THE SUPERNATURAL. <J 



in the form of parable — the common actions and 

 occurrences of daily life being often chosen as the 

 best vehicle and illustration of the highest spiritual 

 truths. It is not merely, as Jeremy Taylor says, 

 that " all things are full of such resemblances," — 

 it is more than this — more than resemblance. It 

 is the perpetual recurrence, under infinite varieties 

 of application, of the same rules and principles of 

 Divine government, — of the same Divine thoughts, 

 Divine purposes, Divine affections. Hence it is 

 that no verbal definitions or logical forms can 

 convey religious truth with the fulness or accuracy 

 which belong to narratives taken from Nature — 

 man's nature and life being, of course, included in 

 the term : 



"And so, the Word had breath, and wrought 

 With human hands the Creed of creeds."* 



The same idea is expressed in the passionate 

 exclamation of Edward Irving : — " We must speak 

 in parables, or we must present a wry and decep- 

 tive form of truth ; of which choice the first is to 

 be preferred, and our Lord adopted it. Because 

 parable is truth veiled, not truth dismembered ; 

 * Tennyson's In Memoriam. 



