The parable of the leaven

“Another parable spake he unto them, the kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened.”

There have been fanciful interpretations of this. The leaven has been taken in its evil sense (for it was undoubtedly used to denote the spreading tendency of evil principles). It has been suggested that Christ meant the working of apostacy in the Church till Christendom should be overrun with error. In this interpretation, the woman is taken as “the church,” and the “three measures of meal,” as the three great ecclesiastical divisions of Christendom—the Greek Church, the Roman Church, and the Protestant communions. There is a certain superficial appropriateness in this that is pleasing at its first proposal: but deeper thought will not confirm it. Jesus spoke his parable with a meaning that his discerning hearers could penetrate. The coming state of the Christian world so-called was certainly not within their horizon; and it is not likely that Jesus would concern himself with the temporary triumph of darkness as the subject of a parable, or that he would speak of such a triumph as a matter in which the kingdom of God was “like” something else. In the Apocalypse, apostate Christendom is spoken of as “the court which is without (outside) the (mystical) temple,” and which was not to be measured because “given to the Gentiles.” It would be incongruous if a system sustaining such a relation to the divine regards should have been the subject of a parable speaking of it as “the kingdom of heaven.”

We must look for an interpretation that will steer clear of such an anomaly. It is not difficult to find one. Leaven has characteristics apart from evil. One of these is its tendency to quietly work in secret with a power that will conquer a mass out of all proportion to its own bulk. A small quantity divided among three “batches” will leaven the whole. It is evident this is the aspect in which Christ finds a likeness to the kingdom of God. His work is “hid” “till the whole is leavened.” This is the feature—a change extending to a certain “whole” brought about by a something “hid” and working quietly. As in the Case of the mustard seed, so in this; it is not difficult to see a perfect parallel in the relation of the kingdom of God to the earth in which we dwell.

It was a long time ago put into the mass or bulk of human affairs, as leaven is put into dough. The form in which it was so introduced was the word and work of God “at sundry times and divers manners.” It has been quietly affecting them ever since. In the laws established in Israel; in the word written by the Spirit, and studied by the faithful; in the gospel preached by the apostles, and received, more or less intelligently by thousands, there has been a gradual modification of the state of things on earth, apart from which, the whole world would have been in the condition of the uncivilized races at this day. A principal part of the work done in this leavening process has been the development in all the ages of a people in harmony with God, from Abel downwards; who, in the further unfolding of the process, will re-appear in the land of the living, and be made use of in the position of governors of mankind, to powerfully affect the populations of the globe with the word-leaven till all are brought into sympathy with God, and the glory of the Lord fills the earth as the water covers the sea.

(Nazareth Revisited, Chapter 27 - The Parables)