rms of their answers. As birds of the same species build
their nests of the same material and the same form, without deliberation
or concert; so the carnal mind, being in its own nature enmity against
God, produces, wherever it operates, substantially the same fruits. In
an alienated heart there is an intense unwillingness to be or to abide
near to God; and there is, consequently, great fecundity in the
conception and production of partition walls to shield the conscience
from the glances of his holiness.

The three species[71] of thorns that grew up and choked the word in this
instance, are fair specimens of their class--fair samples from the heap.
These and such as these slay their thousands still in the Christian
Church. At this point, however, it is of very great importance to
observe that all the transactions which are represented in the parable
as having come between a sinner and the Saviour, are in themselves
lawful; to overlook this would be to miss half the value of the lesson.
In point of fact acts and habits of positive vice keep many back from
the Gospel; but it is not with these cases that the parable deals--it is
not to these persons that the Lord is here addressing his reproof.
Everything in its own place and time; the lesson here is not, "A
drunkard shall not inherit the kingdom," but "How shall we escape if we
neglect so great salvation?" When the material of the temptation is
lawful and honourable the temptation is less suspected, and the tempted
is more easily thrown off his guard. The field and the oxen must be
bought and used; the affections of the family must be cherished; but woe
to us if we permit these seemly plants to grow so rank that the soul's
life shall be overlaid beneath their weight!

[71] I do not set much value on the elaborate and minute discussions
which some expositors have raised regarding the distinct and
specific significance of the several excuses. It is enough for me
that they point to the possessions and the pleasures of life,--the
possessions being distinguished into two kinds, the field and oxen,
corresponding to the farm and the merchandise of the cognate
parable.

The mission of the servants successively to the streets and lanes of the
city, and to the highways and hedges, with the urgent invitation to poor
labourers and homeless beggars, the maimed, the halt, and the blind, is
a vivid picture, given in prophecy, of what the Gospel of Christ does
and will