ure of
the preceding parable, an agriculturist is introduced who cultivates on
a large scale. Group after group of labourers are hired wholesale, and
sent successively into the vineyard; in the evening a steward pays each
labourer under the general instructions of his chief. There in a few
strokes you have the picture of an ancient Israelitish magnate, owning a
broad estate and affording employment to a multitude of dependants. In
the parable which is now under review, we have a picture equally
distinct, but representing another class of countrymen. This is neither
on the one hand a great proprietor, nor on the other a landless
labourer. Here is a man who has a stake in the country, a portion of
ground of size sufficient to provide for the wants of his family; but
his farm cannot afford employment and remuneration to a gang of
labourers; the work must be all done by the owner himself and his
children. This is a desirable condition of life, and the class who
occupy it are valuable to society. There, in the middle, they are
sheltered from many dangers to which their countrymen on either extreme
of social condition are exposed. Woe to the country in which there are
only two classes,--the greatest and the smallest,--the large proprietors
and the floating sea of labourers. The strong fixed few and the feeble
surging many are to each other reciprocally dangerous. Give me a country
dotted all over with homesteads, where father and mother, sons and
daughters, till their own ground and eat the fruit of their own labour.

"To the first he said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard." The first
was none other than the one whom the father first met that morning. To
have intimated whether he was the elder or the younger, would have
introduced a disturbing element, and obscured the meaning of the lesson.
There is no question here between elder and younger, or between Jews and
Gentiles. At all events, if those who maintained a place within the
theocracy are distinguished from those who stood without its pale, we
must conceive of the Father approaching on this occasion from without
towards the centre, coming in contact first with those who were excluded
as aliens, and afterwards reaching the inner circle, who counted
themselves the seed of Abraham.

This son, rebellious in heart, and not trained to cover his disobedience
under a smooth profession, meets his father's command with a rude, blunt
refusal. I think the humble husbandman had re