The Realism of Christ's .sx Parables .sx I .sx MY subject in the lectures mainly consists of certain thoughts derived from a pondering of our Lord's parables .sx Our Lord , we know , was clearly not in any ordinary sense of the word a philosopher .sx But I cannot help suspecting that within both the method and the substance of his parable-teaching there lurks a whole system of general truths , which it is intensely worth while to elicit .sx If we may judge by the synoptic record , parable and proverb were the characteristic forms of expression which our Lord used in His public teaching .sx No doubt such methods were , in a general way , familiar to Jewish ears .sx Where instruction is given orally , and no lecture-notes are taken , parable and proverb have the advantage of dwelling in the memory .sx Moreover , the mind of the ancient world had .sx not yet learned to pursue the ignis fatuus called literal truth which has so completely misdirected the popular questionings of today .sx Eastern peoples in particular have always been quick to grasp ideas presented in imaginative dress .sx And yet our Lord Himself is said to have given a very different and paradoxical reason for the parabolic form of His teaching .sx " And when he was alone , " writes St Mark , " they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parables .sx And he said unto them , ` Unto you is given the mystery of the Kingdom of God :sx but unto them that are without all things are done in parables , that seeing they may see , and not perceive , and hearing they may hear , and not understand ; lest haply they should turn again , and it should be forgiven them .sx ' " It is no matter for surprise that this saying has been a stumbling-block to many .sx Modern commentators frequently conclude that our Lord cannot really have uttered it .sx " In their original context , " writes Dr A. E. J. Rawlinson , " it is probable that our Lord's parables were clear and intelligible enough .sx It was after the original context of a parable , and with it in many cases the point which theparable was originally intended to enforce , had alike been forgotten , that a time came when explanation was felt to be required .sx For the parables were now found difficult :sx it was assumed that our Lord must have meant them to be so .sx It was assumed that they were intended to conceal from the majority , and yet to reveal to the few .sx .. a hidden wisdom .sx The result was that what were originally parables , intended to illustrate , were trans-formed into allegories which needed a clue .sx " According to Dr Rawlinson , therefore , this saying attributed to our Lord really represents the explanation given by a later generation to account both for the non-conversion of the Jews and for the difficulty which Christians themselves experienced in drawing out the exact lesson which each parable was meant to teach .sx Certainly it is true that these verses of St Mark encouraged early commentators to search for hidden and far-fetched interpretations of our Lord's parables by the method of treating them as enigmatic allegories .sx And equally certainly this attempt springs from a complete misunderstanding of our Lord's original intention .sx Yet all the same it seems .sx to me by no means impossible that our Lord might have used the very words St Mark records in the circumstances in which St Mark places them .sx Consider what those circumstances were .sx It is the first crisis of our Lord's public ministry .sx His wonderful works of healing have roused the multitudes to the highest pitch of excitement and enthusiasm .sx Here is a new teacher indeed with authority over evil spirits such as they had never seen before a prophet and more than a prophet , perhaps a herald of the promised Messiah .sx On the other hand , the authorities at Jerusalem have sent down emissaries to form a judgment on the new movement which is creating such a stir .sx And they have declared against it .sx Our Lord's treatment of the Sabbath and of the ceremonial law generally is not to be tolerated He is a menace to properly constituted authority .sx After a scene in the synagogue where our Lord had publicly rebuked them , they had gone forth to plot His destruction with Herod's officers .sx Here then was a crisis indeed .sx Surely it would be wisdom for the new prophet to strike first , while the enthusiasm of the crowd was fresh .sx Would he put Himself .sx at the head of some sort of popular rising ?sx People throng to hear Him as He begins to speak to them out of His boat on the lake .sx And all He does is to tell them the parable of the Sower and follow it up with those of the Seed Growing Secretly and of the Mustard Seed .sx The people are quite nonplussed and bewildered .sx The prophet seems to have missed his great chance altogether .sx And yet the main , broad application of the parables to the actual situation is not obscure , and the people ought to have grasped the essential point .sx They knew well enough the impossibility of hurrying on by any violent action the slow stages of natural growth which lead to the harvest ; they recognised in their own experience the difference made to the growth of the seed by the character of the soil into which it falls .sx The prophet was but telling them that He had come to sow the seed of a new world .sx His Kingdom must wait for the earth of men's hearts to bear fruit of itself .sx No violent action could hasten the process .sx And , moreover , the seed would not grow in all hearts alike .sx They must take heed how they hear , and try to understand whence the new power over evil really came , how it .sx worked , and how it might be shared .sx The lesson was expressed in language which their own lives should have enabled them to interpret .sx It showed how the order of Nature , so familiar to them in their daily surroundings , must apply also in the realm of those national and religious hopes which they shared through their claim to be the chosen people of God .sx Their failure to understand was not intellectual but moral .sx And as the new Teacher Himself perceives that failure , is it so unintelligible that He should echo the grimly ironical words in which Isaiah expressed his sense of the futility of his immediate aim to effect a con-version of the people ?sx To those who have not the will to understand , the parables are just vivid little stories the truth of which they easily recognise on the surface , while they wholly miss their spiritual point .sx It is only to the chosen few that it is given to know the open mystery of the Kingdom of God which to the seeing eye is revealed even in the order of Nature itself .sx I do not at all mean to suggest that the conjectural reconstruction just attempted provides anything like the one certain account or interpretation of the events which the relevantportions of Mark iii .sx and iv .sx have recorded .sx The most I should claim for it is that it does make St Mark's record intelligible more or less as it stands , without supposing either that the Evangelist has ignored the historical sequence of events altogether , or that he has attributed to our Lord words which in fact are definitely contrary to the essential purpose of His authentic teaching .sx In any case , whether the setting just given to our Lord's saying about parables be fact or fiction , it may serve to indicate a genuine and fundamental characteristic of our Lord's parable-teaching in general .sx Our Lord's parables are in their imagery true to life , the product of a faithful observation of natural processes or human action which all may recognise .sx Just for that reason it is the more possible for many not to go beyond the more superficial aspects of the picture's truth .sx There is indeed a deeper significance which they miss .sx But the way to it is not found by torturing the parable into an elaborate allegory which ignores its faithfulness to Nature .sx The true mystery of the Kingdom entirely eludes the methods of the pious enigmatist .sx It is a mystery far deeper than that of any oracular riddle .sx It consists precisely in the fact that the .sx natural and earthly , faithfully observed and truly understood , do really illustrate the heavenly and spiritual , because the single order of the divine love and reason embraces and is immanent in both .sx The true parable-maker , therefore , is not one whose ingenuity twists the images of Nature into artificial symbols of a spiritual reality which is quite alien from Nature itself .sx Nor is the language of parable employed as a mere concession to uncultured minds , in order to convey to them some notion of a truth which a more spiritual intelligence could grasp more fully without the aid of parable at all .sx A genuine parable is not a merely earthly story with a merely heavenly meaning , as though the story and its meaning were in quite separate spheres .sx Rather by its truth to Nature it reveals a real relation between the natural and the spiritual order :sx it shows the one 'touch of God's own nature which makes the whole world kin , and its heavenly meaning is not really grasped until it is seen also as the under-standing of earth itself .sx The mystery of the Kingdom in our Lord's parables is , in this respect at least , analogous to the mystery of the Incarnation .sx Just as in our Lord's Person .sx there is a revelation not only of God's being but of man's , and the two revelations are inseparably one ; so in our Lord's parables the teaching about the heavenly Kingdom is itself not intelligible apart from their truthfulness towards the earthly things also , which alike are God's .sx The true parable is not fabricated with the craftsman's cunning hand ; it is observed with the artist's seeing eye ; and in the result the natural symbol or image which expresses is made inseparably one with the spiritual truth which is expressed .sx One practical inference from what I am suggesting is this .sx We often go to work in the wrong way , because we do not resolutely start by considering each parable first as an earthly story , completely true on the earthly level .sx By saying that the parables are completely true at the earthly level , I mean that they present faithfully observed facts as they are in Nature and in human life .sx None of the characters , for instance , in our Lord's stories of men and women is either supernaturally good or unnaturally bad , like the hero or the villain of popular fiction .sx None is a mere symbol standing for God .sx They are all sincerely drawn portraits of the kind of people , good , bad , or .sx indifferent , whom we meet every day .sx The things that happen in the parables are of the kind of things that happened in the experience of those to whom our Lord spoke , and , mutatis mutandis , still happen in our own .sx It is precisely that truth to Nature which often makes the spiritual lesson seem so hard to draw .sx Our Lord's parables are indeed in this respect exactly opposite to the moral stories and illustrations with which we so often seek to drive home the instructions we give to others in the class-room or the pulpit .sx In these as a rule the story itself is apt to be unconvincing , but the moral is unmistakable .sx In our Lord's parables there is generally a thought-provoking doubt about the moral ; but never a false note in the story .sx If we ponder this contrast and the reason for it , we may reach a deeper insight into our Lord's real meaning when He said that to those who were without all things were done in parables that seeing they might not perceive and hearing they might not under-stand .sx Certainly our Lord was not wrapping up a hidden meaning in an artificially enigmatic dress .sx But just as little was He " speaking down " to His audience , or popularising spiritual realities so that " truth embodied in a tale might enter in at lowly doors .sx "