this reply: probably he had received as fair promises
from the same quarter before, and seen them broken. At all events, this
young man's fair word was a whited sepulchre; he did not obey his
father. Whether he fell in with trivial companions on his way to the
vineyard, and was induced to go with them in another direction, or
thought the day too hot and postponed the labour till the morrow, I know
not; but he said, and did not. It was profession without practice. The
tender vine-shoots might trail on the ground for him till their
fruit-buds were blackened; he would not put himself to the trouble of
tying them up to the stakes, although the food of the family should be
imperilled by his neglect.

Now comes the sharp question, "Whether of them twain did the will of his
father?" The answer is all too easy. The light is stronger than is
comfortable for those owl-eyed Pharisees, who were prowling about like
night-birds on the scent of their prey. The sudden glance of this
sunbeam dazzles and confounds them. In utter helplessness, they confess
the truth that condemns themselves; they say unto him "The first."[40]

[40] At an earlier stage of the same interview, when a question
regarding the ministry of the Baptist was addressed to them, fearing
the consequences which an answer might involve, they had sought
shelter under the plea of ignorance. As they gained nothing by their
duplicity on that occasion, they may have been unwilling to try the
same policy again; and, accordingly, they give frankly the obvious
answers to the questions that resulted both from this and the
succeeding parable.

In the first example the Lord represents chief sinners repenting; and in
the second, the form of godliness without its power. The publicans and
harlots, who had forsaken their sins and followed the Saviour, sat for
the first picture; the chief priests and elders, who concealed their
thirst for innocent blood under a mantle of long prayers and broad
phylacteries, sat for the second.

Let us look first to the two distinct and opposite answers, and next to
the two distinct and opposite acts.

_The answers._--That of the first son, "I will not," was evil, and only
evil. It is of first-rate practical importance to make this plain and
prominent. Looking to the son in the story, we see clearly that the
answer was outrageously wicked: it was an evil word flowing from its
native spring in an evil heart. Looking next to the class