[6] Even parable, however, has always been considered to have attached to it a measure of evidential as well as of illustrative value. Thus: "The parable or other analogy to spiritual truth appropriated from the world of nature or man, is not merely illustrative, but also in some sort proof. It is not merely that these analogies assist to make the truth intelligible or, if intelligible before, present it more vividly to the mind, which is all that some will allow them. Their power lies deeper than this, in the harmony unconsciously felt by all men, and which all deeper minds have delighted to trace, between the natural and spiritual worlds, so that analogies from the first are felt to be something more than illustrations happily but yet arbitrarily chosen. They are arguments, and may be alleged as witnesses; the world of nature being throughout a witness for the world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand, growing out of the same root, and being constituted for that very end."—(Archbishop Trench: "Parables," pp. 12, 13.)
[7] Mill's "Logic," vol. ii. p. 96.
[8] Campbell's "Rhetoric," vol. i. p. 114.
[9] "Nature and the Supernatural," p. 19.
[10] "The Scientific Basis of Faith." By J. J. Murphy, p. 466.
[11] Op. cit., p. 333.
[12] Ibid., p. 333.
[13] Ibid., p. 331.
[14] "Analogy," chap. vii.
[15] "Unseen Universe," 6th Ed., pp. 89, 90.