06 - The Means of Extending God's Kingdom

Chapter 6 THE MEANS OF EXTENDING GOD’S KINGDOM "Thy Kingdom Come" The kingdom of God, as we have exhibited its nature and characteristics in the previous chapter, is his spiritual reign over the minds of men. Occupying, as it did, the thoughts and counsels of the Eternal Mind, before the heavens were stretched out, or the foundations of the earth were laid, it still forms his great master purpose. It is destined to advance; but the inquiry is one of interest. How and by what means is its advancement to be secured? Its conquests are not physical, nor political, nor military conquests; but spiritual victories, and are achieved by a spiritual armor. There are preparatory measures by which the minds of men are rendered accessible to its influences. There is an intimate connection between the system of providence and the method of grace. One of the selected and ordained means of advancing the kingdom of God, ever has been the revolutions and conduct of his own mighty providence. It is the purpose of infinite love that this kingdom shall ultimately absorb every other interest, and in accomplishing this purpose, he must necessarily extend his government beyond those established laws of nature which constitute a general providence. He must exercise a particular providence over all human affairs; without this prerogative, his mediatorial office would be incomplete. If the nations are given to him for an inheritance, the arrangements of his providence must be such as to give his truth access to their minds; and when they have become identified with his kingdom, these arrangements must be such as to render him their effectual guardian. His providence, in ways unseen, as well as seen, prepares the way for his gospel, and is the appointed precursor to herald its approach. The history of the past, as well as events that are taking place under our own observation, abundantly show how the many overturnings in the affairs of men, subserve the purposes of his mediatorial reign. The enterprises of those thus employed as God’s instruments, may be unhallowed enterprises; they may originate with pride, and be prompted by love of power; they may aim solely at wealth, conquest, or revenge; but though "they mean it unto evil, God means it unto good." Even the sword of the conqueror receives its commission from him who purposes to follow it With the sword of his Spirit. Wails that have rendered millions impervious to his truth, have been battered down by men whom he has raised up, and qualified, and directed, and prospered for his own ends. His providence has many a time riveted chains upon the necks of his enemies, that his people might go free; and on the other hand has knocked off those chains, that his people may enjoy the common liberty of his enemies. When science has been pursuing her researches; when the arts have been following up their improvements on the sea and on the land, and amid all the elements of nature; when men of wealth and men of toil have been pushing their enterprises through the rocky and mountainous wilderness, and have joined sea to sea and shore to shore ; an unseen, but almighty hand has been guiding their bold and hazardous undertakings, so that ’’ his way may be known, and his saving health among all nations." As it has been, so it will be. Many a valley is to be exalted, and many a mountain laid low; many a crooked way is to be made straight, and many a stream to be dried up, that the way for the Redeemer’s conquests may be prepared, and the ransomed of the Lord may pass over. Empire after empire is yet to be overturned; the lofty are to be brought low, and the lowly are to be lifted up; great and mighty movements are to be looked for in the world, and periods of disastrous revolution to the powers of darkness, that the God of Israel may make to himself a name, and the ark of his strength be exalted in the earth. The providence of God is the expositor, as well as the precursor and the executor of his purposes of mercy. The origin and progress, the decline and fall of nations and governments, are all under his control, who "worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." His councils record their history; in his calendar are marked the hours of their advancement and their pride; he opens the seals of the book, where the time is noted when he shall overturn them, in order to give place to that kingdom for which all other "things were made." He shall remove the diadem, and take off the crown; exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high; he shall overturn, overturn, and overturn, and it shall be no more until He come whose right it is, and he will give it him." In addition to these preparatory arrangements, there are moral instrumentalities by which this kingdom is to be advanced. In those movements of Divine Providence that are directed and overruled to the coming of Christ’s kingdom, men, so far as regards the ends God is aiming at, are, for the most part, the passive, and even the unconscious instruments. Yet has man an active part to perform, in advancing the interests of this kingdom. He is a sub-altern in this spiritual warfare; he is to occupy the post assigned him; he has the means both of aggression and defense. They are not unhallowed principles which he is warranted to make use of, nor are they sustained by unhallowed motives. They are not the power of the secular arm, enforcing the edicts of the church. They are not fines and forfeitures, fire and sword, racks and chains, banishment and the dungeon. Nor are they entangling alliances between the church and the state, the civil establishments of religion, the wisely-invented checks and balances of the wily politician. Nor do they partake of the nature of those human devices in the worship of God, which have been so abundantly superadded to the " simplicity that is in Christ." They are not the intercession of departed saints, nor the flames of purgatory, nor the merit of penitence, nor works of supererogation, nor the celibacy of the clergy, nor the scarlet robes of the priesthood, nor any of the endless superstitions whereby the Man of Sin has deceived the nations. Nor are they the subtleties of philosophy, the speculations of reason, the pride and ostentation of unsancitified learning and eloquence. Nor are they the disingenuousness and crooked policy of a faithless ministry, that would please men. The means are few and simple, efficacious, and of divine appointment. They are the truth and love of the Gospel; the light, the power, of truth; the ardor, the fire of love.

They are the word of the living God, published to all nations, and sustained by the institutions, example, and influence of his church. These are, indeed, means which seem inadequate to the end; because they are so simple, and so few. " The kingdom of God cometh not with observation." The stone spoken of by the Prophet Daniel, which was emblematical of this kingdom, was " cut out of the mountain without hands." Like the temple at Jerusalem, " neither hammer nor axe, nor any tool of iron, is heard in the house while it is building." They are means which address themselves to the intellectual and moral nature of man ; which make their appeal to his reason, his conscience, and his heart ; which speak to the soul, on the authority of their Author; which are silent in their influence, as the dew of heaven; balmy as the droppings of mercy from the wings of the angel flying through the midst of heaven; diffusive and lifegiving as is the Sun of Righteousness, when he rises with healing in his beams. The simple preaching of Christ and him crucified, occupies the first place among the great instrumentalities by which the kingdom of darkness is to be overcome, and men are to be brought into the kingdom of God.

" The pulpit Must stand acknowledged, while the world shall stand. The most important and effectual guard. Support, and ornament of virtues cause."

"The words that I speak unto you," saith the Saviour, "they are spirit and they are life." Whatever that word contains ― whatever of God in his glory and his humiliation; whatever of man, fallen and redeemed; whatever of the pity of heaven for the apostasy of earth; whatever of glad tidings of great joy there is in his obedience unto death, and in a gratuitous justification by faith in his blood ― intelligently, faithfully, and affectionately exhibited, and urged upon the conscience by all the sanctions of the eternal world ― this is the instrumentality by which the wonderful changes spoken of in the Scriptures are yet to be effected in the world, and the kingdom of God to gain its decisive victories. Heavenly truth and heavenly love are to accomplish these conquests; ― heavenly truth, because true piety is everywhere conformity to the truth of God, nor can it exist save where that truth is perceived and loved ― heavenly love, because there is no other way of carrying a hostile world, than by drawing it with " cords of love" those " bands of a man." In portraying the successes of his empire, the Spirit of God addresses the King of Zion in the following language: "Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty. And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth, meekness, and righteousness: and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp in the hearts of the king’s enemies, whereby the people fall under thee." Mark the means of his conquests ― the weapons by which his foes become a conquered, yet a willing people, and while they submit to his power, cheerfully and gladly bow at his footstool! They are truth, meekness, righteousness. This is the "rod of his strength" which he sends out of Zion; these the arrows which perforate and transform the heart.

Another of the means by which this kingdom is advanced, is the religious education of the young. There is no greater evidence of the importance to be attached to this means of advancing the reign of God in the hearts of men than the fact, that in the dispensations, both of his natural and moral government, God has so closely connected the character and destiny of the child with that of the parent. The covenant with the first father of our race in Paradise, the covenant with Noah as the father of the new world, the covenant with Abraham as the head of the Hebrew nation and the father of all them that believe, confirmed by its impressive seal, furnish affecting proofs of the reality and importance of this great principle, pervading all the varieties of administration in the kingdom of grace. The Scriptures explicitly teach us that the great design of heavenly wisdom in the institution of the domestic relations, and the organization of the social state, protected as they are by so many sanctions of the most solemn kind, is the moral and religious culture of the rising race. Alluding to the origin of the human family from one pair, the prophet demands, " Did he not make one? And wherefore one! That he might seek a godly seed’’. There is nothing in which the interests of piety have a deeper stake, than these hallowed relations. The whole face and character of human society, and the condition of the church, receive their impression from the character of the rising generation. The religious training of the infertile and youthful mind, though not the exclusive, constitutes the selected channel in which the grace of God is wont to flow. The neglect or careless performance of this duty is an unfailing token of evil. Give the adversary the education of the rising generation, and the world will be overrun with " a seed of evil doers." There is no time for sowing the seeds of knowledge and grace like the spring-time of human life. If the child is neglected, unless some unpromised and unlooked-for interposition sever the effect from the cause, the man is lost. It is comparatively easy to purify the fountain; but when the streams become diffused and extended, they are beyond your reach.

Confirmed obduracy in sin belongs not to the earlier periods of life; a seared conscience is seldom, if ever found in the bosom of the young. A little child is never the creature of sensuality; nor do care and perplexity so embarrass and enchain the youthful mind as to choke the word. Faith, hope and prayer hover, with the deepest interest and highest promise, not over the aged, but the young. The Holy Spirit, the gentle Dove of Heaven, forsakes the rugged bosom which has long been the seat of stormy passions, to dwell in the more peaceful, and tranquil heart of the devout child. In those portions of the earth, and in those periods of the world, in which the kingdom of God has been most, and most rapidly extended, it began its advances in the hearts of the young. The great mass of those whose piety has been eminent in the world, as well as the great mass of those who have been most eminent as preachers of the gospel, together with those whom God has honored as the reformers of a corrupt and degenerate age, and the successful missionaries of the cross among the heathen, have sprung from a godly ancestry, and have been "trained up in the way in which they should go." There is no more cheering- indication of the advancement of God’s kingdom in the earth, than when youthful converts are multiplied as the drops of the dew. It is a delightful prospect, as the older, and more withered trees of righteousness die away, to behold the younger and more vigorous plants shoot up and occupy their places. Blessed is that youthful generation by whom the kingdom of God is thus advanced; and blessed also is that risen generation which is preparing a righteous seed to perform this blessed work!

We do not depreciate other agencies in this great work. We honor the press and the institutions of learning; but they owe their elevating and purifying influence to the Bible, the ministry and the church of God. They have accomplished little else than to mislead and corrupt, where they are not under a Christian influence. But while these are means of God’s appointment, and correspond with the nature of that kingdom which they are designed to promote; and while they possess an evident and strong adaptation to secure its advancement; there is another power by which its advancement is secured: I mean the effectual working of the Holy Spirit. There is no natural tendency in the individual mind, nor in larger associations of minds, to yield to the influences of God’s truth, however clearly and impressively exhibited. His truth furnishes but the material, the instrument, the medium by which a superadded and higher power operates on the understanding and heart. In relation to all the means that are adopted for the extension of the Redeemer’s kingdom, it may never be forgotten, that it is "not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of God." Truth enlightens the understanding, and thus presents before the mind the objects of gracious affection; it convinces the conscience, and thus awakens fear and apprehension; it imparts a sense of obligation, and thus leaves men without excuse in their alienation from God; it fixes powerful associations and presents the strongest inducements to piety in the minds of men, who see it as it is, and thus supplies the motives to holiness: but more than this, it cannot perform. " Neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase." Our confidence in the advancement of the Redeemer’s kingdom, is in the promise, "The Comforter, the Holy Ghost, shall abide with you forever." He alone gives the truth its saving efficacy. " We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be all of God and not of us."

Much is indeed gained by those over turnings of divine providence by which the way is prepared for the gospel to have access to the minds of men; more is accomplished by the actual diffusion of the Scriptures in every land, and the dispersion of an instructive and faithful ministry, everywhere dispensing to listening millions the words of eternal life. Still more is effected by the faithful and devout efforts of the church for the rising generation. Effects like these present scenes of great beauty and hope; yet are they in reality scenes of great barrenness and desolation, until the hearts of men are opened by the Spirit of God to receive the truth in the love of it. "Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers; yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city: because the palaces shall be forsaken; the multitude of the city shall be left; the forts and towers shall be for dens forever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks; until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest." No such effective and beneficial changes will take place in the moral condition of men, as shall give success to the kingdom of God, until this sacred influence descends, now in drops, now in more copious showers, giving fertility and gladness. Then it is that the great Husbandman " plants in the wilderness the cedar tree, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree;" and sets in the desert "the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together; that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the ban a of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it." A glorious day will that be, when after ages of darkness and long periods of spiritual desolation, the cheering words shall be again heard from heaven, "And I will no more hide my face from them; for I have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God." The kingdom of Satan, that subtle and malignant Spirit who dwells in the children of disobedience, and who has with so much success organized a regular system of opposition to the kingdom of God, shall be brought within narrower, and still more narrow limits, until it is ultimately subverted and overthrown. Apostate men shall be withdrawn in great numbers from their allegiance to his empire, and introduced into the kingdom of God, and kept in it, and the kingdom of glory shall be hastened. We may not look for the successes of the gospel and the triumphs of truth, without a divine agency. They are but instruments which we make use of, and never effectual save when wielded by an omnipotent arm. It were but a state of complete hopelessness to call upon men to forsake their sins, and to wait for the Son of God from heaven, without confidence in something beside an arm of flesh.

I remark then once more, there is an appropriate place for another powerful agency in advancing the kingdom of God: I mean the power of prayer. Prayer in the closet, prayer in the domestic circle, prayer in the sanctuary, concert in prayer, everywhere, at all times, and with one accord, is the great means of securing the needed influences of the Spirit, and of realizing the hopes of the church for his coming and kingdom who is her adorable Head. ’’ Prayer touches the only spring that can possibly ensure success. By speaking, we move man; by prayer we move God. It is through the medium of prayer that the littleness and meanness of man prevail with omnipotence. The prayer of faith is the only power in the universe to which the great Jehovah yields; he looks upon every other power as more or less opposed to him; but he looks upon this as a confession of man’s dependence, as an appropriate homage to his greatness, as an attraction which brings down his divine agency to the earth. " The voice of prayer is a voice which God hears; it suggests reasons which he weighs; it is the expression of affections which he delights in; it is the utterance of desires which he honors, and is honored in gratifying. "If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him.’’

Men may prosper without other gifts, but they cannot prosper without God’s Holy Spirit. Other gifts are for the body; this is for the soul. Other gifts are for time ; this is for eternity. Earthly parents can bestow other gifts; this they cannot bestow. This is a gift purchased at a dear rate; but our heavenly Parent gives it freely, and only for the asking. Everything else may fail, but prayer has irresistible power, and in the hour of the direst extremity. Prayer pleads in his name, and for his sake and kingdom who bowled his heavens to dwell with and suffer for men, and whom eternally to honor is the peculiar office of the Spirit of all grace. Jesus himself dictated the request "Thy kingdom come!" because that kingdom, under his own condescending and gracious arrangement, needs the impulse of prayer. It solicits it now, from the reader, from the writer, from ’’ men everywhere." It is now in the midst of its conflicts, and in many portions of the earth under the cloud. Its priests, its ministers are often clothed in sackcloth; its prophets prophesy in heaviness upon valleys of the slain; its subjects weep because the enemy hath spread out his hand over her pleasant things. And not until more are found who cease not day nor night to bow their knees before the great Hearer of prayer, that the " Holy Ghost may be sent down from heaven," will this dejection pass away, Zion become clothed with garments of beauty and salvation, and her hopes and expectations be measured no longer by her own resources, but his who is " wonderful in working." The higher we ascend the mount of prayer, the more extended and the brighter is the prospect. A bright streak skirts the horizon, and after long nights of ignorance and sin, the day dawns, not upon a desert and barren world, but one already watered with the dews of heaven, and to be yet more refreshed with copious showers. The view brightens as we still ascend. It is no longer a little cloud that we see, betokening an abundance of rain, but the descending showers, the vales beneath green as the garden of the Lord.

"Rivers of gladness water all the earth. And clothe all climes with beauty."

" Thy kingdom come !" This is a great request, not merely on account of the objects it has in view, but the practical duties it involves. The spirit of prayer is the spirit of corresponding exertion; the noblest, most self-denying, and successful efforts for the coming of God’s kingdom originate at the mercy seat, and find their strongest and most unwearied impulse in prayer. The suppliant who goes to the throne with this request on his lips, if he is truehearted, possesses a strong attachment to the kingdom which the God of heaven has set up in our world, and a willingness on his part to do all in his power to promote it both in his own heart and in the hearts of his fellow-men. There is nothing for which such a man feels so much concern as for the honor of his redeeming God and king; nothing he so fervently desires as that his character should be loved and venerated, his laws obeyed, and his claims enthroned in the hearts of those who know not God. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning; if I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy!" He who possesses this spirit, complains not if God makes demands upon his thoughts, his time, efforts, and property, to extend this kingdom in the world; it is his privilege and honor to consecrate them. He will not offer to God that which costs him nothing. He is habitually jealous of himself and watchful of his own heart and life, lest he should be betrayed into the inconsistency of praying for the advancement of that kingdom, for the prosperity of which he does nothing, and in which he himself has no part.

If the reader sympathizes with the writer of these pages, he has often felt rebuked and condemned by his own prayers. The achievements of prayer ought to be more in keeping with its subject and its matter. They will be so, when we possess its true spirit. Would that this encouraging fact were set in its true light, and were more deeply felt by the Christian world! As certainly as effects follow their causes, in any of the visible operations of nature, " the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." I t is but for the spirit of the closet and the sanctuary to be more deeply felt, and uniformly acted out in the life, and the kingdom of God will come with power.

Far too weak and limited are our conceptions of the work to be done, and the agencies to be employed, in extending the kingdom of God over this lost world. Yet is there one thought I desire to impress on the mind of the reader, before I close the present chapter. It is the relation which those who already belong to this kingdom hear to those who are out of it. The wicked are to be converted to God through the instrumentality of the righteous. Salvation was originally "of the Jews," because they were the only visible people of God. The rod of God’s strength goes "forth out of Zion." So far as human instrumentality is concerned, the resources of the world are found in the church of God. Her Scriptures and her ministry, her Sabbaths and her ordinances, her religious training of the young, and her prayers, her bounty, her example, and her self-denying efforts and courage, "are the hope of benighted and lost men. The church of God constitutes a great" Christian corpration, " for extending the boundaries, and beautifying the character of God’s kingdom among men. It is not for her own sake alone, that she was thus incorporated, but for the sake of others, and that this divinely incorporated body of the professed children of the kingdom might take a deep and effective interest in the conversion of the world. She holds her high her unities and hopes in trust for a world that lieth in wickedness. The conscience of the church has been slow in feeling this obligation; where it is felt and acknowledged, it has not always been responded to by a willing heart and consecrated effort. Did the church of God now on the earth possess the self-sacrificing spirit of the churches established in the Apostolic age, we might say with Apostles, " Now thanks be to God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us, in every place." There has been a declension in the missionary spirit, ever since the memorable age of which we are speaking. Persecution checked it, and then controversy, and then the corruption of prosperity and power, and then a chivalrous enthusiasa, and then severer persecutions, and then again the spirit of controversy; till the world extended its ascendency, and the church sank in a most universal apathy and indifference. The lighting up of the past fifty years has been a delightful, yet a faint reflection of that Apostolic spirit which poured its light on Jewish and Gentile lands. It is a narrow sphere which the church occupies, compared with that which she was organized to occupy, and for the occupation ot which she possesses such augmented means, influence, and facilities. We want an exercised conscience, in this matter; we want the love of Christ, we want the strong and healthy pulsations of glowing piety. The stream has set in; it is flowing on silently; but it must have a wider and deeper channel. Much do we need to prove the preciousness and power of the heart-searching, wrestling, effectual prayer, "thy kingdom come." Where there are professions of piety, but no genuine piety at heart, there is no interest excited for the coming of God’s kingdom. The spiritual welfare of men, the honor and glory of the King of Zion, have no place in the bosom of the man who ’’ liveth to himself". The philanthropy that terminates in the temporal wellbeing of men, is not the noble and disinterested charity of the Bible. The charity of the Bible is stronger than the ties of humanity; it draws closer than all other ties. It attracts soul to soul. It forms a bond of attachment to those who are far off, as well as those who are near. It is a sympathy which includes men of every class and clime, and will never be fully gratified, until that bright day when the Son of David shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.