SERMON IX. THE GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED. MATT. xiii. 21. "The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed." THE parable of the grain of mustard seed must be taken in close connection with that of the leaven, and both are meant to illustrate the small beginnings, the silent growth, and the final victory of the grace of God in the human soul. But they belong to different points of view. The one is extensive the other intensive. The parable of the grain of mustard seed shows us the origin and the development of the kingdom of God, in communities and in the world; the parable of the leaven shadows forth its unimpeded influence in the soul of each separate man. It is not, however, my object to explain either parable, but rather to touch on one or two natural thoughts which their central conception seems to suggest. May God, who only can,-make even so insignificant a thing as a weekly sermon, one more barrier against evil, one more impulse to good in every heart among us. What so trivial and worthless as an atom of sand? yet God binds even the atoms of sand together into an invincible barrier against the fury of the sea. What so insignificant as a grain of mustard seed? Yet even a grain of mustard seed can grow into an overshadowing tree, and the fowls of the air-the restless haughtinesses, and hopes, and cares, and fears of men-take refuge in its branches. There are two classes of men in the world, distinctly marked indeed, but of which one contains infinitely few, the other the vast majority of mankind. To the first of these classes belong those who from the earliest dawn of their intelligence, from the first possibility of independent will, in a word, from the earliest day that they can remember, have striven to be, and have been the children and servants of God. Innocent-hearted to the last, as when they lifted their little hands to lisp to their Heavenly Father an infant's prayer, they have carried the sweetness and simplicity of childhood into the powers of manhood; they have retained "the young lamb's heart amid the full-grown flocks." To them duty has always been the natural and happy law of life; to them purity of soul and dignity of temper have come like spontaneous growths. The temple of their hearts has not been desecrated; the fountain of their being has not been troubled; the white robes of their baptism have not been stained. The crown is still upon their foreheads, for they have not sinned. To them, as one of our holiest poets has said, "Love is an unerring light, Such a man, upon a throne, was St. Louis of France; such, in a cloister, was Fra Angelico di Fiesole; such, as a reformer, was St. Benedict of Nursia; such, in literature, were John Milton and William Wordsworth. M.S. G Nay, what need of meaner examples? Such in his sweet, noble, diligent, submissive boyhood, in the shop of the carpenter at Nazareth, was the Son of God Himself. Lambs of God are these, by the still waters of His comfort, in the green pastures of His love. "It is," says one, "the most complete picture of happiness that ever was, or can be, drawn. It represents the state of mind for which all alike sigh, and the want of which makes life a failure to most. It represents that Heaven which is everywhere if we could but enter it, yet almost nowhere because so few of us can." Some I trust are here who may humbly claim this happiness, "Glad souls without reproach or blot, Who do God's work and know it not ;" yet (thanks to our own wilful and wayward hearts) never and nowhere are there many. How," asks one in the Book of Job, "how can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean who is born of a woman? Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight. How much less man that is a worm, and the son of man that is a worm ?" Peace, alas! comes not to most men but by struggle: and only through bitter experience of evil is learnt the ennobling, absorbing lesson, that good is best. II. Not perfect innocence then, but humble and sincere repentance, forms the main distinction between man and man; and if happy is he who has kept innocency, and done the thing that is right, happy also is he whose iniquity is forgiven and whose sin is covered. These have not always been God's children, but they are so now they were afar off, they have now been made nigh by the blood of Christ. But how? whence sprang that desire, which became first a prayer, then an effort, until the sinner, in his pride and blindness, learnt finally that it was an evil and a bitter thing that he had forsaken the Lord his God, and that the fear of God was not in him? My brethren, that change is conversion, beyond all comparison the most entire and awful change that can happen to any man in life. It is in fact a new life; it brings the soul into new relationships with God. The rebel becomes the child, the haughty humble. He who hid himself from God in shame and anger now goes forth to meet Him in boundless joy. Once mean, he now is noble; once passionate, he is now self-controlled; once frivolous, now soberminded; once unclean in every imagination, now sweet and pure; once full of an evil spirit, he is now clothed, and in his right mind; once a leper, his flesh has now come again like the flesh of a little child. (1.) Now this great change of conversion appears to occur in two ways-sometimes it seems to be the work of an instant, sometimes to be diffused imperceptibly over many years. Though the world scoff at them, there are such things as instantaneous conversions, supreme crises and movements in the history of life, which, like the shock of an earthquake, cleave a sudden rift deep down between all that a man has been and all he is. Such was the vision of Paul on the road to Damascus; such was the sudden arrest which happened to the soul of Bunyan; such the revulsion of horror which changed De Rancé from the dissolute courtier into the devoted saint. And oh, what a change! A man, in his petty conceit, in his small intellectualism, in his insolent self-will, even in his sensual ignorance, has lived in habitual antagonism to some majestic, eternal law, and suddenly, with overwhelming force, there is flashed in upon his conscience an insight that this law which he, poor worm, has been violating and trying to ignore, is eternal, absolute, independent, not made by him, not to be altered by him, but inexorably infinite, and to be disobeyed only at his everlasting peril. And when that sublime ray of light, that lightning flash out of God's eternity, has penetrated his soul, there is an immense untold interval between that moment and the one which preceded it. "The man indeed is left untouched, but there is added to him the God who created him." All vain, idle, furious passions disappear. All the mere emptiness of life becomes repulsive. Things temporal vanish, things eternal dawn on him. An awful sense of reality comes over him, and joy accompanies it. It is as when the weary traveller struggles over the Alps, and a moment comes when the first soft breeze announces his approach to the Italian soil. Before him there may still be barren wastes and icy tempests, but from that moment, as though there were a new heart in him, he fears no danger before him, he forgets every peril and misery behind. (2.) And yet, even in these sudden conversions as they are called, it remains no less true that the kingdom of God is like a grain of mustard seed: for just as in the workings of the mystery of iniquity no crime is, in reality, what it sometimes seems to be, the fatal inspiration of one miserable moment, because each action is in reality influenced by all past actions-90 no man ever really sprang at one bound from a sinner to a saint. The seeds of good must have long been secretly |