ernal, the Judge of the living
and the dead, our feeling would be mightily to resist the terrible
conclusion of this parable, which cuts all and every hope clean
away, and leaves not an If or a But behind, nor any other possible
interpretation. But he speaks; and before his words every mouth is
silent in fear and adoration. He writes into our breast, with a
glowing iron pen, the warning word--therefore watch, &c.

"Short is life; fleeting is time; quick is death; long is eternity.
Therefore what thou desirest to do, do it quickly."--_Gleichnisse_.

After the parable is finished the marrow of its meaning is given in one
short sentence by the Lord: "Watch therefore, for ye know neither the
day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." Let us take heed here,
lest after all the pains we have bestowed on this scripture, we should
miss the portion for ourselves with which it is charged. This parable
was not spoken for the purpose of kindling an agony of repentance in the
hour of death. It describes a sudden call, and an eager upstarting, and
a fruitless effort, and a right prayer uttered too late, and final
rejection, and a fearful doom,--but it reveals this dreadful close of a
life, in order to show us what we should be and do before the close of
life comes on. The end of the foolish five is unveiled in order that we
may be wise unto salvation in the beginning of our days. The lighthouse
reared on a sunken reef flings its lurid glare far through a stormy air
and over a stormy sea, not to teach the mariner how to act with vigour
when he is among the breakers, but to warn him back, so that he may
never fall among the breakers at all. Even so, the end of the lost is
revealed in the word of God, not to urge us to utter a very loud cry
when the door is shut, but to compel us to enter now while the door is
open.

"Behold I stand at the door and knock." His word to-day runs, Soul,
soul, open for me: if that tender plea is echoed back from your closed
heart in a beseeching Saviour's face to-day, your cry, "Lord, Lord, open
to me" will come back to you in empty echoes from a closed heaven.

The foolish five came to the door only a little too late, but it was not
a little damage that they suffered thereby. In the matter of fleeing to
take refuge in Christ, to be late by a little is the loss of all.

XIV.

THE ENTRUSTED TALENTS.

"For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country,