I. The main difficulty of interpretation in this parable is to understand what is meant by the wise and foolish virgins respectively; and also what is meant by the "taking oil in their vessels with their lamps." In the meaning of those expressions lies the key to the passage. It seems of very inferior importance to determine why the precise number ten should be specified; and why there should be an exactly equal division into five wise and five foolish. Ten persons in Jewish usage were regarded as forming a company. It was our Lord's intention, as I take it, simply to indicate that there was a division; that amongst the persons represented by the term "virgins," there was such an essential difference of character, as led to an ultimate difference of destiny. Some interpreters have imagined that we are to understand the ten virgins to be, all of them, genuine and sincere followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; but that a certain proportion through ignorance or carelessness or want of watchfulness or blamable misreading of the statements of Holy Writ have suffered themselves to lapse into a state of unreadiness for the coming of Christ; that this their unreadiness is punished by a temporary exclusion from the best and choicest blessings into which the Lord will introduce His waiting people; but that inasmuch as they have really the root of the matter in them, are really subjects of the converting grace of God, they will, though excluded from the primary privilege, enter at last into the happiness of the eternal kingdom. This view, however, it appears to me, is not contained in the passage before us; our Saviour says to the foolish virgins: "I know you not."
II. The company of ten virgins represents the body of professing Christians, just such as are found assembled together on the Lord's Day in the Lord's house. By the fact of uniting for public worship, they all carry the lamp of outward profession. But there was a difference in the company. Five were wise and five were foolish. All carried the lamp, the symbol of outward profession; but only a certain number carried oil in their vessels, the symbol of the inward spiritual life. The wise virgins are those who, being united by a living faith to the living Saviour, have access to a fountain of grace, which shall never fail. The foolish are those who have no such close and intimate relation to the Saviour. They may be able to give definitions, and to discourse upon doctrines; but their faith is dead, being without works. They have merely the lamp of outward profession, without the oil of the inward spiritual life.
G. Calthrop, Pulpit Recollections,p. 222.
Reference: Matthew 25:1-10. Parker, Cavendish Pulpit,p. 85.