It the general lesson that everything depended on the spirit in which they received his words. He came not (he told them) to hide his light, but to enlighten the darkness of men. was his calling to be the Light of the world (Mark iv. 21). (He spoke in order to reveal the truth, not to hide it.) The truth which he had obscurely intimated was to unfold itself for the instruction of all mankind (v. 22; cf. John xvi. 25). Yet the organs who were destined to unfold it must have "hearing ears" (v. 23). And he proceeds (v. 24), "Take heed, therefore, what ye hear (be not like the stupid multitude, who perceive only the outward word); and unto you that hear shall more be given (my revelations to you will increase in proportion to the susceptibility with which you appropriate the truths which I have intimated)." And he concludes with the general law, "Whosoever has—in reality has—whosoever has made to himself a living possession of the truths which he has heard, to him shall more be ever given. But he that has received it only as something dead and outward, shall lose even that which he seems to have, but really has not."m His knowledge, unspiritual and dead, will turn out to be worthless-the shell without the kernel. Some have supposed that these words (v. 25) were merely a proverb of common life, of which Christ made a higher application. But the proofs that have been offered in favour of the existence of such a proverb are by no means to the point; and in fact, it would be hardly true applied to temporal possessions, for the poor man can increase his small store by industry and prudence; and the rich, without those qualities, may soon lose his heaped-up treasures. The saying is fully true only in an ethical sense; it speaks of moral, and not material possessions. Applied, however, as a proverb, it must refer, not to mere possession, but to property held as such, and can only mean that he who holds property, as his own, will not keep it as dead capital, but gain more with it; while he, on the other hand, who does not know how to use what he has, will lose it. Thus understood, the words are not only fully applicable to the special case before us, but also to manifold relations in the sphere of moral life. The apostles had as yet, in their intercourse with their Mark iv. 25; Luke viii. 18; Matt. xi. 12. I must hold ò dokɛĩ exɛuv to be the true reading of Luke viii. 18, in spite of what De Wette says to the contrary. Conf. Wetstein on Matt. xiii. 12. Master, received but little; but that little was imprinted ou their hearts. They did not, like the multitude, receive the word only by the hearing of the ear, but made it thoroughly and spiritually their own. And thus was laid within them the foundation of Christian progress. § 67. His Mode of Teaching corresponds to the General Law of Development of the Kingdom of God. It was, then, according to Christ's own words, a peculiar aim and law of his teaching, to awaken a sense for Divine things in the human mind, and to make further communications in proportion to the degree of living appropriation that might be made of what was given. And this corresponds with the general laws established by Christ for the development of the kingdom of GOD. It is his law that choice must be made, by the free determination of the will, between GOD and the world, before the susceptibility for Divine things (which may exist even in the as yet fettered soul, if it incline towards GOD), and the emotions of love for the Divine which springs from that susceptibility, can arise in the human heart. The heart tends to the point from whence it seeks its treasure (its highest good). The sense for the Divine, the inward light, must shine. If worldly tendencies extinguish it, the darkness must be total. Christ's words, Christ's manifestation, can find no entrance. The Divine light streams forth in vain if the lightperceiving eye of the soul is darkened. The parable of the sower vividly sets forth the necessity of a susceptible soil, before the seed of the Word can germinate and bring forth fruit. And so he constantly assured the carnal Jews that they could not understand him in their existing state of mind. He who will not follow the Divine "drawing" (revealed in his dawning consciousness of GOD) can never attain to faith in Christ, and must feel himself repelled from his words. The carnal mind can find nothing in him. The form of his language (so he told those who took offence at its) appeared incomprehensible, because its import, the truth of GOD, could not be apprehended by souls estranged from Him. The form and the substance were alike paradoxical to them. The • Pascal (Art de Persuader), “qu'il faut aimer les choses divines, pour les connaître." Beautifully said. P Matt. vi. 21. John vi. 44. 9 Luke xii. 34; Matt. vi. 22. John viii. 33, 44. In v. 43, λaλía expresses the mode of speaking. The substance is expressed by λóyos. See Lücke's excellant remarks on the passage. uncongenial soul found his mode of speaking strange and foreign; it is foreign no more when the spirit, through its newly-roused sense for the Divine, yields itself up to the higher Spirit. The words can be understood only by those who have a sympathy for the spirit and the substance. Thus, then, the other Evangelists agree with John in regard to the fundamental principles of Christ's mode of teaching. B. CHRIST'S USE OF PARABLES. § 68.-Idea of the Parable.-Distinction between Parable, Fable, and Mythus. Without doubt the form of Christ's communications was in some degree determined by the mental peculiarities of the people among whom he laboured, viz., the Jews and Orientals. We may find in this one reason for his use of parables; and we must esteem it as a mark of his freedom of mind and creative originality, that he so adapted to his own purposes a form of instruction that was especially current among the Jews. But yet his whole method of teaching, as we have already set it forth, would have led him, independently of his relations to the people around him, to adopt this mode of communicating truth. Not inaptly as one of the old writers compared the parables of Christ's discourses to the parabolic character of his whole manifestation, representing, as it did, the supernatural in a natural form.t We may define the parables as representations through which the truths pertaining to the kingdom of God are vividly exhibited by means of special relations of common life, taken either from nature or the world of mankind. A general truth is set forth under the likeness of a particular fact, or a continuous narrative, commonly derived from the lower sphere of life; the operations of nature, and the qualities of inferior animals, or the acts of men in their mutual relations with each other, being assumed as the basis of the representation. Those parables which are derived entirely from the sphere of nature are grounded on the typical relations that exist between Nature and Spirit. So, in the vine and its branches, Christ * Διότι καὶ ὁ Κύριος οὐκ ὢν κοσμικός, ὡς κοσμικὸς εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἦλθεν. -Strom. vi. 677. u "It can readily be shown that the parables, as used by Christ, had the significance of their types. Nature, as she has disclosed herself to the mind of man, must in them bear witness of Spirit." Steffens (Religionsphilosophie, i. 146.) And so Schelling, on the relation between Nature and History, "They are to each other parable and interpretation." (Philos. Schriften, 1809, 457.) finds a type of the relation between himself and those who are members of his body. He is the true Vine. The law whose reality finds place in the spiritual life is only imaged and typified in nature. Even though the fable be so defined as to be included in the parable, as the species is comprehended in the genus, still the latter, especially as Christ employs it, has always its own distinctive characteristics. The parable is allied to the fable, as used by Æsop, so far forth as both differ from the Mythus (an unconscious invention), by employing statements of fact, not pretended to be historical, merely as coverings for the exhibition of a general truth; the latter only being presented to the mind of the hearer or reader as real. But the parable is distinguished from the fable by this, that in the latter, qualities or acts of a higher class of beings may be attributed to a lower (e. g., those of men to brutes); while, in the former, the lower sphere is kept perfectly distinct from the higher one which it serves to illustrate. The beings and powers thus introduced always follow the law of their nature, but their acts, according to this law, are used to figure those of a higher race. The fable cannot be true according to its form, e. g., when brutes are introduced thinking, speaking, and acting like men; but the representations of the parable always correspond to the facts of nature, or the occurrences of civil and domestic life, and remind the hearer of events and phenomena within his own experience. The mere introduction of brutes, as personal agents, in the fable, is not sufficient to distinguish it from the parable, which may make use of the same contrivance; as, for instance, indeed, Christ employs the sheep in one of his parables. The great distinction here, also, lies in what has already been remarked; brutes introduced in the parable act according to the law of their nature, and the two spheres of nature and the kingdom of GOD are carefully separated from each other. Hence the reciprocal relations of brutes to each other are not made use of, as these could furnish no appropriate image of the relation between man and the kingdom of God. And as the lower animals are, by an impulse of their nature, attached to man as a being of a higher order, Divine, as it were, in comparison to themselves, and destined to rule over them, the relations between man and this inferior race may serve very well to illustrate the still higher relations of the former to the kingdom of GOD and the Saviour. Thus, for instance, Christ employs the connexion of sheep and the shepherd to give a vivid image of the reiations of human souls to their Divine guide. There is ground for this distinction between parable and fable, both in the form and in the substance. In the form, because the parable intends that the objects of nature and the occurrences of every-day life shall be associated with higher truths, and thus not only illustrate them, but preserve them constantly in the memory. In the substance, because, although single acts of domestic or social virtue might find points of likeness in the qualities of the lower animals (not morality in general, for this, like religion, is too lofty to be thus illustrated), the dignity of the sphere of Divine life would be essentially lowered by transferring it to a class of beings entirely destitute of corresponding qualities. § 69.-Order in which the Parables were Delivered.—Their Perfection.— Mode of Interpreting them. We find many parables placed together in Matthew xiii.; and the question naturally arises whether it is probable that Christ uttered so many at one and the same time. We can readily conceive that he should use various parables in succession in order to present the same truth, or several closely related truths, in different forms; this variety would tend to excite attention, to present the one truth more clearly by such various illustration, to put the one subject before the beholder's eye more steadily, in many points of view, and thus to imprint it indelibly upon his memory. But it is not to be supposed that Christ delivered a succession of parables different both in form and matter, or, if somewhat alike in form, different in scope and design; for this could only have confused the minds of his hearers, and thus frustrated the very purpose of this mode of instruction. It will be easy to gather what is necessary to the perfection of the parable, from what we have said of its nature. In the first place, the fact selected from the lower sphere of life should be perfectly adapted, in its own nature, to give a vivid representation of the higher truth; and, secondly, the individual traits of the lower fact itself should be clearly exhibited according to nature. Hence, in order to understand the parables correctly, we must endeavour to seize upon the single truth which the parabolic dress is designed to illustrate, and refer all the rest to this. The separate features, which serve to give roundness and distinctness to the picture of the lower fact, may aid us in obtaining a more many-sided view of the |
