the seeker for the treasure of the other. In one case, man is the treasure, in the other, God. Taken together, the two parables represent God and man as seeking each other. These two, God and man, are the great treasures of the universe, each needing the other for his completion, neither being sufficient in himself. Apart from fellowship with God, man is valueless, there is no purpose in his existence, he would better not have been born. Apart from man, God's very existence would have no value. Very strikingly Christ emphasizes these facts in these companion parables where man is finding his value in God, and God is finding His value in man. It is only in this Kingdom that man's infinite worth is discovered and revealed, for man's value is recognized only as he is seen in his relationship to a perfect and eternal God. As the treasure of the acorn is seen only in its relationship to the oak, so the treasure in man is seen only as he is recognized as a son of God, having in him all the possibilities of God's perfection. When one thus regards man as an embodiment of God, who has put not a

little of Himself, but all of Himself, into him, and has given Himself to all the ministries involved in developing and perfecting His child, then one sees that man is a treasure of infinite value.

This Kingdom of God is also a regenerating relationship. “Another parable spake He unto them, The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened." Union with God is the one natural and only possible condition of transformation into the image of God. God is the Leaven which must be in hidden, spiritual touch with man if man is to be regenerated and perfected. Personal fellowship with God enables God to give Himself increasingly to man until man is filled with all of His fullness. "Marvel not," Jesus said to Nicodemus, "that I said unto you you must be born from above."

One cannot explain the mystery of this divine union, any more than one can explain the mysteries of other fellowships; but one may be sure of the Kingdom because it is an experience and not a theory, by the fruit of

which it may be known. There is no possibility of perfecting man's soul except as God dwells in him, as leaven dwells in meal. God must be in man, in union with his innermost soul. No faith or worship of God will change man into the image of God that does not result in this union of God and man, such as leaven has with the meal that it transforms. What a type of the religion of Jesus Christ as he experienced and taught it, is given us in this parable of the leaven and the meal. This is the religion of Christ as St. Paul taught it when he said that he had his eye on "the high calling of God in Christ Jesus," by which he meant that he realized that God must be in him as He was in Jesus Christ, if he was to attain to the perfect righteousness of God, as Christ attained it. God must be in us as He was in Christ if we, like Christ, are to be perfected, as God is perfect. Let us understand this fact which has been so strangely obscured in the Christian Church. Our union with God must be exactly the same as Christ's. It must be as personal as his was, and all that it meant to him it must mean to

us; otherwise our union with God will never do for us what union with God did for Christ. The relationship must be the same for us if its fruit is to be the same in us. Those who make Christ's fellowship with his Father unique and peculiar take away from all others all hope of sharing its blessed fruit. Indeed they divest Christ of all power to save others. Jesus declared that his Kingdom was open to all men, that all might enjoy his relationship to the Heavenly Father. This was his Gospel, his good news of a personal relationship of the soul to God, such as he enjoyed. If such fellowship with God as Christ had is open to all men, then all men must be divine as he was divine; must be of the God substance as he was, though not at first in the same degree. All men may unite with God as Christ united with Him because all, like him, are sons of God. There is no difference between the nature of one child of God and that of all other children of God, except in degree. Human nature, apart from ignorance and sin, is the divine nature, as the acorn is the oak, as the egg is the bird. The Holy Spirit and

man's spirit can blend since one is the Father of the other. The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven and meal because the Kingdom of Heaven is the union of God and man. God leavens man through fellowship with Himself, transforming him into His own perfect likeness as He imparts to him the riches of His own nature.

The Kingdom is a growing relationship, in which all the divine possibilities of man are called forth, developed, perfected.

"And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground: and should sleep, and rise night and day and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.

"For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.

"He knoweth not how"-how union of seed and soil results in the development of the seed into all that the plant is, from which it came, or how union of an imperfect man with a perfect God perfects man as God is perfect. But we have seen both of these