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Whatever it was that got you, parson, got the best of the bargain." His voice softened. "You are talking in parables," said I, severely. "But I'm not paying in parables, parson. I'm paying in me," said he, grimly. And he laughed again, a laugh of sheer stark misery that raised a chill echo in my heart. His hand crept back to my sleeve. "I can't always can the squeal," he whispered.
They were not meant to set forth with anything like completeness either what wanderers had to do to go back to God, or what God had done to bring wanderers back to Himself. If this had been remembered, many misconceptions, widespread and mischievous, especially affecting the meaning of the last of the three parables that of the Prodigal Son would have been avoided.
Before proceeding to the exposition of the parable in its spiritual meaning and application, I shall submit a remark of a general character, bearing on the parables at large, as well as on this in particular, which can be made more conveniently now than at the close.
Let us join the outskirts of the crowd and hear that heavenly Teacher too. He speaks in parables: he fixes saving truth in the forms of familiar things, that it may be carried away and kept. We look with lively interest on the scene which these words conjure up before our eyes; but we should look on it reverently: it has not been given to us as a plaything.
She left nothing undone to comfort her mother in her suffering, and to cheer her brother; and for this she had a constant resource in her Bible, the magnificent promises and heavenly consolations of which, soothed and comforted her mother, while Raphael was edified and delighted by the beautiful histories and parables that were read to him.
Our Lord's own parables set forth a more excellent way the way of uninterrupted increase, whereof the type is the springing corn, which puts forth 'first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear, and passes through all the stages from the tender green spikelets that gleam over the fields in the spring-tide to the yellow abundance of autumn, in one unbroken season of genial months.
In short, he simplifies too much, and looks at man from that more elementary point of view which is only sufficient in the case of the animal. That spontaneity which is vital or merely chemical he already calls will. Analogy is not equation; a comparison is not reason; similes and parables are not exact language.
He added to the pleasures of the table by narrating parables and legends, by means of which He brought deep truths home to the people. Since He left the little house at Nazareth, He possessed no worldly goods. What He needed in His wanderings for Himself and His followers, He asked of those who had possessions.
In this couple of parables, which are twins, and must be taken together, our Lord utilises two very familiar facts of old-world life, both of them arising from a similar cause. In the days when there were no banks and no limited liability companies, it was difficult for a man to know what to do with his little savings.
Those which stood in the half way shadow were gravest. Hoar old stems upon the very tops were touched with the self-same glory that lavished itself below. This also was no less a true similitude. "Know ye not this parable?" the Master said. "How then shall ye know all parables?" Verily, they lie about us by the wayside, and the whole earth is vocal with the wisdom of the Lord.
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