encourage wickedness; and such a thought is blasphemy.  He cannot mean me to learn this from it:  let me look at the parable again.  Who is it who is reproved in those words which seem to contain its real object?  It is one who complains of God for having rewarded others equally with himself.  Now this I can see is not a good feeling:  it is pride and jealousy.  In order, then to learn what the parable means me to learn, let me put myself in the position of those reproved in it.  If I complain that others are rewarded by God as much as I am, it is altogether a bad feeling, and one which I ought to check; for I have nothing to do with God’s dealings to others, let me think of what concerns myself.  Here I have the lesson of the parable complete:  and here I find it is useful for me.  But if I take it for a different object, and suppose that it means to encourage waiting till the eleventh hour—­waiting till we are old before we repent—­we find that we make it only actually to be mischievous to us.  And thus we gain a great piece of knowledge:  namely, that the parables of our Lord are mostly designed to teach, some one particular lesson, with respect to some one particular fault:  and that if we take them generally, as if all in them was applicable to all persons, whether exposed to that particular fault or not, we shall absolutely be in danger of deriving mischief from them instead of good.  It is true, that in this particular parable, the gross wickedness of such an interpretation as I have mentioned is guarded against even in the story itself; because those who worked only at the eleventh hour are expressly said to have stood idle so long only because no man had hired them; their delay, therefore, was no fault of their own.  But even if this circumstance had been left out, it would have been just the same; because the general rule is, that we apply to a parable only for its particular lesson, and do not strain it to any thing else.  Had this been well understood, no one would have ever found so much difficulty in understanding the parable of the unjust steward.

This is another great step towards the dispelling vagueness, to apply the particular lesson of each part of Scripture to that state of knowledge, or feeling, or practice in ourselves, which it was intended to benefit; to apply it as a lesson to ourselves, not as a general truth for our neighbours.  And the very desire to do this, makes us naturally look with care to the object of every passage—­to see to whom it was addressed, and on what occasion; for this will often surely guide us to the point that we want.  But in order to do this, we must strive to clothe the whole in our own common language; to get rid of those expressions which to us convey the meaning faintly; and to put it into such others as shall come most strongly home to us.  This I have spoken of on other occasions; and I have so often witnessed the bad effects of not doing so, that I am sure it may well bear to be noticed again; I mean