heering
truth that the Lord will richly reward the services of his people, and
in the subsequent parable gives to them and us a solemn admonition
against the error into which Peter had been for the moment betrayed.

The positive doctrine regarding compensation for all sacrifices and
wages for all work needs only to be read in the memorable words of
Jesus, as the evangelist has recorded them here. Notwithstanding the
incrustations of ignorant self-righteousness that now and then covered
and disfigured their faith, these Galileans have in very deed left all
for Christ, and shall all in very deed receive from Christ a
hundred-fold. Even Peter's own decisive life-act,--his consecration to
Jesus, was a higher and purer thing than his own foolish words at this
time would represent it to have been. It was not with a mercenary eye to
a subsequent equivalent that he left his nets and followed Jesus. That
self-devotion in the simplicity of faith will be gloriously recompensed,
notwithstanding the subsequent slips that dishonour the disciple and
grieve the Master; but Peter, and through him all men, must be clearly
taught that work done for the sake of the reward is not owned in the
kingdom of heaven.[35]

[35] These two are thus united and distinguished by
Draeseke,--"Although the kingdom of God is God's gift in the souls of
men, yet without a worthiness in men it can neither begin nor
continue, neither reveal nor develop itself. And again, although our
worthiness is necessary, we nevertheless obtain the kingdom, not
through the merit of works, but from the fulness of grace, yea, from
that alone. In short, the kingdom demands workers; hirelings it
disdains (das Reich verlangt Arbeiter; Soeldlinge verschmaeht es)....
Thus it stands shut against the hireling, open to the worker. Not as
though the kingdom needed thy labour. He who makes the winds his
messengers and the flames his servants, can do without thy
hand-work, O little man. Thy labour avails not; but that thou
shouldest be a labourer, that thou shouldest have a mind for God,
and through that mind shouldest elevate thy life into a free and
joyful service of him--that avails."--_Vom Reich Gottes_, ii. 40,
42.

Remarkable is the construction of the chain by which this writer
connects the poor unemployed men who were standing idle in the
market-place with the ever-during, ever-increasing satisfaction of
their souls in eternity. So ver