Leaven; or, The Civilising Influence of Christianity

After comparing the gospel or the Church to a grain of mustard seed, the Saviour added this other parable: — u The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.” At the first glance, it might seem as if this were just the same thought repeated; but a little attention will show us that the underlying idea of each parable is distinct, and so the one makes an absolute addition to the lesson of the other.

The mustard-tree is an organised body. It has a trunk and branches, it has leaves, it has fruit. It begins with a germ, and it goes on expanding. It requires sustenance, for it has life, and if it gets sustenance it grows. Like every plant, like every animal, it is an organism; unlike a stone, unlike a heap of sand, unlike

Leaven; or,

that handful of meal, it has life and limbs, vitality and growth.

So the Church of Christ is a living and organised whole, of which a tree, with its roots and branches, its fruit and its shadow, is an excellent emblem. This organism springs from that germ called the gospel. This little seed is sown in God’s garden, and, quickened by the Holy Spirit, it springs up and grows. In Iona, the preaching of Columba springs up the Church of the Culdees. In Germany, the preaching of Luther springs up the Evangelical or Protestant community. In the world itself, the preaching of apostles, the grain of mustard-seed deposited by the fishermen of Galilee, springs up the truest, oldest, widest, of all fellowships — the Church of the First-born, whose names are written in heaven — that grandest of all societies, of which dimly or distinctly we think when we say, “I believe in the communion of saints.”

But leaven is no organism, and for that matter neither is meal. Leaven is the little mass of sour and fermenting paste which in other days, and before the employment of yeast, the baker used to put into his dough, till it spread through the entire batch, and changed the whole into the likeness of itself. And although in the Bible leaven is frequently used to denote hypocrisy or malice, there is no reason why it should not be used to denote any principle which spreads and penetrates, whether good or bad. And here there can be little doubt that it is intended to say, Christianity is a principle designed and fitted to influence the entire community. Although in the outset there may not be much of it, yet it has prodigious potency, and as it keeps on working it will more and more assimilate to its own nature all that is called society. It is not only the Christian who will bring to Christ the pagan or the profligate, but it is Christian truth, Christian feeling, Christian conduct, which will tell on the world’s way of thinking and acting, and at last leave nothing in the whole lump of humanity which is not sensibly affected by this heaven-descended principle.

If so, the purport of the two parables is sufficiently distinct. The one describes the Church of Christ in its own separate identity and organic completeness, starting up from the soil of this world, yet not of it — every leaf and twig partaking the same nature, and in its surprising growth destined to overtop all competitors. The other describes Christianity as a power or principle — a little yeast or ferment to which God has given such potency, that it will go on permeating and assimilating the entire mass of humanity, till the whole is leavened. The one metaphor completes the other. The tree grozvs, the leaven works. The tree is a distinct living organism, the leaven is a power or influence. The Church

Leaven; or.

of Christ is the mustard -tree, the leaven is Christianity. Or, put it another way — If both the grain of seed and the leaven represent the gospel, in the one case we have the seed germinating and springing up in that separate, self-contained unity which we call the church of the saved — in the other, we have the potent and mysterious principle going out beyond itself into society, and materially affecting the world which surrounds the Church.

Put into modern language, we have here the assertion, Christianity is the great civiliser. This is a truth to which more justice has been done by historians than by divines; still it is truth. No doubt there have been civilisations which were not Christian — the Greek and Roman, for example, and the Chinese and Indian, if we may give so grand a name to a grotesque and puerile culture. And in our modern civilisation there may be elements which are not purely or pre-eminently Christian — which are not essentially Christian at all. There is a classical element, for example — and an artistic element, and a very powerful commercial element — which have all their .share in rescuing from barbarism, and which have all contributed to such refinement as the present age has reached. The great educator of the world is God himself, and the great text-book from which the lessons are taken, is the volume of His “Lively Oracles;” but there are pictures and object-lessons all round the walls — beasts, trees, volcanoes, geysers, large as life, pictures, statues, instruments of music; and in the palaestra of actual existence the pupils are made to do a great deal in the way of moulding one another. Many of these pupils are very perverse, and many of the influences at work are intrusive and pernicious — not at all divine, but downright devilish; still, the world which God has so loved, and for which He gave His Son, must never be abandoned to the wicked one; and under its Divine Guide and Guardian it is interesting to notice the processes by which the gradual emancipation is going forward, and a groaning, but self-sold race, is being raised and restored to the liberty of sons of God.

There are certain facts which will not be disputed: There is a Bible in the world, and there is also a Church; but although all men do not accept the Bible out and out, nor do all belong to the household of faith, yet through that Bible, and through that Church, Christ is the Benefactor of multitudes who nevertheless refuse to have “this Man to reign over them.”

Take, for instance, equity, shading off, as it does, into its kindred excellence, humanity. Says the apostle James,” Go to, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that are come upon you. Behold the hire of the labourers, oo

Leaven; or,

who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth, and the cries of them who have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.” And all throughout our Lord’s discourses we find denunciations of those who devour widows’ houses, and throughout the Old Testament prophets — those great preachers of righteousness — denunciations of those who grind the faces of the poor. And although there may be still sufficient fraud and rapacity, no one can conceive what Christianity has done for the poor and unprotected, who cannot throw himself back into the times before the advent, or who is not familiar with the condition of the dependent classes under Eastern despotisms. And it would have been the same in Europe, but Christianity stepped in. It said to the landed proprietor and the chieftain, “If you promise to pay, you must perform. If you take that man’s time, or labour — if you take his ox or his ass — you must give him fair value in return. True, you are strong, and you call him your serf or vassal; but he has a Lord paramount as well as you, who is stronger than either, and before whose tribunal you both must stand.” And thus, even in its most degenerate days, Christianity threw its shield over the poor and needy, and taking up the cause of him who had no helper, its leaven has so penetrated legislation, or rather we should say, has so premeated that opinion which is the source of all effective and enduring legislation, that now not only is there no serfdom in Europe, but the day-labourer is as secure of his wages as the Crown is secure of its revenues.

“Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you.” This great gospel maxim has so infiltrated the mind of Europe, that it is current even amongst those who imperfectly practise it, and by its implied recognition of universal brotherhood, it is giving to the laws and to the ways of every land a complexion of fairness, of respect for one another’s rights, for one another’s feelings even, utterly unknown in lands where one race is clay and another porcelain, or one has descended from Bramah’s head or arm, another from his toe.

But if Christianity has thus supplied the place of a conscience to the world, so has it been the social heart, the great source of the world’s compassion and sympathy. What is to be done with our orphans? Let them shift for themselves, says Selfishness. What is to be done with our aged and invalid poor, and our imbeciles? Let them die off, and the sooner the better, says Political Economy; they are not in our plan, they spoil our calculations, they are very much in the way, and are best let alone. But if we let them alone, our religion won’t let us alone. The poor and the outcast were taken

Leaven; or,

up by Christ himself, and — “The poor ye always have with you” — were by Him transferred to the Church, when they should enjoy His bodily presence no longer. And not only has He made the care for their case a necessity of the Christian life — it is not over a solitary or selfish meal that you pray His prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread;” and when you try to shut out from your compassion the brother who has need, you so far shut out the love of God — but He has made it an inevitable prompting of the Christian spirit; and whether it be Pastor Fliedner, with the Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth, or the founders and supporters of our asylums for the orphan, for the idiot, for the incurable, or those who give their time to visit the sick, to instruct the ignorant, to raise up and restore the fallen, they are obeying an instinct as unknown to the polished Greek and sturdy Roman as it was to the phlegmatic Chinaman or effeminate Hindoo, but an instinct familiar to those whose own spirits have been melted by the matchless manifestation of the Divine benevolence, and who have learned to pray,

“As we to others mercy show,
We mercy beg from Heaven.”

This Christian tenderness tells on the outside world. As a result of these two things in the midst of men — that great magazine of God’s

The Civilising Influence of Christicmity. 93

mercies, the gospel, and that fund of actual loving-kindness which the Spirit of God maintains in the minds of His people — as a result of these things, the world is far less harsh and cruel than it used to be. A little leaven has pervaded the whole lump, and many men who are not devout are kind, generous, humane. Living in an atmosphere filled more or less with Christian feeling, and impelled by the contagious example of Christian friends or kindred — constrained by love to the men whom the love of Christ constrains — they are led on to do such noble deeds, and give such noble gifts, as would be no disgrace to Christian charity.

Equity or fairness is a Christian grace — that considerateness which puts a man in his neighbour’s place, and does as he would be done by: and so is tenderness, compassion, self-sacrifice in saving the lost and relieving the wretched: and as a third excellence, thoroughly Christian, we might have instanced Truth. Unfortunately, the Church of Rome has found it needful to “He for God,” and its frightful doctrine of “pious frauds” has occasionally received countenance in the controversial tricks and prophetic quackeries of Protestant divines: but it is not for nothing that the awful apparition of Ananias aad Sapphira meets us so early in the Christian history; and partly as a result of that solemn warning, and still more as the reflection of the

Leaven; or,

whole spirit of the gospel, wherever there has been genuine piety there has always been a notable measure of truth and God-fearing uprightness; and co-existent with this stricter veracity within the Church there may be discerned a keener sense of honour in the world. There is more than enough of fraud and falsehood still; but surely the number grows of those whose “word” is better than a bad man’s “oath,” and who, when they have sworn to their own hurt, stand by it. Even controversy is conducted with greater candour; men are getting more courage to confess their errors or their ignorance; and not only have statesmen been found bold enough to avow as their policy “a policy of peace,” but wise enough to adopt a policy of openness and honesty.

Not only are they the Christian ethics which have got diffused through the morals of society, but the other ingredients of the gospel have also told. If you were asking a company of believing men, “What is the greatest benefit which Christianity has conferred on you?” one might answer, “New light. Whereas I once was blind, now I see. I see myself, lost and ruined, with a depraved nature and a soul destroyed by sin. And I see God. I see Him holy yet more than helpful: I see Him ’ the just God and the Saviour,’ infinitely pure, yet unspeakably compassionate, desiring my salvation, and doing all things in the way of pardon and assistance which are needful to secure it. New light.” A second might say, “It is new life that I owe to the gospel. It has given me a new Friend in Jesus Christ, a new motive in the love of God, a new prospect in the hope full of immortality.” And a third, in reply to the question, “What has Christianity done for you?” might answer as truly, “It has given me a new nature. Things for which I once had no heart are now my element, and in that law of God I do delight which was once my terror and my task.” Corresponding to such types of piety are the influences which Christianity exerts on those who have not yet come within its pale. The far regards and lofty aims of one high-hearted Christian, if they do not lift his neighbours to heaven, may at least raise them for a moment from the dust; and the courage of one who has faith in God and no fears for the future will sometimes animate feebler spirits in the hour of danger: just as God’s presence with the believer helps to make Him real and present to the worldling. Like the drop of essence which flavours the pitcher — like the flask of attar which scents the whole chamber — like the hidden leaven which gives to the three measures a new attribute; though it is still a little flock, and the followers of Christ a mournful minority, the faith of this little Church keeps the world from

Leaven; or,

atheism, its blessed hope keeps the world from many a mad experiment, as well as from the demoralising blackness of despair, and its love, however limited, is a cheering, elevating influence, which, in the face of all selfish and utilitarian tendencies, maintains that sentiment which gives to society its meaning and its charm, and which, in the midst of materialistic influences, reminds it ever and anon of that higher sphere whence the sweet exotic comes.

You see your calling, Christian brother. You are here to serve Christ and extend His kingdom Ye are the salt of the land, ye are the lights of the world, ye are the leaven which is to pervade and new-mould society. This end is so far answered when any man carries on his common work, his daily calling, on Christian principles. It is perhaps still more decidedly subserved when a man has a calling capable of being consecrated — as when the artist wields his pencil to exhibit the dangers and deformity of vice, the charms of domestic virtue, the majesty of Christian heroism — as when the man of letters employs his pen for the rebuke of popular evils, for the praise and protection of scriptural faith and piety. But it will also be subserved by those who, in the interests of heaven’s kingdom, and in order to promote God’s ascendancy, are steadily and unostentatiously employing the influence God has given.

It was not only gold, but frankincense and myrrh, which the Eastern sages presented to the new-come Saviour. You may have little gold to give, but myrrh in the bundle, incense in the censer, a good man’s influence when living, his memory when gone, will go far in the way of fostering worth and restraining evil. You have such influence; use it. You are not a cypress, strict and straight up, with arms appressed and pointing all to heaven — like a hermit of the Theban desert, like some of the old English Puritans: your branches spread; let those who come under your shadow — your friends, your children — let them there find pleasant fruits and leaves of healing. And the gospel which makes you so rich and strong, it is not a mere amulet or charm which you carry about for your own protection, but a blessing with which you are intrusted for the world’s welfare. So do not hoard it. Do not conceal your convictions, but on right occasions enforce your belief and urge your principles; and even though you may not in every instance succeed in saving a soul from death, it is something to dispel a single prejudice or prevent a single sin.