The parables of Our Saviour expounded and illustrated by William M. Taylor ...

Front matter

- J ~ V

BY REV. WILLIAM M. TAYLOR, D.D., LLD.

LIMITATIONS OF LIFE, and other Sermons.

Contents

PAGE

I. Introductory 1

II. The Four Kinds of Soil, 17

I. Introductory

"He spake many things unto them in parables." — Matt. xiii. 3.

As we enter upon the exposition of the Saviour's parables, we are met by two or three preliminary questions, the answers to which will determine, to a considerable extent, the character and quality of our work. To the consideration and settlement of these, therefore, we shall devote this introductory discourse.

I. First, what is a parable ? In the New Testament, two Greek words have been rendered by this one English term. The one of these, irapot/xia, is almost peculiar to the fourth Evangelist, seeing that he uses it four times, while it occurs only once elsewhere ; to wit, in 2 Pet. ii. 22, where it is translated "proverb." Literally it signifies "something by the way;" and in its secondary sense it denotes a figurative discourse or dark saying, in which more is meant than meets the ear, and into which much valuable though hidden meaning has been closely packed. The other and more common term, TrapafioXri, which, curiously enough, is never used by John, while it is the only one employed by the

2 TTIE PARABLES OF OUR SAVIOUR.

other Evangelists, is simply the English word in Greek letters. It comes from a verb which signifies to throw or place side by side, and denotes a placing of one thing beside another for the purpose of comparison, or, more generally, an utterance which involves a comparison. It is used by the sacred writers both in a wider and in a narrower sense. In the wider sense, it is emplo}^ed sometimes to denote an adage, or proverb properly so called ; 2 sometimes to signify a sentiment so briefly and darkly worded as not to be easily understood ; 2 sometimes to designate a pithy instruction couched in the form of an aphorism; 3 and sometimes to describe a lesson which is confirmed by a simile drawn from nature. 4 But, in its more restricted sense, it is the name given to a connected narrative, whether of events in human life or of a process in nature, by which some great spiritual truth is illustrated or enforced. It is not a mere simile, which may be expressed in a single clause ; or even a detailed comparison of one thing to another: but a little history, which might be read merely for its own sake, but which, as used by the Great Teacher, was made the vehicle of instruction or warning, of comfort or condemnation. The little girl was very near the mark, when she said that a parable is "an earthly story with a heavenly meaning;" and we may not be far wrong if we define it to be a narrative true to nature or to life, used for the purpose of conveying spiritual truth to the mind of the hearer. Its force depends on the analogy which exists between God's works in nature and providence, and his operations in grace. The world of nature came at first from, and is still sustained by, the hand of Him who formed the human soul ; and the administration of

1 Luke iv. 23. 2 Matt. xv. 15. 3 Luke xiv. 7. 4 Matt. xxiv. 32.

providence is carried on by Him who gave to us the revelation of his will in the Sacred Scriptures, and provided for us salvation through his Son. We may expect, therefore, to find a principle of unity running through all these three departments of his administration; and a knowledge of his operations in any one of them may be helpful to us in our investigation of the others.

The use which was made of this truth by Bishop Butler, in his great work on " The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature," is known to every student of the Christian evidences. Postulating that the course and constitution of nature are maintained by God, he shows that the difficulties which emerge in revelation are precisely parallel to those which meet us in nature and in providence, and draws these two conclusions : namely, that, as we have met difficulties in these other departments, we ought not to be surprised to meet similar difficulties in revelation, coming as that does from the same divine Author ; and that, as in the one case the difficulties are not regarded as sufficient to invalidate our belief that the constitution and course of nature are from God^ so in the other they ought not to be allowed to stand in the way of our acceptance of the Scriptures as from him. The argument is irrefutable by those who admit the postulate with which he sets out ; and they who reject it at all can do so consistently, only by accepting, as unhappily James Mill did, the dreary, unrelieved darkness of absolute atheism.

The existence of this analogy lies also at the root of the finest poetry, and accounts for the effect produced upon us by the revelation of those hidden harmonies which genius has discovered and revealed. Not seldom, too, the physical philosopher has been led hj the same principle to some of his grandest discoveries ; and, as in the case of the great German, the insight of the poet has been combined with — has, indeed, contributed to — the eminence of the man of science. Thus all things are double, one against another. The external is the mirror in which we may behold the internal and spiritual ; and Milton was not wrong when he said, —

" What if earth Be but the shadow of heaven and things therein, Each to the other like, more than on earth is thought ? "

Hence a true parable is something more than a mere felicitous illustration. It is an outward symbol of an inward reality. It is not the creation of a new similarity, but the revelation of a similarity that has always existed ; not the putting into nature or into life of that which was not formerly in them, but the bringing-out from them of that which they have always contained, and which is indeed their deepest and their truest significance. Trench is not overstating the case, therefore, when he says of the Saviour's parables, that "their power lies in the harmony unconsciously felt by all men, and which all deeper minds have delighted to trace, between the natural and spiritual worlds, so that analogies from the first are felt to be something more than illustrations happily but yet arbitrarily chosen. They are arguments, and may be alleged as witnesses ; the world of nature being throughout a witness for the world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand, growing out of the same root, and being constituted for that very end." 1

1 Note3 on the Parables, by Archbishop Trench, pp. 12, 13.

Herein, too, lies the root of the difference between the parable, strictly so called, and the fable. No doubt, as has been often pointed out, the fable finds its sphere in the lower department of merely worldly prudence, while that of the parable is in the enforcement of the highest spiritual truths. But that to which I direct attention more particularly now is the fact that the author of the fable puts into nature something that is not originally there, in order that he may draw out again the lesson which he designs to teach ; while the setter-forth of a parable relates a narrative which in all its parts is true to nature, and finds in that nature, when rightly interpreted, the higher principle which he seeks to enforce. The fabulist does violence to nature, by transferring human motives and actions to trees and animals, in order that he may make them the mouthpieces of that shrewdness which he does not care to utter in his own proper personality. Thus, in Jotham's fable of the trees choosing a king, 1 he attributes the actions of human beings to the vine, the olive, and the fig-tree ; and the lesson which he brings out of the whole story is one which he had himself first put into it. In a parable, on the other hand, there is nothing contrary to the truth of nature : every thing is in character ; and the moral is not one which has been thrust into it for the time being and for a particular purpose, but one which has all along been in that aspect of human life, and that process of nature, and which waited only for the eye that could see it, and the voice that could reveal it to the world. So as science advances, and history rolls on in its course, the materials for parable are increased; and those who keep abreast of their times may find ever-new analogies wherewith to attract

i Judg. ix. 8-2Q.

the attention of their fellows, and illustrate to them the eternal verities of the gospel.

But observe : to do all this, the parable must be true to nature and to life. If it be not, then it is no proper parable ; the analogy is forced, and the lesson conveyed is not one which God meant to teach, but only one which the human speaker has himself devised. This must never be lost sight of ; and yet, at the same time, it must never be misunderstood. For it does not imply that the narrative in a parable must be the history of an actual occurrence. It may or it may not be so. The essential thing is, that, whether fact or fiction, it shall be true. It may indeed seem paradoxical when I speak of fiction as being true ; but the proper antithesis to fiction is fact, not truth, and a thing may be true without being fact. Thus, to take a modern instance, we may find mistakes in matters of fact in some of the historical plays of Shakspeare ; but still no mere chronicler of facts has given us any thing like such a truthful idea of the life of the periods which he has delineated, as he has furnished in these dramas. So the story of the Prodigal Son may have been a history of literal facts. There is nothing in it that renders that impossible. But it may also be, as I believe it is, a fiction ; and as such it has the truth of an ideal which corresponds to many different reals. Every thing in it is to the life ; and as each person reads it, he may have some case in his mind, distinct from that in the mind of every other, to which the description exactly answers. Putting together, then, the different things which we have emphasized, we may say that a parable is the narrative — fictitious or otherwise — of a scene in human life or a process in nature ; yet true in its representations either of the one or of the other, and having under it a spiritual lesson : or, to repeat the little girl's definition, it is " an earthly story with a heavenly meaning."

II. But now let us ask, in the second place, why the Lord Jesus used parables in his discourses. And to that we may answer, first of all, that he employed this form of instruction as a means of attracting attention. Every one knows how the interest of young people is awakened and sustained by the telling of "a story." We can all remember how in our early days our minds were fascinated and our imaginations were filled by those classics of the nursery, as I may call them, which were read to us by our seniors, and which we eagerly received, without any questioning on our part as to their truth, or any consciousness, either in the reader or the hearers, of any hidden meaning lurking beneath their incidents. But in this respect we are all only children of a larger growth, as is made abundantly evident by the fact that when a public speaker descends from abstract reasoning to concrete illustration, and clinches his argument by a pat and parallel anecdote, an immediate hush of eager interest stills his audience into a breathless silence, which is broken only at the close by the outburst of irrepressible applause. Now, knowing well this peculiarity of our nature, the Lord secured the attention of his hearers by the beautiful parables which he introduced into his discourses. And the effect was heightened by his selection, for this purpose, of the scenes, incidents, and objects with which men were familiar in common life. He never introduced recondite subjects, or went out of the region with which his hearers were acquainted; but he lifted up that which lay at his hand, making it magnetic in its attractiveness, and luminous in its application. This,

TEE PAYABLES OE OUR SAVIOUB

i his popularity as a

r. Hm - ^oing forth to sow; the fisherman

bo the lake ; the woman kneading her

ing her house in search of a piece of

t which she had lost ; the growth of the mustardfrom a seed; the shepherd going after his

sheep: the father receiving back his 1 ng-L:s: = n : :"_-? 1 incidents of a marriage procession ; the hiring _f laborers in the market-place., — all were turned by ln'm to profitable account And this helps to explain it came, that, with a Joseph and a Mcodemus among his disciples, it was also true that "the common people heard him gladly ; w for here, in their liking for ■ ■ :. st »ry " lying in the sphere of daily life, ** the rich and the poor meet together," and both alike are attracted by the spell of its influence.

But another reason why our Lord used parables in his teaching was to prevent his auditors from being repelled by a too sudden revelation, either of his purposc or of his message. His hearers were largely prejudiced against the truth which he came to teach ; and by means of these delightful stories he secured the presentation of it to their minds in a form which, for the time at least, disarmed antagonism. He had to reveal his truth to men "as the" were able to be:.: it, and so he gave it to them first under the guise of parables, me reas m which underlies the fact that the gospel dispensation as a whole was preceded hy the Jewish — which with its types and shadows was just one t parable — is to be found at the heart of our Saviour's emplovmeii: : this mode of instruction. The race had to be prepared for the fuller revelation which was coming, by the pictorial representation which i before. And what was true .: the race as a whole is true also of the individual. The old heathen myth which represented that the sight of the unveiled image of Truth, at Sais, would smite a man into death or into blindness, has its full interpretation here ; and parable was the veil which Jesus put over the face of truth, to secure its safer perception by those who listened to his words. Had he spoken plainly, they would have been largely repelled; but by his use of analogy he prepared the way for their ultimate reception of his teaching. Thus, to take but one illustration : the Jews of his day had set their hearts upon a literal restoration of their earthly kingdom. Indeed, they fully expected that as the fulfilment of their ancient oracles. Now, if Jesus, at the beginning of his ministry, had affirmed as plainly as he did at its close, to Pilate, who had no such prejudice, that " his kingdom was not of this world," they would have given him no further heed. But in his wisdom he veiled that fact beneath the many parables which tell of " the kingdom of heaven ; " and in that form it was preserved for his genuine disciples, while it was hidden for the time from his antagonists. This seems to me to be the true explanation of the somewhat difficult passage wherein the Lord himself describes his purpose in the use of parables, to his followers. He says, " Therefore speak I to them in parables, because they seeing see not, and hearing they hear not, and do not understand." l Had he spoken plainly, they would have been stirred to immediate antagonism, and the crisis of the cross would have come before his personal ministry had been well begun. But by the adoption of the parabolic method he postponed the inevitable catastrophe, and so secured time for the education of his apostles, and for the communication to

i Matt. xiii. 13.

them, and through them to the world at large, of the true principles of his gospel.

But, as another illustration of the same sort, I may refer to his parables of reproof. By his employment of the story, he made the severest exposure of the conduct of his antagonists, before they were aware of his design ; and so secured that they were put to confusion, nay, oftentimes convicted out of their own mouths. You remember how Nathan did with David in the matter of the Psalmist's great iniquity. 1 Had the prophet gone in to the king, and directly and immediately denounced his guilt, while at the same time he attempted to pronounce sentence upon him, and to declare that punishment would surely follow, it is at least questionable if he would have been listened to at all ; and it is certain, I think, that he would have provoked the monarch to anger, rather than led him to repentance. But by the telling of the touching story of the ewe lamb, he awoke the better nature of the king: and when, after his lord had given his judgment in an outburst of honest indignation, he turned and said, " Thou art the man" the effect was tremendous; for in the ejaculation, " 1 have sinned" there was the germ of the entire Fifty-first Psalm, and the beginning of a penitence which was as sincere as the transgression had been aggravated.

Now, we can see a similar purpose in some of our Lord's parables ; although unhappily, owing to the hardened state of the hearts of his opponents, they were not brought to a similar acknowledgment of their guilt. Thus in the story of the wicked husbandmen (Matt, xxii. 33-46), the chief priests and Pharisees at the end, but not till then, perceived that he had spoken of them ; and it is recorded, that they sought to lay hands on

i 2 Sam. xii. 1-7.

him, but were prevented only by fear of the multitude. Still he had secured his object ; for he had so held up the mirror before them, that they recognized themselves, and were self-condemned. Thus the parable was a veil which both revealed and concealed the truth. It was, if you will allow me to coin a word, an inverbation of the truth, corresponding in some sort to the incarnation of Deity in Christ himself. To those who had the spirit to discern, the outward covering brought the truth nearer, even as the incarnation has been, to the spiritually minded, the clearest revelation of God the world has ever seen ; but to those who lacked that spirit, there was nothing but the story, even as, to the materialists among us, there is nothing but mere humanity in the person of the Christ. With all his usual acuteness, but with a sublimity that is somewhat unwonted in his comments, Matthew Henry has said that parable was " the cloud " wherein the Great Teacher " descended." l Yea, a cloud luminous to some, yet dark to others ; the enveilment, but also the unveiling, of the truth to men.

Now, if this view of the matter be correct, we shall see how two other objects were served by this use of parables by our Lord. For I remark, in the third place, that he employed them to stimulate inquiry. The man who saw in the story nothing but a story, wo aid turn away from it as trifling and unimportant ; but those who had the insight to perceive that the narrative was rehearsed for a high moral and spiritual purpose, would be stirred up to inquire into that, and would be rewarded by the discovery of its hidden meaning. Thus we learn, that after the Lord had related the story of the sower, and that of the tares and the wheat, his disciples

i Commentary on Matt. xiii. 1-23.

12 THE P An ABLE S OF OUR SAVIOUR.

came to him, and asked an explanation of his words. To that he responded by giving the interpretation of the parables : and so he exemplified the meaning, as well as the truth, of his own words, -Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance ; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." l

And that leads directly and immediately to the last purpose which the Lord had in view in his employment of this method of discourse : which was. to test the characters of his hearers. Xothing better on this subject has ever been written than the following suggestive sentences by Neander, in that i; Life of Jesus Christ." which was the first of the answers to the notorious work of Strauss, and which, in my judgment, is still — with some drawbacks incidental to the author's theory of inspiration — incomparably the best of all the works under that title which have been published in modern times. He says. " The form of his expressions, whether he uttered parables, proverbs, maxims, or apparent paradoxes, was intended to spur men's minds to profounder thought, to awaken the divine consciousness within, and so to teach them to understand that which at first served only as a mental stimulus. It was designed to impress indelibly upon the memory of his hearers, truths perhaps as yet not fully intelligible, but which would grow clear as the divine life was formed within them, and become an ever-in creasing source of spiritual light. His doctrine was not to be propagated as a lifeless stock of tradition, but to be received, as a living Spirit, by willing minds, and brought out into full consciousness, according import, by free spiritual activity. Its individual parts, too, were only to be apprehended iu their first proportions, in the complete connection of that higher consciousness which he was to call forth in man.

The form of teaching which repelled the stupid, and passed unheeded and misunderstood by the unholy, roused susceptible minds to deeper thought, and rewarded their inquiries by the discovery of ever-increasing treasures. But the attainment of this end depended on the susceptibility of the hearers. So far as they hungered for true spiritual food, so far the parable stimulated them to deeper thought, and so far only it revealed new riches. Men with whom this really was the case were accustomed to wait until the throng had left their Master, or, gathering round him in a narrow circle in some retired spot, to seek clearer light on points which the parable had left obscure. The scene described in Mark iv. 10 shows us that others besides the twelve apostles were named among those who remained behind to ask him questions after the crowd had dispersed. Not only did such questions afford the Saviour an opportunity of imparting more thorough instruction, but those who felt constrained to offer them were thereby drawn into closer fellowship with him. He became better acquainted with the souls that were longing for salvation. The greater number, however, in their stupidity, did not trouble themselves to penetrate the shell in order to reach the kernel. Yet they must have perceived that they had understood nothing; they could not learn separate phrases from Christ, as they might from other religious teachers, and think they comprehended them, when they did not. And so, in proportion to the susceptibility of his hearers, the parables of Christ revealed sacred things to some, and veiled them from others, who were destined, through their own fault, to remain in darkness. Thus, like those 4 hard sayings,' which were to some an insupportable

'offence,' the parables served to sift and purge the throng of Christ's hearers." 1 They tested character, while they symbolized truth.

III. But now a word or two as to how parables are to be interpreted. The Lord himself has given us a pattern here, and in his expositions of the parables of the sower and the tares he has shown us how we ought to proceed. Each is told for the enforcement of one main truth ; and to that attention is to be particularly devoted, without seeking to run into minute details, or giving a significance to every little thing that is introduced. Now, what the main purpose of the parable is, we may in general discover easily, either from the manner in which it is introduced, or from the circumstances in connection with which it was delivered. Not seldom, indeed, the purpose is indicated in the very first words, as in the numerous parables beginning with " The kingdom of heaven is like ; " while occasionally we have it definitely announced, as in the words prefixed to that of the Pharisee and the publican : " He spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others." 2 Sometimes, too, as in the case of that of the Good Samaritan, the parable is given as an answer to the question either of a caviller or of an inquirer ; and then there can be little hesitation as to its meaning. When we have found out, then, what the main drift and purpose is, we have the key for the opening-up of its significance. Still, just as, in the interpretation of the symbolism of the Jewish tabernacle, we run into trifling and conceit when we attempt to give a spiritual significance to every pillar, and curtain, and coupling,

1 Neander's Life of Christ, Bonn's edition, pp. 106, 107.

2 Luke xviii. 9.

and pin ; so we miss the full force of a parable when we try to find a meaning in every fold of its drapery. In such a case, we divide the river of its teaching into so many little branches that it finally disappears, like one of those streams which flow through many channels into the Australian desert, and lose themselves in the sand. Thus, in regard to the parable of the Good Samaritan, which Christ himself interpreted by saying, " Go and do thou likewise," we have had such laborious trifling as this : The man who fell among thieves was Adam ; the thieves were the Devil and his angels ; the priest and Levite were the Mosaic dispensation ; the Good Samaritan was Christ himself ; the oil and the wine were the comforts and blessings of the gospel ; the beast on which he rode was the humanity of Christ; the setting of the wounded man thereon was his vicarious salvation ; the inn was the Church ; and the two pence, the life that now is, and the life that is to come. But where, meanwhile, is the great lesson of practical beneficence which the Lord designed to teach ? or how, from such a multitude of conceits, will one deduce an answer to the question, " Who is my neighbor ? "

This may serve as a beacon of warning, and keep us from striking against the rock of over-minuteness. But, while we guard against that danger, let us not forget the thought whichdias been already before us ; namely, that the impression produced on us, and the instruction conveyed to us, by the parables, depend on our own spiritual character and susceptibility. We must bring something to them before we can get any thing out of them. We must have the docile spirit of disciples, a willingness to hear, an eagerness to learn, and a readiness to accept what comes to us from the Great Teacher's lips ; and for those qualities we must apply to Him from whom all good counsels flow. Let us first, and before all things else, then, seek after these ; and, having these, our study will be at once instructive, stimulating, and helpful to us in the prosecution of the Christian life.

Different classifications of the Saviour's parables have been suggested by different authors ; and there are, undoubtedly, some advantages to be derived from the following of such a course as that which has been taken by Bruce and Goebel. But, on the other hand, the adoption of such a method is apt to make us lose sight of the very marked difference in structure and in theme between the parables recorded by Matthew, and those preserved by Luke ; and we may best discover the " personal equation " of the Evangelists by taking them in the order in which we find them in the Gospels, while, at the same time, we shall secure variety of topic, and so conserve our interest in the series from first to last. Without attempting any systematic classification of the parables, therefore, we shall examine them in the order in which we come upon them in the narratives of the Evangelists.

II. The Four Kinds Of Soil

This thirteenth chapter of Matthew's Gospel contains seven parables, all of which, apparently, were spoken on the same occasion, and each of which was designed to give distinctness to one special aspect of the same subject. That subject is "the kingdom of heaven," by which is meant, not the glorified state of the future life, but that presently existing spiritual community of which Christ is the head, and which is composed of those whose hearts and lives are subject to him as their sovereign. The theme is thus the same as that which is dealt with in the Sermon on the Mount, and the discourse in which these parables are found may almost be regarded as an illustrative appendix to that matchless address. In the Sermon, the Saviour treats the subject abstractly and impersonally : in the parables, he uses familiar figures for its illustration, and has special reference to the different effects produced by its presentation, on men of different dispositions. In the Sermon, he is mainly retrospective, and sets forth the points of contrast between the Mosaic system, and that which he came to introduce i in the parables, he is almost entirely prospective, and unfolds the manner of the progress of his kingdom, and the nature of its consummation. In the Sermon, he la} T sdown principles, and proclaims laws : in the parables, he gives prominence to individual cases and peculiar features. But both have an important bearing on the one great topic ; and, to have a right understanding of that as a whole, both must be studied together.