"For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder," &c. This picture will illustrate the truth which has been declared; the householder represents Christ, the vineyard his kingdom, and the labourers his servants. The main lesson of the parable concerns, not the way of redemption, but the service which the redeemed render to their Lord. The wages of the labourer represent the rewards which Christ confers upon his servants, but this must be taken with certain explanations and limitations, especially these two,--(1.) That the reward is partly a thing now begun, and partly something that is completed in heaven; (2.) That the value of the reward depends essentially on the disposition of heart with which the workman receives it. It is not necessary to determine whether the labourers who were first hired, and who laboured all the day, represent the Jews under the first dispensation, or those in the Christian Church who individually are converted in early youth, and continue in Christ's service throughout a long life, or those who, from special talent, or zeal, or opportunity, do and suffer most for the Lord and his cause. The all-day labourers may represent all these classes, each in turn, and especially the last. We must not understand exclusively by "the first" those who began first in point of time. The term indicates rather those who are first in the sense of being chief or greatest; it points especially to those who were first in rank as having endured the greatest amount of loss, and done the greatest amount of work in Christ's cause. In the parable it is true those who were first sent into the vineyard, in point of time, were chief among the labourers as to the quantity of labour contributed, but the time is only an accident. The matter truly brought into view is not the time, but the quantity of work. Time is here employed simply as a measure of quantity, for it is obviously assumed throughout that all the men performed equal amounts of labour in equal times. It conduces greatly to a clear conception of the whole lesson when you think of the first and last as indicating those who did and suffered most in Christ's cause and those who did and suffered least.