And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges. Hitherto the parable-story has been dealing with the past and the present of Israel; it now becomes prophetic, and speaks of a state of things to be.
The third series of invitations is not addressed to inhabitants of a city. No walls hem in these far-scattered dwellers among the highways and hedges of the world. This time the master of the house asks to his great banquet those who live in the isles of the Gentiles.
And compel them to some in. A greater pressure is put on this class of outsiders than was tried upon the favoured first invited. The indifferent ones were left to themselves. They knew, or professed to know and to appreciate, the nature of that feast in heaven, the invitation to which they treated apparently with so much honour, and really with such contempt.
But these outsiders the Divine Host would treat differently. To them the notion of a pitying, loving God was quite a strange thought; these must be compelled—must be brought to him with the gentle force which the angels used when they laid hold of the hand of lingering Lot, and brought him out of the doomed city of the plain.
Thus faithful men, intensely convinced of the truth of their message, compel others, by the bright earnestness of their words and life, to join the company of those who are going up to the feast above.
Anselm thinks that God may be also said to compel men to come in when he drives them by calamities to seek and find refuge with him and in his Church. That my house may be filled. In Luke 14:22 the servant, who knew well his master's mind and his master's house too, and its capabilities, tells his lord how, after many had accepted the invitation and were gone in to the banquet, "yet there was room."
The master of the house, approving his servant's words, confirms them by repeating, "Bring in more andyet more, that my house may be filled." Bengel comments here with his quaint grace in words to which no translation can do justice: "Nee natura nec gratis patitur vacuum."
Our God, with his burning love for souls, will never bear to contemplate a half-empty heaven. "Messiah will see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied." "The love of God," says Godet, "is great; it requires a multitude of guests; it will not have a seat empty.
The number of the elect is, as it were, determined beforehand by the riches of the Divine glory, which cannot find complete reflection without a certain number of human beings. The invitation will, therefore, be continued, and consequently the history of our race prolonged, until that number be reached."