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tions: a punishment brought upon them in the operation of those principles by which the Almighty has ordained that immoral dispositions and vicious habits in general shall work their own penalty. This, we conceive, was the punishment to which our Saviour referred, as having been incurred by the negligence and perverseness of his hearers; and, accordingly, he did not regard it as final or irreparable; inasmuch as he still warned them to take "heed how they heard ”—to beware lest they strengthened their own prejudices against the truth, increased the darkness which already lay upon their understanding, and diminished, yet farther, the possibility or likeli hood of their conversion.

But if this explanation of our Saviour's language be disputed as evasive and unsatisfactory, we contend that, in rejecting it, there is no alternative but to deny the utility and advantages of his parables altogether: to deny their inherent fitness as a mode of instruction, and the possibility of their being productive of good to the multitude who heard them :—a consequence which would be attended with more and far greater difficulties, than any supposed to be involved in the explanation which we have just offered of the words of Christ.

It was manifestly a punishment to the Jews for their negligence and perversion of the means of knowledge, to have contracted an unteachableness of mind; but, we must insist, it was no punishment upon them to be offered in the parables of our Saviour any measure of instruction-any particle of information which they might be induced to receive, or which could, in the smallest degree, be expected to profit them. It is a punishment to the man who has wasted his strength and apparently abridged his life by intemperance, that the most wholesome aliment fails to excite his appetite, and scarcely affords him nutrition; but, surely, he is not undergoing a punishment in the opportunity remaining to him of taking such morsels of food as may, in any degree, prolong his existence, or of using any means which may conduce, by the remotest possibility, to the restoration of his strength. It is a punishment to the man who has neglected the cultivation of his memory, to want its incalculable advantages; but who would say that he would be punished by an endeavour, however unpromising, to instruct him in the rudiments of a language, which it had become essential to his welfare to acquire ? Can those, however, be acquitted of a similar

eccentricity of speech, who, pushing the literal and superficial import of the terms in which the Evangelists record the declaration of Christ respecting his parables, maintain that he was actuated by a principle of retribution in the use of them, and notwithstanding allow and even descant upon their instructive properties -their aptitude to profit the hearer? But, unhappily for the settlement of controversies among Christians, for the elicitation of truth, and a harmony of opinions, the expositors of Scripture, as well as the public teachers of religion, are, not unfrequently, more concerned. to bring together an abundance and variety of matter, than to preserve a congruity in their statements, and to sustain the identity of their views: notwithstanding their adoption of most specific opinions, and, it may be, the utmost pertinacity in maintaining them.*

* A remarkable instance of this disposition to say all that can be said, in connexion with a zeal for particular doctrines, may be seen, as we apprehend, in a collection of observations on our Saviour's use of parables in Scott's well-known, and doubtless, for some reasons, valuable Commentary on the Scriptures. For example "It was God's sovereign will to leave many of them to final obduracy and unbelief." ... "Christ spake in parables because they refused to improve their faculties and advantages.”. . .“God judicially left them to be blinded, so that it became impossible for them to understand and believe the doctrines of

One consideration farther it is essential to bear in mind in the discussion of this question. The conclusion, that our Lord adopted an obscure method of discourse in order to punish the wilful and obstinate prejudice of the Jews, appears irreconcilable with that most gracious disposition, and unwearied solicitude for their spiritual welfare, which he evinced on very many occasions, and even to the last moment of his life. It harmonizes but little, surely, with that bitter and heartfelt sorrow for their continued impenitence, and the calamities, in consequence, impending over them, which drew from him such lamentations as he uttered over their city doomed to destruction; still less with the prayer which broke from him on their behalf, at the period when their malice against him had reached its height, and they were "filling up the measure of their iniquities;"-but how should we reconcile such a conclusion with his conduct towards them after his resurrection - with his command to his disciples that repentance and remission of

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salvation." "Parables are a kind of pictures of spiritual things, which we are slow to understand, under the similitude of external objects with which we are more fully acquainted." These observations, surely, include the several and most opposite opinions entertained on the subject.

sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem ?"*

In applying this subject to our own improvement in the preceding discourse, we regarded the language of our Saviour in the text as admonishing us to watch against the power of uncontrolled appetites and passions to impress an increasing bias on the judgment in dealing with the claims of the Gospel to be received as a divine revelation; as well as to guard against the tendency of any favourite preconception, or heretofore cherished inclination, to influence our apprehension of its doctrines. The effect of early education, however, and the diffusion of religious knowledge, may secure even the indolent and careless Christian from a disbelief of the Scriptures, or a misconception of their essential import; and, speaking generally, we stand more in need of the reflection, that by neglecting the cultivation of religious principles, or by devoting our thoughts and affections to the objects of this world, to the exclusion of divine commandments and the issues of futurity, we disqualify ourselves for exemplifying the practical efficacy of the Gospel-for feeling our own most essential interest in the scheme

* Luke xxiv. 47.

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