THE BIBLIOTHECA SACRA. ARTICLE I. NATURAL BASIS OF OUR SPIRITUAL LANGUAGE. BY REV. W. M. THOMSON, D.D., of the SYRIAN MISSION, AUTHOR OF THE LAND AND THE BOOK." No. V.-PARABLES AND SIMILITUDES. IT has been said, wisely and well, that the character of a people is revealed by their proverbs. By them are reflected, as in a mirror, their manners and customs; and in them we find garnered up and preserved the results of their common experience, reduced to verbal formulas the most compact and available. Universally true, this is eminently applicable to Oriental tribes, both ancient and modern. A careful analysis of Arab proverbs, for example, will conduct the student into the very heart of their national life. They transport us, as by enchantment, into the open and boundless desert, where we see and hear and dwell amongst the people in their sackcloth tents, with all their belongings and surroundings,— flocks and herds, asses and camels, the latter omnipresent, in numbers numberless. Everything in fact about the camp smells of the camel, or resounds with it. The very language, in its harsh gutturals, is an echo of the camel's prodigious growl. From their proverbial maxims we know also what virtues they admired, what vices they tolerated and practised. In a word, from this one source we learn with absolute certainty that Bedouin Arabs are, and always have VOL. XXXIII. No. 131.-JULY, 1876. 51 been, a more than semi-barbarous race of roaming robbers, intolerable in any civilized country, and utterly wild and incorrigible everywhere. In like manner the Proverbs of Solomon disclose the condition, moral, social, and religious, of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, as it was when the wise king reigned there, with far greater minuteness than do all the pages of contemporaneous history; and their report is perfectly reliable, for proverbs neither flatter, conceal, nor exaggerate. - It is scarcely necessary to remark that many of the socalled proverbs of Solomon are in reality parables, while some of them are expanded into allegories. On the other hand, some of the New Testament parables are merely brief proverbs. In fact, both in Hebrew and Arabic, all such similitudes be they brief or extended bear the common name of emthal (proverbs), and what by one writer is called a parable, by another is said to be a proverb. We need not hesitate, therefore, to include them all in a single group, whether found in the Old or the New Testament; and our present study of them must be restricted to biblical" proverbs," not merely because they contribute most largely to the special theme of these Essays, but also because the general subject is much too extensive for our limited space. That a large part of the "mysteries" of the kingdom of heaven has been revealed to man by means of parables and suggestive similitudes needs neither proof nor illustration. The Great Teacher himself, at one time in his public ministry, employed them so exclusively, that Matthew tells us that "without a parable spake he not unto them" (xiii. 34). Now it concerns the purpose of this Essay to notice at the outset, that the natural basis for each and every one of these parables already existed in this country, and in the form best adapted to the teacher's use. Jesus found no occasion to originate new external conditions, nor to have recourse to fictitious inventions. Those things in which he saw embedded the truths to be propounded and enforced lay in rich profusion all around him, and needed only an interpreter to render them safe and eloquent expositors of the thoughts of God concerning his kingdom, the mode of its propagation in the world, and the manifold relations between himself and his people. In his hands they are made to reveal with startling distinctness not only man's new spiritual life, its origin and growth, inward and outward, but to symbolize the Christian himself in all his attributes and relations, as a child of God, a servant, a pilgrim, a soldier, a merchant, a husbandman, a fisher, a builder, a temple, a member of Christ's body, the church, and many other aspects of like character. In a field so wide as that covered by the parables of our Lord we can now select for remark only a few examples; and those not chosen in order to illustrate the momentous truths taught by them, but rather to notice the verbal costume with which they are clothed. It must be left to the commentator and to the critic to develop the lessons of divine instruction which they contain. Our special study necessarily restricts us to inquiries relating to the contributions made by them to the spiritual language of God's kingdom, and the natural basis for them in this land of the Bible. This is the theme of our Article, and from it we may not turn aside. To find this basis we need only to read and study the same volume of nature that met the eye of Jesus of Nazareth at his own home. What he saw we can see, and with his interpretations to aid, can understand. Teaching by parable, it may be said, is not peculiar to the Bible; is not only possible in all lands, but has been actually employed by all civilized people. It is merely interpreting, or spiritualizing, resemblances, analogies, relations, qualities, etc., which everywhere exist in the wide world of nature. This is of course admitted. "There are, it may be," says Paul, "so many voices in the world, and none of them are without signification" (1 Cor. xiv. 10). What his argument led the Apostle to state hypothetically, we accept as true, if not literally, at least poetically. Nature has ten thousand tongues, and "publishes to every land, the work of an almighty hand." Many of them, alas! are utterly dumb, or sadly palsied by the confusion and ignorance that darken the moral world ; but still they are very real, and, rightly interpreted, they reveal to men realities of highest concernment. Many of them disclose and illustrate the wisdom, power, and lovingkindness of our Heavenly Father. Others embody latent prophecies of the future life, when this mortal shall have put on immortality; and all at the bidding of the Great Interpreter become eloquent and impressive instructors in spiritual and heavenly wisdom. "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood from the things that are made" (Rom. i. 20). This "material frame" has been compared very beautifully to an immense organ, with pipes, keys, and stops innumerable, but all silent until the Great Musician touches the wondrous instrument, and calls out the sleeping harmonies to ravish the listening ear of piety. There may be more of fancy than reality in such representations; but this entire subject addresses the imagination rather than the intellect, at least, in the aspect of it we are now contemplating; and man's emotional nature will not submit to the hard lines of mathematical propositions. A thousand things as real and potential as any in the universe utterly refuse to be weighed in any scales or measured by any artificial rule of man's devising. And it is just in this domain of " things that are made" that the Great Teacher found those resemblances and analogies which best reveal the deepest mysteries of his kingdom. There is no need to dwell at large upon this topic, interesting and suggestive as it is; but it does belong to our argument to show that although nature is many-sided everywhere, and many-voiced as well, yet is she most richly endowed with the teacher's best gifts in this home of revelation. This is most conspicuous in these parables of our Lord which we are considering, and is by them best illustrated. For instance, in nearly every country where mankind dwell, the mere agricultural act of sowing is common enough, but many of the incidents and circumstances which so enrich the parables of our Lord are found nowhere else than in Palestine; certainly not in such convenient association and striking combination. In icy Greenland, for example, such parables could not have been spoken at all. The verbal terms necessary to utter them are not, and cannot be, found in the language of the people; and it is equally true that many of the conditions and incidents upon which depends the very essence of these spiritual lessons do not exist in, and could never have occurred to, the mind of a teacher dwelling upon the rolling prairies of America, or the bleak steppes of Southern Russia. The same holds good in reference to nearly all biblical parables. Their most perfect basis lies only in this land of the Bible; and need we repeat that it is here not by accident, but through antecedent, providential arrangement. Nor do the foregoing considerations cover the whole ground. It is not difficult to demonstrate that in a broad yet true sense a large part of the entire Bible is real parable for which Palestine is the underlying basis. Its formal histories and personal biographies, its sacrificial rites and ceremonies, its prophetic types, and numberless other things, revealing in many ways the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, have this element in them. Regarded as mere isolated items of information, loosely put together, and without any connection, with the divine scheme of revelation, they are comparatively insignificant. Many of them, indeed, would be trivial and insipid. It is this association that imparts value even to the technical parable. The sower, for instance, scattering seed on the roadside and the rock, among thorns and in good ground, is a very commonplace affair, witnessed continually in this country and elsewhere without suggesting one spiritual idea either to actor or observer. So also are the employment and the acts of the fisherman. One can scarcely ride along the coast between Beirût and Sidon without seeing the entire operation mentioned in the parable, men drawing nets to the shore, separating the good into baskets and casting the worthless away. But this operation of itself conveys neither instruc |