pect the Church is bringing to the
Scriptures. When the woman who kneaded the dough, and the woman who lost
and found the silver coin, come forward, backed by much learned
authority, saying, We are the Church, I stand on my guard against
deception, and carefully examine their credentials. A man took the
mustard-seed and sowed it in his field; a woman took the leaven and hid
it in three measures of meal. The two parables are in this respect
strictly parallel; in both alike an ordinary act in rural economy is
performed, and in either it is performed by a person of the appropriate
sex. The converse would have been startling and inexplicable. Whatever
the operator may represent in the sowing of the seed, the operator in
the hiding of the leaven represents the same. To neglect the strict
parallelism between the two cases, and attribute some meaning to the
selection of a woman as the operator in the one, which the selection of
a man in the other does not convey, is, as I apprehend the matter, to
forsake the main track of the analogy, and follow by-paths which lead to
no useful result. The same divine hand that dropped the word of eternal
life as a mustard-seed into the ground, also hid the word of eternal
life as leaven in the ephah of flour. Looking to the spiritual
significance of the two parables, we have in both cases the same act,
and in both cases, therefore, the same actor.[19]

[19] To the question what the woman specially represents in the
parable, Draeseke answers, "The grace of God."--ii. 263.

A question of deep interest and considerable difficulty arises from the
fact that here, and here only, the greatest good--the kingdom of God in
the world--is unequivocally compared to leaven, whereas this similitude,
in all other places of Scripture where it occurs, either stands
indefinitely for progress of any kind, or expressly represents the
energy of evil. I assume without argument that in this parable the
diffusion of leaven through the mass represents the diffusion of good in
the world, although here and there, both in ancient and modern times, an
inquirer appears who understands the leaven in this place to predict the
prevalence of false doctrines and practices in the Church. This
interpretation no man would voluntarily adopt in the first instance, for
it is obviously incongruous with the signification of the kingdom in
every other parable of the group; but some have permitted themselves to
be driven into it by