The

and runs abreast, or goes ahead. Charles Dickens sits in his chambers in London in the full fame of his Pickwick Papers. He is preparing a new book, to be brought out as that was, with illustra tions. A man comes in, older than himself, but still a young man, and says, "I have come, sir, to show you some drawings, and to get the place, if I can, of artist for your new story." The young author glances over the sketches, and then says, kindly, "They will not do." man goes home, puts aside his pencil, partially, and takes a pen. He works for years after this, writing small books and pieces for magazines, but wins no notice, and is almost altogether unknown. One day, however, he goes to a bookseller in London with a new work, asks him to print it, and fails to persuade him. Another agrees to do it, with fear of the result; but when the book is printed, the most popular writer in Britain has, from that day, a divided kingdom. And when this man died, suddenly, some years ago, tens of thousands, who had never seen his face, mourned for him as for a dear friend; and now vast numbers, of the truest insight, will tell you that the poor artist, whose work was kindly

refused, was the first man of his age in the department of letters, in which he once would have been glad and proud to be a servant of one of the servants of the Master who hires and pays us all.

It is so again in our practical common life. One man begins early, and is a notable man from the start. He goes on in his career, gathering honor and success; the common heart is in his hand; when he speaks all listen; when he writes all read. Another works hard on a frontier farm, or teaches a country school, or tries a flat-boat on the river, feeling dimly all the while that this is only waiting; the time has not come for him to enter the vineyard. But at last, as he stands watching and waiting, the voice says, "Go thou also," and presently those who have been the longest at work feel that he will win his penny. He had but one or two hours; he suffers no loss; he stands, at last, abreast of the very foremost of all.

This is true again of the spiritual life. The old prophet kept his flock, or followed his plough; and the old scholar drank at all the fountains of wisdom and inspiration. Josephus and Philo are

masters in the highest attainments of their age; John and Peter are peasants and fishermen ; Paschal and Jeremy Taylor seem as if they were bora for the sacred robes, so early and so beautifully do they wear them; John Bunyan is, to all seeming, a born tinker, and George Fox a born cobbler. So there is for them a long waiting and watching, and the cry, "What shall I do?" At last the voice says, "Go thou also." Then the grace and glory of the vines they have tended are a world's wonder, and their fruit a world's blessing.

This is true, finally, of our country. England and Germany begin in the early morning, and in the wild woods of Britain and Gaul, to earn their penny; and it is their lot for long centuries to toil, winning, as they can, this and that from the wilderness,— trial by jury, Magna Charta, free speech, free press, free pulpit, and when many hours are past, and much hard work is done, a voice comes to a new nation, and tells of a new world, and says, "Go work there; " and when the old world looks up, the new is abreast of those nations that have borne the burden and heat of the day, and will have its penny. And in this

new world itself, there are men living here in Chicago, who can remember very well when our great prairies lifted their faces wistfully to the sun, and cried, "No man hath hired us;" when our streets, now so full of life, sounded only to the voice of the mighty waters and the cry of the savage. Now the whole civilized world has to come and see what has been done. Not many years more will pass, we who live here believe, before this new worker will be abreast of the oldest, and will win her penny. For so God comes and goes: selecting, calling, and settling all things according to the counsel of his own will. No man can stay his hand, or say, What doest thou? He sitteth in the heavens, and his kingdom is in all the earth. "For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which went out early in the morning, and at the third bour, and at the sixth, and at the ninth, and at the eleventh hour, and hired laborers for a penny a day. So when the even was come, the Lord said. Call the laborers, and give them their hire, beginning from the first even unto the last. And they that came first, and they that came last, received every man his penny."

The parable is said to be meant for a lesson to the Jews at the moment when God was about to call the Gentiles into his vineyard also, and give them a place they had never filled before in working out his will. It is possible this mean. ing may lie within the parable in some remote way; but I cannot believe that this is all the Saviour meant when he spoke to the Jews. The truth is, that then as now, and for ever, there are great numbers of men and women waiting in the market-place, in all sorts of ways, watching for the coming of the Master to set them to work; to give them their true place in this life; the place they know they can fill- men and women who have never found their calling, and yet have never ceased to watch for it, and wait with weary, hungry, patient eyes, and to say, "What shall I do?" We look at them, very likely, as we stand in our place doing our work, and despise them for what we call their shiftlessness; when if we did but know the whole truth, we might wonder over them for their power to do what is harder than any hard work ever could be to such natures,—to wait for work, such as they ought to do, and hear no command to go. These