erent germinating force.
The object of the parables of the sower, the tares, the mustard seed, the
leaven, was to show that the crude catastrophic conception of the coming
of the kingdom must give place to the deeper and worthier idea of
growth--an idea in harmony with the entire economy of God's working in
the world of nature. In the parable of the fruit-bearing earth Jesus
shows His faith in the growth of the good, and hence in the adaptation of
the truth to the human soul. In the parables of the leaven, the light,
and salt Jesus illustrates the gradual power of truth to pervade,
illumine, and purify the life of humanity. His method of bringing about
this {138} good is the contagion of the good life. His motive is the
sense of the need of men. And His goal is the establishment of the
kingdom of love--a kingdom in which all the problems of ambition, wealth,
and the relationships of the family, of the industrial sphere, and of the
state, are to be transfigured and spiritualised.[32]

It is surely no illegitimate application of the mind of Christ if we see
in His teaching concerning the kingdom a great social ideal to be
realised by the personal activities and mutual services of its citizens.
It finds its field and opportunity in the realm of human society, and is
a good to be secured in the larger life of humanity. This ideal, though
only dimly perceived by the early Church, has become gradually operative
in the world, and has been creative of all the great liberating movements
in history. It lay behind Dante's vision of a spiritual monarchy, and
has been the inspiring motive of those who, in obedience to Christ, have
wrought for the uplifting of the hapless and the down-trodden. It has
been the soul of all mighty reformations, and is the source of that
conception of a new social order which has begun to mean so much for our
generation.

Loyalty to the highest and love for the lowest--love to God and
man--these are the marks of the men of all ages who have sought to
interpret the mind of Christ. Mutual service is the law of the kingdom.
Every man has a worth for Christ, therefore reverence for the personality
of man, and the endeavour to procure for each full opportunity of making
the most of his life, are at once the aim and goal of the new spiritual
society of which Christ laid the foundations in His own life and
ministry. Everything that a man is and has, talents and possessions of
every kind, are to be us