Editorial September 4, 1902 Issue

The Parable

In the teaching of our Master the parable was a significant and predominant feature. Why ? Because, first, the people were very familiar with it. Figurative storytelling is a distinct characteristic of the East. Further, it placed the Master in close touch with their every-day life. It showed his sympathy for that which to them was very near and dear. Jesus was too great a philosopher to think that he could stand afar off and teach. He knew that love is interest, and that obedience is the response to the love that expresses itself in interest; that obedience is the fruitage of successful teaching.

Again parabolic teaching is on a sliding scale. It adjusts itself to the growth and comprehension of the student. The most superficial interpreter gets from it a lesson in Truth, if only in husbandry, as in the parable of the sower, while in its grander flights the possibilities of this method, of instruction grow magnificent, as in "The Prodigal Son," from which one may read the loving forgiveness of mere human, paternal affection, or rejoice in the revelation of the ever-presence of that divine Love whose abundance is unmeasured, — Love that meets the prodigal at the very impulse of turning to the one Father-Mother, God.

Through the lens of Christian Science the parables of the Nazarene are resplendent with light and life. S.

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