IN the parable of the grain of mustard seed becoming a great tree, we have the kingdom of heaven as a power in the earth subduing other powers, and as such seeking prominency in the world. The rulers in it have had for their professed object the extension of the name of Christ, but this name in their hands was a means merely to exercise their own ambition. They sought to enlarge the bounds of Christendom, and succeeded in the attempt. In the prosecution of their design they have displayed the greatest energy and the most untiring zeal, they have evinced a readiness and aptitude to use all the appliances that the world could afford. The most astute policy has characterized the measures, framed by some, followed by most, which had for their aim the bringing of the temporal power to acknowledge the superiority of the spiritual. Sovereigns have been urged to oppress their subjects; subjects have been incited to rebel against their sovereigns; divide and conquer was the secret maxim which governed all their proceedings. The lust of earthly grandeur is discernible long before the secular power of the empire allied itself to the professing Church when Constantine made Christianity the religion of the empire. But this alliance once made, the corruption which adversity and persecution had in some degree held in check showed itself boldly; and flattery and intrigue, and all the arts that men use to obtain influence, were employed by those who claimed to be followers of the apostles, and to have the care of the Church. The kings of the earth were courted by the servants of Him whom these kings took counsel together to destroy. What a change came over the profession of Christianity! Christians are called to suffer NOW that they might reign THEN. But instead of suffering, the high places of the earth were coveted and obtained. Satan offered the glory of the world to Christ if He would worship him— “for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it.” (Luke 4:66And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. (Luke 4:6).) Jesus would not have glory from the devil. But Christians have had this glory, Christians still enjoy and seek it. Who gave it them? By what means did they possess it? “To whomsoever I will I give it.” Solemn thought! the power and the glory that Christ rejected the professing church greedily covets. We have societies composed of some real Christians, but for the most part of nominal Christians and worldlings, for the avowed purpose of propagating Christianity. They yield a something to each other. The one has civilization for his object, the amelioration of the world; the other yet professes to aim at Christianizing the world. But is civilization the (yea, an) object of the Christian missionary? Does he not call to separation from the world? “Let the dead bury their dead,” &c. To spread the gospel and the truth is the work of the Christian, and of him alone; the means and the agencies employed should be Christian and not worldly. If the tares and the wheat join to promote Christianity, alas for the wheat! How can such concord exist? How can these two walk together?
Is it not that the place and calling of the Church of God has been forgotten, and the kingdom of heaven has rather become in men's apprehension a kingdom of the earth? If any ask why God permitted such confusion, there can be but one answer: the enemy sowed tares in the field; the work of the sower for the present was spoiled, and judgment was certain. But though known to God, it was not manifest to men, and the worldliness, the effect of the presence of the tares, must be made manifest; for it is the way of God to make evil manifest before punishing it. The persecutions which the early Church suffered were lessons of God, and might have shown the antagonism of the world; but when these divine teachings were disregarded, and the spirit of the world still infected the professing body like an incurable disease, God gave it up to follow its own will, allowing it to fall into the world's arms—to become a mere vine of the earth, doomed to destruction. The true position of the Church, as the body and expression of the glorified Christ, was very soon lost. The Holy Ghost, as the animating and directing energy, was grieved, hindered, and practically denied; and by degrees earthly hopes began to displace the waiting for Christ from heaven. The barrier which the Lord had established to prevent the influx of worldliness being broken down, there was nothing to prevent the professing body, as a whole, from becoming thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the world; and the consequence was the substituting of a religion made up of Jewish ceremonies, heathen rites, and worldly principles, for the faith once delivered to the saints. This seems to be the leavening of the lump.
“Another parable spake he unto them, The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven,” &c. Here we have the kingdom presented, not as a secular worldly power, but as a principle or doctrine which thoroughly pervades all that is submitted to its influence. There are some who conceive this parable to be descriptive of the grace of God in the soul. But while the kingdom of God is said to be “righteousness and peace,” &c., it is never so said of the kingdom of heaven, which is always dispensational, and not moral merely. The kingdom of heaven is ever the kingdom of God, but the expression “kingdom of God” does not always mean “kingdom of heaven.” This parable, too, be it remarked, in common with those preceding, was spoken outside to the multitude, giving an external picture of the kingdom which sets aside another idea, viz., that the leaven is symbolical of real Christianity, spreading universally until the whole world be converted. But there is no such prediction respecting the gospel in the whole book of God; on the contrary, in the very first parable in. this chapter, out of four classes to whom the word is preached, there is only one class which brings forth fruit. It is inferred that the word will not be universally received. In the field the tares, as such, continue to the end; they do not become wheat. In the parable of the net, there were caught both good and bad fishes. All exhibit the same truth, that evil men will be found in every age up to the end. There are many passages in the Old Testament which foretell a time when all in Israel shall know the Lord, from the least even unto the greatest; a time of all but universal blessedness. But nowhere is it said that this will be the effect of preaching only; other and far different means besides will he used to accomplish this. The unprejudiced mind may easily know that all these passages predicting future peace and happiness for the world refer to a future age, to be ushered in by judgment upon those that have not received the gospel. Another reason for rejecting the above interpretation is, that it gives to the symbol “leaven,” a meaning which it has nowhere else in scripture. Leaven never suggests the idea of anything good. Wherever used, it is symbolical of corruption. In the Mosiac economy all the types which have an especial reference to Christ were free from leaven. Where the worship of the saint was shadowed forth, there was leaven, as denoting the presence of the flesh, which though mortified, and by the energy of the Holy Spirit kept under, yet will ever be present while he is dwelling in this present world. It will only be when the mortal and the corruptible shall be changed into the immortal and the incorruptible, that worship shall be free from the effects of the flesh. So in its most virulent and worst forms, as exhibiting the extreme enmity of the unrenewed heart against God, the hypocrisy of the Pharisees is called leaven. We read too of the leaven of Herod. The apostle Paul speaks of the unleavened bread of sincerity, and here, by implication, leaven symbolizes hypocrisy. It may be remarked also, but with no desire to press it beyond its legitimate import, that the hiding of the leaven is not the act of the Lord.
The parable, then, presents the universal diffusion of the Christian religion within certain limits—not the growth of faith or the communication of life, which is rather represented by the wheat which took root in the ground; not the rise and progress of an ecclesiastic-secular power, “a great tree,” resembling the symbols of an Egyptian or Babylonish dynasty; but a definite sphere filled with the profession of Christ. It is the state of the kingdom which will bear a resemblance to the act of a woman who hides leaven in three measures of meal until the whole be leavened. To all but God the distinction between good and evil is lost. Outwardly it is an indiscriminate mass which bears the name of Christ. God simply shows us here the historical fact; and the external appearance is a lump thoroughly leavened. As the tree represented Christendom aspiring to power in the earth, so the leaven, spreading over the three measures of meal, sets forth Christian doctrine professed and propagated throughout a given sphere. It does not appear to be the design of the Lord to pronounce a moral sentence in these early parables to the multitude. Of course the spiritual man ought to judge of all things; but here the object is to represent such facts as meet the eye and mind of men outside. Nor have they failed to be observed, as will appear from the following passage of Guizot's History of Civilization in Europe— “The Church was a society regularly constituted, having principles, rules, and discipline of its own, and actuated by an ardent desire to extend its influence, and to vanquish its conquerors. Among the Christians of that epoch [when the barbarians broke up the Roman empire], in the ranks of the clergy, there where men who had pondered deeply upon all moral and political questions, who held fixed opinions and energetic sentiments upon all things, and strove strenuously to, propagate them and render them paramount. No society ever made such efforts as did the Christian church, from the fifth to the tenth century, TO EXTEND ITS SPHERE, AND SMOOTH THE EXTERNAL WORLD INTO ITS OWN LIKENESS. When we study its particular history, we shall perceive the full extent of its labors. It attacked barbarism, as it were, on all its sides, to civilize by subduing it.” This was just the leavening process going on under the hand of the “woman.” Alas! we know it was but the spread of corrupt Christianity; so that here, as elsewhere, the leaven had, in fact, its usual counterpart. Nor does even doctrine remain sound where there is the mere unhallowed desire of spreading profession, and where the heart is not subject to God, and purified by faith. Thus, throughout Christendom, systematic Judaizing became the rule, mingled with not a few accommodations of heathen rites and practices, in order to please the multitude and facilitate their so-called conversion.
The Church was regarded as an improvement and complement of the Jewish polity. Israel's restoration and future hopes were denied, and so the ruin was helped on; because the Gentiles began to regard the forfeited place of the Jews as their own. Thus becoming earthly, they rose in their own conceit, liable and sure in God's time to be cut off. (Rom. 11)
R. B.