03.04. THE LEAVEN

THE LEAVEN

Matthew 13:33 This parable directs attention to two points connected with the spread of Christianity. It illustrates —

1. First, the kind of change which Christianity works in the world; and 2. Second, the method by which this change is wrought.

I. First, our Lord here teaches that the change which He meant to effect in the world was a change, not so much of the outward form, as of the spirit and character of all things. The propagation of His influence is illustrated not by the figure of a woman taking a mass of dough and baking it up into new loaves of a shape hitherto unseen; but by the figure of a woman putting that into the dough which alters the character of the whole mass. She may set on the table loaves that are to all appearance the same as the old, but no one will taste them without perceiving the difference. The old shapes are retained, the familiar marks appear still on the loaves, but it is a different bread. The appearance remains the same, the reality is altered. The form is retained, but the character is changed.

There are two ways in which you may revolutionize any country or society. You may either pull down all the old forms of government, or you may fill them with men of a different spirit. If an empire is going to ruin, you may either change the empire into a republic, or you may put the right man in the office of emperor. If any society or club or association has become effete and a nuisance, doing harm instead of good, you may reform it either by revising its constitution, making new laws and regulations, and so making it a new society, or you may fill its official positions with men of a right spirit, leaving its form of constitution untouched. A watch stops, and somebody tells you it needs new works, but the watchmaker tells you it only needs cleaning. A machine refuses to work, and people think the construction is wrong, but the skilled mechanic pushes aside the ignorant crowd and puts all to rights with a few drops of oil. “Your bread is unwholesome,” says the public to the baker, and he says, “Well, I’ll send you loaves of a new shape;” but the woman of the parable follows the wiser course of altering the quality of the bread.

Few distinctions are of wider application, few need more careful pondering by all of us whether in our social, political, or religious capacity. Many of us take a huge interest in the institutions of our country, and are ready to lay our finger on this and that as needing reform. This parable should therefore haunt the ear, and always suggest the question: Is this or that institution radically bad? or, supposing good and wise men were working it, would it not serve a good purpose? What is wanted in the world is not new forms, but a new spirit in the present forms. New forms, new institutions, new regulations, new occupations, new trades, new ways of occupying our time, new customs are really as little to the purpose as putting the old make of bread into new shapes. What our Lord by this parable warns us to aim at and to look for is rather the possession which Christian feeling and views take of previously existing customs, institutions, relationships, occupations, than the new facts and habits to which Christian feeling gives birth. It is the regenerating rather than the creative power of Christ’s Spirit that He dwells upon. His Spirit, He says, does not require a new channel to be dug for it; its fuller stream may flood the old banks, may wear out corners here and there, may break out in new directions, but in the main, the channel remains the same. The man has the same arteries, but now they are filled with health-giving blood. The lump is the same lump, and done up into the same old shapes, but it is all leavened now. The coming of the kingdom of heaven does not then consist in an entire alteration of human life, as we now know it. The kingdom of heaven comes not with observation, but is within you. It does not alter empires into republics, it does not abolish work and give us all ease, it does not find fault with the universal frame of things, or refuse to fit itself in with the world as it is; but it accepts things as it finds them, and leavens all it touches. As the outward forms of the world’s business, its offices and dignities, its need of work and ways of working, would be little altered if all men were suddenly to become absolutely truthful or absolutely sober, so the change which Christ proposed to effect was of an inward, not of an outward kind. It was to be first in the individual, and only through the individual on society at large. Our Lord in establishing a kingdom on earth, did not intend to erect a vast organization over-against the world, but He meant to introduce into the world itself a leaven which should rule and subdue all to His own Spirit. The Church itself therefore may become too visible, has become in many respects too visible, and has thus unfortunately succeeded in at once separating itself from the world as a distinct and alien institution, and becoming entirely “of the world,” by imitating the institutions, the ambitions, the power, the show of the world. It has learned to measure its success very largely by the bulk it occupies in the eyes of men, by its well-ordered services, its creeds and laws and courts; and it has too much forgotten that its function is of quite another kind, namely, to be hidden among the flour.

2. Secondly, this parable pointedly directs attention to the precise method by which the kingdom of heaven is to grow; or, as we should more naturally say, by which the whole world is to be Christianized. To one who considers the probable future of any new or young force in the world, to one who stands beside the cradle of a new power and speculates on its future, there will occur several ways in which it may possibly prevail and attain universality. It may so commend itself to the common sense of men, or it may so appeal to their regard to their own interests, as to win universal acceptance. Railways, banks, insurance companies, do not need statutes compelling men to use them; they win their way by their own intrinsic advantages. There have been governments so wisely administered, that men not naturally subject to them have sought to be taken under their protection for the sake of advantages accruing. Some kingdoms have thus been largely extended; but more commonly they have been extended by the sword, by the strong hand. Not by this latter method would Christ have His religion propagated. Yet the idea that men can somehow be compelled to accept the truth, seems never to be quite eradicated from the human mind. Very slowly is it recognized that to support a religion by any kind of force instead of by reason alone, is to admit that reason condemns it. The methods of compulsion change; the coarser forms of compulsion, the sword and the stake, give place; but more disguised and less startling forms of compulsion remain, equally opposed to the spirit of Christ. The spread of Christianity, then, is illustrated in this parable, not by the propagation of fruit trees, nor even by the sowing of seed, but by the leavening of a mass of dough. Religion, that is to say, spreads not by a fresh sowing in each case, but by contagion. No doubt the e is a direct agency of God in each case, but God works through natural means; and the natural means here pointed at is personal influence. And it is not the agency of God in the matter which our Lord wishes here to illustrate, and therefore He says nothing about it. He is not careful to guard Himself against misrepresentation by completing in every utterance a full statement of the whole truth, but presses one point at a time; and the point He here presses is, that He depends upon personal influence for the spread of His Spirit. The Church often trusts to massive and wealthy organizations, to methods which are calculated to strike every eye; but according to the Head of the Church His religion and spirit are to be propagated by an influence which operates like an infectious disease, invisible, without apparatus and pompous equipment, succeeding all the better where it is least observed. Our Lord bases His expectation of the extension of His Spirit throughout the world not upon any grand and powerful institutions, not on national establishments of religion or any such means, but on the secret, unnoticed influence of man upon man. And indeed there exists no mightier power for good or evil than personal influence. Take even those who least intend to influence you and seem least capable of it. The little child that cannot stand alone will work that tenderness in the heart of a ruffian which no acts of parliament or prison discipline have availed to work. The wail of the suffering infant will bring a new spirit into the man whom the strongest police regulations have tended only to harden and make more defiant and embittered. By his confidence in your word, the child is a more effectual monitor of truthfulness than the keen or suspicious eye of the grown man who distrusts you: the child’s recklessness of to-morrow, his short sadnesses and soon recovered smiles, his ignorance of the world and the world’s misery, are the proper balance of your anxiety, and insinuate into your heart some measure of his own freshness and hope. Or what can reflect more light upon God’s patience with ourselves than the unwearying love and repeated forgiveness that a child demands, and the long doubting with which we wait for the fruit of years of training? So that it is hard to say whether the parent has more influence on the child, or the child on the parent? Or take those who have been pushed aside from the busy world by ill-health or misfortune — have not their unmurmuring patience, their Christian hope, their need of our compassion, done much to mold our spirits to a sober and chastened habit? have they not imparted to us the spirit of Christ, and cherished within us a true recognition of what is essential and what accidental, what good and what evil in this world?

What, then, does the parable teach us regarding the operation of this influence? It teaches us, first, that there must be a mixing; that is to say, there must be contact of the closest kind between those who are and those who are not the subjects of Christ. Manifestly, no good is done by the leaven while it lies by itself; it might as well be chalk or anything else. It must be mixed with the flour. So must Christians be kneaded up together with all kinds of annoying and provoking and uncongenial people, that the spirit of Christ which they bear may become universal. Had our Lord not eaten with publicans and sinners; had He sensitively shrunk from the rough and irreverent handling He received among coarse men who called Him “Samaritan,” “devil,” and “sot;” had He secluded Himself in the appreciative household of Bethany; had He not made Himself the most accessible Person, little of His Spirit would have passed into other men. Other things being equal, the effect of Christian character varies with the thoroughness of the mixing. It is so with all personal influence. The depth of the love, the closeness of the intimacy, the frequency and thoroughness of the intercourse, is the measure of the effect produced. In a country such as our own, in which the population is dense, and in which an unobstructed communication subsists between man and man, things constantly tend to equalize; and what yesterday was the property of one person is today enjoyed by thousands. And precisely as a fashion or a contagious disease passes from man to man, with inconceivable and sometimes appalling rapidity, so does evil or good example propagate itself with as certain and speedy an increase. And this it does all the more effectually because insensibly; because we do not brace ourselves to resist this subtle atmospheric influence, nor wash our hands with any disinfectant provided against these imperceptible stains. There is no quarantine for the moral leper, nor any desert in the moral world where a man can be evil for himself alone. For this mixing is provided for in various ways. It is provided for by nature which sets us in families and mixes us up in all the familiarities and intimacies of domestic life; and by society which compels us, in the prosecution of our ordinary callings, to come into contact with one another of a close and influential kind. One part of the world is “mixed “with other parts by commerce, by colonization, by conquest, so that there exists a ceaseless giving and taking of good and evil. One generation is mixed with others by reading their history and their literary remains, and by inheriting their traditions and their long established usages. So that whether we will or no this mixing goes on, and we can as little prevent certain results arising from this intercourse as we can prevent our persons from giving off heat when we enter an atmosphere colder than ourselves. We find it to be true that “The world’s infectious: few bring back at eve Immaculate the manners of the morn.

Something we thought is blotted: we resolv’d, Is shaken: we renounced, returns again.

Each salutation may slide in a sin Unthought before, or fix a former flaw.” But beyond nature’s provision, beyond the unavoidable contact with our fellow-men to which we are all compelled, there are voluntary friendships and associations into which we enter, and casual meetings which we unawares are thrown into. Such casual and passing acquaintanceships have very frequently illustrated the truth of this parable, and have been the means of imparting the Spirit of Christ in very unlikely quarters. And it would help us to use wisely such accidental opportunities if we bore in mind that if there are to be any additions made to the kingdom of Christ, these additions are chiefly to be made from among those careless, worldly, antagonistic persons who do not at present respond to any Christian sentiments. But besides the mingling which nature, and what may be called accident, afford, there are connections we form of our own choice, and companies we enter which we might, if we chose, avoid. There is a borderland of amusements, occupations, duties, common to the godly, and the ungodly, and for the regulation of our conduct, in respect to such intercourse, this parable suffices. Can the occupation be leavened, and can it be leavened by us? Can it be engaged in in a right spirit, and are we sure enough of our own stability to engage in it with benefit? A man of strong physique may scathelessly enter a room out of which a weaker constitution would inevitably carry infection. And it is foolish to argue that because some other person is none the worse of going to this or that company, or engaging in this or that pursuit, therefore you would not be the worse of it. You would not so argue if your entrance into an infected house was in question. But there is also a culpable refusal to mix, as well as an inconsiderate eagerness to do so. Most of us shrink from the responsibility of materially influencing the life of another person. Ask a man for advice about any important matter, and you know what devices he will fall upon to avoid advising you. Many of us are really afraid of incurring the hazardous responsibility of making a man a Christian. Two opposite feelings dispose us to shrink from mingling with all kinds of people. One is a feeling of hopelessness about others. They seem so remote from the acknowledgment of Christ’s rule, that we feel as if they could never be leavened. The parable reminds us, that while no doubt it is impossible to leaven sand, so long as the meal remains meal it may be leavened. The other feeling is one rather of despair about ourselves than about others. We feel as if our influence could only do harm. We are afraid to live out our inward life freely and strongly lest it injure others. This feeling, however, should prompt us neither to seclude ourselves from society, nor to behave in a constrained and artificial manner in society, but to renew our own connection with the leaven till we feel sure our whole nature is throughout renewed. If any one is exercising a healthy influence while we are languid and incapable, it is simply because that other person is in connection with Christ. That connection is open to us as well. The mixing being thus accomplished, how is the process continued? Besides mingling with society and joining freely in all the innocent ways of the world, what is a Christian to do in order that his Christian feeling may be communicated to others? The answer is, He is to be a Christian; not to be anxious to show himself a Christian, but to be careful to be one. It has been wisely said that “the true philosophy or method of doing good is, first of all and principally, to be good — to have a character that will of itself communicate good.” This is the very teaching of the parable, which says, “Be a Christian, and you must make Christians, or help to make them. Be leaven, and you will leaven.” The leaven does not need to say, I am leaven; nor to say that which lies next it, Be thou leavened. By the inevitable communication of the properties of the leaven to that which lies beside it, and by this again infecting what is beyond, the whole, gradually and unseen, but naturally and certainly, is leavened. This illustration of the leaven must, of course, not be too hard pressed, as if the parable meant that only by the unconscious influence of character and not at all by the conscious and voluntary influence of speech and action, the kingdom of Christ is to be extended. Yet no one can fail to observe that the illustration of the parable is more appropriate to the unconscious than to the intended influence which Christians exercise on those around them. It is rather the all-pervading and subtle extension of Christian principles than their declared and aggressive advocacy that is brought before the mind by the figure of leaven. It reminds us that men are most susceptible to the influence that flows from character. This influence sheds itself off in a thousand ways too subtle to be resisted, and in forms so fine as to insinuate themselves where words would find no entrance. A man is in many circumstances more likely to do good by acting in a Christian manner, than by drawing attention to the faults of others and exposing their iniquity. The less ostentatious, the less conscious the influence exercised upon us is, the more likely are we to admit it. And when we are compelled to reprove, or to advise, or to entreat, this also must be in simplicity and as the natural expression, not the formal and forced exhibition of Christian feeling. The words uttered by a shallow-hearted and self-righteous Pharisee may by God’s grace turn a sinner from the error of his ways; the lump of ice, itself chill and hard, may be used as a lens to kindle and thaw other objects; but notwithstanding this, he who does not speak with his whole character backing what he says, may expect to fail. It is man that influences man; not the words or individual actions of a man, but the complete character which his whole life silently reveals.

If then you sometimes reproach yourself for not exercising any perceptible influence for good over some friend or child, if it disturbs you that you have done less than you might have done by conversation or direct appeal, it may indeed be quite true that you have thus fallen short of your duty; yet remember that conduct often tells far more than talk, and that your conduct has certainly told upon the secret thoughts of your friend, whereas were you to speak merely for the sake of exonerating your conscience, the chances are, you would speak in an awkward, artificial, and ineffective manner. That conversation is often the most religious which in appearance is most secular; which concerns bills, and cargoes, and investments, and contracts, and family arrangements, and literature; and which, without any allusion to God, the soul, and eternity, secretly impregnates the whole of human life with the Spirit of Christ. If that only is to be reckoned religious conversation in which the topics of religion are discussed, then religious conversation has commonly produced more heat and bitterness and antagonism to Christ’s Spirit than any other.

While, then, direct address forms one great part of the means of leavening those around you, it is to be borne in mind, that in the first place you must be what you wish others to become. If not, then certainly nothing that you can say is at all likely to compensate for the evil you may do by your character. It does not need that you intend evil to any; it will be out whether you mean it or no. If you are yourself evil, then most certainly you are making others evil. Can you number the times that you have checked the utterance of Christian feeling in those who knew they would find no response in you? Can you tell how many have been confirmed in a sinful course by your winking at their faults, and have none been led into sin by your removing the scruples of their innocence? Are you sure that your example has never turned the balance the wrong way at some critical hour of your neighbor’s life? Is there no one who can stand forward and charge you with having left him in darkness about his duty, when you might have enlightened him? with having made him easy in sin by your pleasant, affable, unreproving demeanor towards him? Are there none who to all eternity will bear the punishment of sins in which you were aiding and abetting; none whom you have directly encouraged to evil, who would, but for you, have been clear of evil thoughts, desires, and deeds of which they now are guilty; none in whose punishment you might see the punishment of sins which were as much yours as theirs, and the memory of which might seem sufficient, if that were possible, to poison the very joys of heaven? Do not turn the warning of this parable aside by the thought. Am I my brother’s keeper? Most assuredly you are responsible for your own character, and for all its effects. If you are not doing good to others, it is because there is something wrong in yourself. If you are not leavening others, it is because you are yourself unleavened: for there is no such thing as leaven that does not impart its qualities to that which is about it. Can you confine the perfume to the flower, or restrict the light of the sun to its own globe? Just as little can you restrain all Christian qualities within your own person: something material, something essential to Christian character is lacking if it be not influencing those about it.

It is a glorious consummation that this parable speaks of. It tells of a mixing that is to go on till “the whole” is leavened. The Spirit of Christ is to pervade all things. That Spirit is to take possession of all national characteristics and all individual gifts. Every variety of quality, of human faculty, temperament, and endowment, is to be Christianized, that all may serve Christ. In His kingdom is to be gathered all that has ever served or gladdened humanity: the freshness of childhood and its simplicity, the sagacity, gravity, and self-command of age, the enterprise and capacity of manhood, the qualities that suffering matures, and those that are nurtured by prosperity; all occupations that have invited and stimulated and rewarded the energies of men, all modes of human life, and all affections that conscience approves, all that is the true work, joy, and glory, of our nature is to be pervaded with the sanctifying, purifying, elevating leaven of Christ’s Spirit. And this is to be achieved not otherwise than by personal influence. Is it possible that you should have no desire to help in this? that you should be in the world of men and not care to see it accomplishing this destiny? that you should know the earnestness of Christ in this behalf, and never lift a finger or open your lips to aid Him? Surely it will pain you to come to the end of life and have it to reflect that not one soul has been effectually helped by you. Would you not save many if by a wish you could lift them to the gate of heaven? Is it, then, because of the little labor and sacrifice that are needed for this purpose that you hold back from helping? Is there nothing you can do, is there nothing you ought to do in the way of leavening some little bit of the great mass? Come back yourselves to the leaven, cultivate diligently that fellowship with Christ Himself, which is alone sufficient to equip you for this great calling. Make sure of the reality of your own acceptance of His Spirit, and then whatever you do, utter, touch, will all be leavened.