i CORINTHIANS v. 7, 8 177
If I remember hearing a friend of mine describe what he him- self once saw in Palestine, and, of all places in Palestine, in Nazareth, and, of all places in Nazareth, in a carpenter's shop there. The carpenter would not allow him to witness the search in the house lest his presence should defile the home; but he allowed him to enter the shop and witness the search there. The man went about the work with a will; he was evidently thoroughly in earnest ; he girded up his loins as if he had a day's work before him, and then proceeded to search with the utmost zeal. Carefully and conscientiously he turned over every board, he moved all his tools, he swept out the whole place, he opened every drawer, looked into every cupboard; there was not a crevice or a cranny in the wall that was not inspected lest there might be a tiny crumb of leaven anywhere in the shop. As he drew towards the close of his search my friend suddenly heard him utter an exclamation of horror, and looking round he saw him standing as though he had seen something most alarming. If he had found a viper or a cockatrice he could not have been more horrified than he seemed to be. What was it? In the last corner that he had visited, under some shavings, he had come across a little canvas bag, and in this little bag there were a few crumbs of leavened bread ; one of the workmen had left it on some former occasion. It was enough; it defiled the whole place. With the utmost possible gravity and solemnity, and with a most anxious expression of countenance as though it were a most critical and important business, the man took hold of two pieces of wood, and using them as a pair of tongs he raised up the bag, and holding it off at arm's length, marched out of the shop and dropped the leavened crumbs, bag and all, into the centre of a fire that he had burning outside ready for such a contingency, and so he purged out the old leaven.1
If Self-scrutiny is often the most unpleasant, and always the most difficult, of moral actions. But it is also the most important and salutary; for, as the wisest of the Greeks said, "an un- examined life is not worth living." 2
2. " Leaven * had a figurative use in Jewish speech, signifying the working of evil affections in the soul. " Lord of Eternity," prayed one of the Eabbis, " it is open and known in Thy sight that we desire to do Thy will. Subdue that which hindereth, to wit, the leaven which is in the lump." " If," it is written in the paschal rubric, " a man be on the way to offer his paschal lamb,
1 Canon Hay Aitken. 2 J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 93.
I COR. — 12
178 FOR THE FEAST
and it come into his mind that he has leaven in his house, if he can return and remove it, and then return to his office, let him return and remove it ; but, if he cannot, let him destroy it in his heart." Our Lord came not to abrogate the ancient Law but to fulfil it ; and, ever exalting the spirit above the letter, He took this Jewish prescription and gave it a loftier interpretation. " If," He said with evident reference to that article of the paschal rubric, "thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there re- memberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." And St. Paul taught the same lesson when he wrote to the Corinthians : " Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump ? Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened."
The working of leaven did not seem, at first sight, to belong to the more regular process of nature. Man's imagination had been struck here by the likeness to something dark, ominous, evil. This strange disturbance into which the natural substances were thrown by the arrival of this alien matter — what did it portend ? This secret insertion of so little within so much by which there was set moving an inner ferment, a yeasty working, a spreading excitement — what was it? What did it express? Was it healthy ? Was it not typical, rather, of disease, corrup- tion ? It looked so uncanny, so uncomfortable. How insidiously it crept ! How unaccountably it penetrated ! It seemed to eat its way along; it insinuated its hidden force within the mass; until what was before quiet and at peace began to stir with un- accountable agitation, began to shake and heave and swell. And what a portentous inflation ! What a mysterious tumult ! Surely here (men said) is the very picture of what we know of the nature of sin! This is the very way of its attack. A seed, a germ, hardly suspected for its smallness, plants itself deep down within some secret recess of the soul, and from that moment the old peace has begun to break up. At first, it is a mere spot of uncomfortable disturbance ; but it is ever moving forward ; the stir spreads wider; there is gradual agitation; there is growing upheaval. We never quite know how or when, but somehow, point by point, our steadiness dissolves; our orderly restraint