in order to show that a man should set no limit to the
forgiveness of injuries; and in order to show this, the parable goes
into the deep things of God. It shows that the motive power which can
produce in man an unlimited forgiveness of his brother, is God's mercy
forgiving himself. At the close it lays down the law, that the act or
habit of extending forgiveness to a brother, is a necessary effect of
receiving forgiveness from God. If you get pardon from God, you will
give it to your brother; if you withhold it from your brother, you
thereby make it manifest that you have not gotten it from God.

As the king determined to take account of his servants during the
currency of their work, and before the final winding up of their
engagement, so the King Eternal in various ways and at various periods
takes account of men, especially of those who know his word, and belong
externally to his Church. One by one the servants are brought into their
Lord's presence. The messenger that brings them may be a commercial
crisis, a personal affliction, or a revival in the neighbourhood. The
King has many messengers at his command, and he employs now one and now
another to bring a professing Christian forward to his presence. When
one who has contrived to keep out of the way, both of his own conscience
and of God, is at length compelled to open his heart to the Omniscient,
and fairly look into it himself, he discovers that his debt is
unspeakably, inconceivably great. The sum of ten thousand talents in the
picture is not an exaggeration; it does not indicate all the guilt which
God detects in the conscience, and which the awakened conscience detects
in itself. It is a dreadful moment when a sinner is brought face to face
with God, and charged with his guilt; it is then that the law performs
its terrible yet merciful work of conviction.

The first purpose that springs in the heart of the alarmed transgressor
is to satisfy the demand: Give me time, and I will pay all. Whether he
deliberately expects to be able to pay it may be doubted; but one thing
is clear, he thinks that nothing else will appease the Master, and he
makes the promise accordingly. This is, in point of fact, the first
proposal of an alarmed conscience, "I will pay thee all." The natural
history of the process is here.

God does not hold the convicted transgressor to his own rash promise.
Treating the criminal, not according to his desert, but according to his
need, the J