Luke 8:10

ὁ δὲ εἶπεν. This verse is rather an answer to the other question, recorded in St Matthew, “why dost thou speak to them in parables?”

δέδοται. ‘It has been given.’

γνῶναι τὰ μυστήρια. I.e. to grasp the revealed secrets, the ‘apples of gold’ hid in these ‘networks of silver.’ The proper use of the word ‘mystery’ is the opposite of its current use. It is now generally used to imply something which we cannot understand; in the New Testament it always means something once hidden now revealed, Colossians 1:26; 1 Timothy 3:16; Matthew 11:25-26; Revelation 17:5, &c. It is derived from μύω, ‘I initiate.’ “God is a revealer of secrets,” Daniel 2:47.

“What if earth

Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to the other like, more than on earth is thought?”

MILTON.

τοῖς δὲ λοιποῖς. Vulg[175] caeteris, ‘to the rest;’ “to them that are without,” Mark 4:11. It has been granted you to grasp these mysteries unveiled; to the rest it has been only given to grasp them under the veil of parables.

[175] Vulg. Vulgate.

ἵνα βλέποντες μὴ βλέπωσιν κ.τ.λ. These words are difficult, and (without dwelling on the fact that the particle ἵνα loses in later Greek some of its final force) must not be pressed with unreasonable and extravagant literalism to mean that the express object of teaching by parables was to conceal the message of the Kingdom from all but the disciples. This would have been to put the kindled lamp under a couch or bushel. On the contrary, they were addressed to the multitudes, and deeply impressed them, as they have impressed the world in all ages, and have had the effect, not of darkening truth but of bringing it into brighter light. The varying phrase of St Matthew, “because seeing they see not, &c.,” will help us to understand it. Our Lord wished and meant the multitudes to hearken and understand, and this method awoke their interest and deepened their attention; but the resultant profit depended solely on the degree of their faithfulness. The Parables resembled the Pillar of Fire, which was to the Egyptians a Pillar of Cloud. If men listened with mere intellectual curiosity or hardened prejudice they would only carry away the parable itself, or some complete misapplication of its least essential details; to get at its real meaning required self-examination and earnest thought. Hence parables had a blinding and hardening effect on the false and the proud and the wilful, just as prophecy had in old days (Isaiah 6:9-10, quoted in this connexion in Matthew 13:14, comp. Acts 28:26-27; Romans 11:8). But the Prophecy and the Parable did not create the hardness or stolidity, but only educed it when it existed—as all misused blessings and privileges do. It was only unwillingness to see which was punished by incapacity of seeing. The natural punishment of spiritual perversity is spiritual blindness.

Nothing can be better than the profound remark of Lord Bacon, that “a parable has a double use; it tends to vail, and it tends to illustrate a truth; in the latter case it seems designed to teach, in the former to conceal.”

“Though truths in manhood darkly join,

Deep seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name

Of Him who made them current coin.
For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,

Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale

Shall enter in at lowly doors.”