The Parable of the Pearl of Great Price

Matthew xiii. 45, 46.

THE costliest jewel mentioned by ancient writers is a pearl which belonged to Cleopatra, the beautiful but infamous queen of Hgypt; and the strongest proof which Roman historians have to give of the wanton and boundless extravagance of some of their emperors is the fact that they dissolved pearls in vinegar, and drank them with their wine. In harmony with these passages of profane history, this and other parts of sacred Scripture prove that among jewels the highest place in former times was assigned to pearls. When our Lord, for example, warned his disciples to beware how they wasted truths of the highest value on such as could not appreciate them, he selects these as their emblem, saying, “Give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.” Such place also pearls hold in the attire of the woman whom John names ‘‘ Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, who was drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.”” In a picture, so graphic as

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to remind us of the memorable words of Lord Bacon — who said that, if the descriptions of Antichrist were extracted from Scripture and put into the Hue and Cry, there was not a constable in all England but would apprehend the Pope, — John describes the dress as well as the deeds of this bloody persecutor. She was arrayed, he says, ‘‘in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls;”’ and here, be it observed, while other gems, however beautiful and costly, — the flashing diamond, and burning ruby, and purple amethyst, and sea-green emerald, and sapphire with hues borrowed from the sky, — are only mentioned under the general term of precious stones, pearls, as more valuable than these, are distinctly named. From all which we are warranted to conclude that when our Lord compared ‘the kingdom of heayen,’ the blessings, in other words, of redeeming love, to ‘fone pearl of great price,’”’ he intended to set them forth as of pre-eminent value; as in fact, amid a thousand things desirable, the one thing needful.

But, besides its money value, a pearl such as this presented a remarkable as well as beautiful emblem of salvation in other aspects — in, for instance, a color of snowy whiteness, a purity unclouded by the slightest haze, and a form so round and polished and perfect that it was impossible to improve it. The lapidary, to whose grinding skill the very diamond owes much of its brilliancy and those many-colored fires with which it shines and burns, may not touch a pearl. His art cannot add to its beauty — the polish of its snowy surface, or the perfection of its rounded form. And what an emblem, therefore, is this gem of that salvation which came perfect from the hand of God — of that righteousness of Jesus Christ which, as no guilt of ours can stain, no works of ours can improve — of that Gospel which, as revealed in the Bible, is without defect of truth or admixture of error, and which the last of the inspired writers therefore closes with this solemn warning: “If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shail take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city.”’

Nor does this pearl present an emblem of salvation in respect only of its incalculable price and intrinsic characters. In the hazards and sacrifices at which both were obtained, we discern, however faintly, another point of resemblance. Other gems, the diamond and ruby and emerald and sapphire, lie bedded in river-courses, or set in the solid rocks; and there men seek them without loss of health or risk of life. But pearls belong to the ocean; they are gems which she casts not up among the pebbles that strew her beach, but hides in her dangerous and darkest depths. Hence a dreadful trade is the pearl-fisher’s. Weighted with stone to sink him, and inhaling a long, deep-drawn breath, he leaps from the boat’s side, and, the parting waves closing above his head, descends into the depths of the sea to grope for the shelly spoils amid the dim light which faintly illuminates her slimy bed; nor rises, breathless and black in face, to the surface till on-lookers have begun to fear that he will rise no more. And not unfrequently he never does. These waters are the haunts of terrible monsters; and, marked for its prey by the swift and fierce and voracious shark, in vain the wretched man stirs the muddy bottom to raise a cloud to cover his escape. Some air-bells bubbling up, and blood that spreads crimsoning the surface of the sea, are all that is evermore seen of one who dies a sacrifice to his hazardous pursuits; and the story of the dangers which pearl-fishers have always to encounter, and the dreadful deaths they have often to endure, will recall to a reflective mind the memory of Him who, in salvation, purchased this pearl at so great a price — giving his life for ours, and dying, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.

Though it belongs to ages long gone by, I may mention another aspect of this emblem that devout men once considered peculiarly appropriate. Hre the progress of science had robbed this and other things of their wonders, they saw in the manner in which the pearl was said to be generated a figure of the mystery of our Lord’s divine descent and miraculous conception. Unlike those which are found in the womb of the dead earth, this gem is formed within the shell of a living creature; and in old times it was believed that when the heavens were in a peculiar state, manifesting their activity in flashes of lightning and peals of thunder, the-future parent of the pearl rose from the bottom to the surface of the sea, and, opening its shelly mouth, received something of the nature of a dewdrop from the propitious skies. From this germ, with which the shell-fish descended again into its native depths, the pearl was believed to be formed; and in this natural mystery and strange birth of the precious gem, old divines saw an emblem of our Lord’s descent into, the dark humiliations of this lower world, the over-© shadowing of the Holy Ghost, and the conception of the Virgin’s womb. The researches of naturalists have taught us that the pearl has no claim to such a lofty and heavenly descent. Yet, though science has robbed that as well as many things else of the dignity which belongs to the mysterious, and pearls now-a-days have lost much of their pre-eminent value, neither the discoveries of science, nor the changes of time and fashion, have abated the value or lessened the wonders of redeeming love. Jesus is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever: and salvation, with its blood-bought and inestimable blessings, will ever remain that ‘ one pearl of great price’ which may be found by all; and which whosoever finds should sell all he has to buy, — saying, with the apostle, “‘I count all things but loss that I may win Christ.” In opening up this parable let us consider

THE PERSONS REPRESENTED BY THIS MERCHANT. i

Mankind present all shades of color, — from the negro, God’s image in ebony, as one said, to the fairskinned, blue-eyed, golden-haired types of our Scandinayian ancestors, — all varieties also of disposition, from the penuriousness of Nabal to the affection embalmed by David in this immortal song: “I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women,’’ — all degrees also of sense, from the fool who, untaught by experience, though pounded in a mortar comes out the same, to those astute, far-seeing, and long-headed men, whose utterances, like the counsels of Ahitophel, are ‘‘as if a man inquired at the oracle of God,’ — and all differences also of outward condition, from Lazarus covered with sores and clothed in rags nor ever enjoying one good full meal, upward to him who, clothed in purple and fine linen, fares sumptuously every day. Yet in God’s sight the whole human family is divisible into two classes, and only two — the good and bad, the chaff and wheat, the wheat and tares, the sheep and goats, the converted and the unconverted — those that, still at enmity with God, lie under condemnation, and such as, renewed in the spirit of their minds and reconciled to Him by the blood of his Son, are in a state of grace.

But, like those great orders of plants or animals which we meet with in the sciences of botany and zoology, these two classes are divisible into numerous subdivisions, differing apparently, though not radically, so much from each other that some sinners seem to stand more nearly related to saints than to many of their own class; just as, for instance, the sponge or

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branching coral, fixed to the rocks and belonging to:

the animal kingdom, looks more allied to the tangle that sways than to the fishes that swim in the flowing tide. Let no man therefore conclude that he must be converted because there are broad outward marks of

THE PEARL” OF GREAT PRICE. Li

difference between him and many who certainly are not. People have gone down to hell, as the Pharisee did to his house, thanking God that they are not as others. The difference between them has been more apparent than real, being no greater than that between two nights — one where the bark seems to sail in the. moonshine on a silver sea, and the other so pitchy dark that her outlook can see neither coast nor reef, though he hears the roar of breakers; or between two bodies both dead — one still beautiful in death, and the other a horrid spectacle of loathsome and ghastly decay. In such circumstances how necessary it is to remember our Sayiour’s warning: ‘ Take heed that ye be not deceived.” .What though we are seeking even goodly pearls, unless we have found the one of great price? And there are such people. Owing to the influence of a pious education, or of something naturally elevated and refined in their disposition, or of the society in which they move, or of some more mysterious causes, there are people in the world, and of the world too, who may be said to be seeking goodly pearls. They cultivate refined enjoyments; they are pursuing patriotic and philanthropic objects; they are seeking to be good, and to do good; they feel that man’s happiness cannot lie in gratifications which satisfy the brutes, or in empty gaiety, or in the common prizes of ambition, or in any amount of money, but in nobler and godlike pursuits — in purity of heart, peace of conscience, and that happy relationship to God without which there is no more rest for a human soul than there was for the wandering dove till, skimming the waters on drooping wing, she returned to her home in the ark. These are ‘‘not far from the kingdom of heaven; ’’ and were in it, would they take but another step. Almost Christians, they are almost saved. But what avails it to have almost made the port? So did the ship whose naked timbers I once passed sticking out of the water. Struck by a giant sea, she stove in her sides on the point of the pier, and went to pieces in the harbor’s mouth; and as on entering it I passed these skeleton ribs bedded in the sand below and rising on the tide above, they had a warning look, and seemed to say, that as in that case so in the case of souls, ‘‘almost saved’’ was but another expression for ‘altogether lost.”’

Let it be observed that different characters, different classes of sinners, are represented as being saved in the two parables of the Hid Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price. For examples of these, let me select two remarkable men — Colonel Gardiner and John Bunyan. Gardiner’s was a sudden and remarkable conversion. Previous to that, he, who afterwards proved himself as brave as soldier of the Cross as of an earthly sovereign — on that fatal field where, refusing to fly, he fell beneath the Highlander’s scythe, was a mere man of the world — not a lover only of pleasure, but of the basest pleasures. “The eventful night which he so unexpectedly passed in prayer, he had intended to spend in the. arms of sin. As he impatiently watched the finger of the clock moving slowly on to the hour of a guilty assignation, nothing was further from his thoughts than conversion; and had Death himself, throwing open the chamber door, stood before him in visible form, he had not been more startled than by the blow, dealt by an unseen hand, which laid Him penitent at the feet of Jesus. In salvation Gardiner found as much as the man in the treasure which his plowshare brought to light, what he neither sought nor expected. In Bunyan, on the other hand, we see one who had come to know that the world and its pleasures could never satisfy the cravings of his heart. He felt the need of being other than he was. As an imprisoned eagle, chained to its perch and turning its eye up to the blue heavens, feels the strivings of a native instinct, and springing upwards beats the bars of its cage with bleeding wings, Bunyan tried to rise out of his estate of sin and misery. He made vigorous efforts to keep the law of God — to live without sin — to establish a righteousness of his ovn — to work out a sum of merits, and thereby obtain peace and pardon, and reconcile himself to God. Seeking the pardon of sin, a purer life, and a holier heart, he had been a merchant seeking ‘goodly pearls.” And as in his case the seeker became the finder, so shall all who, like him, listen to the voice of Jesus, saying, ‘Turn ye, turn ye — I am the way, the truth, the life — all which your souls need and your hearts desire is found in me, ‘the one pearl’ — for whosoever believeth in me shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Wealth in our country is measured by the amount of money which a man has lodged in bank or afloat in business, the value of his house and its furnishings, or the number of acres in his estate. It is quite different in many parts of the Hast. There you enter a house with walls of clay and thatch of straw or reeds or palm-leaves, and in its tenant — who sits, simply attired and amid the scantiest funiture, cross-legged on a rug which, spread out on the naked floor, forms his seat by day and his bed by night — you find a man of enormous wealth. He has it invested in jewels — nor without reason. In countries liable, on the one hand, to sudden invasion, and on the other to sudden and violent revolutions, where bloody tyrants oppress their subjects, and wealth is the carcase that draws the eagles together, it 1s in the form of jewels that property is most securely because most secretly kept, and in the case of flight most easily removed. Here, for example, is a family who, with villages in flames behind them, are flying from a ruined home and wretched country. They seek safety elsewhere; and, with nothing saved but their scanty clothing, seem reduced to the greatest want. Yet stop the mother who carries one child on her breast and has another at her side, and, undoing her raven locks, shake them out, and a shower of diamonds falls at your feet. In this form, and hid in a woman’s hair, fortunes have often been carried from plage to place in the Hast; and it is only by talking thig fact into account, that while with us little else than ornaments, precious stones arc there a form of money, and often of immense wealth, we rise to an adequate idea of the value which Christ puts on his people in calling them his jewels; or of the full meaning of a figure that represents the blessings of his salvation, as ‘one pearl of great price’ which all other pearls and property should be sold to buy.

As all which the merchant sought in acquiring many goodly pearls was found in one — one precious, peerless gem, Jesus teaches us that the soul finds in himself all it feels the want of, and has been seeking in other ways — peace with God and peace of conscience, a clean heart and a renewed mind, comfort in sorrow and a sweet satisfaction with all the discipline of providence, hope in death and a heaven of glory after it. Great as are these blessings in respect of their value, they are equally so in respect of their price. They cost God’s only Son long years of the deepest humiliation — his bloody agony and dreadful death; and yet, alas! in being offered to sinners who despise and reject Him, how often is this pearl cast before swine? To them who believe, Christ is precious; but what can be more sad than to see the value a woman sets on trinkets, the pride with which she shows and wears her jewels, while Jesus has no preciousness in her eyes? What fools people are! They set more on some glittering bits of glass or stone than on a crown of glory! — they care more in this dying body for the perishable casket than for the immortal jewel which it holds! Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet my people, says God, have forgotten me days without number. From such sin and folly, good Lord preserve us!

HOW THIS PEARL WAS OBTAINED.

It was not bestowed as a gift. On the contrary, this merchantman, trading in goodly pearls, bought it at. the price of all he had. If so, where, it may be asked, — lies the analogy between this case and a salvation that, all of mercy and not at all of merit, is the free gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord? In answer to that question, let it be observed, that the Bible has paradoxes — things that appear contradictory, destructive as fire and water are of each other; and yet are true. We have a living one, if I may say so, in our Lord himself. He is a creature, and yet the Creator — he is the Son of man, and yet the Son of God — he is the victim of death, and yet his victor — he is the captive of the grave, and yet her spoiler — he is Lord of all, and yet, with water and towel in hand, he stoops as the lowest servant to wash his servant’s feet — there on Calvary’s bloody cross he suffers as a man, and yet saves asa God. And Christ’s followers, like himself, present to a wondering world what seems inconsistent features, impossible combinations. Are they not, to quote Paul’s words, unknown, and yet well known — dying, and behold we live — chastened, and not killed — sorrowful, yet always rejoicing — poor, yet making many rich — having nothing, and yet possessing all things? Now as — though people may ask, how can these things be? — both are true, it is as true that salvation is a free gift, and yet a thing to be bought and sold. Nay, more and stranger still, it is bought ‘“‘ without money and without price.’ A trader with-Parables.

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pe eases RITE out either money or credit has no footing in the markets where Mammon presides, and man is the seller as well as the buyer; but in the market which Divine Mercy opens, and over which Divine Love presides, and where ‘‘ gold tried in the fire,” and robes washed in the blood of the Lamb, and celestial crowns all set with gems of glory are displayed, wealth and character offer no advantage. Here the poor get as good bargains as the rich — often better indeed; harlots and publicans enter the kingdom, while scribes and pharisees are left standing at the door.

I do not mean to disparage good works. Christians are to be careful to maintain them, and to ‘‘ make their light so to shine before men that they, seeing their good works, may glorify their Father which is in

‘heaven.’ But we are on the wrong road altogether if

we are attempting to earn or deserve salvation by these. No gathered sum of human merits, of virtues, prayers, or charities can, like the accumulation of money that forms the price of an estate, purchase heaven. We have to buy, no doubt, — but not after the world’s fashion. The price, on the contrary, which we are required to pay is not virtues and merits, but just that we abandon all trust in these; give up in them what we may have reckoned goodly pearls; and consent to, be saved as ‘poor, lost, undone sinners — whose type is the beggar that, clad in filthy rags and knocking timidly at our door, stands before us, making no appeal but to our compassion, and urging no plea whatever but our mercy and his own great misery. Still, though we cannot, in the ordinary sense of the term, buy salvation, no man is saved but he who gives up his sins for Christ — takes up his cross, and, denying himself daily, follows Jesus. We are not saved in sin, but from it; and, though we cannot buy salvation, we are to seek it as those who, if they could, would buy it at any price, at any pain — giving the whole world, were it theirs, for Christ; and as earnestly seeking and as highly esteeming Him as she who exclaimed: ‘“Were I on one bank of a river and saw Jesus on the other, and that river ran burning fire, I would dash into the flames to reach Him.”

SOME LESSONS TAUGHT BY THIS FIGURE OF A
MERCHANT.

When Napoleon Bonaparte, after subduing Europe, found himself unable to subdue us, and saw his armies broken on our firm front like waves which the storm launches against a rocky headland, he called us, in his impotent rage, ‘‘a nation of shopkeepers.” Owing our power and wealth more to commerce than to anything else, in a sense we are so — nor are we ashamed of being so. Trade is an honorable occupation. Like those ocean streams that temper the cold of northern climes with the heat of the tropics, and float ice-field and iceberg southward to cool the air of the torrid “gone, its currents also convey to different lands the pe- -culiar. blessings of each; and, besides thus binding ‘country to country in the bonds of mutual advantage, it promises to be an instrument in the providence of God of diffusing the blessings of Christianity over the world. A nation of traders whose merchants are princes, and whose traffickers are the honorable of the earth, there is no figure in the Bible — neither that of a shepherd, nor of a soldier, nor of a watchman, nor of a husbandman, nor of a householder — which comes more home to us than that of a merchant. It suggests many lessons; and to select a few of them I remark that —:

It teaches us to make religion our chief pursutt. — Such is to the merchant his business. ‘To it he does not allot merely some hours stolen from the pursuits of pleasure. He rises to business every morning; it engages his entire attention during the day; nor, save during a few hours in the evening, and a few days, or weeks at most, in the year, does he ever yield himself up to the enjoyments of ease. In its pursuit he is all energy and activity. What a hold it takes of his mind! — forming the topic of his conversatiox at feasts, and often at funerals — intruding itself unbidden, and to a good man unwelcome into the closet where he prays and the church where he worships!

Would God that the business of eternity had as strong a hold of our minds! But, alas! the least thing puts it out of our head. And what greater contrast than the appearance of the same people in a church and at a market — the dull worshipers of this scene and the keen traders of that- — the listless aspect — of the Sabbath congregation and the animated looks ° of the market crowd! Enter an auction-mart, what life, what keen competitors, what watching to catch a chance ! — -no sleepers there, but every face turned up — to him who, raised above the eager crowd, descants on

i¢g* the bargains to be had. Enter a church, and how different the aspect of many ? — people asleep in the pews — listlessness in the countenances and weariness in the attitudes of others. Who would believe this to be a crowd of men under sentence of death, whom one is telling how to break their chains and escape the gallows — a crowd gathered on the deck and hanging over the bulwarks of a sinking ship, whom one who has brought a life-boat to the scene, is offering to rescue from the roaring waves and a dreadful doom? The danger there is that, unless you back your oars and go warily to work, the eager throng, rushing en masse to the side and throwing themselves headlong in, will swamp your boat; but, alas! the chances in that church are, that not one of a hundred, or one of a thousand, accepts the offer. If I may use a common expression, multitudes make religion a bye-job, and not a business, — giving it but the ends and odds of time; and many not even that. May God help us to throw our whole heart into this business; teaching us to give all diligence to make our calling and election sure — to work out our salvation with fear and trembling — to work while it is called to-day, seeing that the ae cometh when no man can work!

It teaches us to guard against deception. — The money which has a suspicious look the wary trader rings on his counter; knowing what frauds are practised in business, the wise merchant often puts such goods as he receives to the test; and the utmost care is taken in such a trade especially as that of this, parable to guard against mistakes or imposition. Before buying a gem, the jewel-merchant examines it with a powerful magnifier — nor without reason. The smallest speck on a diamond detracts greatly from its value: worthless bits of glass are so cut and colored as to pass for precious stones: and by means of the brilliant scales of a small fish which inhabits a river in France, they fabricate such perfect imitations of the pearl, as to impose on ordinary, and almost to deceive the quickest, eyes. The dupes of fraud, men have paid immense sums for pearls which were found to be only paste.

But, through the deceitfulness of the heart and wiles of the devil, men have been greater dupes and suffered unspeakably greater losses. As it is not all gold that glitters, it is not all grace that seems so. There is a counterfeit peace as well as counterfeit coin — there are hopes of heaven which rest on sand as well as hopes founded on the Rock of Ages — there is a righteousness which is ours, as well as one which is Christ’s — there are virtues that, like sweet wild-flowers, cling to the ruins of humanity as well as graces that are the fruit of the Holy Spirit — there are kind and generous, but merely natural, as well as holy and heavenly affections. Such being the case, no merchant needs to be more on his guard against fraud and deception than those who may flatter themselves that they are regenerated when they are only reformed. Many, it is to be feared, fancy that they are on the way to heaven who are on the way to hell; that they are at peace with God when their only peace is that of the river which is locked in ice — the quiet and silence of a tomb where there is no disturbance just because there is death!

It teaches us to examine our accounts with God. — There is a biography called “The Successful Merchant,” and, without having read it, I will venture to affirm that Budgett — this merchant — was careful to balance his books, and apply to his business the spirit of the Apostle’s precept, ‘‘Let a man examine himself.” Alas! that in the use of such a precaution the children of this world should be so much wiser than the children of light! It is a part of every merchant’s education to learn that art; and it is his only safety to practise it. Neglecting to balance his books, he may launch out into expenses quite unsuitable to his circumstances; persevere in branches of business which are not to his profit, but loss; fancy he is making money when he is driving on ruin. No other fate awaits the reckless adventurer than that of the emigrant ship which some weeks ago, with hundreds on board of her; full of hopes of happiness and fortune in the New World, ran headlong on Cape Race to break in pieces, and, whelming its living freight into the devouring waves, gave them a grave on the shores where they expected a happy home! They took no soundings, and so they found no safety. The wise merchant takes stock, balances his books, and, in some businesses at least, strikes a balance on every day’s transactions. In this, as in the energy and toil

and self-denial and resolution of worldly, how much is there worthy of the imitation of Christian, men? Why should not we, at the close of each day, recall and review its transactions to see how our accounts stand with conscience and with God — what duties had been neglected, and what done — what temptations had been resisted, and what yielded to; how far we had indulged evil passions, how far mortified them — how like or how unlike to Christ’s our demeanor had been? This were a scrutiny which, though often painful and humbling, would be attended with the happiest results. How many sins would it extinguish in the spark from which Christians have afterwards to be saved by being pulled out of the roaring fire? How often would it check a deviation at the beginning which ends in our going far astray, and losing a peace which in this world we may never fully recover? In how many cases would it, by early sending us to the balm of Gilead, heal wounds that, neglected, fester into deep, running, sores? And as I have seen the workman, ere he retired to rest, throw himself into stream or sea to wash away the sweat and dust of his daily toil, from such a review the Christian would repair each evening to the fountain of Jesus’ blood to be cleansed of the guilt of daily sins; and rise each morning to seek the aids of the Holy Spirit to do his work, to keep his watch, to bear his burden, to fight his battle, better. If balancing our accounts with God, if reviewing the day’s transactions, showed no progress in the divine life, what earnestness and liveliness would it impart to our evening prayers? If, on the contrary, it showed some good done, some sin crucified, some progress made, what a comfort, as we laid our head on the pillow, to think that we were nearer heaven than when we first believed, and that, wi <4 Jesus standing by the helm, our bark, whether glidn smoothly over calm or tossed in tempestucus seas, was approaching the shores of the happy land — the home and haven of our eternal rest!