Luke 8:11

It has been granted youto grasp these mysteries unveiled; to the rest it has been only given to grasp them under the veil of parables.

that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand These words are difficult, and (without dwelling on the fact that the particle ἵνα loses in later Greek some of its finalforce) must not be pressed with unreasonable and extravagant literalism to mean that the express objectof 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 a 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, "becauseseeing they see not, &c.," will help us to understand it. Our Lord wishedand meantthe 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 others a Pillar of Cloud. If they 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 createthe hardness or stolidity, but only educed it when it existed as all misused blessings and privileges do.It was only unwillingness to seewhich 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."

11. The seed is the word of God We have the same metaphor in Colossians 1:5-6; 1 Corinthians 3:6; and a similarone in James 1:21, "the engrafted word;" 2EEsther 9:31; 2Es 9:33, "Behold, I sow my law in you, and it shall bring fruit in you...yet they that received it perished, because they kept not the thing that was sown in them."