strength, in the self-sufficiency of its own meritswith no consciousness of any thing to be required, no acknowledgment of any thing received, as matter of grace and favour from God-resembling the sacrifice of Cain, might be as offensive to God as that was, and on the same accounts.

We may conclude our reflections on the parable, with one more remark. Our Saviour declared to the Pharisees not long after this time, that the Publicans were nearer to the kingdom of heaven than they; that is, in point of moral fitness and predisposition, were better qualified for becoming converts to the Gospel than they. Considering each of the present characters as the representative of the class to which he belongs-we may perceive in the opposite conduct and demeanour of the two men, a lively illustration of the truth of this assertion. For let it be supposed, that at the moment when they thus appeared in the presence of God, to perform a common act of worship, and while they were still in the same frame of mind in which they preferred their respective prayers; the same tender of salvation through the blood of Christ, had been made to them both in common. It is easy to see, which of the two would have embraced it with joy, and clung to it with hope and confidence; and which would have rejected it with scorn, or treated it with indifference. And perhaps, it might be one design of the parable, not merely by the example of the Pharisee, to instruct the disciples what fault they were especially bound to avoid in prayer; but also by the exposure thus made of the pride and self-sufficiency, yet self-ignorance of this one of the body, to account for the

rejection of Christianity by the rest and by the opposite example of the Publican to teach the hearers not only in what spirit, and with what language, they were to approach God for the performance of such an office as prayer; but also what spiritual proficiency in the school of Moses-what degree of insight into the nature, and final end of the existing Levitical dispensation-was necessary to make a Christian.

PARABLE TWENTY-SECOND.

ALLEGORICAL.

THE LABOURERS IN THE VINEYARD.

MATTHEW XX. 1--16. HARMONY, IV. 54.

MATTHEW Xx. 1—16.

1 For the kingdom of heaven is like a man, a master of an house, who went out with morning (sunrise) to hire himself labourers for his vineyard. 2 And having bargained with the labourers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 And having gone out about the third hour, he saw others standing in the market-place idle. 4 And to them he said, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever may be just will I give you. And they went their way. 5 Again, having gone out about the sixth and the ninth hour, he did in like manner. 6 And having gone out about the eleventh hour, he found others standing idle: and he saith unto them, Why have ye stood here all the day idle? 7 They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever may be just, ye shall receive. 8 And when evening was come, the lord of the vineyard saith to his overseer, Call the labourers, and pay them their wages, having begun with them that were last, unto them that were first. 9 And they of the eleventh hour, came and received a denarius apiece. 10 And when the first came, they supposed that they shall receive more; and they received themselves also a denarius apiece. 11 And when they had received it, they began to murmur at the master of the house, 12 saying, These last ones have passed one hour (in the vineyard) and thou hast made them equal unto us, those that have borne the weight of the day, and

the heat. 13 And he answered and said to one of them, Comrade, I am doing thee no wrong: didst thou not bargain with me for a denarius ? 14 Take up that is thine, and go thy way. But I choose to give to this last one as unto thee also. 15 Whether is it unlawful for me to do as I choose in my own concerns? or is thine eye evil, because I am good? 16 Thus shall the last be first, and the first be last; for many are called but few are chosen.

MATERIAL CIRCUMSTANCES.

THE parable of the labourers in the vineyard,

illustrates in a remarkable manner a characteristic property of many of our Saviour's discoursestheir obvious reference to some actual circumstance in the state of things around him, to which, if they did not owe their conception, they are accommodated in their structure, allusions, and images. There is every reason to suppose that when he delivered this parable, he was not far from Jericho, one of the most considerable cities in Judæa; and the action of the parable is manifestly laid in the neighbourhood of some city. It is still more certain, that the time of the year was the spring; one of the seasons at which the labours of husbandry, whether in the fields or the vineyards, were likely to be most actively going on. Peræa, the district in which he probably was at the time-is described by Josephus as a region abounding in vineyards; the transaction in the parable is supposed to begin with the morning of some day; and when our Lord delivered the account of it, there is the utmost probability that he had just set out in the morning, upon that day's journey which, after crossing into Judæa, from Peræa, over the Jordan, and passing through Jericho,

on the way to Jerusalem, was concluded by stopping at the house of Zaccheus for the night ".

But to proceed to the particulars of the narrative. The personages concerned in the history, are divisible in this instance, as in every other of the same kind, into principal and subordinate; the former, one and the same, the latter, as it appears from the sequel, of two kinds. The principal personage is represented in a twofold capacity-one in relation to each of these subordinate personages respectively-to the one as the owner of a vineyard, and to the other as the master of a family; but the latter of these relations, so far as concerns the representation contained in the parable, is subordinate to the former. The parabolic character, then, of the principal personage is such as might be consistent with the actual character of any master of a family among the Jews, who was but a man of some property and consequence; for property among the Jews, as we have had repeated occasion to observe, consisted principally in fields and vineyards, and the several productions of each. The character of the inferior personages subordinate to this, is that of the workmen, by whose means instead of their own, the owners of property in land bestow upon it the kind and degree of culture which is necessary to render it productive; a description of persons who, as maintaining themselves by the labour of their hands, and by the labour of their hands in the culture of the ground, both in the parable, and in classical writers, are called by the name of pyára, labourers in gene

a Vide my Harmony, part IV. sections 50-59.