o rest. The species
of criminal which the parable depicts was not numerous,--the crime was
not of daily occurrence. It was neither the practice nor the duty of the
people, after they had toiled all day in their fields, to watch their
work by night, to protect it from possible injury. The expression,
"while men slept," is intended merely to indicate that the evil-doer
took advantage of the darkness to cover his deed: accordingly, in the
interpretation no specific meaning is attached to this feature of the
parable.

In regard to the servants, and their proposal instantly to pull up the
tares, the interpretation is attended with difficulty. With some eminent
ancient expositors I am convinced that, if not exclusively, yet
primarily and chiefly, the servants who offered to make the separation
are the angels. The parable stretches far into both time and space: it
comprehends the world, and the successive dispensations of God there.
Morning stars sang together when they saw beautiful worlds starting into
being at their Maker's word: the same high intelligences must have been
surprised and grieved when they saw God's fairest work marred by sin. It
is like the impulse of beings perfect in holiness, but limited in
knowledge, to offer themselves on the instant as willing instruments to
cast the defilers out. Pleased, doubtless, with their instinctive zeal
for holiness, but comprehending his own purposes better than they, the
Lord declined the proffered ministry. At the same time he intimated that
the separation which the servants suggested was not refused, but only
postponed. His plan required that good and evil, now that evil had
begun, should mingle in the world till the end. At the close of the
dispensation, when the Son of man shall come in his glory, he will give
the commission for a final separation to the angels who shall constitute
his train.

It seems to be generally assumed by modern expositors, that while the
reapers who shall separate the tares from the wheat in harvest are
angels, the servants who offered to weed out the tares while they were
yet green are the human ministers of the visible Church. Archbishop
Trench, for example, says: "These servants are not, as Theophylact
suggests, the angels (they are the reapers, ver. 30); but men, zealous,
indeed, for the Lord's honour, but zealous with the same zeal as
animated those two disciples who would fain have commanded fire to come
down from heaven on the inhospitable