THE BIBLE.
I.
A BOOK OF DIVINE PARABLES.
Without a parable spake he not unto them.—Matt, xiii: 34.
A parable involves two distinct series of ideas; one pertaining to principles, the other to persons and things. The power of the parable lies in this, that its distinct series of ideas are related as man's faculties of abstract and sensuous thought are related. It is a series of spiritual ideas clothed in a series of natural incidents, which by their dramatic force fix the interest and enlist the sympathies, and yield their inner meaning in the ratio of man's ascending thought. As the mind is indrawn from sensuous to spiritual thought, the narrative loses its incidental character, and becomes simply the mirror in which is presented the image of spiritual principles and their relations. The distinctness of this image will be
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