was not ready for them, the labourers before hired must do much of their work ere he could well call in these later ones. But the householder had noted these men, their patient waiting for that employment which did not come, so he goes out again, even at the eleventh hour, when his vineyard is ready for the work which they can do and still finds them waiting. He considers their faithful submission to adverse fortune, their fortitude, their hoping against hope, their constancy in trial, their clinging to the honest wish to earn some bread for their families, even at the last hour of the day, and so he decides to engage them. Still, mindful of the contest about the cost of labour with which the day commenced, the householder determines first to prove them by a close question. "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" The reply was satisfactory. "Because no man hath hired us." Had it been "because no man hath offered us an adequate wage" they would never have been hired. Had they spoken falsely they would never have been hired, but the "goodman of the house" saw in their frank eyes and open brows, in their worn but more desponding faces that their answer was a true one. So he sent them in with the significant assurance, "Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive."

It is not necessary to state how these men went, or how they worked. We can imagine how they flew to the task, we can infer with what ardour and skill they laboured, from the fact that the householder, not even thinking it requisite to explain to his steward why he did so, ordered that observant functionary to pay them first. He clearly wished to mark his sense of the difference between the real earnest work of the latter, and the selfish eye-service of those first called. But he desired to mark it in a more important way still, by giving them an equal wage with their earlier brethren, and to give force to this assertion, it may be added that this wage was a large one. The Roman "denarius" translated penny in the English version of the parable, was a silver coin about sevenpence three farthinge in value, by weight, but as the modern value of all commodities needed for the support and comfort of life, as compared with such a coin is now twelve times greater than when this parable was spoken, this wage was relatively very high.

We are not told what wage the intermediate labourers received, though we may suppose that they received a good wage, and went away satisfied. But the payment of the denarius to the last hired vine dressers roused the cupidity of those first called. They look for more than they bargained for, and as such men always are and will be, they were loud in their complaints at the result of their agreement. They receive a well-merited reproof;—the moral of which is obvious.

The first intention of this parable was to show to the Jews their true position. They, as a church and nation had made religion a mere commercial transaction. They had bargained with their Lord for temporal benefits and national prosperity as the result of obedience to his will. They performed sacred rites, and abstained from outward evils only to obtain an earthly reward. The moral was prophetic. It indicated that though the Jew was first called by the Divine Householder; yet those beyond the pale of Judaism, the Gentiles, the after called;-those who

stood outside in the great market place of the world, waiting to be hired, noble hearts patiently listening to hear the Divine voice and obey it ;unselfish thinkers yearning for a vineyard in which to excercise their fervent energies;—that all these would obtain better rewards, and such a pre-eminence in goodness, as the Jewish convert to christianity even would hardly be likely to attain. This moral is not exhausted even now. The statement that "the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder" pours a flood of light upon the Pagan notion which the Jews had embraced, that the reign of the new king was to be the occasion of a continued luxury and idleness. They expected ease and feasting;—the Lord pictured to them a man rising early going forth doing good, incessantly active, delighting in dealing out justice and mercy to all. What a contrast! Yet how feeble has been the effect of this parable, even on the Christian mind. How much sickly sentiment do we still hear about a future of rest and peace, as if the highest demands of humanity were vistas of nothingness and ease. To hear some people talk now-a-days, one would think they were Persians waiting to be absorbed in celestial fire, or Brahmins sitting mentally cross-legged and contemplative, waiting to be merged into the circle of the great Om; instead of Christians and professing believers in the parables before us.

Now as to the term "eleventh hour conversion" so glibly used by many, the whole tenor of this parable is, to my mind, directly against the popular notion attached to the term. It is no part of my subject to enquire whether death-bed repentance, as it is termed, is or is not allowed in Scripture to be possible; but to assert that there is any foundation for such an idea in the teaching of this parable, is I submit, merely to pervert the plain meaning of Scripture. This may be, and often is done unintentionally, through ignorance or habit, but a mistake of this kind may involve serious and lasting danger. To compare the hardened sinner, who knows his Lord's will and does it not ;-the profligate, who in spite of the Divine calls coming to him in every period of his life, has broken down one by one, every moral and decent restraint; the heavily marching contriver whose slow moving selfishness has gradually petrified every tender feeling within him ;-to compare these to the poor and hungry labourers who had faithfully waited in the market-place, past the time of hiring; the men who had stood there, while the hot sun beat upon them, still not swerving; the men who had still watched even to the eleventh hour, who had slighted no call, but had simply been idle because no man had hired them ;—surely to compare these with those is to display, not a resemblance, but an appalling contrast. The moral of this parable is not for the benefit of the obstinate, the continual breakers of Divine commands, to flatter them with the hope of purchasing heaven at last by a few repentant tears; but it is for the constant in waiting, the resolute in trial, the humble and patient in heart. It is the same teaching with that expressed by the Lord in another passage,- "He that shall endure unto the end,

the same shall be saved." *

ON CUSTOM.

Whether it would be possible or not strictly to define the difference between Custom and Habit, I will not here discuss. Although there are many cases in which either of these words may with equal propriety be used, still a general rule may be laid down that Habit is Custom individualized. The power of Habit is proverbial, and not unfrequently produces a species of instinctive action, entirely separate from any reference to the intellectual faculty. Indeed the adage of an old writer that "man is a bundle of habits," possesses a greater degree of truth than many of us suspect. It might be worth my reader's while quietly to recall in detail the doings of an entire day, and observe how large a proportion of them are habitual. Even then, he will probably fail to recognize as such many actions which could be justly so classed, as it is not until our routine is forcibly interfered with, that we feel the difficulty and annoyance which is caused by the ordering of our work or pleasure in any manner other than that which is usual to us.

The value of so potent a power it is difficult to exaggerate, nor can it be generally said that it is not recognized, for it is too constantly and plainly before us, and each of us is too dependant upon its aid, to permit of our neglecting to do so. Hence, in the education of the young, the formation of Habits of thought as well as of action, has become one of the foremost objects of those who have taken up the work in a careful spirit. But inasmuch as every power is capable of becoming equally a blessing or a curse, in proportion to its potency, so evil habit is perhaps one of the most fatal sunken rocks, on which men make moral shipwreck of their lives. This is so fully and sadly illustrated within the range of every man's observation, that to enlarge upon it would be equally useless and painful.

If however it be true that Habit is Custom individualized, the converse equally holds good that Custom is Habit generalized. But whilst the in-. fluence of Habit cannot fail to force itself upon the attention of every one, the power of Custom though equally potent, and though generally acknowledged in the abstract, continually fails to be appreciated even by those who are most under its sway.

In olden time, when intercourse between mankind was of much more limited extent, and members even of the same nation were broken up into small communities, beyond whose limits the individuals composing such but rarely came into contact with outsiders, peculiarities of every kind became localized into customs possessing a very limited area., Traces of singular local customs are still to be found in every nook and corner of our land, but these are day by day being gradually consigned to their last resting-place in the note book of the antiquary. Let it not be supposed however that this is because custom has lost any of its normal power, it is simply that it has widened its area. And it is to the

danger that lurks in this change, that I desire chiefly to draw attention in this paper. Formerly, when Customs were so diversified within comparatively narrow limits, a man had not to travel far to come into contact with great varieties of people, possessing what were to him originalties both in modes of thought, and in the ways which they ordered their lives. Such intercourse would re-act, leading them to reason and compare, and delivering them from the fallacy, that the habits of the little world within whose limits their existence had hitherto been confined, contained the full revelation of nature in respect to how all mankind ought to live and think. Now, all this is changed; and the chances are that if you travel two or three hundred miles, the first person you come in contact with at the end of your journey, will have on the same cut of coat, and will make to you a much hackneyed remark, on the self-same subject as the last person you conversed with before you started. Nay, even if you dive into a foreign country, unless you go so far as to mix with the old civilization of Asia, or the savage barbarism of African or other aboriginal tribes, you cannot escape from a vast superficial resemblance both in dress and manner of life, especially if your intercourse is confined to the more cultivated classes. I do not say that this is necessarily an evil in itself, but if we recognize, as we must do, the great tendency which exists to take our own habits and customs as nature's standard, and to believe that whatever varies from them is an outrage on her laws, we can hardly fail to see that the chances of our correcting such ideas are removed farther from us, for the very fact that these customs though not universal, spread over so vast an area, seems all the more to justify such an assumption. It is curious, considering the wondrous diversity shown by nature throughout every province of her measureless domain, insomuch that it is impossible to find two leaves of a tree, or two human faces exactly alike, that there should exist such a strong tendency in men to resent any deviation from their own standard of thought and habit. All analogy as well as all experience goes to prove that men's mental physiognomy is as varied as their physical, and it is by encouraging and cultivating rather than by repressing individual talents and proclivities that the greatest gain to mankind may be expected.

A Custom when it has existed for a few generations is speedily invested with a certain degree of sacredness, and then its advocates learn to consider that it is an emanation of that moral law, which all agree, (either innately or through the slow teachings of experience,) is revealed with more or less distinctness to us all. A curious instance illustrating this process is mentioned by Mr. Mill. It seems that the Bombay Parsees were originally natives of Persia, and flying from persecution settled in Western India, where they were admitted to toleration by the Hindoos on condition of their not eating beef. Subsequently the Mahommedans conquered that territory; the Parsees then obtained permission to continue their residence in the country, on the fresh condition that they refrained from pork. What was at first obedience to authority became a second nature, and the Parsees to this day, although of course under English rule, they have perfect liberty of action, and although it is no

part of their religion, continue to abstain both from beef and pork, and look with horror and disgust on those who do otherwise!

There are few things which we are apt to look upon and speak of with more complacency at the present day, than the omnipotent power of public opinion; and without doubt in restraining personal and class selfishness, and preventing gross abuses amongst the governing classes, it gives us an immense advantage which was denied to those times when the non-existence of the Newspaper press in its present wonderful efficiency, prevented that power being exercised and felt. But at the same time, it is quite as well to recognize of what public opinion as now constituted consists. For in point of fact, it is little more or less than a grand exhibition of the power of Custom within the mental realm. Most men would feel insulted if they were told that they did not possess an opinion on whatever subject happened to be uppermost in the public mind; and yet in point of fact, such a statement made to nine men out of ten would be literally true,—if by opinion on any subject is meant, the decision which has been arrived at through mental analysis of its merits. That which they call their opinion is but the parrot-like re-iteration of a cry which they have picked up by contact, either personally or through the press, with other minds. It is a following of the custom of the hour, as often as not the result of feeling and prejudice, rather than of thought. Instances innumerable could be cited to show what I mean. It is more palpable when such opinions are connected with strong feeling, as is ever the case in a time of war. Many of us are old enough to recollect the wild and blatant talk with which our newspapers teemed at the time of the outbreak of the Russian War, and how when Mr. Bright with a noble consistency which did him infinite honour, manfully maintained in the face of a spurious patriotism, his opinion, (which by the bye has since been generally adopted) that the whole affair was a mistake, he was not only abused in the press, and exhibited as a Russian in the cartoons of Punch, but was actually mobbed in the streets of Manchester.

But it is not only where passion is enlisted that epidemics of opinion prevail, although in such cases their virulence is naturally of much greater violence. Twenty years ago, the bugbear of the political economy of the day, was Centralization and Paternal Government, both of which were supposed to be only fit for the half-civilized French. The doings of the last few Sessions of Parliament with its State Education, its State purchase of the Telegraphs, and its complacent talk of the same Paternal State becoming the proprietor of the Railways, would have made the hairs of Jeremy Bentham and his disciples stand on end. Doubtless, both these shades of opinion are extreme, but the point to which I wish to call attention is not to the opinions themselves, but to their temporary universality; to the fact, that none excepting a few eccentric and otherwise tabooed individuals (which frequently means the few who possess a real opinion at all) venture to broach a different opinion during the reign of either while it lasts, although one or the other of them must be radically unsound.