Leaven of Truth
Jesus bade his disciples beware of the leaven of the
117:30 Pharisees and of the Sadducees, which he de-
fined as human doctrines. His parable of the
"leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures
118:1 of meal, till the whole was leavened," impels the infer-
ence that the spiritual leaven signifies the Science of Christ
118:3 and its spiritual interpretation, - an inference far above
the merely ecclesiastical and formal applications of the
illustration.
118:6 Did not this parable point a moral with a prophecy,
foretelling the second appearing in the flesh of the
Christ, Truth, hidden in sacred secrecy from the visi-
118:9 ble world?
Ages pass, but this leaven of Truth is ever at work. It
must destroy the entire mass of error, and so be eternally
118:12 glorified in man's spiritual freedom.
The divine and human contrasted
In their spiritual significance, Science, Theology, and
Medicine are means of divine thought, which include spirit-
118:15 ual laws emanating from the invisible and in-
finite power and grace. The parable may
import that these spiritual laws, perverted by
118:18 a perverse material sense of law, are metaphysically pre-
sented as three measures of meal, - that is, three modes
of mortal thought. In all mortal forms of thought, dust
118:21 is dignified as the natural status of men and things, and
modes of material motion are honored with the name of
/laws/. This continues until the leaven of Spirit changes
118:24 the whole of mortal thought, as yeast changes the chemical
properties of meal.
Certain contradictions
The definitions of material law, as given by natural
118:27 science, represent a kingdom necessarily divided against
itself, because these definitions portray law as
physical, not spiritual. Therefore they con-
118:30 tradict the divine decrees and violate the law of Love, in
which nature and God are one and the natural order of
heaven comes down to earth.
Unescapable dilemma
119:1 When we endow matter with vague spiritual power,
that is, when we do so in our theories, for of course we
119:3 cannot really endow matter with what it does
not and cannot possess, - we disown the Al-
mighty, for such theories lead to one of two things. They
119:6 either presuppose the self-evolution and self-government
of matter, or else they assume that matter is the product
of Spirit. To seize the first horn of this dilemma and con-
119:9 sider matter as a power in and of itself, is to leave the cre-
ator out of His own universe; while to grasp the other
horn of the dilemma and regard God as the creator of
119:12 matter, is not only to make Him responsible for all disas-
ters, physical and moral, but to announce Him as their
source, thereby making Him guilty of maintaining perpet-
119:15 ual misrule in the form and under the name of natural
law.
God and nature