ptures or elsewhere we should
find a banquet denominated a marriage feast, while from the
circumstances it appeared that no marriage had taken place, we should
experience no difficulty in explaining the apparent incongruity. But in
this case there is no reason for adopting the exceptional, and the
strongest reason for retaining what is confessedly the ordinary and
natural signification of the term. The conception of the Redeemer as the
bridegroom, and his redeemed people as the bride, lies too deep in
Scripture and protrudes too frequently from its surface to leave any
doubt concerning the allusion in the parable. The feast, introduced into
the story for the sake of its spiritual significance, is the marriage
supper of the king's son.

The king sent forth his servants, not on this occasion to give the first
invitation, but to warn those who had been previously invited that the
time had come, and the preparations been completed. It is obviously
assumed, and analogies are not wanting to justify the assumption, that
those whom the king desired to honour were informed of that desire
before the day of the feast, and that another message was sent to each,
after everything was ready, requesting his immediate attendance in the
palace of the king. This feature of the transaction is not explained or
defended in the narrative; it is silently taken for granted as at least
sufficiently common to be well understood.[44]

[44] I have witnessed a process closely analogous, in a small
detached island of the Shetland group in which the message sent was
an invitation, not figurative but literal, to come and hear the word
of the kingdom. It had been previously intimated to the islanders
that a minister of the Gospel from the south would preach to them on
the occasion of his visit to the neighbouring mainland, as the
largest island of the group is styled. When the minister and his
friends succeeded at length in crossing the Channel, several
children were dispatched as messengers in different directions to
inform the people that public worship would immediately begin. In a
very short time a congregation was assembled consisting of the whole
population of the island.

This peculiarity of the invitation is important in connection with the
severity of the punishment which was subsequently inflicted on the
recusants. They did not repudiate the invitation when it was first
addressed to them. By retaining it, and enjoyin