until he should pay.[30] The amount is comparatively
small, as is fit between servant and servant: the smallness of the debt
brings the cruelty of the creditor out in high relief. His neighbour's
pleading is expressed in the same terms as his own: the sound should
have reminded him of his duty.

[30] Die am meisten geschont sind erweisen sich als die
Schonungslosesten. Unter den Fluegeln der Zaertlichkeit wird die
Grausamkeit ausgebruetet. (Those who get most mercy give least; and
cruelty is hatched under the wings of tenderness).--_Draeseke vom
Reich Gottes_, ii. 141.

Fellow-servants observing the outrage were at once indignant and
compassionate. They informed their master. The master displeased,
pronounced his condemnation in full. He who showed no mercy to his
brother, received judgment without mercy for himself.

Before proceeding to the exposition of the parable in its spiritual
meaning and application, I shall submit a remark of a general character,
bearing on the parables at large, as well as on this in particular,
which can be made more conveniently now than at the close.

The more I examine the structure and use of the parable in the teaching
of the Lord, the more I am convinced that men make a great mistake when
they betake themselves to a single feature of the natural scene as a
defence of some specific and controverted dogma. The rule may be made
absolute, or if there are exceptions they are few, that the parables are
intended to expand, illustrate, and enforce what is elsewhere clearly
taught in the Scriptures, and not themselves to constitute the grounds
or evidences of the doctrines. But to whatever extent such a general
rule may be applicable, it is most certain that those who run to a
corner of a parable and take their stand on it, as impregnable evidence
of some doctrine which they hold, are in all cases egregiously mistaken.
The controversies, for example, on the question of Church discipline,
which were made to turn on the tares among the wheat, and the net that
caught all kinds of fishes, are a mere waste of words. Those parables do
not afford material for the decision of the question; they do not speak
to the point.

In like manner, when theologians gravely refer to this parable in order
to prove that after a man's sins have been all freely forgiven by God,
he may yet fall from grace, and the guilt of all his sins be laid upon
him at the last, they waste their own time, and trifle