his Saviour, for, after all, he is but "an
unprofitable servant, having done no more than it was his duty to do;"
but he has much comfortable proof that his Christian faith has not
been a mere name; and he is able to take up the same language with the
apostle, and to say, with a measure of the same confidence, "I have
fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith;
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the
Lord the righteous Judge shall give me at that day." This then is one
of those who, to borrow the phrase in the parable, may be said to have
"borne the burden and heat of the day."

There is another class of persons who may now be spoken of as entering
into the vineyard of Christ at a somewhat later hour; at the age, we
will suppose, of _twenty-five or thirty_. These have lost an hour
indeed; they have idled away one precious season of life. Alas, it is
also to be feared, that during the heat and self-confidence of youth,
they have done much evil, as well as neglected to do good. Perhaps it
has also happened that they have already formed some rash connection,
and established themselves on some irreligious plan; but now they
repent; they break through all difficulties; they turn away from
the path in which they had set out in life, and they turn into
the vineyard of Christ. They become humble, diligent, and useful
Christians; for even those also give a good part at least of their
health and strength to the cause of their Saviour, and with grief and
shame at having been thus far idle, they become fellow-laborers with
those happier persons already spoken of.

But let us come to a class of persons who repent somewhat later still;
I mean at the age of _forty or fifty_. How affecting is the condition
of such persons when it is well considered. They now discover that
they have been all their lives living, as it were, to no purpose; that
the whole of these forty or fifty years has been idly thrown away, or
if spent in labor, it has been mere labor in vain. For even though
they may have been diligent, yet they have been merely diligent in
doing their own will, and not the will of God; they have been working
in their own vineyard, and not in the vineyard of Christ; they have
been year after year pushing their own fortune, building up their own
credit, exalting their own consequence, indulging their own ease,
following their own pleasure, caring about their own interest, or
f