Samaritan village" (Luke ix. 54). I
think the learned author is mistaken here, and that the preponderance of
evidence lies on the other side. The subject is interesting, and will
repay the labour of investigation.

Here two questions, distinct, yet closely connected, constitute the
case: on the answer which may be given to them the decision will turn.
One relates to the persons, and the other to their acts: Are the
"servants" who propose to pull up the tares in summer, and the "reapers"
who are commanded to make the separation in harvest, the same, or
different persons? and is the separation proposed by the servants
substantially the same in kind with that which is ultimately effected by
the reapers, or is it different?

I think the servants and the reapers are substantially identical. The
troop of servants who haunt a rich man's house, and the band of
labourers who reap his patrimonial fields, stand far apart in our land
and our day. Not so, however, in the establishment of a Galilean
householder eighteen hundred years ago. When you take into view the
habits of society at the date and on the scene of the parable, it will
appear certain and obvious that the servants who proposed to weed the
fields in summer were, in part at least, the same persons who would be
sent to reap the fields in autumn. The reapers might be a more numerous
band than the servants who were employed throughout the year, but to a
large extent the constituents must have been the same. In another
parable (Luke xvii. 7-10), a servant, who has been ploughing or feeding
cattle, is obliged, after he returns from the field, to gird himself and
wait on his master at table. This shows conclusively that the division
of labour which obtains among us was unknown then in Galilee. The master
does not, indeed, say to the servants who made the proposal, I will
employ you in harvest to accomplish the separation: the form of
expression is, "I will say to the reapers;" but reapers and servants
were of the self-same class, and in all probability to some extent the
same individuals.

The second question can be more easily answered. The separation which
the reapers ultimately effected is essentially the same with that which
the servants at an earlier period proposed. It is an actual, material,
final separation of the tares from the wheat.

It results that there is no solid ground in the parable for the
assumption that those who proposed to make the separation at an