ed one step further. It is not enough
to show that no loss of meaning is sustained by the application of this
analogy to a new and opposite class of facts; a positive gain thereby
accrues. The circumstance that in all other places of Scripture in which
the symbolical meaning of leaven is specifically applied, it is, in
point of fact, employed to designate the progress of evil, instead of
obscuring, rather reflects additional light on the comparison as it is
used in this parable. The Teacher who speaks here is sovereign. By him
the worlds were made, and by him redemption wrought. In both departments
he executes his own will: when he speaks, he speaks with authority.
Observing that the principle which ordinarily enters and pervades human
hearts is evil, a leaven of hypocrisy, he does not submit to that state
of things as necessary and permanent: this is, indeed, the condition of
the world; but he has come to change it. Such is the direction of the
current, and the proverb which compares moral evil to a leaven correctly
describes its insinuating and persevering course; but here is one who
has power to turn the river of water so that it shall flow backward to
its source. Corruption has, indeed, spread through the world as leaven
spreads through the dough, but here is Truth incarnate, another leaven,
introduced into the mass, having power to saturate all with good, and
thereby ultimately to cast forth evil from the world. The kingdom of
darkness, for example, comes secretly,--the wiles of the devil
constitute his policy and secure his success; the kingdom of God,
although opposite in essence, is similar in the method of its advance,
for it "cometh not with observation." The wheat and the darnel were
opposite in character and consequences as light and darkness, but they
were precisely alike in the manner of their growth. The loyal army
adopts the same tactics which the rebels employ, while it strives to
defend the throne which they are leagued to overthrow.

Thus, it is not enough to say that although the diffusion of evil in
God's intelligent creatures is like the diffusion of leaven in the
dough, Jesus may notwithstanding employ the same analogy to indicate how
grace grows: we may proceed further and affirm, as Stier has ingeniously
suggested, that because evil has often been compared to leaven in the
manner of its advance, Jesus adopts that similitude to illustrate the
aggressive, pervasive power of the truth.

Boldly, as