the ground, both in the smallness of its beginning and the greatness of
its increase. The first promise, given at the gate of Eden, contained
the Gospel as a seed contains the tree. It fell among Adam's descendants
as a mustard-seed falls between the furrows, and lay long unnoticed
there. With the Lord, in the development of his kingdom, a thousand
years are as one day in the growth of vegetation. A man who in his
childhood observed the seed cast into the ground, may live long and die
old before the plants have reached maturity; but the seed of the kingdom
has not lost its life, the God of the covenant has not forgotten his
own. At the appointed time he will visit his husbandry, and fill his
bosom with its fruits.
Never to human eye did the seed seem smaller than at the coming of
Christ. The infant in the manger at Bethlehem is like a mustard-seed--an
atom scarcely perceptible in the hand, and lost to view when it falls
into the earth. Yet there lay the seed of eternal life--thence sprang
the stem on which all the saved of mankind shall grow as branches.
Israel was feeble among the nations--a little child writhing in the
grasp of imperial Rome; Judea and Galilee, with the heathenish Samaria
between, constituted his beat throughout the brief period of his public
ministry. The range was short in its utmost length, narrow in its utmost
breadth. In a map of the world of ordinary size, the spot that indicates
Palestine can scarcely be seen; yet from that spot radiated a power
which is at this day actually paramount. The Christ who seemed so small
both in private life at Nazareth and in the public judgment-hall of
Pilate at Jerusalem, is greatest now both in heaven and in earth.
Christendom and Christianity are both supreme, each in its own place and
according to its own kind. This world already belongs to Christian
nations, and the next to Christian men. So great has the religion of
Jesus grown, that its body overshadows the earth, and its spirit reaches
heaven.
As the leaves and branches of a tree tend to assume the form and
proportions of the tree itself, so subordinate parts in the development
of God's kingdom follow more or less closely the law of the whole
kingdom--a progress secret, slow, and sure, from a diminutive beginning
to an unexpected and amazing greatness. Take, for example, the history
of Moses, which is a vigorous branch shooting out from the mustard-tree
under the ancient dispensation. The branch, a part of the tree, is, like
the tree itself, small at first and great at last. A poor Hebrew
slave-mother, counting her own "a goodly child," as every true mother
will to the end of time, strove, by a strange mixture of ingenuity and
desperation, to preserve him from the cruel executioners of Pharaoh.
When she could no longer hide him in the house, she laid him in a wicker
basket, and set it afloat in an eddy of the Nile. How small the seed
seemed that day! A slave's man-child, one of many thousands destined by
their jealous owners to destruction, cast by his own mother into the
river, that he might not fall into the more dreaded hands of man--how
small that germ was, and yet how great it grew! From heaven the word had
gone forth, "Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it." On the mighty
stream, and the cruel men who frequented it, the Maker of them both had
laid the command, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophet no harm.
From that small seed, accordingly, sprang the greatest tree that grew in
those old days upon the earth. Moses, the terror of Pharaoh, the scourge
of Egypt, the leader of the Exodus, the lawgiver of Israel--Moses in his
manhood was to the foundling infant what the towering tree is to the
imperceptible seed from which it springs.
The operation of the same law may be observed in later ages. In the
Popish convent at Erfurt a studious young monk sits alone in his cell,
earnestly examining an ancient record. The student is Luther, and the
book the Bible. He has read many books before, but his reading had never
made him wretched till now. In other books he saw other people; but in
this book for the first time he saw himself. His own sin, when
conscience was quickened and enlightened to discern it, became a burden
heavier than he could bear. For a time he was in a horror of great
darkness; but when at last he found "the righteousness which is of God
by faith," he grew hopeful, happy, and strong. Here is a living seed,
but it is very small an awakened, exercised, conscientious, believing
monk, is an imperceptible atom which superstitious multitudes, and
despotic princes, and a persecuting priesthood will overlay and smother,
as the heavy furrow covers the microscopic mustard-seed. But the living
seed burst, and sprang, and pierced through all these coverings. How
great it grew and how far it spread history tells to-day. We have cause
to thank God for the greatness of the Reformation, and to rebuke
ourselves for its smallness. Through the grace of God it made rapid
progress at the first, and by the passions of men it was arrested before
its work was done;--not arrested, but impeded; it is growing still, and
growing more vigorously in our own day than it has done in any
generation since its youth.
But the present time supplies examples of the kingdom's growth from
small to great, as distinct and characteristic as any period since the
apostles' days. The revivals of these times are vigorous off-shoots from
the great stem of Christ's kingdom in the world, and the part observes
the same law of increase that operates in the whole. Trace any one of
the local awakenings back to its source, and you will discover that the
interest in spiritual, personal religion, which now overtops and
overshadows all other interests in the neighbourhood--which has led many
wanderers back to Christ's fold--which has caused friends to sing aloud
for joy, and enemies to stand mute in astonishment--which has emptied
jails and filled prayer-meetings--which has changed the wilderness into
a garden, and drawn wondering witnesses from distant lands--sprang from
some upper or lower room in which two or three unnoticed and unknown
believers were wont to meet at stated times for prayer. Many of those
small but living seeds have burst through the ground and made themselves
known by their magnitude; and many similar seeds are lying hid to-day
under the capacious folds of our vast and earnest industry. May great
trees spring from these small seeds in the Lord's good time!
Robert Haldane in Geneva, with his Bible in his hand and a group of
students around him, is a modern example of the same law in the growth
of the kingdom.
II. The kingdom of heaven _in a human heart_ is like a mustard-seed,
both in the smallness of its beginning and the greatness of its
increase. In the grand design of God, moral qualities hold the first
place; physical magnitude is subordinate and instrumental. We may safely
accommodate and apply to space the principle which the Scripture
expressly applies to time: One man--as a sphere on which his purposes
may be accomplished and his glory displayed--one man is with the Lord as
a thousand worlds, and a thousand worlds as one man. There is room,
brother, for the whole kingdom of God "within you." In one sense, it is
most true, we ought to abase, but in another we ought to exalt
ourselves. We should reverence ourselves as the most wonderful work of
God within the sphere of our observation. The King, as well as the
kingdom, finds room in a regenerated man. Here the Lord of glory best
loves to dwell.
In this inner and smaller, as well as in the outer and larger sphere,
the kingdom of heaven, following the law of the mustard-plant, grows
from the least to the greatest. All life, indeed, is, in its origin,
invisible; and the new life of faith is not an exception to the rule.
The Lord himself, in the lesson which he taught to Nicodemus, compared
it in this respect to the wind. In its origin it is imperceptible; in
its results it is manifest and great. To wash seven times in Jordan
seemed a small thing to the Syrian soldier, and such it really was; but
when his leprosy was cleansed, and his flesh restored like that of a
little child, he perceived that a great effect had sprung from simple
means. The little-child look unto Jesus which the Gospel prescribes for
the saving of the soul seems to the wisdom of this world as inadequate
to heal a leprosy as the waters of the Jordan seemed to Naaman; yet from
that small seed springs the tree of life, with all its beautiful
blossoms of hope, and all its precious fruits of righteousness.
The first true, deep check in the conscience because of sin; the first
real question, "What must I do to be saved?" the first tender grief for
having crucified Christ and grieved the Spirit; the first request for
pardon and reconciliation made to God, as a child asks bread from his
parents when he is hungry;--the kingdom, coming in any of these forms is
small and scarcely perceptible; but it lives, and in due time will grow
great. Be of good cheer, ye who have felt the word swelling and bursting
like a seed in your hearts. That plant may not yet have attained
maturity in your life, but greater is He who shields it than all who
assail it: the enemy cannot in the end prevail. He who hath begun a good
work in you, will perfect it until the day of Christ. You could not make
a living seed; but God has given it. Thus far all is well, but you are
as helpless at the second stage as you were at the first; you have no
more power to make the seed grow than you had to make the seed. The
Author and Finisher of this work keeps it from first to last in his own
hands. It is He who gives rain from heaven and fruitful seasons. The
small seed of the kingdom has fallen on your hearts, and been hidden in
their folds; it has taken root, and sent up into your lives some tender
shoots of faith, and hope, and love. It is well; thank God for the past,
and take courage for the coming time. The plant is small now; it will be
great hereafter. It is small on earth; it will be great in heaven. Weed
it and water it, sun it and shelter it. Be diligent on your own side of
this great business, and God will not withhold his power. Cultivate the
kingdom in your own hearts, and count on the blessing from on high to
make it prosper. From the tender, diminutive life of grace, the life of
glory will in due time grow.
When painters have drawn their figures in light, they throw in dark
shadows beside them, that the positive forms may thereby be more
prominently displayed. So, beside the kingdom of heaven, under the
aspect of its growth from small beginnings, let us throw in the outline
of the kingdom of darkness, that thereby the glory of light may be
better seen.
Although one kingdom differs from another in character and aim, all
kingdoms are like each other in the method of their operation. The
kingdom of darkness, like the kingdom of light, grows gradually from
very small to very great. The kingdom of Satan hangs on and follows
Christ's kingdom like a dark shadow, and the shadow depends upon the
light. The first sin against God was a very small seed, but the tree
which sprang from it was the fall of man. "Thou shalt not eat," is a
small point--its smallness has sometimes supplied unbelievers with wit,
if not with argument--but on that point a door was hung, which, turned
this way, opened heaven and shut hell; turned that way, opened hell and
shut heaven. In its beginning the kingdom of evil was small; but from
that small seed a mighty tree has grown.[18]
[18] "Good is like the mustard-seed; from small it becomes great:
evil resembles it not less. Here, too, the great springs from the
small. An evil thought, when once it has made its way into a poor
soul, may become mighty enough to cast it into hell."--_Dräseke vom
Reich Gottes_, ii. 238.
As there is no sin so great that the blood of Christ cannot blot it out,
so there is no sin so small that it cannot destroy a soul. A little sin
is like a little fire: stand in awe of the spark, and rest not till it
is quenched. As Christ our Lord is tenderly careful of spiritual life
when it is feeble, and cherishes it into strength, we should sternly
stamp out evil while it is yet young in our own hearts, lest it spread
like a fire. He will not quench the smoking flax of beginning grace, and
we should quench with all our might the smoking flax of sin. He
commanded the Church in Sardis to "be watchful, and strengthen the
things which remain, that are ready to die" (Rev. iii. 2). The
counterpart and complement of that command is binding, too, upon his
disciples: Be watchful, and weaken--if possible, kill outright--the
germs of evil that are springing from unseen seeds within your own heart
and around you in the world. "The God of peace will bruise Satan under
your feet shortly:" He will bruise Satan, but Satan must be bruised
under your feet.
IV.
THE LEAVEN.
"Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto
leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till
the whole was leavened."--MATT. xiii. 33.
In the mustard-seed we saw the kingdom growing great by its inherent
vitality; in the leaven we see it growing great by a contagious
influence. There, the increase was attained by development from within;
here, by acquisitions from without. It is not that there are two
distinct ways in which the Gospel may gain complete possession of a man,
or Christianity gain complete possession of the world; but that the one
way in which the work advances is characterized by both these features,
and consequently two pictures are required to exhibit both sides of the
same thing.
The thought which is peculiar to this parable, the specific lesson which
it teaches, is, the power of the Gospel, acting like contagion, to
penetrate, assimilate, and absorb the world in which it lies. The
kingdom grows great by permeating in secret through the masses, changing
them gradually into its own nature, and appropriating them to itself.
The material frame-work which contains the spiritual lesson here is, in
its main features, easily understood. Immediately below the surface,
indeed, lie some hard questions; but all that is necessary is easy, and
the discussion of difficulties, although it may well repay the labour,
is by no means essential.
The chief use of leaven in the preparation of bread is, as I understand,
to produce a mechanical effect. A certain chemical change is caused in
the first instance by fermentation in the nature of the fermented
substance, and for the sake of that change the process is in certain
other manufactures introduced; but along with the chemical change which
takes place in the nature of the substance, a mechanical change is also
effected in its form, and for the sake of this latter and secondary
result fermentation is resorted to in the baking of bread. The moist,
soft, yet dense mass of dough, is by fermentation thrown into the form
of a sponge. Owing to the consistence of the material, the openings made
by the ferment remain open, and consequently the lump, which would
otherwise have been solid, is penetrated in every direction by an
innumerable multitude of small cavities. Through these the heat in the
oven obtains equal access to every portion of the dough; and thus,
though the loaf is of considerable thickness, it is not left raw in the
heart. Other methods, essentially different from fermentation, are in
modern practice adopted in the preparation of bread; but by whatever
means channels may be opened for the admission of heat to every particle
of the dough, the result is practically the same as that which is
obtained by leavening. The operator converts the mass of solid dough
into swollen, light, porous, spongy leaven, by introducing into it a
small quantity of matter already in a state of fermentation. It is the
nature of that substance or principle to infect the portion that lies
next it; and thus, if the contiguous matter be a susceptible conductor
like moistened flour, it spreads until it has converted the whole mass.
The knowledge of this process is not so universal amongst us as it was
then in Galilee, or is still in many countries, because baking by
fermentation, especially in the northern division of the island, is not
much practised in private families. In countries where bread is prepared
by that method, and every family prepares its own, the process is, of
course, universally familiar.
The three measures of meal, which together make an ephah, were the
understood quantity of an ordinary batch in the economics of a family,
and as such are several times incidentally mentioned in the Scriptures
of the Old Testament. See, for example, the preparation of bread by
Sarah, as it is narrated in Gen. xviii. The various suggestions which
inquirers have made regarding the specific significance of the _three_
measures of meal, are interesting and instructive. As they do not
directly traverse the lines of the analogy, they are entitled to a
respectful hearing; but the subject is subordinate, and the meaning must
ever be comparatively obscure. Whether the three measures are understood
to point to the three continents of the world then known, or to the
three sons of Noah by whom the world was peopled, or to spirit, soul,
and body, the constituent elements of human nature, an interesting and
useful conception is obtained. Each of these suggestions contains a
truth, and that, too, a truth which is germane to the main lesson of the
parable.
The same historic incidents which show that three measures were the
ordinary quantity, show also that the women of the house were the
ordinary operators. Baking the bread of the household was accounted
women's work; as men ploughed and sowed in the field, women kneaded and
baked at the oven. An inversion of this order would have been noticed
as incongruous, and presented a difficulty. Exceptions may be found,
both in ancient and modern times, but the representation in the text
proceeds obviously upon the ordinary habits of society. On this account,
although I willingly listen to interesting and ingenious speculations
regarding the significance of the woman who hid the leaven among the
meal, I cannot accept them as the foundation of any positive doctrine. I
am jealous, not without cause, of ecclesiastical tendencies and
prepossessions in the interpretation of the parables. It is quite true
that both in the discourses of the Lord and in the epistles of his
followers, reference is made sometimes to the community or communities
of believers constituted as a Church; but the Church in the Scriptures
is a much simpler affair than it is in ecclesiastical history. Moreover,
in these lessons which were taught by the Lord in the beginning of the
Gospel, we find much about the individual man, and about the aggregate
of mankind, but little about the Church in its visible organization.
Accordingly, while I endeavour to keep my mind open for everything that
the Scriptures bring to the Church, I am disposed to shut the door hard
against anything that I suspect the Church is bringing to the
Scriptures. When the woman who kneaded the dough, and the woman who lost
and found the silver coin, come forward, backed by much learned
authority, saying, We are the Church, I stand on my guard against
deception, and carefully examine their credentials. A man took the
mustard-seed and sowed it in his field; a woman took the leaven and hid
it in three measures of meal. The two parables are in this respect
strictly parallel; in both alike an ordinary act in rural economy is
performed, and in either it is performed by a person of the appropriate
sex. The converse would have been startling and inexplicable. Whatever
the operator may represent in the sowing of the seed, the operator in
the hiding of the leaven represents the same. To neglect the strict
parallelism between the two cases, and attribute some meaning to the
selection of a woman as the operator in the one, which the selection of
a man in the other does not convey, is, as I apprehend the matter, to
forsake the main track of the analogy, and follow by-paths which lead to
no useful result. The same divine hand that dropped the word of eternal
life as a mustard-seed into the ground, also hid the word of eternal
life as leaven in the ephah of flour. Looking to the spiritual
significance of the two parables, we have in both cases the same act,
and in both cases, therefore, the same actor.[19]
[19] To the question what the woman specially represents in the
parable, Dräseke answers, "The grace of God."--ii. 263.
A question of deep interest and considerable difficulty arises from the
fact that here, and here only, the greatest good--the kingdom of God in
the world--is unequivocally compared to leaven, whereas this similitude,
in all other places of Scripture where it occurs, either stands
indefinitely for progress of any kind, or expressly represents the
energy of evil. I assume without argument that in this parable the
diffusion of leaven through the mass represents the diffusion of good in
the world, although here and there, both in ancient and modern times, an
inquirer appears who understands the leaven in this place to predict the
prevalence of false doctrines and practices in the Church. This
interpretation no man would voluntarily adopt in the first instance, for
it is obviously incongruous with the signification of the kingdom in
every other parable of the group; but some have permitted themselves to
be driven into it by a difficulty that threatens on the opposite side.
Because in other portions of Scripture they find leaven employed as an
emblem of evil, they think themselves obliged to take it as a
representative of evil here. But the difficulty which is presented by
the use of a type to denote good, which is elsewhere employed to denote
evil, must be fairly met and explained: to escape an imaginary
difficulty we must not plunge into a real mistake. I am convinced that
here, as in many similar cases, that which at first sight and on the
surface wears the appearance of harshness, will be found, on fuller
consideration, to contain a new beauty, and impart additional power.
It is obvious, in the first place, from the references made to it both
by the Lord and his apostles, and especially from the iteration of the
same maxim by Paul in two distinct epistles, that the similitude was
current and familiar among the people as a proverb. It is conceded, that
apart from this parable, wherever its application is expressly
indicated, it is employed to designate the progress of evil; but it
ought to be borne in mind that Paul has twice, in the same words,
enunciated the universal proposition, "A little leaven leaveneth the
whole lump" (1 Cor. v. 6; Gal. v. 9). By expressly mentioning the leaven
of malice and wickedness in connection with this proposition, he leaves
room for the supposition that there may be also a leaven of truth and
holiness. In like manner, the Lord in another place warns his followers
to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy; but he
nowhere says that leaven is hypocrisy. Leaven does, indeed, illustrate
the method in which falsehood spreads; but it may, for aught that is
said in the Scriptures, illustrate also the manner in which truth
advances, when it has gotten a footing in the world or in a man. If
truth and error, though opposite in their nature, are like each other in
their tendency to advance, as if by contagion; and if error is in this
respect like leaven, then truth must be in this respect like leaven too.
When two things are in a certain aspect like each other, and one of them
is in the same aspect like a third thing, the other must also be like
that third thing, provided the point of view remain unchanged. Leaven
represents evil not in its nature, but only in the manner of its
progress; and in this respect the symbol is equally applicable to the
opposite good.