their vessels, "went in with him to the marriage,* and the door was shut;" shut as much for the security and joy without interruption of those within, as for the lasting exclusion of those without. (See Gen. vii. 16; Rev. iii. 12.) "What door?" exclaims the author of an ancient homily on this parable.† "That which now is open to them coming from the east and from the west, that they may sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven,-that Door which saith, Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Behold how it is now open, which shall then be closed for evermore. Murderers come, and they are admitted,-publicans and harlots come, and they are received, unclean and adulterers and robbers, and whosoever is of this kind, come, and the open door doth not deny itself to them, for Christ, the Door, is infinite to pardon, reaching beyond every degree and every amount of wickedness. But then what saith he? The door is shut. No one's penitence, no one's prayer, no one's groaning shall any more be admitted. That door is shut, which received Aaron after his idolatry,—which admitted David after his adultery—after his homicide, which not only did not repel Peter after his threefold denial, but delivered its keys to be guarded by him." (See Luke xvi. 26.) The door once shut, "afterwards came the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us," not that they have now found the oil, but having sought it in vain, they come looking for mercy, when now it is the time of judgment. In the title "Lord," by which they address the bridegroom, they claim to stand in a near and intimate relation to him; as in the "Lord, Lord," twice repeated, is an evidence of the earnestness with which they now claim admission; some say, also of their vain confidence; but perhaps rather of the misgiving which already possesses them, lest they should be excluded from the nuptial feast, lest it be now to late, lest the needful conditions be found unfulfilled on their part; even as it proves; for in them that solemn line of the old Church hymn must find itself true, Plena luctu caret fructu sera pœnitentia. And in reply to their claim to be admitted, they hear from within the sentence of their exclusion,-" He answered and said, Verily I say unto * Compare MILTON's Sonnet to a Virtuous Young Lady, where there is allusion in almost every word to this latter portion of our parable. Thy care is fixed and zealously attends To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light, And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure, Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure. †The same from whom an extract is given, p. 206, note. AUGUSTINE, Ep. 140, c. 35. you, I know you not." It is not that he disclaims an outward knowledge, but he does not know them in that sense in which the Lord says, "I know my sheep, and am known of mine." This knowledge is of necessity reciprocal, so that Agustine's, though it may seem at first a slight, is indeed a very profound remark, when explaining, "I know you not," he observes, it is nothing else than, "Ye know not me." Of course the issue is, that the foolish virgins remain excluded, and for ever, from the marriage feast. (See Isai. lxv. 13.) On this their exclusion Bengel observes, that there are four classes of persons; those that have an abundant entrance into the kingdom, entering as it were with sails set into the haven; those again that are saved, as shipwrecked mariners reaching with difficulty the shore. On the other side, there are those who go evidently the broad way to destruction, whose sins go before them; while again, there are those who, though they seemed not far off from the kingdom of God, yet miss it after all; such were these five foolish virgins, and the fate of these, who were so near, and yet after all fell short, he observes with truth, must always appear the most miserable of all. Lest that may be our fate, the Lord says to us, for what he said to his hearers then, he says unto all, to his Church and to every member of it in every age,-"Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour;'t and this being so, the only certain way to be ready upon that day, is that you be ready upon every day and the parable has taught you that unreadiness upon that day is without a remedy; the doom of the foolish virgins has shown you that the work, which should have been the work of a life, cannot be huddled up into a mo'Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour.'" This parable will obtain a wider application if we keep in memory that, while it is quite true that there is one great coming of the Lord at the last, yet not the less does he come in all the great crises of his Church, at each new manifestation of his Spirit; and at each of these too there is a separation among those who are called by his name, into wise and foolish, as they are spiritually alive or dead. Thus at Pentecost, when by his Spirit he returned to his Church, he came: the pru ment. *We have at Luke xiii. 25, the same image of the excluded vainly seeking an entrance, though it appears with important modifications. It is there the master, who has appointed a set time in the evening by which all his servants shall have returned home. When the hour arrives, he rises up and bars his doors, and those of the household who have lingered and arrive later cannot persuade him again to open them. They remain without, and he declares the fellowship between them and him has never been more than an outward one, and now is broken altogether. What is more in this verse should have no place in the text, and has probably been brought into it from the parallel passages, such as Matt. xxiv. 44. It is excluded by Lachmann. dent in Israel went in with him to the feast, the foolish tarried without. Thus too he came at the Reformation: those that had oil went in: those that had empty lamps, the form of godliness without the power, tarried without. Each of these was an example of that which should be more signally fulfilled at the end. It remains to say a few words on the relation in which this parable stands to that of the Marriage of the King's Son, and how it happens that in that the unworthy guest actually finds admission to the marriage supper, and is only from thence cast out, while in this the foolish virgins are not so much as admitted to the feast. It might indeed be answered, that this is accidental,—that the differences grow out of the different construction of the two parables; but by such answers every thing that is distinctive in the parables may be explained away: and we treat them with greater respect, when we look for some deeper lying reason. The explanation seems to be, that the marriage festivities which are there spoken of, are different from these. In Gerhard's words, "Those are celebrated in this life in the Church militant, these at the last day in the Church triumphant. To those, even they are admitted who are not adorned with the wedding garment, but to these only they to whom it is granted that they should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints (Rev. xix. 8); to those, men are called by the trumpet of the Gospel;-to these, by the trumpet of the Archangel. To those, who enter, can again go out from them, or be cast out; who is once introduced to these, never goes out, nor is cast out from them any more: wherefore it is said, 'The door was shut."-We may finish the consideration of this exquisite parable with the words in which Augustine concludes a homily* upon it: "Now we labor, and our lamps fluctuate among the gusts and temptations of * Serm. 93, c. 10.-Besides the passage referred to p. 214, note, there is another in Luke (xii. 35-38) offering many analogies to this parable, though with differences as well. The faithful appear there not as virgins but as servants, that is, their active labor for their Lord is more brought out, and they are waiting for him not as here when he shall come to, but when he shall return from, the wedding (TÓTE ȧvaλúσEL èk тŵv yáμwv), from the heavenly bridal, the union with the Church in heaven. The warning to a preparedness to meet him clothes itself under images not exactly similar. They must have their loins girt up (Jer. i. 17; 1 Pet. i. 13), and their lights burning-that is, they must be prompt and succinct to wait upon him, and his home must be bright and beaming with lights. The festival must be prepared which should celebrate his return, and his admission must be without delay, and then that which they have prepared for him shall indeed prove to have been prepared for themselves; "He shall gird himself and make them to sit down to meat, and come forth, and serve them." What he did at the Paschal Supper (John xiii. 4), shall prove but a prophecy of what he shall repeat in a more glorious manner at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. the present world; but only let us give heed that our flame burn in such strength, that the winds of temptation may rather fan the flame than extinguish it."* * In early times and in the middle ages this parable was a very favorite subject of Christian Art. Münter (Sinnbilden. d. Alt. Christ., v. 2, p. 91) mentions a picture of the five wise virgins in the Cemetery of the Church of St. Agnes, at Rome, probably of very early date; and Caumont (Archit. Relig. au Moyen Age, p. 345), describing the representations of the Last Judgment so often found over the great western door of a Cathedral, says: On recontre parfois dans les voussures des portes dix statuettes de femmes, les unes tenant soigneusement à deux mains une lampe en forme de coupe; les autres tenant négligemment d'une seule main la même lampe renversée. Le Sculpteur a toujours eu soin de placer les Vierges sages à la droit du Christ, et du côté des bienheureux: les Vierges folles à sa gauche, du côté des réprouvés. For many further details of interest, see DIDRON'S Manuel d' Inconographie Chrétienne, p. 217. XIV. THE TALENTS. MATTHEW Xxv. 14–30. WHILE the virgins were represented as waiting for the Lord, we have here the servants working for him:-there the inward spiritual rest of the Christian was described,-here his external activity. There, by the end of the foolish virgins, we were warned against declensions and decays in the inward spiritual life,-here against sluggishness and sloth in our outward vocation and work. That parable enforced the need of keeping the heart with all diligence, this the need of giving all diligence also to the outward work, if we would be found of Christ in peace at the day of his appearing. It is not, therefore, without good reason that they appear in their actual order, that of the Virgins first, and the Talents following, since the sole condition of a profitable outward work for the kingdom of God, is that the life of God be diligently maintained within the heart. Or there is another light in which we may consider the distinction between the virgins and the servants, that the first represent the more contemplative, the last, the more active working members of the Church,—a distinction universally recognized in early times, though of late nearly lost sight of among us. It is true that every member of the Church ought to partake of both, of action and contemplation, so that even under this view both the parables will still keep their application to all; but one element may predominate in one, the other in another: the endeavor of each must be harmoniously to proportion them in his own case, according to the gifts which he finds within himself, and the needs which he sees in others around him. We meet with another recension, so to speak, of this parable at Mark * Or they may be co-ordinated with one another. Thus Gerhard (Harm. Erang..., c. 164): Lampas fulgens est talentum usui datum, lampas extincta, talentum otiosum et in terram absconditum. |