Both parables begin with a reference to the Kingdom of God—­to that Rule and Kingship of God, the knowledge of which makes all the difference to a man.  A small grammatical difference points us beyond minutiae to the common experience of the two men.  Each makes a great discovery, and takes action in a great and urgent resolve; and they are both repaid.  If we are to understand the two parables in the sense intended by Jesus, the term “God” must become alive to us with all the life and power and love that the name implies for him.  Then to grasp that this Father of Jesus is King—­that the God of his thoughts, of his faith, with all the tenderness and the power combined that Jesus teaches us to see in Him—­rules the universe, controls our destiny and loves us—­this is the experience that Jesus compares with that of the Treasure Finder and the Pearl Merchant—­worth, he suggests, everything a man has, and more than all.

In passing, we may notice that these stories suggest that this experience may be reached in different ways.  In the parables of the seed and the leaven he indicates a natural, quiet and unconscious growth, a story without crisis, though full of change.  To the Treasure Finder the discovery is a surprise—­how came Jesus so far into the minds of men as to know what a surprise God can be, and how joyful a surprise?  The Pearl Merchant, on the other hand, has lived in the region where he makes his discovery.  He is the type that lives and moves in the atmosphere of high and true thought, that knows whatsoever things are pure and lovely and of good report, of help and use; he is no stranger to great and inspiring ideas.  And one day, in no strange way, by no accident, but in the ordinary round of life, he comes on something that transcends all he has been seeking, all he has known—­the One thing worth all.  There is little surprise about it, no wild elation, but nothing is allowed to stand in the way of an instant entrance into the great experience—­and the great experience is, Jesus says, God.

To see God, to know God—­that is what Jesus means—­to get away from “all the fuss and trouble” of life into the presence of God, to know he is ours, to see him smile, to realize that he wants us to stay there, that he is a real Father with a father’s heart, that his love is on the same wonderful scale as every one of his attributes, and in reality far more intelligible than any of them.  That is the picture Jesus draws.  The sheer incredible love of God, the wonderful change it means for all life—­that is his teaching, and he encourages us, in the words of the Shorter Catechism, “to enjoy God for ever,” as Jesus himself does.  Those who learn his secret enjoy God in reality.  Wherever they see God with the eyes of Jesus, it is joy and peace.  And they realize with deepening emotion that this also is God’s gift, as Jesus said (Luke 8:10; 12:39).