The three measures of meal, which together make an ephah, were the understood quantity of an ordinary batch in the economics of a family, and as such are several times incidentally mentioned in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. See, for example, the preparation of bread by Sarah, as it is narrated in Gen. xviii. The various suggestions which inquirers have made regarding the specific significance of the _three_ measures of meal, are interesting and instructive. As they do not directly traverse the lines of the analogy, they are entitled to a respectful hearing; but the subject is subordinate, and the meaning must ever be comparatively obscure. Whether the three measures are understood to point to the three continents of the world then known, or to the three sons of Noah by whom the world was peopled, or to spirit, soul, and body, the constituent elements of human nature, an interesting and useful conception is obtained. Each of these suggestions contains a truth, and that, too, a truth which is germane to the main lesson of the parable. The same historic incidents which show that three measures were the ordinary quantity, show also that the women of the house were the ordinary operators. Baking the bread of the household was accounted women's work; as men ploughed and sowed in the field, women kneaded and baked at the oven. An inversion of this order would have been noticed as incongruous, and presented a difficulty. Exceptions may be found, both in ancient and modern times, but the representation in the text proceeds obviously upon the ordinary habits of society. On this account, although I willingly listen to interesting and ingenious speculations regarding the significance of the woman who hid the leaven among the meal, I cannot accept them as the foundation of any positive doctrine. I am jealous, not without cause, of ecclesiastical tendencies and prepossessions in the interpretation of the parables. It is quite true that both in the discourses of the Lord and in the epistles of his followers, reference is made sometimes to the community or communities of believers constituted as a Church; but the Church in the Scriptures is a much simpler affair than it is in ecclesiastical history. Moreover, in these lessons which were taught by the Lord in the beginning of the Gospel, we find much about the individual man, and about the aggregate of mankind, but little about the Church in its visible organization. Accordingly, while I endeavour to keep my mind open for everything that the Scriptures bring to the Church, I am disposed to shut the door hard against anything that I suspect the Church is bringing to the Scriptures. When the woman who kneaded the dough, and the woman who lost and found the silver coin, come forward, backed by much learned authority, saying, We are the Church, I stand on my guard against deception, and carefully examine their credentials. A man took the