YEAST

YEAST

City ladies do not make their own bread, but old country­women and housewives know what yeast is. A handful of dough from the last baking as big as a child's hand, wet with warm water and put into the new dough, raises even as much as three measures of flour.

Among the seeds of plants that of the mustard is among the smallest; it can hardly be seen, but from this tiny little seed, if it is put into good earth, springs up a fine shrub, and the fowls of the air lodge in the branches of it. The grain of wheat is not large, the farmer throws it into the ground and then goes on about his other affairs; he sleeps, he goes away from home and comes back. Days pass and nights pass, no thought is given to the seed, but underneath there in the moist, plowed field the seed has germinated. There comes out a blade of green and at the top of this blade an ear, at first green and graceful, then little by little becoming golden grain. Now the field is ready for the mowing and the farmer can commence his harvesting.

Likewise with the Kingdom of Heaven and the first news of it. A word seems nothing. What is a word? Syllables, sounds, which come from the lips, enter with difficulty into the ears and only when they come from the heart find other hearts; it is a little thing, small, a breath, a sigh, a sound which comes and goes and the wind carries it away. And yet the word of the Kingdom is like yeast. If it goes into good flour, clean honest flour not adulterated with other grains, it ferments and grows. It is like the seed of the fields which ger­minates deep under the ground, patient as the earth which hides it, which, when spring comes, grows green and strong and with the beginning of summer, finally, the harvest is ready!

The gospel is made up of few words, "The Kingdom is at hand, repent, change your souls!" and if it falls into the heart of men ready for it, of simple men who wish to become great, of righteous men who wish to become holy, of sinners who seek in good for that happiness which they have futilely sought in their evil stance, then those words take root in the depths, put out buds and shoots, flourish up in clusters and ears, and luxuriate in a summer never to be followed by the decay of Autumn.

Only a few men of those living about Christ believed in the Kingdom and prepared themselves for the great day. Only a few, insignificant men, scattered like tiny particles of yeast in the midst of the divided nations and the immense Empires, but these few dozen insignificant men gathered together in the midst of a predestined people were to become, through the contagion of their example, thousands upon thousands, and only three hundred years after them, in the place of Tiberius, ruled a man who bowed the knee before the heirs of the Apostles.

But men must renounce everything else if they are to enjoy the promised Kingdom. Worldly-minded men do the same in their temporal affairs. If a man working in another's field dis­covers a treasure-store, he quickly hides it again and hurries to sell all that he has to buy that field. If a merchant looking for marvelous jewels worthy to be offered to monarchs, finds a pearl larger and purer than any he has ever seen, he goes and sells everything that he has, even the other pearls of less price, to buy this unique and wonderful pearl. (Matt. 13:46)

If the workman and the merchant, material-minded men, who are satisfied with frail acquisitions, are thus ready to sell all their goods to acquire a treasure which seems to them more precious than anything they possess, even though it is only a material and perishable treasure, how much more reason there is for men to renounce what they hold most dear, in order to achieve the Kingdom of God. If the laboring-man and the merchant for a money gain, likely to be stolen or destroyed, thus consent to a provisional sacrifice which will give them a hundred per cent profit, ought not we for an infinitely greater, infinitely higher profit, throw away the best we have, even if it has seemed until now of inestimable price?

But before we make this renunciation we must take thought and be sure that what remains to us will be enough to take us to the end of this new undertaking. We must measure the forces of our soul, that it may not happen to us as to the man who wished to build up a tower, a beautiful tower which would soar up to the sky like that of Jerusalem. He took no account of the cost but called the diggers, had the foundations ex­cavated; called the masons and had the four walls of the foundations begun; but when the tower had scarcely been raised above the level of the earth, and was not yet as high as the roof of a house, he was obliged to stop because he had no more money to pay for the mortar, the stones, the bricks and the working men; and the tower remained thus, low and unsightly, in memory of his presumption: and his neighbors mocked at him. (Luke 14:8)

A king who wants to make war on another king first takes account of his soldiers, and if he can count only on ten thousand and the other has twenty thousand, he puts off any idea of war, and sends an embassy of peace before his enemy can take the first hostile step. (Luke 14:31) He who is not sure of himself, of being able to conquer to the last, does not follow Christ. For the foundation of the Kingdom is infinitely harder work than the building of a tower, and the creation of the new man is war not less harsh than external war, although silent and inner.