07. Salvation

mention the things done in the past. The forgiveness of sins means sins put away, not as guilt merely, but as virus, poison, disability.

Salvation in all its full sense is not a present experience of the saint. The apostle wrote, and his meaning grows upon me, "Now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed." There is a sense in which we come immediately into possession of the force that destroys the destructive, and that remakes; but never in this world is either salvation or condemnation completed. Nevertheless the process is one that culminates in perfection; and Christ will never think of me as finally saved until He gathers me into His presence, and in the last beatific vision makes even my body to be conformed to the body of His glory. That is His purpose, and for that purpose He has power adequate. According to the teaching of Jesus, salvation or safety is the state of having the destructive forces destroyed, and the essential life realized. The Son of Man came to do that work.

Place this meditation in relation to our previous one, in which we saw what Christ taught concerning sin, as to the element of human responsibility, the fact of bondage in sin, and the awful peril of fixity in sin. Place that awe-inspiring teaching concerning sin by the side of this concerning salvation. Salvation means, according to the interpretation of Jesus, first the forgiveness of a man for failure to fulfill responsibility; secondly the liberty of a man in that he had become the bond-slave of sin; and finally power in the man, denying, breaking up the fixity of sin, and bringing him into a glorious liberty. Every material miracle had in it the element of moral value, and the final truth revealed is that, according to Jesus, salvation, when it is accomplished, is immunity from all harm, and all danger; and His mission is that of bringing such salvation to men who need it.

¹ Rom. xiii. 11.

"Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfill."—Matthew v. 17.

"Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace but a sword!"—x. 34.

"He that receiveth you receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me."—x. 40.

"The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many."—xx. 28.

"He that rejecteth you rejecteth Me; and he that rejecteth Me rejecteth Him that sent Me."—Luke x. 16.

"I came to cast fire upon the earth; and what will I, if it is already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!"—xii. 49-50.

"The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost."—xix. 10.

"I am come in My Father's name, and ye receive Me not."—John, v. 43.

"I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly."—x. 10.

"For this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name."—xii. 27-28.

III

HIS SAVING MISSION

BEARING in mind the general conception and claim of Christ touching salvation, we proceed to consider His teaching concerning His saving mission. We start with the claim itself, uttered in relation to the moral miracle wrought in the case of Zacchaeus; and there are one or two preliminary matters important to the correct apprehension of its value. First, the title "the Son of Man" was our Lord's favourite title for Himself. It must be recognized also that His use of it was personal, and not generic. Even though it be a mathematical way of stating it, there is suggestiveness in the fact that the title occurs two-and-thirty times in the Gospel of Matthew, fifteen times in the Gospel of Mark, twenty-six in Luke, and twelve in John; and that, with two exceptions, it is always used by Christ Himself, of Himself. In the Gospel of John, at the twelfth chapter, we find that men once said to Him, "We have heard out of the law that the Christ abideth forever: and how sayest Thou, The Son of Man must be lifted up? who is this Son of Man?"¹ Evidently they took the phrase from His own lips, impressed by His continual use of it, and challenged Him as to what He meant when He described Himself as the Son of Man. In every other case, all through the Gospels, this descriptive phrase was used by Christ Himself. A careful comparison of these passages will show that our Lord never used the phrase in a generic sense, or with reference to any other than Himself.

Notice also the claim made in the general terms of this

¹ John xii. 34.

text. We have found that when Christ used the word save of material miracle, He described the complete restoration to health of the person who had been afflicted; and that when He used the phrase in the moral realm, He described the complete restoration to holiness of character and rectitude of conduct of such as had been spiritually and morally disabled.

But the central word of value for the present consideration is the word "came." "The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost."¹ In referring to His mission our Lord made use of two methods of speech. He spoke of Himself constantly as the Sent of the Father, and He spoke of Himself as coming for the doing of a work. The first method is so full of interest and value that I cannot wholly pass over it. In my Testament I have marked out the occasions upon which He claimed to be sent of God, and it is remarkable how constantly this thought was present to His own mind. Each of the synoptists chronicles at least one instance, and in each case an important one, in which He referred to the fact that He was the Sent of God: "He that receiveth you receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me."² Luke chronicles the negative statement also, "He that rejecteth you rejecteth Me; and he that rejecteth Me rejecteth Him that sent Me."³ But this claim of the Lord is most remarkably manifest in the Gospel of John. It is the very warp of His teaching as there set forth. The first instance occurs in His dealing with an individual seeker, when in conversation with Nicodemus He claimed that He had been sent by God, and then in every successive chapter in the Gospel of John up to and including the seventeenth, the chapter of the great intercessory prayer, He is perpetually recorded as alluding to the fact that He was the Sent of the Father. In chapters eighteen and nineteen, which deal with His sor-

¹ Luke xix. 10 ² Matt. x. 40. ³ Luke x. 16.

rows, and are characterized by comparative silence, that fact is not mentioned; and the last occurrence is in chapter twenty. This brings clearly before the mind the fact that in the common speech of Christ we have a revelation of the fact, both definitely declared, and incidentally referred to, that He wrought and spoke as One claiming to have been sent into the world by God Himself.

In each case, both in these references to the fact of His having been sent, and in His references to the fact that He came into the world, the implication is that of His pre-existence. All His speech has in it that tone and that emphasis. Whereas in certain matters He spoke, as we have seen in an earlier study, in terms which must be described as temporal, or of an age, He far more often spoke in terms which were eternal, or of all the ages; and in these He either described Himself as the Sent of God, or as coming into the world, thereby claiming a prior existence.

All these declarations reveal a definite purpose, as the explanation of His advent. He was here for a purpose, sent of God for a definite mission. He came for the fulfillment of that mission. We shall confine ourselves here to certain outstanding words in which He spoke of Himself as having come, and in which He declared the purpose of His coming, and revealed the method by which He would accomplish that purpose.

There are four outstanding declarations as to purpose; all made before Cæsarea Philippi, the place of Peter's confession, after which our Lord turned to a new and distinct part of His work. There are also four equally definite statements concerning method; all of which were made after Cæsarea Philippi, beyond the hour of Peter's confession, beyond the hour in which Christ unveiled to His disciples two great secrets, first of the Church as the instrument through which He would prepare for the Kingdom, and the Cross as the one and only method by which it would be possible for Him to build His Church, or to establish His Kingdom.

The first outstanding declaration of Jesus concerning the purpose of His mission is to be found in the Manifesto: "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfill." ¹

The second is to be found in the same Gospel: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." ² That saying is also recorded by Mark and Luke.

The third is also found in Matthew: "Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword!" ³

And the final reference is found in John's Gospel:

"I am come in My Father's name, and ye receive Me not." ⁴

In the first claim our Lord declared the ultimate ethical purpose of His presence in the world. This statement is found at the commencement of a brief paragraph, which closes with these words, "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of heaven." ⁵ It is of supreme importance that we should recognize that this is Christ's first word as to the purpose of His mission in the world. The evangelical presentation of the Gospel has led some astray from this, or has made them unmindful of it. The first purpose, the ultimate purpose, the passion of His heart, was the establishment of the law of God, and the creation in men of a character of holiness which should issue in a conduct of righteousness. The ultimate purpose of the mission of Christ is thus revealed to be ethical; and that according to this word of Jesus, and the whole of His teaching harmonizes with it, He did not come into this

¹ Matt. v. 17.

² Ibid., x. 34.

⁶ Matt. v. 20.

² Ibid., ix. 13.

⁴ John v. 43.

world to persuade God to excuse men who are moral failures. He came into the world to establish the law, to make it honourable; to stand in the midst of human history as the severest of all moral teachers, embodying the highest ideal of law, and at all costs insisting upon obedience thereto. In that ultimate triumph of Christ, when He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied, and in those who have been ransomed and redeemed shall find the fulfillment of His highest purpose, He will not lead into the larger life a great host of men and women crippled and incapable, without spiritual power, and defective in moral character. When His work is done in His own, He will present them to His Father without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, absolutely perfect, with the perfection of His own holiness of character and righteousness of conduct. I came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill. The master-passion of the heart of Christ was ethical, holy, righteous; and the very first word in which He made any statement concerning His mission in the world was a word in which He insisted upon this fact.

But had He said nothing else I should have had no Gospel. That is not the Gospel. It is preliminary to the Gospel. It is a revelation of the ultimate value of the Gospel; but it is not the Gospel. He came and He gave the world His ethic in that great Manifesto, which so many men are admiring, but which so few men will dare try to obey; that Manifesto from which it is the fashion of the hour to deduce certain social values, in order that we may attempt to realize them, but which men seem to forget is introduced by words thrilling with tenderness, and yet vibrant with the thunder of an awful holiness, as the great moral Teacher, -if you speak of Jesus as being such- puts at the forefront of His Manifesto the absolute necessity for character. But that is not the Gospel. If I have nothing other than the Sermon on the Mount I have no Gospel to preach.

The second of these words, in the light of this high declaration concerning ultimate ethical purpose, is the more amazing and the more arresting. "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." They declare His immediate redeeming purpose.

Jesus was upon this occasion defending Himself against the criticism of those who did not understand His attitude towards sinning men. He sat down and ate with publicans and sinners; and He violated tradition as He did so with unwashen hands. He made Himself, most evidently, the personal, near, close companion of sinning men; and the moralists of His day, whose only conception of morality was that it must be maintained by absolute separation from all sinning men, in habits and in social life, looked with amazement at Him, and they criticized Him; and He answered their criticism by saying, "They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. . . . I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." In that statement He explained the meaning of His companionship with sinning men. He revealed the fact that the passion of His heart for them was that of the physician. Now there are two things that the illustration connotes. The physician is needed when there is disease; but the passion of the physician is for health. So that the first principle is not violated in the second. I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill. I have come to take hold of the morally and spiritually sick, and make them well; that is the immediate purpose of My presence in the world; and if there are men who are righteous, and have no moral malady, no spiritual sickness, I have no message for them.

Now that is a very astonishing thing, but it is our Lord's

¹ Matt. ix. 13.

own teaching. If you are righteous, having no spiritual malady, no spiritual sickness, Christ has no message for you. I leave that matter for application in the loneliness of the inner life of every man and woman; only before we decide as to whether we have moral malady, or spiritual sickness, let this Physician examine us, and He will do it with that selfsame Manifesto, that ethical standard that is not satisfied with an external uprightness unless there be an absolute heart purity. When He has examined the life, if we can stand erect and say, we have no malady, then He will say to us: I have no message for you.

Few of us will escape the conviction of need if we let Him deal with us. But here is the Gospel, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners"; I came,—whatever that may include of self-emptying, and stooping in humility, and a long pathway of suffering and sorrow,—to call sinners.

The next words are, "Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword!" Here we specially need all the context or we shall surely be mistaken as to our Lord's meaning. He was insisting upon the absolute necessity of loyalty to Him. Remember He came with an ultimate ethical purpose in His heart. He came also with an immediate redeeming purpose. Now if the incompetent man, the broken man, the man who has failed morally, is to receive healing, health, holiness, to realize the Divine purpose; that man must unreservedly and absolutely put himself under the guidance and direction and rule of Jesus. There must be no affection allowed to interfere, no earthly tie must restrain, no passion or pride of the self-life must be permitted to hinder. The right hand must be cut off, and cast away; the right eye must be plucked out; neither father, mother, nor child

¹ Matt. x. 34.

must be loved more than He, or we are not worthy of Him. These are the severest terms that it is possible for us to imagine; and therefore there must be a separating process; not peace, but a sword. This is merely a description of a process, a declaration of what must inevitably happen if men will follow Him absolutely, in order that He may heal them perfectly, and fulfill His high purpose within them; and so at the commencement, that there may be no mistake, He said, "not peace, but a sword." If we are conscious of moral malady, of spiritual sickness, and come to this great Physician, Whose ultimate purpose is our health of soul, and Whose immediate purpose is the redemption that shall produce that health, then we must give ourselves to Him entirely, absolutely; and to do this will divide households, will separate between parents and children, between brothers and sisters. Our Lord was simply stating the fact, and there is no need for me to argue it. He came to send a sword; and He has done it through all the centuries, He is doing it still. There are those who know the keenness of it; instead of peace, there is indeed a sword. His mission was one of separation in order to the creation of the new, pure, strong, ransomed society, for the accomplishment of His purposes in the economy of God.

The last of these four outstanding declarations taken alone is full of beauty, but we miss the true light unless we consider it in its relation to the story of the man who had lain for so long in the porches of the Bethesda pool. Christ healed him, and when the rulers criticized Jesus for making the man break Sabbath, our Lord answered, "My Father worketh even until now, and I work;" ¹ and the discussion ran to an argument, a defense, an explanation; and in that connection this word occurred, "I am come in My Father's name." ² For the meaning of this word then, we

¹ John v. 17.

² Ibid., v. 43.

need the story itself, and His interpretation of what He did when He healed the man; and we need that interpretation in the light of the criticism which was offered.

This man, for eight and thirty years, had been in the grip of an infirmity, until he had lost heart and lost hope, and had become despondently contented,—if that be not a contradiction of terms—with his condition. Jesus, passing through, looked at him, and said, Do you wish to be made whole? And the man replied, Sir,—and I never can read it without feeling there was a touch of protest in it, as though he had said, Sir, why do you ask me a question like that?—When the water is troubled, and I try to reach it, some man is in front of me, and I have no man that can put me in. What did that answer mean? It surely was as if he had said, Of course I wish to be made whole, but I never can be made whole. Why do you mock my impotence? It is too late, and I have to be content to live upon the almsgiving of others, with no hope of healing. Then came the word of Christ to him, "Take up thy bed, and walk." And he arose and took up his bed and walked; a material miracle with a moral value; but the blind men about Him could not interpret the moral value, and they charged Christ with violating God's law by making that man break the Sabbath. Christ said in effect: You charge Me with breaking Sabbath, but God's Sabbath was broken by man's sin, and God can have no Sabbath while men lie like this one, broken and bruised. "My Father worketh," was His answer to the charge that He had broken Sabbath; "My Father worketh" was an unveiling of the Divine discontent in the presence of all human limitation and suffering; of the restlessness of God until man gets his rest; "My Father worketh . . . and I work." Then presently and in direct connection He said, "I am come in My Father's name." Thus was the purpose of God unveiled in the action of Jesus; God's determination to make rest for man, and His willingness to give up His rest in order to do so. I know the figure halts. I know it is imperfect. Incarnation itself is imperfect as a full unveiling of Deity; but it is perfect in that it meets the need of humanity. There is a sense in which it is unthinkable that God can have His rest interfered with; but there is a deeper sense, a profounder sense, in which it is true that God is not impassive, or indifferent in the presence of human pain and sorrow and agony. "My Father worketh."¹ "I am come in My Father's name."² Jesus came in the name of God. Who will never be able to rest, save as men find rest in health and holiness, and the realization of all the highest purposes of their being.

The central word in each of these declarations is the statement, "I am come," indicating as it does His preëxistence; and that, in connection with the affirmations made, reveals that the ultimate purpose of His mission was the establishment of righteousness; the immediate purpose of His mission was the redemption of the man who has failed, who is broken, who has been flung out upon the world's scrap heap; the necessary processional purpose of His mission was the separation between men, in order to the creation of a great society; and the fundamental purpose of His mission was that of the carrying out of the enterprises of God.

And now reverently let us turn to the second consideration; the words of Jesus spoken as to the method by which He will establish righteousness; redeem the sinner; creating in the process, not peace but conflict; until at last the heart of God shall find rest. All His words on this subject were uttered after Cæsarea Philippi. After Peter had made his great confession concerning the person of the Lord, He began to speak to His disciples definitely and plainly about

¹ John v. 17.

² Ibid., v. 43.

His Cross. Both Matthew, Mark, and Luke give the account of the confession of Peter, and they all record that immediately following that confession He began this teaching. Matthew and Mark use the actual word "began"; Luke does not use that word, but his placing of the commencement at that point is quite distinct.

When He thus began to talk about His Cross the Lord employed a very significant expression as He declared that He must,—that is the key word; Mark employs it, Matthew uses it, Luke reports it,—they all quote Him as declaring that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and the third day be raised again. The whole of this statement is necessary to an understanding of the Lord's meaning. It is not accurate to say that His foretelling of the Cross was merely the result of spiritual intuition, and His must, the expression of a fine heroism by which He yielded to death. His was not the heroism of One consenting to be a victim, for He never spoke of the Cross without speaking of the resurrection which lay beyond; it was rather the heroism of a determined Victor, Who was moving through a dark and awful process, towards a bright and glorious victory. He never spoke of the Cross without the resurrection; but when He first spoke of these He used this word must. Thus He declared that it was necessary that He should go to Jerusalem. It was in the economy of His mission that He went. The Cross was no accident. On the day of Pentecost, Peter, in the first Spirit-taught exposition of the Cross, said, "Him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay."¹ Man's guilt was patent, but behind it, around it, overruling it, was something mightier than man's guilt; it was God's grace. "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God." The must

¹ Acts ii. 23.

of Jesus was not the outcome of His sense that circumstances were against Him. The must of Jesus was the expression of His sense that He was still working with His Father, and coöperating with the purposes of God.

Now in the light of that must at Cæsarea Philippi, let us read the four outstanding words in which He declared the method by which He would accomplish His purpose. The first is to be found in the Gospel according to John: "I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly."

The second is in the Gospel according to Luke: "I came to cast fire upon the earth; and what will I"—what do I desire—"if," and it is the sigh of desire, not a supposition—"Oh, that it were already kindled. But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!"

The third is in the Gospel according to Matthew: "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many."

The final one is again found in the Gospel according to John: "Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name. There came therefore a voice out of heaven, saving, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again."

In these great words in which He referred to His coming, He also revealed the method by which He will accomplish the great purposes already considered.

In the first of these statements He was speaking of the sheep; fleeced, wounded, harried by wolves; and He said, "I am the good Shepherd: the good Shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep" and again, "I lay down My life for the sheep." This was not a repetition, but the revela-

¹ John x. 10.

³ Matt. xx. 28.

Ibid., x. 11.

² Luke xii. 49, 50.

⁴ John xii. 27, 28.

Ibid., x. 15.

tion of a twofold fact. The first was figurative; the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep; that is, He dies for them; He grapples with the wolf in order that He may protect the sheep; and He dies in the struggle, but He slays the wolf. But in the second affirmation the figure is transcended, the truth emerges into a larger presentation than the figure can contain. The figure is exhausted when the good Shepherd of human life has fought the wolf and slain it, dying Himself in the struggle. But our good Shepherd says, "No one taketh it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." I will not merely slay the wolf in My dying, but I will give My life to the sheep in order that they may be able to overcome all the wolves that may attack them. What exposition can there be of such poetry as this? It is poetry itself transcended by the fact of the infinite grace and glory which it attempts to express. The Master came to fulfill law and prophecy, to establish a life in men which shall meet the Divine requirement; but men need a dynamic, and He gives them His life, that the forces of His purity may operate in them; but He could only do this through death. Jesus never attempted to explain the atonement. There is not a single passage in all His teaching that will help us if we are seeking for a theory.

But the fact He declared:

"He death by dying slew,

He hell in hell laid low;

Bowed to the grave, destroyed it so."

By the giving of His life He declared that He would destroy the wolf, and energize the sheep.

Let us turn to the great soliloquy in Luke. I describe it thus because it breaks in upon the continuity of the narrative.

¹ John x. 18.

It was a great heart-burst. "I came to cast fire upon the earth;" fire, the cleansing agent, superior to, and mightier than water. Water can only cleanse superficial things. Fire will penetrate and cleanse thoroughly. "I came to cast fire on the earth." It will be for the cleansing of sinful natures. How can it be done? "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" I cannot scatter this fire; I cannot fulfill My redeeming purpose in the experience of a man, save by the way of My own passion-baptism! Again here is no explanation of profound secrets, no attempt to unveil the mystery of a method deep as the very nature of God; but a clear declaration that only by the way of a passion-baptism could He fulfill His purpose.

The third declaration was: "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." He was charging His disciples that they were to enter into new social relationships, that they were to minister to one another, that they were to help each other within the economy of His new spiritual Kingdom. Then He inspired them by His own example as He said, "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister"; and added to the words of inspiration the revealing word, "and to give His life a ransom for many." Thus He brings the gift of peace into the new family and the new Kingdom, by the giving of His life, and the inspiration of that giving in the lives of other men, as in answer to it they are led to a similar ministry.

The last of these words was uttered in a great triumph of prayer. Jesus was under the very shadow of His Cross, and the Greek enquirers came, asking to see Him. When Philip brought them to Him our Lord said, "Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit. . . . Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour?" He did not say that. What then did He say? "But for this cause came I unto this hour." It was the hour of darkness, the blackness was gathering about His soul, the horror of the coming passion was filling His heart, "What shall I say?" Father, deliver Me from it? No, "Father, glorify Thy name." It was the triumph of One coming into the ultimate coöperation with His Father. The last word in the proclamation of purpose was "I am come in My Father's name." The last word in the unveiling of the method was "Father, glorify Thy name." The answer came in thunder, "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again." And then, the Cross before Him in determination, He uttered the great words of triumph, "Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself." This was His final word concerning the method whereby He will establish righteousness, redeem sinning men, and fulfill the purposes of God.

In the correlation of these declarations of purpose, and revelations of method, we have the teaching of Christ concerning His saving mission. The gift of life through death makes possible the fulfillment of ethical purpose. The gift of fire through death makes possible the redemption of sinners, and the healing of souls spiritually sick. The gift of peace through death is at once the inspiration and the realization thereof. The purpose of God realized through the sorrows of death is the way by which His glory is ensured.

What, then, are the conclusions to be drawn from this statement of Christ's own teaching concerning His mission? First, that He came to cure moral malady through death. Secondly, that He came to enable men to live life in harmony with the will of God, and in the fulfillment of His purpose by the bestowment of life out of death. Thirdly, that He came to separate by a sword in order to establish a final peace, through His death. Finally and inclusively that He came to coöperate with God, and to glorify the name of God through death. Thus He interpreted the purpose and method of His mission in the world.

"From that time began Jesus to preach, and to say, Repent ye; for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand."—Matthew iv. 17.

"Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him Whom He hath sent."—John vi 29.

"If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from Myself."—vii. 17.

IV

HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY

Our subject presupposes those of the two previous chapters and completes their teaching.

We now proceed to enquire what Jesus taught as to human responsibility in view of His Saviourhood.

There are certain preliminary matters which it is well we should bear in mind. The first is that of the general methods of Christ's teaching. As we read these Gospel stories, and listen to Him, sometimes speaking to vast multitudes who were gathered about Him, sometimes speaking to smaller companies of critical and hostile men who were challenging Him, sometimes speaking to companies yet smaller, companies of loyal souls, instructing them in the things of the Kingdom of God; we find under all these different circumstances a consistent method. We may describe that method briefly as being threefold, that of annunciation, application, and appeal.

His teaching was always that of the annunciation of truth. In the midst of the final hours, when challenged by the Roman procurator as to His Kingship, He made a significant claim: "To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth."

He never announced a truth, however, merely that men might apprehend it intellectually. He always applied truth to immediate circumstances, and to actual needs.

Moreover He never rested content with an annunciation and an application. There always rang through His teach-

¹ John xviii. 37.

ing the note of appeal, as He called men to obey the things that He said.

All of which may be stated in another way by declaring that through all the teaching of Christ there is discoverable an ethical purpose. He taught men, in order that they might be obedient to truth; and that by their obedience to it, they might be conformed to the will and the purpose of God. Consequently it is also noticeable in the teaching of Jesus that His objective was the will. His avenues of approach were those of the emotion and the intellect. He made a clear statement of truth that might be apprehended of the intellect, and employed such methods of statement as would make their appeal to the emotional nature, sometimes in the thunder of awful denunciations, and sometimes in the wooing winsomeness of infinite tenderness. But He never attempted merely to satisfy the questioning of the intellect, or merely to move the emotion. These were but avenues of approach, and He was forevermore storming the central citadel of human personality, the will; calling men by thunder and by tears, by clear intellectual statement and emotional appeal, to obedience; claiming that there must be the submission of the will to the truths declared.

From the mass of His teaching I select three outstanding and familiar statements which reveal the nature of His appeal, and enable us to understand His teaching concerning human responsibility.

It must be remembered that our Lord's ministry was exercised, not in the midst of men and women who, knowing truth, and being obedient to it, were like the truth, and of the truth. His ministry was exercised in the midst of men unlike the truth, disobedient to the revelation, and His appeal was made to those who had failed. That appeal is focused in the three passages selected.

The first is recorded by Matthew and Mark, as consti-

Human Responsibility tuting the key-note of His more public ministry. "From that time began Jesus to preach, and to say, Repent ye, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand."¹

The second was spoken in Jerusalem in the midst of hostile criticism, when crowds were following Him, as He Himself said, because He had fed them with material bread. He rebuked them for the motive of their following, sought to lift them on to higher levels of consideration, and consequently of conduct; charged them not to work for the bread that perishes, but to work for the bread of life. They answered His charge by the question, "What must we do, that we may work the works of God?" and to that enquiry, in the midst of that critical atmosphere, He replied, "This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him Whom He hath sent."²

The third of the three passages is found, as to its place in the Gospel, in the chapter immediately following, but as to its chronological place in the ministry of Christ, at a later period. When He had come up to Jerusalem for that memorable feast of tabernacles, and they were charging Him with bearing testimony to Himself, challenging Him as to the truth of the Divine authority of His mission, He uttered these very significant words: "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching whether it be of God;"³ and I emphasize in that way because I know no passage in the New Testament that has been made the basis of more interesting, and yet unwarranted application than this. Many things are said in exposition of these words which in themselves are quite true, but which are not in the meaning of the words. Jesus did not say, If you do the will you shall know the doctrine, all interpreters and expositors notwithstanding. He said, "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching whether it be of God."

In these three statements, taken out of the midst of our

¹ Matt. iv. 17. Mark i. 15. ² John vi. 28, 29. ³ John vii. 17.

Lord's ministry, we have a revelation of human responsibility in the presence of Himself as the Revealer of the will of God, and as the Saviour of men. In the first we find a revelation of the fundamental necessity, repentance towards the Kingdom of God; in the second, a revelation of responsibility created by Himself as the mediating Opportunity, faith in Himself; in the third, His most luminous and wonderful statement as to the responsibility of experimental proof; that men are to prove the Divinity of His teaching, the Divine authority of Himself and His mission, by putting Him to the test by obedience.

Let us examine these declarations a little more particularly. First we have His statement of fundamental necessity in the words, "Repent ye; for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand."

With these words the herald John had commenced his ministry; and when he was arrested and imprisoned, and his voice was silenced, then began Jesus to preach, and to say, Repent. That in itself is suggestive. Men may silence a voice by imprisoning a prophet, but they cannot end the ministry of truth. Another voice will take up the same word, and now no longer the voice of a herald, but the voice of the King.

The implications of this great word are two, those of the rights of God, and the rebellion of man.

There was a clear indication, both in the first word of John and in the first word of Jesus, of the direction of repentance; it must be repentance towards the Kingdom of God. Thus at the commencement of His ministry, our Lord insisted upon the rights of God. The deepest passion of His heart was a passion for the doing of God's will in His own life, and the establishment of God's Kingdom throughout the world; He insisted upon the rights of God over individual life in its entirety, over social life in all its inter-relationships, over national life in its purposes and its

Human Responsibility policies. The vision ever flaming before His eyes was that of the Kingship of God, the rights of God over all the affairs of men.

The second implication of this key word of the Master's preaching is that man is not living within that kingdom consciously, obediently; that he is out of harmony with the will of God. Our Lord charged the men of His own age with having wrong conceptions, which issued in wrong conduct, which resulted in wrong character. He stood in the midst of the men of His own age, and He said to them in effect: The fundamental necessity, if I am to exercise My power as Saviour, and to accomplish My mission in the world, is that men shall turn to the Kingdom of God. His call essentially was and is, that men shall enthrone the exiled God.

That is the first note of human responsibility. It is revolutionary, calling for upheaval and change in all the departments of human life. It is radical in that it deals with the inspirational sources of action, rather than with the external activities. It is restorative in that it calls man to return to the true order of his own life and of his own being. It is the key-note.

There is no Gospel in this. John had no Gospel to preach; he preached repentance. But no man is ready for the Gospel until he has heard this; and no man can receive the benefit which the Gospel provides until he has obeyed this fundamental word. If there has been a lack in the evangelistic preaching of recent years, it has been that this note has been forgotten, that in bringing men face to face with their responsibility to Jesus Christ, we have not commenced where He commenced, where the apostles commenced after Pentecost, where every great revival of religion has commenced, with the need of repentance, the need that is founded upon the rights of God in individual, social, and national human life.

This, then, is the first note of human responsibility, repentance towards the Kingdom of God. Repentance is the change of the mind, the thinking over again; and the thinking in this definite direction. In this particular word that our Lord made use of, there is no suggestion of sorrow, of tears, or of penitence. There was long controversy between the Protestant and the Roman theologians as to the difference between resipiscentia and pænetentia; Catholic theologians insisting that what is necessary is sorrow for the past; Protestant theologians asserting that the essential thing is the change of mind towards the Kingdom of God. There can be no doubt in the light of the New Testament that the latter were right. There will be sorrow for sin, but it is not necessary to initial repentance; and there are men and women who for twenty, thirty, and forty years, have been Christians, whose sorrow for sin to-day is deeper than it was at the beginning of their Christian life. Moreover there may be sorrow for sin without repentance. People may mourn and wail over sin, who never definitely change the mind, and set the life towards the Kingdom of God by making that Kingdom the master conception in everything.

That a man must enthrone at the centre of his life the God Who has been exiled therefrom is the first note in Christ's teaching concerning human responsibility in the presence of Himself and His mission as Saviour.

Then we turn to the next. Men asked Him, "What must we do, that we may work the works of God?" and His reply was definite, "This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him Whom He hath sent." We are immediately impressed by the superlative nature of that claim. Jesus Christ stood confronting the men of light and learning of His own age, and He said that the work of God was that they should believe on Him. He had rebuked them for the materialism of their thinking, and their passion, and

Human Responsibility

179.

their motive, declaring that they had followed Him, not even because they saw the sign, but because they had been fed. He charged them to lift their life on to the higher and the spiritual plane, and to work for spiritual food, and they had said, What is the work of God? Having called them to such high altitude and conception of life, He immediately said, This is the work of God that you believe on Me.

Thus He stands before men as between them and God; He calls men to the Kingdom, to repent towards the Kingdom; and when they come with enquiry as to how they are to do this, He answers, This is the work of God that you believe in Me. He claims in that word relation to the fundamental purpose of the Kingdom; that the King is revealed in Himself, that the Kingdom is revealed in Himself; and that He is not merely the revelation of the King and the Kingdom, but the Administrator of the Kingdom. He was sent from God, not merely to show the glory of God, but to deal with the rebels, the sinners, the men who had forgotten the Kingdom, and insulted the Throne, and to deal with them for reconciliation and restoration. His call is to belief in Himself; not to belief about Him, not to belief of any doctrine or theory of His Person. Not only is it true that men are not saved by holding a theory; it is equally true that He never on any single occasion made it necessary that a man should hold any theory concerning Him; but that men should believe in Him. That Greek preposition eis, with the accusative, always signifies motion into; so that perhaps we should be nearer the word of Christ if we read, That you should believe into Him Whom He hath sent. That lifts belief far higher than the intellectual realm, making it a volitional act by which a man abandons himself to the truth of which he is convinced. There are men who question as to whether it is possible to choose their beliefs. There are senses in which it is not

No man can choose a conviction. He can choose whether he will act upon a conviction. Conviction is necessary to faith; but faith is more than conviction; it is conviction followed. I recommend a very careful study of Professor James's essay on "The Will to Believe," in its bearing on the fact perpetually insisted upon in the Bible that belief is more than conviction, it is the activity that proceeds out of conviction, and harmonizes with conviction. The unbelief which robs a man of peace, and power, and prevents him coming into living association with Christ is not intellectual doubt or intellectual difficulty. The unbelief that shuts a man away from Christ is that man's refusal to act upon the conviction that has gripped his soul. And consequently the belief that saves is an action of the will, a decision to act upon a conclusion reached. That is the work of God. It is the initial work of God, because Christ was the Sent of God, God's new point of departure in human history; and as men accept that fact and yield to Him, they are working the work of God. The Kingdom of God is revealed in Christ, as to its King, and as to its laws; and is administered by Christ through the mystery of His work for saving men; and as men believe into Him and yield to Him, they work the work of God. That is the action that brings men into touch with all the redemptive forces which He has provided for their remaking.

The final words meet a difficulty which is often presented, and our Lord was perfectly clear about it. It has to do with the question of proof. Jesus was in Jerusalem, and the men of light and leading, who in this were quite sincere, had listened to Him, and had said, Whence hath this man the letters, the grammata, never having learned? They recognized the note of the schools of learning, and they said, How did He obtain it? They were questioning His

1 "The Will to Believe," First Essay.

Human Responsibility authority, and found themselves face to face with a scholastic problem. To that enquiry He replied: "My teaching is not Mine, but His that sent Me. If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from Myself." If with all reverence I may change the words of Christ, in an attempt to interpret the spirit of them, He said: You men who are trying to solve the mystery of the grammata which you have detected in My teaching, hear this; you have been listening, not to human wisdom, but to eternal truth, which God has given Me to speak to men. If you are face to face with difficulty about Me, then put what I say to the test of doing it; and if you will thus obey the thing I say, even though you are in intellectual difficulty about Me, you will find that the thing I say is of God, and not of Myself.

This is a supreme word. This is Christ's challenge to all men, men of scholarly attainments, men of intellectual difficulties, men who are holding aloof from the Christian fact because they cannot place the Christian Saviour. To all such He says, Postpone your discussion concerning My Person; do what I tell you; and in the doing you will discover whether what I say is Divine or human. In effect Christ says, I am content to abide by that proof in the case of the human soul.

No man has ever accepted that challenge of Jesus Christ honestly, and yielded himself to it completely, without the issue being that presently,—not immediately perhaps, for the spectres of the mind are not laid immediately—but presently, the man so obeying has to come back to the Christ, saying with Thomas, "My Lord and my God."¹ Only there must be no trifling with the condition. There must be obedience to the things He says. What is the first? Repent towards the Kingdom of God. And I will content

¹ John xx. 28.

myself with that. Christ stands confronting men and He says, Your conceptions are wrong. They are self-centred, materialized, earthly, mean. Change your mind. Put God upon the throne, believe in Him, seek His will, conform your life volitionally to His holiness; repent towards His government. And then He, representing God, calls men to trust Him, to let Him lead them step by step, to let Him interpret to them the meaning of the will of God; He asks them to receive from Him, with the humility of children, grace that will enable them to obey.

Do you say

" Dim tracts of time divide ? "

Then I ask you,

" Can time undo what once was true ? "

In this very hour, face the Christ, and say, I cannot make up my mind about Thee, O Christ. I am not certain whether these theologians and schoolmen and expositors are right; but I am coming after Thee, to put Thy teaching to the test of obedience. If you will do so, then I shall meet you on some fair morning in this world or the next, and you will say, I proved Him by my obedience, and at last I crowned Him my Lord and my God.

Repentance towards God; faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ; and that obedience which is the issue of repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ; are, according to the teaching of Christ, the conditions upon fulfillment of which men may appropriate the perfect salvation of the perfect Saviour.

"For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of heaven."—Matthew v. 20.

"Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them: else ye have no reward with your Father which is in heaven."—v. 48-vi. 1.

"Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee."

"I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to me; and they have kept Thy word. Now they know that all things whatsoever Thou hast given Me are from Thee: for the words which Thou gavest Me I have given unto them; and they received them, and knew of a truth that I came forth from Thee, and they believed that Thou didst send Me."

"Sanctify them in the truth: Thy word is truth."—John xvii 1, 6-8, 17.

V

SANCTITY

Our theme is that of the teaching of Christ concerning sanctity. Our Lord had been speaking to His disciples in the upper room in view of His departure, giving them those teachings which we now speak of as the Paschal discourses. Ceasing to teach, He began to pray; and in this seventeenth chapter of John we have the words of that great Paschal prayer, offered in anticipation of the Cross. They are a revelation of His purpose for the men whom He had been teaching, and who were gathered about Him. He prayed here, as He ever prayed, alone, while yet in their presence. They were sinning men, some of the men whom He had come to seek and to save. He was to them the Saviour; not that they at the moment perfectly understood the meaning of His mission, or fully apprehended all the results thereof; but that He stood to them in His own purpose and in His own power, in that sacred relationship. If they were sinning men they were also men who had fulfilled the responsibilities which He had revealed. They were men who had repented towards the Kingdom of God, and men who had believed in Him; they did not understand His teaching perfectly, had no final truth in their mind concerning the mystery of His Person, and were certainly quite ignorant of that passion towards which His face was set, for they were in rebellion against the very thought thereof. Nevertheless, they had believed in Him, and by that belief had appropriated values far greater than they themselves did know; and He prayed for these men, and in the brief words of this particular verse we have the ultimate word expressive of His desire for them, "Sanctify them in the truth:

Thy word is truth."

Sanctification,—or preferably because not so common,— the word sanctity, already used, is the ultimate word in salvation. We have been considering the teaching of our Lord on these co-related themes; sin as constituting the need for salvation; salvation as the supply of that need in the economy of God; salvation interpreted by our Lord's use of the word; salvation as the purpose of His mission in the world; salvation as to the human responsibilities which this provision creates.

Now we come to consider the issue of salvation, which is sanctity. That is the ultimate word concerning salvation.

If I may borrow the great words of the Roman letter;— justification, sanctification, and glorification,—I would remind you that justification is the root; glorification will be the ultimate fruit; while the supreme experience of the present life, which is in itself a fulfillment of those conditions whereby the root shall proceed to the ultimate fruit, is that of sanctity. The will of our Lord for His people is that they may live the life of sanctity, that they may know the experience of sanctification. These words of Jesus constitute a brief petition in which we have our Lord's teaching concerning sanctity suggestively revealed, when the petition is interpreted by the context of the whole prayer.

He prayed that these men might be sanctified in the truth, and He immediately revealed what He meant by His own term, "the truth," as He said, "Thy Word is truth." We are led therefore to enquire what He meant when He said,

"Thy Word." If we have the interpretation of the term

"the truth" in the term "Thy Word," then we enquire what He meant, when in that great prayer under the shadow of the Cross, amid the silence of the consecrated

¹ John xvii. 17

Sanctity hour, He spoke of the Word of God. If we go back to the earlier part of the prayer we shall find our answer. It is recorded that He said, "I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to Me; and they have kept Thy word."¹ We immediately recognize the connection between the opening statement of that verse, and the closing one; between "I have manifested Thy name" and "They have kept Thy word." When He spoke therefore of the truth, and defined it as being the Word of God, He was, according to the interpretation of His own uttered words, referring to that manifestation of God which He had made, and which He described as the manifestation of the Name.

And yet again we have further light in the statement: "The words which Thou gavest Me I have given unto them; and they received them, and knew of a truth that I came forth from Thee, and they believed that Thou didst send Me."²

In these two statements we have two expressions of our Lord, arresting our attention, and enabling us to understand His thought concerning sanctity. He spoke of the Word of God, and when He so spoke He referred to a manifestation of the name of God, which He said He had given to these men. This is the great word with which we are familiar through all the writings of John, and indeed through all our New Testament, the word logos, signifying the unified and complete revelation of God made through Christ Himself. That, fundamentally and inclusively, is the truth in which He prays that men may be sanctified. In the second statement we have not the same expression, but another carrying another thought: My sayings, that is, such sayings as make application of essential truth in local particulars. It when He spoke of the Word He was referring to the unified and inclusive truth; when He spoke of the sayings, He was

¹ John xvii. 6.

² John xvii. 8.

referring to the words which He had uttered in application to certain human needs.

We shall understand our Lord's thoughts concerning sanctity in proportion as we know the truth to which He referred when He prayed that we might be sanctified in the truth. For that purpose we shall consider that matter under the twofold division of the Word as the manifestation of the name; and the sayings as the application of truth, included in the Word, to the needs of men.

The manifestation of the name producing the right attitude to God issues in sanctity of being, which is holiness. The revelation of duty producing right attitude to men issues in sanctity of doing, which is righteousness. Sanctity is holiness and righteousness, two matters which cannot be severed; two matters which I sometimes fear we are in danger of severing. On one hand, I hear a great deal about holiness, with little reference to righteousness. On the other hand, I hear a great deal about the necessity for righteousness, with very little reference to holiness. But it is impossible that there ever should be righteousness which is not the outcome of holiness; and it is equally impossible that there should be any holiness which is not expressed in righteousness. Holiness is rectitude of character. Righteousness is rectitude of conduct. Both the ideas are related, and are expressed most perfectly in the word sanctity.

Our Lord in this great prayer uttered His ultimate desire for the sinning men who by faith in Him as Saviour enter into new relationship with God. His desire for them is, that they may be sanctified in the truth. We turn first of all to the study of sanctity of character by the Name; and secondly to sanctity of conduct by the sayings, or moral system, which our Lord has given to us.

We commence then with this first conception of truth,

Sanctity

"Thy word is truth."¹ "I manifested Thy name unto the men."² Now to understand this we must take a larger outlook, and remind ourselves of the method and system of this Gospel according to John. It is not a life story, a biography. It is exactly what John declared it to be, the gathering together of certain incidents, of signs in the way of works; of teaching in the form of words; which in their relationship to each other serve to demonstrate the fact that Jesus was the Son of God.

When that is borne in mind we shall discover at the commencement of the Gospel a key to the interpretation of the revelation which Jesus gave to us, and which John made clear in the process of his book: "The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."³ John was looking back to a past economy, in order that he might draw attention to the new economy. He was reminding those for whom he wrote his Gospel of a previous revelation, of how the law came, —the preposition "by" is a very unfortunate one,—"through Moses"; and how—for there was a new revelation, not contradicting the old, but fulfilling it, explaining it, leading out its essential values to ultimate perfection,—"grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." I have referred to that key word in order that we may go back to the previous revelation. "The law came by Moses." What was the first word in that law? Not a moral enactment, but a revelation of God. When after eighty years of preparation, forty years in Egypt, and forty years in the magnificence of the desert, Moses came to the hour of crisis, and was called to his great work, he was called by the mystic symbolism of a bush that burned with fire and was not consumed, and by a revelation of the God Who dwelt in the bush. As this man Moses, of reverent habit and demeanour, who had learned deep secrets from Nature during the forty years of his shepherd life, drew

¹ John xvii. 17. ² Ibid., xvii. 6. ³ Ibid., i. 17.

near to the unusual sight of a bush burning with fire and yet not consumed, a voice said to him, "Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."¹ Then God revealed Himself to him by a name; and this is the name, a name which is an announcement of revelation, imperfect, incomplete, "I AM"; and as it appeared as though something were to be added to the essential word, by way of revelation, the word recoiled upon itself. "I AM, THAT I AM."² The law came through the man who had received that revelation.

Now I take up this Gospel according to John, and having read that key word, "The law came by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ," I find that its supreme value is not its revelation of an ethical code, but its revelation of a name, its revelation of how through this new Messenger of the covenant, the very Son of God Himself, the name was proclaimed; and this prayer of Jesus bears witness to the truth of that assertion, for in the final praying He said to His Father, "I have manifested Thy name." What then is the name? That name is revealed in the course of the discourses of Jesus, some of them careful and continued, some of them fragmentary and incidental, in which we find great words, characterized at once by sublimity and simplicity. The words to which I refer are those in which He took again the word that had been spoken incompletely from the splendour of the burning bush, "I AM," and completed the revelation, "I am the Bread of life,"³ "I am the light of the world,"⁴ "I am the Door,"⁵ "I am the good Shepherd,"⁶ "I am the resurrection, and the life,"⁷ "I am the way, and the truth, and the life,"⁸ "I am the true Vine."⁹ Thus He linked the sublime declaration of essential Being

¹ Exod. iii. 5.

² Ibid., iii. 14.

³ John vi. 35.

⁴ Ibid., viii. 12.

⁵ Ibid., x. 9.

⁶ Ibid., x. 11.

⁷ Ibid., xi. 25.

⁸ Ibid., xiv. 6.

⁹ Ibid., xv. 1.

Sanctity to symbols so full of simplicity that all our children love them; the simplest words of human speech. "I am"; the formula of the fundamental fact in the nature of Deity, that God is the Self-existent One, without beginning and without support other than that within His own Being; Jesus linked to every-day symbols;—bread, light, a door, a shepherd, a resurrection, a way, a vine. When His ministry of teaching was complete, the One Who had uttered these words came into the presence of the Father, Who bears the essential and eternal name, and He said: "I have manifested Thy name unto these men."

That manifestation may thus be summarized:

"I am the bread of life."¹ God Himself as the very bread of life to man.

"I am the light of the world;"² God Himself as the illumination of man's life and pathway.

"I am the door."³ God Himself as the safety of His people.

"I am the good Shepherd." God Himself as the Love that cares for His people.

"I am the resurrection and the life."⁵ God Himself as the power by which men shall come to the consummation of purpose, and that in spite of the tragedy of death which results from their sin.

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life;"⁶ God Himself as the very pathway or course in which men shall proceed in order to the fulfillment of that purpose.

"I am the vine."⁷ God Himself in intimate association with men, making their ministry, perfecting them, and enabling them to fulfill high and holy service.

This was the sevenfold unveiling of the Name, and we at once discover its value to men. "I am the bread of life"—that is, ability at the disposal of men. "I am the

¹ John vi. 35. ² Ibid., x. 9. ³ Ibid., xi. 25. ⁴ Ibid., xv. 1.

⁵ Ibid., viii. 12. ⁶ Ibid., x. 11. ⁷ Ibid., xiv. 6.

light"—that is, fight or direction upon the pathway for men. "I am the door"—that is, love, perfect safety for men folded within the enclosure. "I am the good Shepherd"—that is, care, and perfect rest for all hearts who trust in Him. "I am the resurrection"—that is, consummation, hope upon the darkest day of sorrow and bereavement. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life"; that is the course or the pathway of the pilgrimage, and consequent confidence even when the sun is blotted out of the heavens. "I am the true vine"; that is provision for ministry or service, discipline and purging, in order that much fruit may be brought forth.

Such was the manifestation of the name, and in every case it was manifestation through Himself. In every case He was, in human guise and form and fashion, the unveiling of Deity; and as men touched the warm flesh of the Son of Man they were thrilled by contact with God through the Son of God. And now at the end He said, "I have manifested Thy name." . . . "I have given them Thy word . . . sanctify them in the truth: Thy word is truth." And of these men He said, "They have kept Thy word"—that is, they have kept it in view, they have observed it.

What, then, is this picture of sanctity? It is that of sanctity of character by the Name. This revelation produces love in the heart of a believer; love inspires obedience to the things revealed; and, almost without consciousness at first, when the revelation has inspired love, and love has inspired obedience, character becomes holy, because the life is adjusted to the truth concerning God. Holiness is not something which we can accurately designate by the impersonal pronoun it. Holiness of character is the attitude of life adjusted towards God in response to the revelation of the Name through Jesus Christ our Lord.

We now pass to the second matter; sanctity of conduct in response to the sayings of Jesus. All the things to which

Sanctity we have referred constitute the inclusive, unified, final revelation. He is the I AM. Now out of the "I am" of Jesus came His sayings. Sayings are component parts of the whole, uttered for the instruction of individual lives, and social conditions, and immediate requirements. Christ in Himself is the full and final Truth; and even if He had never uttered a precept or a maxim, He had uttered all Truth in Himself. Nevertheless because of the frailty of human life and the finiteness of the human mind, He, the essential Truth, did speak in sayings, in maxims, in instructions; and the supreme collection is to be found, not in John's Gospel, but in Matthew's, in the Manifesto. The Manifesto is less than the King; all truth is not in the Sermon on the Mount; but it is in the One Who uttered it. But the Sermon on the Mount must be uttered in order that I may be helped in my desire to obey the truth, the revelation of which has called me to the character of holiness, in order that I may express the character of holiness in the conduct of righteousness. He spoke in sayings, in words, in moral and ethical terms; and if we would understand what the sayings of Jesus are, then we must take the whole of the Manifesto, and study it carefully.

There are two master principles which occur in the midst of it: "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of heaven";¹ "Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."² Gathered around these two principles, are words of direct and immediate application; conditioning individual life, and social life; and revealing the moral standards of the Kingdom of God.

Take the first. "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees." The contextual interpretation shows that this is rightness towards men and the affairs of this life, as the outcome of right re-

¹ Matt. v. 20.

² Matt. v. 48.

lationship with God. The failure of the righteousness of scribes and Pharisees is revealed in an incidental saying of Jesus in the course of the Manifesto: "Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them." That is an illuminative word, it is a startling word. Bring the ordinary morality of the world into the light of that word, and it stands condemned. Rightness, in order that we may be thought well of by men, is condemned in the Christian economy, not in itself, but as being relatively worthless. There is a vast amount of morality which is conditioned by the presence of the policeman; and there is still a vaster amount of morality, on a higher level judged by the ordinary standards of human life, which is conditioned by pride. It is very valuable for all merely material purposes, but it is condemned. Honesty is the best policy! But the man who is honest merely because it is politic to be honest is a rogue and a rascal at heart. That is the righteousness which the Lord condemned; the righteousness which is done to be seen of men. What, then, is the righteousness that He inculcated? The righteousness which is done to be seen of God; to please God whether men understand or not; whether it shall please men or not. His illustrations are as remarkable as His ideal. Alms are to be given, and prayer is to be offered privately; and in fasting men are to go amid the crowds as though they had been to a feast, with brightness upon their faces.

The second principle is expressed in the words, "Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." We must not interfere with that saying of Jesus. Some people are terribly afraid of criticism, higher or lower, but they indulge in it for themselves when they read that word. Let us interpret the text in relation to its context. When did He say it? Immediately after He had said

¹ Matt. vi. 1.

Sanctity

"Love your enemies." The second principle of man's relationship to his fellow men is that he is to act towards them by likeness to God in love. The command is thus superlative, rather than minimized by its connection with the command to love our enemies.

This is sanctity of conduct. Love for the Lord inspires us to receive His word, to accept it as authoritative, as final; and the reception of the word thus expresses itself in obedience, which is conduct love-impulsed. Thus righteousness is life adjusted to the truth about God, expressing itself in conduct towards men.

"Sanctify them in the truth: Thy word is truth." This is the word which He gave; the manifestations of the Name, the sayings which He uttered; these constitute the moral code which men must obey. "Sanctify them in the truth." That was His prayer. And His estimate of sanctification is that holiness of character which results from the soul responsive to God as revealed in Christ; and that righteousness of conduct which grows from such character, the expression of relationship to God in a man's dealings with his fellow men.

Finally this teaching was included in a prayer. He was praying for these men, and in the selfsame prayer He prayed for us. "Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on Me through their word."¹ We are of that host and company who have believed through the apostolic word. The ultimate value of His prayer is found in the opening words, "Father, the hour is come." What hour? And again there need not be and must not be any speculation. Throughout this Gospel according to John, that hour is constantly referred to. When His mother came to Him at the first sign, He said, "Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come."² They could not arrest Him "because His hour was not yet come."³

¹ John xvii. 20.

² Ibid., ii. 4.

³ Ibid., viii. 20.

At last, under the very shadow of the Cross, He said,

"Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee."

The hour was the hour of His passion. He was praying first for continued fellowship on the part of His Father with

Himself in that ultimate darkness of the Cross, and the victory of the resurrection that lay beyond; and in that prayer He uttered this petition. That first petition of the prayer was answered. His Father glorified Him by raising

Him from among the dead, by completing the Exodus; and now we can go through that answer of death and resurrection in the person of our Lord Himself, and therefore sanctity is possible to us. Had there been none other than the manifestation of the name in a life, and the uttering of the law in precepts, I should have closed the book and should have said, The ideal is stupendous and marvellous, but I can never attain unto it. But the One Who manifested the name, the One Who uttered the moral code, was glorified in the mystery of death and resurrection; and placed all His resources at the disposal of sinful men, that they might live the life of sanctity, that they might turn to God, and their life be adjusted to Him in holiness; that in the power of such adjustment they might turn back to the affairs of everyday life, in office and mart and shop and household, and wherever they may be, to live towards men in love, in answer to the impulse of the life adjusted towards God, which is the life of righteousness.

¹ John xvii. 1.

"From that time began Jesus to preach, and to say, Repent ye; for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand."—Matthew iv. 17.

"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth."—vi. 9, 10.

"Seek ye first His Kingdom, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."—vi. 33.

"The Kingdom of heaven is at hand."—x. 7.

"Art Thou He that cometh, or look we for another? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Go your way and tell John the things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached to them."—xi. 3-5.

"From the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force."—xi. 12.

"If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, then is the Kingdom of God come upon you."—xii. 28.

"The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the Gospel."—Mark i. 15.

"The Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you."—Luke x. 9.

"Nicodemus came unto Him by night, and said to Him, Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these signs that Thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered, and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto Him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God."—John iii. 2-5.

"Verily I say unto you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God."—xiv. 25.

THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTION

THE vastness of this subject will at once be recognized, and its immediate interest conceded. To deal with it exhaustively is not my purpose, but rather to survey the teaching in outline, by grouping and considering the actual words of our Lord. Some of the aspects with which I shall deal will be: the fundamental conception; some different phases of the one fact, as they are unified in Himself; His view of the existing anarchy; the redemptive processes which He revealed,—the Cross, the Church, the Conflict, the Crisis of the second Advent; and His revelation of final realization.

We commence, then, with the fundamental conception. The subject is one of immediate interest. The attention of many is being turned to the Kingdom of God, and much that is of very great value has been written thereon during recent years. In this process of reconsideration and restatement certain things have been said from which personally I should very profoundly differ, while I respect those who have said them. There have been those who have declared that we must return to the teaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God, and abandon the apostolic teaching concerning the Church. The idea of the Kingdom and that of the Church have thus been put into opposition to each other. It has been affirmed that the conception of the Church, as we know it, is Pauline, and that Paul in some measure departed from the ideals of Jesus; and we have been urged, in the light of that interpretation, to get back to Christ. Now our present line of study will not bring us to the consideration of the alleged difference between Paul and Christ; but we shall see where Christ placed the Church in regard to the Kingdom.

That is only a passing illustration. The interesting fact is that at the present hour there is a new interest in the subject; a new enquiry, a new criticism, a new attempt to restate. What is meant by the Kingdom of God? How far are we responsible for it? How far are we realizing it? How far is it possible to realize it? My desire in thus indicating the atmosphere of the moment is to emphasize the immediate interest of our theme.

The fundamental conception will be considered in two ways: first, by observing that the Kingdom of God,—whatever may be meant by the phrase,—was most evidently fundamental to the doing and the teaching of Jesus; and secondly, by attempting to discover the idea that was central to His mind as He used the term.

First, then, the Kingdom was fundamental in the doing and the teaching of our Lord. This hardly needs proof. Whether we consider the teaching that was public, or private, the teaching that was systematic, or incidental; we find running through the whole of it, like flashes of light, this word Kingdom and its cognate phrases. To summarize mathematically and briefly: in the Gospel according to Matthew I find the word Kingdom recorded as passing His lips forty-seven times; in Mark, thirteen; in Luke, thirty-one; and in John, five. In this connection it should be remembered that John used another phrase, which is really the equivalent of Kingdom. His phrase was "eternal life," a phrase emphasizing the power and result of the Divine Kingship, as the other phrases indicate its fact, and deal with its applications.

It is impossible for us to cover all the ground; but there are certain outstanding facts at which we will glance.

The Fundamental Conception

These we will group around the words I have already borrowed from the second treatise of Luke, the doing and the teaching of Jesus. I shall of course deal especially with the teaching, but must also make a brief reference to the fact that His doing was equally based upon this fundamental conception.

The first recorded teaching of Jesus which can be at all described as systematic is found in the Gospel of John. It was given to an individual, Nicodemus. A ruler among his people, he came to Jesus and said, "Rabbi, we know that Thou art a Teacher come from God; for no man can do these signs that Thou doest, except God be with Him." To him the Master said, "Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." When in amazement the ruler replied, "How can a man be born when he is old?" our Lord explicitly replied, "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God."¹ The first account of our Lord's coming face to face in personal dealing with an inquiring soul records His assumption of the Kingdom of God as the matter of supreme moment. The moment He began to deal with one man who was inquiring for the final light, His recognition of the importance of the Kingdom of God is manifest.

Then observe that when He commenced His more public, definite, and systematic propaganda in Galilee, both Matthew and Mark declare that this was the key-note of His preaching. He "began to preach, and to say, Repent ye, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand."² His call was to repentance, and the immediate reason was that the Kingdom of heaven was at hand.

Matthew and Mark, in chronicling that key-note to the ministry of our Lord, used different phrases. Matthew reported Him as saying, "The Kingdom of heaven is at

¹ John iii. 2-5.

² Matt. iv. 17. Mark i. 15.

hand";¹ while Mark recorded the words thus, "The Kingdom of God is at hand."² Thus at the very commencement of our study, we are brought face to face with these two phrases, and to base any particular doctrine upon the difference is entirely unwarranted. The phrase our Lord most commonly used was that of "the Kingdom of heaven," and Mark's change is a revelation of the simple and natural way in which these stories are told. It is certainly true that our Lord did use the phrase, the Kingdom of God. In our study of His teaching we shall make no difference between these two phrases. They are mutually interpretative.

Presently He commissioned and sent forth twelve men, and yet later, seventy. In each commission the principal work allotted to them was in the interest of the Kingdom; "Preach, saying, The Kingdom of heaven is at hand";³ "Say unto them, the Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you."⁴

In the parabolic teaching of the Lord, the fact that this conception was fundamental is strikingly revealed. We have twenty-nine parables recorded in the New Testament. Of these, seventeen definitely mention the Kingdom of God, and are declared to be in exposition of it. Those in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew,—the Sower, the Darnel, the Mustard Seed, the Leaven, the hidden Treasure, the Pearl, the Drag-net, and the Householder specifically deal with the subject. And beyond those, we have the parables of the unmerciful Servant, the Labourers in the Vineyard, the Two Sons in the Vineyard, the wicked Husbandmen, the royal Marriage Feast, the ten Virgins, the Talents, the Seed growing secretly, and the Pounds;—all of them definitely and explicitly parables concerning the Kingdom of heaven, or the Kingdom of God. If we turn to the other twelve

¹ Matt. iv. 17.

² Matt. x. 7.

³ Mark i. 15.

⁴ Luke x. 9.

The Fundamental Conception we find, although the word Kingdom may not occur in them, in more than half of them the context reveals the fact that they are related to the thought of the Kingdom; and in the whole of them the Kingdom conception is the master idea. Whenever He uttered a parable, in His own mind there was the vision of the Kingdom of God.

The same is true of the great systematic discourses of Jesus. In that which we call the Sermon on the Mount, the Manifesto of the King, the ethic is patently that of His Kingdom. Those parables of the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, which He delivered partly to the mulctudes and partly to His own disciples, are a revelation of the processes of the Kingdom through a certain period. In the great prophecies uttered on Olivet the master thought is still that of the Kingdom. In His last conversation with the disciples in the upper room, before the agony of Gethsemane and Calvary, when He instituted the new ordinance, He said,—it was but an allusion, but it is significant,—"I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God."¹ Thus it is seen that the final realization of all things, towards which He looked under the shadow of the Cross, the light and the glory that lay beyond, was the coming Kingdom of God. When we turn from the Gospels themselves to the last paragraph of history concerning Him ere His ascension, in the first chapter of the Acts, we find that after His resurrection He was seen for many days, during which He was giving His disciples instructions concerning the Kingdom of God.

So that from the first note of systematic teaching, through all methods,—parabolic, systematic, incidental; to the last hour of anticipation, the Kingdom of God was in His mind.

His doing was a further revelation of the fact, which may now be dismissed by three references. When John

¹ Mark xiv. 25.

was cast into prison he was puzzled and perplexed by the method that Jesus was adopting, and he sent his disciples to Him, asking, "Art Thou He that cometh, or look we for another?" Our Lord replied, "Go your way and tell John the things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached to them."¹ As they departed to bear His message He said to the people, "The Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force."² The connection of His declaration with the message He sent to John must be patent. John looked for the Kingdom, but he could not understand the method of the King. He seemed to be doing nothing. He was gathering no army. He was making no proclamation. He was calling together no parliament of men. He was simply walking about, healing a few, speaking to individuals and companies of men. When the disciples of John came asking Him if He were the King, or were they to look for another, He said in effect, Go and tell John that these things are the things of the Kingdom. I am at work in the interests of the Kingdom. I am manifesting the powers of the Kingdom. I am preparing for the coming of the Kingdom. Then to the multitudes He declared that only men who do violence to their own prejudices will enter that Kingdom. Thus He revealed the fact that all the works of healing and mercy were works of the Kingdom, and works for the Kingdom.

When the Pharisees declared that He cast out demons by the power of Beelzebub, He said, "If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, then is the Kingdom of God come upon you."³ It was but an incidental reference, yet it revealed the fact that when He cast demons out, He realized

¹ Matt. xi. 3-5.

² Ibid., xi. 12.

³ Ibid., xii. 28.

The Fundamental Conception that He was making possible the Kingdom of God in the case of the individual, and of society.

Again there came a day when the people of Siloam brought their children to Jesus, and the disciples bade them depart. He rebuked the disciples, and He did it angrily. Mark tells us quite definitely that He was moved with indignation. But what was His argument for permitting the children to come? "Of such is the Kingdom of God." So that whether He accounted for His works to a perplexed prophet, or defended His method to the critical and unbelieving Pharisees, or welcomed the children, the reason underlying everything in His own mind was the Kingdom of God.

Thus it is patent that the Kingdom of God was His chief concern, His constant inspiration, His abiding purpose, and His all-sufficient power. Follow Him through all the days of His public ministry, listen to every word that fell from His lips, accompany Him upon every journey that He took, watch every action of beneficence or of judgment; and in the light of the things He Himself said, it becomes apparent that the reason for all speech and all action, for all journeys and all tarryings, for all pity and all anger, was the Kingdom of God. It was the master passion of His life, the fundamental conception of all His teaching and all His doing.

So we may pass to our second enquiry. What was this idea which was so patently central to His mind as He taught and wrought? The terms, Kingdom of heaven, Kingdom of God, were in common use in our Lord's day in the Rabbinical teachings. These terms, or their equivalents, are found in the Old Testament Scriptures. Therefore when our Lord made use of these terms, men were very familiar with them. We are familiar with them because to-day they are peculiarly Christian terms.

¹ Mark x. 14.

The idea of the Kingdom of God, crystallized into a term, emerges in Exodus. Its first appearance in the Old Testament Scriptures is when God said, through Moses, to His ancient people, "Ye shall be unto Me a Kingdom of priests."¹ It appears again in the second book of Samuel, in the story of David's desire to build a temple.² We find it again in the books of the Chronicles twice over.³ The term is found in the books of the Psalms six times.⁴ It is mentioned by the prophets Isaiah,⁵ Micah,⁶ and Obadiah,⁷ and it is the very burden of that strange and wonderful book of Daniel. So that the terms our Lord made use of were familiar in Rabbinical teachings, and by reason of the fact that they were incorporated in the Scriptures; but to neither Rabbinical teaching nor Old Testament Scriptures must we go for interpretation of His meaning. The Rabbinical teachings He largely contradicted. He did not contradict the teachings of the Old Testament, but He corrected misinterpretations of them, and He fulfilled them. When therefore we desire to know what our Lord really meant, we have but one court of appeal, His own teachings. The very last story to which I have made reference, the first paragraph in the Acts, reveals the fact that after crucifixion and resurrection His disciples were in entire ignorance of all the deep content of the phrase with which they were so familiar, and it was necessary that He should give them their immediate work, and leave them waiting for fuller explanation after the Pentecostal effusion.

Let us then first take the terms which were so often upon the lips of our Lord, and quite simply look at them; the two terms, the Kingdom of heaven, the Kingdom of

¹ Exod. xix. 6. ² Sam. vii. 12, 13.

³ 1 Chron. xxix. 11. 2 Chron. xiii. 8.

⁴ Psa. xxii. 28; xlv. 6; ciii. 19; cxlv. 11, 12, 13.

⁵ Isa. ix. 7; lxii. 3. ⁶ Micah iv. 8. ⁷ Obad. 21.

The Fundamental Conception

God. While, as we have seen, no clear-cut distinction must be made between them, and while in all probability His own term was most often the Kingdom of heaven, there can be little doubt that He used them both.

The phrase "the Kingdom of heaven" is only to be found in Matthew; but in Matthew we also find the phrases "the Kingdom of God" and "His Kingdom," and that in most remarkable circumstances.

Let us first consider the word Kingdom, which is found in both phrases. Every one is supposed to know what kingdom means. Nevertheless one of the first things necessary to our understanding of the teaching of our Lord is that we should carefully examine this, because our common understanding of the word is partial. In order to an interpretation of the true meaning of the word let us make use of three very simple words: Rule, Realm, Result. Rule is the abstract meaning of Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is the rule of God. That is the deepest note. Realm is the concrete fact of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is the sphere in which His rule is exercised. Result is the realization of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is the result realized within His realm through His rule. The Kingdom of God is the rule of God. The Kingdom of God is the realm over which God rules. The Kingdom of God is the result produced in the realm of God as the result of the rule of God.

All these values are in our word, and we must watch for them. As we study, we must be careful lest when we read of the Kingdom of God we simply think of a territory, and largely neglect the first and fundamental fact that gives value to everything else, that of the rule of God. Modern writers are employing another word, the reign of God. Now in certain applications that word is of enormous value, but it leaves a good deal out, and the actual word Kingdom is better; for the reign of God is not the territory over which He rules, but the exercise of authority over it, while the word Kingdom includes both ideas, and more. The Kingdom of heaven is at once the authority of Heaven; the territory over which the heavenly order prevails; and the results produced within that territory because the heavenly order prevails. These are the values of the word, and the truths which we must keep in mind.

Let us now consider the phrase, of heaven. A remarkable fact, perhaps a small one apparently, and yet full of significance, is that wherever we read "the Kingdom of heaven" we more accurately express what is actually written if we read, "The Kingdom of the heavens." The word is plural. The value of that may be discovered by a reference to the Lord's Prayer. To read it a little more literally, as to its first half: "Our Father Who art in the heavens, Thy name be hallowed. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth." A doctrine of God is included in the invocation: "Our Father Who art in the heavens." This method of address suggests the omnipresence of God. In the final clause, "as in heaven, so on earth," the word is singular; and the reference patently is to that heaven which is the place of the supreme manifestation of God. Thus the prayer is that the heavenly order may be established in the world.

So that the phrase, Kingdom of heaven, reveals the pattern of the true Kingdom on earth. The idea of the term is that in this world, the laws of heaven should be observed; and by that I do not merely mean the laws heaven makes for earth, but the laws that heaven obeys. How little we know of the heaven that lies beyond, of all that wonderful region, place, locality, where are unfallen angels and the spirits of the just men made perfect. But Christ

¹ Matt. vi. 9, 10

The Fundamental Conception taught us to pray that the laws that govern them, the reason for the things they do, the master-passion of all their activity, may become the laws, the reason, the master-passion governing the affairs of this world of ours.

The phrase, "of God," with a sublime brevity brings us face to face with the central authority, for the Kingdom of the heavens is the Kingdom of God.

We are not at present dealing with applications. We shall come to some of them; for our Lord believed that flowers are in that Kingdom, and that the King clothes them; that birds are in that Kingdom, and that the King is with the dying sparrow; that children are in that Kingdom, and that "in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father."

Thus we return in conclusion to the central idea of Jesus when He used these phrases. That idea was that of the rule of God. The rule of God in His mind was at once a fact; a claim in the presence of human will; and a purpose, the master-passion and inspiration of all His own ministry. The clear vision shining through all clouds and darkness, illuminating every hour of His patient, sorrowful life, making even the mists about the Cross purple with the joy that was set before Him, was that of the authority of God, the rule of God, the reign of God. His mission in the world was to proclaim that authority, to insist upon it, to explain it, to reveal it, to woo men towards it, to warn men against neglecting it. The mighty passion that bore Him up through all sorrows and misunderstandings, that bore Him at last to Calvary, was His passion for that Kingdom of God.

We have never yet begun to see the exquisite mosaic of these four stories, nor have we caught the majestic harmony of their varied tones, until we have realized that the Kingdom of God, in the thinking and the purpose of our Lord, is the key to the mosaic, and the dominant chord of the music. His passion in this world of ours, in this human history which is but a part of God's great whole, was for the restoration of the lost order, the establishment of the Kingdom, and the bringing back of men and things under the beneficent and healing and beauteous sway of the authority of God.

"From that time began Jesus to preach, and to say, Repent ye; for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand."—Matthew iv. 17.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven."

"Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven."

"Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of heaven."—v. 3, 10, 19.

"Thy Kingdom come."

"But seek ye first His Kingdom, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."—vi. 10, 33.

"As ye go, preach, saying, The Kingdom of heaven is at hand."—x. 7.

"And from the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force."—xi. 12.

"But if I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, then is the Kingdom of God come upon you."—xii. 23.

"The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity. . . . Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears, let him hear."—xiii. 41, 43.

"Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple to the Kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old."—xiii. 52.

"I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."—xvi. 19.

"Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of heaven."—xviii. 3.

"Therefore say I unto you, The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."—xxi. 43.

"But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye shut the Kingdom of heaven against men: for ye enter not in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in to enter."—xxiii. 13.

"If thine eye cause thee to stumble, cast it out: it is good for thee to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell."—Mark ix. 47.

"Heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. But into whatsoever city ye shall enter, and they receive you not, go out into the streets thereof and say, Even the dust from your city, that cleaveth to our feet, we do wipe off against you: howbeit know this, that the Kingdom of God is come nigh."—Luke x. 9-11.

"Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom."—xii. 32.

"The law and the prophets were until John: from that time the Gospel of the Kingdom of God is preached, and every man entereth violently into it."—xvi. 10.

"Neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the Kingdom of God is within you."—xvii. 21.

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto Him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God."—John iii. 3-5.

"My Kingdom is not of this world: If My Kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My Kingdom not from hence."—xviii. 36.

II

DIFFERENT PHASES OF THE ONE FACT

LET us now consider some phases of the one inclusive fact of the Kingdom of God suggested by the phrases which our Lord used when referring to it. His first recorded reference to the Kingdom was in His conversation with Nicodemus. His last recorded reference to the Kingdom was in His conversation with Pilate. These are at least interesting and suggestive facts. Both these conversations are found in the Gospel according to John: and indeed, they are only found there; and yet further, they are the only occurrences of the word Kingdom in that Gospel.

Between these conversations the word was constantly upon His lips, as the idea was ever in His mind; and so varied were His references and declarations that sometimes they seem to be contradictory. It would not be at all difficult for any one, who was so disposed, to set down one thing our Master said, upon one occasion, concerning the Kingdom; and opposite it something He said upon another occasion, apparently in direct opposition. To take a simple illustration. He declared, "Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father." ¹ Upon another occasion He said, "The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation." ² I am not proposing now to deal with that apparent contradiction. I but refer to it. As a matter of fact all these seeming contradictions must be considered in their relationship to His whole conception of the Kingdom; and being so considered, they will be found to

¹ Matt. xiii. 43.

² Luke xvii. 20.

reveal different aspects of the Kingdom as He understood it, and as He came to reveal it.

At the commencement of these studies will be found a table of the references which our Lord made to the Kingdom, set out, so far as I am able, in chronological order.

A glance at this table will show that in the brief report of the words of Jesus preserved for us, there are at least sixty-two references to the Kingdom, and His employment of different phrases with regard thereto is in itself a matter of very great interest. I propose to select those which give distinct ideas, and then to indicate the unification of these ideas in the Person, and in the mission of our Lord.

The boundaries of suggestion are to be found in His first and final references to the Kingdom.

The first reference was made to Nicodemus in the words, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." It was a striking introduction, general and inclusive. He made use of a phrase that was current in Rabbinical teaching, and that was not unknown in the Scriptures of the old economy; and immediately connected that common phrase with an idea, strangely new and mystical to the mind of the man who listened. About the "Kingdom of God" Nicodemus knew much, or thought he did; but when the Master declared that no man can see it, unless he be born from above, a new and strange idea was presented to his mind.

Nicodemus had come to Him devoutly, honestly, and sincerely, himself a teacher in Israel, earnestly desiring to know the last thing God had to say to men. He believed that the God of his fathers, Who had spoken to them in divers portions and divers methods in the past, had through Jesus something else to say, something more to communicate: "We know that Thou art a Teacher come from

¹ John iii. 3.

God.”¹ He had come to listen to the added line, the new precept, the little more; and our Master took the whole conception of Hebraism, and expressed it in the opening phrase, “the Kingdom of God,” and then said to the ruler and the teacher, No man can see it unless he be born anew. The idea of the Kingdom in its entirety lay within that opening word, and it was accompanied by a revelation of our Master’s conception of man’s condition. A man is unable to see the Kingdom, cannot know it, save as he receives some mystic gift of life from above; the result of the reception of which will be a vision of the Kingdom, and an understanding of its true meaning.

The last declaration was made at the close of the long ministry, in that wonderful word which our Lord spoke in the presence of the Roman procurator, “My Kingdom is not of this world: if My Kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My Kingdom not from hence.”² This is an equally striking conclusion. If the first word was general and inclusive, the final word was particular and corrective. If the first word indicated the fact that for the seeing of the Kingdom there must be some communication of heavenly life, the last word indicated the fact that for the realization of the Kingdom, material forces and policies are of no avail. The rule of heaven over the world is My Kingdom; My Kingdom is not of the cosmos, does not depend upon the things that are in it. My Kingdom is the reign and rule of heaven over the cosmos. The results at which I have been aiming will never be realized by armies or policies; not hence is My Kingdom.

There stood the Master face to face with the symbol and embodiment in a man, of the greatest power of government in the world; all the Roman Empire was represented in

¹ John iii. 2.

² *Ibid.*, xviii. 36.

Pilate, and to him Jesus said, Not hence is My Kingdom; not by these methods is it to be established.

The boundaries of suggestion then are: first, that whatever He meant by the Kingdom, no man can see it, save as he receive new life from above; and finally, that whatever He meant by the Kingdom, it can never be realized in human history, by human policies, and human cleverness. All His teaching is bounded by these two great principles.

Now let us glance over what lies between that first declaration and that final affirmation, and taking all these references attempt to summarize them, and to deduce from them their values. There are five things which our Lord's references to the Kingdom make perfectly clear.

He declared first that the Kingdom of God is that into which men must enter. There is a sense in which all men and all angels and all devils are in the Kingdom of God, and can never escape from His Kingship. But there is a sense in which men are outside, and there must be, on their part, a definite act of entrance.

In the second place His teaching proclaimed the fact that the Kingdom of God came to men, when He came to men.

In the third place His teaching revealed the fact that the Kingdom of God is the inheritance of those who enter in, and submit to the rule of God.

In the fourth place He showed that the Kingdom of God is that for which the subjects, entering in, become responsible in all the affairs of this life.

And finally, He taught that the Kingdom of God is that which will be established in the world by processes leading up to a definite crisis.

That is to summarize quite briefly the result of an examination of the phrases which our Lord used, rather than to consider carefully any particular and specific teaching.

He declared that the Kingdom of God is that into which men must enter. He treated men as being outside that Kingdom; and He was perfectly clear in His teaching concerning the way by which they may enter the Kingdom. He declared that the first necessity for entrance is new life in the second word He spoke to Nicodemus, "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God."¹ He revealed the conditions upon which men may have life, and so enter into the Kingdom; the intellectual condition: "From the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence taketh it by force."² Or as He said upon another occasion, "The law and the prophets were until John: from that time the Gospel of the Kingdom of God is preached, and every man entereth violently into it."³ A careful examination of these two in their mutual light will show that our Lord was speaking as to intellectual difficulty, to men who could not understand the methods He was adopting. His methods for the establishment of His Kingdom are as alien to the philosophies of the hour, as they were to the intellectual apprehension of John the Baptist; but He will establish His Kingdom by His own method, which is the only method. Therefore a man must be prepared to do violence to all his own wit and wisdom and cleverness, and be assured that the method of preaching the Gospel to the poor, and healing the sick, and opening blind eyes, and refusing to gather an army, and failing to call together a parliament, are the real methods of the Kingdom;—individual preaching of a truth, insistence upon the importance of truth, the perpetual, quiet, and personal propaganda from man to man, the creation of the new social order by the regeneration of the individuals that make up the social order.

¹ John iii. 5.

² Matt. xi. 12.

³ Luke xvi. 16.

He also revealed the emotional condition for entering. "Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of heaven." ¹ Until a man shall go back to childhood, and to the spirit of a little child, which is the spirit of simplicity, of conscious and confessed imperfection, of plasticity; unless a man get back emotionally to that point, and is willing to take that position, he cannot enter into the Kingdom.

He revealed, moreover, in startling language, in terms that thrill and almost thunder in severity, the volitional necessity: "If thine eye cause thee to stumble, cast it out: it is good for thee to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell." ²

The conception was always that of having to enter in, and the intellectual and the emotional and the volitional values were clearly revealed. The Kingdom is that into which a man must enter, and must enter by a process, by revolution rather than evolution.

But in the second place—and here is the note of hope, and here is the light and the glory of the teaching of Jesus—His words reveal the fact that He conceived of the Kingdom of God as that which had come to men. Such was His unvarying proclamation.

It was the key-note of His own preaching, "From that time began Jesus to preach, and to say, Repent ye; for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand." ³

It was the key-note of His commission to the twelve, "As ye go, preach, saying, The Kingdom of heaven is at hand." ⁴

It was the claim He made when His enemies charged Him with casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub.

¹ Matt. xviii. 3.

² Matt. iv. 17.

³ Mark ix. 47.

⁴ Ibid., x. 7.

"If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, then is the Kingdom of God come upon you."¹

It was the key-note of His commission to the seventy, "Heal the sick . . . and say unto them, The Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you . . . howbeit know this, that the Kingdom of God is come nigh."²

Finally when enforcing His claim in answer to the criticism of the Pharisees He said, "Lo, the Kingdom of God is among you,"³ that is, in the midst of you. That is one of the passages upon which philosophies unwarranted by the teaching of Jesus have been built. There are those who tell us that the passage means that our Lord said that in every man there is the Kingdom of God, and it only needs developing. That was not the intention. The context sweeps the idea away. The Kingdom of God was in the midst of them because He was in the midst of them, revealing its purpose, its powers, and its passion. This statement was a claim for Himself, and not a description of human nature. From beginning to end of His ministry He declared that the Kingdom of God was nigh at hand.

Two things then have we so far seen; first that men must enter the Kingdom by way of change, by revolution; and secondly, that He had brought the Kingdom close to men in order that they might enter in.

The third phase of suggestion made by these phrases of our Lord is that the Kingdom of God is the inheritance of the subjects thereof. Three illustrations will suffice; the opening beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven,"⁴ the closing beatitude, "Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven,"⁵ and when speaking to His own disciples, repeating to them

¹ Matt. xii. 28.

² Luke x. 9-11.

³ Ibid., xvii. 21.

⁴ Matt. v. 3.

⁵ Ibid., v. 10.

some parts of the Manifesto on another occasion, and in a different place, He gave utterance to these wonderful words, "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom."

The idea suggested by these words of Christ is that men entering into the Kingdom He has brought nigh become citizens of that Kingdom. There is conferred upon them the freedom of the city of God. They are now made participants in all the values of that Kingdom. They enter, in order to possess it. Those who are poor in spirit, and who therefore enter into the Kingdom He has brought nigh, entering in are not there on sufferance. "No more strangers and sojourners, but . . . fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God."

And ultimately to those who enter in, the Kingdom is given in perfection. "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." That is a picture of the ultimate democracy, but it is democracy realizing itself under the supreme and vital government of the absolute monarchy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Those who enter the Kingdom possess it, all its riches are theirs, all its privileges belong to them.

The fourth phase of suggestion resulting from these phrases of our Lord is that the Kingdom of God is that for which its subjects become responsible. Nothing is more patent than this in the study of the words of Jesus. Mark His instructions as they are found in the Manifesto, in the parables, and notably at the great confession at Cæsarea Philippi. In the course of the Manifesto He said as to their teaching: "Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of heaven." He commanded them to pray for the coming

Luke xii. 32.

Eph. ii. 19.

Matt. v. 19.

of the Kingdom in the words "Our Father Who art in the heavens, Thy name be hallowed. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."¹ And He called them to effort for the coming of the Kingdom in the words, "Seek ye first His Kingdom, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."² Thus those entering the Kingdom He has brought nigh, and sharing its privileges, are made responsible for that Kingdom in the world.

His parabolic teaching, recorded specially in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, was in part delivered to the multitudes, and in part in private to the disciples. He ended that teaching by asking His own disciples, "Have ye understood all these things?" And they said "Yea." Then said He, "Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple to the Kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old."³ Thus the final parable revealed their responsibility. Because they were scribes, instructed to the Kingdom of heaven, they occupied the position of householders, who were responsible to bring out of their treasure-house things new and old.

At Cæsarea Philippi Peter made his great confession, and our Lord indicated this fact of responsibility in one phase of illustration concerning His Church. Not only did He say, "I will build My Church"; not only "the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it"; but also, "I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven."⁴ I will give unto thee the insignia of moral authority in the world. The keys are the symbols of an ethical responsibility resting upon all disciples of the Kingdom.

Thus our Lord indicated in His Manifesto, in His para-

¹ Matt. vi. 9, 10.

² Matt. xiii. 51, 52.

³ Ibid., vi. 33.

⁴ Ibid., xvi. 18, 19.

bolic teaching, and at the crisis of Peter's confession, the truth that those who enter into the Kingdom which He brings near to men, and who by such entrance do possess for themselves the Kingdom, are responsible in the world for the revelation of that Kingdom, and its proclamation to men.

This is even more solemnly revealed by words He addressed to the rulers of the ancient people, and to the city itself. "I say unto you, The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." ¹ That doom was pronounced because that nation had failed to fulfill its Kingdom responsibility in the world.

The same truth is yet more clearly, vividly, terribly stated in the final woes pronounced upon the rulers, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye shut the Kingdom of heaven against men: for ye enter not in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in to enter." ²

All these words addressed to His disciples, and woes pronounced upon the rulers of the time, reveal the same principle, that if we enter the Kingdom which He brings near, and share its privileges, its responsibilities rest upon us.

Finally, the teaching of our Lord revealed the fact that the Kingdom of God on earth is to be established by processes leading to, and culminating in a crisis. All the Kingdom parables teach this. The process is that of the introduction of certain elements through individual souls into the world spirit and the world atmosphere; the introduction of principles; the sowing of the good seed. These parables reveal also the fact of development; the development of opposing forces and principles to full manifestation; the development of the good seed, first the blade, and then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear; the growth

¹ Matt. xxi. 43.

² Matt. xxiii. 13.

from the seed to the harvest of wheat; the growth to absolute and final development and manifestation of darnel.

There are some people who say: Do you not think the world is getting better? Oh, yes, very much better every day! But others say, Do you not think it is getting very much worse? Yes, very much worse every day! That is exactly the teaching of Jesus; and the man who only sees that it is getting worse does not see as his Master saw; and the man who only sees it getting better, sees very little. Accept it or reject it, this was clearly His teaching. He may have been mistaken, this Teacher of two millenniums ago. For the moment we are dealing only with what He said. The process is one of development; development in which evil is wrought out to its ultimate and most terrible issue and manifestation; development in which good, the good He brought into human history, is wrought out to its final manifestation.

And how will the process end? Not by wheat gaining a victory over darnel, or by darnel driving all wheat out of the field of the world! It will end by a crisis in human history, clear, definite, sharp: a crisis in which evil is to be destroyed and swept out of the world, and good is to be brought to its final realization and its ultimate triumph. Not by a crisis alone, but by a process ending in a crisis! Not by a process alone, but by a crisis prepared for by a process!

The teaching of our Lord and His apostles concerning His second advent as constituting the crisis is perfectly clear, and there can be no greater difficulty in believing that, than in believing the fact of the first advent. The second is no more wonderful a crisis than the first. God's method has always been that of process leading to crisis, the crisis initiating a new movement forward, until the glorious consummation.

Thus our Lord declared that this Kingdom, to which He made such constant reference, men must enter; He came to bring it near; men entering become citizens thereof; becoming citizens they are responsible for its principles, its revelation, and its operations; and that it will come by processes of development which will go forward until an hour of crisis, when He will appear a second time, definitely taking action; and the Kingdom will be established.

All these phases revealed by His phrases are unified in Himself. In the boundaries of suggestion He first declared that life is the first necessity for vision, and proceeded to show Nicodemus how He had come to give that life. In the final affirmation He declared to Pilate that not by the methods of this world can His Kingdom come, but that He had come to proclaim truth, and that by the victory of truth the Kingdom must come.

Entrance to the Kingdom is made possible by Himself. He it is Who has brought the Kingdom nigh to men. He bestows its gifts, and administers its resources. He directs its responsible services. His own advent is to create the crisis when evil is to be destroyed, and the Kingdom is to be established.

From that rapid survey we see a little more clearly the consequent sequence and order. By the first advent the rule of God was revealed; the realm of the rule was claimed in His name; and the resources were provided that were necessary for the establishment of the material Kingdom upon spiritual foundations.

The process of to-day is that of individual realization of the Kingdom; world-wide proclamation of the Kingdom by those in whom the Kingdom is realized; and corporate realization of all the breadth and beauty of the Kingdom within the Christian Church.

In this last particular we have most conspicuously failed. There is no clear manifestation of the Kingdom of God in the corporate being of the Church of God to-day. The man outside has no clear vision of the Kingdom of God when he looks at the Christian Church. That one undivided whole, the holy nation, where is it? Blessed be God, the spiritual unity has never been lost, for He has kept that within His own power; but the outward manifestation has been entirely lost. The most disastrous phase of the Church's failure is her failure in her corporate capacity to reveal to men what the Kingdom of God will mean, when it is established in the world.

The last word is that by the second advent there will be accomplished the ultimate victory of good over evil, the subjugation of the whole realm of the earth to the reign of God, in and through Jesus Christ, and so the fulfillment of the great ideal.

It is ours to ask ourselves the simplest of all questions. Have I entered that Kingdom? If I have not entered that Kingdom, how shall I enter it? I can only enter it as He gives me that life from above that enables me to see it, and seeing it to obey it, and obeying it to become its citizen, and becoming its citizen to fulfill my responsibility while I wait for the flaming glory of His advent, and the ultimate triumph of God in the world.

"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. . . . Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. . . . Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."—Matthew iv. 4, 7, 10.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven."—v. 3.

"When He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd."—ix. 36.

"At that season Jesus answered and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes; yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in Thy sight. All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him. Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."—xi. 25-28.

"Let them alone: they are blind guides. And if the blind guide the blind, both shall fall into a pit."—xv. 14.

"The husbandmen, when they saw the son, said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and take his inheritance."—xxi. 38.

"Yea, they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger."—xxiii. 4.

"Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but go thou and publish abroad the Kingdom of God."—Luke ix. 60.

"When the strong man fully armed guardeth his own court, his goods are in peace. . . . The unclean spirit when he is gone out of the man, passes through waterless places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will turn back unto my house whence I came out. And when he is come, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more evil than himself; and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man becometh worse than the first."—xi. 21, 24-26.

"We will not that this man reign over us."—xix. 14.

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God."—John iii. 3.

"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof."—viii. 44.

"Those of the Pharisees which were with Him heard these things, and said unto Him, Are we also blind? Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye would have no sin: but now ye say, We see: your sin remaineth."—ix. 40, 41.

III

THE EXISTING ANARCHY

Our Lord's references to the Kingdom of God reveal it in four ways. First He spoke of it as existing. The fact of the Divine government was ever present to His mind; He always spoke in the evident consciousness of the throne of God, and of the fact that God is Ruler in the universe. He also spoke of the Kingdom of God as come to men in some new and special way, as the result of His own coming; and so indicated the redemptive nature of His mission. He also referred to the Kingdom of God as having to be established by processes, and by that reference revealed the responsibility of the Church in the interest of the Kingdom of God. He finally spoke of the Kingdom as yet to come, and in so doing foretold the consummating activity; and so revealed the way of the ultimate realization of His ideals in human history, and upon this earth.

The implicate of each of the last three of these conceptions is that of existing anarchy. The Kingdom nigh is the Kingdom unrealized. The Kingdom in process is the Kingdom postponed. The Kingdom to come is the Kingdom not come. It is perfectly evident, from all these references of our Lord, that His outlook upon the world was first, fundamentally, and always, that of the whole universe as under the government of God, and that in certain senses it cannot escape therefrom. But His outlook was also clearly that of One Who saw anarchy instead of order; a Kingdom not recognized, not yielded to; unrealized therefore as to its benefits and its glories. To the eyes of our Lord all men were in the grasp of the Divine authority, but not willingly so. Consequently He saw that their experience of the Divine authority was not according to the first intention of God for men.

Our present theme, then, is that of the existing anarchy as He saw it. While He clearly saw the ultimate, He as clearly saw the immediate; and His references, and His specific teachings, will show us what He saw, and what He thought concerning the anarchy in the midst of which He lived and wrought and taught. We shall attempt to group our examination of this teaching of Jesus concerning the existing anarchy under three headings. First, its manifestations as He described them; secondly, its reasons as He revealed them; and finally its appeal as He was conscious thereof.

First, then, as to the manifestations of anarchy in the midst of which our Lord lived. I will first summarize, and then refer to some of His sayings, which will help us in this matter. It is evident that our Lord, looking out upon men, saw that they were actuated by false ideals concerning the Kingdom of God. As has been seen in an earlier meditation, the phrase was no new phrase. They were quite familiar with it in the Rabbinical teachings of that time, and it was also incorporated in the Scriptures of the Old Covenant. He was in the midst of men who had some idea of the Kingdom of God; or even though they had no idea of that Kingdom, they had ideas concerning kingdoms and governments and authorities; and the teachings of Jesus clearly reveal that these were false ideas. His teaching also reveals men as living under false rule. Finally, He saw men not merely holding false ideals, and living under false rule, but characterized by persistent perversity, in spite of the light He came to bring.

As to the false ideals. The first revelation of His teaching in the matter is to be discovered in the account of His temptation, especially in the form in which that account is given to us in the Gospel according to Matthew. Not that here we have specific teaching, but that in the account of our Lord's own temptation, and in the process of that temptation, as we watch Him and listen to Him, we have a revelation of what He thought concerning human ideals as He found them in the world. It is necessary that we should first be reminded of the place of the temptation, and its relation to this whole subject of the Kingdom of God.

The Gospel according to Matthew is preëminently the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. The key note of the ministry of John as it is recorded in that Gospel was, "Repent ye; for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand." He foretold the coming of the King; One "mightier than I" said he, is coming after me, whose shoe latchets I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. He also described the ministry of the coming King as that of One Who would come with the fan and the fire to destroy the things of evil, and to realize the things of goodness.

Following this story of the ministry of the Baptist we have the account of the first appearance of the King. He came to John, submitted to his baptism, and was immediately attested of heaven, and anointed by the Spirit for His mission in the world. The first event following that anointing was that of His temptation. Thus it is seen that the temptation had its relation, not merely to the personal life of Jesus, but also to His mission in the interest of the Kingdom of God. That becomes patent when we consider the ultimate goal of the adversary's attack. Luke, telling the story, places the temptations in another order, for which he had a special reason. Personally I have no doubt that Matthew gives us the actual order. That goal is reached in the third temptation, in which he showed to the anointed King all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and said: These will I give Thee for one moment's homage rendered to me.

¹ Matt. iii. 2.

² Ibid., iii. 11.

Beginning with the Man upon the physical side of His being, he offered Him bread as the sole necessary sustenance of life; proceeding to the spiritual essential, he suggested that He should traffic with His relationship and tempt God; until reaching the ultimate purpose of the being of the Man, His vocation, he suggested that He should obtain the end, reach the goal, possess the Kingdoms, by the method of yielding a moment's homage to himself.

Now, in that movement we have the Master's conception of the false ideals of evil, concerning a world kingdom, revealed. The first temptation was an appeal to the material, and the answer of Jesus was: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."¹ The second temptation was to the spiritual, and to spiritual selfishness, and the answer of Jesus was: "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."² The final temptation was directed against the vocational position of Jesus, and suggested the gathering of the kingdoms of the world into one by political intrigue; and the answer of Jesus was, "Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."³

In contrast to these affirmations of Christ, which constituted the bed-rock of His own strength, and the very fortress of His victory, we find His conception of the false ideals concerning the Kingdom which men entertained. The first revelation is that of the materialistic ideal which declares that all man needs is bread; which makes bread a basis for a kingdom. Men were acting as though a kingdom depended upon things material alone. Of course this is the reduction of the philosophy to its simplest formula. Nearer the end of His ministry there came a day when multitudes would fain have made Him King, because He had fed them; and He declined to be crowned King upon that basis.

¹ Matt. iv. 4.

² Ibid., iv. 7.

³ Ibid., iv. 10.

Secondly, the false ideal of selfishness is exposed; the ideal that within the Kingdom, if you recognize spiritual things, they are to be recognized in order to the enrichment and the comfort of those who receive them. That was the central thought.

Finally the ideal of political intrigue, the suggestion that by diplomatic arrangement and compromise kingdoms may be federated into a kingdom.

Turning from that very brief glance at the temptation, to the Manifesto of the King uttered in Galilee, we recognize how entirely opposed it is to the conceptions which men held at that time; and indeed, how entirely opposed it is to the conceptions which men still have, as to what a world kingdom ought to be. From that Manifesto I take three very familiar sayings. First the key-note, "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven." When dealing with law He declared that law is spiritual, and that there is no morality which is final and sufficient, other than the morality inspired by religion. Concerning anxiety He bade His subjects not to be anxious what they shall eat, or what they shall drink, or how they shall be clothed; but to be anxious about the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

To examine these ideals is at once to discover how false are the ideals of men. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven." Do men even yet believe that the Kingdom of God is to be possessed and established by poverty of spirit in the sense in which our Lord used the word? Morality must be spiritual. There is no challenge to immorality other than religion. Men endeavour to challenge immorality by all sorts of traditions, rules, and regulations; and to check vulgarities by legislation. Men are overwhelmingly anxious about the things of to-morrow, and about the material necessities of to-day.

Matt v 3

As Jesus looked out upon His age He saw these false ideals mastering men, holding them in their grasp, conditioning their attitudes and their activities. The persistent opposition to His teaching from the commencement of His public ministry until the tragedy of Calvary, is a revelation of the accuracy of His measurement of these ideals. Why did they crucify our Lord? Asking the question,—not as within that determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, to which we shall have to make reference again ere we have done with the subject of the Kingdom;—but purely as within the experiences and the doings of the hour in which He lived, we have to reply, simply because they would not accept His ideals. He was a Teacher contradicting all the conceptions upon which they were basing conduct; saying to them, Repent, change your mind; your deeds are wrong because your outlook is wrong, and your conceptions are wrong. They would not hear and obey; and the only alternative from their standpoint was that of silencing His voice, and putting Him away.

He revealed in His teaching, not only that men were actuated by false ideals, but that they were living under a false rule. It is never to be lost sight of that every stern word of Jesus, and all His rebukes were reserved for the rulers; and all the way through His ministry we discover, not their opposition alone, but also His criticism of their position. He was perpetually, in direct word and in parable, unmasking them, attempting to show the men of His age wherein the rulers failed; and how they were all under false rule, the rulers themselves being under the rule of their own false ideals.

In one of His final parables uttered to the rulers He revealed the principle of all false authority as He said, "Let us . . . take His inheritance." So said the rulers

¹ Matt. xxi. 38.

according to Jesus; and the false principle of all false authority was that of self-centred consideration. In this view the Lord's teaching harmonized perfectly with the prophetic denunciations in the Old Testament Scriptures. "Woe unto the shepherds of Israel!"¹ Why? Because when they should feed the sheep, they are feeding themselves. When they should shepherd and guard the sheep, they are seeking to be guarded themselves. It was Homer who said all kings are shepherds of the people. One wonders sometimes if it would not have been more true to human history if Homer had said all kings ought to be shepherds of the people. But men seek positions of authority, not in the interests of the governed, but in their own interest.

Consequently the method was a false method. Yet a little later in His ministry, in that final hour of conflict with the rulers, He exposed these methods when He said, "They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger."² I go back to Isaiah for illustration of the difference between the rule of God and the false reign of idols. A man takes and cuts down a tree, and uses part for purposes of his own need, and with the residue he maketh him an idol; and then he carries his idol. Jehovah God carries men who serve Him. That is the difference. They, the false rulers, bind burdens on others. The God Who is the one Ruler bids men roll their burden on Him.

So that our Lord revealed the fact that according to His conception, when lawmakers make laws that are burdens that men have to carry, it is entirely contrary to the first principles of law within the Kingdom of God. And to go back to an earlier passage in Matthew, according to the

¹ Ezek. xxxiv. 2.

² Matt. xxiii. 4.

teaching of Jesus, what was the issue of this false rule, whose principle was selfishness, whose method was that of binding burdens? When He beheld the multitude as sheep without a shepherd He saw those multitudes "distressed . . . scattered";¹ fainting, harried by wolves, fleeced and homeless, none to care for them, or to bind their wounds. The issue of false rule is the distress and the scattering of the people. Only remember that while the picture as our Lord saw it must ever appeal to our compassion also, yet no one else saw the people in that condition. The people then were as satisfied as are the people of London to-day. The people were just as sure they were doing well, as are the people in our own times, who are independent of the Kingdom of God. It was only the King, Who saw the Kingdom of God as it ought to be, Who also understood the real ruin and degradation of men.

The final manifestation of anarchy to which our Lord referred was not merely that men had false ideals, and that they were living under a false rule, and exercising a false rule, but that they were perverse. In the parable of the pounds we discover our Lord's central conception of existing anarchy. The reason of the parable is given in the words, "As they heard these things, He added and spake a parable, because He was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the Kingdom of God was immediately to appear."² At the heart of the parable we find these words: "His citizens hated him, and sent an embassage after him, saying, We will not that this man reign over us."³ His disciples and others thought that the Kingdom of God would immediately appear. He said to them in effect: The Kingdom of God cannot appear. Behold the anarchy. Look at the condition of affairs. The citizens of the Kingdom will not have the King; they will reject the

¹ Matt. ix. 36.

² Luke xix. 11-27.

³ Ibid., xix. 14.

King; they will cast the King out. That was His outlook upon the supreme difficulty, that of the perversity of the human heart, having its own false ideal, exercising and submitting to its own false rule, and perverse.

Until this hour that is the difficulty. It is the final difficulty. False ideals are still governing men. False rule is still being exercised and submitted to. Ideals entirely at variance with the ideals of the Kingdom of God as our Lord revealed them; a rule entirely out of harmony with the rule of God as made clear to us in the person of our Lord. But the supreme difficulty is that men are perverse; that they are still saying, We will not have this man to reign over us. We shall never be able to establish the Kingdom of God until that perversity is dealt with. Until that perversity in some way is overcome; until the will of man is turned into harmony with the will of God; we shall never establish the Kingdom of God in the world.

Now rapidly let me gather up His teaching concerning the reasons of this anarchy. We may summarize them thus:—Blindness; spiritual slavery; and spiritual death.

Blindness. His very first reference to the Kingdom is recorded in these words, "Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God."¹ He explicitly declared the fact of this blindness to the disciples, when upon one occasion referring to the rulers He said, "They are blind guides. And if the blind guide the blind, both shall fall into a pit."² And again in holy satire, when in conflict with the Pharisees, He said to them, "If ye were blind, ye would have no sin: but now ye say, We see: your sin remaineth";³ a revelation of the fact that whereas there was blindness, it had become willful blindness in the presence of the light that He had brought to men on the subject of the Kingdom of God. Men do not see the

¹ John iii. 3.

² Matt. xv. 14.

³ John ix. 40, 41.

Kingdom of God, and blind guides are leading blind people, with the result that all fall into the pit. And wherever the light of His revelation has come, men are willfully blind; not all, of course, for there were those around the Lord who were walking in the light, and were obedient thereto, and had healing, and their sight came.

But the revelation that our Lord in His teaching made of the reason of the anarchy goes deeper still. He declared, in symbol and parable and by explicit word, that men are in spiritual slavery. In answer to the charge of complicity with Beelzebub which they made against Him, He said, "When the strong man fully armed guardeth his own court, his goods are in peace." That was His picture of the times. The strong man fully armed was Satan; guarding his own court, his goods were in peace. But when a stronger than he comes, he dispossesses the strong man. That was our Lord's claim for Himself, that He was stronger than Satan. He looked at the Pharisees, the rulers, and the people, and He said, Here is the reason of your blindness. You are under the dominion of Satan; a strong man armed holds you fast and safely; and there is no breaking away from that bondage unless a stronger than he come to deliver you.

In continuation of that parable He spoke another, that weird parable of the empty house, the house from which the evil spirit had been dislodged, but which finding no new tenant, the evil spirit returned with seven other spirits, and whose last state was worse than the first. That gives us our Lord's view of men as under the mastery of evil spirits. At last He said to the men who were opposing Him, in terms so explicit as to be full of terror until this time, "Ye are of your father the devil," "a murderer from the beginning," "a liar and the father thereof"; therefore you murder and you lie.

¹ Luke xi. 21.

² Ibid., xi. 24-26.

³ John viii. 44.

Jesus looked out, and He saw false ideals, false rule, perversity, and why? Because men were blind, and could not see. And why? Because they were mastered by evil, by evil spirits, by spiritual antagonisms. That teaching was revolutionary in His day, and it is still; and it is because we have lost sight of it, that we do not understand how to deal with the problems that confront the Christian Church.

Finally our Lord taught that men are blind and in spiritual slavery. They are spiritually dead. One word is enough, that startling word of Jesus, so easily read, but so searching, how when a man said to Him under a holy impulse, "Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father," He replied, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead." That father was not physically dead. That was not a request to remain to a funeral. It was a request to remain for years, perhaps, to take care of his father. Christ's outlook upon men is that they are spiritually dead, because severed from the life and from the virtue that come from fellowship with God; in anarchy, because under a spiritual domination which is evil.

And so finally what appeal did anarchy make to Him? He saw it clearly, and He had come to establish the Kingdom of God. In order to do that, what were the things needed in view of the anarchy? First that there should be a clear revelation of true authority. All we have said as to blindness reveals this. Read once more in the eleventh chapter of Matthew the paragraph on John in prison; and immediately following it, on the unreasonableness of the generation; and immediately following it, on the unrepentant cities. It moves on until Christ said, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was

¹ Luke ix. 59, 60.

well-pleasing in Thy sight." And then turning from address to heaven, He faced the multitude in their blindness, and He said, "No one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him. Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden." In that general survey we discover that Christ claimed to be able to reveal to men the true authority, in order that they might be led back to submission thereto.

But that was not enough. Not merely does anarchy ask for the revelation of the true authority; it asks for power to dispossess, and to repossess. It asks for the Stronger than the strong man armed, in order that the strong man armed may be despoiled. It asks for a tenant to indwell the house; for it is not enough to cast the evil spirit out, and leave the house swept and garnished. There must be an Indweller, Who shall hold and possess it; or else seven other evil spirits may enter in, and make the last case worse than the first. Anarchy is asking for some One mighty enough to master the strong man armed, and dwell in the house, and hold it as against his power.

Consequently anarchy demands spiritual renewal. Men cannot see the Kingdom. Then they must have life, be born from above, in which life shall come new vision. They cannot enter it. Then they need new life, in order that in the power of that life they may enter in, and abide.

The Lord saw the rule of God, and the realm over which that rule might be exercised, and the glorious results that would follow therein; but He also saw the rule disobeyed, because another rule was obeyed; He saw the realm desolate over which God should reign; and consequently all the gracious results absent in human life individually, socially, nationally, and racially. Therefore He

¹ Matt. xi. 25-28.

knew that in order to establish the rule, the anarchy must be dealt with, not superficially, but radically.

How far is all this true to-day? How far is it true to-day that there is an existing anarchy, whose manifestations are false ideals, false rule, perversity, whose reasons are human blindness, the dominion of evil spiritual forces, and consequently spiritual death? In the measure in which these things abide, they are still making their appeal to the King, asking for authority, asking for a power that operates towards the Kingdom of God, and asking for life that may see and enter in.

"Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God."—Matthew xvi. 16.

"I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."—xvi. 19.

"From that time began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up."—xvi. 21.

"Verily I say unto you, There be some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom."—xvi. 28.

"And behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elijah talking with Him. And Peter answered, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if Thou wilt, I will make here three tabernacles; one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah. While he was yet speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him."—xvii. 3-5.

"Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven."—xviii. 3, 4.

"Therefore doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment received I from My Father."—John x. 17, 18.

"Sir, we would see Jesus. . . . The hour is come, that the Son of Man should be glorified. . . . Father, glorify Thy name. There came therefore a voice out of heaven saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. . . . Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself."—xii. 21, 23, 28, 31, 32.

"My Kingdom is not of this world: if My Kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My Kingdom not from hence. Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art Thou a King then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a King. To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth."—xviii. 36, 37.

IV

THE REDEMPTIVE PROCESSES—THE CROSS

WE now proceed to consider the teaching of our Lord concerning the redemptive processes for the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth.

The contrast between the fundamental conception of Jesus as to the Kingdom of God, and His view of the existing anarchy is complete. On the one hand He saw clearly what the rule of God over the realm of the whole earth and all men would be; and how glorious the results, harmonizing with His nature of holiness and love. But on the other hand He saw that rule of God unknown or disregarded, and the realm consequently in chaos; with results of abounding pollution, and all that was contrary to love. He claimed, as we have seen, that in His coming the Kingdom was brought to men. His mission then most evidently was that of dealing with the anarchy, in order to restore the Kingdom.

We turn now to consider His own teaching as to the processes by which this is to be accomplished. Let it be immediately recognized that in all His teaching there is no trace of a tremor or a doubt. He never spoke speculatively as to the ultimate issue. He moved quietly and calmly forward, both in word and deed, towards a consummation of which He Himself had no doubt. Keenly conscious of the anarchy, protesting against it, thundering against it, weeping over it; He nevertheless walked ever in the light of the glory that is to be; the calm assurance filling His heart from the beginning of His ministry to the end, that at last, though a wide compass first be fetched, the Kingdom of God must be established.

In His teaching we have very clear evidences of His own conceptions as to how that consummation is to be reached. That teaching may thus be summarized. He declared that the Kingdom can only be established by the way of the Cross. He declared that the instrument through which He would move towards the establishment of the Kingdom would be His Church. He declared that throughout the processes there would be a persistence of very definite and severe conflict. He declared that these processes would be completed by the crisis of His advent, in order to the ultimate establishment of the Kingdom.

Our present subject is that of His teaching concerning the way of the Cross. The facts concerning our Lord's teaching on this matter are: first, that after the confession of Peter at Cæsarea Philippi He explicitly declared the necessity for the Cross; secondly, that this necessity was constantly reaffirmed during the days following that first declaration; and thirdly, that in all His subsequent special teaching of His disciples, the principle of the Cross was evidently in His mind, and illustrated in many ways.

Let us take first, the explicit statements; and secondly, some of the instances of illustration.

First, then, as to the explicit statements of our Lord concerning the Cross. With the details we are not now concerned. They are perfectly plain and unmistakable. Our business is that of observing the relation of these statements to His Kingdom ideals and purposes. For this purpose we may confine our attention to the first occasion, that of Cæsarea Philippi, for all subsequent explicit declarations were exactly of the same nature.

Let us, then, first carefully observe the facts of relationship between the Cross and the Kingdom as they are revealed in this teaching; proceeding in the second place to consider the reason of that relationship.

The Redemptive Processes—The Cross 249

First, then, as to the facts. The whole pronouncement at Cæsarea Philippi must always be borne in mind when any part of it is under consideration. To take some one declaration, and not to consider it in the light of the whole, may be to misinterpret it entirely. This was the hour of the great confession, the hour in which in answer to the challenge of the Master, Peter, spokesman of the rest of the disciples, said to Him, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." That was the confession of a Hebrew, that Jesus Christ was the Messiah; the One for Whom his people had been waiting for centuries and millenniums. It was a confession that at last the King had appeared, Who had been foretold by prophets, seers, and psalmists in bygone days. At last He had come, the King; and He had come for the establishment of the Kingdom. That was certainly the meaning of the confession from the standpoint of the Hebrew. "Thou art the Messiah," not Elijah, not Jeremiah, not John the Baptist, not one of the prophets; but the One for Whose coming all had looked, and the purpose of Whose coming all had in greater or less degree indicated, in the course of their prophetic ministry. Thou art the King. Thou art the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

Now observe what Christ said in answer to that confession. He declared four things in close connection: first, the secret of the Church; secondly, the necessity for the Cross; thirdly, the inevitability of a conflict; and finally, the certainty of the crisis of His own second advent. The first matter to be noted is that of the unity of these things in the declaration of Jesus.

Confining ourselves to the subject particularly before us, we notice in the course of this teaching two definite references to the Kingdom; first when He said to Peter concerning the Church, "I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven"; and again, when at the close of the

¹ Matt. xvi. 16.

² Ibid., xvi. 19.

discourse He uttered the words: "Verily I say unto you, There be some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom." The whole thought of Jesus was moving within the realm of the Kingdom of God. The Cross is not something as apart from the Kingdom. It was most evidently and intimately associated in the mind of our Lord with the Kingdom purpose.

He declared that in order to the establishment of that Kingdom He must go to the Cross. The must that declared the necessity for the Cross declared the necessity for the Cross in the interest of the Kingdom. The joy that was set before Him was that of the Kingdom established, the establishment of the rule of God over the realm of the whole earth, with the gracious results of holiness and love, and the consequent blessedness of humanity; and He distinctly said that in order to reach that goal, He must go by the way of the Cross.

Reverently then, let us press a little closer to these assertions, and inquire the reason. How far does this particular passage and these repeated explicit declarations throw light upon this subject? The King said that He must go by the way of the Cross, thus affirming the necessity for it. Does He give us in any measure to see the reason for that necessity? The answer is self-evident. The reason why He must go by the way of the Cross is first of all to be discovered in the anarchy in the midst of which He lived. It is secondly to be discovered in the authority under which He was acting in His mission in the world. And finally it is explained by His activity under that authority in the midst of that anarchy.

The anarchy is focussed, and focussed in a way that I think we are apt to see but dimly, in this first explicit declaration of our Lord. He said the Son of Man "must go

¹ Matt. xvi. 28.

The Redemptive Processes—The Cross to Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests, and scribes."¹ These were all distinctly named by our Lord at that point, because in the naming of them He covered the whole ground of the forces that were antagonistic to Him and to the Kingdom of God. The Sanhedrim was composed of these different orders, all exercising authority; the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes. First we have what to-day we should speak of as the lay authority, or the civic authority, that of the elders. The authority of the Jewish State, as it existed at that moment in Jerusalem, was vested in them. Then we have the religious authority of the hour as it was vested in the chief priests. And finally we have the ethical authority of the hour as it was vested in the order of the scribes. Now the Lord distinctly declared that all these phases of authority that gathered within the Sanhedrim would be against Him, and that at their hands He must suffer. The lay authority of the elders, the religious authority of the chief priests, the ethical authority of the scribes; all were against Him. All authority was degraded, all authority was false, and all authority was antagonistic. He being the Representative of the Divine authority, the King Himself appointed of God over the Kingdom of God, faced the opposition to that Kingdom as it was focussed in those who were themselves in authority. The causes of their opposition we need not now deal with. We have already done so when speaking of the existing anarchy. The results of the reign of these men, of their rule and their authority, were manifested in the condition of the people, over which Christ mourned. They were as sheep, scattered, fleeced, harried, having no shepherd. Into that atmosphere, which was the atmosphere of anarchy, of antagonism to the reign of God, He went. It was in view of these things that He declared He must go to the Cross.

¹ Matt. xvi. 21.

But we are immediately conscious of the fact that this has not brought us to the deepest note as to the necessity for the Cross. Why not leave these anarchists to work out their own anarchy to its end, which must inevitably be destruction? Why the must of Jesus? We give the central answer when we declare that the necessity for the Cross was not the anarchy alone, but the authority under which He was moving. That is clearly revealed in His own words, not recorded by Matthew, but by John. "Therefore doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again. This commandment received I from My Father." By that declaration of the Lord Himself we learn that the necessity for the Cross was created by the nature of God, which is love; and that the compulsion of His determination to establish His reign of love was the central factor in the must of Jesus. It may be said, and with a partial accuracy, that the reason for the Cross was the necessity for the establishment of righteousness; that the profoundest reason for the Cross is to be discovered in the holiness of God. But might not the principle of righteousness have been satisfied, if we take the principle of righteousness alone, by the sweeping out of the things that offended, by the destruction and annihilation of all evil men and things? I affirm that this principle might have been satisfied in that way. But when behind righteousness, inspiring it, is love, then the necessity is created for dealing with anarchy, and with the men steeped therein, in such a way as to save the men. "This commandment received I from My Father." The King moved towards the focussed manifestation and expression of anarchy in the opposition of elders, chief priests, and scribes;

¹ John x. 17, 18.

The Redemptive Processes—The Cross and He moved towards it, because it must be dealt with in such a way as to save the men; and it must be dealt with in that way because God is love. His determination was to establish anew the kingdom of love and light and life where anarchy reigned, and amongst men who were suffering as the result of sin.

We have the explanation of the necessity most perfectly revealed in the actual activity, wherein, again to refer to the word in John, He laid down His life. In the hour of that Cross He experienced the ultimate of anarchy. Sin expressed itself completely and finally when it flung itself against Him. In the Cross I see the unmasking and unveiling of sin as it came to its most appalling and final expression in human history. There is no other problem of evil so terrific as the Cross. In the annals of history there was never any such naked, awful manifestation of evil as the action that put Him on the Cross; and to that bursting of the storm of evil He bared His own bosom; He gathered all into His own Person. That is the holy of holies! That is the central and constant mystery! I cannot apprehend all that transaction, because I cannot apprehend the Person who accomplished it.

If I had no more than His declaration of intention, and the fact of the Cross; if I had seen Him move thus heroically to face the anarchy, to gather its ultimate issue into His own heart, and nothing more; His heroism would be to me finer and more wonderful than the mind of man had ever dreamed; but neither for myself, nor for the world should I have either light, or hope, or expectation of ultimate results. The Cross would be a forlorn hope, the heroism of an uttermost despair, the splendid dream of a misguided enthusiast, and nothing more. But when, according to His own constantly repeated affirmation that He would rise again, I see Him rise again; then I discover that in the mystery of that Cross, He was not only the Sinbearer; in the activities of that dark hour, He was the Sindestroyer; in some infinite transaction beyond human power of thought, He destroyed the works of the devil. That is proved by the fact that He emerged from the dark hour triumphant in the glory of His resurrection. So, by these activities, I have an interpretation of the meaning of His declaration as to the necessity for the Cross. In order to establish the Kingdom He must Himself gather the sin to Himself, and deal with it, grapple with it, master it, negative it; and, emerging from the struggle victorious, communicate life, in the power of which other souls shall be able to enter into the same struggle, and with a like result. Thus in order to establish the Kingdom of God in an individual, He dealt with that which had destroyed the Kingdom of God; and created for men a new liberty of action, both spiritual and moral. He must go to the Cross in order to reach the Kingdom, because His Kingdom can never be finally established merely by the exercise of an iron rule that holds evil things in suppression. His Kingdom must be finally established, a Kingdom having within it no element that destroys, having within it no possibility of a new outbreak of anarchy, or final destruction of the high purposes of God. Therefore He moved to that infinite mystery focussed in the dark hour on the green hill; and there He took hold of the forces that had spoiled, and spoiled them; of the forces that had destroyed, to destroy them; of the evil things that had wrought the ruin, in order to ruin them; and thus provided the remedy for the individual soul, and ultimately for the race.

From this all too rapid examination of the explicit statement and teaching, let us pass to glance at some instances of His illustration of the principle in His subsequent teaching. To make selections here is very difficult. We shall simply glance on a little way in this same Gospel of Matthew.

The Redemptive Processes—The Cross

What immediately followed? The holy mount. Each evangelist giving the record of Cæsarea Philippi gives also the record of the holy mount, and links the two events by the selfsame declaration: "There be some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom."¹ There were far wider values in that declaration than I now suggest, but in that holy mount He gave some of them to see in picture something of the ultimate Kingdom. Let us then observe it, noticing only two things: the vision they beheld, and the voice to which they listened. What was the vision of the holy mount? The central fact is, that the supreme interest of their glorified Lord was manifested in the subject of His converse with Moses and Elijah. Behold Him in His glory, His face as the sun shining in its strength, His very garments white and glistering! Oh, the rapture of that hour when the three disciples looked upon Him in all the glory of His perfected humanity. In such an hour, of what did He think, of what did He speak? "There appeared unto them Moses and Elijah talking with Him";² and Luke tells us that they talked of the exodus which He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. He talked with them of the very subject of which He had spoken to these men for the first time at Cæsarea Philippi. He talked with them not of the death He was about to die merely. The subject was far more majestic and wonderful than that; He talked of the exodus He was about to accomplish. He must go and suffer and be killed and be raised. He was going to accomplish, not to be defeated! He was not moving to Jerusalem as a Victim, but as a Victor. There, on the holy mount, the disciples heard Him talking about that victory!

Was there not at least a remarkable suggestiveness in the visitors whom they saw on the holy mount? Moses, the

¹ Matt. xvi. 28.

² Ibid., xvii. 3.

founder of the Theocracy. Elijah, who came into the midst of the period of the degenerate kingdom, and thundered against its degeneracy. The founder and the reformer talked with the King upon the holy mount of all He was about to do, which they had failed to do, and the way of accomplishment was realized to be that of the Cross.

Then there came the voice to the disciples. When Peter said, "Lord, it is good for us to be here: if Thou wilt, I will make here three tabernacles; one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah," the voice replied, "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him."¹ It was a rebuking voice. It took them back to Cæsarea Philippi. There had been six days of silence; six days with no record of anything said between the Lord and these men. They had been afraid of the voice that had told of the Cross. They had now heard Christ speaking with Moses and Elijah of that Cross; and the heavenly voice said, "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him." We have three records of that voice breaking the silence in the life of Jesus: once at the baptism in Jordan; once here; and once later, when the Greeks desired to see Him. Such Divine attestation always came when the Master was approaching the Cross in the interests of the Kingdom. When anointed as King He had consented to be numbered with the transgressors in baptism, as the symbol of His coming passion baptism; on the holy mount when in the glory of His own perfected humanity He talked with Moses and Elijah of the Cross as the way to the Kingdom; and later when the Greeks came and said, "Sir, we would see Jesus," and Jesus said, "The hour is come, that the Son of Man should be glorified. . . . Father, glorify Thy name," then said the voice, "I have both glorified it and will glorify it again," and the Lord immediately declared, "Now is the judgment of this

¹ Matt. xvii. 4-5.

The Redemptive Processes—The Cross world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself."¹ All these illustrations reveal the fact that in His thinking and by His teaching, He was moving perpetually towards His Kingdom by the way of His Cross.

Pass on through Matthew, and every page gleams with the same revelation. Was He talking to His own disciples about the way of entrance to His Kingdom, and greatness therein? Then He told them that they must turn back and be as little children.² That is the way of the Cross. And if a man question this, let him practice the teaching, and he will discover that for a man to turn back to childhood is indeed the way of the Cross. Did He talk to them about the way in which to end disorder as within the Kingdom? Then He took the parable of the man who was forgiven a debt, and being forgiven, went out to exact the utmost penalty from his brother; and so was rearrested, and his own indebtedness was claimed.³ This is one of the most singularly fine illustrations of what the Cross is. When a man forgives debt what does he do? He bears the loss resulting from another's wrong-doing. It is his personal loss, and he suffers it, in order to forgive. If God so forgive, by suffering loss on our behalf, He does it in order that we also may forgive, by suffering loss; and if we will not so forgive, then He will rearrest us, and claim the utmost penalty.

Or if presently He would speak to His disciples in answer to their request for power as He was on the way to Jerusalem, then He said, "Are ye able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?" And they said unto Him, "We are able." To which He replied that they should, and He admitted them to the place of spiritual authority and power; but He indicated that the way thereinto was the way of the Cross.⁴

¹ John xii. 21, 23, 28, 31, 32.

² Matt. xviii. 3-4.

³ Ibid., xviii. 23-35.

⁴ Ibid., xx. 17-28.

These are but instances. The principle runs through to the last conversation with Pilate. When Pilate said, "Art Thou a king then?" He had said, "My Kingdom is not of this world . . . not from hence."¹ The fact that the Cross was necessary for the establishment of the Kingdom of truth is focussed in that conversation with Pilate.

The teaching of Jesus is perfectly clear. It declares the indispensability of the Cross in His own mission and in the process, to the crisis and the consummation. And why? Because by that principle of the Cross—which had its supreme manifestation and activity in His own Person;—by that, and by that alone, sin is exhausted, negatived, destroyed; and by that principle, and that alone, through the victory over sin, righteousness is made possible. God's Kingdom must be so built that naught that defileth remains within.

Is not the testimony of experience in harmony with this revealed teaching of Jesus? Is the Kingdom of God ever set up in a human life except by the way of the Cross? By the way of His Cross trusted in, and by our identification with that Cross in principle, whereby we die to the self-life, which is of the essence of anarchy, and rebellion; we find our way back again into His Kingdom. And as that is the way in individual experience, it is also the true method for the ultimate establishment of His Kingdom. Always by the mystery of an apparent defeat will God's victories be won. Always by identification with such death as He died will life be liberated and become powerful. The Kingdom of God will only be established by the way of the Cross.

¹ John xviii. 36-37.

"And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven. And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."—*Matthew xvi. 16-19.*

"Who then is greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?"—*xviii. 1.*

"And if thy brother sin against thee, go, show him his fault between thee and him alone: if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he hear thee not, take with thee one or two more, that at the mouth of two witnesses or three every word may be established. And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the Church: and if he refuse to hear the Church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican. Verily I say unto you, What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them."—*xviii. 15-20.*

"Therefore is the Kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would make a reckoning with his servants."—*xviii. 23.*

"When the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation concerning the two brethren. But Jesus called them unto Him, and said, Ye know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Not so shall it be among you: but whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister; and whosoever would be first among you shall be your servant: even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many."—*xx. 24-28.*

"Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do what is done to the fig tree, but even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."—*xxi. 21, 22.*

"Therefore say I unto you, The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."—*xxi. 43.*

"But be not ye called Rabbi: for One is your Teacher, and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father on the earth: for One is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for One is your Master, even the Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled; and whosoever shall humble himself shall be exalted."—xxiii. 8-12.

"I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's Kingdom."—xxvi. 29.

"I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth: for He shall not speak from Himself; but what things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak: and He shall declare unto you the things that are to come."—John xvi. 12, 13.

"They therefore, when they were come together, asked Him, saying, Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And He said unto them, It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within His own authority. But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."—Acts i. 6-8.

V

THE REDEMPTIVE PROCESSES—

THE CHURCH

IN order of time Christ mentioned His Church before His Cross. In order of history the Cross necessarily preceded the Church.

Having considered His teaching as to the relation of the Cross to the Kingdom, we turn now to that which reveals the relation of the Church to the Kingdom.

There has been a tendency in some modern teaching to place the idea of the Church and that of the Kingdom in opposition to each other. But they are intimately related, and so far as the teaching of our Lord Himself is concerned, during the days of His flesh, His references to the Church were entirely in the realm of His teaching concerning the Kingdom. He only referred to the Church as an instrument towards the establishment of the Kingdom in the world.

Paul's teaching concerning the Church does not contradict that of our Lord. It goes very far beyond it. To Paul was committed what he himself described as the stewardship of the mystery of the Church, and through him the Spirit revealed eternal aspects of the Church's vocation at which our Lord Himself never hinted. These were among the things which the disciples of Christ could not bear during the time of His sojourn among them, and for the saying of which they had to wait for the coming of the Spirit, as He distinctly said: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth."¹

Our present theme is not that of the Church in those larger aspects revealed in the course of the Pauline writings; but that of the Church in its relationship to the Kingdom of God, and that only as the subject is dealt with in the teaching of Jesus.

The records give two explicit references to the Church in the teaching of our Lord; and it is not without significance that both these are found in the Gospel according to Matthew, which is peculiarly the Gospel of the King and of the Kingdom. Had there been anything in the nature of contradiction between the idea of the Kingdom and that of the Church, the one evangelist most likely to omit reference to the Church would have been the man whose passion was that of the Kingdom, and whose vision was that of the King. But this man alone has recorded, as evidently of supreme importance to his own thinking and in his own conception, the two occasions upon which our Lord referred definitely and explicitly to the Church.

One of these two statements is singularly explicit as to the nature and office of the Church; explicit, that is, in the sense of being a simple statement, waiting for further interpretation and development, but absolutely clear. "Upon this rock I will build My Church."² There is nothing more to be said concerning the nature of the Church, if that one saying of Jesus be understood. In connection with that declaration He spoke of the twofold function of the Church in time, and in this world. First, "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."³ It is an army at war, conquering, and leading an exodus out of all bondage, even that of death. Secondly, "I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom."⁴ The Church is entrusted with responsibility concerning the ethic of heaven for the gov-

¹ John xvi. 12, 13. ² Matt. xvi. 18. ³ Ibid., xvi. 19

The Redemptive Processes—The Church ernment of earth. If these words of Jesus be perfectly apprehended, nothing remains to be said concerning either the nature or function of the Church so far as this world is concerned; but even then there is no hint of the ultimate and eternal values which are revealed by the Spirit through the apostolic writings.

The facts concerning our Lord's teaching on the subject are these. First, that after the confession of Peter He explicitly declared His purpose to build His Church; and described its twofold function in the history of the world. Secondly, that after that announcement He repeatedly spoke to His disciples in a corporate capacity; and in so doing He assumed the Church, which He had declared it was His purpose to build. And thirdly, that a careful examination of these references will show how closely He connected the Church with the Kingdom, considering her ever as His instrument for its revelation to men, and its establishment in the world.

After He had made His great declaration at Cæsarea Philippi, He addressed them, not so much as individuals, but as a company, a fellowship, an assembly, a corporate body; or to use His word, an Ecclesia, a called-out assembly of men. From that time He took for granted, not that they were already the Church in the full sense of the word, but that He was speaking to them as they would be, after the Pentecostal effusion whereby they should be baptized into new union with Himself, and so constitute the Church which He had announced His intention to build.

That is seen in the group of Scriptures prefacing this meditation. In reading them we pass from Cæsarea Philippi to the moment of the ultimate commission, noting some occasions on which, under various circumstances and with different intentions, the Lord spoke to His disciples in groups, as to a corporate body. There can be no selection of passages such as these, which on careful reading does not impress the mind with the fact that while He spoke to them as a Church, He was always thinking of the Kingdom, and was preparing them for very definite fulfillment of a position in the world in the interests of that Kingdom.

Our consideration will gather around the explicit statements and the subsequent references; dealing with the statements only in one regard, that of their relation to the Kingdom, and glancing at the references in the same way.

We come first then to the scene at Cæsarea Philippi, and listen once again to the words in this particular way. Our Lord's confession concerning His Church was made in answer to Peter's confession that He was the Messiah. The whole Messianic hope of the Hebrew people was connected with the establishment of the Kingdom of God. That they did not understand the nature of that ultimate Kingdom is no argument as against this fact. That they also had become materialized in their thinking, and were failing to understand that the foundations of God's Kingdom, even in material things, must always be spiritual, does not affect the fact. They were all looking for His Kingdom; and they were looking for the King Whose business it should be to establish that Kingdom. When at last, one of their number, after comradeship with Jesus for two years and a half, looked into His eyes and said, "Thou art the Messiah," it was a confession that at last there had appeared in the fullness of times, the King Whose business it should be to establish the Kingdom.

Our Lord immediately accepted that confession; with the pronouncement of blessing upon the man who had thus been illuminated by God, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven"; and then straightway proceeded to utter these words concerning the

¹ Matt. xvi. 16.

The Redemptive Processes—The Church

Church: "Upon this rock I will build My Church." When one man out of the past economy, illuminated from above, said "Thou art the Messiah King"; He said, On the basis of that confession, and upon that eternal fact on which the confession rests, I will build My Church. That was not a departure from the Kingdom ideal. It was not an abandonment of the Kingdom purpose. It was not a refusal of the Kingly crown. It was an acceptance of the Kingly crown, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah"; and now that the crown is placed upon My brow, not merely in the Divine economy, but by the consent of one illuminated soul, I will proceed; "I will build My Church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."¹

Observe also in this connection that the terms which He employed to describe the function of the Church are directly related to Kingdom ideas. What was the meaning of the declaration that the gates of Hades should not prevail against it? Our Lord used two entirely different figures in such close connection that sometimes we have forgotten the difference between them. First: "I will build My Church." Secondly: "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." The first idea is that of the building of a house, using the word house in its largest sense. The second idea is that of an army marching forth to war.

This second figure deals with the function of the Church, suggesting the presence of anarchy, and recognizing the opposing forces of evil. We have considered in a previous study how perpetually the Lord was conscious of these facts; how, notwithstanding that the vision of the Kingdom of God was ever before Him in all its glory and beauty, He was also conscious of the opposition of evil, and that He was exercising His Kingdom ministry in the midst of anarchy. On the first occasion of reference to His Church

¹ Matt. xvi. 17, 18.

He used a figure that suggests war with the anarchy, opposition to the opposition: "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."

Passing from that figure to the next, the terms again suggest and, indeed, actually name the Kingdom idea: "I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven."¹ From the midst of the anarchy, appeal was made for a true authority. I do not suggest that the appeal was intelligent or volitional, but to Him it was none the less real. False rulers and false authority were influencing the people to evil courses, and ruining them; and Jesus ever saw them distressed and scattered; and heard the unconscious appeal of their agony for a true authority. Therefore when He first spoke of His Church, He said to the representative of the Church, I will give thee the keys of the Kingdom. What you bind shall be bound. What you loose shall be loosed. All these terms move in the atmosphere of the Kingdom idea.

Thus it is evident that when at Cæsarea Philippi He was confessed King intelligently by Peter, Christ did not abandon the thought of the Kingdom. As He declared that He would build His Church, it is clear that in His own mind the interest of the Kingdom was supreme; and that the temporal value of the Church He would build would be that of its coöperation with Him, in His passion and His mission, for the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

Let us take with equal brevity the next explicit reference. The preliminary question that led up to the reference was asked by His disciples: "Who then is greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?"² In answer to that enquiry He proceeded with His teaching, and ended His teaching by a parable, which commenced, "Therefore is the Kingdom of heaven likened unto."³

Between this question and parable, we find His second

¹ Matt. xvi. 19.

² Ibid., xviii. 1.

³ Ibid., xviii. 23.

The Redemptive Processes—The Church 269 reference to the Church. It was a mere allusion to what He had already said. The child was set in the midst of them, and He addressed them as a body of men in their more corporate capacity. The very act was symbolic. In the midst the child. Do not be afraid of the pictorial. See Him and His disciples, and the child in the midst. It was singularly suggestive of a corporate relationship, of a responsibility which rested, not upon individuals, but upon the whole of them. Having put the child there, He proceeded to talk to them about the Kingdom. He gave them the great law of Christian discipline, discipline within the Church. "If thy brother sin against thee, go, shew him his fault, between thee and him alone,"¹ and do this in order to gain him, not in order to damn him! And if you do not gain him, take one or two others of the same circle, always to gain him; but if he will not hear the two, tell it to the Church.

It was only a reference, an allusion; but all the light of the declaration at Cæsarea Philippi flashes upon the word, and we have the vision of this new entity, this corporate body. There they are, twelve men, with a child in the midst. And if he will not hear the Church, "let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican."² What sort of man is the Gentile and the publican? A man to be cursed? No. What then? The man for whom Christ died! And so, if the brother cannot be won, he is to be treated by the Church as a man for whom the Church will die in order that he may be saved!

All this is the atmosphere of the Kingdom; and the Church is seen as embodying the great facts of the Kingdom. Moral authority;—"What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Spiritual power;—"If two of you shall agree on earth as

¹ Matt. xviii 15.

² Ibid., xviii. 17 touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven." All this because of the presence of the King: "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." ¹ Christ and the child in the midst; that is the Church; and for to-day, that is the Kingdom.

From these words of Jesus we travel back to an old prophecy. The prophet Zechariah climbed higher than most of his order, and gazing across the centuries and millenniums to the glorious hour when the Kingdom of God should be established, he described what he saw in the words: "The streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof." ² That is the ultimate Kingdom of God on earth. And now, said Jesus, you, My disciples, My ecclesia, My Church, having moral power and spiritual dynamic, you are that for to-day; the child is in the midst, and I am in the midst. I have not abandoned My Kingdom; I have come to realize it first within your borders; and I have come to realize it within your borders in order that it may be interpreted to the world.

Let us now glance at some of His subsequent references, in which He spoke to these men as to a corporate body, a Church, and yet constantly concerning a Kingdom.

Ten men were indignant at the request of two. Two had asked that they might sit on His right hand and on His left, when He should come in His Kingdom. I am not interested in their indignation, or even in the request, only in order to emphasize the fact that it was for power as within His coming Kingdom. But how did the Lord answer? By teaching them the law of greatness in the Church, by putting the Church into contrast with the kingdoms of men. In that passage ³ we have a most graphic picture of all human kingdoms, even until this hour, as to

¹ Matt. xviii. 18-20.

² Zech. viii. 5.

³ Matt. xx. 24-28.

The Redemptive Processes—The Church order of precedence. Your great ones exercise authority over you, and their great ones exercise authority over them. That is to say, there are gradations of authority. The mass of the people are ruled by rulers; the rulers are ruled by higher rulers; and greatness is calculated by the grade of authority. "Not so shall it be among you." He that would occupy the position of ultimate greatness among you is not the one who exercises authority, but yields to it! The lowest grade,—borrowing the phrase from a world that has largely forgotten God,—the grade that serves, is greatest in the ultimate Kingdom of God. The supreme eagerness of souls in the ultimate Kingdom will not be to rule men, but to serve. Christ said that this rule of the Kingdom is to be the rule of the Church. It is to be realized in the Church, and so manifested to the world. One of the secrets why the Church of God has failed, and is failing still, is that in this respect she has never yet realized her Master's ideals.

There had been a symbolic judgment of a fig-tree, on His way to Jerusalem for those last august acts by which He flung the Hebrew nation aside as an instrument of the Kingdom of God.¹ The disciples were astonished, and He said, speaking to them in their corporate capacity, that if they had faith, much mightier things than these should they do. He contrasted the power of faith with the failure of the people who had lost that power of faith, and who therefore were like the fig-tree, doomed to judgment. He put over against the failure of the Hebrew people,—with which He was then dealing from the standpoint of an official authority,—this power of faith, this power of prayer.² It was all in the Kingdom atmosphere, but He was talking to His disciples, to the men who were to become the Church.

At last the King did finally and definitely, and with great

¹ Matt. xxi. 43.

² Ibid., xxi. 21, 22.

clearness, pronounce the word of rejection against the Hebrew people, "The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."¹ In that word, full of solemnity, we are at the heart of the present line of thought, for it was the declaration of the transference of Kingdom responsibility, for the time being, from the Hebrew people to the new Ecclesia, to the new Theocracy, to the Church which He was about to build.

Later still He gave instructions to His disciples as to their responsibilities, by revealing the failure of the scribes and Pharisees. He first recognized an official position which the scribes and Pharisees had occupied in the economy of God. "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat: all things therefore whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe." Then He spoke directly to His disciples: "Be not ye called Rabbi . . . call no man your father . . . neither be ye called masters."² Thus He revealed to them the order of the new Kingdom, and the secrets of the new authority. One is your Teacher, and He did not name the One. His reference was to the Holy Spirit, yet to come. One is your Father, and the declaration is self-evident, that He was referring to the Father Whom He had come to reveal. One is your Master, and He at once claimed that He Himself occupied that position. All this was teaching intended to show these men that they were to exercise moral authority; not by claiming the titles which the Rabbis had claimed, but by being themselves taught of the great Teacher; not by calling other men father, in some official way, and yielding themselves to a false authority, but by recognizing their relationship to the eternal authority, and their right of access to God for the discovery of His will; not by being themselves looked upon as masters

¹ Matt. xxi. 43.

² Ibid. xxiii. 8-12.

The Redemptive Processes—The Church of men, but by being yielded to the mastery of Christ. Thus they were to learn the secrets of morality, and exercise His authority in the world.

The Olivet prophecy was uttered in answer to the inquiry of His disciples, as to when certain things should take place that He had predicted.¹ It is a great prophecy, covering three phases, and yet is permeated from first to last with the consciousness of the Kingdom and of the Church; dealing first with that period which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem; dealing secondly with the period from then until the hour of His second advent; dealing finally with that august and wonderful day in which He will be the Judge of the nations, testing them by their relationship in that final movement to Israel, but through the long processes by their relationship to the nation that has been responsible for the Kingdom of God. Throughout the prophecy the Kingdom of God is the master thought; and the Church is seen as the instrument of that Kingdom in the economy of God.

The Lord was present at the final Hebrew feast. His paschal teaching² is that of the fact of the transference of Passover. The festival celebrated the hour when the Kingdom was formed by redemption in the old economy. In a night much to be remembered, God broke the power of the oppressor, and led His people towards the sea, and through the sea, and said to them, I have brought you to Myself, a nation. He created the Hebrew people a Kingdom by redemption. Passover celebrated it.

Here let us use a word of Paul. “Our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ.”³ Let the light of that declaration fall upon what happened. He transferred Passover from that old economy, and from that ancient people who had failed to bring forth the fruits of the Kingdom, to

¹ Matt. xxiv., xxv.

² Ibid., xxvi.

³ 1 Cor. v. 7.

this new economy, and to these new people who were to be responsible for the fruits of the Kingdom; and He instituted a feast in connection with the redemption by which the new Kingdom was to be founded.

In that connection He referred to yet another transference, and another day, which has not yet come, as He said, "I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's Kingdom." That was a glance far ahead, to ultimate things, to that hour to which the apostle referred when he said, "Then cometh the end, when He (the Son) shall deliver up the Kingdom to God." The burden of all is that of the Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, its establishment, its realization, its victory.

At last we come to Galilee, to the mountain where He appointed to meet them, to the only appearance after resurrection which Matthew records, to the one appearance which is in harmony with all the process of his Gospel. Now He said: "All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and disciple the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the consummation of the age." That is the voice of the King, it is the commission of the Kingdom; it is the declaration that His Church is to go to the nations and deal with them as nations, by dealing with the individuals that make up the national life; always remembering the value of the individual to the national life; and forevermore having at heart a passion for the establishment of the Kingdom of God, and the bringing of all the nations within that Kingdom. The Kingdom responsibility for proclamation and instruction was thus given

¹ Matt. xxvi. 29.

² 1 Cor. xv. 24.

³ Matt. xxviii. 18-20.

The Redemptive Processes—The Church 275 to the Church in that final Kingdom commission of our Lord.

From this rapid survey of the teaching of Jesus certain things are clearly evident.

First, that the Church has, for the time being, superseded the Hebrew people in the economy of God in the matter of responsibility for the Kingdom of God on earth. Jesus said to the rulers, "The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."¹ After resurrection His disciples said to Him, "Dost Thou at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?"² The bearing of that question is only discovered as we remember His denunciation of the Hebrew people. He had cast them out. That is why His disciples asked Him after resurrection: Has the time come to restore the Kingdom to Israel? He did not say that such a time will never come, but, "It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within His own authority. But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."³

Finally we learn that the Church will fulfill her responsibility for the manifestation of the Kingdom of God by the crowning of the King; by yielding herself to His rule; by realizing within her own borders His ideals; by manifesting these things to the world without; by waging unceasing war against all the forces in opposition; by proclamation of His great evangel, whereby men individually may be brought into His Kingdom; by testimony to His moral standards; and by persistent, perpetual prayer in the secret Place.

¹ Matt. xxi. 43.

² Acts i. 6.

³ Ibid., i. 7, 8.

"Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."—Matthew v. 10-12.

"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and as harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you; yea and before governors and kings shall ye be brought for My sake, for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, be not anxious how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you. And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father his child: and children shall rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for My name's sake: but he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved."—x. 16-22.

"Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword! For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law: and a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he that doth not take his cross and follow after Me, is not worthy of Me. He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it."—x. 34-39.

"Another parable set He before them, saying, The Kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man that sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat, and went away. But when the blade sprang up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. And the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath it tares? And he said unto them, An enemy hath done this. And the servants say unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he saith, Nay: lest haply while ye gather up the tares, ye root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn."—xiii. 24-30.

"And He answered and said, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man; and the field is the world; and the good seed, these are the sons of the Kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil: and the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are angels."—xiii. 37-39.

"And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."—xvi. 18.

"Then said Jesus unto His disciples, If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me."—xvi. 24.

"Therefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes, some of them shall ye kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city: that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of Abel the righteous to the blood of Zachariah, son of Barachiah, whom ye slew between the sanctuary and the altar."—xxiii. 34, 35.

"If ye were of the world, the world would love its own: but because ye are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, A servant is not greater than his lord. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for My name's sake, because they know not Him that sent Me."—John xv. 19-21.

"These things have I spoken unto you, that in Me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."—xvi. 33.

VI

THE REDEMPTIVE PROCESSES—

THE CONFLICT

THE proclamation and propagation of the Kingdom of God in the midst of abounding anarchy must necessarily produce conflict. That needs no argument. It has been demonstrated in human history first by the experience of the Hebrew people; and now for two millennia by the experience of the Christian Church; but centrally by the life of Christ, and by the fact of His Cross. Because the Church of God is to-day the instrument of that proclamation and propaganda, she must still share in that conflict.

Our present theme is that of our Lord's teaching concerning that conflict, or rather concerning her part therein during the present age. There are other aspects of the conflict between anarchy and authority, between the forces of evil and those of righteousness, with which we are not now dealing; other aspects of the conflict in the future, with which we are not now concerned. We are now considering the conflict of the Church in the interest of the Kingdom, as revealed in the teaching of our Lord. We shall consider first the fact of the conflict; and secondly the nature of the conflict.

From the opening of His more formal propaganda in Galilee, which was followed almost immediately by the enunciation of His ethic in the presence of His own disciples on the mount, throughout the whole of His ministry and in all His teaching, it is quite evident that our Lord recognized this fact of conflict. It was clearly indicated in the closing beatitude of the great Manifesto when He spoke of the blessedness that rests on such as are persecuted for His sake. It was plainly foretold in the first commission given to the twelve, which was largely local and limited, and which was ultimately superseded by the larger commission beyond resurrection. He explained the fact in His special parabolic teaching concerning the Kingdom. He recognized it when at Cæsarea Philippi He spoke for the first time of His Church, and of His Cross. He announced the fact of the continuity of that conflict to His enemies in the last solemn words that He spoke to them. Finally, in the secret and sacred sanctity of those hours in the upper room, when talking to His own disciples, and delivering to them His final comfort and charge, He distinctly foretold the inevitability of this conflict.

Evidently, then, as our Lord looked through the age to its consummation, He saw His people engaged in ceaseless conflict with the forces that were opposed to Himself, and are opposed to the Kingdom of God. Let us glance at these words of Jesus, in each case a little more particularly.

The words selected from the Manifesto constituted the final double beatitude. Let us remind ourselves once more that they were spoken to His disciples, who for the moment were realizing the Kingdom by submission to the King. When in Galilee the multitudes gathered about Him, our Lord left the crowds in order to reach them more perfectly; He then gathered about Him His disciples; and to His own subjects He uttered the great Manifesto. It is perfectly true that the crowds followed and listened; but it is equally true, and never to be forgotten, that the Sermon on the Mount was spoken to His own disciples, and was intended for them, and for them alone, in the first place. He was speaking therefore to these men in whom the Kingdom ideal was realized, so far as it was possible at the moment, by the fact that they had crowned God's appointed and anointed

The Redemptive Processes—The Conflict 283

King. In speaking to these men in whom the Kingdom ideal was realized in a measure, He was speaking to the Church that was to be. Our previous meditation endeavoured to show how Kingdom responsibility is now vested within the Christian Church. In speaking to them, with a backward look, recognizing all that had been wrought in the ancient Hebrew economy by faithful souls, He said: “Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.”¹ Then looking at the men who were close to Him, and referring to the new Kingdom movement which would issue from His own ministry and work, He said: “Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”² In these words our Lord recognized the fact of perpetual opposition to the Kingdom of God, and the consequent suffering of those who, loyal thereto, proclaim it to men. The prophets of the old, and the messengers of the new economies, alike experience suffering resulting from the opposition of evil to the Kingdom of God.

When sending out His twelve disciples to the fulfillment of their first apostolic mission, He sent them to preach the Kingdom. He spoke to them of the immediate difficulties, and told them that they would suffer for His sake; declared to them that presently the difficulties would become even greater; that they would be sent out as sheep in the midst of wolves, describing with remarkable and detailed accuracy the actual experiences through which they passed between our Lord’s ascension and the destruction of Jerusalem. Then looking on through the following centuries, He said, “Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I

¹ Matt. v. 10.

² Matt. v. 11, 12.

came not to send peace, but a sword !" ¹ So He recognized and emphasized, in the hearing of the men whom He was first sending forth with the great message of the Kingdom, the fact that the proclamation of the Kingdom must issue in strife, in conflict, and in suffering.

The parabolic teaching of the thirteenth chapter of Matthew is full of the recognition of the fact. The element of conflict runs through all the parables, revealing not final things concerning the Kingdom, but processes leading towards the final things. As we read the parables we discover all through two forces opposed to each other. In one of the parables this particular teaching is made clear; the work of the enemy is that of the planting of darnel in the field of God; the planting of that which is an almost exact imitation of wheat in its earliest stages, but which, in later development, proves to be its opposite.

In the words spoken at Cæsarea Philippi, declaring that He would build His Church, we find that His first word concerning the function of the Church recognized the conflict that is to come. "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." ² In that sentence the Church's warfare was revealed in a flash; and the condition of fellowship with Him in that warfare was laid down in His subsequent words: "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." ³

When speaking to His enemies, after the final woes had passed His lips, He said, "I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes"; ⁴ not, I have sent them to you, but I will send them to you, a declaration of His determination to persist in the proclamation of the Kingdom for their sake through a new ministry. I will send to you prophets, speakers for God, wise men who shall be winners of souls,

¹ Matt. x. 34.

² Ibid., xvi. 18.

³ Ibid., xvi. 24.

⁴ Ibid., xxiii. 34.

The Redemptive Processes—The Conflict 285 scribes who shall be interpreters of the law; but you will scourge them, crucify them, fling them out. Thus here again He declared the fact of the persistence, both of the King and His enemies through the coming days; the fact, therefore, of the continuity of the conflict.

Finally in those last discourses in the upper room, He told His disciples that the conflict would be inevitable; but ended everything with the word of courage, "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." ¹

This rapid survey of some of the outstanding words of Jesus concerning this conflict cannot fail to make some very definite impressions on the mind.

The first is that of the unusualness of this conflict. This is marked in the fact that everything was entirely unlike warfare as we have known it in the history of the world. The methods of the soldiers of the Kingdom are not those of earthly strife. They seem to do nothing. They seem to offer no resistance. In no teaching of our Lord concerning these men is there any description of a campaign on their part which appears to be likely to match the campaign of those who are opposed to them. Indeed, we are impressed by the perpetual and persistent defeat of the King's army. They are always persecuted. They are always suffering. They are constantly crucified. They are as sheep in the midst of wolves; and in that one master figure of speech the whole position is revealed. That is not warfare as men understand it, and yet that is the characteristic of the conflict as described in the teaching of our Lord.

Over against that we must place another fact which is equally impressive, the abounding confidence and persistent hopefulness of His outlook. Never a tremor of doubt; no suggestion of ultimate failure; the perpetual declaration of continuity of suffering and defeat; and yet this, buoy-

¹ John xvi. 33.

antly, hopefully, confidently anticipated! This optimism is not the optimism of One Who is hoping against hope, or Who is blind to the facts of the case. As we study the teaching of the Lord, we discover that, according to His conception of the conflict, the soldiers of the Kingdom who offer no resistance are by that fact offering resistance. The soldiers of the Kingdom, who are constantly being scourged and crucified and driven out, are by that fact walking triumphantly after their overcoming Lord, Who Himself did overcome by this process of defeat. As a matter of fact in these very methods that astonish us are the secret sources of strength, and they constitute the sure way to the ultimate victory. By defeat they are to win; by dying they are to live; by crucifixion they are to come to crowning; by non-resistance they are to resist; by taking no sword of the flesh in their hand they are to master all such as use the sword of the flesh.

Now with these general impressions upon the mind, let us examine a little more closely the nature of this strange conflict as it is revealed to us in the teaching of our Lord; no longer referring to particular passages, but endeavouring so far as we are able to deduce from the whole teaching a statement as to the nature of this conflict.

We may summarize the whole story in the simplest way by declaring that in this conflict the weapons of the forces against the King are carnal; while the weapons of the forces that fight for the King are spiritual. The root principle of anarchy is that of godlessness. That is a word so common in our speech, and so easily uttered that one almost trembles lest its profound significance and its many-sided application may be lost sight of. All the forces that are against the King are against the King because they are godless, they put God out of account. Godlessness in His own day, as in our day, is not necessarily that of speech.

The Redemptive Processes—The Conflict but godlessness in the actuality of the deepest inner life. It may be that the name of God is reverently spoken, while yet those naming it have no dealings with God, save that of antagonism to His claims. All the forces revealed to us in the New Testament, in the actuality of our Lord's conflict, or in the revelation of His teaching, are forces resulting from, and acting in response to the inspiration of godlessness.

Let us go farther, and enquire, what is the consciousness of those who are acting in answer to the impulse of their actual godlessness? The consciousness is ever that of love of self, of self-consideration; and consequent hatred of all that opposes self-interest. There are many manifestations revealed in the New Testament, and many more in the course of the ages; but underneath every one is the love of self, consideration of self, self-interest. What shall we eat; what shall we drink; wherewithal shall we be clothed? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. These are words of the simplest, perpetually quoted, yet they are flaming in revelation; the emphasis is always upon the self-life, the self-interest, the self pleasure. Forgetfulness of God, consideration of self; dethronement of God, enthronement of self; and wherever this is the master passion of the life, then hatred of all that opposes follows; hatred of God, hatred of the prophets who speak in His name, hatred of the letter which reveals His law; hatred of all which, coming from Him, would set restraint upon human life in order to realize it in all its beauty and in all its fullness within His great and gracious Kingdom.

Such forces, inspired by godlessness, conscious of the desire for self-pleasing, and of hatred of all that hinders, fling themselves against the Kingdom of God, and against the messengers of the Kingdom of God; and they do so by employing the weapons of the self-life,—lying, murder, and hypocrisy. Of course that is to strip a great man things of false nomenclature, and to name them according to what they really are; for in a day like this we look back to the early days of persecution, and then we look around and say, all the forces of opposition have retired. No, they have but changed their method of attack, they have accommodated their opposition to the more subtle forms which have been made necessary in the age in which we live. Lying to-day is more refined in its methods, but it is none the less prevalent. Murder in the olden days, in the early experiences of the Church, was the actual killing of the saints; but now men indulge in those subtler forms of murder, revealed in the ethic of Jesus, in which He declared that hatred in the heart towards another man is equivalent in the economy of God to the murder of the man. Hypocrisy persists though it has changed its masks. All the weapons of evil in this warfare are carnal; lying, murder, and hypocrisy mass themselves, organize themselves, against the Kingdom of God, to prevent its coming, to refuse its claims.

Turning to observe the attitudes, the consciousness, and the weapons of the soldier of the King as they are revealed in the teaching of our Lord, one word will suffice to define that out of which everything else springs; the root-principle is godliness, the return to God, the recognition of God, the remembrance of the fact of His rule, the submission to that rule, the yielding of all to Him. Out of that everything springs. There can be no fight on behalf of God on the part of men who are godless. No man has any power to bring in the Kingdom of God, who excludes the Kingship of God from his own life. It is quite possible for men to pray in multitudes, "Thy Kingdom come," but the prayer rises no higher than where the sound expires, unless the Kingdom has come in the life of the men who pray. A recognition of that fact affords an explanation of the per

The Redemptive Processes—The Conflict petual terms of sifting and searching severity of which our Lord made use, in the days of His personal propaganda. How the multitudes flocked after Him, and how He held them back! How easily they would have crowned Him upon the basis of the fact that He was able to provide them with bread; and with what solemn resolutions of purpose He declined to be so crowned! He declared that if men would come after Him, to His Kingdom, and the establishment of the Kingdom of God, they must begin by such submission to Himself as should indicate their return to God, not theoretically but practically. Godliness, as opposed to godlessness; that is the nakedness of the fight from beginning to end.

And further, when we look at these soldiers of the King, and when we listen to the King, we discover that their consciousness is in direct opposition to that of the forces against the King. On the one hand love of self and hatred of all opposing. On the other, love of God, and infinite compassion for men.

This at once shows how impossible it is for the soldiers of the King to fight with the weapons which are employed by their enemies. Consciousness of self and hatred of all that opposes will use carnal weapons; but love of God, and compassion for the men that oppose Him, will decline to use such weapons. The weapons of the soldiers of the King are truth, salvation, and sincerity. Truth opposes itself to all lying; a consuming passion to save enters into conflict with hatred; and sincerity challenges hypocrisy.

Now let us observe the forces as they come together in the actuality of conflict. As to the root principles, godlessness confronts godliness; it is armed with sword, and fire, and rack, subtle and devilish means of causing pains to others; but godliness is armed with truth and love and sincerity, the instruments of saving others. Mark them in conflict. Which will be victorious? Let me quote in this connection a great word of the apostle Paul in writing to Timothy. Apart from its profoundest values, it throws light on this matter also. "Great is the mystery of godliness; He was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory." That is the story of the triumph of godliness. How did godliness reach that triumph? By defeat; by being bruised and wounded and murdered; by the appalling mystery of the fact that when He was reviled He reviled not again; that He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. By that non-resistance in the power of the carnal, He resisted in the power of the spiritual; and came to a twofold triumph, past and ultimate.

Or look at the actuality of the conflict as between the consciousness of the forces that oppose, and the consciousness of the soldiers of the King. On the one side, self-consideration, which hates all that opposes; on the other, that self-emptying which loves even such as oppose. Which is to win? In the heart of the classic passage in the writings of Paul on love, there flames and flashes one statement with exquisite and never-fading beauty; the ultimate word of all the argument is this, "Love never faileth." Yet how it seems to fail, but it never fails! Love is bruised, and wins by its bruising. Love is left upon the highway, destitute, tormented, afflicted, and by that willingness to be left, triumphs over every force opposed to it, "Love never faileth."

Next consider the opposition as between the weapons that are carnal and those that are spiritual. In his second letter to the Corinthian Christians Paul said, "We do not war according to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting

¹ 1 Tim. iii. 16.

² 1 Cor. xiii. 8.

The Redemptive Processes—The Conflict down of strongholds); casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ."¹ These are the victorious weapons, those that deal, not with external manifestations, but with the inspirational centres of human life; casting down imaginations, dealing with the underlying reasons of things, and capturing these and turning them to good. Thus the ultimate victory of the Kingdom is to be won.

The conflict is persistent, and the way is still the same. The Church of God has always failed when she has turned to other weapons, and to carnal methods. Christ's first words to His disciples, after He had spoken of the Church, were terrible and stern words, but necessary, "Get thee behind Me, Satan; thou art a stumbling-block unto Me: for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men."² Our Lord had spoken of His Church; of building it; of its victory over all forces including death itself; of His disciples as holding the keys of the Kingdom; and all the words were the words of a propaganda moving towards victory. Then He had told them that the way to the crown was the way of the Cross. And Peter, spokesman of the Church through all time, save as she is indeed taught of the Spirit, said, "Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall never be unto Thee."³ In those words he protested against the idea that in order to the establishment of the Kingdom there must be no carnal fighting; that all the fighting must be the cessation of fighting; that the dynamic of resistance is the end of resistance. That be far from Thee, said Peter. No Church will be built that way. The gates of Hades will never yield to such methods. The keys of the Kingdom cannot long be held by such ideas. And Jesus said, "Get Thee behind Me, Satan," thou art measur-

¹ 2 Cor. x. 3-5.

² Matt. xvi. 23.

³ Ibid., xvi. 22.

ing My campaign by the ways of men, hoping to establish My Kingdom by the way that other kingdoms have been established, all of which perish and fail. "Get thee behind Me, Satan."

And at last, under the olive shades of Gethsemane, speaking to the selfsame man, our Lord said, "Put up again thy sword into its place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." The history of the Church from that day until now demonstrates the truth of that word of Jesus. A little over three centuries ago, men in our own country took the sword and removed the king; but the king came back. Men at the same time suffered the loss of all things, and struck no blow in defense; but they won the victory of spiritual freedom which abides until this hour. The coming of the Kingdom of God will never be by the sword. Defeat is still our way of victory. The loss that a man suffers for the Kingdom of God is the gain of the Kingdom in the place of his suffering, and the assurance of the ultimate triumph. Not by any carnal weapons are we to fight this warfare, not by any means which men employ for the establishment and the strengthening of earthly kingdoms, will this Kingdom be brought in and established. Lowell saw far indeed when he sang:

"Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,—they were souls that stood alone,

While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,

Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline

To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,

By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.

¹ Matt. xxvi. 52.

The Redemptive Processes—The Conflict 293

" By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track,

Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back,

And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned

One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned

Since the first man stood, God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned.

" For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands,

On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;

Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn,

While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return

To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn." ¹

"I came not to send peace, but a sword." ²

"The weapons of our warfare are not carnal." ³

"In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good cheer;

I have overcome the world." ⁴

¹ The Present Crisis.

² Cor. x. 4.

³ Matt. x. 34.

⁴ John xvi. 33.

"Who do men say that the Son of Man is? . . . Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."—Matthew xvi. 13, 16.

"For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then shall He render unto every man according to his deeds."—xvi. 27.

"The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many."—xx. 28.

"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away."—xxiv. 35.

"Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. . . . Let your loins be girded about, and your lamps burning; and be ye yourselves like unto men looking for their Lord."—Luke xii. 32, 35, 36.

"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost."—xix. 10.

"I appoint unto you a Kingdom, even as My Father appointed unto Me, that ye may eat and drink at My table in My Kingdom; and ye shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel."—xxii. 29, 30.

VII

THE CRISIS

WHEN dealing with some of the phases of the Kingdom as indicated in the references of Jesus, we noted as the final fact that the Kingdom is to be established on the earth by processes, culminating in a crisis. With the processes we have dealt; the Cross as fundamental; the Church as instrumental; and the conflict as experiential.

Coming now to the crisis to which our Lord referred, we have immediately to recognize how large a place the subject occupied in the teaching of Jesus. He said far more concerning His advent than He did concerning either His Cross or His Church.

We will, therefore, first survey the field; secondly, examine the first explicit declaration; and finally, attempt to summarize the facts revealed.

In surveying the teaching of Jesus on this subject, we shall confine ourselves to those words of the Lord in which He distinctly dealt with the second advent in its bearing on the Kingdom; omitting all references to that advent which had other reasons and other applications. In referring to this subject He had two methods, which we may describe as parabolic, and specific; and we shall group His sayings in that way.

The parables of the Kingdom may be divided into two groups, those delivered in set discourse, recorded in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew; and those incidentally spoken upon other occasions, and almost exclusively to His disciples, even if in the hearing of the crowd. In the thirteenth chapter of Matthew we have seven parables dealing directly with the Kingdom of heaven, those of the sower, the darnel, the mustard-seed, the leaven, the treasure, the pearl, and the drag-net; and a final one setting forth the responsibility of those who have this teaching, that of the householder

In so far as these parables deal with the processes of the Kingdom, they reveal a conflict; the continued opposition of two persistent activities, antagonistic to each other; or else they reveal some selective activity which finds treasure in the earth and takes it out therefrom, but still leaves the Kingdom unestablished.

Or, to put the matter into slightly different form, in these parables of the thirteenth chapter, we have teaching concerning the Kingdom, but nothing final; no description of its ultimate conditions, no description of the prevailing glories; only a description of certain processes through which the Kingdom passes, only pictures covering a certain period of time, and revealing the movement towards a Kingdom. That period is one of conflict, of antagonism, or, as I have already said, of the operation of two opposing activities.

In two of these parables a definite crisis is referred to; that of the darnel, and that of the drag-net. In each of them our Lord referred to "the consummation of the age," not the end of all the ages, but the consummation of one particular age, the age which He was then describing in His parables. He declared, moreover, in each of these two parables that the consummation of the age would be brought about by some definite interposition of His own. Neither in the parable of the darnel, nor that of the drag-net did He make any definite reference to His personal advent, but He did declare that He would take hold of the reins of authority, and sending His angels into the midst of human affairs, would separate between the evil and the good, casting out of the Kingdom all the things of evil, and bringing to final fruition and glory the things of goodness which have resulted from the operation of His servants through the processes.

Thus in these two parables, the truth is clearly revealed, that the final victory over evil is to be won by a definite crisis under His own guidance, His own authority, and His own administration.

Glancing next at those which were incidentally spoken, we find three definitely dealing with the relation of His advent to the Kingdom.

The first is that of the waiting servants, recorded by Luke. The crisis for which these servants were bidden to wait was that of the return of their lord and master. This parable is closely linked to that gracious word of Jesus, "Fear not, little flock: for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." Having said that, He told His disciples how they might come into possession of that which it was their Father's good pleasure to give them. They were to sell what they had, and invest their wealth as members of His Kingdom in such a way as to bring the Kingdom. He finally illuminated that instruction by the parable beginning: "Let your loins be girded about, and your lamps burning: and be ye yourselves like men looking for their lord."

The next is the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, recorded by Matthew. Notice the crisis of eventide, when the master comes, and the servants appear before him to receive the rewards of toil.

The last is the parable of the marriage feast, also recorded by Matthew. The particular value of this in our present study is that of the crisis created when the King Himself appears, and the man without the wedding garment is sent forth into the darkness outside the Kingdom. Thus in all the parabolic teaching a crisis was referred to; and it is quite clear that, in the mind of the Lord, the crisis would be created by His own return.

1 Luke xii. 32.

2 Matt. xx. 1-16.

3 Ibid., xii. 35.

4 Ibid., xxii. 1-14.

All this, however, was not merely referred to in parabolic teaching; it was definitely stated. At Cæsarea Philippi He for the first time explicitly declared that He would come again. Each of the evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, place that declaration for the first time in that particular relation. After the confession of Peter, after the avowed purpose of building the Church, after the declared necessity for the way of the Cross, He said, "The Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then shall He render unto every man according to his doing."¹ Quite clearly, according to that declaration of our Lord, His own personal advent is to constitute the crisis by which the Kingdom will be established.

In the Olivet prophecies² the same truth was clearly declared. The culmination of the conflict would be when He, the Son of Man, should come; the responsibility of stewards during the period of His absence was always to be fulfilled in the light of His return; and when, looking through the centuries, He foretold the hour of national reconstruction, He associated it with His own coming, declaring that He would return, and before Him the nations should be gathered together, and that under His supervision the great work should go forward.

Finally, under the shadow of the Cross, in His last discourse with His own disciples, He said unto them, "I appoint unto you a Kingdom, even as My Father appointed unto Me"; and to the twelve, His apostles, He said, "Ye shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel."³

Now this is to sweep over the whole ground of His teaching, not to interpret it in detail, but to lay emphasis upon the fact that whether He was mistaken or not, if these records are to be trusted, He confidently affirmed, and persistently declared, that He Himself would actually and per-

¹ Matt. xvi. 27. ² Ibid., xxiv., xxv. ³ Luke xxii. 29, 30.

sonally return, and that by that return the crisis would arrive in which the processes of this period would find fulfillment, and the Kingdom of God would be established.

But now, in order to a little more careful consideration, we concentrate upon what has been already described as the first explicit declaration: "For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then shall He render unto every man according to his deeds."

It requires a very great deal of the wisdom which is of this world to escape from the simple meaning of that declaration of Jesus. If, in order to hear these words, we can get away from this particular age, and stand among those disciples at Cæsarea Philippi, and listen with them, hearing the words as they heard them, from the standpoint of their consciousness, we shall be far nearer to their meaning than in any other way.

Let us first observe the title which our Lord employed in this statement, "The Son of Man." What did that mean to the men who heard it? The connection of the ancient writings is quite evident. In the Old Testament it rarely occurs, and, indeed, it may be said that it is only found specifically and definitely in one particular prophecy, that of Daniel, and it appears there, only to pass out of sight almost immediately.

"I saw in the night visions, and, behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed."

Daniel asked for an explanation of his vision, and in the

¹ Matt. xvi. 27.

² Dan. vii. 13, 14.

course of that explanation, these are the words dealing with this particular part of it:

"But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion"—that is, the dominion of the false prince—"and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High: His Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him." ¹

Now if, at this distance of time, I should affirm that when Jesus made use of the title "Son of Man" for Himself, He did so intending to assume the title as it appeared in Daniel, it would be a supposition to which some objection might very properly be taken. But when we consider that this particular word in Daniel had produced the profoundest effect upon the Jewish theologians, and that the teachers of the time were constantly employing it in reference to Messiah; then we shall see that it was impossible for any new teacher to employ it, without giving those who heard Him do so the impression that He was using it in that sense.

Extracts from two Jewish writers will show the effect that had been produced upon them by the prophecy of Daniel. The book of Enoch was certainly pre-Christian;—it is not quite easy to date it, but we cover all the ground of suggestion by declaring it was written somewhere in the century preceding the coming of Christ, somewhere between 94 and 4 B. C. In that book are these words:

"And there I saw One who had a Head of Days, and His head was white like wool, and with Him was another being whose countenance had the appearance . . . like one of the holy angels. And I asked the angel who went with me and showed me all the hidden things, concerning that Son of Man, who he was, and whence he was, and why he went with the Head of Days? And he answered and said

¹ Dan. vii. 26, 27.

unto me, This is the Son of Man who hath righteousness, with whom dwelleth righteousness, and who reveals all the treasures of that which is hidden, because the Lord of Spirits hath chosen him, and his lot before the Lord of Spirits hath surpassed everything in uprightness forever. And this Son of Man whom thou hast seen will arouse the kings and the mighty ones from their couches, and the strong from their thrones, and will loosen the reins of the strong, and grind to powder the teeth of the sinners. And He will put down the kings from their thrones and kingdoms, because they do not extol and praise Him, nor thankfully acknowledge whence the kingdom was bestowed upon them."

Or again, in the same book of Enoch:

"And he sat on the throne of his glory and the sum of judgment was committed unto Him, the Son of Man, and he caused the sinners, and those who had led the world astray to pass away and be destroyed from off the face of the earth."

These quotations illustrate the common thought of the time in which Jesus exercised His ministry. The title used by Daniel had taken hold of the hearts of the subsequent teachers, and everywhere there was expectation of some apocalypse, unveiling, out-shining, manifestation, connected with the coming of the Messiah who was referred to as the Son of Man.

In the Apocrypha, in the second book of Esdras, a book written undoubtedly within the first century of the Christian era, about 81 A. D., the same ideas are found. Esdras tells of a dream in which he saw coming

"Up from the midst of the sea as it were the likeness of a man; and I beheld, and lo, that man flew with the clouds of heaven; and when he turned his countenance to look, all things trembled that were seen under him. . . . After this, I beheld, and lo, there was gathered together a multitude

¹ Enoch xlvi. 1-5.

² Enoch lxix. 27.

of men, out of number, from the four winds of heaven, to make war against the man that had come out of the sea."

When Esdras seeks the interpretation of the dream, he is told:

"Whereas thou sawest a man coming up from the midst of the sea, the same is he whom the Most High hath kept a great season, which by his own self shall deliver his creatures: and he shall order them that are left behind. . . . Behold, the days come when the Most High will begin to deliver them that are upon the earth . . . and it shall be when these things shall come to pass, and the signs shall happen that I showed thee before, then shall my Son be revealed, whom thou sawest as a man ascending. . . . And this my Son shall rebuke the nations which are come for their wickedness. . . . And He shall destroy them without labour by the law, which is likened unto fire."

All this is of importance in that it shows that our Lord used the title Son of Man, knowing that the men who heard understood it as referring to the Messiah. In the subsequent interpretation of the Master's meaning we find a return to the very views that had characterized the most illuminated teachers in the days before the Lord came Again, Christ used that title for Himself, not once or twice, but constantly; indeed, it was His favourite title for Himself. In declaring the purpose of His mission, He said, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." When He described the method of His mission He said, "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." And now when referring to the completion of His work He said: "The Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father."

1 2 Esdras xiii. 2, 3, 5.

3 Luke xix. 10.

2 Ibid., xiii. 25, 26, 29, 32, 37, 38.

4 Matt. xx. 28. 5 Ibid., xvi. 27.

Now examining His use of the title on this special occasion in the light of the whole story, everything began with His own question, "Who do men say that the Son of Man is?"¹ And when the answer came from one illuminated soul, "Thou art the Messiah, the Son of the living God,"² He accepted the confession, and proceeded to make a declaration concerning His Church, His Cross, and the fact that He was coming again; and announced that by the way of His coming again, the Kingdom whose foundation must be laid in the mystery of His Cross, and whose processes must be carried forward by the conflict of His Church, should be established in the world.

He declared that He Himself would come again, in the glory of His Father, and bringing with Him, for the administration of the affairs of His Kingdom on this earth, the angels of His presence. The avowed purpose of His coming is that of the actual, immediate, visible assumption of authority; and consequent discrimination in the affairs of the world. In that coming again, there will be fulfilled the prophecy of His immediate forerunner, John the Baptist, "Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly cleanse His threshing-floor; and He will gather His wheat into the garner, but the chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire."³ That prophecy our Lord referred to in His own parabolic utterances, as He claimed that at the consummation of the age He would come for the fulfillment of that ministry, the purging of the floor, the gathering of the wheat into the garner, and the burning of chaff in unquenchable fire. These were great figures of speech, all too narrowly interpreted oftentimes, for wheat in that figure of speech is infinitely more than individual men, and chaff may not refer to men at all; or it may, as men have given themselves over to the things of chaff. It is a picture of

¹ Matt. xvi. 13.

² Ibid., xvi. 16.

³ Ibid., iii. 12 the Lord Himself coming at the end of the age, and bringing with Him the angels in order to aid Him in His actual ministry in this world; of His coming to destroy all things evil, and establish all things in themselves good; the winnowing of the threshing floor of the world, so that the chaff is separated from the wheat, and gathered for burning, and the wheat harvested into the treasure-house of the King. It is a picture of a final activity of judgment, in which He will separate, not between man and man alone, but between affairs and affairs, things and things, methods and methods; destroying by His own immediate presence and government all the things that are unworthy, and conserving and establishing all that accords with the will of God.

In this teaching of Jesus there are many details omitted, many questions that we should like to ask are unanswered; but enough is revealed to give us courage of heart. To summarize what seem therefore to be the chief matters in this teaching.

First our Lord taught with great distinctness that the processes towards the Kingdom will culminate in a crisis; that the crisis will be created by His own coming again; that it will be as distinct, as definite as was His first coming, and no more wonderful and no more unbelievable; that the activities of His personal coming will be those of judgment. Judgment means far more than punishment. Judgment is separation, restoration, administration, government. We talk of the day of judgment as if it were a day of four and twenty hours. The day of grace has lasted two millenniums. How long may God's day of judgment last? It is quite certain by Biblical prophecy it will last a thousand years, for all the millennium is the day of judgment; and there are hints and gleams in these prophetic writings of a period beyond the millennium. In the book of Revelation the story of the millennium is dismissed in a few verses; beyond the brief picture of the millennium it is declared that there will be the recrudescence of evil, for during the millennium it is but held in check, and never eliminated. But beyond, it is eradicated, and the glorious Kingdom of the Son is that in which the tabernacle of God shall be with men, and He shall dwell with them. All this must be brought to pass by His advent and His judgment of the world; that is, His direct, immediate, positive government of it. He will not come merely to reign over a people who have been subjugated to His sway by the preaching of the Gospel and missionary effort. He will come to reign over all peoples, some of whom will be antagonistic to Him at His advent; and therefore there will be a preliminary process necessary, the winnowing of the floor, the gathering out of things that offend, the casting of them out, in order to the establishment of the Kingdom. But the issue of His second coming will be the subjugation of all things to Himself.

He teaches moreover that the responsibilities of His Church in this period are those of sharing His Cross, and maintaining His conflict; and He carefully warned His disciples, in words that we need most solemnly to ponder, that the judgment is postponed until He come. Darnel and wheat must grow together until He separate them. The net must swing to the tides, and enclose all manner of fishes, until He separate them. So our business is not that of uprooting darnel, but of planting wheat. Our business is not to set up thrones of judgment before which we summon men; but to carry on the conflict with which we dealt in our previous study, the conflict of the resistance of non-resistance:—the perpetual march of victory which is the constant march of defeat. It is the way of the Cross that leads to the crowning.

These certainly are the teachings of Christ according to the records. Those who are wiser than He must be left to their own problems, and to their own vain conceits. Only let those who are wiser than these words of Jesus consider lest, in zeal for some false conception of God, they may wrong themselves, and the Kingdom of God. An article appeared recently in the *British Weekly*, which is well worthy of very careful attention on the part of Christian people.¹ It has applications beyond this connection, but the title of it immediately arrested my attention,—“Irreligious solicitude for God.” The writer of the article shows that Hilary first used that phrase “irreligious solicitude for God,” and that he used it in reference to those thinkers who shrank from accepting the full mystery of the Incarnation, because it seemed to be a kind of dishonour to God.

In that very mood some truly fine souls object to the doctrine of the actual second advent of Christ. Such an objection is “irreligious solicitude for God.” Let the objection be answered in the words of Mr. Grist. He says,

“A favourite expedient adopted by many is to assume that the apocalypse of Jesus is purely pictorial, and then proceed to ‘spiritualize’ this teaching by excluding every statement that does not accord with the saying ‘The Kingdom of God is within you.’ . . . This prevalent mode of exegesis springs in part from a false delicacy or so-called spirituality, which resents every embodiment of ideas, and decries the material side of life in order to exalt the ideal. A world less gross than the one God has created would be needed to satisfy this superior order of minds.”²

The man who objects to the Incarnation because it dishonours God, objects to that through which he gained the conception of God that now makes him object to the idea of Incarnation. It was only through the Incarnation that the high and exalted ideals of God which men have to-day were made possible. If God did see fit to tabernacle in

¹ June 20th, 1912. ² “Historic Christ in the Faith of To-day,” p. 427.

human flesh, then I worship, though I cannot understand it. The stoop is too infinite for my comprehension, but I dare not question it. And I will not be guilty of such an irreligious solicitude for God as to refuse to believe the apocalyptic word of Jesus, for by other words He so revealed God to me that I am compelled to believe Him when He affirms that He will come again, in order to establish the Kingdom.

To those who believe the teachings of Christ, they bring rest and strength, amid all the conflict of to-day. We realize that all is now as He said it should be; the devil is surely sowing darnel; and so we are confident that all will be according to His word. It was in connection with these very prophecies that He said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away." Believing that to be true, we are content in the hour of conflict, in the bearing of the Cross; for upon all the conflict there flashes the glory of the advent, and we are able to sing with mighty old Luther,

"We wait beneath the furnace blast

The pangs of transformation,

Not painlessly doth God recast,

And mould anew the Nation

Where wrongs expire; Nor spares the hand That from the land

Uproots the ancient evil.

"Then let the selfish lips be dumb,

And hushed the breath of sighing,

Before the joy of peace must come

The pains of purifying.

God give us grace Each in his place To bear his lot; And, murmuring not,

Endure, and wait the labour."

¹ Matt. xxiv. 35.

"And it came to pass, when He went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees on a Sabbath to eat bread, that they were watching Him. And behold, there was before Him a certain man which had the dropsy. And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not? But they held their peace. And He took him, and healed him, and let him go. And He said unto them, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a well, and will not straightway draw him up on a Sabbath day? And they could not answer again unto these things.

"And He spake a parable unto those which were bidden, when He marked how they chose out the chief seats; saying unto them, When thou art bidden of any man to a marriage feast, sit not down in the chief seat; lest haply a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him, and he that bade thee and him shall come and say to thee, Give this man place; and then thou shalt begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest place; that when he that hath bidden thee cometh, he may say to thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have glory in the presence of all that sit at meat with thee. For every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

"And He said to him also that had bidden him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, nor thy kinsmen, nor rich neighbours; lest haply they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, bid the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blessed; because they have not wherewith to recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed in the resurrection of the just.

"And when one of them that sat at meat with Him heard these things, he said unto Him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God. But He said unto him, A certain man made a great supper; and he bade many: and he sent forth his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a field, and I must needs go out and see it: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. And the servant came, and told his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor and maimed and blind and lame. And the servant said, lord, what thou didst command is done, and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and constrain them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say unto you, that none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.

"Now there went with Him great multitudes: and He turned, and said unto them, If any man cometh unto Me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doth not first sit down and count the cost, whether he have wherewith to complete it? Lest haply, when he hath laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all that behold begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, as he goeth to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an embassage, and asketh conditions of peace. So therefore whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple. Salt therefore is good: but if even the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is fit neither for the land nor for the dunghill: men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."—Luke xiv.