earlier
date represent men, while those who were employed to accomplish it
afterwards represent angels; and that the separation which the Lord
prohibited was spiritual, while that which he permitted was physical.
In regard to the separation which he sanctioned, the Lord interprets
what the operation is, and who are the operators; whereas, in regard to
the separation at an earlier date proposed, he gives no interpretation.
Instead of beginning by giving my own assumption as to the meaning of
the uninterpreted part, I go first to the part that is interpreted to my
hand, and from the point which is illuminated I get light thrown back on
the point which was left in the shade. The reapers, I know, are the
angels; and the servants were the same, or at least the same class of
ministers, proposing to accomplish the work at an earlier date. The
separation which was actually effected in the harvest represents, we
know, the personal and local as well as moral and spiritual separation
of the good and the evil; thence I conclude that the separation which
the same ministers, or the same class of ministers, had previously
offered to make was personal and local as well as moral and spiritual.
The proposed and the accepted separations were precisely the same in
kind and degree; they differed only in their dates: while, therefore,
one of the two is interpreted to my hand, I have no right to attach to
the other an interpretation totally different. The assumption that the
separation which the Lord prohibited was only a spiritual sentence,
while the separation which he permitted was actual, local, complete, and
final, derives countenance neither from the parable nor its
interpretation.

It appears to me, then, that the Lord's direct and immediate design in
this parable is, not to prescribe the conduct of his disciples in regard
to the conflict between good and evil in the world, but to explain his
own. Knowing that their Master possessed all power in heaven and in
earth, it was natural that Christians of the first age should expect an
immediate paradise. Nothing was more necessary, for the support of
their faith in subsequent trials, than distinct warnings from the Lord,
that even to his own people the world would remain a wilderness.
Accordingly, both in plain terms and by symbols, he faithfully,
frequently intimated that in the world they should have tribulation, but
that all should be set right at last. On both sides they needed, and on