is there of acted, parable. In addition to those which, by a more especial right, we separate off, and call by the name, every type is a real parable. The whole Levitical constitution, with its outer court, its holy, its holiest of all, its high priest, its sacrifices, and all its ordinances, is such, and is declared to be such in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix. 9). The wanderings of the children of Israel have ever been regarded as a parable of the spiritual life. In like manner we have parabolic persons, who are to teach us not merely by what simply in their own characters they did, but as they represented One higher and greater; men whose actions and whose sufferings obtain a new significance, inasmuch as they were in these drawing lines quite unconsciously themselves, which another should hereafter fill up; as Abraham when he cast out the bondwoman and her son (Gal. iv. 30), Jonah in the whale's belly, David in his hour of peril or of agony (Ps. xxii.). And in a narrower circle, without touching on the central fact and Person in the kingdom of God, how often has he chosen that his servants should teach by an acted parable rather than by any other means, and this because there was no other that would make so deep and so lasting an impression? Thus Jeremiah is to break in pieces a potter's vessel, that he may foretell the complete destruction of his people (xix. 1-11); he wears a yoke that he may be himself a prophecy and a parable of their approaching bondage (xxvii. 2; xxviii. 10); he redeems a field in pledge of a redemption that shall yet be of all the land (xxxii. 6-15). It will at once be seen that these examples might be infinitely multiplied. And as God will have them by these signs to teach others, he continually teaches them also by the same. It is not his word only that comes to his prophets, but the great truths of his kingdom pass before their eyes incorporated in symbols, addressing themselves. first to the spiritual eye, and only through that to the spiritual ear. They are indeed and eminently Seers. Ezekiel and Zechariah will at once suggest themselves, as those of whom, more than, perhaps, any others, this was true. And in the New Testament we have a great example of the same teaching in St. Peter's vision (Acts x. 9-16), and throughout all the visions of the Apocalypse. Nay, we might venture to affirm that so it was with the highest and greatest truth of all, that which includes all others—the manifestation of God in the flesh. This, inasmuch as it was a making intelligible of the otherwise unintelligible; a making visible the invisible; a teaching not by doctrine, but by the embodied doctrine of a divine life, was the highest and most glorious of all parables.*

* See a few words on this in the Epistle of Barnabas, c. 5, and in CLEM. ALEX. (Strom., 1. 6, Potter's Ed., p. 803), he begins, Пapaßoλids yàp d xapakтǹp d#ápxei τῶν γραφῶν· διότι καὶ ὁ Κύριος, οὐκ ὢν κοσμικός εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἦλθεν.

With regard to the record which we have of the Lord's parables, they are found, as is well known, only in the three first Gospels: that by St. John containing allegories, as of the Good Shepherd (x. 1), the True Vine (xv. 1), but no parables strictly so called. Of the other three, that of St. Matthew was originally written for Jewish readers, and mainly for the Jews of Palestine; its leading purpose being to show that Jesus was the Christ, the promised Messiah, the expected King of the Jews-the Son of David-the Son of Abraham;-that in him the prophecies of the Old Testament found their fulfilment. The theocratic spirit of his Gospel does not fail to appear in the parables which he has recorded; they are concerning the kingdom,-being commonly the declaration of things whereunto "the kingdom of heaven is likened,”—a form which never once finds place in St. Luke. The same theocratic purpose displays itself in the form in which the Marriage of the King's Son appears in his Gospel, compared with the parallel narration in Luke; in the last, it is only a man who makes a great supper,-while, in Matthew, it is a king, and the supper a marriage-supper, and that for his son.

The main purpose which St. Luke had before him in writing his Gospel was to show, not that Jesus was the King of the Jews, but the Saviour of the world; and therefore he traces our Lord's descent, not merely from David, the great type of the theocratic king, nor from Abraham, the head of the Jewish nation, but from Adam, the father of mankind. He, the chosen companion of the apostle of the Gentiles, wrote his Gospel originally for Gentile readers, so that while St. Matthew only records the sending out of the twelve apostles, corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel, he relates the mission of the seventy, answering to the (supposed) seventy nations into which the world at Babel was divided. He, as writing for heathens who had so widely departed from God, has been most careful to record the Lord's declarations concerning the free mercy of God-his declarations that there is no departure from God so wide as to preclude a return. The leading idea of St. Luke's Gospel seems to have guided him in the parables which he records. In this view, the three at chapter xv. are especially characteristic of his aim, and more particularly the last, that of the Prodigal Son, and not less so that of Dives and Lazarus, if, as Augustine, Theophylact, and some later commentators have suggested, we may take Dives to signify the Jews, richly abounding with all blessings of the knowledge of God, and glorifying themselves in those blessings, while Lazarus, or the Gentile, lay despised at their door, a heap of neglected and putrefying sores. Again, the fact that it was a Samaritan who showed kindness to the poor wounded man (Luke x. 30), would seem also to have been re

corded not without an especial aim, to be traced up to the same leading idea of his Gospel.

St. Mark has but one Parable which is peculiar to himself, that of the Seed growing by itself (iv. 26), which is nearly related in substance to that of the Mustard Seed in Matthew, the place of which it appears to occupy. There is not, I believe, any thing so peculiar in his record of the parables as to call for especial notice.

CHAPTER III.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES.

THE parables, fair in their outward form, are yet fairer withinapples of gold in network of silver: each one of them like a casket, itself of exquisite workmanship, but in which jewels yet richer than itself are laid up; or as fruit, which, however lovely to look upon, is yet more delectable still in its inner sweetness.* To find then the golden key for this casket, at the touch of which it shall reveal its treasures; to open this fruit, so that nothing of its hidden kernel shall be missed or lost, has naturally been regarded ever as a matter of high concern.† And in this, the interpretation of the parable, a subject to which we have now arrived, there is one question which presents itself anew at every step; namely this, how much of them is significant? and on this subject there have been among interpreters the most opposite theories. Some have gone a great way in saying,-This is merely drapery and ornament, and not the vehicle of essential truth; this was introduced either as useful to given liveliness and a general air of verisimilitude to the narrative, or as actually necessary to make the story, which is the substratum of the truth, a consistent whole, since without this consistency the hearer would be both perplexed and offended, to hold together and connect the different parts, just as in the most splendid house there must be passages, not for their own sake, but to lead from one room to another. Chrysostom continually warns against pressing too anxiously

* Bernard: Superficies ipsa, tanquam à foris considerata, decora est valde: et si quis fregerit nucem, intus inveniet quod jucundius sit, et multò amplius delectabile.

† Jerome (In Eccles. xii.): Parabolæ aliud in medulla habent, aliud in superficie pollicentur, et quasi in terrâ aurum, in nuce nucleus, in hirsutis castanearum operculis absconditus fructus inquiritur, ita in eis divinus sensus altius perscrutandus.

Tertullian (De Pudicitiâ, c. 9): Quare centum oves? et quid utique decem drachmæ ? et quæ illæ scope? Necesse erat qui unius peccatoris salutem gratissimam Deo volebat exprimere, aliquam numeri quantitatem nominaret, de quo unum quidem perîsse describeret: necesse erat ut habitus requirentis drachmam

all the circumstances of a parable, and often cuts his own interpretation somewhat short in language like this,-"Be not curious about the rest" and in like manner, the interpreters that habitually follow him, Theophylact and others, though not always faithful to their own principles. So also Origen, who illustrates his meaning by a comparison of great beauty. He says, "For as the likenesses which are given in pictures and statues are not perfect resemblances of those things for whose sake they are made-but for instance the image which is painted in wax on a plain surface of wood, contains a resemblance of the superficies and colors, but does not also preserve the depressions and prominences, but only a representation of them-while a statue, again, seeks to preserve the likeness which consists in prominences and depressions, but not as well that which is in colors-but should the statue be of wax, it seeks to retain both, I mean the colors, and also the depressions and prominences, but is not an image of those things which are within-in the same manner, of the parables which are contained in the Gospels so account, that the kingdom of heaven, when it is likened to any thing, is not likened to it according to all the things which are contained in that with which the comparison is instituted, but according to certain qualities which the matter in hand requires." Exactly thus in modern times it has been said that the parable and its interpretation are not to be contemplated as two planes, touching one another at every point, but oftentimes rather as a plane and a globe, which, though brought into contact, yet touch one another only in one.

On the other hand, Augustine, though sometimes laying down the same principle, frequently extends the interpretation through all the branches and minutest fibres of the narrative, and Origen not less,

in domo, tam scoparum quàm lucernæ adminiculo accommodaretur. Hujusmodi enim curiositates et suspecta faciunt quædam, et coactarum expositionum subtilitate plerumque deducunt à veritate. Sunt autem quæ et simpliciter posita sunt ad struendam et disponendam et texendam parabolam, ut illuc perducantur, cui exemplum procuratur. Brower (De Par. J. C., p. 175): Talia omitti non potuerunt, quoniam eorum tantùm ope res ad eventum facilè perduci posset, cum alioquin saltus fieret aut hiatus in narratione, qui rei narratæ similitudini omnino noceret, vel quia eorum neglectus auditores fortasse ad inanes quæstiones et dubitationes invitare posset.

* Τἀλλὰ μὴ περιεργάζου.

† Theophylact (In Luc. xvi.): Πᾶσα παραβολὴ πλαγίως καὶ εἰκονικῶς δηλοῖ πραγμάτων τινῶν φύσιν, οὐ κατὰ πάντα ἐοικυῖα τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐκείνοις, δι ̓ ἃ παρελήφθη. δι' ὃ οὐδὲ χρὴ πάντα τὰ μέρη τῶν παραβολῶν λεπτῶς πολυπραγμονευέσθαι, ἀλλ ̓ ὅσον ἔοικε τῷ προκειμένῳ καρπουμένους. τὰ λοιπὰ ἐᾷν, ὡς τῇ παραβολῆ συνυφιστάμενα, καὶ μηδὲν πρὸς τὸ προκείμενον συμβαλλόμενα.

Comm. in Matth. xiii. 47.

See a wonderful instance of the extent to which this may be done in an exposition of the Prodigal Son, given in his Quæst. Evang., 1. 2. qu. 33.