rmation are left
in the shade, but in as far as the story is necessary to unfold and
perpetuate the spiritual lesson, it is accompanied with no doubt and
with very little difficulty.

1. The wedding garment was something conspicuous and distinctive. As
soon as the king entered the room he detected the single man who wanted
it in a great company of guests.

2. It was not a necessary part of a man's clothing, but rather a
significant badge of his loyalty. The primary use of the symbol was
neither to keep the wearer warm nor to make him elegant, but to manifest
his faithfulness.

3. The want of it was, and was understood to be, a decisive mark of
disloyalty. The man who came to the feast without a wedding-garment
endorsed substantially the act of those who had proudly refused to
comply with the king's invitation. It was the same heart-disobedience
accompanied by a hypocrisy that would fain commit the sin and yet escape
the consequences.

4. The question whether a wedding-garment was proffered to every guest
as he entered, out of the royal store, is attended with some difficulty.
The preponderance of probability seems to lie with those who think that
these decorations were freely distributed in the vestibule to every
entrant, in some such way as certain badges are sometimes given to every
one of a wedding party amongst ourselves in the present day. But the
point is not of primary importance. From what is tacitly assumed in the
narrative it may be held as demonstrated alternatively that either the
king gave every guest the necessary garment, or it was such that every
guest, even the poorest, could on the shortest warning easily obtain it
for himself. Two silences become the two witnesses out of whose mouths
this conclusion is established,--the silence of the king as to the
grounds of his sentence, and the silence of the culprit when judgment
was pronounced. The judge does not give any reason why sentence should
be executed, and the criminal does not give any reason why it should
not. On both sides it is confessed and silently assumed that the guest
had not, but might have had, the wedding-garment on. If there had been
any hardship in the case the king would have vindicated his own
procedure, and the condemned guest would not have remained speechless
when he heard his doom.[47]

[47] "It should be assumed that the guests were not instantly
hurried into the festal hall, but that an opportunity was afforded
to them