udge announces the terms of his own covenant--a pardon
immediate, complete, and free.

* * * * *

"The same servant went out:" the moment of close dealing between God and
the soul has passed: the man who has trembled at the sight of his sin,
and the prospect of judgment, has heard the Gospel, and gotten a
respite. He goes out from that solemn and searching communion: he is
released for the moment from the presence of the Judge, and from the
sense of his sin. He glides again into the world. He has not been
converted; he has only been frightened. He has not been forgiven; he has
only been respited. He has not accepted God's grace, and therefore is
not under law to God. The fright is past, and faith has not taken its
place. The heart, after terror had driven the evil spirits out, does not
open to the Lord, and therefore the evil spirits come back, and possess
the empty room in sevenfold power. As soon as he comes in the way of
temptation, the unsubdued carnality of his soul asserts its life and
power. A fellow-servant who has in small matters offended him, begs for
pardon, as he had done from God, and begs in vain. He shows no mercy;
the fact proves that he has not himself accepted the mercy that was
offered by God. If the channel of his heart had really been inserted
into the fountain-head of mercy for receiving, mercy would infallibly
have flowed in the way of giving, wherever the need of a brother made an
opening; if the vessel had been charged, it would certainly have
discharged. No compassion flowed from that heart to refresh a
fellow-creature in distress, because that heart had never truly opened
to accept mercy from God; the reservoir was empty, and therefore the
outbranching channels remained dry.[31]

[31] Draeseke expresses the same conception in his own peculiarly
terse and antithetic way:--So gewiss kein Gottesreich ohne die
Schulderlassung die wir empfangen; so gewiss kein Gottesreich ohne
die Schulderlassung die wir leisten. (As certainly as there is no
kingdom of God without the forgiveness which we receive, so
certainly there is no kingdom of God without the forgiveness which
we bestow.)--ii. 147.

Beyond all question, the design of the Lord in this parable is to
enforce the duty of forgiving one another. In teaching this lesson, he
touches matters greater than itself; but these occupy here only a
secondary place. The drift of the parable is to take off the a