Upon the preceding summary a few remarks are requisite, before we can proceed to any other considerations. As first; if every passage of our Saviour's discourses to which the word parable, or the phrase, “He spake a parable," is premised; or which appears to partake of the nature of a parable, were necessarily to be included among the Gospel parables, the reader would no doubt be surprised at many omissions in the above account. Such are the passages noted below; none of which do I conceive to answer to the description of a regular parable; and my reasons for excepting them will be stated in a more convenient place elsewhere.

Again, the fourth and fifth parables in the Table, both of which were recorded, as they were first delivered, only by St. Matthew, occur again at a later period in the Gospel history, though in the same order of succession, and almost word for word the same as before; viz. Luke xiii. 18-21." Should any one, then, choose to consider these numerically distinct parables, he might add them as such to the list, and so increase the entire amount by two; but the explanation which must be given of them, on the second occasion of their occurrence, would still be the same as that which would require to be given on the first.

In like manner, the fourteenth parable, which, as delivered on the first occasion, was recorded solely by St. Luke, is repeated on a later occasion, Matt.

t Luke iv. 23; v. 36; vi. 39; vii. 41-43; xiv. 7; Mark iii. 23; Matt. xii. 43-45. or Luke xi. 24-26; Matt. xv. 15; Mark vii. 17; Luke xv. 3-10; Matt. xxi. 28-32; Matt. xxiv. 32; Mark xiii. 28; Luke xxi. 29; Vide Appendix, chapter I. x Harm. P. iv. 79.

u Harm. P. iv. 35.

xxiv. 45-51. in terms still more nearly resembling the language of the former account. The same thing is true in part even of the thirteenth parable, as related by St. Luke; in whose account of it, ch. xii. 39, 40. has a great verbal resemblance to Matt. xxiv. 43, 44. recorded on a later occasiony. Were any one so inclined, he might reckon these also numerically distinct parables, and so increase the entire amount by two more: but he could not consider them distinct, with regard to their moral and explanation. The parables, therefore, which really contain a difference of meaning, and of which a distinct explanation will consequently be necessary, are after all only twenty-seven; the first, the parable of the sower, and the last, the parable of the talents: between which, in point of time, there was probably eighteen months' interval.

As to the names of the parables in question, so much deference perhaps is due to established usage, that we should retain, if possible, the titles, which are generally adopted: though it cannot be denied that these titles have not been framed in every instance with all the regard to propriety, which was desirable. Mere disputes about words indeed, are neither interesting nor profitable, except as they affect the right estimation of things of importance; otherwise it might easily be shewn that the received denominations of the parables were fixed upon, in most instances, from some misconstruction of their scope and constitution; and are well calculated to perpetuate similar mistakes.

For example, the first of the number is commonly called the parable of the sower; though in the sumy Harm. P. iv. 78.

mary of the English Bible, premised to Matt. xiii. &c. it is styled, with more attention to exactness, the parable of the sower and the seed. In this parable, however, the abstract character and relation of the sower are the least important circumstance of the history. It is devoted to the account of the fortunes of one and the same kind of seed, according as it fell on the various possible situations of one and the same field, or tract of ground. By what hand it was previously scattered, so as to light upon any one of those situations, was of little consequence to the kind of fortune which it afterwards experienced there.

The usual name of the next parable leaves out of sight the existence of good grain, as well as bad, within the same field which contained the bad; of good grain too, sown by the proprietor of the field in his own field, and bad grain, scattered by an enemy of the owner in a field which was not his own; the former, sown first and in the regular way, and always designed to have gone on growing in its proper field, until it arrived at maturity; the latter, introduced clandestinely afterwards, for the express purpose of vitiating the good,-and, even when discovered in the same field, tolerated there only for its sake.

The denomination of the parable of the prodigal son has a similar tendency to make it be forgotten that there was another son of the same father, besides the prodigal; not a younger son, as he was, but possessing the birthright of primogeniture; nor ever an outcast from his father's family, like him, but always an inmate of his native home; whose history, from first to last, is interwoven with that of