a wnd used there are men living here in To remember very well when our mares itei meir faces wistfully to the Di mei. Som bath hired us;" when * IV so fl of life, sounded only fae my waters and the cry Lane Lw the whole civilized world rame and see what has been done. AS DAY Ters more w pass, we who live relieve, Jere this new worker will be of the best, and win her penny. - s Gat comes and goes: selecting, calling, tting all things according to the counsel of w: will. No min can stay his hand, or say, Tuc ivest tim? Be sitteth in the heavens,

us kmpion is in al can of hasten is hy

MASSA MIRE, Which we

The parable is said to be meant for a lon the Jews at the moment when God was aber 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 moan ing may lie within the parable in soma ra mote 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 k ey can fill-men and

were in the world then as they are now, and this Divine soul, which saw everything that had a sorrow in it, saw them; and the heart that had a sympathy, sweet and abundant as a full honeycomb, took them all in, and then cried to the Father to know the truth about this; and the truth came in this parable of those that work, and those that wait; touching with its consolation the waiters, too; giving them their place in life and their promise; and bidding the worker pause in his hasty judgment of those who wait until he is quite sure that the waiter is not the most worthy of the two.

For this, I think, must be clear, first of all, as we study this mystery of waiters and workers, there can be no pleasure in waiting, in standing all the day idle, and looking wistfully, as the hours pass by, for some one to hire us, feeling the beat and tingle in nerve and brain that would gladly find some worthy task where nothing worthy comes. It is not the young man whose whole career is a constant success, or the young woman who finds her home or her place at once in life; not these the tender intention of the parable touches first and last it is the young man who has to stand

back, and notice painfully how he is distanced by his fortunate or clever companions who go right on; and the woman, whose hair, by and by, begins to show threads of silver while she is compelled to look wistfully and wofully into the silent heavens, into the deeps of our human life, everywhere watching for the coming of the Lord, who shall tell her what to do. Yet the day wears on, and she cries, as one hour strikes after another, “Woe is me! What shall I do?" It is the man who is dimly conscious of power and purpose somewhere within his soul, yet is compelled, year after year, to toil on twenty acres of hardscrabble, or push a flat-boat, or teach a district school and board round, aware all the time that this is only waiting for the coming of the Lord, • -yet to wait, and watch, and hear no voice. It is into these wistful eyes the compassionate Christ looks as he speaks his parable, and not into ours, who are working where we want to be, and feel sure of our wages.

And this, if I understand the parable, is the first consolation we touch in it, and good for all time. The ultimate reason why some have to stand and wait, who sorely want to work, rests not

with us at all, but with the Lord, who calls us when he will, and gives us our reward; not merely for working faithfully, but for waiting faithfully as well. It shows us that away down within this want of power to see and do, we are to believe in the will of God concerning us. So that what we see in such lives as I have touched, for example, we must see in the life of every worthy man and woman who has to wait and watch; who tries and fails, and has to stand back, God knows why, we say in our pride, and they in their patience. We are both right; God does know why; and that is the most intimate reason. He has determined it shall be so, that his purpose may be answered in that one life, and in the whole commonwealth of the world. As we seem to see the things through a glass darkly, when we notice how he kept North America waiting when China was called, and then kept the West waiting when the East was called; waiters and workers,

this has always been the Divine order. Lands, nations, providences, discoveries, the whole world, outside the personal life of the man and woman, are full of my parable.

So, then, when I see a young man slow and