spects these two,--this and the unjust judge,--are the most
wonderful and most precious of all the parables. The rest present such
views of divine grace as may be shadowed forth by the ordinary
manifestations of human character and action,--such as a shepherd
bringing back his sheep, or a sower casting his seed into the ground:
but these two go sheer down through all that lies on the surface of
human history--down through all the upper and more ordinary grades of
human experience, and penetrate into the lower, darker, meaner things at
the bottom, in order to find a longer line wherewith to measure out
greater lengths and breadths of God's compassion; as the shadow in the
lake must needs be deepest where the heavens which it represents are
highest.

I know nothing more amazing, in all these lessons which Christ gave
about the kingdom of grace, than the lesson which these two pictures
teach about prayer. It is the same lesson that is embodied in one of the
most memorable and mysterious of all the Old Testament facts--Jacob's
wrestling with the Angel. Sweet to the Angel of the Covenant was the
persistent struggle of the believing man; and sweet to that same Lord
to-day is the pressure which an eager suppliant applies to his heart and
his hand. In all the Bible you will not find a word that expresses
greater loathing than that which tells us how God regards the Laodiceans
who asked as if they cared not whether they obtained or not: "Because
thou art lukewarm, and art neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee
out of my mouth." The Lord loves to be pressed; let us therefore press,
assured by his own word that the Hearer of prayer never takes urgency
ill.

XIX.

THE RICH FOOL.

"And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich
man brought forth plentifully: and he thought within himself,
saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my
fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and
build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.
And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for
many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said
unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee:
then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he
that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward
God."--LUKE xii. 16-21.

While Jesus was, in