HAD our Lord spoken naked spiritual truth, how many of his words, partly from his hearers' lack of interest in them, partly from their lack of insight, would have passed away from their hearts and memories, and left no trace behind them. But being imparted to them in this form [of parables], under some lively image, in some short and perhaps seemingly paradoxical sentence, or in some brief but interesting narrative, they aroused attention, excited inquiry, and even if the truth did not at the moment, by the help of the illustration used, find an entrance into the mind, yet the words must thus often have fixed themselves in their memories and remained by them. And here the comparison of the seed is appropriate, of which the shell should guard the life of the inner germ, till that should be ready to unfold itself, till there should be a soil prepared for it, in which it could take root and find nourishment suitable to its needs. His words, laid up in the memory, were to many that heard him like the money of another country, unavailable for present use, —the value of which they only dimly know, but which yet was ready in their hand, when they reached that land, and were naturalized in it. ... Not perhaps at once, but gradually, the meanings of what they had heard unfolded themselves to them. Small to the small, they grew with their growth. And thus must it ever be with all true knowledge, which is not the communication of information, the transfer of a dead sum or capital of facts or theories from one mind to another, but the opening of living fountains within the heart, the scattering of sparks which shall kindle where they fall, the planting of seeds of truth, which shall take root in the new soil where they are cast, and striking their roots downward, and sending their branches upward, shall grow up into goodly trees.
—From "Notes on the Parables of Our Lord,"
