ich, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and
gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away." There is no
ambiguity here; the drawers are also the dividers. I suppose none will
take advantage of the impersonal form in which the casting of the net is
expressed, and assume that while one class, representing a human
ministry, cast the net into the water, another class, representing
ministering angels, drew it to land and divided its contents; for it
would be, contrary to all analogy and propriety, to assume that the Lord
introduced into his picture a feature that is never found in fact. There
is no such thing in reality as one set of men throwing the net into the
water, and then retiring from the scene, while another set of men draw
it out.

The ordinary interpretation assumes, contrary both to the letter of
Scripture and the custom of men, that when ministers of flesh and blood
have spread the net, and drawn it toward the shore, enclosing a
multitude good and bad of their brethren, they disappear and take no
part further in the transaction. Another party, representing the angels,
now fasten on the net, and pick out the good from the bad. A late German
expositor, learned, suggestive, and devout, Olshausen, yielding to the
inexorable logic of the case, concedes that the drawers of the net and
the dividers of the fish are not diverse, but the same. He turns,
however, to the other side for a solution of the difficulty. Instead of
simply proceeding to determine the unknown by the known;--instead of
owning that as angels separate the good from the evil on the shore, they
must have also thrown and drawn the net, he explains away the specific
signification of angels, and supposes that those who minister the Gospel
in time are employed, under the general designation of angels, to
separate between good and evil in the world to come. This solution will
not readily commend itself to British students of the Scripture. The
fact therefore remains, that the ordinary exposition of the parable, in
this part of its progress, is palpably at variance with the structure of
the parable itself, and the facts on which it is founded.

2. In the visible Church, the profession, at the very least, is to
enclose the good within the communion of saints, or to rescue the evil
by making them new in the act of entrance; whereas the net is let down
at a certain spot to sweep indiscriminately all within its circle to the
shore. It ma