PARABLE
tioned, however, whether this canon of interpretation is likely to lead us to the 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, parth^ from the occasion of its utterance, and that all else gathers round that thought as a centre, it must be remembered that in the great patterns of interpretation which he himself has given us there is more than this. Not only the sower and the seed and the several soils have their counterparts in the spiritual life, but the birds of the air, the thorns, the scorching heat, have each of them a significance. The explanation of the wheat and the tares, given with less fulness — an outline as it were, which the advancing scholars would be able to fill up — is equallj^ specific. It may be inferred from these two instances that we are, at least, justified in looking for a meaning even in the seeming accessories of a parable. If the opposite mode of interpreting should seem likely to lead us, as it has led manj', to strange and forced analogies and an arbitrary dogma- tism, the safeguard may be found in our recollecting that in assigning such meanings we are but as scholars guessing at the mind of a teacher whose words are higher than our thoughts, recognising the analogies which may have been, but which were not necessarily those which he recognised. No such interpretation can claim anything like authority. The very form of the teaching makes it probable that there may be in anj' case more than one legitimate explanation. The outward ftict in nature or in social life may corre- spond to spiritual facts at once in God's government of the world, and in the history of the individual soul. A parable may be at once ethical, and in the highest sense of the term prophetic. There is thus a wide field open to the discernment of the interpreter. There are also restraints upon the mere fertilitj' of his imag- ination. (1.) The analogies must be real, not arbitrary. (2.) The parables are to be considered as parts of a whole, and the interpretation of one is not to override or encroach upon the lessons taught by others. (3.) The direct teaching of Christ presents the standard to which all our interpretations are to be referred, and by which they are to be measured. He interpreted two parables, "that of the sower (Matt, xiii, 3-8, 18-23 ; Mark iv, 8-8, 14-20 ; Luke viii, 5-8, 11-15) and that of the tares and the wheat (Matt, xiii, 24-30, 3G-43). These interpretations must suggest the further rules of which we are in search.
1. Each parable has one leading idea to which all its parts are subordinate. For example, in the parable of the sower, this idea is the manner in which we ought to hear the Word of God. In that of the tares and the •wheat, it is the struggle of the good with the evil, till the day when both shall be finall}' and forever parted. In subordination to tliese two ideas all the different incidents of the two parables are explained. It is al- waj'S the same ; and when we succeed in forming to ourselves such a conception of the leading idea of the narrative that all its parts easily and naturall}^ ar- range themselves around it, we have good reason to believe that our conception is correct. This idea, it may be further remarked, is to be sought in the rela- tion of the human heart to God, and not in any local or temporary circumstances. It was so in the cases before us. Doubtless it would have been possible for the Saviour to have specified man)-^ causes which spe- cially hindered, in those who then heard him, the true reception of his word. But he does not so. Those which he mentions were not peculiar to that age and country ; they belong to every land and to all time. The devil, tribulation, and persecution, the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches; how general are they! they embrace the widest and most universal re- lations between the human heart and outward circum- stances. So with the other. The field is not Juda?a, but " the world ;" " the good seed are the children of
the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one." Again, how general ! we, as well as Christ's immediate hearers, are included there. The lesson is important. What more common than for preachers to find the meaning of a parable, first in the circumstances of the time- — for example, in the calling of the Jews and the rejection of the Gentiles — and then to proceed to a more general view of the truth con- tained in it, thus leaving upon the minds of their hear- ers the impression that the first is the correct interpre- tation, the second the wise and happy application of it? The ver}' opposite is the case. The general is the true meaning; the particular is only one of its ap- plications suitable at the time, just as other applica- tions might be suitable to any age if drawn from the circumstances by which the age is marked. How completely is the beautiful parable of the pi'odigal son ruined when we are told that the elder son is the Jew, the j-ounger the Gentile. The instinct of a congrega- tion which repels such a method of interpreting is more true to the nature of the parable than the would- be archfeological explorations of the pulpit.