been the original purpose of the Almighty in planting the Church upon earth, and whatever may have been his intention as to its course from generation to generation, it is distinctly asserted, "You are to allow the two classes to grow together till the harvest. You are not to be discerners of spirits, lest you pull up by the roots that which you may consider to be zizan, but which is really wheat. Let them grow together till the harvest, and then I, who order all things, will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them into bundles, in order that afterwards they may be burnt.

According to the metaphor, the bundles of weed, and couch, and things that are taken out of the wheat field are not burnt immediately, but they are removed, laid aside in a convenient place, and reserved for the proper time for burning them. In the gathering of the harvest, the housing of the wheat is the main object, and for this purpose the weeds are first separated. "Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be at the end of this dispensation." "At the end of the age," says our Lord, "the Son of man shall send forth his angels"-those ministers of his who do his pleasure, those agents by

which he works providentially-and thus providentially working they shall gather "out of his kingdom"-"all things that offend"-all scandals, or occasions of offence, "and them which do iniquity" there being a distinction between the offences and the persons which do iniquity-and they shall be "cast into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." Praised be God that we can turn to the contrast, "Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father;" that is, when the kingdom of the Father is fully established. "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." Spirit of the living God! give ears to hear, and let us hear now.

Having thus rapidly drawn attention to the general view of this parable, we will endeavour more definedly to dwell upon two principal divisions of the subject we have referred to. We will consider, first, the corruption of the church. It is not for us, even for a moment, to ponder over the difference between God's original purpose, and the manner in which it seems to have been impeded. A time will come when He shall justify Himself, and be clear when he is judged; but in the meanwhile we must perceive from this parable that the intention of the Lord was that the church should contain nothing but the children of the kingdom. Consider what that purpose is. Here is a sinner,

ignorant of the truth as it is in Jesus, brought by divine grace out of that ignorance into light; the whole current of his feelings and affections turned into another channel, and pledged to the glory of God, and to live so as to manifest before the world that he is one of the people of the living God. We are permitted to go on maturing and growing in grace, under the power of the Divine Spirit. Step by step the overcoming of evil is manifested, gradually conforming the sinner to the image of the Lord Jesus. We are still hindered by this body of humiliation, this vile body that binds us to earth; but the time will come when we shall be loosed from this humiliation, and when being raised in the likeness of Jesus, with a body of glory like unto his, we shall shine as the sun and the stars in the firmament. The brightness of the glory that shall be revealed shall be even the glory of the kingdom which is to be administered by those very persons thus educated in grace for the exercises of the kingdom of glory. This is the Church.

Then, on the other hand, consider Satan trying to mar this great end. His great object is to keep man from God,-until the time when the kingdom of grace was set up by the Incarnation and Atonement of the Son of God, by his dying, and rising again, his ascending to heaven, and sending down

the Spirit to open the bright dispensation of the Gospel,-until that time darkness brooded over the earth. But when that glorious dispensation opened, Satan saw a few men raised up first of all, a handful,—twelve,—a hundred and twenty,—three thousand, until at last a powerful body began to arise. How that body must have shone in Jerusalem! How the Jews whose eyes were holden must have been surprised to see the change that took place in those individuals!

When Satan observed this, he was determined to infuse into this body false members, and to put before them something that might cause them to stumble thus exciting the feeling that is pourtrayed in the parable, when the servants of the householder say: "Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in the field? How then has it tares?" How was this to be accomplished? A Christian, one of the children of the kingdom, is a child of Adam; and there are other children of the same Adam, who have the same natural feelings and passions that have produced in him the actions of devotion, that are beautiful in Christians. If Satan, when he sees these children of Adam so marvellously transformed, as in the case of Peter, and John, and others, can mingle with them some one-an Ananias, a Sapphira, who would assume an appearance like theirs-if he could only by that

means make that which looks life act death, make that which represents truth really infuse falsehood, then he might mar this great, new, and wonderful work that began on the day of Pentecost.

"If

Consider how this could have been done? What was it that made the difference in John, in Peter, in Andrew? What was it that made the difference in all the three thousand? How was it that man after man, and woman after woman, was converted to the truth as it is in Christ Jesus? any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." It was the Holy Ghost. It was the Spirit of God Himself-He who fills all in all-He who must operate in each of us. As the natural spirit animates and acts upon the body of man, so the Holy Ghost comes into the body and reanimates the spirit that animates the body, and influencing that spirit controls it, and draws it into conformity with his will, and makes the man a new man, born of the spirit, feelings, objects, and desires. kingdom. But "if any man

with new passions, This is a child of the

have not the Spirit

Now when a man

of Christ, he is none of his." is thus re-animated, thus born again, thus made to be a new creature,-for "if any man is in Christ he is a new creature," what are the external actings of this new life within him? When God made Adam he made him to worship, he made