Yet forasmuch as the Pharisees agree not with the Sadducees (neither do they teach the same doctrine, nor observe the same customs) I could not understand what this “leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” might be. But when I asked Nathanael thereof, he said that perchance Jesus desired to warn us lest we should be led away in our hearts by the desire of this world, and by the haste to be prosperous. “For,” said Nathanael, “the Sadducees love place and wealth and ease, and the Pharisees love power with the people, and the salutations of the rich, and the respect of the poor, and the name and reputation for piety; and these sects do both go straight towards their several ends. But, though several in appearance, their ends are really the same. For both the Pharisees and Sadducees serve themselves, and live for their own pleasure. And methinks our Master feareth lest we too in the same way may follow him not out of love and out of faithfulness, but from a desire to be prosperous.” “But are we not,” asked I, “to be prosperous in the end?” “Yes, assuredly in the end,” replied Nathanael; “but the end may perchance be somewhat farther off than we suppose, and our course may perchance be somewhat slow. For in all works there are two courses, the course of men and the course of God. Now men work visibly and speedily, and with much stir and noise; but the Father in Heaven worketh for the most part invisibly and slowly, and very gently. Now it may be that the slow ways are best. But in any case I begin to perceive that our Master loveth the slow ways best, according to his saying that the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto the wheat, which is sown and watered and resteth long unseen in the earth, and springeth up at last and by degrees, and putteth forth, first the blade, and then the ear and then the full corn; and all this by slow ways, quietly and gently, while the husbandman riseth and sleepeth and goeth in and out, and taketh no heed how great a work the gentle hand of the Lord is working around him.” Thus spake Nathanael, and I gave heed unto his words; for he seemed day by day to grow in the love and knowledge of our Master, and behold, the knowledge of Jesus seemed to bestow upon him knowledge of all spiritual things, so that he was not like the same Nathanael whom I had first known now a year ago. And the other disciples also were greatly changed from their former selves. For we had now been a full year with the Lord Jesus; and it was the sixteenth year of Tiberius Cæsar. CHAPTER XVII