Perhaps the favourite mode of reconciling the Master’s dealings with fundamental principles of equity is to be found in the suggestion, towards which some sentences in Olshausen’s Exposition strongly lean, that the first called laboured so lazily, and the last called so strenuously that (regarding the actual amount of work accomplished) the Master’s arrangements were more equitable than might at first appear. Notwithstanding the apt illustration of this which appears to be offered by the history of St. Paul, who, though the last called, “laboured more abundantly than they all,” the explanation seems to me to miss the whole point of the teaching of the parable, and to proceed upon very low and worldly conceptions of the method of the Divine ways. There is no hint of such a solution in the body of the parable itself; which is a sufficiently grave objection. If this be the key, its existence is carefully suppressed, and the souls that were most sorely perplexed by the appearance of injustice are left wholly ignorant of the truth. Nay, their ignorance is confirmed by the language, or rather by the silence, of the parable. The answer to their protest on the ground that they had “borne the burden and heat of the day” would have been decisive and was ready at hand. But no hint of a justification on this ground is suffered to appear. Their assertion is allowed to pass unanswered, and must be accepted for the purposes of the parable as the truth. Whether they had wrought well or ill, though it may be the main point in other parables, is plainly not the point which is in question here. And in the interpretation of parables we get into endless difficulties, if we, so to speak, travel beyond the record, and consider the details in any other light than as the garniture of the one central idea which the parable is intended to set forth. As far as this parable is concerned, we must accept it as a fact that they had borne the burden and heat of the day; and no explanation of its equity can be entertained which sets that fact at nought. That we may the better understand what it does mean, let us consider:— I. The work of the vineyard to which all were called, and in which the first called bore the burden and heat of the day. II. The reason of the idleness of the husbandmen who at the eleventh hour were called to the work. III. The Lord’s justification of His ways. I. The work of the vineyard.