ulchre, and counting his own righteousness filthy rags, flees to
Christ as his righteousness, he is instantly accepted in the beloved.

If I could be admitted, in the body or out of the body, to a vision of
the saints in rest, I would like to creep near the spot where two saved
sinners chance to meet,--the man who wrote this narrative of Christ's
ministry, and the man who preached Christ to the Gentiles. I would fain
listen for an hour to the conversation of Matthew the publican and Saul
the Pharisee when they meet in the mansions of the Father's house. Their
loving argument, I could imagine, would sometimes run high. Matthew will
contend that the grace of their common Lord has been most conspicuously
glorified in his own redemption, "for," he pleads, "I was all evil and
had nothing good, I had neither inside purity nor outside whitening. I
had neither the seemly profession without nor the holy heart within. I
was altogether vile; and in me therefore is the grace of God glorified
most." Paul, on the other side, will contend, with his keen intellect
perfect at last, that he was the chief sinner, and that consequently in
his redemption a more decisive testimony is given to the abundance of
the Saviour's grace. After describing his own hardness and blindness and
unbelief, he will add, as the crowning sin of man, the crowning glory of
God,--While I was thus the chief of sinners, I gave myself out as one of
the greatest of saints.

It may be hard to tell whether of the two mountains is the more
elevated; but one thing is clear,--both are covered by the flood. The
blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us,--the profane and the
self-righteous alike,--cleanseth us from all sin.

XI.

THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN.

"Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a
vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it,
and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far
country: and when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his
servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of
it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed
another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than
the first: and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent
unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the
husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the
hei