The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a
marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that
were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. 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. But they made light of it,
and went their ways, out to his farm, another to his merchandise:
and the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully,
and slew them. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he
sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up
their city. Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but
they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the
highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So
those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together
all, as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was
furnished with guests. And when the king came in to see the guests,
he saw there a man which had not on a wedding-garment: And he saith
unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a
wedding-garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the
servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him
into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
For many are called, but few are chosen."--MATT. xxii. 1-14.
This parable stands connected both historically and logically with the
two which immediately precede it: especially between the guests here
invited to the feast and the husbandmen to whom the vineyard was
entrusted, there is a close resemblance in privileges enjoyed, in
perversity manifested, and in judgment incurred. Yet the lessons, though
in some respects parallel, are to a great extent distinct; and though
both traverse partially the same ground, the latter carries the
argument some steps further forward than the former parable.
A question has arisen and been largely canvassed, on the relation
between the parable and one[43] recorded in Luke xiv. 16-24 regarding a
certain man who made a great supper and bade many. Around this subject
much useless and some mischievous debate has accumulated. The criticism
which assumes that only one discourse on the subject was spoken by
Jesus, and that consequently two reports of it differing from each
other, cannot be both correct, is impertinent and trifling. It is a
pedantic literalism contrary to experience and to common sense. It rests
upon the assumption that a public Teacher who taught the common people
daily, on the margin of the lake and in private dwellings, in the Temple
at Jerusalem and in the sequestered villages around, never repeated with
variations in one place the substance of a lesson which he had given in
another. Even in the immense profusion of nature every plant is not in
all its features different from all others; two individuals or species
are found in some respects the same and in some respects different. The
two walk together as far as they are going the same way, and separate
when each approaches his own peculiar and specific terminus. This
combination of identity and difference pervades creation; and you may
observe the same characteristics in the scheme of Providence. Two men
during a portion of their life-course suffer the same troubles and taste
the same joys; but at a certain point in their progress their paths
diverge, and they never meet again in a common experience. Look even to
the history of any citizen whose life is public, and you will find that
by speech, or writing, or act, he prosecutes his objects by a mixture
of sameness and diversity. His address in the high court of the nation,
and his address to his rustic constituents in a distant province, will
be found in some features similar and in some different: yet the address
in either case will be found an independent and consistent whole,
corresponding to the character of the speaker and the circumstances of
his audience.
[43] No. XXI. of this series.
This "Teacher sent from God" was wont in later lessons to walk sometimes
over his own former footsteps, as far as that track best suited his
purpose, and to diverge into a new path at the point where a diversity
in the circumstances demanded a variety in the treatment. This is the
method followed both in nature and revelation,--the method both of God
and of men.
"A certain king made a marriage for his son," the two important features
here are the royal state of the father, and the specific designation of
the supper as the nuptial feast of his son. It may be quite true, as
some critics say, that because the greatest feasts were usually
connected with marriages, the epithet "marriage" was sometimes applied
to any sumptuous banquet; if in the Scriptures or elsewhere we should
find a banquet denominated a marriage feast, while from the
circumstances it appeared that no marriage had taken place, we should
experience no difficulty in explaining the apparent incongruity. But in
this case there is no reason for adopting the exceptional, and the
strongest reason for retaining what is confessedly the ordinary and
natural signification of the term. The conception of the Redeemer as the
bridegroom, and his redeemed people as the bride, lies too deep in
Scripture and protrudes too frequently from its surface to leave any
doubt concerning the allusion in the parable. The feast, introduced into
the story for the sake of its spiritual significance, is the marriage
supper of the king's son.
The king sent forth his servants, not on this occasion to give the first
invitation, but to warn those who had been previously invited that the
time had come, and the preparations been completed. It is obviously
assumed, and analogies are not wanting to justify the assumption, that
those whom the king desired to honour were informed of that desire
before the day of the feast, and that another message was sent to each,
after everything was ready, requesting his immediate attendance in the
palace of the king. This feature of the transaction is not explained or
defended in the narrative; it is silently taken for granted as at least
sufficiently common to be well understood.[44]
[44] I have witnessed a process closely analogous, in a small
detached island of the Shetland group in which the message sent was
an invitation, not figurative but literal, to come and hear the word
of the kingdom. It had been previously intimated to the islanders
that a minister of the Gospel from the south would preach to them on
the occasion of his visit to the neighbouring mainland, as the
largest island of the group is styled. When the minister and his
friends succeeded at length in crossing the Channel, several
children were dispatched as messengers in different directions to
inform the people that public worship would immediately begin. In a
very short time a congregation was assembled consisting of the whole
population of the island.
This peculiarity of the invitation is important in connection with the
severity of the punishment which was subsequently inflicted on the
recusants. They did not repudiate the invitation when it was first
addressed to them. By retaining it, and enjoying the advantage of being
accounted the king's guests during the interval, they pledged themselves
to attend the marriage festival, and honour their sovereign by their
presence. Their abrupt refusal at the eleventh hour, after all was ready
to receive them, partook of the nature both of breach of engagement and
disloyalty. "They would not come."
A second message was sent, more specific and more urgent: but the men
met the importunate kindness of the king with contemptuous mockery:
"they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to
his merchandise." A portion of them carried their opposition beyond
supercilious neglect into blood-thirsty enmity; "the remnant took his
servants and entreated them spitefully and slew them."
"But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his
armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city." As far
as appears from the narrative, those who affronted the king by neglect,
and those who put his messengers to death, received the same punishment.
Although the cruelty perpetrated by some of the conspirators was an
aggravation of their guilt, the crime for which they suffered was one of
which all alike were guilty,--the crime of despising the king's
invitation, and pouring contempt upon his authority.
The transaction may have had great political significance. It was a
combination among the aristocracy to thwart the king and dictate to him
a line of policy. They meant by their absence in mass to leave him
without support, that he might be compelled to court them on their own
terms. In such a case only two alternatives are open to the supreme
magistrate: he must either submit to the aristocracy and buy them back
at their own price, or supersede them by a bold appeal to the common
people. Suppose that in this country the Lords should by compact refuse
to attend Parliament, for the express purpose of extorting concessions
in favour of themselves by bringing the process of legislation to a
stand: the sovereign, in that case, must either submit to the terms of
the refractory nobles, or by prerogative create a new peerage from the
plebean ranks. Such, on a minute scale and in a simple form, was the
course adopted by the king in this ancient oriental drama.
He destroyed their city: it was the king's own city, but he loathed it
because of the rebellion of its inhabitants. He took no pleasure in its
streets and palaces when their moral glory had departed. The loss of so
much property was a small loss; the gain for the discipline of unborn
generations was unspeakably great. The overthrow of the city in which
the rebels dwelt would make children's children shudder at the thought
of apostasy. The sacrifice of a material interest in order to afford
sanction to moral laws is the highest wisdom of government, both human
and divine. This principle was adopted on the largest scale after the
first rebellion, when the earth was cursed for man's sake.
The king took his servants into his counsel. They had suffered in his
cause, and he will not conceal from them what he is about to do. "Go ye
therefore into the highways,"--the public places of resort, as well the
city's streets as the roads that traverse the country,--"and as many as
ye shall find, bid to the marriage." In the first instance the
invitation was limited to the class who had a prescriptive right to
appear at court; when these by their perversity had excluded themselves,
the king in his sovereignty extended the invitation generally to the
common people,--to persons who previously possessed no right of
admission, but who obtained the right then and there by the free act of
the sovereign.
The servants did as they were instructed. They understood and executed
their commission according to its letter: they brought in "bad and
good." As they were not instructed to institute an inquiry into the
character or social position of the persons whom they should invite,
they made no distinction; they swept the streets to fill the royal
halls.
At this point the parable becomes logically complete, and its lesson may
be exhibited apart from the addition regarding the wedding garment which
immediately follows. It will be more convenient, accordingly, to
prosecute the exposition of the earlier portion by itself, and leave the
latter portion to be treated afterwards as substantially a separate
lesson.
The parable, as far as we have hitherto read it, repeats and extends the
warnings previously given regarding the spiritual privileges which the
Jews enjoyed and abused, the judgments which had been and still would be
poured out upon the nation, and the successful proclamation of the
Gospel to the Gentiles, when the natural seed of Abraham should have in
rebellious unbelief rejected the offers of their Lord.
The marriage festival made by the king in honour of his son, points
manifestly to redemption completed in the incarnation, ministry, death,
and resurrection of Christ. Banquets had before this period been
provided by the king, and enjoyed by the favoured circle of his guests;
much advantage was possessed by the Jews over the Gentiles in every way,
but especially in that to them were committed the oracles of God. But
the feast depicted in this parable was the last and best; it was the way
of salvation in its completed state. As the king made known his
intention before it was carried into effect, and intimated to the guests
that they would be summoned as soon as the preparations were complete;
so a period of preparation, and promise, and expectation intervened
between the incarnation and the sacrifice of Christ. To the Jewish
commonwealth the promise was made in the birth of the babe at Bethlehem,
and they were invited to be upon the watch for the moment when the
kingdom should come in its power.
When the fulness of time had come, the Lord himself undertaking the work
as well as assuming the form of a servant, carried to the chosen people
the message, "Come, for all things are now ready." His immediate
followers and their successors repeated and pressed the invitation. It
is worthy of notice that the servants, when they went out with the
commission of the king, did not announce the feast as a new thing, then
for the first time made known; they spoke of it as that which was
promised before, and actually offered them; they summoned those who had
previously been fully informed that the feast was provided for their
use. These favoured but unthankful people were not taken at their word;
after the first refusal, another and more urgent invitation is sent. The
successive reiterated mission of the servants to the class who were
originally invited, may be understood to point to the ministry of the
Lord and the seventy until the time of the crucifixion, and the second
mission of the apostles after the Pentecost, and under the ministration
of the spirit. Both invitations were neglected and rejected by the
people to whom they were sent; Christ came unto his own, and his own
received him not.
Significant are the differences in the treatment which the message and
the messengers received from different classes within the privileged
circle of the first invited. We learn here the solemn lesson that though
there is much diversity in the degrees of aggravation with which men
accompany their rejection of the Saviour, all who do not receive him
perish in the same condemnation. At first no distinction is made
between class and class of unbelievers; of all, and of all alike it is
recorded, "they would not come." But when the offer became more pressing
and more searching, a difference began to appear, not as yet the
difference between the believing and the unbelieving, but a difference
in the manner of refusing, and in the degrees of courage or of cowardice
that accompanied the act. The greater number treated the message
lightly, and preferred their own business to the life eternal which was
offered to them in Christ; while a portion, not content with spurning
away the offer, persecuted to the death the ambassadors who bore it. The
fault of those who are first mentioned takes the form of indolent,
frivolous neglect, rather than of active opposition. They were occupied
with many other things, and therefore could not attend to this one; they
were bent on prosecuting their own gains, and therefore set no value on
God's favour.[45]
[45] A melancholy interest adheres to the contrast between man's
heedlessness of God as expressed in this parable, [Greek:
amelêsantes], made light of it, did not care for it; and God's
regard for men as expressed in 1 Peter v. 7, [Greek: autô melei peri
humôn], he careth for you.
These two, ungodliness and worldliness, are always found in company; but
it is sometimes difficult to determine which of the two goes first, and
draws the other after it. You seldom meet a man who neglects this great
salvation, and neglects also the gains and the pleasures of life. Those
who forget God follow hard after another lord, although they may be
unable to detect or unwilling to confess their own idolatry. No man can
serve two masters; but every man practically serves one. It may not,
however, be easy in any given case to discover whether a man pursues
some particular pleasure because he is determined to abide far from
Christ, or is kept far from Christ because his heart is pre-engaged to
some worldly lust. In the case which the parable exhibits, this point
has not been expressly determined. When the second and more urgent
message arrived, demanding their immediate attendance on the king at the
marriage of his son, those men departed in an opposite direction, each
to his own business; but it remains an open question whether their
hearts were first so glued to the farm and the merchandise, that they
could not be persuaded to take from these engrossing pursuits as much
time as would suffice to attend upon their sovereign; or whether there
was first a determination to resist the sovereign's call, and that they
then introduced the business as an excuse, and fled to it as a welcome
occupation.
It may have been either or both; but in the circumstances I think it was
primarily the latter of the two. In the hearts of those men lay a deep
design against the authority of the king; but it would have involved
serious risk to have flatly refused his reiterated invitation. They had
actually incurred a grave responsibility, and they were disposed to
lighten it somewhat by interposing a plausible excuse. Troubled,
moreover, by the gravity of their step they were fain to seek refuge
from reflection by plunging into the ordinary avocations of life. I
think it was not an excessive zeal for agriculture and trade that really
prevented them from attending on the king that day; but a consciousness
of having conclusively offended the king that drove them for relief into
agriculture and trade. On the spiritual side of the parable, in like
manner, the excessive devotion to business which occupies some men, and
leaves not a shred either of their hearts or lives for Christ, may be in
many cases not a primary affection, but the secondary result of another
and deeper passion. When Christ has often knocked at the door, and the
inhabitant soul within has as often refused to open, there is no longer
peace in the dwelling that has been barred against its Lord. He who has
rejected the merciful offers of a merciful God, does not afterwards sit
at ease; every sound that in moments of solitude falls upon his ear,
seems the footstep of an angry God, returning to inflict deserved
punishment. When one has distinctly heard the Saviour's call, and
deliberately refused to comply with it, he thenceforth experiences a
craving for company and employment. He cannot endure silence or
solitude. When he stands still, he seems to hear the throbbings of his
own conscience terrible as the ticking of the clock in the chamber of
death. To be alone is unendurable, because it is to be with God. To
escape from this fiery furnace, he hastens to plough in his field or
sell in his shop. In such a case, the worldliness, even when it runs to
the greatest excess, is not the primary passion, but a secondary
refuge,--the trees of the garden among which the fallen would fain hide
from the Lord God.
But in some cases the disease may first approach by the other side: love
of the world may be the earlier matured and more imperious passion. The
farm and the merchandise may become the soul's first and fondest love;
and that love possessing all the soul's faculties, may cast or keep out
Christ and his redemption. If you suppose those invited guests to have
been previously wedded to the idolatry of covetousness, worshipping gain
in secret as their god, you can easily comprehend how they should grudge
a day taken from traffic in order to honour their king; so in the
interpretation of the parable, when riches or pleasures increase, and
the possessor sets his heart upon them, he has already obtained his
portion, and will not cast it away for Christ; he will mock the
messengers who bring the distasteful proposal.
Among the invited guests, however, there is another class who treat the
king's servants in another way. The first class made light of the
message; the second murdered the messengers. It is intimated that while
the bulk of those to whom the Gospel was preached, neglected the offer
and busied themselves with earthly gains, some rose against the
preachers and persecuted them unto the death. These last, however, seem
to have been in point of numbers an inconsiderable minority,--"the
remnant entreated them spitefully and slew them."
There were persecutors in the earliest days of the Gospel, and there
have been persecutors in every generation since. The Pharisees plotted
that they might put Jesus to death: Saul of Tarsus at a later date was
their willing tool in a desperate effort to quench the life of the
infant Church in the blood of its members. After he was turned, and the
mighty stream of his life compelled to flow like a river of water in the
opposite direction, a constant succession of cruel men has been kept up
in this restless, sin-stained world, whose life-work is to crucify
Christ in his members. The unchanged, unrepenting hierarchy of Rome,
successor not of Peter the apostle, but of Saul the persecutor, does yet
all that it can and dare to treat spitefully and slay those servants of
the king who invite them and the world to the marriage-supper of the
King's Son.
But the crucifiers of Christ are not all shedders of human blood. Deadly
enmity to the truth and its publishers may be manifested where stakes
and fagots are out of fashion and inconvenient. The soul of the
persecution which the parable represents lies in entreating spitefully
the king's messengers, because they loathed the invitation, and were
irritated by the urgency wherewith the servants, remembering their
sovereign's command, felt themselves constrained to press it on every
man they met. In our own day, it does not require extraordinary sagacity
to perceive the same spirit in the relish and readiness with which
certain classes catch up a cry against any one who, not ashamed of the
Gospel of Christ, has discharged his commission in full.
But when you add together both classes of open antagonists--those who
shed the blood of Christians, and those who merely calumniate them, you
have only a very small company before you. On the one side I see a
little flock,--those who meekly receive Christ; on the other and
opposite side I see also a little flock,--those who loudly proclaim by
word and deed, "We will not have this man to reign over us:" but there
is a multitude, whom no man can number, in the midst, who neither accept
the king's message nor persecute the servants of the king. The character
of the company on either extreme is distinctly marked, and easily seen.
Those have manifestly closed with Christ's offer, and are accepted
through faith; these, on the other hand, have considered the offer, and
proved their rejection of it by killing its bearers. But the multitude
in the middle have not taken a decisive part; they have remained
apparently in a state of equilibrium. As yet they have not indeed
actually and personally closed with the Redeemer as their own; but
neither on the other hand have they determined and proclaimed that they
will not accept him. They have not moved to either side to take a
decisive part for or against the Lord.[46] This feature of their
condition and their history helps to deceive and so to destroy them. If
the condition of the world and the law of God were such that all would
be safe in the great day who did not blaspheme Christ's name, and mock
his Gospel, and put to death his ministers, this multitude in the middle
might remain where they are at ease. But this is not the state of the
case; life and death for us depend on our knowing and not mistaking the
state of the case here.