God our Father; now the faith of Christians is
tested in one way, and then in another. At one time they are called
actively to do a great work; and at another time passively to bear a
great burden. The work required of one disciple is a mission to the dark
places of the earth; and the work required of another is to bear
patiently many years of pain and weariness, in his own home, it may be
on his own bed. By both alike the kingdom of Christ may be advanced:
from both equally when they are bruised,--the one by great effort, and
the other by a heavy weight,--the odour of a holy temper may be diffused
all around.

We are not masters; we are servants. The Lord appoints to each his
place, and his work.

* * * * *

The lesson now passes into the parable. When he had pointed out how
great is God's claim, and how large faith's performance might become in
the life of a disciple, Jesus warns them, on the other side, that the
greatest possible, the greatest conceivable attainment in the direction
of a believing obedience, implies absolutely no independent merit in
man; obedience, although it reached the utmost point of perfection,
would still leave God indebted to man for nothing, and man indebted to
God for all.

"But which of you having a servant ploughing or feeding cattle." The
state of society which supplies the ground-work of this parable is in
many respects different from that which prevails in modern Europe. It is
especially important here to notice the difference in these two
features:--

1. It is a simple pastoral life that constitutes the basis of this
picture. The principle of division of labour exists there in its lowest
stages of development. It is assumed as a common and proper thing to
employ a shepherd or a ploughman in serving his master at table--a
practice entirely unknown among us. 2. The servitude in the instance
supposed was not a voluntary limited engagement, but a species of
slavery: the master's control was much more absolute and complete than
it is among us. The servant's toil might be, and probably in many cases
actually was, on the whole, not heavier than that to which our hired
servants are subjected; but the measure of the labour, both as to its
endurance and its severity, depended there on the master's will rather
than on the servant's freedom. The master, under the species of relation
which then largely prevailed, could demand of his servant on occasion an
amo