Spiritual breadth.
The parable presents the gospel as a sacred feast prepared by the Divine Lord for the hungering hearts of men. The invitation is declined by one and another, who have inclinations for other and lower good than that which is thus provided. Hence the measures taken to supply their room. The text suggests—
I. THE LARGENESS OF GOD'S LOVING PURPOSE, God wills that his house *' shall be filled." This house of his grace is built on a large scale; in it are "many mansions," many rooms. The magnitude of it answers to the greatness of his power and to the boundlessness of his love. The number of the ultimately redeemed will be vast indeed. To this point:
1. The hopes of all holy and generous souls.
2. The terms of predictive Scripture.
3. The attributes of the wise, strong, benignant Father of men.
4. The duration of the redemptive scheme.
5. The character of the redemptive work—the Incarnation, the sorrow, the shame, the death, of the Son of God.
God's loving purpose is to gather a multitude which no man can number into the heavenly home, into the eternal mansions,
II. THE FULNESS OF THE DIVINE COMMISSION. Those who represent the Lord of the feast are to "go into the highways and hedges, and compel men to come in." No people are to be excluded; no efforts are to be spared; no "stone is to be left unturned "to win men to the feast. There is to be a sacred compulsion used rather than the efforts of the "servants" should be unsuccessful. Here is no warrant for persecution. No two things can conceivably be further apart from one another than the use of violence and the spirit of Christ. To employ cruelty in order to compel men into Christianity is worse than a senseless solecism; it is a flagrant and guilty contradiction. There are other and nobler ways of "compelling men to come in" to the kingdom and the Church of Christ—ways which are not discordant but harmonious with the spirit and the teaching of the Lord of love. They are such as these:
1. The constant and irresistible beauty of our daily life. The "waters" of spiritual loveliness "wear" the hardest stones of spiritual obduracy.
2. Occasional magnanimity of Christian conduct. Men are often compelled to bow down in admiration and even in reverence before some deed of noble self-sacrifice, of lofty heroism.
3. Convincing presentation of the Christian argument. The truth of Christ may be presented so cumulatively, so forcibly, so directly, so practically, so winningly, so affectionately, that the most defiant are abashed, the most prejudiced are convinced, the most impervious are penetrated, the most insensible are moved and won; they are compelled to come in.
4. Earnest persistency of Christian zeal. There is a blind, imprudent zeal, which is worse than worthless, which only teases and torments, which does not allure but drives to a greater distance. But there is also a wise, holy, Divine persistency, which will not be refused, which employs every weapon in the sacred armoury, which knows how to wait in patience as well as how to work in ardour, which, like the patient Saviour himself, "stands at the door, and knocks." This is the zeal which continues to plead with men for God, and ceases not to plead with God for men, until the barriers are broken down, until the indifference is broken up, until the heart looks up to heaven and cries, "What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life"—C