both sides he gave, the instruction, that in this life they must lay
their account with a mixture, but that after this life they would
escape. Left to their own imagination, they would readily have expected
that their omnipotent Head would so rule over the world, and so instruct
his ministers, whether stormy winds or flaming fires, that evil, as soon
as it showed its head, would be weeded out of his people's way: but with
this parable and other cognate lessons in their hands, they would not be
surprised at any amount of success which the enemy might be permitted to
obtain; they would possess their souls in patience, and wait for the end
of the Lord.

The parable condemns persecution, but it seems not to bear upon
discipline at all. In its secondary sense, or by implication, it
protects the wicked from any attempt on the part of the Church to cast
them out of the world by violence; but it does not, in any form or
measure, vindicate a place for the impure within the communion of the
Church of Christ. Arguments against the exclusion of unworthy members,
founded on this parable, are nothing else than perversions of Scripture.
Elsewhere Christians may clearly read their duty in regard to any
brother who walks disorderly; elsewhere they may learn how to counsel,
exhort, and rebuke the erring, and, if he remain impenitent, how to cast
him out of communion by a spiritual sentence; but in this parable
regarding these matters no judgment is given.

While the "Notes" of Dr. Trench on the parables are generally judicious
and valuable, his exposition of this and one or two others that are
cognate is injured by a secret bias towards the forms in which he has
been educated,--a bias that is natural and human, but not on that
account less hurtful. The body of the vast and venerable institution of
which he is at once a chief and an ornament, stands so near, and bulks
so largely, that where it is concerned his usual acuteness fails him.
The general announcement at the commencement of the parable, that it
concerns the kingdom of heaven, he seems to think is sufficient proof
that the "field" must mean the kingdom of heaven or the Church. It does,
indeed, concern the kingdom of heaven, for it shows that when that
kingdom has, by the Son of man, been introduced into the world, many
things spring up and mingle with it there to mar its fruitfulness; but
it betrays an unaccountable confusion to argue formally that because the
parable concerns