ursuits as much
time as would suffice to attend upon their sovereign; or whether there
was first a determination to resist the sovereign's call, and that they
then introduced the business as an excuse, and fled to it as a welcome
occupation.

It may have been either or both; but in the circumstances I think it was
primarily the latter of the two. In the hearts of those men lay a deep
design against the authority of the king; but it would have involved
serious risk to have flatly refused his reiterated invitation. They had
actually incurred a grave responsibility, and they were disposed to
lighten it somewhat by interposing a plausible excuse. Troubled,
moreover, by the gravity of their step they were fain to seek refuge
from reflection by plunging into the ordinary avocations of life. I
think it was not an excessive zeal for agriculture and trade that really
prevented them from attending on the king that day; but a consciousness
of having conclusively offended the king that drove them for relief into
agriculture and trade. On the spiritual side of the parable, in like
manner, the excessive devotion to business which occupies some men, and
leaves not a shred either of their hearts or lives for Christ, may be in
many cases not a primary affection, but the secondary result of another
and deeper passion. When Christ has often knocked at the door, and the
inhabitant soul within has as often refused to open, there is no longer
peace in the dwelling that has been barred against its Lord. He who has
rejected the merciful offers of a merciful God, does not afterwards sit
at ease; every sound that in moments of solitude falls upon his ear,
seems the footstep of an angry God, returning to inflict deserved
punishment. When one has distinctly heard the Saviour's call, and
deliberately refused to comply with it, he thenceforth experiences a
craving for company and employment. He cannot endure silence or
solitude. When he stands still, he seems to hear the throbbings of his
own conscience terrible as the ticking of the clock in the chamber of
death. To be alone is unendurable, because it is to be with God. To
escape from this fiery furnace, he hastens to plough in his field or
sell in his shop. In such a case, the worldliness, even when it runs to
the greatest excess, is not the primary passion, but a secondary
refuge,--the trees of the garden among which the fallen would fain hide
from the Lord God.

But in some cases the disease m