27 So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?

28 He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?

29 But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.

30 Let both grow together until the harvest and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but 'gather the wheat into my barn.

*ch. iii, 12:

danger from such an enemy, and that now was his time for doing mischief, he comes and sows tares, i.e., a sort of bastard wheat well known in Palestine, which would grow up alongside of the true wheat, and not be distinguishable from it till the ears appear. This seems to be a form of malicious wickedness still common in the East, and, indeed, not unknown amongst ourselves. Trench gives a graphic account taken from Roberts' "Oriental Illustrations" of what frequently takes place in India, and mentions two noxious weeds thus sown for malicious purposes. But the servants of the householder when they come for directions as to what to do, are forbidden to attempt to extirpate the evil plants, "Lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them." They cannot be safely uprooted till all that grows in the field has ripened its fruit or grain, then the householder will have those to reap who will separate with unerring certainty, and when he gives the word the skilled reapers will "gather together first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into his barn." With respect to the impossibility of distinguishing till harvest time, or at least till fruit appears, between the wheat and tares, Trench gives a quotation from Jerome (who himself lived in Palestine) to that effect; and another to the same purport from Thomson's "Land and Book," who says that “ even the farmers who in Palestine generally weed their fields, do not attempt to separate the one (this form of weed) from the other."

31. "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed....

u Is. ii. 2, 3.

31 ¶ Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:

Mic. iv. 1.

Mark iv, 30,

&c. Luke xiii. 18, 19.

lodge in the branches of it." This parable Chrysostom supposes to have been given to encourage the disciples. They had just heard the kingdom of heaven described as seed of which when sown three parts were lost-then as a field in which noxious, indeed poisonous plants were inextricably mixed with the good wheat; now the Church is described as having the most insignificant of beginnings, and yet growing up into the greatest of human institutions.

Great difficulties have presented themselves to expositors of the parable from the fact that the mustard seed is by no means the smallest of seeds, and the plant which springs from it is not the greatest of plants. But it appears from Trench and others that, in alluding to the mustard seed, our Lord used a common parabolic expression for anything of small size [small as a grain of mustard seed], and that in hotter climates it grows into such a tree that the fowls of the air do take refuge in its branches, into which men can even climb. The Church in its germ was all in one Man, and He "despised and rejected of men," to all appearance ending His career by a shameful death: then it was in some twelve men, not one of whom was, by his own natural gifts or talents, capable of making the smallest change in the world and its institutions; but in less than a century after this parable was uttered, in A.D. 111, Pliny, the Governor of the province of Bithynia, writes to the Emperor Trajan for advice as to what he is to do about the increase of the Christians, as the temples of the gods were deserted because of the spread of this new faith; and within two centuries after this a candidate for the Imperial purple found it to his interest to profess this despised religion; and, ever since, those who have succeeded him in the government of nations have used the Church as the one great binding power in human society. Even nations who have to all appearance utterly thrown it off have speedily restored it: as, for instance, this country, which by its representatives restored it in 1661, and France in the beginning of this century.

Dean Alford, who at times seems to discard all recognition of the Christian ministry, writes, "We must beware, however, of imagining that the outward Church form is His kingdom." The outward

32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. 33

Another parable spake he unto them; Luke xiii. 20, The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which

&c.

Church form may, of course, not be the kingdom-the kingdom must consist of living men before these men can be organized and assume the form of a kingdom; but when our Lord compares His Kingdom or Church to a tree, He compares it to a highly organized work of God which must assume a certain form that it may be visible amongst the things of time and sense: which visibility, by the enunciation of such a parable as this, the Son of God evidently intended it to have. Its form is essential to it. The form which the Catholic Church has always assumed is a binding, uniting, unifying form. If it had been a disintegrating, dividing, individualizing system, as Plymouth Brethrenism, or indeed Presbyterianism, it could not, humanly speaking, have presented anything that could be called a shelter to the powers of the world; powers which, notwithstanding the evil necessarily cleaving to them, are ordained by God and are His ordinance for the well-being of His creatures. This parable is also applied to the individual soul, in which true religion often springs from the smallest beginnings, such as a chance word or thought, to be the dominant power in the soul: but I do not think that such an application was here intended.

33. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took," &c. Alford has a good remark on this parable as compared with the last one. "The two are intimately related. That [the mustard seed] was of the inherent self-developing power of the kingdom of heaven, as a seed containing in itself the principle of expansion; this [the leaven] of the power which it possesses of penetrating and assimilating a foreign mass." The primary application of this parable must, of necessity, be to the working of the kingdom or of the Spirit in each man's heart. No doubt it sets forth the effect of Christianity or the Church on human society: but society is composed of units; as the measures of meal were composed of particles of meal, and as the leaven leavens the whole lump by affecting each particle, so Christianity leavens the world by trans

a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

"Measures." Literally sata, the Hebrew seah, about a peck and a half.

forming or regulating individual souls. Knowing the masses of virtual heathenism in our great cities, and the miserable difference between the profession and conduct of such numbers of professing Christians, we are apt, at times, to overlook this leavening power; but we are often and often assured by missionaries who have had opportunities of comparing the two, that the gulf between mere professing Christians even and the heathen around them, seems enormous. So that even when it is but partially successful, a marked effect for good is produced. Appeal has been made to "the new feelings, gradually diffused, of Christendom as to prostitution, slavery, gladiatorial games, in the new reverence for childhood and womanhood, for poverty and sickness" (Plumptre), as showing the more outward effects of the leaven. I cannot, however, help thinking that in these two parables, the mustard seed and the leaven, we have, in the present mixed state, tendencies rather than results. The tendency of the Church is to expand from the smallest beginnings, as a seed does: the tendency of the Gospel is to affect for the better, indeed to transform to itself all that it comes in contact with. It will not destroy institutions, but will Christianize them. It will not efface distinctions of race, but will make all men feel that they are brethren in Christ. This is, and must be, its tendency, for it brings to bear upon men not a new religion only, or a new morality, but a new human nature: it unites men to the humanity of the Eternal Son. In this world we see the tendency, but the actual results are very imperfect: the salt may lose its savour, only a fourth of the seed bear fruit, the wheat is ever mixed with the tares.

"The Divinity united to the human nature in Christ, the Gospel diffused throughout the world, the Spirit of God working in a sinner's heart, and the Sacramental Bread nourishing a Christian Soul, produce effects which may be compared to those of leaven. These are secrets which Thy Wisdom, O God, my God, has discovered, to render man altogether Spiritual, to raise him to the love of heavenly things, and to make him bear some likeness to Thyself. How can a heart, so often filled with the wholesome leaven of Thy Body, O Jesus, still retain its heaviness and inclination towards earth?" (Quesnel.)

34 All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not Mark iv. 33, unto them:

35 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken phet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; "I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.

34.

by the pro

Ps. lxxviii. 2.

a Rom. xvi. 25,

26. 1 Cor. ii. Ephes. iii. Col. i. 26.

7.

9.

S4. "Spake he not." So D., E., F., G., K., L., S., other later Uncials, almost all Cursives, old Latin, Vulg., Syriac (Cur. and Schaaf); but N, B., C., M., A, and about fifteen Cursives, read " spake he nothing."

....

34. "Without a parable spake he not: That it might be fulfilled." "I will open my mouth," &c. The words are those of the seventy-eighth Psalm, which, in the title, is ascribed to Asaph. 35. "That it might be fulfilled." We learn from this and from many other citations of the old Prophets in the New Testament, that in a vast number of places in which the Prophet seems to speak" of himself or of some other man," the Holy Spirit was leading him to say what would have a very partial and narrow fulfilment in his own times or his own actions, but would be perfectly fulfilled in THE Man-the New Adam-the One Man Who could gather all humanity into Himself.

Some have found a difficulty in accepting literally the often repeated words, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken," &c., because they think these words seem to make our Lord do or suffer something in order that the word of a mere prophet might be fulfilled. But does it not bring out the truth very forcibly that our Lord, as He said, "did nothing of himself," i.e., nothing of His own mere isolated will? because "he came not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him; "-the will of Him that sent Him, not only as to His Birth or Sufferings or Resurrection, but as to His whole conduct. His teaching, and the very manner of His teaching, whether plain or enigmatical, was all ordained for Him beforehand in the counsels of the Trinity: and that we might be assured of this it was written in the prophets: so that when we read that He did such or such things, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet," we are to understand that He did it that He might fulfil what was ordained by His Father, and declared by that Father to His servant the Prophet.