in this parable. It would be evidently a great error to take the parables as evidence on either side of debated matters of which they do not treat, for example, we learn from other parts of scripture that all men, all good men, have once been bad, and that all bad men may become good if they choose. In the 2nd chap. of the Epistle to the Ephesians, the apostle, speaking of those who are redeemed by grace, and will finally be crowned with glory, says in the 3rd verse, they were by nature the children of wrath even as others;" and in the 1st chap. of the book of Proverbs, from the 20th to the 23rd verse, we find it said of those who shall be finally condemned, that the Holy Spirit speaks to them and says "Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets; she crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates; in the city she uttereth her words saying, how long ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning; and fools hate knowledge? turn you at my reproof; be hold I will pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you." Now here are two most important doctrines, which are not contained in these two most instructive parables,, and which on the other hand would seem to be contradicted by them, if we were to apply any other principle of interpretation to the parables than this, that they teach the point of comparison. Our blessed Saviour expounds the leading idea of this parable when he says to his disciples "follow me and I will make you fishers of men." The parable, therefore, teaches us the appointment of a ministry to gather men into the Christian Church, and the two great parties of such in gathering, are those who finally will be found just; and bad men who have their place tem porarily in the kingdom of heaven, but whose end is the furnace of fire. Let us now consider this parable as teaching us:- III, and lastly. The application of these two principles to our present conduct. Dear brethren, these are awful words of our blessed Redeemer, "The angels shall sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire." They are words that perhaps are applicable to some souls here present; they are words that express the danger of every soul born into this world. Let us hear them with a solemnized heart, let us hear them with prayerful spirits, that if it be indeed the case, that a bad man may become good, by the power of that Spirit; that the offered grace of God's Spirit is given to every human being, we may have the transforming power of that grace amongst us, not only enlightening the eyes of our understanding, but renewing the affections of our hearts, and enabling us to receive the truth in the love of it, and to bring forth fruit to our own eternal blessedness and glory. I. We have first then to consider how men are to be gathered into the Church: they are to be so gathered extraordinarily by means of missionary preaching, and ordinarily by means of infant baptism. These are the two appointed means which Christ himself has given and which we may compare to the net that gathers fish of every kind. In both of these cases the bringing into the church is indiscriminate. The scriptures give us no warrant for searching into the state of those who are admitted to the hearing of the preached Gospel, and may be drawn into the church, or of those who are admitted by infant baptism to membership in the Church of Christ. Indeed, the indiscriminate character is that especially which our Lord teaches us in the parable, he declares that the net gathered of every kind; all the fish that came in the way of the net were alike gathered within its folds; were alike kept within its folds; and were alike drawn to the shore. The leading purpose of the parable is to teach us indiscriminateness until that fearful time of discrimination come, when "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." Now if we come to look at the actual gathering of the Church, as set before us in the Scripture, we shall find this principle of indiscriminateness acted upon everywhere. Upon the day of Pentecost, when the promised effusion of the Spirit came down, and the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, rested upon the waiting disciples of Christ, St. Peter preached to men whose hands were still red with the Saviour's blood, whose consciences were still uncleansed from the guilt of that awful crime; he preached to them all alike, and when they enquired of him "what shall we do?" Peter spake to them all alike: "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." calls upon them for individual repentance, he calls upon them for individual submission to baptism; he promised to each one of them individually, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and when three thousand men stood forward and presented themselves for baptism there was no discrimination made between one and another; they were all alike admitted by that gospel net into the kingdom of He 66 heaven. We read in the 41st verse of the same (2nd) chap. of the Acts of Apostles, "Then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls." Now lest we should suppose that this word gladly means of necessity conversion of heart, we have the very same idea given to us by our blessed Saviour in the 13th verse of the 8th chap. of St. Luke's Gospel, where he himself declares that it is not conversion of heart, that is, not necessarily. They on the rock are they which when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away." Indeed the subsequent history of the Jewish Church but too plainly shows us that this indiscriminate reception of three thousand souls; this glad reception by them all of the word of God, was not the renewal of heart of those men. We see plainly upon the face of the narrative, that there was no discrimination of cha racter, no test to which they were put; but simply this, the gospel was preached, they came forward and declared their readiness to be baptized, they were received, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. Let us come to another case,that of the eunuch, in the 37th verse of the 8th chap. of the same book of Acts. When the eunuch said, "What doth hinder me to be baptized?" Philip said, "If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." Individually he required that confession from him. But do we read of any test of the sincerity of that confession?of any length of time that the eunuch was put under a process of probation? No such thing. At that moment they went down both together into the 66 water. Philip baptized, and so admitted him into the kingdom of heaven. If we turn again to the same book of Acts, we shall find in the 16th chap., two cases in which two households were admitted into the church; admitted the very day on which they made their profession of faith. We read in the 15th verse, And when she (Lydia) was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, if ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there." In the 31st verse we read of the jailor of Philippi, that when he made his profession of faith in the Lord Jesus, he was that very night received. And they said, " Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." "And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes, and was baptized, he and all his, straightway." I need not multiply examples, therefore, of the importance of this principle laid down by our blessed Saviour in this parable, that he intended the Gospel net to gather of every kind who should remain so gathered together until the last day, when the day of separation should come. The neglect of this principle led to very serious evils in the early Church. There was that unscriptural principle of catechumens,-men were kept for a long space of time under catechetical instruction before they were baptized, exactly contrary to the principle laid down here. They were permitted to meet in the assemblies of the Christian Church. They were a sort of men, if I may so say, half-way Christians; not heathens, for they were going to public worship, not Christians, for they were not baptized. We read of no such separate body in the Scriptures. The evils that sprang from the system were very great. There was the first general council of Nice, called together by an un |