played.
Employing the sad facts already stated as shadows filled in to make the
lines of light more visible, I shall proceed now to express and enforce
positively some of the practical lessons which the parable contains.

1. Christ, the Son of God, became man and dwelt among us. Behold the
piece of leaven that has been plunged into the dead mass of the world!
"In him was life, and the life was the light of men" (John i. 4). The
whole is not leavened yet, but the germ has been introduced. The
meaning of Immanuel is, "God with us:" the incarnation is the link that
binds the fallen to the throne of God. One without sin and with
omnipotence has become our brother,--has taken hold of our nature, and
will keep hold of it to the end. He will not fail nor be discouraged. To
him every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess: the prophecy has
been written, and the history will follow. In the meantime, while we
wait for the accomplishment of the promise, we may obtain from this
parable some glimpses of the method by which the change will be effected
at last.

Leaven consists in, or at least causes, fermentation. The name suggests
the mechanical process of boiling. The most sublime and awful scenes
which nature has ever presented have been produced in this way. When
great masses are affected, a boiling becomes unspeakably grand and
terrible. This earth, now so solid beneath, and so green on the surface,
seems to have been once a boiling mass. Those mountains that cleave the
clouds are the bubbles that rose to the surface and were congealed ere
they had time to subside again: there they stand to-day, monuments of
the fact. The moral government of God is like the natural. The Maker's
method, when he would bring down the high things and exalt the low, is
to throw in an ingredient which will produce fermentation. He can make
the world of spirit fervid as well as this material globe. The earth is
shaken by moral causes. The Gospel sends a sword before it brings peace.
Wars and rumours of wars rend the nations, and make men's hearts melt
within their breasts. In some cases it is obviously Christian truth
plunged into the mass that agitates the nations; and if we were able to
discern the links of cause and effect a few degrees further into the
fringes of the cloud that encircles God's throne, we would perhaps see
the same central fact setting in motion more distant forces. Our life is
so short, and our range of vision so contracted, tha