24. THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN

IN this Parable we see before us a woman hiding leaven in three measures of fine meal;¹ so that the process of fermentation commences, and silently proceeds, until the whole is leavened. The interpretation of the scene depends, of course, on the meaning to be given to leaven, which has been commonly supposed to represent pure Christianity. But such an explanation could only have originated in the minds of men who had determined it by their own preconceived ideas of what the future should be, and not by patient investigation: for leaven is an unmistakable symbol of sin and corruption, as will appear from a consideration of the following points.

I. The nature of the leaven used by the ancients, and its consequent figurative meaning in the Heathen as well as the Jewish world.

¹ The measures are probably seahs, three of which were contained in an ephah; while the latter seems to have been a full measure for baking. See Gen. xviii. 6; Judg. vi. 19: 1 Sam i. 24.

II. The apparent basis of the Parable in the Old Testament.

III. The invariable use of leaven as a symbol of evil in the Bible.

IV. And the fact that, if a contrary meaning were given to it in this instance, such an interpretation would involve a doctrine not to be found elsewhere in Scripture.

I. In regard to the first point, the only leaven known to the ancients was something sour; and the effect which it produced was incipient corruption spreading through the dough and rendering it sour, and, unless baked at the right time, positively corrupt. Hence, in speaking of bread, the Hebrews used "sour" for leavened, and "sweet" for unleavened. And hence, also, leaven became a symbol of corruption both to the Jews and to many Heathen nations.

In the Talmud it is a frequent figure for "evil affections and the naughtiness of the heart," and, among other instances, we find the following prayer;—"Lord of ages, it is revealed and known before Thy face that we would do Thy will; but do Thou subdue that which hinders, namely, the leaven which is in the lump." One of the Rabbis also says;—"Trust not a proselyte till twenty-four generations; for he holds his leaven."

At Rome, the Flamen Dialis, or High Priest of Jupiter, was forbidden to touch it; and Plutarch, the Greek historian, explains the prohibition on the ground that "leaven is both itself generated by corruption, and also corrupts the mass with which it is mingled."

II. Our Lord, Who frequently founds His sayings upon something written in the Old Testament, appears to have taken the present Parable from the description

THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN.

of the meat-oblation in the second chapter of Leviticus. That offering, which seems to represent the devotion of Christ, our Substitute, in service, was of fine flour; and, if the flour were in any way baked, there is an express injunction that no leaven should be in it. Moreover, this special command is immediately followed by the general precept;—"For ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of the Lord made by fire."¹ Thus the woman, by putting leaven into the fine flour, was rendering it unfit for an offering to the Lord.

III. We are directed to interpret Scripture by comparing spiritual things with spiritual, and leaven is, without a single exception, used as a familiar and well-known figure of corruption in both Old and New Testaments.

The Israelites were to put it away from their houses at the Passover;² God would have none of it offered upon His altar;³ and it is expressly contrasted with salt, the symbol of purity.⁴ Accordingly, when Amos, in bitter irony, bids the people multiply their transgressions and provoke God still further, he tells them that this may be done by offering a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven.⁵

But, perhaps, the most striking instance of the figurative significance of leaven is to be found in the description of the Feast of Pentecost.⁶ On that occasion two ordinary leavened loaves, made of the corn of the year, were to be brought forth from the habitations of the

¹ Levit. ii. 11.

² Exod. xii. 15, 19, 20; xiii. 6, 7; Deut. xvi. 3, 4.

³ Levit. ii. 4, 5, 11; xl. 17; x. 12.

⁴ Levit. ii. 11, 13.

⁵ Amos iv. 4, 5.

⁶ Levit. xxiii. 15-21.

Israelites to the altar, as the firstfruits unto the Lord. But, because there was leaven in them, they could not be burnt upon the altar and ascend from it as a sweet savour, and were, therefore, set down before it. These loaves, perhaps, symbolized the Church—which was called into existence on the day of Pentecost by the descent of the Holy Spirit, as a kind of firstfruits of creation¹—presented before God, but unacceptable to Him on account of the sin which is in it.

Then seven lambs without blemish, a young bullock, and two rams, were offered for a burnt offering, as a type of the whole devotion of our Substitute Christ, even to the death. Each of these sacrifices was followed by its appropriate meat and drink offering, pointing to His perfect and willing service in daily life, His fulfilment of the second table of the Law for us. Then a kid of the goats was slain as a sin offering, a shadow of Christ putting away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Lastly, two lambs were brought to the altar for peace offerings; to set forth Christ reconciling us to God, and restoring us to communion with Him.

And so, after the whole work of the Saviour had been thus represented, the two loaves were taken up and waved before the Lord, and—although they could not, indeed, be placed upon the altar, on account of their leaven—were, nevertheless, accepted and passed on for the use of the priest—a wondrous type of the Church, which, spite of all her faults, shall also be accepted in the Beloved.

The sin, then, which cleaves to us, and renders us unfit for the presence of God, unless we be cleansed in the blood and clothed in the righteousness of Christ, is

¹ James i. 18.

THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN.

symbolized by leaven; and, in the New Testament, the Lord gives some hints respecting special forms of this evil by warning His disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,¹ the Sadducees,² and the Herodians³ —three Jewish sects which are never without their counterparts in the professing Church.

Passing on from the Gospels to the Epistles of Paul, we shall find other examples of the symbolic meaning of leaven. On two occasions the apostle, when exhorting churches to put away evil, remarks;— “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.”⁴ And to one of these admonitions he adds the significant words;—“Purge out, therefore, the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened. For our Passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ: wherefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”⁵ It is, then, an entire absence of all leaven which God desires in the Church; and we cannot consent to set aside the emphatic and oft-repeated meaning of the symbol in the single instance in which it has been disputed.

IV. Again; were we in this passage to interpret leaven of a good influence, the Parable could only mean that all evil would be overcome by a gentle, gradual, and almost imperceptible process; and it would thus be made to contradict the whole testimony of the Bible. For the inspired writers repeatedly affirm that wickedness will increase, until at length it

¹ Luke xii. 1.

² Matt. xvi. 6.

³ Mark viii. 15.

⁴ 1 Cor. v. 6; Gal. v. 9.

⁵ 1 Cor. v. 7, 8 shall be forcibly checked by the interference of the Lord Himself. The mystery of lawlessness had begun to work like leaven even in apostolic times, and it must go on until its true nature be revealed in the person of the Lawless One. It is needless to multiply passages which speak of evil men and seducers waxing worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived, of love growing cold, and faith waning; passages which predict that the world will again become corrupt and filled with violence as in the days of Noah, will be reeking with the foulest crimes, like the cities of the plain, so that the Lord will come forth out of His place to shake terribly the earth, and to punish its inhabitants for their iniquity.

Even in this series of Parables we are taught that wheat and tares must both grow together to the end of the age; that the children of the Wicked One will be left undisturbed, until the Son of Man sends forth His angels to gather out of His Kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and that, after the net has been drawn to shore, the wicked shall be severed from among the righteous, but not made like to them.

There is, therefore, no doubt in regard to the Scriptural significance of leaven, and if it be accepted, the Parable falls easily into its place. The agent in the scene is a woman—the usual symbol of a system or Church; and the fact that she is secretly corrupting the fine flour, acting like the enemy who sowed tares upon the wheat, proves her to be the Harlot, and not the true Church.

The leaven is corrupt doctrine, and is explained for us by Matthew in the words;—"Then understood they

THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN.

how that He bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees." ¹

In the previous chapter we have attempted to describe the manner in which Christianity began to be Heathenized. The process of transformation continued, until the truths of revelation were entirely changed by the gradual admixture of human traditions and philosophies, which, like leaven, were not merely corrupt in themselves, but had also the property of imparting their own nature to that with which they were mingled. The earthly agency by which this strange result was achieved became more and more powerful under the name of "the Catholic Church." And so effectual was its organization, and so vigorous its action, that in a short time the whole society of the Roman world was interpenetrated with its influence, and men regarded themselves as Christians when they were really polytheistic idolaters who had changed the names of their gods.

The three kinds of leaven mentioned by the Lord may be easily distinguished in this apostasy. In both the Greek and the Latin communities there has ever been a sufficiency of Pharisees, those who have, perhaps, some kind of faith in what they teach, but who put their trust in outward forms, in the traditions of men, and in the authority of their own Church; while they look down, sometimes with pity, but more frequently in a spirit of contempt and persecution, upon all who venture to differ from them.

And again; there is always a plentiful sprinkling of Sadducees, men who decline, more or less, to believe

¹ Matt. xvi. 12.

anything which they have not experienced, or cannot understand; who disparage revelation, avoid all mention of the supernatural, and are ever unwilling to speak of the atonement; who dream that the new birth can be effected by education, human philosophy, and the practice of virtue and philanthropy; and who, while apparently acquiescing in the doctrines and practices of their Church, are in their hearts altogether indifferent to them; nay, are often possessed with a bitter spirit of scepticism which resents the very suggestion of a God. When the false religion is growing old in a land, and its authority is becoming relaxed, these men are the fungi which draw life from its decay: they multiply in numbers and increase in boldness, until at length they throw off all disguise, and openly avow their real sentiments, and their hatred of every form of worship. Such are the dregs which Romanism invariably leaves behind it when all else has evaporated.

Of Herodians, who would support religion by the arm of secular power, and who consider political intrigue a fitting means for advancing the interests of Christ's Kingdom, it is needless to speak. Men of this class have ever been conspicuous in the communities of apostate Churches, and in none more than that of Rome.

But there are also many misguided believers, of more orthodox views, who so mind earthly things that they are often found to be practically regarding the political questions of the day as more important than the far weightier matters of the heavenly Kingdom. And they persuade themselves to such a state of mind by the false assumption that the present work of Christ is to improve the world, forgetting that He bids us rather co-operate with Him in gathering His elect out of it.

PARABLE OF THE TREASURE IN THE FIELD. 319

Such, then, was the period of the leaven; nor have reformations or revivals, however great their partial success, been able to free Christendom from its pernicious influence. It is still found, to a greater or less extent, and in one or other of its forms, in every Church and sect: it continues to work in the whole mass of professing Christians, though sometimes one of its developments may be more powerful, sometimes another. Hitherto the Pharisean and Herodian elements have usually been the most prominent; but for a long time the Sadducean has been rapidly increasing, and this will probably be the chief agent in forcing the mystery of lawlessness to its climax. All three will, however, remain active until the end, and, in their final development, are possibly represented by the three unclean spirits of the Sixth Vial, which will drive men on to the last extreme of rebellion, and “gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.”¹

VII.

THE PARABLE OF THE TREASURE IN THE FIELD.

There is now a pause in our Lord’s discourse, and the remaining Parables are spoken to the disciples alone. Some turning-point is indicated, and possibly a more confined area, as though the action of this scene would, in the main, be restricted to a few favoured countries of Christendom. And so we seem to recognize the results brought about by the Reformation. The ceaseless working and rapid progress of the leaven is checked; but that is all: the leaven is not itself purged away. Only that which had been

¹ Rev. xvi. 13, 14.

active for evil now settles down into a cold inert mass; so that the outward appearance of the nominal Church is that of a field. Nevertheless, hidden beneath its unpromising surface lies the heavenly treasure.

The description is wonderfully true when applied to the times of Protestant deadness which, quickly following the Reformation, lasted on with but few signs of life to vary their monotony until it was broken by the preaching of Wesley, Whitefield, and others. For after the enthusiasm of the conflict with Rome had passed away, men speedily settled down to a mere form of godliness, while they denied its power. They thought it a duty to go through their heartless services, but love had grown cold: they boasted of their pure faith, but failed to show the works which it should have produced. And a mournful proof of this may be found in the fact that two centuries had elapsed before they roused themselves to any general missionary effort.

Soon the peoples of Christendom among whom the Reformation had triumphed were divided off into sharply-defined sects, like fenced fields. Each of these sects held the life-giving doctrine of the atonement: but it was often concealed more or less by other teachings, which in some cases seemed to have been very imperfectly purged from the leaven.

During this period the number of believers was usually increased in the manner indicated by the Parable. A man would, as it were by chance,¹ hear

¹ The husbandman found the treasure: while he was engaged in ordinary work, his ploughshare or mattock, perhaps, struck upon something which proved to be valuable. It was, then, an instance of what we call treasure-trove. And, consequently, the interpretation of those who see Christ in the husbandman, and His people in the treasure, leads to very strange results. Surely

PARABLE OF THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 321 the Gospel of Christ, and, having received it, would in his joy buy the whole field, that is, accept, at any cost to himself, all the doctrines of the community of Christians in which he had found his treasure. This was a very characteristic feature of the times from the Reformation to the middle of the present century: the generality of good men, after finding the heavenly treasure in some professing body, while holding firmly, indeed, to fundamental and vital truths, would in other matters thenceforth read the word of God, not independently, but by the light of, and to prove the correctness of, the doctrines which they had adopted. And the various Protestant Churches, while conceding salvation to all believers in Christ's atonement, were wont, nevertheless, to preserve strongly-marked lines of separation, and to remember their distinctive tenets.

VIII.

THE PARABLE OF THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE.

IN this similitude the scene again changes: the solid field breaks up into the ever-shifting waves of the sea, and the secret of the Kingdom is found as a pearl in its lowest depths. This points to times like those on which we seem already to be entering; times in which the narrow boundaries of sect are becoming indistinct, and are little noticed, while almost every man holds his own peculiar opinions. And, just as the pearl lies far beneath the restless surface of the waves, so, in no our Lord did not accidentally light upon His Church, while He was about some other business in the world! And His people can scarcely be called treasures at the time when He finds them: they become so afterwards, by His grace, as new creations in Him.

distant day, will the word of God be hidden beneath the many waters of perpetually changing confessions, creeds, sects, opinions, and philosophies; and still later, at the culmination of the great apostasy, its very existence will be almost forgotten. The truth of God will be no more found, as it were, accidentally—as a man unexpectedly stumbles upon treasure-trove—but only by means of earnest inquiry.

For in this case a merchant, who knows the value of pearls, is seeking for them; and the reward of his diligence is the discovery of the pearl of great price, to obtain which he gives up all that he has. The Lord thus signifies that, even in the perilous times of the end, those who are really desirous of truth will be guided to the great truth. But, as we learn from other prophecies, their sincerity will be sorely tested; they will have to turn away from that which is exciting the enthusiasm of the whole world in order to begin the search; and, when they have been successful, may be required to surrender family, position, property, and even life itself, if they would possess the prize.

Since, however, the merchant is able to find the pearl, we are taught that God will not leave Himself altogether without witnesses while the Lawless One is reigning: there will yet be fishers, blessed of Him, who will be empowered to bring up His truth from beneath the troubled waters of human opinions, and to offer it to those who are honestly seeking for “glory and honour and immortality.”¹

¹ We must carefully bear in mind that the merchant does not dive to bring up the pearl from the deep, but merely purchases it from one who has previously procured it. Great, therefore, is the mistake of interpreters who find in this Parable a representation of Christ seeking and saving His Church.

PARABLE OF THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE.

If we look around us, we cannot but suspect that we are living in the transitional period between the previous Parable and that which we are now considering. Already, on every side, the fields of dogma are breaking up, and where one distinct and unalterable law was wont to prevail, there is nothing but uncertainty and innumerable opinions—opinions, too, which rarely claim to be derived from the revelation of God, but are avowedly based upon human authority, whether ancient or modern, whether ecclesiastical or secular.

The Protestant sects, as communities, attracted by human traditions and philosophies, are ceasing to hold fast the Head, and becoming less and less able to withstand the powerful influx of corruption. Those principles which used to characterize them are, like houses surprised by an inundation, already tottering, and threatening every moment to fall through the violence of the floods; so that shortly nothing will be seen but the tumultuous waters out of which Satan will evoke the last great enemy of Christ.

Some twenty or thirty years ago, the first slight advances of Secularism were viewed with alarm wherever they were discovered, and the seven Essayists and Bishop Colenso regarded as strange teachers in the National Church. But it is not so now: almost all popular magazines and reviews teem with scepticism, and it is openly taught by those who might have been expected to act as barriers against it. Nor is the spread of Romanism, especially in covert forms, less remarkable.

The scarcely noticed summer stream has swelled into a broad and foaming river, and is bringing destruction with it from the mountains. We cannot hope to stay its rapid tide ; for it will prevail, until He appear unto Whom all power is given. But we must not, therefore, remain idle all the day : nay, we are exhorted to greater exertions as the difficulties increase and the end approaches, lest the Lord coming suddenly should find us sleeping. We can stand by the rushing torrent, and pull out many a one, who is being carried away by it, before his spirit is quite extinguished : we can warn others, so that they may avoid it altogether. And by the mercy of God there are still large numbers of His people thus employed. The energy of evil is for the present provoking some little corresponding energy of good ; but of this we shall hear in our Lord's second continuous prophecy. For in the Parables He deals more especially with the general outward appearance of that which claims to be the Church

IX.