LECTURE XIII.

MATTHEW xiii. continued.

THE

HE Lectures of the last year concluded with an explanation of the parable of the fower; and immediately after this follows in the Gospel the parable of the tares, which will be the subject of our present confideration*.

The parable is as follows: "The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which fowed good feed in his field; but while men flept, his enemy came and fowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares alfo. So the fervants of the householder came and faid unto him, Sir, didft thou not fow good feed in thy field; from whence then hath it tares? He faid unto them, an enemy hath done this. The fervants faid unto him, wilt thou then that we go and gather them up.

But he faid nay, left while ye gather up the tares, ye root up alfo the wheat with them. Let both grow together unto the harvest; and in the time of harvest I will fay to the reapers, gather ye together firft the tares, and bind them up in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn."

After our Lord had delivered this parable, and one or two more very fhort ones, we are told that he fent the multitude away, and went into the house; and his disciples came unto him saying, "Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and faid unto them, he that foweth the good feed is the Son of man. The field is the world; the good feed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked

* Matth. xiii. 24.

P

one. The enemy that fowed them is the devil. The har veft is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, fo fhall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they fhall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and fhall caft them into a furnace of fire, there fhall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous fhine forth as the fun in the kingdom of their Father: who hath ears to hear let him hear."

This parable well deferves our moft ferious confideration, as it gives an anfwer to two queftions of great cu riofity and great importance, which have exercifed the ingenuity and agitated the minds of thinking men from the earlicft times to the prefent, and perhaps were never, at any period of the world, more interefting than at this very hour.

The first of these questions is, how came moral evil into the world?

The next is, why it is fuffered to remain a fingle moment; and why is not every wicked man immediately punifhed as he deferves?

The first of these questions has, we know, in almost all ages, and in all countries, been a conftant fubject of investigation and controverfy among metaphysicians and theologians, and has given birth to an infinity of fanciful theories and fyltems, to one more particularly in our own times, by a man of very diftinguifhed talents*; all which however have failed of folving the difficulty, and have proved nothing more than this mortifying and humiliating truth, namely, the extreme weakness of the human intellect, when applied to fubjects fo far above its reach, and the utter inability of man to fathom the counfels of the Moft High, and to develop the mysterious ways of his providence, by the fole ftrength of unaffifted rea

* Soame Jenyns.

fon*.

That those who were never favored with the light of revelation should indulge themselves in such abstruse fpeculations, can be no great wonder, but that they who have access to the original fountain of truth, and can draw from that facred fource the most authentic information on this point, fhould have recourse to the fallible conjectures of human ingenuity, and fhould hew out to themselves "cifterns, broken cifterns, that can hold no water," is a moft unaccountable error of judgment, and a strange mifapplication of talents, and wafte of labor and of time. We are told in the very beginning of the Bible, that he who firft brought fin or moral evil into the world, was that great adversary of the human race, the devil, who firft tempted the woman, and fhe the man, to act in direct contradiction to the commands of their Maker.

This act of difobedience deftroyed at once that innocence and purity and integrity of mind, with which they came out of the hands of their Creator; gave an immediate and dreadful shock to their whole moral frame, and introduced into it all thofe corrupt propenfities and difordered paffions which they bequeathed as a fatal legacy to their defcendants ; of which we all now feel the bitter fruits, and have, I fear, by our own personal and voluntary tranfgreffions, not a little improved the wretched inheritance we received from our ancestors. This is the true origin of moral evil; and it is exprefsly confirmed by our Saviour in the parable before us; in which, when the fervants of the householder exprefs their surprise at finding tares among the wheat, and afk whence they came, his anfwer is, an enemy hath done this; and that enemy our Lord informs us is the devil; that inveterate implacable enemy (as the very name of Satan imports) of the human race, the original author of all our calamities, and

* Among the differtations of Plutarch (which go by the name of his morals,) there is a very curious and ingenious one, intitled peri tōn upo tou theiou bradeōs timōroumenon, concerning thofe whom the Deity is flow in punishing. In this, among other juft remarks, he obferves, that many things which great generals, and legislators, and statesmen do, are to common obfervers incomprehenfible. What wonder is it then, fays he, if we cannot understand why the gods inflict pun ifhment on the wicked, fometimes at an earlier, fometimes at a later period? Plut. Ed. Xyland. v. 2. p. 549. F.

at this moment the prime mover and great mafter-spring of all the wickedness and all the mifery that now overwhelm the world.

To this account great objections have been made, and no fmall pains taken to confute, to expofe, and to ridicule it. But after all the wit and buffoonery which have been lavished upon it, it may fafely be affirmed, and might eafily be shown, that it ftands on firmer ground, and is encumbered with fewer difficulties than any other hypothe fis that has been yet propofed.

But fill, as I have already obferved, there remains another very important queftion to be answered. Why is the wickedness of man, from whatever fource it springs, fuffered to pafs unobferved and unpunished by the Judge of all the earth? Why is not the bold offender stopped fhort in his career of vice and iniquity? Why is he permitted to go on triumphantly, without any obftacle to his wifhes, to infult, opprefs, and harafs the virtuous and the good, without the least check or control, and, as it were to brave the vengeance of the Almighty, and fet at nought the great Governor of the world? Why, in fhort, in the language of the parable, are the tares allowed to grow up unmolested with the wheat, to choke its vigour and impede its growth? Why are they not plucked up instantly with an indignant hand, and thrown to the dung-hill, or committed to the flames?

"This has been a molt grievous "tumbling ftone, a Tock of offence," not only to the unthinking crowd, but to men of serious thought and reflection in every age; and fcarce any thing has more perplexed and disturbed the minds of the good, or given more encouragement or audacity to the bad, than the little notice that feems to be taken of the most enormous crimes, and the little diftinction that is apparently made between "the wheat and the tares, between the righteous and the wicked, between him that ferveth God and him that ferveth him not."

The reflections which these myfterious proceedings are apt to excite even in the best and humbleft of men, are