23. THE PARABLE OF THE MUSTARD TREE

IN the third similitude, a grain of mustard—proverbial in Palestine as being the smallest of familiar seeds—is sown by a man in his field: and, with a solemn significance, the Lord tells us that this plant, although really belonging to the class of pot-herbs, or garden vegetables (τὰ λάχανα), grows, nevertheless, into a tall tree.¹ This is an evident intimation of something wrong: for God would have every seed to develop according to the limits of its kind.

In becoming a tree the mustard throws out great branches,² so that the fowls of the air, which in the first Parable caught up and devoured the good seed, are able to come and lodge under its shelter. Here, then, is another very ominous hint, which, had it been duly weighed, would have checked the frequent, and undoubtedly mistaken, use of this Parable for missionary sermons.

The grain represented the principles of the Church

¹ Thomson remarks that he has seen the wild mustard as tall as the horse and his rider, and suggests that there may have been a perennial kind which grew into a tree, just as the castor bean sometimes does. See "The Land and the Book," p. 414. Very possibly there is no exaggeration in the assertion of R. Simeon Ben Chalaphta, who says;—"A stalk of mustard was in my field, into which I was wont to climb as men climb into a fig tree."

² Mark iv. 32.

THE PARABLE OF THE MUSTARD TREE.

as sown by Christ in the world: the description of its unnatural growth signified that those principles would be abandoned as the age rolled on—a prediction which was very manifestly fulfilled.

For the Lord charged His disciples to learn of Him, and be meek and lowly in heart during their sojourn upon earth; to cast aside every high thought, and follow their despised and rejected Master. But Satan, by means of false teachers and errors stealthily introduced during the period of the tares, prevailed on the great body of professing Christians to turn from the words of golden hope, "Behold I come quickly"—inscribed, as it were, by the Lord upon the blue veil of heaven through which He ascended—and to fix their eyes upon earthly things. He taught them to think of the cessation of human enmity, and of their own growing importance; and so allured their community in the direction of an eminence to which they could attain only by forsaking Christ and serving Mammon. Then, when the fitting moment had arrived, he approached them, and offered the present favour of earthly kings in exchange for the hope of the King from heaven. And, forgetful of their Lord's example, they accepted the offer: like Eve, they were beguiled, and blindly consented to receive their power and influence from the Prince of this World.

The phase represented in the Parable began to be developed in the early part of the fourth century, when Constantine was carried to the imperial throne upon the shoulders of his British legionaries, the great majority of whom were Christians, and a nominal Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire.

Now it had been a frequent custom of the polytheistic Romans to acknowledge all the gods, while they selected one of them as a special patron and object of adoration. And, accordingly, Constantine, in deference to the feelings of his soldiers, placed Christ in the Pantheon, and adopted Him as his favourite god; though, at the same time, he continued to worship the Heathen deities, giving the preference to Apollo.

For his religion was dictated by motives of policy, and his desire was to weld his Christian and Pagan subjects into one people. To promote this end, a set of double-meaning symbols was carefully prepared, or rather, a number of recognized Pagan symbols were so adapted that those who wished might interpret them of Christ, while others continued to explain them from their own mythology.

Among these symbols was the mystic Tau,¹ the famous but obscene "sign of life," known from the earliest antiquity throughout the whole circle of Heathendom, and marked in baptism upon the foreheads of those who were being initiated into the mysteries.² This was brought into greater prominence, and for Christians was made to signify the cross of Christ, while among the Pagans it retained its previous meaning.

¹ The great Phallic emblem. "It is high time that Christians should understand a fact of which sceptics have long been talking and writing, namely, that the cross was the central symbol of all ancient Paganism. What it represents must remain untold: but it was probably made the medium of our Lord's death through the crafty devices of the Wicked One, into whose hands He was for a while delivered, with a view to the future corruption of Christianity, and the carrying on under its name of all the abominations of the Heathen."—"Rome: Pagan and Papal," by Mourant Brock.

² Another form of this symbol was the Egyptian crux ansata, the well-known sign of the goddess Venus.

THE PARABLE OF THE MUSTARD TREE.

Just in the same manner the device on the standard of Constantine, which he was reported to have seen in his vision, the Chi-Rho, was set before the Christians as the monogram of Christ; but the Heathen easily recognized it as a slightly altered form of the sign of Osiris, or Jupiter Ammon.¹ Besides which, it was usually set upon the top of the pole; while on the purple-silk field of the banner below were the heads of the emperor and his sons, which might be worshipped by the Pagans according to their custom.

Another instance of Constantine's policy is worth mention. The Christians of that time were scrupulous in keeping holy the first day of the week in remembrance of their risen Lord. Perceiving that this was in itself sufficient to distinguish them from their fellow-citizens, and to promote a party spirit, he issued an edict that the Pagans should observe the same day in honour of Apollo, the Sun-god, and should call it Dies Solis, or the day of the Sun. Very soon Christ and Apollo began to be more or less identified, and from this unseemly origin comes our modern term "Sunday."

It was probably at the same time that the custom of turning to the East was introduced into the Church. For, however this ceremony may be explained, it is altogether Pagan, and is connected with the worship of the Sun-god. Its extreme antiquity may be known from the fact that, when God gave directions for the arrangements of the Tabernacle and Temple, He caused the Holy of holies in both cases to be set in the West,²

¹ Jennings' "Rosicrucians," pp. 147, 180.

² The longer sides of the Tabernacle were to face the North and South respectively, so that they extended from East to West (Exod. xxvi. 18-20). The West end was to be completely boarded, like the sides, because the Holy of holies was to be there in order that His people might be clearly distinguished from the idolaters around them.

It is only by bearing this in mind that we can understand the deep significance of a passage in Ezekiel. That prophet, when relating how he was caught up by the Spirit and conveyed to Jerusalem to see the abominations which had provoked God to doom both city and Sanctuary to destruction, thus describes the last and greatest of them;—"And He brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house; and, behold, at the door of the Temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the Temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the East; and they worshipped the sun toward the East."¹

The confusing and corrupting effects of Constantine's policy may be easily imagined: Christianity was transformed into a kind of Paganism with new names, and the world ceased to view it with disfavour. And, meanwhile, the private conduct of the emperor, inasmuch as it had to be condoned by the Church, must have greatly contributed to laxity of morals; for, among other crimes, he put to death his eldest son and his own wife, listening in each case to accusations which he afterwards discovered to be false. This caused his enemies to say, that he had become a Christian because no other religion offered pardon for such atrocities as he chose to commit.

(vv. 22-3). But the East end was the entrance to the Holy Place, and was covered with a curtain. The passage quoted from Ezekiel in the next paragraph shows the position of Solomon's Temple, since the men who were worshipping the sun towards the East had their backs turned to the Temple of the Lord.

¹ Ezek. viii. 15, 16. The number of the men seems to indicate that they were the High Priest and the heads of the twenty-four orders (1 Chron. xxiv.).

THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN.

Certainly, when the Church accepted the alliance of such a man, it might well have been said of her, as of Jerusalem, "How is the faithful city become a harlot!" She had, indeed, grown great upon the earth; but instead of the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the foul and rebellious spirits of the air came and lodged in her branches, took possession of her, and directed her; so that she ceased, as a visible body, to be a witness for Christ, and became a mighty instrument in the hands of Satan

VI