The Rejected of the World

’ They say unto Him, No man hath hired us. He saith unto them. Go ye also into the vineyard.” — Matt. xx. 7.

THE men here spoken of are the men standing idle in the market-place at the eleventh hour. They have come to the last hour of the working day, and still no man has hired them. Jesus employs the world’s ifMemployed. He finds a place in the vineyard for those whom the world considers ineligible. Heaven has more trust in earth than earth has in herself. Why are so many standing idle at the eleventh hour? It is through the distrust of their fellows. There are more available workers in the world than man recognises. We neglect all lives that have at any time gone wrong. We will not trust the shipwrecked mariners with a second ship. We will not admit the possibility of fragrance in the box of ointment which has been broken. The life which has caught a stain is thereafter a banished life, a proscribed life, a life not to be utilised. Jesus has more faith in man. He refuses to disregard the men of the eleventh hour. He refuses to despair of those whom zve have discarded. He insists in giving a chance to unlikely subjects. Has He not proved right! His greatest worker was a man of the eleventh hour — the man Paul. The fellow-labourers of that man would not look at him; but the risen Christ broke bread with him; the fragments that remained from that feast have been the spiritual food of the world! O Thou Divine Love, I thank Thee for the depth of Thy hope for man! Many of us belong to the eleventh hour; we have been rejected by our fellows; we have been turned from the threshold of the vineyard. We made a false step in the past; we committed some mistake in judgment; we yielded to some hour of temptation. And on the strength of that error the world has cast us out; there is no room in her vineyard for the feet that have stumbled. But there is room in Thine. Thou hast gone forth at the eleventh hour in soliao2 TIMES OF

tude. There were no human hirers of labour at that hour; Thou hast trodden the winepress alone, and of the people there was none with Thee. The eleventh hour brought no bidders but Thee. Nobody will give work to Saul of Tarsus. Nobody will give work to the penitent thief. Nobody will give work to the latecoming Nicodemus. Their fellow-men are all afraid of them, are shrinking from them. But Thou art not afraid. Thou hast more trust in the world than the world has in itself. Thou hast gathered them in — the unlikely ones, the man-rejected ones. Thou hast risked what my brother would not risk. Thou hast put Thy trust in the soiled garment, in the besmeared robe, in the dilapidated visage. Thou hast accepted the life at its lowest, the night at its darkest. Thou hast called human souls into the vineyard from the graveyard. I marvel at Thy faith, O Son of Man!