The Parables convey the teaching of Jesus in an intuitive and practical form. They contain nothing that is merely theoretical or speculative, no subtle disquisitions on matters that have no bearing on life or conduct. In them the essential unchanging duties of man are so presented as to be within the Comprehension of the simple and unlearned. They were originally spoken, not written; and they were addressed to people for the Inost part rough and uneducated. Jesus spoke not only to His contemporaries, but for all time, and so we may believe that He looked out beyond those who gathered about lIinl on the hillside, or who listened expectantly to Him on the shores of the Lake of Gennesaret, or who formed a narrower circle of hearers like those who sat at table with Him in the house of Simon the Pharisee, to others distant in time and place whom He also wished His words to reach.