Church, he must also maintain that
the shepherd seeking the lost sheep represents the Lord seeking
sinners through the ministrations of the Church. If the Lord himself
is in both cases equally the seeker, there is no reason in the text
of Scripture, and Dr. Trench suggests none from any other quarter,
why he should be represented as seeking through the ministrations of
the Church in one case and not in the other. The letter of the word
and the nature of the case peremptorily demand that the
qualification regarding the instrumentality of the Church should be
attached to both or to neither. In either case it remains that, in
respect to the person who seeks the lost, these two parables teach
precisely the same lesson.

The house in which the coin is lost means, according to Dr. Trench,
the visible Church: the result is that the Church (invisible)
searches in the Church (visible) for sinners that have been lost
there, and restores them when found to the Church, but whether the
visible or invisible I cannot discover. The Church then calls upon
the angels to rejoice with her over the recovery of the lost. This
exposition seems confused and inconsistent; and it is a dim
mysterious conception of "the Church" that constitutes the
disturbing element.

From the similarity of structure and the studied identity of expression
in the two cases, I gather surely that the persons who seek and find
the lost in those two parables both represent the same Seeker of lost
men, the Lord Jesus Christ. On any other supposition, I cannot find a
spot on which the foundation of a satisfactory exegesis can be laid. The
introduction of the second parable by the particle either ([Greek: e])
in the eighth verse, prepares us to expect, not another subject, but
another illustration of the same subject; whereas, when the Prodigal Son
is introduced in the eleventh verse, the connecting link distinctly
indicates a change of theme.[81]

[81] Nor do I see any force in the minute criticism by which Dr.
Trench endeavours to make out that while the sheep were the
shepherd's property, the money did not belong to the woman. He says,
"I have found my sheep which was lost;" while she says, "I have
found the piece which I had lost;" but these are nothing more than
varieties of expression. The absolute identity of the terms in which
the two cases are introduced, proves that these seemly and slight
variations o