NOTES
ON THE
PARABLES OF OUR LORD
BY
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, M3. A.,
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON; AUTHOR OF c"NO('rE
ON TIIE MIRACLES OF OUR LORDI)   ETC., ETC,
SECOND AMERICAN FIOM THE LAST ENGLISH EDITION.
ELEVENTH EDITION.
NEW-YORK:
D. A P P L E    T N  &  C 0 At P A N Y,
443 & 445 1BRADWAY.
1.DCCC LXII.








ADVERTISEMENT OF TIHE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS,
THAT a work has reached a third edition in England, although one evidence
of its merit, may not always be a safe or satisfactory reason for its republication
in this country. But in regard to the volume herewith sent forth, the subject of
which it treats is of such general interest, and the ability with which it has been
prepared is so marked, and has been so universally acknowledged, that the publishers cannot hesitate to believe they are doing good service to the cause of
sound theological learning in making it accessible to a large class of American
readers, who in all probability would not otherwise be able to possess it.
The parable, whilst it is amongst the earliest modes of conveying truth to the
mind, is at the same time the most effective. Never losing its vigor by age or
repetition, it convinces sooner than logical argument, and strikes the imagination
more readily than a living example.*  From the fact that the parables of our
Lord form a very considerable portion of his recorded teaching, and that he was
accustomed by them to enforce the highest moral precepts, to illustrate important
points of doctrine, and to give prophetical intimation of future events relating to
himself and his mission, it is obvious that a competent knowledge of this portion
of the Gospels, while it is essential to the Chritian teacher, is of the greatest value
to every member of the Church. And amply wll these sacred fictions repay the
most constant perusal.  Attractive in the highest degree, even to childhood,
while as yet like Samuel the little hearer " does not know the Lord, nor in the
word of the Lord yet revealed to him" (1 Sam. iii. 7), they are the delight of
riper manhood, and never fail to offer to the attentive reader, beauties to admire.
* Htec autem docendi ratio, qua itacit ad illustrationem antiquis seculis plurimum
adhibebatur. Ut Hieroglyphica literis, ita Parabolm argumentis erant antiquiores
Atque hodie etiam et semper, eximius est et fuit Parabolarum vigor; cum nec argumenta tam perspicua nec vera exempla tam apta, esse possint.-BACONI De Aug.nentis Scientiarum, lib. 2, cap. 13.




VI                        ADVERTISEMENT.
principles to ponder, and examples to allure. Thus do they illustrate the wisdom
and benevolence of that Ieavenly Teacher " who spake as never man spake,"
and exhibit a skill in the statement of moral principles to which no merely human
intellect was ever equal, and a power and beauty of illustration which no poet or
orator ever approached.
In the present work the parables of our Lord are collected together, compared,
and explained; and by a judicious use of learning, and a fertile and happy employment of illustrative comment, they are rendered eminently profitable " for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and instruction in righteousness." " As a mere
delight to the understanding," says Dr. Arnold, " I know of none greater than
thus bringing together the different and scattered jewels of God's word, and
arranging them in one perfect group. For whatever is the pleasure of contemplating wisdom  absolutely inexhaustible, employed on no abstract matter of
science, but on our very own nature, opening the secrets of our hearts, and disclosing the whole plan of our course in life; of the highest wisdom clothed in a
garb of most surpassing beauty; such is the pleasure to the mere understanding
of searching into the words of Christ, and blending them into the image of his
perfect will respecting us."  If the understanding can be thus delighted and
improved, can it fail but that at the same time the heart will be made better?
Mr. Trench, while informing the understanding, has never neglected the opportunity to excite the affections, to regulate them, and lead them to seek the blessed
influences of tlat Holy Spirit which can alone purify them and fit them for the
service of God. These " scattered jewels of God's word," of which Dr. Arnold
speaks, he has brouglat together, and fixed them in a setting, not worthy indeed
of their richness and lostre-what silver, or gold even, of human workmanship
could possess such value':-but the framework is yet skilfully constructed, and
is wrought by a devout as \xell as a learned and earnest mind, and will hold its
pearls of wisdom so that we rmay have the opportunity of gazing upon them in
their concentrated form witi delight and profit.
Under these convictions oT the importance of the subject and the successful
manner in which it has oeen treated by Mr. Trench, this volume is now commended to the notice of American eaders by the Publishers.




C 0 NTTE NT S
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
CHAP.                                         PACE
I. On the Definition of the Parable.        9
II. On Teaching by Parables....   17
III. On the Interpretation of Parables.... 32
IV. On other Parables besides those in the S-criptures..  46
PARABLES.
I. The Sower......   57
II. The Tares.....  3
III. The Mustard Seed.......  91
IV. The Leaven....  97
V. The Hid Treasure....               103
VI. The Pearl.......111
VII. The Draw Net  -.....   115
VIII. The Unmerciful Servant....    124
IX. The Laborers in the Vineyard...   138
X. The Two Sons.....157
XI. The Wicked -Iusbandmen........  162
XII. The Marriage of the King's Son..... 177
XIII. The Ten Virgins...                  200
XIV. The Talents....... 218
XV. The Seed Growing Secretly.....     233
XVI. The Two Debtors......239
XVII. The Good Samaritan -.    ~...    251
XVIII. The Friend at Midnight -....      265
XIX. The Rich Fool -.....   271
XX. The Barren Fig Tree.,..   280
XXI. The Great Supper...                   291




Viii               CONTENTS.
PAGE
XXII. The Lost Sheep....... 30
XXIII. The Lost Piece of Money...    311
XXIV. The Prodigal Son.  -...         316
XXV. The Unjust Steward.....   345
XXVI. The Rich Man and Lazarus.-..    366
XXVII. Unprofitable Servants..            91
XXVIII. The Unjust Judge. -...       398
XXIX. The Pharisee and the Publican..   408
XXX. ThePonnds 4. 416




INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
CHAPTER I.
ON THE DEFINITION OF THE PARABLE.
THOSE writers who have had occasion to define a parable* do not appear
to have found it an easy task to give such a satisfying definition as
should omit none of its distinguishing marks, and yet at the same time
include nothing that was superfluous and merely accidental. Rather
than attempt to add another to the many definitions already given,t I
will seek to note briefly what seems to me to difference it from the fable,
the allegory, and such other forms of composition as most closely border
upon it. In the process of thus distinguishing it from those forms of
composition, with which it is most nearly allied, and therefore most
* fIapaBoA7f, from mrapa3B&XAELv, projicere, objicere, i. e. ri TIvL, to put forth one
thing before or beside another; and it is assumed, when 7rapafox4j is used for parable, though not necessarily included in the word, that the purpose for which they
are set side by side is that they may be compared one with the other. That this is
not necessarily included is proved not only from the derivation, but from the fact.that the word itself and the whole family of cognate words, as 7rapao3Aos, irapa8oAors,
parabolanus, are used in altogether a different sense, yet one growing out of the
same root, in which the notion of putting forth is retained, but it is no longer for
the purpose of comparison, which is only the accident, not of the essence of the
word. Thus srap$BoXAo, qui objicit se pressentissimo vitae periculo, one who exposes
his life, as those called parabolani, because they buried infected corpses at Alexandria.
t Many from the Greek Fathers are to be found in SUICER's Thcs., s. v. rrapafSoA4.
Jerome, on Mark iv., defines it thus: Sermonem utilem, sub idone figura expressum, et in recessu, continentem spiritualem aliquam admonitionem; and he calls it
finely in another place (Ad Algas.), Quasi umbra prmevia veritatis. Among the
moderlns, Unger (De Parab. Jesu Natura, p. 30): Parabola Jesu est collatio per
narratiunculam fictam, sed verisimilem, serio illustrans rem sublimiorem. Teel
man: Parabola est similitudo a rebus communibus et obviis desumta ad significandum quicquam spirituale et csleste. Bengel: Parabola est oratio, qua per narrationem fictam sed versm similem, k rebus ad vitae communis usum pertinentibus
desumtam, veritates minus notas aut morales repressentat.




10                      ON THE DEFINITION
likely to be confounded, and justifying the distinction, its essential pro
perties will come before us much more clearly than I could hope to bring
them in alny other way.
1. There are some who have confounded the parable with the -ZEso
pic fable, or drawn only a slight and hardly perceptible line of distinction between them, as for instance Lessing and Storr, who affirm that
the fable relates an event as having actually taken place at a certain
time, while the parable only assumes it as possible.    But not to say
that examples altogether fail to bear them out in this assertion, the cifference is much more real, and far more deeply seated than this.   The
parable is constructed to set forth a truth spiritual and heavenly: this
the fable, with all its value, is not; it is essentially of the earth, and
never lifts itself above the earth.  It never has a higher aim than to inculcate maxims of prudential morality, industry, caution, foresight; and
these it will sometimes recommend even at the expense of the higher
self-forgetting virtues.  The fable just reaches that pitch of morality
which the world will understand and approve.     But it has no place in
the Scripture," and in the nature of things could have none, for the purpose of Scripture excludes it; that purpose being the awakening of man
to a consciousness of a divine original, the education of the reason, and
of all which is spiritual in man, and not, except incidentally, the sharpening of the understanding.   For the purposes of the fable, which are
the recommendation and enforcement of the prudential virtues, the regulation of that in man which is instinct in beasts, inz itself a laudable discipline, but by itself leaving him only a subtler beast of the field,-for
these purposes, examples and illustrations taken from the world beneath
him are admirably suited.t   That world is therefore the haunt and the
main region, though by no means the exclusive one. of the fable: even
when mru are introducecd, it is on tie side by which they are conneated
* The two fables that are found in the Old Testament, that of the trees which
would choose a kin- (Judg. ix. 8-15), and the brief one of the thistle and cedar
(2 Kin. xiv. 9); may seem to impeach the universality of this rule, but do not so in
fact. For in neither case is it God that is speaking, nor yet messengers of his, delivering his counsel: but men, and from an earthly standing point, not a divine.
Jotlham seeks only to teach the men of Shechem their folly, not their sin, in making
Abimelech king over them: the fable never lifting itself to the rebuke of sin, as it
is sin; this is beyond its region; but only in so far as it is also folly. And Jehoash,
in the same way, would make Amaziah see his presumption and pride, in challenging him to the conflict, not thereby teaching him any moral lesson, but only giving
evidence in the fable whicl hle uttered, that his own pride was offended by the
clhallenge of the Jewish king.
t The greatest'of all fables, the Reineke Fuchs, affords ample illustration of all
this; it is throughout a glorifying of cunning as the guide of life and the deliverer
from all ev-il.




OF THE PARABLE.                            11
with that lower world; while on the other hand, in the parable, the
world of animals, though not wholly excluded, finds only admission in
so far as it is related to man.  The relation of beasts to one another not
being spiritual, can supply no analogies, can be in no wise helpful for
declaring the truths of the kingdom of God. But all man's relations to
man are spiritual, many of bis relations to the world beneath him are so
also.  His lordship over the animals, for instance, rests on his higher
spiritual nature, is a dominion given to him from above; therefore, as in
the instance of the shepherd and sheep (John x.) and elsewhere, it will
serve to image forth deeper truths of the relation of God to man.
It belongs-to this, the loftier standing point of the parable, that it
should be deeply earnest, allowing itself therefore in no jesting nor raillery at the weaknesses, the follies, or the crimes of men.* Severe and
indignant it may be, but it never jests at the calamities of men, however
well deserved, and its indignation is that of holy love: while in this raillery, and in these bitter mockings, the fabulist. not unfrequently indulges;t-he rubs biting salt into the wounds of men's souls-it may be,
perhaps it generally is, with a desire to heal those hurts, yet still in a
very different spirit from that in which the affectionate Saviour of men
poured oil and wine into the bleeding wounds of humanity.
" Phsedrus' definition of the fable squares with that here given:
Duplex libelli dos est, ut rzsum moveat,
Et quod prudenti vitam consilio monet.
t As finds place, for instance, in La Fontaine's celebrated fable,-La Cigale ayant
chantb tout l'6t6,-in which the ant, in reply to the petition of the grasshopper,
which is starving in the winter, reminds it how it sung all the summer, and bids it
to dance now. That fable, commending as it does foresight and prudence, preparation against a day of need, might be compared for purposes of contrast to more
than one parable urging the same, as Matt. xxv. 1; Luke xvi. 1; but with this
mighty difference, that the fabulist has only worldly needs in his eye, it is only against
these that he urges to lay up by timely industry a sufficient store; while the Lord
in his parables would have us to lay up for eternal life, for the day when not the
bodies, but the souls that have nothing in store, will be naked and hungry, and
miserable,-to prepare for ourselves a reception into everlasting habitations. The
image which the French fabulist uses was very well capable of such higher application, had he been conscious of any such needs (see Prov. vi. 8, and on that verse,
COTELER, Patt. Apos., v. i. p. 104, note 13, and Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. Lxvi. 2).
In Saadi's far nobler fable, The Ant and the Nightingale, from whence La Fontaine's is undoubtedly borrowed, such application is distinctly intimated. Yon
Hammer has in this view an interesting comparison between the French and the
Persian fable (Gesch. d. schO6. Redek. Pers., p. 207).-The fable with which Herodotus (i. 141) relates Cyrus to have answered the Ionian ambassadors, when they
offered him a late submission, is another specimen of the bitter irony, of which this
class of composition is often the vehicle.




12                      ON THE DEFINITION
And yet again, there is another point of difference between the parable and the fable.  While it can never be said that the fabulist is regardless of truth, since it is neither his intention to deceive, when he
attributes language and discourse of reason to trees, and birds, and
beasts, nor is any one deceived by him; yet the severer reverence for
truth, which is habitual to the higher moral teacher, will not allow him
to indulge even in this sporting with the truth, this temporary suspension of its laws, though upon agreement, or, at least, with tacit understanding. In his mind, the creation of God, as it came from the Creator's
hands, is too perfect, has too much of reverence owing to it, to be represented otherwise than as it really is.  The great Teacher by parables,
therefore, allowed himself in no transgression of the established laws of
nature-in nothing marvellous or anomalous; he presents to us no speaking trees or reasoning beasts,* and we should be at once conscious of an
unfitness in his so doing.
2. The parable is different from the mythus, inasmuch as in the
mythus, the truth and that which is only the vehicle of the truth are
wholly blended together: and the consciousness that there is any distinction between them, that it is possible to separate the one from the
other, belongs only to a later and more reflective age than that in which
the mythus itself had birth, or those in which it was heartily believed.
The mythic narrative presents itself not merely as the vehicle of the
truth, but as itself being the truth; while in the parable, there is a perfect consciousness in all minds, of the distinctness between form and
essence, shell and kernel, the precious vessel and yet more precious
wine which it contains.  There is also the mythus of another class, the
artificial product of a later self-conscious age, of which many inimitable
specimens are to be found in Plato, devised with distinct intention of
embodying some important spiritual truth, of giving an outward subsistence to an idea.  But these, while they have many points of resemblance with the parable, yet claim no credence for themselves either as
actual or possible (in this differing from  the parable), but only for the
* Klincldkardt (De Horn. Div. et Laz., p. 2): Fabula aliquod vita communis
morumque, proeceptum simplici et nonnunquam jocosa oratione illustrat per exemplum plerumque contra veram naturam fictum: parabola autem sententiam sublimiorem (ad res divinas pertinentem) simplici quidem sed gravi et serit oratione
illustrat per exemplum ita excogitatum ut cum rerum naturt maxime convenire
videatur. And Cicero (De Invent., 1. 19): Fabula est in qua nec veras nec verisimiles res continentur. But of the parable Origen says, "ETarL raoa,8oX', k6yos cs
TEepl,ivo/uJov,,a, yYIvoe/lvov f/'x KaTC rb p'7-1roy,, vYaueoVov ae S'yove'aai. There is then
some reason for the fault which Calov finds with Grotius, though he is only too
ready to find fault, for commonly using the terms fabula and faclbll in speaking
of our Lord's parables, terms which certainly have an unpleasant sound in the ear.




OF THE PARABLE.                          13
truth which they embody and declare. The same is the case when upon
some old legend or myth that has long been current, there is thrust some
spiritual significance, clearly by an afterthought; in which case it perishes in the letter that it may live in the spirit; all outward subsistence
is denied to it, for the sake of asserting the idea which it is made to contain. To such a process, as is well known, the latter Platonists submitted the old mythology of Greece. For instance, Narcissus falling in love
with his own image in the water-brook, and pining there, was the symbol of man casting himself forth into the world of shows and appearances,
and expecting to find the good that would answer to his nature there,
but indeed finding only disappointment and death. It was their meaning hereby to vindicate that mythology from charges of absurdity or
immorality-to put a moral life into it, whereby it should maintain its
ground against the new life of Christianity, though indeed they were
only thus hastening the destruction of whatever lingering faith in it
there yet survived in the minds of men.
3. The parable is also clearly distinguishable from the proverb,*
though it is true that in a certain degree, the words are used interchangeably in the New Testament, and as equivalent the one to the other.
Thus "Physician heal thyself" (Luke iv. 23), is termed a parable, being
more strictly a proverb; so again, when the Lord had used that proverb,
probably already familiar to his hearers,t "If the blind lead the blind,
both shall fall in the ditch," Peter said, "Declare unto us this parable"
(Matt. xv. 14, 15); and again, Luke v. 36 is a proverb or proverbial
expression, rather than a parable, which name it bears.  So, upon the
other hand, those are called proverbs in St. John, which, if not strictly
parables, yet claim much closer affinity to the parable than to the proverb, being in fact allegories: thus Christ's setting forth of his relations
to his people under those of a shepherd to his sheep, is termed a " proverb," though our translators, holding fast to the sense rather than to
the letter, have rendered it a "parable." (John x. 6, compare xvi. 25,
29.4) It is not difficult to explain how this interchange of the two words
should have come to pass. Partly from the fact which has been noted
by many, of there being but one word in the Hebrew to signify both parable and proverb; which circumstance must have had considerable influence upon writers accustomed to think in that language, and itselt
* nrapoLfula, that is, trap' oTuov, a trite, wayside saying, = 7rapolta. But somederive
it from ofrjm, a tale, or poem. Yet Passow's explanation of the latter word shows
that at the root the two derivations are the same.-See SUICER'S Thes., s. v. irapoifjua.
t It is current at least now in the East, as I find it in a collection of Turkish
Proverbs, in VON HAMMER'S lMorgenl. Kleelbatt, p. 63.: The word wrapaSBoxf never occurs in St, John, nor wrapoizia in the three first
Evangelists,




14                       ON THE DEFINITION
arose from the parable and proverb being alike enigmatical and some.
what obscure forms of speech, " dark sayings," speaking a part of their
meaning and leaving the rest to be inferred.* This is evidently true of
the parable, and in fact no less so of the proverb. For though such
proverbs as have become the heritage of an entire people, and have obtained universal currency, may be, or rather may have become, plain
enough, yet in themselves proverbs are most often enigmatical, claiming
a quickness in detecting latent affinities, and oftentimes a knowledge
which shall enable to catch more or less remote allusions, for their right
comprehension.t And yet further to explain how the terms should be
often indifferently used,-the proverb, though not necessarily, is yet
very commonly parabolical,$ that is, it rests upon some comparison either
expressed or implied, as for example, 2 Pet. ii. 22. Or again, the proverb is often a concentrated parable, for instance that one above quoted,
"If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch," might evidently be extended with ease into a parable; and in like manner, not
merely many proverbs might thus be beaten out into fables, but they are
not unfrequently allusions to or summings up in a single phrase of some
well-known fable.~
4. It only remains to consider wherein the parable differs from the
allegory, which it does in form rather than in essence: there being in
the allegory, an interpenetration of the thing signifying and the thing
signified, the qualities and properties of the first being attributed to the
last, and the two thus blended together, instead of being kept quite distinct and placed side by side, as is the case in the parable. 1J Thus, John
* So we find our Saviour contrasts the speaking in proverbs and parables (John
xvi. 25), with the speaking plainly, 7rappao-', (rayv Ppia), every word.
t For instance, to take two common Greek proverbs: XpvaEa XaAcKEl/wv would
5tq^K.^ Gs^'te~s%% Shn <wS           -3: g aS'SS'  S  ssnaKn, Iraq ns% Mjrv4ss-vi<z,,'Z
moneys. The obscurity that is in proverbs, is sufficiently shown by the fact of such
books as the Adagia of Erasmus, in which he brings all his learning to bear on
their elucidation, and yet leaves many of them without any satisfactory explanation.
And see also the Pareemiographi Graeci (Oxf. 1836), p. xi.-xvi.
$ It is not necessarily, as some have affirmed, a A4yos e'rXyiarT'LEosvos, for instance'EXapuv &awpa &ipa, or rxvKeb a7refpWy prJelpos, and innumerable others are
expressed without figure; but very many are also parabolical, and generally the
best, and those which have become most truly popular.
0 Qtintilian says, nIapoqcuia fabella brevior... Parabola longius res quse comparentur repetere solet. On the distinction between the rapa/3oA4 and rapolifa, there
are some good remarks in HASE's Thes. Nov. Theol. Philolog., v. 2, p. 603.
|I Thus LOWTH (De Sac. Poes. Heb., Prel. 10): His denique subjicienda est
quasi lex qusedam parabolas, nimirum ut per omnia sibi constet, neque arcessitis
propria admista habeat. In quo multam differt a prima allegorie specie, qua b
simplici metaphors paulatim procedens, non semper continue excludit proprium, &




OF THE PARABLE.                            15
xv. 1-8," I am   the true vine; &c.," is throughout an allegory, as there
are two allegories scarcely kept apart from one another, John x. 1-16,
the first, in which the Lord sets himself forth as the Door of the sheep,
the second, as the good Shepherd. So, " Behold the Lamb of God," is
an allegorical, " He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter," a parabolical
expression.* The allegory needs not, as the parable, an interpretation
to be brought to it from    without, since it contains its interpretation
within itself, and, as the allegory proceeds, the interpretation proceeds
hand in hand with it, or at least never falls far behind it;t and thus the
allegory stands to the metaphor, as the more elaborate and long drawn
out composition of the same kind, in the same relation that the parable
does to the isolated comparison or simile. And as many proverbs are,
as we have seen, concise parables, in like manner many also are brief
allegories.  For instance the following, which is an Eastern proverb," This world is a carcass, and they who gather round it are dogs,"-does
in fact interpret itself as it goes along, and needs not therefore that an
interpretation be brought to it from without; while it is otherwise with
the proverb spoken by our Lord, "Wheresoever the carcass is there
will the eagles be gathered together,"-this gives no help to its own
interpretation from within, and is a saying, of which the darkness and
difficulty have been abundantly witnessed by the many interpretations
of it which have been proposed.
To sum up all then, the parable differs from the fable, moving as it
does in a spiritual world, and never transgressing the actual order of
things natural;-from   the mythus, there being in the latter an unconpropriis in translata paulatim illapsa, nec minus leniter ex translatis in propria per
gradus quosdam se recipiens.
* Thus, Isai. v. 1-6 is a parable, of which the explanation is separately given,
ver. 7; while on the other hand, Ps. lxxx. 8-16, resting on the same image, is an
allegory; since, for instance, the casting out of the heathet, that the vine might be
planted, is an intermingling of the thing signifying and that signified, wherein the
note that distinguishes the allegory from the parable consists, as Quintilian (Inst.
viii. 3, 77) observes; for having defined the allegory, he proceeds: In omni autem
rapaBokXf ant praecedit similitudo, res sequitur, aut praecedit res, similitudo sequitur; sed interim libera et separata est. The allegory then is translatio, the parable
collatio.-Since writing the above I find that Bishop Lowth (De Sac. Poes. Hab.,
Preal. 10) has adduced these same examples from Isaiah and the Psalmist to illustrate the distinction.
t Of all this the Pilgrim's Progress affords ample illustration, "Interpreter"
appearing there as one of the persons of the allegory. Mr. Iallam (Liter. of
Europe, v. 4, p. 553) mentions this as a certain drawback upon the book, that, " in
his language, Bunyan sometimes mingles the signification too much with the fable;
we might be perplexed between the imaginary and the real Christian:" but is not
this of the very nature of the allegorical fable'




16           ON THE DEFINITION OF THE PARABLE.
scious blending of the deeper meaning with the outward symbol, the
two remaining separate and separable in the parable,-from the proverb,
inasmuch as it is' longer carried out, and not merely accidentally and
occasionally, but necessarily figurative,-from the allegory, comparing
as it does one thing with another, at the same time preserving them
apart as an inner and an outer, not transferring, as does the allegory,
the properties and qualities and relations of one to the other.




CHAPTER II.
ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.
HOWEVER our Lord may on one or more occasions have made use of
this manner of teaching by parables, with the intention of withdrawing
from certain of his hearers the knowledge of truths, which they were
unworthy or unfit to receive;* yet we may assume as certain that his
* Macrobius (Somn. Scip., 1. i. c. 2): Figuris defendentibus I vilitate secretum.
No one can deny that this was sometimes the Lord's purpose, who is not prepared
to do great violence to his words, as recorded by the three first Evangelists.
(Matt. xiii. 10-15; Mark iv. 11, 12; Luke viii. 9, 10.) When we examine the words
themselves, we find them in St. Mark to wear their strongest and severest aspect.
There and in St. Luke, the purpose of speaking in parables is said to be that
('va, which can be nothing else than TEXLCijt) seeing they might not see; while in
St. Matthew he speaks in parables, because (iar) they seeing see not. In Matthew
and Mark it is said to be so done, lest (A7rore) at any time they should see with
their eyes; while in Luke this part of the sentence is entirely wanting. The
attempt has been made to evacuate'va and phroTe of their strength, these being
clearly the key-words; thus -'la=TL, and u7ro=rcE-frore, " if perchance;" to justify which last use, reference is made to 2 Tim. ii. 25, uworoe c&5p aVrois 6 @ebs jeTdvozav, " if God peradventure will give them repentance;" so that thus we should
get back to the old meaning, that the aim of his teaching by parables was, because
they could not understand in any other way, and if perchance the Lord would give
them repentance. Now there is no question that such might be the sense given
to Csasore, but even if the STr could be as successfully dealt with, which it certainly
cannot, there is still the passage of Isaiah in the way. Where would then be the
fulfilment of his prophecy? There can be no doubt that the Prophet there speaks
of a penal blindness, as even Gesenius allows, a punishment of the foregoing sins
of his people, and namely, this punishment, that they should be unable to recognize what was divine in his mission and character; which prophecy had its ultimate and crowning fulfilment, when the Jewish people were so darkened by
previous carnal thoughts and works, that they could see no glory and no beauty
in Christ, could recognize nothing of divine in the teaching or person of him who
was God manifest in the flesh. It is not that by the command, " Make the heart of
this people fat" (Isai. vi. 10), we need understand as though any peculiar hardening then passed upon them, but that the Lord having constituted as the righteous
law of his moral government, that sin should produce darkness of heart and moral
insensibility, declared that he would allow the law in their case to'ake its course,
2




18                  ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.
general aim* was not different from that of others who have used this
method of teaching, and who have desired thereby to make clearer,t
either to illustrate or to prove, tle truths which they had in hand:-I
say either to illustrate or to prove; for the parable, or other analogy to
spiritual truth appropriated from  the world of nature or man, is not
merely illustration, but also in some sort proof. It is not merely that
these analogies assist to make the truth intelligible, or, if intelligible
before, present it more vividly to the mind, which is all that some will
allow them.t Their power lies deeper than this, in the harmony unconsciously felt by all men, and by deeper minds continually recognized
and so also with this latter generation; even as that law is declared in the latter
half of Rom. i., to have taken its course with the Gentile world; in Augustine's
awful words, Deus solus magnus, lege infatigabili spargens poenales ceecitates super
illicitas cupidines; who says also in another place, Quorundam peccatorum perpetrandorum facilitas, poena est aliorum preecedentium. The fearful curse of sin is
that it ever has the tendency to reproduce itself, that he who sows in sin reaps in
spiritual darkness, which delivers him over again to worse sin; all which is wonderfully expressed by Shakspeare;For when we in our viciousness grow hard,
Oh misery on't, the wise gods seal our eyes,
In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us
Adore our errors, laugh at us, while we strut
To our confusion.
* Bacon has noted this double purpose of parables (De Sap. Vet.); Duplex
apud homines repertus est atque increbuit parabolarum usus, atque quod magis
mirum sit, ad contraria adhibetur. Faciunt enim parabola ad involucrum et velum, faciunt etiam ad lumen et illustrationem. See also De Augm. Scient., 1.2. c. 13;
and the remarkable passage from Stobteus, on the teaching of Pythagoras, quoted
in Potter's edit. of Clemens Alexandrinus, p. 676; note.
t This has been acknowledged on all sides, equally by profane and sacred writers; thus Quintilian (Inst. viii. 3, 72.): Praeclare vero ad inferendam rebus lucem
repertee sunt similitudines. And Seneca styles them, adminicula nostrse imbecilitatis. Again, they have been called, Mediae scientiam inter et ignorantiam. The
author of the treatise ad Herennium: Similitudo sumitur aut ornandi causa aut
probandi, aut apertius docendi, ant ante oculos ponendi. Tertullian. (De Resur.
Car., c. 33), expressly denies of parables, that they darken the light of the Gospel
(obumbrant Evangelii lucem). See also the quotation from Chrysostom in SuICER'S Thes. s. v. IrapacSo4, and Basil explains it, xAyos w;pe\Aos yueT' EirKp4ewoS
Setpias, with that moderate degree of concealment wfich shall provoke, not such
as shall repel or disappoint, inquiry. The Lord, says Chrysostom (Hon. 69 in
Mattl.), spoke in parables,?peari'Cw  Kayl LeyeipcwY, or as he expresses it elsewhere
(De Prec., Serm. 2), that we might dive down into the deep sea of spiritual knowledge, from thence to fetch up pearls and precious stones.
t So Stellini: Ita enim fer6 comparati sumus, ut cum impressionis vivacitate
notionis evidentiam confundamus, eaque clarius intelligere nos arbetremur, quibus
imaginandi perculsa vis acrius est, et quae novitate aliqua commendantur, ea stabiD
liora sunt ad diuturnitatem memoriae, neque vetustate ulla consenescunt.




ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.                         19
and plainly perceived, between the natural and spiritual worlds, so that
analogies from the first are felt to be something more than illustrations,
happily but yet arbitrarily chosen. They are arguments, and may be
alleged as witnesses; the world of nature being throughout a Witness
for the world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand, growing out of
the same root, and being constituted for that very end. All lovers of
truth readily acknowledge these mysterious harmonies, and the force of
arguments derived from them. To them the things on earth are copies
of the things in heaven. They know that the earthly tabernacle is
made after the pattern of things seen in the mount (Exod. xxv. 40;
1 Chron. xxviii. 11, 12); and the question suggested by the Angel in
Milton is often forced upon their meditations,"What if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?""t
For it is a great misunderstanding of the matter to think of these as
happily, but yet arbitrarily, chosen illustrations, taken with a skilful
selection from the great stock and storehouse of unappropriated images;
Irom whence it would have been possible that the same skill might have
selected others as good or nearly as good. Rather they belong to one
another, the type and the thing typified, by an inward necessity; they
were linked together long before by the law of a secret affinity.:  It
is not a happy accident which has yielded so wondrous an analogy as
that of husband and wife, to set forth the mystery of Christ's relation to
* See IRENIEUs, Con. Har., 1. 4, c. 14, 3.
t Many are the sayings of a like kind among the Jewish Cabbalists. Thus in
the book Sohar, Quodcunque in terra est, id etiam in caelo est, et nulla res tam
exigua est in mundo, quse non alii similii, quse in caelo est, correspondeat. In
GFR6RER'S Urchristentkum, v. 2, p. 26-30, and BXHR'S Symb. d. Mos. Cult., v. 1, p. 109,
many like passages are quoted. No one was fuller of this than Tertullian: see his
magnificent words on the resurrection (De Res. Carn., c. 12). All things here, he
says, are witnesses of a resurrection, all things in nature are prophetic outlines of
divine operations, God not merely speaking parables, but doing them, (talia divinarum virium lineamenta, non minus parabolis operate Deo quam locuto.) And
again, De Anima, c. 43, the activity of the soul in sleep is for him at once an argument and an illustration which God has provided us, of its not being tied to the
body to perish with it: Deus.... manum porrigens fidei, facilius adjuvanda per
imagines et paraboles, sicut sermonum, ita et rerum.
i Out of a true sense of this has grown our use of the word likely. There is a
confident expectation in the minds of men of the reappearance in higher spheres,
of the same laws and relations which they have recognized in lower; and thus that
which is like is also likely or probable. Butler's Analogy is just the unfolding, as
he himself declares at the beginning, in one particular line of this thought, that the
like is also the likely.




20                ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.
his elect Church. There is far more in it than this: the earthly rela.
tion is indeed but a lower form of the heavenly, on- which it rests, and
of which it is the utterance. When Christ spoke to Nicodemus of a
new birth, it was not merely because birth into this natural world was
the most suitable figure that could be found for the expression of that
spiritual act which, without any power of our own, is accomplished
upon us when we are brought into God's kingdom; but all the circumstances of this natural birth had been pre-ordained to bear the burden
of so great a mystery. The Lord is king, not borrowing this title from
the kings of the earth, but having lent his own title to them-and not
the name only, but so ordering, that all true rule and government upon
earth, with its righteous laws, its stable ordinances, its punishment and
its grace, its majesty and its terror, should tell of Him and of his kingdom which ruleth dver all-so that "kingdom of God" is not in fact a
figurative expression, but most literal: it is rather the earthly kingdoms
and the earthly kings that are figures and shadows of the true. And
as in the world of man and human relations, so also is it in the world of
nature. The untended soil which yields thorns and briars as its natural
harvest is a permanent type and enduring parable of man's heart, which
has been submitted to the same curse, and without a watchful spiritual
husbandry will as surely put forth its briers and its thorns. The weedy
that will mingle during the time of growth with the corn, and yet are
separated from it at the last, tell ever one and the same tale of the
present admixture, and future sundering of the righteous and the
wicked. The decaying of the insignificant unsightly seed in the earth,
and the rising up out of that decay and death, of the graceful stalk and
the fruitful ear, contain evermore the prophecy of the final resurreoc
tion, even as this is itself in its kind a resurrection,-the same process
at a lower stage,-the same power putting itself forth upon meaner
things.
Of course it will be always possible for those who shrink from contemplating a higher world-order than that imperfect one around them,and this, because the thought of such would rebuke their own imper.
fection and littleness-who shrink too from a witness for God so neat
them as even that imperfect order would render-it will be possible for
them to say it is not thus, but that our talk of heavenly things is only a
transferring of earthly images and relations to them;-that earth is not
a shadow of heaven, but heaven, such at least as we conceive it, a dream
of earth; that the names Father and Son for instance (and this is Arianism) are only improperly used and in a secondary sense when applied to
Divine Persons, and then are terms so encumbered with difficulties and
contradictions that they had better not be used at all; that we do not




ON TEACHING BY PARABL;SS.                   21
find and recognize heavenly things in their earthly counterparts, but only
dexterously adapt them. This denial will be always possible, and has
a deeper root than that it can be met with argument; yet the lover of a
truth which shall be loftier than himself will not be moved from his faith
that however man may be the measure of all things here, yet God is
the measure of man,-that the same Lord who sits upon his throne in
heaven, does with the skirts of his train fill his temple upon earth-that
these characters of nature which every where meet his eye are not a
common but a sacred writing-that they are hieroglyphics of God: and
he counts this his blessedness, that he finds himself in the midst of such,
and because in the midst of them, therefore never without admonishment and teaching.
For such is in truth the condition of man: around him is a sensuous
world, yet not one which need bring him into bondage to his senses, but
so framed as, if he'will use it aright, continually to lift him above itself
-a visible world to make known the invisible things of God, a ladder
leading him up to the contemplation of heavenly truth. And this truth
he shall encounter and make his own, not in fleeing from his fellows and
their works and ways, but in the mart, on the wayside, in the fieldnot by stripping himself bare of all relations, but rather recognizing these
as instruments through which he is to be educated into the knowledge
of higher mysteries; and so dealing with them in reverence, seeking
by faithfulness to them in their lower forms to enter into their yet deeper
significance-entertaining them, though they seem but common guests,
and finding that he has unawares entertained Angels. And thus, besides
his revelation in words, f-od has another and an elder, and one indeed
without which it is inconceivable how that other could be made, for from
this it appropriates all its signs of communication. This entire moral
and visible world from first to last, with its kings and its subjects, its
parents and its children, its sun and its moon, its sowing and its harvest,
its light and its darkness, its sleeping and its waking, its birth and
its death, is from beginning to end a mighty parable, a great teaching
of supersensuous truth, a help at once to our faith and to our understanding.
It is true that men are ever in danger of losing " the key of knowledge" which should open to them the portals of this palace: and then
instead of a prince in a world of wonder that is serving him, man moves
in the midst of this world, alternately its taskmaster and its drudge.
Such we see him to become at the two poles of savage and falsely-cultivatea life-his inner eye darkened, so that he sees nothing, his inner
ear heavy, so that there come no voices from nature unto him: and
indeed in all, save only in the one Man, there is more or less of the




22               ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.
dulled,ar, and the filmed eye. There ib none to whom nature tells out
all that she has to tell, and as constantly as she would be willing to tell
it. Now the whole of Scripture, with its ever-recurring use of figurative language, is a re-awakening of man to the mystery of nature, a
giving back to him the key of knowledge, the true signatura rerum:
and this comes out, as we might expect, in its highest form, but by no
means exclusively, in those which by pre-eminence we call the parables
They have this point of likeness with the miracles, that those too were
a calling heed to powers which were daily going forward in the midst of
men, but which, by their frequency and their orderly repetition, that
ought to have kindled the more admiration, had become wonder-works
no more, had lost the power of exciting attention, until men had need to
be startled anew to the contemplation of the energies which were ever
working among them. In like manner the parables were a calling of
attention to the spiritual facts which underlie all processes of nature,
all institutions of human society, and which, though unseen, are the
true ground and support of these. Christ moved in the midst of what
seemed to the eye of sense an old and worn-out world, and it evidently
became new at his touch; for it told to man now the inmost secrets of
his being: he found that it answered with strange and marvellous correspondencies to another world within him,-that oftentimes it helped
to the birth great thoughts of his heart, which before were helplessly
struggling to be born,-that of these two worlds, without him and within,
each threw a light and a glory on the other.
For on this rests the possibility of a real teaching by parables, such
a teaching as, resting upon a substantial ground, shall not be a mere
building on the air, or painting on a cloud,-that the world around us is
a divine world, that it is God's world, the world of the same God who is
teaching and leading us into spiritual truth; that the horrible dream of
Gnostic and Manichaean, who would set a great gulf between the worlds
of nature and of grace, seeing this from a good, but that from an imperfect or an evil power, is a lie; that being originally God's, it is a
sharer in his great redemption. And yet this redeemed world, like
man, is in part redeemed only in hope: it is not, that is, in the present
possession, but only in the assured certainty, of a complete deliverance.
For this too we must not leave out of sight, that nature, in its present
state, like man himself, contains but a prophecy of its coming glory;it' groaneth and travaileth;" iicannot tell out all its secrets; it has a
presentiment of something, which it is not yet, but which hereafter it
shall be. It too is suffering under our curse: yet even thus, in its very
imperfection wonderfully serving us, since thus it has apter signs and
more fitting symbols to declare to us our disease and our misery, and




ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.                     23
the processes of their healing and removing;-symbols not merely of
God's grace and power, but also of man's sins and wretchedness: it has
its sores and its wounds, its storms and its wildernesses, its lion and its
adder, by these interpreting to us death all that leads to death, no less
than by its more beneficent workings life and all that tends to the restoring and maintaining of life.
But while thus it has this merciful adaptation to our needs, not the
less does it, in this its fallen estate, come short of its full purpose and
meaning: it fails in part to witness for a divine order, as the philosophic poet, whose eye was mainly directed to this, its disorder and deficiency, exclaimed,
tanta stat prmdita culp&:
it does not give always a clear witness, nor speak out in distinct accents,
of God's truth and love. Of these it is oftentimes the inadequate expression-yea, sometimes seems not to declare them at all, but rather in
volcano and in earthquake, in ravenous beasts, and in poisonous herbs, to
tell of strife and discord and disharmony, and all the woful consequences
of the fall. But one dayit will be otherwise: one day it will be translucent with the divine Idea which it embodies, and which even now,
despite these dark spots, shines through it so wondrously. For no doubt
the end and consummation will be, not the abolition of this nature, but
the glorifying of it,-that which is now nature (natura), always, as the
word expresses it, striving and struggling to the birth, will then be
indeed born. The new creation will be as the glorious child born out
of the world-long throes and anguish of the old. It will be as the snake
casting its wrinkled and winter skin; the old world not abolished, but
putting off its soiled work-day garments, and putting on its holiday apparel for the great Sabbath which shall have arrived at last. Then,
when it too shall have put off its bondage of corruption, shall be delivered from whatever is now overlaying it, all that it has at present of
dim and contradictory and perplexing shall disappear. This nature,
too, shall be a mirror in which God will perfectly glass himself, for it
shall tell of nothing but the narvels of his wisdom and power and love.
But at present, while this natural world, through its share in man's
fall, has won in fitness for the expression of the sadder side of man's
condition, the imperfection and evil that cling to him and beset him, it
has in some measure lost in fitness for the expressing of the higher. It
possesses the best, yet oftentimes inadequate, helps for this. These
human relationships, and this whole constitution of things earthly, share
in the shortcoming that cleaves to all which is of the earth. Obnoxious
to change, tainted with sin, shut in within brief limits by decay and




24               ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.
death, they are often weak and temporary, when they have to set forth
things strong and eternal. A sinful element is evidently mingled with
them, while they yet appear as symbols of what is entirely pure and
heavenly. They break down under the weight that is laid upon them,
The father chastens after his own pleasure, instead of wholly for the
child's profit; in this unlike that heavenly Father, whose character
he is to set forth. The seed which is to set forth the word of God, that
Word which liveth and abideth for ever, itself decays and perishes at
last. Festivals, so frequently the image of the pure joy of the kingdom,
of the communion of the faithful with their Lord and with one another,
will often, when here celebrated, be mixed up with much that is carnal,
and they come to their close in a few hours. There is something
exactly analogous to all this in the typical or parabolical personages of
Scripture-the men that are to set forth the Divine Man. Through
their sins, through their infirmities, yea, through the necessary limitations of their earthly condition, they are unable to carry the correspondencies completely out. Sooner or later they break down; and
very often even the part which they do sustain, they sustain it not for long.
Thus, for instance, few would deny the typical character of Solomon.
His kingdom of peace, the splendor of his reign, his wisdom, the temple which he reared, all point to a greater whom he foreshowed. Yet
this gorgeous forecasting of the coming glory is vouchsafed to us only
for an instant; it is but a glimpse of it we catch. Even before his
reign is done, all is beginning to dislimn again, to lose the distinctness
of its outline, the brightness of its coloring. His wisdom is darkened,
the perfect peace of his land is no more; and the gloom on every side
encroaching warns us that this is but the image, not the very substance,
of the things.
Again we see some men, in whom there is but a single point in their
history which brings them into typical relation with Christ; such was
Jonah, the type of the Resurrection: or persons whose lives at one moment and another seem suddenly to stand out as symbolic; but then
sink back so far that we almost doubt whether we may dare to consider
them as such at all, and in whose case the attempt to carry out the
resemblance'into greater detail would involve in infinite embarrassment.
Samson will at once suggest himself as one of those. It is scarcely
possible to believe that something more was not meant than is contained
in the letter when out of the eater he brought forth meat, and out of the
strong sweetness (Judg. xiv. 14), or when he wrought a mightier deliverance for Israel through his death than he had wrought in his.ife
(Judg. xvi. 30). Yet we hesitate how far we may proceed. And so it
is in every case, for somewhere or other every man is a liar: he is
false, that is, to the divine idea, which he was meant to embody, and




ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.                            25
fails to bring it out in all the fulness of its perfection. So that of the
truths of God in the language of men (which' language of course includes man's acts as well as his words), of these sons of heaven married
to the daughters of earth, it may truly be said, "we have this treasure
in earthen vessels." And it must only be looked for, that some'where
or other the earthen vessel will appear, that the imperfection which
cleaves to our forms of utterance, to men's words and to their works,
will make itself felt either in the misapprehensions of those to whom the
language is addressed (as John iii..11); or by the language itself,
though the best that human speech could supply,-by the men themselves, though   the noblest, it may be, of their age and race,-yet
failing to set forth the divine truth in all its fulness and completeness.*
No doubt it was a feeling, working more or less consciously, of the
dangers and drawbacks that attend all our means of communication, a
desire also to see eye to eye, or, as St. Paul terms it, face so facet
* It is now rather K j pcpovs, ev avLiyUaTL,,,' io-a7rpov (1 Cor. xiii. 9, 12), dv Wrapoilats (John xvi. 25). Cf. BERNARD, In Cant., Serm. 31. 8. A Persian mystical
poet has caught this truth, which he has finely expressed. (See THOLUCK'S Bliitlensamm. aus d. Morgenl. Mystik, p. 215.)
Die Sinnenwelt ein Schatte ist der Geistwelt,
Herab von dieser jener Nahrunsgmilch quellt.
Gefuhle sind gefangene Monarchen,
Die in der Worte Kerker sich verbargen.
Tritt das Unendliche in's Herz des Weisen,
Muss flugs hinab er zum Verstande reisen.
Der muss die Schattenbilder ihm gewihren,
Damit er kinn' Unendliches erklaren.
Doch nimmer ist das Abbild je vollkommen,
Nur Selbstverstiindniss kann dir wahrhaft frommen.
Denn ziehst aus jedem Bild du Consequenzen,
Musst hier du Vieles wegthun, dort erganzen.
t John Smith (Select Disc., p. 159), observes that the later Platonists had three
terms to distinguish the different degrees of divine knowledge, ica-' 1ri~az'rf,v, iKaT
voTal and KaTa& rapovaiav. If we assumed these into Christian theology,-and
they very nearly agree with the threefold division of St. Bernard (De Consid., 1. 5,
c. 3), the opinio, the fides, and the intellectus (intuition),-we might say of the
first, that it is common to all men, being merely notional, knowing about God: the
second is the privilege of the faithful now, the knowing God; the third, the auocldveta of the same school, the Arcanum facierum of the Jewish doctors, will be
their possession in the world to come, the seeing God, the reciprocity of which is
finely indicated by Augustine, when he terms it, Videre Videntem. It was this,
according to many of the Jewish interpreters, which Moses craved when he said,
" I beseech Thee, show me thy glory," but which was denied him, as being impossible for man in this present life; " Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no
man see me, and live." (Exod. xxxiii. 18-20.) Yet he too, they say, came nearer
to this than any other of the Lord's prophets. (See MEUSCHEN'S N. T. ex Talm.
illustc., p. 373.) It is a striking Mohammedan tradition, according to which the




26                ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.
(1 Cor. xiii. 12), which caused the mystics to press with such earnest.
ness and frequency that we should seek to abstract ourselves from all
images of things; that to raise ourselves to the contemplation of pure
and naked truth is the height of spiritual attainment, towards which we
should continually be struggling.*  But in requiring this as a test
and proof of spiritual progress, in setting it as the mark towards which
men should strive, they were not merely laying unnecessary burdens
on men's backs, but actually leading astray. For whether one shall
separate in his own consciousness the form from the essence,-whether
the images which he uses shall be to him more or less conscious symbols,-does not depend on his greater or less advance in spiritual knowledge, but on causes which may or may not accompany religious growth,
and mainly on this one,-whether he has been accustomed to think
upon his thoughts, to reflect upon the wonderful instrument which in
language he is using. One who possesses the truth only as it is incorporated in the symbol, may yet have a far stronger hold upon it-may
be influenced by it far more mightily-may far more really be nourished by it than another, who, according to the mystic view, would be
in a higher and more advanced state. It is true, indeed, that for them
who have not merely to live upon the truth themselves, but to guard it
for others,-not merely to drink of the streams of divine knowledge, but
to see that the waters of its well-heads be not troubled for their brethren
-for them it is well that they should be conscious, and the more conscious the bettei of the wonderful thing which language is,-of the
power and mystery, of the truth and falsehood, of words; and as a part
of this acquaintance, that the truth, and that which is the vehicle of the
truth, should for them be separable; but then it should be even for
them as soul and body, not as kernel and husk. This last comparison
has been often used, but when pushed far, may be pushed into an error.
It has been said that, as when the seed is cast into the ground, after a
time the kernel disengages itself from the outer coating, and alone
remains and fructifies, while the husk decays and perishes; so in the
seed of God's word, deposited in man's heart, the sensible form must fall
off, that the inner germ releasing itself may germinate. But the image,
urged thus far, does not aptly set forth the truth-will lead in the end
to a Quaker-like contempt of the written word, under pretence of having
Lord convinced Moses how fearful a thing it would be to comply with his request,
" Show me thy glory,"-by suffering a spark of that glory, the fulness of which
Moses had craved to see, to fall upon a mountain, which instantly burst into a
thousand pieces.
* Thauler, for instance, is continually urging-Ut ab omnibus imaginibus de.
nudemur et exuamur.-Fenelon the same; and indeed all the mystics, from Dionyaius downward, agree in this.




ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.                     27
the inner life. The outer covering is not to fall off and perish, but to
become glorified, being taken up by, and made translucent with, the
spirit that is within. Man is body and soul, and being so, the truth has
for him need of a body and soul likewise: it is well that he should
know what is body and what is soul, but not that he should seek to kill
the body, that he may get at the soul.
Thus it was provided for us by a wisdom higher than our own, and
all our attempts to disengage ourselves wholly from sensuous images
must always in the end be unsuccessful. It will be only a changing of
our images. and that for the worse; a giving up of living realities which
truly stir the heart, and getting dead metaphysical abstractions in their
room. The aim of the teacher, who would find his way to the hearts
and understandings of his hearers, will never be to keep down the
parabolical element in his teaching, but rather to make as much and as
frequent use of it as he can. And to do this effectually will need a
fresh effort of his own; for while all language is, and of necessity must
be, more or less figurative, yet long familiar use has worn out the
freshness of the stamp (who, for example, that speaks of insulting,
retains the lively image of a leaping on the prostrate body of a foe); so
that to create a powerful impression, language must be recalled, minted
and issued anew, cast into novel forms as was done by him, of whom it
is said, that without a parable (rcpaPcoXM in its widest sense) spake he
nothing to his hearers; that is, he gave no doctrine in an abstract form,
no skeletons of truth, but all clothed, as it were, with flesh and blood.
He acted himself as he declared to his apostles they must act, if they
would be scribes instructed unto the kingdom, and able to instruct
others (Matt. xiii. 52); he brought forth out of his treasure things new
and old: by the help of the old he made intelligible the new; by the aid
of the familiar he introduced them to that which was strange; from the
known he passed more easily to the unknown. And in his own manner
of teaching, and in his instructions to his apostles, he has given us the
secret of all effectual teaching,-of all speaking which shall leave behind
it, as was said of one man's eloquence, stings in the minds and memories
of the hearers. There is a natural delight* which the mind has in this
manner of teaching, appealing as it does, nob to the understanding only
but to the feelings, to the imagination, and in short to the whole man,
calling as it does the whole man with all his powers and faculties inte
* This delight has indeed impressed itself upon our language itself. To like a
thing is to compare it to some other thing which we have already before our natu
ral, or our mind's, eye: and the pleasurable emotion always arising from this process of comparison has caused us to use the word in a far wider sense than that
which belonged to it at the first. That we like what is like is the explanation ot
the pleasure which rhymes give us.




28                ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.
pleasurable activity: and things thus learned with delight are those
longest remembered.*
Had our Lord spoken naked spiritual truth, how many of his words,
partly from his hearers' lack of interest in them, partly from their lack
of insight, would have passed away from their hearts and memories,
leaving scarcely a trace behind them.t But being imparted to them in
this form, under some lively image, in some short and perhaps seemingly
paradoxical sentence, or in some brief but interesting narrative, they
awakened attention, excited inquiry, and even if the truth did not at the
moment, by the help of the illustration used, find an entrance into the
mind, yet the words must thus often have fixed themselves in their
memories and remained by them.t And here the comparison of the
seed is appropriate, of which the shell should guard the life of the inner
germ, till that should be ready to unfold itself-till there should be a
soil prepared for it, in which it could take root and find nourishment
suitable to its needs. His words laid up in the memory were to many
that heard him like the money of another country, unavailable it might
be for present use,-of which they knew not the value, and only dimly
knew that it had a value, but which yet was ready in their hand, when
they reached that land and were naturalized in it. When the Spirit
came and brought all things to their remembrance, then he filled all theoutlines of truth which they before possessed with its substance, quickened
all its forms with the power and spirit of life. Not perhaps at once, but
gradually, the meanings of what they had heard unfolded themselves to
them. Small to the small, they grew with their growth. And thus must
it ever be with all true knowledge, which is not the communication of
information, the transference of a dead sum or capital of facts or theories
from one mind to another, but the opening of living fountains within the
heart, the scattering of sparks which shall kindle where they fall, the
planting seeds of truth, which shall take root in the new soil where they
are cast, and striking their roots downward, and sending their branches
upward, shall grow up into goodly trees.
Nor is it unworthy of remark, when we are estimating the extent of
the parabolic element in Scripture, how much besides the spoken, there
* Thus Jerome (Comm. in Matt., in loc.) describes the purpose of the parable
Ut quod per simplex praceptum teneri ab auditoribus non potest, per similitudinem exemplaque teneatur.
t It was no doubt from a deep feeling of this that the Jewish Cabbalists
affirmed, Lumen supernum nunquam descendit sine indumento; with which agrees
the saying of the pseudo-Dionysius, so often quoted by the schoolmen, Impossibile
est nobis aliter lucere divinum radium nisi varietate sacrorum velaminum circum.
relatum.
T Bernard: An non expedit tenere vel involutum, quod nudum non capis 1




ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.                     29
is there of acted, parable. In addition to those which, by a more especial
right, we separate off, and call by the name, every type is a real parable.
The whole Levitical constitution, with its outer court, its holy, its holiest
of all, its high priest, its sacrifices, and all its ordinances, is such, and is
declared to be such in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix. 9). The wander
ings of the children of Israel have ever been regarded as a parable of the
spiritual life. In like manner we have parabolic persons, who are to
teach us not merely by what simply in their own characters they did,
but as they represented One higher and greater; men whose actions
and whose sufferings obtain a new significance, inasmuch as they were in
these drawing lines quite unconsciously themselves, wnich another should
hereafter fill up; as Abraham when he cast out the bondwoman and her
son (Gal. iv. 30), Jonah in the whale's belly, David in his hour of peril
or of agony (Ps. xxii.). And in a narrower circle, without touching on
the central fact and Person in the kingdom of God, how often has he
chosen that his servants should teach by an acted parable rather than by
any other means, and this because there was no other that would make so
deep and so lasting an impression? Thus Jeremiah is to break in pieces
a potter's vessel, that he may foretell the complete destruction of his
people (xix. 1-11); he wears a yoke that he may be himself a prophecy
and a parable of their approaching bondage (xxvii. 2; xxviii. 10); he
redeems a field in pledge of a redemption that shall yet be of all the
land (xxxii. 6-15). It will at once be seen that these examples might
be infinitely multiplied. And as God will have them by these signs to
teafhn  k.-2snkeentiuually teaches them also by the same. It is not his
word only that comes to his prophets, but the great truths odilni'am'i
pass before their eyes incorporated in symbols, addressing themselves
first to the spiritual eye, and only through that to the spiritual ear.
They are indeed and eminently Seers. Ezekiel and Zechariah will at
once suggest themselves, as those of whom, more than, perhaps, any
others, this was true. And in the New Testament we have a great
example of the same teaching in St. Peter's vision (Acts x. 9-16), and
throughout all the visions of the Apocalypse. Nay, we might venture
to affirm that so it was with the highest and greatest truth of all, that
which includes all others-the manifestation of God in the flesh. This,
inasmuch as it was a making intelligible of the otherwise unintelligible;
a making visible the invisible; a teaching not by doctrine, but by the
embodied doctrine of a divine life, was the highest and most glorious of
all parables.*
* See a few words on this in the Epistle of Barnabas, c. 5, and in CLEM. ALEX.
(Strom., 1. 6, Potter's Ed., p. 803), he begins, rlapafoXliKs yap 6 XapaftrTo fdpXx
ow ypav' iriL Kcal 6 KL5pros, ovcK cv Koaou0KoS els o Avrpcrovs iAJ;ev.




30               ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.
With regard to the record which we have of the Lord's parables,
they are found, as is well known, only in the three' first Gospels: that
by St. John containing allegories, as of the Good Shepherd (x. 1), the
True Vine (xv. 1), but no parables strictly so called. Of the other
three, that of St. Matthew was originally written for Jewish readers,
and mainly for the Jews of Palestine; its leading purpose being to show
that Jesus was the Christ, the promised Messiah, the expected King of
the Jews-the Son of David-the Son of Abraham;-that in him the
prophecies of the Old Testament found their fulfilment. The theocratic
spirit of his Gospel does not fail to appear in the parables which he has
recorded; they are concerning the kingdom, —being commonly the declaration of things whereunto " the kingdom of heaven is likened,"-a
form which never once finds place in St. Luke. The same theocratic
purpose displays itself in the form in which the Marriage of the King's
Son appears in his Gospel, compared with the parallel narration in
Luke; in the last, it is only a man who makes a great supper,-while,
in Matthew, it is a king, and the supper a marriage-supper, and that for
his son.
The main purpose which St. Luke had before him in writing his
Gospel was to show, not that Jesus was the King of the Jews, but the
Saviour of the world; and therefore he traces our Lord's descent, not
merely from David, the great type of the theocratic king, nor from
Abraham, the head of the Jewish nation, but from Adam, the father of
mankind. He, the chosen companion of the apostle of the Gentiles,
wrote his Gospel originally for Gentile readers, so that while St. Matthew only records the sending out of the twelve apostles, corresponding
to the twelve tribes of Israel, he relates the mission of the seventy, answering to the (supposed) seventy nations into which the world at Babel
was divided. He, as writing for heathens who had so widely departed
from God, has been most careful to record the Lord's declarations concerning the free mercy of God-his declarations that there is no departure from God so wide as to preclude a return. The leading idea of
St. Luke's Gospel seems to have guided him in the parables which he
records. In this view, the three at chapter xv. are especially characteristic of his aim, and more particularly the last, that of the Prodigal Son,
and not less so that of Dives and Lazarus, if, as Augustine, Theophylact,
and some later commentators have suggested, we may take Dives to signify the Jews, richly abounding with all blessings of the knowledge of
God, and glorifying themselves in those blessings, while Lazarus, or the
Gentile, lay despised at their door, a heap of neglected and putrefying
sores. Again, the fact that it was a Samaritan who showed kindness to
the poor wounded man (Luke x. 30), would seem also to have been re



ON TEACHING BY PARABLES.                    31
corded not without an especial aim, to be traced up to the same leading
idea of his Gospel.
St. Mark has but one Parable which is peculiar to himself, that of
the Seed growing by itself (iv. 26), which is nearly related in substance to that of the Mustard Seed in Matthew, the place of which it
appears to occupy. There is not, I believe, any thing so peculiar in his
record of the parables as to call for especial notice.




CHAPTER III.
ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.
THE parables, fair in their outward form, are yet fairer withinapples of gold in network of silver: each one of them like a casket,
itself of exquisite workmanship, but in which jewels yet richer than
itself are laid up; or as fruit, which, however lovely to look upon, is yet
more delectable still in its inner sweetness.* To find then the golden
key for this casket, at the touch of which it shall reveal its treasures;
to open this fruit, so that nothing of its hidden kernel shall be missed or
lost, has naturally been regarded ever as a matter of high concern.t
And in this, the interpretation of the parable, a subject to which we have
now arrived, there is one question which presents itself anew at every
step; namely this, how much of them    is significant? and on this subject there have been among interpreters the most opposite theories.
Some have gone a great way in saying,-This is merely drapery and
ornament, and not the vehicle of essential truth; this was introduced
either as useful to given liveliness and a general air of verisimilitude to
the narrative, or as actually necessary to make the story, which is the
substratum of the truth, a consistent whole, since without this consistency the hearer would be both perplexed and offended,-to hold together
and connect the different parts, just as in the most splendid house there
must be passages, not for their own sake, but to lead from one room to
another.f  Chrysostom continually warns against pressing too anxiously
* Bernard: Superficies ipsa, tanquam a foris considerata, decora est valde: et
si quis fregerit nucem, intus inveniet quod jucundius sit, et mult6 amplius delectabile.
t Jerome (In Eccles. xii.): Parabolae aliud in medulla habent, aliud in superficie pollicentur, et quasi in terra aurum, in nuce nucleus, in hirsutis castanearum
operculis absconditus fructus inquiritur, ita in eis divinus sensus altius perscrutandus.
t Tertullian (De Pudicitia, c. 9): Quare centum oves. et quid utique decem
drachmae? et quae illas scopme? Necesse erat qui unius peccatoris salutem gratissimam Deo volebat exprimere, aliquam numeri quantitatem nominaret, de quo
unum quidem perisse describeret: necesse erat ut habitus requirentis drachmam




ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES                     33
all the circumstances of a parable, and often cuts his own interpretation
somewhat short in language like this,-" Be not curious about the
rest:"* and in like manner, the interpreters that habitually follow him.
Theophylactt and others, though not always faithful to their own principles. So also Origen, who illustrates his meaning by a comparison of
great beauty. He says, " For as the likenesses which are given in pictures and statues are not perfect resemblances of those things for whose
sake they are made-but for instance the image which is painted in wax
on a plain surface of wood, contains a resemblance of the superficies
and colors, but does not also preserve the depressions and prominences,
but oAly a representation of them-while a statue, again, seeks to preserve the likeness which consists in prominences and depressions, but
not as well that which is in colors-but should the statue be of wax, it
seeks to retain both, I mean the colors, and also the depressions and
prominences, but is not an image of those things which are within-in
the same manner, of the parables which are contained in the Gospels so
account, that the kingdom of heaven, when it is likened to any thing, is
not likened to it according to all the things which are contained in that
with which the comparison is instituted, but according to certain qualities which the matter in hand requires.":    Exactly thus in modern
times it has been said that the parable and its interpretation are not
to be contemplated as two planes, touching one another at every point,
but oftentimes rather as a plane and a globe, which, though brought into
contact, yet touch one another only in one.
On the other hand, Augustine, though sometimes laying down the
same principle, frequently extends the interpretation through all the
branches and minutest fibres of the narrative,% and Origen not less,
in domo, tam scoparum quam lucernse adminiculo accommodaretur. Hujusmodi
enim curiositates et suspeota faciunt qusedam, et coactarum expositionum subtilitate plerumque deducunt a veritate. Sunt autem que et simpliciter posita sunt
ad struendam et disponendam et texendam parabolam, ut illuc perducantur, cui
exemplum procuratur. Brower (De Par. J. C., p. 175): Talia omitti non potuerunt, quoniam eorum tantuim ope res ad eventum facile perduci posset, cum alioquin saltus fieret aut hiatus in narratione, qui rei narratse similitudini omnino
noceret, vel quia eorum neglectus auditores fortasse ad inanes qusestiones et dubitationes invitare posset.
* TaAA'W F.y 7repEpyd'ov.
t Theophylact (In Luc. xvi.): Iaoaa 7rapajSoAX rX'ayfws cKal EKOVLKiCS  l57Xot pna'ydT(V cIV ri l(TIV, OV Kamr& T7rdra 4oiLKv'a Tots'irpdy1.aCmrV VKEIvOISS, &? & rapeXfio>^m. VC
t oVS8 XP 7'rTdYa -Tr& IEdp TW1 7wrapaSowyv \AETTrS wroXvTpay/ioveveo'ai, &aA.' boaov 4osc
r 7rpiOKCELEiE'V) KapOV.LEVYOVS. Ta Xorx& av, s y  n-apaSoX avvv(flirTeva, Kal  781
rpbs ib irpOKEi.Eev ov U/AaAXXJEAea.: Comm. in Matth. xiii. 47.
m See a wonderful instance of the extent to which this may be done in an expol
vition of the Prodigal Son,,given in his Qucst. Evang., 1. 2. qu. 33.
3




34          ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.
despite the passage which I have just quoted. And in modern timea
the followers of Cocceius have been particularly earnest in affirming
all parts of a parable to be significant.* Perhaps, I might mar the pleasure of some readers in the following noble passage, by saying from
whence it was drawn: but the writer is describing the long and laborious care which he took to master the literal meaning of every word in
the parables, being confident of the riches of inward truth which every
one of those words contained; he goes on to say,-" Of my feelings and
progress in studying the parables of our Lord, I have found no similitude worthy to convey the impression, save that of sailing through between the Pillars of Hercules into the Mediterranean Sea, where you
have to pass between armed rocks, in a strait, and under a current-all
requiring careful and skilful seamanship-but being past, opening into
such a large, expansive, and serene ocean of truth, so engirdled round
with rich and fertile lands, so inlaid with beautiful and verdant islands;
and full of rich colonies and populous cities, that unspeakable is the
delight and the reward it yieldeth to the voyager."
On a review of the whole controversy it may safely be said, that the
advocates of the first-mentioned scheme of interpretation have been too
easily satisfied with their favorite saying —' Every comparison must
halt somewhere;" —since one may well demand, "Where is the necessity?" There is no force in the reply, that unless it did so, it would
not be an illustration of the thing, but the thing itself; since two lines
do not become one, nor cease to be two, because they run parallel
through their whole course; it needs not that they somewhere cease to
be parallel, to prevent them from being one and the same.t It may
well be considered, too, whether these interpreters, in their fear of capricious allegories, have not run into an opposite extreme. It is quite true,
to use an illustration which they sometimes employ, that a knife is not all
edge, nor a harp all strings; that much in the knife, which does not
cut, is yet of prime necessity, as the handle,-much, in the musical instrument, which is not intended to give sound, must yet not be wanting:
or to use another comparison, that many circumstances "in Christ's
parables are like the feathers which wing our arrows, which, though
they pierce not like the head, but seem slight things and of a different
matter from the rest, are yet requisite to make the shaft to pierce, and
do both convey it to and penetrate the mark."~ It is true, also, that
* Teelman (Comm. in Luc. xvi., p. 34-52) defends this principle at length and
with much ability.
t Omne simile claudicat.
$ Theophylact (in SUICER'S Thes., s. v. rapaCBoX):'H wapaoXA, Eav t& rdyrVrr
BoCz'ai, OVlK fTTiL rapaTeoA.S, aA' t arob eKeirv, i' rm  T7raparoAX.j
~ BOYLE'S Style of the Holy. Scriptures; Fifth Objection. There is a remarkable




ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.                      35
in the other scheme of interpretation, there is the danger lest a delight
in the exercise of ingenuity on the part of the interpreter, and admira
tion of the ingenuity so exercised on the side of the readers and hearers,
may cause it to be forgotten that the sanctification of the heart through
the truth is the main purpose of all Scripture:-even as there will presently be occasion to observe how heretics, through this pressing of all
parts of a parable to the uttermost, have been wont to extort from it
almost any meaning that they pleased.
Yet, on the other hand, there is a shallow spirit ever ready to empty
Scripture of the depth of its meaning, to exclaim-" This means nothing,
this circumstance is not to be pressed;" and satisfying ourselves with
sayings like these, we may fail to draw out from   the word of God all
the riches of meaning that are contained in it for us,-we may fail to
observe and to admire the wisdom with which the type was constructed
to correspond with its antitype.  For as a work of human art, a statue,
for instance, is the more perfect in the measure that the life, the idea
that was in the sculptor's mind, breathes out of and looks through every
feature ad \;im'b, so muc    the greater being the triumph of spirit,
penetrating through and glorifying the matter which it has assumed;
so the more translucent a parable is in all parts with the divine truth
which it embodies, the more the garment with which it is arrayed, is a
garment of light, pierced through, as was once the raiment of Christ,
with the brightness within,-illuminating it in all its recesses and
corners, and leaving no dark place in it,-by so much the more beautiful
and perfect it must be esteemed. It may be further answered, that of
those who start with the principle that so much is to be set aside as
passage in Augustine (De Civ. Dei, 1. 16, c. 2), where he carries out this view still
further; Non sane omnia quse gesta narrantur, aliquid etiam significare putanda
sunt: sed propter illa quse aliquid significant, etiam ilia quse nihil significant attexuntur. Solo enim vomere terra proscinditur, sed ut hoc fieri possit, etiam csetara
aratri membra sunt necessaria. Et soli nervi in citharis atque hujusmodi vasis
musicis aptantur ad cantum, sed ut aptari possint, insunt et caetera in compaginibus
organorum, quae non percutiuhtur a canentibus, sed ea quse percussa resonant his
connectuntur. Ita in prophetica historia dicuntur et aliqua, quae nihil significant,
sed quibus adhmreant quse significant, et quomodo religentur. Cf. Con. Faust. 1. 22.
c. 94. A Romish expositor, Salmeron, has a comparison something similar: Certum est. gladium non omni ex parte scindere, sed una tantum: nec enim. per manubrium secat, neque per partem obtusam oppositam aciei, neque per cuspidem, sed
tantum per aciem secat. Et tamen nemo sanae mentis dixerit aut manubrium aut
cuspidem aut partem obtusam oppositam aciei, necessaria non esse ad scindendum:
nam etsi per se ipsa non scindant, serviunt tamen ut pars que acuta est, et ad
secandrum nata, scindere forties et commodias valeat. Ita in parabolis multa afferuntur, quae etsi per se ipsa sensum spiritalem non efficiant, conducunt tamen ut
parabola per illam partem scindat et secet, ad quod prsestandum ab auctore proposita fiterat.




36           Oi THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.
non-essential, scarcely are to be found any two agreed, when it comes to
the application of their principle, concerning what actually is to be set
aside; what one rejects, another retains, and the contrary. Moreover, it
is always observable that the more this system is carried out, the more
the peculiar beauty of the parable disappears, and the interest in it is
weakened.    For example, when Calvin will not allow the oil in the
vessels (Matt. xxv.) to mean any thing, and when Storr,* who, almost
more than any other, would leave the parables bare trunks, stripped of
all their foliage and branches, of all that made for beauty and ornament,
denies that the Prodigal leaving his father's house has any direct reference to man's departure from the presence of his heavenly Father, it is
at once evident of how much, not merely of pleasure, but of instruction,
they would deprive us.  It may be remarked too, in opposition to the
interpretation of the parables merely in the gross, that when our Lord
himself interpreted the two first which he delivered, those of the Sower,
and of the Tares, it is more than probable that he intended to furnish
us with a key for the interpretation of all. These explanations therefore
are most important, not merely for their own sakes, but as laying down the
principles and canons of interpretation to be applied throughout. Now
in these the moral application descends to some of the minutest details
of the narrative: thus, the birds which snatch away the seed sown, are
explained as Satan who takes the good word out of the heart (Matt.
xiii. 19), the thorns correspond to the cares and pleasures of life (Matt.
xiii. 22), and much more of the same kind.;' It must be allowed," says
Tholuck,t "that a similitude is perfect in proportion as it is on all sides
rich in applications;t and hence, in treating the parables of Christ, the
expositor must proceed on the presumption that there is import in every
single point, and only desist from seeking it, when either it does not
result without forcing, or when we can clearly show that this or that
circumstance was merely added for the sake of giving intuitiveness to
* De Parabolis Christi, in his Opusc. Acad., v. 1, p. 89.
t Auslegung der Bergpredigt, p. 201. With this agrees what Bishop Lowth
says, De Sac. Poes. Heb., Pral. 10.
t Vitringa: Placent mihi qui ex parabolis Christi Domini plus veritatis eliciunt,
qubm generale quoddam preceptum ethicum, per parabolam illustratum et auditorum animis fortius infixum. Non quod audaciter pronunoiare sustineam, ejusmodi institutionis aut persuasionis genus, si Domino nostro placuisset illud adhibere, cum summi ejus sapientik non potuisse consistere. Contendo tamen de
summa sapientia qualis illa flit Filii Dei, nos meritb plus presumere, ac propterea,
si parabolae Christi Domini ita explicari queant, ut singulae earum partes commodb et absque violentis contorsionibus transferantur ad ceconomiam Ecclesie,
illud ego explicationis genus tanquam opiumum amplectendum, et cseteris preferendum existimo. Quanto enim plus solidee veritatis ex Verbo Dei eruerimus si
nihil obstet, tantb magis divinam commendabimus sapientiam.




ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.                    37
the narrative. We should not assume any thing to be non-essential,
except when by holding it fast as essential the unity of the whole is
m.arred and troubled.'*
It will much help us in this matter of determining what is essential
and what not, if, before we attempt to explain the particular parts, we
obtain fast hold of the central truth which the parable would set forth,
and distinguish it in the mind as sharply and accurately as we can from
all cognate truths which border upon it; for only seen from that middle
point will the different parts appear in their true light.  "One may
compare," says a late writer on the parables,t " the entire parable with
a circle, of which the middle point is the spiritual truth or doctrine, and
of Which the radii are the several circumstances of the narration; so
long as one has not placed oneself in the centre, neither the circle itself
appears in its perfect shape, nor Will the beautiful unity with which the
radii converge to a single point be perceived, but this is all observed so
soon as the eye looks forth from the centre. Even so in the parable, if
we have recognized its middle point, its main doctrine, in fill light, then
will the proportion and right signification of all particular circumstances
be clear unto us, and we shall lay stress upon them only so far as the
main truth is thereby more vividly set forth."
There is another rule which it is important to observe, which at the
same time is so simple and obvious, that were it not very frequently
neglected, it would hardly be thought needful to be mentioned, but
might be left to the common sense of every interpreter.  It is this, that
as in the explanation of the fable, the introduction (7rpo/z1tov) and
application (rlTnpvtov) claim to be most carefully attended to, so here
what some have entitled the pro-parabola and epi-parabola, though the
* Out of this feeling the Jewish doctors distinguished lower forms of revelation
from higher, dreams from prophetic communications thus, that in the higher all
was essential, while the dream ordinarily contained something that was superfluous; and they framed this axiom,-" As there is no corn without straw, so
neither is there any more dream without something that is &apydv, void of reality
and insignificant." They would instance Joseph's dream (Gen. xxxvii. 9); the
moon could not there have been well left out, when all the heavenly host did obeisance to him; yet this circumstance was thus &pydv, for his mother, who thereby
was signified, was even then dead, and so incapable of rendering hereafter the
homage to him which the others at last did. (See JOHN SMITH'S Discourses,
p, 178.)
t Lisco: Die Parabeln Jesu, p. 22; a sound and useful work. It has been
translated into English-how, may be guessed by a single specimen. Having occasion to characterize VITRINGA'S Erkltrung der Parabolen, Lisco observes of it thui:
Ein fiber 1000 Seiten starkes Werk, breiter Sprache (a book more than a thousand
pages thick, very diffuse), which however reappears in the translation: "A work
of great power in many respects, in broad dialect."




3S           ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.
other terms would have done sufficiently well, which are invariably the
finger-posts pointing to the direction in which we are to look for the
meaning,-the key to the whole matter.      These deserve the most
attentive heed, as their neglect often betrays into the most untenable
explanations; for instance, how many of the interpretations which have
been elaborately worked out of the Laborers in the Vineyard, could
never have been so much as once proposed, if heed had been paid to the
context, or the necessity been acknowledged of bringing the interpretation into harmony with the saying, which introduces and winds up the
parable. These helps to interpretation, though rarely or never lacking,* are yet given in no fixed or formal manner; sometimes they are
supplied by the Lord himself (Matt. xxii. 14; xxv. 13); sometimes by
the inspired narrators of his words (Luke xv. 1, 2; xviii. 1); sometimes,
as the prologue, they precede the parable (Luke xviii. 9; xix. 11);
sometimes, as the epilogue, they follow (Matt. xxv. 13; Luke xvi. 9).
Occasionally a parable is furnished with these helps to its right understanding and application both at its opening and its close; as is that of
the Unmerciful Servant (Matt. xviii. 23), which is suggested by the
question which Peter asks (ver. 21), and wound up by the application
which the Lord himself makes (ver. 35).    So again the Parable, at
Matt. xx. 1-15, begins and finishes with the same saying, and Luke xii.
16-20 is supplied with the same amount of help for its right understanding. t
Again we may observe that an interpretation, besides being thus in
accordance with its context, must.be so without any very violent means
being applied to bring it into such agreement; even as, generally the
interpretation must be easy-if not always easy to be discovered, yet
being discovered, easy. For it is here as with the laws of nature; the
proleptic mind of genius may be needful to discover the law, but being
discovered, it throws back light on itself, and commends itself unto all.
And there is this other point of similarity also; it is the proof of the
law that t explains all the phenomena and not merely some-that
* Tertullian (De Resur. Card., c. 33): Nullum parabolam non aut ab ipso invenias edisseratam, ut de Seminatore in verbi administratione: aut a commentatore Evangelii praeluminatam, utjudicis superbi et viduae instantis ad perseverantiam orationes; aut ultro conjectandam, ut arboris fici, dilatse in spem, ad instar
Judaicae infructuositatis.
t Salmeron (Serm. in Evang. Par., p. 19) has a threefold division of the parabls, which is worth noticing. There are three things, he says, which, in proceeding to interpret it, claim our attention; the radix or root out of which it grows,
which may also be regarded as the final cause or scope with which it is spoken,
which is to be looked for in the jrpopLoywv; next, the cortex or the outward sensuous array in which it clothes itself; and then the medulla, or inward core, the
spiritual truth which it enfolds




ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.                     39
sooner or later they all marshal themselves in order under it: so it is
tolerable evidence that we have found the right interpretation of a parable, if it leave none of the main circumstances unexplained. A false
interpretation will inevitably betray itself, since it will "invariably
paralyze and render nugatory some important member of an entire account." If we have the right key in our hand, not merely some of the
words, but all, will have their corresponding parts, and moreover the
key will turn without grating or over-much forcing; and if we have
the right interpretation, it will scarcely need to be defended and made
plausible with great appliance of learning, to be propped up by remote
allusions to Rabbinical or profane literature, by illustrations drawn from
the recesses of antiquity.*
Once more-the parables may not be made first sources of doctrine.
Doctrines otherwise and already grounded may be illustrated, or indeed
further confirmed by them; but it is not allowable to constitute doctrine first by their aid.t They may be the outer ornamental fringe, but
not the main texture, of the proof. For from the literal to the figurative, from the clearer to the more obscure, has been ever recognized as
the law of Scripture interpretation. This rule, however, has been often
forgotten, and controversialists, looking round for arguments with which
to sustain some weak position, one for which they can find no other support in Scripture, often invent for themselves supports in these. Thus
Bellarmine presses the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the circumstance that in that the thieves are said first to have stripped the traveller,
* That which is required in a satisfactory solution, is well stated by Teelman
(Comm. in Luc., 16, p. 23): Explicatio non sit hiulca, non aspera, non auribus nec
judicio difficilis, non ridicula; sed mollis et verecunda, leniter manantis fluvii instar
amcenitate in aures auditorumque judicium influens, appropriata, proxima, et ab
omni longa petitione remota.
t This rule finds its expression in the recognized axiom: Theologia parabolica
non est argumentativa. And again: Ex solo sensu litterali peti possunt argumenta
efficacia. See GERHARD'S Loc. Theol., 1. 2, c. 13, i 202. There is a beautiful passage in ANSELM'S Cur Deus Homo, 1. 1, c. 4, on the futility of using as primary
arguments what indeed can but serve as graceful confirmation of truths already on
other grounds received and believed,-and against gainsayers most of all. The
objector is made to reply to one who presses him with the wonderful correspondencies of Scripture: Omnia hvec pulcra et quasi quaedam picturae suscipienda sunt.
sed si non sit aliquid solidum super quod sedeant, non videntur infidelibus satisfacere: nam qui picturam vult facere, aliquid eligit solidum super quod pingat, ut
maneat quod pingit. Nemo enim pingit in aqua vel in aere; quia ibi nulla manent
picture vestigia. Qua propter cum has convenientias quas dicis, infidelibus quasi
quasdam picturas rei gestae obtendimus, quoniam non rem gestam sed figmentum
arbtrantur esse quod credimus; quasi super nubem pingere nos existimant. Monstranda est prius veritatis rationabilis soliditas. Deinde, ut ipsum quasi corpuj
veritatis plus niteat, istma convenientihe, quasi picturae corporis sunt exponendse.




40           ON THE INTERPRETATION OF:PARABLES.
and afterwards to have inflicted wounds on him, as proving certain
views of the Romish Church on the order of man's fall, the; succession
in which, first losing heavenly gifts, the robe of a divine righteousness,
he afterwards, and as a consequence, endured actual hurts in his soul.*
And in the same way Faustus Socinus argues from the parable of the
Unmerciful Servant, that as the king pardoned his servant merely on his
petition (Matt. xviii. 22), and not on account of any satisfaction made,
or any mediator intervening, we may draw from this the conclusion,
that in the same way, and without requiring sacrifice or intercessor,
God pardons his debtors simply on the ground of their prayers.t
But far the greatest sinners against this rule were the Gnostics and
Manichoeans in old time, especially the former.  The parables were far
too welcome to these, who could find no color for their scheme in the
plain declarations of Scripture, for them to allow themselves to be robbed of the help which they hoped to find in this quarter, by attending
to any such canon as this. The whole scheme of the Gnostics was one
which, however it may have been a result of the Gospel, inasmuch as
that set the religious speculation of the world vigorously astir, was yet
of independent growth; and they only came to the Scripture to find a
varnish, an outer Christian coloring, for a system essentially antichristian;-not to learn its language, but to see if they could not compel it
to speak theirs.t  They came with no desire to draw out of Scripture
its meaning, but to thrust into Scripture their own.~   When they fell
thus to picking and choosing from it what was best adapted to their ends,
* De Grat. Prim. Horn.: Neque enim sine caus& Dominus in parabola ill& prius
dixit, hominem spoliatum, posterius autem, vulneratum fuisse, ctm tamen contra
accidere soleat in veris latrociniis; nimirum indicare voluit, in hoc spirituali latrocinio ex ips' amissione justitiae originalis nata esse vulnera nostrse naturge. (Se
GERHARD'S Loc. Th/eol cc. 9, c. 2. Q 86.)
t DEYLING, Obss. Sac., v. 4, c. 649. Socinus here sins against another rule of
Scripture interpretation as of common sense, which is, that we are not to expect in
every place the whole circle of Christian truth to be fully stated, and that no conclusion may be drawn from the absence of a doctrine from one passage which is
clearly stated in others. Jerome (Adv. Jovin., 1. 2): Neque enim in omnibus locis
docentur omnia; sed unaquneque similitudo ad id refertur cujus est similitudo.
i Jerome: Ad voluntatem suam Scripturam trahere repugnantem.
g Irenveus, 1. 1, c. 8: Ut figmentum illorum non sine teste esse videatur. All
this very nearly repeats itself in Swedenborg, in whom, indeed, there are many
resemblances to the Gnostics of old, especially the distinctive one of a division of
the Church into spiritual and carnal members. One, estimating his system of
Scripture interpretation, thus speaks: "His spiritual sense of Scripture is one
altogether disconnected from the literal sense, is rather a sense before the sense;
not a sense to which one mounts up from the steps of that which is below, but in
which one must, as by a miracle, be planted, for it is altogether independent of
and disconnected from, the accidental externum superadditum of the literal sense."




ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.                    41
the parables would naturally invite them almost more than any other
portions of Scripture; for it was plain that they must abandon the literal
portions of Scripture; their only refuge was in the figurative, in those
which might receive more interpretations than one; such perhaps they
might bend to their purposes. Accordingly we find them revelling in
these; with no joy indeed in them, on account of their simplicity or
practical depth or ethical beauty; for they seem to have had no sense or
feeling of these; but delighted to superinduce upon them their own capricious and extravagant fancies. Irenseus is continually compelled to,
vindicate the parables against them, and to rescue them from the extreme
abuse to which they submitted them, who not merely warped and drew
them a little aside, but made them tell wholly a different tale from that
which they were intended to tell.* Against them he lays down that
canon, namely, that the parables cannot be in any case the original or the
exclusive foundations of any doctrine, but must be themselves interpreted
according to the analogy of faith; since, if every subtle solution of one
of these might raise itself at once to the dignity and authority of a
Christian doctrine, the rule of faith would be nowhere.   So to build
were to build not on the rock, but on the sand.t
Tertullian has the same conflict to maintain. The whole scheme of
the Gnostics was a great floating cloud-palace, the figment of their own
brain, and having no counterpart in the actual world of realities. They
* In a striking passage (Adv. Hesr,, 1.1, c. 8), he likens their dealing with Scripture, their violent transpositions of it till it became altogether a different thing in
their hands, to their fraud, who should break up some work of exquisite mosaic,
wrought by a skilful artificer to present the effigy of a king, and should then
recompose the pieces upon some wholly different plan, and make them to express
some vile image of a fox or dog, hoping that, since they could point to the stones
as being the hame, they should be able to persuade the simple that this was the,
king's image still.
t Thus Con. Haer., 1. 2, c. 27. Et ide6 parabolas debent non ambiguis adaptari:
sic enim et qui absolvit sine periculo absolvit, et parabolas ab omnibus similiter
absolutionem accipient: et a veritate corpus integrum, et simili aptatione membrorum et sine concussione perseverat. Sed quse non aperte dicta sunt neque ante
oculos posita, copulare absolutionibus parabolarum, quas unusquisque prout vult
adinvenit [stultum est]. Sic enim apud nullum erit regula veritatis, sed quanti
fuerint qui absolvent parabolas, tantae videbuntur veritates pugnantes semet invicem. So too c. 3: Quia autem parabolae possunt multas recipere absolutiones, ex
ipsis de inquisitione Dei affirmare, relinquentes quod certum et indubitatum et
verum est, valde proecipitantium se in periculum et irrationabilium esse, quis non
amantium veritatem confitebitur' et numquid hoc est non in petra firma et valid&
et in aperto positas edificare suam domum, sed in incertum effusse arenae? Unde
et facilis est eversio hujusmodi'edificatlonis. Cf. 1. 2, c. 10; and for an example
of what they were able to bring out of a parable, see the explanations of the Lost
Sheep, and the Lost Piece of Money, 1. 1, c. 16. The miracles were submitted by
them to the same process of interpretation; see 1. 1, c. 7, and 1. 2, c. 24.




42           ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.
could therefore shape or mould it as they would.      They found no
difficulty then in forcing the parables to be upon their side. For they
readily modified their scheme, shaping their doctrine according to the
leadings and suggestions of these, till they brought the two into apparent
agreement with one another. There was nothing to hinder them here;
their doctrine was not a fixed body of divine truth to which they could
neither add nor take away, which was given them from above, and in
which they could only acquiesce: but it was an invention of their own,
and they could invent and fashion it as they pleased, and as best suited
their purposes. We, as Tertullian often says, are kept within limits in
the exposition of the parables, accepting as we do the other Scriptures
as the rule to us of truth, as the rule therefore of their interpretation.
It is otherwise with these heretics; their doctrine is their own; they
can first dexterously adapt it to the parables, and then bring forward
this adaptation as a testimony of its truth.*
As it was with the Gnostics of the early Church, exactly so was it
with the cognate sects of a later day, the Cathari, and Bogomili; they
too found in the parables no teaching about sin and grace and redemption, no truths of the kingdom of God, but fitted to them the speculations
about the creation, the origin of evil, the fall of angels, which were
uppermost in their minds, which they had not drawn from Scripture,
but which having framed, they afterwards turned to Scripture to find if
there was not something there which they could compel to fall into their
scheme. Thus the apostasy of Satan and his drawing after him a part
of the host of heaven, they found set forth by the parable of the Unjust
Steward.   Satan was the chief steward over God's house, whom he
deposed from his place of highest trust, and who then drew after him
the other angels with the suggestion of lighter tasks and relief from the
burdea of their imposed duties.t
* De Pudicitid, c. 8, 9. Among much else which is interesting, he says, HaRretici parabolas quo volunt trahunt, non quo debent, aptissimb excludunt. [His
image is from the workers in gold or rather metals; called exclusores (see Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. liv. 22) from excludere, to strike or stamp out (Du Cange, s. v.)
This meaning of the word excludere is wanting in SCHELLER'S Dictionary.] Quare
aptissimb 1 Quoniam a primordio secundtim occasiones parabolarum, ipsas materias confinxerunt doctrinae. Vacavit scilicet illis solutis i regul& veritatis, ea conquirere atque componere, quorum parabolae videntur. Thus too De Prcese. Heret.,
q. 8, Valentinus non ad materiam Scripturas sed materiam ad Scripturas, excogitavit.
t NEANDER, KzrcA. Gesch., v. 5, p. 1082. They dealt more perversely, and at
the same time more characteristically still, with the parable of the Servant that
owed the ten thousand talents (Ibid, v. 5, p. 1122): This servant too, with whom
the king reckons, is Satan or the Demiurgus, his wife and children whom the king
orders to be sold, the first his Sophia or intelligence, the second the angels subject




ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.                 43
But, though not testifying to evils at all so grave in the devisers of
th, scheme, nor leading altogether out of the region of Christian truth,
yet sufficiently injurious to the sober interpretation of the parables,
is such a theory concerning them as that entertained, and in actual
exposition carried out by Cocceius, and his followers of what we may
call the historico-prophetical school. By the parables, they say, and so
far they have right, are declared the mysteries of the kingdom of God.
But then laying hold of the term, kingdom of God, and understanding
it in far too exclusive a sense, they are determined to find in every one
of the parables a part of the history of that kingdom's progressive
development in the world, to the remotest times. They will not allow
any to be merely for exhortation, for reproof, for instruction in righteousness, but affirm all to be historico-prophetical. Thus, to let one of
them speak for himself, in the remarkable words of Krummacher,*"'The parables of Jesus have not primarily a moral, but a politicoreligious, or theocratic purpose. To use a comparison, we may consider
the kingdom of God carried forward under his guidance, as the action,
gradually unfolding itself, of an Epos, whose first germ lay prepared
long beforehand in the Jewish economy of the Old Testament, but which
through him began to unfold itself, and will continue to do so to the end
of time. The name and subscription of the Epos is, The kingdom of
God. The parables belong essentially to the Gospel of the kingdom,
not merely as containing its doctrine, but its progressive development.
They connect themselves with certain fixed periods of that development,
and, as soon as these periods are completed, lose themselves in the very
completion: that is, considered as independent portions of the Epos,
remaining for us only in the image and external letter." He must mean,
of course, in the same manner and degree as all other fulfilled prophecy
-in the light of such accomplished prophecy, he would say, they must
henceforth be regarded.
Boyle gives some, though a very moderate countenance, to the same
opinion, saying of the parables, " Some, if not most, do, like those oysters
that, besides the meat they afford us, contain pearls, not only include
excellent moralities, but comprise important prophecies;" and having
adduced the Mustard Seed and the Wicked Husbandmen as plainly
to him. God pitied him, and did not take from him his higher intelligence, his
subjects or his goods; he promising, if God would have patience with him, to
create so great a number of men as should supply the place of the fallen angels.
Therefore God gave him permission that for six days, the six thousand years of the
present world, he should bring to pass what he could with the world which he had
created-But this will suffice. 
* Not the Krummacher who is now, or was of late, so popular in England, but
his father, himself the author of a volume of very graceful original parables.




44,ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.
containing such prophecies, he goes on, " I despair not to see unheeded
prophecies disclosed in others of them."?  Vitringa's Elucidation of the
Parablest is a practical application of this scheme of interpretation, and
one which certainly is not calculated to give one a very favorable opinion
of it. As a specimen, the servant owing the ten thousand talents (Matt.
xviii. 23), is the Pope, or line of Popes, placed in highest trust in the
Church, but who, misusing the powers committed to them, were warned
by the invasion of Goths, Lombards, and other barbarians, of judgment
at the door, and indeed seemed given into their hands for punishment;
but being mercifully delivered from this fear of imminent destruction af'
the time of Charlemagne, so far from repenting and amending, on tht
contrary, now more than ever oppressed and maltreated        the true
servants of God, and who therefore should be delivered over to ar
irreversible doom.  He gives a yet more marvellous explanation of the
Merchant seeking goodly pearls, this pearl of price being the church of
Geneva! and the doctrine of Calvin opposed to all the abortive pearls.
that is, to all the other reformed Churches. Other examples may be
found in Cocceius-an interpretation, for instance, of the Ten Virgins,
after this same fashion.t Deyling has an interesting essay on this schooi
of interpreters, and passes a severe, though certainly not undeserved,
condemnation on them.~ Prophetical, no doubt, many of the parables
are, for they declare how the new element of life, which the Lord was
bringing into men's hearts and into the world, would work-the future
* On the Style of the Holy Scriptures: Fifth Objection. There is nothing ner
however in this scheme, for it is evident from many passages, that Origen had very
much the same belief. I would refer particularly to what he says on the parable
of the Laborers in the Vineyard (Comm. in Matth. xx.), where he seems to laboe
nnder the sense of some great undisclosed mystery concerning the future destinies
jf the kingdom of God, lying hidden in that parable. St. Ambrose (Apolog. At.
David, c. 57) gives a strange historico-prophetical interpretation of Nathai'sa
parable of the Ewe Lamb: and Hippolytus (De Antichristo, c. 57), of the UnjuAt
Judge.
t Erkldrung der Parabolen.-Being published, not like most of his other works io
Latin, but originally in Dutch, it is far less known, as indeed it deserves to be, than
his other oftentimes very valuable works. I have made use of a German transla.
tion, Frankfort, 1717. The volume consists of more than a thousand rather closelyprinted pages, and has wonderfully little grain to be winnowed out from a most
unreasonable proportion of chaff.
f Schol. in Matth. xxv. More are to be found in GURTLER:S SYSt. Theol. Proph.,
as at pp. 542, 676. Deusingius, Teelman, D'Outrein, Solomon Van Till, may be
named among the other chief writers of this school.
~ Obss. Sac., v. 5, p. 8831, seq. He notes how the same scheme of interpretation
has been applied by the same school of interpreters to the miracles. Of this
various examples may be found in LAMPE'S Commentary on St. John,-see, for instance, on the feeding of the five thousand (John vi.). They form the weakest
part of a book which contains in other respects much that is admirable.




ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.               45
influences and results of his doctrine-that the little mustard-seed would
grow to a great tree-that the leaven would continue working till it had
leavened the whole lump. But they declare not so much the facts as
the laws of the kingdom, or the facts only so far as by giving insight
into the laws, they impart a knowledge of the facts. Historico-prophetical are only a few; as for instance, that of the Wicked Husbandmen
which Boyle adduced, in which there is a clear prophecy of the death of
Christ; as that again of the Marriage of the King's Son, in which there
is an equally clear announcement of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the
transfer of the privileges of the kingdom of God from the Jews to the
Gentiles. But this subject will again present itself to us when we have
arrivea at the conclusion of the seven parables contained in the 13th of
St. Matthew.




CHAPTER IV.
ON OTHER PARABLES BESIDES THOSE IN THE SCRIPTURES.
HOWEVER the most perfect specimens of this form of composition,
those by which the comparative value of all other in the like kind are
to be measured, are to be found in that Book which is the most perfect
of all books, yet they do not belong exclusively to it. The parable, as
Jerome has noted, is among the favorite vehicles for conveying moral
truth in all the East. Our Lord took possession of it, honored it by
making it his own, by using it as the vehicle for the very highest truth
of all. But there were parables before the parables which issued from
his lips. It seems to belong to our subject to say a little concerning
those, which, though they did not give the pattern to, yet preceded his,
concerning those also which were formed more or less immediately on
the suggestion and in the imitation of his, on the Jewish, that is, and the
Christian. And first upon the Jewish parables.
Some indeed have denied, but against all testimony, that this method
of teaching by parables was current among the Jews before our Saviour's
time. To this they had been mainly led by the fear lest it should detract from his glory, to suppose that he had availed himself of a manner
of teaching already in use. Yet surely the anxiety which has been
often shown, and of which this is a specimen, to cut off the Lord's
teaching from all living connection with his age and country is very
idle, and the suspicion with which parallels from the uninspired Jewish
writings have been regarded, altogether misplaced.  It is the same
anxiety which would cut off the Mosaic legislation and institutions altogether from Egypt;* which cannot with honesty be done, and which,
in truth, there is no object whatever in attempting. For if Christianity
be indeed the world-religion, it must gather into one all dispersed rays
* The attempt fails even when made by so able and learned a man as Witsius.
It is not from grounds such as he occupies in his tZgyptiaca, that books like SPENCER'S De Legibus Hebraeorum can be answered.




PARABLES NOT IN THE SCRIPTURES.                   47
of light: it must appropriate to itself all elements of truth which are
any where scattered abroad, not thus adopting what is alien, but rather
claiming what is its own.* There cannot be a doubt that our blessed
Lord so spake, as that his doctrine, according to its outward form, should
commend itself to his countrymen. There were inner obstacles enough
to their receiving of it; need was it therefore that outwardly it should
be attractive. Thus he appealed to proverbs in common use among
them. He quoted the traditionary speeches of their elder Rabbis, to
refute, to enlarge, or to correct them. When he found the theological
terms of their schools capable of bearing the burden of the new truth
which he laid upon them, he willingly used them;t and in using, did
not deny their old meaning, yet at the same time glorified and transformed it into something far higher. He used them, but all his words
being creative, and he making all things new, he breathed into them
also a new spirit of life. The prayer, " Thy kingdom come," formed
already a part of the Jewish liturgy, yet not the less was it a new prayer
on the lips of all who had realized in any measure the idea of the
kingdom, and what was signified by the coming of that kingdom, as
he first had enabled them  to realize it.  So,' Peace be unto you!"
was no doubt an ordinary salutation among the Jews long before, yet
having how much deeper a significance, and one how altogether new
upon his lips who was our Peace, and who, first causing us to enter ourselves into the peace of God, enabled us truly to wish peace, and to
speak peace, to our brethren. In like manner also it is not to be doubted
that a proselyte was in the Jewish schools entitled, "a new creature,'
and his passing over to Judaism was called " a new birth;"t yet were
these terms used, as far as we can see, to express a change only in his
outward relations-that his kinsmen were his kinsmen no more; it remained for Christ and his apostles to appropriate them to the higher
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Nor less is it certain that the
illustrating of doctrines by the help of parables, or briefer comparisons,
was eminently in use among the Jewish teachers,~ so that it might also
* In the words of CLEMENT (Strom., 1. 1, c. 13): AvvaMr  aX4eiLa Yvvay&dyeLv T
oKcefia TrPACpaTa, KyV els T-rV &AAo8arov KIc7rE'OL y7av.
t There is an interesting Essay in this point of view by Schoettgen (Hor. Heb.,
v. 2, p. 883,) with the title Christus Rabbinorum summus. In the same way the
whole coloring of Ezekiel's visions, and the symbols which he uses, are Persian
and Babylonian throughout, they belong, that is, to the world in which he lived
and moved; yet the distinction remains as wide as ever between a Magian or Chaldasan soothsayer and a prophet of the living God.
X SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Heb., v. 1, pp. 328, 704.' VITRINGA, De Synagoga, p. 678, seq. Hillel and Schammai were the most
illustrious teachers by parables before the time of our Saviour; R. Meir immediately after. With this last, as the tradition goes, the power of inventing para



48               ON OTHER PARABLES BESIDES
be said of them as of him, that without a parable they taught nothing.
The very formulas with which their parables were introduced were the
same as those we find in the Gospels; for instance, the question.' Whereunto shall I liken it?" is of continual recurrence. But what then? it
was not in the newness of the forms, but in the newness of the spirit,
that the glory and superior excellency of Christ's doctrine consisted.
As some may not be displeased to see what these Jewish parables
are like, I will quote, not as sometimes has been done, the worst, but
the best which I have had the fortune to meet. The following is occasioned by a question which has arisen, namely, Why the good so often
die young? It is answered, that God foresees that if they lived they
would fall into sin. "To what is this like?  It is like a king who,
walking in his garden, saw some roses which were yet buds, breathing
an ineffable sweetness. He thought, If these shed such sweetness while
yet they are buds, what will they do when they are fully blown? After
a while, the king entered the garden anew, thinking to find the roses
now blown, and to delight himself with their fragrance; but arriving at
the place, he found them pale and withered, and yielding no smell. He
exclaimed with regret,'HEad I gathered them while yet tender and
young, and while they gave forth their sweetness, I might have delighted myself with them, but now I have no pleasure in them.' The
next year the king walked in his garden, and finding rosebuds scattering fragrance, he commanded his servants,' Gather them, that I may
enjoy them, before they wither, as last year they did.' "*  The next is
ingenious enough, though a notable specimen of Jewish self-righteousness:-" A man had three friends: being summoned to appear before
the king, he was terrified, and looked for an advocate: the first, whom
he had counted the best, altogether refused to go with him; another
replied that he would accompany him to the door of the palace, but
could not speak for him; the third, whom he had held in least esteem,
appeared with him before the king, and pleaded for him so well as to
procure his deliverance. So every man has three friends, when summoned by death before God, his Judge: the first, whom he most prized,
his money, will not go with him a step; the second, his friends and
kinsmen, accompany him to the tomb, but no further, nor can they deliver him in the judgment; while the third, whom he had in least esteem, the Law and good works, appear with him before the king and
deliver him from condemnation."t But this is in a nobler strain; it is
bles notably declined. This is not hard to understand. The fig-tree of the Jewish
people was withered, and could put forth no fruit any more. (Matt. xxi. 19.)
* SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 682.
t SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 1129. How different is this view of the Law




THOSE IN THE SCRIPTURES.                     49
suggested by those words, "In thy light shall we see light.'  As a
man travelling by night kindled his torch, which, when it was extinguished, he again lit, and again, but at length exclaimed,'How long
shall I weary myself in my way? better to wait till the sun arise, and
when the sun is shining I will pursue my journey'-so the Israelites
were oppressed in Egypt, but delivered by Moses and Aaron. Again
they were subdued by the Babylonians, when Chananiah, Misael, and
Azariah delivered them. Again they were subdued by the Grecians,
when Mattathias and his sons helped them. At length the Romans
overcame them, when they cried to God,' We are weary with the continual alternation of oppression and deliverance; we ask no further
that mortal man may shine upon us, but God, who is holy and blessed
for ever.' "* There is a fine one of the fox, who seeing the fish in great
trouble, darting hither and thither, while the stream was being drawn
with nets, proposed to them  to leap on dry land.  This is put in a
Rabbi's mouth, who, when the Graeco-Syrian kings were threatening
with death all who observed the law, was counselled by his friends to
abandon it. He would say, " We, like the fish in the stream, are indeed
in danger now, but yet, while we continue in obedience to God, we are
in our element; but if, to escape the danger, we forsake that, then we
inevitably perish."t-Again, there is one of much tenderness. to explain
why a proselyte is dearer to the Lord than even a Levite. Such proselyte is compared to a wild goat, which, brought up in the desert, joins
itself freely to the flock, and which is cherished by the shepherd with
especial love; since, that his flock, which from its youth he had put
forth in the morning and brought back at evening, should love him, was
nothing strange; but this,-that the goat, brought up in deserts and
mountains, should attach itself to him, demanded an especial return of
affection — There are besides these a multitude of briefer ones, deservas an advocate with the Judge, from that given by our Lord (Matt. v. 25, 26,) who
compares it to an adversary dragging us before a tribunal where we are certain to
be worsted! This parable, like so much else that is to be found'in the Rabbinical
books, reappears in many quarters; in the Eastern Romance, Barlaam and Josephat, c. 13; and among the traditional sayings of Mahomet. (See VON HAMMER'S
Fundgruben d. Orients, v. 1. p. 315.)
* SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Heb., v. 2, p. 691.
t SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Hieb., v. 1, p. 189.
t SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 377. This too on the resurrection is good
(CoccEIUS, Excerpt. Gem., p. 232): R. Ammin replied to a Sadducee who said,
Numquid pulvis vivet?-Rem tibi hac parabola explicabo. Rex quidam jusserat
k servis suis palatium in loco, qui aqua et limo careret, extrui. Factum. Eo col.
lapso, jussit id resedificari in loco ubi utriusque erat copia. Negant se posse.
Tum ille iratus, Quum abesset aqua et limus, potuistis: nunc quum utrumque adsit, non-possetis.
4




50                 ON OTHER PARABLES BESIDES
ing the title of similitudes rather than of parables. Thus there is one,
urging collection of spirit in prayer, to this effect:-" If a man brought
a request to an earthly monarch, but instead of making it, were to turn
aside and talk with his neighbor, might not the king be justly displeased?"*-In another, the death common to all, tnd the doom after
death so different to each, is likened to a king's retinue entering a city
at a single gate, but afterward lodged within it very differently, according to their several dignity.t' There is a singular one to explain, why
God has not told which command should have the greatest reward for
its keeping.t-In another it is shown how body and soul are partners in
sin, and so will justly be partners in punishment.~
These, with two or three more, which, bearing some resemblance to
Evangelical parables, will be noted in their due places, are the most
memorable which I have met. When these last are brought into
comparison, I think it will be acknowledged that the resemblance is one
lying merely on the surface, and is nothing so extraordinary, as some
writers have given out. Some, indeed, have thought the similarity so
great, as needed in some way or other to be accounted for, and have
supposed that our Lord adopted those which he found in any way fitted
for his purpose, remodelling and improving them as they passed under
his hands. Others suppose that the Jewish parables are of later origin
than those in the Gospels, and that the Rabbis, while they searched the
Christian books for the purpose of ridiculing or gainsaying them,
enriched themselves with their spoils, borrowing sayings and narrations
which they afterwards used, concealing carefully the source from whence
* SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 656. The same comparison with slight
variation occurs in Chrysostom (Hom. 1, in Oziam), and again with further modification, Hom. 51, in Matth.
t SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 388.
t Ibid., v. 4, p. 187.; CoccEIus (Excerpt. Gem., p. 232): Antoninus cum R. Jehuda sancto sic colloquutus aliquando est. Corpus inquit et anima k judicio se liberare possunt.
Quomodo? Corpus dicat, Anima peccavit, nam ex quo illa a me discessit, ecce
lapidis instar sine sensu in sepulcro jacui. Anima autem dicat, Corpus peccavit,
nam ex quo illius laxata sum nexu, ecce volito per aerem avicula in morem. Ad
haec Rabbi, Parabolam, iniquit, tabi dabo. Rex mortalis horto cuidam amcenissimo, in quo maturi fructus essent, duos custodes apposuit, claudum et caecum.
Claudus, visis fructibus, cacum admonuit, ipsum uti in humeros reciperet, quo illos
decerperet, et illi inter se devorarent. Insedit igitur claudus coci cervicibus, decerptosque fructus absumserunt. Aliquanto post tempore venit Domirus horti et
de fructibus requisivit. Cum ctcus, sibi oculos non esse ut videret, et claudus,
sibi pedes deesse, ut accederet. Quid ille? Quum jussisset hunc illius humeris
excipi, utrumque simul judicavit et plexit. Consimiliter faciet Deus: animI corpori indita, pariter animam et corpus judicabit.




THOSE IN THE SCRIPTURES.                      51
they were derived.* But neither of these suppositions seems necessary.
Lightfoot has a collection of such sayings under the title — Wit stolen by
the Jews out of the Gospel;t but neither here, nor in the parallels elsewhere adduced, is the resemblance so striking as to carry any persuasion
to my mind, of the necessity, or even the probability, of a common origin.
The hatred and scorn with which the Jews regarded the sacred books of
the Christians, a hatred which extended to all foreign literature, but
which was felt with especial force in regard to themt makes this last
supposition extremely improbable
The resemblance, after all, is merely such as must needs have founi
place, or at least could with difficulty have been avoided, when the same
external life, and the same outward nature, were used as the common
storehouse, from whence images, illustrations, and examples were drawn
alike by all. Perhaps it will be as well at once to consider one of these
Talmudical parables, frequently compared with one spoken by our Lord.
It is one of the best of those which pretend to any similarity with his,
and has been sometimes likened to that latter part of the Marriage of
the King's Son, which relates to the wedding garment. " The Rabbis
have delivered what follows, on Eccl. xii. 7, where it is written,'The
spirit shall return unto God who gave it.'-He gave it to thee unspotted,
see that thou restore it unspotted to him again. It is like a mortal
king, who distributed royal vestments to his servants. Then those that
were wise, folded them carefully up, and laid them by in the wardrobe;
but those that were foolish went their way, and, clothed in these
garments, engaged in their ordinary work. After a while the king
required his garments again; the wise returned them white as they had
received them; but the foolish, soiled and stained. Then the king was
well pleased with the wise, and said,'Let the vestments be laid up in
the wardrobe, and let these depart in peace;' but he was angry with the
foolish, and said,' Let the vestments be given to be washed, and those
servants be cast into prison:'-so will the Lord do with the bodies of the
righteous, as it is *written, Isai. Ivii. 2; with their souls, 1 Sam. xxxv.
29; but with the bodies of the wicked, Isai. xlviii. 22; lvii. 21; and
with their souls, 1 Sam. xxv. 29."'  But with the exception of a king
* So Carpzow, Storr, Lightfoot, and Pfeiffer (Theol. Jud. atque 1Iohamm., th.
40-43.)
t Erubhin, chap. 20.: GFR6RER'S Urchristenthum, v. 1, p. 115, seq.
i MIRUSCHEN, N. T. ex Talm. illust., p. 117; see others, pp. 111, 194, 195; and
more in WESTEIN'S N. T., pp. 727, 765. Those given by Otto, a converted Jew;
who afterwards relapsed into Judaism, in a book entitled Gali Razia, have been
tampered with by him for the purpose of making the resemblance between them
and the Evangelical parables more close, else they would be remarkable indeed.
(PFEIFFER'S TheAL Jud., th. 39.)




52                ON OTHER PARABLES BESIDES
appearing in each, and the matter of praise and condemnation turning
on a garment, what resemblance is there here?  In fact, if we penetrate
a little below the surface, there is more real similarity between this
parable and that of the Talents, as in each case there is the restoration
of a deposit, and a dealing with the servants according to their conduct
in respect of that deposit.  But then, how remote a likeness! and how
capricious the whole! The distributing of garments which were not to
be worn, and, afterwards reclaiming them,-what analogy has this to
any thing in actual life?* —how different from  the probability that a
nobleman, going into a distant country, should distribute his goods to
his servants, and returning, demand from them an account.t-There are
no parables in the apocryphal Gospels. Indeed, where a moral element
is altogether wanting, as in these worthless forgeries, it was only to be
expected that this, as every other form of communicating spiritual truth,
should be absent from them.
This much in regard of the Jewish parables. Among the Fathers of
the Christian Church there are not many, as far as I am aware, who
have professedly constructed parables for the setting forth of spiritual
mysteries. Two or three such parables are to be found in the third
book of the Shepherd of Hermas. The whole of that third book is indeed parabolical, as it sets forth spiritual truths under sensuous images,
only it does this chiefly in visions, that is, parables for the eye rather
than for the ear. There are, however, parables in the strictest sense of
the word; this for example,t which is, I think, an improved form of the
rabbinical parable last quoted: " Restore to the Lord the spirit entire as
thou hast received it: for if thou gavest to a fuller a garment which was
entire, and desiredst so to receive it again, but the fuller restored it to
thee rent, wouldest thou receive it? wouldest thou not say in anger,'I delivered to thee my garment entire, wherefore hast thou torn it and
* This, with so many other of the Rabbinical parables, sins almost against every
rule given as needful to be observed in such an invented tale, if it is to carry any
power of conviction with it, by the author of the treatise, Ad Heren~nium, i. 9:
Verisimilis narratio erit, si ut mos, ut opinio, ut natura postulat, dicemus; si spatia
temporum, personarum dignitates, consiliorum rationes, locorum opportunitates
constabunt, ne refelli possit, aut temporis parum fuisse, aut causam nullam, aut
locum idoneum non fuisse, aut homines ipsos facere aut pati non potuisse.-But
how wonderfully do all these requisites meet in the parables of the New Testament!
t Unger (De Parab. Jes. Nat., p. 162) observes that he has gone into this conm
parison of the Evangelical with the Jewish parables,-Partim ut absterreremur h
solito rAbbinicos locos doctrine Jesu quodammodo sequiparandi pruritu ac levitate,
interdum ad interpretationem juvandam parum utili,...partim ut inde magis ag.
aosceremus parabolarum Jesu praestantiam.
t Simil. 9, 32, cf. Simil. 5, 2.




THOSE IN THE SCRIPTURES.                       53
made it useless? It is now, on account of the rent which thou hast
made in it, of no more service to me.' If thou then grievest for thy
garment, and complainest because thou receivest it not entire again,
how, thinkest thou, will the Lord deal with thee, who gave thee a perfect
spirit, but which spirit, thou hast marred, so that it can be of no more
service to its Lord? for it became useless when it was corrupted by
thee." —There are a good many parables, regularly brought forward as
such, in the writings of Ephraem Syrus, but such of these as I am
acquainted with, are very far from felicitous: indeed they could scarcely
be tamer than they are.*-Eadmer, a disciple of Anselm, has preserved
a sort of basket of fragments from    his sermons and his table-talk.
Among these there are so many of his.similitudes and illustrations as
to give a name to the whole collection.t There are not a few complete
parables here, though none perhaps of that beauty which the works that
come directly from him might have led us to expect.
Far better are those interspersed through the Greek religious romance
ofithe seventh or eighth century, Barlaam and Josaphat, ascribed, without, I believe, any sufficient grounds, to St. John of Damascus, and often
printed with his works.   They have been justly admired,; yet more
* This is the best that I know, of which, however, I only judge in its Latin
translation: Duo homines proficiscebantur ad quandam civitatem, quae stadiis aberat triginta. Chm autem jam duo ant tria confecissent stadia, obtulit se in via
locus, in quo sylvae et arbores erant umbrosae, fluentaque aquarum, multaque ibidem delectatio. Qui dum contemplarentur ista, alter quidem ad urbem spectandam contendens, instar cursoris locum prseteribat; alter vero, cam constitisset ut
contemplaretur, remansit. Deinde cam prodire jam vellet extra arborum umbram,
calores timuit, atque ita diutius ibidem loci dum remaneret, locique simul amceni.
tate sese delectaret atque occuparet, bestia ex iis que in sylva commorantur prodiit, apprehensumque ipsum pertraxit in suum antrum: alter verb qui neque iter
neglexisset, neque forma arborum se detineri passus esset, recta ad urbem perrexit.
See also Paranes., 21, 28.
t De S. Anselm; Similitudinsbus. It is published at the end of the Benedict.
edit. of St. Anselm. I do not know whether I can find a better than this, upon
the keeping of the heart with all diligence, of which, however, I can quote no more
than is necessary for giving an insight into the whole (c. 41): Cor etenim nostrum
simile est molendino semper molenti, quod Dominus quidam cuidam servo suo custodiendum dedit: praecipiens ei ut suam tantim annonam in eo molat, et ex eodem
quod moluerit, ipse vivat. Verim illi servo quidam inimicatur, qui si quando
illud vacuum invenerit, aut arenam ibi statinl projicit, quae illud dissipat; ant
picam, que conglutinat; aut aliquid quod fbedat; aut paleam quae tantam illud
occupat. Servus igitur ille si molendinum suum bene custodierit, Dominique sui
taatum annonam in illo moluerit, et Domino suo servit, sibique ipsi victum acquiri;. Hoc itaque molendinum semper aliquid molens cor est humanum, assidui
aliquid cogitans. Cf. c. 42, 46.: See DUNLOP'S History of Fiction, London, 1845, p. 40, seq.




54                 ON OTHER PARABLES BESIDES
than one of them is certainly not original, being easily traced up to ear
lier sources. A very interesting one will be found in the note below "
Those which are entitled parables in the writings of St. Bernard,;
which, whether they be his or no, have much of beauty and instruction
in them, are rather allegories than parables, and so do not claim here to
be considered. But if parables, which are professedly such, are not of
frequent occurrence in the works of the early Church writers, the parabolical element is, notwithstanding, very predominant in their teaching.
This was only to be expected, especially in their homilies, which are
popular in the truest and best sense of the word. What boundless stores,
for instance, of happy illustration, which might with the greatest ease
be thrown into the forms of parables, are laid up in the writings of St.
Augustine.   One is only perplexed amid the endless variety what instances to select: but we may take this one as an example. He is
speaking of the Son of God and the sinner in the same world, and appearing under the same conditions of humanity; "But," he proceeds,
* Urbem quandam magnam exstitisse accepi, in qua cives hoc in more et institute positum habebant, ut peregrinum quendam et ignotum virum, ac legum consuetudinum civitatis omnino rudem et ignarum acciperent, eumque sibi ipsis regem
constituerent, penes quem per unius anni curriculum rerum omnium potestas esset,
quique liberb et sine ullo impedimento quicquid vellet, faceret. Post autem, dum
ille omni prorsus cur& vacuns degeret, atque in luxu et deliciis sine ullo metu
versaretur, perpetuumque sibi regnum fore existimaret, repente adversus eum
insurgentes, regiamque ipsi vestem detrahentes, ac nudum per totam urbem tanquam in triumphum agentes, in magnam quandam et longb remotam insulam eum
relegabant, in qua nec victu nec indumentiA suppetentibus, fame ac nuditate miserimre premebatur, voluptate scilicet atque animi hilaritate, quae praeter spem ipsi
concessa fuerat, in mverorem rursus praeter spem omnem et expectationem commutata. Contigit ergo ut pro antique civium illorum more atque institute vir quidam
magno ingenii acumine praeditus ad regnum ascisceretur. Qui statim subita ea
felicitate, quae ipsi obtigerat, haudquaquam preceps abreptus, nec eorum qui ante
se regiam dignitatem obtinuerant, miserbque ejecti fuerant, incuriam imitatus,
animo anxio et solicito id agitabat, quonam pacto rebus suis optimb consuleret.
Dum ergo crebra meditatione haec secum versaret, per sapientissimum quendam
consiliarium de civium consuetudine ac perpetui exilii loco certior factus est: quonam pacto sine ullo errore ipse sibi cavere deberet, intellexit. CMm igitur hoc
cognovisset, futurumque propediem, ut ad illam insulam ablegaretur, atque adventitium illud et alienum regnum allis relinqueret, patefactis thesauris suis, quorum
tune promptum ac liberum usum habebat, aurique atque argenti ac preciosorum
lapidum ingenti mole famulis quibusdam quos fidissimos habebat, tradita, ad eam
insulam, ad quam abducendus erat, premisit. Vertente autem anno cives commota
seditione nudum eum quemadmodilm superiores reges, in exilium miserunt. Ac
cseteri quidem amentes, et brevis temporis reges, gravissim& fame laborabant: ille
contra qui opes suas premiserat, in perpetu& rerum copia vitam ducens, atque
infinit& voluptate fruens, perfidorum ac sceleratorum civium metu prorsus abjectoc
sapientissimi consilii sui nomine beatum se proedicabat. Compare 1 Tim. vi. 19.
f In the Benedictine edition, v. 1, p. 1251, seq.




THOSE IN THE SCRIPTURES.                        55
"how great a difference there is between the prisoner in his dungeon
and the visitor that has come to see him. They are both within the walls
of the dungeon: one who did not know might suppose them under equal
restraint, but one is the compassionate visitor who can use his freedom
when he will, the other is fast bound there for his offences. So great is
the difference between Christ, the compassionate visitor of man, and
man himself, the criminal in bondage for his offences."* Or rebuking
them that dare in their ignorance to find fault with the arrangements of
Providence:-" If you entered the workshop of a blacksmith, you would
not dare to find fault with his bellows, anvils, hammers.  If you hadnot the skill of a workman, but the consideration of a man, what would
you say?'It is not without cause the bellows are placed here; the
artificer knew, though I do not know, the reason.' You would not venture to find fault with the blacksmith in his shop, and do you dare to
find fault with God in the world?"t-Chrysostom, too, is very rich in
such similitudes, which need nothing to be parables, except that they
should be presented for such; as for instance, when speaking of the exaltation of outward nature, the redemption of the creature, which shall
accompany the manifestation of the sons of God, he says, "To what is
the creation like? It is like a nurse that has brought up a royal child,
and when he ascends his paternal throne, she too rejoices with him,
and is partaker of the benefit."t  But the field here opening before us
is too wide to enter on.~ It is of parables strictly so called, and not all
of these, 1 but of such only as are found in the New Testament, that
* In Ep. 1 Joh., Tract. 2.
t Enarr. in Ps. cxlviii. He has something perhaps more nearly approaching
in its form to a parable than either of these, Enarr. in Ps. ciii. 26.
Horn. in Rom. viii. 19.
( I will not, however, deny myself the pleasure of transcribing the following
parable from H. de Sto. Victore (De Sacram., 1. 2, pars 14, c. 8): Pater quidam
contumacem filium quasi cum magno furore expulit, ut ita afflictus humiliari disceret. Sed illo in contumacia su& persistente, quadam secret& dispensatione consilii a patre mater mittitur, ut non quasi a patre missa, sed quasi materna per se
pietate ducta veniens muliebri lenitate obstinatum demulceat, contumacem ad
humilitatem flectat, vehementer patrem iratum nuntiet, se tamen interventuram
spondeat, consilium salutis suggerat,.... non nisi magnis precibus patrem placarl posse dicat; causam tamen rei se suscepturam asserat, et ad bonam finem
rem omnem se perducturam promittat. The mother here he presently explains
as divine Grace.-Readers that have at hand POIRET'S remarkable work, (Economi
Divina, may find a parable (v. 2, p. 554), 1. 5, c. 9, 5 26, which is too long to
quote, but is worthy a reference; and another in SALMERON'S Serm. in Parab.
Evang., p. 300.
[1 One Persian, however, I will quote for its deep significance. I take it from
DESLONGCHAMPS' Fables Indiennes, p. 64. The Persian moralist is speaking of the
manner in which frivolous and sensual pleasures cause men to forget all the deeper




56              PARABLES NOT IN THE SCRIPTURES.
it is my wish to speak: and these I would now proceed severally and in
order to consider.
interests of their spiritual being: On ne peut mieux assimiler le genre humain qu't
un homme qui, fuyant un 6elphant furieux, est descendu dans un puits, il s'est
accroch6 k deux rameaux qui en couvrent l'orifice; et ses pieds se sont poses sur
quelque chose qui forme une saillie dans l'interieur du meme puits: ce sont quatre
serpens qui sortent leurs totes hors de leur repaires; il appergoit au fond du puits,
un dragon qui gueule ouverte n'attend que l'instant de sa chAte pour le devorer.
Ses regards se portent vers les deux rameaux auquels il est suspendu, et il voit h
leur naissance deux rats, l'un noir, l'autre blanc, qui ne cessent de les ronger. Un
autre objet cependant-se presente a sa vue: c'est une ruche remplie de mouches a
miel, il se met B manger de leur miel, et le plaisir qu'il y trouve lui fait oublier les
serpens sur lesquels reposent ses pieds, les rats qui rongent les rameaux auxquels
il est suspendu, et le danger dont il est menace k chaque instant, de devenir la
proie du dragon qui guette le moment de sa chfte pour le d6vorer. Son 6tourderie et son illusion ne cessent qu'avec son existence. Ce puits c'est le monde rempli
de dangers et de misbres; les quatre serpens ce sont les quatres humeurs dont le
melange forme notre corps, mais qui, lorsque leur 6quilibre est rompu, deviennent
autant de poisons mortels; ces deux rats, l'un noir, l'autre blanc, ce sont le jour et
la nuit, dont la succession consume la duree de notre vie; le dragon c'est le terme
inevitable qui nous attend tous; le miel, enfin, ce sont les plaisirs des ses dont la
fausse douceur, nous seduit et nous d6tourne du chemin oA nous devons marcher.
This is again, with some slight alterations, to be found among the specimens of the
great mystical poet of Persia, Dschelaleddin, given by Von Hammer (Gesch. d.
schon. Redek. Pers., p. 183), in Barlaam and Josaphat, c. 12, and elsewhere. In
S. DE SACY'S Chrest. Arabe (v. 2, p. 364) there is a parable by an Arabian author
which bears some resemblance, particularly at its opening, to that of the talents;
and in THOLUCK'S Bluthensammlung aus d. Morgenl. Myst., there are several para.
bles from the mystical poets of Persia, for instance, a beautiful one, p. 106.




PARABLES.
I.
THE SOWER.
MATr. xiii. 3-8, and 18-23; MARK iv. 4-8, and 14-21;
LuKE viii. 5-8, and 11-15.
IT is evidently the purpose of St. Matthew to present to his readers
the parables recorded in the thirteenth chapter of his Gospel as the first
which the Lord spoke; with this of the Sower he commenced a manner
of teaching which he had not hitherto used. This is sufficiently indicated by the question which the disciples asked, "Why speakest thou
unto them in parables?" (ver. 10), and the answer which our Lord gave
(ver. 11-17), in which he justifies his use of this method of teaching, and
declares the purpose which he had in adopting it; and no less so, when
he seems to consider this parable as the fundamental one, on the right
understanding of which, would depend their comprehension of all which
were te follow-" Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know
all parables?" (Mark iv. 13.) And as this was the first occasion on
which he brought forth these things new out of his treasure (see ver. 22),
so was it the occasion on which he brought them forth with the largest
hand. We have not any where else in the Gospels so rich a group of
parables assembled together, so many and so costly pearls strung upon
a single thread. The only passage that will bear comparison is chapters xv. and xvi. of St. Luke, where there are recorded five parables that
were all apparently spoken on the same occasion. The seven that are
here recorded divide themselves into two smaller groups,-the first four
being spoken to the multitude while he taught them out of the ship,the three last, as it would seem, on the same day, in the narrower circle
of his disciplesat his own home.




58                         THE SOWER.
Before proceeding to consider the parables themselves, let us seek to
realize to ourselves, and to picture vividly to our minds the aspect which
the outward nature wore, and what the scenery was with which our
blessed Lord and the listening multitudes were surrounded. St. Matthew tells us that " Jesus went out from the house," probably at Capernaum, which was the city where he commonly dwelt after his open ministry began (Matt. iv. 13), " his own city" (Matt. ix. 1), and which was
close by the sea-shore,* and going out he " sat down by the sea-side,"
that is, by the lake of Genesareth, the scene of so many incidents in his
ministry.  This lake (now Bahr Tabaria) goes by many names in the
Gospels.  It is often called simply "the sea" (Mark iv. 1), or "the
Sea of Galilee" (Matt. xv. 29, John vi. 1), or, "the sea of Tiberias"
(John xxi. 1), though indeed it was an inland lake of no very great extent, being but about sixteen miles in length, and no more than six in
breadth. But it might well claim regard for its beauty, if not for its
extent: the Jewish writers would have it that it was beloved of God
above all the waters of Canaan, and indeed almost all ancient authors
that have mentioned it, as well as modern travellers, speak in glowing
terms of the beauty and rich fertility of its banks. Hence sometimes
its name Genesareth has been derived, which some interpret "the garden of riches,"t though the derivation, I believe, is insecure. And even
now, when the land is crushed under the rod of Turkish misrule, many
traces of its former beauty remain, many evidences of the fertility which
its shores will again assume in the day which assuredly cannot be very
far off, when that rod shall be lightened from them. It is true that the
olive-gardens and vineyards, which once crowned the high and romantic
hills with which it is bounded on the east and the west, have disappeared; but the citron, the orange, and the date-tree, are still found in
rich abundance; and in the higher regions, the products of a more temperate zone meet together with these;-while lower down, its banks are
still covered with aromatic shrubs, and its waters are still, as of old,
sweet and wholesome to drink, and always cool, clear, and transparent
to the very bottom, and as gently breaking on the fine white sand with
which its shores are strewn as they did of old, when the feet of the Son
of God trod those sands, or walked upon those waters.f On the edge of
* Toy irapaaaXohaaaay, probably so called to distinguish it from another Capernaum on the brook Kishon.
t Jerome (De Nomin. Heb.) makes Gennesar=hortus principinm.: Josephus (Bell. Jud., 3. 10, 7) rises into high poetical animation while he is
describing its attractions; and in RoHR's Palestina (termed by Giethe, a glorious
book), p. 67, there is a singularly beautiful description of this lake and the neighboring country. See also LIGHTFOOT'S Chorograph. Century, c. 70, 79, and MEUSCHEN, Nov. Test. ex Talm. illust., p. 151. Yet Robinson *(Bibl. Researches, v. 3,




THE SOWER.                             59
this beautiful lake the multitude were assembled, in such numbers, that
probably, as on another occasion (Luke v. 1), they pressed upon the
Lord, so that he found it convenient to enter into a ship; and putting off
a little from the shore, he taught them from it, speaking "many things
unto them in parables."
First in order is the parable of the Sower. It rests, like so many
others, on one of the common familiar doings of daily life. The Lord
lifted up, it may be, his eyes, and saw at no great distance an husbandman scattering his seed in the furrows. As it belongs to the essentially
popular nature of the Gospels, that parables should be found in them
rather than in the Epistles, where indeed they never appear, so it belongs
to the popular character of the parable, that it should thus rest upon the
familiar doings of common life, the matters which occupy
" The talk
Man holds with'week-day man in the hourly walk
Of the world's business;"
while at the same time the Lord, using these to set forth eternal and
spiritual truths, ennobles them, showing, as he does, how they continually reveal and set forth the deepest mysteries of his kingdom. " A sower
went forth to sow, —what a dignity and significance have these few
words, used in the sense in which the Lord here uses them, given in.all
after-times to the toils of the husbandman in the furrow.
The comparison of the relations of the teacher and the taught to those
between the sower and the soil, and of the truth communicated to the
seed sown, is one so deeply grounded in the truest analogies between the
worlds of nature and of spirit, that we must not wonder to find it of frequent recurrence, not merely in Scripture (1 Pet. i. 23; 1 John iii. 9);
but in the works of all the wiser heathens,* of all who have realized in any
p. 253) gives a far less enthusiastic account. He speaks indeed of the lake as a
" beautiful sheet of limpid water in a deeply depressed basin;" but the form of the
hills, "regular and almost unbroken heights" (p. 312), was to his eye "rounded
and tame:" and as it was the middle summer when his visit was made, the verdure
of the spring had already disappeared, and he complains 6f nakedness in the
general aspect of the scenery.
* Grotius has here a particularly rich collection of parallel passages from Greek
and Latin writers; he or others have adduced such from Aristotle, Cicero (Tzisc.
ii. 5), Plutarch, Quintilian, Philo, and many more; but it would not be worth
while merely to repeat their quotations. I do not observe that any have this one
from Seneca (Ep. 73): Deus ad homines venit, im6 (quod propius est) in homines
venit. Semina in corporibus humanis disperso sunt, quse si bonus cultor excipit,
similia origini prodeunt, et paria his ex quibus orta sunt surgunt: si malus, non
aliter quam humus sterilis ac palustris necat, ac deinde creat purgamenta pro
frugibus.




60                          THE SOWER.
measure what teaching means, and what sort of influence the spirit of
one man ought to seek to exercise on the spirits of his fellows, commu
nicating to them living and expanding truths. While all teaching that
is worthy the name is such, while all words, even of men, that are really
words, are as seeds, with a power to take root in the minds and hearts
of those that hear them, contain germs in them that only by degrees
develope themselves;* in a much higher sense must this be true of the
words, or rather of the Word of God, which he spake who was himself
the Seminal Word which he communicated.f Best right of all to the
title of seed has that Word, which exercises not merely a partial working
on the hearts in which it is received, but wholly transforms and renews
them,-that Word by which men are born anew into the kingdom of
God, and of which the effects endure for ever. I cannot doubt that the
Lord intended to set himself forth as the chief sower of the seed, (not,
of course, to the exclusion of the apostles and their successors,) that here,
as well as in the next parable, he that soweth the good seed is the Son of
man; and this, even though he nowhere in the three interpretations of
the present one announces himself as such.t  Indeed, it is difficult to
see how we can stop short of him, when we are seeking to give the full
meaning to the words, " A sower went forth to sow."~ His entrance
into the world was a going forth to sow; the word of the kingdom,
which word he first proclaimed, was his seed; the hearts of men his
soil; —others only were able to sow because he had sown first; they did
but carry on the work which he had auspicated and begun.
"And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way-side [and it was
trodden down (Luke viii. 5)], and the fowls came and devoured them up."
Some, that is, fell on the hard footpath, or road, where the glebe was
not broken, and so it could not sink down in the earth, but lay exposed
on the surface to the feet of passers by, till at length it became an easy
* Thus Shakspeare, of a man of thoughtful wisdom:
" His plausive words
He scattered not in ears but grafted them
To grow there and to bear."
t Salmeron very beautifully (Serm., in Par. Evang., p. 30): Quemadmodm'
Christus Medicus est et medicina, Sacerdos et hostia, Redemptor et redemptio,
Legislator et lex, Janitor et ostium, ita Sator et semen. Nec enim est aliud Evangelium ipsum, quam Christus incarnatus, natus, prtedicans, moriens, resurgens,
mittens Spiritum Sanctum, congregans Ecclesiam, illamque sanctificans et gn.
bernans.
t See, however, the arguments adduced to the contrary by Mr. Greswell (Exp.
of the Par., v. 5, part 2, p. 238).
( Salmeron (Serm. in Parab., p. 29): Dicitur exire per operationem Incarnationis, quL indutus processit tanquanr agricola aptam pluvi.e, soli at frigori vestem
uasamens, cum tamen Rex esset.




THE SOWER.                          61
prey to the birds, such as in the East are described as following in large
flocks the husbandman, to gather up, if they can, the seed-corn which he
has scattered. These words are explained by Christ himself; for of this
parable we have an authentic interpretation, one that has come from his
own lips; and which is important, as has been observed, not merely in
its bearings on the parable itself, as enabling us to feel that we are
treading on sure ground, but also as giving us a key to the explanation
of other parables, instructing us how far we may safely go in the application of their minor circumstances: these words are thus explained:" 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."  St. Luke brings out Satan yet more distinctly as the
adversary and hinderer of the kingdom of God (of which there will be
fuller opportunity of speaking in the following parable), by adding the
reason why he snatches the word away,-" lest they should believe and
be saved."  The words which St. Matthew alone records, " and understandeth it not," are very important for the comprehending of what this
first state of mind and heart is, in which the word of God is unproductive of any, even transitory, effect. The man understands it not; he
does not recognize himself as standing in any relation to the word which
he hears, or to the kingdom of grace which that word proclaims. All
that speaks of man's connection with a higher invisible world, all that
speaks of sin, of redemption, of holiness, is unintelligible to him, and
wholly without significance. But how has he come to this state? He
has brought himself to it; he has exposed his heart as a common road
to every evil influence of the world, till it has become hard as a pavement*-till he has laid waste the very soil in which the word of God
should have taken root; and he has not submitted it to the ploughshare
of the law, which would have broken it; which, if he had suffered it tc
do the work which God appointed it to do, would have gone before, pre
paring that soil to receive the seed of the Gospel. But what renders his
case the more hopeless, and takes away even a possibility of the word
germinating there is, that besides the evil condition of the soil, there is
also One watching to take advantage of that evil condition, to use every
weapon that man puts into his hands, against man's salvation; and he,
lest by possibility such a hearer might believe and be saved, sends his
ministers in the shape of evil thoughts, worldly desires, carnal lusts,
and by their help, as St. Mark records it, " immediately taketh away the
word that was sown in their hearts."  And the Lord concludes,  This
is he that receiveth seed by the way-side."
* H. de Sto Victore (Annott. in Matth.): Via est cor frequenti malarum cogitationem transitu attritum et arefactum. Corn. a Lap: Via est trita secularis et
licentioris vitra consuetudo.




62                          THE SOWER.
Other of the seed; which the sower scattered, appeared to have at
first, but in the end had not truly any better success. For we read
" Somefell upon stony places, where they had not much earth; andforth
with 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" here are to be explained by the
" rock" in St. Luke, and it is important, for the right understanding of
the parable, that the words in St. Matthew, or rather in our translation
of them  (for "rocky places,"-as indeed the Rhemish version has it,would have avoided the possibility of any mistake), do not lead us
astray. A soil mingled with stones is not meant; for these, however
numerous or large, would not certainly hinder the roots from striking
deeply downward, as those roots, with the instinct which they possess,
would feel and find their way, penetrating between the interstices of the
stones, and would so reach the moisture below. But what is meant is
ground, where a thin superficial coating of mould covered the surface of
a rock, which stretched below it and presented an impassable barrier,
rendering it wholly impossible that the roots should penetrate beyond a
certain depth, or draw up any supplies of nourishment from beneath.t
While the seed had not fallen into deep earth, therefore the plant the
sooner appeared above the surface; and while the rock below hindered
it from striking deeply downward, it put forth its energies the more luxuriantly in the stalk. It sprung up without delay, but was not rooted
in that deep moist soil which would have enabled it to resist the scorching heat of the sun, and being smitten by that, withered and died.
Concerning the signification of this part of the parable we learn,
They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with
joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of
temptation fall away."   Though the issue is the same in this case as in
the last, the promise is very different; so far from the heart of this manner of hearer appearing irreceptive of the truth, the good news of the
kingdom  is received at once, and with gladness.: But alas! the joy
*'Avar'AAX7E once occurs transitively in the New Testament, Matt. v. 45; so
Gen. iii. 18, Isai. xlv. 8 (LXX). It is especially used, as in this passage, of the
rising of the sun or stars, Num. xxiv. 17; Isai. Ix. 1; Mal. iv. 2; but also of the
springing up of plants from the earth, Gen. xix. 25; Isai. xliv. 4; Ezek. xvii. 6;
Ps. xci. 7; and so,?eavELrAE, in this present parable. In either sense the title
avaTroAX belongs to Christ, and has been applied to him in both; as he is The
Branch ('AvaToXA4, Zech. vi. 12, Lxx.), and as he is the Day-spring (Luke i. 78).
t Bengel: Non innuunter lapides sparsim in agro jacentes, sed petra sive saxum
continuum, sub terrae superficie tenui.
t Cocceius: Statim lsetari est malum signum, quia non potest non verbum Dei,
si rectt percipiatur, in homine operari displicentiam sui, a&ywvav, angustias, coi
contritum, spiritum fractum: famem ac sitim, denique luctum, ut Servator docuit.
Matt. v.




THE SOWER.                           63
thus suddenly conceived is not, as the sequel too surely proves, a joy
springing up from the contemplation of the greatness of the benefit, even
after all the counterbalancing costs and hazards and sacrifices are taken
into account, but a joy arising from an overlooking and leaving out of
calculation those costs and hazards-which circumstance fatally differences the joy of this class of hearers from that of the finder of the treasure -(Matt. xiii. 44), who for the joy thereof, went and sold all that he
tacd, that he might purchase the field which contained the treasure-that
is, was willing to deny himself all things, and to suffer all things, that
he might win Christ. We have rather here a state of mind not stubbornly repelling the truth, but wofully lacking in all deeper earnestness,
such as that of the great multitudes that went with Jesus, not considering what his discipleship involved,-those multitudes to whom he turned
and told at large, and in the strongest language, what the conditions of
that discipleship were (Luke xiv. 25-33;) exhorting them beforehand
that they should count the cost. This is exactly what the hearer here
described has not done; whatever was fair and beautiful in Christianity
as it first presents itself, had attracted him-its sweet and comfortable
promises,* the moral loveliness of its doctrines; but not its answer to
the deepest needs of the human heart; as neither when he received the
word with gladness, had he contemplated the having to endure hardness
in his warfare with sin and Satan and the world.-" So hath he not root
in himself, but dureth for a while, for when tribulation or persecutzon
ariseth because of the word, by and by he is ofended."  It is not here, as
in the last case, that Satan can merely come and take the word out of
the heart without further trouble; that word has found some place there,
and it needs that he bring some hostile influences to bear against it.
What he brings in the present case are outward or inward trials, these
being compared to the burning heat of the sun.t  It is true, that generally the light and warmth of the sun are used to set forth the genial
and comfortable workings of God's grace, as eminently Mal. iv. 2; but
not always, for see, beside the passage before us, Ps. cxxi. 6; Isai. xlix.
10; Rev. vii. 16. As that heat, had the plant been rooted deeply
enough, would have furthered its growth, and hastened its ripening, fitting it for the sickle and the barn-so these tribulations would have furthered the growth in grace of the true Christian, and ripened him for
heaven. But as the heat scorches the blade which has no deepness of
* Bede: Illa sunt prvecordia qum dulcedine tantium auditi sermonis ac promissis
calestibus ad horam delectantur
t It was with the rising of the sun, that the Kaviowv, the hot desert wind, began
commonly to blow, the deadly effects of which on all vegetation are often alluded to. (Jon. iv. 8: Jam. i. 11.) Plants thus smitten with the heat are called
torrefacta, ^ilov/.eva.




64                           THE SOWER.
earth, and has sprung up on a shallow ground, so the troubles and afflic.
tions which would have strengthened a true faith, cause a faith which
was merely temporary to fail.*  When these afflictions for the word's
sake arrive he is offended, as though some strange thing had happened
to him:t for then are the times of sifting,t and of winnowing; and then
too every one that has no root, or as St. Matthew describes it, no root in
himself, no inward root,~ falls away.
The having that inward root here answers to the having a foundation
on the rock Matt. vii. 25, to the having oil in the vessels elsewhere.
(Matt. xxv. 4.) And the image itself is not an unfrequent one in
Scripture. (Ephes. iii. 17; Col. ii. 7; Jer. xvii. 8; Hos. ix. 16.) It
has a peculiar fitness and beauty,-for as the roots of a tree are out of
sight, yet from them it derives its firmness and stability, so upon the
hidden life of the Christian, that life which is out of the sight of other
men, his firmness and stability depend; and as it is through the hidden
roots that the nourishment is drawn up to the stem and branches, and
the leaf continues green, and the tree does not cease from bearing fruit,
even so in the Christian's hidden life, that life which "is hid with Christ
in God," lie the sources of his strength and of his spiritual prosperity.
Such a root in himself had Peter, who, when many others were offended
and drew back, exclaimed, " To whom shall we go? thou hast the words
of eternal life." (John vi. 68.) This faith that Christ and no other had
the words of eternal life and blessedness, was what constituted his root,
causing him to stand firm when so many fell away. So again when the
Hebrew Christians took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing in
themselves that they had " in heaven a better and an enduring substance"
(Heb. x. 34), this knowledge, this faith concerning their unseen inherit
ance, was the root which enabled them joyfully to take that loss, and not
to draw back unto perdition, as so many had done. Compare 2 Cor. iv
17, 18, where again the faith in the unseen eternal things is the root,
* Augustine is particularly rich in striking sayings on the different effects
which tribulations will have on those that are rooted and grounded in the faith,
and those that are otherwise. Thus (Enarr. in Ps. xxi.) speaking of the furnace
of affliction: Ibi est aurum, ibi est palea, ibi ignis in angusto operatur. Ignis ille
non est diversus, et diversa agit, paleam in cinerem vertit, auro sordes tollit. See
for the same image CHRYSOSTOM, Ad Pop. Antioch., Horn. 4, 1.
t See Job viii. 11, 12, and Umbreit's Nl)te.
t The very word " tribulation," with which we have rendered the AxiLs of the
original, rests upon this image-tribulatio from tribulum, the threshing-roller, and
thus used to signify those afflictive processes by which in the moral discipline of
men God separates their good from their evil, their wheat fr bm their chaff.
~ It is with allusion to this passage no doubt that men of faith are called in the
Greek Fathers, 8aovPiSfoi, 7roXvfpiCo,. Compare with this division of the parable,
the S/iepherd of Hermas, 1. 3, sim. 9, c. 21.




THE SOWER.                           65
which, as St. Paul declares, enables him to count the present affliction
light, and to endure to the end. Demas, on the other hand, lacked that
root. It might at first sight seem as if he would be more correctly
ranged under the third class of hearers; since he forsook Paul, "having
loved this present world." But when we examine more closely what was
Paul's condition at Rome at the moment when Demas left him, we find
it to have been one of great outward trial and danger; so that it would
seem more probable that the immediate cause of his so going back, was
the tribulation which came for the word's sake.*
But thirdly-of the seed which the sower cast, "some fell among
thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked it," or as Wiclif has,
"strangled it,"t so that, as St. Mark adds,  it yielded no fruit."  It is
not that this seed fell so much among thorns that were full grown, as in
ground where the roots of these had not been carefully extirpated, in
ground which had not been thoroughly purged and cleansed; otherwise
it could not be said in the words of Luke, " that the thorns sprang up
with it." They grew together; only the thorns overtopped the good
seed, shut them out from the air and light, drew away from their roots
the moisture and richness of earth, which should have nourished them,
and thus they pined and dwindled in the shade. They grew dwarfed
and stunted, for the best of the soil did not feed them-forming indeed
a blade, but unable to form a full corn in the ear, bringing no fruit
to perfection. It is not here, as in the first case, that there was no soil,
or none deserving the name-nor yet as in the second case, that there
was a poor or shallow soil. Here there was no lack of soil, it might be
good soil; but what was deficient was a careful husbandry, a diligent
eradication of the mischievous growths, which, unless extirpated, would
oppress and strangle whatever-sprung up side by side with them.
Of this part of the parable we have the following explanation-" He
also that received seed among the thorns, is he that heareth the word, and
the carest of this world and the deceitfulness of riches [and the lusts of
other things~ entering in (Mark iv. 19)], choke the word, and he becometh
unfruitful," or, as St. Luke gives it, "they bring no fruit to perfection."H
* See Bernard (De Qffic. Epist., c. 4, ~ 14, 15), for an interesting discussion,
whether the faith of those comprehended under this second head was, so long as it
lasted, real or not,-in fact, on the question whether it be possible to fall from
grace given.
t Columella: Angentem herbam. The image of an evil growth strangling a
nobler, is permanently embodied in our language in the name cockle, given to a
weed well known in our fields-derived from the Anglo-Saxon, ceocan, to choke.: Catullus: Spinosas Erycina serens in pectore curas.'H wrepl Tra XoLrd e7rLav/ua. Winer (Gramm. p. 177) would rather translate,
The lusts about other things (cupiditates quxe circa reliqua versantur).
1[ Ou rEXEOepopovar. The word occurs only here in the New Testament. It is
5




66                           THE SOWER.
It is not here as in the first case, that the word of God is totally ineffeoe
tual; nor yet as in the second case, that after a temporary obedience to
the truth, there is an evident falling away from it, such as the withering
of the stalk indicates: the profession of a spiritual life is retained, the
name to live still remains-but the life and power of religion is by
degrees eaten out and has departed. And to what disastrous influences
are these sad effects attributed? To two things, the cares of this world,
and its pleasures; these are the thorns and briers that strangle the life
of the soul.* It may seem strange at first sight, that these which appear
so opposite to one another, should yet be linked together, and have the
same evil consequences attributed to them: but the Lord does in fact
lere present to us this earthly life on its two sides, under its two aspects.
There is first, its crushing oppressive side, the poor man's toil how to
live at all, to keep hunger and nakedness from the door, the struggle for
a daily subsistence, "the cares of this life,"t which if not met in faith,
hinder the thriving of the spiritual word in the heart. But life has its
flattering as well as its threatening side, its pleasures as well as its cares;
and as those who have heard and received the word of the kingdom with
gladness, are still exposed to be crushed by the cares of life, so on the
other hand, to be deceived by its flatteries and its allurements. In
neither case has the world altogether lost its power, nor is the old man
dead: for awhile he may seem dead, so long as the first joy on account
of the treasure found endures; but unless mortified in earnest, will
presently revive in all his strength anew. Unless the soil of the heart
be diligently watched, the thorns and briers, of which it seemed a
thorough clearance had been made, will again grow up apace, and choke
especially used of a woman bringing her child'to the birth, or a tree its fruit to
maturity.
* See the Shepherd of Hermas, 1. 3, sim. 9, c. 20, for the emblem of the mountain covered with thorns and briers; and so Jer. iv. 3: " Break up your fallow
ground, and sow not among thorns." It is evident that in the great symbolic language of the outward world, these have a peculiar fitness for the expression of
influences hostile to the truth. They are themselves the consequences and evidences of sin, of a curse which has passed on from man to the earth which he inhabits (Gen. iii. 17), till that earth had none other but a thorn-crcwn to yield to its
Lord. It is a sign of the deep fitness of this image that others have been led to
select it, for the setting forth of the same truth. Thus the Pythagorean Lysis
BAUR's Apollonius, p. 192), 7rVKlYal KCal  AdXLua Xlaiz 7repI r&s (cpevas Karl ar  Kcapsiaw
rec1iKavrt'Trwiv Ki Kicaaapws'ro?7 zs Aafzaaav pyiraofevrwv, raPy Trb aepoY Kcal 7rpaov Kat
AO7LO'TLKbV TaS Pvas v tas TaKidova'at, ial Kwxvovcrat rpo4av;Ys Y.evr abvU-q ev tal TrpaKv'aL 7T vor'i7KOv.
t Mipliva from /gpil, that which draws the heart different ways. See Hos. x 2:
"Their heart is divided," i. e. between God and the world; such a heart consti.
tutes the avhp SivXos. (Jam. i. 8.) See Passow, s. v. juepuwa, who quotes Terenco:
Curae animum divorsb trahunt.




THE SOWER.                              67
the good seed.*  While that which God promises is felt to be good, but
also what the world promises is felt to be good also, and a good of the
same kind, instead of a good merely and altogether subordinate to the
other, there will be an attempt made to combine the service of the two,
to serve God and mammon; but the attempt will be in vain-they who
make it will bring no fruit to perfection, will fail to bring forth those
perfect fruits of the Spirit, which it was the purpose of the word of God
to produce in them. The Saviour warns us against the danger which
proves fatal to those in this third condition of heart and mind, when he
says, "Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so
that day come upon you unawares" (Luke xxi. 34): and St. Paul when
he writes, " They that will be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and
into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and
perdition."  (1 Tim. vi. 9; see Matt. vi. 25-34.)t
But it is not all the seed which thus sooner or later perishes.  The
spiritual husbandman is to sow in hope, knowing that with the blessing
of the Lord, he will not always sow in vain, that a part will prosper.:
" Other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some a hundred
* Thus with a deep heart-knowledge Thauler (Dom. 22 post. Trin., Serm. 2):
Nostis ipsi, quod dum ager sive hortus a loliis ac zizaniis expurgatur, ut plurimum
radices quaedam zizaniorum in terrea visceribus maneant, ita tamen ut minime deprehendantur. Interim humus diligentur conseritur atque sarritur: ubi dum bona
semina oriri deberent, simul zizania ex radicibus terrme fixis succrescunt, et frumentum aliasque herbas et semina bona destruent opprimentque. Sic ergo et in
presenti loco radices dico, pravos quosque defectus et vitia in fundo latentia, et
necdum mortificata: quae per confessionem et poenitentiam, ut ita dicam, sarrita
quidem sunt, et per bona exercitia exarata: attamen vitiosarum radicum malte
inclinationes seu propensiones, puta vel superbise vel luxurie, irse vel invidie, seu
odii hisque similium in ipso fundo relictas sunt, qum postea exoriuntur, et ubi divina, beata, virtuosa, laudabilis vita ex homine germinare, succrescere, oriri deberet, hmc pessima noxiarum radicum germina prodeunt, fructusque illius ac religiosam devotamque dispergunt, extinguunt, obruunt vitam.
t Ovid's description (Metamorph., 1. 5, v. 463-466,) of the things which hinder
the returns of a harvest exactly include, with a few slight additions, those which
our Lord has given; though the order is a little different:
Et modb sol nimius, nimius modb corripit imber;
Sideraque ventique nocent; avidaEque volucres
Semina jacta legunt; lolium tribulique fatigant
Triticeas messes, et inexpugnabile gramen.
4 Thus the author of a sermon Augustini Opp., v. 6, p. 597, Bened. ed.: N'on
ergo nos, dilectissimi, aut timor spinarum, aut saxa petrarum, aut durissima via
perterreat: dum tamen seminantes verbum Dei ad terrai bonam tandem aliquande
pervenire ]ossimus. Accipe verbum Dei, omnis ager, omnis homo, sive stcrilis.
sive fdedus. Ego spargam, tu vide quomodo accipias: ego erogem, tu vidi qualea
fructus reddas.




68                          THE SOWER.
fold, some sixty fold, some thirty fold."  St. Luke says simply,' and
bare fruit a hundred fold," leaving out the two lesser proportions of
return which St. Mark gives; who, however, reverses the order of the
three, beginning from the smallest return, and ascending to the highest.
The return of a hundred for one is not unheard of in the East, though
always mentioned as something extraordinary; thus it is said of Isaac,
that he sowed,' and received in the same year a hundred fold, and the
Lord blessed him" (Gen. xxvi. 12); and other examples of the same
kind are not wanting.*
We learn that "he that receiveth seed into the good ground, is he that
heareth the word and understandeth it, which also beareth fruit, and
bringeth forth some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty," or with
the important variation of St. Luke, "that on the good ground are they,
who in an honest and good heart having heard the word keep it,t and
bring forth fruit with patience"-important, because in it comes distinctly forward a difficulty, which equally existed in the parable as
recorded by the other Evangelists, but did not come forward with an
equal distinctness, and yet on the right solution of which a successful
interpretation must altogether depend.  What is this "honest and good
heart?" how can any heart be called good, before the Word and Spirit
have made it so?-and yet here the seed finds a good soil, does not
make it. The same question recurs, when the Lord says, <" He that is
of God, heareth God's words" (John viii. 41); and again, "Every one
that is of the truth heareth my voice " (John xviii. 37). But who in
this sinful world can be called "of the truth," for is it not the universal
doctrine of the Bible that men become " of the truth " through hearing
Christ's words, not that they hear his words because they are of the truth
-that the heart is good, through receiving the word, not that it receives
the word because it is good?t This is certainly the scriptural doctrine,
but at the same time those passages from St. John, as well as this present
* Herodotus mentions that two hundred fold was a common return in the plain
of Bdbylon, and sometimes three; and Niebuhr (Beschreib. v. Arab., p. 153), mentions a species of maize that returns four hundred fold: Wetstein (in loc.; has
collected many examples from antiquity of returns as great as, or far greater than,
that mentioned in the text.
} KaTrXova'l. So John viii. 51, rpei, TrbV xdhov, to hold fast the word. St.
Mark also has an instructive word, Irapae~XovrTa, they receive it into their inward
life and soul. 
T Augustine (In Ev. Jok., Tract. 12), puts the difficulty and solves it in this
manner: Quid est hoc? quorum enim erant bona opera? Nonne venisti ut justifices impios — He replies: Initium operum bonorum confessio est operum maloo
rmm. Facis veritatem, et venis ad lucem. Quid est, facis veritatem I non te pal.,pas, non tibi blandiris, non tibi adularis, non dicis, Justus sum, cAm sis iniquias
et incipis facere veritatem.




THE SOWER.                          69
parable, and much more also in the Scripture, bear witness to the fact
that there are conditions of heart in which the truth finds readier
entrance than in others.  "Being of the truth,"-"doing truth,"having the soil of "an honest and good heart,"-all signify the same
thing. Inasmuch as they are anterior to hearing God's words-coming to
the light-bringing forth fruit-they cannot signify a state of mind and
heart in which the truth is positive and realized, but they indicate one
in which there is a receptivity for the truth. No heart can be said to
be absolutely a good soil, as none is good save God only. And yet the
Scripture speaks often of good men; even so comparatively it may be
said of some hearts, that they are a soil fitter for receiving the seed of
everlasting life than others. Thus the "son of peace" will alone receive
the message of peace (Luke x. 6), while yet not any thing except the
reception of that message will make him truly a son of peace. He was
before indeed a latent son of peace, but it is the Gospel which first
makes actual that which was hitherto only potential.  So that the
preaching of the Gospel may be likened to the scattering of sparks:
where they find tinder, there they fasten, and kindle into a flame; or to
a lodestone thrust in among the world's rubbish, attracting to itself all
particles of true metal, which yet but for this would never and could
never have extricated themselves from the surrounding heap.
Not otherwise among those to whom the word of Christ, as actually
preached by himself, came, there were two divisions of men, and the same
will always subsist in the world. There were first the false-hearted, who
called evil good and good evil-who loved their darkness and hated the
light that would make that darkness manifest, and refused to walk in
that light of the Lord even when it shone round about them, drawing
back further into their own darkness-self-excusers and self-justifiers,
such as were for the most part the Scribes and the Pharisees, with
whom Christ came in contact. But there were also others, sinners as
well, often as regards actual transgression of positive law much greater
sinners than those first, but who yet acknowledged their evil-had no
wish to alter the everlasting relations between right and wrong-who,
when the light appeared, did not refuse to be drawn to it, even though
they knew that it would condemn their darkness-that it would require
an entire remodelling of their lives and hearts: such were the Matthews
and the Zacchaeuses, all who confessed their deeds justifying God. Not
that I would prefer to instance these as examples of the good and honest
heart, except in so far as it is needful to guard against a Pelagian abuse
of the phrase, and to show how the Lord's language here does not condemn even great and grievous sinners to an incapacity for receiving the
word of life. Nathanael would be a yet more perfect specimen of the
class here alluded to-" the Israelite indeed, in whom was no guile "



70                         THE SOWER.
which was saying in other words, the man with the soil of an honest and
good heart, fitted for receiving and nourishing the word of everlasting
life, and bringing forth fruit with patience;-one of a simple, truthful,
and earnest nature; who had been faithful to the light which he had,
diligent in the performance of the duties which he knew, who had not
been resisting God's preparation for imparting to him his last and best
gift, even the knowledge of his Son. For we must keep ever in mind
that the good soil comes as much from God, as the seed which is to find
there its home. The law and the preaching of repentance, God's secret
and preventing grace, run before the preaching of the word of the kingdom; and thus when that word comes, it finds some with greater readiness
for receiving it, as a word of eternal life, than others.
When the different measures of prosperity are given,-that the seed
brought forth in some a hundred-fold, in some sixty, and in some thirty,
it seems difficult to determine whether these indicate different degrees
of fidelity in those that receive the word, according to which they oring
forth fruit unto God more or less abundantly, or rather different spheres
of action more or less wide, which they are appointed to occupy, as to
one servant were given five talents, to another two; in which instance
the diligence and fidelity appear to have been equal, and the meed of
praise the same, since each gained in proportion to the talents committed
to him, though these talents were many more in one case than in the
other:-I should suppose, however, the former.*  The words which St.
Luke records (ver. 18), " Take heed therefore how ye hear, for whosoever
hath to him shall be given, and whosoever hath not from him shall be
tasken even that whzieh  e aemeetk to hasez " (see alls Marzk v. 23), are
very important for the avoiding a misunderstanding of our parable,
which else might easily have arisen. The disciples might have been in
danger of supposing that these four conditions of heart, in which the
word found its hearers, were permanent, immutable, and definitively
fixed; and therefore that in one heart the word must flourish, in another
that it could never germinate at all, in others that it could only prosper
for a little while. Now the warning, " Take heed how ye hear," obviates
the possibility of such a mistake, for it tells us that, according as the
word is heard and received, will its success be-that while it is indeed
true, that all which has gone before in a man's life will greatly influence
the manner of his reception of that word, for every event will have
* So Irenaeus (Con. Hcer., 1. 5, c. 39, 9 2) must have understood it, and Cypriaa
(Ep. 09): Eadem gratia spiritualis quae sequaliter in baptismo a credentibus sumitur, in conversatione atque actu nostro postmodum vel minuitur vel augetur, ut in
Evangelio Dominicum semen Pequaliter seminatur, sed pro varietate terraT aliuM
absumitur, aliud in multiformem copiam vel tricesimi, vel sexagesimi, vel cente
~imi numeri fructu exuberante cumulatur.




THE SOWER.                               71
tended either to the improving or deteriorating the soil of his heart, and
will therefore render it more or less probable that the seed of God's word
will prosper there, yet it lies in him now to take heed how he hears, and
through this taking heed to insure, with God's blessing, that it shall
come to a successful issue. (Compare Jam. i. 21.)
For while this is true, and the thought is a solemn one, that there is
such a think as laying waste the very soil in which the seed of eternal
life should have taken root-that every act of sin, of unfaithfulness to
the light within us, is, as it were, a treading of the ground into more
hardness, so that the seed shall not sink in it, or a wasting of the soil, so
that the seed shall find no nutriment there, or a fitting it to nourish
thorns and briers more kindly than the good seed; yet on the other
hand, even for those who have brought themselves into these evil conditions, a recovery is still, through the grace of God, possible:-the hard
soil may again become soft-the shallow soil may become rich and deep
-and the soil beset with thorns open and clear.*        For the heavenly
seed in this differs from the earthly, that the latter as it finds its soil, so
it must use it, for it cannot alter its nature. But the heavenly seed, if
it be acted upon by the soil where it is cast, also reacts more mightily
upon it, softening it where it is hard (Jer. xxiii. 29), deepening it where
it is shallow, cutting up and extirpating the roots of evil where it is encumbered with these, and wherever it is allowed free course, transforming and ennobling each of these inferior soils, till it has become that
which man's heart was at first, good ground, fit to afford nourishment to
that Divine Word, that seed of eternal life.t
* So Augustine (Serm. 73, c. 3): Mutamini cam potestis; dura aratro versate,
de agro lapides projicite, de agro spinas evellite. Nolite habere durum cor, unde
cit6 verbum Dei peaeat. Nolite habere tenuem terram, ubi radix charitatis alta
non sedeat. Nolite curis et cupiditatibus secularibus offocare bonum semen, quod
vobis spargitur laboribus nostris. Etenim Dominus seminat; sed nos operarii ejus
sumus. Sed estote terra bona. Cf. Serm., 101, c. 3; and the author of a sermon,
August. Opp., v. 6, p. 597, Bened. ed.: Si verb te terram infoecundam aut spinosam
vel siccam sentis, recurre ad Creatorem tuum. Hoc enim nunc agitur, ut innoveris,
ut foecunderis, ut irrigeris ab illo qui posuit desertum in stagna aquarum, et terram sine aqua in exitus aquarum. (Ps. cvi. 35-37.)
t As our Saviour in this parable, so the Jewish doctors divide the hearers of
the words of wisdom into four classes. The best they liken to a sponge that drinks
in all that it receives, and again expresses it for others; the worst to a strainer which
allows all the good wine to pass through (see Heb. ii. 1, jIA TroTe rapaPAvcOpe), and
retains only whatever of dregs is worthless and of no account, or to a sieve that lets
through the fine flour and retains only the bran.-Prudentius (Con. Symm., 1. 2,
v. 1022) has put this parable *well into verse. These are a few lines:
Christus... dedit haec praecepta colons:
Semina cim sulcis committitis, arva cavete
Dura lapillorum macie ne decidat illuc




72                                  THE SOWER.
Quod seritur: primb quoniam praefertile germen
Luxuriat: succo mox deficiente, sub aestu
Sideris igniferi sitiens torretur et aret.
Neve in spinosos incurrant semina vepres:
Aspera nam segetem surgentem vincula texunt,
Ac fragiles calamos nodis rubus arctat acutis.
Et ne jacta vie spargantur in aggere grana:
Heec avibus quia nuda patent, passimque vorantur,
Immundisque jacent fceda ad ludibria corvis
Talis nostrorum solertia centuplicatos
Agrorum redigit fructus.




no
THE TARES.
MATTHEW xiii. 24-30, and- 3643.: ANOTHER parable put heforth unto them."*  Of this parable also, that
" of the tares of the ield," we have an authentic interpretation from the
lips of our Lord himself. And this is well: for it is one, as all students
of Church history are aware, on the interpretation of which very much
has turned before now. Allusion to it occurs at every turn of the controversy which the Church had to maintain with the Donatists; and the
whole exposition of it will need to be carried on with reference to disputes which, though seemingly gone by, yet are not in fact out of date,
since in one shape or another they continually re-appear in the progress
of the Church's development, and in every heart of man. To these disputes we shall presently arrive.-' The kingdom of heaven is likened
unto a man that sowed good seed in his field."  From our Lord's own
lips we learn, " He that sowed the good seed is the Son of man."  This
is the most frequent title by which our Lord designates himself, though
it is never given him by any other, except in a single instance (Acts
vii. 56), and then it would seem only to indicate that the glorified Saviour appeared bodily to the eyes of Stephen. He was often understood,
in the early Church and among the Reformers, by this title to signify
nothing more than his participation in the human nature; while others
have said that he assumed the name as the one by which the hoped-for
Messiah was already commonly known among the people. But it is
* rIapAlicev. The word implies that he set it before them as one would set
forth or propose a riddle, and is used because the parable has always something of
the spiritual enigma, and as such is to call into exercise the spiritual sense of those
to whom it is proposed, that they may discover its solution. (Mark iv. 34, &reve,
he solved them.) Rosenkranz (Gesch. d. Deuts. Poesie in Mittelalt.; p. 484 seq.)
quotes from an old German poem a whole string of riddles proposed for solution
under the form of parables.




74                        THE TARES.
clear that, on the contrary, the name was a strange one to them, so that,
hearing it, they asked, " Who is this Son of man?" (John xii. 34.) The
popular name for the Messiah at the time of our Lord's coming, was
Son of David. (Matt. ix. 27; xii. 23; xv. 22; xx. 31, &c.) No doubt
he claimed the title (which was already given him in the Old Testament,
Dan. viii. 13), inasmuch as it was he who alone realized the idea of
man,* the second Adam, who, unlike the first, should maintain his position as the head and representative of the race,-the one true and perfeet flower which had ever unfolded itself out of the root and stalk of
humanity. And using this title he witnessed against the twofold error
concerning his person which has ever been seeking to manifest itself,the Ebionite, to which the exclusive use of the title " Son of David"
might have led, and the Gnostic, against which the appellation " Son of
man" must have been a continual witness.
At first there might seem a slight disagreement between this parable and the preceding, as though the same symbol were used in the two
places to signify very different things; for here it is explained, " The
good seed are the children of the kingdom," there, " The seed is the word
of God;" yet in reality there is none, but only a progress from that parable to this. In that the word of God is the instrument by which men
are born anew and become children of the kingdom (Jam. i. 18; 1 Pet.
i. 23); that word there is considered more absolutely in and by itself,
while here it is considered after it has been received into the heart, incorporated with the man-as that which has brought him into the position of a child of the kingdom, and which is now so vitally united with
him, that the two cannot any more be considered asunder. (Compare
Jer. xxxi. 27; Hos. ii. 23; Zech. x. 9.)
The next words, " thefield is the world," at once bring us into the
heart of the controversy referred to already. Words few and slight, and
seemingly of little import, a great battle has been fought over them,
greater perhaps than over any single phrase in the Scripture, if we except the consecrating words at the Holy Eucharist. It is well known
that, putting aside the merely personal question concerning the irregularity of certain ordinations, the grounds on which the Donatists justified their separation from the Church Catholic were these: The idea of
the Church, they said, is that of a perfectly holy body; holiness is not
merely one of its essential predicates, but the essential, to which all
others must be subordinated, the exclusive note of the Church. They
did not deny that it was possible that hypocrites might lie concealed in
its bosom, but where the evidently ungodly were suffered to remain in
communion with it, not separated off by the exercise of discipline, then it
* So Philo calls the Logos 6 &XL7livbs vapwnrov.




THE TARES.                             75
forfeited the character of the true Church, and the faithful were to come
out from it; since remaining in its communion, by the very presence of
the others they would themselves be defiled. In support of this view,
they maintained that such passages as Isa. lii. 1, and all other which
spoke of the future freedom of the Church from evil, were meant to be
applicable to it in its present condition, and consequently, where they
were not applicable, there could not be the Church. Here, as on so
many other points, the Church owes to Augustine, not the forming of
her doctrine, for that she can owe to no man, but the bringing out into
her clear consciousness that which hitherto she had implicitly possessed,
yet had not worked out into a perfect clearness, even for herself. By him
she replied, not in any way gainsaying the truth which the Donatists
proclaimed, that holiness must be an essential predicate of the Church,
but only refusing to accept their idea of that holiness, and showing how
in the Church, which they had forsaken, this quality was to be found,
and combined with other as essential qualities;-catholicity, for instance,
to which they could make no claim.
The Church Catholic, he replied, despite all appearances to the contrary, is a holy body, for they only are its members who are in true
and living fellowship with Christ, therefore partakers of his sanctifying
Spirit. All others, however they may have the outward notes of belonging to it, are in it, but not of it: they press upon Christ, as that thronging multitude; they do not touch him, as that believing woman. (Luke
viii. 45.) There are certain outward conditions, without which one cannot pertain to his Church, but with which one does not necessarily do so.
And they who are thus in it but not of it, whether hypocrites lying hid,
or open offenders, who from their numbers may not without greater evils
ensuing be expelled,* do not defile the true members, so long as these
share not in their spirit, nor communicate with their evil deeds. They
are like the unclean animals in the same ark as the,lean, goats in the
* Augustine's view of the extent to which discipline should be enforced, and
the questions of prudence which should determine its enforcing, may be judged
from the following passage. Having referred to these parables, and to the separation of the sheep and goats (Matt. xxv.), he proceeds (Ad Don. post. Coll., c. 5):
Quibus parabolis et figuris Ecclesia preenunciata est usque ad finem saeculi bonos
et malos simul habitura, ita ut mali bonis obesse non possint, cum vel ignorantur,
vel pro pace et tranquillitate Ecclesive tolerantur, si eos prodi aut accusari non
oportuerit, aut aliis bonis non potuerint demonstrari: ita sane ut neque emendatioo
nis vigilantia quiescat, corripiendo, degradando, excommunicando, ceterisque coercitionibus licitis atque concessis, que salv& unitatis pace in Ecclesia quotidie fiunt,
caritate servata,... ne forte aut indisciplinata patientia foveat iniquitatem, ant
impatiens disciplina dissipet unitatem. This, among his anti-Donatist treatises is
the best for giving a notion of that part of the controversy on which this parable
specially bears.




76                           THE TARES.
same pastures with the sheep, chaff on the same barn-floor as the grain,
tares growing in the same field with the wheat, endured for a while, but
in the end to be separated off, the evil from the good.
The Donatists wished to make the Church in its visible form and
historic manifestation, identical and co-extensive with the true Church
which the Lord knoweth and not man. Augustine also affirmed the
identity of the Church now existing with the final and glorious Church:
but he denied that they were co-extensive. For now the Church is
clogged with certain accretions which shall hereafter be shown not to
belong, and never to have belonged, to it: he affirmed-not, as his opponents affirmed of him, two Churches, but two conditions of one and the
same Church; the present, in which evil is endured in it, —the future,
in which it shall be free from all evil;-not two bodies of Christ, but
one body, in which now are wicked men, but only as evil humors in
the natural body, which in the day of perfect health will be expelled and
rejected altogether, as never having more than accidentally belonged to
it; and he laid especial stress upon this fact, that the Lord himself had
not contemplated his Church in its present state as perfectly free from
evil.* In proof he appealed to this parable and that of the Draw-net,that as tares are mingled with wheat, and the bad fish with the good, so
the wicked with the righteous, and should remain so mingled to the end
of the present age;t and this not merely as an historic fact, but that
all attempts to have it otherwise are here expressly forbidden. The
* Augustine (Serm. 351, c. 4): Multi enim corriguntur ut Petrus, multi tolerantur ut Judas, multi nesciuntur donec adveniat Dominus, qui illuminet abscondita
tenebrarum, et manifestet Consilia cordium. And in another place: Homo sum et
inter homines vivo, nee mihi arrogare audeo meliorem domum meam quam area
Noah. He often rebukes the Donatists for their low Pharisaical views concerning
what the separation from sinners meant. Thus (Serm. 88, c. 20): Displicuit tibi
quod quisque peccavit, non tetigisti immundum. Redarguisti, corripuisti, monuisti, adhibuisti etiam, si res exegit, congruam et qum unitatem non violat disciplinam, existi inde.:-see much more that is excellent. In another place he asks, Did
the prophet of old, who said, " Go ye out of the midst of'her," (Isai. lii. 11,) himself separate from the Jewish church?-Continendo se a consensu non tetigit immundum: objurgando autem exiit liber in conspectu Dei: cui neque sua Deus
peccata imputat, quia non fecit, neque aliena, quia non approbavit, neque negligentiam, quia non tacuit, neque superbiam, quia in unitate permansit. See also
Ad Don. Post. Coll., c. 20. And once more: Cecidit Angelus; numquid inquinavit coelum.  Cecidit Adam; numquid inquinavit Paradisum. Cecidit unus de
filiis Noe; numquid inquinavit Justi domum' Cecidit Judas; numquid inquinavit apostolorum choros — This extract is from one of the sermons in the volume
of Sermones Ineditz of Augustine lately published (they are indeed inedited still) at
Paris. This Sermon is among the. not very many, which bear the stamp of unquestionable genuineness upon them.
t Augustine: Alia est agri conditio, alia quies horrei.




THE TARES.                           77
Donatists then were in fact acting as the servants in the parable would
have done, if, after the master's distinct prohibition, they had gone and
sought forcibly to root out the tares.
There will be occasion hereafter to note how the Donatists sought to
escape the argument drawn from that other parable.  They were put to
hard shifts to reply to this, but made answer,-" By the Lord's own
showing'thefield' is not the Church, but the world. The parable,
therefore, does not bear on the dispute betwixt us and you in the least,
that dispute being not whether ungodly men should be suffered in the
world (that is plain enough), but whether they should be endured in the
Church."* But it must be evident to every one who is not warped by a
dogmatic interest,t that the parable is, as the Lord announces at its first
utterance, concerning the kingdom of heaven, or the Church. It required no special teaching to acquaint the disciples, that in the world
there would ever be a mixture of good and bad, though they must have
been so little prepared to expect the same in the Church, that't was
very needful to warn them beforehand, both that they might not be
offended, and think the promises of God had failed, when the evil should
appear; and also that they might know how to behave themselves, when
that mystery of iniquity, now foretold, should begin manifestly to work
Nor need the term "world" here used perplex us in the least: it was
the world, and therefore was rightly called so, till this seed was sown in
it, but thenceforth was the world no longer. No narrower word would
have sufficed for him, in whose prophetic eye the word of the Gospel
was contemplated as going forth into all lands, and sown in every part
of the great outfield of the nations. 
"But while men slept, his enemy came and sowedt tares among the
* See how Augustine answers this argument, Ad Don. post Coll., c. 8. As the
Donatists professed to make much of Cyprian's authority, Augustine quotes often
from him (as Con. Gaudent., 1. 2, c. 4) words which show that he understood the
parable as one relating to the Church: Nam etsi videntur in Ecclesid esse zizania,
non tamen impediri debet aut fides aut caritas nostra, ut quoniam zizania esse in
Ecclesii cernimus, ipsi de Ecclesia recedamus. Nobis tantummodo laborandum
est, ut frumentum esse possimus, ut cum cceperit frumentum Dominicis horreis
condi, fructum pro opere nostro et labore capiamus.
t Commentators who have interpreted the parable, iirespectively of that controversy one way or the other, acknowledge this. Thus Calvin: Quanquam autea
Christus postea subjicit mundum esse agrum, dubium tamen non est, quin proprtl
hoc nomen ad Ecclesiam aptare voluerit, de qua exorsus fuerat sermonem. Sed
quoniam passim aratrum suum ducturus erat per omnes mundi plagas, ut sibi agros
excoleret in toto mundo, ac spargeret vitae semen, per synecdochen ad mundum
transtulit, quod parti tantcm magis quadrabat.
$ In the Vulgate, superseminavit, as in the Rhemish, oversowed, according to
the better reading, i&reorapey, which Lachmann retains.




78                           TlHE TARES.
wheat, and went his way."   Our Lord did not invent here a form     of
malice without example, but alluded to one which, though elsewhere
unnoted in Scripture, was familiar enough to his hearers-one so easy
of execution, involving so little risk, and yet effecting so great and so
lasting a mischief, that it is not strange, that where cowardice and malice met, this should often have been the shape in which they displayed
themselves.  We meet traces of it in many directions.    Thus in the
Roman law the possibility of this form of injury is contemplated, and a
modern writer illustrating Scripture from the manners and habits of
the East, with which he had become familiar through a sojourn there,
affirms the same to be now practised in India.  "See," he says, " that
lurking villain watching for the time when his neighbor shall plough his
field: he carefully marks the period when the work has been finished,
and goes in the night following, and casts in what the natives call pandinellu, i. e. pig-paddy: this being of rapid growth, springs up before
the good seed, and scatters itself before the other can be reaped, so that
the poor owner of the field will be for years before he can get rid of the
troublesome weed. But there is another noisome plant which these
wretches cast into the ground of those they hate, called perum-pirandi,
which is more destructive to vegetation than any other plant. Has a
man purchased a field out of the hands of another, the offended person
says,'I will plant the perum-pirandi in his grounds.' "*
Many have made the first words here significant, and suppose that
they indicate the negligence and lack of watchfulness on the part of
rulers in the Church, whereby ungodly men should creep in unawares,
introducing errors in doctrine and in practice.t   (Acts xx. 29, 30;
Jude 4; 2 Pet. ii. 1, 2, 19.) But seeing it is thus indefinitely put, and
the servants, who should have watched, if any should have done so, are
first designated at a later stage of the history, and then without any thing
* ROBERTS' Oriental Illustrations, p. 641. A friend who has occupied a judicial
station in India confirms this account. We are not without this form of malice
nearer home. Thus in Ireland I have known an outgoing tenant, in spite at his
ejection, to sow wild oats in the fields which he was leaving. These, like the plant
mentioned above, ripening and seeding themselves before the crops in which they
were mingled, it became next to impossible to get rid of them.
t So Augustine (Quaest. ex Matth., qu. 9): Cum negligentius agerent praepositi
Ecclesise; and Chrysostom. H. de Sto. Victore (Annott. in Matth.): Mortem significat Apostolorum sive torporem praelatorum. But Grotius more rightly:'AvA&p.?rovs, hic indefinitum est, non universale: quasi dicas, cihm dormiretur: hoc autem
nihil est aliud quam descriptio opportunitatis;-and Cajetan's remark has value:
Cum dormirent homines, non dicit custodes, si enim dixisset custodes, intelligeremus negligentiam custodum accusari, sed dicit homines, ut inculpabiles intelligamus, naturali somno ocupatos. Jerome's Dormiente patre-familias (Ad Lucif.) ii
snly explicable as other than an error on this view.




THE TARES.                           79
to mark a past omission on their part, it would seem that the men who
slept are not such as should have done otherwise, but the phrase is equivalent to " at night," and means nothing further. (Job xxiii. 15.) This
enemy seized his opportunity, when all eyes were closed in sleep, and
wrought the secret mischief upon which he was intent, and having
wrought it undetected, withdrew.
" The enemy that sowed " the tares, we learn, - is the devil,"* so that
we behold Satan here, not as he works beyond the limits of the Church,
deceiving the world, but in his far deeper skill and malignity, as he at
once mimicks and counterworks the work of Christ: in the words of
Chrysostom, "after the prophets, the false prophets; after the apostles,
the false apostles; after Christ, Antichrist."t
We may further notice with what distinctness the doctrine concerning Satan and his agency, his active hostility to the blessedness of man,
of which there is so little in the Old Testament, comes out in our Lord's
teaching in the New. As the lights become brighter, the shadows
become deeper; but till the mightier power of good was revealed, we
were in mercy not suffered to know how mighty was the power of evil:
and even here it is in each case only to the innermost circle of the
disciples, that the explanation concerning Satan is given. So it was not
till the Son of man actually appeared on the stage of the world, that
Satan came distinctly forward upon it also; but the instant that Christ
opens his ministry for the setting up of the kingdom of God, at the same
instant Satan starts forward as the hinderer and adversary of it, the
tempter of him who is the head and prince of this kingdom.t   And
instead of hearing less of Satan, as the mystery of the kingdom of God
proceeds to unfold itself, in the last book of Scripture, that which details
the fortune of the Church till the end of time, we hear more of him,
and he is brought in more evidently and openly working than in any
other.
It is very observable, too, that Satan is spoken of as his enemy, the
enemy of the Son of man; for here, as in so many other places, the
great conflict is spoken of as rather between Satan and the Son of man,
than between Satan and God. It was part of the great scheme of
* Zizaniator, as therefore he has been called; see Du CANGE, S. v. zizanium;
and by Terfullian (De Anima, c. 16), Avenarum superseminatorem, et frumentarim
segetis nocturnum interpolatorem. When Ignatius exhorts the Ephesians (c. 10)
that no one be found among them, TroD 8La6Kov NOTrdv7r, no doubt there is an allusion to this parable.
t Cf. TERTULLIAN, De Praescr. Haeret., 3. 31.
4 Bengel (on Ephes. vi. 12) has observed this: Quo apertius quisque Scripture
liber de oeconomia et gloria Christi agit, e6 apertius rursum de regno contrario
tenebrarum.




80                           THE TARES.
redemption, that the victory.over evil should be a moral triumph, not a
triumph obtained by a mere putting forth of superior strength.* We
can see how important for this end it was, that man, who lost the battle,
should also win it (1 Cor. xv. 21), and therefore as by and through man
the kingdom of darkness was to be overthrown, so the enmity of the
Serpent was specially directed against the seed of the woman, the Son
of man.   The title given him is " T/ie wicked one," the article is emphatic, and points him out as the absolutely evil, of whom the grozind of
his being is evil. For as God is light, and in him is no darkness at all
(1 John i. 5; Jam. i. 17), so Satan is darkness, and in him is no light;
there is no truth in him. Man is in a middle position; he detains the
truth in unrighteousness; light and darkness in him are struggling;
but, whichever may predominate, the other is there, kept down indeed,
but still with the possibility of manifesting itself.  Herein lies the
possibility of a redemption for man, that his will is only perverted; but
Satan's will is inverted, for he has said what it is never possible for a
man to say, or at least fully to act upon, "Evil, be thou my good;"
and therefore, as far as we can see, a redemption and restoration are
impossible for him.
It makes much for the beauty of the parable, and is full of instruction, that wheat and tares are not seeds of different kinds, but that the
last is a degenerate or bastard wheat;t so that, in the very emblems
* In Augustine's memorable words: Diabolus non potentia Dei sed justitis
superandus erat.
t It is well known that the word (~,dvLov nowhere occurs except here, and in
the Greek and Latin Fathers who have drawn it from this parable. The Etymol.
Mag. gives another derivation of the word besides that quoted by Schleusner, and
a better, though even that will scarcely command assent: 7rapa rJ Airos Kal ifcdw,
that which grows side by side with the wheat. Tertullian always renders it by avena,
which is incorrect; neither is Augustine sufficiently exact when he says, Omnis
immunditia in segete zizania dicitur; nor again is it, as our translators would seem
to have understood it, the vicia, but the adpa, or lolium temulentum (in German,
Tollkorn, in French, yvroie), having that addition to distinguish it from the lolium
proper, with which it has nothing but the name in common, because of the vertigo
which it causes, when mingled with and eaten in'bread. This in the East, despite
its poisonous qualities, not uncommonly happens-it being so hard to separate it
from the wheat. The assertion made above, that it is a degenerate wheat, seems,
I think, perfectly made out. Lightfoot quotes these words, distinctly asserting
it, from the Talmud. "'Wheat and zunin are not seeds of different kinds.'
Where the gloss is this,' zunin is a kind of wheat which is changed in the earth,
both as to its form and to its nature.' And in a passage quoted by Buxtorf (Lex.
Talm., p. 680), this is noted as part of the progressive deterioration of nature,
which went hand in hand with man's wickedness; "they sowed wheat and the
earth brought forth zunin." Michaelis indeed (Mos. Recht, v. 4, p. 322) says that
these Rabbis, who probably never saw a corn-field in their lives, are not to be lis



THE TARES.                             81
which the Lord uses, the Manichsean error is guarded against, which,
starting from the (falsely assumed) fact, that wheat and tares are
different in kind, proceeds to argue, that as tares by no process of
culture can become wheat, so neither can the children of the wicked ont
become children of the kingdom. Satan is no Ahriman who can create
children of darknessi he can only spoil children of light.     Calvin*
himself, whatever may have been the case with some who call themselves
by his name, is careful to guard against that conclusion here, which
would have been an abuse of parabolical language, a pressing of accidental circumstances too far,t even supposing that the tares and wheat
had been altogether different in their kinds. But the fact in natural
history, noticed above, besides rescuing this passage from the possibility
of being so abused, makes also this image peculiarly instructive and
curiously adapted to the setting forth the origin of evil, that it is not a
tened to in the matter: see also Ambrose Hexaem., 1. 3, c. 10. Yet on the other
hand Pliny (H. N., 1. 18, c. 17), says of the lolium as of some other plants, inter
frugum morbos potius quam inter ipsius terrve pestem numeraverim: and an old
Scholiast upon the Georgics, on the words, Infelix lolium, writes thus: Triticum et
hordeum in lolium mutantur. This quite explains the difficulty of knowing them
apart, and the danger, therefore, of plucking up one for the other: since only
when the grains begin to form, that of the lolium being dark, sometimes nearlh
black, the difference clearly reveals itself. The tendency of wheat, badly cultivated, to degenerate is well known, and is noted by Columella (De Re Rust., 1. 2,
c. 9): Omno triticum solo uliginoso post tertiam sationem convertitur in siliginem.
The same happened with the Grape (see Gesenius on Isai. v. 2): "It brought
forth wild grapes" (labruscas). The tendency of the uncared-for tree to fall away
from its first perfection, of the neglected seed to worsen, is bitt another of the infinite
and wonderful analogies which the world of nature supplies to the world of man.By far the fullest and most satisfying account of the Ci&dvlov is given by Schultetus
(Crit. Sa;. v. 6, p. 2026): I had not seen it when the note above was written, but
it arrives altogether at the same conclusions.
* Observing how the Manichocans have abused this passage he proceeds: Atqui
scimus, quidquid vitii est tam in diabolo, quam in hominibus non aliud esse quam
integrae nature corruptelam;-and Augustine, on a passage exposed to like abuse
(John viii. 44), " Ye are of your father the devil," guards against such, explaining
it,-Imitando non nascendo. Compare Irenaeus, Con. Heer., 1. 4, c. 41, ( 2, and
Grotius on Matt. vii. 18; and who has not heard in arguments concerning pre.
destination, how goats can never become sheep, nor sheep goats? (Matt. xxv.
32, 33.)
t Chrysostom rather has right, when (De Penit., Homr. 8) he compares the
Church to a better ark. Into the other ark, as the animals entered so they canm
out; a hawk entered in, and a hawk came forth, a wolf entered in, and a wolf
came forth. But into this a hawk has entered in, and a dove comes out; a wolf
has entered in, and a sheep issues forth; a serpent has entered in, and a lamb
comes forth.
6




82                          THE TARES.
generation, but a degeneration; that as Augustine often expresses it, it
has not an efficient, but only a defcient cause.*
Having sown his tares, the enemy "went his way." The work did
not evidently, and at first sight, appear to be his. How often, in the
Church, the beginnings of evil have been scarcely discernible,-how often
has that which bore the worst fruit in after-times, looked at first like a
higher form of good. St. Paul, indeed, could see the mystery of iniquity,
which, in the apostolic times, was already working-could detect the
punctum saliens out of which it'would unfold itself; but to most, evil
would not appear as evil till it had grown to more ungodliness: just as
the tares did not, to the servants, appear to be such till "the blade was
sprung up and brought forth fruit."   All who have written on'the
subject have noted the great similarity that, as might be expected,
exsits between the wheat and this lolium or tare, while yet in the blade,t
so that they are only distinguishable when the ear is formed; thus fulfilling literally the Lord's words, " By their fruits ye shall know them."
Augustine, noting how it was only when the blade began to ripen and
bring forth fruit, that the tares began also to appear in their true character, most truly remarks, that it is only the opposition of good which
makes evil to appear. "None," he says, "appear evil in the Church,
except to him who is good;" and again, " When one shall have begun
to be a spiritual man, judging all things, then errors begin to appear to
him;": and in another place he makes the following observations, drawn
from the depths of his Christian experience: "It is a great labor of the
good, to bear the contrary manners of the wicked; by which he who is
not offended has profited little, for the righteous, in proportion as he
recedes from his own wickedness, is grieved by that of others."~ As
there must be light, with which to contrast the darkness, height wherewith to measure depth, so there must be holiness to be grieved at
unholiness: and this is true, not only in the collective Church, but in
each individual member of it, that as the new man is formed in him, the
* De Civ. Dei. 1. 12, c. 7.
t The testimony of Jerome, himself resident in Palestine, may here be adduced:
Inter triticum et zizania, quod nos appellamus lolium, quamdiu herba est, et nondum culmus venit a& spicam, grandis similitudo est, et in discernendo ant nulla
ant perdifficilis distantia.
* t Quast. ex Matt., qu. 12: where is to be found an admirable exposition of the
whole parable.
t Tantrim enim torquet justum iniquitas aliena, quantum recedit B sub. Cf.
Enarr. in Ps. cxix. 4, ari in Ps. cxl.: Nondum sum totus instauratus ad imaginem fabricatoris mei: ccepi resculpi, et ex ea parte qua reformor, disciplicet mihi
quod deforme est.




THE TARES.                          83
old man will become more and more displeasing,-will come more and
more into distinct opposition.
" 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?"' Theophylact interprets this of the angels, indignant that there
should be heresies, scandals, and offences in the Church; for having
explained, "while men slept," of the comparative negligence of the
householder's servants, that is, of some Church rulers who ought better
to have kept the borders of the Church from the incursions of the enemy,
he now finds it inconvenient to understand the same servants as those so
much offended by the mischief which had been done. But the angels
are so clearly pointed out (ver. 30) as different from the servants, that
this must be a mistake, and even granting that the words " while men
slept," do indicate, as he supposes, the negligence of some who ought to
have watched, still it is easy to say, some slept, and some wished to do
away with the consequence of the others' negligence. These servants are
not angels, but men, speaking out of the same spirit as animated those
disciples, who would fain have commanded fire to come down from
heaven on the inhospitable Samaritan village. Those disciples, as the
servants here, did well that they had a righteous zeal for their Master's
honor; but in each case the zeal needed to be tempered and restrained.
The question which they ask, " Didst not thou sow good seed in thy
field?" is not put merely to give opportunity for the householder's reply:
but expresses well the perplexity, the surprisehe inward questionings,
which must often be felt, which in the first ages, before long custom had
too much reconciled to the mournful spectacle, must have been felt very
strongly by all who were zealous for God, at the woful and unexpected
appearance which the visible Church presented. Where was the "glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing?" Well,
indeed, might the faithful have questioned their own spirit, havespoured
out their hearts in prayer, of which the burden should have been nearly
this, "D idst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath
it tares?-didst thou not constitute thy Church to be a pure and holy
communion?-is not the doctrine such as should only produce fruits of
righteousness? whence then is it that even within the holy precincts
themselves, there should be so many who themselves openly sin and
cause others to sin?"*
* Menken: "This question,' Whence then hatA it tares?" is the result of our
first study of Church history, and remains afterwards the motto of Church history,
and the riddle which should be solved by help of a faithful history; instead of
which, many'so-called Church historians [authors of Ancient Christianity, and the
like], ignorant of the purpose and of the hidden glory of the Church, have their




84                          THE TARES.
But in the householder's reply, the mischief is traced up to its
origin: " An enemy hath done this."  It is attributed not to the imperfection, ignorance, weakness, which cling to every thing human, and
which would prevent even a Divine idea from being more than very
inadequately realized by men; but to the distinct counterworking of the
great spiritual enemy; they are "spiritual wickednesses." No doubt in
the further question, " Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?"
the temptation to use outward power for the suppression of error, a
temptation which the Church itself has sometimes found it difficult to
resist, finds its voice and utterance.*  But they were unfit to be trusted
here. Their zeal was but an Elias zeal at the best. (Luke ix. 54.)
They who thus speak have often no better than a Jehu's " zeal for the
Lord." And therefore " he said, Nay." By this prohibition are doubtless forbidden all such measures for the excision of heretics and other
offenders, as shall.leave them no possibility for after repentance or
amendment; indeed the prohibition is so clear, so express, so plain, that
whenever we meet in Church history with something that looks like the
carrying into execution this proposal of the servants, we may suspect, as
Bengel says, that it is not wheat making war on tares, but tares seeking
to root out wheat.  The reason of the prohibition is given; "Lest while
ye gather upothe tares, ye root up also the wheat with them." This
might be, either by rooting up what were now tares, but hereafter should
become wheat-children of the wicked one, who, by faith and repentance
should become childre, of the kingdom;t-or it might happen through
the mistake of the servants, who, with the best intentions, should fail to
distinguish between these and those, leaving the tares and uprooting the
wheat.  It is only the Lord himself, the Searcher of hearts, who with
absolute certainty "knoweth them   that are his."  But the Romish
expositors, and those who, in earlier times, wrote in the interest of
Rome~in these words, "lest ye root up the wheat with them," find a
loophole whereby they may escape the prohibition itself. Thus Aquinas
says, the prohibition is only binding, when there exists this danger of
pleasure in the tares, and imagine themselves wonderfully wise and useful, when out
of Church history, which ought to be the history of the Light and the Truth, they have
made a shameful history of error and wickedness. They have no desire to edify, to
further holiness or the knowledge of the truth; but at the expense of the Church
would gratify a proud and ignorant world."
* Augustine (Qucst. ex Matth., qu. 12): Potest ei suboriri voluntas, ut tales
homines de rebus humanis auferat, si aliquam temporis habeat facultatem: sed
utrfim facere debeat, justitiam Dei consulit, utrfm hoc ei praecipiat vel- permittat,
et hoc officium esse hominem velit.
t Jerome: Monemur, ne cit6 amputemus fratrem: quia fieri potest, ut ille,
qui hodie noxio depravatus est dogmate, eras resipiscat, et defendere incipiat
veritatexa.




THE TARES.                           85
plucking up the wheat together with the tares;* and Maldonatus, that
in each particular case the householder is to judge whether there be
such danger or no. The Pope, he adds, is now, the representative of the
householder, and to him the question is to be put, " Wilt thou that we
go and gather up the tares?" and he concludes his exposition with an
exhortation to all Catholic princes, that they imitate the zeal of these
servants, and rather, like them, need to have their eagerness restrained,
than require to be urged on to the task of rooting out heresies and
heretics.
The householder proceeds to declare-not that the tares shall never
be plucked up, but that this is not the time, and they not the doers.
" Let both grow together until the harvest."  In these words the true
doctrine concerning Antichrist, not indeed the personal Antichrist, but
the antichristian power, is implicitly declared. We learn that evil is
not, as so many dream, gradually to wane and to disappear before good,
the world before the Church, but is ever to develope itself more fully,
even as on the other side, good is to unfold itself more and more mightily
also.  Thus it will go on, till at last they stand face to face, each in its
highest manifestation, in the persons of Christ and of Antichrist; on the
one hand, an incarnate God, on the other, the man in whom the fulness
of all Satanic power will dwell bodily. Both are to grow, evil and good,
till they come to a head, till they are ripe, one for destruction, and the
other for full salvation. And they are to grow together; the visible
Church is to have its intermixture of good and bad until the end of
time, and by consequence that the fact of the bad being found mingled
with the good will in no wise justify a separation from it, or an attempt
to set up a little Church of our own.t Where men will attempt this,
besides the guilt of transgressing a plain command, it is not difficult to
see what fatal effects on their own spiritual life it must have, what darkness it must bring upon them, and into what a snare of pride it must
cast them.  For while even in the best of men there is the same intermixture of good and evil as there is outwardly in the Church, such conduct will infallibly lead a man to the wilful shutting his eyes both to
the evil which is in himself, and in the little schismatical body he will
* Summa Theol., 2a 2e, qu. 10: Cum metus iste non subest,... non dormiat
severitas disciplinse.
t Calvin's words are excellent: Est enim haec periculosa tentatio, nullam Ecclesiam putare, ubi non appareat perfecta puritas. Nam quicunque hac occupatus
fuerit, necesse tandem erit, ut, discessione ab omnibus aliis facta, solus sibi sanctus
videatur in mundo, aut peculiarem sectam cum paucis hypocritis instituat. Quid
ergo causse habuit Paulus cur Ecclesiam Dei Corinthi agnosceret 1 nempe quia
Evaingelii doctrinam, baptismum, cenam Domini, quibus symbolis censeri debet
Ecclesia, apud eos cernebat.




86                           THE TARES.
then call the Church, since only so the attempt will even seem to be sue
cessful.
Thus Augustine often appeals to the fact that the Donatists had not
succeeded,-that they themselves would not dare to assert that they had
succeeded,-in forming what should even externally appear a pure communion: and since by their own acknowledgment there might be, and
probably were, hypocrites and concealed ungodly among themselves, this
was enough to render all such passages as Isai. lii. 1, as inapplicable to
them as the Catholic Church in its present condition. And yet on the
strength of this their assumed purity, they displayed a spirit of the most
intolerable pride and presumptuous uncharitableness towards the Church
from which they had separated. And the same sins cleave more or less
to all schismatical bodies, which, under plea of a purer communion, have
divided from the Church Catholic:*-the smallest of these, from its very
smallness persuading itself that it is the most select and purest, being
generally the most guilty in this matter. Not that there is not something in every man which inclines him to the error; every young Christian in the time of his first zeal is tempted to be somewhat of a Donatist
in spirit. Nay, it would argue little love or holy earnestness in him, if
he had not this longing to see the Church of his Saviour a glorious
Church without spot or wrinkle. But he must learn that the desire,
righteous and holy as in itself it is, yet is not to find its fulfilment in
this present evil time; that on the contrary, the suffering from false
brethren is one of the pressures upon him, which is meant to wring out
from him a more earnest prayer that the kingdom of God may appear.t
He learns that all self-willed and impatient attempts, such as have been
repeated again and again, to anticipate that perfect communion of saints
are indeed works of the flesh, and that however well they may promise
at the first, no blessing will rest upon them, nor will they for long even
appear to be attended with success.t
* See Augustine (Coll. Carth., d. 3, c. 9) for an extraordinary instance of this
pride on the part of the Donatist adversaries of the Church.
t Fuller (Holy State, b. 5, c. 2) enumerates six reasons why in the kingdom of
grace wicked men should be inseparably mingled with godly:-" First, because
hypocrites can never be severed but by him that can search the heart; secondly,
because -if men should make the separation, weak Christians would be counted no
Christians, and those who have a grain of grace under a load of imperfections,
would be counted reprobates; thirdly, because God's vessels of honor for all eternity, not as yet appearing, but wallowing in sin, would be made castaways; fourthly, because God by the mixture of the wicked with the godly will try the watchfulness and patience of his servants; fifthly, because thereby he will bestow many
favors on the wicked, to clear his justice and render them the more inexcusable;
lastly, because the mixture of the wicked grieving the godly, will make them the
more heartily pray for the day of judgment."
t Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. xcix. 1) asks: Quo se separaturus est Christianus




THE TARES.                              87
There are some in modern times who, in fear lest arguments should
be drawn from this parable to the prejudice of attempts to revive stricter
discipline in the Church, have sought to escape the cogency of the arguments drawn from it,* observing that in our Lord's explanation no notice
is taken of the proposal made by the servants (ver. 28), nor yet of the
householder's reply to that proposal (ver. 29). They argue, therefore,
that this parable is not instructive of what the conduct of the servants
of a heavenly Lord ought to be, but merely prophetic of what generally
will be the case in the Church-that this offer of the servants is merely
brought in to afford an opportunity   or the master's reply, and that of
that the latter is the only significant portion. But it is clear that when
Christ asserts that it is his purpose to make a complete and solemn separation at the end, he implicitly forbids, not the exercise in the mean time
of a godly discipline, not, where that has become necessary, absolute
exclusion from Church-fellowship-but any attempts to anticipate the
final irrevocable separation, of which he has reserved the execution to
himself.t That shall not take place till the end of the present dispensation;t-not till the time of the harvest~ will the householder comut non gemat inter falsos fratres l Solitudines petat 2 sequuntur scandala. Separaturus est se qui bene proficit, ut nullum omnino hominem patiatur. quid si et
ipsum antequam proficeret nemo vellet pati 2 Si ergo quia proficit, nullum hominem vult pati, eo ipso quo non vult aliquem hominem pati, convincitur, quod non
profecerit. An quia veloces pedes tibi videris habuisse ad transeundem, praecisurus es pontem?-The whole passage is too long to quote, but deeply instructive
concerning the vanity of every attempt to foand a Church on a subjective instead
of an objective basis, on the personal holiness of the members, instead of.recegnizing one there to be founded for us, where the pure word of God is preached,
and the sacraments administered by those who are duly commissioned to these
offices. How admirable again are his words in another place (Con. Cresc., 1. 3, c.
35): Fugio paleam ne hoc sim; non aream, ne nihil sim; and see also Serm. 164,
c. 7, 8.
* Steiger, in the Evang. Kirch. Zeit., 1833, and an able writer in the British
Critic, No. 52, p. 385.
t Tertullian (Apol. c. 41): Qui semel Sternum judicium destinavit post seculi
finem, non precipitat discretionem quae est conditio judicii, ante seculi finem.: The TvvT'XiELa ro alvos, or Ovvr. rv ac&vYwv (so Heb. ix. 26), the moment of
the passing over from this adI&v to the coming, the juncture of the two eras (see
Job xxiv. 20, LXX. p'XPpL O'vvTreXdas pwrTbs ical aO'-rovs), the present, called ai&cv
evea'&s (Gal. i. 4), or 6 vvv al&v (Tit. ii. 12)=K4ajAOS oVros, with the future termed
aBv?px4yeoy (Mark x. 30), ai.lves 7rEpXo/.evot (Ephes. ii. 7), al&^ 6 yex'xwv (Heb.
vi. 5)-=oKovou:v/  " bdiEXovuaa (Heb. ii. 5). The phrase is equivalent to the eEXt]
ri&, az&c~w (1 Cor. x. 11), the extremities of the two eras, the end of the one and
the commencement of the other.
~ Bishop Horsley (Bibl. Crit., v. 3, p. 344,) distinguishes between the vintage
and the harvest, which are the two images under which the consummation of the
present age are so commonly represented. " The vintage is always an image of




88                            THE TARES.
mand, —and then he will give the command not to these servants, but to
the reapers,-that the tares be gathered out from among the wheat.
Not till the end of the world will the Son of man send forth his servants
-nor even then his earthly ministering servants,* but " his angels, and
they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offendt and all which
do iniquity"-in the words of Zephaniah (i. 3,) " the stumbling-blocks
of the wicked."
The lot of the tares is to be gathered into oundlest and consumed
with fire, as of the land bearing thorns and briers the end is to be burned.
(Heb. vi. 8.)  In David's words (SPSam. xxiii. 6, 7), " The sons of Belial
shall be all of them as thorns thrust away... and they shall be utterly
burned with fire," or, as it is here expressed, the angels " shall cast them'
into the furnace offire."  Elsewhere (Mark ix. 43-48), the woe of hell is
described under an image borrowed from the valley of the children of Hinthe season of judgment, but the harvest of the ingathering of the objects of God's
final mercy. I am not aware that a single unexceptionable instance is to be found,
in which the harvest is a type of judgment. In Rev. xiv. 15, 16, the sickle is thrust
into the ripe harvest, and the earth is reaped, i. e. the elect are gathered from the
four winds of heaven. The wheat of God is gathered into his barn. (Matt. xiii. 30.)
After this reaping of the earth the sickle is applied to the clusters of the vine, and
they are cast into the great winepress of the wrath of God. (Rev. xiv. 18-20.)
This is judgment. In Joel iii. 13, the ripe harvest is the harvest of the vine, i. e.
the grapes fit for gathering, as appears by the context. In Jer. li. 33, the act of
threshing the corn upon the floor, not the harvest, is the image of judgment. It
is true the burning of the tares in our Saviour's parable (Matt. xiii.), is a work of
judgment, and of the time of harvest, previous to the binding of the sheaves; but
it is an accidental adjunct of the business, not the harvest itself."-It may be a
question whether the manner in which he makes our parable fit into his scheme is
quite satisfactory.
* Augustine: Audes usurpare officium alienum, quod nec in messe erit tuum
And Cyprian (with reference to 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21): Nos operam demus et quantum
possumus, laboremus, ut vas aureum et argenteum simus. C(eterum fictilia vasa
confringere Domino soli concessum est, cui et virga ferrea data est. Jerome
)Adv. Lucif.): Nemo potest Christi palmam sibi assumere, nemo ante diem
judicii de hominibus judicare. Si jam mundata est Ecclesia, quid Domino reservamus 1
t T& arKdvcaXa. SKdCvaxov (in its older form aocav5dxAcrpov) is that part of a
trap or snare on which the bait is placed, and which being touched by the animal,
gives way, and causes the snare to draw suddenly tight; then, generally, a snare.
In the New Testament, it is transferred to spiritual things, and includes whatever,
entangling as it were men's feet, might cause them to fall; it is therefore =rpdJr
roluta. On account of its derivation it is nearly allied to wrayls and Pupa, and we
find it used together with them, Rom. xi. 9.
i Augustine explains this something in the fashion of Dante's hell, in which the
wicked of one kind are gathered into one place; for on this gathering into bundles,
he says: Hoc est, rapaces cum rapacibus, adulteros cum adulteris, homicidas cum
homicidis, fures cum furibus, derisores cum derisoribus, similes cum similibus.




THE TARES.                             89
nom, where carcasses were cast out that from time to time were consumed
with fire; here from that most fearful of all forms of punishment, one not
indeed in use among the Jews, for we must look at David's act (2 Sam.
xii. 31) as an excess of severity, but one with which they were not unacquainted, that is, death by fire. (Gen. xxxviii. 24.) It was in use among
the Chaldeans (Jer. xxix. 22; D*. iii. 6), and in the Jewish tradition,
which is probably of great antiquity, Nimrod -cast Abraham into a furnace of fire, for refusing to worship his false gods, and in modern times
Chardin makes mention of furnaces with a like object in Persia.* That
dreadful punishment by fire supplies the image here, and doing so,
makes exceedingly improbable the explanation which some have given of
the gnashing, which they rather understand as a chattering, of the teeth,
-that it is the expression of the pain arising from excessive cold,f so
that they imaginqa kind of Dantean hell, with alternations of cold and
heat, alike unendurable. But the wailing and gnashing of teeth are
evidently no more than expressions of rage and impatience (Acts vii.
54), under the sense of intolerable pain and unutterable loss.
But after it has been thus done with the wicked, "then shall the
righteous shine forthl as the sun in the kingdom  of their Father."  As
* Voy. en Perse, Langlb's ed., v. 6, p. 118.
t See SUICER, S. V. 8pvyuds, which some make=- TwpLds  dlvrwv, but it is simpler to say with Bernard: Fletus ex dolore, stridor dentium ex furore; for in Cyprian's words (Ad Demet.): Erit tune sine fructu poenitentie dolor, poense inanis
ploratio, et inefficax deprecatio. See AMBROSE, Exp. in Luc., 1. 7, c. 205, 206; and
GERHARD, Loc. Theoll., 1. 31, c. 6, 5 46.
t'EKAdcpIovoiv, in which full force is to be given to the preposition. Schleusner
indeed says,-Paritm differt a simplici xAcd4r,-but Passow very differently,-Hervorstrahlen, sich plotzlich in aller Herrlichkeit hervorthun. There are two beautiful similitudes in the Shepherd of Hermas (1. 3, sim. 3 and 4), engaged in setting
forth the same truth, though under a different image. The Seer is shown in the
first a number of trees, all which, while it is winter, are alike without their leaves,
and seeming therefore to him all alike dead; and he is told that as the dry and the
green trees are not distinguishable from one another in the winter, while all alike
are leafless and bare, so neither in the present age are the just from sinners. In
the second, he is again showr. the trees, but now some of them are putting forth
leaves, while others are still remaining bare. Thus shall it be in the future age,
which for the just shall be a summer, and they shall be declared openly, while
their hidden life shall then manifest itself; but for the sinners it shall still be winter, and they, remaining without leaf or fruit, shall as dry wood be cut down for
the burning. The resemblance between these visions and singularly beautiful passages in Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. xxxvi. 2, and in Ps. cxlviii. 13), where exactly
the same image is used, is very remarkable; and again he says of the Christian as
he is now (In Ep. Joh. Tract. 5), Gloria ejus occulta est; chm venerit Dominus,
tune apparebit gloria. Viget enim, sed adhuc in hyeme; viget radix, sed quasi
aridi sunt rami. Intus est medulla quse viget, intus sunt folia arborum, intus fructus: sed aestatem expectant. Compare Minucius Felix (p. 329, ed. Ouzel.): Ita




90                           THE TARES.
fire was the element of the dark and cruel kingdom of hell, so is light
of the pure heavenly kingdom.* Then, when the dark hindering ele
ment is removed, shall this element of light which was before struggling
with and obstructed by it, come forth in its full brightness. (See Col.
iii, 3; Rom. viii. 18; Prov. xxv. 4, 5.)  A  glory shall be revealed in
the saints: it shall not merely be broiuht to them, and added from without; but rather a glory which they before had, but which did not before
evidently appear, shall burst forth and show itself openly, as did the
Lord's hidden glory once in the days of his flesh, at the moment of his
Transfiguration. That shall be the day of the manifestation of the sons
of God; they shall shine forth as the sun when the clouds are rolled
away (Dan. xii. 3); they shall evidently appear and be acknowledged
by all as the children of light, of that God who is "the Father of
Lights."t (Jam. i. 17.) And then, but not till then shall be accomplished those glorious prophecies which are so often repeated in the Old
Testament,-" Henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean." (Isai. li. 1.) " In that day there shall
be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of Hosts." (Zech.
xiv. 21.)  "Thy people also shall be all righteous."    (Isai. Ix. 21.)
Compare Isai. xxxv. 8; Joel iii. 17; Ezek. xxxvii. 21-27; Zeph,
iii. 13.
corpus in seculo ut arbores in hiberno, occultant virorem ariditate mentita. Quid
festinas ut cruda adhuc hieme reviviscat et redeat' Expectandum nobis etiam
corporis ver est.
* It is exactly thus that in the Mahommedan Theology, the good angels are
compact of light, and the evil ones of fire.
t Calvin: Insignis consolatio, quod filii Dei qui nunc vel squalore obsiti jacent,
vel latent nullo in pretio, vel etiam probris cooperti sunt, tune quasi sereno coelo,
et discussis omnibus nebulis, verb et ad liquidum semel conspicui fulgebunt: suoa
in sublime attollet Filius Dei, et omnem fuliginem absterget, qua nunc eoruir.
fulgor obruitur.-It is the saying of a Jewish expositor of Ps. lxxii.: Quemadmodum Sol et Luna illuminant hoc seculum, ita futurum est ut justi illuminent seculum futurum.




UI.
THE MUSTARD SEED.
MATT. xiii. 31, 32; MARK iv. 30-32; LUKE xiii. 18. 19.
THIS parable, and the one that follows, would seem, at first sight, merely
repetitions of the same truth; but here, as in every other case, upon
nearer inspection, essential differences reveal themselves. The other,
of the Leaven, is concerning the kingdom of God, which " cometh not
with observation;" this is concerning that same kingdom as it displays
itself openly, and cannot be hid: that declares the intensive, this the extensive, development of the Gospel. That sets forth the power and
action of the truth on the world brought in contact with it,-this the
power of the truth to develope itself from within itself,-how it is as the
tree shut up within the seed, which will unfold itself according to the
inward law of its own being. Both have this in common, that they describe the small and slight beginnings, the gradual progress, and the
final marvellous increase of the Church,-how, to use another image, the
stone cut out without hands, should become a great mountain, and fill
the whole earth. (Dan. ii. 34, 35.)-Chrysostom* traces finely the connection between this parable and all that has gone before. In the parable of the Sower, the disciples had heard that three parts of the seed
sown perished, and only a fourth part prospered; again, they had heard
in that of the Tares, and of the further hinderances which beset even
this part that remained: lest then they should be tempted quite to lose
heart and to despair, the Lord spake these two parables for their encouragement. My kingdom, he would say, will survive these losses, and
* surmount these hinderances, until, small as its first beginnings may ap* So also Lyser, with more immediate reference to the question with which
the parable is introduced in St. Mark (iv. 30): Cum ea sit Evangelii sors, ut tam
multa ejus fructum impediant, et eidem Satanas tot modis insidietur, ut vix fructus aliquis sperari possit, quid de illo dicemus? poterltne in rerum naturk aliquid
inveniri, quod ejus exilitatem excusare, illudque contemptu vindicare queat'




92                      THE MUSTARD SEED.
ptr, it will, like a mighty tree, fill the earth with its branches, —like
potent leaven, diffuse its influence through all the world.
The comparison which he uses, likening the growth of his kingdom
to that of a tree, was one with which many of his hearers may have been
already familiar from the Scriptures of the Old Testament. The growth
of a worldly kingdom had been set forth under this image (Dan. iv.
10-12; Ezek. xxxi. 3-9),* that also of the kingdom of God.   (Ezek. x.
vii. 22-24; Ps. lxxx. 8.)t  But why, it may be asked, is a mustard treet
here chosen as that with which the comparison shall be made?    Many
nobler plants, as the vine, or taller tr&s, as the cedar, might have been
named. But this is chosen, not with reference to its ultimate greatness,
but with reference to the proportion between the smallness of the seed
and the greatness of the plant which unfolds itself from thence.   For
this is the point to which the Lord calls especial attention,-not its
greatness in itself, but its greatness when compared with the seed from
whence it springs; since what he desired to set before his disciples was
-not merely that his kingdom should be glorious, but that it should be
glorious despite its weak and slight and despised beginnings. Nor, indeed, was the mustard seed, though in appearance so trivial, altogether
without its significance and acknowledged worth in antiquity. It ranked
among the nobler Pythagorean symbols,~ it was esteemed to possess
medicinal virtues against the bites of venomous creatures, and against
poisons, and was used as a remedy in many diseases.]   Nor can I, with
* See HAVERNICK, Comm. ab. Daniel, p. 139.
t In a striking poem, found in the Appendix to FELL'S Cyprian, the growth.of
the kingdom of God, under the figure of that of a tree, is beautifully set forth.
The religious reverence with which all antiquity was accustomed to look upon
trees (see CREUZER'S Symbolik, third edit. v. 4, p. 621,) should not here be left out
of mind.: The most accurate inquiries of naturalists would seem to point out as the
mustard-tree of this parable, not that which goes by this name in Western Europe,
but the Salvadora Persica, commonly called in Syria now, khardal. So Dr. Lindley in his Flora Judica; and see in the Athenaceu  of March 23,1844, an interesting
paper by Dr. Royle, read before the Asiatic Society. Captains Irby and Mangles,
describing this khardal, say, " It has a pleasant, though a strongly aromatic taste,
exactly resembling mustard, and if taken in any quantity, produces a similar irritability of the nose and eyes." There is on the other hand a learned discussion in
the Gentleman's Magazine, June 1844, calling in question Dr. Royle's conclusions;
but not seriously shaking them.
~ PLIN., H. N., 1. 20, c. 87.
II Pliny (Ibid.) Plautus applies to it a harder epithet, sinapis sceterata, because
of its sharpness which draws tears from the eyes; and Columella's line is often
quoted:
Seque lacessenti fletum factura sinapis.
Yet this too may be a part of its fitness here. For neither is the Gospel all sweets,
but may be compared to the mustard seed, 6ri8dKvovaav wceXifAiws frv 4vxh^




THE MUSTARD SEED.                            93
a modern interpreter, find any thing so very ridiculous in the supposition, that the Saviour chose this seed on account of further qualities
which it possessed, that gave it a peculiar aptness to illustrate the truth
hich he had in hand.       Its heat, its fiery vigor, the fact that only
through being bruised it gives out its best virtues, and all this under so
insignificant an appearance, and in so small a compass, may well have
moved him to select this image under which to set forth the destinies of
the word of the kingdom,-of the doctrine of a crucified Redeemer,
which, though to the Greeks foolishness, and to the Jews a stumblingblock, should prove to them that believed " the power of God unto sal
vation."*
Yet is it not Christ's doctrine merely, nor yet even the Church which
he planted upon earth, that is signified by this grain of mustard seed.
He is himself the grain of mustard seed.t   For the kingdom of heaven,
or the Church, was originally inclosed in him, and from him unfolded
itself, having as much oneness of life with him as the tree with the seed
in which it was originally shut up, and out of which it grew. He is at once
the sower and the seed sown: for by a free act of his own will, he gave
(CLEM. ALEX., Strom., 1. 5.) The comparison is carried out to a greater length in
the homily of an uncertain author: Sicut sinapis granum chm sumimus, vultu contristamur, fronte contrahimur, ad lacrimas permovemur, et ipsam salubritatem
corporis nostri cum quodam fletu austeritatis accipimus,... ita ergo et cam fidei
Christianas mandata percipimus, contristamur animo, affligimur corpore, ad lacri.
mas permovemur, et ipsam salutem nostram cum quodam fletu ac mcerore consequimur. Moreover, that its active energy, which in these quotations is noted,
will make it as apt an emblem of the good as the ill; and as such it was used,
according to eastern tradition, by Alexander the Great; for when Darius sent him
a barrel full of sesame, to acquaint him with the number of his soldiers, he sent a
bag full of mustard seed in return, to indicate the active, fiery, biting courage of
his. (D'HERBELOT, Biblioth. Orient., s. v. Escander.)
* Thus the author of a Sermon which has been attributed to Augustine (Serm
87, Appendix) and to Ambrose: Sicut enim granum sinapis prima fronte speciel
suse est parvum, vile, despectum, non saporem praestans, non odorem circumferens,
non indicans suavitatem: at ubi teri cmperit, statim odorem suum fundit, acrimoniam exhibet, cibum flammei saporis exhalat, et tanto fervoris calore succenditur,
ut mirum sit in tam frivolis [granis] tantum ignem fuisse conclusum,... ita ergo
et fides Christiana prima fronte videtur esse parva, vilis, et tenuis, non potentiam
suam ostendens, non superbiam preferens, non gratiam subministrans. There is
great fitness and beauty in the occasion upon which this sermon was preached,
namely, the martyrdom of St. Laurentius, the manner of whose death is well
known.-There is much also that is instructive, with somewhat merely fanciful,
in the remarks which Ambrose (Exp. in Luc. 1. 7, c. 176-186) makes on this
parable.
t See a fragment of Irenaeus (p. 347, Bened. ed.,) who also notes how the mustard seed was selected for its fiery and austere qualities (rb wvjAaljces Kal avb'r-7pb).
So TERTULLIAN, Adv. Marc., 1. 4, c. 30.




94                     THE MUSTARD SEED.
Ifimself to that death, whereby he became the author of life unto many;
as he himself had said, " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground
and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."
(John xii. 24.) And the field in which he sowed this seed was 1Be
word — "his field," or, as St. Luke expresses it (xiii. 19), "his garden;"
for the world was made by him, and when he came unto it, "he came
unto his own."
This seed when cast into the ground is "the least of all seeds,"words which have often perplexed interpreters, as there are many seeds,
as of poppy or rue, that are smaller; yet difficulties of this kind are not
worth making;-it is sufficient to know   that-Small as a grain of
mustard-seed, was a proverbial expression among the Jewst for something exceedingly minute. (See Luke xvii. 6.) The Lord, in his popular
teaching, adhered to the popular language.-To pass on then to the thing
signified: What, to the eye of flesh, could be less magnificent, what could
have less of promise than the commencements of the kingdom of God in
the person of the Son of man? He grew up in a distant and despised
province; till his thirtieth year, did not emerge from the bosom of his
family,-then taught for two or three years in the neighboring towns
and villages, and occasionally at Jerusalem; made a few converts, chiefly
among the poor and unlearned; and then falling into the hands of his
enemies, without an attempt on his own part or his followers lo release
him, died the shameful death of the cross: such, and so slight, was the
commencement of the universal kingdom of God. For in this the kingdom of God differs from the great schemes of this world;-these last
have a proud beginning, a shameful and a miserable end-towers of
Babel, which at first threaten to be as high as heaven, but end in being
a deserted and formless heap of slime and bricks; but the works of God,
and most of all his great work, his Church, have a slight and unobserved
beginning, with gradual increase and a glorious consummation. So is it
with his kingdom in the world; so is it with his kingdom in every single
heart. The word of Christ falls there too, like a slight mustard seed,
promising little, but issuing, if allowed to grow, in great and marvellous'
* Early Christian art had a true insight into this. DIDRON (Iconographie Chre.
tienne, p. 208), describes this as a frequent symbol: Le Christ dans un tombeau:
de sa bouche sort un arbre, sur les branches duquel sont les ap6trea,
t So also in the Koran (Sur. 81): Oh my son, verily every matter, whether
good or bad, though it be of the weight of a grain of mustard seed, and be hidden
in a rock, or in the heavens, or in the earth, God will bring the same to light.: Jerome (Comm. in Matth. in loc.) has a striking passage noting the difference
In this respect, between the Gospel and every system of human philosophy: the
last promising much and performing little, the other promising little and performing much: Prmedicatio Evangelii minima est omnibus disciplinis. Ad primam




THE MUSTARD SEED.                           95
resulta  That which was the smallest of all seeds,* "when it is growt,
it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of
she air come and lodge in the branches thereof."  It is well known that
in hot countries, as in Judsea, the mustard-tree attains a size which it is
never known to reach in our colder latitudes, sometimes so great as to
allow a man to climb up into its branches, though this, indeed, is
mentioned as a remarkable thing;t or to ride on horseback under them,
as a traveller in Chili mentions that he has done. And, on this passage,
Maldonatus relates, that even in Spain he has himself seen great ovens
heated with its branches; he mentions as well that birds are exceedingly
partial to the seed, so that when it is advancing to ripeness, he has often
seen them lighting in very great numbers on its boughs, which, however, were strong enough to sustain the weight without being broken.
This fact of the fondness of birds for the seeds, and the manner in
which, therefore, they congregatedin the branches, was probably familiar
to our Lord's hearers also.  They, too, had beheld them lodging in the
branches of the tree, whose seed thus served them for meat, so that there
must have been a singular liveliness in the image which the parable presented to their minds.
Neither need we suppose this last circumstance introduced merely
for the purpose of completing the picture, and presenting it in a more
lively manner to the eye; but rather in the birds flocking to the boughs
of the mustard-tree when it had grown great, and there finding shelter
and food (Ezek. xvii. 23, "under it shall dwell all-fowl of every wing"),
we are to recognize a prophecy of the refuge and defence that should be
for all men in the Church: how that multitudes should thither make
quippe doctrinam, fidem non habet veritatis, hominem Deum, Deum mortuum, et
scandalum crucis pradicans. Confer hujuscemodi doctrinam dogmatibus Philosophorum, et libris eorum, splentori eloquentire, et compositioni sermonum, et
videbis quanto minor sit caeteris seminibus sementis Evangelii. Sed illa cim
creverit, nihil mordax, nihil vividum, nihil vitale demonstrat, sed totum flaccidum,
marcidumque, et mollitum ebullit in olera et in herbas quae cito arescunt et corruunt. Haec autem praedicatio quae parva videbatur in principio, cim vel in
animA credentis, vel in toto mundo sata, fuerit, non exsurgit in olera, sed crescit
in arborem.
* Kuinoel's is an inaccurate remark, that here xIcKp4repov is a comparative for a
superlative, since it is the following 7rdvrwv which justifies and explains its use (see
Mark iv. 32; John x. 29; Ephes. iii. 8); if I say that a man is better than all men,
I say, indeed, that he is the best; but I do not use a comparative for a superlative.
So neither Virgil: Scelere ante alios immanior omnes; nor the author of the old
Latin epitaph, in which these words occur: Omnium feminarum sanctiori. This
would not be worth observing, save as an example of the loose attribution to the
New Testament, of ungrammatical forms, which is a most serious hindrance to all
accurate interpretation. See WINER'S Grammatik, p. 221.)
t LIGHTFOOT, Hor. Heb., ia loc.




96                     THE MUSTARD SEED.
their resort, finding their protection from worldly oppression, as well as
the satisfaction for all the needs and wants of their souls;* and proving
true the words of the son of Sirach (xiv. 20, 26, 27), "Blessed is the
man that doth meditate good things in Wisdom.... He shall set his
children under her shelter, and shall lodge under her branches; by her
he shall be covered from heat, and in her glory shall he dwell."  Theo
phylact concludes his exposition of the parable with this practical application: " And be thou also such a grain of mustard,-small, indeed, in
appearance, for it becomes thee not to make a spectacle of thy virtue,
but fervent, and zealous, and energic, and armed to reprove."
* Augustine (Serm. 44, c. 2): Crevit Ecclesia, crediderunt gentes, victi sunt
terrme principes sub nomine Christi, ut essent victores in orbe terrarum. Persequebantur ante Christianos pro idolis, persequuntur idola propter Christum. Omnes
confugiunt ad auxilium Ecclesie, in omni pressure, in omni tribulatione su&.
Crevit illud granum sinapis, veniunt volatfia coeli, superbi saeculi, et acquiescunt
sub ramis ejus.




IV.
THE LEAVEN.
MATTHEW xiii. 33; LUKE xiii. 20, 21.
THIS parable relates also to the marvellous increase of the kingdom of
God; but while the last set forth its outward visible manifestation, this
declares its hidden mysterious working; and not merely its development
from within itself, but its influence on the world which it touches upon
all sides. The mustard seed does not for some while attract observation,
nor, till it has grown to a considerable size, do the birds of the air light
upon its branches; but the active working of the leaven has been from
the very beginning, from the moment that it was hidden in the lump.
It might indeed be said against this or any other scheme which should
expound the leaven in a favorable sense, that it is most frequently used
in the Scripture as the symbol of something evil. (1 Cor v. 7; Luke xii.
1; Gal. v. 9.) This is undoubtedly true, and being this, it was forbidden,
in the offerings under the Law (Exod. xiii. 3; Lev. ii. 11; Amos iv. 5),
though not without an exception. (Lev. xxiii. 17.) The strict command
to the people, that they should carefully put away every particle of
leaven out of their houses, during the Passover week, rests on this view
of it as evil: they were thus reminded that they needed to put away
from their hearts all workings of malice and wickedness, if they would
rightly keep the spiritual feast.* When leaven is thus used in an evil
* See our Collect for the First Sunday after Easter.-The Jews termed the figmentum malum, that in man which lusteth against the spirit, and hinders him
from doing the things that he would, the leaven in the lump, and the reason is
given in the book Sohar: Prava concupiscentia vocatur fermentum, quia parum
ejus cor pervadit, et in tantum exturgescit, ut findatur pectus. (See SQHOETTGEN'S
HoT. Heb., v. 1, p. 597.) The Romans had the same dislike to the use of leaven in
sacred things: Farinam fermento imbutam attingere flumini Diali fas non est.
(Gell. x. 15, 19.) Plutarch (Quaest. Rom. 109), gives no doubt the true explanation: "The leaven itself is born from corruption, and corrupts the mass with
which it is mingled." Thus it comes to pass that &pTro Kaccpol is used as=-CvoL.
7




98                          THE LEAVEN.
sense, its tendencies to make sour and to corrupt are those which come
most prominently forward. Yet, because such is its most frequent use
in Scripture, there needs not, therefore, to interpret the parable, as
Gurtler,* Teelmant and also some little bands of modern separatistst
(whose motive, of course, is obvious) have done, as though it were a
prophecy of the heresies and corruptions, which should mingle with and
adulterate the pure doctrine of the Gospel,-as though it were, in fact,
a prophecy of the workings of the future mystery of iniquity. These
expositors make the Woman to be the apostate church' which, witn its
ministers, they observe is often represented under this image. (Prov.
ix. 13; Rev. xvii. 1; Zech. v. 7-11.) The last of these passages Teelman
asserts to be an exact parallel to the parable before us. If this interpretation were the true one,-if it could be said that at any time the
whole Church was thus penetrated through and through with the leaven
of false doctrine, the gates of hell would, indeed, have prevailed against
it; and from whence it should ever have become unleavened again, it
is difficult to understand.
But the unquestionable fact, that leaven is, in Scripture, most commonly the type of something false and corrupting, need not drive us into
any such embarrassment. It was not, therefore, the less free to use it in a
good sense. In those other passages, its puffing up, distributing, souring
properties, were the prominent points of comparison; in the present, its
warmth,~ its penetrative energy, the power which'a little of it has to
lend its savor and its virtue to much wherewith it comes in contact.
The great features of the figurative language of Scripture remain no
doubt fixed and unalterable; but it is not thus stereotyped in its minor
details, so that one figure needs always to stand for one and the same
So Jerome (Ep. 31) gives the reason why honey was forbidden in the Levitical
offerings (Lev. ii. 11); Apud Deum enim nihil voluptuosum, nihil tantum suave
placet; nisi quod in se habet mordacis aliquid veritatis. These omissions had
doubtless the same symbolical meaning, as the casting away of the gall among the
Romans in the victims offered to the nuptial Juno.-It was the feeling of the unsuitableness of leaven in sacris which, in part, caused the Latin Church to contend
so earnestly against the use of fermented bread in the Eucharist, calling those who
used it, Fermentarii, though there was an historical interest also mingling in the
question. (See AUGUSTI, Handb. d. Christl. Archdol.T v. 2, p. 662.)
* Syst. Theol. Prophet., p. 590.
t Comm. in Luc. 16, p. 59, seq.-Vitringa gives, with great impartiality, two
entirely independent expositions of the Parable, taking first the leaven in a good,
then in an evil sense, but decides absolutely for neither.: Brief Exposition of Matthew xiii., by J. N. Darby, 1845, p. 40. He makes in
the same way the parable of the mustard seed to be a prophecy of the upgrowth
of a proud world-hierarchy.
t Z5*t- from  exw, as fermentum (=fervimentum) from fervo: leaven, in French
levain, from levare, to lift up.




THE LEAVEN.                           99
thing. The devil is "a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour"
(1 Pet. v. 8); yet this does not hinder the same title from being applied
to Christ, " the lion of the tribe of Judah " (Rev. v. 5); only there the
subtlety and fierceness of the animal formed the point of comparison,
here the nobility and kingliness and conquering strength.* Cyrilt then
certainly goes too far, and could scarcely have had this parable in his
mind, when he says: " Leaven, in the inspired writings, is always taken
as the type of naughtiness and sin." Ignatius shows rather by his own
application of the image, how it may be freely used, now in a good, now
in a bad sense; for warning against Judaizing practices, he writes:
"Lay aside the evil leaven which has grown old and maketh sour, and
be transmuted into the new leaven, which is Christ Jesus.":  Nor is it
to be forgotten that if, on one side, the effects of lejaven on meal present
an analogy to something evil in the spiritual world. they do also on the
other, to something good, as it is universally agreed that its effects
on bread are to render it more tasteful, lighter, and more nourishing,
and generally more wholesome.
There is no need, then, to take the parable in ether than its obvious
sense, that it is concerning the diffusion, and not the corruptions, of the
Gospel; by the leaven we are to understand the word of the kingdom,
which Word, in its highest sense, Christ himself was. As the mustardseed, out of which a mighty tree was to grow, was the least of all seeds,
so the leaven is also something apparently of slight account, and yet, at
the same time, mighty in operation. Thus, too, of Christ it was said,
("He hath no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him there is
no beauty that we should desire him;" but then presently again, "By
his knowledge shall my righteous Servant justify many,.. and he
shall divide the spoil with the strong" (Isai. liii. 2, 11, 12); and when
he had communicated of his life and spirit to his apostles, they too, in
their turn, poor and mean and unlearned as they were, became the salt
of the earth, the leaven of the world. For, in Chrysostom's words, "that
which is once leavened becomes leaven to the rest; since as the spark
when it takes hold of wood, makes that which is already kindled to
transmit the flame, and so seizes still upon more, thus it is also with the
preaching of the word."~
* See AUGUSTINE (Serm. 73, c. 2): Quod enim tam distat ad invicem, quam
Christus et Diabolus? Tamen leo et Christus est appellatus, et Diabolus.... Ille
leo, propter fortitudinem: ille leo, propter feritatem. Ille leo ad vincendum: ille
leo, ad nocendum. Cf. Serm. 32, c. 6.
t Horn. Paschal., 19.: Ad Magnes., 10. Cf. GREGORY NAZ. (Orat. 36, c. 90), who says that Christ
by his Incarnation sanctified men, tvrep pc07n y7e?^evos Tq WaVrl pvpipcatr, Kal rpbs
IauTrbV  oravUs.
6 In Matth., Hom. 46; see also Con. Ignaviam, Horn. 3. 2. So Cajetan: Christi




100                      THE LEAVEN.
Is it only a part of the suitable machinery of the parable, that the
act of kneading being proper to women, it should be here said, that it
was " a woman " who took the leaven, and hid it in the three measures
of meal? or may we look for something more in it than this? A
comparison with Luke xv. 8, the woman who had lost and found her
piece of money, may suggest that the Divine Wisdom, the Holy Spirit,
which is the sanctifying power in humanity, (and it is of that sanctifying
that the word is here,) may be meant. But if it be asked, why as a
woman? to this it may be replied, that the organ of the Spirit's working
is the Church, which evidently would be most fitly represented under
this image. In and through the Church the Spirit's work proceeds:
only as he dwells in the Church (Rev. xxii. 7), is it able to mingle a
nobler element in the mass of humanity, to leaven the world.-So again,
why should three measures of meal be mentioned? It may perhaps be
sufficiently answered, Because it was just so much as at one time would
be commonly mixed. (Gen. xviii. 6; Judg. vi. 19; 1 Sam. i. 24.)* Yet
it may be that we should attach a further significance to this number
three. Some perceive in it allusion to the spread of the Gospel through
the three parts then known of the world: others again, as Augustine, to the
ultimate leavening of the whole human race, derived from the three sons
of Noah; which is nearly the same thing. And those who, like Jerome
and Ambrose, find in it a pledge of the sanctification of spirit, soul, and
body, are not upon a different track, if indeed, as has not been ill
suggested, Shem, Japhet, and Ham, do indeed answer to these three
elements, spirit, soul, and body, which together make up the man-the
one or other element coming into predominance in the descendants
severally of the three.
But leaving this, we may observe how the leaven is at once different
from, and yet acting upon, the lump; for the woman took it from elsewhere to mingle it therein: and even such is the Gospel, a kingdom not
of this world (John xviii. 36), not the unfolding of any powers which
already existed in the world,-a kingdom not rising as those other
kingdoms "out of the earth" (Dan. vii. 17), but a new power brought
into the world from above, not a philosophy, but a Revelation. The
Gospel of Christ was a new and quickening power cast in the midst of
an old and dying world, a centre of life round which all the energies
which survived, and all which itself should awaken, might form and
gather;-by the help of which the world might renew its youth.t —And
discipuli, prima regni caelorum membra, spiritu penetrarunt corda hominum, cru.
daque ac acerba ad maturitatem ac saporem cselestis vitas promoverunt.
* In the two last places, the Septuagint has rpia j/epa.
t Augustine, in whose time the fading away of all the glory of the ancient




THE LEAVEN.                          101
it is observable, that this leaven is said not merely to have been mingled
with, but hidden in the mass, on which its influence was to be exerted.
The true renovation, that which God effects, is ever thus from the inward
to the outward; it begins in the invisible spiritual world, though it ends
not there; for there beginning, it yet fails not to bring about, in good
time, a mighty change also in the outward and visible world. This was
wonderfully exemplified in the early history of Christianity. The
leaven was effectually hidden. A remarkable evidence of this is the
entire ignorance which heathen writers betray of all that was going
forward a little below the surface of society,-the manner in which they
overlooked the mighty change which was preparing, and this not merely
at the first, when the mustard-tree might well escape notice, but, with
slight exceptions, even up to the very moment when the triumph of
Christianity was at hand. The leaven was hidden, yet, by degrees, it
made itself felt, till at length the whole Roman world was, more or less,
leavened by it.. Nor must we forget, that the mere external conversion
of that whole world gives us a very inadequate measure of the work
which had to be done: besides this, there was the eradication of the
innumerable heathen practices and customs and feelings which had
enwoven ahd entwined their fibres round the very heart of society, a
work which lagged very considerably behind the other, and which, in
fact, was never thoroughly accomplished, till the whole structure of
Roman society had gone to pieces, and the new Teutonic framework
had been erected in its room.
But while much has thus been effected, while the leavening of the
mass has never ceased to go forward, yet the promise of the parable has
hitherto been realized only in a very imperfect measure, and we cannot
consider these words "till the whole is leavened," as less than a prophecy
of a final complete triumph of Christianity; that it will diffuse itself
through all nations, and purify and ennoble all life. And we may also
fairly see in these words a promise and an assurance that the word of
life, received into any single heart, shall not there cease its effectual
working till it has brought the whole man in obedience to it, sanctifyworld was daily becoming more apparent (mundus tanta rerum labe contritus, ut
etiam speciem seductionis amiserit), delighted to contemplate and to present the
coming of Christ under this aspect. Thus Se-m. 81: Parum tibi prestitit Deus,
quia in senectute mundi misit tibi Christum, ut tune te reficiat, quando omnia
deficiunt.... enit cum omnia veterascerent, et novum te fecit. Res facta, res
condita, res peritura jam vergebat in occasam. Necesse erat ut abundaret laboribus: venit ille, et consolari te inter labores, et promittere tibi in sempiternum
quietem. Noli adhaerere velle seni mundo, et nolle juvenescere in Christo, qui
tibi dicit; Perit mundus, senescit mundus, deficit mundus, laborat anhelitu senectutis. Noli timere, renovabitur juventus tua sicut aquilse.




102                         THE LEAVEN.
ing him wholly, so that he shall be altogether a new creation in Christ
Jesus.* It shall claim every region of man's being as its own, and make
itself felt in all. In fact, the parable does nothing less than set forth to
us the mystery of regeneration, both in its first act, which can be but
once, as the leaven is but once hidden; and also in the consequent
renewal by the Holy Spirit, which, as the ulterior working of the leaven,
is continual and progressive. This side of the truth is that exclusively
brought out by Hammond, who thus paraphrases our Lord's words:
" The Gospel hath such a secret invisible influence on the hearts of men,
to change them and affect them, and all the actions that flow from them,
that it is fitly resembled to leaven, so mixed thoroughly with the whole,
that although it appeareth not in any part of it visibly, yet every part
hath a tincture from it." We may fitly conclude, in the words of St.
Ambrose: " May the Holy Church, which is figured under the type of
this woman in the Gospel, whose meal are we, hide the Lord Jesus in
the innermost places of our hearts, till the warmth of the.Divine wisdom
penetrate into the most secret recesses of our souls."t
* Corn. l Lapide quotes from an earlier commentator: Dicif antem, Donec fermentatem est totum, quia charitas in mente nostra recondita e6 usque crescere
debet ut totam mentem in sui perfectionem commutet, quod hic quidem inchoatur,
in futuro verb perficitur.
t Exp. in Luc., 1. 7, c. 187.-Clemens of Alexandria (p. 693, Potter's ed.) gives
an admirable exposition of the parable: and in very few words. The kingdom of
heaven, he says, is likened to leaven, ii j x lo'Xs -To A^youv vo~rouOS  ooVaa ial uvvai-r,
dvTCa Tc KatcTaseQdyevov Kal evTbs eavTrov KCT7a-dJevaY   CwTrY, BIerKEKpU/V.jL4fPS TE Kut
&pav&ss- rps arw4v X.K~et, Kcl Trb rwy avTrov et's bEvrzTa auvvdyei.




V.
THE HID TREASURE.
MATTHEW xiii. 4.
THE kingdom   of God is not merely a general, it is also an individual,
thing; it is not merely a tree overshadowing the earth, leaven leavening
the world, but each man must have it for himself, and make it his own
by a distinct act of his own will. He cannot be a Christian without
knowing it.  He may come under the shadow of this great tree, and partake of many blessings of its shelter. He may dwell in a Christendom
which has been leavened, and so in a manner himself share in the universal leavening. But more than this is needed, and more than this in every
elect soul will find place. There will be a personal appropriation of the
benefit, and we have the history of this'in these two parables* which
follow. They were sqokem, not to the niultitude, not to those "without,'
-but within the house, and to the more immediate disciples. These
are addressed as having found the hid treasure —the pearl of price
and are now warned of the surpassing worth of these, and that, for their
sakes, all things are to be joyfully renounced. The second parable does
not merely r peat what the first has said, but repeats it with a difference.
The two are each the complement of the other: so that under one or
other, as finders either of the pearl or hid treasure, may be ranged all
* Origen (Comm. in Matth.) observes that these would more fitly be called
similitudes (61uoL.aeLrs) than parables, which name, he says, is not given to them in
the Scripture: yet see ver. 53.-For a series of these briefer parables as in use
among the Jews, see SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Heb., v. 1, pp. 83-85.
t EOQ'avprs, i. e. avvacywy~ Xppd7fi.rcw KeKpVlfA.Le'7, as an old Lexicon explains it.
Neither of the derivations greatly commend themselves; not Tfl7Lu and a3poy==
aurum" the receptacle of gold, since the word aaqov seems not so old as  aoaoqoes
itself, and that from T71'rI el a6 iplov, that put by for to-morrow, is artificial.-The
Jurisconsult Paulus gives its legal definition, Thesaurus est'tam vetus depositio
pecunise, ut ejus non exstet memoria, et jam dominum non habeat.




104                    THE HID TREASURE.
who become partakers of the rich treasures of the Gospel of Christ. Fol
these, it may be, are persons who feel that there must be some absolute
good for man, in the possession of which he shall be blessed, and find
the satisfaction of all his longings, and who are, therefore, seeking every
where and inquiring for this good.  Such are likened to the merchant
that has distinctly set before himself the purpose of seeking goodly
pearls. These are the fewest in number, but at the same time, perhaps,
the noblest converts to the truth. Again, there are others, who do not'
discover that there is an aim and a purpose for man's life,-that there
is a truth for him at all, until the truth as it is in Jesus is revealed to
them. Such are likened to the finder of the hid treasure, who stumbled
upon it unawares, neither expecting nor looking for it. While the
others knew that there was a good, and were looking for it, the discovery
of the good itself is the first thing that reveals to these that there is
such at all; whose joy, therefore, as greater,-being the joy at the discovery of an unlooked-for treasure,-is expressed; that of the other, not.
Thus Hammond, bringing out this distinction, paraphrases the two parables thus: " The Gospel being by some not looked after, is yet sometimes met with by them, and becomes matter of infinite joy and desire to
them: and so is likened fitly to a treasure, which a man finding casually
in a field, hid again, or concealed it, and then, designing to get into his
possession, accounts no price he can pay too dear for it. Others there
are which have followed the study of wisdom, and thirsted after some
instruction: and thea the Gospel of Christ comes as a rich prize doth
to a merchant, who is in pursuit of rich merchandise, and meeting with
a jewel for his turn, lays out all his estate upon it."
The cases of Jew and Gentile will respectively exemplify the contrast between the Pearl and the Hid Treasure; though of course, in the
case of the Jews, or the chiefest part of them, the example cannot be
carried through, as they, though seeking the pearl, having a zeal for
righteousness, yet, when the pearl of great price was offered to them,
were not willing to sell all,-to renounce their peculiar privileges, their
self-righteousness, and all else that they held dear, that they might buy
that pearl.  The Gentiles, on the contrary, at least the greater number
of them, came upon the treasure unawares. Christ was found of them
that sought him not, and the blessings of his Gospel revealed to them
who before had not divined that there were such blessings for man.*
* Grotius: Doctrina Evangelica quibusdam affulsit, neque de Deo, neque d~
vita emendanda, neque de spe vita alterius quicquam cogitantibus, quales erant
plerique in gentibus externis, quibus illud vaticinium Paulus aptat: Inventus sum
non quarentibus me. Erant et sapientie studiosi inter Judaeos et alibi, qui veritatis cognoscendae desiderio quodam tangebantur, quive Prophetam aliquem aut




THE HID TREASURE.                         105
Or again, we might instance Nathanael, as an example of the more receptive nature,-of one who has the truth found for him; or a still more
striking example,-the Samaritan woman (John iv.), who was thinking
of any thing more than of lighting on the hid treasure, when she came to
draw water from the well. Yet in this character, there cannot be a total
absence of seeking for the truth; only it is a desire that has hitherto
slumbered in the soul, and displays itself rather as a love of the truth
when revealed, and at once a joyful and submissive acquiescence to it,
than in any active previous quest. In both, there must be the same
willingness to embrace it, when it is known, and to hold it fast at all
costs and hazards. On the other hand, we have, perhaps, no such picture of a noble nature, seeking for the pearl of price, and not resting
till he had found it, as that which Augustine gives of himself in his Confessions; though we also have many more, such as Justin Martyr's account of himself, in his first dialogue with Trypho, when he tells how he
had gone through the whole circle of Greek philosophy, seeking in vain
for something which would satisfy the longings of his soul, and never
finding what he wanted, till he found it in the Gospel of Christ.
The circumstance which supplies the groundwork of this first parable, namely, the finding of a concealed treasure, must have been of
much more frequent occurrence in an insecure state of society, such as
in almost all ages has been that of the East, than happily it can be with
us. A writer on Oriental literature and customs, mentions that in the
East, on account of the frequent changes of dynasties, and the revolutions which accompany them, many rich men divide their goods into
three parts: one they employ in commerce, or for their necessary support; one they turn into jewels, which, should it prove needful to fly,
could be easily carried with them; a third part they bury. But while
they trust no one with the' place where the treasure is buried, so is the
same, should they not return to the spot before their death, as good as
lost to the living (compare Jer. xli. 8), until by chance, a lucky peasant, while he is digging his field, lights upon it, So that when we read
ipsum etiam Messiam avidis animis expectabant. Priores respicit thesauri comparatio, posteriores ista de unione. Bengel recognizes the same distinction: Inventio thesauri non prmesupponit Tb quaerere, ut margaritse, quae percontatione inveniuntur. Alex. Knox, in his Remains (v. 1, p. 416, seq.) has very excellent remarks
to the same effect. There is rather a confirmation of this in the forms which the
two parables assume. In this the treasure is the prominent circumstance:-" The
kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure." Now if the other had been cast in the
same mould, it woufl have been saife, The kfngcom orf eaven fs ffre unto a pearr;
but not so, it is " like unto a merchant-man;" so that the person seeking is there
at the centre of the spiritual picture, the thing found, here. This is scarcely
accidental.




106                   THE HID TREASURE.
in Eastern tales, how a man has found a buried treasure, and, in a mo<
ment, risen from poverty to great riches, this is, in fact, an occurrence
that not unfrequently happens, and is a natural consequence of the customs of these people.* Modern books of travels continually bear witness to the universal belief in the existence of such hid treasures; so
that the traveller often finds great difficulty in obtaining information
about antiquities, and is sometimes seriously inconvenienced, or even
endangered, in his researches among ancient ruins, by the jealousy of
the neighboring inhabitants, who fear lest he is coming to carry away
concealed hoards of wealth from among them, of which, by some means
or other, he has got notice. Another evidence of this widespread belief
is, that part of the skill of an Eastern magician should consist in being
able to detect the places where these secreted treasures will successfully
be looked for.t Often, too, a man abandoning the regular pursuits of
industry, will devote himself to' treasure-seeking, in the hope of growing,
through some happy chance, rich of a sudden.4   (See Job iii. 21; Prov.
ii. 4.) The contrast, however, between the present parable and the following, noticed already, renders it unlikely that in the present we are
to assume the finder to have been in search of the treasure; he rather
stumbles upon it unawares,~ probably while he is engaged as a hireling
in cultivating another man's field.
Some, in the interpretation, draw a distinction between the field and
the treasure; making the first to be the Holy Scriptures; the second,
the hidden mystery of the knowledge of Christ contained in them,j]
which when a man has partly perceived,-discovered, that is, and got a
glimpse of the treasure, he is willing to renounce all meaner aims and
* Richardson (Dissert. on the Languages, t-c., of Eastern Nations, p. 180);
quoted by Rosenmiiller (Alte und Neue Morgenland, v. 5, p. 197). Compare the
strange story told by Tacitus, Annal., 1. 16, 1-3.
t See BURDER'S Oriental Literature, v. 1, p. 275; and for evidence of the same
in old time, BECKER'S Charikles, v. 1, p. 224.
$ The reader of Plato will remember his admirable words De Legg., 1. 11,
p. 913,
~ Such a treasure, in a field, would naturally be most often found quite unexpectedly; as Horace: O si urnam argentifors qua mihi monstret;-it would often
be turned up by the husbandman engaged in digging or ploughing, and thinking
of no such thing. O si sub rastro crepet argenti mihi seria! (Persius.)
11 So Jerome (Comm. in Matth., in loc.): Thesaurus iste,... sanctee Scripturae
in quibus reposita est notitia Salvatoris; and Augustine (Qucrst. Evang., 1. 1,
qu. 13): Thesaurum in agro absconditum, dixit duo Testamenta Legis in Ecclesia,
quae quis cum ex parte intellectAs attigerit, sentit illic magna latere, et vadit et
Tendit omnia sua, et emit agrum ilium, id est, contemtu temporalium comparat sibi
otinm, ut sit dives cognitione Dei. Alex. Knox has an ingenious view of the relation between the treasure and the field which contains the treasure, in his Remains,
v. 1, p. 418.




THE HID TREASURE.                         107
objects; that having leisure to search more and more into t9ose Scriptures, to make them his own, he may become rich in the knowledge of
Christ which therein is contained.  Yet to me the field rather represents the outer visible Church, as contradistinguished from the inward
spiritual, with which the treasure would then agree. As the man who
before looked on the field with, careless eyes, prized it but as another
field, now sees in it a new worth, now determines that nothing shall
separate him  from it,-so he who recognizes the Church, not as a
human institute, but a divine,-as a dispenser, not of earthly gifts, but
of heavenly,-who has learned that God is in the midst of it,-sees now
that it is something different from, and something more than, all earthly
societies, with which hitherto he has confounded it: and henceforth it is
precious in his sight, even to its outermost skirts, for the sake of its inward glory, which is now revealed to his eyes. And he sees, too, that
blessedness is unalterably linked to communion with it; as the man
cannot have the treasure and leave the field, but both or neither must
be his, so he cannot have Christ except in his Church; none but the
golden pipes of the sanctuary are used for the conveyance of the golden
oil (Zech. iv. 12); he cannot have Christ in his heart, and,, at the
same time, separate his fbrtunes from those of Christ's struggling, suffering, warring Church: the treasure and the field go together; both or
neither must be his.
But not to anticipate the progress of the parable,-this treasure
" when a man hathfound, he hideth;" having laid it open in the discovery, he covers it up again, while he goes and effects the purchase of
the field. By these words it cannot, of course, be meant that he who
has discovered the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are hidden in
Christ Jesus, will desire to keep his knowledge to himself, since rather
he will feel himself, as he never did before, a debtor to all men, to make
all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery that is hid in Christ.
He will go like Andrew to his brother man, and say to him, "We have
found the Messias," and will seek to bring him to Jesus. If he hide the
treasure, that will be, not lest another should find it, but lest he himself
should lose it.* In the first moments that the truth is revealed to a soul,
there may well be a tremulous fear lest the blessing found should, by
some means or other, escape from it again; the anxiety that it may not
* Maldonatus: Non ne alius inveniat, sed ne ipse perdat: Jerome (Comm. in
Matth., in loc.): Non quod hoc de invidia faciat, sed quod timore servantis et
nolentis perdere, abscondit in corde suo quem pristinis prsetulit facultatibus. H
de Sto. Victore has a somewhat different explanation (De Arc& Mor., 1. 3, c. 6)
Thesaurum inventum manifestat, qui acceptum donum Sapientiae in ostentations
portat. Thesaurum autem inventum abscondit, qui accepto'dono Sapientise not
foris in oculis hominum, sed intus coram Deo inde gloriari quaerit.




108                  THE HID TREASURE.
do so, and precautions for this end taken, would seem to be the truth
signified by this re-concealment of the treasure found.-Having thus
secured it for the moment, the finder, "for joy thereof,* goeth and selleth
all that he hath, and buyeth that field:" the joy is expressly mentioned
here, being that in the strength of which the finder of the spiritual treasure is enabled to go and sell all that he hath;t no compulsion, no
command is necessary; for joy thereof he cannot do otherwise; all
other things have now no glory, "by reason of the glory which excelleth."
Augustine excellently illustrates this part of the parable. Describing the crisis of his own conversion, and how easy he found it, through
this joy, to give up all those pleasures of sin that he had long dreaded to
be obliged to renounce, which had long held him fast bound in the chains
of evil custom, and which if he renounced, it seemed to him as though
life itself would not be to be endured, he exclaims: " How sweet did it
at once become to me, to want the sweetness of those toys! and what I
feared to be parted from was now a joy to part with. For thou didst
cast them forth from me, thou true and highest sweetness. Thou castedst
them forth, and, for them, enteredst in thyself, sweeter than all pleasure."t
The parting with those other delights, which had hitherto held him bound,
was, in Augustine's case, the selling all that he had, that he might
buy the field. Compare Phil. iii. 4-11, where St. Paul declares to us
how he too sold all that he hadrenounced his trust in his own righteousness, in his spiritual and fleshly privileges, that he might Irwin
Christ and be found in him." In each of these illustrious instances, the
man parted with the dearest thing that he had, so to make the treasure
his own: though, in each case, how different was the thing parted with!
So, too, whenever any man renounces the thing that is closest to him,
rather than that should be a hinderance to his embracing and making his
own all the blessings of the Gospel,-when the lover of money renounces
his covetousness,-and the indolent man, his ease,-and the lover of
pleasure, his pleasure,-and the wise man, his confidence in the wisdom
of this world, then each is selling what he has that he may buy the field
which contains the treasure. When the Lord says (Matt. x. 37-39),
"He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me," &c.,
he is, in fact, exhorting to this selling of all that we have; see also Matt.
*'Arb T.s Xapay aiTro. But perhaps rather "for his joy" (a&rb Trs Xapas
t Bengel: Gaudium spirituale, stimulus abnegandi mundum.
i Confess., 1. 9, c. 1: Quam suave mihi subito factum est carere suavitatibus
Aiugarum, et quas amittere metus fuerat, jam dimittere gaudium erat. Ejiciebas
enim eas a me, vera tu et summa suavitas, ejiciebas et intrabas pro eis omni volup.
tate dulcior.




THE HID TREASURE.                          109
xvi. 24; and Mark ix. 43-48, where the same command is given. And
yet, in the present case, it is not merely a command; it is not to be considered as an arbitrary condition, imposed from without, but rather a delightful constraint, acknowledged within: even as a man would willingly
fling down pebbles and mosses, which hitherto he had been gathering,
and with which he had filled his hands, if pearls and precious stones
were offered to him;* or as the dead leaves easily and as of themselves
fall off from the tree, when propelled by the new blossoms and buds
which are forcing their way from behind.
But a difficulty has been sometimes found in the circumstance of the
finder of the treasure going and buying the field,t keeping back, as it is
evident that he did, from the owner, the knowledge of the fact which enhanced its value so greatly, that either he would not have parted with it at
all, or only at a much higher price. They argue that it is against the decorum of the divine teaching and of the Divine Teacher, that an action,
morally questionable at least, if not absolutely unrighteous, should be used
even for the outward setting forth of a spiritual action which is commended and urged upon others as worthy of imitation; that there is a certain
approbation of'the action conveyed, even in the very use of it for such
ends; in fact, they find the same difficulty here as in the parables of the
Unjust Steward, snd the Unjust Judge. Olshausen,: so far from evading the difficulty, or seeking to rescue the present parable from underlying
the same difficulty, as undoubtedly cleaves to one of those, himself brings
forward the likeness existing between the two, and affirms that, in both,
prudence (Klugheit) with regard to divine things, is commended; so that
they are parables of the same class, and in this respect, at least, contain* Augustine: Ecce petis a Deo, et dicis, Domine, da mihi. Quid tibi dabit qui
aliunde manus tuas videt occupatas l Ecce Dominus vult dare qua sua sunt, et
non videt ubi ponat; and again (In 1 Ep. Joh., Tract. 4): Bono implendus es,
funde malum. Puta quia melle te vult implere Deus. Si aceto plenus, es ubi mel
pones. Fundendum est quod portabat vas. Mundandum est, etsi cum labore,
cum tritura: ut fiat aptum cuidam rei.
t It is curious, and is noticed by Vitringa (Erklar. d. Parab., p. 235), that we
should have in ancient history, an account almost exactly answering to that which
supplies the groundwork of the present parable. After Mardonius had been conquered at Plataea, a report existed that he had left great treasures buried within
the circuit where his tent had stood; Polycrates, a Theban, buying the ground,
sought long for the treasure, but not finding it, inquired at Delphi, and was told
" to turn every stone," which doing, he found it. Such the proverb collectors give
as the origin of'the proverb, rdvTra Aitov KIVEL. (See the Paracm. Grcec., Oxf., 1836,
p. 363.). In his Biblischer Commnentar, a most interesting and instructive work, to which
my obligations are large and frequent: it has unhappily been left unfinished by
his death. I know no work which would so favorably present the better German
theology to the English reader, as would this.




110                    THE HID TREASURE.
ing the same moral.   But to the objection made above, it seems enough
to say, that not every part of his conduct who found the treasure is proposed for imitation, or as affording a point of comparison,* but only his
earnestness in securing the treasure found; his fixed purpose to secure
and make it his own, at all costs and all hazards, and (which, I suppose,
is Olshausen's meaning) his prudence, without any affirmation that the
actual manner in which that prudence was exercised, was praiseworthy
or not.t
* Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. lvii. 6): Non undecunque datur similitudo a Scrip.
turis, laudatur ipsa res, sed tantim inde similitudo trahitur.
t In books of casuistry, where they treat of the question, how far and where a
finder has a right to appropriate things found, this parable is frequently adduced,
as by Aquinas (Srumm. Theol., 1. 2, qu. 69, art. 6): Circa res inventas est distinguendum. Quedam enim sunt, qum nunquam fuerint in bonis alicujus, sicut lapilli
et gemmae que inveniuntur in litore maris. Et talia occupanti conceduntur, et
eadem ratio est de thesauris antiquo tempore sub terra occultatis, quorum non extat aliquis possessor: nisi quod secundim leges civiles tenetur inventor dare medietatem domino agri si in alieno agro invenerit. Propter quod in parabola dicitur
(Matth. xiii.), de inventore thesauri, quod emit agrum, quasi ut haberet jus possidendi totum thesaurum.-We read of Apollonius of Tyana (see his Life, 1.2. c. 16)
being called in to decide a quarrel between the buyer and seller of such a field, as
to which of them a treasure found in it shall belong. He does not much help the
law of the matter, for he adjudges it to whichever of the parties shall be found, on
scrutiny, to have lived ip 4inse- past the holiest life.




A.
THE PEARL.
MATTHEW Xiii. 45, 46.
ALMOST all which would have been to be said upon this parable, had it
stood alone, has been anticipated in that which went immediately before.
The relations in which the two stand to one another have been already
noticed:-we have here not merely a finder, but also a seeker, of true
wisdom-" The kingdom of God is like unto a merchant-man* seeking
goodly pearls." To find them has been the object of his labors: "the
search is therefore determinate, discriminative, unremitting." He has set
his purpose distinctly before him, and to that is bending all his energies;
he is one in fact, who has felt that man was not made in vain, that there
must be a centre of peace for him, a good that will satisfy all the cravings of his soul, and who is determined not to rest till he has found that
good. He does not perhaps yet know that it is but one, for at his starting he is seeking many goodly pearls, but rather perhaps imagines that
it is to be made up and combined from many quarters: but this also will
be revealed to him in due time.t
It makes much for the beauty of the parable, and the fitness of the
image used to set forth the surpassing value of the kingdom of God, that
we keep in mind the esteem in which the pearl was held in antiquity,4
* The pearl-merchant was termed margaritarius, though this name was sometimes also given to the diver..
t Augustine (Serm. de Disc. Christ., v. 6, p. 583, Bened. ed.) assumes the oneness of that which here is found as furnishing another point of contrast beside those
already detailed, between this parable and the last. There the kingdom of heaven
is presented as manifold, even as a treasure would contain precious things of various kinds laid up in it: here it is presented in its unity-as much as to say, This
which is so multifold, is also single and at heart but one.
f Pliny: Principium culmenque omnium rerum pretii margaritse tenent: and
the word which was rendered (Prov. iii. 15; xx. 15; xxxi. 10) by earlier translators




112                           THE PEARL.
so that there is record of almost incredible sums having been given for
single pearls, when perfect of their kind. There were many defects
which materially diminished their value, as for instance, if they had a
yellow or dusky tinge, or were not absolutely round or smooth. The
skill and wariness which on this account the pearl-merchant must have
needed lest he should have a meaner thing put upon him in lieu of the
best, will not be without its answer in the spiritual world.* Origent
observes, that the fact of there being so many pearls of an inferior
qS[cardy (   hAwj~  &z& eas &  2  am-  & ts s  rsmaps2       UaQ, s p-  T!sO
merchant is seeking "goodly" pearls, as he whom     the merchant represents, has set before himself, not mean and poor, but noble and worthy,
aims, even in times anterior to that in which he finds the pearl of price.
He is not one living for sensual objects.  He has not made pleasure, or
the acquisition of money, or the winning of the high places of the world,
the end of his labors. But he has been, it may be, a seeker of wisdom,
a philanthropist, a worshipper of the beautiful in nature or in art-who
has hoped to find his soul's satisfaction in these. But this pearl of
price, what is it, which at length he finds? Many answers have been
given, which yet, however they may seem to diverge from one another,
grow out of one and the same root; all ultimately resolve themselves
into one;t-the pearl is the kingdom    of God within a man,-or God
revealing himself in the soul,-or the knowledge of Christ, —or Christ
of Scripture most commonly as rubies, is generally believed now to signify pearls;
though according to Winer (Real Worterb., s. v. Perlen) the question is still unsettled.
* Augustine (Serm. 37, c. 3): Discite lapides sestimare, negotiatores regni
celorum.
t Comm. in Matth. (in loc.), where he has much curious learning about pearls.
-The theory of their formation current in ancient times is detailed by him. The
fish conceived the pearl from the dew of heaven, and according to the quality of
the dew, it was pure and round, or cloudy and deformed with specks. (See PLIN.
H. N., 1. 9, c. 35. AMMIAN. MARCELL., 1. 23, c. 6, ~ 85.) The state of the atmosphere at the time of their conception, was then naturally supposed to exercise a
great influence on their size and color, and even the time of the day. Thus Isidore
Hisp.: Meliores... candidae margaritse quam quae flavescunt: illas enim aut juventus, aut matutini roris conceptio reddit candidas; has senectus vel vespertinus
aer reddit obscuras. See also Mr. GRESWELL'S Exp. of the Par., v. ii. p. 220-222;
and for all which could be got together about them, BOCHART'S Hierozoicon, pars 2,
1. 5, c. 5-8.
t See SUICER'S Thes., s. v. i.apapya'rrs.
I H. de Sto. Victore (Annot. in Matth.): Bonse margaritse, lex et prophetae:
una pretiosa, Salvatoris scientia. So Origen on this place says, the law and prophets were as the lamp which was precious till the sun arose; he has these
instructive references, Matt. xvii. 5-8; 2 Cor. iii. 10. Schoettgen observes (Hor.
Heb., v. 1, p. 132): Judsei doctrinas et lectiones pulchras ac notatu dignas vocarunt
margaritas:-as in later Latin, margaritum was a name of endearment. Von




THE PEARL.                            113
himself,* —these are all but different ways of expressing the same
thing.
But when the merchant had found this pearl of price, he "went and
sold all that he had, and bought it."   What this selling of all means,
has been already observed; and to understand what the buying means,
and what it does not mean, we may compare Isai. lv. 1; Matt. xxv. 9,
10: Rev. iii. 18;, and Prov. xxiii. 23, "Buy the truth, and sell it not;"
obtain the truth at any price, and let no price tempt you to let'it go.
The contrast between the one pearl which the merchant finds and the
many which he had been seeking, is here by no means to be overlooked;
the same contrast is marked elsewhere; Martha is troubled about many
things; Mary has found that but one thing is needful. (Luke x. 41, 42.)
There is but one such pearl (though every one may have that one), since
the truth is one, even as God is one; and the-truth possessed brings
that unity into the heart of man, which sin had destroyed;t that which
through sin had become as a mirror shattered into a thousand fragments,
and every fragment reflected some different object, is now reunited again,
and the whole with more or less clearness reflects, as it was intended at
first to do, the one image of God. It is God alone in whom any intelligent
creature can find its centre and true repose; only when man has found
him, does the great Eureka break forth from his lips; in Augustine's
beautiful and often quoted words, "Lord, thou hast made us for thee,
and our heart is disquieted till it reacheth to thee."4
Before concluding the notice of this parable, it may just be worth
while to mention, were it only for its singularity, an interpretation, which
Bohlen (Das Alt. Ind., v. 2, p. 122,) derives margarita from a Sanscrit word manaarlta; signifying The Pure. Another name it bore signified The Beloved.
* Theophylact says, that it was at a moment when it lightened that the conception of the pearl from the heavenly dew took place, which explains an otherwise
obscure passage in Clement of Alex., Potter's ed., p. 1014, when, explaining this
parable, he says, " This pearl is the most pellucid and pure Jesus, whom the Virgin conceived from the divine lightning." Augustine, too (Qucest. ex Matth., qu.
13), likens Christ to the pearl: though he does not bring out this point of comparison: Est enim Verbum Domini lucidum candore veritatis, et solidum firmitate
aeternitatis, et undique sui simile pulcritudine divinitatis, qui Deus penetrata
carnis testudine intelligendus est. Bochart (Hierozoicon, pars 2, 1. 5, c. 8, in fine,)
has a graceful bringing out of the points of likeness between the kingdom of God,
and a pearl.
t H. de Sto Victore: Quia enim mens hominis in illo uno bono stare noluit, in
quo potuit feliciter requiescere...projecta foras extra semetipsam, in multiplicitatem rerum visibilium spargitur, et veritatem quam intus caecata i fonte haurire
non potest, quasi per rivulos quosdam visibilium, arescentibus precordiis, saltem
sugere conatur. These words are from a Commentary on Ecclesiastes, which book
itself is a profound commentary on this parable.
F Fecisti nos propter te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donee requiescat in te.
8




114                         THE PEARL.
strangely reverses the whole matter. The merchant seeking goodly pearls
is now Christ himself. The Church of the elect is the pearl of price;
which that he might purchase and make his own, he parted with all that
he had, emptying himself of his divine glory and taking the form of a
servant.* Or yet more ingeniously, the pearl, as in the common explanation, is still interpreted as the heavenly blessedness, and Christ the
merchant, who that he might secure that blessedness to us and make it
ours, though he was so rich, gladly made himself poor, buying that pearl
and that treasure,-not indeed for himself, but for us.f
* Salmeron (Serm. in Par. Evang., p. 66) applies the same to the parable preceding: Homo qui invenit thesaurum, hoc est, pretiosam Ecclesiam electorum.. 
Christus est qui pro comparando tanto sanctorum thesauro omnia bona sua distraxit. Compare the Brief Exposition of Matth. xiii., by J. N. Darby, pp. 30, 31.
t So Drexelius (Opp., v. 1, p. 209): Quis verior Christo Domino mercator, qui
pretium sui sanguinis infinitum pro pretiosis illis mercibus dedit? Verb abiit,;endiditque omnia, famam, sanguinem, vitam exposuit, ut nobis ccelum emeret.




VII.
THE DRAW NET.
MATTHEW xiii. 47-50.
THIS parable would at first sight seem to say exactly the same thing as
that of the Tares.' Maldonatus, led away by this apparent identity of
purpose in the two, supposes that St. Matthew has not related the
parables in the order in which the Lord spoke them, but that this
should have immediately followed upon that.  Here however he is
clearly mistaken; there is this fundamental difference between them,
that the central truth of that is the present intermixture of the good
and bad; of this, the future separation; of that, that men are not to
effect the separation; of this, that the separation will, one day, by God
be effected; so that the order in which we have them is evidently the
right one, as that is concerning the gradual development,-this, the final
consummation of the Church. Olshausen draws a further distinction
between the two, that in that, the kingdom of God is represented rather
in its idea, as identical with the whole world, which idea it shall
ultimately realize; in this, rather in its present imperfect form, as a
less contained in a greater, which yet, indeed, has this tendency in itself
to spread over and embrace all that greater;-the sea being here the
world, and the net, the Church gathering in its members from the world,
as the net does its fish from the sea.
Much of what has been already said, in considering the Tares, will
apply here. The same use has been made of either parable; there is
the same continual appeal to this as to that in the Donatist controversy,
and the present conveys, to all ages, the same instruction as that,namely, that the Lord did not contemplate his visible Church as a communion in which there should be no intermixture of evil; but as there
was a Ham in the ark, and a Judas among the twelve, so there should
be a Babylon even within the bosom of the spiritual Israel; Esau shall




116                           THE DRAW NET.
contend with Jacob even in the Church's womb,* till, like another
Rebekah, she shall often have to exclaim, "Why am             I thus?" (Gen,
xxv. 22.)   It conveys, too, the same lesson, that this fact does not justify
self-willed departure from the fellowship of the Church, an impatient
leaping over, or breaking through, the nets, as it is often called; but the
Lord's separation is patiently to be waited for, which shall surely arrive
at the end of the present age.t
It is worth our while to consider what manner of net it is to which
our Lord likens the kingdom of heaven. In the heading of the chapter
in our Bibles, it is called a draw net, and the particular kind is distinctly
* See Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. cxxvi. 3.
t The following extracts will show the uses, either practical or controversial, to
which the parable was turned. Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. Ixiv. 6): Jam in mari
capti per retia fidei, gaudeamus nos ibi natare adhuc intra retia, quia adhuc mare
hoc saevit procellis, sed retia quae nos ceperunt perducentur ad litus. Interim
intra ipsa retia, fratres, benb vivamus, non retia rumpentes foras exeamus. Multi
enim ruperunt retia et schismata fecerunt, et foras exierunt. Quia malos pisces
intra retia captos tolerare se nolle dixerunt, ipsi mali facti sunt potuis, quhm illi
quos se non potuisse tolerare dixerunt.-The curious ballad verses which are found
at the commencement of his Anti-Donatist Tracts, and which he wrote, as he says,
to bring the subject within the comprehension of the most unlearned, begins with a
reference to, and exposition of, this parable.
Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare;
Propter hoc Dominus noster voluit nos praemonere,
Comparans regnum ccelorum reticulo misso in mare,
Congreganti multos pisces, omne genus hinc et inde,
Quos cum traxissent ad litus, tune cceperunt separare,
Bonos in vasa miserunt, reliquos malos in mare.
Quisquis recolit Evangelium, recognoscat cum timore:
Videt reticulum Ecclesiam, videt hoc seculum mare,
Genus autem mixtum piscis, justus est cum peccatore:
Seculi finis est litus, tune est teinpus separare:
Quando retia ruperunt, multim dilexerunt marc.
Vasa sunt sedes sanctorum, quo non possunt pervenlre.
The following quotations from the minutes of the conference at Carthage will
show how the Donatists sought to evade the force of the arguments drawn from
this parable, and how the Catholics replied. They did not deny that Christ spake
in this parable of sinners being found mingled with the righteous in the Church
upon earth, yet it was only concealed sinners; they affirmed (Coll. Carth., d. 3,)
hoc de reis latentibus dictum, quoniam reticulum  in mari positum  quid habeat, a
piscatoribus, id est k sacerdotibus, ignorantur, donec extractum ad litus ad purgationem  boni seu mali prodantur. Ita et latentes et in Ecclesia constitituti, et &
sacerdotibus ignorati, in divino judicio proditi, tanquam pisces mali B sanctorum
consortio separantur. Augustine answers, with an allusion to Matt. iii. 12 (Ad
Don. post Coll., c. 10): Numquid et area sub aqua vel terrh trituratur, aut certh
nocturnis horis, non in sole, conteritur, aut in e& rusticus csecus operatur'-It is
evident that their reply was a mere evasion; that they took refuge in an accidental
circumstance in the parable, namely, that so long as the nets are under water their
contents cannot be seen, so as to avoid being plainly convinced of schism.




THE DRAW     NET.                        117
specified by the word in the original.* It is a net of the largest size,
suffering nothing to escape from it; and this, its all embracing nature,
is certainly not to be left out of sight, as an accidental or unimportant
circumstance, but contains in fact a prophecy of the wide reach and
potent operation of the Gospel. The kingdom of heaven should henceforward be a net, not cast into a single stream as hitherto, but into the
broad sea of the whole world, and gathering or drawing together (John
xi. 52) some out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation.
Or when it is said, that it "gathered of every kind," we may understand
both good and bad. As the servants who were sent to invite guests to
the marriage supper (Matt. xxii. 10), "gathered together all, as many as
they found, both bad and good;" so here the fishers take fish of all kinds
within the folds of the net;-men of every diversity of moral character
have the Gospel preached to them, and find themselves within the limits
of the visible Church.t
* 1ayv- (not as some derive it, from Eaw &yfELv, but from CdTTW, onero), a
hauling net, as distinguished from the & /pXqa7orpo or casting net (Matt. iv. 18) 
in Latin, tragum, tragula, verriculum. It was of immense length. On the coast
of Cornwall, where it is now used, and bears the same name, seine or sean, a corruption of the Greek, which has come to us through the Vulgate and the AngloSaxon, it is sometimes half a mile in length; and scarcely could have been much
smaller among the ancients, since it is spoken of as nearly taking in the compass
of an entire bay (vasta sagena, Manilius). It is leaded below, that it may sweep
the bottom of the sea, and supported with corks above, and having been carried
out so as to inclose a large space of sea, the ends are then brought together, and
it is drawn up upon the beach with all that it contains. Cicero calls Verres, with
a play upon his name, everriculum in provincia, in that he swept all before him;
and in the Greek Fathers we have CavdTOv 0aa-y71, KaTaoCXUOv!oLov oryjv (see SuiCER's Thes., s. v.); in each case with allusion to the all-embracing nature of this
net, which allowed no escape. See Hab. i. 15-17, LXX., where the mighty reach
of the Chaldsean conquests is set forth under this image, and by this word. In
this view of it, as an arepavTov ficrvoYv'A7r, how grand is the comparison in Ho.mer (Odyss., 22. 384) of the slaughtered suitors, whom Ulysses saw,6i0Tr' lXaas, oga0' a&XLELs
KOOV Xovs aL'yraXRbv XwoAXls o EK'TOOJe baraXco'a]s
KtCT047 eepvUazI irox\vcar. ol BE' Te carrves,
icviuya a'Abs ro aovrTES, rOl a4.rZLoLlL i KeXVrTaC.
There are curious notices in Herodotus (iii. 149: vi. 31) of the manner in which
the Persians swept away the conquered population from some of the Greek islands;
a chain of men, holding hand in hand and stretching across the whole island, advanced over its whole length-thus taking, as it were, the entire population in a
draw net: and to this process the technical name rayYvetELi was applied. Cf.
PLATO'S Menexenus (p. 42, Stallbaum's ed.) where the process is described; De
Legg., 1. 3, p. 698; and PLUTARCH, De Solert. Animal., c. 26. There is a good
account of the aoayY~1 in the Diet. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Rete, p. 823.
t Beza, indeed, translates ec Travrbs y'evovs, ex omni rerum genere, as mud,




118                        THE DRAW     NET.
But as all do not use the advantages which the communion of the
Church has afforded them, an ultimate separation is necessary; and this
is next described; the net, " when it was full, they drew to shore, and
sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away."
When the number of God's elect is accomplished, then the separation of
the precious from the vile shall follow, of the. just from sinners. It is
most likely that from some image like that which our parable supplies,
the leaving and taking of Matt. xxiv. 41, 42, is to be explained,-" the
one shall be taken, and the other left." Probably there as here the
taking is for blessedness, the selecting of the precious; the leaving for
destruction, the rejecting of the vile; though the terms have sometimes
been understood in exactly the opposite sense. Yet hardly with justice;
for what is the "left" but the refused, and the refused but the refuse?
Whether these "bad"t are dead putrid fish, such as sometimes are
shells, sea-weed, and whatever else of worthless would be gathered together within
the folds of a net; these things would then be understood by the acTrpd, which are
described in the next verse as cast away; and so it is in the Geneva version, " of
all kinds of things." But the plain sense of the parable would seem to determine
that it isfish of all kinds as the Yulgate (ex omni genere piscium), and not things
of all kinds, which are spoken of; in the words of I. de Sto Victore (Annott. in
Matth.): Congregat ex omnibus qui minoribus vel majoribus peccatis sunt a Deo
divisi, et per multas iniquitates dispersi. Another name of the net, ~rdrvaypov, is
exactly derived from this collecting of all sorts of prey within its folds.
* The nature of this separation-that it will be with entire consideration-no
hasty work confusedly huddled over-may be indicated in the sitting down of the
fishers for the task of sorting the good from the bad. Thus Bengel, who to this
Ka$4aarvres appends, Studiosb; cf. Luke xiv. 28, 31; xvi. 6. At the same time it
completes the natural picture:
in illo
Cespite consedz, dum lina madentia sicco,  *
Utque recenserem captivos ordine pisces.   OvrD.
t:airpd, scil. ZSXtaLa. Grotius: Sunt nugamenta et quisquilife piscium, quod
genus ut servatu indignum, videmus a piscatoribus abjici: (&3pcra Kal TL/Lta, Lucian; pisces frivolos, Apuleius.) Yet Vitringa, in an instructive note (Erkldr. d.
Parab., p. 344, seq.), refers to Athenaeus as using aaorpol IXves in opposition to
7rpda4aTroL. As the latter are the fresh, the first must signify stale, or here yet
more strongly, putrid (aarpbs, 6 aeo-a7rurs, Etym. Mag.), and he denies that we
should depart from this, the primary signification of the word, to take up with the
secondary. But on the other hand, to find dead fish in a net, though it will sometimes happen, must be of rare occurrence, and of the list of fishes, which, for
instance, Ovid gives in his fragment of the Halieuticon, how many, though perfectly fresh, would be flung aside as not edible, as worthless or noxious, the immunda chromis, merito vilissima salpa... Et nigrum niveo portans in corpore
virus Loligo, durique sues: or again,-Et capitis duro nociturus scorpius ictu,all which might well have been gathered in this oba7yi]. We have proof that at
times some'of them were, from a proverb in the Parcen. Graci (Oxf. 1836, p. 14),
which is explained as containing allusion to a fisherman, who had got such a sea



THE DRAW NET.                           119
inclosed within a net, and brought to land;-or fish worthless, and good
for nothing, "that which was sick and unwholesome at the season," or
fish such as from their kind, their smallness, or some other cause, are
unfit to be either sold or eaten, and are therefore flung carelessly aside,
to rot upon the beach, and to become food for the birds of prey (Ezek. i
xxxii. 3, 4), there is much question; and it seems not easy, as it is not;
very important, to decide.
These dead or worthless fish are "cast away." An entire freedom
from all evil belongs fo the idea of the Church, and this idea shall
be ultimately realized. Notwithstanding all that mars its purity, and
defiles its brightness, we confess our belief in a holy Catholic Church;
for we believe that whatever we see cleaving to it, which is not holy, is
an alien disturbing element, which shall one day be perfectly separated
from it. As all the prophets foreannounce such a glorious consummation,
so in the Revelation it is contemplated as at last accomplished: "without
are dogs" (Rev. xxii. 15), wheref as in the words used here, and in so
many other passages, the Church is contemplated as a holy inclosure,*
into which nothing unclean has a right to enter; and from which, if it
has by stealth or force effected an entrance, it shall sooner or later
be excluded-shut out for ever, even as those ceremonially unclean, in
witness of this, were obliged to remain for a season without the camp,
which was the figure of the true kingdom of God.-Our Lord offers no
explanation of the " vessels" into which the good fish are gathered: nor,
indeed, is any needed: what the "barn" was at ver. 30, the "vessels"
are here; the "many mansions" (John xiv. 2), which the Lord went to
prepare for his people, the " everlasting habitations " (Luke xvi. 9), into
scorpion in his net, by which he was stung, while carelessly handling its contents.
Moreover, with Jewish fishermen this rejection of part of the contents would of
necessity have taken place, not because some of the. fish were dead, but because
they were unclean; "all that have not fins and scales shall be an abomination unto
you." (Lev. xi. 9-12.) These probably were the o-arpd. Fritzche combines both
meanings, for he explains it, inutiles et putridos. Our translation using the word
" bad," has not determined absolutely for one sense or the other. See SUICER'S
Tites., s. v.
* From this image is to be explained the frequent use of the terms Stw, and (as
here) fC8dXXeLv tEw. The Church is regarded as complete in itself, with the line
of its separation from the sinful Kdjpos distinctly drawn. All non-christians then
are those " that are without" (of gw, Mark iv. 11; Col. iv. 5); Christ will in no
wise cast out (oh,1 &KdjAw Ew), that is, expel from this holy inclosure, this
city of refuge, those that come to him. (John vi. 37.) The prince of this world
shall be cast out (John xii. 31), driven forth from God's redeemed creation. He
that abideth not in Christ, is cast forth, or cast out, as a branch (John xv. 6),the image continuing the same; as the dead vine branches are flung forth fiom
the vineyard and a riddance made cf them, so will these be expelled from the
kingdom of God.




120                       THE DRAW    NET.
which he promises to receive them,* the   city which hath foundations "
that Abraham looked for. (Heb. xi. 10.)
But to whom is the task of separation to be confided? Here I cannot consent to Olshausen's view, which is also Vitringa's,t that those who
cast the net, and those who discriminate between its contents, being, in
the parable, the same; therefore, since the first are evidently the apostles
and their successors, now become, according to the Lord's promise,
" fishers of men" (Matt. iv. 19; Luke v. 10; Ezek. xlvii. 10; Jer. xvi.
16);t so the last must be-not the angelic ministers of God's judgments,
but the same messengers of the Covenant, and as such, angels, to whom,
being equipped with divine power, the task of judging and sundering
should be committed. No doubt the Church, in its progressive development, is always thus judging and separating (1 Cor. v. 4,5; Jude 22,
23); putting away one and another from her communion, as they openly
declare themselves unworthy of it.   But she does not count that she
has thus cleansed herself, or that this perfect cleansing can be effected
by any power which now she wields.    There must be a judgment and
sundering from without, and of this the final separation, every where
else in Scripture we find the angels distinctly named as the executioners.
(Matt. xiii. 41; xxiv. 31; xxv. 31; Rev. xiv. 18, 19.)~  It seems then
contrary to the analogy of faith to interpret the present passage in any
other manner.
It is quite true, that in the familiar occurrence which supplies the
groundwork of the parable, the same who carried Qut the net would naturally also draw it to shore,-as it would naturally be they who would
* Augustine (Serm. 868, c. 3): Vascula sunt sanctorum sedes, et beatre vitae
magna secreta.
t Eraklr. d. Parab., p. 351, seq.
t This last reference to Jer. xvi. 16, will only hold good, supposing we connect
this verse not with what follows, but as Jerome does, with what goes before, and
so make it not a threat, but a promise that into whatever place the Lord's people
have been scattered, from thence he will be at all pains to recover them. In that
fine Orphic hymn attributed to Clement of Alexandria (p. 312, Potter's ed.), Christ
himself is addressed as the chief fisher; and, as here, the world is the great sea
of wickedness, out of which the saved, the holy fish, are drawn.'AXLED tepd'ctwv      Zlxs ayvobs
r,'v'wco'Le'vwo,,     Ki6ar'os eXPrpov
Kre\Ayovs KaiKas      yXvKep?) Awq seAacVr.
~ Moreover in each of the other parables of judgment, there is a marked distinction, which it is little likely should have been here renounced, between the
present ministers of the kingdom, and the future executors of doom-in the Tares
between the servants and the reapers, in the Marriage of the King's Son (Matt.
xxii. 3, 13) between the servants (8ovhoi) and attendants (6dKcovoL), in the Pounds
between the servants and those that stand by (ol 7rapeaTrres, Luke xix. 25).




THE DRAW NET.                        121
also inspect its contents, for the purpose of selecting the good and cast.
ing the worthless away; but it is pushing this circumstance, which, in
fact, is the weak side of the comparison, too far, to require that the same
should also hold good in the spiritual thing signified. In the nearly allied
parable of the Tares, there was no improbability in supposing those who
watched the growth of the crop to be different from those who finally
gathered it in; and, accordingly, such a difference is marked: those are
the servants, these are the reapers. The difference could not be marked
in the same way here, but it is indicated, though lightly, in another way.
The fishers are not once mentioned by name; the imperfection of the
human illustration to set forth the divine truth, is kept, as far as may be,
out of sight, by the whole circumstance being told, as nearly as possible,
impersonally. And when the Lord himself interprets the parable, he
passes over, without a word, the beginning of it; thus again drawing
away attention from a circumstance, upon which to dwell might needlessly have perplexed his hearers,-and explains only the latter part,
where the point and stress of it lay: " So shall it be at the end of the
world: the angels shall come forth and sever the wickeldfrom among the
just, and shall cast them into tze furnace of fire."#  Assuming then as
we may, and indeed must, the angels of heaven here also to be the takers
and leavers, we may find an emphasis in the " coming fort/h" which is
attributed to them. Ever since the first constitution of the Church they
have been hidden-withdrawn from men's sight for so long. But then
at that great epoch of the kingdom, they shall again "come forth" from
before the throne and presence of God, and walk up and down among
men, the visible ministers of his judgments.
Though the parable, as was observed at the beginning, at first sight
appears so similar to that of the Tares, as merely to teach over again
the same truth, yet the moral of it, in fact, is very different. It is needless to re-state the purpose of that; but the moral of this is clearly, that
we be not content with being inclosed within the Gospel-net,-that
" they are not all Israel, who are of Israel,"-but that, in the " great
house " of the Church," there are not only vessels of gold and silver,
but of wood and earth, and some to honor, and some to dishonor;'
that each of us therefore seek to be " a vessel unto honor, sanctified and
meet for the master's use" (2 Tim. ii. 20, 21);, since in the midst of all
the confusions of the visible Church, " the Lord knoweth them that are
his," and will one day bring the confusion to an end, separating, and for
ever, the precious from the vile-the true kernel of humanity from the
husk in which for a while it was enveloped.
* Chrysostom well calls the parable with reference to this verse, foepazv irapaoBoXyv, and Gregory the Great says of the same (Horn. 11, in Evang.), Timendum
est potits quam exponendum.




122                      THE DRAW NET.
Having arrived at the conclusion of these seven parables, the present
will be a fit opportunity for saying a few words concerning their mutual
relation to one another, and how far they constitute a complete whole.
The mystical number seven has offered to many interpreters a temptation too strong to be resisted for the seeking in them some hidden mystery; and when the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer, and the names
of the seven original deacons (Acts vi. 5), have been turned into prophecy of seven successive states of the Church, not to speak of the seven
Apocalyptic Epistles (Rev. ii. iii.), it was scarcely to be expected that
these seven parables should have escaped being made prophetic of the
same.
They have been, in fact, so often thus dealt with as prophecy, that a
late ingenious writer* needed not to have apologized for making an attempt of the kind, as though it were something altogether novel and unheard of. Having offered his apologies, he proceeds:  It is my persuasion that the parables in this chapter are not to be considered disjointedly, but to be taken together as a connected series, indicating, progressively, the several stages of advancement through which the mystical
kingdom of Christ, upon earth, was to proceed, from its.commencement
to its consummation.... It will be understood, then, that each parable
has a period peculiarly its own, in which the state of things, so signified,
predominates; but when another state of things commences, the former
does not cease. It only becomes less predominant; operative as really
as ever, but in a way subsidiary to that which now takes the lead. It
will follow that each succeeding stage implies a virtual combination of all
that has gone before, and, of course, the grand concluding scene will contain the sublimated spirit and extracted essence of the whole." Bengel
announces the same theory,t and applies it thus: the first parable, he
affirms, refers to the times of Christ and his immediate apostles, when
was the original sowing of the word of eternal life. The second, that of
the Tares, to the age immediately following, when watchfulness against
false doctrine began to diminish, and heresies to abound.  The third,
that of the Mustard Seed, to the time of Constantine, when the Church,
instead of even seeming to need support, evidently gave it, and the great
ones of the earth came under its shadow and protection. The fourth,
* Alex. KLox, in his Remains, v. 1, p. 408.
t Prseter communes et perpetuas regni calorum sive Ecclesiae rationes, conveniunt has septem parabola, reconditissimum habentes sensum, etiam in periodos et
setates Ecclesise diversas, ita quidem ut alia post aliam in complemento incipiat,
non tamen prior quselibet ante initium sequentis exeat. An essay which I know
only by name, REUSS: Meletema de sensu septem Parab., Matth. xiii. prophetico,
Haun. 1733, must no doubt be an exposition of the same theory. See against it
MARCKIUS Syll. Dissert. Exerc. 4.




THE DRAW NET.                       123
that of the Leaven, refers to the propagation of true religion through
the whole world. The fifth, of the Hid Treasure, to the more hidden
state of the Church, signified in the Apocalypse (xii. 6) by the woman
flying into the wilderness. The sixth, that of the Pearl, to the glorious
time when the kingdom shall be esteemed above all things, Satan being
bound. The seventh, of the Draw Net,,details the ultimate confusion,
separation, and judgment. Any ond who will take the trouble to compare the two schemes with one another, will be induced to suspect how
merely capricious they both must be, when he notes the considerable
differences that exist between them. They have two out of the seven,
the fifth, and the sixth, altogether different.
Yet though not thus historico-prophetical, these parables were in a
certain sense prophetical, for they foretold things that were to come to
pass; only it was not the Lord's main purpose in uttering them to
acquaint his servants with the future destinies of his Church, but rather
to give them practical rules and warnings for their conduct. So, too,
doubtless the seven have a certain unity, succeeding one another in natural order, and having a completeness in themselves:-thus in the Sower
are set forth the causes of the failures and success which the word of
the Gospel meets, when it is preached in the world. In the Tares, the
obstacles to the internal development of Christ's kingdom, even after a
Church has been hedged in and fenced round from the world, are declared, and are traced up to their true author, with a warning against the
manner in which men might be tempted to remove those obstacles. The
Mustard Seed and the Leaven declare the victorious might,-the first,
the outward, and the second, the inward might of that kingdom; and
therefore implicitly prophesy of its development in spite of all these obstacles, and its triumph over them. As these two are objective and general, so the two which follow are subjective and individual, declaring the
relation of the kingdom to every man, its supreme worth, and how those
who have discovered that worth will be willing to renounce all things for
its sake; they have besides mutual relations already touched on, and
complete one another. This last is the declaration, how that entire separation from evil, which in the second we saw that men might be tempted to anticipate by unpermitted means, shall yet come to pass,-that
separation which it is righteous to long for in God's own time, but
wrong by self-willed efforts prematurely to anticipate;-and looking
forward to which, each is to strive that he may so use the present privileges and means of grace, which the communion of the Church affords
him, that he may be found among those that shall be the Lord's when
he shall put away all the ungodly like dross, when he shall set a difference between them who serve him, and them who serve him not.




VIIIM
THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT
MATTHE1W xviii. 23-35.
THERE is nothing in the discourse going before, to lead immediately to
the question of Peter's, in answer to which this parable was spoken;
while, at the same time, the words, " Then came Peter," seem to mark
that the connection is unbroken. It may perhaps be thus traced: Peter
must have felt in his Lord's injunctions concerning the manner of dealing with an offending brother (ver. 15-17), that the forgiveness of his
fault was necessarily implied as having already taken place; since, till
we had forgiven, we could not be in the condition to deal with him thus;
for this dealing, even to the exclusion of him from Church-fellowship,
is entirely a dealing in love (2 Thess. iii. 14, 15), and with a view to his
recovery. (See Sirac xix. 13-17.) Nor does it mean, as we might be
too much inclined to understand it, that after the failure of these repeated attempts to win him to a better mind, we should even then be
justified in feeling strangeness towards him in our hearts;* for compare the whole course of St. Paul's injunctions concerning the offender
in the Corinthian church. Were that too the meaning, the exercise of
the law of love would then be limited to three times (see ver. 15-17);
and that in opposition to what immediately follows: where it is extended
to seventy times seven.t Chrysostom observes, that when Peter in* As neither, on the other hand, does the command to forgive till seventy times
seven exclude a dealing, if need be, of severity, provided always it be a dealing in
love. Thus Augustine (Serm. 83, c. 7): Si per caritatem imponitur disciplina, de
corde 1hnitas non recedat. Quid enim tam pium quam medicus ferens ferramentum. Plorat secandus, et secatur: plorat urendus, et uritur. Non est illa crudelitas, absit ut sevitia medici dicatur. Ssevit in vulnus, ut homo sanetur, quia si
vulnus palpetur, homo perditur. Cf. Serm. 211.
t Our Lord's "seventy times seven" of forgiveness makes a wonderful contrast,
which has not escaped the notice of St. Jerome (v. 2, p. 565, edit. Bened.) to Lamech's, the antediluvian Antichrist's, seventy and seven-fold of revenge. (Gen. iv.




THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.                       125
stanced seven, as the number of times that an offending brother should
be forgiven, he accounted certainly that he was doing some great thing,
-that his charity was taking a large stretch, these seven being four
times more than the Jewish masters enjoined.*  He increased the number of times with the feeling, no doubt, that the spirit of the new law
of love which Christ had brought into the world,-a law larger, freer,
more long-suffering, than the old,-required this.t  There was then in
Peter's mind a consciousness of this new law of love,-though an obscure one, since he supposed it possible that love could ever be overcome
bjy hate, good by evil. But there was, at the same time, a fundamental
error in the question itself, for in proposing a limit beyond which forgiveness should not extend, there was evidently implied the notion, that
a man in forgiving, gave up a right which he might, under certain circumstances, exercise.  The purpose of our Lord's answer,-in other
words, of the parable,-is to make clear that when God calls on a member of his kingdom to forgive, he does not call on him to renounce a
right, but that he has now no right to exercise in the matter: asking
for and accepting forgiveness, he has implicitly pledged himself to show
it; and it is difficult to imagine how any amount of didactic instruction
could have conveyed this truth with at all the force and conviction of the
following parable.
" Therefore," to the end that you may understand what I say the
better, "is the kingdcom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which
would take account of his servants."  This is the first of the parables in'
which God appears in his character of King. We are the servants
with whom he takes account. Yet this is not, as is plain, the final'
24.)'Eo60LU-qKOvrcYKS b7rrFc is not, as Origen and some others understand it
70-+7=77; for that would be rather if360oKOVTa e7rdKisr, but 70X 7=490.
* They grounded the duty of forgiving three times and not more, on Amos i. 3:
ri. 6; also on Job xxxiii. 29, 30; at this last passage see the marginal translation.
LIGHTFOOT'S Hor. Heb. in loc.
t While this is true, there were yet deeper motives for his selection of the number seven. It is the number in the divine law with which the idea of remission
(&peaLS) was ever linked. The seven times seventh year was the year of jubilee
(&EoS T7i ap'Ews), Lev. xxv. 28; cf. iv. 6, 17; xvi. 14, 15. It is true that we find
it as the number of punishment or retribution for evil also; (Gen. iv. 15; Lev.
xxvi. 18, 21, 24, 28; Deut. xxviii. 25; Ps. lxxix. 12; Prov. vi. 31; Dan. iv. 16;
Rev. xv. 1;) yet this should not disturb or perplex, but rather confirm us in this
view, since there lies ever in punishment the idea of restoration of disturbed
relations, and so of forgiveness. (Ezek. xvi. 42.) It is the storm which violently
restores the disturbed equilibrium of the moral atmosphere. Gregory of Nyssa
then has a true insight into the reason why Peter should have named seven times:
when he observes (Opp. v. 1, p. 159): napeTrprlaev 6 IIe'pos, nT Kcavcrv rapaSJdceos
APXaiOS anT7, rTbV ejoudS6cAa G4aaoiyv i'XELv rMvos &e'oews aeapT7yTTdrv, acraatuoes~
TrAXcas, 0; Ofl5eTioV rb oaB8aTrdy' el'rv, j fji7 neppa &arb yeveaoEws.




126                THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.
reckoning, not identical with that of Matt. xxv. 19; 2 Cor. v. 10; but
rather such a reckoning as that of Luke xvi. 2. To this he brings us
by the preaching of the law,-by the setting of our sins before our face,
-by awakening and alarming our conscience that was asleep before,by bringing us into adversities,-by casting us into perils of death, so
that we seem to see it near before us (2 Kin. xx. 4); he takes account
with us when he makes us feel that we could not answer him one thing
in a thousand,-that our trespasses are more than the hairs of our heads;
when through one means or another he brings our careless carnal security to an utter end. (Ps. 1. 21.) Thus David was summoned before
God by the word of Nathan the prophet (2 Sam. xii.); thus the Ninevites by the preaching of Jonah, thus the Jews by John the Baptist.
" And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unwo him which
owed him ten thousand talents;" he had not to go far, before he lighted
on this one; he had only "begun to reckon."   This perhaps was the
first into whose accounts he looked; there may have been others with
yet larger debts behind.  This one "was brought unto him," he never
would have come of himself; far more likely he would have made that
ten into twenty thousand; for the secure sinner goes on treasuring up
(Rom. ii. 5) an ever mightier sum, to be one day required of him.
The sum here is immense, whatever talents we suppose these to have
been, though it would differ very much in amount, according to the
talent which we assumed; if, indeed, the Hebrew, it would then be a
sum perfectly enormous;* yet only therefore the fitter to express the
greatness of every man's transgression in thought, word, and deed,
against his God.
In the case before us, the immensity of the sum may be best explained by supposing the defaulter to have been one of the chief servants
of the king, a farmer or administrator of the royal revenues;t or seeing
that in the despotisms of the East, every individual, from the highest to
* How great a sum it was, we can most vividly realize to ourselves by comparing it with other sums of which mention is made in Scripture. In the construction
of the tabernacle, twenty-nine talents of gold were used; (Exod. xxxviii. 24;)
David prepared for the temple three thousand talents of gold, and the princes five
thousand; (1 Chron. xxix. 4-7;) the queen of Sheba presented to Solomon, as a
royal gift, one hundred and twenty talents; (1 Kin. x. 10;) the king of Assyria
laid upon Hezekiah thirty talents of gold; (2 Kin. xviii. 14;) and in the extreme
impoverishment to which the land was brought at the last, one talent of gold was
laid upon it, after the death of Josiah, by the king of Egypt. (2 Chron. xxxvi. 3.)
t In the Jewish parable (SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Hcb. v. 1, p. 155), which bears resemblance to that before us, in so far as the sins of men are there represented under the image of enormous debt, which it is impossible to pay-it is the tribute
due from an entire city, which is owing to the king, and which, at the entreaty of
the inhabitants, he remits.




THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.                      127
the lowest, stands in an absolutely servile relation to the monarch, is in
fact his servant or slave, there is nothing in that name to hinder us from
supposing him to be one, to whom some chief post of honor and dignity
in the kingdom had been committed,-a satrap who should have remitted the revenues of his province to the royal treasury.* This is far
more probable than that he is such an one as those servants in the
parable of the Talents, to whom moneys were committed that they might
trade with them: the greatness of the debt renders such a supposition
very unlikely. Nor would the sale of the defaulter, with the confiscation
of all his goods, have gone far to pay such a debt, unless he had been
one living in great splendor and pomp; though,:t is true, the words of
the original do not imply that the king expected the debt to be discharged with the proceeds of the sale, but that whatever those proceeds
were, they were to be rendered into his treasury.
The sale of the debtor's wife and children,-for the king commanded
them to be sold with him,-rested upon the theory that they were a part
of his property. Thus, according to Roman law, the children being part
of the property of the father, they were sold into slavery with him.
That it was allowed under the Mosaic law to sell an insolvent debtor, is
implicitly stated, Lev. xxv. 39; and ver. 41, makes it probable that his
family also came into bondage with him; and we find allusion to the
same custom in other places. (2 Kin. iv. 1; Neh. v. 6; Isai. 1. 1; lviii.
6; Jer. xxxiv. 8-11; Amos ii. 6; viii. 6.) Michaelis* states that the
later Jewish doctors declared against it, except in cases where a thief
should be sold to make good the damage which he had done, and is inclined to think that there was no such practice among the Jews in our
Lord's time, but that this dealing with the servant is borrowed from the
practice of neighboring countries. There is much to make this probable: it is certain that the imprisoning of a debtor, which also we twice
meet with in this parable (ver. 30, 34), formed no part of the Jewish
law; indeed, where the creditor possessed the power of selling him into
* According to Plutarch (Reg. et Imp. Apothegm.), it was exactly this sum of
ten thousand talents with which Darius sought to buy off Alexander, that he
should not prosecute his conquests in Asia;-as also the payment of the same sum
was imposed by the Romans, on Antiochus the Great, after his defeat by them: and
when Alexander, at Susa, paid the debts of the whole Macedonian army, they
amounted to only twice this sum, though every motive was at work to enhance the
amount. (See DROYSEN'S Gesch. Alexanders, p. 500.) Von Bohlen (Das. Alt. Ind.,
v. 2, p. 119) gives some curious and almost incledible notices of the quantities of
gold in the East.-I do not know whether the immensity of the sum may partly
have moved Origen to his strange supposition, that it can only be the man of sin
(2 Thes. ii.) that is here indicated, or stranger still, the Devil! Compare TIIrLo's
Cod. Apocryphus, vol. 1, p. 887, and NEANDER's Kirch Gesch., v. 5, p. 1122.
t Mos. Recht., v. 3, p. 58-60.




128               THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.
bondage, it would have been totally superfluous. 4 The tormentors'
also (ver. 34), those who make inquisition by torture, have a foreign appearance, and would incline us to look for the locality of the parable elsewhere than in Judea.-For the spiritual significance, God may be said
to sell those, whom he altogether alienates from himself, rejects, and delivers for ever into the power of another. By the selling here may be
indicated such "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord
and the glory of his power."  Compare Ps. xliv. 12, "Thou sellest thy
people for nought."
The servant, hearing the dreadful doom pronounced against him by
his lord, betakes himself to supplication, the one resource that remains
to him; he'fell down and worshipped him."  The formal act of worship, or adoration, consisted in prostration on the ground, and kissing of
the feet and knees; and here Origen bids us to note the nice observance
of proprieties in the details of the parable. This servant " worshipped"
the kin  for that honor was 2aid to royal persona.es; but it is not said
that the other servant.worshipped, he only "besought," his fellow-servant. His words, "Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all,
are characteristic of the extreme fear and anguish of the moment, which
made him ready to promise impossible things, even mountains of gold,
if only he might be delivered from the present danger. When words
of a like kind find utterance from the lips of the sinner, now first convinced of his sin, they show that he has not yet attained to a full insight
into his relations with his God-that he has yet much to learn; as namely
this-that no future obedience can make up for past disobedience; since
that future God claims as his right, as only his due: it could not then,
even were it perfect, which it will prove far from being, make compensation for the past. We may hear then in the words, the voice of selfrighteousness, imagining that, if only time were allowed, it could make
good all the shortcomings of the past. The words are exceedingly important, as very much explaining to us the later conduct of this man. It
is clear that he had never come to a true recognition of the immensity of
his debt. Little, in the subjective measure of his own estimate, was
forgiven him, and therefore he loved little, or not at all. It is true that
by his demeanor and his cry he did recognize his indebtedness, else
would there have been no setting of him free: and he might have gone
on, and had he been true to his own mercies, he would have gone on, to
an ever fuller recognition of the grace shown him: but as it was, in a
little while he lost sight of it altogether.
However, at the earnestness of his present prayer " the lord of that
servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him
the debt." The severity of God only endures till the sinner is brought




THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.                       129
to recognize his guilt, it is indeed, like Joseph's harshness with his brethren, nothing more than love in disguise;-and. having done its work,
having brought him to the acknowledgment of his guilt and misery, reappears as grace again, granting him more than even he had dared to
ask or to hope, loosing the bands of his sins and letting him go free.
His lord "forgave him the debt,"* and thus this very reckoning with him.
which at first threatened him with irremediable ruin, might have been
the chiefest mercy of all; bringing indeed his debt to a head, but only
so bringing it, that it might be put away. So is it evermore with men.
There cannot be a forgiving in the dark. God will forgive; but he will
have the sinner to know what and how much he is forgiven; he summons him with that " Come now and let us reason together," before the
scarlet is made white. (Isai. i. 18.) The sinner shall have the sentence
of death in him first, for only so will the words of life and pardon have
any true meaning for him.
But he to whom this mercy was shown did not receive it aright
(Wisd. xii. 19); too soon he forgot it, and showed that he had forgotten
it by his conduct towards his fellow-servant. For going out from the presence of his lord, he found, immediately after, as would seem, and when
the sense of his lord's goodness should have been yet fresh upon him,
" one of hisfellow-servants who owed him a hundred pence." How striking and instructive is that word "going out "-slight as it seems, yet
one of the key-words of the parable.  For how is it that we are ever in
danger of acting as this servant? Because we "go out" of the presence
of our God; because we do not abide there, with an ever-lively sense of
the greatness of our sin, and the greatness of his forgiveness.  By the
servant's going out is expressed the sinner's forgetfulness of the greatness
of the benefits which he has received from his God.t The term "fellowservant " here does not imply any equality of rank between these two,
or that they filled similar offices;t but indicates that they stood both in
the same relation of servants to a common lord.   And the sum is so
small, one hundred pence,-as the other was so large, ten thousand tal* Compare Chardin (Voy. en Perse, Langlbs' ed., v. 5, p. 285): Toute disgrace
en Perse emporte infalliblement avec soi la confiscation des biens, et c'est un reverse prodigieux et 6pouvantable que se changement de fortune, car un homme se
trouve d6nu6 en un instant si entierement qu'il n'a rien a lui. On lui 6te ses biens,
ses esclaves, et quelquefois jusqu'k. sa femme et ses enfans... Son sort s'adoucit
dans la suite. Le roi declare sa volont6 sur son sujet. On lui rend presque toujours sa famille, partie de ses esclaves, et ses meubles, et assez souvent il revient
au bout d'un temps a 6tre r6tabli dans les bonnes graces de la cour, et a rentrer
dans les emplois.
t Theophylact: OWvels y7p ev y ~e/ pE.evwv, a&vjra,{,is
$ Such would have been 6gI6uovAos, this is ovvaovuos.
9




130                THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.
ents,-to show how little man can offend against his brother, compared
with the amount in which every man has offended against God,* so that,
in Chrysostom's words, these offences to those are as a drop of water to
the boundless ocean.t
The whole demeanor of the mnan in regard of his fellow-servant is
graphically described; " He laid hands on him, and took him by the
throat,t saying, Pay me that thou owest."  When some press the word
in the original, and find therein an aggravation of this servant's harshness
and cruelty, as though he was not even sure whether the debt were owing
or not,~ this is on every ground to be rejected.   That the debt was
owing is plainly declared;-he found a fellow-servant " who owed him a
hundred pence;" and the very point of the whole parable would be lost by
the supposition that we had here an oppressor or extortioner of the common sort. In that case it would not have needed to speak a parable of
the kingdom of heaven; the law would have condemned such a one; but
here we have a far deeper lore-namely this, that it is not always right,
but often most wrong, the most opposite to right, to press our rights,
that in the kingdom of grace, the summum jus may be indeed the summa injuria. This man was one who would fain be measured to by God
in one measure, while he measured to his brethren in another. But this
may not be; each man must take his choice; he may dwell in the kingdom of grace; but then, receiving grace, he must show grace; finding
love, he must exercise love. If on the contrary he exacts the uttermost,
pushes his rights as far as they will go, he must look to have the uttermost exacted from him, and in the measure that he has meted to have it
measured back to him again.-It was in vain that "hisfellow-servant fell
down at his feet, and besought him," using exactly the same words of
entreaty which he, in the agony of his distress, had used, and using had
* The Hebrew talent==300 shekels. (Exod. xxxviii. 25, 26.) Assuming this,
the proportion of the two debts would be as follows:
10000 talents: 100 pence:: 1250000: 1.
that is, one million two hundred and fifty thousand to one.
t Melancthon: Ideo autem tanta summa ponitur, ut sciamus nos valde multa
et magna peccata habere coram Deo. Sicut facile invenies multa, si vitam tuam
aspicies; magna est securitas carnalis, magna negligentia in invocatione, magna
diffidentia, et multme dubitationes de Deo. Item vagantur sine fine cupiditates
variae.
f Erasmus:'Eirvyey, obtorto collo trahebat,.. pertinet ad vi trahentem vo.
in carcerem, vel in judicem.
t The et fL oE Xet~s, which reading, as the more difficult, is to be preferred to
6 r ofEletrs, and which is retained by Lachmann, does not imply any doubt as to
whether the debt were really due or no; but the conditional form was originally,
though of course not here, a courteous form of making a demand, as there is often
the same courteous use of 2tws.




THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.                   131
found mercy: he continued inexorable; he "went," that is, departed;
dragging the other with him till he could consign him into the safe
keeping of the jailer; and thus in the words of St. Chrysostom, he
refused " to recognize the port in which he had himself so lately escaped
shipwreck;" but delivered over his fellow-servant to the extreme severity
of the law, unconscious that he was condemning himself, and revoking
his own mercy.
But such is man, so hard-hearted and cruel, when he walks otherwise than in a constant sense of forgiveness received from God; ignorance or forgetfulness of his own guilt makes him harsh, unforgiving, and
cruel to others; or if by chance he is not so, he is only hindered from
being so by the weak defences of natural character, which may at any
moment be broken down. The man who knows not his own guilt, is ever
ready to exclaim, as David in the time of his worst sin (2 Sam. xii. 5),
" The man that hath done this thing shall surely die;" to be as extreme
in judging others, as he is slack in judging himself; while, on the other
hand, it is they that are spiritual to whom Paul commits the restoring
of a brother who should be "overtaken in a fault" (Gal. vi. 1); and
when he urges on Titus the duty of being gentle, and showing meekness
unto all men, he adds (Tit. iii. 3), "For we ourselves also were sometimes
foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures."  In
exact harmony with this view is that passage (Matt. i. 19), in which it is
said that Joseph, " being a just rian,"* would not make Mary a public
example, whom yet he must have believed to have done him grievous
wrong. It is just in man to be humane,-to be humane is human;
none but the altogether righteous may press his utmost rights; whether
he will do so or no is determined by altogether different considerations,
but he has not that to hold his hand, which every man has, even the
sense of his own proper guilt. (John viii. 7-9.)
But not in heaven only is there indignation, when men are thus
measuring to others in so different a measure from that which has been
measured to them. There are on earth aso those who have learned
what is the meaning of the mercy which the sinner finds, and the
obligations which it lays on him-and who grieve over all the lack of
love and lack of forbearance which they behold around them: " When
his fellow-servants saw what was done, they were very sorry."  They
were sorry-their lord (ver. 34) was wroth; to them grief, to him anger,
is ascribed. The distinction is not accidental, nor without its grounds.
In man, the sense of his own guilt, the deep consciousness that whatever
sin he sees come to ripeness in another, exists in its germ and seed in
his own heart, the feeling that all flesh is one, and that the sin of one
* AlKaoSr, which Chrysostom makes there==xpe-Tds, ~Eiicsr.




132                THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.
calls for humiliation from all, will ever cause sorrow to be the predo.
minant feeling in his heart, when the spectacle of moral evil is brought
before his eyes; but in God the pure hatred of sin,* which is, indeed,
his love of holiness at its negative side, finds place. Being sorry, they
"came and told unto their lord all that was done;" even as the righteous complain to God, and mourn in their prayer over the oppressions
that are wrought in their sight: the things which they cannot set right
themselves, the wrongs which they are not strong enough to redress
themselves, they can at least bring unto him, and he hears their cry.
The king summons the unthankful and unmerciful servant into his
presence, and addresses to him words of severest rebuke, which it is
noticeable he had not used before for his debt's sake, but now he uses
on account of his cruelty and ingratitude-"O thou wicked servant,t
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?"-wert thou not bound, was there not a moral obligation
on thee, to show compassion,-even as compassion had been shown to
thee?t We may here observe, that the guilt laid to his charge is this,
not that, needing mercy, he refused to show it, but that having received
mercy he remains unmerciful still; a most important difference!-so
that they who like him are hard-hearted and cruel, do not thereby bear
witness that they have received no mercy; on the contrary, the stress of
their offence is, that having received an infinite mercy, they remain
unmerciful yet. The objective fact, the great mercy for the world, that
Christ has put away sin and that we have been made partakers in our
baptism of that benefit, stands firm, whether we allow it to exercise a
purifying, sanctifying, humanizing influence on our hearts or not. Our
faith apprehends, indeed, the benefit, but has not created it, any more
than our opening our eyes upon the sun has set it in the heavens.
"And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors,"
according to that word, " He shall have judgment without mercy, that
On the language of Scripture, attributing anger, repentance, jealousy to God,
there are some very valuable remarks in Augustine's reply to the cavils of a Manichsean (Con. Adv. Leg. et Proph., 1. 1, c. 20): Pcenitentia Dei non est post errorem:
Ira Dei not habet perturbati animi ardorem: Misericordia Dei non habet compatientis miserum cor: Zelus Dei non habet mentis livorem. Sed poenitentia Dei
*dicitur rerum in ejus potestate constitutarum hominibus inopinata mutatio: Ira
Dei est vindicta peccati: Misericordia Dei est bonitas opitulantis: Zelus Dei est
providentia qua non sinit eos quos subditos habet impune amare quod prohibet.
Cf. Ad Simplic., 1. 2, qu. 2.
t Bengel: Sic non vocatus fuerat ob debitum -a remark which Origen and
Chrysostom had already made.
$ See CIRYSOSTOM, De Simult., Hor 20, 6, an admirable discourse.




THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.                         133
hath showed no mercy." (Jam. ii. 13.) Before he had dealt with him
as a creditor with a debtor, now as a judge with a criminal.       " The
tormentors" are not merely the keepers of the prison as such; but those
who also, as the word implies, shall make the life of the prisoner bitter
to him; even as there are " tormentors" in that world of woe, whereof
this prison is a figure-fellow-sinners and evil angels-instruments of
the just, yet terrible judgments of God.* But here it is strange that
the king delivers the offender to prison and to punishment not for his
ingratitude or cruelty, but for the very debt which would appear before
to have been entirely and without conditions remitted to him.      When
Hammond says, that the king " revoked his designed mercy," and would
transfer that to the relation between God and sinners, this is an example
of those evasions of a difficulty by help of an ambiguous expression, or
a word ingeniously thrust in by the commentator, which are so frequent
even in some of the best interpreters of Scripture. It was not merely
a mercy designed, the king had not merely purposed to forgive him, but
in the distinct words of the earlier part of the parable he "forgave him
the debt." An ingenious explanation is that which would make the debt
for which he is now cast into prison, the debt of mercy and love, which
he had not paid, but which yet was due, according to that word of St.
Paul's, " Owe no man any thing, but to love one another;" but neither
* Grotius makes the Baaya-araaL  merely=-EauoipvAaceY, and Kuinoel, who observes that debtors are given to safe keeping, but not to tortures; but this seems
rather inaccurately stated, since we know, for instance, that in early times of Rome
there were certain legal tortures, in the shape, at least, of a chain weighing fifteen
pounds, and a pittance of food barely sufficient to sustain life (see ARNOLD'S Hist.
of Rome, v. 1, p. 136), which the creditor was allowed to apply to the debtor foi
the purpose of bringing him to terms; and no doubt they often did not stop here.
The old centurion (LivY, 2. 23) complains: Ductum se ab creditore non in servitium, sed in ergastulum et carnificinam esse: inde ostentare tergum, foedum recentibus vestigiis vulnerum. In the East, too, where there is a continual suspicion
that those who may appear the poorest, and who affirm themselves utterly insolvent, are actually in possession of some secret hoards of wealth, as is very often
the case, the torture (,8davos), in one shape or another, would be often applied, as
we know that it is often nowadays, to make the debtor reveal these hoards; or if
not with this hope, his life is often made bitter to him for the purpose of wringing
the money demanded, from the compassion of his friends. In all these cases the
jailer would be naturally the instrument employed for the purpose of inflicting
these pains on the prisoner; (see 1 Kin. xxii. 27;) so that there is no reason why
we should understand by these " tormentors," merely the keepers of the prison,
"the jailers," as Tyndale's and Cranmer's Bibles give it, and not rather accept the
word in its proper sense. Besides, if the unforgiving servant had merely been
given into ward, his punishment would now have been less than that with which
he was threatened, when his offence was not near so great as now it had becomefor then he was to have been sold into slavery.




134               THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.
can this be accepted as satisfactory. Nor are the cases of Adonijah and
Shimei (1 Kin. ii.), which are sometimes adduced, altogether in point.
They no doubt, on occasion of their later offences, were punished far
more severely than probably they would have been, had it not been for
their former offences; yet still it is not the former crimes which are
revived that they may be punished, but the later offence which calls
down its own punishment; and moreover, to produce parallels from the
questionable acts of imperfect men, is but a poor way of establishing the
righteousness of God.
The question herein involved, Do sins, once forgiven, return on the
sinner through his after offences? is one frequently and fully discussed
by the Schoolmen;* and of course this parable, and the arguments
which may be drawn from it, always take a prominent place in such
discussions.  But it may be worthy of consideration, whether the
difficulties do not arise mainly from our allowing ourselves in too
dead and formal a way of contemplating the forgiveness of sins;-from
our suffering the earthly circumstances of the remission of a deft to
embarrass the heavenly truth, instead of regarding them as helps, but
at the same time weak and often failing ones, for the setting forth that
truth.  One cannot conceive of remission of sins apart from living
communion with Christ; this is one of the great ideas brought out in
our baptismal service, that we are members of a righteous Person
and justified in him. But if through sin we cut ourselves off from
communion with him, we fall back into a state of nature, which is of
itself a state of condemnation and death, a state upon which therefore
the wrath of God is abiding. If then, laying apart the contemplation
of a man's sins as a formal debt, which must either be forgiven him or
not-we contemplate the life out of Christ as a state of wrath, and the
life in Christ as a state of grace, the first a walking in darkness, and
the other a walking in the light, we can better understand how a man's
sins should return upon him; that is, he sinning anew falls back into the
darkness out of which he had been delivered, and no doubt all that he
has done of evil in former times adds to the thickness of that darkness,
causes the wrath of God to abide more terribly on that state in which
he now is, and therefore upon him. (John v. 14.) Even as also it must
not be left out of sight that all forgiveness short of the crowning act of
* By PET. LOMBARD, 1. 4, dist. 22; AQUINAS (Sum. Theol., pars 3, qu. 88), and
H. DE STO VICTORE. (De Sacram., 1. 2, pars 14, c. 9: Utrum peccata semel dimissa
redeant.) Cf. AUGUSTINE, De Bapt., Con. Don., 1. 1, c. 12. Cajetan, quoting Rom.
xi. 29, "the gifts of God are without repentance " (alEvraeAWXTa), explains thus
the recalling of the pardon which had once been granted: Repetuntur debita semel
donata, non ut fuerant priis debita, sed ut modo effecta sunt materia ingratitudinis,-which is exactly the decision of Aquinas.




THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.                     135
forgiveness and mercy, which will find place on the day of judgment,
and will be followed by a total impossibility of sinning any more, is
conditional,-in the very nature of things so conditional, that the
condition must in every case be assumed, whether stated or no; that
condition being that the forgiven man abide in faith and obedience, in
that state of grace into which he has been brought; which he whom the
unmerciful servant here represents, had not done, but on the contrary
evidently and plainly showed by his conduct, that he had "forgotten
that he was purged from   his old sins."  He that is to partake of
the'final salvation must abide in Christ, else he will be "cast fortn
as a branch, and withered."  (John xv. 6.)  This is the condition, not
arbitrarily imposed from without, but belonging to the very essence of
the salvation itself; as, if one were drawn from the raging sea, and set
upon the safe shore, the condition of his continued safety would be that
he abode there, and did not again cast himself into the raging waters.
In this point of view an interesting parallel will be supplied to this
parable by 1 John i. 7, " If we walk in the light as he is in the light,
we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his
Son cleanseth us from all sin." He whom this servant represents does
not abide in the light of love, but falls back into the old darkness; he
has, therefore, no fellowship with his brother, and the cleansing power
of that blood ceases from him.
It is familiar to many that the Romish theologians have often found
an argument for purgatory, in the words " till he should pay all that was
cdue,"* as on the parallel expression, Mlatt. v. 26; as though they designated a limit beyond which the punishment should not extend. But it
seems plain enough that the phrase is nothing more than a proverbial
one, to signify that the offender should now be dealt with according to
the extreme rigor of the law; that he should have justice without mercy, that always paying, he should never have paid off his debt. For
since man could never acquit the slightest portion of the debt in which
he is indebted to God, the putting that as a condition of his liberation,
which it was impossible could ever be fulfilled, was the strongest possible way of expressing the eternal duration of his punishment; just as,
when the Phoceans abandoning their city swore that they would not
return to it again, till the mass of iron which they plunged into the sea
appeared once more upon the surface, it was in fact the most emphatic
~ See GERHARD'S Loci Theoll., loc. 27, c. 8. Chrysostom rightly explains it,
7roUreo'TL 8l]YEKW, otire yap a&rocrmeL ro e, and Augustine (De Serm. Dom. in Mon.,
1. 1. c. 11): Donec solvas... miror si non eam significat poenam qum vocatur aeterna. So Remigius: Semper solvet, sed nunquam persolvet.
t Just as the Roman proverbs, Ad numum solvere, ad extremum assem solvere.




136                THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.
form they could devise of declaring that they would never return;such an emphatic expression is the present.*
The Lord concludes with a word of earnest warning: " So likewise
shall my heavenly Father do also uzto you, if ye from your heartst forgive not every one his brother their trespasses."  "So" —with the same
rigor; such treasures of wrath, as well as such treasures of grace, are
with him. He who could so greatly forgive, can also so greatly punish.
Chrysostom  observes, that he says, my heavenly Father, meaning to
imply-yours he will not be, since so acting you will have denied the
relationship; but this. observation can scarcely be correct, since our
Lord often says, My Father, when no such reason can be assigned (as
ver. 19). On the declaration itself we may observe that, according to
the view given in Scripture, the Christian stands in a middle point,
between a mercy received and a mercy yet needed. Sometimes the first
is urged upon him as an argument for showing mercy-" forgiving one
another as Christ forgave you" (Col. iii. 13; Ephes. iv. 32); sometimes
the last, " Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy" (Matt.
v. 7); " Forgive and ye shall be forgiven" (Luke vi. 37; Jam. v. 9);
and so the son of Sirach (xxviii. 3, 4), " One man beareth hatred against
another, and doth he seek pardon from the Lord? he showeth no mercy
to a man who is like himself, and doth he ask forgiveness of his own
sins!"-so that while he is ever to look back on the mercy received as
the source and motive of the mercy which he shows, he also looks forward to the mercy which he yet needs, and which he is assured that the
merciful, according to what Bengel beautifully calls the Benigna talio
of the kingdom of God, shall receive as a new provocation to its abundant exercise. Tholuck has some good remarks upon this point: " From
the circumstance that mercy is here [Matt. v. 7] promised as the recompense of anterior mercy on our part, it might indeed be inferred that
under'merciful' we are to imagine such as have not yet in any degree
partaken of mercy; but this conclusion would only be just on the supposition, that the divine compassion consisted in an isolated act, which
could be done to man but once for all. Seeing, however, that it is an
act which extends over the whole life of the individual, and reaches its
* Just so Macbeth thinks he has the strongest assurance of safety, while that is
put as a condition of his defeat, which he counts can never come to pass:.. Let them fly all;
Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane
I cannot taint with fear."
t'A7rb Trv Kaphi'v== eK 4VXOs, Ephes. vi. 6; to the exclusion, not merely of acts
of hostility, but also of all uvalriKaKca. H. de Sto Victore: Ut nec opere exerceat
vindictam, nec corde reservet malitiam; and Jerome: Dominus addidit, de cordibus vestris, ut omnem simulationem fictee pacis averteret.




THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.                       137
culminating point in eternity, it behooves us to consider the compassion
of God for man, and man for his brethren, as reciprocally calling forth
and affording a basis for one another."* And this seems the explanation
of a difficulty suggested by Origen,t namely, where in time we are to
place the transactions shadowed forth in this parable!-for on.the one
hand, there are reasons why they should be placed at the end of this
present dispensation, since, it might be asked, when else does God take
account with his servants for condemnation or acquittal? while yet on
the other hand, if it were thus placed at the end of the dispensation,
what further opportunity would there be for the forgiven servant to
show the harshness which he actually does show to his fellow-servant?
The difficulty disappears, when we no longer contemplate forgiveness as
an isolated act, which must take place at some definite moment, but
consider it as ever going forward,-as running parallel with and extending over the entire life.J
* Auslegung. der Bergpredigt, p. 93.
t Comm. in Matth., xviii.
t There is a fine story illustrative of this parable, told by Fleury (Hist. Eccles.,
v. 2, p. 334;) It is briefly this. Between two Christians at Antioch enmity and
division had fallen out. After a while one of them desired to be reconciled, but
the other, who was a priest, refused. While it was thus with them, the persecution of Valerian began; and Sapricius, the priest, having boldly confessed himself
a Christian, was on the way to death. Nicephorus met him and again sued for
peace, which was again refused. While he was seeking and the other refusing,
they arrived at the place of execution. He that should have been the martyr was
here terrified, offered to sacrifice to the gods, and despite the entreaties of the
other did so, making shipwreck of his faith: while Nicephorus, boldly confessing,
stepped in his place, and received the crown which Sapricius lost. This whole
story'runs finely parallel with our parable. Before Sapricius could have had grace
to confess thus to Christ, he must have had his own ten thousand talents forgiven;
but refusing to forgive a far lesser wrong, to put away the displeasure he had
taken up on some infinitely lighter grounds against his brother, he forfeited all the
advantages of his position, his Lord was angry, took away from his grace, and suffered him again to fall under those powers of evil from which he had been once
delivered. It comes out, too, in this story, that it is not merely the outward wrong
and outrage upon a brother, which constitutes a likeness to the unmerciful servant,
but the unforgiving temper, even apart from all such. So Augustine (Qucest.
Evang., 1. 1, qu. 25): Noluit ignoscere,... intelligendum, tenuit contra eum huno
animum, ut supplicia illi vellet.




IX.
THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.
MATTHEW XX. 1-16.
THTS parable stands in'closest connection with the four last verses of
the preceding chapter, and can only be rightly understood by their help,
so that the actual division of the chapters is here peculiarly unfortunate,
causing, as it has often done, this parable to be explained quite independently of the context, and without any attempt to show the circumstances
out of which it sprung. And yet on the right tracing of this connection,
and the showing how the parable grew out of, and was in fact an answer
to. Peter's question, " What shall we have?" the success of the exposition will mainly depend. The parable now to be considered is only second to that of the Unjust Steward in the number of explanations,* and
those the most widely different, that have been proposed for it; as it is
also only second to that, if indeed second, in the difficulties which beset
it. These Chrysostomt states clearly and strongly; though few, I think,
will be wholly satisfied with his solution of them. There is first the difficulty of bringing the parable into harmony with the saying by which
it is introduced and concluded, and which it is plainly intended to illustrate: and secondly, there is the moral difficulty, the same as finds place
in regard of the elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son,namely, how can one who is himself a member of the kingdom of God
" be held," as Chrysostom terms it, " by that lowest of all passions, envy,
and an evil eye," grudging in his heart the favors shown to other members of that kingdom? or, if it be denied that these murmurers and
envious are members of that kingdom, how is this denial reconcilable
* Hase (Leben Jesu, p. 147), gives the literature connected with this parable,
consisting of no less than fifteen essays, most of them separately published; and
has yet omitted some, of which the titles are given in WOLF'S Curce.
t In Matth., Horn. 64.




THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.                     139
with the fact of their having labored all day in the vineyard, and ulti
mately carrying away their own reward? And lastly, there is the dif.
ficulty of deciding what is the salient point of the parable, the main doc.
trine which we are to gather from it.
Of those who have sought to interpret it there are first they, who
see in the equal penny to all, the key to the whole matter, and who say
that the lesson to be learned is this,-the equality of rewards in the
kingdom of God.* This was the explanation which Luther gave in his
earlier works, though he afterwards saw reason to alter his opinion. But
however this may appear to agree with the parable,t it evidently agrees
not at all with the saying, of which that is clearly meant to be the illustration-" Many that are first shall be last, and the last shall befirst;"t
for that equality would be,-not a reversing of their order, but a setting
of all upon a level. Others affirm that the parable is meant to set forth
this truth,-that God does not regard the length of time during which
men are occupied in his work, but the fidelity and strenuous exertion
with which they accomplish that work.~ Of this view there, will presently be occasion to speak more at large; it will be enough now to observe that the assumption that the last-hired laborers had worked more
strenuously than the first, is entirely gratuitous;-this circumstance, if
the narrative had turned on it, would have scarcely been omitted.Calvin again asserts that its purpose is to warn us against being overconfident, because we have begun well;ll lest (though this is not his illus* Augustine also (Serm. 343) says of the penny to all: Denarius ille vitae seterna est, qume omnibus par est,-but without affirming equality in the kingdom of
God; for all the stars, as he goes on to say, are in the same firmament, yet " one
star differeth from another star in glory:" (Splendor dispar, ccelum commune.)
Cf. De Sand. Virgin., c. 26. In like manner BERNARD, In Ps. Qui habitat,
Serm. 9, 4; and see AMBROSE, Ep. 7, c. 11, and GREGORY THE GREAT, Moral., 1. 4,
c. 36.
t Yet Spanheim (Dub. Evang., v. 3, p. 785) is not easily answered, when
against this he says: Nec enim per denarium vita Seterna intelligi potest, quippe
qui denarius datur etiam murmuratoribus et invidis, nec datus exsatiat, et datur
illis qui recedere jubentur B Domino. (ver. 14.) Atqui nec murmuratorum portio
est vita seterna, nec invidorum, nec homines b Deo abducit, sed conjungit cum illo,
nec ulli datur, cui non plenam adferat satietatem gaudiorum.
t Fritzche, indeed, finds no difficulty in giving the sense of the gnome thus:
Qui postremi ad Messiam se adplicuerunt, primis accensebuntur, et qui primi eum
secuti sunt, postremis:-but this is doing evident violence to the words.
~ So Maldonatus: Finis parabola est mercedem vitae aeternm non tempori quo
quis laboravit, sed labori et operi quod fecit respondere; and Kuinoel the same.
1| Non alio Dominum spectasse quam ut suos ad pergendum continuis stimulis
incitaret. Scimus enim segnitiem fere ex nimia. fiduci& nasci. If we found, Indeed,
the gnome by itself, we might then say that such was his purpose in it; see the
admirable use which Chrysostom (In Matth., Hon. 67, ad finem) makes of it, in
this regard.




140             THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.
tration), like the hare in the fable, growing careless and remiss in our
exertions, we allow others to outrun us: and so having seemed the first,
fall into the hindmost rank,-that it conveys a warning that no one begin to boast, or consider the battle won, till he put off his armor. But
neither will this agree with the circumstances of the parable, since the
laborers who were first engaged are not accused of having grown slack
in labor during the latter part of the day.
There are others who make-not the penny equal to all, but the successive hours at which the different bands of laborers were hired, the
most prominent circumstance of the parable. And these interpreters
may be again subdivided, for there are first those who, as Origen and
Hilary, make it to contain a history of the different summonses to a
work of righteousness, which God has made to men from the beginning of
the world,-to Adam,-to Noah,-to Abraham,-to Moses,-and lastly to
the apostles, bidding them each, in his order, to go work in his vineyard.
Of these, all the earlier lived during weaker and more imperfect dispensations, and underwent, therefore, a harder labor, in that they had not
such abundant gifts of the Spirit, such clear knowledge of the grace of
God in Christ, to sustain them, as the later called, the members of the
Christian Church. Their heavier toil, therefore, might aptly be set forth
by a longer period of work, and that at the more oppressive time of the
day (compare Acts xv. 10); while the apostles, and the rest of the
faithful who were called into God's vineyard at the eleventh hour (the
last time, or the last hour, as St. John [1 Ep. ii. 18] calls the Christian
dispensation), and were made partakers of the larger, freer grace that
was now given in Christ, had to endure little by comparison. But in
regard to this explanation,* it may be asked, when could that murmuring
have taken place, even supposing the people of God could thus grudge
because of the larger grace freely bestowed upon others? Those prior
generations could not have so murmured in their lifetime, for before the
things were even revealed which God had prepared for his people that
came after, they were in their graves. Far less is it to be conceived as
* Were it the right one, John iv. 35-38 would afford a most interesting parallel;
for it is exactly this which is there declared. The "other men" that labored
(ver. 38) are the generations that went before, doing their harder tasks under the
Law, breaking up the fallow ground of men's hearts, and with toil and tears sowing
their seed,-this would answer to the bearing here the burden and heat of the day.
The blessedness of the disciples is there magnified, in that theirs is an easier task,
the reaping and gathering in of the spiritual harvest; they enter upon other men's
labors;-which is the counterpart to the coming into the vineyard at the eleventh
hour. But the true feeling of the first laborers and of the last, of the hardesttasked and the lightest, is there also declared, the only feeling which could find
place in the kingdom of God, they "rejoice together" (ver 36), are unenvying
partakers of the same joy.




THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.                   141
finding place in the day of judgment, or in the kingdom of love made perfeet. Unless, then, we quite explain away the murmuring, and say with
Chrysostom, that the Lord only introduced it to magnify the greatness
of the things freely given to his disciples, which he would thus imply
were so great and glorious, that those who lived before they were imparted
might be provoked to murmur at the comparison of themselves with their
more richly endowed successors, were it possible to imagine that such a
feeling of envy could be entertained in their heart,-unless we accept
this ingenious solution of the difficulty, this explanation of the parable
seems almost untenable, as, were it worth while, much more might be
brought against it.-Then there are, secondly, they who, in the different
hours at which the laborers are hired, see the different periods of men's
lives, at which they enter on the work of the Lord; and who affirm that
the purpose is to encourage those who have entered late on his service,
now to labor heartily, not allowing the consciousness of past negligences
to dispirit them, since they too, if only they will labor with their might
for the time, long or short, which remains, shall receive a full reward
with the rest. This is, in the main, Chrysostom's view;* but while;
under certain limitations, such encouragement may undoubtedly be
drawn from the parable, it is another thing to say that this is the admonishment which it is especially meant to convey. If that were the interpretation, in what living connection would the parable stand with what
went before, with Peter's question which occasioned it, or with the spirit
out of which that question grew, and which this teaching of the Lord
was meant to meet and to correct?
But the explanation which is very frequently offered, and which
certainly contains more truth in it than all which have hitherto been
passed under review, is that which makes the parable a warning and a
prophecy, of the causes which would lead to the rejection of the Jews,
the first called into the vineyard of the Lord;-these causes being
mainly their proud appreciation of themselves and of their own work;
their dislike at seeing the Gentiles, so long aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, put on the same footing, admitted at once to equal
privileges with themselves in the kingdom of God:-and an agreement
or covenant being made with the first hired, and none with those subsequently engaged, has seemed a confirmation of this view. Doubtless
this application of the parable is by no means to be excluded. It was
* And also Jerome's (Comm. in Matth.): Mihi videntur primae hore esse operarii Samuel et Jeremias et Baptista Johannes, qui possunt cum Psalmisth dicere,
Ex utero matris mene Deus es tu. Tertiae vero horae operarii sunt qui in pubertato
servire Deo ceperunt. Sexte horse, qui matur setate susceperunt jugum Christi:
nonae, qui jam declinant ad senium: porro undecimse, qi.i ultima senectute. Et
tamen omnes pariter accipiunt preemium, licet diversus labor sit.




142            THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.
notably fulfilled in the Jews; their conduct did supply a solemn con.
firmation of the need of the warning here given: but its application is
universal and not particular; this fulfilment was only one out of many:
for our Lord's words are so rich in meaning, so bring out the essential
and permanent relations between man and God, that they are continually
finding their fulfilment. Had this however been the meaning which our
Lord had exclusively, or even primarily, in his eye, we should expect to
hear of but two bands of laborers, the first hired and the last: all those
who come between would only serve to confuse and perplex the image.
The solution sometimes given of this objection,-that the successive
hirings are the successive summonses to the Jews; first, under Moses
and Aaron; secondly, under David and the kings; thirdly, under the
Maccabeean chiefs and priests; and lastly, in the time of Christ and his
apostles; or that these are Jews, Samaritans, and proselytes of greater or
less strictness,-seems devised merely to escape from an embarrassment,
and only witnesses for its existence without removing it.*
Better then to say that the parable is directed against a wrong
temper, and spirit of mind, which indeed was notably manifested in the
Jews, but which not merely they, but all men in possession of spiritual
privileges, have need to be, and are here, warned against: while at the
same time the immediate occasion from which the parable rose, was not
one in which they were involved. This is clear, for the warning was not
primarily addressed to them, but to the apostles, as the chiefest and
foremost in the Christian Church, the earliest called to labor in the
Lord's vineyard-" the first," both in time, and in the amount of suffering and toil which they would have to undergo. They had seen the rich
young man (xix. 22) go sorrowful away, unable to abide the proof by
which the Lord had mercifully revealed to him how strongly he was yet
holden to the world and the things of the world. They (for Peter here,
as in so many other instances, is the representative and spokesman of
all) would fain know what their reward should be, who had done this
very thing from which he had shrunk, and had forsaken all for the
Gospel's sake. (ver. 27.) The Lord answers them first and fully, that
they and as many as should do the same for his sake, should reap an
abundant reward. (ver. 28, 29.) At the same time the question itself,
"What shall we have?" was not a right one; it was putting their relation
to their Lord on a wrong footing; there was a tendency in the question
to bring their obedience to a calculation of so much work, so much
reward.  There was also a certain self-complacency lurking in this
* This explanation of the parable, however, is maintained by, and satisfies,
Grotius: and also by Mr. Greswell (Exp. of the Par., v, 4, p. 370, seq.) who has
done for it every thing whereof it is capable, to win acceptance for it.




THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.                    143
speech, not so much a vain confidence in themselves, considered by
themselves, as a comparison for self-exaltation with others-a comparison between themselves who had not shrunk back from the command
to forsake all, and the young man who had found the requirement too
hard for him. That spirit of self-exalting comparison of ourselves with
others, which is so likely to be stirring when we behold any signal
failure on their part, was at work in them; and the very answer which
the Lord gave to their question would have been as fuel to the fire,
unless it had been accompanied with the warning of the parable. It is
true that this self-complacent thought was probably only as an underthought in Peter's mind, obscurely working within him, one of which he
was himself hardly conscious; but the Lord, who knew what was in man,
saw with a glance into the depths of his heart, and having given an
answer to the direct question, went on by this further teaching, to nip
at once the evil sprout in the bud before it should proceed to develope
itself further. " Not of works, lest any man should boast;" this was the
truth which they were in danger of losing sight of, and which he would
now by the parable enforce; and if nothing of works, but all of grace
for all, then no glorying of one over another could find place, no grudging of one against another, no claim as of right upon the part of any.
First indeed the Lord answered the question, "What shall we
have?" As they in deed and in sincerity had forsaken all for Christ's
sake, and desired to know what their reward should be, he does not
think it good to withhold the reply, but answers them fully,-the
reward shall be great. But having answered so, his discourse takes
another turn,* as is sufficiently indicated in the words, "But many that
are first shall be last;" and he will warn them now against giving place
toe much to that spirit out of which the question proceeded: for there
* Gerhard: Sub finem, quia Christo Petri et reliquorum confidentia non fuit
ignota, et verendum erat ne ob magnificam hanc promissionem sese alis prseferrent, hunc locum gravi sententia concludit, qua ipsos et in primis Petrum sub
modestia et metu continere cupit, Multi autem primi erunt novissimi, et novissimi
primi... Nolite ergo altum sapere, nolite arroganter de vobis ipsis sentire. So
also Olshausen, who refers to ver. 20-28 of this chapter (cf. Mark x. 35), as an evidence how liable the promise (xix. 28) was to be perverted and misunderstood by
the old man which was not yet wholly mortified in the apostles. But the whole
matter has been strangely reversed by some, who instead of a warning and a caution here, see rather in the parable a following up of what has been already spoken:
-" You, the poor and despised, who might seem the last called, shall be first in
the kingdom of God-while the first, the wise, the noble, and the rich, such,
for instance, as that young man and all the spiritual chiefs of the nation, shall be
last in the day of the Lord." But this would indeed have been fuel to a fire
which rather needed slaking, and which it was the very purpose of the parable to
slake.




144             THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.
was therein a pluming of themselves upon their own work, an invidious
comparison of themselves with others, a certain attempt to bring in God
as their debtor.  In short, the spirit of the hireling spoke in that
question, and it is against this spirit that the parable is directed, which
might justly be entitled, On the nature of rewards in the kingdom  of
God,-the whole finding a most instructive commentary in Rom. iv. 1-4,
which passage supplies a parallel not indeed verbal, but a more deeply
interesting, that is, a real parallel with the present.
As far as it is addressed to Peter, and in him to all true believers,
the parable is rather a warning against what might be, if they were not
careful to watch against it, than a prophecy of what would be.* For we
cannot imagine him who dwells in love as allowing himself in envious
and grudging thoughts against any of his brethren, because, though they
have entered later on the service of God, or been engaged on a lighter
labor, they will yet be sharers with him of the same heavenly reward,or refusing to welcome them gladly to all the blessings and privileges of
the communion of Christ.  Least of all can we imagine him so to forget
that he also is saved by grace, as to allow such hateful feelings to come to
a head, actually to take form and shape, which they do in the parable,as justifying them to himself or to God, like the spokesman among the
murmurers here.   We cannot conceive this even here in our present
imperfect state, and much less in the perfected kingdom hereafter; for
love "rejoices in the truth,"t and the very fact of one so grudging
against another would prove that he himself did not dwell in love, and
therefore was himself under sentence of exclusion from that kingdom.T
It is then a warning to the apostles, and through them to all believers,
of what might be,-not a prophecy of what shall be with any that share
in the final reward;-a solemn warning that however long continued
their work, abundant their labors, yet if they had not this charity to
their brethren, this humility before God, they were nothing;-that
pride and a self-complacent estimation of their work, like the fly in the
ointment, would spoil the work, however great it might be, since that
work stands only in humility; and from first they would fall to last.* Bengel: Respectu Apostolorum non est praedictio sed admonitia.
t In the beautiful words of Leighton (Prelect. 6.):'O (Jprvos'w TroO dEov X;pov sed caritas absolutissima, qua unusquisque simul cum sua alterius mutu6 felicitate fruitur et beatus est illa scillicet tanquam suS colletatus; unde inter illos
infinita quendam beatitudinis repercussio et multiplicatio est; qualis foret splendor
aulse auro et gemmis, pleno regum et magnatum choro, nitentis, cujus parietes speculis undique lucidissimis obtecti essent.
$ Gregory the Great says excellently (Hor. 19, in Evang.) on this murmuring: Coelorum regnum nullus murmurans accipit: nullus qui accipit, murmurare
poterit.




THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.                     145
There is then this difference between the narration in the parable, and
the truth of which it is the exponent, that while it would not have been
consistent with equity for. the householder altogether to have deprived
the first laborers of their hire, notwithstanding their pride and their
discontent, so that consequently they receive their wages, and are not
punished with more than a severe rebuke, yet the lesson to be taught to
Peter, and through him to all disciples in all times, is, that the first may
be altogether last, that those who seem chiefest in labor, yet, if they
forget withal that the reward is of grace and not of works, and begin to
boast and exalt themselves above their fellow-laborers, may altogether
lose the things which they have wrought:* and those who seem last,
may yet, by keeping their humility, be acknowledged first in the day of
God;-and in proof of this, the parable which follows was spoken.
It commences thus: " The kingdom    of heaven is like unto a -ian
that is a householder, which went out early in the morning to hire
laborers into his vineyard:" in other words, The manner of God's
dealings with those whom he calls to the privileges of working in his
Church,-that is, his kingdom  in its present imperfect development,-is
similar to that of a, householder, who went early in the morning to hire
laborers.t  This is ever true in the heavenly world, that God seeks his
laborers, and not they him; "You have not chosen me, but I have
chosen you." (John xv. 16.) Every summons to a work in the heavenly
vineyard is from the Lord: man's heart never originates the impulse;
all which is man's in the matter is, that he do not resist the summons,
which it is his melancholy prerogative that he is able to do.    It is
"a call," according to the instructive Scriptural expression: but as in
the natural world a call implies no force, but is something which may be
obeyed or refused, so also is it in the spiritual.
The householder agreed with the first laborers for a penny a day.+
* Gregory the Great again (Moral., 1. 19, c. 21): Perit omne quod agitur, si
non sollicite in humilitate custoditur.
t Fleck: Non in una persona sed in tota actione collatio consistit;-a remark
of frequent application.
t A denarius, a Roman silver coin, which passed current as equal to the Greek
drachm, though in fact some few grains lighter. It was =8-d., at the latter end
of the commonwealth; afterwards, something less, of our money. It was not an
uncommon, though a liberal day's pay. (See Tob. v. 14.) Morier, in his Second
Journey through Persia, p. 265, mentions having noted in the market-place at Hamadan a custom like that alluded to in the parable:-" Here we observed every
morning before the sun rose, that a numerous band of peasants were collected with
spades in their hands, waiting to be hired for the day to work in the surrounding
fields. This custom struck me as a most happy illustration of our Saviour's parable, particularly when, passing by the same place late in the day, we found others
standing i~le, and remembered his words,' Why stand ye here all the day idle'
10




146             THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD
The different terms upon which the different bands of laborers went to
their work, would scarcely have been so expressly noted, unless stress
were to be laid on it. An agreement was made by these first-hired laborers before they entered on their labor, exactly the agreement which
Peter wished to make, "What shall we have?"-while those subsequently engaged went in a simpler spirit, trusting that whatever was
right and equitable the householder would give them. Thus we have
here upon the one side early indications of that wrong spirit which presently comes to a head (ver. 11, 12); on the other side, we have the
true spirit of humble waiting upon the Lord, in full assurance that he
will give far more than we can desire or deserve,-that God is not unrighteous to forget any labor of love,-that his servants can safely trust
in him, who is an abundant rewarder of all them that seek and that serve
him.*
At the third, at the sixth, and at the ninth hour,-at nine in the
morning, at mid-day, and at three in the afternoon,t he again went into
the market-place,s and those whom he found there disengaged, sent into
his vineyard.-" 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?"  All activity out of Christ, all labor that is not labor in his
Church, is in his sight a standing idle.  " They say unto him, Because
no man hath hired us."    There was a certain amount of rebuke in the
question, which it is intended that this answer shall clear away; for it
belongs to the idea of the parable, that it shall be accepted as perfectly
satisfactory. It is not then in a Christian land, where men grow up
under sacramental obligations, with the pure word of God sounding in
as most applicable to their situation, for on putting the very same question to them
they answered us,' Because no man hath hired us."'
* Thus Bernard, in a passage (In Cant., Serm. 14, 4) containing many interesting allusions to this parable: Ille [Judoeus] pacto conventionis, ego placito voluntatis innitor.
F These would not, except just at the equinoxes, be exactly the hours, for the
Jews, as well as the Greeks and Romans, divided the natural day, that between
sunrise and sunset, into twelve equal parts, (John xi. 9,) which parts must of
course have been considerably longer in summer than in winter; for though the
difference between the longest and the shortest day is not so great in Palestine, as
with us, yet is it by no means trifling; the longest day is of 14h 12" duration, the
shortest of 91 48m, with a difference therefore of 4h 24m, so that an hour on the
longest day would be exactly 22m longer than an hour on the shortest. The equinoctial hours did not come into use until the fourth century. (See the Diet. of Gr.
anzd Rom. Antt., s. v. Hora, p. 485.) Probably the day was also divided into four
larger parts here indicated, just as the Roman night into four watches, and indeed
the Jewish no less: the four divisions of the latter are given in a popular form,
Mark xiii. 35. (See SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Heb., 9. 1, p. 136.): Maldonatus: Totum mundum qui extra Ecclesiam est.




THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.                     147
their ears, that this answer could be given-or at least, only in such
woful cases as that which our own land now presents, where in the
bosom of the Church multitudes have been allowed to grow up ignorant
of the blessing which her communion affords, and the responsibilities it
lays upon them;-and even in their mouths there would only be a partial truth in the answer, " No man hath hired us;" since even they cannot be altogether ignorant of their Christian vocation. It would only be
when the kingdom of God is first set up in a land, enters as a new and
hitherto unknown power, that sinful men with full truth could answer,
" No man hath hired us —if we have been living in disobedience to God,
it has been because we were ignorant of him,-if we were serving Satan,
it was because we knew no other master, because we knew not that there
was such a thing as living for God and for his glory, and bringing forth
fruit to the honor of his name."
Yet while thus the excuse which the laborers in the parable plead,
appertains not to them who, growing up within the Church, have despised to the last, or nearly to the last, God's repeated biddings to go
work in his vineyard-while the unscriptural corollary cannot be appended to the parable,* that it matters little at what time of men's lives
they enter heartily upon the service of God, how long they despise his
vows and obligations which have been upon them from the beginning;
yet one would not deny that there is such a thing even in the Christian
Church as men being called,-or to speak more correctly, since they
were called long before,-as men obeying the calling and entering on
* The author of a modern Latin essay, De Sera Resipiscentia, anxious to rescue
this part of the parable from the dangerous abuse to which it is often subjected,
observes that it should have been otherwise constructed, if such a doctrine were to
be drawn from it: Oportuisset dixisse regnum ccelorum simile est homini egresso
alto mane, ad conducendum operarios in vineam suam. Invenit tales quibus fecit
maxima promissa, sed isti hec rejecerunt, preeferentes manere in foro ad ludendum
et compotandum. Reversus est hora tertia, eadem illis obtulit, et instantibs eo$
rogavit, sed absque fructu... Idem fecit hora sextA et nona, ipsius autem oblationes et promissiones semper fuerunt in utiles. Illi quin etiam ipsum malb exceperunt, ipsique protervb dixerunt, quod nollent pro eo laborare. Ipse ne sic quidem
offensus, reversus est, cum non nisi una diei hora superesset, eandemque obtulit
summam quam mane. Illi tune videntes quod summam tantam lucrari possent
labore momentaneo, tandem passi sunt hoc sibi persuaderi, spectantes maximb quod
dies ferb transactus foret ante suum in vineam adventum. Augustine (Serm. 87, c.
6) has the same line of thought: Numquid enim et illi, qui sunt ad vineam conducti, quando ad illos exibat paterfamilias, ut conduceret quos invenit hora tertiA.. dixerunt illi; Exspecta, non illuc imus nisi hora sexta 1 aut quos invenit hora
sexta dixerunt; Non imus nisi hora non&... Omnibus enim tantumdem daturus
est: quare nos amplius fatigamur? Quid ille daturus sit et quid facturus sit, penes
ipsum consilium est. Tu quando vocaris, veni. Compare GREGORY NAZANZI., Orat.
40, c. 20, against those who used this parable as an argument for deferring their
baptism.




148             THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.
God's service, at the third, or sixth, or ninth, or even the eleventh hour
Only the ease of such will be parallel not to that of any of these labor
ers,.at least in regard of being able to make the same excuse as they
did, but rather to that of the son, who being bidden to go work in his
father's vineyard, refused, but afterwards repented and went (Matt. xxi.
28); and such a one, instead of excusing and clearing himself as respects the past, which these laborers do, will on the contrary have deep
repentance in his heart, while he considers all his neglected opportunities
and the long-continued despite which he has done to the Spirit of grace.
Yet while thus none can plead, " No man hath hired us," in a land where
the Christian faith has long been established, and the knowledge of it
brought home unto all men, the parable is not therefore without its ap
plication in such;-since there will be there also many entering into the
Lord's vineyard at different periods, even to a late one, of their lives,
and who, truly repenting their past unprofitableness, and not attempting to excuse it, may find their work, be it for a long or a short while,
graciously accepted now, and may share hereafter in the full rewards of
the kingdom.
For in truth time belongs not to the kingdom of God.    Not " How
much hast thou done?" but "What art, thou now?" will be the great
question of the last day. Of course we must never forget that all which
men have done will greatly affect what they are; yet still the parable is
a protest against the whole quantitative appreciation of men's works
(the Romanist), as distinct from the qualitative, against all which would
make the works the end and man the means, instead of the man the end,
and the works the means-against that scheme which, however unconsciously, lies at the root of so many of the confusions in our theology at
this day.*
* This mechanical as opposed to the dynamic idea of righteousness, is carried
to the greatest perfection df all in the Chinese theology. Thus in that remarkable
Livre des recompenses et des peines, the mechanic, or to speak more truly, the arithmetic idea of righteousness, comes out with all possible distinctness. For example, p. 124: Pour dgvenir immortel, il faut avoir amassd trois mille merites, et huit
cent actions vertueuses. How glorious, on the other hand, are Thauler's words
upon the way in which we may have restored to us " the years which the cankerworm has eaten" (Joel ii. 25): Libet hic quarere quo pacto deperditum tempus
unquam recuperare quis possit, cum nullum sit tam breve et velox temporis momentum, quod non totum cum omni virtute ac facultate nostra Deo creatori debeamus. Sed hMc in parte consilium sanissimum prvestatur. Avertat se quisque cum
omnibus tam supremis quim infimis viribus suis ab omni loco et tempore, seque in
illud Nunc seternitatis recipiat, ubi Deus essentialiter in stabili quodam Nuno
existit. Ibi neque praeteritum aliquid est, neque futurum. Ibi principium et finis
universi temporis prsesentia adsunt. Ibi, in Deo scilicet, deperdita omnia reperiuntur. Et qui in consuetudinem ducunt spepius in Deum se immergere atque in ipso
commorari, hi nimium fiunt locupletes, immo plura inveniunt quhm deperdere




THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.                  149' So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the laborers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last
unto the first." In bidding his steward to pay his laborers the same
evening, he acted consistently with the merciful command of the law
which enjoined concerning the hired servant, "At his day thou shalt
give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it, for he is poor,
and setteth his heart upon it."  (Deut. xxiv. 15. See Lev. xix. 13;
Job. vii. 2; Mal. iii. 5; Jam. v. 4; Tob. iv. 14.) Christ is the steward,
or the overseer rather, set over all God's house. (Heb. iii. 6; John v.
27; Matt. xi. 27.) The whole economy of salvation has been put into
his hands, and in this, of course, the distribution of rewards. In obedience to the householder's commands the laborers are called together;
the last hired, those who came in without any agreement made, receive a
full penny. Here is encouragement for those that have delayed to enter on God's service till late in their lives-not encouragement to delay,
for we every where find in Scripture a blessing resting on early pietybut encouragement now to work heartily, and with their might. It is a
great mistake to think that misgivings concerning the acceptance of
their work will make men work the more strenuously; on the contrary,
nothing so effectually cuts the nerves of all exertion; but there is that
in this part of the parable which may help to remove such misgivings
in those who would be most likely to feel them: it encourages them to
labor in hope; they too shall be sharers in the full blessings of Christ
and of his salvation.
It may be securely inferred, that all between the last and the first
hired received the penny as well; though it is the case of the first hired
alone which is brought forward, as that in which the injustice, as the
others conceived it, appeared the most striking. To assume, as so many
have done, Chrysostom, Maldonatus, Hammond, Waterland, and of late
Olshausen, that these first hired had been doing their work negligently
by comparison, while the last hired, such for instance as a Paul, whom
Origen in this view, and quoting 1 Cor. xv. 10, suggests, had done it
with their might, and had in fact accomplished as much in their hour as
the others in their day, is to assume that of which there is not the slightest trace in the narrative. And more than this, such an assumption
effectually blunts the point of the parable, which lies in this very thing,
that men may do and suffer much, infinitely more than others, and yet
be rejected, while those others are received,-that the first may be last
and the last first. It is not indeed strange that a Rationalist interpreter
like Kuinoel should thus explain it; for in fa& the whole matter is thus
queant.. Denique et neglecta omnia atque deperdita in ipso quoque Dominica
passionis preciosissimo thesauro reperire ac recuperare licet.




150             THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.
taken out of the spiritual world, and brought down to the commonest
region of sense; since if one man does as much work in onehour as
another in twelve, it is only natural that he should receive an equal reward. Every difficulty disappears,-except indeed this, how the Lord
should have thought it worth his while to utter a parable for the justifying so very ordinary a transaction; or if he did, should have omitted to
state that very thing which formed the justification. But in truth this
view exactly brings us back to the level, from which to raise us the
parable was expressly spoken-we have a Jewish,* instead of an evangelical, parable, an affirmation that the reward is not of grace but of
debt,-the very untruth which it is meant to gainsay.
When those first hired received the same sum as the others and no
more, " they murmured against the good man 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 heatt of the day."   These other, they
* Singularly enough, exactly such a one is quoted by Lightfoot and others from
the Talmud; it is concerning a celebrated Rabbi, who died at a very early age, and
is as follows: " To what was R. Boh Bar Chaija like 1 To a king who hired many
laborers, among whom there was one hired, who performed his task extraordinarily
well. What did the king? He took him aside and walked with him to and fro
When even was come, those laborers came, that they might receive their'hire, and
he gave him a complete hire with the rest. And the laborers murmured, saying,' We have labored hard all the day, and this man only two hours, yet he hath
received as much wages as we.' The king said to them,' He hath labored more in
those two hours, than you in the whole day.' So R. Bon plied the law more in
eight and twenty years than another in a hundred years." This parable appears
in the Spicilegium ofL. Capellus, p. 28, in an altered shape.-Von Hammer (FIundgruben d. Orients, v. 1, p. 157) has a curious extract from the.Sura, or collection of
Mahomet's traditional sayings, which looks like a distorted image of our parable.
The Jew, the Christian, the Mahommedan are likened to three different bands of
laborers, hired at different periods of the day, at morning, at mid-day, and afternoon.
The latest hired received in tl3 evening twice as much as the others. It ends thus:
" The Jews and Christians will- complain and say,' Lord, thou hast given two carets
to these and only one to us.' But the Lord will say,' Have I wronged you in your
reward 2' They answer,' No.'' Then learn that the other is an overflowing of my
grace.'" See the same with immaterial differences in GEROCK'S Christol. d. Koran,
p. 141; and Mohler (Verm. Schrift., v. 1, p. 355) mentions that when seeking for
prophetic intimations of their faith in our Scriptures, they make distinct referehce
to this parable, and its successive bands of laborers.-Mr. Greswell quotes a remarkable passage from Josephus (Antt. Jud., 20. 9. 7), which proves that such a
dealing as that of the householder, was not without a very remarkable precedent
in those very days. The Jewish historian expressly says, that Ananus (the Annas
of the New Testament) paid toie workmen who were employed in the rebuilding or
beautifying of the temple a whole day's pay, even though they should have labored but
a single hour.
t The Kac'7v, which word is used in the LXX. for the dry burning east wind
so fatal to all vegetable life: "the wind from the wilderness" (Hos. xiii. 15), of




THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.                     151
would say, have been laboring not merely a far shorter time, but when
they entered on their tasks it was already the cool of the evening, when
toil is no longer oppressive, while we have borne the scorching heat of
the middle noon. But here the perplexing dilemma meets us, Either
these are of the number of God's faithful people,-how then can they
murmur against him, and grudge against their fellow-servants? or they
are not of that number,-what then can we understand of their having
labored the whole day through in his vineyard, and actually carrying
away at last the penny, the reward of eternal life?-for it is a very unnatural way of escaping the difficulty, to understand " Take that which
is thine" as meaning,-Take the damnation which belongs to thee, and
is the just punishment of thy pride and discontent. Theophylact and
others strive to mitigate as much as possible the guilt of their murmuring, and make it nothing more than the expression of surprise and admiration* which will escape some, at the unexpected position which
others, of perhaps small account here, will occupy in the future kingdom of glory.f But the expression of their discontent is too strong, and
the rebuke which it calls out too severe, to allow of any such explaining
of their dissatisfaction. Better to say that there is no analogy to be
found for this murmuring in the future world of glory-and only where
there is a great admixture of the old man in the present world of graced
There is here rather a teaching by contraries; it is saying, Since you
cannot conceive such a spirit as that here held up before you, and which
you feel to be so sinful and hateful, finding place in the perfected kingdom of God, check betimes its beginnings-check all inclinations to look
grudgingly at your brethren who, having in times past grievously departed from God, have now found a place beside yourselves in his kingdom, and are sharers in the same spiritual privileges,$ or to look down
which Jerome says (Corn. in Os., 1. 3, c. 11): KaCo'wva, i. e. ariditatem, sive ventum
urentem, qui contrarius floribus est, et germinantia cuncta disperdit. It has much
in common with, though it has not altogether so malignant a character as, the desert wind Sam or Samiel, to which modern travellers attribute yet more destructive effects, speaking of it as at times fatal to the life of man; and whose effects
Venema (Comm. in Ps. xci. 6) thus describes: Penetrat ventus, venenatis particulis mixtus, aestu suo venenato in viscera, et praesentissimum ac dolorificum adfert
exitium. Subito corpora faedb afficiuntur ac putrescunt. See also GEBSER, Der
Brief des Jakobus, p. 41.
* Bellarmine: Admirationem potius quamquerimoniam significare videtur.
t The explanation given by Gregory the Great (Hor. 19, in Evang.) is of the
same kind, though with particular reference to tlfe Saints and Patriarchs of the
Old Testament: Quia antiqui patres usque ad adventum Domini ducti ad regnum
non sunt,... hoc ipsum murmurAsse est; quod et rectb pro percipiendo regno vix.
erunt, et tamen diu ad percipiendum regnum dilati sunt. Origen in the same spirit
quotes Heb. xi. 39, 40.
$ There are many and interesting points of comparison, as Jerome observes, be



152             THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.
upon and despise those who occupy a less important field of labor, whs
are called in the providence of God to endure and suffer less than your
selves; check all inclinations to pride yourselves on your own doings,
as though they gave you a claim of right upon God, instead of accept
ing all of the free mercy and undeserved bounty of God, and confessing
that you as well as others must be saved entirely by grace.
With regard to the murmurers actually receiving their penny, it is
ingeniously remarked by a Romish expositor, that the denarius or penny
was of different kinds; there was the double, the treble, the fourfold;
that of brass or rather copper, of silver, and of gold. The Jew (for he
applies the parable to Jew and Gentile) received what was his, his
penny of the meaner inetal, his earthly reward, and with that went his
way; but the Gentile the golden penny, the spiritual reward, grace and
glory, admission into the presence of God. Ingenious as this notion is,
of course no one will for an instant accept it as a fair explanation of the
difficulty, and yet it may suggest valuable considerations. The penny
is very different to the different receivers-though objectively the same,
subjectively is very different; it is in fact to every one exactly what he
will make it.*  What the Lord said to Abraham, he'says unto all, " I
am thy exceeding great reward," and he has no other reward to impart
lo any save only this, namely himself. To see him as he is, this is the
tween this parable and that of the Prodigal Son; and chiefly between the murmuring laborers in this, and the elder brother in that. They had borne the burden
and heat of the day-he had served his father these many years: they grudged to
see the laborers of the eleventh hour made equal with themselves-he to see ths
Prodigal received into the full blessings of his father's house; the lord of the vineyard remonstrates with them for their narrow-heartedness, and in like manner the
father with him.
* Thus Aquinas, in answer to the question whether there will be degrees of
glory in the future world, replies that in one sense there will, in another there will
not; for, he adds, Contingit aliquem perfectius frui Deo quam alium ex eo quod
est melius dispositus vel ordinatus ad ejus fruitionem;-and again; Virtus erit
quasi materialis dispositio ad mensuram gratie et gloriae suscipiendae. This is one
vision of God; but there are very different capacities for enjoying that vision, as is
profoundly expressed in DANTE'S Paradiso, by the circles concentric, but ever growing smaller and thus nearer to the centre of light and life. Augustine (Enarr. in
Ps. lxxii. 1) carries yet further the view of the one vision of God for all: he compares it to the light which gladdens the healthy eye but torments the diseased (non
mutatis sed mutatum). It was also a favorite notion with the mystics that God
would not put forth a twofold pTwer to punish and reward, but the same power
acting differently on different natures,-as, to use their own illustration, the same
heat hardens the.clay and softens the wax. The Zend-Avesta supplies a parallel:
All, it is there said, in the world to come, will have to pass through the same
stream; but this stream will be as warm milk to the righteous, while to the wicked
it will be as molten brass.




THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.                    153
reward which he has for all his people, the penny unto all; but they
whom these murmuring laborers represent, had been laboring for
something else besides the knowledge and enjoyment of God, with an
eye to some other reward, to something on account of which they could
glory in themselves and glory over others. It was not merely to have
mzuch which they desire, but to have more than others,-not to grow
together with the whole body of Christ, but to get before and beyond
their brethren —and the penny then, because it was common to all,
did not seem enough-while in fact it was to each what he would
make it. For if.the vision of God constitute the blessedness of the
future world, then they whose spiritual eye is most enlightened, will
drink in most of his glory; then, since only like can know like, all advances which are here made in humility, in holiness, in love, are a polishing of the mirror that it may reflect more distinctly the divine image,
a purging of the eye that it may see more clearly the divine glory, an
enlarging of the vessel that it may receive more amply of the divine
fulness; and, on the contrary, all pride, all self-righteousness, all sin of
every kind, whether it stop short with impairing, or end by altogether
destroying, the capacities for receiving from God, is in its degree a
staining of the mirror, a darkening of the eye, a narrowing of the vessel.t In the present case, where pride, and envy and self-esteem had
found place, darkening the eye of the heart, as a consequence the reward seemed no reward,-it did not appear enough;t instead of being exactly what each was willing, or rather had prepared himself to
make it.
" But he answered one of them," probably him who was loudest and
foremost in the expression of his discontent, " and said, Friend,~ I do
* The true feeling is expressed by Augustine: Haereditas in qua cohseredes
Christi sumus, non minuitur multitudine filiorum, nec fit angustius numerositate
cohleredum. Sed tanta est multis quanta paucis, tanta singulis quanta omnibus;
and in a sublime passage, De Lib. Arbit., 1. 2, c. 14, where of Truth, the heavenly
bride, he exclaims: Omnes amatores suos nullo modo sibi invidos recipit, et omnibus communis est et singulis casta est: and by Gregory, who says: Qui facibus
invidie carere desiderat,.illam caritatem appetat, quam numerus possidentium non
angustat. The same is beautifully expressed by Dante, Purgat. 15, beginning:Com' esser puote ch'un ben distribute
In piu posseditor, faccia pit ricchi
Di se, che se da pQchi e posseduto?
f BellArmine (De ater. Felic. Sanct., 1. 5): Denarius vitam reternam significat:
sed quemadmodum idem sol clarius conspicitur ab aquila quam ab aliis avibus, et
idem ignis magis calefacit proximos quam remotos, sic in eadem aeterna vita clarius
videbit, et jucundius gaudebit unus quam alius.
$ As the heathen moralist had said: Nulli ad aliena respicienti, sua placent;and again: Non potest quisquam et invidere et gratias agere.
~'EraTpe: in the Vulgate, Amice: but Augustine (Serm. 87, c. 3,) Sodalis,




154             THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.
thee no wrong   didst thou not agree with me for a penny?"  "Friendn
is commonly a word of address, as it would be'among ourselves, from a
superior to an inferior, and in Scripture is a word of an evil omen,
seeing that besides the present passage, it is the compellation used to the
guest that had not a wedding garment (Matt. xxi.), and to Judas when
he came to betray his Master.-"I do thee no wrong;" he justifies his
manner of dealing with them, as well as his sovereign right in his own
things. They had put their claim on the footing of right, and on that
footing they are answered;-" Take that thine is, and go thy way;"
and again, "Is thine eye* evil because lam good? so long as I am just
to you, may I not be goodt and liberal to them?" The solution of the
difficulty that these complainers should get their reward and carry it
away with them, has been already suggested,-namely that, according to
the human relations, on which the parable is founded, and to which it
must adapt itself, it would not have been consistent with equity to have
made them forfeit their own hire, notwithstanding the bad feeling which
they displayed. Yet we may say their reward vanished in their hands,
and the sentences which follow sufficiently indicate, that with God an
absolute forfeiture might follow, nay must necessarily follow, where this
grudging, unloving, proud spirit has come to its full head; for it is said
immediately after, " So the last shall be first, and the first last."
Many expositors have been sorely troubled how to bring these words
into agreement with the parable; for in it first and last seem all put
upon the same footing, while here, in these words; a complete change of
place is asserted;-those whlo seemed highest, it is' declared shall be
placed at the lowest, and the lowest highest; compare too Luke xiii. 30,
where there can be no doubt that a total.rejection of the first, the unbelieving Jews, accompanied with the receiving of the last, the Gentiles,
into covenant, is declared.  Origen, whom Maldonatus follows, finds an
explanation of the difficulty in the fact that the last hired are the first
in order of payment; but this is so trifling an advantage, that the
which is better. Our " fellow," as now used, would contain too much of contempt
in it, though else it would give the original with the greatest accuracy.
* Envy is ever spoken of as finding its expression from the eye, Deut. xv. 9;
1 Sam. xvii. 9 (" Saul eyed David "); Prov. xxiii. 6; xxviii. 22; Tob. iv. 7; Sirac
xiv. 10; xxxi. 13; Mark vii. 22. There lies in the expression the belief, one of the
widest spread in the world, of the eye being able to put forth positive powers of
mischief. Thus in Greek the o(paauzis fSdaKavos and fa~Kaieiycv=-=- ovezi; 4n Italian,
the mal-occhio; in French, the mauvais-oeil. Persius: Urentes oculos. See
BECKER'S Charikles, v. 2, p. 291. We have on the other hand the a7cba obf aX/ds,
the ungrudging eye. (Sirac xxxii. 10: LXX.)
t The same opposition between &ayac&s and icKaLos finds place, Rom. v. 7, which
indeed is only to be explained by keeping fast hold of the opposition between the
words.




THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.                  155
explanation must be rejected as quite unsatisfactory. The circumstance
of the last hired being first paid is evidently introduced merely for the
convenience of the narration; if the first hired had been first paid, and,
as was natural, had then gone their way, they would not have been
present to see that the others had obtained the same remuneration as
themselves, and so would have had no opportunity of expressing their
discontent. Neander* finds the difficulty of reconciling the parable with
the words which introduce and finish it so great, that he proposes a
desperate remedy, and one under the frequent application of which we
should lose all confidence in the trustworthiness, not to speak of the
inspiration, of the Gospel narration. He thinks the sentences and the
parable to have been spoken on different occasions, and only by accident
to have been here brought into connection; and asserts that one must
wholly pervert this so weighty parable to bring it through forced artifices
into harmony with words which are alien to it. But what has been
observed above may furnish a sufficient answer; if that be correct, the
saying is not merely in its place here, but is absolutely necessary to
complete the moral, to express that which the parable did not, and
according to the order of human affairs, could not express, namely, the
entre forfeiture which would follow on the indulgence of such a temper,
as that displayed by the murmurers and complainers.'
There is more difficulty with the other words, "Many be called but
few chosen."t  They are not difficult in themselves, but difficult on
account of the position which they occupy: the connection is easy and
the application obvious, when they occur as the moral of the Marriage
of the King's Son, Matt. xxii. 14, but here they have much perplexed
interpreters, such at least, as will not admit the entire rejection from
the heavenly kingdom of those represented by the murmuring laborers.
Some explain them, Many are called, but few have the peculiar favor
shown to them, that though their labor is so much less, their reward
should be equal: thus Olshausen, who makes the "called" and the
" chosen " alike partakers of final salvation, but that by these terms are
signified higher and lower standings of men in the kingdom of God.t
These last hired had, in his view, labored more abundantly, but this
their more abundant labor was to be referred to a divine election, so that
* Leben Jesu, p. 196, note.
t It is not often that there is so felicitous an equivalent proverb in another language as that which the Greek supplies here; and which Clement of Alexandria
has more than once adduced on the score of its aptness as a parallel:
IIoAol roL vapaflKco(Ppoi,'ravpol s TEe BatcXol.
t Thus Wolf also (Curze, in loc.): KXr7ov's et.eKeKrobs hic non tanquam specie
sibi oppositos considerandos esse, sed tanquam opposites gradu felicitatis atque
dignitatis.




156             THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD.
the name "chosen" or elect becomes them well, to whom such especial
grace was given. But this supposition of larger labor upon their part
mars, as has been already noted, the whole parable, and is by no means
to be admitted.  Others have supposed that the "called" may refer to
some not expressly mentioned in the parable, who had refused altogether
to work in the vineyard, in comparison with whom the " chosen," those
who at any hour had accepted the invitation, were so few, that the Lord
could not bear that any of these should be shut out from his full reward.
But the easiest interpretation seems to be,-Many are called to work in
God's vineyard, but few retain that temper of spirit, that humility, that
entire submission to the righteousness of God, that utter denial of any
claim as of right on their own part, which will allow them in the end to
be partakers of his reward.*
* The term, reward, as applied to the felicity which God will impart to his people, sometimes offends, while it seems to bring us back to a legal standing point, and
to imply a claim as of right, not merely of grace, upon man's part; but since it is a
scriptural term (Matt. v. 12, vi. 1; Luke vi. 35; 2 John 8; Rev. xxii. 12), there is
no reason why we should shrink from using it, even as we find our Church has not
shrunk from its use. Thus in one of our Collects we pray " that we plenteously
bringing forth the fruit of good works may of thee be plenteously rewarded"-and
in the Baptismal Service, " everlastingly rewarded." Yet at the same time we
should clearly understand what we mean by it. Aquinas says: Potest homo apud
Deum aliquid mereri non quidem secundum absolutam justitie rationem, sed secunddm divine ordinationis quandam prsesuppositionem; and this is a satisfactory
distinction; the reward has relation to the work, but this is, as the early protesters
against the papal doctrine of merits expressed it, according to a justitia promissionis
divine, not a justitia retributionis. There is nothing of a meritum condignum,
though Bellarmine sought to press this parable into service, in support of such.
(See GERHARD'S Loc. Theoll., loc. 18, c. 8, O 14.) When it is said, " God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love," it is only saying in other words,
he is faithful (ovK &Iucos=r —Tabs). Compare 1 John i. 9; 1 Cor. x. 13; 1 Pet. iv.
19. By free promise he makes himself a debtor: Augustine (Serm. 110, c. 4):
Non debendo sed promittendo debitorem se Deus fecit. In the reward there is a
certain retrospect to the work done, but no proportion between them, except such
as may have been established by the free appointment of the Giver, and the only
claim which it justifies is upon his promise. " He is faithful that promised"-this
and not any other thing must remain always the ground of all expectations and
hopes: and what these expectations are to be, and what they are not to be, it is
the main purpose of this parable to declare. Bernard declares excellently the spirit
in which man ought to work, and in which God will accept the work, when he says:
Vera caritas mercenaria non est, quamvis merces eam sequatur.




X.
THE TWO SONS.
MATTHEW xxi. 28-32.
OUR Lord had put back with another question the question with whick
his adversaries had hoped either to silence him, if he should decline to
answer, or to obtain matter of accusation against him, if he should give
the answer which they expected; and now he becomes himself the
assailing party, and commences that series of parables, in which, as in a
glass held up before them, they might see themselves, the impurity of
their hearts, their neglect of the charge laid upon them, their contempt
of the privileges afforded them, the aggravated guilt of that outrage
against himself which they were already meditating in their hearts;
Yet even these, wearing as they do so severe and threatening an aspect,
are not words of defiance, but of earnest, tenderest love,-spoken, if it
were yet possible to turn them from their purpose, to save them from
the fearful sin they were about to commit, to win them also for the
kingdom of God. The first that of the Two Sons, goes not so deeply
into the matter as the two that follow, and is rather retrospective, while
those other are prophetic also.
" But what think ye?-A certain man had two sons."  Here, as at
Luke xv. 11, are described, under the image of two sons of one father,
two great moral divisions of men, under one or other of which might
be ranged almost all with whom our blessed Lord in his teaching and
preaching came in contact. Of one of these classes the Pharisees were
specimens and representatives,-though this class as well as the other
will exist at all times. In this are included all who have sought a righteousness through the law, and by the help of it have been kept in the
main from open outbreakings of evil. In the second class, of which the
publicans and harlots stand as representatives, are contained all who




158                      THE TWO SONS.
have thrown off the yoke, openly and boldly transgressed the laws of
God, done evil with both hands earnestly. Now the condition of those
first is of course far preferable; that righteousness of the law better than
this open unrighteousness;-provided always that it is ready to give
place to the righteousness of faith when that appears,-provided that it
knows and feels its own incompleteness; and this will always be the case
where the attempt to keep the law has been truly and honestly made;
the law will then have done its work, and have proved a schoolmaster to
Christ. But if this righteousness is satisfied with itself, —and this will
be, where evasions have been sought out to escape the strictness of the requirements of the law; if, cold and loveless and proud, it imagines that it
wants nothing, and so refuses to submit itself to the righteousness of
faith, then far better that the sinner should have had his eyes opened to
perceive his misery and guilt, even though it had been by means of
manifest and grievous transgressions, than that he should remain in this
ignorance of his true state, of that which is lacking to him still; just as
it would be better that disease, if in the frame, should take a decided
shape, so that it might be felt and acknowledged to be disease, and then
met and overcome,-than that it should be secretly lurking in, and pervading, the whole system, and because secretly, its very existence denied
by him whose life it was threatening. From this point of view St. Paul
speaks, Rom. vii. 7-9, and the same lesson is taught us in all Scripture
-that there is no such fault as counting we have no fault. It is taught
us in the bearing of the elder son towards his father and returning
brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son; and again, in the conduct of
the Pharisee who had invited Jesus to his house, in his demeanor to him
and to the woman "which was a sinner;" and in his who went up into
the temple to pray. (Luke xviii. 10. Compare v. 29-32.)
" And he came to the first and said, Son, go work to-day in my vneyard." This command was the general summons made both by the natural law in the conscience, and also by the revealed law which Moses
gave, for men to bring forth fruit unto God. This call the publicans
and harlots, and all open sinner., manifestly neglected and despised.
The son first bidden to go to work, " answered and said, I will not."*
The rudeness of the answer, the total absence of any attempt to excuse
his disobedience, are both characteristic; he does not take the trouble to
say, like those invited guests, " I pray thee have me excused;" but flatly refuses to go; he is in short the representative of careless, reckless
sinners.-And he came to the second and said likewise, and he answered
and said, I go, sir."t The Scribes and Pharisees, as professing to be
* Gerhard: Vita peccatorum nihil aliud est, quhm realis quidam clamor 3t professio, Nolumus facere Dei voluntatem.
t''E'y, Kcpie. The readings here are very various, var Ki6pl, urdcyw K6pL~, and




THE TWO SONS.                        159
zealous for the law, set themselves in the way as though they would fulfil the commands; this their profession was like the second son's promised obedience. But, as the Lord on a later occasion lays to their
charge, that they said and did not (Matt. xxiii. 2), even as he quotes the
prophet Isaiah as having long before described them truly (Matt. xv. 8),
" This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me
with their lips, but their heart is far from me," so was it here. When
the marked time arrived, when it was needful to take decisively one
side or the other, when the Baptist came unto them "in the way of
righteousness," and summoned to earnest repentance, to a revival of
God's work in the hearts of the entire people, then many of those hitherto openly profane were baptized, confessing their sins; and like the son
who at first contumaciously refused obedience to his father's bidding,
" repented and went:" while on the other hand, the real unrighteousness
of the Pharisees, before concealed under show of zeal for the law, was
evidently declared: professing willingness to go, they yet." went not."
When the Lord demands of his adversaries, " Whether of the twain
did the will of his father?" they cannot profess inability to solve this
question, as they had done that other (ver. 27); they are obliged now
to give a reply, though that rdply condemned themselves. " They say
unto him, The first:"-not, of course, that he did it absolutely well,
but by comparison with the other. Whereupon the Lord immediately
makes the application of the words' which have been reluctantly wrung
from them, " Verily, I say unto you, that the publicans and harlots go
into the kingdom of God before you."  When he says, they "go before
you," or take the lead of you, he would indicate that the door of hope
was not yet shut upon them, that they were not yet irreversibly
excluded from that kingdom —the others indeed had preceded them,
but they might still follow, if they would. Some interpreters lay an
emphasis on the words, " in the way of righteousness," as though they
are brought in to aggravate the sin of the Pharisees-as though Christ
would say, "T The Baptist came, a pattern of that very righteousness of
the law, in which you profess to exercise yourselves. He did not come,
calling to the new life of the GQspel, of which I am the pattern, and
many more, which however may be easily traced up to transcribers wanting to
amend a phrase which they did not quite understand, and which seemed incomplete: —ropevoaiL a,7r epXoJzLa or some such word must be supplied, See 1 Sam. iii.
4, 6; Gen. xxii. 1, LXX. 
* But he does not affirm more, so that there need be no difficulty here on account of the Pharisees, or the greater part of them, never having followed; the
word (Orpodyovorv) does not imply that they will follow, it merely declares that the
others have entered first, leaving it open to them to follow or not. Compare the
still stronger use of rpwrT00ocos (Matt. i. 25), where there were none to come after.




160                        THE TWO SONS.
which you might have misunderstood; he did not come, seeking to put
new wine into the old bottles; but he came, himself fulfilling that very
idea of righteousness which you pretended to have set before yourselves,
that which consisted in strong and marked separation of himself from
sinners, and earnest asceticism; and yet you were so little hearty in the
matter, that for all this he found no acceptance among you, no more
acceptance than I have found. You found fault with him for the
strictness of his manner of life, as you find fault with me for the
condescension of mine,-and not merely did you reject him at first, but
afterward when his preaching bore manifest fruit in the conversion of
sinners, when God had thus set his seal to it, when'the publicans
and harlots believed him,' even then you could not be provoked to
jealousy; "Ye, when ye had seen it, repented not* afterward, that ye
might believe him."
In many copies, and some not unimportant ones, it is the son that is
first spoken to, who promises to go, and afterwards disobeys, and the
second who, refusing first, afterwards changes his mind, and enters on
the work. Probably the order was thus reversed by transcribers, who
thought that the application of the parable must be to the successive
callings of Jews and Gentiles,t and that therefore the order of their
callings should be preserved. But the parable does not primarily apply
to the Jew and Gentile, but must be referred rather to the two bodies
within the bosom   of the Jewish people:-it is not said, the Gentiles
enter the kingdom of heaven before you, but, the publicans and harlots;
* Ou LETE11jEXL-\Tre-the word does not in itself describe so comprehensive a
change as peAravoEv, and as a less expressive word is comparatively very seldom
used in Scripture. MeralE'XELa does not of necessity signify more than the after
anxiety for a deed done, which may be felt without any true repentance towards
God, may be merely remorse, such as Judas felt after having betrayed his Master,
and it is worthy of remark that this very word /1ETacYeXqElS is used of him. (Matt.
xxvii. 3.) In the present case, however (that is, at ver. 29), the. true geravoia is
meant, the change of affections and will and conduct. For a good tracing of the
distinction between the two words, see SPANHEIM'S Dubia Evang., Dub. 9, v. 3, p.
16, seq.
t This is the view maintained by Origen, Chrysostom, and Athanasius, as also
by Jerome, who quotes as a parallel to "Igo, sir," the words of the Jews at the
giving of the law, "All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient."
(Exod. xxiv. 7.) The Auct. Oper. Irperf. interprets it as is done above, noting at
length the inconveniences that attend the application of it to Jew and'Gentile.
Maldonatus, who assents to his interpretation, affirms he is the only ancient author
that gives it, and is perplexed how the other should have obtained such general
reception-but the crs euol aOKE?, with which Origen introduces his explanation,
marks, that there was another opinion current in the Church in his time; even as
is explicitly stated by Jerome: Alii non putant Gentilium et Judaeorum esseparabolam, sed simpliciter peccatorum et justorum.




THE TWO SONS.                      161
while yet the other, if the parable had admitted, (and if it had admitted,
it would have required it,) would have been a far stronger way of
provoking them to jealousy. (Rom x. 21, 22.) The other application of
the parable need not indeed be excluded, since the whole Jewish nation
stood to the Gentile world, in the same relation which the more selfrighteous among themselves did to notorious trangressors. But it is
not till the next parable that Jew and Gentile, in their relations to one
another, and in their respective relations to the kingdom of God, come
distinctly and primarily forward.
11




XI.
THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.
MATT. XXi. 33-44; MARK xii. 1-12; LUKE xx. 9-18.
THE Lord's hearers would have been well content that he here should
have paused. But no; he will not let them go: "Hear another parable,"
as if he would say, " I have not done with you yet; I have still another
word of warning and rebuke," and to that he now summons them to
listen. There is this apparent difference between the accounts of the
several Evangelists, that while St. Matthew and St. Mark relate the
parable as addressed to the Pharisees, it was, acdcording to St. Luke,
spoken to the people. But the sacred narrative itself supplies the helps
for clearing away this slight apparent difference, St. Luke mentioning
the chief priests and scribes (ver. 19) in a way which shows that they
were listeners also; and thus, being spoken in the hearing of both
parties, in the mind of one narrator the parable seemed addressed
mainly to the people; in that of the others, to the Pharisees.
The opening words at once suggest a comparison with Isaiah v. 1-7;
no doubt our Lord here takes up the prophecy there, the more willingly
building on the old foundations, that his adversaries accused him of
destroying the law; and not in word only, but by the whole structure of
the parable, connecting his own appearing with all that had gone before
in the past Jewish history, so that men should look at it as part, indeed
as the crowning and final act, of that great dealing of mercy and
judgment which had ever been going forward.      The image of the
kingdom of God as a vine-stock* or as a vineyardt is not peculiar to
* The vine-stock often appears on the Maccabsean coins as the emblem of Palestine; sometimes too the bunch of grapes, and the vine-leaf. Thus Deyling (Obss.
Sac., v. 3, p. 236): Botrus prseterea, folium vitis et palma, ut ex nummis apparet,
symbolum erant Judsee.
t Bernard draws out the comparison between the Church and the vineyard at




THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.                           163
this parable, but runs through the whole Old Testament (Deut. xxxii.
32; Ps. lxxx. 8-16; Isai. v. 1-7; xxvii. 1-7; Jer. ii. 21; Ezek. xv. 1-6;
xix. 10); and has this especial fitness, that no property was considered
to yield so large a return (Cant. viii. 11, 12), none was therefore of
such price and esteem, even as none required such unceasing care and
attention.* Our Lord compares himself to the vine as the noblest of
earthly plants (John xv. 1), and in prophecy had been compared to it
long before. (Gen. xlix. 11.)
It would not be convenient to interpret the vineyard here as the
Jewish church, since the vineyard is said to be taken away from the
Jews and given to another nation; and it is evident that this could not
be accurately said of the Jewish church. In Isaiah, indeed, the vineyard
is that Jewish church, and consistently with this, it is described, not as
transferred to others, but as laid waste and utterly destroyed, its hedge
taken away, its wall broken down, all labor of pruning or digging withdrawn from it, and the heavens themselves commanded that they rain no
rain on it any more. Here, where it is transferred to other and more
faithful htsbandmen, we must rather understand by it the kingdom of
God in its idea, which idea Jew and Gentile have been successively
placed in conditions to realize.t Inasmuch indeed as Israel according
to the flesh was the first occupier of the vineyard, it might be said that
the vineyard at that time was the Jewish church; but this.arrangement
was only accidental and temporary, and not of necessity, as the sequel
some length (In Cant. Serm., 30): In fide plantata, in caritate mittit radices, de.
fossa sarculo disciplinae, stercorata poenitentium lacrymis, rigata preedicantium
verbis, et sic sanb exuberans vino, in quo est lketitia, sed non luxuria, vino totius
suavitatis, nullius libidinis. Hoc certb vinum laetificat cor hominis, hoc constat et
angelos bibere cum laetitia. Augustine also (Serm. 87, c. 1): Cultura ipsius est in
nos, quod non cessat verbo suo extirpare semina mala de cordibus nostris, aperire
cor nostrum tanquam aratro sermonis, plantare semina preeceptorum, exspectare
fructum pietatis. Cf. AMBROSE, Exp. in Luc., 1. 9, c. 29.
* It no doubt belongs to the fitness of the image that a vineyard does, if it is to
bring forth richly, require the most diligent and never-ceasing ctre, that there is
no season in the year in which much has not to be done in it. Virgil presses this
very strongly, in words not unworthy to be kept in mind by all to whom a spiritual
vineyard has been committed: see Georg., 2, 397-419, beginningEst etiam ille labor curandis titibus alter,
Cui nunquam exhausti satis est: namque omne quotannis
Terque quaterque solum scindendum, glebaque versis
Eeternum frangenda bidentibus; omne levandum
Fronde nemus. Redit agricolis labor actus in orbem,
Atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus.
And so Cato: Nulla possessio pretiosior, nulla majorem operam requirit.
t Origen (Comm. in Matth., in loc.) draws out clearly and well the differences
that exist in this regard between the parable in Isaiah and that recorded by the
Evangelists.




164                 THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.
abundantly proved. They were not identified with the kingdom of God;
to them indeed it was first given to realize that kingdom, as to these
husbandmen the vineyard was first committed, but failure in each case
involved forfeiture of all privileges and advantages, with the tranfer of
them to others.
The householder was more than the possessor of this vineyard, he
had himself "planted" it. (Exod. xv. 17.) The planting of this spiritual
vineyard found place under Moses and Joshua, in the establishing of the
Jewish polity in the land of Canaan. It is described Deut. xxxii. 12-14.
See Ezek. xvi. 9-14; Neh. ix. 23-25. But the further details of things
done for the vineyard,-the hedging of it round about,* the digging the
wine-press, the building the tower,-are these, it may be asked, to have
any particular signification attached to them?-or are they to be taken
merely as general expressions of that ample provision of grace and
goodness which God made for his people?       Storr, as usual, will allow
nothing in them at all beyond a general expression of God's provident
care for his Church, such as found utterance in his words by the prophet,
" What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I ha*f not done
in it?" (Isai. v. 4.) But even those who like him most shrink from the
interpretation of a parable except in the gross, could here, one might
have supposed, scarcely have resisted the explanation of the hedging
round the vineyard, which is suggested by passages like Ephes. ii. 14,
where the law is described as " the middle wall of partition "t between
the Jew and Gentile. By their circumscription through the law, the
Jews became a people dwelling alone, and not reckoned among the
nations. (Num. xxiii. 9.) That law was a hedge at once of separation
* Mr. Greswell's observation (Exp. of the Par., v. 5, p. 4), that this fence (papryuds) is rather a stone wall than a hedge of thorns, or of any other living materials,
I should suppose most probably to be quite correct (see Numb. xxii. 24; Prov.
xxiv. 31; Isai. v. 5), though in that last passage the vineyard appears to have been
provided with both. Yet one of his grounds for this seems questionable, namely,
that the incursions of the enemies which threatened the vineyard, the foxes (Cant.
ii. 15) and the wild boar (Ps. lxxx. 13), were not to be effectually repelled except
by fences made of stone: see Neh. iv.'3: and Virgil (Georg., 2, 371), while he is
on the very subject of the extreme injury which the various animals,-(durique
venenum Dentis et admorso signata in stirpe cicatrix,)-may inflict upon the vines,
enjoins not the building of stone walls, but a careful keeping of the hedges as the
adequate measure of defence,-Texendae sepes etiam. The thorn fences, especially
if formed, as is common in the East, of the wild aloe, would be far more effectual
for this than any wall of stone. See also HOMER, II. 18, 564. The word ppayuds
itself determines nothing, as the fundamental meaning of ppdoarw seems to be tc
surround or inclose (PAssow: umgeben, einschliessen), without itself determining
In the least how the inclosure shall be effected.
t MefdrooXopv toO ppa-yLoD there, as cppay.ods here.




THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.                          165
and of defence,* since in keeping distinct the line of separation between
themselves and the idolatrous nations around them, lay their security that
they should enjoy the continued protection of God. That protection is
called a wall of fire Zech. ii. 5, and compare Ps. cxxv. 2; Isai. xxvi. 1;
xxvii. 3, Nor is it unworthy of observation, that outwardly also Judea,
througk its geographical position, was hedged round-by the bounty of
nature on every side circumscribed and defended-guarded on the east
by the river Jordan and the two lakes, on the south by the desert and
mountainous country of Idumsea, on the west by the sea, and by AntiLibanus on the north-for so, observes Vitringa, had God in his counsels
determined, who willed that Israel should dwell alone.
The wine-presst and the towerS would both be needful for the
* Ambrose (Exp. in Luc., 1. 9, c. 24,) explains it: Divina3 custodiae runitione
valalvit, ne facile spiritalium pateret incursibus bestiarum; and Hexaem., 1..3, c.
12: Circumdedit eam velut vallo quodam caelestium preceptorum, et angelorum
custodih.
t AV6vs = torcular, in Mark vroA\viov-  = lacus, in eacn case a part for th.
whole; the digging can be applied strictly only to the latter, which was often hollowed out of the earth and then lined with masonry, as Chardin mentions that he
found them in Persia; sometimes they were hewn out of the solid rock. Nonnus
(Dionys., 12. 330) describes, in some spirited lines, how Bacchus hollowed out such
a receptacle from thence. In the Aqv6s, or press above, the grapes were place'd,
and were there crushed commonly by the feet of men (Judg. ix. 27: Neh. xiii. 15;
Isai. xiii. 3), hence Bacchus has the epithet, A-rYvaos, the wine-press treader; at the
bottom of this press was a closely grated hole, through which the juice, being expressed, ran into the vroX'hrto (or rpoAXrplov, Isai. v. 3, LXX.), the vat prepared'beneath for its reception, the lacus vinarius of Columella.
+ It may be this spryos was the villa where at once the fruits were kept and
the husbandmen resided; but I should rather suppose it the tower of the watchmen. I have seen in Spain temporary towers erected for them, at the season when
the grapes, approaching to ripeness, might tempt the passers by, which were there
the more necessary, as often the vineyard lay open to the road without any protection whatever. A scaffolding was raised to a considerable height with planks and
poles, and matting above to defend from the heat of the sun; and on the scaffolding, which commanded an extensive view all round, a watcher, with a long gun, was
planted. Calderon has an Auto, La vina del Seior, founded on this parable, and
explains the purpose of the tower exactly so:Y porque de la campania        Assaltando sus portillos
Se descubran X lo lejos          Robar, sin ser descubiertos
Sus ambitos, sin que puedan      Sus frutos, para Atalaya
Tampoco los passageros           La puse essa torre enmedio.
This tower is the o7rwpepvXdAKcov of Isai. i. 8, xxiv. 20, which Jerome explains:
Specula quam custodes satorum habere consueverunt.  Niebuhr (Brschreib. v
Arab., p. 138) says: " In the mountainous district of Yemen, I saw here and there
as it were nests in the trees, in which the Arabs perched themselves to watch their
cornfields. In Tehama, where the trees were scarcer, they built for this purpose
a high and light scaffold." Ward (View of the Hindoos, v. 2, p. 327, quoted by




166                 THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.
completeness of a vineyard; the latter not being merely the ornamenta.
building, the kiosk which belongs to the perfection of an Eastern garden,
and serves mainly for delight, but here serving as.much for use as
ornament,-a place of shelter for the watchmen, who should protect the
fruits of the vineyard, and perhaps a receptacle for the fruits themselves.
It is difficult satisfactorily to point out distinct spiritual benefits shadowed
forth by these, or to affirm that more is meant than generally that God
provided his people with all things necessary for life and godliness, and
furnished them with fixed channels and reservoirs of his blessings. All
the explanations which are given of this tower and this wine-press*
appear fanciful, and though often ingenious, yet no one of them such as
to command an absolute assent.t
Having thus richly supplied his vineyard with all things needful, he
" let it out to husbandmen."  These last must be different from the vineyard which they were to cultivate, and must, therefore, be the spiritual
leaders and teachers of the people, while the vineyard itself will then
naturally signify the great body of the people, who were to be instructed
and taught, to the end that, under diligent cultivation, they might bring
forth fruits of righteousness.t By the letting out of the vineyard to
Burder) observes: "The wild hogs and buffaloes [silvestres uri, Georg., 2, 374]
make sad havoc in the fields and orchards of the Hindoos; to keep them out, men
are placed on elevated covered stages in the fields;"-sometimes, as a friend has
told me, on mounds built with sods of earth; and the watchers are frequently
armed with slings, which they use with great dexterity and effect, to drive away
invaders of every description. The Greek proverb, yXvice7? orwpa,,vAaKos KXEXAOL-rdos, alludes to the custom of setting such watchers over a vintage.
* Generally the wine-press is taken to signify the prophetic institution. Thus
Irenmeus (Con. Hcar., 1. 4, c. 36): Torcular fodit, receptaculum prophetici SpiritAs
prseparavit. Hilary (in Matth.): In quos [prophetas] musti modo quaedam ubertas SpiritAs Sancti ferventis influeret. So Ambrose, Exp. in Luc., 1. 9, c. 24.
t In the parallel passage in Isaiah two other principal benefits are recorded,that the vineyard was on a fruitful hill (apertos Bacchus amat colles, VIRGIL,) sloping towards the rays of the sun, and that the stones were gathered out from it
(2 Kings. iii. 19), the last with allusion to the casting out of the Canaanites,
that else might have proved stumbling-blocks for God's peojle. (Ps. cxxv. 3.)
With the whole parable Ezek. xvi. will form an instructive parallel. There too, in
the same manner, although under altogether a different image, the Lord upbraids
the ingratitude of his people with the enumeration of the rich provision which he
had made for them. With this description of the ample furniture of the vineyard
might be compared ver. 10-12 of that chapter, for they too in like manner are employed in describing what God did for his people at their coming out of Egypt.
t A friend who kindly looked over the notes on some of these parables before
publication has added a note, which I am sure every reader will be glad I have
preserved; he says: " I do not absolutely question the truth of this interpretation;
but it seems to me rather an escape from a difficulty which does not exist more in
the parable than in all our customary language about the Church. The Church is




THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.                       167
those, we must understand the solemn commital which the law made, of
this charge to the priests and Levites; their solemn commission is
recognized and pressed in such passages as Mal. ii. 7; Ezek. xxxiv. 2
It is worthy of observation, that the parable is so constructed as to imply
that the disobedience, the contumacy, the unprofitableness of the Jews,
were to be looked at not merely in the light of common wickedness,
but as a breach of the most solemn trust,-as ingratitude of the darkest
dye; for no doubt it was a great benefit to the husbandmen to be put in
possession of a vineyard so largely and liberally furnished (compare
Neh. ix. 25; Deut. xvi. 11), and every thing implies that they had
entered into covenant with the proprietor, concerning what proportion
of the fruits they were to pay to him in their season-even as the Jewish
people made a solemn covenant with God at Horeb, that as he would be
their God, so they would be his people.
The householder then, having thus intrusted the husbandmen with
the keeping and cultivation of the vineyard on some certain terms,
" went into a far country," and, as St. Luke adds, "for a long while."
At Sinai, when the theocratic constitution was founded, and in the
miracles which accompanied the deliverance from Egypt and the bringing into Canaan, the Lord may be said to have openly manifested
himself, to Israel, and this done, to have withdrawn himself for a while,
not speaking to the people again face to face (Deut. xxxiv. 10-12), but
waiting in patience to see what the law would effect,-what.manner of
works the people, under the teaching of their spiritual guides, would
bring forth.*
"And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to
the husbandmnen that they might receive the fruits of it."  How, it may
be asked, are these servants to be distinguished from the husbandmen?
Exactly in this, that the servants, that is, the prophets, and other more
eminent ministers of God in his theocracy, were sent, being raised up
at particular times, having particular missions,-their power lying in
their mission, while the others were the more regular and permanently
established ecclesiastical authorities, whose power lay in the very constitution of the theocracy itself.t The servants were sent to receive the
both teacher and taught; but the teachers are not merely the ministers: the whole
Church of one generation teaches the whole Church of another, by its history, acts,
words, mistakes, &c. The Church existing out of time an unchangeable body,
teaches the members of the Church existing in every particular time. The whole
subject requires to be diligently examined and elucidated."
* Ambrose (Exp. in Luc., 1. 9, c. 23): Multis temporibus abtuit, ne prvepropcra
videretur exactio: nam quo indulgentior liberalitas, e6 inexcusabilior pervicacia.
Theophylact:  a &roo77lya ro O~Eov, 7 AcaKpouav[a. Bengel: Innuitur tempus divina
taciturnitatis, ubi homines agunt pro arbitrio. See Ezek. viii. 12; Ps. x. 5.
t Bengel: Servi sunt ministri cxtraordinarii, majores: agricolse, ordinarii.




168                 THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.
fruits of the vineyard, or, as St. Mark and St. Luke have it, to receive
" of the fruit of the vineyard,"* the householder's share of the produce,
whatever that might have been-the rent not being to be paid in money,
but in a fixed proportion of the fruits. Olshausen says here, " These
fruits which are demanded, are in no wise to be explained as particular
works, nor yet as a condition of honesty and uprightness, but much
rather as the repentance and the inward longing after true inward
righteousness, which the law was unable to bring about. It is by no
means meant to be said that the law had not an influence in producing
uprightness: it cuts off the grosser manifestations of sin, and reveals its
hidden abomination; so that a righteousness according to the law, can
even under the law come forth as fruit, but this to be sufficing, must
have a sense of the need of a redemption for its basis. (Rom. iii. 20.)
The servants therefore here appear as those who seek for these spiritual
needs, that they may link to them the promises concerning a coming
Redeemer: but the unfaithful husbandmen who had abused their own
position, denied and slew these messengers of grace."
The conduct of the wicked husbandmen toward their lerd's servants
is brought out with more particularity in the two later Gospels than in
the first. In St. Luke, the gradual growth of the outrage under the sense
of impunity is distinctly traced.  When the first servant came, they
" beat him and sent him away empty;" the next they not only beat, but
" entreatedl'him shamefully," or according to St. Mark, who defines the
very nature of the outrage, " at him they cast stones, and wounded him
in the head,t and sent him away shamefully handled."   The expression
*'ATrb roi KaporoV-according to the well-known metayer system once prevalent
over a great part of Europe, and still known in parts of France and in Italy; the
two parties would in Latin be styled partiarii. Pliny (Ep., 1. 9. 37) mentions of
some of his estates which had hitherto been very badly managed, that the only way
in which he could get any thing from them, was by letting them on this system:
Medendi una ratio si non nummo sed partibus locem: he was to appoint some
guardians (exactores and custodes) to secure his portion of the produce-differing
it is probable only from these servants, that they were to be permanently on the
spot, to prevent fraud, and to see that he obtained his just share. Chardin (Voy.
en Perse, v. 5, p. 384, LanglBs ed.) gives much information on the terms upon which
these arrangements are commonly made in Persia, and proceeds showing how something like the dishonest and violent breaking of the agreement which is supposed
in the parable might be of frequent occurrence: Cet accord, qui paroit un march6
de bonne foi et qui le devroit 6tre, se trouve n6anmoins une source intarissable de
fraude, de contestation, et de violence, oi la justice n'est presque jamais gard6e, et
ce qu'il y a de fort singulier c'est que le seigneur est celui qui a toujours du pire,
et qui est les6. He then enters into details of some of these frauds and violences,
of which, it is true, none reach the pitch which is here supposed. See Du CANGE,
u. vv. Medietarius and Medietas.
t St. Mark has here (xii. 4) a singular use of the word Ke4exaLdJ, as to wound




THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.                        169
of the original' would seem to indicate, that in the wantonness of their
cruelty and pride these husbandmen further devised some insulting outrages, not expressly named in the parable, against this servant, whereby
they might the more plainly testify their scorn of the master-some
outrages, perhaps, like Hanun's, when he " took David's servants, and
shaved off the one half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the
middle, and sent. them away." (2 Sam. x. 4). The third they wounded,
and cast out of the vineyard with violence,-flung him'forth, it might
be, with hardly any life in him. In the two first evangelists the outrage
reaches even to the killing of some of the subordinate messengers-in
St. Luke's narration it is perhaps preferable, that this last and worst
outrage is reserved for the son himself, though on the other hand it
might be said that some of the prophets were not merely maltreated,
but actually put to death. Thus, if we may trust Jewish tradition,
Jeremiah was stoned by the exiles in Egypt, Isaiah sawn asunder by king
Manasseh; and for an ample historical justification of this description,
see Jer. xxxvii. 38; 1 Kin. xvii. 13; xxii. 24-27; 2 Kin. vi. 31; xxi. 16;
2 Chron. xxiv. 19-22; xxxvi. 16; and also Acts vii. 52; 1 Thess. ii. 15;
and the whole passage finds a parallel in the words of the apostle (Heb.
xi. 36), " And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea
moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they weresawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword;... of whom
the world was not worthy."
The patience of the householder under these extraordinary provocations is wonderful,-that he sends messenger after messenger for the
purpose of bringing back, if possible, these wicked men to a sense of
duty, and does not at once resume possession of his vineyard, and inflict
summary vengeance, as the end proves that he had power to do, upon
them: and this his patience is thus brought out and magnified, that it
in the head,while yet it is never elsewhere used but as to gather up in one sum, as
under one head-of which its more correct use, we have a good example in the
Epistle of Barnabas, c. v., which as bearing in another aspect upon this present
parable, may be quoted. It is there said that the Son of God came in the flesh,'lva ro T'ELOV'TWo aqLcaptprwv KExaAalcapg7 o0iS 8t(aaO'v E' v aavdcTy TOs 7rpo7Tras a'vrev.
Passow seems hardly accurate when he says, s. v., with allusion, as is evident, to
this passage, Ke(feXaaw in N. T.= iKEcEaAX, t6dten. For it is clear it does not
mean to decapitate or wound mortally on the head, since they sent him away on
whom they inflicted this injury. We have parallels in yaOarpi'w, to strike on the
stomach. yvCaSw, on the cheek. The notion of some that here also it is, breviter
vel summatim egerunt, they make short work of it, or as Lightfoot expresses it,
alluding to the circumstance that the servant came to demand payment,-they
rc~koned with him, they squared accounts with him (ironically), is quite untenabie.
*'A7r-fr-eltAav,TI/WUfEVcy.




170                THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.
may set forth the yet more wonderful forbearance and long-suffering of
God: " Howbeit I sent unto you all my servants the prophets, rising
early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable thing that
I hate."  (Jer. xliv. 4.)  "Nevertheless they were disobedient, and
rebelled against thee, and cast thy law behind their backs, and slew thy
prophets who testified against them, to turn them to thee, and they
wrought great provocations." (Neh. ix. 26.) The whole confession made
in that chapter by the Levites is in itself an admirable commentary on
this parable.
"Butt last of all he sent unto them his son," or in the still more
affecting words of St. Mark (ver. 6), "Having yet therefore one son, his
well-beloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence
my son." (See Heb. i. 1.) This was the last and crowning effort of
divine mercy, after which, on the one side all the resources even of
heavenly love are exhausted, on the other the measure of sins is
perfectly filled up. The description of the son as the only one, as the
well-beloved, marks as strongly as possible the difference of rank between
him and the servants, the worth and dignity of his person, who only was
a Son in the highest sense of the word* (see Heb. iii. 5, 6); and undoubtedly they who were our Lord's actual hearers quite understood
-what he meant, and the honor which in these words he claimed as his
own, though they were unable to turn his words against himself, and to
accuse him on the strength of them, of making himself, as indeed he did
then affirm himself, the Son of God. When the householder expresses
his conviction, that however those evil men may have outraged his
inferior messengers, they will stand in awe of and reverence his son, it
is hardly worth while to make a difficulty here, as some have done, from
the fact that he whom the householder represents must have fully known
from the beginning what treatment his Son would receive from those to
whom he sent him:-not that there is not a difficulty, but that it is the
same difficulty which runs through every thing, that of the relations in
which man's freedom and God's foreknowledge stand to one anothertand it does not in truth come out more strongly here than it does every
where else, and therefore requires not to be especially treated of in this
place.
* This has been often observed by the early Church writers when proving the
divinity of the Son; as by Ambrose (De Pide, 1. 5, c. 7): Vide quia ante servos,
postea filium nominavit; ut scias quod Deus Filius unigenitus secundam divinitatis
potentiam nec nomen habet, nec consortium commune cum servis. Cf. IRENEUS,
Con. Har., 1. 4, c. 36, ( 1.
t Jerome: Quod autem dicit, Verebuntur forte filium meum, non de ignorantia
dicitur: Quid enim nesciat Paterfamilias, qui hoc loco Deus intelligitur? Sed
semper ambigere Deus dicitur, ut libera voluntas homini reservetur. Cf. AMBROSE,
De Fide, 1. 5, c. 17,18.




THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.                     171
" But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves,
This is the hzeir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance."
Compare John xi. 47-53, and the counsels of Joseph's brethren against
him, Gen. xxxvii. 19; "When they saw him afar off, even before he
came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him, and they
said one to another, Behold this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore,
let us slay him,.... and we shall see what will become of his dreams."
As they, thinking to defeat the purpose of God concerning their younger
brother, helped to bring it to pass, so the Jewish rulers were the instruments to fulfil that purpose of God concerning Christ which they meant
to bring to nothing.*  (Acts, iii. 18; iv. 27, 28.)-" This is the heir;"
he for whom the inheritance is meant, and to whom it will in due course
rightfully arrive-not as in earthly relations, by the death, but by the
free appointment, of the actual possessor. For it is evident that "heir"
is not here used, as it often laxly is, a synonyme for lord,t but the idea
of one who is not in present possession of a good, but hereafter is coming to it, must be held fast. (Compare Phil. ii. 9-11.)  Christ is " heir
of all things" (Heb. i. 2), not as he is the Son of God, for the Church
has always detected Arian tendencies lurking in that interpretation, but
as he is the Son of man. So Theodoret: " The Lord Christ is heir of
all things, not as God, but as man; for as God he is maker of all."
It is the heart which speaks in God's hearing; the thought of men's
heart is their true speech, and therefore here given even as though it
were the words of their lips;-the husbandmen say, " Come, let us kill
him;' not that we are to imagine that the Pharisees even in their
secret counsels ever trusted one another so far, or dared to look their
own wickedness so directly in the face, as thus to say, "This is the
Messiah, therefore let us slay him."  But they desired the inheritance
should be theirs, they desired that what God had intended should only
be transient and temporary, enduring till the times of reformation, should
be made permanent,-and this, because they had prerogatives and privileges under the imperfect system, which would cease when the more
perfect scheme was brought in, or rather which, not ceasing, would yet
be transformed into other higher privileges, for which they had no
care. The great master-builder was about to take down the temporary
scaffolding which had now served its end, and this his purpose, they the
under-builders were setting themselves to resist,T and were determined,
at whatever cost, to resist to the uttermost.-And further, may we not
* Augustine: Ut possiderent, occiderunt, et quia occiderunt, perdiderunt.
t Just as in Latin oftentimes hseres =dominus.
t Hilary: Consilium colonorum et hsriditatis occiso'heerede presumptio, spes
inanis est gloriam Leges perempto Christo posse retineri.




172                THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.
see in this thought of killing the heir, and seizing on the inheritance and
making it their own, an allusion to the principle of all self-righteousness,
which is a seizing on the divine inheritance, a seeking to comprehend
and take down into self that light, which is only light while it is recognized as something above self, and whereof man is permitted to be a
partaker, but which he neither himself originated, nor yet can ever possess in fee, or as his own, or otherwise than as a continual receiver of it
from another; a light too, which, by the very success of the attempt to
take it into his own possession, is as inevitably lost and extinguished, as
would be a ray of our natural light if we succeeded in cutting it off
from its luminous source-a truth of which angels and men have made
mournful experience.
" And they caught him and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew
him." All three narrators describe him as thus "v*ast out of the vineyard,"-by which we are reminded of him who "suffered without the
gate."  (Heb. xiii. 12, 13; John xik. 17.) By that, as in the Pentateuch by the exclusion from the camp, was signified the cutting off from
the people of God, and from all share in their blessings. Thus when
Naboth perished on charges of blasphemy against God and the king,
that is, for theocratic sins, "they carried him forth out of the city, and
stoned him with stones, that he died."* (1 Kin. xxi. 13.) In St. Mark
it would rather seem that having slain the son first, they afterwards cast
out the body: they denied it the common rites of sepulture: they flung
it forth to show what they had done, and as much as to say, that was
their answer to the householder's demands.
Having brought the tale of these husbandmen's guilt to a conclusion.
and prophesied to the Jewish rulers the wickedness which in a few days
they should accomplish,t Christ proceeds to ask, " When the lord, therefore, of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?"
It is very observable how the successive generations, who for so many
centuries had been filling up the measure of the iniquity of Israel, are
considered, throughout the entire parable, but as one body of husband* The act of Naboth dying for his vineyard has been often adduced as a pro.
phecy, not by word, but by deed, of the death of Christ and the purpose of that
death. Thus, Anmbrose addresses the vineyard of the Lord, the Church which he
has purchased with his own blood (Ex.p. in Ifuc., 1. 9, c. 33): Salve vinea tanto
digna custode: te non unius Nabuthe sanguis, sed innumerabilium prophetarum
et (quod est amplius) pretiosus curor Domini consecravit. Ille... temporalem
vineam defendebat, te vero in perpetuum multorum nobis martyrum plantavit
interitus, te crux apostolorum semula Dominicse passionis usque in orbis totius
terminos propagavit.
t We have a remarkable example of a like prophesying to men their wickedness, as a last endeavor to turn them away from that wickedness, in Elisha's prophecy to Hazael, 2 Kin. viii. 12-15.




THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.                     173
men. And this, because God's truth is every where opposed to that shallow nominalism which would make such a word as " nation" a dead abstraction, a mere convenient help to the understanding. God will deal
with nations as indeed being, as having a living unity in themselves, at
in fact bodzes, and not as being merely convenient mental terms to express certain aggregations of individuals. Unless this were so, all confession of our fathers' sins would be mere mockery, and such passages
as Matt. xxiii. 32-35, without any meaning at all. This is one of the
many ways in which God encounters our selfish, self-isolating tendencies; and while there is an abundant blessing in this law of his government, supplying as it does new motives and incentives to good, so is
there no hardship or injustice in it. For while there is a life of the whole,
there is also a life of each part, so that even should we belong to a
nation, in that of its generations which is chastised for all its own and
its fathers' iniquities,-a generation upon which, having filled up the last
drop of the measure, the accumulated weight of chastisement is descending,-yet it remains always possible for every individual even of that
generation, by personal faith and repentance, to withdraw himself, not
indeed always from sharing in the outward calamity, though often there
will be an ark when a world perishes, a Pella when Jerusalem is destroyed, but always to withdraw himself from that which really constitutes the calamity,-the wrath of God, of which the outward visitation
is but the expression.
The necessity of preserving the due probabilities of the narrative
renders it, of course, impossible that it should be the son, throWh whom
the final vengeance is executed on these thankless and wicked husbandmen; he is slain, and cannot, like, him whom he shadows forth, rise
again to take just vengeance on his murderers. It must necessarily be
the lord of the vineyard,-that is, the Father: neither is there any thing
here which is not easily reconcilable to tl~e general doctrine of the
Scripture, for it is the Father revealing himself in the Son, who both
gave the law at Sinai, and will also, in the end of time, return to take
vengeance on all that obey not the Gospel. In the question itself,
" When the lord of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?" Christ makes the same appeal to his hewers, compelling them
to condemn themselves out of their own mouths, which Isaiah (v. 3) had
done before.* It may be that the Pharisees, to whom he addressed himself, had as yet missed the scope of the parable, answering as they did,
* Vitringa there observes: Tam enim liquidum est Dei jus, ut si homo exuto
affectu in tertio simili contempletur quod sui amore excnecatus in se videre non vult,
per conscientiam obligatur ad agnoscendam caIsse divinse justitiam. Imo neminem
Deus c(amnat, nisi quem sua condetfnet conscientia. Habet enim Deus in omni
homine suum tribunal, sui sedem judicii, et per hominem de homine judicat.




174                 THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.
" He will miserably destroy those wicked men,* and will let out his mno
yard unto other husbandmen," and so, before they were aware, pronounced sentence against themselves; or Olshausen may be more correct in supposing that they as yet pretended not to perceive its drift, and
therefore rendered necessary the still more explicit words (ver. 42-44),
which it was impossible any longer to affect to misunderstand: " Therefore I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and
given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof"  Then at length
Christ and his adversaries stood face to face, as did once before a prophet and a wicked king 6f Israel, when the prophet, having obtained in
his disguise a sentence from the lips of the king against himself, removed
the ashes from   his face, and the king "discerned him    that he was
of the prophets," and that he had unconsciously pronounced his own
doom. (1 Kin. xx. 41.)-The " God forbid," which, according to St.
Luke, the people uttered when they heard the terrible doom of the husbandmen, gives evidence that the scope of the parable had not escaped
their comprehension,-that they had understood it, even before its plain
interpretation at the last.t  The Pharisees had too much wariness and
self-command to have allowed such an exclamation to have escaped from
them. The exclamation itself was either an expression of fear, desiring
that such evil might be averted,-or of unbelief, " That shall never be,
it is impossible that our privileges can ever be so forfeited:"-This last
* Kacobs KaKCCS, a proverbial expression, and one as Grotius observes, petita ex
purissimo sermone Greeco; he does not, however, give any examples. This remarkablebne, which is a parallel in much more than those two words, may suffice
in place of many that might be adduced.
Torydp ()''OXvpLrov -ovr' 6 7rpeaf3etcwv CraTp,
MvYtuvo, T''EpLwbs, KcaI TreAearXppos ALicr
KaKobs KaKCWS creTipetav, ~%Irep jsreov
Tb)v yvspa Xc4ars Ec3aAeZi,, avaiouWs.
SOPHOCLES, Ajax, 1889.
Our version has not attempted to preserve the paronomasia, which for evident
reasons is far from being easy. The same difficulty attends the double ~E [IpeLV
(1 Cor. iii. 17,) for which our version has equally failed to give an equivalent.
Compare Apuleius: Alte... pessinpum pessimb perdant. In Plutarch's Amator.
10, we meet Kaxbv Kaicax.-How remarkable in connection with this passage are
those words of Josephus, (Bell. Jud., 4, 5, 2,) in which he asserts his conviction
that the destruction of Jerusalem might be traced up to the murder of one man,
Ananus the high priest: he only errs in the person whom he names.
t- Augustine (De Cons. Evang., 1. 2, c. 70) is not very successful in his scheme
for reconciling any slight discrepancy which may here appear between the narratives of the different Evangelists; but the apparent discrepancy is in itself so slight,
and so easily removable, that even Strauss, who in general makes the weakest and
thousand times refuted objections do service anew, has not thought it worth while
to bring forward this.




THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.                       175
is more probable from the spirit and temper of those who give it utterance.
Thereupon the Lord, in confirmation of this truth so strange to his
hearers, quotes a prophecy from the Old Testament, which proved that
such a turn of things had been contemplated long before in the counsels
of God-" Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the
builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner?" The
quotation is from Ps. cxviii. 22, 23, a psalm of which, as already has
been noted, the Jews recognized the application to the Messiah, and of
which there is the same application at Acts'iv. 11; 1 Pet. ii. 7; and an
allusion somewhat more remote, Ephes. ii. 20.* The passage quoted
forms an exact parallel with this parable. The builders answer to the
husbandmen:-they were appointed of God to carry up the spiritual
building, as these to cultivate the spiritual vineyard. The rejection of
the chief corner stone answers exactly to the denying and murdering
the heir. The reason why he leaves for a moment the image of the
vineyard, is because of its inadequacy to set forth one important part of
the truth, which yet was needful to make the moral complete, namely
this, that the malice of the Pharisees should not defeat the purpose of
God,-that the son should yet be the heir,-that not merely vengeance
should be taken, but that he should take it. Now this is distinctly set
forth by the rejected stone becoming the head of the corner, on which
the builders stumbled and fell, and were broken, —on which they were
now already thus stumbling and falling, and which, if they set themselves against it to the end, would fall upon them and crush and destroy
them utterly.t  They fall on the stone, who are offended at Christ in
his low estate (Isai. viii. 14; Luke ii. 34); of this sin his hearers
were already guilty. There was yet a worse sin which they were on
the point of committing, which he warns them would be followed with a
more tremendous punishment: they on whom the stone falls are they
* The aKpoywuvaios there == Xios els KceCfaA\v'ywvYs here; the headstone of
Zech. iv. 7. Aquila: 6 XAios 6 irpCwEvw'. (See 1 Kin. v. 17.) It was a favorite
view of the early Fathers that Christ was called the corner stone, because he united
the Jew and the Gentile, making both one: thus Augustine, in almost numberless
places,-for instance (Serm, 88, c. 11): Angulus duos parietes copulat de diverso
venientes. Quid tam diversum, quam circumcisio et prseputium, habens unum
parietem de Judae&, alterum parietem de gentibus? sed angulari lapide copulantur.
t Cajetan: Plus subjungit quam parabola pateretur: Parabola enim usque ad
vindictam duxit; sed hac additione suppletur, quod occisio filii non privavit filium
haereditate: hoc enim significat adjuncta prophetia de Messi& sub metamorphose
lapidis.
$ Lachmann marks ver. 44 in Matthew, as an interpolation, brought in from St.
Luke; and it certainly seems out of its place, as one would have naturally looked
for it after ver. 42.




176                 THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.
who set themselves in distinct and self-conscious opposition against the
Lord,-who, knowing who he is, do yet to the end oppose themselves to
him and to his kingdom;* and they shall not merely fall and be broken,
for one might recover himself, though with some present harm, from such
a fall as this; but on them the stone shall fall and shall grindt them to
powder,-in the words of Daniel, " like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors," destroying them with a doom irreversible, and from which
there should be no recovery.t
All three Evangelists notice the exasperation of the chief priests and
scribes, when they perceived, as they all did at last, though it would
seem some sooner than others, that the parable was spoken against them;
they no longer kept any terms with the Lord, and, had they not feared
the people, would have laid violent hands on him at once. Yet not even
so did he give them up; but as he had, in this parable, set forth their
relation to God as a relation of duty, as he had shown them how a charge
was laid upon them, which they incurred the greatest guilt and the most
fearful danger in neglecting to fulfil, so in the ensuing parable,-of the
Marriage of the King's Son, he sets it forth in a yet more inviting light
as a relation of privilege,-not any more as a duty and charge, but as
a grace and boon freely imparted to them; which yet they incurred an
equal danger and guilt in counting light of or despising.
* So Tertullian (Adv. Marc., 1. 3, c. 7), and Augustine: Christus verus lapis in
hoc seculo quasi terrse infixus jacet, in judicio vtro futuro quasi ex summo veniet,
impios conteret: hoc dictum est de lapide illo, Qui offenderit in lapidem ilium. conquassabit eum, super quem venerit, conteret eum: aliud est conquassari, aliud
conteri: conquassari minus est quam conteri.
I AKI/c-fiL, from XLiKcuJs-r = T'o, Matt. iii. 12, the fan with which the chaff,
which in the act of threshing had been crushed and broken into minute fragments,
is scattered and driven away upon the wind. (Isai. xli. 2, 25, 16.) In the N. T. it
occurs only here; in the parallel passage, Dan. ii. 44, XLIKCtaeL irdaas ras aa-lAXeas.
t H. De Sto Victore makes the following application of the parable to every
man (Annott. in Luc.): Secundum moralem sensum vinea locatur? cum mysterium
baptismi fidelibus ad exercendum opere committitur. Mittuntur tres servi ut de
fructu accipiant, cum Lex Psalmodia, Prophetia, ad bene agendum hortatur: sed
contumeliis affecti, vel csesi ejiciuntur, cim sermo auditus vel contemnitur, vel
blasphematur, Missum insuper hseredem occidit, qui filium Dei contemnit, et
spiritui quo sanctificatus est, contumeliam facit. Vinea alteri datur, cumn grati,
quam superbus abjicit, humilis ditatur.




XII.
THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON."
MATTHEW XXii. 1-14.
THIS parable, and that which is found at Luke xiv. 16, are not to be
confounded with one another,t as if they were only two different versions of the same discourse, though Calvin, indeed, and others have so
confounded them. It is true that the same image lies at the root of both,
that, namely, of an invitation to a festival; yet it is plain that they were
spoken on very different occasions,-that at a meal, this in the temple,and that, too, at a much earlier period of our Lord's ministry than this.
For then the hostility of the Pharisaic party had not yet openly declared
itself, nor indeed reached that pitch to which it afterwards arrived; on
the contrary, we find one of the chief Pharisees, on the very occasion
when the other parable was spoken, had.invited the Saviour to eat bread
with him. (Luke xiv. 1.) But when this parable was spoken, their hostility had already attained to the highest point, even to the formal determination of making away with Christ by violent means. (John xi. 4753.)  Then there was yet hope that they might, perhaps, be won over
to obedience to the truth: now they were fixed in their rejection of the
counsel of God, and in their hatred of his Christ. And consistently with
the different times, and the different tempers of the hearers, the parable
in St. Luke wears a milder, in St. Matthew a severer aspect:-in the
latter the guilt is greater, the retribution more terrible. In that other,
the guests decline indeed the invitation, but civilly excuse themselves;* This title, which is the one given to the parable in the heading of the chapter
in inr version, seems preferable to that by which it is sometimes called, namely,
the Wedding Garment; for then the name is given, not from the main circumstance of the narrative, but from that which is but an episode in it: and the other
title, The Marriage of the King's Son, quite as effectually distinguishes the present
parable from that of the Great Supper in St. Luke.
t See Augustine, De Cons. Evang., 1. 2, c. 71.
12




178            THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.
in this, they mark their contempt for the invitation as strongly as they
can, not thinking it worth their while. to make any excuse, and some of
them maltreating and killing the servants, the bearers of the message.
Doubtless too, had it consisted with the decorum of the other parts of-the
narration, the king's son himself would have been the bearer of the invitation and the victim of their outrage, as was the householder's son in
the last parable. In that, the contemptuous guests are merely excluded
from the festival,-in this, their city is burned up and themselves destroyed. And as the contempt would be aggravated in proportion to the
dignity and honor of the person inviting and the solemity of the occa
sion, this increased guilt is set forth by the fact of its being a king,-and
no common man, as in that other,-who makes the festival,-so that rebellion is mingled with their contempt,-and the festival itself no ordinary one, but one in honor of his son's marriage;-by which latter circumstance is brought out the relation of the Jews, not merely to the
kingdom of God in general, but their relation to Jesus, the personal theocratic King; and in every way the guilt involved in their rejection of
him is heightened. And again, while in the parable recorded by St.
Luke, nothing more is threatened than that God would turn from one
portion of the Jewish people,-from the priests and the Pharisees,-and
offer the benefits which they counted light of, to another part of the same
nation,-the people that knew not the law, the publicans and harlots,with only a slight intimation (ver. 23) of the call of the Gentiles; in St.
Matthew it is threatened that the kingdom of God shall be taken wholly
away from the Jewish people, who had now proved themselves in the
maws, and with very few exceptions; despisers of its privileges, and should
be given to the Gentiles.*
But one of the latests cavillers,t not attending to these circumstances
which justify and perfectly explain the appearance of the parable in
forms so different, asserts that here St. Luke is the only accurate
narrator of Christ's words, and that St. Matthew has mixed up with
them some heterogeneous elements,-for instance, some particulars, as
of the maltreatment and murder of the servants, drawn from the parable
* Fleck (De Reg. Div., p. 241) with truth observes: Parabolarum in posterioribus Matthaeiani libri partibus propositarum talis est indoles, ut sacrum divini
animi mcerorem spirent, et severum prodant habitum. Incidunt in ea tcmpora
quibus Pharisseorum, sacerdotum, seniorumque plebis machinationem, maligna
consilia, et ccecitatem abunde expertus Servator, divinm cause quotidie infestiores
prsevidit futuros. And Unger (De Parab. Jes. Nat., p. 122): Videtur itaque Matthaeus parabolam tradidisse, qualem Jesus posteriore eaque austeriore occasione
ipse repetierit, variatam, auctiorem, severiorem, jam toto de populo judaico mceste
vaticinantem.
t STRAUSS: Leben Jesu., v. 1, p. 677, seq.




THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.                 179
preceding; and has also blended into the same whole, the fragment of
another, namely, the Wedding Garment, which when uttered, was totally
distinct. For the first assertion his only argument wearing the slightest
appearance of probability, is, that while it is quite intelligible how the
husbandmen should abuse and maltreat servants of their lord, who came
demanding rent from them; it is inconceivable, and therefore could not
find place in a parable, of which the very condition is, that it should
have perfect verisimilitude,-that invited guests, however unwilling to
keep their engagement, should actually maltreat and kill the servants
sent to remind them that the festival, to which they were engaged, was
now ready. It is of course true that this can with difficulty be conceived,
when we suppose no other motive but unwillingness to keep the engagement at work in them. But may we not rather presume that a deep
alienation from their lord, with a readiness to resist and rebel against
him, existing long before, found its utterance here?  In the presence of
these his ambassadors, an outrage against whom would express as much
as an outrage against himself, the desired occasion may have offered
itself for showing a hostility, which had long been entertained.*  The
little apparent motive makes their conduct almost monstrous, yet thus
fitter to declare the monstrous fact, that men should maltreat and slay
the messengers of God's grace, the ambassadors of Christ, who came to
them with glad tidings of good things,-should be ready to rend them,
as well as to tread their pearls under foot.
His other objection, that the latter part of the parable which relates
to the wedding garment cannot have originally belonged to it, is partly
the old one, that the guest could not in justice be punished for not having that, which, as the course of the story goes, he had no opportunity of
obtaining-on which objection there will be occasion presently to remark
-and partly, that this is an entirely new and alien element introduced
into, and marring the unity of, the parable; something appended to, not
intimately cohering with it. But so far from this being the case, we
have here a wonderful example of the love and wisdom which marked
the teaching of our Lord. For how fitting was it in a discourse which
set forth how sinners of every degree were invited to a fellowship in the
blessings of the Gospel, that they should be reminded likewise, that
for the lasting enjoyment of these, they must put off their former con* Oftentimes in the East, a feast would have a great political significance, would
in fact be a great gathering of the vIaals of the king; contemplated on this side,
their refusal to come at once assume? the aspect of rebellion. Thus there are
many reasons to suppose that the feast recorded in Esth. i. is the same as the great
gathering which Xerxes (Ahasuerus) made when he was planning his Greek expedition, (avAXhoyov ei7r[Ki1rov Iepcrew v w apLawro, Herod. 1. 7, c. 8,) though Herodo
tus brings out more its political, the sacred historian its festal. side.




180            THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.
versation.-in Theophylact's words, "that the entrance, indeed, to the
marriage-feast is without scrutiny, for by grace alone we are all called,
as well bad as good; but the life of those that have entered, hereafter
shall not be without scrutiny:-the King will make a very strict examination of those who, having entered into the faith, shall be found in
filthy garments "-a most needful caution, lest any should abuse -the
grace of God, and forget that while as regarded the past they were
freely called, they were yet now called unto holiness.
Thus much on the relation in which this parable stands to that recorded by St. Luke. In the present, as compared with the last, we see
how the Lord is revealing himself in ever clearer light as the central
person of the kingdom, giving here a far plainer hint than there of the
nobility of his descent. There he was indeed the son, the only and beloved one, of the householder; but here his race is royal, and he appears
himself at once as the king, and the king's son. (Ps. lxxii. 1.) This
appearance of the householder, as the king, announces that the sphere in
which this parable moves is the New Testament dispensation-is the
kingdom, which was announced before, but was only actually present
with the coming of the king. That last was a parable of the Old Testament history; even Christ himself appears there rather as the last and
greatest of the line of its prophets and teachers, than as the founder of a
new kingdom. In that, a parable of the law, God appears demanding
something from men; in this, a parable of grace, God appears more as
giving something to them. There. he is displeased that his demands are
not complied with-here, that his goodness is not accepted; there he
requires, here he imparts.   And thus, as we so often find, the two
mutually complete one another; this taking up the matter, where the
other left it.
The two favorite images under which the prophets set forth the
blessings of the new covenant, and of all near communion with Godthat of a festival (Isai. xxv. 6, lxv. 13; Cant. v. 1), and that of a marriage* (Isai. lxi. 10, lxii. 5; Hos. ii. 19; Matt ix. 15; John iii. 29;
Ephes. v. 32; 2. Cor. xi. 2)-are united and interpenetrate one another
* The phrase 7roLei ydioy, occurring Gen. xxix. 22; Tob. viii. 19; 1 Macc. ix.
37, x. 58, (LXX.,) is rather, as also often in classical Greek, to celebrate the marriage feast than the marriage (see Matt. xxv. 10; Esth. ii. 18), and sometimes the
notion of the marriage is altogether lost, and that of the festival alone remains: so
for instance, Esth. ix. 22, where the 7ydOL We merely feastings; not otherwise, I
think, should the word be understood at Luie xiv. 8, and at ver. 4 of the present
parable. Singularly enough, exactly the reverse has happened with the German
Hochzeit, which signifying at first any high festival, is now only the festival of a
marriage. These marriage festivities lasted commonly seven or fourteen days
(Gen. xxix. 27; Judg. xiv. 12; Tob. viii. 19.)




THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.                     181
in the marriage festival* here. There appears indeed this inconvenience,
resulting from the inadequacy of things human to set forth things divine, that the members of the Church are at once the guests invited to
the feast, and, in their collective capacity, constitute the bride at whose
espousals the feast is givenj But in the progress of the narrative the
circumstances of the marriage altogether fall into the background;t
the different conduct of the guests invited to the feast becomes the
prominent feature of the narration. This parable, like the last, has its
groundwork and its rudiments in the Old Testament (Exod. xxi.v 11;
Zeph. i. 7, 8; Prov. ix. 1), and it entered quite into the circle of Jewish
expectations, that the setting up of the kingdom of the Messiah should
be accompanied with, and ushered in by, a glorious festival: and elsewhere our Lord himself does not refuse to make use of the same image
for the setting forth of the same truths. (Luke xxii. 18, 30.) It is true
indeed that the marriage is spoken of there, and at Rev. xix. 7, as one
that shall not take place till the end of the present age, while here the Lord
speaks of it as already present; but the two statements are easily reconcilable, when we keep in mind how distinct the espousals and the actual
marriage were held in the East, and contemplate his first coming as
the time of his espousals, while not till his second coming will he lead
home his bride.
At a fitting time the king " sent forth his servants~ to call them that
were bidden to the wedding "-we must presume, a numerous company,
for in the corresponding parable of St. Luke, the giver of thefeast, a private man as it would seem, "bade many."     Here then we may suppose
* Vitringa (In Apocal., xix. 7): Nuptime ipsee figurant arctissimam Christi cum
Ecclesia unionem, fide utrinque data, et fcederali contractu obsignatam, ad faciendam spiritualem sobolem, quae orbem repleat. Epulum nuptiale adumbrat tum
beneficia gratiae, quam vi justitiae Christi Ecclesiwe ad satietatem et hilaritatem exhibentur, tum illorum beneficiorum communionem, turn denique lhetitiam et festivitatem, quae cum fruitione bonorum gratiae conjungitur, et ex e& ad convivas hujus
epuli redundat.
t Augustine (In Ep. 1 Joh. Tract. 2): Non quomodo in nuptiis carnalibus alii
frequentant nuptias et alia nubit: in Ecclesik qui frequentant, si bene frequentant,
sponsa fiunt.
t This difficulty would be altogether escaped, if we understood the marriage as
one between the Divine Word and the human Nature,-God and man united and
making one Christ; so Augustine and Gregory the Great (Hor. 38 in Evang.,)
have understood it, though certainly neither to the exclusion of the more obvious
meaning suggested by such passages as Ephes. v. 24-32, according to which the
marriage would be one between Christ and his Church. Gregory shows how well
the two interpretations can be reconciled, saying, In hoc Pater regi filio nuptias
fecit, quo ei per incarnationis mysterium sanctam Ecclesiam sociavit.
Q Technically vocatores, invitatores, KZA1Topes, 8ELVrToKATopes, eXhaTpoi.  See
Prov. ix. 3-5.




182           THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.
still larger numbers to have been bidden, even as the maker of the feast
was a greater person, and the occasion a more solemn one. (Compare
Esth. i. 3-9.) This second invitation, or admonishment rather, is quite
according to Eastern manners. Thus Esther invites Haman to a banquet on the morrow (Esth. v. 8), and whenthe time is actually arrived,
the chamberlain comes to bring him to the banquet (vi. 14). Modern
travellers testify to the same custom now of repeating the invitation to a
great entertainment, at the moment when all things are in actual readiness; so that there is no reason at all why with some we should make
" them that were bidden" to mean them that were now to be bidden.*
Indeed, deeper reasons than those that lie on the surface of the parable are against this; for our Lord in assuming the guests to have been
invited long before, would bring out that the new was not indeed new,
but rather a fulfilment of the old; that he claimed to be heard, not as one
suddenly starting up, and unconnected with all which had gone before
him, but as himself the end of the law, that to which it all had been tending, the birth with which the whole Jewish dispensation had been pregnant, and which at length gave its meaning to all. When he says, " to
call them that were bidden," he teaches us, as he would fain have taught
those who then heard him, that there was nothing sudden in the coming
in of his kingdom, that its rudiments had a long while before been laid,
that all which they clung to as precious in their past history was pro,
phetic of blessings now actually present to themselves.f The invitation
first went forth at the constitution of the Jewish nation as God's elect
people, and ran through all their history. It was taken up and repeated
by each succeeding prophet, as he prophesied of the crowning grace that
should one day be brought to Israel in the actual presence in the midst
of it of its Lord and King, and summoned the people to hold themselves
in a spiritual readiness against that day.
Yet they never did more than thus bid the guests, for they only spoke
of good things to come. The actual calling of "them that were bidden" 
pertained not to them. John the Baptist was the first in whose time the
kingdom was actually present, the wedding feast prepared, the king and
the king's son manifested, and the long-invited guests summoned. By the
first band of servants I should certainly now understand John and the
apostles in their first mission-that which they accomplished during the
* Thus Storr (Opusc. Acad., v. 1, p. 120) affirms Tcbs KcKX7V/AE'OVS may as well
signify vocandos as vocatos! Did not this refute itself, Luke xiv. 16, 17, would be
decisive in the matter.
t See in this view the admirable use which Tertullian makes of this parable,
or rather of its parallel (Luke xiv. 16), arguing against Marcion (1. 4, c. 41), whose
great aim was to cut loose the New Testament from the Old. So too Irenaeus,
Oe. Hcr., 1. 4, c. 36.




THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.                  13
lifetime of the Lord, his Incarnation being the true bridal of the earth
and heaven.* His own share in summoning the guests, summoning
them, that is, unto himself, " Come unto me," is naturally in the parable
kept out of sight. It would have disturbed those proprieties which it
was needful to observe, to have made the king's son himself a bearer of
the invitation; but yet did he in the reality of his infinite condescension
sustain the double character, and he for whom the marriage was made,
was content himself to be sent forth to call the guests thereunto. We
observe upon this first occasion, there was no actual maltreatment of the
servants sent out; a general averseness from the message, and alienation
from  the messengers,-but as yet no positive outrage-nor was there
such against the apostles during the lifetime of the Lord,t nor at the
first against the Lord himself.  It was simply "they would not come."
" Ye will not come to me, that ye may have life."
"Again he sent forth other servants."  The second sending forth of
the servants describes that renewed invitation to the Jews which was
made subsequent to the Crucifixion: of this, as was needful, nothing was
said, for the parable would not bear it. It need not perplex us to find
these spoken of as " other " servants, while, in fact, many of them were
the same. In the first place, there were many other now associated with
them, Stephen and Barnabas and Paul and a great company of preachers.
Those, too, who were the same yet went forth as new men, full of the Holy
Ghost, and with a somewhat altered message, not preaching generally a
kingdom of God, but preaching now " Jesus and the resurrection " declaring, which it may be observed they had not done before, that all things
were ready-that all the obstacles which man's sin had reared up, God's
grace had removed (Acts ii. 38, 39; iii. 19-26; iv. 12); that in that
very blood which they had impiously shed, there was forgiveness of all
sins, and freedom of access to God. And let us not miss in the parable
* These missions by the king of his servants to summon the guests (ver. 3, 4)
have been sometimes differently understood. Thus Origen applies'them both to
the sending of the prophets under the law; Jerome makes no doubt that the first
mission (ver. 3) is to be so understood, though he is more doubtful about the
second. So too Gregory the Great (Horn. 38 in Evang.) understands it: Bis itaque
servos ad invitandum misit, quia Incarnationem Unigeniti et per prophetas dixit
futuram, et per Apostolos nunciavit factam. I am now persuaded however that
Hilary's is in the main the true explanation; who (Cor. in Matth., in loc.) thus expresses himself: Servi missi, qui invitatos vocarent, Apostoli sunt: eorum enim
erat proprium, commone facere eos, quos invitaverant prophetee. Qui verb iterum
cum prseceptorum conditione mittuntur, Apostolici sunt viri et successores Apostolorum.
t The death of John cannot be here adduced; for he by whose command he
was murdered was an Edomite, not therefore one of the invited guests at all-and
moreover, it was for preaching the law, not the Gospel, that he died.




1iA            THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.
or in its application the infinite grace which gives to the guests the
opportunity of coming to a better mind, and making good their first
contempt. The king, as though he thought it possible that they deferred
coming, as not being aware that the preparations were yet completed, or
that some other misunderstanding had found place, instead of threatening or rebuking, told his servants only to press the message with greater
distinctness and instancy: " Tell them which are bidden," so tell them that
they cannot mistake, that every anterior preparation is made,* and that
now " all things are ready." And exactly thus was it with the apostles
after the crucifixion; how willing were they to look upon all that was
past in the mildest possible light; thus Peter (Acts iii. 17), "And now,
brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it;"-how did they refuse
to dwell upon the past sin, urging rather the present grace!
But the servants upon this second mission fare worse than upon the
first. The guests, when they heard the reiterated invitation, " made
light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise."  Nor is this the worst.  The careless disregard of the honor
vouchsafed, which appeared from the beginning, and has grown in some
to this contemptuous rejection of it, has ripened in others to an absolute
hostility against the bringers of the message: " The remnant took his
servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them."  So there are
ever in the world two kinds of despisers of the Gospel of God: some who
take the trouble perhaps of saying, "I pray thee have me excused "others in whom it excites feelings of a positive enmity. Those in the
first class are again subdivided; for it is said that they "went their
ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise"    The question
naturally arises, Can we make a distinction here? did the Lord intend a
distinction? Perhaps if we understand of the first as one who went to
his estate, which the word will perfectly justify, the distinction will come
more clearly out. The first is the landed proprietor, the second the
merchant; the first would enjoy what he already possesses, the second
would acquire what as yet is his only in anticipation.  Exactly so,
Luke xir. 18, 19, the guest who has bought a property and must needs
go and see it, is one who has entered into the first condition; the guest
who would fain try his five yoke of oxen, belongs to the second. The
dangers of having and of getting, though cognate, are yet not at all the
same. There is quite difference enough between them to account for the
distinction. One of the guests when urged to come, turned to that which
* "My oxen and my fatlings are killed." This would be a sign of the immediate nearness of the feast. Chardin (Voy. en Perse, v. 4, p. 48): On tue le matin le
mouton et l'agneau qu'on mangera le soir... Les Persans croient que la meilleure
chair est la plus fraiche tuee. (See Gen. xviii. 7, 8; xliii. 16; Prov. ix. 1-5.)




THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.                    185
by his own or others' labor he had got-another to what he was hoping
to get.* They are either those who are full, or are hoping to be full of
this world; and the woe which the Lord pronounced, Luke vi. 25, has
come upon them; for this fulness has prevented them from discovering
their emptiness of things heavenly; the divine hunger, the hunger and
thirst after righteousness, has never been awakened in their souls. But
" the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew
them." The oppositions to the Gospel are not merely natural, they are
also devilish. There are other evils in man's heart besides the worldliness of it, which are stirred up bJ the word of the truth.  It wounds
men's pride, it affronts their self-righteousness, and they visit on the
bringers of it the hate they bear to itself.  Three forms of outrage are
enumerated here; and how abundantly do the Acts of the Apostles, and
much else in the later Scriptures, bear out all the three.  They "took,"
or laid violent hands on, "his servants" (Acts iv. 3; v. 18; viii. 3);
they "entreated them spitefully" (Acts v. 40; xiv. 5, 19; xvii. 5; xxi.
30; xxiii. 2); they "slew   them" (Acts vii. 58; xii. 3, cf. Matt.
xxiii. 34).t
"But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth."  The insult was to
him, and was intended for him; as in every case where an ambassador
is outraged, it is his master whom it is intended that the blow shall
reach.  (2 Sam. x.)  As such it was avenged; for the king " sent forth
his armies," that is, as some say, his avenging angels, the armies in
heaven (Rev. xix. 14), the legions that are at his bidding (Matt. xxvi.
53; 1 Kin. xxii. 19; 2 Sam. xxiv. 16),]: or, it may be, the hosts of Rome~
(Dan. ix. 26), which were equally " his armies," since even ungodly men
are men of God's hand, by whom he executes vengeance on other
wicked. (Thus Isai. x. 5, ("O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger." Thus
* Bengel who is gifted with such wonderful skill, rem tangere acu, brings out
the difference exactly so: Alius per falsam avTrpKrcav, alius per cupiditatem acquirendi detentus. And Gerhard suggests, though with no great confidence, the
same explanation (Harm. Evang., c. 153): Quid si per abeuntes ad negotiationem
intelligamus eos qui inhiant opibus adhuc acquirendis; per abeuntes ad villam,
qui malb delectantur in opibus jam ante partis et acquisitis'
t To this part of the parable, 2 Chron. xxx. 10 supplies an interesting parallel.
When Hezekiah restored the worship of Jehovah at Jerusalemn, he sent messengers
throughout all the tribes, inviting all Israel to share in the solemn passover which
he was about to keep, that is, bidding them to the feast. " So the posts passed
from city to city... but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them." Yet as
guests were brought in to the marriage-supper, so in this case, also, " divers humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem."
t Gregory the Great (Honm. 38 in Evang.): Quid namque sunt illa Angelorum
agmina, nisi exercitus Regis nostri?
Q So Ireneus, Con. Hsr., 1. 4, c. 36, S 6.




186            THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.
too, Isai. xiii 5; Ezek. xvi. 41; Jer. xxv. 9; "Nebuchadnezzar, mn
servant.")  In fact, the two explanations flow one into the other, for
when God's wrath is to be excuted, the earthly and visible ministers of
his judgments and the unseen armies of heaven are evermore leagued
together. The natural eye sees only those, the spiritual eye beholds the
other also behind. It is ever at such moments as it was with Israel of
old. (1 Chron. xxi. 16.) The multitude, to whom the purged spiritual
eye was wanting, beheld only the outward calamity, the wasting pestilence, but David lifted up his eye and saw the angel of the Lord,
standing between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in
his hand.*  " The city of those murderers" can of course be no other
than Jerusalem, the central point of the Jewish theocracy. (Matt. xxiii.
34, 35; Luke xiii. 33, 34; Acts vii. 39; xii. 2, 3.)  There lies an awful
threat in this appellation. It is their city, not any longer the city of
the great King, who owns it no more for his own. With a similar
threatening Christ says, " Your house is left unto you desolate " (Matt.
xxiii. 38); "your house," not mine, for I no longer fill it with my
presence. So to Moses God says, " Thy people have corrupted themselves" (Exod. xxxii. 7); "thy people," not mine; for the covenant
between him and them was suspended by their sin.
" Then" (compare Acts xiii. 46) "saith he to his servants, The
wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy."  Their
unworthiness consisted in their rejection of the invitation, even as the
worthiness of those who did find a place at the festival consisted-not
in their previous state, for in that regard they were most unworthy of
the honor of sitting down at the king's table, but in their acceptance of
the invitation. " Go ye therefore into the highways,t and as many as ye
* Even the heathen could understand this. When Troy was perishing, the
poet describes how the multitude saw but their Grecian enemies engaged in the
work of destruction; but to Eneas, when his Goddess mother had opened his eyes
there appeared other foes; to him
Apparent dirme facies, inimicaque Trojwe
Numina magna Defm.
t It seems hard to determine whether these &Eo5oiL are transitus or exitus
(Passow gives both meanings, Durchgang and Ausgang): whether the thoroughfares (see Ps. i. 3, LXX., where the word is used for channels of waters), or the
outlets leading from the city (Grotius: Vime extra urbem ducentes), or such as
issued into its places and squares (Kuinoel: Compita viarum), or the points where
many roads or streets meet; Chrysostom (Horn. 69 in Matth.) more than once substitutes rpLdsovs. (Schleusner: Loca ubi plures plate concurrunt.) All these
places have an equal fitness, in regard of being places of resort, where the servants
might hope soon to gather a company. But we must not permit the English expression, " highways," to make us think of places in the country as contradistinguished from the town, whither the servants were sent; the image throughout the




THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.                  187
shallfind, bid to the marriage." Here the doctrine so hateful to Jewish
ears (see Acts xxii. 21,.22), the calling of the Gentiles, and that by
occasion of the disobedience of the Jews, is again plainly declared. By
the breaking off of the natural branches of the olive, there shall be room
made for the grafting in of the wild olive in their stead (Rom. xi.),-so
Paul sets forth the same truth which here his Lord declares under the
image of the exclusion of the guests, who in the natural order of things
would best become the wedding, and were invited to it, and the reception
of those gathered in from the highways in their stead. Compare Matt.
viii. 10-12, of which this parable is only the ampler unfolding.
Hereupon the servants "went out into the highways, and gathered
together all as many as they found, both bad and good." In the spirit of
this command, "Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached
Christ unto them" there (Acts viii. 5); Peter baptized Cornelius and
his company; and Paul declared unto the men of Athens how God now
commanded "all men every where to repent."    When it is said they
gathered in "bad" as well as "good,"-in which words there is a passing
over from the thing signifying to the thing signified, since moral qualities
would scarcely be attributed to the guests as such,-we are not to see
here an explanation of the fact that one should hereafter be found at
the festival without a wedding garment; it is not to prepare the way for
and to account for that fact, that these different qualities of the guests
are mentioned. "Bad" here is not equivalent to "not having a wedding
garment" there; on the contrary, many were "bad" when invited, who,
through accepting the invitation, passed into the number of the "good;"
for here the beautiful words of Augustine, concerning Christ's love to his
Church, find their application, " he loved her when she was foul, that he
might make her fair."* Neither may the terms "bad and good," and
least of all the latter, be pressed too far; for speaking with strict
accuracy, none are good till they have been incorporated into the body
of Christ and are sharers in his Spirit. Yet, at the same time, few will
deny that there are different degrees of moral life, even anterior to obedience to the call of the Gospel. There are "good," such, for instance,
as Cornelius, or those Gentiles that were a law to themselves (Rom. ii.
parable is of a city, in which the rich and great and noble, those who naturally
would be selected for a king's guests, refuse to come to his banquet, whereupon
the poor of the same city are brought in to share it.
* Fcedam amavit ut pulcram faceret,-a thought which he pursues at length
elsewhere (in 1 Ep. Joh. Tract., 9), among other things saying: Amavif nos prior
qui semper est pulcher. Et quales amavit, nisi fcedos et deformes? Non ideo
tamen ut foedos dimitteret, sed ut mutaret et ex deformibus pulchros faceret.
Quomodo erimus pulchri 1 amando eum qui semper est pulcher. QuantHm in to
crescit amor, tantim crescit pulchritudo, quia ipsa charitas est anima pulrsritudo.




188            THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.
14); and " bad," those who are so far gone in moral depravity, that to
men there seems no hope of restoration for them;* —" such were some
of you," says the apostle to the Corinthians, after enumerating sinners
of the worst classes. The Gospel of Christ is the draw-net which brings
within its ample folds both them who have been before honestly striving
after a righteousness according to the law, and those who have been
utterly dead in trespasses and sins. Its invitation some of both classes
accept; " The wedding was furnished with guests."
This, which was the conclusion of the other and Garlier spoken parable (Luke xiv. 16), is only the first act in the present. There is still
another solemn act of judgment to follow. Hitherto the parable, with all
the prophetic hints and glimpses which it gives of the wickedness of men
and judgments of God, has been addressed to the chief priests and Pharisees; or generally to the Jewish nation, in so far as it cared not or as
it hated to hear the glad tidings salvation. It is now for those who
have accepted their portion therein, with an earnest warning also for
them'  Besides the separation between those who come and those who
refuse to come, it shall be also tried at the last who among the actual
comers have walked worthy of their vocation and who not; and according to this rule there shall be a second sifting and separation.  We
have had the judgment on the avowed foe: that on the false friend is
yet to find place.
But however it was the servants' work to gather in the guests to
the heavenly banquet, it is not their office here, any more than in the
parable of the Tares, to separate finally and decisively between the worthy partakers and the unworthy intruders. And indeed how should it
be? for the garment which distinguishes these from those is worn, not
on the body, but on the heart:t and only " the Lord trieth the hearts."
We may presume that it pertained to the dignity of the king, that he
should not appear at the festival till all were assembled, nor indeed till
all had now occupied their places at the banquet; for so much is im* Jerome, on these "bad and good:" Inter ipsos quoque Ethnicos est diversitas
infinita, quum sciamus alios esse proclives ad vitia et ruentes ad mala, alios ob
honestatem morum virtutibus deditos. Augustine's conflict with the Pelagians
would have hindered him from expressing himself exactly in these last words, and
he will only allow these "good" to be minus mali than the others. Yet he too is
most earnest against the abuse of these words, which should argue for allowing
men to come to baptism without having faithfully renounced, as far as human eye
could see, all their past ungodliness; for that were to make the servants of the
householder themselves the sowers of the tares. (De Fide et Oper., c. 17.) Ambrose (Exp. in Luc., 1. 7, c. 202): Jubet bonos et malos introire ut bonos augeat,
malorum affectum in meliora commutet: ut compleretur illud quod lectum est:
Tune lupi et agni simul pascentur.
j Algustine: Vestis quippe illa in corde, non in came, inspiciebatur.




THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.                  189
plied in the word by which now the guests are described.   But then,
when he " came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on
a wedding garment." Among the guests, ranged in order and splendidly apparelled, his eye at once detected one who lacked the apparel that
became a guest admitted to a royal festival.  Him he addresses, as yet
with a gentle compellation, for it was yet to be seen whether he could
explain away his apparent contempt;' Friend, how camest thou in
hither, not havingf a wedding garment?"  But he could not; " he was
speechless."
But why could he not answer that it was unreasonable to expect of
him, brought in of a sudden and without notice from the highways, to be
furnished with such-that he was too poor to provide,-or that no time
had been allowed him to go home and fetch,-such a garment? Some,
willing to get rid of any semblance of harshness in the after conduct of
the king, maintain that it was customary in the East, when kings or
great personages made an entertainment, that costly dresses should be
by them presented to the guests. Such a custom, they say, is here tacitly
assumed, so that this guest could only have now appeared not having
such a garment, because he had rejected it when offered to him; and
had thus both despised the grace done to him in the gift, and had also
by that rejection plainly declared that he counted his ordinary work
day apparel, soiled and stained as it may probably have been, sufficiently
good in which to appear in the presence of the king, being guilty thus
of a twofold offence.  Ernesti, however, and others, have denied that
any certain traces of such a custom are any where to be found, affirming that the only notice which we have of any thing like it, is the modern custom of clothing with a caftan those that are admitted into the
presence of the Sultan.
But, while it must be acknowledged that the passage (Judg. xiv. 13)
often adduced in proof, fails to prove any thing: and that, perhaps, dis* Tovis avacueiqEyov. In the Vulgate, Discumbentes; Wiclif, The men sitting at
the meat.
t We may observe that it is the subjective, and not the objective, particle of
negation, which is here used, ^ and not ov —y,  i xwv vySua Yd/ov, " not having
(and knowing that thou hadst not) the wedding garment;" with a consciousness
that it was wanting.-The e&vusta yacyov is not exactly the id/ATov VVlKcmv of Plutarch (Amator. 10), for that is the garment not of the guests, but of the bridegroom; nor yet the Ea3hs pvlUpIK of Chariton, 1, p. 6, which is that of the bride.
(BECKER'S Charikles, v. 2, p. 467.) Yet there may lie under the use of this phrase,
which seems at first fitter to set forth the array of the bridegroom than that of the
invited guests, that the true adornment of each of these at the spiritual marriage
is identical with that of the bridegroom: from him they have it; it is of the same
kind as that which he wears himself; for they who are rightly arrayed have put on
the Lord Jesus Christ; and as he is, so are they in the world.




19)            THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.
tinct evidence is not forthcoming of any such practice as that assumed
yet we know enough of the undoubted customs of the East to make it
extremely probable that presents of dresses were often distributed
among the guests at a marriage festival, especially one like the present,
celebrated with great pomp and magnificence; so that our Lord's hearers, to whom those customs must have been familiar, would have unconsciously supplied the gap in the narration, and taken for granted
such a gift going before, especially when they found so severe a penalty inflicted upon his guest, for a want which otherwise he could not
well have avoided. We know in the first place, that it was part of the
state and magnificence of kings and wealthy persons in the East, to have
great store of costly dresses laid up, as at the present day a great portion
of their wealth is very commonly invested in numerous changes of
costly apparel.  (Job xxviii. 16; Isai. iii. 6; Jam. v. 2; 2 Kin. x. 22.)*
Keeping this in mind, we need not suppose that the number of guests,
however great, would have created any embarrassment. We know
moreover that costly dresses were often given as honorable presents,
marks of especial favor (Gen. xlv. 22; 1 Sam. xviii. 4; 2 Kin. v. 5;
Dan. v. 7; Est. vi. 8; 1 Macc. x. 20); that they were then, as now, the
most customary gifts;-and marriage festivals (Est. ii. 18) and other
occasions of festal rejoicing (2 Sam. vi. 19) were naturally those upon
which gifts were distributed with the largest hand. If the gift took the
form of costly raiment, it would reasonably be expected that it should
be worn at once, as part of the purpose of the distribution would else
be lost, which was to testify openly the magnificence and liberality of the
giver, and also to add to the splendor and glory of the festal time,-not
to say that the rejection of a gift, or the appearance of a slight put upon
it, is ever naturally esteemed as a slight and contempt not of that gift
only, but also of the giver.t
* The story told by Horace of the five thousand mantles which Lucullus, on examining his wardrobe, found that he possessed, is well known; and this extract
from Chardin (Voy. en Perse, v. 3, p. 230, Langles' ed.), a traveller of whom all
later inquirers into Eastern customs join in praising the accuracy and extent of information, may be accepted in proof that the number of the garments needed would
have been readily at hand: On ne sauroit croire la d6pease que fait le roi de Perse
pour ces presens-la. Le nombre des habits qu'il donne est infini. On en tient
toujours ses garde-robes pleines. On les tient dans les magazins s6par6s par assortiment.
t So strongly is this felt, that we are not without example in the modern history of the East (and Eastern manners so little change that modern examples are
nearly as good as ancient), of a vizier having lost his life, through this very failing
to wear a garment of honor sent to him by the king. Chardin mentions the circumstances;-the officer through whose hands the royal robe was to be forwarded,
out of spite sent in its stead a plain habit. The vizier would not appear in the city




THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.                      191
But in addition to the affront of rejecting the gift, supposing it to be
granted that such a gift going before may be safely assumed, this guest
was guilty of a further affront in appearing at the festival in unsuitable,
probably in mean and sordid, apparel. Even with us there are occasions when such conduct would be felt as manifesting a serious lack of
respect; much more among the nations of antiquity, especially those of
the East, where outward symbols have a significance so far greater than
with' us, would such an omission as that whereof this guest was guilty,
be felt as a grievous affront and insult* to the person in whose honor
arrayed in this, lest it should be taken as an evidence that he was in disgrace at
court, and put on in its stead a royal habit, the gift of the late king, and in that
made his publie entry into the city. When this was known at court, they declared
the vizier a dog, that he had disdainfully thrown away the royal apparel, saying, I
have no need of Sha Sefi's habits. Their account incensed the king, who severely
felt the affront, and it cost the vizier his life. (BURDER'S Orient. Liter., v. 1, p. 94.
Cf. Herodotus, 1. 9, c. 111, for an example of the manner in which the rejecting of
a monarch's gift was resented.)-Olearius (Travels, p. 214), gives an account of
himself, with the ambassadors whom he accompanied, being invited to the table of
the Persian king. He goes on to say, " It was told us by the mehmandar, that we
according to their usage must hang the splendid vests that were sent us from the
king over our dresses, and so appear in his presence. The ambassadors at first refused; but the mehmandar urged it so earnestly, alleging, as also did others, that
the omission would greatly displease the king, since all other envoys observed such
a custom, that at last they consented, and hanged, as did we also, the splendid
vests over their shoulders, and so the cavalcade proceeded." This passage, besides
its value as showing us how the rejection of the garment of honor, or rather the
failing to appear in it, would be felt as an insult, clears away any difficulty which
might have occurred to any from the apparent unfitness of the king's palace as a
place for changing of apparel. In fact, there was strictly speaking no such changing of apparel, for the garment of honor was either a vest drawn over the other
garments, or a mantle hung on the shoulders. Schulz, in his Travels, describes
that given to him, as "a long robe with loose sleeves, which hang down (for the
arm is not put into them), the white ground of which is goat's hair, mixed with
some silver, but the flowers woven in are of gold-colored silk;" and his account of
the necessity of putting it on before appearing in the presence of the Sultan, agrees
with that given by the earlier traveller. (ROSENMULLER'S Alte und'Neue Morgenl.,
v. 6, p. 76.)
* Ireneus then has exactly seized the right point when hc says (Con. Hacr., 1.
4, c. 36, 0 6): Eum, qui non habet indumentum, nuptiarum hoc est, contemptorem.
Compare with this the exceeding stress which Cicero lays, in his charges against
Vatinius (In Vatin., 12, 13), on the fact of the latter having once appeared clad in
black at a great and solemn festival (supplicatio)-how much of wanton indignity
and insult he saw in it, both towards the giver of the feast, and also towards the
other guests. " Who ever," he asks, " even in a time of domestic grief, appeared
at a supper thus arrayed in black'" and we learn from that passage, as from many
others, that none but white garments, which, however, would afford great room for
magnificence, were considered becoming for a festival. (See BECKER'S Charikles,
v. 2, p. 469.) It was the same among the Hebrews, for one exhorting to continual




192            THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.
the more splendid and becoming apparel ought to have been put on;
and, of course, the more honorable the person the more serious would be
the offence. So that, though others have been forward to say something
in this guest's behalf,-as that he could not help appearing as he did, or
that his fault was after all but a slight one,-he did not feel that he had
any thing to say for himself; "he was speechless," or literally, his mouth
was stopped, he was gagged,* with no plea to allege for his contemptuous behavior; he stood self-condemned, and judgment therefore immediately proceeded against him.   " Then said the king to the servants,"
or rather to the ministering attendants, " Bind him hand andfoot, and
take him away, and cast him   into outer darkness."  Within the palace
was light and joy, but without it was cold and darkness;-into this the
unworthy guest, with no power of resisting the fulfilment of the decree,
for his hands and feet were first bound, was to be cast-and there for
him, under the sense of his shame, and loss and exclusion from the glorious festival, would be " weeping and gnashing of teeth."
This brings the parable to an end according to the letter, yet is there
much in this latter part which demands an accurate inquiry. When,
it may first be asked, does the king come in to see, or to scrutinize, the
guests? Not certainly exclusively in the day of final judgment, though
indeed most signally then. At every other judgment whereby hypocrites are revealed, or self-deceivers laid bare to themselves or to others,
the king enters in to see, or rather, diligently to regard,f the assembled
guestst-at every time of trial, which is also in its nature a time of separation, a time when the thoughts of many hearts are laid bare;
though for the day of the last judgment the complete and final separamerriment and festal gladness exclaims, "Let thy garments be always white"
(Eccles. ix. 8), that is, keep a continual feast;-so we read that white robes were
given to the souls under the altar (Rev. vi. 11), a pledge to them, that though kept
waiting a while, they should yet in a little season be admitted to the marriage-supper of the Lamb; and the bride is arrayed in fine linen, clean and white. (Rev.
xix. 8.)
*'Ep~Lu6Iz, from PfIdsLs = eirrdJuAoY, a gag. Chrysostom admirably explains it,
KareKcpvv eaVCdv. Such gags (in Latin, camus) were actually in use, not merely for
beasts, but sometimes for rebellious slaves, or criminals on their way to execution.
(See SCHOETTGEN'S Her. Heb., v. 1, p. 241, and the Param. Grceci, Oxf. 1636, p. 41.)
The word is used in its literal sense, 1 Tim. v. 18.
t EedoLai, which is the word here, Schleusner explains: Fixis ac intentis oculis
aspicio et intueor ad rem aliquam considerandam et dijudicandam. In the Vulgate, Ut videret discumbentes: the old Italic had better, Ut inspiceret discumbentes.: Augustine: Intrat Deus judicio, qui foris manet tolerando: and the Auct.
Oper. Imperf.: Tune regem ingredi, quando Deus tentat homines, ut appareat
quantum quisque virtutis habeat, et an loco, quem in Ecclesia tenet, dignus sit.




THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.                  193
tion is of course reserved, and then all that has been partially fulfilling
in one and another will be completely fulfilled in all.
Some would not leave out of sight the singleness of the guest without the wedding garment, but seek to hold it fast in the interpretation.
They have suggested that Judas may perhaps be immediately pointed
out.*  It is certainly not impossible that a gracious Lord, who suffers
none to perish without warning, may have meant a merciful warning
for him here.  This, at any rate, were a more tolerable supposition
than that of Vitringa, Cocceius, and others,t of the historico-prophetical school, to wit, that it is the man of sin, by whom they understand
the Pope. It is hardly, however, probable that any single person is intended, but rather under this one a great multitude: for the "few"
presently said to be " chosen" in comparison to the " many called"
would seem to imply that there had been a great sifting. Why these
many excluded should be here represented as a single person has been
explained in different ways. Townson instances it as an example of
what he happily calls "the lenity of supposition," which finds place in
our Lord's parables; as he instances in like manner there being but one
servant who failed to turn his lord's money to account. Gerhard gives
an ingenious reason,-that "if many had been thrust out from the marriage, the nuptial festivities would have seemed to have been disturbed."
But he is on a truer track, when he observes how the fact of his being
but one, brings the matter home to every man: " So diligent and exact
will be the future scrutiny, that not so much as one in all that great
multitude of men, shall on the last day escape the piercing eyes of the
Judge."t   Nor is there any difficulty in thus contemplating the whole
multitude of evil-doers as a single person. For as the righteous are one
being gathered under their one head, which is Christ, so the congrega
tion of the wicked are one, being gathered also under their one head,
which is Satan.  The mystical Babylon is one city no less than the
* Thus Pseudo-Athanasius (De Parab. Script.), and in later times Weisse
(Evang. Gesch., v. 2, p. 114).
t As GURTLER, Syst. Theol. Propi., p. 676. He finds a confirmation of this
view in the fact, that the man is addressed as rape: Antichristus singulariter est
eraTpos, vicarium illius se venditans, et solio ejus solium nequitise associans!-The
Jews have a curious tradition about Esau, who is their standing type of Antichrist,
that he will be such a guest thrust out from the kingdom of God. It is found in the
Jerusalem Talmud, and is as follows: " Esau the wicked will veil himself with his
mantle, and sit among the righteous in Paradise in the world to come; and the
holy blessed God will draw him and bring him out from thence, which is the sense
of those words, Obad. 4, 6."
f Cajetan the same: Subtilis discretio in tanta multitudine describitur; quia
enim ita omnes Deus videt ut singulorum singillatim curam habeat, ideb unus doscribitur visus homo.
13




194             THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.
mystical Jerusalem. There is a kingdom of darkness as well as a
kingdom of God.*
But concerning the wedding garment itself, it has been abundantly
disputed what spiritual grace or gift he lacked, who was lacking in this.
It is well known that the Romanists have been eager to press this passage into their service, in the controversy concerning the relative value
of faith and charity. But when they assert that it must have been
charity in which this guest was deficient, and not faith,-for that he had
faith, since he would not have been present at the feast at all unless
externally a believer, they are merely taking advantage of the double
meaning of the word faith, and playing off the occasional use of it as a
bare assent to the truth, against St. Paul's far deeper use of the word,and this most unfairly, for they must know that it is only in the latter
sense of the word that any would attribute this guest's exclusion to his
wanting faith.  Were it needful to decide absolutely for one or other of
these interpretations of the wedding garment, I would far sooner accept
the other, as infinitely the deepest and truest, since the flower may be
said to be contained in the root, but not the root in the flower, and so
charity in faith, but not faith in charity.t  There is however no need
to decide for either interpretation, so as to exclude the other. The great
teachers in the early Church did not put themselves in contradiction to
one another, when some of them asserted that what the intruder was deficient in was charity, and others faith; nay, the same writer,S without
* Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. lxi. 4): Levatus est de convivio et missus in poena
nescio quis homo in tam magna turba recumbentium. Sed tamen Dominus volens
ostendere unum ilium hominem, unum corpus esse quod constat ex multis, ubi
jussit eum projici foras, et mitti in debitas poenas, subjecit continuo, Multi enim
sunt vocati, pauci vero electi... Qui sunt electi, nisi qui remanserunt. Projecto
uno, electi remanserunt. Quomodo, projecto uno de multis, pauci electi nisi in illo
uno multi? See also Con. Don., lost Coll., c. 20. We have just the reverse of this
1 Cor. ix. 24. There the whole number of the elect are included in the " one that
receiveth the prize."
t Ignatius (Ad Ephes., 14) calls the twain, &PXt Aws Kal TEAOS aPX* [FV iVs rTl,,
Teos Be ayaT7rq.
t Thus Ambrose (De Fide, 1. 4, c. 1) speaks of the nuptiale fidei vestimnentum
-while elsewhere (De Penit., 1. 1, c. 6) he says: Ille rejicitur qui non habet vestem nuptialem, hoc est, amictum caritatis, velamen gratia;-and again uniting his
two former expositions (Exp. in Luc., 1. 7, c. 204): Yestem nuptialem, hoc est,
fidem et caritatem. In the same way Augustine (Serm. xc.) joins them both:
Habete fidem. cum dilectione. Ista est vestis nuptialis. The Auct. Oper. Imrpe f.:
Nuptiale vestimentum est fides vera que est per Jesum Christum et justitiam ejus;
see also Basil (on Isai. ix.) for a like interpretation. Yet no one would denj- the
other to be the side upon which the Fathers more frequently contemplate the wedding garment, as charity, or sanctity. Thus Ireneus (Con. Hxr., 1. 4, c. 36, ( 6): Qu
vocati ad carnam Dei, propter malam conversationem non perceperunt Spiritum




THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.                      195
feeling that there was aught needing to be reconciled, would in one place
give the one interpretation, and elsewhere the other. For what this
guest lacked was righteousness,]oth in its root of faith and its flower of
charity.  He had not, according to the pregnant image of Paul, here
peculiarly appropriate,-" put on Christ "-in which putting on of
Christ, both faith and charity are included,-faith as the power putting
on, charity or holiness as the thing put on.* By faith we recognize a
righteousness out of and above us, and which yet is akin to us, and
wherewith our spirits can be clothed, which righteousness is in Christ,
who is the Lord our Righteousness.       And this righteousness by the
appropriative and assimilative power of faith we also make ours; we are
clothed upon with it, so that it becomes, in that singularly expressive
term, our habitt —the righteousness imputed has become also a rightSanctum; and Hilary; Vestitus nuptialis est gloria SpiritAs Sancti et candor habitus ccelestis, qui bonse interrogationis confessione susceptus usque in cetum regni
coelorum immaculatus et integer reservatur. So Gregory the Great, Hor. 38 in
Evang. Yet Grotius affirms too much when he says: Ita veteres magno consensu
ad hunc locum. And this is the predominant, though not I think the exclusive,
sense given to it in our Exhortation to the Holy Communion; with which compare
Chrysostom, Hon. 3, in Ephes., quoted by Bingham (Christ. Antt., b. 15, c. 4, 9 2).
* Even so Gerhard, to whose most useful collection of passages I have been
very much indebted in this parable, explains it: Vestis nuptialis Christus est, qui
et sponsus et cibus est in his nuptiis. Christum autem induimus tum fide ejus
meritum apprehendendo, ut nuditas nostra coram Dei judicio ipsius justitia tanquam pretiosa veste tegatur, tum sanctl vitle conversatione, qua ipsius vestigiis insistimus (Rom. xiii. 14), cum Christus non soluim nobis datus sit in donum, sed
etiam propositus in exemplum;-and Jerome's words are remarkable: Vestein
nuptialem, hoc est, vestem superccelestis hominis,-as he explains the sordid garment as veteris hominis exuvias.-One might here bring forward as illustrative a
passage from the Shepherd of Hermas,'. 3, sim. 9, c. 13. He sees in his vision some
virgins, and asks who they are; it is answered that they represent the chief Christian
virtues: Spiritus sancti sunt, non aliter enim homo potest in regnum Dei intrare nisi
hue induerint eum veste sua. Etenim nil proderit tibi accipere nomen filii Dei, nisi
etiam et vestem earum acceperis ab eis.
t This image runs remarkably through the whole of Scripture, its frequent use
being a witness for its peculiar fitness. Thus we are bidden to put on the Lord
Jesus Christ (Rom. xiii. 14), to put off the old, to put on the new, man (Col. iii.
10; Ephes. iv. 22), to put on the various pieces of the panoply of God (Ephes. vi.
13-16; 1 Thess. v. 8); baptism is a putting on of Christ (Gal. iii. 27). See further, Rom. xiii. 12; Ezek. xvi. 10; Isai. lxi. 10; Sirac. vi. 31; and Schoettgen
(Ior. Heb., v. 1, p. 699) shows that the mystery of putting on a righteousness from
above was not wholly hidden from the Jews-many of the passages which he
quotes being truly remarkable. The figure has passed on to the heavenly kingdom; as grace is put on here, so glory there. "He that overcometh, the same
shall be clothed in white raiment." (Rev. iii. 5; iv. 4; vi. 11; vii. 9; 2 Esd. ii. 39,
45.) In the book of Enoch these garments are called vestes vitae. See EISENMEN~ER'S Entd. Judenthum (v. 2, p. 310), where it is said of the angels, that according




196            THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.
eousness infused, and is in us charity or holiness, or more accurately
still, constitutes the complex of all Christian graces as they abide in the
man and show themselves in his life.
The wedding garment then is righteousness in its largest sense, the
whole adornment of the new and spiritual man,-including the faith
without which it is impossible to please God, and the holiness without
which no man shall see him, or, like this guest, shall only see him to
perish at his presence:-it is the faith which is the root of all graces, the
mother of all virtues, and it is likewise those graces and those virtues
themselves. Let us contemplate this guest as a self-righteous person,
who is making and trusting in a righteousness of his own, instead of
believing in a righteousness of Christ's, imputed and imparted,-or let
us see in him a more ordinary sinner, who with the Christian profession
and privileges is yet walking after the lusts of the flesh in unholiness
and sin, in either case the image holds good;-he is rejecting something,
even the true robe of his spirit, which has been freely given to him at his
baptism,* and which if he has since let go, he may yet, on the strength
of that gift, freely at any moment claim;-he is a despiser, counting
himself good enough merely as he is in himself, in the flesh and not in
the spirit, to appear in the presence of God. But a time arrives when
every man will discover that he needs another covering, another array
for his soul. It is woe unto him, who like this guest only discovers it
when it is too late to provide himself with such; and then suddenly
stands confessed to himself in all his moral nakedness and defilement.
It was the king's word which struck the intruder speechless-so it will
be the light of God shining round and shining in upon the sinner, which
will at the last day reveal to him all the hidden things of his heart, all
that evil, of the greater part of which he has hitherto wilfully chosen to
be ignorant, but of which now he can remain ignorant no longer. We
may well understand how he also, like the unworthy guest, will be
speechless, that however forward he may have been in other times to
justify himself, in that day his mouth will be stopped; he will not even
pretend to offer any excuse, or to plead any reason why judgment should
not proceed against him at once.
The ministering attendants here, who are different both in name and
office from the servants who invited and brought in the guests,t can be
to the Jewish tradition they strip off the grave-clothes from every one who enters
Paradise, and clothe him in white and glistering raiment.
* See one of Schleiermacher's Taufreden, in his Predigten, v. 4, p. 787.
t Those were BoiXoL, these are atdKovoL. (John ii. 5, 9.) They here appear as
&rctors-that name, from ligare, having allusion to this very function of bindi.ng the
hands and feet of condemned criminals.




THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.                   197
no other than the angels who " shall gather out of his kingdom all things
that offend, and them that do inquity." (Matt. xiii. 41, 49; Luke xix. 24.)
These are bidden to "bind him hand andfoot," which by some is made to
mean that upon the sinner the night is come, in which no man can work,
that for him all opportunity of doing better is gone by; though I should
rather see in it the sign of the helplessness to which in a moment every
proud striver against God is reduced.* The hands by the aid of which
resistance, the feet by whose help escape, might have been meditated, are
alike deprived of all power and motion. (Acts xxi. 1.) In the command
" Take him away," is implied the sinner's exclusion from the Church
now glorious and triumphant in heaven, the perfected kingdom of God.t
(Aatt. xiii. 48; 2 Thess. i. 9.)  Nor is the penalty merely privative: it
is not only this loss of good, but also the presence of evil.: They shall
" cast him into outer darkness;" so called because it lies wholly beyond
and external to God's kingdom of light and joy.  For as light is contemplated as the element of that kingdom, so whatever is beyond and
without that kingdom is darkness-the "outer darkness" girdling round
the kingdom of light, and into which all fall back, who refusing to walk
in the light of God's truth, fail to attain in the end to the light of everlasting life. (Compare Wisd. xvii. 21; xviii. 1.) On the words following,
" There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth," there has been occasion
to say something already. l
* H. de Sto. Victore: Ligatis manibus et pedibus, id est, ablata penitus potestate benb operandi: but I rather follow Grotius: Notat HT &/caXo Kcal T &EQevKCTO
irrogati divinitus supplicii. Taking it in this meaning, Zech. v. 8 will supply an
instructive parallel. The woman whose name is " Wickedness" sitting securely
in the ephah, the great measure of God's judgments, which she has filled, is forcibly
thrust down into it; and the mouth of it is then stopped with the huge mass of
lead, that she may never raise herself again. Jerome (in loc.) Angelus praecipitem misit in medium amphorae... ac ne forte rursum elevaret caput, et sub iniquitate et impietate gauderet, talentum plumbi in modum gravissimi lapidis mittit
in os amphorse, ut Impietatem in medio opprimat atque concludat, ne quo modo
possit erumpere. The women with wings, who bear away the ephah, will further
answer to the servants here; and the outer darkness here to the land of Shinar,
theprofane land, whither the vessel and its burden are borne. The whole vision
too (v. 5-11) has its similarity to this parable; for that and this speak alike of the
cleansing of the Church by judgment-acts of separation upon the sinners in it.
t It is interesting to compare Zeph. i. 7, 8: " The Lord hath prepared a sacrifice, ho hath bid his guests. And it shall come to pass in the day of the Lord's
sacrifice, that I will punish the princes and the king's children, and all such as are
wdited with strange apparel." (eY8eSUvvYovS e5V'tLacra aXt'plta.  LXX.)
t AUGUSTINE, Serm. 31, c. 5.
0 Peter Lombard (1. 4, dist. 50): Exteriores tenebrse erunt, quia tune peccatores penitus erunt extra Deum... Secludentur penitus a luce Dei.
11 Meuschen (N. T. ex Talm. illst., p. 106) quotes a Jewish parable as bearing




198            THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.
The parable terminates like that of the Laborers in the Vineyard
with that weighty saying, " Many are called, but few are chosen," which
refers not merely to the expulsion of this unworthy guest; but in the
called " and not "chosen " must be included those others also, that did
not so much as seem (which he had done) to embrace the invitation, and
who expiated their contumacy in the destruction of themselves and their
city. And these words do but state a truth which had long before been
finding its fulfilment in the kingdom of God, which, alas! is always
accomplishing there. They were fulfilled in the history of that entire
generation which went out of Egypt-they were all " called " to a kingdom, yet were not in the end "chosen" to it, since with most of them
God was not well pleased, and they died in the wilderness. (1 Cor. x.
1-10; Heb. iii. 7-19; Jude 5.)  They were fulfilled on a smaller scale
in those twelve to whom it was given first to see the promised land-two
only drew strength and encouragement from that sight, and they only
were " chosen" to inherit it.  They found their fulfilment in the thirty
and two thousand of Gideon's army: these all were " called" but only
three hundred were found worthy, and in the end "chosen" to be heplers
in and sharers of his victory,-such a sifting and winnowing away had
there been before. (Judg. vii.) They were fulfilled too in a type and
figure, when Esther alone of all the maidens that were brought together
to the king's place was " chosen " by him, and found lasting favor in his
sight. (Esth. ii.)*
some resemblance to the present. It is of a king who invited his servants to a
festival:-some of these prepared and adorned themselves, and waited at the door
till he should pass in, others said there would be time enough for this, as the feast
would be a long while in preparing, and so went about their ordinary business.
The latter, when the king demanded suddenly the presence of his guests, had no
time to change their apparel, but were obliged to appear before him in sordid garments as they were;-he was displeased, and would not allow them to taste of his
banquet, but made them stand by while the others feasted.-But if this can be said
to resemble any of our Lord's parables, it is evidently the Ten Virgins, with which
it should be compared, and not this.
* H. de Sto. Victore (De Arrh& Animee) makes excellent application of Esther's
history to the matter in hand: Vide quam multae electae sunt, ut una eligeretur, illa
scilicet quae occulis Regis formosior et ornatior cseteris videretur. Ministri Regis
multas eligunt ad cultum, Rex ipse unam eligit ad thalamum. Prima electio multarum facta est, secundum Regis prneceptionem, secunda electio unius facta est,
secundum Regis voluntatem... Rex summus Regis filius vait in hunc mundum
(quem ipse creaverat) desponsare sibi uxorem electam, uxorem unicam, uxorem nuptiis regalibus dignam. Sed quia hunc Jude humilitatis form& apparentem recipero
contempsit, abjecta est. Et missi sunt ministri Regis, Apostoli videlicet, per totum
mundum congregare animas, et adducere ad civitatem Regis, id est, ad Sanctam Ecclesiam.... Multi ergo vocati intrant per fidem Ecclesiam, et ibi Sacramenta Christi
quasi quaedam unguenta et antidota ad reparationem et ad ornatum animarum pre



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON.                      199
parata accipiunt. Sed quia ore veritatis dicitur, Multi sunt vocati, pauci vero electi:
non omnes qui ad hunc cultum sunt admissi, ad regnum sunt eligendi; nisi tantium
ii, qui sic student se per ista mundare et excolere, ut cdm ad Regis presentiam
introducti fuerint, tales inveniantur, quos ipse magis velit eligere qlkm reprobare,
Vide ergo ubi posita es, et intelliges quid facere debes. Posuit enim te Sponsus
tuus in triclinio, ubi mulieres ornantur, varia pigmenta et diversas species dedit,
cibosque regios de mensk su. ministrari tibi prsecepit, quidquid ad sanitatem,
quidquid ad refectionem, quidquid ad reparandam speciem, quidquid ad augendum
decorem valere potest, tribuit. Cave ergo ne ad colendam teipsam negligens sisy
ne in novissimo tuo, cum in conspectu sponsi hujus reprsesentata fueris, indigna
(quod absit) ejus consortio inveniaris. Praepara te, sicut decet sponsam Regis, et
sponsam Regis coelestis, sponsam spons immortalis.




XIII.
THE TEN VIRGINS.
MATTHEW XXV. 1-13.
THE circumstances of a marriage among the Jews, so far at least as
they supply the groundwork of the present parable, are sufficiently well
known, and have been abundantly illustrated by writers on Jewish
antiquities; and indeed no less through the accounts given by modern
travellers in the East,-for the customs alluded to hold in full force to
the present day, and form as important a part of the nuptial ceremony
as they did in ancient times. The bridegroom, accompanied by his
friends ("the children of the bride-chamber," Matt. ix. 15; "the friends
of the bridegroom" John iii. 29; see Judg. xiv. 11), goes to the house
of the bride, and brings her with pomp and gladness (1 Macc. ix. 37-39)
to his own home, or occasionally, should that be too narrow to receive
the guests, to some larger apartment provided for the occasion. She is
accompanied from her father's house by her young friends and companions* (Ps. xlv. 15), while other of these, the virgins of the parable, at
some convenient place meet and join the procession, and enter with the
rest of the bridal company into the hall of feasting.t  Such seems to me
the exactest account of the ceremony, though by some the circumstances
which supply the groundwork of the parable are given somewhat differently. They describe the custom to be as follows:-the virgins meet
the bridegroom, not as he is returning with, but as he is going to fetch,
the bride; and accompany him first unto her home, and only after that
* The iraptevoL eTraoal of Pindar, Pyth. 3.
t See Wolf's latest Jornal, p. 174, in addition to the accounts given by earlier
travellers and quoted by Harmer and Burder. Bingham (Antt. b. 22, c. 4, ~ 7)
shows the importance which was attached among the early Christians to the leading home of the bride-so that without it the marriage in some legal points of
view was not considered as completed.




THE TEN VIRGINS.                         201
to his own. But this supposition has every thing against it; besides
being inaccurate in itself, and needlessly complicating the parable, it
also considerably weakens its moral force; for the parable is certainly
meant to leave on our minds the impression that the joining of the
bridal company, for the purpose of passing in with it to the house of
feasting, was a swift and momentary thing, to be done upon the instant,
and of which if the opportunity were once lost, it could not be recovered.
Such would not be the case, if there were this going first for the bride,
and only then-after a considerable pause and delay, which would ha-e
naturally taken place at her house,-a leading of her home to her future
dwelling. Neither can it be replied to obviate this objection, that perhaps the nuptial feast was celebrated at the house of her parents and
friends, for this was as much contrary to all the customs of the Jews
(see John ii. 10) as of the Greeks,* and such a supposition would
seriously affect the parable in its spiritual application.t
The marriages in the East taking place of old, as they do now,
invariably at night, hence the constant mention of lamps and torches
carried by the friends and attendants; therefore we are told here that
these virgins "took their lamps." (Cf. 2 Esdr. x. 2.) These, however,
do not appear to have had the same religious significance which they
had in the Greek and Roman marriages,~ or even in those of the early
* See BECKER'S Charikles, v. 2, p. 468, in proof that the celebration of the marriage in the bridegroom's house and not in the bride's, was at least the rule.
t One would not lay any stress on the fact that some of the earliest versions
read, "went forth to meet the bridegroom and the bride;" since this reading has
been universally rejected,-except as it gives an evidence of the light in which the
circumstance was looked at by some, who probably were familiar with the ceremony as it actually took place in Palestine or the neighboring countries. This
extract from HUGHES' Travels in Sicily, 4c. (v. 2, p. 20), confirms the view first
given, in so far as we can argue back from the modern custom to the ancient: " We
went to view the nocturnal procession which always accompanies the bridegroom
in escorting his betrothed spouse from the paternal roof to that of her future husband. This consisted of nearly one hundred of the first persons in Joannina, with
a great crowd of torch-bearers, and a band of music. After having received the lady
they returned, but were joined by an equal number of ladies, who paid this compliment to the bride." These "ladies" evidently answer to the virgins of our parable, and they join the procession, not till the bridegroom with his friends have
received the bride at her father's house, and are escorting her to her new abode.
Thus, Rev. xviii. 23, the (fps xAXYov and the pwv] vvqplov iKa vv'~Vls are joined together.
~ Among the Greeks and Romans torches were in chiefest use. Thus CATULLUS, Elithal., 98: Viden'? faces Aureas quatiunt comas; and again: Manu Pineam quate ttedam; so Apuleius, 10: Veluti nuptiales epulas obiturae dominae, coruscis facibus praelucebant; and Euripides;,vwuqKca A a/vrdaes.  Cf. BECKER'S
Charikles, v. 2, p. 465. Among the Jews lamps fed with oil were more common
The early Christians seem to have used indiscriminately either, as the expressions,




202                      THE TEN VIRGINS.
Christians; but were in use, partly as being actually needed, partly as
adding to the splendor of the scene. That the virgins should be tenin
number is not accidental:-this number formed a company, which a less
number, according to the Jewish notions, would not have done.* Of
course the first question for the interpreter of the parable will be, Who
are meant by these virgins?  There are two mistakes to which the word
has given rise. There is first theirs, who thus argue, All are described
as virgins: all, therefore, belong at the inmost centre of their life unto
Christ. Some, it is true, were found unready at the last moment, and
therefore suffered loss (1 Cor. iii. 13), even a long deferring of their
blessedness.  Yet the name with which the Lord has honored all gives
assurance that none were ultimately excluded from the kingdom of
heaven and the final salvation. They who take this view of the case
of the foolish virgins, in general connect it with the doctrine of the
thousand years' reign of Christ on the earth and a first resurrection.
From the blessedness of these they sould be shut out for the unreadiness in which they were found, whether at the hour of their death, or at
Christ's second coming; they should be thus shut out because of their
imperfections, and the much that remained in them unmortified and
unpurified still, which needed therefore the long and painful purging of
this exclusion, and of the dreadful persecutions to which all who were
thus left out should be exposed. But the root of the matter being in
them, they did not forfeit every thing, nor fall short of the final bliss of
heaven.t   There might be an argument in favor of this view, drawn
facula nuptiales, lucernm conjugales, denote. It is only in later Greek, that haCA-,rds came to signify not a torch or link,-but as here it would seem, a lamp fed
with oil, which would at an earlier time have been expressed by xXvos or eAAi5xyvio. (See PAssow, s. v. Aa~Wrds.) Yet the mention of oil would not of itself
exclude the possibility that these also were torches. For Elphinstone (Hist. of
India, v. 1, p. 333), has noted, " The true Hindu way of lighting up is by torches
held by men, who feed the flame with oil from a sort of bottle [which would answer
to the &yyeyov here] constructed for the purpose."
* Thus it was ruled that wherever there were ten Jews living in one place,
there was a congregation, and there a synagogue ought to be built. Much more
on the completeness of the number ten may be found collected by Vitringa, De
Synagoga, p. 232, seq., and in BAHR'S Symbolik d. Mos. Cultus, v. 1, p. 175.
t Thus Poiret (Divin. aEconom., 1. 4, c. 12, O 18, v. 2, p. 376): Illi qui tempore
Advenths in statu quidem gratim versabuntur, at multis simul imperfectionibus,
multisque negligentiis implicati, quas hue usque nondum correxerint nec abluerint,
hi inquam h regno glorioso Christi in terra, dum mille anni periodi hujus effluent,
exclusi, portam sibi obserari videbunt. Itaque foris relinquentur in tenebris pur.
gationis, eo rumque beatitude ad Resurrectionem usque generalem et post annos
mille regni Christi atque Sanctorum differetur. Hoc ipsum satis apertb docet
Parabola Virginum fatuarum. Videmus enim eas ob negligentiam suam a convivio
puptiali fuisse exclusas, etiamsi et Virgines fuerint, et lampadem fidei habuerint,




THE TEN VIRGINS.                           203
from the circumstance of these foolish being styled virgins as well as the
others, if others sometimes undertook the office of welcoming the brzuegrooz, and yet the Lord had chosen to give that appellation to these, and
to specify them  as virgins.  But seeing that to such the task in the
natural order of things appertained, there is no weight in the argument
derived from the title which they bear.
The second error is one of which Chrysostom is the chief champion.
He, taking the title " virgins" in the literal, while every thing else is
taken in a figurative sense, limits the application of the parable to those
who had made a profession of outward virginity,* instead of seeing that
the virginity here is the profession of a pure faith, the soul guiltless of
etDominum invocaverint. Janua enimjam clausa nunquam iterum aperiebatur dum
hoc tempus durabat; quoniam commotio, quae hoc in mundo ftitura est antequam
finis ejus ac periodorum adveniat, per quam Deus hoc in mundo et in omnibus
qume ibidem adsunt, mutationem hanc gloriosam operabitur (qua veluti janua erit
ac introductio in regnum ejusdem) non nisi semel futura est. Adhuc semel, inquit,
et movebo caelum et terram; omnesque qui tur temporis per puritatem perfectam
ad gloriam adipiscendam idonei erunt, impressionibus divinae hujus motionis receptis mutabuntur: at post hoc tempus ad Resurrectionem generalem usque, nulla
nova commotio aut mutatio fiet. Tune enim aderit dies quietis natural ac creaturarum omnium que in eandem jam erunt introducta. Abhinc vero oportebit, ut
Virgines fatum, et quicunque nondum veste nuptiali fuerint induti, AEternitatem
ipsam exspectent. Neque enim probabile videtur Virginibus istis negligentibus,
in quibus tamen tot jam erant dispositiones bone pariterque iis, qui eo tempore
nondum rite parati, bona tamen initia jam fecerant, sternum pereundum esse: sed
nec probabile est quamcumque illi, post januam semel clausam, prmparationem
sint adhibituri, Christum iterum ex quiete sue exiturum, et in gratiam eorum
novam crisin ac separationem aliquam peculiarem in nature instituturum esse.
Yon Mayer (Blatter fir h6here Wahrheit, v. 7, p. 247) interprets the parable in the
same manner, and Olshausen.
* Augustine (Serm. 93, c. 2) warns his hearers that the parable is not to be
limited to such, but belongs to all souls, que habent Catholicam fidem, et habere
videntur bona opera in EcclesiI Dei; and he quotes 2 Cor. xi. 2. In another place
he says, Virginitas cordis fides incorrupta;-and Jerome (Comm. in Matth., inloc.):
Virgines appellantur, qui gloriantur in unius Dei notitia, et mens eorum idolatria
turba non constupratur: and again (Ad Jovin., 1. 2): Decem virgines non totius
generis humani, sed solicitorum et pigrorum exempla sunt, quorum alteri semper
Domini prestolantur adventum, alteri somno et inertiae se dantes, futurum judicium non putant. There is apparently Chrysostom's limitation of the parable, in the
use made of it in a prayer for the consecration of nuns, given by Mabillon (Liturg.
Gall., 1. 3, p. 311), where, among other allusions to the parable, this occurs: Regalem januam cum sapientibus Virginibus licenter introeant. Yet this may be no
more than an adaptation. Tertullian (De Anima, c. 18) mentions a singular use or
rather abuse which some of the Gnostics made of this parable: The five foolish
virgins are the five senses, foolish inasmuch as they are easily deceived, and often
give fallacious notices; while the five wise are the reasonable powers, which have
the capability of apprehending ideas.




204                     THE TEN VIRGINS.
spiritual fornication, of apostasy from the one God. For such we are
to understand by the virgins who go forth to meet the bridegroom,-all
who profess to be waiting for the Son of God from heaven, to love his
appearing, all who with their lips join in the glorious confession, " I believe in Jesus Christ our Lord, who shall come again to judge both the
quick and the dead," and who do not by their deeds openly deny that
hope; all are included, who would desire to include themselves in the
number of his believing people. This they have all in common, that they
confess to the same Lord, they profess to have the same hope in him,even as the virgins were alike in this, that they all " took their lamps, and
wentforth to meet the bridegroom."  But, it is immediately added, "jive
of them were wise, and five of them were foolish; the numbers make
nothing to the case-only the division is essential.  They are not distinguished into good and bad, but as the hearers at Matt. vii. 25-27,
into "wise" and "foolish," for as a certain degree of good-will toward
the truth is assumed there in the foolish from their putting themselves in
the relation of hearers, and even attempting to build, so here from their
going forth to meet the bridegroom. We have them described-the wise,
2 Pet. 1. 5-8, and the foolish, 2 Pet. i. 9.
The Lord proceeds to tell wherein the folly of these and the wisdom
of those consisted:-" They that werefoolish took their lamps, but took no
oil with them; but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps." It
is evident that here is the point on which the interpretation of the parable turns: the success of an interpreter must depend on his rightly explaining what the having, or not having, a reserved supply of oil may
mean. Here again we meet with a controversy between the Romanists
and the Reformers, not different from that which they held concerning
the signification of the wedding garment. The latter asserted that what
these virgins lacked was the living principle of faith; what they had
were the outer deeds of Christianity, these were their lamps shining
before men:-what they wanted was the inner spirit of life, the living
faith; this was the oil which they should have had, if their lamps were
to burn bright before Christ in the day of his appearing.* The Romanist
* This is very much Augustine's interpretation (Ep. 140, c. 33; Serm. 149, c.
11): Lampades bona sunt opera... et ipsa qum etiam coram hominibus lucet
laudabilis conversatio; sed magni interest qua mentis intentione fiat... Quid est
ergo ferre oleum secum, nisi habere conscientiam placendi Deo de bonis operibus,
et non ibi finem gaudii sui ponere, si homines laudent. Cocceius explains the oil in
the vessels thus, Doctrina SpiritAs Sancti fidem pascens in perpetuum ut non deficiat: and Cajetan, a Romanist expositor, consents to this interpretation; his words
are so excellent that I will quote them: In hcc differunt operantes bona opera,
quod aliqui habent testimonium suse bonitatis foris tantum in ipsis operibus bonis:
intus enim non sentiunt se diligere Deum in toto corde, se poenitere peccatorum




THE TEN VIRGINS.                         205
reverses the whole, and affirms that what they had was faith, but then it
was a faith which, not having works, was "dead, being alone" (Jam.
ii. 17); they were not careful to maintain good works, to nourish the
lamp of faith, which they bore in sight of men, with deeds of light done
for and in the sight of God; they did not by well-doing stir up the
grace of God that was in them, and so through this sluggishness and
sloth the grace which they did not use was taken from them; their
lamps burned dim, and at last were wholly extinguished, and they had
not wherewith to revive them anew.* It is needless to observe in what
different senses the two parties use the wordfaith,-the Romanist as the
outward profession of the truth-the reformers as the root and living
principle of Christian life.t If it were not for those opposite uises of the
same term, the two interpretations would not be opposed to, or exclude,
one another,-certainly would not be incapable of a fair reconciliation.t
For we may equally contemplate the foolish virgins who were unprovided
with oil, as those going through a round of external duties, without life,
without love, without any striving after inward conformity to the law of
God, to whom religion is all husk and no kernel; or again, we may contemplate them as those who, confessing Christ with their lips, and holding fast the form of the truth, yet are not diligent in the work of the
Lord, in acts of charity, of humility, and self-denial; and who therefore
by that law which decrees that from him who hath not shall be taken
even that which he hath, do gradually lose that grace which they had,
and find that they have lost it altogether, at the decisive moment when
it were need that they should have it in largest measure. It is clear
that whatever is merely outward in the Christian profession is the lamp
-whatever is inward and spiritual is the oil laid up in the vessels.
When we contemplate with St. James the faith as the body, and the
works as that which witnesses for an informing vivifying soul, then the
quia sunt offensae Dei, se diligere proximum propter Deum. Alii autem operantur
sic bona, ut et ipsa opera lucentia testimonium foris reddant boni animi, et intus in
conscientia propria ipse Spiritus Sanctus testificetur spiritui eorum quod filii Dei
sunt. Sentiunt enim in corde toto se diligere Deum, poenitere propter Deum, diligere proximum et seipsum propter Deum, et breviter Deum esse sibi rationem
amandi, sperandi, timendi, gaudendi, tristandi et breviter operandi intus et extra:
hoc est enim oleum in vasis propriis.
* This view too has its supporters among the Fathers: thus Jerome (in loc.):
Non habent oleum, quae videntur simili quidem fide Dominum confiteri, sed virtutum opera negligunt. Cf. ORIGEN, in Matth., Tract. 32.
t As Augustine, when he says: Animae ture anima fides.: For instance, who would refuse to accede to the explanation given by Gerhard? Per lampades accensas externa oris professio et exterior pietatis species:
per oleum vero in vasis interior cordis justitia, vera fides, sincera charitas, vigilan.
tia, prudentia, qua solius Dei, non autem hominum oculis obvia, intelliguntur.




206                      THE TEN VIRGINS.
faith is the lamp, the works the oil in the vessels;-but when on the
other hand we contemplate with St. Paul the works as only having a
value from the living principle of faith out of which they spring, then
the works are the lamp, and the faith the oil which must feed it. Yet
in either case, before we have fully exhausted the meaning of the oil,
we must get beyond both the works and the faith to something higher
than either, the informing Spirit of God which prompts the works and
quickens the faith, and of which Spirit oil is ever in Scripture the
standing symbol.   (Exod. xxx. 22-33; Zech. iv. 2, 12; Acts. x. 38;
Heb. i. 9.)
But under whatever aspect we regard the relation between the oil
in the lamps and in the vessels, the purpose of the parable is, as we
learn from the Lord's concluding words, to impress upon the members
of his Church their need of vigilance. Regarded in the one view, it is a
warning that they be careful to maintain good works,-that they be not
weary of well-doing,-that they be not of the number of those who are
satisfied with saying, Lord, Lord, while they do not the things that he
says. Regarded under the other aspect, it is a warning that they be
watchful over their inward state,-over their affections,-over all which,
withdrawn from the eyes of man, is seen only of God; —that they seek
to be glorious within, to have a continual supply of the Spirit of Christ
Jesus in their inmost hearts, to approve themselves before God,* as
well as to show a fair and unblamable conversation before the world.
In either case, we must remember, and it adds much to the solemnity of
the lesson, that by the foolish virgins are meant,-not hypocrites, not
* This is a point which is brought out with great frequency and urgency, by the
old expositors, by Augustine, Ep. 140, c. 31, and again, Serm. 93, c. 8; by Gregory
the Great, Horn. 12 in Evang.: and with much beauty by the author of a sermon
found among the works of St. Bernard (v. 2, p. 722): Oleum in lampade est opus bonum in manifestatione, sed dum videtur a proximis caritas operis, dum mirantur et
laudant, extollitur plerumque et adsurgit elatus animus operantis, et dum in se et
non in Domino gloriatur, lumen lampadis adnullatur, et carens fomento congruo
lampas, quae coram hominibus clar6 lucet, coram Domino tenebratur. Prudentes
vero virgines praeter oleum quod in lampadibus habent, oleum aliud in vasis reponunt: quia nimirum sanctee animce dum sponsi sui prsestolantur adventum, dum
toto desiderio ei clamant quotidie. Adveniat regnum tuum, preeter illa opera quae
proximis lucent ad Dei gloriam et videntur, aliqua in occulto, ubi solus Pater videt,
opera faciunt... e.Hec est gloria filiae regis ab intus. dum plus de oleo quod in
vasis conscientive dilucescit, quam de eo quod lucet de foris gloriatur: periisse
sestimat omne quod cernitur, nec id dignum judicat remuneratione, quod favores
hominum prosequuntur. Latenter igitur quae praevalet, operatur, petit secretum,
orationibus pulsat ccelum, fundit lacrymas testes amoris,... haec est gloria, sed ab
intus, sed invisa, filiae regis et amicre. Hoc oleum fatua virgines non habent, quia
nisi ad nitorem vance glorier et favorem hominum bona non operantur. Hoc oleum
m quo prudentes confidunt, in abditis conscientiarum vasculis reponunt.




THE TEN VIRGINS.                      207
self-conscious dissemblers, much less the openly profane and ungodly,
but the negligent in prayer, the slothful in work, and all those, whose
scheme for a Christian life is laid out to satisfy the eyes of men, and not
to please God who seeth in secret. Nor is it that they have actually no
oil at all; they have some, but not enough; their lamps, when they
first go forth, are evidently burning, else they could not speak of them
as on the point of expiring just as the bridegroom was approaching. In
fact, the having no oil provided in the vessels is exactly parallel to the
having no deepness of earth (Matt. xiii 5); the seed springs up till
the sun scorches it,-the lamps burn on till their oil is exhausted through
the length of the bridegroom's delay. In each case there is something
more than a merely external profession, conscious to itself that it is nothing besides;-it is not that there was no faith, but rather that there
was only that fides temporaria which could not endure temptation nor
survive delay,-the Christian life in manifestation, but not fed from
deep internal fountains. But they are like the wise virgins, who recognize the possibility that the bridegroom may tarry long, that the Church
may not very soon, perhaps not in their days, enter into its glory;who, therefore, foresee that they may have a long life to live of toil and
self-denial, before they shall be called to cease from their labors, before the kingdom  shall come unto them; —and who consequently feel
that it is not a few warm excited feelings which will carry them successfully through all this,-which will enable them to endure unto the
end; for such are but as a fire among straw, which will quickly blaze
up and as quickly be extinguished.  They feel that principles as well
as feelings must be engaged in the work,-that their first good impulses
and desires will carry them but a very little way, unless they be revived, strengthened, and purified, by a continual supply of the Spirit of
God. If the bridegroom were to come at once, perhaps it might be another thing, but their wisdom is that, since it may possibly be otherwise,
they see their need of making provision against the contingency.
When it is said in the parable that the bridegroom did actually tarry, we may number this among the many hints, which were given by
our Lord, that it was possible the time of his return might be delayed
beyond the expectation of his first disciples. It was a hint and no more;
if more had been given, if the Lord had said plainly that he would not
come for many centuries, then the first ages of the Church would have
been placed in a disadvantageous position, being deprived of that powerful motive to holiness and diligence supplied to each generation of the
faithful, by the possibility of the Lord's return in their time. It is not
that he desires each succeeding generation to believe that he will certainly return in their time, for he does not desire our faith and our practice to be founded on an error, as, in that case, the faith and practice of




208                      THE TEN VIRGINS.
all generations except the last would be. But it is a necessary element
of the doctrine concerning the second coming of Christ, that it should
be possible at any time, that no generation should consider it improbable in theirs.*  The love, the earnest longing of those first Christians
made them to assume that coming to be close at hand. In the strength
and joy of this faith they lived and suffered, and when they died, the
kingdom was indeed come unto them.f    But in addition to the reason
here noted, why the Church should not have been acquainted with
the precise time of her Lord's return, it may be added, that it was in
itself, no doubt, undetermined.  Prophecy is no fatalism,t and it was
always open to every age by faith and prayer to bring about, or at least
to hasten that coming, so that the apostle speaks of the faithful not
merely as looking for, but also hasting, the coming of the day of God
(2 Pet. iii. 12); and compare acts iii. 19, "Repent ye..... that the
times of refreshing may come;" these "times of refreshing" being evidently identical with "the times of restitution of all things" (ver. 21),
the glorious setting up of the kingdom of Christ; and we find the same
truth, that the quicker or tardier approach of that time is conditional,
elsewhere declared in clearest terms. (2 Pet. iii. 9.) In agreement
with these passages, we pray that it may please God "to accomplish
the number of his elect, and to hasten his kingdom." But while the
matter was left by the wisdom of God in this uncertainty, it was yet important that after the expectations of the first ages of the Church had
proved to be ungrounded, those who examined the Scriptures should
find intimations there that this might probably be the case.~ Of these
intimations there are many, and this present passage is one.
But to return; the bridegroom tarrying, the virgins "all slumbered
and slept."  The steps by which they fell into deep sleep are here
marked, first they nodded the head or slumbered, and next they slept
profoundly. Some have understood by this sleeping of all, a certain un* Augustine: Latet ultimus dies, ut observetur omnis dies; and Tertullian (De
Anima, c. 33) gives the reason why the Father has reserved to himself the knowledge of that day: Ut pendula expectatione solicitude fidei probetur, semper diem
observans, dum semper ignorat, quotidie timens, quod quotidie sperat.
t Yet Augustine, claiming a right to dissent from a scheme of prophetic interpretation current in his day, which made the end of the world to be already instant,
says very beautifully (Ep. 199, c. 5): Non ergo ille diligit Adventum Domini, qui
illum asserit propinquare, aut ille qui esserit non propinquare; sed ille potius qui
eum sive prope sive longe sit, sinceritate fidei, firmitate spei, ardore caritatis expectat.
f In Augustine's words, Prsedixi, non fixi.
t Augustine (Ep. 199, c. 5): Ne forte cum transisset tempus, quo eum credi
derant esse venturum, et venisse non cernerent, etiam caetera fallaciter sibi promitti arbitrantes, et de ips& mercede fidei desperarent.




THE TEN VIRGINS.                        209
readiness that will be found in the whole Church,-a certain acquiescence
in the present time and in the present things, even among the faithful
themselves, though with this difference, that their unreadiness will be
remediable, and easily removed; its removal being actually signified by
the trimming and replenishing of their lamps, while that of the other,
will be beyond remedy.* Augustinet proposes, but it is only to reject
this interpretation, that by the sleeping of all is signified the love of all
in some measure growing cold; for he asks, Why were these wise
admitted unless for the very reason that their. ove had not grown cold?
But there is, he says a sleep common to all, the sleep of death, which
by these words is indicated: and this is the explanation of Chrysostom.
Theophylact, Jerome, Gregory the Great, and nearly all the ancient
interpreters.  It seems, indeed, far preferable to that other which understands by this slumbering and sleeping the negligences and omissions
of even the best Christians, for it is scarcely probable that our Lord
would have, as it were, given this allowance for a certain degree of negligence, seeing that with all the most earnest provocations to diligence, we
are ever inclined to indulge in spiritual sloth. It is most improbable of
all that he should have done so in a parable of which the very aim and
moral is that we be always ready,-that'we be not taken unprepared.
But perhaps by this slumbering and sleeping more may not be meant
than that all, having taken such measures as they counted needful to
enable them to meet the bridegroom as they would wish1 calmly and
securely awaited his approach.T: Moreover, the conveniences of the parabolic narration which required to be consulted seem to require such a
circumstance as this. For had the foolish virgins been in a condition to
mark the lapse of time, and the gradual waning of their lamps, they,
-knowing that they had not wherewith to replenish them,-would
naturally have bestirred themselves before the decisive moment arrived,
to procure a new supply. The fact that they fell asleep and were not
awakened except by the cry of the advancing bridal company gives,and scarcely any thing else would give,-an easy and natural explanation of their utter and irremediable destitution of oil at the moment
when there was most need that they should have it in abundance. And
* So Cocceius: Significat securitatem, qua Ecclesiam Christianam post primain
quasi vigiliam noctis persecutionum cum pace invasit; and Grotius, in this view
following the Auct. Oper. Imperf., quotes in confirmation Jam. iii. 2; Rom. xiii. 2.
Maldonatus gives this explanation in a form somewhat modified, and popular at the
present day: Dormire interpretor desinere de adventu Domini cogitare.
t Serm. 93, c. 5; Ep. 140, c. 32.
t Hilary (Conmm. in Matth., c. 27), unites this meaning and the preceding: Ex
spectantium somnus credentium quies est, et in poenitentie tempore more tempo
ralis universorum.
14




210                    THE TEN VIRGINS.
had the wise virgins not slept as well,-had they been represented as
watching while the others were sleeping, it would have seemed like a
lack of love upon their parts, not to have warned their companions of the
lapse of time and the increasing dimness with which their lamps were
burning, while yet help was possible.*
It was at midnight, and not till then, that " there was a cry made,
Behold the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him;"-this cry we
may suppose to have been made either by a part of the retinue running
before, or by the applauding multitude, who, even till that late hours had
been waiting to see the passage of the procession through the streets,
and thus testified their lively sympathy in what was going forward. But
the spiritual signification of the cry at midnight has been variously given.
Most are agreed to find an allusion to " the voice of the archangel and
the trump of God" (1 Thess. iv. 16), which shall be heard when the
Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout. Some, however, explain
the cry as coming from watchers in the Church, such as shall not be
altogether lacking in the last times,-by whom the signs of the times
have been observed, and who would proclaim aloud the near advent of
the Lord, the heavenly Bridegroom, when he draws nigh, accompanied
by the angels the friends of the bridegroom, and leading home his bride,
the triumphant Church, and looking to be met and greeted by the
members of his Church yet militant on earth, themselves a part of that
mystical bride,t that so he may bring her to the glorious mansion-the
house of everlasting joy and gladness which he has prepared for her.
And this cry is "at midnight:" it was an opinion current among the
later Jews, that the Messiah would come suddenly at midnighllt as their
forefathers had gone out from Egypt and obtained their former deliverance, at that very hour (Exod. xii. 29), from which belief Jeromet supposes
the apostolic tradition of not dismissing the people on Easter eve, till
the middle night was past, to have been derived. They waited till then,
that they might be assembled if Christ should come, who was twice to
glorify that night, first, by in it resuming his life, and again, by assuming in it the dominion of the world: and not a few have found in the
passage before us an argument for supposing that the Lord's coming
would actually take place at the middle night. But it is more natural
to suppose that midnight is here named, simply because that is the time
when commonly deep sleep falls upon men,-when such an occurrence as
* STORR, De Par, Christi, in his Opusc. Acad., v. 1, p. 133.
t Augustine (Quast. lxxxiii. qu. 59): Ex ipsis virginibus constat ea quae dicitur sponsa, tanquam si omnibus Christianis in Ecclesiam concurrentibus filii ad
matrem concurrere dicantur, cum ex ipsis filiis congregatis constet ea q-ue dicitur
mater. (See Rev. xix. 7, 9).: Comm. in Matth., in loc.




THE TEN VIRGINS.                         211
that in the parable would be least looked for, accounted least likely to
happen; and because thus the unexpectedness of Christ's coming, of the
day of the Lord which "cometh as a thief in the night" (1 Thess. v. 2),
is in a lively manner set out.*
But when the cry was heard, "then all those virgins arose, and
trimzed their lamps."t    Every one at the last prepares to give an
account of his works, inquires into the solidity of the grounds of his
faith,:f seriously searches whether his life has been one which will have
praise not merely of men, for that he now feels will avail nothing, but
also of God.  Many put off this examination of the very grounds of
their faith and hope to the last moment-nay, some manage to defer it,
and the miserable discoveries which will then be made, beyond the
grave, even till the day of judgment,-but further it cannot be deferred.
When the day of Christ comes, it will be impossible for any to remain
ignorant any longer of his true state, for that day will be a revelation
of the hidden things of men, of things which had remained hidden even
from themselves;-a flood of light will then pour into all the darkest
corners of all hearts, and show every man to himself exactly as he is,so that self-deception will be no longer possible.  Thus when the foolish
virgins arose to trim their lamps, they discovered to their dismay that
their lamps were on the point of expiring for lack of nourishment,-and
that they had not wherewith to replenish them:-so that they were
compelled in their need to turn to their wiser companions, saying,
"G.ive us of your oil, for our lampr s are gone out."~  Of course the
* Augustine (Serm. 93, c. 6): Quid est media nocte? Quando non speiatur,
quando omnino non creditur;-and Jerome: Subito enim, quasi intempesta nocte,
et securis omnibus Christi resonabit adventus.
t Ward (View of the Hindoos, v. 2, p. 29), describing the parts of a marriage
ceremony in India of which he was an eye-witness, says: "After waiting two or!
three hours, at length near midnight it was announced as in the very words of Scripture,' Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.' All the persons
employed now lighted their lamps, and ran with them in their hands to fill up their
stations in the procession-some of them had lost their lights and were unprepared, but
it was then too late to seek them; and the cavalcade moved forward.": Augustine: Rationem prseparant reddere de operibus suis. Cocceius: Quivis homo apud se fidei sum soliditatem requisivit.
( The hand-lamp was naturally small, and would not contain a supply of oil for
very many hours of continuous burning: even the lamps used at a festival, which
would be larger, needed to be replenished, if kept burning long into the night.
Thus Petronius, 22: Tricliniarchus experrectus lucernis occidentibus oleum infuderat; see also c. 70. Such lucernm occidentes are the lamps here, failing and
" going out," as it is in the margin of our Bibles, not already " gone out," for in that
case they would not merely have needed to trim and feed them, but must have asked
from their companions also permission to kindle them anew, of which yet we hear
nothing. The trimming itself implied two things, the infusion cf fresh oil, and the




212                     THE TEN VIRGINS.
request and the refusal which it calls out,-like the discourse between
Abraham and Dives,-are only the clothing and outer garb of the truth
-but of truth how important!-no other indeed than this, that we shall
look in vain from men for that grace which God only can supply, that
we shall be miserably disappointed, if we think thus to borrow in an
easy lazy way, that which must be bought,-won, that is, by earnest
prayer and diligent endeavor.
"But the wise answered, saying, Not so;* lest there be not enough fous and you." Every man must live by his own faith. There is that
which one can communicate to another, and make himself the richeras one who gives another light, has not therefore less light, but walks
henceforth in the light of two torches instead of one; but there is'also
that which being divine is in its very nature incommunicable from man to
man, which can be obtained only from above, and which every man must
obtain for himself;-one can indeed point out to another where he is to
dig for the precious ore, but after all is said, each one must bring it up
for himself and by his own efforts. The wise virgins did all they could
for their unfortunate companions, gave them the best counsel that under
the circumstances was possible, when they said, " Go ye rather to them
that sell, and buy for yourselves;" turn to the dispensers of heavenly
grace, to them whom God has appointed in the Church as channels of
his gifts, or as some would explain it, to the prophets and apostles, and
aearn from their words and teaching, how to revive the work of God in,your souls, if yet therebe time. Sometimes the words have been understood as ironically spoken;t but how much more pleasing, how much
more consistent with their character whom the wise virgins represent, to
see in them a counsel of love, of that love which emphatically "hopeth
all things,"-an exhortation to their companions that they trust not in
man, but betake themselves, if it yet be time, to the sources from which
true effectual grace can alone be obtained, that they seek yet to revive
removing whatever had gathered round, and was clogging the wick. For the last
purpose there was often a little instrument that hung by a slender chain from the
lamp itself-pointed for the removing of the snuffs (the putres fungi) from around
the flame, and furnished with a little hook at the side by which the wick, when
need was, might be drawn further out. This instrument is sometimes found still
attached to the bronze lamps discovered in sepulchres. In Virgil's Moretum, 11:
Et producit acu stupas humore carentes. (See BECKER'S Gallus, v. 2, p. 205, seq.)
* The answer in the Greek is strongly elliptical as in a moment of earnestness
and haste. Bengel: Abrupta oratio, festinationi illi conveniens. On the spirit of
the answer of the wise virgins as regards themselves, Augustine remarks: Non
desperatione dictum est, sed sobriA et pi& humilitate; and Chrysostom (De Pcenit.,
Horn. 3): 05' &a'rAaax/yxav'roV'ro'roovo'aL, &aA,& & rb To' evbv Tov Kaipov.
t Augustine (Serm. 93, c. 8): Non consulentium sed irridentium est ista responsio; and Lather quotes, Justi ridebunt in interitu impiorum.




THE TEN VIRGINS.                           213
the work of grace in their hearts.-Nor can we refuse to see in the
reason which they give for refusing to comply with the others' request,
namely, " lest there be not enough for us and you," an argument against
works of supererogation, however the Romish expositors may resist the
drawing of any such conclusion from the words.      "The righteous shall
hardly be saved;*-the wise virgins did not feel that they had any thing
over,-aught which, as not needing for themselves, they could impart to
others. All which they hoped to attain was, that their own lamps might
burn bright enough to allow them    to make part of the bridal company,
to enter with those that entered into the joy of the festal chamber.t
So much was granted them:-while the others were absent, seeking
to repair their past neglect, "the bridegroom cane, and they that were
ready,"\ they whose lamps were burning, having been fed anew from
* Augustine (Ep. 140, c. 34): Petunt a sapientibus oleum, nec inveniunt, nee
accipiunt, illis respondentibus se nescire, utrhm vel sibi sufficiat ipsa conscientia,
qua exspectant misericordiam sub illo Judice, qui cum in throno sederit, quis gloriabitur castum se habere cor, aut quis gloriabitur mundum se esse a peccato, nisi
superexultet misericordia judicio l
t Tertullian (De Pudic., c. 22) makes good application of this part of the parable, when he is opposing the libelli pacis which the confessors in the African
Church gave to the lapsed: Sufficiat martyri propria delicta purgasse. Ingrati
aut superbi est in alios quoque spargere, quod pro magno fuerit consecutus. Quis
alienam mortem suA solvit nisi solus Dei filius l... Proinde qui ilium semularis
donando delicta, si nihil ipse deliquisti, plane patere pro me. Si vero peccator es,
quomodo oleum faculae tue sufficere et tibi et mihi poterit 1-Gurtler (Syst. Theol.
Proph., p. 711) gives a strange story from Melchior Adamus, which witnesses how
strongly it was once felt that there was here an argument against all hoping in man
and in the merits of men rather than in God. The words are these: " There was
A. D. 1322, exhibited at Eisenach before the Margrave Frederick of Misnia, the
mystery concerning the five wise and as many foolish virgins. The wise were St.
Mary, St. Catharine, St. Barbara, St. Dorothy, and St. Margaret. To these come
the foolish, seeking that they will impart to them of their oil, that is, as the actor
explained it, intercede with God for them that they also may be admitted to the marriage, that is, to the kingdom of heaven. What happens? the wise absolutely
deny that they can communicate aught.    Then a sad spectacle began-the
foolish knocked, they wept, they were instant in prayer-but all profited not a jot,
they were bidden to depart and buy oil. Which when that prince saw and heard,
he is said to have been so amazed, that he fell into a grievous and dangerous sickness.' What,' he exclaimed,' is our Christian faith, if neither Mary nor any other
saint can be persuaded to intercede for us' From this sadness an apoplexy had its
rise, of which he died the fourth day after, and was buried at Eisenach." This
event is told with some differences in CARLYLE'S Miscellanies, v. 2, p. 415. It may
be observed here that this parable was a very favorite subject for the mysteries in
the middle ages. (See Du MERIL'S Poesies populaires Latines, p. 138.)
$ In the Pirke Avoth there is this comparison: Seculum hoc simile est vestibule,
ct seculum futurnm triclitio. Prsepara teipsum in vestibule, ut ingredi possis in
triclinium.




214                     THE TEN VIRGINS.
their vessels, "went in with him to the marriage,* and Jie door was
shut;" shut as much for the security and joy without interruption of
those within, as for the lasting exclusion of those without. (See Gen. vii.
16; Rev. iii. 12.)  "What door?" exclaims the author of an ancient
homily on this parable.t " That which now is open to them coming from
the east and from the west, that they may sit down with Abraham, and
Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven,-that Door which saith,
Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Behold how it is
now open, which shall then be closed for evermore. Murderers come,
and they are admitted,-publicans and harlots come, and they are
received,-unclean and adulterers and robbers, and whosoever is of this
kind, come, and the open door doth not deny itself to them, for Christ,
the Door, is infinite to pardon, reaching beyond every degree and every
amount of wickedness.   But then what saith he?   The door is shut.
No one's penitence,-no one's prayer,-no one's groaning shall any
more be admitted.   That door is shut, which received Aaron after his
idolatry,-which admitted David after his adultery-after his homicide,
which not only did not repel Peter after his threefold denial, but
delivered its keys to be guarded by him." (See Luke xvi. 26.)
The door once shut, " afterwards came the other virgins, saying,
Lord, Lord, open to us," not that they have now found the oil, but having sought it in vain, they come looking for mercy, when now it is the
time of judgment.   In the title "Lord," by which they address the
bridegroom, they claim to stand in a near and intimate relation to him;
as in the "L ord, Lord," twice repeated, is an evidence of the earnestness with which they now claim admission; some say, also of their vain
confidence; but perhaps rather of the misgiving which already possesses them, lest they should be excluded from the nuptial feast, lest it
be now to late, lest the needful conditions be found unfulfilled on their
part;-even as it proves; for in them that solemn line of the old Church
hymn must find itself true, Plena luctu caret fructu sera poenitentia.
And in reply to their claim to be admitted, they hear from within the
sentence of their exclusion,-" He answered and said, Verily I say unto
* Compare MILTON'S Sonnet to a Virtuous Young Lady, where there is allusion
in almost every word to this latter portion of our parable.
Thy care Is fixed and zealously attends
To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light,
And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure,
Thou, when the Bridegroem with his feastful friends
Passes to bliss in the mid hour of night,
Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure.
t The same fiom whom an extract is given, p. 206, Ibte.
t AUGUSTINE, Ep. 140, c. 35.




THE TEN VIRGINS.                        215
you, I know you not."  It is not that he disclaims an outward knowledge, but he does not know them in that sense in which the Lord says,
"I know my sheep, and am known of mine."    This knowledge is of necessity reciprocal, so that Agustine's, though it may seem at first a
slight, is indeed a very profound remark, when explaining,  I know you
not,' he observes, it is nothing else than, " Ye know not me."  Of course
the issue is, that the foolish virgins remain excluded, and for ever, from
the marriage feast.* (See Isai. lxv. 13.) On this their exclusion Bengel observes, that there are four classes of persons; those that have an
abundant entrance into the kingdom, entering as it were with sails set
into the haven; those again that are saved, as shipwrecked mariners
reaching with difficulty the shore. On the other side, there are those
who go evidently the broad way to destruction, whose sins go before
them; while again, there are those who, though they seemed not far off
from the kingdom of God, yet miss it after all; such were these five
foolish virgins, and the fate of these, who were so near, and yet after all
fell short, he observes with truth, must always appear the most miserable
of all. Lest that may be our fate, the Lord says to us,-for what he
said to his hearers then, he says unto all, to his Church and to every
member of it in every age,-"' Watch therefore, for ye know neither the
day nor the hour;'t and this being so, the only certain way to be ready
upon that day, is that you be ready upon every day: and the parable
has taught you that unreadiness upon that day is without a remedy;
the doom of the foolish virgins has shown you that the work, which
should have been the work of a life, cannot be huddled up into a mo
ment.' Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour.'"
This parable will obtain a wider application if we keep in memory
that, while it is quite true that there is one great coming of the Lord at
the last, yet not the less does he come in all the great crises of his
Church, at each new manifestation of his Spirit; and at each of these
too there is a separation among those who are called by his name, into
wise and foolish, as they are spiritually alive or dead. Thus at Pentecost, when by his Spirit he returned to his Church, he came: the pru* We have at Luke xiii. 25, the same image of the excluded vainly seeking an
entrance, though it appears with important modifications. It is there the master,
who has appointed a set time in the evening by which all his servants shall have
returned home. When the hour arrives, he rises up and bars his doors, and those
of the household who have lingered and arrive later cannot persuade him again to
open them. They remain without, and he declares the fellowship between them
and him has never been more than an outward one, and now is broken altogether.
t What is more in this verse should have no place in the text, and has probably been brought into it from the parallel passages, such as Matt. xxiv. 44. It is
excluded by Lachmann.




216                     THE TEN VIRGINS.
dent in Israel went in with him to the feast, the foolish tarried without
Thus too he came at the Reformation: those that had oil went in: those
that had empty lamps, the form of godliness without the power, tarried
without. Each of these was an example of that which should be more
signally fulfilled at the end.
It remains to say a few words on the relation in which this parable
stands to that of the Marriage of the King's Son, and how it happens
that in that the unworthy guest actually finds admission to the marriage
supper, and is only from thence cast out, while in this the foolish virgins
are not so much as admitted to the feast. It might indeed be answered,
that this is accidental,-that the differences grow out of the different construction of the two parables; but by such answers every thing that is
distinctive in the parables may be explained away: and we treat them
with greater respect, when we look for some deeper lying reason. The
explanation seems to be, that the marriage festivities which are there
spoken of, are different from these.  In Gerhard's words, " Those are
celebrated in this life in the Church militant, these at the last day in the
Church triumphant. To those, even they are admitted who are not
adorned with the wedding garment, but to these only they to whom it is
granted that they should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for
the fine linen is the righteousness of saints (Rev. xix. 8); to those, men
are called by the trumpet of the Gospel;-to these, by the trumpet of
the Archangel.  To those, who enter, can again go out from them, or
be cast out;-who is once introduced to these, never goes out, nor is
cast out from them any more: wherefore it is said,' The door was
shut.' "-We may finish the consideration of this exquisite parable with
the words in which Augustine concludes a homily* upon it: "Now
we labor, and our lamps fluctuate among the gusts and temptations of
* Serm. 93, c. 10.-Besides the passage referred to p. 214, note, there is another in Luke (xii. 35-38) offering many analogies to this parable, though with
differences as well. The faithful appear there not as virgins but as servants, that is,
their active labor for their Lord is more brought out, and they are waiting for him
not as here when he shall come to, but when he shall return from, the wedding
(rode &vaAvceL eK cT&v -yld wv), from the heavenly bridal, the union with the Church
tn heaven. The warning to a preparedness to meet him clothes itself under images
not exactly similar. They must have their loins girt up (Jer. i. 17; 1 Pet. i. 13),
and their lights burning-that is, they must be prompt and succinct to wait upon
him, and his home must be bright and beaming with lights. The festival must
be prepared which should celebrate his return, and his admission must be without
delay, and then that which they have prepared for him shall indeed prove to have
been prepared for themselves; " He shall gird himself and make them to sit down
to meat, and come forth, and serve them." What he did at the Paschal Supper
(John xii. 4), shall prove but a prophecy of what he shall repeat in a more glorious
manner at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.




THE TEN VIRGINS.                           217
the present world; but only let us give heed that our flame burn in
such strength, that the winds of temptation may rather fan the flame
than extinguish it."*
* In early times and in the middle ages this parable was a very favorite subject
of Christian Art. Munter ($innbilden. d. Alt. Christ., v. 2, p. 91) mentions a picture of the five wise virgins in the Cemetery of the Church of St. Agnes, at Rome,
probably of very early date; and Caumont (Archit. Relig. au Moyen Age, p. 345),
describing the representations of the Last Judgment so often found over the great
western door of a Cathedral, says: On recontre parfois dans les voussures des portes dix statuettes de femmes, les unes tenant soigneusement a deux mains uno
lampe en forme de coupe; les autres tenant negligemment d'une seule main la
meme lampe renvers6e. Le Sculpteur a toujours eu soin de placer les Vierges
sages a la droit du Christ, et du c6te des bienheureux: les Vierges folles a sa
gauche, du c6te des r6prouv6s. For many further details of interest, see DIDRON'S
Manuel d' Inconographie Chrtietone, p. 217.




XIV.
THE TALENTS.
MATTHEW XXV. 14-30.
WHILE the virgins were represented as waiting for the Lord, we have
here the servants working for him:-there the inward spiritual rest of
the Christian was described,-here his external activity. There, by the
end of the foolish virgins, we were warned against declensions and decays in the inward spiritual life,-here against sluggishness and sloth
in our outward vocation and work. That parable enforced the need of
keeping the heart with all diligence, this the need of giving all diligence
also to the outward work, if we would be found of Christ in peace at the
day of his appearing. It is not, therefore, without good reason that
they appear in their actual order, that of the Virgins first, and the Talents
following, since the sole condition of a profitable outward work for the
kingdom of God, is that the life of God be diligently maintained within
the heart.* Or there is another light in which we may consider the
distinction between the virgins and the servants, that the first represent
the more contemplative,-the last, the more active working members of
the Church,-a distinction universally recognized in early times, though
of late nearly lost sight of among us. It is true that every member of
the Church ought to partake of both, of action and contemplation, so that
even under this view both the parables will still keep their application
to all; but one element may predominate in one, the other in another:
the endeavor of each must be harmoniously to proportion them in his
own case, according to the gifts which he finds within himself, and the
needs which he sees in others around him.
We meet with another recension, so to speak, of this parable at Mark
* Or they may be co-ordinated with one another. Thus Gerhard (Harm. Evang.,
0.164): Lampas fulgens est talentum usui datum, lampas extincta, talentul otio.
sum et in terrain absconditum.




THE TALENTS.                        219
xiii. 34, with not unimportant variations, as there also are traces at the
same place of the ten virgins (" Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping," ver. 36); the whole, however, which St. Matthew records more
distinctly, being by St. Mark blended together, and more briefly recorded.
There is no doubt, however, that it is the same discourse which both
Evangelists are relating, as in both it occurs immediately after the warning concerning the calamities of the last days. St. Luke (xix. 11) has
recorded for us a parable very similar to this one, but certainly not
identical, however some expositors, as Maldonatus, may have affirmed
the identity of the two.* But every thing is against this. The time
and place are different; the parable which Luke records, having been
spoken when Jesus was now drawing near to Jerusalem, but had not
yet made his triumphal entry,-this, while he was seated on the Mount
of Olives, the third day after his entry into the city. That was spoken
to the multitude as well as to his disciples; this in the innermost circle
of his own most trusted followers, of those to whom he was about to confide the carrying forward of the great work which he had himself commenced on earth. The scope of that, which is the more complex parable,
is twofold, and may be thus defined. The multitude, and perhaps many
that were following the Lord with true hearts, thought that he was now
going to take his kingdom and to reign-to sit on the throne of his father
David at Jerusalem. He would teach them, on the contrary, that there
must yet be a long interval ere that should be,-that he must go away,
and only after a long period return, and that not till that period had elapsed,
should the powers that opposed his kingdom be effectually put down. *In
the mean time (and here is the point of contact between the two parables),
those who stood to him in the relation of servants and friends, were not
to be idly waiting the time of his coming back, but should seek earnestly
to forward his interests according to the ability which was given them,
being sure that at his return he would reward each according as his
work should be;-at which time of his return, as St. Luke, in accordance to the plan of his parable, relates, he would also utterly destroy his
enemies,-break in pieces with the rod of his anger those who refused to
bow to the sceptre of his love. The scope of his parable then is twofold. It is addressed, in part, to that giddy light-minded multitude, who
were following Jesus with an expectation that his cause would speedily
triumph, and who, when they should find their expectations disappointed,
might, perhaps, many of them turn against him and join in the cry,
Crucify him. He warns them that his triumph over his enemies, though
not speedy, yet should be certain, even as it would be terrible: it con* The arguments against the identity of the two parables are well stated by
Gerhard. (Harm. Evang., c. 154, ad init.)




220                       THE TALENTS.
tains for them a double warning, that they be not offended or prevented
from attaching themselves yet closer to him and to his Church by the things
which should befall him at Jerusalem; and that, least of all, they should
suffer themselves to be drawn into the ranks of his foes, since these were
doomed to an utter destruction. For the disciples also it contains a
warning, that this long period which should intervene before his coming
again in glory and in power, was not to be for them a period of sloth
and inactivity, but a time in which they would be required to show all
good fidelity to their absent Lord: which fidelity would by him be acknowledged and abundantly rewarded, even as negligence and sloth
would meet also their due recompense of reward.
Here it is at once evident how idle the objections are which have
lately been brought against the parable as given by the third Evangelist.
The objector* imagines that he detects there, as in the case of the Marriage of the King's Son, a blending together, through loose and floating
tradition, of heterogeneous materials,-that in fact we have there, joined
in one, what ought to be two parables, and this so awkwardly that the
joinings are plainly discernible-the occasion of their confusion being
that they both turned upon the common fact of a lord absenting himself
from his home for a while. He observes that servants'and citizens
stand in no relation to one another, that with the very slightest alterations, ver. 12, 14, 15, 27, would form a complete whole, and standing by
themselves might be entitled the parable of the Rebellious Citizens: the
remaining verses would form the parable of the Pounds, which would
theh be free from all admixture of foreign elements.t
But only let that be kept in mind which this objector seems to have
forgotten, or never to have perceived, that there were two groups of
hearers in different states of mind and needing different admonitions, to
whom the Lord addressed the parable which has been recorded in St.
Luke, and it will at once be perceived how he divided to all, to his own
disciples and to the multitude, according to their different needs. In
Luke the parable is of necessity more complex, as having a more complex purpose to fulfil. In Matthew it is simpler; for it is addressed to
the disciples, or rather to the apostles alone, and the parts there meant
for the multitude would be superfluous here, and accordingly find no
place.
* STRAUSS, Leben Jesm, v. 1, p. 675.
t This view is not new: indeed his whole book is little more than a mustering
up and setting in array objections which had been made, and most of them answered, long ago. Unger on the same ground of the lack of unity in this parable,
says (De Par. J. Nat., p. 130): Itaque simplicem apud Matthaeum parabolam, et
omnium Christi parabolarum simplicitatem atque unitatem recordanti mihi Lucas
visus est cum illa simplici parabola hic alteram similem, sed alias et aliter prolatam, in unam composuisse.




THE TALENTS.                         221
To the apostles then and to none other the parable of the Talents
which alone concerns us now, was spoken. It is needful for the right
understanding of its outward circumstances, that we keep in mind the
relation of masters and slaves in antiquity: for that between masters and
servants, as it now exists among us, affords no satisfactory explanation.
The master of a household going away does not leave with his servants,
and it is foreign to all the relations between them, moneys wherewith to
trade in his absence; nor if he did, could he punish them on his return
for neglect of duty, as the slothful servant is here punished. But slaves
in antiquity were often artisans, or were allowed otherwise to engage
freely in business, paying, as it was frequently arranged, a fixed yearly
Fum to their master: or as here, they had money given them wherewith
to trade on his account, or with which to enlarge their business, and to
bring him in a share of their profits.* In the present instance something of the sort is assumed, when it is said, " The kingdom of heaven is
as a man travelling into afar country, who called his ownt servants and
delivered to them his goods."  It was " a far country" into which the
Lord Jesus Christ was about to travel; and that his servants might be
furnished in his absence, he was about to intrust them, and all their
successors, whose representatives they were, with many excellent gifts.
The day of Pentecost was no doubt the time when the goods, that is,
spiritual powers and capacities, were by him most manifestly and most
abundantly communicated to his servants, that they might profit withal.
(Ephes. iv. 8-12.) Yet was not that the first occasion when they were
so given; the Lord had communicated to them much during his earthly
sojourn with them (John xv. 3), and before his ascension (John xx. 22),
and from that day forth he has been evermore delivering his goods to
each successive generation of his servants. This being so, the parable
has application to all times;-yet primarily to all persons: it was
first addressed to the apostles alone, and the gifts for the exercise of the
ministry, the powers which Christ has given to his Church, are signified,
in the first place, by the committed talents. Seeing, however, that all
are called in their measure to edify one another, that all Christians have
a spiritual vocation, and are intrusted with gifts, more or fewer, for
which they will have to render an account, the parable is applicable to
* See Mr. GRESWELL'S Exp. of the Par., v 5 part 2, p. 27, seq., and the Diet.
of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Servus, pp. 867, 873.
t It should not be " his own servants;" for there is no emphasis here on the
ib8ovs. It is only the same misuse that in later Latin has proprius for suus or ejus.
So Matt. xxii. 5, &7rjXey eLs AbY 1BLov &aypY.: Auct. Oper. Imperf., Hom. 53: Ad Patrem iturus, peregre se iturum dicit;
propter caritatem sanctorum, quos relinquebat in terris, cnm magis peregre esset
in mundo.




222                        THE TALENTS.
all. While, too, it has relation first to spiritual gifts and capacities,
yet it has not therefore no relation to those other gifts and endowments,
as wealth, reputation, ability, which, though not in themselves spiritual,
are yet given to men that they may be turned to spiritual ends,-are
capable of being sanctified to the Lord, and consecrated to his service,
and for the use or abuse of which, the possessors will have also to render
an account. There is, indeed, a witness for this in our English word
"talent," which has come to signify any mental endowments, faculties,
or powers whatever, a use which is of course entirely the growth of this
parable, even as it is a proof of the manner in which it has worked itself
into the thoughts and language of men.
But different men receive these gifts in very different proportions:
" Unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to
every man according to his several ability."  It is not that the gifts, as
Theophylact explains it, were to each " according to the measure of his
faith and purity," for the faith which purifies is itself one of the chiefest
of these gifts: but to each according to his ability, inasmuch as the natural is the ground upon which the spiritual is superinduced, and grace
does not dissolve the groundwork of the individual character, nor abolish
all its peculiarities, nor bring all that are subject to it to a common
standard. (See 1 Cor. xii. 4-31; Ephes. iv. 16.) The natural gifts are
as the vessel, which may be large or may be small, and which receives
according to its capacity;t but which in each case is filled; so that we
are not to think of him who had received the two talents, as incompletely
furnished in comparison with him that had received the five, any more
than we should affirm a small circle incomplete as compared with a large.
Unfitted he might be for so wide a sphere of labor, but altogether as
perfectly equipped for that to which he was destined: for " there are
diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit,"-and as the body is not all eye,
nor are all in an army generals or captains,f so neither in the Church
are all furnished to be leaders and governors. Yet while we speak of
natural capacity as being the vessel for receiving the wine of the Spirit,
we must not leave out of account, that comparative unfaithfulness, stopping short indeed of that which would cause the gift to be quite taken
away, will yet narrow the vessel; even as fidelity has this tendencyto dilate it, so that the person with far inferior natural gifts yet often
* Cajetan: Disponit siquidem Dens in Ecclesia suaviter omnia: neminem onerat
supra vires, nulli negat donum congruum suis viribus.
t Jerome:*Christus doctrinam Evangelicam tradidit, non pro largitate et parcitate alteri plus, et alteri minus tribuens, sed pro accipien tum viribus; quormod6
et apostolus eos qui solidum cibum capere non poterant, lacte potasse se dicit.
J See CLEMENS ROM. ad Corinth., c, 37, where this comparison is used.




THE TALENTS.                         223
brings in a far more abundant harvest, than one with superior powers,
who yet does bring in something.
Having thus committed the talents to his servants, and divided wisely
unto each according to his several powers, the lord, without more delay,' straightway took his journey:"  In the things earthly the householder's
distribution of the gifts naturally and of necessityprecedes his departure;
in the heavenly it is not altogether so; the Ascension, or departure, goes
before Pentecost, or the distribution of gifts; yet the " straightway " still
remains in full force: the interval between them was the smallest, one
following hard upon the other, however the order was reversed. The
three verses which follow (17-19) embrace the whole period intervening
between the first and second coming of Christ. Two of the servants,
those to whom the largest moneys have been committed, lay out those
sums with diligence and success. These are the representatives of all
that are diligent and faithful in their office and ministry, whatsoever that
may be.   There is this variation between our parable and St. Luke's,
that here the faithful servants multiply their unequal sums in the same
proportions: " He that had received the ive talents, mnacle them otherfive
talents," and again, " he that had received the two, he also gained other
two;"-while there they multiply their equal sums in different proportion; all had alike received a pound, but one gained with that pound ten
pounds, and another five. Two most important truths are thus brought
out, as it could not have conveniently been done in a single narrationfirst by St. Matthew this truth, that according as we have received will
it be expected from us-and this secondly by St. Luke, that as men differ in fidelity, in zeal, in labor, so will they differ in the amount of their
spiritual gains.-But if two of the servants were thus faithful in the
things committed to them, it was otherwise with the third  " He that
had received one" talent, "went and digged in the earth, and hid his
lord's money "-an apt image for the failing to use divinely imparted
gifts, for "Wisdom  that is hid, and treasure that.is hoarded up, what
profit is in them both? Better is he that hideth his folly, than a man
that hideth his wisdom."*  (Sirach, xx. 30, 31.) In St. Luke he hides
his pound in a napkin, but that would have been impossible with so large
*Compare Shakspeare:"Heaven does with us, as we with torches do:
Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us,'twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched
But for fine issues: nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But like a thrifty goddess she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use."




224                        THE TALENTS.
a sum as a talent, which is, therefore, more fitly said to have been con.
cealed in the earth.*
" After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth
with them."  In the joyful coming forward of the faithful servants, we
see an example of boldness in the day of judgment: they had something
to show, as Paul so earnestly desired that he might have, when he said
to his beloved Thessalonian converts, " What is our hope, or joy, or crown
of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ
at his coming?" (1 Thess. ii. 19; 2 Cor. i. 14; Phil. iv. 1.) In St.
Matthew the faithful servant comes forward, saying, " Behold, I have
gained," while in St. Luke it is," Thy pound hath gained;" thus between them they make up the speech of St. Paul, " I-yet not I, but the
grace of God that was with me."   And even in St. Matthew, " I have
rained " is preceded by that other word " thou deliveredst me;" it is only
thy gift which I have so multiplied.  In St. Matthew, as.has been observed, the gain is according to the talents, five for five, and two for two.
Consistently with this, the commendation of the servants is expressed in
exactly the same language, even as the reward to each is precisely the
same: to each it is said, " Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord,"t that
is, become a sharer of my joy. No doubt the image underlying this
language is, that the master celebrates his return by a great festival, to.which each of the servants, as soon as he has rendered his accounts, and
shown that he has been true to his master's interests in his absence, is
bidden freely to enter. It is well known that under certain circumstances
the master's inviting his slave to sit down with him at table, did itself
constitute the act of manumission; henceforth he was free.t   Perhaps
* Jerome (Ad Damas.) finds a further distinction between hiding in the earth
and in a napkin: Hoc talentum non est in sudario colligandum, id est, delicate
otiosbque tractandum, nec in terra defodiendum, terrenis scilicet cogitationibus
obscurandum.
t Leighton's words on this entering into the joy of the Lord are beautiful: "It
is but little we can receive here, some drops of joy that enter into us, but there we
shall enter into joy, as vessels put into a sea of happiness." Gerhard has the same
thought: Tam magnum enim erit illud gaudium, ut non possit in homine concludi vel ab eo comprehendi, ideo homo intrat in illud incomprehensibile gaudium,
non autem intrat illud in hominem velut ab homine comprehensum; and H. de
Sto. Victore (Erud. Theol., 1.3) says on this joy of the Lord: Triplex est gaudium:
est gaudium seculi, est gaudium tuum, est gaudium Domini tui. Primum est de
terrena affluentia: secundum de bonA conscientia: tertium de seternitatis experientia. Non igitur exeas in gaudium seculi, non remaneas in gaudio tuo, sed intres
gaudlum Domini tui... Ad primum exivit homo, cum cecidit de paradiso: ad
secundum venire incipit, cim per fidem reconciliatus Deo. Tunc autem ad tertium
perveniet, cum videndo ipsum sicuti est in seternum frueter ipso.: See the Diet. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Manumissio, p. 596.




THE TALENTS.                        225
tilere may be here allusion to something of the kind-the incorporation
in an act of what once he had spoken in words, " Henceforth I call you
not servants,. but I have called you friends."  (John xv. 15; Luke
xii. 37; Rev. iii. 20.)
But there remains one who has not yet given in his account, and it
has been often observed how solemn a warning there is, and to how many,
in the fact, that he to whom only the one talent had been committed, is
the one who is found faulty-since an excuse like the following might
very easily occur to such: " So little is committed to my charge, that it
matters not how I administer that little; at the best I cannot do much
for God's glory; what signifies the little, whether it be done or left undone?" But here we are instructed that the Lord looks for fidelity in
little as well as in much.* We can well understand why he should
have lingered to the lEst, being reluctant to appear in the presence of hig
lord. It is true that he had not wasted his master's goods like the Unjust Stlward, nor spent all his portion in riotous living like the Prodigal,
nor was he tennhtUsand talents in debt like the Unmerciful Servant;
and it is an entire mistake to mix up his case with theirs, when it should
be kept entirely distinct. The consequence of such confounding his guiLt
with theirs would be, that the very persons whose consciences the parable was meant to reach would evade its force. When we weave the
meshes of the spiritual net so large, all but the very worst offenders are
able to slip through: and the parable is not for such, not for those that
are evidently by their lives and actions denying that they count Christ
to be their Lord and Master at all: it is not for them who thus squander
their talent, or deny that they have ever received one: the law, and their
own hearts, tell them sufficiently plainly of their sin and danger. But
the warning we have here is for them who hid their talent, who being
equipped for a sphere of activity in the kingdom of God, do yet choose,
to use Bacon's words, "a goodness solitary and particular, rather than
generative and seminal." There is great danger that such might deceive
themselves, as there are so many temptations to a shrinking from the
labor and the toil involved in a diligent laying out of our talent. There
is a show of humility in the excuses that a person so inclined would
make; as for instance, " The care of my own soul is sufficient to occupy
me wholly;-the responsibility of any spiritual work is so great, so awful,
that I dare not undertake it;-while I am employed about the souls of
others, I may perhaps be losing my own." We read repeatedly of those
in the early Church, who on grounds like these, persisted in refusing
* Grotius: In eo cui minimum erat concreditum negligentiae exemplum posuit
Christus, ne quis speraret excusatum se iri ab omni labore, ideo quod non eximia
dona accepisset.
15




226                        THE TALENTS.
charges to which they were called, and when they should have been the
salt to salt the earth, chose rather to retire into caves and wildernesses,
forsaking their brethren, whom they were called to serve in the active
ministries of love.*
- The warning then is addressed to such as might be tempted to fol.
low after this goodness solitary and particular, instead of serving their
generation according to the will of God. The root out of which this
mischief grows is laid bare in the words which this slothful servant utters,
"Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man."       It has its rise, as
almost every thing else that is evil, in a false view of the character of
God. For we must not understand this speech as an excuse framed
merely for the occasion, but it is the true out-speaking of the inmost
heart, the exact expression of the aspect in which the servant did actually regard his lord. The churl accounted him churlish, thought him
even such an one as himself: he did not believe in his lord's forgiving
love, and in his gracious acceptance of the work with all its faults,
which was done for him out of a true heart, and with a sincere desire to
please him. This was his wilful and guilty ignorance concerning the
true character of the master whom he was called to serve. But to know
God's name is to trust in him.  They indeed who undertake a ministry
in his Church, or any work for him, are well aware that they shall commit manifold mistakes in that ministry, which they might avoid, if they
declined that ministry altogether,-even many sins in handling divine
things which they might escape, if they wholly refused that charge.t
* Augustine, in a sermon preached on the anniversary of his exaltation to the
episcopal dignity (Serm. 339, c. 3), makes striking use of this parable, while he is
speaking of the temptation, whereof he was conscious, to withdraw from the active
-labor in the Church, and to cultivate a solitary piety: Si non erogem, et pecuniam
servem, terret me Evangelium. Possem enim dicere: Quid mihi est taedio esse
hominibus, dicere iniquis, Iniqub agere nolite, sic agite, sic agere desistite. Quid
mihi est oneri esse hominibus? Accepi quomodo vivam, quomodo jussus sum,
quomodo prseceptus sum, assignem quodo accepi; de aliis me reddere rationem
quo mihi 2 Evangelium me terret. Nam ad istam securitatem otiosissimam nemo
me vinceret: nihil est melius, nihil dulcius, quam divinum scrutari, nullo strepente,
thesaurum; dulce est, bonum est. Praedicare, arguere, corripere, edificare, pro.unoquoque satagere, magnum:onus, magnum pondus, magnus labor. Quis non refugiat istum laborem. Sed terret Evangelium. And again (In Ev. Jol., 7Tact.
10): Si autem fueris frigidus, marcidus, ad te solum spectans, et quasi tibi sufficiens, et dicens in corde tuo: Quid mihi est curare aliena peccata, sufficit mihi anima
mea, ipsam integram servem Deo: Eja non tibi venit in mentem servus ille qui
abscondit talentum et noluit erogare. nunquid enim accusatus est, quia perdidit,,
et non quia sine lucro servavit? Compare what he beautifully says, Enar. in Ps.
xcix. 2; and also De Fide et Oper., c. 17.
t This sense of the careful and accurate handling which all divine things require, and the exceeding gravity of a fault therein, though very liable of being




THE TALENTS.                           227
But shall those who are competently furnished and evidently called, be
therefore justified or excused in doing so? would they not, so acting,
share in the condemnation of this servant? would they not testify thereby that they thought of God, as he thought of his master-that he was
a hard* lord-extreme to mark what was amiss-making no allowances, accepting never the will for the deed, but watching to take advantage of the least failure or mistake on the part of his servants?
Nor does the sluggard in the parable stop here. If only he may roll
off a charge from himself, he cares not for affixing one to his lord. Ia
his speech, half cowering and half defying, and in this respect, a wonderful picture of the sinner's bearing towards God, he shrinks not from
attributing to him the character of a harsh unreasonable despot, who
requires the bricks but refuses the straw (Exod. v. 7), who would reap
what he has not sown, and gather whence he has not strawed.t In these
words he givesevidence that he as entirely has mistaken the nature of
the work to which he was called, as the character of the master for whom
it should have been done.  In the darkness of his heart he regards the
pleaded as here by the slothful and the false-hearted, and ever needing, even when
most true, to be balanced by other thoughts concerning God, is yet in itself a high
grace, and has a word of its own to express it, EiX&ELta, from  3 XaucJdveiv, those
divine things being contemplated as costly yet delicate vessels, which must needs
be handled with extreme wariness and even fear.
* The orRX7pJs here is stronger than the aroa-rtp&r of Luke xix. 21; that word
being sometimes used in a good sense, which this is never; thus Plutarch: tv c&ppwv ial avo7qp'rpv. This last is an epithet properly applied to fruit or wine, which
is crude, unripe, sour, wanting in mellowness, and would find its opposite in Xpnov-'rs (Luke v. 39), so the Latin austerus.continually, which is opposed to the dulcis.
But a-KrxpJs is an epithet given to a surface which is at once dry and hard, as
through drought, involving alike the asper and the durus, and is opposed to  XAsctK6s and Vyphs. Nabal:is o'qX0pbs ral 7rovpJr (1 Sam. xxv. 3, LXX.) churlish and
evil. Terence (Adelph., v. 4), unfolds the oK'x]pdr, when he describes one as Tristis,
parcus, truculentus, tenax, The words are discriminated in TITMANN'S Synonyms,
c. 10.
t " Styawed" does not refer to the strewing of the seed, for then he would but
be saying the same thing twice. Rather there is a step in the process of the harvest. " Where thou hast not strawed," or better, scattered with the fan on the barn
floor, there expectest thou to "gather" with the rake: as one who will not be at
the trouble to purge away the chaff, yet expects to gather in the golden grains into
his store. (Matt. iii. 12.) 4lerKdp7rriaas, the word here used, could scarcely be applied to the measured and orderly scattering of the sower's seed. It is rather the
dispersing, making to fly in every direction, as a pursuer the routed enemy (Luke
i. 51; Acts v. 37); or as the wolf the sheep (Matt. xxvi. 31), or as the Prodigal his
goods (Luke xv. 13; xvi. 1); or as here, the husbandman the chaff. Thus rightly
Schott on this 5eEKoJp7rinas: Notionem ventilandi frumentum in area repositum
exprimit.
t Aquinas asserts well the true doctrine, which this servant denies: Deus nihil




228                            THE TALENTS.
work as something outward-as something to be done for God, instead of
being a work to be wrought in him, or rather, which he would work in
and through his servants. He thought that God called to a labor, and
gave no ability for the labor,-that he laid on a task, which was a mere
task, and put no joy nor consolation into the hearts of them that fulfilled
it: no wonder then that he should shrink from          it.   Thus, he goes on
to say, "I was afraid;"* he justifies the caution and timidity which
he had shown, and how it was that he would attempt nothing and
venture upon nothing: he feared to trade on that talent, lest in the
necessary risks of buisness, seeking to gain other he might lose that
one, and so enrage his master against him; even as men might profess
to fear to lay themselves out for the winning of other souls, lest, so
doing, they might endanger their own,-"Lo, there thou hast that is
thine."t   Here it might be asked, how could God's gifts be hidden, and
yet restored to him entire; since the suffering them to lie idle is in fact
one form   of wasting them        In reality they could not be so restored.
It is only that men imagine they can be given back, when they suppose
that keeping the negative precepts is all that God requires of them, and
that doing this they will restore to him his gifts entire, as they received
them.4
requirit ab homine nisi bonum quod ipse in nobis seminavit; and Augustine, put.
ting the same truth in the form of a prayer: Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis.
* Hilary (Comm. in Matth., in loc.) has a remarkable use of the words " I was
afraid." It is, he says, the voice of them that choose to abide, as the Jew, in the
law and in the spirit of bondage, shrinking from the liberty and activity of Christian service: Timui te, tanquam per reverentiam et metum veterum prceceptorum
usu Evangelicze libertatis abstineat.
t Cocceius: Jactatio superba conservati talenti significat fiduciam et securita.
tem ejus qui sibi facile satisfacit. See SUICER'S Thes. s. v. rdcavrov.
t There is an instructive Eastern tale, which in its deeper meaning runs re.
markably parallel to this parable. It is as follows:
There went a man from home: and to his neighbors twain
He gave, to keep for him, two sacks of golden grain.
Deep in his cellar one the precious charge concealed;
And forth the other went and strewed it in his field.
The man returns at last-asks of the first his sack:
"Here take it;'tis the same; thou hast it safely back."
Unharmed it shows without; but when he would explore
His sack's recesses, corn there finds he now no more:
One half of what was there proves rotten and decayed,
Upon the other half have worm and mildew preyed.
The putrid heap to him in ire he doth return,
Then of the other asks, " Where is my sack of corn 1'
Who answered, " Come with me and see how it has sped"And took and showed him fields with waving harvests spread
Then cheerfully the man laughed out and cried, " This one
Had insight, to make up for the other that had none.
The letter he observed, but thou the precept's sense,
And thus to thee and me shall profit grow from hence;
In harvest thou shalt fill two sacks of corn for me,
The residue of right remains in full for thee"




THE TALENTS.                           229
But his lord answers him on his own grounds, and making his own
mouth condemn him (Job. xv. 6; 2 Sam. i. 16); nor does he take the
trouble to dispute or deny the truth of the character which his servant
had given him:-" Thou wicked and slothful servant;"        wicked," in
that he defended himself by calumniating his lord, and "slothful," as his
whole conduct has shown,' thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not,
and gather where I had not strawed;-that is, Be itso, grant me to be
such as thou describest, severe and exacting, yet even then thou art not
cleared, for thou oughtest to have done me justice still; and there was a
safe way, by which thou mightest have done this, with little or no peril
to thyself; and thereby have obtained for me, if not the large gains, which
were possible through some bolder course, yet something, some small but
certain return for my moneys;-Thou oughtest, therefore, to have put my
money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received
mine own with usury."* This putting the money to the exchangers,.
Olshausen ingeniously explains: "Those timid natures which are not
suited to independent labor in the kingdom of God, are here counselled
at least to attach themselves to other stronger characters, under whose
leading they may lay out their gifts to the service of the Church."t
*:v r dcq,, with increase. So fenus is explained by Varro, a fetu et quasi a
fetur& quidam pecuniae parientis atque increscentis. To estimate how great the
master's gains even in this way might have been, we must keep in mind the high
rates of interest paid in antiquity. See the Diet. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Interest of Money, p. 523; and see also the lively chapter in BECKER'S Charikles, v. 1,
p. 237, for a graphic description of the Tpa7re'iaIt, the bankers of antiquity.
t Cajetan has nearly the same explanation: Intendit per hoc, quod si non
ausus fuit uti dono Dei in actionibus multi periculi, uti tamen debuit illo, in actionibus in quibus est lucrum cum parvo periculo. Teelman (Comm. in Luc. xvi.)
has a curious explanation of this giving the money to the TpaTreSZau, starting from
the notion that the business of these money-changers was in itself and necessarily
unfair; " If you thought me this unfair man, why were you not consistent?-why
did you not seek for me the gains which you must then have supposed would have
been welcome to me I" not saying this as though he would have had him so to
have done, but only convicting him of conduct inconsistent with his own assertions.
— It is an interesting question, whether the saying so often quoted in the early
Church as our Lord's, and not any where to be found in the New Testament, riveOa<e h8KtIO (or KaXof, or (pp^YlioJ) rpaire'iTat, has its origin here. Many have
thought they found it in this passage, but it is difficult to see on what ground, except that the word Tpa7reCTra here occurs. The point of that exhortation is evidently this: Be as experienced money-changers, who readily distinguish the good
from the bad coin, receiving the one but rejecting the other. Now in this parable,
there is no direct or indirect comparisdo of the disciples with money-changers, and
such an exhortation lies wholly aloof from its aim and scope. The words can as
little be said to be implicitly contained in the parable, as they can to be plainly
read in the text, though it is true that SUICER (Thes., s. v. rpawreCiTs), defends this
view. The precept would be much more easily deduced from 1 Thess. v. 21, 22;




230                        THE TALENTS.
This explanation has the advantage' that it makes these words na
merely useful to add vivacity to the narrative, as the natural exclama.
tion of an offended master,-but gives them likewise a spiritual signifi
eance, which is not generally sought in them, but which, if they yield it
easily and naturally, must by no means be rejected. Certainly this
meaning is better than that which Jerome proposes, that the moneychangers are believers in general, to whom the intrusted word of grace
should have been committed, that they, trying it, and rejecting any
erroneous doctrine which might be admingled with;t, but holding fast
what was good, might be enriched with the knowledge of God.       Such
can hardly be the meaning, for that is the very thing which the servant
ought to have done in the first instance, boldly to have laid out his gift
for the profit and edification of his brethren; while this of committing
the talent to the money-changers is only the alternative proposed to him,
in case he had shrunk from that other and more excellent way.
And hereupon, his doom who neither in one way or the other had
sought his master's interests, is pronounced; it consists first, in the loss
of the talent which he had suffered to lie idle,-" Take, therefore. the
talent from  him.'*  We have here a limitation of Rom. xi. 29.    This
deprivation may be considered partly as the directly penal, and partly
as the natural consequence of his sloth.    For there is this analogy
between the course of things in the natural and in the spiritual world,
that as a limb which is never called into exercise loses its strength by
degrees-its muscles and sinews disappear,-even so the gifts of God,
unexercised, fade and fail from us: "From  him  that hath not shall be
taken away even that which he hath..'"   And on the other contrary, as
even as we find yfiv, 8J. Tpar. sometimes called an apostolic saying, attributed by
many of the Fathers not to the Lord but to one of his apostles, or to St. Paul by
name, and by some, indeed, even inserted before this very passage,-for examples,
see Suicer; and the whole question is thoroughly discussed by Hansel, in the
Theol. Stud. und Krit., for 1836, p. 179. He maintains this latter origin of the
words. See also COTELERII Patt. Apostol., v. 1, p. 249, and the Annott. in Euseb.,
Oxford, 1842, v. 1, p. 930.-There being mention of interest here, rpcnreCt7r is the
fitter word than KohB\ vJua s, which, however, rightly finds place, Matt. xxi. 12;
Mark xi. 15. Jerome (Comm. in tMatth. xxi. 12, 13,) has a singular, but erroneous
derivation of the last word.
* Augustine asks here (Enarr. in Ps. xxxviii. 4): Quid exspectare debent, qui
cum luxuria consumserunt, si damnatur qui cum pigritia servaverunt? And again,
InteUigatur poena interversoris ex poenm pigri
t Chrysostom (De Christ. Prec., Con. Anom., 10) has two other comparisons, to
set forth that the grace unused will quickly depart: " For as the corn, if it be let
lie for ever in the barns, is consumed, being devoured of theworm; but if it is
brought forth and cast into the field, is multiplied and renewed again: so also the
spiritual word, if it be evermore shut up within the soul, being consumed and
eaten into by envy and sloth, and decay, is quickly extinguished; but, if, as on a




THE TALENTS.                           231
the limb is not wasted by strenuous exertion, but rather by it nerved
and strengthened, not otherwise is it also with the gifts of God; they
are multiplied by being laid out: "Unto every one that hath shall be
given, and he shall have abundance."      "The earth which bringeth
forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing,"
that is, a farther blessing, the gift of a continued fruitfulness "from
God."   (Heb. vi. 7.)  Nor is it merely that the one receives more, and
the other loses what he had; but that very gift which the one loses the
other receives; he is enriched with a talent takenfrom the other; while
on his part, another takes his crown.  We see this continually; one by
the providence of God steps into the place and the opportunities which
another left unused, and so has forfeited. (1 Sam. xv. 28.)
For this taking away of the unused talent which will find its complete consummation at the day of judgment, yet is also in this present
time continually going forward. And herein is mercy, that it is not done
all at once, but by little and little, so that till all is withdrawn, there is
still the opportunity of recovering all: at each successive withdrawal,
there is some warning to hold fast what still is left, " to strengthen the
things which remain that are ready to die." It is quite true that at each
successive stage of the decline, the effort required for this is greater,the strength for it less: but to complain of this, is to complain that sin
is sin, that it has any curse with it; and however this is the mournful
truth, yet, at the same time, it remains always possible, till the last spark
is extinguished, to blow up that spark again into a flame: even the sense
of the increasing darkness may be that which shall arouse the man to a
serious sense of his danger, and to the need of an earnest revival of
God's work in his soul. But this servant had never awoke to the sense
fertile field, it is scattered on the souls of the brethren, the treasure is multiplied
to them that receive it, and to him that possessed it;-and as a fountain from
which water is continually drawn forth, is thereby rather purified, and bubbles up
the more; but being stanched fails altogether, so the spiritual gift and word of
doctrine, if it be continually drawn forth, and if who will has liberty to share it,
rises up the more; but if restrained by envy and a grudging spirit, diminishes, and
at last perishes altogether."-Augustine too, (or Csesarius, as the Benedictine
editors affirm, August. Opp., v. 5, p. 81, Appendix) has an admirable discourse on
the manner in which gifts multiply through being imparted, and diminish through
being withholden. It is throughout an application of the story of the widow (2
Kin. iv.) whose two sons Elisha redeemed from bondage, by multiplying the oil
which she had in her single vessel so long as she provided other vessels into which
to pour it, but which, when she had no more, at once stopped:-et ait Scriptura
stetisse oleum, posteaquam ubi poneret, non invenit. Sic, dilectissimi fratres, tandiu caritas augetur quandiu tribuitur. Et ideo etiam ex industril debemus vasa
quaerere, ubi oleum possumus infundere, quia probavimus quod dum aliis infundimus, plus habemus. Vasa caritatis, homines sunt.




232                      THE TALENTS.
of his danger till it was too late,-till all was irrevocably lost; and now
it is said, not merely that he shall forfeit his talent, but yet further,
"Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be
wailing and gnashing of teeth."  While there is light and joy and
feasting within, to celebrate the master's return, the darkness without
shall be his portion.
The comparison of the causes which led to this servant's exclusion,
and those which led to the exclusion of the foolish virgins, is full of
important instruction for all; the virgins erred through a vain overconfidence, this servant through an under-confidence that was equally
vain and sinful. They were overbold, he was not bold enough. Thus,
as in a chart, the two temptations, as regards our relation to God and his
service,-the two opposing rocks on which faith is in danger of making
shipwreck, are laid down for us, that we may avoid them both. Those
virgins thought it too easy a thing to serve the Lord,-this servant
thought it too hard;-they esteemed it but as the going forth to a
festival which should presently begin, he as a hard, dreary, insupportable work for a thankless master. In them, we have the perils that
beset the sanguine, in him the melancholic, complexion. They were
representatives of a class needing such warnings as this: " Strait is the
gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be that
find it" (Matt. vii. 14); "Work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling" (Phil. ii. 12); "If any man will come after me, let him
deny himself" (Matt. xvi. 24). He was representative of a class that
would need to be reminded: "Ye have not received the spirit of
bondage again to fear" (Rom. viii. 15); "Ye are not come unto the
mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto
blackness, and darkness, and tempest;..... but ye are come unto
Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God,..... and to Jesus,
the Mediator of the new Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that
ipeaketh better things than that of Abel" (Heb. xii, 18, 22, 24).




XV.
THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY.
MARK iv. 26-29.
THIS is the only parable which is peculiar to St. Mark. Like that of
the Leaven, of which it seems to occupy the place, it declares the secret
invisible energy of the divine word,-that it has life in itself, and will
unfold itself according to the law of its own being; and besides what it
has in common with that parable, declares further, that this word of the
kingdom has that in it which will allow it safely to be left to itself.
The main difficulty in the parable is the following: Whom shall we
understand by the man casting seed in the ground?-is it the Son of
man himself, or those who in subordination to him declare the Gospel
of the kingdom? There are embarrassments attending either explanation. If we say that the Lord points to himself as the sower of the seed,
how then shall we explain ver. 27?-it cannot be said of him that he
knows not how* the seed sown in the hearts of his people springs and
grows up; since it is only his continual presence by his Spirit in their
hearts which causes it to grow at all. Neither can he fitly be compared
to a sower who, having scattered his seed, goes his way and occupies
himself in other business, feeling that it lies henceforth beyond the
sphere of his power to further the prosperity of the seed, but that it
must be left to itself, and its own indwelling powers, and that his part
will not begin again till the time of the harvest has come round. 4his
is no fit description of him, who is not merely the author and finisher of
our faith, but who also conducts it through all its intermediate stages:
and without whose blessing and active co-operation it would be totally
unable to make any, even the slightest, progress. Or on the other hand,
* It is a poor way to get out of this difficulty to say with Erasmus, that, "he
knoweth not how," ought rather to be, "it knoweth not how,"-that is, the seed
knoweth not how it grows itself; since, as no one could have supposed that it did,
who would think of denying it.




234              THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY
shall we say that the sower of the seed is here one of the inferior
ministers and messengers of the truth, and that the purpose of the
parable is to teach such, that after the word of life, of which they are
bearers, has found place in any heart, they may be of good confidence,
trusting to its own powers to unfold itself, for it has a life of its own,a life independent of him who may have been the original instrument
for the communication of that life, even as a child, after it is born, has a
life no longer dependent on that of the parents, from which yet it was
originally derived  But then, with this explanation, there is another
and not slighter difficulty; for at ver. 29 it is said, " when the fruit is
brought forth, immediately he" (the same person clearly who sowed
the seed) "putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come."  Of whom
can it be said, save of the Son of man, the Lord of the harvest, that he
putteth in the sickle,-that he gathereth his people, when they are ripe
for glory,-when they have finished their course,-when the work of
faith has been accomplished in their hearts,-into everlasting habitations?  So that the perplexity is this,-If we say that the Lord means
himself by the principal personage in the parable, then something is
attributed to him which seems unworthy of him, less than to him rightly
appertains; while if, on the other hand, we take him to mean those that,
in subordination to himself, are bearers of his word, then something
more, a higher prerogative, as it would seem, is attributed, than can be
admitted to belong rightly to any, save only to him.* I cannot see any
perfectly satisfactory way of escape from this perplexity. It will hardly
do to say, for the purpose of evading the embarrassments which beset the
first explanation, that the circumstances mentioned at ver. 27, are not to
be pressed, and that they belong, not to the body itself, but only to the
drapery, of the parable; for clearly there,-in the sower absenting himself after he has committed the seed to the ground, and in its growing
without him,-is the very point and moral of the whole, and to strike
out that, would be as the striking out of its right eye, leaving it
altogether dark.
Not admitting then this too convenient explanation, I will yet take
the parable as having reference in the first place, though not exclusively,
to She Lord himself, the great Sower of the seed, and it will then remain
to see how far the acknowledged difficulties are capable of being removed
or mitigated. It commences thus:-" So is the kingdom of God, as if
a man should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep, and rise night
and day."  By these last words it is agreed among interpreters,-old
* It would be unjust to deprive Strauss (Leben Jesu, v. 1, p. 664) of the glory
of his theory concerning this parable,-namely, that it is another and imperfect
version of that of the Tares, only with the circumstance of the tares left out!




THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY.                      235
and new, almost without exception,-that is signified.not his carefulness
after having sown the seed, but his absence of such an after-carefulness;* he does not think it necessary to keep watch over his seed after
it has been cast on the ground, but he sleeps securely by night, and by
day he rises and goes about his ordinary business, leaving with full confidence the seed to itself; which meanwhile " should spring and grow
up, he knoweth not how."  These words have no difficulty,-on the con.
trary, are full of most important instruction,-so long as we apply them,
as no doubt we fairly may, to those who under Christ are teachers in his
Church.   They are here implicitly bidden to have faith in the word
which they preach,-in the seed which they sow, for it is the seed of
God; when it has found place in a heart, they are not to be tormented
with anxiety concerning the final issue, but rather to have confidence in
its indwelling power and mightt not supposing that it is they who are
to keep it alive, and that it can only live through them; for this of
maintaining its life is God's part and not theirs, and he undertakes to
fulfil it. They are instructed also to rest satisfied that the seed should
grow and spring up without their knowing exactly how; let them not be
searching at its roots to see how they have stricken into the soil, nor seek
prematurely to anticipate the shooting of the blade, or the forming of the
corn in the ear — for the mystery of the life of God in any and in every
heart is unfathomable,-any attempt to determine that its course shall be
this way, or shall be that way, is only mischievous. It has a law, indeed,
for its orderly development, "first the blade, then the ear, then the full
corn in the ear," but that law is hidden; and as manifold as are the
works of God in nature, so that they never exactly repeat themselves, so
manifold also are they in grace. Therefore let the messengers of the
Gospel be content that the divine word should grow in a mysterious
* So Pole (Synops., in loc,) in a passage woven out of several commentators:
Semente facta transigit securus noctes et dies, segetem Deo committens, nec dubitans quin germinet, ipse agens alia vitae munia. The only interpreter that I know,
who takes an opposite view, is Theophylact, who understands the rising night and
day to mark the continual watchfulness of Christ over his Church. But what then
will the sleeping mean? and, moreover, this explanation goes directly contrary to
the whole aim and purpose of the parable.
t Calvin brings forward this side of the truth, though an important one, yet too
exclusively, when he thus explains the parable: Sermonem ad verbi ministros
dirigit, ne frigidius muneri suo incumbant quia non statim laboris fructus apparet
Ergo illis agricolas ad imitandum proponit, qui sub spe metendi semen in terrain
projiciunt, neque anxia inquietudine torquentur, sed eunt cubitum et surgunt, hoc
est, pro more intenti sunt quotidiano labori, et se nocturna quiete reficiunt, donee
tandem suo tempore maturescat seges. Ergo quamvis verbi semen ad tempus suffocatum lateat, jubet tamen Christus bono animo esse pios doctores, ne diffidentia
illis alacritatem minuat.




236               THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY.
manner, and one of which the processes are hidden from them, and
believing that it is a Divine power and not a human, let them be of
good courage concerning the issue, and having sown the seed, commit
the rest to God in faith, being confident that he will bring his own work
to perfection. Of course this is not meant as though they are not to
follow up the work which has been through their instrumentality commenced.   For, as when it is said "the earth bringeth forth fruit of
herself," this does not exclude the rain, and sun, and all other favorable
influences, so neither, when we say that the seed of God implanted in
any heart has life of its own, is it hereby implied that it will not require
the nourishment suitable for it,-nay, rather it is affirmed that it will
require it; were it a dead thing it would require nothing of the kind,
but because it is living, it has need of that whereon it may feed. But
then it is a different thing to impart life, and to impart the sustenance
for life: this latter the Church has still to do for her children, but then
it is in faith that they have a life of their own once given, and continually maintained from on high, by which they can assimilate to
themselves this spiritual food provided for them, and draw nutriment
from it.
But it still remains to consider, in what sense that which is said of
leaving the seed to itself can be affirmed of Christ. Olshausen suggests
this explanation of the difficulties above noted. It is true, he says, that
the inner spiritual life of men is never in any stage of its development
without the care and watchfulness of the Lord who first communicated
that life: yet are there two moments when he may be said especially to
visit the soul; at the beginning of the spiritual life, which is the seedtime, and again when he takes his people to himself, which is their time
of harvest.* Between these times, lies a period in which the work of
the Lord is going forward without any such manifest interpositions on
his part-not indeed without the daily supply of his Spirit, and the daily
ordering of his providence, but so as that he does not put to his hand so
plainly and immediately as at those two cardinal moments. And the
difficulty will be slighter when we make application of the parable,-as
* We may compare Job v. 26: " Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age,
like as a shock of corn cometh in his season." There, however, it is rat'her said,
that the favored of God shall not die till they have known the fulness of earthly
blessing, till they have reached Abraham's " good old age," and (if one may use
the image not offensively) retire as satisfied guests from life's feast. But in our
parable, consistently with the higher dispensation which looks to higher blessings,
it is rather affirmed, that the faithful are not taken away while yet the work of
grace is incomplete in them, while yet Christ is not fully formed in them, that in this
respect there is a provident love ordering. their death as well as their life, that it is
only "when the fuit is brought forth," that Christ "putteth in the sickle."




THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY.                      237
undoubtedly we are bound to do,-to the growth and progress of the
universal Church, and not only to that of the individual soul. The Lord
at his first coming in the flesh sowed the word of the kingdom in the
world, planted a Church therein, which having done he withdrew himself; the heavens received him till the time of the consummation of all
things. Many and many a time since then the cry has ascended in his
ears, " O that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come
down!"-often it has seemed to man as though the hour of interference
had arrived, as though his Church were at its last gasp, at the point to
die, as though its enemies were about to prevail against it, and to extinguish it for ever, unless he appeared for its deliverance. Yet he has not
come forth, he has left it to surmount its obstacles, not indeed without
his mighty help, but without his visible interference. He has left the
divine seed, the plant which he has planted, to grow on by night and by
day, through storm and through sunshine, increasing secretly with the
increase of God; and will let it so continue, till it has borne and brought
to maturity all its appointed fruit. And only then, when the harvest of
the world is ripe, when the number of his elect people is accomplished,
will he again the second time appear unto salvation, thrusting in his
sickle, and reaping the earth, and gathering the wheat into his barns.*
The convenience of interpreting the parable altogether, and taking it
in its whole object and aim at a single view, has caused one or two less
important circumstances to be passed over, which yet it might be well
not to leave quite without notice. When it is said that " the earth bringethforthfruit of herself," it may excite surprise that it is not rather said,
-The seed groweth and springeth up of itself; for that, strictly speaking, is the doctrine which the Lord is now teaching: and if the eaith be
here, as it must be, the heart of man, it is not there, but in the word of
God which is sown there, that the living p)wer resides. But the Lord's
object, in using the expression,t is pointedly to exclude the agency of
* Grotius: Sensus mihi videtur esse perspicuus: Christum a facta semente ac!
messis tempus agro aspectabiliter non adfuturum.
t AvrroJLdUT-. The word, derived from abrds, and the obsolete pdcw, desidero, is
one of singular fitness and beauty. Elsewhere it occurs but once in the New Testament. (Acts xii. 10. Cf. Josh. vi. 5, LXX.) It is often used by classic authors
to describe the spontaneous bringing forth of the earth in the golden age, during
the paradisiacal state anterior to the change marked Gen. iii. 17. Yet here it is 
not exactly correct to make, as has been done, the avro/jdl' 7Y =aKi-,ucaros?yj of
Sophocles, Antig., 339; for leaving out of account that that does mean the earth
which brings forth without labor, but which is never weary of bringing forth, it
besides is not the notion of previous labor bestowed on the soil which is here excluded-but of ulterior carefulness. In the next verse, &av'rv must be supplied
after racaSy. Virgil will then have exactly the same idiom:
Multa adeo gelida melius se nocte edeerunt.




238              THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY.
the sower, at least a continuous agency on his part of the same kind as
he exercises at the first, and this done he is not careful for more.-The
three stages of spiritual growth implied in "the blade," "the ear," and
"the full corn in the ear," suggest a comparison of this passage with such
as 1 John ii. 12-14, where the apostle in like manner divides the faithful
into "little children," "young men," and "fathers," evidently according
to the different degrees of progress which they have made in the spiritual
life.-With ver. 29 we may compare Rev. xiv. 14, 15; and the comparison supplies an additional reason why we should not rest satisfied with
the application of the parable to any less than the Son of man himself,"And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat,
like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his
hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying
with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust * in thy sickle and
reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth
is ripe:"-and the. entire parable gives the same encouragement which
St. Peter means to give, when he addresses the faithful in Christ Jesus,
as, "being born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by
the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever," and that whole passage (1 Pet. i. 23-25) supplies a parallel than which no apter could be
found in the entire circle of Scripture for the parable which we have
been now considering.
* This passage also shows us that Sp6ravov is not here, as so many say, a part
of the whole, and in place of aepiaTds. There is no argument for this to be derived
from the word &7roa'Tre'Ae here, which is not stronger than the 7reov, there, where
yet it is plain that the Lord is imagined as in his own person the reaper; and compare Joel iii. 13, LXX., ea7roFrEAaIwre aperaVa. So in Latin, immittere faleem.




XVI.!'HE TWO DEBTORS.
LUKE vii. 41-43.
M s may affirm with tolerable certainty that the two first Evangelists
an i the last, in all their relations of our blessed Lord's anointing, refer
to one and the same event. (Matt. xxvi. 7; Mark xiv. 8; John xii. 3.)
But the question whether St. Luke narrates the same circumstance, and
the woman here, " which was a sinner," be Mary the sister of Lazarus,
which then must follow, is more difficult, and has been the subject of
much variety of opinion from the earliest times in the Church. The
main arguments for the identity of all the relations are, first, the name
Simon, as that of the giver of the feast in one place (Luke vii. 40), and
most probably so in the other, in which he appears as the master of the
house where it was given (Matt. xxvi. 6); secondly, the seeming unlikelihood that twice the Lord should have been honored in so very unusual
a manner; and thirdly, the strange coincidence, as it would otherwise be,
that in each case there should have been on the part of some present a
misinterpretation of the thing done, an offence taken.
To these arguments, however, it may be answered that the name
Simon was of much too frequent use among the Jews for any stress to be
laid upon the sameness of the name. Again, that the anointing of the
feet with odors or with ointments, though not so common as the anointing of the head, yet was not in itself something without precedent,* the
* Thus Curtius of the Indian monarchs (1. 8, c. 9): Demtis soleis odoribus illinuntur pedes, and Plutarch makes mention, though on a very peculiar occasion, of
wine and sweet-smelling essences as used for this purpose. (BECKER'S Charikles,
v. 1, p. 428.) The custom of having the sandals taken off by those in attendance
before meals, which would render the service of the woman easy and natural to be
done, is frequently alluded to by classic writers. Thus Terence:
Adcurrunt servi, soccos detrahunt,
Inde alii festinare, lectos sternere,
Caenam apparare;




240                     THE TWO DEBTORS.
only Remarkable coincidence here being, that Mary the sister of Lazarus,
and the woman " which was a sinner," should have each wiped the feet
of the Lord with the hairs of her head. (Luke vii. 38; John xii. 3.)
Now if this had been any merely fantastic honor paid to the Lord,
which to offer would scarcely have occurred to more persons than one,
we might well wonder to find it twice, and on two independent occasions,
repeated;-but take it as an expression of homage, of reverence and
love, such as would naturally rise out of the deepest and truest feelings
of the human heart, and then its recurrence is no wise wonderful.
And such it is; in the hair is the glory of the woman (see 1 Cor. xi. 15),
long beautiful tresses having evermore been held as her chiefest adornment;* they are in the human person highest in place and in honor,while on the contrary the feet are lowest in both. What then was this
service, but the outward expression, and incorporation in an act, of the
inward truth, that the highest and chiefest of man's honor and glory and
beauty were lower and meaner than the lowest that pertained to the Son
of God; that they only found their true place when acknowledging their
subjection and doing service to him?  And what wonder that the Lord,
who called out all that was deepest and truest in the human heart, who
awoke in it, as none else might ever do, feelings of the warmest love and
profoundest reverence, should twice t have been the object of this honor?
Yet was it an honor, we may observe, with some differences in the motives which called it forth.  Once, in the case of Mary the sister of Lazarus, the immediately impelling cause was intense gratitude,-she had
found the words of Christ, words of eternal life to herself, and he had
crowned his gifts to her by giving back to her a beloved brother, whom
she now beheld restored to life and health before her; the pound of oint.
ment "very costly " which she brought, was a thank-offering from her,
and as less of shame was mingled in her feelings, she anointed both her
and in all the ancient bas-reliefs and pictures illustrative of the subject, we see the
guests reclining with their feet bare. (See the Diet. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v.
Coena, p. 253.)
* So the Latin poet: Quod primum forma: decus est, cecidere capilli. And of
nearly similar uses of the hair in extreme humiliation and deprecation of the divine
anger we have abundant examples in profane history. Thus Livy, 1. 3, c. 7: Strats passim matres crinibus templa verrentes veniam irarum cselestium exposcunt. Cf.
Polybius, 1. 9, c. 6.
t Here, as in so many other places, Strauss (Leben Jesm, v. 1, p. 782), like one
before him, murmurs against the evangelical history, crying, " To what purpose is
this waste 1" as though that history could not but be wrong which was thus prodigal in relating honors done to the Saviour.: Gregory the Great, applying the "very costly" to this history, says beautil
fully (Hom. 33 in Evang.): Consideravit quid fecit, et noluit moderari quid faceret
The whole discourse is full of beauty.




THE TWO DEBTORS.                          241
Lord's feet and also his head. But what brought this woman with the
alabaster box of ointment to Jesus, was the earnest yearning after the
forgiveness of her sins, and she, in her deep shame and abasement of
soul before him, presumed not to approach bin nearer than to anoint his
feet only, standing the while behind him; and kissing them with her
lips, and wiping with the hair of her head, she realized, as it were. in an
outward act, the bidding of St. Paul, " as ye have yielded your members
servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield
your members servants to righteousness unto holiness." (Rom. vi. 19.)
And to the third argument it may be answered, that though the two
events have this in common, that there was on each occasion an offence
taken, yet beyond this there is nothing similar. In the one case it is
the Pharisee, the giver of the feast, that is offended-in the other some
of the disciples, and mainly Judas;-again, the Pharisee is offended with
the Lord-Judas, not so much with him, as with the woman;-the Pharisee, because the Lord's conduct seems inconsistent with his reputation
for holiness-but Judas, as is well known, from a yet meaner and baser
motive of covetousness. To all which it may be added, that there is
nothing to make it the least probable, that the Mary of the happy family
circle in Bethany,* to whom the Lord bears such honorable testimony,
had ever been aforetime one to whom the title of sinner,"t as it is here
* XEUvWV Kal aorouaw'a, as a Greek Father entitles her.
~ " Which was a sinner," must then mean, " which had been, a sinner," that ls,
in former times, but had long since been brought to repentance and chosen the
better part, and returned to, and been received back into, the bosom of her family;
even as the history must be related here altogether out of its place, for the anointing by Mary took place immediately before the Lord's death, it was for his burial.
(Matt. xxvi. 12.) Many do thus understand the words to refer to sins long ago
committed, even as they had been long ago forsaken: as for instance, Grotius, who
is partly moved thereto by the necessities of his harmony, which admits but one
anointing, and partly, I should imagine, also by his fear of antinomian tendencies
in the other interpretation; for that he was in this respect somewhat afraid of the
Gospelof the grace of God, his Commentary on the Romans gives sufficient evidence:
even as the same fear makes another expositor affirm, that het sin, for which she was
thus spoken of as a sinner, was not more than that she was too fond of adorning her
person; just as others will not allow Rahab to have been, at least in the common
sense of the term, a 7rdov1f at all, but only the keeper of a lodging-house. But how
much does that view maintained by Grotius weakeh the moral effect of the whole
scene, besides being opposed to the plain sense of the words;-if the woman had
long since returned to the paths of piety and holiness, it is little likely that even
the Pharisee should have been so vehemently offended at the gracious reception
which she found, or would have spoken of her as he does, " for she is a sinner"
We should rather consider this as the turning moment of her life, and it is evident
that Augustine (Serm. 99) so considered it, for he says of her: Accessit ad Dominum immunda ut rediret munda, accessit segra ut rediret sana. Moreover in that
other case, the absolving words, "Thy sins are forgiven," iratead of being those of
16




242                      THE TWO DEBTORS.
meant, could have been applied; and, as it has been ingeniously observed,
with the risen Lazarus sitting at the table, even this Pharisee would
hardly have so rapidly drawn his conclusion against the divine mission
and character of his guest.
These arguments appear so convincing, that one is surprised to find
how much fluctuation of opinion there has been from the very first in
the Church, concerning the relation of these histories one to another,the Greek Fathers generally distinguishing them-the Latin, for the
most part, seeing in them but one and the same history. This last
opinion however finally prevailed, and was long almost the universal one
in the Church, that is, from the time of Gregory the Great, who threw
all his weight into this scale,* until the times of the Reformation. Then,
when the Scriptures were again subjected to a more critical examination, the other interpretation gradually became prevalent anew, and one
might say, had for some while been recognized almost without a dissentient voice, till again in our own days Schleiermacher has maintained,
not I think with success, but certainly with extraordinary acuteness, that
the anointing happened but once. But to enter further on this debate
would be alien to the present purpose: and the passage containing the
parable of the Two Debtors will be considered without any reference to
the histories in the other Gospels, of which indeed I have the firmest
conviction that it is altogether independent.
a present forgiveness, now first passing upon her, can only be the repeated assurance of a forgiveness which she must long since havereceived; and how strange
and unnatural a supposition this is, every one may judge.
* The fact of this opinion being introduced into one of the hymns in the Liturgy
as by him reformed,Maria soror Lazari,
Quae tot commisit crimina,must have had great influence in procuring its general acceptance. Even so we
have in the famous Dies irce, composed in the thirteenth century,
Qui Mariam absolvisti....
Mihi quoque spem dedisti;
though here may possibly be allusion to Mary Magdalene, who indeed was often,
though without the slightest grounds, save that the first notice of her occurs shortly
after this incident (Luke viii. 2), identified with this woman that was a sinner; so
that many have made but one and the same person of Mary the sister of Lazarus;
Mary Magdalene, and this woman. Thus Gregory himself, Hor. 33 in Evang.
The belief in the identity of the two last has indelibly impressed itself on the
very language of Christendom; but there is nothing to make us suppose that Mary
Magdalene had led an eminently sinful life, before she was found in the company of
the holy women that ministered to the Lord, unless we should interpret the seven
devils which were cast out of her, to mean seven sins.-There is a good sketch of
the history of the controversy concerning this matter in DEYLING'S Ob.s. Sac., v. 3,
p 291.




THE TWO DEBTORS.                         243
Our Lord having been invited to the house of a Pharisee, had there
K sat down to meat." That a woman, and one of a character such as is
here represented, should have pressed into the guest-chamber, and this
uninvited, either by the Lord, or by the master of the house, and that
she should have there been permitted to offer to the Saviour the form of
homage which she did, may at first sight appear strange;-yet after all
does not require the supposition of something untold for its explanation,
as that she was a relation of Simon's, or lived in the same house,-suppositions which are altogether strange, not to say contradictory to the
narrative. A little acquaintance with the manners of the East, where
meals are so often almost public, where ranks are not separated with
such iron barriers as with us, will make us feel with what ease such an
occurrence might have taken place.* Or if this seems not altogether to
explain the circumstance, one has only to remember how easily such
obstacles as might have been raised up against her, and would have
seemed insuperable to others, or to herself in another state of mind,
would have been put aside, or broken through by an earnestness such as
now possessed her: even as it is the very nature of such religious earnestness to break through and despise these barriers, nor ever to pause
and ask itself whether according to the world's judgment it be " in season" or "out of season."t
* The following confirmation of what above is written has been since put into
my hands: "At a dinner at the Consul's house at Damietta we were much interested
in observing a custom of the country. In the room where we were received, besides
the divan on which we sat, there were seats all round the walls. Many came in and
took their places on those side-seats, uninvited and yet unchallenged. They spoke
to those at table on business or the news of the day, and our host spoke freely to
them. This made us understand the scene in Simon's house at Bethany, where
Jesus sat at supper, and Mary came in and anointed his feet with ointment; and
also the scene in the Pharisee's house, where the woman who was a sinner came in,
uninvited and yet not forbidden, and washed his feet with her tears. We afterwards saw this custom at Jerusalem, and there it was still more fitted to illustrate
these incidents. We were sitting round Mr. Nicolayson's table, when first one and
then another stranger opened the door, and came in, taking their seat by the wall.
They leant forward and spoke to those at the table." Narrative of a Mission of
Inquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland in 1839.
t Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cxl. 4): Ilia impudica, quondam frontosa ad fornicationem, frontosior ad salutem irrupit in domum alienam; and again (Serm. 99,
c. 1): Vidistis mulierem famosam... non invitatam irruisse convivio, ubi suus
medicus recumbebat, et quesisse pia impudentiA sanitatem: irruens quasi importuna convivio, opportuna:beneficio: and Gregory the Great (Horn. 33 in Evang.);
Quia turpitudinis sum maculas aspexit, lavanda ad fontem misericordiae cucurrit,
convivantes non erubuit; Nam quia semetipsam graviter erubescebat intus, nihil
esse credidit, quod verecundaretur foris; and another (BERNARDI Opp., v. 2. p.
601): Gratias tibi, 6 beatissima peccatrix; ostendisti mundo tutum satis peccatoribus locumpedes scilicet Jesu, qui neminem sperunt, neminem rejiciunt, neni



244                      THE TWO DEBTORS.
In the thoughts which passed through the heart of the Pharisee,displeased at seeing that the Lord did not repel the woman, but gra.,
ciously accepted her homage,-the true spirit of a Pharisee betrays
itself-of one who could not raise his thoughts beyond a ceremonial
pollution, nor understand of holiness, as standing in any thing save the
purifying of the flesh,* who would have said to that woman, had she
dared to approach unto him, "' Stand by thyself, for I am. holier than
thou!"t  In the conclusion to which, in his inward heart, he arrived,
" This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what
manner of woman this is;" we trace the belief, so evidently current
among the Jews, that discerning of spirits was one of the marks of a
true prophet, and, in an especial degree, of the great prophet of all, the
Messiah,-a belief founded on Isaiah xi. 3, 4.    (See 1 Kin. xiv. 6; 2
Kin. i. 3; v. 26.) Thus Nathanael first exclaims in wonder to the Lord
who has truly read his character,: Whence knowest thou me " and
then presently breaks out into that undoubting confession of faith,'Thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel;" and so the
Samaritan woman, " Come and see a man who told me all things which
ever I did: is not this the Christ?" (John iv. 29); and on account of
this belief it is, that the Evangelists are so often careful to record that
Jesus knew the thoughts of his hearers, or as St. John (ii. 25) expressly
states it, "needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew
what was in man.'t    So that, in fact, the Pharisee mentally put the
Lord into this dilemma,-either he does not know the true character of
this woman, in which case he lacks that discernment of spirits which
pertains to every true prophet; or if he knows it, and yet endures her
nem repellunt: suscipiunt omnes, omnes admittunt. Ibi certe AEthiopissa mutat
pellem suam; ibi pardus mutat varietatem suam; ubi solus Pharisseus non exspumat superbiam suam.
* Augustine: Habebat sanctitatem in corpore non in corde, at quia non habebat
eam in corde, utique falsem habebat in corpore. Cf. Enarr. in Ps. c. 5; cxxv. 2;
and Gregory the Great (Horn. 34 in Evang.): Vera justitia compassionem habet,
falsa justitia dedignationem.-As' a specimen of similar notions of holiness current
among the Jews, a commentator on Prov. v. 8, puts this very question: Quanto
spatio k meretrice recedendum est. R. Chasda respondet: Ad quatuor cubitos.
(SCHOETTGEN, Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 348.) And again, p. 303, various Rabbis are
extolled for the precautions which they took to keep lepers at a distance from
them; for example, by flinging stones at them if they approached too near.
t Bernard, in a beautiful passage (De Dedic. Ecc., Serm, 4), styles him: Phariseam illum murmurantem adversis medicum, qui salutem operabatur, et succcnsentem languidee, quae salvabatur.
t Vitringa (Obss. Sac., v. 1, p. 479) has an interesting and instructive essay (De
Signis a Messia edendis) on the expectations of the Jews concerning the miracles
which the Messiah was to perform, and by which he was to legitimate his preo
tensions.




THE TWO DEBTORS.                     245
touch and is willing to accept a service at such hands, he is lacking in
that holiness which is also the mark of a prophet of God; such therefore
in either case he cannot be. Probably as these thoughts were passing
through his mind he already began to repent of the needless honor he
had shown to one, whose pretensions to a peculiar mission from God he
had thus quickly concluded were unfounded. But the Lord showed him
that he was indeed a discerner of the thoughts of hearts, by reading at
once what was passing in his heart, and laying his finger without more
ado on the tainted spot which was there. " Sinwn," he said, " I have
somewhat to say unto thee." The other could not refuse to hear, nor has
he yet so entirely renounced his faith in some higher character as belonging to his guest, but that he still addresses him with an appellation
of respect, " Master, say on."
With this introduction,-with this leave to speak asked and received,
-the parable is uttered. " There was a certain creditor which had two
debtors: the one owed five hundred pence and the otherfifty. And when
they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both."  In the words
themselves there is no difficulty, though in the application of them to
the case which they were spoken to illustrate, there are one or two of
considerable importance. God, it needs not to say, is the creditor, men
the debtors, and sins the debts. Of the sums named as the amount of
the debts, fifty and five hundred pence, it may be remarked that they
vary indeed, but nothing like in the same proportion as the two debts
vary in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant. (Matt. xviii.) There
the difference is between ten thousand talents and one hundred pence,
an enormous difference, even as the difference is enormous between the
sins which a man commits against God, and those which his fellow-man
may commit against him; but here the difference is not at all so great,
the sums vary but in the proportion of ten to one, for there is no such
incalculable difference between the sins which one man and another
commits against God. Our Lord proceeds: "T Tell me, therefore, which of
them. will love him most? Simon answered, I suppose that he, to whom
he forgave most."  The difficulties meet us when we come to the application of these words: for while that which Simon says is true in the
order of things natural, can the consequences which would seem thereupon to be induced as relates to the spiritual world be true also? Are
we to' conclude from hence, as at first sight might seem, that there is any
advantage in having multiplied transgressions?-that the wider a man
has wandered from God, the nearer, if he be brought back at all, he will
cleave to him afterward?-the more sin, the more love? Would it not
then follow, " Let us do evil that good may come,"-let us sin much
now, that we may love much hereafter,-that we may avoid that lukewarmness of affections which will be the condition of those that have




246                    THE TWO DEBTORS.
sinned but little? And would it not then seem, that for a man to have
been kept out of gross offences in the time before he was awakened to a
deeper religious earnestness,-or, better still, for a man to have grown
out of his baptismal root,-instead of being a blessing, and a mercy, and
a matter of everlasting thanksgiving, would prove a hindrance, opposing, in his ease, an effectual barrier to any very near and very high
communion of love with his Saviour? And to understand the passage
thus, would it not be to affirm a moral contradiction,-to affirm in fact
this, that the more a man has emptied himself of love,-the more he has
laid waste all nobler affections and powers,-the deeper his heart has
sunk in selfishness and sensuality (for sin is all this), the more capable
he will be of the highest and purest love?
But the whole matter is clear, if we consider the debt, not as an objective, but a subjective, debt,-not as so many outward transgressions
and outbreaks of evil, but as so much conscience of sin: and this we
well know is in no wise in proportion to the amount and extent of evil
actually committed and brought under the cognizance of other men.
Often they who have least of what the world can call sin, or rather
crime (for the world knows nothing of sin), have yet the deepest sense
of the exceeding sinfulness of sin-are most conscious of it as a root of
bitterness in themselves-are the most forward to exclaim, " Woe is me,
I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips;" and therefore, as
they have most groaned under the evil, are the most thankful for the
fact of a redemption, for the gift of a Redeemer. But he who has little
forgiven is not necessarily he who has sinned little, but he who is lacking in any strong conviction of the exceeding evil of sin, who has little
feeling of his own share in the universal taint and corruption that
cleaves to all the descendants of Adam, who has never learned to take
home his sin to himself; who, therefore, while he may have no great
objection to God's plan of salvation, may have a cold respect, as this
Pharisee had, for Christ, yet esteems that he could have done as well,
or nearly as well, without him. He loves little, or scarcely at all, because he has little sense of a deliverance wrought for him; because he
never knew what it was to lie under the curse of a broken law, having
the sentence of death in himself, and then by that merciful Saviour to be
set free, and bidden to live, and brought into the glorious liberty of the
children of God.*
* Augustine (Serm. 99, c. 4) freely acknowledges the stress of this difficulty:
Dicit enim aliquis, Si cui modicum dimittitur, modicim diligit; cui autem plus
dimittitur, plus diligit, expedit plus diligere quam minis diligere: oportet ut
multum peccemus..... ut dimissorem magnorum debitorum amplius diligamus;
and again: Si invenero plus diligere eum, cui plura peccata dimissa sunt, utilius
multa peccavit, utilior erat multa iniquitas, ne esset tepida caritas. And he solves




THE TWO DEBTORS.                       247
Simon himself was an example of one who thus loved little, who
having little sense of sin, felt little his need of a Redeemer, and therefore loved that Redeemer but little: and he had betrayed, this his lack
of love in small yet significant matters. Accounting, probably, the invitation itself as sufficient honor done to his guest, he had withheld
from him the ordinary courtesies almost universal in the East-had
neither given him water for the feet (Gen. xviii. 4; Judg. xix. 21),
nor offered him the kiss of peace (Gen. xxii. 4; Exod. xviii. 7), nor
anointed his head with oil, as was ever the custom at festivals. (Ps.
xxiii. 5; cxli- 5; Matt. vi. 17.) But while he had fallen so short of the
customary courtesies, that woman had far exceeded them. lie had not
poured water on the Saviour's feet,-she had washed them, not with
water but with her tears-the blood of her heart,* as Augustine calls
them,-and then wiped them with the hairs of her head;-he had not
given the single kiss of salutation on the cheek, she had multiplied
kisses, and those upon the feet; he had not anointed the head of Jesus
with ordinary oil,-but she with precious ointment had anointed even
his feet.
"Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins which are many, are forgiven;
for she loved much: but to whom little isforgiven the same loveth little."
There is an embarrassment, by all acknowledged, on the face of these
words; first, how to bring them into agreement with the parable, for in
that the debtor. is said to love much, because forgiven much, and not to
be forgiven much, because he loved much: and again how to bring
them into agreement with the general doctrine of Scripture, which ever
teaches that we love God because he first loved us,-that faith is the
previous condition of forgiveness, and not love, which is not a condition
at all, but a consequence. Some have felt these difficulties so strongly,
that in their terror lest the Romanists should draw any advantage for
their fides formata from the passage,-which indeed they are willing
enough to do,-they have affirmed that the word designating the cause
really stands for that designating the consequence,-that " her sins are
forgiven, for she loved much," means, "her sins are forgiven, therefore
she loved much."t But in the first place, it was not true that she yet
knew her sins to be forgiven,-the absolving words are only spoken
in the next verse; and moreover, this way of escape from a doctrinal
it as is done above: O Pharisaee, ideo, parum diligis, quia parum tibi dimitti suspicaris: non quia parum dimittitur, sed quia parum putas esse, quod dimittitur.
Compare a beautiful sermon by Schleiermacher. (Predigten, v. 1, p. 524.)
* Fudit lacrymas, sanguinem cordis.
t They say SiW is here for ito, and appeal to John viii. 44 and 1 John iii. 14; but
neither passage, rightly interpreted, yields the least support to the view that the
words could ever be interchangeably used. (See WINER'S Grammatik, p. 426.)




248                       THE TWO DEBTORS.
embarrassment, by some violence done to the plain words of the text
will at once be rejected by all, who justly believe that in the interpretation of Scripture, grammar and the laws of human speech should first
be respected, and that the doctrine can and will take care of itself —
will never in the end be found in any contradiction with itself,-that
the faith of the Church will ever come triumphantly forth out of every
part of the word of God. And as far as regards advantage which the
Romish controversialists would fain draw from the passage, such, whatever may be the explanation, there can really be none.     The parable
stands in the heart of the narrative, an insuperable barrier against such;
he who owed the large debt is not forgiven it as freely as the other is
his smaller debt, because of the greater love which he before felt towards the creditor;* but, on the contrary, the sense of a larger debt
remitted, makes him afterwards love his creditor more. And besides,
were it meant that her sins were forgiven, because,-in their sense who
would make charity justify and not faith,t —she loved much, the other
clause in the sentence would necessarily be, " But he who loveth little,
to the same little is forgiven."
But the words, "for she loved much," may best be explained by considering what the strong sorrow for sin, and the earnest desire after for* Incredible as it will appear, this is actually the interpretation of the parable
given by Maldonatus (ad loc.): "Which of them will love him most?" is only, he
affirms, a popular way of saying, " Which of them did love him most " —which of
them may you conclude from the effect to have had most affection for him, and
therefore, to have been dearest to him, he in whose behalf he was willing to remit a
large debt, or he in whose behalf he only remitted a small?-He asserts the same
to have been the interpretation of the parable given by Euthemius, and also by
Augustine; in the case of the last this is certainly untrue.
t Let me quote, were it only with the hope of bringing it before one reader who
was hitherto ignorant of it, the following passage on the attempt thus to substitute
charity for faith in the justification of man. " To many, to myself formerly, it has
appeared a mere dispute about words: but it is by no means of so harmless a
character, for it tends to give a false direction to our thoughts, by diverting the
conscience from the ruined and corrupted state in which we are without Christ.
Sin is the disease. What is the remedy?-Charity?-Pshaw! Charity in the
large apostolic sense of the term is the health, the state to be obtained by the use
of the remedy, not the sovereign balm itself-faith of grace,-faith in the Godmanhood, the cross, the mediation, the perfected righteousness of Jesus, to the utter
rejection and abjuration of all righteousness of our own! Faith alone is the
restorative. The Romish scheme is preposterous;-it puts the rill before the
spring. Faith is the source,-charity, that is the whole Christian life, is the
stream from it. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect without
charity; as wisely might you say that a fire, however bright and strong, was
imperfect without heat; or that the sun, however cloudless, is imperfect without
beams. The true answer would be:-It is not faith,-but utter reprobate faith
Lessness." (COLERIDGE, Literary Remains, v. 2, 368.)




THE TWO DEBTORS.                         249
giveness, such as this woman displayed, mean, and from whence they
arise;-surely from this, from the deep feeling in the sinner's heart, that
by his sins he has separated himself from that God who is Love, while
yet he cannot do without his love,-from the feeling that the heart must
be again permitted to love him, must be again assured of his love toward
it, else it will utterly wither and die. Sin unforgiven is felt to be the
great barrier to this; and the desire after forgiveness,-if it be not a
mere selfish desire after personal safety, in which case it can be nothing
before God,-is the desire for the removal of this barrier, that so the
heart may be free to love and to know itself beloved again. This desire
then is itself love at its negative pole, not as yet made positive, for the
work of grace, the absolving word of God can alone make it so; it is
the flower of love desiring to bud and bloom, but not daring and not able
to put itself forth in the chilling atmosphere of the anger of God,-but
which will do so at once when to the stern winter of God's anger, the
genial spring of his love succeeds. In this sense that woman " loved
much;" all her conduct proved the intense yearning of her heart after a
reconciliation with a God of love, from whom she had alienated herself
by her sins; all her tears and her services witnessed how much she desired to be permitted to love him and to know herself beloved of him,
and on account of this her love, which, in fact, was faith* (see ver. 50,
" Thyfaith hath saved thee"), she obtained forgiveness of her sins. This
sense of the miserable emptiness of the creature,-this acknowledgment
that a life apart from God is not life but death, with the conviction that
in God there is fulness of grace and blessing, and that he is willing to
impart of this fulness to all who bring the empty vessel of the heart to
be filled by him; this, call it faith, or initiatory love, is what alone makes
man receptive of any divine gift,-this is what that Pharisee, in his legal
righteousness, in his self-sufficiency and pride,t had scarcely at all, and
* Very distinctly Theophylact (in loc.) d"OTL d-yarre roa, &jTr TOO, 7TroTv,vesei6ao roX Xo'v, and presently before he calls all which she had been doing for
her Saviour, irao7r-es o/f8oXa cal aydarris. For further testimonies in favor of this
exposition, see GERHARD'S Loc. Theoll., loc. 16, c. 8, ~ 1.
t In the Bustan of the famous Persian poet Saadi (see THOLUCK'S Bliuthensamml. aus d. Morgenl. Mystik, p. 261) there is a story which seems an echo of,
this evangelical history. Jesus, while on earth, was once entertained in the cell of
a dervish or a monk, of eminent reputation of sanctity; in the same city dwelt a
youth sunk in every sin, "whose heart was so black that Satan himself shrunk
back from it in horror." This last presently appeared before the cell of the monk,
and, as smitten by the very presence of the Divine prophet, began to lament deeply
the sin and misery of his life past, and shedding abundant tears, to implore pardon.-s,^,.-, Mikc- r Ask;,L,  axtlK {intormKTnLc - him. rlnaemndinm how he dared to
appear in his presence and in that of God's holy prophet; assured him that for
him it was in vain to seek forgiveness; and in proof how inexorably he considered




250                      THE TWO DEBTORS.
therefore he derived little or no good from communion with Christ.
But that woman had it in large measure, and therefore she bore away
the largest and best blessing which the Son of God had to bestow, even
the forgiveness of her sins; to her those blessed words were spoken,
" Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace;" and in her it was proved true
that "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound."
his lot was fixed for hell, exclaimed, "My God, grant me but one thing, that I may
stand far from this man on the judgment-day." On this Jesus spoke, " It shall be
even so: the prayer of both is granted. This sinner has sought mercy and grace,
and has not sought them in vain,-his sins are forgiven,-his place shall be in
Paradise-at the last day. But this monk has prayed that he may never stand near
this sinner,-his prayer too is granted,-hell shall be his place, for there this sinner
shall never come.




XVII.
THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
LUKE x. 30-37.
WE need not suppose that the lawyer, who " stood up" and proposed to
our Lord the question out of which this parable presently grew, had any
malicious intention therein, least of all that deep malignity which moved
questions like those recorded at John viii. 6; Matt. xxii. 16; which
were, in fact, nothing less than snares for his life; nor need we attribute to this lawyer even that desire to perplex and silence, out of which
other questions had their rise. (Matt. xxii. 23.) For in the first place,
the question itself, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" was not an
ensnaring one; it was not one like that concerning the tribute-money,
which it was hoped would put the answerer, however he replied, in a
false position; and further, we may conclude from the earnestness of
the Lord's reply, that the spirit out of which the question was proposed,
had not been altogether light or mocking; since it was not his manner to
answer so the mere cavillers or despisers. The only ground for attributing an evil intention to this scribe, or lawyer,-for Matt. xxii. 35, compared with Mark xii. 28, show that scribe and lawyer are the same,-is
that he is said to have put the question to Christ " tempting him." But
to tempt, in its proper signification, means nothing more than to make
trial of, and whether the tempting be good or evil, is determined by the
motive out of.which it springs. Thus God tempts man, when he puts
him to proof, that he may show him what is in himself,-that he may
show him sins, which else might have remained concealed even from
himself (Jam. i. 12); he tempts man to bring out his good, and to
strengthen it (Gen. xxii. 1; Heb. xi. 17); or if to bring his evil out, it
is that the man may himself also become aware of some evil which before was concealed from him, and watch and pray against it,-it is to




252                   THE GOOD SAMARITAN
humble him and to do him good in his latter end;* only Satan tempts
man purely to irritate and bring out and multiply his evil. The purpose
of this lawyer in tempting Jesus, as it was not on the one side that high
and holy one, so as little seems it this deeply malignant on the other.
The Evangelist probably meant nothing more than that he desired to put
the Lord to the trial. Comparing Matt. xxii. 35 with Mark xii. 28-34,
both records of the same conversation, we shall see that in the first the
questioner is said to have proposed his question, as in the present case,
tempting the Lord; while in the second Evangelist, the Lord bears witness concerning the very questioner, " Thou art not far from the kingdom
of God;" even as he was evidently a seeker and lover of truth. We cannot, indeed, suppose that the question, on the present occasion, arose
purely from love of the truth, and a desire to be further instructed in it;
but the lawyer probably would fain make proof of the skill of this famous Galilaean teacher, he would measure his depths, and with this purpose he brought forward the question of questions, " What shall I do to
inherit eternal life?"
Our Lord's reply is as much as to say,-The question you ask is
already answered; what need to make further inquiries, when the answer
is contained in the words of that very law, of which you profess to be a
searcher and expounder?  What is written there concerning this great
question? " How readest thou?" That the lawyer should at once lay
his finger on the great commandment which Christ himself quoted as
such on that other occasion just referred to, showed no little spiritual
insight,-proved that he was superior to the common range of his countrymen: he quotes rightly Deut. vi. 5, in connection with Lev. xix. 18,
as containing the essence of the law. Thereupon our Lord bears him
testimony that he has answered well,-that his words were right words,
however he might be ignorant of their full import,-of all which they
involved: " Thou hast answered right; this do, and thou shalt live;" put
this which thou knowest into effect,-let it pass from dead uninfluential
knowledge into living practice, and it will be well. Now-at length the
lawyer's conscience is touched: these last words have found him out;
however he may have owned in theory the law of love, he has not been
* IIELpdCELv = iPrETpa AaEJadvE,. Augustine very frequently describes the manner
in which it can be said that God tempts, and the purposes whichhe has in tempting; thus (Enarr. in Ps. lv. 1): Omnis tentatio probatio est, et omnis pIobationis
effectus habet fructum suum. Quia homo plerumque etiam sibi ipsi ignotus est:
quid ferat, quidve non ferat ignorat, et aliquando prmesumit se ferre quod non
potest, et aliquando desperat se posse ferre quod potest. Accedit tentatio quasi
interrogatio, et invenitur homo B seipso, quia latebat et seipsum, sed artificem non
latebat. Thus God tempts, as 8oKlucao'rTs Ti  Kaps3iv, Satan, on the contrary, is
The temper (6 7rEpdcov= 6 7relpaor-s.) Cf. TERTULLIAN, De Oratione, c. 8.




THE GOOD SAMARITAN.                      253
living in obedience to it. Still he would fain justify himself; if he has
not been large and free in the exercise of love towards his fellow men,
it is because few have claims upon him:-" True, I am  to love my
neighbor as myself, but who is my neighbor?"    The very question,
like Peter's, "How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive
him?" was not merely a question which might receive a wrong answer,
but itself a wrong question, involving a wrong condition of mind, out of
which alone it could have proceeded. He who asked, "Whom shall I
love?" proved that he understood not what that love meant of which he
spoke, for he wished to have laid down beforehand how much he was to
do, and where he should be at liberty to stop,-who had a claim and
who not upon his love; thus proving that he knew nothing of that love,
whose essence is, that it has no limit, except in its own inability to proceed further,-that it receives a law only from itself,-that it is a debt
which we must be well content to be ever paying, and not the less still
to owe. (Rom. xiii. 8.) Especially wonderful is the reply which our
blessed Saviour makes to him, wonderful, that is, in its adaptation to the
needs of him to whom it was addressed, leading him, as it does, to take
off his eye from the object to which love is to be shown, and to turn it
back and inward upon him who is to show the love; for this is the key
to the following parable, and with this aim it was spoken.
"A certain man went down from   Jerusalem to Jericho."  He says,
"went down," or, "was going down," not merely because Jerusalem
stood considerably higher than Jericho,-for the phrase would have its
fitness in this view,-but because the going to Jerusalem, as to the metropolis, was always spoken of as going up. (See Acts xviii. 22.) The
distance between the two cities was about a hundred and fifty stadia,the road lying through a desolate and rocky region-" the wilderness
that goeth up from Jericho" (Josh. xvi. 1), though the plain of Jericho
itself, the second city in Judsea, was one of extraordinary fertility and
beauty, well watered, and abounding in palms (" the city of palm-trees,"
Judg. i. 16), in roses, in balsam, in honey, and in all the choicest produc* Tholuck (Auslegung der Bergpredigt, Matt. v. 43), has an instructive inquiry
on the interpretation which the Jews gave to the term " neighbor," in the law. It
is striking to see the question of the narrow-hearted scribe, " Who is my neighbor?"
reappearing in one who would think that they two had little in common. I make
this extract from Emerson's Essays (Ess. 2):' Do not tell me, as a good man did
to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my
poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime,
the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me, and to whom I do not belong.
There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and
sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular
charities," &c.




254                   THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
tions of Palestine.  St. Jerome mentions that a particular part of the
road leading from one of these cities to the other, was called the red or
the bloody way,t so much blood had there been shed by robbers; and
that in his own time, there was at one point in this wilderness a fort with
a Roman garrison, for the protection of travellers; so that the incident
of the poor traveller falling in that very journey among robbers seems
taken from the life. Those among whom he fell did their best to maintain the infamous character of the spot, for they' stripped him of his raiment," and, because, perhaps, he made some slight resistance as they were
spoiling him, or out of mere wantonness of cruelty, "wounded him, and
departed, leaving him half dead." 
As he lay bleeding in the road, " by chance there came down a certain
priest that way."  The original would justify us in saying rather " by
coincidence ": than "'by chance;" by that wonderful falling in of one
event with another, which often indeed seems to men but chance, yet is
indeed of the fine weaving in, by God's providence, of the threads of different men's lives into one common woof. He brings the negative pole
of one man's need into contact with the positive of another man's power
of help-one man's emptiness into relation with another's fulness. Many
of our summonses to acts of love are of this kind, and they are those perhaps which we are most in danger of missing, through a failing to see
in them this finger of God. He at least who went down that way missed
his opportunity. There would be a fine irony in the supposition that
he was one who was journeying from Jericho, which was a great station
of the priests, to Jerusalem, there to execute his office before God, " in
the order of'his course," or who, having accomplished his turn of service,
was returning to his home. But whether this was so or not, at all events,
he was one who had never learned what that meant, " I will have mercy,
and not sacrifice;" rather one who,'whatever duties he might have been
careful in fulfilling, had " omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith;"-for "when he saw him, he passed by on the
other side."  So likewise did a Levite, though in his cruelty there was
* COTORICI Itiner., quoted by Winer (Real Worterbuch, s. v Jerico): Est in
planitie sita perampl&, moutibus in theatri formam circumdata, amoenissima quidem et pinguissimi, sed incult& hodie, floribus tamen et herbis odoriferis abundantissiina.
t Onomast., s. v Adommim. There is a particularly impressive description of
this dreary route in LAMARTINE'S Travels in the Holy Land. Indeed no travellers
seem to have gone this journey without being deeply impressed with the wildness
and desolation of the road.
Ka'ra avu-yicvpiav. ZvytKvpia, or more commonly urvyiclpralrs, from ovrV and
Icvpe- = TrvyXc^w, the falling in one event with another, exactly our English coincidence.
O If the wounded man was a Jew, and it is very unnatural to assume him to




THE GOOD SAMARITAN.                       255
an additional aggravation; for he, it might be out of curiosity, drew near
and looked at the miserable condition of the wounded man, claiming, as
it did, instant help; for the life that remained was fast ebbing through
his open gashes, and yet after all could endure to pass forward without
affording him the slightest assistance. Thus did they, who made their
boast in, and were the express interpreters of, that law, which was so
careful in pressing the duties of humanity, that twice it had said,
" Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass, or his ox, fall down by the way,
and hide thyself from them; thou shalt surely help him to lift them up
again."  (Deut. xxii. 4; Exod. xxiii. 5.) Here not a brother's ox or his
ass, but a brother himself, was lying in his blood, and they hid themselves from him. (Isai. lviii. 7.)
"But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was."
He might have found the same excuses for hurrying on as those who had
gone before him had done, for no doubt they did make excuses to themselves,-they did, in some way or other, justify their neglect to their own
consciences; as perhaps they said that there was danger where one outrage had happened, of another happening,-that the robbers, probably,
were not far distant, and might return at any moment,-or that the sufferer was beyond the help of man,-or that he who was found near him
might himself be accused of having been his murderer. The Samaritan
was exposed to at least the same danger in all these respects, as those
that had passed before him, but he took not counsel of these selfish fears,
for when he saw the wounded and bleeding man, " he had compassion on
him." *  While the priest and Levite,-marked out as those who should
have been foremost in showing pity and exercising mercy,-were forgetful of the commonest duties of humanity, it was left to the excommunicated Samaritan, whose very name was a by-word of contempt among
the Jews, and synonymous with heretic (John viii. 48), to show what love
was; and this, not as was required of them, to a fellow-countryman, but
to one of an alien t and hostile race,-one of a people that had no dealhave been any other, his countrymen (the priest and the Levite) were in this very
far indeed from deserving even that limited praise which Tacitus gives them;
Apud ipsos misericordia in promptu.
* This compassion, as the best thing he gave, is mentioned first, for Gregory
the Great says with great beauty (Moral., 1. 20, c. 36): Exteriora etenim largiens,
rem extra semetipsum prmebuit. Qui autem fletum et compassionem proximo
tribuit, ei aliquid etiam de semetipso dedit.
t Our Lord calls the Samaritan a stranger (XaAoyEvhs, Luke xvii. 18), one of a
different stock. It is very curious how the notion of the Samaritans, as being a
mingled people, composed of two elements, one heathen one Israelitish, should of
late universally have found way not merely into popular but into learned books; so
that they are often spoken of as, in a great measure, the later representatives of the
ten tribes. Christian antiquity knew nothing of this view of their origin, but saw




256                    THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
ings with his people,-that anathematized them;-even as, no doubt, all
the influences with which he had been surrounded from his youth,'would
have led him, as far as he yielded to them, to repay hate with hate, and
insult with insult, and wrong with wrong.  For if the Jew called the
Samaritan a Cuthite,-an idolater who worshipped the image of a dove,and cursed him publicly in his synagogue,-and prayed that he might
in them a people of unmingled heathen blood (see testimonies in SUICER'S Thes. s.
v. Zaj.apeiT1-s, to which may be added Theophylact on Luke xvii. 15,'Ao-ropioL yap
of Zacpapeicla); and the Scripture itself affords no countenance whatever for this
view, but much that makes against it. In 2 Kin. xvii., where the deportation of
the Israelites is related, there is not a word to make us suppose that any were left,
or that there was any blending of the Cuthites and other Assyrian colonists that
were brought in, with a remnant of the original inhabitants, whom they found still
in the land. It is true that when Judah was carried away captive, many of the
people were left still in the land: but we can easily explain why they should have
been thus differently dealt with; their sins comparatively were smaller, and the
Lord moreover had a purpose of bringing back the captivity of Judah. Winer
(Real Worterbuch, s. v. Samaritaner) says that it is very unlikely that some out of
the ten tribes were not left behind in the same manner. But 2 Kin. xxi. 13, seems
to give the strongest testimony that there were none whatever. For there the Lord
threatening Judah says, " I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the
plummet of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, and
turneth it upside down." This, which was only a threat against Judah, in part
averted by repentance, had actually been executed against Samaria. (See Jer. vii.
15.) That such an entire clearance of a conquered territory was not unusual, we
may see from HEROD. 3. 140: 6. 31. For an account of the process by which it
was sometimes effected, and which the Persians may well have learnt from their
Babylonian and Assyrian forerunners in empire, see p. 117, note. The historian
describes a Greek island which had undergone the process, as being delivered to a
new lord, pip71uoov eoo'va a&vptv. If the Samaritans had owned any Jewish blood in
their veins, they would certainly have brought this forward, as mightily strengthening their claim to be allowed to take part with Zerubbabel and Ezra, and the
returned Jewish exiles, in the rebuilding of the temple; but they only say, "We
seek our God as ye do, and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon,
king of Assur, which brought us up hither." (Ezra iv. 2.) When our Lord, at
the first sending out of his apostles, said, " Into any city of the Samaritans enter
ye not" (Matt. x. 5), he was not, as some tell us, yielding to popular-prejudice, but
gave the prohibition because, till the Gospel had been first offered to the Jews, "to
the lost sheep of the house of Israel," they had no more claim to it than any 6ther
Gentiles, being as much aXAoyyEve7s (Josephus call them XaAAXoEaEs), as any other
heathen. What is singular is, that the mistake is altogether of recent origin; the
expositors of two hundred years ago are quite clear of it. Hammond speaks of the
Samaritan in our parable, as " being of an Assyrian extraction;" and Maldonatus;
Samaritani origine Chaldei erant; and Reland, De Samaritanis; and many more.
For the opinion of Makrizi, the very accurate and learned Arabian geographer,
concerning the origin of the Samaritans, an opinion altogether agreeing with that
here stated, see S. DE SACY'S Chrest. Arabe, v. 2, p. 177. And Robinson, in his
Biblical Researches, speaking of the Samaritans, says, " The physiognomy of those
we saw was not Jewish."




THE GOOD SAMARITAN.                     257
have no portion in the resurrection of life,-and proclaimed that his testimony was worth nothing and might not be received,-that he who
entertained a Samaritan in his house, was laying up judgments for his
children,-that to eat a morsel of his fare was as eating swine's fleshand in general would rather suffer any need than be beholden to him for
the smallest office of charity; the Samaritan was not behindhand in
cursing, nor yet in active demonstrations of enmity and ill will. We are
not without evidences of this in the Gospels (John iv. 9; Luke ix. 53),
and from other sources more examples of their spite may be gathered.
While, for instance, the Jews were in the habit of communicating the
exact time of the new moon to those at a distance from Jerusalem, by fires
kindled on the highest mountain tops, they would give the signal on the
day preceding the right one, so to perplex and mislead.* And Josephus
nentions that they sometimes proceeded much further than merely to
refuse hospitality to the Jews who were going up to the feasts at Jerusalem,-that they fell upon and murdered many of them-and once,
which must have been to them most horrible of all, a Samaritan entering
Jerusalem secretly, polluted the whole temple, by scattering in it human
bones.t
But the heart of this Samaritan was not hardened, though so many
influences must have been at work to harden and to steel it against the
needs and distresses of a Jew. Exceedingly touching is here the minuteness with which all the details of his tender care toward the poor and
unknown stranger, of whom all he knew was, that he belonged to a nation bitterly hostile to his own, are given. He "bound up his wounds,"
no doubt with stripes torn from his own garments, having first poured
in wine to cleanse them, and then oil to assuage their smart, and to bring
gently the sides of them together, these two being costly but well known
and highly esteemed remedies throughout the East.t All this must
havw consumed no little time, and this too while there was every motive
to hasten onward. But after thus he had ministered to the wounded
man's most urgent needs, and revived in him the dying spark of life, he
" set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn," and there again
renewed his care and attention. Nor even so did he account that he
had done all, but before he departed on the morrow, with the considerate
* This fact is mentioned by Makrizi (see S. DE SACY'S Chrest. Arabe, v. 2, p
159), who affirms that it was this which put the Jews on making accurate calcula.
tions to determine the moment of the new moon's appearance. Cf. SCHOETTGEN'S
lor. Heb., v. 1, p. 344
t JOSEPHUS, Antt., 18. 2. 2.
t See Isai. i. 6. PLINY, H. N., 1. 31, c. 47. Both Greek and Latin physicians
commended vinegar and oil, or wine and oil, to be used in cases of bruises and
wounds.
17




258                  THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
foresight of love, he provided for the further wants of the sufferer-" 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."
Beautiful as is this parable when thus taken simply according to the
letter, and full of incentives to active mercy and love, bidding us to
"put on bowels of mercies," to be kind and tender-hearted, yet how
much lovelier still, provoking how much more strongly still to love and
good works, when, with most of the Fathers of the Church, with many
too of the Reformers, we trace in it a deeper meaning still, and see the
work of Christ, of the merciful Son of man himself, portrayed to us
here. It has been objected to this interpretation, that it makes the parable to be nothing to the matter immediately in hand. But this is a
mistake; for what is that matter? To magnify the law of love, to show
who fulfils it, and who not. Inasmuch then as Christ himself, he who
accounted himself every man's brother, in its largest extent fulfilled it,
showed how we ought to love and whom; and inasmuch as it is his example, or rather faith in his love towards us, which is alone really effectual in causing us to " love one another with a pure heart fervently,"
he might well propose himself and his act in succoring the perishing
humanity, as the everlasting pattern of self-denying and self-forgetting
love, and bring it out in strongest contrast with the selfish carelessness
and neglect of the present leaders of the theocracy. They had not
strengthened the diseased, nor healed the sick, nor bound up the broken,
nor sought that which was driven away (see Ezek. xxxiv. 4), while he
had bound up the broken-hearted (Isai. lxi. 1), and poured the balm of
sweetest consolation into all wounded spirits. Moreover, even the adversaries of this interpretation must themselves acknowledge the facility
with which all the circumstances of the parable yield themselves to it;
and it certainly affords a strong presumption that a key we have in our
hand is the right one, when it thus turns in the lock without forcing,
when it adapts itself at once to all the wards of the lock, however many
and complex. Of course, this deeper interpretation was reserved for the
future edification of the Church. The lawyer naturally took and was
meant to take the meaning which lay upon the surface; nor will the
parable lose its value to us, as showing forth the pity and love of man to
his fellow, because it also shadows forth the crowning act of mercy and
love shown by the Son of man to the entire race.
The traveller then is the personified human Nature, or Adam as he
* Let us not miss the e e & a&7ro&cw, "I will repay thee." Trouble not the poor
man upon that score; I will take those charges on myself; or it might be, Fear
not thou to be a loser; I will be thy paymaster.




THE GOOD SAMARITAN.                       259
is the representative and head of the race. He has left Jerusalem, the
heavenly city, the city of the vision of peace, and is travelling toward
Jericho, he is going down toward it, the profane city, the city which was
under a curse.  (Josh. vi. 26; 1 Kin. xvi. 34.) But no sooner has he
forsaken the holy city and the presence of his God, and turned his desires toward the world, than he falls under the power of him who is at
once a robber and a murderer (John viii. 44), and by him and his evil
angels is stripped of the robe of his original righteousness; nor this
only, but grievously wounded, left full of wounds and almost mortal
strokes, every sin a gash from which the life-blood of his soul is copiously
flowing.* Yet is he at the same time not altogether dead;t for as all
the cares of the good Samaritan would have been expended in vain upon
the poor traveller, had the spark of life been wholly extinct, so a recovery for man would have been impossible, if there had been nothing
to recover, no spark of divine life, which by a heavenly breath might
again be fanned into flame-no truth which, though detained in unrighteousness, might yet be delivered and extricated from it. When the
angels fell, as it was by a free self-determining ac.t of their own will,
with no solicitation from without, from that moment they were not as
one half-dead, but altogether so, and no redemption was possible for them.
But man is " half dead;"-he has still a conscience witnessing for God;
evil is not his good, however little he may be able to resist its temptations; he has still the sense that he has lost something, and at times a
longing for the restoration of the lost. His case is desperate as concerns
himself and his own power to restore himself, but not desperate, if taken
in hand by an almighty and all-merciful Physician.
And who else but such a Divine Physician shall give him back what
he has lost, shall heal and bind up the bleeding hurts of his soul? Can
the law do it? The apostle answers, it could not; " if there had been
a law which could have given life, verily righteousness should have
* H. de Sto. Victore (Annott. in Luc.): Homo iste.... genus designat humanum, quod in primis parentibus supernam civitatem deserens, in hujus seculi et
exilii miseriam per culpam corruens; per antiqui hostis fraudulentiam veste innocentiae et immortalitatis est spoliatum, et originalis culpee vitiis graviter vulneratum. See AMBROSE, Exp. in Luc., 1. 7, c. 73; AUGUSTINE, Enarr. in Ps. cxxv.
6, and the sermon (Hor. 34, in Luc.) which Jerome has translated out of Origen.
For the later Gnostic perversions of the parable in this direction, see NEANDER,
Kirch. Gesch., v. 5, p. 1121.
t H. de Sto. Victore: Quamvis enim tanta maliti& possit affici ut nihil diligat
boni non tamen ignorantia tanta excaecari potest, ut nihil congnoscat boni.....
Hostilis gladius hominem penitus non extinxit, dum in eo naturalis boni dignitatem
omnino delere non potuit. Augustine (Quecst. Evang. 1. 2, qu. 19): Ex parte qua
potest intelligere et cognoscere Deum, vivus est homo; ex parte qu& peccatis contabescit et premitur, mortuus est.




260                     THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
been by the law." (Gal. iii. 21.*) The law was like Elisha's staff, which
might be laid on the face of the dead child, but life did not return to it
the more (2 Kin. iv. 21); Elisha himself must come ere the child revive.t  Or as Theophylact here expresses it: "The law came and
stood over him where he lay, but then, overcome by the greatness of hit
wounds, and unable to heal them, departed." Nor could the sacrifices
do better; they could not "make the comers thereunto perfect," nor "take
away sins," nor "purge the conscience."       The law, whether natural
or revealed, could not quicken, neither could the sacrifices truly abolish
guilt and reconcile us unto God. The priest and the Levite were alike
powerless to help: so that in the eloquent words of a scholar of St. Bernard's,: " Many passed us by, and there was none to save. That great
patriarch, Abraham, passed us by, for he justified not others, but was
himself justified in the faith of one to come. Moses passed us by, for
he was not the giver of grace, but of the law, and of that law which
leads none to perfection: for righteousness is not by the law. Aaron
passed us by, the priest passed us by, and by those sacrifices which he
continually offered, was unable to purge the conscience from dead works
to serve the living God. Patriarch and prophet and priest passed us by,
helpless both in will and deed, for they themselves also lay wounded in
that wounded man. Only that true Samaritan beholding was moved
with compassion, as he is all compassion, and poured oil into the wounds,
that is, himself into the hearts, purifying all hearts by faith. Therefore
the faith of the Church passes by all, till it reaches him who alone
would not pass it by."~ (Rom. viii. 3.)
* The selection of this passage, Gal. iii. 16-23, for the Epistle on the Sunday
(the thirteenth after Trinity), when this parable supplies the Gospel, shows I think,
very clearly, the interpretation which the Church puts upon the parable. The
Gospel and Epistle agree in the same thing, that the law cannot quicken, that
righteousness is not by it, but by faith in Christ Jesus.
t AUGUSTINE, Enarr. in Ps. lxx. 15.
t Gillebert. His works are to be found at the beginning of the second volume of
the Benedictine edition of St. Bernard. He carried on and completed the exposition
of the Canticles which Bernard had left unfinished at his death. —Compare a noble
passage in CLEMENS ALEX., Quis Dives Salv., c. 29. T's 8' &v &XAos ef 7 rXy arbs
6 Z0wrTp; ~ Trs fiaaXov fjax s eXeioaas eKeivov, T'os WIb T7v Ko'o.qoKYpaTopw v Tro (roKtroUs
oA(yov TreaavaTrwcavovs ros'roXo'ios Tpa/LIaaC'l, 4bJSois, E7'lrv/ilais, opyais, X7rais, airdraaLs,
i7tovacs; r0o TOVrv  e TrTv TpavyasoTWv /ofvos, larpbs'Ijoovs,;?KKon'rwYv &pSrvY T&a W,'rp4pl'a' oVKc io7rep 6 Yvfos ia Xa a'r& &7OTEXea'uaa,'robs Kapwrovs Trv 7rov,7pwv I<>vTwv,
aAAc rv o&[vry'v r7v lavTroU 7rpbs ras pCpas'7rs KaKias'rpoo'ayayc'v o'ros 6 rbv oTiov, rT
atlca'r7s au7reXov TOV AaLIS, eKXaS 7UIv 7rTl TarS TTre'rpWpLvas vX&as, o6 Tb eK on7rA''yXVw'rvetia.ros eXaiov'rpoa'evey&Krv  Kal EcriLaA4hXeuv/evos'  o vros 6 TroVSs'r e 6'ydas Kal owTr7pCas ero'ob4s &AVTovs erieeCIas, &OycOrvy, 7ral'rv, EX7ri8a  o'Vros 6 iaKcoveiv a&yyeXovs Kal
aPXas Kala fiouvaOa 77fiiwv virroTcas e7r' /fe'yo Acp JLat'^, 16rTr Kai avrol 6eAev~apwcjfovzrc'
AT'b T'rS uapalzJT7r7ros TO, KJO'aov 7rapa T7'V a&roKdcvIv TrL s' 4 5'ri TV vli'v Tro Oeou.
4 The argument that Augustine uses more than once (as Serm. 171, c. 2) in




THE GOOD SAMARITAN.                          261
If it is absolutely needful to give a precise meaning to the oil and the
wine, we might say, with Chrysostom, that the wine is the blood of Passion, the oil the anointing of the Holy Spirit.* On the binding up of the
wounds, one might observe that the sacraments are often spoken of in
the language of the early Church as the ligaments for the wounds of the
soui.f  It is moreover a common image in the Old Testament for the
healing of all spiritual hurts.t When we find the Samaritan setting the
wounded man on his own beast, and therefore of necessity himself
pacing on foot by his side,~ we can scarcely help drawing a comparison
with him, who though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that
we through his poverty might be rich,-the Son of man who came not
proof that our Lord intended himself to be understood by this Samaritan, is
singular. He argues thus: Cam duo essent verba conviciosa objecta Domino,
dictumque illi esset, Samaritanus es et daemonium habes, poterat respondere: Nec
Samaritanus sum, nec damonium habeo: respondet autem, Ego daemonium non
habeo. Quod respondit, refutavit': quod tacuit, confirmavit. Cf. Enarr. in Ps.
cxxxvi. 3.
* They were sometimes interpreted differently; the oil as the blanda consolatio,
the wine as the austera increpatio. Thus Bernard says of the good pastor: Samaritanus sit, custodiens et observans quando oleum misericordiae, quando vinum
fervoris exhibeat; and beautifully, and at more length, In Cant., Serm, 44, 3. So
too Gregory the Great (Moral., 1. 20, c. 5): Inesse rectoribus debet et justb consolans misericordia, et pie saeviens disciplina. Hinc est quod semivivi illius vulneribus, qui B Samaritano in stabulum ductus est, et vinum adhibetur et oleum; ut
per vinum mordeantur vulnera, per oleum foveantur: quatenus unusquisque qui
sanandis vulneribus praeest, in vino morsum districtionis adhibeat, in oleo mollitiem
pietatis: per vinum mundentur putrida, per oleum sananda foveantur. And very
beautiful is the prayer into which in another place he has resolved this whole
history (Exp. in Ps. li.): Utinam, Domine Jesu, ad me misericordia motus, digneris
accedere, qui descendens ab Jerusalem in Jericho, proruens scilicet de summis ad
infirma, de vitalibus ad infirma, in angelos tenebrarum incidi, qui non soliim gratike
spiritalis mihi vestimentum abstulerunt, sed etiam plagis impositis semivivum reliquerunt. Utinam peccatorum meorum vulnera, data mihi recuperandae salutis
fiduciA, alliges, ne deterius sreviant, si sanari desperent. Utinam oleum mihi remissionis adhibeas, et vinum compunctionis infundas. Qu6d si in jumentum tuum
me imposueris, de terr& inopem, pauperem de stercore suscitabis. Tu es enim qui
peccata nostra pertulisti, qui pro nobis quae non rapueras exsolvisti. Si in stabulum me Ecclesiae tue duxeris, corporis et sanguinis tui me refectione cibabis. Si
curam mei egeris, nec praecepta tua pretereo, nec frementium rabiem bestiarum
incurro. Custodia enim tuA indigeo, quamdiu carnem hanc corruptibiliem porto.
Audi ergo me, Samaritane, spoliatum et vulneratum, flentem et gementem, invocantem et cum David clamantem Miserere mei, Deus, secundtm magnam misericordiam tuam.
t Augustine not precisely so: Alligatio vulnerum est cohibitio peccatorum; the
stanching of the ever-flowing fountain of evil in the heart.: Cf. Ps. cxlvi. 3. (LXX):'O l&Evos Trobs TuvvrETple'vouVS T7V KiappvY, Kal eFouAeiwx
r& asUvvJpTiJL/iraTa aVuT(s.
~ Lyser: Suo quasi incommodo nostra commoda quaesivit.




262                   THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
to be ministered unto, but to minister-" who his own self bare our sins
in his own body." Neither is it far-fetched to see in the inn the figure
of the Church, the place of spiritual refection, in which the healing of
souls is ever going forward,-by some called on this last account a
hospital,-whither the merciful Son of man brings all those whom he
has rescued from the hand of Satan, and in which he cares for them
evermore.* In harmony with this we find Christ's work continually
set forth in Scripture as a work of healing; for instance, Mal. iv. 2;
Hos. xiv. 4; Ps. ciii. 3; Matt. xiii. 15; Rev. xxii. 2; and typically,
Num. xxi. 9.
And if, like the Samaritan, who was obliged on the morrow to take
his departure,t he is not always in body present with those whose cure
he has begun, if for other reasons it is expedient even for them that he
should go away, yet he makes a rich provision of grace for them during his absence, and till the time of his coming again. It would be entering into curious minutiae, which rather tend to bring discredit on this
scheme of interpretation, to affirm decidedly of the two pence, that they
mean either the two sacraments, or the two testaments, or the word and
the sacraments, or unreservedly to accede to any other of the ingenious
explanations which have been offered for them. It is sufficient that
they signify all gifts and graces, sacraments, powers of healing, of
remission of sins, or other powers which Christ has left with his Church
to enable it to keep house for him till his return. As the Samaritan
took out two pence and gave them to the host, and said, " Take care of
him;"-even so the Lord Jesus said unto Peter, and in him, to all his
fellow apostles, having first promised unto them heavenly gifts, and
richly furnished them for their work, "Feed my sheep," "Feed my
lambs." To them, and in them to all that succeed them, he has committed an economy of the truth, that as stewards of the mysteries of
God, they may dispense those mysteries as shall seem best for the
health and salvation of his people. And as it was said to the host,
" Whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again Iwill repay thee;"
so the Lord has promised that no labor shall be in vain in him-that
he will count what is done to the least of his brethren, as done unto
him-that they who "feed the flock of God," not by constraint but will* Augustine brings out another side of the similitude: Stabulum est Ecclesia,
ubi reficiuntur viatores de peregrinatione redeuntes in seternam patriam: or it is
an inn (wrav8oXewov), because (ORIGEN, Hom. 34 in Luc.) universos volentes introire
suspiciat.
t Ambrose (Exp ix Luc., 1. 7, c. 78): Non vacabat Samaritano huic din in
terris degere; redeundum e6 erat, unde descenderat.
$ Melancthon: Si quid supererogaveris, solvam: quasi dicat: Accedunt labo.
res, pericula, inopia consilii, in his omnibus adero et juvabo te.




THE GOOD SAMARITAN.                         263
ingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind," —they, "when the
chief Shepherd shall appear," "shall receive a crown of glory that
fadeth not away." (1 Pet. v. 2, 4.)*
It is difficult enough to admire the divine wisdom with which the
Saviour, having brought to an end this affecting parable, reverses the
question of the lawyer, and asks, "Which now of these three thinkest
thou was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?"  The lawyer
had asked, "who is the neighbor to whom I am bound to show the service of love?"  But the Lord asks, "Who is a neighbor, he who shows
love, or he who shows it not?"-for herein lay the great lesson, that it is
not the object which is to determine the love, but that love has its own
measure in itself; it is like the sun, which does not ask on what it shall
shine, or what it shall warm, but shines and warms by the very law
of its own being, so that there is nothing hidden from its light and from
its heat. The lawyer had said, "Declare to me my neighbor; what
marks a man to be such?-is it one faith, one blood, the bonds of mutual
benefits, or what else, that I may know to whom I owe this debt of love?"
The Lord rebukes the question by holding up before him a man, and this
a despised Samaritan, who so far from asking that question, freely and
largely exercised love towards one who certainly had none of the signs
such as the lawyer conceived would mark out a neighbor in his sense
of the word.   The parable is a reply, not to the question, for to that it
is no reply,t but to the spirit out of which the question proceeded. It
says, " You ask who is your neighbor? I will show you a man who
asked not that question, and then your own heart shall be judge between
you and him, which had most of the mind of God, which was most truly
the doer of his will, the imitator of his perfections." The parable is an
* Cyprian's application of the parable (Ep. 51) forms a sort of connecting link
between these two interpretations, the literal and the allegorical: the wounded
man is a sinning brother, in this particular case one who had not stood steadfast in
the time of persecution. Cyprian, who desired to follow the milder course with
these lapsed, and to readmit them to Church communion, exclaims: Jacet ecce
saucius frater ab adversario in acie vulneratus. Inde diabolus conatur occidere,
quem vulneravit, hinc Christus hortatur ne in totum pereat quem redemit. Cui de
duobus assistemus, in cujus partibus stamus? Utrumne diabolo favemus ut perimat, et semianimem fratrem jacentem, sicut in evangelio sacerdos et Levites, pr-eterimus? An vero ut sacerdotes Dei et Christi, quod Christus et docuit et fecit
imitantes, vulneratum de adversarii faucibus rapimus, ut curatum Deo judici
reservemus. Cf. AMBROSE, De Paenit., 1. 1, c. 6; and CHRYSOSTOM, Adv. Jud.,
Orat. 8, 3.
t Maldonatus is the only commentator I have seen who has fairly put this, and
acknowledged the difficulty which is on the face of the parable. It is one of the
many merits of this most intolerant and most abusive Jesuit (Maldonatus maledicentissimus), that he never slights a difficulty, nor pretends not to see it, but fairly
and fully states it, whether he can resolve it or not.




264                 THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
appeal to a better principle in the querist's heart, from the narrow and
unloving theories and systems in which he had been trained. It is to be
hoped that through no unwillingness to acknowledge the truth, though
it has something of that appearance, the lawyer in reply to the Lord's
question, Who was this poor man's true neighbor? circuitously replies,
"He who showed mercy on him;" grudging to give the honor directly
and by name to a Samaritan.* But having acknowledged this, whether
grudgingly or freely, " Go," said the Lord to him, now we trust a
humbler and larger-hearted man, "Go, and do thou likewise."
These last words will hardly allow one to agree with those, who in
later times have maintained that this parable and the discourse that led
to it are, in fact, a lesson on justification by faith-that the Lord sent.
the questioner to the law, to the end that, being by that convinced of sin
and of his own short-comings, he might discover his need of a Saviour.
His intention seemed rather to make the lawyer aware of the great gulf
which lay between his knowing and his doing,-how little his actual exercise of love kept pace with his intellectual acknowledgment of the debt
of love due from him to his fellow-men: on which subject no doubt he
had secret misgivings himself, when he asked, " Who is my neighbor?"
It is true indeed that this our sense of how short our practice falls of our
knowledge, must bring us to the conviction that we cannot live by the
keeping of the law, that by the deeds of the law no flesh shall be justified-so that here also we shall get at last to faith as that which alone
can justify: but this is a remoter consequence, not, as it seems to mea
the immediate purpose of the parable.
* So Bengel: Non invitus absinet legisperitus appellatione propria Samariten.




XVIII.
THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT.
LUKE Xi. 5-8.
THE connection between this parable and the words that go before is
easy to be traced. The disciples had asked to be taught in what words
they should pray, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples."  He graciously gives them  that perfect form which has ever
since been the treasure of the Church: but having done so, he instructs
them also by this parable in what spirit they must pray, even in the
spirit of persevering faith, " continuing instant in prayer." There is the
same argument as in the parable of the Unjust Judge, one from the less
to the greater, or more accurately, from the worse to the better,-but
with this difference, that here the narrow-heartedness and selfishness of
man is set against the liberality of God, while there it is his unrighteousness which is tacitly contrasted with the righteousness of God. The
conclusion is, if selfish man can yet be won by prayer and importunity
to give, and unjust man to do right, how much more certainly shall the
bountiful Lord bestow, and the righteous Lord do justice.* And perhaps
there is this further difference, that here it is intercessory prayer, prayer
for the needs of others, in which we are bidden to be instant; while
there it is rather for our own needs.  Yet must we not urge in either
case; the illustration so far, as to conceive of prayer as though it were
an overcoming of God's reluctance, when it is, in fact, a laying hold of
his highest willingness.t For though there is an aspect under which
* Augustine (Ep. 180, c. 8): Ut hinc intelligeremus, si dare cogitur, qui cum
dormiat, a petente excitatur invitus, quant6 det benignius, qui nec dormire novit,
et dormientes nos excitat ut petamus.
t This is finely expressed by Dante (Parad. 1. 20), in words which have as
much a theological as a political interest:Regnum ccelorum violenzia pate
Da caldo amore e da viva speranza,
Che vince la divina volontate,
Non a guisa che 1' uomo all' uom sovranza,
Ma vince lei, perche vuole esser vinta,
E vinta vince con sua beninanza.




266                 THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT.
God may present himself to us, similar to that of the Unjust Judge and
this churlish neighbor, yet is there ever this difference,-that his is a
seeming neglect and unwillingness to grant, theirs a real. Under such
an aspect of seeming unwillingness to hear, did the merciful Son of man
present himself to the Syro-Phcenician woman.   (Matt. xv. 21.)  But
why? Not because he was reluctant to give, but because he knew that
her faith was strong enough to bear this trial, and that in the end, though
the trial for the moment might be hard, it would prove a blessing to her,
more mightily calling out that faith; since faith ever needs to find some
resistance, before it can be called out in any strength. In like manner
the angel of the Lord, the great Covenant Angel, contended with Jacob,
and wrestled with him all the night, yet allowed himself at the last to
be overcome by him, and left a blessing behind him; and Jacob henceforth was Israel, that is, was permanently lifted up through that conflict
into a higher state, marked by that nobler name which henceforth he
bore,-" for as a Prince hast thou power with God and with men, and
hast prevailed." (Gen. xxxii. 28.)
The parable with which now we have to do, rests on a humble and
familiar incident of our common life; and spoken to humble men, it may
easily have come within the limits of their own experience: " 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?"  I do not see
in these words any deeper meaning than lies on the surface; yet it is
well worth observing that they have afforded ample scope for allegorical
and mystical interpretations, and some of these of considerable beauty.
For instance, it has been said that the guest newly arrived is the spirit
of man, which, weary of its wanderings in the world, of a sudden desires
heavenly sustenance,-something that will truly nourish and satisfy it,begins to hunger and thirst after righteousness. But the host, that is,
man, in so far as he is " sensual, having not the Spirit," has nothing to
set before this unexpected guest, and in this his spiritual poverty and
distress,* is here taught to appeal unto God, that from him he may receive that which is bread indeed, and spiritual nourishment'for the soul.t
* "At midnight:" In media tribulatione constitutus. Augustine.
f Bede (Horn. in Luc. xi.): Amicus qui venit de via, ipse noster est animus,
qui toties b nobis recedit, quoties ad appetenda terrena et temporalia foris vagatur.
Redit ergo, ccelestique alimonias refici desiderat, cam in se reversus superna cceperit
ac spiritualia meditari. De quo pulchrb qui petierat, adjungit, se non habere quod
ponant ante illum, quoniam animee post seculi tenebras Deum suspiranti, nil preeter
eum cogitare nilque libet intueri. And Bernard (In Rogat., Serm.): Amicum venientem ad me, non alium intelligo qubm meipsum, cim transitoria deserens, ad
tor redeo. Venit amicus de regione longinqua, ubi pascere porcos, et ipsorum sili.




THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT.                       267
There is, besides, another interesting adaptation of the parable, which
Augustine gives. He is urging upon his hearers the duty of being able
to give a reason for their faith, a reason not merely defensive, but one
which shall win and persuade: and this, because it might often happen
that some one from the yet heathen world, or it might be a heretic, or
even a nominal Catholic, weary of his wanderings in error, weary of the
bondage of sin, and desiring now to know something of the Christian
faith, but lacking confidence or opportunity to go to the bishop or catechists, might betake himself to some one of them, desiring fuller instruction in the faith. While this was possible, he therefore urges upon all,
that they have what to communicate; or if, when such occasion arises,
when such a friend comes to them, craving spiritual hospitality, they
find they have nothing to set before him, he instructs them out of this
parable what they should do, and to whom they should betake themselves
for the supply of their own needs and the needs of their friend,-that
they go to God, praying that he would teach them, that so they might
be enabled to teach others.* Vitringa's explanationt is a modification
of this last. With him the guest is the heathen world; the host who
receives him, the servants and disciples of Jesus, who are taught from
this parable that they can only nourish those that come to them with
bread of life, as they themselves shall receive the same from God, which
therefore they must solicit with all perseverance and constancy of supquas insatiabiliter esurire solebat. Venit fame laborans, sed hen me! pauperem
eligit hospitem, et vacuum ingreditur habitaculum. Quid faciam huic amico misero et miserabili 2 Fateor amicus est, sed ego mendicus. Quid venisti ad me,
arnice, in necessitate tanta. Festina, inquit, discurre, suscita amicum tuum illum
magnum, quo majorem dilectionem nemo habet, sed neque substantiam ampliorem.
Clama et die, Amice, commoda mihi tres panes. Compare Augustine (Qucest.
Evang., 1. 2, qu. 21); and a discourse which is not Augustine's, but has sometimes
been attributed to him (Serm. 85, Appendix), where the explanation given, at first
sight seems slightly different, but in reality comes to the same thing. Every good
desire, visiting the soul and awakening in it a hunger and thirst after righteousness,-a longing after God, is the guest from the way, whose hunger can only be
satisfied by spiritual nourishment,-by the bread from heaven.
* Serm. 105, c. 2: Venit tibi amicus de via, id est, de vita hujus seculi, in qua
omnes velut peregrini transeunt, nec ullus quasi possessor manet: sed omni homini
dicitur, Refectus es, transi, age iter, da venturo locum. Aut forte de via mala,
hoc est, de vita mala, fatigatus nescio quis amicus tuus, non inveniens veritatem,
qua audita et percepts beatus fiat: sed lassatus in omni cupiditate et egestate
seculi, venit ad te, tanquam ad Christianum, et dicit: Redde mihi rationem,
fac me Christianum. Et interrogat quod fortb tu per simplicitatem fidei nesciebas,
et non est unde reficias esurientem, et te admonitus invenis indigentem. Tibi forte
sufficiebat simplex fides, illi non sufficit. Nunquid deserendus est? nunquid de
domo projiciendus I Ergo ad ipsum Dominum, ad ipsum cum quo familia requi,
escit, pulsa orando, pete, insta.
t Erkllr. d. Parab., p. 763.




268                 THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT.
plication,-at all events a most important truth, whether it is here to be
found or not, for those that have to feed the flock of Christ.* In like
manner in the " three" loaves various Scriptural triads have been traced,
as for instance, it has sometimes been said that the host craving the
three loaves, craves the knowledge of the Trinity, of God in his three
persons, t sometimes again, it is the three choicest gifts and graces of
the Spirit, faith, hope, and charity, which he desires may be his.t
When he from within replies, " Trouble me not, the door is now shut;"
it means evidently more than merely closed; he would say, " The door
is fastened, barred, and bolted, the house is made up for +he night, and
at this unseasonable hour I cannot disturb my children, who are now
with me in bed, by rising and giving thee."  Theophylact makes these
last words yet further significant; " My children are with me in bed;"
that is, "All who by earlier application to me have obtained right to be
called my children, have secured their admission into my kingdom, and
are now resting with me there; it is too late to apply, the door is closed,
the time is past."~ The lesson to be here learned would then be this,
that through earnest importunate prayer, even lost opportunities may be
made up and recovered.1|
" Isay 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."     Our version, translating "importunity," has
rather softened the original word, which might be rendered by a stronger
term; it is his "shamelessness "T which extorts the gift.  At the same
time, the shamelessness which is here attributed to the petitioner is
greatly mitigated by the consideration, that it is not for himself but for
another, and that he may not be wanting in the sacred duties of hospi* Augustine: Unde vivo, inde dico; unde pascor, hoc ministro. Compare a
sermon by Guerricus, in the Benedict. edit. of St. Bernard, v. 2, p. 1023.
t AUGUSTINE, Enarr. in Ps. cii. 5. Qucest. Evang., 1. 2; c. 21.: Thauler gives an ingenious reason, why it should be rather charity alone: Ut
enim quamlibet pretosia mundi cibaria neque utilia, neque jucunda, neque comestabilia sunt absque pane, ita etiam quidquid agas Deo non multAm placet, si
absque caritate fiat. Euthymius: "ApTovs Sr& r peTrTiLKs r-v +/X6yv B-aCxKaxtas.
~ Augustine: Quid pulsas sine tempore, qui piger fuisti cum tempore. Dies
fait, et in lumine non ambulasti, nox supervenit, et pulsare ccepisti.
1 It is possible that the word which we translate "children," would be fitter
translated "servants," and the sense then would be, " I cannot myself come, and
I have none whom I can send; my household as well as myself are gone to rest."
It is clear that r& wratlga has been so understood by Augustine (Ep. 130, c. 8): Jam
cum suis servis dormientem petitor instantissimus et molestissimus excitavit.
~'AvalSela. The Vulgate gives it by a happily chosen word, improbitas, which,
like the adjective from which it is drived, may describe unweariedness in a good
cause as well as in a bad.




THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT.                       269
tality, that he so pertinaciously urges his request.* Through this pertinacity  he at length obtains, not merely the three which he asked, but
"' as many as he needeth," like that woman already referred to, from whom
the Lord at first seemed to have shut up all his compassion, but to whom
at last he opened the full treasure-house of his grace, and bid her to help
herself, saying, " O woman, great is thy faith! be it unto thee even as
thou wilt." Augustine too observes, that he who would not at first so
much as send one of his house, himself now rises, and supplies all the
wants of his friend; and adds on the return of prayers not being always
immediate many excellent observations, as this, When sometimes God
gives tardily, he commends his gifts, he does not deny them;-Things
long desired, are more sweet in their obtainment; those quickly given,
soon lose their value;-and again, God for a time withholds his gifts,
that thou mayest learn to desire great things greatly.t-Faith, and patience, and humility, are all called into exercise by this temporary denial
of a request. It is then seen who will pray always and not faint, and
who will prove but as the leopard, which if it does not attain its prey at
the first spring, turns sullenly back and cannot be induced to repeat the
attempt.~ The parable concludes with words in which the same duty of
prayer is commended, and now no longer in a figure, but plainly: "And
I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be. given you; seek, and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you."ll  The three repetitions of the
command are more than mere repetitions; since to seek is more than to
ask, and to knock than to seek; and thus in this ascending scale of
earnestness, an exhortation is given, not merely to. prayer, but to increas* In the same manner Abraham's conversation with God (Gen. xviii. 23-33),
which almost rises into a like vacLdela, is not the asking any thing for himself, but
intercession for the people of Sodom.
t Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cii. 5): Extorsit taedio quod non possit merito.
The Jews have a proverb, Impudentia est regnum sine corona; and again they say,
Impudentia etiam coram Deo proficit. Von Meyer (Blatter fur hohere Wahrheit, v.
5, p. 45) has some interesting remarks on the avarieta of this petitioner, and how it
is reconcilable with the humility which is praised in the publican. (Luke xviii. 13.)
C Cim aliquando tardiis dat, commendat dona, non negat.-Diu desiderata dulcius obtinentur, cito data vilescunt; and again, Ut discas magna magnb desiderare.
( Stella: Sunt multi qui nature sunt et conditionis leonispardi, qui si primo
saltu vel secundo non assequitur praedam, non amplius earn irsequitur. Ita isti
sunt qui prim& oratione vel secundA non exauditi, protinus ab oratione cessant, et
impatientiae nota signantur.
I1 Augustine (De Serm. Dom. in Mon., 1. 2, c. 21) had made only one of these
three commands (Matt. vii. 7) to have direct reference to prayer, while the other
two he referred to other forms of earnest striving after the kingdom of God;-but
in his Retractations he says, no doubt more accurately: Ad instantissimam orationem omnia referuntur. Their position in relation to this parable leaves no doubt
on the matter.




270                THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT.
ing urgency in prayer, even till the suppliant carry away the blessing
which he requires, and which God is only waiting for the due time to
arrive that he may give him.* All that we have here is indeed a commentary on words of our Lord spoken at another time, " The kingdom
of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."
* Augustine: Deus ad hoc se peti a1lt, ut capaces donomr ejus fiant, qul
petunt; and again: Non dat nisi petent w det non capienti.




XIX.
THE RICH FOOL.
LUKE Xii. 16-21.
1N the midst cf ine of our Lord's most interesting discourses an interruption occurs. One of his hearers had so slight an interest in the
spiritual truths which he was communicating, but had so much at heart
the redressing of a wrong, which he believed himself to have sustained
in his worldly interests, that, as would seem, he could not wait for a
more convenient season, but broke in upon the Lord's teaching with that
request which gave occasion for this parable, "Master, speak to my
brother, that he divide the inheritance with me." It has been sometimes
taken for granted, that this man who desired a division of the inheritance, had no right to what he was here claiming, and was only seeking
to make an unfair use of the Saviour's influence. But how much does
this supposition weaken the moral. All men, without any especial
teaching, would condemn such unrighteousness as this. But that love
of the world, which, keeping itself within limits of decency and legality,
yet takes all the affections of the heart from God, and robs divine things
of all their interest-against that men have need to be continually
warned; and such a warning is here,-a warning, not against unrighteousness, but against covetousness;* for this may display itself in the
manner and temper in which we hold and reclaim our own as truly as
in the undue snatching at that of others:-" Take heed and beware of
covetousness."t From this man's confident appeal to Jesus, made in
* Not asiIda, but rAeovetiia. It is exactly opposed to the avrdp.ceta, which has
always enough, as the 7rAxEOetfa has never.
t In the Vulgate, Cavete ab omni avariti&. So Lachmann, a7rb andarJs rXeovetias.
The emphasis on this "all" is strikingly brought out by Augustine (Serm. 107,
c. 8), as though Christ were herein saying to each that stood by, Fortb tu avarum
et cupidum diceres, si queereret aliena; Ego autem dico cupidb et avarb non appetas
nec tua.... Non solhm avarus est qui rapit aliena: sed et ille avarus est qui cupidb
servat sua.




272                        THE RICH FOO.
the presence of the whole multitude, it is probable that his brother did
withhold from him a part of the patrimony, which fell justly to his
share.  But it was the extreme inopportuneness of the season which he
chose for urging his claim, that showed him as one in whom the worldly
prevailed to the danger of making him totally irreceptive of the spiritual,
and that drew this warning from the lips of the Lord. For that h(
should have desired Christ as an umpire or arbitrator,-and such only
the word in the original means (see Acts vii. 27, 35; Exod. ii. 14), such
too the Lord, without publicly recognized authority, could only have
been *-this in itself had nothing sinful.  St. Paul himself recommended
this manner of settling differences (1 Cor. vi. 1-6), and how weighty a
burden this arbitration afterwards became to the bishops of the Church
is well known.t
In the request itself there was nothing sinful, yet still the Lord absolutely refused to accede to it; he declined here, as in every other case,
to interfere in the affairs of civil life. It was indeed most true, that his
word and doctrine received into the hearts of men, would modify and
change the whole framework of civil society, that his word and his life
was the seed out of which a Christendom would evolve itself, but it was
from the inward to the outward that he would work. His adversaries
more than once sought to thrust upon him the exercise of a jurisdiction
which he so carefully avoided, as in the case of the woman taken in
adultery (supposing that passage to belong to the true Gospel of St.
John),-as in that of the Roman tribute. But each time he avoided the
snare which was laid for him, keeping himself within the limits of the
moral and spiritual world, as that from which alone effectual improvements in the outer life of man could proceed.t
* Grotius explains xeplr-iTs: Qui familiae herciscundae, communi dividundo,
aut finibus regundis arbiter sumiter. Lachmann has admitted KPLTiv, in the place
of BLKaTa^v, into his text.-See Tertullian (Adv. Marc., 1. 4, c. 28) for the reasons
which moved the Lord here'to use the very phrase with which the Israelite
(Exod. ii. 14) put back the arbitration of Moses; and in Hammond's Paraphrase
(in loc.).
t Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cxviii. 115) complains of this distraction from
spiritual objects, and that he was not allowed to say to those who came to him
with cases for arbitration, " Who made me a judge or a divider over you?" And
Bernard, writing to Pope Eugenius, especially warns him against this distraction
of mind, arising from the multitude of these worldly causes which would be
brought before him.: The latter part of ver. 15 is difficult, not that there is any difficulty in tracing
the connection of thought, or the meaning, but that the sentence is more burdened
with words than can be conveniently taken up into the construction. Euthymius,
Theophylact, and others, and in modern times Paulus, would make this the meanIng: When a man possesses much abundance, yet is not his (bodily) life one
among his possessions; in short, A man, though he is rich, cannot live for ever,




THE RICH FOOL.                          273
The Lord having uttered a warning against covetousness, a sin
which is always united with the trusting in uncertain riches'(1 Tim. vi.
17), for who that did not trust in them as a source of good, as a means
of blessedness, would be so eager in their accumulation?-he proceeds
to show by a parable the folly of such trust,-how, though man is ever
dreaming that these worldly goods are the source of happiness, and is
thus drawn to trust in them, rather than in the living God, yet in truth
they cannot constitute a man's blessedness. For, besides other reasons,
that only is blessedness, which has in it security and endurance; but
that earthly life, which is the necessary condition of drawing enjoyment
out of worldly abundance, may come to an end at any moment, and then
will ensue utter loss and destitution to him who has thus been laying up
treasure for himself, instead of seeking to be rich toward God.
" The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plertifully."   It
was said long before, "The prosperity of fools shall destroy them" (Prov.
i. 32), a truth to which this man sets his seal, for his prosperity ensnares
him in a deeper worldliness, draws out the selfish propensities of.his
heart into stronger action.* In this respect how deep a knowledge of
the human heart the warning of the Psalmist displays, " If riches increase,
set not thy heart upon them." It might, at first sight, appear, that the
time when we should be in chiefest danger of setting our heart upon
riches, would be when we saw them escaping from our grasp,-perishing
or, Riches will not lengthen his life. It may certainly be said in favor of this explanation, that it suits well enough with the parable which follows, and it might
pass, if it were this kind of flat morality which our Lord were in the habit of inculcating, or if wcoA were ever in Scripture degraded to this lower sense, and used
to designate the mere soulish life, the *vx4.. It is much better to take'1 Aw here
in that deeper sense, which in Scripture it has ever, as man's true life,-his blessedness; and then with Shultz (iib. d. Parabel vom Vorwalter, p. 79) to put a comma
before and after iv Tr irepLaaevelv rivl, and translate thus: When a man comes to
have abundance (e Tr. repLr. rTivI), his life (his true life,-his blessedness) does not
grow out of his wordly goods. Thus will be preserved all the force of the preposition ec, expressing the springing up or the growing out of one thing from another
(see Luke xvi. 9; Acts i. 18; John iii. 5, 6; xviii. 36, at which last place the Lord
asserts, his kingdom grows not out of an earthly root), and then the parable is
brought in cofirmation. The sudden taking away of the rich worldling's goods, or
which comes to the same thing, his sudden taking away from them, shows that
his life, his true blessedness, was not from them,-that he had made a fearful
mistake in supposing that it was: since the very idea of blessedness involves that
of permanence, not of something that may slip from under a man's feet at any
moment, which a happiness linked to a merely earthly life, and dependent upon
the duration of that life, is ever liable to do; and then, at the conclusion of the
parable, a glimpse of the true cw'j is opened to us as being a irXovUret els Oedv, a
life, a blessedness, which is eternal as the God upon whom it is built.
* Ambrose: Dat tibi fcecunditatem Deus, ut aut vincat aut condemnet avaritiam tuam.
18




274                       THE RICH FOOL.
from under our hand. But all experience testifies the contrary,-that
earthly losses are the remedy for covetousness, while increase in worldly
goods is that which chiefly provokes to it, serving, not as water to quench,
but as fuel to augment, the fire:* " He that loveth silver shall not be
satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase."  (Eccl.
v. 13.) St. Basil, in the opening of his noble sermont upon this parable, observes: " There are two manners of temptations, either afflictions
torment the heart, as gold in the furnace, through the trial of faith working patience, or often the very prosperities of life are too many in place
of other temptation." But it seems a certain exaggeration when he explains, as many others have done, the following words, "he thought
within himself saying, What shall I do?" as though they were the
utterance of one brought to sore straits and difficulties through the very
abundance, for the sake of which others were envying him,-as though
they were the anxious deliberations of one that was now at his wit's end,
and knew not which way he should turn, who was in as painful perplexity through his riches as others are through their poverty.:
Rather, we should say, that the curtain is here drawn back, and we
are admitted into the inner council-chamber of a worldling's heart,rejoicing over his abundance, and realizing to the very letter the making
"provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof." As far as he may be
said to be perplexed, this is his perplexity: "I have no room where to
bestow myfruits."   It has been well answered to him, " Thou hast barns,
-the bosoms of the needy,-the houses of the widows,-the mouths of
orphans and of infants." ~ If he had listened to the prudent admonition
of the son of Sirach (xxix. 12), " Shut up alms in thy storehouses," he
would not have found his barns too narrow. To one thus ignorant where
* Plutarch in his excellent little treatise, rlepf fiLXorXovT[as, applies to the
covetous the line,
Tb (adpfLaKdv rov'TrV Yvdtov diedw Iroie?,
and the same truth is confessed in the Latin proverb: Avarum irritat pecunia, non
satiat. Compare Seneca, Ad. Helv., c. 11; and the fine Eastern tale of Abdallah,
the camel-driver, has the same moral. See also AUGUSTINE, Serm. 50, c. 4.
t Ed. Bened., Paris, 1722, v. 2, p. 43: and in the new Paris reprint, v. 2, p. 60.
t So Augustine: Turbavit hominem copia plusquam inopia. And Grotius
quotes in this view: Crescentem sequitur cura pecuniam. Thus too Gregory
(Moral., 1. 15, c. 22): 0 angustia ex satietate nata! De ubertate agri angustatur
animus avari. Dicens namque, Quid faciam? profecto indicat quia votorum
suorum affectibus pressus sub quodam rerum fasce laborabat. But Unger's is a
better account of these words: Opulentum describit parabola elatM deliberantem.
O Ambrose (De Nabuthe, c. 7): Habes apothecas, inopum sinus, viduarum domus, ora infantium. There is much else that is excellent on this parable. C~
AUGUSTINE,, Serm. 36, c. 9.




THE RICH FOOL.                       275
to bestow his goods and so in danger of losing them, Augustine gives
this earnest affectionate admonition: " God desires not that thou shouldst
lose thy riches, but that thou shouldst change their place; he has given
thee a counsel, which do thou understand. Suppose a friend should
enter thy house, and should find that thou hadst lodged thy fruits on a
damp floor, and he, knowing by chance the tendency of those fruits to
spoil, whereof thou wert ignorant, should give thee counsel of this sor,
saying, Brother, thou losest the things which thou hast gathered with
great labor; thou hast placed them in a damp place; in a few days they
will corrupt;-And what, brother, shall I do? —Raise them to a higher
room;-thou wouldst listen to thy brother suggesting that thou shouldst
raise thy fruits from a lower to a higher floor, and thou wilt not listen
to Christ advising that thou raise thy treasure from earth to heaven,
where that will not indeed be restored to thee which thou layest up, for
he would have thee lay up earth that thou mayest receive heaven, lay up
perishable things.that thou mayest receive eternal."*
This would have been his wisdom, but he determines otherwise-not
to provide thus for himself " bags which wax not old, a treasure in the
heaven which faileth not" (ver. 33), but on the contrary, " I will puli
down my barns and build greater, and there will I bestow all my fruits
and my goods."  " Observe," says Theophylact on these words, "another
folly,-my goods, and my fruits,-for he did not count that he had these
from God, else, as a steward of God, he would otherwise have disposed
of them, but he counted them the products of his own labors,-wherefore
separating them exclusively for himself, he said, my goods, and my fruits."
Yet according to the world's judgment there was nothing sinful in all
this; his riches were fairly got,t and this makes the example the better
to suit the present occasion. Nor yet was there any thing which the
world condemns in the plans which he laid out for his future enjoyment,
in the decent Epicureanism which he meditated; " I will say to my soul,
Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat,
drink, and be merry."  Having now at last, as he imagines, secured himself against every thing that could disturb his felicity, he determines to
rest from his labors, to enjoy that ease and quiet from which hitherto
the anxious acquisition of wealth had hindered him; like the rich man
in another parable, to fare sumptuously every day. His plans of felicity,
it may be observed, rise no higher than to this satisfying of the flesh, so
that there is an irony as melancholy as it is profound in making him
address this speech, not to his body, but to his soul-to that soul, which
* Enarr. in Ps. xlviii. 9. Cf. Enar. in Ps. xxxviii. 6.
t Augustine (Serm. 178, c. 2): Non limite perturbato, non spoliato paupere, non
sircumvento simplice.




276                       THE RICH FOOL.
though thus capable of being dragged down into the basest service of the
flesh, inbodied and imbruted, was also capable of being informed by the
Divine Spirit, and of knowing and loving and glorifying God.
He expects he shall thus nourish his soul "for many years" (see
Sirac. v. 1), he boasts not merely of to-morrow, but of many years to
come; he expects, as Job did once, to multiply his. days as the sand; his
felicity shall not soon come to an end, but to-morrow shall be as to-day,
and much more abundant.* Compare with all this the words of the son
of Sirach (xi. 18, 19), forming as they do a remarkable parallel: " Thers
is that waxeth rich by his weariness and pinching, and this is the portion
of his reward: whereas he saith, I have found rest, and now will eat continually of my goods; and yet he knoweth not what time shall come upon
him, and that he must leave those things to others and die." Therefore
deserves he the appellation of fool which immediately after is given him;
" But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required
of thee."  "Thoufool"t —this title is opposed to the opinion of his own
prudence and foresight which he entertained,-" this night," to the many
years that he promised to himself,-and that " soul," which he purposed
to nourish and make fat, it is declared shall be inexorably " required,"
and painfully rendered up.t There is no need to inquire here, as has
been sometimes done, in what way God spoke to the man,-whether by
a sudden presentiment of approaching death, by some strong alarm of
conscience, by some mortal sickness at this instant falling upon him, or
by what other means. We are not to understand that in any of these
ways God spake to him.    It was not with him as with the Babylonian
king, while the word was in whose mouth there fell a voice fton LLeaven
* Tertullian: Provenientibus fructibus ampliationem horreorunm, et longas
securitatis spatia cogitavit.
t See a striking Epistle (the 101st) of Seneca, on the sudden death of a rich
acquaintance, where, among other things, he says: Quam stultum est aetatem disponere! ne crastino quidem dominamur. O quanta dementia est, spes longas
inchoantium. Emam, aedificabo, credam, exigam, honores geram; tum demum
lassam et plenam senectutem in otium referam. See, too, more than one of the
Greek Epigrams expressing the same truth, that with all his heaping a man is not
able Cwis awopevar pErpa 7replaao-Jepa, and this surely is what the Lord intends to
affirm, Matt. vi. 27,-that no one can add to his term of life (W/xK[ca), for while
many would fain so add to their length of life, who ever wanted to add to his
stature 1 and it is not merely a great addition, such as a cubit, which he could not
make, but the smallest, not even an inch, which would naturally be the thing expressed, if that were the meaning.
t Yitringa (Erkldr. d. Parab., p. 781) makes here an ingenious reference to
1 Sam. xxv. 25, and observes that this rich fool is the Nabal of the New Testament: "As his name is, so is he: Nabal is his name, and folly is with him."
Compare ver. 86-38, then with this ver. 20 of our parable.




THE RICH FOOL.                       277
telling him that the kingdom was departed from him. (Dan. iv. 31.)
Here we are to suppose nothing of the kind, but more awful still, that
while those secure deliberations which have been just described were
going on in the thoughts of the man, this sentence was being determined
in the counsels of God:* for it is thus that the Lord in heaven derides
the counsels of sinners, seeing them in their vanity and folly, and knowing how soon he will bring them to nothing.t Not as yet was there any
direct communication between God and the man's soul-any message or
warning concerning the near impending judgment, but even at the very
moment when God was pronouncing the decree that the thread of his life
should in a few moments be cut in twain, he was promising himself as
confidently as ever the long spaces of an uninterrupted security.
There is a force in the words, " shall be required of thee," (with which
we may compare Wisd. xv. 8, " His life which was lent him  shall be
demanded,") a force which Theophylact well brings out: "For.ike pitiless exactors of tribute, terrible angels shall require thy soul from thee
unwilling, and through love of life resisting. For from the righteous his
soul is not required, but he commits it to God and the Father of spirits,
pleased and rejoicing, nor finds it hard to lay it down, for the body lies
upon it as a light burden. But the sinner who has enfleshed his soul,
and embodied it, and made it earthy, has prepared to render its divulsion
from the body most hard: wherefore it is said to he required of him, as
a disobedient debtor, that is delivered to pitiless exactors."t  For he is
not as a ship, which has been long waiting in harbor, and joyfully when
the signal is given lifts its anchor, and makes sail for the harbor of eternity, but like the ship which by some fierce wind is dragged from its
moorings, and driven furiously to perish on the rocks. The mere worldling is torn from the world which is the only sphere of delight which he
knows, as the fabled mandrake was torn from the earth, shrieking and
with bleeding roots. ~ " Then whose shall those things be which thou host
provided?"  Solomon long before had noted this as constituting part of
the vanity of wealth, and the eager pursuit after wealth, namely, the uncertainty to whom after death it would come, and of the use which the
heir would make of it (Eccles. ii. 18, 19), "Yea, I hated all my labor
* God said to him this, in the words of Grotius, Non revelando sed decernendo.
t This will come out yet more strongly if with the best manuscripts we read not
ae vocative ahpo, but the nominative &(pwov, Fool! It is so in Lachmann's text.: So on the other side, the Jewish doctors taught that the angel Gabriel drew
gently out with a kiss, the souls of the righteous from their mouths; to something
of which kind, the phrase so often used to express the peaceful departure of the
saints, In osculo Domini obdormivit, must allude.
Q See LUCIAN'S inimitable dialogue, the sixteenth (Cataplus), for a commentary,
in its way, on these words " shall be required," as well as on those which next follow.




278                       THE RICH FOOL.
which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it to the man
that shall be after me: and who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man
or a fool?" Compare Ps. xxxix. 6, " He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them." (Eccles. ii. 26; Ps. xlix. 6-20; Job.
xxvii. 16, 17.)*' So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward
God," or, does not enrich himself toward God-for the two clauses of
the verse are parallel, and in the second not merely a state or condition,
the being rich, but as in the first, an effort and endeavor, the making
oneself rich, though in a manner altogether different, is assumed. Self
and God are here contemplated as the two poles between which the soul
is placed, for one or other of which it must determine, and then make
that one the end of all its aims and efforts. If for the first, then the man
" layeth up treasure for himself," and what the end of this is, we have
seen; the man and his treasure, so far at least as it is his treasure,
come to nothing together. He has linked himself to the perishable in
his inmost being, and he must perish with it.  His very enriching of
himself outwardly, while that is made the objeot of his being; is an
impoverishing of himself inwardly, that is, toward God and in those
which are the true riches; for there is a continual draining off to
worldly objects, of those affections which were given him that they
might find their satisfying object in God; where his treasure is, there
his heart is also. Now the Scripture ever considers the heart as that
which constitutes a man truly rich or poor. He that has no love of
God, no large spiritual affections, no share in the unsearchable riches
of Christ, no sympathies with his brethren, is in fact, "wretched and
miserable, and poor and blind, and naked," and shall one day find out
that he is so, however now he may say, " I am rich and increased with
goods, and have need of nothing:" he is poor towards God, he has
nothing with God; he has laid up in store no good foundation against
the time to come. On the other hand, he only is truly rich, who is
rich toward God-who is rich in God-who has made the eternal and
the unchangeable the object of his desires and his efforts. Hie in God
possesses all things, though in this world he were a beggar, and for
him to die will not be to quit, but to go to, his riches.t
* So the Greek epigrammatist on the painful gatherer of wealth for others:
06&ro 6rooa pEXolcaa 7roAXTpTo70os Ev\ aItABotI
MoXZao'El, erTpwv 8pE7rTOJuev'wv Tb jeIAL.
t 1 cannot give better what seems to me the true view of the passage than in
Cyprian's words addressed to the covetous (De Opere et Eleem.): Obsederunt animum tuum sterilitatis tenebrae, et recedente inde lumine veritatis, carnale pectus
alta et profunda avaritxe caligo csecavit: pecuniae tuae captivus et servus es,




THE RICH FOOL.                         279
Our Lord having thus warned his hearers against covetousness, and
knowing how often it springs from a distrust in God's providential care,
goes on to teach them where they may find that which shall be the best
preservative against all such over anxious thoughts for the future, namely, in the assurance of the love and care of a heavenly Father (ver. 2230), so that the connection is as close as it is beautiful, between this
parable and the instructions which immediately follow. There is also,
perhaps, in the words of ver. 24 a distinct reminiscence of the parable.
servas pecuniam, quse te servata non servat, patrimonium cumulas, quod te pondere suo gravies onerat: nec meministi quid Deus respondent diviti exuberantium
fructuum copiam stulta exultatione jactanti... Quid divitiis tuis solus tncubas 1
qui in poenam tuam patrimonii tui pondus exaggeras; ut quo locupetior swacub
fueris, pauperior Deofias? See SuIcER's Thes. s. v. TwxrovIrf.




XX.
THE BARREN FIG-TREE
LUKE Xiii. 6-9.
THE eagerness of men to be the first narrators of evil tidings, an
eagerness which can only spring from a certain secret pleasure in
them,* though that be most often unacknowledged even to themselves,
was perhaps what moved some of those present to tell the Lord of a new
outrage which Pilate had committed. These persons understood rightly
that he was speaking, in the words which conclude the last chapter, of
the severe judgments which men bring upon themselves through their
sins: but, as is generally the manner of men, instead of applying these
words to their own consciences, they made application of them only to
others. Of the outrage itself,-which however agrees well with the
quarrel between Herod and Pilate (Luke xxiii. 12), and might have been
either its cause or its consequence,-there is no historical notice. For
it is little probable that the scattering or slaying by Pilate of some
fanatical Samaritan insurgents, recorded by Josephus, which is here adduced by some of the early commentators, is the event referred to; and
it is something too bold a change, as Lightfoot observes, to make rebelling Samaritans of these sacrificing Galilveans. Among the numberless atrocities with which the Romans exhausted the patience of the
Jewish nation, and at length drove it into open resistance, it is nothing
strange that this, which must have been but a drop of water in the sea,
should have remained unrecorded. It is no more strange than that the
slaughter of a few infants in a small country town like Bethlehem should
find no place in profane history. The troublesome insurrectionary character for which the Galilseans were noted,t may have been the motive
* Two languages at least, bear melancholy witness to the existence of such a
feeling, having a word to express this joy at calamities:-the German, Schadenfreude; and the Greek, efrLXaLpeKaKCa.
t The Galilsans are described by Josephus as industrious and brave; but,
though not in the least considered heretical like the Samaritans, by the other




THE BARREN FIG-TREE.                       281
or excuse for this outrage, which must have been perpetrated at Jerusalem where alone sacrifices were offered. There is something significant
in the language in which the slaughter of these Galilseans is narrated,
-" whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices." It is probable from our Lord's reply, that the narrators urged this circumstance,
or at least would have had it understood, as a peculiar evidence of the
anger of God against the sufferers. If men might have been safe anywhere or at any time, it would have been at the altar of God, and while
in the act of offering sacrifices unto him.  But here, they probably
meant to infer, just as Job's friends inferred some great guilt on his part
from the greatness of his calamities, there must have been some hidden
enormous guilt, which rendered the very sacrifices of these men to be
sin,-not a propitiation of God, but a provocation,-so that they themselves became piacular expiations, their blood mingling with, and itself
becoming part of, the sacrifices which they offered.
But whether exactly this was what they meant or not, the Lord at once
laid bare the evil in their hearts, rebuking the cruel judgments which they
certainly had formed concerning those that perished; " Suppose ye that
these Galileans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered
such things?"  He does not deny that they were sinners, justly obnoxious
to this or any other severest visitation from God, but he does deny that
their calamity marked them out as sinners above all other of their fellowcountrymen; and then he leads his hearers, as was ever his manner (see
Luke xiii. 23; John xxi. 22), to take their eyes off from others, and to fix
them upon themselves-" Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."
Here, in these words, we are exactly taught how rightly to use the calamities which befall others; what their significance is, as regards ourselves-that they are loud calls to an earnest repentance. For instead
of exalting ourselves above and against the sufferers, as though we were
more righteous thah they, and on this account exempt from the like tribulations, we are on the contrary to recognize that whatever befalls another, might justly have befallen ourselves. So it will be ever felt by
all who, not altogether ignorant of their own sinfulness, and of the holiness of God, apply any right measure to their own actual transgressions
Jews, they were yet held in a certain degree of contempt by them, partly because
their blood was considered less pure, many heathens being mingled among them,
whence their country is called " Galilee of the Gentiles" (Matt. iv. 15; see 1 Macc.
i. 15, raxixata aAAoxoAc)),-and partly because their faith was considered bythe
Jewish doctors as less strictly orthodox (John vii, 52; see i. 46; Acts ii. 7), they
in many observances departing from the Jewish tradition. They spoke a bad
dialect (Matt. xxvi. 73), characterized particularly by a confusion of gutturals, and
a broad Syriac pronunciation, so as to give occasion to the strangest mistakes, and
often to be unintelligible to a native of Jerusalem. (See LIGHTFOOT'S Clorograph,
Cent., c. 86, 87.




282                    THE BARREN FIG-TREE.
against the law of God.    Moreover, when we have learned to see in
ourselves the bitter root of sin, we shall learn to acknowledge that what.
ever deadly fruit it bears in another, it might have borne the same or
worse, under like circumstances, in ourselves.  But when this is felt, it
will be no longer possible to triumph over the doom of any sinner. The
thoughts of a man thus taught to know himself will fall back on his own
life and on his own heart. He will see in the chastisement which has
overtaken another, the image of the chastisement which might justly
have overtaken himself; he will see in it a message of warning addressed
to himself. For he will not deny, as neither does our Lord here deny,
the intimate connection between sin and suffering, but it is the sin of
the race which is linked with the suffering of the race-not, of necessity
at least, the sin of the individual with his particular suffering.* So
far from denying this connection, the more the Christian conscience is
developed in him, the more freely he will acknowledge it, the more close
and intimate will it appear. At every new instance of moral and physical evil which he encounters in a world which has departed from God,
he will anew justify God as the Author of all good, even when he proves
himself negatively such, in the misery of man as he is a sinful creature
separated from his God, as well as positively in the blessedness of man
as he is redeemed and re-united with himself.
Our blessed Lord, to set the truth he would fain enforce yet more
plainly before his hearers, himself brings forward another instance of a
* Strauss (Leben Jesu, v. 2, pp. 84-90) terms the faith in a connection between
sin and suffering, a "vulgar Hebrew notion," from which this passage might at
first sight appear to clear the Lord, but which such other passages as Matt. ix. 2,
John v. 14, lay again at his door, or that of his historians; and says that this passage and those are in contradiction to one another, and cannot be reconciled. He
will not see, I know not whether in feigned or real blindness that what Christ condemns is this, the affirming that any man's particular calamity is the consequence
of his particular sin. He affirms, all Scripture affirms, that the sum total of the
calamity which oppresses the human race is the consequence of the sum total of
its sin; nor does he deny the relation in which a man's actual sins may stand to
his sufferings. What he does deny is man's power to trace the connection, and
therefore his right in any particular case, to assert such connection. And this,
instead of being a " vulgar Hebrew notion," is one of the most deeply rooted convictions in the universal human heart, witnessed for by the proverbs of all nations,
inextricably entwined in all language-a truth which men may forget or deny in
their prosperity, but which in the hour of calamity they are compelled to acknowledge-when this confession is ever extorted from them, Our sin hath found us
out. Thus was it with Joseph's brethren; in the hour of their own afflictions,
they remembered their own sins: " We are verily guilty concerning our brother,.... therefore is this distress come upon us." (Gen. xlii. 21; cf. 1 Kin. xvii. 18;
Judg. i. 7; Acts xxviii. 4.) There are some excellent observations upon this subject in HENGSTENBERG'S Authentie d. Pentateuches, v. 2, p. 577, seq.




THE BARREN FIG-TREE.                      283
swift destruction overtaking many persons at once:-' Those eighteen
on whom the tower of Siloam* fell and slew them, think ye that they
were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?"  Neither in this
case were uncharitable judgments to find place, as though these were
sinners above all men, as though they owed a larger debtt to God than
others. But while none were to attribute a preponderance of guilt to
those who perished, yet here also, in these accidents, in this disharmony
of outward nature, all were to recognize a call to repentance, partly as
these swift calamities should convince them of the uncertain tenure of
life, and how soon therefore the day of grace might be closed for them;
but chiefly as awakening in them a sense of consciousness of sin. For
the discords of outward nature, storms and floods, earthquakes and pestilences, and so too all disasters such as that one here referred to, are
parts of that curse, that subjection of the whole creation to vanity, consequent on the sin of man. All were to speak to sinners in the same
warning language,-"Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."
There is a force in the original word (&co-OavrC), which our English "like.
wise," from its frequent lax usage as a synonyme for "as well," fails
to give. The threat is, that they shall literally in like wise perish, in a
manner similar to that in which these perished: for, as it has often been
observed, the resemblance is more than accidental between these two
calamities here adduced, and the ultimate destruction which did overtake the rebellious Jews, those who refused to obey the Lord's bidding,
and to repent. As the tower of Siloam fell and crushed eighteen of the
dwellers at Jerusalem, exactly so multitudes of its inhabitants were
crushed beneath the ruins of their temple and their city; and during
the last siege and assault of that city, there were numbers also, who
were pierced through by the Roman darts in the courts of the temple,
in the very act of preparing their sacrifices, so that literally their blood,
like that of these Galileans, was mingled with their sacrifices, oie blood
with another.
These two calamities then are adduced as slight foretastes of the
doom prepared for the whole rebellious nation. If the warning was
taken, if they would even now bring forth fruit meet for repentance, that
* This tower was, from its name, probably in the immediate neighborhood of
the fountain of Siloam, though Josephus (Bell. Jud., 6. 7, 2) would seem to distinguish a region of Siloam from the fountain bearing that name. Though the
notices of Siloam are so numerous, both in the Scriptures and in the Jewish
historian, modern topographers are altogether at issue concerning its true position.
t Literally, "Think ye they were debtors above all men." a remarkable phrase,
selected for its peculiar fitness here, and with reference no doubt to chapter xii
58, 69. (Cf. Matt. v. 25; vi. 12; xviii. 24; Luke vii. 41.)




284                   THE BARREN FIG-TREE.
doom might still be averted: but if not, if they refused to return, then
these calamities would in the end be headed up by that one great and
final catastrophe, which would leave no room for repentance. In the
meanwhile they were to see in the fact that as yet the strokes descended
upon them for warning, and not the stroke for excision, a proof of the
long-suffering of God, not willing that any should perish: as Olshausen
observes,-" the discourse of Jesus, severe and full of rebuke, is closed
by a parable, in which the Merciful Son of man again brings the side of
grace prominently forward. He appears as the Intercessor for men before
the righteousness of the heavenly Father, as he who obtains for them
space for repentance. This idea of the deferring of the judgment of
God, so to leave men opportunity to turn, runs through all the Holy
Scripture; before the deluge, a period of a hundred and twenty years
was fixed (Gen. vi. 3); Abraham prayed for Sodom (Gen. xviii. 24); the
destruction of Jerusalem did not follow till forty years after the ascension
of the Lord; and the coming again of Christ is put off though the
patience of God (2 Pet. iii. 9)."
This parable then is at once concerning the long-suffering and the
severity of God; it begins thus: "A certain man had afig-tree plantea
in his vineyard." The vineyard here must be the world, and not, as in
the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, the kingdom of God; in the
midst of the world the Jewish people were set and appointed that they
should bear much fruit, that they should bring much glory to God.
(Deut. iv. 6.) Yet though the parable was directly pointed at them, it
is also of universal application; for as Israel according to the flesh was
the representative of all and of each, who in after times should be elected
out of the world to the privileges of a nearer knowledge of God, so is
a warning herein contained for the Gentile Church and for every individual soul.*, Indeed there is persdnal application made of the image
which applies the groundwork of the parable, by the Baptist (Matt. iii.
10), and of an image very nearly the same by Christ himself. (John xv..
2.)-The possessor of the fig-tree "came and sought fruit thereon."
What is here parabolically related was on another occasion typically
done in a kind of sermo realis by the Saviour; " seeing a fig-tree afar
off, having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon."
(Mark xi. 13.) But he then, as the master of the vineyard now, "'found
* Such application of it Ambrose makes (Exp. in Luc., 1. 7, c. 171): Quod de
Judaeis dictum, omnibus cavendum arbitror, et nobis maxims; ne fecundum
Ecclesise locum vacui meritis occupemus: qui quasi melogranata benedicti, fructus
ferre debemus internos, fructus pudoris, fructus coInunctionis, fructus rmutue cariatis et amoris, sub uno utero Ecclesise matris inclusi: ne aura noceat, ne grando
lecutiat, ne sestus cupiditatis exurat, ne humoris imber elidat.




THE BARREN FIG-TREE.                       285
none."  Long since the prophets had upbraided their people, and laid
this charge against them, that though ordained to bring forth much fruil
to the glory of God, they had fallen from their high calling, and brought
forth either no fruit or bitter fruit.  (Isai. v. 2, 7; Jer. xv., and, if oui
version is to stand, H9s. x. 1.)
There is a wonderful significance in the simple image running through
the whole of Scripture, according to which men are compared to trees,
and their work to fruit*-the fruit being the organic produce and evidence of the inner life, not something arbitrarily attached or fastened on
from without. (Ps. i. 3; Jer. xvii. 8; John xv. 2, 4, 5; Rom. vii. 4.)
It is a comparison which helps greatly to set forth the true relation between faith and works, which relation is, in fact, just as plainly declared
by our Lord, when he says, "A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt
fruit, neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit" (Luke vi. 43),
as by St. Paul in any of his Epistles. There are three kinds of works
spoken of in the New Testament, which may all be illustrated from this
image: first, good works, when the tree, being made good, bears fruit of
the same character;t then dead works,t such as have a fair outward
appearance, but are not the living outgrowth of the renewed man-fruit,
as it were attached and fastened on from without, alms given that they
may be gloried in, prayers made that they may be seen, works such as
were most of those of the Pharisees: and lastly, wicked works,~ when the
corrupt tree bears fruit manifestly of its own kind. Here it is, of course,
those good fruits which the tree is accused of not bearing: both the
other kinds of fruit the Jewish nation abundantly bore.
For "three years" the master of the vineyard complains that he had
come seeking fruit, and in vain.   Of these "three years" very many
explanations have been offered. Augustine understands by them the
times of the natural law,-of the written law,-and now, at last, of
grace.  Theophylact; " Christ came thrice, by Moses, by the prophets,
and thirdly, in his own person;" or, when application of the parable is
* BENGEL on Matt. vii. 16: Fructus est, quod homo, tanquam arbor, ex bona
vel malA indole sue, omnes interiores facultates permeante, scaturit. Doctrina
undecunque compilata et linguae alligata non est fructus: sed id omne quod doctor
aliquis ex suo corde promit et profert, in sermone et actione, ceu quiddam ex intim. sua constitutione fluens, ut lac quod mater prsebet ex se. See an admirable
sermon by Augustine (Serm. 72) on the tree and its fruits, as setting forth the
relation between a man and his works.
t'Epya Oeov (John vi. 28), Kaxa tpya (Tit ii. 7), aya&a gpya (1 Tim ii. 10), epya
rtir'Tws (1 Thess. i. 3).
"'Epya vKecpd (Heb. ix. 14), and sometimes {pya vPJIov (Gal. ii. 16).' EEpya irovpdc (1 John iii. 12), Jp'ya Tro aKOTouV (Rom. xiii. 12), ris aapprd (Gal
v. 19).




286                    THE BARREN FIG-TREE.
made to the individual,-in childhood, in manhood, in old age.   Olshau.
sen thinks that they may refer to the three years of the Lord's open
ministry upon earth; but Grotius had already observed against this
view, that if the three years are chronological, the one year more, which
at the intercession of the dresser of the vineyard.is granted to the tree,
ought certainly to be chronological also, whereas not one, but forty years
of grace were allowed to the Jews, before their final destruction. —" Cut
it down" (see Isai. v. 5, 6; Matt. vii. 19; Luke xix. 41-44), "why*
cumbereth it the ground?" St. Basil beautifully observes the love which
breathes even in the threatenings of God.  "This," he says, "is peculiar
to the clemency of God toward men, that he does not bring in punishment silently or secretly; but by his threatenings first proclaims them
to be at hand, thus inviting sinners to repentance."  There is a blessed
sense in which that word of the Greek proverb,' The feet of the avenging
deities are shod with wool," to express the noiselessness of their approach,
is not true. Before the hewing down begins, the axe is laid at the root
of the tree (Matt. iii. 10), laid there, as prompt and at hand for immediate use, though as yet no blow has been struck; but laid there also, that
if possible, this sign of what is threatened may avert the actual fulfilment of the threat.t    (2 Chron. xxxiii. 10.)  The "cumbering"$ the
* We have missed the " also" here (ivari K a I rov'y-v Karapyei); which is
really the key-word of the sentence: Wherefore should the tree stand, when, besides being itself barren, it also injures the soil in which it is set 2 The Vulgate
has held it fast: Ut quid etiam terram occupat? and in De Wette's German translation: Warum macht er auch noch das Land unfruchtbar? Gregory the Great
(Hom. 31 in Evang.) shows that it had not escaped him: Postquam enim se perdidit, qunsrendum est cur et alios premat. And Bengel: Non mod6 nil prodest,
sed etiam laticem avertit, quem e terra sucturte erant vites, et soles interpellat, et
spatium occupat.
t Augustine: Si damnare vellet, taceret. Nemo volens ferire dicit, Observa;
and Chrysostom has the same thought (De P&onit. Horn. 7, ad finem):'A7TrelAE TRj
L/Iwpiav'Va /7IXywFeV TV 7reipaVr7s T LS LpiasL aC (of3oe Tcp AXya), VaG /Aj KIoAayC Td repY.
We have a parallel, Heb. vi. 7, 8. The earth which beareth thorns and briers is
there described as Kacrapas eyyis, but though thus " nigh unto cursing," the curse
has not lighted on it yet;-it is foreannounced, that so it may not arrive.
t The word is not altogether adequate; nor is it very easy to see what.induced
to its selection. It first appears in Tyndale's translation. In the Geneva, " Why
keepeth it the ground barren!" takes its place, but it reappears in the authorized
version. Doubtless the verb, to comber (cognate with the German kummern), had
a stronger and more extensive sense in early English than it has retained in later
use, but mainly the sense of harassing or annoying. Like the occupat of the Vulgate, which is evidently too weak, it fails to give us the Karapyei (=appyv, or a'epyd
ronei) of the original. Impedit, which appears to have been in the old Italic, is
better, for the tree is charged not merely with being negatively, but positively
evil; it marred and mischiefed the soil beneath and around it. Gregory the
Great: Stat desuper arbor infructuosa, et subtus terra sterilis jacet. Infructuosae




THE BARREN FIG-TREE.                      287
ground implies something more than that it occupied the place which
might have been filled by another and a fruit-bearing tree; the barren
tree injured the land, spreading injurious shade, and drawing off to itself
the fatness and nourishment which should have gone to the trees that
would have made a return.   Thus, like ths fig-tree, the Jewish Church
not merely did not itself bring forth fruits of righteousness, but it
injured the ground in which it was planted. Through them the name
of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles (Rom. ii. 24); they hindered
the spread of the knowledge of God among other nations, through the
mischievous influences of their pride and hypocrisy (Matt. xxiii. 13. 15);
even as it is true of every individual sinner, that he is nqt merely unprofitable to God, but has a mischievous influence; by his evil example, by his
corrupt maxims, he is a hindrance and a stumbling-block to others in the
way of their attainment of salvation.
The dresser of the vineyard, who pleads for the tree, and would, if it
might be, avert its doom, saying, " Lord, let it alone this year also," is
manifestly the Son of God himself, the Intercessor for men (Job xxxiii.
23; Zech. i. 12; Heb. vii. 25); yet not as though the Father and the
Son had different minds concerning sinners,-as though the counsels of
the Father were wrath, and of the Son, mercy; for righteousness and
love are not qualities in him, who is Righteousness and who is Love;they cannot, therefore, be set one against the other, since they are his
essential being. Yet, on the other hand, w6 must not, while escaping
this error, fall into the opposite, letting go the reality of God's wrath
against sin,-the reality of the sacrifice of Christ, not merely on the side
with which it looks towards men, but also on the side with which it looks
towards God; the death of Christ was really a propitiation of God, not
merely an assurance of God's love towards sinners. The way of escape
from both these errors is shown to us in those words: " the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world" (Rev. xiii. 8); "foreordained before
the foundation of the world" (1 Pet. i. 20). The sacrifice, though of
necessity outwardly brought to pass in time, " now manifest in these last
times for you," yet took place in the purpose of him who offered, and of
arboris desuper umbra densatur, et solis radius ad terram descelidere nequaquam
permittitur. Corn. B Lapide; Terrain inertem et sterilem reddit, tum umbrA su&
tum radicibus suis, quibus succum terree vicinis vitibus eripit et praeripit. Even
so we have in Shakspeare:"The noisome weeds that without profit suck
The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers."
The word Karap-yev is a very favorite one with St. Paul, occurring no less than
twenty-six times in his Epistles; and only here besides in the N. T. We have
Apyobs and aKcdp7rovs joined together, 2 Pet. i. 8. See SUIcER's Thes., s. v.




288                   THE BARREN FIG-TREE.
him who accepted it, before all time, or rather, out of time; so that we
must not conceive of man as ever not contemplated by God in Christ:
there was no change in God's mind concerning the sinner,* because he
who beholdeth the end from the beginning, had beheld him from the first
as reconciled and re-constituted inr his Son. (Rom. xvi. 25, 26.) In
this view we may consider the high priestly intercession of Christ as
having found place and been effectual even before he passed from earth
into the heavens,-before he had carried his own blood into the truly
Holy of holies:t for to that intercession all the long-suffering of God
toward sinners is to be referred;-" The earth and all the inhabitants
thereof are dissolved; I bear up the pillars of it." (Ps. lxxv. 3.) Some
of the Fathers see here allusion also to the intercessory work, which the
Church, in its healthy members, is ever carrying forward on behalf of
its sick members, or that of the Church for the world.t No doubt such
intercession is always going forward, and has a real worth before God
(Gen. xviii. 23-33; Exod. xxxii. 11; Job xlii. 8; 1 Sam. xii. 19, 23; 2
Kin. xix. 24; Jer. xv. 1; 1 Tim. ii. 1-4; Jam. v. 14-18; 1 John v. 16),
and such need not here be of necessity excluded; but at the same time,
it seems simpler and more satisfactory, with Theophylact and others, to
refer this primarily to that one Intercessor, on whose intercession that
of all others must ultimately rest. It is plain, too, that he must be
meant, for the pleader now is the same who but for this pleading should
have executed the sentence. But to him only, to whom all judgment is
committed, could the command have been given, " Cut it down."   Certainly it would not have been given, to men; for if to any beside him, it
must have been to the angels. (Matt. xiii. 29, 30.)
As he pleads for men, not with the purpose that they may continue
in their sins with impunity, but obtains that their sentence may for a
while be suspended to see if they will turn and repent, so the vinedresser here pleads for the barren tree, not that it may be suffered to
stand for ever, though it continue in barrenness (for on the contrary he
consents to its doom, if it thus continue unfruitful, as a doom righteous
* Augustine (Serm. 254, c. 2): Interpellat misericors misericordem. Qui enim
se volebat exhibere misericordem, ipse sibi opposuit intercessorum.
f Cocceius and his followers, as is well known, laid much stress on the distinction between the hrdpeOrs (Rom iii. 25) and the &earis auap.ricv. The first, the
pretermission of sins through the forbearance of God, they said was what the Son
obtained for men till he had actually come in the flesh, and then ensued the &eEO-Y,
or entire remission, the last going along with the gift of regeneration, exclusively
the prerogative of the New Covenant.
$ As Augustine (Sermn. 110, c. 1): Qui intercedit colonus est omnis sanctus, qui
Intra Ecclesiam orat pro iis qui sunt extra Ecclesiam.




THE BARREN FIG-TREE.                      289
and good);* but he asks for it one year of grace, to see if it will yet de
better: " If it bear fruit, well;t and if not, then after that thou shalt
cut it down."  During this year he " he will dig about it and dung it:"
that is, he will hollow out the earth from around the stem of the tree,
and afterwards fill up the hollow with manure; as one. may often see
done now to the orange-trees in the south of Italy.: By these appliances
is signified that multiplication of the means of grace, which in God's
dealing with men, we may so often observe to find place at the last moment,-before those means are withdrawn for ever. Thus, before the
flood, they had Noah, a "preacher of righteousness,"-b'efore the great
catastrophes of the Jews, they had among them some of their:nost eminent prophets, as Jeremiah before the taking of Jerusalem by the Chaldieans,-and before its final destruction, they enjoyed the ministry of
Christ and of his apostles. To this last, no doubt, allusion is here more
immediately made, to that larger, richer supply of grace,-that freer outpouring of the Spirit, which was consequent on the death, and resurrection, and ascension, of the Lord. So Theophylact explains this digging
about and manuring the hitherto unfruitful tree: "Though they were
not made better by the law and the prophets, nor yielded fruit of repentance, yet will I water them by my doctrines and passion; it may be,
they will then yield fruits of obedience." No doubt if the history of
men's lives were writ as large as the history of nations and of churches,
and could we, therefore, read the history of those as plainly as of these,
we should oftener perceive that what is true of the last is also true of
the first: we should mark critical moments in men's lives to which all
the future was linked, on which it was made altogether to depend,times of gracious visitation which it was of the deepest importance to
know, and not to suffer to escape unobserved and unimproved. Such a
time of visitation to the Jewish people was the Lord's ministry in the
midst of it (Luke xix. 42); then was the digging about and manuring
the tree which had been so long barren. But it abode in its barrenness,
-its day of grace came to an end; and, as here is threatened, it was
inexorably cut down. We may observe, however, that in the parable our
Lord does not actually affirm that the tree will certainly continue unfruitful to the last, but suggests the other alternative as possible; " If
* With a play on the words, Augustine (Serm. 110, c. 4): Dilata est securis,
noli esse secura; and elsewhere, Distulit securim, non dedit securitatem.
t We have the same suspended sense, with e3, or some word similar, understood,
Luke xxii. 42.
t For a useful spiritual application of the words, see AUGUSTINE, Serm. 254 and
110, c. 1: Sordes cultoris, dolores sunt peccatoris. Cf. Ambrose, De Poanit, 1. 2,
c. 1.
19




290                    THE BARREN FIG-TREE,
it bear fruit, well." For thus the door of repentance is left open to all;
they are warned that they are not shut up, except indeed by their own
evil will, in unbelief and hardness of heart,* that it is they only themselves who make inevitable their doom.
* Rosenmiiller (Alte und Neue Morgenland, v. 5, p. 187) quotes from an Arabian
writer the following receipt for curing a palm-tree of barrenness. " Thou must
take a hatchet, and go to the tree with a friend, unto whom thou sayest, I will cut
down this tree, for it is unfruitful. He answers, Do not so, this year it will certainly bear fruit. But the other says, It must needs be,-it must be hewn down;
and gives the stem of the tree three blows with the back of the hatchet. But the
other restrains him, crying, Nay, do it not, thou wilt certainly have fruit from it
this year, only have patience with it, and be not over-hasty in cutting it down; if it
still refuses to bear fruit, then Cut it down. Then will the tree that year be certainly fruitful and bear abundantly." The same story is to be found in RUCKERT'S
Brahmanische Erzahlungen, so that it would appear widely spread in the East; also
in S. DE SACY'S Chrest. Arabe, v. 2, p. 379; and in the collk Ot: w' tracts De Re
Rustica, entitled Geoponica.




XXI.
t'HE GREAT SUPPER.
LUKE XiV. 15-24.
IT is not wortn while to repeat the arguments which seem to prove
beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this parable, and that recorded at
Matt. xxii. 2, are entirely different, spoken upon different occasions,
and with (partially) different aims. On the present occasion, the Lord
had been invited to eat bread at the house of one of the chief of the
Pharisees. (Ver. 1.) Much happened at this meal, which was probably no common meal, but an entertainment prepared with much cost and
expense, and at which many, and it is likely, guests of consideration, were
present. This would seem probable for many reasons; there were contests among the guests for precedency, or at least a silent, but not unobserved or unrebuked, attempt on the part of some to select for themselves the places of honor and dignity.*  (Ver. 7.)  Then again, in
the Lord's address to his host, in which he points out to him a more excellent way of hospitality (ver. 12), it would seem implied that at that
feast were present many of his kindred and richer neighbors-such a
supposition adds much force to the admonishment. And yet further,
our Saviour so often borrowed the images of his parables from that which
was actually at the moment present before his eyes and the eyes of his
hearers-that his speaking of a certain man having made a great supper,
would seem to indicate that this also at which he was now sitting was
no ordinary, but rather some costly and numerously attended entertainment.
The circumstances out of which the parable immediately grew were
these: one that sat at the table with him, after hearing some of the graoious words that proceeded out of his mouth, could not help exclaiming,
* This snatching at the first places is adduced by Theophrastus (Char. 21) as
an example of the liKpoL^xoriquha. See also BECKER's Charikles, v. 1, p. 427.




292                   THE GREAT SUPPER.
certainly not in the spirit of mockery, rather in approval and admiration, " Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!" But
how, it may be asked, came the Lord's last words, "Thou shalt be
recompensed at the resurrection of the just," to elicit exactly this obser.
vation? what natural connection was there between the two, for such a
connection is evidently marked in the narrative? When we keep in
mind the notions then current among the Jews concerning the resurrection of the just, or, which was the same thing, the open setting up of the
kingdom of God,-that it would be ushered in by a great and glorious
festival,* of which all the members of that kingdom should be partakers,
it is at once easy to perceive how this man's thoughts, a man it might be
with certain favorable dispositions towards the truth, but of a carnal
mind like the most of his countrymen, should have passed on from the
resurrection of the just, of which Jesus spake, to the great festival which
was to accompany that resurrection, or rather, should have interpreted
the Lord's words, when he spake of the recompense that would then be
given to the merciful, as meaning participation in that festival. His
exclamation, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!"
might be unfolded thus; " Blessed is he that shall share in the recompense whereof thou speakest, in the reward which shall be given
at the resurrection of the just."  His words are an earthly way of saying, " Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection!" It
is likely from the warning conveyed in the parable, which we are told
was particularly, though we cannot suppose exclusively, addressed to
him, that he spoke these words with a very easy and comfortableassurance that he should make one of those that should thus eat bread in the
kingdom of God. He, as a Jew, as a member of the elect nation, had
been invited to that great feast of God; that was all which he paused to
consider; and not whether he had truly accepted the call, or, on the
contrary, had suffered carnal desires and lusts to keep him away from
rightly embracing it; certainly he had not at all considered whether in
the refusal to enter into that higher spiritual life of the Gospel, to which
Christ was now inviting him, there was not involved his own ultimate
rejection from the heavenly festival.t For his warning, and for the
warning of all like-minded with him, the parable was spoken.
" A certain man made a great supper." Many have said, " a supper,^
because as a supper takes place at evening, so it was in the evening of
* See EISENMENGER'S Entdeckt. Judent/lum, v. 2, p. 872, seq.-Augustine warning against a carnal interpretation, exclaims concerning this supper: Noli parare
fauces, sed cor.
t Augustine (Sermn 112, c. 5): Quasi in longinqua iste suspirabat, et ipse Panis
ante ilium discumbebat.




THE GREAT SUPPER.                         293
time, the last hour (1 John ii. 18; 1 Cor. x. 11), that Christ came, and
invited men to the fulness of Gospel blessings. But this is pressing the
word of the original* too far, which is of very wide and fluctuating use:
a great feast, and nothing more, is signified. Men's relish is so little,
their desire so faint for the things heavenly, therefore are they presented to them under such inviting images as this, that if possible they may
be stirred up to a more earnest longing after them.t-" And badet
many"-these were the Jews, and the latter parts of the parable oblige
us to understand by those bidden, not so much the entire nation, as those
who might be taken for the peculiar representatives of the theocracy,
the priests and the elders, the scribes and the Pharisees, in opposition to
the publicans and sinners, and all the despised portions of the people.
Those other as claiming to be zealous for the law, to be following after
righteousness, seemed as it were to be pointed out as the first who
should embrace the invitation of Christ. The maker of the feast " sent
his servant at supper-time; to say to them that were sidden, Come, for all
things are now ready." Some will have that the guests, in needing thus
to be reminded that the hoia of supper had arrived, already began to
show how slightly they esteemed the invitation; but this is a mistake,
* An7rvov, which, as is well known, originally,-at least in the time of Homer,
-meant the morning, in opposition to the evening, meal, and as little indicates
the time when the meal was made as does the Latin coena. Or even granting that
&Eiirvov in the later Greek of the New Testament had come to signify the evening
meal, yet still its being the chief and most important meal in the day, was naturally
what caused it here to be selected, and not the accidental circumstance of its
being celebrated towards evening.
t A sermon by Gregory the Great (Horn. 36 in Evang.) on this parable begins
beautifully thus: Hoc distare inter delicias corporis et cordis solet, quod corporales
deliciae cuim non habentur, grave in se desiderium accendunt; cim vero habitae
eduntur, comedentem protinus in fastidium vertunt. At contra spiritales delicise,
cim non habentur, in fastidio sunt: cum vero habentur, in desiderio; tantoque a
comedente amplius esuriuntur, quanto et ab esuriente amplius comeduntur. In
illis appetitus placet, experientia displicet; in istis appetitus vilis est, et experientia
magis placet.: KaXAEr, like the Latin vocare, is the technical word for the inviting to a festival. (Matt. xxii. 3; John ii. 2; 1 Cdr. x. 27.) It is also the word which St. Paul
uses to express the union of an outward word bidding, and an inward Spirit drawing, whereby God seeks to bring men into his kingdom. The answering word in
St. John is e\K{eiv (vi. 44; xii. 32). They have both their peculiar fitness, in ltat
both express how the power brought to bear on man's will is a moral power, and
man a moral being, capable, though called, of not coming, if he chooses,-of resisting the attraction that would draw him, if he will. This attraction or bidding, outward by the Word, inward by the Spirit, is the KcXloLS ayLa (2 Tim. i. 9), KICXOs Toi
0eoV (Rom. xi. 29), Kix',is Eirovpacyos (Heb. iii. 1), X &vw Ki7;lS (Phil. iii. 14),which last is not the calling to a height, but the calling from a height; not, as we
have it, the "high calling," but "the calling from on high."




294                    THE GREAT SUPPER.
as it has been already observed that such was the usual custom; and
their contempt of the honor done them, and their neglect of their word
given,-for we must suppose they had accepted the invitation before, —
is first testified by their excuses for not appearing at the festival.-Therel
was, beyond a doubt, in the world's history a time, when more than any
other it might be said "all things are now ready," a fulness of time,*
which, when it was arrived, and not till then, the kingdom of heaven
was set up, and men invited, the Jew first, and afterwards the Gentile,
to enter into it.  The servant who is sent to bid the guests is not, as
Theophylact assumes, our blessed Saviour himself, who " took the form
of a servant," and might therefore be aptly represented under this name.
Nor yet can we include under this single servant, the prophets of the
old covenant, for it is not till "all things are now ready" that this servant is sent forth. He represents then not the heralds who went before
the king, but those who accompanied him, preachers, evangelists, and
apostles, all who, reminding the Jews of the prophecies that went before
concerning the coming kingdom of God and their share in that kingdom,t bade them now enter on the enjoyment of those good things, which
were no longer good things in the distance, but now actually present.
"And they all with one consent" I (or, out of one mind or spirit)
"began to make excuse."~   Whether there is any essential difference
between the excuse which the first guest offers, and that offered by the
second, whether by these are represented hindrances different in their
nature and character which keep back different men from Christ, or that
both would alike teach us the same general lesson, that the love of the
world takes away from men a desire after and a relish for heavenly
things, it is not easy to determine. I should imagine there was a difference, as I have already incidentally suggested, in speaking of the
cognate parable in St. Matthew. Perhaps the first who said, " I have
bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it," repre* Theophylact has here a remarkable comparison; he has remarked the height
to which the wickedness of the world had reached at the time of the Saviour's
coming, and goes on: "rcyTrEp y&p vJk'loa SiovAov Ka! KaiccJ7es woai, olar' apol iravra
Tbv yrovr7pbv XCVbyV Kcpjijat, e&' O{T'WS Trs fapUCaKECtas rdcyovoa', O'rws Kca'rv ay aprifa
Ei arvrYa  -h o'Kea e'T77eS si2 tk Orei e eao'ac, eIra Tbv Je/ yayv'apbv l7rascsvaL Tb
4pf/(aKcov.
t Augustine: Qui sunt invitati, nisi per preemissos vocati prophetas?: rvcorus, Kappasr, or some similar word, must be supplied; and such, as marking the oneness of spirit out of which all the refusals proceeded, would, I think,
be better than pwvies, which some propose.
r IapaLTei~?aL is used for recusare and excusare; for the first, Acts xxv. 11; for
the second at ver. 19 of this parable, where eXe pE ~rappT bpE'rov is rather a Latin
phrase (habeas me excusatum) than a Greek one.'EEraive', Tv cv Khvw would be. the more classic phrase for declining an invitation




THE GREAT SUPPER.                        29b
sents those who are elate of heart through acquired possessions. He is'
going to see his ground, not exactly in the spirit of Ahab when he visited the vineyard which he had taken by violence, for there is no guilt
of the sort, and it makes much for the earnestness of the warning conveyed in the parable, that there is no such attributed to any of the
guests, that none are kept away by any occupation in itself sinful-and
yet all become sinful, because they are allowed to interfere with higher
objects, because the first place, instead of a place merely subordinate,
is given to them. But he is going to see his possession that he may
glory in it, as Nebuchadnezzar gloried when he walked in his palace
and said, " Is not this great Babylon that I have built... by the might
of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?" (Dan. iv. 30.)
While in him then it is "the lust of the eye and the pride of life"
which are indicated as the things keeping him from Christ, with the
second guest it is rather the care and anxiety of business which fill
his soul; he has made an important purchase, and cannot put off for a
single day the trial of how it is likely to turn out; " I have bought
Jivet yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them."  He is one who is getting
what the other has already got.
If in these two it is the pride and the business, in the last it is the
pleasure, of the world that keeps him from Christ.  " See you not that
I have a feast of my own? why trouble me then with yours? I have
married a wife, and therefore I cannot come."t  The other two, even
while they plead their excuses, are themselves conscious that they are
hardly valid, so that they add out of a sense of this their insufficiency,
" Ipray thee have me excused..' But this one accounts that he has a reason perfectly good, why he should not attend, and troubles not himself,
therefore, to make a courteous denial, but bluntly refuses.~ As there
was an ascending scale of contumacy in the bearing of the guests in the
other parable (Matt. xxii.), some making light of the message, others
* So Augustine (Serm. 112, c. 2): In villa emptA, dominatio notatur; ergo superbia castigatur,..... vitium malum, vitium primum. His mystical explanation of the things which kept away the second guest is less satisfactory, but this is
as true as beautiful: Amor rerum terrenarum, viscum est spiritalium pennarum.
Ecce concupisti, hoesisti. Quis tibi dabit pennas, ut columbee, quando volabis ubi
verb requiescas, quando hic ubi malb heasisti, perversb requiescere voluisti? Cf.
Enarr. in Ps. cxxxviii. 10.
t The number need not perplex us, as Elijah (1 Kin. xix. 19) found Elisha
ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen. As a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke
would be nearly useless, the trial of the oxen was very needful, and was probably
to find place before the purchase was finally concluded.
f On the same grounds Croesus would excuse his son from the. great hunting
party (Herod. 1. 1, c. 36): Ne^ya~uds T'e ydp a'T, CKal ravTrd ol vivv jUEAL.
9 Bengel: Hic excusator, qub speciosiorem et hones'torem videtur habere causam, e6 est ceterio importunior.




296                   THE GREAT SUPPER.
killing the messengers, so is it here. It is true that in none does the
evil grow to such an enormous height as there, yet still is there this
same ascending scale. The first would be very glad to come, if only it
were possible, if there were not a constraining necessity keeping him
away. It is a needs be, so at least he describes it, so he would have it
no doubt represented to the maker of the feast. The second alleges no
such constraining necessity, but is simply going upon sufficient reason
in another direction; yet he too, at the same time, prays to be excused.
The third has plans of his own, and says outright "I cannot come."
According to the Levitical law, this reason of his would have been a
sufficient one why he should not have gone to the battle (Deut. xxiv. 5),
but it is none why he should not come to the feast.*
In what remarkable connection do the words, put into the mouth of
the guests, stand with the declaration of the Saviour which presently after
follows, "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother,
and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life
also, he cannot be my disciple;"t and how apt a commentary on the
parable is supplied by the words of St. Paul, " This I say, brethren, the
time is short; it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though
they had none, and they that weep as though they wept not, and they
that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and they that buy as though they
possessed not, and they that use this world as not abusing it" (1 Cor.
vii. 29-31), since it was not the having-for they had nothing which it
was not lawful for men to have-but the unduly loving these things,
which proved their hindrance, and ultimately excluded them from the
feast.
The servant returns and declares to his lord the ill success which he
has met-how all have excused themselves from coming-even as hitherto
it is probable that in no single instance had any one of the spiritual
chiefs of the Jewish nation attached himself openly, and without reserve,
to Christ, so that they could say, " Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?"  (John vii. 48.)." Thent 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."  In these words there would seem a distinct remi* Gerhard gives well the three hindrances in thiee words, Dignitates, opes, voluptates; and in the old monkish rhymes there is evidently an interpretation of
them intended, something similar to that given above:
Uxor, villa, boves, ccenam clausere vocatis;
Mundus, cura, caro ccelum clausere renatis.
t Of all the excuses made by the invited guests, Bengel well says: His omnibus
mederi poterat sanctum illud odium, ver. 26.
t Ambrose: Post divitum resupina fastidia.




THE GREAT SUPPER.                     297
niscence of the precept which Christ just before had given to him at
whose table he was sitting; " Call thou the poor, the maimed, the lame,
the blind." (Ver. 13.) He would encourage him to this by showing
him that it is even thus with the great Giver of the heavenly feast. He
calls the spiritually sick, the spiritually needy; while the rich in their
own virtues, in their own merits, at once exclude themselves and are excluded by him, he calls these poor to sit down at his table. The people
who knew not the law, and whom the Pharisees accounted cursed-the
despised and outcasts of the nation, the publicans and sinners, they should
enter into the kingdom of God, before the great, the wise, the proud,before those who said they saw,-before those who thanked God they
were not as other men,-before those who counted that they had need
of nothing.
Hitherto the parable has been historic, now it passes on to be prophetic, for it declares how God had a larger purpose of grace than could
be satisfied by the coming in of a part and remnant of the Jewish people,-that he had prepared a feast, at which more shall sit down than
they,-that he has founded a Church, in which there would be room for
Gentile as well as Jew,-that those, too, should be " fellow-citizens with
the saints, and of the household of God." It is not that this is explicitly
declared in the parable, for the time was not yet for unfolding plainly the
great mystery of the calling of the Gentiles; but it lay wrapt up therein,
and, like so much else in Scripture, biding its time. The servant
returning from the accomplishing of his second mission had said, "Lord,
it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room,"-whereupon,
since grace will endure a vacuum as little as nature,* he receives a new
commission, " so out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to
come in, that my house may be filled."  If those in the streets and the
lanes of the city are the most abject of the Jews, the meaner, the more
ignorant, the more sinful, then those without the city-which city will
here br the symbol of the theocracy-those in the country round, those
wandering in the highways and camping, as Gipsies now-a-days, under
the hedges, will be the yet more despised, and yet more morally abject
Gentiles, the pagans in all senses of the word.
Concerning these the master says," Compel them to come in."  It is
strange how any argument for a compulsion, save indeed a moral one,
should ever have been here drawn from these words. In the first place,
in the letter of the parable to suppose any other compulsion, save that
of earnest persuasion, is absurd; for how can we imagine this single servant-for he is but one throughout-driving before him, and that from
the country into the city, a flock of unwilling guests, and these, too,
gathered from those rude and lawless men unto whom he is now sent
* Bengel: Nec natura nec gratia patitur vacuum.




298                     THE GREAT SUPPER.
The words imply, not that the giver of the feast assumed there would
be, on their part, any reluctance to accept the invitation which should
need to be overcome, any indifference toward it, but exactly the contrary.
It was rather that these houseless dwellers in the highways, and by the
hedges, would hold themselves so unworthy of the invitation as scarcely
to believe it was intended for them, scarcely to beinduced-without
earnest persuasion, without the application of something almost like
force-to enter the rich man's dwelling, and share in his magnificent
entertainment. And when we pass on to the spiritual thing signified,
since faith cannot be compelled, what can this compelling men to come
in mean,* save that strong, earnest exhortation, which the ambassadors
of Christ will address to men, when they are themselves deeply convinced of the importance of the message which they bear, and the mighty
issues which there are for every man, linked with his acceptance or
rejection of that message of the Gospel? If they "compel," it will be as
did the angels, who, when Lot lingered, laid hold upon his hand and
brought him forth, and set him without the city of destruction (Gen.
xix. 16); or the ambassadors of Christ will, in another way, compel men
to come in, for they will speak as delivering the words of him who has a
right to be heard by his creatures,-who not merely entreats, but commands, all men, every where, to repent and believe the Gospel. Anselm
observes, that God may be also said to compel men to come in, when he
drives them by strong calamities to seek and find refuge with him and
in his Church it or as Luther explains it, they are compelled to come in
when the law is broadly preached, terrifying their consciences, and
driving them to Christ, as their only refuge and hope.
The parable closes with the householder's indigngnt declaration,
" For Isay unto you:; that none of those men ~ that were bidden shall taste
* Even Maldonatus explains it thus: Sinners, he says, are to be adeo rogandos,
adeo invitandos, ut quodammodb compelli videantur; and Bengel says excellently:
Non est omnimoda coactio.... Aliter compulit Saulus pro Judaismo insaniens,
aliter Paulus servus Jesu Christi. See on the other hand this phrase adduced
and used by Augustine, as justifying a certain degree of constraint for the bringing
men into the outward unity of the Church, Ep. 50, De moder. coerc. Hasret., and
Serm. 112, c. 7, where he says, Foris inveniatur necessitas, nascitur intus voluntas;
and compare De Unit. Eccles., c. 20, and BERNARD, De Grat. et Lib. Arb., c. 11.
t So, too, Gregory the Great (Hor. 36 in Evang.): Qui ergo hujus mundi adversitatibus fracti ad Dei amorem redeunt, compelluntur ut intrent.: The plural vuvi is perplexing, only one servant having been named throughout. Is it that that one is considered as the representative of many? or that this
declaration is made in the presence of the whole household 2 or, as Bengel explains
it, of such guests as were already by the first vocation assembled l Plurale pertinet ad introductos pauperes. It cannot be that Christ is now speaking in his own
person to the Pharisees round him, for the words must plainly be regarded not as
his words, but as the conclusion of the parable, and spoken by the householder.
J It is worth while observing that it is avapciv not avApcS7rwv here, which of itsell




THE GREAT SUPPER.                      299
of my supper."  Final exclusion from the feast, to which, when they
saw others partaking, they might wish to regain admission on the plea of
their former invitation,-this is the penalty with which he threatens
them — he declares they have forfeited their share in it, and for ever;
that no after earnestness in claiming admission shall profit them now.
(Prov. i. 28; Matt. xxv. 11, 12.)
It is worth while to compare this parable and that of the Marriage
of the King's Son, for the purpose of observing with how fine a skill all
the minor circumstances are arranged in each, to be in perfectly consistent
keeping. The master of the house here does not assume, as he does not
possess, power to avenge the insult; even as the offence committed is
both much lighter in itself, and lighter in the person against whom it
is committed, than the offence which is so severely punished in the parallel narration. There the principal person, being a king, has armies at
his command, as he has also whole bands of servants, and not merely a
single one, to send forth with his commands. The refusal to accept hzs
invitation, was, in fact, according to Eastern notions of submission,
nothing less than rebellion, and being accompanied with outrages done
to his servants, called out that terrible retribution. Here, as the offence
is in every way lighter, so also is the penalty,-that is, in the outward
circumstance which supplies the groundwork of the parable, since it is
merely exclusion from a festival; though we should remember it is not
lighter, when taken in its spiritual signification; for it is nothing less
than exclusion from the kingdom of God, and from all the blessings of
the communion of Christ, and that exclusion implies "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power."
brings this verse into interesting relation, as indeed the whole parable suggests the
parallel, with 1 Cor. i. 26-29.




XXII.
THE LOST SHEEP.
MATTHEW xviii. 12-14; LUKE XV. 3-7.
WHEN St. Luke says, "Then drew near to the' Lord all the publicans
and sinners for to hear him," this does not imply that all who were at
some particular moment in a certain neighborhood drew near with this
purpose; but the Evangelist is rather giving the prevailing feature in
the whole of Christ's ministry, or at least in one epoch of it-that it was
such a ministry as to draw all the outcasts of the nation, the rejected of
the scribes and Pharisees, round him-that there was a secret attraction
in his person, in his Word, which drew all of them habitually to him for
to hear him.*   Of these "publicans and sinners" the first were men
infamous among their countrymen by their very occupation —the second,
* We find this indicated in the words, aoav eyyiovrTes, which here find place,
instead of the simpler imperfect: They were in the habit of drawing nigh. Grotius
rightly: Actum continuum et quotidianum genus hoc loquendi significat. And he
compares Luke iv. 31; to which he might have added Mark ii. 18, and other
examples.
t TeXSvaI (&7r'roO rE'Aos wvEro'ail) were of two kinds. The publicani, so called
while they were gatherers of the publicum, or state revenue; these were commonly
Roman knights, who farmed the taxes in companies, and this occupation was not
in disesteem, but the contrary. Besides these were the portitores, or exactores,
who are here meant by reXchvat, men of an inferior sort, freedmen, provincials, and
the like, who did the lower work of the collection, and probably greatly abused the
power which of necessity was left in their hands. They were commonly stationed
at frontiers, at gates of cities, on rivers, at havens (vendentium ipsius cceli et terre
et marls transitus; Tertullian), for the purpose of collecting customs on the wares
which were brought into the country. They were sufficiently hateful among the
Greeks on account of their rudeness, their frauds, their vexations and oppressions;
as they are here classed with a&apTcrwol, so by them with /olXXol and 7ropvoooacoi, and
whole lists are given of the opprobrious epithets with which they were assailed.
Cicero (In Patin. 5) gives a lively picture of their doings, telling Vatinius he must
have thought himself one of these publicans, cam omnium domos, apothecas, naves,




THE LOST SHEEP.                         301
ouch as till awakened by him to repentance and a sense of their past
sins, had been notorious transgressors of God's holy law.  He did not
repel them; nor seem to fear, as the Pharisees would have done, pollution
from  their touch; but being come to seek and to save that which was
lost, received them graciously, instructed them further in his doctrine,
and lived in familiar intercourse with them.  At this the scribes and
Pharisees murmured and took offence*-seeming as -it did to them conduct unbecoming a teacher of righteousness. They could more easily
have understood a John Baptist, flying to the wilderness, so to avoid the
contamination of sinners, separating himself from them outwardly in the
whole manner of his life, as well as inwardly in his spirit. And this
outward separation from sinners, which was the Old Testament form of
righteousness, might have been needful for those who would preserve
their purity in those times of the law and till the Lord came,-till he, first
in his own person, and then through his Church, brought a far mightier
power of good to bear upon the evil of the world, than ever had been
brought before. It had hitherto been prudent for those who felt themselves predisposed to the infection to flee from the infected, but he was
the physician who rather came boldly to seek out the infected, that he
might heal them; and furnishing his servants with divine antidotes
against the world's sickness, sent them also boldly to encounter and overcome it. This was what the Pharisees and scribes could not understand;
it seemed to them impossible that any one should walk pure and unspotted amid the pollutions of the world, seeking and not shunning sinners.
They had neither love to hope the recovery of such, nor medicines to
effect that recovery.
furacissimb scrutarere, hominesque negotia gerentes judiciis iniquissimis irretires,
mercatores e navi egredientes terreres, conscendentes morarere. Chrysostom (De
Paxnit., Hem. ii. 4) would seem to say that the business itself from its very nature,
apart from the frauds to which it too often led, was unrighteous: ObSey dXAo eorl
TeEX6j/7~j' reraEpp7r o'ao'iLE71 Sia,'Yvoo.os a/.Lapria, EbvrpJ6wo7ros rXEovYeta. But the
Jewish publicans were further hateful to their countrymen, being accounted traitors
to the cause of the nation and of God, who for the sake of filthy lucre had sided
with the Romans, the enemies and oppressors of the theocracy, and now collected
for a heathen treasury that tribute, the payment of which was the evident sign of
the subjection of the people of God to a foreign yoke. Of the abhorrence in which
they were held there is abundant testimony; no alms might be received from
their money-chest, nay it was not even lawful to change money there; their
evidence was not received in courts of justice; they were put on the same l1eve
with heathens (to keep which in mind, adds an emphasis to Lukl xix. 9), and no
doubt, as renegades and traitors, were far more abhorred even than the heathen
themselves. (See the Diet. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Publicani, p. 806, and
DEYLING'S Obss. Sac., v. 1, p. 206.)
* Gregory the Great (Hom. 34 in Evang.): Arenti corde ipsum Fontem misericordiae reprehendebant.




302                    THE LOST SHEEP.
As another expression of their discontent (Luke v. 30) had called
out those blessed words, " Those that are whole need not a physician,
but they that are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance;" so their later murmurings were the occasion of the three
parables which here follow one another, in the which he seeks to shame
the murmurers out of their murmurs, showing them how little sympathy
those murmurs found in that higher heavenly world from whence he
came. He holds up to them God and the angels of God rejoicing at the
conversion of a sinner, and silently contrasts this, the liberal joy and
exultation of heaven, with the narrow discontent and envious repinings
that found place in their hearts. The holy inhabitants of heaven did
not count scorn of the repentant sinner, but welcomed him into their
fellowship with gladness. Would they dare, in the pride of their legal
righteousness, and of their exemption from some gross offences whereof
he had been guilty, refuse to receive him, keeping him at a distance, as
though his very touch would defile them?
Nor is it merely that there is joy in heaven over the penitent sinner,
but the Lord warns them, if they indulge in this pride,-if they shut
themselves up in this narrow form of legal righteousness,-there will
be more joy in heaven over one of these penitents whom they so much
despised, than over ninety-nine of such as themselves. He does not
deny the good that might be in them; many of them, no doubt, had a
zeal for God,-were following after righteousness such as they knew it,
a righteousness according to the law. But if now that a higher righteousness was brought into the world,-a righteousness by faith, the new
life of the Gospel,-they obstinately refused to become partakers of this
new life, preferring to serve in the oldness of the letter instead of the
newness of the Spirit, then such as would receive this life from him,
though having, in times past, departed infinitely wider from God than
they had ever done, yet would now be brought infinitely nearer to him,
as the one sheep was brought home to the house, while the ninety and
nine abode in the wilderness,-as for the prodigal a fatted calf was
slain, while the elder brother received not so much as a kid. Nay, in
the last parable they are bidden to beware lest the spirit they are now
indulging in, if allowed further, do not shut them out altogether, or rather, lest they do not through it exclude themselves altogether from that
new kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost,
which the Lord was establishing upon earth, and into which they, as
well as the publicans and sinners, were invited freely to enter.
Of the three parables, the two first, those of the Lost Sheep and the
Lost Piece of Money, set forth to us mainly the seeking love of God;
while the third, that of the Prodigal Son, describes to us rather the rise
and growth responsive to that love of repentance in the heart of man.




THE LOST SHEEP.                      303
It is, in fact, only the same truth presented successively under different
aspects, God's seeking love being set forth first, and this not without
reason, since we thus are taught that all first motions towards good'are
from him, that grace must prevent as well as follow us. But yet is it
the same truth in all; for it is the confluence of this drawing and seeking love from without, and of the faith awakened by the same power
from within,-the confluence of these two streams, the objective grace
and the subjective faith,-out of which repentance springs.  The parables in this chapter would have seemed incomplete without one another,
but together form a perfect and harmonious whole. Separately they
would have seemed incomplete, for the two first speak nothing of a
changed heart and mind toward God; nor, indeed, would the images of
a sheep and piece of money have conveniently allowed this; while the
last speaks only of this change, and nothing of that which must have
caused it, the antecedent working of the Spirit of God in the heart, the
going forth of his power and love, which must have found the wanderer,
before he could ever have found himself, or found his God. We may
thus contemplate these parables under the aspect of a trilogy, which yet
again is to, be divided into two unequal portions of two and one-St.
Luke himself distinctly marking the break and the new beginning
which finds place after the two first.
But there are also many other inner harmonies and relations between them which are interesting to observe and trace. Thus there is
a seeming anti-climax in the numbers named in the successive parables,
which is in reality a climax,-one in a hundred*-one in ten,-one in
two; the feeling of the value of the part lost would naturally increase
with the proportion which it bore to the whole. And other human feelings and interests are implied in the successive narratives, which would
have helped to enhance in each successive case the anxiety for the recovery of what was lost. The possessor of a hundred sheep must have
been in some sort a rich man, therefore not likely to feel the loss of a
single one out of his flock, so deeply as the woman who, having but ten
small pieces of money, should of these lose one: again the intensity of
her feeling would come infinitely short of the parental affection of a
father, who, having but two sons, should behold one out of these two
go astray. Thus we find ourselves moving in ever narrower and so
ever intenser circles of hope and fear and love-drawing in each successive parable nearer to the innermost centre and heart of the truth.
* This was a familiar way of numbering and dividing among the Jews, of which
examples are given by Lightfoot here. There is also a striking saying attributed to
Mahomet, in which the same appears;-The Lord God has divided mercy and pity
into a hundred parts; of these, he has retained ninety and nine for himself, and
sent one upon earth. (VON HAMMER'S Fundgruben d. Ornzts, v. 1, p. 308.)




304                     THE LOST SHEEP.
In each case too we may see shadowed forth a greater guilt and
therefore a greater grace. In the first parable the guilt is the smallest
The sinner is set forth under the image of a silly wandering sheep.
Though this is but one side of the truth, yet is it a most real one, that
sin is oftentimes an ignorance: the sinner knows not what he does, and
if in one aspect he deserves wrath, in another claims pity: he is a sheep
that has gone astray, ere it knew what it was doing, ere it had even
learned that it had a shepherd, that it belonged to a fold. So is it with
a multitude of wanderers, in whom all this knowledge was yet latent,
and who went astray before ever it was effectually called out. But there
are others, set forth under the lost money, who having known themselves to be God's, to be stamped with his image, the image of the Great
King, on their souls, do yet throw themselves away, renounce their high
birth, and wilfully lose themselves in the world.  Their sin is greater,
but there is a sin yet greater than theirs behind-the sin of the prodigal
-to have known something of the love of God-to have known something of him, not as our King who has stamped us with his image, but
as our Father in whose house we are, and yet to have slighted that
love, and forsaken that house-this is the crowning guilt; and yet the
grace of God is sufficient to forgive even this sin,* and to bring back
such a wanderer even as this to himself.
The first parable of the series had a peculiar fitness addressed to the
spiritual rulers of the Jewish people. They too were shepherds-continually charged, rebuked, warned, under this very title (Ezek. xxxiv.;
Zech. xi. 16), under-shepherds of him who set forth his own watchful
tenderness for his people under the same image (Isai. xl. 11; Jer.
xxxi. 10; Ezek. xxxiv. 12; xxxvii. 24; Zech. xiii. 7; ef. Ps. xxiii. 1;
Ixxx. 1); yet now were they finding fault with Christ for doing that
very thing which they ought, and which the name they bore should
have reminded them they ought, to have done. Not only were they
themselves no seekers of the lostf no bringers back of the strayed, but
they murmured against him, the Shepherd of Israel, the great Shepherd
of the sheep, because he came doing in his own person, what they his
deputies so long had neglected to do, because he came to make good
what they had marred.
In the common things of our daily experience, a sheep which could
wander away from, could also wander back to, the fold. But it is not
so with a sheep of God's pasture: this could lose, but it could not find
* Bengel: Ovis, drachma, filius perditus: peccator stupidus, sui plane nescius
sciens et voluntarius.
* One of the charges against the false shepherds, Ezek. xxxiv. 4, is just this, ia
&roWAAbs oVEc iC7T7ioaTe.




THE LOST SHEEP.                          305
itself again; there is in sin a centrifugal tendency, and of necessity the
wanderings of this sheep could only be further and further away,
Therefore, if it shall be found at all, this can only be by its Shepherd
going to seek it; without this, being once lost, it must be lost for ever.'
It might at first sight appear as though the Shepherd were caring for the
one strayed, at the expense and risk of all the others, leaving as he does
the other " ninety and nine in the wilderness."  But it need hardly be
observed, that we are not to understand of "the wilderness," as of u
sandy or rocky desert, without herbage,-the haunt of wild beasts or of
wandering robber hordes,-but rather as wide-extended grassy plains.
steppes or savannas, called desert because without habitations of men,
but exactly the fittest place for the pasture of sheep. Thus we read in
St. John (vi. 10) that there was much grass in a place which another
Evangelist calls a desert, and no doubt we commonly attach to " desert'
or " wilderness," in Scripture, images of far more uniform barrenness and
desolation and dreariness than the reality would warrant. Parts, it is
true, of any of the large deserts of Palestine or Arabia, are as dreary
and desolate as can be imagined, though quite as much from rock as from
sandy levels-yet we learn from travellers, that on the whole there is in
those deserts, or wildernesses, much greater variety of scenery, much
more to refresh the eye, much larger extents of fertile or at least grassy
land, than is commonly supposed;t so that the residue of the flock are
* Augustine presses this point, observing how, though nothing is said of the
father either sending by the hand of another or himself looking for the' prodigal
son, yet we are not therefore to see in his return, in his "I will arise," an
independent resolution of the sinner's own, but rather to complete that parable
from this (Enarr. in Ps. lxxvii. 19): Redit ovis perdita, non tamen in viribus suis,
sed in humeris reportata pastoris, quae se perdere potuit, dum sponte vagaretur, se
autem invenire non potuit, nec omnio inveniretur, nisi pastoris misericordia quareretur. Non enim et ille filius ad hanc ovem non pertinet, qui reversus in semetipsum  dixit, Surgam et ibo ad patrem meum.  Occulta itaque vocatione et
inspiratione etiam ipse qusesitus est et resuscitatus, nonnisi ab illo qui vivificat
omnia: et in'rentus, a quo, nisi ab illo:ti perrexit salvare et quserere quod
perierat 1
t This is the admirable description of a late traveller in the East: " Stern and
monotonous as may be called the general features of a desert, let not the reader
suppose it is all barren. There are indeed some accursed patches, where scores of
miles lie before you, like a tawny Atlantic, one yellow wave rising before anotlier.
But far from unfrequently there are regions of wild fertility, where the earth
shoots forth a jungle of aromatic shrubs, and most delicious are the sensations conveyed to the parched European, as the camel treads down the underwood with his
broad foot, and scatters to the winds the exhalations of a thousand herbs. There
are other districts, where the hard and compact gravel would do honor to a lady's
shrubbery: in these regions you meet with dwarf trees, and long ridges of low bare
rocks, of fantastic configuration, along whose base you find the yellow partridge
and the black-eyed gazelle."
20




306                         THE LOST SHEEP.
left here in their ordinary pasturage, while the shepherd goes after that
one which is lost till he finds it.
Christ's Incarnation was a girding of himself to go after his lost
sheep. His whole life upon earth, his entire walk in the flesh, was a
following of the strayed one; for in his own words he was come, this was
the very purpose of his coming, namely, " to seek and to save that which
was lost." And he sought his own till he found it. He was not weary
with the greatness of the way; he shrank not when the thorns wounded
his flesh, and tore his feet. He followed us into the deep of our misery,
came under the extremity of our malediction. For he had gone forth to
seek his own till he hadfound it, and would not pause till then.      And
having found, how tenderly the shepherd handles that sheep which has
cost him all this labor and fatigue: he does not punish it; he does not
smite, nor even harshly drive it back to the fold: nay, he does not deliver it to a servant, but he lays it upon his own* shoulders, and himself
carefully carries it, till he brings it to the fold. In this last circumstance
we recognize an image of the sustaining and supporting grace of Christ,
which does not cease till his rescued are made partakers of final salvation.
But when some press and make much of the weariness which this load
must have caused to the shepherd, seeing here an allusion to his sufferings, "who bare our sins in his own body,"t upon whom were laid the
iniquities of us all, this seems to me a missing here of the true significance.   For rather the words " till hefind it," I should take as having
told the whole story of the painfulness of his way, who came in search of
his lost creature, a way which led him, as he would not cease till he
found his own, to the cross and to the grave; and this is now rather the
*'Earl rovs &6iovs e a U ov.
t Cajetan: Impositio ovis in humeros redemptio est humani generis in proprio
corpore, et hoc quia sponte fecit, ideo gaudens describitur. Melancthon: Est in
textu suavis significatio inserta passionis Christi: ovem inventam ponit in humeros
suos, i. e. ipse onus nostrum transfert in se ipsum. The lines of Prudentius (Hymn.
post Jegjn.) have much beauty:Ille ovem morbo residem gregique
Perditam sano, male dissipantem
Vellus affixis vepribus per hirtas
Devia silvae
Impiger pastor revocat, lupisque
Gestat exclusis, humeros gravatus;
Inde purgatam revehens aprico
Reddit ovili,
Reddit et pratis viridique campo
Vibrat impexis ubi nulla lappis
Spica, nec germen sudibus perarmat
Carduus horrens:
Sed frequens palmis nemus, et reflexa
Vernat herbarum coma, turn perennis
Gurgitem vivis vitreum fluentis
Laurus obumbrat.




THE LOST SHEEP.                       307
story of his triumphant return* to heaven with the trophies that he had
won, the spoil that he had delivered from the lion's jaws.
And as the man reaching home summons friends and neighbors to
be sharers in hist joy, as they had been sharers in his anxiety, for he
speaks of the sheep as one with the loss of which they were acquainted
and had sympathized, so Christ declares that there shall be joy in heaven
on the occasion of one sinner repenting, one wandering sheep of the
heavenly fold brought back to it again-that heaven and earth form but
one kingdom, being bound together by that love which is "the bond of
perfectness." He keeps indeed back, as far as any distinct declaration
in words goes, who the bringer back is, but since he is justifying his own
conduct in inviting sinners to repentance, lets it sufficiently plainly appear
who it is, that it is even himself, who returning to the heavenly places
shall cause jubilee there. For we must observe, that he speaks of this
joy as future, as one hereafter to be-not as yet does he contemplate the
occasion of this joy as having been given, since not as yet has he returned
to his house, not as yet risen and ascended, leading captivity captive, and
bringing with him his rescued and redeemed. Nor should we miss the
slight yet majestic intimation of the dignity of his person which he gives
in that "I say unto you "-I who know, I who, when I tell you of heavenly things, tell you of mine own, of things which I have seen (John
iii. 11)-I say to you that this joy shall be in heaven on the recovery of
the lost.
Were this all that Christ had declared, there would be nothing to
perplex us; but he declares further, that there is not merely joy over
one penitent, but more joy over him "than over ninety and nine just
persons zwhich need no repentance."  Now we can easily understand, how,
among men, there should be more joy for a small portion which has been
endangered, than for the continued secure possession of a much larger
portion: we might say with Luther, it is the mother, concentrating for
the moment all her affection on her sick child, and seeming to a bystander to love none but that only, and rejoicing at that one child's
recovery more than at the uninterrupted health of all the others.  Or to
use Augustine's beautiful words,tr "What then takes place in the soul,
* Gregory the Great (Hor. 34 in Evang.): InventA ove ad domum redit, quia
Pastor noster reparato homine ad regnum celeste rediit. Bengel: Jesus Christus
plani in ascensione domum rediit; ccelum ejus domus est; Joh. xiv. 2.
t Gregory the Great (Hom. 34 in Evang.) on this "Rejoice with wae" has a
striking remark: Non dicit, Congratulamini invente ovi, sed mihi; quia videlicit
ejus gaudium est vita nostra, et chm nos ad coelum reducimur, solemnitatem
laetitim ejus implemus.: Confessions, b. 3, c. 3. I have taken the liberty of using here and once before
the noble translation of the Confessions, published in the Library of the FaVthers.




308                       THE LOST SHEEP.
when it is more delighted at finding or recovering the things it loves
than if it had ever had them? Yea, and other things witness hereunto,
and all things are full of witnesses, crying out, So it is.' the conquering commander triumpheth; yet had he not conquered, unless he had
fought, and the more peril there was in the battle, so much the more joy
is there in the triumph. The storm tosses the sailors, threatens shipwreck; all wax pale at approaching death; sky and sea are calmed, and
they are exceeding joyed, as having been exceeding afraid. A friend is
sick, and his pulse threatens danger; all who long for his recovery are
sick in mind with him. He is restored, though as yet he walks not with
his former strength, yet there is such joy as was not when before he
walked sound and strong."" Yet whence arises the disproportionate
joy? clearly from the unexpectedness of the result, from the temporary
uncertainty concerning it. But nothing of the kind could find place
with God, who knows the end from the beginning, whose joy needs not
to be provoked and heightened by a fear going before; nor with him
need the earnest love for the one, as in the case of the mother and her
children, throw into the background, even for the moment, the love and
care for the others-so that the analogy hardly holds good.
And yet further, there being said to be any "which need no repentance" is difficult, since the prophet says, "All we like sheep have gone
astray;" and therefore all must have need to search and try back our
ways; nor do the explanations commonly given quite remove the perplexity.t We may indeed get rid both of this difficulty and the other,
by seeing here an example of the Lord's severe yet loving irony. These
ninety and nine, not needing repentance, would then be-like those
* Thus too Bernard says (In Cant., Sermn. 29): Nescio autem quomodo tenerius
mihi adstricti sunt qui post increpatoria et per increpatoria tandem convaluerunt
do infirmitate, quam qui fortes ab initio permanserunt, non indigentes istiusmodi
medicamento,-words which are the more valuable for the illustration of the text,
as spoken with no immediate reference to it.
t As for instance that by Grotius: Quibus non est opus de toto vitae genere
migrare; and by Calvin: Nomen pcenitentie specialiter ad eorum conversionem
rostringitur, qui penitus & Deo aversi, quasi a morte in vitam resurgunt. Nam
alioqui continua in totam vitam esse debet poenitentire meditatio; nec quisquam
ab htc necessitate eximitur, quum singulos sua vitia ad quotidianum profectum
sollicitent.-A very curious, but not very fortunate, scheme for getting rid of the
difficulty which attends the words " who need no repentance," has been proposed by
some. The ninety-nine just signify the whole unfallen creation, the world of angels.
" These," says Theophylact, who however proposes the interpretation not as his
own (Qpaa-iv Tries), " the good Shepherd left in the wilderness, that is, in the higher
heavenly places, for heaven is this wilderness, being sequestered from all worldly
tumult, and fulfilled with all tranquillity and peace," and came to seek the waniering and lost human nature. The interpretation finds more favor with Hilary,
Crmm. in Mattlh., xviii. 10.




THE LOST SHEEP.                          309
whole who need not, or count that they need not, a physician,-selfrighteous persons, persons therefore displeasing in the eye of God, and
whose present life could naturally cause no joy in heaven-so that it
would be easy to understand how a sinner's conversion would cause
more joy than their continuance in their evil state. But the Lord could
hardly have meant to say merely this; and moreover, the whole construction of the parables is against such an explanation: the ninety and
nine sheep have not wandered, the nine pieces of money have not been
lost, the elder brother has not left his father's house.  The one view of
the parables which affords a solution of the difficulties appears to be
this-that we understand these " righteous" as really such, but also that
their righteousness is merely legal, is of the old dispensation, so that the
least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than they. The law had done
a part of its work for them, keeping them from gross positive transgressions of its enactments, and thus they needed not, like the publicans
and sinners, repentance on account of such; but it had not done another part of its work, it had not brought them, as God intended it
should, to a conviction of sin, it had not prepared them to receive
Christ, and gladly to embrace his salvation. The publicans and sinners,
though by another path, had come to him; and he now declares that
there was more real ground of joy over one of these,* who were now
entering into the inner sanctuary of faith, than over ninety and nine of
themselves, who lingered at the legal vestibule, refusing to go further in.t
* Here the illustration of Gregory the Great may fairly be applied: Dux in
praelio plus eum militem diligit, qui post fugam conversus, fortiter hostem premit,
quam ilium qui nunquam terga prtebuit et nunquam aliquid fortiter gessit. And
Anselm (Hor. 12): Sunt aliqui justi, qui licet justi vivant et ab illicitis se contineant, magna tamen bona nunquam operantur. Et sunt alii qui prius seculariter
et criminosb vixerunt, sed postmodum redeuntes ad cor suum, quia se illicitb egisse
considerant, ex ipso suo dolore compuncti, inardescunt ad amorem Dei, seseque in
magnis virtutibus exercent, cuncta etiam difficilia sancti certaminis appetunt,
omnia mundi blandimenta derelinquunt; et quia se errasse b Deo conspiciunt, damna
praecedentia lucris sequentibus recompensant.
t There is no image upon which the early Church seems to have dwelt with
greater delight than this of Christ as the good Shepherd bringing home his lost
sheep. We have abundant confirmation of this in the very many gems, seals,
fragments of glass, and other early Christian relics which have reached us, on
which Christ is thus portrayed as bringing back a lost sheep to the fold upon his
shoulders. From a passing allusion in Tertullian (De Pcsnit., c. 7, 10), we learn
that it was in.his time painted on the chalice of the Holy Communion. Christ
appears in the same character of the Good Shepherd in bas-reliefs on sarcophagi,
and paintings in the catacombs-one of which last is believed to be as early as
the third century. Sometimes there are other sheep at his feet, generally two,
looking up with apparent pleasure at him and his burden; in his right hand he
most often holds the seven-reeded pipe of Pan, the attractions of divine love, with




310                         THE LOST SHEEP.
his left he steadies the burden which he is bearing on his shoulders. Some.
times he is sitting down, as if weary with the length of the way. And it is
observable that this representation always occupies the place of honor, the centre of the vault or tomb. In MUNTER'S Sinnbilder der Alt. Christ., v. 1, pp. 60-65,
there are various details on the subject, and many copies of these portraitures,
which are interesting specimens of early Christian art.  See too Bossio's Rom.
Stoterr. pp. 339, 348, 349, 351, 373, 383, 387, for various delineations of the same,
and DIDRON'S Iconogr. Chretienne, p. 346.




XXIII.
THE LOST PIECE OF MONF Y.
LUKE XV. 8-10.
THE parable which has just gone before, has naturally anticipated much
that might have been said upon this, and yet we must not think so poorly
of our Lord's wisdom as a speaker of parables, as to conclude them
merely identical. It would be against all analogy of preceding parables
to presume that these two said merely the same thing, twice over. The
Pearl and the Hid Treasure, the Leaven and the Mustard Seed, at first
sight appear the same, and the second but to repeat the first, and yet, as
we have found, on closer inspection important differences reveal themselves; and so is it here. If the shepherd in the last parable was
Christ, the woman in this may, perhaps, be the Church; or if we say
that by her is signified the Divine Wisdom,t which so often in Proverbs
is described as seeking the salvation of men, and is here as elsewhere
set forth as a person (Luke xi. 49), and not an attribute, this will be no
different view. For rather these two explanations flow into one, when
we keep in mind how the Church is the organ in and through which the
Holy Spirit seeks for the lost, and how only as the Church is quickened
and informed by the Divine Spirit, is it stirred up to these active ministries of love for the seeking and saving of souls. That the Church
should be personified as a woman is only natural; nor has the thought
of the Holy Ghost as a mother been at different times far from men's
minds.t  Keeping prominently in mind then that it is only the Church,
* Ambrose: Qui sunt isti, pater, pastor, mulier? nonne Dens pater, Christus
pastor, mulier Ecclesia.
t Gregory the Great (Hor. 34 in.Evang.); Ipse etenim Dens, ipse et'Dei Sapientia.
t See some interesting remarks in Jerome (Comm. in Esai. xl. 3, p. 303) explaining and justifying this language; while at the same time he guards with saying: In divinitate nullus cst sexus. Christ claims too for himself the mother's
heart in his affecting words, Luke xiii. 34.




312                 THE LOST PIECE OF MONEY.
because and in so far as it is dwelt in by the Spirit, which appears as
the woman seeking her lost, that it is only as the Spirit says "Come,"
that the Bride can say it; we shall have in the three parables the three
Persons of the Holy Trinity, albeit not in their order, since other respects prevailed to give the parables a different succession.  Moreover,
any reluctance to accept this interpretation, as though it were putting
the Church too near upon an equality with its Lord, is in this way removed   and besides, if we do find in this parable a picture of the Church
carrying forward the same work which its Lord auspicated and commenced, what is this but in agreement with Christ's own words, that it
should do the same works that he did and greater-only, however, because he went to the Father, and shedding abroad the Holy Ghost, himself carried on from  heaven the work which he had begun in his own
person -apon earth.
In the one piece of money,* which the woman loses out of her ten,
expositors, both ancient and modern, have delighted to trace a resemblance to the human soul, which was originally stamped with the image
and superscription of the great Kingf (" God created man in his own
image" Gen. i. 27), and which still retains traces of the mint from
which it proceeded, though by sin the image has been nearly effaced,
and the superscription has well nigh become illegible.t  Nor is this all;
as the piece of money is lost for all useful purposes to its right owner,
so man, through sin, is become unprofitable, and worse than unprofitable,
to God, who has not from him that service which is due.
But as the woman having lost her piece of money, will "light a
candle and sweep~ the house, and seek diligently till she find it;" even
* In the original, it is not indefinitely a piece of money, but a drachma, the
commonest of Greek coins. Except during a part of the Mfaccabaean rule, the
Jews never coined any money of their own. The Herodian coins, now found in
collections, were rather medals struck on particular occasions, than money.
t Thus Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cxxxviii.): Sapientia Dei perdiderat drachmam. Quid est Drachma? Numus in quo numo imago erat ipsius Imperatoris
nostri. Compare Ignatius (Ad Magn., c. 5), though he refers not to this parable:'EorYv voulaoruara 6uo, t /eLE OEOV, b 8e Kd"C!ov, Kal EcKaaTOv, avw'v Mzov xapaKr71pa
e7rLKEu/Levov EXEi, olf a7rt   TOO'ro KaLOUv rov To, of 6E r01ioTol e'v &ad  apa"KT7pa ieou
IlaTpbs 8fa'I?7oovD Xpilarov.
i It is true that against this view it may be said that the Greek drachma, the
coin here particularly named, had not, like the Roman denarius (Matt. xxii. 20),
the image and superscription of the emperor upon it, but commonly some image,
as of an owl, or tortoise, or head of Pallas.
( The erroneous reading, evertit, for everrit, prevailed in the copies of the Vulgate during the middle ages. It appears as early as Gregory the Great (Hom.
34 in Evang.), who says: Domus evertitur, quum consideratione reaths sui humana
conscientia perturbatur. And Thauler's interpretation a good deal turns on that




THE LOST PIECE OF MONEY.                      313
so the Lord, through the ministrations of his Church, gives diligence to
recover the lost sinner,-to bring back the piece of money that was lost
to the treasury of God, from which originally it issued.* The meaning which the Mystics have often found in the lighting of the candle
or lamp, namely, that there is an allusion here to the mystery of the
Incarnation-the divine glory which the Saviour had within, shining
through the fleshly covering which only in part concealed it,t-this must
of course give way, if we take the parable as I propose. Rather the
lighting of the candle must be explained by the help and hints of such
passages as these, namely, Matt. v. 14, 15; Phil. ii. 15; Ephes. v. 13,
The candle is the word of God;-this candle the Church holds forth, as
she has and exercises a ministry of the Word. It is by the light of this.
Word that sinners are found-that they find themselves, that the Church
finds them.t Having this candle now to assist her in her search she proceeds to sweep the house, which, as Bengel well remarks; non fit sine
pulvere. What a deranging of the house for a time! how does the dust
which had been allowed to settle down and accumulate begin to rise and
fly about in every direction; how unwelcome that which is going forward to any that may bein the house and have no interest in the finding
of that which has been lost.  Thus it is with the word of God.  Evermore the charge against it is, that it turns the world upside down, even
as indeed it does. For only let that word be proclaimed, and how
much of latent aversion to the truth becomes now open enmity; how
much of torpid alienation against God is changed into active hostility;
what an outcry is there against the troublers of Israel, against the witnesses that torment the dwellers upon earth, the men that will not leave
the world alone. But amid all this, while others are making outcry
very word: Deus hominem qucerit, domumque ejus penitus, evertit, quomodo nos
solemus, aliquod requirentes, cuncta evertere, et loco suo movere, donec invenire
contingat quod quarimus. So Wiclif: " Turneth up so down the house."
* H. de Sto. Victore: Drachma reperitur, dum in homine similitudo conditoris
reparatur; and Bernard (De Grat. et Lib. Arb., c. 10): Adhuc hic foeda et deformis
jacuisset imago, si non evangelica illa muller lucernam accenderet, id est, Sapientia
in came appareret, everreret domum, videlicet vitiorum, drachmam suam reqireret
quam perdiderat; hoc est imaginem suam, quae native spoliata decore, sub pelle
peccati sordens tamquam in pulvere latitabat: inventam tergeret, et tolleret de
regione dissimilitudinis, pristinamque in speciem reformatam, similem faceret
illam in gloria sanctorum, immo sibi ipsi per omnia redderet quandoque conformem, c6m illud Scripturae videlicet impleretur; Scimus quia cum apparuerit,
similes ei erimus; quoniam videbimus eum sicuti est.
t Thus Cajetan: Lucerna accensa mysterium est Incarnationis, Verbum in
came, tanquam lux in testa.
t So Tertullian (De Pudic c. 7): Drachmam ad lucernae lumen repertam, quasi
ad Dei verbum.




314                 THE LOST PIECE OF MONEY.
about the dust and inconvenience, she that bears the candle of the Lord
is diligently looking meanwhile for her lost, not ceasing her labor,
her care, her diligence, till she has recovered her own again.
We must not omit to remark a difference between this parable and
the preceding, which is more than accidental. In that the shepherd
went to look for his lost sheep in the wilderness; but it is in the house
that this piece of money is lost, and there by consequence that it is
sought for.* There is then a progress from that parable to this. The
earthly house, the visible Church, now first appears. In that other there
was the returning of the Son to the heavenly places, but in this there is
intimation of a church which has been founded upon earth, and to which
also sinners are restored. And there are other slighter variations between the two parables, explicable at once on the same supposition that
we have there the more immediate ministry of Christ, and here the secondary ministry of his Church.    The shepherd says, "I have found my
sheep "-not so the woman, "I have found the coin "-for it is in no sense
hers as the sheep was his.  He says, "which was lost:" but she, "which
I lost," confessing a fault and carelessness of her own, which was the
original cause of the loss-even as it must have been; for a sheep strays
of itself, but a piece of money could only be lost by a certain negligence
on the part of such as should have kept it.
* Origen also presses the fact that this money was found within the house, and
not without it, though with a different purpose. He is dealing with Gen. xxvi. 18,
to which he very fairly gives a deeper and allegorical interpretation, besides that
which lay on the surface, namely this,-that those stopped wells are the fountains
of eternal life, which the Philistines, that is, Satan and sin, had choked, but which
our Isaac, the son of gladness, opened anew for us. And observing that such wells,
though stopped indeed, are within every one of us (compare John iv. 14), he
brings into comparison this parable, noting that the lost money was not found
without the house, but within it: for, he would say, at the bottom of every man's
soul there is this image of God, mislaid indeed and quite out of sight, overlaid
with a thousand other images, covered with dust and defilement, but which still
may be found, and in his hands from whom it first came, may again recover its
first brightness, and the sharpness of outline which it had at the beginning. His
words are (In Gen. Horn. 13): Mulier illa quae perdiderat drachmam, non illam
invenit extrinsecus, sed in domo sub posteaquam accendit lucernam, et mundavit
domum sordibus et immunditiis, quas longi temporis ignavia et hebetudo congesserat, et ibi invenit drachmam. Et tu ergo, si accendas lucernam; si adhibeas tibi
illuminationem Spiritts Sancti, et in lumine ejus videas lumen, invenies intra te
drachmam. Cam enim faceret hominem ex initio Deus, ad imaginem et similitudinem suam fecit eum; et hanc imaginem non extrinsecus, sed intra eum collocavit. HIec in te videri non poterat, donec domus tua sordida erat, immunditiis
et ruderibus repleta.  Iste fons scientie intra te erat situs, sed non poterat
fluere, quia Philistini repleverant eum terra et fecerant in te imaginem terreni.
Sed tu portasti quidem tune imaginem terreni, nunc vero his auditis ab ills omni
mole et oppressione terrenh per Verbum Dei purgatus, imaginem ccelestis in te
splendescere facito.




THE LOST PIECE OF MONEY.                   315
The woman having found her own, "ccalleth her friends and her
neighbors together," that they may be sharers in her joy. (Compare
Ruth iv. 14, 17.) It is only natural that, according to the groundwork
of the parable, this being a woman, the friends and neighbors she summons should be described as female also, though this escapes us in the
English version. That they are so does not hinder us in applying the
words,-we have indeed in the next verse the Lord's warrant for applying them,-to the angels; whose place we shall observe is not "in heaven"
in this parable which it was in the last; for this is the rejoicing together
of the redeemed and elect creation upon earth at the repentance of a
sinner. The angels that walk up and down the earth, that are present
in the congregations of the faithful, offended at aught unseemly among
them (1 Cor. xi. 10), joying to behold their order, but most of all joying
when a sinner is converted,-there shall be joy before them, when the
Church of the redeemed, quickened by the Holy Spirit, summons them
to join with it in consenting hymns of thanksgiving to God for the recovery of a lost soul. For indeed if the "sons of God" shouted for joy and
sang together at the first creation (Job xxxviii. 7), how much more when
a new creation has found place, at the birth of a soul into the light of
everlasting life (Ephes. iii. 10; 1 Pet. i. 12); for according to that exquisite word of St. Bernard's, the tears of penitence are the wine of
angels,* and their conversion, as Luther says, causes Te Deums among
the heavenly host.
* Pcenitentium lacrymse, vinum Angelorum; and with allusion to this parable
the Christian poet sings:Amissa drachma regio
Recondita est arario;
Et gemma, deterso luto,
MrjtoJ vjcdt ajie,




XXIV.
THE PRODIGAL SON.
LUKE xv. 11-32.
WE have now come to a parable which, if it be permitted to compare
things divine one with another, we might call the pearl and crown of all
the parables of Scripture; as it is also the most elaborate, if again we
might venture to use a word, which has an evident unfitness when applied to the spontaneous and the free, but which yet the completeness of
all the minor details seems to suggest;-one too containing within itself
such a circle of doctrine as abundantly to justify the title Evangelium
in Evangelio, which has been sometimes given it. In regard of its great
primary application, there have always been two different views in the
Church. There are those who have seen in the two sons the Jew and
Gentile, and in the younger son's departure from his father's house, the
history of the great apostasy of the Gentile world, in his return its reception into the privileges of the new covenant;-as in the elder brother a
lively type of the narrow-hearted self-extolling Jews, who grudged that
the "sinners of the Gentiles" should be admitted to the same blessings
as themselves, and who on this account would not themselves "go in.'
Others, again, have beheld in the younger son a pattern of all those who,
whether Jews or Gentiles, whether in that old dispensation which was
then drawing to an end, or brought up in the bosom of the Christian
Church, have widely departed from God, and after having tasted the
misery which follows upon all departure from him, have by his grace
been brought back to him, as to the one source of blessedness and life;
-while they in the elder brother have seen either a narrow form of real
righteousness, or, accepting his words to be only his own account of himself, of Pharisaical self-righteousness,-one righteous in his own sight,
not in the Lord's.
They who maintain this last explanation, object to the other which
makes the two sons to represent the Jew and Gentile (and the objection




THE PRODIGAL SON.                         317
appears decisive), that it is alien to the scope of the parable; for that
was spoken in reply to the murmurings of the Scribes and Pharisees
(ver. 1, 2), who were offended that Jesus received and consorted with
publicans and sinners.  Before that interpretation can have any claim
to stand, it must be shown that these publicans and sinners were heathens.  Tertullian, indeed, boldly asserts that the publicans were always
heathens; but he was not very careful what he asserted when he had a
point to prove, which he had in the present instance, namely this, that
no encouragement could be drawn from this Scripture for the receiving
back of great offenders into Church communion. But there is abundant
evidence, some Scriptural, and more derived from other sources, that
many of the publicans, probably of those in Judea, if not all, yet far the
greater number, were. of Jewish birth.   Zacchaeus was " a son of Abraham" (Luke xix. 9), and Levi, who sat at the receipt of customs, must
needs have been so too: and publicans were among those who came to
the baptism of John. (Luke vii. 29.*) They were indeed placed by
their fellow-countrymen on a level with heathens: and some heathen
publicans even within the limits of Judaea there may have been, but
doubtless these whom Jesus received, and with whom he consorted, were
publicans of Jewish origin, for with none but Jews did he familiarly live
during his walk upon earth; he was " not sent but unto the lost sheep of
the house of Israel;" and John xii. 30-22 shows us how unusual a thing
it was for him to break through this rule.t
* See also LIGHTFOOT, Hor. Heb., on Matt. v. 46.
t Many of these arguments in proof that the publicans of the New Testament
were Jews, are adduced by Jerome. (Ep. 21, ad Damasum.) He seems lost in
wonder (vehementer admiror) at the audacity of Tertullian's assertion to the contrary. The great aim of the latter in his treatise De Pudicitia, c. 7-9, written
after he had forsaken the Catholic Church, is by proving that contrary, to rob the
parable of all the encouragement and consolation which it might otherwise afford
to the penitent sinner; and in his passionate eagerness for this, he does not pause at
a small matter,-for instance, he declares the occasion of the parable to have been,
quod Pharissei publicanos et peccatores ethnicos admittentem Dominum mussitabant.
One cannot sufficiently admire his bold insertion of the ethnicos, nor how elsewhere
(Adv. Marc., 1. 4, c. 37,) even our Lord's declaration that Zacchaeus was " a son of
Abraham," is not decisive with him, (Zacchseus etsi allophylus fortasse, tamen
aliqnu notitia Scripturarum ex commercio Judaico afflatus,) nor his proof from
Deut. xxiii. 18, that no Israelite could have been a publican, in which matter it is
difficult to think that one so profoundly skilled in all Roman antiquities should not
have known better. His fear is lest sinners should be overbold in their sin, having
hope, like the prodigal, to find favor and grace whenever they will return to their
God; and he asks, " Who will fear to squander what he can afterwards recover?
Who will care always to keep what he is not in danger of always losing?" But if
once, leaTvng the ground of Scripture, he comes to arguments of this sort, we
might demand in return,-Is it on calculations of this sort that men rush into sin 1




318                     THE PRODIGAL SON.
These "publicans and sinners" then were Jews-outcasts indeed of
the nation, scorned and despised, and till the words of Christ had
awakened in them a nobler life, no doubt deserving all or nearly all the
scorn and contempt which they found. The parables in this chapter are
spoken to justify his conduct in the matter of receiving them, not to
unfold another and far deeper mystery-that of the calling of the Gentiles, of which during his lifetime he gave only a few hints even to his
chosen disciples, and which for long after was a difficulty and stumblingblock even to them.  Much more would it now have been an offence to
the scribes and Pharisees; to them therefore he would not needlessly
have opened it, least of all at a time when he was seeking to reconcile
them to his dealings, and if possible to win them  also for his kingdom.
Both these reasons,-first, that the parable was spoken to justify his
reception, not of Gentiles, but of Jews; and secondly, that the mystery
of the Gentiles as fellow-heirs with the Jews in the covenant of promise
was not unfolded till a later period, and certainly not first to cavillers
and adversaries, but to friends,-strongly recommended the latter as the
truer interpretation. Yet will not the other therefore be rigorously excluded; for the parable sets forth the relations of men to God, and
wherever those relations exist, it will find a more or less extensive application. It found a fulfilment, though not its primary one, in the relations in which Jew and Gentile stood to one another and to God. Again,
what the whole Jewish people were to the Gentile world in respect of
superior privileges and advantages, in respect too of freedom from some
of its worst enormities, that, within its own body, were the scribes and
and not rather because they believe their good is there, and not in God? And
how little was he really promoting holiness in this his false zeal for it: for if there
had been a deeper depth of sin and piollution, into that no doubt the prodigal
would have sunk, but that his sure faith in the unchanging love of his father extricated him both from the sin in which he was, and that yet further sin into which
he would but for that inevitably have fallen. Tell men after they have sinned
grievously that there is for them no hope of pardon, or, which amounts to the same
thing, give them only a dim, distant, uncertain hope of it, and you will not hinder one
by all these precautions and warnings from squandering his goodly heritage, but
you may hinder ten thousand poor miserable sinners that have discovered the
wretchedness of a life apart from God, from returning to their Father's house, from
throwing themselves on the riches of his mercy, and henceforward living, not to
the lusts of men, but to the will of God: and every one of these that is thus kept
at a distance will inevitably be falling from bad to worse, departing wider and
wider from his God. It is worth while to see what motives to repentance Chrysostom (Ad T/eod. Laps., 1. 7) draws from this very parable, and his yet more memorable words (De Pcenit. Hom. 1. 4), where among other things he says, —o'ros rofvvr
6 vibos Eicvav a    o Lepd b  Xovpbev 7Ipe o ITevrov, which he proceeds to prove. Compare the exposition of the parable by St. Ambrose (De Pxeit., 1. 2, c. 3) against
the Novatianists.




THE PRODIGAL SON.                       319
Pharisees to the publicans and sinners, so that here too it found its ap.
plication. And not less within the Christian Church,-however wide
may have been the sinner's departure from God, he may be encouraged
to return by the example of the prodigal, who returning found yet again
a place in his father's house, and in his father's heart. This blessed assurance we win from the fact that it was sinners within the covenant to
whom the Lord had regard and whom he portrayed in the younger son,
not sinners, as Tertullian would fain have us believe, without it.
Of these two sons, the younger said to his father, Give me the portion of goods thatfalleth to me."  His claiming of his share in this technical, and almost legal, form* is a delicate touch, characteristic of the
entire alienation from all home affections which has already found place
in his heart.  It is apparently too as a right that he claims it; not as a
favor: and such a right the Lord may mean to assume that he had.
Those authors indeed who have brought Oriental customs and manners
in illustration of Scripture, however they may prove such a right or custom to have existed among some nations of the East, for example, among
the Hindoos, adduce no satisfactory proof of its having been in force
among the Jews.t   But we need not conceive of the younger son as asking this his portion of goods as a right-only as a favor; " That portion
which will hereafter fall to me, which thou designest for me at last, I
would fain receive it now." This portion, according to the Jewish laws
of inheritance, would be the half of what the elder brother would receive.
(Deut. xxi. 17.)  What does this request mean, when we come to give it
its spiritual significance?  It is the expression of man's desire to be
independent of God, to be a God to himself (Gen. iii. 5), and to lay out
his life according to his own will and for his own pleasure. It is man
growing weary of living upon God and upon his fulness, and desiring to
take the ordering of his life into his own hands, and believing that he
can be a fountain of blessedness to himself.:  All the subsequent sins
of the younger son are included in this one, as in their germ,-are but
the unfolding of this, the sin of sins.  We express the true godly feeling
* Tb en7rf3dXov J dpos Trs obo'ras = ratam hvereditatis partem; the phrase like so
many in Luke is classical and happily selected; it is of no rare occurrence in good
Greek authors. (See WETSTEIN, in loc.)
t ROSENMULLER, Alte und Neue Morgenl., v. 5, p. 115. There is reference indeed to something of the sort, Gen. xxv. 5, 6, where Abraham in his lifetime would
seem to have given the main body of his possessions to Isaac, having given gifts
also to the sons of his concubines, evidently their portions; for having endowed
them with these, he sent them away. But it seems there recorded as something
unusual-probably a wise precaution to avoid disputes after his death.
t Bernard observes, that it is a sign of evil augury, when this son-bonum
incipit velle dividere, quod in commune dulcius possidetur, et habere solus, quod
participatione non minuitur, partitione amittitur.




320                    THE PRODIGAL SON.
which is directly opposed to " Give me myportion of goods," in our daily
petition, " Give us this day our daily bread:" we therein acknowledge
that we desire to wait continually upon God for the supply of our needs,
both bodily and spiritual, that we recognize our dependence upon him
as our true blessedness. In the earthly relationship which supplies the
groundwork of the parable, the fact of the son first growing weary of
receiving from his father, and presently altogether quitting his father's
house, has not the full amount of guilt which it has in the heavenly;
though, indeed, the contempt, or slighting of the earthly relationship
inevitably brings with it contempt, or slighting of the heavenly; the
former being constituted to lead us into the knowledge of the blessings
which are laid up in the other: and where the lower is despised, the
higher will inevitably be despised also.
The father " divided unto them his living."*  It would have little
profited to retain him at home against his will, who had already in heart
become strange to that home: rather he will let the young man discover,
by bitter experience, the folly of his request. Such, at least, is the dealing of God: he has constituted man a spiritual being, that is, a being
with a will; and when his service no longer appears to man a perfect
freedom, and man promises himself liberty elsewhere, he is allowed to
make the trial,t and to discover, if needs be, by woful experience, that
the only condition of his freedom is his cleaving unto God; that departing from him, he inevitably falls under the.horrible bondage of his own
lusts and of the world,t and under the tyranny of the devil.
And now the younger son is that which he desired,
"Lord of himself-that heritage of woe,"
as he, too, shall shortly find it. Yet though he had thus craved and
obtained his portion, it was not till after a few days that he left his home.
St. Bernard sees a force in this circumstance, and observes how tho
apostasy of the heart will often precede the apostasy of the life;~ that
there may be an interval between them, though the last must of necessity
sooner or later follow the first. The sinner is, indeed, pleasing himself,
* Tb,3foy = facultates; so Mark xii. 44; Luke viii. 43; xxi. 4; and 1 John iii
17, TbV 3oLv TOO Kid6hov. There is this use of the word in Plato. (De Rep., 1. 3, p.
228, Stallbaum's ed.)
t See CHRYSOSTOM, De Panit., Horn. 1. 4.
$ Augustine: Si herebis superiori, calcabis inferiora; si autem recedas a superiori ista tibi in supplicium convertentur.
9 De Divers., Serm. 8: Est autem interim homo sub se, cam proprime satisfaciens
voluntati, necdum tamen possidetur a vitiis et peccatis. Jam hinc vero proficiscitur ad regionem longinquam, qni prius quidem separatus erat, sed necdum elongatus a patre.




THE PRODIGAL SON.                       321
but the divergence of his will and the will of God does not immediately
appear: soon, however, it must; and thus it came to pass, that " ot
many days after the younger son gathered all together," turned, we may
suppose, all that fell to his share into ready money, or into valuables
that he could easily carry with him, " and took his journey into afar
country." By this gathering together of all and departing, seems intimated the collecting, on man's part, of all his energies and powers, with
the deliberate determination of getting, through their help, all the gratification he can out of the world,-the open preference of the creature to
the Creator,-the manifest turning of the back upon God.*  The "far
country" is a world where God is not.t There he "wasted," or scattered, "his substance uith riotous living"-,so quickly has the gat hering
which was mentioned but now, issued in a scattering, so little was it a
gathering that deserved the name. But there is no such waster as the
sinner.
For a while, it may be, the supplies which the young man brought
with him into that far land lasted; and while this was so, he may have
congratulated himself, and counted that he had done wisely in claiming
liberty for himself. Even so the sinner for a while may flatter himself
that he is doing well at a distance from God; he discovers not all at
once his misery and poverty: for the world has its attractions, and the
flesh its pleasures; his affections are not all at once laid waste, nor the
sources of natural delight drawn dry in an instant. But this is the end
whereunto he is more or less rapidly hastening. The time arrives when
he has come to an end of all the satisfaction and joy which the creature
can give him-for it was not as a springing fountain, but a scanty cistern-and then it fares with him as with the prodigal: "when he had
spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land, and he began to be
in want."   He, too, begins to discover that there is a great spiritual
famine in the land where he has chosen to dwell,-a famine of truth and
love, and of all whereby the soul of man indeed lives; he begins to discover his wretchedness and misery,~ and that it is an evil thing, and a
* Cajetan: Confidentia in omnibus donis naturee et gratise animi et corporis, est
bonorum congregatio.
t Augustine: Regio longinqua oblivio Dei est. Bede: Non regionibus longe
est quisque a Deo, sed affectibus.: Or rather "he began himself to be in want:" the famine reached even to him.
The Vulgate has not missed the force of the avrds: Et ipse cepit egere. (See
WINER's Grammatik, p. 142.)
) Ambrose (Exp. in Luc., 1. 7, c. 215): Etenim qui -recedit a verbo Dei esurit,
quia non in solo pane vivit homo, sed in omni verbo Dei: qui recedit a fonte,
sittit: qui recedit a thesauro, eget: qui recedit a sapientia, hebetatur: qui recedit
& virtnte, dissolvitur.
21




322                      THE PRODIGAL SON.
bitter, to have forsaken the Lord his God.* (Jer. ii. 19; xvii. 5, 6.) In
the spiritual world there need be no outward distresses or calamities,
though often there will be, bringing on this sense of famine. A man's
outward possessions, supposing him to have such, may stand in their fulness, may go on abounding more and more, all his external helps to
felicity may remain; while yet in the true riches he may have run
through all, and may be commencing " to be in want."    This famine sits
down, an unbidden guest, at rich men's tables, finds its way into kings'
palaces. In these palaces, at those feasts; the immortal soul may be famishing, yea, ready to "perish with hunger."
When we see portrayed in this parable the history of the great apostasy of the heathen world from the knowledge and worship of the true
God, as well as the departure of a single soul,t this wasting of goods will
be exactly that which St. Paul describes, Rom. i. 19-23, as the remaining part of the chapter will exactly answer to the prodigal's joining him* Thus, when a great English poet, with every thing that fortune, and rank,
and genius could give him,-and who had laid out his whole life for pleasure and
not for duty,-yet before he had reached half the allotted period of man, already
*~xclaimed,
My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flowers, the fruits, of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alonewhat are these deeply affecting words, but the confession of one, who having spent
all, had found himself in want 1 Or again, the prodigal's misery, his sense of the
barrenness of sin, find a yet deeper voice:The fire that on my bosom preys,
Is lone as some volcanic isle;
No torch is lighted at its blaze,
A funeral pile!
t We are not in this early part of the parable expressly told, but from ver. 30
we infer, that he consumed " with harlots" the living which he had gotten from his
father. This too suits well, when we see here the history of the world's departure
from God, since in the deep symbolical language of Scripture fornication is the
standing image of idolatry; they are, in fact, ever spoken of as one and the same
sin, considered now in its fleshly, now in its spiritual, aspect. (Jer. iii.; Ezek. xvi.
xvii.) And as much, indeed, is implied in the (sv &co-wTs, living dissolutely, of
ver 13.'AurTos, from a and a6co, as one who thinks he need not spare,-that he
never will come to an end of what he has. Clemens of Alexandria gives it a
passive signification, &i0Tos== &owa'ros, one who will not be spared, who is far
from salvation, a-SCea-a a, A svvaYeos = perditus of the Latins; so Passow: heillos,
ohne Rettung verloren. Cicero has latinized the word (De Fin, 2, 8), and uses it
of those given to prodigal luxury and excess at the table: but it also includes the
other main lusts of the flesh; and it affirms a depth of moral degradation, a
desperate debauchery (&ascrTws = alaoXpps, Hesychius), which it may be questionable
whether our translation has quite reached. See Suicer, s. v., and Deyling (Obss,
Sac., v. 3, p. 435).




THE PRODIGAL SON.                      323
self to the citizen of the far country, and seeking to fill his belly with the
swines' husks. The great famine of that heathen world was at its height
when the Son of God came in the flesh: in this consisted a part, though
of course, only a part, of the fulness of time,-the fitness of that time,
above all other, for his appearing. The glory of the old world was fast
fading and perishing. All childlike faith in the old religions had departed. They were creeds outworn, unable any longer to nourish, ever so
little, the spirit of man. The Greek philosophy had completed its possible circle, but it had found no answer to the doubts and questionings
which tormented humanity.  " What is truth?" this was the question
which all asked,-some, indeed, in mockery, some in despair,-some
without the desire, but all equally without the expectation, of obtaining
an answer.
When in this famine, the prodigal " began to be in want," for as yet
he had but a foretaste of his coming woe, this, no doubt, was a summons
to him to return home. But as yet his proud heart was unsubdued, his
confidence in his own resources not altogether exhausted.  The first
judgments of God do not always tame, but the stricken sinner says, like
Ephraim, " The'bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn
stone; the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars." (Isai. ix. 10; Jer. v. 3; Isai. lvii. 10; Amos iv. 6-10.) It
was, we may suppose, in such a spirit as this that " he went and joined
himself* to a citizen of that country,"-" fastened," or " pinned himself
upon" him, as Hammond expresses it, hoping to repair his broken fortunes by his help.t And here, no doubt, is meant to be set forth to us a
deeper depth in the sinner's downward course; a fall within a fall,-a
more entire and self-conscious yielding of himself in heart and will to
the service of the world. St. Bernard:t understands by the citizen of
the far country, Satan himself or one of his angels. " That citizen I
cannot understand as other than one of the malignant spirits, who in that
they sin with an irremediable obstinacy, and have passed into a permanent disposition of malice and wickedness, are no longer guests and
strangers, but citizens and abiders, in the land of sin."  Yet rather I
* So Unger: E'KoXt r7 contemtim, se obtrusit; he thrust himself upon,-as in
Latin, herere or adharere is often used, with something of contempt, of an inferior
who clings to some superior, through whose help he hopes to advance his fortunes,
-and see SUICER, s. v.,coXXAdo.aL. But there is no contempt necessarily involved
in the word,-it is not in the cleaving itself, but in the unworthiness of the person
to whom he cleaves, that the contempt lies: in proof compare Rom. xii. 9, with
1 Cor. vi. 16.
t Theophylact:'rpoKtd4as Ti KaKta.
t De Divers., Serm. 8. So also Cajetan: Subjecit se totaliter Dsemoni, qui verb
est civis regionis peccati.




324                    THE PRODIGAL SON.
should say that by the term " citizen" is brought out the distinction be
tween the prodigal and the lord to whom for a while he addicted himself.
He with all his misery was not a " citizen," but a stranger, in that far
land. He did not feel himself at home, nor naturalize himself there.
The other was well to do; the famine had not touched him; herein how
far more miserable indeed, though he knew it not, than he who " began
to be in want."  For there is hope for the sinner so long as he feels himself a miserable alien in the land of sin: his case is becoming hopeless,
when he has made himself " a citizen" there, when he is troubled with
no longings after a lost paradise, after a better land that he has left behind.  But how shall we understand his joining himself to the citizen of
that far country? The sinner sells himself to the world, he entangles
himself more deeply in it. Our Lord gives us a hint here of that awful
mystery in the downward progress of souls, by which he who begins by
using the world to be a servant to minister to his pleasures, submits in
the end to a reversing of the relationship between them, so that the
world uses him as its drudge, and sin as its slave. He becomes cheap
in the sight of that very world for the sake of which he has forfeited all.
Its good wine, which it offered him at the first, it offers him no more, but
now that he has well drunk, that which is worse.
It was small help that the young man found from the new master on
whom he had thrust himself. Sinful man finds no mercy from his fellowsinner, no love, no pity.  "All thy lovers have forsaken thee," this is
the doom of each soul that breaks faith with its heavenly bridegroom.
(Cf. Ezek. xvi. 37; xxiii. 22-25.)  This new master cared not whether
he had him or no-and if he must needs engage him, who so crouches
to him for a morsel of bread (1 Sam. ii. 36), he will dismiss him out of
sight, and send him to the meanest and vilest employment which he has;
" He sent him into his fields tofeed swine."  We might easily guess, and
indeed we know, how exceedingly vile and degrading, and even accursed,
this employment was esteemed in the eyes of a Jew;* so that misery
would seem to have come upon him to the uttermost. And now " he
would fain havefilled his belly with the husks f that the swine did eat;
* See LIGHTFOOT'S Hor. Heb., on Matt. viii. 30; and GEFORER'S Urchristenthum,
v. 1, p. 115. Herodotus. (1. 2, c. 47) describes the swineherds as the only persons
who were excluded from the temples of Egypt.
t These iKepdria are not the husks or pods of some other fruit, but themselves
the fruit of the carob tree (KEpaTwvia), of which there is a good account in WINER'S
Real. Worterbuc/l, s. v. Johannis Brodtbaum. This name of St. John's bread the
tree derives from the tradition that the Baptist fed upon its fruit in the wilderness.
I have seen and tasted them in Calabria, where they are very abundant, and being
sold at a very low price are sometimes eaten by the poorer people, but are mainly
used for the feeding domestic animals. They are also common in Spain, and still




THE PRODIGAL SON.                         325
and no man gave unto him."    Shall we understand that he was reduced
so low as to look with a longing eye upon these swine's husks, but that
a share even of these which he distributed to them, was withholden from
himself? —" no man gave unto him"' of these;-so the passage is generally taken.* But seeing they must have been in his power,t it seems
preferable to understand that in his unscrupulous hunger he was glad
to fill himself with these husks, and did so, no man giving him any nobler sustenance. J  With these he would fain have "filled his belly; ~
-the expression is chosen of design-all he could hope from them was
just this, to dull his gnawing pain-not that he should with them truly
satisfy his hunger, for the food of beasts could not appease the cravings
of man. Thus a deepest moral truth lies under the words,-that none
but God can satisfy the longing of an immortal soul,-that as the heart
was made for him, so he only can fill it.
The whole description is wonderful: and for nothing more than the
evident relation in which his punishment stands to his sin.  "He who
would not, as a son, be treated liberally by his father, is compelled to be
the servant and bondslave of a foreign master,-he who would not be
ruled by God, is compelled to serve the devil,-he who would not abide
in his father's royal palace, is sent to the field among hinds,-he who
would not dwell among brethren and princes, is obliged to be the servant
and companioif of brutes,-he who would not feed on the bread of angels,
petitions in his hunger for the husks of the swine."ll In his feeding of
more so on the northern coasts of Africa, and in the Levant. They are in shape
something like a bean-pod, though larger, and curved more into the form of a
sickle; thence called KEpTLOy, or little horn, and the tree sometimes in German,
Bockshornbaum. They have a dark hard outside, and a dull sweet taste, hardly,
I think, justifying Pliny's prcedulces silique. The shell or pod alone is eaten; wine
was sometimes expressed from it in ancient times; Robinson mentions when steeped in water they afford a pleasant drink: the fruit within is bitter and cast aside.
Maldonatus gives an accurate account of the KepaTlov, and see POLE'S Synopsis (in
loc.) and ROSENMULLER'S Alte und Neue Morgenland, v. 5, p. 198.
* Thus Luther: Und niemand gab sie ihm. Bernard (De Convers., c. 8): Meritb siliquas esuriit, et non accepit, qui porcos pascere maluit, quam paternis epulis
satiari.
t Calvin: Significat prm fame non amplius cogitasse veteres delicias, sed avid6
vorasse siliquas: neque enim cum porcis ipse daDet hoc cibi genus, carere potuit,...
Additur ratio, quia nemo illi dabat, nam copula in causalem particulam, meo judicio,
resolvi debet.
$ Or the words Kal ovsels ei8ov, aorcpd may be a new and the final touch in the
picture of his misery, and express generally that there was none that showed any
pity upon him.
T retiaaO T'a  KoicCav. Stella: Hominem non satiant, sed ventrem tantu'i gra,
sant; and Ambrose (Exp. in Luc., 1. 7, c. 227): Cibus... quo corpus non reficitn
sed impletur. Augustine: Pascebatur de siliquis, non satiabatur.
jI Corn. d Lapide.




326                     THE PRODIGAL SON.
swine, what a picture have we of man " serving divers lusts and plea
sures,"-in whom the divine is totally obscured,-the bestial merely pre.
dominant. And in his fruitless attempt to fill his belly with the husks
what a picture, again, of man seeking through the unlimited gratification
of his appetites, to appease the fierce hunger of his soul. But in vain,
for still "he enlarges his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be
satisfied:" since as well might one hope to quench a fire by adding fuel
to it, as to slake desire by gratifying it.* (Ezek. xvi. 28, 29.) And
the further misery is that the power of sinful gratifications to stay that
hunger even for the moment, is ever diminishing,-the pleasure which is
even hoped for from them still growing fainter, and yet the goad behind,
urging to seek that pleasure, still becoming fiercer,-the sense of the horrible nature of the bondage ever increasing, with the power of throwing off
that bondage ever diminishing.t All the monstrous luxuries and frantic wickednesses which we read of in the later Roman history, at that
close of the world's Pagan epoch, stand there like the last despairing
effort of man to fill his belly with the husks.t  The attempt by her emperors was carried out under all the most favorable circumstances of
wealth and power, for, in Solomon's words, "what can the man do that
cometh after the king?" In this light we may behold the incredibly
sumptuous feasts,-the golden palaces,-the enormous shows and spectacles,-and all the pomp and pride of life carried to the uftermost, —the
sins of nature, and the sins below nature; while yet from  amidst all
these the voice of man's misery only made itself the louder heard. The
experiment carried out on this largest scale, only caused the failure to be
more signal, only proved the more plainly that of the food of beasts there
could not be made the nourishment of men.
* Jerome (Ad Darn., Ep. 21, c. 13): Non poterat, saturari quia semper voluptas
famem sui habet, et transacta non satiat: and Bernard, though elsewhere he has
affirmed the other, yet brings out this interpretation also on its ethical side (De
Convcrs., c. 14): Neque enim parit hane [satietatem] copia sed contemptus. Sic
fatui filii Adam, porcorum vorando siliquas, non esurientes animas sed esuriem
ipsam pascitis animarum. Sola nimirum hoc edulio inedia vestra nutritur, sola
fames alitur cibo innaturali.
t Cajetan: Quieto siquidem dominio jam possidentes Deemones hominem, invident illi satietatem appetites, quam tamen procurabant quosque illum plenb sibi
subjecerunt. Compare a passage from the Tabula of Cebes, quoted by Mr. Greswell. (Exp. of the Par., v. 3, p. 586.): The explanation which Augustine gives is not virtually different from this.
The husks he explains: Seculares doctrinae steriles, vanitate resonantes; such as
had been to himself once his own M1nichaean figments. Compare Jerome (Ad
Dam., Ep. 21, c. 13), and H. de Sto. Victore: Sordida figmenta poetarum, et diversis erroribus polluta dogmata philosophorum.
4 See, for instance, SUETONIUS, Caligula, c. 19. 37.




THE PRODIGAL SON.                       327
It might be here, perhaps, said, that the picture drawn in the para.
ble, if it be applied to more than a very few, the deepest sunk in depravity, is an exaggeration both of the misery and also of the wickedness
even of those who have turned their backs upon God; that, in the most
corrupted times, not all, and in more moral epochs only a few even of
these, fall so low in wretchedness and guilt. This is true, yet all might
thus fall. By the first departure from God, all this misery, and all this
sin, are rendered possible-all are its legitimate results; there is nothing
to hinder them from following, except the mercy and restraining grace
of God, who does not suffer sin, in all cases, to bear all the bitter fruit
which it might, and which are implicitly contained in it. In the present case, it is suffered to bear all its bitter fruit: we have one who has
done " evil with both hands earnestly," and debased himself even unto
hell; and the parable would be incomplete without this, it would not
be a parable for all sinners, since it would fail to show, that there is
no extent of departure from God, which renders a return to him impossible.
Hitherto we have followed the sinner step by step in a career. which
is ever carrying him further and further from his God. Another task
remains-to trace the steps of his return, from the first beginnings of
repentance to his full reinvestment in all the rights and privileges of a
son. For though he has forsaken his God, he has not been forsaken by
him-no not eyen in that far land; for the misery which has fallen upon
him there is indeed an expression of God's anger against sin, but at the
same time of his love to the sinner. He hedges up his way with thorns,
that he may not find his paths (Hos. ii. 6); he makes his sin bitter to
him, that he may leave it. In this way God pursues his fugitives, summoning them back in that only language which now they will understand.*  He allows the world to make its bondage hard to them, that
they may know the difference between his service, and the service of
the kings of the countries (2 Chron. xii. 8), that those whom he is about
to deliver may cry to him by reason of the bitter bondage, and in that
cry give him something that he may take hold of. (Deut. iv. 29-31;
2 Chron. xxxiii. 11-13.) Here we have one upon whom this severe
but loving discipline is not wasted.t  Presently, " he came to himself."
How full of consolation for man, how deeply significant are these words,
he came to himself"-so that to come to one's self and to come to God,
* AUGUSTINE, Enarr. in Ps. cxxxviii. 3, 4.
t Augustine: Divinse misericordise severa disciplina.
t How remarkable a parallel the words of Seneca (Ep. 53) supply: Quare vitia
sua nemo confitetur l quia etiam nunc in illis est. Somnium narrare, vigilantis est,
et vitia sua confiteri, sanitatis indicium.




328                    THE PRODIGAL SON.
are one and the same thing. He being the true ground of our being
when we find ourselves we find him; or rather, because we have found
him, we find ourselves also.* It is not then the man living in union
with God who is raised above the true condition of humanity, but the
man not so living, who has fallen out of and fallen below that condition.
When he thus "came to himself he said, How many hired servants oJ
my father's have bread enough and to spare, and Iperish with hunger."
This too is a touch of the deepest nature; for there is nothing that so
causes the sinner to feel the discord which he has introduced into his
innermost being, as to compare himself with all things around and beneath him. He sees the happy animals undisturbed with his longings,
unable to stain themselves with his sins; he beholds all nature calm and
at rest, and fulfilling in law and in order the purposes for which it was
ordained.  Every where, peace and joy-he only condemned the mean
while
"To be a jarring and dissonant thing
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy."
He sees also many of his fellow-men, who without any very lofty views
concerning living to the glory of God,-without any very lively affections towards him, do yet find their satisfaction in the discharge of their
daily duties, who, though they do his work rather in the spirit of servants than of sons, rather looking to their hire than out of the free impulse of love, are yet not without their reward. It is true, they may
not have the highest joy of his salvation, or consolations of his grace,
but, on the other hand, they are far from the misery and destitution into
which he has sunk. They at least have bread enough and to spare:
while he is tormented with the fierce hunger of desires which are ever
craving, but which can never be satisfied.t
Comparing his state with theirs, what does the prodigal determine
now? How many, even at this point, do not determine as he does.
They betake them to some other citizen of that far country, who promises them a little better fare or less contemptuous treatment. Or it
* See AUGUSTINE, Serm. 96, c. 2.
t This, in the main, is the interpretation of these words by the Fathers. See
Jerome (Ad Dam., Ep. 21, c. 14), Ambrose (Exp. in Luc., 1. 7, c. 220), and Bernard
(De Divers. Serm, 8): Quis enim peccati consuetudine obligatus, non se felicem
reputaret, si datum esset ei esse tanquam unum ex his, quos in seculo tepidos
videt, viventes sine crimine, minimb tamen quserentes quee sursum -sunt, sed quas
super terram? In proof that this distinction between the filial and the servile
work was clearly recognized among the Jews, see SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Heb., T. 1,
pp. 260, 532.




THE PRODIGAL SON.                      329
may be they learn to dress their husks, so that they shall look like human food, and they then deny that they are the fodder of swine. Or
glorying in their shame, and wallowing in the same sty with the beasts
they feed, they proclaim that there was never intended to be any difference between the food of men and of swine. But it is otherwise with him.
"I wzill arise."*  We may picture him to ourselves as having sat long
upon the ground, revolving the extreme misery of his condition-for the
earth becomes the natural throne of the utterly desolate. (Job ii. 8, 13.)
But now he gathers up anew his prostrate energies, as a better hope
wakens in his bosom; " Why sit I here among the swine? I. will
arise and go to my father."  These words the Pelagians of old adduced, in proof that man could turn to God in.his own strength,tthat he needed not a drawing from above, that the good thought was
his own; just as the (self-styled) Unitarians of modern times find
in the circumstances of the prodigal's return, a proof that the sinner's repentance alone is sufficient to reconcile him with his God,that he needs not a Mediator and Sacrifice. But these conclusions are
sufficiently guarded against by innumerable clearest declarations, the
first by such as John vi. 44; the second by such passages as Heb. x. 1922; nor are we to expect that every passage in Scripture is to contain
the whole circle of Christian doctrine, but the different portions of truths
being gathered by the Church out of the different parts of Scripture, are
by her presented to her children in their due proportions and entire
completeness.
Returning to that father, he "will say unto him, Father,"-for as
that relation was one which his obedience has not constituted, so his
disobedience could not annul. And what is it that gives the sinner now
a sure ground of confidence, that returning to God he shall not be
repelled or cast out? The adoption of sonship, which he received in
Christ Jesus at his baptism, and his faith that the gifts and calling of
God are on his part without repentance or recall. For the recollection
of his baptism is not to him as a menacing angel, keeping with a fiery
sword the gates of that Paradise which he has forfeited, and to which he
now vainly desires admission again; but there he finds consolation and
strength;-he too, wretched and degraded though he be, may yet take
that dearest name of Bather on his lips, and claim anewhis admission
into the household of faith, on the ground that he was once made a member thereof, and that his privileges abide for him still in their full force,
* Augustine: Surgam, dixit-sederat enim.
t But Augustine says in reply (Ep. 186): Quam cogitationem bonam quando
haberet, nisi et ipsam illi in occulto Pater misericordissimus inspirAsset  Cf.
Enarr. in Ps. lxxvii. 39.




330                     THE PRODIGAL SON.
however he may have chosen to remain in guilty ignorance of them for
so long.  " I have sinned against heaven and before thee:" he recognizes
his offence to have been committed not merely against man, but against
heaven, or against God: he shows his repentance to have been divinely
wrought, a work of the Spirit, in that he acknowledges his sin in its
root, as a transgression of the divine law, as exceedingly sinful, being
wrought against God. Thus David, when he exclaims, " Against thee,
thee only have I sinned;" while yet his offences had been against the
second table. For we may injure ourselves by our evil, we may wrong
our neighbor, but strictly speaking, we can sin only against God; and
the recognition of our evil as first and chiefly an offence against him, is
of the essence of all true repentance, and distinguishes it broadly from
many other kinds of sorrow which may follow on evil deeds. When we
come to give these words their higher application, the two acknowledgments, " 1 have sinned against heaven, and before thee," merge into one,
" I have sinned against thee, my Father in heaven." Not here alone,
but throughout all Scripture, this willingness to confess is ever noted as
a sign of a true repentance begun, even as the sinner's refusal to humble
himself in confession before God, is the sure note of a continued obduracy.  (2 Sam. xii. 13; Job ix. 20; xxxi. 33; xxxiii. 27; Prov. xxviii.
13; Jer. ii. 35; xvi. 10; Hos. xiv. 2; 1 John i. 9, 10.)  In Augustine's
words, "He shows himself worthy, in that he confesses himself unworthy."*
With this deep feeling of his unworthiness, he will confess that he
has justly forfeited all which once was his: " lam no more worthy to be
called thy son." This is well, and a confession such as this belongs to
the essence of all true repentance.  But the words that follow,t " Iake
me as one of thy hired servants," are these the words of returning spiritual health, so that we should desire to meet them in each normal repentance; or not? We shall find that at a later period he drops them  (ver.
21), and shall then have something more to say about them.  A scholar
* And again: Esto accusator tuus, et ille erit indultor tuus; cf. Enarr. in Ps.
xxxi. 5. Tertullian, in his treatise De Pcnitentia (c. 9, 10), has many useful
remarks, in connection with this parable, on the benefit of unreserved confession:
Tantum relevat confessio delictorum quantum dissimulatio exaggerat. Confessio
enim satisfactionis consilium est, dissimulatio, contumaciae... In quantum non
peperceris tibi, in tantum tibi Deus, crede, parcet. The whole treatise breathes a
far different spirit from that in which the other above referred to, De Pudicitia, is
written; and yet is most useful, as showing us how far more serious and earnest a.hing repentance was accounted in the early Church, than it is commonly now, how
much more it linked itself with outward self-denials and humiliations.
t- Cajetan: Non audebo petere redintegrationem in statum filii, in pristina dona
gandia: sed petam dona incipientium, qui amore asternae mercedis serviunt Deo.




THE PRODIGAL SON.                      331
of St. Bernard's here exclaims: " Keep, O happy sinner, keep watchfully and carefully this thy most just feeling of humility and devotion:
by which thou mayest ever esteem the same of thyself in humility, of
the Lord in goodness. Than it there is nothing greater in the gifts of
the Holy Spirit, nothing more precious in the treasures of God, nothing
more holy among all graces, nothing more wholesome among [all] sacraments. Keep, I say, if thou wilt thyself be kept, the humility of that
speech and feeling, with which thou confessest to thy Father, and sayest,'Father, I am no more worthy to be called thy son.' For humility is of
all graces the chiefest, even while it does not know itself to be a grace at
all. From it they begin, by it they advance, in it they are consummated,
through it they are preserved."* But it is wholly against the spirit of
this parable, when he exhorts him still to persist in taking the place of
a servant, even after his father shall have bidden him to resume the position of a son. This is that false humility of which we find so much,
and which often is so mightily extolled, in monkery, but of which we find
nothing in this parable, nor elsewhere in the Scriptures. It is true humility when bidden to go up higher, to go. It was true humility in Peter
to suffer the Lord to wash his feet, as it would have been false humility,
as well as disobedience, to resist longer than he did: it was true humility of the prodigal, when his father would have it so, to accept at once
the place of a son.
There is no tarrying now; what he has determined to do, at once
he does; being about to prove how much larger are the riches of grace,
which are laid up with his father, than he had dared to hope; "IHe
arose, and came to his father; but when he was yet a great way off, his
father saw himand had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck (Gen.
xlv. 14; xlvi. 29; Job xi. 9), and kissed him.?  The evidences of the
father's love are described with a touching minuteness; he does not wait
for the poor returning wanderer till he has come all the way, but himself hastens forward to meet him; he does not wear at first an aspect of
severity, only after a season to be relaxed or laid aside, but at once welcomes him with the kiss, which is something more than an evidence of
affection, being the significant, and in the East well understood, pledge
of reconciliation and peace. (Gen. xxxiii. 4; 2 Sam. xiv. 33; Ps. ii.
12.) It is thus the Lord draws nigh unto them that draw nigh unto
himt (Jam. iv. 8), he sees them while they are " yet a great way off"
* Guerricus, in a singularly beautiful sermon in the Bened. edit. of St. Bernard,
v. 2, p. 986: Humilitas siquidem omnium virtutum est maxima, cum tamen virtutern se esse nesciat: ab ips& incipiunt, per ipsam proficiunt, in ips& consummantur,
per ipsam conservantur.
t Thus there is an Eastern proverb, If man draws near to God an inch, God




332                    THE PRODIGAL SON.
It was he who put within them even the first weak notions toward good;
-and as his grace prevented them, so also it meets them;-he listens
to the first faint sighings of their hearts after him, for it was he that first
awoke those sighings there. (Ps. x. 17.) And though they may be
" yet a great way off," though there may be very much of ignorance in
them still, far too slight a view of the evil of their sin, or of the holiness
of the God with whom they have to deal, yet he meets them, notwithstanding, with the evidences of his mercy and reconciled love. Neither
makes he them first to go through a dreary apprenticeship of servile fear
at a distance from him, but at once embraces them in the arms of his
love, giving them at this first moment strong consolations, perhaps
stronger and more abounding than afterwards, when they are settled in
their Christian course, they will oftentimes receive. And this he does,
because such they need at this moment, to assure them that notwithstanding their moral loathsomeness and defilement and misery, they are
accepted in Christ Jesus, to convince them of that which it is so hard
for the sinner to believe, which it is indeed the great work of faith to
realize, that God has put away their sin, and is pacified toward them.
But the returning son, though thus graciously received, though his
sin is not mentioned against him at all, yet not the less makes the confession which he had determined in his heart, when the purpose of
returning was first conceived. And this was fitting; for though God may
forgive, man is not therefore to forget. Nor should we fail to note that
it is after, and not before, the kiss of reconciliation, that this confession
finds place; for the more the sinner knows and tastes of the love of God,
the more he grieves ever to have sinned against that love. It is under
the genial rays of this kindly love, that the heart, which was before
bound up as by a deadly frost, begins to thaw and to melt and loosen,
and the waters of repentance to flow freely forth. The knowledge of
God's love in Christ is the cruse of salt which alone can turn the bitter
and barren-making streams of remorse into the healing waters of repentance. And thus the truest and best repentance follows, and does not
precede, the sense of forgiveness; and thus too will repentance be a
thing of the whole life long, for every new insight into that forgiving
love, is as a new reason why we should mourn that we ever sinned
against it. It is a mistake to affirm that men, those I mean in whom
there is a real spiritual work going forward, will lay aside their repentance, so soon as they are convinced of the forgiveness of their sins, and
will draw near to him an ell; or as Von Hammer (Fund. d. Orients, v. 4, p. 91)
gives it:
Wer sich mir eine Spanne weit naht, dem eile ich eine Elle lang entgegen,
Und wer mir gehend entgegen kommt, dem eile ich in Spriingen zu.




THE PRODIGAL SON.                       333
that therefore, —since repentance, deep, earnest, long-continued, selfmortifying repentance, is a gqod thing, as indeed it is,-the longer men
can be kept in suspense concerning their forgiveness the better, as in
this way a deeper foundation of repentance will be laid.  This is surely
a wrong view of the relations in which repentance and forgiveness stand
to each other; and their true relation is rather opened to us in such passages as Ezek. xxxvi. 31, where the Lord says, " Then" (and for what
that then means, see ver. 24-30: then, after I have cleansed you,-after
I have given you a new heart,-after I have heaped all my richest blessings upon you, then under the sense of these) " shall ye remember your
own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe
yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and your abominations."
Compare Ezek. xvi. 60-63, where the Lord declares he has established
his covenant with Judah for the very purpose "that thou mayest
remember and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou
hast done."  The younger son, while he has the clearest evidence that
his father is pacified toward him, does not the less confess his shame.
He does not indeed say all that he had once intended,-he does not say,
" Make me as one of. thy hired servants:" for this was the one troubled
element of his repentance, this purpose of shrinking back from his
father's love, and from the free grace which would restore to him all:
and in his dropping of these words, in his willingness to be blest by his
father to the uttermost, if such is his father's pleasure, there is beautiful
evidence that the grace which he has already received he has not received
in vain. Bengel thinks it possible that his father cut him short, and so
took these words out of his mouth, but has also suggested the truer explanation.*
And now the father declared plainly in act, that he meant to give
him a place and a name in his house once more; for he "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," these all being the ornaments, not of the
slave, but. of the free; all, therefore, speaking of restoration to his
* Bengel: Vel quod ex obvii patris comitate accensa filialis fiducia omnem servilem sensum absorberet, vel quod patris comitas sermonem filii abrumperet. So
Augustine (Quzcst. Evang., 1. 2, qu. 33): Cium enim panem non haberet, vel mercenarius esse cupiebat; quod post osculum patris generosissimb jam dedignatur.
* Thus Tertullian (De Resur. Cam., c. 57) speaking of the manumitted slave:
Vestis albce nitore, et aurei annuli honore, et patroni nomine ac tribu mensaque honoratur. Grotius: AaKcTAtov apud Romanos ingenuitatis, apud Orientes populos
dignitatis eximiae signum, aut etiam opulentiae. (Jac. ii. 2.) He might have
added Gen. xli. 42. Cf. ELSNER, in the Biblioth. Brem., v. 3, p. 906; and for the
significance of the ring, the Diet. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Rings, p. 824.




334                    THE PRODIGAL SON.
former dignity, and his lost privileges. Or if we cannot suppose the
Roman customs which accompanied the lifting up of a slave to a freeman's rank, to have been familiarly known in Palestine, or to be here
alluded to, yet the giving of the robe and ring were ever accounted, in
the East, among the highest tokens of favor and honor (Gen. xli. 42;
1 Macc. vi. 15).; so that, in fact, these words would still testify of highest
blessings and chiefest favors in store for him who had most justly confessed that he had forfeited his claim to the least of these.
Few interpreters, even among those who commonly are most opposed
to the giving a spiritual meaning to the minuter circumstances of a parable, have been able to resist the temptation of doing so here; and there
is a pretty general agreement concerning the manner in which these circumstances shall be explained. There is a question, however, whether
" thefirst robe" is to be understood as the first in worth, as our translation has it, "the best robe," the most excellent that was laid up in the
house,-or "the former* robe, that which he wore when of old he walked
a son in his father's house, and which has been kept for him, and was
now to be restored. The difference is not important, though our trans
lation is clearly the right; nor whether we say that by the giving of this
robe is signified the imputation to him of the righteousness of Christ,t
or the restoration of sanctity to his soul. If we see in it his reintegration in his baptismal privileges, then both will be implied. They who
bring forth the robe have been generally interpreted as the ministers of
reconciliation; and if we may imagine them first to have removed from
him, as they would naturally have done, the tattered garments, the poor
swineherd's rags which were hanging about him, Zech. iii. 4 will then
suggest to us an interesting parallel. Those who stood before the Lord
there, would answer to the servants here,-and what they did for Joshua
there, removing his filthy garments from him, and clothing him with a
change of raiment, and setting a fair mitre on his head, the same would
the servants do here for the. son, with the difference only that instead of
the mitre, the appropriate adornment there of the high priest, the ring
* The Vulgate: Stolam primam. Tertullian: Vestem pristinam, priorem.
Theophylact: T v oaTroY rv apay &pavc,-but rather, Stolam illam prsstantissimam;
as Euthymius: T7v,L TILWTCr7r. Cf. Gen. xxvii. 15. LXX. TWv coroX\v rv KaX'fy.
There need no quotations to prove how often 7rp&ros is used in this sense of the
chiefest, the most excellent (see 1 Chron. xxvii. 33; Ezek. xxvii. 22, LXX).
PAssow, s. v., der vornehmste, angesehenste. The oaroX{ is the vestis talaris, the
long and wide upper garment of the higher classes. (Mark xxii. 38.)
t Tertullian: Indumentum Spiriths Sancti. Jerome: Stolam quae in alia parabola indumentum dicitur nuptiale. Augustine: Stola prima est dignitas quam
perdidit Adam; and in another plac6, spes- immortalitatis in baptismo. Theophylact: TNb *SvLa.rijs a&qapaias. Guerricus: Sanctificationem Spiritas, qua baptiza.
tus induitur et poenitens reinduitur.




TEE PRODIGAL SON.                         335
and the shoes are here mentioned; and the symbolic act has in each
case, no doubt, the same signification; what that is, the Lord there expressly declares-" Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from
thee." These words, brought to bear on the passage before us, make it,
I think, more probable that by this bringing out of the best robe, and
putting it upon him, is especially signified that act of God, which, considered on its negative side, is a release from condemnation, a causing
the sinner's iniquity to pass from him,-on its positive side, is an imputation to him of the merits and righteousness of Christ.
This explanation, for other reasons also, is preferable, since we have
the gift or restoration of the Spirit indicated in the ring with which the
returning wanderer is also adorned. It is well known, and despite Pliny's* denial is unquestionable, that in the East, as with us, the ring was
also often a sealt (Esth. iii. 10, 13: Jer. xxii. 24), which naturally
brings here to our minds such passages as Ephes. i. 13, 14; 2 Cor. i.
22, in which a sealing by God's Spirit is spoken of, whereby they that
have it are assured, as by an earnest, of a larger inheritance one day
coming to them, and which witnesses with their spirits that they are the
sons of God. (Gal. iv. 6; Rom. viii. 23; 2 Cor. v. 5.)  The ring, too,
may be the pledge of betrothal: " And I will betroth thee unto me for
ever: yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies, and I will even betroth thee
unto me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know the Lord." (Hos. ii. 19,
20.~) The shoes also are given him, to which answers the promise, " I
will strengthen them in the Lord, and they shall walk up and down in
his name." (Zech. x. 12.)   The penitent shall be equipped for holy
obedience,. having his "feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of
* H. N., 1. 33, c. 6. Speaking of the seal-ring, he says: Non signat Oriens aut
iEgyptus etiam nunc, litteris contenta solis. The later discoveries have shown this
as false concerning Egypt as the East; see moreover Herod., 1. 2, c. 38.
t Clem. Alex. (Potter's ed., p. 1017):'pi/avrpov 3aaolKicbv Kicac apac4ia aeiav,
and presently after, a&romppa'yiaa yJi5y. The fragment whence these words are
taken, is interesting in many respects;-and among others in this, that the author,
whether Clement or another, affirms of the prodigal that he had not merely wasted
the natural gifts of God, but especially abused riv roO BavrTrLoaTos icWAue'Vw
KaX WV.: Ambrose (De Pcenit., 1. 2, c. 3): Det annulum in manu ejus, quod est fidei
pignus, et Sancti Spiriths signaculum.
( The whole chapter affords deeply interesting parallels: ver. 5 (the latter part)
answering to ver. 11, 12 here; ver. 6-13 there to 13-19 here; and ver. 14-23 to
20-24.
I| Guerricus: Calceamenta, quibus ad calcanda serpentum venena munitur, vel
ad evangelizandum prseparatur. Grotius, quoting Ephes. vi. 15, adds. Nimirum
pcenitentibus in gratiam receptis etiam hoc Deus concedit, ut apti sint aliis ant




336                     THE PRODIGAL SON.
peace." (Ephes. vi. 15.) No strength shall be wanting to him. (Deut.
xxxiii. 25.)  When it is added, " Bring hither the fatted calf* and kill
it." it would create a confusion of images, again to go back to the sacrifice of Christ, which was implicitly contained in the first image, that of
the giving of the robe, and which, moreover, is not a consequence of the
sinner's return, as the killing of the fatted calf is the consequence of
the prodigal's, but the ground which renders that return possible t Noi
should I here see (with Tertulliant and Clement of Alexandria) special allusion to the Eucharist; but more generally to the festal joy anQ
rejoicing which is in heaven at the sinner's return, and no less in the
Church on earth, and in his own heart also.~
As in the preceding parables the shepherd summons his friends (ver.
6), and the woman her female neighbors (ver. 9), so here the householder his servants, to be sharers in his joy. For this is the very nature of true joy-that it runs over, that it desires to impart itself: and
if this be true of the joy on earth, how much more of the yet holier joy
in heaven. II  And summoning them to rejoice, he declares to them the
ground of the joy in which they are invited to share. In an earthly
household, we might naturally conclude some to have made part of the
household now, who had not made part at the time of the young man's
departure.  To them, therefore, it was needful to declare that this wanderer, this beggar as it seemed, was no other than a son of the house,
one who should henceforth be by them treated and regarded as such.
voce aut certb exemplo docendis, and quotes well Ps. li. 13, in this view. And see
Clemens Alex. (Potter's ed., p. 1018) for much that is beautiful and something that
is fanciful on these shoes,-though the iv6roauaara were probably rather sandals
than shoes, the latter being in very rare use in the East. The word is used interchangeably with aavcdiXLa, by the LXX., though there is a distinction. (See
TITTMANN'S Synonyms, and the Diet. of Gr. and Rom. Antt. s. v. Sandalium, p.
839.) Much luxury was often displayed among the wealthy in this article of dress
(see Judith xvi. 9; Ezek. xvi. 10; Cant. vii. 1), so that we can easily understand
why they should have been especially mentioned; not to say that slaves usually
went discalceati.
* Tbv 0ad'ov TbV ffI'rEVv. Cf. Judg. vi. 25 (LXX.); Tertu.lann: Vitulh1m p'aeopimum,-that set by for some special occasion of festal rejoicing. In the Geneva
version, " that fatted calf."
t Augustine evades this difficulty: Tune enim cuique [Christus] occiditur cam
credit occisum.: De Pudic., c. 9.
Q Arndt (De Vero Christ., 1. 2, c. 8): Hoc convivium innuit gaudium angelorum, sive vivificantem, Icetificantem, et coronantem misericordiam quam Ps. lxiii. 5;
Jes. lxvi. 13, depingit.
11 Origen (Hor. 23 in Lev.) on the words " My feasts," which there occurs,
asks: Habet ergo Deus dies festos suos l Habet. Est enim ei magna festivitaa
humana salus.




THE PRODIGAL SON.                       337
The father solemnly reinstates him, before them all, in the honors of a
son. " This my son," he says-and then, comparing the present with
the past, " wvas dead, and is alive again"-" dead," for the state of sin ie
ever considered in Scripture as a state of death-(1 John iii. 14; 1
Tim. v. 6; Ephes. ii. 1)-" he was lost, and isfound,"-compare 1 Pet.
ii. 25: " Ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the
shepherd and bishop of your souls;" and while thus the lost was found,
and the dead alive, " they began to be merry."
Here this parable, like the two preceding, might have ended. But
our Lord at ver. 11 saying "two sons," had promised something more;
and complete as is this first part within itself, yet is it also to form part
of another and more complex whole, and to derive new beauty from the
contrast which is thus brought out between the large heart of God and
the narrow grudging heart of man. For the purposes of this contrast
the elder brother, who as yet has been named to us, and no more, is now
brought upon the scene. He, while the house is ringing with the festal
rejoicing, returns from <" the field" where, no doubt, he had been, as
usual, laboriously occupied; so much is implied in the words; and it is
not without good reason that this intimation is given us. For thus we
are informed that while the other had been wasting time and means and
strength,-his whole portion of goods,-in idle and sinful pleasures
abroad, he had been engaged at home, on his father's ground, in pursuits
of useful industry. This is not a justification, but yet is a tacit explanation, of the complaints which he presently thinks himself entitled to
make. As he " drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancin;g."
It would be alien to the manners and feelings of the East, to suppose
the guests themselves to have been engaged in these diversions: they
would but be listeners and spectators, the singers and dancers being
hired for such occasions. Surprised at these unaccustomed sounds. "he
called one of the servants and asked what these things meant."  Let us
note here with what delicate touches the ungenial character of the man
is indicated already  He does not go in; he does not take for granted
that when his father makes a feast, there is matter worthy of making
merry about. But, as if already determined to mislike what is going
forward, he prefers to remain without, and to learn from a servant the
occasion of the joy, or rather, as he puts it, " zwhat these things meant,"
demanding an explanation, as if they required it. And then the tidings
that his father had received his brother " safe and sound, "* with the
* How nice is the observance of all the lesser proprieties of the narration. The
father, in the midst of all his natural affection, is yet full of the moral significance
of his son's return-that he has come back another person from what he was when
he went, or while he tarried in that far land; he sees into the deep of his joy, that
22




338                     THE PRODIGAL SON.
thought of his father's joy, his brother's safety, instead of stirring up
any gladness in his heart, move him rather to displeasure; " he was angry," and in place of rushing to that brother's arms, " would not go in."
Nor even when his father so far bore with him as to come out and
entreat him, would he lay aside his displeasure, but loudly complained
of the unfairness with which he was treated-the bounty which was bestowed upon his brother's misconduct: "Lo! these many years do 1
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."*
And then he invidiously compares the father's conduct to his brother 
" This t;iy son," he says not, my brother,-" which hath devoured thy
living," again invidiously, for in a sense it was his own- "w ith harlots,"
very probably, yet only a presumption upon his part-'.s soon as he
was come," he says not, was returned,t as of one who had now at length
resumed his own place, but speaks of him as a stranger-upon the first
moment of his arrival, and after years, not of duty, but disobedience" thou hast killed for him," not a kid merely, but the choicest calf in the
stall. What would he have said, if he had known all, and seen him
arrayed in the best robe, and with all his other adornments, when this
which alone he mentions as it is all which he has learned from his informant, so moves his indignation?
It is too joyful an occasion for the father to take the just exception
which he might at the tone and temper of this remonstrance. There
shall not be, if he can help it, a cloud upon any brow, and instead of
answering with aught of severity, he expostulates with the malcontent,
would have him see the unreasonableness of his complaint-nor does he
fail to warn him that he is now, in fact, falling into the very sin of his
brother, when he said, " Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me."
He is feeling as though he did not truly possess what he possessed with
his father,-as though he must separate and divide something off from
his father's stock, before he could call it truly his own. The father's
answer is a warning against this evil, which lay at the root of the elder
he is receiving him now indeed a son, once dead but now alive, once lost to him
and to God, but now found alike by both. But the servant confines himself to the
more external features of the case, to the fact, that after all he has gone through of
excess and hardship, his father has yet received him " safe and sound." Even if
he could enter deeper into the matter yet with a suitable discretion he confines
himself to that which falls plainly under his and every one's eye.
* Jerome (Ad. Dam., Ep. 21) finding an emphasis in these last words, " oith
my friends," asks of him: Potest esse tibi aliqua jucunditas nisi patre te cum celebrante convivium? Cf. BERNARD, In Cant., Serm. 14, 4.
t This is one of Bengel's fine and delicate notices: Venit, dicit, ut de alieno
loquens: non, rediit.




THE PRODIGAL SON.                         339
brother's speech, though it had spoken out more plainly in the younger's,
the same which spoke out most plainly of all in the words of the wicked
husbandmen, " This is the heir; let us kill him, that the inheritance
may be ours."  Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine;"
and then he makes him see the unloving spirit out of which his discontent proceeded; " It was meet that we should tnake merry and be glad;
for this thy brother " (not merely " my son," as thou hast ungraciously
put it, but " thy brother," kinned to thee, and to whom therefore kindness is due)-he " was dead, and is alive again;* was lost, and is found."
What success the father's expostulations met, we are not told.
Whether we shall assume them to have been successful or not will, in
fact, be mainly determined by the interpretation which we give to this
concluding portion of the parable. Those who see in the younger
brother the Gentile, and therefore in the elder the Jew,t certainly find
this portion of it encumbered with fewer difficulties than those who deny
that its primary purpose can be to set forth their history, and their relations to one another and to God.  As in the interpretation which I have
here sought to establish, the correctness of such application, as the primary at least, has been denied, it will be needful to look elsewhere for a
solution of the difficulties, which are indeed the same which beset us in
the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. They resolve themselves into this single one,-Is their righteousness, whom the elder brother
represents, real or not? If real, how can this be reconciled with his
contumacy towards his father, and his unloving spirit towards his brother?t
* SCHOETTGEN, Hor. Heb. v. 1, p. 877.
t Thus Augustine (Quest. Evang., 1. 2, qu. 33): The elder brother was in the
field, that is, the Jew was occupied labore servilis operis: returning he heard
music and dancing, scil. spiritu plenos vocibus consonis Evangelium preedicare.
He inquires of the prophets, what mean these festivals in the Church, in which he
bears no part: they tell of the calling of the Gentiles; but he is displeased, and
will not enter. A time however is coming, so Augustine continues, after the fulness of the Gentiles has come in, when the father will come out and entreat him, to
the end that all Israel may be saved; for by this coming out of the father, he understands the manifest vocation of the Jews in the last times. Here he must needs
be in error: for however we may accept the elder brother as a portrait of the Jews
as they were in the days of Christ's earthly life, yet we cannot imagine his contumacy and self-righteousness manifesting itself in them, when the Lord hereafter
shall be successfully dealing with them for their conversion, and when " they shall
took on him whom they have pierced, and mourn for him as one that is in bitterness for his first-born."
~ Jerome's reply to Damasus (Ep. 21), which has been more than once referred
to. is very remarkable, as showing how the difficulties which press upon this part
of the parable, were felt quite as strongly in the Church in his time as now. It
was just this question which Damasus had asked: Nunquid persona justi tam immanis invidia poterit coaptari? And Theophylact calls the question about the
elder son, Tb'roAvprrAA71vrv Tr]mRja.




340                     THE PRODIGAL SON.
For does the true believer accuse God of unrighteousness in his dealings
with men? does he grudge, and not rather rejoice, when one who has
departed more widely, it may be, than himself, is brought home to the
fold of God? How again does the supposition that his righteousness
was real, agree with the aim of this part of the parable, which is directed
against the Pharisees, whose righteousness, for the most part, was not
such, but feigned and hypocritical?' But on the other side, if it is not
real, how is this reconcilable with the course of the story, according to
which the elder brother had remained ever in his father's house, or wita
his uncontradicted assertion concerning his own continued obedience, or
with the meed of approbation and assurances of favor which he receives
from his father's lips?  Each determination of the question is embarrassed with difficulties-and that certainly with considerable, though
perhaps not with the greatest, which is come to by Jerome,* by Thecphylact, and by others, namely, that by the elder son the Pharisees are
signified, whose righteousness was feigned and hypocritical; —that his
assertions concerning his own continued obedience are suffered to pass
uncontradicted, because, even granting them to be true, the case would
not be altered-the father arguing with him e concesso:t "Be it so, chat
is not the subject now in hand;-allowing your obedience to have been
without interruption, your works always to have been well-pleasing in
my sight, yet ought you in love to rejoice that your brother has returned
to us once more, and to be well-pleased at this exuberant joy and gladness with which he is welcomed home."
But there seems a possible middle course, which shall escape the
embarrassments which undoubtedly perplex this as well as the opposite
scheme of interpretation-that we see in him, or in those whom he represents, a low, but not altogether false form of legal righteousness.  He is
one who has been kept by the law from gross offences-he has been
occupied, though in a servile4 spirit, in the works of that law. So, no
doubt, had been many of the Pharisees: many of them hypocrites-but
also many of them sincerely, though in much blindness of heart, following after righteousness (Rom. x. 1, 2),-a righteousness indeed of a low
sort,~ in the strivings after which, while those were mostly external, they
* Christ, he says, paints the Pharisees, non quales erant, sed quales esse debu.
erant. Theophylact calls them, Kay' v3rdeaLv SKacLoL.
t Jerome: Non confirmavit vera esse quae dixerat filius, sed irascentem alia
ratione compescuit.: I cannot, however, press the word aovxevw (ver. 29) into service here, as Ben.
gel does, whose note upon it is,-Confessio servitutis. There is no confession of a
servile mind, no abnegation of a state of filial adoption, at Acts xx. 19; 1 Thess. i. 9,
nor in many passages where bovuEcC is used,-any more than when Paul calls him.
self a servant ('oUXos) of Jesus Christ.
4 Salmeron: Intelligam-s veros justos, sed mediocres.




THE PRODIGAL SON.                      341
did not attain to any deep self-acquaintance, any such knowledge of the
plague of their own hearts as should render them mild and merciful to
others, any such insight into the breadth of that law which they professed to keep, as should thoroughly abase them before God. Such may
have been some of the murmurers here-persons not utterly to be rejected, nor the good in them to be'utterly denied, but who had need rather
to be shown what was'faulty, deficient, narrow, and loveless in their religion;-to be invited to renounce their servile for a filial spirit, and to
enter into the nobler liberties of that Church and kingdom which Christ
was establishing upon earth. And in this sense we must then understand the father's invitation to the elder son to come in. Hitherto he
had been laboring "in the field,"* but now he is invited to a festival.
They whose work for God had hitherto been servile, the hard taskwork
of the law, are invited now to enter into the joy of the Lord, the freedom
of the Spirit.f  This part of the parable will then be as much a preaching of the Gospel of the kingdom to the legalist, as the earlier part of it
had been to the gross sinner,-as love to the one spoke there, so love to
the other here.
The elder son's reply to the father's invitation (ver. 29, 30), and
especially those words, "yet thou never gavest me a kid," show too plainly
that he understands not the nature of that kingdom to which he is invited.
He is looking for certain definite rewards for his obedience, to the getting somethingfrom God, instead of possessing all things in God.t Instead. of feeling it his true reward, that he had been ever with lis father,
he rather would plead this as establishing his claim to some other
reward.~  In the father's reply, " Son, thou art ever with me, and all
that I have is thine," we must be careful that we place the emphasis on
the right word, for without this we shall entirely miss the meaning. It
is not, "Son thou art ever with me," as though the contrast was drawn
between him and the younger son who had so long not been with his
father; but we should read rather, " Son, thou art ever with me," setting
the emphasis on the last words. "What need to talk of other friends?
thou art ever with a better than them all, with myself. Why shouldest
thou have expected a kid, when all that I have is thine?" To make the
first clause of the sentence an honorable recognition of his past obedi.
ence, or the second a promise that he " shall inherit all things," is an
* Ambrose: Terrenis operibus occupatus, ignorans quse sunt Spiriths Dei. But
Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cxxxviii.) rather more favorably: Significat sanctos in
lege facientes opera et prsecepta legis.
t Augustine: Ad perfruitonem potioris atque jocundioris exultationis invitat.
t Augustine: Non dicit pater, Omnia possides, sed, Omnia mea tua sunt.
i He should have felt, in Bernard's words: Ipse retributor, ipse retributio nostra,
aec aliud jam qukm ipsum expectamus ab ipso.




342                    THE PRODIGAL SON.
entire missing and marring of the whole. Rather in the first words lies
the keenest, though at the same time the most loving, rebuke  "Am not
I to thee more than all besides 2" in the second the most earnest warning.; "What is mine is thine, if only thou wilt so regard it; what can I
do for thee, if thy fellowship in my things fails to make thee feel rich?"
and how wonderfully do these last words declare to us the true nature of
the rewards of the kingdom: " All that I have is thine;" the elder son
no doubt had thought that what was given to his brother was taken from
him; but in the free kingdom of love one has not less, because another
has more; but all is possessed by each. The fountain of God's grace is
not as a little scanty spring in the desert, round which thirsty travellers
need to strive and struggle, muddying the waters with their feet, pushing
one another away, lest those waters be drawn dry by others before they
come to partake of them themselves, but a mighty inexhaustible river, on
the banks of which all may stand, and of which none need grudge lest if
others drink largely and freely, there will not enough remain for themselves. To each of his true servants and children the Lord says, as the
father did to his elder son, "All that I have is thine;"* if any then is
straitened and counts that he has not enough, he is straitened, as is the
elder son here, not in God, but in himself, in his own narrow and grudging heart.
There is abundant reason why nothing should be said of the issue of
the father's expostulations with his discontented son. That could not
yet be told, even as it was yet uncertain whether the scribes and Pharisees might not also be won to repentance, which indeed, though of another kind and for other sins, they needed quite as much as the publicans and harlots. The Lord not distinctly declaring that the elder son
sullenly refused to the last to enter in, or that he was finally excluded
for his contumacy, intimated to these, that as yet the kingdom of God
was not closed against them-that they too, as well as the publicans
and sinners were invited and summoned to leave their low, poor, and
formal service, "the elements of the world" (Gal. iv. 3), and to'enter
into the glorious liberties of the kingdom of Christ-to be present at that
spiritual festival wherein he should manifest his glory, changing the
weak and watery elements of that old dispensation into the generous and
gladdening wine of the new..(John ii. 1-11.)
That, it is true, of which we have here only an uncertain intimation,
the refusing, and on these grounds, to go in, was fearfully fulfilled and
on the largest scale, when the Jews in the apostolic times refused to take
* Augustine, on these words, says: Sic enim perfectis et purgatis ac jars
Immortalibus filiis habentur omnia, ut sint omnium singula, et omnia singulorum:
at enim cupiditas nihil silue angustit, ita nihil cum angustiS caritas tenet.




THE PRODIGAL SON.                          343
part in the great festival of reconciliation, with which the Gentile world's
incoming into the kingdom was being celebrated. How may we read
all through the Acts, as especially xiii. 45; xiv. 19; xvii. 5; 13; xviii.
12, a commentary on this statement,-He would not go in, because his
brother was received so freely with music and with dancing. If he had
been submitted first to a painful apprenticeship of the law, if he too had
been sent to work in the field, it might have been another thing. (Acts
xv. 1.) But that he should be thus made free of the kingdom of God,
be brought into the festival at once-this was more than they could bear.
Numbers staid openly and sullenly without. Others, as the Ebionites,
only pretended to go in, or went in under a mistaken supposition that
it should be as in their narrow hearts they desired, and discovering
their error, presently withdrew themselves again.* At the same time
we Gentiles must not forget that the whole matter will be reversed at
the end of the present dispensation, and that we shall be in danger then
of playing the part of the elder brother, and shall do so, if we grudge at
the largeness of the grace bestowed upon the Jew, who is now the
prodigal feeding upon husks far away from his Father's house.t
* Augustine (Serm. Inedd.): Irascitur frater major... Stomachati sunt Judeei
venire gentes de tanto compendio, nullis impositis oneribus legis, non dolore circumcisionis carnalis, in peccato accipere baptismum salutarem.
t Cajetan's view of the elder brother and his anger is very interesting, and I am
not aware that any interpreter, except indeed Jerome, and he but slightly, has
brought it forward. He speaks first of the joy and consolation which the penitent
sinner often finds at his first return unto God;-these are set forth by the music
and dancing,-for him all the glories of the Gospel have the freshness of novelty,
and, for a while, an overpowering gladness, which they cannot have for him who
has ever continued in the ways of the Lord. The joy of the latter has indeed been
infinitely greater than this one burst of gladness, but it has been spread over a far
larger space of time:-so that seeing the other's exultation, he may be tempted
for a moment to ask, with a transient feeling of discontent, why to him also is not
given this burst of exulting joy? why for him the fatted calf has never been slain?
-But the answer is, because he has been ever with his father, because his father's
possessions are, and have been always, his. His joy therefore is soberer and more
solid,-not the suddenly swelling mountain cataract, but the deep, though smooth
and silent, river: and what is given to the other, is given to him just because he is
a beginner. And Cajetan concludes his very interesting explanation of the whole
parable with these words: Adverte hic, prudens lector, Deum quandoque noviter
pcenitentes afficere magnb consolatione interni gaudii, donec firmentur in vi' Dei;..
haec autem non sunt majoris perfectionis fructus, sed delicie quaedam seu blanditise
ccelestis Patris, quae perfectioribus multis negantur. This view was a very favorite
one with the Mystics, who observed how in the festivals the first and eighth days,
that is, their beginnings and their glorious consummations, were commonly the
days of chieftest gladness, and they compare these joys to sugared dainties, with
which those who are as it were children in spiritual things, are first allured into
Christ's school. Volmar (De Spirit. Perfect.) uses a like image: Haec itaque devo



344                      THE PRODIGAL SON.
tionis gratia infantibus dari solet, ut ad bona opera per eam incitentur, quemadmodum venaticis canibus in principio solet gustus ferarum captarum praeberi, ut ad venandum eb fortius insistant.-Before leaving this parable, I would just take notice
of a very interesting allegory, called indeed itself, but incorrectly, a parable, founded upon this present one, which appears among the works of St. Bernard, but is by
his Benedictine editors (v. 1, p. 1261) attributed to some other author.




XXV.
THE UNJUST STEWARD.
LUKE xvi. 1-9.
THIS parable, whereof no one, who has seriously considered it, can underrate the difficulties,-difficulties which multiply rather than disappear the closer the parable is searched into,-which Cajetan found so
great that he gave up the matter in despair, affirming a solution impossible,-has been the subject of manifold, and those the most opposite,
interpretations. I cannot doubt, however, that many interpreters have,
so to speak, " overrun their game," and that we have here a parable of
Christian prudence, Christ exhorting us, if I may so say, to use the world
and the world's goods in a manner against itself, and for God. I shall
not attempt to give a complete account of all the interpretations to which
it has been submitted; since that would be an endless task,* but as I
go through the parable shall note what parts of it those interpreters,
who have the best right to be heard, have considered its key-words, and
the meanings which they have made the whole parable to render up,
noting at the same time what seem the weak and unsatisfactory points
in those explanations which I shall reject.
The Lord, having finished the parable of the Prodigal Son, did not
break off the conversation, but,-it is probable, after a short pause, which
he allowed that his words might sink down into the hearts of his hearers,
-resumed, addressing his words, however, not any more to the gainsayers and opposers —not to the Pharisees, but to those who heard him
gladly and willingly,-to "his disciples," as we are (ver. 1) expressly
told. By " his disciples," we must understand not exclusively the twelve
(see Luke vi. 13) nor yet on the other hand the multitude, in a certain
* Schreiter, in a work entirely devoted to this parable (Explic. Parable de
ntnprobo (Econ. Descriptio; Lips. 1803), gives an appalling list of explanations
offered, and a brief analysis and judgment of them all; but I have not been able
to derive much assistance from the book.




346                   THE UNJUST STEWARD.
degree well affected to the doctrine and person of Christ, yet at the
same time hanging loosely upon him,-following him from place to place,
but with minds not as yet made up to join themselves without reserve
to him as to their master and lord:-rather the whole body of those who
had attached themselves to be taught of him, whom his word had found
out in the deep of their spirits, and who having left the worla's service,
had decidedly passed over into the ranks of his people. To them, to the
"disciples" so understood, the parable was addressed, and for them
meant, since it is scarcely probable, as some would have it, that the
Lord was speaking to them, but at the Pharisees. These last, it is true,
were also hearers of the Lord's words (ver. 14), but the very mention
of them as such excludes them from being the persons to whom it was
primarily addressed.  The Lord may have intended,-it would seem
most likely did intend,-some of his shafts to glance off upon them, while
yet it was not at them that thay were originally aimed. We shall presently see that in relation to, at least, one of the expositions which are
offered, it will be important to have fixed in our minds for whom above
all the parable was meant.
" There was a certain rich man, which had a steward," not a landbailiff* merely, but a ruler over all his goods, such as was Eliezer in
the house of Abraham   (Gen. xxiv. 2-12), and Joseph in the house of
Potiphar (Gen. xxxix. 4).   It was one of the main duties of such a
steward to dispense their portions of food to the different members of the
household (Luke xii. 42), to give the servants or slaves their portion in
due season, a duty which we sometimes find undertaken by the diligent
mistress of a house   (Prov. xxxi. 15).  "And the same was accused
unto him that he had wasted his goods."t This of the lord's needing that
* And therefore not villicus, which the Vulgate has, nor yet dispensator, which
is a cashier. The inaccuracy of the first expression is noted and corrected by
Jerome (Ep. 121, qu. 6), who at the same time gives a good account of what were
the steward's duties: Villicus proprib villae gubernator est, unde nomen accepit.
OlKov41os autem tam pecuniae quam frugum, et omnium quoe dominus possidet,
dispensator. See too Ad Eustoch, Ep. 22, c. 35, for the duties of the oeconomus,
in the Egyptian monasteries; and for much information on the subject, Mr. GRESWELL'S Exp. of the Par., v. 4, p. 3, and BECKER'S Charikles, v. 2, p. 37. Procurator
would be the best translation. (See BECKER'S Gallus, v. 1, p 109.) In the pictures
lately discovered in the Egyptian tombs, the steward is seen often with all his
writing materials, taking an exact note of the amount of the harvest, before it is
stored in the granaries (HENGSTENBERG'S Bucher Moses, end JEgypten, p. 23); which
is something to the point here, as the same person would naturally have the oversight of the outgoings as well.
t There does not seem any reason why we should have shared the error of the
Vulgate, quasi dissipasset, when it is plain from the present (&s Laa-Koptrifv) of the
original, that it is no past, but an actual and present, unfaithfulness to his trust
with which he is charged.




THE UNJUST STEWARD.                         347
the ill conduct of his steward should come to his ears through a third
party, belongs to the earthly setting forth of the truth: yet it finds its
parallel, Gen. xviii. 30, 31. There is not the slightest ground for supposing, as some have done, that the steward was falsely and calumniously accused. It lies not in the word, for the same is used Dan. iii. 8,
where it is said that certain Chaldseans came near and accused the Jews;
yet it was not falsely that they accused them of having refused to worship the golden image; nor had Daniel been calumniously accused of
having knelt and prayed, and given thanks before his God;-malignantly
it might be, and in each case was, and so much lies in the word, but not
falsely.*  No support then is to be found in this word for their view,
who would in a greater or less measure clear the character of the steward.t Indeed, his own words (ver. 3) seem an implicit acknowledgment of his guilt: he proposes not to make any defence, and his after
conduct, his scheme for helping himself out of his difficulties, will allow
no conclusion, but that the accusation, though it might have been
brought against him by some enemy and from      malicious motives, yet
was one with most entire foundation in the truth. The accusation was,
* In both places the same word (8laSaAMXo) is used in the Septuagint, by which
Luke here expresses the accusation against the steward.  Cf. 2 Mace. iii. 11.
He was as the Vulgate has it, diffamatus, but not in our English use of the word,
defamled.
t As for instance Schleiermacher, who says: " The right view of this parable is
to be sure very much perverted, if the steward who, after all, has not committed
any breach of trust (?) on his own account, nor was charged with it, is notwithstanding to be termed oiKov. T. aLiKIas, and we will not make up our minds to leave
olcoy^los without an epithet, and to refer this &aKScas to &IrpY-EvY: [against this
construction see WINER'S Grammatik, p. 185:] and if the master who treats his
servant in so very arbitrary a way, and discharges him, without inquiry, upon a
secret information, and who besides discovers no higher measure by which he
judges of human actions than prudence, if this character is all along considered a
blameless man." But it is very difficult to see what Schleiermacher would gain
for his scheme by the altered construction. " The Lord praised the steward for
his injustice," comes pretty nearly to the same thing as, "The Lord praised the unjust steward;" and with such analogous phrases as talwvya r7s &aiKasa, KpIT7S T7S
&&Ktas (Luke xviii. 6), aKpoarTjs irX7rl~jovzs (Jam. i. 25), he will scarcely persuade
that the ordinary and natural collocation of the words is to be abandoned, even to
help out his marvellous interpretation of the parable, according to which the rich
householder is the Romans, the steward the publicans, and the debtors the Jewish
people; the lesson it contains being, If the publicans show themselves mild and
indulgent towards their nation, the Romans will in their hearts praise them, and
they who have now lost all favor with their countrymen, will-by them be favorably
received. But in what sense, it may be asked, could a coming into favor with the
Jewish people be termed a reception into everlasting habitations? this last is
somewhat too strong a phrase for any thing which they could do for those who
showed themselves favorably disposed towards them.




348                  THE UNJUST STEWARD.
that he wasted or scattered his master's goods,-that he administered
them without due fidelity, turning them to private ends, laying them out
for himself, and not for his lord. This last, when the charges against
his steward were brought to his ears, " called him and said unto him,
How is it that I hear this of thee?" This is not examination, but rather
the expostulation of indignant surprise,-" of thee,* whom I had trusted
so far,-to whom I had committed so much; Give an account of thy
stewardshipfor thou mayest be no longer steward."
They who, like Anselm, see in the parable the rise and growth and
fruits of repentance, lay much stress upon these words, " How is it that
I hear this of thee?" This remonstrance is for them the voice of God
speaking to the sinner, and convincing him of sin, bringing home to his
conscience that he has had a stewardship and has been abusing it; and
the threat, thou mayest be no longer steward," is in like manner a bringing home to him, by sickness or by some other means, that he will soon
be removed from his earthly stewardship, and have to render an account.
He feels that he cannot answer God one thing in a thousand, and that
when once he is thus removed, there will be no help for him: he cannot
dig, for the night will have come in which no man can work; and he
will be ashamed to beg for that mercy, which he knows will then be
refused. Consistently with this view, they see in the lowering of the
bills, not a further and crowning act of unrighteousness on his part, but
the first act of his righteousness, the dealing of one who now seeks,
while he has time, to do good with that which is committed to him, to
lay out the things in his power not with merely selfish aims, but in acts
of charity and kindness, to scatter for God rather than for himself, to
*heap up in heaven and not on earth. The dishonesty of the act they
get over, either by giving this lowering of the bills altogether a mystical
meaning, and so refusing to contemplate it in the letter at all, or in a
way of which we shall presently have to take notice. He is still called
they say, the " unjust" steward (ver. 8), not because he remains such,
but because of his former unrighteousness; he bears that name for the
encouragement of penitents. It is as much as to say, Though he had
been this unrighteous ungodly man beforetime, he yet obtained now
praise and commendation from his lord. He retained the title, as did
Matthew that of " the publican" (Matt. x. 3), even after he had become
an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ,f in perpetual remembrance of the
* Wetstein: Mirantis; de te! quem procuratorem constitui.
+ So the author of a sermon in the Bened. edit. of St. Bernard (v. 2, p. 714),
who gives this as the sum of the parable: Multa laude est dignus, qui relicto errore
pristinre conversationis, diviti Deo satisfaciens redit ad gratiam: and Anselm
(Horn. 12), who, however, sees in the steward only an unfaithful ruler in the




THE UNJUST STEWARD.                       349
grace of God which had found him in that mean employment, and out of
that had raised him to so great a dignity; as in like manner we have
Zenas the lawyer (Tit. iii. 13); Rahab the harlot (Heb. xi. 31); Simon
the leper (Matt. xxvi. 6); not that such they were now, but that such
they once had been. But there is nothing in the man's counsels with
himself that marks the least change of mind, the slightest repentanceno recognition of guilt, no acknowledgment of a trust abused, no desire
expressed henceforward to be found faithful, but only an utterance of
selfish anxiety concerning his future lot, of fear lest poverty and distress
may come upon him; and the explanation,-however ingenious, of his
being still characterized (ver. 8) as the " unjust" steward, is quite unsatisfactory.
But now follow his counsels with himself, and first his expression ot
utter inability any where to find help: his past softness of life has unfitted him for labor: his pride forbids his begging. Yet this helplessness
endures not long. He knows what he will do; and has rapidly conceived a plan whereby to make provision against that time of need and
destitution which is now so near at hand. If his determination is not
honest, it is at any rate promptly taken; and this is part, no doubt, of
the skill for which he gets credit,-that he was not brought to a nonplus, but quickly found a way of escape from his distresses.  " I am resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship* they may
receive me into their houses," as one from whom they have received kindnesses, and who, therefore, may trust to find hospitable entertainment
among them,-a miserable prospect, as the son of Sirach declares (xxix.
22-28), yet better than utter destitution and want. Hereupon follows
the collusion between him and his lord's debtors.  They owed, it seems,
to the householder, at least the two whose cases are instanced, and who
are evidently brought forward as representatives of many more,-just
as but three servants are named opt of the ten (Luke xix. 13), to whom
pounds had been intrusted,-the one a hundred measures of oil, and
the other a hundred measures of wheat. It is not likely that they
were tenants of his, who paid their rents in kind, which rents were now
by the steward lowered, and the leases tampered with; the name "debto'" seems not to point that way. Again, the enormous amountt of the
Church, not every man to whom a dispensation has been committed, which he has
been abusing;-he says: Laudari ha Domino meruit; ct nos ergo laudemus eum,...
nec eum in aliquo, priusquam correctus est, audeamus reprehendere, ut heec putemus in his que erga debitores egit domino fraudem fecisse, sed potius credamus
euum in his lucra Domini sui prudenti consilio quesisse, et ejus voluntatem
implkssc.
* In the Vulgate: Amotus b villicatione; but Tertullian in far happier Latin:
ab actu summotus.
t The word "measure" in our translation, which may be a small or a largo




350                   THE UNJUST STEWARD.
oil and wheats both of them costly articles (see Prov. xxi. 1F), which
is due, makes it equally unlikely that these "debtors" were poorer
neighbors or dependents, whom the rich householder had supplied
with means of living in the shape of food,-not however as a gift, but
as a loan, taking from them an acknowledgment, and meaning to be re.
paid, when they had ability. Rather we might assume the foregoing
transactions, by which these men came into the relation of debtors to
the rich man, to have been of this kind,-that he, having large possessions, and therefore large incomings from the fruits of the earth, had
sold, through his steward,'a portion of such upon credit to these debtors,-merchants, or other factors, and they had not as yet made their
payments. They had given, however, their bills, or notes of hand, acknowledging the amount which they had received, in which amount they
owned themselves to stand indebted to him.  These, which had remained
in the steward's keeping, he now returns to them,-" Take thby bill," or
" Take back thy bill" —bidding them to alter them, or substitute others in their room, in which they confess themselves to have received
much smaller amounts of oil and wheat than was actually the case. and
consequently to be so much less in the rich man's debt than they truly
were. To one debtor he remits half, to another the fifth of his debt; by
these different proportions teaching us, say many, that charity is not to
be a blind profuseness, exhibited without respect of the needs, greater
or smaller, of those who are its objects, but ever to be exercised with
consideration and discretiont-that the hand is to be opened to some
more widely than to others.
In this lowering of the bills, Vitringat finds the key of the parable,
and proposes the following interpretation, which deserves to be recorded,
if for nothing else, yet for its exceeding ingenuity. The rich man is
God, the steward the Pharisees, or rather all the ecclesiastical leaders of
the people, to whom was committed the administration of the kingdom
of God, who were stewards of its mysteries.  But they were accused by
quantity, fails to intimate this. Better Tyndal and Cranmer, who give it, " tuns of
oil" (the Rhemish, pipes), and " quarters of wheat." It is exactly this quantity,
one hundred cors of wheat, which in one of the apocryphal gospels, where every
thing is on a gigantic scale, as with those whose only notion of greatness is size,
we are told that the child Jesus received in return for a single grain of wheat
which he had planted in the ground. (THILo's Cod. Apocryph., p. 302.)
* rpa-ua =XElpo'yppaov (Col. ii. 14) = ypaF/uaTesov Xpeovs oU 6LOXo07rTiKjv, by the
Vulgate happily translated, cautio. See the Diet. of Ga'. and Ron. Antt., s. v.
Interest of money, p. 524.
t Thus Gregory the Great, who quotes from Gen. iv.: Si rectb offeras, et non
rect6 dividas, pecccsti.
$ Erkldr. d. Parab., p. 921, seq. This seems to have been the standing interpretation of the Cocceian school, for see DEYLING'S Obss. Sac., v. 5, p. 335.




THE UNJUST STEWARD.                         351
the prophets (see for instance Ezek. xxxiv. 2; Mal. ii. 8), and lastly by
Christ himself, that they neglected their stewardship, used the power
committed to them, not for the glory of God, but for purposes of selfhonor-that they scattered his goods. They feel the justice of this accusation, and that they are not in the grace of their Lord, and only outwardly belong to his kingdom. Therefore they now seek to make themselves friends of others, of the debtors of their Lord, of sinful men,-and
this they do, acting as though they still possessed authority in the things
of his kingdom. And the way by which they seek to make these friends
is, by lowering the standard of righteousness and obedience, inventing
convenient glosses for the evading of the strictness of God's law, allowing
men to say, " It is a gift" (Matt. xv. 5), suffering them to put away their
wives on any slight excuse (Luke xvi. 18), and by various devices making slack the law of God (Matt. xxiii. 16);-thus obtaining for themselves
favor and an interest with men, and so enabling themselves, although
God's grace was withdrawn from them, still to keep their hold on men,
and to retain their advantages, their honors, and their peculiar privileges.
This interpretation has one attraction, that it gives a distinct meaning
to the lowering of the bills,-" Write ffty," " Write fourscore;"-which
very few others do. The moral will then be no other than is commonly
and rightly drawn from the parable; Be prudent as they, as these children of the present world, but provide for yourselves not temporary
friends, but everlasting habitations: they use heavenly things for earthly
objects; but do you reverse the case, and show how earthly things may
be used for heavenly.*
* With the interpretation of these words as being a lowering the standard of
obedience very nearly agrees the use of the parable which is made in the Liber
S. Joannis Apocryphus, a religious book of the Albigenses, republished in THILO'S
Codex Apocryphuis, p. 884, seq. It is with the very question which the steward
here puts to the debtors, "How much owest thou unto my lord?" and with the.
bidding "Write fifty," " Writefourscore," that Satan is introduced as tempting and
seducing the inferior angels (blandiendo angelos invisibilis Patris). The very ingenious exposition of the parable by Gaudentius, bishop of Brescia, a cotemporary
of St. Ambrose, is in the same line. IIe says, Villicus iniquitatis Diabolus intelligendus est, qui in seculo relictus est, ut immunitatem [immanitatem 1] ejus
villici fugientes ad pietatem Dei suppliciter curramus. Hie dissipat facultates Domini, quando in nos grassatur, qui portio Domini sumus. Hie excogitat quomodo
valeat debitores Domini, h. e., peccatis involutos non solum aperto prmlio persequi,
sed sub obtentu fallacis benevolentiae, blanda fiaude decipere, quo magis eum in
domos suas falsa benignitate seducti recipiant, cum ipso in Sternum judicandi...
Hic debita conservorum suorum relaxare se falso promittit. dum vel, in fide vel in
opere peccantibus variam pollicetur indulgentiam.... Laudat [Salvator] astutiam villici minaciter simul et providenter. Minaciter quidem, cum vocabulo
iniquitatis pessimam DiaboYi prudentiami condemnat: p     uwowent   wutem, dtm
contra argumentorum ejus consilia discipulos audientes confirmat, ut omni cautela
atque prudentii tam callido atque prudenti inimico repugnent.




352                   THE UNJUST STEWARD.
Connected with this view is that of the writer of an elaborate article
in a modern German Review.* He conceives the parable was meant
for the scribes and Pharisees-only that he makes it to contain counsel
for them,-the unjust steward is set forth for them to copy; while Vitringa made it to contain a condemnation of them. They were the
stewards and administrators in a dispensation which was now coming to
a close; and when in its room the kingdom of Christ was set up, then
their much abused stewardship would be taken away from them. The
writer finds in the parable an exhortation to them, that in the little while
that should intervene between the announcement and actual execution
of this purpose of God's, they should cultivate that spirit which alone
would give them   an entrance "into everlasting habitations," into the
kingdom not to be moved,-the spirit, that is, which they so much lacked,
of mildness and love and meekness toward all men, their fellow sinners.
This spirit and the works which it would prompt, he affirms, are justly
set forth under the image of the remission of debts — and those, debts
due to another, since it is against God that primarily every sin is committed. Such a spirit as this, of love and gentleness toward all men,
flows out of the recognition of our own guilt, which recognition the writer
finds in the absence on the steward's part of all attempts to justify or
excuse himself. The same temper which would prompt them to these
works of love and grace, would fit them also for an entrance into the
everlasting habitations, the coming kingdom, which, unlike that dispensation now ready to vanish away, should endure for ever; But how
shall this interpretation be reconciled with the words, "He said also
unto his disciples," with which the Evangelist introduced the parable?t
* Zyro, in the Theol. Stud. I. Kritt. for 1831, p. 776. He had been however,
though he seems not to know it, long ago anticipated by Salmeron (Serm. zn
Evang. Par., p. 231): Quia enim Scribae et Pharisei cum lege et sacerdotio in
-promptu erant, ut deficerent. ] hortatur Dominus ut dent operam, ne austerb cum
peccatoribus procedant,.. ut ita sibi prneparent amicos, qui eos in Evangelium
recipiant.
t Weisse (Evang. Gesch., v. 2, p. 162, seq.) brings forward as though it were a
great discovery of his own, and all that was wanted for the easy explanation of the
parable, this view, that the lowering of the bills is the image here under which,
not acts of bounty and love with the temporal mammon, but the spiritual act of
the forgiveness of sins, is represented. He owns, however, that he cannot bring
this into agreement with ver. 9, " Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness," and the words in Italics he therefore includes in brackets, being
"convinced that Jesus never spoke them!"
$ Not very unlike this, is the explanation given by Tertullian (De Fug in
Persec., c. 13), only that he makes the exhortation to be addressed to the entire
Jewish people, and not to the spiritual chiefs of the nation alone: Facite autem
vobis amicos de mammona; quomodo intelligendum sit parabola prremissa doceat,
ad populum Judaicum dicta, qui commissam sibi rationem Domini cum malb




THE UNJUST STEWARD.                         353
it will then plainly be addressed not to them, but to the scribes and
Pharisees.
But to return;-with these new acts of unrighteousness this child of
the present world filled up the short interval between his threatened'and
his actual destitution of his office. It is not said that he attempted to
conceal the fraudulent arrangement which he was making, or that he
called his lord's debtors together secretly-whether it was that he trusted
that they would keep counsel, being held together by a common interest
and by the bands of a common iniquity,-or whether he thus falsified
the accounts, fearing neither God nor man, careless whether the transaction were blown abroad or not, as being now a desperate man, who had
no character to lose, and who was determined to brave the matter, confident that there would be no redress for his lord, when the written documents testified against him. This latter seems to me the most probable
supposition-that the thing was done openly and in the face of day,* and
that the arrangement was such as, from some cause or other, being once
completed, could not be broken, but must be permitted to stand. Were
it meant to have been a secret transaction, the lord's discovery of the
fraud would hardly have been passed over, and the steward would
scarcely have obtained for a contrivance which proved so clumsy that it
was presently seen through and detected, even the limited praise which
he does obtain as a skilful adapter of his means to his ends.  Least of
aL would he have obtained such praise, if it had depended merely on the
forbearance of his master, in the case of discovery being made, which
the event proved must have been regarded as probable from the beginning, whether the arrangement should be allowed to stand good or not.
Such forbearance could not have been counted on, even though the
wordst of the lord should lead us, in the present instance, to assume that
*uministrasset, deberet de mammonse hominibus, quod nos eramus, amicos sibi
potius prospicere quhm inimicos, et relevare nos a debitis peccatorum, quibus Deo
detinebamur, si nobis de dominica ratione conferrent, ut ciim coepisset ab hujus
deficere gratiS, ad nostram fidem refugientes reciperentur in tabernacula seterna.
* His words to the debtors, " Sit down quickly and write," may appear to some
characteristic of a man who wished to huddle over the matter as fast as possible,
for fear of discovery;-so Bengel explains them,-TaXEws, raptim, furtim; and
Maldonatus: Quod dicit cito, hominis mihi fraudulenti et male agentis esse videtur,
timentis, ne in scelere deprehendatur, ne quis dum adulterantur litterse, supervcniat.
But there is another fair explanation, that they are the words of a man who feels
that what is to be done, must be done at once-that to-day he has means to help
himself, while to-morrow they will have passed from his hands. The transaction
was evidently not with the debtors, one by one, apart from and unknown to each
other, as is slightly but sufficiently indicated, by the ao- e ("And thou"), with
which the steward begins his address to the second.
t Jensen, however, who has a very interesting essay on this parable (Theol
23




354                   THE UNJUST STEWARD.
he did not allow the steward to reap the full benefits which he hoped
from his dishonest scheming.
But whether the arrangement was a clandestine one or not, that it was
a fraudulent one seems beyond a doubt: such, on the face of it, it is, and
any attempt to mitigate, or explain away the dishonesty of the act, is
hopeless.*  It may be said, indeed, and has sometimes been so, that this
dishonesty of the transaction is not of the essence of the parable, but an
inconvenience arising from the inadequacy of earthly relationships to set
forth divine. They must fail somewhere, and this is the weak side of
the earthly relation between a steward and his lord, which renders it not
altogether a perfect type of the relation existing between men and God,
-that in the latter case, to use Hammond's words, " the man hath liberty to use the wealth put into his hands, so as may be most (not only
for his master's but also) for his own advantage, namely, to his endless
reward in heaven, which, though it were an injustice and falseness in a
servant here on earth, who is altogether to consider his master's profit,
not his own, yet it is duty, and that which by the will and command of
God we are obliged to do, in the execution of that steward's office which
the rich man holds under God-and is the only thing commended to us
in this parable; which is so far from denominating him that makes this
advantage of the treasure committed to him an unjust or unrighteous
steward, in the application, that it denominates him faithful (rtrr-os) in
the latter part of the parable, and him onlyfalse (atcKOS) that doth it
Stud. u. Krit., 1829, p. 699), sees a spiritual significance in the householder's
forbearing to break the arrangement-he says: "That which is related of the
master,-how he regards the dealing of the steward,-does not blame it, nor stand
to his rights,-seems to me to be the setting forth the grace of God, through which,
instead of entering into judgment with sinful men, he rather rewards the good in
them, which, according to strict right, could not even attain to secure them from
punishment. For he leaves the steward to enjoy the fruit of his device-and since,
after what has been said above, it cannot be conveniently supposed that he had no
right to demand a strict reckoning in the matter, it only remains to consider this,
conduct as a voluntary forbearance on his part."
* One might say absurd, but that it has been done with so much ability by
Schulz in an instructive little treatise (Ub. d. Parabel von Verwalter, Breslau, 1821),
as to redeem it from such a charge. The ancient obKOYsv4os, he says, was one with
far greater liberty of action, more uncontrolled freedom in the administration of
the things committed to him, than any to whom we should in modern times apply
the title of steward-and the sum of his statement seems this (though the comparison is not his), that his conduct at this latest moment of his stewardship, however
merely selfish it might be, yet was no more dishonest, than it would be dishonest
on the part of the minister of a kingdom, who had hitherto been oppressing the
people under him, and administering the affairs of the kingdom for his own
interests and pleasures, yet now, when about to be removed from his place of
authority, to seek to win the people's love and a place in their hearts, by remitting
or lowering the heavy dues and taxes with which before he had burdened them.




THE UNJUST STEWARD.                       355
not.   In worldly things there is not, and there never can be, such absolute identity of interests between a master and a servant, that a servant
dealing wholly with reference to his own interests, would at the same
time forward in the best manner his lord's. But our interests as servants
of a heavenly Lord, that is, our true interests, absolutely coincide in all
things with his; so that when we administer the things committed to us
for him, then we lay them out also for ourselves, and when for ourselves,
for our lasting and eternal gain, then also for him.
"And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done
wisely."  Every one who is able to judge of the construction of the original, will at once acknowledge that it is the lord of the steward, he who
has twice before in the parable been called by this name (ver. 3, 5), that
is here meant, and not our Lord, who does not begin to speak directly in
his own person till ver. 9-the intermediate verse being the point of
transition from the narration to the direct exhortation.* The attempt to
substitute " cunningly" for the "wisely" of our translation, and so, by
limiting and lowering the commendation given, to evade the moral difficulty of the passage, cannot altogether be borne out by an appeal to the
original. " Wisely" may not be the happiest word that could have been
selected, and certainly is not, since wisdom is never in Scripture disconnected from moral goodness.t But if more commendation is implied in
" wisely" than the original warrants, in " cunningly" there would be less;
" prudently" is clearly the word that should have been chosen, and so
in Wiclif's translation it was, though the word has disappeared from all
our subsequent versions. But concerning the praise itself, which cannot be explained away as though it were admiration of the man's cunning, it is true that none but a mere malignant, such as the apostate
Julian would make here a charge against the morality of the Scripture,
or pretend, as he does, to believe that Jesus meant to commend an unrighteous action, and propose it, in its unrighteousness, as a model for
imitation.
* So Augustine (EBirr. in Ps. liii. 2): Cor ejus laudavit dominus ejus. Compare Luke xii. 42; xiv. 23, where in like manner 5 Ktivpos, without further qualification, is used of an earthly lord.
t In Plato's words, nFira eiriaTLrf p/ Xwp'ouEy'l GiKaioao'vrSs tcKam Ts &Xa7s apeTr-,
7ravovpyla ou oboqira cpalveTraL. Rather <ppooviws is a middle term, not bringing out
prominently the moral characteristics, either good or evil, of the action to which it
is applied, but recognizing in it a skilful adaptation of the means to the endaffirming nothing in the way of moral approbation or disapprobation either of
means or end, but leaving their worth to be determined by other considerationa
If the (ppv4Ljos were the cunning, we should find it opposed to the &caOKOS, the
simple, but we do find it actually opposed to the,uwpds. (Matt. vii. 24, 26; xxv. 2.)
The p)pdvrlis stands in the same relation to the ovlveois (understanding) as tha
7opia does to the voUs (reason).




356                   THE UNJUST STEWARD.
Yet at the same time few will deny that the praise has something
perplexing in it-though rather from the liability of the passage to abuse,
unguarded as at first sight it appears, though it is not really so (for see
ver. 11, which should never be disconnected from the parable), than from
its not being capable of a fair explanation. The explanation is clearly
this: the man's deed has two sides on which it may be contemplated,
-one, the side of its dishonesty, upon which it is most blameworthy,the other, the side of its prudence, its foresight, upon which, if it be not
particularly praiseworthy, yet it supplies a sufficient analogon to a Christian virtue,-one which should be abundantly, but is only too weakly
found in most followers of Christ,-to make it the ground of an exhortation and rebuke to these,-just as any of the deeds of bold bad men have
a side, that is the side of their boldness and decision, upon which they
rebuke the doings of the weak and vacillating good. There are martyrs
of the Devil who put to shame the saints of God, and running as they do
with more alacrity to death than these to life,* may be proposed to them
for their imitation.  We may disentangle a bad man's energy from his
ambition, so far at least as to contemplate them apart from one another,
and may then praise the one and condemn the other. Even so our Lord
in the present case disentangles the steward's dishonesty from his prudence: the one of course can only have his earnest rebuke,-the other
may be usefully extolled for the purpose of provoking his people by emulation to a like prudence, which yet should be at once a holy prudence,
and a prudence employed about things of far higher and more lasting
importance.t
The next verse fully bears out and confirms this view of the Lord's
meaning; " For the children of this world are in their generation wiser
than the children of light."  Of course there is the same objection to the
"wiser" here that there was to the "wisely" of the verse preceding.
As we saw that ought to have been " prudently," so this ought to have
been "more prudent."t    " The children of this world" are evidently
* Bernard: Martyres Diaboli... alacriis currunt ad mortem quam nos ad
vitam. There is a striking story of one of the Egyptian eremites which illustrates
the matter in hand. Chancing to see a dancing girl, he was moved to tears.
Being asked the reason, he replied, That she should be at such pains to please men
in her sinful vocation: and we in our holy calling use so little diligence to please
God. Compare an incident in the Life of Pelagia in LIPOMANNI Acta Sanctorun,
v. 5, p. 226.
t Clarius: Laudat ingenium, damnat factum. Augustine's explanation (Quaest.
Evang., 1. 2, c. 34) is less satisfactory: E contrario dicuntur istae similitudines, ut
intelligamus si laudari potuit ille a domino qui fraudem faciebat, quanto amplius
placent Domino Deo, qui secundum ejus proeceptum illa opera faciunt. Cf. JEROME
Ad Algas, Ep. 121, qu. 6.: It would seem that exactly thus one of the old Latin versions had astutiores,
(AUGUSTINE, Enarr. in Ps. liii. 2.)




THE UNJUST STEWARD.                     357
the earthly-minded, the men of the earth, those whose portion is here,
and who look not beyond-who have adopted the world's maxims, being
born of the spirit of the world, and not of God. The phrase occurs but
once else in Scripture, and then in our Evangelist (xx. 34), though the
term " children of light" is common also to St. John (xii. 36), and St.
Paul (1 Thess. v. 5; Ephes. v. 8). There is good reason why the faithful should be here called by that rather than by any other name, for so
their doings, which are deeds of light, done in truth and in sincerity,
even as they are themselves sons of the day and of the light, are contrasted with the deeds of darkness, the hidden things of dishonesty, which
are wrought by the children of this world, and of which this child of the
present world, who plays the chief part in the parable before us, has just
given a notable specimen.
The declaration itself has been differently understood, according as
the words that are wanting to complete the sentence have been differently
supplied. Some complete it thus:-" The children of this world are
wiser in their generation," namely, in worldly things, "than the children
of light" are in those same worldly things, that is, Earthly men are
more prudent than spiritual men in earthly things; those earthly things
are their element, their world; they are more at home in them; they
give more thought, they bestow more labor, on these matters, and therefore succeed in them better: though it be true that this is only as owls
see better than eagles-in the dark.*  But it is hard to see how a general statement of this kind bears on the parable, which most are agreed
urges upon the Christian, not prudence in earthly things by the example
of the worldling's prudence in the same, but rather, by the example of
the worldling's prudence in these things, urges upon him prudence in
heavenly.
Others, then, are nearer the truth who complete the sentence thus:
The children of this world are wiser in their generation" (in worldly
matters) "than the children of light" in theirs, that is, in heavenly matters; the children of light being thus rebuked that they are not at half
the pains to win heaven which the men of this world are to win earththat they are less provident in heavenly things than those are in earthly
-that the world is better served by its servants than God is by his. This
is the meaning, as it is rightly, though somewhat too vaguely, given by
many; for it is only perfectly seized when we see in the words, "in their
generation," or as they ought to be translated.-" unto," or "towards
their generation,"t an allusion, which has been strangely often missed,
/ * So Cajetan: Filii hujus saeculi sunt filiis lucis prudentiores, non absolute, sed
in natione tenebrosa, sicut noctuae melius vident in tenebris animalibus diurnis.
t Els T^V yevFea& Tv eavTrVy, which Theophylact explains ev me B6O TOtT o: but




358                    THE UNJUST STEWARD.
to the debtors in the parable.  They, the ready accomplices in the stew
ard's fraud, showed themselves to be men of the same generation as he
was,-they were all of one race, children of the ungodly world; and the
Lord's declaration is, that the men of this world make their intercourse
with one another more profitable,-obtain more from it, —manage it better for their interests, such as those are, than do the children of light their
intercourse with one another.   For what opportunities, he would imply,
are missed by these last, by those among them to whom a share of the
earthly mammon is intrusted,-what opportunities of laying up treasure
in heaven-of making them friends for the time to come by showing love
to the poor saints,-or generally of doing offices of kindness to the household of faith-to the men of the same generation as themselves, whom
yet they make not, as they might, receivers of benefits, from which they
themselves should hereafter reap a hundred-fold.
In the following verse the Lord exhorts his disciples not to miss these
opportunities, but by the example of him who bound to himself by benefits the men of his generation, so should they in like manner, by benefits,
bind those who were like themselves children of light, and make friends
of them; —" And Isay unto you, M3ake to yourselvesfriends of the mainthen he has first changed eds Trv'yeVea& into ev r.y yevve, and as if it were so, it is
translated in the Vulgate, in generatione sun. Mr. Greswell has well shown (Exp.
of the Par., v. 4, p. 52) how untenable such a translation of the words is, which,
indeed, could never have been so much as entertained, except on the principle
which, in the interpreting of Scripture, has been so often adopted,-that prepositions have no meaning in particular, but may be made to mean any thing which it
seems convenient for the moment that they should mean. It was convenient to
turn ds into ev, because it seemed to give some meaning to the words, though not
a very satisfactory one. But even the convenience disappears, when we once regard the debtors of the parable as the men of the same yEVE& as the steward, and
that here is allusion to them, for all then is easy and plain, and this while there is
no force applied to the words, and they are allowed their full rights. Storr (Opusc.
Acad., v. 3; p. 117) gives rightly the meaning of this verse: Rebus terrenis unic6
inhiantes (or viol T. aiey. r.), ut oeconomas inductus (v. 1, 3, 4) prudentia erga suam
familiam (res Y. yev. r. Ear.), hoc est, erga idem sentientes, qui pariter ac ipsi sunt
viol r. aieV.'. rOU. erga fratres suos, terrena similiter inhiantes (cf. v. 5-7) antecedere solent lucis ac beatitatis sempiterne (v. 9-12) cupidos, qui ssepe non ita
(cf. v. 4) student familiam suam (r. yev. r. eavr.) hoc est, lucis item cupidos (euqu
cun ipsis viovs r. oPWbs) et els T. aiovp. OK1cvds perventuros (v. 9), ipsumque communem familiae Dominum (Matt. xxv. 40), beneficiis sibi devincire, ut igitur tanto
magis fuerit opus, admonitionem inculcare qum sequitur, Luc. xvi. 9. Weisse
(Evang. Gesch., v. 2, p. 161) translates the words els r. yev. r. eatr. rightly, Im
Verkher mit ihres Gleichen; but Neander too vaguely, Von ihrem Standpunkte,
— For a masterly disposal of the loose theory that eds and ev are ever promiscuously
and interchangeably used in the Greek Testament, see WINER's Grammatik,
p. 392, seq.
* Yet at the same time, who could be entirely satisfied with such a summing




THE UNJUST STEWARD.                          359
mon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you intd
everlasting habitations."  This "mammon of unrighteousness," some
explain as wealth unjustly gotten,* by fraud and by violence, " treasures
of wickedness" (Prov. x. 2); but plainly the first recommendation to the
possessors of such would be to restore it to its rightful owners, as Zaccheus, on his conversion, expressed his determination to do (Luke xix.
8), for "he that sacrificeth of a thing wrongfully gotten, his offering is
ridiculous" (Sirac. xxxiv. 18; and see xxxv. 12), and out of such there
could never be offered accepted alms to that God who has said, " I hate
robbery for burnt-offering."  Only when this restoration is impossible,t
which of course must continually be the case, could it be lawfully bestowed upon the poor. Others again say that it is not exactly wealth
which the present possessor has unjustly acquired, but that wealth which
from the very nature of the world and the world's business can scarcely
ever have been gotten together without sin somewhere,-without something of the defilement of the world from which it was gathered clinging
to it;: if not sin in the present possessor, yet in some of those, nearer or
up of the parable as that given by Calvin: Summa hujus parabolas est, humaniter
et benignb cum proximis nostris esse agendum, ut quum ad Dei tribunal ventum
fuerit, liberalitatis nostrme fructus ad nos redeat. Who does not feel that there must
be something more in it than merely this? for if this only, why an unjust steward 1
This is at the same time the point which the early Church writers mainly, often
exclusively, make,-that the parable is an earnest exhortation to liberal almsgiving.
So Ireneus (Con. Hoer., 1. 4, c. 30), Augustine (De Civ. Dei, 1. 21, c. 27), Athanasius, Theophylact; so also Erasmus, Luther, who says, "It is a sermon on good
works and especially against avarice, that men abuse not wealth, but therewith
help poor and needy people,"-and many more.
* The words so interpreted would be easily open to abuse, as though a man
might compound with his conscience and with God, and by giving some small portion of alms out of unjustly acquired wealth, make the rest clean unto him. Plutarch speaks thus of some, o&rb ~epoovXias r eooeBovVTes, and Augustine affirms
(Serm. 113, c. 2) that such abuse of the words was actually made: Hoc quidam
mali intelligendo rapiunt res alienas, et aliquid inde pauperibus largiuntur, et
putunt se facere quod prieceptum est. Dicunt enim, rapere res alienas, mammona
est iniquitatis: erogare inde aliquid, maximb egentibus sanctis, hoc est facere
amicos de mammona iniquitatis. Intellbctus iste corrigendus est, imo de tabulis
cordis vestri omnino delendus est.
t Thus the Jewish ProverD, Pastorum, exactorum, et publicanorum restitutio
est difficilis.: In this sense Jerome quotes the proverb, Dives ant iniquus aut iniqui hoeres,
as illustrative of the parable: and Cajetan says, it is called mammon of unrighteousness, Eo quod rarT vel nullae sunt divitis, in quarum congregatione seu conversa.
tione non intervenerit peccatum, vel habentium, vel ministrorum, vel patrum seu
avorum. We might quote in this view, Sirac. xxvii. 2: " As a nail sticketh fast
between the joinings of the stones, so doth sin stick close between buying and
selling." Augustine (Qucast. Evang., 1. 2, qu. 34): Quia non sunt istoe divitim
nisi iniquis, qui in eis constituunt spem atque copiam beatitudinis suae. Cf. Serm,




360                    THE UNJUST STEWARD.
more remote, from or through whom he received it: and so inheriting
the wealth, he has inherited the obligation to make good the wrongs committed in the getting it together.    But the comparison with ver. 12,
where " unrighteous mammon," a phrase of course equivalent to' narmnwn of unrighteousness," is set against " true riches "-these true being
evidently heavenly enduring gouds, such as neither fade nor fail,-makes
it far more probable that the " nammnon of unrighteousness" is the uncertain, unstable mammon, that which is one man's to-day, and another's
to-morrow; which if a man trust in, hc is sure to be trusting in a vain
and deceitful thing, that will sooner or later prove false and betray his
confidence, so that he will find that trusting in it he will have trusted in
a lie.*  And " nammon of unrig/hteousness" it may in a deeper sense be
50, c. 4. Turtullian's explanation (Adv. Marc., 1. 4, c. 33) is a little different,
money is so called because the love of it is the root of all evil: Injustitise enim,
auctorem, et dominatorem totius seculi nummum scimus omnes: Melancthon,because of the manifold abuses that are almost inseparably connected with it:
Vocat mammonam injustam non quod sint injuste parta [divitise], non quod contra
conscientiam occupatse sint, sed propter abusus multiplices, qui in hic infirmitate
humani generis sequi solent. (See Eccles., v. 13.)
One would be glad to find true the assertion that mammon (which I believe
would more correctly be spelt with a single m) was the name of a Syrian god, who
was worshipped as presiding over wealth, in the same way as Plutus is the god of
riches in the Greek mythology-for so the antithesis in the words, " Ye cannot
serve God and mammonn," would come out more strongly,-Ye cannot serve the true
God and an idol or false god at once. But there is no satisfactory proof of the
assertion. It is repeated by Schleusner, who makes, as usual, references which he
has evidently never verified,-one to Tertullian [a Syris religiose colebetur, teste
Tertulliano] who says nothing of the kind, Adv. Marc. 1. 4, c. 33, which must be
the passage meant: and another, which being followed up, proves only that an
obscure grammarian of the eleventh century said so. Neither Augustine (De
Serm. Dom. in Mon., 1. 2), nor Jerome (Ad Algas., qu. 6), who both explain the
word, give a hint of the kind. All that Augustine says there, or Sermn. 113, c. 2,
is this: Quod Punici dicunt mammon, Latinb lucrum vocatur: quod Hebrxi dicunt
manurona, Latin6 divitise vocantur,-and Jerome no more. The erroneous notion
belongs to the middle ages. Thus Pet. Lombard (1. 2, dist. 6): Nomine dsenionis
divitiae vocantur, scilicet Mammona. Est enim Mammon nomen d&emonis, quo
nomine vocantur divitis secundhm Syram linguam.-See a good note by Drusius
in the Crit. Sac. (in loc.)
* The use of &aIbos for "false" runs through the whole Septuagint. Thus,
Deut. xix. 16, adpTvs &IKcos, a false witness; and ver. 18,?apTr'pva-eY aKLa, he hath
witnessed falsely. See Prov. vi. 19; xii. 17; Jer. v. 31, "The prophets prophecy
falsely" (6iKca), and many more examples might be adduced. So here the "unrighteous" mammon is the false mammon, that which will betray the reliance
which is placed on it, which we must leave, or which will leave us. (Prov. xxiii. 5.)
Thus larpol &IcKOt (Job xiii. 4), "physicians of no value." So our Lord speaks oi
the a&rdrT To?rATXoSiov; and Paul (1 Tim. vi. 17) bids Timothy to warn the rich
that they trust not eiri rAovrov &aXrn7Tn.




THE UNJUST STEWARD.                         361
justly called, since it is certain that in all wealth a principle of evil is
implied; for in a perfect state of society-in a realized kingdom of God
upon earth-there would be no such thing as property belonging to one
man more than another. In the moment of the Church's first love, when
that kingdom was for an instant realized, "all that believed were together,
and had all things common;* and this existence of property has ever
been so strongly felt as a witness for the selfishness of man, that in all
ideas of a perfect commonwealth,-which, if perfect, must of course be a
Church as well as a State-from Plato's down to the Socialists', this of
the communion of goods has made a necessary condition. So that though
the possessor of the wealth, or those who transmitted it to him, may have
fairly acquired it, yet it is not less this " unrighteocus" mammon, witnessing in its very existence as one man's and not every man's, for the corruption and fall and selfishness of man,-for the absence of that highest
love, which would have made each man feel that whatever was his, was
also every one's beside, and rendered it impossible that a mine and thine
should ever have existed. With all this, we must not of course forget
that the attempt prematurely to realize this or any other little fragment
or corner of the kingdom of God, apart from the rest-the corruption
and evil of man's heart remaining unremoved, and being either overlooked or denied-has ever been one of the most fruitful sources of the
worst mischiefs in the world.
The words, "that when ye fail,"t are of course an euphemistic way
* Augustine: In animam unam et cor unum conflati caritatis igne, quorum
nemo dicebat aliquid proprium: and (Enarr. in Ps. lxviii.) he explains " mammon
of unrighteousness:" Fortasse ea ipsa est iniquitas quia tu habes et alter non habet,
tu abundus et alter eget; as he says elsewhere in the same spirit: Res aliena
possidentur, cdm superflua possidentur. Thus Aquinas: Divitiae iniquitatis, i. e.
inaequalitatis; of which one has so much, and another so little.
T It may perhaps be a question whether the other reading, icXhp (" that when
it fails," i. e., the mammon), be not to be preferred. It is decidedly so by Schulz
(ub. d. Par. v. Verwalter, p. 81), though he allows that as regards number of MSS.
it is supported by inferior authority. Many however of the oldest versions bear
witness for that reading which Lachmann has also admitted into his text; yet not
the Vulgate, which has, cam defeceritis, nor yet the older Latin (IRENMUS, Con.
Haer., 1. 4, c. 49), quando fugati fueritis. We certainly have more than one word
of the same family, to show how fitly EKXEitreiT might be used in the sense which
would thus be given it: thus noavpbv avetcKe7rTov (Luke xii. 33), ayKEcAvrnv arEavpds
(Wisd. vii. 14), 7rxoVros &vecxKtris (Wisd. viii. 16). But on the other hand it may
be said that EKAef7rev is also frequently used for the failing of men through death
from the earth, of which any Lexicon of the Septuagint will supply many examples. Should eKcXiSrp be preferred, the words of Seneca (De Benef., 1. 6, c. 3)
mill afford a striking parallel: Egregib mihi videtur M. Antonius apud Rabirium
poetam, ctim fortunam suam transeuntem ali6 videbat et sibi nihil relictum...
exclamare: Hoc habeo, quodcumque dedi. O quantum habere potuit, ei voluis.
set! Hae sunt diviti.e certae, in quacunque sortis humane levitate, uno loco per,




362                   THE UNJUST STEWARD.
of saying, " that when ye die."  Many, however, have been unwilling to
refer the words that follow, "they may receive you," to the friends which
were to be made by help of the unrighteous mammon; such an application seeming to them to attribute too much to men and to their intercession, to imply a right on their parts who had received the benefits, to
introduce their benefactors into everlasting habitations,-and so to be
trenching on the prerogative which is God's alone. Thus it has been
sometimes said "they" are the angels, as we find angels (ver. 22) carrying Lazarus into Abraham's bosom; or others understand that it is God
and Christ who it is meant will receive; others again say, that the
phrase is impersonal, even as it is certain that St. Luke more than once
uses the plural impersonally (xii. 11, 20; xxiii. 31), so that "they may
receive you," would be equivalent to, "You may be received."   But if
we look at this verse, not as containing an isolated doctrine, but as standing in close and living connection with the parable which has just preceded it, and of which it gives the moral, we shall at once perceive how
this phrase comes here to be used, and its justification.  There is plainly
allusion here to the debtors; they, being made friends, were to receive
the deposed steward into temporary habitations; and the present phrase
is an echo of what had just gone before in regard to him and them, by
using which in his practical application of the parable, our Lord throws
back light upon that, and at once fixes the attention of his hearers upon,
and explains, its most important part.  It is idle to press the words
further, and against all analogy of faith to assert, on the strength of this
single phrase, that with any except God, that even with his glorified
saints, there will reside power of their own to admit into the kingdom of
heaven; but idle too, on the other hand to affirm,.that "they may receive
you," in the second clause of the sentence, can refer to any other but the
friends mentioned in the first-which no one, unless alarmed by the consequences which others might draw from the words, could possibly for
an instant call in question.* The true parallel to, and at once the explanation and the guard of, this passage, is evidently Matt. xxv. 34-40.
mansurae: qume quo majores fuerint, hoc minorem habebunt invidiam. Quid tanquam tuo parcis. Procurator es... Quris quomodo illa tua facias? donando.
Consule ergo rebus tuis et certam tibi earum et inexpugnabilem possessionem
para: honestiores illas non solam, sed tutiores facturus.
* Cocceius: AE'wvTai posset intelligi impersonaliter,... sed filum parabola
postullat ut referatur ad amicos. Non quod homines suis meritis possint recipere in
mterna tabernacula, sed quod fillis Dei lItantibus, applaudentibus, et in Deo ac
Spiritu ejus volentibus, k Deo recipiantur ii, qui amici ipsorum esse voluerint.
Voluntas justorum et beatorum est efficax, quia est fp6v7tJua'roO rveEaCros, Rom.
viii. 27. Cf. AUGUSTINE, Quast. Evang., 1. 2, qu. 38; and GERHARD (Loc. Thieoll.,,oc. 27, c. 8, ( 3): Recipiunt nos tur precibus in hac vitA turn testimonio ac
luffragio in die judicii.




THE UNJUST STEWARD.                        363
The heavenly habitations being termed "everlasting"* are thus tacitly
contrasted with the temporary shelter which was all that the steward,
the child of the present world, procured for himself with all his plotting
and planning, his cunning and his dishonesty,-also, it may be, with the
temporary stewardship which every man exercises on earth, from which
it is not long before he fails and is removed:-how important it is therefore, the word will imply, that he should make sure his entrance into a
kingdom that shall not be removed.t
In the verses which follow (10-13), and which stand in vital coherence with the parable, it is very observable that not prudence, but
faithfulzess, in the dispensation of the things earthly is especially commended; so to put far away any possible abuse of the parable, as though
the unfaithfulness of the steward there could have found any thing but
the strongest reprobation from Christ; just as in another place (Matt.
x. 16), when he said, "Be wise as serpents," lest this wisdom should
degenerate into cunning, he immediately guarded the precept, adding,
" and harmless as doves." The things earthly whereof men have a dispensation, and wherein they may show their faithfulness and their fitness to be intrusted with a higher stewardship, are slightingly called,
"that which is least," as compared with those spiritual gifts and graces
which are "much;" they are termed " unrighteous," or deceitful, " mammon,' as set against the heavenly riches of faith and love, which are
" true" and durable "riches;" they are called "that which is another
man's,"  by comparison with the heavenly goods, which when possessed
* These a46vioL, those IrpaKcaLpoi. The term oKc1nV, the tent which was pitched
at evening and struck in the morning, or the temporary booth (Lev. xxiii. 40-43)
erected with planks and branches, itself implies any thing but a fixed and lasting
habitation; on the contrary, it is directly set against such, Heb. xi. 9, 10, where it
is said that Abraham dwelt in tabernacles (arKlva4s), while he'looked for a city
which hath foundations. And the image from the unstable oK7Y4v1 is used by
Hezekiah to set forth the briefness of life (Isai. xxxviii. 12): " Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent." See Job xxvii. 18; 2 Cor. v. 1.
Thus too the temporary sojourning of the Son of God on the earth is a aKvoVv.
(John i. 14.) But these K'Cvai[ are al'&o01, they are ploval (John xiv. 2), being
pitched by God, "a tabernacle that shall not be taken down" (cr7)/al at ov S U
aeLioaliv, LXX.), "not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither
shall any of the cords thereof be broken." (Isai. xxxiii. 20.) It is not accurate
to adduce 2 Cor. v. 1 here as a parallel, for the " building of God, the house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens," of which St. Paul there speaks, is
plainly not the abiding heavenly mansions, but the glorified body, as contrasted
with " our earthly house of this tabernacle," or our present body,;rb yei&es KC9uVOS,
as it is called, Wisd. ix. 15.
t So according to Diodorus Siculus the Egyptians called the houses of the
living cKaicAvXes, but of the dead a&iiovs ^yKOvs. Compare Eccles. xii. 5, "Man
goeth to his long home." (olKov aiovos au'roD, LXX.)
t Divitie non verse nec vestrse, as Augustine terms them.




364                  THE UNJUST STEWARD.
are our own, not something merely without us, but which become a part
of our very selves, assimilating to our truest life. Thus the Lord at
once casts a slight on the things worldly and temporal, while yet at the
same time he magnifies the importance of a right administration of
them; since in the dispensing of these,-which he declares to be the
least,-to be false and without any intrinsic worth,-to be alien from
man's essential being, he yet also declares that a man may prove his fidelity, will inevitably show what is in him, and whether he be fit to be
intrusted with that which has a true and enduring value, with a ministration in the kingdom of God.* And in ver. 13 he further states what
the fidelity is, which in this stewardship is required:-it is a choosing
of God instead of mammon for our lord.  For in this world we are in
the condition of servants from whom two masters are claiming allegiance-one is God, man's rightful lord, the other is this unrighteous
mammon, which was given to be our servant, to be wielded by us in
God's interests, and in itself to be considered by us as something slight,
transient, and another's-but which has, in a sinful world, erected itself
into a lord, and now demands obedience from us, which if we yield,
we can be no longer faithful servants and stewards of God's. We
shall no longer lay out according to his will that which he indeed
gave us to be merely a thing beneath us, but which we have allowed to
have a will and a voice of its own, and to speak to us in accents of
command.   We cannot any longer be faithful servants of God, for that
upstart lord has a will so different from his will, gives commands so
opposite to his, that occasions must speedily arise when one or other will
have to be slighted, despised, and disobeyed, if the other be regarded,
honored, and served;t-God, for instance, will command a scattering,
when mammon will urge to a further heaping and gathering; God will
require spending upon others, when mammon, or the world, a spending
upon our own lusts. Therefore, these two lords having characters so
different, and giving commands so opposite, it will be impossible to reconcile their service (Jam. iv. 4), -one must be despised, if the other is
* The Jews have various sayings and parables concerning the manner in
which God proves men in little things, to try whether they are worthy to be
intrusted with great. Thus they say of David, that God tried him first with
"those few sheep in the wilderness," which because he faithfully and boldly kept
(1 Sam. xvii. 34-36), therefore God " took him from the sheepfolds to feed Jacob
his people, and Israel his inheritance" (Ps. lxxviii. 70, 71). See SCHOETTGEN'S
Hor. Heb. v. 1, p. 300.
t Stella has a lively comparison in illustration of this: Si duobus hominibus
aliqua via incedentibus canis sequitur, non facile judicare poteris uter illorum
Dominus ejus sit. Caeterhm si alter ab altero discedat, statim apparet clarissim6
quis Dominus sit. Canis enim, ignoto relicto, ad notum accedit, eumque Dominum
esse suum clare ostendit.




THE UNJUST STEWARD.                          365
held to; the only faithfulness to the one is to break with the other;
" Ye cannot serve* God and mammon."       Such appears to me to be the
connection between ver. 13 and the preceding verses, and between the
whole of these verses and the parable of which they surely are intended
to give the moral.t
* AovXeveiv, to which word its full force is to be given, a force which Chrysostom excellently brings out, when after noting how Abraham and Job were rich,
and yet found favor with God, he goes on to observe that it was because each ol
these though rich, OVK e4o8XoAeae wrcy uaJ4ova, &aA' FXyv abrbv Ka I eKpdrEL Kial Eco~r4T
[avrov] ov ov6Xos ZvJ. See also SUICER, S. V. GovXEVW.
t Among the many strange explanations to which this parable has given birth,
perhaps one of the strangest is recorded by Jerome (Ad Algas., Ep. 121, qu. 6),
who quotes it from the Commentaries of Theophilus, bishop of Antioch. According to this, the unjust steward is the apostle Paul, who was forcibly thrust out by
God of his Judaism, and being so, made himself a reception in many hearts,
through the declaring the Gospel of the grace of God,-of the remission of sins;
and for this had praise, that he had well done, "being changed from the austerity
of the Law to the clemency of the Gospel." But I see that elsewhere (De Script.
Eccles.) Jerome doubts the genuineness of the Commentaries extant in his *time
under the name of Theophilus. This is only outdone by a modern writer mentioned by Unger (De Par. Jes. Nat., p. 85), who affirms the Lord to have meant himself by the unjust steward! It sounds almost irreverent to mention in immediate
juxtaposition with this, that Pontius Pilate and Judas Iscariot have been proposed
as the persons by him represented. But the meanest and most grovelling of all
expositions is given by Hartmann (Comm. de (Econ. Improbo, Lips. 1830) of which
it will suffice to say that the author explains ver. 9 to mean this: Make to yourselves friends of those that are rich in this world (this is his interpretation of'EK T.
uagu. T. a&lK.), that when through any mishap you get low in the world, you may be
sure of a retreat for the remainder of your days. In WOLF'S Curae, and KOCHER'S
Analecta, other extravagant interpretations may be found, which it would be little
worth while to repeat.




XXVT.
THE RICH MAN AND LAZA RTUS
LUTKE Xvi. 19-81.
IT must be acknowledged that the connection of verses 15-18 with one
another, and of all with this parable, is not easy to trace, while yet to
say, as Hammond and others do, that St. Luke has here thrown together various sayings of our Lord's, uttered on very different occasions,
is a most unsatisfactory explanation;-for what should they do here? or
how have they come to be here introduced? But however loosely strung
together, at first sight, verses 15-18 may appear, there is a thread of
connection running through them all, and afterwards joining them with
the parable,-there is one leading thought throughout, namely, that in
all is contained rebuke and threatening for the Pharisees. They had
heard the Lord's exhortation to a large and liberal bounty, his warning
to his disciples that they should not attempt to serve at once God and
the world,-and they testified by look and gesture, and it may be also
openly in words, their dislike of the doctrine, and scorn of the teacher;
-" The Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and
they derided him."* Whereupon he turned and addressed to them the
discourse, which had hitherto been to the disciples, and rebuked, first
their hypocrisy;-while they were covetous,t that is, while their hearts
were secretly given to the world, they yet would be accounted to love
God above all things,-they sought a reputation, for holiness and righteousness before men; but he proceeds, highly esteemed as they were
among men, they and their pretences were abomination before God,
who knoweth the hearts. It is then announced to them (ver. 16) how
that dispensation, of which they were the stewards and administrators,
*'EE/VCc'     atp' O aVTOv.
t The (ptapyvplu here attributed to the Pharisees is to be taken in that widest
and deepest sense, in which it is the piCa irroVwv rv KiKcacc (1 Tim. vi. 10), the
dependence upon and trust in the world rather than in God.




THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.                    367
was passing away; "The law and the prophets were unto John;" their
stewardship is coming to an end, and a larger dispensation, in which
they shall no more have the "key of knowledge" to admit or to exclude, is begun: " The kingdom of God is preached, and every man
presseth into it." Yet not that the law itself was to be abolished, for that
would be eternal as the God that gave it (ver. 17), being the expression
of his perfections and holy will: which when it was so, how great was
their guilt, who, while they pretended to be zealous for its honor, the
guardians of its purity, were continually tampering with it in some of
its most sacred enactments, as in those concerning marriage (ver. 18),
and relaxing its obligations; and thereupon the parable follows.
But that being evidently addressed to the Pharisees, a difficulty at
once presents itself. They were, indeed, "covetous" (ver. 14), lovers
of money, but prodigal excess in living, like that of the rich man, is nowhere, either in history or in Scripture, imputed to them.  On the contrary, we learn from contemporary historical* sources, that they were
remarkably sparing and abstemious in their manner of life, many of
them rigid ascetics: and among all the severe rebukes which our Lord
addressed to them, the sin of luxury and prodigal excess is nowhere laid
to their charge. Their sins were in the main spiritual, and what other
sins they had were such as were compatible with a high reputation for
spirituality, which covetousness is, but a profuse self-indulgence and an
eminently luxurious living is not. Mosheim feels the difficulty so
strongly, that he supposes the parable to have been directed against the
Sadducees,t of whose selfish indulgence of themselves, and hard-hearted
contempt for the needs of others (for they had wrought into their very
religious scheme that poverty was a crime, or at least an evidence of the
displeasure of God), he says we shall then have an exact description.
But the parable cannot be for them, there is nothing to make it probable
that Sadducees were present, neither can there be any change between
ver. 18 and 19 in the persons addressed; this will appear.yet more evident in the original than in our version, which has omitted the particle
which marks the continuity and unbroken tenor of the discourse, and to
give the force of which, the parable ought to begin not simply, " There
was," but, " Now there was a certain rich man."
The explanation, however, seems to be the following. While it is
quite true that covetousness was the sin of the Pharisees, and not prodi* Josephus (Antt., xviii. 1, 3) says of them, Tr SwavLca  ewuevTeXCovouLv, ovrev es
rb iaaCaKfc&rpov YsJy&VTres, and that the Sadducees mocked them for their fasts and
austerities.
t De Reb. Christ. ante Const., p. 49. So also Wetstein, who says of the
Pharisees, jcjunabant crebro, modestius vestiebantur. This frequent fasting (Luke
xviii. 12), could not be reconciled with the faring sumptuously every day.




368              THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
gal excess in living, while it was rather an undue gathering, than an
undue spending, yet hoarding and squandering so entirely grow out of
the same evil root, are so equally the consequences of unbelief in God
and in God's word —of trust in the creature rather than in the Creator,
are so equally a serving of mammon (though the form of the service
may be different), that when the Lord would rebuke their sin, which
was the love of the world and trust in the world rather than in the living God, there was nothing to hinder his taking his example from a sin
opposite in appearance to theirs-which yet was one springing out of
exactly the same evil condition of heart,-by which to condemn them.
For it ought never to be left out of sight or forgotten, that it is not the
primary purpose of the parable to teach the fearful consequences which
will follow on the abuse of wealth and on the hard-hearted contempt of
the poor,-this only subordinately,-but the fearful consequences of
unbelief, of having the heart set on this world, and refusing to give credence to the invisible world which is here known only to faith, until by
a miserable and too late experience, the existence of such an unseen
world has been discovered. The sin of Dives in its root is unbelief:
hard-hearted contempt of the poor, luxurious squandering on self, are
only the forms which it takes; the seat of the disease is within, these
are but the running sores which witness for the inward plague. He who
believes not in an invisible world of righteousness and truth and spiritual joy, must of necessity place his hope in the things which he sees,
which he can touch, and taste, and smell,-will come to trust in them,
and to look to them for his blessedness, for he knows of no other: it is
not of the essence of the matter, whether he hoards or squanders, in
either case he sets his hope on the world. He who believes not in a God
delighting in mercy and loving-kindness, and that will be an abundant
rewarder of them that have showed mercy, and severe punisher of all
that have refused to show it, will soon come to shut up his bowels of
compassion from his brethren, whether that so he may place more money
in his chest, or have more to spend upon his own lusts. This was the
sin of Dives and the origin of all his other sins, that he believed not in
this higher world, which is apprehended by faith,-a world not merely
beyond the grave,-but a kingdom of God, a kingdom of truth and love
existing even in the midst of this cruel and wicked world; and this too
was the sin of the worldly-minded Pharisees: and his punishment was,
that he made the discovery of the existence of that truer state of things
only to his own unutterable and irremediable loss. His unbelief shows
itself again in his supposing that his brethren would give heed to a ghost,
while they refused to give heed to the sure word of God,-to Moses and
the prophets. For it is of the very essence of unbelief, that it gives that
credence to portents and prodigies which it. refuses to the truth of God.




THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.                     369
Caligula, who'mocked at the existence of the gods, would hide himself
under a bed when it thundered;* and superstition and incredulity are
evermore twin brothers.  It is most important to keep in mind that this,
the rebuke of unbelief, is the aim and central thought of the parable;
for if we conceive of its primary purpose as to warn against the abuse
of riches, it will neither satisfactorily cohere with the discourse in which
it is found, nor will the parable itself possess that unity of purpose, that
tending of all its parts to a single centre, which so remarkably distinguishes the other parables of our Lord: it will seem to divide itself into
two parts, which are only slightly linked together,-to have not a single
but a double point.t But when we pierce deeper into the heart of the
matter, and contemplate unbelief as the essence of the rich man's sin,
and his hard-heartedness towards others with his prodigality towards
himself only as the forms in which it showed itself, we shall then at
once admire the perfect unity of all its parts, and the vital connection of
the conversation with Abraham in the latter part, with the sumptuous
fare, the "purple and fine linen," of the earlier.
But before proceeding to examine the parable in its details, it is
worthy of notice, that besides the literal and obvious, there has also
ever been an allegorical interpretation of it, which, though at no time
the dominant one in the Church, has frequently made itself heard, and
which has been suggested by Augustine, by Gregory the Great, by
Theophylact, and by more modern commentators than one. According to this the parable, like so many others exclusively given by St.
Luke, sets forth the past and future relations of the Jew and Gentile.
Dives is the Jew, or the Jewish nation, clothed in the purple of the king
and the fine linen of the priest, the " kingdom of priests."  He fares
sumptuously,-that is, the Jews are richly provided with all spiritual
privileges, not hungering and thirsting after the righteousness of God,
but full of their own righteousness; and who, instead of seeking to impart their own blessings to the Gentiles-to the miserable Lazarus that
lay covered with sores at their gate-rather glorified themselves by
comparison in their exclusive possession of the knowledge and favor of
God. To them is announced-that is, to the Pharisees, who might be
considered as the representatives of the nation, for in them all that was
evil in the Jewish spirit was concentrated-that an end is approaching,
nay, has come upon them already: Lazarus and Dives are both to die —
* SUETONIUS, Caligula, c. 51.
t One of the latest impugners of the accuracy of the Evangelical records, as we
possess them (WEISSE, Evang. Gesch., v. 2, p. 168), has brought forward this very
objection, only showing thereby how entirely he has himself failed to enter into
the spirit of the parable.
24




370                THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
the former state of things is to be utterly abolished.  Lazarus is to be
carried by angels into Abraham's bosom-in other words, the believing
Gentiles are to be brought by the messengers of the new covenant into
the peace and consolations of the Gospel. But Dives is to be cast into
hell,-the Jews are to forfeit all the privileges which they abused, and
will find themselves in the most miserable condition, exiles from the
presence of God, and with his wrath abiding upon them to the uttermost, so that they shall seek in vain for some, even the slightest, alleviation of their woful estate.
If the present had been expressly named a parable, it would tend
somewhat to confirm this or some similar interpretation;* for according
to that commonly received, it is certainly no parable, the very essence
of that order of composition being, that one set of persons and things
is named, another is signified-they are set over against one another;
but here the rich man would mean a rich man, and the poor man a poor
-the purple and fine linen would mean purple and fine linen, and so on.'Thus, in fact, the question concerning which there has been such a variety of opinion from the first, namely, whether this be a parable, or a
history (real or fictitious, it matters not), does in fact wholly depend on
the manner in which it is interpreted: if the ordinary interpretation be
the right one, it is certainly not, in the strictest sense of the word, a
* Teelman, in an elaborate essay (Corn. in Luc. xvi.), has wrought out an explanation in part similar to this, but also with important differences. In this too,
Dives is the Jewish people, but by Lazarus is signified Christ, rejected and despised
by the proud nation, and full of sores, that is, bearing the sins of his people,
wounded and bruised for their iniquities. (Isai. liii. 3-5.) Vitringa gives the
same explanation (Erkldr. der Parab., p. 939), but it is not modern, for it is
mentioned by Augustine (Quast. Evang., 1. 2, qu. 38): Lazarum Dominum significare accipiamus... jacentem ad januam divitis, quia se ad aures superbissimas
Judoeorum Incarnationis humilitate dejecit. (2 Cor. viii. 9.).... Ulcera passiones sunt Domini ex infirmitate carnis, quam pro nobis suscipere dignatus est....
Sinus Abraha, secretum Patris, quo post passionem resurgens assumptus est
Dominus.   It is to be found also in Ambrose (Exp. in Luc., 1. 8, c. 15): Cui
[Lazaro] similem illum puto, qui cesus seepius a Judaeis, ad patientiam credentium et vocationem gentium ulcera sui corporis lambenda quibusdam velut canibus
offerebat; and than he quotes Matt. xv. 27. See also GILL'S Exp. of the N. T. (in
loc.)-Schleiermacher's supposition that-Herod Antipas, infamous for his incestuous marriage (see ver. 18), is pointed at in Dives is sufficiently curious, and one
might be tempted at first to suppose, original. Yet this interpretation, in its germ
at least, is to be found in Tertullian (Adv. Marc., 1. 4, c. 34). He too sees ill ver.
18 an allusion to Herod's marriage, and observes that the connection is closer than
at first sight appears, between that verse and the parable which follows: Nam et
illud [scil. argumentum parabola] quantum ad Scripture superficiem, subito propositum est, quantbm ad intentionem sensfs et ipsum coheret mentioni Joannis
male tractati, et sugillatui Herodis malb maritati, utriusque exitum deformans,
Herodis tormenta et Joannis refrigeria.




THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.                      371
parable: if that above proposed, or one similar, it is.*  Nor will it, say
those who support the allegorical explanation, even if that be admitted,
lose any of its obvious practical value: it will still, as before, be a warning against trust in the creature, a declaration of the fearful consequences of unbelief, only that the lower selfishness of the flesh will be
used as a symbol to set forth the more spiritual selfishness. It will not,
indeed, any longer be the ultimate aim of the parable to teach the miserable doom which must follow on the selfish abuse of worldly goods,
the living merely for this present world; but yet more strikingly, that
miserable doom is assumed as so certain and evident, that it may be
used as the substratum on which to superinduce another moral, through
which to afford another warning. Whatever might, according to the
more usual interpretation, have been drawn from it, of earnest warning
for all the children of this present world, who have faith in nothing beyond it, —for all who are unmindful, in their own abundance, of the infinite want and woe around them, of the distresses of their fellow-men,
the same may be drawn from it still. Only, in addition to this warning
to the world, it will yield another deeper warning to the Church, that it
do not glorify and exalt itself in the multitude of its own blessings and
privileges, but that it have a deep and feeling sense of the spiritual
wants and miseries of all who know not God, and that it seek earnestly
to remove them. Of this interpretation I will say something more
presently; it is plainly not incompatible with the commonly received
interpretation, to which it is now time to return.
" There was a certain rich man, which was clothed inpurple and fine
linen, and fared sumptuouslyt every day"-habitually clothed, for so
much the word implies: it was not on some high day that he thus
arrayed himself, but this "purple and fine linen" was his ordinary ap* For a list of the interpreters, who have held one view and the other, see
SUICER'S Thes., s. v. AdJapos.
t Parkhurst is not satisfied with this, "fared sumptuously," which he thinks an
inadequate rendering of the original (&ppawivLvos Aaurpws). There is something,
he says, wanting it our version, that should show the exultation and merriment of
heart in which the rich man lived. He proposes, " who lived in jovial splendor;"
and Mr. Greswell, " enjoying himself sumptuously." Teelman (Corn. in Luc. xvi.,
p. 320, seq.) makes the same objection to the Vulgate, "epulabatur lautO," and
enters into the matter at length. The old Italic was nearer to their view, for it
seems to have had (IRENEUS, Con. Hcr., 1. 3, c. 41) jucundabatur nitida. So
Luther, who translates, " Und lebte herrlich und in Freuden." But the immediate
mention which follows, of the crumbs falling from the table, makes it most
probable that some sumptuous feastings, some EximiA veste et victu convivia, are
here indicated; and both ha/rpo's and eucpa[cvoyat, if oftener used in the other
sense, are frequently enough in this. Hesychius interprets evwXVeYVpra as=
vxwpav4vra, and we read of Xay-7rpa eSeo'aura (Sirac. xxix. 26).




372                THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
parel; so too his sumptuous fare, it was his every day's entertainment
The extreme costliness of the purple dye of antiquity is well known;*
the honor too in which this color was held; it was accounted the
royal color; the purple garment was then, as now in the East, a royal
gift. (Esth. xviii. 15; Dan. v. 7; 1 Macc. x. 20; xi. 58; xiv. 43.)
With it too idols were often clothed. (Jer. x. 9.) There was as much
then of pride as of luxury in its use. And the byssus, which we have
rightly translated "fine linen," was hardly in less price or esteem,t so
that he plainly sought out for himself all that was costliest and rarest.
Yet while this was so, it has often been observed, and cannot be observed too often, that he is not accused of any breach of the law,-not,
like those rich men in St. James (v. 1-6), of any flagrant crimes.
" Jesus said not, a calumniator,-he said not, an oppressor of the poor,
-he said not, a robber of other men's goods, nor a receiver of such, nor
a false accuser,-he said not, a spoiler of orphans, a persecutor of
widows: nothing of these.    But what did he say?-' There was a certain rich man.'    And what was his crime?-A lazar lying at his gate,
and lying unrelieved."'    Nor is he even accused of being, as he is sometimes called, for instance in the heading of the chapter in our Bibles," a glutton.'  To call him such, " a Sir Epicure Mammon," serves only
to turn the edge of the parable. For, on the contrary, there is nothing
* That is, the true sea-purple. There were many cheaper substitutes for it:
thus one, in LUCIAN'S Navigium, c. 22, who is desiring to lay out for himself a life
like that of Dives, and in imagination heaping on himself every thing of the
costliest, says, eart  ewl rovTois a&Xovpyls [that is, &Xbs Epyov, the true work of the
sea], Kal 6 3tios olos &f3pbraros. Its rarity arose from the exceeding small quantity,
but a few drops, of the liquid which served for the dyeing, found in each fish.
(PLIN., H. N., 1. 9, c. 60.) All modern inquirers have failed to discover what shellfish it exactly was which yielded the precious dye. (WINER'S Real Worterbuch,
s. v. Purpur.)
t PLINY (H. N., 1.19, c. 4) tells of a kind of byssus which was exchanged for its
weight in gold: it served, he says, mulierum maximi deliciis. It is not probable,
as has been sometimes asserted, that we have an ev a& Svov in "purple and fine
linen," so that indeed it signifies fine linen dyed of a purple hue. Though the
byssus did sometimes receive this color, yet its glory was rather in its dazzling
whiteness; thus Rev. xix. 8, 14, "fine linen, white and clean;" and PLINY, H. N.,
1. 19, c. 2, speaking of the fine linen of Upper Egypt, Nec ulla sunt eis candore
mollitiaque prseferenda; vestes inde gratissimce. The byssus here was the inner
vest, the purple the outer robe. The two occur together, Rev. xviii. 12, as part of
the merchandise of Babylon. The blue and white formed a highly prized combination of colors, Esth. viii. 15. (See the Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Byssus;
p. 169; WINER'S Real Worterbuch, s. v. Baumwolle; and BAHR'S Symbolik d. Mos.
Cult., v. 1, pp. 310, 338; v. 2, p. 72.)
t Augustine (Serm. 178, c. 3). Massillon has one of his most deeply impressive
Lent sermons upon this parable, in which he labors especially to bring out this
point.




TIHE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.                      373
to make us think him other than a reputable man,-one of whom none
could say worse than that he loved to dwell at ease, that he desired to
remove far off from himself all things painful to the flesh, to surround
himself with all things pleasurable.  His name Christ has not told us,
but the poor man's only:* " Seems he not to you," asks Augustine,t
"to have been reading from that book where he found the name of the
poor man written, but found not the name of the rich; for that book is
the book of life?"  " Jesus," says Cajetan, " of a purpose named the
beggar, but the rich man he designated merely as a certain man,' so to
testify that the spiritual order of things is contrary to the worldly. In
the world, the names of the rich are known, and when they are talked
of, they are designated by their names; but the names of the poor are
either not known, or if known are counted unworthy to be particularly
noted."t
At the gate of the rich man, whose name though well known on
earth, was thus unrecognized in heaven, the beggar Lazarus was flung
-brought it may be thither, by the last who took any care or charge of
him  upon earth; and who now released themselves gladly of their
charge, counting they had done enough when they had cast him under
the eye, and so upon the pity, of one so easily able to help them. The
circumstance that Lazarus was laid at the gate, in the vestibule it
might be, or open porch, of the rich man's palace, which was probably
henceforth his only home, this circumstance contains an ample reply
to one,~ who in his eagerness to fasten some charge on Scripture, asserts
* AdKapos, abridged from'EAedCapas, and once called by Tertullian Eleazar.
There are two derivations given of the name, the one most generally received
would make it, Who has God only for his help; but Olshausen adheres to the
other, which would make AaCadpos= -aBo''Tos. (See SUICER'S Thes., s. v. AdCapos.)
It is a striking evidence of the deep impression which this parable has made on
the mind of Christendom, that the term, lazar, should have passed into so many
languages as it has, losing altogether its signification as a proper name. Euthymius mentions that some called the rich man, Nimeusis; and they used to showperhaps still pretend to show, the ruins of his house at Jerusalem: thus an old
traveller: Inde ad quindecim passus protedentibus obviam fiunt aedes (ut volunt)
divitis illius epulonis, ex quadratis et dolatis constructse lapidibus, magnifico et
eleganti opere, altis muris licet ruinosis conspicuae.
t Serm. 41.
t So Bengel: Lazarus nomine suo notus in ceelo: dives non consetur nomine
ullo.
t Strauss (Leben Jesu, v. 1, p. 671), but he has had a forerunner here, for among
the essays written on this parable, there is one (reprinted in HASE'S EThes. Theol.)
by A. L. Konigsmann, which is entitled, De Divite Epulone & Christo immisericordice not accusato. 1708. But Grotins rightly remarks that Lazarus was cast, in
ipso divitis aspectu ut ignorantiam caussari nullo modo posset; and see NEANDER'S
Leben Jesu, p. 205, note. He has a poor notion of the Christian law of love, who
undertakes the defence of Dives




374              THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
that there is no reason sufficient given why the rich man should have
been punished as he was,-that "his only crime seems to have been
his wealth." The beggar was cast at his very porch, so that ignorance
of his distresses and miseries might in no wise be pleaded. And even
if the rich man did not know, that ignorance itself would have been his
crime, for it was his task to have made himself acquainted with the
misery that was round him; since for what else was the leisure of wealth
given him?
As the rich man's splendid manner of living was painted in a few
strokes, so in a few as expressive is set forth to us the utter misery and
destitution of Lazarus. Like Job, he was " full of sores"-hungry, and
no man gave to him,-for since it is evidently our Lord's purpose to describe the extreme of earthly destitution, it seems most probably meant
that he desired, but in vain, " to be fed with the crumbs which fell from
the rich man's table;" (Judg. i. 7)-even these were not thrown to him,
at least not in such a measure that he could be satisfied with them.*
Shut out from human fellowship and human pity, he found sympathy
only from the dumb animals; " the dogs came and licked his sores,"probably the animals without a master that wander through the streets
of an Eastern city. (Ps. lix. 15, 16.) Chrysostom indeed, and others
after him, have seen in this circumstance an evidence of the extreme
weakness and helplessness to which disease and want had reduced him;
he lay like one dead, and without strength even to fray away the dogs,
which approached to lick his sores, and thus to aggravate his misery by
exasperating their pain. Yet this is hardly what is meant: for medicinal virtue was in ancient times popularly attributed to the tongue of the
dog;t being moist and smooth, it would certainly not exasperate, but
rather assuage the pain of a wound. The circumstance seems- rather
mentioned to enhance the cruelty and neglect of the rich man, and to
set them in the strongest light; -man neglected his fellow-man, beheld
his sufferings with a careless eye and an unmoved heart, yet was it a
misery which even the beasts had pity on, so that what little they could
they did to alleviate his sufferings., We have in fact in the two descriptions stroke for stroke. Dives is covered with purple and fine linen;
Lazarus is covered only with sores. The one fares sumptuously, the
other desires to be fed with crumbs. The one, although this is left to
our imagination to fill up, has numerous attendants to wait on his least
caprice, the other only dogs to tend his sores.
* The words however which are found in the Vulgate, Et nemo illi dabat, do
not belong here, and are evidently transferred from ch. xv. 16.
t H. de Sto. Victore Lingua canis dum lingit vulnus, curat. (See also WINER,
Real Worterbuch, s. v. Speichel.) When Hilary too (Tract. in Ps. cxxii.) sets him
in aggestu fimi, this also is a needless exaggeration of his own.




THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.                        375
There is nothing expressly said concerning the moral condition of
Lazarus-his faith, his patience, his resignation to the will of God.  Yet
these from the sequel must all be assumed, since his poverty of itself
would never have brought him to Abraham's bosom. We may certainly
assume that he suffered after a godly sort, that he did not "call the
proud happy," nor say that he had cleansed his heart in vain, but patiently abided, putting his trust in the Lord. But for this, his sufferings themselves, however great, would have profited him nothing, would
have brought him not a whit nearer the kingdom of God.     In all homiletic use of the parable, this should never be left out of sight.  Thus
Augustine has more than one admirable discourse, in which, having
brought home to the rich and great, to the prosperous children of the
world, the awful warning which is here for them, he tur: s round to the
poor, and exhorts them that they be not deceived, as though mere outward poverty were of itself sufficient to bring them into a conformity
with Lazarus, and into the possession of the good things which he inherited. He tells them that poverty of spirit must go along with that
external.poverty, which last is to be looked at, not as itself constituting
humility, but only as a great help to it-even as wealth is to be regarded
not as of necessity excluding humility, but only as a great hindrance to
it, a great temptation, lest they that have it be high-minded, and come
to trust in those uncertain riches, rather than in the living God: and he
often bids them note, how the very Abraham into whose bosom Lazarus
was carried, was one who had been on earth rich in flocks, and in herds,
and in all possessions.*
But this worldly glory and this worldly misery are alike to have an
* Thus, Serm. 14, c. 2: Ait mihi quisque mendicus debilitate fessus, pannis
obsitus, fame languidus, Mihi debetur regnum cselorum, ego enim sirnilis sum illi
Lazaro: Nostrum genus est cui debetur regnum caelorum, non illi generi qui
induuntur purpura et bysso, et epulantur quotidie splendid6. Augustine replies:
Cim illum sanctum ulcerosum te esse dicis, timeo ne superbiendo non sis quod
dicis. Esto verus pauper, esto pius, esto humilis. Nam si de ipsa pannosa et
ulcerosa paupertate gloriaris, quia talis fuit ille qui ante domum divitis inops jacebat, attendis quia pauper fuit et aliud non attendis.-(Enarr. in Ps. lxxxv. 1):
Nunquid verb iTle pauper merito illius inopiae ablatus est ab angelis, dives autem
ille peccato divitiarum suarum ad tormenta missus est 2 In illo paupere humilitas
intelligitur honorificata, in illo divite superbia damnata. Breviter probo, quia non
divitiae, sed superbia in illo divite cruciabatur. CertO ille pauper in sinum Abraha
sublatus est. De ipso Abraham dicit Scriptura, quia habebat hic plurimum auri
et argenti, et dives fuit in terra. Si qui dives est ad tormenta rapitur, quomodo
Abraham praecesserat pauperem, ut ablatum in sinum suum susciperet? Sed erat
Abraham in divitiis pauper humilis, tremens omnia priecepta et obaudiens. Cf.
Enarr. in Ps. cxxxi. 15, and in Ps. li. 9: Quid tibi prodest, si eges facultate, et
ardes cupiditate' This last passage is worth referring to, for the profound insight
which it gives into the full meaning of Matt. xix. 23-26.




376               THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
end: they are the passing shows of things, not the abiding realities. " It
came to pass that the beggar died;" -he died, and how mighty the
change! he whom but a moment before no man served, whom none but
the dogs cared for, is tended of angels, is carried by them into the blessedness prepared for him,* "into Abraham's bosom."      This last phrase
has been sometimes explained as though he was brought into the chiefest
place of honor and felicity, such as the sons of Zebodee asked for themselves (Matt. xx. 23), that he was admitted not merely to sit down with
Abraham in the kingdom of heaven, at the heavenly festival, whereunto
all the faithful should be admitted, but to lean on his bosom, an honor
of which one only could partake, as John the beloved disciple leaned
upon Jesus' bosom at the paschal supper. But this explanation starts
altogether upon a wrong assumption, since the image underlying " Abraham's bosom" is not that of a feast at all.  Hades is not the place of the
great festival of the kingdom, which is reserved for the actual setting
up of that kingdom, and to which there is allusion Matt. viii. 11; Luke
xiii. 29, 30. This is not a parallel passage with those, but rather is to
find its explanation from John i. 18, where the only-begotton Son is declare& to bee in the bosom of tle Fathler: it is a figurative phrase to express the deep quietness of an innermost communion.t Besides, the
Jews, from whom the phrase is borrowed, spoke of all true believers as
going to Abraham, as being received into his bosom. To be in Abra
ham's bosom was equivalent with them to the being " in the garden of
Eden," or " under the throne of glory," the being gathered into the general receptacle of happy but waiting souls.t (See Wisd. iii. 1-3.) The
expression already existing among them received here the sanction and
* Luther: En qui dum vivebat, ne unum quidem hominem habuit amicum, repente non unius angeli, sed plurium ministerio honoratur. The belief was current
among the Jews that the souls of the righteous were carried by angels into
paradise: there are frequent allusions to this in the apocryphal gospels. (See
THILo'S Cod. Apocryphus, v. 1, pp. 25, 45, 777.) In the heathen mythology the
task was assigned to Mercury, 7roylra:os, Ivxoir4Aros, /vxaywyAs. So Horace: Tu
pias latis animas reponis Sedibus.
t Lud. Capellus (Spicilegium, p. 56): Porro sinus Abrahse non tam videtur hic
dictus a more accumbentium mensae (uti vulgo accipitur hrec phrases) quam potius
i puerulis qui parentibus sunt carissimi, quos parentes in sinu sive gremio fovent,
in quo etiam suaviter interdum quiescunt. And Gerhard (Loc. Theoll., loc. 27, c.
8, ~ 3): Vocatur sinus metaphor& ducta a parentibus, qui puerulos suos diurna
discursitatione fessos, vel ex peregrinatione domum reversos, ant ex adverso aliquo
casu ejulantes, solatii causa in sinum suum recipiunt, ut ibi suaviter quiescant.
Theophylact assumes the image to be rather that of a harbor, where the faithful
cast anchor and are in quiet after the storms and tribulations of life. This escapes
us in the English, but might be suggested equally by the Latin sinus as the Greek
tc6Aros.
t See LIGHTFOOT'S Hor. Heb., n loc.




THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.                       377
seal of Christ, and has come thus to be accepted by the Church,*
which has understood by it in like manner the state of painless expectation, of blissful repose, which should intervene between the death of
the faithful in Christ Jesus, and their perfect consummation and bliss
at his coming in his glorious kingdom. It is the " Paradise" of Luke
xxiii. 43, the place of the souls under the altar (Rev. vi. 9); it is, as
some distinguish it, blessedness, but not glory.t  Hither, to this haven
of rest and consolation, Lazarus, after all his troubles, was safely borne. 
But " the rich man also died and was buried,"-it would appear subsequently to Lazarus, so that, as has been noted, the mercy of God was
manifest in the order of their deaths: Lazarus was more early exempted
from the miseries of his earthly lot; Dives was allowed a longer time
and space for repentance. But at last his day of grace came to an end;
it is possible that the putting of Lazarus under his eye had been his
final trial; his neglect of him the last drop that made the cup of God's
long-suffering to run over. Entertaining him, he might have unawares
entertained angels.  He had let slip, however, this latest opportunity,
and on the death of Lazarus follows hard, as would seem, his own. He
"also died and was buried."   There is a sublime irony, a stain upon
all earthly glory, in this mention of his burial, connected as it is with
what is immediately to follow. No-doubt we are meant to infer that he
had a splendid funeral, all things according to the most approved pomp
of the world;~ this splendid carrying to the grave is for him what the
carrying into. Abraham's bosom was for Lazarus,-it is his equivalent,
which, however, profits him but little where now he is.ll
* For ample quotations from the Greek Fathers, see SUICER's Thes., s. v.
no^mros. Augustine (Ep. 187) is worth referring to, and Tertullian (De Anima, c.
58). Aquinas (Sum. Theol., pars 3a, qu. 62, art. 2) gives the view of the middle
ages; Cajetan, of the modern Romish Church, which, for good reasons of its own,
has always depressed as much as possible the felicity of that middle state: In
limbo patrum erat consolatio, tum securitatis reternae beatitudinis, tum sanctse
societatis, tum exemptionis ab omni poenh sensis. Limborch (Theol. Christ., 1. 6,
c. 10, S 8) has a striking passage, in which, starting from the Scriptural phrase of
death, as a sleep, he compares the intermediate state of the good to a sweet and
joyful dream, while the wicked are as men afflicted with horrible and frightful
dreams, each being to waken on the reality of the things of which he has been
dreaming; in this agreeing with Tertullian, who calls that state a prselibatio
sententiae.
t Beatitudo, but not gloria.
t Augustine (Serm. 41): Sarcina Christi, pennae sunt. His pennis ille pauper
in sinum Abrahae volavit.
d Seculariter fucata: Augustine.
-I See for a noble passage on the rich man's burial Augustine (Enarr. in Ps.
rlviii. 18): Spiritus torquetur apud inferos, quid illi prodest quia corpus jacet in
cinnamis et aromatibus involutumn pretiosis linteis 1 Tanquam si dominus domes




378               THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
For his death is for him an awakening from his flattering dream of
ease and pleasure and delight upon the stern and terrible realities of
the life to come. He has sought to save his life, and has lost it. The
play in which he acted the rich man is ended, and as he went off the
stage, he was stripped bare of all the trappings with which he had been
furnished, that he might sustain his part: all that remains is the fact
that he has played it badly, and so will have no praise, but rather extremest blame, from him who allotted him the character to sustain.*
mittatur in exilium, et tu ornes parietes ipsius. Ille in exilio eget, et fame deficit,
vix sibi unam cellam invenit ubi somnum capiat, et tu dicis, Felix est, nam ornata
est domus illius. The whole exposition of the Psalm is full of interesting matter
in regard of this parable. Cf. Enarr. in Ps. xxxiii. 22.-According to Jewish
notions, it was this very burial which handed him over to his torments, for in the
book Sohar it is said: Anima quwe non est justa in hoc mundo permanet, donec
corpus sepultum est, quo facto ipsa deducitur in gehennam.
* Both these images, that of awaking from a dream of delight, and bringing to
an end some proud part in a play, are used by Chrysostom to set forth the altered
condition of the rich man after his death. Ad Theod. Laps., 1. 1, c. 8: "For as
they who toil in the mines, or undergo some other penalty more terrible even than
this, when perchance they fall to sleep under their many labors and their most
bitter existence, and in dreams behold themselves lapped in delights and in all rich
abundance, yet after they are awakened owe no thanks to their dreams; so also
that rich man, as in a dream being wealthy for this present life, after his migration
hence was punished with that bitter punishment." And again (De Laz., Conc.
11): "For as on the stage some enter, assuming the masks of kings and captains,
physicians and orators, philosophers and soldiers, being in truth nothing of the
kind, so also in the present life, wealth and poverty are only masks. As then,
when thou sittest in the theatre, and beholdest one playing below, who sustains
the part of a king, thou dost not count him happy, nor esteemest him a king, nor
desirest to be such as he; but knowing him to be one of the common people, a
ropemaker or a blacksmith, or some such a one as this, thou dost not esteem him
happy for his mask and his robe's sake, nor judgest of his condition from these, but
boldest him cheap for the meanness of his true condition: so also, here sitting in
the world as in a theatre, and beholding men playing as on a stage, when thou seest
many rich, count them not to be truly rich, but to be wearing the masks of rich.
For as he, who on the stage plays the king or captain, is often a slave, or one who
sells figs or grapes in the market, so also this rich man is often in reality poorest of
all. For if thou strip him of his mask, and unfold his conscience, and scrutinize
his inward parts, thou wilt there find a great penury of virtue, thou wilt find him
to be indeed the most abject of men. And as in the theatre, when evening is come
and the spectators are departed, and the players are gone forth thence, having laid
aside their masks and their dresses, then they who before showed as kings and
captains to all, appear now as they truly are; so now, when death approaches and
the audience is dismissed, all laying aside the masks of wealth and of poverty
depart from hence, and being judged only by their works, appear some indeed
truly rich, but some poor; and some glorious, but others without honor." Cf.
Augustine, Serm. 345. Arndt (De Vero Christ., 1. 1, c. 20) has a fine comparison to
set forth the same truth. Of such as the rich man in our parable, he says: Quos




THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.                         379
From this verse the scene of the parable passes beyond the range of
our experience into the unknown world of spirits, but not beyond the
range of his eye to whom both worlds, that and this, are alike open and
manifest.  He appears as much at home there as here; he moves in
that world as with a perfect familiarity, speaking without astonishment,
as of things which he knows. He still indeed continues to use the language of men, as the only language by which he could make himself
intelligible to men. Yet is it not easy now to separate between what is
merely figure, vehicle for truth, and what is to be held fast as itself
essential truth.*  We may safely say that the form     in which the expression of pain, and of desire after alleviation, embodies itself, is figurative, even as the dialogue between Abraham and Dives belongs in the
same way to the parabolical clothing of the truth. It is indeed the hope
and longing after deliverance which alternately rises, and is again
crushed by the voice of the condemning law speaking in and through
the conscience:-as by the seeing of Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, is
conveyed to us the truth, that the misery of the wicked will be aggravated by the comparison which they will continually be making of their
lost estate with the blessedness of the faithful.
But to return; he that had that gorgeous funeral, is now "in hell,"
or " in Hades" rather; for as " Abraham's bosom" is not heaven, though
it will issue in heaven, so neither is Hades " hell," though to issue in it,
when death and Hades shall be cast into the lake of fire, which is the
proper hell. (Rev. xx. 14.) It is the place of painful restraint,f where
the souls of the wicked are reserved to the judgment of the great day
homines fortasse non malb camelis et mulis comparaveris; nam ut illi per rupes
montiumque edita vestes sericas, gemmas, aromata, et generosa vina dorso vehentes, agmen quasi quoddam famulorum custodiae et securitatis causa secum trahunt,
simulac vero circa vesperam in stabulum venerint, pretiosorum ornamentorum vestiumque pictarum apparatus illis detrahitur, jamque lassi et omni comitatu nudati
nil nisi vibices et livida plagarum vestigia ostentant: Ita qui in hoc mundo auro et
serico nituerunt, obitAs extrema vespera irruente, nihil habent praeter vibices et
cicatrices peccatorum per abusum divitiarum sibi impressas. Shakspeare has the
same thought:
"If thou art rich, thou art poor,
For like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death un3Cads thee."
* There were some in Augustine's time that took all this to the letter, but he
has more doubts and misgivings (De Gerr. ad Lit., 1. 8, c. 6): Sed quomodo intelligenda sit illa flamma inferni, ille sinus Abrahae, illa lingua divitis, ille digitus
pauperis, illa sitis tormenti, illa stilla refrigerii, vix fortasse a mansuetS, quasrentibus, a contentiosb autem certantibus nunquam, invenitur. Tertullian (De Anima,
c. 7) has of course taken it all literally.
ft vAccK (1 Pet. iii. 18) = &Autaos (Luke viii. 81).




380              THIE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
it is," the deep" whither the devils prayed that they might not be sent
to be tormented before their time (Luke viii. 31),-for as that other
blessed place has a foretaste of heaven, so has this place a foretaste of
hell; Dives being there is "in torments," stripped of all wherein his
soul delighted and found its satisfaction; his purple robe has become a
garment of fire;* as he himself describes it, he is "tormented in this
flame."
For a while we may believe that he found it impossible to realize his
present position, to connect his present self with his past; all for a while
may have seemed to him only as some fearful dream. But when at
length he had convinced himself that it was not indeed this dream, but
an awaking, and would take the measure of his actual condition, then,
and that he might so do, " he lifted up his eyes, and seeth Abraham afar
off, and Lazarus in his bosom." (Isai. lxv. 13, 14.) "And he cried and
said, Father Abraham," still clinging to- the hope that his descent
from  Abraham, his fleshly privileges, will profit him something: he
would plead that he has Abraham to his father, though it was indeed
this which mhade his sin so great, his fall so deep. This, which was
once his glory, is now the very stress of his guilt. That he, a son of
Abraham, the man of that liberal hand and princely heart, the man in
whom, as the head of their great family, every Jew was reminded of his
kinship with every other, of the one blood in their veins, of the one hope
in God which ennobled them all from the least to the greatest,-should
have so sinned against the mighty privileges of his condition, should
have so denied through his life, all which the name " son of Abraham"
was meant to teach him, it was this which had brought him to that place
of torment. Nor does Abraham deny the relationship, for he addresses
him not as a stranger but a son, yet thus, in the very allowance of the
relationship, coupled with the refusal of the request, rings the knell of
his latest hope. Poor and infinitely slight was the best alleviation which
he had looked for,-a drop of water on his fiery tongue! So shrunken
are his desires, so low is the highest hope which even he himself ventures to entertain.t Nothing could have marked so strongly how far
he has fallen, how conscious he has himself become of the depth of his
fall.
In this prayer of the rich man we have the only invocation of saints
in Scripture, and certainly not a very encouraging one. He can speak
of "father Abraham" and his "father's house," but there is another
Father, of whom he will know nothing-the Father whom the Prodigal
* Augustine (Serm. 36, c. 6): Successit ignis purpure et bysso: et tunics
ardebat, quai se exspoliare non poterat.
t Augustine: Superbus temporis, mendicus inferni.




THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.                   381
had found. For he is as far as heaven is from hell, from the faith of
the prophet: " Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not." And the pity which he
refused to show, he fails to obtain. We have here the reverse of the
beatitude, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."
With what measure he meted, it is measured to him again. The crumbs
which he denied, issue in the drop of water which is denied to him.*
Here is one who has not obeyed the admonition of the preceding parable, who has not made friends of the mammpon of unrighteousness, and
now that he has failed, has none to receive him into everlasting habitations. That Abraham's reply contains a refusal of his petition is clear;
yet it is not so certain what exact meaning we shall attribute to his
words: " Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things."  There are
two explanations;-the first and the commonest one would make "thy
good things," to signify, temporal felicities; these, which were goods to
thee, which thou esteemedst the best and highest goods, and wouldst
know of no other, thou receivedst; and Abraham's reply would then be
this: " Son, thou hadst thy choice, the things eternal or the things temporal, this life or that; thou didst choose that: but now, when that is
run through, it is idle to think of altering thy choice, and having even
the slightest jortion in this life also." But the other explanation that
would make "thy good things" to be good actions or good qualities,
which in some small measure Dives possessed, and for which he received
in this life his reward, I cannot give better than in the words of Bishop
Sanderson.t The answer of Abraham was as though he had said, " If
thou hadst'any thing good in thee, remember thou hast had thy reward in earth already, and now there remaineth for thee nothing but the
full punishment of thine ungodliness there in hell: but as for Lazarus
he hath had the chastisement of his infirmities [his'evil things'] on
earth already, and now remaineth for him nothing but the full reward
of his godliness here in heaven."  Presently before he has said, " For as
God rewardeth those few go)d things that are in evil men with these
temporal benefits, for whom yet in his justice he reserveth eternal damnation, as the due wages, by that justice, of their graceless impenitency,
so he punisheth those remnants of sin that are in godly men with these
temporal afflictions, for whom yet in his mercy he reserveth eternal salvation, as the due wages, yet by that mercy only, of their faith and repentance and holy obedience." This was Chrysostom's view of the pas.
* Augustine: Desideravit guttam, qui non dedit micam; a thought which
makes Gregory the Great exclaim (Hom. 40 in Evang.): Oh quanta est subtilitas
judiciorum Dei! And Bengel observes, Lingua maximb peccarat.
t In a sermon on Ahab's repentance (1 Kin. xxi. 29).




382               THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
sage,* and Gregory the Great, who in general follows Augustine,t has
here an independent exposition, and strongly maintains this meaning of
the words,t which has certainly something to commend it.
But whether there be in the words such a meaning or not, this is in
them, as in so many other passages of Scripture, namely, that the receiving of this world's good without any portion of its evil, the course of
an unbroken prosperity, is ever a sign and augury of ultimate reprobation.~ (Ps. xvii. 4; Luke vi. 24, 25.)  Nor is the reason of this hard to
perceive; for there being in every man a large admixture of that dross
which has need to be purged out, and which can only be purged out by
the fire of pain and affliction, he who is not cast into this fire is left
with all his dross in him. with his evil unpurged, and therefore can be
no partaker of that holiness without which no man shall see God.
Thus Dives, to his endless loss, had in this life received good things
without any share of evil.ll But now all is changed: Lazarus, who received in this mortal life evil things, is comforted, but Dives is tormented; for he had sown only to the flesh, and therefore, when the order of
things has commenced in which the flesh has no part, he can only reap
in misery and emptiness, in the hungry longing and unsatisfied desire of
the soul.
Moreover, besides that law of retaliation, which requjres that the
unmerciful should not receive mercy, the fact is brought home to the
* De Laz., Conc. 3. He lays a stress on the &ci7rAa3er, recepisti, not accepisti;
see too Theophylact (in loc.) Certainly the other five passages of St. Luke, in
which a7roXacyBldveL occurs (vi. 34, twice; xv. 27; xviii. 30; xxiii. 41), quite bear
him out in his remark.
t Augustine's exclamation here, O mundi bona, apud inferos mala! shows that
the explanation was his.
Horn. 40 in Evang.: Dum dicitur, Recepisti bona in vita. tui, indicatur et
Dives iste boni aliquid habuisse, ex quo in hAc vita bona reciperet. Rursumque,
dum de Lazaro dicitur, quia recepit mala, profecto monstratur et Lazarus habuisse
malum aliquod, quod purgaretur. Sed ilium paupertas afflixit et tersit, istum
abundantia remuneravit et repulit. Cf. Moral., 1. 5, c. 1. In like manner the
Jewish doctors said: Quemadmodum in seculo futuro piis rependitur premium
boni operis etiam levissimi, quod perpetrarunt, ita in seculo hoc rependitur impiis
priemium cujuscunque levissimi boni operis,-a saying which GfrSrer (Urrehristentium, v. 2, p. 171) applies here.
t Augustine: Quid infellcius felicitate peccantium.
\ Thus in the Jewish books the scholar of an eminent Rabbi found his master
one day in extreme affliction and pain, and began to laugh, while all the other
scholars were weeping round him. Being upbraided for this, he answered, that
while he saw in times past his master in such uninterrupted prosperity, he had
often feared test he was receiving his portion in this world; but now seeing him
so afflicted, he took courage again, and believed that his good things were still to
come. (MEUSCHEN'S N. T. ex Taln., illust., p. 66.)




THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.                   383
conscience of him who was once tne rich man, that with death the separation of the elements of good and evil, elements which in this world are
mingled and in confusion, begins. Like is gathered to like, good by natural affinity to good, and evil to evil-and this separation is permanent.
"Between us and you there is a great gulffixed, not a mere handbreadth
only, as the Jews fabled, but " a great gulf," and not merely there, but
"fixed"* there,-an eternal separation, a yawning chasm, too deep to
be filled up, too wide to be bridged over, so that there is no passing from
one side to the other; " They who would pass from hence to you cannot,
neither can they pass to us that would come from thence." Now, the latter affirmation is easily intelligible, for we can quite understand the lost
desiring to pass out of their state of pain to the place of rest and blessedness, but it is not quite so easy to understand the reverse-" they who
would pass from hence to you cannot." The desire of passing thither
cannot, of course, be for the purpose of changing their condition; but
they cannot pass, he would say, even for a season, they have no power
to yield even a moment's solace to any that are in that place, however
they may desire it. Yet here the difficulty suggests itself, Can they,
being full of love, otherwise than greatly desire it? Nay, is not such a
longing implied in the very words of Abraham? And if they do thus
greatly desire it, and yet it may not be, must not this trouble and cast a
shade even upon a heavenly felicity? A question which must wait for
its solution; for all the answers which commonly are given do not
reach it.
But though repulsed for himself, he has yet a request to urge for
others. If Abraham cannot send Lazarus to that world of woe, at least
he can cause him to return to the earth which he has so lately quitted;
there is no such gulf intervening there: —' Ipray thee, therefore, father,
that thou wouldst send him tc myfather's house, for Ihavefive brethren,
that he may testify unto them, lest they also come unto this place of torment." He and they, Sadducees at heart, though it might be Pharisees
in name, perhaps oftentimes had mocked together, at that unseen world
which now he was finding so fearful a reality;t and that it was such, he
would now desire by Lazarus to warn thepn. Lazarus will be able to
"testify," to speak, that is, of things which he has seen.: In this anxiety
* Augustine (Ad Evod., Ep. 164): Hiatus... non solam est, varhm eliam
firmnatus est.
t Augustine (Serm. 41): Non dubito quia cum ipsis fratribus suis loquens de
Prophetis monentibus bona, prohibentibus mala, terrentibus de tormentis futuris
et futura prammia promittentibus, irridebat hsec omnia, dicens cum fratribus suis;
Quae vita post mortem? qure memoria putredinis. qui sensus cineris l... quis
inde reversus auditus est?
$ In the legend of Er the Pamphylian (PLATO'S Rep., 1. 10, c. 13), he is to




384               THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
for his brethren's good, which he, who hitherto had been merely selfish,
expresses, some have found the evidence of a better mind beginning, and
the proof that suffering was already doing its work in him, was awakening in him the slumbering germ of good.*  With this view, were it the
right one, would of necessity be connected his own ultimate restoration,
and the whole doctrine of future suffering not being vindictive and eternal, but corrective and temporary: a doctrine which will always find
favor with all those who have no deep insight into the evil of sin, no
earnest view of the task and responsibilities of life; especially when, as
too often, they are bribed to hold it by a personal interest, by a lurking
consciousness that they themselves are not earnestly striving to enter at
the strait gate, that their own standing in Christ is insecure or none.
But the rich man's request grows out of another root. There lies in it
a secret justifying of himself, and accusing of God. What a bitter reproach against God and against the old economy is here involved: " If
only I had been sufficiently warned, if only God had given me sufficiently clear evidence of these things, of the need of repentance, of this place
as the goal'of a sensual worldly life, I had never come hither. But
though I was not duly warned, let at least my brethren be so."
Abraham's answer is brief and almost stern; rebuking, as was fit,
this evil thought of his heart: " They are warned; they have enough to
keep them from your place of torment, if only they will use it. They
have Moses and theprophets, let them hear them." Our Lord then clearly did not see an entire keeping back of the doctrine of life eternal and
an after retribution in the Pentateuch, but to hear Moses was to hear of
these things; as elsewhere more at length he showed.  (Matt. xxii. 31,
32.)  But the suppliant will not so easily be put to silence. " Nay, father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead they will repent."
As it is true of the faithful that their works do follow them, and that their
temper here is their temper in heaven, so not less does this man's contempt of God's word, which he showed on earth, following him beyond
the.grave;t that Word cannot suffice to save men; they must have
something else to lead them to repentance.  We have here re-appearing
in hell that " Show us a sign that we may believe," which was so often
return from the place where souls are judged, &y77exo a&vrpTlroLs yey/E'araL Trv eKe?,
of the greatness of the rewards of the just, the dreadfulness of the doom of sinners.
* Aquinas (Sum. Theol., Supp. ad 3m part., qu. 98, art. 4) has a discussion to
which this verse gives occasion: Utrum damnati in inferno vellent alios esse
damnatos, qui non sunt damnati' He determines, despite this passage, that they
would.
t Bengel: Vilipendium Scripturae miser, relictu luxu, secum intulit in inferno.




THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.                     385
on the lips of the Pharisees on earth. They believe, or at least think
they would believe, signs and portents, but will not believe God's Word.
(Isai. viii. 19, 20.)  A vain expectation! for in the words of Abraham,
" If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded,
though one rose from the dead."  These words demand to be accurately
considered.  Dives had said, "they will repent;" Abraham replies, they
will not even " be persuaded."  Dives had said, " if one went unto them
from the dead;" Abraham, with a prophetic glance at the world's unbelief in far greater matter, makes answer, " No, not if one rose from the
dead." He in fact is saying to him, " A far greater act than you demand would be ineffectual for producing a far slighter effect: you suppose that wicked men would repent on the return of a spirit; I tell you
they would not even be persuaded by the rising of one from the dead."*
This reply of Abraham's is most weighty, for the insight it gives us
into the nature of faith, that it is a moral act, an act of the will and the
affections no less than of the understanding, something therefore which
cannot be forced by signs and miracles: for where there is a determined
alienation of the will and affections from the truth, no impression which
these miracles will make, even if they be allowed to be genuine, will be
more than transitory.  Nor will there fail always to be a loophole somewhere or other, by which unbelief can escape;t and this is well, or we
should have in the Church the faith of devils, who believe and tremble.
When the historical Lazarus was raised from the dead- the Pharisees
were not by this miracle persuaded of the divine mission and authority
of Christ, and yet they did not deny the reality of the miracle itself.
(John xi. 47; xii. 10.) A greater too than Lazarus has returned from
the world of spirits; nay has arisen'from the dead; and yet what multitudes who acknowledge the fact, and acknowledge it as setting a seal
to all his claims to be heard and obeyed, yet are not brought by this
acknowledgment at all nearer to repentance and the obedience of faith.
And it is very observable, how exactly in the spirit of Abraham's refusal to send Lazarus, the Lord himself acted after his resurrection. Iie
showed himself, not to the Pharisees, not to his enemies, " not to all the
people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God" (Acts x. 41), to his
* It is a pity that we have not given the edYv rs of ver. 31, "if one," as we
have rightly done in the verse preceding. Observe the change of words: rropefuj
in the request of Dives; avaarrj in the reply of Abraham; a'rd VepoiV in the request; e'K VEKpPy in the reply.
t When for instance Spinoza declared himself ready to renounce his system
and to become a Christian, if only he were convinced of the truth of the raising
of the historical Lazarus, he knew very well that in his sense of the word convince,
and with the kind of evidence that he would have required, it was impossible to
satisfy his demand. (See BAYLE Diction., Art. Spinoze, note R.)
25




386                THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
own disciples alone. It was a judgment on the others, that no sign
should be given them but the sign of the prophet Jonah, yet it was a
mercy also, for they would not have been persuaded, even by one that
had risen from the dead. At the same time it is not to be denied that
in Christ's resurrection there was a satisfaction of the longing of man's
heart, that one should return from the world beyond the grave, and give
assurance of the reality of that world,-a longing which Abraham could
not satisfy, but which Christ did, when he died and rose again, and appeared unto men, having the keys of death and of Hades.*
It remains only to give a slight sketch of their interpretation, who
maintain that, besides its literal meaning, the parable h.s also an allegorical;-though of these some find this only by the way, and as something merely subordinate, an interpretation which they throw out and
leave to every one to allow it what value he chooses: while others make
it the chief moral of the parable, and affirm that it was the primary pur.
pose of the Lord to set forth the relations between Jew and Gentile.
Dives then, as already has been said, represents the Jewish nation clad
in the purple of the king, and the fine linen of the priestt-the kingdom
of priests or royal priesthood.: They fared sumptuously every day, they
were amply furnished with all spiritual blessings: " enriched," as Theophylact describes it, "with all knowledge and wisdom, and with the
precious oracles of God." They were the vineyard which the Lord had
* Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cxlvii. 14): 0 Domine, gratias misericordise tuse;
voluisti mori, ut aliquis ab inferis surgeret, et ipse aliquis non quicumque, sed
Veritas surrexit ab inferis. In Plato's legend of the revenant, alluded to already
(p. 383, note), there is a remarkable witness for this craving in the mind of man,
that he who gives assurance of the reality of the things after death should have
himself returned from the world of spirits,-a longing that for us has found its
satisfaction in the resurrection of Christ. The same reappears in that, which however is plainly but an imitation of Plato's narrative, the story of Thespesius in
Plutarch's essay, De sera Numinis vindicta.
t Augustine (Quwcst. Evang, 1. 3, qu. 38): In Divite intelligantur superbi Judoeorum, ignorantes Dei justitiam, et suam volentes constituere... Epulatio splendida, jactantia legis est, in qu& gloriabantur plus ad pompam relationis abutentes
ea, quam ad necessitatem salutis utentes. Compare Gregory the Great (Hor. 40
in Evang.: and Moral., 1. 25, c. 13) and H. de Sto. Victore (Annott. in Luc.):
Dives iste Judaicum populum designat, qui cultum vitse exterius habuit, et acceptse legis deliciis usus est ad nitorem, non ad utilitatem. Theophylact; nopp6par Kal Eo aoeov ve8evTo, BucrLAeiav e'wv Kar iepwo'vrqv. He refers the faring sumptuously every day to the daily sacrifice. In modern times Lomeier has wrought out
this view at length, Obss. Analytico-Didact. ad Luc. xvi., p. 91, seq. See VON
MEYER'S Blatter far hohere Wahreit, v. 6, p. 88, for an exposition not historically
the same, but agreeing with the spirit of this one. It is in this sense also that
Swedenborg understands the parable.
4 Bawrikeiov ieodTevfLa, Exod. xix. 6; compare 1 Pet. ii. 9.




THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.                   387
planted, and of which he could say, "What could have been done more
to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?" (Isai. v. 2, 4.) They were
the people whom he had made to ride on the high places of the earth,
and to whom pertained " the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants,
and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises."
But all these things were given them, not that they might make their
boast of them, and rest there, comparing themselves for self-exaltation
with the heathen round them, who were perishing without the knowledge of God, but that they might spread around them the true faith and
knowledge of God. Yet they did not so; " Behold," said St. Paul, " thou
art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God,
and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent,
being instructed out of the law, and art confident that thou thyself art a
guide of the blind, a light of them that are in darkness." But meanwhile,
though they thus boasted, they did nothing effectual to scatter the darkness of the heathen; for they had forsaken their true position, misunderstood their true glory; and this talent of talents, the knowledge of the
true God, these privileges, and this election, they had turned into a selfish thing. For they counted that God had blessed them alone of all
people, instead of, as was the truth, above all people; they stopped the
blessing, of which they should have been the channel, and through them
the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles-he was presented
to the Gentiles under a false character and in an unworthy light.*
Lazarus the beggar t lay at their gate covered with sores: at the
gate, and without it, for the Gentiles were "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise:"-full
of sores, for their sins and their miseries were infinite. These sores of
the Gentile world are enumerated by St. Paul, Rom. i. 23-32; though
the term will include, besides the sins, the penal miseries which were
consequent on those sins. But these sores, these " wounds and bruises
and putrifying sores" (Isai. i. 6), were neither closed, nor bound, nor
mollified with ointment, so that the dogs came and licked them. Here,
as must so often happen, there is a question whether this last circumstance has any distinct signification, or is added only to complete the
picture. Are there indicated here the slight and miserable assuagements of its wants and woes,-the wretched medicine for its hurts,
which the heathen world derived from its poets and philosophers and
legislators, as Lomeier proposes? or is it meant that even in this depth
* H. de Sto. Victore: Non ad caritatem sed ad elationem doctrinam legis
habuit. And Gregory (Hom. 40) explains the refusal of the crumbs: Gentiles ad
cognitionem legis, superbi Judaei non admittebant.
t Theophylact: nwl'v efwv Xapoirv al ao(roas.




390              THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
Lazarus rising from the dead and bidding it to repent. It has enough
to remind it of its duty,-it has its deposit of truth,-its talent wherewith
it was bidden to trade till its Lord's return. So that the latter part of
the parable, thus contemplated, speaks to us Gentiles in the very spirit
of those awful words which St. Paul addressed to the Gentile converts at
Rome: "Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God: on them
which fell severity, but towards thee goodness, if thou continue in his
goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off." (Rom. xi. 22.)




THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.                   389
or Deut. xxviii. 15-68, or call to mind the Lord's words which speak of
the weeping and gnashing of teeth, which shall be their portion, when
they see the despised Gentiles coming from the east and the west, from
the north and from the south, and sitting down in the kingdom of God,
while they themselves are thrust out.* (Luke xiii. 28-30.) But as
Dives looked for some consolation from Lazarus, whom before he despised, so the Jew is looking for the assuagement of his miseries through
some bettering of his outward estate,-some relaxation of severities imposed upon him,-some improvement of his civil condition,-things which
he looks for from the kingdoms of the world, and which if they gave him,
would be but as a drop of water on the tongue. He knows not that the
wrath of God does in truth constitute his misery; and so long as this is
unremoved, he is incapable of true comfort. The alleviation which he
craves is not given, it were in vain to give it; —the one true alleviation
would be that he should be himself received into the kingdom of God,
that he should bewail his guilt, and look on him whom he pierced, and
mourn because of him: then consolations would abound to him; but
without this, every thing else is but as the drop of water on the fiery
tongue. That there is no allusion in the parable to any future time,
when the great gulf of unbelief which now separates the Jew from his
blessings shall be filled up, makes nothing against this interpretation;
since exactly the same argument might be applied, and we know incorrectly, to call in question the ordinary explanation of the parable of the
Wicked Husbandmen; nothing is there said of the vineyard being
restored to its first cultivators, which yet we know will one day be the
case.
By the five brethren of Dives will be set forth to us according to this
scheme all who hereafter, in a like condition and with like advantages,
are tempted to the same abuse of their spiritual privileges. The Gentile
Church is in one sense Lazarus brought into Abraham's bosom; but
when it sins as the Jewish Church did before it, glorying in its gifts, but
not using them for the calling out of the spiritual life of men, contented
to see in its very bosom a population that are outcast, save in name, from
its privileges and blessings, and to see beyond its limits millions of heathens to whom it has little or no care to impart the knowledge of Christ
and of his salvation,-then in so far as it thus sins, it is only too like
the five brethren of Dives, who are in danger of coming with him, and
for sins similar to his, to this place of torment. Nor are we to imagine
that, before judgment is executed upon a Church thus forgetful of its
high calling, it will be roused from its dream of security by any startling
summonses,-any novel signs and wonders,-any new revelation,-any
* Theophylact:'Ev T7f (pAoy KaraKa0ovrTa'roV prvov.




390              THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
Lazarus rising from the dead and bidding it to repent. It has enough
to remind it of its duty,-it has its deposit of truth,-its talent wherewith
it was bidden to trade till its Lord's return. So that the latter part of
the parable, thus contemplated, speaks to us Gentiles in the very spirit
of those awful words which St. Paul addressed to the Gentile converts at
Rome: "Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God: on them
which fell severity, but towards thee goodness, if thou continue in his
goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off." (Rom. xi. 22)




XXVII.
UNPROFITABLE SERV ANT"S.
LUKE xvii. 7-10.
SOME interpreters find a connection between this parable and the discourse which precedes it, while others affirm that no such can be traced,
-that the parable must be explained without any reference to the saying concerning faith which goes immediately before. Theophylact supposes this to be the link between the parable and the preceding verse:
the Lord had there declared the great things which a living faith would
enable his disciples to perform-how they should remove mountains;
but then, lest these great things which were in the power of their faith
should cause them to fall into a snare of pride, the parable was spoken
for the purpose of keeping them humble.* Augustine confesses the difficulty of tracing the connection, and has a very singular explanation of
the whole parable,which I must be content to refer to,t as it would take
up considerable space to do it justice. Olshausen gives this explanation:
The apostles by that account which went before of the hindrances they
would meet in their work (ver. 1, 2), of the hard duties, hard as they then
seemed to them, which were required of them (ver. 3, 4), had a longing
awakened in them after a speedier reward. The Lord therefore would
set before them their true relation to him; that their work, difficult or
not, welcome or otherwise, must be done-that they were not their own,
but his, and to labor for him. If they found their labor a delight, well;
but if not, still it was to be done. Neither were they to look for their
reward and release from toil at once,t but rather to take example of the
* So Cajetan: Petierant Apostoli adjungi sibi donum confidentiae, quod et eis
oollatum intelligitur. Et quoniam etiam superbia bonis operibus insidiatur ut
psreant, ideo Jesus adjungit parabolam conservativam eorum in verb recognitione
snimet, ne extollantur.
t QuCsst. Evang., 1. 2, c. 39. Maldonatus, who denies that there is any connection, thinks Augustine's very forced and unnatural.
$ Eviws (ver. 7).




392               UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS.
servant, who though he had been strenuously laboring all the day in the
field, "ploughing or feeding cattle," yet not the less when he returned
home had to resume his labors in the house also. Such is his explana.
tion, and no doubt he here asserts an important truth, and one found in
the parable; but to the connection, as he traces it, there is this objection,
that the request, " Lord, increase.our faith," does not seem to convey any
such meaning as he finds in it; there is no appearance as if those who
made it were desirous of escaping a dispensation committed to them, or
snatching prematurely at a reward. Other expositors have neglected to
seek any immediate connection between the parable a:d the context in
which it is found, affirming that it teaches generally how God is debtor
to no man, that all we can do is of duty, nothing of merit, and that in all
our work we must retain the acknowledgment of this, and carefully guard
against all vainglory and elation of heart; how rather we must be deeply
humbled before God out of the thought that, did we do all, we should
only do that we were bound to; and how then must it be, when we fall
so infinitely short of that all?
But altogether different from any of these interpretations is that first
formally proposed, if I mistake not, by Grotius, and which Venema*
has taken up and strengthed with additional arguments and illustrations. The parable, they say, is not meant to represent at all the standing of the faithful under the new covenant, " the perfect law of liberty,"
but the merely servile standing of the Jew under the old, and it grew
in this manner out of the discourse preceding.  The disciples had
asked for increase of faith. The Lord in answer would teach them the
necessity and transcendent value of that gift for which they were asking, would magnify its value, showing them how all outward works
done without this living principle of free and joyful obedience, such as
for the most part the men of their own nation were content with, were
merely servile, and were justly recompensed with a merely servile reward,-that in those God could take no pleasure, and for them counted
that he owed no thanks; the servants who did them were after all unprofitable and of no account in his sight.
The arguments of Grotius and Venema are mainly these. They
object to the common interpretation, that it sets forth in a wrong aspect
the relations which exist between Christ and his people. They ask, Is
it likely that the gracious Lord who in another place said, " Henceforth
I call you not servants,... but I have called you friends," would here
wish to bring forward in so strong a light the service done to him as one
merely servile, and for which he would render them no thanks? would
he, who ever sought to lead his disciples into the recognition of their
* Diss. Sac., p. 262, seq.




UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS.                        393
filial relation to God, that they had received not the spirit of bondage
but of adoption, here throw them back so strongly on their servile relation? It was not, they say, in this spirit that he spake those words,
" Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find
watching: verily, I say unto you, that he shall gird himself; and make
them sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them." (Luke
xii. 37.) On the other hand the parable does, they affirm, exactly set
forth the relation of the Jews, at least of the greater part of them, to
God.   They were hired to do a certain work, which if they did, they
were, like servants, free from stripes: they had too their stipend-they
ate and drank-they received their earthly reward.   But going no further than this bare fulfilling of the things expressly enjoined* them, and
fulfilling them without love, without zeal, without the filial spirit of faith,
contented to stop short when they had just done so much as would enaable' them, as they hoped, to escape punishment, going through' their
work in this temper, they were " unprofitable servants," in whom the
Lord could take no pleasure, and who could look for no further marks
of favor at his hands.t
* Exactly the same stress which they would here lay on Hi &ta raxEvra is laid
by Origen (In Rom., 1. 3), although his purpose, as will be seen, is different:
Donec quis hoc facit tantum quod debet, i. e., ea quse praecepta sunt, inutilis
servus est. (Luc. xvii. 10.) Si autem addas aliquid praeceptis, tune non jam
inutilis servus eris, sed dicetur ad te: Euge serve bone et fidelis. (Matt. xxv. 21.)
St. Bernard too (In Cant., Serm. 11, d. 2), without indeed making Origen's dangerous use of the passage, and lowering the standard of piety for the ninety-nine, in
the hope of exalting it for the one, has implicitly the same explanation of the
passage as that mentioned in the text. Expounding Cant. i. 2, he has occasion to
speak of a service, rendered indeed, but without joy and alacrity and delight, and
ends thus: Denique in Evangelio qui hoc solum, quod facere debet, facit, servus
inutilis reputatur. Mandata forsan utcumque adimpleo: sed anima mea sicut terra
sine aqua in illis. Ut igitur holocaustum meum pingue fiat, osculetur me, quseso,
osculo oris sui.
t Grotius (in loc.) is especially rich in materials in support of this interpretation of the parable. From Maimonides he quotes a Jewish proveb, Ei datur premium qui quid injussus facit: and from Chrysostom (In Rom. viii.) a passage
contrasting the obedience of the Jew and the Christian: KKceZvoL  qp 3,8 ri/LWSOptaS
7rvra E7rparrov a&y-e1voL, ol  7r8 revfLaKLCoI erTAvyilJiccal ic rcp, Kcai rouro 8aXAoo-1 Tr.cal
6Trepp3a[ceiv & em7rLtdsy/u.aa. We might compare, especially with that Jewish proverb, one of the Similitudes in the Shepherd of Hermas (1. 3, sim. 5), which is
briefly this: A householder planted a vineyard, and going from home, left his
servant the task of tying the vines to their supports, and no more; but the servant
having finished this task, thought it would profit the vineyard, if also he were to
weed it and dig it, which he did; and the master found it in high order and beauty
on his return. Well pleased with his servant, because he had thus done more than
was enjoined him, he determined to give him the adoption of sonship, and to make
him fellow-heir with his own son. It is true that Hermas makes an application of




394                 UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS
It is not to be denied that there is something attractive in this exposition,* or that it is worthy of respectful consideration; but yet it
might be fairly replied in this way to the arguments of those that uphold it. The present parable need not be opposed to, but rather should
be balanced with, that other saying of the Lord's (Luke xii. 37) quoted
above,-should be considered as supplying the counterweight of all such
declarations. This is; the way God might deal; for we may observe, it
is not said that this is the way he will deal, since rather that other is
the manner in which he will actually bear himself towards his faithful
servants;-the one relation is that which according to the strictness of
justice he might assume, the other is that which according to the riches
of his grace he will assume. We, to keep us humble, are evermore to
acknowledge that upon that footing he might put our relation to him,
having, at the same time this assurance, that so long as we put it upon
that footing, he will not; for so long, we are capable of receiving his
favors without being corrupted by them. It is only to the humble, to
the self-abased before God, that he can give grace, for where this humility is not, it is certain that, as the unclean vessel will altogether taint
the wine poured into it, so the gifts of God will be perverted to spiritual
wickedness, more dangerous and more deadly than the natural corruptions of man's heart.   And although, doubtless, the relation of the
Christian to his Lord is set forth here under somewhat a severert aspect
than is usual under the New Covenant, yet the experience df every
heart will bear witness how needful it is that this side of the truth, as
the similitude different from what one would expect, and not bearing upon our
parable, but yet the passage is in itself remarkable. Seneca (De Benef., 1. 3, c.
18-28) treats an interesting question which bears on the present object: An beneficium dare domino servus possit. which he answers in the affirmative: Quamdiu
preestatur quod a servis exigi solet [dT  8raTaX&evra] ministerium est, ubi plus
quam quod servo necesse est, beneficium: ubi in affectum amici transit, desinit
vocari ministerium.... Quicquid est quod servilis officii formulam excedit, quod
non ex imperio sed et voluntate praestatur, beneficium est. He has much more on
the same subject.
* It is Wetstein's also: Sunt nimirum servi qui serviunt serviliter, hoc est,
qui nil nisi jussi faciunt: alii serviunt liberaliter, ut filii qui, non exspectato mandato, ex generosa et nobili indole, sponte et injussi ea faciunt, quve utilia et Domino
placitura credunt. Illos Christus hic perstringit et vituperat eo fine ut discipulos
ad altiorem gradum perducat.
t At the same time, our translation makes it wear even a severer aspect than is
need, while it has rendered EXEL XdpLI K. r. A.; "Doth he thank that servant?" thus
seeming to cut off any recognition at all of the servant's work. It would be better,
"Doth he count himself especially beholden to that servant." as Weisse gives it,
Weiss er dem Knecht besondern Dank     So Heb. xii. 28, ExwLev Xdpiv, which
should be translated, "Let us have the thankfulness." See TITTMAN'S Synonylms
s. v. aXpc74b.




UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS.                      395
well as the other, should be set out,-that in hours when we are tempted
to draw back, to shun and to evade our tasks, we should then feel that a
necessity is laid upon us,-that indeed while we do them willingly, we
do them also the most acceptably: yet whether willingly or not, they
must be done,-that we are servants who are not to question our Master's will, but to do it. Good for us it is that we should have the check
of considErations like these upon us in such moments, and should thus
be kept in the way of duty, till the time of a more joyful and childlike
obedience again comes round. This fear does not exclude love, but is
its true guardian: they mutually uphold and support one another;* for
our hearts, while yet they are not made perfect in love, are not such
that they can be presented with motives drawn only from gratitude and
love. These indeed, must ever be the chief and prominent motive to
obedience (Rom. xii. 1), and so long as they prove sufficient, the others
will not appear; but it is well for us that behind these, there should be
other sterner and severer summonses to duty, ready to come forward and
make themselves felt, when our evil and our corruption causes them to
be needed.  Well for us, too, is it, that while the Lord is pleased graciously to accept our work and to reward it, we should ever be reminded
that it is an act of his free grace, of his unmerited mercy, by which our
relation to him has been put upon this footing. For there is also
another footing (that of the parable) upon which it might have been put,
-yea, upon which, though he does not, yet we must evermore put it, so
far at least as is needful for the subduing every motion of pride and
vainglory-every temptation to bring in God as our debtor because of
our work,-which, inconceivable as it must appear when we calmly contemplate the matter, is yet what men are evermore on the point of doing.t
A more real difficulty in the parable, as it appears to me, is this,
that of the first part of it (ver. 7, 8) the purpose seems, to commend patience in the Lord's work,-that we do not desire to be dismissed before
the time from our labors, or snatch too early at the reward; but rather
take example from the hind, who only looks to rest and refresh himself,
when his master has no further need of his service: that, in the words
* Gierricus (BERNARDI Oper., v. 2, p. 1028, ed. Bened.): Neque enim timor iste
quem amor castum facit, gaudium tollit, sed custodit; non destruit, sed instruit;
non inamaricat, sed condit; ut tant6 sit durabilius, quanta modestius, tant6 verius,
quanto severius, tant6 dulcius, quant6 sanctius.
t Ambrose (Exp. in Luc., 1. 8, c. 32): Agnosce esse te servum plurimis obsequiis defoeneratum. Non te preeferas, quia filius Dei diceris: agnoscenda gratia,
sed non ignoranda natura., Neque te jactes si bene servisti, quod facere debuisti.
Obsequitur sol, obtemperat luna, serviunt angeli.... Et nos ergo non a nobis
laudem exigamus, nec praeripiamus judicium Dei et praeveniamus sententiam judi.
cis: sed suo tempori, suo judici reservemus.




396                UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS.
of the son of Sirach (xi. 20) we learn to wax old in our work, and so
long as we are here, see in one task but a stepping-stone to another.
Such appears the lesson of the first part of the parable,-that we do not,
after we have made some exertion, smaller or greater, account that we
have a claim to be exempted henceforth from strenuous toil; but on the
contrary, ever, as we have surmounted one hill of labor, perceive a new
one rising above it, and gird ourselves for the surmounting ofthat also.
But in the second part (ver. 9, 10) it is no longer this patient continuance in well-doing, but humility, that is enjoined, the confession that we
are not doing God a favor in serving him, but that all we can do is of
merest duty,-that our service at best is poor and of little value. I suppose, however, the solution is, that impatience under deferred reward,
with the desire to be released from labor, springs from over-estimation
of our work; while he who feels that all which he has yet done is little,
that it is all poor and mean, as he will not count that it gives him a
claim henceforward to be exempted from labor, but will rather desire
some new field of labor where he may approve himself a better servant
than he has yet done, so neither will he count that it gives him a right
to consider God as his debtor. The two wrong states of mind, springing
from the same evil root, are to be met by the same remedy, by the learning to know what our actual relation to God is, —that it is one of servants
to a master, and being such, it precludes us alike from all right of claiming release when we please, and so also from all right to extol or exalt
ourselves for the doing of that, which by the very laws of our condition
we are bound to,-which not to do were great guilt, but which to do is
no merit.
With regard to the actual words of the parable, there is not much to
remark. All are aware that the waiting at table with the dress succinct was a mark of servitude,* which to keep in mind makes more wonderful the condescension of the Son of God in his saying, Luke xii. 37,
and in his doing, John xiii. 4. With regard to the confession which he
puts into the mouths of his disciples,t "s When ye shall have done all
those things which are commanded you, say,t We are unprofitable servants;" we may truly observe, as many have observed before, if this they
are to say when they have done all, how much more, and with how far
deeper self-abasement and shame, when their consciences bear them wit* Venema quotes from Philo (De Vita Contempl.) a passage concerning the
Egyptian Therapeutse, which gives remarkable evidence of this: A'ACwoo-To  Kal
KCaEiJevoL rovss XCLTOWVIOKOVS eilCTL6('V 77rppETfOVWTES, eveKca TOV5 /18EV E~ThXov hLjf)epepatC
aovXotrpevroDs'Xii/a'ros ElS ov^ro'rb ovMLJrdO'ov.
t Augustine: Contra pestem vane glorise diligentissimb militans.
$ Bengel: Miser est quem Dominus servum inutilem appellat (Matt. xxv. 30),
beatus qui se ipse.




UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS.                         397
ness, as his conscience must bear witness to every man, that so far from
having done all that was commanded, they have in innumerable things
grievously failed and come stort of their duty, of what they might and
ought to have done.*
* Cajetan: Quod igitur dicitur, Quum feceritis omnia, non ideo dicitur, quod
facturi essent omnia: sed quod si etiam faciunt omnia, sed quod quum merita
habuerint facientium omnia priecepta, recognoscant se servos inutiles; ut a fortiori
se recognoscant minus quam inutiles, hoc est debitores et reos multorum, quse
debebant seu debent facere.-Our Church in her 14th Article has used this parable
against the Romish doctrine of works of supererogation. Cf. GERHIARD'S Loc.
Theoll., loc. 18, c. 8, ~ 91




XXVIII.
THE UNJUST JUDGE.
LUKE xviii. 1-8.
TIms parable is addressed to the disciples, and stands, as Theophylact
and others have noted, in closest relation with what has gone immediately
before, with the description of the sufferings and distress of the last
times, when even the disciples " shall desire to see one of the days of the
Son of man, and shall not see it." (xvii. 22.) Then will be, according
to the deeply significant image in use among the Jews, and sanctioned
by our Lord, the birth-pangs of the new creation,* and the distresses of
that time are the motive here set forth for prayer,-distresses which
shall always be felt, but then at the last felt more intensely than ever.
" He spake a parable unto them, that men ought always to pray," that
men must needs pray always, if they would escape the things coming on
the earth-that such was the only condition of their escaping.  It is not
so much the duty or suitableness, as the absolute necessity, of instan*
persevering prayer that is here declared.t Nor is this all that the par* ApX4 0mIwvy, Matt. xxiv. 8. Compare John xvi. 21, and Rom. viii. 22, iraoa
i KiTLOs vcyaWivelt.
t Compare two remarkable sermons by Chrysostom (De Precatione), which
turn a good deal on this parable, and contain many remarkable things on the
extreme needfulness of prayer; he calls it the medicine expelling spiritual sicknesses-the foundation of the spiritual building-that to the soul which the nerves
are to the body. He likens the man without prayer to the fish out of water and
gasping for life-to a city without walls, and exposed to all assaults; but from him
that is armed with prayer the tempter starts back, as midnight robber start back
when they see a sword suspended over a soldier's bed.-Some have questioned
whether these sermons are Chrysostom's, and the Benedictine editors (v. 2, p. 778)
speak doubtfully, the main argument against them being, that Sennacherib is
twice spoken of in them as king of the Persians, an error it is thought which
Chrysostom could scarcely have committed. But if it is to be considered an error,
it is quite or nearly as difficult to imagine' any one else, who could write these




THE UNJUST JU,DGE.                        399
ble teaches, but it gives us further some very deep insight into the nature
and essence of prayer.
In this precept,'to pray always * (with which we may compare
Ephes. vi. 18; 1 Thess. v. 17), there is nothing of exaggeration, nothing
commanded which may not be fulfilled, when we understand of prayer
as the continual desire of the soul after God; having indeed its times
of intensity, seasons of an intenser concentration of the spiritual life, but
not being confined to those times; since the whole life of the faithful
should be, in Origen's beautiful words, one great connected prayer,tor, as St. Basil expresses it, prayer should be the salt which is to salt
every thing besides.  "That soul," says Donne, " that is accustomed to
direct herself to God upon every occasion, that as a flower at sun-rising,
conceives a sense of God in every beam of his, and spreads and dilates
itself towards him, in a thankfulness, in every small blessing that he
sheds upon her,... that soul who, whatsoever string be stricken in her,
base or treble, her high or her low estate, is ever turned towards God,
that soul prays sometimes when it does not know that it prays.": Many
and most worthy to be repeated are Augustine's sayings on this matter,
drawn as they are from the depths of his own Christian life. Thus, in
one place, " It was not for nothing that the apostle said, Pray without
ceasing.' Can we, indeed, without ceasing bend the knee, bow the body,
or lift up the hands, that he should say,'Pray without ceasing?' There
is another interior prayer without intermission, and that is the longing
of thy heart. Whatever else thou mayest be doing, if thou longest after
that Sabbath of God, thou dost not intermit to pray. If thou wishest
not to intermit to pray, see that thou do not intermit to desire-thy continual desire is thy continual voice. Thou wilt be silent, if thou leave
off to love, for they were silent of whom it is written,'Because iniquity
shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." The coldness of love is
the silence of the heart-the fervency of love is the cry of the heart."~
sermons failing into it. But it should be called a mistake; the names of the three
great Eastern monarchies were of old continually confounded, and this where it is
impossible that ignorance could have been the cause. Thus Darius is called (Ezra
vi. 22) king of Assyria and Artaxerxes (Neh. xiii. 6) king of Babylon; the explanation being, that the three first empires, as we call them, were considered not
as different, but as one and the same empire, continued under different dynasties.
D'Herbelot (Bibl. Orient., s. v. Nouh) mentions something of the sort as being the
view of the modern East: I1 faut remarquer ici, que les Orientaux comprennent
dans les dynasties des anciens Rois de Perse, les Assyriens, les Babyloniens, et les
Medes.
* Tirinus sets forth well this " always:" Non obstante tedio, metu, tentatione,
t Mia VeeydX7i afvvEX4eFvP7 Irpoo'evXj.
Sermon XI. On the Purification.
5 Enarr. in Ps. xxxvii. 10: Ipsum desiderium tuum, oratio tua est, et si con.




400                     THE.UNJUST JUDGE.
But he who knew how easily we are put off from prayer, and under what
continual temptatibns to grow slack in it, especially if we find not at
once the answer we expect, warns us against this very thing, bidding us
to pray always, and  not tofaint,"* not to grow weary, since in due season we shall reap if we faint not; and in proof of this he brings forward
the parable of the Unjust Judge, with whom the feeble importunities of
the helpless widow did yet so mightily prevail, that they at length extorted from him the boon which at first he was determined to deny.
None but the Son of God himself might have ventured to use this
comparison. It had been overbold on the lips of any other. For as in
the parable of the Friend at Midnight we were startled with finding God
compared to a churlish neighbor, so here with finding him likened to an
unrighteous judge.  Yet we must not seek therefore to extenuate-as
some have been at great pains to do, and by many forced constructions
-his unrighteousness;t but on the contrary, the greater we conceive
that to have been, the more does the consoling and encouraging truth
which the Lord would enforce come out, the more strong the argument
for persevering prayer becomes. If a bad man will yield to the mere
force of the importunity which he hates, how much more certainly will
a righteous God be prevailed on by the faithful prayer which he loves.4
The fact that the judge is an unrighteous one, is not an accident cleaving to the earthly form under which the heavenly truth is set forth, and
which would have been got rid of, it it conveniently could, but is rather
a circumstance deliberately and voluntarily chosen for the mightier setting forth of that truth. In two strokes is described the wickedness of
tinuum desiderium, continua oratio.... Frigus caritatis, silentium cordis est:
flagrantia caritatis, clamor cordis est; and elsewhere: Tota vita Christiani boni
sanctum desiderium est; and again: Lingua tua ad horam laudat, vita tua semper
laudet. Cf. Ep. 130, c. 8.
*'EKKacEcaev-a word of not unfrequent use with St. Paul, but elsewhere in the
New Testament only here. Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. lxv. 20), warns against the
danger of this "fainting:" Multi languescunt in oratione, et in novitate suse conversionis ferventer orant, postea languide, postea frigidb, postea negligenter; quasi
securi fiunt. Vigilat hostis; dormis tu.... Ergo non deficiamus in oratione: ille
quod concessurus est, etsi differt, non aufert.
t For a monstrous specimen of the explanations, of which the aim is to get rid
of the &alKia of the judge, see Theophylact (in loc.)-it is not, however, approved
by him. It is also adduced by Pseudo-Athanasius (De Parab. Script., qu. 30), and
mentioned in SUICER, Thes., s. v. KprITS. It stands parallel with the extraordinary
explanation of Nathan's parable of the Ewe Lamb (2 Sam. xii. 1), given by
Ambrose (Apolog. Proph. David., c. 5).
t Augustine (Serm. 115, c. 1): Si ergo exaudivit qui oderat quod rogabatur,
quomodo exaudit qui ut rogemus, hortatur' and Tertullian, on the holy violence
of prayer: Hsec vis Deo est grata. Clemens too (Potter's ed., p. 947): fampse 6
ebEs eTa rOLavOTa 7rrTTuevos.




THE UNJUST JUDGE.                       401
the earthly judge: he "feared not God, neither regarded maen."  ( HI
feared not God:" all that God's law had said concerning the judge's
charge and the unrighteous judge's guilt, he counted light of (Exod.
xxiii. 6-9; Lev. xix. 15; Deut. i. 16, 17; 2 Chron. xix. 6, 7); nor
merely was there wanting in him that higher motive, the fear of God;
but its poor and miserable substitute, the respect for the opinion of the
world, was equally inoperative; he had reached that point of reckless
wickedness, that he was alike indifferent to either. And what was *orse
than all, he dared to avow this contempt to himself. The case, therefore, of any suppliant was the more hopeless, especially of one weak and
poor-weak, so that she could not compel him to do her justice-and
poor, so that she could not supply him with any motive, why for her sake
he should brave, it might be, the resentment of formidable adversaries.
Such, no doubt, is the widow of the parable, one "that is a widow indeed and desolate."  Many writers have noticed the exceeding desolation of the state of widowhood in the East, and the obviousness of the
widow, as one having none to help her, to all manner of oppressions and
wrongs;* of this, the numerous warnings against such oppression which
Scripture contains, are sufficient evidence. (Exod. xxii. 22; Deut xxiv.
17; xxvii. 19; Mal. iii. 5, and many more.)
How fitly then does this widow represent the Churcht under persecution, not necessarily under any particular persecution, but under that
which is always going forward, the oppression from the adverse element
in which she draws her breath.   Nor need it be only the Church at
large which we see represented in her, but also any single soul in conflict with the powers of darkness and the world. The adversary then
(" your adversary, the Devil," 1 Pet. v. 8), is the prince of the darkness
of' this world, the head of all the powers which are arrayed against the
manifestation of the kingdom of God either in a single soul, or in the
whole world, keeping down and, as far as it is allowed him, oppressing
it; the spiritual I erod that is ever seeking to destroy the heavenly
child. But the elect, they who having the first fruits of the Spirit,
* For instance, Ward in his Illust, ations of Scripture from the Manners aid
Customs of the Hindoos. Thus, too, Terence:
Non, ita me Dii ament, auderet facere hec vidue mulieri,
Qua in me fecit.
t Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cxxxi. 15): Omnis anima qua intelligit se desertam
omni auxilio nisi solius Dei, vidua est;... omnis Ecclesia una vidua est, deserts
in hoc seculo; si sentit illud, si novit viduitatem suam: tune enim auxilium prsesto
est illi; and Quest. Evang., 1. 2, qu. 45: Ipsa vero vidua potest habere similitudinem Ecclesie, qute desolata videtur donec veniat Dominus, qui tamen in secrete
etiam nune curam ejus gerit. Cf. Isai. liv. 1-8.
26




402                   THE UNJUST JUDGE.
groan within themselves, waiting their perfect redemption, are here rep
resented as in conflict with those adverse powers, as suffering oppression
from them; till under the sense of that oppression, and of their helplessness to effect their own deliverance, a cry is wrung out from them, a
cry generally for aid, but chiefly for that aid which will be final and
complete, the revelation of the Son of man in his glory,-even the cry
of the Prophet, " Oh I that thou wouldst rend the heavens, that thou
wouldst come down" (Isai. liv. 1), when the Wicked shall fall and not
rise again, when the Church shall be at rest, being for ever set free
from all the enemies that are round about her. It would be a very imperfect and slight view of those cries for deliverance, which occur so
often in the Psalms and in the Prophets, to refer them to any particular
and transient outward afflictions or persecutions which the Church or
any of its members are enduring. The world is always, whether consciously or unconsciously, whether by flattery or by hostile violence,
oppressing the Church; and Satan evermore seeking to hinder the manifestation of the life of God in every one of her members: and prayer is
the cry de profundis which the elect utter, the calling in of a mightier
to aid, when they feel the danger to be urgent lest the enemy should
prevail against them. And the words in which their need finds utterance, " Avenge me of mine adversary," wonderfully express the relation
in which we stand to the evil of which we. are conscious as mightily
working within us;-that it is not our very self, but an alien power,
holding us in bondage,-not the very " I," as St. Paul (Rom. vii.) is so
careful to assert, for then redemption would be impossible, but sin which,
having introduced itself, is now seeking to keep us in bondage. It is
one great work of the Spirit of God to make us feel this distinctness
between us and the evil which is in us. The new creation is in this like
the old, that it is a separating of the light from the darkness in the soul
of man,-not indeed, as yet, an entire expelling of that darkness, but a
disengaging of the light from it, so that the light being brought into
direct relation with him who is the fountain of all light, may act as an
opposing power to that darkness. The good and the evil in him are no
longer in a state of blind contradiction, but of distinct self-conscious opposition, The renewed man knows that he has an adversary, but for
his comfort, he knows also that this adversary is not his very self, but
another, so that if he resist him, he will flee from him; he knows that
the power which that other exercises over him is an usurpation, and
that it will be a righteous thing for God to cast out him who obtained
that power by fraud and by violence; and knowing this, he is able to
ory, with the widow in the parable, " Avenge me of mine adversary," or
rather, since men go not to a judge for vengeance, but for justice, —" Do




THE UNJUST JUDGE.                       403
me right on, deliver me from the oppression of, mine adversary.:'* And
this is the same petition that we make daily, when we say "Deliver us
from evil," or rather, "from the Evil One,"-from him who is the
source and centre of all evil.t
For a time the judge was deaf to the widow's petition; "He would
notfor a while." When it was'said above that the strength of the parable lay in the unlikeness between the righteous Judge of the world,
and this ungodly earthly judge, it was not meant to be denied,-nay,
this too is part of the teaching here,-that God often seems to man to
be acting as this unjust judge, to be turning a deaf ear to the prayer of
his people. For even the elect are impatient under suffering and affliction; they expect a speedier deliverance than God is always willing to
vouchsafe them; they think they have a claim to be heard and delivered
more promptly than God thinks good.: They cry, and when they receive no speedy answer, but are left, as it appears to them, long in the
hands of their enemies, or in the furnace of affliction, they are tempted
to hard thoughts of God, as though he took part with, or at least was
contented to endure, the proud oppressors, while the cry of his afflicted
people was as nothing in his ears; they are tempted to say with the
storm-tost disciples, " Carest thou not that we perish?" Now the parable is in fact intended, as we shall presently see, to meet this very difficulty and temptation, to which the faithful, suffering long under sore
earthly trials, are exposed.-We have in ver. 4, 5, recorded, not of course
what the judge spoke aloud, scarcely what he spoke in his own hearing,
but the voice of his heart, as that heart spake in the hearing of God.~
" He said within nimself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man, yet
because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lestby her continual
coming she wearyll me."  He was not impelled in the matter by any
* Schleusner, s. v. csce&w: Assere me juredicundo ab injuriA adversarii mei.
The Vulgate: Vindica me de adversario meo.
t The analogy of other passages, Matt. xiii. 19, 39; Eph. vi. 16; 2 Thess. iii. 3,
would lead us to translate in the Lord's prayer, 7rov~pov not as a neuter, but
masculine; and all the quotations in SUICER'S Thes., s. v. show that it was so interpreted in the Greek Church.
$ AUGUSTINE, Enarr. 2% in Ps. xxxiv. 17'
( Bernard: Audit Deus in corde cogitantis, quod nec ipse audit qui cogitat.
I| He uses a very strong expression here, vrorwTrdCSp, from nrc6rnor, the part of the
face under the eyes. Wahl: zrrwcnrdCw, sullo, ut sub oculis vivices et maculae
luride existant. St. Paul uses the same word (1 Cor. ix. 27) to describe the hard
discipline to which he submitted his body. Both there and here there is another
reading, irroirdCw or broT7rLei, instead of  rwnrcidCw, which is not without some
authorities in its favor. It is easy, however, to see how, in the present instance, that
reading arose, the transcribers thinking this too strong an expression for any thing
which the widow could effect; for how could she punish him till his face became




404                     THE UNJUST JUDGE.
other motive than a selfish regard for his own ease and quiet; but lest
these should be continually disturbed and broken in upon, he does her
right, that so he may be rid of her,-that she may not plague nor vex
him any more, as it was the same motive, though of course in a much
milder form, which moved the disciples to ask for the woman of Canaan,
that her prayer might be granted: "Send her away, for she crieth after
us."* (Matt. xv. 23.). Indeed this parable and that miracle form altogether an interesting parallel.  (Compare Sirac. xxxv. 17.)
Between the parable and its application,-that is, between ver. 5
and 6,-it is likely that the Lord paused for a while, and then again resumed his discourse: "' Hear what the unjust judge saith; and shall
not God avenge his own elect?"   In the first clause of the sentence the
emphasis should be laid on the word "unjust;" in the other, the epithet
of goodness which should complete the antithesis is omitted, as being
necessarily included in the name, God;-if the unjust judge acts thus,
shall not the just God avenge his own elect?  And the antithesis is to
be carried through all the members of the sentence: the righteous God
is not only opposed to the unrighteous judge, but the elect, the precious
before God, to the widow, the despised among men; their prayers to her
clamor; and the days and nights during which those prayers are made,
black and blue?' But the use of so strong a term is very characteristic of the man
described. Bengel: Hyperbole judicis injusti et impatientis personae conveniensit is exactly this exaggeration of language which selfishness uses in the things
which threaten its own ease and enjoyment; and we have numerous examples of a
like usage of words; thus aKV1AXIE, to vex or annoy, means properly to flay; and
the Spanish ahorcar, used much if the same sense, means rightly, to put to death
by hanging; and our English to plague, is properly, to lash; and these examples
might easily be multiplied. Beza's translation, obtundat, is happy,-that word
being used exactly in this sense: thus Terence, Ne me obtundas hac de re supius.
The assertion made by Chrysostom (De Laz., Conc. 3, c. 5), that it was pity which
at length moved the judge, is totally without foundation, and opposedc to the spirit
of the parable.
~* The endeavor to obtain help or redress by long-continued crying, and by
mere force of importunity,-to extort by these means a boon or a right which is
expected from no other motives, is quite in the spirit of the East. Thus it is
mentioned in CHARDIN'S Travels in Persia (I have not the book at hand to give the
exact reference), that the peasants of the district, when their crops have failed, and
they therefore desire a remission of the contributions imposed ontheir villages, or
when they would appeal against some tyrannical governor, will assemble before the
gates of the Schah's harem, and there Continue howling and throwing dust in the air
(Job ii. 12; Acts xxii. 23), and not be silenced or driven away, till he has sent out
and demanded the cause, and thus given them at least an opportunity of stating
their griefs; or sometimes they would beset him in the same manner, as he passed
through the streets of the city, and thus seek to gain, and often succeed in gainig,
their point, not from his love of justice, but from his desire to be freed from
annoyance. See BURDER'S Orient. 71lust., v. 2, p. 382.




THE UNJUST JUDGW                          405
to the comparatively short time during which she with her importunities
beset the judge. The certainty that the elect will be heard rests not,
however, on their mighty and assiduous* cryng as its ultimate ground,
but on their election of God, which is, therefore, here brought especially
into notice,f and they called. by this name of God's elect, rather than by
any other of the many titles that might at first sight have seemed equally
appropriate:-just as in Daniel (x'i. 1) the deliverance of God's servants is traced up to the same cause; "At that time," that is, at the
time of extremest distress, " thy people shall be delivered, every one that
shall be found written in the book."  Shall he'not avenge them, asks the
Lord, "though he bear long with them??' or since that phrase is mostly
used in Scripture, to set forth the relation of God to the sins of men, —
his patience in giving them  time and space for repeintnce,-it would
avoid perplexity if here another phrase were used, as for instance,
" though he bear them long in hand " or " though he delay with them
long?"t that is, long, as men count length.  He may be slack in aveng*'HyUepas Kal vvwbs here= irdvore of ver. 1. Our English " cry" is but a weak
translation of the original jBoiv. Tertullian translates it better by mugire; it is a
mighty crying (Gen. iv. 10; John iii. 8, LXX.; Jam. v. 4) which is here attributed
to the elect.
t Bengel (on Matt. xxiv. 22): Ubi supra robur fidelium ordinarium excedit vis
tentationum, electio allegatur.
t The words Kal iaKpoavpv  i r'e arros have created much difficulty. tome
refer abrobs to the oppressors, on whom the vengeance is taken, and 1uaKpoav/u.v is
then used in its commonest sense; " Shall not God avenge his elect, though he
bear long with their oppressors 1" yet against this Wolf says truly, Impiorum, de
quibus ultio sit sumenda, non meminit Christus. But uaKpoeraVce need not be
necessarily, differo ultionem, but merely differo, patienter expecto; see Heb. vi. 15;
Jam. v. 7, 8; Job vii. 16; and especially Sirac. xxxv. 18 (in the Greek, xxxii. 18).
Grotius seizes happily the point from which the two meanings diverge; he says:
Est in hMc voce dilationis significatio, qua ut debitori prodest, ita gravis est ei qui
vim patitur. Suicer, who has given rightly the meaning of the Lord's words
(quamvis lentb ad vindicandum ipsos procedat), has (s. v.,uaKpoavUfew) a good and
useful commentary on all the latter part of the parable. The proverb may be
brought into comparison: Habet Dens suas horas, et moras.-Since the'above was
written, I have seen an essay by Hassler (Tubing. Zeitschr., 1832, Heft 3, pp.
117-125), wherein he finds fault with this explanation, which he denies to lie in the
words, and makes Kal pacaKpotvucv e'r' aC'Tos a description of God's patience with
his suppliants, as contrasted with the fretful irritation of the judge under the
solicitations of her that beset him; and the passage, in his view, might thus be
translated, " Shall not God avenge his own elect, when also he is patient-toward
them i" shall he not avenge them, and so much the more while their reiterated
prayers do not vex or weary him, as that widow's prayers vexed and wearied the
judge-excite no impatience but only pity in his heart. Our Lord is then giving
an additional motive why they should not faint in prayer. There may be a question,
whether it is not the intention of the Vulgate to give this meaning, when it translates,




406                     THE UNJUST JUDGE.
ing his people as " men count slackness," as compared with their impa
tience, and with their desire to be at once delivered from affliction: but,
indeed, " he will avenge t/hn speedily," not leaving them a moment lon'
ger in the fire of affliction than is needful, delivering them from it the
instant that patience has had its perfect work; so that there is, and there
is meant to be, an apparent contradiction, while yet there is no real
one, between ver. 7 and that which follows.  The relief which, to man's
impatience seems to tarry long, indeed arrives speedily; it could not,
according to the far-seeing and loving counsels of God, have arrived a
moment earlier.* We may find a practical illustration of these words
in the whole of our Lord's conduct with the family of Bethany (John
xi.) in the depths into which he suffered them to be brought, before he
arrived to aid (just as, to take a milder example, it was not till the
fourth watch, in other words, until the last, that he came to aid his disciples laboring in vain against an adverse and perilous sea.  (Matt. xiv.
24, 25.)
The words with which the application of the parable concludes,
" Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith an the
earth?" are perplexing, for they appear at first sight to call in question
the success of his whole mediatorial work.t  But though we have other
grounds for believing that the Church will, at that last moment, be reduced to a very little band; yet here the point is not that there will be
then few faithful or none, but that the faith even of the faithful will be
almost failing;-the distress will be so urgent, the darkness so thick,
at the moment when at last the Son of man shall come forth for salvation and deliverance, that even the hearts of his elect people will have
begun to fail them for fear. The lateness of the help Zechariah (xiv.
Et patientiam habebit in illis? and of Luther: Und sollte Geduld dariiber haben?
but dariber is ambiguous. At all events this interpretation has no claim to be a
new light thrown upon the passage, as the writer supposes. Homberg (Parerga,
p. 146) had long ago proposed it, and Wolf (Curd-, in loc.) is inclined to fall in
with it, who sums up the meaning thus; Patientia igitur Dei hic refertur ad auditionem precum electorum, quod oppositum judicis injusti exemplum probabile
reddit, qui non patienter audiebat viduse querelas.
* Unger (De Par. Jes. Nat., p. 136): Opponuntur sibi pAaKpoavlujwv atque?i
TdXes, illud fortasse ad hominem opinionem (ut sit, " si vel tardior videatur "), hoc
ad sapiens Dei consilium referendum. Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. xci. 6) has some
admirable remarks on the impatience of men, contrasted with the seeming tardiness of God.
t We learn from Augustine that they were used by the Donatists, in reply to
the Church, when she pleaded against them her numbers and her universality
(Omnes enim haeretici in paucis et in parte sunt: Enarr. in Ps. xxxi 2). The
Donatists answered (applying to their own day this prophecy concerning the last
times), that the Lord himself had declared this fewness of the faithful; how he
should hardly find faith on the earth.




THE UNJUST JUDGE.                          407
1-5) describes, under the images of the old theocracy,-Jerusalem shall
be already taken, the enemy shall be within its walls, spoiling and desolating, when the Lord shall come forth, his feet standing on the Mount
of Olives, to fight against its enemies. All help will seem utterly to
have failed, so that the Son of man at his coming will hardly find faith,
or rather that faith, the faith which does not faint in prayer, with allusion
to ver; 1,-the faith which hopes against hope, and believes that light will
break forth even when the darkness is thickest, and believing this contin*ues to pray,*-he will hardly find that faith upon earth. The verse
stands parallel to, and may be explained by, those other words of our
Lord's: " For the elect's sake," lest their faith also should fail, and so
no flesh should be saved, "those days shall be shortened."t       (Matt.
xxiv. 22.)
* Theophylact observes here on faith, as the one condition of prayer, 7rdofs
rpooevXs 09Spov Kal Kprrls 7 irf[rsv. And Augustine: Si fides deficit, oratio
perit: quis enim orat quod non credit 1
f Vitringa's explanation of the parable (Erklar. d. Parab., p. 960, seq.) is
curious. I should think it his own, and likely to remain so. The unjust judge
represents the Roman emperors, the importunate widow the early Church, which
sought evermore to plead its cause before them, and by their interference to be
delivered from its oppressors. The emperors, after a long while, undertook its
defence, ceasing themselves to persecute, and not suffering others any moretto
persecute it.-Yet stranger than this is the view of Irenmeus (Con. Haer., 1. 5. c,
25), and of Hippolytus, or whoever else is the author of the treatise De Antichristo,
c. 37. The widow is the earthly Jerusalem, Israel after the flesh, which, forgetful
of God, turns to the unjust judge, that is, to Antichrist, for he is the despiser alike
of God and men (ver. 2), for aid against him whom she falsely believes her
adversary, namely, Christ. They see an allusion to the last days and to the
mighty part which, as tney assume, the unbelieving Jews will have in the setting
up of Antichrist's kingdom. (John v. 43; Dan. viii. 12.)




XXIX.
THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN.
LUKE XViii. 9-14..
THE last parable was to teach us that prayer must be earnest and persevering; this that it must also be humble.* Some have supposed, as;
for example, Vitringa,t that here too we have set forth before us the
rejection of the Jew and the acceptance of the Gentile; the Pharisee
being the representative of that whole nation, which would have taken
him as its most favorable specimen-the publican, of the Gentiles,
with whom those despised collectors of customs were commonly classed;
the one glorying in his merits, proudly extolling himself above the sinners of the Gentiles, but through this very pride and self-righteousness
failing to become partaker of the righteousness of God; while the other,
meekly acknowledging his vileness, and repenting of his sins, is justified
freely by his grace.  But the words with which the parable is introduced (ver. 9),.and which must give the law to its interpretation, are
opposed to this view. It was spoken " unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others; the aim of it was to
* Augustine finds a yet closer connection: Quia fides non est superborum sed
humilium, prsemissis subjecit parabolam de humilitate contra superbiam.
t ErklUr. d. PaTab., p. 974. Augustine too (Enarr. in Ps. lxxiv. 8) thinks this
application may be made, though it is not with him the primary: Hoc latins accipientes, intelligamus duos populos, Judseorum et Gentium: Judseorum populus
Pharisseus ille, Gentium populus Publicanus ille. Judsorum populus jactabat
merita sua, Gentium confidebatur peccata sua. So H. de Sto. Victore (Annott. in
Luc.): Pharisseus, Judaicum populum significat, qui ex justificationis legibus extollit merita sua, et superbiendo recedit. Humiliatus publicanus, Gentilem significat: qui longb I Deo positus, peccata confitetur, et lamentando propinquat Deo,
et exaltatur. Schleiermacher also observes, that it contradicts the idea of a
parable, that the Pharisee should here mean a Pharisee, or the Pharisees generally; but this objection yields to the fact, that the term parable is of very wide
signification throughout*the New Testament.




THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN.                  409
cure a fault which the Lord had noted in some of those that surrounded
him. He had seen in some of his disciples, displays of spiritual pride,
-of self-exaltation, accompanied, as they'always will be, with the contempt of others.  There is no hint given in the context to lead us to
suppose that the relations of Jew and Gentile are now before him: he is
dealing rather with a spiritual mischief, which he has observed showing
itself in some of his own followers; I say, in some of his own followers,
because I cannot for an instant conceive that by the example of a Pharisee
he is warning and rebuking the Pharisees. It would have been to no
profit to have held up to these the spectacle of a Pharisee praying, as
this one prays in. the parable. They would have held it only most natural and proper,'that he should have prayed in this fashion.* There
would have been for them no conviction of sin, but only for a disciple,
for one who had advanced much further in spiritual insight, though in
danger of falling back into pharisaic sins.  Such a one would only
need his sin to be plainly shown to him, and he would'start back at its
deformity.  He would see the Pharisee in himself, and tremble and
repent.
" Two men went up into the temple to pray," we are to suppose at one
of the fixed hours of devotion (Acts iii. 1), "the one a Pharisee and the
other a Publican;" a Brahmin and a Pariah, as one might say, if preaching from this Gospel in India-the Pharisee, a specimen of that class of
men, who, satisfying themselves with a certain external freedom from
gross offences, have remained ignorant of the plague of their own hearts,
and have never learned to say, Deliver me from mine adversary, who
do not even know that they have an adversary; the other, the representative of all who, though they have much and grievously transgressed,
are now feeling the burden of their sins, and heartily mourning them,
who also are yearning after one who shall deliver them from those sins,
and from the curse of God's broken law. The parable would make us
feel how much nearer is such a one to the kingdom of God than the
self-complacent Pharisee, or than any who share in the spirit and temper of the Pharisee,-that he indeed may be within it, while the other is
without. 
* Or to take another view of it, which is Mr. Greswell's: "Of what use in a
moral point of view would it be to hold up to the Pharisee the true picture of
himself and his sect? or what hope could there be of correcting his characteristic
vices, whatever they were, by laying them bare, and exposing them openly and
nakedly before himself? Such an exposure might be well calculated to irritate
and offend, but not to reform or amend them; for it cannot be supposed that they
would willingly be parties in their own disgrace or patiently acquiesce in their
own condemnation."  See also p. 248, note, some important remarks on the
question how far this is a parable proper or not.
t Gregory the Great (Moral., 1. 19, c. 21) wittily likens this Pharisee, and all




410            THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN.
It is a mistake growing out of forgetfulness of Jewish and early
Christian customs, when some commentators see in the fact that the
Pharisee prayed standing, an evidence already manifesting itself, of his
pride.*  Even the parable itself contradicts this notion, for the publi
can, whose prayer was a humble one, stood also.  But to pray standing
was the manner of the Jews (1 Kin..viii. 22; 2 Chron. vi. 12; Matt.
vi. 5; Mark xi. 25); though in moments of a more than ordinary humiliation or emotion of heart, they changed this attitude for one of kneeling or prostration. (Dan. vi. 10; 2 Chron. vi. 13; Acts ix. 40;. xx. 36;
xxi. 5.) The term station (statio) passed into the usage of the Christian
Church; it was so called, as Ambrose explains it, because standing the
Christian soldier repelled the attacks of his spiritual enemy; and on the
Lord's day the faithful stood in prayer, to commemorate their Saviour's
resurrection on that day; through which they, who by sin had fallen,
were again lifted up and set upon their feet.t  Some have combined the
words somewhat differently, and rendered the passage in this way;
" The Pharisee stood by himself, and prayed."     There would be certainly something morally striking in this construction of the passage,
indicating as it would that the Pharisee,-the separatist in spirit as in
name,~ and now also in outward act,-desired to put a distance between
himself and all unclean worshippers (see Isai. lxv. 5); but the other
construction, it is generally agreed, should be adhered to.
His prayer at first seems to promise well; " God, I thank thee," yet
its early promise quickly disappears: under the pretence of thankfulness to God, he does but thinly veil his exaltation of self; and he cannot thank God for what he has done for him, without insulting and casting scorn upon others. He thanks him indeed, but not aright;l for the
who, because of their victory over certain temptations, are exalted with pride, and
so perish through their very successes, to Eleazar, who killed the elephant, but
was himself crushed by its falling body (1 Macc. vi. 46): In prselio elephantem
feriens stravit, sed sub ipso quem extinxit, occubuit.
* Tirinus: PharisaPus stans superbo et erecto animo, quasi Deum ad judicium
provocans: so also Theophylact. It is possible however, the word may be emphatic,
-He stood forward prominently so that all men might see him as he was engaged
in his devotions (see Matt. vi. 5), which would then contrast with the iuaKpJrep
BTSrd, and the whole attitude of the publican; on which see Cyprian, De Orat.
Dom., ad init.; and Ambrose, De Off. Minist., 1. 1, c. 18, ~ 70.
t See BINGHAM'S Chris. Antt., b. 13, c. 8, ~ 3.
t So Cameron and J. Cappellus in the Crit. Sac., who make irpbs eavor'v= cKa
fa&vrdv.
~ Hesychius:,aplaios &aowplaf.e'vos, jL/AeplO^eYos, Kalcapds. St. Bernard observes
how he isolates himself in his prayer: Gratias agit non quia bonus, sed quia solus,
non tam de bonis quse habet, quam de malis quae in aliis videt.
11 Augustine says here (Serm. 115, c. 3), with an eye to the Pelagians, the
ingrati gratise: Quid est ergo qui impib oppugnat gratiam, si reprehenditur qui,uperbb agit gratias.




THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN.                  411
Pharisees, as Grotius well observes, " did not exclude the divine help.
But they who allow it and use this language, are frequently ungrateful
to it, allotting, as they do, to themselves the first share in virtuous actions, to God the second; or so recognizing common benefits, as to avoid
fleeing as suppliants to that peculiar mercy, which their own sins require."* Thus it was with him: but the right recognition of God's
grace will always be accompanied with deep self-abasement, while we
confess how little true we have been to that grace,-how infinitely short
we are of what we ought to, and might, have been, having had such help
at command; and moreover we shall thank him as much for our needs,
for the sense of jeed which he has awakened within us, as for the supplies of grace which he has given us. But this Pharisee thanks God
that he is " not as other men," as the rest of men, dividing the whole of
mankind into two classes, putting himself in a class alone, and thrusting
down all besides himself into the other class; his arrogance reaches even
to such a pitch as this; he in one class, all the world besides in the other.
And as he can think nothing too good for himself, so nothing too bad of
them; they do not merely come a little short of his excellencies, but
they are " extortioners, unjust, adulterers."  And then, his eye alighting
on the publican,t of whom he may have known nothing, but that he was
a publican, he drags him into his prayer, making him to supply the
dark background on which the bright colors of his own virtues shall
more gloriously appear-and in the blindness of his heart finding, it
may be, in the deep heart-earnestness with which the penitent was beating his breast, in the fixedness of his downcast eyes, proofs in confirmation of the judgment which he passes upon him. He, thank God, has no
need to beat his breast in that fashion, nor to cast his eyes in that shame
upon the ground; he has done nothing to call for this.
So perfect is he in regard to the commands of the second table. He
now returns to the first; in that also he is without blame. " Ifast twice
in the week."  He is evidently boasting of his works of supererogation.
According to the law of Moses, but one fast-day in the year was ap* There is an interesting anecdote told of the writer of these words, which
connects itself with this parable. At Rostock, where he was overtaken by a
mortal illness on his way to Sweden, he was attended on his death-bed by a
Lutheran clergyman, named Quistorp. When this last reminded him, with the
fidelity due to a dying man, on the one side, of all his sins known and unknown,
and on the other, not of his merits and reputation which filled the world, but only
of the grace of God in Christ Jesus, as of the one way of salvation, and of the
publican who had known how to lay hold of that way, Grotius replied, " I am that
publican," and so expired. Quistorp has himself given the account in a letter to
Calovius, the old antagonist of Grotius.
t Augustine (Enarr. 1 in Ps. lxx. 2): Hoc jam non est exsultare, sed in.
sultare.




412            THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN.
pointed, the great day of atonement* (Lev. xvi. 29; Num. xxix. 7), but
the more religious Jews, both those who were so and those who would
seem so, and especially the Pharisees, kept two fasts weeklyt on the
second and fifth days in the week.  Thus does he: nor is this all:  1
give tithes of all that Ipossess;"t the law commanded only to tithe the
fruit of the field and produce of the cattle'(Num. xviii. 21; Deut.
xiv. 22; Lev. xxvii. 30), but he tithed mint and cummin (Matt. xxiii.
23), all that came into his possession, down to the trifles on which there
was question, even in the Jewish schools, whether it was needful to tithe
them or not. (Hos. xii. 8.) He would therefore in both respects lay
claim to doing more than might strictly be demanded of him; he would
bring in God as his debtor; turning those very precepts concerning
fasting and paying of tithes, which were given to men, the first to waken
in them the sense of inward poverty and need, the second to bring them
to feel that whatever they had, they were debtors for it to God and
stewards of his,-turning even these into occasions for self-exaltation,
and using them to minister to his arrogance and his pride. Acknowledgment of wants or confession of sin, there is none in his prayer, if
prayer it can be called, which is without these.~  "Had he then no
sins to confess 1 Yes, he too had sins, but perverse and knowing not
whither he had come, he was like a patient on the table of a surgeon,
who should show his sound limbs and cover his hurts.  But let God cover
thy hurts, and *not thou: for if, ashamed, thou seekest to cover them,
the physician will not cure them. Let him cover and cure them; for
under the covering of the physician the wound is healed, under the covering of the sufferer it is only concealed; and concealed from whom.
from him to whom all things are known."H
* Called therefore X ca-rerla, Acts xxvii. 9; and by Philo, vJo-refas fopr4.
t The Latin Fathers are led astray by the ToO 0aj$drov here (in the Vulgate,
in sabbato), and understand the Pharisee to say that he fasted twice upon the
Sabbath.-though it is difficult to guess what they could have understood by the
twice fasting upon one day. (See AUGUSTINE'S Ep. 36, c. 4.)' But the week was
entitled, ra adSarTa, or sometimes as here, rb o-dtj8arov, deriving its title from its
chiefest day, as on the other hand the Sabbath was called 4Soyds.
t UOra Krjslat, which should be rather, All that I acquire, or, All that I earn
(qus mihi redeunt). It is only the perfect IKEKTac77   which means, I possess,-in
other words, I have earned. All the English translations, with the Vulgate (que
possideo), share in a common error.
~ Augustine (Serm. 290, c. 6): Rogare veneras, an te laudare o totum te habere dixisti; nihil tanquam egens petisti. Quomodo ergo orare venisti  And
Serm. 115, c. 6: Parum est, non Deum rogare sed se laudare; insuper et roganti
insultare.
I! Augustine (Enarr. 2" in Ps. xxxi. 2), who has in the same place much more
that is excellent on this parable. See, also, Serm. 351, c. 1: Non enim ille Phari.




THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN.                    413
It aggravates our sense of the moral outrage which is involved in the
Pharisee's contemptuous allusion to his fellow-worshipper, if we keep in
mind that'in this last we are to see one who at this very moment was
passing into the kingdom of God, who had come in the fulness of a contrite heart, to make, as I think evidently is meant, the first deep confession of his sins past which had ever found utterance from his lips, in
whom under sore pangs the new man was being born. How horrible a
thing does the Pharisee's untimely scorn appear, when we think of it,
mingling as a harshest discord with the songs, the Te Deums of angels,
which at this very moment hailed the lost which was found, the sinner
that repented.  For " the publican standing afar off," though, as Augustine observes, not afar off from God, for the Lord is nigh unto them that
are of a contrite heart, "would not lift up so much as his eyes* unto
heaven," to the dwelling of the Holy One, for he felt as the prodigal,
that he had sinned against heaven (Luke xv. 18), as Ezra when he exclaimed, "  my God I am     ashamed, and blush to lift up my face to
thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our heads, and our
trespass is grown up unto the heavens."  (Ezra ix. 6.)  He stood " afar
off, not that he was a proselyte or a heathen, or had not full right to
approach, for undoubtedly he also was a Jewi but in reverent awe, not
presuming to press nearer to the holy place, for he knew something of
the holiness of God, and (which always exactly keeps pace with that
knowledge) of his own sinfulness and defilement: he felt that his sins
had set him at a distance from God, and until he had received the
atonement, the propitiation which he asks for, he could not presume to
draw near. Moreover, he "smote 2upo0 his breast," an outward sign of
inward grief or self-accusationt (Luke xxiii. 48), as one judging himself, that he might not be judged of the Lord, and who would acknowledge how much heavier strokes might justly come upon him,-at the
sseus tam su& sanitate, quam morborum alienorum comparatione gaudebat. Utilius
autem illi erat, quoniam ad nedicum venerat, ea de quibus agrotabat confitendo
monstrare, gu&m dissimulare a vulneribus suis, et de cicatricibus alienis audere
gloriari. Non ergo mirum, si publicanus magis curatus abscessit, quem non puduit
wstendere quod dolebat. Cf. CHRYSOSTOM, De PaEnit., Horn. 2, 4.
* "Not so much as his eyes "-far less then his hands and his countenance, which
yet would be usually lifted up in prayer (1 Tim. ii. 8; 1 Kin. viii. 54; Heb. xii. 12;
Ps. xxviii. 2); which no doubt the Pharisee had lifted up in his. The feeling, that
in the eyes cast down to the ground is the natural expression of shame and humiliation, is permanently embodied in the word KarIcpEla, from KaTd and pdos. Cf
Tacitus (Hist. 4, 72): Stabant conscientia flagitii maestee fixis in terram oculis.
t Augustine (Serm. 67, c. 1): Tundere pectus, quid est, nisi argere quod latet
in pectore, et evidenti pulsu occultum castigare peccatum; for as elsewhere he
says: Quid est homo pcenitens, nisi homo sibi irascens' Bengel: Ubi dolor, ibi
manus.




414             THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN.
same time " saying, God be merciful* to me a sinner,"t or " to me, the
sinful one;" for as the other had singled himself out as the most eminent of saints, or indeed as the one holy one in the world, so the publican singles himself out as the chief of sinners, the man in whom all sins
have met-a characteristic trait! for who at that moment when he is
first truly convinced of his sins, thinks any other man's sins can be
equal to his own?
And he found the mercy which he asked; his prayer like incense
ascended unto heaven, a sacrifice of sweet savor, while the prayer of
the other was blown back like smoke into his own eyes; for " God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble:" "I tell you this
man went down to his house justifted rather than the other."        Not
merely was he justified in the secret, unsearchable counsels of God, but
he " went down to his housejustified," with a sweet sense of a received
forgiveness shed abroad upon his heart; for God's justification of the
sinner is indeed a transitive act, and passes from him to its object. The
other meanwhile went down from the temple, his prayer being finished,
with the same cold, dead heart, with which he had gone up. Christ does
not mean that one by comparison with the other was justified, for there
are no degrees in justification, but that one absolutely was justified, was
contemplated of God as a righteous man, and the other was not;~ so
*'IAao-7TL. The selection of this word is very observable: see Passow, who
without any reference to Scripture, shows how iXaIKoJuaL implies not reconciliation
only, but reconciliation effected through some gift, or sacrifice, or offering; so that
Cocher (Analecta, in loc.) has right when he says: Eam vocis iXdca7rTr vim esse, ut
causam meritoriam propitiationis, nempe cruentam Christi passionem et mortem,
simul comprehendat et indicet.
t Augustine (In Evang. Jok., Tract. 12): Qui confitetur peccata sua et accusat peccata sua, jam cum Deo tacit. Accusat Deus peccata tua: si et tu accusas,
conjungeris Deo. Quasi duse res sunt, homo et peccator. Quod audis homo, Deus
fecit: quod audis peccator, ipse homo fecit. Dele quod fecisti, ut Deus salvet
quod fecit. Oportet ut oderis in te opus tuum, et ames in te opus Dei. Cf. Serm.
36, c. 11; and Enarr. in Ps. lxvi. 6. Of this publican he says (Enarr. in Ps.
xxxix.): Sibi non pacebat ut ille parceret, se agnoscebat ut ille ignosceret, se
puniebat ut ille liberaret.
t The reading 8te8Kaiwyevos... ^ eKeTos; which is the lectio recepta of our
Greek Testaments, has, I believe, no MS. authority for it whatever. It was an
unauthorized emendation in the Elzevir edition, which has since held its place in
the text. The question lies between the readings X y&p eKeizos, which has far the
greater amount of outward authority in its favor, but is hardly intelligible, and
xrap' eKeiov, which, with less external support, has yet been received, as it seems to
me rightly, into the text of the later critical editions. It is probable that nAP
having by mistake been written rAP, the insertion of 4 and the change of Eceiwov
into eKE'Vos followed, as needful to make the words render up any sense at all.
9 It is characteristic that this should be denied by nearly all the chief commentators of the Roman Church, though in fact this is the very truth which the




THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN.                     415
that here the words found their fulfilment, " Ie hath filled the hungry
with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away;" "Though the
Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he
knoweth afar off." (Ps. cxxxviii. 6; Isai. lvii. 15; 1 Pet. v. 5, 6.)* And
the whole parable fitly concludes with that weighty saying, which had
already formed part of another of the Lord's discourses (xiv. 11); and
which, indeed, from the all-important truth which it contains, might well
have been often uttered: " For every one that exalteth himself shall be
abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted;" t words which
here form a beautiful transition to the bringing of the children to Jesus,
the incident next recorded by our Evangelist.
parable is to teach. Thus Maldonatus: Non significatur aut publicanum verb
justificatum fuisse, aut verb damnatum Pharisaeum, quanquam ita Euthymius
intelligit. He might have added many more who so understand it; Tertullian, for
instance (Adv. Marc., 1. 4, c. 36), affirms: Alterum reprobatum, alterum justificatum descendisse; and Augustine: Nam superbia in Pharisseo de templo damnata
descendit, et humilitas in publicano ante Dei oculos approbata ascendit.
* Augustine says of these two in the parable (Enarr. in Ps. xciii. 12): Ille
superbus erat in bonis factis, ille humilis in malis factis... Placuit Deo magis
humilitas in malis factis, quhm superbia in bonis. These are striking words, yet
will not bear any close examination. There may be, and was here, a humilitas post
mala facta, but there is no humilitas in malis factis, since in every sin there is a
root of deadly pride out of which it grows, a daring of the creature to lift itself up
against the Creator; and again, there is no possibility of a superbia in bonis, since
they cease to be good in which this pride mingles.
t Augustine: Videte, fratres, miraculum magnum, altus est Deus; erigis te, et
fugit a te; humilias te, et descendit ad te; and of this Pharisee (Enarr. 2a in Ps.
xxxi. 4): Noluit humiliari confessione iniquitatis suae; humiliatas est pondere
manfs Dei.




XXX.
THE PO UNDS.
LUKE xix. 11-27.
THE chiefest part of what might else have been said upon this parable,
has been anticipated in that of the Talents. The reasons for affirming
this to be not the same, but another parable, have been already given.
Not to speak of the many and important variations between the two —
variations so important that the two accounts can scarcely be records f
the same discourse-the parables bear the most decisive marks, each
one, of its adaptation to the peculiar circumstances under which it is
recorded as having been spoken; while in each case, the other would
not fit the time or place at all so well.* But on this matter it will be
needless to repeat, save exceedingly briefly, what has been already said.
We are first informed what the motive of the parable was: " He added
and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they
thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear."  It was
uttered then to repress impatience, to teach the need of a patient waiting
for Christ, and not merely that, but also of an active working for him
during the time of his absence: such was its aim as regarded those who
had joined themselves entirely to him, and had placed themselves to him
in the relation of servants to their Lord and Master. But he had also
other hearers on this his last journey to Jerusalem, such as had not indeed thus attached themselves to him, but a multitude drawn together by
wonder, by curiosity, and by other mingled motives. These, though
now having a certain good will toward Christ and his doctrine, and
though being, so long as they were in his presence, to a considerable
degree under his influence, yet not the less were exposed to all the evil
influences of their age, and liable to be drawn presently into the mighty
t
* Chrysostom (In Matth. HIom. 78) distinctly affirms them to be different, and
hadnot Augustine believed them so, we may confidently assume that in his work,
De Consensu Evang., he would have sought to bring them into harmony.




THE POUNDS.                        417
stream of hostility which was now running so fiercely and so fast against
him: and this especially, when in his own person he was no more
among them, when his death had seemed to belie his lofty pretensions.
For them is meant that part of the parable (ver. 14-27) concerning the
citizens who hated to have their countryman set over them as their king,
and as soon as he had withdrawn from them for a while sent after him
messages, disclaiming him for their lord, but who at his return paid the
fearful penalties of their hatred and defiance.
In the great Roman empire, wherein the senate of Rome, and afterwards its emperors, though not kings themselves, yet made and unmade
kings, such a circumstance as that which serves for the groundwork of
this parable can have been of no unfrequent occurrence. Thus Herod
the Great was at first no more than a subordinate officer in Judoea,* and
flying to Rome before Antigonus, was there declared by the senate,
through the influence of Antony, king of the Jews. In like manner his
son Archelaus had personally to wait upon Augustus in Rome, before
he inherited his father's dominions, which he then did, not indeed as king,
but only as ethnarch. History furnishes many other examples, for it
was felt over the world, in the words of the historian of the Maccabees, "whom they [the Romans] would help to a kingdom, those reign,
and whom again they would, they displace." (1 Mace. viii. 13.) That
he who should thus seek and obtain a kingdom was one well-born, &
" noblemann," is only what we should naturally expect, as it would be little
likely that any other would lift his hopes so high, or would have such
probability of being unable to maintain himself on his throne, as would
render it likely that the higher authority would install him there. Nor
is this circumstance without its deeper significance, for who was of such
noble birth as he, who, even according to the flesh, came of earth's first
blood-was the Son of Abraham, the Son of David; who was besides
the eternal and only-begotten Son of God?
The. kingdom which this nobleman goes to receive, can scarcely be,
as some understand it, another kingdom, at a distance from the land of
his birth, but rather he goes to receive the investiture of that kingdom,
whereof before he was only one of the more illustrious citizens, and
which after a while he returns to reign over as its king. Either supposition, it is true, would suit his case, whom this nobleman represents:
he went to be enthroned in his heavenly state, and in heaven to rule
over all as the Son of man (Heb. ii. 7, 8); thus Theophylact explains
it. But it might with equal truth be said that he went to receive solemn
investiture of that earthly kingdom, which he had purchased with his
blood, and which hereafter he shall return and claim as his own, sitting
* First Procurator; afterwards, oa-oar'ys.
27




418                         THE POUNDS.
on the throne of his father David;-and the circumstances of the narra,
tive evidently point to the last as the correcter view of the matter. It
was not over strangers, but over his fellow-citizens, that the nobleman
departed to solicit a dominion-else would there be no meaning in their
message," We will not have this man to reign over us;" whether these
words imply, as generally taken, that they, hearing of his purpose to go
and solicit the kingdom, give him notice beforehand that they will yield
him no obedience, that however he may receive at other hands the dominion over him, they will not acknowledge his rule, nor own allegiance to him,-or whether, as is -more probable, it is a message, or an
embassage rather, which they send to the court whither he has gone, to
anticipate and counter-work him there, to declare how unwelcome his
exaltation would be;-" We do not desire that this man should be made
our king.'.*  It was exactly thus that a faction of the Jews, in the
case of Archelaus, sent ambassadors to the court of Augustus to accuse
him there, and if possible to hinder his elevation over them. So again
we find him on his return exercising kingly functions among his fellowcitizens-setting his servants over five cities, and over ten-having
power of life and death, and executing extreme judgment on those that
had refused to admit his authority. There can hardly then be a question but that the kingdom which he goes to receive, is not any other,
but that very same of which he was himself originally a citizen.
Before however he went, "he called his ten servants," or rather, ten
servants of his,t " and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them,
Occupyt till I come." The sum here delivered to the servants is very
much smaller than that which, in St. Matthew, the man who was travelling into a far country committed to his servants' keeping ~ This is at
once explained, if we keep in mind how that parable was spoken to the
apostles, who of course had received infinitely the largest gifts of any
* The speaking of him in the third person, " this man" (Tov'oz), seems a strong
confirmation of this view, and wrpeoa3-ia is an embassage rather than a message.
(See Luke xiv. 32.)
t Besides that the original requires this, it would be absurd to suppose that,
with the immense households of antiquity, which, as Seneca says, were nations
rather than families (see BECKER'S Gallus, v. 1, p. 106), this nobleman, of consequence enough to be raised to a royal dignity, had but ten servants belonging
to him.
t$ rpayicarEt6aace, employ in trading. " Occupy" is here a Latinism. Thus,
occupare pecuniam, because money in business, or put out to interest, does not lie
idle, is in fact occupied or employed. So in NORTH'S Plutarch, p. 629, Phocion
refusing Alexander's gift, says, "If I should take this sum of money and occupy it
not, it is as much as I had it not."
5 A talent was = ~243 15s.; a pound (mina) = ~4 Is. 3d. (See the Diet. of
Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Drachma, p. 360.)




THE POUNDS.                        419
from Christ, while this is spoken to the disciples &enerally, whose faculties were comparatively fewer. How remarkable is this still ministry,
these occupations of peace in which the servants of the future king should
be engaged, and that too while a rebellion was going on. A caviller
remarkably enough asks, " Why did he not distribute weapons to his
servants? Such would have been under present circumstances the most
natural thing to have done."  Doubtless the most natural, as Peter felt
when he cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest, as all have felt,
who have sought to fight the world with its own weapons, and by the
wrath of man to work the righteousness of God. Such identifying of
the Church with a worldly kingdom has been the idea of the Papacy,
such of the Anabaptists. Men in either case feeling strongly that there
must be a kingdom of God, have supposed that it was immediately to
appear (ver. 11), and that they, and not Christ himself, were to bring it
into this outward form and subsistence-instead of seeing that their part
was, with the still and silent occupation of their talent, to lay the rudiments of that kingdom, and so to prepare the world for its outbreaking,
-which outbreaking should yet not actually come to pass, till the King
returned in his glory.
The Jews were especially Christ's fellow-" citizens," for, according to
the flesh, he was of the seed of Abraham, a Jew and a member of the
Jewish polity;-and they hated him not merely in his life, and until his
departure out of this world, but every persecution of his servants-the
stoning of Stephen-the beheading of James-the persecutions of Paul,
and all the wrongs which they did to his people for his name's sake, and
because they were his, were each and all messages of defiance sent after
him, implicit declarations upon their part, "' We will not have this man
to reign over us."  And Theophylact well observes, how twice this very
declaration found formal utterance from their lips,-once when they
cried to Pilate, "We have no king but Csasar;" and again, when they
said, "Write'not, The King of the Jews."  When we give this parable
a wider range, and find the full accomplishment of all which it contains,
not at the destruction of Jerusalem, but at the day of judgment,-and
it is equally capable of the narrower and the wider interpretation,-then
these rebellious citizens will no longer be merely the Jews, but all such
evil men, as by word or deed openly deny their relation and subjection
to Jesus, as their Lord and King (in this different from the unfaithful
servant, for he allows the relation, and does not openly throw off the.subjection, but yet evades the obligation by the false glosses of his own
heart), and their message will have its full and final fulfilment in the
great apostasy of the last days, which shall be even as this is, not an
svading merely of the subjection due unto Christ, but a speaking of




420                         THE POUNDS.
great things against4him (Rev. xiii. 5, 6; Dan. vii. 25), not merely disco
bedience, but defiance, even such as shall not be content with resisting
his decrees, but shall anticipate and challenge him to the conflict: " The
kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, Let us break their
bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us."
On the following verses (15-23) there is little to say which has not
been said in another place. At his return, the nobleman distributes
praise and rewards to them that have been faithful to him while he was
away,-punishments, more or less severe, to them who have abused the
opportunity, and taken advantage of his absence.* The rewards which
he imparts to his faithful servants, are royal, and this consistently with
the royal dignity, with which he is now invested; he sets them over
cities:t while the rewards imparted were quite different in the other
parable (Matt. xxv. 14-30)-for there the master being but a private
man would have no such power of setting his servants in high places of
authority. This is worthy of notice, as an example of the manner in
which each parable is in perfect keeping and harmony with itself
through all its minor details, which is another reason for believing them
originally distinct from one another. The rewards too, as they are
kingly, so are they also proportioned to the fidelity of the servants: he
whose pound had made five pounds was set over five cities,-he whose
* This, of course, is borrowed from the life, and is what often must have happened. We may compare the conduct of Alexander, rewarding and punishing
after his return from his long Indian expedition, from which so many in Western
Asia had believed that he never would come back. (See the Bishop of St. David's Hist. of Greece, v. 7, p. 62, seq.)
t Such a method of showing grace to servants was not uncommon in the East.
Barhebraus (quoted by HAVERNICK, Comm. ub. Dan., p. 87) tells of a slave, who,
giving proofs of his prudence and dexterity in business, his master, the Sultan
Zangi, exclaimed, " It is fit to give such a man as this, command over a city," and
at once he made him governor of the Kurisch, and sent him thither.-I cannot find
the force in these words, "Have thou authority over ten cities, &c.," which Mr.
Greswell does, when they supply him with a convincing argument in favor of the
millennial views (Exp. of the Par., v. 4, p. 501), for why should this image of
ruling over cities be interpreted literally? nay, being found in a parable, must it
not be accepted as an image only, which we are not to hold fast in the letter, but,
on the contrary, must seek to exchange for the truth which underlies it? That
truth certainly is, that he who is faithful in a little here (and all here is little compared to what is coming), to him much will be intrusted in a future age. But
more than this, or what that much will be, is in no wise defined, though this,
which Bengel notes on these " ten cities," is doubtless true: Magna rerum amplitudo ac varietas in regno Dei, quamvis nondum nobis cognita. We only know, in
Calvin's words: Nunc tanquam absentis negotia laboriosb curamus: tune verb
ampla et multiplex honorum copia ei ad manum suppetet, qua magnificb nos
exornet.




THE POUNDS.                               421
pound had made ten was set over ten.        We hear nothing of the other
seven servants, but need not therefore conclude that they had wholly
lost or wasted the money intrusted to them;* rather that the three who
come forward are adduced as specimens of classes, and the rest, while
all that we are to learn is learned from the three, for brevity's sake are
omitted.-Those who stand by, and who are bidden to take his pound
from the slothful servant,t and give it to him that had shown himself
the faithfulest, or, at least, the ablest of all, are clearly the angels, who
never fail to appear and take an active part in all scenes descriptive of
the final judgment.J
When tne king has thus distributed praise and blame, rewards and
penalties, to those who stand in the more immediate relations of servants to him, to those of his own household,-for the Church is the
household of God,-he proceeds to execute vengeance on his enemies,
-on all who had openly cast off allegiance to him, and denied that they
belonged to his house at all. (Prov. xx. 8.) At his command they are
brought before him, and slain before his face; as their guilt was greater,
so their punishment is more terrible than that of the slothful servant.
In the Marriage of the King's Son (Matt. xxii. 1) the vengeance on the
open enemies goes before that on the hypocritical friend or servant;* Thus Ambrose (Ep. in Luc., 1. 8, c. 95): De aliis siletur, qui quasi prodigi
debitores, quod acceperant, perdiderunt.
t It is characteristic that the o'ovidpiov (sudarium) which, not exerting himself,
this idle servant does not need for its proper use (" in the sweat of thy face shalt
thou eat bread," Gen. iii. 19), he uses for the wrapping up of his pound. That he
had it disengaged, and so free to be turned to this purpose, was itself a witness
against him.: Dschelaleddin, whom Von Hammer speaks of as the great religious poet of
the modern East, has an interesting little poem resting on the same idea as that of
the present parable,-namely, that of life with all its powers and faculties, as a
sum of money to be laid out for God. As it is brief I will subjoin a translation,
made, indeed, through the German. (See RUCKERT'S Gedichte, v. 2, p. 451.)
O thou that art arrived in being's land,
Nor knowest how thy coming here was planned;
Prom the Schah's palace to life's city, thou
On his affairs wert sent, at his command.
Thee thy Lord gave, thy faithfulness to prove,
The sum of life, a capital in hand.
Hast thou forgotten thine intrusted pound?
Stunned with the market's hubbub dost thou stand?
Instead of dreaming, up and purchase good;
Buy precious stones, exchange not gold for sand.
Thou at the hour of thy return wilt see
Thy Monarch set, with open book in hand.
What thou from him receivedst, he will bring
To strict account, and reckoning will demand:
And a large blessing, or a curse from him,
Thy faithfulness or sloth will then command.




422                         THE POUNDS.
here it follows after.  This slaying of the king's enemies in hisprersece
is not to be in the interpretation mitigated or explained away, as though
it belonged merely to the outer shell of the parable, and was only added
because such things were done in Eastern courts (1 Sam. x. 27; xi.
12; Jer. liii. 10), and to add an air of truthfulness to the narrative.
Rather it belongs also to the innermost kernel of the parable. The
words set forth, fearfully indeed, but not in any way in which we need
shrink from applying them to the Lord Jesus, his unmitigated wrath
against his enemies,-but only his enemies exactly as they are enemies
of all righteousness,-which shall be revealed in that day when grace
shall have come to an end, and judgment without mercy will have begun.* (Rev. xiv. 10.)   All this found its nearest fulfilment in the
overthrow of Jerusalem, and in the terrible calamities which went before and followed it: that was, without doubt, a coming of Christ to
judgment; but it will find its full accomplishment, when the wickedness
of an apostate world, having come to a single head, shall in that single
head receive its final doom,-in the final destruction of Antichrist and
his armies.
* Augustine often uses this and the parallel passage, Matt. xxii. 13 (as Con.
Adv. Leg. et Proph., 1. 1, c. 16; Con. Faust., 1. 22, c. 14, 19), in argument with the
Manichseans, who, contrasting the severity of the God of the Old Testament with
the lenity of the God of the New, would have proved that they were not, and
could not be, one and the same. But, he replies, there is no such contrast. As
there is love in the Old Testament, so there is fear, and that which should awaken
fear, in the New: and he alleges the terribleness of this doom in proof. The
Manichaeans could not betake themselves to their ordinary evasion, that the passage was an interpolation or a corruption, as they accepted the parables (see AUGUSTINE, Con. Faust., 1. 32, c. 7) for part of the uncorrupted doctrine of Christ.-We
may compare Heb. i. 13, "till I make thine enemies thy footstool," and we learn
from Josh. x. 24, what the image is, that lies under these words




INDEX.
A.                    AleloboS, 186 n.'AJKpoywviaos, 175 n.                AfcKalos, 131.'AvafScea, 268 n.                     Discipline in the Church, 87.
Avare'\Xev, 62 n.                     Distortion of the Parables by the Gnos.
Ancient Christianity, &c, 83 n.         tics and others, 40, &c.
Angels rejoicing, 315.                Doctrine not to be grounded on ParaAnointing of our Lord's feet, 239.      bles, 39.
Antichrist, 85.                       Donatist idea of the Church, 75-77, 86,
Apostasy of the heathen world, 322.      114.'AaoL'rwr, 322 n.                      AovXeteLv, 340 n.
AbTJadcros, 237 n.                     Ape'avoy, 238.
B.                                     E.
Baptism, 132, 135, 329.               Ecclesiastes; a commentary on the
Baaaco-r's, 133 n.                      Parable of the Pearl, 113 n.
Bengel, 185 n., 338 n.'Ec.dXXetyv Qc —holiness of the Catholic
Bios, 320 n.                            Church, 119.
Byssus, 372 n.'EKXd/cA reLV, 89 n.'ESvua yfdwov, 189 n.
C                     Envy expressed by the eye, 154 n.
Esther's history applied, 198 n.
Calling of the Gentiles, 187.'ETapos, 153 n.
Characters of different Gospels marked  EbXdjSeLa, 227 n.
in the Parables they record, 30, 31.
Christ as the Good Shepherd-a sym-                     F.
bol in the Early Church, 309.
" the heir of all things," 171.   Fables, two in the Old Testament, 10 n.
-     his second coming, 208.         Faith-the root of Charity, 194, 248 n.
Church in conflict here, 401.          -   its nature, 385.
seeking her lost, 313.            -     and works, 204.
Classical phrases frequent in St, Luke,  Feasts in the East often political, 179 n.
319 n.                              Fides formata, 247.
Covetousness, 274.
G.
D.                    Galilkeans, 280 n.
ae6irvov, 293 n.                      rdov'rOei?, 180 n.
Denarius, 145 n.                      Genesareth, lake of, 58.




424                              INDEX.
H.                     Metayer system of letting Estates, 168 n,
Harmony between things seen and un-   ^Midnight, Christ's second coming at,
seen, 19-22.                           210.
Millennium, 202.
Hezekiah's reformation (2 Chron. xxx.  Millennium, 202.
10) a parallel to {" The Marriage of  Miracles, in what like the Parables, 22
10) a parallel to "IThe Marriage of  Mustard-tree. 92 n.
the King's Son," 185 n.
Historico-prophetic School of interpreters, 43.                                            N.
Hours of the Jews, 146 n.              Naboth's death a type of Christ's, 172 n
Bymn of Prudentius, 306 n.            National life, 173.
Nature's present bondage, 22.
I.
Interpretation of.Two Parables by our 
Lord, 36.                            OltcovJos, 347 n.
j.                                     P.
TIal8lov, 268 n.
Judaea: its natural position, 165.
Judaea: its natural position, 165.     Parable: wherein it differs from (i.)
Justin Martyr's Conversion, 105.
Justin Martyr's Conversion, 105.         The fable, 10. (ii.) The mythus, 12.
(iii.) The proverb, 13.  (iv.) The
K.                       allegory, 14.
KaAejt and icxns-of invitation. 293 n.  Parables in use before our Lord's time,
46.
Ka'apyte', 286 n.
Kasapyfev, 28B6 n.                     -       other than our Lord's. (i.)
Kaio'ov, 150 n.
Katrcov, 153 n.                          Jewish, 48-53, 197 n. (ii.) Christian,
KepdTlov, 324 n.                         53-58.
K~aAalo^y, 168 n.         ~
KspaXaaioi, 168 n.                         - acted, 29.
----    the Seven of St. Matthew, xiii.
L.                      54: their relation, 122.
"Laborers in the Vineyard"-Jewish              of "The Ten Virgins" and
and Mahometan Version of the Para-     "The Marriage of the King's Son,"
ble, 150 n.                            their difference, 216.
Lamp, small, 211 n.                            of " The Talents," and " The
Lazarus, 373 n.                          Pounds," different, 416.
Leaven, 97 n.                                  of "The Marriage of the
Lenity of supposition in our Lord's      King's Son," and "The Great SupParables, 193.             *           per" compared, 177, 299.
A7Lv6s, 165 n.                         IIapalTewr^at, 294 n.
ArKcAay, 176 n.                        rIapac'ac'Xoa os-why applied to Caper.
naum, 58 n.
rIapar'veat, 73 n.
MI.                    IIcdpea-i and &peaolS, 288 n.
Maldonatus, 263 n.                    Ilapolufia, 13.
Mammon, 359 n.                        IlEipdCeLv, 252 n.
Man of Sin, 194.                      ILuoV, 192 n.
Marcion, 182 n.,payfdrs, 164 n.
Men compared to trees, 285.            Pilgrim's Prdgress, an allegory, 15 n.
MepilAva, 66 n.                        IAxeoyeSla, 271 n.
MepwrOT$s, 272 n.                      I       dlovUrv es Oedv (St. Luke xii. 15),
MeTraleAia and perTavoi'a, 160 n.        273 n.




INDEX.                             425
lnovpoi, in the Lord's Prayer, mascu-  Standing a posture of prayer in the
line, 403 n.                          Early Church, 410.
Prayer, 399.                          Story illustrative of " The Unmerciful
Pro-parabola and epi-parabola, 37.     Servant," 137 n.
Publicans, 817.'vyicvpia, 254 n.
Purgatory, 135.                      ZwvvreA'ea T'ro alCvos, 87 n.
Ivpyos, 165 n.                       Supererogation, works of, 213, 398.
Putting on Christ, 194.               Swedenborg, 40 n.
R.                                    T.
Readings of the Greek Testament:      Talent: use of the word in English, 222.
Matt. xviii. 28, 130 n.             TeXea(popeEi, 65 n.
xxi. 30, 158 n. and 160.            TeAcvrfs, 300 n.
xxi. 44, 175 n.                     Tertullian, 317.
xxv 13, 215 n.                      Ora-avp6s, 103 n.
Luke xvi. 9, 361 n.                   ToKds, 229 n.
xviii. 14, 414 n.                Traditional sayings of our Lord, 229 n.
Reward, its meaning, 156 n.           Tribulation: derivation of the word,
Righteousness not by the Law, 259.     64 n.
Types = Parables, 29.
S.                    Typical personages, 24.
Sacraments and the Church, 261, 262.
BayjlVn, 117 n.
Salmeron's division of a Parable, 38 n.'TwriCaa, 336 n.
Samaritans not a mingled people, 255 n.  wr'o. V, 403 n.
Zavrp&s, 118 n. 
Satan and his agency progressively unfolded in Scripture, 79.            Vintage and harvest: Bishop Horsley's
" Seventy times seven," 124.distinction, 87 n.
Siloam, 283 n.
Sin and Suffering: their connection,
282 n.                              White Garments, 191 n.
Sins: whether if once forgiven they   Wilderness: meaning of the word in
can return, 134.                      Scripture, 305.
&KcvaSaXov, 88 n.                     Works, spoken of in the New TestaOK3-, 363 n.                           ment, of three kinds, 285.
ZKx7p6s, 227 n.
Slaves in Antiquity, 221.                            Z.
Son of Man: force of the Name, 74.    ZLivLov, 80 n.
THE END.








P. Appleton 4- Company publish
NOTES
ON THE
MIRACLES OF OUR LORD.
BY THE
REV. RICHARD C. TRENCH, M. A.
One volume, 8vo. Price, $1.75.
" lThis book is a repint of an English work. The author is Professor of Divlr'ty in King's Cot.ege, London, and is the author of a standard work, also reprinted in this country, on the'Parablel
f our Lord.' We have examined the book before us with some little attention; and feel gratified at
the results of the examination. We have nothing in the English language, on this subject, which
can compare in elaborateness and critical value with the work of Mr. Trench. The style of treatment
adopted by Mr. Trench is plain and familiar, following the course of the Scripture narrative, and is
eminently apologetic. Difficulties are met and cleared away with a readiness that shows familiarity,
not only with the records themselves, but with the almost infinite theological controversies to which
they have given rise. The author relies much on the authority of the Fathers. He is evidently familiar with their, in some respects, incomparable productions, particularly with the writings of that
clear thinker and master in theology, Augustine, bishop of Hippo. These ancient writings he uses
often by way of illustration, very aptly. Mr. T. is familiar, too, with the productions of the German
theologians, and makes good use of them in his Notes, now by confuting them, now by adducing
their testimony in support of his own views. Without this knowledge of what the Germans have
said, no man, of the present day, need expect, we may safely say, to contribute any thing really
scholarlike, valuable, or permanent to theological literature. Mr. Trench knows well the truth of this
assertion. Indeed, the most valuable suggestions in his present work bear the mark of their German
origin. Not that the writer has borrowed without due credit from others; but he has become imbued,
by his plan of study, with the critical spirit of his masters.
" The Miracles treated of are thirty-three in number. There is prefixed to the main body of tlh
work, a Preliminary Essay on Miracles, in which the author discourses in an interesting and masterly
manner on the six following points: a.) their Names; b.) their Nature; c.) their Authority; d.) the
Evangelical compared with other Cycles; e.) Assaults on them; f.) their Apologetic Worth.-The
book is neatly bound in muslin."
" This is a work of great learning, evincing also on the part of the author, much thought and re'
flection. He draws very largely from the Fathers of the Church, both for his opinions and elucidae
tions, and to a Churchman especially, it is possessed of much interest and many attractions. The
style is clear and nervous, and the writer evidently fond of literary and theological research, whos
mind seems to have been fully and intensely occupied with the subject. He states his opinions boldly'
and is not ashamed to acknowledge the different sources whence they are derived. He has, in the
amount of intelligence he has condensed and communicated in this volume, been of great assistance
to the lovers of sacred lore, and the subject which he has chosen for discussion is of itself of so imposing a character, as to command in his readers their fixed interest and attention. Some have considered this work as unequalled on this subject."
"The book contains a preliminary essay on the names of miracles; the miracles and nature; the
authority of the miracle; the evangelical compared with other cycles of miracles; the assaults on the
miracles, and tbh apologetic worth of the miracles.
"The miracles of our Saviour are then treated of in their order, commencing with the Water made
Wine at Cana, and concluding with the second Miraculous Draught of Fishes; thirty-throe in
number.
" That this part of the Sacred History is the legitimate theme of a work, such as this claims to bie
is apparent. Christ's Miracles form a distinct feature of the history of his mission upon earth. It i
that feature of his public life which attracts the attention of the world, and challenges the closest
scrutiny. If this scrutiny succeeds in proving their genuineness, the claims of Jesus as the Saviour of
the world are for ever established; since when once proved genuine, they are miracles to us, precisely
a much as to those who with their own eyes looked upon them.
"In the treatment of these subjects the author makes a crittoal examination of the text, illustrated
with copious notes, so as to place before the reader a full expoaimon of all the circumstances attend.
ing the miracle. The practical as well as general design of such a miracle is also fully pointed out,
so that the reader is put in posession of the scope and bearing of this part of the work of our Saviour
considered by itself.
"To the full understanding of the New Testament such a treatise as this would seem neceary,
and the book will undoubtedly be found a welcome aid to the Biblical student the Sabbath  cboa
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done good service to literature."
The Westminster Review, the very highest critical authority upon English literature,
said of this work, upon its original publication in England-" We can sincerely recommend Dr. Vaughan's Revolutions in English History as a thoughtful, interesting,
scholarly presentment of the principal sociological vicissitudes of more than two
thousand years of our British existence. Dr. Vaughan's composition is extremely lucid
and nervous; not without a certain sedate ornamentation, but quite free from the
misleading exaggerations of a seductive rhetoric.'




.D. Appleton & Company's Publications.
18 CHRISTIAN CENTURIES.
B Y
THE REV. JAMES WHITE,
AUTHOR OF A HISTORY OF FRANCE.
I Vol. 12mo. Cloth. 538 pages, $1 25.
CONTENTS.
I. Cent.-The Bad Emperors.-II. The Good Emperors.-III. Anarchy and Confusion.-Growth of the Christian Church. —IV. The Removal to Constantinople.-Establishment of Christianity.-Apostasy of Julian.-Settlement of the Goths.-V. End of
the Roman Empire.-Formation of Modern States.-Growth of Ecclesiastical Authority.
-VI. Belisarius and Narses in Italy.-Settlement of the Lombards.-Laws of Justinian.
-Birth of Mohammed.-VII. Power of Rome supported by the Monks.-Conquests of
the Mohammedans.-VIII. Temporal Power of the'Popes.-The Empire of Charlemagne.
-IX. Dismemberment of Charlemagne's Empire.-Danish Invasion of England.-Weakness of France.-Reign of Alfred.-X. Darkness and Despair.-XI. The Commencement
of Improvement.-Gregory the Seventh.-First Crusade.-XII. Elevation of Learning.Power of the Church.-Thomas B Becket.-XIII. First Crusade against Heretics.-The
Albigenses.-Magna Charta.-Edward I.-XIV. Abolition of the Order of Templars.Rise of Modern Literature.-Schism of the Church.-XV. Decline of Feudalism.-Agincourt.-Joan of Arc.-The Printing Press. -Discovery of America.-XVI. The Reformation.-The Jesuits.-Policy of Elizabeth.-XVII. English Rebellion and Revolution.Despotism of Louis the Fourteenth.-XVIII. India.-America.-France.-Index.
Opinions of the Press.
Mr. White possesses in a high degree the power of epitomizing-that faculty which
enables him to distil the essence from a mass of facts, and to condense it in description;
a battle, siege, or other remarkable event, which, without his skill, might occupy a
chapter, is compressed within the compass of a page or two, and this without the sacrifice of any feature essential or significant.-Century.
Mr. White has been very happy in touching upon the salient points in the history
of each century of the Christian era, and yet has avoided making his work a mere bald
analysis or chronological table.-Providence Journal.
In no single volume of English literature can so satisfying and clear an idea of the
historical character of these eighteen centuries be obtained.-Home Journal.
In this volume we have the best epitome of Christian History extant. This is high
praise, but at the same time it is just. The author's peculiar success is in making the
great points and facts of history stand out in sharp relief. His style may be said to be
stereoscopic, and the effect is exceedingly impressive.-Providence Press.




D. AppZeton & Co.'s Publication.
HISTORY OF FRANCE,
From   the Earliest Times to MDCCCXLJIl1.
By the REV. JAOIES WHITE,
Author of the "Eighteen           Christian   Centuries."
ONE VOLUME, OCTAVO. 571 PAGES. $2.
This History aims at something higher than a mere epitome of events. While it
gives the results from its author's mind of his various reading rather than the abstracts
of what he read, it yet devotes sufficient space to any occurrences which seem to have
a general bearing on the progress or character of the nation.
It is believed to be more especially adapted to the benefit of general readers who
are anxious for historical as well as other kinds of knowledge, but who, in respect to
the History of France, are repelled from the attempt to acquire it by the dryness of the
narrative and the uninteresting style of the smaller volumes devoted to the subject, and
by the time and labor required for the perusal of the more extensive and valuable
works.
This book has had the highest commendation from the British critical press
generally.
Speaking of its conciseness and attractive style, the Athenaeum says: "Its 600
pages contain every leading incident worth the telling, and abound in word painting,
whereof a paragraph has often as much active life in it as one of those inch-square etchings of the great Callot, in which may be clearly seen whole armies contending in
bloody arbitrament, and as many incidents of battle as may be gazed at in the miles of
canvass in the military picture galleries at Versailles.  * *  Especially skilful is Mr.
WHITE in the depicting of the great revolutions of France, and their consequences."
THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS.
A NEW ENGLISH VERSION, EDITED WITH COPIOUS NOTES AND APPENDICES,
ILLUSTRATING THE HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF HERODOTUS, FROM
THE MOST RECENT SOURCES OF INFORMATION; AND EMBODYING THE
CHIEF RESULTS, HISTORICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHICAL, WHICH HAVE
BEEN OBTAINED IN THE PROGRESS OF CUNEIFORM AND HIEROGLYPHICAL DISCOVERY. BY GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A., LATE FELLOW AND
TUTOR OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD, ASSISTED BY COL. SIR HENRY
RAWLINSON, K. 0. B., AND SIR J. G. WILKINSON, F. R. S. WITH MAPS AND
ILLUSTRATIONS. FOUR VOLUMES, OCTAVO. $10.
The object of this work is to present the English reader with a correct yet free
translation, and to collect and methodize the chief illustrations of the author, which
modern learning and research have accumulated. Parallel with the progress of the
work, a series of fresh discoveries have been made upon its (to us) more important subjects-the ethnography of the East, and the history and geography of Babylonia and
Assyria. The results of these discoveries, up to the latest, have been incorporated in
the illustrative part of the work-great part of it having been from time to time re-written, as new light has been thrown upon doubtful points.
This feature, together with the labor of scholarship given to the task, renders the
work one of the most valuable and erudite of modern publications.




D. Appleton &     Co.'s Publications.
A NEW HISTORY
OF
THE UNITED STATES.
BY
J. H. PATTON, A. M.
In one large vol., 822 pages, 8vo, half Morocco. Price, $3 50.
lustttte   6 Witt fut 0ital                ranbfnigs*.
In presenting the reading public this volume, the Publishers hope to
supply a want long      felt-that of a popular History        of the United States
occupying a place between the documentary histories, extending to six or
more volumes, and the mere compends used in Schools. The former of thege
are beyond the reach of great numbers of intelligent general readers, while the
latter do not meet their wants.
Much labor has been given to supply a more than ordinary deficiency in
the histories of the War of 1812, and the War with Mexico.          As to the latter,
the causes which led to it, the annexation of Texas, the intrigues, the conflicts, the results, are graphically given.
"It is the result of careful, deliberate, and extended research; It exhibits impartial and sound
Judgment, and is written in an easy and attractive style, making it a book to be read as well as to
be preserved for constant reference."-New York Observer.
" We cannot speak too well of its accuracy and impartiality."-Christian Intelligencer.
" We regard the book as a success."-Philadelphia Presbyterian.
" The book is one which a Christian parent will himself read with satisfaction, and it is one
which he can safely and profitably place in the hands of his children."-New York Evangelist.
"The War of 1812 is fully explained. The late Administrations and their history, are sketched
with remarkable accuracy and candor."-The Evening Post.
"An excellent history of the United States for family reading. The author gives due weight to
the moral and religious influences which have contributed to form our national life, and the tone of
his work throughout is admirable." —The Independent.
"In this single volume will be found as comprehensive a view of the origin, growth, and development of our institutions, and of the incidents of our career as a people, as can be found in the
larger histories." —N.. Y.Realtd.
"The author, possessing a clear mind and a good style, bften aptly characterizes men and events
in a few graphic words."-N. Y. Chronicle.
"The author has given a narrative, not merely of external events, but of the interior life and
growth of the people. Mr. Patton's style is deserving of unqualified praise. It is pure, simple,
strong, free from mannerism, and singularly easy and graceful." —orth American Review.




D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.
AIDS TO FAITH:
A SERIES OF THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS.
BY VARIOUS WRITERS.
BEING
A REPLY TO "ESSAYS AND REVIEWS."
1 vol., 12mo, cloth, 538 pages, $1.25.
CONTENTS.
I. On Miracles as Evidences of Christianity. H. L MANSEL, B. D., Waynflete Professor
of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy,
Oxford; late Tutor and Fellow of St.
John's Coll.
II. On the Study of the Evidences of Chris. WILLIAM FITZGERALD, D.D., Lord Bishtianity.                            f    op of Killaloe.
III. Prophecy............................ A. M'CAUL, D.D., Professor of Hebrew and
Old Testament Exegesis, King's College,
London, and Prebendary of St. Paul's.
IV. Ideology and Subscription............... F. C. COOKE, M.A., Chaplain in Ordinary to
the Queen, one of H. M. Inspectors of
Schools, Prebendary of St. Paul's, and Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Lincoln.
V. The Mlosaic Record of Creation......... A. ACAUL, D.D., Professor of Hebrew and
Old Testament Exegesis, King's College,
London, and Prebendary of St. Paul's.
VI. On the Genuineness and Authenticity of GEORGE RAWLINSON, M. A., Camden
the Pentateuch.                          Professor of Ancient History, Oxford; and
late Fellow and Tutor of Exeter Coll.
VII. Ispiration.............................. EDWARD HAROLD BROWNE, B D., Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge,
and Canon Residentiary of Exeter Cathedral.'
VIII. The Death of Christ..................... WILLIAM THOMSON, D. D., Lord Bishop
of Gloucester and Bristol.
IX. Scripture and its Interpretation......... CHARLES JOHN ELLICOTT, B. D., Dean
of Exeter, and Professor of Divinity,
King's College, London.
EXTRACT FROM PREFACE.
The Essays in this volume are intended to offer aid to those whose faith may have been shaken
by recent assaults. The writers do not pretend to have exhausted subjects so vast and so important within the compass of a few pages; but they desire to set forth their reasons for believing the
Bible, out of which they teach, to be the inspired word of God, and for exhorting others still to
cherish it as the only message of salvation from God to man. They hope these Essays may be, to
those whose attention they can secure, incentives to further thought and reading. They have
avoided rather than sought direct controversy. They have excluded personality; they have not
spoken with undue harshness of the views they have been forced to oppose.
This volume is humbly offered to the great Head of the Church, as one attempt among many
to keep men true to Him in a time of much doubt and trial. Under His protection, His people
need not be afraid. The old difficulties and objections are revived, but they will meet in one way
or another the old defeat. While the wvorld lasts skeptical books will be written and answered,
and the books, perhaps, and the answers alike forgotten. But the Rock of Ages shall stand unchangeable; and men, worn with a sense of sin, shall still find rest under the shadow of a great
rock in a weary land.