e I find it is useful for me. But if I take it for a
different object, and suppose that it means to encourage waiting till
the eleventh hour--waiting till we are old before we repent--we find
that we make it only actually to be mischievous to us. And thus we gain
a great piece of knowledge: namely, that the parables of our Lord are
mostly designed to teach, some one particular lesson, with respect to
some one particular fault: and that if we take them generally, as if all
in them was applicable to all persons, whether exposed to that
particular fault or not, we shall absolutely be in danger of deriving
mischief from them instead of good. It is true, that in this particular
parable, the gross wickedness of such an interpretation as I have
mentioned is guarded against even in the story itself; because those who
worked only at the eleventh hour are expressly said to have stood idle
so long only because no man had hired them; their delay, therefore, was
no fault of their own. But even if this circumstance had been left out,
it would have been just the same; because the general rule is, that we
apply to a parable only for its particular lesson, and do not strain it
to any thing else. Had this been well understood, no one would have ever
found so much difficulty in understanding the parable of the
unjust steward.

This is another great step towards the dispelling vagueness, to apply
the particular lesson of each part of Scripture to that state of
knowledge, or feeling, or practice in ourselves, which it was intended
to benefit; to apply it as a lesson to ourselves, not as a general truth
for our neighbours. And the very desire to do this, makes us naturally
look with care to the object of every passage--to see to whom it was
addressed, and on what occasion; for this will often surely guide us to
the point that we want. But in order to do this, we must strive to
clothe the whole in our own common language; to get rid of those
expressions which to us convey the meaning faintly; and to put it into
such others as shall come most strongly home to us. This I have spoken
of on other occasions; and I have so often witnessed the bad effects of
not doing so, that I am sure it may well bear to be noticed again; I
mean the putting such words as "persecution," "the cares and riches of
the world," "the kingdom of God," "confessing Christ," "denying Christ,"
and many others, into a language which to us has more lively reality,
which makes u