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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 2
the mysterious influence of divine grace upon the human soul, and the
quickening power of the word that declares itself in the daily life.
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“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.” The leaven in the meal represents
the progressive work of divine grace in the human heart. The leaven
was not naturally in the meal, but being placed in it gave rise to
fermentation which resulted in a radical change of the whole mass.
So the principles of God’s truth, hidden in the heart of an individual,
change his entire nature, and influence his life. The natural feelings
are transformed, the affections are consecrated, and the mind elevated.
Physically, the man appears the same; but inwardly, he has become
renewed by the heavenly principles that animate his life.
Again Jesus took the fields before him and the sowers and reapers
to illustrate his truths, saying, “The kingdom of Heaven is likened unto
a man which sowed good seed in his field. But while men slept, his
enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But
when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared
the tares also.
The tares were noxious weeds, very annoying to the cultivator of
the soil, for they sprang up together with the good grain. There was
danger of disturbing the roots of the wheat, and destroying the young
blades, if the weeds were rudely pulled from among them; besides
this, the tares so closely resembled the grain, while growing, that it
was hard to distinguish the one from the other.
When the servants of the householder came and asked him from
whence the tares had come, seeing he had sown good seed in his field,
he told them that an enemy had sowed the weeds among his grain to
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injure him. Then they inquired if they might not gather out the tares
and leave the wheat free. “But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up
the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together
until the harvest; and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers,
Gather ye together first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn
them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”
The enemy sowing the troublesome seeds, is an illustration of
Satan’s work upon the human mind. Christ is the Sower, who scatters
the precious grain in the fallow ground of the heart; but the enemy
of souls steals in secretly and sows the seeds of evil. These germs