of my supper." Final exclusion from the feast, to which, when they saw others partaking, they might wish to regain admission on the plea of their former invitation,-this is the penalty with which he threatens them; he declares they have forfeited their share in it, and for ever; that no after earnestness in claiming admission shall profit them now. (Prov. i. 28; Matt. xxv. 11, 12.)

It is worth while to compare this parable and that of the Marriage of the King's Son, for the purpose of observing with how fine a skill all the minor circumstances are arranged in each, to be in perfectly consistent keeping. The master of the house here does not assume, as he does not possess, power to avenge the insult; even as the offence committed is both much lighter in itself, and lighter in the person against whom it is committed, than the offence which is so severely punished in the parallel narration. There the principal person, being a king, has armies at his command, as he has also whole bands of servants, and not merely a single one, to send forth with his commands. The refusal to accept his invitation, was, in fact, according to Eastern notions of submission, nothing less than rebellion, and being accompanied with outrages done to his servants, called out that terrible retribution. Here, as the offence is in every way lighter, so also is the penalty, that is, in the outward circumstance which supplies the groundwork of the parable, since it is merely exclusion from a festival; though we should remember it is not lighter, when taken in its spiritual signification; for it is nothing less than exclusion from the kingdom of God, and from all the blessings of the communion of Christ, and that exclusion implies "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power."

brings this verse into interesting relation, as indeed the whole parable suggests the parallel, with 1 Cor. i. 26-29.

XXII.

THE LOST SHEEP.

MATTHEW Xviii. 12-14; LUKE XV. 3-7.

WHEN St. Luke says, "Then drew near to the Lord all the publicans and sinners for to hear him," this does not imply that all who were at some particular moment in a certain neighborhood drew near with this purpose; but the Evangelist is rather giving the prevailing feature in the whole of Christ's ministry, or at least in one epoch of it—that it was such a ministry as to draw all the outcasts of the nation, the rejected of the scribes and Pharisees, round him—that there was a secret attraction in his person, in his Word, which drew all of them habitually to him for to hear him. Of these "publicans and sinners" the first were men infamous among their countrymen by their very occupationt-the second,

* We find this indicated in the words, hoar èyyíÇovres, which here find place, instead of the simpler imperfect: They were in the habit of drawing nigh. Grotius rightly: Actum continuum et quotidianum genus hoc loquendi significat. And he compares Luke iv. 31; to which he might have added Mark ii. 18, and other examples.

† Τελῶναι (ἀπὸ τοῦ τέλος ἀνεῖσθαι) were of two kinds. The publicani, so called while they were gatherers of the publicum, or state revenue; these were commonly Roman knights, who farmed the taxes in companies, and this occupation was not in disesteem, but the contrary. Besides these were the portitores, or exactores, who are here meant by Teλŵvαi, men of an inferior sort, freedmen, provincials, and the like, who did the lower work of the collection, and probably greatly abused the power which of necessity was left in their hands. They were commonly stationed at frontiers, at gates of cities, on rivers, at havens (vendentium ipsius cœli et terræ et maris transitus; Tertullian), for the purpose of collecting customs on the wares which were brought into the country. They were sufficiently hateful among the Greeks on account of their rudeness, their frauds, their vexations and oppressions; as they are here classed with ἁμαρτωλοὶ, so by them with μοιχοί and πορνοβοσκοί, and whole lists are given of the opprobrious epithets with which they were assailed. Cicero (In Patin. 5) gives a lively picture of their doings, telling Vatinius he must have thought himself one of these publicans, cùm omnium domos, apothecas, naves,

such as till awakened by him to repentance and a sense of their past sins, had been notorious transgressors of God's holy law. He did not repel them, nor seem to fear, as the Pharisees would have done, pollution from their touch; but being come to seek and to save that which was lost, received them graciously, instructed them further in his doctrine, and lived in familiar intercourse with them. At this the scribes and Pharisees murmured and took offence*-seeming as it did to them conduct unbecoming a teacher of righteousness. They could more easily have understood a John Baptist, flying to the wilderness, so to avoid the contamination of sinners, separating himself from them outwardly in the whole manner of his life, as well as inwardly in his spirit. And this outward separation from sinners, which was the Old Testament form of righteousness, might have been needful for those who would preserve their purity in those times of the law and till the Lord came,-till he, first in his own person, and then through his Church, brought a far mightier power of good to bear upon the evil of the world, than ever had been brought before. It had hitherto been prudent for those who felt themselves predisposed to the infection to flee from the infected, but he was the physician who rather came boldly to seek out the infected, that he might heal them; and furnishing his servants with divine antidotes against the world's sickness, sent them also boldly to encounter and overcome it. This was what the Pharisees and scribes could not understand; it seemed to them impossible that any one should walk pure and unspotted amid the pollutions of the world, seeking and not shunning sinners. They had neither love to hope the recovery of such, nor medicines to effect that recovery.

furacissimè scrutarere, hominesque negotia gerentes judiciis iniquissimis irretires, mercatores e navi egredientes terreres, conscendentes morarere. Chrysostom (De Panit., Hom. ii. 4) would seem to say that the business itself from its very nature, apart from the frauds to which it too often led, was unrighteous: Ovdèv ăλno ẻotl τελώνης ἢ πεπαῤῥησιασμένη βία, ἔννομος ἁμαρτία, εὐπρόσωπος πλεονεξία. But the Jewish publicans were further hateful to their countrymen, being accounted traitors to the cause of the nation and of God, who for the sake of filthy lucre had sided with the Romans, the enemies and oppressors of the theocracy, and now collected for a heathen treasury that tribute, the payment of which was the evident sign of the subjection of the people of God to a foreign yoke. Of the abhorrence in which they were held there is abundant testimony; no alms might be received from their money-chest, nay it was not even lawful to change money there; their evidence was not received in courts of justice; they were put on the same level with heathens (to keep which in mind, adds an emphasis to Luke xix. 9), and no doubt, as renegades and traitors, were far more abhorred even than the heathen themselves. (See the Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Publicani, p. 806, and DEYLING'S Obss. Sac., v. 1, p. 206.)

*Gregory the Great (Hom. 34 in Evang.): Arenti corde ipsum Fontem misericordiæ reprehendebant.

As another expression of their discontent (Luke v. 30) had called out those blessed words, "Those that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance;" so their later murmurings were the occasion of the three parables which here follow one another, in the which he seeks to shame the murmurers out of their murmurs, showing them how little sympathy those murmurs found in that higher heavenly world from whence he came. He holds up to them God and the angels of God rejoicing at the conversion of a sinner, and silently contrasts this, the liberal joy and exultation of heaven, with the narrow discontent and envious repinings that found place in their hearts. The holy inhabitants of heaven did not count scorn of the repentant sinner, but welcomed him into their fellowship with gladness. Would they dare, in the pride of their legal righteousness, and of their exemption from some gross offences whereof he had been guilty, refuse to receive him, keeping him at a distance, as though his very touch would defile them?

Nor is it merely that there is joy in heaven over the penitent sinner, but the Lord warns them, if they indulge in this pride,-if they shut themselves up in this narrow form of legal righteousness,—there will be more joy in heaven over one of these penitents whom they so much despised, than over ninety-nine of such as themselves. He does not deny the good that might be in them; many of them, no doubt, had a zeal for God,-were following after righteousness such as they knew it, a righteousness according to the law. But if now that a higher righteousness was brought into the world, a righteousness by faith, the new life of the Gospel,-they obstinately refused to become partakers of this new life, preferring to serve in the oldness of the letter instead of the newness of the Spirit, then such as would receive this life from him, though having, in times past, departed infinitely wider from God than they had ever done, yet would now be brought infinitely nearer to him, as the one sheep was brought home to the house, while the ninety and nine abode in the wilderness,-as for the prodigal a fatted calf was slain, while the elder brother received not so much as a kid. Nay, in the last parable they are bidden to beware lest the spirit they are now indulging in, if allowed further, do not shut them out altogether, or rather, lest they do not through it exclude themselves altogether from that new kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, which the Lord was establishing upon earth, and into which they, as well as the publicans and sinners, were invited freely to enter.

Of the three parables, the two first, those of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Piece of Money, set forth to us mainly the seeking love of God; while the third, that of the Prodigal Son, describes to us rather the rise and growth responsive to that love of repentance in the heart of man.

It is, in fact, only the same truth presented successively under different aspects, God's seeking love being set forth first, and this not without reason, since we thus are taught that all first motions towards good are from him, that grace must prevent as well as follow us. But yet is it the same truth in all; for it is the confluence of this drawing and seeking love from without, and of the faith awakened by the same power from within, the confluence of these two streams, the objective grace and the subjective faith,-out of which repentance springs. The parables in this chapter would have seemed incomplete without one another, but together form a perfect and harmonious whole. Separately they would have seemed incomplete, for the two first speak nothing of a changed heart and mind toward God; nor, indeed, would the images of a sheep and piece of money have conveniently allowed this; while the last speaks only of this change, and nothing of that which must have caused it, the antecedent working of the Spirit of God in the heart, the going forth of his power and love, which must have found the wanderer, before he could ever have found himself, or found his God. We may thus contemplate these parables under the aspect of a trilogy, which yet again is to be divided into two unequal portions of two and one-St. Luke himself distinctly marking the break and the new beginning which finds place after the two first.

But there are also many other inner harmonies and relations between them which are interesting to observe and trace. Thus there is a seeming anti-climax in the numbers named in the successive parables, which is in reality a climax,-one in a hundred*—one in ten,-one in two; the feeling of the value of the part lost would naturally increase with the proportion which it bore to the whole. And other human feelings and interests are implied in the successive narratives, which would have helped to enhance in each successive case the anxiety for the recovery of what was lost. The possessor of a hundred sheep must have been in some sort a rich man, therefore not likely to feel the loss of a single one out of his flock, so deeply as the woman who, having but ten small pieces of money, should of these lose one: again the intensity of her feeling would come infinitely short of the parental affection of a father, who, having but two sons, should behold one out of these two go astray. Thus we find ourselves moving in ever narrower and so ever intenser circles of hope and fear and love-drawing in each successive parable nearer to the innermost centre and heart of the truth.

* This was a familiar way of numbering and dividing among the Jews, of which examples are given by Lightfoot here. There is also a striking saying attributed to Mahomet, in which the same appears,-The Lord God has divided mercy and pity into a hundred parts; of these, he has retained ninety and nine for himself, and sent one upon earth. (VON HAMMER'S Fundgruben d. Orients, v. 1, p. 308.)