The Parables of Our Lord | Page 5

to
determine how far this characteristic is due to the meteorological and
geographical features of the continent, and how far to hereditary
peculiarities of race.
Looking merely to the physical features of their country, you might

expect that the inhabitants of Palestine would possess in a high degree
the faculty of suggesting and appreciating analogical conceptions; the
peculiar history and jurisprudence of the people must have tended
powerfully in the same direction. Accordingly, as might have been
expected from the circumstances of the nation, it appears in point of
fact on the whole face of the Scriptures, that as the institutes of the
commonwealth were symbolical, the language of the people was
figurative. They were at home in metaphor. It was their vernacular. The
sudden and bold adoption of physical forms in order to convey spiritual
conceptions, did not surprise--did not puzzle them. "Ye are the salt of
the earth," "Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be
gathered together," fell upon their ears, not as a foreign dialect, but as
the accents of their native tongue.
It might easily be shown that no other characteristic connected with the
form of the Scriptures could have done so much to facilitate their
diffusion in all climes, and in all ages, as the analogical mould in which
a large proportion of their conceptions is cast; but this is scarcely
denied by any, and is easily comprehended by all. In another point of
view, less obvious, and not so frequently noticed, the prevalence in the
Scriptures of analogical forms, attaching spiritual doctrines to natural
objects and historic facts, has served a good purpose in the evidences
and exposition of revealed religion. The more abstract terms of a
language are not so distinctly apprehended as the more concrete, and in
the course of ages are more liable to change. The habit, universal
among the writers of the Scriptures from the most ancient to the latest,
of making abstract moral conceptions fast to pillars of natural objects
and current facts, has contributed much to fix the doctrines like fossils
for all time, and so to diminish the area of controversy. All the more
steadily and safely has revealed truth come down from the earliest time
to the present day, that it has in every part of its course run on two
distinct but parallel tracks.
II.--PARABLES.
The parable is one of the many forms in which the innate analogy
between the material and the moral may be, and has been practically

applied.[2] The difficulty of constructing a definition which should
include every similitude that belongs to this class, and exclude all
others, has been well appreciated by expositors and frankly confessed.
The parables of the New Testament, after critics have done their utmost
to generalize and classify, must in the end be accounted sui generis,
and treated apart from all others. The etymology of the name affords us
no help, for it is applied without discrimination to widely diverse forms
of comparison; it indicates the juxtaposition of two thoughts or things,
with the view of exhibiting and employing the analogy which may be
found to subsist between them; but several other terms convey
precisely the same meaning, and therefore it cannot supply us with the
distinguishing characteristic of a class. As far as I have been able to
observe, hardly anything has been gained at this point by the
application of logical processes. The distinctions which have been
successfully made are precisely those which are sufficiently obvious
without a critical apparatus; and in regard to those comparisons which
bear the closest affinity to the parable, and in which, on account of the
rainbow-like blending of the boundaries, logical definitions are most
needed, logical definitions have most signally failed. Scholars have, for
example, successfully distinguished parables from myths and fables;
but this is laboriously to erect a fence between two flocks that in their
nature manifest no tendency to intermingle; whereas, from some other
forms of analogy, such as the allegory, the parable cannot be separated
by a definition expressed in general terms, which shall be at once
universally applicable and universally understood.
[2] Christ made it his business to speak in parables; and, indeed, one
may say, the whole visible world is only a parable of the invisible
world. The parable is not only something intermediate between history
and doctrine; it is both history and doctrine--at once historical doctrine
and doctrinal history. Hence its enchaining, ever fresher, and younger
charm. Yes, parable is nature's own language in the human heart; hence
its universal intelligibility, its, so to speak, permanent sweet scent, its
healing balsam, its mighty power to win one to come again and again to
hear. In short, the parable is the voice of the people, and hence also the
voice of God.--Die Gleichniss-reden Jesu