thereof, after a manner at present inexplicable, and perhaps inconceivable.

Under these circumstances, it seems only a necessary inference, that the case of the individual guest, who was found destitute of this particular qualification for admission to the feast, and whom we concluded to be the representative of a class-was intended to apply to the case of all those among professing believers-who notwithstanding that there is no other name given under heaven, whereby men can be saved, but the name of Jesus Christ; nor any means of admission to the marriage feast of the Lamb, without the marriage garment proper for such an occasion—yet purposely neglect, or wilfully overlook this only method of salvation; foolishly hoping, or presumptuously trusting, that they shall still be entitled to acceptance for the sake of some merit of their own, independent of faith in a crucified Saviour. For the offence of this guest was due to no unavoidable necessity, no venial imprudence, no excusable oversight, which might have defended, or palliated it. It was no sin of ignorance or of omission; but a wilful act of commission. He knew that he was expected to appear in such a garment, and yet he had ventured into the guest-chamber without one: he knew it to be necessary in every other instance, and yet he had imagined it would be overlooked in his own: it had no doubt been offered to him, as well as to the rest, yet he had declined to receive it as if superfluous-or to wear it, as not indispensable. All this seems to point, in the class of guests of which he is the representative, to that portion of the members of the visible church, who, however distinguished in other respects, yet

agree in this, that they do not choose to be saved after the manner of God's appointment, but will still be trusting to some device or imagination of their own, as just as effectual for the same purpose, and just as likely to succeed.

The ministers or attendants, whose instrumentality was alluded to, in executing the sentence of exclusion upon the reprobate guest; who were seen to be distinct from the servants employed in the collection of guests, yet to discharge an office closely connected with the celebration of the feast; it will now be perceived, must denote the angels; whose personal attendance upon our Lord Jesus Christ, at the time of his return to judgment, is uniformly mentioned in every description of that event, or allusion to it, which occurs in scripture; and whose presence, it is also implied, is not designed to be that of idle spectators, but of those who will have a special part and duty to discharge, in carrying into execution the different personal results of such an œconomy as that of the final judgment, to their different personal subjects.

Lastly, the outer darkness, into which the reprobate guest is described to be ejected, is not more opposed, in its primary sense, to the joy and festivity which must be conceived to reign in the guestchamber of a banquet, celebrated at night—as contrasted with the darkness, the gloominess, the solitude, and melancholy, which at the same time prevail without its precincts; than it is in its concealed import, to the state of reprobation in which the result of their final trial must leave the merely nominal members of the visible church of Christ

as compared with their condition, whom the same event will leave in possession of the inestimable privilege of standing in the same relation to the invisible, as before to the visible church, and of partaking in that capacity, of their share in the common happiness of guests at the marriage supper of the Lamb. The weeping and gnashing of teeth, those symptoms of disappointment, rage, or despair, which are supposed to be the personal acts of such as are condemned to that state of exclusion, in contradistinction to those who are permitted to remain in the enjoyment of the festivity within-may be consequently the proper acts of persons in their situation, and naturally to be expected as the first expression of their feelings, under the circumstances of the case; yet in comparison of the extreme curse and malediction, which we may presume to be destined for those, who labour under the sentence of a perpetual exclusion from the presence of God, and the enjoyment of happiness-even this thrusting into the outer darkness can be but the beginning of sorrow, and the first indications of pain and horror, produced by the consciousness of their situation, can be but the forebodings of wrath to come; and not more the effect of the absence of present good, than of the anticipation of future evil '.

If the above explanation of the parable of the weddinggarment is correct, it may justly be regarded as one of the most profound and mystical, which has yet come under our observation. Considered as a prophetical delineation of the future, it is not unmixedly so; but partly historical, partly prophetical, the historical being subservient to the prophetical part. It is historical, down to the time of the second mission of the servants to the first order of the guests-answering to the mission of the

apostles of Christianity to the Jews; prophetical thenceforward to the end. As prophetical, it is even now in the course of its fulfilment; the order to bring in the guests of the second class, having been long since given, indeed, and long since begun to be executed, but not yet being completed. From the first conception to the final consummation of the feast-that is, from the first conception to the final consummation of the scheme of human salvation-the time embraced by it is from an eternity a parte post, to an eternity a parte ante: for there never was a time when the Christian scheme was not contemplated in the Divine mind, and there never will be a time when the effects of that scheme will cease to be felt.

Though I have made no mention in the preceding exposition, of the millenary dispensation, yet the reader must doubtless be aware, from vol. i. 147. and also from the exposition given of the kindred parable of the great supper, that this is one of the parables, which in the opinion of the author of this work are to be referred to that dispensation, and will find their fulfilment underneath it. With this reference, he will of course understand that the judgment alluded to, as adumbrated by the review of the guests in the parable, is the judgment consequent on the return of our Lord to his personal reign on earth, and the first resurrection; in the œconomy and effects of which no class of moral and responsible agents will be concerned, but those, who, whether Jews or Gentiles, have been from time to time the members of the visible church, in its state of probation on earth. This circumstance may serve to explain in a manner not yet pointed out, that part of the parable, which supposes the review of the guests to take place in the guest-chamber itself, immediately before they must be conceived to sit down to meat; for the guest-chamber, on that supposition, may answer to Judæa, just as the nuptial festivity does, to the millenary kingdom established under the Messiah in that country; and it is an ancient tradition of the church, that Christ will return to judgment to that part of the earth whence he departed at his ascent into heaven. I know not, whether the same circumstance of the millenary kingdom's being to be established in some sense or other, in Judæa, as contradistinguished to the rest of the earth, may not explain the allusion to the outer darkness, in its first and proper sense-after a more obvious and

intelligible manner, than on any other principle. Let it only be supposed at least, that some parts of the earth will be excluded from the limits of Messiah's kingdom, or from the visible enjoyment of his presence; and we assign an outer darkness in opposition to the light within, and a proper state of abode for the reprobates in opposition to the elect, even during the millenary dispensation, and as coincident with it while it lasts. But this is too mysterious a subject, to speak positively upon it.

The stated usage of the language of scriptural allegory, by which the union between Christ and his true church, in the present state of its probation, is so regularly represented as that of parties affianced, but not yet married to each other, and in its future state of retribution, as the connection of the marriage state itself cannot be traced further back than the Song of Solomon; though the observations of St. Paul, Ephes. v. 22-32, on the mystical import of the rite of marriage, justify the inference that it must have been contemplated and typified under the institution of marriage, from the first.

Though the agency both of the prophets of the old dispensation, and of the apostles of the new, each as standing in the same relation to the master of the feast, and each as discharging the same office to the first order of his guests, denoting the Jews, is so distinctly mentioned in the parable, that of our Lord is not; though he too discharged an office, analogous to that of the prophets before him, and preparatory to that of the apostles after him, for and among the same people, and in the same quality of the servant, apostle, or messenger of his Father. But the propriety of this omission in the present instance is evident; for our Lord himself is that son of the king whose wedding-festivity gives occasion to all that is done in behalf of the guests; this wedding is the union between him and his church; and while the character and relation of the bridegroom in that mystical union, are sustained by Christ, the character and relation of the servants, who take the prominent part in the provision of guests to do honour to the feast, are those of the bridegroom's friend, which might be sustained by the prophets and by the apostles, but could not with propriety be ascribed to the bridegroom himself.

As the two parables which we have just considered, were delivered consecutively; so, if we make allowance for the differ