If the Jews were called, and the Pagans were left sad and idle in the
streets, the evenfall shall adjust the balance, the evening of earth’s
life, the morning of the everlasting day. Idle and sad, I say. When you
are next at South Kensington Museum, place yourself before the cartoon
of “Paul preaching at Athens.” Mark the foremost in the group of pagan
hearers; he bears in his sad wistful countenance the whole tale of
Gentile waiting, longing, hoping, disappointment, despondency, and
despair. Few preachers can preach such a sermon as utters itself mutely
from that man’s eyes and lips. This parable is Christ’s answer to the
mute appeal: “No man hath hired thee, poor outcast! the day spent, the
soul lost! Come in, at the last hour, come in. These have wrought in a
noble service the long day through. The sweat of manly toil is on their
brow, the joy of a work well done is in their hearts. Come in; the sun
still lacks some hours of setting. Bend thy soul to the task, put thy
heart into the labour of the hour, and the same meed shall be thine.
Even as unto this first, will I give unto thee; come in.”
9. On a wider scale the parable is Christ’s assurance, that through all
outward inequalities of gift, endowment, opportunity, position,
prospect, which jar this jangled world, there is a sublime equity ruling
which will right all wrongs, adjust all balances, and square all issues
with pure celestial justice at last. “_No man hath hired us._” How much
does this explain of the bitterness and misery with which the world is
filled! Cross purposes, cross callings, cross relationships, cross
necessities, cross issues of life! Men with power in them for a service
which is never asked of them; tied down to a desk or a counter, it may
be, while they feel within them the stirrings of a power to guide the
coursers of the sun. Men bound in a home which has no beauty for them,
no love; while beyond there is a vision of the Eden which might be, if
bonds could be unbound and bound afresh. Some overflowing with fatherly
or motherly tenderness, in a barren home. Some shrinking from the
prattle of infant voices, yet with stuff in them of noble texture, shut
up to a nursery through the prime of their days. Some longing, pining,
panting for a work they love, bound to a work they loathe. Some with a
genial, generous, royal nature, wrestling with the serpents of care and
penury their long life through. “This is a mad world, my masters;” “the
times are out of joint;” it is all out of joint everywhen and
everywhere! “No man hath hired us” to the work which we are fit for; a
glorious wealth of being, of power, is left to “fust in us unused.”
Patience, brothers, patience! One grand work, the grandest, spreads
broad and fair before you; “in your patience possess ye your souls.” The
hiring is in higher, wiser hands; the patience, the hope, are in yours,
with all their glorious eternal fruit. None of the sighing, none of the
groaning, none of the desire and yearning of your spirit, is hidden from
Him who made you, and who in His own good time will call you to your
God-ordained work. “UNTO THIS LAST WILL I GIVE, EVEN AS UNTO THEE”
reveals the sublime equity of His dealings. Await with strong patience,
with steadfast hope, the things and the times of His sovereign
appointment; till you find with profound and wondering joy, that your
patience has won a prize whose splendour outshines the constellations,
and whose bliss shall outlast eternity.