235.  Nothing in the teaching of Jesus is more remarkable than his confidence that men who believed in him would adequately represent him and his message to the world.  The parable of the Leaven seems to have set forth his own method.  We owe our gospels to no injunction given by him to write down what he said and did.  He impressed himself on his followers, filled them with a love to himself which made them sensitive to his ideas as a photographic plate is to light, teaching them his truth in forms that did not at first show any effect on their thought, but were developed into strength and clearness by the experiences of the passing years.  Christian ethics and theology are far more than an orderly presentation of the teaching of Jesus; in so far as they are purely Christian they are the systematic setting forth of truth involved, though not expressed, in what he said and did in his ministry among men.  His ideas were radical and thoroughly revolutionary.  His method, however, had in it all the patience of God’s working in nature, and the hidden noiseless power of an evolution is its characteristic.  Hence it was that he chose to teach some things exclusively in figure.  So great and unfamiliar a truth as the gradual development of God’s kingdom was unwelcome to the thought of his time.  He made it, therefore, the theme of many of his parables; and although the disciples did not understand what he meant, the picture remained with them, and in after years they grew up to his idea.

236.  Jesus’ use of illustration is one of the most marked features of his teaching.  In one sense this simply proves him to be a genuine Oriental, for to contemplate and present abstract truths in concrete form is characteristic of the Semitic mind.  In the case of Jesus, however, it proves more:  the variety and homeliness of his illustrations show how completely conversant he was alike with common life and with spiritual truth.  There is a freedom and ease about his use of figurative language which suggests, as nothing else could, his own clear certainty concerning the things of which he spoke.  The fact, too, that his mind dealt so naturally with the highest thoughts has made his illustrations unique for profound truth and simple beauty.  Nearly the whole range of figurative speech is represented in his recorded words, including forms like irony and hyperbole, often held to be unnatural to such serious speech as his.

237.  Another figure has become almost identified with the name of Jesus,—­such abundant and incomparable use did he make of it.  Parable was, however, no invention of his, for the rabbis of his own and later times, as well as the sages and prophets who went before them, made use of it.  As distinguished from other forms of illustration, the parable is a picture true to actual human life, used to enforce a religious truth.  The picture may be drawn in detail, as in the story of the Lost Son (Luke xv. 11-32), or it may be the concisest narration possible,