If the Jews were called, and the Pagans were left sad and idle in the streets, the evenfall shall adjust the balance, the evening of earth’s life, the morning of the everlasting day. Idle and sad, I say. When you are next at South Kensington Museum, place yourself before the cartoon of “Paul preaching at Athens.” Mark the foremost in the group of pagan hearers; he bears in his sad wistful countenance the whole tale of Gentile waiting, longing, hoping, disappointment, despondency, and despair. Few preachers can preach such a sermon as utters itself mutely from that man’s eyes and lips. This parable is Christ’s answer to the mute appeal: “No man hath hired thee, poor outcast! the day spent, the soul lost! Come in, at the last hour, come in. These have wrought in a noble service the long day through. The sweat of manly toil is on their brow, the joy of a work well done is in their hearts. Come in; the sun still lacks some hours of setting. Bend thy soul to the task, put thy heart into the labour of the hour, and the same meed shall be thine. Even as unto this first, will I give unto thee; come in.” 9. On a wider scale the parable is Christ’s assurance, that through all outward inequalities of gift, endowment, opportunity, position, prospect, which jar this jangled world, there is a sublime equity ruling which will right all wrongs, adjust all balances, and square all issues with pure celestial justice at last. “_No man hath hired us._” How much does this explain of the bitterness and misery with which the world is filled! Cross purposes, cross callings, cross relationships, cross necessities, cross issues of life! Men with power in them for a service which is never asked of them; tied down to a desk or a counter, it may be, while they feel within them the stirrings of a power to guide the coursers of the sun. Men bound in a home which has no beauty for them, no love; while beyond there is a vision of the Eden which might be, if bonds could be unbound and bound afresh. Some overflowing with fatherly or motherly tenderness, in a barren home. Some shrinking from the prattle of infant voices, yet with stuff in them of noble texture, shut up to a nursery through the prime of their days. Some longing, pining, panting for a work they love, bound to a work they loathe. Some with a genial, generous, royal nature, wrestling with the serpents of care and penury their long life through. “This is a mad world, my masters;” “the times are out of joint;” it is all out of joint everywhen and everywhere! “No man hath hired us” to the work which we are fit for; a glorious wealth of being, of power, is left to “fust in us unused.”