bring forth a hundred fold. This parable appears to have been specially intended for the instruction and admonition of Christ's disciples. It explained to them the reason why so many of his hearers, who had given hopeful symptoms of incipient piety in the commencement of his ministry, had degenerated into indifference or opposition; and it was a solemn caution to those who still continued in the profession of discipleship, and followed him. The next parable prepared them for that mixed state of his own visible church which was to be more fully displayed in future times.

Verse 24. A man which sowed good seed in his fields.-The sower, as we are taught by our Lord's own explanation of this parable, is the Son of Man, disseminating truth by his own ministry, and through that of his servants, whose strength and success are derived from him. The good seed are the children of the kingdom; those who in truth receive his whole doctrine, and come under his spiritual rule: a brief but clear description of real Christians.

The field is the world.-This evidently means the church in the world, the Christian church, which was shortly to be extended into all nations of the whole civilized world. This church, in truth, wherever it is planted, only consists of "children of the kingdom;" but Satan has always introduced others of an opposite character within its visible pale.

Verse 25. But while men slept, &c.-The enemy, says our Lord, is the devil, the father not only of all openly profane persons, but of all false professors of Christ's religion. The men represent the ministers and members of churches, whose want of due attention to the cultivation of a decided piety and the upholding of a godly discipline, greatly increased an evil,

the corruption of the church, which even vigilance could not wholly have prevented. This we may collect from the case of Judas, who was a tare sown among the true disciples even in the time of our Lord. Still, had not great lukewarmness prevailed, and a disposition to rest in the outward exercises of religion; and had that tone of spirituality continued which marked the church immediately after the day of pentecost, and fixed the attention of all wholly upon the religion of the heart, and subordinated all forms and circumstances to that alone; the field would have been well guarded by the servants against the enemy, and little encouragement would have been found in such a state of the church for false or even superficial professors to have connected themselves with it. The kind of plant called Savia, by us translated 'tares," has been disputed. That the zizania did not at all resemble our tare or vetch, which is a useful plant, is evident from their being gathered at the harvest and burned. The word is not mentioned in any other part of scripture, nor in any ancient Greek writer; but a similar word Dis found in Jewish writings, and is described to be a degenerate and worthless kind of weed, bearing, however, a strong resemblance to corn. Others take it to be the darnel, "lolium temulentum,” which is called zuvan by the Arabs. Travellers state that "in some parts of Syria the plant is drawn up by the hand in the time of harvest along with the wheat, and is then gathered out, and bound up in separate bundles." In this parable our Lord alludes to the same circumstance. These worthless plants sprung up among the grain; they were suffered to grow up with it; and in the time of reaping they were separated by hand, bound up in bundles, and burned as fuel.

Verse 26. But when the blade was sprung up, &c.—In the first stage of vegetation the difference was not so marked as to awaken attention among the unsuspecting and somewhat inattentive servants; but when the fruit of each appeared, it was so opposite in character, that it could no longer pass unnoticed.

Verse 27. The householder.-The master of the family; the proprietor of the field.

Verses 28, 29. Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay, lest, &c. The chief point of difficulty in this parable lies in this question of the servants, and the answer of the master. Some make a distinction between thorns, briers, and obvious weeds, which they say ought to be extirpated, and the plant here mentioned; which, on account of its similarity to the wheat, so that it could not be plucked up without danger, ought to be treated with greater tenderness; but it is clear that, when the servants made their complaint to the master, the similarity had passed away, and each plant, the wheat and the zizanion, having attained more mature growth, was known by its fruit. Others think that we are cautioned against pushing discipline in churches too far, lest by mistake the good wheat should be rooted up also; but this affords no reason at all why the plants which could be easily distinguished by their very fruit, should be suffered to remain growing together; and would afford an argument, not against too rigid a discipline, but against discipline of every kind. That this could not be the in

tention of our Lord, we have decided proof, in the conduct of his apostles as to the moral regulation of churches, and in those disciplinary directions they have left in their epistles. St. Paul commanded the Corinthians, by his apostolical authority, to "put away" an immoral person, and strongly reproved them for their supineness in the case. Christians are prohibited from "eating" with such characters ; that is, from receiving the Lord's supper in their company; by which they refused all communion with them. A heretic, after suitable admonition, is to be" rejected;" and St. John forbids those to whom he writes "to receive" false teachers, or to bid them "God speed." All these are obvious instances of separation from the fellowship of saints. It is clear, therefore, that we must seek another solution. Our Lord is to be understood as prohibiting all civil coercion, and every species of persecution, on religious grounds; all infliction of punishment upon men by his servants, his ministers, which should be a rooting up of the tares, and thus doing the work of the harvest before the time of harvest, a work reserved to Christ alone. The parable must therefore be understood as not referring at all to questions of church DISCIPLINE. The seeds of evil, early sown in the church, sprung up at length into innumerable heresies and immoralities, and that under the Christian name; and so long as the civil power was arranged against Christianity, the only defence of the purer portion of the church was its own legitimate ecclesiastical power to re

prove and to separate offenders from its communion; though this began to be done even at an early period, too often in a spirit which indicated that if greater power had been at command, it would have been unmercifully used. A new state of things arose when the civil power lent itself to obey the call of ecclesiastics, to give greater force to these excommunications by the infliction of pains, penalties, and finally death; and it is a remarkable fact, and one to which our Lord in this parable may be supposed particularly to refer, that for so long a period of time even those ministers who were best entitled to be called the servants of the master of the field, were the advocates of civil coercion in matters of religion, and asserted the right of the magistrate to employ the sword to punish offenders against the doctrines and the rules of their respective churches; a principle which has indeed been renounced, though even still but partially, in comparatively modern times. For many ages almost all ministers, good or bad, advocated the violent rooting up of the tares by the arm of power, regardless of the lesson taught them in this parable; and if any thing more than its own internal evidence were necessary to convince us of the profound wisdom of this lesson, the proof which history has afforded of the utter unfitness of weak and passionate man to wield the rod of the Almighty, for ever establishes it. "Lest ye root up with them the wheat also," says our Saviour; and the fact has been, that, with few exceptions, religious persecution, in all its degrees, has in all ages been more fatal to the wheat than to the tares; and that in an immense number of cases, under the pretence of destroying the tares, the wheat alone has been the object of this blind and perverted violence. The proud persecuting spirit is wholly of Satan; and when he impels his agents into the field to root up and destroy, he will generally take care of the plants of his own sowing; or if he sacrifice a few of them, it will be with the design to give a colour to a coercive and political process, by which,

in the final result, the good grain shall chiefly suffer. Every church of Christ has the right, nay, the duty is imposed upon it, of separating from its communion all who hold fundamental error, or lead an unholy life, after due admonition, and with tender charity; but to separate men from the church in order to punish them,-the work of Christ at the harvest, which is the end of the world, and his work alone,—is a matter which, though often dictated by a forward and blind zeal, is here wholly prohibited. Grotius has showed that Augustine, Chrysostom, and Jerom applied the forbearance recommended in this parable to heretics. Augustine concluded from it that no punishments should be inflicted upon them; and though the Donatists made him so far accede as to allow of those punishments which admitted of time for repentance, he continued often to interpose to avert sentences of death. Constantine, in his first edicts, gave all Christians the liberty of worshipping God according to their conscience; but he afterwards imposed penalties, chiefly pecuniary fines, on those who separated from the dominant church. The succeeding emperors were more or less strict in this respect, as it suited their temporal interests; but all were averse to capital punishments. Thus the bishops in Gaul, who put the Priscillianists to death, were censured and excommunicated; and the council in the east was condemned, which burnt Bogomilus. Arius, Macedonius, Nestorius, and Eutyches suffered nothing beyond banishment. The Arian emperors, and the kings of that sect in Africa, appear to have been the first who embrued their hands in the blood of their opponents. Thus gradually did the caution of this merciful parable lose its influence over the minds of professing Christians; and the barbarities of future times, induced by the "accursed ungodliness of zeal," have infixed the foulest blot upon the history of our religion.

Verse 30. The reapers.-These, says our Lord, are the angels, not men having in