ur or recompense; the question is
simply concerning the bringing in of other husbandmen, the Gentile
nations, at the last hour, to share in full measure in all that the
Jewish workmen had won by their long and hot day's toil.

Perhaps the favourite mode of reconciling the Master's dealings with
fundamental principles of equity is to be found in the suggestion,
towards which some sentences in Olshausen's Exposition strongly lean,
that the first called laboured so lazily, and the last called so
strenuously that (regarding the actual amount of work accomplished) the
Master's arrangements were more equitable than might at first appear.
Notwithstanding the apt illustration of this which appears to be offered
by the history of St. Paul, who, though the last called, "laboured more
abundantly than they all," the explanation seems to me to miss the whole
point of the teaching of the parable, and to proceed upon very low and
worldly conceptions of the method of the Divine ways. There is no hint
of such a solution in the body of the parable itself; which is a
sufficiently grave objection. If this be the key, its existence is
carefully suppressed, and the souls that were most sorely perplexed by
the appearance of injustice are left wholly ignorant of the truth. Nay,
their ignorance is confirmed by the language, or rather by the silence,
of the parable. The answer to their protest on the ground that they had
"borne the burden and heat of the day" would have been decisive and was
ready at hand. But no hint of a justification on this ground is suffered
to appear. Their assertion is allowed to pass unanswered, and must be
accepted for the purposes of the parable as the truth. Whether they had
wrought well or ill, though it may be the main point in other parables,
is plainly not the point which is in question here. And in the
interpretation of parables we get into endless difficulties, if we, so
to speak, travel beyond the record, and consider the details in any
other light than as the garniture of the one central idea which the
parable is intended to set forth. As far as this parable is concerned,
we must accept it as a fact that they had borne the burden and heat of
the day; and no explanation of its equity can be entertained which sets
that fact at nought.

That we may the better understand what it does mean, let us consider:--

I. The work of the vineyard to which all were called, and in which the
first called bore the burden and