rate, but to spread the net, to gather all we can within reach of the kingdom of heaven.

And then our Lord asks, at the conclusion of these seven parables, whether his hearers understood these things? The question implies that the meaning was designed to be understood; and the question implies also that they are intelligible to men, if they will apply themselves to it. What was the Bible written for? To be read. What is it read for? To be understood. And what is the way to understand it? To get new light to read it in, and a new heart to read it with. The Bible is, on the whole, the plainest and most intelligible book that ever was written, and from that arises the influence which it has had, wherever it has been read and understood. And I do believe that if men would give to the Bible one-tenth of the trouble and care that they give to the reading of old manuscripts, and the interpretation of ancient authors, they would understand thoroughly the mind of God; yet to enable us savingly to understand it, we need Him who inspired the Bible to teach us. A scholar may understand the Bible, as he may understand any other book, but the Christian feels besides a response in his heart to all that the Bible says. In order to understand the Bible, we do not need a new Bible, but new hearts; we do not need God to add a commentary to what he has written, but to give us new and clearer vision, that looking at it in the light of his countenance, we may see in it the features of our Father, and in ourselves the simplicity, the confidence, and the peace of children. Very soon its pages will be spread out in everlasting sunshine, the map and the land it delineates lying before us.

360

LECTURE XXII.

THE MIDNIGHT CRY.

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not. Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.-MATT. XXV. 1-13.

EVERY one who is at all conversant with the peculiar language used in Scripture, will understand the nature and the reference of the parable, which is here so beautifully told. Christ is repeatedly represented, especially in the Apocalypse, as well as in Isaiah, and in the Gospels themselves, as the Bridegroom; and his church as the waiting, redeemed, and adopted bride. The picture which is here given, is drawn, of course, from an Eastern and an ancient marriage. Such marriages were always celebrated in the evening, or at night; and the practice was for the bridegroom, accompanied by his friends, or, as they are called in the gospel, "the friends of the bridegroom," to go to the house of the bride, and bring her, accompanied by her friends, in pomp, and majesty, and glory, home. Some of

her friends accompanied her from her own house, while others waited at a convenient place, in order to join the procession, and add to its splendour and to their own happiness. The ten virgins here mentioned, are not those that accompanied the bride from her own house, but those who were waiting at some convenient, central place, watching till the procession should emerge from below the horizon and approach, when they would fall in and join it, and be admitted to the festival then celebrated, with the bridegroom and the bride, and their common or mutual friends.

It is also very important to notice, that no one figure in Scripture exhausts the meaning of divine and spiritual things. It is plain, that the bride is properly Christ's redeemed church, and the five wise virgins would seem in this parable to be distinct personages, but really and truly they are a portion, if I may use the expression, of the bride, or the redeemed, holy, adopted company, who are making ready for the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ; and it is only the necessity of the thing, or the poverty of human speech, and the inability of the human mind to grasp two or three ideas at once, that renders it necessary that there should be this apparent division.

These ancient marriages, as I have mentioned, were celebrated at night, and lamps, or, as it should rather be translated, "torches," were necessarily carried. There seems at first a sort of difficulty here, because if these were lamps or hollow vessels, like the old Roman clay lamps, they must have had oil to burn at all; but the truth is, they were not so; they were torches, which were composed of linen, or lint, or other substance, which of itself burned, but required to be supplied from another. vessel with oil in order to make the burning bright and permanent. Hence it is said that some took their lamps, and took no oil with them; but in the 4th verse it is said,

that the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps; showing that the oil was in another vessel, and not in the lamp itself. Thus, if we suppose that they were torches, they would burn for five or ten minutes without any oil at all, but unless supplied with oil from the lamp that accompanied them, they would soon go out. We can then understand some of the torches expiring just when they were wanted, and the others burning because fed with the means of burning-namely, oil.

The names applied to these virgins are frequently used in Scripture to describe what Christians should be. In 2 Cor. xi. 2, the apostle uses this image to describe the people of God, when he says, "For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy; for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ"-one separated from all subordinate earthly and inferior attachments, and devoted with the whole heart and soul to one, even to Christ: not those who are so in the light of the Church of Rome; for I need not say it is perfectly possible to be a Romish nun and not to be a Christian virgin; it is perfectly possible to be mechanically separated from the world, and to be morally plunged in the very depths of all its sympathies, its cares, its passions, its prejudices, and its anxieties. The purity is in the affections, the separation is in the heart; the devotion to Christ is not by dwelling in cloisters, but by being in the world, and yet not of it; by discharging manfully all its duties, but having our heart and our treasure with Christ, where our treasure alone should be.

The number of the virgins is stated to be ten. The reason of this number being given is probably this: It was a law in the ancient Mischnas, and Gemaras, and regulations of the Jews, that wherever there were ten Jews, there a synagogue should be built; and this explains very beau

tifully the condescending mercy in the remark of our Lord, "Wheresoever [not, as in the old law, ten Jews are met together, there shall be a synagogue, but wheresoever] two or three are met together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." As the imagery is Jewish, the number ten is Jewish also.

Having made these preliminary explanations on the structure and the imagery of the parable, let us endeavour to draw from it the lessons which it seems so well fitted to teach.

First of all we perceive that all the ten expected the bridegroom; all the ten professed the same creed, joined in the same communion, constituted, to the outward eye, the same consecrated, devoted, and holy company; but we read that they were distinguished in the sight of Godand they were shown to be distinct in the evolution of their history-into two contrasting classes; outwardly the same, inwardly perfectly separate. The first class were wise, and the second foolish. We have an analogous use

of these words in the reference to the two men-the wise man that built his house upon the rock, and the foolish man that built his house upon the sand. They are the wise, who seek first the kingdom of God and his rightcousness, that all other things may be added; and they are the foolish, who seek other things, and miss both them and the kingdom of God and his righteousness too.

Yet this is not a distinction of the head, but a distinction of the heart; it is not that the one was deficient in intellect, and the other abounded in it; but that the one had a deficiency which was moral and spiritual, and the other an excellency which was spiritual, permanent, and saving. The Church of Rome in commenting upon this parable alleges, that the deficiency of the foolish virgins was that they had faith without works, and that this was