CHAPTER 34
SOON AFTER his journey through southern Galilee, Jesus began to teach in a new form, that of telling stories to the people. Everybody likes to listen to a story, and sometimes a story will go to the heart when the plain truth will fail. Story-tellers have always been very abundant in the East, where Jesus lived. Even today may be found everywhere men who go from place to place telling stories, and the people flock around them and listen to their stories from morning until night.
But the stories that Jesus told were very different from those of the Eastern story-tellers. His stories were told to teach some great truth, and on that account were called "parables." A parable is a story which is true to life—that is, a story which might be true, not a fairy story—and which also has in it some teaching of the truth.
"Once a sower went out to sow his seed. Some seed fell on stony ground and some fell among briers and bushes."
One day Jesus went out of the city of Capernaum and stood on the beach by the Sea of Galilee. A great crowd of people gathered around him, for all the opposition of the scribes and Pharisees could not keep the common people away from Jesus. The throng was so great, crowding around Jesus, that as before he stepped into a boat and told his disciples to push it out a little from the shore. Then he sat down in the boat, fronting the great multitude that filled the sloping beach. He said to the people:
"Listen! Once a sower went out to sow his seed. And as he was scattering the seed, some of it fell on the path, where the ground had been trodden hard. The seed lay there on the path until the birds lighted upon it and picked up all the kernels, so that none of them grew.
"Some of the seed fell on places where there was a thin covering of earth over stones. There the kernels grew up quickly, just because the soil was thin. But when the hot weather came, the sun scorched the tender plants, and they all withered away, because they had no moisture and no root in deep earth.
"Some other of the seeds fell among briers and bushes, and there was no room for the grain to grow up. It lived, but it did not bring forth heads of grain, because it was crowded and choked by thorn bushes all around it.
"But there were some other of the seeds that fell into ground that was soft and rich and good. There they grew up and brought forth fruit abundantly. Some kernels gave thirty times as many as were sown, some sixty times and some a hundred times."