about the dust and inconvenience, she that bears the candle of the Lord is diligently looking meanwhile for her lost, not ceasing her labor, her care, her diligence, till she has recovered her own again. We must not omit to remark a difference between this parable and the preceding, which is more than accidental. In that the shepherd went to look for his lost sheep in the wilderness; but it is in the house that this piece of money is lost, and there by consequence that it is sought for. There is then a progress from that parable to this. The earthly house, the visible Church, now first appears. In that other there was the returning of the Son to the heavenly places, but in this there is intimation of a church which has been founded upon earth, and to which also sinners are restored. And there are other slighter variations between the two parables, explicable at once on the same supposition that we have there the more immediate ministry of Christ, and here the secondary ministry of his Church. The shepherd says, "I have found my sheep"-not so the woman, "I have found the coin"-for it is in no sense hers as the sheep was his. He says, "which was lost:" but she, "which I lost," confessing a fault and carelessness of her own, which was the original cause of the loss-even as it must have been; for a sheep strays of itself, but a piece of money could only be lost by a certain negligence on the part of such as should have kept it. * Origen also presses the fact that this money was found within the house, and not without it, though with a different purpose. He is dealing with Gen. xxvi. 18, to which he very fairly gives a deeper and allegorical interpretation, besides that which lay on the surface, namely this,-that those stopped wells are the fountains of eternal life, which the Philistines, that is, Satan and sin, had choked, but which our Isaac, the son of gladness, opened anew for us. And observing that such wells, though stopped indeed, are within every one of us (compare John iv. 14), he brings into comparison this parable, noting that the lost money was not found without the house, but within it: for, he would say, at the bottom of every man's soul there is this image of God, mislaid indeed and quite out of sight, overlaid with a thousand other images, covered with dust and defilement, but which still may be found, and in his hands from whom it first came, may again recover its first brightness, and the sharpness of outline which it had at the beginning. His words are (In Gen. Hom. 13): Mulier illa quæ perdiderat drachmam, non illam invenit extrinsecus, sed in domo sua posteaquam accendit lucernam, et mundavit domum sordibus et immunditiis, quas longi temporis ignavia et hebetudo congesserat, et ibi invenit drachmam. Et tu ergo, si accendas lucernam, si adhibeas tibi illuminationem Spiritûs Sancti, et in lumine ejus videas lumen, invenies intra te drachmam. Cùm enim faceret hominem ex initio Deus, ad imaginem et similitudinem suam fecit eum; et hanc imaginem non extrinsecus, sed intra eum collocavit. Hæc in te videri non poterat, donec domus tua sordida erat, immunditiis et ruderibus repleta. Iste fons scientiæ intra te erat situs, sed non poterat fluere, quia Philistini repleverant eum terra et fecerant in te imaginem terreni. Sed tu portasti quidem tunc imaginem terreni, nunc verò his auditis ab illa omni mole et oppressione terrena per Verbum Dei purgatus, imaginem cœlestis in te splendescere facito. The woman having found her own, "calleth her friends and her neighbors together," that they may be sharers in her joy. (Compare Ruth iv. 14, 17.) It is only natural that, according to the groundwork of the parable, this being a woman, the friends and neighbors she summons should be described as female also, though this escapes us in the English version. That they are so does not hinder us in applying the words, we have indeed in the next verse the Lord's warrant for applying them, to the angels; whose place we shall observe is not "in heaven" in this parable which it was in the last; for this is the rejoicing together of the redeemed and elect creation upon earth at the repentance of a sinner. The angels that walk up and down the earth, that are present in the congregations of the faithful, offended at aught unseemly among them (1 Cor. xi. 10), joying to behold their order, but most of all joying when a sinner is converted, there shall be joy before them, when the Church of the redeemed, quickened by the Holy Spirit, summons them to join with it in consenting hymns of thanksgiving to God for the recov ery of a lost soul. For indeed if the "sons of God" shouted for joy and sang together at the first creation (Job xxxviii. 7), how much more when a new creation has found place, at the birth of a soul into the light of everlasting life (Ephes. iii. 10; 1 Pet. i. 12); for according to that exquisite word of St. Bernard's, the tears of penitence are the wine of angels, and their conversion, as Luther says, causes Te Deums among the heavenly host. * Pœnitentium lacrymæ, vinum Angelorum; and with allusion to this parable the Christian poet sings: Amissa drachma regio XXIV. THE PRODIGAL SON. LUKE XV. 11-32. We have now come to a parable which, if it be permitted to compare things divine one with another, we might call the pearl and crown of all the parables of Scripture; as it is also the most elaborate, if again we might venture to use a word, which has an evident unfitness when applied to the spontaneous and the free, but which yet the completeness of all the minor details seems to suggest ;-one too containing within itself such a circle of doctrine as abundantly to justify the title Evangelium in Evangelio, which has been sometimes given it. In regard of its great primary application, there have always been two different views in the Church. There are those who have seen in the two sons the Jew and Gentile, and in the younger son's departure from his father's house, the history of the great apostasy of the Gentile world, in his return its reception into the privileges of the new covenant;-as in the elder brother a lively type of the narrow-hearted self-extolling Jews, who grudged that the "sinners of the Gentiles" should be admitted to the same blessings as themselves, and who on this account would not themselves "go in." Others, again, have beheld in the younger son a pattern of all those who, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether in that old dispensation which was then drawing to an end, or brought up in the bosom of the Christian Church, have widely departed from God, and after having tasted the misery which follows upon all departure from him, have by his grace been brought back to him, as to the one source of blessedness and life; -while they in the elder brother have seen either a narrow form of real righteousness, or, accepting his words to be only his own account of himself, of Pharisaical self-righteousness,-one righteous in his own sight, not in the Lord's. They who maintain this last explanation, object to the other which makes the two sons to represent the Jew and Gentile (and the objection appears decisive), that it is alien to the scope of the parable; for that was spoken in reply to the murmurings of the Scribes and Pharisees (ver. 1, 2), who were offended that Jesus received and consorted with publicans and sinners. Before that interpretation can have any claim to stand, it must be shown that these publicans and sinners were heathens. Tertullian, indeed, boldly asserts that the publicans were always heathens; but he was not very careful what he asserted when he had a point to prove, which he had in the present instance, namely this, that no encouragement could be drawn from this Scripture for the receiving back of great offenders into Church communion. But there is abundant evidence, some Scriptural, and more derived from other sources, that many of the publicans, probably of those in Judæa, if not all, yet far the greater number, were of Jewish birth. Zaccheus was a son of Abraham" (Luke xix. 9), and Levi, who sat at the receipt of customs, must needs have been so too: and publicans were among those who came to the baptism of John. (Luke vii. 29.) They were indeed placed by their fellow-countrymen on a level with heathens: and some heathen publicans even within the limits of Judæa there may have been, but doubtless these whom Jesus received, and with whom he consorted, were publicans of Jewish origin, for with none but Jews did he familiarly live during his walk upon earth; he was "not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel;" and John xii. 30-22 shows us how unusual a thing it was for him to break through this rule.† 66 * See also LIGHTFOOT, Hor. Heb., on Matt. v. 46. Many of these arguments in proof that the publicans of the New Testament were Jews, are adduced by Jerome. (Ep. 21, ad Damasum.) He seems lost in wonder (vehementer admiror) at the audacity of Tertullian's assertion to the contrary. The great aim of the latter in his treatise De Pudicitia, c. 7-9, written after he had forsaken the Catholic Church. is by proving that contrary, to rob the parable of all the encouragement and consolation which it might otherwise afford to the penitent sinner; and in his passionate eagerness for this, he does not pause at a small matter,--for instance, he declares the occasion of the parable to have been, quod Pharisæi publicanos et peccatores ethnicos admittentem Dominum mussitabant. One cannot sufficiently admire his bold insertion of the ethnicos, nor how elsewhere (Adv. Marc., 1. 4, c. 37,) even our Lord's declaration that Zacchæus was "a son of Abraham," is not decisive with him, (Zacchæus etsi allophylus fortasse, tamen aliquâ notitia Scripturarum ex commercio Judaico afflatus,) nor his proof from Deut. xxiii. 18, that no Israelite could have been a publican, in which matter it is difficult to think that one so profoundly skilled in all Roman antiquities should not have known better. His fear is lest sinners should be overbold in their sin, having hope, like the prodigal, to find favor and grace whenever they will return to their God; and he asks, "Who will fear to squander what he can afterwards recover? Who will care always to keep what he is not in danger of always losing?" But if once, leaving the ground of Scripture, he comes to arguments of this sort, we might demand in return,-Is it on calculations of this sort that men rush into sin? These "publicans and sinners" then were Jews-outcasts indeed of the nation, scorned and despised, and till the words of Christ had awakened in them a nobler life, no doubt deserving all or nearly all the scorn and contempt which they found. The parables in this chapter are spoken to justify his conduct in the matter of receiving them, not to unfold another and far deeper mystery-that of the calling of the Gentiles, of which during his lifetime he gave only a few hints even to his chosen disciples, and which for long after was a difficulty and stumblingblock even to them. Much more would it now have been an offence to the scribes and Pharisees; to them therefore he would not needlessly have opened it, least of all at a time when he was seeking to reconcile them to his dealings, and if possible to win them also for his kingdom. Both these reasons,-first, that the parable was spoken to justify his reception, not of Gentiles, but of Jews; and secondly, that the mystery of the Gentiles as fellow-heirs with the Jews in the covenant of promise, was not unfolded till a later period, and certainly not first to cavillers and adversaries, but to friends,-strongly recommended the latter as the truer interpretation. Yet will not the other therefore be rigorously excluded; for the parable sets forth the relations of men to God, and wherever those relations exist, it will find a more or less extensive application. It found a fulfilment, though not its primary one, in the relations in which Jew and Gentile stood to one another and to God. Again, what the whole Jewish people were to the Gentile world in respect of superior privileges and advantages, in respect too of freedom from some of its worst enormities, that, within its own body, were the scribes and and not rather because they believe their good is there, and not in God? And how little was he really promoting holiness in this his false zeal for it: for if there had been a deeper depth of sin and pollution, into that no doubt the prodigal would have sunk, but that his sure faith in the unchanging love of his father extricated him both from the sin in which he was, and that yet further sin into which he would but for that inevitably have fallen. Tell men after they have sinned grievously that there is for them no hope of pardon, or, which amounts to the same thing, give them only a dim, distant, uncertain hope of it, and you will not hinder one by all these precautions and warnings from squandering his goodly heritage, but you may hinder ten thousand poor miserable sinners that have discovered the wretchedness of a life apart from God, from returning to their Father's house, from throwing themselves on the riches of his mercy, and henceforward living, not to the lusts of men, but to the will of God: and every one of these that is thus kept at a distance will inevitably be falling from bad to worse, departing wider and wider from his God. It is worth while to see what motives to repentance Chrysostom (Ad Theod. Laps., 1. 7) draws from this very parable, and his yet more memorable words (De Pænit. Hom. 1. 4), where among other things he says,—OTOS Tolyur ὁ υἱὸς εἰκόνα τῶν μετά τὸ λουτρὸν φέρει πεσόντων, which he proceeds to prove. Compare the exposition of the parable by St. Ambrose (De Pænit., 1. 2, c. 3) against the Novatianists. |