pherd without a flock. In the exercise of
the same sovereignty through which he chose Abraham at first, he passed
over Abraham's degenerate posterity and called another family. This
family was Abraham's seed, not by natural generation, but in the
regeneration through faith. Of these stones he raised up children to
Abraham, when the natural children of the family had through unbelief
shut themselves out. "Go to the highways:" Christ commanded his
apostles to begin at Jerusalem indeed, but he did not enjoin,--did not
permit them to continue holding out their hands to a disobedient and
gainsaying people; the alternative was embodied in their commission, If
the Jews do not receive you, go to the Gentiles.

It becomes us to stand in awe before these deep things of God: their
fall became our rising. In the channel through which a running stream is
directed upon a mill wheel the same turning of a valve that shuts the
water out of one course throws it into another, that had previously been
dry; thus the Jews by rejecting the counsel of God shut themselves out,
and at the same moment opened a way whereby mercy might flow to us who
were afar off.

The servants went out and did as they were bidden. Peter went to the
house of Cornelius, and in that lane of the world's great city found a
whole household willing to follow him to the feast his royal master had
prepared. Soon thereafter Paul and Barnabas, Silas, Titus, Timothy, and
others traversed the continents of Europe and Asia, bringing multitudes
of neglected outcasts into the presence and the favour of the king.

"They brought in good and bad." This is a cardinal point in the method
of divine mercy, and therefore it is articulately inserted in the
picture. The scene is taken from life in the world; the conceptions
accordingly, and the phraseology correspond with the circumstances. In
society at large, and in every section of society such as the rich or
the poor, two classes are found distinguished by their moral character,
and in ordinary language designated the good and the bad. The thought
and the style of ordinary life are adopted in the parable, and every
reader understands easily what is meant. Every great community has its
virtuous poor and its vicious poor. The invitations of the Gospel come
to fallen human kind, and to all without respect either of persons or of
characters. Apart from Christ and prior to regeneration the distinction
between bad and good is only an eart