ate watchers, while they pitied their sisters, were afraid to part
with any portion of their own stores, lest they should be left in the
same hapless condition ere the procession should close: "Go to them that
sell, and buy for yourselves." Alas, this was now the only alternative!
Away went those foolish virgins at the dead of night on the hopeless
errand of buying oil for immediate use in the shops of the neighbouring
town. The folly, however, lay not in this latest act; this was now their
only resource. The foolish deed was done in the day time, and before the
cry arose, Behold the bridegroom cometh.

As soon as the foolish five had gone, the procession came up, and they
that were ready fell into their places. The new accession, each bearing
a flaming torch aloft, increased the grandeur of the scene. When the
company reached the house, they all entered with the bridegroom, and the
door was shut. Some time afterwards the five who had gone away in search
of oil, returned and pleaded for admission; but they pleaded in vain.
Within the house the glad festival went forward; but those who came too
late were not admitted.

* * * * *

The story at its close is indebted for its deep pathos, not to anything
inherent in itself, but to the sublime lesson which it conveys. The
Lord's great parable, like the Lord's great apostle, is "weak and
contemptible" in its bodily presence; but the letters in which it writes
its meaning are like his, "weighty and powerful." A few country girls
arriving too late for a marriage, and being therefore excluded from the
festival, is not in itself a great event: but I know not any words in
human language that teach a more piercing lesson than the conclusion of
this similitude. The frame is constructed of common materials; the
sublimity lies in the spiritual truth which that frame sustains. This
conception, like that of the hen gathering her chickens under her wing,
seems so common and so common-place, that we would not have ventured in
dignified discourse to employ it; in the hands of Jesus the similitude
becomes at once tender and terrible in the highest degree. At his word
the world sprang from nothing; we need not be surprised to find that
under his touch small things become great.

I think no symbolic character should be attributed to the virgins, as
such, in the interpretation of the parable; it is when they take their
lamps and go forth to meet the bridegroom