of the eyes of each generation of Israel to witness. The Prophets are full of it. And to say that such predicted glory should have been realized had the generation which heard this parable been found “a willing people," what is it but to say that the time and season, and, it may be, the means and manner, of its fulfilment, were provided, in the wonderful forecast of God, to be pendent on the alternative of man's wickedness?

Thus, then, Christ was the Bridegroom; the separate church of his faithful ones, the bride; and the generation of the Jewish people then in the flesh, were the intended guests; and the wedding feast, that excellent repast of good things which the Prophets had of old promised to Israel in the day of Messiah's glory. So that whatever excellent glory might have been expected to attend Messiah's advent, unlike to the humble accidents which did attend the coming of Jesus, I find the parable represent to have been verily purposed by the King's sincere invitation to the wedding feast, but thwarted by the guests' refusal to come. It may seem strange, that, since Christ, the speaker of the parable, was indeed the Bridegroom intended in it, no allusion should be made to the treatment which himself should receive from the unwilling guests, but only to their treatment of his Father's messengers, twice sent to them. But to suppose this to be really the case, is an oversight incident only to our common misappreciation of the parable: for the thing which is represented to us is the frustration, by the people's wickedness, of the coming to them of a King's Son in the glory of his espousals; and such a one, through such wickedness, did now stand before them the "Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief," to whom they were listening. What more, then, could be needed, to exhibit most touchingly the bitter cup which the Lord was drinking at their hands, than for himself to stand before them in humiliation, to tell of their frustration of this marriage feast of the King's Son? In a sense which every heart may apprehend, it may be said that Christ truly was not born to suffer. The wise men hailed him born King of the Jews (Matt. ii. 2); and He himself, when Pilate asked him, “Art thou a king ?" replied, "Verily ; for this end was I born.’ It was not in the Father's purpose willingly to afflict him, but only through the intermediate contingency of men's wickedness all which he suffered, as one suffers ill-treatment" in the house of his friends." Surely his life, from beginning to end, was, humanly speaking, the cruelest disappointment;-disappointment which he bore for the glory of his Father, and in unspeakable compassion to his enemies; sustained by the assurance that the former could not disappoint the Son of his love, and by the consolation that the latter might be retrieved from the self-ruin in which he beheld them. John testified that the lowly

Jesus was the glorious Bridegroom; and the Father set his seal thereto, first in the transfiguration, and afterwards in the resurrection and ascension: on which occasions, Jesus, doffing the mean vestments of his sorrow, appeared in habiliments suited to his birth and dignity. But, besides this, John bore witness that Christ" had the bride" (John iv. 29); and, accordingly, the Father testified that the bride also was ready to have been forthcoming, by the appearance of Moses and Elias at the transfiguration, and afterwards by the arising of " many of the saints," and their "appearing unto many" after the resurrection of Christ (Matt. xxvii. 53). For these things, which are indeed types to assure us concerning the reality and glory of the kingdom which we expect, must without doubt have been a present testimony to the like effect in that day, assuring the few faithful that the King had had indeed a purpose of glory, nor had sent the guests a mocking invitation to the magnificence of his Son's table.

Ver. 3: "The king sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding, and they would not come."-The glory of which we have been speaking above, had from the beginning been held out to the hopes of the Jewish people; and these, on their part, had ever professed to expect and desire its fulfilment. They had received and accepted an invitation of long standing to a feast which the king should give in his appointed time; and now were his servants sent forth to summon them. The summons in this verse answers, I believe, to what took place in our Lord's life-time. To say, The wedding feast is at hand, according to the view which we have taken, would be precisely equivalent to saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand; for the manifestation of the latter clearly consists of the elements which we have attributed to the former. And, indeed, this feast is evidently of the nature of a feast of inauguration, on the king's son being put into possession of the government of his father's subjects. (A specimen of such a feast may be seen by consulting 1 Kings i. 5-9, 19, 25.) Again: to say, "Come ye to the wedding," would naturally imply, Clothe yourselves fitly for the occasion; put off your own vestments, which become it not; leave your own interests and occupations, and be engrossed with one matter, of interest to you all, &c. Whatever, therefore, the parable can possibly imply by "calling them that were bidden," which was to say, "The wedding is ready; come ye to it," was fulfilled to the uttermost in our Lord's day, by messengers who preached to the Jews," Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." [The Jewish people were called upon to repent, and believe that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. If, therefore, by the kingdom of heaven at hand, was meant salvation by the death of Christ, it is obvious that the repentance to which Israel was

called would have frustrated such a kingdom, and so the first part of the message been nugatory of the second; for, had they repented, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.] These "servants" of the verse before us probably answer to the seventy disciples [I had thought otherwise; but it would seem improper that the summons, "Come ye to the wedding," should be dated to commence earlier than the birth of Christ, the Bridegroom], who were sent, like John, before the face of Christ, to proclaim in every town whither he would come, "Behold, the kingdom of heaven is at hand ;" and to summon all to repent and prepare to receive him. But the people would not repent, nor could be made to see, by any means, the least symptoms of the approach of a glory answering to their notions of the coming of "the kingdom of heaven." The servants said, "Come ye to the wedding-feast:" but they said, Where is the feast?" and 'Let the King's Son shew himself.' But in vain, during our Lord's life, were the Jewish people called to "repent," on the strength of the kingdom of heaven being at hand; or to "come," on the strength of the feast being in readiness had they come. They would not repent; they did not come : and the final issue of their unrepentance and not coming was, as we may all know, the rejection and crucifixion of Christ, the Bridegroom, as an impostor. But He was no impostor: nor could they mar the Father's glorious purpose towards him, nor as yet exhaust the love which designed them to partake of it.

Ver. 4: " Again he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage."-He who was the Bridegroom had suffered as an ignoble one, who could not be at charges for any feast worth coming to, in the eyes of the recusant guests; but God, overruling this, did demonstrate that this was no ignoble one, but the King's Son, and that a banquet was indeed in the power of his gift. There is, therefore, the most forcible propriety in applying this verse to the preaching of the Gospel to the Jews which ensued on our Lord's ascension. The Apostles and first preachers of the Gospel are the "servants" in this verse. These reiterated the original summons to the guests to "come to the wedding," declaring that the substance of the repast was actually procured for the occasion: "Behold, I have prepared (or made preparation for) my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings (or fatted rams) [compare 2 Sam. yi. 13 with 1 Chron.xv. 26] are killed, and all things are ready: come ye to the wedding." The animals here mentioned were wont to be slain, under the Levitical dispensation, for peace-offerings, either when peace and safety were to be sought of God, or when he was to be praised for having granted them. Of which latter occasion 1 Chron. xv. 26 furnishes an

instance, and our parable suggests a similar one. It was customary for the common people to feast on the animals so sacrificed, after the fat had been offered by fire to the Lord and certain other parts assigned as the priests' portion. The typical aspect of these animals, so sacrificed, looked not ultimately to the death of Christ (for many animals were wont to be so sacrificed at once), but to the destruction and spoiling of all the enemies of God's people, the great pacification which He by destroying the enemies of peace should bring about. These enemies the animals typified in the sacrifices, and these they allegorize in our parable. And to say that they are slain and ready to be served up and eaten, is to intimate that their antitypes are brought to nought, and their strong-holds ready for spoliation. This was the message of the second set of servants, after that Christ had through death, whereby Satan had hoped to be victor, destroyed him that had the power of death, and subjected to himself the invisible powers and principalities of wickedness and oppression; thus putting out the life and soul of all visible forms of oppression, and leaving them like slain victims ready to be served up and eaten. For what was the Roman domination, or any other visible oppression, if the devil were vanquished, but a slain victim, a body without its breath? And when Israel shall be willing in the day of Christ's power, shall they not banquet on all such? So should they erst have done, had they been willing to come to the King's feast for, I repeat that to taste of that feast meant to eat in the reality of present glory; and Israel was summoned to come and eat. [I do not overlook an objection which many would here urge; but to obviate it now would lead me to anticipate nearly all which I have to say concerning the second part of the parable.]

Verse 5: "But they made light of it, and went their ways," &c. -These unwilling guests, having, as is implied by ver. 3, originally accepted the King's invitation, must be supposed to refuse now to "come" to his feast for some other reason than because they despise his table, for the persuasion of his second summons stands in the assurance that "all things are ready;" and it is this assurance of the readiness of the feast which they "made light of." The messengers said, 'Come, for the oxen and fatlings are slain;" but they, as it were, said, 'Except the flesh of those beasts, made ready for the table, be brought unto us, we will not come.' So said the Jews in their unbelief, who would fain have had displayed to their sense in the flesh what was proposed to their faith in the spirit. But faith is the substance of things unseen, and these guests saw nothing which to their minds could assure them that the feast was ready; and so they made light of the message, that the feast was ready, or (to recur to our

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synonyme) that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. They made light of the assurance, and "would not come”—that is, would not repent—but “ went their ways," that is, continued to sin after their several inclinations. And the verse which we are considering, with the following, distributes the sinful people into three classes; for I must suppose that all the three "ways ways" of their own which the guests went are of special application, since the third of them (ver. 6) is so in fact. The first two went their own ways: one, εis тov idioν aypov," to his own farm or field ;” the other, εs ηy εμπopia avrov, "to his merchandize or trading." The first suggests a cultivator of the soil at home; the second, a trafficker with strangers. The first went his way, from the hearing of what he deemed an idle message, to mind his own local interest; the second did likewise to follow up the speculations which he had entered upon with strangers. The one seems to intend that portion of the people whose prejudices were peculiarly national, whose zeal was peculiarly Jewish, who went away from the foolishness of preaching to look with carnal eyes to their own scheme of subsistence in Judaism: the other, that portion of the people which, falling easily into the state of things brought about by Roman intercourse and dependence, might be said to have a subsistence in Romanism. That two such classes existed, cannot be disputed; and, did our space permit, much might be said to shew the propriety of the application: suffice it, however, that both stupidly hastened away to their respective schemes of subsistence, as more solid matters of concern than the idle message of the King's servants.

Ver. 6: But the remnant, or such as were not included in the two former kinds, which may be said generically to include all honest callings-the remnant, an idle and malicious set, without a regular way of subsistence (signifying neither bigoted Jews nor easy Romanizers, but such as bated truth for itself rather than neglected it for other matters)-these went not their ways, as the former, but "took the King's servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them." And, presuming that the reader needs no proof of the treatment answering to this which the preachers of the Gospel of Christ's kingdom received at the hands of the more wicked of the Jewish populace, I am content to add the issue of the whole matter, as far as they were concerned: That when the wickedness of the people, thus fully manifested, came up before the Father, he commissioned the Roman armies to go forth, under Titus Cæsar, and to slay those wicked ones, and to destroy their city, Jerusalem.

Such is the sum of the first part of our parable, which I must here break off from considering; reserving the remainder for another paper, in which I trust the reader will find what has been here urged corroborated by many considerations. G. A. S.