or Deut. xxviii. 15-68, or call to mind the Lord's words which speak of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, which shall be their portion, when they see the despised Gentiles coming from the east and the west, from the north and from the south, and sitting down in the kingdom of God, while they themselves are thrust out.* (Luke xiii. 28-30.) But as Dives looked for some consolation from Lazarus, whom before he despised, so the Jew is looking for the assuagement of his miseries through some bettering of his outward estate,-some relaxation of severities imposed upon him,-some improvement of his civil condition,-things which he looks for from the kingdoms of the world, and which if they gave him, would be but as a drop of water on the tongue. He knows not that the wrath of God does in truth constitute his misery; and so long as this is unremoved, he is incapable of true comfort. The alleviation which he craves is not given, it were in vain to give it ;-the one true alleviation would be that he should be himself received into the kingdom of God, that he should bewail his guilt, and look on him whom he pierced, and mourn because of him: then consolations would abound to him; but without this, every thing else is but as the drop of water on the fiery tongue. That there is no allusion in the parable to any future time, when the great gulf of unbelief which now separates the Jew from his blessings shall be filled up, makes nothing against this interpretation; since exactly the same argument might be applied, and we know incorrectly, to call in question the ordinary explanation of the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen; nothing is there said of the vineyard being restored to its first cultivators, which yet we know will one day be the case. By the five brethren of Dives will be set forth to us according to this scheme all who hereafter, in a like condition and with like advantages, are tempted to the same abuse of their spiritual privileges. The Gentile Church is in one sense Lazarus brought into Abraham's bosom; but when it sins as the Jewish Church did before it, glorying in its gifts, but not using them for the calling out of the spiritual life of men, contented to see in its very bosom a population that are outcast, save in name, from its privileges and blessings, and to see beyond its limits millions of heathens to whom it has little or no care to impart the knowledge of Christ and of his salvation,-then in so far as it thus sins, it is only too like the five brethren of Dives, who are in danger of coming with him, and for sins similar to his, to this place of torment. Nor are we to imagine that, before judgment is executed upon a Church thus forgetful of its high calling, it will be roused from its dream of security by any startling summonses, any novel signs and wonders, any new revelation,-any * Theophylact: Εν τῇ φλογὶ κατακαίονται τοῦ φθόνου. Lazarus rising from the dead and bidding it to repent. It has enough to remind it of its duty,—it has its deposit of truth,—its talent wherewith it was bidden to trade till its Lord's return. So that the latter part of the parable, thus contemplated, speaks to us Gentiles in the very spirit of those awful words which St. Paul addressed to the Gentile converts at Rome: "Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell severity, but towards thee goodness, if thou continue in his goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off." (Rom. xi. 22.) XXVII. UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS. LUKE xvii. 7-10. SOME interpreters find a connection between this parable and the discourse which precedes it, while others affirm that no such can be traced, —that the parable must be explained without any reference to the saying concerning faith which goes immediately before. Theophylact supposes this to be the link between the parable and the preceding verse: the Lord had there declared the great things which a living faith would enable his disciples to perform-how they should remove mountains; but then, lest these great things which were in the power of their faith should cause them to fall into a snare of pride, the parable was spoken for the purpose of keeping them humble. Augustine confesses the dif ficulty of tracing the connection, and has a very singular explanation of the whole parable, which I must be content to refer to,† as it would take up considerable space to do it justice. Olshausen gives this explanation: The apostles by that account which went before of the hindrances they would meet in their work (ver. 1, 2), of the hard duties, hard as they then seemed to them, which were required of them (ver. 3, 4), had a longing awakened in them after a speedier reward. The Lord therefore would set before them their true relation to him; that their work, difficult or not, welcome or otherwise, must be done--that they were not their own, but his, and to labor for him. If they found their labor a delight, well; but if not, still it was to be done. Neither were they to look for their reward and release from toil at once, but rather to take example of the * So Cajetan: Petierant Apostoli adjungi sibi donum confidentiæ, quod et eis collatum intelligitur. Et quoniam etiam superbia bonis operibus insidiatur ut pereant, ideo Jesus adjungit parabolam conservativam eorum in verâ recognitione suimet, ne extollantur. † Quæst. Evang., 1. 2, c. 39. Maldonatus, who denies that there is any connection, thinks Augustine's very forced and unnatural. Euséws (ver. 7). servant, who though he had been strenuously laboring all the day in the field, "ploughing or feeding cattle," yet not the less when he returned home had to resume his labors in the house also. Such is his explanation, and no doubt he here asserts an important truth, and one found in the parable; but to the connection, as he traces it, there is this objection, that the request, "Lord, increase our faith," does not seem to convey any such meaning as he finds in it; there is no appearance as if those who made it were desirous of escaping a dispensation committed to them, or snatching prematurely at a reward. Other expositors have neglected to seek any immediate connection between the parable and the context in which it is found, affirming that it teaches generally how God is debtor to no man, that all we can do is of duty, nothing of merit, and that in all our work we must retain the acknowledgment of this, and carefully guard against all vainglory and elation of heart; how rather we must be deeply humbled before God out of the thought that, did we do all, we should only do that we were bound to; and how then must it be, when we fall so infinitely short of that all? But altogether different from any of these interpretations is that first formally proposed, if I mistake not, by Grotius, and which Venema has taken up and strengthed with additional arguments and illustra tions. The parable, they say, is not meant to represent at all the standing of the faithful under the new covenant," the perfect law of liberty," but the merely servile standing of the Jew under the old, and it grew in this manner out of the discourse preceding. The disciples had asked for increase of faith. The Lord in answer would teach them the necessity and transcendent value of that gift for which they were asking, would magnify its value, showing them how all outward works done without this living principle of free and joyful obedience, such as for the most part the men of their own nation were content with, were merely servile, and were justly recompensed with a merely servile reward, that in those God could take no pleasure, and for them counted that he owed no thanks; the servants who did them were after all unprofitable and of no account in his sight. The arguments of Grotius and Venema are mainly these. They object to the common interpretation, that it sets forth in a wrong aspect the relations which exist between Christ and his people. They ask, Is it likely that the gracious Lord who in another place said, "Henceforth I call you not servants, . but I have called you friends," would here wish to bring forward in so strong a light the service done to him as one merely servile, and for which he would render them no thanks? would he, who ever sought to lead his disciples into the recognition of their *Diss. Sac., p. 262, seq. filial relation to God, that they had received not the spirit of bondage but of adoption, here throw them back so strongly on their servile relation? It was not, they say, in this spirit that he spake those words, "Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching verily, I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them." (Luke xii. 37.) On the other hand the parable does, they affirm, exactly set forth the relation of the Jews, at least of the greater part of them, to God. They were hired to do a certain work, which if they did, they were, like servants, free from stripes: they had too their stipend-they ate and drank-they received their earthly reward. But going no further than this bare fulfilling of the things expressly enjoined them, and fulfilling them without love, without zeal, without the filial spirit of faith, contented to stop short when they had just done so much as would enaable them, as they hoped, to escape punishment, going through their work in this temper, they were "unprofitable servants," in whom the Lord could take no pleasure, and who could look for no further marks of favor at his hands.† *Exactly the same stress which they would here lay on rà diataxdévta is laid by Origen (In Rom., 1. 3), although his purpose, as will be seen, is different: Donec quis hoc facit tantum quod debet, i. e., ea quæ præcepta sunt, inutilis servus est. (Luc. xvii. 10.) Si autem addas aliquid præceptis, tunc non jam inutilis servus eris, sed dicetur ad te: Euge serve bone et fidelis. (Matt. xxv. 21.) St. Bernard too (In Cant., Serm. 11, c. 2), without indeed making Origen's dangerous use of the passage, and lowering the standard of piety for the ninety-nine, in the hope of exalting it for the one, has implicitly the same explanation of the passage as that mentioned in the text. Expounding Cant. i. 2, he has occasion to speak of a service, rendered indeed, but without joy and alacrity and delight, and ends thus: Denique in Evangelio qui hoc solùm, quod facere debet, facit, servus inutilis reputatur. Mandata forsan utcumque adimpleo: sed anima mea sicut terra sine aqua in illis. Ut igitur holocaustum meum pingue fiat, osculetur me, quæso, osculo oris sui. + Grotius (in loc.) is especially rich in materials in support of this interpretation of the parable. From Maimonides he quotes a Jewish proveb, Ei datur præmium qui quid injussus facit: and from Chrysostom (In Rom. viii.) a passage contrasting the obedience of the Jew and the Christian: Κακεῖνοι δὲ φόβῳ τιμωρίας πάντα ἔπραττον ἀγόμενοι, οἱ δὲ πνευματικοὶ ἐπιθυμίᾳ καὶ πόθῳ, καὶ τοῦτο δηλοῦσι τῷ καὶ VTEρßaÍVEI TÀ Èniтáyμатa. We might compare, especially with that Jewish proverb, one of the Similitudes in the Shepherd of Hermas (1. 3, sim. 5), which is briefly this: A householder planted a vineyard, and going from home, left his servant the task of tying the vines to their supports, and no more; but the servant having finished this task, thought it would profit the vineyard, if also he were to weed it and dig it, which he did; and the master found it in high order and beauty on his return. Well pleased with his servant, because he had thus done more than was enjoined him, he determined to give him the adoption of sonship, and to make him fellow-heir with his own son. It is true that Hermas makes an application of |