the trustee was designed by the former trust, because some part of his character was still to be ascertained by its results: none is designed by the latter, because the object of the experiment has been satisfactorily attained. The abilities of the trustees were known, prior even to the commission of their former trusts their personal principles might be open to doubt. The result of their trial has been an equal assurance as to both. The first trust, then, was partially a mark of confidence, but not without some mixture of distrust: the second is a mark of approbation, founded upon reasons which leave no room for doubt. The former was necessarily temporary; the latter, for ought which appears to the contrary, must be supposed perpetual.

Nor is it less evident that the situation of the unprofitable servant also, convicted by the result of an adequate and impartial trial, to be unworthy of the confidence until then reposed in him, and much more of any further trust; deprived of the privilege, which however undeserving of it he had hitherto enjoyed; banished with disgrace from his master's presence, and the society of his fellow-servants; ejected from the light within, into the darkness without, and from the abodes of joy and happiness, into the region of wailing and the gnashing of the teeth; is not only worse than before, but from the time that his sentence is carried into effect, is desperate and irremediable; with no prospect of change, no hope of amelioration; with no possibility of further trial, no chance of atoning by the exertions of the future for the omissions of the past; with no prorogation of his sentence, however brief, to prevent its immediate effects, no intimation of forgive

ness, however obscure or however distant-nothing in the present, or the future appearance of his case, to temper the bitterness of instant evil, to relieve the apprehension of worse to come, or to console the despondency of hopeless despair.

On all these accounts we may infer, that the œconomy of retribution, to describe and represent which we have seen to be the chief business and final end of the parable, is strictly the œconomy of such a process, and of such effects, as those of the final judgment. But the question still recurs, who are to be supposed the proper subjects of it? In answer to which we may reply, that if the principal personage in the parabolic representation has been shewn to be Christ himself, in the specific relation of the Head of his household, the church; it can require no argument to prove that the subordinate personages in the same representation must be Christians, in the relation which answers to his, as the members of that household, of which he is the Head. But Christians, even in this capacity, are divisible into the two comprehensive classes of the ministers of religion and the people; and it would not follow that because the parable might apply to the case of Christians as such in general, it may not apply to one of the classes of Christians in particular.

I am aware, indeed, that no part of the New Testament is commonly supposed to supply a more apposite and graphic delineation of the state of probation to which Christians in general, or even moral and responsible agents, whether Christians or not, are subject in the present life, than this parable of the talents; that, in confirmation or illustration of

such a doctrine as that of the moral discipline and responsibility of all rational and accountable human beings, none would be more readily or confidently appealed to, than this parable. The very use of the word talent, to express any thing for which men are accountable in the way of moral probation, familiar as it is, in that sense, in the writings of Christian moralists, or even in common discourse, was no doubt originally derived from the presumed authority of this parable: for there is so little connection between the idea of a sum of money, and that of any natural or acquired capacity, which as the subject-matter of a moral trust, and as a means of moral probation, may be used or abused, at the discretion of its possessor, according or contrary to the purposes of its destination; that without the sanction of some precedent, (and such precedent as this parable appears to furnish,) it would be impossible to account for the translation of the term in a corresponding sense. Yet the difficulties which immediately present themselves, if we attempt to explain the parable on this principle, by supposing it applicable to the doctrine of the moral discipline and probation of Christians, without any special restriction either as to the subjects of that probation, or to the instance of the trust, in the administration of which it resides-are neither few nor inconsiderable; as the following examples of them will shew.

First, whereas the master, before his departure, is represented as calling his servants together-giving them their respective commissions-and then going away himself; if the master is Jesus Christ, if the servants are Christians in general, and the time of

his departure is the time of the Ascension, before which no such thing as the Christian church was yet in being—and we are to discover in the fact and nature of that discipline and probation to which Christians are subject as Christians, something analogous to the above, in the order of proceedings, before it came into being, (and I contend that the importance of this preliminary part of the parable to the sequel, requires we should,) where shall we find it, in any thing preliminary to the first institution of the Christian scheme? in any thing transacted before the commencement of that state of moral probation, which began to be with the Christian church? in any thing specially designed beforehand for the beginning, continuance, and final effect of each individual Christian's share in the economy of that probation-as much as the act of the master, in assigning his proper task to each of his servants, before his departure, was intended for the benefit of his individual responsibility in the scheme of probation, to be transacted during his absence?

Again, if what was distributed among the servants, as the subject of the trust, was originally the master's, and yet could be divided among them; and consistently with that supposition, if what was divided among the servants, yet being originally the master's, might again be restored to him-and as held meanwhile in trust, was to be restored at last, not only the same in kind, but greater in degree; what have Christians in general, as the subjectmatter of a common probation, and as communicated to them in their proper capacity of moral beings, accountable not on any principles but on those of the Gospel-which will answer to this description?

as something originally derived from the proper Master of Christians, and ultimately to be restored to him; as belonging to that Master, even while in the hands of his servants; as held for a time as their own, but to be used and applied as his; as capable of improvement by good use, and of diminution by ill use; as rendered, when rendered again, though the same in kind, yet necessarily different in degree, and not merely as it was received, but either greater or less-and so far either better or worsethan before.

Again, the subject-matter of the trust in the parable, being represented by one and the same thing; whatever description of blessings the talents may be supposed to denote, whether spiritual or temporal; considered as the ordinary means and instruments of the ordinary moral probation of Christians, they must denote blessings the same in kind with respect to all the subjects of the probation in common. We cannot suppose the same parabolic image of a talent to stand for one thing, as the appointed means and instrument of the moral probation of one Christian, and for another, as the appointed means and instrument of that of another Christian. Now what blessing, or species of blessing, whether secular or spiritual, as the proper subject-matter of their moral probation—or what means and instruments available in the way of that probation-do Christians as such, receive and enjoy, indiscriminately, no matter in what proportion-to make it the instance and subject-matter of their proper probation unto all? What do all Christians possess, left to their use and discretion, as identical in its own nature as the talents possessed by the servants in the parable?