on; yet there is room. Nor let any one think that bearing and doing God’s will must be less blessed when we learn that God did not need this at our hand, and that we do not thereby lay him under obligation to us. When one is truly taught of the Spirit, it will increase and not diminish the pleasure which he enjoys in obedience, to learn that all he is, and has, and does, comes from God. A dependent is happier than an independent position for human beings, if he on whom they hang is great and good. The life of a child is happiest during the period when he has no possession of his own, and desires none,—when he gets all as he needs from his father; on this side, as well as on others, we must receive the kingdom as a little child. Here is a little stream trickling down the mountain side. As it proceeds, other streams join it in succession from the right and left until it becomes a river. Ever flowing, and ever increasing as it flows, it thinks it will make a great contribution to the ocean when it shall reach the shore at length. No, river, you are an unprofitable servant; the ocean does not need you; could do as well and be as full without you; is not in any measure made up by you. True, rejoins the river, the ocean is so great that all my volume poured into it makes no sensible difference; but still I contribute so much, and this, as far as it goes, increases the amount of the ocean’s supply. No: this indeed is the seeming to the ignorant observer on the spot; but whoever obtains deeper knowledge and a wider range, will discover and confess that the river is an unprofitable servant to the sea—that it contributes absolutely nothing to the sea’s store. From the ocean came every drop of water that rolls down in that river’s bed, alike those that fell into it in rain from the sky, and those that flowed into it from tributary rivers, and those that sprang from hidden veins in the earth. Even although it should restore all, it gives only what it received. It could not flow, it could not be, without the free gift of all from the sea. To the sea it owes its existence and power. The sea owes it nothing; would be as broad and deep although this river had never been. But all this natural process goes on, sweetly and beneficently, notwithstanding: the river gets and gives; the ocean gives and gets. Thus the circle goes round, beneficent to creation, glorious to God. Thus, in the spiritual sphere,—in the world that God has created by the Spirit of his Son, circulations beautiful and beneficent continually play. From him, and by him, and to him are all things. To the saved man through whom God’s mercy flows, the activity is unspeakably precious: to him the profit, but to God the praise. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 30: 1.28. THE IMPORTUNATE WIDOW ======================================================================== XXVIII. THE IMPORTUNATE WIDOW. “And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint: saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: and there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but afterwards he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh; shall he find faith on the earth?”—Luke 18:1-8. Among the parables this one is signalized by the distinctness with which its object is announced at the commencement, and the principle of its interpretation at the close. No room is left here for diversity of opinion regarding the lesson which the Lord intended to teach, or the manner in which the parable should be expounded. The design is expressed in Luke 18:1; the rule of interpretation in Luke 18:6-7. Why did the Master tell this story to his disciples? To teach them “that men ought to pray always, and not to faint.” How may this lesson be derived from it? As the widow by her unremitting cry obtained her desire from the judge, God’s own redeemed children will obtain from their Father in heaven all that they need, if they ask it eagerly, persistently, unwearyingly. When we rightly comprehend the design of the parable, the difficulty connected with the bad character of the judge at once disappears. It was necessary to go to a corrupt tribunal in order to find a suitable case; a pure judgment seat supplies no such example. In certain circumstances you might gather from a dunghill a medicinal herb which cleaner ground would never bear. The grain which becomes our bread grows best when its roots are spread in unseen corruption; and so perfect is the chemistry of nature, that the yellow ears of harvest retain absolutely no taint of the putrescence whence they sprung. Thus easily and perfectly the Lord brings lessons of holiness from examples of sin. He pauses not to apologize or explain: majestically the instruction advances, like the processes of nature, until the unrighteousness of man defines and illustrates the mercy of God. It is not by accident,—it is by choice that this seed of the word is sown on filthy ground: it is sown there, because it will grow best there. The experience of a righteous human tribunal does not supply the material of this lesson. Where the presiding judge is just, a poor injured widow will obtain redress at once, and her perseverance will never be put to the test. The characteristic feature of the case which the Lord needed, was a persistent, unyielding perseverance in the cry for redress; for such a case he must go to a court where law does not regulate the judge, but where the judge for his own ease or interest makes his own law. The feature of Christ’s teaching which most arrested intelligent listeners in his own day, was its inherent, self-evidencing majesty. Instead of seeking props, it stood forth alone, obviously divine. He taught with authority, and not as the scribes. Here is an example of that simple supremeness that is at once a witness to itself. He compares explicitly and broadly the method of God’s dealing, as the hearer of prayer, with the practice of a judge who is manifestly vile and venal. Nor is a word of explanation or apology interposed. He who thus simply brings sweet food from noisome carrion, has all power in heaven and in earth; His ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts. As he needed for his purpose an example of judicial corruption, examples lay ready to his hand in human history; especially in the practice of oriental empires, ancient and modern, it is easy to find cases in which the supreme authority, civil and criminal, is vested in a deputy who habitually sacrifices justice to his own ease or interest. The thorough badness of this judge, although stated distinctly, is stated briefly; it is not made prominent in the parable, and should not be made prominent in the interpretation of the parable. That badness on both sides, towards God and man, is I apprehend not introduced here for its own sake, but for the sake of a particular effect that resulted from it;—the frequent, persevering appeals of the widow for redress. This is the thing that is needed and used in the Lord’s lesson; and although the injustice of the judge stands distinctly out on the face of the parable, it is like the forest tree in the vineyards of Italy, used only to hold up the vine. Earnest, repeated, unyielding appeal by a needy, feeble suppliant before the throne of power;—this is the fruit which is precious for the Teacher’s purpose, and the hollow heart of the epicurean judge is employed only as the trunk to bear it. When it has held up that fruit to be ripened, itself may be thrown away. At certain points in frequented routes through romantic scenery it is customary to fire a gun in order to afford the tourists an opportunity of hearing the echoes answering each other in the neighbouring mountains. The explosion is in place nearest, in time first, and as to sound loudest, but this the most articulate and arrestive fact is employed exclusively for the purpose of producing the subsequent and more distant echo. The explosion is instantly dismissed from the mind and attention concentrated on the reverberation which it called forth. The conduct of the judge in this parable stands precisely in the place of that explosion. When it has produced the widow’s importunity it is of no further use; it must be thrown aside. Let us hear now the interpretation,—“And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith,” &c. God’s own chosen and redeemed people correspond to the suppliant widow in the parable. They are like her in her suffering and her weakness; they should be like her too in her unintermittent, persevering cry. Like other similar lessons, this one bears equally on the Church as a body, and on an individual Christian. The Church collective, in times of persecution, and a soul surrounded by temptations, stand equally in the place of the poor widow; they are in need and in danger. They have no resources in themselves; help must come from one that is mighty. It is their interest to plead with him who has all power in heaven and in earth,—to plead as men plead for life. The lesson here is very specific; it bears on one point, and in order that all its force may be concentrated on one point, others are for the time omitted. This parable is not spoken with the view of teaching that Christians ought to pray; that duty is assumed here, not enjoined. Neither does it prescribe what the suppliant should ask, or on whose merits he should lean. Taking for granted all these things which the Scriptures elsewhere explicitly teach, the Master in this lesson confines his attention to one thing,—perseverance in prayer when the answer does not come at first, perseverance and pertinacity aye and until the object is attained. It is expressly intimated in the narrative that there is sometimes a long, and from our view-point inexplicable delay. This is the meaning of the expression “though he bear long with them.” This phrase is not taken here in its ordinary signification,—an endurance of injuries; it means that he holds back long, and resists their pressure for relief. Here are the two sides over against each other: they cry day and night, and he, hearing their continuous cry, refrains from bestowing the relief for which they passionately plead. As God keeps back the answer, they redouble the cry; as they redouble the cry, God still withholds the answer. Expressly we are informed he will give answer; he will avenge his own elect. The eternal Father treasures up all the supplications of his children, and he will yet give them deliverance. When his time comes the deliverance will be complete; but in the meantime the interesting inquiry presents itself, Why does he delay at all? In the light of Scripture we are able to give a satisfactory answer to this inquiry. The reason why the widow’s claims were left long unsettled in the court was the self-pleasing indolence of the judge. The love of his own ease was the motive that induced him both to refuse redress at first and to grant it afterwards. He refused to avenge her until he perceived that to do her justice would afford him less trouble than to withhold it. In the treatment which the petitions of the elect receive at the throne of God there is nothing in common with the conduct of the unjust judge, except the delay. The fact that the petitions lie for some time unanswered is common to both tribunals, but on all other points they are wholly diverse, and even the single feature of coincidence springs in the two cases from opposite grounds. When God withholds the deliverance for which his children plead he acts with wisdom and love combined. It would be, so to speak, easier for a father who is at once rich and benevolent to comply immediately and fully with all the child’s demands; it requires and exercises a deeper, stronger love to leave the child crying and knocking for a time in vain that the bounty given at the proper time may in the end be a greater boon. I once knew two men who lived near each other in similar worldly circumstances, but adopted opposite methods in the treatment of their children. The boys of this family obtained money from their father when they asked it, and spent it according to their own pleasure, without his knowledge or control: the boys of that family often asked, but seldom received a similar supply. The father who frequently thwarted his children’s desires loved his children more deeply, and as the result showed, more wisely than the father who could not summon courage sufficient to say No. The wise parent bore with his own when they pleaded for some dangerous indulgence, and the bearing wounded his tender heart; but by reason of his greater love, he bore the pain of hearing their cry without granting their request. The other parent was too indolent and self-pleasing to endure such a strain, and he lived to taste bitter fruit from the evil seed which his own hand had sown. For the same reason, and in the same manner, our Father in heaven bears with his own when they cry night and day to him for something on which their hearts are set. Because he loves us he endures to hear our cry and see our tears. We do not certainly know what thorn it was that penetrated Paul’s flesh, but we know that it pained him much, that he eagerly desired to be quit of it, and that he besought the Lord thrice to take it away. From the fact that the child pleaded three times for the same boon, we learn that the Father bore with him awhile,—bore, so to speak, the pain of refusing, because he knew that the refusal was needful for Paul. The thorn was left in the flesh until its discipline was done, and then it was plucked out by a strong and gentle hand. “My grace is sufficient for thee:” there are no thorns in Paul’s flesh now. The case of the Syro-Phœnician woman (Matthew 15:21-28) runs parallel with this as well as with the “Friend at midnight.” Mark how the Lord bore with the woman. He delighted in her faith; it was his happiness to give, and yet he refused; in denying her he denied himself. But by withholding a while, he kindled her love into a brighter, stronger flame. By refusing what she asked, he reduplicated her asking; this is sweet to him and profitable to her. By the long delay on his part and the consequent eager repetition of the request on her part, a richer boon was prepared and bestowed. Her appetite was greatly quickened, and her satisfying was more full. Who shall be filled most abundantly from the treasures of divine mercy at last? Those who hungered and thirsted most for these treasures in the house of their pilgrimage. Think of the plainness of this lesson, and the authority which it possesses. Its meaning cannot be mistaken; we know what is spoken here, and we know who speaks. Hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. Show us the Father, said Philip, and it sufficeth us; here Christ, in answer to his disciples’ prayer, is showing the Father. To reveal the Father’s heart he spoke this parable. The helpless, needy woman came and came again, and cried, and would take no refusal, until the judge was compelled by her importunity to grant her request: and this is the picture chosen by the Lord Jesus when he desires to show how God regards suppliant disciples as they plead at his footstool. It is an amazing revelation, and the best of it is its truth. He who gave it has authority to speak. The Son will not misrepresent the Father; the Father’s honour is safe in this Teacher’s hands. We learn here, then, that the Hearer of prayer puts himself in the power of a suppliant. He permitted Jacob to wrestle, and the firmer he felt the grasp the more he loved the wrestler. The words, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me,” dropping in broken fragments from his lips at intervals as he paused and panted, were sweeter than angels’ songs in the ears of the Lord of Hosts. He is the same still, as he is in the New Testament revealed by Jesus. The spirit in man that will take no denial is his special delight; the spirit that asks once and ceases he cannot away with. As the Lord loveth a cheerful giver, he loveth too an eager persevering asker. The door seems narrow, but its narrowness was not meant to keep us out; they please him best who press most heavily on its yielding sides. “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.” The King of Glory feels well pleased the warriors’ onset,—gladly welcomes the conqueror in. It is indeed blessed to give: but the giver’s blessedness is greatly marred by the listlessness of the needy creatures on whom he has bestowed his bounty. If they who need and get the goodness are insensible, and cold, and ungrateful, the joy of the benefactor is proportionally diminished. It is thus with “the giving God.” When the receiver values the bounty, the delight of the bestower is increased. Thus the Lord Jesus was specially pleased as he healed the daughter of the Syro-Phœnician mother because she gave evidence by her importunity how much she valued the boon; and, on the other hand, his plaintive question, “Where are the nine?” when the lepers took their cure so lightly, shows that he did not much enjoy the act of healing because the diseased made light both of their ailment and their cure. Come near, press hard, open your mouth wide, pray without ceasing; for this is the kind of asking that the great Giver loves. Unforgiven sin on the conscience keeps the sinful distant, and Satan calls the silence modesty. It is not; they most honour God who show by their importunity in asking that they value his gifts. While it is true that prayer should be a continuous fulness in the heart, ever pressing outward and upward, flowing wherever it can find an opening, it is not specifically that characteristic to which this parable points. This is not the lesson, “In everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God:” the lesson here points not to the breadth of a whole spiritual life, but to the length of one line that runs through it. Whatever it be that a disciple desires, and is bent upon obtaining, he should ask not once, or twice, or twenty times, but ask until he obtain it; or until he die with the request upon his lips: and in that case he will get his desire, and more. Trust in God: trust in his love. He who has not spared his own Son, how shall he not with him freely give us all things? Do not deem that delay is proof of his indifference. Delaying to bestow is not proof of indifference in God; but ceasing to ask is proof of indifference in man. Christ assures us he will give: that should induce us to continue asking. Give me these links—1. Sense of need; 2. Desire to get; 3. Belief that God has it in store; 4. Belief that though he withholds awhile, he loves to be asked; and 5. Belief that asking will obtain;—give me these links, and the chain will reach from earth to heaven, bringing heaven all down to me, or bearing me up into heaven. While it is right to generalize the lesson, as we have already done, it is our duty also to notice the special form of the widow’s prayer and the Lord’s promise: in both cases it is vengeance against an adversary. The pleading is that the enemy who wronged the widow should be punished by the hand of power: the promise is that God will avenge his chosen ones, who cry to him. The case is clearly one in which the weak are overpowered by an adversary too strong for them: unable to defend themselves, or strike down their foe, they betake themselves to God in prayer. The ailment is specific; such also is the request. Do justice upon this enemy—rid me of his oppression and his presence. Ah, when a soul feels sin’s power a bondage, and sin’s presence a loathsome defilement;—when a soul so oppressed flees to the Saviour for deliverance, the Lord will entertain the case, and grant redress. He will avenge. “The God of peace will bruise Satan under your feet shortly.” No cry that rises from earth to heaven sounds so sweetly in the ear of God as the cry for vengeance upon the enemy of souls. When there is peace between man and his destroyer, the closet is silent, and no groan of distress from the deep beats against the gate of heaven. This is not what Jesus loves. He came not to send this peace on earth, or in heaven; he came to send a sword. His errand was to produce a deadly quarrel between the captive soul and the wicked one, its captivator. When the cry rises, broken and stifled, but eager, as uttered by one engaged in deadly strife—when the cry, “Avenge me,” rises from earth, God in heaven hears it well pleased. He delights when his people, hating the adversary of their souls, ask him for vengeance; and he will grant it. Long to the struggling combatant the battle seems to last, but speedily, according to God’s just reckoning, the avenging stroke will fall. If there is delay it is but for a moment, and because this added moment of conflict will make the everlasting victory more sweet. It is worthy of notice, incidentally, that where an indolent judge, in order to avoid trouble, gives a just sentence to-day, he may, from the same motive, give an unjust sentence to-morrow. He who taught this lesson, knowing all that should befall himself, and hastening forward to his final suffering, knew well that deepest sorrow may spring from the selfishness of an unjust judge which happened for that time to bring deliverance to the widow. Pilate was precisely such a magistrate. Neither fear of God nor regard for man was the ultimate reason that determined his decision: the love of his own ease and safety was the hinge on which his judgment turned. He was disposed to do justly rather than unjustly in the case, when the Jewish rulers dragged Jesus to his bar. He would have pronounced a righteous judgment if that course had seemed to promise greater or equal advantage to himself. But the priests and people were, like this widow, very importunate and persevering. “Crucify him, crucify him,” they cried. “Why, what evil hath he done?” “Crucify him, crucify him,” rose again in a sound like the voice of many waters from the heaving throng. “Shall I release Jesus?” interposed the irresolute Pilate; “Away with this man, and give us Barabbas,” was the instant reply. “Shall I crucify your king?” said Pilate, making yet another effort to escape the toils that were closing round him; but this fence laid him open to the heaviest blow of all: “If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar’s friend.” He gave way at last: by their continual coming they wearied him, and he abandoned the innocent to their will. Thus the unjust as well as the just judgment seat has two sides. Jesus gave the safe side to the poor widow, and accepted the other for himself. He became poor that we might be rich: he was condemned that we might be set free. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 31: 1.29. THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN ======================================================================== XXIX. THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. “And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”—Luke 18:9-14. In this parable two great classes are represented, not by symbols, but by specimens. Self-righteous men are here represented by a self-righteous man, and repenting sinners by a repenting sinner. The instruction is communicated, not obliquely by a figure, but directly by a fact. The quality of the harvest is shown by samples taken from the heap. If allegory were deemed an essential ingredient of a parable, this lesson of the Lord would necessarily be excluded from the list; but I am not disposed to adopt such a narrow and artificial definition. Taking a general view of its substance, rather than making a minute inspection of its form, I accept the Pharisee and the publican as a parable according to the common consent of the Church. It is almost entirely free from critical and exegetical difficulties: he may run who reads its lesson. In announcing the class of persons for whose reproof it was spoken, the evangelist at the outset supplies us with a key that opens all its meaning:—“Certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others,” were clustering round the Teacher, and mingling with his disciples. He spoke this parable for the purpose of crushing their pride: he will not suffer sin upon them. For their instruction and reproof, these examples are selected and described. It is not necessary to suppose that the parable pointed exclusively to those who were Pharisees, or exclusively to those who were not: it concerned all who were self-righteous, to whatever sect they externally belonged. We know that within the circle of Christ’s devoted followers much of this spirit still lingered. Peter enumerated the sacrifices which he and his comrades had made for their Master, and bluntly demanded what reward they might expect for their fidelity. It is expressly to his own disciples that the Lord, on another occasion, addresses the warning, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” For our benefit, then, even though we be true Christians—for our benefit, and not only for some particular sect, is this instruction given. “Two men went up into the temple to pray.” The temple was the acknowledged place of prayer; to it the devout Jews went at the hour of prayer, if they were near; toward it they looked if they were distant. The appointment was a help to prayer in the preparatory dispensation: it would be a hindrance if it were maintained still. Not in that one place, but in all places, the true worshippers pray to the Father. “The one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.” The two characters are represented in deep relief: there is no confusion, and no ambiguity. Each is exhibited in his own colour, and the two are sharply distinguished from each other. Nor are these two men in all their features diverse: there are points of likeness as well as of difference. It is as profitable to observe wherein they are like as wherein they are unlike. The distinction does not lie in that the one was good while the other was bad: both were evil, and perhaps it would be safe to say, both alike evil. In the end, the one was a sinner forgiven, and the other a sinner unforgiven; but at the beginning both and both equally were sinners. Their sins as to outward form were diverse; but in essential character the sinfulness was in both the same. The Pharisee said and did not; the publican neither said nor did. The Pharisee pretended to a righteousness which he did not possess; the publican neither professed righteousness nor possessed it. While one maintained the form of godliness, but denied its power, the other denied both the form and the power of godliness. At first there is nothing to determine our choice between the two men as to their state before God: the one was a hypocrite, and the other a worldling. Both alike need pardon, and to both alike pardon is offered in the Gospel. “The blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin;” but no effort of our own will cleanse us from any. With the forgiveness that comes through Christ, the Pharisee would have been accepted; but wanting it, the publican would have been cast out. The hinge on which the essential distinction between these two men turned was not the different quantities of sin which they had severally committed, but the opposite grounds on which they severally placed their trust. 96 Both go at the same time to the same place to pray, and both adopt in the main the same attitude in this exercise; they stood while they prayed. This was the ordinary attitude; but kneeling and prostration were also practised. Each of these postures has its own peculiar appropriateness; either is a seemly and a Scriptural method of bringing the position of the body into significant harmony with the desire of the soul. Among those attitudes which are true and right, we are at liberty to adopt that which is in our circumstances most convenient and seemly. Alas! there has always been a tendency in man to lay a yoke upon himself and his fellow. Why should we judge one another where our Master has left us free? We may safely lay it down as an absolute rule, without stipulating for even a single exception, that the best position for praying in is the position in which we can best pray. 97 “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee,” &c. Those expositors are probably right who think that “with himself” is connected with “stood,” rather than “prayed.” It is in perfect accord with the narrative to intimate that he stood by himself—he was not the man to mingle with the common herd of worshippers; but it does not seem congruous to intimate that he prayed with himself. His prayer is addressed to God; he has no doubt much to do with himself while he utters it, but so has his neighbour the publican. As much as the proud man deals with himself to contemplate his own goodness during prayer, so much does the humble man deal with himself to contemplate his own badness. It is not then intimated that he prayed by himself, but that he stood by himself while he was praying. He counted that he belonged to the aristocracy in the kingdom of God, and must get a position apart from the multitude. 98 In yet one other point the two suppliants are like each other; both alike look into their own hearts and lives; and both permit the judgment thus formed to determine the form and matter of their prayer. Both addressed themselves to the work of self-examination, and the prayers that follow are the fruits of their research. At this point the two men part company, and move in opposite directions—the one found in himself only good, the other found in himself only evil. In both, and in both alike, there was only evil; but the publican discovered and confessed the truth regarding himself, while the Pharisee either blindly failed to see his own sin, or falsely refused to confess it. The error of the Pharisee does not lie in the form or matter of his prayer. It is substantially a song of thanksgiving. This is never out of place; praise is comely. There is not a living man on the earth who has not ground for giving praise to God every day, and all day. Nor does his prayer necessarily transgress the strict limits of truth when he says, “God, I thank thee that I am not as other men.” If he had been employed in numbering the mercies of God—if he had meditated on his privileges, till he was lost in wonder, that so many benefits had been conferred on one so worthless, he might with truth have burst into the exclamation, “I am not as other men.” As a true penitent, when employed in considering his own sin, truly describes himself as the chief of sinners; so a thankful man, lost in the multitude of God’s mercies, thinks in all simplicity that none in all the world have been so highly favoured as himself. From his own view-point a true worshipper truly counts both his sins and his mercies greater than those of other men. When he confesses his sins he counts and calls them deeper than those of others; when he recounts the benefits he has received from God, he says that they are greater than others have enjoyed. Glad praise and weeping confession correspond to each other in a true heart, as correspond the height of the sky and the depth of its shadow in still waters. When the clouds above you become high, the shadow of them beneath you becomes correspondingly deep. The same man who said, “I am chief of sinners,” said also, “Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.” It is not, then, for what he has said that the Pharisee is condemned, even when he announces that he is not as other men. If conscious of unworthiness, and amazed at God’s long-suffering, he had exclaimed, I am not like other men—I have been spared and instructed, and invited and taught and led with a paternal tenderness that others do not enjoy, his thanksgiving would have been sweet incense as it rose to the throne of the Most High. He presumes to give thanks not for what he has received, but for what he is and does. Here lies his condemnation. It is not in the thanks but in the reason for the thanks that the old serpent lurks; he is delighted not with what God has graciously bestowed on him, but with what he has meritoriously given to God. The sense in the original is more comprehensive than that which the English conveys; other men here mean all others. On one side he places himself, and on the other side the rest of human kind: the result of the comparison in his judgment is that he is better than all. Three of the more articulate and manifest forms of wickedness he enumerates, in order by the contrast to set forth his own purity. “Extortioners” are officials having a right to something, who unjustly force from an oppressed people more than is due; the “unjust” are those who deal unfairly in the ordinary intercourse of life; and adulterers are, in fact, and were then accounted the deepest and most daring transgressors of the laws both human and divine. Probably the Pharisee was in point of fact free in his conduct from all these vices; there is nothing in the parable that forbids us in these matters to take him at his word. Instead of extending the list of vices of which he felt himself free, he cuts the matter short by a general comparison between himself and the publican. The contempt in which the tax-farmers were held by the stricter Jews shines out in every page of the Gospel, and is well understood by the readers of the Scriptures. By way of purging himself from sin in the lump, he says shortly, “I am not as this publican.” In order to condemn the Pharisee on this point, it is not necessary to suppose that he made a wrong estimate of his neighbour. Granted that this publican had up to this hour been stained with all these three vices, and that the Pharisee, knowing his character, formed a correct judgment regarding it; still his condemnation remains the same; it is not the part of one sinner to judge and condemn another. “I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess,”—all that I acquire; it is not capital but income. It is a picture of mere self-righteousness. His judgment was wrong from the root; he knew neither his own heart nor God’s law. Pharisee as he was, he might have learned from the prophet Isaiah the true state of the case, “We are all as an unclean thing; and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.”99 “The publican standing afar off,” &c. The difference does not lie in that this was a good man while the other was bad. This is a sinner too; but he has come to know it, and therein lies the distinction between him and the Pharisee. His judgment of himself accords with his actual state and character; he knows and owns the truth regarding his own sinfulness. There is no merit in this discovery, and in itself it cannot save. If two men should both take poison, and one of them should become aware of the fact ere the poison had time to operate; the one who knows the truth is more miserable than the one who is ignorant, but not more safe. If there be a physician within reach who can cure, the knowledge of his danger will send one man to the source of help, while the ignorance of the other will keep him lingering where he is, till it is too late to flee. But even in that case it was not the man’s knowledge of his danger that saved him. Another saved him; his knowledge of his own need only led him to a deliverer. It is so here. There is no merit and no salvation in the publican’s conviction and confession; although he confesses his sin, he is still a sinner. His own tears are not the fountain in which his guilt can be washed away. If there were no Saviour, his penitence would do him no good; if Christ had not come to save the lost, the lost, though alarmed, would not have been saved. If we take care to notice that there was neither merit nor safety in the man’s confession, we may profitably listen to the confession, and learn what it was. “He stood afar off.” Here we begin to observe external marks of an inward penitence; he judged and condemned himself. He had the same right with other worshippers to come near; but a consciousness of his uncleanness before God compelled him to take the lowest place even among men. Such was the tenderness of his spirit, that he thought everybody better than himself. Humility is the exact opposite of pride; as the one man counted himself better than all, the other counted himself worse than all. When he obtained a sight of his own vileness before God, his feeling was that even his brother would be polluted by his presence. As love of God, when we have tasted his grace, carries love to men after it, like a shadow; so shame before God, because of sin in his sight, diffuses humility and modesty through the spirit and conduct in the ordinary intercourse of life. He was unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven. He looked down to the earth; but his heart was rising up to heaven the while. His eyes could not bear at that moment to look, as it were, on the light of the great white throne; but his soul ascended, and pressed with violence on the gate of the kingdom. Against that strait gate his spirit is now striving; the King of glory from within feels the pressure well pleased, and opens to let the agonizer in. “Smote upon his breast;” it is like other signs of grace, precious if it is true, worthless when it is false. A worshipper will not be heard for his much beating, any more than for his much speaking: but when it is the true external symptom of a broken heart within, the knocking on his own breast is reckoned a knocking at the gate of heaven. To him that knocketh at this lower gate, the highest will be opened. His prayer was short and suitable; “God be merciful to me, the sinner” (?? ????????). The contrast continues to the last; as the Pharisee had compared himself with all mankind, and concluded that he alone was good; so the Publican in the depth of his shame seems to count himself the only sinner. The steps are few and simple by which a sinner finds or misses the way into eternal life. Not perceiving his own sin, a Pharisee comes to God, as one who deserves favour; he seeks to enter heaven where the wall of righteousness frowns in his face, and is cast away. The publican, conscious of his unworthiness, counting himself altogether evil, flees from his own sin to God’s provided mercy; he tries where the door is open, and passes in a moment through. I tell you, “This man went down to his house justified,” &c.; he, but not the other. 100 The Pharisee forgave himself; who is this that forgiveth sin? and who is this whose sins he forgives? He asked no forgiveness from God, and got none. He departed from the temple as full and satisfied, or rather as empty and poor, as he entered it. For aught that we learn to the contrary, he went on, tithing his mint, anise, and cummin,—went on blindfold till he stumbled on the judgment-seat. The penitent Publican went down to his house a justified man; he sat in the circle of his family, retired to rest at night, rose in the morning to his labour, at peace with God. On the morrow he looked on the sun-light without being in terror of the mighty One whose word had made it shine; he walked abroad on the fields, in conscious, loving companionship with Him who spread them out and covered them with green; he looked from the mountain-side on the great sea when “it wrought and was tempestuous,” the confiding child of Him who holds its waters in the hollow of his hand; and when again he laid his head upon the pillow for rest to his wearied body, he laid his soul on the love of his Saviour, as an infant leans on a mother’s breast. When the hand that led him through the wilderness leads him at length down the dark sides of the swelling Jordan, he looks up with languid eye, but bright, burning spirit, and whispers to his guide, “I will not fear, for Thou art with me;” when the judgment is set and the books are opened, he stands before the Judge in white clothing, accepted in the Beloved; the voice of the Eternal, tenderly human, yet clothed with divine authority, utters the welcome,—“Come, thou blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom.” FOOTNOTES 96. There is a strong resemblance between this pair and the two sons who were severally asked by their father to work in his vineyard.—Parable X.[96] 97. This question has begun of late to attract a considerable measure of attention in the Presbyterian Churches of this country. It needs a wise treatment, and, alas! we lack wisdom. For convenience and order, all the members of a worshipping assembly ought evidently to adopt the same method; but this is not a matter for arbitrary ecclesiastical enactment. The Pharisee and the publican both stood while they prayed; but their prayers seem to have been short. To enact that the congregation must stand during prayer, and then to keep them praying for twenty minutes or half-an-hour, which is sometimes done, seems to be in effect turning prayer into penance.[97] 98. ??????? ???? ??????, standing by himself, as if it were ???’ ??????. Thus the relation is preserved with the position of the publican, ???????? ?????. Either stood alone, but for opposite reasons: the Pharisee stood forward alone, because he thought other worshippers were not fit to be in his company; the publican stood back alone, because he considered himself unworthy to mingle with other worshippers. It may be worth while to mention, for the sake of the English reader, the order of the words in the original is, “The Pharisee standing with himself, thus prayed.” You must be guided entirely by the sense in determining whether to read it, Standing with himself, thus prayed; or standing, with himself thus prayed.[98] 99. He obtained this self-confidence by comparing himself not with the law of God, but with others who seemed worse than himself. When a man compares himself with robbers and adulterers, for whom the sword and the prison are prepared, he may easily seem to himself like an angel.—Arndt.[99] 100. He brought with him, what the Pharisee left at home, the book of his own guilt, and exhibited all that stood against him there.—Arndt.[100] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 32: 1.30. THE SERVANTS AND THE POUNDS ======================================================================== XXX. THE SERVANTS AND THE POUNDS. “And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear. He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come. But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us. And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading. Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds. And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities. And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds. And he said likewise to him, Be thou also over five cities. And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin: for I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow. And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow: wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury? And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds. (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.) For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given: and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him. But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.”—Luke 19:11-27. It is necessary at the outset to indicate the relation which subsists between this parable and that of the talents, (Matthew 25:1-46). Although in many of their features they are the same, in others there is a decisive difference. Both show that the Lord bestows privileges on his servants, and demands faithfulness in return; and both show that the diligent are rewarded and the unprofitable condemned. But the one supposes a case, in which all the servants receive equal privileges, and shows that even those of them who are faithful, may be unequal as to the amount of their success; the other supposes a case in which unequal privileges are bestowed upon the servants, and shows that when unequal gifts are employed with equal diligence, the approval is equal in the day of account. Both alike exhibit the grand cardinal distinction between the faithful and the faithless; but in pointing out also the diversities that obtain among true disciples, they view the subject from opposite sides, each presenting that aspect of it which the other omits. The parable of the talents teaches that Christians differ from each other in the amount of gifts which they receive; and the parable of the pounds teaches that they differ from each other in the diligence which they display. 101 The incident connected with Zaccheus, although it occurred on the spot and at the moment, did not, I think, supply the occasion of this parable, and does not contain the key of its meaning. The Lord’s interview with that interesting and earnest tax-farmer in the neighbourhood of Jericho rather constituted an episodical interruption to the continuity of his thought and the narrative of his journey. He had passed through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem for the last time. An expectation, intense in character though vague in outline, was spreading through the neighbourhood, that great events would emerge on his arrival at the capital. It was the crowd already on this account assembled that gave prominence to the case of Zaccheus. It is not from that episode that the parable springs; rather, when the interruption which it caused was over, the current of thought, displaced for a moment, returns to its former channel, and flows as it had flowed before. The crowd had assembled before the conversation with Zaccheus took place, and the cause of the excitement was the expectation that “the kingdom of God should immediately appear.” It was on account of this expectation that the parable was spoken. The purpose of the Lord was to correct the popular impression in as far as it was erroneous, and to turn it to account in as far as it contained a basis of truth. They expected that Jesus was about to proclaim himself king, and occupy David’s throne at Jerusalem: he teaches them by the parable that his kingdom is not of this world—that he, the king, will depart from their sight for a while, and that it behoves his subjects to occupy their talents and opportunities till he return. “A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.” His errand when he went abroad was not to seek a kingdom in another quarter of the world, but to obtain from a foreign power nomination to the sovereignty of his native land. In the first place, it is not probable that, after having become king of another country, he would return to reside where he was only a subject; but a much more decisive indication is given by the message which his fellow-citizens sent after him, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” They do not interfere with his prospects in a foreign country; it is his sovereignty over themselves that they dread and deprecate. This outspoken repudiation of his government by his fellow-citizens makes it both certain and manifest that, though he sought investiture abroad, the kingdom which he expected to receive was in his own native land, and over his former fellow-citizens. In those days both the Jews and other nations subject to the supremacy of Rome were familiar with the transaction which forms the basis of this parable. After the nobleman’s departure, his countrymen, aware of his design, endeavoured to thwart it. With this view they sent a message, or rather an embassy (?????????) after him; they commissioned some of their own number to appear along with him before the power paramount, and oppose his claim. It is a mistake to suppose that the protest of these citizens was addressed to the nobleman who sought to become their king; the deputies are instructed to address themselves not to him, but to the foreign power from whom he intends to seek investiture. They will appear at court along with him when his petition is presented, and plead that it may be rejected. Such debates were in point of fact held before the republican and imperial tribunals of Rome. 102 Before setting out on his journey “he called his ten servants,” &c. These men were his servants or slaves. In different countries, and at different times, the bond of servitude has been indefinitely varied both in stringency and duration. In all probability these servants were the bondsmen of the nobleman, although law and practice might not accord to the owner a power so absolute as that with which we are too familiar in modern slavery. But the more nearly that the master’s rights approached the point of absolute ownership of property, the more suitable becomes the picture to represent the relation that subsists between the redeeming Lord and his ransomed people. 103 This nobleman, desiring that no part of his property or capital should lie unproductive during his absence, made the best arrangement, of which the circumstances admitted, before he left the country. His method was the same as that which appears in the cognate parable, the entrusted talents, with the exception that in this case the master made all his servants equal. A mina, in value equal to about £2, 3s. 6d., was entrusted to each man, with the intimation that, according to his diligence and faithfulness in the management of this capital, would be his reward when the owner should return. 104 Such is the arrangement which this nobleman made with those who are described as “his own servants,” on the eve of his departure; but with his neighbours, who were free and independent, he had either neglected to seek, or failed to obtain, an understanding. Aware of his object, they sent after him a deputation of their own number, instructed to appear along with him at the imperial court, and oppose his request. They were not willing to become his subjects, and therefore endeavoured to prevent him from obtaining a regal title and despotic power. Their opposition, however, had no other effect than to betray their enmity, and so expose them to the King’s displeasure. His first act after he returned with supreme authority was to call his servants into his presence, and reward them according to their merits; and his second, to issue an order for the punishment of those who had opposed his elevation. The remaining portion of the scene is so similar to the corresponding parts of the cognate parable already expounded, that it is unnecessary to trace the narrative further; rather let us hasten now to ascertain and enforce the spiritual lesson from the whole. While the Master was setting his face towards Jerusalem for the last time, a dim presentiment of coming change occupied his disciples. In their minds, the expectation of his kingdom had taken a wrong direction, and tended to put them off their guard. To correct their error, and bind them to patient watchfulness, he spoke this parable. Because they imagined he was about to assume kingly power, and give them places of temporal dignity on his right hand and on his left, he taught them by this similitude, that he must go away, and that they must remain behind, working and watching. The nobleman represents the Lord himself. While he prosecuted his ministry on earth, he had not fully attained possession of the kingdom. The departure of the nobleman represents the exodus which the Lord soon afterwards accomplished at Jerusalem, comprising his death, resurrection, and ascension. In the parable, the power paramount who could withhold or bestow a kingdom is not named: it is intimated only that this transaction took place out of sight in a far country. When the Son of God ascended after his mediatorial work on earth was complete, all power was given to him in heaven and on earth. Beyond his disciples’ sight he received the kingdom from the Father. Now he has right to rule supreme over that world, on which before he had not where to lay his head. He will come to this world again as its King, with power and great glory. Two classes of persons are mentioned as having remained in the country while the prince was absent:—these are his servants and his adversaries. In the material scene, there might be many who neither served nor opposed him; but these are not mentioned in the parable, because there are none to correspond with them on the spiritual side. There only two classes exist,—those who serve Christ as the Lord that bought them, and those who, being at enmity with God, refuse to obey the Gospel of his Son. The parable has not much to do with them that are without. At the beginning, it shortly indicates their rebellion, and at the close as shortly predicts their doom; but the circumstances, the character, the life, and the reward of the Lord’s disciples are more expressly and more fully declared. The master who owns them places some of his treasures at their disposal, and with the general injunction, “Occupy,” goes out of their sight. The servants are those who, at least in profession, are the disciples of Christ, and the pounds are the faculties which they possess, and the opportunities which they enjoy. The place and age in which our lot has been cast, our early education, our bodily members and mental powers, our station in society and the circle of our homes, our money and our health, and, in addition, the graces of the Spirit, in whatever measure they may have been conferred,—all that we are and have belongs to God. He is the owner, and we are tenants at will. While a general law has been laid down to determine, in the main, the direction of our course, the details are left to our own discretion. One man may invest his master’s capital in land, and another in merchandise, and both may be equally faithful, equally successful: so in various lines of effort, different disciples may, in diverse manners, but with equal faithfulness, serve the Lord. There is freedom in the choice of departments, provided always there be loyalty to the King. In the relation between Christ and Christians, opposites meet without hostile collision. His ownership is absolute, and yet there is freedom in full. His lordship does not limit their liberty; their liberty does not infringe his rights. What a glorious liberty this earth-ball enjoys! How it careers along through space, threading its way through thronging worlds, and giving each a safe wide berth in the ocean of the infinite! Yet the sun holds the earth all the while in absolute and entire control. Like that glory in the visible heavens is the glory of the Everlasting Covenant. The largest liberty conceded to the sons of God consists with sovereignty complete and constant exercised over them by the Redeemer, who bought them with his blood. He is their owner, and yet they are free. The union of opposites is possible with God: “He is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.” The sons serve; and yet they are sons. Ransomed men are instruments of a higher order, than other agencies through which the reign of Providence is administered. Although the Lord requires of his regenerated people as complete submission to his law, as he demands and obtains from the elements of nature and the brutes that perish, he does not require from them an equally uniform and mechanical routine. The streams that course over continents, and the tides that swell upon their shores, must render the same service every day; but these sons of God are not held to labour by a bridle so short and rigid. They are endowed with reason and will; they are set at liberty, and permitted to expatiate over a wider field. Their master goes out of sight, and trusts to a renewed, loving heart for the diligent outlay and faithful return of all the talents. The Gospel requires and generates not a legal, but an evangelical obedience. When the king returns, or the servants are summoned one by one through death to meet their master, they are tried as to faithfulness and diligence in laying out their talents. Although ten were mentioned at the beginning, it is not necessary to report on more than three at the close. These are sufficient to show that some were diligent, and some slothful; and that among the diligent there were different measures of effort, success, and reward. What hast thou that thou didst not receive? Occupy; occupy all, and occupy it all the time till the Giver come to claim his own. All that God gives us is given for use. There is much evil, moral and material, in the world. He who made it and saw it fall by sin, has its restoration and renewal much at heart. When he has gotten some of the fallen restored to favour and renewed in spirit, he endows them with various riches from his own treasury, that the capital wisely invested may yield a large return at his coming. Let each according to his means and opportunity lay himself and his talents out to leave the world better than he found it;—to diminish the amount of sin and suffering, to feed hungry mouths, and cover naked backs, to enlighten dark minds and save perishing souls. It is a high calling to be fellow-workers with God, to be instruments of righteousness in his hands. One, by trading with his pound gained ten, before the king returned, and another five. Both are equally approved, but unequally rewarded; each receives as his recompense all that he had won. Two principles which operate in the spiritual kingdom are symbolized here; one, that various degrees of efficiency and success obtain among the faithful disciples of Christ; another that reward in his kingdom springs from work and is proportioned to it. The parable of the talents recorded by Matthew represented one fact in the history of the kingdom, that different persons receive differing gifts from the sovereign God: this parable, recorded by Luke, represents another fact in the history of the kingdom, that among those who possess equal gifts varieties occur in the skill and success with which the gifts are employed. The practical lesson from the former parable is, If with all your efforts you fall far behind your neighbour in the result of your labour, you need not on that account be cast down, for equal diligence will meet equal approval, whether it be applied to a large capital or a small; the lesson of the latter parable is, If others are obtaining greater results than you, strive to imitate and equal them, lest your opportunity not have having been fully occupied, you should obtain at last only a small reward. The first puts in a spring to keep the truly faithful from sinking into despondency because their talents are few; and the second puts in a spring to keep the indolent from lagging behind. The two together, one on this side and one on that, shut all up to diligence in the work of the Lord. A glimpse is given here of the method in which rewards are bestowed upon faithful servants; each receives what he has won. The work of the saved in their Master’s service measures in some way their recompense at their Master’s side. In all cases the wages given, seeing they depend on the merits of the Mediator, must be immeasureably greater than the work done; but it would appear that the differences which shall obtain in heaven will bear some proportion to the productiveness of the service here: the whole continent will be elevated as by the immediate power of God: but certain points will stand out above others in the celestial landscape on account of great talents greatly used. How much a city is greater in value than a pound we cannot calculate exactly, but the difference represents the gain that all the true servants will make at the coming of the king. All the faithful are made great; but the greatest worker is the greatest winner when the accounts are closed. Hold on, disciples; every grace that grows into strength, through bearing and doing your Redeemer’s will here, is a seed that will multiply your enjoyment manifold when you come to the inheritance. Nor is this a mercenary motive. A true Christian can never separate his interests from Christ: he serves his Lord in love to-day, and will discover at last that in serving his Lord, he has been enriching himself. The case of the servant who allowed his pound to lie unused is not different from the corresponding case in the parable of the talents except in one thing; in this parable the pound which the indolent servant had permitted to lie idle is simply taken out of his hands, while, in the other parable, the unprofitable servant is cast into outer darkness. The lesson, in as far as it is the same in both, is, that not only those who do positive wickedness, but those also who fail to do good, are counted guilty in God’s sight. Inasmuch as in this parable no other punishment is inflicted on the indolent servant than the deprivation of his capital, it may possibly be intended to intimate that culpable unfaithfulness in a true believer may sometimes descend so far as to be undistinguishable by human eyes from the entire neglect of the unbelieving. There is, however, in all cases, a dividing line, although we may not be able to trace it—“the Lord knoweth them that are his.” Nor does this conception really weaken the motive to diligence; for if any one should slacken in his efforts to serve the Lord on the ground that a great degree of negligence, although it may diminish his reward, does not imperil his safety, this very thing would conclusively prove that he has no part in Christ. It is the nature of the new creature to be forgetting the things behind, and reaching forth to those that are before; when the leaning of a man’s heart goes in the opposite direction—that is, when he deliberately endeavours to make matters as pleasant as possible for himself, by escaping from all service to Christ, except as much as is necessary to carry him safe to heaven, he certainly has not yet been born again, and in this state shall not see the kingdom. He who sails along the sea of Christian profession, loving the neighbouring land of worldly indulgence, and therefore hugging the shore as closely as he thinks consistent with safety, will certainly make shipwreck. Ah! the ship that thus seeks the shore is drawn by the unseen power of a magnet-mountain—drawn directly to her doom; he who is truly bound for the better land gives these treacherous headlands a wide berth. The last lesson is the judgment pronounced and the punishment inflicted on the adversaries. They who will not submit to Christ the crucified will be crushed by Christ the king. Every eye shall see him; they also who pierced him. Meekly now he stands at the door and knocks; then he comes as the lightning comes. One hope remains,—one door stands wide open yet. His enemies must be slain, either now or then. The enemies of the Lord’s reign in the present world are the evil desires that occupy a man’s heart, and close it against its rightful sovereign; drag them forth and slay them before him, that he may enter and possess his own. Surrender his enemies into his hands to-day, and you will henceforth be among his friends; if sins be sheltered in the day of grace, the sinners will find no shelter in the day of judgment. FOOTNOTES 101. The man who cannot perceive, or will not own that these are two distinct cases, charged with different, though cognate lessons, is not fit to be an expositor of any writing, either sacred or profane. Enough for the critics who persist in the theory, that these two parables are different, and consequently incorrect, reports of one discourse spoken only once by the Lord; the conceit is not worthy of more minute refutation.[101] 102. Herod and his son Archelaus had both in succession repaired personally to Rome to obtain their authority. Precisely similar scenes are enacted between the British government and the protected potentates of India; the agents for rival princes contend for regal rights in London, where the government of India is in the last resort controlled.[102] 103. It is altogether a mistake to conclude from the allusions made here and elsewhere in the Scriptures to the actually existing servitude of the times and places, that any modern system of slavery may claim the sanction of divine approval. It was the custom of Jesus to seize existing facts on the right and on the left as they lay around, and employ them as vehicles for conveying his meaning. Sometimes he so employed a good thing, and sometimes a bad thing, but by the mere fact of using a human act or habit as a metaphor, he pronounced no judgment regarding its moral character. It was enough for him that the thing was well known, and that it served as a letter with which he might indicate his mind. Printers make their types of any material that may be most suitable for the purpose, and most readily obtained; and with these types they multiply the Scriptures. They use a cheap mixture of lead and tin; and this base alloy serves their purpose better than more precious metals. Their only question in determining the choice of material is, Will it print our meaning clearly? Thus the Lord Jesus dealt with the habits which he found in society, and the events that were passing at the time. He selected and employed them with a regard not to their own intrinsic moral worth but to their fitness for expressing the idea which he meant to convey. No matter whether it be lead or gold; what he wanted was material suitable for types. A steward has no Scriptural warrant for cheating his master, because the trick of an astute agent is employed to print one of the parables; neither have men-stealers, men-sellers, and men-buyers any authority from the Bible to treat their fellow-men like cattle, because the relation of master and slave was employed by the Lord to express a conception in the course of his teaching.[103] 104. For fuller notice of the methods adopted, see the exposition of the corresponding parable No. XIV. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 33: 2.00. THE LESSER PARABLES OF OUR LORD ======================================================================== The Lesser Parables of Our Lord and Lessons of Grace in the Language of Nature By Rev. William Arnot. With Biographical Notice by Canon Bell. T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW. EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK. Copyright 1884. ---> Contents <--- A. THE LESSER PARABLES OF OUR LORD. 1. The harvest field and the harvest labourers. Part 1. 2. The harvest field and the harvest labourers. Part 2. 3. The fields white already to habvest, 4. Liberty 5. True, yet tender — tender, yet true, 6. The food that jesus loved and lived on, 7. The food that jesus gave to his own, 8. The two families— the natural and the spiritual, 9. Trees of righteousness. Part 1. ... 10. Trees of righteousness. Part 2. ... B. Lessons of grace in the language of nature. 1. Adam a type of Christ 2. Epistles of Christ 3. Christians the light of the world 4. A comprehensive confession 5. Rooted in love, 6. Drawn and dragged, 7. The fixed compass, 8. The Good Shepherd, 9. Personal adorning, 10. The salt of the earth, C. Readings in first peter. 1. Peter, an apostle, 2. Apostolic benediction, 3. The heirs and their inheritance, ... 4. Mighty to save, 5. The latter end is peace, 6. Rejoicing in tribulation, 7. Salvation by substitution, 8. No cross, no crown, 9. Jesus in the midst, 10. Obedient children, 11. Bought with a price, 12. Love on the spring, 13. Man and his glort, 14. "Christ in you the hope of glory," 15. The bane and the antidote, 16. Living stones, 17. "On either side one; and jesus in the midst,” 18. "The Lord’s people, the lord’s treasure," 19. The way and the fruits of redemption, 20. The warfare 21. The witness of a pure life, 22. The scriptures sanction civil authority, 23. The dignity of man, 24. No respect of persons, 25. The brotherhood 26. Love the brotherhood, D. Life in Christ. 1. Life in Christ, 2. Christ and the sacraments— the spirit and the body, 3. Faith and a good conscience, 4. The prodigal, 5. No cross, no crown, 6. The relation between doctrine and life WILLIAM ARNOT. Biography WILLIAM ARNOT was a remarkable man. He was a power in his time, and made himself felt as preacher, writer, lecturer, both on this and on the other side of the Atlantic. His life contains but few incidents, but is nevertheless well worthy of being related, partly by his own graphic pen in a short Autobiography, and partly by his daughter through a selection from his private papers and correspondence. We have only to look at the portrait attached to the Autobiography and Memoir, and we know at once what manner of man he was. If the mind be written in the face, here we have a man simple yet strong-brained, earnest and true, full of humour, full too of “the milk of human kindness.” These traits all gradually become apparent as we read his story from childhood onward to manhood, and at last see him placed in an honoured grave, mourned not only by that branch of the Church to which he belonged, but by all who can estimate genius when sanctified by grace and devoted to the highest aims. William Amot was born at Scone in 1808. His father lived here for about twelve years, and here seven children were bom; and here his mother died when she gave him birth. While William was still an infant, his father removed with his family to the Boat of Forgan, on the river Earn, in the parish of Forgandenny, about four miles from PertL This he always looked upon as his native place, as he never could feel an interest in the spot where he was bom, since he never knew it as a home. This was the home of his youth. No other spot on earth was half so dear to him; and to use the touching words of the Autobiography, “ The love of it is fresh in my bosom yet when many other emotions are fading.” And again, when describing the place connected with his earliest recollections, he says, “ There are three trees at the west end of the house, and two — a venerable plane and widespreading ash — at the edge of the garden, right behind the bam. Oh, the hum of bees in the top of that plane tree on a summer afternoon, when its blossoms hung from every twig! I think I hear it now; and it makes me weep to think that I shall never hear it as I was wont to hear it with the fresh, buoyant hopeful bosom of boyhood. I should like to sit beneath it again on a warm summer evening and hear that hum. I do not know whether it would gladden my heart again, or break it; but I would like to try.” His parents lived in the faith and the fear of God. They were universally respected. The following is a characteristic anecdote of his father: — The small iarm which he cultivated was rented from Lord Kuthven. He had obtained a verbal authority from his landlord to execute some building, and repay himself by retaining his rents. Lord Ruthven left home for the Continent, where he resided some seven years. The building was erected, and the cost was £49, 10s. Robert Amot retained this sum; but as he had no voucher, the factor could not give him a discharge. On Lord Buthven’s return, the factor sent Amot a letter, stating that this sum stood on his book as arrear of rent, and advising him to get the necessary voucher. He carried the factor’s letter to Lord Ruthven, and received one in return to the factor. “ On presenting his lordship’s letter to the man-of-law, my father observed him smiling as he read, and asked the cause of his merriment. Whereupon he read aloud the contents of the letter, which were as follows: * I believe whatever this man says.’ “His mother was a woman who loved her Bible and walked with God. He notes down one very characteristic habit of hers which had reached him, “ When employed in spinning, she was wont to have her Testament lying open upon the body or framework of the wheel, within sight, and would catch a verse from time to time without interrupting her toil. ’ Diligent in busin ess; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.’ “ Though he had never seen his mother, he delighted to think that all his blessings came in answer to her prayers; and he felt it was very good for him to have grown up with the conception of his mother being a glorified saint “ Her company has often awed me out of evil, and encouraged me to good. Even yet, the thought of my mother’s eyes fainting in death, taking a last look of me, her helpless infant, melts me as nothing else is able to da” So, although his birth was humble, and the scenes and circumstances which surrounded his childhood rude, he could with thankfulness take up the words of the poet Cowper, — “ My boast is not that I deduce my birth From loms enthroned and rulers of the earth; But higher far my proud pretensions rise — The son of parents passed into the skies.” The glimpse which he gives us into his boyhood is interesting. His memory was so good that it retained a connected and continuous record of events from the time that he was four years old. This period was to him ’* like the era which divides the fabulous from the authentic history of a nation.” He takes us to the village school, and paints the teacher in a few graphic touches. “ He was an elderly man, lame in body, and of a most inoffensive and gentle disposition* His character penetrated right through the childlike, and stuck fast in the childish. He was, however, a good, conscientious. Christian man, of a most unblemished reputation.” He describes the school, with its two stone steps outside the door leading to the floor, a little elevated above the level of the road. We see the little boy standing on the street, and looking through the opened door at the whole extent of the schoolroom, where his eye is arrested by “ the rows of dangling feet and legs, whose owners were seated at the tables above, and not so directly in my view I was soon introduced to the master and the alphabet I had the credit of being a good scholar from the commencement.” That he had a lively imagination, may be gathered from the following incident: — “Somewhere about this time my brothers and sisters and companions began to persuade me that I had been enlisted, and that as soon as I should grow up they would take me away to be a soldier. The foundation of this dangerous joke was this: Some soldier, or perhaps a yeoman going to Perth for drill, took me up in his arms and gave me a shilling, when I was quite an infant. It was afterwards repeated, as I thought seriously, that I was enlisted and must be a soldier. I never spoke of it; I was too much afraid even to mention it; but it often imbittered my joys throughout the period of childhood It was a grievous wrong that was done me. Why will not all mankind speak truth, and only truth, to children? “Amot had no distinct remembrance of the dawn of religious impressions on his mind. He was sure, however, that the influence of prayer and the Bible at school was good. He had a very vivid recollection of the first prayer that he ventured to offer in his own words and thoughts, and he felt the emancipation from the trammels of prayers learned by rote to be very great. At seven years of age he was sent to school at Aberdalgie, the nearest parish on the other side the river. Its master, Mr. Peddie, was a teacher in advance of his age, and a fine specimen of an old gentleman. He used to give Scripture lessons with a vigour and a genius that made the Bible stories most attractive to his scholars. “ I remember well the hearty laugh of the scholars when the worthy old gentleman, who was somewhat corpulent and very tall, enacted David throwing the stone at the Philistina How he did swing his one arm round his white head, while the loose sleeve where the other arm should have been danced in the wind; and what a race forward he took to give additional impetus to the stone -when at last it was let off; and how earnestly he looked forward to see whether his missile had taken effect on the forehead of his adversary! The whole essence of the training system was thera” While at this school and other schools he did much as other boys do. He fought many a battle, played the truant, and proved the truth of the saying that ’ evil communications corrupt good manners.” His father married again when he was about eight or nine years of age. As the boy grew in years and strength he was kept at home in the summer to herd cows, and attended school only in the winter. He had but few books; but amongst them were “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” Brydone’s “Tour through Sicily and Malta,” “ The Arabian Nights,” and “ Don Quixote.” These were greedily devoured, and, whetting his appetite for mental food, contributed to his intellectual development The historical parts of the Bible were an inexhaustible theme, and Watts’ “ Hymns for Children “ became a part of memory itself. The first glimpses he obtained of the political world were connected with the trial of Queen Caroline. Robert Liddel, owner and master of a sloop trading from Perth, and married to Mary Laing, his cousin, often visited his father, and sometimes brought with him a newspaper; and in this way he first found out the existence and nature of government. When about fourteen, his father sent him to a school in Perth; but he had not been there more than six or seven weeks when he was compelled to leave through illness. An attack of measles, and then of acute inflammation in the chest, was so severe that for two or three days his family were apprehensive for his life. He recovered, however, and from the period of convalescence in the summer he dates a most important era in his spiritual history. He was made to feel the reality of his sin and danger, and ardently to desire the safety of his soul. Baxter’s “ Saints’ Rest,” which he read at this time with great profit, gave reality and power and personal interest to all that he had previously known of divine things. In the autumn of the same year, while he was still feeble, he was invited to reside with a cousin of his father, Mr. William Thompson, at Leadketty, in the parish of Dunning. Mr. Thompson was a farmer, and young Amot was set to work on the farm, the horses being chiefly intrusted to his care. The open-air employment and the constant exercise were favourable to health, and he became strong and robust The inward man did not prosper so much as the outward man. Evil influences were manifold. He was almost wholly in the society of ploughmen and other young persons employed on the farm. The moral tone was low. The conduct in many instances was most vicious. He was now fifteen years of age and far from his father’s house. It was only on Sabbath evenings that he escaped from the society of the servants and farm-labourers, for on such occasions he was invited to drink tea with the family in the parlour. A painful experience at this time of the truth that the way of transgressors is hard” begat in him a resolution which coloured all his future days. At an annual fair in a neighbouring village, he went with Mr. Thompson’s foreman and other men into several public-houses, where they gave him whisky-toddy. After he reached home, he became sick and giddy, passed a wretched night, and, gnawed by thirst, left his bed at three in the morning, and seeking a well at the bottom of the garden, drank of its clear, cool stream. He was not well for several days after; and the sickness and disgust produced so great an effect upon his mind that for many years he could not endure the taste of whisky in any shape, and could not even remain in a house where toddy was emitting its fumes. The illness of that night, and the loathing of spirits which resulted from it, became a shield of defence to him from that time forth. The reflective powers which were so prominent a feature of his character began now to put forth some faint buddings. “ One hot summer day I was alone in a field, driving three horses in the harrows. The ground was soft and dry. The harrows raised the hot dust round my head, and my feet at every step sank heavily into the dry ground. It was a weary day; it was fatiguing work. I had no human being to speak to. I betook myself to rhyme. I composed a poem on a snowdrop. It occupied my thoughts pleasantly, and diverted me from the oppressive exercise of my lungs and limbs.” When the hour of release came, he unyoked the horses, leaped joyfully on the bare back of one, and, leading the other two, soon had the poor brutes in the stable. Hurrying to his sleeping-room, he committed the lines to paper. They were “ sad doggerel,” he says; “ they have long been lost, and not one could I now recall. But though the lines are lost, and would be of no value if found, the memory of the making of these lines, with the attendant circumstances, is still fresh and sweet. It is one of a number of little mental efforts which served to keep me from being entirely absorbed in the mass of coarse vulgarity.” That experience on the farm, hard as it was, he never regretted. “The rude contact with men and familiarity with horses rubbed off a good deal of my constitutional ’baimliness and imparted a dash of manliness to my character, which I think is by no means to be despised. I certainly do not regret that I held the plough at sixteen years of age, or that I could throw myself on the bare back of a horse while he was in motion, or that I learned horsemanship at the expense of many a fall It has helped, I think, to wring the womanhood out of a nature somewhat soft in its original contextura It enables me to feel easy in many positions which are sufficient to annoy those who have been more tenderly cradled in their youth. I delight to notice every one, even the least, of the multifarious influences which during youth go to mould the character of the man.” About the year 1824 or 1825 he went home, and was called to occupy for a time the place of his brother, who had been apprenticed to the business of a gardener at Kilgraston, in the parish of Dunbamey, and who was laid aside by illness. When he left Kilgraston he returned to his father’s house, and became an apprentice to the gardener of Lord Ruthven at Freeland. His father was not favourable to this step, believing that a lawyer’s office offered better prospects of remuneration; yet many influences combined to attract young Amot to the occupation. A spice of the romantic in his nature, a strong desire to continue under his father’s roof, and a decided contempt for money-making, made him prefer the open air and freedom of a garden to a desk in a county town. He entered joyfully on his duties at Martinmas (November 11th) 1824, when he was just sixteen years of age His work was often heavy, but he was in good health, and lived in great happiness. With regard to his religious impressions he thus writes: — ’ My mind made some progress in spiritual understanding; but there was a great conflict between the claims of Christ and the claims of pleasure One thing I ought to record with unmeasured thankfulness, — that the enemy in that conflict never got the advantage over me which results from actual indulgence in vice. I am well aware that there may be to a great extent the abstinence from vice where Christ is not permitted to dwell in the heart by faith; but I am most firmly convinced that every defilement of the conscience by actual guilt strengthens the adversary’s hold, and diminishes the power of resistance. The conflict in my experience was hard enough; and I thank God now that elements were not permitted to enter which would have made it tenfold harder, — that such giant lusts as drunkenness and licentiousness were kept at bay without the camp, and never obtained the advantage of actual possession. One touch of defilement on the conscience corrodes the very sinews of the combatant’s strength The vain thoughts — the pleasures of sense — the dislike of seriousness, — these and a multitude of other sins maintained within me the conflict against the truth But at this hour I rejoice with trembling that their power was not then reinforced by those lusts which, besides presenting enticements to the spirit, lay hold of the body, and drag down the man by all the force of natural laws.” About this time he freed himself by a desperate struggle from the bondage of the recognized drinking usages of society. And though in doing so he had to run the gauntlet of sarcasm and scorn, yet his own strong common-sense prevailed, aided as he was by the support and counsel of his father, who not merely condemned excess, but was ’* opposed to the drinking customs root and branch.’’ “The great ruling event of my youth, the event which by sovereign wisdom was made the pivot on which my life and character turned, was the long illness and death of my only brother.” This brother was obliged in the year 1825 to leave his employment finally, and to come home an invalid. He had grown up to manhood with many qualities fitted to gain the esteem of his fellows. His person was handsome, his manners refined, and he possessed a considerable amount of mechanical genius. From his frolicsome and social qualities, as well as from the purity of his conduct, he was a favourite in every circle, and greatly beloved. He came home to die from a disease of the spine, which gradually increased, paralyzing the limbs, and telling with effect on his general health The companionship of this brother became a turning-point in William Arnot’s life. For his brother was a true Christian; his faith was seen by its fruits, and the new life was manifested in his conversation. Communion with this brother, sometimes by the river-side, or in the woods, where William carried him in his arms “ as a nurse takes a child; “ sometimes on a grassy bank, where they basked in the softened rays of the evening sun; or sometimes on a bed in the sick-room, — was the training provided by his heavenly Father to break the power of the world over his heart And when at last his brother died, and his “dearest earthly treasure was torn away,” a new purpose was formed in his heart, and he wished to devote himself to the ministry. He now commenced the study of Latin in right earnest, and the account which he gives of his preparation for the work to which his after-life was to be consecrated is remarkable, and shows us the earnest, determined, noble character of the man: — “ Even during the hours of labour I continued to learn something. Digging, which was one of our most laborious occupations, became nevertheless, by a little management a favourable occasion for learning a conjugation or a rule of syntax. The management was after this manner. When three or four persons were together digging a large plot of ground, we followed each other closely, each carrying a furrow across. When the first man reached the edge with his furrow, he stood aside and waited till the others completed theirs, and turned with each a new one in the opposite direction. Then he who had «arrived first at this side struck in last when the motion began towards the other side. Thus at each round we obtained in turn two or three minutes to stand and change the position for the relief of the muscles I latterly fell upon the plan of having my elementary books of Latin or Greek in my pocket. During the moments of rest I snatched the book, ran over a tense or a portion of whatever might be in hand, and put the book in my pocket again when it was time to move on again with a new furrow. While toiling across a field I kept conning and trying the portion I had read. At the next halting I corrected the errors, and took up a new portion. This was done without any prejudice to the work. I found in it a double benefit. The memory in these circumstances acted very freely; the lesson was easily learned, and the employment of the mind on that subject acted as a diversion, greatly lessening the weariness of the toil” Truly William Amot was a man of mark, and one who proved himself able to rise above the circumstances which would have dragged a man of weaker nerve or infirmer purpose down. He had now begun to save every penny of his wages that could be spared from necessarie& He earned nine shillings a week during the two latter years of his labour, and his father, thinking the discipline good for his son, charged him two and sixpence a week for his board. He had saved twenty pounds in November 1828. His father would fain have persuaded him to remain at home, and offered to take a farm and stock it for him; but when he saw that his heart was set upon the work of the ministry, he fell in with his views, and encouraged him in every possible way. He now devoted all his time to study, preparatory to entering college He went to Perth, and placed himself under a Mr. Thomas Scott, a probationer, lately licensed, who had begun to keep a school. Here he read the whole of the j neid of Virgil, acquired some knowledge of the Greek grammar, and read portions of the New Testament and other selections from Sandford’s “Extracts.” At the invitation of his uncle, Robert Fisher, who offered him lodging in his house free of expense during the first session, he went to Glasgow on the 8th of October 1829. On the 10th October he purchased a red gown, paid his matricidation fee at the library, and his tickets for the reek and Latin classes, and was ready to commence work on the following day. And work he did, — obtained an honourable place in his classes, — carried off prizes, and enjoyed learning not only for its own sake, but for the enlargement of mind which it brought. The amount of his private teaching, which was needful for his support while at college, was no doubt a hindrance to his own studies, and prevented him from specially distinguishing himself as a student. He felt this necessity keenly at the time, and regretted it in after-years. While at college he formed some life-long friendships. With two students especially he was intimate, and enjoyed with them a tender and hallowed brotherhood. They were both men of mark, and both entered into rest before him. He was the eldest of the three, and yet it was his singular lot to begin his own literary life-work by composing the Memoir of one of his friends, and to close it by composing the Memoir of the other. These friends were Halley and Hamilton; and now, as the author of Amot’s Memoir beautifully says, they three “who paced long ago the dingy quadrangle of Glasgow College, now pace the golden streets, praising together the Lord whom they all three loved and served 80 faithfully on earth/’ “ All the friends were earnest workers in the cause of Sunday schools. Some of them, including Mr. Amot, were amongst the first promoters of the Glasgow Sabbath-School Union.” He taught for four years an advanced Bible class for young women, in connection with the mission at St Kollox. His work was much blessed, and many were the testimonies he received as to the good that was done. His correspondence at this time with his intimate friends is very interesting, and throws much light on his character in all its phases. “Some letters overflow with playfulness, and sparkle with humour; others are full of serious thoughts on the most solemn subjects; in many the grave and the humorous lie side by side in very close contact, but never mingled so far as to jar on the strictest sense of propriety.” He was keenly alive to all that took place in the great city, and threw himself as far as he was able into the questioa of Negro Emancipation and of Beform, and into the other public movements of the day. Through the whole of his college life the love of home runs like a strong current through all his correspondence; and his love of flowers crops up in almost every letter; so that when a parcel has to be sent from home the invariable request is, “Be sure to send me a flower.” On the 4th of October 1837 Mr. Amot was licensed as a preacher of the gospel by the Presbytery of Glasgow. Soon afterwards he was appointed assistant to the Bev. John Bonar, then minister of the united parishes of Larbert and Dunipace, and entered on his duties in November 1837. The year spent in the work at Larbert and with Mr. Bonar was both pleasant and profitable, and was a time which he always liked to look back to. He had hardly been a year at Larbert when he received a call to St. Peter’s Church, Glasgow. “ He began his ministry here on the first Sabbath of January 1839; but before many weeks had passed, his health, already much enfeebled, broke down completely under the new strain. A severe illness ensued, which disabled him entirely for work during a period of about three months.” When he recovered from this illness, he very soon gathered around him a large and warmly attached congregation. His preaching had a peculiar attraction for young men, who, both in Glasgow and afterwards in Edinburgh, formed an important element in his congregation. Though his church became crowded, and his hearers eagerly drank in the Word as it fell from his lips, the preacher himself was far from satisfied with his work. His private journal and letters “ show how strictly he scrutinized his work, with all its springs and motives; and how sternly he judged, and how unsparingly he condemned, when he himself was the prisoner at the bar.” He was truly at this time in labours abundant; and besides the duties more particularly connected with his own church and congregation, he began to take his share in more public work, and his name was announced in the prospectus of ’’a course of lectures on the* physical, educational, and moral improvement of the people, especially of the great towns.” Fully occupied with the laborious work of a city charge, he took no prominent part in the proceedings which led to the Disruption. But when the crisis came, he, with his whole congregation, left the Establishment, though they continued for some years in possession of their old place of worship. On the 30th Jidy 1844 he married the second daughter of Mr. Fleming of Clairmont, Glasgow; and although a stranger to all the family but the lady herself, he gradually gained their love, and exercised a growing influence for their good. In the spring of the following year he was requested by the Colonial Committee of the Church to supply the newly-organized Free Church congregation in Montreal for some months. To this he agreed, and sailed from Liverpool on the 4th May, accompanied by his wif a During his absence he wrote some pastoral letters to his people, giving an account of his journey and his labours, and exhorting them to cleave with stead&ust heart unto the Lord. He left for home in the end of September. From his own letters we learn the number of calls he received to become the pastor of other churches, and to minister to other congregations. Now the call comes from Lerwick, in Shetland; now it comes from Canada; now it is to a professorship in the Presbyterian College in London. These different proposals to remove from Glasgow caused him considerable anxiety, and brought him to the throne of grace for guidance; but bound by theties of strong affection to his flock, he refused them all, and for twentyfive years he continued to minister to the same people. St. Peter’s congregation was not, like many others, ejected from their place of worship immediately at the Disruption. The church belonged to the Church Building Society, and continued until the commencement of the year 1849 to be used by the Free Church congregation, they paying to the Society a yearly rent of XI 00. But in February 1849, by a decision of the Court of Session, the congregation, along with others similarly situated, were formally ejected from their place of worship, which was declared to be the property of the Established ChurcL A new church, however, had been building in Main Street for Mr. Amot and his congregation. This was opened on the 26th May 1850, and Dr. Hamilton preached the opening sermon. In 1851 he published his first volume of sermons. It was entitled “ The Eace for Eiches, and some of the Pits into which the Runners Fall: Six Lectures applying the Word of God to the Traffic of Men.” The first edition of one thousand was sold out within two months, and a second thousand printed At the close of the next year a little book appeared with a fictitious signature, but which his friends at once ascribed to William Amot The title of this was, “ The Drunkard’s Progress: being a panorama of the overland route from the station at Drouth to the general terminus in the Dead Sea; in a series of thirteen Views, drawn and engraved by John Adam, the descriptions given by John Bunyan, junior.” He was a determined foe to drinking under all its forms during the whole course of his life. He entered heart and soul into the battle against it, and there can be no doubt that his manly and consistent protest against the evil did much to advance and strengthen the temperance cause. During his long ministry in Glasgow, from the close of 1838 till October 1863, there are few striking events or great changes to be recorded to mark the progress of the years. To use his own words in describing a similar period in, the life of James Hamilton, — “ Where there are no battles, the history of a country ia brief and dull; but great are the happiness and progress of the people. It is the same with the work and sphere of a Christian minister, when he is faithful and his flock affectionate. The minister, loving and beloved, is felt everywhere as a rallying-point and centre of attraction. The beneficent machinery goes smoothly round, Christian charity lubricating every wheel; and precisely because everything is going on well there is not much for the historian to teU.” But his time is fully occupied. Now he is engaged on a new series of tracts; now he prepares a paper for some periodical; then he writes a warm letter of sympathy to a friend on the occasion of his mother’s death, or he sends a kind farewell letter to a young man connected with the congregation going abroad. And many a proof do his letters afford of a rich affectionate nature, of ripe wisdom, of strong common-sense, of kindness toward man, and of love toward God. His Autobiography and Memoir gives us pleasant glimpses of the writer, and lecturer, and preacher at home. We see him in his holiday time giving daily lessons to his two girls in the rudiments of Latin, or reading aloud to his children Longfellow’s poem of “Hiawatha.” “The peculiar rhythm of this poem took his fancy, and he would frequently improvise long screeds of mock-heroic verse in imitation of it Any little incident at home or in his walks furnished a subject, and he would proceed as uninterruptedly as if reciting from a book. If a rhyme was wanted and did not immediately present itself, a word was coined to suit the emergency.” Amidst his busy life, Mr. Amot found time to write and publish some works of lasting interest, great originality of conception, and remarkable freshness of thought. Amongst these may be mentioned lectures on the Book of Proverbs, entitled “ Laws from Heaven for life on Earth;” a volume illustrating the Parables of our Lord; a volume of sermons called “Roots and Fruits of the Christian life;.” and “ The Church in the House, or Primitive Christianity as exhibited in the Acts of the Apostles.” How active was this man of God, how energetic in body and mind, may be gathered from the fact that he spent six months in Canada in evangelistic work, that he paid several visits to the Continent, attended the meetings of the Evangelical Alliance at Geneva, and preached the gospel at the Salle Evang lique in the Paris Exhibition of 1867. Besides all this, he twice visited the United States, — agoing on the first occasion as one of ’’a deputation from the Free Church to the United Assembly of the Presbyterian Churches in America; “ and on the second occasion being invited to attend the meetings of the Evangelical Alliance at New York in the autumn of 1873. His two eldest sons were engaged in business in the United States, and this strongly influenced him to accept the invitation — which was further pressed upon him, in a personal interview, by Mr. G H Stuart of Philadelphia and Dr. Hall of New York. During this latter visit “ he traversed the Pacific Railway to San Francisco and back — a great undertaking for one of his years, and alone; indeed, the result proved that it was too great. A serious illness detained him some days in Salt Lake City; and though he recovered so as to be able to complete the journey, the fatigue of it more than balanced the pleasure, and the very recollection of it was never anything but dreary to him.’’ It should have been mentioned that in 1863 he received a call to the Free High Church, Edinburgh, which he accepted, as believing it to be the leading of Providence, though it was directly opposed to his own inclinations at the time. Once settled in his new sphere, he soon began to feel at home, and enjoyed his work, rapidly filling a church which had been thinned during the long vacancy. During Mr. Amot’s first absence in America the editorship of the Family Treaawry became vacant, and the publishers proposed that he shoidd undertake the conduct of the magazine. On his return it was definitely arranged that he should become editor, and his duties commenced with the beginning of the year 1871. It added considerably to his labours; but he enjoyed the work, and entered upon it with all his might. He was now in his sixtythird year. So his life ran on quietly, happily, usefully. He had many blessings and some sorrows. He took both from his Father’s hand, and both were made to work together for his good. One of his great sorrows was the death of that eminent man Dr. Candlish. He heard the tidings on his return from his second visit to America. “At Queenstown, on Monday night, Irish newspapers came on board. I was listlessly glancing over paragraphs in one of them, when my eye fell on one of two and a half lines, thus: — * At the funeral of Dr. Candlish yesterday, in Edinburgh, the procession was nearly a mile long.’ It blinded me like a flash of lightning in my faca It was the first intimation to me of our great bereavement. Edinburgh seems naked and empty since.” And then Mr. Amot adds: “ Many beautiful things are told of his faith and love and childlike demeanour towards the closa I must tell you a thing that he said of myself, that I count a very precious legacy. His mind was wandering; he thought he was in some meeting of Presbytery or Assembly. Suddenly and sharply, after a pause, he said, * That’s Amot; I want to hear what he is saying.’ His son took occasion to say, * Do you love Amoti’ *Love him! who would not love Amot? I love him as a brother.’ These words have distilled like oil to soothe other rufflings ever since — all the more that they were spoken while the intellect was beclouded, and judgment not sitting on watch to restrain the expression of the heart’s thoughts.” Towards the close of the year 1873 the two American evangelists, Moody and Sankey, paid their first visit to Edinburgh, and Amot was one of the first to throw himself heart and soul into their work. He also wrote occasional notices of the work, both for the Family Treasuiy and also for an American paper. The lllutstrated Christian Weekly, to which he was, from the time of his last visit to America, a frequent contributor. In the autumn of 1874 he once more spent a month on the Continent, and during the winter of the same year he lectured in Exeter Hall to the Young Men’s Christian Association. His subject was, “ The Foe and the Fight; or. The Trinity of Evil,”— Belial (vice). Infidel (unbelief). Idols (superstition), 2 Corinthians 6:15-16. Throughout the winter his strength declined steadily, but so gradually that it was only on looking back over a considerable period that the difference could be observed. A formal application was made in the November of this year to the Assembly, in his name, for a colleague and successor. At the monthly meeting of the Presbytery, in January 1875, the proposal was brought forward, and the necessary steps taken for bringing it befpre the General Assembly in May. “ Little did he then think that by the time it reached the highest court of the Church the need of such an application would be only too apparent. He lived only two days after it was sanctioned by the Assembly.” For two or three months before the end his strength began to fail, and to his friends he would let fall some touching hints that the end was drawing near. To one he said, “I do not know whether it is the spring season, or whether it is the a ttumn of my life; but I have never felt before as I do this spring.” To another he wrote, “ The strength has leaked out of me this spring more than ever heretofore.” And so there followed some months of gradual decline and “ calm decay.” But still he continued to work as his strength permitted h\m. In April he went to Stirling, to attend a religious convention; and the same day left for Glasgow, to be present at the funeral of a near relatiya In May he went to London as a deputy from the Free Church to the Synod of the English Presbyterian Church; and during the week he spent there he spoke twice at the Synod, twice at Moody’s meetings in the Opera House, and preached on Sunday, in the forenoon, at Hampstead, and in the evening at Begent Square. On the 16th, the last Sunday that he preached, his text in the morning was, “ We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Against the wishes of his family, who feared for his strength, he spoke in the afternoon, shortly and simply, on the wise men from the east being guided by the star to Bethlehem. On Monday he finished the preparation of the June number of the Family Treasury. On Tuesday he attended the noon prayer-meeting in the Assembly Hall, when he opened his mouth in public for the last time. “ Taking his text, as he so often did, from Nature, he told how that morning, on going into his vinery, he observed a branch drooping. On examining it, to discover the cause, he found that it was a tie which he had himself bound round it, some time before, to give it support. The branch had grown since then, and the tie was now so tight that it impeded the flow of the sap. He took out his knife and severed it at once. He then spoke ofties around our souls hindering us from full fruitfulness, and of the means by which the great Husbandman loosens them. ’ Sometimes he takes the knife and cuts them through; sometimes he sends such a rush of life through the soul that it bursts every bond.’ The friend who after his death reported the substance of what he said, added: ’ It seemed to me as if his own soul was being visited with such a blessed rush of life.’ ’’ A few days of weariness followed, during which he was bright and cheerful as ever. The last glimpses which his children got of him, weak though he was and much confined to his room, were very pleasant. Oftentimes he would sit in his easy-chair in his garden, looking at his shrubs and flowers, and gladdened by their beauty. “Never had earth seemed so fair to him in the fresh green of early summer; and expressions of admiration often burst forth from his happy heart” He knew that he was drawing near the goal; but the good fight had been fought out and his course finished. “ Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peaca” The last day of his life he remained in bed most of the day, — taking pains, however, to say that it was not because he felt worse, but because he felt so useless when he was up. In the evening he rose and went to another room, where he sat for several hours. Some letters arrived by the late post; they were read to him after he had lain down again. One was from a daughter at school, and he laughed heartily at some girlish fun described in it Another was from the Convener of the Continental Committee, asking him to go to Bome for the winter. His wife and daughters were delighted with this proposal, knowing his desire to see Rome, and thinking that the rest and change would recruit his strength. When he was asked his opinion, he smiled, and said, *’ I feel like the laddie who was offered jelly when he was too sick to take it, and said, *You never give me good things but when I canna tak* them.’ “ About three in the morning he awoke in profuse perspiration. Noticing the sweet warbling of the birds, he said, “These sweet birds! they are singing for me.” A little afterwards his wife, hearing him speak, asked if he wished anything. “No, dear,” he answered; “I was not apeing to you,” In less than two hours she was awakened by the sound of coughing, and running to his side, saw the blood flowing from his mouth. The silver cord was being loosed, and the golden bowl was being broken at the fountain. “ He sank back on his pillow as if in a swoon, and without a sigh, without a quiver, the spirit escaped away from its tabernacle of clay.” He was buried in the Grange Cemetery, beside his eldest sister and his infant child. On his monument are inscribed the appropriate words: “ He walked with Grod: and he was not; for God took him.” This sketch of a good man cannot be better closed than with an extract from the sermon preached by Professor Blaikie on the Sunday following his death: “ And now along the golden path, and through the golden gate, he himself has passed to his Father’s housa And to you his death just deepens the lessons and exhortations of his life— ’Choose the path to glory; see how it stretches from your very feet upward to the heavenly Jerusalem; let your citizenship be in heaven; and while you are on earth walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.’ “ ======================================================================== CHAPTER 34: 2.01. THE LESSER PARABLES OF OUR LORD ======================================================================== I. THE HARVEST FIELD AND THE HARVEST LABOURERS. PABT I. II. THE HARVEST FIELD AND THE HARVEST LABOURERS. PABT II. III. THE FIELDS WHITE ALREADY TO HABVEST, IV. LIBERTY V. TRUE, YET TENDER — TENDER, YET TRUE, VI. THE FOOD THAT JESUS LOVED AND LIVED ON, VII. THE FOOD THAT JESUS GAVE TO HIS OWN, VIII. THE TWO FAMILIES— THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL, IX. TREES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. PART I., ... X. TREES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. PART II., ... ======================================================================== CHAPTER 35: 2.01.01. THE HARVEST FIELD AND THE HARVEST LABOURERER, PART 1 ======================================================================== THE LESSER PARABLES OF OUR LORD. THE HARVEST FIELD AND THE HARVEST LABOURERS. “ The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.” — Matthew 9:37-38. PART FIRST. THE HARVEST FIELD. SEVERAL distinct aspects of Christ’s kingdom are represented in the gospel under the figure of grain, in its growing, ripening, and ingathering. One view is set forth in the parable of the sower, another in the parable of the tares, and another in the separation of the chaff from the wheat; but the conception here is essentially different from all these. The harvest in this similitude springs not from the seed of the word, but from the root of human nature. The field is the world, and mankind the crop that covers all its breadth. The portions that are safely gathered represent the redeemed of the Lord; and the portions that drop over-ripe and rot on the ground represent those who perish in their sins. This field is— 1. Precious, in the very fact that it is a harvest-field. Men, created at first in God’s image, and capable yet, when redeemed, of living in his presence for ever, are the fruit which this world bears — the fruit for the sake of which this world was made. If you ask a fanner what has been the produce of a certain field, he will not in reply enumerate roots, stalks, husks, and grain; he will answer, in one word, wheat; the other portions of the plant are valuable, not for their own sake, but for the sake of the grain which they bear. Thus the various vegetable and animal products of the earth are the stalks that support humanity; and humanity is the true fruit, for the sake of which our Father, the husbandman, cultivates his field. The conclusion of philosophy, reached through an examination of Nature, without reference to Revelation, is that all creation, from its earliest embryo, pointed to man. All that lies beneath and that came before him was a preparation for his coming. Creation contains abundant evidence that the conception of humanity was in the Maker’s mind from the first, and that the purpose of calling man into being ruled all the successive stages of the stupendous work. An American citizen from the sunny South, travelling once in New England, and holding its rugged hills in contempt, demanded of a native what his country produced. "My country produces men,” said the descendant of the Puritans. He was right. Man, made in God’s image to be his servant and his son, is the true, heavy, precious head; plantations of cotton, sugar, rice, are merely the stalks which support it. Silk, wool, flax; wheat, barley, oats, are precious only as food and clothing for the Father’s family. These articles are not separately reckoned in the inventory of the great Proprietor’s gooda After all these things were made, and the world stored with them, its Maker counted his work only begim; it was then that God said, “Let us make man in our image.” All other products served only to make the earth ready for the reception of man. This is the fruit that God values. With this he intends to fill his stores. When ransomed men are gathered into heaven, the cotton crop, the silk crop, the grain crop, and all the crops, will be left behind like stubble, rotting in the field when its work is done. Human beings are the head of God’s creation. For these he formed the green earth, and spread over it that bright sky; for these he hung the sun in heaven by day, and sprinkled the stars like gold dust upon the canopy of night, for these, when they fell, he gave his Son a ransom, and prepared an eternal home on high; over these, when they are forgiven and purified, he rejoices with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. O man, reverence thyself! In God’s sight thou art precious; be not vile in thine own! 2. It is plenteous. So said he who sees it all and knows its worth. We soon become bewildered when we try to realize the numbers of human beings that live or have lived on the earth; but numbers do not burden God. It would not weary him to enlighten every human heart, any more than to send a beam of sunlight into the bosom of every flower. More than ten hundred million live and breathe at one time; and many such generations have passed over the stage in succession since time began; yet the hairs of every head are numbered, and omniscience is not baflBed by the account. There may be as many blades of grass in one field as there are persons in Great Britain and Ireland; and yet every one of these gets its own drop of dew, and its portion of colouring from the sun’s rays. It is not more difficult for God to care for us than to care for them. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. In like manner, one man is with the Lord as a worldful, and a worldf ul as one man. If the existing population of the globe were multiplied by a miUion, none would receive less of God’s care; and if there were only one man in creation, he would not get more. We are a great family who have been bom into this world, but not too many for the Creator’s upholding hand; and if we were all bom again, we would find room enough in the mansions of our Father’s house. When God’s Israel have got through the fire and water, it is “ a large place” into which they are ushered as their eternal home. God has made all these of one blood. He has compassion on the ignorant and them that are out of the way. He will people heaven from every kindred and every tongue. He so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. The godly should be like God both in the wideness of their view and the warmth of their love. If love be true, the extent of its range will not diminish its intensity. It is characteristic of God’s laws and works that while they grasp the greatest they do not neglect the least. The power that balances the worlds in space, sharpens the down on a nettle stalk. If we, the children of the kingdom, be in spirit like our Father in heaven, no extension of range will dilute the strength of our sympathy. He who has learned from Christ to take the whole world within his embrace, loves his own house more intensely than the man who loves his own house alone. The world, as distinguished from the people of God sojourning in it, may be roughly divided into the three parts — Pagan, Mohammedan, and Papist. Under the term Pagan may be included all who do not know and worship the one living and true God; under the term Mohammedan, all who, worshipping one God, do not approach him by the one Mediator Jesus Christ; and under the term Papist, all who, worshipping God and acknowledging Jesus, have added a multitude of other mediators. Pagans have not God. Mohammedans have not Christ. Papists have not Christ only. (1.) Pagans. We should never forget, in this land of light, that the larger portion of the human race is sitting in darkness. We are not near Christ and not like him if we do not take the burden of this fact upon our spirits. More especially, the many millions of India and of Southern Africa have been thrown upon the compassion of British Christians. In respect to those feeble myriads who are subject to our sway, we are like a rich family at whose door a foundling has been laid. That vast multitude, nearly equal to the population of Europe, has been thrown on our hands. When they were sinking in anarchy we came to the rescue. Pushing aside others who oflTered to undertake the task, we drew the child out of the water. In our hands it is helpless as a child. If she who drew the child out of the water be a daughter of the king, she will bring up the child, not in the bondage to which it was bom, but as a prince in her father’s house. Alas! we have done little to bring the child up for our Father King. The Chinese, though not directly subject to our sway, have a stronger claim on our compassion. The nation has in time past done them wrong, and Christians in the nation should endeavour to make compensation. We introduced or winked at the introduction of a destroying flood; we should prepare a channel in which the water of life may flow. (2.) Mohammedans. The region of the false prophet’s rule is a study of intense interest to Christians in respect of its geographical position. It constitutes a broad and continuous belt, running across the world from the Atlantic on the west to the deserts of Siberia on the north-east, separating Christianity from Paganism. Observe the skilful strategy of the god of this world. The gross idolatry of the heathen was not allowed to come into contact with, the Christianity of the West. To meet the strongest enemy a more ethereal system was pushed forward, and accordingly Christianity and Paganism, previous to the date of modem missions, were nowhere geographically conterminous. The foolish idols, were withdrawn into the dark bosom of the East, and a line of stronger lies drawn up to cover them from the onset of Christian truth. When the power of Mohammed swept over Western Asia and Eastern Europe like a lava flood, some Christian communities were embedded in it, like Herculaneum and Pompeii; and these fossil Churches have been found of late by some American missionary explorers. If the breath of the Spirit bring life into the petrified skeletons, it will be a grand sight to see a resurrection of dead Churches, after the silence of many centuries, in the very lands where the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians. (3.) Papists. The greater part of the nations called Christian have remained under the Roman Antichrist, or are bound by the similar superstitions of the Greek Church. I shall mention here ouly one feature of the many-sided system, — the discovery lately made and proclaimed by the Pope of the immaculate conception of the Virgin. On first hearing the fact we are surprised that the Papacy should thus expose its own weakness. One would think, if they were wise in their generation, they would hold by antiquity, and not confess that there are saving truths in religion which Popes for many generations did not know. But when we examine the state of the case, we find they could not help themselves; They are in the power of a law as mighty and as inexorable as gravitation. “ Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse.” They cannot fix their doctrine at the present point, although they would. On — on they must go, like the fall of a stone or the flow of a river. The Popish system, by the mere weight of its wickedness, sinks necessarily deeper and deeper, until it fall like a mill-stone into a sea of wrath. Priests and people have for many generations been gravitating deeper and deeper into the worship of Mary. In this direction the mighty mass was moving, and it could not be recalled. Any attempt to arrest the movement would have rent the huge bulk of the Papacy asunder. The heads of the great apostasy f oimd themselves in this dilemma: the people with one consent were worshippers of Mary as much as the people of Ephesus were worshippers of the great goddess Diana. They must either forbid the worship or declare its object divine; they must either go backward or forward. Backward they were not able to go, and therefore, making a virtue of necessity, they went forward. They separated their idol from humanity; they declared her a sinless being. Happy Mary! she got safe to heaven before these lies were invented. She rejoiced in God her Saviour, while these her worshippers, if they had been living then, would have told her she was mistaken — that she had no sin, original or actual, to be saved from. Be of good courage, then; the apostasy of Rome cannot help itself. Further and faster it must fall by an inexorable law, until the jubilant cry be raised by emancipated nations, “ Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and shall be found no more at all.” But in a general survey of the field, we must not overlook the portion that lies nearest ourselves. Multitudes of our own flesh and blood, speaking our own language, and dwelling on our own soil, are living without God and dying without hope. As the Lord intimated to his disciples in Samaria, we have only to lift up our eyes where we stand, and we shall see fields large enough to occupy all our energies. The need of home missions has been fully recognized by the Church, and the work of home missions has been fairly begun. The features of this work, however, with its difficulties and its hopes, may be more appropriately noticed in connection with the latter portion of the parable — the prayer for an increase of harvest-labourers. In the meantime, looking generally to the world as the field to which the reapers must be sent, we gather from manifold symptoms that — 3. It is ripe. In the days of our Lord there was a divinely arranged readiness in the world for receiving his truth. It ran like the breaking out of waters over the empty aching breast of Greece and Bome. The Master saw that readiness, and pointed it out to his disciples in a tone of reproof. They were inclined to delay; he was eager to send them forth upon their work. Accordingly (John 4:35) he said, “Say not ye. There are yet four months, and then Cometh harvest?... Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” Whatever interval might be needed to ripen the natural grain, the spiritual field was ready for the reaper. There was a panting expectation both in Jew and Gentile then, and the Master commanded his servants to strike in while the opportunity was good. I believe at no period since Jesus spoke these words to the twelve in Samaria were the fields so generally and so manifestly ready for the reapers as they are in our day. The idols of the heathen are losing hold and tottering to their fall. The Euphrates is drying up from its springs, — the doctrines of the prophet are effete, and his followers do not find their hands. The Papacy is rent from within, and its empty and disappointed multitudes, discontented with the teachers who have cheated them, are opener, therefore, to the advent of the truth. Even the Jews are weary with waiting, and the godless multitudes of our great cities are heaving like the sea in a ground-swell, some with dumb, indefinite desires, not knowing what ails them, but some with the grand old question of a quickened soul, “ What must I do to be saved?” No worker needs to wait four months or four days for the harvest. The fields are already white. There is a tide in human things which should be taken at the flood. When the grain is ripe it comes easy to the gatherer’s hand. But — 4. It is perishing. When vast breadths of land have been sown in spring, and few hands can be found in harvest to gather it, the sight is one of the saddest. So much come to the birth, and not strength to bring forth! The heavy ripened fields are bending and growing black, and falling to the ground. Whatever may have caused the scarcity of reapers; whether war or pestilence or oppression may have cut them down or cast them away, or whether it be mere indolence that clogs exertion, the sight of food left to perish is equally a melancholy sight. Seldom does such a sight present itself, for men value the fruit of the earth. They cannot want it, and therefore they make adequate exertions to secure it. We know what hunger is, and therefore we do not waste food. When our spiritual appetites become as k en as our natural, God will get his work done. When it becomes our meat to do the Father’s will and to finish his work, we shall be like Christ; and soon thereafter, I suppose, we shall be with him, and see him as he is. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 36: 2.01.02. THE HARVEST FIELD AND THE HARVEST LABOURERES, PART 2 ======================================================================== II. THE HARVEST FIELD AND THE HARVEST LABOURERS. “Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.” — Matthew 9:37-38. PART SECOND. THE HARVEST LABOURERS. A HEAVY burden lies on the husbandman’s heart when he sees his cornfields fully ripe, and knows not where to find a sufficient band of reapers. The thought that the last year’s labour and the coming winter’s hope may both be lost together occupies and oppresses him. For the fruit he planned and toiled and spent his means; and shall it slip, now that it is so near his lip? This heaviness of heart the Man of sorrows employed to express his care at the sight of human generations perishing for lack of knowledge. When he lifted up his eyes and saw the people of Sychar coming out in companies to the well, his soul yearned for their salvation as for the reaping of ripened fruit, lest it should drop and be lost for ever. “ Lift up your eyes,” he said to the twelve, “ and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest “ (John 4:35). If the mind that was in Christ were in his people now, there is much in the aspect of the world fitted to stir both fear and hope in their breasts" I. As the world’s population, living and dying without God, appears in the Redeemer’s eye a great harvest-field, ripe and ready to perish, those who in any sphere strive to win souls are, in his eye, as reapers gathering the wheat into the gamer. A labourer need not expect to lead an easy, idle life. To eat his bread with the sweat of his brow is a necessity of his condition. Our Father is our Master; and he says, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. For a reconciled man who possesses the spirit of adoption work is worship. The labour of his hand, as well as the song of his lips, is praise to the Lord that bought him. Christ the Son made himself a servant, and it was his meat to do the Father’s will Christians are admitted to be Christ’s fellow-servants; and the more they resemble the Lord, the more they rejoice in their work. Labourers are not a high class of functionaries. They need not expect to get all their own will as to the times and places of their toil. It is their business not to select the field that pleases themselves, but to labour diligently at the task which the Master may have assigned them. What thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. The Husbandman may send some of the reapers into a thin and comparatively barren field, where they must bend very low and toil very long ere they get their bosoms filled with corn; and he may send others to a more favoured spot, where with less exertion and in a shorter time they may gather many sheaves. Sometimes, in the natural sphere, a jealousy springs up, and a murmuring breaks out among the reapers on this ground; but in the spiritual harvest there is no cause for complaint: there is no respect of persons with God — “ Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” The Judge of all the earth when he distributes the eternal reward lays the emphasis, not on the number of the talents that may have been intrusted to the servant, but on the faithfulness of the servant in the execution of his trust. II. In the judgment of the Lord Jesus the labourers were few. They were few then; they are few still. We are not at liberty to set aside the force of the word by pointing out that the circumstances are different in our day. Such a prophecy of Scripture is not of any private interpretation. Jesus spake as never man spake. He spoke to his own generation with his eye on all generations. Although, in point of fact, a much greater number of labourers are employed in the harvest-field to-day, the Lord himself would not retract his word if he were now amongst us. He would still say, “ The labourers are few.” After a multitude whom no man could number had entered by the narrow gate into the kingdom, he cried, “ Few there be that find it.” A great multitude have pressed in since that day, and yet he would certainly repeat the same cry were he on earth again. His heart is so enlarged toward a lost world that he will complain, Few are coming, until the last man is safe within the gate. In like manner here he would not retract his plaintive word about the paucity of the labourers because one Church has sent fifty missionaries to the heathen, and another a hundred. All flesh is grass; but the word of the Lord abideth for ever: it is true for us to-day. The labourers are few, — few in proportion to the world’s need; few in proportion to the compassion of the Lord. As that same Jesus from his throne to-day looks down upon the world, and counts the numbers that attempt to reap the vast fields of India, and China, and Africa — the vast fields of our overgrown cities in so-called Christian lands — we may rest assured he will not retract or modify his word, “ The labourers are few.” A very remarkable contrast is presented in the multitudes that may sometimes be seen pressing forward to the natural harvest. The pressure has slackened of late; but a few years ago you might have seen, any day about the beginning of autumn, dense crowds of Irish labourers clustering like bees about the wharves of Liverpool and Glasgow. On one occasion the master of a Londonderry steamer, on arriving at Glasgow, was prosecuted for admittmg a much greater number of passengers than his ship was legally entitled to carry. His defence was that the men rushed on board in spite of his efforts to prevent them, and took forcible possession of the deck. Such were the numbers that poured into the Scottish harvest-fields at that time, and such the eagerness of each man to get a share of the work and the reward. It is even so: natural wants press heavily, and their pressure is keenly felt. The motive is sufficient to throw an abundance of labourers into the harvest. But a spiritual taste and a divine power are needed to fill with reapers that vast ripe field over which the compassionate Saviour looked and longed. III. When additional labourers enter the field, they are sent into it by the Lord of the harvest. The expression “send forth” in the English version is feebler than the corresponding term in the original. The word which the Lord employs conveys the idea of force. It is literally “ throw out,” as missiles are thrown in war into a besieged city. The labourers are grasped by the providential hand of God, and thrown upon the field where their services are needed, not indeed against their will, but by means of their will. They are made willing in a day of power. A secret force, like the force of fire, is generated within the man, — as it were behind and beneath his will. While the man is musing alternately on the Redeemer’s mercy to himself, and the need of a perishing world, this fire bums and disturbs his rest. To such a height of pressure the force at length attains that he can no longer resist: he is torn from the fastenings where he had said, Soul, eat and drink and take thine ease, and thrown with a great impetus forth from himself and into the field of labour. It is after this manner that missionaries are made. He works best on this field who cannot help working: “ Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel.” The power that throws the missionary into the field is the love of Christ to his own soul: it is divine mercy tasted in secret that swells about his heart, until all barriers burst, and the volunteer comes forth with the old oflFer founded on the old reason, “O Lord, I am thy servant thou hast loosed my bonds.” The distinction between a missionary properly so called, who abandons his secular calling and devotes himself wholly to the ministry of the word, and a disciple who abides in his calling and commends the gospel to his neighbours, although important, is a distinction of detail and not of principle. The Lord has need of both sorts; and the world has need of both. Some portions of the work cannot be reached except by men set apart for the purpose; and other parts cannot be reached except by the silent every-day influence of Christians upon the consciences of those with whom they come into closest contact from day to day and from hour to hour. The Master will send some reapers forth into great and distant fields, and some down into minute openings, where only those can work who are every day and all day upon the spot. “The poor always ye have with you,” not only indicates a fact of history, but reveals a plan and purpose of the Lord. Exercise is provided for the spiritual life. None shall be able to say that the field was too distant, and that he consequently had not an opportunity of rendering service as a reaper. A man cannot sit at meals in his own family, walk along the streets, or pursue his daily toil on the farm or in the workshop, without passing along this laden harvest-field. Everywhere precious fruit, ready to perish, offers itself to the reaper’s hand. Nowhere in the world at the present day can a sadder sight be seen than in the great cities of so-called Christian lands. Great, needy, promising fields have been placed within reach of every disciple of Christ; none should stand idle. If any stand all the day idle, they will not at last be permitted to urge either that the field was distant or that the hirer made no proposal. Work is offered to every one, and the reward is sure. To win souls is both work and wages. To illustrate the manner in which it pleases the Lord of the harvest sometimes to throw a reaper into the field, I shall mention one example which came under my own personal knowledge. In a remote rural district of Scotland, a boy passed through a spiritual struggle of several stages, resisting the Spirit with varying measures of determination, in order to keep himself free for the expected pleasures of the world, but never able wholly to silence the still small voice. At length the love of Christ gained the mastery, and the youth surrendered; not unwillingly, but because now his will had been won, and it became both a reasonable and a pleasant service to own the Redeemer as his King. Few, perhaps none, were aware of the conflict while it lasted, for he kept it secret as if it were a crime. Having occasion one day, after he had chosen conclusively his side, to cross a range of hills on his way to the market town of the district, he must needs pass a lonely thatched cottage where he knew a poor and very old man lay dying. He must go in; he dare not pass by; the groans of the old man would have followed and haunted him. Nor was he unwilling to go in; the conflict now lay with a certain conventional and constitutional bashfulness. Grown now, but inexperienced and shame-faced, he stepped in and stood by the old man’s bed, repeated some texts, and uttered some timid words to commend Christ to a sinner. He was about to take leave, when the old man’s daughter, herself far advanced in life, and of rough, ungainly appearance, came forward, tamed at least for the time by a sense of loneliness, and with a beseeching look from filling eyes, underneath long shaggy eyebrows, and gray dishevelled hair that hung over a weather-beaten, wrinkled brow, said, “ Yell pray wi’ my faither? “ The youth was enclosed; the net was round him; his retreat was cut oflT; backward he cannot, forward he must go. He prayed for the first time in the hearing of strangers. Such was the instrument that the Lord of the harvest employed that day to come behind one reaper who was hesitating and holding back on the border, and to throw him, ere he was well aware, over that dreaded fence into the harvest-field. It is a long, long time ago; and, God helping him, he is in the field, a reaper still to-day. IV. The Lord of the harvest presses labourers into the field in answer to the prayers of his people. The request of Jesus possesses a tender interest for us. He who bids us address this prayer to the Father knows the Father’s mind, and always does what pleases Him. Let it be settled firmly in a disciple’s mind that Christ would not persuade us to say anything to the Father that the Father would not like to hear; and it is certain that the Father loves to grant the requests that he loves to hear. Indeed, it is because he longs to grant the requests that he delights to hear them. There is an encouragement of peculiar power to induce us to prefer the request in the fact that the Mediator between God and man urges us to prefer it at the throne. But some who hear, and hear with reverence, the word of Jesus, so far from being themselves ready to be sent forth as reapers, may be in sadness reckoning themselves the wheat that is not yet gathered atid ready to perish. Yet even in these circumstances he who hears the word of Christ should obey it, — should pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers. Let the first groans of an anxious soul be shaped into this prayer, and the Lord may send out a reaper to gather thee. We know that the Spirit of God sent out Philip from his mission work in the city to a desert place near Gaza, to meet the Ethiopian treasurer there, — a reaper to gather a precious head of wheat into the garner; but I think that silent sable African, with his weeping eye bent on Isaiah’s gospel, had sent a petition up to the Lord of the harvest for a reaper; and in answer to his own prayer a labourer was sent out to the field to gather him in. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 37: 2.01.03. THE FIELDS WHITE ALREADY TO HARVEST ======================================================================== III. THE FIELDS WHITE ALREADY TO HARVEST. “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” — John 4:35. HE conception here is closely allied to the subject of our last paper. The two parables are reciprocally complements of each other; together they constitute one whole. The second fills up the spaces that were left open in the first; consequently it is convenient and useful to examine them in immediate succession. Never man spake like this man, because never man was like this man; his lessons, both in substance and in form, sprang naturally and necessarily from his life. The twofold nature of the Mediator was continually revealing itself in his words and his ways. The life of Jesus, as it lies in the evangelic histories, is a riddle which men cannot read until they find the key in his name, Emmanuel, and his nature, God with us. It is a life within a life; at every turn in his history the divinity glances from human words and acts, as a burning light shines through a transparent covering. In many instances the language which the Lord employed partook of his own twofold nature; and this peculiarity served to deposit his doctrines in the memory of his disciples, without revealing their full meaning until his work was finished. In these cases, while the body of the words represented temporal things, their soul within was occupied with things unseen and eternal. The passage in John 2:19-21 aifords an example of the peculiar duality of meaning which often attached to the words of the Lord, “ Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body.” It was his manner, while conversing about common things, to be occupied in secret with his own saving work, and to employ the terms as a channel to convey some law of the kingdom or some purpose of the King. Several examples occur in the narrative where this parable is found embedded. While he continued to speak to the Samaritan woman about the natural water which she had drawn from Jacob’s well, he employed the words as a vessel wherewith to pour the good news from a far country into a thirsty soul. While at a subsequent stage the subject in hand between himself and the disciples was the food which nature greatly needed, he was speaking of his own redemption work as the savoury meat which his soul loveth. And yet once more, while the senses of the disciples are occupied with the sown field and the expected harvest, the Master’s meaning is, Souls are perishing; haste to the rescue. It was seed-time in Samaria when these events occurred and these words were spoken. The period is determined, directly by the terms of the text, and indirectly by the circumstances of the context. It is obviously implied that any one who should look simply to the course of nature would have said at that time and place, Four months hence it will be harvest. Further: from the abundant reference to sowing in relation to reaping which occurs in the succeeding verses, we may gather that on the journey northward that morning they had seen the husbandmen on either side of the path busily employed in the process of committing the seed to the ploughed ground. Every reader of the evangelic history is aware that the Lord Jesus, looking on creation and redemption from the centre of the eternal purpose in which both were planned, was wont to think and speak of them in parallel lines. None could so well cause the two worlds to throw light reciprocally on each other as the Author and Finisher of both. The Lord saw and acknowledged a many-sided and various analogy between nature and grace. At another time and place the operations of seed-time, as seen on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, suggested to him the parable of the sower; while on this occasion the same scene brings up a completely different lesson. There the sowing suggested the many obstacles which might interfere to prevent the growth and ripening of the grain; here it suggests the vastness of the harvest, the rapidity with which it ripens, and the consequent necessity of having many reapers ready to pour into the field. In the ministry of Jesus, two or more distinct and separate spiritual lessons spring from the same natural fact, as two or more wheat stalks spring from one grain of seed. It is a remarkable and most instructive feature of this brief parable that it points out both a likeness and an unlikeness between the natural and the spiritual husbandry. In general, the sowing of the seed in spring and the reaping of the grain in harvest are like the preaching of the word and the gathering of saved souls; but in one particular feature they are decisively and conspicuously unlike. The points of similarity are many and obvious; the one point of dissimilarity, singled out in the instructions of the Lord, is, that whereas in the natural husbandry four months must intervene between the sowing and the reaping, in the spiritual husbandry, on the contrary, no such fixed and uniform period of time elapses after the gospel has been preached ere its ripened fruits are gathered in the conversion of sinners. In this department the ripe fruit may appear the same day — the same hour in which the seed of the word has been cast into a contrite heart; or it may lie dormant, not only four months, but forty years, and come in great abundance at last. On this distinction let the form and order of our exposition turn. Notice first the Likeness and then the Unlikeness which the Lord here acknowledges and employs between the natural and the spiritual husbandry, especially in the relation between sowing and reaping. I. The natural sowing and reaping suggest, represent, and illustrate the sowing and the reaping in the kingdom of grace. The beginning of a process suggests the end. In the spring-time, as you walk along the highway, you may observe either the actual operation of sowing, or careful preparation for it, on almost every field. The first coming of Christ was the seed-time, and his second coming will be the harvest. From the seed which was then dropped into the ground will spring ripened fruit, like the stars of heaven or the sand of the sea-shore for multitude. The ten thousand times ten thousand that stand round the throne in white clothing constitute the harvest, waving like Lebanon, — a manifold increase from the handful of seed sown on the mountains of Israel, when the Son of God took our nature and gave himself for sin. Generally, the seed is the word, and the sowers are the ministers of the gospel. Wherever and whenever Christ is preached, there is a sowing of the precious seed. But in all cases the sowing is only a means to an end It is the hope of harvest that induces the husbandman to cast his seed into the ground, and sustains Um through the heavy labour of the spring. If he did not desire to reap, he would not sow; and if he did not expect to reap, he could not. No mail ever yet cast the material seed into the ground for the sake of the sowing. He would be counted mad who should go forth ostentatiously and laboriously to sow seed in the field, performing the operation with a knowing and elegant air, counting his work done when the grain was lost to view under the clods, and never coming back to look for a profitable return. Every man that sows, sows in order to have an increase in harvest. Those who have their bosom filled with the incorruptible seed of the word should do likewise. When we have preached, even when we have preached well, our work is not done, our end is not attained. He is wise that winneth souls. It is enough to console a man for all the pain of spring, when he went forth weeping, bearing precious seed, to tell him that he will return rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with biro. This is the only aim that will animate a ministry as a living soul and sustain a minister as a commanding motive, — to save a soul from death and hide a multitude of sins. When many anxious inquirers come to a minister, and many under his advice close with Christ as their righteousness, the joy is like the joy of harvest. Though in harvest the work is heaviest, it is then that the workers are most cheerful. There is a providential arrangement here; and the rule holds good in both husbandries. II. Consider now the single feature in which there is a marked dissimilarity between the natural and the spiritual husbandry. Whereas in nature a known and uniform period, in each country and climate, intervenes between the sowing and the reaping, in grace the fruits may be gathered at any season of the year, and at any length of time, from the least to the greatest, after the seed of the word has been sown. In this respect the word of the Lord intimates that there is a specific contrast between the two departments. He put the question to the disciples as an emphatic method of affirming that they were accustomed to say. We shall have harvest in four months. It would have been an inversion of the order of nature if the fields had been ripe on the day that they were sown or the day after. Yet he announces emphatically that the fields were already white to harvest. Lift up your eyes and see. Alas I they were not adept in the art of lifting up their eyes or their souls. It was downward and earthward that they ordinarily looked. It needed an elevation of position and an enlightenment of eye to enable them to understand that in the labour to which they had been called they might reap as soon as they had sowed. Two lessons, distinct but cognate, emerge here, one on either side. The interval between the sowing and the reaping is not the same in the kingdom of grace as it is in the kingdom of nature: — 1. It may be shorter. 2. It may be longer. On the one hand it is not necessary for sowers of the word to wait four months ere they begin to look for a return; and, on the other hand, although they have waited four months, or as many years, without seeing a single ripened stalk, they should not despair of success or abandon the enterprise. 1. Do not wait four months, for the harvest may come at an earlier period. The seed that is sown to-day may be ripe to-night. An example of such a rapid progress to maturity was set before the disciples that day beside Jacob’s well. Jesus has dropped the seed into that poor woman’s heart. See the great, plump fragrant seeds as they drop from the Sower’s hand: “ Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14). She had gone away into the town and invited her neighbours. In the interval of her absence the conversation took place between the Lord and his disciples in which he told them that though the cultivators in the neighbourhood must wait four months after having deposited the seed in the ground ere they could expect to reap their harvest, it was not so in the kingdom of God. They might sow to-day and to-morrow reap abundantly. Peter, when at Pentecost he saw the heads of the surrounding multitude drooping on their breasts under his preaching, like ripe ears of grain under an autumn sun, would doubtless remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, on the very day of the sowing, The fields are white already to the harvest. “ Lift up your eyes,” he said, perhaps not an hour after the sowing, “ and look on the fields... they are white already.” At this point he glides from the natural to the spiritual. Those who were on the spot would observe the transition easily; for in point of fact the agricultural fields in view were not white. They were black, as being newly ploughed and sown. But I think it probable that a stream of people from Sychar, stirred by the tidings which the woman bore, were by this time pouring along the road towards the well where the Messiah stood, and that these were the whitened fields on which the Master would send his servants to work. To the left, when they lifted up their eyes, they would see an enclosure of dull black earth, for which, although the seed was already in its bosom, the owner must wait four months ere he could get any ripe return; but to the right, although the seed was only sown that day at noon, already the harvest of anxious souls was waving like Lebanon, inviting the reaper to enter and fill his bosom with the sheaves. Those who minister the word of Christ, whether more publicly or more privately, are at once sowers and reapers. Like the cultivators in the natural sphere, the same persons must sow the seed and gather in the harvest; but unlike the cultivators of the ground, those who care for souls may and should expect to reap immediately after they have cast away the seed. Here then is the lesson for the reapers whom this Master sends into his field. Never fold your hands and say we must wait — the fruit cannot appear till such and such an interval. Go out to gather, expecting to get your bosom full; lest while you are waiting the harvest whiten suddenly, and soon waste for want of reapers. The Master gives sometimes to the sowers a glad reaping in the spring, but not uniformly, not always. 2, The second branch of the lesson is, — Do not despond and count your labour lost, although four months, although four — forty years pass and the seed which you have been all the time sowing should lie still hidden in the ground. If the cultivator of the grain field do not see his harvest whitening in about four months, he abandons hope: he knows that if he do not get a harvest from the spring’s sowing now, he will get it never. In the spiritual husbandry, where ministers are fellow-workers with God in the saving of the lost, this rule does not hold good. As the seed of the word may ripen earlier, so also it may ripen later, than other seed. It is well worthy of remark here that although these peculiarities are contrary to each other, the Lord of the harvest makes them both alike work for good to his servants in their toil. To know that some of the seed ripens early, keeps their hopes active from the first; and to know that some of the seed ripens late, prevents their hopes from sinking even to the last. One most precious aspect of the law that the spiritual seed may bring forth fruit after it has long lain dormant, is specially singled out by the Lord in a subsequent part of the same conversation, where he intimates to the disciples that “one soweth and another reapeth.” How broad and deep is the counsel of God in this feature of his covenant. It is fitted to multiply the labourers and intensify their toil. To draw forth the reapers, and give them an impulse in their work, it is proclaimed that seed sown long ago by some who have entered into rest may be now growing white for the sickle; and that consequently those who now enter the service may enjoy the delight and the reward of reaping where they have not sown. On the other hand, where there is faith in God, a patient sower is greatly comforted by learning that the living seed is not lost, although his own eyes should not behold the golden sheen of harvest. Even when these eyes are closing in death, the servant of the Lord who has been faithful in his day may depart in the joyful hope that many sons shall be brought into glory as the fruit of his saving work. Both are best, and God has shown his goodness in giving both. We could not hold on, unless some of the seed should ripen in our own sight and be gathered by our own hands; and we should abandon the work in despair, unless we were held up, on the other side, by the knowledge that after many days the seed sown now may send up a plentiful harvest. In times of special spiritual quickening, beautiful mixtures of both methods occur. Some of the seed sown long before by other labourers ripens suddenly then, and is gathered on the same day with fruit that springs from the sowing of yesterday. Men are the reapers in this harvest: there is no limit as to the capacity that each shall possess or the numbers that may be employed. As to numbers, the rule is, “ Let him that heareth, say, Come.” Every one who knows that Christ is precious should make his secret known to his neighbour; and as to capacity, the Master has need of men — little ones who have one talent, as well as of the great who have ten. These are the reapers in this harvest; but another harvest follows that will be gathered by another class of labourers. Time is the spring season, death is the sowing, resurrection is the harvest, and the reapers are the angels. When the earth and the sea give up their dead, the fields will be white to harvest, and a mighty band of reapers will have their hands full of work. Some rocky islets are so covered at certain times by white sea-birds, that they seem from a distance islands of snow. When an alarm is sounded the whole multitude rise into the air, like a cloud that hides the sunlight from the landscape. This black earth sailing through space, protruding like a rugged islet from the waters of infinitude, will, methinks, appear one day white like a hill of snow. When the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise, oh, what a harvest! These angel reapers will quickly fill their bosoms with the sheaves. Christ died and rose again, the first-fruits; then shall all that are his arise to meet him, the full harvest of the ransomed that shall at last fully satisfy his soul. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 38: 2.01.04. LIBERTY ======================================================================== IV. LIBERTY. "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” John 8:36. REE indeed I Really free! There must, therefore, be a freedom which is imaginary, unreal, delusive. I know not a feature of our fallen world that is more frequently displayed, or more melancholy to look upon, than this. A whole family or a whole nation in bondage is a sad sight; but the measure of its sadness is multiplied tenfold if the cruel conqueror has put out the eyes of the captives, so that they do not see their prison walls, and fondly dream themselves free. Examples of persons who, being enslaved, foolishly imagine themselves free, instead of needing to be discovered and picked out, are strewn on the surface of the world as green grass in summer or as withered leaves in autumn. Ask the visitor of a mad-house what was the saddest sight he saw; he will immediately describe to you the patient who had contrived to plait a crown out of rags and tinsel, and strutted about with the toy on his head giving orders right and left, as a king, to imaginary fleets and armies; casting all the while stolen and startled glances toward the iron bars of the window, and trembling when the stern look of the keeper met his eye. This man is an object of pity even among his fellow-captives, who rave some degrees less wildly than himself. You have lain down to sleep, perhaps more wearied than your wont, and have dreamt that, free from the law of gravity, you soared at will in all the upper air. But when you awoke your limbs were stiffer and heavier than heretofore; you could scarcely trail them along the ground. Flying was a dream; the cold reality scarcely amounted to a walk on the earth; it was only a painful dragging of benumbed limbs. In literary and political circles liberty is plentiful as a profession but scanty as a power. In those departments, freedom and independence are frequently employed as terms of sarcasm when men desire to make sport of the bondage. But the cases which are at once most characteristic and most numerous are those in which a man loudly boasts of his liberty, while vice, like a possessing spirit, rules in his heart and lashes him to diligence in his degrading task. I need not describe in detail the miserable drudgery of the slaves. The description, like the public exhibition of a cripple’s sores, would be both repulsive and unnecessary. When a drunkard has been tormented, body and soul, by the demon that possesses him — tormented as cruelly as the martyrs in ancient persecutions — the poor victim’s resolution under the compulsion of his keeper is. When I awake I will seek it yet again. Apart from the redemption by Christ and the renewing by the Spirit, the struggles of a sinful race to shake off their bonds are like those of Samson when his locks were shorn and his eyes out, with the Philistines making sport of the giant’s pain. The Jews of that day took it ill that Jesus should propose to make them free. The offer of liberty implied the imputation that they were slaves: this they rejected with disdain. “We are Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man;” and this at a time when the Romans held the province with their legions and made their own will the law. We can see through the flimsy pretexts under which they attempted to cover their pride and poverty; and’ other onlookers may perhaps as easily see through ours. Slaves, in very deed, we all are, held helpless in a tyrant’s grasp, unless and until the Son of God make us free. Our inherited and actual bondage has two sides, and there are two corresponding sides in the liberty wherewith Christ makes us free. The two sides of the spiritual slavery may be designated. Guilt on the conscience, and Rebellion in the will. These are distinct and yet united. They are wedded into one spirit, and become helpmeets to one another in offending God and destroying man. Guilt unforgiven on the conscience makes impossible a holy obedience in the life. While God’s wrath lies on your soul, your life is not obedience to God’s law. The greater the weight that lies on any object, the more difficult it is to move that object along the surface of the earth. If it is weighed heavily down, it will not move easily forward; if you lift off its load, you draw it easily after you. like the relation between the perpendicular pressure of a weight and the difficulty of horizontal motion is the relation between guilt and rebellion. Sin, and the wrath which it deserves, constitute the dead weight which presses the spirit down; and the spirit so pressed cannot go forward in duty. As in the material department it is the weight pressing sheer down that causes the» difficulty of moving forward, so m the spiritual department it is the conscious want of God’s favour that hinders a human being from obeying God. When his anger is removed from me, I will yield myself a willing instrument of his righteousness. When the Son, by redeeming me from the guilt and the power of sin, has made me free, I am free indeed! Look to these two sides of the primary bondage and subsequent liberty, — look to them separately and successively, as well as in their actual union. I. The main element of the bondage consists in guilt and the consequent apprehension of judgment. The book in which the debt is registered lies far above, out of our sight. Although a man’s account in that book were hopelessly heavy, he might not in point of fact be greatly troubled by it, if there were no counterpart or duplicate of the liabilities transferred to a ledger nearer at hand. The charge against a man is led, by an electric wire, from God’s secret book right into the man’s own bosom; and fiery throbs from the distant judgment-seat are ever and anon generated in his conscience, disturbing his rest and blighting all his joys. What we call conscience is a mysterious, tenderly susceptible instrument in the midst of a man’s being, bringing the man and keeping him in close and conscious relation to the great white throne and the living God. Here on earth, at one extremity of the connected system, the needle quivers and beats quickly, significantly, terrifically. The still, small tick of that needle, moved by a touch in the unseen heaven, is more appalling to the man than the thunder over his head or the earthquake under his feet. The pain is in practice deadened more or less by a hardening of the instrument, so that it loses a measure of its susceptibility; but mysterious beatings sometimes thrill through all the searings, and compel the prodigal to realize the presence of the living God, We sometimes speak of distance being destroyed by the telegraph. A sovereign and his ambassador in a distant capital may whisper to each other across seas and continents, as if they were separated only by a curtain drawn across the room. By the communication which is kept up between God’s law and man’s conscience, the distance between heaven and earth is practically done away; and the criminal must rise up and lie down in the presence of his Judge. A man is compelled to eat, and drink, and speak under the eye of the King Eternal, It is natural that the slave, weary of such complete and constant inspection, should cast about for the means of becoming free. To quench this burning in the unclean conscience, all the bloody sacrifices of the heathen were offered. To the same object all the efforts of self-righteousness are directed; they are so many blows dealt in order to sever the connecting rod, so that the anger of the Judge may not be felt even now burning like fire in a sinner’s breast. But these efforts do not avail: “ There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” But a real liberty is possible; God in his infinite mercy has opened a way by which it may be reached. If the Son make you free, you shall be free indeed. He is able to open the seven-sealed book and to blot out the reckoning that stands against us there. We have an advocate with the Father: the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin. The Mediator — the Daysman who lays his hand upon both — has placed himself in the line of communication between the Judge and the culprit. When I am in Christ, all the throbbing messages that rise from me to God, or descend from God to me, pass through the heart of Jesus. The frown of justice due to sin is changed into love as it passes through the Mediator, and from him descends on me, no longer a consuming fire, but the light of life. On the other side, my sins, rising up to stir the wrath of the righteous God, are absorbed in the suffering Saviour as they pass, and his righteousness ascends as mine and for me. It is this that explains the agony in the garden and the cry on the cross. Man’s sin passing up demanding judgment, and God’s answering anger coming down, met in the well-beloved of the Father, and rent him: “ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Am I free from condemnation? Then with a great price obtained I this freedom. I was not free-born, but redeemed from bondage by the precious blood of Christ. II. In the department of life and conduct also there is a false freedom wherewith men delude themselves, and there is a real freedom which Christ bestows upon his own. The essence of slavery, in as far as work is concerned, lies in the terror of the master, that sits like a heavy, cold, hard stone on the worker’s heart. After the slave has spurred himself on to duty, and accomplished his task, something still occurs to his memory that he ought to have done; he trembles lest he should be punished for the defect. “ What lack I yet?” is the dreadful question to the worker who is striving with the load of unpardoned sin on his conscience — striving without love and reconciliation to fulfil all the law o£ God. There may be a good deal of work without reconciliation, but there is no liberty in it, and no love. The man is hunted forward in his toil by the lash of a master. Even to prayer the slave runs trembling, driven by the fear lest he be punished for not praying. It is the heavy weight of sin not forgiven lying on the spirit and pressing it into the dust in dull despair — it is this burden that prevents the man from bounding forward fleetly, gladly on the errands of his Lord. When that load is lifted, the spirit, free to rise, is free also to move onward. It is when condemnation is taken away that obedience begins. Take your stance on the margin of the ocean, on the western coast of this island, where the shore is a bold rugged rock, and when a long blue ground-swell is rolling towards the land. I know not any aspect of merely inanimate nature that tends so strongly to make one’s heart sad. I have stood and gazed upon it until I was beguiled into a painfully tender sympathy with a mute struggling captive. Slowly, meekly, but withal mightily, the sea-wave comes on in long, regular array, and striking with its extended front at all points simultaneously against the pitiless rock, is broken into white fragments and thrown on its back all thrilling and hissing with expiring agony. Sullen and sore the broken remnants of the first rank steal away to the rear, and hide themselves in the capacious bosom of the mother sea. Anon, you perceive another long blue wave gathering its strength at a distance; with gloomy, unhopeful brow, as if warned by the fate of its predecessor, and hurried onward to its own, it rushes forward and delivers another assault against the rocky shore. It shares the fortune of the last. Again, and yet again, the water wearily gathers up its huge bulk, and again strongly but despairingly launches itself upon its prison walls, to be again broken and thrown back in utter discomfiture. You weep for the great helpless prisoner, who cannot weep for himself. Year after year, century after century, era after era, that prisoner toils and strikes upon the walls of his prison, but never once succeeds in clearing the barrier and flowing across the continent free. That mighty creature, with its sublime strength, and dumb, patient, unceasing labour, never succeeds in breaking its bonds — never leaps into liberty. Here you find a picture, such as no artist could ever make, of a sinner, or a worldf ul of sinners in the aggregate, as they lie in their prison, ceaselessly striving for enlargement, but never attaining it. “ The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest.” And can this water never get freedom? Is it doomed to lie weltering for ever in its prison? Cannot the prisoner by any means be ever set free? The captive may be set at liberty; the captive is set at liberty day by day. Above the firmament are waters, as well as in the hollow which constitutes the ocean’s bed. They are higher up — nearer heaven — as you see, these aerial waters; but being high in heaven, they are therefore free to move across the earth. Nothing conveys a more lively idea of quick, soft, unimpeded motion, than a flying cloud. Here is none of the effort visible even in the flight of birds. Absolutely free they are; and sweetly swiftly do the free run on the errands of their Lord. In this respect there is a sublime contrast between these waters that have been made free and those that are still enslaved — held down by their own dead weight within their prison walls. It is thus that human spirits advance in fleet, gladsome obedience, when the weight is lifted off, and they are permitted to rise. It is when you are raised up into favour that you can go onward to serve. “ Lord, truly I am thy servant.” That is a great attainment, David; how did you reach it? Hear him give the reason: “ Thou hast loosed my bonds” (Psalms 66:16). Those who are strangers to the liberty of dear children, often fall into great mistakes in regard to the obedience which true disciples render to their Lord. Here is a man who lives for present pleasure, and lives without God. He is good-hearted, in the ordinary acceptation of that word. He lays himself out for happiness, and he would like to see all his neighbours happy as well as himself. If he would not suffer much to promote the happiness of others, neither would he spontaneously do anything to injure them. As soon as one source of pleasure is exhausted, he puts his wit on the stretch to invent another. He denies himself nothing that is pleasant to his taste. Be it eating and drinking; be it luxury in things more elevated; be it the midnight dance or play — whatever pleases his palate he tastes in turn. He knows another man, a neighbour in residence or business, who denies himself all these indulgences, and prosecutes some difficult and disagreeable line of benevolence. The free liver looks on that neighbour and studies him, but cannot understand him. If the Christian were a morose and gloomy natured man, he thinks he could explain the reason of his conduct; but his character is precisely the reverse. He is diligent in business, cheerful in company, affectionate and sprightly at home, literary, it may be, or patriotic. With all this he lives strictly as a Christian. He never turns night into day in any species of revelry; he neither reads newspapers nor attends to business on the Lord’s day. He refuses to associate with any who dishonour the name and day and word of God, however profitable the association might seem. The man of the world — called and counted free and easy, although he is neither free nor easy — wonders how his neighbour, being not a morose and gloomy but a cheerful man, can consent to lie under such grievous restraint; how he can deny himself so many liberties, and bind himself so steadily to a round of dull duties. It is a mistake. This man is not capable of understanding his believing neighbour. His standpoint is low, and his range of vision limited. He counts that liberty which the Christian counts bondage, and that bondage which the Christian counts liberty. The Christian before he was converted entertained the same views; but his world has been turned upside down by the gospel. The disciple of Christ has changed — he has become a new creature; but his neighbour, who is not changed, cannot understand him now. He applies carnal measurement to a spiritual nature, and is out of his reckoning at every point. It is as if he were told that a certain vast quantity of water has been in a very short space of time removed a distance of a thousand miles over mountains and valleys, from one continent of the earth to another. Forthwith the thought arises of the heavy, sluggish, gurgling mass enclosed within vessels innumerable of vast capacity and strength, and of these being dragged by mechanical power up steep mountain sides and precipitated into the valleys beyond. It is all a mistake. If the water could only have been transported in this manner, it would never have been transported at all. The water in inconceivable quantity was lightened — was set free: being free, it rose into the heavens, and softly sailed away to its destiny. Thus one who has not entered into peace through the blood of Christ, having no experience of liberty, cannot understand liberty as enjoyed by another. He counts that it must be a dreadful dragging to follow the Christian life. It would be uphill work for himself, if he should attempt it; and he thinks it must be uphill work for his neighbour too. In reasoning from the capacities and habits of his own physical frame to those of his neighbour’s, he reaches a just conclusion; for in bodily constitution, notwithstanding minor differences, both are essentially the same. But in reasoning by analogy from his own spiritual state to that of his believing neighbour, he errs fatally j for the one is the old man, while the other is the new: the one soul is in bondage; the other has been made free by the Son of Gk)d. The Christian obedience is not the dragging of a heavy weight over the rugged ground by the sheer force of fear; it is the easy, fleet movement of the cloud, after its constituent waters have been set free from earth and raised to heaven. “ Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power.” A ship outward bound has struck on a sunken rock ere she has well cleared out of the harbour. There she lies in the water, a mile from land, with the ocean all clear before her from that spot to her journey’s end; but she moves not. What will make her move? The mechanical resources of our time could bring an enormous accumulation of force to bear upon her, but under all its pressure she will remain stationary. If you increase the dragging power beyond a certain point, you will wrench her asunder limb from limb, but you will not win her forward on her voyage. No; not this way — not by any such method can the ship be set free to prosecute her voyage. How then? Let the tide rise, and the ship with it: now you may heave off your hawsers and send home your steamers. Hoist the sail, and the ship will herself move away like a bird on the wing. It is thus that a soul may be set free to bound forward on the path of obedience. Dragging will not do it. A soul cleaving to the dust is like a ship aground, — it cannot go forward until it be lifted up; but when it is lifted up, it will go forward without any violent drawing. Further, the soul cleaving to the dust is lifted, as the ship was, by a secret but mighty attraction in the far-off heaven. Elevated by a winning from above, it courses over life with freedom. “ I will run in the way of thy commandments, when thou hast enlarged my heart.” But there is no time to be lost. If that ship be not lifted up by the tide to-day, she may be broken to pieces by the waves to-morrow. Yield to the mighty but gentle upward drawing which God’s mercy now exerts upon the world, like the sun-heat winning water from the sea, lest you should be obliged to yield to iihe tempest in which the wicked are driven away in their wickedness. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 39: 2.01.05. TRUE, YET TENDER - TENDER, YET TRUE ======================================================================== V. TRUE, YET TENDER— TENDER, YET TRUE. “Ye are the salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.” — Mark 9:50. |N this place the Lord is instructing his own disciples. We learn here not how one may become a Christian, but how one who is a Christian should demean himself in the world The lesson directly concerns not the roots but the fruits of the new life. Every step of progress that a believer makes in practical conformity to his Master’s example and precept, is a substantial gain. If we gain in godliness, we shall grow rich; and this species of wealth never flies away. When a mercantile telegram arrives from a distant land, and is exhibited in the exchange, men eagerly crowd around it. You may see them clustering like bees about the spot, and hanging one on the other’s shoulders, all eyes strained to learn the news. Even when the message relates immediately to battles fought and cities captured — to the slaughter of thousands and the capture of myriads — the interest of the onlookers is absorbed not in the facts that meet the eye, but in the possibilities that lie beneath them. The news of the crushing defeat or the glorious victory is regarded chiefly as an index of the probable price of cotton or the premium on gold. Such is the preponderating attraction of gain in the mercantile community. Now here is a transaction which promises a profit. Here is a message, short and pithy like the telegrams. It is a message from a far country, and it points to a good investment; it opens a prospect of great gain. Let us press near the intimation that has been flashed down upon us from a better country, and go in for a fortune on the field which it lays open. Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said: “ Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.” The two principal terms are Salt and Peace. Examine first their meaning, and next their relations. I. The meaning of each. 1.Salt. As its natural effect is different in different circumstances, so also its meaning differs when metaphorically applied to moral character. It is not necessary, however, for our present purpose, to investigate the different shades of meaning which the metaphor bears, either in Scripture or in common language; for as used by the Lord and his apostles, its signification is obvious and sure. “ Ye are the salt of the earth... if the salt have lost his savour” — “Have salt in yourselves “ — “ Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt.” Keeping in view the reference to salt in the sacrifices, and the solemnizing announcements conveyed by its means in the immediate context, we gather easily, from a comparison of these passages, that salt, as a metaphor applied to human character in the New Testament, signifies in general the grace of God sanctifying the whole nature, and in particular the sterner virtues, — Faithfulness, boldness, righteousness, truth, purity. The term indicates holiness on its harder side; and holiness has a hard side, for it must needs be strong. In this use of the analogy the preserving power of salt is the predominating idea. Salt appears here as the stem, sharp antagonist of all corruption. Christians baptized into the Spirit of Christ act as salt in a tainted world. In union with the virtue that preserves, there is a pungency that pains. You may observe, however, that salt does not irritate whole skin. Apply it to an open sore, and the patient winces; but a healthy member of a living body does not shrink from its touch. A similar distinction obtains in the moral region. Stringent faithfulness in the conduct of his neighbour will not offend a just man: but those who do not give justice do not like to get it. Purity in contact with impurity makes the impure miserable. Peter’s charge against the Jews after the resurrection was: “ Ye denied the Holy One and the Just” It was precisely because he was holy and just that they denied him. The member that was covered with wounds violently shook off the salt that touched and by touching tormented it. Like draws to like, and unlike shrinks from unlike. Salt in yourselves, then, means grace on its sterner side; an unbending truth and faithfulness, that preserves while it pains, but pains while it preserves. 2. Peace. Surely it is not necessary to explain what this word means. You may comprehend it without the aid of critical analysis. It is like the shining sun or the sweet breath of early summer; it is its own expositor. Wherever it is, it makes its presence and its nature known. As the traveller who has missed hi» way thinks more of the light, and understands it better, while he is groping and stumbling in the dark than he did in the blaze of noon; so those best understand and value peace who suffer the horrors of war. You know the worth of it when you know the want of it. In communities, in churches, in families, those who groan under the rendings of strife can best tell you what peace is and how much it is worth. Blessed is peace — blessed are the peacemakers. The greatest peace is, peace with the Greatest; the greatest peace is, peace with God. The Mediator, who makes this peace, is the greatest Peacemaker. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God: this is the first and great commandment; the second, which is like unto it, is. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. After the privilege of peace with God comes that of peace with your neighbour — peace with all the human brotherhood. Peace — including all the characteristics of a Christian which make for peace — is holiness on its softer side; and holiness has a soft side, that it may win the world. As the disciples of Christ should combine the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove, so they should possess and display, in balanced union, the bold, biting strength of the preserving salt and the gentleness of the little child whom Jesus set as a pattern in the midst. “I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed “ — behold the salt! “ All things to all men, that I might gain some “ — behold the peacefulness! II. The reciprocal relation between salt in ourselves and peace with one another. In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, these two are true opposites. In some measure salt in you is antagonist to peace with your neighbour; and peace maintained with your neighbour is antagonist to the vigour of salt in yourselves. Accordingly, error appears alternately in two opposite directions. One man has so much salt in himself that he cannot maintain peace with his neighbours; another man is so soft and peaceable towards all that he manifests scarcely any of the faithfulness which is indicated by the salt. It is interesting and instructive to examine the extent and the limits of this antagonism. In point of fact, and among men, faithfulness does sometimes disturb peace; and peace is sometimes obtained at the expense of faithfulness. At one time you are in a strait, because, if you show faithfulness, you will break the peace; and at another you are in a strait, because, if you keep the peace, you must hold truth in abeyance. The difficulty really exists, and frequently crosses our path in life; but we need not be surprised, and need not be despondent. It is not inherent in the nature, but introduced by the sin of man. When Christ has made an end of sin, the contradiction will disappear from the new world. Those white-robed multitudes that surround the throne are very peaceful, and yet very pure; are very pure, and yet very peaceful. There the salt does not disturb, because there is no corruption to be irritated by contact with holiness; there the peace does not degenerate into indifference, for there is no vile appetite to be indulged. That will be joyful, joyful! when all shall have salt in themselves, and all peace with each other. Nothing shall hurt or destroy in all that holy mountain. In the meantime — like the necessity for labour — that which comes as a curse is, under the arrangements of Providence, converted into a blessing. As toil to keep down thorns and thistles is a useful exercise for physical health, so effort to maintain faithfulness without breaking peace keeps the spirit healthful and fits it for heaven. All the more fully grown and perfect will the heirs of the kingdom be when they reach their rest, that they were compelled to exert themselves during their course in the world. No effort is lost; every expenditure of energy in God’s work tells on the education of God’s child. Every exertion made by a disciple of Christ to soften his own faithfulness and invigorate his own tenderness goes to increase the treasures which he shall enjoy at God’s right hand. It is thus that the saved work of their own salvation. Similar antagonisms in the system of nature constitute at once the exercise and the evidence of the Creator’s skill. Results are frequently obtained through the imion of antagonist forces neutralizing each other. A familiar example is supplied by the centripetal and centrifugal forces, which insure the stability of the solar system. Take another case, equally instructive, though not so obvious. In the structure of a bird, with a view to the discharge of its functions, two qualities, in a great measure reciprocally antagonistic, must be united; these are strength and lightness. As a general rule, strength is incompatible with lightness, and lightness incompatible with strength. You cannot increase the one without proportionally diminishing the other. The body of the bird must float in the air, therefore it must be proportionally lighter than quadrupeds or fishes; but the creature must sustain itself for long periods in the atmosphere, and perform journeys of vast length, therefore its members must be strong. The structure of a bird, accordingly, exhibits a marvellous contrivance for the combination of the utmost possible strength with the utmost possible lightness. Every one is familiar with the structure of the feathers that compose the wing. The quill barrel gives you an example of a minimum of material so disposed as to produce a maximum of strength. The bones of birds are formed on the same plan. They are greater in circumference than the corresponding bones of other animals, but they are however in the heart. In iron castings we repeat the process which we have learned from nature. This union of antagonists for the production of a common beneficent result is like the labour of a Christian life. Be gentle to all without sacrificing any truth; be faithful to truth without giving needless offence to any brother. There should be meekness of spirit, speech, and conduct in a Christian, that he may have peace with his neighbours; but there should be a stem, unyielding righteousness in a Christian, that, wherever his lot may be cast, he may act as a salt to counteract all corruption. The task set before us is difficult, but not impossible. Much watchfulness, prayerfulness, perseverance, and self sacrifice are required in order that you may do it; but it may be done. The disciple who would accomplish this task must labour hard; but hard labour applied to this task will not be labour lost. In this business the hand of the slothful remaineth empty; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. We are ignorant of many things; but the object in creation which most successfully escapes our scrutiny is precisely that which lies nearest us — ourselves. The heart is deceitful above all things. We do not pronounce righteous judgment when our own thoughts and ways are under trial. Self-love, like a huge lump of iron concealed under the deck right below the ship’s compass, draws the magnet aside; thus the life takes a wrong direction, and the soul is shipwrecked. Self-love draws the life now to the right and now to the left; the errors lie not all on one side. One man, soft from selfishness, basely sacrifices truth and duty for ease; another, hard from selfishness, bristles all over with sharp points, like thorns that tear the flesh of the passenger, and when he has kindled discord among brethren, calls his own bad temper faithfulness to truth. There is no limit to the aberration of a human judgment under the bias of self-interest. It will not scruple to dispute the distinction between black and white, if it can thereby hope to gain its selfish end. Oh, how precious are these words of our Lord, “ Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” It is easier to explore the sources of the Nile, than to discover the true motives whence our own actions spring; and easier to turn the Nile from his track, than to turn the volume of thoughts and purposes which issue from a human heart and constitute the body of a human life. We cheat ourselves and our neighbours as to the character of our motives and the meaning of our acts. Nothing that defileth shall enter heaven; purged we must be ere we go in. It is time to begin and get the work forward a stage or two. “ Put off the old man with his deeds.” Watch on the right side, and watch on the left. 1. On the side of peace. It is true there cannot be too much peace in a community; and there cannot be too much of the gentle and peace-making in the character and conduct of a man. But if the folds of our peace are so large, and thick, and warm, as to overlay and smother our faithfulness, the peacemakers are not blessed by God, and are not blessings to the world. This soft carcass that has no salt in it soon runs into decay. To have peace one with another is only half of the commandment; and half of a commandment, like half of an animal body, cannot live alone; it goes into corruption. One who is constitutionally soft and indolent may not only sinfully fail in faithfulness; he may even take credit for his fault, and blame a brother for want of love who tempers his’ love with the due proportion of righteous firmness. Let the timid and retiring nature stir up his soul to a greater measure of truthful courage, without letting any of his gentleness go. Let the vine of his tenderness cling to an oak of stem faithfulness; it will thus bear more fruit than if it were allowed to trail on the ground. 2. On the side of truth and faithfulness. There cannot be too much of faithfulness in the character of a Christian; but even faithfulness to truth may become hurtful, if it is dissociated from the gentleness of Christ. The arms that impart strength to the chair may only hurt the occupant, if they lack the cushion that ought to cover them. For strength, there should be an iron hand in the velvet glove; but for softness, a velvet glove should be on the iron hand when it grasps the flesh of a brother. Some people mistake acid for salt; their own passions for godly zeal. Jehu drives furiously forward to purify the administration of the kingdom; but it is a cruel, selfish ambition that spurs him on. When such a man scatters a shower of acid from his tongue, and sees that his neighbours are hurt by the biting drops, he points to their contortions, and exclaims, See how pungent my salt is! The true savour is in my salt; for see how these people smart under its sting! Ah, the acid, in common with salt, makes a tender place smart in a brother; but it possesses not, in common with salt, the faculty of warding off corruption. Itself corrupts and undermines; it corrodes and destroys all that it drops upon, “ Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God.” Let every one suspect himself. Watch especially the side in which the weakness lies. But, alas I how shall we know that side? The deceitfulness of a human heart often consists in this, that it persuades the dupe that what is really his weakness is his strength. Blind humanity makes a merit of its besetting sin. How shall we find out our ailment? ’* Search me, O God see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Carry the war into the enemy’s country, and strike home there. But where is the enemy’s country? Alas! it is mainly here; down in the secret chambers of the heart* Those enemies that are within the fortress have the greatest power to hurt. Strike them first, and strike them with all your might. If a deadly viper should alight upon your flesh, you would strike a sudden sharp blow with the first weapon that might come to hand. You would not bring the stroke down gently and waveringly, in order to save your skin. You would smite quick and strong, although you should thereby wound your own body, in order that you might destroy the viper ere it had time to sting. “ All that a man hath will he give for his life.” Would that the children of light were as wise in their generation; would that ourselves were as wise in counsel, and as prompt in action, when the soul’s life and health are concerned, as we are when we are called to preserve the health and life of the body. But we have apostolic example to sustain us in administering sharp reproof. “ Enemies of the cross of Christ,” said Paul, in addressing his well-beloved Ephesians. He rims the sword boldly through, and spares not for their crying. But let ignorant and rash physicians beware how they imitate that great master. He did, indeed, administer to his patients a biting reproof; but there were two ingredients in the prescription. One alone would kill and not cure. Such remedies are too potent for being safely intrusted to inexperienced hands. Paul told the Philippians to their face that they were enemies of the cross of Christ, but he told it weeping. Ah, those tears, thrown into the potion along with the scalding reproof, took all the burning out, and made the word mighty to save. Alas! in this form the truth is often turned into a lie. Even the terrors of the Lord rattled forth hard and dry from an unmoved human heart, lose their divinity when they lose their tenderness, and degenerate into a scold. God is love while he sends out his threatenings; man should be loving when he ventures to gather these bolts from the Bible and point them to a brother’s breast. Let us press with all our might, and press always on both sides, — as far towards tenderness as truth will permit us to go, and as far towards faithfulness as the line of love will allow. Between these two divinely balanced opposites — between the salt and the peace — between steadfast truth and a gentle, winsome brotherliness, let the Christian life swing round the circumference of time, as those heavenly orbs revolve in beauty and safety, balanced between the force that drives them off and the force that keeps them near. Do you ask what mainly hinders the union of Christians in these days? I answer, it is the practical divorce of this paradise pair, whom God has commanded us to bind in a perpetual wedlock. The softness that suffers sin upon a brother, and the hardness that proudly tears a brother because of his sin — these two are the dividers, the disturbers of Israel. If we could pour enough of love into our faithfulness, and enough of faithfulness into our love, an amalgam would come forth from the crucible fitted to weld into one all the dislocated members of Christ’s body, the Church. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 40: 2.01.06. THE FOOD THAT JESUS LOVED AND LIVED ON ======================================================================== VI. THE FOOD THAT JESUS LOVED AND LIVED ON. “Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” — John 4:34. CERTAIN woman who lived in the Samaritan town of Sychar went out one day at noon to the well for water. Although the path between the town and the well was trodden by multitudes every day, the woman on this occasion had it all to herself. She seems to have had nobody in her company, and to have met nobody by the way. All the well-ordered households had laid in their supply of water early in the morning, or late in the evening of the previous day; for none who can otherwise arrange their plans will bear a burden through an unsheltered plain when the Syrian sun is high. Matters were not well arranged in this woman’s house: she led an irregular life in a disreputable home. On this account, probably, she came to the well at noon. Had she been ready when her neighbours came, she would have missed the living water. How deep are God’s purposes both in creation and providence, and how exactly wheel fits into wheel as the vast machinery moves majestically round! It is intimated at the beginning of the chapter that Jesus must needs go through Samaria. The necessity for taking this route lay deeper than the geography of Palestine. In the counsels of Eternal Mercy he must needs go through Samaria, that he might meet a sinner there; and she must needs go out to the well at noon, because only at that hour could she find on the well’s brink the Saviour of her soul. As she approaches the well-known spot, alike venerated for its hallowed associations and valued for its continued usefulness, she espies a way-worn stranger resting on the stones at the well’s mouth. Either suspecting him to be a Jew, and therefore avoiding intercourse, or bent only on her own errand without regarding his presence, she proceeded in the usual way to let down her bucket and to draw it up full from the cool depths. Ere she had time to transfer her treasure to her shoulder, in order to bear it to her home, the weary stranger accosted her with a simple request for a drink of water. Now that the ice was broken, and the intercourse begun, she enters freely into conversation; and, as the subject that came easiest to hand, plunged into the feud between Jews and Samaritans. So far from replying to her argument, the Lord instantly glided from the water with which he was refreshing his own parched lips, to the water which would be the life of her soul. He has requested the woman to give him drink. He has applied his parched lips to the vessel which she presents, and, perhaps in the pauses of his panting draughts, looking into her careworn, uneasy countenance, he mysteriously says, “ I will give thee living. water.” At a later stage of this episode the disciples, having brought some food from a shop in the town and oflFered it to their master, knowing that he must by this time be hungry, are surprised when he declines their offer. To account for his unexpected abstinence, they suggest the thought that some person during their absence might have given him food. Gliding off that common theme, What shall I eat? — rising and lifting them with himself up from earth to heaven, he replied, “ My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” Consider Messiah’s ministry of salvation, first, simply as a work which he performed; and next, as the food in which he delighted I. His work: — “ To do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” He speaks here in his capacity of Son and servant. He has been sent to execute the Father’s wilL In his essential nature he is one with the Father, and the purpose of redeeming lost men is his own as well as the Father’s; but here the Son speaks in accordance with his place as Mediator. From Father, Son, and Spirit, the one purpose issued; and to Father, Son, and Spirit, will the glory return, when many sons are brought into glory; but in the actual execution of the divine purpose, and dining the currency of redemption, the Son of God, the Saviour, stands in a low place, and speaks as a servant charged with a specific mission, and engaged in performing a specific work. He is doing the will of the Father that sent him. What is the will — the desire of the Sender? You may learn it best by looking to the Sent. Look unto Jesus, if you would know the mind of God. He meant not evil to a fallen world when he sent his Son to dwell amongst us clothed in our nature. The Gift reveals the Giver’s heart Well may we take up the bright, blessed argument of Manoah’s wife, as we meditate on the incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection of our Lord — well may we adopt faith’s strong argument, “ If the Lord had meant to kill us, he would not have shown us such things as these.” Jesus himself has said, “ No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” The Christ sent into the world is fitted to draw men to God, not to drive them away. The will of the Father toward the world corresponds with the Messenger who has been sent to accomplish it. God is love; and Christ came to embody divine love in the actual redemption of the lost. Oh, when will the thought spring up in the heart of a prodigal race, “ I will arise, and go to my Father”? By the gift of the Son the Father has revealed his own heart; and they are without excuse who still count him hard, and keep at a distance. “To do the will of him that sent me:” the desire of God could not be carried into effect without Christ sent, the Saviour. As God made the world by his Word, he makes the world anew by the Word made flesh, and dwelling amongst us. The incarnation and dying of the Lord Jesus became the accomplishment of the Father’s merciful design. Intention was turned into fact. How precious are God’s thoughts towards us! But his thoughts found body in Christ crucified. Here lies the power to carry into effect the love that lay in the eternal covenant. “And to finish his work.” The work is not left half done. His work is perfect. Creation was completed ere God gave over his work and rested. It was all very good ere it left his hands. His next and more glorious work will be finished too. There will be no patches added after the children assemble in the Father’s house. This earth was complete as a habitation for humanity, here the children were brought to it as their home. The mountains were all raised up, and the rivers all flowing in the valleys, and the sea confined within its capacious basin, and the air mixed and made up, suitable as breath for living creatures, clasping the globe round all its circumference. Then, and not sooner, did God make man in his own image. The home of the holy will be perfect when its inmates enter. All things are ready ere the message is sent round to bid the guests assemble. God’s works are all finished works. At the time that Jesus talked with the woman and with his disciples at Jacob’s well, the work which he had undertaken was not finished. The agony in the garden lay before him, and lay full in view; the hiding of the Father’s face, the cup of wrath; all the bearing for his people’s sin, and the Father’s righteousness, lay before him. This baptism he must yet be baptized with, and he was straitened till it should be accomplished. He hastened to the end. For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame. II. His food: — To do the Father’s will and finish his work, he counted his bread. It is not enough to learn from the evangelic histories what Jesus did and suffered. It is not enough to examine his acts; we must look, as far as the Scriptures present an opening, into the secret motives that wrought in his heart. At Jacob’s well he was carrying forward his great mission as the Saviour of lost men: the twelve looked on, but they looked on as little children look on their father while he is preparing to accomplish some great work of skill. They saw each separate movement, but they could not comprehend the design. Not understanding the whole, they were baffled by the sight of the separate parts. “ They marvelled that he talked with the woman.” Knowing full well all that the redemption of his people would bring upon himself, he longed for the work as for his daily bread. It is my meat to do his will, and finish his work. This word we can in some measure understand; for we know what the pain of hunger is, and what the delight of satisfying hunger with convenient food. I can in some measure comprehend the desire that burned in the breast of Jesus that day at Jacob’s well; for I have been hungry, and when hungry have been satisfied with bread. In this glass I can see reflected the nature and intensity of the Saviour’s eagerness to save. On one occasion Jeremiah was commanded to go down to the potter’s house, that he might there receive a message from the Lord; and the prophet soon learned the reason why the message was not communicated to him in his own house. It regarded the sovereignty of God in appointing the lot of his creatures, and Jeremiah could more easily understand the lesson while he stood by the potter’s wheel, and saw him making from one piece of clay a vessel unto honour and a vessel unto dishonour. Some lessons which God gives us can be more fully taken up in one position than in another. Some texts of Scripture may be most profitably read in a dark night, some beside a stormy sea, and some at the brink of an open grave. You can enter into the spirit of some texts more easily when you are young, and of others when you are old, — of some while you are joyful, and of others when you weep. Methinks this word of the Lord should be thought of when we are hungry, and anticipating the pleasure of enjoying our food. Like hunger was Christ’s appetite for saving work — like the satisfying of hunger is his joy when he is winning souls. What an agony is unappeased hunger! What contrivances will you adopt, what efforts will you make, what pain endure, i]\ order to obtain bread! “ Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life;” and food is life — the want of it death. A traveller lost his way in an Eastern desert. His provisions were exhausted, and he had already wandered about for several days without food, when he described under a palm-tree on his track the marks of a recent encampment. He approached the spot tremulous with hope. He found a bag which the travellers had left behind, filled with something that appeared to be dates. He opened it eagerly, expecting to satisfy his hunger, when lo, it contained only pearls I He sat down and wept. What are pearls to a man who is dying for want of bread? Jesus is Lord of all. Those glorious stars that stud the heavens are all his. They are the jewels which belong to his crown. He values them; but they do not satisfy his soul. To Christ, these shining orbs are like the pearls to the fainting traveller in the desert. They are precious and pure, but he cannot live on them. Christ does not need to redeem those bright worlds and those unfallen angels, and they cannot therefore satisfy his appetite. To seek the strayed; to redeem the lost; to renew the fallen; to lay down his life for them, — this is his meat: and for this food he must pass those shining worlds. He must leave them, like the ninety-nine unstrayed sheep upon the mountain pastures, and go after the lost one, that when he gets it on his shoulders he may rejoice, with a joy inspeakable and full of glory. “ Blessed are they that hunger; for they shall be filled.” This he said: this he felt. He experiences the truth of this saying to-day in the midst of the throne, while ten thousand times ten thousand of the saved are ministering before him. That fainting, hungry traveller by Jacob’s well, obtained a foretaste of his joy when the Samaritan woman received life from his hands; and his joy will be full when all the ransomed shall rise and reign with him upon his throne. Behold the man, fainting, hungry, under a midday sun at Jacob’s well! Behold the man, crowned with thorns and mocked at Jerusalem! Behold the man, as he bows his head upon the cross, — what has brought him to this? His appetite: it is that hunger for the doing of his Father’s loving will, and the finishing of his Father’s mighty work. It was his unquenchable appetite for saving, as for the bread of his life, that brought him to a fallen world, and left him under the curse that was due to sin. This appetite burned in hij breast like fire. With this appetite unsatisfied, he would have counted heaven unhappy. Under the control of his own divine love, he left his throne, took upon himself the form of a servant, and suffered unto death, that he might feast upon the work of winning souls. The same feature of his character appeared when he stood on the Mount of Olives, and wept over Jerusalem. Son of God, why weepest thou? He weeps for hunger. He is like a hungry man in sight of food, but not within reach of it. It is in such a case that hunger gnaws like a worm in the breast. Oh, how he loves! How deeply and how persistently do the guilty misinterpret and misrepresent the heart of Christ! Men take the devils’ opinion of him, “Art thou come to torment us?” instead of the view which the true One gives of himself. It is difficult for us to take in the conception of Christ’s passionate desire to save, and yet retain a due sense of his omnipotence as God. We are apt to think that in such a case his power might have been put forth, as the immediate instrument of accomplishing all his desire. Might not the Almighty Deliverer have made short work with the saving of Jerusalem that day? Might he not have seized a whole cityful, as the angels seized Lot by the hand, and hurried them up to heaven? But this would not satisfy his soul; this is not food convenient for him. It is not pure. It was a gross and carnal conception that the prosperous man entertained, when he tried to feed his soul with the goods that he had laid up in a barn. Material acquisitions cannot satisfy and sustain spirit. Though the Lord Jesus has all power committed to him in heaven and in earth, he will not command stones to be made bread by a miracle to satisfy his hunger; neither will he lift a multitude to heaven by mere omnipotence. They who are drawn up to him for the satisfying of his soul, rise as the clouds rise from the sea, spontaneous and pure. Nothing shall enter that defileth. He hungers, and saving work is his food; but as with his servant Peter so with the Master himself, — nothing common or unclean hath at any time entered his lips. He must needs go through Samaria, not only because that province lay in his way, but because he was hungry, and in poor half-heathen Samaria lay the savoury meat which his soul loved. In the same manner he must needs pass through our nature and our world, as he goes from the glory of the eternity past to the glory of the eternity to come. It was not any physical necessity; for the Maker of all worlds might have found another path from glory to glory without visiting this shooting star. But he must needs pass through the abode of fallen humanity on his way to the throne of the kingdom, because he longed to save the lost with a longing like hunger, and here only could be found the food that would satisfy his soul. His own sovereign love laid the necessity upon himself. The sun, his creature, is under an inherent necessity of giving out light; so Christ, the light of the world, must needs give out the light of life, and therefore he casts himself in the way of a dark world, as the hungry seeks food and the thirsty makes his way towards water-springs. The Ethiopian found Christ in the desert, and went on his way rejoicing; but also Christ found the Ethiopian in the desert, and went on his way rejoicing that he had tasted his sweetest food. Within the limits prescribed by our capacity and our condition, the appetite of the Master may be experienced by the servants too, and they after their own way may be satisfied with the food that he loved so well. Our spiritual hunger is first a desire to get and then a desire to give salvation. It is in the second part of the process that the disciple enters in some measure into the joy of his Lord. Out of his own fulness the Lord gives. At first we are empty; but when we have obtained mercy, we shall experience a desire like an appetite to publish it. Oh that we were inoculated with that appetite for doing good that burned in the breast of the man Christ Jesus! We try to do some good, and then we slacken and leave oft. When some providential call awakens us, we start into activity again for a season. This is not the way to work deliverance in the earth. The work is not effectually done unless we do it as the Master did it. When saving work is our meat, and idleness gnaws like the pain of hunger, we shall be sent unto our task and kept at it. An appetite is the unslumbering, faithful, effective task-master appointed by our Creator, in the material department, to see that we take our necessary food. When a task-master of the same order keeps our spirits on the stretch for saving work, the work will be vigorously prosecuted, and we shall never be long out of employment. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 41: 2.01.07. THE FOOD THAT JESUS GAVE TO HIS OWN ======================================================================== VII. THE FOOD THAT JESUS GAVE TO HIS OWN. “ I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say \mto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drinli his blood, ye have no life in you.” — John 6:51-53. To finish his work was bread to himself: his work finished is bread to his people. His food was the subject of the last exposition; theirs invites our attention now. As never man spake like this man, so never hitherto has even this man spoken as he speaks here. After intimating generally, “ I am the bread of life,” he proceeds to declare specifically, “ The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Here he glides from a deep into a deeper revelation. In answer to the perplexed questioning of his auditors, he declares with great clearness that, in order to their spiritual life, they must “ eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man.” He was well aware, when he uttered these extraordinary words, of the offence that they must give. The conception of eating his flesh, in as far as they took it in a bodily sense, was fitted to shock them as men; and the conception of drinking his blood was additionally distasteful to them as Jews, who were forbidden in any circumstances to eat the blood. He foresaw that many would take offence at these words and desert his ministry; but he would not on that account refrain from uttering them. The truth which these words convey is necessary to the life of men, and therefore the merciful Redeemer will not withhold them. He must finish his work. This rock must be laid down although many of the superficial disciples may stumble over it, for it is necessary as the foundation of a true disciple’s faith and hope. The cross must be held aloft, although the offence of the cross may drive many of the unstable away. Already the Lord saw meet to proclaim his own sacrifice as the atonement for sin. Let it be distinctly understood at the outset that the Communion of the Lord’s Supper is not the subject of discourse here. The doctrine which the Lord here teaches, and the ordinance which he afterwards instituted in the upper room at Jerusalem, are distinct things, although they are related to each other. If the instituted supper is like a lofty tower, the doctrine tauo-ht in this passage is like the solid ground on which the tower rests. This broad world is a greater thing than any tower or mountain that it bears. There might have been a world the same substantially as that which is, although no tower or mountain should have. ever raised its head into the sky; but no tower or mountain could have lifted its head towards the heavens if there had not been a deep steady world to bear it. Not the words of this passage, but the truth which they teach, is the ground on which the Lord’s Supper rests. The Communion is a lofty monumental tower from whose summit the spectator can look eastward into the morning of time, till he meet Abraham’s straining faith looking down the ages; and westward, farther and farther toward the end, till he go round the circumference of time and meet another morning — the second coming of the Lord in the clouds of heaven. But that ordinance depends absolutely for all its value on the foundation-truth that is revealed here: that Christ crucified — his flesh and his blood — constitutes the sustaining food and refreshing drink of all who enjoy spiritual life and are heirs of the life eternal. The evangelist John omits from his history both the sacraments. He mentions neither as an instituted ordinance; but he records from the lips of the Lord the fundamental doctrines on which those ordinances severally depend. In the conversation with Nicodemus you find the ground which sustains Baptism; and in this discourse the ground which sustains the Supper. The Supper, although it is Christ’s own institute, is an outward thing, deriving all its meaning and power from this precious truth. This is the soul which animates the body of the sacrament. If Christ had not made himself the meat and drink of his people, the Supper would never have been set up as a monument of the fact; and if Christ’s disciples do not really thus live upon him in secret, their participation of bread and wine at the Table wdll be to them a stone instead of bread. Wanting Christ’s sacrifice for sin, the sacrament of the Supper would have contained nothing for us; and wanting individual personal faith in Christ crucified, we can get nothing from the sacrament. For the beginning of this doctrine regarding the spiritual appetite and its supply, we must go back to the conversation with the Samaritan woman (iv. 10). “He would have given thee living water.” Living water! what may that be? It is not a springing well; it is not a running stream. The water that Christ gives is not only living, it gives life. He who drinks of it is satisfied, and that for ever. The woman failed to comprehend his meaning, as one who had enjoyed a better education had failed before her to comprehend the new birth; but both the woman and Nicodemus, like new-born babes, received the nourishment which they could neither explain nor understand. It is a mistake to suppose that spiritual profit is always in proportion to the intellectual comprehension. A little child may thrive upon the food of whose name and nature he is ignorant, while a physician who knows the constituents and properties of every morsel he swallows may be dying by inches, not for want of food, but for want of hunger. The woman soon got beyond her depth in doctrine; but she thirsted, and drank the living water. Forthwith she became an apostle, and called the men of her city out to the Lord. In this portion the same doctrine appears at a further advanced stage. There, it was water for the thirsty; here, it is meat and drink. Then the Lord gave water; now his flesh is meat and his blood is drink. Hunger and thirst inhere naturally in human souls. There is a craving in humanity for more. We are in this respect completely distinct from other orders of living creatures. The craving for something not yet possessed, and not yet visible, is a universal characteristic of our kind. The pressure of that appetite makes the whole machinery of the world go round. It sends armies into the field, and ships across the ocean; it mines the solid earth, and washes gold from Avistralian sands. The cry of human nature, blind and unintelligent, but eager and constant, is the cry of the horse-leech — Give, give. This soul-hunger in humanity human beings attempt to satisfy with body-food. “ Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years,” etc. But when all these have been flung to it, the poor soul is more hungry than before. It is as when the shipwrecked seaman on his raft drinks salt water to appease his thirst, and so makes his thirst burn more fiercely. This strong but blind appetite is cheated, moreover, by all the idolatries and all the self -righteousnesses that men have invented in name of religion. To meet and satisfy this craving Christ came into the world, and gave himself a sacrifice. Neither is there salvation in any other. “ My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” “ Except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man, ye have no life in you.” Here we have, on the part of Christ, his incarnation and sacrifice; on the part of Christians, their faith in exercise, and their life thereby. I. On the part of Christ, Incarnation and Sacrifice. 1. His incarnation: the Son of man. A deep mine of meaning lies in this form of expression. Not man, not a man, not a son of man; but the Son of man. There is only one to whom this title is due. It points not to the millions who are sons of man, and nothing more; it points to him who, being Son of God from eternity, became the Son of man in the fulness of time. Neither a son of man nor the Son of God could be our substitute and saviour. The one is near enough to us, but has no power to save; the other has power to save, but is not near enough to us. A son of man is linked to us in the sympathy of a common nature; but this only secures that he sinks with us when we fall: the Son of God is far above, out of our sicjht, and we cannot rise with him when he rises. Thus, if mere man had been our help, we should have perished, for there would have been no strength to lay hold of; and if only God had been our help, we should have perished, for we could never have laid hold of his strength. The incarnation — that is, when he who is God blessed for ever took our nature, and became a man — is the greatest fact in the course of time. It is the knot that binds a fallen world to a stable heaven, that interlaces divine power with human weakness, and imparts divine righteousness to the fallen as their covering and their plea. 2. His saGrifice. Beyond question the Lord points already to his own atoning death when he speaks of his flesh and his blood as the meat and the drink of his people. Even the incarnation, if it stood alone, could not save us. Although the Son of God had taken our nature, we must have been left to perish, if he had not in that nature given himself a sacrifice. Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. This is the great central lesson of the Scriptures. This cardinal doctrine was imprinted into the being of the Church during the period of its infancy. From Abel’s sacrifice to the Passover which Jesus kept in the upper room wath the twelve on the eve of his suffering, the blood of sacrifices flowed on the altar like a continual stream. Daily sacrifice; morning and evening sacrifice; sacrifice when the sun went down, and sacrifice again to greet his risinc:: blood, blood; all things under the law were sprinkled with blood. Expiation by the victim’s blood was the very mould in which the people’s minds were cast from youth to age, from generation to generation. If that were only the invention of men, what a waste! but if that be the appointment of God, what a meaning! When Christ came he recognized his place and his mission. He placed himself in the focus of all those converging fires, and owned himself the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world. “ It is finished,” he said at length, and gave up the ghost. II. On the part of Christians, They believe and live. “Eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man.” He employs plain, powerful language. Nor does he take any pains to give warning that it is not the bodily eating of his material body that he means. He knows what is in man, and what man needs. He knows that if any would not perceive his meaning without such a warning, neither would they accept his meaning with it. Those who entertain the conception of a corporal and carnal receiving of Christ’s flesh and blood would have run into that idolatry over the back of all the warnings that could have been written. All through, the Lord speaks not of the hunger and food of the body, but of the hunger and food of the soul. If any one misses or rejects this, he would not have been corrected and instructed by any other form of words possible in human speech. But mark well, although it is a spiritual and not a material food, it is yet a real supply of a real hunger. The soul’s hunger is a greater thing than the hunger of the body. A Roman poet has called avarice a spiritual thirst for gold. And this spiritual appetite works greater effects on earth than any bodily appetite. Correspondingly, a pure and divinely inspired spiritual appetite is a more imperious and far-reaching power than the natural appetites of the body. From the Psalmist downward, it has been common for souls to be so eager for the spiritual food that they have forgotten to eat their daily bread. The soul’s appetite has overruled and overridden the appetite of the body. And as hunger is often quickened into sharper activity by the sight or the scent of food, so longing eager souls become more eager when, after long striving in vain for that which will satisfy, they come near their true satisfaction — the Christ of God, incarnate in our nature and sacrificed for our sin. Never did the Ethiopian treasurer more keenly hunger for this flesh to eat and this blood to drink than when, on his journey homewards, he continued seeking, and was blindly groping over the very place where his satisfaction lay — the Lamb of God led to the slaughter — the sacrifice of Christ for the world’s sin. To eat his flesh and drink his blood is to secure and live upon Christ — God with us, and sacrificed for us. As truly a believing soul receives this food as the living body receives its appropriate nourishment; and as truly does the new life of the soul prosper on this sustenance, as does the healthy body prosper on its convenient food. “ Except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man ye have no life in you.” Even intelligent assent to the truth of the gospel does not give life. Even devout admiration of the incarnation, the ministry, and sufferings of Immanuel will not give and sustain the life of a soul. It is the personal individual acceptance and relish of the divine and crucified Redeemer, as your own Redeemer, and this acceptance as real as your acceptance of food for the body’s life — it is this that contributes, that sustains, that constitutes the new life of a Christian. Drink his blood is a striking, and must have been to the Jews who heard it, a startling addition to the more familiar conception of eating the flesh of the sacrifice. He must have intended to startle them, and to shake them out of their lethargy. They were strictly forbidden to eat the blood; and yet they were taught that the blood was the life. It was like the prohibition laid on the primeval pair acfainst eatinsr of the tree. Yet the tree is a tree of life; and the Lord means that they shall eat of it yet, and eat abundantly. Not in an imlawful way or at an unripe time, but in time and manner divinely appointed, Israel shall yet drink the blood in which is the life. The time had now come. The way was open; the barrier was removed. There was now access into the holiest. That which was veiled off before is laid open now, and whosoever will may come and take of this water — may drink of this blood, which is the life, freely. These words of Jesus have a direct and obvious bearing on the question whether participation in the communion of the Lord’s Supper, the external ordinance, is necessary to salvation. The doctrine taught here manifestly settles that question. The words were spoken by Jesus, and recorded by John, in order that they might settle that question. Here the circumstance that John, writing after the other three Gospels were before his eye, gives fully this discourse, and gives not the institution of the Supper at all, is broadly significant. By eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of man believers then had life, at a time when the Supper was not appointed, and none but the Lord himself knew that it ever would be appointed. This is given in full by John, and the sacrament not given at all, to prevent a corrupt priesthood, in a subsequent age, from laying a yoke of bondage on the necks of believers. There were men who then and there did eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man before the external ordinance was appointed; and a multitude which no man can number would have so eaten and so drunk for their own eternal life, in succeeding ages, although it had pleased the Lord not to have instituted the Supper at all. But althouo-h the discourse of Jesus vindicates for all time and all places the possibility of living in Christ here and with him on high, without actually partaking of bread and wine with the Church on earth, it does not make the ordinance which Christ subsequently instituted of no effect, and does not liberate any disciple from the duty of observing it. The fact that he lives a new life, by secretly eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ, so far from making a believer careless of the ordinance, is the very thing that impels him with desire and joyfulness to take the cup of salvation in his hand, and so call upon the name of the Lord. It is the consciousness that he has already been redeemed from all evil through the shedding of the Saviour’s blood, that induces him to serve the Lord that bought him by a glad obedience to all his commandments. The supposition of a believer living in Christ, and eating his flesh and blood, yet refusing to partake of the Lord’s Supper, is vain and useless. For if the refusal spring from some mist that has come over a true disciple’s mind, preventing him from seeing the way that the Lord has pointed out, it is like the case of a man who wants a limb — he lives, but his progress is impeded by the calamity. And if it be the case of one consciously, with his eyes open, refusing to obey that dying command of Christ, that despiser is none of his. No man who really trusts in the risen Saviour for redemption and eternal life, will persist with understanding in refusing to obey what he knows to be the Saviour’s command. When one has tasted that the Lord is gracious, you may be well assured he will cast up wherever and whenever new tastes of the same grace are going. As even the dumb brute which draws your carriage will turn aside with a strong determination when he approaches the spot where formerly he has obtained food when hungry or drink when thirsty, so a Christian who has already lived upon the Lord will be feund pressing in to whatever places, by the Lord’s own appointment, new experiences of his love are given, — in the Closet, in the Church, at the Table. Pause a moment yet over the word, “ Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” The Lord seems to ignore the life that we now live in the body. He will not count or call it life at all; at least, when in his view this life is laid for comparison alongside of eternal life in himself, he deliberately refuses to count it life. He reckons it only a process of dying. We are aware of the general law that one’s view depends upon his view-point. Christ, though he is Son of man and our Brother, yet stands within the veil while he speaks to us. He stands on his own footing as the eternal Son of God, with all eternity exposed beneath his eye: in this position he stands while he speaks to us, and he cannot call this fitful struggle to keep death at bay for a few years, a life. In his view, unless we are found in him and so partake of life spiritual and eternal, we have not life at all. If it were possible for us, by a certain process of union or engrafting, to admit an insect whose life is but a day into a participation of the human life, with its intellect and its span of seventy years; and if the creature could become aware of the fact, and capable of receiving instruction regarding it, you might, in such an imagined case, approach it while its one-day life was drawing towards sunset, and say, Haste and take such and such measures for engrafting yourself into me; for except ye be inserted into my flesh and blood, ere that sun go down you have no life in you. From man’s view-point, and with his measures, the life of that ephemera is not a life at all. The figure, though feeble, helps, as far as it goes, to explain the meaning of the Lord when he says, “ Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have no life in you.” With his experience and with his prospect, he counts this fitful life in the body as not a life. In comparison with the life of which we are capable, and which he both has at his disposal and loves to bestow, this is not life. But as in this lower life, if we do not eat and drink it cannot be sustained; so in that higher life, unless we receive its sustenance we cannot enjoy it. The Hebrew fathers, although they tasted the manna that fell from heaven, died. No material plenty, no spiritual privilege, will secure for you the life of the soul. The body and blood of Christ are the appropriate and necessary sustenance of that only real and perfect life. You must, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith, discern the Lord’s body and feed upon it. A soul can live as well as a body. A spirit can hunger and thirst as well as a body. The hunger and thirst of a spirit are as real as the hunger and thirst of a body. The food that satisfies a spirit is as real as, and inconceivablymore substantial than, the food that satisfies a body. Nor is it true that body-hunger and body-food are substance, and the spiritual need and spiritual supply a kind of shadowy figurative thing. No; the opposite is the truth. The real, the substantial, the original — the food that is first and shall be last — is the body and blood of Christ, on which Christians live; and the hunger and the food that bulk so largely in the business of earth are a shadow that endures for a moment and then vanishes away. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 42: 2.01.08. THE TWO FAMILIES - THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRTUAL ======================================================================== VIII. THE TWO FAMILIES— THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. “ Then came to him his mother and his brethren, and could not come at him for the press. And it was told him by certain which said. Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee. And he answered and said unto them. My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it.”— Luke 8:19-21. WHILE Jesus was in the act of preaching in the centre of a crowd, Mary his mother approached the spot, accompanied by some members of her family. Unable to penetrate the throng, they remained on its outskirts, and sent in a message, from lip to lip, that they desired to speak with him. Not permitting his public ministry to be authoritatively interrupted even by his mother’s word, he set the demand aside by the memorable answer, “ My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it.” From these words of the Lord Jesus I learn — That, without repudiating the family relations of earth, he institutes and proclaims the family relations of heaven. The prophecy is not limited to any single or private interpretation; it has a meaning for all kindreds and all times. As a faithful minister of the gospel said once to a despotic sovereign—” There are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland,*’ explaining how Church and State may live and thrive on the same spot at the same time, giving and receiving help reciprocally, if each will consent to confine itself to its own sphere and exercise only its own functions; so the Scriptures intimate that two families pervade society, both having to a great extent the same persons as members, yet without jealousy or collision, getting and giving reciprocal support. Both families are of God. He has planned and constituted them. To him they owe their origin, and from him they receive their laws. A place has been assigned to the one in creation; to the other in redemption. The one«has been in full operation since the birth of our race; the other was long a secret hidden institute, nor was it completely formed and openly manifested till Christ came into the world. The members of the first family enter its circle by birth; the members of the second by the new birth. The one is the grand Institute of Nature; the other the grand Institute of Grace. Both are good, each as far as it goes; but the second is deeper, longer, broader, higher than the first. The first is the family for time; the second is the family for eternity. In this text, and in others of similar import, the Lord Jesus, without pulling up the first family, plants another among its roots. The first, being an institute existing from the beginning hitherto and manifest to all, he simply leaves as it is; the second, being in a great measure new and unknown, he proclaims, defines, and approves. The first, being strong in nature, he leaves to its own resources; the second, being feeble, he protects against the possible oppression of its robuster neighbour. The rights of the one family are secured in the decalogue; the privileges of the other are pronounced by the lips of Christ. In short, as the Redeemer and Head of his ransomed Church, the Lord does not condemn and annul relations of blood; but he refuses to permit them to burst in and dominate relations by the Spirit. By silence he permits the natural affections to rule in their own sphere; but by express intimation he forbids them to usurp authority in another. At the proper time and place, Jesus the son owned the law of Mary his mother; but Jesus the Saviour will not, at this woman’s word, interrupt his work, and scatter an assembly of disciples. Let us therefore endeavour to explain and apply in their order and relations these two lessons:- — L Christ in the Gospel permits the natural family, in all II. Christ in the Gospel establishes, on the same sphere, a new spiritual family. I. Christ in the Gospel permits the natural family, in all its integrity, to remain imdisturbed. Jesus was himself the member of a family. He received the benefits of that position, and fulfilled its duties. In his ministry he recognized the institute, and in his conduct he obeyed its laws. Nor is it enough to say that he knew and acknowledged those affections that bind family-groups together: himself had planted them in the human constitution at the first. He is the contriver and creator of humanity, with all its original capacities. Wisdom, as in the Proverbs, was with the Maker “ when he set a compass upon the face of the deep,” and his peculiar “ delights were with the children of men.” He who stands in the heart of that crowd, and receives a message from a mother, shared in the mysterious counsel, “Let us make man in our own image.” It is essential to the depth and stability of our faith to bear in mind that our Redeemer is the Eternal and Almighty God. He who is now redeeming man from sin made man in the beginning sinless. He imprinted instincts, such as he saw meet, on the core of his creature; and these, as they came from his hand, were all very good: these are all very good still, in as far as they have been set in his own work by his own hand. While the incarnation is to us the grand evidence of God’s condescending kindness, it is fitted also to exalt to the utmost the dignity of man. Therein we get a glimpse, which the fallen could not have otherwise obtained, of the place which unfallen humanity held, and which the redeemed will enjoy for ever. “ The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” “He took not on him the nature of angels,” but ours; and he bears that nature still. We learn here that God is not ashamed of his own conception embodied in the constitution of the human race. He did not repent of his plan, and has not withdrawn it to substitute another. He did not fling his work away, even when it fell. He abides by all that is his own in us; and will abide by his redeemed, not ashamed to call them brethren when they are at last completely restored. Before the mystery of the incarnation we ought first to adore the condescension of God, and next to reverence ourselves. Honour all the pure affections of human nature, for they thrill in the Saviour’s breast; loathe all the sins that stain it, for they crucified the Son of God. If you examine the natural affections and instincts of living creatures, you will find that one principle lies like a measuring rod along the whole — utility. These affections are inserted, and inserted such as they are, in the constitution of the creature, because of their usefulness. They are the instruments whereby the Maker works out his own design. “ God is good,” will explain all. “ The eyes of the Lord are in every place.” “ The hairs of your head are all numbered.” The instincts go as far as is necessary for the good of the creature, and no farther. There Sno wa i! the mechanism of creation a d providence. Sufficient power is provided to produce the desired result; and by a self-acting apparatus the power ceases to operate as soon as the result has been attained. Some living creatures, as fishes and certain species of birds, have no perceptible filial or parental affections at all. In their case the instinct is not needed, and therefore is not found. In others, including all the higher grades of the brute creation, the parental affection is developed in great intensity for a short period, and then altogether ceases. A mother that would have shed her blood for her offspring a month ago, when it was feeble, does not know it to-day, at least does not acknowledge it in the herd. The instinct, having served its purpose, is not left dangling after its work is done. It has been cut off* short and clean; remnants would only encumber, and therefore none are left. Relative affections in human kind expatiate on a wider field, and are more enduring. Here we enter a region in which these affections find room to range; they become, accordingly, manifold and strong. The roots go deeper down in the deeper, richer soil. A short-lived maternal love would not serve the purpose here; and therefore a mother’s love in this region is not short-lived. In this sphere a moral end is proposed, penetrating through time into eternity; and in the economy of Providence adequate means have been provided. The relations of the family, like the flowers are fair even on the surface and to the casual observer; but beauties unnumbered and unmeasured lie beneath the leaves to reward more earnest and careful inspection. Christ was a perfect man. He was not only perfectly holy, but completely human. He took all our nature, without its defects and defilements. He experienced filial and fraternal love. He loved his mother and his brethren with the true affection of a son and a brother. The bosom on which he slept when he was an infant, he never tore when he became a youth and a man. The woman who cherished him from his birth was dear to his heart till death. How the filial regard, a merely human emotion, was affected by the love divine wherewith he, the same person, regarded Mary as a sinner saved, we can neither comprehend nor explain. “We are treading here on the lip of the unrevealed and the unrevealable; if we turn one step aside, or go forward one step too far, we are in an instant helplessly beyond our depth. One thing we know surely — that the man Christ Jesus fulfilled a son’s and a brother’s part to the woman Mary and those men of her family who are called his brethren. No disciple of Christ is permitted to break the bonds of kindred, and abjure the aflFections of consanguinity, on the plea of his Master’s example or command. Superstition has always shown a tendency to exalt the spiritual relations by crushing the natural; it would build up, according to its own false conception, the family of God on the ruins of the family of man. It even represents, that to extinguish by violence every spark of specific filial regard to an earthly parent, is the way to become a first-class favourite among the children of our Father in heaven. This is a mistake — a mischievous will- worship. God has not required — will not accept this service at our hands; he is not pleased — he is displeased with those who, on any pretence, rudely break the bonds which his own hands have so skilfully constructed. God did not build up the family in order to pull it down again. By permitting the bonds by which it is united to twine around his own heart, the Lord our Redeemer has intimated that in themselves they are pure, and in the Church shall be permanent; these laws he came not to destroy, but to fulfil. As the ordinances of the earlier dispensation were a shadow, and so a prediction, of better things to come in Christ, the natural family is a type, and so a promise, of the spiritual and heavenly. That which is earthly is first, and will be superseded when that which is spiritual shall have fully come. It occupies its place and serves its purpose; for its time and its purpose, behold it is very good. Christ came to plant another family beside it — a family which is now growing among its roots and under its shade, and will at last cast it out and assume its place; but in the meantime, and while the world lasts, he leaves all the relationships and instincts of human families untouched, except to hallow them by his own example and approval. He will not permit the affections of the present time to grow too rank, draining often the heart’s riches, and starving the affections that are unseen and spiritual within his own; but even in the act of checking the family instincts and forbidding them to travel beyond their sphere, he leaves them honoured and approved in all their integrity to expatiate within their own sphere. He will not permit the family to exalt itself above its own place; but neither will he depress it beneath its own place: he will neither banish it from earth, nor permit it to intrude into heaven. On this, and on one or two other occasions, the Lord Jesus maintains towards Mary his mother a measure of reserve which at first sight attracts notice, and perhaps even excites surprise. We know from the record of his life that equally in his childhood and at his dying hour a fervent filial love glowed in his breast; but some incidents also recorded in the Gospels, although not contrary, distinctly point in another direction. Two lines in regard to this matter, not hostile or inconsistent, but articulately distinct, seem to run through the Lord’s life on earth. Here emerges a true, deep, human, filial love; there appears a subdued and measured, but meditated intentional reserve. These facts, I believe, were prophecy; and upon them, as upon the spoken prophecies, subsequent events have thrown light. He saw the end from the beginning, and so acted from the first; we now see the beginning from the end, and perceive the reason why he acted thus. The Mariolatry of modern Rome, lying, like, all other events, open before the mind of the Lord during the period of his personal ministry, must have sensibly affected those of his words and actions whose relation to it he, in his omniscience, foresaw. Li short — for I desire to throw out this thought frankly and without ambiguity — I believe that the Lord Jesus, deliberately and presciently, adopted towards Mary, the mother of his humanity, precisely that line of conduct by which he might on the one hand sanction by his own example all the relations and affections of the family, and yet, on the other hand, withhold from a great but grossly superstitious community, in these latter days, every semblance of pretext for citing his authority in support of a loathsome idolatry on which he foresaw they should absolutely go mad. Why should we hesitate to accept this solution? Wist ye not that he must be about the Father’s business? Even in smaller matters we enjoy to-day the benefit of ancient prophecy, not spoken in figurative language, but deeply relieved in historic fact. For what purpose has the Holy Spirit permitted and directed the record to be inserted, in two distinct and far distant portions of Scripture, (Matthew 8:14; 1 Corinthians 9:5) that the Apostle Peter was, and continued to be, a married man? If Rome had chosen any other one of the twelve than Peter as the head of her celibate priesthood, I am not aware that direct proof could have been found in the Scriptures that, in the matter of marriage, the practice of the chief condemned the precepts of his followers. Why, when the family relations of the rest have been permitted to pass into oblivion, as unimportant to the Church, have two witnesses separately testified in Scripture that Peter was a married man? If you ascribe this to chance, you may ascribe all to chance, and refuse to recognize in the world the traces of an intelligent government. For my part, I see God’s finger in the fact; and I read it as a prescient, prophetic condemnation of the Romish celibate — a system that brands a divine ordinance with a stigma of reproach and elevates at its expense a mischievous invention of man. In presence of the idolatrous worship addressed to Mary, which has been swelling like a tide for ages, and has reached its culmination only in our own day, practically superseding Christ in the devotions of the multitude, I reverence and love with peculiar interest that chastened reserve wherewith Jesus saw meet to modify his filial tenderness throughout his intercourse with Mary his mother. Ah, there was no sorrow like unto his sorrow, because there was no knowledge like unto his knowledge of the desperate wickedness which from generation to generation broods in human hearts. In that distance and coolness, approaching almost to coldness, with which he treated Mary, I see the Man of sorrows covering his human filial love, and limiting to the utmost the visible expression of its fervour, that misguided men might not in later ages wrest his words to justify apostasy — might not be able on any pretence to plead his authority for turning aside to trust in another Saviour. II. Christ in the Gospel establishes, on the same sphere, a new spiritual family. The Redeemer’s mission was to re-establish the relations which sin had broken between God and man, on the one hand, and between man and man on the other. The redeemed on earth are united to their Head and to one another by affections which are completely different from, but not in any sense contrary to, the natural instincts. If any man be in Christ he is a new creature: in the new creature a multitude of new affections spring and flow, but being on a higher level, they never run foul of the affections that expatiate on the lower sphere of temporal things. Mind, conscience, immortality, have been imparted to man, and these faculties have free scope for action; but those operations of the higher nature do not in any measure impede the inhalation of air, the circulation of the blood, or any of the other processes which belong to us in common with inferior creatures. Now, as mind, acting in another sphere, comes not into collision with the functions of the body, so the new spiritual affections, which belong to ns as Christians, do not interfere with the original affections which belong to us as men. It is a great thing to be in the regeneration a child of God; it is a great thing to be a brother or a sister in that family, which is already like the stars of heaven in number, and will yet be like them in purity and glory. The new relation is formed, and through the earlier stages of its growth consolidated, while the old relation remains in vigour. The germ of the new sonship and brotherhood is rooted in the heart unseen, without disturbing the sonships and brotherhoods of the present world, which grow thick and fresh all around. There is a process in agriculture which presents an interesting parallel to the simultaneous and commingling growth of relations for time and relations for eternity in human hearts. A field is closely occupied all over with a growing crop which will soon reach maturity, and will be reaped in this season’s harvest. The owner intends that another crop, totally different in kind, shall possess the ground in the following year; but he does not wait till the grain now growing has been reaped — he goes into the field and sows the seed of the new while the old is still growing and green. In some cases a method is adopted which is, from our present point of view, still more suggestive: the seed which shall complete its functions within the present season, and the seed which, springing this year, shall bear its fruit upwards, are mixed together in the same vessel and scattered together on the same ground. Nor does the one lie dormant for a season while the other monopolizes the soil; both spring up at the same, or nearly the same time. The plant for the future germinates at once, but it does not reach maturity till the following year; the plant intended for the present season — the wheat or the barley — grow» rapidly and ripens ere the winter come. Lowly, meekly at the roots of the waving grain springs the plant of the future; it passes through its earlier stages while the tall stalks of the wheat are towering over its head. It springs although the grain is growing on the same spot, and springs better because the grain is growing there. The vigorous growth of another species all around it shelters its feeble infancy; and after the winter has passed, in another season, it starts afresh and comes forth in its own matured strength. Thus the affections and relations that belong to the future spring and grow under the shadow of the affections and relations that belong to the present. The Sower who came forth into time to sow a seed that ripens in eternity, did not first cut down and cast away as cumberers of the ground all the natural affections which he found covering its surface with a luxuriant growth; he sowed the seeds of the future among the growing crop of the present, and these seeds grow better there than in a soil bared of human loves and joys. The seed of the word for eternal life, other things being equal, thrives better in a heart where all the natural emotions of the family circle swell, than in a heart that has been prematurely shorn of human affections, and caged in a cloister for protection from the world. The two seeds are of different kinds, and for different seasons; there is not a collision of interests when both grow on the same spot and at the same time. The question whether or how far thesties of nature, as we know them here on earth, will survive or revive in the resurrection, has been often raised, but from the nature of the case cannot be fully answered. The family relations, as they are exercised here, do not go into heaven in the lump, — to this extent the Scriptures definitely inform us; but how many and how much of them may be permitted to pass through the narrow gate we cannot tell. I would not venture to pronounce that the bonds which so sweetly bind heart to heart on earth, leave no mark of their existence in the world to come. I think it is not probable that those lines which have graven themselves so deeply into our being here will be all blotted out in the middle passage. One thing strongly favours the supposition that the affections of nature will in some form survive, — the longings of believing hearts certainly do go out with great intensity after their own who die in the Lord. It would seem contrary to the analogy of his ways in other departments, that our Father should plant that desire, or permit it to flourish in his children, if he had provided no satisfaction for it at his own right hand. In this matter I would, venture to apply and appropriate the promise of the Lord, • Blessed are they that hunger and thirst: for they shall be filled.” But while we are straining to see where there is hardly any light, a thought, containing all the force of an axiomatic truth, rises up to cheer us, — if those best earthly bonds survive not — if, in heaven, all be the same to all, the absence of individual affections will not constitute any diminution of happiness. If such a levelling of distinctions shall take place in the better land, it will be because love to all the saved brotherhood has risen to such a height that particular affections have been overwhelmed in the flood. If those particular preferences which stand out, to our view, like mountains on the horizon of time, are in eternity altogether lost, they are lost because love to the Lord and all his redeemed has covered them as the ocean covers the vegetation in its bed. If those deep traces of affinity and consanguinity shall be blotted out, they will be blotted out by a river of blessedness that will leave them unregretted, as the childish things which in manhood we forget. Most certainly if, in the place of rest, mother be nothing more to son, and son nothing more to mother, than any of all the redeemed, the love of all to each, and of each to all, in eternity, will be immeasurably greater and sweeter than the most loving heart has ever been able to conceive in this place of pilgrimage. If mothers and brothers melt into the mass, it is not because mothers and brothers become less dear in heaven than they were on earth, but because Christ and all the saved become more dear. Those stars that studded the dark blue canopy of the sky were lovely: often through the weary night did the lone watcher lift his eyes and look upon them. They seemed to him a sort of company, and, while he gazed on the bright glancing throng, he felt himself for the moment somewhat less lonely. Yet you hear no complaint from that watcher’s lips when those stars disappear; for the cause of their disappearance is the break of day. Either the many fond individual companionships which cheer disciples in the night of their pilgrimage will remain with them, as bright particular stars in the day of eternity, or they will fade away before its dawning: if they remain, their company in holiness will be a thousand-fold more sweet; if they disappear, it will not be that those joys have grown more dim, but that we do not observe them in the light of a more glorious day. Two practical lessons, one in the form of a warning, and the other in the form of an encouragement, depend from the subject visibly, and claim a notice at the close. 1. Be verting again, for a moment, to the analogy of seed for the future sown and springing under the shade of a crop that is growing for the present season, we may gather from nature a caution which is needful and profitable in the department of grace. When this season’s crop, amidst which next season’s seed was sown in spring, has been cut in harvest and carried home, I have seen the field in whole or in part destitute of the young plants which ought at that time to have covered its surface, the hope of future years. Sometimes after this season’s harvest is reaped, no living plant remains in the ground. As you walk over it at the approach of winter, you see rotting stubble, the decaying remnants of one harvest, but no young plants, the promise of another year. Why? Because the first crop has grown too rank in its robust maturity, and overlaid the second in its tender youth. It is somewhat like the heavy slumber of a drunken mother, that quenches the life of her child by night. Ah, it is not safe to feed and fatten too much either the corn of our farm or the natural affections of our hearts: when either grows too gross, it both injures itself and oppresses a more precious plant that is seeking shelter underneath. The principle of this lesson applies to the business of life as well as the reciprocal affections of kindred. Beware! Open your hearts and take the warning in. Have you hope for pardon and eternal life in the Son of God, the Saviour? Then bear in mind that, under the shade of your city-traffic and your home-joys, a tender plant is growing, native of a softer clime — a plant whose growth is your life, whose decay your ruin, in the great day; a plant that needs indeed the shelter of honest industry and pure family affections, but dies outright under the choking weight of their over-growth; and see to it that the profits and pleasures of time do not, by their excess, kill the hope for eternity. What is a man profited although he gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul? 2. It is ever true, according to the symbolic prophecy of the Apocalypse, that the earth helps the woman — that the occupations and affinities and friendships of this life may and do cherish the growth of grace in the soul. In many ways the loves and cares that appertain to the family institute, growing normally, healthfully vigorous, and not morbidly, feebly rank, do in point of fact shield and stimulate the seed of eternal life that has been sown, and is springing, in the heart. Many a son can tell, and will tell in heaven, that the good seed of the word would have been scorched and blasted, if it had not lain for a time under the kindly shade of home. Many may say with truth, If I had not been born at first in such a family on earth, I probably would not have been born again into the family of God. Let us be content with our lot; especially let us beware of fretting against family responsibilities, and the demands of lawful business, as if these were necessarily impediments to the growth of the spiritual life. If these affections and occupations were taken away, the spiritual life, deprived of its shelter, would be burnt by the heat or blasted by the wind. Beware of that intemperate rankness in the growth of temporal affairs which would kill in its infancy the planting of the Lord in your heart; but fear not when the lawful cares and affections of time spring thick and grow vigorous: God has sown these seeds with his own hand in creation, and he will employ them to cherish and protect that “ Christ in you “ which is his own special delight. For the safety and the increase of the life of faith, the best place to be in is the place in which God has put you. He that believeth shall not make haste: it is not change of place, or change of occupation, that will make you safe or holy. Shake off sins, as Paul shook the viper from his hand into the fire; but as to the affections and cares that spring in nature, and accord with the divine law, fear them not when you feel them penetrating your being and warping round all your faculties. All things work together for good to the people of God. His children may thrive equally in circumstances the most diverse; but if it were his will to give me my choice, I would, even with a view to the prosperity of my soul, request him to plunge me into the tide of merchandise that flows through London, rather than send me, an unemployed annuitant, to some rural jetreat; or to hang on my shoulders the cares of a large family, rather than leave me with nothing but myself to bear. The affections of nature in time, will help and not hinder the affections of grace for eternity; for, each in its own place, both are equally the planting of the Lord. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 43: 2.01.09. TREES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS ,PART 1 ======================================================================== IX. TREES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. PART I. “Make the tree good, and his fruit good.” — Matthew 12:33. HERE are two kinds of religion in the world; and perhaps we would not greatly err, if we should say, there are two only. They stand over against each other, not only different but opposite in their essential characteristics; and the manifold varieties that have sprung up in diverse periods and diverse regions, may be classed under the one or the other of these two great normal types. These two kinds of religion, so radically distinct that they cannot by any art be amalgamated, and yet so comprehensive that they include all religion under their ample folds, are not Christianity and Paganism, — are not Protestantism and Popery, — are not Presbytery and Episcopacy, — are not the Church spiritually free and the Church submitting to Erastian control. The two great genera, which between them comprehend all subordinate species, have distinct natures, but not distinguishing names. They cannot be designated by single words; they must be described by their essential features. One kind of religion teaches that men are not so holy as they should be, but that by a little attention they may be improved; the other kind of religion confesses that men are all and only evil, and must be made new creatures ere they can be pleasing to God or fit for his presence. The first starts with the assumption of something good to begin with, and busies itself in making good better; the second starts with the assumption that all is evil, and seeks from God the grace to change the evil into good: the one mends, the other makes. The one looks up to heaven and says, “ I am not as other men; I fast, I pray, I give alms:” the other looks down to the earth and cries, “ God be merciful to me a sinner.” The one builds his house upon the sand, which, while the weather is fair, seems to his eye firm enough: the other refuses to build at all until he get down to the living rock. Both confess failing; both seek help; and both seek help from Christ. In outward aspect they are like each other; so closely do they resemble each other, that in some aspects they are distinguished only by one little word. One says, Christ and I: the other says, Christ, not I. The one says, I cannot live alone, but I can live if Christ is near me: the other says, I live; nevertheless not I, but Christ liveth in me. The Lord and my righteousness, says this man: the Lord my righteousness, says that. Of these two that seem so familiar, the one is falsehood, the other truth; the one is darkness, the other light. The great Teacher himself took pains with his pupils on this point. At one time he allowed a self-righteous man to try his own method, that by the fall which it entailed he might be crushed out of his error. “ Good master,” said a promising scholar once, “ Good master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life, “ Keep the commandments.” “ I have kept them; what more?” “GO sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come follow me.” Under this pressure the good resolution broke down; he went away sorrowful. On another occasion the Lord taught the same lesson in a gentler form to a more gentle inquirer: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” It behoves us to know well this human error that undermines the spiritual life. It springs within, and circulates secretly but mightily, like the blood in the veins. By making light of the disease, it makes light also of the cure provided. By failing to estimate aright the fall, it forms a false judgment regarding the unspeakable gift of God. It is not indeed written in the creed that mankind are holy in nature and in life; but the habit of the heart’s thoughts, flowing strong and steady like a river, counts the man in the main good, and seeks in religion not the new creation of the lost, but the gradual improvement of the defective. This system takes the word of Christ and turns it upside down. Christ says. Make the tree good, and his fruit good; but it says, Make the fruit good in the first place, and the tree will improve of its own accord. Leaving the tree as it grows, this system directs all its energies to the task of making the fruit good, or at least seem good. It is the weary work of dropping buckets into empty wells and growing old in bringing nothing up. It is the labour of a life-time to gather grapes off thorns and figs off thistles. The tree has grown from seed. For a while in its inf ajicy it bears no fruit, and it is not expected to bear any. Before its nature is developed, it neither does good nor evil, in a tangible or practical form. Its nature and tendencies are fixed, but they are not known. People who look on the tender plant putting forth its leaves, expect that when it comes to maturity its fruit will be good. At length, while the tree is yet young, it begins to bear fruit. There is not much at first. The quantity is diminutive, but the quality is well defined. There is no mistake here. The fruit is bitter — is bad. But it is young. What could you expect? Wait for wisdom. They wait, they fence, they water; but the fruit is still bitter. In the case of the tree, as long as you look only on its fruit, you may be deceived in your judgment. The fruit may be thoroughly evil, and yet in colour and shape it may be like good fruit. It is only by tasting it that you can certainly determine its character. Our Father is the husbandman, and we are his husbandry. When we bear fruit, he is not contented with looking on its external appearance. He comes near and tastes it. A man cannot certainly determine the taste of the fruit that his neighbours bear — cannot certainly determine the taste even of his own. “Ye know not what spirit ye are of.” Peter did not discern what was the taste of his own soul’s emotions; but his Master knew and loathed it: “ Get thee behind me, Satan.” The outward appearance of a gift, for example, may have all the lineaments of charity; yet to Him who looketh on the heart, it may be a nauseous outgrowth of selfishness or pride. We must be purged from dead works as well as from bad works ere we can acceptably serve the living God. Dead works, though in form they may be the fulfilment of his law, are not sweet to his taste. That is a dreadful sentence which the risen Saviour pronounced on the fruit of a bitter tree: “ I will spue thee out of my mouth.” I shall assume that the reader knows in the main how the common fruit trees of our gardens are made good. Instead of explaining the process of engrafting, I shall take for granted that it is known, and proceed at once to deduce and apply the lessons which the Lord’s brief parable suggests. The essence of the art consists in this, that the tree is not mended but made new. The old tree is cut off and cast away, and another is inserted in its stead. It is not amelioration, but regeneration. As in man’s husbandry, so in God’s. Good fruit is attained by making the tree good. I shall now submit a series of lessons suggested by the analogy. Let us prolong for a little our walk through these avenues of nature, gathering as we go the precious fruits of grace. Among these trees of the garden we may now hear, not for judgment, but for mercy, the voice of the Lord God. I. Although the tree has been made good by engrafting, and has consequently begun to bear good fruit, the young trees that spring from the seed of that good fruit, when it is sown again, take after the original bitter root of the parent tree, and not after the sweetness subsequently imparted to it. Trees that spring from the seed of an evil tree that has been made good, are not good but evil. Bitter is every one, and bitter the fruit it bears, unless and until it put off itself and put on another. Such is our condition as fallen; such is the law that lives in our members, whether we find out that law or not. The child of a Christian man is not by birth a Christian. We are born into the condition which our parents had by nature, not into the condition into which they may have been brought by grace. It is true that blessings exceeding rich and precious accrue, in God’s covenant, to the children of believers, in virtue of their relation to godly parents; but the benefits do not include or amount to safety and holiness through the natural birthright. “Bom not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). Children, you may learn from the trees of the garden, and by the teaching of the Lord, that although your parents are saints on earth or in heaven, except ye be born again, ye cannot enter their home or join their company. So far am I from undervaluing the privilege of descent from the people of God, that every day I live I learn to give more fervent thanks to God that I was in this sense the seed of the righteous. I have no memory of my mother, for soon after my eyes were opened hers were closed; but something clearer, stronger than memory— something allied to faith, but not to sight— has for many years kept her by my side, as one that walks with God in white, and gently beckons me to follow her as she followed Christ. I do not undervalue the privilege of being by natural birth the seed of the righteous: I know it; I enjoy it; 1 have been enriched by it, more than they whose comand wine have most increased. But I warn all who enjoy the privilege, that it will not save them. There is only one Saviour. You cannot be carried into heaven by clinging to a parent’s skirts. Your place in the family of God’s children will aggravate your condemnation, if you do not yourselves accept Christ as your own; as they who fall from the greatest height are most deeply bruised by the fall. II. As the first lesson is one of warning to those who presume upon their privileges, the second lesson is one of encouragement to those who have had in youth no privileges to presume upon. This lesson, too, we shall read from the tree that is made good. Although a young tree has sprung from the seed of an evil tree, it may be made good by engrafting as easily and as effectually as if its parent had been the best in the garden. These two lessons, both on the natural side and the spiritual, are precisely the converse of each other. The first is gathered from the natural fact that the tree which springs from the seed of one that has been made good needs to be engrafted ere it can become good like its parent; the second is gathered from the natural fact that a tree which has sprung from a parent not made good may by engrafting attain the goodness which its parent never knew. The one fact teaches that the privileged should not presume; the other fact teaches that the unprivileged need not be despondent. In point of fact, the cultivator of fruit trees does not make much distinction between the trees that have sprung from renewed and those that have sprung from unrenewed parents. He looks not to the parentage of the original root, but to the character of the new branch which is inserted. This new good branch is necessary to the plant that came from the seed of the best tree; and it is sufficient for the plant that came from the seed of the worst. The rule that the character of the tree follows the branch that has been grafted on as head, and not the root out of which it has sprung, points equally in two opposite directions and tells in two different results. Pretensions of good in the root, and fears of evil, are equally destitute of validity. Those do not count in favour of the tree, and these do not count against it. Most necessary and most precious is the corresponding fact in the spiritual sphere. As we have already seen that the goodness of the parents, although they are new creatures in Christ, cannot pass through the natural birth into the children, so as to save them, so we now, in the second place, assuredly gather, that the badness of parents, although they remain in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity, does not penetrate through the conversion of children so as to condemn them. As certain substances, although in quantity small as a quivering film, act as nonconductors, and, when interposed effectually, bar the passage of electricity, however strong may be the current, or however near may be the congenial receiver, so generation is a non-conductor of grace, and regeneration a non-conductor of corruption. Grace, though pulsing strong in the parent, cannot pass through birth into the child; corruption, though pulsing in the parent, and communicated also to the child, cannot pass the regeneration, and reduce the child who is born again into the spiritual condition of the unconverted parent. The cultivator of fruit trees can make as good a tree from the progeny of an evil parent as from the progeny of a good parent; so our Father, the husbandman, is wont, in his own inscrutable purposes, to create again in Christ many children whose parents remain in sin. I have endeavoured to utter a needed warning to those who are descended from godly parents: Beware of a false hope; ye must be born again. I now, in turn, address a word of glad encouragement to children who have not known these privileges: Give not way to false fear; ye may be born again. The promise runs not. Him that is born of a godly parent, but, Him that cometh, I will in nowise east out. Some of the bitterest reproaches cast against Christ in the days of his flesh became hymns to his praise. The wrath of man praised him when enemies exclaimed, ’ This man receiveth sinners.” To those who were not in childhood brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord — who either had no living father, or, sadder still, a father of whom they had cause to be ashamed — comfort and encouragement spring here. There is no respect of pei-sons with God. The rule of the kingdom is. Whosoever will. His father’s light did not bring one child into the kingdom, and his father’s darkness did not keep another out. The owner of a garden, when he is about to make his young trees good by engrafting, scarcely inquires which of them sprang from renewed trees, and which from trees that remained in the bitterness of nature. Placing all on a level, and treating all alike, he engrafts them all, and all the engrafted become good: in due time all bring forth good fruit together. Of these two classes, the church on earth — of these two classes, heaven on high is full; and, as they mingle in the praises of their Lord, nor man nor angel can distinguish between them. In the general assembly and church of the first-born, it will never be said, This one was the son of a saint, aud that one the son of a sinner. These distinctions are lost; they were written only in the earth, and the earth with its records will be burnt up. The son of a saint cannot be distinguished in the circle; he wears not a whiter robe, he bears not a fresher palm, he sings not a sweeter song than his neighbour. One baptism has blotted all distinctions out, and one description serves to designate all the throng, — They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Privileged, beware! What will your name to live avail you if you be dead? If you are not “found in Him/’ nothing in heaven or earth can open the door to let you in. Destitute, be encouraged! Arise, lo He calleth you. If you come at his call, all the sins that ever defiled man, and all the devils that ever tempted him, cannot shut the door to keep you out. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 44: 2.01.10. TREES OF REIGHTEOUSNESS, PART 2 ======================================================================== TREES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. PART II. "Make the tree good, and his fruit good.” — Matthew 12:33. ALTHOUGH an evil tree ought to be made good by engrafting while it is young, it may be made good by engrafting after it has grown old. Such also is the law of the kingdom in regard to spiritual life. A man may indeed be born into God’s family when he is old; but it is in all respects better if he enters the childhood of grace before he has emerged from the childhood of nature. In fruit-trees fully grown you may sometimes observe a ring round the stem, midway between the ground and the branches, resembling somewhat the mark of a healed wound on a living man. This indicates the p ace where the natural stem was cut off and a new branch inserted. You perceive at a glance that this tree has been engrafted, and that it was well grown ere it was made good. In the same garden another tree may grow which exhibits no such mark; yet the owner does not value it less on that account. These two trees are equally good and equally prolific They differ not in their present character but in the period of life at which they -Were severally renewed. This latter tree must have been engrafted when it was very young: the cut was made close to the ground when the stem was very slender; and thus the mark has been obliterated by the subsequent growth of the tree. The cockatrice is concealed under the grass, or perhaps under the ground. The renewing has certainly taken place, but when or where no man can tell. The date of its new birth is no longer legible. Such similarities and such differences obtain also among converted men. Some who were born when they were old bear the mark of their regeneration all their days. When the old nature was matured and developed before the change, the memory of the fact is more distinctly retained, and the contrast more vividly displayed. It was thus in the experience of the Apostle Paul. The spiritual man did not in his case obtain the sway while the natural was yet young and tender and easily moulded. Paul was a man, every inch of him, before he was a Christian. "I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth; which thing I also did” (Acts 26:9-10). His principles and his conduct were strong and consistent, while both were contrary to God and man. When such a character was changed, the change was manifest, and the mark of it permanent. That fall and rising again on the way to Damascus stood out a well-marked girdle round the mighty stem of his life, even to its close. He frequently pointed to that healed wound as evidence both of his enmity against God and God’s marvellous mercy to him. But Paul’s son Timothy was not less surely in the Lord, although no such great landmark towered in the heart of his history. This tree was made good while it was yet young, and ere its native badness had got full room to reveal itself. The healed wound in this disciple’s life lay so near the root that in maturity it could not’ be seen. In heaven these two may lovingly contend with each other, either striving to show that himself is the more deeply indebted to sovereign, redeeming love. God showed a peculiar mercy to me, says Timothy, in that he made the tree good while it was young, ere yet it had begun to bear visible fruit. But God showed greater mercy to me, the apostle rejoins, in that he made the tree good, although it had grown old in evil, and spread much bitter fruit over the whole land. Those who, by a great rending, have been converted in mature age, bear the fact in memory, and weave it into their songs of praise; but, on the other hand, let not those who have been earlier and more insensibly won to Christ complain that the mark of their engrafting is not visible as a girdle round the middle of their life. There are diversities of operation, but the same Spirit. All’s well that ends well: God’s way is best; all his people will see this truth, and sing it yet. But if you ask me what choice I should make, if choice in the matter were given to me, I would rather be one of the converted who could not tell the time or manner of his conversion, than one of those who were born when they were old, and bear many scars as monuments of the agony. The aged are not shut out from hope, but the earliest time is the best time. It is a peculiar glory of the gospel that it holds out free pardon and immediate peace to the chief of sinners, whether that chiefdom ia evil may have been won by quantity of work or length of service. The blood of Jesus Christ eleanseth us from all sin. You may see this glory of grace reflected from the field of nature, if perhaps you have looked over the hedge and seen, in a garden by the wayside, a sight that attracted your eye and excited your curiosity. A tree, old, thick, and rusty, has been cut off, not by the ground, but about the height of a man, and the bare stump left standing. On a closer inspection you see one or more small fresh twigs fastened to the bark on the top of the desolate trunk. They are budding and putting out green leaves. It is a tree that had grown old, either barren or bearing bad fruit. Its owner would not longer permit it to occupy uselessly the precious ground. But it is not necessary that he should cut it down and cast it away, in order to make room for another tree. Even this tree, grown old in evil, may be made good. It is not cut down, but cut off, and a new nature engrafted on its stem. Even in old age it will yet be fresh, and flourishing, and fruitful The owner of the garden counts that he will sooner get a large retimi by engrafting the old tree than by rooting it out and planting another. The tree was full grown and in vigorous health. The owner will utilize all these powers by sending the sap through a new and better head. It is thus that our Father, the husbandman, takes full-grown vigorous natures, charged with gifts of understanding, and eloquence, and zeal, that have been hitherto occupied with evil, and makes them new creatures by his power. Forthwith they are fit for able-bodied service in the work of the Lord. It is a very gladsome truth for an evil world — that a man may be born when he is old. Blessed be God, it is possible that he who has long been accustomed to do evil niay by union to Christ become a new creature. Certain places, much desired under the government of the country, are open only to the young. If you do not enter before you attain a certain specified age you can never enter. The rule there is not, Him that cometh, but. Him that cometh while he is young. This is not the rule in the kingdom of God. There is no alien on earth too old for being admitted into the family of God. The truth which I have stated is too precious to be held back or only spoken in a whisper, lest some should abuse it. It is true, self -deceivers will abuse it to encourage themselves in sin; but if this truth were concealed, they would find some other pretext. Let the warning be distinctly, fully given on the other side. If the tree is permitted to grow up and grow old in evil, there is danger lest, by storm or fire, it should be destroyed, and so never be made good. But even although it were insured against all accidents, there is no reason why another, and yet another year an evil tree should cumber the ground, merely to put off the time of its change. Who would say, Permit it to bear bitter fruit all the time of its youth, and make it good only when it has grown old? If any one should make this proposal, the fact would prove that he was not sincere, that he did not wish the tree made good. The plea that there is time enough, when advanced by way of deferring the period of decision, is not only delusive and dangerous, it is positively false and dishonest. Men postpone only what they dislike. You will not decisively follow the Lord now, but you will some day. But if you have no desire to be good and do good to-day, you have no desire to be good and do good any day. There is no such thing as putting off for a time: it is simply, We will not have this man to reign over us. You want to waste the broad sunny surface of life in pursuing your own pleasures, and you promise to throw a narrow strip of the outmost edge of life, withered and tasteless, as an offering to the Lord. Be not deceived; he who is weary of sin wants to be quit of it now. He who hungers wants the bread of life to-day, not to-morrow. Blessed are they that hunger. IV. A tree that has been made good does not again become evil; but evil latent in its roots may, if it be not watched and crushed, spring up and bear bad fruit, and mingle with the good, and to a great extent outgrow and choke the good. The same law obtains in the spiritual sphere. The old man is more or less active in every Christian. Thoughts and desires are continually springing up from the old stock — thoughts and desires that do not belong to the new creature. If these are not in good time crucified, they will bear fruit in actual wickedness; and when, they are permitted to bear, the fruit of the better nature will disappear for the time, or become very small in quantity. One clear example of this tendency I knew well in my youth. I think it remains to this day, and I could point to the spot. A grove given over, by the time I knew it, for the purpose of affording shady pleasure-walks, had originally been a fruit-garden. Some of the old fruit trees had been left standing as ornaments, when the owner no longer looked for a profitable return. These trees were left growing for the sake of their beauty merely, not for the sake of their fruit. They were allowed, accordingly, to run wild, that their appearance might be more picturesque. An aged pear-tree stood there, with a tall, bare, straight stem and round bushy head like an Eastern palm. But while not a single branch grew on the naked trunk, from where it emerged out of the moss to where its head began to spread at three times the height of a man, a number of lively vigorous shoots sprang from its roots, or rather from its stem where it touched the ground. Thus the long bare stem had a bushy head of branches on either extremity. These lower branches had been permitted to grow freely till they reached maturity on their own account, and bore fruit of their own kind. I have seen fruit growing on these suckers, and fruit hanging at the same time high over them on the tree’s towering head, with a large portion of the bare stem between. I have compared them, and found that which grew from the old root hard and bitter, while that which grew on the head that had been made new, although somewhat deteriorated, retained still the sweet flavour of its best days. Here were two kinds of fruit growing at the same time on one tree — evil fruit growing on the original root, and good fruit growing on that which had been made new. If the tree had been rightly cultivated for the sake of its fruit, those suckers would have been without pity torn off in the bud as soon as they showed themselves, and never have been permitted to open their blossoms or bring forth their fruit. You do not ordinarily see these outgrowths from the old stock growing to the size of bearing, on fruit-trees. This, however, is not because they do not manifest a tendency to throw out these shoots, but because the shoots are, in ordinary cases, wrenched off by the husbandman as soon as they appear. Here is a parable. I saw that tree with its two kinds of fruit, and got it insensibly photographed on my memory as a curiosity, before I learned the lesson which it taught. It remains before my imagination to-day, the same object; but it has now become a glass in which I see reflected myself and my fellows. The lesson contains both reproof and encouragement. Reproof. — There remains in a Christian something of the old carnal mind This corruption in the root is continually sending out thoughts and purposes of its own. These, if neglected, will soon ripen into manifold sins. Forewarned, forearmed. Watch and pray. Crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts. Kill those suckers that spring from the carnal root. Kill them day by day as they appear: beware of permitting them to make head. Encouragement. — When acts appear in a Christian — yourself or your neighbour — acts unlike his place and his name, you should not thereby be driven into despair. An unchristian act done by a man does not prove that the man is not a Christian. Perhaps some may think this is a dangerous doctrine. No; it is a true doctrine, and truth is sate in the long run. The contrary doctrine would extinguish hope; and wanting hope, what would become of holiness? If a sinful act done is held to prove that the doer is not in Christ, the nerve that sustains effort is cut, and the soul sinks soon in absolute despair. In the man, as in the tree, two natures meet. The old man has been made new; and yet the old man, in a sense, remains. From this remaining original evil the evil thoughts and words spring; while from the new man spring thoughts and words that are good. He cannot sin because he is born of God (1 John 3:9). Two natures struggle in the man, as two nations in the womb of the Hebrew mother. In his perplexity and amazement, the distracted spirit cries out, Why am I thus? The true solution is that which brave Paul reached after a sharp conflict, “ It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.” That tree, with its two natures, and its two kinds of fruit, which I knew so well in my youth, was the shadow and the symbol of David the king. In his busy working days his fruit was good. The tendencies of the old corrupt nature were kept down. But when he sat upon a luxurious throne, and thought only of his pleasure, the old corruptor’s sprung up in strength, and vile fruit ripened on the lower, baser part of his being. But even this, vile though it was, did not cast the king out of the covenant. Even this rank outgrowth from a bitter root did not wrench the king’s head from its place on high. It wasted his faculties for a time in carnal indulgence, and left his better being shrivelled and barren; but when the Husbandman, displeased yet loving, visited his tree, and by terrible things in righteousness hewed off the low indulgences, the head revived again, and even in old age was fat and full of sap and flourishing. V. Although the natural head of the tree either in youth or age is cut off, and the new good branch brought near to touch it, unless the new branch take to the old tree, and the old tree at its wound take to the new branch, so that they become one, no change will be effected in the old tree. The wounding — the cutting off with a view to engrafting — will produce no effect if the process is interrupted before it is completed. The cutting of the tree makes it bleed — makes it languish as in pain, but does not make it good. After that would it will grow again, and its fruit will be evil as before. In this aspect also the law of the spiritual kingdom follows the law of the natural The sword of the Spirit cuts deep into the heart and conscience. The terrors of the Law overwhelm the soul like a flood. The countenance that formerly was radiant is now fixed in gloom. The fountains of the great deep are broken up, and the penitent makes his bed to swim with tears. Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me? What is this? Is it the godly sorrow that leads to peace in believing? We cannot tell; no man can yet tell what is the nature of this sorrow, or what will be its fruit. As far as man can observe, it is such a grief that goes before the living hope. They who are now rejoicing in the Lord have passed through such fire and water ere they reached their wealthy place. But not every one who enters this deep gets through it into safety on the other side. The wounds of conviction prepare the way for Christ; but if the wounded do not in the end close with Christ, his wounds will not make him safe or holy. If he has been pierced by conviction, and thrown into alarm about his sin, his pain should give the Saviour, the Healer, a welcome into his heart; but if, notwithstanding his fright, he keep the door shut, the fright will not renew the man. The great outstanding specimen of this process is the experience of Felix. His convictions were terrible, but they did not make his heart new. As the tree, after being cut through, grows up again an evil tree, unless at the wounded place a new branch has been inserted, so a man that has trembled between a sight of his own guilt and the approach of the judgment, grows up as unjust, as unclean, as intemperate as before, unless, while he is in distress, he close in simple faith with Christ the Saviour. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 45: 2.02. LESSONS OF GRACE IN THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE ======================================================================== B. LESSONS OF GRACE IN THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE. I. ADAM A TYPE OF CHRIST II. EPISTLES OF CHRIST III. CHRISTIANS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD IV. A COMPREHENSIVE CONFESSION V. ROOTED IN LOVE, VI. DRAWN AND DRAGGED, VII. THE FIXED COMPASS, VIII. THE GOOD SHEPHERD, IX. PERSONAL ADORNING, X. THE SALT OF THE EARTH, ======================================================================== CHAPTER 46: 2.02.01. ADAM A TYPE OF CHRIST ======================================================================== LESSONS OF GRACE IN” THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE, ADAM A TYPE OF CHRIST. “Adam who is the figure [type] of Him that was to come.”— Romans 5:14. HIS is the earliest of all the types: in time, it comes first; in position, it lies deepest. There are none before it — none beneath it. Bowing down from heaven in love, God the Spirit grasps the first fact of man’s history, and therewith prints the lesson of man’s redemption. There was no delay, for the King’s matter required haste. The Giver was prompt and eager; the receivers have been indolent and slow. Mark the nature of the relation that subsists between a type and its letter — between a seal and its impression. There are at once likeness and diversity; they are the same, and yet they are opposite. The type, whether it be a single letter or a varied landscape, is of the same size and shape as the object which its impress leaves behind; and every several point or turn in the one has an equal and corresponding point or turn in the other; and yet there is a complete and pervading difference, or rather contrariety, between them. Look first to the engraving on a seal, and then to the image which it has left on wax: the two are in certain aspects the same, and yet they are reciprocally opposite. They agree, and yet they are antagonist. The left of this is the right of that: where this reveals a hollow, that exhibits a height: where this is shaded, that lies in the light. In their whole aspect they are the reverse of each other. After this manner is Adam a type of Christ. In some aspects there is likeness; and in others, not only diversity, but contrariety. Observe first the agreement, and then the difference. I. The agreement or similarity. 1. Adam and Christ were the true sources or heads of their Respective f amilies* There are two conceivable methods of constituting humanity. Whether both were possible, in consistence with all the attributes of God, we cannot telL One is, to make men such that each should be absolutely independent of all, and the conduct, good or bad, of any one should have no effect, physical or moral, on the condition of any of the rest. The other is, to constitute the race such that the first man should be the head and source of humanity, and that the state and tendencies of all should be determined by the standing or the falling of this one. This latter method our Maker has adopted, and it is useless to agitate the question whether the other method Would, in his own nature, have been honourable to God and salutary for men. When the bird is shut up within an iron cage, it is better for itself that it should not dash itself against the bars. It was in an attempt to be as God that our first parents fell. If we would escape their fault and fate, we should abandon speculations on what might have been and address ourselves to what is. We are men — creatures with a short lease and a narrow boundary. Let us leave with God the things that are God’s, and evidently require omniscience for their solution and let us mind our own business. In point of fact we all come into the world with darkened minds and wayward hearts. As water flows down and sparks fly up, human beings, as they emerge successively into consciousness, turn aside into sin and fall into sufiering. The grandest of God’s works is most awry and out of joint. The highest creature falls furthest short of fulfilling its destiny. The Scriptures, acknowledging this fact, explain it by the Fall. Some people complain much of the difficulties which they find in the Scriptures regarding this subject A serious mistake is made, however, in the statement of the question. The difficulty lies, not in the Scriptures, but in the fact: it would have been all there although there had never been a Bible* Creatures manifestly the head of creation, having an intellectual and moral nature in conjunction with an exquisite physical frame, under the government of a Being who is at once omnipotent and beneficent, lie weltering in sin and suffering, like the sea when it cannot rest. This state of things has endured from age to age, without intermission and without mitigation. This is the difficulty; all the difficulties that you meet in the Bible are small when compared with this. The aim of the Bible is to throw light on the darkness; but even if some parts of the scene remain obscure, we have no right to lay the blame of the obscurity on that which to some extent at least, has brought us light. The first man, according to the actual constitution of humanity stood as head and representative of the race. His fall brought all down. At the head he stands, and from him the long line stretches away down the course of time. Two hundred generations constitute the links of the chain, and its length extends to six thousand years. At first the line of march is narrow: on the apex one; and behind him two or three walk abreast: broader and broader grows the stream as it recedes from the source, until, in our day, the file of march is a million of millions deep. Adam, like the point of the wedge, stands on the summit, a unit alone; the generations in the ranks immediately beneath him are numbered by tens, and anon by hundreds, until they have in our day reached a number that can indeed be expressed in figures, but cannot be adequately comprehended by finite minds. On the other side stands the second Adam — he that was to come. Alone he stands at the head; and his also shall be a numerous offspring. Here and there, in the earliest ages, appears a righteous Abel offering faith’s sacrifice, or a righteous Enoch walking in newness of life with God. Yonder a Noah preaches righteousness over a world lying in wickedness; and here an Abraham is called from his home and his kindred to a better country and a higher life. Broader now is the line of their marching since Christ came in the flesh. Already a multitude, which no man can number, tread the pilgrim’s path, and shall in due time enter the joy of their Lord. All the redeemed in heaven and on earth are Christ’s, — their life as certainly flowing from and dependent on him as the natural life of humanity flows from the first man. The chief feature of similarity between the figure and the greater fact which it predicts is that each stands for all his own; and this principle of God’s government, introduced at the beginning, runs through to the end. The line of march was suddenly changed at the resurrection of Christ. Then the column left the narrow track of Palestine, and overflowed on the wide field of the world. Admitted into the capital of the Gentiles when Jerusalem fell, it speedily found a larger sphere and became a more numerous company. As centuries pass, it grows still greater; and now we look wistfully forward to that time when it shall reach from sea to sea — when the kingdom of Christ shall absorb the kingdoms of the world — when the stream of the second Adam’s children shall be co-extensive and coincident with that of the first. 2. These two representatives stood side by side from the first, and redemption began to flow from Christ as soon as sin was brought in by Adam. The promise did not tarry; it sprang at the gate of Eden, an echo of the curse. When the first man fell, and so entailed on all his posterity an inheritance of woe, Christ, within the veil unseen, began to be the head of a new and saved family. In eternity within he dwelt, and there he began to act the head of the redeemed the moment that the first man outside became the head of a fallen race. An impenetrable partition veiled ofi” the unseen from the eyes of men; but the Redeemer within the veil, delighting from the first in his saving work, approached the curtain, and often permitted softened rays of his glory to shine through. Let a veil be hung up impervious to light and vision; it may yet be such that a magnet within will, when brought near the boundary, attract kindred objects on the outer side. You may observe them to quiver and move, and lift themselves mysteriously off the ground. The magnetic power from within grasps the objects that lie without, and leads them whithersoever it will. Under the Patriarchal and Jewish economies many felt the drawing of Christ’s love who never with the bodily eyes beheld Christ. Caught by the deepest affections of their souls, they arose from the dust) and quivered tremulously after him, whom having not seen they had yet learned to love. Similarly in the days of his personal ministry, although he manifested himself only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, he had compassion on the surrounding heathen, and hastened forward to the day of their redemption. On one occasion he walked to the boundary of his allotted sphere, and touched the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. In that outer land a Syrophenician woman felt the drawing of his love, and followed him — the first fruit of the Gentiles) to Christ. 3. Another point of likeness lies in this, that on both sides equally it is by birth that the members are united to their head and his destiny. It is by birth that we are knit to our inheritance of sin. If we had not descended by birth from a fallen father, we would not have been in this condition of sin and misery. The thought sometimes presses for admission — What if we had never been bom; or if we had descended from the holy? — but the conception is too hard for us. The mind cannot bear its weight; to entertain it long would overwhelm our faculties. Not only is the thing impossible of attainment; the conception of it exceeds our power. We have been born to this inheritance of sin and suffering; we cannot shake it off. We may weep over the discovery of our sad condition, and cry with an exceeding great and bitter cry, “ Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?” but to that cry, apart from the gospel revealed, no comforting answer can ever come. The depths saith, “It is not in me:” it is not in earth, it is not in heaven, to cause that to be not which is. By birthright our dark heritage is ours, and the link that binds us to it we cannot break. We are in it, and cannot escape. But be of good cheer, prisoner of hope: the chain that binds you by birth to the first Adam, it is true, cannot be broken; but if by a corresponding new birth you are one with the second Adam, you have no cause to weep. Greater is He that is for you than all that be against you. You cannot, indeed, escape from being a man; but if you are a new creature in Christ Jesus, the second birthright is as irrevocable as the first. If you are once born nothing can separate you from your heritage, except to be re-born. But if you are born again, nothing can separate you from your new inheritance* Both birth-bonds are indissoluble. Though the weight of a world were fixed to you, and flung into infinite space, it would not avail to wrench you off your stem in Adam, with all the twofold death that it involves; but though all the weight of a world were fixed to a member of Christ, and flung free into infinitude, it could not separate the living member from the life-giving Head. It is a fixed principle of natural science that species do not change. In the material department of God*s creation there is no way over from one nature to another: once in a nature always in it, without a new creation. But that which is impossible with man is possible with God. He has undertaken in the gospel to make a new creature. As the principle operates in the first Adam’s posterity, so it operates in the second Adam*s posterity. “ I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). II. The difference. The chief point of contrast lies in this, that whereas Adam’s seed derive from their head sin and death, Christ’s seed derive from their Head righteousness and life. This birth is meanness; that is honour: this birth is darkness; that is light: this birth is death; that is life. One of the strangest facts in human history — a fact which I suppose angels desire to look into, and yet shudder when they see — is that multitudes of the human race are proud of their first birth, and do not give themselves any concern about a second. They count the little great, and the great little; the evil good, and the good evil. Woe to them that so turn upside down the very ground themselves must stand upon! This contrast between the type and the thing which it represents is over all. The two are in this respect not only unlike each other, but complete and absolute contraries. Under this, however, there are many specific points of difference. 1. While Adam’s seed in this world possess the moral nature of their head complete, Christ’s seed possess the moral nature of their Head only in part. We get the evil in full, the good only in part. It comes about in this way, When we derive a sinful nature from the first man, we have previously no other and better nature, that may mingle with it and mitigate its evil; we possess the evil all, and the evil only. The imagination of the thoughts of his heart are only evil, and that continually. In me, that is in my flesh — in all that I derive from man my father there dwelleth no good thing. But on the other hand, the regeneration is not the birth of a being who did not previously exist. It is the getting of a new nature, indeed, and that a holy one, through union in spirit with Christ, the holy Man; but it is gotten by one who previously possessed an evil nature, and that evil nature is not wholly cast away. It is cast down from the throne, but not cast forth from the territory. It no longer reigns, but it continues to disturb. The old mingles with and spoils the new. The two contend against each other; and there is not peace, but a sword. The actual life of a Christian, accordingly, is neither wholly carnal nor wholly spiritual — it is neither a straight line in the direction of goodness, nor a straight line in the direction of badness; it is a sort of diagonal, traced by the opposite pressure of the two forces. (See Romans 7:1-25) The union with Christ in the regeneration is likened to the grafting of a fruit-tree. Now the tree at the first, which springs from seed, is wholly evil — root and branch. When it is grafted it is made good; but not so completely as it was originally made evil. Its head is taken away; but its root, and the lower portion of the stem, are left living in the ground. On this old stump a new and good branch is grafted. It is the new branch that grows upward and bears the fruit, but it must lean on and get its life-sap through the old root and stem of the old evil tree. Although the good head ingrafted always brings forth good fruit, the old evil root is continually putting forth shoots and buds and blossoms of its own, that are evil, and that waste the strength which should go to the good. A similar defect, from a similar cause, adheres to Christians as long as they are in this life. They are still the same persons that they were before. The lower parts remain: the physical frame and the intellectual faculties remain; it is the higher or spiritual nature that has been radically changed. The old spirit has been taken away, and a new spirit inserted. The seed of Christ in the higher part has been inserted in the seed of Adam in the lower part; and, alas! the fruit that grows even on a Christian tastes of the old corrupt root on which it still stands and grows. In some way, we know not how, the remnants of the old will be filtered out in the dissolution of death; and nothing shall enter heaven that would defile its golden streets or be a jar in its new song. 2. The two bands are not equally numerous. Adam’s company includes absolutely the whole of the human race; Christ’s company is contained within it, and is therefore necessarily smaller, as the whole is greater than a part. *’As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive “ (1 Corinthians 15:1-58). These words do not intimate that the two companies are co-extensive and coincident: no man with his eyes open can read the words in their connection, and think that this is their meaning. The meaning is. In Adam, Adam’s all die; in Christ, Christ’s all live. It tells that all who are in Adam die, and all who are in Christ live; but it does not tell how many either company contains. We know certainly from other scriptures that Adam’s company consists of all the born, and Christ’s of all the born-again. To cleave to the letter here, and understand it to announce that all the human race are actually saved in Christ, contradicts the whole spirit of the Scriptures, and makes both their exhortations and their warnings of none effect. God’s creatures of the old and new creation seem to envelop each other, after the manner of a sphere within a sphere, the most precious being embedded in the heart. Humanity, comparatively small in bulk, is surrounded by the mightier mass of the inferior creatures, the beasts that perish. Men, immortal, made in God’s image, lie in the heart like the kernel, and all inferior organized beings encompass it like a huge husk. The husk will in due time rend and rot and return to the dust. But within the mass of humanity that remains is an inner seed, encased around by a harder, rougher shell. In the heart of humanity lie the regenerate — the true, vital seed of the kingdom; and the crust that surrounds them, compact and highly organized though it be, will crumble and be cast away. The Bridegroom and they that were ready went in to the marriage; and the rest were shut out. When the earth and all that it contained have passed away, Christ and Christians will remain, inheritors together and alone of the eternal life. 3. Another point of difference. Although we inherit this corruption from the first man, we personally have no immediate relation to him. We inherit directly from our own immediate forefathers. With Adam we have no personal relation, in the matter of a descending moral taint. Although it came from the first man originally, we received it from the last that stood before us in the line. If we could suppose our first progenitor to be from this time forth annihilated, we should remain in the same state as to inherited corruption. We derived it not immediately from him, but from our nearest father. It is not thus in the relation between Christ and Christians. It is from him that their life flows as its fountain. But further: each generation of believing men, down to the end of the world, continue to draw their spiritual life and justifying righteousness directly and immediately from the person of Emmanuel. It is not that Christ gave forth a germ of new spiritual life, once for all, and that each new generation of Christians derive their better life from those that went immediately before them. No; the new creature does not propagate its kind. A Christian now gets his life as directly from Christ as those who lay in his bosom or sat at his feet. Death once imparted at the sources of humanity, runs down its stream; but life imparted to one man by the God-man Christ, needs to be equally imparted to every saved sinner, by personal relation with the Saviour. If the first Adam were annihilated, the born of the human, race would still be born in sin; but if Christ were no more Christ, there could be no more for any man a new, a holy life. The difference is somewhat like that which may be found in nature between a tree propagating its kind by seed on the one hand, and a tree sustaining its branches on the other. When once the seed is ripened and cast, the progenitor tree may be burned; from the seed, trees of the same kind will spring. But even when the branch has been put forth by the tree, the branch is every year, and all the year, directly dependent on the tree. If the tree should die, all the branches would die too. The corruption we inherit from Adam, as the seed has come from the tree; the new life we can only have in Christ, as the branch lives in the vine. Adam might say, I was the tree, and ye grew from the seed which I shed; but Christ says, I am the vine, ye are the branches. And as Christians hold directly of Christ, Christ holds individually by Christians. The Vine bleeds and languishes when the branches are torn away: “ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” The Head endures pain when the members are injured. How safe is that life which is hid with Christ in God! 4. Yet another point of difference. The gain by the second Adam is greater than the loss by the first. The scripture intimates, indeed, that there is a likeness, — that Adam is a figure of Christ. But having made the intimation of the similarity, it proceeds immediately to intimate that there is also a dissimilarity: “ But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many” (Romans 5:15). The gain in Christ is not merely the loss that we sustained made up. He pays our debt, and makes us rich besides. He sets free the slave, and makes him a son. “ Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” A blessed word this “ much more”! There is a mystery here. We may stand on the brink of this great deep, and reverently gaze into its far-receding, limitless light; but this is a thing which we cannot fully comprehend; and attempts to be wise in it above what is written may do us serious harm. In Christ we are far better than we would have been as unfallen children of Adam. Had we entered the society of heaven as men that had kept their first estate, we should have been accepted as perfect men; but when a ransomed sinner is admitted to the joy of the Lord and the company of angels, he enters as one with Him who sits upon the throne. With man unfallen, there would, as far as we can see, have been no incarnation of the Eternal Son. God in Christ would not have been so near to us; we would not have been so near to him. The unfallen would have been good servants; but the ransomed, by brotherhood of nature with the Divine Redeemer, have attained the place of beloved children. Great was the joy set before our Redeemer when he undertook our cause; great is the joy he is reaping now when his work is finished. He has gotten a multitude, like the stars of heaven, nearer to himself, and higher than the angels. God compels evil to become the instrument of good on a wider sphere than this world. When a portion of the angels fell, that fall, by omniscient forethought and infinite love, was so directed that it set agoing a process which never ceased until it had raised from the dust a countless family of God’s children to a higher place than angels ever held. This hope might be the source of unmeasured joy to believers. This union to the Lord that bought us, and this destined elevation to sit with him upon his throne, should surely cheer us in the house of our pilgrimage. This promised dawn should give us songs in the night. But he who hath this hope in Him should purify himself even as He is pure. No unfair or foul thing should lodge in the bosom of the man who is already in a flutter of expectation, as not knowing what moment he may be called into the presence of the Great King. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 47: 2.02.02. EPISTLES OF CHRIST ======================================================================== EPISTLES OF CHRIST. ’’Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.”— 2 Corinthians 3:2-3. FROM the example of the Master, Paul had acquired the habit, in his teaching, of gliding softly and quickly from a common object of nature to the deep things of grace. In his conversation with the woman of Samaria, for example, Jesus led his scholar, ere she was aware, from the water of Jacob*s well to the water of life. In like manner, the apostle of the Gentiles was accustomed to make any common topic that arose the stepping-stone by which he carried his pupils over into the concerns of the kingdom of God. In this case, the question concerned the testimonials which a minister or missionary might present when he reached a new sphere. The practice of asking and obtaining certificates seems to have been introduced at a very early period into the Christian Church. Already, in Paul’s time, some abuses had crept in along with it. A minister of very moderate gifts, or even of doubtful soundness, might carry in his pocket a voucher signed by some great names. We may gather from this epistle that some very well recommended missionaries had been spoiling Paul’s work at Corinth. Virtually challenged to exhibit his own certificates, he boldly appeals to the profession and the life of those who had been converted through his ministry. He does not need to present letters of recommendation to them when he comes to Corinth, or to request letters of recommendation from them when he goes away: “ Ye are our epistle.” The work which God had done by him is evidence that God has sent him to work. He will not deign to submit any other proof of his call. But Paul always reckons himself a small subject. Although compelled sometimes to introduce it, he will not dwell on it. The conception of the disciples being an epistle to recommend him is no sooner brought in than it is abandoned. He glides instantly into a greater thing. The Christians are an epistle of Christ. Their lives are a letter in which men may learn the Lord. Regarding these living epistles of Christ, consider, I. The paper, or material, on which the marks are made. — Many different substances have been employed in successive ages of the world to receive and retain a written language; but one feature is common to all, — in their natural state they are not fit to be used as writing materials. They must undergo a process of preparation. Even the primitive material of stone must be polished on the surface ere the engraving begin. All the rough places must be made smooth, otherwise the writing would not be legible. The precious stones containing the names of the twelve tribes, and together constituting the high priest’s breastplate, were not capable of taking the engraving on when first the Hebrews found them. Much labour was expended ere all the sharp comers were rubbed off, and a glassy polish imparted to the surface. The reeds, and leaves, and skins, too, which were used as writing materials by the ancients, all needed a process of preparation. Therein they are like the living epistles of Jesus Christ, who must be renewed in the spirit of their minds ere they can show forth the Redeemer’s likeness in their lives. But the preparation of modern materials for writing, although it was not before the apostle’s mind when he wrote this text, contains, in fact, more points of likeness to the renewing and sanctifying of believers than any of the ancient arts. Although Paul does not here directly refer to paper — a substance not invented when he wrote — there is a remarkable likeness between the method employed in its manufacture and that work of the Spirit by which a human life becomes fit to receive and exhibit an epistle of Christ. Filthy rags are the raw material of the manufacture. These are with great care and labour torn into very small pieces and washed very clean. They are then cast into a new form, and brought out pure and beautiful, ready to get a new meaning impressed on their smooth, bright breast. Paper from rags is, in an obvious and important sense, a Tiew creature. It has been cleansed from its filthiness. There is now no spot nor wrinkle upon it, nor any such thing. A similar process takes place every time that a writing material is prepared for receiving an epistle of Christ. You might as well try to write with pen and ink upon the rubbish from which paper is made, as to impress legible evidence for the truth and divinity of the gospel on the life and conversation of one who is still “ of the earth, earthy.” The paper manufacturer is not nice in the choice of his materials. He does not reject a torn or a filthy piece as unfit for his purpose. All come alike to him. The clean and glancing cloth from the table of the rich, and filthy rags from a beggar’s back, are equally welcome. The clean cannot be serviceable without passing through the manufacturer’s process, and the unclean can be made serviceable with it. He throws both into the same machine, puts both through the same process, and brings out both new creatures. The Pharisees were scandalized on observing that publicans and sinners came in streams to Christ, and were all accepted. “ This man receiveth sinners,” they complained. Yea, receiveth them: sinners are taken in between the wheels at the commencement of this process; but at the end of it saints in white clothing are thrown out, fit for the kingdom of heaven. Go ye into the highways and hedges, and as many as ye can find bid to the marriage. Christ does not find any pure on earth; he makes them. Those that stand round the throne in white clothing were gathered from the mire. They were once darkness, though they be now light in the Lord. Let no man think he can go into heaven because he is good; but neither let any one fear he will be kept out of it because he is evil. Him that cometh, the Lord will in no wise cast out. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as wool. The blood of Jesus cleanseth us from all sin. Not on tables of stone, like those on which the law was graven, but on tables of flesh, must the mind and likeness of Christ be written. Give him your heart. Surrender it to him, that he may blot out its stains and mark it for his own. The Lord hath need of epistles to recommend his grace in this world: Lord, here am I; use me. II. The writing or the mind and meaning which is fixed on the prepared page.— It is not Christianity printed in the creed, but Christ written in the heart. When that writing is fixed on the heart, it shines through every opening of the life, and conciliates favour for the Lord. It is well understood that a person’s character may be very well gathered from his letters. These seem to be windows in his breast through which you can read his true character. How eagerly the public read the letters of a great man, if they are printed after his death! People expect to learn better by these than by any other means what the man really was. As our Lord left no monument of himself in brass or marble, so he left no letters written by his own hand. He did not write his mind on tables of stone or on sheets of parchment. Even Rome, with all her rage for relics, does not pretend to show a specimen of his hand-writing. Yet he has not left himself without a witness. He has left letters behind him which truly reveal his mind. “ Ye are epistles of Christ.” Disciples, when he desires to let the world know what he is, he points to you. Nay, more, and further, when he would have the Father to behold his glory, he refers him to the saved: “ Father, I am glorified in them.” It is not only that the world, in point of fact, judges of Christianity by what it sees in Christians, but it has authority so to do. The Lord himself consented that it should read him there. So Jesus sends a letter to the world — sends many letters — sends a letter to every city, and every street, and every house. A merchant who is a disciple of Christ goes to India or China. He sells manufactured goods; he buys silk and tea. But all the time he is a letter, a living epistle, sent by Christ to the heathen. A boy becomes an apprentice in a warehouse or factory; but before he was bound to a master on earth he has been redeemed by a Master in heaven. He is now, therefore, a letter from the Lord to all his shopmates. Li his truth, and love, and gentleness, and fairness, and generosity, they should learn the mind of Christ. I confess that this thought is fitted to make us afraid. How shall we fulfil such a function? The solution is — it is the Lord’s own method. He has chosen earthen vessels in order that the glory may be to God. III. The writer, — This letter is written by the Spirit of the living God. Some writings and paintings look well for a while, but are easily rubbed off by rough usage, or grow faint with age. Only fast colours are truly valuable. Human art has found the means of making them lasting. The flowers and figures painted upon porcelain, for example, are burned in, and therefore cannot be blotted out. As long as the vessel lasts the painting remains bright. How shall we get a writing or a likeness made durable in a human heart? One thing we know, — many features which people admire are blotted out in the wear and tear of life. Lessons which human hands lay on are not able to stand the rough usage of the world. The education which can be obtained at schools is not sufficient. Its fair characters may soon be stained by evil passions from within, or scratched by cruel treatment from without. We cannot make the writing deep enough on those mysterious tablets. We cannot warrant the colouring. No writing on a human spirit is certainly durable, except that which the Spirit of God lays on. The process is in one aspect like writing; but in another it seems rather a species of printing. The meaning is in the Scriptures set up like types — once for all. Then the Scriptures are impressed on the heart, as the types are applied to the page. It is when divine truth, taken off the divine Redeemer, is pressed on the human heart by the Spirit of God, that one becomes a new creature. Old things pass away, and all things become new. Henceforth the Christian bears about on his character the likeness of Christ. And there is also a kind of burning to make the writing durable. In conversion there is a sort of furnace through which the new-born pass. We must take up our cross when we follow Christ. We must part with all that crucifies the Lord, although it were dear as a right arm or a right eye. Through such fire and water the Spirit leads us; but he brings us into a wealthy place. It is gladsome, as well as safe, to pass from death unto life in conversion; but there is something to be stripped off*, and something to be put on, in the passage, which you will never forget. In the wide-spread religious activity of the day some marks are made on the people, — not made by the Spirit of God. A cry; a swoon; a fear of wrath; an imagination of the judgment-seat; a gift of prayer; a profession of faith, — may be shown by the event to have been only marks on the surface made by some passing fear or nervous sympathy. The writing made by the Spirit does not go out again. This baptism is a baptism of fire as well as of water — it not only washes off the old; it also bums in the new. IV. The pen. — In writing the new name and new nature on the tables of the heart, the Holy Spirit employs an instrument. It is expressly said in the text that Paul and the younger evangelists who assisted him had a hand in the work. The terms “ministered by us” poiat to the presence of man in the work of conversion and sanctifying. It is not a high place that the human ministry occupies; but it is the right place, and it cannot be wanted. In photography it is the sun that makes the portrait. There is no drawing of the outline by a human hand, and no shading of the figure by the rules of the painter’s art. The person stands up in the light; and the light lays his image on the glass. Yet even in this there is room and need for the ministry of man. Without the ministry of man the work could not in any case be accomplished. A human hand prepares the plate and adjusts the lens. Although in the real work of making the picture the artist has no part at all — although he has nothing more to do in the end than stand still, like Israel at the Red Sea, and see the work done by the sun — his place is still important and necessary. A similar place is assigned to the ministry of men in the work of the Spirit. God does not send angels to preach. We learn the gospel from men of flesh and blood like ourselves. Cornelius and his house will be saved; but for that end Peter must go from Joppa to Caesarea, and there declare the way of life. The Ethiopian treasurer will find the Saviour whom he seeks; but not until Philip is sent from Samaria, a skilful evangelist to guide the earnest but ignorant African. It is thus that the Lord employs parents, teachers, pastors, at the present day, as instruments to break hard hearts and bind up broken ones. This is the most interesting and honourable employment in which any human being can be engaged. Whether he be a ministering child or a ministering man, the agent who stands between the living and the dead — a channel through which the light of life may run — occupies the most honourable place and discharges the greatest function competent to any creature. Here above me is the depending extremity of the wire whose upper end is dipped in heaven— dipped there in everlasting love — dipped in God, who is love; and here beneath me, within reach, is a brother “ dead in trespasses and sins.” I grasp with one hand the conducting rod, and with the other the cold, stiff hand of my brother •, then, not from me, but through me, the light of life flows from its eternal fountain into the empty soul. Here is an example of the first resurrection. The living is now an epistle of Christ, written indeed by the Spirit, but yet “ ministered by us.” Printing nowadays is done by machines which work with a strength and regularity and silence that are enough to strike an onlooker with dismay. Yet even there a watchful human eye and alert human hand are needed to introduce the paper into the proper place. Agents are needed, even under the glorious ministry of the Spirit — needed to watch for souls. V. The readers, — They are a great number, and of various kinds. The terms of the text have a wide ransre “ known and read of all men.” The writing is not sealed, or locked up in a desk, but exposed daily, and all the day, to public view. These living epistles walk about upon the streets, and mingle with the crowds in the market-place. Every one may read them at will. Some who look on the letters are enemies, and some are friends. If an alien see Christ truly and clearly represented in a Christian, he may thereby be turned from darkness to light; but if he see falsehood, and anger, and selfishness, and worldliness in one who is called a Christian, he will probably be more hardened in his unbelief. Those who already know and love the truth are glad when they read it clearly written in a neighbour’s life; are grieved when they see a false image of the Lord held up before the eyes of men. Here, however, in justice I ought to say that many readers fail to see the meaning of the plainest letters. None so blind as those who will not see. Every one’s life is an open letter. Every man, whether he is a Christian or not, is written and is read. Some are epistles of Christ; some are epistles of vanity; some are epistles of covetousness; some are epistles of selfishness; some are epistles of the wicked one. The main features of the father of lies are written largely on the life of some of his followers. The spirit that reigns within is more or less visible in the outward conduct. In some countries the master’s name is branded in the flesh of his slave, so that, if the slave should run away, every one should know to whom he belonged. The captive may, indeed, be bought with a price; and then he receives the mark of his new master. Thus, whether we like it or not, people may read in our lives, with a considerable degree of accuracy, whose we are and whom we serve. The surest way to appear a Christian, in all places and at all times, is to be one. The surest way to make people, when you go out, take knowledge that you have been with Jesus, is really to be with Jesus. Considering how defective most readers are, either in will or skill, or both, the living epistles should be written in characters both large and fair. Some manuscripts, though they contain a profound meaning, are so defectively written that none but experts can decipher them. Skilled and practised men can piece them together, and gather the sense where, to ordinary eyes, only unconnected scrawls appear. Such should not be the writing on a disciple’s life. If it be such, most people will fail to understand it. It should be clear and bold throughout, that he may run who reads it. Benevolent ingenuity, in our day, has produced a kind of writing that even the blind can read. The letters, instead of merely appealing to the eye by their colour, are raised from the surface so as to be sensible to touch. Such, methinks, should be the writing of Christ’s mind on a Christian’s conversation. It should be raised in characters so large, and sharp, and high, that even the blind, who cannot see, may be compelled, by contact with Christians, to feel that Christ is passing by. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 48: 2.02.03. CHRISTIANS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD ======================================================================== III. CHRISTIANS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. ’Ye are the light of the world Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” — Matthew 5:14, Matthew 5:16. HE first section of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-10) represents God and his saints; the second (Matthew 5:11-16) represents believers and the world. Redeemed men in the body are exhibited first in their relation to God on high, and next in their relation to the world around. In the first picture, you behold believers in contact with their Friend; in the second, you behold them in contact with their foe. In the first, you learn what good they receive; in the second, what evil they suffer. From the Father of lights, every good and perfect gift comes down; from the world, lying in wickedness, every kind of danger springs up. Between these two opposite poles the Christian life is suspended and balanced. The fountain opened in heaven supplies all a believer’s need; and the pressure of temptation in the world sends him the oftener and the closer to his supplies. The Father’s love draws, and the world’s enmity drives; but though these forces spring on opposite sides, they act in the same direction. Thus all things work together for good to them that love God. A Christian need no more fear to plunge into the current of life than a planet to launch forth on its course. Opposite forces conspire to keep them safe, and urge them on. In the first section, you learn from the double line of the seven beatitudes what God is to his people, and what his people are to God. He blesses them, and they trust in him. In the second section, you learn what the world is to the disciples of Christ, and what they are to the world. It is to them a persecutor; they are to it a salt and a light. Omitting in the meantime the first of these analogies, we fix our regards on the second. Let us fairly look in the face this grand function assigned by the Lord to his followers — to be “the light of the world.” In verse 14th, the function is defined; and in verse 16th, a particular instruction is given regarding its exercise. The first tells disciples that they are a light in the world; and the second exhorts them to keep it blazing. We shall explain shortly the nature of this office, and then more fully enforce the command to exercise it well. I. It is the function of a living Church to be a light in a dark world. In order that we may determine in what sense the disciples of Christ are lights, let us read two cognate scriptures, one in the Old Testament, and the other in the New: “ Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee “ (Isaiah 60:1-2). “ That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life” (Php 2:15-16). From these texts we learn clearly that renewed men are first receivers of light; then and therefore givers. They are not the source whence the light springs, but channels through which it is distributed. The Lord alone is the light of the world; but he has been pleased to arrange his covenant so that those who receive his beams also spread them. It is so arranged also in the material world. Not much of the light which guides us in life comes in direct lines from the sun: most of it reaches us at second hand, reflected from surrounding objects. Thus, in the spiritual sphere, the glory of the Lord arises and shines on Israel; then and therefore Israel is» expected to arise and reflect the light around to attract the Gentiles. The Philippian converts, walking in the light of God, are expected to shine among the heathen as lights. They are not rays, but reflectors; they give out, with more or less of truth and fulness, the light which they receive from the Sun of Righteousness after he has risen upon them. The conception of Christians being lights, not as Source, but reflectors, might perhaps be profitably examined somewhat more minutely. Reflectors are ordinarily either metallic or vitreous. In either case, two preparatory processes are necessary: there must be a melting first and a polishing afterwards. Ah! search and see that those Christians who have really been eminently useful as attractive lights — winning many from the world by the beauty of their character — have been in the furnace, and have there had the dross taken away; have been under the pressure of providential trials that- have rubbed their inequalities off. There is no royal — that is, no soft and easy — road to eminence in the Christian calling. The good soldier of Jesus Christ has suffered some privations and seen some service. Men who have never seen any other than parade service are not reckoned good soldiers in either army. If a stranger, ignorant alike of means and end, had been permitted to see Lord Rosse engaged in preparing the speculum of his great telescope, he would have formed a false judgment regarding the usefulness of the work and the wisdom of the operator. This huge, heavy casting, cooled with so much care, — when it is at last removed from its bed, it seems a coarse, black, shapeless, useless mass. What is the use of it? the observer inquires. To reveal the stars that have hitherto lain hid in heaven. That lump of black, irregular metal! How can it reveal the stars? But the operator knows what he is about. This uncouth mass will yet receive on its bosom the light from burning orbs, so many and so distant that hitherto they have seemed to be little white clouds, sailing without a compass in the sea of infinitude. The Day only will reveal the wisdom and the pains displayed by the omniscient Worker in preparing the hearts and lives of his witnesses for receiving from himself the light of life and spreading it around. II. Leaving now the fundamental fact — that Christians are lights, to rest on the Word of the Lord — we proceed to examine more particularly the specific exhortation addressed to them in that capacity, — to let their light so shine before men, etc. In the verse immediately preceding this injunction there is an interesting reference to the elevation of the light as a necessary condition of its usefulness. A lofty position, breadth, and brightness, must be combined in order to produce the greatest effect. In a trigonometrical survey of our country, it is necessary often to obtain an exact view of an object placed at a great distance; and some ingenuity is displayed in overcoming the obstacles. Goatfell, a mountain in Arran, is visible from the summit of the Ochils, east of Stirling, a distance of about seventy miles in a straight line. But at such a distance you can scarcely distinguish between a mountain and a cloud; no object can be seen with sufficient exactness for the purpose of measurement. But they bring a looking glass to the top of Goatfell, scoiu: its surface well, watch for a sun-blink, and turn it then in the required direction. On the summit of the Ochils they observe the flash, as a single point of glory, like a star in the broad blue sky. They measure their angle with security now. A great elevation does not belong to every Christian. This is a matter that does not lie in his own hands. It is not like the climbing of the mountain by a man; it is like the uplifting of the mountain from the plain, which is the prerogative of the Creator. Some he both elevates and kindles, that their light may stream afar; but he has use for most of his lights on moderate elevations, and close to the benighted world. The great business of Christians is to keep their light bright, and make it broad, that all who are within reach may be compelled to see it. A mirror besmeared with mud, although it is set in the sunlight on a mountain-top, will not be seen; whereas a bright burnished glass will reflect the light truly over a greater or a smaller sphere, according to the height which it may have attained. Thus, Christians should take care that their light should be large and pure, leaving it to God in his providence to determine the height of their elevation and consequent radius of their influence. All who have let their light shine, like all who have used the intrusted talents, will be welcomed with the same words. Well done! whether their position has enabled them to spread the truth among many or only among a few. Among a crowd of placards, varying much in size and subject, which jostled and overlapped each other on a piece of neglected wall at the entrance of a large city, one particularly arrested me. At the distance at which I stood, it exhibited only these words: “ Large Type Christians.” Doubtless intermediate lines in smaller letters, invisible where I stood, informed the nearer reader that some publisher had prepared a series of tracts in large type for the special use of aged Christians. From my viewpoint at the time only the larger letters were visible. I passed on with what I had got, not desiring to exchange it for the meaning that a closer inspection would have revealed. Large type Christians! That is not the conception which the writer of the handbill intended to convey, but is the conception which in the circumstances it conveyed to me, and I determined to retain it. This shadow, which the publisher’s circular projected on the wall, was to me a tenfold greater thing than the circular itself would have been. Large type tracts may be good for the conversion of the careless and the edification of believers; large type tracts may be good, but large type Christians are better. Tracts, large and legible, may win their thousands of captives in the battle of the kingdom; but Christians large and legible, if we had them, would win their tens of thousands. As young and struggling colonies advertise amid the teeming population of the mother country for able-bodied farm-labourers and skilled artisans, covertly hinting, by their silence, that certain other classes would only be in the way; so the Church, charged to colonize and cultivate the world for Christ, should distinctly own and loudly proclaim her need of large type Christians. We have many who are really Christians — more, perhaps, than either a scoffing world or a desponding Church would acknowledge; but not so many who are clearly, largely, unmistakably Christ-like, whatever they may be doing, and whoever may be looking on. If the graces of the Spirit, though real, are small and stunted, and especially if they are overshadowed by a rank growth of vanity, worldliness, and self-pleasing, they will not be seen by those who most need their evidence. The careless passenger will class you according to the earthliness which is large in your life, and not according to the heavenliness which is small. If conformity to every vain show make up the bulk of your history, while your compliance with Christ’s will can only be detected by the microscope, your influence will, in point of fact, tell on the side of the world. Christians, although the Light of life be within, yet, if it is choked and hidden by an abounding worldliness of spirit and conduct, you are in point of fact hindering the kingdom of Christ. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Observe here how closely the lines of a true disciple’s life approach at certain points to those of a hypocrite’s course. The Pharisees gave their alms and repeated their prayers that they might be seen of men; and therein they are condemned by the Lord: but when his disciples let their good works be seen by men they are commended. Paul was frequently in a strait betwixt two here. He abhorred the Pharisees’ ostentation, — I am less than the least of all saints; and yet, when he saw that he could promote the kingdom by boldly taking the place which belonged to him, he flashed forth in the face of the world the lofty claim that he was not a whit behind the chiefest of the apostles. The hypocrite performs what are accounted good works in order that he may be seen of men, and get glory to himself; the true disciple, doing necessarily the things that please God, in conformity with his new nature, endeavours carefully to do them in such a way as will best commend the gospel to his neighbours, and so extend the kingdom of Christ. The redeemed should consider well the end of the Lord in redemption. To save the perishing is not by itself the aim and the hope which directed and animated the Redeemer in his work. As a husbandman makes an evil tree good by ingrafting, in order that he may enjoy its good fruit, so our Father in heaven saves us from condemnation, that he may delight in the new obedience of his children, and employ them in his work. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever. What is contained in yonder vessel? I inquire of a stranger who, like myself, is passing by the door of the threshing-floor where it stands. Chaff*, he replies, turning a momentary glance towards the object, and so passes on.. His answer is all that I could expect him to give; and yet it is not true. It was not true, for the vessel was mainly filled with wheat; but it was what seemed true for it was chaff mainly that met the traveller’s eye. The measure standing on the floor, while the process of threshing proceeded, was gradually filled with what fell from the sheaves — with wheat and chaff commingled; but as it has been shaken somewhat roughly from side to side, the wheat grains have for the most part sunk to the bottom, and the chaff for the most part risen to the top. In some such way many real but defective disciples are set down as hypocrites in the books of a careless world, because the things of the Spirit gravitate downwards, and lie hidden in the secret parts of their life; while the vanities of time usurp and occupy almost all the visible space on the surface of their history, I do not know any means by which the gospel of Christ is more effectually hindered. Alas! the Lord knows we ha ve all too little of the true Christian life in the visible Church; but if even that which exists were well employed, it would soon change the face of the world. Christians have in them more of Christianity than they have the wit to employ well in the cause of the kingdom. Oh, if the talents that belong to our Master were as wisely and vigorously laid out as those which we count our own, the kingdoms of this world would be won over I That which is the fruit of the Spirit in Christians should not be small, but large and full-grown — should not be jostled out of its place by the urgency and impudence of mere worldly fashion. That which is Christ-like in Christians should not be hidden under a thick shade of cares and pleasures. If you would let your light shine before men, you must labour to cut down and kill off the covetousness, the pride, the evil-speaking, the equivocation, the falsehood, the dishonesty — all the bitter roots, whose branches weave themselves together into a thick veil, so as to turn your light into darkness. You have asked the question, What must we do to be saved? and through the blood of sprinkling you have obtained an answer of peace. Another question demands now all the energy of a saved soul — the question, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? There are many wandering in the darkness, and stumbling even to a final fall. To enlighten and win and save them, the Lord hath need of you. Yield yourselves instruments of righteousness unto God. In particular, he calls for lights. In us there is not a light which can give life to any; but from the Lord the light of life is streaming down like the rays of the sun: if we receive it and reflect it, the light of life may through our means reach the perishing. Occasions turn up daily in every one’s experience when he must make a choice between faithfulness to Christ and conformity to the world’s ways. Take no hesitating, double-minded course. Be on the Lord’s side; and be on his side out and out. Let your Christianity be written in large characters* for the sake both of friends and foes. A halting walk is a painful walk: plant your foot firm on the path of righteousness, and a new joy will be infused into your life. A life devoted because it is redeemed is not a wearisome but a joyful thing. It is not like a stagnant pool, but like a sparkling river: bright is its course over time j blessed its issue in eternity. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 49: 2.02.04. A COMPREHENSIVE CONFESSION ======================================================================== IV. A COMPREHENSIVE CONFESSION. “ But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteougnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid tiiy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.” — Isaiah 64:6-7. T is not enough to say of this brief prayer that it is figurative in the form of its expressions. It is a combination of many types. Natural analogies are piled upon each other, as the penitent strives to give all his emotions vent in language. It will be our effort to analyze the compact conglomerate, and examine in succession each of its constituent parts. A quickened and repenting people in those ancient times pour forth their confession through Isaiah’s lips. The speech is simple and sweet and tender, like the wailing of a suffering child. The conscience has been reached and melted, and here in our sight the confession flows. Obviously this sinful man “ pours out his heart unto God" he keeps nothing back. Let us draw near and listen while an exercised human spirit makes full confession of sin to God, that we may make his prayer our own. The confession consists of six several but consecutive and closely connected parts. We shall enumerate them as they follow each other in the text, and then endeavour to obtain for ourselves the lessons which they teach. There is much meaning in each separate ingredient of this confession considered by itself, and more in the relations and union of the whole: — 1. The taint of sin, that from the springs of humanity has poisoned all its streams — “We are all as an unclean thing.” 2. The worthlessness and positive loathsomeness of all the efforts which a sinful man can make to set himself at first right with God — “ All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” 3. The frailty, uncertainty, and shortness of human life — “ We all do fade as a leaf.” 4. The power and success of internal corruption in hurrying the man away into actual transgressions — “ Our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” 5. The inability and unwillingness of these helpless sinners, as they are drifting down the stream of sin towards the gulf of perdition, to lift themselves up and lay hold on God — “ There is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.” 6. God’s method of dealing with such a case — “Thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.” I. The taint of sin, that from the springs of humanity has poisoned all its streams: “ We are all as an unclean thing.” What feature of his dreadful case is first revealed to an awakening soul, we cannot tell; the beginnings of life are kept secret. Probably, as there are diversities of operation in the process of bringing a man out of death into life, there may also be diversities in the process of revealing to him that he is dead in trespasses and sins. One man, when conviction by the Spirit first begins, may have his eye chiefly fixed on one feature, and another man on a different feature, of the carnal mind. But whether the discovery begin with the root or the branches, — with the deep rebellion of the heart or the manifold transgressions of the life, — it is certain that when a really awakened sinner proceeds to make an articulate confession to God, he is inclined, like Isaiah in this text, to begin at the beginning: “ We are all as an unclean thing.” When the patriarch had learned at length to know himself and God, and to bring the two together, a short formula best expressed his experience: “ Behold, I am vile.” This is the confession of faith, on its under or subjective side, which all who are taught of the Spirit are willing to sign. This confession does not yet proclaim the way of salvation, but it has unveiled the necessities of the lost; it points not yet to the sun in the heavens, but it owns and laments the darkness which broods over the earth. This darkness does not create the light, but it makes the light welcome when God commands it to shine. True confession of sin, like its counterpart, true faith in Christ, is not partial, but universal. It belongs to all and it belongs all to each. There is none that doeth good, and there is no good thing in any one. When one who has been convinced by the Spirit takes words and turns to God, he begins at the heart, as the spring whence the many unclean streams of thoughts and words and deeds flow out in the daily life. This simplicity is a mark of truth. It is not an in ventory of remembered shortcomings that disturbs the conscience in the prospect of the judgment. He has looked in on his own heart, and back over his past life, and forward to the great Day, and upward to the righteous Judge, and has discovered that his character is sin, his condition misery. Around the circle of his life he sees no spot where a troubled conscience can find a resting-place. When he opens his lips to express his state, the complaint is not a superficial gleaning of the bulkiest sins. He does not dally on the surface; he goes right to the root. An unclean thing. He counts himself a defiling spot on God’s fair creation, and loathes the self which, notwithstanding, he cannot fling away. “ wretched man that I Amos 1 who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” II. The worthlessness and positive loathsomeness of all the efforts which a sinful man can make to set himself at first right with God: “ All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” Most naturally this ingredient of the confession comes next in order. He looked first to his sins, and told what he thought of them; he next looks to his righteousness, and we shall learn what his opinion is in regard to it also. This is the natural history of the process — the process of conviction. By this way the soul went in order to reach true repentance. The path is rugged and painful. It is a voyage of discovery, in which all that lies before you is unknown, and where every increase of knowledge is acquired at the expense of falls and bruises. When a sense of guilt and a fear of wrath force their way into the conscience, nature’s instinct prompts to the method of making peace by doing better for the time to come. There is no instinct more uniform than this recourse to self-righteousness as soon as conviction of sin becomes alarming. After the discovery of our sin, another discovery, still more terrible, remains to be made — the discovery that our righteousness will do no more for us in the judgment than our sins. In the first stages of conviction, although one by one the pretensions of innocence fail the culprit, he has still hope in another resource, — a second line of defence, — in which he may make a stand. If he must own that the sins deserve wrath, he will betake himself to righteousness, in the hope that, though it cannot be expected to be complete, it may yet go far as a protector. It is when the fugitive soul is driven from this inner line of defence that the crisis of the case arrives. It is this feature, — this step of the confession, — that we examine now. Perhaps the memory of some painful dream will afford us more help in the examination of this point than any phase of our waking experience. You have dreamed that you were in a strange, unknown place, and that all imaginable difficulties were gathering round you. Among other misfortunes, by some unexplained and unaccountable neglect, you were left without clothing far from home and from friends. In the dreary, shuddering apprehension of the moment you eagerly clutch at the first thing that lies to hand, and wrap it round you with convulsive haste. Glad to have gotten something that feels like a covering, you proceed on your way somewhat more hopefully for a time. The dawn, although it may be discerned in the east, does not yet sensibly diminish the darkness that broods over you and your path. You step forward with a comfortable sensation of being at least clothed. Quickly the light increases, and soon bursts into day; the path is leading to frequented thoroughfares; now you discover that the garment which you hastily snatched is a bundle of unconnected rags, very poor and very filthy. This garment is a conspicuous badge of shame, and you have none other. A sinking of the heart, and a choking in the throat, awaken you from sleep, and you discover that it was but a dream. Gradually the wildly-pulsing heart sinks down again into its normal peacefulness, and nothing remains of the terror but an involuntary sob at intervals, like a ground-swell after a storm. Not more naturally do you in such a perplexity snatch any covering that lies within your reach than does a sinful man, when convictions first begin to prick his conscience, betake himself hastily to a self -wrought righteousness. As uniformly and necessarily as a rebound in the opposite direction follows the blow, a soul, when first alarmed by a sense of sin, endeavours to deprecate dreaded wrath by getting up a painful and forced obedience. How busily the naked, when he discovers his nakedness, labours to get a covering, and how long he labours sometimes in vain! For a time a man may be so busy gathering the rags and putting them on that he does not perceive their filthiness; more terrible, on that account, is the discovery that awaits him when the quickening Spirit sheds in a brighter light, and he learns at length that the King is coming in, while he is destitute of a wedding garment. Those who have never experienced the distress which the dream represents cannot, even in imagination, form a conception of the dismay and sinking of heart that would overwhelm them, if they found themselves, the observed of all observers, entering the presence of royalty clothed in filthy rags. Your limbs would totter beneath you, and your tongue would cleave to the roof of your mouth. Your heart would seem to be a heavy, hard, cold stone lying within your breast and crushing it. Such in kind, but inconceivably magnified in degree, is the dismay that seizes a sinner who has been busy preparing a righteousness for the judgment-seat, when in the light of the great white throne, now felt to be very near, he discovers that the righteousness wherewith he has covered his sins is yet more vile in God’s sight than the sins which it is employed to cover. Nor let any one lightly deem that this representation is introduced as the necessary filling up of a well-favoured theological system. The scripture and reason concur in demonstrating that the righteousness which the convicted but unreconciled soul throws over its uncleanness is itself at least equally unclean. Love is the fulfilling of the law; and in these hasty, painful efforts to provide a satisfying obedience there is no love. You make these efforts while you are strangers to pardon and reconciliation in Christ, not because you trust in God’s mercy, but because you dread his holiness. These are peace-offerings flung to an enemy, not love lavished on a friend. If you were near a lion and in his power, you would throw him a piece of flesh, in the hope that, soothed and satisfied with the morsel you had given him, he might not be disposed to tear you. Men, stung by apprehended wrath, and not reassured by tasting mercy, treat God thus. Their diligent tread-mill round of duty, and painful penances, and costly offerings, are a stratagem cunningly contrived to occupy the attention of the omniscient Watcher while they turn round a comer and escape. Wanting pardon and reconciling in the Mediator, there is no love in the good works which men bring to God; and wanting love, there is no life in them; and wanting life, they are dead; and the dead run to corruption; and the more of the dead you heap together, the ranker is the decay. From dead works as well as from acts of sin we must be purged through the blood of the covenant ere our service can be pleasing to God. Such prayers and penances add insult to injury. Hatred of God’s holiness is the motive of the deeds. As long as you toil unforgiven, unreconciled, unrenewed, to work a righteousness under which you may be safe from God’s displeasure, you are in effect vainly trying to throw dust in the eyes of your enemy. If you could be assured that he did not hate sin and would not punish it, you would instantly cease to strive after righteousness. Ah, these filthy rags! how intensely loathsome they seem to the dear child when Christ has made him free. III. The frailty, uncertainty, and shortness of human life: “ We all do fade as a leaf.” The time is short, and even the short time is uncertain. Any day, any hour, thy soul may be required of thee. This thought, coming on the back of the discovery that your righteousnesses are filthy rags, adds to the agony. Our own righteousness is worthless, and our breath may be taken away before we have time to cast about for another. We have suddenly awakened and found our lamps out and our oil-vessels empty; alas! while we go to buy the Bridegroom may pass and the door be shut. You are in debt. It has been announced that you must be ready with payment in your hand to meet your creditor face to face whenever he may call. You stand among a crowd of fellow-debtors in the outer court. From time to time the awful voice of the judge resounds from within the veil, calling now one and now another of your neighbours by name into his presence. Every man rises and goes in the moment that he hears the summons; some enter cheerful, and some with terror in their look and trembling in their limbs, but all enter instantly as they are called. You know well that your turn cannot be far distant, but you know not at* what hour or moment it will come. Will you, in these circumstances, be at ease or in wretchedness? This depends on another question. Have you enough to pay your debt, or have you nothing? If you have enough, you await your call with composure, and obey it when it comes with a light heart; if you have nothing to pay, your heart beats hurriedly at every movement in the crowd; and when your name is called, you faint and fall to the ground. It cannot be denied that many who would fain seem free are, through fear of death, all their lifetime subject to bondage. Two classes occupying the two opposite extremes contrive to enjoy life, although its term is short and uncertain: those on the one hand who have never been disturbed by conviction; and those on the other who have, through the Mediator, entered into peace. But to the multitude in the middle, who have been made aware of their own guilt, and not yet got it washed away in the blood of the cross. Death in the distance darkens by his shadow all the joys of life. The fading of a leaf supplies a correct and affecting emblem of our mortality in both its main features — its certainty and its uncertainty. In one aspect nothing is more sure than the fall of the leaf, and in another nothing more uncertain. Look to this fruit or forest tree: of all the leaves that it bears to-day, glittering in the sunshine and quivering in the breeze, not one will remain in winter — all will be strewn on the ground. But when each leaf will fall is secret and unsearchable as the purposes of God. One, touched by an imperceptible mildew, may drop soon after it has unfolded itself from the bud in spring; a second, bitten by a worm, may wither as soon as it has fully spread out iis surface to the sun of summer; a third may be shaken off by a boisterous wind, and a fourth nipped by an early frost. On what day of the season any leaf will drop no man knows; but that all will drop ere the season is over is absolutely sure. Such is our condition in this life. We fade as a leaf fades. The generation will in a few years be laid in the dust, but the individuals composing it may be led away at any hour into eternity. This is our condition. It is a sad picture, but it is true; and it would be foolish to hide or forget it. We are on our warning, every one of us. We know not what a day may bring forth. Every day we perform a march, and every night lie down to sleep, a day’s journey nearer home. These busy hearts are beating the dead march to the grave. But the hope in Christ turns this sad world upside down; to them that are found in him, these pulsations mean a life-march to the rest that remaineth. IV. The power and success of internal corruption in hurrying the man into actual sin: “ Our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” It is a mark of true repentance when the penitent lays all the blame upon himself. He who tries to shift the burden so as to lay it on his neighbour, has not yet, in faith, gotten his burden laid on Christ; on the other hand, he who has gotten his sins laid on Christ, is not under the necessity of shifting the guilt upon a fellow-creature. This confession bears the mark of truth. Our iniquities have carried us away. There is indeed a spiritual wickedness in high places, as well as evil communications between man and man; but when a soul is truly convinced of sin by the Spirit, and draws near to the Father in confession, these outward enemies are forgotten, and the sin is felt to be all the sinner’s own. Every one is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lusts and enticed. Like the wind, in the secrecy of its origin and the greatness of its effects, is the spirit of evil as well as the Spirit of grace. As the wind carries chaff away, so the impetuous passions of an evil heart overcome every resolution of amendment, and direct the whole volume of the life. It is strange that this confession follows immediately upon the reflection that we all do fade as a leaf. You might suppose that if men believed themselves immortal they might dare to sin with a high hand; but that the knowledge of death being certain, coupled with the uncertainty and suddenness of its approach, would compel them to live soberly and righteously and godly in the world. Vain expectation! The knowledge that death is sure, and the day of it uncertain, does indeed exert a force in the direction of restraining sin. It is a power which, to the extent of its ability, binds the evil spirit; but it is like a green withe round Samson’s limbs. It opposes wickedness, but it has not power to stop its career, or even to diminish its speed. A great ship is lying in deep water, dose to a precipitous beach, with two or three lines made fast to the shore, and all her canvas spread. A breeze off the land springs up, and increases to a gale. Will the ship retain her position? No; she will be driven out to sea. But is she not bound by these ropes to the shore? Yes, these lines hold her to the shore with all their might; but when such a blast fills the sails, they’ snap asunder like threads. Such and so feeble is the thought of death to keep a man back, when the passions of his own heart carry him away like the wind. Sometimes — and the experience is by no means rare— those whose business it is every day to dig graves and handle the dead neither fear God nor regard man. The scripture is entirely accordant with experience when it intimates that the man who knows that he fades like a leaf permits his own iniquities notwithstanding to carry him away. The fear of death has not power to turn us from sin. V. The inability and unwillingness of these helpless sinners, as they are drifting down the stream of sin towards the gulf of perdition, to lift themselves up and take hold on God: “ There is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.” Here again we might at first sight suppose, that as there is help at hand, the feeble will grasp it, and be saved. Because there is a God to lay hold of, we would think, those who are carried away to perdition like chaff on the wind will lay hold of God, that they may not perish. His feet have well-nigh slipped into the pit; but surely on that very account he will stay himself upon his God. Alas! it is not so. If a man were carried down against his own will by some external force, he would gladly grasp any friendly hand that might be stretched out for help. But the state of the case is different, — is opposite. It is his own iniquities that are carrying him away. To grasp God’s hand as it is in Christ stretched out would indeed save him — would snatch him out of that impetuous flood, and hide his life with Christ in God; but this would tear the man asunder — would separate the man from himself. He would indeed be saved, so as by fire, leaving a right eye and a right hand behind him. This kind of safety he is not yet willing to accept. If he were invited to stir himself up to lay hold of a safe heaven, he might make a shift to obey; but he has no inclination to stir himself up to lay hold of a holy God, and to abide in the light of his countenance, “ Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power.” “ Put off the old man with his deeds.” VI. God’s method of dealing with such a case: “ Thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.” The Holy One hides his face from his creatures while they live in sin. “And hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.” I prefer to take this clause in its most literal sense, as it is given in the margin — “ Thou hast melted us by the hand of our iniquities.” God melts the hardest sinners, and he employs their own sins to make the flinty hearts flow down. If this melting take effect in the day of grace, it is repentance unto life. What a mystery is here! All are his servants. He can employ a man’s own sins as the burning coals poured on his head to melt him into confession and trust. We have often found souls undergoing this process. There is great grief and great tenderness, the fountains of the great deep seem to have been broken up within them, and their eyes have become fountains of tears. Ask what ails them, and from the groans, and cries, and broken words you soon discover that their own sins have in some way been lifted up and poured over them like melted lead. This is the hand of God. He is melting these highhanded transgressors — melting them down in order to mould them again as new creatures in Christ; and the means whereby he makes the stony hearts yield are their own sins treasured up, and poured in a scalding stream over their own consciences. Ah 1 when they are softened in that furnace they will be poured into another type, and emerge new creatures. By terrible things in righteousness the Lord is answering their cry. But if the sinful are not so melted in the day of grace, they will be melted when that day is done. By their own iniquities, too, will the judgment be inflicted. Their own sins on their own heads will be at least a material part of the doom of the lost in the great Day. Having examined somewhat fully what the text is, we shall now, in a concluding sentence, point out where it lies. Many lessons may be obtained from its contents; at least one, exceeding great and precious, may be drawn from its position. After having looked to the text, we shall look at that which touches it, before and behind. The gem is the chief object of attraction, but its setting may be both beautiful and precious. When a diamond of great size, of historic interest and almost fabulous worth, now the property of the Queen, was some years ago exhibited to the public, it was supported on either side by the representation of a human hand made of gold, and artistically constructed to represent at once firmness and tenderness, as a living human hand would hold fast and hold forth that which is unspeakably precious. In that case, a measure of interested attention was given by the spectators to the setting, second only to that which the gem attracted to itself. Here, too, when, in the expanse of Scripture, a gem so precious was about to be held up to view, care seems to have been taken to give it a setting, precious in its own nature, and in its form betokening tender care and deep appreciation. A hand of gold protrudes from either side, expressively and impressively holding forth the precious and full-bodied confession of the ancient prophet. The word that touches it on the one side (end of Isaiah 64:5) is, “We shall be saved;” the word that touches it on the other side (beginning of Isaiah 64:8) is, “But now, O Lord, thou art our Father.” It is not by chance that this great deep confession lies between these two words — is held up and held out in these two tender loving hands. “ We are saved by hope,” not by terror. It is God*s mercy that melts. If these arms of love had not been thrown round the stony heart, the stony heart would not thus have flowed down like water. When they propose to melt the rugged ore, and bring the precious metal out, they put a fire below it and a fire above it, and fan both into a sevenfold glow. Between these two fires the rock at length gives way. It is thus that the melting of repentance and the outflow of confession are produced. Terror alone, even the terror of the Lord, does not avail. The weight of apprehended judgment lying on the guilty will only compress the soul into a harder, intenser atheism, unless redeeming love burst through. Surround a fallen human spirit with the immediate and certain apprehension of divine vengeance due to sin — leave no chink in that wall of brass to admit a ray of hope from the face of Jesus — confront the creature with the Creator’s almighty anger — and nothing more, nothing else: you will not thereby melt that human spirit into repentance and faith. That creature, though guilty now and feeble, is, in his origin and nature, great and Godlike That spirit, despairing, will curse God and die — die hard. It is another thing than divine anger that really melts and remoulds the man. Isaiah, in this case a representative man — for the word is not of private interpretation — Isaiah, secretly conscious of sin, looks this way, and the signal hung out is, “ We shall be saved;” looks that way, and the signal displayed is, “ Thou art our Father.” Between these fires the heart is melted, and flows down into the great confession of the text. This, Isaiah, is “repentance unto life;” but the goodness of God, compassing thee behind and before — “the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 50: 2.02.05. ROOTED IN LOVE ======================================================================== V. ROOTED IN LOVE. “Rooted and grounded in love.” — Ephesians 3:17. ON bended knees and with bursting heart the Apostle of the Gentiles, from his prison at Rome, pleads with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus in behalf of his beloved brethren at Ephesus, that they may be “ rooted and grounded in love.” These two distinct conceptions are very frequently united in the Scriptures. (For examples of this union, see Psalms 144:12; and 1 Corinthians 3:19.) Two cognate conceptions — one borrowed from the processes of nature, and the other from human art — are employed to indicate at once the life, the growth, the strength, and the stability of a Christian’s hope. A tree and a tower are the material objects which are used here as alphabetic letters to express a spiritual thought. More particularly, as a tree depends for life and growth upon its roots being embedded in a genial soil, and a tower depends for strength and stability upon its foundation, the apostle desires, by aid of these conceptions, to express and illustrate the corresponding features of the Christian life. If disciples are compared to living trees, love is the soil they grow in; if they are compared to a building, love is the foundation on which it stands secure. Dropping from view now the second of these associated conceptions, we shall confine our regard to the first. A believing man, pleading with God in behalf of fellowbelievers, prays that they may “ be rooted in love.” The picture, thus limited, contains only two objects. These are the ground that sustains the tree, and the tree that grows in the ground. The ground in which the tree grows represents the love that faith feeds on; the tree that grows on that ground represents the faith that leans and feeds on love. I. The soil in which the living tree is planted: it is love. A question rises here at the outset which must be settled ere we can advance a step with the exposition, — What is the love in which the trees of righteousness are rooted? Whether is it God’s love to man, or man’s love to God and to his brother? The question admits of an answer at once easily intelligible and demonstrably true. The love in which the roots of faith strike down for nourishment is not human but divine. It is not even that grace which is sovereign and divine in its origin, but residing and acting in a renewed human heart: it is the attribute, and even the nature, of Deity, for “ God is love.” The soil which bears and nourishes the new life of man is the love of God in the gift of his Son. The analogy introduced absolutely demands that the text should be so understood. To explain it otherwise would destroy the consistency of the analogy, and distort the spiritual lesson which it is employed to teach. It would be, in effect, to turn the parable upside down. When Paul prays that the Ephesian Christians may be rooted, he obviously thinks of them as living plants. Whatever the soil may be in which the plant grows, it must be something distinct from the plant itself. It introduces an inextricable confusion of ideas to think of believers as trees rooted in their own love — an emotion that has its abode and its exercise within their own hearts. The roots of a man’s faith and hope must penetrate, not inward into the love he exercises, but outward into the love which is exercised towards him. The roots of a tree grow, not into the tree itself, but into an independent soil, which at once supports its weight and nourishes its life. In like manner a Christian’s faith does not lean and live upon anything within himself; it goes out and draws all its support from God’s love to sinners in the gospel of his Son. The same result may be obtained by looking to the twin analogy of an edifice resting on its foundation. The term “ grounded “ refers specifically to the foundation on which a building rests. “ Foundationed,” if there were such a word in our language, would be a more exact and literal translation. The two analogies here imitated in one clause are obviously parallel throughout their whole length. The foundation on which a house stands is something external to the house itself; and so the soil in which a tree grows is something external to the tree. Love, on the spiritual side of the comparison, corresponds both to the ground which sustains a tree and the rock which sustains a building. That love, in both cases, is demonstrably something completely distinct from the soul that leans on it. The love which satisfies a soul is not emotion that springs within itself. *’ God is love.” Behold the Rock of Ages on which the building stands; behold the generous soil which satisfies these towering trees of righteousness! But the question may be decided more shortly, if not more surely, by a direct appeal to the written Word. In the Epistle to the Colossians, where the same apostle about the same time is discoursing on the same theme to a sister Church, occurs an expression which, being precisely parallel and yet not completely identical, brings out the significance of our text in the manner of an algebraic equation. “ As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him; rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith “(Colossians 2:6-7). No one can fail to perceive the identity of the two associated conceptions as they occur in the two epistles. In both letters alike, a tree rooted and a building founded are brought together in the same order, for the purpose of setting forth the spiritual life and steadfastness of believers. Obviously the apostle meant to express to the Colossian Christians the self -same idea by the term “rooted” that he had already conveyed thereby to those at Ephesus; but while in the’ one epistle he writes “ rooted in love,” in the other he writes “ rooted in him,” — that is, in Christ. Here is demonstration that the love in which faith find’s its sustenance is God’s love in the covenant to his own; for Christ, the unspeakable gift, is the issue and embodiment of that love. In Paul’s mind — that is, in the mind of the Spirit — “Christ” and the love which faith lives on are identical. The terms are used alternately and indifferently to signify the same thing. To be rooted in him manifestly means to be rooted in the love wherewith he first loved us. Having determined the first point, — that the soil in which faith’s roots can freely grow is found in God, not in man, — we must now weigh well what attribute or manifestation of God it is that permits and invites the confidence of the fallen. The justice of God does not afford a soil on which the hope of sinners can thrive. “ Our God is a consuming fire; “ and as often as the straining hopes of men stretch forth in the direction of the judgment-seat, they are driven back in dismay. As well might you expect the tender roots of a living plant to strike kindly down into hot ashes, as expect the trust of a guilty soul to go into the righteousness of God for support. No; there is nothing on this side but a fearful looking for of judgment to devour. Neither can human hopes grow in a mixture of mercy and justice such as men, in ignorance of the gospel, when conscience is uneasy, may mingle for themselves. You may indeed find some who for a time seem to grow in such a mixture; but the roots never go deep, and the hold is never secure. In the plant so nourished there is no freshness of life, no blossom of joy, no fruit of righteousness. If the unclean conscience, apart from the blood of sprinkling, qualify the divine justice with a proportion of imaginary tenderness, and qualify the tenderness in turn with a proportion of avenging wrath, the result will be a miserable halting between two. There is only one place in which righteousness and peace can meet without mutually destroying each other, and that is in the cross of Christ the Substitute. In Christ, but not elsewhere, God is at once just, and the justifier of the sinful who believe. Disturbed by an accusing conscience, and not perceiving the way of righteous peace through the death of Christ, the sinful strive to make matters right for the judgment seat; but, striving unlawfully, never succeed. They throw into their conceptions of God as much unappeased anger as serves to destroy all the pleasure of their religion, and as much softness for sin as serves to extract all its power. Their God is not very kind, and therefore they have no pleasure in his company; their (?od is not very just, and therefore they take liberties with his law. Thus “the double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” It is not in divine justice, nor in a spurious compound of justice and indulgence, that human souls can securely place their hope for eternity. If ever an immortal spirit is rooted at all, it must be in love — in love that is infinite — the love of God in the gift of his Son. “ In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and ye are complete in him.” Those that are rooted in him live and bring forth fruits of righteousness. These are not plants growing for a few days on rocky ground. They may plunge their roots down as far as their faculties and their lives extend, they will never meet any obstacle to check and repel their confidence. God is love; and they cannot by their penetrating pass through that and strike a barren rock beyond. “ Happy are the people that are in such a case; yea, happy are they whose God is the Lord.” II. The plant that is rooted in the ground represents a believer getting all his support and all his sustenance from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Under this head, the first point that occurs is the very obvious one, that before any measure of growth can be obtained there must be life. Of what avail would richness of soil be to rows of dead branches? A withered branch draws no sap from the most fertile ground. Faith fastens on God’s revealed love in the covenant, and satisfies itself from this inexhaustible treasury; but who and what first creates faith? The living will, by the instincts of nature, seek convenient food; but how shall the dead be restored to life? Let it be granted that faith, appropriating God’s love, sustains the living, the question remains, Who quickens the dead? In the last resource, an answer to this question must be sought in the sovereignty of God and the ministry of the Spirit; but we must beware of so regarding God’s part in it as to miss or neglect our own. “ Live “ is the first thing in the Spirit’s ministry; but “ Believe” is the first thing in the duty of man. To God’s eye, looking downward from his own eternity, the order of events is. Live, that you may believe; but to our eye, as we stand on earth and look upwards, the order of events is, Believe, that you may live. Our part is not to produce life, but to exercise trust. Honour God by referring the origin of life to his sovereign grace and power; but obey God by believing in Jesus Christ whom he has sent. Let us neither intrude into his province nor neglect our own. His command is, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;” “His commandments are not grievous.” If we in simplicity render this service, we shall find to our joy in that day that his work was perfect before we responded to his call. Here we may well appropriate to ourselves the advice which the neighbours gave to the blind man when Jesus was passing by: “ Be of good comfort; rise, he calleth thee.” The fact that he calls us should be sufficient warrant for us to come. O Spirit, breathe upon the dead bones, that they may live, — upon the dead branches, that they may grow! But even when the plant is living, many obstacles may intervene to prevent it from fredy pushing down its roots and drinking up the richness of the soil. Stones of stumbling lie in the way of the living root, and hinder its growth. “ An enemy hath done this.” Desponding thoughts, of various shape and source, may mar the peace and stunt the growth of a disciple, but they cannot quench his life. The natural history of faith’s life on earth will be an interesting study, when the day shall reveal all its windings — all its days of drooping, and all its days of growth. Sometimes the history of vegetable life, concealed for generations, is afterwards thrown open. When a forest tree, that has outlived several generations of its owners, is at last thrown down by a tempest, and its roots all exposed to the inspection of the passer-by, many secret passages of its early history are at length revealed. Each bend of those gnarled roots has a tale to tell, — of various efforts and disappointments, and conflicts and victories. Here, in the centre of the circular mass, the main stem was pointing perpendicularly downward when the tree was young, perhaps a century ago; but ere it had gone far in that direction, it had struck against a stone. The fibre, then young and pliable, had sensitively turned as soon as it felt the obstacle, and grew for a little upward, as if retracing its steps. Then it had bent to one side and crept along the surface of the stone, intending, so to speak, to turn its flank and plunge into the deep earth beyond its outmost edge. Once or twice in its horizontal course it came to hollows in the stone, and ever instinctively seeking downward, penetrated to the bottom of each; but finding no opening, it came always up again, and pursued its course on the horizontal line. But, long ere it reached the margin of the great rock, it found a rent, narrow, indeed, but thorough. Into this minute opening it thrust a needlelike point. It succeeded in pushing that pioneer through. Tasting thereby of the rich soil below, it thence drew new strength for itself. Strong now in that acquired strength, it increased its bulk and rent the rock asunder. You may now see the two halves of the cleaved rock hanging on the mighty root that rent them. Now the victor has overcome its adversaries, and makes a show of them openly. It holds the remnants of its ancient enemy aloft as trophies of its victory. It is thus that a living soul struggles against all obstructions, and either round them or through them penetrates into the unlimited love of God as it is in Christ. There the life satisfies itself and becomes strong. This man is more than conqueror through Him that loved him. A soul has been quickened by the Spirit. The new life ha 5 begun; the new tastes are felt; the appetites of the new nature are stirring. Why am I thus? This thirsty soul now longs for God, and strikes out for satisfying in the direction of his covenant. But something comes in the way. Through the wiles of the devil a great rock of offence is cast right in between that sinner and the Saviour’s love. In one case, the stumbling-block is the doctrine of election: If I am not among the chosen number, I need not try. In another case, it is the sin against the Holy Ghost: If I have committed the unpardonable sin, I need not strive, for God will not hear me. In another case, it is such a view of his own sins as leads him morbidly to think that while there may be pardon for others, there can be none for him. Ah! this quickened soul, in the beginnings of life, while the intelligence is yet feeble like an infant’s mind, when feeling for the love of God in Christ to Kve upon, often strikes upon a stone. This is not God; this is not love. Thus the root finds so many stones, and these so close together, that it cannot reach the rich ground underneath for nourishment; but the root, true to its nature, never gives up. It strives without ceasing to reach its object. Worming its way along the surface of the obstruction, to find a passage round it — fretted and frightened, and thrown back often, but never despairing, never slackening — it holds on, until at length between these opposing rocks it reaches and tastes the sap of the unlimited soil beneath. Then it becomes strong enough to throw the obstruction aside, and expatiate at will in its element. When the saved are drawn at length from the ground in which the new life secretly grew, and all the history of their redemption revealed in the better land, themselves and others will read with interest the record of the struggle, and the final victory. It will then be seen that every hindrance which the tempter threw in faith’s way only exercised and so strengthened faith. They who have had the hardest conflict in throwing obstacles aside that they might freely draw from redeeming love in Christ, draw most freely from that love when they reach it: as that woman who had pined many years in disease, and spent all her means on other physicians, drew proportionally a larger draught from the fountain when she touched its lip at last. As if surprised and delighted with the suddenness, the eagerness, and the largeness of her demand upon his healing power, the Lord stood and looked round and cried, “ Who touched me? “ So, I suppose, yet in his glory, Jesus has occasion from time to time to say in glad surprise to surrounding angels, Some one has touched me, when a sinner who has long tried, and been long kept back by stones of stumbling, at last gets the lip of thirsty faith laid upon the fountain of living water. “Fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom:” fear not, little roots; the stones which lie in your way are many and hard, but when you work past them or through them, there is love infinite and eternal, all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, in Christ, that you may live upon and luxuriate in. Have you been brought through fire and water? Then all the more sweet will the “ large place “ be when at length you reach it. Seek, and ye shall find. Many things go to increase the fruit-bearing, but all are subordinate to this, — the free plunging of the living root into the rich, unobstructed ground. Pruning, and watering, and weeding will do nothing for the tree if its roots have struck a rock. In like manner, the main requisite to a productive Christian life is the liberty that the soul enjoys to spread itself to the full extent of its capacity into the love of God in Christ. It is the receiving that produces the doing. The law of grace is not, Give freely, and you shall in return freely receive: the law of grace is the opposite, — “ Freely ye have received, freely give.” This analogy suggests many practical lessons; but it is not necessary even to enumerate them, for they spring spontaneously before the reader’s eye as soon as he has apprehended the main features of the similitude. The storm, for example, that shakes the living tree, ordinarily serves but to compel its roots to take a deeper hold, and make it stronger to bear the next onset. So afflictions exercise and strengthen faith. Again-a needful lesson in an age of many words and little tendency to silence — the roots grow best when they are least meddled with. The child who pulls up his young tree two or three times every day in order to show his companions its roots, will soon have nothing but a dead stem to show. Encourage by all means the meek confession of a convert’s hope, but do not lay open all the spiritual experience of a novice to satisfy the curiosity of some passing Talkative. Once more, we have had fathers of our flesh who did not give us a stone when we asked for bread. The more we counted on their love the better pleased they were. Let us beware of mistaking and distrusting the Father of our spirits. Alas! if our roots were exposed, they would tell a tale of constraint and suspicion. How often even a disciple refuses to plunge openly into offered love, and draws back &s if he expected a repulse. It was Jesus who said, “ The Father ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 51: 2.02.06. DRAWN AND DRAGGED ======================================================================== VI. DRAWN AND DRAGGED. “ But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.”— James 1:14. WE are tempted, it seems — “ drawn “ into sin. Who tempts us — who draws us? Not God. He is perfectly holy, and by a necessity of nature does good and not evil. God is our friend — in all the ordinations of his providence and in all the revelations of his grace. God is for us; who is against us? There is indeed a tempter — an evil spirit unseen, the enemy of man; but let us beware what use we make of the scriptures which reveal the fact. If any one should be disposed to excuse himself on this ground, James, the Lord*s brother, gives him here a clear warning. The evil spirit has no power at all over any of us, except what we concede to him. He “ goeth about seeking whom he may devour:” he cannot devour whom he will. Only they who “ give place “ to the devil — and that place within their own bosoms — can be hurt by his fiery darts. The tempter is elsewhere described as “ the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience “ (Ephesians 2:2). These two branches of the definition explain and qualify each other. As the prince of the power of the air, he could do a soul no harm: it is when he is admitted and welcomed within a man’s own heart that he defiles and ensnares. So then, in the last resort, as we have it in James, *’ every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” From the striking figures here employed we learn some specific features of the sad process. The two terms are literally, “ drawn out, and hooked.” The first expression does not yet mean drawn by the hook; it means rather drawn to the hook. There are two successive drawings, very diverse in character. In classic Greek, the first term is indifferently applied to both; but in this case the circumstances confine it to one. The first is a drawing towards the hook, and the second is a dragging by the hook. The first drawmg is an invisible spiritual power, the second is a rude and cruel physical constraint. The first is a secret enticement of the will, and the second is an open and outrageous oppression by a superior force, binding the slave and destroying him. The first process, as applied to hunting and fishing, is well known and easily understood. This part of the process is carried on with care and skill and secrecy. No noise is made, and no danger permitted to meet the eye of the victim. Everything is artfully and falsely made to assume the appearance of innocence and safety. With quiet stealthy steps the hunter or the fisher moves about. When necessary, he will lie down on the ground, that he may the better conceal himself. His whole art consists in these two things — exposing an enticing bait, and concealing himself and his snare. By smell or by sight, the fish or the wild animal is “ drawn “ from the safe, deep hidings place in the bush or in the river. The victim, not perceiving the danger, is by its own “ lust “ — its own appetite — drawn to its doom. It is thus that a man is drawn — but mark it well, by his own lust, his own appetite for pleasure — out of safe paths and into danger. Forewarned, forearmed. Oh, “ watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” The next part of the process is the act of fixing the barbed hook in the victim’s jaws. The word is “ baited; “that is, enticed by the bait to swallow the hook — the hook that is in the first instance unseen and unsuspected. When the hook is fastened, there is another drawing; but oh, how diverse from the first! The angler does not now hide himself, and tread softly, and speak in a whisper. There is no more any gentleness. He rudely drags his helpless prey to shore, and takes its life, I have often seen the same process, with the same difference between its commencement and its conclusion, in the tempting and ensnaring of human souls. At first all care is taken not to alarm the conscience. It is a temperate cup, and it contributes to health and friendship. It will refresh and cheer you, and it will bind you in warmer love to your brother. But when the barb goes into the flesh — when the drug has bitten — when the appetite, insatiable as the grave, has been generated, the poor slave is dragged, without disguise and without ceremony, through the mire. His morbid, fiery appetite is now his governor, and he is dragged about, exposed as a spectacle, “ whithersoever the governor listeth.” The best, the only real preventive against these baited books, is to be satisfied with a sweetness in which there are no sin and no danger. The creature that is hungry greedily takes the bait and is caught. The human soul that is empty — that is not satisfied with the peace of God — is easily drawn into the pleasures of sin. In a certain Highland lake, I have been told, sportsmen at one season of the year expect no sport. There are plenty of fishes, but they will not take the bait. Some vegetable growth on the bottom at that period is abimdant and suitable as food. Being satisfied at home, they will not go away to follow the offer of a stranger. As long as they have enough in their own element, the fisher dangles his bait in vain over the surface of the water. They cannot be drawn to the hook, and so they are not dragged by it. I have observed, in the process of fishing, that on the part of the victim there are two successive struggles, both violent, both short, and both, for the most part, unavailing. When first it feels the hook, it makes a vigorous effort to shake itself free. But that effort soon ceases, and the fish sails gently after the retreating hook, as if it were going towards the shore with its own consent. What is the reason of its apparent docility after the first struggle? Ah, poor victim! it soon discovers that to draw against the hook, when the hook is fastened, is very painful; therefore, for the sake of immediate ease, it yields and follows. Then, when it feels the shore, and knows instinctively that its doom has come, there is another desperate struggle, and all is over. I think I have observed these two struggles, one at the beginning and one at the end, with the period of silent resignation between them, in the experience of an immortal man, my brother. There is an effort to resist the appetite, after the victim discovers that he is in its grasp. But the effort is painful, and is soon abandoned. “ I will seek it yet again,” is the silent resolution of despair. The struggle, with all the agonies of remorse, may be once more renewed when the waters of life grow shallow, and the soul is grazing the eternal shore. The result? Alas! the darkness covers it; we know it not. After the first drawing, which is soft and unsuspected, the way of transgressors is hard. The fish with the hook in its jaws is the chosen glass in which the Scripture invites us to see it. The snare of intemperance is the one in which the victim is tormented, and made a show of openly, in sight of the world. There are other snares that are secret in the second stage, as in the first: because they are secret, they cannot be freely named among us; but, oh! many strong men are caught and destroyed by these baits. It is blessed to be free. “ If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” Hear ye him: “ Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest into your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 52: 2.02.07. THE FIXED COMPASS ======================================================================== VII. THE FIXED COMPASS. "He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.”— Psalms 112:7. THIS psalm is a fine full-length portrait of a godly man. Is it drawn from life? Did the painter, or any of his contemporaries, sit for this likeness? “ Of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?” Neither of himself, it must be confessed, nor of any other man, could the prophet speak all this. This is not the portrait of any mere man that ever lived; and yet it is a true portrait. Artists paint ideals on canvas, combining in one figure the finest features gathered from many specimens. The result is true to nature; and yet no living man ever answered to the likeness. The picture represents what man might be, rather than what he is. Sketches of saints occasionally occur in the Scriptures wanting the blemishes which more or less mar the beauty of every actual life. These representations show what the redeemed may become when they are fully conformed to the image of Christ. They exhibit the new man when he has attained the perfect stature. It is right that the highest standard should be set before us; but the best has many things to forget and leave behind, and many steps to press forward, ere he gains the prize of this high calling. The pattern saint of this psalm is happy as well as holy. It concerns us specially to inquire how his happiness is secured while he inhabits a frail body and lives in an evil world. Among other sorrows from which the shield of faith defends him is “ the fear of evil tidings.” Mark the word; for there is no promise, even to the most matured saint, that evil tidings shall not reach his ears. He, like his neighbour, is exposed both to the wars and the rumours of wars that shake the most stable thrones. Both the announcement of coming evil, and the evil that has been announced, come upon those that are God’s dear children, as upon other people. The sound of the midnight tempest boding evil, and the wreck that it boded, reach the good man as well as the wicked; and both are like iron entering into his soul. The peculiar privilege that belongs to victorious faith is exemption from the fear of evil tidings. Evil tidings, when they come, will pierce a good man’s heart; but in two things he has an advantage over those who know not God: first, he is not kept in terror before the time by the anticipation of possible calamity; and next, even when calamity overtakes him, he does not look upon it in blank despair. He knows that it is the chastening of a Father, and is sure that love is wielding the rod. This, then, being the kind and degree of exemption which a godly man enjoys, we must now inquire into the means whereby he attains- it. How comes it that evil tidings have not the same terror for him that they have for other men? Expressly, the text declares, because “ his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.” This man has a solidity and an independence which others never know. His heart is fixed. It is something to have one’s mind made up and settled. No man can be happy as long as he does not know his own mind — does not know what he would be at. “ A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” On the contrary, “ if thine eye be single, thy wholq body shall be full of light.” To have an object in view, and to go straight at it, constitutes in a great measure the difference between a useful and a wasted life. But while there is very little of either happiness or usefulness in a life as long as it shifts about from one object to another — one thing to-day, and another to-morrow — it does not follow that all will go well when you have chosen your object, and pursue it steadily. As much depends on the object that the heart is fixed upon as on the fixing of the heart. Even after you get your heart fixed, you may be as far from happiness and safety as before. Your heart is fixed; but what is it fixed on? On houses and lands; on emoluments and honour; on youth, and health, and pleasure; on wife and children? Alas! it is easy to fix on any of these; it does not require any vigorous act of the will, or any heavy labour of the hands, to fasten yourself to objects like these. Your heart-strings warp themselves around and through and through these objects spontaneously, when they lie within reach, as ivy clasps, and even interpenetrates, an old wall, without any nailing up. A beautiful object is that same ivy when it has clasped the wall with a thousand tendrils, and covered the wall even to its copestone with woven tasselled green — beautiful as the matted foliage quivering in the wind and glittering in the sunshine. But have you seen the ivy after the old wall has fallen? Then it is a sight that might make the observer weep. Prostrate, broken, torn, soiled, withering — ah, how is its glory gone! And, alas \ it cannot be restored. Those tendrils that have grown so closely in, and have been torn so rudely out, cannot now ply into another support, though another and solider support were at hand. The towering and stately but feeble branches cannot now be attached to another prop. Nothing for them now but to be cut down and cast into the burning. Possibly, in another season, the old bare root may send out young shoots again; but it is only by such a death and resurrection that the parasite which held so closely, and was rejected so rudely, can possibly be attached to another and a better stay. In the fallen, broken, draggled ivy, lying along on the earth, and crushed by crumbling stones, you see the image of a human being whose heart has been fixed on a perishing portion, when that portion has fallen or fled. Woe, woe to those who have grown with, and grown for, and grown into, some tottering wall! When the wall crumbles, what of the life that leant on it? Woe is me! How many heart-strings we see rent in the various calamities of life; and how many heart-strings are preparing for themselves a dread rending, by going for the soul’s support into something that is rotten at the root, and will yield to the strain of the next storm! Look at David’s ideal man: not what this man and that man is, but what any man through divine grace may ba See the source of his peace and safety: “ His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.” We obtain here an interesting glimpse of the true relation in which the children stand to our Father in heaven. It is a matter of the heart, more than even of the intellect. True religion is not a matter into which a man is driven against his will; it is a matter that he seeks with desire, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks. It is not a demonstration that God is a righteous judge, and therefore the guilty must tremble before him; it is a tasting that the Lord is gracious, and a consequent clinging to his bosom, as a frightened infant clasps its mother’s breast. The heart goes to God; the desires of the new nature flow out in that direction: “ Nearer to thee, my God; nearer to thee.” And then, when you come nigh in the covenant, God is not a terror, but a trust. The profane and unbelieving are often far out of their reckoning when they try to understand a believer’s faith. They suppose that a devout man submits to some dark cold restraint, in order to secure some future expected benefit. Their conception is as near as may be the opposite of the truth. They who get nigh through the blood of the covenant give way to their hearts’ longings when they walk with God. If you could by any means convince them that there is no God, the light of this life would be extinguished, as well as the hope of another. Indeed, nothing but a trust in God will keep a human heart near him. We cannot resist the laws of nature in things spiritual any more than in things material. It is a law of nature that the human spirit keeps at a distance from that which it dislikes and dreads. There is no way of keeping our spirit near to God, except by learning to trust him. And conversely, when you trust him, you do not need external compression to keep you near. It is well that the heart should be fixed on the unchangeable and eternal One; for no other anchor for the soul is sure and steadfast. In proportion as the heart of a believer is fixed on high it becomes looser to all beneath. As it gets firmer hold of things unseen and eternal, it relaxes its grasp of things seen and temporal. A soul cannot be made fast on both sides. “ Ye cannot serve two masters.” Serving one master, you may have many important and tender relations with fellow-servants. Faith in God does not rend theties that bind man to man. The expectation of a rest that remaineth does not interfere with needful labour on our present field. You may — you must take many other things into your hands; but only one should be permitted to glue your heart indissolubly to itself. The magnet of the ship’s compass is in this aspect very like a godly man in the course of his earthly pilgrimage. The magnet on the sea and the believing soul in this life are firmly fixed on one side, and hang loose on every other. Both alike are fastened mysteriously to the distant and unseen, but are slack and easily moved in all their material settings. Precisely because they are attached beneath, they are free to keep by their hold on high; and precisely because of their hold on high, they do not turn round with every movement of their material supports. The magnet is by far the slackest, loosest thing in the ship. It is the only slack, loose thing there. It is not tied to the spars or nailed to the deck; it is not even laid down and left to the force of its own gravity. An elaborate machinery has been constructed for the purpose of reducing the friction, both vertical and horizontal, to a minimum, and so leaving it nearly as free to move as if it were imponderous. I need not describe the contrivance in detail: suffice it to say, that it is so softly poised on a needle-point in the middle, that if it chooses to fix itself by its own nature — as it were by the tendency of its heart — to a known but unseen point in heaven, it is at liberty to do so, and not obliged to turn with every turning of the ship that bears it. The ship rolls from side to side; the ship pitches, now her bow and now her stern raised high above the water; the ship changes her tack, now going east, and now west, and anon driving before the wind. All things in the ship move with her except the magnet of the compass. It alone keeps ever one attitude, whatever changes of attitude take place in the ship; or if it turn partially and momentarily, with the sudden heavings of the labouring vessel, it is only for a moment — it rights itself again. Steady and still otherwise, it is when driven for a little out of its normal attitude that the magnet moves — moves, trembling and uneasy, until it regains its own place, and there it rests., It is thus that a heart is loose to the world if it is fixed on Christ. It may have needed many rendings to slacken the heart’s hold of things seen and temporal. There are sometimes more of these, and sometimes less. There are diversities of operation. Some are more gently set loose, and some are severed only by the wrenching of God’s own hand, leaving a right arm cut off, or a right eye plucked out, behind. But whether he comes in an earthquake or in a still small voice, it is the doing of the Lord, when the bonds are loosed that bound a soul to the dust, and the soul, delivered, swings round free to follow the Lord. But still, however lightly and loosely poised upon its bearings the needle might be, it would turn with all the ship’s turnings, and never hold its head to the pole, unless it were magnetized. The needle of the compass is a bit of steel; but a bit of steel, though rightly framed and nicely balanced, could not serve the purposes of a compass. They take the bit of steel and hang it on a thread at a particular angle to the horizon, and give it a certain stroke with a hammer. Then and thereby it is magnetized. Its nature seems new. There are life and purpose in the iron now, and its life is manifested by a sure fixed pointing to the pole. The freeness of its poising did not make it point to the pole: it is a mysterious change of its own nature that gives it this tendency, and the freeness of its balance in the gearing permits it to obey that tendency without obstruction. In like manner, the setting free of the heart from all idolatrous cleaving to things seen, though necessary, is not enough. Without it you cannot succeed, but even with it you may fail. Alas! we have seen a man by the strokes of God set adrift from all his moorings on the earth, and yet not fastened by faith to the anchor of the soul within the veil. When all the evil spirits are cast out of a man, it does not follow as a matter of course that he shall take Christ to fill up the empty room: he may leave it empty, until the evil spirits return and regain possession. Weary of the world is not all at once ready for heaven. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom with his understanding, or cleave to the King with his heart. As the fashioned and poised steel did not turn to the pole before it was magnetized, so the unrenewed heart is not fixed in a trust on God, although all its earthly portion has been taken away. A mysterious touch is needed to bring the heart into unison with Christ, so that it shall ever afterwards point to this pole, — the ministry of the Spirit in regeneration. “ Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” Even after the heart has got its bias, and is by the law of a new nature fixed on Christ, the pointing is not perfect or constant. Many things hinder. The most common cause of the magnet’s aberration — an aberration that often causes shipwreck — is an unsuspected m&ss of attractive matter lying underneath the deck, which draws the magnet from its pole. Alas! even after the heart has been truly turned to the Lord, how often is it drawn aside by certain heaps of stuff that secretly attract it. “ Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation” — “Set your affection on things above, not on things that are on the earth “ — “ Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” There is a comfort which belongs to the children of the kingdom, and yet cannot easily be stated without a risk of soothing the worldly into a deeper sleep. The tumult of griefs and repentings — of regretted backslidings, and eager, agitating returns to the Lord — the fightings without and the fears within — that to a greater or less extent chequer a disciple’s life, do not by any means throw doubt upon his interest in the Saviour. These are symptoms of a true faith. While the ship is at sea, the magnet shakes and moves more than any other part of the ship; and that precisely because its heart is fixed on the distant and the unseen. When, by a sudden turn or lurch in the storm, it is driven partially aside, it does not rest there; it immediately begins to struggle back again into its right position. Other objects, when they are turned away with the turning of the ship, continue in that attitude. But the magnet cannot remain averted; therefore, while the ship is at sea, it is constantly quivering. The paradox becomes at once true and easily understood, — because it is fixed it is never at rest. Souls that have their trust in the Lord are in this way restless. They are always tremblingly struggling back into their right position before the Lord. This is proof of life, — that they rest not in an averted attitude. “ Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.” But perhaps the greatest difficulty and danger to the pilgrim on this part of his course lie in the relations, close and tender, that he must and should maintain to objects lower than the Lord — objects on earth which cannot continue by reason of death. Must one who would have his heart fixed, trusting in the Lord, keep more distant and more cold than others in the relations of kindred and friendship? No, verily. The heart that is fixed on the Lord may twine round loved ones on earth as closely as the heart that has no hold on heaven. This is possible, but I do not say this is easy. Dangers and temptations lie thick here. Where does the fowler lay his snare? Precisely on the path that his victim most frequently treads. Among our most binding duties and our purest enjoyments lie some of our greatest dangers. There is a way of safety, if we have grace to choose and follow it. We must not cling to anything mortal, as the ivy clings to the old wall. There is a possibility of holding fast and yet holding loosely. It is thus that a workman grasps his tool. He holds it fast for an efficient stroke, but he can easily lay it down the next moment When a human heart is rightly balanced, the unrestrained exercise of all pure natural affections does not hinder, but rather helps, the faith that fastens on the Supreme. See how the analogous relations have been arranged in the motions of the spheres. The moon does not need to abjure its relations to the earth in order to maintain a supreme allegiance to the central sun. All the planetary bodies revolve round the sun; but that paramount law does not interfere with the circulation of the satellite also, and at the same time, round the earth — the globe that lies nearest to it. Our moon is as obedient to the sun as any globe in the solar system. Its course around its great centre is as true as the orbit of any planet, and far more beautiful. Whereas the chief planets circulate in a prosaic line, the moon in its movements describes a spiral track, which adds grace and beauty to the landscape of space, as climbing, flowering shrubs relieve the monotony of a forest. The first and great commandment is, “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart;” and the second, which is like unto it, and consistent with it, is, “ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” If we obtain grace rightly to divide the affections of our hearts as well as the word of God, we shall find that the subordinate relations of time, instead of choking, shelter and cherish the precious seed of a better life. When, through grace, the heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord, the full, free exercise and enjoyment of all pure human relations will be safer for ourselves and more attractive as an example to others than if, in order to make sure of our hold on heaven, we should abandon the duties of time and crush the affections of nature. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 53: 2.02.08. THE GOOD SHEPHERD ======================================================================== VIII. THE GOOD SHEPHERD. “I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” — John 10:15-16. HE relation between the shepherd and his sheep is employed frequently and freely in the Scriptures to set forth the loving care of Christ on the one hand, and the blessed privileges of Christians on the other. Several aspects of the analogy — some of them unique and peculiar — are presented in this text. Before we proceed to deal directly with the parable, however, it will be very instructive to glance for a moment at the words which go immediately before it. Here the preface to the parable is greater than the parable itself. Christ telLs his disciples first that he died for them, and then that he lived for them. His first intimation is, “ I lay down my life for the sheep;” and his second is, “ I have other sheep, and them also I must bring.” There is a grand reason why these two are brought together, and arranged in this order. In the plan of this wise Master Builder, the foundation is first laid, and then the superstructure is reared. It is first his satisfying atonement, and next his ingathering ministry. The estimate that should count resistance to the doctrine of the atonement the chief ingredient in the sceptical spirit of the age would not be far wide of the mark. It is free salvation through the sacrifice of the Substitute that most offends human philosophy in our day. The great Prophet himself, seeing the end from the beginning, and seeing in the end of the world that specific form of enmity to the cross, presciently supplied the antidote in his Word. He speaks first of his atoning death, and next of his ministering life. No effective ministry without a full expiation, on the sacrifice the ministry leans, as a structure on its foundation. “ I lay down my life for the sheep.” Here, in a few simple words, is recorded the greatest fact in the course of time. Here lies the reason of the hope that is in believers. “ Behold the Lamb of Gk)d, that taketh away the sin of the world!” He who clothed himself with a human body clothes his thoughts towards us in forms which, being taken off humanity, fit humanity again. He is the Shepherd, and his people are the flock. The Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He takes their place, that they may enjoy his; he bears their guilt, that they may wear his righteousness; he endures their curse, that they may inherit his glory. “ He saved others; himself he cannot save.” Because he saved others, he could not save himself. If he had come down from the cross we could never have ascended to the crown. When sin gnaws in your conscience, and the judgment seat gleams before your eyes, here lies your help. Listen to the voice of Jesus: “ I lay down my life for the sheep.” From an accusing conscience and a condemning law hide in the suffering Redeemer, as the Hebrews hid under the sprinkled blood till the night of death passed over and salvation came with the dawn. This is the turning-point; this is the key of the position. Around this spot the conflict of ages has raged. Christ was for this sacrifice, and the devil against it, from the beginning. When the Lord intimated to his disciples that he was about to lay down his life, Peter, or rather Satan within him, replied, “ Far be this from thee. Lord.” The cross is still to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness; but to them that are saved it is the power of God, and the wisdom of God. In this his greatest plan and greatest work, God has not missed his mark. The Eternal Son has not thrown his life away; he laid down his life to save. I shall trust him that he knew what he did, and did what he meant to do. It is his life laid down that shall support me in my depths. Into this ark I enter when the fountains of the great deep are broken up and the flood overwhelms the world. After the shortest and simplest announcement of his atoning death comes a description of his saving ministry, “ And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.” 1. “ This fold:” the seed of Israel — the visible Church of those times. It became Christ to fulfil all righteousness. He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil. He was born in Bethlehem. He came in the track of the old sacrifices, and came unto his own. The faithful in Jerusalem were waiting for the Consolation of Israel; and at the appointed time the Consolation of Israel appeared. By his own personal ministry he founded the kingdom in Israel, and left to his followers the task of propagating it through the world. Some of the seed of Abraham were gathered in. The common people heard him gladly, and here and there a ruler also was subdued. At the word of Jesus, living children of Abraham’s faith sprang from those stones which then constituted the bulk of his natural offspring. The Redeemer’s soul was from time to time satisfied as he felt the parched lips of a daughter of Israel pressed to himself, the Foimtain of living water. He was filled with joy as he felt branch after branch growing into himself, the Vine, for life and fruitfulness. They got life — he gave it: both were blessed, but the Giver most. In ’* this fold” he had some of his flock gathered and sheltered and fed, even during the time of his own personal ministry. But— 2. “ Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold." Here the expansive love of Jesus breaks forth. He began at Jerusalem, but he did not end there. Even while his feet stand on the soil of Palestine, the longings of his heart go out to the ends of the earth. He was getting some, but he longed for more; his appetite was not satisfied. The King is still sending out relays of servants into the highways and hedges of the world to compel the poor to come in, that his table may be furnished with guests. After he has gathered into his fold a flock more numerous than the stars that stud the plains of heaven, he still cries, “ Other sheep!” “ Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Besides the expansive out-going of the Redeemer’s love, you may mark here its all-encompassing sovereignty: “other sheep / have,’’ He does not say, I may acquire others at some future time; he has them already. They were his in the covenant from the beginning, and he held them, every one, at that moment, in distinguishing love upon his heart. At a time when they had not learned to follow him — when they were neither born nor born again — he counts and calls them his. Ah, believing brother, thy soul lay on the Redeemer’s heart that day. Thy backsliding hurt him, but did not make him change. Thy sins wounded him, but did not provoke him to let thee go. “I am Jehovah; I change not: therefore ye seed of Jacob are not consumed.” 3. “ Them also I bring.” There is no respect of persons with GkxL Of every nation, and kindred, and tongue will be the multitude, which no man can number, who stand round the throne in white clothing. “Them also.” No poor slave will be left out because he is black, or bears the mark of lashing; no servant is pushed aside to make way for his master; no rich or powerful man who cleaved to Christ is kept out at the cry of a mob that envied him. If any were kept back, the Lord would pause as he came across the sky like the lightning — would pause and say, as he beckoned to attending angels, “ Thefm also.” Gather up the fragments, that none of them be lost. O ye least in the kingdom of God, I have never heard that the law of gravity, God’s servant, attended to the worlds and mountains, letting the drops and atoms go because they were small! Be assured God, the master of that law, and of all laws, will not permit his little ones to slip through an opening in his love. “ Them also “ is a cheering word. I like to hold it in my hand; I like to roll it as a sweet morsel under my tongue, to taste it long and leisurely. Lazarus, with his sores all healed now, must not glide into his old habit of lying at the door; he also must come into the palace of the great King, and there abide. The prodigal, who went far from his father, and remained long, and had nothing to recommend him when he returned, he also must come in, and come as a son to a father’s bosom, without a fear. And these, who only came to Christ when they grew old, after spending their lifetime for the world; and these, who, though they came in youth, came not till they felt the hand of death upon their hearts — come in. The Master stands and says, “ Them also.” Manasseh, Saul of Tarsus — the blood of the martyr Stephen all off his hands at last — “ them also.” “ Them / bring!’ He sends none forward to make or find their own way. He goes before them, and bids them follow; he goes with them, and bears them through. They are not alone in trouble; for in all their afflictions he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them. He does not permit them to cross the valley of the shadow of death alone: the High Priest goes into the midst of Jordan, and therefore they pass safely over. “ I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” He will not send any disciples to the judgment-seat to make the best of their own case; he will be there before them, and will bring them to himself. Once more it may be, recorded, “ Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.” Those guilty brothers, although they trembled at the first hint of Joseph’s power, were, after full reconciliation, glad to find that Joseph ruled the kingdom. When they were convinced of their brother’s love, they rejoiced in their brother’s regal power. Although I find upon the throne of judgment Him whom I have crucified, yet when he manifests his forgiving love, I shall rejoice with a joy unspeakable to find that all judgment has been committed into his hands. We learn (Ephesians 5:27) that when Christ has washed and sanctified his Church, he will present it to himself, without spot or wrinkle, in that day. He brings his sheep home by going before them. He makes a way through the sea of wrath, that they may safely pass. “ I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no man Cometh into the Father but by me.” When he brings them to the Father, they are welcome home. “ Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is -Christ that died.” He brings them through the regeneration into the fold during their life on earth. It often takes much bringing to bring the distant nigh — the prodigal home; but all power in heaven and in earth is given to the Captain of our salvation. He will not fail nor be discouraged. To bring a drunken father home from his cups and his companions may take much power — more than weeping wife and hungry children can exert; but when the love of Christ gets hold of him by the heart, it leads him whithersoever it will. That love has laid hold of a miser, and drawn him from his gold; that love has laid hold of a sinner, whose right hand was bound indissolubly to his lust, and drawn the man to heaven, leaving his right hand behind. “Art thou a king then?” they said to Jesus, at that unrighteous tribunal; and he condescended to tell them that they had stumbled upon the truth: “ Thou sayesi” He is a King, and acts in a kingly way: he says, “I bring;” and when his strength is put forth, the threefold chains of the devil, the world, and the flesh give way like threads. He leads; they follow. Thy people, Lord, shall be willing in the day of thy power. At his bringing they come from east and west; at his command the north gives up, and the south keeps not back. Those that cleaved most firmly to the dust fly as doves to their windows, their wings glittering in beauty like yellow gold. That same bringing power, that rent asunder the chains of sin and liberated the soul, shall prevail to burst the gates of death, and bring the body in life and beauty from the grave. “ I am the resurrection and the life,” said Jesus, them also — the bodies of his saints, as well as the spirits — I bring with me; that where I am, they may be. "Arise, yea, rise again thou must, After a little rest, my dust, Thee God thy Maker gives Life that for ever lives. Hallelujah!” 4. “Them also I must bring.” What a word is this! He commands the winds and the sea, and they obey him, who then can stand over him with authority, compelling him to fulfil his task? It is the mightiest of all taskmasters, his own yearning love. It is not only that he will or may bring his other sheep home to the fold; he must bring them. He has laid this necessity upon himself in the well-ordered covenant, and the self-imposed necessity is sweet to his soul. “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?” The Good Shepherd does not know how to abandon any of his flock. The whole body of the ransomed is in Scripture expressly said to be “ the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” A part of his own fulness would be wanting, if he should leave any fragment behind. Shreds from this divine necessity of doing good drop down from the Head and beautify the life of the members, as rays from the sun glitter on the leaves of the grove or on the pebbles of the beach. These things that “ must be “— these inevitable deep necessities — are the most lovely features of the free. Here is a mother with a sick infant on her knee. The infantas eyes are open, but they see not; they roll at random — lightless, lifeless. The parched lips utter at intervals a faint, uneasy shriek. Thus has the infant lain for several days and nights. The sun has set once more upon the. scene, and the city lays itself down to rest. But that mother rests not; although her head is weary, she does not lay it down. Why? Ah! she must sit there and hold her child in the safest place, and look into those eyes that give her back now no answering look; she must sit and hold the child till she see the end. An overmastering love compels her, and will take no denial. It is a “ must” of this kind, but mightier, that binds the Good Shepherd to bring the most distant and most feeble sheep home to the fold. Can a mother forget? She may; but thy Redeemer will not forget thee, Zion! The high priest stood in the midst of Jordan till all the people passed over. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 54: 2.02.09. PERSONAL ADORNING ======================================================================== IX. PERSONAL ADORNING. “Whose adorning let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.” — 1 Peter 3:3-4. IN our day some books and magazines devote themselves exclusively to female dress and ornament. When you open them you expect nothing else than pictorial representations or artistic descriptions of the newest fashions and the most admired adornments. But the Bible! when you turn to it, you consider that you bid farewell to all these trifles, and plunge into the deepest things of the human spirit — plunge, in some measure, according to your capacity, even into the deep things of God. Yet here, in the Word of life, we have fallen upon a text that deals with female attire, condemning one style of adorning, and commending another. Let us listen to what our Maker says to us regarding the most becoming dress and the most effective ornaments. He who formed our bodies, and breathed into them living souls, knows best what we should put on in order to set off his workmanship to the best advantage. Hear our Father in heaven when he tells us what style of apparel will make his children beautiful. God loves beauty of every kind, both the beauty of nature and the beauty of holiness. How do we know that? Because everything that he makes is beautiful. There is nothing ugly in creation as it comes from his hands. All the works of God are useful indeed, but all are ornamental too. The tree shows lovely flowers before it bears nourishing fruit. Such is creation as a whole. Flowers and fruit are everywhere combined. The sky, whether it is studded with stars by night, or strewn with fleecy clouds by day, is beautiful. The dome of heaven is grander than any that men have ever made. The carpet that covers the ground is studded with flowers, as well as the canopy that overhangs our dwelling. What work of man is so exquisitely ornamented as the leopard’s skin and the butterfly’s wing? Our works of taste are nothing but imitations, more or less successful, of the patterns which have been given to us in the mount — in the higher sphere of creative art. The chief works of our greatest masters are not original The sunset, the sea, the landscape, outspread on canvas, and hanging in royal halls, on which successive generations have gazed admiring, are only copies more or less accurately taken from the divine originals. The works of nature are beautiful on all sides, and on all sides alike beautiful. It is not a bright exterior, and a rough ungainly interior; it is not a polished side to the public road, and a slovenly rubble wall on the shaded side. True beauty is beauty all over, whether any observing eye should see it or not. Nor is the most elaborate design or the most exquisite colour reserved for the most enduring objects. The snow crystals, and the frosted tracery on the windows, are as perfect in design and execution as the monarchs of the forest that outlast fifty human generations. Man is the chief of God’s works, and enjoys most of his care. Man was placed highest, but has fallen from his high estate. He was made most beautiful, but has disfigured himself by sin. When his best work was damaged, the Creator did not give it up, and give it over. He framed a plan to restore. He desires to have his own image renewed. He desires to look upon his world again with complacency, and to call it good. When the prodigal returned to his father he was in a wretched plight. He bore the marks of his sin and misery. His countenance was wan through want and his clothing was filthy rags. The swineherd bore traces of his mean employment when he appeared again in his father’s sight. “Bring forth the fairest robe, and put it on him: put a ring on his finger, and shoes on his feet.” The father gave commandment for becoming ornaments as well as the necessary covering. Thus our Father in heaven, when we return to him, sees us defiled and dishonoured; but he will not permit us to remain in an unsightly and dishonoured plight. He will make his adopted children fit for their place and their company. He will make them like the children of a king. Beggars come to Christ; but none remain beggars in his presence, A man of feeble intellect, in the north of Scotland, was wont, like most of his class, to be very slovenly in his appearance. To this weakling the gospel of Christ came in power. He accepted God’s covenant love, and found himself a child of the family. Soon after this change the minister met him on a Sabbath morning, and was struck with his unwonted cleanness, and the efforts he had made in his own fashion to ornament his person. Accosting him kindly, the minister said, “ You are braw to-day, Sandy,” “He was braw Himser the day,” replied Sandy reverently; meaning that Jesus, when he rose from the grave on the first day of the week, was arrayed in the divine glory and the beauty of holiness. The Lord on high, who rejoices to receive the little ones, would, methinks, be pleased to see Sandy’s Sunday clothes and to hear Sandy’s simple answer. When a gold coin of the kingdom has by long usage lost the image and superscription of the king, they bring it back to the sovereign from whom it originally issued. The king will renew and restore. None other can. But the process cannot be accomplished by rubbing the surface. The defaced coin must be cast into the furnace and melted. Then it is recast, and comes out a new creature. In the act of renewing, the king’s image is restored. By such a process, and not otherwise, may God’s image be renewed in a soul that has lost it by sin. “ Put off the old man, and put on the new.” There is a true analogy between physical beauty and spiritual holiness. In all languages the same names are applied to both. These parallels abound on all sides. For example, truth is like a straight line, and falsehood like a crooked one. Every one comprehends easily what is meant by the great white throne. And the fine linen, clean and white, is expressly defined to be “the righteousness of saints.” “This man,” said the Pharisees, speaking with their lips a truth which they did not comprehend, “this man receiveth sinners.” Yea, receiveth sinners. On this side they are poured in sinners; on that side they emerge saints. Who are these, then, who stand around the throne in white clothing, with palms in their hands? These are they who entered at the gospel call, in filthy rags, and have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. Peter in this text undertakes to tell how the uncomely may be rendered beautiful. Here is the true adorning; and it is for us, for all. Whosoever will, let him take it. The call of the gospel compels the homeless, naked, hungry wanderers to come into the banqueting hall; and if any one is found there without the wedding garment, his want is due to his own obstinacy, for the King offers it free to all his guests. Still deeper goes the apostle’s thought when he arrives at the details of the recommended ornaments. “ Not that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel f — what then? “ Let it be the hidden wxin of the heart’’ Strange prescription! when the guests, picked up from the highways and hedges in all their rudeness and rags, must be made fit to sit at the King’s table. Get them suitably adorned at once. How? “ The hidden man” in the heart of each. So then the ornament which will make human beings really comely is called “ the man.” What man? The hidden man. He is himself invisible, and yet it is his indwelling that will make the wearer’s face to shine. Adam was the first man. He was beautiful when he came from his Maker’s hands, but he was not hidden. He was the visible head of creation when God pronounced it good. Behind him, unseen, was another Man — the original, the pattern Man — in whose image Adam was formed. Adam was but a copy of the divine original. Adam was disfigured by his fall into sin. Then, it was not another copy taken, which might have been spoilt like the first, but the hidden Man himself who came into the world, and revealed himself to restore humanity. When he had finished transgression and made an end of sin, and brought in an everlasting righteousness, he ascended again to heaven, and remains hidden from our sight. But he who said, “ It is expedient for you that I go away,” said also, “ Lo, I am with you alway.” It is Christ dwelling in a Christian that makes him beautiful. It is not, Lo, here, or, Lo, there; — the kingdom of God is within you. The apostolic expression, “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” explains how the hidden man of the heart imparts more than earth-born winsomeness to the countenance and the life of those who walk with God in the world. There is a whole Christ in every disciple who lives up to his privileges, as there is a whole sun in the cup of every flower that opens to his shining. Suppose the sun should say to the flowers, “ Lo, I am with you always,” and afterwards remain high in the heavens; the flowers could not complain that the sun had broken his promise. It is expedient for them that he should remain distant: by remaining distant he is able to dwell in the heart of each, its light and life. It is thus with our Sun of Righteousness, “ If any man open, I will come in.” When this ornament is worn in the heart within, its beauty is seen on the outward life. I once met with an unexpected and interesting illustration of this principle in the Gobelin Tapestry Factory near Paris. The web, in course of construction, was suspended perpendicularly from the ceiling to the floor. The operator was concealed behind it. Beside him — f or I was permitted to go within the veil to inspect his work — he had a fine picture by a master on canvas. At every thread that he shot through the extended work he took another look of this picture. He was reproducing on the external surface of the web, feature by feature, the picture, in this case of a royal personage which he kept beside himself under the veil unseen. He continually looked at his hidden pattern, and continually advanced with the visible duplicate, that grew into form and beauty in his hands. The sight, with the thought which it suggested, startled me. Here is the picture of a true Christian life. The workman’s business is to make his visible life an epistle of Jesus Christ. But he must have the model beside himself — within. On this pattern he must frequently look, that he may reproduce outwardly the exact features of the original. When it is Christ in you — “ the hidden man of the heart” — some faint but true features of the Lord will be legible on your life and spirit. In general, a likeness of Christ is in the life of a Christian; and, in particular, “ a meek and quiet spirit.” This is not the only ornament which the children of the family put on, but it is one of the most decisive marks of their birthright and their station. It was the feature which the Lord expressly specified when he invited his disciples to imitate his ways: “ Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29). As this is the most characteristic feature of a disciple, it is, perhaps, as the world goes, the most difficult to acquire and exhibit. But though it be the chief, it is not the only fruit and evidence of faith. Indeed, if it stood alone, it would not be so precious. It must have others to leian upon. It so happens that in the specific case recorded in the Acts, in which the world outside recognized by the conduct of the apostles that they were Christ’s, it was the opposite quality of courage that constituted the distinguishing feature. It was when they saw the boldness of Peter and John that they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. One of the instructions given by Paul for the conduct of life runs in these terms: “ In the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life” (Php 2:15-16). The lantern of the lighthouse has many sides, and it revolves. It does not always present the same side to the observer. The sides, moreover, may be of different colours, so that now the lantern throws over the waters a white, now a green, and now a red light, — all lights and all useful, and all exhibited from the same beacon-tower, but all diverse the one from the other. Thus stand Christians conspicuous — set on a hill, and seen from afar. As they turn round in the varied business of life, they display now one and now another grace of the Spirit; but if they are true, and not too much blotted by contact with the earth, on every side they give forth evidence that they have been with Jesus. As a meek and quiet spirit is one of the most useful features to bring out of a believer’s life, it is one of the most difficult to get in. When, in the processes of art, a new and beautiful colour is about to be transferred to a fabric, the hardest portion of the task sometimes is to discharge the dyes that are already there. A terrible process of scalding must be applied to take out the old ere you can successfully impart the new. In like manner, the anger and pride and selfishness that have first possession present the greatest obstacle to the infusion of a meek and gentle spirit into a man. If there be a royal, there is certainly no easy road to this consummation. Nothing will suffice but the old apostolic prescription — “ Put off the old man, put on the new.” It is a striking, bold, and original conception, to propose that an ornament should be hidden in the heart. Ordinarily, we understand that an ornament, from its very nature, must be worn in a conspicuous position. When it is hidden, how useful and valuable soever it may be, it ceases to be an adorning. But in the spiritual sphere the law is reversed. That which is put on makes the wearer loathsome; that which is hidden within makes him beautiful. Meekness is spoiled when it is set up for show. The bloom was rubbed off from the devotion of the Pharisees when it was exposed at the corner of the streets; their charity was soured by the sound of a trumpet, like milk in a thunderstorm. The meekness that is hidden is the meekness that adorns. When it is not hidden, it is no longer meekness. This ornament, moreover, is incorruptible. This epithet is peculiarly relevant. With the exception of the metals and minerals, ornaments are, for the most part, perishable commodities. Bain soils them; the sun bums their beauty out. In the accidents of life they are worn or torn, or stolen or lost. The rose and lily that bloom on the cheek are not perennial; the wrinkles of age are creeping on to drive them off and take their place. All these adornings are corruptible. This text recommends one that will never fade. Age makes it mellower, but not less sweet. As it is not a colour of the decaying body, but a grace of the immortal spirit, it will pass unharmed through the dark valley, and bloom in greater beauty on the other side. It will make the ransomed from among men very comely in the eyes of angels, when they stand together round the throne, and serve their common Lord. One grand concern with buyers is to obtain garments that will last — garments whose fabric will not waste, and whose colours will not fade. There is one Seller in the great market of the world who assures the permanence of his wares. Hear ye him: “ Buy of me gold tried in the fire, that ye may be rich; and white raiment, that ye may be clothed.” In this apparel the redeemed shall shine, when the sun shall have grown dim with age and the stars fallen from heaven like unripe figs. Yet another quality is noticed of the recommended adorning — it is costly. In the sight of God, and of the godly, it is “ of great price.” In the market of the world, alas! we, like inexperienced children, are often cheated. We pay a great price for that which is of no value. We are often caught by the glitter, and accept a base metal for gold. He who counts this ornament precious knows its worth. The righteousness of the saints is dear to God in a double sense. It is both beloved and costly. “ Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass 5” but it was not possible. “He saved others; himself he cannot save.” The price must be paid. The just gave himself for the unjust. The beauty of a new nature and an immortal life for fallen man were bought with a great price. The “ unspeakable gift” of God was laid down to obtain it. It cost the Redeemer much to get the “ filthiness purged out” of his people, and get them made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light. Nothing shall enter that defileth: the bride shall be adorned to meet her Husband. The ransomed of the Lord, when they come to Zion, will constitute the crown that adorns their Redeemer’s brow. These are the jewels for which he paid an unspeakable price, and which he will wear as his crown of rejoicing in that day. The practical lesson is very clear and very forcible. We should be fellow-workers with God in keeping off, or casting off, with all diligence, every spot from our own hearts and lives which the Lord that bought us would not like to look upon. “ Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 55: 2.02.10. THE SALT OF THE EARTH ======================================================================== X. THE SALT OF THE EARTH. “Ye are the salt of the earth.”— Matthew 5:13. HIS is a short, pointed, condensed sentence. It gives us much matter in little room. The words were spoken by Jesus, and addressed to his own disciples. Come and let us sit at his feet, and hear him, as it were, speaking them over again If we come to him as scholars, he will be our teacher still. He will bestow the Spirit at our request, to open the parable and make all its meaning plain. Although the expressions are figurative, they are by no means difficult. The two chief words are, the earth and the salt We shall consider them separately, and then apply the lesson from both combined. I. The earth and its need, — It is quite true that the term “ earth,” when employed in Scripture as a figure to express moral relations, is not always employed in the same sense. Had it stood alone here, it might have been difficult to determine which of several possible meanings should be attached to it; but its connection with the other word “ salt “ renders such an examination unnecessary. ** Salt “stands like a mirror before “earth,” to receive and exhibit its precise import. We are not left to guess which of its figurative meanings the word “earth” here bears. The meaning is fixed, and shown to be that which needs purification and preservation. Obviously the earth, considered as requiring salt, is human kind lying in the corruption of sin. It means all mankind; and all lying in wickedness. The Lord Jesus speaks of man, made in God’s image, as the head of creation, and speaks of him as tainted by sin. A fly alighted on creation while it was yet young, and its mass became morally a noisome carcass. No portion of the race has escaped the infection. It is, moreover, the law of moral as well as of material corruption, that the evil a umes an aggravated form wherever lar e masses are collected together. As men multiply, sin increases. The larger the heap of corruptible matter, the more rapidly it decays. Hence the kind and quantity of depravity in large cities. The use of the single term “earth” in this sense by Him who came to redeem it is calculated to awaken and alarm us. It is not a part of the world that has gone astray, but the whole. This last and chief of God’s works — this cornerstone of creation — has fallen from purity. It is corrupt to the core. There is no soundness in it. The only kind of beings on earth that are capable either of holiness or sin have fallen from holiness, and are lying helpless in sin. The earth, as represented by the moral and spiritual being at its head, is altogether an unclean thing. By birth and nature a part of this corrupt mass, we grow up without uneasiness or alarm, unless and until we be awakened by another voice than our own. The corrupt do not loathe their own corruption. Sinners do not of their own motion grow weary and ashamed of sin. They have no desire to escape from the miry pit; they resist and resent every offer of aid. Although all intelligent beings who are not in the pit, whether they be angels who never fell, or saints who have been lifted up, look on with inexpressible disgust and pity, those who lie unclean in that place of uncleanness are contented with their lot. Corruption is the element of the corrupt. So far from naturally desiring freedom, and welcoming a deliverer, they dread the approach of the hand that would save them. When the maniac’s heart was a nest of unclean spirits his lips cried out, “ What have we to do with thee, thou Jesus?” Holiness, instead of being the inborn delight of the carnal mind, is the object of its strongest aversion. It is in a day of almighty power that the impure are made willing to be led into purity. Here lies the most dreadful feature of our case: we are not only vile, but vileness is our nature, so that we cleave to it with the strength and steadiness of an instinct. If the case of a sinner in his sin could be justly compared to the case of a man who has fallen into the water, and is in danger of being drowned, all would be easy. To help the willing is a simple task, and is generally successful. But the actual condition of the problem is precisely the reverse. Souls in sin love to be in it; the spiritually corrupt love corruption. It behoves us to look this matter in the face, and be aware of the desperate state of the fallen, ourselves and our neighbours. It is not by a wish for heaven that the corrupt can escape from their corruption and become new creatures. From its first plan to its final consummation in glory, sovereign free mercy has done all the work of redemption. “ Create in me a clean heart, God, and renew a right spirit within me.” The first faint uneasiness under guilt, and the first faint desires to be free, are marks of the Spirit’s motion in my heart: let me not quench the Spirit, lest that blessed messenger depart and leave me; let me yield to the drawing which I now feel, and these everlasting arms will draw me more. II. The salt and its properties. — Jesus, addressing his own disciples, said, “ Ye are the salt of the earth.” A portion of the corrupt mass cannot become the salt to preserve the rest of it. The salt is different from the earth. It is new* It is the work of God in the regeneration. Those who have been forgiven and renewed are the salt; but why has their Redeemer given them that peculiar name? What feature of their character, or form of their usefulness, does this figurative expression indicate? The word teaches us something about the new creature in respect both to what it is and to what it does; a lesson regarding both its nature and its use lies wrapped in the parable. In nature the new creature is not allied to the corruption that is in the world. It is an incorruptible thing. Left to itself it does riot become noisome; it continues pure. There are indeed mixtures of the old man in a Christian while he remains in the body; but the new life from the Lord which has been quickened within him is like its origin and its Author. Although it be lodged among earthly things, itself is not earthly. Although it is sadly true that even a Christian falls frequently into sin, yet the new man created within him “ cannot sin, because he is born of God.” As to the use of Christ’s disciples in the world, the Lord clearly and impressively made known his mind when he called them ’’the salt of the earth.” This designation should be as easily BJxd correctly understood as the speech of a commander who cries aloud to his soldiers, ’’Ye are the defenders of your country,” as he leads them forward to repel an invading foe. If we confine our view to what the Lord has done for his people, we shall run away with half a truth, and convert it into a full error. He does something for them — something greater than eye hath seen, or ear heard, or heart conceived; but he does something with them too. Nay more: he works for them first, in order that he may work by them then. He buys them off from Satan’s bondage with the price of his own blood, in order that he may have a band of sons and daughters who shall yield themselves willing instruments unto him, for his work of righteousness in the world. He redeems them from their sin, that he may employ them in his own service. As to the fact that true disciples are of use to their Lord, the whole Bible is full and clear; and as to the manner in which he turns their talents to account, a world of meaning is contained in the one word “ salt.” When he has forgiven and renewed some, he places them m contact with the remaining mass, as an instrument to preserve and purify it. The errand on which he came is to save the lost; he is straitened till his work be done; his disciples, partaking of his spirit, should be straitened too. Paul greatly longed after certain inhabitants of Philippi whom he knew; but he longed after them “ in the bowels of Jesus Christ.” It was as a member of Christ’s body that he felt that throb of compassion for human kind. It was the Saviour’s own compassion circulating through the soul of the saved man that stimulated him to zeal for his brethren. The word of Christ is, as it were, a two-edged sword; it is a promise and a command in one. He gives what he demands, and demands what he gives. The same master both gives the talents and requires an account of their outlay. He sends none on a warfare at their own charges; but when he has been at charges with any one, and fully furnished him, he does not exempt him from the warfare. “ Ye are the salt of the earth.” Look to the upper side of that word, and its meaning is— Christ has redeemed and purified his own; look to the under side, and its meaning is — Christians should be in the world witnesses of Christ and winners of souls. Elsewhere this double truth is divided, and both its sides separately displayed, — “ Ye are bought with a price; therefore, glorify God,” Now for the lessons. 1. There is much of the “ earth’* still, — The portion that has been broken off and purified is comparatively small; the bulk of the world lies in a state of corruption. The majority of mankind worship the work of their own hands. The nations, without knowing the reason, have rejected the living God, because impurity does not like to come near the consuming fire. It is not an innocent and childlike form of worship into which the nations have fallen. It is evil in its nature and its efiects. It dishonours God and destroys men. But even in countries where divine truth is known, and divine worship set up, great numbers remain almost as deeply corrupt as the heathen. Certain districts of our great cities, and certain classes of our teeming population, live without God in the world. Even within the communion of Christian churches, and within the circle of Christian families, much of the “ earth” remains unchanged. Oh! if there were missionaries ready for the work, the mission field is wide attd near. A mighty work must be done ere the earth be penetrated and pervaded by the salt of divine truth, held in the life and conversation of consistent Christians. 2. There ia little of the salt — There are not many nations in the world called by the name of Christ; and even of these, comparatively few have actually been transformed into his likeness. Alas! Christians are still a little flock. But we must beware lest we stumble here on the other side. It would indeed be an error indolently to assume that all are Christians who assume the name; but it would be also an error on the other side peevishly to make the number of Christians less than it is. It is as much our duty to own what God has wrought in the world by his grace as to lament the corruption that still so widely prevails. If it be true on the one side that there is little salt, it is true on the other side that there is a little. There has been a little all along, and the Spirit poured out is at present creating more. While we grieve that the number of true Christians is so small, we ought also to be thankful that it is so great. Many have been added to the Lord in our own day, and he would be offended if we should refuse to own the fact. True Christians are so many that we should greatly rejoice in God’s goodness; and yet true Christians are so few that we should not sit down satisfied with the state of the world. The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad. What has been done should effectually rebuke our repining; but what remains to be done should prevent us from making this our rest. The true attitude of Christians at the present time, on either side, is to thank God for giving us much salt, and give him no rest till we get more. Indeed, the design of our Father in giving us drops is to stimulate our desire for showers. When we are permitted to see sinners coming to Christ by tens, he expects that the sight will send us to his throne with ceaseless supplications that he would arise in the power of his love and draw them to himseK in thousands. 3. There is little saltness. — We have already pointed out that there is not much salt in the great mass of a corrupt world; and it is our duty now to point out, further, that there is little savour even in the salt itself. Christians are few in the world; and grace is feeble in Christians. The Lord himself, in his lessons on this subject, clearly indicated that even the salt may, in some measure, lose its pungency and power. It is a sad and obvious fact, which may be read on the surface of society, that even true disciples are more or less conformed to the world in which they live. Indeed, it seems, in some cases, to be the specific aim of the “ salt “to be as like “ earth “ as it can. The preserver labours to become indistinguishable from the corruption which it is sent to cure; and, alas! it often labours in this direction with abundant success. Christians, with much trouble and care, disguise their Christianity. The saltness is perseveringly bleached out of the salt, lest the neighbouring corruption should smart under its pungency. This is not the discontented complaint of one who can see no good among his fellows. It is not a wholesale and indiscriminate sentence of condemnation spoken by croaking lips and guided by a jaundiced eye. It is the truth; and it is plainly spoken, because truth is necessary and salutary. I speak it from the certain knowledge that the case requires it, and with a fervent hope that to speak it plainly will do good. I give forth the warning, not from a despairing but from a hopeful heart. In dealing with the vineyard, I would fain follow the steps o. f our Father the husbandman: if the tree were hopelessly barren, I would let it alone; but when a tree is bringing forth some fruit, I would like to prune it that it may bring forth more fruit. There is some savour in the salt; but why should there not be more? Great is the bounty of the Giver, and great is the world’s need. What is the rule which secretly, habitually, effectively shapes your conduct? Is it the way of the world, or the will of your Saviour? This is a great question, and it is not necessarily very difficult. We do not drag you through minute details. We ask your attention only to the chief motive power. The flowing stream which drives all the complex machinery of your life — is it the frothy fashion of the world, or the strong deep love of Christ in giving himself for you? The wheel which the fashion of the world drives is, like those of Ezekiel’s vision, so high that it is dreadful; but, unlike them, it is not full of eyes round about — it is blind all over. An uncounted number of busy little wheels are dependent on its power. Great are the noise and dust; great the sweat and toil. Do you grind in that treadmill? If you do, you may be weary, but you will not get rest. “ On the other side of Jordan, In the sweet fields of Eden, Where the Tree of Life is blooming, There is rest for the weary “ — the weary who walk with Christ and work for his cause; but though the god of this world gives his wopshippers hard work, he has no rest remaining for them when the work is done. But the fashion of the world is not only made in secret the real motive power in life; it is in many cases openly confessed as the rule. Others did the same; it was common in the place; what would the world say if we should take another course? — these and other similar current phrases, like floating straws, show the direction and the force of the current. The plea is worthless. It will not stand in the judgment of the great day; it will not even stand the scrutiny of common sense. For the food, the drink, the dress, the education, the company, the conduct of yoursdves and your children, fling away at once and for ever the fashion of a giddy world, and take as your guiding rule the will of the Lord that bought you. As long as you meanly tread in the track of a corrupt world, you do the world no good. Your salt has lost its savour. To be near you does not trouble an unconverted man. Your way is so like his own that your presence is no reproof. The profane may count you a good fellow; but Christ counts you an unfaithful witness. On the other hand, if you were enabled to walk in the Spirit and with Christ, your presence would be a reproof to wickedness, your footprints a guide to the wanderer, your faith a support to younger disciples. Salt of the earth, do not let go your savour. Christians, let the mind which was in Christ be also found in you. 4. The salt is too seldom laid upon the decaying to preserve and restore it — Even where there is salt with the savour in it, the benefit is in a great measure lost for want of the needful contact. It is not enough that there is salt here and corruption yonder — salt, it may be, in the square, and corruption in the lane; unless they meet, the one cannot enjoy the blessedness of receiving, nor the other the greater blessedness of imparting, good. The preserving salt must interpenetrate the body which needs preservation, and lie in contact with all its parts. Thus the Saviour did, and thus should the saved do. He was the friend of publicans and sinners; the friend of publicans and sinners should I also be. This is the true secret of a home mission. The best Christians are those who are most like Christ. The Holy One came from a holy heaven and dwelt in a sinful world; while there he cast himself in the way of the worst, and wept over them when they would not permit him to come near. Go, ye who are bought by his blood, and bear his name — go, and do likewise. By close communing with the Lord Jesus, keep the savour in your salt; and by close contact with those who are dead in sins, let the earth in its corruptest parts get the benefit of a pungent reproof. Be alternately much with the great Giver, God in Christ; and the needy receiver, a godless world. These are the two things worth living for — getting from the Saviour, and giving to the lost. “ Freely ye have received, freely giva” It is when Christians have a “ savour of Christ” upon their spirit and conduct that they become “ a savour of life” to those who are dead in sin. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 56: 2.03. READINGS IN FIRST PETER ======================================================================== C. READINGS IN FIRST PETER. I. PETER, AN APOSTLE, II. APOSTOLIC BENEDICTION, III. THE HEIRS AND THEIR INHERITANCE, ... IV. MIGHTY TO SAVE, V. THE LATTER END IS PEACE, VI. REJOICING IN TRIBULATION, VII. SALVATION BY SUBSTITUTION, VIII. NO CROSS, NO CROWN, IX. JESUS IN THE MIDST, X. OBEDIENT CHILDREN, XI. BOUGHT WITH A PRICE, XII. LOVE ON THE SPRING, XIII. MAN AND HIS GLORT, XIV. "CHRIST IN YOU THE HOPE OF GLORY," XV. THE BANE AND THE ANTIDOTE, XVI. LIVING STONES, XVII. "ON EITHER SIDE ONE; AND JESUS IN THE MIDST,” XVIII. "THE LORD’S PEOPLE, THE LORD’S TREASURE," XIX. THE WAY AND THE FRUITS OF REDEMPTION, XX. THE WARFARE XXI. THE WITNESS OF A PURE LIFE, XXII. THE SCRIPTURES SANCTION CIVIL AUTHORITY, XXIII. THE DIGNITY OF MAN, XXIV. NO RESPECT OF PERSONS, XXV. THE BROTHERHOOD XXVI. LOVE THE BROTHERHOOD, ======================================================================== CHAPTER 57: 2.03.01. PETER, AN APOSTLE ======================================================================== PETER, AN APOSTLE “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.” — 1 Peter 1:1. ON OCCASIONS for critical remarks may occur here and there as we proceed, but I do not propose to introduce any general discussion of cognate subjects as a preface to my work. There is not time nor space for that. It suits my purpose better to plunge at once into the matter of the Divine Word. We do not assume here the position of Israel when first the manna fell — that of the questioner, “What is it?” We assume at once the position of the people after they had tasted it. Being hungry, and seeing the bread from heaven spread out around our tents, we propose to gather and eat — eat, and live thereby. If, through the blessing of God, any gainsayer should be convinced by these expositions, the effect would be incidental: our direct aim is gently to lead inquirers through the open gate into life, to instruct the little ones of the family, and to edify strong men into a still stronger faith. This letter, like those of Paul and ancient letters generally, throws into its forefront the writer’s name and office. The reader desires to know who his correspondent is; and the practice of placing that information at the beginning seems more convenient as well as more natural than our modem method This man is not now ashamed of his name, nor of the cause which it supports. He will not undertake to vindicate all his antecedents; but now he knows hLs position and bearings. The latter end is peace. Peter! the Galilean fisherman; the forcible yet fickle disciple; the cowardly denier, yet the ardent lover and heroic confessor of the Lord! A number of different and even opposite qualities go to constitute this man’s history and character. Two kings and two kingdoms strove against each other for the mastery in the fisherman’s capacious breast. Ishmael, or the world power, had first possession, and had grpwn into strength before Isaac, the child of promise, was born. The son of the strange woman lorded it long over the heir in Peter’s history, as* in Abraham’s house; but in the end, the child of promise prevailed, and possessed all. At the date of this letter, Peter, with all his force and fire, is on the Lord’s side. “ Peter, an apostle.” Ah, Peter, is this another piece of cowardice? An apostle, and no more: are you not the prince of the apostles? Are you not the representative of God on earth, and the infallible interpreter of his will? Are you not the head of the Church, before whose word Paul and all the rest must humbly bow on pain of perdition? Mark: if Peter ever possessed these prerogatives, he possessed them then. He received no subsequent advancement from the Divine Head. If Peter were infallible, what of Paul who withstood him to the face? Oh the silliness as well as the wickedness of men! I suspect, however, that people will never be argued out of Papal Infallibility, they were not reasoned into it, and we need not expect that they can be reasoned out of it. The human mind is voluntarily crushed in order to let that dogma in, and therefore it has no power to arise and cast the intruder out again. It is not that men are convinced that the blasphemous pretension is true; it is that they are given over to believe a lie. The title which Peter assumes is at once dignified and modest. He assumes all the authority he possessed — all that his Master gave him. If he had a right to more, he should have claimed it, in order to add weight to his word. He was bound to keep nothing back. Yet, according to Romish teaching, Peter and all his successors have from that day to this possessed a divine power of infallible knowledge intrusted to them for the good of the world, and especially for settling all controversies in religion; and they have never told that they possessed the precious treasure, — never known that they possessed it, for that matter, — till now I “ Fie on*t, oh, fie; it smells rank.” The Greek term apostle, and the Latin term missionary, mean the same thing, — “ one sent out.” Those ministers who dwell at home at ease, however useful they may be in their own place, have no peculiar claim to be accounted the successors of the apostles. The men to whom the Master gave that office thought it needful to offer an apology for remaining in one place a whole year. If any class of ministers more than another had a claim to this distinction, it would have been foreign missionaries. Moses was a missionary. The I Am, from the midst of the burning bush, first drew him near and then sent him out, — “Come; I will send thee.” From the embrace of the suffering Saviour, in the old time, Moses was sent into Egypt to lead the exodus. From the embrace of the Saviour more fully manifested apostles were sent out in the fulness of time to win the world. From that glow of divine love Peter issued all on &e — a messenger sent out to seek his Lord’s lost and lead them back to his Lord. By special providence Peter’s case has been left on record as a type of the manner in which real apostles are made. Behold the Master (John 21:15) bending over him, at once healing the old backsliding and kindling the flame of a new love: Lovest thou me? lovest thou me? lovest thou me? There is some smoke yet in that bundle of flax over which he is tenderly bending: methinks I hear the thrice repeated gentle breathings, — not energetic blasts that might have quenched the feeble spark, but breathings to cherish the dull heat into a flashing flame. Out from this furnace sprang an apostle ready-made, who needed now but to gefc his specific commission: “ Feed my sheep; feed my lambs.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 58: 2.03.02. APOSTTOLIC BENEDICTION ======================================================================== II. APOSTOLIC BENEDICTION. "To the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” — 1 Peter 1:1-3. the Christians scattered throughout the various provinces of Asia Minor the letter is addressed. The regions enumerated coincide in the main with those in which Paul and his companions founded churches. Did Peter transgress the rule which forbids one missionary to interfere with the sphere and labour of another? No: we may not be able to explain everything, as we are not acquainted with all the circumstances, but we may rest assured there was an understanding between those primitive missionaries. Had Paul by this time been taken away? or had Mark brought word that a letter from Peter to the Asiatic churches would be welcome to the members, and even strengthen Paul’s hands, especially with the Jewish portion of the Christian communities? These disciples were “ elect [chosen] according to the foreknowledge of God.” What is called the doctrine of Election should not be a stumbling-block to any who acknowledge the divine authority of the Scriptures. There it is, as fully and articulately expressed in the Word of God as it can be in any human creed. The Bible says they were chosen according to the foreknowledge of God; and who shall say they were not? We may well stand in awe on the margin of this unsearchable deep. We may not be able to comprehend it in all its bearings; but there it is. “ Be still, and know that I am God.” This great word should make human hearts bow in deep humility, and accept offered salvation all of grace. And as to inferential difficulties, the freedom and responsibility of men are as clearly revealed as the sovereignty of God. “Repent ye,” is the commandment; and the sanction follows it, “ Except ye repent, ye perish.” So the sovereignty of God does not stand in the way of his free offer and man’s full responsibility. He knows his own way through the difficulty. These two ends meet in the deep things of God; and “the day” will reveal the meeting-place. Enough for me: he has said, “ Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” Even so, “ Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.” In this verse the Father is revealed in connection with election and foreknowledge; the Spirit in connection with the sanctification of believers; and the Son in connection with the sprinkling of the blood that saves. It is parallel with that word in the Lord’s own prayer: “Thine they were; and thou gavest them me: and they have kept thy word “ (John 17:6). While this beautiful introductory salutation, “ Grace unto you, and peace,” is a formula common to all the apostles, it is also an exact theological definition, rightly dividing the word of truth. The right thing is put foremost here. The living root lies in the ground below, and the fruit-bearing branches tower above it. It is grace first, and peace following it. When God and man meet, it is pardon first, and then a mutual confidence. When he in the Mediator dispenses freely his favour, you in the Mediator draw near without dread. He manifests himself a forgiving Father, and that very thing infuses into your heart the spirit of a trusting child. “ May grace and peace be multiplied.” In the Old Testament (Isaiah 48:18) there is a promise that his people’s peace “ shall be like a river” — gaining affluents from either side as it flows, and at the last opening out into “ a righteousness like the waves of the sea.” Now, after the designation of the writer and the readers has been given, the matter of the letter begins, — begins with glory to God in the highest. With remarkable unanimity the sacred writers make this their starting point. From Moses to Peter, the first commandment is glory to God, and the second is duty to men. There is a distinction maintained in Scripture between “ blessed “ as applied to God, and “ blessed “ as applied to men. Although we are obliged to use the same term for both in our language, they are distinct in the Greek. That which is applied to God means to be pronounced blessed; that which is applied to men means to be made blessed. Of all the aspects and attributes of the great God, that which first leaps to the lips of this apostle is, “ the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” How real and vivid was spiritual life in those primitive Christians. Faith really dominated. Farm and merchandise receded into the background, and the relations of the soul with God and eternity bounded to the front. And mark how Peter finds it possible to draw near to God: he takes refuge in the Mediator. When he sees God as the giver of the unspeakable Gift, he comes forward with boldness. In point of fact, unless we recognize him in that character, we cannot relish him in any. “ Wiik Him, how shall he not freely give us all things?” These men were skilful. They knew where consolation lay; they grasped God by his title of Father of our Lord Jesus, and so were enabled to cling in fond confidence aa dear children. There is an amazing wealth and grandeur of thought and expression here. Whence hath this man his wisdom? The fisherman is here the vessel chosen and employed by the Spirit to pour out in all its fulness the gospel of the grace of God. The Epistle at this point where it begins to flow is like one of those infant rivers which burst fullbodied at their birth from a great inland sea in which their waters have been gathered. Unlike the waters of Ezekiel’s vision that gathered volume as they flowed, this is a river to swim in the moment that it breaks away from the fountain-head. This testimony from an unleamed Galilean is already a Christian evidence. The book is a witness to itself. Who is this of whom the prophet speaks? — God. In what aspect does the Supreme present himself? — As the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. What has he done? — Begotten us again; made us new creatures. From what motive has he acted? — Accordinof to his abimdant mercy. By what means has he accomplished this great change? — By the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. To what end in the experience of his people does he thus work? — To a living hope burning in their hearts here, and an inheritance incorruptible beyond the grave. At the opening here made in heaven a great cluster of stars appear. Their united light shines like a sun, and each constituent of the constellation is a separate orb of glory. Nor does the brightness dazzle the sinner’s uplifted eyo, for it is the glory of God streaming from the face of Jesus, mighty to save. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 59: 2.03.03. THE HEIRS AND THEIR INHHERITANCE ======================================================================== III. THE HEIRS AND THEIR INHERITANCE ’’Which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us agam unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you." — 1 Peter 1:3-4. I OPE is enjoyed here, possession hereafter. But the enjojonent of the inheritance is real, although it is as yet held only by hope. The hope is living. Not only will it surely be substantially satisfied in the end, but even in the meantime it secures the enjoyment. An inanimate cord might bind together the expecting heir and his ultimate inheritance, so that they could not finally miss each other; but a living nerve, extending from the new creature here in the body to the kingdom that is not of this world, conveys even now the revenue of the inheritance before the time, according to the Master’s own aspiration, “That my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full “ (John 15:11). How may we be introduced into such a hope? Through the new birth. Peter’s doctrine here is in strict accord with the word of the Lord to Nicodemus: “ Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” — neither behold it in living hope now, nor enter it at last. These two terms, “ begotten again “ and the “ incorruptible inheritance,” are made for each other, like the two valves of a sea-shell. They shut accurately upon each other, but upon nothing else. Our inheritance by the first birth is neither undefiled nor unfading. To escape the curse of the first birth-right, we must have another birth. The new creature in Christ is joint-heir with him — heir of all things. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was the closing and culminating act of the redemption that he wrought. If the work had not thereby been completed, it would have been of no avail. The Spirit, through Paul, has clearly borne witness that unless the Redeemer’s work had been crowned by his resurrection, our hopes would have been in vain (1 Corinthians 15:17). The meaning is, that the completed work of Christ saves his people from sin, and gives them a right to the eternal inheritance. Those who are born again rise with him into resurrection life. The life that they now live in the flesh, they live by the faith of the Son of God. Earth becomes to these heirs the vestibule of heaven. The characteristics of the inheritance are all negative. The features that ordinarily go to mar an earthly heritage are enumerated for the purpose of declaring that they do not adhere to the rest that remaineth for the people of God. The inheritance is (1) incorruptible. It is not liable to complete dissolution, like a dead body that returns to dust. It is (2) undefiled. It is not liable to have all its beauty dimmed by some unclean spot falling on its form. Often an earthly inheritance, while its substance abides the same, loses all its attraction for the owner. The eldest son, perhaps, for whom it was fondly cherished, has thrown away his good name. Henceforth the father cannot look with complacency on his green fields and waving woods. A glance at the landscape makes him shudder. His inheritance is defiled. Not so the heritage to which the children of God have, in the regeneration, been served heirs. The inheritance is (3) unfading; its bloom will never wither. It is not subject to alternations of darkness and light, of winter and summer. The Lamb is the light thereof; and there shall be no night there. In exact accord with the imagery of John is the plain, earnest prose of Paul, when life and death were trembling in the balance. To be with Christ was the bright expectation which took all the terror out of death when it seemed very near (Php 1:23). The silence of Scripture, especially in contrast with the coarseness of earth-born systems, is sometimes as emphatic a testimony to its divine origin as its positive revelations. Lights on the shore flash far over the ocean, and conduct the voyager to the land; but they do not reveal to him, while at sea, the particular features of the landscape. It is thus that the Bible exhibits lights sufficient to guide inquirers safe to heaven, but not sufficient to reveal its interior beauties. Those who reach the better land will discover its glories after they arrive. Some are born to a great inheritance, and yet miss it. In our days thrones are frequently shaken, and their occupants cast off. Princes who were born to a royal heritage wander as exiles in a foreign land. But there are no revolutions in the kingdom of heaven. Every one gets his own there. The laws of nature give a token of the certainty that prevails in the region where the Lord reigns. Although a globule of air were imprisoned for a thousand years within a shell at the bottom of the ocean, the moment its prison-house decayed it would rise sheer through the water, though it were miles in depth, and never halt till it emerged with a bound into its native element, the sky. Behold a specimen of his power, who has promised “ none of them shall be lost.” Here are two keepings promised; and the two constitute a pair. The inheritance is preserved for the heirs, and the heirs are preserved for the inheritance. Both keepings are needed; and both are provided in the covenant. The danger was not all over when Pharaoh consented at last to let Israel go. The danger was not all over even when the emancipated Hebrews reached the Red Sea’s farther shore. They were saved; and yet they needed salvation. The returning waters overwhelmed the enemy, and protected their rear; but a howling wilderness lay between them and their rest. They needed keeping by an Almighty hand, those feeble heirs. They sing. Have they not begun their song too soon? Are they not hallooing before they are out of the wood? Have they not something harder than hymns to deal with? They have; and yet they have not too soon begun their song. They should rejoice in salvation already wrought, and go forward to work out their own salvation. Getting manna from heaven, and water from the rock, they must tread the rugged path and fight the cruel foe; and toiling forward, never breathe freely till, in the wake of the forerunner high priest, they pass the parted Jordan, and feel their footing firm in the promised land. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 60: 2.03.04. MIGHTY TO SAVE ======================================================================== IV. MIGHTY TO SAVE. "Who are kept by the power of God through faith.”— 1 Peter 1:5. WHAT is done for the heirs while they are here in the body? They are kept Nothing more is needed here than to give a definition of the word and its meaning. There are various kinds of keeping. It concerns us to define exactly what kind is promised here. In the first place, it is a keeping within walls and gates. To this meaning the term is limited by the well-known usage of the original language. But even within these limits there are two kinds of keeping, very diverse in design and effect. Stone walls may close around you either for the purpose of keeping you in, or for the purpose of keeping your enemy out. The first is a prison, the second a fortress. In construction and appearance the two species of fastness are in many respects similar. In both cases the walls are high, the gates strong, and the guards trusty. But they differ in this — that the prison is constructed to prevent escape from within, the fortress to defy assault from without. In their design and effect they are direct and exact contraries. The one secures the bondage, the other the freedom, of its inmates. In both cases it is a keep, and in both the keep is strong: the one is strong to keep the enemy out, the other is strong to keep the prisoner in. In the Greek of the New Testament two completely distinct words are employed respectively to designate these two places of strength. Both terms alike signify to guard; but the one {(fivXaK-q) signifies a prison, the other ((tipovp-q) signifies a fort. The word employed here is not prison, but fort. It is a place strong to preserve liberty, not to take it away. From David downward, the godly in times of trouble have ever found and confessed that God is a strong tower, in which the righteous are safe. In times of persecution the name is best understood, and the thing most valued, when and where war rages, strongholds are desired and appreciated. In this life a Christian is safe; but his safety consists in the protection of a fort. He is neither the slave of a tyrant on the one hand, nor beyond the reach of assault on the other. He is no longer in the kingdom of darkness, but neither has he been admitted yet into the mansions of the Father’s house. He is in a middle region; and in all that region he is safe, but his safety cometh from the Lord. Before he was converted, he did not get this keeping; and when he is glorified, he will no longer need it. Before he came over to God’s aide, he was not preserved from his enemies; after he is taken to God’s presence, there will no longer be any enemies to be defended from. But all through this middle passage, between Egypt and Canaan, he needs and gets his Redeemer to be a wall of fire round about him. This is the kind and measure of safe-conduct which the King bestows upon the pilgrim: “ I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” This is precisely what the Mediator asks and the Father bestows. Some, mistaking the fortress for a prison, refuse to enter it. They give a wide berth to all earnest personal religion, as a dungeon in which, if they should venture too near, they might possibly be immured for life. The enerfiy of souls, taking advantage of this terror, which is natural to the guilty, sends scouts all over the plain through which the pilgrims are marching, who falsely tell them that this stronghold which the King has built for their protection is a prison in which they will be cruelly shut up. If vice and unbelief slay their thousands, ten thousand fall under the false opinion that to come personally to Christ, though necessary for safety at the end of life, is to dwell in a prison through its course. Believe not this false testimony. “Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise both of the life that now is and of that which is to come.” Whereby are the heirs kept? By the power of Ood, Omnipotence is pledged on their behalf. But it is a different exercise of divine power from that which is exhibited in creation. It is specifically described in Php 4:7 : “ The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” This is a most interesting and instructive definition. It tells both that in God which he holds them with, and that in men which he holds them by. In him it is “ the peace of God “ that takes hold; in them, it is “ the heart and mind” that it seizes. God’s peace streaming forth through the Mediator, and wrapping itself round the heart and mind, — behold the specific exercise of divine power by which the heir is kept for his inheritance. Through what means are believers kept? Through faith. The cause is God’s power; the manner, through our believing. Men are not kept from falling into sin precisely as the worlds are kept from falling away into unlighted space. Both effects are produced by the power of the same God; but there are diversities of operation. In the case of those coursing worlds, it is power on the one side and nothing on the other; it is simple omnipotence. With all their bulk and all their brightness, they lie like clods in the law of God. Worlds were made by God’s word; but man was made in his image. Renewed man, living and sensitive, feels his Creator’s hand around him, and responds by a reciprocating grasp. This feeble people have no strength, but they make their nest in the Rock of Ages. A believer is not like a god on the one hand, and not like a clod on the other. He does not save himself; but neither is he saved by mere omnipotence. He stands in the middle between these two. He is like a piece of matter in its weakness, but like God in having an intelligent will to choose and refuse. Equally with inanimate matter, he is indebted to divine power for his upholding; but unlike it, he knows his need, and gladly casts his burden on the Lord. God holds him up, and he trusts in God. Take a glance at these two points now, in their union and relations. They are the two sides, the upper and the lower, of one salvation. The double seal is elsewhere exhibited with both its inscriptions in view: “ The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity “ (2 Timothy 2:19). He hath done all things well. He acts as becomes himself; and he exercises also the faculties which he has imparted to his creatures. Nothing unnecessary is introduced, and nothing is left undone. Both on the heavenward side and the earthward side salvation is secure. The strongest thing in heaven and the strongest thing on earth are entwined into each other to bear up a believer, that he may not in time of temptation drop away. The strongest thing in heaven is the power of God, and that on high holds fast a Christian; the strongest thing on earth, removing mountains if need be, and overcoming the world —the strongest thing on earth is man’s faith, and that below makes fast a Christian. If one of the least of these should begin to say, Oh! wretched man that I am, my faith is weak; some day the adversary will gain an advantage over me, and I shall let’ go my hold, — the reproof and encouragement are ready here. It is not by your faith that you are kept, but by God’s power. Behold, he that keeps Israel, he slumbers not nor sleeps. Again, if the subtle temptation is injected into his heart. If God keeps me by his power, I need not be at the trouble of keeping myself, — he will find in this text a scourge ready plaited to his hand wherewith he may drive the tempter out. My God, who keeps me, keeps me through my own faith. He gives me himself to lean on; but he expects me to lean on himself. If I in carelessness or presumption neglect to hold, I fall, and my perdition is my own deed. But in such a case the purpose to escape the trouble of holding, on the plea that omnipotence is enough, is already evidence that this soul has no part in the salvation of Christ. He is a God, not of the dead, but of the living. If the soul lives, it will grasp its almighty Protectors arm; and if it does not grasp, the fact is evidence that it lives not yet. The mother holds her infant, when danger presses; but the infant, if it is living, also grasps the mother. If it is dead, it does not; and if it does not, it is dead. It is the mother’s hold of the infant, and not the infant’s hold of the mother, that really secures its safety; but if the infant cease to meet the mother, in time of danger, with an answering grasp, the mother will fling the child away — will hide the dead in the earth out of her sight. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 61: 2.03.05. THE LATTER END IS PEACE ======================================================================== V. THE LATTER END IS PEACE. Unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” — 1 Peter 1:5. UNTO what end are Christians kept? “ Unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time/* The word is expressly spoken to Christians. The Lord tenderly regards them, and sends them messages of love to cheer them in the house of their pilgrimage. 1. They are kept unto salvation, not to perdition. It is the fortress of their King in which they are enclosed today; and when at length they are led forth from it, they are led to the palace of the King, that they may be princes there for ever. There are many dark pages of this world’s history connected with those who have been long kept in a stronghold, and led forth at length, — led forth to execution. The bridge across the narrow canal in Venice, between the duke’s palace and the prison, consisting of a secret path for leading the prisoners to and fro, is called the Bridge of Sighs; and the sight of its solemn gray mass spanning the narrow opening aloft upon the sky, makes the spectator stand and sigh to-day, if he knows some points of its awful history. Many a death procession marched across that gloomy bridge in those gloomy tunes. Often the great and noble were kept long in those strongholds — kept unto a cruel death at last. Christ keeps his people not in a prison. If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed. He keeps unto salvation. O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? Our Lord does not desire that we should pass a life of terror, as prisoners held over for execution. The express design of his sacrifice was “ to deliver them who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:15). He offers us deliverance from the bondage of fear. He offers us blessed hope; he commands us to rejoice in the Lord. When one of Christ’s disciples is led away, it is to life eternal. It is to depart and to be with Christ. And many of those who have been by wicked men kept in prison, and led forth to die, have. gone forth with glad songs, knowing that they would soon be with their Lord. Argyle’s sleep on the night before his execution was sweeter than that of his persecutors. The hope and joy of the martyrs in the immediate prospect of complete deliverance have usually been brighter and stronger than other believers enjoyed, on the principle of compensation which may be seen running through both the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace. 2. Salvation is ready. Salvation has two sides, and both are ready. One of its sides is in heaven, and the other is in a believing soul. The kingdom of heaven is at God’s right hand for evermore; and the kingdom of heaven is also within you. On both sides it is ready for any sudden call. On high, Christ’s work is perfect; his covenant is sure; his sacrifice has been accepted; his people have already been accepted in his righteousness, and their names are recorded in the Lamb’s book of life. They shall not come into condemnation — into judgment — because they have believed in the only-begotten Son of God. They shall not be tried and judged for life at all. That trial is past. They have, in Christ their Substitute already stood before that tribunal and been approved. The place is ready, the mansions of the Father’s house, to receive his children. The company is ready — ten thousand, times ten thousand, — all the unfallen, and all the fallen who have been redeemed and taken to glory. Here, on earth, too, the salvation is ready. There is a Christ in the midst of the throne, and a Christ in each Christian indwelling. The salvation is ready within the saved: they have passed from death unto life; there is now to them no longer any condemnation. They have been sprinkled from an evil conscience, and reconciled to God. 3. The salvation is ready to be revealed. Mark this well. It is now concealed. On neither of its two sides is it exposed to the view of men. The finished work of Christ, the prepared home in heaven and the peace of God within a believer’s heart — these are both and both alike hidden, secret things. But these things are, although they are not seen. They are all ready underneath the covering veil; and when that veil is removed, every eye shall see them. When the Lord shall come again, his coming will be like the morning. As the daylight reveals the green herbs and growing flowers, which the veil of night had concealed, the coming of the Lord will expose to view a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. The flowers and forests, the hills and streams, were all there in the night, though they were not seen. They needed not to be made in the morning. They were ready to be revealed. Suppose a creature with the intelligence of a man, but with the term of life allotted to some of the insects — a day. Suppose that creature’s life begins after sunset. At midnight and in the early morning watches he looks around, but sees nothing. He reasons, and loses himself in dark speculation. A voice from the abyss above reaches his ear, and tells him that a beautiful, furnished world is ready to be revealed, and will be revealed in the morning. He believes, and waits: the promise is fulfilled. The glory of the world when the sun is up surpasses all his expectation. Such a creature is redeemed man. All is ready. The inheritance needs only to be unveiled. The unveiling only remains for the last time. Now is the time for seeking and obtaining it: then, it only remains that it should be fully displayed. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 62: 2.03.06. REJOICING IN TRIBULATION ======================================================================== VI. REJOICING IN TRIBULATION. “ Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”— 1 Peter 1:6-7. N a somewhat formal logical definition Paul declares the kingdom of God to be “righteousness and peace and joy.” Gladness is one constituent of a living faith. They are completely out of their reckoning who think that earnest religion means the sacrifice of happiness in this world for the sake of securing it in the world to come. The faith that makes eternal life secure also sheds a blessed light over the life that now is. This may be gathered from the nature of the case. To pass from the condition of a criminal under condemnation to the place of a son and the right of an heir, cannot but gladden a man’s heart. That which the terms of the gospel would lead one to expect appears everywhere in its history. When Philip preached Christ with success in Samaria, “ there was great joy in that city; “ and when the Ethiopian treasurer heard and accepted the same message from the same preacher, “ he went on his way rejoicing.” In our own day the same effects spring from the same cause. There is no feature more distinctly characteristic of present religious earnestness tha. the gladness which springs in the heafts aoxd shines in the faces of the converts. The absolute identity of results produced by a hearty acceptance of the gospel in the days of the apostles and in ours, is itself a proof that the word of God is a living and reproductive seed— that it “ liveth and abideth for ever.” Peter had himself experienced peace and joy in believing; and writing to the scattered converts, he takes for granted that in their experience like causes would produce like effects. On this point he plants a firm foot; there is no wavering. He counts on it as confidently as on the sequences of nature, that those who had accepted Christ as their own Saviour were made glad thereby. Nor is it an ordinary satisfaction, as when comand wine abound. It is an exuberant, exultant, passionate joyf ulness. The term implies an articulate and demonstrative happiness that cannot be concealed. It must reveal itself by leaping and singing. Such, moreover, is its strength and persistence that’ a great weight of grief will not quench it. “ Ye greatly rejoice, though now ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.” A vivid illustration of this principle appears in Old Testament history. Elijah (1 Kings 18:1-46) would convict the priests of Baal, and convince the people, by fire from heaven consuming the sacrifice. But first he directs that the wood should be soaked and the ditch filled with water. When the fire burned the soaked wood, and licked up the water in the trench, there was a great demonstration of its power. So here: it is not an ordinary contentment; it is a joy that burns so fiercely that many waters of grief cannot quench it. The joy overcomes and swallows up the antagonist element, and the presence of the antagonist increases its triumph. Witnesses, in number constituting a great cloud, have appeared in various ages and in various countries, to show that the joy of faith in Christ triumphed over all the tortures which ingenious superstition was able to invent or the most callous executioners were able to inflict. The hymns which the martyrs have sung in the flames are measures of the strength to which the Holy Spirit may bring the grace of joy in the heart of believers in the body. The sorrow with which believing joy in those primitive Christians must needs contend sprang from many and various sources. At one time it was persecution for Christ’s sake; at another time it was loss of goods, sickness, bereavement. But when the stream of suflering was swollen by the addition of all these affluents, faith still gave them victory, and they rejoiced in their Lord. Two circumstances, expressed in two quiet parentheses, come in here to limit the great flood of affliction, — two touching, tender memorials of a Father’s pitying eye and all-encompassing arm. These are (1) “ if need be,*’ and (2) “ for a season.” Only if, and when, and as far as there is a necessity for them, are the trials permitted to come at all; and even when they come, their duration is limited. In both cases the Father is himself the judge, and he doeth all things well. Elsewhere in Scripture the believing sufierer is taught the art of diminishing the weight and shortening the term of sorrows. They seem “ light “ when compared with the exceeding great weight of the glory that shall follow, and “ but for a moment “ when compared with the eternal rest. It is thus that faith gains the victory over the world. It is on this principle that the disciples, when they find their hearts sinking under trials, say unto the Lord, Increase our faith. The disciples are taught to regard their sufierings in the aspect of trials; at once tests to determine whether their faith is genuine, and exercises to increase its strength. It is not faith, but the trial of faith, that is here pronounced to be precious. Precisely because faith is the link by which the saved are bound to the Saviour, it is of unspeakable importance to have faith tested in time and proved to be true. The trial of gold is precious; for if you sell all that you have, and give away the proceeds for a field that seems to contain the treasure, it is beyond all things necessary to test the glittering heap before the transaction is completed, in order to ascertain that it is really gold. Here the fire and the crucible are the most valuable of all things for the investor. These are his safeguards; he cannot want them. In like manner, it is dangerous to venture our eternity on a fair-weather profession; an assay in some form is essential to determine whether there is life or only a name that we live. The trial of faith by affliction is compared to the testing and purifying of gold by fire. The sufierer, while in the furnace, is encouraged to look up and see a Father in heaven bending over him in all-wise love, and ready to remove the pain as soon as the purpose is efifected. The “need be” and the “season” are determined and limited by an omniscient love. Nor is all over when the trial has come, and burned for a season, and accomplished its purpose here, and passed away. The greatest results will be seen within the veil. When Christ comes the second time to reign, the efiect of these trials will appear to his praise. In exact accordance with this representation is the vision of the glorified in the Revelation of John (Revelation 7:1-17). Those who stand round the throne in white clothing are described by two leading features, a subordinate and a supreme — they have come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Although the one ground on which they enter the kingdom is the atonement made on the cross, yet the tribulation they endured — the trial of their faith for a season through suffering — tells instrumentally with so much effect upon the Lord’s glory in their redemption, that it is reckoned worthy of mention among the means of th ir salvation and their Saviour’s praise. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 63: 2.03.07. SALVATION BY SUBSTITUTION ======================================================================== VIL SALVATION BY SUBSTITUTION. “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy imspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come imto you: searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.” — 1 Peter 1:8-11. HE joy of believing is repeated, expanded, and emphasized. It is a theme which Peter seems loath to let go. It grasps his heart and carries him away. He is passionate about it. He has no thought of denying his relation to Jesus now. His wound was thoroughly healed when the Great Physician thrice demanded of him, “ Lovest thou me? “ and at the point where he once was weak, he is now very strong. In this expression of exuberant gladness he obeys the Master’s word, “ When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” But the object of this strong faith and fervent love is a living Person. No chain of connected doctrines could beget such enthusiasm in a human heart. Doctrines, though true and divine, would remain a dead letter if they did not lead a soul to the Saviour. It is the grand characteristic of apostolic preaching that it constantly presents a personal Christ to sinful men. Those who simply accept the offered Saviour do not miss the mark. They receive — that is, they carry off, as the winner in a race bears off the prize — the end and object of their faith, even the salvation of their souls. We have now reached fi. subject which in Peter’s estimation is of supreme importance. It becomes for him a new starting-point. He expatiates on it in thoughts that breathe and words that bum throughout the next three verses. Surveying the whole course of time, he sees all the lines of Providence and grace converging on this one point, — your salvation. The prophets who were commissioned to promise redemption did not fully comprehend the meaning of their own testimony. We are in a better position for understanding it. In this respect the least in the new kingdom is greater than the greatest prophet of the older dispensation. In the light of the now risen sun we may better perceive both the glory of the luminary himself, and the beauty of the landscape he shines upon, than those morning-stars who promised but did not see the day. Three distinct things embodied in the testimony of the prophets, yet not completely understood by themselves, are here in succession enumerated: — 1. The grace that should come unto you. 2. The sufferings of Christ. 3. The glory that should follow. We may learn much by a close examination of these three in their union and relations. A chain of three links gives two joinings. We shall, in the first place, examine the connection between the first and second, and afterwards the connection between the second and third. “The grace that should come unto you,” and “the sufferings of Christ,” constitute the first pair. Here, however, we shall gain much by a preliminary critical examination. In regard to the first member, nothing more is needed than to omit the words printed in italics, not in the original but inserted by the translators, — the words, “ that should come/* They are not incorrect, but they are not necessary. Let the clause run simply as it is in the Greek, “ the grace unto you.” The second member runs in the very same form; and the connection between the two is somewhat obscured by the change made in the translation. Let the original form be restored and* retained; the clause will then read, “ the sufferings unto Christ.” Thus, by a more simple and rigid adherence to the original in sense and in form, the relation between these two members — which, I ddubt not, the Spirit intended to exhibit — is made much more manifest, — The grace unto you. The sufierings unto Christ. When these clauses are restored to the simplicity of the Greek text, they exhibit in a very clear light the doctrine of substitution. The grand characteristic of the divine plan, as distinguished from all false religions, and all corruptions of the true, is substitution of the just for the unjust. The Redeemer takes the place of believing sinners, and they take his. He assumes the sin-burden, and with it meets the Judge; they, freed from their sin, put on his righteousness, and are therein accepted. This is the gospel. This is the thing into which prophets, from Abel to the Baptist, diligently inquired — into which angels strive to look. The eternal Son is made sin for his people, and they become the righteousness of God in him. The first inexplicable mystery to prophets and angels is “ the grace unto you; “ and the second is “ the sufierings unto Christ.” Favour from God to the guilty: sufferings poured out on the Holy One — these are the two great wonders on earth, these the two great wonders in heaven. A case which illustrates this aspect of the gospel occurs in Old Testament history. Joseph brings forward his two sons, that he may obtain for them his father’s blessing. As the Hebrews counted much on the rights of the first-born, he carefully led Manasseh, the elder, in his own left hand, that the right hand of the aged patriarch might rest on his head; and Ephraim, the younger, in his right, to receive the blessing through the left hand. But the aged prophet, though blind, “ crossed his hands wittingly,” and laid his right hand on the head of the younger, his left on the head of the elder. Joseph, thinking his father had blundered through blindness, took hold of his hands and endeavoured to reverse the order according to his own idea of primogeniture; but his father, in the spirit of prophecy, persisted in his own method, saying, “ I know it, my son; I know it, my son,” and gave the greater blessing to the younger child, the lesser to the elder. So, when witnessing angels beheld the goings of their God in the redemption of fallen men, they failed to comprehend it. When they saw the guilty rebels called forward to one side of the throne, and the well-beloved of the Father to the other side, and the Judge of all preparing to pour out his love and favour on the rebels, and sufferings, the due of sin, upon his own Son, we might imagine that they would be inclined reverently, like Joseph, to say, “ Not so, my Father; for these are the guilty, and he is the Holy One;” and that the Eternal Father would reply, “ I know it, my children; I know it.” Ah, he guided his hands wittingly when he apportioned his own favour and love to the fallen who believed, and the sufferings due to sin to his own beloved. This was the fundamental feature of the eternal covenant. The Son had said, “ Save from going down to the pit, for I have found a ransom;” and he added, I am the ransom found. We need not be surprised that the method of redemption here revealed does not commend itself to the wise of this world, who view it only in the light of this world. It is deep; it is difficult. Prophets of old, who felt that the revelation of it was passing through their own lips, were amazed and staggered. They returned to the testimony they had delivered, and searched it again. They strove to comprehend what to their understanding seemed incomprehensible. Angels unfallen, too, who seem to have obtained a glimpse of the facts, were unable to determine the reason. This is eminently a spiritual thing. The carnal mind cannot possibly know it. Yet God reveals it unto babes. And it is interesting at this point to remember that the Lord Jesus, during his ministry on earth, gave audible thanks to the Father in a strain of unusual emotion and fervency for this very thing — “ That thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes.” This is the truth that is able to give peace to a troubled conscience, as the word of Jesus settled the raging sea. He has taken my place to bear and answer for sin; and he invites me to take his place, that his righteousness may be mine, and I be accepted therein. He is not displeased, but glad, when sinners take him at his word. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 64: 2.03.08. NO CROSS, NO CROWN ======================================================================== VIII. NO CROSS, NO CROWN. The sufferings unto Christ, and the glories after these.’’ — 1 Peter 1:11 MARK now the junction of the second link with the third, — the relation between “the sufferings unto Christ” and “the glories after these.” The connection here is as deep and as significant as in the other case. There are many glories in heaven and earth not specially connected with the sufierings of Christ. “ There is a glory of the sun, and a glory of the moon, and a glory of the stars.” The various gradations and tribes of living creatures, with their members and faculties, wonderfully made, are evidences of the Creators wisdom and power. But none of these have any place here. This is a glory of a dififerent kind displayed on another sphere, — a glory that excelleth. The distinguishing characteristic of this glory is that it springs from the sufferings of Christ, as flowers and fruit spring from the root of a living tree. Peter deals here exclusively with those glories thai “ follow “ the sufferings of Christ. No cross, no crown. Although there had been no cross, there would have been a gloiy to God from a fallen world. Righteous judgment consuming all the guilty would have been a glory of its kind, but not the specific glory that springs from the atoning death of Christ. The honour to God that results from destroying the works of the devil, and redeeming the fallen family — magnifying the law, and yet setting free the transgressors — cannot come before the cross, cannot come without the cross. It is fitted at once to inspire us with awe and to fill us with gladness, to observe how great a place the suffering of an innocent substitute holds in the Scriptures from their commencement to their close. In the Old Testament mainly by symbol, in the New mainly by direct revelation, this one theme pervades the whole Bible. Take this away, and you leave the book like a web when the warp-threads have all been drawn out,— not a web at all, but a heap of tangled threads. Those who cling to Christianity but reject the cross, labour in vain. They can extract no glory from its precepts and its examples if they take away the “ redemption by his blood; “ for all the precepts and examples are built on that one foundation. Among the apostles, Peter was peculiarly qualified to teach this doctrine. He received it in an extraordinary way. Besides the ordinary method of instruction by his own word, the Lord burnt this truth into his heart by the most terrible rebuke that he ever addressed to friend or to foe. When Peter, under the influence of true human tenderness, indeed, but also of carnal human pride, ventured to deprecate the dying of the substitute, saying, “ Far be this from thee, Lord,” the Master, not content to show him his mistake as on other occasions of error, flashed in his disciple’s face that flaming fire of reproof, ’’Get thee behind me, Satan.” It was thus that he was moved with indignation when any one, either from open enmity or mistaken love proposed to take away the cross, and so make impossible the crown. Seeing the end from the b inning, the Lord kept in the covenanted course — strove lawfully, that he might win. “For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross;*’ knowing that if the cross were not endured, the glory could not follow. On another occasion he gave his own suffering the same fundamental place, although circumstances rendered the expression more gentle. When two of his disciples proposed to introduce him to some Greeks, he declined; and explained the reason why he would not consent to the interview. The cultured Greeks, hearing of his fame, would consent to be taught by the prophet of Nazareth, and carry light from him to their own classic shores. But, like their representatives in modern times, they would accept the teaching of this prophet, and count it enough. On these terms he refused to speak. His answer — sent at secondhand — was, “ Except a comof wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it fall into the ground and die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” This is precisely the lesson that Peter teaches in our text. The fruit must spring from the dying of the seed; the glories must follow the sufferings of Christ. That song of white-robed worshippers around the throne is a glory to God in the highest; but the glory sprang from the cross, for these are they that have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. The offence of the cross has not yet ceased. The extraordinary fulness with which the atonement is taught in Scripture, in connection with the persistent rejection of it by the wisdom of this world, constitutes the evidence of inspiration. The architect who laid the foundations of that harbour-wall so deep and so broad — deeper and broader than any passer-by would have deemed needful — must have known the strength of the currents below and tempests above to which, at certain seasons, his structure would be exposed. The sufferings of the innocent substitute in the room of the guilty occupy a place for depth and breadth in the Scriptures corresponding to the strength of the wild current that rushes against them in modern times. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 65: 2.03.09. JESUS IN THE MIDST ======================================================================== IX. JESUS IN THE MIDST. “Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported imto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.” — 1 Peter 1:12. HAVING examined the two junctures which these three links present, and the two pairs which are constituted by these three members, let us now take a parting glance of the whole in one view. The grace unto you. The sufferings unto Christ. The glories after these. Behold another example of that revealed mystery, — “ On either side one, and Jesus in the midst.” When Christ was crucified on Calvary, his cross was flanked right and left by a sinner saved and a sinner lost. When his throne of judgment is set, the same phenomenon will reappear, with this difference, that instead of a single sample from either host, the hosts will all be there. Here in this apostle’s letter is an exhibition most interestingly analogous. Who is this that stands in the midst here? It is Christ crucified; — “ the sufferings unto Christ.” On either side of that central object is one, and who are they? On one side favour to the sinful, on the other side glory to God! From the cross stream, right and left, these two distinct but kindred glories — this way pardon to the guilty, that way divine righteousness satisfied and adorned. On no other root do these twin blossoms grow, on no other foundation do these twin pillars stand. Hark, a melody, as the Spirit breathes through the three distended strings of this harp, — we have heard the song before. Then too it was Jesus in the midst. The twin stanzas, radiating both like light beams from the head of the Babe born in Bethlehem, are “ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.” A pictorial, an almost dramatic interest adheres to this brief but pregnant portion of Peter’s letter. We have already pointed out, that making Christ crucified the centre, we find the cross supported on either side by favour poured on sinners and glory rising to God the Judge. These are the more immediate surroundings. But extend the radius, and you will find at the greater distance a parallel pair, and the form still is, “ On either side one, and Jesus in the midst.” Before verse eleventh, where the cross is elevated, you find in verse tenth the prophets promising Christ, and after it in verse twelfth the apostles proclaiming him. Here is the vision. In the centre stands a throne, and “ in the midst of the throne a Lamb, as it had been slain." On the one side a line of prophets stretches from the steps of the throne upwards to the creation of man; for the Lord never left himself without a witness on the earth. Latest and greatest of the race, the Baptist stands nearest, looking unto Jesus, and exclaiming, “ Behold the Lamb of God.” Earliest and farthest off”, on the eastern brink of time, Abel may be descried, shedding the blood of his sacrifice, and through it seeing Christ’s day afar off. Hand in hand they stand this long-drawn line of witnesses, promising a Saviour yet to come. On the other side of the throne stand the chosen witnesses of the Lamb’s death and resurrection, reporting the great accomplished fact of the Divine government and of human history, and preaching glad tidings to the world through the power of the Holy Ghost. From the cross in the midst a light streams upward to the very gate of Eden, giving life and meaning to all the sacrifices which, without it, would have been dull and dead; and downward, till the milder light of the first coming meet the lightning flash of the second. All that went before promised. He is coming; all that follow report, He has come. And so in him all the promises of God are yea and Amen. Incidentally here, an interesting feature of the gospel emerges — “ preaching “ and “ reporting “ are identical. To preach the gospel is substantially to report a fact. To tell the now old, old story, and tell it so as to make it ever new — this is the highest style of a gospel ministry. It is finished. The Son of God became the Son of man, that he might take our place, and that we might stand in his. He gave himself, the just for the unjust. His invitation is, “ Whosoever will, let him come; “ and, “ There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” Yet another feature is added to the landscape — thrown in near the outskirts, and communicating a tender settingsun-like glow to the whole canvas — “ Which things the angels desire to look into.” These holy spiritual beings, flames of fire though they be in ardent and intelligent service to their Creator, could not fully comprehend the redemption of men. They lacked experience. In taking up a difficult idea, no amount of intellectual acuteness can make up for the want of having gone through the case yourself. They had seen, I suppose, that their fellowcreature man had fallen by sin, and yet that the fallen were spared, forgiven, and restored to favour. In the fulness of time they had seen the weU-beloved of the Father, whom they were wont to worship, forsaken of the Father, and by wicked hands crucified and slain. This was beyond their comprehension. They stood amazed before the mystery. Saved men have another view-point, and can understand all. Seen from their stand-point, this cloud dissolves into light, and becomes a glory to God in the highest. In the estuary of a great navigable river, between parallel lines of green hills, a great number of buoys are seen scattered over the surface of the water. You stand on the neighbouring hill-top and see — see, but cannot understand. Some of the buoys are large, some small; some are white, some are red; some are near the shore, and some in midchannel. They seem to you as if they had fallen from the clouds without order, meaning, or use. But come down from that height; get into a ship that is coming from abroad and making its way home; thread your way through these signals right and left. You will see that they mark the way for the voyager; not the straight, but the deep safe way from the outer ocean to the harbour-home. In some such way might the angels, from their high place, be unable to understand the way of life for the lost, and might desire to descend, and get into our position, and share our experience, so as to taste and see the goodness and wisdom of God in the scheme of redemption. In the earlier year of the current century, certain nebula — shreds of white, mist-like clouds — were familiar to astronomers, hanging in the blue, far beyond the region of our atmosphere — farther distant than the fixed stars. What might these be? Has a dull, creeping mould or mildew tainted the purity of highest heaven? At length a new and more powerful instrument was turned in that direction, and, lo, the clouds resolved themselves into innumerable separate stars — shining worlds so thickly strewn, that in the aggregate they seemed a mildew spot on the surface of the azure. If the angels, who are amazed at the sight of sinners spared and the Holy One forsaken, could get a glimpse of the same objects through our instruments and with our eyes, the things that seemed anomalous spots on the universal purity of the Supreme would break out into separate glories — glories that excelled all that they had hitherto known. Certain it is, that however bright the place of the saints’ eternal rest may be, “ the Lamb is the light thereof.” The method and the means whereby the redemption of lost men has been accomplished will be hereafter the chief study of perfect creatures, and the brightest glory of the Creator God. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 66: 2.03.10. OBEDIENT CHILDREN ======================================================================== X. OBEDIENT CHILDREN. “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance.” — 1 Peter 1:13-14. ETEE, like his beloved brother Paul, was thoroughly familiar with the relation between doctriifie and life. In the writings of both apostles these two themes continually emerge in company; nor is the mingling irregular or accidental. Everywhere they stand related as roots and fruits. Out of truth revealed springs duty performed. Living faith shows itself by the fruits which it bears; and if it be barren, it is accounted dead. The link of connection in this passage is brought fully into view: “Wherefore gird up the loins,” etc. At this point the teacher changes his theme, and launches into a series of precepts for practice. In the preceding portion we have a list of doctrines revealed, and in the subsequent portion a list of duties enjoined. But it is not enough to observe that these two lie near each other; they are welded into one like the links of a chain. The long, connected series of doctrines contained in 1 Peter 1:1-12 seem like the row of jars constituting an electric battery; and the combined power of the whole is at 1 Peter 1:13 discharged into the field of duty, in order there to generate a force which will send a life spinning forward, “ fruitful in every good work,’ It is thus that doctrines are always in Scripture utilized as the motive-power of duty, according to the fundamental principle laid down by Paul in Romans 3:31 : “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.” Activity, as opposed to indolence; sobriety, as opposed to vanity or vice; and a cheerful hope, instead of a sluggish despondency, — these are the proper characteristics of one who bears the name of Christ and hopes in his merty. The obedience demanded and expected in the gospel is not the mere external act. Dead works do not serve the living God. There is a body, indeed, but there is a soul in it. The precept is not generally “ obedient,” but specifically “ as obedient children.” A slave’s obedience is not accepted; there must be a child’s love. We touch here, indeed, a fundamental characteristic of the gospel. We do not first work our way into sonship. We obtain sonship as a free gift; and then we work to please the Giver, because we love him who first loved us. A true child serves his father not from fear of punishment or hope of reward, but spontaneously from love. It is the child’s delight to anticipate and fulfil his parent’s wishes, he would be wretched if he were prevented. This, as far as things of time may be compared with those of eternity, is the kind of obedience that our Father in heaven desires and accepts. Thus the expression, “ as obedient children,” is not merely a figure of speech, but a specific definition of the thing required. Our Father is served by sons, not by slaves, A clause follows of great significance for us — “ Not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts.” The expression occurs only once elsewhere in the New Testameni - Romans 12:2, “ Conformed to this world.” It is a word with a wide scope; it is almost a picture. It presents a man bent on some particular pursuit, with body and mind all alert, his eye looking and his hand stretching in that direction. He is, moreover, girt and accoutred expressly for this object; as a diver or a hunter, each prepared for his work. Ah, Christian, you are acting imlike your name and place when you devote your mind and your energies to worldly lusts! But in this case a very remarkable epithet is applied to these unworthy pleasures; they are called “ the former lusts.” A disciple of Christ is past them; they lie behind him now. He has done with them. An epoch is here marked in a human life, and some parts of a man’s experience are said to have passed before it. The grand epoch which marks the dates of the civilized world is the birth of Christ. We constantly employ the letters A. D. (the year of our Lord) to mark the age of events. It so happens that in a very precise sense this is the epoch which Peter employs in the text. These lusts were the pursuit of the people’s life “ before “ some specific event. And what event was that? The birth of Christ in themselves. Before Christ was formed in them, in their regeneration, these lusts occupied them; but after that event, they were left behind. The apostle’s exhortation is, that these vain or vile pleasures should be left, as the tasks of Egypt were left behind the Hebrews when the Red Sea was placed between them and the house of bondage. It is further said that it was “ in their ignorance “ that these lusts had any power over them. A human soul would not succumb to these ignoble masters, unless it were void of understanding. Evil spirits, according to Paul, are “ rulers of the darkness of this world: “ if the world were not in darkness, they would not be permitted to rule. When a man is mastered by the appetite for wealth, it is in ignorance. He says, “ Soul, take thine ease; thou hast much goods laid up for many years.” But the Lord replies, *’ Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.” I have heArd a reflection often expressed by thoughtful country people when they saw a great draught horse meekly submitting to be bridled and led away to labour by a child: “If the brute creatures knew their own strength, they would not submit to the yoke and the lash.” These mighty quadrupeds could trample down the stripling that puts bits in their mouths. Yet they submit to whatever their master imposes, ignorant of their own strength. Oh, if man, (Jod’s greatest creature, knew his strength, he would not submit to be the slave of vile passions! Strong men in multitudes are in our country led not only to the yoke, but even to the shambles, by the appetite of intemperance. This possessing spirit says to the right arm. Do this, and he doeth it; to the foot, Go thither, and he goeth. Oh that these captives, driven openly in gangs, not through the marshes of interior Africa, but along the streets of British cities, were at last set free! Hear ye Him: “ Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Their Redeemer is strong. “ If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 67: 2.03.11. BOUGHT WITH A PRICE ======================================================================== XI. BOUGHT WITH A PRICE. "But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear: forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” — 1 Peter 1:15-19. T is an interesting study to search in the words of the Lord Jesus for the germs of all the doctrines which the apostles subsequently repeated and expanded. Peter intimates that it was in “ ignorance “ that the former lusts retained their power. He learned this from the Master at Jacob’s well. The Samaritan woman, previously to her interview with Jesus, had led a wild, impure life; but she knew no better till that eventful day. The words of the Lord are very full and precise on this point: “ If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith unto thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.” An invitation to holiness is enforced by an appeal to the holiness of God. Here again the Master has given the cue to his servant in one of the beatitudes, — “ Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” Mark the sweep of the precept: the compass is planted in the centre, and the circle drawn round the circumference of a life. The demand is, “Be holy in all manner of conversation.” The meaning is, in all your intercourse with men, in every turning of your history. At home, or abroad; with your own family, or in presence of strangers; at work, or enjoying relaxation; at church, or in the market; — wherever you may be, or however employed, let lips and life be holiness to the Lord. A life is like a stream issuing from a mountain-lake. The water cannot be of different colours at different places. It cannot be pure at one spot and turbid a few yards further on. If the fountain be transparent, the outflowing stream will be clear over all its breadth. The holiness that is put on, as suitable at certain times and in certain places, is not holiness; it is hypocrisy. When the streams of a life, as they dispread themselves over the individual history, are found, like the waters of Jericho, to be all bitter, it is not possible, by any medicament, to sweeten portions of them here and there, where travellers may be expected to taste them. There is only one way of cure: a certain salt must be cast into the spring, and then all the water that flows over its brim will be wholesome — all wholesome alike. “ Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit withm me.” The warning is addressed to the children of God’s family; and the exhortation to sobriety is enforced by the consideration that they salute as Father him who judges without respect of persons. Neither mistrust of the Father nor jealousy of any brother should have place in this house. Favouritism is a fatal flaw in parental discipline. Seen, or even suspected, it ruins all. But there is no such flaw in the Divine administration. There is great variety of treatment, indeed; but all is regulated by wisdom and love. Absolute confidence in the Father’s fairness should banish all fretting from the children’s hearts. This is not your home; it is only a sojourn. The heirs, detained for a time in a strange country, should be watchful lest they contract relations and habits inconsistent with their station and prospects. To make their actual life solid and true, he bids them remember that they have been redeemed. Here the melody touches the key-note of all Scripture, — redemption is the power that purifies and elevates a life. In entire accordance with this representation, the aspect of redemption presented is deliverance from a frivolous course. True it is that when any one is, in the gospel sense, “ redeemed,” he is no longer under condemnation; the sentence of guilt is removed, and he is at peace with God. But an immediate fruit and uniform accompaniment of that blood-bought pardon is an emancipation from the bondage of vain and vicious habits of life. “ If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” Those of the Christians who were of Jewish origin were delivered from the intolerable load of rabbinical traditions which had ensnared their consciences and fossilized their lives; and those who were converted Gentiles had escaped the still more debasing idolatry of the heathen, whether Phenician or Greek. There was no emancipation without a ransom; and the price was not paid in silver and gold. In presence of the ransom actually provided, even these are deemed “ corruptible things.” Their souls were redeemed from death, and their life on earth from vanity, by “ the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” The expressions point to the Passover lamb and the exodus from Egypt. Although Israel were a nation that God had chosen and called, they languished in slavery, their days were wasted in making bricks for their masters. Many terrible judgments were sent upon Egypt; but these strokes did not break the captive’s chain — they seemed only to weld its links more firmly on his limbs. After the nine plagues had come and gone, emancipation seemed as far distant as ever. Then was the lamb’s blood shed and sprinkled on the lintels: a nation of slaves, helpless under the tyrant’s hand, but obedient to the word of the Redeemer, crept beneath the sprinkled blood at night, and went out free with a high hand in the morning. Beautiful and articulate symbol of the true redemption. Terrors of the Lord in succession may tear the flesh and dry up the bones; a law work may keep the conscience for years like the sea in a storm; and yet there may be no peace and no liberty. Without shedding of blood there is no exodus, either to Israel or to us. The law may become a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ; but Christ only can save. I suppose Saul of Tarsus was as much racked and shaken by his self-righteous struggle as Egypt by the nine plagues. The law of God on one side, with the long array of merits on the other to meet it, — the circumcision, and the birth, and the tithes, and the phylacteries, and the long prayers, and the persecuting zeal. There they fought, these mighty adversaries, and poor Saul, body and soul, was the battle-field for contending powers. “ O wretched man that I am!” At last came a peace as sudden and as great as the calm that came over the Sea of Galilee when Jesus said, “Peace, be still.” But when he cast away all his grand array of merits — cast them away with intense disgust — we do not find that lie gathered up another list of better attainments in their stead: “ I count all but loss, that I may win Christ, and be found in him” In room of all he obtained one only; but that one was enough. He learned first in his own experience what he afterwards taught to the alarmed jailer, — “ Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 68: 2.03.12. LOVE ON THE SPRING ======================================================================== XIL LOVE ON THE SPRING. “Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.”— 1 Peter 1:20-23. LTHOUGH man was last in the order of creation, he was also first, before all. It was not first a fallible man, and then when he fell an infallible Redeemer provided. First was the Redeemer, the Eternal Son. In his image, off this model, man was made. In order that he may be made high, he is made free. But if he be made free, he will fall. What then? To prevent the possibility of falling, will he be made low — on the level of the beasts, without a will? Will he be created, beautiful and glorious indeed, like the stars, but, like them, without the power of choosing, and obliged to be obedient to physical laws whether he will or not? No; he shall be made high, so that when he falls, and is redeemed, he will be a glory to God far greater than any that the heavens or the earth declare. As in regard to the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:23), so in regard to the original foreordination. It is “Christ the first fruits; afterwards they that are Christ’s.” It is not that God created the planets, and then, finding them dark and cold, subsequently provided a sun to afford them light and heat. Rather, he made a sun for his own glory, and scattered satellites aroimd him, that they might circulate and shine in his light. In the eternal covenant it is first Christ, and then man, with his constitution and his history, to wait upon Christ, as the planets wait upon the sun, receiving his light and reflecting his glory. Foreordained before the world was, the Redeemer was “ made manifest in these last times for you.” The times we live in are the last. For those who despise the ministry of the Spirit now showing the things of Christ, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, no other refuge for sinners. We have here a very short but very comprehensive creed. “ For you, who by him do believe in God.” It is parallel with the one given by the Lord himself (John 14:1): “Ye believe in God; believe also in me.” The whole matter lies there: come unto God the Father, but come in Christ, the Mediator between God and man. “ No man cometh unto the Father but by me;” and, on the analogy of Scripture, we may safely add, No man will be cast out or kept out who comes in this way to the Father. e again approach a practical exhortation, and it is a most interesting study to observe how it is surrounded and enforced. This apostle would no more think of laying down a duty without a divine doctrine to enforce it, than an engineer would think of erecting a mill-wheel without a stream of water to drive it round. The precept in this case is, “ Love one another with a pure heart fervently.” It is a duty that is very difficult, very necessary, and, when performed, very precious. Before we speak of the precept itself, let us carefully observe how it is flanked on either side for support. Although the moral precepts of Scripture are higher and purer and fuller than any other, they differ from other systems, not so much in their nature as in the motives by which they are enforced. When they propose to throw a suspension bridge across a river, far more labour and cost are laid out in providing the sustaining pillars on either side than in constructing the actual roadway between them. So here it is easy to say, “Love one another;” but such is the strain which this command puts on human life, that it cannot be supported unless there be faith in doctrines that are divine. More depends on the pillars that support the chain than on the chain itself. On the one side the precept here is supported by, “ Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit; “ and on the other by, “ Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God.” Unless these two piers had stood on either bank of the river, founded on the living rock below, the slight rainbow-like line could never have been suspended in the sky. Brother-love may be held up if it is attached on the one side to the consciousness of having purified our souls by the truth applied by the Spirit; and on the other side to the consciousness of having been born again of the incorruptible seed. Nothing less and nothing else is able to bear the strain. The structure of the argument might even be presented to the eye on a printed page, thus: —. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, Love one another with a pure heart fervently, Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God. These two pillars repeat each other, with differences in minor features, as was meet. Both express the new birth, and the means by which it is accomplished. In the first, however, man*s own activity is more prominently presented; and in the second, God’s sovereign power. The same difference may be observed between the parable of the Prodigal, which presents the human side of redemption, where man is active, and the parable of the Lost Sheep, which presents the Divine side, where the Redeemer does all. The instrumentality of conversion is in both cases substantially the same — the word and Spirit of God. In the precept itseK there is one feature which demands and will repay a careful examination. The term “fervently,” although it gives the meaning of the original, is not a literal translation. It means extended, or on the stretch. It conveys the idea of a constant tension such as is supplied in machinery by a steel spring. In one department of a sewing machine all depends on the thread being kept constantly tight, so that the moment any slackness occurs, the loose portion is picked up instantly and without fail. If that operation were left dependent on the watchfulness and quickness of a human operator, it would entirely fail. The worker would grow w eary, would forget, would hasten to tighten the thread after the time was past, and all would go to wreck and ruin. But by entrusting the watch and the work to a bent elastic steel wire, an absolute infallibility is secured. The watcher never forgets, the worker never wearies. The work is done perfectly, and always done at the right moment. The spring is always on the stretch, and never misses.c Though it is obliged to watch the slackening, and pull the thread instantly tight, a hundred times a minute, all day long for twenty years, it never once forgets or fails. The precept requires a love of this sort — watching and working in a Christian’s heart. If you need to remember your duty every time that a sudden injury occurs, you will not be in time with the soft answer that turns away wrath. Before love has gathered itself up, and determined on its course, the opportunity will be past. The disciple of Christ will appear as irascible, passionate, and revengeful as other men. There must be a spring — a law of love set once for all as a faculty of the new heart, that will operate instantaneously and uniformly. The disciples thought it was a burdensome and irksome task to forgive an injurer seventy times seven injuries. Such indeed it would be, if you needed every time to reason the matter out and spur yourself on to duty. If the spring is not on, loops will fall, and the web will be spoilt. But the spring-love, once inserted as a faculty of the regenerated heart, will catch and keep every opportunity like a law of nature. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 69: 2.03.13. MAN AND HIS GLORY ======================================================================== XIII. MAN AND HIS GLORY. “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the liord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.”— 1 Peter 1:24-25. THESE verses institute a comparison and bring out a contrast between the natural life and the spiritual. Every son of man is born into one life, and every son of God is born again into another. There is a mystery in every man, but a greater mystery in every Christian. Nature is deep, but grace is deeper. This is not a contrast between the carnal and the spiritual mind. Of these it cannot be said that the one is short-lived and the other enduring. Spirit does not die, whether good or evil. The two lives brought into contrast here are the natural life of man in the body, which soon fades away, and the new life of the regenerated, which will for ever flourish. These two lives are not in all their aspects opposite, for the same person may at the same time possess both. When a man is born of the Spirit, he is not then and thereby stripped of the life which belongs to the flesh. Every child of God, from the day of his conversion till the day of his death, possesses and enjoys both. He holds them, however, by different tenures: the first or natural life will soon depart; but the new or spiritual life will be his for ever. The “ word of God,” as the seed of the new life in believers, “ endureth for ever.” That word is “ Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The analogy employed is exact and full and beautiful, “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.” The flgure flts so well that we may venture to make a clos inspection, and institute a minute analysis. The comparison of human life generally to the herbage of spring contains two distinct but corresponding parts, expressed in the usual manner of Hebrew poetry. First, we have the simple, broad, and comprehensive intimation, “ All flesh is as grass; “ and then a more special analogy rising out of it, as the flower springs from the stalk, “ The glory of man is as the flower of grass.” Man is like the grass, and his glory like its flower. Life is short, and the period of its perfect development is shorter still. The analogy in its first and more general form requires scarcely any exposition; no comparison could be more true, or more obvious. Mankind are like the herbage of summer, which will wither at the turn of the year, although no accident befall it, and is liable to be crushed before its time by a wild beast’s foot, or cut through by the mower’s scythe. A human life passes through the same stages as the herbage of a season: it has a growing spring, a ripening summer, and a fading autumn. The history of a man consists of a gradual growing to maturity, and a gradual declining to the grave. Such is his best estate, when no accident cuts him off in mid-time of his days. This is the mirror which truly reflects the image of “ all flesh.” So pass the threescore and ten years which sum up the pilgrimage. It is like a dream when one awaketh: it seems very small when it is nearly done. But if this is true of the flesh — the sensitive nature which man has in common with the brutes — what shall be said of all his distinguishing features as a moral and intelligent being? Although the mere flesh is evanescent, what of the glory wherewith his Maker has crowned his head? The text has two things to say of this glory, — the first, that it greatly excels in worth and beauty the animal structure on which it grows; the second, that it is still more short-lived. If all flesh be as graaa, all its glory is only as the flower of grass. Two characteristic features distinguish the flower from the herbage, — greater brilliance, and a shorter day. The herbage lives long and grows far ere the blossom appears; and the blossom, although more beautiful than the supporting stalk, fades and dies before it. The flower is indeed the glory of the grass; but it comes up later, and withers earlier. What shall we say, then, of all that is peculiar to man — of all that distinguishes him from the beasts of the field — of that human face divine, and that articulate speech, and that calculating mind, which mark him off” as chief of God’s creatures here and ruler of his world? Can the glory of man be compared to the herbage as well as his sentient nature? No; for though it is more brilliant while it lasts, it is sooner over. The distinguishing excellence of human nature is not like the grass; it is only like the flower of grass. Beauty of form is one of the distinguishing glories of humanity. In our species beauty of person is the rule and tendency of nature, although particular features in individuals may by various accidents be more or less obscured. It has pleased God our Father so to arrange the features of our frame, and so to constitute our minds, that we count them comely. We admire the flower of the herbage, and devoutly see in it the Creators wisdom. Shall we not look with deeper interest on a lighted human countenance, and see in that glory of man a glory to the Lord? Loathe as much as you will the moral depravity which converts all a Father’s gifts into instruments of evil, but reverently acknowledge the mark of his fingers in the model of man. This glory does not last long. It is a flower — fragrant, attractive; but it withers soon. Man’s life is short, but the glory which grows on it is shorter. The flower is later blown and earlier faded than the frail green stem that bears it. But the beauty of the new creature in Christ does not fade like a flower. It is an interesting speculation — though it can be nothing more — to imagine the beauty of man unfallen. The peculiar sweetness sometimes imparted to the countenance of an ordinary person by the sudden influx of a “ great peace “ in periods of spiritual revival, suggests the probability that we lost by sin an external loveliness so great that we lack now the power of conceiving fully what it was. But, great though the loss be, Christians sorrow not over it as those who have no hope; for their gain is greater. Where sin abounded to mar, grace will much more abound to renew. Whatever is lost by sin is more than restored by redemption. The risen Christ is glorious, and risen Christians will be like him. Humanity redeemed will be humanity perfect. As the idea of man in the mind of God from eternity, will be the man who shall stand before the white throne, accepted in the Beloved. I would fain realize the beauty of the resurrection body, as well as the spiritual purity of the saints in light. How beautiful man will be when there is no longer any seed of corruption in his body, or any enmity to God in his soul! I think a true Christian sometimes halts painfully in his pilgrimage for want of this ingredient in his hope. The redemption of the soul is indeed the most precious; thereon all other blessings depend; but among the good things that go in its train, the perfection of the redeemed body is a consoling hope — a consolation which Christians greatly need in this vale of tears. “ How bright these glorious spirits shine! “ Yea; but when Christ’s work is completed, they will be embodied spirits. How bright these glorious bodies will shine also, when mortality shall be swallowed up of life! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 70: 2.03.14. "CHRIST IN YOU THE HOPE OF GLORY" ======================================================================== XIV. “CHRIST IN YOU THE HOPE OF GLORY.” "But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” — 1 Peter 1:25. N contrast with the fleeting life of man, “the word of the Lord endureth for ever.” Every creature after its kind. The life that springs from the word will, like its origin, be immortal. But we cannot reach the full meaning of the message here, if we think only of the written word, or even of the mind or meaning which the Holy Spirit expresses thereby. These are only the clothing: it is Christ himself that is wrapped therein, and presented to us. It is from John that we learn most fully the relation of the Scriptures to Christ. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” The corn of wheat which must fall into the ground and die is the speaker himself. He was at once the sower and the seed; he was at once the offerer and the sacrifice. Nowhere else does the prophecy of the text find its full meaning. The Word that endureth for ever is the Word that was with God, and was God. This comes out with great clearness and force in the example of his own preaching in the synagogue of Nazareth recorded in the Gospels (Luke 4:16-21). When he had read the text from the Scriptures, he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant. As soon as the book had delivered its message, it was laid aside, and he presented himself to the congregation as the fulfilment of the prophecy. His sermon consisted in permitting the prophet to pronounce the promise, and then exhibiting himself as its fulfilment. No other preacher, either false or true, ever acted thus. To do so would in any mere man be a measure of pride and arrogance that even the boldest has never attained. Only He whom the Father sent into the world could stand in that breach. The weight would crush emy creature. This alone is proof of his divinity. If any should dare to assume that position, the height would make him giddy, and his life would reel into all manner of extravagance. Again, referring to the ostentatious assiduity with which the Jewish doctors searched the letter of the Scriptures, he tells them that in so doing they allow the kernel to slip through their hands, while they vainly strive to live upon the shell: they — the Scriptures — “ are they that testify of me; and ye will not come unto me that ye may have life.’* From the beginning to the end the Scriptures are the vehicle which contain and convey and deliver Christ. Christ in the Scriptures revealed is the Word of God, — the mind of God toward lost men, expressed and embodied. The same central truth is taught in many places and in many forms by the Lord: thus, “ He that eateth me shall live by me;” “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” “ And this is the Word which is gospelled unto you.” It is not so many doctrines, and so many precepts, logically strung together and intellectually understood. It is the ever-enduring Word that is given by God, and accepted in faith by man. When the Lord articulately on appeal decerned between the sisters Martha and Mary, the distinction he drew was between the many not needful and the one needfvl. His judgment is, “ Of one there is need;” and Mary had fixed her choice on the one when she sat at his feet. In the case of Paul, too, it is made marvellously clear that what God gave, and he accepted, was the Word in person. Taught by the Spirit at length, he flung away all his long-cherished righteousnesses, naming them one by one, and casting them away with loathing as filthy rags. But when he comes to tell of the new portion for his soul that he obtained instead of his cast-off merits, he does not give a list of many good things that took the place of the evil; he counted all loss for Christ (Php 3:7). It is this that constitutes the “ gospel “ — the good news. No number of good things would serve our turn. “ There is need of one.” But that one is enough. It is finished, He hath done it all. All things are yours, if ye are Christ’s. But the gospel is preached “ unto you.” Unless we personally, one by one, appropriate for ourselves “ the gift of God,” there is no transaction. It is not Christ in heaven, Christ in the Bible, Christ in the confession, but Christ in you, that is the living hope of glory. The expression here is parallel with that which is employed in the report of Philip’s address to the Ethiopian treasurer — “He preached unto him Jesus.” On both sides the parallel holds good; both subject and object are identical. What did Philip preach? Jesus; that is, as represented by Peter, the ever -enduring Word. How did Philip preach that Word? “ Unto him.” So here, “ unto you.” This is a great and pressing point. It is, indeed, the turning-point. In the sphere of life it is the article of a standing or a falling man, as in the sphere of doctrine justification is the article of a standing or a falling Church. In some countries and at some periods there has been a disastrous divorce of these two whom God hath joined. Sometimes there has been much preaching of Jesus — of the Word — without the application of the truth to persons. It seems to have been the gospel poured into the air, and not “ unto you.” The expression conveys the conception of a human soul being the vessel into which the eternal Word is poured. Now, though the Word be preached truly and abimdantly over all the land, it will save only those into whom it is poured. Though much water be poured out, it will not benefit the vessel that stands shut, and empty, and dry. It is the old, plain truth: “ Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” The two essentials are the Christ and thou; that which saves is Christ unto thee. It is parallel with the Lord’s own word to Peter, “ Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thov, me?” The spiritual quickening which is spreading over the land, and arresting the regard both of the Church and the world, touches mainly this point. It is not a greater or a better gospel, but the old gospel more specifically pressed home upon persons. It is the gospel unto you. In as far as there is an advance, I think it lies very much in this, — that Christ is brought into contact with the individual soul, and these two are left to wrestle, like Jacob and the angel. The Christ “ apprehends “ the lost man as the shepherd grasped the lost sheep when at last he found it, — apprehends him, and will not let him go: the lost man, conscious that the Christ is “ apprehending “ him, conceives from that fact a new hope, and, in turn, “ apprehends “ his Apprehender, with the life and death cry, “ I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” The King suffers this violence, and delights to suffer it; and the violent gain Him by this force. Hence the frequent glad announcement, as the wrestler emerges from the conflict, ’’ I have found Christ.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 71: 2.03.15. THE BANE AND THE ANTIDOTE ======================================================================== XV. THE BANE AND THE ANTIDOTE. “Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all gwle and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.” — 1 Peter 2:1-2. HIS is not a converting word, but a word for the converted. Here are precepts for practice. The deep things of God, both in the covenant of grace and in the conversion of men, have been fully set forth. But these are not left merely as the materials of a creed; they are employed as the power that shall purify the life. The particle “ wherefore “ is the visible link that connects doctrine and practice. Ye have been forgiven and renewed; therefore put off the evil and put on the good. “ Ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are his.” “ Let every man that hath this hope in him purify himself even as he is pure.” In accordance with the facts of human experience, and with the whole analogy of faith, the precept here is twosided. It points at once to the evil that must be discarded, and the good that must be admitted in its stead. That which has first possession must be expelled, in order that the faculties of the new man may have room to expand and operate. Following the order of nature, the apostle first names the tenants in possession, and serves them with a writ of ejectment. These are arranged in three compartments, with the universal “ all “ attached to eacL 1. All malice. 2. AU gmle. and hypocrisies, and envies. 3. All evil speakings. The first term is general It indicates the soil in which the roots of bitterness grow — badness. The group of three under the second head represent evil thoughts teeming in the heart, like invisible seeds that lie in the ground ready to spring up on the first favourable opportunity. And the third is the issue of the inner thoughts by the readiest channel upon the outward life. Alas, evil speaking floods the world as some weeds cover the fields in early summer! My heart was made sad in some journeys last year, as I saw many large tracts of grain almost hidden by a yellow sea of flowering weeds. For the time you think it is not possible that any of the comcan come to perfection. Even there, however, a harvest is reaped; but the harvest would have been heavier, if the fields had been clean. Evil speaking, like one dominant weed, covers the surface of society, and chokes in great measure the growth of the good seed. Christians, ye are God’s husbandry — ploughed field: put away these bitter things in their seed-thoughts and in their matured actions, that ye may be fruitful unto him. K the multitude of words spoken by professing Christians in disparagement of their neighbours were reduced first by the omission of all that is not strictly true and fair; and next by the omission of all that is not spoken with a good object in view; and next by the omission of all that, though spoken with a good intention, is unwisely spoken, and mischievous in its results; — the remainder would, like Gideon’s army, be very small in number, but very select in kind. The residuum would consist only of the testimony of true men against wickedness, which truth and faithfulness, as in God*s sight, compelled them to utter. The positive precept that follows is conceived and expressed in the form of a most interesting and obvious analogy. “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word.” The terms translated milk of the word certainly and simply mean, milk not in a literal but spiritual sense. It is the same epithet that is employed (Romans 12:1) to signify that the service or divine worship expected from Christians is not material offerings of sheep and goats, but a reasonable — that is, a spiritual in contradistinction from a material — service. It is an act of the human soul, worshipping God a Spirit, through faith in the one Mediator. So here, in making use of the word milk, the apostle does not leave it to be inferred, he expressly intimates that it is spiritual milk he means. And by further introducing “babes” into the analogy, he more clearly explains his meaning to be the food provided and suited for the young spiritual life, corresponding to the food provided in nature for a new-born child. Spiritual hunger and thirst are as real as the corresponding appetites of the body, and as commanding. Saul of Tarsus, when that new hunger began its cravings in his soul, abandoned material food and drink for three whole days. The spiritual hunger was stronger than the natural, and overbore it. Such also was the experience of the Master himself when “ he waited at the well of Jacob.” Though hungry, he declined to eat the bread his disciples offered, because his appetite for another bread overbore and for the time silenced the appetites of nature. He was so satisfied with the act of imparting salvation to a lost sinner, that he forgot to eat his daily bread. So then the prescription which this beloved physician administers to invalids is spiritual or soul milk. We are not at a loss to understand his meaning; for Christ has presented himself alike to the newly converted and the experienced as the food whereby they must live and grow. ’’ Except ye eat the flesh and diink the blood of the Son of man, ye have no life in you.” As new-born babes desire the milk, and drink it, so the born again come to the Word, and get out of his fulness the supply of all their need. Observe now the relation in which the negative and the positive stand to each other. Although the precept about putting off first meets our eye on the page, the act is not represented as taking precedence in point of time. It is neither first put off the evil, and then admit the good; nor first take in the good, and then get quit of the eviL The language of the text determines that the two acts are strictly simultaneous. The form of the sentence is — “ Laying aside these, desire this.” This is scientifically correct as well as scripturally true. The coming of Christ unto his own — to the throne of a human heart — “ is like the morning.” And how does the morning come? Is it first that the light comes, and then the darkness departs? or first the darkness departs, and then the light advances? It is neither. As the light advances, the darkness recedes. The processes are strictly simultaneous; but in nature the advance of light is the cause, and the departure of darkness the effect. Such, also, is the rule in the spiritual sphere. It is indeed tnie that evil must depart to let in the good; but it is the advance of the good that drives the evil before it. Christ is the stronger who overcomes the strong, and casts him out, and reigns in his stead. To take in the milk and retain also the envies and evil speakings, will give neither comfort nor growth. The effort to mmgle these opposites mars the happiness of many a life, and distorts all its testimony for the truth of the gospel. To pour in the milk on the head of these manifold corruptions still retained and cherished, produces neither health nor strength. The milk so mingled sours, and so disturbs. No man can serve two masters. As David’s house waxes stronger, the house of the deposed and apostate monarch must wax more feeble. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 72: 2.03.16. LIVING STONES ======================================================================== XVL LIVING STONES. “If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious. To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” — 1 Peter 2:3-5. HERE Peter walks closely in the Master’s footsteps. He intimates that all his expectation of growth in the new life of his friends depends on their experience of forgiving love in their own hearts. He proceeds on the supposition that they have “ tasted that the Lord is gracious;” otherwise he has no expectation of fruit. So taught the Lord himself, when he said, with reference to the relation between the vine and its branches, “ Without me ye can do nothing.” The actual performance of duty depends on the receiving of pardon, as an effect depends on its cause. In the gospel it is not, Do in God*s service, then and therefore you will receive from him; it is. Receive from him, then and therefore you will be enabled to serve him. It is the branch in the vine that is fruitful. In the affluent imagery of this fisherman apostle, we are introduced somewhat suddenly here to a new analogy. Dismissing the conception of infants with their sure strong instincts for their mother’s milk as the means of life and growth, he steps with all the ease of a master into the widely different yet perfectly congruous conception of a house growing from its foundation to its summit, by the preparation and piling up of many stones. The figures here crowd upon one another, and yet all contribute to the exactitude and completeness of the idea. To the notion of many stones constituting one edifice, is added the idea of life in each separate stone, and the consequent increase of the edifice being a spontaneous growth instead of an operation performed on inanimate matter. And then the conception of a priesthood is added to that of the temple in which they serve, that another aspect of the kingdom may be included in the picture. “To whom coming.” This is in harmony with the whole gospel. It is always and everywhere, “ Come unto me.” The corresponding complaint of the Lord against the Jews is, “Ye will not come unto me that ye may have life.*’ But here the “ coming “ is applied to a stone, that enters as a constituent of an edifice. The figure requires that we should conceive of a stone carried to the spot by human hands. So much the worse for the figure if it make any such demand. We are learning here at the feet of a teacher who is bent, not on maintaining the rules of rhetoric, but on conveying to men’s minds the saving truth of the gospel. The form must yield to the substance. When nature fails to convey the whole lesson, the lacking part will be given contrary to nature; and so the stones are “ living stones.” They represent living souls, — a people made willing in a day of Divine power; therefore the rhetorical unity of the analogy must be broken, in order to maintain the unity of the faith. Both the rock which constitutes the foundation, and the stones which are laid ou it, are living. The Christ to whom they come, and they who come to him, are living stones; and thus the house grows, like the vine and its branches. As the vine grows into the branch and feeds it, and the branch grows into the vine and draws from it sustenance, so the living foundation attracts the stones, and the stones, by that mysterious attraction made living, come to the foundation, and grow into an holy temple. It is worthy of notice here that the growth of a tree and the construction of an edifice are very closely and very frequently united in the Scriptures, in order to exhibit the nature and result of the new life in a soul. We give two specimens, one from the Old Testament and the other from the New: “ That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as comer stones, polished after the similitude of a palace” (Psalms 144:12). “ Ye are God’s husbandry; ye are God’s building “ (1 Corinthians 3:9), The foundation chosen by God was rejected by men. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. This rejection by the Jews was indeed the preconcerted mark by which the faithful should recognize the Messiah. “ He was rejected and despised of men.” On this foundation resting, each living stone is a temple, and all the living stones together constitute the universal Church. As Christ himself is at once the offerer and the sacrifice, so a Christian is at once the temple where God condescends to dwell, and the consecrated priest who presents offerings there. Ye offer up spiritual sacrifices. In the Epistle to the Bomans, we find that the bodies of believers — this life, with all its faculties and powers — are the living sacrifices that God will accept at the offerer’s hands, as distinguished from the dead offerings of a former dispensation. Two qualities in New Testament worship go to make it acceptable. One is, the offerings must be spiritual, not material; the other is, they must be presented through the one Mediator between God and man. Only spiritual offerings can be acceptable. Bodily service has no merit. No amount of material gifts contributed can avail the opulent worshipper, and no degree of self-inflicted torture can avail the devotee who is courageous but poor. Vestments and candles and incense are out of place under the gospeL God does not regard them; they have no value in his sight, except a value on the wrong side, as marking men who have departed from the simplicity of Christ. Beware, ye who labour in the fires to produce these mechanical and dead sacrifices. The answer prepared for your appeal is, — “ Who hath required this at your hands?” God calls for spiritual sacrifices. Christ taught with marvellous clearness that under the New Dispensation the acceptance of worship does not depend on place and form, but that men must everywhere worship in spirit and in truth. It is the human soul, in contact with the Father of our spirits, worshipping, loving, serving, — this only is acceptable. But even this, in order to be acceptable, must be all presented always through the one Mediator between God and man. The office of the Holy Spirit in the word is to take of the things of Christ and show them unto us. Here is a thing of Christ which the Spirit clearly shows. He is the Daysman, laying his hand upon both, to obtain acceptance for our worship or work. Even the most spiritual sacrifices are acceptable only through Jesus Christ. The announcement from above is, “ Lo! I am with you alway.” Let our heart’s answer echo up to him that speaketh — “Even so, come. Lord Jesus.” It is not his name as a dead letter in our creed, or his name as a sound at the termination of our prayer, but himself in simple faith accepted, dwelling in our hearts, and ever presented unto (Jod as our righteousness, not only when we bow the knee in prayer, but also in all the turnings of life. “ Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, within the veil.” Let the line be ever tight that unites the ship tossed on the sea of time to the anchor within the veil, until the soul, saved from shipwreck, get an abundant entrance into the Lord’s presence, and so the need of an anchor be felt no more. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 73: 2.03.17. "ON EITHER SIDE ONE; AND JESUS IN THE MIDST" ======================================================================== XVII. “ON EITHER SIDE ONE; AND JESUS IN THE MIDST.” “ Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief comer stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded. Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the comer, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stimible at the word, being disobedient: whereimto also they were appointed.” — 1 Peter 2:6-8. HE Scriptures did not determine the provisions and character of the covenant of grace: rather, the provisions and character of the covenant, arranged in the Divine counsel before time began, gave shape to the promises and ordinances of Scripture. Because matters were so ordered in the plan of salvation, therefore also that same ordering was given in the Scriptures. In particular, because, in the purpose of God, the eternal Son undertook to redeem his people, the promises of his coming were given in the prophets, to keep the eye of faith from the beginning ever looking unto Jesus. The eternal God has laid this foundation: we need not fear to trust it. He hath done all things well. It was laid in Zion: it pleased God to select one family, and constitute them the custodiers of his oracles, for distribution through the world in the fulness of time. The chief corner stone is chosen and precious. The word means dear, as in the case of the centurion’s servant, who was dear unto his master. The well-beloved of the Father was chosen for this service, and sent into the world. Much of the power which the gospel exercises on stony hearts to break and melt them lies here. God spared not his own Son: the gift was, in human language, unspeakable. It is the preciousness of his gift that imparts power to his invitation. As soon as an anxious inquirer realizes that Gk)d, in order to save a soul from death, gave up his Well-beloved, the melting begins, and the hard stony heart flows down like water. It is not that God was hard and unforgiving until Christ, by his suffering in our stead, propitiated his favour. This conception grasps even the glorious gospel by the wrong end, and turns it upside down, — turns the truth into a lie. The opposite is the truth. Such was the love of the Father to the lost, that he spared not his dear Son, but gave him up to die, the just for the unjust. The mercy of God to sinners is the cause, not the effect, of the incarnation and sacrifice of the Son. “ He that believeth on him shall not be confounded.” It seems to point to the flutter and confusion that must overtake the guilty at the appearing of the Judge. Those guests who wore the wedding garment were not put about when the footfall of the king was heard approaching. They were adorned with the robe that the king himself had chosen, prescribed, and bestowed. They knew that he would be well pleased with his own. This is the shadow of that confidence which calms and keeps the hearts of believers when they have put on Christ. They know that God is well pleased with his own beloved. There is no confusion of face for those who are found in him. “ There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” It was well for Paul that he cast away with loathing the long array of merits in which he formerly trusted. For if he had been placed before the great white throne with those filthy rags for covering — his birth and baptism, his orthodoxy and his zeal — he would certainly have been confounded in the presence of the Judge. He learned in time to loathe these filthy rags, and he passionately put them off, counting them loss for Christ, his new portion, — his only and sufficient righteousness. Nor is it merely a confidence in the gre t day; it is also a firm footing and a glad song at every stage of the pilgrimage on earth. Alas, the life -course of a sinner unforgiven is like the flutter and fright of a painful dream, where the feet sink in mire at every step, — where the opening is so narrow that you cannot pass through, and you experience a sense of suffocation as you vainly repeat the effort. I observe with glad gratitude that no other condition is attached to this confidence than the one — believe on him. The Spirit has not said. If you belong to this or that ecclesiastical corporation, or have received ordinances at the hands of self-styled successors of the apostles, you shall not be confounded. I admire the liberty wherewith the Son has made his people free. He that believeth on him — this condition, and none other! In presence of this divine decision, seen like the sun in its own light, how can a puny, ignorant, sinful man, strutting about in an authority derived only from equally puny, ignorant, and sinful men who lived before him, dare to set up other conditions of peace with God! “ Unto you therefore which believe he is precious.” He is now summing up the results of the preceding argument. The term here is not the same as that which is rendered “ precious “ in verse 4tlL There it is the adjective; here it is the corresponding noun, and means ’’ the price.” It is the word employed to designate the thirty pieces of silver (Matthew 27:6); “ it is the price of blood.” It is true that Christ is “ precious “ to them that believe; but more than that lies in the word. He is their price — the price paid for them, and by which they were redeemed. They were, according to Luther’s rendering, “bought dear;” and he who became their ransom is, in the other and cognate sense of the term, ’’ dear “ to their hearts. It is eminently worthy of notice that over against “believe” in 1 Peter 2:6 stands, not its exact correlative “ unbelieving,” but “ disobedient.” They who receive Christ believe: you would expect to read conversely, they who reject him are unbelieving; but instead, you read that they are disobedient. People raise a great debate upon the question whether a man is responsible for his belief, and whethet he can be condemned for not believing. Quietly this debate is all quashed here by the representation that unbelief is disobedience. Unbelief is indeed the root, but the outgrowth is disobedience. As you can more easily push over a tree by applying force to its lofty head, than by acting on its stem near the ground, so the matter is more easily settled by reckoning unbelief as disobedience. This is a matter which we must leave with the conscience of the individual. Sincere inquirers after truth, God will hear and guide; those who cannot believe, because they have in their hearts a foregone conclusion that they will not obey, God will judge. Every man is his brother’s keeper, for loving, patient eflPort to lead him into truth; but no man is his neighbour’s judge. To his own master he standeth or falleth. In regard to the expression, “Whereunto they were appointed,” all that I can suggest towards its interpretation is, that it corresponds with and balances the clause in 1 Peter 2:6, “ I lay in Sion a chief corner stone.” The same word is employed in both clauses. “ Appoint “ here is not the word which signifies choose, or determine. It is simply place, or lay down. The two clauses are the complements of each other. He who lays down the corner stone, also lays down these men in their lives before it. He places them in each other’s way. Whatever may be taught elsewhere in Scripture on cognate topics, as far as I can see, all this passage teaches is, that the comer stone, and these rejecters, were by God placed reciprocally in each other’s path. The stone is set before them, and they are set before it. There is no possibility of evading a decision. This stone must be to them one of two — must be either the foimdation on which a believer’s hope shall securely rest, or the stone that in judgment will fall upon them and crush them as enemies. “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve: as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 74: 2.03.18. "THE LORD'S PEORPE, THE LORD'S TREASURE" ======================================================================== XVIII. “THE LORD’S PEOPLE, THE LORD’S TREASURE.” “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.” — 1 Peter 2:9. HE last of these four expresses the aim or object pursued and attained; and the three preceding reveal the steps or means by which that end is reached. We shall accordingly examine the last first. The central object here is the special designation given to the Lord’s redeemed as his “ peculiar people.” On this point in the middle we must plant our compass, if we would trace to any good effect the circumference of the verse, explaining alike what goes before and what follows. At this stage the view-point of the observer is changed. Hitherto we have been considering redemption as some good thing which we obtain from God; now we must think of it as some good thing that God obtains for himself. In this case the Good Shepherd has lost some of his own sheep. He is not willing to want them. He leaves the unstrayed safe on the pasture, and goes after the wanderers until he find them; and when he has found them, he bears them back rejoicing. Some years since the son of a wealthy English family was seized by a band of robbers while he was making a THE lord’s people, tour in the mountains of Greece. Through some mismanagement the ransom demanded was not promptly paid, and the men, in revenge, killed their captive. There was a great deal of trouble with the Government of Greece; but nothing could restore their beloved child to his bereaved family. They had agreed to pay the stipulated sum, and they remained inconsolable because that ransom, instead of reaching the robbers, returned to their own hands. Their money came back, but they lost their son. More recently, a young man was similarly captured and held to ransom by bandits in Italy. The parents, in this case, succeeded in paying the price, and redeeming their son. From this completed transaction two distinct joys sprang — one, the joy of the child in gaining his liberty; the other, the joy of the parents in obtaining their child. Hitherto we have been thinking of redemption through grace as the first of these joys; now we think of it as the second. In the preceding verses we have stood on the view-point of the ransomed captive; now we stand on the view-point of God who redeems. “ This my son was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and is found.” Literally and fully the expression is, “ A people for his peculiar property.” The idea is transferred from the Old Testament: ’* Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people “ (Exodus 19:6). The word “ peculiar,” by which the thought is expressed in English, we derive directly through the Latin, and the use of the term in the secular life of the Romans will throw light on its meaning here in the spiritual sphere. The system of slavery prevailed in the Roman Empire. It interpenetrated all society. An elaborate code of laws had sprung up to regulate its complicated and imnatural relationa The slave, when he fell into slavery, lost all. He became the property of his master. But if he served faithfully, law and custom permitted him to acquire private property through his own skill or industry. A man might, for example, hire himself from his owner, paying him so much a day. He might then employ himself in art or even merchandise, and if successful, might soon accumulate a considerable sum. Some slaves, in this manner, purchased their own Uberty, and raised themselves to a high position. Now the savings of a slave, after satisfying the demands of the master, were called his pecvZium. The law protected him in his right to this property. It may be supposed to have been very dear to the poor man. It constituted his sole anchor of hope. He cherished it accordingly. From this a conception and expression have been borrowed to show the kind of ownership that God is pleased to claim in the persons who have been won back to liimself after they were lost. He had made man in his own image and for himsell For him he had formed and furnished the world. Man, made last, made best, was the chief of the Creator’s works. That chosen, cherished portion was lost and enslaved. The Father was not content to leave his child a captive in the enemy’s hands. He provided a ransom. The ransom was paid. The slaves set free returned in number and purity like dew-drops from the womb of the morning. The darkened and denuded heavens were studded again with stars. The portion regained became dearer than ever to the Redeemer. These sons and daughters of the Lord bmighty became a “ peculiar people.” They were God’s THE lord’s people, own cherished treasure in a closer sense than any other creature of his hand. The same language is frequently employed in the New Testament, to indicate that while all other beings and things belong to God, human sinners redeemed by the blood of Christ are in a higher sense his own — the treasure in which he delights. When Paul is commending the church at Ephesus to the special care of its own elders, he reminds them that God had purchased that church as his own peculiar treasure, by the price of the Redeemer’s blood. The circumstance that they are so peculiarly precious to the Lord that bought them, is given as the strongest reason why the under-shepherds should faithfully feed the flock. While therefore it is right to stand on the earth below and look up to redemption as a boon which the ransomed obtain, it is right also, in proper place and time, to reverse the view, — to come up higher, and look as the Redeemer looks upon the portion he has won. Those whom he has bought with his blood are his treasure, his portion, his reward. He rejoices over them with a joy that is unspeak? able and full of glory. He keeps them as the apple of his eye. It is a great thing that my Redeemer is mine; but it is still a greater, if I can attain to it, that I am his. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 75: 2.03.19. THE WAY AND THE FRUITS OF REDEMPTION ======================================================================== XIX. THE WAY AND THE FRUITS OF REDEMPTION. “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation; that ye should show forth the praises of hun who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” — 1 Peter 2:9. E proceed now to trace in this scripture the steps by which this great end is attained. The goings of the Lord are glorious — the goings by which he achieves for himself his own peculiar possession. The steps as written here are three: “ A chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation.” Father, Son, and Spirit appear working here. In that same eternal counsel where the constitution of man was determined, the redemption was provided too. There is more in the purpose of redemption than pity for the perishingIt is much to learn that God is merciful, and that the gift of Christ is the outcome and the evidence of his compassion. That is deep; but a deeper lies beneath it. It was good for the lost sheep that through the pity of the tender shepherd it was brought back to the fpld; but it was better for the owner that he got back his own. There are two revolutions of the earth, a less and a larger. It revolves round itself, and it revolves also round the sun. To revolve round its own axis is great, but to circulate round the central sun is inexpressibly greater. In some such manner and proportions seem related the two gains — the gain of the ransomed when he is saved from death, and the gain of the Redeemer when he wins his treasure. 1. “ A chosen generation,” or race. This is the beginning. The spring of all is in the Father’s purpose. 2. “A royal priesthood.” The Mediator’s hand is revealed here. This is the Daysman’s place. He makes them kings and priests unto God. They are accepted in the Beloved, and in his birthright they reign. 3. “ An holy nation.” This is the work of the Sanctifier. The baptism of the Spirit cleanses. This is “ the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.” Chosen by the Father, this is the favoured race; ransomed by the Son, their guilt is taken away, and they are delivered from bondage; sanctified by the Spirit, they are meet for heaven. These three steps in the same order are exhibited in the Lord’s intercessory prayer (John 17:6), — “Thine they were “ = a chosen generation. “Thou gavest them me” = a royal priesthood. “They have kept thy word “ = an holy nation. I suppose Peter listened while the Master spoke that prayer aloud. It was there he found the germs of the grand theology which he teaches here. These Galileans were not original in their conceptions and dogmas. They teach us in their Epistles what they learned at the feet of Jesus. To what uses will he put his peculiar and cherished property, now that he has obtained it at a great price. His intention in that regard is written here at length, “ That ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” This is the uniform testimony of Scripture. “ Arise, shine; for thy light is come.” “ Father, I am glorified in them.” “ Epistles of Jesus Christ, known and read of all men.” That ye should show — should “ angel forth “ — his praise. Do it with your lips, where and when an opportunity may occur, as when the Lord directed the restored maniac to tell them of his own house what great things God had done for him. But in any case the delivered captives should in their lives be witnesses to the Lord that bought them. Israel, after the exodus, turned the great facts of their deliverance into psalms. So here, the experiences through which the saved are led are suggested as the material of their praise. He hath effectually called us out of darkness into his own marvellous light. Say this, and sing it too. They have been called out of darkness ere their mirth began: while they were in the darkness they did not sing about it. Before they heard his call they spake nothing in his praise: as long as they were deaf they were’ also dumb. They make a song about the darkness after they are in the light. Israel made psalms on Pharaoh and his warriors after they saw them sink as lead in the mighty waters. Suppose a person has been born and has passed his life hitherto in the recesses of a mine. He may have heard companions telling of a glorious light in the heavens, and a lovely landscape spread out beneath it. Some dim conceptions the captive may have entertained of day, based on multiplying many times in conception the oil lamps that guided his steps in the narrow galleries. But when at last he is brought up “ out of darkness into light,” he learns the meaning of both. He sings now intelligently, for the first time, both of the darkness from which he has escaped, and of the light into which he has come. The redeemed of the Lord, when they are brought out of darkness, behold the Light of Life in the face of Jesus. It is that light off the face of Jesus streaming down into their dungeon that drives the darkness away. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 76: 2.03.20. THE WARFARE ======================================================================== XX. THE WARFARE. "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the souL”— 1 Peter 2:11. HERE we suddenly step down again into the arena of practical duty, — the conflict which must he waged through life against multiform vice. But, Peter, you gave us an exhortation on that head a few lines further up. After the practical warning, ** Laying aside all malice,” etc, you led us into the deep doctrines of the covenant, and made us almost forget that there is still a world and wickedness. Again you revert at a spring to the old subject, “ Abstain from fleshly lusts.” Has the ardent apostle forgotten, and glided off the track? No; he knows where he is: he is about the Master’s business. “ The Lord said unto Peter, I have prayed for thee When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” He is in the act of obeying that injunction now. He knows by bitter experience, that after making a good confession, a man’s heart, if left to itself, will fall again into deep sin. “ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona; that is a grand and full confession. But Simon’s warfare is not yet accomplished. He thought it was; but he was mistaken. “ Though all men forsake thee, yet will not I.” Hear him! He is hallooing before he is out of the wood. The next time you meet him, he is cursing and swearing: “I know not the man.” This time the apostle does not fall into the mistake of counting the battle won as soon as the soldier has got his armour on. He returns to the charge, on the assumption that the enemy is not dead yet. Another blow: “ Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.” His doctrinal discussions are always followed up by warnings and precepts for practice. Like other good soldiers, he takes advantage of everything that promises to further his object. Human affections are pressed into the service: “ Dearly beloved.” The power of love is like the power of gravity. It surrounds the greatest, and yet grasps the least. It keeps a mountain steady on its base, and balances a dew-drop on a blade of grass. How often do human beings labour in the fires to accomplish their objects, and fail for want of this greatestally! This is as if manufacturers should abandon steam, and revert to the strength of human arms. Love will do effective service at every turn, and on any material. Call love to your aid, and it would be hard to say what barrier you will not surmount. “ As strangers and pilgrims.” Another weight thrown in to increase the vantage on the side of right. In military monarchies it has always been the policy to employ the soldiers far from home. When the Austrian Empire was a conglomerate of many nationalities, German regiments were sent to campaign in Italy, and Italians served in Grerraany. When the men had not a home to care for they were more completely at the disposal of their leaders. This is Peter’s idea here. Christians are not at home in the world. There is less to distract them. They should be better soldiers of Jesus Christ. The more loose their hearts are to the earth, the more firm will be the anchor of their souls on high. Conversely, the more they are attached to their home in heaven, the less will they be entangled with the wealth and the pleasures of the world. The same contrast is exhibited by Paul when he brings the two classes together, in order to exhibit their opposite courses and ends. This class mind earthly things; that class, on the contrary, have their citizenship in heaven (Php 3:18-20). These desires that belong to the flesh are adversaries of the soul. There is a difference between a war and a battle. It is not a random stroke; it is warfare on a plan. A battle may be won, and yet the victor be overcome ere the war be over. The first French emperor gained several great battles in the Russian campaign; but his army was not only vanquished, it waa almost annihilated in the end It is thus that certain appetites and passions, although once and again overcome by a resolute will, return to the charge, and watch their opportunity. It is not a battle, and done with it; the vanquished foe often enslaves his conqueror. A young man in modem society must do battle for his life with strong drink. He can taste it freely and stop in time. He despises the weak who seek safety in flight and abstinence. He knows what is good for him, and will not allow himself to be overcome. He obtains a good many victories, and counts himself invulnerable. But the wily foe persists. By little and little a diseased thirst is generated. The enemy now has an accomplice within the castle gates; and in the end the strong man, like Samson with his eyes out, grinds darkling in his enslaver’s prison. For the Lord’s redeemed it is not a hardship but rather a privilege to be strangers and pilgrims. The last step of the pilgrimage is the entrance into home. If here we have no continuing city, all the more intently will we seek one to come. If this is not our rest because it is polluted, into the rest that remaineth for the people of God nothing shall enter that defileth. “ Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 77: 2.03.21. THE WITNESS OF A PURE LIFE ======================================================================== XXL THE WITNESS OF A PURE LIFE. “Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evil-doers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake.”— 1 Peter 2:12-13. HAVING your conversation honest.” Both terms need some explanation. Both words come from the Latin, and have in process of time greatly changed their meaning. In modem English, conversation means the talking of two or more persons with each other; but the sense in the text is, the whole habit and life-course of a person, — his character, and temper, and conduct in presence of his fellows. You are exposed now on this side and now on that, — now to one observer and now to another. See that the whole circumference of your life be wise and pure and true. At all times, and in all circumstances, walk circumspectly, for you never know who may be looking on. The modern meaning of honest is, that you do not cheat in a bargain; but as used here, and in ancient times generally, it signifies beautiful, — first a material and then a moral winsomeness. These two terms in conjunction convey the precept. Let all the circumference of your life shine in the beauty of holiness. Alas! bid this dull earth shine like a star of heaven! There is nothing impossible there. In very deed this opaque globe does shine as a star, not a whit behind its neighbours in brightness, when it receives and reflects the sunbeams. To have commanded the house of Israel to shine as a light to surrounding nations would have been an impossible requirement, if the precept had not been mated with a promise. But as the record runs, it is a reasonable service that is demanded: “ Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee” (Isaiah 60:1). This precept given by Peter is on both its sides the echo of Isaiah’s words. A light is needed because darkness reigns around. Peter desiderates a beautiful life among the Gentiles; and Isaiah expects that, when Israel basks in the favour of God, the Gentiles shall come to their light. It was in the same spirit that the Lord promised to the eleven before the Pentecost, “ Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me.” The nations sat in darkness, and the disciples of Christ were commissioned to go out as lights in the world. One day, the people of Lystra brought a garlanded ox, and would have sacrificed to Paul as a god; another day they stoned him, and left him for dead. Such was heathenism at its best. It is a characteristic of true faith that it has positive hope. It does not despair even when things are at the worst, for it trusts in God. It is not enough that the primitive disciples should repel surrounding, assailing evil, and hold their own. They expect to make aggression and to gain a victory; to turn scoffs into hymns of praise, and enemies of Christ into zealous disciples: ’* That, whereas they speak against you as evil-doers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.” It is not by the loudest debate and profession that these conquests can be made. It is not by what Christians say, but by what Christians are, that they can win the neighbourhood. The call is not so much to give evidence, as to be witnesses. What the adversaries see will be more effectual to convert them than what they hear. It is by their “ walk “ that Paul distinguished certain persons at Philippi as enemies of the cross of Christ; and it is by their walk that true disciples may most effectually challenge recognition as its real friends. Still further the precepts run down into detail. Submission to magistrates is prescribed as a Christian duty. Considering the time and the circumstances, this is a remarkable feature of the New Testament Scriptures. They are in favour of authority, but not of tyranny. The gospel fosters liberty, but does not suggest insurrection. Witness the emigration of the persecuted Puritans from England to America. These men would not resist constituted authority; but neither would they allow themselves to be crushed by a despot, as long as a remedy, which they could with a good conscience adopt, lay within their reach. The results will tell with decisive effect on the future condition of the human race. Ordinances of man should be obeyed, but they stand not on the same level with ordinances of God. Divine laws that directly appeal to the individual conscience must be obeyed absolutely and at all hazards; ordinances enacted by the civil legislature are binding also when they do not come in conflict with a higher law. If any man resist civil enactment, regularly made and enforced, it is at his own peril. He must in that case make very sure that the law of God forbids obedience. The principle that we must obey God rather than man, is precious not only as a religious truth, but as the firmest safeguard of national liberty. But there is an application of that principle in vogue in some quarters of Europe which is a caricature of truth and decency. When the Pope issues an order to the subjects of a king, or the citizens of a commonwealth, which is directly at variance with the laws of the State, and Papists claim the liberty of obeying their spiritual head in defiance of their country’s law, under authority of the rule. Obey God rather than man, they ofifer an insult to the common sense of the community, and to the real authority of the divine Word. It seems degrading to the dignity of human nature to be obliged even to maintain an argument on this question. The citizen who profanely identifies the random and passionate assertion of a foreign priest with the word of the living God addressed to the souls that he has made, does not deserve an answer. When he violates the “ ordinance of man “ — the legal statutes of the constituted authorities — on such grounds, he must even be left in prison to meditate on the consequences of his crime. How honest old Peter would have stared, if any one had proposed a qualifying clause at this point of his Epistle, to the eficct that any one should be at liberty to resist the ordinance, provided a priest in Rome, claiming to be Peter’s successor, gave him permission! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 78: 2.03.22. THE SCRITPURES SANCTION CIVIL AUTHORITY ======================================================================== XXII. THE SCRIPTURES SANCTION CIVIL AUTHORITY. “Submit yottrselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do welL For so is the will of God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.” — 1 Peter 2:13-16. THE passage 1 Peter 2:11-16 is a group of practical precepts. In a preceding portion Peter had taught the doctrines, — “ What man should believe concerning God.” Here he applies himself to conduct, — “What duty God requires of men.” Observe in what manner the Scriptures teach and enforce morals. The rules are specific and minute; but these, if left alone, would lack power — they would remain dead letters. In order to give life and force to his precepts, the apostle binds them at every joint not only to religion, but to God. Four times in this little bundle of precepts the personal living God comes in as the present power to enforce obedience: — 1 Peter 2:12. “That they may glorify God.” 1 Peter 2:13. “For the Lord’s sake.” 1 Peter 2:15. “.For so is the will of God.” 1 Peter 2:16. “As the servants of God.” A great sheet is let down, full of miscellaneous duties, knit at the four comers, not to heaven merely, but to the living God. This Bible stands alone; no book at all approaches it. It brings God as close to the whole of human life as the air is to the surface of the earth and the bodies of men; and this not in terror but in paternal love. Christ is the mediator, and he is the gift of God to the lost. It is not that a sacrifice was offered in order to deliver the guilty from punishment, and leave him in a place of safety. The Deliverer abides with his redeemed for hope and holiness, “ Lo, I am with you alway” — always to sustain, direct, and comfort. God desires to be not only the author of a salvation sent from heaven, and the receiver of the ransomed into rest, but also to be in the life of his people here, compassing them about with his favour, as the air, and supplying them with the breath of life. like the veins interspersed through a leaf to strengthen its weak points, the peace of God runs through a Christian’s life, to keep his heart and mind. The motive supplied refines and elevates the duty, however lowly may be the sphere of its exercise. Do it for the Lord’s sake; and then the life is sublime, though it be worn out in menial occupation, or crushed by unjust laws. The various classes of magistrates are noticed, to show that obedience is due, not only to the supreme, but also to the delegated authorities. Civil government is recognized as a divine institution, and obedience is simply enjoined as a duty, although in point of fact laws have often been unjust and rulers have acted unlawfully. These, and similar precepts elsewhere in the New Testament, constitute a standing evidence that the writers spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Peter and Paul were hunted by the magistrates of the empire, like wild beasts, until at length they were hunted down; and yet no bitter word escapes from their lips. Other ships reel and stagger, like drunken men, on a stormy sea; but this vessel alone moves straight and steady. That very fact proves that she is not leaning on the waters like the rest, but is sustained in the air above them. “This is the will of God concerning you.” Blessed news! I delight to learn that God in heaven has a will about me, and the manner of my life. Cheer up, fellow-pilgrims, he careth for us — he whom the hosts of heaven adore. It elevates my life to know that its smallest joys or sorrows concern the King Eternal This is a kindlier doctrine than any theory of atomic development. And as there are many ignorant and foolish men going about, making a very great noise because of their folly and ignorance, it seems that one part of God*s will concerning Christians in the body is that they should silence these noisy fellows. How? Shall we smite with the sword? That was the method which this same Peter once proposed — and not only proposed, but practised. He valiantly cut off the ear of a servant of the high priest, in order to silence him. Ah, Peter, you will not silence your adversaries in that fashion. Two can play at that game; and in a very short time they will silence you. But now, when the fioly Ghost has come upon him, the impetuous Peter has received power to be a true witness unto Christ He would still have these adversaries silenced, but he knows a better method of doing it now: silence them “ by well-doing.” Such is the principal weapon used in this holy war. “As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness.” While he certifies their right to freedom. he gives faithful warning against the tares that often spring among the precious wheat. Many abominations are wrought in this world in the name of liberty. The apostle has a particular species of hypocrite in his eye. Foreseeing that this kind will infest the Church, he blows a blast to drive the chaff away. This man has assumed the name of Christian, and joined himself to the visible Church. He is accountable only to God; he is not bound by the laws of human magistrates. In virtue of being a king and priest unto God, he is not obliged to be submissive to the laws of men. This kind of pretender has often strutted about on the stage of history, and brought shame upon the Christian name. He gets no countenance here; he is articulately condemned by the spirit of prophecy in Peter’s word. In the Scriptures great pains are taken to show that faith is not against authority and order; and yet it is made perfectly clear that whenever human ordinances traverse the law of God for the conscience of the individual man, they must give way. Can the line be always correctly drawn between these two jurisdictions? The line is not in itself uncertain or obscure. It is like the horizon line between the air above and sea and earth below: it is a well-defined boundary; but men do not always clearly see or faithfully keep it. In our own country, in past times, dreadful conflicts have raged on this border land. Power lay on one side, and martyr courage emerged on the other. The strife has made our history sublime. None of the sufferings are altogether lost. All past experience will contribute to clear the clouds from the horizon, and introduce the brightness of the latter day. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 79: 2.03.23. THE DIGNITY OF MAN ======================================================================== XXIII. THE DIGNITY OF MAN. “Honour all men.” — 1 Peter 2:17. |HE first three precepts of this verse constitute an ascending series, and the series is complete. It begins on earth, and ends in heaven. The Spirit in this word specifies the kind of affection that is due respectively to three different objects, lying in three distinct spheres. The first and lowest of these objects is humanity, as it is, — all mankind; the next above it is the redeemed from among men who are still in the body; and the highest is God. One kind of regard is due to human beings as such, however low their state or bad their character; another kind of r ard is due to those who are born again, and have become sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty; and yet another kind of regard is due to the Creator of all, the Recreator of his own. Instead of “ honour,” I shall employ the term “ value,” as equivalent to “ esteem,” which the translators have given in the margin, and which expresses more precisely the sense of the original I retain the term “ men,” as in the text although the noun is not expressed in the Greek, because in the circumstances the masculine adjective is equivalent. Let US now place the emphasis successively on each of these three words, and the lessons will emerge in their natural order. 1. Value. 2. Value men. 3. Value all men. 1. Value. — The root on which the expression grows is “ a price.” This original- meaning adheres to it with more or less of strictness through all its forms and all its applications. It is the word which in Matthew 27:9 has been translated “ value,” — “ They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; “ and “ honour,” in Matthew 15:4, — “ Honour thy father and thy mother.” Honour, as it is usually understood, is only the external expression of the value which in your heart you may have set upon an object. You weigh the worth of a man, and honour him accordingly. The estimate fixed by the judgment determines the honour expressed by the lips. Although the three precepts of this verse are separately presented to the mind, they are bound into one for the power to produce obedience. Where the two higher fail, the lower cannot succeed. If the fear of God and the love of the brotherhood be wanting or weak, the estimate of humanity will go far astray. And it is error in the estimate of man that practically distracts the world. Some get too much honour, and others too little. These extremes throw the machinery of society out of gear. Hence the adulation of the great; hence the oppression of the poor. The man who is godly and brotherly is also humane. He who sets a proper value on the higher things sets a proper value also on the lower. Look on men — the human race at large — in the light of the fear which you owe to God, and the love which you cherish towards the brethren: thus you will neither meanly flatter nor coldly neglect; you will count the meanest a man, and the mightiest no more. 2. Value Tnen, — Here God our Maker has left us an example that we should follow his steps. Both creation and redemption teem with evidences that God sets a high value on his creature man. All the relations and uses of minerals, plants, and animals have been arranged for man’s benefit; for no other creature is capable of observing or turning them to account. All the rich furniture of the world bears obvious marks of having been constructed for the convenience of its chief inhabitant. The house was arranged, and all its furnishings completed, and living creatures destined for servants provided, before men, the children of the family, were brought home. All that the Father did in constructing this earth and these heavens he did for our sakes. But the grandest evidence of the value which God sets on man appears in the mission, ministry, and sacrifice of Christ. So high in heaven was the estimate of even ruined man, that when no other price could buy the captive back, the Son of God gave himself, the just for the unjust. A jewel has dropped from the wearer’s neck into a deep and filthy pool. The owner, looking on it from aloft, loathes the fetid object, and loves it too, — so loves it, in spite of its loathsomeness, that rather than lose it, he plunges into the polluted deep, wades among its filth, and feels for his treasure. If he find it, he goes home rejoicing; and when the jewel has been burnished again, he rejoices more than ever to see it on his own breast, receiving bright glances from the sun, and throwing them back as bright. In some such way, making allowance for the difference between the finite and the infinite, did Christ set a high value on men, though they were fallen and polluted. In some such way does he now rejoice over those whom he has rescued from perdition and carried into rest. Value highly immortal beings made in their Creator’s likeness, and capable yet of living to his praise. We act according to our estimates. Estimate humanity aright in the habit of your hearts, aild your conduct will fashion itself naturally accordant, as a river finds its way to the sea. Value the whole. man, and not merely a part. In particular, and for obvious practical purposes, value his soul as well as his body, and his body as well as his soul. So did Christ; and therefore so should we. The body’s suflferings did not occupy his attention to the neglect of the soul’s sins; the soul’s sins did not occupy his attention to the neglect of the body’s suflferings. As the legs of the lame are not equal, a one-sided philanthropy is abortive, whichever side it may be. You cannot do good to the poor by merely supplying his material wants. Unless you lift his spirit from despair into hope, and lead his spirit from darkness to light, your gifts go all into a bag with holes. You must be always giving, and yet he is never full. On the other side, the ordinary path to the soul lies through the body’s senses; and all your eflforts for spiritual good may prove abortive, if you 4o pot clear meiterial obstructions out of your way. Do good to the whole man as you have opportunity. Neglect not to entertain those strangers that step about in human form upon the earth, for in so doing you entertain angels unawares, — fallen, indeed, but capable yet of a glorious immortality. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 80: 2.03.24. NO RESPECT OF PERSONS ======================================================================== XXIV. NO RESPECT OF PERSONS, “ Honour all men.”— 1 Peter 2:17. VALUE all men. There is no respect of persons with God, and there should be none with men. When you fail to value aright any man or class of men, you are fighting against God, and will certainly be hurt. He that falls upon this stone shall be broken. Action and reaction are equal and opposite. Suppose you and your neighbour are walking abreast on a pavement of pure ice; and suppose you put forth your strength to push your neighbour off the way on one side. You may, perhaps, succeed; but the same effort at the same time has pushed yourself as far from the path on the other side. The operation of this principle may be seen in all ranks and in all places. Wherever and whenever a man fails to give a neighbour his due, he thereby to the same extent injures himself. The machine of Providence brings vengeance on the transgressor, as its awful wheels move round. Take an example from the treatment of negro slaves in our own colonies and in the States of America till lately; in other places of the world still, White men cannot push black men aside from the right position without pushing themselves as far from the right character. The loss which they suflfer is greater than the loss which they inflict. As it is more blessed to give than to receive, so it is more cursed to deprive another of his rights than to be deprived of your own. I would rather have my condition deteriorated by another’s violence, than my character deteriorated by my own sin. Man’s foundation is not like the everlasting hills. It is not in his power to push another and yet not move himself. The oppressor and the oppressed are by the same operation equally, although in opposite directions, depraved. As far as the slave is pressed down beneath the level into brutish indifference, so far is the master thrust up above the level into supercilious pride. As deeply as the vice of meanness is scored into the black by the lash, so deeply is the vice of arrogance scored into the white by lashing. Those are injured by sufiering oppression, and these by inflicting it. Nothing is gained by a false estimate of the value of any man. The circles of Providence, like the celestial bodies, correct aberrations, and right themselves as they go round. The same sleepless eye, and the same avenging arm, are over masters and servants in the economical relations of our own land. Value the yoimg. How precious these germs are! These spring-buds are lovely to look upon, but their worth is greater than their beauty. An immortal life is opening there; heed it well. Proprietors rear strong fences round young trees, while they leave aged forests to take their chance. Permit not the immortal to be twisted at the very starting of its growth, for the want of such protection as it is in your power to afford. By failing practically to value little ones at their real worth, we both suffer and inflict an incalculable injury. They will be the men and women of the generation when we become children again. If they grow crooked for want of our care to-day, we shall lack support when we are too feeble to bear our own weight. Don’t spoil these tender, precious things. Tell them no lie. Speak no vile or profane word in theit hearing. Let no drop fall on that polished surface, which may eat like rust into the heart, and become the death of a soul. Value the poor and ignorant. In that state Christ valued you, believer. He did not pass you because you were worthless. He came to make you rich in grace, and to rejoice over you then. Value the rich. We speak here not of the Christian brotherhood, but of humankind. Many of those whom the world call rich are selling themselves for vile stuff. They give themselves for money and show. The rich man’s soul is more precious than all his riches. If he cannot estimate the things at their proper worth, you can, and should. He is as precious as the poor, and will be as worthy, if he is redeemed, when he walks with his Redeemer in white. Value the vicious. Although they wallow in a deep mire to-day, they have fallen from a high estate, and may yet regain it. If one who had been a king’s son should, in the frequent revolutions of these days, be cast a naked and penniless wanderer on our shores, we would not think of him as of a common beggar. If he should come in want to your door, you would look with a kind of awe on him who is the heir of a sovereign house, and may yet sit upon a throne. Under his piteous condition you would recognize what he has been, and may yet be. When an abandoned woman passes you on the street, do not despise her. Perhaps beneath that bold look shame begins to swell, and would burst into repentance if it could get an outlet. She is human; Christ is human; and therefore she may yet be partaker of the divine nature. A jewel most precious lies under these loathsome incrustations. That is a precious soul. If she were snatched from the burning, she might be on earth yet a sister beloved, and in heaven a daughter of the Lord Almighty. Despise her not as you pass. Let your heart glue itself to hers; and if you must pass, unable to di-aw her from the pit, let it be such a passing as will leave your own heart torn and bleeding for the outcast whom you cannot save. Let not the frequency of such a contact rub your heart hard and smooth, so that other victims passing to perdition shall slip easily over, getting no grip, and leaving no pain within you. Never learn to pass the lost without a sigh, for she is human, immortal. If she is lost, the loss is eternal, if she were won, the gain would be unspeakable, to your Lord and you. It is time that the brotherhood in Christ were aroused to estimate aright the value of a drunkard, and the peculiar danger of his state. They who spurn him away in disgust, and they who make merry with his weakness, are alike out of their reckoning. We should not lightly laugh at him on the one hand; we should not hopelessly give him up on the other. The saddest feature of the drunkard’s sad case is the tendency that may be observed, even among earnest Christians, to give him up as beyond the reach of human help. I see that some, even of those who are girding themselves for saving work upon the world, without saying that the inveterate inebriate is absolutely irreclaimable, are deliberately passing by the class, in order that they may quarry in other veins where experience holds out greater hope of success. The peculiar hopelessness of the advanced stage in this form of sin gives peculiar force to the maxim, “ Prevention is better than cure.” That poor staggering drunkard is worth more than worlds, if he were won. If you could win him, he would be a crown of joy to you in the great day. “ Of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire’’ (Jude 1:22-23). They who hope in Christ should not count any case hopeless. Value yourself. Do not hold yourself cheap, ye who may have Christ for your brother, and heaven for your home. This body the Lord has cleansed, that he may make it his own dwelling-place; and why should these loathsome lusts be permitted to possess and defile it? These lips are needed to support a part in the new song of the redeemed out of all nations; and why should they be lent out as instruments of sin? I shall not lightly accord my company to every comer, for the King is courting it: “ Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.” In estimating the value of yourself, for all the practical purposes of life, adopt the standard of the King Eternal; and the value which he attached to the subject may be seen in the price which he paid — ’’ Who loved me, and gave himself for me.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 81: 2.03.25. THE BROTHERHOOD ======================================================================== XXV. THE BROTHERHOOD. “Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear GkxL Honour the king.” 1 Peter 2:17. N this letter Peter teaches the scattered Christians that in the lowest sphere they should highly value human beings as such, and in the highest sphere reverently worship the Supreme. Between these two he recognizes a brotherhood to whom a diflTerent species of regard is due: “ Love the brotherhood.” Distinct, on the one hand, from the respect due to immortal man as the Creator’s greatest work, and, on the other hand, from the worship due to Deity, brotherly love, pure and fervent, should be cherished towards all who have been redeemed by the Saviour’s blood and renewed into the Saviour’s likeness. The “brotherhood” here manifestly means, not those who have been born into the same family on earth, but those who have been born again into the family of God. The obvious order here is, the object first, and then the emotion; the brotherhood whom Christians love, and the love with which they regard the brotherhood. The brotherhood is a winsome word. It falls kindly on one’s wearied ear in the intervals of the world’s strife. Like the term in the preceding clause, it is universal It includes a whole class without exception, although the class is less numerous than the other. As the whole is greater than a part, the brotherhood is a group indefinitely smaller than the “ all men “ of the first clause. When we say “ honour all men,” it is as if we should say “ all waters,” comprehending those that are in the sea, on the earth, and in the air; comprehending the salt and the fresh, the pure and the impure, — absolutely and universally all waters. When we speak of the smaller class, “the brotherhood,” it is as if we should say the waters that float in the air, — the clouds. These are waters too. These waters once lay in the sea, lashing themselves into fury there, or seething, putrifying under the sun in hollows of the earth’s surface. But they have been sublimed thence; they are now in their regenerated state, and their impurity has been left behind. These waters float now in the atmosphere, far above the defilements of the earth and the tumults of the sea. Although they remain essentially of the same nature with that which stagnates on the earth or rages in the ocean, they are sustained aloft by the soft, strong grasp of a secret universal law. No hand is seen to hold them, yet they are held on high. Their Maker has given them the command, “ Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and I will receive you.” As the clouds which soar in the air are to the universal mass of waters, so are the brotherhood of God’s renewed children to the whole human family. Of mankind these brothers are in origin and nature; but they have been drawn out and up from the rest by an unseen omnipotent law. Their nature remains the same, and yet it is a new nature. They are men of flesh and blood, yet they have been elevated in station and purified in character. They are nearer God in place, and liker him in holiness. They have been “ washed and justified and sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” The command, “Come out from among them,” having been obeyed, the promise has also been fulfilled to them, — “ To shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” Let none think that the expressions employed to designate this change are extravagant. The language is not too strong, but too feeble. When a guilty man has been forgiven and reconciled to God through the death of Christ, the change of condition is greater than can be expressed iq human language. No formula can adequately express the distance between the carnal mind, which is enmity agarnst God, and the spirit of adoption, that cries, Abba, Father. In the nature of the case, those who have experienced only one of these conditions cannot compute the distance between them. Only they who have passed from the one to the other can appreciate the magnitude of the transition. To pass spiritually from death unto life is a great passage. From the sullen enmity of the guilty to the glad confidence of the forgiven, is as far as from east to west, or from earth to heaven. This whole class in the spiritual sphere is, by a figure borrowed from human life, designated the brotherhood. It is one of the relations by which human creatures are bound into one. The conjugal, parental, and fraternal bonds constitute the strands of the three-fold cord by which our Creator, in the constitution of our nature, has knit his intelligent offspring in groups for their mutual support and comfort. The brotherhood are those who have been born together into the same family. They have one Father, a pervading likeness, and 8 common home. This human relation is a great and good thing. It is one of the wonderful works of God. It is a contrivance in the system of the universe for binding a number of feeble rods into one, so that each of the fragile offshoots may, in the period of its weakness, enjoy all the strength of a tree. The natural affections of brothers and sisters in a family are stronger than the general affinities of man to man in the world. All history testifies that attempts to substitute artificial communism for the natural divinelyappointed constitution of the family, only torture the individual and dislocate the machinery of society. But this precious earthly thing is not introduced here merely for its own sake; it is borrowed as a term to express a spiritual and heavenly relation. The brotherhood in Peter’s pointed precept means that great company on earth, of every nation and kindred and tongue, who are in the regeneration sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. It is by comparison with the first of the three precepts that the import of the second may be most certainly ascertained. Honour — that is, count precious, value highly — “ all men: “ these terms include all of humankind born. But two births are possible for man. Many learners, like Nicodemus, find this lesson hard, — “How can a man be born when he is old? “ But those who simply sit at Jesus’ feet, and ask for the Spirit, will surmount the difficulty. Those who are born again believe in the new birth. All men are born, and the brotherhood are born again. They have become new creatures in Christ Jesus. Their life now is hid with Christ in God. The two connected precepts point to these two births and these two lives. We should highly value the generation — all humankind; but we should fondly love the regeneration — those who are forgiven and reconciled and renewed. Clasp fellow-disciples to your bosom; walk hand in hand with them across the pilgrimage of life, expecting to enter with them at length into the joy of the Lord. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 82: 2.03.26. LOVE THE BROTHERHOOD ======================================================================== XX VL LOVE THE BROTHERHOOD. “Love the brotherhood.”— 1 Peter 2:17. ONSIDER now the precise species of affection which is due by Christians to those who are, fellow-members with themselves in the family of God: it is Love. There is a sense in which we ought to love the whole human race; but the love which is due to man as such is diflferent from that which we owe to the disciples of Christ. Love, indeed, is a generic emotion, comprehending several distinct species; and, as often happens in natural history, one of the species bears the same name with the genus. The generic love to mankind branches into pity for those that are without, and love, specifically so called, to those who are within. 1. Love to the brotherhood is an instinctive emotion. It is not an accident, but a nature. It springs in renewed hearts, as love of her offspring springs in a mother’s breast. It is the result not of an artificial policy, but of a natural law. The new creature owns and exercises instincts as well as the old. The members of Christ cannot but love their fellow-members. In as far as they have drunk into the Master’s spirit, they will follow the Master’s steps. 2. The Lord Jesus was not satisfied with the measure of this affection which existed among his followers during his personal ministry. He desired that it should be increased. For its increase he pleaded alternately with God and with man. “That they all may be one/’ was his prayer; “ Love one another,” was his command. 3. Those who are destitute of this affection themselves are acute enough to observe the want or weakness of it in Christians. The bitterness, malice, and envy which defile and disturb the Church, afford to scoffers a foundation all too solid for their railing. Among Christians the state of matters is bad, and among those who are not Christians it is counted and called worse than it is. We give some, and they take more, occasion to blaspheme. 4. Brotherly love among Christians, when it really exists, honours the Lord and propagates the gospel. Like the blood of the martyrs, it is the seed of the Church. It has convinced many who resisted harder arguments. 5. It is the most pleasant of all emotions to the person who exercises it. Other passions may in certain circumstances be right and useful, but none generate so much joy as they flow. You may be “ angry and sin not; “ but you cannot be angry and suffer not. As a great gun recoils violently, and is heated and defiled within by every discharge, a human spirit is shaken and perhaps soiled by discharges of anger, even when it does well to be angry against evil deeds. But love is delightful in the exercise, both to the lover and the loved. It leaves behind no sourness and no sediment. “ Love is of God,” and its character corresponds to its origin. It constitutes the atmosphere of heaven, where there are no pain and no defilement. At home, in the Father’s house, when the whole brotherhood finally assemble, there will be no anger and no fear, — only love. Love of the brotherhood is the command of God, and, consequently, the duty of men; but another thing goes before it to prepare its way — lies beneath it to bear its weight. Before you can love the brotherhood, you must be a brother. It is the new creature that experiences this hallowed affection. These pulses do not throb through severed limbs; these beautiful blossoms do not open on withered branches. Those who are one with Christ in faith, are in spiritual communion with “ the whole family in heaven and on earth.” When you and I are, and know that we are, members of Christ, we shall love one another as he loved us. Like draws to like. Although the gates of a lost paradise were opened again on earth, and you admitted within the long-forbidden precincts, if there were only, on the one hand, angel-spirits flitting to and fro as flames of fire on their Maker’s errands, never encumbered by a body of flesh; and, on the other hand, the dumb creatures, all tame and all submissive and affectionate according to their powers, — if there were these, and only these, for company, the place would be no paradise for you. You would long to go forth again. You would rather contend with thorns and thistles outside, but in company of your kind. Man is not made for solitude. He must have a brother on whom he can lavish a brother’s love. Hence in Paul’s esteem heaven was desirable, because the Elder Brother’s presence is enjoyed there. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 83: 2.04. LIFE IN CHRIST ======================================================================== D. LIFE IN CHRIST. I. LIFE IN CHRIST, II. CHRIST AND THE SACRAMENTS— THE SPIRIT AND THE BODY, III. FAITH AND A GOOD CONSCIENCE, IV. THE PRODIGAL, V. NO CROSS, NO CROWN, VI. THE RELATION BETWEEN DOCTRINE AND LIFE ======================================================================== CHAPTER 84: 2.04.01. LIFE IN CHRIST ======================================================================== I. LIFE IN CHRIST. “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Php 1:21. SUPPOSE the chief reason why Christianity does not yet pervade the world, is that Christ does not pervade the life of Christians. We speak of “the Christian world.” The picture is truer than most people deem. It is a world. with a Christian tinge upon it, but still a world. It is not a new heaven and a new earth, wherein righteousness dwells. Among the many shortcomings of disciples, perhaps the chief is this: that to a large extent their life and spirit seem to intimate that they count Christ an unfortunate necessity, instead of exulting and boasting in him as their joy and their life. Christians seem to sigh because they cannot do without him, rather than welcome with glad songs the Sun of Righteousness as he rises upon a dark world with healing in his beams. Oh for a step forward, a leap higher! Forgetting the things behind, let us bend forward mightily, and endeavour to apprehend the Christ, who has apprehended us. Arise, blind beggar on the highway-side! arise, lo, he calleth thee into light and joy! To live beneath our privilege is to dishonour the Lord The same act of advancement, which would be gladness to the Christian, would be glory to Christ. I do not come here to preach a gloomy gospel: I proclaim glad tidings of great joy. I do not wield a spiritual terror to wrench human beings away from their only joys, and compel them to accept Christ lest they should drop into hell. I come to bid you retain and enjoy all the gifts of providence, and to enjoy them a thousand-fold more by enjoying them in the light of your Redeemer’s countenance, as you enjoy a thousand-fold more the landscape when the sun is up. The life and the death of which Paul speaks here are the ordinary life and death of human creatures. The terms are employed in no figurative or emblematic sense. To live is simply to live as you or I lived yesterday and live to-day. And to die means to depart from life, in the act of putting off this mortal. We do not need to search here for any hidden or mysterious meaning. The language is used in a simple and natural sense. To live, for this man, now that he has been redeemed and forgiven and renewed, — to live is something great and sublime. Life for this man is not like the life of the beasts that perish — let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. For him to live is not to eat and drink and be clothed. It is not the mere struggle for existence, or the chase after luxuries when the necessities of nature have been satisfied. Some men make this their life. They change the end for the means. Food and drink and raiment are necessary, are sweet, are God’s good gifts to his children. It is the duty even of these children to labour for them, to use them, to enjoy them. Without them there caimot be life, and consequently none of life’s highest ends. These are the means of preserving life; but these are not the objects for which we live. A disciple of Christ and heir of glory lives on these as long as he is here; but no child of God lives for these. They who seek their life there shall lose it. Life for him is not gain. The aim and end of living is not to acquire a great property. Property is useful in fulfilling some of the more important ends of life; but whenever it comes to be itself an end, its nature is changed. It is no longer a blessing. It is then like a bag of gold hung round the neck of a shipwrecked miser, to drag him down, down to death. He who knows what human life is, who knows its deepest need and highest destiny, has said, “ A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” Life for this man does not consist in pleasure. He will not occupy his day in chasing tufts of thistle-down as they float on the breeze. He is a grown man, and has put away childish things; he is a new man, and has put away the old man with his deeds. Life for this man is not honour — the highest place among his fellows. He has gotten the favour of God as a dear child, and he sets less value on the honours that the world bestows. life for Paul does not consist in the chase after these things or in the enjoyment of them; so far all is clear. But further: his life does not consist in refusing and avoiding these things. Suppose you should strip all these oflF, and deny yourself all comforts, you would be no nearer a true life in the Lord and for the Lord. Life consists neither in having them nor in wanting them. The truly living may have them to-day and want them to-morrow. This is a new life of which Paul speaks. He did not always possess it. Formerly he lived without Christ in the world, and now he lives with him. Before the Lord met him, he lived a sort of life. While he was in it he thought it good. It was a vigorous, active life. It burned like fire; but the sparks sprang from earth — they were not sunbeams out of heaven. As soon as he escaped from that life, he counted it vile. He thought with a shudder of his previous life. From the moment that the life of Christ was revealed to him, he was a new man. But even this is not what he says in our text It is not a life with Christ, or even a life in Christ; but his very life is Christ. This extraordinary expression conveys an extraordinary thought. It behoves us to search and see what it means. Life is now to him another thing: his former life he remembers as a horrid dream. And the bound over is extreme. It is not that his life is like Christ, for it is Christ. He is a new creature. His former self is lost. It is not I that live, but Christ that liveth in me. A vine is growing; it grows in good ground; it grows strong. It draws the sap of the ground, and bears much fruit; but the fruit is bad. It is bitter to the taste, and poisonous. Another vine grows near it — a good vine — all good. They take a branch of the good vine, and bend it gently towards the wild vine; and they lay a strong hand on the wild vine, and bend it towards the good vine. They touch. They are fastened — the branch of the good vine to the stem of the evil. As yet this produces no change on the wild vine; but it is some needful preparatory work. They now make an opening in the stem of the wild vine, and another in the branch of the good vine. They place them into each other at the wound, and bind them up. The wounds heal, and the two have grown into each other. The next step in the process is to cut off the head of the wild vine, and leave instead the now engrafted branch of the good. Then the branch of the good is severed from its parent stem. The root of the evil tree remains; but its head now is the new and the good tree. “I live,” murmurs the root and stem of the old evil tree far below. / live — you live; you have no leaf, no flower, no fruit: all the life is in the new tree. “ I live,” still humbly murmurs the old root out of the ground; “ nevertheless not I, but the new good tree liveth in me; and the life that I now live in the ground, I live through the new and good tree, which loved me, and gave itself for me.” This cutting, and bleeding, and binding, and grafting process took place while the patient was prostrate and blind outside the gate of Damascus. Thus is Paul’s life a new thing; for to him to live is Christ. Suppose he had said, To me to pray is Christ; it would have been true — a precious truth. Not only that he needs Christ when he draws near to God, but that to pray is all Christ. He comes not himself. He says, Look not on me, but on the Beloved; for worthy is the Lamb. He comes not in the filthy rags of his own righteousness. It is the righteousness of the Redeemer that is presented to the eye of God. The suppliant commands, because he stands on the right of the Son. But it is not when he prays — when he comes to the communion, leaving the world outside — that he and the Saviour are one; but it is his common life — when he lies down and rises up, when he buys and sells, when he labours and when he rests, when he is in the bosom of his family and in public. The Father loveth the Son, From everlasting the Son is in the bosom of the Father. This is the original and perfect idea of sonship. All that we know yet on earth is but a shadow, projected and dimly outlined upon the ground from the one perfect and substantial Sonship in heaven. In the eternal covenant man was designed as God’s son: the Eternal Son was the ideal — the perfect man. When Adam was made, he was made on the model, in the image of God. But he was sent into life free — he was not upheld by Divine power; and he fell. But when man, as he lived on earth, became corrupt, the perfect manhood was not lost. God did not risk all on one stake. The original remained, the type off which Adam in innocence was cast. Of him the Father will yet make a great nation. Sometimes, after an engraven steel-plate has given forth some pictures it is destroyed, in order to enhance the value of the copies thrown off. If the copies were all destroyed, then the ideal would be lost. But when one type was thrown off and planted in Paradise, the original remained when the copy was spoiled. Man still remained — the Eternal Son remained. Next time it was not another mould taken, and a holy man sent into the world to make another trial. This time it was the Eternal Pattern himself — the God-man — that came into the world, and took hold of us, and made himself one with his people. “ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? “ These words were spoken to Saul as an enemy of Christ.. But I think the words were very precious to Paul when he came into Christ. These words were burned into his memory, and taught him that Christ and his people are one. Thus those words of God that are against the wicked become the very bread that the children live on when they are children. I think Paul would roll those awful words as a sweet morsel under his tongue. Me! — not only on my side, but they are Tne. Paul was thus acting, when Festus cried out, “Paul, thou art beside thyself.” Right, Festus. You may trust the governor for the mere observation of the fact. He knew what a Saul in himself would be — a Hebrew of the Hebrews — a Pharisee — “touching the law blameless.” But he made a mistake when he attempted to give the reason. Paul is not here — he is put off: another stands in his stead — “ To live is Christ “ — “ to die is gain” I do not think these two are different in kind; it is only in degree. You might say: Here is a man who is very rich; he owns vast estates in his own right; this wealth he enjoys in his father’s lifetime, and his father’s death will be gain — that is, he will retain all he had, and get it multiplied manifold. All his wealth he retains, and gets more. So here: it is not that in life Paul had Christ, and that at death he would lose that and obtain something else instead. “ To me to live is Christ.’’ And what will death be to you when it comes? It will be Christ, and more. The substance of the inheritance beyond we know, from Php 1:23, is the same Christ — “To depart, and to be with Christ.” But there will be something more — “ To die is gain.” What are the gains? Peace instead of war. Here Christ and conflict: there Christ and peace. Here Christ and ignorance, seeing in part through a glass darkly, there Christ and light — we shall know, even as we are known. Here Christ and sins, vexing his Spirit, and polluting his dwelling-place: there Christ and purity— nothing shall enter that defileth. Some people count their gains very carefully when they have got them. Some count the gains before they are won; they calculate the expected profit, and enjoy it by anticipation. Christian winners do likewise. Paul counts his gains before he gets them; he enjoys the expected wealth. It does no harm to gloat thus over the true riches. Your real money-makers never despise small winnings. This is their art — they despise nothing because of its smallness. It is thus that careful souls grow rich in grace. Here we have Christ and pain. A dying girl said to her mother, “ There will be no sore heads in heaven.” To her to live was Christ and to die was gain. And she counted her gains beforehand on her bed of languishing, and cheered her aching heart with the glitter of expected fortune. There will be no evil-speaking there: that is a gain awaiting us. There will be no envy swelling in our own breasts: what a gain! There we shall have Christ and the company of Christians in all the beauty of holiness: how ravishing! — those bodies glorified like Christ’s glorious body; souls perfect in purity shining through those beautiful countenances. “Thou art all fair, my love; “ “ Thy beauty to the King Shall then delightful be.” “ To die’’ In the original it is “ to Iiave died,’’ a past tense; whereas “to live” is a present. The death is pleasant; it is a dark passage, and the child shudders as he goes down. Not the narrow gate, but the life it leads to, is a gain. He will be richer too; he will* rejoice over every one that returns. And oh! his joy will be great over the multitude that no man can number. God was not taken aback and defeated when man his child was drawn into rebellion and death. He had a grander scheme in reserve prepared beforehand. The very fall of man touched a spring that set the greater plan in motion — a motion which will not cease till his many sons have been brought into glory. When the first Adam fell, the second Adam stood. The second Adam came — the Lord from heaven; the Man who should restore humanity, and make a glory that excelleth to endrcle the brow of ransomed men. Men redeemed by Christ are higher up and closer in than angels unfallen. Will he have room for us all, and a beam of light from his countenance for each? Look up into the heavens. “Who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number? He calleth them all by names, by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power: not one f aileth.” “ Lo, I am with you alway.” Tliat is life: after life that, and more. Christ the man — eternal, everywhere present God; yet transfused through every ransomed man. Every one in Christ; Christ in every one. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 85: 2.04.02. CHRIST AND THE SACRAMENTS - THE SPRIT AND THE BODY ======================================================================== II. CHRIST AND THE SACRAMENTS— THE SPIRIT AND THE BODY. “ Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”— 2 Corinthians 3:17. HE minLstry of Moses was glorious in comparison with the utter darkness of the heathen world, and with the feebler light of earlier revelation; but much more glorious is the ministry whereby the Spirit now takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto us. While he was receiving the message from God, and uttering it to the people, a supernatural light illumined the countenance of the lawgiver; but as soon as he had delivered the prophecy, he veiled his face, so that the people did not see its brightness long or continuously. Only glimpses of the light were shown; and then the revelation stopped short — the rest hidden by a veil. But this was not the only obstacle: a veil, opposite, and yet corresponding, was spread over the hearers’ minds and hearts. When it was no longer a speaker’s voice to be heard, but the Scriptures of the Old Testament to be read, the veil remained on the readers’ hearts. The hardening of their heart constituted the blinding veil that prevented them from fully comprehending the Scriptures, and their testimony to Christ. Their descendants remained in the same state at the date of this epistle; and until this day the same veil, at the reading of the Old Testament, remains, not apoealypsed, not revealed, when it (Old Testament ritual) is done away in Christ. The veil that then hid the speaker’s countenance, has now been put on the readers’ hearts. They cannot, when they read the Old Testament, perceive how the outward ordinances pass away, and leave Christ the substance and inner spirit of them all. This veil prevents them from seeing the glory that shines in the Old Testament — its prophetic word, and prophetic sacrifices. They cannot discover that the letter is done away, by the full unfolding of the spirit; that the promises, however rich and precious, fall away of their own accord, when the Promised One has come. Even unto this day, says Paul, the veil is upon their heart, when Moses is read; when that heart of theirs shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. It is when they behold in living faith the Lamb of God, that they understand the meaning of the appointed sacrifices. “ We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth “ (John 1:45). The shell, hard and encompassing, holds firm in spite of influences from without, until the kernel within comes to its time, and, affected by prepared conditions, swells and bursts out into manifestation and life. The Lord is the spirit that lies in the Old Testament, under the folds of its sacrifices, giving them life. When the eye of the soul is opened to behold the beauty of the Lord, the observer comes to understand aright, both the spirit that animates the body, and the body that clothes the spirit — to imderstand both the Christ whom the sacrifices promised, and the sacrifices that promised Christ. When it is intimated that Christ is the spirit of all ordinances, the intimation is not meant to disparage these ordinances, which constituted for him a hody until the fulness of time. The period of his ministry on earth was brief. He manifested himself the Saviour before he bebecame incarnate, and after he had ascended to heaven. On both sides of the cross were sinners suffering, and love from the face of Christ crucified beamed in gracious offer either way, reaching earth’s utmost ends — penetrating to Adam backward, and down to his latest child. In order that Christ, before and after his sojourn on earth, might make himself known to men, it behoved him to adopt a body palpable to human sense. Accordingly, before he was born in Bethlehem, and after he ascended from Olivet, he presented himself to faith clothed in certain forms and symbols, that touched human senses, and so made way into human souls. He knows what we are, and what we need. He not only filled the fountain of grace on high; he also prepared suitable channels through which it might flow to the needy. Divine truth revealed must have respect to its objects as well as to its Author, It must, in its nature, be like CJod; but it must also be, in its form, like man. People object to certain details in the Bible, averring that they seem far below the Divine: they are; and that because it was necessary to bring them down to the human. Our knowledge comes to us in the first instance through the bodily senses; and how shall God, a Spirit, be made known to us? The method adopted in the covenant, and manifested in the Scriptures, is — in order to bring us up to his nature he bowed down to ours. In order that we might know and receive the Lord, the spirit, God has from the beginning prepared for that spirit a body, which brings saving truth within the reach of embodied men. “While God in his ordinances condescends to our low estate, a tendency is always manifest in the divine dispensations to advance from the lower to the higher. The more carnal ordinances came first; afterwards, the more spiritual. The New Testament is an advance upon the Old; and a yet greater advancement awaits the Church. Things are prepared for them that love God — things which eye hath not seen yet, nor ear heard. In the meantime, however, it is only what the eye can see or the ear hear that can be made known to us. Revelation must assume some bodily shape ere it can be intelligible to men in the body. Such, accordingly, were all the ordinances of the Ancient Church, and such all the revelations that were made under the earlier dispensations. Christ, their spirit and life, was in them; but those things in which the life was lying were bodily things. The bondage in Egypt, and the redemption thence by the blood of the lamb; the open way through the Red Sea to Israel, and the burjdng of their oppressors beneath its flood; the journey through the wilderness, and the rest that lay beyond; the manna from heaven, and the water from the rock; the deadly wound by the bite of a serpent, and the healing by a look, — all these had Christ in them, and all were employed to make Christ known. The permanent institutes, as well as the passing events, were bodies prepared for containing and conveying that one blessed spirit. The unblemished lamb, and its blood on the doorposts; the one fair mitre on the high priest’s brow, and the twelve precious stones on his breast, — that signifying Christ’s holiness before Gtod, and this Christ’s imperishable love to his people; all the sacrifices and types that were written in the laws of Moses, and reverently observed throughout the generations of Israel, were bodies prepared for bringing Christ near to men. All these were handles let down from heaven, whereby the perishing might grasp their Saviour. Christ put these garments on in those ancient days, that his people, when bowed down by disease, might be enabled to touch their hem, and so live. Christ was within those bodies, their quickening spirit. Believers like Abraham saw him thereby long before he came in the flesh. It was his delight thus to reach them, and give them life; it was their delight thus to reach him, and get life. The song, “ My beloved is mine, and I am his,” is an old, old song, and a very sweet one to those who have an ear to hear what the Spirit, out of the ordinances, saith unto the Churches. But though these bodies were precious, as vehicles for containing and presenting Christ, they were worthless wanting him. A body with the life is good. When the spirit animates the body, the body clothes the spirit, and enables it to reach its object. But a body when the spirit has fled is useless, and worse. Itself is dead, and it kills others. Such are ordinances, even those of divine appointment, when Christ, their spirit, is not in them, or is not owned. It is no disparagement to God’s wisdom in the construction of the human body, that it becomes corrupt and corrupting when the soul has fled. The human body is a wonderful work; but it is most wonderful as the home of a human soul. When the soul has departed, it is of no further use; we are fain to bury it out of sight, God’s work though it be. Such are the ordinances of religion when Christ is not in them. Their deadness and loathsomeness when their life is lost, is no reflection on the wisdom that ordained them. They were never meant to be, in themselves and for their own sakes, either beautiful or good; they are obedient and loyal, and so they part with all their glory when the King goes away. There is a strong tendency in us to cling to the mere body of a religious ordinance and let its spirit go. This error appeared early in the Churches of Galatia. They turned from Christ, who is the spirit of the ordinances, to the old ordinances destitute of Christ. Returning to the elements of the world, they distrusted Christ, and leant on circumcision. How vehemently Paul cried out to them, “ O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect in the flesh?” They were leaving the animating Spirit, and going back to the dry bones of the dead. As sensible ordinances were appointed for communicating Christ to faith before the incarnation, so also after the Lord had ascended into heaven, he has appointed ordinances in which he their spirit will dwell, and where his people will find him. The Scriptures of the New Testament, like those of the Old, are bodily things, suited to bodily senses. They are words and letters. If they have not a spirit in them they are dead; and the dead cannot give life. Christ is the soul that animates them; and if we do not find him in the Bible, we find nothing there. As a human body with the life in it is the most beautiful object in nature, and a human body when the life has gone the most forbidding, so I suppose the Bible is to one class the most attractive of all books, and to another the most forbidding because to the one it is a dead letter, and to the other it is a body all glowing with Christ its life. The Jewish scribes of our Lord’s day spent much time in handling the Scriptures, but the letter in their hands was a body dead, and their schools had the thick noisome air of a dissecting-room. “ Ye search the Scriptures/’ said the Lord to those learned Jews, “ for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.” They stolidly manipulated the carcass, and rejected him who came to be its spirit and life. They embraced the dead because the look of the living reproved them. But the sacrament of the Supper is in a peculiar manner and in an eminent degree the body whereof Christ is the inner living spirit. As men often missed the spirit of the old dispensation, so they miss the spirit of the Lord’s Supper now. If we do not by faith realize Christ at his table, it will be no more to us than a Jewish passover would be. Li the remarkable discourse which is reported in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus taught clearly and fully that himself is the bread on which a soul must live. That discourse does not contain the institution of the Lord’s Supper. It is an exposition by the Lord himself, while he stood among the disciples, of the central saving doctrine which the Supper afterwards expressed and commemorated It is not his body but himself that he represents as the bread of life. At the beginning he said, “ I am that bread of life; “ and at the close he repeated, “ He that eateth me shall live by me.” In the light of that discourse observe the relation between our text and the ordinance of the Supper. “ This is my body... this is my blood;... take; eat... drink ye all of it;... this do in remembrance of me.” In all this you have the body; but to eat bread and drink wine will not save, will not profit a soul. Where is the spirit of the body? The Lord is that spirit. The Supper is indeed a body, — a sort of channel appointed for conveying Christ to the believing, — but it cannot by itself contribute an atom of influence to the procuring of pardon, or the purifying of the heart. The Lord is the spirit; and if they who come to the body do not seek and find by faith that spirit, the body will profit them nothing, divine institute though it be. This question is entirely independent of that which concerns the right administration of the sacrament. Suppose it to be administered by apostles, and in exact conformity with the Lord’s will, still it can impart nothing to the unworthy receiver. His evil heart of unbelief has refused Christ, and there is none other who can be the spirit of the ordinance. The bread and wine are but beggarly elements. As the lead of a water-pipe, although most perfectly fitted for conveying water from the fountain to the lips of the needy, cannot in any measure contribute to allay his thirst, so the Supper, although divinely ordained and purely administered, can do nothing for a sinner who closes the door of his heart against the Saviour Christ. We do not deny to the Supper a place when we refuse to give it the place of the Saviour. The body, which is nothing when dead, is a great thing when living. It is not only that the soul inhabiting the body is great: the body is great when a soul inhabits it. In like manner, it is not enough to say that, though a Christless sacrament is nothing, Christ himself is great. That is true; but more than that is true. While the ordinance is dead and worthless, if Christ its spirit be not apprehended, the ordinance is most precious when the believing partaker seeks through it communion with the Lord. When he makes himself known to a longing heart, that heart loves him; and loves, too, in its own place, the channel through which he comes. Recall to mind the design of Christ’s departure from the disciples, and the process of weaning through which they were put. They loved the Master, with a fond, adoring love. When they were tossed on a stormy sea and ready to perish, the only want they felt was the absence of their Lord: “ It was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them.’’ But while their love was grateful to his heart, he knew that sense with them was growing too rank, and was choking the more feeble, more precious faith. Carried away in a flood of personal love that lay in the senses, Peter passionately opposed the dying of the Lord: ’• Far be this from thee.” There Satan got an advantage over Peter. But Peter’s love to the person of the Lord, as seen by the bodily eyes, was the cover under which the old serpent lurked while he dealt this blow. Knowing what was in man, the Lord prepared to go out of his people’s sight as soon as his atoning work was dona The faith of these Galileans would have been smothered outright under the ample folds of their love to the man Christ Jesus, their personal friend. When he departed, they remained glued to the ground and gazing up to heaven. The ministry of angels was needed and employed to tear them from the spot, and turn their minds another way. But the ministry of angels, though fitted to take them away from their needless looking into the sky over Olivet, was not fitted positively to lead them to the perception and enjoyment of Christ, the spirit of word and ordinances. The ministry of angels ceased, and a more glorious ministry succeeded it. The Holy Ghost came upon them; and his mission was to glorify Christ. They were wrenched away from sensible, human companionship with Jesus, as infants are torn from their mother’s breast. They were led by the Spirit to Christ; and although Christ was now bodily removed, he was still manifested to them under bodily forms. In the sacrament of the Supper they found Christ with less of tumult and distraction than they would have experienced if he had again appeared in the flesh. As the result of the Lord’s ascension and the Spirit’s ministry, we learn that in mutual love and sacramental communion they did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart. “ This is my body...this do in remembrance of me” — “Lo, I am with you.” The Lord became the spirit in the body of their sacrament. They lived on the same Saviour; but now their life in him was more purely a life of faith. This body which he has left is as fit to nourish us as his personal, visible presence on earth would be. We may now praise him for having weaned his Church in those days: he has given us food convenient for us; he hath done all things well. Let the Lord be the spirit of our sacrament, and we shall feed on him by faith, with less distraction than if he should return to show us either the marks of former suffering on his hands, or the signs of present glory on his countenance. By his reappearing in bodily form, we should be flooded by tumults of human passion; — either crying out, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord,” or “falling at his feet as dead.” In these tumults flickering faith would be overlaid and quenched. He gives us the sensible sign, that in it we may receive himself by faith as our Saviour, with less distraction than if his eyes as a flame of fire were opened and bent upon our company. We should gladly accept any body wherein he pleases to present himself; and if there be less in these symbols themselves to carry ns away than there would have been in the transfigured presence of the Lord descending on our mount, all the more complete should be the inner worship of the soul, while we cleave to the Lord the spirit in these bodily memorials of his death. Tell me the sweetest scene of mingled moral and material beauty that may be seen on earth. It is an infant satisfying itself abundantly from a living mother’s breast. Tell me now the saddest sight that eye hath seen or ear hath heard of. It is that which they say has sometimes been seen in the wake of war or of pestilence — an infant unconsciously sucking a mother dead. If that process continue long, the child will draw death from that which was formed to be a well of life. The letter of the ordinance is dead if Christ be not known and tasted. The letter, when the spirit has departed, is not only dead, but deadly: “ The letter killeth.” But the same letter, when the Lord is its spirit, is life, and gives life. The tendency to go back to the dead letter in the sacrament of the Supper is, of course, seen in its grossest form in modern Rome. But even that deepest error of the Romish superstition has a more terrible meaning to ns at this day than formerly, because of a movement — broad, deep, and rapid — in the Church of England to follow in the wake of Rome. Opposite and equal to the revival movements upward to the Lord that have been experienced in our day, other movements have emerged, — movements of men’s spirits gravitating downwards like lead, from Christ the spirit of the Supper to the form from which Christ has departed. This gravitation downwards affects us all, except in as far as the Holy Spirit is given to quicken and elevate. Whereas all the sacrifices of the Old Testament, being symbols, ceased when the one Sacrifice was offered, they multiply their sacrifice of the Mass, as they call it, to ten thousand times ten thousand — thus returning to the shadows again. Their wafer and their wine-cup, they say, have become the body and blood of Christ — the very body that was nailed to the cross, and the blood that flowed from his wounds. It is the most adventurous imposture that ever human heart invented. But even although it were true, what gain would accrue from it? Although the wafer and wine which the devotee swallows were the body and blood of Christ — which they are not — what better would he be of swallowing them? It is the spirit that giveth life; bodily service profiteth little. The Lord, the spirit, is not there; he has gone away offended, leaving the dead letter for the dead worshipper. The second clause of the verse intimates that “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” I know not a shorter or surer method of illustrating the liberty that prevails wherever the Lord, the spirit, is recognized by faith, than to point out the bondage which crushes the people wherever the spirit of the sacrament is lost, and its body resorted to as a charm. The converse of the clause is strictly true and eminently appropriate to the times, — “ Where the Spirit of the Lord is not, there is slavery.” Human spirits are too high in nature and too capacious for worshipping any other than God. When men, as individuals or as communities, let Christ slip from the grasp of their faith, and fasten on some corporeal thing, whether a superstitious ceremonial or a human priesthood farewell to liberty. It becomes, on the one side, an iron tyranny; and, on the other, the cringing of a slave. The Pharisee would lose peace of conscience if he should eat with unwashen hands. A modem bondsman, a sincere worshipper in his way, will count that he has committed a sin against God, which must be atoned for by a painful or degrading penance, if by some accident he has tasted a kind of food on one day of the week which he might eat lawfully on any other. A man of education and refinement in this country will eat meat with peace of conscience at a certain season of the year if an aged priest at Kome shall give permission, but would count that he had incurred the displeasure of God if he should eat meat at that season without such permission. There is no imaginable depth of degradation which the master of a soul may not impose — which a soul enslaved will not endure. Woe to human spirits when they let go Christ and submit to a carnal ordinance or a fellow-man! Take all the advantage that can be obtained — and it is great — from the union and organization of Christians, as a brotherhood of God’s children; take instruction and accept fellowship wherever you can obtain them pure and useful, — but subject your soul to none but Christ. When in reading the Scriptures, in prayer secret or social, in the worship of the great assembly, or in the act of showing forth the Lord’s death, you seek and get communion in spirit with the living Saviour ever present, you enjoy a sublime freedom. You walk at liberty before God as a dear child, consciously reconciled through the blood of the covenant; you will walk at liberty through life, calling no man master, and not trembling before shifting shadows or rustling leaves; you will walk at liberty through the swelling Jordan, when you approach the border line, and get an abundant entrance into the rest that remaineth. If the Son make you free, you shall be free indeed; — free from the fear of man; free from the snares of the devil; free from the condemnation for sin; free from the terrors of conscience; free from the sting of death; free from the clog of a mortal body; free from the confusion of a consuming world: freed hy the Lord; free witk the Lord. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 86: 2.04.03. FAITH AND A GOOD CONSCIENCE ======================================================================== III. FAITH AND A GOOD CONSCIENCE "Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away, concerning faith have made shipwreck.” — 1 Timothy 1:19. CHRISTIANS in this country are at present [1874], more than usually happy and hopeful. Both the constituents of apostolic cheerfulness are present, “ a wide door,” and “ many adversaries.” So wide is the door, and so great the spiritual enlargement, that the “adversaries,” instead of depressing, tend rather to stimulate and elevate the hearts of believers. The shout of a King is in the camp, and he is leading many captive. As in ancient times, so now, “ This is the victory that overcometh the world, even your faith.” “Justified by faith,” is the key-note of the hymn that is now rising heavenward like the voice of many waters from a revived and united Church. Christ the substitute — the just dying for the unjust — is the distinguishing feature of the preaching which at present is accompanied with power. This is as it should be; it is under this standard only that the Christian host will conquer. This gospel of free grace must be always and everywhere proclaimed. The evil spirit that possesses human hearts goeth not out by any other adjuration. But while this should be done, there is another thingwhich ought not to be left undone. A watchful, energetic effort personally to turn from all evil, and to practise all good, must be made by every one who trusts in Christ for pardon and peace. Work from peace and pardon as energetically as if you were working for peace and pardon. There is not safety for an hour in any other attitude. If the upper side of true religion, pointing heavenward, be, “ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;” the under side, pointing earthward, is, “ To visit the widows and the fatherless in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” If the upper side of the seal which binds a believer to the sure foundation bear the inscription, “ The Lord knoweth them that are his; “ the legend on the under side must be kept clear and legible by constant rubbing, “ Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Timothy 2:19). Actual holiness is as necessary to the life of faith as the left side of a man’s body is to the life of the right. In these circumstances I think I shall contribute a word for the times, if, for the special use of young converts, rejoicing in a free and full salvation, I set forth the two sides of the Christian life in their union and relations. These I shall present as given by that great master of logical connections, the Apostle Paul. “ Holding faith, and * a good conscience; which some Ivaving put away, concerning faith have made shipwreck “(1 Timothy 1:19). The two subjects here are faith, and a good conscience. We must inquire first. What they severally are, and next, How they are reciprocally connected. Their nature first, and then their relations. I. What they are 1. Faith. — The term is in the Scriptures applied both to the revealed truth which a disciple believes, and to his act in believing it. Faith is objective, or subjective. It is at one time the truth which you grasp, and at another time your grasp of the truth. Both of these senses occur in the text, distinguished (in the original, though not in the English) by the presence or absence of the article. “ Faith,” in the first clause, is the soul’s act of believing; “ the faith,” in the second clause, is the gospel which the soul believes. Both in the Scriptures and in their own nature these two are closely interwoven together. It is impossible everywhere to preserve and mark the distinction between the light that I look on, and my looking on that light. True, my looking on it does not create the light, but it makes the light mine. Unless I look on it, the light is nothing to me. If I am blind, it is the same to me as if there had not been light. In some such way are faith and the faith connected and combined. It is quite true that the gospel remains, although I should reject it: my unbelief cannot make God’s promise of none effect. Yet my unbelief makes the gospel nothing to me — the same to me as if it had not been. 77ie faith stands in heaven, although faith be wanting on earth; but if faith is wanting, the faith does not save the lost: as the sun continues his course through the sky although I were blind; but my blindness blots out the sun for me. 2. A good conscience, — It is not necessary to explain what conscience is: my readers know what it is better than I can tell. What is meant by conscience is a thing to be experienced rather than to be taught; but what is meant by a “ good conscience “ is not so obvious. Here the principal question is, Whether does the epithet “ good “ refer to the conscience that gives the testimony, or to the testimony that the conscience gives. The term “ good “ here belongs not to the testifier, but to the testimony. In one sense that might be called a good conscience, that tells the truth even though the truth torment you. When the conscience, like an ambassador from God in a man’s breast, refuses to be silent in the presence of sin, and disturbs the pleasure of the guilty by uttering warnings of doom, that conscience is good, in the sense of being watchful and useful; but it is not the good conscience of this text, and of ordinary language. Both here, and in common conversation, a good conscience is a conscience that does not accuse and disturb. It is the same as peace of conscience. It is no doubt true that in an evil world, and through the deceitfulness of an evil heart, the conscience may sometimes be so drugged or seared that it may leave the soul undisturbed, although the soul is steeped in sin. It sometimes says “ Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. “ There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked;” but the conscience sometimes contradicts God, and says that there is peace to the wicked. This is, however, an abnormal state of things j as when an ambassador at a foreign court turns traitor to the king who commissioned him, and refuses to deliver his lord’s commands to the court where he has been accredited. Although this state of rebellion is in point of fact common among men, it is in its own nature a contradiction and an anomaly. Although it abounds in this fallen world, it is an exception and a rarity in the universal dominion of the supreme God. It may for our present purpose be set aside. The conscience in man is intended to be God’s witness, and to speak to the man all the truth. Taking conscience, not as twisted and seared by sin, but as constituted by God in the conception and creation of humanity, then a good conscience is peace of conscience. You have and hold a good conscience when that present representative of God in your bosom does not charge you with sin. When it accuses it is an evil, when it approves it is a good, conscience. The one is an inward sense of guilt, the other an inward sense of righteousness. By the light of Scripture we know that, as matters go among the fallen, a good conscience, if real and lawfully attained, implies these two things: — (1) The application of the blood of sprinkling for the pardon of sin; and (2), Actual abstinence from known sin in the life through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. A good conscience — if it is not a cheat — implies a righteousness on you and a righteousness in you. There is the washing away of guilt in the fountain open; and there is the actual turning from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. There is a righteousness which you get, and there is a righteousness which you perform. The one is the justification, and the other the sanctification, of a believer. The one is an act of God’s free grace; the other is the work of God the Spirit. The one, as being an act, is completed when it is begun; the other, as being a work, drags its slow length along — alas, through corruptions within and temptations without — along the whole line of a disciple’s life, until he escape from the body and depart to be with Christ. Pardon and renewing combine to constitute, under the gospel, a good conscience. What God hath joined, let not man put asunder. The first dissociated from the second is antinomianism; the second dissociated from the first is legalism. The hope of pardon through grace, without actual newness of life, tramples under foot God’s holy law. The effort to lead a holy life, without looking for pardon through the blood of Christ, parades the filthy rags of a sinner’s righteousness, as if they were fit to constitute the wedding garment of the King’s guests when the King cometh in. The conscience is then really good when your trust is in the blood and righteousness of your Redeemer, and your life is practically dedicated to the Lord that bought you. The conscience is good when it truly testifies that God is at peace with you, and you are at peace with God. For all practical purposes, the good conscience here may be taken as synonymous with well-doing. II. Their relations, — The text consists of. two parts. The first is a command, the second is an example. The example, as is usual both in human teaching and divine, is adduced for the purpose of enforcing the precept. An illustrative case, taken from actual life to explain or apply a prescribed duty, may be in its form positive or negative; that is, it may either directly show how good it is to obey, or how evil it is to transgress. The case which is employed in this text is negative. It exhibits, in concrete form, not the good that results from obedience, but the evil that results from transgression. Doubtless, Paul could have called up from his own experience many examples to show how good it is to hold both faith and a good conscience; but it suited his purpose better, in this instance, to adduce an example which shows the dread consequence of attempting to separate them. In point of fact, an example of these two rent asunder is more effective in proving the necessity of their union than a hundred examples in which the union remains intact. Thus, if proof were necessary, to divide a Kving child in two with Solomon’s sword would constitute more vivid evidence that in a human being the left side is necessary to the life of the right, and the right to the life of the left, than the sight of a hundred unharmed children. When one side is wrenched off, the other side also dies: this is shorter and surer proof that the two are mutually necessary to each other’s existence than a hundred examples of positive, perfect life. Besides, it is easier to find a foundation for a negative than for a positive example. In buoying a channel, they cannot well set up a mark where the ship ought to go; they set up a beacon on the simken rock which the ship ought to avoid. On this principle, the apostle selects a negative rather than a positive example to enforce his point. A case in which death resulted from severance suits his purpose better than a case in which life is preserved through continued union. In this case, one of the related pair is severed, and the other, as a necessary consequence, perishes. Holding faith and a good conscience, which some — and he immediately names two men who had actually passed through the course which he describes — which some having put away, concerning faith have made shipwreck; that is, when they put away the good conscience, the faith also was lost. Here a question of the deepest interest crosses our path and claims our regard. Granted that faith and a good conscience are linked so intimately together that the one cannot live without its consort, what is the specific character of the relation? Whether of these two is first in nature as cause, and whether follows as effect? Looking to the form of expression in the text, which is exact and definite, we find that in the case adduced it was not the dissolution of faith that destroyed the good conscience, but the failing of the good conscience that destroyed faith. These men put away the good conscience; then and therefore, they lost the faith. What then? As the continued possession of the faith depended on maintaining the good conscience, is it through prior possession of a good conscience that one may attain faith? No. The converse is the truth, fully and clearly taught in the Scriptures. You do not reach faith through a good conscience, but a good conscience through faith. A good conscience grows on faith, like fruit on a tree, not faith on a good conscience. A good conscience in both its aspects, as already explained, is the fruit of faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God, either by the righteousness of Christ in justifying, of the new obedience in sanctifying. God is pleased with both righteousnesses, each in its own place, and after its own kind. The righteousness which a believing man receives satisfies his justice, and the obedience which a converted man renders adorns his doctrine. God is well pleased, for his righteousness’ sake, when he sees his Son accepted in your heart and his law honoured in your life. But both of these are attained through faith. It is faith that justifies the man before God*s judgment, and establishes the law in the life-course of the man. Now this specific relation is not reciprocal. The good conscience does not produce faith, as faith produces a good conscience. What then? If faith goes first as the cause, and a good conscience follows as the fruit, the good conscience obviously cannot subsist without faith; but may faith subsist without a good consdenoe? No. As to production at first, the relation is not reciprocal; but as to maintenance it is. We cannot say, as a good conscience springs from faith, faith also springs from a good conscience; but we can say, as the want of faith makes a good conscience impossible, so, also, the loss of a good conscience is fatal to faith. Some species of trees retain life in the roots although the head and stem are cut away. A young tree may spring from the old stump, and grow to maturity. But other species, such as the pine, will not thus spring a second time. When the mature tree is cut off, although the root, with a portion of the stem, is left, the tree does not revive. The root dies when the head is severed.* There is an interesting analogy between a pine-tree and the pair which are joined in the text. It is not the tree’s towering head that produces the root; the root produces the towering head. We can, therefore, safely say. If the root is killed, the head cannot live; but we may also say, If the head is severed, the root will die. Precisely such is the relation between faith and a good conscience. Faith is the producing, sustaining root, and a good conscience the stem that it sustains. Consequently, cut off faith, and a good conscience falls to the ground. Tes, this is the truth; but it is not the whole truth. We can also say. Destroy the good conscience, and faith cannot stand. * The emigrant, in clearing his lot in the American forest, does not at first dig each tree out by the root. This process would occupy too much time. He cuts the tree four or five feet above the ground, and the root rots away in a few years. Hence, a common feature of the landscape in newly-reclaimed territories — fields studded all over wii the stumps of trees, and the comgrowing around them. Hence the coinage of a new word in the English language as used in America. A candidate for office is said *’ to stump the state ’* — that is, he goes through it addressing meetings and soliciting votes. One of these stumps constitutes a convenient platform for the political orator. Thus in one way only may the good eonacienee be obtained; but in either of two ways both may be lost. Let faith fail, and the good conscience goes with it; let the good conscience be polluted, and the faith itself gives way. In the first place, then, speculative error undermines practical righteousness. As belief of the truth purifies the heart and rectifies the conduct, so a false belief leads the life astray. Let it suffice to have enunciated the relation on this side; we shall turn for practical lessons chiefly to another aspect of the case. The example given in the text, and oftenest found in experience, is not false faith leading to an incorrect conduct, but impure conduct undermining faith. I suppose, in the experience of human life, if the speculative error producing practical wickedness slays its thousands, the practical wickedness perverting the creed slays its ten thousands. The backsliding begins more frequently on the side of conduct than on the side of opinion: the good conscience is lost in most cases, not by adopting a heretical creed, but by indulging in the pleasures of sin. “ A good conscience, which some having put away.” When a man who has known the gospel and professed to be a disciple of Christ yields to temptation, and indulges in a course of sin — knowing the right, but doing the wrong — he forthwith loses the good conscience. His peace is disturbed; the witness in his bosom accuses him, and he is tormented by the fear of divine wrath. To this wicked man there is now no peace, and that by the word and decree of God. His heart is a house divided against itself, and it is wretched. Now, will this man who has fallen into sin, and so lost his good conscience, continue still sound in the faith? When his conduct is polluted, will his opinion continue true? No, verily. As in the case of the text, when the good conscience is thus forced out, the sound creed will soon follow. Having put away a good conscience, concerning the faith they have made shipwreck. It is true indeed that pure conduct depends on sound doctrine; but it is also true that sound doctrine depends on pure conduct. And, in point of fact, it is much more common to find the faith perverted by loose practice, than practice perverted by a loose creed. The wicked one knows that a soul may be undone by a successful assault either on his faith or his practice. But in seeking whom he may devour, he finds the side of a holy life more easily reached and pierced than the side of orthodox views. Our enemy finds it easier to persuade us to do what is evil than to believe what is false. The conscience is more exposed in the battle of life than the intellect. And it is on the weak point that a skilful adversary will concentrate his attack. For our instruction and reproof, the Spirit, by the apostle, adduces a case in which, while all the beliefs remained sound, the heart and life glided into impurity. In such a case there is strife in a man’s own bosom. The doctrines of grace entertained in the mind wage war against the vices indulged in the life, and the vices indulged in the life wage war against the doctrines still retained in the mind. This battle cannot last very long. One or other combatant must give way. Either sound doctrine, maintaining its ground, will drive out the vile indulgence, or the vile indulgence, growing, like an appetite, by what it feeds on, will put to flight the faith. In the case of our text the bad conscience prevailed and cast out the good belief. There is another ease recorded in the same epistle — 1 Timothy 6:9-10. Here are some who erred from the faith. How came that? They first gave themselves over to covetousness; then and therefore they erred from the faith. In truth, a man cannot make both money and Christ his portion. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways; and in some turn of the way the unstable traveller will stumble and fall. While the calamity is substantially in all cases the same, the faith may be shipwrecked in any of three distinct forms, — a dead faith, an erroneous faith, and no faith. In the first a form of sound words remains, but they are a dead letter; in the second, false views of Christ and his work are entertained; and in the third, the backslider sits down in the chair of the scomer, and says, No God, with his lips as well as in his heart. Among ourselves, perhaps a dead faith is the most common form of soul shipwreck. Through the indulgence of various vanities and lusts, although the name of Christ and the salvation which it brings remain as words, they are words of no meaning, no power. It is difficult to tear the stump right out of the ground at once. The same end is gained by leaving it standing dead; it will gradually rot away. Faith and covetousness, faith and any impurity, cannot dwell together in the same breast. These cannot be in the same room with living faith. As well might you expect fire and water to agree. The cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word. What then? In order that faith in us should not be choked and die, we must crucify the flesh, with its affections and lusts. Does this savour of legal teaching? See how Paul, the of the Cross, acted in his own experience — Acts 24:15-16, “And have hope toward God... And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men.” You have faith in Christ; well, this is the way to keep it — to keep it living. Let not one of us suppose that his faith will remain fresh and full without watching and striving, when we see that even Paul found it necessary to exercise himself every day to keep his conscience clean. Young men are, in the present day, peculiarly exposed to the danger of speculative error or unbelief. They hear many arguments against either certain doctrines of the gospel, or the gospel itself; they must listen to many sneers against men who profess the faith. I do not deny that there is danger on that side. There is danger: a process of sapping and mining goes on, which may in time overthrow the faith of some. I confess there is danger of false opinions insinuating themselves into men’s minda All I contend for is, that the danger is greater on the other side. Faith is easier and oftener reached and undermined by stains that eat through the conscience. I knew a young man once who became what was called a Socialist. He attained a great degree of boldness in the profession of ungodliness. No God, or no God that cares for me, was his short, cold creed. But I knew him and his communications before he had made shipwreck concerning faith. The second table of the law had, by indulgence of sinful pleasure, been rusted out of his heart before the first table was discarded from his creed. He had cruelly dishonoured his father and his mother, before he learned to blaspheme God. It cannot be comfortable to a young man in his strength to come day by day to open his heart to God, if day by day he is deliberately disowning and dishonouring his parents in the weakness of their age. The dishonourer of his parents finds it necessary to his own comfort to cast off God. This man put away his good conscience, and therefore his faith was wrecked.* I knew another, who had in youth made higher attainments, and who, on that account, made a more terrible fall. He had experienced religious impressions, and taken a side with the disciples of Christ. I lost sight of him for some years. When’T met him again, I was surprised to find that he had neither modesty before men nor reverence before God. He was free and easy. He announced plainly that he did not now believe in the terrors spiritual that had frightened him in his youth. I made another discovery at the same time regarding him. He had deceived, ruined, and deserted one whom he falsely pretended to love. Through vile and cruel affections he had put his good conscience away; and, to pacify an evil conscience, he had denied the faith. The belief of the truth and the practice of wickedness could not dwell together in the same breast. The torment caused by their conflict could not be endured. He must be rid of one of the two. Unwilling to part with his sin at the command of his faith, he parted with his faith at the command of his sin. But though the shipwreck of faith is often, it is not always, the issue of the struggle. When the conscience of one who tried to be Christ’s disciple is defiled by admitted, indulged sin, the struggle inevitably, immediately begins. The Spirit striveth against the flesh, and the flesh against * The man ultimately reoovered his faith. The stress of life was too heavy for an empty heart to bear; and he was fain to return, like the prodigal, to his Father. the Spirit The sin often casts out the faiih; but the faith also often casts out the sin. The outcome is often, through grsce, the discomfiture of the adversary. “Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victoiy.” “ The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.” David put away his good conscience. His conscience was deeply stained by great, grievous, deliberate sin. The sword of the Spirit, glancing from a prophet’s lips, pierced through the searing, in the short and awful word, “ Thou art the man.” Then b an the conflict to rage in his breast This battle cannot last long. One or other combatant, in such a fast and furious struggle, must soon succumb. Angels desire to look into it. Here is a fight for the life of a soul! Now, or never! Either his faith vrill triumph over his sin, or his sin will triumph over his faitL These two cannot divide the kingdom and reign in concert. Repentance or Atheism will gain the day, and possess the man. It must either be the cry of Repentance, “ I have sinned against the Lord; “ or the cry of Atheism, “ There is no Lord to sin against” The struggle closed in the confession of the penitent; and the Lord also put away his sin. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 87: 2.04.04. THE PRODIGAL ======================================================================== IV. THE PRODIGAL “ And he said, A certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far coimtry, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he b an to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields tc feed swine,” etc — Luke 15:11-24. I. HIS DEPARTURE. HE young man goes away. Why? What drives or drags him from that sweet home — the home that might be sweet to him, if he would open his heart and drink in its pure enjoyments? Within the man are the “ seven devils “ that hold the reins and direct his course, and urge him to his ruin. “ The pleasures of sin for a season” have been long secretly nursed in his heart: now they have obtained the mastery, and can no longer be restrained. The impure passion which he has cherished and not crucified now lords it over him; and under the tyranny of his own lusts the way of this transgressor is hard. Like the centurion among his soldiers, the will of this possessing foul spirit is supreme over all the powers of the victim’s mind, and all the members of his body. To the right hand appetite says, Do this; and the right hand doeth it. So with all the rest of the faculties: they do the bidding of their master, even to the maiming and mutilating of themselves. These imperious lusts drove the young man from his home, because they could not completely get their own way in his father’s presence. “ Out of my father’s sight,” he thought, “ and then no longer any bridle on my passions; no longer any limit to my pleasures.” The wretched dupe was photographed long ago, for warning to all generations, “ With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forced him. He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks; till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life” (Proverbs 7:21-23). The fugitive could not halt or look behind him till he had crossed the borders of his native country, and found shelter among foreigners, as a tree is hidden by the wood. Nobody knows me here! I have here no character to keep; I shall give rein to passion, and have pleasures without stint. Very soon, however, his substance is wasted. The English word ’’substance” is ambiguous. It may mean the pith and marrow of a man’s body, or the contents of his purse. It may be taken both ways at once; for these two kinds of substance generally melt away together, in the bitter experience of the prodigal. His fortime is lost; his health has failed; and his pleasures, such as they were, have fled. The pleasures, when they flee, leave behind them stings and terrors in the conscience. The youth begins to be in want; — in want of food, and clothing, and home; in want of friends, in want of peace — in want of all things. A waif drifting towards the eternal shore — a lost soul. Such is the track of a prodigal. The fbotprints are thick on that path. A multitude tread it. The way down to death is thronged. As the saved tread their path in daily life, they are jostled at every step by a crowd hastening the opposite way. Oh, it is a solemn thing even for the saved to tread our streets, for they are rubbing every hour on fellow-immortals hastening on their own feet to their own destruction! But yet there is hope. If these pages meet the eyes of any prodigal, turning his back on God and all the good — chasing the pleasure that is fleeing from his grasp, i order to lead him over a precipice to the death that does not die, — we have two pieces of good news for him. Pause, prodigal, and listen! 1. God is angry with you. How do you know that? I read it in his Word: **And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart departed from the Lord God of Israel” (1 Kings 11:9). But you promised to give us good news, and you announce the most dreadful message that can reach human ears, — the anger of the Almighty God! The message I bring is good tidings: nay, it is, in your circumstances, the best news that could possibly be sent to you from God or man. If God were not angry, but pleased with you, in your sin, it would mean that there is neither holiness nor happiness in heaven or on earth — in time or eternity; which would be folly and blasphemy either to think or to say. If God were not angry with you, prodigal, for going away, he would not be glad when you return. I shall give you here a note of my experience. I have learned to love and delight in the anger of my Father in heaven. BSs anger against my departing, when I depart, means that he loves to feel me near. If he were pleased when I go away, I could not expect him to welcome me back. Think of it: as the central sun would miss this world, if this world should burst its bonds and wander away into the darkness of space; so God, the Father of the spirits of aU flesh, misses a single wandering soul, and is angry. Anger here is but the other side of love. It proves that “ he careth for you.” If I were a runaway child of an earthly father, and if the conviction could be conveyed to my weary, despairing heart, in the land of the stranger, that my father was angry with me for going away, hope would beam again into my dark soul; for the fact would lead me to expect a welcome, and no upbraiding, if I should return. 2. Christ himself, by the word of his own lips, in the parable, marked and made a path for the prodigal’s return. As they said to the blind man at Jericho, “ Be of good comfort; rise, he calleth thee,” — so, with the Bible open in our hands, we can address every prodigal child: “ Rise, he calleth thee.” Why did he paint the picture? Why did he leave on record for all generations this most tender and melting story? It was to make and leave open a way from the place where the prodigal lies, on the very brink of the pit, back and up to the Father’s home and the Father’s bosom. He traced every step of that way with his own hand. The way leadeth imto life, and the gate stands open now. Poor worn-out wreck, at war with yourself and with all the world; torn with remorse, and freezing under the dark shadow of despair; lonely, desolate, lost; — there is One that cares for you. Read the parable of the Prodigal Son once more. Though father and mother forsake you. He who spoke that word will not give you up. If he had been willing to let you go, and content to leave you lost, he would not have left on record that wonderful word. The lines of the parable are like beams of light from heaven, streaming towards the dark region round the sides of the pit — the outgoings of the heart of Jesus in unchanged compassion towards those self -destroyers who have put themselves beyond the reach of human help. He who wept over Jerusalem is still the same. That departure, in its results, is now grieving you: there is another One whom it grieves. Christ weeps for want of you: he will not frown on you when you return. “ Just as I am, without one plea But that thy blood was shed for me, And that thou bidd’st me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come! “ Make that plea your own, and you will feel the arms of the Father’s love clasped around you. “ This man receiveth sinners.” II. THE RETURN. “ Out of the depths have I cried unto thee.” I suppose it ’will be foimd, when the books are opened, that most of the cries that have reached to heaven rose from the depths. When all was lost, when he was on the point of perishing, the prodigal came first to himself, and then to his father. The word that marks the turning-point is very suggestive: “ He came to himself.” Had he then been beside himself, had he not been in his right mind, when he left his home and wasted himself among strangers? The word makes it clear that the man was not himself in his prodigal course. His act was madness, as well as sin. It was the act of the evil spirit in him, and yet it was his own act. Jesus rebukes Peter when he says, “ Get thee behind me, Satan.” The madness of a prodigal’s act does not make it any the less his own. It is a great point when the deceived soul discovers his deceiver and denounces him. The tide of battle is already turned when the ruined soul finds out that himself is his destroyer, and turns against the enemy within his own heart As soon as he comes to himself, he resolves to return to his father. But the picture, as drawn by the Master in the parable, speaks for itself. It does not need explanation. The point in hand for us is its application. When the prodigal comes to himself, is convinced that he is lost by his own sin, he returns to God, and is accepted. To show how this blessed word operates, I shall describe a case that came under my own observation long ago — a case from which I learned a good deal of the Lord’s way when I was young, and which has been a mine of wealth to me ever since. When I was sixteen years of age, a youth very dear to me, two years older than myself, was seized with paralysis of the limbs. He was handsome and amiable and wellconducted — no prodigal, but the delight of the family circle, and a favourite throughout a wider sphere. The ailment advanced by very slow degrees; but it advanced, and he died before he was twenty-two years of age. In the earliest stages he was pleasant, but reserved. Afterwards, for a while, he became sad. At the next stage he opened like a flower in spring, and blossomed into the most attractive beauty, both of person and spirit. He manifested peace and joy in believing. His society was sought even by aged and experienced Christians. After his souFs burden was removed, his face lighted up and his lips opened; he told me fully the history of his spiritual course, which he had kept secret at the time. It was this: When, he found himself a cripple, although otherwise enjoying a considerable measure of health, he saw that the world had for him lost its charm. The happiness he had promised himself was blasted. His former portion was gone, and he had none other. After the first sadness passed, he thought of turning towards Christ for comfort; but he was met and precipitously stopped at the very entrance on this path by the reflection: “ Christ knows that as long as I had other pleasures I did not care for him; he knows that if I come to him now, it is because I have nothing else — that I am making a do-no-better of him. He will spurn me away. If I had chosen him while the world was bright before me, he might, perhaps, have received me; but as I never turned to him till I had lost the portion I preferred, I can expect nothing but upbraiding.” This thought kept him long back. It was like a barrier reared across the path — the path that leadeth unto life — and he could not surmount it. By degrees, however, as he studied the Scriptures in his enforced leisure, he began to perceive that, although he deserved to be so treated, Christ would not treat him so. He discovered that “ this man receiveth sinners” when they come, without asking what it was that brought them. Further, he learned that whether one come when the world is smiling, or when it is shrouded in darkness — whether he come in health or in disease — it is in every case the love of Christ that draws him; and that no sinner saved vrill have any credit in the end. All and all alike will attribute their salvation to the free mercy of God. At first his thought was, ’’ If I had the recommendation of having come when my fortune was at the full, I could have entertained a hope.” But at last he learned that whosoever will may come, and that he who Cometh will in no wise be cast out. On these grounds he came at Christ’s command, was accepted, and redeemed. For the remainder of the journey he went on his way rejoicing. It is possible that some who read these pages may have fallen into that “ slough of despond” in which that young man for a short time lay, and the story of his experience may help them out. But by far the best help in such a case is the parable of the prodigal The Physician who wrote this prescription knows both the ailment and the cure. He is mighty to save. You have sinned away your soul, prodigal, and perhaps sinned away also the health of your body. You begin to be in want, and in your want your poor desolate heart tries to turn to Christ. But the consciousness that your own wickedness has wasted aU that you had rises up before you, and seems to drive you away from the Redeemers presence. He seems to say, “ When your vice has so wasted you that you can no longer get any enjoyment in it, will you come with your ’ blemished’ body as an offering to me?” — he seems to say these forbidding words; but though you hear these words, Christ has not spoken them. “An enemy hath done this;” the same who sows tares among the wheat. When the tempter cannot get you to go any deeper into vice, he tries to persuade you that Christ will reject you for having gone so deep. But be of good cheer; answer this fear with a “ Get thee behind me, Satan.” These things savour of man, but not of God, my Redeemer. His terms are, “ Him that cometh.” He has left that brief blessed word behind him, and nothing has been added to it since. And look to the prodigal in the mirror that He holds up, until the prodigal’s latter end be yours. What did that youth deserve from his father? The fellow was out and out worthless. He could not enjoy prosperity while his father was near; he would not remain with his riches even in the same territory. In the land of the stranger, when he began to be in want, he thought not of home. This yoimg gentleman, reared in ease and honour, will serve a stranger rather than come home. He consents to be a “ field hand,” toiling and associating with the meaner class of slaves. Nor is it merely to till the stranger’s ground that the Hebrew freeman is reduced, but he must accept the most detested of all employments — must feed the foreigner’s swine. The wretch submits to all this, and plods on through his dreary task with no tender relentings towards home. When hunger comes, if he can succeed in sharing the swine’s food, he will live on that rather than cast himself on his father. It was only when even swine’s food was not to be had, and death by starvation was staring him in the face, that he said, “ I will arise and go to my father.” And how did the father receive him? Look again to that divinely drawn picture: “ His father ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” Young man, far from Christ, and fearing that he would forbid your approach because of your provocations, look once more into this picture. Remember, it is not the history of an actual case. It is a story made by Christ, and so made in every feature as best to serve his purpose. And his purpose is to show that he receives sinners, even the chief; that no possible or conceivable degree of provocation has any effect in closing his heart against him that cometh. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 88: 2.04.05. NO CROSS, NO CROWN ======================================================================== V. NO CROSS, NO CROWN. "And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, Jesus op Nazabkth thb King of thb Jews.”— John 19:19. “No cross no crown:” how deep and broad is the principle expressed in these words! It belongs to the Master as well as to the servants; to the covenant of God as well as to the experience of men. Christ’s title of royalty is written on his cross; this blessed fruit grows only on that cursed tree. Our Redeemer is made perfect through suffering. In the Apocalyptic prophecy a Lamb as it had been slain is seen in the midst of the throne. It is the cross that bears the crown. Worthy of notice here is the machinery by which the Redeemer’s royal title was engraved and his royal dignity proclaimed. The human instrument acted blindly, and knew not what he did; all the more fitted therefore was he for doing the necessary work. You may observe that in nature those operations that are performed by blind unintelligent instinct are most surely and most perfectly performed. The creatures that act without intelligence keep their time and execute their tasks far more perfectly after their kind than man. The reason is, that they are only instruments in their Maker’s hands. The Omniscient forms the design, and employs suitable instruments. The execution is correspondingly perfect. But when a creature intervenes, with a determining will of its own, irregularities occur of every kind and degree. Even in human affairs, those operations that are performed by machinery proceed with greater uniformity and exactitude than those that depend on the worker’s will The worker may be distracted, or idle, or ignorant, or malicious. and corresponding flaws appear in the product; but beams and wheels, having no purpose of their own, simply work their owner’s will. Thus Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, became a rod in Jehovah’s hand for chastening backsliding Israel. He did not intend and desire to iofiict paternal chastisement upon his neighbours for their good. If the plan had been his, it would not have been executed so well. Nebuchadnezzar gave rein to his own cruel ambition. The Father of wayward Israel lifted the ambition of the heathen king, and employed it as a rod to chasten his child. In like manner, Pilate was employed to proclaim Messiah’s kingdom. He did it better, or rather it was better done by him, than it could have been done by any dLsciple of Jesus. If Pilate had planned this coronation, he would have greatly erred; nor would Peter, or James, or John have done it better. For this work friends and foes were equally imfit. Some of his followers attempted by force to place him prematurely upon an earthly throne. And Peter ventured to rebuke his Master for intimating that the cross must come before the crown. When the Lord would have his own sovereignty at length proclaimed, he did not employ a herald whose will “-ered into the transaction. Had he desired to use the will of a man in the matter, he must have chosen one of his own disciples, for his enemies refused to own his sovereignty. But none of his disciples at that period understood the nature of his reign or knew the date of its beginning. They would not have proclaimed the kingdom at the right time, nor would they have proclaimed the right kingdom. Even after the Lord had offered himself a sacrifice, and risen again, their eyes were still blinded on this point; we find, accordingly, that the promise runs in this form: “ Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me. They erred on both sides: they attempted to establish the kingdom before the time had come, and when the time had come they did not acknowledge it. They would fain have set the crown on the Lord’s head while he was living and working miracles. In presence of a fickle Jewish mob on the one hand, and of armed Roman legions on the other, they thought they would be safe as subjects of one who could raise the dead by his word, or summon fire from heaven to consume his enemies. They would have crowned Christ at the wrong time; and when the right time came, they had lost confidence in his power. In a tone of the most forlorn despondency, the two with whom the Lord conversed on the way to Emmaus said, “ We trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.” They trusted once, when they saw his power; but they abandoned hope when they knew he was crucified. They were not the men to write “ King “upon the cross of Jesus. They would have crowned him when his raiment glistened on Tabor; but when his bleeding head drooped on his breast on Calvary, their fondness anticipation of a kingdom vanished like a dream. "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" With the precision and pimctuality of an unconscious machine, blindly executing its author’s will, Pilate composed the regal title of the Redeemer, and fastened it aloft upon the cross. Thus the dumb Roman preached Christ crucified before the burning lips of Paul were baptized by the Spirit for taking up and continuing the theme. With equal ignorance in the instrument, and therefore with equal exactness in the performance, the priesthood of Emmanuel was proclaimed by Caiaphas, “ It is expedient that one man should die for the people.” PUate, the supreme civil ruler for the time, meant in revenge to pillory the Jewish leaders aloft before the world as the subjects of the crucified Nazarene; but this wrath of man was by God’s unseen hand intercepted in its flow, and compelled to publish the Redeemer’s praise. “ My kingdom,” said Jesus, in his ministry — “ my kingdom is not of this world.” In origin, nature, object, and end it is wholly diverse from other kingdoms. As in other features it is peculiar, so especially in this, that the King’s glory lies in the shame which he endured. The King’s power sprang from his weakness; the King’s authority rested on the King’s death. The crown of the kingdom hangs on the cross of its King. This kingdom that springs from the cross is a new thing. Hitherto it had not been known among the works of God. Not that then the divine sovereignty over the world began first to be exercised. There was a kingdom of God before the cross; but the kingdom that rose from the cross was a new manifestation of the divine attributes, more glorious than any that had been previously made. Frotn the beginning the divine sovereignty was exercised both in the material and spiritual departments without the suffering of a divine person. In nature the Lord reigneth; his throne is from everlasting to everlasting. The heavens declare his glory, and obedient earth echoes back the witness to the sky. How exquisitely perfect is the divine government over matter! How beautiful the laws of that kingdom, and how uniform the obedience which its subjects yield! These stars never wander from their paths; that sun never fotgets to rise. Every tree produces its own kind of seed, and every seed reproduces its own kind of tree. How manifold, O Lord, are thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all! This kingdom is governed by wisdom and power, infinite and eternal. No cross is needed to sustain this throna The Son of God does not need to become a man and die that the stars may be kept in their courses, and the sea within its bed. Nor would a sacrifice be necessary to restore the kingdom to its beauty, if it were reduced to chaos by a universal flood. Again, as at the beginning, might God say, “ Let there be light,” and light would be. Again, internal heat might be employed to upheave new mountain ranges, and leave another hollow for another sea. Other races of living creatures might be called into being, more or less closely resembling those that had been destroyed, and the earth might be commanded to produce fruit for their food. In all this there would be nothing new under the sun; it would be only a repetition with minor variations of what had previously been done. There would, indeed, be a new heaven and a new earth; but no new exercise of divine wisdom and power would be put forth in calling them into being. In regard to the character and kind of sovereignty exercised, it might be proclaimed over the new creation, ** All things continue as they were.” The heavenly hosts might in such a case continue the praises they had learned at their birth, but no new song would have burst from their lip& In the moral department, too, there was a kingdom before Christ was crucified, a rule that did not demand for its exercise the crucifying of Christ. Sovereign rule on this side did not require that the Ruler should suffer even unto death. The kingdom in this department parts, like a stream interrupted by an island, into two diverging channels. The Lord reigneth over the good and the eviL He reigns over all holy, unfallen intelligences. The sovereignty on this aide consists of one unbroken course of holy love from the King, and a corresponding course of holy obedience from the subjects. It is difficult for us to form a distinct conception of this species of rule; for we have no experience of it. The will of the King is the law of his subjects; and yet their service is free. There is no disobedience; and yet there is no constraint. What a mystery is here! A lordship absolute over the highest kind of created beings; and these beings with all their faculties absolutely free. The kind of sovereignty which the holy God exercises over holy creatures, is perhaps as widely distinguished from his moral government of fallen humanity as it is from his control over material natare. A perfect moral supremacy over intelligent beings, who yield a perfectly willing and delighted obedience, must constitute a happiness in kind and degree far aboye our capacity of conception. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him, when in them perfect love has cast out fear. A government exercised over beings perfectly intelligent and completely free, and that government as absolute as the control of matter by the natural laws, constitutes, as I apprehend, a main element in the happiness of heaven. When we shall be as free as we now are in sinning, and yet with that free will shall render to God an obedience as perfect as the elements of nature, we shall have in our hearts the joy of the Redeemer, and that joy will be full. If the stars in their courses possessed our intelligence, how happy should they be in the sweet willingness of their perfect obedience; if we, with our intelligence, were like the stars in the perfection of our obedience, how happy should we be in knowing and doing God’s will, without a distracting thought or a rebellious desire! But there is another and opposite department of God’s moral government. The same holy Sovereign rules also over unholy intelligent creatures, distinct from man and created before him. Here, too, the relations between the Governor and the governed are short and simple. On one side it is all holiness; and on the other all sin. As in the case of holy creatures in their relation to God, the agreement is perfect; so here is the disagreement. On that side there Ls no jar; on this, no harmony. On the part of the King, it is justice executed; on the part of the subject, it is judgment endured. The lines of relation here between the throne and the prison are terribly short and straight. Righteousness pure and bright, and straight like sunlight, streams from the judgment-seat*, and no mediator stands in the way to receive its piercing, or deflect its course. Such were the departments of Jehovah’s kingdom, and such the kinds of government which he exercised, before man made in his image disobeyed his law. The authority in these several departments was in species various, but in all of them alike it was single, short, direct. No mediator intervened. Towards matter, it was omnipotence; towards moral intelligence, righteousness, diverging practically into two channels; towards the good, complacent love, — towards the evil, holy anger. In none of these kingdoms did it behove the King to die. But when human creatures fell, a new thing happened in the universe. The exercises of divine sovereignty hitherto put forth did not apply to the case, and contained not a cure for the ailment. The laws of nature do not reach it, for they are spiritual, intelligent beings who have rebelled. The law of gravity would grasp a falling star and raise it — would seize a wandering world and restore it to the circle of the planets in the sky, as a good shepherd bears back a strayed sheep to the fold; but the law of gravity has no power over a prodigal souL It has no sense to perceive the departure, and no faculty to arrest the fugitive. Even all-comprehending omnipotence does not keep a soul from sinning, — does not win back a soul that has sinned. Spirits escape from the grasp of power, even though that power be divine, as water escapes through the net which encloses and brings to land the fishes great and small that lie within its sweep. This is not a defect in the attributes or government of God. He hath done all things well. It is no more a disparagement to the wisdom and power of God that the laws of nature do not control spirits, than it is a disparagement to the skill of man that a net does not hold water. The net was not made for holding water: neither were the natural laws intended to rule spirits. It was God’s plan to leave meshes wide enough in the circumference of his providential government for spirits to escape into rebellion, if they should so will. To arrest and win back these fugitives he has instituted a new kingdom, and in it now exercises a new and unique species of sovereignty. When power and wisdom and holiness, in their simple and direct exercise, are no longer adequate to meet the creature’s need and accomplish the Creator’s purpose, the Infinite and Omniscient will call in another principle of government, foreseen and predetermined by himself from eternity, but never exercised till now. The problem is deeper now; more glorious, therefore, will be the display of wisdom and love by which its secrets shall be searched, and its difficulties overcome. Hitherto, in exercising sovereignty over moral and intelligent beings, God had only visited the good with simple approval, and the bad with simple condemnation. In the one direction no displeasure radiated from his face, d in the other no favour. Upward, it was all and only paternal love; downward, it was all and only judicial condemnation. But now, in accordance with the divine counsel from eternity, his love and his justice will be more gloriously manifested by being joined in one. The love of the Holy One will now be seen to flow full on spirits that have rebelled. To make this possible, the Son of God becomes a man and dies. This new exercise of sovereignty can be put forth only through a suffering Sovereign. The title of this King can be written nowhere but on his cross. Christ crucified, and none other, is the power of God that can control the course, and renew the character, and make blessed the destiny, of fallen men. With the awful exactitude and irresistible force of machinery, whose iron arms are destitute of thought and feeling, and therefore only execute the designer’s will, the kingly dignity of Jesus is held in reserve imtil Jesus himself is nailed to the cross; then it is emblazoned over his head, and proclaimed in three languages to the world. Fix your regard now on the great central and fundamental fact, that Christ’s reign rests on Christ’s suffering. In the shedding of his blood lies the essence of his power to save. This kingdom is a new kingdom. Its power is as great, and its control in its own sphere as complete, as the divine sovereignty over matter and over good and bad spirits; but it is a sovereignty different in essentials from all that the Supreme has hitherto put forth. The newness, the peculiarity lies in this, that the power which the King wields rests on the death which the King endured From the cross a kingly power goes forth, to heaven above, and hell beneath, and earth around. It is the blood of the Lamb that satisfies God, silences the adversary, and wins a human souL It was this sovereignty which Jesus desired to obtain and delights to wield. For this hope that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame. He refused to permit himself to be proclaimed King prematurely, because a crown before the cross would not have possessed power to save sinners. When the people were bent on elevating him to the throne of David, he conveyed himself away. When the Greeks sought to be introduced to him before he suffered, he intimated that unless he should die he could not put forth in their behalf the power which they needed — “ Unless a corn of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth alone.” Without the suffering he could not obtain the power to win back and rule a multitude of alienated, condemned creatures; but if he should suffer death according to the covenant with the Father, he would thereby acquire power to ransom and renew a people unto himself manifold as the grains of wheat in the fields of harvest. If the comof wheat die, it bringeth forth much fruit. When he made a similar intimation to his disciples, and Peter officiously interposed with, “Far be this from thee, Lord,” he resented Peter’s advice as the suggestion of Satan to subvert his throne. Thus uniformly and peremptorily did Jesus repudiate a kingdom, until by his suffering he had acquired the right to reign and the power of reigning; but as soon as the cross was planted on Calvary, and his body was nailed to the cross, he permitted the regalia to be displayed above his bleeding brow. For, mark, if he had not permitted it, the thing would not have been done. Expressly on that very day this Jesus had said to Pilate, “ Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above.” He who so long refused the title of royalty will not let it lie idle when he has accepted it at last. He had not power to act in his new kingdom until he suffered; but now that by suffering he has obtained the power, he will certainly wield it. He is a crowned King now; whatsoever he does as Mediator, he does in a kingly way. Kiss ye the Son, lest he be angry. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. Christ crucified satisfies divine justice, and forgives his people’s sin. In a royal way he cancels the sentence of death, although it was righteously pronounced and recorded. The handwriting that constituted a soul’s death-warrant, duly signed and sealed by the King of righteousness, he wrenches from the executioner’s hand and cancels; but observe, it is by nailing it to his cross that he can blot out that dread handwriting. On the cross the work was finished, — the Father’s work which the Son’ loved to perform. There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. The death of Jesus perfects for ever all his own. The truth and the power of God are pledged here. An omnipotent sovereignty shields the disciples of Jesus. “ Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.” After the manner of a king, the Saviour of sinners speaks. He knows his own power, and we may safely trust it. A half -hesitating faith dishonours the Lord, and mars the happiness of his servant. What pains he took that his work should be complete, and that its completeness might be manifest! There is sovereign power in this shed blood! “ The blood of Jesus Christ God’s Son deanseth us from all sin “ — “ Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is Christ that died” — “ I saw in the midst of the throne a Lamb as it had been slain.” Righteous Abel, — that blood of the Sacrifice washed his sin away, and made him just with God. The sprinkled blood on the door-posts kept the Hebrew households safe from the angel of death on the eve of the exodus in Egypt. Let that blood be on my conscience, and I shall be safe from the second death. Christ crucified has all power in heaven and in earth. Count him a King. Treat him as a King. Confide in the royal power of his sacrifice, — he shields all his own from condemnation. “The sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow: “ as the flowers and fruit spring from the living root that spreads darkly under ground, so the blossom of hope here and the fruit of eternal life hereafter, for all Christ’s members, spring from the suffering of Christ in his people’s stead. The dying of the Lord Jesus has a sovereign power to win us to obedience, as well as to shield us from wrath. It is the power that lies in the cross to which we must look for arresting, controlling, moulding human hearts. Our spirits are not made for yielding to any other kind of power. The forces in nature that have raised the mountains, have no eflScacy to rend a stony heart. The force that shook the jail at Philippi could not have shaken the jailer. God was not in that sense in the earthquake. It was a still, small voice, accompanying or following the shock of nature, that reached and melted the man. “ No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” It is the new kingdom — the kingdom whose throne is occupied by a Lamb as it had been slain, that reaches and leads them captive. Bear in mind that if you are ever grasped and held for saving, that you may not go down to the pit, it is the power of the dying of Christ that will do it. There is power in the blood that he shed to hold you — and hold you up, when the power which keeps the stars in their courses would fail to arrest your fall. Brother, a power is sent out from heaven, and softly thrown around you, greater than the power that sends angels forth on their errands, and casts the wicked into their own place. Abandon yourselves to its drawing, and you will be borne safely home. “ I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” But why so few drawn to Jesus — drawn by the power of his dying, whithersoever he will? Yonder ship lying on the water has all her sails spread, and a great steady breeze filling them; yet she moves not. Why? She is in secret unseen depths touching the earth. She is aground It must be a similar cause — it must be some secret cleaving to the dust that keeps us from being won by Christ, so as to run the way of his commandments. Saved men, from righteous Abel to the last saved man, are like one long procession marching across the world. The head of the column appeared at the gate of Eden; while the rear rank will pass only before the flame in which the earth shall be burned up. It is one company, and there is no break in the line. The shout of a King is in the camp all through; but the King personally marches neither with the first nor with the last. Jesus is in the midst. But his kingly power — the sovereign sway of his dying, covers the foremost and covers the last, shields the earliest and shields the latest; and gives to all, at the journey’s end, an abundant entrance into the joy of their Lord. Two lessons at the close hang on two IFS: — 1. If Christ had not died. If his patience had given way when he had wept over Jerusalem, and Jerusalem still laughed him to scorn; if he had dashed the cup from his lips in anger, refusing to drink it for a thankless world; if he had taken the scoffers at their word, on Calvary, and come down from the cross to save himself, — what then? Ah! the kingdom’s power would have been all employed to cast into outer darkness a wicked world No sacrifice for sin! but a fearful looking for of judgment. He was faithful unto death. “ I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” 2. Now that the price is paid and redemption completed; now that Christ crucified is King, and has all power in heaven and in earth; now that the shelter of Omnipotence is spread open towards time, — if any one of us pass over time and across the border into eternity without taking shelter under this sprinkled blood — what then? No more sacrifice for sin; but a fearful looking for of judgment. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 89: 2.04.06. THE RELATION BETWEEN DOCTRINE AND LIFE ======================================================================== VI. THE RELATION BETWEEN DOCTRINE AND LIFE. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” — Romans 12:1. object in this paper is to feel for the connection between Christian doctrine and Christian life. The link which unites doctrine and duty in the Christian system is neither an imaginary line nor an iron rod: it is like the Word of God, “ both quick [living] and powerful.” It is like the great artery that joins the heart to the members in a living body — both the channel of life and the bond of union. If that link is severed in the animal, the life departs; there remains neither heart nor members. So in the Christian system, if doctrine and duty are not united, both are dead; there remains neither the sound creed nor the holy life. Here, then, we shall find a logical argument avd a practical lesson. Inquirers should know the truth on this point, and believers should practise it. A common street cry of the day is, Give us plenty of charity, but none of your dogmas: in other words, Give us plenty of sweet fruit, but don’t bother us with your hidden mysteries about roots and engrafting. For our part, we join heartily in the cry for more fruit; but we are not content to tie oranges with tape on dead branches lighted with small tapers, and dance round them on a winter evening. This may serve to amuse children; but we are grown men, and life is earnest. We too desire plenty of good fruit, and therefore we busy ourselves in making the tree good, and then cherish its roots with all our means and all our might. In the transition from the eleventh to the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, the knot is tied that binds together doctrine and duty in a human life. Speaking generally, with the eleventh chapter the apostle concludes his exposition of doctrines, and with the twelfth he begins his inculcation of duties. At the beginning of his great treatise he plunged into the deep things of God, and at Romans 11:33 he emerges from his exploration with a passionate cry of adoring wonder at what he has seen and heard — “ the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” After relieving his overcharged spirit with that grand anthem which constitutes the close of the doctrinal section, he addresses himself (Romans 11:1) to the business of directing and stimulating an obedient and holy life in believers; and this theme he prosecutes to the close. At the point of contact between the doctrinal and practical divisions of his treatise he defines and exhibits the relations established in the laws of the Eternal between the gifts which flow from God to men, and the service rendered by men to God. Hitherto he has been opening the treasures of the kingdom, and permitting the divine goodness to flow freely into the lap of the needy; but here is the turningpoint: henceforth he will urge that tribute should stream upward, like a column of incense, from man to God. Who hath first given to God, and it shall be given to him again? None. No man first gives to God, and then gets back an equivalent. But though no man gives first to God, all renewed men give to him second; that is, the disciples of Christ, having gotten all from God first and free, then and thereby are constrained to render back to him themselves and all that they possess. This apostle knows human nature too well to expect that men will render fit service to God first and spontaneously. He puts the matter on another footing. He expects that the mercy of God, first freely poured out, will press until it press out and press up whatever the little vessel of a redeemed man contains, in thankofferings to the giving God. Here is a leaden pipe concealed under the plaster, stretching perpendicularly from the bottom to the top of the house. What is the use of it? It is placed there as a channel through which water for the supply of the family may flow up to a cistern on the roof. “ Water flow up? Don’t mock us. That would be contrary to its nature. Water flows down, not up. How should it change its nature when it gets into your pipe?” Place your ear near the wall, and listen. What do you hear? “I hear water rushing.” In what direction? “ Upward.” Precisely; water left to itself outside of the pipe, flows down; but water left to itself inside, flows up. “ Why?” Because there it is pressed by the water that flows from the fountain on the mountain’s side. It is the weight of water flowing down that forces this water to flow up. It is thus that living sacrifices, holy and acceptable, ascend from a human life to God, when that life is in Christ. When a human soul is within the well-ordered covenant, it is constrained, by the pressure of divine mercy flowing through Christ, to rise in responsive love. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye yield yourselves,” etc. The word “therefore “ is the link of connection between doctrine and life. Here it unites the product to the power. The whole epistle consists of two parts, united together by this word. The first portion is occupied with truth revealed, and the second with obedience rendered; and the truth is in point of fact the force which generates the obedience. Much mischief is done in the world by a wanton or ignorant divorce of this divinely united pair. There are two errors, equal and opposite. Those who teach high doctrine, and wink at slippery practice in themselves and others, fall into a pit on the right hand; those who preach up all the charities, and ignore or denounce the truth and the faith that grasps it, fall into a pit on the left. Let not one man say, I have roots, and another, I have fruits. If you have roots, let us see what fruit they bear; if you would have fruits, cherish the roots whereon they grow. Beginning his course of practical lessons with the twelfth chapter, this rigidly logical author binds the motive firmly to the act, and the act to the motive. He tells us what we ought to do, and what will induce us to do it. For power to propel his heavy train, he depends on “ the mercies of God,” as these have been set for£h in the preceding portion of the treatise; and the train which by this power he expects to propel is, « Present your bodies a living sacrifice,” etc. The mercies of God constitute the motive force. A consecrated life is the expected result. Consider carefully now the power employed in constant view of the effect which it is expected to produce. “ I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God.” Up to this point the epistle is occupied with the enunciation, elucidation, and defence of doctrine. The writer started with the set purpose of directing and stimulating human Uf e in the way of holiness and love; yet he expends the greater part of his time and strength in the exposition of abstract dogma. Paul has made no mistake here. Although his aim was to get human hearts and Uves fiUed with love to God and man, he devotes his attention first to truth revealed. This is a scientific operator. He knows what he is about. He is especially skilful in adapting means to ends. To provide the water-power may be a much more lengthened and laborious process than to set the mill agoing; but ’ without the reservoir and its impounded supply, the mill would never go round at alL Paul goes forward with a firm step and a straight course towards his aim in a sanctified and useful human life; but he takes every step on the assumption that a devoted and charitable life cannot be attained, unless the person and work of Christ be made clear to the understanding and accepted with the heart. Hence the time he has occupied and the pains he has bestowed in exhibiting and commending at the outset a complete theology. A class of men is springing and pressing to the front in our day, who laud charity at the expense of truth. The truth, exterior to the human mind, which God has presented in his Word, they ignore as imnecessary rather than denounce as false. Doctrine, as truth fixed and independent, they seem to think a hindrance rather than a help towards their expected millennium of charity. In their view, a man may indeed become a model of goodness although he believe sincerely all the doctrines of the gospel; but he may reach that blessed state, as quickly and as well although he believe none of them. Their creed is that a man may attain the one grand object of life— practical goodness— equally well with or without belief in the Christian system. That there may be no mistake in the transmission of their opinion, they take care to illustrate it by notable examples. John Bunyan, who received all the doctrines of the gospel, and Spinoza, who rejected them all, attain equally to the odour of sanctity in this modern church of charity. This representation is publicly made by men who profess the faith, and hold the preferments, and draw the emoluments of the Established Church in England. In order to elevate love, they depress faith. For our convenience, they have compressed the essence of their system into a phrase that is compact and portable — ’’ A grain of charity is worth a ton of dogma.” The maxim is well constructed, and its meaning is by no means obscure. If it were true, I should have no fault to find with it. But, as I have seen a mechanic, after the rule applied to his work gave imequivocal decision in its favour, turning the rule round and trying it the other way, lest some mistake should occur; so, in the important matter before us, it may be of use to express the same maxim in another form, lest any fallacy should be left lurking unobserved in its folds — thus: “ A small stream flowing on the ground is worth acres of clouds careering in the sky.” In this form the maxim is arrant nonsense; but the two forms express an identical meaning, like the opposite terms of an algebraic equation. Wanting clouds above us, there could be no streams, great or small, flowing at our feet -, so, wanting dogma — that is, doctrine revealed by God and received by man — there could be no charity. They scorn dogma, and laud charity — that is, they vilify the clouds, and sing paeans to running streams. There is an aspect of childishness in the methods at present in fashion for undermining evangelical faith. When I was a little child I thought the clouds were accumulations of smoke from the chimneys. I also thought that, whUe the barren atmosphere above our heads was filled with stacks of dry thick smoke, the earth beneath our feet was rich and beneficent, seeing that from its bowels spring up all the waters that feed the rivers and fill the sea. Foolish chUd! The clouds are the storehouses in which the water is laid up, ready to be poured on the earth. From these treasures the wells obtain all their supply. We have streams on the ground because we have clouds in the sky. As the clouds create the rivers, the love of Christ exhibited in the gospel causes streams of charity to circulate in human life. The Bible teaches this, and history proves it. “ God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” This is a dogma; and before that dogma came, how much charity was in the world? Our latest reformers, I suppose, came easily by their discoveries. I am not aware that they have passed through any preparatory agonies, like those which Luther endured at Erfurth. Your philosophic regenerator of the world dispenses with a long search and a hard battle. When he brings forward for my acceptance his savoury dish, like poor old blind Isaac, when his slippery son presented the forged venison, I am disposed to ask, “ How hast thou found it so quickly, my son?” Ah, it is easy for those who have never been deeply exercised about sin to denounce dogma and cry up charity in its stead; but whence shall I obtain charity if I abjure truth? “ Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” The Apostle John got his charity from the bosom of the Master whereon he lay. Where do the modern apostles obtain theirs? How can you move the world if you have nothing but the world to lean your lever on? The Scriptures present the case of a man who was as free of dogma as the most advanced Secularist could desire, and who was notwithstanding wofully lacking in charity. “ What is truth?” said Pilate; and he did not wait for an answer, for he had made up his mind that no answer could be given. Pilate was not burdened with a ton, with even an ounce, of dogma; yet he crucified Christ — crucified Christ, believing and confessing him innocent — that he might save his own skin, endangered by the accusations of the Jewish priests at the court of Rome. Those who, in this age, lead the crusade against dogma, are forward to profess the utmost reverence for the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. But he did not despise dogma. “ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Nothing more completely and abstractly dogmatical can be found in all the creeds of the Church than that short and fervid exclamation of Peter in answer to the Master’s articulate demand for a confession of his faith upon the point. And how did the Master receive it? He not only acquiesced in the doctrine and the expression of it by his servant, but, departing in some measure from his usual habit of calm, unimpassioned speech, he broke into an elevated and exultant commendation: “ Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” Let men keep congenial company, and let things be called by their right names. Either doctrine — truth revealed by God and accepted by man — either doctrine is decisive and fimdamental for the salvation of sinners and the regeneration of the world, or Jesus Christ was a weakling. Tou must make your choice. The divinity of Christ, as confessed by Peter, is a dogma, for that dogma Jesus witnessed; for that dogma Jesus died. For it was because he made himself the Son of God that the Jewish priesthood hunted him down. Did he give his life for a dogma that is divine and necessary to the salvation of siimers. or did he fling his life away by a mistake? Men must make their choice. Those who are not for Christ are against him. If you do not receive Jesus Christ as God your Redeemer, you cannot have him as the beautiful example of a perfect humanity. He claimed to be divine, and died in support of the claim. Therefore, if he be not the true God, he must be a false man. Thus the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures has presciently rendered it impossible for modern Secularists to reject the great dogma of the gospel, and yet retain the life of Jesus as the highest pattern of human character. Both or none: Christ cannot be so divided. The word “ therefore,” destitute of any moral character in itself, and deriving all its importance from the things which it unites, is like the steel point set on a strong foundation which constitutes the fulcrum of the balance. To one extremity of the beam is fixed, by a long plummet-line, a consecrated benevolent human life; but that life itself lies unseen in the dark at the bottom of a deep well, a possibility only as yet, and not an actual entity. No human arm has power to bring it up and set it in motion — power to bring it into being. Here is a skilful engineer, who has undertaken the task. What is he doing? We expected that he would stand at the well’s mouth, and draw with all his might by the depending line, in the hope of drawing up that precious Charity from the deep. But no; he is busy at the opposite extremity of the beam. He is making fast to it some immense weight. Who is he, and what is the burden that he is zealously tying to the beam; and what does he expect to get by his pains? The operator, diminutive in bodily presence, but mighty in spirit, is the Apostle of the Gentiles; the weight that he is making fast to the beam is nothing less than the Tnerdes of God as they are exhibited in Christ, — all the love of God; nay, God himself, who is love. He has fastened it now, and he stands back — does not put a hand to the work in its second stage. What follows? They come! they come! the deeds of Charity — they ascend like clouds to the sky, at once an incense rising up to heaven, and a mighty stream of beneficence rolling along its channel on the surface of the earth, and converting the desert into a garden. Ask those great lovers who have done and suffered most for men — who have taken up their abode in dungeons in order to soothe the spirits and relieve the wants of the wretched inmates — who have braved pestilential climates to Christianize and civilize the long-degraded negro; ask the whole band of flesh-and-blood angels who, by sacrificing themselves, have sought to heal the sores of humanity, what motive urged them on and held them up. They will answer with a voice like the sound of many waters. The love of Christ conatraineth us. Those who have done most of the charity that has told on the ills of life do not think, and do not say, that this fruit grows as well on all doctrines. or no doctrines, as on the truth of the gospeL They tell US that the force which sent them into the field and kept them there was the mercy of God in Christ, pardoning their sin and sealing them as children. They are bought with a price, and therefore they glorify God in their lives. In the scheme of doctrine set forth in the first half of the epistle, we behold the reservoir where the power is stored; and in the opening verses of the second section the engineer opens the sluice, so that the whole force of the treasured waters may flow out on human life, and impel it onward in active benevolence. Let the memory of God’s goodness, in the unspeakable gift, bear down upon our hearts, as the volume of a river bears down upon a mill-wheel, until its accumulating weight overcome the inertia of an earthly mind, and the interlacing entanglements of a pleasure-seeking society, so sending the life spinning round in an endless circle of work to abate the sins and sorrows of the world. The mercies of God being the power that sends out the product, the product so sent consists of two distinct yet vitally connected parts, as soul and body in the natural life. These are, devotion in spirit to God our Saviour, and substantial kindness to man our brother. The constituents of a true devotion are, a living sacrifice and a reasonable service. Whatever is rendered in sacrifice to God is rendered whole. The phraseology is in a high degree typical, but by reference to the Old Testament institutions it is easily understood. The distinguishing features of the New Testament sacrifice are, that it is the offerer’s own body, not the body of a substitute; and that it is presented not dead but living. It is not a carcass laid on the altar to be burned; it is a life devoted to God Love is the fire that consumes the sacrifice; and in this case, too, the fire came down from heaven* The body is specially demanded as an offering: the body is for the Lord; it bears the mark of his hand. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Stand in awe and sin not: give not that which is holy unto the dogs. Your body is another Bible: read it with reverence. Its precepts, like those of the Decalogue, are written by the finger of (Jod. Show me, not a penny, but a man; for this is the only coin which the great King will accept as tribute. Whose image and superscription hath he? God’s. Bender therefore unto God the thing that is God’s. As the sacrifice is living, the service is reasonable — rational. It is not the arbitrary though loving command addressed by a father to his infant son-burn the fat upon the altar — that he may be trained to habits of unquestioning obedience; it is rather the work prescribed by the father to an adult son — a work which the son understands, and a purpose in which he intelligently acquiesces. The burning of incense, practised in the Bomish community for ages, and now resumed by those who should have known better, is not a reasonable service. It is a going back from the attainments of the gospel to the beggarly elements of a past dispensation. The second constituent of Christian duty is reciprocal justice and kindness between man and man, like the harmony and helpfulness which the Creator has established between the several members of a living body. Mark how the hand comes to the defence of the eye in its weakness; and how the eye with its sight, and from its elevated position, keeps watch for the welfare of the lowly, blind, but laborious and useful foot. The mutual helpfulness of these members is absolutely perfect. Such should be the charity between brother and brother of God’s family on earth; such it shall be when all the sons and daughters are assembled in the many mansions of the heavenly home. In the remaining portion of the epistle Paul labours with all his might to stimulate practical charity — in one place reducing the whole law to one precept, to one word — love. After devoting so much attention to the roots, he will not neglect to gather the fruit. After so much care in obtaining the power, he looks sharply to the product, lest it should turn out that he had laboured in vain. We must look well to our helm as we traverse this ocean of life, where we can feel no bottom and see no shore — we must handle well our helm, lest we miss our harbour-home» Such seems to be the counsel given for the guidance of life to those who count that all religion and all duty lie in subjective care and diligence, while they ignore, as unattainable or useless, all objective revealed truth. But careful management of the helm, though necessary, is not enough on our voyage. By it alone we cannot bring our ship safe to land. We must look to the lights in heaven. The seaman does not look to the stars instead of handling his helm. This would be as great folly as to handle his helm vigorously and never look to the stars. Not this one nor that one, to the neglect of the other. Both, and each in its own place: the stars, to show us the path in which we ought to go; and the helm, to keep us in the path which the stars have shown to be right. Not turn to the contemplation of dogma, instead of labouring in the works of charity; but looking to the truth as the light which shows us the way of life, and walking in that way with all diligence. It is interesting to notice how the spiritual instincts of the Lord’s immediate followers led them in the right way, at a time when their intellectual comprehension of the gospel was very defective. On one occasion the Master taught the twelve a lesson on this subject — charity — which seemed to them very hard. The point in hand was the forgiving of injuries, and how far it could or should be carried. “ Master/’ they inquired, “ how often shall a man sin against me, and I forgive him? Seven times?” That, they thought, was as great a stretch of loving forbearance with a neighbour as could reasonably be required of any man. But what is the word of the Lord in this case? “I say not unto thee, till seven times, but until seventy times seven.” That is, he refused to set any limit to the charity of his disciples. Charity in his Church must be like the atmosphere wrapped round the world — no mountain-top can pierce through it to touch another element beyond. Charity shall surround life so high and so deep that all life shall float in it always, as the globe of earth in the circumfluent air. The poor men were taken aback by this great demand. It cut their breath. They had been educated in a narrow school, and could not at first take in the conception of a love that should know no other limit than the life and capacity of the lover. But on recovering from their first surprise, and becoming aware of their own short-coming, a true instinct directed them to the source of supply. Then the disciples said unto the Lord, “ Increase our faiths Faith! O ye simple Galileans, it is not in faith that ye come short; it is in charity! How foolish, at such a moment, to give chase to the ignis fatuus of dlqgrma, when it is life that you need — more of love in your life! If our secxilar philosophers had been there, such would have been their patronizmg reproof of those simple, unlettered fishermen. But the fishermen, taught of the Spirit, possessed a sounder philosophy as well as a truer religion than their modem reprovers. I could imagine that Peter, in such circumstances, would have stood up as spokesman for the whole college, and made short work with the logic of the Secularists. Although blind, like old Jacob, to objects outside, like him Peter was endowed with an inner light. When Joseph brought his two sons to the patriarch for his blessing, he led them forward so that the elder should stand opposite the right hand of his grandfather, and the younger opposite the left. But Jacob crossed his hands in bestowing the blessing, so as to lay the right hand on the head of the younger child. When Joseph interfered to correct what he supposed to be a mistake, his father persisted in his own plan, saying, “ I know it, my son; I know it.” He guided his hands wittingly. So would the simple but courageous fisherman answer the philosophic Joseph of our day — “ I know it, my son; I know it.” He guided his lips wittingly, when, in lack of charity, he prayed for faith; for faith is the only efficient of charity. He would fain yield himself a living sacrifice for behoof of his fellows; but if he is ever impelled forward in this arduous course, he will be impelled, as Paul teaches, by the mercies of GkxL The instincts of the new creature in Peter taught him that if he should ever do more in forgiving love for his neighbours, he must get more through faith from his Lord. A miller, while he watches the operations of his mill, observes that the machineiy is moving slower and slower, and that at last it stands altogether stilL On searching for the cause, he discovers that some small hard pebbles have insinuated themselves between the millstones, first impeding the celerity of their motion, and then stopping it altogether. What will the miller do? Put in his hand and try to remove the obstruction? No; he is not such a fool. He goes quietly to a comer of the mill, and touches a simple wooden lever that protrudes at that spot through the wall. What is the miller doing there? He is letting on more water: impelled by more weight of water, the millstones easily overcome the obstacle, and go forward on their course. The demand of unlimited forgiving was the obstacle that stuck on the heart of those poor Galileans, and brought its beating to a stand; and they wisely applied for a greater gush of the impelling power — more faith. When the circulation of the spiritual life was impeded by that hard ingredient, they gasped for a widening of the channel through which the mercies of God flow from the covenant to the needy. More faith meant getting more of forgiving grace from God to their own souls; and they knew that when the vessel was full, it would flow over. The best of the argument, as well as of the sentiment, remains with the fishermen. It is now time, however, that we should turn to the other side, and gather there a very needful lesson for Christians ere we close. We have been showing that it is faith accepting the mercies of God that produces a devout and charitable life; but what shall we say of those who have faith, or seem to have it, and yet lack charity? Here a very interesting question arises. Want of faith, it is granted, among evangelical Christians, is followed by want of goodness, as a blighting of the root destroys the stem and branches of a tree. But does the converse also hold good Will a languid life weaken. faith, and an entire cessation of Chxistian activity make shipwreck of the faith? As a metaphysical speculation, we do not touch this question; hut on its practical side a useful warning may he given. Of all trees it may be said, destroy the root, and the stem will wither; but you cannot predicate of all trees that the destruction of the stem in turn destroys the root. Many trees when cut down to the ground retain life and grow great again. But some speciespines, for example— die outright when the main stem is severed. Here lies a sharp reproof for all who bear Christ’s name. True it is that your faith in Christ is the root which sustains the tree of your active life, and insures its fruitfulness; but true it is also that, like the pines, if from any cause the life cease to act, the faith, or what seemed faith, will rot away under ground. It was in this manner that Hymenseus and Alexander fell away. They first lost the good conscience; then and therefore they made shipwreck of the faith. They gave way in the sphere of duty, and then dogma melted away from their hearts. (1 Timothy 1:19.) The stem of the tree was cut off or withered, and the root rotted in the ground. Thus, as the roots nourish the tree, and the growth of the tree in turn keeps the roots living, so is it with the trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that he may be glorified. While faith, by drawing from the fulness of Christ, makes a fruitful life; reciprocally, the exercise of all the charities mightily increases even the faith from which they sprang. While, on one side, the necessity of the day is to maintain the faith as the fountain and root of practical goodness in the life; on the other side, especially for all within the Church, the. necessity of the day is to lead and exhibit a life corresponding to the faith it grows upon. Here it is safe to join full cry with the Secularists — more charity — charity in its largest sense, a self-sacrificing, brother-saving love, that, counts nothing alien which belongs to man, and spares nothing to make the world purer and happier. A pure, holy, loving, active, effective life, — this is the first, And the second, and the third requisite for the regeneration of the world. It is quite true that those who bear Christ’s name fail to walk in his steps; and to this defect it is owing that so little of the desert has yet been converted into a garden. It is life, it is love, it is living sacrifices that are wanted; this is the cure for the sores of humanity. But how shall we get that life of mighty doing and suffering charity, which we confess is lacking, and which, if we had it, would flow like a stream over the world and heal its barrenness? How and where shall we obtain this heaven”born charity? Enter into thy closet, and shut the door, and seek it there. Seek, and ye shall find. Copy literally the simple request of the amazed disciples. Say unto the Lord, Increase our faith. That means that your very soul should open to Christ, and accept him as all your salvation. It is not to have a faith printed in your creed-book about one Jesus; it is to clasp him to your heart as your Redeemer, your Friend, your Portion. It is to taste and see that he is good, and to bear about with you the dying of the Lord Jesus. This will be a force suflScient to impel all your life forward, so as to please God and benefit your brother. “ I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.” Unfortunately, we must look to the sovereign Lord God for a baptism of the Spirit, greater than that of the Pentecost, to produce a revival that will nsher in the glory of the latter day; but mediately and instnimentally that revival will come through the mebcies of Gk)D, manifested to the world in the incarnation and Sacrifice of the eternal Son, accepted, realized, and f elt, in new and greatly increased intensity by the members of the Christian Church. THE END. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 90: S. FRUITFUL IN EVERY GOOD WORK ======================================================================== Fruitful in Every Good Work by Rev. William Arnot William Arnot (1808-1875) was a Free Church minister, and the author of several books which may be obtained today, including a work on the Book of Proverbs, "Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth," and an exposition entitled "The Parables of Our Lord." The following is part of a sermon based upon Colossians 1:10 : "That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God." Arnot, once an apprentice gardener, explains in his introduction that this verse in particular, as well as Paul’s prayer in general, points to those who are already Christians. "It speaks not of birth, but of growth. We have to do here not with the raising of the dead, but with the advance of the living." The sermon is from the volume "The Anchor of the Soul and other Sermons;" most of these were unrevised for publication. Although perhaps not a "high" Calvinist, there is good matter in Arnot to stir us from our lethargy, that we may indeed love our neighbour as ourselves. Published in The Presbyterian Standard, Issue No. 7, July-September 1997. That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God — Colossians 1:10. (1.) "Work." The Christian life is essentially a life of labour. They who find Christ do, indeed, often speak of having found rest to their souls; but that rest does not imply exemption from work: on the contrary, this "peace in believing" only supplies a firm foot-hold whereon the labourer may stand more steadily, and so labour with more effect. The rest which a troubled soul finds in Christ is like the rest which the Pilgrim Fathers found on the American continent. When they stepped upon the shore free, feeling God’s earth firm under their feet, and seeing God’s sunlight bright above their heads, they said and sung, "This is our rest." But they meant not idleness. Each family reared a cabin in the bush, and forthwith waged war against the desert, until they had subdued it, and turned it into a fruitful field. Their resting-place was their working-place; and none the worse in their esteem was the rest because of the labour that accompanied it. Beyond the reach of the tyrant, and past the dangers of the sea, the rest they sought and found was a place to work on, and useful labour close at hand. Such is a Christian’s rest when the Son has made him free, as long as he remains in the body. Liberty to labour is all the rest he obtains or desires. Trusting in Christ’s merits, he also walks in Christ’s steps: he goeth about doing good. (2.) "Good work." Not energy of action merely: the work must be good. The master is God; the motive, love; the immediate aim, the good of the world; and the standard of measurement, "the law and the testimony." (3.) "Every good work." True Christian beneficence is characterised by a grand and god-like universality. This does not mean that one man should go round the world and meddle with everything in it: it rather means that he should neglect no opportunity that comes in his way. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might;" but do not waste time and effort in trying to do all at once. The rule is not to overtake all, but to refuse none that overtake you. Have you seen those large, lovely, transparent globes that float in sheltered bays a little beneath the surface of the sea? They are living creatures. They cannot cut quickly through the water in chase of prey, but they lie wondrously open and watchful to seize the prey that comes within their reach. They lie open on all sides, and stretch out arms on all sides; and though they cannot go to a distance for what they need, they intercept and use whatever, in the miscellaneous movements of the waves, may be passing by. Thus, though nearly stationary, they are abundantly fed. Such is the activity of a Christian man. His meat is to do the Father’s will; but he is almost fixed to the spot, and cannot roam over the world for his spirit’s congenial food. He feeds abundantly notwithstanding. Let him only lie open, and spread out, and be ready with an active arm and an eager appetite: the sort of food that will please his taste and strengthen his soul is floating past continually in the tide of time. No Christian is ever idle for want of something to do. But it is of the last importance that we should cultivate a universal willingness. Bought servants must not choose their tasks: they must labour at the task which their Master assigns to them. The tendency of every one of us is to do duty by halves. One is great in gentleness, and fails in courage; another is great in courage, and fails in gentleness. Brethren, it is not this one, or that other work for which you have a natural aptitude, but "every good work." The acting of a virtue that is not in your nature will be a more impressive evidence that grace is reigning. When an elephant picks up a pin from the dust with his huge trunk, men wonder more than when they see him break a tree. So when a man of might — some intellectual and moral hero, who dares every danger, and delights in having danger to dare — condescends to bear with the infirmities of the weakest, and like the good shepherd, tenderly lifts a weary lamb in his arms, the testimony of the fact is resistless, and observers confess that the grace of God is there. To the same extent, on the opposite side, the display of martyr courage in a good cause by one who is constitutionally sensitive and timid, tells more effectually than the exercise of the natural bent. When the plaintive and bashful Jeremiah, who said he could not speak because he was a child, stands forth for God and righteousness, setting his face like a flint before all his enemies, and denouncing unjust tyrants to their face, the rebuke is powerful in exact proportion to the natural feebleness of the reprover. "Every good work," Christian. You must not pick and choose. Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it; for God has put it in your way. Direct effort to convince a sinner and lead him to Christ is one good work; to set an untrained mother on the way of cleaning her house and cooking her husband’s food is another. "Every good work." Here it may be to open a church, and there to dig a well; here to support a missionary, and there to widen a street. Everything that would benefit the world, God’s creation, or man, God’s child, is congenial occupation for the disciple of Jesus. Universality is the characteristic most needed in our Christian benevolence. Without partiality and without hypocrisy was the Master; without partiality and without hypocrisy should the servant be. (4.) "Fruitful in every good work." The comparison of Christian beneficence to fruit indicates its spontaneous nature, its useful effect, and its great abundance. The good works grow as fruit grows on a fruit-tree. The tree has first been made good, and then the fruit grows and ripens spontaneously. You cannot gather grapes of thorns; but neither can you find thorn fruit growing on a true vine. Every creature after its kind. He who in the regeneration has been made a partaker of Christ, gives forth in his life Christ-like actions. There is a good deal of artificial charity agoing. People can tie oranges to the sprigs of a fir-tree in a parlour, and the show will gratify children on a winter evening. But true Christian beneficence is a fruit that grows, and is not tied on. It swells up from sap which the tree of righteousness draws out of that infinite love in which it is rooted. He who is in Christ cannot stand still, any more than the water in those iron tubes which traverse our streets in connection with the great reservoir: on it must flow, wherever there is an opening, by reason of the pressure from above. Hear the exclamation of that ancient Christian in explanation of his wonderful self-sacrifice and energetic labour for the good of men: "The love of Christ constraineth me." Efforts burst impetuous from his bosom whenever an opening was made, because he was in union with the Fountainhead on high. As fruit is sweet and profitable, so are the efforts of Christians for the good of the world. And like the abundance with which good trees bear, is the abundance of a true disciple’s labours. The fecundity of Nature is a standing wonder with all who possess sufficient intelligence to observe it. The faculty of production in the vegetable creation is, beyond all calculation or expression, great. Through adverse seasons and other causes, the actual quantity of fruit brought to perfection is greatly limited; but the tendency and willingness and capability of plants to produce their fruit in inconceivable quantities may be seen everywhere in the teeming, flowering spring. Such is the tendency of a renewed heart. Few, few of his aspirations does a Christian ever actually reach; but they swell in his bosom numerous as the embryo seeds that hide beneath the flowers of spring. He who numbers the hairs of our head knows and feels every loving thought that trembles in a broken heart. With such sacrifices God is well pleased. He recognises the breathings of his own Spirit in the desires; and he will remove in good time these trees of righteousness from the wilderness here to another garden, where all their flowers will become fruits, and all their fruits will ripen fully under the light of love. ======================================================================== Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-william-arnot/ ========================================================================