mystical Jerusalem. There is a kingdom of darkness as well as a kingdom of God.* But concerning the wedding garment itself, it has been abundantly disputed what spiritual grace or gift he lacked, who was lacking in this. It is well known that the Romanists have been eager to press this passage into their service, in the controversy concerning the relative value of faith and charity. But when they assert that it must have been charity in which this guest was deficient, and not faith,—for that he had faith, since he would not have been present at the feast at all unless externally a believer, they are merely taking advantage of the double meaning of the word faith, and playing off the occasional use of it as a bare assent to the truth, against St. Paul's far deeper use of the word,— and this most unfairly, for they must know that it is only in the latter sense of the word that any would attribute this guest's exclusion to his wanting faith. Were it needful to decide absolutely for one or other of these interpretations of the wedding garment, I would far sooner accept the other, as infinitely the deepest and truest, since the flower may be said to be contained in the root, but not the root in the flower, and so charity in faith, but not faith in charity. There is however no need to decide for either interpretation, so as to exclude the other. The great teachers in the early Church did not put themselves in contradiction to one another, when some of them asserted that what the intruder was deficient in was charity, and others faith; nay, the same writer, without * Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. lxi. 4): Levatus est de convivio et missus in pœnas nescio quis homo in tam magnâ turbâ recumbentium. Sed tamen Dominus volens ostendere unum illum hominem, unum corpus esse quod constat ex multis, ubi jussit eum projici foras, et mitti in debitas pœnas, subjecit continuò, Multi enim sunt vocati, pauci verò electi... Qui sunt electi, nisi qui remanserunt? Projecto uno, electi remanserunt. Quomodo, projecto uno de multis, pauci electi nisi in illo uno multi? See also Con. Don., post Coll., c. 20. We have just the reverse of this 1 Cor. ix. 24. There the whole number of the elect are included in the "one that receiveth the prize." † Ignatius (Ad Ephes., 14) calls the twain, ἀρχὴ ζωῆς καὶ τέλος· ἀρχὴ μὲν πίστις, τέλος δὲ ἀγάπη. Thus Ambrose (De Fide, 1. 4, c. 1) speaks of the nuptiale fidei vestimentum -while elsewhere (De Panit., 1. 1, c. 6) he says: Ille rejicitur qui non habet vestem nuptialem, hoc est, amictum caritatis, velamen gratiæ ;—and again uniting his two former expositions (Exp. in Luc., 1. 7, c. 204): Vestem nuptialem, hoc est, fidem et caritatem. In the same way Augustine (Serm. xc.) joins them both: Habete fidem cum dilectione. Ista est vestis nuptialis. The Auct. Oper. Imperf.: Nuptiale vestimentum est fides vera quæ est per Jesum Christum et justitiam ejus; see also Basil (on Isai. ix.) for a like interpretation. Yet no one would deny the other to be the side upon which the Fathers more frequently contemplate the wedding garment, as charity, or sanctity. Thus Irenæus (Con. Hær., 1. 4, c. 36, § 6): Qui vocati ad cænam Dei, propter malam conversationem non perceperunt Spiritum feeling that there was aught needing to be reconciled, would in one place give the one interpretation, and elsewhere the other. For what this guest lacked was righteousness, both in its root of faith and its flower of charity. He had not, according to the pregnant image of Paul, here peculiarly appropriate,-"put on Christ;"-in which putting on of Christ, both faith and charity are included,-faith as the power putting on, charity or holiness as the thing put on. By faith we recognize a righteousness out of and above us, and which yet is akin to us, and wherewith our spirits can be clothed, which righteousness is in Christ, who is the Lord our Righteousness. And this righteousness by the appropriative and assimilative power of faith we also make ours; we are clothed upon with it, so that it becomes, in that singularly expressive term, our habit,f-the righteousness imputed has become also a right Sanctum; and Hilary; Vestitus nuptialis est gloria Spiritûs Sancti et candor habitus cœlestis, qui bonæ interrogationis confessione susceptus usque in cætum regni cœlorum immaculatus et integer reservatur. So Gregory the Great, Hom. 38 in Evang. Yet Grotius affirms too much when he says: Ita veteres magno consensu ad hunc locum. And this is the predominant, though not I think the exclusive, sense given to it in our Exhortation to the Holy Communion; with which compare Chrysostom, Hom. 3, in Ephes., quoted by Bingham (Christ. Antt., b. 15, c. 4, § 2). * Even so Gerhard, to whose most useful collection of passages I have been very much indebted in this parable, explains it: Vestis nuptialis Christus est, qui et sponsus et cibus est in his nuptiis. Christum autem induimus tum fide ejus meritum apprehendendo, ut nuditas nostra coram Dei judicio ipsius justitia tanquam pretiosa veste tegatur, tum sanctâ vitæ conversatione, quâ ipsius vestigiis insistimus (Rom. xiii. 14), cùm Christus non solùm nobis datus sit in donum, sed etiam propositus in exemplum ;-and Jerome's words are remarkable: Vestem nuptialem, hoc est, vestem supercœlestis hominis,—as he explains the sordid garment as veteris hominis exuvias.-One might here bring forward as illustrative a passage from the Shepherd of Hermas, 1. 3, sim. 9, c. 13. He sees in his vision some virgins, and asks who they are; it is answered that they represent the chief Christian virtues: Spiritus sancti sunt, non aliter enim homo potest in regnum Dei intrare nisi hæ induerint eum veste suâ. Etenim nil proderit tibi accipere nomen filii Dei, nisi etiam et vestem earum acceperis ab eis. This image runs remarkably through the whole of Scripture, its frequent use being a witness for its peculiar fitness. Thus we are bidden to put on the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. xiii. 14), to put off the old, to put on the new, man (Col. iii. 10; Ephes. iv. 22), to put on the various pieces of the panoply of God (Ephes. vi. 13-16; 1 Thess. v. 8); baptism is a putting on of Christ (Gal. iii. 27). See further, Rom. xiii. 12; Ezek. xvi. 10; Isai. lxi. 10; Sirac. vi. 31; and Schoettgen (Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 699) shows that the mystery of putting on a righteousness from above was not wholly hidden from the Jews-many of the passages which he quotes being truly remarkable. The figure has passed on to the heavenly kingdom; as grace is put on here, so glory there. "He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment." (Rev. iii. 5; iv. 4; vi. 11; vii. 9; 2 Esd. ii. 39, 45.) In the book of Enoch these garments are called vestes vitæ. See EISENMENGER'S Entd. Judenthum (v. 2, p. 310), where it is said of the angels, that according eousness infused, and is in us charity or holiness, or more accurately still, constitutes the complex of all Christian graces as they abide in the man and show themselves in his life. The wedding garment then is righteousness in its largest sense, the whole adornment of the new and spiritual man,-including the faith without which it is impossible to please God, and the holiness without which no man shall see him, or, like this guest, shall only see him to perish at his presence:-it is the faith which is the root of all graces, the mother of all virtues, and it is likewise those graces and those virtues themselves. Let us contemplate this guest as a self-righteous person, who is making and trusting in a righteousness of his own, instead of believing in a righteousness of Christ's, imputed and imparted,—or let us see in him a more ordinary sinner, who with the Christian profession and privileges is yet walking after the lusts of the flesh in unholiness and sin, in either case the image holds good; he is rejecting something, even the true robe of his spirit, which has been freely given to him at his baptism, and which if he has since let go, he may yet, on the strength of that gift, freely at any moment claim-he is a despiser, counting himself good enough merely as he is in himself, in the flesh and not in the spirit, to appear in the presence of God. But a time arrives when every man will discover that he needs another covering, another array for his soul. It is woe unto him, who like this guest only discovers it when it is too late to provide himself with such; and then suddenly stands confessed to himself in all his moral nakedness and defilement. It was the king's word which struck the intruder speechless-so it will be the light of God shining round and shining in upon the sinner, which will at the last day reveal to him all the hidden things of his heart, all that evil, of the greater part of which he has hitherto wilfully chosen to be ignorant, but of which now he can remain ignorant no longer. We may well understand how he also, like the unworthy guest, will be speechless, that however forward he may have been in other times to justify himself, in that day his mouth will be stopped; he will not even pretend to offer any excuse, or to plead any reason why judgment should not proceed against him at once. The ministering attendants here, who are different both in name and office from the servants who invited and brought in the guests,† can be to the Jewish tradition they strip off the grave-clothes from every one who enters Paradise, and clothe him in white and glistering raiment. * See one of Schleiermacher's Taufreden, in his Predigten, v. 4, p. 787. Those were doûλo, these are diákovo. (John ii. 5, 9.) They here appear as lictors—that name, from ligare, having allusion to this very function of binding the hands and feet of condemned criminals. no other than the angels who "shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them that do inquity." (Matt. xiii. 41, 49; Luke xix. 24.) These are bidden to "bind him hand and foot," which by some is made to mean that upon the sinner the night is come, in which no man can work, that for him all opportunity of doing better is gone by; though I should rather see in it the sign of the helplessness to which in a moment every proud striver against God is reduced.* The hands by the aid of which resistance, the feet by whose help escape, might have been meditated, are alike deprived of all power and motion. (Acts xxi. 11.) In the command "Take him away," is implied the sinner's exclusion from the Church now glorious and triumphant in heaven, the perfected kingdom of God.† (Matt. xiii. 48; 2 Thess. i. 9.) Nor is the penalty merely privative: it is not only this loss of good, but also the presence of evil. They shall "cast him into outer darkness;" so called because it lies wholly beyond and external to God's kingdom of light and joy. For as light is contemplated as the element of that kingdom, so whatever is beyond and without that kingdom is darkness-the "outer darkness" girdling round the kingdom of light, and into which all fall back, who refusing to walk in the light of God's truth, fail to attain in the end to the light of everlasting life. (Compare Wisd. xvii. 21; xviii. 1.) On the words following, "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth," there has been occasion. to say something already.|| * H. de Sto. Victore: Ligatis manibus et pedibus, id est, ablatâ penitus potestate benè operandi: but I rather follow Grotius: Notat rò &uaxov Kal тd åpeUKTOV irrogati divinitus supplicii. Taking it in this meaning, Zech. v. 8 will supply an instructive parallel. The woman whose name is "Wickedness" sitting securely in the ephah, the great measure of God's judgments, which she has filled, is forcibly thrust down into it; and the mouth of it is then stopped with the huge mass of lead, that she may never raise herself again. Jerome (in loc.): Angelus præcipitem misit in medium amphoræ . . . ac ne fortè rursum elevaret caput, et sua iniquitate et impietate gauderet, talentum plumbi in modum gravissimi lapidis mittit in os amphoræ, ut Impietatem in medio opprimat atque concludat, ne quo modo possit erumpere. The women with wings, who bear away the ephah, will further answer to the servants here; and the outer darkness here to the land of Shinar, the profane land, whither the vessel and its burden are borne. The whole vision too (v. 5-11) has its similarity to this parable; for that and this speak alike of the cleansing of the Church by judgment-acts of separation upon the sinners in it. † It is interesting to compare Zeph. i. 7, 8: "The Lord hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath bid his guests. And it shall come to pass in the day of the Lord's sacrifice, that I will punish the princes and the king's children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel." (évdedvμévovs évðúμaтa àλλóтpia. LXX.) AUGUSTINE, Serm. 31, c. 5. Peter Lombard (1. 4, dist. 50): Exteriores tenebræ erunt, quia tunc peccatores penitus erunt extra Deum. . . Secludentur penitus à luce Dei. Meuschen (N. T. ex Talm. illust., p. 106) quotes a Jewish parable as bearing The parable terminates like that of the Laborers in the Vineyard with that weighty saying, "Many are called, but few are chosen," which refers not merely to the expulsion of this unworthy guest; but in the "called" and not "chosen" must be included those others also, that did not so much as seem (which he had done) to embrace the invitation, and who expiated their contumacy in the destruction of themselves and their city. And these words do but state a truth which had long before been finding its fulfilment in the kingdom of God, which, alas! is always accomplishing there. They were fulfilled in the history of that entire generation which went out of Egypt-they were all "called" to a kingdom, yet were not in the end "chosen" to it, since with most of them God was not well pleased, and they died in the wilderness. (1 Cor. x 1–10; Heb. iii. 7-19; Jude 5.) They were fulfilled on a smaller scale in those twelve to whom it was given first to see the promised land—two only drew strength and encouragement from that sight, and they only were "chosen" to inherit it. They found their fulfilment in the thirty and two thousand of Gideon's army: these all were "called" but only three hundred were found worthy, and in the end "chosen" to be heplers in and sharers of his victory,-such a sifting and winnowing away had there been before. (Judg. vii.) They were fulfilled too in a type and figure, when Esther alone of all the maidens that were brought together to the king's place was "chosen" by him, and found lasting favor in his sight. (Esth. ii.)* some resemblance to the present. It is of a king who invited his servants to a festival-some of these prepared and adorned themselves, and waited at the door till he should pass in, others said there would be time enough for this, as the feast would be a long while in preparing, and so went about their ordinary business. The latter, when the king demanded suddenly the presence of his guests, had no time to change their apparel, but were obliged to appear before him in sordid garments as they were ;-he was displeased, and would not allow them to taste of his banquet, but made them stand by while the others feasted.-But if this can be said to resemble any of our Lord's parables, it is evidently the Ten Virgins, with which it should be compared, and not this. *H. de Sto. Victore (De Arrhâ Anima) makes excellent application of Esther's history to the matter in hand: Vide quàm multæ electæ sunt, ut una eligeretur, illa scilicet quæ occulis Regis formosior et ornatior cæteris videretur. Ministri Regis multas eligunt ad cultum, Rex ipse unam eligit ad thalamum. Prima electio multarum facta est, secundùm Regis præceptionem, secunda electio unius facta est, secundùm Regis voluntatem . . . Rex summus Regis filius venit in hunc mundum (quem ipse creaverat) desponsare sibi uxorem electam, uxorem unicam, uxorem nuptiis regalibus dignam. Sed quia hunc Judæ humilitatis forma apparentem recipere contempsit, abjecta est. Et missi sunt ministri Regis, Apostoli videlicet, per totum mundum congregare animas, et adducere ad civitatem Regis, id est, ad Sanctam Ecclesiam... Multi ergo vocati intrant per fidem Ecclesiam, et ibi Sacramenta Christi quasi quædam unguenta et antidota ad reparationem et ad ornatum animarum præ |