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 Todd, Elbert S. 
 
 The kingdom of heaven 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/kingdomofheavenOOtodd 
 
THE KINGDOM 
 OF HEAVEN 
 
 BY y 
 
 /A’ 
 
 / V 
 
 
 ELBERT S. TODD 
 
 
 tteHSiaebcgfera 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 
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Copyright, 1923 by 
 ELBERT S. TODD 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Preface. 5 
 
 I. Foregleams. 9 
 
 II. A Fitting Name.. 15 
 
 III. Nature of the Kingdom. 23 
 
 IV. Freedom. 32 
 
 i 
 
 V. Altruism. 41 
 
 VI. Servant of All. 46 
 
 VII. The Stone That Grew as It 
 
 Rolled. 52 
 
 VIII. Emmanuel—God With Us. 62 
 
 IX. Seeking the Living Among the 
 
 Dead. 68 
 
 X. Citizens by Birth. 78 
 
 XI. Citizens by Naturalization. .. 85 
 
 XII. Citizens at Large. 95 
 
 XIII. Wherefore a Kingdom?. 103 
 
 XIV. Methods of the Kingdom .... 110 
 
 XV. Human Organizations and the 
 
 Heavenly Kingdom. 118 
 
 XVI. The Kingdom and the King¬ 
 doms. 126 
 
 XVII. Was Jesus Mistaken?. 132 
 
 XVIII. The Kingdom Triumphant. ... 145 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The reader may notice that in these 
 pages reference is made almost exclusively 
 to the teachings of Jesus. The writer 
 was not unaware of what learned rabbis 
 had written on this theme before the 
 Christian era, or of the frequent references 
 to the subject in the Acts and Epistles, 
 the Apocalypse and the early church 
 fathers. With the latter the kingdom of 
 heaven was incidental and the teaching 
 fragmentary; with Jesus it was a major 
 theme. No further apology seems neces¬ 
 sary for the adoption of the motto, 
 
 “I prefer," if you please, for my expounder 
 Of the laws of the Feast, the Feast’s own Founder.” 
 
 The Scriptures are given by inspiration 
 of God, but are not therefore equally 
 important or decisive on a point in ques¬ 
 tion. The words of Jesus seem to be in 
 a class by themselves. The four Gospels 
 are four judges on the bench of a supreme 
 court from whose decision there is no 
 
 5 
 
6 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 appeal. As we read what others have 
 written and then turn to the Gospels, 
 we seem to be in the harvest field in 
 Canaan where the twelve sons of Jacob 
 wrought, and to see the sheaves of rabbi, 
 saint, and early Christian, arise, stand 
 round, and do obeisance to the four 
 Gospel sheaves. As we read that “Jesus 
 opened his mouth and taught them, say¬ 
 ing,” we are eating fruit just plucked 
 from the tree before it passed through 
 the hands of the middlemen, and expe¬ 
 rience the satisfaction that we remember 
 to have had after climbing the steep 
 ascent and drinking of the rivulet where 
 it burst from the rocks before it could 
 possibly have been in contact with iron 
 pipes, conduits, or weed-cumbered reser¬ 
 voirs. 
 
 Nothing was further from the writer’s 
 thought than to indulge in criticism that 
 could be construed as destructive. One 
 often finds a sidewalk cumbered by sand, 
 lime, and litter where he can only learn 
 by inquiry if it is the debris of those who 
 tear down or the materials of those who 
 build up. The former process often goes 
 
PREFACE 
 
 7 
 
 hand in hand with the latter, as may be 
 seen in cities of southern Europe, where 
 workmen may be seen tearing away the 
 stucco from the fagade of buildings erected 
 in the days of the “elder art” in order 
 to uncover the priceless work of master 
 sculptors, which a taste for the baroque 
 in modern art had caused to be plastered 
 over. Without careful inquiry in this 
 matter, the author has made use of his 
 freedom in the gospel to write that which 
 he has found both true and exceedingly 
 precious. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 FOREGLEAMS 
 
 “0 brother mine, 0 beautiful brother, 0 brother 
 of love, build me a castle which shall have neither 
 stone nor iron; 0 beautiful brother, build me a 
 city which shall have neither wood nor stone.” 
 —Beato Egidio. 
 
 First Elias, then Messias—thus ran the 
 age-long prophecy. First one who gathers 
 stones out of the straightened highway, 
 levels the valleys, and brings down the 
 hills, then the King, the glowing orb of 
 day, preceded by his avant courier , the 
 morning star. In the fullness of time, 
 not one hour too late or early, on the 
 banks of the Jordan, Elias appeared. He 
 was a young man with a vision. The 
 vision, and the message which accom¬ 
 panied it, made of his soul an overflowing 
 fountain and of his voice a trumpet 
 whose tones reached the farthest of the 
 crowd of turbaned scribes, white-robed 
 Pharisees, mailed soldiers, effeminate 
 princelings and the rabble of all Jewry. 
 
 9 
 
10 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 “Get ready,” was his message, “for the 
 kingdom of heaven is coming.” His 
 career was brief but worthy of One more 
 than prophet and greatest born of woman. 
 It virtually ended on the day when, 
 recognizing one who came to his preach¬ 
 ing, he cut short his swift-flowing words 
 and, pointing to the dust-stained sandals 
 of the Stranger, said: “This is he of whom 
 I spoke, whose shoes I am not worthy to 
 unloose. The kingdom of heaven has 
 come. This is the King. He must in¬ 
 crease, but I must decrease.” 
 
 The fickle crowd, accepting the sugges¬ 
 tion, turned to the Newcomer desiring to 
 be shown the new Kingdom. Would he 
 restore the Kingdom of Israel? Could he 
 by divine interposition be placed on the 
 throne of the far-flung Roman Empire 
 and become the master of the world in 
 a day? Perhaps a new kingdom had 
 been secretly set up among the nations, 
 as astronomers assert that a new star 
 now and then appears in the heavens. 
 Where, then, was the capital, and were 
 buildings already erected of proportions 
 commensurate with the dignity of the 
 
FOREGLEAMS 
 
 11 
 
 new kingdom? Had ministers of state, 
 judges, and treasurers been already ap¬ 
 pointed? Were there an army and a navy 
 and a standard already inscribed with a 
 fitting device? 
 
 They had yet to learn that the kingdom 
 of heaven cometh not by observation. 
 The Queen of Sheba readily found the 
 capital of Solomon’s empire, but the cap¬ 
 ital of this kingdom none could find. 
 Should new Magi from the East come 
 westward with tribute for the new mon¬ 
 arch, they must return to report that 
 they found no trace of king or kingdom. 
 Should they persevere and search the 
 world over, they must at the end find 
 what Pompey, the Roman general, found 
 when entering the temple at Jerusalem 
 and insisting on going into the Holy of 
 holies, he found in amazement — noth- 
 ing. 
 
 The perplexed people had not long to 
 wait. Fresh from his fasting and tempta¬ 
 tion in the desert, the Messiah appeared 
 and issued his first proclamation, “Re¬ 
 pent, for the kingdom of heaven has 
 come.” It was not a prophecy but the 
 
12 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 plain statement of a fact. Though it 
 might not number a single subject, the 
 kingdom had come , was fully established 
 and functioning. To questions about it, 
 topographical or chronological, his ready 
 answer was, “The kingdom is now in this 
 place, even within some of you.” 
 
 Yet the people must not infer, because 
 it was not manifest to the sight or hear¬ 
 ing, therefore it was something unreal 
 that would vanish as it came, like a dream 
 or a mirage in the desert. The Kingdom 
 on the other hand was the most real 
 thing in the world. It was so precisely 
 because it could not be seen, for it is 
 ever the thing that is seen that is tem¬ 
 poral and the thing that is unseen that is 
 eternal. It was a reality in a world of 
 phantoms. It was more real than the 
 rock of Gibraltar, the pyramids, or the 
 fixed stars. In contrast with earthly 
 kingdoms, it was actual and they eva¬ 
 nescent. The sea of the nations had 
 often been lifted up by a proud wave 
 called Babylon, Carthage, or Tyre, but, 
 like a wave, each sank back into the 
 deep. They passed away so completely 
 
FOREGLEAMS 
 
 13 
 
 as to suggest shadow rather than sub¬ 
 stance. The kingdom of heaven, in con¬ 
 trast, was in process of preparation be¬ 
 fore the foundations of the world and 
 must endure, 
 
 “When the moon is dead and the stars are cold 
 
 And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold.” 
 
 No future Volney shall sit among the 
 ruins of this Kingdom and lament its 
 fall. 
 
 Nor must the people think because the 
 Kingdom was unseen, therefore it was 
 undefined, without boundary lines or land¬ 
 marks, like mist or the shades of evening. 
 Its boundaries, on the other hand, were 
 more sharply drawn than between earthly 
 kingdoms. This side the line was the 
 Kingdom, that side “the world,” or “with¬ 
 out,” or “darkness.” Two women shall 
 be grinding at the same handmill, the 
 invisible boundary line runs between them; 
 two men shall be working side by side 
 in the field, one within and one without 
 the Kingdom. Here was no need of a 
 law against the removal of boundary 
 stones, for they were part of the consti- 
 
14 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 tution and foundation of all things. He 
 who would know of the kingdom of 
 heaven must dismiss all thought that 
 he is dealing with mere figures of speech. 
 He is confronted with a fact. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 A FITTING NAME 
 
 “And whatsoever Adam called every living crea¬ 
 ture, that was the name thereof.” 
 
 It is difficult to express in exact form 
 a living and universal reality. Religion, 
 for instance, is hard to define. We know 
 it is a fact and realize its power but 
 stumble as we attempt to put it into 
 words. The difficulty is that words must 
 be used that express the relations of 
 material things, but fail when we use 
 them to speak of the things of the spirit. 
 The first sacred writers and teachers were 
 artists who, with exquisite subjects in 
 mind, had only charcoal and lime for 
 pigment and a bundle of rushes for a brush. 
 Jesus called attention to the Kingdom, but 
 could not supply words to adequately 
 express its nature and meaning. He 
 could only use such words as were, and 
 gradually adapt them to a new meaning. 
 Hence the argument most frequently on 
 his lips was “It is like.” By what word 
 or words should the new world-scheme be 
 
 15 
 
16 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 known among men? It must cover the 
 relation that he sustained to them as 
 Lord and they to him as followers, to¬ 
 gether with the new relations they sus¬ 
 tained to each other on account of their 
 relation to him and the relation that as 
 a whole they sustained to the world at 
 large. One conception alone sufficed, and 
 that he adopted. One set of words from 
 all possible words he deliberately chose to 
 express this relation, to wit: The kingdom 
 of heaven. No religious teacher ever kept 
 so steadily in mind one conception and 
 embodied it so uniformly in one set of 
 words as did Jesus in the use of the “king¬ 
 dom of heaven.” It is needful that we 
 realize this, and a brief review of his life 
 shows its truth. 
 
 Jesus began his work by announcing 
 the kingdom of heaven. He sent forth 
 the twelve to spread the news of the 
 Kingdom and afterward the seventy, 
 putting into their mouths the same mes¬ 
 sage. When Nicodemus came to him by 
 night he was told of a kingdom which 
 in his present condition he could not 
 even see. When little children were 
 
A FITTING NAME 
 
 17 
 
 brought to him, they and the attendants 
 were told of a kingdom to which the 
 children already belonged. When priests 
 and elders came to confuse him with 
 questions, he told them of a kingdom that 
 publicans and harlots were entering be¬ 
 fore them. In a time of hesitation and 
 danger he encouraged the timid saying, 
 “Fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s 
 good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” 
 The carping scribes were told that they 
 were shutting up the kingdom of heaven 
 against men. A young man who would 
 follow him, but must first bury his father, 
 was counseled to rather go and publish 
 abroad the Kingdom; one who would first 
 bid good-by to his friends was assured 
 that he was not fit for the Kingdom. 
 When they charged Jesus with casting 
 out devils by Beelzebub, he replied that 
 if devils were cast out, it proved that 
 the kingdom of heaven had come. He 
 admonished them that it was better to 
 enter the Kingdom with one eye and one 
 foot, than not to enter at all. 
 
 Those who taught and lived his say¬ 
 ings should be great in the kingdom of 
 
18 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 heaven, and those who passed them by, 
 the least. Some were eunuchs for the 
 kingdom of heaven’s sake and some shone 
 forth like the sun in the Kingdom. They 
 were told that they must have a rights 
 eousness greater than that of the scribes 
 and Pharisees, or they could never enter 
 the Kingdom, and that the Kingdom 
 should be taken from them and given to 
 the Gentiles. “Not every one,” he said, 
 “who saith. Lord, Lord, shall enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven.” 
 
 In the Lord’s Prayer, the second peti¬ 
 tion is for the coming of the Kingdom, 
 and the note of praise at the close is for 
 the Kingdom. The first of the beatitudes 
 mentions the Kingdom, as does also the 
 last. It is the text of the Sermon on the 
 Mount with its three long chapters and 
 one hundred and ten verses. As to the 
 parables, the sower and the seed, the 
 mustard seed, the treasure in the field, 
 the leaven in the meal, the pearl of great 
 price, the fishermen and the net, the 
 marriage feast, the withered fig-tree and 
 the wicked husbandmen, they are par¬ 
 ables of the Kingdom. 
 
A FITTING NAME 
 
 19 
 
 The kingdom of heaven is the theme 
 of the story of Dives and Lazarus, the 
 wise and foolish builders, the new cloth 
 and old garment, the unmerciful servant, 
 the laborers in the vineyard, the two 
 sons, the wise and foolish virgins, the 
 talents, the strong man armed, the candle 
 and the bushel, the creditor and debtor, 
 the good Samaritan, the importunate 
 friend and the tower-builder. To the 
 same end Jesus told of the lost sheep 1 
 and the lost coin, the Pharisee and pub¬ 
 lican and the prodigal son. 
 
 In volume the teaching of Jesus con¬ 
 cerning the kingdom of heaven is greater 
 than concerning all other subjects com¬ 
 bined. It has been observed that were 
 the Gospels bound by themselves, an 
 appropriate title might be “The Teach¬ 
 ing of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of 
 Heaven.” As the end of his ministry 
 drew near, Jesus continued steadfastly in 
 the same doctrine. At the triumphal 
 entrance the humble peasants hailed him 
 as King and without rebuke. On the 
 night of his betrayal, when closeted with 
 his disciples, he reminded them of the 
 
20 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 Kingdom. Before Pilate lie made frank 
 confession of this kingdom and kingship. 
 On the cross he heard and made prompt 
 response to the knock at the door of the 
 Kingdom of a penitent who would enter. 
 The assertion of Jesus that he was King 
 of a real kingdom was the basis of his 
 condemnation by both Jew and Roman, 
 and for that he was crucified. Beyond 
 that, in the interval between the resur¬ 
 rection and ascension, we learn that his 
 blessed employment was 4 "teaching them 
 concerning the kingdom of God.” 
 
 If Jesus thus set his kingdom to the 
 forefront and with his dying words com¬ 
 mended it to the world, it becomes Chris¬ 
 tians everywhere to earnestly inquire 
 what part he would have it take in the 
 life of to-day. A partial answer to this 
 question is obtained when we discover the 
 true nature of this Kingdom, for every 
 kingdom, as every man, has a character, 
 a heart of hearts, that which it truly is 
 in distinction from what it possesses or 
 does. In its contact with the world a 
 nation leaves its distinctive mark as 
 plainly as a lion his tracks in the sand; 
 
A FITTING NAME 
 
 21 
 
 as a robber bis thumb-print on the door¬ 
 jamb. Moreover, a nation has a soul 
 and may lose it and be known, as is the 
 eighteenth century, as “ce siecle sans 
 ante ” “The glory that was Greece and 
 the grandeur that was Rome,” wrote 
 Poe of two colossal empires of the past. 
 Each had many things, including vast 
 territory and piled-up wealth, and each 
 by deeds had written its name large in 
 the history of the world, but one was 
 that will-o 5 -the wisp called glory, and the 
 other was at the last analysis that “vault¬ 
 ing pride which overleaps itself,” called 
 grandeur. 
 
 Our question is. What is the real nature 
 of this kingdom of heaven, and what 
 may we conclude it will do for the world? 
 We are fortunate in the possession of 
 abundant material for this study. We 
 have the teaching of Jesus concerning 
 the Kingdom during three years; in the 
 Temple at Jerusalem, in a nursery, by 
 the wayside, on the banks of the Jordan 
 and by the Sea of Galilee, in a court of 
 justice, on the mount and on the cross; 
 to one, to a group, to a select company, to 
 
22 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 a mixed multitude. He taught by a 
 prayer, in a chapter of blessings, in quaint 
 stories, in parables piled one upon an¬ 
 other, and in formal discourse. We have 
 also the history of the world in its con¬ 
 tact with this kingdom through many 
 centuries. Besides this, not a few know 
 something of the kingdom of heaven, as 
 an experience of the heart. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 “To-night we’ll wander through the streets and note 
 The qualities of people.”— Shakespeare. 
 
 To know a man one must live with 
 him. It is even more true that to know 
 a country one must become a citizen. 
 Still, if one is a keen observer, he may 
 gain a superficial knowledge by even a 
 brief visit. Such is all we may expect 
 to do as, with Baedeker in hand, we 
 ramble among the parables of the King¬ 
 dom, so fathomless in depth, unmeasur¬ 
 able in height, comparable to the loftiest 
 mountains, the deepest seas, and the 
 most venerable monumental ruins. 
 
 The first impression one is likely to 
 gain is that the kingdom of heaven is at 
 heart ethical. It is a kingdom with a 
 conscience. The scepter is a scepter of 
 righteousness and the throne is a throne 
 of judgment. It differs from kingdoms 
 that are unethical as from those that are 
 nonethical. It believes in justice and con- 
 
 23 
 
24 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 sideration for the feeble and the stranger. 
 It does not ignore or belittle the fact that 
 evil exists, evil that is man-made, that is 
 unlovely in character, injurious to its 
 author and the world, an outlaw danger¬ 
 ous to the community, a meteor whose 
 movements are not adjusted to the sys¬ 
 tem of the universe and is destined sooner 
 or later to burn itself up or wreck a world. 
 According to its laws, evil is not the 
 absence of good, or good in the making. 
 Between the two, as to character and 
 destiny, there stretches “the unbridged 
 and fathomless gulf that yearned be¬ 
 tween the rich man and Lazarus.” The 
 right shall be the right and other than 
 
 i 
 
 the wrong while He endures. In the ensu¬ 
 ing world-wide and age-long war, the king¬ 
 dom of heaven is no slacker nor neutral, 
 but a partisan avowed and outspoken. 
 It believes in law and recognizes the 
 inevitableness of penalty for the trans¬ 
 gressor. The unmerciful debtor is deliv¬ 
 ered to the tormentors, the sleeping virgins 
 are shut out from the marriage feast, 
 the wicked husbandmen are destroyed and 
 their city burned. Yet with this love of 
 
NATURE OF THE KINGDOM 25 
 
 righteousness is cherished profoundest pity 
 for the unrighteous. Nowhere are doors 
 so wide open and welcome so sincere, and 
 love so boundless or such joy on earth or 
 among the angels, as at the return of 
 the penitent prodigal. Nowhere do old 
 sins get themselves buried so deeply and 
 forgotten so utterly. Even God forgets. 
 It is the wrath of a great righteousness 
 which must condemn, which meets with 
 a greater love that must save. Earthly 
 kingdoms have at times been terribly 
 just without an atom of mercy; at other 
 times they have been bountiful in mercy 
 at the expense of justice. In the kingdom 
 of heaven alone they know to decree the 
 extreme penalty of the law on the peni¬ 
 tent wrongdoer bating no jot or tittle and 
 at the same time granting him an abun¬ 
 dant pardon. The King alone knows how 
 this is. Apart from that 4 ‘Be not deceived: 
 neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor 
 adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of 
 themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor 
 covetous, nor extortioners, shall inherit 
 the kingdom of God.” 
 
 A characteristic of the kingdom of 
 
26 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 heaven which even a careless observer 
 cannot but notice, has led to its being 
 called the “Sunshine Kingdom.” It fore¬ 
 tells by its manner in coming among men 
 that it brings gospel as Ahimaaz, the 
 messenger to King David, revealed when 
 far off, by his manner of running, that it 
 was good tidings that he brought. It is 
 the Kingdom of hope and good cheer. 
 It believes in God and man and in the 
 ultimate triumph of truth. Its innermost 
 spirit is unbounded optimism. For the 
 cynic’s sneer it has as little fear or use 
 as for the pessimist’s moan. Jesus, the 
 splendid optimist, who saw a sunrise glow 
 on the coming years because he had the 
 power and the purpose to actualize it, 
 fills the Kingdom, and in a measure the 
 world, with his hopeful spirit. The things 
 to which he likened his kingdom were, in 
 the main, joyful and cheerful—the waving 
 grain, the diver, emerging from the brine 
 with the pearl of great price, the peasant 
 happy in the discovery of a treasure in 
 the field, the shepherd rejoicing over his 
 sheep that was lost, the marriage feast, 
 the home-coming of one long absent. 
 
NATURE OF THE KINGDOM 27 
 
 Already his parable of the mustard seed 
 which became a tree so firmly rooted and 
 with such wide-spreading branches that 
 the birds knew it as a refuge from the 
 storm and the heat, has fulfilled itself 
 among the nations which, in despair at 
 what seemed the breaking of civilization, 
 turned to his kingdom for hope and cheer. 
 The nations were the three hundred and 
 seventy-six souls on the corn-ship of 
 Alexandria in mid-Mediterranean at the 
 hour when all hope that they should be 
 saved was taken away, the kingdom of 
 heaven was Paul standing on the deck of 
 the water-logged and sinking vessel say¬ 
 ing, “Be of good cheer, for there shall be 
 no loss of any man’s life, but of the ship.” 
 This rainbow-tinted hope for the world 
 is a reflection of the good cheer brought 
 into individual lives as the green expanse 
 of the forest is the greenness of a vast 
 number of individual trees. From the 
 first Jesus taught that his Father was 
 light and in him was no darkness at all. 
 He loved happiness and loved to see it 
 among men. It followed that the king¬ 
 dom of heaven must be the head center 
 
28 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 of human felicity, and such it was. 
 “Happy,” he said, “are the poor in spirit, 
 happy they who mourn, happy the meek, 
 they who hunger and thirst after right¬ 
 eousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, 
 the peacemakers, the persecuted for right¬ 
 eousness’ sake, happy all the children of 
 the Kingdom.” There are expressions in 
 use in the kingdom of heaven found no¬ 
 where else. The words “joy,” “peace,” 
 and “rest” are used by all classes of 
 people, but largely with reference to 
 something as yet unattained. They are 
 spoken hesitatingly as though they applied 
 to nothing real in life. In connection with 
 the kingdom of heaven they speak not 
 only of joy, but of “joy that is full,” 
 “exceeding great joy,” “everlasting joy,” 
 “joy that is unspeakable.” Not with 
 hesitation, but triumphantly as of some¬ 
 thing present and attainable, they speak 
 of peace, “great peace,” “abundance of 
 peace,” “peace like a river,” “peace that 
 no man taketh away.” The mines where 
 the gem called joy is obtained are largely 
 in the kingdom of heaven; the pearl of great 
 price is taken from the water of its rivers. 
 
NATURE OF THE KINGDOM 29 
 
 The world wishes to be happy but does 
 not know how. It cherishes traditions of 
 Utopia and Paradise, but the paths thither 
 have been lost. Multitudes linger about 
 old wells that it is said once furnished 
 living waters, but the wells have gone dry 
 or been filled up. The world is richer 
 than it once was, but, as was the case 
 with Solomon, for some reason cannot 
 eat thereof. It has discovered in a measure 
 the laws of the transmutation of species 
 and can transmute power from one depart¬ 
 ment of nature to another. It has yet 
 to discover how to transmute earthly 
 good into happiness. Yet it is not dis¬ 
 couraged and really believes that if it 
 has not succeeded, no one else has done 
 any better. At times it plucks up courage 
 and shouts, 
 
 “Hence, loathed melancholy, 
 
 Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born.” 
 
 Melancholy is too jaundiced a ghoul to 
 listen, and Cerberus too bad and fierce a 
 dog to be frightened. They do not budge. 
 At times they plead. 
 
30 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 “Haste thee, nymph, and bring with, thee 
 Jest and youthful jollity.” 
 
 The nymphs were ever fickle and mood- 
 ish. They do not listen or heed. The 
 world does not even pretend to find the 
 bliss for which it sighs. Yet the kingdom 
 of heaven was charged in the first Chris¬ 
 tian century by Caucilius, a Roman, with 
 being the enemy of joy and the mother 
 of gloom. He could hardly have been 
 ignorant of the fact that at that time, 
 when Rome had the world in its iron 
 grasp and was squeezing it as a sponge 
 in hope of securing a few more drops of 
 pleasure, and had offered a prize to the 
 one who would invent a new pleasure, 
 the great capital was pervaded by a de¬ 
 spairing sadness, with disgust and secret 
 loathing of life, which made it, of all 
 times, an age of suicide. 
 
 Jesus taught that in his kingdom they 
 knew how to live overflowing lives; not 
 “animality at top notch,” nor culture at 
 the peak, nor earthly good at its full, 
 but life “divine, victorious, complete.” 
 This Jesus hid from the wise and the 
 worldly and revealed to those who could 
 
NATURE OF THE KINGDOM 31 
 
 receive it in the parable of the pearl of 
 great price and the treasure hid in the 
 field. If the world ever regains its lost 
 happiness, it must inquire at the kingdom 
 of heaven. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 FREEDOM 
 
 “A sadly toiling slave, dragging the slowly lengthen¬ 
 ing chain 
 
 Of bondage to the grave.” 
 
 The kingdom of heaven stands for free¬ 
 dom. At the opening of his ministry, 
 from the rostrum of the synagogue at 
 Nazareth, Jesus said: “He hath anointed 
 me to preach . . . deliverance to the cap¬ 
 tives, and ... to set at liberty them that 
 are bruised.” Freedom is in the very 
 air of the Kingdom and the thought of 
 any man being in any sort of bondage 
 to his brother, intolerable. Jesus would 
 have men serve, but serve by choice and 
 call not any man master. A primal im¬ 
 pulse of fallen man is to enslave his 
 fellow. Making yokes, forging fetters, 
 building prisons and gibbets is a trade 
 whose origin is in a dim past. Even in 
 Christian countries no small fraction of 
 the population is in jail. The sighing of 
 those bound in some sort of prison has 
 
 32 
 
FREEDOM 
 
 33 
 
 been quite as constant in the history of 
 the world as the roar of the ocean or the 
 soughing of the wind in the pine trees. 
 
 “So free we seem. 
 
 So fettered fast we are.” 
 
 The coming of the kingdom of heaven 
 was a virtual proclamation of emancipa¬ 
 tion. Though it is not of this world, it 
 is in it, and implies freedom of mankind 
 from unjust and tyrannical government. 
 In a Roman court and before a judge 
 Jesus protested against a blow dealt him 
 by the fist of a hireling of the govern¬ 
 ment, saying, “If I have spoken evil, bear 
 witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest 
 thou me?” He was not against the 
 government, but for it in protesting against 
 injustice that must in the end bring it 
 into disrepute. He was the patriot, and 
 the smiter the enemy of the country. As 
 time rolls on, the platform of the kingdom 
 of heaven broadens as a rock on the sea¬ 
 shore as the tide goes out grows into a 
 wide plateau. There is room enough on 
 the platform of that vigorous protest for 
 all those who struggle against political 
 
34 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 corruption. The kingdom of heaven is 
 not so permeated by other-worldliness as 
 to ignore a struggle for righteousness and 
 justice in this. “He whom the Son makes 
 free is free indeed.” Thus Jesus warned 
 men that political freedom is only a 
 fraction of freedom and not its whole. 
 He characterized the Jewish religion as 
 preached and practiced in his day as, 
 in the main, burden and fetter and bond¬ 
 age. Strange as it seems, that religion 
 could change its coat and character, and 
 from being a staff in the hand to lean 
 upon, climb to the neck and become a 
 yoke on which to fasten a load, yet such 
 is the history of many religions from 
 Jephthah to the latest medicine-man on 
 the Indian Reservation. Bondage is bond¬ 
 age, though in place of a tyrannical master 
 or a heartless government there be, at 
 the other end of the chain, a corrupt 
 religious hierarchy, or a cruel and remorse¬ 
 less idol of brass or stone. Political free¬ 
 dom with spiritual bondage is as vain as 
 to free the hands of a prisoner while his 
 feet are left in the stocks. Millions of 
 the race who have been delivered, in the 
 
FREEDOM 
 
 35 
 
 main, from political tyranny, are in abject 
 fear and cruel bondage to angry gods and 
 evil spirits that dog their steps, frown on 
 them out of the clouds, speak in the 
 thunder, and flame forth in the lightning 
 and the storm. 
 
 Out of the heart of man debased by 
 the absence of religion have always sprung 
 shoots that grew into strong arms of 
 habit that have bound him to courses of 
 life degrading, burdensome, killing; leaving 
 him little more freedom than the oak 
 finds when the matadore vine wraps 
 about it its snakelike branches, and ren¬ 
 dering him as helpless as Laocoon and 
 his sons in the coils of the serpents. Com¬ 
 pulsion is unnecessary. In their blindness 
 men reach out their wrists to receive the 
 manacles and present an ear to the door¬ 
 post for an awl-mark of perpetual bond¬ 
 age. They wear their chains and bear 
 the marks of servitude proudly. We do 
 not need to go back to Jesus’ day, but 
 we find mention there of some who were 
 “slaves of sin”; of others who “served 
 divers lusts and passions,” and of some 
 “who could not cease from sin,” but 
 
36 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 were at the same time “speaking great 
 swelling words of vanity” about their 
 freedom. To say I should or would, but 
 cannot, is to bare the neck and reveal 
 the iron collar of serfdom. 
 
 The utmost freedom possible the king¬ 
 dom of heaven has and covets for all 
 men. It does not offer freedom to do 
 wrong or injure one’s neighbor. The 
 express train has a right to ask that all 
 obstructions be taken from the track, but 
 not for freedom to leave the rails at will. 
 The earth moves sweetly and silently on 
 its appointed course round the sun and 
 is not in bondage, because it cannot run 
 amuck through the heavens. In that 
 way is no freedom, but wreck and ruin 
 instead. Every step in such a course 
 creates or brings to light other bonds and 
 more abject slavery. The herds on the 
 fenced ranges of the West live in the 
 utmost freedom. They feed on the hills, 
 drink from the streams, and lie down at 
 will. The moment the wild desire takes 
 them to break over restraints, they learn 
 that a barbed-wire fence can make cruel 
 wounds and that dogs and angry cowboys 
 
FREEDOM 
 
 37 
 
 do not spell freedom. The farmer, worn 
 out with toil, seeks relaxation by a visit 
 to the city. He seeks no high-seasoned 
 pleasure, but relaxation. He may be 
 seen at the parks, the museums, and 
 picture-halls, tired out, but happy.' He 
 returns at the end of his week, with no 
 remembrance of having seen a policeman, 
 or heard of a jail, a police court, or any¬ 
 thing to make his visit unpleasant. The 
 crook comes to the city to rob and to 
 steal. He comes in contact with officers 
 of the law, makes acquaintance with a 
 judge, rides in a prison van, finds how 
 the inside of a jail looks and how prison 
 fare tastes and what it feels like to lie 
 on a jail bed, and has no end of unpleasant 
 experiences. All these rasping and humil¬ 
 iating things and the law itself “were not 
 made for a righteous man, but for the 
 lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly 
 and for sinners, for the unholy and pro¬ 
 fane.’’ If all were righteous, there would 
 be no need of law, save for education and 
 information. The way of the Kingdom 
 is to make men better, ruler and ruled, 
 and thus make the world free. 
 
38 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 The kingdom of heaven is committed 
 to unswerving allegiance to truth. Though 
 he refused to become or to be called a 
 king, Jesus said to the incarnation of 
 falsehood and insincerity seated on the 
 Roman tribunal, “Thou sayest that I am 
 a king. To this end was I born, and for 
 this cause came I into the world, that 
 I should bear witness unto the truth.” 
 Not only does Jesus reign over his king¬ 
 dom of truth, but he is the embodiment 
 of its inner spirit. He said, “I am the 
 truth.” His mightiest utterances were 
 clinched with a “Verily, verily.” The gold 
 and silver from the mine and pearls from 
 the sea he leaves to men. On the other 
 hand, truth, wherever found and by whom¬ 
 soever, he claims for his kingdom. We 
 credit certain truths to Zoroaster or 
 Buddha, others to Plato or Paul. They 
 only found them, and finding does not 
 constitute ownership. The truths that 
 the future folds in its closed hand are 
 his also. 
 
 The kingdom of heaven demands of its 
 citizens loyalty to truth. Though it lead 
 to the lions, to the galley, to prison, to 
 
FREEDOM 
 
 39 
 
 social ostracism, to death, there must be 
 no flinching, no compromise. 4 4 We can 
 do nothing against the truth, but for the 
 truth,must be the watchword. In its 
 Hall of Fame martyrs of the truth occupy 
 the first place. The King of this kingdom 
 is one of them. 
 
 Nor must men stumble when they dis¬ 
 cover that truth is not static, but is always 
 leading out and on. Or, rather, it is ever 
 fulfilling itself as the green bud fulfills 
 itself in the blushing rose, the acorn in 
 the oak, the helpless babe in the stalwart 
 and bearded man, the typical sacrifice for 
 sin, in the Christ who taketh away sin. 
 Truth is ever on the march. To be loyal 
 to it men must follow. The loyalty that 
 is true to that which is, denying that it 
 may go on to perfection, is as wanting as 
 the mother love that tarries about the 
 cradle when its occupant has gone on to 
 manhood, and in the struggle of life sorely 
 needs the strength which her sympathy 
 and love would give. Coming up out of 
 Egypt, the Hebrew nation seemed deter¬ 
 mined to tarry about Sinai where Jehovah 
 had spoken to Moses. They abandoned 
 
40 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 the thought as they saw the pillar of 
 cloud far out over the desert, on the way 
 to the promised land. To have failed to 
 follow would have been to lose forever the 
 land flowing with milk and honey, to have 
 no part in the city and temple built on 
 Mount Moriah, no part in Bethlehem and 
 Nazareth and Calvary, the empty sepul¬ 
 cher and the upper room. So often as 
 men think they have heard the last word 
 and begin to build tabernacles to dwell 
 in, they are likely to hear the voice of 
 Jesus saying, “I have yet many things to 
 say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
 now.” He, in all the yesterdays and in 
 all the to-morrows the same, is with the 
 years unfolding in beauty and glory. 
 What seems change is only a more com¬ 
 plete unveiling. He said, “The truth shall 
 make you free.” That would be strange 
 freedom which gave liberty in all things 
 save freedom to follow the truth. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ALTRUISM 
 
 “There is no social order, no society, no peace or 
 happiness, no righteous leadership or kingship, un¬ 
 less men lose themselves in something greater than 
 themselves.”— Wells. 
 
 The kingdom of heaven is differentiated 
 from earthly kingdoms by the loftiest 
 altruism. In ideals and in estimates of 
 what is noble and worth while in life, it 
 came as a revolution. A group of scien¬ 
 tists maintain that at some time in the 
 past and for reasons that we cannot now 
 discern, this earth suddenly changed its 
 axis so that the poles took the place of 
 the equator and the equator of the poles. 
 It was conduct extraordinary for this 
 generally stable world, but hardly more 
 marked than that which took place in 
 the world of ideals and concepts of human 
 life. It was unquestioned that if a grain 
 . of wheat died, it died and there was no 
 more of it. The new conception was if 
 it dies, it lives, and only by death in this 
 
 41 
 
42 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 dark earth, can it live. It was said if a 
 man lose his life, he loses it, and for him 
 there is no other. According to the new 
 thinking, if he lose his life for others, he 
 saves it. According to the old, if a man 
 desired fame, he diligently sought it, keep¬ 
 ing himself in the limelight, and drawing 
 in to himself the means to attain his end 
 as the cuttle fish draws toward its ca¬ 
 pacious maw each particle of food in the 
 water. The kingdom of heaven taught 
 that only as a man forgot himself in 
 seeking the welfare of others would he 
 be remembered. The noblest things were 
 to be obtained, not by seeking, but by 
 renouncing them. If one would rise, he 
 must stoop. Happiness sought as an end 
 was evasive, but happiness renounced, in 
 thought of others, came in double measure 
 to the generous soul. To truly love life 
 one must hate it. It was ever esteemed 
 blessed to receive houses and lands and 
 gold and goods, but the kingdom of 
 heaven would have it that it was more 
 blessed to give them. To surrender goods 
 and lands and fathers and brethren for 
 love of God and country, was to find 
 
ALTRUISM 
 
 43 
 
 them, as Monica found Augustine and 
 Cornelius his household. To be minis¬ 
 tered unto, lavishly, obsequiously, was to 
 obtain the highest good the world has to 
 offer; in the kingdom of heaven they 
 thought it nobler and better to minister 
 than to be ministered unto. 
 
 This higher conception of life was not 
 altogether unknown in the past, and now 
 and then a noble example of self-sacrifice 
 flared forth in the moral night; it re¬ 
 mained for the kingdom of heaven to 
 announce it as its ideal for every citizen 
 of the Kingdom and for Jesus to give 
 his never-to-be-forgotten example of ut¬ 
 most self-sacrifice for the world. 
 
 By a process of absorption, rather than 
 by formal acceptance, this ideal of the 
 noblest in life finds place not alone 
 among Christians, but in the world at 
 large. It figures extensively in literature, 
 is emblazoned in art and voiced in song 
 and verse. Who is the greatest? To-day 
 the almost universal answer is “He who 
 serves most.” The jingle of gold in the 
 pocket of the plutocrat or the silver tongue 
 of the ambitious statesman may enthuse 
 
44 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 the rabble, but not for long, and even 
 that is drowned in the larger and more 
 sincere applause for men of the type of 
 Abou Ben Adhem. The most popular 
 word of the day is “democracy.” It 
 points away from self to the many, as 
 autocracy would that the many should 
 pay tribute to the one. A new enthusiasm 
 is spreading from Jesus its center out 
 over the sea of humanity in ever-widening 
 circles. Like the receiver of the tele¬ 
 graphic messages who hears but does not 
 heed the many clicks of his instrument 
 till a well-known signal strikes his ear, so 
 the world hears with much complacency 
 many subtly arranged calls for popular 
 favor, but gives instant attention to news 
 that a new hero has laid his life a willing 
 sacrifice on the altar of his country. The 
 popular heart-throb then is like 
 
 “When a deed is done for freedom 
 
 Through the broad earth’s aching breast, 
 Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, 
 
 Trembling on from East to West.” 
 
 In the progress of the human race “the 
 noblest Roman of them all” may yet 
 
ALTRUISM 
 
 45 
 
 appear, but we know what he shall be— 
 a feeble replica of Him who gave his life 
 for the world. This is a great triumph 
 for the kingdom of heaven. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SERVANT OF ALL 
 
 “The grace that came to earth and found no 
 word to speak it.” 
 
 When the Messiah was published as a 
 carpenter, the world was amused; when he 
 was described as one girt with a towel 
 with a bowl in his hands in the act of 
 washing the feet of a company of peasants, 
 the Jews were scandalized and the rest 
 laughed. Yet thus we must think of him, 
 and in so doing we are noting another 
 mark of the Kingdom as expressed in 
 his confession, “I am meek and lowly in 
 heart.” Perhaps Jesus alone could speak 
 thus without violating the spirit of the 
 words he uttered, for self-effacement is 
 not a plant indigenous to the soil of the 
 human heart. He said in substance: “I 
 make myself of no reputation. I was 
 born in a much-despised city. I have 
 the form of a servant, I travel about on 
 foot, I eat with publicans and sinners, my 
 most intimate friends are fishermen; when 
 
 46 
 
SERVANT OF ALL 
 
 47 
 
 in Galilee I am entertained at the home 
 of a fisherman, when in the neighborhood 
 of Jerusalem, at a home where there are 
 no servants; I choose to have it thus.” 
 
 Humility, the grace which came to 
 earth and found no word to speak it, has 
 since that time found no words to describe 
 itself. It has been identified with mean¬ 
 ness as one might with equal absurdity 
 identify a star and a lucifer match. Coun¬ 
 terfeit humility is the most contemptible 
 and altogether the worst fraud on the 
 market of the world. On February 22, 
 1901, the Holy Synod of Russia published 
 a bitter document of excommunication 
 against Leon Tolstoy, a Christian and 
 world-benefactor. The document was 
 signed by the Humble Anthony, the 
 Humble Theognose and the Humble Vlad¬ 
 imir. A letter in a Russian newspaper, 
 issued soon after, read; “You hierarchs 
 teach humility and simplicity and yet you 
 drive about in carriages drawn by six 
 horses; you are clothed in silk and velvet 
 and brocade; you wear miters on your 
 heads and vestments covered with dia¬ 
 monds.” The “humble” signatures of 
 
48 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 those who in six-horse carriages displayed 
 their silks and jewels is proof that they 
 admired humility and coveted the reputa¬ 
 tion of possessing it. The description of a 
 piece of land states that it is over against 
 a certain other property and at such and 
 such a distance from a given point. Should 
 one thus describe the humble mind he 
 would say that it was exactly over against 
 pride and a long distance away from it. 
 On the dark and almost unrelieved back¬ 
 ground of human vanity how starlike 
 glows the lowly Nazarene! How truly 
 epoch-making the coming of the Kingdom 
 of the meek and lowly into a world of 
 brazen self-assertion in spite of the posses¬ 
 sion of mediocre talents, of coarseness 
 under a thin veil of culture, of scrimping 
 poverty with pretended wealth and of 
 humble birth and ancestry with claim 
 of long and honorable lineage. The ab¬ 
 sence of the spirit that “minds not high 
 things” and is content, if Providence so 
 orders, with the lowly path and the simple 
 life, leads to an accumulation of excess 
 baggage that makes the journey of life a 
 toilsome and annoying experience. Thus 
 
SERVANT OF ALL 
 
 49 
 
 a man buys a pretentious home to hnd 
 that he has bought an extensive assort¬ 
 ment of cares and expensive discomforts. 
 The few joys and simple pleasures he 
 had, in the old home, refuse to move 
 into the new house. He is there a stranger 
 and has exchanged a care-free home for 
 a jangling servants’ boarding house. 
 
 For centuries men have been singing 
 “And pour contempt on all my pride.” 
 
 Should they in good earnest set about 
 the task, what oceans of contempt would 
 be necessary that each act of human 
 pride might receive but a few drops. 
 
 Human nature can be depended upon 
 to move in the line of the least resistance, 
 that is, toward pride and away from hu¬ 
 mility. It is easier to resent a wrong 
 than to forgive an injury. Seeds of pride 
 grow in the worst of soil, especially if it 
 is shallow. An ignorant Negro in a prayer 
 meeting held in a shack in a Mississippi 
 hamlet, a man of forbidding appearance, 
 miserably clothed and without a dollar of 
 wealth, with evident sincerity again and 
 again put up the petition, “Lord, make 
 me humble.” With enough, one would 
 
50 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 think, to make him humble, he was pur¬ 
 sued by the devil of pride. Pride in this 
 case showed itself wanting in pride when 
 it chose such a victim. A man of whom 
 all the people are proud, knew but one 
 poem and that, “O why should the spirit 
 of mortal be proud?” It was because he 
 was great of soul that he saw through the 
 shams and shoddy of a generation that 
 stands at the street corners and in the 
 market places proclaiming its own superi¬ 
 ority, and that this life at best is “a 
 fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,” 
 where pride is but a monstrous deformity. 
 
 In this way the kingdom of heaven is 
 the ally of good government and a friend 
 of law and order. In a democracy, espe¬ 
 cially, men must submit themselves one 
 to another. They must in honor prefer 
 one another and stand by one another, 
 each in his place. The vain, the high- 
 tempered man cannot do this. He must 
 rule or ruin. An army of Benedict 
 Arnolds would be but a herd of wild 
 cattle, a nation of Aaron Burrs would be 
 a continuous storm at sea, wave lashing 
 wave. Humility thus becomes a granite 
 
SERVANT OF ALL 
 
 51 
 
 foundation on which to rest a stable 
 government. 
 
 The principles already noted are suffi¬ 
 cient to indicate the nature of the kingdom 
 of heaven. A complete summary must 
 include “whatsoever things are pure, what¬ 
 soever things are lovely, whatsoever things 
 are of good report, if there be any virtue 
 and if there be any praise.” 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE STONE THAT GREW AS IT 
 
 ROLLED 
 
 “Great is His kingdom and of His dominion there 
 is no frontier.” 
 
 Before a sculptor begins to embody a 
 new conception in marble he makes a 
 rude clay image that may be a kind of 
 stepping-stone to the perfect work which 
 follows. The things of earth are rude 
 shadows or first models of things of the 
 spirit, and furnish many hints as to their 
 nature. To one of these we turn for 
 illustration of another characteristic of the 
 kingdom of heaven. 
 
 The glacier, especially that of the Alps, 
 has always been an object of immense 
 interest. It was a frozen river filling wide 
 mountain gorges, extending from the cul¬ 
 tivated fields at the base of the moun¬ 
 tains back and up through the tortuous 
 windings of the canyons to the mountain 
 tops; in depth equaling the height of 
 lofty peaks, piled up in hummocks crossed 
 by wide crevasses of unknown depth, here 
 
 52 
 
THE STONE THAT GREW 53 
 
 suggesting waves thrown up and con¬ 
 gealed in midair, and there a cataract 
 caught and frozen as it leaped from a 
 height; in bulk and avoirdupois com¬ 
 parable to mountain ranges. Visitors were 
 too much occupied in admiring its beauty 
 or too deeply impressed by its grandeur 
 to philosophize about it, till a scientist 
 published the conjecture that a glacier 
 was not the static thing they had thought, 
 but that it moved and was actually 
 traveling down the gorge toward the sea. 
 In opposition it was alleged that the 
 road over which it must pass was exceed¬ 
 ingly crooked, sometimes broad and often 
 narrow, and that the power to move 
 such a mass must be unthinkably great 
 and was nowhere in evidence. All things 
 must give way to facts and these were 
 furnished by selecting a landmark on the 
 mountain side, and erecting an observation 
 post on the ice, by which it was evident 
 that the glacier was moving with ma¬ 
 jestic step down to the cities and habita¬ 
 tions of the plain. It was estimated that 
 all the machinery in the world, with all 
 the power of oxen, horses, mules, camels, 
 
54 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 reindeer, and water buffaloes, would not 
 suffice to move an ordinary glacier a 
 single inch; yet within its congealed mass 
 was a power that easily and without 
 ceasing marched on, carrying with it 
 huge pines and oaks that had been broken 
 off or torn up by the roots, together with 
 millions of tons of rock. No wonder the 
 superstition spread that the glacier was 
 alive. The more ignorant saw in it a 
 huge ice serpent slowly crawling to the 
 sea, a monster of the same race as the 
 giant sleeping under Vesuvius, who by 
 turning on his bed caused the eruptions. 
 
 At its inception the kingdom of heaven 
 attracted as little attention as a glacier 
 among the peasants in a Swiss hamlet. 
 The Roman world had become accus¬ 
 tomed to an attempt to set up a new 
 kingdom in some of the provinces. It had 
 no vitality and crumbled as a Roman 
 legion appeared. Fanatical Jews had done 
 the same among their people and suc¬ 
 ceeded no better. When Jesus came 
 preaching the kingdom of heaven, he was 
 regarded as but the last of many to play 
 that role. As the days passed they 
 
THE STONE THAT GREW 55 
 
 noted the spread of the new kingdom 
 from city to city across the seas and over 
 the mountains. Somewhat alarmed, an 
 investigation was ordered. Multitudes 
 were summoned before Roman consuls and 
 not a few were tortured to elicit the truth. 
 The result was to establish the fact of 
 the marvelous spread of the Kingdom 
 and the absence of any reason that could 
 account for it. As to an army, there were 
 two swords, but not a soldier. The navy 
 was composed of a half dozen fishing 
 boats. The capital, if there were any, 
 was the home of a fisherman on the shores 
 of Galilee; as to the treasury, there was 
 none, nor need of one. The citizens of 
 this Kingdom were one and all without 
 influential connections and without stand¬ 
 ing in society. To learn that the Kingdom 
 was reaching out beyond the Alps and 
 across the Mediterranean and at the same 
 time that there was no reason why it 
 should spread at all, was weird, uncanny. 
 The belief of the Swiss peasants about 
 the glacier, that is, that it was somehow 
 a living thing, became that of the people 
 concerning the kingdom of heaven. 
 
56 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 That is precisely what Jesus taught. 
 He said it is like seed that should “spring 
 and grow up he Jcnoweth not how .” He 
 said, “the earth bringeth forth fruit of 
 herself.” “Ye know not whence it cometh 
 nor whither it goeth.” The things that 
 Jesus pointed out as like to the kingdom 
 of heaven were those that had life and 
 motion. “The kingdom of God is not 
 in word, but in power.” Most of all, he 
 found the heart of his kingdom like to 
 life in some of its forms. That unseen 
 and practically unknown somewhat is one 
 of nature’s brawniest forces. Life clothes 
 the fields with grass; it lifts millions of 
 tons of nourishing sap to the top of loftiest 
 trees. It germinates seed in the crevices 
 of castles and towers and overturns them. 
 It fills the waters with fish, the air with 
 birds, and the forests and plains with 
 wild beasts. Yet no one has seen life or 
 heard it. The most we know of life is 
 that it does things, does them quietly and 
 easily and by means of resident forces. 
 Life is its own architect and builder, has 
 its own laws and is its own executor. 
 In this it is like the kingdom of heaven. 
 
THE STONE THAT GREW 57 
 
 It is the stone that grows as it rolls, 
 the river that widens and deepens as it 
 flows, the corn that unfolds from blade 
 to ear and to full corn, the talents that 
 from five increase to ten, the leaven that 
 works on till all is leavened. The ex¬ 
 planation is brief —“Ye know not how .” 
 One cannot but be conscious that he is 
 in the presence of some deep mystery 
 beyond the vision of the eyes. 
 
 “As one who wandering in a starless night 
 Feels momently the jar of unseen waves. 
 
 And hears the thunder of an unknown sea 
 Breaking along an unimagined shore.” 
 
 One can easily believe that the stones 
 of the field and the silent forces of nature 
 are in league with the Kingdom. As to 
 Deborah, not alone the hosts of Israel, 
 but the stars in their courses, fought 
 against Sisera, so, with no other explana¬ 
 tion, he might think of the chariot of 
 the Kingdom as hitched to and drawn 
 onward by the same horses of fire. 
 
 We sometimes look upon change, move¬ 
 ment, and even progress, where we are 
 able to see causes which led up to the 
 result. This is, in some cases, a gifted 
 
58 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 leader and in others efficient organization. 
 These outside forces are necessary in the 
 measure that the inner spirit and life are 
 lacking. The early years of the kingdom 
 of heaven are only explicable as the result 
 of the working of silent and secret forces. 
 
 From the glacier, which for the sake of 
 illustration is the kingdom of heaven, and 
 sighting across to some landmark on the 
 shore, can we not see that there is move¬ 
 ment? The mountains do not move, but 
 the ice river does. The mountains are 
 inert, static, dead; the river is life and 
 motion. It has a future and presses on 
 to inherit its kingdom of smiling fields 
 and valleys and its heaven, the wide sea. 
 From our position on the glacier, could we 
 have occupied it in the time of our Lord, 
 we might have seen the Jewish system 
 with its Temple and city slowly passing 
 from sight, the city and temple of the 
 great goddess Diana fade away on the 
 distant horizon, the cults of both Greek 
 and Roman left behind till the tops of 
 ruined temples and broken shrines were 
 lost to view. For the last time the sports 
 of the gladiators are celebrated in the 
 
THE STONE THAT GREW 59 
 
 Coliseum and the curtain pulled down on 
 that cruel spectacle. The Roman Empire 
 that once outlawed now accepts and pro¬ 
 tects the new Kingdom. Something 
 moves; it is not the old pagan world. 
 Something is left behind to death and 
 oblivion; it is not the kingdom of heaven. 
 In our day we have only to sight from 
 the onward moving Kingdom to the shore 
 to be forced to say, as did Galileo on 
 bended knee in Saint Peter’s, “It does 
 move.” 
 
 One is even more startled to find that 
 a part of this change is in oneself. With¬ 
 out consciously deserting the old ideals or 
 accepting new views, men find themselves 
 at a viewpoint that they never dreamed 
 they would occupy and looking at their 
 fellows and their doings through other 
 eyes than those they once possessed. 
 They are the trees and rocks along the 
 margin of the glacier that, one by one, 
 desert their ancient habitat and join the 
 procession. / 
 
 Expansion in the kingdom of heaven 
 cannot be measured by the progress or 
 decline of any human institution. To 
 
60 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 cherish high hopes for the Kingdom be¬ 
 cause the church prospers and the world 
 is growing better, or to yield to despair 
 because they seem to be losing ground, 
 is to make the mistake of the passenger 
 in the train who imagines that he is going 
 forward because the train on the nearby 
 track is going back, or that he is going 
 back because it is advancing. The king¬ 
 dom of heaven stands and must be judged 
 by itself. Is it winning its way as Jesus 
 said it would or is it losing out? Is not 
 the situation this? In all progress there 
 is first the battle for the ideal or goal, 
 then the struggle to realize the ideal. 
 The heads of a household often spend 
 more time and anxious thought in deciding 
 upon the plans and specifications of a 
 new home than over their embodiment 
 in brick and mortar. A battle for the 
 ideals of the kingdom of heaven has been 
 in progress since the publication of its 
 Gospels. Can we say that this battle 
 has been substantially won? What other 
 scheme of world-betterment is even 
 offered? In what larger hope can the 
 world indulge? Toward what star shall 
 
THE STONE THAT GREW 61 
 
 the ship of humanity steer if not toward 
 the star of Bethlehem? On the other 
 hand, the work of putting the principles 
 of the Kingdom into the governments, 
 laws, customs, manners, and social and 
 industrial relations of men is apparently 
 just begun. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EMMANUEL—GOD WITH US 
 
 “The late Dr. Dale has left on record the almost 
 unutterable feelings that stirred within his soul 
 when he first realized that Jesus Christ is alive. 
 He thought he had always believed it and had 
 often preached it, but never till one ever-to-be- 
 remembered moment did he realize it.”— Walker. 
 
 To set forth a great result, such, for 
 instance, as the presence and expansion 
 of the kingdom of heaven, without at 
 the same time assigning some adequate 
 cause, leaves the mind in the condition 
 of the multitude by the Sea of Galilee 
 after the miracle of the loaves and fishes. 
 There was a definite result—the feeding 
 of five thousand. The only thing to 
 account for it, so far as they could see, 
 was a lad with five loaves and two small 
 fish. It is not our purpose, having called 
 attention to the expansion of the kingdom 
 of heaven, to leave the reader to account 
 for it as best he can. There can be but 
 one explanation and that the presence 
 and power of Jesus. This opens the way 
 
 62 
 
GOD WITH US 
 
 63 
 
 to consider, more in detail, the King, as 
 we have before the Kingdom. Jesus 
 taught much concerning his kingdom and 
 much less about himself. He knew the limi¬ 
 tations of the human understanding and 
 that to man the nature of God and the 
 scheme of the universe are unimaginable. 
 
 The thought of God as one, and at the 
 same time triune, is a noble conception, 
 worthy of being regarded as the utmost 
 of God’s endeavor by words to reveal 
 himself to man and of man’s by searching 
 to find out God. Here we are swimmers 
 that with few strokes find ourselves be¬ 
 yond our depth and must make for shore. 
 Yet the sea in a rude form instructs us 
 about Jesus and one whom he called his 
 heavenly Father and with whom he said 
 he was one. A part of the ocean is near 
 the shore. I hear the gentle murmur of 
 the waves that wash the sand, or break in 
 thunder upon the rocks. I can swim in 
 it and “fearlessly lay my hand upon the 
 ocean’s mane.” I can launch a boat 
 and ride upon it. I can know it, I can 
 come into fellowship with it and seek 
 its company whenever my duties will 
 
64 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 permit. But this is not all of the ocean. 
 Far beyond my gaze it extends, hundreds 
 and even thousands of miles in all direc¬ 
 tions, its rocky bed as far beneath the 
 surface as the clouds are above it. There 
 the trade winds blow and icebergs float 
 and deep calleth unto deep. There are 
 the submarine gardens and forests, the 
 caves of coral and the wrecks of man’s 
 proud ships. The little that I see is 
 truly ocean, but what of that beyond? 
 Lo, this narrow wash of waves is a part 
 of thy works, O ocean, and of thyself, but 
 the thunder of thy power who can under¬ 
 stand? With the ocean in its immensity, 
 I can never become acquainted. I shall 
 die and never see the millionth part of 
 it. It is too big and I too little. I say 
 of it, as Martin Luther of its Maker and 
 Lord, “In his majesty I cannot find God.” 
 But God dwells not alone in majesty. 
 He bowed the heavens, came to earth 
 and in the person of Jesus of Nazareth 
 became a Man. Simeon, Anna, and his 
 “pondering” mother were the first to 
 notice that what in the best of men is but a 
 smoldering spark of the Divine Fire, was 
 
GOD WITH US 
 
 65 
 
 in this youth a brightly burning flame. 
 As he increased in wisdom and stature 
 as a man, the divinity within was man¬ 
 ifest by words such as never man spake, 
 by Godlike pity for suffering humanity, by 
 helpful deeds of healing, by power to still 
 the tempest and raise the dead and by 
 an expressed purpose, which astonished 
 angels desired to look into, to give his 
 life for man. His coming was not a flash 
 of light which illumined the world for a 
 little while and then disappeared. He 
 came to establish a kingdom in which he 
 would rule till the kingdoms of this world 
 were merged into the heavenly kingdom. 
 He told them that at about the time of 
 his death and for only a little while they 
 would not see him. His absence, he 
 explained, would be that he might be 
 with them thereafter, in a new and better 
 sense. He departed, as he predicted, and 
 came again in power and great glory at 
 Pentecost. 
 
 He was, he is the complete expression 
 of God in human form, Emmanuel, God 
 with us, earth’s Redeemer and King, 
 crowned and pledged to stay by his 
 
66 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 Kingdom, world without end; never to 
 leave the field till the final battle is won, 
 never to lay by the ax till the last tree 
 that brings forth evil fruit is cut down 
 or the winnowing fan until the harvest 
 is gathered into the barn. This is the 
 all-sufficient explanation of the kingdom 
 of heaven. Jesus is alive; fills the King¬ 
 dom with his presence, and maintains it 
 by his power. He is the angel of the 
 covenant that was with the Hebrews in 
 the wilderness, the Captain that as leader 
 of the Lord’s host appeared to Joshua, 
 the Angel that spoke to Paul on the 
 Alexandrian com ship, and the Comrade 
 in White who made himself known to 
 brave hearts on the field of Flanders. 
 He said, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all 
 men unto me.” Many men have been 
 lifted up on all sorts of gibbets; only One 
 draws . “My words are spirit, they are 
 life.” Words, in number like the sand 
 on the seashore, have been spoken or 
 printed, to rot like leaves in ravines in 
 the woods, or be shut up in moldy books 
 in libraries. His words not only live, 
 but are life-giving, reaching down into 
 
GOD WITH US 
 
 67 
 
 the tomblike souls of the self-satisfied and 
 the dead in sin, and waking the sleepers. 
 Jesus is the life. The world has long 
 known that all fife must come from life. 
 He is the Itaska of the world’s life stream. 
 Humanity is not always a prodigal son, 
 enamored of the pleasures of the far 
 country, but one who is sick of the farce 
 and lacks moral energy to arise and go 
 home. It is a traveler in the desert dying 
 by thirst whose immediate need is a little 
 water to enable him to rise and search 
 for more water. This spiritual inertia 
 in men has been the despair of reformers. 
 It caused the death of Confucius and has 
 whitened many a noble head and blanched 
 many a cheek. Meliora video proboque; 
 deteriora sequor . The last Adam has 
 proven himself a quickening Spirit, and 
 at his word, men, institutions and nations 
 awake, arise, and come forth. Because he 
 liveth, my race and his kingdom live also. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SEEKING THE LIVING AMONG 
 THE DEAD 
 
 “Plus il fait jour, mieux on voit Dieu.”— Lamartine. 
 
 The Jews were unable to see, at least 
 did not see, that Jesus was their long- 
 expected Messiah. They are still waiting. 
 They have been joined by a goodly 
 company of Christians who are also wait¬ 
 ing for the Messiah. To the former, it is 
 a first; to the latter a second coming. 
 The mental attitude is the same. Those 
 who await a second coming tell us that 
 the Messiah has ascended to the Father, 
 but is present by the Spirit. Is not 
 presence by the Spirit the highest form 
 of presence the human spirit can know? 
 Does not Paul labor through a whole 
 chapter to show that the open vision of 
 God which Moses knew, with the entire 
 dispensation written and engraven in 
 stones, had no glory when compared with 
 the excellence of the dispensation of the 
 Spirit. If knowledge of the divine through 
 
 68 
 
SEEKING THE LIVING 
 
 69 
 
 the Spirit is the highest form of knowl¬ 
 edge and spiritual presence more real 
 than visible presence, why should they 
 not, though now they see him no more, 
 yet believing, rejoice with joy unspeak¬ 
 able and full of glory? So long as we 
 demand a visible presence, so long Jesus 
 must to us be present only by proxy, 
 which carries with it the idea of absence 
 in person. It may be legal presence, it 
 can hardly be more. It is not a presence 
 that can satisfy the heart. For the time 
 being the world has lost its Lord; the 
 throne of the Kingdom is without an 
 occupant. To hope and love, no one can 
 take his place or supply his absence. 
 Only a mighty faith can dissipate the 
 doubt that if he can leave the world for 
 a century, for a thousand years, for two 
 millenniums, he can stay forever where is 
 no sin to annoy or cares to vex. 
 
 Are we compelled to think of Jesus as 
 an absentee Saviour and King? This 
 depends upon the answer we give to the 
 question. What did he mean when he 
 said, “I go away and come again”? In 
 this matter it is vain to open any book 
 
70 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 save the New Testament or to consult 
 any other author than Jesus. His ref¬ 
 erences to this theme were many. Of 
 that which he taught, this is the sum: 
 “I am going away, but will surely return. 
 The interval between my going and com¬ 
 ing will be brief. My return shall not be 
 after the manner of my going. I go in 
 apparent weakness, I return in power 
 and great glory. I go as the visible 
 Christ, I return as the Christ of the 
 Spirit. My return shall include the 
 apotheosis of my kingdom.” His most 
 significant teaching on this subject is 
 thought to be connected with his ascen¬ 
 sion. Rising through the parting clouds, 
 he shouted back a cheerful message. Two 
 angels remained, apparently to encourage 
 the sorrowful company by the further 
 message, “This same Jesus shall so return 
 in like manner as ye have seen him go.” 
 Was the message to inform them of the 
 manner of his return? Of what interest 
 could it have been to them, or is it to us, 
 the manner of his return, if at Bethany 
 or Nazareth, alone, or with a company of 
 angels, clad in the seamless robe, or in 
 
SEEKING THE LIVING 71 
 
 the livery of heaven? One thing was 
 more important at that hour and it was 
 what, and all, that the message said, 
 “He unit surely return So many had 
 gone away who never did come back. 
 As to the expression “in like manner,” 
 Greek scholars, not a few, assert that 
 neither in this instance nor in the three 
 other cases in which it is used in the New 
 Testament has it any reference to the 
 manner, but only to the certainty of the 
 fact in question. The sayings of Jesus 
 about his return were no doubt recalled 
 by the one hundred and twenty as they 
 waited in the upper room. Would he 
 really return and, in view of his reference 
 to some great exaltation that awaited 
 him, would he be the same wise, loving, 
 and faithful Friend? They waited as did 
 the household of Saul at the entrance of 
 what they feared was the death chamber of 
 the King. They might have said asBrowning 
 makes one say to David as he came forth, 
 
 “Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance 
 sent, 
 
 Neither drunken nor eaten have we, nor until 
 from his tent. 
 
72 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 Thou return with the joyful assurance, the King 
 liveth yet. 
 
 Shall our lips with honey be bright, with the 
 water be wet.” 
 
 The tenth day arrived and with it an 
 end of their waiting. The manifestations 
 of that chief of days in the religious world 
 were unlike, and yet so strangely like, 
 what they had seen before. They brought 
 to mind so much they had heard from 
 Jesus about his kingdom. The one hun¬ 
 dred and twenty, and many others, were 
 filled with tumultuous joy, peace, and love. 
 They praised the Lord. Their gladness 
 was overflowing. It was joy “unspeak¬ 
 able,” “fulness of joy,” “joy like a river,” 
 “joy that no man taketh away,” joy so 
 great that they were thought to have 
 partaken too freely of new wine. What 
 may have astonished them most was that 
 it was so like the kingdom of heaven . Yet 
 it was not more like the Kingdom than 
 the sudden outburst of the spirit of 
 brotherhood, which, floodlike, for the 
 time being, obliterated national lines, 
 broke down the barriers between Bar¬ 
 barian and Scythian, bond and free, Jew 
 
SEEKING THE LIVING 
 
 73 
 
 and Gentile. “Neither said any of them 
 that aught that he had was his own.” 
 “They had all things common.” “They 
 sold and gave to the poor as every man 
 had need.” It was the altruism of Jesus 
 and his kingdom, that, by a sudden coming 
 of heavenly sunshine and rain, burst forth 
 into flower and fruit. If the kingdom of 
 heaven meant freedom from all bonds 
 and fears, then it must have come in 
 power that day. This man who, amid 
 surging crowds, stands as fearless as a 
 lion and as firm as a rock and charges 
 them with the murder of their Messiah, 
 how little he looks like the coward who 
 quailed before the question of a servant. 
 This Peter and John, arrested and ques¬ 
 tioned by the rulers of the city and for¬ 
 bidden to preach, how did they dare to 
 put to this august body the question, 
 “Whether it be right in the sight of God 
 to hearken unto you more than unto 
 God, judge ye”? How well they proved 
 in the ensuing days that with the fear 
 of man had departed all fear of death 
 and hell and everything but God! 
 
 A mysterious power accompanied them 
 
74 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 and their work. A single sermon and three 
 thousand were added to the church. 
 They witnessed in power. A great fear 
 came upon the multitude. They were 
 afraid where no fear was. They fled 
 when no man pursued. This, again, was 
 the Kingdom. One by one the principles 
 which Jesus taught in precept and parable 
 appeared in living form among the mul¬ 
 titude. Barnabas having land sold it 
 and brought the money and laid it at the 
 apostles’ feet. Stephen forgave and prayed 
 for his enemies. Peter the Jew entered 
 and ate in the home of Cornelius the 
 Roman. Ananias went to a home on 
 Straight Street, Damascus, and putting 
 his hands on the head of a man who had 
 caused great slaughter among his brethren, 
 said, “Brother Saul.” Truly this was the 
 “Kingdom come.” The Kingdom of the 
 parables was the United States as it 
 existed in ideal and purpose in the hearts 
 of one hundred in the cabin of the May¬ 
 flower and the Kingdom of Pentecost was 
 the United States after the adoption of 
 the Constitution. 
 
 Early in that memorable day came the 
 
SEEKING THE LIVING 
 
 75 
 
 joyous surprise that this breaking through 
 of heaven upon earth meant the return 
 of Jesus. “This Jesus,” said Peter in his 
 great sermon, “hath shed forth this which 
 ye now see and hear.” The next day the 
 healing of a lame man at the Temple gate 
 was explained to the multitude as the 
 work of Jesus. Stephen at his martyrdom 
 witnessed that Jesus was nearer to him 
 than were his persecutors. It was Jesus 
 who confronted Saul on the road to 
 Damascus and said, “I am Jesus whom 
 thou persecutest.” It was he who stood 
 by him at his first trial when all men 
 forsook him and fled and he who appeared 
 to him at Corinth with the assurance 
 that no man would be permitted to do 
 him harm, and he who was with him on 
 the storm-tossed and foundering corn- 
 ship. Even a cursory reading of the 
 literature of that day must convince one 
 that the first Christians were strangely 
 impressed that Jesus was present with 
 them. If Pilate and the high priest were 
 in Jerusalem on that day, and they doubt¬ 
 less were, they saw the fulfillment of a 
 prediction made fifty days before, that 
 
76 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 they should see the humbled prisoner 
 before them coming in His Kingdom with 
 great power and glory. His coming at 
 that time fulfilled the prediction that it 
 would be in “a little while,” that it would 
 be “in that generation,” that it would 
 be “before the company sent out to 
 preach should reach all the towns of 
 Israel,” and that it would precede the 
 death of some of the disciples. As to the 
 manner of his reappearing, they were soon 
 to know of believers in Jerusalem, Antioch, 
 Ephesus, and even in far-off Corinth and 
 Rome, who were saying of the same 
 Christ and at the same moment “Still, 
 still with thee when evening shadows 
 gather.” That these, so widely separated, 
 realized “How sweet the consciousness I 
 am with thee” fulfilled the prediction that 
 his reappearing would know no place and 
 be like the lightning, present at the same 
 time in every place. 
 
 “We are not to interpret,” says the 
 Rev. W. L. Walker, a Scottish clergyman, 
 referring to the ascension, “such language 
 merely literally, but spiritually and truly. 
 It does not mean that Christ rose up in 
 
SEEKING THE LIVING 
 
 77 
 
 some outward way to a position elevated 
 above the earth so that he in some way 
 entirely left the world of our humanity, 
 but that he in that humanity which in 
 him became one with God, passed wholly 
 into the divine life, the manhood, as the 
 creed says, being taken up into the God- 
 hood so as to give him full participation 
 in that infinite life of God which is the 
 life of Spirit, and so that he as a spiritual 
 divine and human Personality is present 
 and working everywhere. When he put 
 off the flesh his spirit did not go away 
 somewhere, but became free to be present 
 everywhere and to become thus that 
 indwelling spirit he promised to his disci¬ 
 ples. The first disciples might understand 
 this in the sense of local movement, but 
 for us to continue to do so is to material¬ 
 ize spiritual truth so as, in time, to lose 
 it altogether.” 
 
 Imperfect as may be this survey of 
 the character and aims of the Kingdom 
 which Jesus established, we must turn 
 from it to the more practical question of 
 citizenship in the Kingdom. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 CITIZENS BY BIRTH 
 
 “Try to become little with the Little One that 
 you may increase in stature with Him.”— Bona- 
 ventura. 
 
 Jesus in his teaching referred to some 
 as being in the kingdom of heaven, to 
 others as about to enter. Some, he said, 
 were not far from the kingdom of God; 
 others were far off. Some not only would 
 not enter but hindered others from doing 
 so. Some were not fit for the Kingdom 
 and some could not even see the Kingdom. 
 From this we infer that it is entirely 
 proper to make inquiry concerning the 
 conditions of citizenship. This carries 
 with it the admission that the kingdom 
 of heaven is as much a reality as any 
 earthly kingdom, Italy, for instance, and 
 entrance to it as valid an experience as 
 landing on the dock at Naples and sub¬ 
 mitting one’s passport and baggage for 
 inspection. This does not apply to cit- 
 
 78 
 
CITIZENS BY BIRTH 
 
 79 
 
 izens who enter the Kingdom by the 
 Birth Gate. 
 
 So vast is this number that it gives 
 character to the citizenship body. ‘‘Of 
 such is the kingdom of heaven.” Each 
 child born into the world Jesus claims as 
 a citizen of his kingdom. This is irre¬ 
 spective of the flag under which he was 
 born or the quarter of the globe in which 
 he came into life, the religious belief or 
 unbelief of the parents, their Christian 
 professions or their pagan practices, their 
 poverty or wealth, their standing in high 
 circles, or their degradation in the under¬ 
 world. Nor did it matter if they were 
 children of the Judas who betrayed him, 
 the' witnesses who perjured themselves at 
 his trial, the soldier who smote him, or 
 the impenitent thief who railed at him. 
 Not knowing the right hand from the 
 left, with life measured by a few ticks of 
 the clock, the endless task of babyhood 
 in counting the fingers, not yet under¬ 
 taken, without baptism or name, they are 
 birthright citizens of a kingdom so royal 
 that we call it after the name of the 
 abode of Deity. The name “citizen” in 
 
80 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 this case is no empty title but carries with 
 it substantial honors and emoluments. 
 
 The true light that lighteth every man 
 that cometh into the world; that is part of 
 the dower of childhood. Is Christ the 
 light of the world? Then we need no 
 further proof that he is the special light 
 of those whose eyes yet blink with feeble¬ 
 ness and the unaccustomed glare. One 
 who looks back to childhood with any 
 measure of introspection must discern 
 what was then hidden, that the “Hound 
 of God” was on his track; not the hun¬ 
 ter’s hound to slay, but the Saint Bernard 
 of the monks’ hospice with a loaf of bread 
 and a flask of wine tied to his neck, to 
 succor little pilgrims who had wandered 
 from the snow-hidden road, or perhaps 
 the faithful mastiff swimming out among 
 the breakers to rescue one who, playing 
 too near the edge, had been caught by a 
 wave and borne out. Childhood’s days 
 are fondly remembered and often recalled, 
 but could we turn that part of life inside 
 out, we might discover that the hands 
 that fashioned it were those that were laid 
 on the heads of little children. 
 
CITIZENS BY BIRTH 
 
 81 
 
 The dower of childhood includes special 
 protection. Sins against childhood are 
 super-sins on account of the helplessness 
 of the victims. His watchful eye is over 
 all, even down to old age, but only of 
 childhood is it said their angels do always 
 behold the face of your Father which is 
 in heaven. The figure is that of the city 
 under the care of the guardians of the 
 night, but the watchers over some homes, 
 specially menaced and defenseless, have 
 direct access at any moment to the ruler 
 of the city. What is punishment meet for 
 a Pied Piper of Hamelin, or for the crime 
 of leading even one child astray? Jesus 
 made answer. Take the nether stone 
 of the mill, not the hand mill, but the 
 mill turned by the ox in his endless rounds; 
 let the place of execution be the open sea, 
 not the sea near the shore, but out where 
 it has depths. Let the great stone be 
 tethered to his neck and he, disgraced 
 and forfeit of life and hope, be cast over¬ 
 board; yet even this is not penalty equal 
 to the crime. Forgiving those who sin 
 against him as he has bidden us forgive 
 those who sin against us, can he or we. 
 
82 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 forgive those who sin against child¬ 
 hood? 
 
 Each baby citizen of the Kingdom has 
 a sacred right to a proper training of his 
 infant powers. Behind the blinking eyes 
 is mind yet in embryo, but potential of 
 subtle grasp and endless expansion. Within 
 the breast is a spirit, but the candle there 
 is as yet unlighted and an altar that has 
 known no sacrifice. Our Revolutionary 
 fathers took up the sword in defense of 
 the right of every man to life, liberty, and 
 the pursuit of happiness. Claiming it for 
 themselves, can they deny the right to 
 the weakest among them? If to us be¬ 
 longs the right to come to our best polit¬ 
 ically, shall we be backward in allowing 
 it to our feeblest, as to the whole of life? 
 We may do it, but the kingdom of heaven 
 does not. The debt which the generation 
 passing away owes for what it received is 
 a debt to the generation that is coming. 
 Let parents and guardians, legislators 
 and judges, hear the voice that like 
 rolling thunder comes echoing down the 
 centuries—“Feed my lambs.” O, Peter, 
 was it because you represent the organ- 
 
CITIZENS BY BIRTH 
 
 83 
 
 ized Church of Christ that the command 
 was addressed to you? Have a care lest 
 busy with your nets and fish, your lust 
 for the seat on the right hand and the 
 left hand in the Kingdom—your denomi¬ 
 national rivalries and contentions about 
 creeds and ordinances—you forget to put 
 in the forefront of your duties the care 
 of childhood. 
 
 Of such is the kingdom of heaven. 
 Kingdom of rainbows and flowers and 
 sunshine, of smiles and laughter, of simple 
 faith and unquestioning love, of tears but 
 only like May showers, and of beauty that 
 needs no adorning. Jesus was in this 
 kingdom, but he was also in the world. 
 There he was in an atmosphere of sus¬ 
 picion, meeting with crafty men, who, 
 pretending one thing, had something dif¬ 
 ferent in the hinterland of the mind, out 
 of harmony with him and his message, if 
 not entirely hostile. How refreshing to 
 turn to this kingdom of childhood, where 
 the citizens were without prejudice or bias, 
 without malice or guile, with no pride of 
 learning or pretense of sanctity, without 
 affectation or self-consciousness, without 
 
84 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 covetousness, yet with ships at sea sail¬ 
 ing for their harbor, with no past, but a 
 limitless future, with no possessions at 
 present, but boundless hopes for the 
 future! Doff your hat to the dignitary 
 who rides forth in his baby-cart chariot, 
 or sleeps in his royal trundle bed, who 
 swings in his hammock under the dark 
 trees of an African forest or from his 
 mother’s back as she toils in the rice 
 field. “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.” 
 Yet there are others of whom we must 
 now speak. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 CITIZENS BY NATURALIZATION 
 
 “Toward it one journeyeth not in ships, nor in 
 chariots, nor on foot; for to journey thither, nay 
 even to arrive there, is nothing else but to will to 
 go.”— Augustine. 
 
 The gates of the Kingdom swing out 
 as well as in. Free will in man is God’s 
 gift and the Giver respects his gift. He 
 forces no one to enter; he prevents no one 
 from going out. We are familiar enough 
 with the fact that many, blinded and 
 deceived, barter away their birthright in 
 the Kingdom, renounce their citizenship, 
 and depart for the far country. The 
 prodigal son and the apostate Judas 
 appear and reappear in the history of 
 every village. Though they dwell in tents 
 pitched toward Sodom, there remain faint 
 memories of an Eden where they once 
 lived, which are kept alive by a rosy tint 
 on the horizon toward childhood. For 
 this reason, or because of world-nausea, 
 
 85 
 
86 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 heart-hunger, home-sickness, or because 
 the time comes 
 
 “When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
 Turns again home,” 
 
 some of those who went away return. 
 This brings us to the question of the 
 reentrance into the Kingdom of those who 
 have turned their backs upon it. Jesus 
 said they may not enter again by the 
 Birth Gate, but there remains the Gate of 
 Repentance; they may enter there. He 
 taught that without repentance one could 
 not enter or even see the kingdom of 
 heaven. From beginning to end repent¬ 
 ance was in the forefront of all his teach¬ 
 ing. The word “repentance” is clear-cut 
 as a diamond. It will not admit of mysti¬ 
 cal speculations nor theological juggleries. 
 Jesus urged men to repent and upbraided 
 them because they did not repent. That 
 makes of repentance something that may 
 be understood without calling in a theolog¬ 
 ical doctor, and done without waiting for 
 extraneous aid. It is the exercise of the 
 highest because the executive faculty— 
 the will. The passions may rage, the 
 
NATURALIZATION 
 
 87 
 
 carnal mind demand, the intellect for- 
 bode, the flesh urge; the will as the su¬ 
 preme judge in the supreme court of man 
 may overrule and decide against them all. 
 Repentance respects the decision of this 
 supreme court concerning righteousness. 
 In its heart it is the decision of the will 
 to break once and forever with evil in the 
 heart and life. The forerunner of the 
 Messiah, who preached nothing but re¬ 
 pentance, urged that genuine repentance 
 involved renouncing at once and forever 
 the besetting sin. The soldier must give 
 up his violence and false accusation, those 
 living in selfish ease must share their 
 coats and meat with the destitute, the 
 rulers must abandon extortion. It must 
 be done deliberately, absolutely, and in 
 utmost sincerity. ‘T will,” men say as 
 they take the oath of office, “I will” they 
 say at the marriage altar, “I will” they 
 repeat on the witness stand. It is the 
 same “I will” they must use to their 
 Maker concerning the law of righteous¬ 
 ness. The human act is but one half 
 the hinge on which the door of destiny 
 turns. The decision made, they would 
 
88 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 then learn that when a soul anywhere 
 on God’s earth and in any age becomes 
 conscious of sin as manifest in specific 
 acts or a course of life, and resolves to 
 break with it forever, the human resolve 
 meets with the forgiving Spirit of God 
 and from the union issues repentance 
 which on the one side is a human pur¬ 
 pose, and on the other an act of God, the 
 visible sign of which is likely to be a few 
 bitter-sweet tears. It may be but par¬ 
 tially understood or seemingly trivial, but 
 is as vital to the future life as is the meet¬ 
 ing, in the shut-in chamber of an auto¬ 
 mobile, of a drop of gasoline and an 
 electric spark from whose union emerges 
 power to climb the hill and lift the load. 
 Is repentance of man? It could not be 
 without God. Is it of God? It could 
 not be without man. Is it regeneration? 
 Jesus did not name it. Is it once for all 
 in the life? It is for this day and hour 
 only. Henceforth it is a lifelong holding 
 of the helm of the will toward the North 
 Star of righteousness. Because repentance 
 is a solemn decision in the supreme court 
 of the entire man it is more vital than 
 
NATURALIZATION 
 
 89 
 
 raptures, visions, ecstasies, halleluiahs, or 
 visits like that of Paul to the third heaven 
 or that of Dante to the lowest hell. Its 
 value, like the currency of a bankrupt 
 country, has been depreciated to mean 
 penitence and that to involve the per¬ 
 formance of a few extra-churchly duties, 
 or the manifestation of a few spasms of 
 fear of judgment to come. Jesus taught 
 that, especially for him who had long 
 lived a selfish life, repentance was the 
 hardest task he ever had or would en¬ 
 counter; that in some cases it was im¬ 
 possible. The gate of repentance, as 
 Jesus saw it, was not like Ghiberti’s 
 Doors, a dream of artists, or like the 
 Brandenberg Gates, for the entrance of 
 conquerors. It was narrow; the portal 
 was low. One who entered might expect 
 to touch garments with publicans and 
 harlots, to be one of a procession, not of 
 merrymakers, but of those who, in sack¬ 
 cloth and ashes, smote their breasts say¬ 
 ing, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” 
 He must leave his foolish pride behind 
 and stoop and stoop again and lower 
 still. He must learn as he sees smoke 
 
90 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 ascending from the valley of Gehenna 
 beside the gate, that it is the smoke of 
 the burning idols of those who surrendered 
 them to be burned before they could 
 enter. “Repentance an easy task”! Did 
 ever lips utter words more untrue? Did 
 the rich young man of the gospel find 
 it so? He had kept the commandments. 
 He bowed before Jesus, desiring to attain 
 to that something beyond the command¬ 
 ments which he saw was the Kingdom 
 which he preached. Jesus saw his sin¬ 
 cerity and loved him. But there, occupy¬ 
 ing the chief place in his heart, was a grim 
 idol. He saw how, in spite of hunger of 
 soul, Mammon ruled. Love of wealth 
 was an oak with roots so deep and far 
 reaching in his soul that it must and 
 would live, however it might fare with 
 the flowers growing on the surface. Jesus 
 saw that for him only uprooting the 
 tree would avail. “Go and sell all that 
 thou hast and give to the poor and follow 
 me.” This was the price of repentance 
 for him. He was very sorrowful, but 
 went away, and we look in vain for his 
 name among the early Christians or in 
 
NATURALIZATION 
 
 91 
 
 the number of the one hundred and 
 twenty in the upper room. “It is easier 
 for a camel to go through the eye of a 
 needle than for a rich man to enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven.” Yet a camel 
 may go through the eye of a needle, but 
 only when his body is reduced to its 
 primal elements. This even is easier than 
 for a man, into whose soul the love of 
 riches has entered and grown till it mas¬ 
 tered and used in the service of Mammon 
 every faculty of his being, to enter the 
 kingdom of heaven. 
 
 Nor did Herod find repentance easy. 
 He was on the road to the Kingdom, 
 perhaps not far from it. He was a devout 
 man and attended the preaching of John 
 and did many things and heard him 
 gladly. In his path stood a woman vain, 
 revengeful, and beautiful and with a 
 strange power over him. Through her 
 influence he put away his lawful wife, 
 angered his brother, and estranged his 
 friends. To repent meant to sever the 
 sinful tie, to array the woman in her 
 wounded pride among his enemies. It 
 meant to make a journey back over the 
 
92 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 past, to right the many wrongs that were 
 there. It would be regarded, and would 
 be, a confession of spiritual bankruptcy 
 and of moral breakdown. Would the road 
 through a needle’s eye seem more difficult 
 than the road to the Kingdom through 
 so narrow a way as that? He may have 
 done many things after this, but repent¬ 
 ance was not one of them. By his situa¬ 
 tion and influence his might have been 
 a chief name in the early church, but no 
 list extant contains it. 
 
 Nicodemus was at one time as near the 
 Kingdom as Herod. He had no such 
 past to fight as had Herod. In place of 
 that he had the spiritual and churchly 
 pride of the men of his rank. When he 
 saw what repentance involved he drew 
 back. Could he give up being pointed 
 out in the streets and greeted as rabbi? 
 Could he endure no longer to be given 
 a chief seat at the feast and to be admired 
 as he prayed at the corner of the streets, 
 or put his numerous and sonorous gifts 
 in the trumpet-mouthed collection chests? 
 Could he endure to hear the taunting cry, 
 “Renegade!” which must often greet him 
 
NATURALIZATION 
 
 93 
 
 if he obeyed the voice of his conscience? 
 To his own thinking he could not, at least 
 he did not. Before the Sanhedrin, in 
 timid fashion he defended Jesus only on 
 the ground that the Jews should not 
 break one of their own laws. When 
 Joseph of Arimathsea had led the way in 
 asking the body of Jesus, he joined 
 in making preparations for the burial* 
 Of repentance there is nothing. Why 
 was Jesus so urgent at this point? “Seek 
 ye first the kingdom of heaven.” “Strive 
 to enter in.” Why did he say that only 
 by an earnestness amounting to “violence” 
 could they hope to enter? It was because 
 the road of repentance is a rough and 
 thorny one, and the way thither, like the 
 passage of the bridge A1 Sirat, “sharp as 
 a scimitar’s edge.” When Divine Mercy 
 opens the gate to a mortal and says to 
 him, “Come in,” and he, in the exercise of 
 the God-given power to dispose of himself, 
 says, “I will,” he has done the greatest 
 thing that falls to him from the first lisp 
 of babyhood to his nunc dimittis. 
 
 The parable of Dives and Lazarus has 
 been construed to be the pulling aside of 
 
94 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 the curtain that hides from our view the 
 unseen world. So viewed, it adds nothing 
 to the view commonly held among the 
 Jews in the days of our Lord. The parable 
 is really concerned with this life and 
 specifically with the reluctance with which 
 men listen to the call to repentance. 
 Such was the case with the five brethren 
 of Dives who were living on the earth 
 the same sensual, selfish lives their brother 
 had lived before them and were likely 
 to come to the same unhappy end. To the 
 assertion of Dives that his brothers would 
 repent if one went to them from the dead 
 —a long absent mother perhaps, a wife, 
 or child—Abraham answers, “No, not even 
 if one went unto them from the dead, 
 they would not repent.” Thorny as is 
 the path of repentance, some in every 
 age have passed along it into the King¬ 
 dom to whom we in these more favored 
 times give all honor. Still it shall ever 
 be that “we must with much tribulation 
 enter the kingdom of heaven.” 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 CITIZENS AT LARGE 
 
 “Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham 
 be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not.” 
 — Isaiah. 
 
 The world outside the pale of the 
 gospel is greatly the debtor of Chris¬ 
 tianity. It has also suffered from the 
 narrowness and bigotry of the followers 
 of the Nazarene. On missionary maps 
 the pagan world is shown in deepest black 
 and, with equal error, Christian lands 
 are represented in spotless white. In 
 mistaken zeal for Jesus and his teach¬ 
 ings, non-Christian lands and eras have 
 been represented as moral deserts, barren 
 spiritual stretches of heaving ocean brine, 
 or polar wastes where the sun scarce 
 pierces the mist through a short day, and 
 then hides himself for a long, long night. 
 One might infer that “flowers, green fields, 
 fruits and running brooks are only to be 
 found in association with Christmases, 
 Sundays, Christian song, and Bible study. 
 
 95 
 
96 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 This artificial division of the earth peoples 
 is alien to the spirit of Jesus. The so- 
 called heathen are not all depraved, nor 
 are the visible followers of Christ all 
 saints. In privilege and opportunity the 
 races differ greatly, in ideals and strug¬ 
 gles for spiritual betterment less, and in 
 the love and care of the All-Father not at 
 all. The earth’s surface on the map is 
 divided into hemispheres by the equator, 
 which is represented by a band girdling 
 the ocean. The traveler finds no such 
 line, the ocean north and south scorning 
 such a division. He may discover the 
 equator lying prone upon the water as 
 soon as find recognition of the division 
 of mankind into a favored and a neglected 
 race. 
 
 Among the things that are inherent 
 in man, wherever and whenever found, 
 are the existence of a religious faculty 
 and the presence of the Spirit of God. 
 
 “Take comfort; earth is full of sin. 
 
 But also full of God.” 
 
 “The grace of God hath appeared to all 
 men.” It is not a breeze from heaven 
 
CITIZENS AT LARGE 
 
 97 
 
 that stops short and retraces its course 
 as it nears a non-Christian land, or a 
 river that turns in its bed and flows back¬ 
 ward at the sight of a pagoda or a temple 
 of idolatry. It blows, it flows on, it 
 abounds—grace at least—much more then, 
 not less. Where this is the case who does 
 not know that some fruit of the Spirit 
 must be found? Especially must this be 
 in all the East where, as has often been 
 observed, men have not only a full-sized 
 capacity, but a genius, for religion. Where 
 religion means more and sin and guilt are 
 weightier words than in the West, there 
 must be some who have, as wrote Augus¬ 
 tine, “the will to go” and where this is 
 the case, there is the kingdom of God. 
 This brings into the Kingdom a third 
 class, which we call Citizens at Large. 
 Our justification for this classification is 
 the four Gospels and the specific discovery 
 of Peter that God is no respecter of per¬ 
 sons and IN EVERY NATION HE THAT 
 FEARETH GoD AND WORKETH RIGHTEOUS¬ 
 NESS is accepted of him. Acceptance 
 with God is impossible save on the con¬ 
 dition of submission to his law of right- 
 
I 
 
 98 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 f 
 
 eousness. Having no law, he is amenable 
 to the law within his own breast. The 
 struggle with the world, the flesh, and the 
 devil in himself until he has reached 
 “the will to go" is not one whit other 
 in Bombay than in Boston. The way in 
 each is straight and the gate narrow. 
 One, being better instructed, passes 
 through in the daylight, the other by 
 night. They are alike fellow citizens with 
 the saints. To the immediate followers of 
 Jesus it was a stumbling-block that he 
 found outside their nation those to whom 
 he was attracted and with whose spirit 
 he found fellowship. Such was a woman 
 of mixed Greek and Tyrean origin whose 
 beautiful faith and devotion to her 
 daughter was a bright star shining through 
 a rift in the cloud in a dark night. In 
 Capernaum the one of all others to whom 
 he was drawn was captain at the mil¬ 
 itary post of that district. Though a 
 Roman, the people said “he loveth our 
 nation”; of another religion, they told 
 that he had built them a synagogue; a 
 man of authority, yet he was greatly 
 concerned about a sick servant; an idol- 
 
CITIZENS AT LARGE 
 
 99 
 
 ater perhaps, he had great faith in Christ. 
 We can read into the account the soul 
 struggle, sometime, somewhere, by which 
 he came to “the will to go.” To those 
 whose sympathies were limited by the 
 bounds of their own nation, Jesus said, 
 “Other sheep I have which are not of this 
 fold.” He expressly claimed the patri¬ 
 archs, who never knew him, as citizens of 
 his Kingdom. In a chapter which has 
 been called the Westminster Abbey of 
 the early church, Paul mentions a score 
 of those who were especially endeared to 
 him. The names are largely Greek, 
 Roman, and Syrian. He was drawn to 
 them because their spirit was so akin to 
 his. He doubtless found many of them 
 in the Kingdom needing only to be made 
 acquainted with the King. To be saved 
 by Christ and to be saved by faith in 
 Christ are not one and the same thing. 
 Not a few of those who through repent¬ 
 ance know of the working of the Spirit 
 do not yet know the source of their regen¬ 
 erated lives. The Spirit of God is free, 
 working where and as he will, and one 
 must believe that that Spirit, wherever 
 
100 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 found, is the channel through which divine 
 and saving truth has been conveyed. 
 
 “A Socrates, a Plato, a Sakya-Muni” 
 writes a canon of Westminster, “had 
 reared their altars to the unknown God; 
 these too were enabled to shed some 
 light on the darkness of sin and sorrow 
 because they had kindled their torches at 
 the sun of righteousness and drawn some 
 sparks of light from the torch held aloft 
 by Him who is both life and light.” 
 
 “Whence,” asks Archdeacon Farrar, 
 “got Buddha his purity, or Aristides his 
 justice, or Epicurus his Puritanic virtue, 
 or Cicero his search after immortality, 
 save from the same source as did Isaiah 
 or Samuel or John the Baptist or Paul?” 
 Justin and Clement of Alexandria allow 
 that some of the pagan philosophers must 
 have been instructed by the Logos. Who 
 can read the autobiography of Marcus 
 Aurelius, in which he portrays the charac¬ 
 ter of his father and his tutor, coupled 
 with a remembrance that the mind of the 
 flesh never gives way to the mind of the 
 Spirit without a struggle, without being 
 convinced that the three were at least 
 
CITIZENS AT LARGE 
 
 101 
 
 not far from the kingdom of heaven? 
 Howard S. Bliss, president of the Syrian 
 College at Beirut, was born and had spent 
 most of his life in a non-Christian country 
 before he wrote: “The missionary discovers 
 with a new humility that with very much 
 to give he has not a little to receive from 
 men of other faiths; the mystical element, 
 so prominent in Eastern religions, a be¬ 
 coming reticence in presence of the great 
 mysteries of life, a sense of the nearness 
 of God, a recognition of the importance 
 of religion.” From a hospital in Peking 
 Dr. Yu Shu-Fen, a young Chinese phy¬ 
 sician, sent this farewell message to his 
 friend: “In my enthusiasm for plague 
 prevention I overstepped the bounds of 
 caution and in my constant contact with 
 plague patients I accidentally contracted 
 the disease. I am dying for the people. 
 I make no complaint.” With all that 
 Jesus taught in mind can we doubt that 
 he would say, “Of such is the kingdom 
 of heaven”? “All are ready to say if 
 any man have not the spirit of Christ 
 he is none of his; too often the corollary 
 that if a man have the spirit of Christ 
 
102 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 he is his is overlooked.” By the discovery 
 of the Pacific, Balboa mightily extended 
 the bounds of the ocean world. Making 
 known the citizenship of childhood and 
 of those who in every nation feared God 
 and wrought righteousness, Jesus did a 
 like work for the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 “I see,” says Emerson, “that sensible 
 and conscientious men all over the world 
 were of one religion—the religion of well¬ 
 doing and daring, men of sturdy truth, men 
 of integrity and feeling for others. My 
 inference is that there is a statement of 
 religion possible which makes all skep¬ 
 ticism absurd.” 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 WHEREFORE A KINGDOM? 
 
 “He who is near me is near the fire; He who is 
 far from me is far from the Kingdom.”— Anon. 
 
 Jesus did nothing for himself. His 
 thought was always of his younger and 
 weaker brothers to whom he would act 
 an elder brother’s part. They were sheep 
 in a country that was wolf-infested. 
 They were the good seed, but the soil 
 was thin and rocky and beset by hungry 
 birds. The world in which they must 
 live had only twilight and their eyes 
 were dim and the path sometimes but a 
 desert trail. For these whom he called 
 “my sheep,” “my friends,” “my chil¬ 
 dren,” “my father, my mother and my 
 brethren,” was the Kingdom made ready. 
 The earnest appeal of Jesus that men 
 strive to enter the Kingdom, the prayer 
 of Paul that he might be preserved unto 
 the Kingdom, and the congratulation of 
 John the aged that he and his brethren 
 and companions were in the Kingdom, 
 
 103 
 
104 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 would be meaningless if the Kingdom 
 served no worthy end in the life of the 
 individual. It is not essential that we 
 should know how this result was to be 
 accomplished, yet we cannot refrain from 
 asking, though we cannot fully answer, 
 the question. A matter it is of importance 
 in applied Christianity that men should 
 come to a realizing sense of the presence 
 of God. One may hold to the omni¬ 
 presence of God as an article of the creed, 
 without a realizing sense of its truth as 
 an experience of the heart. Brother Law¬ 
 rence, a cook in a monastery of Europe, 
 a man long since dead, attained to fame 
 that reaches our day, as one who claimed 
 to realize and practice what he called “the 
 presence of Deity.” His fame attests 
 the rarity of the experience. The enor¬ 
 mously greater universe which science has 
 given us puts God so far away that to all 
 but pure reason he is lost in the stellar 
 spaces of an infinitely extended creation. 
 Can the kingdom of heaven in any measure 
 bring him back? Jesus announced the 
 establishment of his kingdom on the 
 earth. He encouraged men to think of 
 
WHEREFORE A KINGDOM? 105 
 
 him as Lord of this kingdom, seated upon 
 its throne, and filling it with his presence. 
 We do not deny the omnipresence of 
 Deity when we emphasize his presence in 
 his kingdom. For aught we know, his 
 special presence may be manifest in any 
 or every other world. But he is here. 
 He is not far from every one of us. “Lo, 
 I am with you always,” he said. Paul 
 wrote to his brethren, “Let your modera¬ 
 tion be known to all men; the Lord is 
 close by.” Can we doubt that one who 
 accepted this presence as a fact would 
 at first visualize and then realize the 
 presence of Deity? Christianity in the 
 first century is a sufficient answer. To 
 the Christians of that day the kingdom 
 of heaven had surely come. With the 
 Kingdom came the King. With both 
 came the fulfillment of the ancient proph¬ 
 ecy, “I will dwell in them and walk in 
 them, and I will be their God, and they 
 shall be my people.” Those were peril¬ 
 ous times, but the martyr fires that lit 
 up the cities were no brighter than the 
 faces of the heroes whose spirits ascended 
 through them, illumined by the same 
 
106 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 presence that glorified the face of Moses 
 when he came down from the mount. 
 
 To bring back the fellowship of the 
 saints that marked the early history of 
 the Kingdom is much to be desired. 
 Fellowship is strength. The lone tree 
 goes down before the tempest, while the 
 clump of trees and the forest stand. The 
 lone sentinel quails before danger, but 
 give him his company and regiment and 
 he is fearless. In this matter twice one 
 is not two but ten. The genuine ca¬ 
 maraderie of the Christians of the first 
 century is as unquestioned as its source. 
 A member of a modern church asked his 
 pastor to explain the expression “the 
 communion of saints.” In his considerable 
 experience he had apparently not met 
 with any. All admit that the goodly 
 fellowship of the saints might be goodlier. 
 Among Christians there is “a tie that 
 binds,” but it is not firm enough to be 
 felt, or positive enough to comfort, or 
 strong enough to rescue in a flood of 
 temptation. The need we have 
 
 “To lean on others as we walk 
 
 Life’s evening path with pitfalls strewn** 
 
WHEREFORE A KINGDOM? 107 
 
 is shown by the multiplication of societies 
 proposing as an end some form of benev¬ 
 olence, but really based on fellowship. 
 Stronger than these is the tie of a com¬ 
 mon country. “My fellow countryman” 
 is an appellation big with meaning to 
 both savage and civilized man. The call 
 to go or do or sacrifice based on the need 
 or peril of a countryman is not in vain. 
 How many by business or destiny exiles 
 in a foreign land know what it means 
 to strain tired eyes for a glimpse of the 
 ship that brings letters from home; or, 
 in a foreign port, are thrilled at the sight 
 of even the most lubberly craft that bears 
 at the masthead the flag of their country; 
 or stop short in the street to note which 
 one in the crowd had used a word of 
 their mother tongue. This tie, written 
 into the constitution of man, Jesus called 
 to a higher service. Those who accept 
 him are no more strangers and foreigners 
 but citizens of his kingdom and fellow 
 citizens of the saints. Fellowship in insti¬ 
 tutions of this world are often disap¬ 
 pointing and always inadequate; in world 
 kingdoms, because of the imperfections 
 
108 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 of human laws and the injustice of rulers; 
 in the church, because of class distinc¬ 
 tions and the unfortunate divisions of 
 Christendom; in human organizations, be¬ 
 cause of the many foibles of human 
 nature. Fellowship in the Kingdom and 
 patience of Christ remains as that which 
 can best realize a tie that binds sufficient 
 for life’s struggles, its sorrow and its work. 
 Only in the Kingdom can one feel in full 
 measure the thrill of realization that he 
 is “surrounded by so great a cloud of 
 witnesses” that he can never more feel 
 he is standing alone. 
 
 For the accomplishment of the tasks of 
 life it is also necessary that there should 
 be a hopeful future. If death ends all, 
 then one may as well lay off the harness 
 and abandon the task. Uncertainty con¬ 
 cerning the hereafter is equally dishearten¬ 
 ing. Not Moses only, but we all, endure 
 when we see, or think we see, the Invis¬ 
 ible. But how shall this vision be ours? 
 When our wisest and best have sent 
 forth despairing appeals toward the beyond 
 for even the slightest tokens that their 
 beloved dead still live, and for a response 
 
WHEREFORE A KINGDOM? 109 
 
 have heard only the echo of their own 
 voices, can we hope for even partial 
 knowledge, much less for certainty? Jesus 
 affirmed that we might know even to the 
 point that our hearts should not be 
 troubled. In his gospel he tells how this 
 may be. Let one enter by the lowly door 
 the kingdom of heaven. Let him become 
 acquainted with the King and absorb 
 into his life the spirit of the Kingdom. 
 As to a voyager by sea there appears on 
 the horizon a gray shadow which rapidly 
 becomes a mainland, there comes into his 
 consciousness the assurance and the spir¬ 
 itual vision of a country and a life beyond. 
 The source of this knowledge is indicated 
 by the fact that should he subsequently be 
 faithless to duty and false to the King, 
 the vision fades away into the shadow 
 and the black fog of doubt shuts down 
 upon him. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 METHODS OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 “And when we looked for crowns to fall 
 We find the tug’s to come—that’s all.” 
 
 — Browning . 
 
 The place of the Kingdom in the life 
 of the individual still claims our atten¬ 
 tion. In the thought of Jesus those who 
 entered his kingdom were children even 
 though in the world they were greeted as 
 “Rabbi.” They had everything to learn 
 and some of them nearly as much to un¬ 
 learn. After their vision of the new life 
 they must translate it into character and 
 conduct. At the same time they must 
 carry on the struggle for the extension 
 of the Kingdom, spending life with the 
 sword in one hand and the trowel in the 
 other. The Kingdom aims to aid in all 
 these particulars. Erroneous ideas as to 
 the nature of salvation and the way by 
 which it may be attained render the work 
 difficult. Some are slow in learning that 
 packing a satchel for a long journey is 
 
 110 
 
METHODS 
 
 111 
 
 not equivalent to reaching the journey’s 
 end, nor buckling on the armor reason 
 for commencing the shout of victory. 
 To mistake the peace of repentance for 
 the possession of a Christian character 
 is to mistake matriculation at the uni¬ 
 versity for a diploma and a finished edu¬ 
 cation. The student may enter the uni¬ 
 versity and the immigrant the country by 
 a short and easy way, but to get the 
 university into the student and the spirit 
 and ideals of the country into the for¬ 
 eigner is a long and laborious process. 
 The word “salvation” may be defined 
 from two standpoints. It is first a work 
 done for us by Christ through whose 
 death there is extended to the sinner the 
 grace of pardon. This salvation is only 
 potential and becomes actual by the 
 repentance of the individual. Salvation 
 is also, to use the words of Channing, 
 “to be rescued from moral evil, from error 
 and sin, from the diseases of the mind 
 and to be restored to inward truth, piety, 
 and virtue.” In salvation, according to 
 the first definition, man has no part, but 
 according to the second definition he has 
 
112 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 a first and vital part. He can lay hold, 
 he can welcome, he can second the work 
 of Jesus, who, to this end, is an every¬ 
 where present and quickening spirit. He 
 has over the whole the veto power. While 
 this is the case, it would seem that em¬ 
 phasis should be placed on making what 
 is potential actual, which is to center 
 attention on man’s part in man’s salva¬ 
 tion. A glance at the trend of doctrinal 
 teaching shows that this is not always 
 done. The foremost theme in the preach¬ 
 ing of the last generation was the atone¬ 
 ment. The great and glorious truth was 
 proclaimed from Spirit-touched lips and 
 tongues of fire as never before. It is a 
 theme that can never grow old or fail 
 to interest. Yet this must be allowed. 
 It is in a realm in which man cannot add 
 to or take from or change one iota. At 
 the end of all preaching it remains an 
 amazing wonder of divine grace. Mean¬ 
 while in the neglected background is the 
 practical truth that the atonement is the 
 foundation on which each must erect his 
 house of life. The student who expends 
 in exulting that he has a chance to 
 
METHODS 
 
 113 
 
 obtain an education the time and vigor 
 he needs to obtain it, is neither wise nor 
 grateful. The kingdom of heaven places 
 all emphasis on acceptance and utilization 
 of the offer of grace. Jesus said little about 
 his vicarious death for sin but much about 
 his triumphant life and power in behalf 
 of sinners. The way of the Kingdom as 
 he taught was the way of the athlete 
 struggling manfully in the arena, the way 
 of the husbandman sweaty with toil in 
 the field through the long, hot day, the 
 way of the fisherman, whom each new 
 morning as it broke over the water, found 
 busy with his nets. He would have them 
 work, pray, give, resist, strive, fight, deny 
 self, pluck out right eyes and cut off 
 right hands, suffer and die if need be. 
 It required much self-denial, it meant 
 habitual subordination of the lower to the 
 higher. The Kingdom was opportunity, 
 the more precious because so brief. 
 
 It is quite the custom to divide life 
 into two parts, the part that looks toward 
 the earth where we earn our bread and 
 the part that looks toward God by which 
 we hope to gain heaven. To succeed on 
 
114 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 the world side of life, we are told, one 
 must exert to the utmost and continuously 
 every power of body and mind. The 
 heavenward side is gained by faith and 
 prayer. Jesus reverses this order, putting 
 exertion and struggle for the things of 
 the soul and quiet trust for the things 
 of the world: “Labor not for the meat 
 that perisheth but for that which endur- 
 eth”; “Your heavenly Father knoweth 
 that ye have need of all these things”; 
 “Why take ye thought for raiment?” 
 “Seek ye first the kingdom of God”; 
 “Strive to enter in.” Through all the 
 teachings of Jesus there is a note of trust 
 for the things of this life and of urge as 
 to the things of the Spirit. It emphasizes 
 salvation as the attainment of Christian 
 character and places the responsibility for 
 this upon the individual. It would no 
 more think of receiving this as a gift 
 from God, save as all things are his gift, 
 than to expect proficiency in music or 
 the sciences in answer to prayer. But 
 one class of educational institutions offer 
 an education on quick and effortless 
 terms. They may be found through the 
 
METHODS 
 
 115 
 
 columns of the dailies along with the get- 
 rich-quick schemes, the cured after the 
 use of three bottles method, or the drug- 
 less method without even one. Paul 
 preached salvation by faith, but it was a 
 salvation that must be “worked out with 
 fear and trembling.” At a first reading 
 of the faith chapter in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews one sees the power of God 
 working through worms and clods of 
 earth. A closer study shows that it was 
 
 Gideon and Barak and Samson and 
 
 / 
 
 Jephthah and David and Samuel who, 
 through the help of God, subdued king¬ 
 doms, wrought righteousness, obtained 
 promises, and stopped the mouths of lions. 
 Nor does the kingdom of heaven hold out 
 promise of short or easy victory. “Work¬ 
 ing out,” said the late President Bliss, 
 “the beast is no holiday jaunt; the ape 
 and the tiger do not readily die. One 
 cannot truly love God and self and man, 
 one cannot put righteousness, justice, 
 mercy in the forefront of life without a 
 willingness to give up ease and comfort 
 and popularity and power. It is a life 
 experience in which step by step, day by 
 
116 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 day and year by year, we have the happy 
 satisfaction of knowing and feeling the 
 increase of moral and spiritual strength.” 
 To publish salvation as a work wrought 
 out by Christ and received once for all, 
 like a legacy, is to present a pitiable half- 
 truth which easily becomes an excuse for 
 spiritual sloth. The conception of progress 
 by growth seems ever in the thought of 
 Jesus. To describe this growing life of 
 the soul in language borrowed from physi¬ 
 cal dynamics is misleading. A native of 
 the polar regions, knowing nothing of the 
 vegetation of the tropics, is led by the 
 accounts of sailors, who must describe 
 things in the only terms they know, to 
 think that there is one crisal hour when 
 a groan of mother-earth proclaims that 
 seeds in the earth have burst their cover¬ 
 ing and another day when the sod heaves 
 and everywhere those long buried seeds 
 come forth from their graves, and still 
 another day when all together, with loud 
 acclaim, they leap into the maturity of 
 harvest. He may later think that he was 
 deceived when he finds only a silent and 
 gradual process. That which he perceives 
 
METHODS 
 
 117 
 
 is not less wonderful than his former 
 thought, but more. The explosive power 
 of dynamite is a feeble thing compared 
 with the power of life. Along such a path 
 the citizen of the Kingdom is led. 
 
 Jesus was a man of the world. He 
 never represented life in the Kingdom as 
 that of an anchorite in his cell. He began 
 his work at a marriage feast. He left 
 men in the world where he found them, 
 the steward busy with his accounts, the 
 housewife with her bread, the merchant 
 with his laden camels on the way to the 
 distant market. He would not take his 
 people out of the world because they 
 needed the world. Without it they would 
 be an airship where there was no atmos¬ 
 phere or a steamship where was no water 
 against which the propeller strove. 
 
 The more clearly we perceive that the 
 aim of Jesus was to develop a vigorous 
 manhood, ennobled by a righteousness that 
 the world must respect, the more we 
 have a vision of his purpose in the estab¬ 
 lishment of his kingdom. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 HUMAN ORGANIZATIONS AND 
 THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM 
 
 “Distinct like the billows 
 Yet one like the Sea.” 
 
 The aim of the previous chapter was to 
 define the relation of the kingdom of 
 heaven to the individual. Besides the 
 life which each one lives to himself and 
 God there is a life which each lives in 
 association with a greater or less number 
 of his own kind. It is life in the com¬ 
 munity, the clan, the organization, the 
 nation or the race. It is as one of a 
 group or community that each one does 
 the greater part of his work and lives his 
 life. The evolutionist suggests that the 
 tendency to divide up into groups is an 
 inheritance which man received from a 
 far past when his lowly forbears lived in 
 droves, flocks, and herds. However that 
 may, or may not be, men find within 
 them a compelling urge to combine and 
 organize. Of constitutions framed and 
 adopted, of associations formed, of lodges, 
 
 118 
 
HUMAN ORGANIZATIONS 119 
 
 chapters, benevolent societies, churches 
 and sects there is no end. With civiliza¬ 
 tion the number grows. Was it the 
 thought of Jesus that these human asso¬ 
 ciations should merge into his kingdom, as 
 the lights of earth pale in the glory of 
 sunrise? Would he uproot or unseat 
 them and thrust them aside as hindering 
 weeds or stones of stumbling, or would he 
 foster and use them? 
 
 Of organizations the church is foremost 
 numerically, and potentially it will suffer 
 as an illustration. It is of unquestioned 
 influence among the forward-looking na¬ 
 tions, and a power among the more back¬ 
 ward. It has the ear and in the main the 
 confidence of a larger constituency than 
 any other institution. As might perhaps 
 have been expected, at an early date it 
 was rent in twain and the two hemi¬ 
 spheres have since been subdivided into 
 fragments so small as to excite the 
 laughter of a gainsaying world. Yet it 
 must be admitted that the tendency to 
 separate and organize around some truth, 
 fact, or form of worship is the expression 
 of something deep in human nature. 
 
120 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 Even the older religions, that of the 
 Buddha in India, or of Assyria, whose 
 winged deities look down upon us from 
 their pedestals in the museum, or the 
 cults of Egypt, were not able to save 
 themselves from the inevitable tendency 
 to divide up into sects. Nor may the 
 prayer of Jesus, that his followers may 
 be one, be quoted as inhibiting the forma¬ 
 tion of sects. He was there speaking of 
 his followers as individuals. He would 
 have them one as he was “one with the 
 Father.” That we know was not in 
 outer form, but in spirit. It might not 
 follow that if they were one in spirit they 
 would wish to belong to the same church 
 or be identical in creed. It is possible 
 that, in view of the fact that “he knew 
 what was in man,” Jesus never con¬ 
 templated or desired a complete oneness 
 in doctrine, discipline, or outward expres¬ 
 sion of the life of the soul. Yet he taught 
 meekness, tranquillity, harmony. How 
 could these abide in the midst of number¬ 
 less divisions? It is evident they could 
 not, unless a centripetal force could make 
 itself known strong enough to overcome 
 
HUMAN ORGANIZATIONS 121 
 
 the centrifugal tendency to separation and 
 consequent discord. The principle under¬ 
 lying the union of divergent parts and 
 varied functions is revealed in the prayer 
 of our Lord. It is briefly this. Oneness 
 is attained by merging objects of like 
 nature in one of a like nature though on 
 a higher plane. Thus the members of 
 a family are one in the united head of 
 the family and the families become one , 
 in the tribe. The individual members 
 of the human race differing in race, cus¬ 
 toms, laws, and speech, become one in 
 the Federal Head of humanity, the God- 
 Man. In form and function, how varied 
 the hands, feet, eyes, ears, and nostrils! 
 Paul saw a beautiful oneness therein, not 
 by the other members going over and 
 forming one great eye or hand, but by 
 each remaining itself and becoming one 
 in a human body. The planets which 
 watch above us in our sleeping hours are 
 each unlike the other in size, in the num¬ 
 ber of their satellites, their diurnal and 
 annual motions, and, as far as we can 
 tell, in surface configuration. In their 
 midst is an orb, like themselves, yet 
 
122 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 greater than they all combined, not a 
 dead world, but one which has light, 
 heat, life, and color for itself and each 
 of them, and holds each one in leash in 
 its orbit. In this glorious orb of day the 
 planets become one solar system. 
 
 Our Revolutionary sires were divided 
 into colonies founded by peoples of di¬ 
 vergent stock, cherishing different tradi¬ 
 tions, customs, and aspirations. In vain 
 they strove to reconcile their differences. 
 Virginia would be Virginia and Massa¬ 
 chusetts none other than Massachusetts. 
 It dawned upon them that they could 
 never be one by selecting one colony as 
 a model and making one great Maine or 
 New York. Instead they created a na¬ 
 tion called the United States of America, 
 merging the colonies in it, and thus be¬ 
 came one. By degrees the many lan¬ 
 guages of the colonies became what has 
 been facetiously called American English; 
 provincialisms disappeared, business in 
 various quarters was coordinated, and 
 political differences were adjusted. By 
 emphasizing their oneness they became no 
 more colonies, but so completely a nation 
 
HUMAN ORGANIZATIONS 123 
 
 that the average citizen cannot say if 
 each sovereign State has a separate flag. 
 He knows that over all floats one flag. 
 He knows that the tie that binds the 
 still sovereign States is not a rope of sand. 
 
 These illustrations point the way to the 
 only possible union of the several frag¬ 
 ments of the church. To expect organic 
 union is to expect that human nature 
 will reverse itself. Already what amounts 
 to a notice comes from China that as 
 Christianity becomes a part of the life 
 of the people it will take on an outward 
 form and assume a government adapted 
 to the genius of that race. India is 
 destined to have a type of Christianity 
 purely Hindoo. Surprising readiness is 
 seen in many quarters to accept the 
 teachings of Jesus coupled with a decided 
 inclination to discriminate between the 
 wine and the bottles in which it is brought. 
 The present divisions of the church are 
 destined to abide because rooted in racial 
 traits and linked with faiths and philos¬ 
 ophies inbred for ages. So the denom¬ 
 inations are like to survive and the last 
 chapter of the world’s history may treat 
 
124 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 of groups and races that make the voyage 
 of life with a pronounced list toward Paul 
 or Apollos or Cephas. How, then, may 
 such a measure of unity be attained that 
 denominations may not fritter away their 
 strength in duplication of effort in the 
 same field or drive far hence the dove of 
 peace by mutual jealousies? For an answer 
 we point to the kingdom of heaven. It 
 too is an organization, broader in its 
 scope than the sects, embracing the na¬ 
 tions, the ages, and what Paul calls the 
 “heavenlies.” It seeks as an objective 
 the same ennobled earth and redeemed 
 humanity for which the denominations 
 strive. Among organizations it alone is 
 infallible and without spot or wrinkle or 
 any such thing. Human organizations 
 spring up in a night; they have their little 
 day and pass away. The Kingdom en¬ 
 dures for aye. Was it not the thought of 
 Jesus that these human organizations 
 should find their oneness in the kingdom 
 of heaven as the colonies became one in 
 the nation? His words are few at this 
 point, for as yet there were no divisions, 
 but does not the emphasis which he placed 
 
HUMAN ORGANIZATIONS 125 
 
 on the kingdom of heaven lead to this 
 conclusion? Decades now pass with never 
 a difficulty between the several States. 
 Might not the same heavenly harmony 
 reign among the sects of Christendom if 
 they emphasized their oneness in the 
 kingdom of heaven as much as the States 
 their oneness in the nation? Does not the 
 realized unity of Christendom depend on 
 whether Christians shall stress the denom¬ 
 ination or the kingdom of heaven? To 
 speed that day must not the sects learn 
 to say of the kingdom of heaven as John 
 the Baptist of its Founder, “It must 
 increase but we must decrease”? 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE KINGDOM AND THE 
 KINGDOMS 
 
 “How fair his friendship and his leagues how just, 
 Whom ev’ry nation courts, whom all religions 
 trust/’— Prior. 
 
 The nations also, what would the 
 kingdom of heaven of them? Would it 
 break them in pieces as a potter’s vessel 
 and of the fragments form a kingdom 
 of mankind? Would it rub out national 
 lines and seek to efface racial idiosyn¬ 
 crasies? Why destroy that which the 
 God of nations, during so many ages, 
 has been of such great pains to develop? 
 In case of success what an uninteresting 
 old world we should have! Is mankind, 
 then, to have no more legacies such as 
 law, literature, or art in its varied forms, 
 built up by one race and bequeathed to 
 the world? 
 
 Of the nations, their capitals, domains, 
 piled-up wealth, armies and navies, the 
 kingdom of heaven covets nothing. It 
 seeks no dominion over racial activities 
 
 126 
 
THE KINGDOMS 
 
 127 
 
 or censorship over national traits or cus¬ 
 toms. It offers only to each nation, as 
 a guide and an ideal in working out its 
 destiny, the principles of the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 Our day witnesses the manifestation of 
 what has been called a world-conscious¬ 
 ness. Men are speaking in terms of the 
 whole, as never before. They are asking 
 as to a proposed reform, not only is it 
 good for us, but is it good for the world? 
 A spirit is abroad which suggests that if 
 a nation has found anything good, it 
 share it with the rest. The proposal to 
 build a Chinese wall about a country in 
 our day would be sure to call forth the 
 suggestion that it be built around the 
 whole race. We hear talk of remaking 
 the world, as though the efforts of hu¬ 
 manity thus far had resulted in building 
 a city, like Rome in Nero’s day, which 
 we, after his example, must put to the 
 torch and make over again. The will to 
 build anew will not be seriously under¬ 
 taken until an understanding is reached 
 as to what kind of a world men want. 
 In all building the architect’s plan comes 
 
128 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 first. There have been numerous futile 
 attempts, like that of Alexander, the 
 Caesars, or modern instances, to unite all 
 nations under the dominion of the strong¬ 
 est, or to subordinate the nations to a 
 ruling spiritual power, or to make of all 
 peoples a great world-democracy. The 
 times in which we live call for a new and 
 comprehensive plan for a new world. 
 Gifted with abundant resources and sur¬ 
 rounded by hosts of willing workers, the 
 world has been marking time because 
 lacking an ideal. The situation is not 
 unlike that in Rome at the time of the 
 erection of Saint Peter’s Cathedral. The 
 Catholic world was united in the project 
 to erect the grandest edifice which the 
 world contained. Elaborately engraved 
 columns, beams of precious wood carved 
 and embellished, stones from old temples 
 and palaces of the Far East were arriving 
 and skilled workmen lined the roads 
 leading toward Rome. The material was 
 useless because not made to fit a designed 
 place and the workmen were idle because 
 all was in confusion. There was need 
 that one should set forth a design that 
 
THE KINGDOMS 
 
 129 
 
 would visualize to the people the enor¬ 
 mous structure that they saw in shadows. 
 The advent of Michael Angelo with such 
 a plan and the ability to inspire confidence 
 in its practicability, put an end to con¬ 
 fusion and uncertainty. A greater than 
 the four-souled Florentine puts forth a 
 plan, and there seems to be no other, 
 for the rebuilding of the world. The 
 kingdom of heaven has no world policy, 
 knows no favored race or class, is partial 
 to no particular form of government and 
 views with equal eye each section of the 
 globe and each branch of the human 
 family. It offers certain well-known prin¬ 
 ciples as constituting together a working 
 pla# for rebuilding the temple of human¬ 
 ity. It must not be inferred that such 
 a plan will be acceptable only to so-called 
 Christian nations. Races classed as non- 
 Christian have been learning in the hard 
 school of experience through the ages. 
 They have sifted some things, weighed 
 others, and put still others to the acid 
 test. The small remainder that was 
 proven gold did not go back into the ore- 
 bed with the passing of those who mined 
 
ISO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 it, but remained as part of the wealth of 
 the nation. In volume this accumulated 
 treasure is not small. The astonishing 
 thing is that it is so like to the gold of 
 the kingdom of heaven. This should not 
 seem strange, since all truth is one in 
 essence and origin however varied the 
 channels by which it comes to us. 
 
 The human family in its old home in 
 central Asia divided into two sections 
 which went forth to try their fortunes in 
 the new earth. One turned Westward to 
 people Europe and America and in the 
 process to attain to a knowledge of Jeho¬ 
 vah and of Jesus and the principles of 
 his kingdom. The other branch turned 
 to the East and the South to people 
 the waiting lands and to learn in the 
 school of experience lessons in self-govern¬ 
 ment and national comity. In due time 
 East and West meet to compare the 
 treasure they have gained. In language, 
 customs, and religion they differ widely. 
 In the principles that should guide nations 
 in their intercourse with each other, the 
 men of the East have much in common 
 with Jesus and his kingdom. It is suflB- 
 
THE KINGDOMS 
 
 131 
 
 cient ground for the hope that the vision 
 seen by the seer of Patmos may become 
 fact and in ideal and purpose, the king¬ 
 doms of this world may become the king¬ 
 doms of our Lord and of his Christ. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 WAS JESUS MISTAKEN? 
 
 “As remarkable is the enormous prominence 
 given to the teachings of what He called the king¬ 
 dom of heaven and its comparative insignificance 
 in the procedure and teaching of the most of the 
 Christian churches.”— WeUs. 
 
 The first chapters of this book were 
 devoted to the initial proclamation and 
 early days of the kingdom of heaven. 
 At that time the Lord’s land was a 
 thriving province of the Roman Empire, 
 its towns and villages numerous and its 
 population considerable. With no agency 
 but the natural one of the human voice 
 and presence, the message of John was 
 echoing from Dan to Beer-Sheba with 
 news that the Kingdom was coming. It 
 was the theme in the market place as men 
 met for trade, and at the corner of the 
 street where women tarried to gossip. 
 Interest grew as one told how he had 
 heard John preach and others that they 
 
 132 
 
WAS JESUS MISTAKEN? 133 
 
 had seen him afar off. This meant prep¬ 
 aration for the twelve and the seventy as 
 they journeyed from city to city with the 
 message of repentance. When to these 
 was added the voice of Jesus teaching 
 everywhere as he journeyed, it could truly 
 be said that the Kingdom filled the land 
 with itself. It was as much in evidence 
 as Caesar’s kingdom, even though the 
 latter had a visible government with 
 magistrates and a Roman legion to repre¬ 
 sent it and enforce its laws. The sea not 
 only of waters but of the years rolls be¬ 
 tween us and that distant shore. Those 
 who visit it find many regrettable changes. 
 They can barely identify the land of 
 which they read in the Gospels, as the 
 vulgarized and commercialized Holy Land 
 of to-day. Slowly the footsteps of Jesus 
 are being erased by the erosion of the 
 years and the tramp of careless pilgrims. 
 This matters little providing the King¬ 
 dom which he founded abides and pros¬ 
 pers. How fares it in the Jordan Valley, 
 where John first announced its coming, 
 and by the Sea of Galilee and in the region 
 about Jerusalem where “without a parable 
 
134 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 of the kingdom he spake not unto the 
 people”? 
 
 Is the kingdom of heaven foremost 
 among Christian ideals and first among 
 agencies to make vision a reality? It is 
 with no little disappointment that we turn 
 from an era when Christianity not only 
 taught but was the kingdom of heaven, to 
 times in which it plays a lesser part. 
 This is by no means to deny that Jesus 
 is taught as truly and sought as earnestly 
 now as then. We are not now speaking 
 of Christianity as a doctrine or an expe¬ 
 rience, but of the method of bringing it 
 to the attention of the world. As respects 
 this, Jesus made much of the kingdom 
 of heaven; the twentieth century does not. 
 The plow is a symbol of civilization as 
 the bow and arrow of barbarism. It 
 stands for law, culture, and peace. But 
 the plow is also a means by which civiliza¬ 
 tion is attained, since its actual use leads 
 to plenty and that to civilization. The 
 kingdom of heaven, in like manner, is 
 both the perfect ideal of a redeemed earth 
 and a chosen instrumentality by which the 
 ideal is to be realized. Organized Chris- 
 
WAS JESUS MISTAKEN? 185 
 
 tianity accepts the kingdom of heaven as 
 an ideal, but has thus far made little use 
 of it as an agency. The failure has found 
 apologists and even defenders. Chris¬ 
 tianity, they tell us, is a life, and life is 
 only another name for growth and change, 
 the sloughing off of the old and the putting 
 on of the new. For this reason they 
 expect that Christian truth will require 
 frequent restatement and as to the outer 
 form and furnishings of the temple, of 
 religion, predict that a complete house¬ 
 cleaning and refitting may be expected 
 from time to time. 
 
 Yet life in any of its forms is confined 
 within the limiting walls of its own genus. 
 Within these narrow borders there may be 
 endless changes. The attempt to break 
 over the bounds is abortive. The apple 
 tree has numberless species but never 
 becomes an oak. A student of natural 
 history calls attention to the many species 
 of the genus elephant. They are large 
 or small. In color they are white, brown 
 and even black. One species has a con¬ 
 vex and one a concave forehead, one has 
 small ears and tusks, another wide-flapping 
 
136 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 ears and huge tusks. Yet the life ele¬ 
 phantine has through all ages differentiated 
 within narrow limits. The elephant carved 
 on the temple walls of the ancient Assyr-' 
 ians is the same as the elephant in the 
 modern circus parade. The only per¬ 
 ceptible difference is in the shape of the 
 howdah and the color of the trappings. 
 Christianity is indeed a life. It belongs 
 to a genus all its own. It varies in its 
 manifestations but only within the bounds 
 of faith, hope, and charity. The howdah 
 which it bears—for it must have one, 
 since it is not for ornament but for service 
 —may differ in different lands and times, 
 but that is about all. We may not expect 
 great changes in the form of Christianity 
 both on account of the continuity of this 
 form of life and the persistence of human 
 nature. He who knows the joy of sins 
 forgiven in any age or land wants in some 
 way to witness to the world his gratitude 
 and purpose to lead a better life. If he 
 does not say it by water, as Jesus taught, 
 he will find some like way. His conscious 
 fellowship with the Comrade in White he 
 wishes to symbolize and visualize. If he 
 
WAS JESUS MISTAKEN? 137 
 
 does not do it by a morsel of bread and 
 a sip of wine at his Lord’s table, he will 
 find some other like way. The new life 
 leads to association with his fellow. If 
 there be no holy Scriptures or Lord’s Day 
 he will essay to find or create something 
 like them. In like manner the kingdom 
 of heaven is a complement of man’s need, 
 with such a nature as he possesses, and in 
 such a world as ours. It brings him into 
 a larger fellowship and opens up wider 
 horizons. It brings into bold relief the 
 gulf between the children of fight and of 
 darkness. It makes more concrete the 
 quest of the Christian. It transfers the 
 arena of the Christian warfare from a 
 valley of mist and shadows to a sun¬ 
 bathed stadium such as Paul saw with its 
 cloud of witnesses. It brightens and 
 heightens the sense of the nearness of the 
 Divine and in particular of the com¬ 
 panionship and guidance of Jesus. It 
 cannot be set aside without great loss. 
 By the same token we know it was meant 
 to abide. We may listen with patience 
 to those who predict the passing of the 
 electric fight to the limbo of the lard- 
 
138 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 oil lamp and the tallow dip, but not to 
 those who see a day when we shall 
 have no more need of the sun, moon, 
 and stars. 
 
 The science of pedagogy points to a like 
 conclusion. It is not concerned with the 
 discovery or the sifting of truth, but only 
 with conveying truths which other sciences 
 have brought to light. Socrates is known 
 as one of the greatest teachers of the past. 
 Yet he had no new doctrines and did not 
 noticeably add to the sum of human 
 knowledge. He had a new method of 
 teaching old truths. He is remembered 
 as the author of the Socratic method of 
 teaching rather than for his contribution 
 to the store of knowledge. In more 
 recent years Pestalozzi and Froebel be¬ 
 came known through their method of 
 teaching children. The child mind, just 
 emerging from the animal stage, to which 
 everything is a wonder, fresh and recep¬ 
 tive, this was the field occupied by those 
 noted teachers. They had no new truth, 
 but only a new method. In art we read 
 of the school of Giotto, Titian, and Michael 
 Angelo. No one of these had discovered 
 
WAS JESUS MISTAKEN? 139 
 
 new landscapes or trees or flowers or 
 types of human excellence to put upon 
 the canvas or carve in marble, but a new 
 way to help men see the beauty all about 
 them and to express it so that others 
 might see. Thus we read of the school 
 of Raphael, or Rubens, or Canova, or of 
 the Berlitz school in language. The 
 teaching of religious truth, whose aim is 
 to bring men into obedient relations with 
 their Maker, is difficult. Men are some¬ 
 times ignorant, often prejudiced, wedded 
 to sinful ways, with spiritual faculties 
 blunted and perverted by a sinful past. 
 Nothing that Jesus saw among men so 
 astonished him as the dullness and slow¬ 
 ness and aversion of the heart of man. 
 Who has not seen in a Christian assembly 
 those whose puzzled look, half laugh and 
 half scorn, showed how far away all these 
 things were from them? To lead such to 
 give heed, to be willing to follow toward 
 the light, and finally to take the torch 
 into their hands and walk by its light, 
 called for the wisdom of serpents. Jesus 
 had much to teach the world. The ques¬ 
 tion before us is. Did he also have a 
 
140 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 world method? What truth did he put 
 first; what doctrine did he emphasize most? 
 
 Concerning their deportment, as they 
 went forth as heralds of the Kingdom, 
 Jesus gave specific directions. They were 
 not to tell men to come. They were to go. 
 They must not wait until they arrived 
 at the place where a congregation gath¬ 
 ered, but must preach as they went. 
 They must not take an elaborate outfit. 
 One coat was enough, one pair of shoes, 
 one staff. The scrip or hand satchel was 
 to be left at home, together with the 
 purse, whether full or empty. They must 
 really have and manifest a tender and 
 helpful pity toward suffering humanity* 
 They must heal the sick if they could, 
 at least show that they coveted the power 
 to do so; they must cleanse the lepers, 
 raise the dead, and cast out devils, if they 
 could—at least show a spirit that would 
 do so if it could. Entering a city they 
 were to inquire, not for the home of the 
 richest, but the most worthy. If a wel¬ 
 come were extended, there they must 
 abide. They must not advertise them¬ 
 selves as lovers of ease by going from 
 
WAS JESUS MISTAKEN? 141 
 
 house to house to find the best. As to 
 food, they were to eat what was set be¬ 
 fore them without comment, otherwise 
 they would appear more interested in 
 good living than in the souls of men. If 
 ill received or chased away from a city, 
 they must not slink away as cowards, or 
 answer railing by railing, but, preserving 
 their dignity as heralds of the King, shake 
 the dust of the city from their sandals 
 in solemn protest. 
 
 Thus specifically concerning externals 
 Jesus instructed his heralds. Accepted and 
 carried out in their true spirit and intent 
 they have never failed to give success to 
 a herald of the Kingdom and are as 
 applicable to this age as to any other. 
 Had he no instructions concerning the 
 more vital and difficult task of presenting 
 the truth? Had Jesus a method con¬ 
 cerning the evangelization of the world? 
 Those who have read the preceding chap¬ 
 ters of this book are prepared for the 
 affirmation that he had. It is sufficient 
 at this time to point to a single feature 
 in that method. He presented to men 
 specifically and definitely the kingdom of 
 
142 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 heaven and bade them strive to enter in. In 
 this kingdom they were to live their life 
 and do their work, embodying more and 
 more the principles of the Kingdom in 
 themselves and yielding more and more 
 to its life till that high tide which we 
 call death came to drift each frail bark 
 out of the kingdom of heaven on earth 
 to the wider sea and kingdom of eternity. 
 To abandon the method of Giotto in 
 painting or of Froebel in teaching; to set 
 aside the method of the experienced 
 fisherman in angling or the skilled sports¬ 
 man in hunting, is to set them aside, for 
 all they have is a method of doing things. 
 Jesus had truth to bring to men so precious 
 that presented in any way it in the end 
 must reach them. He had also a chosen 
 method. We call him the Great Teacher, 
 and such he was. His method was also 
 great. Should not regard for one who 
 “spake as never man spake,” joined with 
 affection for one who loved as never man 
 loved, lead the world to cherish highly 
 and follow closely every suggestion he 
 made? “Follow me and I will make you 
 fishers of men.” Shall we whose empty 
 
WAS JESUS MISTAKEN? 143 
 
 fish baskets betray our lack of any method, 
 carelessly set aside suggestions from such 
 a source? If Jesus was a great teacher, 
 can we conceive that he could set forth a 
 method that was out of date before it 
 had a chance to be tried? That was not 
 the thought of the early evangelists. 
 
 Among the followers of Jesus was one 
 who, on account of his success in winning 
 men, was called Philip the Evangelist. 
 The title was worthily bestowed, for he 
 won his four daughters, then an African 
 prince, then took the initiative in a move¬ 
 ment that stirred a Roman province. 
 His method was preaching “the things 
 concerning the kingdom of God.” Paul, 
 the greatest evangelist of these eighteen 
 centuries, had a method. It was that of 
 his Master. Standing among the elders 
 of the church of Ephesus, he summed 
 up his labors—“I went about among you 
 preaching the kingdom.” Two precious 
 years, the last probably of his life, were 
 spent as a prisoner in Rome. He was not 
 idle. One notable day he preached, his 
 sermon continuing from morning to eve¬ 
 ning. His biographer tells us that his 
 
144 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 theme was the kingdom of God. The 
 book of Acts closes with the statement 
 that to the last he was “preaching the 
 kingdom of God, and teaching those 
 things which concern the Lord Jesus 
 Christ.” It is evident that in the thought 
 of Paul his Master had not only a message 
 but, like all great teachers, had a method. 
 Nothing is more common than to hear 
 Jesus eulogized as “the Great Teacher.” 
 May He not be saying to us, “Why call 
 ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things 
 that I command you?” Methods of 
 evangelism that were successful a few dec¬ 
 ades since are waning in power. Could 
 we look in at the study window of many 
 a faithful and well-equipped pastor at 
 the hour of midnight, we should find him 
 on his knees bewailing his want of success 
 in leading men to Christ. May it be 
 because we have abandoned in part the 
 method of Jesus? In his parting address 
 at Bethany he said: “Go into all the 
 world, teaching all things that I have 
 commanded you.” Was the kingdom of 
 heaven part of the “all things”? 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE KINGDOM TRIUMPHANT 
 
 “The world is enlarged for us, not by new objects 
 but by finding more affinities and potencies in 
 those we have.”— Emerson. 
 
 It has been steadily maintained in these 
 pages that the kingdom of heaven has 
 come, that the King is now upon his 
 throne, that the nature of the kingdom 
 and its laws have been fully declared, and 
 a proclamation issued to all peoples, “Seek 
 ye first the kingdom of heaven/’ That, 
 in a general sense, Christ lives and reigns 
 is conceded. It is quite as evident that- 
 he does not reign fully. The world is 
 looking for something more and expecting 
 something to happen. There is a feeling 
 that the program at present is not com¬ 
 plete. On many lips is the question, 
 “What next?” Is it not evident that 
 what is lacking is a more complete accept¬ 
 ance of the proclamation of the King? 
 The earth is waiting, but is it not true 
 that Heaven is also waiting? They differ 
 
 145 
 
146 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 in this, that God has done all that he 
 can do and man has not done what he 
 could and should do. There is the further 
 difference that God has plenty of time 
 in which to wait and that the men of this 
 generation will soon be in their graves. 
 Men may hasten or delay the full coming 
 of the Kingdom; the ultimate triumph is 
 secure. To the generation in which Jesus 
 lived the offer was made. Some accepted, 
 but as a nation the refusal was complete. 
 Read in the light of the subsequent his¬ 
 tory of that people how solemn the words 
 of Jesus, “Ye shall not see me from 
 henceforth until ye shall say, ‘Blessed is 
 he that cometh in the name of the Lord’ ”! 
 The ignominy and sorrow of centuries of 
 persecution and exile have not yet forced 
 that sentence from the lips of that race. 
 
 That an acceptance of Jesus and his 
 kingdom on a scale that would entitle it 
 to be called a world-movement may not 
 be expected, at least in our day, is un¬ 
 founded assumption. Men “think in 
 herds and go mad in herds.” As distance 
 vanishes and knowledge grows they incline 
 more and more to act as a whole. The 
 
THE KINGDOM TRIUMPHANT 147 
 
 close of the World War finds the nations 
 weeping together over their dead. They 
 are hungry together and are asking one 
 another for a crust of bread. They go 
 from land to land to borrow from those 
 who would borrow from them. They 
 see factories idle and industries prostrate 
 and know that they do not suffer alone. 
 They are hopeless together. They are 
 weary of government by men and would 
 welcome one that has in it a touch of 
 the Divine. They are tired even of 
 governing themselves. It is night in the 
 world, and out of the darkness comes a 
 many-voiced cry, “Would God it were 
 morning!” Love is a tie that binds, but 
 to suffer together makes men one. In 
 such a condition a petition like that which 
 certain Greeks made to Philip, saying, 
 “We would see Jesus,” underwritten in 
 such a manner as to make it a world ap¬ 
 peal, is by no means an impossibility. Such 
 a movement could not be called sudden. 
 The great reformation under Luther was 
 not sudden. Preparation for it began cen¬ 
 turies before. Its appearance alone was 
 sudden. No ecumenical conference, world 
 
148 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 congress or council will suffice. They have 
 their origin and are shaped from without; 
 this must come from within. It must be 
 like the bursting forth of vegetation in the 
 spring which is not settled at a convention 
 of the chief forests and fields but by a spon¬ 
 taneous movement in the tiniest seed and 
 the topmost branch. 
 
 The world can emphasize its acceptance 
 of the Kingdom by removing the obstruc¬ 
 tions in the road. There are valleys to 
 be filled up, hills to be leveled and stones 
 to be removed. They are man-made, and 
 men must be the John the Baptist to 
 remove obstructions and prepare the way. 
 At the outset is a ravine which in places 
 is a veritable quagmire where the chariot 
 wheels of Christianity oft drove heavily 
 and sometimes sank in the mire. It is 
 the swamp of doubt and uncertainty as 
 to the teachings of the Gospels concerning 
 the plan and aim of Jesus and the future 
 of his kingdom. Is Jesus now a real 
 presence and King, committed to a def¬ 
 inite program of progress for the human 
 race through forces and by methods that 
 are now at work? On the other hand, is 
 
THE KINGDOM TRIUMPHANT 149 
 
 he an absentee Lord who will return in 
 visible form to reward the righteous and 
 punish the wicked and set up his throne 
 and kingdom on the wreck of a wicked 
 world? A cleavage in the forces of Chris¬ 
 tianity is painfully apparent at this point. 
 It is not overstating the importance of 
 the subject to affirm that the next prac¬ 
 tical step is to fill up this piece of very 
 bad road. It is a serious reflection on 
 Jesus to say that though as a teacher 
 he never wandered far from his theme, 
 we cannot certainly know what he in¬ 
 tended to teach. It is to make light of 
 the promised aid of the Holy Spirit to 
 the end that we may know. Effort in 
 this direction has been discouraged in 
 the interest of peace. Such a peace is 
 gained at too dear a price. Early in the 
 history of Christianity controversy arose 
 concerning the person, and especially the 
 deity of Christ. There were not wanting 
 those who discouraged discussion because 
 it might lead to schism. They would 
 replace argument about Christ by work to 
 make him known. From many quarters 
 came the reply, “What shall we say when 
 
150 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 the world asks, Ts this Jesus a great man 
 and teacher or is he a god?’ Shall we run 
 before we have a message?” To their 
 credit, be it said, they refused to listen 
 to councils of peace. Instead, with the 
 spirit of the Bereans, they turned to the 
 Scriptures and to God. It was a battle 
 royal, but the outcome was the settle¬ 
 ment, so far as a question that will not 
 allow a mathematical demonstration can 
 be settled, of the controversy. We now 
 know that the expansion of Christianity 
 which followed would not have been 
 possible without that discussion. Behold 
 a sign of the times! The Christian world 
 is stirred as never before concerning the 
 plan and aim of Jesus. Hail the day! 
 Let those divisions of the church that 
 congratulate themselves that there are no 
 discussions of this theme among them 
 beware lest they boast of having no part 
 in the vision and work of the age. Wel¬ 
 come, rather, a battle of critics, higher 
 and lower, of historians and antiquarians, 
 of exegetes and linguists; a strife of lex¬ 
 icons and grammars, Hebrew and Syriac, 
 Greek and Latin. Above all welcome the 
 
THE KINGDOM TRIUMPHANT 151 
 
 sight of millions of sincere and intelligent 
 Christians, void of prejudices and obses¬ 
 sions, on their knees before God and an 
 open Bible, pleading for the enlightenment 
 of the Divine Spirit. 
 
 In the road by which the Kingdom 
 must come is also a hill which must be 
 leveled if the way is prepared. It may well 
 be called the Hill Difficulty since a hill 
 suggests pride and this obstructive hill 
 is the pride men take in their own insti¬ 
 tutions. This easily leads to the exalta¬ 
 tion of the institution. In the mist of 
 laudation the organization gets between 
 men and the purpose for which it was 
 founded. 
 
 Organizations, begun in unselfishness, 
 have had their day and departed unre¬ 
 gretted, because they did not hold to the 
 original purpose of being a means to an 
 end, rather than an end in themselves. 
 They failed because their raison d'etre 
 was not clearly defined or steadily kept 
 in mind. An organization, like a man, 
 may lose its soul. This it does when the 
 hour comes that it lives for itself. When 
 it lives to save its own soul it loses it. 
 
152 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 and when it loses its soul in something 
 higher it saves it. The roadside along 
 which the kingdom of heaven has come 
 thus far is strewn with the wrecks of 
 organizations that lost their souls in the 
 struggle to exist and, like human bodies 
 after the departure of the spirit, were 
 henceforth tenanted by worms. 
 
 There are organizations, Christian and 
 semi-Christian, that can only save their 
 own souls by giving themselves away to 
 the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 There is also a crooked place in the road 
 that needs to be straightened. The con¬ 
 fusion and loss occasioned by it are great. 
 Haply, it is within the power of, men to 
 straighten it out. How like a twisting 
 and tortuous road is the comment which 
 the world makes on the kingdom of 
 heaven! It is praised, even lauded to the 
 skies. One might suppose that there 
 were no longer any unbelievers. In almost 
 the same breath it is said: “But the 
 principles of the Kingdom are Utopian. 
 They are not practicable or workable in 
 this world, at least not in this age. There 
 is the Golden Rule, and ‘Thou shalt love 
 
THE KINGDOM TRIUMPHANT 153 
 
 thy neighbor as thyself.’ That is beau¬ 
 tiful, but in practice it will not work. 
 ‘Lay not up treasures upon earth.’ If 
 men did that, the financial system of the 
 world would collapse. ‘The meek shall 
 inherit the earth.’ That sounds well but 
 really who believes it? There is the 
 teaching of Jesus about war and divorce 
 and many other things. As an ideal it 
 is good enough, but it fails when put 
 to the test.” So long as the idea prevails 
 that the kingdom of heaven is visionary, 
 it is hindered. At this point there is 
 imperative need of road work. It cer¬ 
 tainly can be shown that the teachings 
 of Jesus have never been fully tried out, 
 and that in the measure that they have, 
 they have been found to be eminently 
 practical. It is also true that the opposite 
 principles, the right of the strong to 
 rule, an utterly selfish policy in business, 
 the reign of secrecy and intrigue among 
 nations, have been thoroughly tried and 
 found not to work save in the direction 
 of ruin. Speed the day when this crooked 
 place shall be made straight. 
 
 Among many stones to be gotten out 
 
154 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
 
 of the road is the erroneous idea that the 
 Kingdom may be won by waiting for it. 
 In vain we wait for what has already 
 come. What Heaven can do has been 
 done. It remains for the followers of 
 Jesus to begin at once, and steadfastly 
 continue, the 'practice of the kingdom of 
 heaven . A foremost question among the 
 American people at the close of the 
 Civil War was how to resume specie pay¬ 
 ment. Many plans were suggested. The 
 Secretary of the Treasury swept them all 
 aside saying, “The only way to resume is 
 to resume.” 
 
Ji 
 
Date Due 
 
 
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