•Y_&ILE«¥MlIYEI&_MirYo • iLniBisAisy • DIVINITY SCHOOL TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY NOTES ON THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD RICHARD CHERETH TRENCH, M. A., 1'nOFESSOR OF DIVINITY, KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON; AUTHOR OF "NOTES ON THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD," ETC., ETC. f \ A L ^ i- SECOND AMERICAN FROM THE LAST ENGLISH tod? 131" A TWELFTH EDITION. NEW-YORK : D. APPLETON & COMPANY 90, 92 & 94 GRAND STREET. 1869. ADVERTISEMENT OF THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS. That a work has reached a third edition in England, although one evidence of its merit, may not always be a safe or satisfactory reason for its republication in this country. But in regard to the volume herewith sent forth, the subject of which it treats is of such general interest, and the ability with which it has been prepared is so marked, and has been so universally acknowledged, that the pub lishers cannot hesitate to believe they are doing good service to the cause of sound theological learning in making it accessible to a large class of American readers, who in all probability would not otherwise be able to possess it. The parable, whilst it is amongst the earliest modes of conveying truth to th. mind, is at the same time the most effective. Never losing its vigor by age or repetition, it convinces sooner than logical argument, and strikes the imagination more readily than a living example* From the fact that the parables of our Lord form a very considerable portion of his recorded teaching, and that he was accustomed by them to enforce the highest moral precepts, to illustrate important points of doctrine, and to give prophetical intimation of future events relating to himself and his mission, it is obvious that a competent knowledge of this porti.ra of the Gospels, while it is essential to the Christian teacher, is of the greatest value to every member of the Church. And amply will these sacred fictions repay the most constant perusal. Attractive in the highest degree, even to childhood, while as yet like Samuel the little hearer " does not know the Lord, nor in tne word of the Lord yet revealed to him" (1 Sam. iii. 7), they are the delight of •iper manhood, and never fail to offer to the attentive reader, beauties to admire. * Khec autem docendi ratio, qua) facit ad illustratior.em antiquis secialisplurimum Eulhibebatur. Ut Hieroglyphica Uteris, ita Parabola? argumentis erant antiquioics. Atopic hodie otiam et semper, eximius est et fuit Parabolarum vigor ; cum nee ar- gumenta tam perspicua nee vera exempla tarn apta, esse possint. — Bacoxi _ ' - Aug mentis Scientiarum, lib. 2. cap. ]¦". Vi ADVERTISEMENT. principles to ponder, and examples to allure. Thus do they illustrate the wisdom and benevolence of that Heavenly Teacher " who spake as never man spake," and exhibit a skill in the statement of moral principles to which no merely human intellect was ever equal, and a power and beauty of illustration which no poet or orator ever approached. In the present work the parables of our Lord are collected together, compared, and explained ; and by a judicious use of learning, and a fertile and happy em ployment of illustrative comment, they are rendered eminently profitable " for doc trine, for reproof, for correction, and instruction in righteousness." " As a mere delight to the understanding," says Dr. Arnold, " I know of none greater than thus bringing together the different and scattered jewels of God's word, and arranging them in one perfect group. For whatever is the pleasure of contem plating wisdom absolutely inexhaustible, employed on no abstract matter of science, but on our very own nature, opening the secrets of our hearts, and dis closing the whole plan of our course in life ; of the highest wisdom clothed in a garb of most surpassing beauty ; such is the pleasure to the mere understanding of searching into the words of Christ, and^blending them into the image of his perfect will respecting us." If the understanding can be thus delighted and improved, can it fail but that at the same time the heart will be made better 1 Mr. Trench, while informing the understanding, has never neglected the oppor tunity to excite the affections, to regulate them, and lead them to seek the blessed influences of that Holy Spirit which can alone purify them and fit them for the service of God. These " scattered jewels of God's word," of which Dr. Arnold speaks, he has brought together, and fixed them in a setting, not worthy indeed of their richness and lustre — what silver, or gold even, of human workmanship could possess such value ? — but the framework is yet skilfully constructed, and is wrought by a devout as well as a learned and earnest mind, and will hold its pearls of wisdom so that we may have the opportunity of gazing upon them in their concentrated form with delight and profit. Under these convictions of the importance of the subject and the successful manner in which it has oeen treated by Mr. Trench, this volume is now corrc mended to the notice of American readers by the Publishers. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. chap. pi0E I. On the Definition of the Parable 9 II. On Teaching by Parables . IT III. On the Interpretation of Parables 32 IV. On other Parables besides those in the Scriptures _6 PARABLES. ' I. The Sower . 57 II. The Tares, . 73 III. The Mustard Seed 91 IV. The Leaven . 97 V. The Hid Treasure 103 VI. The Pearl . Ill VII. The Draw Net . 115 VIII. The Unmerciful Servant . 12_ IX. The Laborers in the Vineyard 138 X. The Two Sons 157 XI. The Wicked Husbandmen . 162 XII. The Marriage of the King's Son 177 XIII. The Ten Virgins 200 XIV. The Talents . 218 XV. The Seed Growing Secretly 233 XVI. The Two Debtors . 239 XVII. The Good Samaritan 251 XVIII. The Friend at Midnight 2.5 XIX. The Rich Fool . 271 XX. The Barren Pig Tree . 280 XXI. The Great Supper . 291 Vill CONTENTS. FAGS XXII. The Lost Sheep . 300 XXIII. The Lost Piece of Money 311 XXIV. The Prodigal Son . 316 XXV. The Unjust Steward . 24- XXVI. The Rich Man and Lazarus 366 XXVII. Unprofitable Servants . 391 XXVIII. The Unjust Judge . 39S XXIX. The Pharisee and the Publican 408 XXX. ThePooiHls 418 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. CHAPTER I. ON THE DEFINITION OF THE PARABLE. Those writers who have had occasion to define a parable* do not appear to have found it an easy task to give such a satisfying definition as should omit none of its distinguishing marks, and yet at the same time include nothing that was superfluous and merely accidental. Rather than attempt to add another to the many definitions already given,f I will seek to note briefly what seems to me to difference it from the fable, the allegory, and such other forms of composition as most closely border upon it. In the process of thus distinguishing it from those forms of composition, with which it is most nearly allied, and therefore most * Uapaffo\rj , from ¦KapafiaXXsiv, prqjicere, objicero, i. c. t! tiVi, to put forth one thing before or beside another ; and it is assumed, when „ apajSoX-q is used for para ble, though not necessarily included in the word, that the purpose for which they are set side by side is that they may be compared one with the other. That this is not necessarily included is proved not only from the derivation, but from the fact that the word itself and the whole family of cognate words, as „ _p„/3oA.os, irdpap6\ws, parabolanus, are used in altogether a different sense, yet one growing out of tho same root, in which the notion of putting forth is retained, but it is no longer for the purpose of comparison, which is only the accident, not of the essence of the word. Thus rrapdfloXo?, qui objicit se prsesentissimo vita? periculo, one who exposes his life, as those called parabolani, because they buried infected corpses at Alex andria. f Many from the Greek Fathers are to be found in Suioer's Tlies., s. v. TrapapoXij. Jerome, on Mark iv., defines it thus : Sermonem utilem, sub idonea figur_ expres- sum, et in rcccssu, continentem spiritualem aliquam admonitionem ; and he calls it finely in another place {Ad Algasi), Quasi umbra prsevia veritatis. Among the moderns, Unger (De Parab. Jesii Naiura, p. 30): Parabola Jesu est collatio per narratiunculam fictam, sed verisimilem, serio illustrans rem sublimiorem. Teel- man: Parabola est similitudo _ rebus communibus et obviis dosumta ad significan- dum quicquam spirituale et casleste. Bengel : Parabola est oratio, quae per narra- tioneni fictam sed vcras similem, ii rebus ad vitas communis usuni pertinentibus desumtam, veritates minus notas aut morales reprassentat. 1. There are some who have confounded the parable with the iEso pic fable, or drawn only a slight and hardly perceptible line of distinc tion between them, as for instance Lessing and Storr, who affirm that the fable relates an event as having actually taken place at a certain time, while the parable only assumes it as possible. But not to say that examples altogether fail to bear them out in this assertion, the dif ference is much more real, and far more deeply seated than this. The "parable is constructed to set forth a truth spiritual and heavenly : this the fable, with all its value, is not; it is essentially ofthe earth, .and never lifts itself above the earth. It never has a higher aim than to in culcate maxims of prudential morality, industry, caution, foresight ; and these it will sometimes recommend even at the expense of the higher self-forgetting virtues. The fable just reaches that pitch of morality which the world will understand and approve. But it has no place in the Scripture,* and in the nature of things could have none, for the pur pose of Scripture excludes it ; that purpose being the awakening of man to a consciousness of a divine original, the education of the reason, and of all which is spiritual in man, and not, except incidentally, the sharp ening of the understanding. For the purposes of the fable, which are the recommendation and enforcement of the prudential virtues, the regu lation of that in man which is instinct in beasts, in itself a laudable dis cipline, but by itself leaving him only a subtler beast of the field, — for these purposes, examples and illustrations taken from the world beneath him are admirably suited.! That world is therefore the haunt and the main region, though by no means the exclusive one, of the fable : even when men are introduced, it is on the side by which they are connected * The two fables that are found in the Old Testament, that of the trees which would choose a king (Judg. ix. 8-15), and the brief one of the thistle and cedar (2 Kin. xiv. 9), may seem to impeach the universality of this rule, but do not so in fact. For in neither case is it God tha* is speaking, nor yet messengers of his, de livering his counsel : but men, and from an earthly standing point, not a divine. Jotham seeks only to teach the men of Shechem their folly, not their sin, in making Abimelech king over them : the fable never lifting itself to the rebuke of sin, as it is sin ; this is beyond its region ; but only in so far as it is also folly. And Jehoash, in the same way, would make Amaziah see his presumption and pride, in challeng ing him to the conflict, not thereby teaching him any moral lesson, but only giving evidence in the fable which he uttered, that his own pride was offended by the challenge of the Jewish king. ¦\ The greatest of all fables, the Reineke Fuchs, affords ample illustration of all this ; it is throughout a glorifying of cunning as the guide of life and the deliverer fiotri all evil. OF THE PARABLE. 1] with that lower world ; while on the other hand, in the parable, the world of animala, though not wholly excluded, finds only admission in so far as it is related to man. The relation of beasts to one another not being spiritual, can supply no analogies, can be in no wise helpful for declaring the truths of the kingdom of God. But all man's relations to man are spiritual, many of his relations, to the world beneath him are sc also. His lordship over the animals, for instance, rests on his highei spiritual nature, is a dominion given to him from above ; therefore, as in the instance ofthe shepherd and sheep (John x.) and elsewhere, it will serve to image forth deeper truths of the relation of God to man. It belongs to this, the loftier standing point of the parable, that it should be deeply earnest, allowing itself therefore in no jesting nor rail lery at the weaknesses, the follies, or the crimes of men." Severe and indignant it may be, but it never jests' at the calamities of men, however well deserved, and its indignation is that of holy love : while in this rail lery, and in these bitter mockings, the fabulist not unfrequently in dulges ;f — he rubs biting salt into the wounds of men's souls — it may be, perhaps it generally is, with a desire to heal those hurts, yet still in a very different spirit from that in which the affectionate Saviour of men poured oil and wine into the bleeding wounds of humanity. * Phajdrus' definition of the fable square.s with that here given : Duplex libelli dos est, ut risum moveat, Et quod prudenti vitam consilio monet. t As finds place, for instance, in La Fontaine's celebrated fable, — La Cigale ayant chante tout l'_t_, — in which the ant, in reply to the petition of the grasshopper, which- is starving in the winter, reminds it how it sung all the summer, and bids it to dance now. That fable, commending as it does foresight and prudence, prepara tion against a day of need, might be compared for purposes of contrast to more than one parable urging the same, as Matt. xxv. 1 ; Luke xvi. 1 ; but with this mighty difference, that the fabulist has only worldly needs in his eye, it is only against these that he urges to lay up by timely industry a sufficient store ; while the Lord in his parables would have us to lay up for eternal life, for the day when not the bodies, but the souls that have nothing in store, will be naked and hungry, and miserable, — to prepare for ourselves a reception into everlasting habitations. The image which the French fabulist uses was very well capable of such higher applica tion, had he been conscious of any such needs (see Prov. vi. 8, and on that verse, Coteler, Patt. Apos., v. i. p. 104, note 13, and Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. Ixvi. 2). In Saadi's far nobler fable, The Ant and the Nightingale, from whence La Fon taine's is undoubtedly borrowed, such application is distinctly intimated. Von Hammer has in this view an interesting comparison between the French and the Persian fable {Gcsch. d. schon. Rcdck. Pers., p. 207). — The fable with which Hero dotus (i. 141) relates Cyrus to have answered the Ionian ambassadors, when they 'offered him a late submission, is another specimen of the bitter irony, of which this class of composition is often the vehicle. X2 ON THE DEFINITION And yet again, there is another point of difference between the para< ble and the fable. While it can never be said that the fabulist is re gardless of truth, since it is neither his intention to deceive, when he attributes language and discourse of reason to trees, and birds, and beasts, nor is any one deceived by him ; yet the severer reverence for truth, which is habitual to the higher moral teacher, will not allow him to indulge even in this sporting with the truth, this temporary suspen sion of its laws, though upon agreement, or, at least, with tacit under standing. In his mind, the creation of God, as it came from the Creator'? hands, is too perfect, has too much of reverence owing to it, to be repre sented otherwise than as it really is. The great Teacher by parables, therefore, allowed himself in no transgression of the established laws of nature — in nothing marvellous or anomalous ; he presents to us no speak ing trees or reasoning beasts,* and we should be at once conscious of an unfitness in his so doing. 2. The parable is different from the mythus, inasmuch as in the mythus, the truth and that which is only the vehicle of the truth are wholly blended together : and the consciousness that there is any dis tinction between them, that it is possible to separate the one from the other, belongs only to a later and more reflective age than that in which the mythus itself had birth, or those in which it was heartily believed. The mythic narrative presents itself not merely as the vehicle of the truth, but as itself being the truth ; while in the parable, there is a per fect consciousness in all minds, of the distinctness between form and essence, shell and kernel, the precious vessel and yet more precious wine which it contains. There is also the mythus of another class, the artificial product of a later self-conscious age, of which many inimitable specimens are to be found in Plato, devised with distinct intention of embodying some important spiritual truth, of giving an outward sub sistence to an idea. But these, while they have many points of resem blance with the parable, yet claim no credence for themselves either as actual or possible (in this differing from the parable), but only for the " Klinckhardt {Dc Horn. Div. ct Laz., p. 2) : Fabula aliquod vita? communis morurnque, prasceptum simplici et nommnquam jocos_ orationo illustrat per exem- pluni pleramque contra veram naturam Actum : parabola autem sententiam subli- miorem (ad res divinas per tinentem) simpliei quidem sed gravi ct seria oratione illustrat per exemplum ita excogitatum ut cum rcrum natura maxim- convenire vidcatur. And Cicero {Dc InvcnL, 1. 19) : Fabula est in qua nee vera ncc verisi- miles res continent™-. But of the parable Origen says, "e_ti ir_o_jBo\i), \-70s tis «pl y.vo/iivov. ph yivo^ivov fief Kara to f>tyr6v, Swa.iJ.ivov Se yeveoftat. There is then some reason for the fault which Calov finds with Grotius, though he is onlv too ready to find fault, f„r commonly using the terms /___/_• and fabella in speaking of our Lord's parables, terms which certainly have an unpleasant sound in the ear. OF THE PARABLE. 13 truth which they embody and declare. The same is the case when upon some old legend or myth that has long been current, there is thrust some spiritual significance, clearly by an afterthought ; in which case it per ishes in the letter that it may live in the spirit ; all outward subsistence is denied to it, for the sake of assorting the idea which it is made to con tain. To such a process, as is well known, the latter Platonists submit ted the old mythology of Greece. For instance, Narcissus falling in love with his own image in the water-brook, and pining there, was the sym bol of man casting himself forth into the world of shows and appearances, and expecting to find the good that would answer to his nature there, . but indeed finding only disappointment and death. It was their mean ing hereby to vindicate that mythology from charges of absurdity or immorality — to put a moral life into it, whereby it should maintain its ground against the new life of Christianity, though indeed they were only thus hastening the destruction of whatever lingering faith in it there yet survived in the minds of men. 3. The parable is alsp clearly distinguishable from the proverb,* though it is true that in a certain degree, the words are used inter changeably in the New Testament, and as equivalent the one to the other. Thus "Physician heal thyself" (Luke iv. 23), is termed a parable, being more strictly a proverb ; so again, when the Lord had used that proverb, probably already familiar to his hearers,! " If the blind lead the blind. both shall fall in the ditch," Peter said, ''Declare unto us this p arable " (Matt. xv. 14, 15); and again, Luke v. 36 is a proverb or proverbial expression, rather than a parable, which name it bears. So, upon the other hand, those are called proverbs in St. John, which, if not strictly parables, yet claim much closer affinity to the parable than to the pro verb, being in fact allegories: thus Christ's setting forth of 'his relations to his people under those of a shepherd to his sheep, is termed a '' pro verb," though our translators, holding fast to the sense rather than to the letter, have rendered it a "parable." (John x. 6, compare xvi. 25. 294) I* is n0^ difficult to explain how this interchange of the two words should have come to pass. Partly from the fact which has been noted by many, of there being but one word in the Hebrew to signify both par able and proverb ; which circumstance must have had considerable in fluence upon writers accustomed to think in that language, and itselt * Tlupoifiia, that is, - ap' oTfiov, a itite, wayside saying, = irapoSla. But some derive it from o-/_tj, a tale, or poem. Yet Passow's explanation of the latter word showe that at the root the two derivations are the same. — See Suicer's Tkcs., s. v. TTopot/iia, t It is current at least now in the East, as I find it in a collection of Turkish Proverbs, in Von Hammer's Morgenl. Kleelbatt, p. 63. X The word 7rapcy.0A.7f never occurs in St John, nor irapoi/jLia in tho three first Evangelists. 14 ON THE DEFINITION arose from the parable and proverb being alike enigmatical and some what obscure fdrms of speech, " dark sayings," speaking a part of their meaning and leaving the rest to be inferred.* This is evidently true of the parable, and in fact no less so of the proverb. For though such proverbs as have become the heritage of an entire people, and have ob tained universal currency, may be, or rather may have become, plain enough, yet in themselves proverbs are most often enigmatical, claiming a quickness in detecting latent affinities, and oftentimes a knowledge which shall enable to catch more or less remote allusions, for their right comprehension. f And yet further to explain how the terms should be often indifferently used, — the proverb, though not necessarily, is yet very commonly parabolical,^ that is, it rests upon some comparison either expressed or implied, as for example, 2 Pet. ii. 22. Or again, the pro verb is often a concentrated parable, for instance that one above quoted, " If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch," might evi dently be extended with ease into a parable ; and in like manner, not merely many proverbs might thus be beaten out into fables, but they ara not unfrequently allusions to or summings up in a single phrase of some well-known fable. § 4. It only remains to consider wherein the parable differs from the allegory, which it does in form rather than in essence : there being in the allegory, an interpenetration of the thing signifying and the thing signified, the qualities and properties of the first being attributed to the last, and the two thus blended together, instead of being kept quite dis tinct and placed side by side, as is the case in the parable. || Thus, John * So we find our Saviour contrasts the speaking in proverbs and parables (John xvi. 25), with the speaking plainly, Trap^T), i' Ct quod per simplex praxeptum teneri ab auditoribus non potest, per similitudi- nem exenrplaque teneatur. t It was no doubt from a deep feeling of this that the Jewish Cabbalists afBrmed, Lumen supernum nunquam descendit sine indumenta ; with which agrees the saying ofthe pseudo-Dionysius, so often quoted by the schoolmen,. Impossibile est nobis aliter lucere divinum radium nisi varietate sacrorum velaminum circum- relatum. t Bernard : Au non expedit tonere vel involutum, quod nudum non capis 1 ON TEACHING BT PARABLES. 29 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 wander ings 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, wnich 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 ho 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. Ai.ex, {Strom., 1. 6, Potter's Ed., p. 803), he begins, Xlapa.$o\utbs yap 6 x«p"""'7)o vriex*- rSy ypatp&v ' Sioti Kal 6 Kipios, ovk &>v Kotr/xtKis els av&pdnrovs %X&ev. 30 ON TEACHING BT PARABLES. 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 theocratio spirit of his Gospel does not fail to appear in the parables which he has recorded ; they are concerning the kingdom, — being commonly the de claration 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. Mat thew only records the sending out of the twelve apostles, corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel, he relates the mission of the seventy, an swering 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 con cerning the free mercy of God— his declarations that there is no depar ture 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 character istic 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 sig nify 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- ON TEACHING BT PARABLES. 31 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 sub stance 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 hia 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 within— apples 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.t 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 sub ject 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 consist ency 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 a foris considerata, decora est valde : et si quis fregerit nucem, intus inveniet quod jucundius sit, et mult6 amplius delec- tabile. f Jerome {In Eccles. xii.) : Parabola) aliud in medulla, habent, aliud in super- ficie pollicentur, et quasi in terrft aurum, in nuce nucleus, in hirsutis castanearum operculis absconditus fructus inquiritur, ita in eis divinus sensus altius perscru- tandus. % Tertullian {De Pudicitia, e. 9) : Quare centum oves 1 et quid utique decern drachma; 1 et quae illae scopae ? Necesse erat qui unius peccatoris salutem gratis- simam Deo volebat exprimere, aliquam numeri quantitatem nominaret, de quo unum quidem perisse describeret : necesse erat ut habitus requirentis draphmam ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES 33 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. Theophylactt and others, though not always faithful to their own prin ciples. So also Origen, who illustrates his meaning by a comparison of great beauty. He says, " For as the likenesses which are given in pic tures 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 pre serve 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 quali ties 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 tho same principle, frequently extends the interpretation through all the branches and minutest fibres of the narrative,^ and Origen not less, in domo, tarn scoparum quam lucernae adminiculo accommodaretur. Hujusmodi enim curiositates et suspecta faciunt quaedam, et coactarum expositionum subtili- tate plerumque deducunt a veritate. Sunt autem quae 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 potu- erunt, quoniam eorum tantum ope res ad eventum facile perduci posset, cum alio- quin saltus fieret aut hiatus in narratione, qui rei narratae similitudini omnino noceret, vel quia eorum neglectus auditores fortasse ad inanes quaestiones et dubi- tationes invitare posset. * TaAAa ^ irepiepydfav. f Theophylact {In Imc. xvi.) : n_