Secondly, the church is like a grain of mustard-seed, because her laws are often sharp and burning to the human heart. Mustard-seed, when crushed, has, as you know, a very strong and pungent odor. If you stand over it when thus crushed it will cause tears to flow from your eyes. If applied to your flesh it will burn and smart. Yes; and sometimes the law of God will make tears start from your eyes. There is some habit you find convenient, some little pet plan you have made, some person to whom you are attached. These things are leading you from God; so his church says: "Change your ways." "Give it up." "It is not lawful for thee." "Cut it off." Ah! don't you feel the sharp mustard-seed getting into your eyes? Again, the flesh rebels. That drink you love so much, that sinful appetite you like to indulge, those places of evil amusement to which you want to go--what says the church about such things? "Take the pledge." "Throw away drink." "You must not gratify that sinful inclination." "You cannot go to that place of amusement." "Give up that bad company or Jesus Christ will give you up." Ah! don't you feel how the mustard-seed burns and stings? But have good courage--better be burnt here than burnt hereafter. That burning of the mustard seed will heal you, will cure you. Its warmth will bring you back to life. Lastly, one day the little seed will become a great tree, whose branches shall reach to the sky, whose boughs shall wave in heaven. Then we, like poor, homeless birds of the air, shall spread our weary wings and go and make our lodgings for ever beneath its sheltering leaves. Rev. Algernon A. Brown. ------------------------ {118} Sermon XXXI. _The kingdom of heaven is like to leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened._ --St. Matthew xiii. 33. The kingdom of heaven, my dear friends, means, as you know, in this as well as in many other of our Lord's parables, not God's kingdom in the next world, but in this--that is, his holy Catholic Church. Understanding it in this way, it is easy to see why he compares it to a grain of mustard-seed or to leaven; for it was small in the beginning, but has grown, as the mustard-seed grows, so that it now has spread through the whole earth; and it was not noticed in the beginning, as the little leaven or yeast would not be in the dough into which it is put, but has now made its influence felt in all the world, as that of the yeast is in the bread which it makes.