ritual lesson of the parable diverges into two lines, distinct
but harmonious. By the kingdom of heaven, as it is represented in the
growth of the mustard-plant, we may understand either saving truth
living and growing great in the world, or saving truth living and
growing great in an individual human heart. In both, its progress from
small beginnings to great issues is like the growth of a gigantic herb
from the imperceptible germ that was dropped among the clods in spring.

I. The kingdom of heaven _in the world_ is like a mustard-seed sown in
the ground, both in the smallness of its beginning and the greatness of
its increase. The first promise, given at the gate of Eden, contained
the Gospel as a seed contains the tree. It fell among Adam's descendants
as a mustard-seed falls between the furrows, and lay long unnoticed
there. With the Lord, in the development of his kingdom, a thousand
years are as one day in the growth of vegetation. A man who in his
childhood observed the seed cast into the ground, may live long and die
old before the plants have reached maturity; but the seed of the kingdom
has not lost its life, the God of the covenant has not forgotten his
own. At the appointed time he will visit his husbandry, and fill his
bosom with its fruits.

Never to human eye did the seed seem smaller than at the coming of
Christ. The infant in the manger at Bethlehem is like a mustard-seed--an
atom scarcely perceptible in the hand, and lost to view when it falls
into the earth. Yet there lay the seed of eternal life--thence sprang
the stem on which all the saved of mankind shall grow as branches.
Israel was feeble among the nations--a little child writhing in the
grasp of imperial Rome; Judea and Galilee, with the heathenish Samaria
between, constituted his beat throughout the brief period of his public
ministry. The range was short in its utmost length, narrow in its utmost
breadth. In a map of the world of ordinary size, the spot that indicates
Palestine can scarcely be seen; yet from that spot radiated a power
which is at this day actually paramount. The Christ who seemed so small
both in private life at Nazareth and in the public judgment-hall of
Pilate at Jerusalem, is greatest now both in heaven and in earth.
Christendom and Christianity are both supreme, each in its own place and
according to its own kind. This world already belongs to Christian
nations, and the next to Christian men. So great has the religion