The three species[71] of thorns that grew up and choked the word in this instance, are fair specimens of their class--fair samples from the heap. These and such as these slay their thousands still in the Christian Church. At this point, however, it is of very great importance to observe that all the transactions which are represented in the parable as having come between a sinner and the Saviour, are in themselves lawful; to overlook this would be to miss half the value of the lesson. In point of fact acts and habits of positive vice keep many back from the Gospel; but it is not with these cases that the parable deals--it is not to these persons that the Lord is here addressing his reproof. Everything in its own place and time; the lesson here is not, "A drunkard shall not inherit the kingdom," but "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" When the material of the temptation is lawful and honourable the temptation is less suspected, and the tempted is more easily thrown off his guard. The field and the oxen must be bought and used; the affections of the family must be cherished; but woe to us if we permit these seemly plants to grow so rank that the soul's life shall be overlaid beneath their weight! [71] I do not set much value on the elaborate and minute discussions which some expositors have raised regarding the distinct and specific significance of the several excuses. It is enough for me that they point to the possessions and the pleasures of life,--the possessions being distinguished into two kinds, the field and oxen, corresponding to the farm and the merchandise of the cognate parable. The mission of the servants successively to the streets and lanes of the city, and to the highways and hedges, with the urgent invitation to poor labourers and homeless beggars, the maimed, the halt, and the blind, is a vivid picture, given in prophecy, of what the Gospel of Christ does and will do in the world till the end of time. When many, and these the most wretched, are brought in redeemed and sanctified, the Lord is not satisfied; yet there is room, and the servants must go forth again to new, and if possible, more needy objects, with new, and if possible, more urgent appeals. "Whosoever will, let him come." It is thus that the numbers are filled up in the kingdom of God; but let it be well observed that to be in a spiritually wretched state does not confer a favour or imply safety. These men were saved, not because they were spiritually very low, but although they were spiritually very low: they were saved, although the chief of sinners, because Christ invited them, and they came at his call. The more moral, and more privileged, who were first invited, would have been as welcome and as safe if they had come. THE LOST SHEEP, THE LOST COIN, AND THE PRODIGAL SON. LUKE xv.