ace 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.

With more immediate reference to the exposition herewith submitted, it
is enough to intimate that it is neither a compend of criticism, nor
merely a series of sermons. I have endeavoured to combine the substance
of a critical investigation with the direct exhortation which becomes a
minister of the gospel, when fellow-sinners constitute his audience, and
the Bible supplies his theme. On the one hand, no important difficulty
has been consciously slurred over without an effort to satisfy the
judgment of a studious reader; and, on the other hand, no opportunity
has been omitted of pressing the gospel of Christ on the consciences of
men.

THE

PARABLES OF OUR LORD.

THE GROUP IN MATT. XIII.

"The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side. And
great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went
into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.
And he spake many things unto them in parables."--MATT. xiii. 1-3.

In Matthew's narrative, the first specimen of that peculiar pictorial
method which characterized the teaching of our Lord, is not an isolated
parable occurring in the midst of a miscellaneous discourse, but a group
of seven presented in one continuous and connected report. Nor is the
grouping due to the logical scheme of the Evangelist; we have here, not
the historian's digest of many disjointed utterances, but a simple
chronological record of facts. In this order have these seven parables
been recorded by the servant, because in this order they were spoken by
the Lord. It does not in the least detract from the soundness of this
judgment to concede that some of them were spoken also in other
circumstances and other combinations. There is no ground whatever for
assuming that one of our Lord's signal sayings could not have been
spoken in one place, because it can be proved that it was spoken at
another. From the nature of the subjects, and the form which Christ's
ministry assumed, it might be confidently anticipated that the parables
and other sharply relieved similitudes would recur, in whole or in part,
in different discourses and before different assemblies: with this
supposition accordingly the facts agree, as they may be gathered from a
synopsis of the sev