resistible law; it is one transaction represented successively
on two sides. The representations are different, but both are true. In
the fallen, sin is both active and passive. The sinful select their own
course and go astray in the exercise of a self-determining power; they
also gravitate to evil in virtue of an inborn corruption, which acts
like a law in their members. In connection with these two sides or
features of sin, the two doctrines opposite and yet not contrary, the
sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man, meet and embrace each
other in the work of redemption. To the disease of sin in both its
phases,--as an active choice and an innate tendency,--the divine
physician has prepared an antidote; He brings the wanderer home, and
lifts the fallen up.

Compare once more the lost sheep and the lost coin: in both the sinful
are lost, and in both the Saviour saves; but there we see a spontaneous
error, and here the effect of inherited corruption. These, when kept
together like the right and left sides of a living man, constitute, in
this matter, the whole truth: to tear them asunder is to kill both.

The number of the coins is appropriately fixed at ten, while the number
of sheep was a hundred. Ten sheep would not have required or repaid the
care of a shepherd; and a hundred pieces of silver would not, in
ordinary circumstances, have been at one time in the hands of a working
woman. The difference of numbers is fully accounted for by the natural
circumstances, and no benefit is obtained by squeezing from it a
distinct spiritual signification. The numbers, I think, belong to the
adjuncts of the material pictures, and they constitute only elements of
disturbance when they are brought into the interpretation.

The lessons which some draw from the preciousness of the metal on the
one hand, and the image of the king which it bears on the other,
although attractive and useful in themselves, are not relevant here. It
is better to forego for the time even precious morsels of instruction,
than to obtain them by doing violence to those exquisite
analogies which the parables present.

XXIV.

THE PRODIGAL SON.

"And he said, A certain man had two sons; and the younger of them said
to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to
me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the
younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far
country,