God, a man diligent in business step into a place where his talent may be employed, and add to his own the connection of another who was careless and inattentive? The hand of diligence maketh rich; unused privileges are invariably soon forfeited. The way to accumulation is dispersion. Would you be rich; scatter to the claims of the poor. Would you be happy; try to make others so. Would you be great; help every one up the hill. The oil will increase by effusion; the bread, by giving; for by a beautiful law, our own happiness is generated in the greatest degree, by our greatest exertion to make others sharers of it. This taking away is, however, a process, not a closing act of judgment. The wasting limb and the rusting iron are visible evidences of neglect. Intellect not drawn on, soon flags; and privileges long neglected, soon pass away to others.

The reward of grace is not, then, according to original endowment, whether that endowment was spiritual or material merely in its nature, because it was solely and wholly in sovereignty; but it is according to the actual use and employment that we make of it. Every excuse that ingenuity can give for sloth is utterly worthless. There is no reason on the earth, why every man should not be active, diligent, and daily turning to account every opportunity of doing good, or of receiving good, that occurs. throughout the providence of God.

The whole parable presents a very instructive cartoon of the future. We see by it what is before us. O Lord, give us grace so to use the talents thou hast given us, that they may contribute to thy glory, and to the good of all.

344

LECTURE XXI.

THE LAST DISCRIMINATION.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus saith unto them, Have ye understood all these things? They say unto him, Yea, Lord.-MATT. xiii. 47-51.

THIS parable seems, at first sight, to be almost identical in meaning and in import with the parable of the tares, but its identity is, in fact, more apparent than real. Each parable has certainly this one central and distinguishing fact, that it is an exhibition of the mixture of saints and sinners, good and bad, tares and wheat, in the outward and visible corporation called the church of Christ. This one fact they have in common, and this one our Lord seems to have been anxious to impress upon his church and people, that indeed the visible church would not be identical with the true church, but would consist of good and bad, tares and wheat. But, notwithstanding this identity in one grand central peculiarity, there is a distinction of great practical value. In the parable of the tares and wheat we have the prohibition clearly announced, that neither apostle, nor minister, nor synod, nor priest, nor anybody else is to root up tares under the mistaken idea of securing a pure church, lest in tearing up the tares they should injure the wheat and we have also

:

the other truth, embodied in the parable of the tares and wheat, that these should grow and mingle together till the harvest should come. In this our Lord meets the excessive purism, if I may so call it, which will not join a church unless it be a perfect one, which determines to wait till it find a perfect visible church, and so is doomed to wait till the Millennium. Never having joined such a church as can be found below, the prospect is dim and faint indeed that such will be united to that which shall be in the age to come. But in the drag-net, which is the parable on which I am now about to write, we have the perfect assurance that this separation shall take place. In the first, that is, the parable of the tares and wheat, we have the declaration that men were not to make the separation; in the parable of the drag-net, we have the promise that God will do it. The first parable is designed to stay the hands of the rash; the second is made to comfort the drooping and discouraged hearts of the holy. The first parable was fitted to forbid impatience, and to inculcate forbearance, tenderness, brotherly kindness, charity; believing all, hoping all; yet rejoicing not in iniquity, but rejoicing in the truth; rather erring on the side of supposing that more were Christians than there are, than erring on the side of supposing that fewer were Christians than there seem to be. And this last parable, again, was intended to cheer the hearts of the people of God with this bright hope, that if there should be a hypocrite in the church now, if there should be a loud professor with a very insincere heart now, if there should be much pretension and too little principle now, it will not be so always a day comes when God, whose prerogative it is, will interpose to burn the tares, and to gather the wheat into his garner; to cast away the bad fish, to collect the good into vessels and then shall the righteous shine forth in the

kingdom of their Father. We thus see with what propriety and beauty each parable is constructed, and how a central and guiding point is always to be kept in view in quoting the parable. Certainly the tendency of both parables, of that of the tares and wheat, as well as that of the good and bad fishes, is to destroy the common idea, that to belong to a visible church is necessarily to belong to the true church;-that to be baptized is necessarily to be regenerate;-that to be related to a church that holds Christ to be its head, is necessarily to be a member of the body of Christ, and an heir of the kingdom of heaven;— and that, in short, whatever prerogatives and attributes Christ asserts to belong to his living, true, redeemed church, ought, as alleged, to belong to any one visible church that men may think to be the best and the purest. Such an idea is the very germ and essence of Popery. The moment that a man comes to believe that there is a church which can speak through its bishops, or its synods, or its priests, or its presbyters, the very mind of Christ, and whose decision is the decision of the Spirit of God, it is something else than consistency which keeps him from saying that the Church of Rome is the mother and mistress of all churches, and that the pope is the vicar of Christ, and the head, under Christ, of the church universal. What does the apostle say? «The Lord knoweth them that are his." It is well that we do not always know; if we did, we should perhaps worship some and anathematize others. We are told that there was a Ham in the ark, a Judas among the apostles; we read of a Demas in apostolic days; Esau and Jacob still struggle together in the womb. of the visible church of Christ; the tares and the wheat that were in the one parable, and the good and the bad fish that were contained in the net in the other parable, are still mixed up. Therefore it becomes us to make up our minds

that there will be no pure, no perfect church, no church identical with the true spiritual church in this dispensation. And this does not prevent us from seeking the communion of the purest church that we can find; it is perfectly proper to seek to join, not the nearest, but the best—not the oldest, but the most scriptural-not that which men canonize, but that which our own conscience and our own experience tell us are most blessed of God in conveying to our minds the light of truth, to our consciences the peace of God, and to our hearts the hopes of the everlasting gospel. And so when, having sought such a communion as this, we find it, we may not lightly leave it; and if you find that you are not so edified in 1852 as you were in 1851, or that you are not so edified this year as you were last, do not say, as many do, it is the minister's preaching that is so dull, it is his sermons that are so illstudied, and therefore you will not remain longer, you will take a turn in this chapel on the left, or that church on the right. Do you not see how quietly and undoubtingly you assume that the minister is at fault? You take it for granted that it is the minister's sermons, and the minister's study, and the minister's feelings, and the minister's convictions that are all wrong; and very complacently assume that it is impossible that there should be more worldliness. in your minds to exclude the power of divine truth, more absorption in the world preventing a heartfelt interest in the gospel; or, which is very often the case, whenever a man falls into some sin which is dear and delightful to him, but which in his conscience he knows to be wrong, he will not remain long in a place where the gospel is most faithfully preached. He must go where he will hear peace, peace without, or there will be no peace at all within. Wherever and whenever the contest begins, at all hazards keep within reach of the truth of God, and, as soon as you