Section XI

the kingdom of god

As we have already remarked, it is an absolutely false assumption, that Christ entirely rejected the Jewish expectations of the reign of the Messiah; or at least that He designed to establish a merely spiritual kingdom. In contrast to this notion, we must point to the fact that the spirit of the Gospels throughout favours the promise which was given to Mary, that the Messiah should rule for ever as a king on the throne of David (Luk 1:32-33), and similar expectations (1:69). The announcement with which John opened his ministry, that the kingdom of heaven was at hand (Mat 3:2), was immediately repeated by Jesus (Mat 4:17).¹ And we cannot overlook the circumstance, that all the disciples of Jesus entered into His communion on the distinct understanding that He was about to found a kingdom (Mat 18:1).

But had Christ really purposed to found only a spiritual kingdom—in other words, not a kingdom, but a school—He could hardly with truthfulness have induced the men who came to Him with that expectation to join themselves to Him. Still less could He have yielded His assent to their supposition, as He really did (Mat 19:28).² Rather, He was conscious of being in the strictest sense the King of humanity, and of founding a kingdom, that is, a realm of God, to come hereafter into actual appearance, and completing itself in a visible community. Only in relation to the founding, the spirit, and the nature of this kingdom, He was obliged to hold Himself aloof from the expectation of the Jews. But it is indeed a false notion to imagine that all the Jews cherished a fully developed, carnalized, equally rude and low expectation of this kingdom. The expectation was originally a religious one, and therefore more spiritual or carnal according as the persons who cherished it had a higher or lower stand-point. Probably it was as multiform as in Christendom the idea of the nature of the Church. There could be no devout man in Israel who did not possess, in the Jewish shell of his idea of the kingdom, a christological kernel. Only thus was it possible for the Lord to engage the disciples as heralds of His kingdom (Mat 10:7). He needed not to annihilate their expectation, but only to purify and transform it by the fire of regeneration. In this process of purification all were obliged to go through a great fire, and a Judas through his own criminality became dross; all the rest incurred the greatest risk. But they bore uninjured the certainty that Christ founded the kingdom, though fully purified by the flames. After the resurrection (Act 1:6) and ascension (Act 3:20-21) of the Lord, the confidence of the disciples bloomed afresh, that He would establish His eternal kingdom by their means; it was imperishable. Nevertheless the doctrine of Christ concerning His kingdom, differed, as we have said, so far from the prevalent conceptions of His people, that He saw Himself obliged to bring it near to them under the veil of parables. We can plainly distinguish a threefold cyclus of such parables. The first exhibits the kingdom of God in general, in its development. In the second and third, the essential forms of activity by which God completes His kingdom are pointed out. The second cyclus, namely, includes the parables respecting the mercy which founds and fills up the kingdom of God; the third contains the parables of the judgment, by means of which it is completed in its purity.

Jesus delivered the parables respecting the kingdom of God in general, for the most part, to the multitudes on the shores of the Galilean sea; not all at once, but on different occasions.³

The first of these parables describes the sower scattering his seed on land consisting of very different kinds of soil, and of which the crop is regulated by the quality of the soil on which the seed is cast (Mat 13:1-23; Mar 4:1-20; Luk 8:4-15). The general groundwork of the parable is the truth, that the culture of heaven is reflected in the culture of earth. God’s corn-field, mankind, is reflected as to its chief relations in the corn-field of mankind, the earth. The sower who makes his appearance in this parable is not some petty husbandman who cultivates a small enclosed piece of ground; his field is large, of various quality—an image of the earth, or rather of humanity. So we see that humanity is as distinctly and comprehensively cultivated by its sower, as the earth by man. ‘The word of the kingdom’ is everywhere expressed in its most general form. This is the first leading thought: the whole of humanity is God’s corn-field. But the second thought shows how God treats mankind justly and equally in the distribution of His seed. The seed of the word falls everywhere; the same seed falls on the stony ground and on the wayside that falls on the good ground. But the soil is very different. Even in a smaller piece of ground the difference exists. Besides the good ground, there are corners of the field trodden down—places where there is a want of soil above the rock, and places where there is a rank growth of thorns. On these differences the produce of the sowing depends. Only on the good ground does the seed thrive for the harvest. These relations are exhibited more fully on a large scale. Many cultivated tracts of the earth are trodden down, spoilt, gone wild; and there are in proportion only a few choice districts and cultivated grounds. And so it is in humanity, both on the great and small scale. In this lies the third leading thought of the parable. On the largest scale we see the different soils in the different religions. In Heathendom we see the trodden wayside: the seed of God which falls on this ground is immediately—since the heathen do not understand it (μὴ συνιέντος)—taken away by the fowls of heaven, by the wicked one. Corrupted Judaism exhibits the stony ground: here the seed sprang up quickly, but withered under the sun of tribulation, under the rays of the Cross. The ground where the good seed is choked by the thorns of worldly lusts, is the Mohammedan world. The good ground is Christendom. But even within the pale of Christendom there are again the same varieties of susceptibility; hearts which have been hardened by the repeated tread of evil, so that the seed of the word not received only rests on it outwardly, and is taken away by the first temptation of the evil one;—superficial souls, who received the word with a sudden enthusiasm, but remain unchanged in their radical disposition, and therefore easily fall away;—souls which are deeply involved in the cares and pleasures of the world, and therefore cannot surrender themselves to the highest. On these soils the seed thrives not. But yet the husbandman gains a clear profit from his sowing, a joyful harvest. The earth yields its increase, and so does humanity. God obtains His harvest from the good ground in humanity. The plan of the parable might easily have led to conceive of these differences of susceptibility in a fatalist sense. But this is not the Lord’s design. First of all, He obviates such a misinterpretation by changing men of different soils into men of different fallings of the seed. He speaks of that which is sown on the wayside, instead of the wayside on which it is sown; of that which is sown on the stony ground; and so on. According to this construction, men are the seed in various states; there is a life in them, and a human life according to the kind of men. Then it is said of the man of the good ground, ‘This is he that heareth the word and understandeth it;’ the activity of his spirit is rendered prominent. And when it is said, in conclusion, that the good ground bore thirty, sixty, or a hundred-fold, not merely the difference of the natural capacity, but likewise the free appropriation and application of the word is pointed out. In the definiteness of these numbers are represented the definiteness and harmony of the blessings, the living powers, of the kingdom of God. Thus God obtains His world-historical harvest in humanity on the good ground of chosen and faithful hearts. He therefore conquers the negative hindrances to His kingdom, those of the manifold defective and blunted human susceptibility.

But His kingdom has also positive hindrances to overcome. This is shown by the parable of the tares among the wheat (Mat 13:24-30; Mat 13:36-43). The general symbolic of this parable consists in the delineation of the positive tendency to degeneracy and running wild which is shown in the life of the earth, and presents hindrances to its culture; and just so in the life of humanity. As in the ground, the noxious plants threaten to choke the noble cultivated plants; so in the life of humanity, the seed of corruption threatens the seed of salvation. Three leading thoughts proceed from this truth. This is first evident: the heavenly sower is opposed by a dark sower, his enemy; a noxious seed is placed in opposition to the good seed and threatens to choke it. Thus, therefore, not merely human weakness, unsusceptibility, and culpable defect are opposed to the kingdom of God. as in the first parable, but a kingdom of conscious wickedness whose point of unity is Satan, as the enemy of Christ, as the life-principle of all antichristianity. His sowing time is the night, when people are asleep. Under the protection of human weakness, the work of devilish wickedness flourishes. The seed which the enemy sows in the consecrated field, in which the wheat has already been sown, is darnel, a weed resembling wheat, but a positive weed, since it grows up between the wheat and endangers it. ‘The good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the bad seed are the children of the wicked one.’ Not men as men form the contrast, for Satan is no Ahriman who can form men, but men as they are become identical with the spiritual seed received into their inmost being. The wicked, therefore, are here described as the weeds as far as they are identical with the ‘offences’ (τὰ σκάνδαλα, Mat 13:41) which check the growth of Christ’s good seed. Evidently these offences are the religious and moral heresies in the Church. They have in common a life-germ of demoniac origin, and an antichristian bias. They are collectively and separately the wheat-like darnel. The element of truth which in them is decomposed into falsehood, the form of doctrine which they assume, and the enthusiasm with which they are carried away—all this makes them have the semblance of the wheat of pure doctrine, and of the Christian life that is the product of that doctrine. But this darnel owes all its vital power to the fact, that men identify themselves with it until they exhibit it themselves, and therefore realize the antinomian principle (ἀνόμια) which lies in heresy. The greatest danger in the appearance of the darnel arises from its not springing up merely in one patch of ground, but growing through the whole corn-field, scattered in every part. In this manner it apparently threatens to destroy the whole crop, and this it is which so alarms the servants of the proprietor. Then we are introduced to the second leading thought of the parable. The servants wish to pull up the noxious plants; but their master orders them to let them grow with the wheat till harvest. The excitement of the servants proceeds first of all from their anger at the wickedness of the enemy: they wish to punish him by destroying his crop; and next, their zeal is roused for the cleanly state of the field, that it may be throughout free from blemish. Lastly, their fears are excited lest the darnel should choke the wheat, or even adhere to it and change it into darnel. But the master is superior to their excitement, for he sees that these zealous servants would be as dangerous to his crop of wheat as the enemy. In their passionate zeal they are not in a state to distinguish stalk for stalk between darnel and wheat, particularly as in the green shoots they are so much alike, the less they are developed. There is therefore great danger of their doing great damage to the crop of wheat in their attempt to weed it. But their master knew of a certainty that the wheat would remain wheat, and in time overtop the darnel; and the nearer the harvest approached, the more distinctly it would contrast with it, so that at last the wheat would be most easily separated from the darnel. In this feature of the parable the great thoughts of the Lord respecting His kingdom are contained. The servants of the sower have in history proved it a thousand times by the fact, that the darnel and the wheat cannot be distinguished with sufficient exactness. How often have the purest doctrines been execrated as noxious weeds; how often have the children of the kingdom been condemned as darnel and committed to the flames! In such cases the servants have assisted the enemy himself: their hatred of men has been kindled by his; his unbelief has inflamed the unbelief in them which imagined that the seed of Christ could be destroyed; they had lost the repose of spirit and the clearness of vision which beheld the glory and righteousness of their Lord. These zealots in the wheat-field commit violence, contrary to the express commands of their Lord. He knows that the false heart will always form false doctrine, and false doctrine will always find a congenial soil in false hearts, which assimilate themselves to it, and thus the noxious plant must complete its history. It must ripen till harvest,—then the entire worthlessness and noxiousness of its seed will be discovered. How otherwise could it be perfectly judged at the last judgment? But to the Lord it is equally certain that pure doctrine will always find true hearts; that it will be ever retained and flourish in congenial dispositions till the day of harvest, when the whole crop will be ripened in the life of the children of the kingdom. The precious seed and its precious operations, and the precious souls,—that is, the precious seed of Christ in the Gospel, the precious seed of the Spirit in the Church, and the precious seed of the Father in the creation,—will ever meet together and form a wheat-field, which, though outwardly intermixed with darnel, yet remains true to its destiny, and will certainly reach it. There is one more consideration which the parable could less definitely express. That seed of light and the opposite seed of darkness both find a susceptible soil in humanity. But it does not follow that some hearts have originally only a disposition for the darnel and others for the wheat. In this relation the most numerous intermixtures, fluctuations, and transitions take place, and it is not well to pass a final judgment during this stormy season of development. Even erroneous doctrine and the truth itself, during this intervening period, are found in such an intermixture, not in themselves, but in the heads and opinions of men, that even in doctrine the wheat and the noxious plants cannot be perfectly and in all their parts separated from each other till the end. The harvest-time is here that terminus where heresies have set themselves as completed scandals, as principles of destruction against the truths of the Gospel, the principles of salvation, and where men who advocate the contrary to these principles have at length become identified with them, so that judgment must follow. From this significance of the final judgment, we may understand in what sense Christ has required His servants to tolerate the darnel-crop during the present life. In the law of the Old Testament theocracy the punishment of death was inflicted on false prophets. Religious zeal might erroneously transplant this law and apply it in a manner most detrimental to the very essence of this economy, by concentrating all the elements of this theocratic typical process against the false prophets. This took place when such zeal placed on an equal footing mistaken opinion with erroneous teaching, and erroneous teaching with fixed heretical dogma, and this with actual social outrage, and outrage with a capital offence, and this with the offending soul; and, accordingly, at one stroke instructed, refuted, excommunicated, tried, condemned, and everlastingly damned the real or supposed heretic. In this way, forsooth, has the Old Testament typical law been expounded and practically enforced by the hierarchy of the Christian Church. In opposition to the horrible judicial arrogance of such servants, whose minds have been darkened by the fear of the devil and the hatred of men, the Lord requires the toleration of the darnel in His wheat-field. But this toleration cannot signify an absolute impunity to evil; but only a holy keeping apart of the momenta we have mentioned. The passing error should only be corrected, for it is sufficiently ripe for that (Jam 5:19). Distinct erroneous doctrine should be refuted, and its teachers punished by admonition; for this purpose are the angels of the Church there (1Ti 4:1-6). Fixed antichristian dogma must be excluded from the Church, with its promulgators, for it has become a scandal to the consciousness of the Church (Gal 1:9). The offender against the laws of social order must be judged (Rom 13:4), and he who is chargeable with a capital crime must atone for it with his life (Mat 26:52). But no one must be condemned and rooted out of the Church as a noxious plant; for only at the last judgment can this judgment be passed by holy beings, by the impartial angels, and the judgment of Christ Himself. Thus Christ wills toleration as an infinite energy of patience, which must come forth for ever new in His congregation, from the purest reciprocal action between the spirit of righteousness and the spirit of mercy; and with this, the last principle of this parable is announced. There is coming such a complete separation of all impure and pure elements, of all that is Christian and antichristian in humanity, as certainly as harvest-time follows seed-time; and that harvest-time comes as a sudden great epoch at the completion of the development of the seed. Then will men be treated in judgment like the principles with which they have identified themselves. This identification on the Part of the good is a complete one, for a man can become altogether one with the light; but with darkness he cannot altogether become one, for identification with evil, in which evil men become individual scandals, is an incomplete, a crying contradiction, an internal laceration, and fiery torment, which in itself is a judgment, and to which, as an outward judgment, the fire of hellish relations corresponds, into which the wicked will be thrown, and in which they will burn. That the noxious plants are gathered into bundles before they are burnt, points to the bringing together of the bad by their separation from the good, as it forms one part of their judgment. But the good form a wheat-harvest, in which all will become living bread for all, a world of ideality, in which all will be upheld and borne by all in the eternal brightness of life—the pure produce of the development of humanity. One great fact of the kingdom of God is here depicted, when it is said, that after the separation of the darnel from the wheat, the righteous shall shine forth as the sun. The release of the pure Church from the pressure which, by the mixture of its members with the antagonist members, weighs down their souls, must have the effect of giving them an infinitely powerful and delightful elevation. The Lord adds to this promise the words which always arouse the attention to an important communication, ‘Whoso hath ears to hear, let him hear.’

The third parable (Mar 4:26-29), represents in a very striking manner the gradual development of the kingdom of God in time. This kingdom is bound to a rhythm, the succession in time of the development of nature. No sooner is the seed sown, than the growth proceeds of itself agreeably to nature, without incessant toil and anxiety on the part of the husbandman. He cannot bring on the harvest before its appointed time; he must quietly wait, and so it certainly comes to him. But it comes when the seed has gone through all its forms of existence, till it appears in the last stage of ripened corn. First the green blade shoots forth, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear, and last of all the ripe grain. This beautiful parable shows that the kingdom of God, not only in its widest extent, but in the individual soul, requires time and patience for its development, and that the seed of God grows quietly and surely, day and night, wherever it is in the right soil. At the same time the important thought is presented, that we ought rightly to estimate all the forms of development in the kingdom of God-the green field of hope in its youthfulness, as well as the time when the Gothic spires rise towards heaven as do the high-pointed, but not yet full ears; and the time when the stalks become heavier, and the heads droop, as the time of harvest, when all is shining in the golden light of joy.

After the development of the kingdom of God in time, its development in space, its spread in the world, is depicted in the parable of the grain of mustard-seed (Mat 13:31-32; Mar 4:30-32; Luk 13:18-19). The kingdom of God in its beginning is the smallest of all seeds; but in its unfolding it is the greatest of herbs, a real tree, so that the birds of heaven come and make their nests in its branches. In its beginning, therefore, it is remarkably small; in its development, remarkably large—its extension in space is wonderful. And thus the kingdom of God has actually been extended. The earthly appearance of Jesus was the wonderful small grain of mustard-seed but the plant which sprang from this germ is ever spreading itself throughout the whole world. The same thing is true of the seed of the kingdom of God in the breast of the individual: a single word of God, which lies, as it were, buried in the depths of the soul, spreads itself by degrees as a tree of life through his whole inward and outward life.

This certainty and power of expansion belonging to the kingdom of God indicates also a preponderance of power by which it overcomes all earthly opposition. This specific preponderance of the life of Christ over the whole natural life of the world, is expressed in the parable of the leaven (Mat 13:33; Luk 13:20-21). The leaven is simply and invariably a match for the dough. Let only a small quantity of it be mixed in three measures of meal, and as it were buried deep in it, yet it will penetrate and leaven the whole heap, and change its nature into its own nature. With the same certainty Christianity gains the mastery over the natural life of humanity, as it is buried both in the nature-fulness of the world and in the nature of a single individual whose inner man is affected by it. This perfectly certain, victorious power of the Christian principle is here depicted; not merely its imperceptible, quiet, gradual operation, though this quiet, imperceptible delicacy of its action is contained in the parable. But at the same time the parable declares the circumstance, that Christianity with this preponderance must christianize humanity. As, on the one hand, the leaven is different from the dough, so is Christianity from the natural life of men. Therefore it cannot allow this life to retain its old character. And as, on the other hand, the leaven bears an intimate relation to the dough, so does Christianity to the essential life of man, and therefore can and must mingle with it. But that is a higher potency of the dough. On the certainty of this fact rests the confidence of the woman who kneads the leaven into the meal; she knows that owing to its superior power it must transform the dough into its own nature. In like manner Christianity is a higher potency of humanity, and on that rests the confidence of the Church, which, with its weak hand, performs the same office in spiritual things as the woman in earthly things, when it infuses the life-power of Christ into the blood and life of humanity.⁴

But this preponderance of the Church is no natural necessity for individuals in the world, so that they would become Christians without knowing how. They may be outwardly christianized by that leavening influence of Christianity without becoming Christians in their individual inward life. For individuals in the world, Christianity remains continually a mysterious, hidden treasure. At the best, they are aware of its existence as a hidden, far-distant treasure, celebrated by report. Whoever finds it may esteem himself fortunate in the highest degree; for in this discovery God’s highest freedom co-operates with the highest free agency of man. When a man has found this treasure, he recognizes it as the highest good of his life; he gives up everything in order to gain the divine good of individual, vital Christianity. Thus the world-historical Christianity becomes individual. These relations are pointed out by the treasure hid in the field (Mat 13:44) and by the pearl of great price (ver. 45). The two parables resemble one another in this point, that they show how Christianity must be first found by the individual; how it becomes his portion in concentrated unity. as the highest good of life, and desired as an absolute, new, and heavenly life-treasure, so that the man is ready with joy to resign his ancient life-treasure, in whatever imaginary good it might consist, and at the same time his own self-will, with which he clung to that treasure. This surrender is represented under the image of purchase-money, in part allegorically, and in part symbolically. It is only allegory when it is said that man gains the pearl of great price by the surrender of his earthly comforts; for this surrender cannot be considered as the payment of the purchase-money, but only as the removal of obstacles, as the fulfilment of conditions: yet the description is, in its internal sense, symbolical; when man surrenders himself and his old life-image to God in faith, he gains, in the vital exchange of love, a participation of the life of God. He gains Christ, the treasure hid in the field, the pearl of great price; and if he possesses the most precious pearl in its unity, he no longer seeks the inferior pearls in their multiplicity, which, compared with that pearl, are valueless. But though no one receives the treasure of Christianity otherwise than on the condition of a pure surrender, yet there is a great difference in the way and manner by which individuals obtain it. In one case the superintendence of grace which makes a man the happy finder is conspicuous in all its nobleness. Most suddenly he lights upon the treasure in the field, and from a poor day-labourer becomes a wealthy Man.⁵ In the other case his discovery is the final result of a long, conscious striving. He was a merchant whose attention was directed to precious pearls, and who gladly laid out his property on the choicest goods of life; who perhaps sought his satisfaction in the pleasure resulting from high morality, the cultivation of the fine arts, of literature, and of science. He was seeking for goodly pearls; he finds the one pearl of great price. This merchant is also a finder to whom the highest blessing of Heaven, grace, is propitious. But his long seeking, the mediation of finding by a higher striving, is made more conspicuous. On the other hand, the favour of Heaven came suddenly on the first finder, although he was unconsciously a seeker, a man who was digging the field for the sake of bread. As the free saving agency of the grace of God in the reconciliation of man is set forth in the parable of the treasure hid in the field, so is the noblest striving of man in it by the parable of the pearl of great price.⁶

The last parable in this cyclus is that of the net cast into the sea, and enclosing all kinds of fish (Mat 13:47-50). When full, it it drawn on shore. The fishermen sit down and gather the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. The explanation of this parable shows, that the judgment is represented under a new point of view. The judgment had already been spoken of in the parable of the darnel and the wheat; but the leading thought of that parable was the necessity of tolerating heretical spirits, and the judgment itself appeared principally as a separation of offences and their perpetrators. But here the distinction between the good and the bad, the elect of humanity and its refuse, is represented unconditionally in the contrast of the good and the bad fish. The net is the Church in its widest extent, as the institution which, in its consummated operation at the end of the world (ἐν τῇ συντελείᾳ τοῦ αἰῶνος), embraces the whole world, and has continually embraced it according to its ideal significance as the glory of Christ’s kingdom. The judgment here appears from the point of view which regards the correct estimate of the essential worth of individuals. The righteous form collectively an essential heaven; the wicked, an essential hell; and the separation is made accordingly. Here also the judgment of the wicked is marked by their being cast into the fire where is wailing and gnashing of teeth.⁷

All the parables in this cycle show to what extent Christ deviated from the Jewish representations of the Messianic kingdom, and combated them. According to the Jewish preconception, the heavenly sower had cultivated and sown only a small field in the wilderness of the world, the people of Israel, who bore the best fruits in the fidelity of their observances. This corn-field, according to the false notion of the Jews, was pure enough; but all round there grew a crop of noxious plants, the heathen world. At the most, there appeared in those opposed to the one Jewish sect but one kind of noxious plants; but when this appeared distinctly in the shape of individual opinion, they inflicted stoning in order to exterminate it. Neither the metamorphoses of the kingdom of God as depicted in the third parable, nor its extension, as in the fourth, suited their system. The doctrine of the vital operation of the kingdom of heaven as portrayed in the parable of the leaven, agreed not with their system of traditions; still less could they admit, in their self-righteousness, that each one among them must enter the kingdom of heaven through a special act of grace in his individual experience. The judgment, they imagined, would consist in the exaltation of the Jews and the punishment of the Gentiles; this momentous separation was, in their opinion, completed long before outwardly. Thus, in one word, the whole difference was decidedly exhibited between the completely pure original Christianity and totally decayed Judaism in all these doctrines of the kingdom. It was only in parables that the people could endure such severe Christian truths.

By means of the three last parables of the first cycle, the two following cycles are already announced. If here, in the parables relating to the agency of mercy, the traits of judicial righteousness come forth at first gently, but afterwards more powerfully; and if again, in the parables relating to judgment, the traits of redeeming grace and love are constantly to be found, we are not to be surprised. For these fundamental forms of the divine administration are not antagonistic to one another. Bather we may affirm, that one is a necessary complement of the other, and that they build up the divine kingdom in living co-operation. This twofold aspect of the parables we are about to consider, may in some instances make it doubtful whether we are to place them in the second or in the third group; in such cases, we must pay particular attention to the leading thought of the parable.

It accords with Luke’s peculiar predilection, that he has collected most of the parables that illustrate the administration of mercy. These parables the Lord was especially induced to bring forward, when, towards the close of His ministry, He came into frequent collision with the Pharisees, and had to censure their unloving disposition.

The first of these parables is a noble portraiture of mercy, which very properly opens this cycle; namely, the parable of the good Samaritan (Luk 10:30-37). By means of this parable, Jesus explained to the scribe, who wished to tempt Him, who was his neighbour. The, man who, according to our Lord’s representation, falls among thieves between Jerusalem and Jericho, is a Jew from the metropolis. His neighbours in the Jewish sense are the priest and the Levite, who heartlessly hurry by him as he lies half-dead. The Samaritan who travels the same way is, according to the Jewish prejudice, not his neighbour, and he dare not promise himself any help from him. But generous pity moves his breast as he sees the Jew lying there half-dead, The latter must be glad, that in such a plight a Samaritan salutes him, lifts him up, binds his wounds, and pours in oil and wine. He readily consents to be placed on the beast of the reputed unclean stranger, and to be taken by him to the inn. He must acknowledge such a deliverer to be his neighbour, and, ashamed and overcome by his noble-mindedness, must also become the neighbour of his deliverer. With wonderful skill Christ has so put the case, that no choice is left to the scribe, but he must himself condemn his Jewish prejudice. No feature of the parable is impossible. An orthodox Jew from Jerusalem might fall among thieves. There are priests and Levites who would be heartless enough to pass by him without sympathy; it is very possible that a Samaritan might pity and help him. And such traits of character are frequently to be found in real life. But the reality is always a judgment on that hatred of heretics which eradicates universal philanthropy and the love of our neighbour. It is not a Samaritan whom the priest allows to be in his blood, but a Jew. The priest, with cold selfishness, is conscious of his elevation above this layman, although he was of the same confession. The Levite also prides himself too much on his peculiar temple-purity. Even the Jewish innkeeper is not altogether free from the charge of heartlessness, for he allows the Samaritan to pay for his Jewish brother. How striking and how awfully true are these traits of inhumanity, as it begins to operate in regions where fanaticism leads to the hatred of those of a different faith! Such fanatics cannot be content with striking down the Samaritan, and leaving him in his blood. They rob one another, and strike one another half-dead; and their very priests and Levites leave the unhappy man who has been attacked by robbers lying in his blood; and all this within the circle of one and the same fanatically excited confession. Thus the Jewish nation, in the last war before the destruction of Jerusalem, was overrun by robbers and fanatics, the same persons being often both. No consecrated institution holds men together any longer, where love has grown cold, and is even regarded as a sin. In the circle of such heartlessness, every person is an obscure separatist, and every family a sect in opposition to the great universal Church of grace and mercy, and scarcely is the nearest, to say nothing of those at a distance, regarded as a neighbour. But calamity comes forth, on the one hand, with giant steps, and plunges the fanatic into misery; on the other hand, mercy conducts the differently minded, and makes him an angel of deliverance for him. Thus the holy, inalienable humanity of benevolence and compassion breaks down those barriers of religious and national animosity, by which man in his selfishness can fancy that he does honour to God by his nation or his creed, while he has become worse than a heathen in his disposition. And as far as this humanity exerts its influence, and establishes a higher intercourse between calamity and mercy—as far as this pure unselfish human love reaches, it is manifest that man, simply as such, is neighbour to man, as far as he is man, as far as he can receive and return love. The good Samaritan is in all his features an image of the freest and richest mercy; and this has given occasion to find in this parable an allegory of the love of Christ. Christ too was, in the eyes of the pharisaical Jews, an unclean person, a heretic; and He it was who rescued prostrate, half-dead humanity from sin, while the priests and Levites never vouchsafed a glance at the deep wounds of their race. Thus the first parable delineates the mercy of love in its most general form, embracing all opposites, and overcoming all obstacles.

The parable of the man who made a wedding feast, in the first form in which Luke presents it (14:16-24, compared with Mat 22:1, &c.), is also, as we have already mentioned, predominantly a parable of mercy. The insulting behaviour of the persons who were first invited, who betrayed by their paltry excuses their contempt of the invitation, called forth, of course, the anger of the householder. But this anger revealed itself again as the ardour of an invincible love: he was angry, and sent forth his servants to invite other guests, till his house should be full of the poorest and meanest. And he resolved, in accordance with justice and honour, that ‘none of the men that were bidden shall taste of my supper.’ The banquet of this noble-minded personage represents the blessedness of the Christian spiritual life. Jehovah is the giver of the banquet. He had long before invited guests. The Israelites had been prepared for the great banquet, and had been invited to it. But the latter summonses must be distinguished from the first invitation; now the feast was ready. These summonses coincide with the advent and ministry of Christ. But now the invited, as if preconcerted from the first, began to make excuse. The excuses of these persons are excused in a foolish manner,⁸ contradictory to the spirit of the parable, when the text is explained thus: that the first and second wished to settle their purchases; and when, as to the third, it is observed that the newly married Israelites, according to the law, were free for a year from military service (Deu 24:5). These excuses must from the first appear as worthless, and indeed contain their own refutation. For temporal and worldly business does not in itself prevent man from being a guest in the kingdom of heaven, but bondage of the will, the tumult of the passions by which he is impelled, and the confusion of a worldly mind, as it appears in all imaginable forms. This confusion is shown in this, that the two first, having made their purchases, wished to inspect them at night-time, when all field boundaries are obscure, and all cattle are black; and that the third has been made a vassal by his wife, which means more in the East than in the West. The earthly mind in its various forms makes men unsusceptible for the spiritual life of the kingdom of heaven; particularly as delight in earthly possessions, represented here by ‘the piece of ground,’ and in the love of power is symbolized by brandishing the goad over five yoke of oxen; and lastly, as slavish sensuality and surrender to men in love and fear, perversities which the hindrance arising from marrying represents. The subtle forms of opposition to the Gospel as they met the Lord in Pharisaism and Sadduceeism are everywhere animated by these various elements of the worldly mind. The offence against the giver of the feast consisted in breaking the word of promise made to him, and that his kindness was treated with contempt by worthless excuses precisely at the most joyous event in his life. But yet he gratified his ardent desire to make a festival. We cannot hesitate to understand by ‘the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind,’ whom he caused to be invited in haste from the streets and lanes of the city, in the first place, the ‘publicans and sinners,’ in contrast to the Pharisees. And when the servant is sent out of the city to invite the people who were lying about in the highways and hedges, this must apply to the Samaritans and heathens in contrast to the Jews in general. The hedges may refer to the extreme borders of Judaism, and to its being fenced in, as it were, from the Gentiles who were situated on the borders of the Israelitish territory. But here again, in the outward contrast an inner one is reflected. The Pharisees and Jews are in this case only the representatives of the worldly happy and the worldly-minded throughout the world; the publicans, Samaritans, and heathen, on the other hand, represent the poor in this world, the souls who are longing for the blessings of the kingdom of heaven. These poor persons, who could scarcely conceive of so high an invitation, the giver of the feast causes to be earnestly invited, yea, compelled to come in. Yet we must not impute to them a spirit of resistance against entering the house of the Church, which is to be overcome by force, as fanaticism has interpreted the passage; but simply the hesitation of joyful surprise in humble minds, who deem themselves unworthy of such an invitation. Thus the house of the divine liberality is filled with guests who can celebrate the feast of love and of the spirit; the worldly happy remain without.

The love, generosity, and mercy which are depicted in this parable are shown in the next place as redeeming grace, which is not only applied to the suffering and the poor, but equally to the lost. It is thus exhibited in the parables of the lost sheep, the lost piece of money, and the prodigal son. In all the three parables, that overflowing, wonderful, self-sacrificing inspiration of love is delineated, which to the earthly mind must appear as foolishness. The shepherd risks the ninety and nine sheep in the wilderness, and even his own life, in order to rescue and recover the lost sheep; and his rejoicing on having found it far exceeds the pecuniary value of the sheep. And the very pains with which the woman who had ten pieces of silver seeks to recover the lost piece, and the joy with which she tells her neighbours of its fortunate recovery goes far beyond the bare value of the coin. But the father, who sees his lost son returned, prepares a feast such as he had never prepared for the elder son who had remained at home with him. So wonderful, even to the miraculous, is love, that even the angels of God, in all their number and glory, can ‘rejoice over one sinner that repenteth.’ Yet is this apparently foolish love, divinely wise grace. Mercy also acts with ail the motives of wisdom. It came, in the person of the Son of man, to seek what was lost. When anything that God has made is lost in His world, a violation of the divine order is involved, against which not only love but also wisdom enters the lists. The beautiful completeness of his flock is lost to the shepherd, to make up the number one hundred; and the woman also dwells upon the round number of her savings—that she had exactly ten pieces of silver. The deficiency is so painful, especially in the father’s house, where one of two sons is wanting.⁹

Therefore the consideration of the whole guides mercy when it seeks for the single lost one. The divine regard for the symmetry and beauty of the eternal temple causes the divine love to exert itself about this or that stone in the structure. But there is also consideration of the individual, of its life and value. A lost sheep is indeed, as lost, a very poor creature; but the shepherd values it as a sheep of his flock; he gives it not up to the wolf; he pities its unhappy life in its wanderings and distress. The lost piece of money lies in the dirt, tarnished and useless; but still it is a coin composed of a noble metal, and stamped with the image of a prince. But the value of the lost son which remains to him in all his degradation, consists in his being the nearest relative of his father, that his being is derived from his father’s being. Thus grace seeks to deliver the lost sinner, partly on account of the relation in which, according to the divine destiny, he stands to God and to the eternal family of God; but also on his own account, because he is an unhappy being, because in his nature (Substanz) he has an unchangeable value, and because he is originally of divine descent. The parable of the lost son is a gospel in the Gospel. It has been said, that here is reconciliation without mediation through Christ, and so it has been erroneously assumed that every parable must exhibit the whole rule of faith; the parable of the lost sheep and its shepherd is already forgotten; and in this of the lost son, it is not understood what is meant by the father’s running to meet him with agitated heart, and falling on his neck and kissing him. The divine salutation in the heart of the returning sinner, the first blessed feeling of grace, is here exhibited in the most beautiful manner.¹⁰ Every stroke is to the life. The youngest son loses his inheritance, by separating through mere selfishness his own property from his father’s, withdrawing from his father into the paths of worldly pleasures, and squandering his property in the indulgence of sensual lusts. He is punished by famine, by the want of the peace of God in the land of vanity, and by the lowest degradation, that he, an Israelite, must prolong his life in a most dishonourable existence, as swine-herd of a heathen, a most servile and disgusting occupation—till at last he must vainly wish to live upon the swine’s fodder, and therefore sank into a depth of misery, which made the lot of the most unclean animals an object of envy. But by these means his awakening is brought about. This is expressed with admirable beauty: ‘he came to himself’ (εἰς ἑαυτὸν δὲ ἐλθών). He reflected on the happy lot of the hired servants at his father’s, and resolves, ‘I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants!’ The hired servants were not the offspring of his father. If we are not disposed to consider them as merely allegorical figures, which is precluded by the fact that their happy condition made so deep an impression on the prodigal, their tranquillity denotes the tranquillity of creation, particularly of the irrational creatures, which formed so lively a contrast to the miserable state of the distracted sinner, and admonished him to turn from his evil courses. The confession, ‘I have sinned against Heaven,’ is very significant; by every sin a heavenly nature is violated and disturbed. Compassionate grace could not be depicted in a more striking manner than is shown in the conduct of the father. The lost son brings the confession of his guilt before him; but grace has expelled the gloomy element in his repentance; the petition, ‘Make me as one of thy hired servants,’ has died in his heart. He cannot affront the father with this monkish or slavish sigh of distrust. But the father reinstates him joyfully in his filial dignity: orders his servants to put on him the best robe, and a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: he must be seen again in the full array of sonship. Then he commands them to kill the fatted calf, and to prepare a feast, because this son who was dead, is alive again; he was lost, and is found.¹¹ He therefore prepared for him a feast of restoration with the highest joy, devotion, and distinction. The elder son forms a difficult element of this parable. It seems a contradiction that he should be contrasted with the lost son as remaining at home, and should yet be irritated with his father for showing compassion to his brother. But if we closely look at it, traces of the same lost condition will gradually show themselves in the secret recesses of his soul, with which he upbraided his younger brother. In his legal good conduct he is outwardly unblameable, but inwardly he is not more in harmony with his father. He is not of one mind with him in mercy; he no longer knows his father’s property to be his own; he is not dutiful to him; he even refuses to go into his father’s house, where the feast for the return of his brother is celebrated, so much is he offended at the festive sound of the music and at the dancing. How strikingly is this feature apparent in the conduct of the Jews when the Gentiles became Christians! They went with heathenish rancour out of their Father’s house in which grace celebrated their redemption-feast. And for a long time the elder son cherished a secret embittered feeling against the Father; for he fancied that he had served Him so many years, and never transgressed His commandment, but the Father had never yet estimated his conduct according to its merits. It is evident that he had no inward delight and joy, from his morose external correctness of deportment. A fearful truth lies in the words, ‘Thou hast killed for him the fatted calf; yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I should make merry with my friends.’ He never found a real feast of soul in his legality. But, in truth, he fain would have made merry without idea and occasion, as his brother had done in a foreign land; this now comes out with his chagrin. With a feast of the spirit he had nothing to do; this is proved by his ill feeling towards the feast for his brother. His last words are full of bitterness and falsehood. ‘But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf (ver. 30). He was unwilling to call the returned prodigal his brother, though obliged to recognize him as his father’s son. He exaggerates and misrepresents his irregularities, and describes the expense of the feast as an excessive indulgence of the prodigal, and wastefulness. He even depreciates his father’s character; and his own degeneracy, which had been hitherto concealed under outward propriety of conduct, now comes to a head. Thus mere outward righteousness is always brought to shame when it sees the feast of grace. It cannot endure the sight of sinners being saved by grace. In the tumult of envy which this spectacle arouses, all the selfishness, coarseness, and depravity which had been hitherto concealed, break forth. The history of the Jews in the days of the Apostle Paul proves this; and the history of the hierarchy in Luther’s time on the large scale, while on the small scale it has been repeated a thousand times. Thus, for example, a feeling of chagrin may be observed in many sanctimonious rationalist writings respecting the conversion of Augustin, and his high reputation in the Christian Church. The elder son is a character that perpetually recurs in the history of the kingdom of God. But it was not within the scope of the parable to narrate the sequel of his history. His fall first became visible when that of his brother was retrieved by grace. This grace also calmly confronted his perversity with soothing and admonitory words. The divine mercy is as much illustrated by the closing words of the father, with which he admonished the elder son, as by the joy with which he hastened to meet the younger.

The parable of the prodigal son is plainly reflected in the parable of the Pharisee and publican (Luk 18:9-14). The two forms which stand in presence of the grace of God in such different frames of mind, again make their appearance. But the elder son here develops himself fully in his self-righteousness, and the younger stands before us in the attitude of ripened repentance. This advance, however, is not the only difference of the two parables; for a turning-point is here introduced, since a man is depicted as praying with such complete success as to obtain the redeeming grace of God. We must here connect several parables with one another as representations of the life of prayer, by which man becomes sure of the grace of God and of all its aids. The parable already mentioned forms the beginning. From the connection we gather that the publican is the principal person in it, as is also shown by the structure of the conclusion. Christ spoke this parable ‘to certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.’ It has been remarked, that, since a Pharisee is introduced in this parable, Christ could not have addressed it to the Pharisees, for in that case the form would have been unsuitable. But on this hypothesis, no publican could have ventured to be present at its delivery, nor any priest or Levite at that of the parable of the good Samaritan. Since the figure of the Pharisee was not chosen to put into the shade any individual of that sect, or the sect itself, the question appears to be unimportant, whether the Pharisees were present or not at the delivery of this parable. The parable recognizes, indeed, that the Pharisee had the pre-eminence of dignity and conformity to the law, before the publican: he is with propriety placed first. It is not his zeal for the law in itself that brings him into a disadvantageous position, but the delusion that by this zeal he was righteous in God’s sight. With emphasis it is said that he stood thus in the temple and prayed by himself.¹² He thanked God that he was not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican; and then he tells what he really is—he fasts twice a week, and gives tithes of all that he has. This shocking poverty of the feeling of life, which would make out of two useless excesses of a religious and civil legality the true riches of life, and even a righteousness before God, shows his character. The keynote of his prayer is contempt of other people; and the worst thing in it is, that he condemns the publican personally while celebrating his own reconciliation with God. The publican was an Israelite as well as he, and had an equal right to enter the temple. But, bowed down by the consciousness of his sinfulness, he did not venture to go far into the sanctuary. The sanctuary reproved him as the visible majesty of God, and perhaps the Pharisee himself appeared to him as a cherub who threatened to hinder his entrance into paradise. He would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven, not even his hands, but smote upon his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ The judgment of Christ follows this contrast: ‘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.’ Thus, then, man obtains grace in the way of sincere humiliation before God, and of believing prayer; not in the way of legal performances. But, owing to his spiritual slothfulness no less than to his pride, he is always inclined to enter the path of self-righteousness, and thus to estrange himself from the grace of God and from true spiritual life. This striving of man to realize righteousness in his religious and civil performances sinks him a thousand times into the most unspiritual Pharisaism, which sharpens his performances in mere external things, while spiritual death gives the most ghastly signs of its having seized on the inner man. And a thousand times the poor publican stands agitated by the feeling of his guilt, and burdened by the condemnatory sentence of the Pharisee, and in the internal sentence that he passes on his own soul, sees the day-spring of God’s grace. Thus both the Pharisee and the publican are world-historical forms; they walk immortal through all ages of the theocracy and of the Christian Church.

While this parable shows how the sinner obtains grace by means of prayer, the parable of the unjust judge (Luk 18:1-8) represents how Christians who are in a state of acceptance with God obtain at last, in times of severe trial, His merciful aid by means of persevering prayer. Here, therefore, the unjust judge represents the image of God, as in another parable the unjust steward denotes the pious man. In both cases these delineations are manifestly to be regarded as allegorical, in distinction from symbolical ones. God can only according to outward appearance seem like the unjust judge when He allows the pious to suffer long under the oppression of the world and the attacks of the evil one, when, as in the instance of the sufferings of Christ, He seems to continue inexorable in the deepest sufferings of the innocent. But, according to His nature, He is always the merciful One. Parables in which such bold allegorical strokes occur, peculiarly require an explanation, such as is given here and at the close of the parable of the unjust steward. Olshausen has justly referred to the often-recurring outward appearance of the inexorability of God, in which He only expresses His own unsearchableness in order to explain the figure of the unjust judge. According to him, the oppressed widow is to be regarded as an image of the persecuted Church; and her adversary who oppressed her, an image of the princes of this world. The explanation which Jesus appends to the parable favours this interpretation. He calls attention to the words of the unjust judge. As the poor widow was always importuning him to extend to her the protection of the law against her adversary, he said to her, ‘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.’¹³ ‘Hear,’ said Christ, ‘what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and night unto Him, though He acts towards them with lofty reserve,¹⁴ and therefore inscrutably? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily.’ The closing words, ‘Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, will He find faith on the earth?’ express the same thought in the strongest manner. God will not only respond to the prayers of His elect, but will so far surpass them, that the appearance of the Son of man, with which the redress of their wrongs will take place, will be incredible to the majority. In this parable, therefore, the whole praying life of the Church is marked as the condition on which the entire mercy which God cherishes for His Church in His Spirit will be manifested. The appearance of not hearing, of unmercifulness for a long time, confronts the supplications of the Church; but when the hearing comes, the unfolding of the mercy will be so glorious, that it will be met by the appearance of unbelief in those who had implored it.¹⁵ But though this parable, according to its precise interpretation, is a living image of the Church in all ages, it is equally an image of individual believers. The destitute soul is reminded of the full power of constant access which God grants it in the privilege of prayer. In the way of prayer it can be certain of the superabundant unfolding at a future time of God’s mercy.

A kindred parable, but presented in the form of a parabolic conversation, we find in Luk 11:5-8. Here the Lord describes a person who knocks in the middle of the night at his friend’s door, to seek his assistance on a pressing occasion. Another friend, travelling by night, has turned in for a lodging, and he wants three loaves to entertain him; so he comes to his friend with a request to lend them to him. Will this friend, in such a case, call to him from within,¹⁶ ‘Trouble me not; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed?’ ‘I say unto you,’ says Christ, ‘though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will arise¹⁷ and give him as many as he needeth.’ Both friends have excellent motives which clash with one another. The one entreats under the pressure of a sacred obligation which friendship, and indeed hospitality, had imposed upon him in a most urgent form. For the other, it is hard to disturb his little ones in their sweet sleep so suddenly and alarmingly, especially by the opening of the house-door. But still he does not consider it well to set his own motive against that of his friend. The unabashed urgency to which his friend is impelled by the requirements of love forms an exciting power which overpowers him and makes him quite alert to render aid. And if he were not his friend, yet he could hardly withstand him. How much more, then, will God, in His deep, heavenly repose, faithfully and graciously hearken to the supplication of man in his midnight distresses—that supplication which in its purity always proceeds from the holiest solicitude of love, honour, and duty!

The experience of God’s great clemency which redeems and rescues the sinner, can only be completed when the life of love again awakens in his breast and begins to gush forth. It will therefore express itself in reciprocal love and gratitude, and in their preservation. This truth the Lord exhibits in the short parable of the two debtors (Luk 7:41-42). Both were in debt to the same creditor. The one owed him five hundred pence, and the other fifty; and since they could not pay him, he frankly forgave them both. Simon the Pharisee, to whom Jesus had addressed this parable, was obliged himself to decide, that he to whom the creditor forgave most would love him most. Jesus then declared to him, that the sins of the woman who had occasioned this conversation were forgiven, since she had given proof of greater love; ‘but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.’ It plainly follows from the connection of the parable, that the forgiveness of sins is to be considered not as the consequence, but as the ground of love to the Lord. But the leading thought of the parable is this, that from the fulness and power of a man’s proofs of love we must draw conclusions respecting his love, and through that, respecting the reconciliation from which alone it can proceed. Where the love is great, the reconciliation is great; where there is little love, the reconciliation is slight; that is, the reconciliation scarcely exists, or is not yet begun. And the more the love of man unfolds itself, so much more deeply he enters into the blessed kingdom of love and mercy. But the more he gives himself up to an unloving disposition, the more he loses the right state of mind for mercy and the hope of it.

Christ shows in three great parables, that if men would obtain mercy, they must exercise mercy. In the first, the parable of the unjust steward (Luk 16:1-8), we see the blessing of mercy; on the other hand, in the two others, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and of the servant who owed ten thousand talents (Mat 18:23; Mat 18:35), the curse of unmercifulness is depicted. In the exposition of the first parable, we must, above all things, not overlook the key which the Lord has given, since this parable is more difficult than the others. This remark applies particularly to the words, ‘The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.’ The unfaithful steward must be regarded as one of the children of this world, since he deceives his lord. And the debtors are, at all events, people who live in the same worldly element as the steward; they become parties at once to his unfaithfulness. Of his master we know nothing that sets him above the region of the children of this world. It strikingly indicates his worldly mode of viewing things, when we are told, in ver. 8, that he actually commended his unfaithful servant. It is true, he praised him only for his cleverness—that by the exercise of a great though unrighteous liberality he had made provision for his own maintenance. Now thus the children of light ought to be wise in their way, in accordance with their own character. Money is almost an imperishable idol, the Mammon whose worship will not vanish even among Monotheists;¹⁸ for which reason Christ calls money by the name of the idol. But He calls it still more definitely the Mammon of unrighteousness; not only because it passes through so many unrighteous hands, but because it never purely corresponds to its proper destiny, an ideal standard of value for worldly things and relations. Money (Geld) should express the essential value (Geltung), and thus secure righteousness in commercial transactions; but in its actual use it is often a caricature of its destiny-a false standard of value, and therefore a medium on which a thousand false estimates and returns, and therefore deeds of unrighteousness, depend. But the children of light should always feel about money as if something alien and unsuitable belonged to it, and therefore should devote it most willingly to making friends with it—friends who may receive them, if they now suffer want, into everlasting habitations. It would not be consonant to the spirit of Christ’s doctrine, if we were so to understand these words, as if the pious could by works of mercy purchase a reception into everlasting habitations, or that this reception is dependent on the generosity of the perfected in the other world. In this parable we find ourselves placed in the kingdom of free mercy. According to this view, the leading thought is: Sanctify temporal possessions, which generally become a burthen to men; make them an organ of blessing by your liberality; make them the channels of your mercy. If you so devote the temporal to mercy, you will make friends for yourselves, who will give you in exchange the eternal for the temporal, and receive you into their everlasting habitations. Here in the everlasting habitations of the Church, and in the other world in the everlasting habitations of the perfected kingdom, you will be welcomed as belonging to the family. Whoever devotes his powers to mercy, living and dying, he will fall into the arms of mercy. Olshausen has developed the leading thoughts of the parable in an ingenious manner, so that all the parts obtain a definite meaning. The rich man is the world, or the prince of this world. Opposite to him stands another, the true Lord,—God as the representative of those who receive the destitute into everlasting habitations. The steward stands in the middle between the two. ‘He labours with the property of the one for the objects of the other.’ We are here reminded of the better sort of publicans, who had an entirely different position from that of the Pharisees. They were outwardly, indeed, very much mixed up with the world, but their inner man was inflamed with a longing after the divine. The Pharisees, on the contrary, were ‘outwardly in close conjunction with the divine, as the representatives by birth of the theocracy; but their inner life was attached to the world, and they made use of their spiritual character for temporal objects.’ But the parable, by certain definite features, requires the exposition of Olshausen to be in some degree modified. According to ver. 13, the rich man is Mammon himself—the allegorical Plutus—the spirit of gain, or the worldly mind so far as it amasses wealth in the spirit of selfishness. Every man of wealth or property is a steward in the kingdom of this Mammon. But the pious man of wealth does not serve him faithfully; he embezzles, according to worldly notions, the treasures which he ought strictly to employ for self-interest, since he employs them in the spirit of liberality and sympathy. Lastly, he is too much for the calculating genius of gain, who purposes to dismiss him from his service; that is, the steward by his liberality puts himself in a wrong position to the spirit of gain in the world; he is in danger of being reduced to poverty. But this knowledge of his situation does not frighten him back into worldly covetousness. He wishes, indeed, not to starve, nor would he like, in order to live, to be a bungler in a trade that he had not learnt, or to practise the fawning servility of a mendicant. So he goes confidently and boldly forward in his way; he takes still bolder steps in disregarding his lord’s interests, for he contributes to the kingdom of love and mercy. The parable makes it manifest, how in the Christian Church the rigidity of selfish acquisition ever more becomes relaxed in the service of love, and how the Christian spirit contributes to a brotherly communion in the enjoyment of goods.¹⁹ The practical application made by Jesus calls this unfaithfulness of the pious against Mammon, faithfulness in little, the least that can be required of a Christian. ‘If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon, who will commit to your trust the true [riches]? If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?’ Here the thought is more decidedly brought forward, that money is not to be managed according to the mind of the wealthy world of Mammon, but according to the Spirit of God. Lucre is dangerous as well as unessential for the Christian. If he succumbs to the spirit of the world in this little thing, the true riches cannot be entrusted to him, and he cannot come into the possession of the eternal goods intended for him. This saying struck the Pharisees, and was designed to strike them; but we are not at liberty to suppose that this parable was a mere allegory on the Pharisees and publicans.

The rich man in the next parable, at whose gate poor Lazarus was laid, forms a counterpart to the unfaithful steward. Recently some have attempted to maintain that this parable is founded on Ebionitish views. We are not to suppose that the rich man had to atone in eternity for his sins in the present life; nothing of this sort is to be found in the Gospel. It is not said that he had not given relief to Lazarus; rather, he was punished because he was rich and had lived prosperously in the present world. On the other hand, nothing is known of the good conduct of Lazarus; rather, he was admitted into heaven simply because he had been poor in this life. To the rich man special praise has been awarded, because he wished to send a messenger to his brethren who were yet alive from the kingdom of the dead, that they might be warned by his fate. This last circumstance tells against the preceding remarks. The rich man, at all events, admits that he might have escaped the place of torment if he had been suitably warned, and that his brethren might yet escape it. Did it ever enter his thoughts, that they must divest themselves of their wealth? He says nothing of the sort, but rather that they must repent (ver. 30).²⁰ Criticism has indeed not altogether overlooked this circumstance; just so the description that the rich man ‘was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.’ It is indicated with sufficient clearness that Lazarus had not to rejoice in any sympathy on the part of the rich voluptuary. He lay at his door (‘laid at his gate’), covered with sores, and desiring (ἐπιθυμῶν) to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Yea, even the dogs which came licked his sores. The expression ἀλλὰ καὶ, ‘but also,’ with which the mention of the dogs is introduced, makes them appear not as friends, but as sorry rivals of the destitute. The dogs here spoken of are such as in the East run at large in the towns and greedily seize whatever food they can find. The abundant fragments of the rich man’s luxurious table attracted them in great numbers. They gathered round Lazarus and licked his sores. He was obliged to share his scanty fare with these greedy dogs, among whom it was his lot to be thrown.²¹ Lazarus dies; so also does the rich man. The funeral procession of the former was a guard of honour from the other world: the angels carry him into Abraham’s bosom.²² The interment of the latter was an earthly ceremonial; with emphasis it is said, ‘he was buried.’ The rich man had charged his memory with the name of Lazarus.²³ He was surprised in the other world, in Hades,²⁴ to see this man in Abraham’s bosom, while he was tormented in the flame. And this is exactly the finest, keenest master-stroke of the parable, that the rich man is disposed to treat Lazarus with an unconscious continuation of his earthly arrogance even here, and with contempt. Lazarus must come down to him into the fire, and cool his tongue by applying the moistened tip of his finger; perhaps only in this slight manner, because he had seen the poor man in the impurity of his sores. Lazarus must undertake the errand to his father’s house, and convey information to his brethren as an apparition from the other world. Lazarus here, Lazarus there. Thus he regards him with the same eyes as before, and with the same estimate. Lazarus must be his errand-boy. The arrogance with which he intrudes into Heaven from Hades he foolishly grounds in part, even in the presence of Lazarus, on his descent from Father Abraham. But even in Abraham’s presence he is not teachable. He contradicts his assurance that Moses and the prophets gave sufficient instruction about time and eternity for men who are willing to hear. ‘Nay, Father Abraham, but if one went to them from the dead, they will repent.’ His anxiety for his brethren’s house implies a covert censure of Moses and the prophets, that they were not sufficient to bring persons to repentance; and a bitter reproach of the divine economy, that it neglected him in his religious need, and had suffered him to perish unwarned. The declaration with which Abraham closes the conversation is justified by the events that followed. Even the resurrection of Christ made no impression on the hearts of those who had not been willing to learn the awful importance of eternity from Moses and the prophets. Lazarus throughout the whole parable does not utter a word. Hence it has been inferred that we know nothing of his disposition, and that, according to the Evangelist, he was transported to heaven on account of his former sufferings. But not to say that, as Neander remarks, he is not the principal person in the parable, and that from his relation to Abraham we may conclude that he bore his sufferings with pious resignation, his silence in his present situation must be regarded as most impressive. He is silent before the gate of the rich man, where he calmly lies, a beggar of princely pride and unblemished honour. He is silent also in Abraham’s bosom (whence the rich man would recall him for his service in hell), a humble, blessed child of God, without self-exaltation, in the bosom of glory. If we duly estimate the great virtues of silence, we shall see that of Lazarus come forth conspicuously. This parable would have been better understood if the powerful impression of a transaction between the spirits of heaven and those of hell had not led men’s minds away from the leading thought. Olshausen justly remarks, that this conversation is to be regarded only as a living reciprocal action between the two domains of life. His remark is also worthy of notice, that the description here given relates not to eternal salvation and damnation, but to the intermediate state of departed souls from death to the resurrection. ‘In our parable, therefore, nothing can be said of the everlasting condemnation of the rich man, inasmuch as the germ of love, and of faith in love, is clearly expressed in his words.’ We cannot indeed but acknowledge in him the feeling of sympathy for his brethren; but, in the whole form which it takes, there is a mixture of the most impure elements, namely, of ill-will and unbelief, and even of superstition. The disclosures which Olshausen finds here respecting the relations of the intermediate state must be admitted; namely, ‘(1.) That departed souls are congregated in one place; (2.) that they are separated according to the basis of their character into the good and the wicked; (3.) that after death a transition from the good to the wicked, or the reverse, is impossible.’ But, as we have already remarked, information respecting the detail of things in the other world is not the essential design of the parable. The key to it lies in the declaration of Father Abraham: ‘Thou in thy lifetime receivedst (ἀנπέλαβες) thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.’ Of the mere life-position of the rich man in this world on the one hand, and of the poor man on the other, nothing is said, even remotely; but of the way and manner in which the rich man conducted himself in his prosperity, and the poor man in his adversity. The one had enjoyed his good things.²⁵ He had seized upon them as his felicity, and by this enormous delusion had laid the foundation for his future sinking into the fiery torment of unquenchable desires and ever-devouring circumstances. The other received his evil things, his grievous lot; and by his resignation to the divinely decreed suffering, he became capable of blessedness. Reposing in Abraham’s bosom, he could find a heaven in that calm retreat; while the other, in his fearful agitation, would fain have set heaven and earth in commotion. These destinies, so distinctly marked, considered in their parallelism, would show the judgment of the Gospel to be far exalted above the reproach of Ebionitism. But these destinies intersect one another, and for this reason,—because the rich man kept his earthly goods for himself, without mercy towards the poor man; because he turned that abundance itself into a curse which should have been a blessing to the other; and because the poor man in his indigence had borne with resignation the misery of the world together with the misery of the rich man. The true poor man is merciful in the manner in which he bears unenviously and quietly in God the burden of the world, its discordancy; wherefore he will obtain mercy. The false rich man, who receives his property as booty for his sensual indulgence, is without mercy by the very manner of his luxurious living; retributive justice confronts him in eternity with its punishments. Dives and Lazarus are world-historical personages.

The rich man, by worldly luxury, allowed himself to be seduced into unmercifulness, and thus incurred heavier guilt, since he had experienced the liberality of God in his abundant possessions, and was therefore bound to exercise liberality. But much heavier is the guilt of him, who in the spiritual life experiences the mercy of God, and after such an experience treats his neighbour in spiritual relations with unmercifulness. This criminality is depicted in the parable of the unmerciful servant. The king who would take account of his servants (Mat 18:23-35) is evidently an image of God in the administration of His strict justice. When he begins to reckon, there is one who owes him ten thousand talents. In the presence of eternal rectitude, the very best servant of God is a sinner burdened with an immeasurable debt. The servant is unable to pay. So man cannot possibly wipe away his own sin. His lord threatens the debtor to sell him with all his family, according to the ancient law of debt, in order to recover as much as possible. Thus the punishment which strikes the sinner, falls also on those who belong to him. But the debtor, in his terror, pleads for a respite; and his lord yields to his prayer, takes compassion on his family, and remits the whole debt. It deserves special notice, that the debtor asked for a respite; it did not amount to a frank admission of his insolvency; he could not leave the legal standpoint. He shows the same temper also in his conduct immediately after towards his fellow-servant, who owed him a hundred pence: ‘He took him by the throat, saying, Pay me what thou owest;’²⁶ and without being softened by his entreaties, ‘cast him into prison till he should pay the debt.’ His hard-heartedness is represented in sharp, bold strokes. This took place on his going out from the chamber in which his lord had just forgiven him his immense debt As he had thrown himself at his lord’s feet, just so his fellow-servant fell at his, and in the same words as he had used to his lord, besought a respite. And the claim was so trifling. By these traits is depicted the legal harsh demeanour of a member of the theocracy, or of the Christian Church, towards his brethren who are in debt to him. His fellow-servants were sorely grieved at such conduct, and told their lord. They plainly recognized another higher right—the right of mercy. Their lord now called the unmerciful servant into his presence and reproached him for his baseness. He handed him over in wrath to the tormentors, and to a painful imprisonment, till he had discharged his whole debt. But how could he exact from him the debt which he had already remitted? According to our civil law, to revoke the remission of a debt is not permissible. But in the legal relation in which this king stood to his servants or slaves, it was allowable for him to impose a heavy fine, or to exact the debt he had remitted. He had remitted the debt because he besought him (ἐπεὶ παρεκάλεσάς με). But the real suppliant gives the assurance that he believes in mercy, and therefore that the spark of mercy is in his own heart. If this debtor had supplicated in truth, he would have given a guarantee that he also practised mercy. His having been the recipient of an act of mercy, bound him to the exercise of mercy. This his lord plainly reminded him of, in the words,’ Shouldst not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee?’ Therefore the act of remission was nullified by his own fault. If the old debt had been remitted, he had now incurred another, greater one; had he incurred no new debt, the old one remained. According to this law which he had set up against his fellow-servant, the law of inexorable legality, he is now handed over to justice. His lord first treated him according to the law of justice, for the sake of the truth of justice. Then he treated him according to the law of mercy, or of supplication; for supplication as an expression of faith in mercy is a prophecy of mercy, and so its germ. But since he had practically repudiated this law, his lord returns with him to the first law, and holds him a prisoner in this stern hard world of exacting, avenging, inexorable justice, until he has paid all—for ever, if he does not learn to believe in the kingdom of mercy. The latter proviso we must make, for his lord had not changed his own nature in itself; but towards him he is the strict judge, not only for the sake of justice, but of truth; and this conduct is at the same time concealed mercy. We are not to suppose, from the particular traits here given, that a pardoned sinner in the stricter sense is depicted, who by his decidedly unmerciful conduct towards his fellow-men again falls back into his old state of condemnation. Christ distinctly assumes that he to whom much is forgiven, also loves much. But the possibility is certainly expressed in the parable, that a man may lose the beginnings of a life in grace by unmercifulness, or that he may decidedly disturb and obscure the continuance of his life in reconciliation with God, by more or less rash single acts of natural or legal hardness. And in this reference, the parable is a solemn warning. But if we keep in view the meaning of the words, that the lord took account of his servant, and remitted his debt, the whole life in Christianity is marked as a life in the kingdom of mercy, and therefore mercy as the highest duty. The Christian has, by his profession, from the first acknowledged himself to be a heavy laden debtor to God;—the central point of his prayers is supplication for forgiveness—his whole faith is grounded on the remission of sins; therefore his duty to show mercy to all who need mercy, and are susceptible of it, is expressed as the great and prime duty of his life. But it has happened a thousand times that the professed servant of God has come from his Lord’s presence in the ordinance of the Church, after absolution, and immediately, according to another rule of action, the purely legal, has treated his fellow-servant with the greatest harshness while the absolution was still sounding in his ears and should have found an echo in his heart. And thus he often comes from baptism, or from the communion, or from prayers; and a thousand times he is in danger, as he comes out, of forgetting the remission of his own great debt, and of seizing his neighbour by the throat for a small one. And if he falls into this temptation, it proves that his supplication was not of the right kind, and therefore that he has not really obtained absolution. His whole transaction with the merciful Lord was rendered nugatory, because his supplication was no real reflex and witness of eternal mercy. We need only take a glance at the history of the Church, or even at our own lives, in order to see what a fearfully clear and reproving mirror of a thousand instances of spiritual unmercifulness, under the banner of eternal mercy, is held up in this parable. And as in the rich man the unmerciful practices of men of the world are condemned, so in the parable of the two debtors the unmercifulness of professed Christians is condemned. And as the former suffered torment because in his unmerciful selfishness he had extinguished in himself the true capacity of enjoyment, so the latter came under the tormentors of the legal world, in the gloomy circumstances of self-tormenting both in this world and the next, and of endless quarrelling with humanity, because he did not thoroughly believe in forgiveness, and therefore could not forgive. This law is distinctly expressed in Christ’s closing words (ver. 35). But the unmercifulness of the latter is the greatest. The former closed against his neighbour the treasures of temporal means; the latter closed against his own heart the treasures of mercy.

Thus we see in a succession of pictures the agency of the love of God, which has its central point in Christ, as it establishes and extends the kingdom of God in its two great forms of life, in the glory of grace, and in the fervour of mercy. Every parable is a special world-image of this agency of love; each one exhibits a new revelation of its spirit and operation, as it is reflected in a new glorification of the world; and so the representation of the widest circle of its agency stretches forward to the most decided manifestations of its world-glorifying operation. In this series we see grace constantly approaching the fulfilment of the time when it will change itself into the form of judicial righteousness, in order to complete the erection of the kingdom of God, or in order to free the finished structure of ideal humanity from the rubbish and scaffolding which surround it.

The world of the merciful Samaritan is the world of merciful love in its widest extent. It embraces heaven and earth, the good and the evil. Hence it oversteps all the limits of nationalities and confessions, and chooses the strangest instruments among foreigners, dissidents, and heterodox, in order to put to shame and to conquer the unlovingness of national and confessional pride. It operates in a thousand forms on earth. Children and women, even heathens and savages, are active in its service. It is the healing balsam which streams forth from human hearts in their philanthropy and sympathy. Its symbolic representative is the good Samaritan; its real chief in its quiet world of wonders is the Crucified. If we see in this image the great labour of love, the second world-scene shows us the festival of love; we are taught its special object. It has prepared a great feast for humanity. Men are to assemble in its hall for an eternal feast—a feast of the highest divine communion, spiritual joy, and blessedness. The feast is announced in the morning of the world against the world’s evening; the first invitations have already been issued. And the glory of this love is most of all verified in not allowing itself to be perplexed by the despisers of its feast among the invited—that even in its wrath towards them it remains true to itself: it sends out messengers and seeks new guests among the poorest and most forlorn. And throughout all ages of the world this is the boldness of love, that it still makes efforts for winning hearts for the spiritual life of heaven, notwithstanding that the most honourable, consecrated, and dignified administrators of its outward ordinances often appear estranged from this life, and even in a state of awful death. But not without labour does love convert into guests of heaven those who ofttimes would fain have appeased their hunger with the food of swine. A new world opens. We see grace go forth on its sacred errands to seek out the lost. The great history of reconciliation is unfolded before our eyes in the parables of the lost sheep, the lost piece of money, and the prodigal son. The anxiety of the good shepherd, who is ready to lay down his life for his sheep, shows us the impassioned, self-sacrificing, uncalculating devotedness of the love of the Redeemer. The painstaking housewife is the lively image of a whole world of beautiful redeeming solicitudes in the heart of Christ and His Church. The restoration of the prodigal son, which the father celebrates by a feast in his house, is the history of numberless experiences of grace, and of its welcomes in the hearts of believing penitents, and an image of every evangelical jubilation in Christendom which sounds forth from time into eternity. But the life of Christ in us must verify itself under trial. The parts are shifted. Before, man was for a long time irresponsive to the call of his God; now, God appears to be irresponsive to reconciled men. We see humanity in its genuine christological life of prayer turned towards salvation: the work of God’s faithfulness in the trial and distress of His people, the glowing operation of His purifying power in their earnest supplications, is unveiled to us. The innermost life of humanity is disclosed; its wrestling after the righteousness of God and the completion of His kingdom, in the praying publican, in the persistently supplicating widow, and in the friend made over-importunate by necessity. Then, in the parable of the thankful debtor, we see the community of believers in the overflow of their love; they love much because many sins have been forgiven them. We see how humanity in its choicest specimens gratefully gathers round its Redeemer. And now the Christian spirit begins to transform the old world of selfish acquisition, the ice-bound kingdom of Mammon, into a new genial world of brotherly kindness, of benevolence, and of the common enjoyment of God’s blessings. But we see how, against this bright side of the new world, a dark night-side is presented; the world of secular and spiritual unmercifulness that constantly becomes more intense, represented by the rich man and the unmerciful servant. With these parables we approach the representation of the judgment as it is given in the third cycle of parables. Already, in the earlier parables, our attention has been directed to the judgment by single traits; as by the priest and Levite, by the despisers of the great feast, and by the elder brother of the prodigal son. But as the kingdom of God in its absolute power and glory embraces the whole world, those persons who reject His mercy are still within the range of His government, and fall into the hands of His justice. Yet, while His justice visits them with its judgments, it remains one with His mercy. But as it is the office of mercy to found and to build the kingdom of God, so it is the office of justice to purify and to complete it.

The parable of the day-labourers who each received one penny, notwithstanding the unequal times of their labour in the vineyard (Mat 20:1-16), must stand at the head of the parables of this group; for it shows how the justice of God exercises a rewarding retribution which is wholly animated by the munificence of grace. Grace determines and gives a brilliancy to the hire of these labourers, and equalizes it. The parable shows us, therefore, how the administration of God’s justice is perfectly one with that of His love. A proprietor hires labourers for his vineyard: the first, about six o’clock in the morning, at the beginning of the day; others, at nine o’clock (about the third hour)—people whom he finds standing in the market-place, detained there by the attraction of earthly things, loungers in the region of worldliness; others, again, about noon; a fresh set, about three in the afternoon; the last, an hour before sunset, or about the eleventh hour. These latter answer to his inquiry, ‘Why stand ye here all the day idle?’ ‘Because no man hath hired us;’ and at his bidding they go immediately into the vineyard. Here, then, we have a series of conversions exhibited according to the measure of their earlier and later temporal beginning. Some of these labourers have grown up in a life of piety, and from the first have been active in it; others have been called later; many have stood all day idle in the market-place, and enter the Lord’s service not till the evening of life. Now, according to the relations of earthly justice and rewards, it would be natural to expect that the payment of these labourers would be reckoned according to the term of their labour. So the Jews probably expected that the heathen who should be converted in the world’s evening, would receive a smaller reward than themselves. Also in modern times it has been maintained by rationalist theologians, that the neglected opportunities of the sinner in the time before his conversion can never be repaired—that the loss of time follows the converted man himself into eternity in an irreparable shortening of his felicity. But this parable seems to have been specially constructed to explode such an erroneous opinion. It belongs to the majesty of grace, that from the bosom of its eternity it can restore the otherwise irretrievably lost time. Hence also the circumstance is explained, that God could allow the heathen to go on in their own way thousands of years without losing sight of them, and similar mysteries. The power of grace shows itself in the reward of the labourers as the parable depicts it. The proprietor agrees with the earliest labourers for one penny; to the next he made the indefinite promise, that ‘whatsoever was right, that they should receive;’ and with the last he appears scarcely to have made even this condition.²⁷ And when evening was come, the lord of the vineyard desired his steward to call the labourers and give them their hire, in such order, that he began with the last and ended with the first. Now when the labourers who were hired in the early part of the morning saw that those who were hired at the eleventh hour received a penny, they expected much more, and murmured when they also received only a penny. Manifestly the parable expresses first of all the equal position of the earlier and later converted in the state of blessedness. But if the parable merely represented this truth, that salvation would at last be equal for all the converted, although they entered at different times into the service of the kingdom of God (as Neander thinks), the most striking features of the parable would be to no purpose. Rather it is clear, that the labourers hired last enjoyed the distinction of being first paid. And since in proportion to their time of labour they could not expect much, one penny was for them extraordinary good fortune. The first labourers, on the other hand, not only received their penny last of all, but embittered their own joy in it by expecting more. The outward equality of their pay, therefore, became an inward inequality in favour of the labourers who were last hired. How are we to explain this circumstance? Manifestly we must regard the labourers who were first hired as saved persons. For the one equal payment denotes the salvation to be imparted equally to all. But there is originally a difference in men’s capacity for salvation, and in proportion the fulness of salvation must be different to different persons. Now these first labourers appear to be delineated as more legal, calculating natures, whose capacity for salvation was not of great extent. They bargained with the proprietor for a penny. Labouring in his vineyard had become irksome to them—the chief point in the recollection of their labour is the burden and heat of the day. And they think it strange, that the others should be placed on an equality with them in point of wages. Since they ground their complaint on the principles of daily wages, the proprietor points out to them, that even on these principles they had received what was due to them. As to the last hired, on the other hand, the lord of the vineyard appears to take into account that they had not the opportunity till late of entering into his vineyard, and possibly they had a battle with themselves to exchange towards evening their indolent mode of life for hard work, and yet went briskly to their task without a stipulated reward. At all events, they appear now as, in proportion, the more richly rewarded, for this reason, that the amount of the reward must have surprised them. Thus a great fact in the kingdom of God seems to be reflected in their relation to the labourers who were first hired. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of spirit, in which the power of time and the relations of nature are abolished—in which a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years. In this kingdom it can be, then, of no decisive importance, in what outward temporal extent any one has lived for the kingdom of God, in what number and measure he has accomplished laudable works in its service. Rather the point of importance is, with what energy he can surrender himself to eternal love, and in what abundance he is able to receive it. And it is frequently found that the spiritual service of one convert forms a strong contrast in its energy to the formal service of another in its outward extent; as, for example, the conversion of the woman who was a sinner contrasted with the religiousness of Simon. In this contrast, one hour of human conversion and of divine reconciliation may have greater weight in their spiritual importance, than many years of life which have been spent under the reciprocal action of a well-considered human piety, and a proportional scanty flow of divine blessings. The differences of the measures of blessedness in the kingdom of God are adjusted, therefore, not according to the calculations of a mercenary disposition, or according to the outward measure of religious service, or according to the rules of human industry, but according to the relations of power and energy in the spiritual life. But viewed under these relations, it may be asserted as a maxim, that a man’s capacity for spiritual blessedness is smaller in proportion as he is more disposed to make stipulations with God, and greater in proportion as he is bold and large-hearted in joyful surrender to the free love of God. According to these relations of the energy of love, the determination of the dynamic inequalities is regulated, which allows the justice of God to enter into the circle of equality which embraces all the saved as saved. The justice of God is, according to its nature, not an outward forensic justice, deciding according to outward laws,—but it is a spirit, and therefore decides spiritually; it is one with free grace, and therefore gives to man in proportion as he can apprehend it as this free power of love. The parable expresses this truth in the words which the lord of the vineyard addressed to one of the dissatisfied labourers: ‘Friend, I do thee no wrong; didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way. It is my will to give unto this last (θέλω δοῦναι) even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my own? Is thine eye evil because I am good?’ The concluding words are also explained by the intention of the parable: ‘So the last shall be first, and the first last; for many are called, but few chosen.’ According to Neander²⁸ and others, this addition does not suit the parable, but is only outwardly attached to it, since the parable should express simply the equalization of all the converted in heavenly felicity. But we have seen how the parable also gives prominence to the dynamic inequalities within this equalization, and how deeply they enter into its main scope. According to this view, the parable terminates quite naturally with the words just quoted. It is a fact, that many of those who were called early into the kingdom of God were last in what related to spiritual fulness, and that many of those who were later called, appeared in this respect the first. But how can this relative fact be expressed in one sentence which states the matter quite unconditionally—The first will be last, and the last first—since Abraham and the elect of the Old Covenant generally belong to the early called, and, on the contrary, among the later called even the majority will present themselves as the inferior organs of glory? First of all we have to answer, that it belongs to the nature of an apophthegm to express a manifold conditioned thought in an unconditional form, since it must influence by the paradoxical emphatic expression of its chief element. But the warrant for this lies in the symbolical nature of the apophthegm; and so in this instance, the last which will be first are those who appear before the Lord with the slightest pretensions; while inversely, the first are those who by their undue pretensions became the last. This sentence was most strikingly fulfilled in the time of Christ: the Jews, who were the first in their pretensions, became the last; while the last, the Gentiles, advanced to the rank of the first. But even among the Gentile Christians the same phenomenon was repeated, and the ultimate reason is, that many are called, but few chosen. Even because only a few are chosen, so, many of the early called, as they grow up from childhood, in all confessions, according to their internal capacity for salvation, occupy of themselves decidedly a subordinate situation in the organism of the kingdom of God. But the few chosen also enter into their high position although their calling in time reached them later; for they meet the infinite energy of the love of God with a corresponding energy of a yearning and trustful disposition. Thus the kingdom of royal love obtains its organization, because the relations of eternity, or of the spirit, overcome the relations of time. Those who find love in justice, move towards the centre; on the contrary, those who only see justice predominating in love, move towards the circumference. But the circle of equal blessedness encloses them all; each receives his penny.

In the parable we have just now considered, the administration of God’s justice is exhibited in its refined and lofty spirituality, in its peculiar glory. This contemplation is continued in the parable of the ten servants among whom the ten pounds were divided (Luk 19:11-28). The former parable shows us how the divine justice requites labour outwardly unequal with an equal reward. In the latter, we see how the faithful employment of an equal number of pounds, on the part of different servants, is followed by an unequal success, and consequently by an unequal reward. But in the former case an internal dynamic inequality was plainly apparent, notwithstanding the equality of the reward; and in the latter we see how this inequality, which is here exhibited in its full extent, is equalized by every labourer’s receiving a reward which exactly agreed with his gains. And this constitutes the peculiarity by which the divine justice is infinitely exalted above the human, that it can exhibit the essential life in law, and equally in law the essential life; that it does not do away the great inequalities of life in the equality of right; and that it faithfully preserves the pure equality of right in the inequalities of life—that it can be justice and grace at the same time, in the one majesty of its administration.

As to what relates to the form, it has been thought that in this representation the Evangelist has committed the mistake of confounding two parables together, and that to restore their integrity they must be separated, be that one depicts the relation of a king to his rebellious subjects (vers. 12, 14, 27), and the other the relation of a rich lord to his servants.²⁹ But the blending of these two parts into one living unity constitutes the very pith of the parable. The kingdom of Christ is a realm which first of all was imperilled by a rebellion of its legitimate citizens, the theocratic nation; and its Ruler must gain the kingly power by travelling to a distant land which would place Him in a position to assume it on His return. Now, what was the first duty of His faithful servants whom He had left behind among the rebellious citizens? Should they take arms in order to make an attempt to gain possession of the kingdom for their Lord?³⁰ But this is precisely what this prince was obliged to forbid his servants. In this critical interval they were to administer his property in a perfectly peaceful agency, to make use of their abilities, and to employ the time in promoting his interests. Could our Lord have more impressively told His disciples that in the interval between the ascension and His second advent they were not to think of a worldly exhibition of His kingdom, or of vindicating His royal dignity and identifying His word with the laws of social life, but that they were only faithfully to administer the real goods, namely, the spiritual, which He had left behind, in their unassuming evangelical offices, in order to form a basis for the outward appearing of His kingdom by means of its spiritual riches? But at a future time, when He returns with kingly power, they will also surround Him in royal splendour—be placed over the cities of His kingdom, and assist Him as warriors to execute judgment on the rebellious. Such being the leading thought of the parable, we can understand why the Lord delivered it to His disciples exactly at the time when He was going with them to Jerusalem, and they were expecting that the kingdom of God would directly appear. Luke takes particular notice of the close connection of this discourse with the occasion of its delivery (ver. 28): ‘And when He had thus spoken, He went before, ascending up to Jerusalem.’ Now, if we look at the several particulars of the parable, we meet with traits of great significance. The certain man to whom the parable relates is a nobleman, a person of high birth; namely, Christ the chief of humanity. But as in that age Jewish persons of rank frequently resorted to the Emperor at Rome in order to get themselves invested with princely dignity in Palestine, so this noble personage went into a distant land in order to obtain a kingdom and to return home; an evident reference to His ascension, and His return at a future time for the manifestation of His kingdom.

The nobleman, before setting out, calls his ten servants, commits to their care ten pounds,³¹ and says to them, ‘Occupy till I come!’ The great number of his servants indicates the dignity of his house; the number ten is the round number of the world’s course. Each servant receives only one pound: by the equality as well as the smallness of the amount, we are led to think not of the gifts of grace entrusted to them considered in themselves, but of the official calling in which they find their expression. Every disciple of Christ is like the rest in his calling; and such a calling appears very mean in contrast with the splendour of the world. But his citizens hated this nobleman, and sent a message after him with the declaration, ‘We will not have this man to reign over us.’ We are here reminded of the embassy which the Jews sent to Rome to remonstrate against the government of Archelaus;³² and we are thus shown how Christ, in the contemplation of His theocratic claims to the throne of David in the sense of eternal duration, might wish to bring it into comparison with the way and manner in which the partizans of Herod at Rome canvassed for the earthly throne in Israel. The fulfilment of this part of the parable was first of all shown by the refusal of the Jews to receive the tidings of Christ’s glorification after His ascension and the day of Pentecost. But in a wider sense all unbelievers in the whole course of time belong to these rebels. When the nobleman returned, invested with kingly authority, he commanded the servants to whom he had given the money to be called before him, that he might know how much each had gained by trading. The first came forward and said, ‘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.’ The second came forward and said that he had gained five pounds. He was put over five cities. In this description the gain is first of all to be estimated. With the pounds are gained pounds; that is, from a few messengers and witnesses many others are made; His people, who are called to testify of Him, become numerous. But next, the difference in the gains of the different servants is strikingly exhibited. With one pound one had gained ten pounds; another, only five. If this difference lay entirely in the difference of industry, the servant would scarcely pass muster with the gain of only five pounds; but other causes appear to have co-operated, namely, the diversity of talent, and especially the talent of energy, in order to account for such a difference in the result. Then the recompense comes under consideration. Since the kingdom of Christ has now become a monarchy, His faithful servants become royal governors over its cities, and according to the measure in which they have gained with the sums entrusted to them. In the success, of their activity in the kingdom of the Cross, they had developed their qualification for their activity in the kingdom of glory, and the measure of it was fixed. The juxtaposition of the two faithful servants is sufficient to illustrate these truths. But another comes, 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 my own with usury?’ Now follows the sentence: ‘Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.’ The servants object, be has already so much; but their lord answers, ‘Unto every one that hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.’ The wicked servant allowed the pound entrusted to him to lie unemployed. It is characteristic, that he had laid it aside wrapped up in his napkin; he had used neither his pound nor his napkin; in cold indolence he had neglected, concealed, and denied his calling. From the reason he alleges, it is evident that he had no attachment to his lord, that he could not regard his master’s business as his own. We cannot, as Olshausen has done, look upon his excuse as indicating a noble nature, which was merely held back by the timidity and scrupulosity of the legal standpoint from putting out his pound to interest. Christ reproaches him as a wicked servant, and condemns him out of his own mouth. His excuse was therefore hypocritical. Devotion to his lord was wanting. He stood on the egoistic, and hence on the slavish standpoint. He undervalued his calling and the talent entrusted to him as a matter of insignificance, which, as he thought, was not worth considering whether he could gain or lose by using it. Trading with the sum entrusted to him seemed everything; the sum itself as nothing; and accordingly he reasoned thus: If I gain large profits with the pound entrusted to me, I shall gain no advantage from it—my lord will take it all; but if I suffer loss, I shall be made responsible for it without mercy. Hence it will be best for me to lay the pound by for him, and take care of myself. Thus the man of a slavish spirit calculates in the Lord’s service. He feels not how great the gift of his calling is; for surrender to the love that has called him is wanting. He thinks that everything in religion depends on his working. But he is afraid of becoming a saint, since he cannot regard as his own gain what he is to gain for God. On the other hand, he is so very much afraid of failures in Christian endeavour, and on that account postpones his conversion, as many Christians in ancient times deferred their baptism. Wherever a slothful servant of Christ looks upon his calling in relation to the harvest of the world, which Christ will expect from him, as a troublesome, contemptible sowing, and on that account neglects it, this parable obtains its fulfilment. But Christ passes sentence on the servant according to his own showing. Exactly because he expects great things from the improvement of every gift and calling entrusted to man, must every one make the best use he can of his pound. The very least which the slothful servant could have done, would have been to put his pound in the bank; without any great exertion on his own part, he would then have secured at least the usual interest of the money. He might give back his calling to the Church, who would then transfer it to some one else (place the pound in another person’s hands for trading with), and the Lord would then receive the profits which He might expect from a faithful application of it.³³ Instead of this, he retained the calling, but neglected it, and thereby inflicted an injury on his lord’s affairs. As a punishment, his pound is taken from him and given to him who had ten pounds. All the rights of the Christian calling which the unfaithful neglect, will one day revert in the world of perfect reality to those who have been faithful in their calling; and precisely those who have the richest blessing of power and fidelity will obtain the richest reversion. This expectation is thoroughly certain, since it is a settled matter that the correct relations of power and being in the kingdom of God, and therefore the relations of rank in those who sustain them, must one day appear in a perfect, clearly expressed organism. Whoever has the reality, to him also will be imparted the glory of the appearance; but whoever is destitute of real life in the calling of Christ, from him will be taken away the outward calling to exhibit it. After this sentence passed on the slothful servant, sentence is also passed on the rebels. They are already defeated by the glorious return of the lord; he now causes them to be brought and slain before his eyes. In this is contained the announcement, that the sentence of condemnation on the enemies of Christ will take place at His return before His throne.

The parable of the talents (Mat 25:14-30) has such an affinity to the preceding, that by critics of different schools³⁴ it has been regarded as only another recension of it, or as the original from which the other is taken. But notwithstanding the affinity of its leading features and thoughts, it is distinguished from it by a marked peculiarity. As to its position, it is connected with the parable of the ten virgins, which immediately precedes it, by the thought that the delay of Christ’s return is a probation for His disciples, and at last will suddenly come upon them with a dangerous surprise; and by this same thought it is clearly distinguished from the parable of the pounds. In both parables, Christ’s servants are individually tried by the great distance which separates Him from them. But in the former it is the distance of space, here it is the distance of time, which forms the ground of their trial. There, it is questionable whether the candidate for the throne will return from a distant land invested with regal power; here, the master of the household is a long time away from home, and his servants, owing to the uncertainty whether he will ever return, and the long destitution of his personal appearance, are tempted to slothfulness and the neglect of what is entrusted to their care. According to this view of the parable, the first thing that strikes us is the relation of the lord of the servants to the kingdom. He is not described as a person of high birth, but simply as ‘a man travelling into a far country.’ He has three servants. If in the number of ten servants the relation of the disciples of Jesus to the whole course of the world is made apparent, here the three servants mark the work of the Spirit which is committed to the circle of the disciples on earth; for three is the number of the Spirit. And if in the one pound the equal discipleship of all Christians, in its humble aspect in the eyes of the world, is represented, so here the trust committed to the disciples appears to us rather in its essential importance.³⁵ According to this proportion, one of these servants had a sum three hundred times greater than in the former parable. Poverty-struck as the calling of the apostles and evangelists may appear on the secular side, thus splendid is its inward spiritual side; however faint the outward lustre of the calling, great are its golden contents, the gifts of grace; for we can understand by the talents nothing else than the gifts of grace bestowed on the disciples. The calling of the disciples is equal: each has only one pound. But the gifts of grace are various: to one servant five talents are entrusted; to another, two; to another, one. On this rest the inner differences of Christian discipleship, and hence it is explained that one with his pound could gain ten pounds, while another gained only five. This diversity in the gifts of grace which Christ dispenses in the kingdom of redemption is regulated by the diversity of natural gifts which God has dealt out in the kingdom of creation. The master, on his leaving, fixed for each of his servants the number of talents according to their ‘several ability’ (κατὰ τὴν ἰδίαν δύναμιν), it is said in the parable. What in the domain of human natural life was intellectual power, in the kingdom of Christ, when purified and consecrated by grace, becomes ‘wisdom and knowledge; what in the former was a power of the soul, here becomes a holy flame of love; and thus every gift, from being a mental natural talent, is converted into a spiritual talent of the kingdom. After the distribution of these gifts of grace, the master straightway departs (ver. 15). The ascension and Pentecost nearly coincide, and, according to the inner nature of things, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the immediate consequence of Christ’s ascension. Now a long period elapses; a dangerous term of probation for the servants. The reckoning takes place at the final return of their lord, and it then appears that the two first servants have dealt faithfully with their talents. Each of them has gained as much as was entrusted to him; consequently the spiritual capital entrusted to the believer is exactly doubled by its faithful application. But why only doubled, while the capital of the calling, the pound, has realized ten times its own amount? The calling operates on the broad, wide world, where an apostle in fulfilling his vocation might gain half the world, or bring a whole generation under his power. But the gift of the Spirit operates within the kingdom of the Spirit; hence it will gain just so much life as is specifically related to it. For every positive power of the kingdom of God, a proportionate receptive power exists in the spirit life of the world destined for the kingdom of God. Outwardly this simple gain of the essential gift of the Spirit may appear less than the tenfold gain of the official calling; but according to the scale of importance in the kingdom of God, it stands perfectly equal to it. For the mental gift, in its faithful application, is exactly that which imparts to the calling its destined productiveness. In truth, it is the greatest gain when it is granted to a Christian to reclaim five talents of human mental gifts from their wild growth and perversion for the life of the kingdom of God; hence an abundance of new offices of life arises. The reward, also, which is here granted to the faithful servants, points to the profoundest relations of the kingdom of God. They were faithful over a little;³⁶ now they are placed over much. And this exaltation is thus expressed—the rewarding Lord says to each, ‘Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!’ He admits them into the fellowship of His own life of joy—the fellowship of His perfected rest. The former parable makes the reward of God’s servants for their fidelity in their temporal calling to consist in the glory of their heavenly calling: they were placed over many cities. Here, their fidelity in their human spirit-life, as it was peculiarly conditioned and diversified, is rewarded by their being raised to the sabbatical rest of the unconditioned spirit-life of their Lord. There, they received their reward in a new, heavenly investiture; here, their temporal striving is rewarded with the most entire rest from toil. There, heavenly labour is the blessing on fidelity to their earthly calling; here, heavenly repose of spirit is the consequence of temporal activity of spirit in divine things. In the former case, those who had maintained their fidelity become God’s vicegerents; in the latter, they become members of His family. Thus one parable describes the outward side of their inheritance; the other parable, the inner side. But the servant who had received only the one pound appears very similar to the slothful servant in the former parable. He calls his lord a hard man, reaping where he had not sown; and says, that for fear of him he hid his talent in the earth. He returns it to him unimproved. Manifestly he also was induced by an undervaluation of his gift to hide it in the earth. That in this manner he gradually lost the life of the divine Spirit and sunk the life of his own spirit deep in the earth, the parable could only express by showing how he never properly made the entrusted talent his own, since he brings it again to his lord as his (‘Lo, there thou hast that is thine’), with which he had nothing to do. But his lord rebukes him as a ‘wicked and slothful servant.’ His condemnation is then expressed as in the former parable. His talent is taken from him and given to him who had ten talents. This is designed to teach, that the faithlessness and apostasy of God’s wicked servants produces on His faithful servants a most salutary reaction, a stimulating effect, by which their life acquires an extraordinary elevation.³⁷ But the unprofitable servant is here not merely punished by being deprived of his pound. He is cast into outer darkness, where is wailing and gnashing of teeth.³⁸ When he kept back a gift of the Spirit from the kingdom of God, after he was pledged to employ it, the necessary consequence was, that he became an enemy of this kingdom; hence the severest punishment was inflicted upon him. Finally, if we notice the circumstance that the servant was guilty of this unfaithfulness with the smallest sum, we shall see, on the one hand, the connection of the religious self-determination of man with his gift. This servant had, in proportion, the least religious capital. But on the other hand, we also see the full manifestation of freedom in the unfaithfulness of the servant; for he too had his talent, and could have gained a second with it. It was therefore his guilt that he so conducted himself as if he had no vocation for the kingdom of God, and by this guilt he incurred his condemnation.

Thus we see how the three parables, which exhibit the rewarding justice of the Lord in such great acts of allegiance, by degrees bring forward more distinctly its punitive administration. This punitive administration gradually comes forth in the following parables in all its majesty. Especially we find parables which announce beforehand this punitive justice; we might designate them parables of warning and threatening justice.

The constant nearness of the divine judgment is continually announced to men by the prevalence of death. The nearness of death, when it makes itself perceptible to sinners, is everywhere an omen of threatening judgment. This is shown in the parable of the foolish landholder (Luk 12:16-21). This man was rich; his fields were crowned with an abundant and splendid harvest. He found that his barns were too small, and resolved to build greater, in order to stow in safety his fruits and his goods. And then he would ‘delude his soul’³⁹ to look upon this store for many years, to eat, drink, and be merry. Here God Himself makes His appearance in the parable. ‘Thou fool!’ He said, ‘this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be which thou has provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God.’ Judgment overtook him. The death of such a man is in itself a judgment, because it exhibits with one blow all his labour as vain, his whole calculation as false, his striving as folly, and meets his self-will with an inexorable counter-working fate, but especially by the result, that it places him in his nakedness and destitution before God. Thus God’s judgments incessantly proceed through the whole world in the most appalling forms and visitations. But the threatening omens go before the judgments themselves in all the signs of death. In these circumstances, in which death stands for judgment, he is the antipodes of the good Samaritan. He likewise knows no limitations of confessions or nationalities. As the former (the good Samaritan) restored the half-dead to life, so the latter hurries them to the grave. The administration of salutary severity stands as a complement over against the administration of salutary kindness; and the ministers of justice join themselves to the ministers of mercy.

But the same man, who is threatened by the impending judgment because his heart is set on earthly things, calls also for punitive retribution, since by this vain striving he becomes an unfruitful tree for the kingdom of God. This truth is exhibited in the parable of the barren fig-tree (Luk 13:6-9). This fig-tree was in a very favourable position. It stood in its owner’s vineyard, under the care of a faithful gardener. And yet, for three years in succession, it brought forth no fruit. Then the owner said to the vine-dresser, ‘Cut it down, why should it impoverish⁴⁰ the ground on which it stands!’ But the vinedresser interceded for the tree on which sentence had been passed. ‘Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it and dung it: if it bear fruit, well; and if not, after that thou shalt cut it down!’ In the theocratic symbolic, the people of Israel, in consequence of its early awakening to the knowledge of the true God, were in its prime the early fig-tree among the nations (Hos 9:10). But now, in consequence of its being stiffened in the unspiritual observance of traditions, it had become an unfruitful fig-tree. Its unfruitfulness was the more unnatural, because it enjoyed such distinguished care in the garden of God. Already, at the first appearance of Christ, a judgment had been manifested on the people, for they were not capable of receiving Him. But He, whom the faithful vinedresser resembled in spirit, implored a respite for them. This respite took place in the time of Christ’s ministry, and was then on the point of expiring, without the fig-tree’s promising to reward the last labour bestowed upon it. Therefore the doom that had already been pronounced by the Judge was coming on with hasty steps. But the Christian Church was also such a fig-tree in the garden of God in its outward form, and in a wider sense the whole human race, and indeed, in the most varied appearances, every Christian and every individual man. The spirit of justice which presides over the earth, continually presses forward the developments of human life with accelerated speed, to judgment. But the spirit of mercy exerts a force in an opposite direction, and is ever keeping back the threatening judgments.⁴¹ This makes the time of salvation always more precious and more momentous. Long-suffering counts the days of the granted respite, and the greatest facts in which the power of Christ’s love and the monitions of His Spirit are manifested, announce most of all as warning prognostics that judgment is nigh.

But at last the threatened judgments make their appearance. Man can suffer them. This is shown in the following parables, especially the parable of the marriage of the king’s son (Mat 22:1-14). Here that feast appears, which was before exhibited in its relation to mercy, in its opposite relation to judgment. The greatest blessing of earthly life is, that man is invited in it to the feast of God’s felicity; and it is his heaviest loss in life, if he has neglected this invitation. But his punishment does not consist in mere destitution. The destitution of essential life, of life in life, must, according to its very nature, become a tormenting fire in the centre of life-a death in life. A king makes a great feast to celebrate the nuptials of his son; the guests invited are his subjects. Evidently the king is God Himself, and His son is Christ, as He is on the point of uniting Himself with His bride the Church. That the persons invited, if they accept the invitation, belong themselves to the life—form of the bride, is not a point for consideration; for Christ is perfectly certain of His Church as a whole, although individuals of the invited guests should be wanting. Indeed, believers themselves, in their individual capacity, are to be regarded only as wedding guests who partake of one joy with the Bridegroom. Since the guests are the king’s subjects, they would be obliged to comply with the invitation, although he had summoned them to compulsory service. Thus motives of the highest honour, of the highest love and joy, and of the highest duty, combined to induce the persons invited to appear in the most joyful manner at the great festival. Their refusal is therefore something quite monstrous, and in its threefold aggravation is to be regarded as a rebellion. To the first invitation they gave a simple refusal, without alleging any reasons for it: ‘they would not come.’ Their lord condescends to request them by a second set of messengers. He represents the abundance of the feast, the embarrassment of his household if the oxen and fatlings should be killed in vain, and that all things were ready. How strikingly in these traits is the earnestness, the ardour of love in the preaching of the Gospel, depicted! But the persons invited turn away with contempt, and go their way to their usual avocations. Some even proceed so far as to insult and kill the servants who invited them. The king hears of this, and is wroth; he sends forth his armies and destroys those murderers, and burns their city. This is the first act of retributive justice. It has been said that no reason has been given why some of these ungrateful guests killed the servants of their prince who invited them.⁴² Certainly no motive is alleged for their conduct; nor can any be given, any more than for the fact in the department of spiritual life, that the indifferentism with which the earthly minded man refuses the invitation to the blessed feast of reconciliation with God, can change itself into a positive demoniac hatred against that invitation and its bearers. It is, indeed, an awful thing, that by the guilt of those who are invited, an avenging sword and a dismal conflagration must proceed from the marriage feast of the King of humanity, by which the despisers of the feast perish with their city,—that therefore the greatest gift of God to humanity is rejected by many with a rebellious spirit which can only be put down by the most fearful judgments. In the description of the burning city, there is certainly an obscure allusion to the destruction of Jerusalem; yet we must not overlook the fact, that all the features are symbolical in the most comprehensive sense, so that, for example, the burning city may reappear in Constantinople taken by the Turks, and often in the history of the world; last of all, in the mysterious conflagration which will accompany the last judgment The parable now more distinctly falls in with the representation in the similar parable contained in Luke. We see that the marriage feast of the king’s son cannot be rendered nugatory. ‘The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy,’ the king says to his servants. He therefore sends them into the highways with a commission to invite whomsoever they can find. The servants execute their errand in the most comprehensive manner; they invite good and bad, and thus the house is filled with guests. We here see how powerfully the preaching of the Gospel is carried on in the world according to the will of the Lord, and how the free invitation addressed by Him to all is at special times more strongly urged by His servants.

The most righteous in their ecclesiastical and civil relations are too bad (οὐκ ἄξιοι) if they are self-righteous; the most unworthy, on the other hand, are good enough if they seek righteousness in redemption. Grace, indeed, would not be grace in its divine majesty if it could not redeem, and wished not to redeem, the most unworthy. Therefore the contrast of good and bad which was formed in the old-world æon makes no difference, if only the good acknowledge with penitence the evil in their lives, and the bad lay hold of goodness in Christ as the destiny of their life. But the emphasis with which this majesty of grace must be announced, in order to put an end to all doubt and despondency, may be badly managed by some servants, as soon as they carry it on in an antinomian spirit-as soon as they accommodate the doctrine of faith to the earthly mind, and grant admission into the Church or absolution with undue facility. In a similar manner, false hearts may misinterpret the Gospel by falsely hearing it, and wish to unite the service of sin with assurance of salvation. But with this a new fall of man is originated worse than the first, just as in the case when unbelief rejects the Gospel. Wherefore the judgment of God pervades the kingdom of grace, and with more intense severity, because the conscious service of sin which will find its way into this kingdom is of all offences the most heinous. Men cannot indeed unite the peace of reconciliation with sin, but they may make the attempt both in doctrine and life; and then always, as an outrage against the holy pure spirit of mercy, must call forth the greatest judgments. The parable exhibits this fact in the king’s going in to take a view of the guests, and finding one among them who had not on a wedding garment. This image has been explained by a reference to the Oriental custom of furnishing a splendid garment for the guest who came to the feast of a man of rank.⁴³ On the other hand, it has been remarked that it is not certain that this custom was prevalent in the time of Jesus.⁴⁴ Then again it has been urged, that Oriental customs are characterized by their constancy;⁴⁵ and as a proof, the narrative of Samson’s wedding feast has been adduced (Jdg 14:11-13). Samson promised to his thirty companions, whom the Philistines managed to bring with an evil intent to his wedding, thirty sheets and thirty change of garments, on the condition of their explaining his riddle. He might not like to make such a present to the perfidious guests; but since established custom seemed to require it, he imposed on them the task of earning the gift by his riddle. But in our parable a king is speaking before a multitude of poor people, whom he had most graciously invited. It is therefore presupposed that he would not let them want the festive garment.⁴⁶ Therefore this man, in the imagery of the parable, is a vulgar, coarse-minded being, who knew not how to value the king’s kindness, or to enter into the spirit of the feast-who did not esteem the master of the feast nor the occasion, nor even respected himself. But according to the spiritual meaning this guest cannot be considered as a self-righteous person, ignorant of the righteousness of faith; for this class has already been sentenced under the image of those who ungratefully refused the invitation. That this man appears among the guests in the house of mercy, marks him as one of those who assented like the rest to the doctrine of justification by faith, and tried to regard the consolations of salvation as belonging to himself. But his delinquency consisted in his not entering into the spirit of the feast, into the holy and sanctifying import of reconciliation. As far as he was concerned, the wedding feast would become a coarse carousal, the Gospel would be mere absolution, and Christian orthodoxy a cloak for sin. But the king’s glance detected him even among the genuine guests. He asks him, ‘Friend, how comest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. The king commands the servants to bind him hand and foot, and to cast him into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Thus the parable becomes once more a parable of judgment. The judgment is first of all to be regarded as an internal one. A greater self-delusion cannot exist, than when a man attempts to confound the experiences of grace, of which the essence is to eradicate sin, with the actings and thoughts of sin. This wicked course has for its consequence the most mischievous derangement of the life of the soul. But an outward judgment follows the inward. First of all a fearful repulsion arises between the pure spirit of the Church of Christ and the impure spirit of the hypocrites, and often the latter, when suddenly unveiled, retire as the most mischievous adversaries into outer darkness. But then the special punishment attends them: the servants bind their hands and feet. In their actions and course of conduct they are much more completely ruined than other reprobates. So deeply diseased and prostrated are they, that they have destroyed in themselves the capability of self-respect, and in the Church the possibility of believing in their return; and moreover, by the worst entanglement in the curse, they have utterly deprived themselves of the free movement of their life in the world. Here again the saying holds good, Many are called, but few chosen. Even in the body of professed believers in the righteousness by faith, individuals are to be found who are destitute of the fidelity of the chosen.

The chief contrast of this parable, as exhibited in the despisers and guests of the marriage feast, is shown on a small scale in the parable of the two sons whom their father wished to send into his vineyard (Mat 21:28-31). The first answered to his father’s command to go and work in his vineyard, ‘I will not,’ but afterwards repented of his refusal and went. The other replied to the same injunction, ‘I go, sir,’ and went not. The Lord propounded this parable to the members of the Supreme Council at Jerusalem, who questioned His authority for purifying the temple, and called on them to decide which of the two sons did the will of their father. They answered, The first. Upon this they were obliged to listen to the denunciation, ‘Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.’ The publicans and harlots had first of all renounced the service of God, the one by their position in life, the other by their sinful course. But the spirit of repentance which moved many of them in the time of Christ, was a proof that they repented of their inconsiderate haste. Many of these erring ones became labourers in the vineyard of the Lord. On the other hand, the heads of the Jewish people appeared, by their whole bearing, to be giving a constant assent to the call of God; while their conduct towards the Messiah was a constant decisive negative, which was consummated in the crucifixion. In this parable also, notwithstanding its definite immediate application, we cannot fail to perceive its general symbolical nature.

The high priests and elders might indeed have reminded the Lord that the people of Israel were God’s true vineyard, and it cannot be disputed that they as official labourers continued to work in it. To this representation Christ assents: He causes them to appear in a new parable (Mat 21:33-41; Mar 12:1-9; Luk 20:9-16) as labourers in the Lord’s vineyard. Here therefore the vineyard is an image of the kingdom of God in its universal theocratic form,⁴⁷ while in the former parable He described the kingdom of New Testament life breaking out of the shell of Judaism.

The owner of the vineyard is God. He has completed the whole according to the ideal of a vineyard. The vines are planted; a hedge surrounds the plantation; and it is furnished with a wine-press and a watch-tower. The word of God, as the principle of consecrated life, forms the plantation; the social communion, as the exclusion of those who are not members of the kingdom (under the Old Covenant represented by circumcision and the Passover, under the new by baptism and the Supper), forms the hedge;⁴⁸ the wine-press denotes the holy suffering by which the spiritual wine is pressed from the grapes; and the tower, the sacred discipline, the office of watching and punishing, in the Church. This vineyard the owner let out to Vinedressers and went into a distant country. In the fruit-season he sent his servants to receive the rent. But these servants were ill-treated by them. According to Mark, one servant was sent first of all, whom they beat and sent empty away; then another, whom they stoned and wounded in the head, and handled him shamefully; last of all, one whom they killed outright.⁴⁹ The owner then sent a greater number of servants, whom they maltreated in the same way. These Vinedressers are manifestly the rulers of the Jewish nation, as far as they represent generally the prevailing tendency of the people in general. At their hands the Lord might expect to receive the proceeds of His capital, the genuine fruits of repentance. But they shamefully maltreated His prophets, and killed some of them. Christ makes two divisions of these messengers, in order that the sending of the son may appear more suitable as the third and last. The owner last of all sends his own (his only, his beloved) son to them, saying, They will reverence my son. He still wished to regard them not as rebels and robbers, but only as misguided men. But when the son came, they said, This is the heir! This expression is highly significant. By employing it, Christ reproaches His enemies as well knowing that He came from the Father, and was filled with the life of God. The Vinedressers were perfectly aware that to Him the vineyard really belonged, and on that account resolved to kill Him in order to get possession of His inheritance. ‘And they took him and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard’ (Mar 12:8; Mat 21:39). The meaning of these words strikes us at once. They were fulfilled to the letter. These Jews slew the Messiah before the vineyard. They put Him to death as an excommunicated person by the hands of the Gentiles. Jesus again caused the Jews to pass sentence on themselves. To the question, ‘When the lord of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto these husbandmen?’ they say to Him, ‘He will miserably destroy these wicked men, and will let out his vineyard to other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons’ (Mat 21:40-41).⁵⁰

Thus the judgment on the wicked administrators of the Old Testament theocracy is announced. But the same spirit of judgment which presides there, pervades also the New Testament theocracy, and executes also in it the decisions of eternal righteousness. But its judgments will come forth especially at the close of the New Testament economy. Then all false, unspiritual Christians will be rejected, while the faithful will enter into the kingdom of perfection. This is shown in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Mat 25:1-13). But especially will all faithless overseers of the Christian Church experience a heavy sentence; this is taught by the parable of the wicked servant (Mat 24:45-51; Luk 12:42-46).

There are times of darkness in the history of the kingdom of God, times which are full of severe temptation for believers. Such a time was that of Christ’s crucifixion (Luk 22:53). The Lord has particularly illustrated the characteristics of a midnight of this kind by the parable of the ten virgins, which is constructed on the Jewish mode of celebrating weddings. The bridegroom went out at eventide in nuptial array, and with great pomp, to fetch his bride from her parents’ house and bring her home to his father’s. The bride watched for him, surrounded by the bridal virgins, who were provided with festive lamps, in which oil nourished the burning wick, and which were often carried on a wooden pole, so that they resembled equally torches and lamps. It was the office of these virgins to go out and meet the bridegroom on his approach, to congratulate him, and then to accompany him in a joyous procession with their lamps to his father’s house, where the wedding was celebrated. On these occasions the bridegroom sometimes kept them waiting till late in the evening, and thus the bridal virgins were subjected to a trial. Their lamps might burn out if they were only scantily supplied with oil, so that they would suffer disgrace, especially if they fell asleep, and thus did not notice early enough the deficiency of oil in their lamps. The characteristic of this nocturnal trial, which the Lord has also exhibited in another parabolic discourse, consists in this: that the waiting virgins lost the festive disposition and earnest attention; that they did not continue in that watchful and joyous state of feeling which the occasion itself and the near approach of the bridegroom ought to have inspired. The significance of this danger is obvious. It is midnight for the Church of Christ when the diffusion of a worldly spirit has so gained the ascendancy as to produce the appearance as if the history of the Church were subject to the common course of the world and nature; as if the kingdom of heaven would not be completed at the judgment and the transformation of the world; as if Christ would not come again. Believers at such a time would be more than ever tempted to lose the feeling of being in the midst of the development of the wedding of the Christian reconciliation and purification of the world, and gradually to renounce their calling of contributing to the festivity of the work of their Lord. But more than once in the midnight of the progress of Christianity the cry is made, ‘The Bridegroom cometh.’ Heavy judgments and great awakenings testify the near approach of the Lord, and His spiritual advent expresses in continually stronger manifestations the approach of His glorified personality, as it takes place at an equal ratio with the transformation of the earth. But the members of the Church of Christ, through spiritual slothfulness, may sink into a state in which every great incident in Christ’s approach will become a heavy judgment. Such a judgment is exhibited to us in the fate of the foolish virgins. The ten virgins, taken all together, do not form merely some part of the Church, as Olshausen thinks, but the whole Church, as indeed is indicated by the number ten. But they signify the Church in one peculiar relation, namely, as it ought to exhibit the glory of the bride with her abundant splendour; the Church, therefore, in its destiny, as full of spiritual joy and blessedness, waiting with the full brightness of her Lord’s inner life, to maintain His honour in His absence, and to meet Him triumphantly at His advent. The sleeping in this parable is indeed a questionable thing; but it is not the special point of criminality, otherwise the wise virgins would not be represented as sleeping at the same time as the foolish ones. It is distinctly said of all of them, ‘While the bridegroom tarried they all slumbered and slept.’ For a while they lost the consciousness of the importance of their position, and of the commencement of the wedding. But this situation was critical, especially since they could not notice whether the oil in their lamps was too quickly consumed. The point of importance in this parable is the oil, the spirit of the inner life.⁵¹ The foolish virgins awaken, as well as the wise, at the cry raised by the most wakeful spirits in the Church, ‘The Bridegroom cometh!’ They also are provided with lamps, and begin, like the others to trim them, that they may burn clear. But now it is found that oil is wanting to their lamps; they are gone out. The wise, on the contrary, are provided with a sufficiency of oil; and in this consists the essential difference. The parable therefore exhibits the contrast between the unspiritual, dead members of the Christian Church, and those who are spiritually alive. This difference exists at all times. But it always becomes more important as time advances, and at last appears in all its fearfulness, and is the basis of an essential decision and separation in the judgment which awaits the Church. All the members will wish, at last, to take a part in the imperial glory of the Church. They all have lamps—the forms of faith, the confession of the Church, and their outward position in it. But then the question will be, whether this form speaks the truth, or deceives; whether it is filled by the eternal contents of the Spirit of Christ or not. The foolish virgins have not the Spirit of Christ; they want the burning lamps, the proofs of love and the songs of praise. But it belongs to the more allegorical finish of the parable, when the foolish virgins say to the wise, ‘Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out;’ and when these answer, ‘Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you; but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.’ On the one hand, the earnest longing after the communication of the Spirit is the first beginning of the spiritual life itself; and on the other, the spiritual fulness of one Christian cannot be diminished by impartation to another. Nevertheless, this representation has also symbolical features. The feeling of a deficiency is now awakened in the foolish virgins, and yet they wish to retard the completion of the wise. But these must now attend to their calling, to begin the festive life of the kingdom in the communion of their Lord. The separation is come to maturity. Still a prospect seems to open to them of reaching their destination, since the advice is given them, ‘Go to them that sell, and buy for yourselves;’ since the wise ones counselled them to seek for the spiritual life in the regular way of Christian meditation and of Christian endeavour; in the faithful employment of the instituted means of grace. But while the foolish virgins went to buy, the bridegroom comes. The wise virgins become partakers of the feast, and the door of the festive hall is closed. At last the foolish virgins come and cry out at the door, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’ They receive the answer, ‘Verily I say unto you, I know you not!’ This is manifestly a judicial sentence. Olshausen maintains, that from the connection it results that the sentence, ‘I know you not,’ cannot mark eternal condemnation. ‘Rather,’ he says, ‘the foolish virgins were only excluded from the marriage supper of the Lamb’ (Rev 19:7). But it is very uncertain, when Olshausen says, ‘These virgins had the universal condition of salvation, faith (from their calling κύριε, κύριε, ἄνοιξον ἡμῖν, ver. 11), but they wanted the requisite for the kingdom of God which proceeds from faith, sanctification (Heb 12:14).’ The objective fact which he has here in his eye is the difference between the first and second resurrection—between the preliminary judgment of the world, which is to be succeeded by the glorification of the Church of Christ on earth, and the last judgment, which will be followed by its transformation into a heavenly state of existence. But this constitutes no reason for seeing in the parable only the preliminary judgment. That the foolish virgins said, ‘Lord! Lord!’ and craved an entrance to the feast, did not qualify them as believers. Had they been believers, they would also have been welcome guests. Even the rejected at the last judgment will excuse themselves, according to Matt. 25. Yet it is not to be lost sight of, that there is a difference between the description of the judgment as it affects the foolish virgins, and as it affects the finally rejected. Therefore, although no particular preliminary judgment is here spoken of, yet the thought of a transient judgment seems to predominate. According to the whole structure of the parable, we may venture to see in it all the preliminary judgments of the Lord, even to the last judgment. And such is the actual fact. As often as the Lord comes to His Church in a new manifestation of His Spirit, a separation is made between the dead and the living members of the Church. Only the children of the Spirit form a joyous procession with Him to His marriage supper. This was the case for the first time, when at Pentecost the Lord returned to His Church by His Spirit. The wise in Israel went in with Him to His feast; the foolish remained without. This will one day be signally verified when the palmiest times of the Church begin, her true glorification in the world. The unspiritual, perfectly dead part of Christendom then set themselves, in some form or other, in marked opposition to the glorified Church. The final judgment was not yet passed upon them; but it is not said that they would necessarily be restored in that judgment. That will depend upon how the last judgment will find them.

As to what relates to this judgment which will come on the Church, the Lord finally has expressed in the most striking manner the climax of evil in the Church, by the parable, already mentioned, of the wicked servant. It is remarkable, that it was Peter who gave the Lord occasion to deliver it. The Lord exhorts the disciples to watch (Luk 12:35-36) like servants who wait for their lord when he returns from the wedding. They are to have their loins girt and their lamps burning. They must wait in earnest expectation of their coming Lord, and not incur His displeasure by self-indulgence, and by allowing, like dark spirits, their lights to become dim and go out. Christ closed this exhortation with the words, ‘If he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants’ (ver. 38). But then this cheerful earnest image is changed into a threatening one: ‘And this know, that if the good-man of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.’ The thief easily deceives the householder in the night, if he does not know at what hour he will come. If he only knew this, nothing would be easier than to hinder the thief. Therefore the uncertainty of the hour of the coming of Jesus Christ is the great danger which always threatens the careless among His disciples; and the more they surrender themselves to their carelessness, so much the more dangerous and obnoxious to them will be the coming of Jesus Christ, as to a householder the breaking in of a thief.⁵² This parabolic representation contains two most important thoughts. The Christian must indeed consider, that the very next moment may put him in a fearfully difficult position, which will urge him to a decision for his life, and become a judgment for him, if he has not carefully watched beforehand, so as to understand the meaning of this hour when it comes. Christ’s language, which He so often repeats, respecting the uncertainty of that hour, shows us most clearly how distinctly the certainty was present to His mind, that after the tardy course of the periodic time of the Church’s æon, the final catastrophe which is to introduce a new epoch will come with fearful and startling rapidity. Peter having asked the Lord whether He had uttered this parable in reference to them, the disciples alone, or to all, the parable we have mentioned follows (Luk 12:41-48). It appears at first not in parabolic compactness, but in a discourse which gradually assumes a distinctly parabolic form. The Lord said, ‘Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season?’ This question distinguishes in their spiritual importance between the class of spiritual stewards and those whom they provide for in the Church. But who is the servant? The decision is difficult, but it is given in the following words: ‘Blessed is that servant whom his lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing.’ Whoever, therefore, at His coming is occupied in dispensing spiritual food to the household, as it becomes him, the doctrines, the consolations, and the encouragements of the Gospel, him his Lord will mark as the servant originally called by Him, and will attest him to be such by placing him over all His goods, and thus making him a prince in the kingdom of the Spirit. But if that servant, who in his real character was distinctly present to his mind as evil (‘that evil servant,’ Mat 24:48), should say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming, and should begin to beat the men-servants and maidens, the younger members of the household, and to eat and drink, and give himself up to inebriety, and therefore changing his calling to furnish food to his fellow-servants into the stand-point of a despotic judicial taskmaster in the house, the lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will pass upon him the sentence of theocratic zeal; he will cut him in sunder,⁵³ and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers, or with the hypocrites. And thus will he make it evident that he was not his true and accredited servant; for in the kingdom of Christ, according to its essential spirituality, the office must coincide with the interior life and the conduct. The general rule by which the Lord inflicts those severe punishments is next given. The servant who knew his lord’s will and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, will suffer many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall suffer few stripes. For every man has an immediate feeling of the will of his heavenly Lord, which he ought to cultivate; and as punishment is due even when a servant does not know what his lord wills, so in a like sense is a man punishable when he does not know what God wills.⁵⁴ But the punishment of the servant who wilfully transgresses his Lord’s will, will be great. By this rule a greater punishment will be inflicted on a bad Christian than on a bad heathen, and a greater still on a bad clergyman; and so the scale rises up to a bad bishop, and that servant who holds the highest position in the Church with the greatest unfaithfulness, will on that account be punished most severely. The punishment of being ‘cut in sunder,’ expresses the fearful contrast which is formed between the greatest, most careless, judicial arrogance, and the sudden endurance of the most horrible doom. Such a doom falls everywhere on the clerical office, where it falls asunder by a schism into dead parts, where by divisions it loses its authority and power. But as to what concerns the despotic functionary in the Church of Christ, his punishment is more precisely determined in Luke: ‘his portion is appointed with unbelievers.’ He was an unbeliever who made himself a lord of the Church, because he did not thoroughly believe with his heart in the return of his Lord, and therefore neglected and ill-treated his fellow-servants, and gave himself up to a life of self-indulgence. But, according to Matthew, he receives the punishment of the hypocrites, since in his unbelief he assumed the credit of the greatest and most ardent zeal, while he maltreated his fellow-servants. The punishment of the ‘evil servant’ is therefore this, that he is cast into the abode of the lost, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The two last parables distinctly point to the great representation of the last judgment, which Jesus has given, not in a parable, but in a discourse pervaded by parabolic traits (Mat 25:31-46). We have seen how the parables relating to the kingdom of God rise in one straight stem, and then branch out into parables of mercy and of judgment. Last of all, the lofty summit of this parabolic system appears in the parabolic representation already mentioned of the last judgment. And here, in the crown of the system, we see the blossom of the parable fully expand, and the resplendent flower break forth of a clear representation of the appearance of the kingdom of God in its New Testament glory; while, by the abundance of its symbolical traits, it shows that it forms the crown of the parabolic system. Nor will the circumstance that this representation is destitute of the compact parabolic form, prevent us from considering it, since it forms the natural organic head of the cycle of parables; in fact, it is the key by which Christ teaches us to unfold what is hidden and veiled in all the parables of the kingdom.

We see here how mercy is to form the decisive rule by which the Lord will pass sentence, and consummate His kingdom. The Son of man appears in His glory, and all His angels with Him, and He sits on the throne of His glory. Thus is the revelation of Christ’s consummated kingdom of glory depicted. All nations are assembled before Him.⁵⁵ All men come under the judgment of the Christian rule of life; and as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, so Christ divides men. He places the sheep on His right, and the goats on His left. Therefore on that day the human race is so matured in the works of separating contrast, that it needs only the coming forth of Christ, only a signal from Him, to complete the separation which had matured in life. Now the merciful are saluted by Christ as the blessed of His Father. In His judgment they have brought the required aid to Him in all His sufferings: they have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, taken in the stranger, clothed the naked, visited the sick, sought out the prisoner. But these merciful ones are also the humble; they cannot recollect that they have acted as such angels of mercy on earth. And these humble ones are also the truly Christ-like. For what they have done to the least among them whom Christ calls His brethren, they have done, in His judgment, to Himself. They had, therefore, in their eye not merely the physical in the sufferers, with an unspiritual sensuous sympathy; but they cherished and raised the inner man in them, their Christian destiny and christological dignity. The noble marks of the divine lineage in the unfortunate have attracted and moved them as a life related to their own, and by their charity they have brought them nearer to Christ. ‘Inherit the kingdom,’ Christ says, announcing their reward, ‘prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’ They enter into eternal life as the blessed of the Father, as those who were pervaded by the blessing of the Father. The kingdom of a chosen humanity perfected in the Spirit of Christ, in humility and love, and raised above death, has been founded in them from the beginning, and its completion will be carried on among them in the development of the world, and above them in the administration of the Father. Now this inheritance exists in its bloom, and receives them as the phenomenal world, corresponding to its inner nature. But the wicked will be rejected as the unmerciful, who, in all the relations of misery, have no heart for the destitute. But they reveal themselves, moreover, as the self-righteous, since they are not disposed to convict themselves of negligence in the duty of mercy. But lastly, it contributes to their severest reproach, that they entirely ignored the golden threads of the christological relation which go through all human life, that they have not regarded in man the calling to Christ, and therefore not Christ in humanity. Christ sends them away from Himself as accursed. The word here is no mere term of reproach, but the description of a reality. They are pervaded by the curse as a petrifaction by the stony material (κατηραμένοι). Therefore they will be thrown into the æonian fire, prepared for the devil and his angels; and they will be sent into the æonian punishment. The æonian fire began from the fall of Satan to develop itself in him and in his associates; and in this development a great spiritual torment, a great community of destruction, ripened in humanity. This must separate itself under the sentence of the Lord in the last crisis of the Christian world, as a tormenting fire-æon, from the blessed lightæon of perfected humanity. The Christian development of the world, according to its whole epic course, cannot pass over into a heavenly nature in an idyllic continuity, but must close with a catastrophe—must complete itself in a fiery paroxysm of world-historic magnitude. As in a man with a mortal disease, the departing life at last breaks loose from the stiffening body in a fiery conflict, so at last the world of light will separate itself from the world of the curse—the kingdom of the new humanity perfected in love from the æon of fierce discord, and of an old humanity devouring itself in the doom of egoism, which falls back into the pre-human spirit-regions of the demons. This will take place when the kingdom of Christ in this world has, in its last development, most nearly approached to the kingdom of Christ in the other world, and when, in consequence of reciprocal attraction, this world passes over into the other, and the other into this, so that the barrier falls, and Christ appears in the midst of His people here, or His people appear before His glorious throne there; both in one and the same event.

The cycle of the parables of judgment forms also a succession of world-historical pictures, in which retributive justice exhibits the successive great acts of its administration. The parables of the labourers in the vineyard, each of whom receives a penny, of the pounds, and of the talents, reveal the administration of rewarding retribution, and at the same time show how punitive retribution accompanies it as its complement. The first world-picture shows us the action of the energy of the Spirit in the founding of the kingdom of God. The divine justice appears in its unity with grace, since it is altogether spirit; therefore it does not miss its reward, according to the external mode of valuing human work. Human conversion corresponds to it in its spirituality; it raises itself above the loss of time, and can receive and experience from God the blotting out of the guilt of this loss. The second world-picture shows us how the external might of the offices of the kingdom appointed by God gains the world. The nobleman in his appearance is poor, and his servants are poor; but he gains the whole kingdom and puts down the rebellion; while they gain for him the single component parts of his kingdom, according to the measure of the internal energy of the life of their calling. The third world-picture shows us how recompensing justice gives every servant of God a spiritual gain in the kingdom of God, and how it corresponds exactly to the faithful application of His spiritual gifts. But we see punitive justice by the side of the remunerative acting in a threefold manner: the servants of a mercenary, outwardly calculated mechanical service were punished by the disappointment of their outward expectation; the servants of spiritual sloth, by being deprived of their gifts; and the actual rebels against the government of a prince who is identical with grace, by the severe punishments which their own unmercifulness demanded. Then the scenes of judicial justice, in its predominant agency, are announced by the phenomena of its menaces and warnings. We see Death as the messenger of Judgment stalking through the world, and hear in all the paths of mortality the footsteps of the approaching retribution. A whole world of manifestations of divine grace is further shown us in the history of the respited fig-tree, as a numerous group of revelations of long-suffering, in which already the most alarming omens of judgment are disclosed. Then follow the images of the judgment itself. We see how first of all judgment strikes man in general when he despises the invitation of God to the spiritual feast of the divine life in His kingdom, and likewise when he would profane this spiritual feast, and change it into the common carousal of a sinful life. These crimes of despising and desecrating the Eternal appear in an aggravated form as crimes of dishonesty. The unchristian changes into the antichristian, and calls forth a judgment of the rejection of whole communities, as is represented in the parable of the criminal Vinedressers. These special acts of penal justice point to the general judgment as they come forth more distinctly at the end of time. Judgment begins first of all at the house of God. We see in the parable of the foolish virgins, how the dead part of the theocracy, as well as of the Christian Church, is shut out from the festive communion of living believers; and in the parable of the wicked servant, how the hardened individuals among the overseers of the Church must suffer the heaviest retribution. Out of this judgment of the Lord on the Church the judgment on all nations finally unfolds itself. But as rewarding justice is always complemented by punitive justice, so this again is also accompanied by the former, which is constantly unfolding the divine affluence of its grace. For God changes not towards man, but man changes towards Him; and in this change a separation according to their opposite tendencies is produced, which is constantly widening, till at last a separation which reaches to the bottomless pit is consummated in the last judgment. Hence the completed condemnation of the ungodly is the completed redemption of the godly. The separation of the æon of light and the æon of the curse in the last crisis of the history of humanity, forms therefore the completion of the Christian kingdom of God.

In this manner Christ has delivered to His people the doctrine of the founding of the kingdom of God, in parables which form themselves into a system with wonderful fulness and distinctness.

The very name of this institution characterizes its nature. It is the kingdom of God⁵⁶ in opposition to the kingdom of this world—the completed theocracy. While the ancient theocracy exhibited itself in the individual inspired flashes of the prophets, and thus its peculiar function consisted in momentary flowings forth of eternity into time, this kingdom of God is a firmly established kingdom of human spirits, in which God Himself rules as King, and His Spirit as the supreme law of life, and the union of human hearts with God in His royal supreme will is its peculiar life-element. This kingdom is also, according to its nature, equally the kingdom of heaven;⁵⁷ an ideal state, or a state of ideality, of the purest distinctness and action of all relations in the unity of a heavenly, consecrated life. That which makes heaven to be heaven is the perfect elevation of all its phenomena into its idea, or its ideality. But its idea is its consecration to God. In that, therefore, consists the holiness of heaven, that it rises into this divine consecration. The kingdom of heaven is consequently an institution pure and consecrated as heaven itself. Hence the Lord can recognize the kingdom of heaven in no state of inferior purity. But this institution is also termed ‘the kingdom’ simply (Mat 13:19, &c.), because in it the perfected human society, the eternal organism, is realized in the essential relations of humanity. This organism culminates, and has its point of unity, in a head animating all the members, that is, in Christ, and hence this kingdom is also called the kingdom of Christ (Mat 13:41; Joh 18:36, &c.) But since this kingdom has been prepared by the theocratic plan of the entire world-history, and since, according to this great historical development, it has appeared first of all in a prefigurative form in the Old Testament consecrated kingdom, it has been also named after that typical kingdom in its greatest splendour, and thus is called the kingdom of David (Mar 11:10). The head of this kingdom is also its principle. Its first, unrecognized appearance in the world is the person of Christ Himself. This kingdom flourishes in His heart, in His Spirit, and begins to unfold itself in His works. The King of truth is the soul of the kingdom of truth; therefore on His appearance the proclamation is made, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand!’

But the historic goal of this kingdom is the completion of the Christian æon, the appearance of the glory of Christ in the perfected manifestation of the glory of His Church, and the glorification of the Church by the appearance of the Lord. The leading outlines of that completion of the ancient æon, upon which the new æon of the kingdom makes its appearance, are the following:-The life of Christ, as the vital principle of humanity, has completed its regeneration. The palingenesia is effected in the core of humanity to such a degree that a new humanity exhibits itself in perfect beauty as a splendid organism which shines forth in eternity, and from which the image of God is reflected (Mat 19:28). The earth itself is drawn upwards in this palingenesia. Its ethereal light-image has become complete with the new humanity, and issues forth as a heavenly star from the cloud of its humiliation (Mat 5:14; Luk 12:49).⁵⁸ The appearance of Christ is accomplished in this way, that the interval between this world and the next is removed by the completed victory of the Christian spirit (Mat 24:14).

The kingdom of God, therefore, is in constant development between these two points of its life—between its principle, the invisible life of Christ, resting in the depths of heaven and of humanity, and between that glorious appearance of the transformed human world resting in the depths of the future. The question now presents itself, by what means is the life of Christ changed into the life of humanity?

The first means by which the life of Christ becomes the life of the world, is the word of Christ, the Gospel (Mat 13:3; Mat 13:19). It is secured to the world by a perpetual ordinance of Christ in the evangelical office of teaching.⁵⁹ But the teaching of Christ is from the first quite identical with His life, and therefore His life exhibits itself in a second means, in His collective heavenly doings (Joh 2:18). But His course of conduct and His works are secured to His Church by the calling of His witnesses (Act 1:8). But Christ’s doings are completed only in His sufferings and death. His death is the redemption of the world (Mat 26:28). And His death is continually incorporated with the world by the confession of His people (Mat 16:24-25). And as Christ has completed His work in His own eternal Spirit, so also it can be completed in the hearts of His people only by the same Spirit (Joh 16:7). With His Spirit, His life and sufferings first become a peculiar possession of His people in their unity, power, and depth, as a full divine work, and by the life of His Spirit they become His Church. By His Church, then, the life of Christ is transplanted into the world (Joh 17:18). But how is His Church to be recognized? In this way, that they exhibit His life in their life (Joh 13:35); that they miss His visible presence with consciousness and earnest longing, and hope with firm confidence for His return (Joh 14:27-28); and that, in the certainty of His spiritual presence, they express this intermediate state by celebrating the communion according to His institution—the present and future communion by the rite of holy baptism, the past communion by partaking of the holy supper (Mat 28:19; Luk 22:19). In the holy sacraments the Church comprehends all the means, as given by the Lord, by which the kingdom of God in it and by it is established in the world-the word, the doing, and the suffering of Christ, His Spirit and His future appearance. In the moments of true communion the Church for an instant enters into that appearance it shines in an anticipated lustre of the kingdom (Mar 14:24-25; Luk 22:29-30).

By the continual use of these means the Church is constantly advancing towards its manifestation, urged on by the power of Christ’s life; and this movement is healthful in proportion as the means co-operate in living unity, and as it is carried on with a reference to both points. Consequently, the progress of the Christian palingenesia is always arrested where the sacraments are administered, without the living word, or where the word is proclaimed without the exhibition of its power of manifestation in the sacraments, or where the word and the sacraments are administered disconnectedly, because the spirit that unites the two elements is not sought by prayer. But if, on the one hand, the manifestation of the kingdom of Christ is prematurely exhibited in a State where the ecclesiastical power is supreme, this is a too active manifestation, that goes beyond the truth and loses itself in illusions, in which the vital principle of the palingenesia must more and more be lost And if, on the other hand, the word of Christ should be made a mere scholastic term, so that the sense of the need of communion, to say nothing of longing after the manifestation of Christ and His glory in humanity, is continually diminishing,—this is a spiritualism which cannot be recognized as the spiritual life of the Word made flesh, and is not capable in the least of effecting the regeneration of the world.

Therefore, where there is no well-developed Christian communion, no guarantee can exist that the Christian life will be active in its vital principle; and where the communion goes beyond its destination, and is changed into a State organism, it is a sure sign that it operates no longer deeply and with perfect fidelity as the spirit of regeneration. The communion in its ideal form is therefore the constant living medium between the throne of the invisible Christ and His future appearing. And thus through Christian fellowship His life mingles itself in its separate elements with the life of the world. His word is the law of the kingdom and of life to it. Were it governed by an inferior law, it would not be the communion of Christ. But it makes His word not immediately the political life-law of the world. If it attempted this, it would change Christ into a Moses, and Christianity into Judaism, instead of being the medium of imparting His life to the world. But it feels that the latter object is its vocation, and proves it, since by ingrafting Christ’s words on the morals and laws of the world, it constantly keeps in view its final aim that the world may become the kingdom of Christ. And in the same way it imparts the mysteries of its doctrine, as well as its whole life. If it were to subtract anything from the original fulness of Christianity, it would damage the institution which it was appointed to maintain, and evermore adulterate it with the heathenism of the natural worldly mind. If, on the other hand, it were disposed to make this institution predominant in the world at the cost of human freedom, it would change Christianity into Judaism. Rightly to bring the institution of Christ into harmony with the freedom of the human mind and conscience, is a task infinitely difficult, and yet blessed in itself and in its consequences.

It results from the magnitude of this task that the kingdom of God can only by slow degrees attain the maturity of its manifestation in the world, and that the exact time of its future cannot be computed (Mar 13:32). Further, it results from its free spiritual character, that the kingdom of God cannot be exhibited prematurely in heavenly purity (Mat 13:30), but that, nevertheless, its sanctification must be aspired after, according to the measure of its vital principle, its spirit, and its aim.

Hence the firm planting of the kingdom of God is effected by a continual movement, which, on the one hand, always exhibits the entire fulness of the divine mercy, in the reception of all who stand in need of salvation (Mat 18:21-35), and on the other hand, the entire severity of the divine judgment, in the constant exclusion of all by the ecclesiastical discipline, who would bring scandals into the Church. On the other hand, this movement has not its full energy, or rather it is depressed by hindrances in the same proportion as admission is effected with carnal rigour or facility; or as the exclusion with similar carnality, is carried to the length of political persecution, or is neglected to the loss of the social sense of honour in the members of the Church.

But all defects in the progress of the Church, between the manifestation of mercy and of judgment, will be corrected and rendered complete by the great administration of mercy and of justice by the Lord over the Church. They will be rectified: the Lord receives the merciful Samaritan in a thousand forms into the communion of His people, and ejects the guest without the wedding garment, as well as the evil servant, with a fearful doom from the communion. They will be rendered complete: the Church itself, like the world, is an object of the completed judgments and mercies of the Lord; and in a mysterious reciprocal action between the formation of the Church for the world, and the world for the Church, the time advances, when with mighty throes the epoch of the final decision suddenly comes. On the one hand, mercy celebrates its manifestation in the living images which are filled by it, and become its perfected organ, its everlasting feast in the kingdom of love. Then, on the other hand, justice celebrates its glorification, since the condemned exhibit its administration, and must justify it in their own persons in the kingdom of inflexible wrath and vengeance. But justice and mercy are never separated, although their æons, when completed, separate from one another in humanity. Justice reveals itself to the Church of the saved in the holiness of love. But the multitude of the reprobate is involved in the darkness of a corresponding æon, by a compassion which has veiled itself in punitive justice. But the kingdom of God is then completed, when in this manner Christ has communicated His blessedness to the new humanity. The Church is united to Him as His bride. It is therefore wholly participant of His life, and enters into the inheritance of His glory. And if a region is situated opposite this Church, in which the despising of His life is punished by an æonian spiritual agony, it is shown by this how men are struck in its depths by His rays, and shaken to bow the knee in His name, and in the relation of their life to Him to occupy the right position in the kingdom of spirits (Php 2:10-11).

1) Glosses have been made, without reason, on this repetition of the words of the Baptist in the lips of Jesus. The Evangelist reports the announcements of both, not in their original extent, but in a condensed form, as is his wont. Moreover, these two great preachers of the kingdom were no rhetoricians, who might have made it their business to describe the one great fact which they announced in embellished variations.

2) It is very important that Christ calls the revelation of His kingdom The Regeneration (παλιγγενεσία) ; indicating that it must be founded wholly and entirely on regeneration.

3) Compare Mark iv. 10 ; Matt. xiii. 10, ver. 36

4) Olshausen believes that the reference of the three measures of meal to the sanctification of the three powers (Potenzen) of human nature by means of Christianity, is not to be unceremoniously rejected. But then we must also bring in the three powers which Christianity spiritualizes in its totality; and as such we may regard the Church, the State, and the cosinical Globe.

5) The contrivance which this man employed to make the field his own, must, as Olshausen justly remarks, be explained on the same principle as the parable of the unjust steward.—[See Trench, Notes on the Parables, p. 126.—TR. ]

6) To the same class, according to Neander, belong the passages in Luke xiv. 28 and 31, about the man who built a tower and counted the cost, and the king who was about to make war and consulted respecting his forces; but these passages rather belong to parabolic discourses, since the comparisons are only incidentally made. [Neander, Life of Christ, § 208, p. 342.—Tr.]

7) The fiery furnace into which at the revelation of the new son the ungodly will be thrown, is a counterpart of the fiery furnace into which, while the old æon flourished, the godly were thrown (Dan. iii.) In that furnace ‘the song of the three men in the fire” resounded as a great song of praise; in the other furnace will be heard the how] of anguish and pain, and the teeth-gnashing of wrath and wickedness (see Rev. ix. 2). By the fiery trial of the pious, heaven was rendered visible in humanity; the fiery heat which the wicked endure, brings to light the inward hell in humanity. So also the outer darkness in which there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. viii. 12, xxii. 13), is thus pointed out in contrast to the holy darkness in which God dwells (Exod. xx. 21; 1 Kings viii. 12), among the praises of Israel (Ps, xxii. 3), and the darkness of the tribulation of the pious, which, by the blessing of their inward peace, shall be as clear as noonday (Isa. lviii, 10). These contrasts plainly indicate that it is the wicked who make hell, bell.

8) Very often, exegetical pedants labour to make reasonable what in the Gospels is represented as foolish.

9) To the shepherd one of a hundred sheep is wanting,—to the woman, one of ten pieces of silver,—to the father, one of two sons, while in the other he can no longer have any real satisfaction. Ina bolder form, but with profound evangelical insight, “Angelus Silesius expresses the longing of God after the reconciliation of man by the words, ‘Iam of as much consequence to Him, as He is to me’

10) Olshausen remarks, that in the parable of the prodigal son human activity in the work of conversion is delineated. But the divine activity also is not wanting in this parable.

11) If we attempt to explain the particulars of the description, the best robe may denote the rejoicing of the son with the father, the reconciliation, But the seal-ring (δακτύλιος) is not equivalent to the seal or sealing; it rather denotes the filial right to act and seal in the father’s name. The sandals are a sign that the reformed one can go in and out freely. The fatted calf, in the singular, indicates that the father spared no expense, but provided what was of most value.

12) πρὸς ἑαυτὸν Perhaps he did not venture to utter aloud so offensive a prayer. Taken literally, the words would mean that he did not really address himself to God, but in vain self-idolatry had only himself before his eyes, though ostensibly praying to God.

13) μὴ ὑπωπιάζῃ με, lest she strike me under the eye, or clench her fist at me.

14) So, I believe, we must translate καὶ μακροθυμῶν, ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς, according to the connection and the literal sense of the words.

15) Compare Ps. cxxvi. 1, ‘When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream,’

16) It is in accordance with the connection and the harmonic construction of this parabolic discourse to take ver. 7 as an inference, so that the question involves a negation, and is such as the following : ‘ Who will have a friend who should give such an answer (even though he well might)?’ Probably the recollection of the parable of the unjust judge has contributed to alter the interpretation of this parable.

17) The ἑγερθεὶς would be quite superfluous if it were not significantly used in reference to the preceding ἀναστάς,

18) Mammon is probably not a mythological divinity, but in the Syrian and Phœnician commercial life has been transformed into an idol, just as is now often done in a half-jocose, half-serious manner. Bretschneider : ‘Μαμωνᾶς. Heb. מָמוֹן, fortasse significat id cui confiditur ut LXX. אֱמוּנָה, Jer, xxxiii. 6, θησαυρούς; Ps. xxvii. 3, πλοῦτον, reddiderunt; vel est ut multi putant nomen idoli Syrorum et Poenorum, divitiarum prasidis, iq. Pluto Græcorum.’ Olshausen: ‘ Augustin remarks on this passage—congruit et punicum nomen, nam lucrum punice Mammon dicitur. Gold appears in contrast with God, as a person, an idol, a sort of Plutus, without its being proved that an idol of this kind was worshipped ’ (i. 231).

19) It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader here, that the Christian community of goods is an ideal community realizing itself with the perfecting of the Church, and resting on the principle of freedom, holiness, and love, while modern communism would make a profane realistic community by a forced method on the principle of self-interest. ‘The way and manner in which Christ lets the unjust steward set aside the requirements of his lord, points to the living mediation between the kingdom of private property and that of the Christian community. he circumspection of the mediation is shown in this, that, in the first instance, he lowers the demand from a hundred to fifty; in the second, only to eighty. But the praise bestowed by the idol of wealth on the steward might be referred to the commnnistic ideas of the worldly mind.

20) See Neander, Life of Christ, § 219, p. 354.

21) See Olshausen, Commentary, iii, 63. Some are fond of finding here an important feature, by regarding the dogs as belonging to the rich map, and explaining their licking the sores of Lazarus as sympathy. In applying this view, it is said that the rich man’s dogs showed more pity to the poor man than himself. “Yet we must here take into account the habits of dogs in the East.

22) [See the beautiful sentences of Augustin (De Civ. Def, i. 12) on this, beginning, ‘pompa exequiarum magis sunt vivorum solatia, quam subsidia mortuorum,’—ED.]

23) ‘Probably symbolical—לאֺ עֵזֶר the helpless, the forsaken.’—Olshansen.

24) Olshausen justly remarks that we are not to confound Hades, the kingdom of the unblessed dead before the last judgment, with Gehenna, in a stricter sense the abode of the unblessed after the last judgment.

25) And this is a more severe reproach than that which is popularly expressed, He had taken an excess of good things. According to Strauss (i. 633), the latter only is to be regarded as a reproach, and not the former.

26) The reading εἵ τι, preferred by Lachmann [Tischendorf and Tregellesl, gives certainly a much, more expressive, sharper sense than ὅ, τι. The personal violence pre ceded the demand for payment, and the claim was not substantiated.

27) The words, καὶ ὅ ἐὰν ᾗ δίκαιον, λήψεσθε, in the 7th verse are omitted by Lachmann [Tischendorf, and Tregelles].

28) Life of Christ, 240, p. 385 (Bohn).

29) See Strauss, Leben Jesu, i. 636.

30) ‘Instead of a capital for trading, he ought rather to have sent them arms.’ Modern criticism often proposes emendations of this sort in the Gospel history. We have here a specimen how, without intending it, it can inflict a wound on the very vitals of a biblical passage.

31) The Attic mina (Μνᾶ), equal to rather more than £4. (Smith’s Dict. of Ant.)

32) Joseplius, Antiq. xvii. 11, §1. Compare De Wette, Exegetisckes Handbuch. on the passage.

33) In the parable of the pounds in Luke, the lord tells the unfaithful servant that he ought to have given his money into the bank (ἐπὶ τὴν τράπεζαν); on the other hand, in the similar parable of the talents, Matt. xxv., it is said, ‘Thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers’ (τοῖς τραπεζίταις): this difference corresponds to the different character of the parables. The offices are returned to the Church ; but the gifts of grace, which are in danger of being injured, are to be rendered productive by their possessors connecting themselves with the most active leaders of the Church.

34) Strauss, Leben Jesu, i. 634; Olshausen, iii. 283. On the other hand, Schleiermacher, Ueber die Schriften des Lukas, p. 239.

35) The talent (Τάλαντον) contained 60 minæ, worth about £243, 15s. of our money.

36) It is said ἐπὶ ὀλίγα, not έν ἐλαχίστῳ as in the former parable.

37) Compare Acts v. 11, 12.

38) ‘The βασιλεία is viewed as the region of light, which is encircled by darkness. In reference to this point, the metaphorical language of Scripture is very exact in the choice of expressions. Concerning the children of light who are unfaithful to their vocation, it is said that they are cast into the σκότος; but respecting the children of darkness, we are told that they are consigned to the πῦρ αἰώνιον; so that each one is punished in the opposite element.’—Olshausen, iii. 287.

39) In this case neither σῶμα nor πνεῦμα could have been employed. According to the divine ordinance, nourishment is required by the body, but the πνεῦμα has relation to nobler than sensuous blessings and food, The ψυχή, as being capable of education and development, can refer as well to the lower region of the σάρξ as to the higher one of the πνεῦμα. In this very thing consequently does the point of the thought before us lie, that he gave up to the σαρκικοῖς that ψυχή, which he should have consecrated to the πνευματικοῖς.’—Olshausen, ii, 300.

40) [More than the ἄχθος ἀρούρης of the Greeks, for which see Plat. Apol. p. 28. ED.]

41) 2 Peter iii. 9.

42) Strauss, Leben Jesu, i. 638.

43) ‘Allusion is made to the Eastern custom observed at feasts, of distributing costly garments.—Olshausen, iii. 176.

44) Strauss, Leben Jesu, i. 639.

45) Neander, Life of Christ, 255, p. 409.

46) This trait in the parable would occasion no difficulty if there had been no trace of the custom to which we have alluded. The poorest person provides his own dress, if as a mark of favour he be invited to court.

47) Compare Isa. v. 1-7

48) We cannot understand this hedge to mean the Mosaic law. Nor can we help noticing, that at the close of the parable the vineyard is transferred to other husbandmen. The kingdom of God passes into the New Testament form. But how is it possible to regard the Mosaic law as hedging in the New Testament kingdom?

49) According to Luke, they cast him out wounded.

50) Mark condenses the narrative, since he represents the Lord Himself as uttering this judgment. According to Luke, Christ s adversaries answered this address of the Lord by saying, God forbid! If the Pharisees, according to Matthew, passed this judgment themselves on the supposition that they rightly understood the meaning of Jesus this feigned impartiality certainly meant that it would be far from them to slay the true heir of God.

51) De Wette remarks on the passage : The oil which they have in store is not (according to a current devotional interpretation) precisely the Holy Spirit, possibly because anointing is, in Scripture language, equivalent to being under the Spirit s influence (Inspiration). It denotes the internal persistency in watchfulness, and, so far, internal spiritual power. This remark depends on the distinction between the anointing of the Spirit, and the internal spiritual power in the Christian life.

52) See Olshausen's Commentary, ii. 307.

53) Compare 1 Sam. xv. 33.

54) Compare Olshausen, iii. 1

55) Olshausen, without reason, would find in this representation only the delineation of a final judgment on unbelievers. Unbelievers, as such, would indeed not be yet ripe for judgment. Besides, this judgment is too decidedly represented as a judgment on all nations.

56) Ἠ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. Mark i. 15, &c.

57) Ἠ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν. Matt. xiii, &c.

58) Christ kindles the earth itself with His fire.

59) John xx. 21