IV.  There is a Banquet in the Gospels, S. Luke xiv. 16. and a hospitable Host and friends; and the Banquet is most pleasant, for it is the marriage of His Son.  He calleth them, but they come not:  He is angry, and—I pass over the interval for fear of bad omen—but, to speak gently, He filleth the Banquet with others.  God forbid that this should be your case; but yet you have treated me (how shall I put it gently?) with as much haughtiness or boldness as they who after being called to a feast rise up against it, and insult their host; for you, though you are not of the number of those who are without, or are invited to the marriage, but are yourselves those who invited me, and bound me to the Holy Table, and shewed me the glory of the Bridal Chamber, then deserted me (this is the most splendid thing about you)—one to his field, another to his newly bought yoke of oxen, another to his just-married wife, another to some other trifling matter; you were all scattered and dispersed, caring little for the Bridechamber and the Bridegroom. S. Matt. xxii. 10.