that they had already complied with it. Peter therefore, in the name of the twelve Apostles, reminded him that they had given up all they possessed in the world, and had devoted themselves entirely to his service. He had told the rich young man, that if he would do this he should have "treasure in heaven;" they wanted therefore to know, what they might expect in

consequence.

Our Lord told them that, when the time should come that he shall make all things new again, (Rev. xxi. 5. Acts iii. 19-21)-when he shall have established his kingdom of glory, and shall himself be upon the throne; then those of the Apostles who should have followed him according to his course upon earth, shall also be as kings sitting upon twelve thrones, each having rule over one of the tribes of Israel.

Jesus added a statement, which he applied not only to the Apostles, but to every other self-denying christian. He said that if a person-being called upon to give up his property, or to resist the dearest affections of his heart, for the sake of Christ, in order not to deny the truth of the Gospel-does for this purpose give up his home, or his brothers, or his sisters, or his parents, or his wife, or his children, or his worldly possessions; the loss shall be abundantly made up to him, even in the course of this present life, where he shall find those who will supply to him the place of home, brothers, sisters, parents, children, and property, even though it be in the midst of painful opposition and persecution : while in the future state, he shall inherit eternal life.

In connection with this, however, he repeated the remark which he had before made, when he was asked whether they were few that are saved (Luke xiii. 23, 30); he said that many persons are first in the present life, who shall be last in that to come; and many who are last now, shall be first then and he proceeded to explain his meaning by a parable.

Christ's Church may be compared to the following circumstances. A rich person, who farmed his own property, went out one morning at sun-rise for the purpose of engaging labourers to work upon his farm, where he cultivated grapes to make wine. (Isaiah v, 1-7.) Those whom he thus hired were to give him their labour for a whole day; and he was to pay them a certain sum in return. The sum mentioned in the parable (for which "a penny" is put in the English Bible), means a piece of money called a denarius, which was the full rate of wages in those days; under this agreement he sent them to work. In the course of the day, he went into the place of common resort in the city; and seeing a number of labourers waiting to find employment, he desired them to go and work on his farm: but made no agreement with them as to wages; telling them only they might depend upon his treating them fairly, and giving them what was right: they were satisfied to trust him for this, and set to work at once. This took place about nine o'clock in the morning; but he also did the same thing with other labourers at noon, and at three o'clock in the afternoon. The day's work was to close at six in the evening; and about five o'clock, as he walked to the market

place again, he still found some unoccupied labourers. He asked them why they were standing about idle all day long; and being told that nobody had offered to employ them, he set them also to work on his farm; saying as before, that they should have whatever was fair and proper.

As soon as the labours of the day were over, the master told his bailiff to call in the workmen, to be paid; and to begin with those men who had come to work the latest in the day, and so on in turn, until he came to those who had been hired in the morning.

They who had not come till five o'clock in the evening, were therefore first paid; and to each of them a denarius was given, which was the full amount of a whole day's labour. As the payments were made in the same way to all the others, those with whom the agreement had been made early in the morning, thought that of course they should receive higher wages, as they had done more work. But when it came to their turn to be paid, a denarius (the sum agreed upon) was given to each of them. At first they took the money from the steward; but finding they were to receive no more, they laid it down again, and grumbled at the way in which the master treated them. They compared themselves with the labourers who had come upon the farm at five o'clock in the evening; who (they said) had only been a single hour employed, while they had done all the hard work during the heat of the day.

The master told them, that by giving as he had done to others, he was doing no injustice to them; their agreement was to work the whole day for

a denarius. He bid them therefore take up the money that belonged to them, according to the justice which they claimed, and be gone: it was his pleasure to give as much to those who had come last, as to those who had come first; and had he not a right to do as he pleased with what was entirely his own? Why should his kindness and liberality make them envious of their fellowlabourers?

Having spoken this parable, our Lord applied it to the remark he had made at the beginning; thus it is that the last shall be first, and the first last but he added also that which enables us to make the application more particularly;-that many people are called into God's service, but few are chosen to receive the gracious and undeserved reward.

In this parable, the householder stands for God himself; who at first chose the children of Israel to be his own peculiar people, and gave them the covenant of the law, the terms of which are "the man that doeth them shall live in (or by) them" (Gal. iii. 12): thus he may be said to have hired these as his servants, upon a special agreement that for their work, in perfectly fulfilling what he required of them, they should be admitted into eternal life. (Luke x. 28.)

Since the call of the Jews, however, God has been mercifully pleased to receive the Gentiles also into his service; not under the covenant of works, but under a covenant of grace. He has collected from time to time numbers of different nations, and kindreds, and people, (some as it may be said) at the third hour, some at the sixth, and some at the ninth: these have been admitted

to his service upon the terms of the Gospel, in which he promises to give eternal life, as he may see right, and not according to the measurement of the duty done: and now when the world's day is well nigh over (so that it may be called the eleventh hour) he is still going forth by His Spirit accompanying the preaching of His word, and adding to the Church daily such as shall be saved. (Acts ii. 47.) When the Lord shall come to close this present order of things, it will be found that he will then make no distinction as to the time during which the Gentile Church, or any member of it, has been employed in his service; but that, under the gracious terms of the Gospel, he will admit them to the full enjoyment of eternal life, as if they had been engaged under the terms of the Law, and had fulfilled them. The Jews have ever found fault with this doctrine; they claim to themselves a higher reward than others, upon the principle of payment for obedience to the Law.

While this appears to be the first intention of the parable, it has evidently another meaning, which will be stated in the third application; one more immediately connected with the circumstances which called forth the parable The young ruler imagined that he had kept all the commandments from his youth up, and expected therefore to be rewarded according to the value of his works; until our Lord put an end to his hopes, by requiring something of him which he felt he was not willing to perform, On the other hand the Apostles, in giving up all which they had possessed, had done very little in proportion to what was required of the young man: yet does