pertinent examples, he says that punishment may be delayed in order to give those who commit great crimes an opportunity to do what good they will. The man who gains a kingdom by crime may then seek to make up for his crime by using his power for good ends, and the world would be the loser if he were cut off at once. Or the offender's life may be spared, because his own conscience, in the apprehensions and terrors which it holds over him, may inflict a more dreadful punishment than immediate death. Or if the punishment is deferred in this world, it is only that it may hereafter be inflicted with the greater severity, before its purpose is accomplished, and the man's sin and guilt purged away. Or it may be in order to allow an opportunity for amendment, which is shown by the example of a young man who, after a dissolute, dishonest, and cruel course of life, being stunned by a fall and while in a swoon seeing as in another world how crimes are exposed, the souls of the guilty turned inside out, and vengeance wreaked upon them, he determined to reform his character, and lived afterwards purely and uprightly. Jesus goes far deeper than this into the very constitution and nature of things. Without exposure and temptation to evil, we conclude from his teachings, there can be no virtue. Bad deeds and men cannot be extirpated now except by destroying the good with them. Evil does exist. It cannot be rooted out without rooting out also the virtues that are growing with it, and which often in the early period of their growth can hardly be distinguished from it. Nor can bad men be destroyed at once without a fatal influence on the good. But by and by, when their deeds and characters have fully developed themselves, in the consummation to them of this earthly dispensation, that is, in the end of the world to each of them, a separation shall be made in accordance with the principles of a righteous retribution. In these parables Jesus "gathers

up ages into one season of seed-time and of harvest." So the end of the world, or the day of judgment to each individual when his earthly course is ended, is set forth by one majestic figure in which all the generations of men are brought together to be separated according to what they have done, 41, 42, and been, 48 – 50.

There are nowhere more sublime images of moral grandeur than are placed before us here. Earthly scenes that impress themselves most powerfully on the imagination, earthly thrones and kingdoms and the mightiest displays of human authority shrink away. "The field is the world. The harvest is the end of the world. The reapers are the angels. The Son of man shall send forth his angels and he shall gather out of his kingdom all those who cause others to sin, and all who work iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom of their Father." The last sentence would probably come with still greater force to the Jews from its bringing to their minds a most impressive passage in one of their sublimest prophets. "And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever." (Daniel xii. 3.) To them at least, language like this used by the sacred writers of old, and for generations educating the hearts. of the people to a deeper solemnity, became, when intermingled with the speech of Jesus, more impressive than words wholly unfamiliar to them could have been.

We do not like to discuss the duration of future punishment in the presence of images such as are thrown around the condition of the wicked hereafter. Jesus undoubtedly intended to represent them as full of misery. But he says nothing in this place, if he does anywhere, in regard to the period of its continuance; not one word to show whether, like tares, the wicked themselves shall be

utterly burned up, or whether the penal fires (taken of course in a figurative sense) shall only consume and purge away their sins, so that at last (as is intimated in 1 Cor. xv. 24–28), after we know not how many years or ages, they may be restored to life and peace, or whether they are left there in endless sin and pain. He places before us in the most impressive and terrible language the dreadful character and consequences of sin, that we may be warned against it; and it is much wiser in us,—it shows a deeper reverence for him, to use these expressions as undefined but awful warnings for ourselves and others, than by attempting to lessen or to aggravate their horrors by any speculations of ours in regard to the precise method of inflicting punishment, or the term of its duration. Why can we not learn to respect the reserve of Jesus in regard to such themes?

The field is the world according to our use of the word. The harvest is the end of the world, the consummation of the æon, age, or dispensation, as applied to the Jewish nation and to each individual soul. See Note. In this great field of the world we are sowing seed, and at the same time are ourselves growing up and ripening for the harvest. Whatsoever we sow, that shall we also reap. "For he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap everlasting life." (Gal. vi. 8.) As in the ripened fruit, every shower that fell upon it, every hour of sunshine, every night that folded it round with darkness, every ingredient in the soil beneath, entered into its texture, and helped to make it what it is in the time of harvest, so with us, every incident in life, the passions we indulge, the actions we perform, the hopes we cherish or reject, the privileges we improve or leave unimproved, are entering into the texture of our souls, and preparing us, or leaving us unprepared, for the harvest. Nothing that has entered into our life's experience shall

be lost. Our riches and honors, our pleasant homes and comfortable situations, except in their influence on the soul, shall pass from us. But every kind deed that we have done, every pang of contrition, every earnest effort in behalf of what is good, every prayer that we have uttered from the heart, every longing after holiness, every unselfish affection that we have cherished and obeyed, every sorrow that has helped to wean us from the world or draw us towards God, every pain or disappointment patiently or meekly borne, every one of these, in the influences which it is having upon us, shall be gathered in, the only treasures we can carry with us, when our harvest, which is the end of the world to each one of us, shall come. And the harvest must be whenever the Son of man shall send forth his reapers, the angels, to gather us in. The little child that without one questioning thought or fear resigns itself into their hands, though but an opening bud, is gathered into the harvest of its Lord. The young girl who, through some mysterious sympathy with them or some strange monition to the soul, seems to hear the sound of their coming from afar, and without apprehension or surprise composes herself for the solemn change, and with encouraging farewells and a perfect trust leaves all that she loves on earth, goes already ripe for the harvest. The aged servant of Christ who has long been waiting for his Master's call, departs from us at last as one prepared and ripened for the kingdom of Heaven. He has finished his labors; he has had his trials. He has been opposed and maligned, he has been praised and honored by man; but he has done justly, loved mercy, and walked humbly with his God. Nothing that he has once gained in his religious progress is lost. His principles confirmed by a life of scrupulous fidelity; his mind expanded and enriched by a conscientious search after truth; his affections chastened and mellowed by disappointments and sorrows; his faith strengthened by every varying ex

perience of life and carried into every department of activity and thought; - all growing up and ripening here under the clouds or sunshine of God's love, are gathered in when the revolving years have completed their circuit, and to him the end of the world, the fulfilment and consummation of the age, has come. And the wicked too!-- There is no more sublime or beautiful or awful picture than this of the world as a field, and the end of the world as the harvest, in which for joy or sorrow we all of us shall be gathered in.

THE WICKED ONE.

But how are we here to interpret "the wicked one,” "the enemy," "the devil" and "the angels"? As already stated, we are not to press the adjuncts of a parable too literally. They are to be considered as the surrounding scenery fitted to make an impression on the mind through the imagination, and thus prepare it to receive the truth which is taught. When Jesus speaks of a merchantman finding one pearl of great price, and selling all that he has in order to purchase that, we do not suppose that he asserts this as a fact which had actually taken place. He holds it up as a picture to illustrate an important truth; and this it does equally well, whether he regarded it as a veritable fact or as an imaginary incident. Some of the parables may have been suggested by passing events; but the particulars he undoubtedly supplied and arranged in such a way as might most effectually accomplish his purpose, as a teacher of divine truth. And this is the case, whether he draws his illustrations from familiar and well-known objects here, as the Sower and his Seed, the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son, or from objects which lie beyond our personal cognizance, as the devil, the angels, &c. For example, in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke xvi. 19-31), as in the details be