But, however different the circumstances, yet there is a lesson in this story which is universal and eternal, true for all men, and true for ever.  The same human nature, for good and for evil, is in us, as was in that Eastern king and his slave.  The same kingdom of heaven is over us as was over them, its laws punishing sinners by their own sins; the same Spirit of God which strove with their hearts is striving with ours.  If it was not so, the parable would mean nothing to us.  It would be a story of men who belonged to another moral world, and were under another moral law, not to be judged by our rules of right and wrong; and therefore a story of men whom we need not copy.

But it is not so.  If the parable be—­as I take for granted it is—­a true story; then it was Christ, the Light who lights every man who cometh into the world, who put into that king’s heart the divine feeling of mercy, and inspired him to forgive, freely and utterly, the wretched slave who worshipped him, kneeling with his forehead to the ground, and promising, in his terror, what he probably knew he could not perform—­’Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.’

And it was Christ, the Light of men, who inspired that king with the feeling, not of mere revenge, but of just retribution; who taught him that, when the slave was unworthy of his mercy, he had a right, in a noble and divine indignation, to withdraw his mercy; and not to waste his favours on a bad man, who would only turn them to fresh bad account, but to keep them for those who had justice and honour enough in their hearts to forgive others, when their Lord had forgiven them.

We must bear in mind, that the king must have been right, and acting (whether he knew it or not) by the Spirit of God; else his conduct would never have been likened to the kingdom of heaven:  that is, to the laws by which God governs both this world and the world to come.

The kingdom of heaven.  The kingdom of God—­Would that men would believe in them a little more!  It seems, at times, as if all belief in them was dying out; as if men, throughout all civilized and Christian countries, had made up their minds to say—­There is no kingdom of God or of heaven.  There will be one hereafter, in the next world.  This world is the kingdom of men, and of what they can do for themselves without God’s help, and without God’s laws.

My friends, the Jewish rulers of old said so, and cried, ’We have no king but Caesar.’  And they remain an example to all time, of what happens to those who deny the kingdom of God.  Christ came to tell them that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, and the kingdom of God was among them.  But they would have none of it.  And what said our Lord of them and their notion?  ‘The prince of this world,’ said He, ’cometh, and hath nothing in me.  This is your hour and the power of darkness.’  Yes; the hour in which men had determined to manage the world in