the
wheat prospers, the tares languish. Evil men have lived in God's world
ever since sin began: evil thoughts and deeds will be found in God's
children as long as they remain in the body. The angels are not sent
to-day to make such a separation as would leave the children of the
kingdom nothing to do, or to bear.

If you desire the heavenly to prosper within you and around you, fight
with the proper weapons against the devilish: if you desire the devilish
within and around you to languish and decay, cherish the heavenly. As
David's house waxes stronger, Saul's house will wax weaker. When Christ
gets more of the world and of our hearts, the devil will get less.

THE MUSTARD-SEED, AND THE LEAVEN.

In the first two parables the kingdom of heaven is represented in
conflict with its enemies; in the next two it stands alone, putting
forth its inherent life and power. There we learn the strength of its
adversaries, and here we learn its own. There we saw the efforts made to
check the progress of the kingdom; and here we see the progress which,
in spite of these efforts, the kingdom makes. There the combat is
exhibited, and here the victory. Devils and men, conscious conspirators
or unconscious tools, did their utmost, as explained in the first pair
of parables, to strangle the kingdom in its infancy, or to overpower it
at a later stage; but the kingdom, as we learn from the second pair,
shakes its assailants off, emerges unhurt from the strife, and goes
forward from strength to strength, until it has subdued and absorbed all
the world. I have seen clouds gathering at dawn on the eastern horizon,
with dark visage and a multitudinous threatening array, as if they had
bound themselves by a great oath either to prevent the sun from rising
or afterwards to quench his light; but through them, beyond them, above
them, slowly, steadily, majestically rose the sun, nor quivered from his
path, nor halted in his progress, until by the power of his mid-day
light he had utterly driven those clouds away, so that not a shred of
their tumultuous assemblage could any more be seen on the clear blue
sky. Such and so impotent in Christ's hands are the adversaries of
Christ's kingdom, although they seem formidable to men of little faith:
such and so glorious will be the final victory of the King, although
even his true subjects may fret and fear over his incomprehensible
delay. The coming of the kingdom is like the morning, as slow, but