“UNTO THIS LAST.”
“I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.”—MATT. xx. 14.
These words appear at first sight to set us very decisively face to face
with the sovereignty of God, in its sternest and most naked
form—affirming its right to distribute its gifts and payments at its
pleasure, and refusing to consider the question of equity when urged by
the creature’s sharp complaint. “Take that thine is, and go thy way.”
“Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” “I will give
unto this last, even as unto thee.” There, it is said, and with apparent
truth, is Sovereignty—pure, naked Sovereignty. The “I will” of God
seems to be the sole explanation which is vouchsafed of His
dispensations and decrees. But this view of the matter has always seemed
to me deeply unsatisfactory. Equity is a strong instinctive principle,
which God Himself has established in the judgment seat of the human
conscience; and God never beats down with the bare assertion of an
irresistible Sovereignty the soul that is perplexed about the equity of
His ways. It is equity, pure, celestial equity, which reveals itself to
those who will search for it in this parable; equity to the poor souls
who had been standing all the day idle in the market-place, because no
man had called them to the vineyard; equity to the labourers who had
borne the burden and heat of the day, and had made the dignity and
culture of the Lord’s husbandmen their own. It is an equity which
invites the closest criticism from those who will search it thoroughly,
and which reveals to the searchers deep vital truths about man and about
God.
“I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.” It is a startling
sentence. This man had been labouring in the vineyard under the burning
heat, through the blazing noon; he had borne and bent under the whole
burden of the work: while this one had been brought in at the eleventh
hour, in the cool evenfall, and by a few minutes of light sweet labour
he had won the equivalent prize. There is something startling here, and
men have felt it; and they have striven in manifold and curious ways to
square the method of the Master with their fundamental notions of the
righteousness of God. There are theologians who feel no need to square
it. According to a theology which has exercised a wide-spread and malign
influence in the past, Sovereignty answers amply every difficulty, and
treats our ideas of equity as a high impertinence, when they claim to
weigh the ways of God. If it pleases God to make some men to be saved
and other men to be damned, who shall question His rights? and if He is
glorified equally by the salvation of the chosen and the damnation of
the reprobate, who dares complain, or to what court can we carry the
appeal? There are theologians who would have us rest calmly on the
conviction that a sovereign and inscrutable will is ruling, and trouble
ourselves in no wise about the equity of the decrees. But one cannot but
reflect that this composed contentment with the doctrine of reprobation
is mainly conspicuous in those who feel themselves safe from its
trenchant stroke. With the exception of Lord Byron—to whose malign and
scornful tone we believe that this was the real key—we hardly discover
the disciples of the doctrine among those who believe that they are
reprobate; and in the case of the theological school whose influence is
happily dying away, but which survives in out-of-the-way places to an
extent little dreamed of still, we may fairly entertain the question,
whether, if it were flashed suddenly on their souls that they, the
theologians, were doomed by the Divine decree to everlasting anguish,
their rest in the inscrutable Sovereignty would be so calm, and their
contentment so assured. For thinkers of this school, of course, such a
parable as this presents no sort of difficulty. A penny more or less
would not be likely to stagger them, when the gift of heaven or the doom
of hell raise no question as to the equity of the Divine decrees. But
with the great multitude of Christian thinkers the parable has been the
source of much grievous perplexity, as the manifold explanations amply
prove. The question is, in which verse of the parable are we to find the
key to it? “Unto this last will I give, even as unto thee,” states the
problem. Is the solution to be found in the body of the parable, or must
we seek it outside in a general study of the ways of God?
There can be no question, I think, that the broad bearing of the parable
is on the impending revolution in the visible Divine kingdom, whereby,
as the Saviour says, the kingdom of God was to be taken from the
Pharisees, and “given to a people bringing forth the fruits thereof.” I
say advisedly, from the Pharisees; from the party which held the chief
influence and authority in the Church. Their influence, their
standing-ground, was utterly shattered by the Saviour’s advent; the
kingdom passed visibly, absolutely, finally, out of the rule of their
hand. But there was never any question of its passing wholly from the
Jews; the Jews were never to be disowned. Paul earnestly, with intense
emphasis, asserts this, and makes it the basis of a long and profound
argument. “I say then, hath God cast away His people? God forbid. For I
also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
God hath not cast away His people, which He foreknew.” (Rom. xi. 1, 2.)
The Jews, as such, were not cast away. We think all too slightly of the
strength of the Jewish element in the apostolic Church. And it is the
Jews—the people, not their leaders—who are in question here. They had
borne the burden and heat of the day; they had done the work—with what
result, well or ill, is not the point in debate. There is no idea of
their being dismissed without honour or recompense; the question is
simply concerning the bringing in of other husbandmen, the Gentile
nations, at the last hour, to share in full measure in all that the
Jewish workmen had won by their long and hot day’s toil.
Perhaps the favourite mode of reconciling the Master’s dealings with
fundamental principles of equity is to be found in the suggestion,
towards which some sentences in Olshausen’s Exposition strongly lean,
that the first called laboured so lazily, and the last called so
strenuously that (regarding the actual amount of work accomplished) the
Master’s arrangements were more equitable than might at first appear.
Notwithstanding the apt illustration of this which appears to be offered
by the history of St. Paul, who, though the last called, “laboured more
abundantly than they all,” the explanation seems to me to miss the whole
point of the teaching of the parable, and to proceed upon very low and
worldly conceptions of the method of the Divine ways. There is no hint
of such a solution in the body of the parable itself; which is a
sufficiently grave objection. If this be the key, its existence is
carefully suppressed, and the souls that were most sorely perplexed by
the appearance of injustice are left wholly ignorant of the truth. Nay,
their ignorance is confirmed by the language, or rather by the silence,
of the parable. The answer to their protest on the ground that they had
“borne the burden and heat of the day” would have been decisive and was
ready at hand. But no hint of a justification on this ground is suffered
to appear. Their assertion is allowed to pass unanswered, and must be
accepted for the purposes of the parable as the truth. Whether they had
wrought well or ill, though it may be the main point in other parables,
is plainly not the point which is in question here. And in the
interpretation of parables we get into endless difficulties, if we, so
to speak, travel beyond the record, and consider the details in any
other light than as the garniture of the one central idea which the
parable is intended to set forth. As far as this parable is concerned,
we must accept it as a fact that they had borne the burden and heat of
the day; and no explanation of its equity can be entertained which sets
that fact at nought.