so infected
communicates its fervour to the land; and a nation thus on fire kindles
another by its far-reaching sympathy beyond intervening seas. Thus some
portions of the world have been thrown into such a state of
effervescence, by the leaven of the Gospel hidden in their heart, that
for a time the sound of praise for sin forgiven has risen in the
highways and market-places, louder than that other old, strong cry, What
shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be
clothed?

The leaven, like gravitation, follows the same law on smaller spheres
that it follows on the larger. Brother infects sister, and sister
brother; parent child, and child parent; shopman shopmate. We often
lament the contagious influence of evil, and it is right that we should;
but it is an unthankful, unhopeful spirit, that thinks and speaks of the
dark side only. Oh, thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?
The new life which Christ has brought into the world is a leaven too.
Working on the same method, but backed by a mightier power, good will
yet overcome evil,--life will destroy death. Life from the Lord and in
the Lord, though small at first as to the number of persons whom it
animates, will increase until it fill the world. It will absorb
surrounding death, and in absorbing quicken it. He that sat upon the
throne said, "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. xxi. 5).

3. There is yet another branch of the practical lesson which ought not
to be overlooked: The life of faith, when it is hidden in the heart,
spreads like leaven through the man, occupying and assimilating all the
faculties of his nature and all the course of his life. The whole lump
of the individual must be leavened, as well as the whole lump of the
world. Christ will not be satisfied until he get every man in the world
for his own, and every part of each. Whatever amount of ground there may
be for the judgment of some expositors that the three measures of meal
in the parable represent spirit, soul, and body, the constituents of
human nature, certain it is that if the leaven of the kingdom is
deposited in the heart, it will not cease until it has interpenetrated
the human trinity and conformed all to the likeness of Christ. In the
new creature, as in the new world, "dwelleth righteousness." That which
is now laid on the conscience of Christians as a law will yet emerge
from their life as a fact,--"Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or
whatsoever ye