Our Lord’s habitual language was parabolical; I use the word in a wide sense, to include all language which is not meant to be taken according to the letter.  Observe his conversation with the Samaritan woman; it begins at once with parable, “If thou hadst known who it was that asked of thee, saying, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.”  And again, “Whoso drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but it shall be in him a well of water, springing up unto life eternal.”  This seems to have been, if I may venture to say so, the favourite language in which he preferred to speak; but when he found that he was not understood, then, according to the nature of the case, he went on in two or three different manners.  When he, to whom all hearts were open, saw that the misunderstanding was wilful, that it arose out of a disposition glad to find an excuse, in his pretended obscurity, for not listening to him and obeying him, then, instead of explaining his language, he made it more and more figurative; more likely to be misunderstood, or to offend those whom he knew to be disposed beforehand to misunderstand and to be offended.  A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of St. John; there he first calls himself the Bread of Life, and says, that whosoever should eat of that bread should live for ever:  but when he found that the Jews cavilled at this language, instead of explaining it, he only added expressions yet more strongly parabolical; “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you:”  and he dwells on this image so long, that we find that many of his disciples, bent on interpreting it literally, and, in this sense, finding it utterly shocking, went back and walked no more with him.  Again, when he found not a disposition to cavil, but yet a profound ignorance of his meaning, arising from a state of mind wholly unused to think of spiritual good and evil, he neither used, as to those who wilfully misunderstood him, language that would offend them still more, nor yet did he offer a direct explanation; but he broke off the conversation, and adopted another method of instruction.  Thus, when the Samaritan woman, thinking only of bodily wants, answered him by saying, “Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw,” he neither goes on to speak to her in the same language, nor yet does he explain it; but at once addresses her in a different manner, saying, “Go, call thy husband, and come hither.”  Thirdly, when he was speaking to his own disciples, to whom it was given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, he generally explained his meaning,—­at least so far as to prevent practical error,—­when he found that they had not understood him.  Thus, when he had said to them, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod,” and they thought only of leaven and of bread in the literal sense, he upbraids them, indeed, for their