Parable

“ I answered.
"Thank you, but wise nonsense is most becoming when it is expressed as a parable."
"Then let us have the parable."
"Oh! parables are not in fashion with so many hard realities about, and there should not be three people in one. Three's never company, they say, good company, even in a parable." ”

“ It sprang up and bore fruit a hundredfold. Then He finished by saying, He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
His disciples asked Him, What might this parable mean? He said, To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. But, to others, it is given in parables that looking, they might not see, and hearing, they might not understand.
Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are they that hear; then the devil comes and takes the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. ”

“ Parable contrasted with fable
The parable, like the fable, is a short didactic story; but the lesson of the parable is always spiritual, though not necessarily religious. The fable never rises above the common-place: it preaches a worldly morality. Self-interest and prudence are its tenets; it often satirizes; it laughs at mankind. The parable, on the contrary, is always serious: it is earnest and high in its purpose. ”

“ John 10:9, 11, 14.
7. The scriptural parables have a rich variety of form, sometimes approaching to that of the allegory, when the interpretation must be upon the same general principle. In its pure form, however, the parable does not, like the allegory, represent directly the higher spiritual truth, but is simply a narrative to illustrate it. It may be introduced in the absolute form, like the parable of the barren fig-tree (Luke 13:6-9) ; or, more commonly, in the shape of a similitude, thus: "The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field" (Matt. 13:24) ”

“ So His parable is as the parable of a smooth rock with earth upon it, then heavy rain falls upon it, so it leaves it bare They are not able to gain anything of that which they earn. And God guides not the disbelieving people. ”

“ The design of the parable was to illustrate on the one hand, the joy of God, as he beholds afar off, the returning sinner "seeking an injured father's face" who runs to clasp and bless him with an unchiding welcome ”

“ The fable moves on the plane of the prudential virtues, the parable on the plane of the higher self-forgetting virtues. Because of that difference there is in the parable "no jesting nor raillery at the weakness, the follies, or the crimes of men." All is deeply earnest, befitting its high spiritual point of view. ”

“ Now this parable, by drawing the curtain, and letting us see what will be the end of both in the other world, goes very far in prosecuting those two great intentions. This parable is not like Christ's other parables, in which spiritual things are represented by similitudes borrowed from worldly things, as those of the sower and the seed (except that of the sheep and goats) , the prodigal son, and indeed all the rest but this. But here the spiritual things themselves are represented in a narrative or description of the different state of good and bad in this world and the other. ”

“ Why should he miraculously give forth an account of creation which, from a scientific point of view, is in no wise equal to that which the rude rocks of earth have themselves revealed? Only because they have higher meanings than error has been in the habit of admitting; only because the parable is always God's chosen method of spiritual utterance; only because they were written neither as history nor as science; not to teach the one nor to enforce the other, but to use outward narrative forms for the expression of interior spiritual truth. ”

“ The parable is a comment upon the fifth petition of the Lord's prayer, Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. Those, and those only, may expect to be forgiven of God, who forgive their brethren. The parable represents the kingdom of heaven, that is, the church, and the administration of the gospel dispensation in it. The church is God's family, it is his court; there he dwells, there he rules. God is our master; his servants we are, at least in profession and obligation. ”

“ It is beyond the scope of this parable to explain how the ground is rendered soft and kept free from thorns. The Teacher was content in this lesson to tell us what the good ground produces; we must discover elsewhere in the Scriptures whence its goodness is derived. “...The similitude from nature is no longer applicable to the mystery of the kingdom of heaven; as a parable, it has already reached its limits, when the truth goes beyond the similitude. There is a miraculous seed superior indeed to all natural seed, so powerful that by its growth it can and will choke all thorns. ”

“ Many are called, but few are chosen," words that, to some, prove that few indeed are saved, but words that, to my mind, prove that many more are saved than are lost. If you remember, they are the closing words of two famous parables — the parable of the householder who hired laborers for his vineyard, and the parable of the king who, to procure guests for his son's wedding-feast, turned from the discourteous rich to the riffraff of the highways and byways. ”

“ It is one thing to place some ancient eastern custom in such a position that a ray of light from its surface shall pleasantly illumine a feature of the parable that was lying in the shade, and all another thing to make the parable a convenience for the exhibition of a scholar’s lore. ”

“ A parable is a narrative of imaginary events, a symbolic didactic story, wherein the actors are always types of men or types of men and animals (never exclusively of animals) , and whereof the lesson is always spiritual, single, and separate, and the tone is always serious, and the events always appear natural and customary.
A list of proverbs that might be expanded into parables
1. God understands the dumb.
2. What a man acquires in his youth serves as a crutch in his old age. ”

“ Men have proposed to answer two different and contrary ends by the use of parable; for parables serve as well to instruct or illustrate as to wrap up and envelop, so that though, for the present, we drop the concealed use, and suppose the ancient fables to be vague, undeterminate things, formed for amusement, still the other use must remain, and can never be given up. ”

“ If any man lack instruction, let him ask it of God. Christ had expounded the foregoing parable unasked, but for the exposition of this they ask him. Note, The mercies we have received must be improved, both for direction what to pray for, and for our encouragement in prayer. The first light and the first grace are given in a preventing way, further degrees of both which must be daily prayed for.
2. The exposition Christ gave of the parable, in answer to their request; so ready is Christ to answer such desires of his disciples. ”

“ Men should remember when they explain away the meaning of the term “world,” and teach that it signifies the Church, that they are dealing not with a parable, but with the explanation of a parable given by the Lord. ”

“ The avowed purpose of the fable is rather to amuse than to teach. The parable may embody a narrative as in the instances of the sower and the tares, or merely an isolated incident, as in those of the mustard seed and the leaven.
Allegories are distinguished from parables by greater length and detail of the story, and by the intimate admixture of the narrative with the lesson it is designed to teach; these are kept distinctly separate in the parable. Myths are fictitious stories, sometimes with historic basis of fact, but without symbolism of spiritual worth. ”

“ The lowest things are often seen to signify the things most high. A parable, paraballo, is that which “throws before” us such concrete imagery as best serves to foreshadow and to fit the mind to understand a certain abstract principle. ”

“ If, instead of looking to the picture as a whole, you insist on finding the analogue of the kingdom or the Church specifically in the net, you must, in like manner, in the parable of the pearl, find that the Church is specifically compared to a man, whereas in the preceding example it was compared to a treasure. ”

“ A penny more or less would not be likely to stagger them, when the gift of heaven or the doom of hell raise no question as to the equity of the Divine decrees. But with the great multitude of Christian thinkers the parable has been the source of much grievous perplexity, as the manifold explanations amply prove. ”

“ It seems an easier and shorter way to dignity, to observe that—since there never was a true story which could not be told in parables, where you might put a monkey for a margrave, and vice versa—whatever has been or is to be narrated by me about low people, may be ennobled by being considered a parable ”

“ We enter now, or rather have already entered, the region where the parable must needs glide, not indeed from the literal into the metaphorical, but from a foreground where every object is distinctly seen to a background where the real objects cannot be seen at all, and where, accordingly, only signals are thrown up to tell what is their bulk and their bearing. ”

“ In the tares, for example, both these elements are combined in nearly equal proportions. In the malicious sowing of the darnel, the zealous proposal of the servants, and the cautious decision of the master, you have threads of human motive and action running through the whole; but in the growth of the darnel, its likeness to the wheat in spring, and the decisive difference between them in the harvest, you have the processes of nature profusely intertwined. A parable is ordinarily woven of human action and the unconscious development of nature, as warp and woof. ”

“ It is the first excellence of a parable to turn upon an image well known and applicable to the subject, the meaning of which is clear and definite; for this circumstance will give it perspicuity, which is essential to every species of allegory. If the parables of the sacred prophets are examined by this rule, they will not be found deficient. They are in general founded upon such imagery as is frequently used, and similarly applied by way of metaphor and comparison in the Hebrew poetry. ”

“ THE NEED OF WATCHFULNESS AND DILIGENCE ILLUSTRATED BY PARABLES. To more indelibly impress upon the apostles, and, through their subsequent ministry, upon the world, the absolute need of unceasing watchfulness and unwavering diligence in preparation for the coming of the Lord in judgment, Jesus depicted in parables the prospective condition of mankind in the last times. The first of these illustrative portrayals is the Parable of the Ten Virgins. ”

“ While the lesson of the parable bears upon the Church at large, both in ancient and modern times, it is to individuals that it can be most safely and most profitably applied. Most certainly we enjoy at this day the advantages set forth under the figure of the favoured fig-tree. ”

“ Every one who is the servant of God, and has his Lord in his heart, asks of Him understanding, and receives it, and opens up every parable; and the words of the Lord become known to him which are spoken in parables. ”