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LECTURE XXI.

THE LAST DISCRIMINATION.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus saith unto them, Have ye understood all these things? They say unto him, Yea, Lord.—MATT. xiii. 47-51.

THIS parable seems, at first sight, to be almost identical in meaning and in import with the parable of the tares, but its identity is, in fact, more apparent than real. Each parable has certainly this one central and distinguishing fact, that it is an exhibition of the mixture of saints and sinners, good and bad, tares and wheat, in the outward and visible corporation called the church of Christ. This one fact they have in common, and this one our Lord seems to have been anxious to impress upon his church and people, that indeed the visible church would not be identical with the true church, but would consist of good and bad, tares and wheat. But, notwithstanding this identity in one grand central peculiarity, there is a distinction of great practical value. In the parable of the tares and wheat we have the prohibition clearly announced, that neither apostle, nor minister, nor synod, nor priest, nor anybody else is to root up tares under the mistaken idea of securing a pure church, lest in tearing up the tares they should injure the wheat and we have also

the other truth, embodied in the parable of the tares and wheat, that these should grow and mingle together till the harvest should come. In this our Lord meets the excessive purism, if I may so call it, which will not join a church unless it be a perfect one, which determines to wait till it find a perfect visible church, and so is doomed to wait till the Millennium. Never having joined such a church as can be found below, the prospect is dim and faint indeed that such will be united to that which shall be

in the age to come. But in the drag-net, which is the parable on which I am now about to write, we have the perfect assurance that this separation shall take place. In the first, that is, the parable of the tares and wheat, we have the declaration that men were not to make the separation; in the parable of the drag-net, we have the promise that God will do it. The first parable is designed to stay the hands of the rash; the second is made to comfort the drooping and discouraged hearts of the holy. The first parable was fitted to forbid impatience, and to inculcate forbearance, tenderness, brotherly kindness, charity; believing all, hoping all; yet rejoicing not in iniquity, but rejoicing in the truth; rather erring on the side of supposing that more were Christians than there are, than erring on the side of supposing that fewer were Christians than there seem to be. And this last parable, again, was intended to cheer the hearts of the people of God with this bright hope, that if there should be a hypocrite in the church now, if there should be a loud professor with a very insincere heart now, if there should be much pretension and too little principle now, it will not be so always: a day comes when God, whose prerogative it is, will interpose to burn the tares, and to gather the wheat into his garner; to cast away the bad fish, to collect the good into vessels and then shall the righteous shine forth in the

kingdom of their Father. We thus see with what propriety and beauty each parable is constructed, and how a central and guiding point is always to be kept in view in quoting the parable. Certainly the tendency of both parables, of that of the tares and wheat, as well as that of the good and bad fishes, is to destroy the common idea, that to belong to a visible church is necessarily to belong to the true church ;-that to be baptized is necessarily to be regenerate;-that to be related to a church that holds Christ to be its head, is necessarily to be a member of the body of Christ, and an heir of the kingdom of heaven;and that, in short, whatever prerogatives and attributes Christ asserts to belong to his living, true, redeemed church, ought, as alleged, to belong to any one visible church that men may think to be the best and the purest. Such an idea is the very germ and essence of Popery. The moment that a man comes to believe that there is a church which can speak through its bishops, or its synods, or its priests, or its presbyters, the very mind of Christ, and whose decision is the decision of the Spirit of God, it is something else than consistency which keeps him from saying that the Church of Rome is the mother and mistress of all churches, and that the pope is the vicar of Christ, and the head, under Christ, of the church universal. What does the apostle say? The Lord knoweth them that are his." It is well that we do not always know; if we did, we should perhaps worship some and anathematize others. We are told that there was a Ham in the ark, a Judas among the apostles; we read of a Demas in apostolic days; Esau and Jacob still struggle together in the womb of the visible church of Christ; the tares and the wheat that were in the one parable, and the good and the bad fish that were contained in the net in the other parable, are still mixed up. Therefore it becomes us to make up our minds

that there will be no pure, no perfect church, no church identical with the true spiritual church in this dispensation. And this does not prevent us from seeking the communion of the purest church that we can find; it is perfectly proper to seek to join, not the nearest, but the best-not the oldest, but the most scriptural-not that which men canonize, but that which our own conscience and our own experience tell us are most blessed of God in conveying to our minds the light of truth, to our consciences the peace of God, and to our hearts the hopes of the everlasting gospel. And so when, having sought such a communion as this, we find it, we may not lightly leave it; and if you find that you are not so edified in 1852 as you were in 1851, or that you are not so edified this year as you were last, do not say, as many do, it is the minister's preaching that is so dull, it is his sermons that are so illstudied, and therefore you will not remain longer, you will take a turn in this chapel on the left, or that church on the right. Do you not see how quietly and undoubtingly you assume that the minister is at fault? You take it for granted that it is the minister's sermons, and the minister's study, and the minister's feelings, and the minister's convictions that are all wrong; and very complacently assume that it is impossible that there should be more worldliness in your minds to exclude the power of divine truth, more absorption in the world preventing a heartfelt interest in the gospel; or, which is very often the case, whenever a man falls into some sin which is dear and delightful to him, but which in his conscience he knows to be wrong, he will not remain long in a place where the gospel is most faithfully preached. He must go where he will hear peace, peace without, or there will be no peace at all within. Wherever and whenever the contest begins, at all hazards keep within reach of the truth of God, and, as soon as you

can, get rid of the golden wedge and the Babylonish garment, which alone interferes with your comfort, your happiness, and your peace.

Having noticed the fact, that the visible church is thus composed of good and bad, and that we must not expect, in this dispensation, a perfectly pure church, and yet that we must not forbear to join ourselves to such as we can reach, though we are convinced that many things in it are not so good as we could wish them to be, just as we must not lay aside the weapons which do the work, because they do not do it so perfectly and so rapidly as we could desire, -I now proceed to examine what we read in this parable of the net which was drawn out, and in which fishes were gathered, good and bad. Those who have only seen what is called deep-sea fishing, on the southern coast of England, cannot comprehend the meaning of a drag-net, which is not a net cast over the stern of the boat into the sea, but such nets as you may have seen in salmon rivers, or at the mouth of rivers which fall into a bay, such as the Tweed, the Dee, the Don, and the Spey; these rivers fall into an open bay, and the nets employed are long nets, nearly a quarter of a mile in length; the lower edge is sunk with lead, the upper edge is floated with cork; the fishermen take a sweep out, stretching the net from one point in the shore, and taking a sweep of half or a quarter of a mile to sea, thus going round, and bringing the other end of the net in again to shore, and thus all the fish within its sweep are dragged to shore for the fishermen. This is what is called the drag-net, which drags along the bottom of rivers, so that no fish can escape by getting out below, or leaping over above, and therefore all within the sweep must be drawn ashore. So, says our blessed Lord, it is with the gospel: the great ocean is the world; the