These words appear at first sight to set us very decisively face to face with the sovereignty of God, in its sternest and most naked form—affirming its right to distribute its gifts and payments at its pleasure, and refusing to consider the question of equity when urged by the creature’s sharp complaint. “Take that thine is, and go thy way.” “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” “I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.” There, it is said, and with apparent truth, is Sovereignty—pure, naked Sovereignty. The “I will” of God seems to be the sole explanation which is vouchsafed of His dispensations and decrees. But this view of the matter has always seemed to me deeply unsatisfactory. Equity is a strong instinctive principle, which God Himself has established in the judgment seat of the human conscience; and God never beats down with the bare assertion of an irresistible Sovereignty the soul that is perplexed about the equity of His ways. It is equity, pure, celestial equity, which reveals itself to those who will search for it in this parable; equity to the poor souls who had been standing all the day idle in the market-place, because no man had called them to the vineyard; equity to the labourers who had borne the burden and heat of the day, and had made the dignity and culture of the Lord’s husbandmen their own. It is an equity which invites the closest criticism from those who will search it thoroughly, and which reveals to the searchers deep vital truths about man and about God.