(B.) THE PARABLES OF CHRIST. true of all? or of Judas Iscariot, and in it, if Joses was, as would seem likeperhaps some others, according to ly, an elder brother of Jude, and next John xii. 4, and Mark xiv. 4? It is in order to James. not at all necessary to suppose that St. John is here speaking of all the brethren. If Joses, Simon, and the three sisters disbelieved, it would be quite sufficient ground for the state- The word Parable (πapaßoλý) does ment of the Evangelist. The same not of itself imply a narrative. The may be said of Matt. xii. 47, Mark juxtaposition of two things, differing iii, 32, where it is reported to Him in most points, but agreeing in some, that his mother and his brethren, is sufficient to bring the comparison designated by St. Mark (iii. 21) as thus produced within the etymology oi rap avτо~, were standing without. of the word. In Hellenistic Greek Nor does it necessarily follow that the the word acquired a meaning codisbelief of the brethren was of such extensive with that of the Hebrew a nature that James and Jude, Apos- mâshâl, for which the LXX. writers, tles though they were, and vouched with hardly an exception, make it the for half a year before by the warm-equivalent. That word (= similitude) tempered Peter, could have had no had a large range of application, and share in it. It might have been simi- was applied sometimes to the shortest lar to that feeling of unfaithful rest-proverbs (1 Sam. x. 12, xxiv. 13; 2 lessness which perhaps moved St. Chr. vii. 20), sometimes to dark proJohn Baptist to send his disciples to phetic utterances (Num. xxiii. 7, 18, make their inquiry of the Lord (see xxiv. 3; Ez. xx. 49), sometimes to Grotius in loc., and Lardner, vi. p. enigmatic maxims (Ps. lxxviii. 2; 497. Lond. 1788). With regard to Prov. i. 6), or metaphors expanded John ii. 12, Acts i. 14, we may say into a narrative (Ez. xii. 22). In that "his brethren 19 are no more ex- Ecclesiasticus the word occurs with a cluded from the disciples in the first striking frequency, and, as will be passage, and from the Apostles in the seen hereafter, its use by the Son of second, by being mentioned parallel Sirach throws light on the position with them, than "the other Apostles, occupied by parables in our Lord's and the brethren of the Lord, and teaching. In the N. T. itself the word Cephas" (1 Cor. ix. 5), excludes Pe- is used with a like latitude. ter from the Apostolic band. attached most frequently to the illusObjection 5. -"If the title of breth-trations which have given it a special ren of the Lord had belonged to meaning, it is also applied to a short James and Jude, they would have been designated by it in the list of the Apostles." The omission of a title is so slight a ground for an argument that we may pass this by. While saying, like "Physician, heal thyself" (Luke iv. 23), to a mere comparison without a narrative (Matt. xxiv. 32), to the figurative character of the Levitical ordinances (Heb. ix. 9), or of single facts in patriarchal history (Heb. xi. 19). Objection 6.-That Mary the wife of Clopas should be designated by the title of Mary the mother of James and To understand the relation of the Joses, to the exclusion of Jude, if parables of the Gospels to our Lord's James and Jude were Apostles, ap- teaching, we must go back to the use pears to Dean Alford extremely im- made of them by previous or contemprobable. There is no improbability porary teachers. We have sufficient evidence that they were frequently | grounds of wonder. Here, for us, is employed by them. They appear fre- the key to the explanation which he quently in the Gemara and Midrash, gave, that he had chosen this form and are ascribed to Hillel, Shammai, of teaching because the people were and other great Rabbis of the two spiritually blind and deaf (Matt. xiii. preceding centuries. Later Jewish 13), and in order that they might rewriters have seen in this employment main so (Mark iv. 12). Upon this of parables a condescension to the ig- we may observe that all experience norance of the great mass of mankind, shows (1) that parables do attract, who can not be taught otherwise. and, when once understood, are sure For them, as for women or children, to be remembered; (2) that men may parables are the natural and fit meth-listen to them and see that they have od of instruction. It may be ques- a meaning, and yet never care to ask tioned, however, whether this represents the use made of them by the Rabbis of our Lord's time. The language of the Son of Sirach confines them to the scribe who devotes himself to study. They are at once his glory and his reward (Ecclus. xxxix. 2, 3). The parable was made the instrument for teaching the young disciple to discern the treasures of wisdom of which the "accursed" multitude were ignorant. The teaching of our Lord at the commencement of his ministry was, in every way, the opposite of this. The Sermon on the Mount may be taken as the type of the "words of grace" which he spake, "not as the scribes." So for some months he taught in the synagogues and on the sea-shore of Galilee, as he had before taught in Jerusalem, and as yet without a parable. But then there comes a change. The direct teaching was met with scorn, unbelief, hardness, and he seems for a time to From the time indicated by Matt. abandon it for that which took the xiii., accordingly, parables enter form of parables. The question of largely into our Lord's recorded teachthe disciples (Matt. xiii. 10) implies ing. Each parable of those which that they were astonished. Their we read in the Gospels may have Master was no longer proclaiming the been repeated more than once with Gospel of the kingdom as before. He greater or less variation (as e. g. those was falling back into one at least of of the Pounds and the Talents, Matt. the forms of Rabbinic teaching. He xxv. 14; Luke xix. 12: of the Supper, was speaking to the multitude in the in Matt. xxii. 2, and Luke xiv. 16). parables and dark sayings which the Every thing leads us to believe that Rabbis reserved for their chosen dis- there were many others of which we ciples. Here, for them, were two have no record (Matt. xiii. 34; Mark what that meaning is. Their worth, iv. 33). (A.) There is the group with which the new mode of teaching is ushered in, and which have for their subject the laws of the Divine Kingdom, in its growth, its nature, its consummation. Under this head we have 1. The Sower (Matt. xiii.; Mark iv. ; Luke viii.). 2. The Wheat and the Tares (Matt. xiii.). 3. The Mustard Seed (Matt. xiii.; Mark iv.). 4. The Seed cast into the Ground (Mark iv.). 5. The Leaven (Matt. xiii.). 6. The Hid Treasure (Matt. xiii.). 8. The Net cast into the Sea (Matt. xiii.). 16. The Great Supper (Luke xiv.). 18. The Lost Piece of Money (Luke xv.). 22. The Unjust Judge (Luke xviii.). 24. The Laborers in the Vineyard (Matt. To (C.) Toward the close of our Lord's ministry, immediately before and after the entry into Jerusalem, the parables assume a new character. They are again theocratic, but the phase of the Divine Kingdom, on which they chiefly dwell, is that of its final consummation. They are prophetic, in part, of (B.) After this there is an interval the rejection of Israel, in part of the of some months, of which we know great retribution of the coming of the comparatively little. Either there was Lord. They are to the earlier paraa return to the more direct teaching, bles what the prophecy of Matt. xxiv. or else these were repeated, or others is to the Sermon on the Mount. like them spoken. When the next this class we may referparables meet us, they are of a different type and occupy a different position. They occur chiefly in the interval between the mission of the Seventy and the last approach to Jerusalem. They are drawn from the life of men rather than from the world of nature. Often they occur, not, as in Matt. xiii., in discourses to the multitude, but in answers to the questions of the disciples or other inquirers. They are such as these 9. The Two Debtors (Luke vii.). 10. The Merciless Servant (Matt. xviii.). 11. The Good Samaritan (Luke x.). 12. The Friend at Midnight (Luke xi.). 13. The Rich Fool (Luke xii.). 14. The Wedding-Feast (Luke xii.). 15. The Fig-Tree (Luke xiii.). *The number of parables in the Gospels will of course depend on the range given to the application of the name. Thus Mr. Greswell reckons twenty-seven; Archbishop Trench, thirty. By others, the number has been extended to fifty. 25. The Pounds (Luke xix.). 30. The Talents (Matt. xxv.). 31. The Sheep and the Goats (Matt. xxv.). It is characteristic of the several Gospels that the greater part of the parables of the first and third groups belong to St. Matthew, emphatically the Evangelist of the kingdom. Those of the second are found for the most part in St. Luke. They are such as we might expect to meet with in the Gospel which dwells most on the sympathy of Christ for all men. Mark, as giving vivid recollections of the acts rather than the teaching of Christ, is the scantiest of the three synoptic Gospels. It is not less characteristic that there are no parables properly so called in St. John. It is St. as if he, sooner than any other, had more than one legitimate explanation. passed into the higher stage of knowl- The outward fact in nature, or in soedge, in which parables were no long- cial life, may correspond to spiritual er necessary, and therefore dwelt less facts at once in God's government of on them. That which his spirit ap- the world, and in the history of the propriated most readily were the individual soul. A parable may be words of eternal life, figurative it at once ethical, and in the highest might be in form, abounding in bold sense of the term prophetic. There analogies, but not in any single in- is thus a wide field open to the disstance taking the form of a narrative. cernment of the interpreter. There Lastly, there is the law of interpre- are also restraints upon the mere fertation. It has been urged by some tility of his imagination. (1) The writers, that there is a scope or pur- analogies must be real, not arbitrary. pose for each parable, and that our (2) The parables are to be considered aim must be to discern this, not to as parts of a whole, and the interprefind a special significance in each cir- tation of one is not to override or cumstance or incident. The rest, it encroach upon the lessons taught by is said, may be dealt with as the dra- others. (3) The direct teaching of pery which the parable needs for its Christ presents the standard to which grace and completeness, but which is all our interpretations are to be refernot essential. It may be questioned, red, and by which they are to be meashowever, whether this canon of inter- ured. (Trench on the Parables, Intropretation is likely to lead us to the ductory Remarks.) full meaning of this portion of our Lord's teaching. True as it doubtless is, that there was in each parable a leading thought, to be learned partly from the parable itself, partly The Transfiguration is usually from the occasion of its utterance, placed on Mount Tabor, which is one and that all else' gathers round that of the most interesting and remarkthought as a centre, it must be re-able of the single mountains of Palesmembered that in the great patterns tine. It rises abruptly from the northof interpretation which He himself eastern arm of the Plain of Esdraelon, has given us, there is more than this. and stands entirely insulated, except Not only the sower and the seed and on the west, where a narrow ridge the several soils have their counter-connects it with the hills of Nazareth. parts in the spiritual life, but the It presents to the eye, as seen from a birds of the air, the thorns, the scorch- distance, a beautiful appearance, being heat, have each of them a signifi- ing so symmetrical in its proportions, The explanation of the wheat and rounded off like a hemisphere or and the tares, given with less fullness the segment of a circle. If one might (an outline as it were, which the ad- choose a place which might be deemed vancing scholars would be able to fill peculiarly fitting for the Transfiguraup), is equally specific. It may be tion, there is none certainly which inferred from these two instances that would so entirely satisfy our feelings we are at least justified in looking in this respect as the lofty, majestic, for a meaning even in the seeming beautiful Tabor. It is impossible, accessories of a parable. The very however, to acquiesce in the correctform of the teaching makes it proba-ness of this opinion. It is susceptible ble that there may be, in any case, of proof from the Old Testament, and cance. (C.) THE SCENE OF THE TRANSFIGURATION. Evangelists record the event in connection with a journey of the Saviour to Cæsarea Philippi, near the sources of the Jordan. It is conjectured that the Transfiguration may have taken place on one of the summits of Mount Hermon in that vicinity. "It is impossible," says Dean Stanley, "to look up from the plain to the towering peaks of Hermon, almost the only from later history, that a fortress or town existed on Tabor from very early times down to B.C. 50 or 53; and, as Josephus says (Bell. Jud. iv. 1, § 8) that he strengthened the fortifications of a city there, about A.D. 60, it is morally certain that Tabor must have been inhabited during the intervening period, that is, in the days of Christ. Tabor, therefore, could not have been the Mount of Transfigura-mountain which deserves the name in tion; for when it is said that Jesus took his disciples "up into a high mountain apart and was transfigured before them" (Matt. xvii. 1, 2), we must understand that he brought them to the summit of the mountain, where they were alone by themselves. It is impossible to ascertain with certainty what place is entitled to the glory of this marvelous scene. The Palestine, and not be struck with the |