one of them in particular-that his displeasure towards his hearers, his "grief for the hardness of their hearts," was mingled with a deep compassion for their ignorance and spiritual destitution; inclining him, at all times, to make known to them so much of the end of his mission and the nature of his kingdom, as might engage any willing attention on their part, and contribute, in the smallest degree, to their religious improvement.

Having already endeavoured to elicit the actual import of the terms employed by the Evangelists with reference to the declaration of our Lord before us, we have, it is hoped, sufficiently anticipated the objection of Doddridge, that to attribute the use of parables by Christ to condescension, is to suppose that St. Mark and St. Luke have reported what our Lord said "in a sense directly contrary to what he intended." Passing this objection, therefore which, expressed as it is in so absolute terms, the writer will be found in the sequel to have virtually recalled by his own admissions-we proceed to support that view of the conduct of our Lord, by some general considerations arising out of the evangelical history.

In the first place, the fact is indisputable,

that the Jews were, generally speaking, deeply averse to the instructions tendered them by our Lord, and so inveterately prejudiced against his doctrines, as to be insusceptible of any benefit from a lucid exposition of them. The objects and interests of this world, magnified as they were to their apprehension by unauthorized conceptions of the object of the Messiah's coming, had, in a very extraordinary degree, preoccupied and engrossed their minds; rendering them proportionately indifferent to things unseen and future, and unapt to the perception of moral distinctions. They were accordingly insensible to the excellence of the Gospel, as well as impervious to the conviction of its truth. It was the solemn declaration of Christ himself, made after repeated exemplifications of their character, that, conformably to the prophecy of Esaias, the "heart" of that people was "waxed gross;" that "their ears were dull of hearing;" and that "their eyes they had closed; lest, at any time, they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and he should heal them."* There is, therefore, nothing to wonder at in the fact itself, that our Saviour addressed such a people in the

*Matt. xiii. 15.

obscurity of parables; far less to incline us to infer that he intended to punish their resistance to the truth by withdrawing from them the means of knowledge: for had he unfolded the Gospel to them in language as plain and intelligible as that in which we are privileged to read it, he would have spoken in vain, and have wasted his time and powers. That this, however, was one reason for the reservation which our Lord maintained before the multitude, on subjects of transcendent interest and moment, is not our own suggestion. It is furnished us by himself, in the following injunction, which he gave to his disciples: :-"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine."*

But farther-direct and explicit statements of evangelical principles, besides being useless to the mass of our Saviour's hearers-the effusion of a light too strong for their distempered organs to use or suffer-would have exposed his life to imminent and premature danger, and, to human apprehension, have obstructed the fulfilment of those ends which his mission was divinely ordained to accomplish. For not only had the Jewish people in *Matt. vii. 6.

general evinced a decided repugnance to the 'teaching of our Lord; but their rulers had conceived a violent, unmitigated hatred against his person, and had plotted to betray and destroy him. These "dogs" and "swine" would not only have trampled under their feet that which was holy, and have buried pearls in their own mire; but they would have "turned again" and "rent" the hand that had cast such things before them.

Dod

dridge himself remarks :-" It is not impro"bable that the scribes and Pharisees, who "had so vilely blasphemed him this very morning, might with an ill purpose have gathered a company of their associates and "creatures about Christ to ensnare him;

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which, if it were the case, will fully account "for his reserve." But it was the case. enmity of the scribes and Pharisees had actually ripened into a determination to take his life; and it was to frustrate, for a season, their atrocious purpose, and to disappoint their thirst for his blood, that, on some occasions, he suddenly withdrew himself from their presence, and on others, baffled their insidious endeavours to entrap him into the utterance of language convertible into matter for accusation against him before the Roman

procurator. It is far from being easy to fix the order of events recorded in the Gospels; but it is sufficiently apparent from those of St. Matthew and St. John, that it was immediately previous to the conversation of Christ with his disciples, touching his use of parables, that the Pharisees, in the words of St. Matthew, "held a council against him how they might destroy him :"*-a council that stood opposed to the will of the Most High, which had decreed that "the hour" in which Jesus should be delivered into the hands of his enemies " was not yet come." If, then, a design on the part of the Pharisees to ensnare our Saviour would "fully account for his reserve," and it be unquestionable that there was such a design, what remains to be explained? or why should we be compelled to submit to those difficulties which confessedly encumber the opinion, that our Lord delivered his parables in order that the multitude who heard them might not comprehend the meaning of his words, and remain as ignorant of the Gospel as before? At least, if still it be argued that this is the obvious-inevitable import of the language of our Lord " as reported by St. Mark and St. Luke," it is idle

* Matt. xii. 14.