XXV. THE PRUDENT STEWARD.

 XXV.
THE PRUDENT STEWARD.

“And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.”—Luke xvi. 1–9.

When we read the parable we may detect a feeling of surprise creeping over our minds, that the Lord, who had the whole world and its history before him whence to select his examples, should have chosen a specimen of worldly wisdom, damaged by an admixture of downright falsehood, in order to stimulate thereby the spiritual zeal of his own disciples. The three following observations will, in my judgment, explain and completely remove the difficulty:—(1.) The Holy One, precisely because he is perfectly holy, can come closer to the unholy than we who are infected with sin and susceptible of injury from contact with impurity. Jesus talked with the Samaritan at the well, and permitted the sinner to wash his feet with tears in Simon’s house. His own disciples and the Pharisees wondered by turns why he came so close to the unclean; but if they had been free from sin as he was, they could have handled it freely when in their ordinary ministry it crossed their path. Inflammable matter must be kept far from fire; whereas matter that is incombustible may, when a necessary cause occurs, safely pass through the midst of the flame. (2.) A shorter parable in another place presents and explains the same difficulty: “Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” Serpents are proposed to the disciples as examples to be imitated; but it is the wisdom only and not the hurtfulness of the serpent that their Master enjoins them to imitate. Foresight and dishonesty are not more closely or inseparably united in the character of the cunning steward than wisdom and hurtfulness in the nature of the serpent. In both alike the Master meant that one  quality which is commendable should be selected for imitation, and the other quality which is vile should be cast away with loathing. (3.) The key-note of the parable is expressed in verse 8: “The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” The line of interpretation must be drawn through this point, and all the scattered features of the picture brought up or brought down to meet it. Thus the tinge of dishonesty that runs through the prudence of the steward, so far from rendering his case unsuitable for the purpose of the Lord, imparted to it additional appropriateness and point. The methods, as well as the ends of the worldly, were different from those of the spiritual. This example shows that, from the ungodly man’s own view-point, and according to his own maxims, he prosecutes his object with energy and skill. Let the Christian, with his clearer, purer light, prosecute his high aim by holy means with an energy and zeal similar to those which the ungodly exhibit in the pursuit of their gains or pleasures. It was the design of the Lord not simply to give his disciples generally an example of wisdom, but to give them specifically an example of the wisdom of the world—the wisdom that neither fears God nor regards man. An example of prudence taken from a good man’s history, and exercised under submission to the law of God, would not have suited the Master’s purpose so well as the one that has been chosen.

It is important to notice at the outset, that in this instance the Lord addresses his instructions specifically to his own disciples. The three parables which are recorded in the preceding chapter were spoken to the Pharisees; immediately after these, and in continuation of the history, the evangelist intimates that “he said also unto his disciples,  There was a certain rich man,” &c. Besides those lessons which he gave to the multitude, teaching how the distant may come near, he gave this lesson to those who had already come near, in order to incite them to diligence in the course which they had chosen: this Teacher rightly divides the word of truth, giving to each his portion in due season. In this lesson the diligence of worldly men is employed to rebuke the slothfulness of Christians. Those who make perishing things their portion are thoughtful, inventive, energetic, decisive in prosecuting their object; how thoughtless and slow are the heirs of the kingdom in the work of their high calling!

“A certain rich man had a steward.” We learn here, incidentally, how evenly balanced are the various conditions of life in a community, and how little of substantial advantage wealth can confer on its possessor. As your property increases, your personal control over it diminishes; the more you possess, the more you must entrust to others. Those who do their own work are not troubled with disobedient servants; those who look after their own affairs, are not troubled with unfaithful overseers.86

This overseer cheated his master, and concealed the fraud for a time under the folds of complicated accounts; but, as in all similar cases, this career of wickedness came suddenly to an end. Some person discovered the facts and informed the proprietor. When suspicion was raised inquiry could not be resisted; and, when an inquiry was  instituted, the crime could not be hid. The steward seems to have given up his case as soon as he was accused; he uttered not a word in his own defence. There was no proof on one side, and no denial on the other. The case was clear, and the process summary; sentence of dismissal was pronounced on the spot. But the proprietor was still in a great measure at the mercy of this unfaithful servant; the accounts were all in his hand, and the owner could not instantly resume the power which he had delegated. The agent accordingly was ordered to prepare and submit a balance-sheet, on which his successor might proceed to administer the estate.

There was not much time for deliberation: the decree of dismissal had already passed, and as soon as the state of accounts could be made up, this once comfortable and important personage must be cast penniless upon the world. Now or never, he must do something for himself. With habits, both mental and physical, cast in another mould, he cannot win his bread as a labourer; and his pride revolted against the prospect of becoming a beggar on the spot where he had long been owned as master by the multitude. His resolution is quickly formed, and as quickly carried into effect. He will employ his present opportunity, so as to provide a refuge for himself in his future need: he will so deal with the money while it is still in his hand, as that he shall not be left destitute when he is driven from his place.

In prosecution of his purpose, the steward summoned his master’s debtors one by one into his presence. He held their acknowledgments for goods received, or their signatures for the amount of rent which they had agreed to pay for their lands. Having in his hands the documents  which bound the debtors, he might have read off from these the amount due by each; but it suited his purpose better to ask the obligants what sums they owed, and to proceed wholly upon their voluntary acknowledgments. The first owed a hundred measures of oil, the second a hundred measures of wheat. What these quantities may have been in relation to our standards is a question which possesses only a critical and antiquarian interest: it has no bearing on the interpretation of the parable, and therefore we pass it without further notice. The absolute amount of the debt has no influence on the meaning of the parable; the point which is really important is the proportion between the amount owned by the debtors and the amount exacted by the steward. Olive oil and wheat were two of the staple products of the country, and the obligations in regard to them may have been incurred either in transactions of a mercantile character, or in those which intervene between landlord and tenant.87

The method of the overseer is short and simple: apart from considerations of morality, conscience, and divine retribution, it seemed a short road to the accomplishment of his purpose. He surrendered to the debtors their obligations, and received in return obligations for smaller amounts, in one case for fifty, and in another for eighty, instead of a hundred. These two cases are submitted as specimens: others were treated in a similar way. Of course the steward could not obtain from these debtors any obligation in his own favour for the portion remitted, which could be enforced in a court of justice; for the proof of the claim on the one side would have revealed  his guilt on the other: but it was assumed between the parties that the benefit conferred should in due time be substantially acknowledged and repaid. The steward counted that in the day of his distress those men on whom he had conferred favours would receive him into their houses.88

It was expected, moreover, that the proprietor, or the steward whom he might afterwards employ, could not exact more than the smaller sums, for which they possessed the acknowledgments of the parties. We could indeed conceive a case in which the injured owner could lead a proof of fraud in the transaction, and enforce from the obligants the original amounts; but it is not probable that, in an age when records were defective, and the two parties immediately connected with the fraudulent transaction deeply interested in concealing it, such a suit could be successfully carried through.89

The lord, that is the injured proprietor, commended the unjust steward, because, or in that, he had done wisely. The difficulty here lies on the surface,—lies, as it were, in the sound; upon a close examination it vanishes. First of all, the lord who praised the steward is, as the translators have indicated by printing the word without a capital, not the Lord Jesus, the speaker of the parable,  but the master, whom the cunning agent had robbed. Further, this praise obviously did not indicate moral approval. The master praised the servant when all was over, not for the faithfulness with which he had been served, but for the cleverness with which he had been cheated. The commendation which the master bestowed upon the servant was that of sharply looking after himself. It is the commendation which one whose house has been robbed during the night might bestow in the morning upon the robber, after noticing how adroitly he had opened the locks, and carried off the booty.

This nefarious transaction was, from the perpetrator’s view-point, cleverly planned and promptly executed. It was no sooner said than done; delay might have ruined the steward’s prospects. He must have everything done before he is summoned actually to transfer his books to his successor’s hands. He provided in his own way for his own future need; the plan was well-contrived, and successfully carried into effect. This praise, but expressly and only this, the injured master bestowed upon the man.

“And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.” Such is the lesson which the Lord draws from the picture. Difficulties, indeed, adhere to the phraseology in its details; but the interpretation, in its main line, is determined and made evident by landmarks which can neither be overlooked nor removed. The mammon of unrighteousness means the world with all its business and its possessions; mammon is denominated unrighteous, generally on account of the manner in which it is employed by worldly men, and specially on account  of the case in hand, where a gross injustice was perpetrated without scruple, and as an ordinary matter of business. Alas, how prevalent is this form of unrighteousness still! Although justice in a large measure pervades and so sustains the vast commerce of the country, many mean tricks insinuate themselves between its mighty strata, corroding its fabric, and undermining its strength.

In counselling the disciples to acquire for themselves friends from the mammon of unrighteousness (ποιησατε ἑαντοις φιλους εκ του μαμωνα της αδικιας), the Lord obviously adopts the terms of his spiritual lesson from the structure of the parable which conveys it. By remitting part of their debts the steward made the debtors his friends; he won them to his side, and made sure of their sympathy when his day of need should come. His prudence and skill were commendable, but the fraud which was mingled with them is neither approved by the Lord, nor prescribed as a pattern for the disciples.90 Nor is it difficult to lift the pure lesson from the impure ground on which it lies. The steward could not reach his unrighteous object except by a crooked path; but the ends which a Christian strives to attain neither require nor admit the employment of falsehood. Use the world in such a way that it shall help and not hinder the interests of your soul and of the world to come.

The position of the phrase, ἐις τὴν γενεὰν τὴν ἑαυτων, in or for their own generation, near the end of the sentence, determines that it is applied equally to both  parties. It is implied that both classes, the children of the world and the children of light, look after their own affairs; and it is intimated that the one class attends to its business more earnestly and more skilfully than the other. This man cleaves to the world as his portion, and that man has chosen the Saviour as his: but, in point of fact, he who has chosen the inferior object prosecutes it with the greater zeal. The superior energy of the worldling in the acquisition of gains is employed to rebuke the Christian for his slackness in winning the true riches. This is the main lesson of the parable.

The specific form which the lesson assumes is,—Provide now for future need, and make the opportunities of time subservient to the interests of eternity.

The characteristic features of the steward’s skill were, that when his dismissal was near, he occupied the short time that remained, and the resources still at his disposal, in skilfully providing for the future. We are stewards in possession still, but under warning; do we employ the time and the opportunities that remain in making our calling and election sure?

Many precious possessions have been placed in our hands by the owner of all; health of body and soundness of mind; home and friends; good name or great riches, or both conjoined;—these and many others have been by their owner placed under our charge, that we should lay them out for him. Soon the stewardship will be taken from us. “When ye fail,”—that is, when we can no longer retain our hold of time and life; when flesh and heart are failing; when a mist comes over the eye, so that it can no longer see the circle of weeping friends that stand round the bed of death,—have we an everlasting habitation ready to receive the departing spirit?

 More particularly the practical question is, Have we disposed of earthly possessions and opportunities, so that they helped and did not hinder the acquisition of an incorruptible inheritance?

There is a place and a use for temporal things in making sure of the life eternal. How constant has been the tendency of fallen humanity to run wildly into opposite extremes of error; because the Popish system gives worldly possessions too high a place in the concerns of the soul, we may readily fall into the error of giving them no place at all. We lean hard over against the superstition that expects by alms, and money paid for masses, to smooth the spirit’s path to peace beyond the grave; but when we have refused to make money directly the price of our admission into heaven, we have not exhausted our duty in regard to its bearing on our eternal weal. The property, and money, and occupations of time may instrumentally affect for good or evil our efforts to lay up the true riches. According as they are employed, they may become a stumbling-stone over which their possessor shall fall, or a shield to cover his head from some fiery darts of the wicked one.91

Could it be truly said of any who are lost that the  mammon of unrighteousness brought them to the place of woe? or, conversely could it be truly said of any who now stand round the throne in white, that the mammon of unrighteousness became the friend who introduced them to that everlasting habitation? I reply, this mammon is not and cannot be a cause either of being saved or being lost; but it, as well as all other things in time, may become instruments in the saving or destroying of a soul, according as it is wisely used or foolishly abused. For example, in the next parable, it was sin and not wealth that ruined the rich man; many richer men than he have walked with God on earth, and entered rest when they departed. Wealth was not his destroyer, yet he so used his wealth as to permit the wicked one to bind his soul with it as with chains over to the second death. On the other hand, it was neither the poverty nor the sores of Lazarus, nor both together, that saved him; many as destitute of money and as full of sores as he are never saved. Christ was this man’s Saviour,—Christ alone; yet, his poverty became in God’s hands, and through his servant’s faith, the instrument of shielding him from temptation and purging his dross away. In the same subordinate and instrumental sense in which the rich man’s wealth was his ruin, the poverty of the poor man saved him. But these results are not uniform—are not necessary; they may be—they often are reversed. The wealth of a rich man may help him heavenward, and the poverty of a poor man may press him down toward the pit. The cardinal point of the parable is, employ the mammon of unrighteousness—this world’s affairs all, with forethought, skill, decision, and energy, to further your own salvation; turn all to account for the gain of godliness.

A ship leaves our shores bound westward to an  Atlantic port: the wind, being from the north, beats on her right side all the way. She makes a quick voyage and reaches her destination in safety. Another ship at another time leaves these shores for the same destination: the wind, blowing from the south, beats on her left side. She wanders from her course and is shipwrecked. Whence these opposite results? Was the first ship saved because she met a north wind, and the second lost because she fell in with a wind from the south? Nay, verily: but because the one so received the wind, from whatever point of the compass it might blow, as to be impelled by it onward in her course: and the other, instead of wisely employing every wind to help her forward, allowed herself to drift before the wind that happened to blow.

Mammon, the world—ah, is it not adverse to the interests of our souls? What then? Believer, adversary though it be, you may make it your friend. A skilful seaman, when once fairly out to sea, can make a wind from the west carry him westward! he can make the wind that blows right in his face bear him onward to the very point from which it blows. When he arrives at home, he is able to say the wind from the west impelled me westward, and led me into my desired haven.

Thus if we were skilful, and watchful, and earnest, we might make the unrighteous mammon our friend; we might so turn our side to each of its tortuous impulses, that willing or unwilling, conscious or unconscious, it should from day to day drive us nearer home.

The parable is in this peculiar, that in the moral lesson which the Master enforces at the close, he retains and employs the phraseology of the story. “Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,”  &c. The meaning is by the context made plain, and the reader may translate the metaphor as he proceeds. The steward, while he remained in his place, so handled the property in his power as to secure for himself a home when he should be removed from his place: in like manner let men so use material possessions while they live on earth, that these very possessions shall be found to have helped them toward their eternal rest. When a man’s ways please God, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him. These things that are enemies, and that overcome many, you may make your friends; you may turn to them such a side, that every time they strike they shall press you nearer rest, and at their last stroke impel you through the narrow entrance into the joy of your Lord.
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 XXVI.
THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.

“There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died and was buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house: for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham; but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”—Luke xvi. 19–31.

When this episode was over, the Lord resumed his theme where it had been broken off. I think it probable, both from the terms of the narrative, and the nature of the case, that if these Pharisees had not been present, or if they had held their peace when the preaching galled them, the matter of verse 19th would have touched that of verse 13th—the parable of the rich man and Lazarus would have been connected in place as well as in purport with that of the prudent steward.

When he had followed up the first parable with a pungent application regarding the abuse of riches, “the Pharisees, also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him.” To them, in reply to their jesting, he spoke the words verses 14–18, and then resumed, in verse 19th, “There was a certain rich man,” &c.93

 At the beginning of the chapter, addressing his own disciples particularly, although some of the Pharisees were present, he had taught them from the case of the prudent steward to use the possessions of this world with a view to their bearing on the next; and now, to complete the lesson, he will teach them, by a terrible example, the consequences of neglecting that rule.

But before we proceed to examine the parable in detail, it is important to determine generally regarding its nature whether it is an allegory in which spiritual things are represented by sensible objects, or simply an instructive example, historic or poetic, charged like other examples with moral warning and reproof. The parable of the sower is an allegory: the sower represents not a sower, but a preacher; the seed represents not seed, but the Gospel: whereas in the inner substance, as well as the outward form of the lesson, the good Samaritan is simply a good Samaritan, and the wounded traveller is simply a wounded traveller. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is not allegory; it belongs to the class of the Samaritan, and not to that of the sower. It is not like a type, which a man cannot read until it is turned; but like a manuscript, which delivers its sense directly and at first hand.94

 The description of the rich man is short, but full. He “was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.” He maintained a royal state and a prodigal expenditure. This excess of luxury was not confined to great occasions; it was the habit of every day.

Here, as in other cognate parables, great wisdom is displayed in bringing the whole force of the rebuke to bear on one point. It is not intimated that this man made free with other people’s money, or that he had gained his fortune in a dishonest way. All other charges are removed, that the weight lying all on one point may more effectually imprint the intended lesson. To have represented him as dishonest or drunken, would have blunted the weapon’s edge. Here is an affluent citizen, on whose fair fame the breath of scandal can affix no blot. He had a large portion in this world, and did not seek—did not desire any other. He spent his wealth in pleasing himself, and did not lay it out in serving God or helping man. It is not of essential importance whether such a man miserably hoard his money, or voluptuously spend it in feasts and fine clothing. Some men take more pleasure in wealth accumulated, and others more in wealth as the means of obtaining luxuries. These are two branches from one root; the difference is superficial and accidental: the essence of the evil is the same in both—a life of self-pleasing—“without God in the world.”

By a transition, purposely made very abrupt, we learn  next that a beggar named Lazarus95 was laid at this rich man’s gate, full of sores. Whether the position was chosen by the man himself, or by his friends for him, the motive is obvious—it was expected that where so much was expended, perhaps also wasted, some crumbs might come the beggar’s way.

“The dogs came and licked his sores;” perhaps the dogs, always plentiful in eastern cities, that had no master; perhaps the dogs that belonged to the rich man, and had turned aside to lick the beggar’s sores when their master rode past on the other side, and hid from the sight of misery within the drapery of his stately mansion. The act attributed to the dogs accords, as is well known, with their instincts and habits. It is soothing to the sufferer in the sensations of the moment, and healthful in its effects. When the beggar’s fortunate brother took no notice of his distress, the dumb brutes did what they could to show their sympathy. The stroke, though it wears all the simplicity of nature, is in the parable due to consummate art; the kindness of the brute brings out in deep relief the inhumanity of man.

 “And it came to pass that the beggar died.” Towards this point the narrative hastens. Here on the border is the hinge on which the lesson turns. The whole parable is constructed and spoken in order to show how this life bears on eternity; and to make eternity, thus unveiled, bear reciprocally on the present life. The death of Lazarus happened in the ordinary course of things: his sufferings came to an end. Not a word of his dust, whether it was buried, or how. Of design, and with deep meaning, the body is left unnoticed, and the history of his soul is continued beyond the boundary of life, as the real and uninterrupted history of the man: in the same breath and in the same sentence that intimates his death, we are informed that he was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom. The dying and the entrance into the rest that remaineth are expressed in one sentence, the two clauses connected by a copulative conjunction: the Lord means manifestly to teach us, as he afterwards taught the repenting malefactor on the cross, that there is no interval to his people between departing from the body and being with Christ.

Nor did Jesus then reveal the immortality of the soul: the doctrine was already accepted, and he assumed it in his discourse as a truth known and acknowledged. Even the resurrection of the body was a commonplace among the immediate disciples of Jesus during the period of his ministry: “Thy brother shall rise again,” said the Lord to Martha. “I know that he shall rise again,” she replied, “in the resurrection at the last day:” this was a belief that she previously possessed.

Abraham’s bosom, we may assume, was already an expression employed by the Jews to designate the place of the blessed beyond the grave. It accords much better  with the Lord’s purpose and method to suppose that this phrase and the term paradise, which he afterwards employed to express the same idea, were adopted by him from the current custom, than that they were then first introduced.

“The rich man also died and was buried.” Here, for once, the rich and the poor meet together: the beggar died, and the rich man died too. The same event happened to both, and in both cases the same terms are employed to record the events; but very remarkable is the difference introduced immediately after the article of death. What came after death in the case of Lazarus? He was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom. What came after death in the case of this rich man? He was buried. Perhaps as much could not have been said of Lazarus. The rich man was carried from a sumptuous table to a sumptuous tomb; and the poor man perhaps had not where to lay his head, when its aching had ceased at length. It may be that his body did not find a grave. His spirit found happy rest and holy company; and we can afford therefore to lose sight of the dissolving dust. First and last the one had excellent earthly accommodation, and the other had none; but conversely, he who had neither a house when living nor a tomb when dead, walked with God while the tabernacle stood, and went to God when it fell; whereas he who made the earth his portion got nothing for his portion but earth.

It would be a mischievous perversion of the parable to suppose that because the one was rich he was cast out, and because the other was poor he was admitted into heaven: the true lesson is in one aspect the reverse proposition: an ungodly man is in the highest sense poor  in spite of his wealth; and a godly man is in the highest sense rich, in spite of his poverty.

We enter now, or rather have already entered, the region where the parable must needs glide, not indeed from the literal into the metaphorical, but from a foreground where every object is distinctly seen to a background where the real objects cannot be seen at all, and where, accordingly, only signals are thrown up to tell what is their bulk and their bearing. When the line of the instruction goes through the separating veil and expatiates in the unseen eternity, it must become dim and indistinct to our vision. The moment that the parable in its progress goes beyond the sphere of the present life, our effort to follow it is like the struggle of a living creature out of its element. Even when the Lord of that unseen world is our instructor, our conceptions regarding it are necessarily indirect, second hand, and obscure. In this region the capacity of the scholar is infantile, and, consequently, the ability of the teacher cannot find scope. While, therefore, those parts of the parable which lay within our sphere were direct and literal, the latter portion, lying beyond our sphere, is necessarily indirect and expressed by signs: consequently, though sufficiently precise in its larger leading features, it is, in its minor details, indistinct, inarticulate.

“The beggar died;” this is sufficiently direct and literal: “and was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom,”—there we are already beyond our depth. The horizon is dim now, by reason of distance and intervening clouds. Equally obscure is the other line of information when it has crossed the boundary of time. The rich man died and was buried; this we clearly comprehend: but “in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment,”—these  are events of the eternal world, shadowed forth in the language and according to the conceptions of the present. We perceive the direction in which they lie, and can understand the moral lesson which they contain, but the things themselves are shrouded from our intellectual vision in impenetrable darkness. Not perhaps intentionally in the structure of the parable, but necessarily, on account of the place where its scene is latterly laid, a veil thicker than that of allegory is wrapped around it.

In accordance with the use of the word in classic Greek, and of the corresponding term in the Hebrew Scriptures, we might assume that “hell” (Hades) only indicates generally the world of spirits, as distinguished from this life in the body; while the expression “being in torment,” serves to determine the specific region or condition in that world to which the rich man was consigned: the term, however, wherever it occurs in the New Testament, seems to be applied, in point of fact, to the place of punishment, except in passages that are directly quoted from the Old Testament. Both were now in the world of spirits; but the beggar in that world was in Abraham’s bosom, and the rich man in torment. Both spirits near the same time passed from this world by the same narrow passage; beyond the boundary their paths diverged in opposite directions. Each went to his own place as certainly and as necessarily as vapour rises up, and water flows down. The ransomed man entered the Father’s house and joined the company of the holy; the ungodly gravitated, according to his kind, into the place of woe.

Having lifted up his eyes, “he seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom, and he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me.” Deeper and deeper into  the mystery we are led at every step. While the outline of the landscape is defined sufficiently for the purpose or affording a landmark to direct our course, all the lesser objects are entirely concealed by the distance. We must beware lest, in straining to get a glimpse of the invisible, we should mistake the flitting shadows that the unnatural effort sets afloat in the humours of our own eyes for the veritable objects of the spiritual world.

Here I would fain arrest attention on one guiding and dominating consideration, which may become a thread to lead us safely through the labyrinth, saving us the trouble of working out difficult speculations, and averting from us the danger of injuring ourselves by falls in the dark. The Lord delivered and the evangelist recorded this parable for the purpose of teaching, warning, directing, not spirits disembodied in the other world, but men in the body here. “All things are for your sakes;” the great Teacher determined all his words and acts by a regard to the benefit of his people. Even when Lazarus died at Bethany, he said to his followers, “I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent that ye might believe;” his absence led to the resurrection of Lazarus, and that event, he foresaw, would confirm their faith. So here, his aim is not to show how much he knows of the separate state, or to astonish the world by the display of its secrets; it is to give men while they are in the body those views of the separate state which will tell most effectually in leading the wicked to repentance, and in establishing believers in the faith.

Taking the Teacher’s aim as the determinating principle in the interpretation of his discourse, I gather that the dialogue between the rich man and Abraham does not describe absolutely what is possible and actually  takes place in the world of spirits, as if it were addressed to an inhabitant of that world, but gives such pictures of it, or signs regarding it, as are intelligible to an inhabitant of this world, and as will best bring the realities of the future to bear with beneficial effect upon the present character of men. By a system of coloured lights we contrive to warn the conductors of engines on our railways of danger to be avoided on the one hand, and to intimate the line of safety on the other. The things regarding which the engineers get instruction are not within their view. A red or a white light are not like the things in the distance that are to be dreaded or desired; but a red or a white light displayed serves the purpose when the things themselves cannot be made known. There everything is determined with a view to immediate practical benefit. I think this helps me to grasp the difficult portions of the parable. The purpose of the Lord was not to display his own knowledge or gratify our curiosity. He ever acted as the Saviour of the lost; he never swerved from that aim. It was his meat to do the Father’s will, and to finish his work. In this particular case, accordingly, the object which he kept in view was not to convey to men in the body the absolute knowledge of a state, for knowing which their faculties are unfit, but to convey to them in time such shadows or signals of danger and safety as the actual state of matters in the unseen world truly suggested, and in such forms as that living men, from their view-point, and with their mixed constitution, could comprehend and appreciate.

When this principle is permitted to dominate, the exposition of the dialogue becomes comparatively both short and easy.

I do not know whether the saved are within view of  the lost in a future state, or whether any communication can pass between them; I only know that this parabolic picture, constructed as from a view-point within the present world, is the exhibition best fitted to make the diverse conditions of the good and the evil beyond the grave effectual to warn and instruct living men in the body. If any one should curiously inquire about flame, what is its nature, and how it can hurt a spirit, I can give no information on the subject, and I can gather none from the parable. One thing I know, that this representation is a red light hung out before me, as I am rushing forward on the line of life—hung out to warn me of danger, and hung out by the hand of him who came to save the lost. I understand perfectly what the beacon means to me: it is my part to take the warning which it gives; and, as to the exact state of events and capabilities in the world to come, I shall learn all when I enter it. It may be quite true that there is not a flame like that which we are accustomed to see, and not a body, previous to the resurrection, that may be burned in it. But he who gave the word is my Friend; and he is true; I shall trust him. He knows what I understand by a flame; he knows how I am affected by the thought of the pain which it inflicts. Knowing all these, he has employed that word in order to apply the terrors of the Lord for my warning; he has done all things well. The minute features of the dialogue all serve to give point to the main conception. The request for a drop of water contributes to bring out the intensity of the suffering; the answer of Abraham shows that, beyond the boundary of this life, there is no hope of relief. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners—it was to this world he came; but no Saviour goes to that other world to win back the lost  who have permitted the day of grace to run out. Christ is the way unto the Father; but there is no way of passing from death unto life, if the passage has not been made in this present world.

Interpreting the rich man’s intercession for his brothers on the same principle, I do not know and cannot learn here, whether those who have passed through death into the next world unsaved, remember the character of the relatives whom they left behind on earth, or whether, remembering their condition, they will or can make intercession in their behalf. All that I gather certainly on the subject from this parable is, that although a brother may permit his brother to abide in sin without instruction or reproof, while all are living here and walking by sight; yet, if the fate that awaits the impenitent were adequately believed and realized, he who believed and realized it, could not refrain from effort to arouse the slumberers, and lead them to repentance. Again, as in previous parts, I am taught here not what I shall wish when I shall be in the world of spirits, but what I should do now while I am in the body and under grace. I should get the message sent to every heedless brother who is wasting his day of grace, while a messenger of flesh and blood may be found, and there is a way by which I may reach the objects of my solicitude.

By aid of the same machinery—the dialogue between the rich man and Abraham—another lesson is brought from the world of spirits to the land of living men—the lesson that those who refuse to believe and obey under the means of grace which God has appointed in the Church, would not be more pliable if prodigies were shown to them by way of overcoming their unbelief. The conception, although conveyed by the lips of the rich  man after he had gone to his own place, that a miracle of power would, if it were exhibited, bring alienated hearts submissively back to God, springs native here in time. It is the deceit with which many sing themselves to sleep—they would believe if one rose from the dead. There are two answers to it:—one is, it would not be effectual although it were granted; and the other is, even though it were fitted to accomplish the object, it will not be given.

The conclusion of the whole matter is, delays are dangerous; “Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.”

Some lessons still remain, that invite our attention, and will repay it.

1. For mankind, after this life is done, another world remains, consisting of two opposite spheres or conditions, one of holiness and happiness, the other of sin and misery. The Jewish people and their rulers persistently demanded of Jesus that he would show them a sign from heaven; and this demand he as steadily refused to gratify. Unlike all false prophets, the Lord Jesus maintained silence in regard to the particular characteristics of the unseen world; but one thing in compassionate love he made known with abundant clearness, that there is an absolute and permanent separation between good and evil in the world to come, and that there are distinct places of rewards and punishments.

Some people labour hard to shake from their own minds the belief in a place and state of retribution. To these I would affectionately suggest that to disbelieve it will not destroy it. Even in Scotland—the narrow end of an island nowhere very broad—I have met with persons well advanced in life, of good common education,  and good common sense, who had never seen the sea. Suppose that these persons should have cause greatly to dread the sea, and should therefore ardently desire that there were no such thing in existence. Suppose further, that, in the common way of the world, the wish should become father to the thought, and that they at last should firmly believe that there is not a sea. Would their sentiment change the state of the fact? Sinners, to whom the name and nature of a place of punishment are disagreeable, have no more power to annihilate the object of their aversion than the shepherds of the Cheviots to wipe out the sea by a wish. The sea is near those men though they have never seen it; and, if they were cast into it, they would perish, notwithstanding their opinion. Ah! the thing which by God’s appointment is, cannot by our arguments be blotted out of being.

2. There is a way from this present life to the place of future misery, and also a way to the place of future blessedness. The way from this world to the place of woe was made by man’s sin; the way from this world to the place of rest was made by the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. By the one way you can glide easily down; by the other you may climb toilsomely, but surely up. The one goes with the corrupt affections; the other against them. But let it be remembered that the way of life, though hard, is not unhappy; the struggle, when once fairly begun, is a grand, gladsome thing. Forth from this world there are only two paths; by one or other of these two all men take their departure; on one or other of these two paths we all are treading now. We owe it to Christ that a way into safety has been opened for our sinful world: “I am the way, ... no man cometh unto the Father but by me.”

 3. There is no way over from one of these future states to the other. The great gulf between them is fixed. This is the main fact of the parable, and hereon its greatest lesson grows. The great gulf is fixed, and after death none can change his place. This fact we now know without further revelation, and if we believe it not on the testimony of Jesus, neither would we believe it although one should rise from the dead to declare it. This parable, in some of its minute features, is to our vision necessarily obscure, because the scene is laid in the life to come, but its main outline is as clearly visible as any temporal object could be. It teaches with great perspicuity that when immortal spirits, at the dissolution of the body, are thrown into the eternal world, it is no longer possible that their place or their condition should be changed: those who will not learn from this word of Christ that the condition of the departed is for ever fixed at death will not learn it in time to profit by the lesson.

4. Our Lord has thus emphatically taught us that there is no possibility of passing from one state to another beyond the boundary of this life in order that he may thereby constrain us to make the needful transition now. The impassable gulf between the saved and the outcast in eternity is a dreadful sight; it was the compassionate Jesus who drew aside the curtain and exposed it to view, and it was his great love that moved him to make this revelation. There is a line that crosses our path a little way forward from the spot where we stand to-day—a line that divides our time from our eternity—invisible to our eyes, but known unto God. We never know as we advance what step of the journey will carry us over this line. Christ has told us that if we pass it unsaved we cannot obtain a change of condition beyond it; and  he has revealed to us this truth in order that we might be induced now to make our calling and election sure. These terrors of the Lord are displayed in order to persuade men. There is no impassable gulf now between a sinner and the Saviour; the way is open, and the perennial invitation resounds from the Gospel, “Come unto me;” but to those who pass from this life without having obeyed that call, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, no more a refuge from judgment.

This word of Christ is not of any private interpretation; it may have pointed to Herod or to the Pharisees in the first instance, but it was of the nature of a seed, and its applications multiply a hundred times a hundred fold down through the history of the world. We may find the rich man in this land to-day as certainly as in the circle that listened that day to the preaching of Jesus. We find the counterpart of this picture, not only in individuals, but in associated churches; and if Christians, both in their private and corporate capacities, are rich both in temporal means and spiritual privileges, they need not go far to seek for the Lazarus who is laid at their gate. Lazarus lies in the streets and lanes of our opulent cities; and, oh, he is full of sores! For his sake, for Christ’s sake, for our own sake, we must go out and show him kindness. Dives lost his opportunity,—lost it for ever: we must “haste to the rescue” lest we lose ours too. If we love the Lord, our love will stir and burst out and overflow in life. The life that will exercise itself in Christ-like charity must begin now; and if a new life in the Lord begin, it will reveal itself in love’s labour. If we are bought with a price and quickened by the Spirit, the beggar at our gate will soon discover the change. He will not be left longer to the mere promptings  of natural instinct among his neighbours for the soothing of his sorrows; the warm skilful hand of intelligent and affectionate brotherhood will raise him up and minister to his wants. Lazarus, instead of having only a dog to lick his sores, will be compassed about with human affections, and all his wants supplied. As a diseased, miserable, neglected lazar world felt the coming of Christ, the poor and destitute of the world’s inhabitants will know when a loving, hopeful Christian comes within reach. Who touched me? might the huge world have said, if it had possessed intelligence, when God became man and dwelt among us. Who touched me? will the outcasts on the earth begin to cry as they awaken to consciousness, when a revived Church has visited them in their prison, and brought to them the bread of life.
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 XXVII.
UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS.

“Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him. And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith. And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you. But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.”—Luke xvii. 1–10.

The passage 1–10 as a whole, teaches the double truth, That God requires of men a complete obedience, and that even though a complete obedience were rendered, the master would not be laid under any obligation—the servants would have no claim to praise or reward. While the rule towards the close is made universal, in the beginning the demand is particular and specific—to bear meekly and forgive generously the injuries which neighbours may inflict in the multifarious intercourse of life. Besides the point which constitutes the main scope of the discourse, several matters of the very highest importance are incidentally involved, and must be noticed, each in its proper place.

First of all, in order to prepare his disciples for meeting the trials that lay before them, he warned them that offences will come, and pronounced a solemn woe on those who should cast them in their neighbour’s way. Looking to his own—alike those who were then in his sight, and those who should believe on him down to the end of the world—he calls them, tenderly, little ones, and intimates that it would go ill with all who should dare to hurt them.  This, however, appears to be laid down as a basis for the lesson which he intended at that time to teach, rather than the lesson itself. Speaking expressly for the benefit of his own followers, he was more concerned to teach them how to bear injuries than to command them to beware of inflicting injuries on others. The chief part of a Christian’s duty consists in bearing well; and when that part of his duty is successfully performed, it is more effectual in serving God and convincing men than any kind or degree of active effort. The disciple is like his Lord in this, that he conquers by suffering.

Accordingly, the Teacher soon glides from the precept which forbids his people to inflict injuries, into the precept which teaches how they should bear injuries inflicted by others. “Take heed to yourselves:” this is his main design: towards this he was hastening; as a basis for this word, the previous injunction had been given. But, mark well, it is not after the manner of men that Jesus warns his disciples to take heed to themselves. He does not mean that they should be solicitous to protect themselves from receiving injury: he leaves that to the natural instincts of self-preservation, and warns them against danger on another side, where nature supplies no defence. He does not mean, Take heed lest you suffer by the stroke which an enemy may deal against you; he means, Take heed lest you sin in spirit and conduct when you suffer unjustly. You suffer one injury when a neighbour treats you unfairly: and another when you proudly, impatiently retaliate. The loss that you thus inflict on yourself is far heavier than the loss which has been inflicted by a neighbour: the little finger of the one damage is thicker than the loins of the other.

After the outpouring of the Spirit at the Pentecost, we  find these scholars far advanced in this lesson, which their Master taught them while he remained at their head. The believers of those days had, especially in the persons of Peter and John, been cruelly persecuted by the Jewish authorities, and when they met after their suffering to pray, their petition ran: “And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word” (Acts iv. 29). An injury had been inflicted: they innocently suffered; and observe what in these circumstances they feared: not more suffering, but lest by the suffering they should be tempted to be silent or wavering when called to be witnesses of Christ. Not the pain they endured, but the right state of their own spirits under the endurance, exercised their minds, and stimulated their prayers.

We must not suppose, however, that the Lord has commanded his disciples to bear injuries as a clod bears blows. Mere softness in yielding to the wicked is not a Christian grace; it is, on the contrary, a mischievous indolence: it suffers sin upon a brother: it deprives him of the benefit of reproof, and so encourages him to continue in his sin. “If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.” This Teacher does not obliterate the lines which separate righteousness from unrighteousness. He enjoins tenderness: but much as he loves to see that feature in his disciples, he places it second to faithfulness. The order of precedence as regards these two has been determined by royal ordinance—“first pure, then peaceable.” “Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another,” said the Lord at another time (Mark ix.), plainly giving faithfulness the first place, and requiring that gentleness should press hard up behind. Rebuke the brother who does a wrong to you; if under  your reproof and the working of the truth on his conscience, he be led to repentance and confession, forgive him in your heart, and express your forgiveness, that he may be encouraged and relieved. The precept “forgive” must, from the nature of the case, refer to the articulate expression of forgiveness; for in his heart and before God, a Christian forgives his enemy, although that enemy continue obdurate.

Next comes the precept, given in similar terms already in another place (Matt. xviii. 15–22), regarding the repetition of injuries. The duty of forgiving a repenting injurer is not modified by the frequency of his sin; the form of the expression “seven times in a day,” is manifestly intended to intimate that there is on that side absolutely no limit. It is not the part of a Christian to count the number of the injuries he has received, and to refuse forgiveness after a certain point; it is his part to be of a forgiving spirit, and to give forth forgiveness to all like the sunlight. The example of the Lord is the pattern for his servants; “Love one another as I have loved you.”

The conception of unlimited forgiving, which in Matthew’s narrative is expressed by “seventy times seven,” is here with equal emphasis expressed by “seven times in a day.” When we understand the terms as a formula for an indefinite number, we exclude the minute question, How could we believe a man sincere, who should seven times in a day do us an injury, and as often come and express sorrow for his fault? The words should not be literally taken; and besides if any one should trifle with his neighbour by frequent and manifestly false professions of repentance, his meaning would and should be read, not by his words, but by his conduct; the rule would and should be understood in its spirit, and not in its letter merely.

 Ver. 5. “And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.” An interesting and instructive view emerges here, of the relation between faith and practice. When they heard the measure of the demand which their Master made upon them in the matter of bearing and forgiving injuries, the apostles felt instantly that the weight was heavier than they could bear. They had not in their hearts such an amount of patience and love, as would enable them to fulfil this commandment of the Lord. Having already learned that faith is the secret fountain whence the stream of obedience flows, they asked with equal simplicity and correctness that their faith might be increased. In this short prayer they assumed, first, that they already believed, asking for an addition to the faith which they already possessed; and second, that it is more faith that will produce more obedience; and third, that the faith which worketh by love is not of themselves, but is the gift of God through his Son. In all this, having been secretly taught of the Spirit, these apostles are deeply intelligent, and completely correct. The appetites are generally sure guides to living creatures for the sustenance of their life; and here the appetite of the new creature, points surely to the source of supply: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

Both in the request of the scholars (ver. 5), and in the answer of the Master (ver. 6), it is distinctly assumed as a fundamental truth in religion, that faith lies at the root of obedience. When a requisition is made upon them for an amount of meek endurance and forgiving love which their own stores cannot supply, they cry not directly for more power of enduring and forgiving, but for more faith which will strengthen them on this side, and on all other  sides at the same time. It is as if you had a cistern meant to supply twelve streams, running in various directions, from whose lip twelve conduits were accordingly led: and when water from one of these was suddenly wanted, you opened it but found that little or none could be obtained. You cry out for a new supply to the cistern; that supply given will fill this channel which is for the the moment in requisition, and all the other channels at the same time. Endurance and forgiving—more than we are able to bear and bestow—are at this moment required of us; but if we had more faith, we should exhibit more of these graces, and more of all graces.

The Lord in his answer acknowledges that their inference is correct. By another form of expression, similar in character to the “seven times in a day,” he intimates that faith possesses an unlimited power of production in the department of doing. To intensify the result he employs a double hyperbole, as engineers employ two pairs of wheels to generate extreme rapidity of motion; the smallest spark of faith will overcome the greatest obstacles that may lie across a Christian’s path. Again, the same idea which appeared before in Matt. xvii. 20, is expressed here by a different figure: in both cases the Lord intends to intimate that what without faith is impossible, may with faith be done. In Matthew the impossible is represented by the removal of a mountain; in Luke by the planting of a sycamore in the sea. By these forms our Teacher conveys his meaning with amazing distinctness. The letters of his lessons thus sharply, deeply cut, remain indeed dead letters to those who have not experienced the grace of God; as letters of a book, the largest and loveliest lie meaningless before the eyes of a savage or a little child; but in either case, as soon as the scholar  becomes capable of understanding, the meaning shines forth like light. It would be a great transition from our present position of impotence, if we should become able to remove a mountain, or plant a sycamore in the sea; such and so great is the transition when a man passes from death in sin to life in Christ; such and so great the difference between what he could bear, and hope, and do while he was at enmity with God, and what he can bear, and hope, and do when he is reconciled to God through the death of his Son.

The particular requirement which on this occasion put the faith of the disciples under a strain greater than it was able to meet, was the endurance and the forgiving of injuries; but this Scripture must not be limited to a private interpretation; this is a specimen shown in illustration of a general rule. There are diversities of operation, under the providence of God our Father; now the faith of Christians is tested in one way, and then in another. At one time they are called actively to do a great work; and at another time passively to bear a great burden. The work required of one disciple is a mission to the dark places of the earth; and the work required of another is to bear patiently many years of pain and weariness, in his own home, it may be on his own bed. By both alike the kingdom of Christ may be advanced: from both equally when they are bruised,—the one by great effort, and the other by a heavy weight,—the odour of a holy temper may be diffused all around.

We are not masters; we are servants. The Lord appoints to each his place, and his work.

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The lesson now passes into the parable. When he had pointed out how great is God’s claim, and how large  faith’s performance might become in the life of a disciple, Jesus warns them, on the other side, that the greatest possible, the greatest conceivable attainment in the direction of a believing obedience, implies absolutely no independent merit in man; obedience, although it reached the utmost point of perfection, would still leave God indebted to man for nothing, and man indebted to God for all.

“But which of you having a servant ploughing or feeding cattle.” The state of society which supplies the ground-work of this parable is in many respects different from that which prevails in modern Europe. It is especially important here to notice the difference in these two features:—

1. It is a simple pastoral life that constitutes the basis of this picture. The principle of division of labour exists there in its lowest stages of development. It is assumed as a common and proper thing to employ a shepherd or a ploughman in serving his master at table—a practice entirely unknown among us. 2. The servitude in the instance supposed was not a voluntary limited engagement, but a species of slavery: the master’s control was much more absolute and complete than it is among us. The servant’s toil might be, and probably in many cases actually was, on the whole, not heavier than that to which our hired servants are subjected; but the measure of the labour, both as to its endurance and its severity, depended there on the master’s will rather than on the servant’s freedom. The master, under the species of relation which then largely prevailed, could demand of his servant on occasion an amount and continuity of service which now is not demanded on the one side, and would not be rendered on the other.

It should be noticed, however, that the service which is  in the parable required and rendered, is both in character and quantity extreme. An ordinary example of a servant’s work would not have suited the purpose of the Lord; he needed a line stretched to its utmost limits. His purpose is to teach that the utmost conceivable amount of obedience on man’s part is not independently meritorious before God; and, in searching among temporal things for a suitable analogy, he selected a case in which the line stretched from one extremity to the other.

When the servant has finished his day’s work on the pasture or in the field, at his return, and before he obtain either rest or food, he is compelled to wait upon his master at table. Even this extreme measure of work is required by the master and rendered by the servant as within the limits of their respective rights: the servant even in that case has done no more than was due.

“So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all these things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants.”

God has given all, owns all, has a right to all. We are his by right of creation, and his by redemption, when we are in Christ. Christians are not their own; they are bought with a price. Themselves, and their faculties, and their capabilities belong to God, their Creator and Redeemer. When they have rendered all their powers, and all the product of these powers, absolutely up to God’s will, they have done no more than rendered to him his own. “Will a man rob God? yet ye have robbed me” (Mal. iii. 8). It is an aggravated sin to rob God of what is his; but it is no merit or ground of praise simply to refrain from robbing him; and this is all that the creature’s obedience would amount to, although it were complete.

 Our Master ordinarily makes our work easy; he is gentle, and easy to be entreated. “As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him:” but at his pleasure, and doubtless in deep ways for their good, he sometimes lays extraordinary burdens on his own. He may permit offences to come, trying your temper; he may permit sickness to overtake you, trying your patience; he may permit temptations to assail you, trying your faith even at its foundations; he may require of you great and varied activity, trying your willingness to run at his call. These burdens seem heavy, as the master’s demand of service in the house seemed heavy to the servant when he returned weary and hungry from field labour; but although we should bear them all with complete uncomplaining alacrity, we should acquire thereby no right to reward.

There is absolutely no such thing as a surplus of merit in man. The imagination of it has ever been rife in man-made religions, as weeds spring thick and spontaneous from the ground; but never and nowhere is there any substantial foundation for this human conceit. It springs in the deepest ignorance, and it withers when the light of knowledge begins to shine. It rests on an entire misapprehension of the relations between God and man. If a man on ship-board, thinking that the ship was about to sink, on account of being too heavily loaded, should grasp the shrouds, and hang on them with all his weight, by way of lightening the ship, the bystanders would count him fatuous; and yet such is the folly of him who, getting all from God, imagines that he has conferred on God a favour by a surplus of goodness. I have seen grown people, in possession of all their faculties, able to read, if not further educated, when, in crossing  a river by a ferry, they apprehended danger, applying both their hands to the side of the boat in which they stood, and, pushing with all their might, in order to push it towards a place of safety. This implies the grossest ignorance, or at least the total forgetfulness for the time of the most obvious and ordinary of the natural laws; and yet I have found that these persons had quite enough of wit to manage all their ordinary affairs, and to get along respectably in society. I think there is some analogy between this case and the case of those who, intelligent on other points, yet blindly imagine that they merit praise for not squandering God’s gifts that have been placed under their care.

“When ye have done all, say, We are unprofitable servants”—servants whom the master did not need, and who contribute nothing to him. The question whether the Lord conceded that in point of fact any man ever does perfectly perform all his duty is out of place here; The Lord’s meaning is, even although a man should do all, he would still be destitute of merit before God; much more are those destitute of merit who come far short of perfection, and to this class belong all, even the best of the children of men.

Means and opportunities of bearing evil and doing good are in providence conceded to every one of us; and the law announced in another parable holds good here; If we improve aright the talents which we possess, more will forthwith be entrusted to us.

There is room for advancement; and, when grace is begun, it is sweet to grow in grace. If we had power to add cubit by cubit to our stature, we should have far to grow ere our head should strike the heavens; and in bearing meekly, and acting righteously, and living purely,  we have room enough to expand: it will be long ere we have done all, and so our progress be stopped by striking the boundary. Forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth to those that are before, we may press on and ever on; yet there is room.

Nor let any one think that bearing and doing God’s will must be less blessed when we learn that God did not need this at our hand, and that we do not thereby lay him under obligation to us. When one is truly taught of the Spirit, it will increase and not diminish the pleasure which he enjoys in obedience, to learn that all he is, and has, and does, comes from God. A dependent is happier than an independent position for human beings, if he on whom they hang is great and good. The life of a child is happiest during the period when he has no possession of his own, and desires none,—when he gets all as he needs from his father; on this side, as well as on others, we must receive the kingdom as a little child.

Here is a little stream trickling down the mountain side. As it proceeds, other streams join it in succession from the right and left until it becomes a river. Ever flowing, and ever increasing as it flows, it thinks it will make a great contribution to the ocean when it shall reach the shore at length. No, river, you are an unprofitable servant; the ocean does not need you; could do as well and be as full without you; is not in any measure made up by you. True, rejoins the river, the ocean is so great that all my volume poured into it makes no sensible difference; but still I contribute so much, and this, as far as it goes, increases the amount of the ocean’s supply. No: this indeed is the seeming to the ignorant observer on the spot; but whoever obtains deeper knowledge and a wider range, will discover and confess that the river is  an unprofitable servant to the sea—that it contributes absolutely nothing to the sea’s store. From the ocean came every drop of water that rolls down in that river’s bed, alike those that fell into it in rain from the sky, and those that flowed into it from tributary rivers, and those that sprang from hidden veins in the earth. Even although it should restore all, it gives only what it received. It could not flow, it could not be, without the free gift of all from the sea. To the sea it owes its existence and power. The sea owes it nothing; would be as broad and deep although this river had never been. But all this natural process goes on, sweetly and beneficently, notwithstanding: the river gets and gives; the ocean gives and gets. Thus the circle goes round, beneficent to creation, glorious to God.

Thus, in the spiritual sphere,—in the world that God has created by the Spirit of his Son, circulations beautiful and beneficent continually play. From him, and by him, and to him are all things. To the saved man through whom God’s mercy flows, the activity is unspeakably precious: to him the profit, but to God the praise.
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 XXVIII.
THE IMPORTUNATE WIDOW.

“And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint: saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: and there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but afterwards he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh; shall he find faith on the earth?”—Luke xviii. 1–8.

When we rightly comprehend the design of the  parable, the difficulty connected with the bad character of the judge at once disappears. It was necessary to go to a corrupt tribunal in order to find a suitable case; a pure judgment seat supplies no such example. In certain circumstances you might gather from a dunghill a medicinal herb which cleaner ground would never bear. The grain which becomes our bread grows best when its roots are spread in unseen corruption; and so perfect is the chemistry of nature, that the yellow ears of harvest retain absolutely no taint of the putrescence whence they sprung. Thus easily and perfectly the Lord brings lessons of holiness from examples of sin. He pauses not to apologize or explain: majestically the instruction advances, like the processes of nature, until the unrighteousness of man defines and illustrates the mercy of God.

It is not by accident,—it is by choice that this seed of the word is sown on filthy ground: it is sown there, because it will grow best there. The experience of a righteous human tribunal does not supply the material of this lesson. Where the presiding judge is just, a poor injured widow will obtain redress at once, and her perseverance will never be put to the test. The characteristic feature of the case which the Lord needed, was a persistent, unyielding perseverance in the cry for redress; for such a case he must go to a court where law does not regulate the judge, but where the judge for his own ease or interest makes his own law. The feature of Christ’s teaching which most arrested intelligent listeners in his own day, was its inherent, self-evidencing majesty. Instead of seeking props, it stood forth alone, obviously divine. He taught with authority, and not as the scribes. Here is an example of that simple supremeness that is at once a witness to itself. He compares explicitly and broadly the method of God’s  dealing, as the hearer of prayer, with the practice of a judge who is manifestly vile and venal. Nor is a word of explanation or apology interposed. He who thus simply brings sweet food from noisome carrion, has all power in heaven and in earth; His ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts.

As he needed for his purpose an example of judicial corruption, examples lay ready to his hand in human history; especially in the practice of oriental empires, ancient and modern, it is easy to find cases in which the supreme authority, civil and criminal, is vested in a deputy who habitually sacrifices justice to his own ease or interest.

The thorough badness of this judge, although stated distinctly, is stated briefly; it is not made prominent in the parable, and should not be made prominent in the interpretation of the parable. That badness on both sides, towards God and man, is I apprehend not introduced here for its own sake, but for the sake of a particular effect that resulted from it;—the frequent, persevering appeals of the widow for redress. This is the thing that is needed and used in the Lord’s lesson; and although the injustice of the judge stands distinctly out on the face of the parable, it is like the forest tree in the vineyards of Italy, used only to hold up the vine. Earnest, repeated, unyielding appeal by a needy, feeble suppliant before the throne of power;—this is the fruit which is precious for the Teacher’s purpose, and the hollow heart of the epicurean judge is employed only as the trunk to bear it. When it has held up that fruit to be ripened, itself may be thrown away.

At certain points in frequented routes through romantic scenery it is customary to fire a gun in order to afford the tourists an opportunity of hearing the echoes answering  each other in the neighbouring mountains. The explosion is in place nearest, in time first, and as to sound loudest, but this the most articulate and arrestive fact is employed exclusively for the purpose of producing the subsequent and more distant echo. The explosion is instantly dismissed from the mind and attention concentrated on the reverberation which it called forth. The conduct of the judge in this parable stands precisely in the place of that explosion. When it has produced the widow’s importunity it is of no further use; it must be thrown aside.

Let us hear now the interpretation,—“And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith,” &c. God’s own chosen and redeemed people correspond to the suppliant widow in the parable. They are like her in her suffering and her weakness; they should be like her too in her unintermittent, persevering cry.

Like other similar lessons, this one bears equally on the Church as a body, and on an individual Christian. The Church collective, in times of persecution, and a soul surrounded by temptations, stand equally in the place of the poor widow; they are in need and in danger. They have no resources in themselves; help must come from one that is mighty. It is their interest to plead with him who has all power in heaven and in earth,—to plead as men plead for life.

The lesson here is very specific; it bears on one point, and in order that all its force may be concentrated on one point, others are for the time omitted. This parable is not spoken with the view of teaching that Christians ought to pray; that duty is assumed here, not enjoined. Neither does it prescribe what the suppliant should ask, or on whose merits he should lean. Taking for granted all  these things which the Scriptures elsewhere explicitly teach, the Master in this lesson confines his attention to one thing,—perseverance in prayer when the answer does not come at first, perseverance and pertinacity aye and until the object is attained.

It is expressly intimated in the narrative that there is sometimes a long, and from our view-point inexplicable delay. This is the meaning of the expression “though he bear long with them.” This phrase is not taken here in its ordinary signification,—an endurance of injuries; it means that he holds back long, and resists their pressure for relief.

Here are the two sides over against each other: they cry day and night, and he, hearing their continuous cry, refrains from bestowing the relief for which they passionately plead. As God keeps back the answer, they redouble the cry; as they redouble the cry, God still withholds the answer. Expressly we are informed he will give answer; he will avenge his own elect. The eternal Father treasures up all the supplications of his children, and he will yet give them deliverance. When his time comes the deliverance will be complete; but in the meantime the interesting inquiry presents itself, Why does he delay at all? In the light of Scripture we are able to give a satisfactory answer to this inquiry.

The reason why the widow’s claims were left long unsettled in the court was the self-pleasing indolence of the judge. The love of his own ease was the motive that induced him both to refuse redress at first and to grant it afterwards. He refused to avenge her until he perceived that to do her justice would afford him less trouble than to withhold it. In the treatment which the petitions of the elect receive at the throne of God there is nothing  in common with the conduct of the unjust judge, except the delay. The fact that the petitions lie for some time unanswered is common to both tribunals, but on all other points they are wholly diverse, and even the single feature of coincidence springs in the two cases from opposite grounds.

When God withholds the deliverance for which his children plead he acts with wisdom and love combined. It would be, so to speak, easier for a father who is at once rich and benevolent to comply immediately and fully with all the child’s demands; it requires and exercises a deeper, stronger love to leave the child crying and knocking for a time in vain that the bounty given at the proper time may in the end be a greater boon. I once knew two men who lived near each other in similar worldly circumstances, but adopted opposite methods in the treatment of their children. The boys of this family obtained money from their father when they asked it, and spent it according to their own pleasure, without his knowledge or control: the boys of that family often asked, but seldom received a similar supply. The father who frequently thwarted his children’s desires loved his children more deeply, and as the result showed, more wisely than the father who could not summon courage sufficient to say No. The wise parent bore with his own when they pleaded for some dangerous indulgence, and the bearing wounded his tender heart; but by reason of his greater love, he bore the pain of hearing their cry without granting their request. The other parent was too indolent and self-pleasing to endure such a strain, and he lived to taste bitter fruit from the evil seed which his own hand had sown.

For the same reason, and in the same manner, our Father in heaven bears with his own when they cry night  and day to him for something on which their hearts are set. Because he loves us he endures to hear our cry and see our tears. We do not certainly know what thorn it was that penetrated Paul’s flesh, but we know that it pained him much, that he eagerly desired to be quit of it, and that he besought the Lord thrice to take it away. From the fact that the child pleaded three times for the same boon, we learn that the Father bore with him awhile,—bore, so to speak, the pain of refusing, because he knew that the refusal was needful for Paul. The thorn was left in the flesh until its discipline was done, and then it was plucked out by a strong and gentle hand. “My grace is sufficient for thee:” there are no thorns in Paul’s flesh now.

The case of the Syro-Phœnician woman (Matt. xv. 21–28) runs parallel with this as well as with the “Friend at midnight.” Mark how the Lord bore with the woman. He delighted in her faith; it was his happiness to give, and yet he refused; in denying her he denied himself. But by withholding a while, he kindled her love into a brighter, stronger flame. By refusing what she asked, he reduplicated her asking; this is sweet to him and profitable to her. By the long delay on his part and the consequent eager repetition of the request on her part, a richer boon was prepared and bestowed. Her appetite was greatly quickened, and her satisfying was more full. Who shall be filled most abundantly from the treasures of divine mercy at last? Those who hungered and thirsted most for these treasures in the house of their pilgrimage.

Think of the plainness of this lesson, and the authority which it possesses. Its meaning cannot be mistaken; we know what is spoken here, and we know who speaks.  Hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. Show us the Father, said Philip, and it sufficeth us; here Christ, in answer to his disciples’ prayer, is showing the Father.

To reveal the Father’s heart he spoke this parable. The helpless, needy woman came and came again, and cried, and would take no refusal, until the judge was compelled by her importunity to grant her request: and this is the picture chosen by the Lord Jesus when he desires to show how God regards suppliant disciples as they plead at his footstool. It is an amazing revelation, and the best of it is its truth. He who gave it has authority to speak. The Son will not misrepresent the Father; the Father’s honour is safe in this Teacher’s hands. We learn here, then, that the Hearer of prayer puts himself in the power of a suppliant. He permitted Jacob to wrestle, and the firmer he felt the grasp the more he loved the wrestler. The words, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me,” dropping in broken fragments from his lips at intervals as he paused and panted, were sweeter than angels’ songs in the ears of the Lord of Hosts. He is the same still, as he is in the New Testament revealed by Jesus. The spirit in man that will take no denial is his special delight; the spirit that asks once and ceases he cannot away with. As the Lord loveth a cheerful giver, he loveth too an eager persevering asker. The door seems narrow, but its narrowness was not meant to keep us out; they please him best who press most heavily on its yielding sides. “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.” The King of Glory feels well pleased the warriors’ onset,—gladly welcomes the conqueror in.

 It is indeed blessed to give: but the giver’s blessedness is greatly marred by the listlessness of the needy creatures on whom he has bestowed his bounty. If they who need and get the goodness are insensible, and cold, and ungrateful, the joy of the benefactor is proportionally diminished. It is thus with “the giving God.” When the receiver values the bounty, the delight of the bestower is increased. Thus the Lord Jesus was specially pleased as he healed the daughter of the Syro-Phœnician mother because she gave evidence by her importunity how much she valued the boon; and, on the other hand, his plaintive question, “Where are the nine?” when the lepers took their cure so lightly, shows that he did not much enjoy the act of healing because the diseased made light both of their ailment and their cure.

Come near, press hard, open your mouth wide, pray without ceasing; for this is the kind of asking that the great Giver loves. Unforgiven sin on the conscience keeps the sinful distant, and Satan calls the silence modesty. It is not; they most honour God who show by their importunity in asking that they value his gifts.

While it is true that prayer should be a continuous fulness in the heart, ever pressing outward and upward, flowing wherever it can find an opening, it is not specifically that characteristic to which this parable points. This is not the lesson, “In everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God:” the lesson here points not to the breadth of a whole spiritual life, but to the length of one line that runs through it. Whatever it be that a disciple desires, and is bent upon obtaining, he should ask not once, or twice, or twenty times, but ask until he obtain it; or until he die with the request upon his lips: and in  that case he will get his desire, and more. Trust in God: trust in his love. He who has not spared his own Son, how shall he not with him freely give us all things? Do not deem that delay is proof of his indifference. Delaying to bestow is not proof of indifference in God; but ceasing to ask is proof of indifference in man. Christ assures us he will give: that should induce us to continue asking.

Give me these links—1. Sense of need; 2. Desire to get; 3. Belief that God has it in store; 4. Belief that though he withholds awhile, he loves to be asked; and 5. Belief that asking will obtain;—give me these links, and the chain will reach from earth to heaven, bringing heaven all down to me, or bearing me up into heaven.

While it is right to generalize the lesson, as we have already done, it is our duty also to notice the special form of the widow’s prayer and the Lord’s promise: in both cases it is vengeance against an adversary. The pleading is that the enemy who wronged the widow should be punished by the hand of power: the promise is that God will avenge his chosen ones, who cry to him.

The case is clearly one in which the weak are overpowered by an adversary too strong for them: unable to defend themselves, or strike down their foe, they betake themselves to God in prayer. The ailment is specific; such also is the request. Do justice upon this enemy—rid me of his oppression and his presence.

Ah, when a soul feels sin’s power a bondage, and sin’s presence a loathsome defilement;—when a soul so oppressed flees to the Saviour for deliverance, the Lord will entertain the case, and grant redress. He will avenge. “The God of peace will bruise Satan under your feet shortly.”

No cry that rises from earth to heaven sounds so  sweetly in the ear of God as the cry for vengeance upon the enemy of souls. When there is peace between man and his destroyer, the closet is silent, and no groan of distress from the deep beats against the gate of heaven. This is not what Jesus loves. He came not to send this peace on earth, or in heaven; he came to send a sword. His errand was to produce a deadly quarrel between the captive soul and the wicked one, its captivator. When the cry rises, broken and stifled, but eager, as uttered by one engaged in deadly strife—when the cry, “Avenge me,” rises from earth, God in heaven hears it well pleased. He delights when his people, hating the adversary of their souls, ask him for vengeance; and he will grant it. Long to the struggling combatant the battle seems to last, but speedily, according to God’s just reckoning, the avenging stroke will fall. If there is delay it is but for a moment, and because this added moment of conflict will make the everlasting victory more sweet.

It is worthy of notice, incidentally, that where an indolent judge, in order to avoid trouble, gives a just sentence to-day, he may, from the same motive, give an unjust sentence to-morrow. He who taught this lesson, knowing all that should befall himself, and hastening forward to his final suffering, knew well that deepest sorrow may spring from the selfishness of an unjust judge which happened for that time to bring deliverance to the widow. Pilate was precisely such a magistrate. Neither fear of God nor regard for man was the ultimate reason that determined his decision: the love of his own ease and safety was the hinge on which his judgment turned. He was disposed to do justly rather than unjustly in the case, when the Jewish rulers dragged Jesus to his bar. He would have pronounced a righteous judgment if that  course had seemed to promise greater or equal advantage to himself. But the priests and people were, like this widow, very importunate and persevering. “Crucify him, crucify him,” they cried. “Why, what evil hath he done?” “Crucify him, crucify him,” rose again in a sound like the voice of many waters from the heaving throng. “Shall I release Jesus?” interposed the irresolute Pilate; “Away with this man, and give us Barabbas,” was the instant reply. “Shall I crucify your king?” said Pilate, making yet another effort to escape the toils that were closing round him; but this fence laid him open to the heaviest blow of all: “If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar’s friend.” He gave way at last: by their continual coming they wearied him, and he abandoned the innocent to their will.

Thus the unjust as well as the just judgment seat has two sides. Jesus gave the safe side to the poor widow, and accepted the other for himself. He became poor that we might be rich: he was condemned that we might be set free.
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 XXIX.
THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN.

“And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”—Luke xviii. 9–14.

If allegory were deemed an essential ingredient of a parable, this lesson of the Lord would necessarily be excluded from the list; but I am not disposed to adopt such a narrow and artificial definition. Taking a general view of its substance, rather than making a minute inspection of its form, I accept the Pharisee and the publican as a parable according to the common consent of the Church.

It is almost entirely free from critical and exegetical difficulties: he may run who reads its lesson.

In announcing the class of persons for whose reproof  it was spoken, the evangelist at the outset supplies us with a key that opens all its meaning:—“Certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others,” were clustering round the Teacher, and mingling with his disciples. He spoke this parable for the purpose of crushing their pride: he will not suffer sin upon them. For their instruction and reproof, these examples are selected and described.

It is not necessary to suppose that the parable pointed exclusively to those who were Pharisees, or exclusively to those who were not: it concerned all who were self-righteous, to whatever sect they externally belonged. We know that within the circle of Christ’s devoted followers much of this spirit still lingered. Peter enumerated the sacrifices which he and his comrades had made for their Master, and bluntly demanded what reward they might expect for their fidelity. It is expressly to his own disciples that the Lord, on another occasion, addresses the warning, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” For our benefit, then, even though we be true Christians—for our benefit, and not only for some particular sect, is this instruction given.

“Two men went up into the temple to pray.” The temple was the acknowledged place of prayer; to it the devout Jews went at the hour of prayer, if they were near; toward it they looked if they were distant. The appointment was a help to prayer in the preparatory dispensation: it would be a hindrance if it were maintained still. Not in that one place, but in all places, the true worshippers pray to the Father.

“The one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.” The two characters are represented in deep relief: there is no confusion, and no ambiguity. Each is exhibited in his  own colour, and the two are sharply distinguished from each other.

Nor are these two men in all their features diverse: there are points of likeness as well as of difference. It is as profitable to observe wherein they are like as wherein they are unlike. The distinction does not lie in that the one was good while the other was bad: both were evil, and perhaps it would be safe to say, both alike evil. In the end, the one was a sinner forgiven, and the other a sinner unforgiven; but at the beginning both and both equally were sinners. Their sins as to outward form were diverse; but in essential character the sinfulness was in both the same. The Pharisee said and did not; the publican neither said nor did. The Pharisee pretended to a righteousness which he did not possess; the publican neither professed righteousness nor possessed it. While one maintained the form of godliness, but denied its power, the other denied both the form and the power of godliness. At first there is nothing to determine our choice between the two men as to their state before God: the one was a hypocrite, and the other a worldling. Both alike need pardon, and to both alike pardon is offered in the Gospel. “The blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin;” but no effort of our own will cleanse us from any. With the forgiveness that comes through Christ, the Pharisee would have been accepted; but wanting it, the publican would have been cast out. The hinge on which the essential distinction between these two men turned was not the different quantities of sin which they had severally committed, but the opposite grounds on which they severally placed their trust.96

 Both go at the same time to the same place to pray, and both adopt in the main the same attitude in this exercise; they stood while they prayed. This was the ordinary attitude; but kneeling and prostration were also practised. Each of these postures has its own peculiar appropriateness; either is a seemly and a Scriptural method of bringing the position of the body into significant harmony with the desire of the soul. Among those attitudes which are true and right, we are at liberty to adopt that which is in our circumstances most convenient and seemly. Alas! there has always been a tendency in man to lay a yoke upon himself and his fellow. Why should we judge one another where our Master has left us free? We may safely lay it down as an absolute rule, without stipulating for even a single exception, that the best position for praying in is the position in which we can best pray.97

“The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee,” &c. Those expositors are probably right who think that “with himself” is connected with “stood,” rather than “prayed.” It is in perfect accord with the narrative to intimate that he stood by himself—he was not the man to mingle with the common herd of worshippers; but it does not seem congruous to intimate that he prayed with himself. His prayer is addressed to  God; he has no doubt much to do with himself while he utters it, but so has his neighbour the publican. As much as the proud man deals with himself to contemplate his own goodness during prayer, so much does the humble man deal with himself to contemplate his own badness. It is not then intimated that he prayed by himself, but that he stood by himself while he was praying. He counted that he belonged to the aristocracy in the kingdom of God, and must get a position apart from the multitude.98

In yet one other point the two suppliants are like each other; both alike look into their own hearts and lives; and both permit the judgment thus formed to determine the form and matter of their prayer. Both addressed themselves to the work of self-examination, and the prayers that follow are the fruits of their research.

At this point the two men part company, and move in opposite directions—the one found in himself only good, the other found in himself only evil. In both, and in both alike, there was only evil; but the publican discovered and confessed the truth regarding himself, while the Pharisee either blindly failed to see his own sin, or falsely refused to confess it.

The error of the Pharisee does not lie in the form or  matter of his prayer. It is substantially a song of thanksgiving. This is never out of place; praise is comely. There is not a living man on the earth who has not ground for giving praise to God every day, and all day. Nor does his prayer necessarily transgress the strict limits of truth when he says, “God, I thank thee that I am not as other men.” If he had been employed in numbering the mercies of God—if he had meditated on his privileges, till he was lost in wonder, that so many benefits had been conferred on one so worthless, he might with truth have burst into the exclamation, “I am not as other men.” As a true penitent, when employed in considering his own sin, truly describes himself as the chief of sinners; so a thankful man, lost in the multitude of God’s mercies, thinks in all simplicity that none in all the world have been so highly favoured as himself. From his own view-point a true worshipper truly counts both his sins and his mercies greater than those of other men. When he confesses his sins he counts and calls them deeper than those of others; when he recounts the benefits he has received from God, he says that they are greater than others have enjoyed. Glad praise and weeping confession correspond to each other in a true heart, as correspond the height of the sky and the depth of its shadow in still waters. When the clouds above you become high, the shadow of them beneath you becomes correspondingly deep. The same man who said, “I am chief of sinners,” said also, “Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.”

It is not, then, for what he has said that the Pharisee is condemned, even when he announces that he is not as other men. If conscious of unworthiness, and amazed at God’s long-suffering, he had exclaimed, I am not like other men—I have been spared and instructed, and invited  and taught and led with a paternal tenderness that others do not enjoy, his thanksgiving would have been sweet incense as it rose to the throne of the Most High. He presumes to give thanks not for what he has received, but for what he is and does. Here lies his condemnation. It is not in the thanks but in the reason for the thanks that the old serpent lurks; he is delighted not with what God has graciously bestowed on him, but with what he has meritoriously given to God.

The sense in the original is more comprehensive than that which the English conveys; other men here mean all others. On one side he places himself, and on the other side the rest of human kind: the result of the comparison in his judgment is that he is better than all.

Three of the more articulate and manifest forms of wickedness he enumerates, in order by the contrast to set forth his own purity. “Extortioners” are officials having a right to something, who unjustly force from an oppressed people more than is due; the “unjust” are those who deal unfairly in the ordinary intercourse of life; and adulterers are, in fact, and were then accounted the deepest and most daring transgressors of the laws both human and divine. Probably the Pharisee was in point of fact free in his conduct from all these vices; there is nothing in the parable that forbids us in these matters to take him at his word.

Instead of extending the list of vices of which he felt himself free, he cuts the matter short by a general comparison between himself and the publican. The contempt in which the tax-farmers were held by the stricter Jews shines out in every page of the Gospel, and is well understood by the readers of the Scriptures. By way of purging himself from sin in the lump, he says shortly, “I am  not as this publican.” In order to condemn the Pharisee on this point, it is not necessary to suppose that he made a wrong estimate of his neighbour. Granted that this publican had up to this hour been stained with all these three vices, and that the Pharisee, knowing his character, formed a correct judgment regarding it; still his condemnation remains the same; it is not the part of one sinner to judge and condemn another.

“I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess,”—all that I acquire; it is not capital but income. It is a picture of mere self-righteousness. His judgment was wrong from the root; he knew neither his own heart nor God’s law. Pharisee as he was, he might have learned from the prophet Isaiah the true state of the case, “We are all as an unclean thing; and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.”99

“The publican standing afar off,” &c. The difference does not lie in that this was a good man while the other was bad. This is a sinner too; but he has come to know it, and therein lies the distinction between him and the Pharisee. His judgment of himself accords with his actual state and character; he knows and owns the truth regarding his own sinfulness. There is no merit in this discovery, and in itself it cannot save. If two men should both take poison, and one of them should become aware of the fact ere the poison had time to operate; the one who knows the truth is more miserable than the one who is ignorant, but not more safe. If there be a physician within reach who can cure, the knowledge of his  danger will send one man to the source of help, while the ignorance of the other will keep him lingering where he is, till it is too late to flee. But even in that case it was not the man’s knowledge of his danger that saved him. Another saved him; his knowledge of his own need only led him to a deliverer.

It is so here. There is no merit and no salvation in the publican’s conviction and confession; although he confesses his sin, he is still a sinner. His own tears are not the fountain in which his guilt can be washed away. If there were no Saviour, his penitence would do him no good; if Christ had not come to save the lost, the lost, though alarmed, would not have been saved.

If we take care to notice that there was neither merit nor safety in the man’s confession, we may profitably listen to the confession, and learn what it was.

“He stood afar off.” Here we begin to observe external marks of an inward penitence; he judged and condemned himself. He had the same right with other worshippers to come near; but a consciousness of his uncleanness before God compelled him to take the lowest place even among men. Such was the tenderness of his spirit, that he thought everybody better than himself. Humility is the exact opposite of pride; as the one man counted himself better than all, the other counted himself worse than all. When he obtained a sight of his own vileness before God, his feeling was that even his brother would be polluted by his presence. As love of God, when we have tasted his grace, carries love to men after it, like a shadow; so shame before God, because of sin in his sight, diffuses humility and modesty through the spirit and conduct in the ordinary intercourse of life.

He was unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven. He  looked down to the earth; but his heart was rising up to heaven the while. His eyes could not bear at that moment to look, as it were, on the light of the great white throne; but his soul ascended, and pressed with violence on the gate of the kingdom. Against that strait gate his spirit is now striving; the King of glory from within feels the pressure well pleased, and opens to let the agonizer in. “Smote upon his breast;” it is like other signs of grace, precious if it is true, worthless when it is false. A worshipper will not be heard for his much beating, any more than for his much speaking: but when it is the true external symptom of a broken heart within, the knocking on his own breast is reckoned a knocking at the gate of heaven. To him that knocketh at this lower gate, the highest will be opened.

His prayer was short and suitable; “God be merciful to me, the sinner” (τῳ ἁμαρτωλῳ). The contrast continues to the last; as the Pharisee had compared himself with all mankind, and concluded that he alone was good; so the Publican in the depth of his shame seems to count himself the only sinner.

The steps are few and simple by which a sinner finds or misses the way into eternal life. Not perceiving his own sin, a Pharisee comes to God, as one who deserves favour; he seeks to enter heaven where the wall of righteousness frowns in his face, and is cast away. The publican, conscious of his unworthiness, counting himself altogether evil, flees from his own sin to God’s provided mercy; he tries where the door is open, and passes in a moment through. I tell you, “This man went down to his house justified,” &c.; he, but not the other.100 The  Pharisee forgave himself; who is this that forgiveth sin? and who is this whose sins he forgives? He asked no forgiveness from God, and got none. He departed from the temple as full and satisfied, or rather as empty and poor, as he entered it. For aught that we learn to the contrary, he went on, tithing his mint, anise, and cummin,—went on blindfold till he stumbled on the judgment-seat.

The penitent Publican went down to his house a justified man; he sat in the circle of his family, retired to rest at night, rose in the morning to his labour, at peace with God. On the morrow he looked on the sun-light without being in terror of the mighty One whose word had made it shine; he walked abroad on the fields, in conscious, loving companionship with Him who spread them out and covered them with green; he looked from the mountain-side on the great sea when “it wrought and was tempestuous,” the confiding child of Him who holds its waters in the hollow of his hand; and when again he laid his head upon the pillow for rest to his wearied body, he laid his soul on the love of his Saviour, as an infant leans on a mother’s breast. When the hand that led him through the wilderness leads him at length down the dark sides of the swelling Jordan, he looks up with languid eye, but bright, burning spirit, and whispers to his guide, “I will not fear, for Thou art with me;” when the judgment is set and the books are opened, he stands before the Judge in white clothing, accepted in the Beloved; the voice of the Eternal, tenderly human, yet clothed with divine authority, utters the welcome,—“Come, thou blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom.”
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 XXX.
THE SERVANTS AND THE POUNDS.

“And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear. He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come. But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us. And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading. Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds. And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities. And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds. And he said likewise to him, Be thou also over five cities. And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin: for I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow. And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow: wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury? And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds. (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.) For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given: and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him. But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.”—Luke xix. 11–27.

The incident connected with Zaccheus, although it occurred on the spot and at the moment, did not, I think, supply the occasion of this parable, and does not contain the key of its meaning. The Lord’s interview with that interesting and earnest tax-farmer in the neighbourhood of Jericho rather constituted an episodical interruption to the continuity of his thought and the narrative of his journey. He had passed through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem for the last time. An expectation, intense in character though vague in outline, was spreading through the neighbourhood, that great events would emerge on  his arrival at the capital. It was the crowd already on this account assembled that gave prominence to the case of Zaccheus. It is not from that episode that the parable springs; rather, when the interruption which it caused was over, the current of thought, displaced for a moment, returns to its former channel, and flows as it had flowed before. The crowd had assembled before the conversation with Zaccheus took place, and the cause of the excitement was the expectation that “the kingdom of God should immediately appear.” It was on account of this expectation that the parable was spoken. The purpose of the Lord was to correct the popular impression in as far as it was erroneous, and to turn it to account in as far as it contained a basis of truth. They expected that Jesus was about to proclaim himself king, and occupy David’s throne at Jerusalem: he teaches them by the parable that his kingdom is not of this world—that he, the king, will depart from their sight for a while, and that it behoves his subjects to occupy their talents and opportunities till he return.

“A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.” His errand when he went abroad was not to seek a kingdom in another quarter of the world, but to obtain from a foreign power nomination to the sovereignty of his native land. In the first place, it is not probable that, after having become king of another country, he would return to reside where he was only a subject; but a much more decisive indication is given by the message which his fellow-citizens sent after him, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” They do not interfere with his prospects in a foreign country; it is his sovereignty over themselves that they dread and deprecate.  This outspoken repudiation of his government by his fellow-citizens makes it both certain and manifest that, though he sought investiture abroad, the kingdom which he expected to receive was in his own native land, and over his former fellow-citizens.

In those days both the Jews and other nations subject to the supremacy of Rome were familiar with the transaction which forms the basis of this parable. After the nobleman’s departure, his countrymen, aware of his design, endeavoured to thwart it. With this view they sent a message, or rather an embassy (πρεσβειαν) after him; they commissioned some of their own number to appear along with him before the power paramount, and oppose his claim. It is a mistake to suppose that the protest of these citizens was addressed to the nobleman who sought to become their king; the deputies are instructed to address themselves not to him, but to the foreign power from whom he intends to seek investiture. They will appear at court along with him when his petition is presented, and plead that it may be rejected. Such debates were in point of fact held before the republican and imperial tribunals of Rome.102

Before setting out on his journey “he called his ten servants,” &c. These men were his servants or slaves. In different countries, and at different times, the bond of servitude has been indefinitely varied both in stringency and duration. In all probability these servants were the bondsmen of the nobleman, although law and practice might not accord to the owner a power so absolute as that with  which we are too familiar in modern slavery. But the more nearly that the master’s rights approached the point of absolute ownership of property, the more suitable becomes the picture to represent the relation that subsists between the redeeming Lord and his ransomed people.103

This nobleman, desiring that no part of his property or capital should lie unproductive during his absence, made the best arrangement, of which the circumstances admitted, before he left the country. His method was the same as that which appears in the cognate parable, the entrusted talents, with the exception that in this case the master made all his servants equal. A mina, in value equal to about £2, 3s. 6d., was entrusted to each man, with the intimation that, according to his diligence and  faithfulness in the management of this capital, would be his reward when the owner should return.104

Such is the arrangement which this nobleman made with those who are described as “his own servants,” on the eve of his departure; but with his neighbours, who were free and independent, he had either neglected to seek, or failed to obtain, an understanding. Aware of his object, they sent after him a deputation of their own number, instructed to appear along with him at the imperial court, and oppose his request. They were not willing to become his subjects, and therefore endeavoured to prevent him from obtaining a regal title and despotic power.

Their opposition, however, had no other effect than to betray their enmity, and so expose them to the King’s displeasure. His first act after he returned with supreme authority was to call his servants into his presence, and reward them according to their merits; and his second, to issue an order for the punishment of those who had opposed his elevation. The remaining portion of the scene is so similar to the corresponding parts of the cognate parable already expounded, that it is unnecessary to trace the narrative further; rather let us hasten now to ascertain and enforce the spiritual lesson from the whole.

While the Master was setting his face towards Jerusalem for the last time, a dim presentiment of coming change occupied his disciples. In their minds, the expectation of his kingdom had taken a wrong direction, and tended to put them off their guard. To correct their error, and bind them to patient watchfulness, he spoke this parable. Because they imagined he was about to assume kingly power, and give them places of temporal  dignity on his right hand and on his left, he taught them by this similitude, that he must go away, and that they must remain behind, working and watching.

The nobleman represents the Lord himself. While he prosecuted his ministry on earth, he had not fully attained possession of the kingdom. The departure of the nobleman represents the exodus which the Lord soon afterwards accomplished at Jerusalem, comprising his death, resurrection, and ascension. In the parable, the power paramount who could withhold or bestow a kingdom is not named: it is intimated only that this transaction took place out of sight in a far country. When the Son of God ascended after his mediatorial work on earth was complete, all power was given to him in heaven and on earth. Beyond his disciples’ sight he received the kingdom from the Father. Now he has right to rule supreme over that world, on which before he had not where to lay his head. He will come to this world again as its King, with power and great glory.

Two classes of persons are mentioned as having remained in the country while the prince was absent:—these are his servants and his adversaries. In the material scene, there might be many who neither served nor opposed him; but these are not mentioned in the parable, because there are none to correspond with them on the spiritual side. There only two classes exist,—those who serve Christ as the Lord that bought them, and those who, being at enmity with God, refuse to obey the Gospel of his Son.

The parable has not much to do with them that are without. At the beginning, it shortly indicates their rebellion, and at the close as shortly predicts their doom; but the circumstances, the character, the life, and the  reward of the Lord’s disciples are more expressly and more fully declared.

The master who owns them places some of his treasures at their disposal, and with the general injunction, “Occupy,” goes out of their sight. The servants are those who, at least in profession, are the disciples of Christ, and the pounds are the faculties which they possess, and the opportunities which they enjoy. The place and age in which our lot has been cast, our early education, our bodily members and mental powers, our station in society and the circle of our homes, our money and our health, and, in addition, the graces of the Spirit, in whatever measure they may have been conferred,—all that we are and have belongs to God. He is the owner, and we are tenants at will.

While a general law has been laid down to determine, in the main, the direction of our course, the details are left to our own discretion. One man may invest his master’s capital in land, and another in merchandise, and both may be equally faithful, equally successful: so in various lines of effort, different disciples may, in diverse manners, but with equal faithfulness, serve the Lord. There is freedom in the choice of departments, provided always there be loyalty to the King.

In the relation between Christ and Christians, opposites meet without hostile collision. His ownership is absolute, and yet there is freedom in full. His lordship does not limit their liberty; their liberty does not infringe his rights. What a glorious liberty this earth-ball enjoys! How it careers along through space, threading its way through thronging worlds, and giving each a safe wide berth in the ocean of the infinite! Yet the sun holds the earth all the while in absolute and entire control. Like that glory in the visible heavens is the glory of the  Everlasting Covenant. The largest liberty conceded to the sons of God consists with sovereignty complete and constant exercised over them by the Redeemer, who bought them with his blood. He is their owner, and yet they are free. The union of opposites is possible with God: “He is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.”

The sons serve; and yet they are sons. Ransomed men are instruments of a higher order, than other agencies through which the reign of Providence is administered. Although the Lord requires of his regenerated people as complete submission to his law, as he demands and obtains from the elements of nature and the brutes that perish, he does not require from them an equally uniform and mechanical routine. The streams that course over continents, and the tides that swell upon their shores, must render the same service every day; but these sons of God are not held to labour by a bridle so short and rigid. They are endowed with reason and will; they are set at liberty, and permitted to expatiate over a wider field. Their master goes out of sight, and trusts to a renewed, loving heart for the diligent outlay and faithful return of all the talents. The Gospel requires and generates not a legal, but an evangelical obedience.

When the king returns, or the servants are summoned one by one through death to meet their master, they are tried as to faithfulness and diligence in laying out their talents. Although ten were mentioned at the beginning, it is not necessary to report on more than three at the close. These are sufficient to show that some were diligent, and some slothful; and that among the diligent there were different measures of effort, success, and reward.

What hast thou that thou didst not receive? Occupy; occupy all, and occupy it all the time till the Giver come  to claim his own. All that God gives us is given for use. There is much evil, moral and material, in the world. He who made it and saw it fall by sin, has its restoration and renewal much at heart. When he has gotten some of the fallen restored to favour and renewed in spirit, he endows them with various riches from his own treasury, that the capital wisely invested may yield a large return at his coming. Let each according to his means and opportunity lay himself and his talents out to leave the world better than he found it;—to diminish the amount of sin and suffering, to feed hungry mouths, and cover naked backs, to enlighten dark minds and save perishing souls. It is a high calling to be fellow-workers with God, to be instruments of righteousness in his hands.

One, by trading with his pound gained ten, before the king returned, and another five. Both are equally approved, but unequally rewarded; each receives as his recompense all that he had won. Two principles which operate in the spiritual kingdom are symbolized here; one, that various degrees of efficiency and success obtain among the faithful disciples of Christ; another that reward in his kingdom springs from work and is proportioned to it.

The parable of the talents recorded by Matthew represented one fact in the history of the kingdom, that different persons receive differing gifts from the sovereign God: this parable, recorded by Luke, represents another fact in the history of the kingdom, that among those who possess equal gifts varieties occur in the skill and success with which the gifts are employed. The practical lesson from the former parable is, If with all your efforts you fall far behind your neighbour in the result of your labour, you need not on that account be cast down, for equal diligence will meet equal approval, whether it be applied  to a large capital or a small; the lesson of the latter parable is, If others are obtaining greater results than you, strive to imitate and equal them, lest your opportunity not have having been fully occupied, you should obtain at last only a small reward. The first puts in a spring to keep the truly faithful from sinking into despondency because their talents are few; and the second puts in a spring to keep the indolent from lagging behind. The two together, one on this side and one on that, shut all up to diligence in the work of the Lord.

A glimpse is given here of the method in which rewards are bestowed upon faithful servants; each receives what he has won. The work of the saved in their Master’s service measures in some way their recompense at their Master’s side. In all cases the wages given, seeing they depend on the merits of the Mediator, must be immeasureably greater than the work done; but it would appear that the differences which shall obtain in heaven will bear some proportion to the productiveness of the service here: the whole continent will be elevated as by the immediate power of God: but certain points will stand out above others in the celestial landscape on account of great talents greatly used. How much a city is greater in value than a pound we cannot calculate exactly, but the difference represents the gain that all the true servants will make at the coming of the king. All the faithful are made great; but the greatest worker is the greatest winner when the accounts are closed. Hold on, disciples; every grace that grows into strength, through bearing and doing your Redeemer’s will here, is a seed that will multiply your enjoyment manifold when you come to the inheritance. Nor is this a mercenary motive. A true Christian can never separate his interests from Christ: he  serves his Lord in love to-day, and will discover at last that in serving his Lord, he has been enriching himself.

The case of the servant who allowed his pound to lie unused is not different from the corresponding case in the parable of the talents except in one thing; in this parable the pound which the indolent servant had permitted to lie idle is simply taken out of his hands, while, in the other parable, the unprofitable servant is cast into outer darkness.

The lesson, in as far as it is the same in both, is, that not only those who do positive wickedness, but those also who fail to do good, are counted guilty in God’s sight. Inasmuch as in this parable no other punishment is inflicted on the indolent servant than the deprivation of his capital, it may possibly be intended to intimate that culpable unfaithfulness in a true believer may sometimes descend so far as to be undistinguishable by human eyes from the entire neglect of the unbelieving. There is, however, in all cases, a dividing line, although we may not be able to trace it—“the Lord knoweth them that are his.” Nor does this conception really weaken the motive to diligence; for if any one should slacken in his efforts to serve the Lord on the ground that a great degree of negligence, although it may diminish his reward, does not imperil his safety, this very thing would conclusively prove that he has no part in Christ. It is the nature of the new creature to be forgetting the things behind, and reaching forth to those that are before; when the leaning of a man’s heart goes in the opposite direction—that is, when he deliberately endeavours to make matters as pleasant as possible for himself, by escaping from all service to Christ, except as much as is necessary to carry him safe to heaven, he certainly has not yet been born  again, and in this state shall not see the kingdom. He who sails along the sea of Christian profession, loving the neighbouring land of worldly indulgence, and therefore hugging the shore as closely as he thinks consistent with safety, will certainly make shipwreck. Ah! the ship that thus seeks the shore is drawn by the unseen power of a magnet-mountain—drawn directly to her doom; he who is truly bound for the better land gives these treacherous headlands a wide berth.

The last lesson is the judgment pronounced and the punishment inflicted on the adversaries. They who will not submit to Christ the crucified will be crushed by Christ the king. Every eye shall see him; they also who pierced him. Meekly now he stands at the door and knocks; then he comes as the lightning comes.

One hope remains,—one door stands wide open yet. His enemies must be slain, either now or then. The enemies of the Lord’s reign in the present world are the evil desires that occupy a man’s heart, and close it against its rightful sovereign; drag them forth and slay them before him, that he may enter and possess his own. Surrender his enemies into his hands to-day, and you will henceforth be among his friends; if sins be sheltered in the day of grace, the sinners will find no shelter in the day of judgment.