Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/269



HIS is one of the most beautiful and instructive parables in the whole of the Divine Word, equally edifying in the letter as in the spirit. Dr. Hales has, with great force and beauty, illustrated the literal sense, which we shall first transcribe, and then proceed to illustrate the spiritual sense.

"For their ingratitude to the house of Gideon, the Shechemites were indignantly upbraided by Jotham, in the oldest and most beautiful apologue of antiquity extant—the trees choosing a king. With the mild and unassuming dispositions of his pious and honourable brethren—declining, like their father, we may suppose, the crown, when offered to them successively, under the imagery of the olive tree, the fig tree and the vine—he pointedly contrasts the upstart ambition and arrogance of the wicked and turbulent Abimelech, represented by the bramble, inviting his new and nobler subjects, the cedars of Lebanon, to put their trust in his pigmy shadow, which they did not want, and which he was unable to afford them; but threatening them