corresponding portion of His subsequent key to its meaning: "In the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them : but gather the wheat into My barn. ... The harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather. . . ."

"For the harvest of the earth is ripe "-or "over-ripe " according to the Revised Version, or "dried up" given there marginally as the literal Greek. Thus long hath God waited! So of old He spake unto Abram: "In the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." Meanwhile pious souls on both sides of the veil (it may be) call out of the deep: "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the Living God: when shall I come and appear before God?"

That is a very wonderful rule (if it may be deemed a rule) which sweetly ordering both nature and grace, oftentimes for the moment appears to postpone the righteous to the wicked: so that the ninety-nine are left in the wilderness for the sake of one, and that one no more after all than contingently recoverable. "If so be that he find it. . . .”

Imperfectly good people may feel such postponement a keen trial; whether it befall them immediately by direct Providences, or mediately by (for instance) ruinous lifelong family sacrifices to save a vicious child. St. James has left an encouraging exhortation and a warning suited to such unfinished Christians: "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned behold, the Judge standeth before the door." And the spirit if not the letter of the Parable of the Prodigal Son invites them with the elder son to triumph over self: "And he was angry, and would not go in therefore came his father out, and intreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living

with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad : for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found."

"And the earth was reaped"-at last. Not as yet do we discern the unearthly reapers, the flying sickle; but we are forewarned of their imminence. If then by watching as well as by prayer we desire to make ready against the moment of their actual inevitable arrival, let us strive to rise above our natural and high above our present level; for the farthest view is from the loftiest standpoint. Doves at windows command a much wider horizon than moles on hillocks: whilst a mole who takes his ease or grubs inside a hillock, what chance has he of seeing?

17. And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle.

18. And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe..

At first sight there seems a striking likeness, on further observation a marked distinction, between that reaping of the earth and this vintage of the clusters of her vine. In both cases the authoritative judicial sentence is pronounced as from the Temple; but the angel of the harvest invokes One Who "sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in" : while the Angel of the vintage, apparently a minister of the Altar, calls upon a fellow Angel (for so the sequence of verses at least suggests), who sickle in hand has issued from the Temple, to execute his office.

Such a resemblance harmonizing with such a difference. suggests that though harvest and vintage are congruous figures, they yet are not here employed simply and absolutely as equivalents; whence arises a further suggestion that the corn corresponds with the general human race, the vine with the Church. A like distinction, but in reverse order, seems at least conjecturable between the Servants in the Parable of the Talents and the Sheep and Goats in the Prophecy of the Doom (see St. Matt. xxv.. 14—46).

Our Lord expressly claimed the Vine as a figure of the Church made one with and in Himself: "I am the Vine, ye are the branches." So in the Old Testament the Jewish Church, so far as comported with that dispensation, appears under the same symbol: "Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt.. Look down from heaven, and behold, and visit. this vine":"Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto Me?"

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When our Lord employs the figure of corn it is (at least sometimes) without any restrictive stamp of unity: "The harvest truly is plenteous-"; "Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest." Even when He deigns to symbolize Himself by "a corn of wheat," the characteristic stated is not simple expansion, but multiplication: "If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." And though (blessed be His Holy Name) this much fruit is self-evidently His death-bought Church, it yet remains true that one obvious. lesson from the corn is neither exclusion nor unity, but likeness. The function of each branch is to abide in the vine: the function of each grain in the ear is to do like the parent seed.

To return to our text, if I may thus consider it. He Who reaps the corn reaps it not from the Temple, but seated at large in the open firmament of heaven; that heaven which canopies the whole earth, the evil and the good, the just and the unjust. "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." Every man, woman, child, must undergo the judgment: whence it ensues that every one, whatever the issue, was created susceptible of salvation; less than this St. Paul in the universal brotherhood of his zealous heart does surely not imply: "The righteous judgment of God; Who will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in welldoing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; but glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God. For as many as have sinned without law

shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; . . . in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ." And perhaps I may without rashness notice how in this Apocalyptic vision the last word concerning earth's harvest is that it " was reaped"; nothing further do we here read of wheat or tares, barn or fire; reminding us of St. Paul's words to his Corinthian converts : "What have I to do to judge them also that are without? ... Them that are without God judgeth."

As to the vine, wide is the difference. The armed messenger of judgment comes forth from the Temple; and the exhorting Angel from as it were the very heart of the temple, the Altar if not the Fire of the Altar. From the days of Isaiah the elect vine was forewarned of the inevitable future reckoning, each intermediate judgment prefiguring that final judgment which is to be without appeal: "My Well-Beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: and He fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein : and He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. . . . What could have been done more to My vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to My vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down and I will lay it waste." And in the passage of the Apocalypse under consideration, now that the final judgment is come (for so it seems to be), I suppose we may parallel the clusters of fully ripe grapes with the "wild grapes of the former provocation; observing that at the utmost they apparently rank no higher than barren branches, both alike. being doomed to severance from the root of their only life. Degenerate clusters, they have left their wine which cheereth God and man, and have made themselves like the vine of God's enemies whose "vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter : their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps."

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"Fully ripe."-Not (so far as either the translated text or the margin informs me) either dried up or over ripe: such excess befell the corn, as if this had been made to wait on the vine. Even so the world is tolerated until the number of the elect be fulfilled.

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19. And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

20. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.

As to the harvest we are told nothing further than that it was reaped; but plainly are we told what befalls the condemned clusters of this awful vine. So are all Christians warned of what awaits unworthy Christians: "If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the Blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite to the Spirit of grace? For we know Him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto Me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge His people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God."

These "clusters are men, for they yield blood, and their winepress is the wrath of God. Such are they who once trod under foot the Son of God, that very Saviour Who for their sakes trod the winepress alone: now are they ground as it were to powder under His wrath Whom they outraged. They despised and rejected His saving Blood: now must their own be as dung on the face of the field. They went not forth unto Him without the camp bearing His reproach: now are they themselves crushed without the city. They did despite to the Spirit of grace; and now there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins. "Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe : come get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great."

God's righteous vengeance, even when He maketh a way to His indignation and spareth not souls from death, is proportioned, due, not in excess: the horses are bridled, the area is circumscribed.