Matthew xxii.11-14.

Here is a man who has the feast offered to him, but is not clothed to meet it. He is unprepared and is therefore cast out. He does not wear the wedding garment and therefore is not fit for the wedding feast. This seems at first sight harsh treatment; but one soon remembers that it was the custom of an Oriental feast to offer the guest at his entrance a robe fit for the occasion. "Bring forth the best robe," says the father of the prodigal, "and put it on him." This man had had offered to him the opportunity of personal preparation and had refused it. He wanted to share the feast, but he wanted to share it on his own terms. He pressed into the happiness without the personal preparedness which made that happiness possible.

Every man in this way makes his own world. The habit of his life clothes him like a garment, and only he who wears the wedding garment {186} is at home at the wedding feast. The same circumstances are to one man beautiful and to another, at his side, demoralizing. You may have prosperity and it may be a source of happiness, or the same prosperity and it may be a source of peril. You may be at a college and it may be either regenerating to you, or pernicious in its influence, according as you are clothed or unclothed with the right habit of mind. God first asks for your heart and then offers you his world. The wedding feast is for him alone who has accepted the wedding garment.