It was this state of their minds that induced him to adopt the plan of teaching them by parables —
[The people shut their eyes against plain truths; and therefore our Lord taught them in an obscure way.
But here arises a question; was the people's blindness a reason for our Lord's teaching them by parables? or, was our Lord's teaching them by parables the intentional cause of their blindness? Did he so teach them because they were blind? or did he so teach them, in order to make them blind?
Beyond a doubt, the former of these positions seems more consonant with the general character of our Lord. But the more obvious construction of his words seems rather to favour the latter sentiment.
The language of prophecy is sometimes exceeding strong ; and the prophets are said to do, what they only foretell as cer- tainly to happen*'; consequently, when the prophecies are quoted, they are frequently to be understood in rather a lower sense than the words at first sight appear to bear. Accordingly the prophecy as quoted by our Lord represents him as speaking to the people in parables, not on purpose to blind thetJi, but with the lamentable prospect of their rejecting his message, and of their shutting their eyes, as if they were afraid of seeing the light, and of being converted by it.
Yet there is an objection to this solution, namely, that both St. Mark and St. Luke make our Lord speak directly an opposite language*^. But to this we answer, that neither of these evangelists expressly quotes the prophecy, as St. Matthew does : they only allude to it ; and therefore may be considered rather as using the words in an accommodated sense. And indeed St. Mark's own declaration in ver. 33. that " with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it" shews clearly, that what he before spake in allusion to the prophecy, must be vuiderstood in a sense that can be reconciled with the declaration itself: for otherwise there would be an absolute contradiction between his two assertions. But they perfectly accord with each other, if we interpret the for- mer as importing, that our Lord spake to the people in parables, that they might see (sufficient to instruct them) and not per- ceive (the full drift of his discourses, which would make them only turn away from him in disgust) ifperadventure^he might
c Jer. i. 10. Ezek. xliii. 3. ^ Markiv. 11, 12. and Luke viii. 10.
« Here the translation of the word fjij-n-ore, upon which the whole depends, is altered from lest, to if peradventure. But it occurs in a parallel passage, where it is actually so translated, and where, unless it were so rendered, there would be no sense at all. See 2 Tim. ii. 25. Indeed, if it be not so translated in St. Mark, our Lord must be un- derstood to say, that he preached unintelligibly to them /or /ear they