tihtavy of t:he t:heolo0ical ^tminary 
 
 PRINCETON . NEW JERSEY 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 ROBERT ELLIOTT SPEER 
 
 BV 625 .S87 
 
 Sutherland, Alexander, 183: 
 
 1910. 
 The kingdom of God and 
 

 Cl.'J^i 
 
COLE LECTURES FOR 1898. 
 
THE COLE LECTURES. 
 
 Col. E. W. Cole, of Nashville, Tenn., has donated to Van- 
 derbilt University the sum of five thousand dollars, the design 
 and conditions of which bequest are stated as follows: 
 
 "The object of this fund is to establish a foundation for a 
 perpetual lectureship in connection with the Biblical Depart- 
 ment of the University, to be restricted in its scope to a defense 
 and advocacy of the Christian religion. These lectures shall 
 be delivered at such intervals, from time to time, as shall be 
 deemed best by the Board of Trust; and the particular theme 
 and lecturer shall be determined bv nomination of the Theolog- 
 ical Faculty and confirmation of the College of Bishops of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Said lectures shall always 
 be reduced to writing in full, and the manuscript of the same 
 shall be the property of the University, to be published or dis- 
 posed of by the Board of Trust at its discretion, the net pro- 
 ceeds arising therefrom to be added to the foundation fund or 
 otherwise used for the benefit of the Biblical Department." 
 
THE KINGDOM 
 
 AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY. 
 
 LECTURES 
 
 Delivered Before the Biblical Department of 
 Vanderbilt University. 
 
 BY ALEXANDER SUTHERLAND, D.D., 
 
 Toronto^ Canada. 
 
 Toronto: 
 
 William Briggs. 
 
 Montreal: Halifax: 
 
 C. W. COATES. S. F. HUESTIS. 
 
Copyrighted, 1898, 
 By Barbee & Smith, Agents. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 General Prelude vii 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 The Kingdom of God in Conception and 
 Outline i 
 
 LECTURE IL 
 The Principles and Polity of the Kingdom 
 OF God 25 
 
 LECTURE IIL 
 Two Important Issues, and How to Meet 
 Them 8i 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 The Problem of Poverty 125 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 Labor Disputes, and How to End Them... 165 
 
 LECTURE VL 
 
 The Stability, Perpetuity, and Final 
 Consummation of the Kingdom of God... 201 
 A (V) 
 
GENERAL PRELUDE, 
 
"Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, 
 
 Why should I strive to set the crooked straight? 
 Let it suffice me that my murmuring rime 
 
 Beats with light wings against the ivory gate, 
 Telling a tale not too importunate 
 To those who in the sleepy region stay, 
 Lulled by the singer of an empty day." 
 (Rev. William Bayard Hale, '<The New Obedience," p. 84.) 
 
 "The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and 
 he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully." 
 (Jer. xxiii. 28.) 
 
GENERAL PRELUDE. 
 
 In discoursing upon a subject so large as the prob« 
 lems of modern society, and the relation of the king, 
 dom of God thereto, it will be seen how impossible it 
 is to cover the ground in the compass of half a dozen 
 lectures. Almost every topic would require a volume — 
 some of them more than one — for its complete elucida- 
 tion. Whole sections will have to be omitted, and oth- 
 ers touched upon very slightly. All that can be done 
 at this time is to outline the nature, principles, and pol- 
 ity of that kingdom which, as I believe, it has been and 
 still is God's purpose to establish in this world, and to 
 show, by suggestion rather than by exhaustive treat- 
 ment, that if men could be persuaded to accept those 
 principles as a rule of life, and to adopt that polity as 
 the basis of their social relations, all the problems 
 which now disturb society would be quickly and easily 
 
 solved. 
 
 It is not uncommon to find the themes which come 
 within the domain of sociology treated in an abstruse 
 way, and burdened with technical terms intelligible 
 only to scholars ; while to ordinary people the Babel 
 (let me not say babble) of high-sounding words is as 
 "the crackHng of thorns under a pot." But if in this 
 department of investigation there are truths which all 
 men ought to know (and how can they be of practical 
 
 (ix) 
 
X THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 value otherwise?), they must be expressed in terms in- 
 telligible to average men and women. Sociology, 
 although the word has a formidable sound, is not an 
 abstruse science. Its truths, while touching very com- 
 plex conditions, are simple in themselves ; and if in 
 these lectures I avoid as much as possible the termi- 
 nology of the schools, and utter my thoughts in the 
 everyday language of the common people, the result, 
 though disappointing to pedantic scholarship, may be 
 all the more useful to the multitude, whose ideas re- 
 garding social duties, obligations, and relationships 
 need to be clarified and turned into better channels. 
 
 If there is one subject upon which, at the present 
 time, more than upon any other, ample data, clear 
 thinking, and accurate statement are required, it is the 
 complex science of sociology. And yet, outside of a 
 limited number of volumes, there are few subjects 
 upon which w^e have less of either. The reason is 
 p^ain. A great many persons who do not take the 
 trouble to ascertain the facts, and have never been 
 trained to think clearly, have made their minds recep- 
 tacles for a mass of crude, undigested notions which 
 they dignify with the name of social science, and 
 then pour them forth upon a long-suffering world as 
 a panacea for all the social ills to which flesh is heir. 
 And so it has come to pass that what is called social- 
 ism has been sadly misunderstood and misinterpreted 
 alike by its friends and foes. Even when clearly ap- 
 prehended, secular democratic socialism may not com- 
 
GENERAL PRELUDE. xi 
 
 mend itself to thoughtful men ; but it is important 
 that we should understand just what it is before we 
 either laud it as the highest wisdom, or denounce it as 
 false and misleading. 
 
 And yet the wide discussion of social and sociolog- 
 ical topics, even when the discussion proceeds, as it 
 sometimes does, in ignorance of the facts, much more 
 of the underlying principles, will result in good. If it 
 does no more, it will call the attention of earnest 
 Christian thinkers to those conditions of society which, 
 in the opinion of men who are not mere alarmists, fore- 
 bode disaster ; and when once it is seen that we can 
 not proceed safely on the ostrich-like plan of thrusting 
 our heads into the sand and refusing to see or hear, it 
 is likely that some remedy for real social ills will be 
 sought with an earnestness that will itself presage 
 success. In medical science diagnosis must precede 
 prescription, unless we are content to go upon the old 
 empirical plan of mixing sundry nostrums in hope 
 that some one of them may hit the disease ; and the 
 same thing may hold true with respect to the diseases 
 of the body politic. 
 
 It would be a great mistake to suppose that the 
 social ills of which we hear so much are a new thing 
 under the sun. Ills just as great, or greater, existed in 
 the past ; but they had not become living issues as they 
 are to-day, because the public conscience was less sen- 
 sitive, and most people regarded these things with 
 indifference. But all this has been chanofed. Wronofs 
 
Xll THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 that once found no voice have become vocal in the 
 Church, the market place, and the halls of legislation ; 
 a small army of trained experts are collecting- and 
 classifying the facts of social and industrial life as a 
 foundation upon which future remedial action may 
 proceed ; preachers of righteousness are bringing the 
 methods and maxims of business face to face with the 
 Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. 
 As a result of all this, social ills are being steadily re- 
 pressed where they can not be altogether eliminated. 
 Step by step the liquor traffic is restricted ; social vice 
 finds no open apologists, and the righteousness of one 
 standard of morals for men and women gains new 
 adherents every day. Cruelty to children, and even to 
 animals, is punishable by statute ; compulsory education 
 is the law of the more advanced nations ; enactments 
 in the interests of labor are on almost every statute- 
 book ; the simple justice of a living wage (if we could 
 only agree as to what that means ! ) for all who toil is 
 generally admitted, and efforts to that end are steadily 
 pursued. Best of all, the conviction grows that social ills 
 are not incurable, and that a remedy will be found in the 
 steady application of the laws of the kingdom of God to 
 all the concerns of life. And what does all this indicate 
 but the steady working of the gospel leaven in human 
 society as Christ foretold it w^ould, giving promise of a 
 coming day when the whole mass will be leavened ? 
 
 In dealing with any of the sociological problems of 
 the day, a knowledge of the facts is indispensable. 
 
GENERAL PRELUDE. Xlll 
 
 Some one has said that the conditions of life of 
 wasps and bees have been more thoroughly examined 
 by Sir John Lubbock, and the habits of earthworms 
 by Charles Darwin, than have the conditions of life of 
 the common people. Such a reproach is scarcely true 
 to-day. A search-light of intense power has been 
 turned not only upon the slums of great cities, w^here 
 the vicious and the criminal congregate, but also upon 
 the homes — if they deserve the name — of the very 
 poor, and such w^orks as General Booth's " In Darkest 
 England" and Mr. Charles Booth's "Life and Labor 
 of the People" ^ have come as a revelation, dispelling 
 much of the ignorance that once existed. That such 
 books should come as a " revelation " is the strangest 
 and saddest thing about it all. How could such a state 
 of things exist, one might ask, and yet multitudes of 
 Christian people in the same city be ignorant of the 
 fact ? Was it because, as of old, the priest and the Le- 
 vite " passed by on the other side," and that only here 
 and there was there a "Samaritan" who had time or 
 
 iThe book which Mr. Charles Booth (no connection of the 
 General, I believe) has given to the world is not the result of 
 a hasty run through the slums. On the contrary, he and his 
 associates determined to get to the bottom of the whole ques- 
 tion. They went over a large part of East London " mile by 
 mile, street by street, house by house, and room by room " ; and 
 their work is characterized by the impartiality of jurists and 
 the accuracy of mathematicians. If it be said that these investi- 
 gations refer only to the city of London, the obvious reply is 
 that social problems are substantially the same everywhere, 
 differing in degree rather than in kind. 
 
XIV THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 inclination to turn aside to raise the fallen and pour a 
 little oil and wine into wounds that were gaping wide? 
 Perhaps so ; or perhaps it was only that, beyond a 
 vague surface notion that something was wrong, very 
 few had any knowledge of the real facts in the case. 
 To-day no such ignorance can be pleaded. Society's 
 festering wounds have been laid bare in the light of 
 the sun ; and if the Church of God comes not to pour 
 in the oil and the wine, it will go far to justify the 
 reproach of a labor leader in England : " Shame, a 
 thousand times shame, upon so feeble a religion as 
 that which can tolerate the awful social life which ex- 
 ists in London to-day ! " But religion — true religion — 
 does not " tolerate " it in London or anywhere else, and 
 religion must work with both hands to remove the re- 
 proach where it even seems to exist. 
 
 There is not much room for complaint in these days 
 that the poor or the toilers are without a voice to tell 
 their ^vrongs.^ Ten thousand voices are clamoring on 
 this one subject, and the voices have every variety of 
 tone. We hear the moan or still more bitter cry of 
 those who suffer, they scarcely know why ; we hear 
 the warninof voice of those who have been behind the 
 
 1 Sixty years ago Carlyle wrote: "How inexpressibly useful 
 were a genuine understanding by the upper classes of society 
 what it is that the under classes intrinsically mean; a clear in- 
 terpretation of the thought which at heart torments these wild 
 inarticulate souls, struggling there with inarticulate uproar, 
 like dumb creatures in pain, unable to speak out what is in 
 them! " 
 
GENERAL PRELUDE. XV 
 
 scenes, and who see in the struggling masses forces 
 that threaten the civiUzation of the future ; we hear the 
 earnest appeals of those who would fain arouse the 
 Church of God to grapple with the problems of the 
 hour. Anon we hear the rasping tones of the profes- 
 sional agitator, whose delight it is to set class against 
 class and interest against interest, and to keep alive 
 the discontent out of which he makes his living or 
 gains his notoriety ; while from across the sea, and 
 even in some cities of this continent, is heard the in- 
 sane shriek of the anarchist, whose cry, when inter- 
 preted, means, " Back from cosmos to chaos ! " To 
 comprehend the meaning of all this confused uproar 
 may not be easy ; but one thing is clear : discontent so 
 deep and widespread must have its source in some real 
 trouble which, if we could but reach it, would suggest 
 some remedy. It is not enough to say, amid the tur- 
 moil, that the great toiHng, struggling, sweating 
 masses don't know what they want. Of some of them 
 it is true ; of many of them it is partly true ; of all of 
 them it once was true, say in Carlyle's day, but not 
 now. Be that as it may, it is the duty of the Church 
 of God to find out what they want, and, so far as the 
 wants are legitimate, help to supply them. 
 
 In these days numerous remedies for our social ills 
 are persistently advertised. Our social "medicine 
 men," like their patent-medicine prototypes, paint the 
 diseases of the body politic in the darkest colors, and 
 portray a condition of ideal health in hues superlative- 
 
XVI THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 ly bright ; but whether any one of the advertised nos- 
 trums will prove to be the bridge over vvdiich a so- 
 cially invalided race will pass from disease to health, 
 can be determined only when the experiment is tried. 
 I cherish an unv^avering belief that better social condi- 
 tions will prevail in the not distant future, but I also 
 believe that this can be brought about only in so far as 
 men are animated by the spirit and governed by the 
 precepts of Jesus the Christ. We can have better so- 
 cial conditions only when we have better men, and the 
 only way that has yet been discovered of making 
 better men is the transforming power of the Spirit of 
 God. The world has yet to learn that the root of all 
 social ills is in man himself and not in his environ- 
 ments, and then it will be seen that tlie teachings of 
 Jesus Christ embody the soundest philosophy and the 
 most exact science= See how, in a single sentence, he 
 cleaves his way to the very heart of this matter as 
 with the stroke of a two-edged sword : " Either make 
 the tree good, and its fruit good ; or make the tree cor- 
 rupt, and its fruit corrupt : for the tree is kno'wn by its 
 fruit." 1 Neither in social life nor anywhere else "do 
 men gather grapes from thorns, or figs of thistles." ^ 
 
 Not a few students of social and political problems 
 VvTite and speak of human laws and institutions as 
 though they were automata, working by virtue of 
 some inherent mechanism. But a law or an institution 
 
 1 Matthew xii. 33. 2 ]\iatthew vii. 16. 
 
GENERAL PRELUDE. Xvil 
 
 in itself is nothing, and it can do nothing save as it is 
 controlled and operated by human intelligence. An 
 imperfect institution controlled and operated by good 
 men will work better than an ideal institution con- 
 trolled by bad men. Slavery, in the hands of humane 
 and upright men, will work better than liberty admin- 
 istered by Judge Lynch. Despotism, in the hands of 
 a truly humane and upright ruler, with like-minded 
 subordinates, will conserve the interests of the people 
 better than an ideal democracy whose leaders are 
 vicious and corrupt. 1 hold, therefore, that far more is 
 accomplished by steady and continuous efforts to in- 
 crease the number of humane and righteous men than 
 by perpetual tinkering at laws and institutions without 
 concerning ourselves as to the character of the men by 
 whom they are to be administered ; more especially as 
 an increase of humane and righteous men is the surest 
 and quickest way of improving laws and institutions 
 that are imperfect, and reforming those that are bad. 
 It can not be too often repeated that the laws and in- 
 stitutions which obtain in any self-governing communi- 
 ty represent, approximately, the average of intelligence 
 and morality in that community, and reforms will not do 
 more than keep even pace with the moral growth of the 
 people. Without expressing the slightest opinion as to 
 the merits of different systems of government, it may be 
 instructive to remember that France tried to force on 
 republicanism before a real republican was born, and 
 the reign of terror is history's significant warning to 
 
XVlll THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 men not to repeat experiments of that kind premature^ 
 ly. Assuming that there may be some degree of truth 
 in the theory of evolution, it will be well to remember 
 that we cannot safely force the pace by modern appli- 
 ances. Evolution will take its time, no matter how 
 impatient we may be. 
 
 If sociology is what Joseph Cook defines it to be, 
 "the science, philosophy, and art of human welfare in 
 life and death, and beyond death," the vastness of its 
 scope might well deter one from any attempt to master 
 it. ' Nor is the outlook more encouraging if we adopt 
 Professor Ely's definition that sociology is the group 
 name of the social sciences that relate to language, art, 
 education, religion, family life, society life, political 
 life, economic life.^ Professor Herron is more terse and 
 lucid when he calls it "the science of right human 
 relations " ; ^ and so is Dr. Washington Gladden, who 
 calls it "the science of human welfare."^ But some- 
 thing different is wanted to express the conception of 
 what is now called Christian sociology, or the applica- 
 tion of the law of Christ to the solution of social 
 problems. Its object, as expressed in the principles 
 of the American Institute of Christian Sociology, is 
 "to present Christ as the living Master and King of 
 men, and his kingdom as the complete ideal of human 
 society to be realized on earth " ; but in doing this we 
 
 i" Outlines of Economics," pp. 8i, 82. 
 
 2 " Christianity Practically Applied," I., p. 458. 
 
 3 "Applied Christianity," p. 221. 
 
GENERAL PRELUDE. XIX 
 
 need not go beyond the plain teaching of the New 
 Testament, especially of the Gospels. That Jesus con- 
 templated an ideal state of society as the outcome of 
 his kingdom among men admits, I think, of no dis- 
 pute, and it is the vision of such a society, dim and 
 distorted as it often is, that is stirring men's souls with 
 a vague unrest. Society, as a whole, is yet very far 
 from the gospel ideal, because as yet the scope of the 
 gospel is imperfectly apprehended by the masses, and 
 even the Church cannot be said to have realized all 
 that Christ intended his kingdom to be. Perhaps this is 
 why men in their blindness and impatience are preach- 
 ing industrial and social revolutions to be brought 
 about not by moral and spiritual forces, which is Christ's 
 plan, but by compulsion, by confiscation, by robbery. 
 
 Those who may take the trouble to read these lec- 
 tures are asked to remember that they have been pre- 
 pared in such fragments of time as could be snatched 
 from pressing duties of another kind, and may be 
 lacking alike in logical arrangement and literary finish. 
 They are, to say the least, far short of the author's 
 own ideal of what the occasion demanded ; but he had 
 to content himself with a simple presentation of facts 
 and inferences touching social duties and relationships 
 that might show their intimate connection with the 
 laws of the divine kingdom which God is establishing 
 in the world. In all that is said there is an avoidance 
 of mere declamation and of all appeals to passion or 
 prejudice, keeping in mind the saying of the apostle : 
 
XX THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 " I speak as to wise men ; judge ye what I say." It 
 is quite possible that some of my views will be re- 
 garded as antiquated, if not obsolete. There are men 
 who have gained considerable reputation in the domain 
 of physical research who regard with ill-concealed im- 
 patience any hint of a belief that there is a God who 
 still lives and reigns, as being altogether opposed to 
 modern discoveries and advanced thought ; but I have 
 lived long enough to be convinced that not a little of 
 what passes current as modern and advanced thought 
 is only a revival of very ancient errors, and that men 
 who have spent their lives in the study of the physical 
 sciences are not the best qualified to pass judgment in 
 the higher realm of spiritual beliefs. A case in point 
 is that of the late Charles Darwin, who admitted to- 
 ward the close of his life the effect upon his own 
 singularly clear and powerful mind of exclusive de- 
 votion to a purely physical pursuit, in rendering him 
 insensible to the whole class of conceptions which 
 belong to the spiritual realm. But if in spite of 
 warnings like these the conception of a divine king- 
 dom in the earth, planned by divine wisdom and 
 carrie4 to its consummation by divine power, be still 
 regarded as the dream of an enthusiast rather than the 
 sober belief of a rational man, I must content myself 
 to be even as " the voice of one crying in the wilder- 
 ness," sustained only by the conviction that the cry 
 repeats in its every tone the spirit of the ancient 
 message : " Prepare ye the way of the Lord ! " 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN CONCEPTION 
 AND OUTLINE. 
 
 (1) 
 
"Not only philosophy and the so-called gnosis, but also the 
 Scriptures, recognize and avow a divine ideal world to which the 
 actual world stands related as the historical development of an 
 eternal conception. (Delitzsch, ''Biblische Psychologie," p. 
 23; quoted by Dr. Charles Hodge, "Systematic Theology," 
 Vol. 11., p. 66, English edition.) 
 
 "The sovereign people must not be sovereignless, but their 
 only possible Sovereign is the God who is Lord of the con- 
 science. His is the only voice that can still the noise of the 
 passions and the tumult of the interests." (A. M. Fairbairn, 
 D.D., "Religion in History," p. 61.) 
 
 "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set 
 up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: nor shall the 
 sovereignty thereof be left to another people; but it shall break 
 in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand 
 forever." (Dan. ii. 44.) 
 
 "Any social order must stand in some veritable connection 
 with the higher law of heaven. If it would be tr^e and per- 
 manent, it must recognize the presence and power of the living 
 God." (A. Scott Matheson, "The Church and Social Prob- 
 lems," p. 346.) 
 (2) 
 
L 
 
 PRELUDE.— SEARCHING FOR A CLUE. 
 
 IN the investigation of many important subjects 
 some propositions have to be assumed, at least 
 for a time. This may give to arguments the ap- 
 pearance of mere dogmatic statements that are not 
 yet proved, and may even be incapable of proof. 
 But such an objection has weight only in regard 
 to the initial stage of a discussion. As the investi- 
 gation proceeds the assumptions may be either 
 verified or disproved, and only such as are verified 
 can be retained. At the start certain assumptions 
 may be necessary as a working hypothesis, if 
 nothing more; later on they may be dispensed 
 with, and their places supplied by conclusions 
 based upon substantial evidence. 
 
 In attempting to show that from the beginning 
 it has been the purpose of Almighty God to estab- 
 lish in this world a kingdom of truth and right- 
 eousness, and to present, if only in faint outline, 
 the saHent features of that kingdom, my argu- 
 ments must be drawn chiefly from that Book 
 which Christians call the Word of God. I will 
 assume, for the time being, the trustworthiness of 
 
 (3) 
 
4 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 that Book as a revelation of the mind and will of 
 God concerning the human race; that its history 
 is reliable touching those occurrences of which it 
 professes to give an account; that its prophetic 
 announcements have in them the elements of 
 *' foretelling" as well as **forthtelling," and may- 
 be trusted at least to the full extent to which they 
 have been fulfilled in history; and that its ethical 
 teaching is along lines which tend to the highest 
 development and greatest good of mankind. As 
 we proceed it will be seen how far these assump- 
 tions are valid, or whether some or all of them 
 must be abandoned as untenable. 
 
 In approaching the Scriptures, and especially 
 those portions which speak of the beginnings of 
 things, we should move with caution and interpret 
 without dogmatism. The meaning we extract 
 from a given passage is often colored by precon- 
 ceived opinions. It is quite possible to deceive 
 ourselves with the belief that we are developing 
 the true meaning of the Scriptures when in fact 
 we are simply bringing to light some notion which, 
 all unconsciously perhaps, we had previously hid- 
 den there. This appears in the writings of two 
 widely diverging schools of interpretation. It is 
 found among those who adhere to the barest liter- 
 alism in the interpretation of even highly figurative 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. 5 
 
 passages, and it is found in a more marked degree 
 among those who are perpetually finding some 
 mystical meaning hidden beneath the plainest 
 statement of facts. 
 
 This difficulty has arisen, in part at least, from 
 adopting the theory of verbal inspiration. This 
 theory has never been very clearly defined, nor 
 has it ever been expressly adopted, as far as I 
 know, by any branch of the Christian Church; 
 but in some form or other it has been widely prev- 
 alent, and in its logical outcome has presented 
 many openings of which skeptics of all classes 
 have not been slow to avail themselves. A con- 
 spicuous example of this is found in some of the 
 writings of the late Professor Huxley.^ Incautious 
 statements of Christian apologists, apparently in- 
 volving the position that Christianity is founded 
 upon a series of events recorded in our sacred 
 books, which events must have happened exactly 
 as they are declared to have happened, the words 
 being interpreted in the most literal way, have 
 been seized by the Professor with avidity, distorted 
 and made ridiculous, as is the fashion of his class, 
 and then on the ground of these crude and even 
 absurd interpretations he assails alike the Mosaic 
 
 ^"Lights of the Church and the Light of Science." 
 
O THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 cosmogony and the gospel narratives, relegating 
 the creation, the fall, the flood, the call of Abra- 
 ham, the whole Messianic doctrine, and the New 
 Testament miracles to the same category as the 
 Greek myths or the Roman legends. It will be 
 seen, therefore, how important it is that we en- 
 deavor to hold an even balance between that ex- 
 treme literalism which allows no room for the use 
 of metaphor or poetic representation, and the 
 vague mysticism which, in its anxiety to spiritual- 
 ize every statement, robs plain words of their ob- 
 vious meaning, and lands us among shifting quick- 
 sands where safe footing cannot be found. 
 
 It scarcely needs to be said that any theory of 
 the universe, or of the history and destiny of the 
 human race, which includes God and his purpose 
 as chief factors is sure to meet with sturdy oppo- 
 sition; but the form of opposition changes as the 
 years go by. The old argument drawn from the 
 insignificance of this earth as compared with the 
 rest of the universe, or even the rest of the solar 
 system of which it forms a part, and how unlikely 
 it is that it would be chosen as the theater of a 
 divine drama lasting as time and comprehensive 
 as the thought of God, is now seen to be incon- 
 clusive and even childish. If the universe is the 
 outcome of intelligence, behind it there must be 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. 7 
 
 plan and purpose, not only for the universe as a 
 whole, but for each separate part, and into the 
 whole the parts must fit with perfect adjustment, 
 otherwise the result will be confusion and disaster. 
 Each creative thought of God must find embodi- 
 ment sometime and somewhere in time and space, 
 and if in the instances now under consideration 
 that somewhere is but an outlying orb of minute 
 dimensions, and the sometime a mere fragment of 
 duration, yet that orb is an integral part of an il- 
 limitable universe, and that fragment belongs to 
 an eternity that saw no beginning and will see no 
 end. Physical bigness is not essential to the dis- 
 play of grand conceptions. The microscope, no 
 less than the telescope, gives evidence of far- 
 reaching plan and purpose, and divine wisdom is 
 seen in the infinitely minute as clearly as in the in- 
 finitely vast. 
 
 In the domain of natural science, and even of 
 sciology, we find here and there some islets of 
 knowledge surrounded by a vast ocean of igno- 
 rance. The known is so small compared with the 
 unknown that Sir Isaac Newton's famous saying, 
 in which he compares himself to a child at the sea- 
 shore; gathering a few shells brighter than the 
 rest, while the great ocean of truth lay before him 
 unsounded and unexplored, is felt to be no exag- 
 
b THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 geration. If an explanation is asked of this pau- 
 city of results as compared with the expenditure 
 of effort, it is not to be found in the exceptional 
 difficulty of the problems themselves, nor yet in 
 the insufficiency of the human mind to grapple 
 with them, but rather in the fact that at the first 
 students were under the necessity of studying the 
 subjects without any guiding principle, hoping by 
 the slow and painful accumulation of facts to 
 reach some generalization that might be expressed 
 in terms of universal application. Facts were al- 
 ways plentiful enough, but often it has been only 
 after centuries of patient investigation that some 
 underlying principle is discovered which unites 
 and correlates the heterogeneous and seemingly 
 discordant facts, so that they fall obediently into 
 line under the sway of universal law. 
 
 In attempting a solution of the complex social 
 problems that meet us at every turn, it becomes us 
 to proceed with caution, for the field is strewn with 
 dead issues and fragments of exploded theories, 
 through which it is difficult to find one's way. In- 
 deed, it will be impossible unless we can find an 
 absolutely trustworthy clue. And although such 
 a discovery may seem very doubtful to those 
 whose search has resulted only in successive dis- 
 appointments, yet he would be a bold man who 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. 9 
 
 would affirm that such a clue cannot be found. 
 There was a time when the problem of the solar 
 system was surrounded by difficulties quite as 
 great as those which surround the sociological 
 problems of to-day. In the nature of the case an 
 a priori clue was out of the question. It was 
 only by the slow accumulation of facts, and the 
 testing and rejection of many theories, that the 
 law of planetary motion could be discovered ; but, 
 once discovered, it furnished a clue whereby stu- 
 dents of the future might find their way, safely 
 and surely, through the intricate mazes of planet- 
 ary and stellar motion throughout the whole uni- 
 verse. 
 
 There is this difference, however, in the two 
 cases : In the search for physical laws the student 
 is deahng, for the most part, with fixed and inva- 
 riable quantities, and his mathematical or other 
 signs have always and everywhere the same 
 values ; but in the search for laws that may under- 
 lie our sociological problems, he is deahng with 
 forces which appear to be neither fixed nor inva- 
 riable. He has to reckon with an entirely new 
 factor. Human nature, with all its complex forces 
 — moral, intellectual, and social — constitutes the 
 chief part of the problem, and increases immense- 
 ly the difficulty of solution. In other words, the 
 
lO THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 student is no longer dealing with inert matter and 
 the laws of motion and gravitation, which are al- 
 ways and everywhere the same; he has entered 
 an entirely different realm, where the human mind, 
 with its endless speculations, and human volition, 
 with its practically unlimited power of choosing, 
 have to be taken into account. In astronomical 
 science it is very easy to measure the direction 
 and intensity of all the forces that act upon the 
 heavenly bodies, and to predict the result with ab- 
 solute certainty ; but who can catalogue the thou- 
 sand and one influences of passion and prejudice, 
 of interest and pleasure, of judgment and con- 
 science, of volition and choice, which sway hu- 
 man actions, or predict the result of their ever- 
 varying forces ? 
 
 And yet if it be true that law is everywhere ; if 
 it be true that natural laws in their last analysis 
 are simple as axioms and clear as the light; if it 
 be true, as science seems to teach, that all power 
 is one and comes from one source — it would be 
 strange to the last degree if law should reign in 
 the lower but not in the higher realm, or that law 
 in that higher realm should be less clear and sim- 
 ple than the laws which pertain to the physical 
 universe. There may be some who in a matter of 
 this kind think with Tennyson that 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. II 
 
 " We have but faith, we cannot know, 
 For knowledge is of things we see "; 
 
 but that has been just as true in the realm of 
 physical research as in the higher realm of mind. 
 In astronomical science the laws of motion and 
 gravitation were matter of faith before their exist- 
 ence was demonstrated or their universality re- 
 vealed, just as a Western Hemisphere was matter 
 of faith to Columbus before one of his ships left 
 the coast of Spain. And it is my belief, reasoning 
 not alone from analogy, that, underlying the swirl 
 of that seething vortex we call society, there are 
 laws that will account for all its movements, even 
 the most erratic, and from which results may be 
 predicted with at least moral certainty. 
 
 When Kepler, after long and patient investiga- 
 tion, found a clue which solved the problem of the 
 movements of the heavenly bodies, he fell upon 
 his knees and cried in solemn rapture, '^Almighty 
 God, I think thy thoughts after thee !" And if in 
 tracing the conception and development of a di- 
 vine kingdom among men we find a clue which 
 solves otherwise insoluble problems ; which guides 
 us safely and surely through the mazes of human 
 history — the growth and decay of empires, the rise 
 and fall of dynasties, the shock of contending 
 armies, the entanglements of statecraft, the heav- 
 
12 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 ings of social unrest, the awful problems of sin 
 and suffering — until we emerge into the peace and 
 glory of a never-ending kingdom, where human 
 wrongs are righted, and human relationships are 
 adjusted on a basis of eternal righteousness, we 
 too may exclaim in solemn rapture, "Almighty 
 God, we think thy thoughts after thee !" 
 
 Every student knows what an immense advan- 
 tage is gained if he can begin the investigation of 
 any branch of science with a knowledge of its un- 
 derlying principles or laws, by the application of 
 which each problem can be solved as it arises. 
 And this, I submit, is the case when sociological 
 problems are studied in the light of the great laws 
 of the kingdom of God. He who confronts the 
 complex and intricate problems which crowd the 
 domain of man's social relations with no other 
 guide than some theor}^ that has been reasoned 
 upward from amid the strife and clamor of human 
 interests and passions is like one who w^anders in 
 the mazes of a labyrinth with no certain clue to 
 guide his steps. Here and there he grasps w^hat 
 seems to be a clue, but finds it to be only a broken 
 thread dropped by some one as bewildered as 
 himself. Perplexed and almost despairing, what 
 wonder if he abandons the task as one bey^ond hu- 
 man skill, and is ready to conclude that man is 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. I3 
 
 the victim of some malignant power from whom 
 there is no escape ; that the God in whom he was 
 once taught to beHeve as the loving Father of men 
 is, after all, only a sort of sculptured deity, who 
 sits behind an impenetrable veil of second causes, 
 '* clutching in his cold metallic fingers iron bands 
 of law," and gazing forth, with stony. Sphinx-like 
 eyes, upon human souls that sin and suffer and 
 human hearts that break. 
 
 But if human life in the aggregate of its prob- 
 lems is the hopeless labyrinth that some find it to 
 be, it is past belief that it can be the result either 
 of accident or malignant design, and the root of 
 the difficulty must be sought in faulty methods of 
 interpretation rather than in the facts which they 
 seek to interpret. Doubtless there are some who 
 still worship the great goddess Fortuity, and think 
 that man is the sport of circumstance or the slave 
 of fate ; but they judge more truly who teach that 
 the Maker of the universe and of all that it con- 
 , tains is neither a blind force nor a cold abstrac- 
 tion, but a living God whose mighty hand upholds 
 all worlds, yet wipes the tear from sorrow's cheek; 
 whose eye surveys the utmost limits of creation, 
 yet notes the sparrow's fall; whose ear drinks in 
 the melody of rolling spheres, yet catches the 
 faintest whisper from the heart of trouble, and 
 
14 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 hears even the young ravens when they cry. 
 Doubtless we are under law, and we rejoice that 
 it is so. The universe is not left to the mercy of 
 lawless chance. But law itself is subject to love, 
 and the fountain of law is not a hard, stern neces- 
 sity, but a loving Heart that beats in sympathy with 
 man's highest aspirations, and cherishes a tender 
 pity for human griefs and fears. And law itself 
 is not a pitiless Juggernaut, remorselessly crushing 
 whatever comes in its way; it is simply the living 
 and loving God in action, working out the great 
 plan and purpose of his kingdom, the final out- 
 come of which shall be "glory to God in the high- 
 est, and on earth — peace." 
 
 LECTURE I.— THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN CON- 
 CEPTION AND OUTLINE. 
 
 In searching for a rational interpretation of the 
 universe, or of this world as it actually exists, cer- 
 tain postulates seem to be inevitable. That the 
 material universe can be eternal belongs to the 
 class of unthinkable propositions. It must have 
 had a beginning, and it is probable, to say the 
 least, that it will have an end. Equally unthink- 
 able is the proposition that the universe is self- 
 evolved — that it is the cause of its own existence. 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. l5 
 
 The absurdity of such a proposition is self-evident, 
 and shows that an atheistic conception of the uni- 
 verse is altogether inadmissible. A healthy human 
 mind is so constituted that it demands an adequate 
 cause for whatever is. It affirms that back of aU 
 phenomena — back of everything that we see cr 
 know — there must be power guided by intelli- 
 gence, and both must belong to the realm of the 
 infinite. In other words, infinite power and infinite 
 intelligence are postulates necessary to a rational 
 conception of the universe. 
 
 A second postulate is that the universe and all it 
 includes is the outcome of a divine plan and pur- 
 pose; for creation and providence are not a mere 
 succession of unrelated occurrences: each event 
 is a necessary part of a plan which began before 
 time was, and will reach through the ages when 
 time, as we understand the word, shall cease to 
 be. Now a plan is a mental conception with 
 reference to the future, and in the nature of 
 things mxust precede its embodiment in visible 
 form. We may infer, therefore, that the plan of 
 the kingdom of God was a conception in the mind 
 of its author long before it began to take shape as 
 an actuality. And if it be true that God has in 
 any way revealed himself to men, it would be rea- 
 sonable to expect that the nature and purpose of 
 
l6 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 this kingdom will be outlined at least in that reve- 
 lation. Let any one, having this thought in mind, 
 read again the Old Testament Scriptures, and he 
 will be surprised to find how abundantly the 
 thought is confirmed. He will be convinced that 
 from the beginning it has been God's purpose to 
 set up in this world a kingdom of righteousness 
 and peace that shall eventually subdue all other 
 kingdoms, and fill the whole earth with the glory 
 of God. 
 
 Turning now to that record which we justly call 
 a divine revelation, we are met, first of all, by a 
 statement of the origin of things: "In the begin- 
 ning God created the heaven and the earth." It 
 is worthy of remark that in all the researches of 
 scientists in modern times nothing has been dis- 
 covered which even modifies this opening sentence 
 of Genesis. All are agreed that there must have 
 been a "begmning," and as the Scriptures say 
 nothing as to the length of time that has elapsed 
 since that beginning, there can be no chronologic- 
 al dispute in the case. As the design of revelation 
 is to make known God's purpose concerning the 
 human race, it is reasonable that it should begin 
 with the story of creation, which serves as a back- 
 ground, throwing into strong relief the details of 
 the picture as they are successively outlined. 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. 1 7 
 
 Following the statement as to the origin of the 
 heaven and the earth, there is a brief record of the 
 successive steps whereby this earth was fitted to 
 become the abode of a race of beings a little lower 
 than the angels, but inconceivably higher than the 
 brutes ; and that part of the record ends with the 
 appearance of the human race, as we know it, 
 upon the stage. Materialistic evolution would dis- 
 pute with us here, and contend that man had his real 
 origin millions of ages earlier, in the lowest form 
 of animated existence, and that his present condi- 
 tion is the result of a gradual evolution, modified 
 by environment and natural selection, and also by 
 the struggle for existence. But with a preadam- 
 ite race, if such ever existed, we are not con- 
 cerned, for the preadamite man, as sketched by 
 the evolutionist, has nothing distinctively human 
 about him. All we are concerned with is the fact 
 that the intellectual, moral, and social history of 
 the race begins with Adam and Eve. Only once 
 since the beginning have human beings, possessed 
 of intellectual and moral powers, appeared upon 
 the scene, and it seems reasonable to conclude 
 that these powers are a direct communication or 
 gift from the Creator of all, rather than the result 
 of evolution from a substance in which they did 
 
 not originally inhere. 
 2 
 
l8 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 In close association with the origin of the race 
 we find the institution of the home, based upon 
 monogamous marriage, the union of one man with 
 one woman, which is God's ideal of the family re- 
 lation.^ And this ideal is reaffirmed by Jesus in 
 the most emphatic manner.^ He explicitly con- 
 demns the practice of divorce for trifling causes as 
 an infraction of the primal law, and recognizes 
 only one ground on which it can be justified. The 
 shifting of moral standards in regard to this matter 
 is an ominous sign of the times, for no worse dan- 
 ger can threaten society than a blow aimed at the 
 integrity of the home. The kingdom of God at its 
 very inception recognized the sacredness of the 
 marriage relation, and so long as the Church re- 
 mains true to its King and its mission it must reso- 
 lutely oppose every attempt to lower the standard 
 of New Testament morality touching marriage and 
 divorce. Society needs a moral tonic on this ques- 
 tion, and I know of nothing better than a faithful 
 inculcation of the gospel law of marriage. 
 
 Just at this stage, and while the first features of 
 the kingdom of God were being faintly outlined, 
 a terrible catastrophe intervened : "Sin entered 
 into the world, and death through sin," changing 
 
 1 Genesis ii. 24. 2 Matthew xix. 3-9. 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. I9 
 
 at once man's moral relation to his Maker, and in- 
 troducing an entirely new factor into human his- 
 tory. Many attempts have been made to explain 
 away this sad fact, apparently for no better reason 
 than that it conflicts with certain modern theories 
 of the universe and of man. But if the fact of a 
 great moral catastrophe, at the very beginning of 
 human history, stands in the way of a consistent 
 theory of evolution, it is time that the theory was 
 so modified as to conform to the fact; for the fact 
 remains , let evolutionists say what they will. Cole- 
 ridge summed up the whole situation in a single 
 sentence when he wrote: *'A fall of some sort or 
 other ... is the fundamental postulate of the 
 moral history of man." ^ 
 
 The point that chiefly concerns us here is that all 
 conceptions of a kingdom of righteousness in this 
 world are necessarily modified by this new fact in 
 the history of the human race. Fallen and sin- 
 ful beings cannot be dealt with in the same way 
 as if they were righteous. It is no longer the 
 question of a kingdom naturally unfolding in a 
 congenial environment, where everything is favor- 
 able to its growth, but of a kingdom placed in a 
 hostile environment, winning its way against oppo- 
 
 1 Table Talk, May i, 1830. 
 
20 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 sing forces of the most formidable kind. But if a 
 kingdom of righteousness is to be perpetuated un- 
 der such circumstances, it is clear that it must con- 
 tain some provision for dealing with sinful men 
 whereby past sins may be forgiven and sinful dis- 
 positions and tendencies be completely eradicated ; 
 for unless there be some method whereby man 
 may be reconciled to God, how can the kingdom 
 of this world ever become the kingdom of our 
 Lord and his Christ? It is not at all surprising, 
 therefore, that almost immediately following the 
 record of man's revolt we have intimations of the 
 institution of sacrifice. As to how sacrifice first 
 came to be practiced the Scriptures are silent, but 
 when we find that it was observed by a member 
 of the first family of mankind ^ we can scarcely 
 doubt that its origin was divine; and this view is 
 confirmed when we see that from the beginning 
 the practice was characteristic of those who were 
 called the sons of God as distinguished from those 
 who were known as the children of men. Of the 
 development of this practice, and its incorporation 
 as a fundamental part of the religious system of 
 the Hebrews, it is unnecessary to speak further 
 than to say that the kingdom of God in a fallen 
 
 1 Genesis iv. 4. 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. 21 
 
 world was manifestly founded on vicarious sacri- 
 fice — the inscrutable principle of a life for a life. 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that man had revolted, 
 it is clear that intercourse between him and his 
 Maker was not entirely suspended. The story of 
 the cherubim and the flaming sword at the gate- 
 way of Eden,^ taken in connection with the early 
 institution of sacrifice, shows conclusively that a 
 relation of some kind existed; but soon we come 
 upon a new feature in the outlining of the kingdom, 
 when God established covenant relations with man.^ 
 The overthrow of the primeval race by a flood of 
 waters manifested in the most unmistakable way 
 God's righteous displeasure with sin, making a 
 perpetual distinction between him that serveth God 
 and him that serveth him not; and now God en- 
 ters into covenant with the head and representa- 
 tive of a new race," selecting the rainbow' as the 
 token thereof, a sure pledge that so long as the 
 laws of nature continued to operate the earth 
 should no more be destroyed by a flood. 
 
 The story of Babel has an interest, in connec- 
 tion with this discussion, as an incipient and pre- 
 mature endeavor on the part of man to found a 
 
 1 Genesis iii. 24. ^Qgnesis ix. 8-10. 
 
 2Genesis vi. 18; ix. 12-16; xv. 18. ^Genesis ix. 13. 
 
22 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 universal kingdom.^ But it was an attempt that 
 crossed the purpose of Almighty God, and he frus- 
 trated it by confounding the speech of the people 
 and scattering them abroad upon the face of the 
 earth. 2 This was the first, but it was not the last at- 
 tempt of the kind. Babylon, Assyria, Greece, and 
 Rome were all attempts in the same direction ; but 
 the history of all these nations serves to show that 
 kingdoms built on selfishness and sustained by 
 force are doomed to fall, for they have in them- 
 selves the seeds of their own destruction. Only 
 that which is based on truth and righteousness, 
 and is sustained by love and justice, can ultimately 
 prevail in a universe where God rules. Nor is the 
 Babel story without its analogue in the intellectual 
 realm. The wise ones of this world — the scholars, 
 the philosophers, the scientists, and sometimes the 
 theologians — have tried a similar experiment. 
 They have set themselves to build out of natural 
 laws and human speculations *' a tower, whose top 
 should reach unto heaven," and overlook in its 
 pride the very temple of God ; but again and again 
 has the old result followed: God has " confound- 
 ed their speech," so that they have *'left off to 
 build," at least, upon the old lines. 
 
 1 Genesis xi. 4. 2 Genesis xi. 7, 8. 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. 23 
 
 In the call of Abraham out of Ur of the Chal- 
 dees we have the first direct step in the founding 
 of the kingdom of God in the earth; and in the 
 few incidents recorded of the Father of the faith- 
 ful we have some indications of what the future 
 kingdom was to be. Its citizens were to be a 
 chosen people, called out from among the nations, 
 and who would be wilHng at the command of God 
 to forsake, if needs be, both country and kindred 
 that they might be true to the new vocation. In a 
 sense they were to be in the world but not of it. 
 For the time being they were to have no posses- 
 sion in the land of Canaan. Dwelling in tents, 
 they sojourned there for a season, looking by faith 
 ''for the city which hath the foundations, whose 
 architect and maker is God." ^ 
 
 There are many incidents in the life of Abraham 
 and his immediate descendants that are interesting 
 because they afford some hints of God's purpose 
 touching his kingdom, but upon these we need not 
 dwell. Let it suffice to call to remembrance the 
 first definite fulfillment of the promise of God in 
 the birth of Isaac, pledge of the promised seed 
 who was yet to come ; the renewal of the covenant 
 on various occasions, with intimations of a wider 
 
 i Hebrews xi. 10. 
 
24 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 purpose in the declaration that in the promised 
 seed all nations of the earth should be blessed; 
 the trial of Abraham's faith, and the opportunity 
 it afforded for teaching Abraham, and through 
 him the world, that the principle of atonement lay 
 at the very basis of the divine kingdom, and that 
 God himself would provide a lamb for an offering; 
 the checkered career of Jacob, and the transforma- 
 tion wrought in the man on the memorable night 
 when he wrestled with the Angel of the Covenant, 
 foreshadowing the great gospel doctrine of a spirit- 
 ual regeneration; the selling of Joseph into Egypt, 
 another link in the chain of preparatory providences ; 
 the going down of Jacob and his household into 
 Egypt, and his death in the land of strangers ; the 
 long and painful bondage of his descendants; the 
 sending forth of a great deliverer ; the signs and 
 mighty wonders by which the deliverance of the peo- 
 ple was accompHshed; the institution of the Pass- 
 over; the march out of Egypt; the triumphant pas- 
 sage of the Red Sea; the long encampment before 
 the mount, where God came down in majesty to pro- 
 claim his law and estabhsh his kingdom — all these 
 belong to the preparatory stage, but, like the un- 
 roUing of a magnificent panorama, they show the 
 successive steps which led up to the founding of 
 the theocracy, the kingdom of God among men. 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. 25 
 
 The polity of the kingdom of God, as outlined 
 in the laws of the Hebrew commonwealth, w^as in 
 marked contrast with the customs of other nations, 
 and plainly indicated that it was God's purpose to 
 separate his chosen people completely from the 
 nations that were round about them. The founda- 
 tion truth of their religion was expressed in the 
 phrase, ''Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is 
 one Lord,'''^ and was a standing protest against 
 the polytheistic idolatry of all surrounding nations. 
 In an age w^hen polytheism was universal, and in 
 Egypt had reached its most degrading forms, the 
 assertion of the divine unity, as a fundamental 
 principle of the Mosaic code, is one of the most 
 remarkable facts in human history, and of itself 
 goes far to establish the claim that that code w^as a 
 veritable revelation from heaven. Indeed, it may 
 be said that the great truth that there is but one 
 God, whose nature is holy and whose will is the 
 sole standard of right, shaped and inspired the 
 whole Hebrew polity, and constituted the broad 
 line of demarcation between them and the rest of 
 the world; thus bringing into view the concep- 
 tion of a kingdom in the world but not of it, type 
 of that more perfect kingdom to be established 
 
 ^ Deuteronomy vi. 4. 
 
26 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 when the dispensation of the law should pass 
 to make way for the dispensation of truth and 
 grace. 
 
 It is noteworth}^ that that root or summary of the 
 divine law which we call the Decalogue stands in 
 the very forefront of the Mosaic code. With the 
 exception of the institution of the Passover, and 
 the law of the redemption of the firstborn, there is 
 nothing in that code which precedes it in point of 
 time, and nothing that approaches it in point of 
 importance. Among human codes of ancient or 
 modern times there is nothing with which it can 
 be compared. The very best of them fall infinite- 
 ly short of the moral grandeur, the comprehensive 
 sweep, the searching incisive spirit of that law 
 which was given to the world when " God spake 
 all these words and said." Whatever may be true 
 as to the date of other portions of the Pentateuch, 
 no unprejudiced mind can doubt that this corner 
 stone of the Hebrew commonwealth, this founda- 
 tion of all enduring legislation from that day to 
 this, belongs to the time of Moses and the exodus. 
 And when we remember that this was the primary 
 law of a people just escaped from centuries of 
 bondage — a people without a religion, or a civil 
 polity, or any social organization worthy of the 
 name — the fact that they start upon their national 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. 27 
 
 career with a code in which, even under the in- 
 tense search-hght of modern criticism, no flaw 
 has been discovered, stamps the whole with a 
 divine impress, the very image and superscription 
 of the Most High. Of the body of Levitical stat- 
 utes which came after, it is not necessary to speak 
 at large. They were fitted to the circumstances 
 of an untrained people in the initial stages of their 
 political and religious development, and when 
 they had served their purpose they passed away; 
 but the moral code, broad as human life and fitted 
 to the wants of a race through all time, firm on its 
 foundations as the mount where it was given, and 
 like it rising in calm, undisturbed serenity above 
 the lower ranges about it, still stands immovable, 
 the one supreme standard of human conduct in all 
 relationships, the divine ideal of what the laws of 
 a state should be. 
 
 The immediate result of the promulgation of 
 this law was the creation of a divine common- 
 wealth, the segregation of a people with lofty aims 
 and ideals, regarding themselves as in a pecuhar 
 sense the people of God, charged with an impor- 
 tant mission as depositaries of a divine revelation. 
 Of the part they were yet to play in the history of 
 the world their leaders had no clear conception, 
 and even their prophets may have been but dimly 
 
28 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 conscious of the far-reaching import of the mes- 
 sages they uttered. The Levitical economy, in its 
 social and poHtical aspects, was, for the most part, 
 national and local, and even in its religious aspects 
 did not possess the characteristics of a universal 
 religion ; but underlying all that was local, nation- 
 al, and temporary there was a substance that was 
 both enduring and universal, and this substance 
 remained when the old form had passed away. 
 The relation of Christian civilization to the He- 
 brew code is the relation of the flower and the 
 fruit to the root from which they spring. Christian- 
 ity is not the law of Moses continued in the rigid 
 outline of the letter; it is that law unfolded in its 
 inner meaning and carried forward to its full log- 
 ical and spiritual results; and it may be safely 
 affirmed that '* all that civilization has wrought for 
 social good, for the marriage bond, for the ties of 
 the family^ for chastity, for honesty, for the safe- 
 guard of human life, for the right of property, the 
 right of a good name, for the training of the man, 
 the neighbor, the citizen, is but the ripe growth of 
 this ancient Book, written in the morning of the 
 world, which has entered into the conscience, the 
 history of mankind." ^ 
 
 IE. A. Washburn, D.D., "The Social Law of God," p. 7. 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. 29 
 
 At the time when the Israelites became firmly 
 settled in Canaan, and for some three centuries 
 later, certain features of the kingdom of God as 
 established among them may be clearly traced. 
 The government was a pure theocracy, God being 
 recognized as sole Lawgiver and King. A casual 
 reading of Exodus and Leviticus might lead to the 
 conclusion that there w^as a fourfold code of laws 
 ' — moral, religious, civil, and criminal — but a more 
 careful reading shows that the three latter divi- 
 sions, if they may be so called, had their root and 
 source in the first, and that the whole constitutes 
 one body of laws covering every relation of the 
 citizen to God and his fellow-men. In part, as we 
 have seen, these laws, in their literal form, were 
 designed for a temporary purpose. In their mi- 
 nute details they were exactly suited to the earlier 
 stages of the nation's development, for as yet the 
 people could neither comprehend nor apply those 
 great principles on which the whole economy of 
 the kingdom was based. In the meantime the 
 law was their schoolmaster until the fullness of the 
 time when the newness of the spirit should replace 
 the oldness of the letter. 
 
 The salient features of the kingdom of God, at 
 this period, may be summed up as follows: i. A 
 chosen people, called out and separated from all 
 
30 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 other nations.^ 2. The recognition of God as sole 
 King and Head of the nation, and the repudiation 
 of all government but his.^ 3. The recognition of 
 God's law as the ultimate standard of appeal 
 touching religious duties, moral conduct, civic 
 responsibilities, and social relationships." 4. The 
 recognition of God as absolute Proprietor, citizens 
 of the kingdom being but stewards. This is indi- 
 cated more especially in the laws respecting the 
 redemption of the firstborn,^ the payment of 
 tithes,-^ and the surrender of property rights in the 
 year of jubilee.'^ 5^ A social system designed to 
 prevent injustice and oppression, and to shield the 
 poor and needy, the stranger and the fatherless.'' 
 
 Such, in brief outline, was the kingdom of God 
 as foreshadowed in the Jewish commonwealth; 
 but it is abundantly clear that this was not to be a 
 finality. It was but a shadow of something that 
 
 1 Exodus vi. 7; Leviticus xx. 24. 
 
 2 Nevertheless God foresaw that they would choose a King 
 after they were settled in Canaan, and provision was made for 
 this (Deut. xvii. 14, 15); but it was no part of his plan that they 
 should do so (i Sam. viii, 7). 
 
 3 Numbers xv. 30, 31, Deuteronomy iv. 2. 
 
 4 Exodus xiii. 2-13. 
 
 ^Leviticus xxvii. 30-32. 
 
 6 Leviticus xxv- 10-23, 39-41- 
 
 5^ Exodus xxii, 21-24; Leviticus xxiii. 22; xxv. 14. 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. 3I 
 
 was yet to come. The Hebrew polity was na- 
 tional, but it embodied principles that were of uni- 
 versal appHcation. In its details of observance it 
 was suited to the childhood of a people, but in its 
 fundamental truths it was for all time and for all 
 stages of development. The dispensation was 
 temporary, but the truth was eternal. The He- 
 brew ritual has no authority now, but the great 
 principles of the moral law stand unchanged and 
 unrepealed. This becomes increasingly clear as 
 we advance along the lines of historical develop- 
 ment. The Hebrew pohty, regarded from the 
 standpoint of mere political sagacity, might be 
 pronounced a failure ; and had the purpose of God 
 been limited to the political fortunes of that one 
 nation, the polity might justly have been called a 
 failure in the broadest sense; but in its concep- 
 tion the kingdom of God was far wider than na- 
 tional or race boundaries, and its development 
 must run parallel with the lines of human progress 
 down to the end of time. 
 
 If the divine pohty seemed to fail in the case of 
 the Hebrew people, it was not because of any in- 
 herent defect in the system itself, which was emi- 
 nently suited to its purpose, but to the rebellious 
 temper and spirit of the people, and their incur- 
 able tendencies toward idolatry. But even the 
 
32 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 seeming failure was overruled for good. The 
 world was taught the great lesson that law can 
 .make nothing perfect; that it cannot of itself 
 reach the seat of sin's inveterate disease, or rescue 
 men from the bondage of their own corruptions. 
 At best it is suited only to the earlier stages of 
 spiritual development and can accomplish only a 
 preparatory work. But the divine kingdom which 
 law and prophecy foreshadowed was to be signal- 
 ized by the bringing in of a better hope, the intro- 
 duction of a new covenant, when God would put 
 his laws into the hearts of men and write them, 
 not as of yore on tables of stone, but in the minds 
 of a willing people, and by the regenerating power 
 of the Holy Spirit make obedience easy and self- 
 surrender a delight. Even in times of greatest na- 
 tional abasement and disaster this vision of an 
 ideal kingdom filled the prophets with a divine en- 
 thusiasm that no reverses could dampen or de- 
 stroy. Through the gloom of the nation's darkest 
 hour they saw the dawning of a better day, when 
 *'a King" should '* reign in righteousness, and 
 princes . . . rule in judgment";^ and when 
 <*the earth" should ''be filled with the knowl- 
 edge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover 
 
 1 Isaiah xxxii. i. 
 
CONCEPTION AND OUTLINE. 33 
 
 the sea."^ That day they might not live to see, 
 but they knew that it would come, for the mouth 
 of the Lord had spoken it. 
 
 But there came a time when the prophet's voice 
 was hushed into silence and there was no open 
 vision. The oracles of the heathen were dumb, 
 and the heavens gave no sign. Slowly the cen- 
 turies dragged their weary rounds, and it seemed 
 as though God had forgotten the world he had 
 made. But though men knew it not, God's pur- 
 pose still lived, and just when the darkness was 
 deepest the morning star of hope arose. In the 
 silence of the world's midnight angel voices awoke 
 the slumbering echoes with tidings of peace and 
 joy to men. Zion's long captivity was ended, and 
 the King was coming to his own. A thrill went 
 through the nation like the pulsing tides of a new 
 life. The prophetic impulse awoke again, and 
 once more God "spake unto the fathers by 
 the prophets." And while men looked and Hs- 
 tened, marveling whereunto these things might 
 grow, from the wilderness of Judea the message 
 for which the world so long had waited rang out 
 in joyous tones: ** The kingdom of heaven is at 
 
 HAND." 
 
 1 Hebrews ii. 14. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES AND POLITY OF THE 
 KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 (35) 
 
" The principles of a reconstructed society are not yet under- 
 stood, though the age is in a ferment of ideas about them. We 
 have those principles wrapped up in our gospel of the king- 
 dom of God, but they need to be mastered by the Church, 
 freely discussed and fully wrought out, with the view of being 
 taught to the people, and ultimately acted upon in the work of 
 reform." (A. Scott Matheson, " The Church and Social Prob- 
 lems," p. lO.) 
 
 "Think not that I came to destroy the law and the prophets: 
 I came not to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, 
 Till heaven and earth pass away one jot or one tittle shall in 
 no wise pass away from the law till all things be accomplished." 
 (Matt. V. 17, 18.) 
 
 "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of 
 this world, then would my servants fight." (John xviii. 36.) 
 
 "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither 
 shall they say, Lo here; or, lo there! for, behold, the king- 
 dom of God is within you." (Luke xvii. 20, 21.) 
 
 '•'There is another King, one Jesus.' The safety of the 
 State can be secured only in the way of humble and whole- 
 souled loyalty to his person, and obedience to his law." (Prof. 
 A. A. Hodge, "Popular Lectures on Theological Themes," 
 
 p. 287.)- 
 
 (36) 
 
II. 
 
 PRELUDE.— THE RELATION OF THE KINGDOM 
 OF GOD TO CIVIL GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 THIS is a subject of profound importance, in- 
 volving the whole question of patriotism and 
 the duties that grow out of it. In this connection 
 I do not refer solely or even chiefly to the problem 
 of Church and State as popularly understood. 
 That is substantially a dead issue on this conti- 
 nent, at least in its ancient form ; and if Christians 
 to-day have any duty in that regard, it is to watch 
 with jealous care against everything which might 
 have a tendency to introduce the vicious principles 
 of a political union between Church and State in 
 lands now free from it, or to perpetuate the prin- 
 ciple in lands where it still has a footing. Some 
 may regard this word of warning as entirely un- 
 necessary; but he who imagines that the only way 
 in which the State — the kingdom of this world — ' 
 can dominate the kingdom of God is by constitu- 
 ting the earthly ruler the head of the Church, as in 
 England, or making the Church the mere tool of 
 the State, as in Russia or Germany, shows that he 
 
 has profited little by the lessons of history. And 
 
 (37) 
 
38 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 he has profited less who thinks that the danger lies 
 all on that side. Immeasurably worse results have 
 followed from the domination of the Church over 
 the State than from the domination of the State 
 over the Church. 
 
 In the primitive Church the sense of citizenship 
 in the kingdom of God changed at once and for- 
 ever the relation of believers to all earthly king- 
 doms, and to the laws and customs by which those 
 kingdoms were governed. Believers were united 
 to Christ and to each other by bonds stronger than 
 those of nationality or even of kindred. They 
 recognized each other as brethren in a sense that 
 scarcely belongs to the word to-day. The duty of 
 obedience to the civil authority under which they 
 lived, in all things that could be rendered with a 
 good conscience, was never disputed; nay, more, 
 such obedience was required by the very laws of 
 that heavenly kingdom of which they claimed to 
 be citizens.^ Csesar was entitled to honor, cus- 
 tom, tribute ^ — everything which did not interfere 
 with fealty to the divine law; but when the de- 
 mands of the civil authority came into conflict with 
 higher claims there was but one thing for the 
 Christian believers to do, and that was to be loyal 
 
 ii Peter ii. 13-17; Romans xiii. 1-8. SMatthew xxii. 21. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 39 
 
 to Christ at all hazards, and then submit without 
 murmuring to whatever penalty the civil power 
 might inflict. They did not refuse to pay taxes, 
 no matter how unjust or excessive ; they did not re- 
 fuse to pray for those in authority, although they 
 were heathens, or even men of vicious lives. In 
 a word they were '' subject to every ordinance 
 of man for the Lord's sake"; but if they were 
 required, as was often the case, to burn but one 
 grain of incense before the statue of Jupiter, or 
 pour out one drop of wine as a libation to Venus 
 or Diana, they would submit to the martyr's cross 
 or to be thrown to wild beasts in the arena rather 
 than obey. 
 
 In apostolic times, and for two centuries follow- 
 ing, the line of cleavage between the kingdom of 
 God and the kingdoms of this world was broad 
 and distinct. The former was founded upon prin- 
 ciples antagonistic to those of the latter, and be- 
 tween them there could be no compromise without 
 damage to one or both. This mutual antagonism 
 grew in part out of the widely different spirit which 
 animated the two kingdoms, and in part out of their 
 opposing polities. The whole spirit and constitu- 
 tion of the kingdom of God was an emphatic pro- 
 test against the very things that were characteristic 
 of the kingdoms of this world, namely, war, class 
 
40 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. / 
 
 distinctions, and Mammon worship, and moving on 
 such lines collision was only a question of time. 
 This was clearly perceived by the governments of 
 this world, especially that of imperial Rome. It 
 was not a mere question of rival religions. Had 
 that been the case, there might have been no con- 
 flict, for Rome was tolerant of anything that did 
 not challenge her supremacy, or interfere with her 
 authority or system of government. Had it been 
 only a question of a new religion, the Christians 
 might have set up an image of Jesus and might 
 have burned incense before it to their hearts' con- 
 tent; for what signified one god more or less to the 
 haughty Roman whose Pantheon was crowded with 
 gods from every nation? But a kingdom whose 
 principles and polity antagonized the very founda- 
 tions on which Roman power and government were 
 built was a very different matter, and Rome's far- 
 seeing rulers quickly perceived that two such king- 
 doms could not exist side by side — one must give 
 way before the other; and so Rome set herself, 
 with steadfast purpose, to extirpate the new reli- 
 gion as a dangerous menace to the State. 
 
 It is necessary at this point to note an important 
 distinction between two phrases which are almost 
 identical in form but widely diverse in meaning. 
 The first is the phrase, ^'' \h^ kingdoms of the 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 4I 
 
 world," or of *' this world." It occurs very rarely 
 in the Scriptures in the plural form, and where it 
 occurs is to be understood in its obvious sense. 
 The other phrase is, '' the kingdom of the world," 
 which occurs only in Revelation xi. 15, according 
 to the revised translation, which is undoubtedly 
 the correct one. As thus used the phrase has no 
 reference to any political division of the earth's 
 surface, nor to any form of government, but to 
 that deep underlying spirit which permeates so- 
 ciety everywhere; something invisible, intangible, 
 yet wonderfully powerful; a spirit ever changing, 
 and yet, in its last analysis, always the same. In 
 Noah's time it was incarnated in violence; in 
 Elijah's time in idolatry; in Christ's time in 
 oppression of the poor; in our time in Mammon 
 worship, which is the root of all evil. For want 
 of a better name we call it the spirit of the age. 
 Germans call it Zeitgeist, the ''Time Spirit," or 
 ''Spirit of the Time," the intellectual and moral 
 tendencies of an age or epoch. But the Scriptures 
 have a more forceful word still. Paul personifies 
 this spirit as " the god of this world," who " hath 
 blinded the minds of the unbelieving," and again 
 as " the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that 
 now worketh in the children of disobedience." 
 But whatever be the name or nature of this in- 
 
42 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 tangible force, the result of its influence is to ren- 
 der the human soul insensible to the whole class 
 of conceptions which belong to the spiritual realm. 
 This is the foe with which the kingdom of God 
 must ever be at war. With the governments of 
 the nations, as such, it has no dispute. They are 
 of this world, and the policy they pursue accords 
 with that fact. Christ's kingdom is not of this 
 world, and its policy is on different lines. If it 
 collides with the policy of earthly kingdoms, it 
 should never be on the ground of mere prefer- 
 ence for one form of government rather than 
 another, which is a matter with which a citizen 
 of the kingdom of God has very little concern. 
 His quarrel is not with human governments, but 
 with *'the kingdom of this world" — the mighty 
 Zeitgeist of the ages. Against that he must 
 maintain unceasing and relentless warfare. To 
 overthrow this kingdom and set up the king- 
 dom of God in its place has been the divine 
 purpose through all the ages ; but this result can- 
 not be achieved by political agitation, much less 
 by a social revolution brought about by political 
 intrigues: it can be accomplished only by moral 
 forces, by the universal spread and acceptance of 
 the laws of the kingdom of God. 
 
 What, then, is or ought to be the relation of the 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 43 
 
 kingdom of God to human governments? In the 
 days of primitive Christianity this question could 
 have been answered more easily than now. Then 
 human governments were distinctly and avowedly 
 hostile to the new religion. The conflict of the 
 Church was with an effete but bigoted Judaism on 
 the one hand, and a dominant heathenism on the 
 other, and there could not be a truce with either. 
 The lines of separation were sharply drawn, and 
 it was easy to see that the duty of Christians was 
 to stand aloof and have no fellowship with the un- 
 fruitful works of darkness. But circumstances, 
 we are told, have greatly changed. Among civil- 
 ized nations, as a rule, Christianity is in the as- 
 cendant; nay, in some nations a form of Chris- 
 tianity has been adopted as the State religion; and 
 in others it has so spread that they are called by 
 many, in good faith. Christian nations. But in 
 what sense is this true? Only in the sense that in 
 those nations many persons profess the Christian 
 religion, not in the sense that their governments 
 are based either professedly or in fact on the prin- 
 ciples of New Testament Christianity. To put it 
 in another form, where is the government that is 
 not based upon the very principles which Christ's 
 kingdom came to antagonize — namely, brute force, 
 class distinctions, and Mammon worship? 
 
44 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 Doubtless it is true that circumstances have 
 changed; but have they, in the matter now under 
 consideration, changed for the better? I doubt it. 
 In the days of primitive Christianity the rule was 
 to render to Csesar all honor and obedience that 
 did not conflict with fidelity to Christ and his law, 
 but now the rule seems to be to render to Christ 
 all honor and obedience that does not interfere 
 with loyalty to party, or with the customs and 
 usages of the kingdom of this world; and this is 
 excused or justified under the plea of patriotism, 
 and by some is even called Christian patriotism. 
 The term is a misnomer. Christian patriotism 
 seeks first the kingdom of God and his right- 
 eousness; mere political patriotism seeks first the 
 kingdom of this world and its advancement. We 
 teach our children to love their country, and by 
 implication to hate or despise every other; Christ 
 taught his followers to love the whole world, and to 
 hate no one. We teach the political brotherhood 
 of a common nationality; Christ taught the uni- 
 versal brotherhood of man. The very best that a 
 Christian can wish for his country is that Christ be 
 received as Lord and Master, and his law applied 
 to all the concerns of life, and he is the true 
 patriot who has lived and labored with that end 
 in view. The man who proposes anything lower 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 45 
 
 than this as his ultimate aim is not a patriot but a 
 partisan. 
 
 But has a Christian no duties as a citizen of an 
 earthly kingdom? Doubtless he has, but always 
 in subordination to his duty as a citizen of the 
 kingdom of God. Or rather, let me say, he who 
 is loyal, first of all, to Jesus Christ will be the best 
 and most faithful citizen of the earthly kingdom in 
 which he sojourns. Indeed, if all men were true 
 Christians, the world could dispense almost with 
 law and government as methods of force no long- 
 er needed. This is no mere guesswork. For 
 the first three hundred years there was no crime 
 in the Christian communities ; but when they be- 
 gan to surrender the laws of Christ and to accept 
 those of human governments instead, then crime 
 began, and has continued ever since. The Chris- 
 tian's duty to the State is to uphold the authority 
 of rulers in all lawful and just things, to obey 
 every law and ordinance that can be obeyed with 
 a good conscience toward God; but to oppose, 
 steadily and resolutely, whatever conflicts with 
 the principles of the kingdom of God, and to this 
 end must keep himself free from party domination, 
 and from all entangling alliances. 
 
 That the kingdom of God, as such, should form 
 no alliance with the kingdoms of this world is an 
 
4^ THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 affirmation having all the force of an axiom. The 
 sphere and functions of the two kingdoms are so 
 entirely distinct that they cannot be merged, or 
 even allied, without irreparable damage to the 
 heavenly kingdom. The gulf which separates 
 them was recognized in that saying of the Master, 
 *' Render therefore unto Cgesar the things which are 
 Caesar's ; and unto God the things that are God's " ;' 
 and so long as the Church kept that distinction in 
 mind as the guiding star of her polity, her progress 
 in the face of bitter hostility and tremendous odds 
 was the marvel of the ages. But when she sur- 
 rendered "the things that " were " God's " in ex- 
 change for the protection and patronage of the 
 State, small marvel that she began to crave '*the 
 things that" were *' Cesar's," and became em- 
 phatically a kingdom of this world. The alliance 
 of the kingdom of God with the kingdom of this 
 world in the fourth century was a colossal mistake, 
 from the effects of which it has not entirely es- 
 caped even to this day. It was the admission of a 
 vicious principle which robbed the Church of her 
 freedom and led to compromises of the most dan- 
 gerous kind. When the Church became the ally 
 of the State, Christ's laws regarding war, class 
 
 1 Matthew xxii. 21, 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 47 
 
 distinctions, and property rights were virtually re- 
 pudiated, and laws and customs of an opposite tend- 
 ency were accepted in their stead. The Church 
 had been founded on the principles of universal 
 peace, universal brotherhood, and community 
 rights; imperial Rome, like all human govern- 
 ments, was founded on military force, class privi- 
 leges, and the domination of wealth. An alliance 
 between two such kingdoms was unnatural, in- 
 deed impossible. Allies they could not long re- 
 main, for in the nature of things the one must 
 dominate the other. The unalterable law of 
 Christ's kingdom is: ** Ye cannot serve God and 
 mammon."^ He does not merely appeal to the 
 sense of right in his followers, saying, *' Ye ought 
 not to serve God and mammon," nor does he ut- 
 ter an imperative prohibition, *' Ye must not serve 
 God and mammon"; but he affirms a principle 
 universally and absolutely true, '* Ye cannot serve 
 God and mammon." 
 
 The phrase ''kingdom of God," or ''king- 
 dom of heaven," which is used to designate 
 Christ's conception of an ideal human society, is 
 one which at first thought suggests a form of gov- 
 ernment repugnant to modern notions of human 
 
 1 Matthew vi. 24. 
 
48 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 liberty and equality, and might be regarded by 
 social doctrinaires as a retrograde rather than a 
 progressive step; but when the nature of the di- 
 vine kingdom is fully apprehended, not only as a 
 spiritual force within men's souls, producing new 
 affections and leading to new lines of action, but 
 also as a philosophy of life covering all personal 
 and social relations, we are brought face to face 
 with the startling paradox that the kingdom of 
 God, organized on lines not merely of kingship 
 but of positive autocracy, where Christ is sole 
 Lawgiver and King, is nevertheless the only perfect 
 democracy which is possible to men ; for no man 
 is truly qualified for democratic self-government 
 until he has become, in very deed and truth, a citi- 
 zen of the kingdom of God. 
 
 There is another point touching the relation of 
 Christians to human governments which should not 
 be overlooked. In case of disputes arising in the 
 Church, or of injury inflicted upon any of its mem- 
 bers, the primitive Christians, as a rule, refused 
 to seek redress in the civil courts, deeming such a 
 course to be at variance with the very constitution 
 of the kingdom of God. At Corinth it was differ- 
 ent. There the practice continued for a time, but 
 Paul sharply rebuked it, as well as the practice of 
 setting those to judge who were of no account in 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 49 
 
 the Church.^ All things in the Church were to be 
 judged by divine and not by human laws, which, 
 in their very nature, flatly antagonized the laws 
 of the kingdom of God. Thoughtful Christians 
 clearly perceived that crime was largely the out- 
 come of the false systems which human govern- 
 ments had estabhshed, and that to invoke the pro- 
 tection of human laws served only to perpetuate 
 the evil. It was also perceived that if the laws of 
 the divine kingdom were accepted and obeyed 
 crime must cease. Where government by force is 
 unnecessary there can be no treason; where class 
 distinctions and privileges are unknown there will 
 be neither jealousy nor envy ; where human broth- 
 erhood is the rule there will be no war; and 
 where property is not regarded as private posses- 
 sion, but is administered as a trust for the com- 
 mon good, there can be little temptation to dishon- 
 esty or fraud. 
 
 1 1 Corinthians vi. 1-8. 
 
50 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 LECTURE II,— THE PRINCIPLES AND POLITY OF 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 In discussing the principles and polity of the 
 kingdom of God it is necessary to bear in mind its 
 twofold aspect: first, as an invisible spiritual force 
 in the souls of men ; and secondly, as a visible com- 
 munity, revealing itself as the outcome of that 
 force. The first is the kingdom in its heavenward 
 aspect, the enthronement of the living Christ in the 
 heart, answering to that broad saying of Jesus: 
 '* Except a man be born from above,^ he cannot 
 see the kingdom of God."^ The second is the 
 kingdom in its earthward aspect, the kingdom ac- 
 tually existing as an organized community, in the 
 world but not of it, yet touching all human inter- 
 ests and relationships, winning its way, not by rev- 
 olution but by evolution, until *' the kingdom of the 
 world" becomes "the kingdom of our Lord, and 
 of his Christ." =^ 
 
 Let us now try to ascertain, as clearly as we can, 
 the principles on which the kingdom of God has 
 been founded, and the polity by which its citizens 
 are to be governed. It may be said in advance that 
 in the Gospels we shall not find the principles of 
 
 1 Marginal reading, Revised Version. 
 
 2John iii. 3. 
 
 3 Revelation xi. 15. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 5 1 
 
 the divine kingdom methodically arranged, para- 
 graph by paragraph, like the written constitution 
 of a modern state. On the contrary we shall find 
 them only in detached sentences, in brief sayings, 
 in parabolic illustrations, but none the less clear and 
 authoritative on that account. In this respect there 
 is a marked contrast between the Old Testament 
 and the New. In the commonwealth and Church 
 of the Hebrews the civil and religious polities are 
 closely allied, and both find expression in the form 
 of specific enactments; and as these were for the 
 guidance of a people recently escaped from sla- 
 very, and, for the most part, ignorant of the first 
 principles of religious truth or civil government, it 
 was necessary that the laws should be at once com- 
 prehensive and minute, from the all-embracing 
 principle of supreme love to God down to the most 
 circumstantial details of civic duty or religious ob- 
 servance. At such a time, and among such a peo- 
 ple, the conception of a spiritual kingdom, embra- 
 cing the great principles of the fatherhood of God 
 and the brotherhood of man, was scarcely possible, 
 and it was necessary to place them under law as 
 under a schoolmaster until, in the fullness of time, 
 the letter should give place to the spirit, and men 
 would learn that true citizenship in the kingdom 
 meant also sonship with God. 
 
52 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 Turning to the very foundation, what, first of all, 
 is the charter of enfranchisement — the title by vir- 
 tue of which men enter the kingdom of God? 
 For if there is one truth concerning it which is 
 clearer than another, it is this : that the boundaries 
 of the kingdom of God as established by Jesus 
 Christ are not conterminous with the human race, 
 nor are men citizens thereof in virtue of their nat- 
 ural birth ; but if they enter at all, it can be only by 
 a spiritual regeneration wrought by the power of 
 the Holy Spirit. Over the very portal of the king- 
 dom this great truth is written plain for all men to 
 see: ** Except a man be born anew, he cannot see 
 the kingdom of God."^ When announcing this 
 foundation law Jesus does not say, *' Ye 7nay be 
 born again," or " Ye ought to be born again," 
 but *'Ye must be born again," and without this 
 there is no entrance into the kingdom. The rea- 
 son is plain: '* That which is born of the flesh is 
 flesh ";2 it belongs only to the kingdom of this 
 world, a kingdom which is transient and will pass 
 away; but *'that which is born of the Spirit is 
 spirit" ;2 it belongs to a spiritual, and therefore an 
 everlasting, kingdom. The law of regeneration is 
 not a mere arbitrary condition of admission to the 
 
 1 John iii. 3. =^ John iii. 6. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 53 
 
 kingdom ; neither is it the affirmation of a theolog- 
 ical dogma, based upon a doctrine of total deprav- 
 ity; it is the simple statement of a fact universally 
 and scientifically true, that a man can pass from 
 that kingdom of the flesh wherein he was born into 
 that spiritual kingdom which Christ has revealed, 
 only by means of a new divine life imparted by the 
 Spirit of God. 
 
 God's kingdom in the hearts of men is builded 
 by the Holy Spirit, and man's interference mars 
 instead of helping the work. All that man can do 
 is to submit himself utterly to the control and guid- 
 ance of those spiritual forces by which alone his 
 nature can be renewed in righteousness. Of this 
 renewal the final outcome is the heavenly state, 
 and all that such a state implies may safely be left 
 to Him who has gone to prepare a place for His 
 people. But in the building up of the kingdom of 
 God on earth, where so much is left to human ef- 
 fort, we must see to it that we are not turned aside 
 by human plans, much less by the things of the 
 kingdom of this world, but that we ** make all 
 things according to the pattern " that has been 
 shown to us " in the mount." 
 
 A second principle which lies at the foundation 
 of this kingdom is that of the fatherhood of God. 
 But the fatherhood which Jesus taught is a differ- 
 
54 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 ent thing from the fatherhood portrayed in some 
 of the erratic developments of modern theology. 
 That God is the Father of all men in the sense of 
 being their Creator is true,^ but the inferences 
 sometimes drawn from that truth are altogether 
 misleading. Divine beneficence makes the *'sun 
 to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain 
 on the just and the unjust,"^ but it does not 
 follow that God makes no distinction between the 
 two classes as regards their moral relation. As 
 there is a broad distinction between the kingdom 
 of God and the kingdom of this world, so in the 
 nature of the case there must be between the sub- 
 jects of these kingdoms. If it were otherwise — if 
 there were no difference *' between him that serv- 
 eth God and him that serveth him not"^ — there 
 would be an utter confounding of all moral dis- 
 tinctions. We need only turn to the teaching of 
 Jesus to see how distinct is the line of cleavage 
 between the two classes. When certain of the 
 Jews said, *' We have one Father, even God, Je- 
 sus said unto them. If God were your Father, ye 
 would love me."* And again: *'Ye are of your 
 father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is 
 
 1 Malachi ii. lo. SMalachi iii. i8. 
 
 2 Matthew V. 45. -^John viii. 41, 42. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 55 
 
 your will to do."^ The point to be noted is that 
 God is the Father of regenerate men in a sense in 
 which he is not the Father of the unregenerate, 
 and it is this which determines whether they are 
 in the kingdom of God or not. 
 
 A third foundation principle is the kingship of 
 Jesus Christ. If it be true that God has estab- 
 lished, or is establishing, a kingdom in the earth, 
 there must be rule and authority somewhere ; and 
 if that authority is to mean anything, there must be 
 some name to which every knee shall bow in will- 
 ing homage.^ That it has been God's purpose 
 from the beginning that this kingly power should 
 be exercised by his only-begotten Son is per- 
 fectly clear. In the opening chapters of revelation 
 there is reference to a coming seed of the wom- 
 an who should lie in wait for the serpent's head.'' 
 In the last words of Jacob, as he lay upon his dy- 
 ing bed, a Person yet unseen and unknown is re- 
 ferred to as the Shiloh to whom is to be the gath- 
 ering of the people.^ Moses foresaw him as ''a 
 Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter . . . out of 
 Israel," who should *' break down all the sons of 
 
 ijohn viii. 44. 
 
 2Philippians ii. 10, 11. 
 
 ^Genesis iii. 15. See marginal reading of Revised Version. 
 
 4 Genesis xlix. 10. 
 
56 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 tumult."^ In the second Psalm God declares 
 concerning this coming One, "I have set my 
 King upon my holy hill of Zion ' ' ; and to this King, 
 who is announced as the begotten Son of God, he 
 promises to give '* the nations for" an '* inher- 
 itance," and the uttermost parts of the earth for a 
 " possession." 2 Isaiah speaks of him as One on 
 whose shoulders should be the government, and of 
 the increase of whose government there should be 
 no end.^ Still more significant are the words of 
 Daniel: *' I saw in the night visions, and behold, 
 there came with the clouds of heaven one like 
 unto a son of man, and he came even to the 
 ancient of days, and they brought him near be- 
 fore him. And there was given him dominion, 
 and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, 
 nations, and languages should serve him: his do- 
 minion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not 
 pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not 
 be destroyed." * 
 
 In the New Testament Christ's kingly character 
 is set forth with equal clearness. Thus the angel 
 Gabriel, in announcing the Saviour's birth, de- 
 clares: *' He shall be great, and shall be called 
 the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God 
 
 1 Numbers xiv. 17. ^jsaiah ix. 6, 7. 
 
 2 Psalm ii. 6-8. ^ Daniel vii. 13, 14. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 57 
 
 shall give unto him the throne of his father David, 
 and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forev- 
 er; and of his kingdom there shall be no end."^ 
 Much of Christ's teaching incidentally sets forth 
 the same idea, for, although the kingdom is often 
 the main subject of his parables, there can be no 
 kingdom without a king, and there can be no doubt 
 as to what king is meant. 
 
 A fourth foundation principle of the kingdom of 
 God is the equality of all behevers, and in this the 
 true democracy of the kingdom appears. The 
 whole spirit of the gospel is against those arbitrary 
 distinctions which divide men into classes as they 
 may be learned or ignorant, rich or poor, noble or 
 plebeian.2 The law of the kingdom recognizes 
 only moral distinctions ; all others are mere acci- 
 dents, and in the nature of things cannot be per- 
 manent. On the other hand, the spirit of the gos- 
 pel is equally opposed to that spurious equality 
 that has been so often lauded as though it con- 
 tained a panacea for all human ills. The watch- 
 words of the French Revolution were ''Liberty," 
 ''Equality," "Fraternity," but never were three 
 grand conceptions so abused and debased. As 
 interpreted by history "Liberty" meant unbridled 
 
 Luke i. 32. '^Galatians iii. 28. 
 
5^ THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 license; ** Equality" was not the lifting up of the 
 lowly, but the pulling down of all that was high; 
 while *' Fraternity " seemed to mean the hatred of 
 demons, reveling in cruelty and blood. 
 
 Quite as misleading is the aphorism that all 
 men are created free and equal. The only an- 
 swer to such a statement is that it is not true. 
 So far as we can see, men are not created 
 ** equal" in any sense that properly belongs to 
 the word. Furthermore, perfect freedom and 
 equality are impossible in any scheme of human 
 government so long as human nature remains 
 what it is. But I unhesitatingly affirm that just 
 this ideal state of freedom and equality is the very 
 thing proposed in the kingdom of God. Men who 
 are not free are to be made free by mighty spirit- 
 ual forces. **Ye shall know the truth, and the 
 truth shall make 3^ou free,"^ is the announcement 
 of the King himself, and is emphasized by the fur- 
 ther statement, '* If therefore the Son shall make 
 you free, ye shall be free indeed."^ Then those 
 thus enfranchised are raised by that very process 
 to a position of perfect equality as children of the 
 same Father, subjects of the same kingdom, and 
 heirs of the same heritage on earth and in heaven. 
 
 ijohn viii. 32. ^Jq^^ viii. 36. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 59 
 
 It may be well to inquire just here whether his- 
 tory affords any confirmation of the view just ad- 
 vanced. Beyond question the law of the king- 
 dom, as exemplified in the daily life of the primi- 
 tive Church, accomplished the very result of 
 which I have spoken. National and race barriers 
 that appeared insurmountable were broken down; 
 prejudices that seemed invincible were complete- 
 ly removed ; caste and class distinctions, inwoven 
 with the very fibers of society, were obliterated; 
 and without employing a single one of those revo- 
 lutionary methods that had characterized the his- 
 tory of nations, the divine kingdom effected a rev- 
 olution that completely changed the moral and 
 social aspects of society. Jew and Greek, bar- 
 barian and Scythian, bond and free — all became 
 one in Christ. 
 
 An immediate effect of this law of the kingdom 
 touching the equality of all believers is seen in the 
 attitude of the primitive Church toward the ques- 
 tion of slavery. At the time when the new king- 
 dom became a living reality, domestic slavery, in 
 some form, was universal. Among the Jews 
 bond-service was an institution as old as the na- 
 tion, but was surrounded by checks and safe- 
 guards that prevented it from degenerating into a 
 system of oppression. Among other nations it was 
 
6o THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 not SO. Slavery of the most pronounced type was 
 the rule; and the slave, whether bought with 
 money or taken in battle, had no rights, personal, 
 civil, or social. Such a system among peoples 
 whose religions inculcated no sentiment of hu- 
 manity, and whose laws imposed no restraint, was 
 sure to result in gross injustice and oppression. In 
 view of this fact, it seems strange that in the Gos- 
 pels there is no direct allusion to the institution of 
 slavery, or any intimation as to how it should be 
 dealt with in the kingdom of God. Jesus must 
 have known that the problem would confront the 
 Church as soon as it passed the limits of Palestine 
 and began to win converts among the Gentiles; 
 and yet he does not denounce the system as 
 wrong, nor does he enjoin upon his followers the 
 duty of waging relentless war against it. He sim- 
 ply leaves this, as he leaves all other social prob- 
 lems, to be solved by the spirit and genius of the 
 gospel, rather than by any express command. 
 
 The wisdom of this policy is seen in the results. 
 Within half a century the Church had solved the 
 problem so far as the kingdom of God was con- 
 cerned. Without any political agitation or social 
 revolution, the new kingdom brought ** liberty to 
 the captives, and the opening of the prison to them 
 that were bound." Indeed, it could not be other- 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 6l 
 
 wise. The gospel in its very essence is unal- 
 terably opposed to injustice and oppression in any 
 form ; and whoever received the gospel, whether he 
 were rich or poor, bond or free, of noble or plebeian 
 blood, at once entered a new kingdom where all 
 were enfranchised and became God's freemen, 
 dowered with the same rights because heirs of the 
 same citizenship. Nay, more: the inward trans- 
 formation wrought by the gospel not only enfran- 
 chised them as members of the same divine com- 
 monwealth, it also constituted them members of a 
 common brotherhood in which there could be no 
 distinction on account of race or rank or birth 
 or fortune. They all had become children of a 
 common Father in virtue of a common redemption 
 in Jesus Christ. 
 
 This principle of the equality of all believers in- 
 volved, also, the equality of the sexes, and there- 
 fore the emancipation of woman. Probably the 
 highest uninspired conceptions of an ideal human 
 society ever given to the world are to be found in 
 Plato's *' Republic" and More's ''Utopia"; but 
 the former included human slavery and the aboli- 
 tion of marriage for the higher class as parts of his 
 system, while the latter outlined a state in which 
 class distinctions were by no means abolished. Je- 
 sus, on the other hand, taught the sacredness of the 
 
63 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 individual, and announced the freedom and equal- 
 ity of all men in the kingdom of God. Instead of 
 abolishing marriage or weakening its bond, he ele- 
 vated and sanctified the relation as the highest, di- 
 vinest institution possible to the race. For woman, 
 as such, he taught freedom and equality, repudia- 
 ting the notion, so prevalent at the time in every 
 nation outside of Palestine, that she was merely a 
 chattel, at best a necessary evil, so that the birth 
 of a female child w^as regarded as a household ca- 
 lamity, as it is to this day in heathen lands. Among 
 the early Christians the great fact of the incarna- 
 tion, when Jesus was born of a woman, had exalt- 
 ed and glorified once for all the dignity of woman- 
 hood, still more of motherhood, and abolished for- 
 ever the idea of her inferiority. Under the influ- 
 ence of this exalted, faith Christians have always 
 and everywhere repudiated polygamy, and held 
 firmly to the doctrine of monogamous marriage 
 which Jesus inculcated. It will be seen, also, that 
 this principle of the equality of the sexes carries 
 with it, as its inevitable corollary, that there can 
 be but one standard of morals, the same for men 
 as for women. 
 
 The last, but by no means the least important, 
 principle in the kingdom of God on the earth is 
 that of vicarious sacrifice. Had I been thinking of 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 63 
 
 this only in its relation to Christ's atoning work, 
 it would have been considered first in the series of 
 foundation principles, but my object at present is 
 to call attention to the fact that it not only inheres 
 in the very constitution of the kingdom, but that 
 its practical outcome is the only possible solution of 
 most of our social problems. As commonly un- 
 derstood, even among Christians, self-sacrifice 
 means only some spasmodic efforts to do good, a 
 little self-denial here and there, a little charity, so 
 called, but not enough to infringe upon our own 
 comforts or lessen perceptibly our possessions. 
 But the self-sacrifice which Jesus taught, and ex- 
 emplified in his life and death, is a very different 
 thing. It meant that '' though he was rich, yet 
 for our sakes he became poor, that we through his 
 poverty might become rich";^ it meant that he 
 bore "our griefs, and carried our sorrows," and 
 that the Lord '* laid on him the iniquity of us all " ;^ 
 it meant that he ** humbled himself, and became 
 obedient unto death, even the death of the cross " f 
 and self-sacrifice thus interpreted is of the very es- 
 sence of his kingdom, and not a mere incidental 
 feature. In a word, it means that he *' came not to 
 
 I2 Corinthians viii. 9. 
 2 Isaiah liii. 4-6. 
 sphilippians ii. 8. 
 
64 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his 
 life a ransom for many," ' and that all this must be 
 true of the Church if it would be true to its Lord, 
 and fill out his ideal of the kingdom of God. 
 
 The principles of the kingdom of God were in- 
 evitable factors in shaping its polity. By * * polity 
 in this connection is not meant a code of rules for 
 the government of the Church as an organized 
 community, but rather those principles, scattered 
 through the Gospels, whereby individual Chris- 
 tians are to regulate their conduct toward one an- 
 other and toward the w^orld at large. It must not 
 be supposed that in establishing the moral stand- 
 ards of the new dispensation there was any violent 
 break with the moral standards of the old. Jesus 
 guards against any such anticipation, warning his 
 disciples that he came not to destro}^ the law and 
 the prophets, but to fulfill. The Decalogue is just 
 as much a part of the law of Christ's kingdom as is 
 the Sermon on the Mount. He indorsed and re- 
 affirmed its precepts, for these did not belong sole- 
 ly to the law of Moses, but were part of a primal 
 law which had been incorporated with the Jewish 
 system as a summary of moral principles, wide as 
 humanity and lasting as time. The attitude of Je- 
 
 1 Matthew xx. 28. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 65 
 
 sus toward the Decalogue is clearly seen in his 
 teaching. He affirms the supremacy of God as 
 the only object of religious worship;^ the duty of 
 honoring father and mother ;2 the necessity of keep- 
 ing the commandments if we would enter into life, 
 and quotes in this connection no less than five 
 clauses of the Decalogue r and referring in an- 
 other place to two great precepts, outside of the 
 Ten but breathing the spirit of them all, he affirms 
 that '*on these two commandments hangeth the 
 whole law, and the prophets."^ It is clear, there- 
 fore, that Jesus incorporated the Decalogue as the 
 foundation of the polity of his kingdom ; but the 
 difference between the old and the new consists in 
 this, that while Jesus taught the same moral pre- 
 cepts as Moses he gave them a new application, 
 and carried them inward from the life to the heart. 
 Moses forbade murder;'^ Christ forbids anger.« 
 Moses forbade the unclean act;^ Christ forbids 
 the unclean thought.^ Moses said, *' Swear not 
 falsely";^ Christ says, '* Swear not at all."'" 
 
 1 Matthew iv. 10. (Compare Deuteronomy vi. 13, 14, and 
 iv. 20, 23.) 
 
 2 Matthew xv. 4. (Compare Exodus xx. 12.) 
 
 3 Matthew xix. 18, 19. 7 Exodus xx. 14. 
 
 4 Matthew xxii. 40. 8 Matthew v. 28. 
 « Exodus XX. 13. 9Exodus xx. 16. 
 6 Matthew v. 22. ^^ Matthew v. 34. 
 
 5 
 
66 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 The law of revenge said, ''An eye for an eye, and 
 a tooth for a tooth ;^ but the law of Christ says, 
 '•'Resist not evil."^ In a word, Moses enjoined 
 upon men to keep their lives clean ; but Christ en- 
 joins upon men to keep their souls clean. 
 
 The polity of the divine kingdom is seen in 
 what its laws forbid as well as in what they en- 
 join. It was to be a kingdom in the world but not 
 of it; and its spirit, laws, maxims, policy, methods, 
 were to be the very reverse of those which had 
 obtained in earthly kingdoms. Its organization 
 was to be of the simplest kind. It was to have no 
 visible or human head, but he who was greatest 
 among its citizens was to be servant of all.^ It 
 was to employ no force, ^ collect no taxes, maintain 
 no army, inflict no punishments, revenge no in- 
 juries.^ Its one sole weapon of discipline was to 
 refuse fellowship with incorrigible offenders.^ In 
 the kingdom of God personal rights, as common- 
 ly understood, were to have no place, save the 
 right of mutual service, rendered with a whole- 
 
 1 Exodus xxi. 24. 
 
 2 Matthew v. 39. 
 ^Matthew xxiii. 11. 
 4John xviii. 36. 
 ^Matthew v. 39. 
 
 6 Matthew xviii. 17; Romans xvi. 7; 1 Corinthians v. 11. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 67 
 
 heartedness that seeks for nothing in return, but 
 is content, like the rain or the light, to pour itself 
 out upon all who need. 
 
 It is impossible in the compass of this lecture to 
 pass in review all the precepts of the gospel which 
 touch man's social relations; but there is one law 
 of the kingdom which is deserving of special em- 
 phasis because it has been suffered to escape, to 
 a large extent, from the working creed of the 
 Church, and also because its restoration is indis- 
 pensable to the solution of many of our social 
 problems. I refer to the gospel law respecting 
 property, and the way in which its use is to be 
 regulated in the kingdom of God. This doctrine 
 or law held a very prominent place in the faith 
 and practice of the early Christians for nearly 
 three hundred years, and its decline was simul- 
 taneous with the incoming of a flood of worldli- 
 ness which swept the Church so far from her old 
 foundations that she has scarcely got back to them 
 even to this day. 
 
 What, then, was the law regarding property or 
 personal possession which came in with the king- 
 dom of God? One thing about it is certain: it 
 was utterly opposed to the laws and customs on 
 the same subject which then prevailed throughout 
 the world, and which still prevail in human gov- 
 
68 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 ernments. The student who makes himself famil- 
 iar with the language and spirit of the Gospels, and 
 with the daily life of the early Christian Church, 
 will find it hard to resist the conviction that the 
 kingdom of God, in its social aspect, was founded 
 upon the principle of a divine communism, and 
 that the principle was recognized and acted upon 
 for several centuries. From the beginning it was 
 apparent that an era had dawned wherein personal 
 and individual rights receded farther and farther 
 into the background, and community rights be- 
 came correspondingly prominent. Hitherto in- 
 dividual rights had predominated, and society 
 seemed to be based upon the principle 
 
 " That he should take who has the power, 
 And he should keep who can"; 
 
 but under the beneficent sway of the gospel the 
 right of one became the right of all, the interest of 
 one the interest of all, and, in a very important 
 sense, the possessions of one the possession of 
 all. 
 
 It is not to be inferred from this that the gospel 
 sanctions any scheme of confiscation, or makes 
 the possession of property a fault, much less a 
 crime. Neither does it teach that the vicious, the 
 indolent, the thriftless, have a right to share in the 
 earnings of the moral, industrious, and prudent 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 69 
 
 members of the community. Such a scheme 
 would at once put a premium upon vice and idle- 
 ness. But it does teach that in the kingdom of 
 God the right of private possession was to give 
 place to the responsibilities of stewardship, and 
 that each member of the Christian community 
 should regard himself as holding his possessions 
 in trust for the common good, to be used as the 
 providence of God might indicate, first in pro- 
 viding shelter, food, and raiment for those of his 
 own household, or of kindred whom misfortune 
 might throw upon his bounty, and after that in 
 helping needy brethren and in spreading the king- 
 dom and truth of God in the earth. 
 
 I have said that the kingdom of God was found- 
 ed upon a divine communism, in which the need 
 of one became the care and concern of all; not 
 the Christless communism advocated in some 
 quarters to-day, whose foundation is selfishness 
 and whose outcome will be anarchy; but a com- 
 munism imbued with the very spirit of Him who 
 '* came not to be ministered unto, but to minister," 
 a communism wherein no man said that aught of 
 the things he possessed were his own, but stood 
 ready to distribute to every fellow-citizen as he 
 had need. In all this there was no confiscation of 
 property, no tyrannical overthrow of private rights. 
 
70 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 It was a voluntary surrender by those who had 
 become citizens of a heavenly kingdom, and who 
 recognized the fact that the supreme law of the 
 kingdom had abrogated for them both legal codes 
 and social maxims where these conflicted with the 
 law of love. New forms of speech came in to ex- 
 press new conceptions, and even old forms took 
 on new and larger meanings. Those who had 
 entered the kingdom were no longer children of 
 Abraham merely. They had become children of 
 God and stewards of his gifts. They were no 
 longer to be distinguished as Jew and Gentile, 
 Greek and Roman, bond and free; for now all 
 were free, and all were one in Christ Jesus. 
 
 The voluntary nature of this property surrender 
 in the primitive Church is evidenced by a specific 
 instance, where the general principle that guided a 
 believer in matters of property comes clearly into 
 view. The account of this matter given in the 
 fourth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is as. 
 follows: '*And the multitude of them that believed 
 were of one heart and soul: and not one of them 
 said that aught of the things which he possessed 
 was his own; but they had all things common. 
 And with great power gave the apostles their wit- 
 ness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and 
 great grace was upon them all. For neither was 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 7 1 
 
 there among them any that lacked : for as many as 
 were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and 
 brought the prices of the things that were sold, 
 and laid them at the apostles' feet: and distribu- 
 tion was made unto each according as any one 
 had need."^ 
 
 Then follows an account of an attempted de- 
 ception by Ananias, who sold a possession, but 
 kept back part of the price, and was punished 
 with sudden death from the hand of the Lord. 
 The sin of Ananias was not in bringing a part of 
 the price, but in pretending a part was a whole. 
 This is clearly recognized in the words of Peter: 
 ** Ananias, why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie 
 to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the 
 price of the land? Whiles it remained, did it not 
 remain thine own? and after it was sold, was it 
 not in thy power? How is it that thou hast con- 
 ceived this thing in thy heart? thou hast not lied 
 unto men, but unto God. And Ananias hearing 
 these words fell down and gave up the ghost. "^ 
 
 A result so tragic, a punishment so swift and terri- 
 ble, is very startling, and can be explained only on 
 the supposition that the gospel law respecting prop- 
 erty was not a mere incident, but was fundamental 
 
 lActs iv. 32-35. ^Acts V. 3-5. 
 
72 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 in the Christian scheme. The definite establish- 
 ment of the kingdom of God at Pentecost, when 
 the Holy Ghost became sole administrator, intro- 
 duced a new era, in which believers ceased to be 
 proprietors and became stewards. In discharging 
 the duties of this relation it is of supreme impor- 
 tance that a steward be found faithful,^ and that 
 transparent truthfulness should characterize all his 
 dealings in the fulfillment of his trust. To lie unto 
 men is bad enough, but to lie to the Holy Ghost 
 hath no forgiveness. 
 
 It is worthy of note, however, that this new line 
 of conduct touching the use of property was not 
 due to some express commandment in the Gos- 
 pels ; it was simply the recognition of one aspect of 
 the law of love, and sprang from a divine impulse 
 in the soul. In the faith of the primitive Chris- 
 tians the redemption which had come through 
 Jesus Christ extended not alone to the soul, but to 
 soul and body and property. They had been 
 ''bought with a price," had become the willing 
 bond-servants of Jesus Christ, and the idea of 
 withholding anything from him never entered into 
 their thoughts. Hence the impulse which led to 
 the seUing of possessions, and using the proceeds 
 
 iLuke xii. 42-46; xvi. i, 2; i Corinthians iv. 2. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 73 
 
 for the relief of the needy, was no mere spasm of 
 unregulated enthusiasm; it was the practical out- 
 come of an essential principle of the new king- 
 dom. 
 
 At this point the question arises as to how far 
 the practice of the apostolic Church in the use of 
 property is binding upon Christians at the present 
 time. The answer is that the underlying principle 
 is as binding as ever, but that methods may not 
 necessarily be the same. The selling of posses- 
 sions and casting the proceeds into a common 
 fund was made necessary by the circumstances in 
 which the early Christians were placed. As yet 
 they were few in number, and some were very 
 poor, while others were liable at any moment to 
 be despoiled of their goods through persecution, 
 so that a family that was in comfort to-day might 
 be reduced to absolute beggary to-morrow. It 
 was a wise and necessary arrangement, therefore, 
 which turned all possessions into a common fund 
 out of which the real needs of all might be sup- 
 plied. But when the kingdom had extended into 
 the regions beyond, and the number of beHev- 
 ers was greatly multiplied, the method of one com- 
 mon fund was no longer practicable. It was then 
 that the divine principle of individual stewardship 
 came into prominence — each believer holding in 
 
74 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 trust that portion of the common estate which 
 Providence had placed in his hands, administering 
 the same for the common good and for the spread 
 of the kingdom of God. 
 ^ It will be seen that the law of the divine king- 
 dom now under consideration did not abrogate the 
 right of private property, but it changed its uses 
 by changing the tenure on which it was held. To 
 assert, as some do, that the accumulation of private 
 property is robbery, and that its possession is a 
 crime, is not only foolish but wicked. That Chris- 
 tians should prosper in worldly affairs is quite to 
 be expected, for one effect of Christianity, when 
 it is real, is to make men industrious, frugal, eco- 
 nomical. Wasting is as foreign to the spirit of the 
 gospel as is hoarding on the one hand or self-in- 
 dulgence on the other. It is not the accumulation 
 of property that is wrong, but the holding of it for 
 selfish ends and uses. And even where this is 
 done we have no right to call it robbery or crime. 
 All that we are justified in saying is that such a 
 one transfers his allegiance from the kingdom of 
 God to the kingdom of this world, for he prac- 
 tically denies a fundamental law of that kingdom 
 of which he professes to be a subject, and obeys 
 the law of another kingdom which is opposed to 
 that of Christ. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 75 
 
 If any one is in doubt whether the law of the 
 kingdom regarding property really demands that 
 complete change of attitude in which no man said 
 that aught of the things he possessed was his own, it 
 may be well to recall some of the sayings of Christ 
 respecting the matter. These sayings can be un- 
 derstood only when we bear in mind that the king- 
 dom of God which Christ came to establish is on 
 the earth and not in the heavens; that what he 
 had in contemplation was an ideal community of 
 men and women here in this world; and as this 
 community in its spirit, policy, customs, and max- 
 ims was to be the very reverse of those which ob- 
 tain in the kingdom of the world, it is plain upon 
 the face of it that to enter Christ's kingdom one 
 must renounce all his past conceptions of things, 
 especially such as are most characteristic of hu- 
 man society as actually existing. Now in the past 
 as in the present nothing was more characteristic 
 of the laws and usages of earthly kingdoms than 
 the recognition of man's absolute right to proper- 
 ty which he had acquired; the right to use it as 
 might seem good to him while he lived, and to be- 
 queath it to whom he would when life was closing 
 and he could no longer use it for himself. 
 
 I do not here raise the question whether this legal 
 right of absolute proprietorship, as conceded by 
 
76 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 human governments, is morally right or otherwise; 
 I only say that the principle is not recognized in 
 the laws of the kingdom of God. In that king- 
 dom stewardship and not proprietorship is the 
 universal law, and unless this law is recognized 
 we shall find it hard to explain in a satisfactory 
 way many things which Jesus taught. Let us turn 
 to some of these as recorded in the Gospels, and 
 see if this be so. Take, for example, the case of 
 the rich man who came to Jesus asking what good 
 thing he should do that he might have eternal life. 
 Jesus replied: ** Keep the commandments." The 
 young man said: ** All these things have I ob- 
 served: what lack I yet? " Then comes the test: 
 "If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell that thou 
 hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have 
 treasure in heaven: and come, follow me."^ 
 Apply this to things purely spiritual, make it the 
 condition of entrance into heavenly felicity, and 
 the explanation strikes us at once as forced and 
 unnatural; but regarded as a fundamental law of 
 an ideal community to be established here on 
 earth, in which common rights should take the 
 place of personal rights, and no man would live 
 for self but for the happiness of others, the ex- 
 
 1 Matthew xix. 16-22. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 77 
 
 planation is simple and consistent. This view is 
 further emphasized by the words that follow: '*'It 
 is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of 
 heaven." And again: ''It is easier for a camel 
 to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich 
 man to enter into the kingdom of God."^ But 
 why should this thing be difficult even to the verge 
 of impossibility? If the reference is only to a 
 spiritual regeneration, and ultimate entrance into 
 the kingdom of glory, the conversion of a rich 
 man is no harder task to the Holy Spirit than is 
 the conversion of a poor man ; but if Jesus had in 
 mind a fundamental law of his kingdom in this 
 world, which demanded as a condition of entrance 
 the voluntary surrender of all worldly possessions 
 (not, as has been stated, in the sense of casting all 
 into a common fund, but of holding our posses- 
 sions in trust and administering the same for the 
 common good), then any one who knows human 
 nature will at once perceive that this is the very 
 thing which no rich man will do save under the 
 power of a dominant conviction that "the thing 
 that is best for all believers is best for him, and 
 that the common good is better than self-aggran- 
 dizement." 
 
 1 Matthew xix. 23, 24. 
 
78 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 Let US now turn to another passage which ex- 
 emplifies in a yet more striking way the truth that 
 I am trying to impress : "Then Peter began to say 
 unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed 
 thee. And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say 
 unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or 
 brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, 
 or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gos- 
 pel's, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in 
 this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and 
 mothers, and children, and lands, with persecu- 
 tions; and in the world to come eternal life."^ 
 
 On the usual lines of interpretation such a state- 
 ment is utterly unintelligible, but on the supposi- 
 tion that Christ is referring to the believer's posi- 
 tion in the kingdom of God here on earth, the 
 meaning is plain. He who relinquished friends 
 and earthly possessions for the gospel's sake en- 
 tered thereby a kingdom where every fellow-be- 
 liever was a brother, or sister, or mother, and 
 where he became an equal sharer in all the wealth 
 of the kingdom as far as his just needs required. 
 No matter how much he might have relinquished, 
 he obtained literally '*a hundredfold now in this 
 time." 
 
 ^ Mark x. 28-30. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND POLITY. 79 
 
 If the principles enunciated in these observa- 
 tions are sound, and my exegesis can be main- 
 tained, two things are clear: First, that the aver- 
 age Church life of the present day is far below the 
 spirit and teachings of Jesus Christ; and, second- 
 ly, that the unfeigned acceptance and appHcation 
 of the principles and polity of the kingdom of God 
 by Christians generally would so revolutionize so- 
 cial conditions that it might be declared, not in 
 the language of metaphor but of sober fact: ** The 
 kingdom of God is among you." 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES, AND HOW TO 
 
 MEET THEM. 
 
 6 (81) 
 
*' Christianity and labor can most naturally enter vipon that 
 cooperative pursuit of industrial justice which is the duty of 
 the hour by battling together, first of all, for labor's right to 
 the rest day, the gain of which, to those deprived of it, is 
 greater and easier of attainment than the eight-hour law, and 
 an earnest of all other labor reforms." (Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, 
 Ph.D., " Practical Christian Sociology," p. 184, Sec. 22.) 
 
 "Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy." (Ex. xx. 8) 
 
 " The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sab- 
 bath." (Jesus, Mark ii. 27.) 
 
 " If every member would boycott strong drink ... for five 
 years, and would pledge his word to study the labor question 
 from its different standpoints, we would then have an invinci- 
 ble host arrayed on the side of justice." (T. V. Powderly.) 
 
 «♦ Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, . . . and 
 makest him drunken also." (Hab. ii. 15.) 
 
 (82) 
 
III. 
 
 PRELUDE.-THE GOSPEL AS A REMEDY FOR 
 SOCIAL ILLS. 
 
 CERTAIN writers and speakers who seem to 
 have fallen into a confirmed habit of exaggera- 
 ting our social ills, and even of discovering ills that 
 nobody seemed to be conscious of before, are always 
 telhng us that some remedy must be found and 
 appHed, and they are by no means backward in 
 suggesting remedies. But as regards some of the 
 proposed methods of deaHng with real or imagi- 
 nary ills, it is by no means certain that the remedy 
 may not prove worse than the disease. Where 
 human ills are curable, doubtless some remedy 
 ought to be applied ; but just here lies the heart of 
 the whole difficulty. Suppose an adequate remedy 
 is found, can men generally be induced to accept 
 it? Experience says, some of them will accept, a 
 great many will not. It is a case where the home- 
 ly adage, *' You can lead a horse to the stream, but 
 you cannot make him drink," is fairly applicable. 
 I am bold to affirm that a remedy for real ills — per- 
 sonal, political, or social — is within reach, a reme- 
 dy that never fails when hone&tly applied; but a 
 
 (83) 
 
84 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 great many people resolutely oppose its application 
 because it means death to human selfishness. Yet 
 selfishness is the very taproot of all our social ills. 
 
 Perhaps the most persistently advertised remedy 
 for existing diseases of the body politic is social- 
 ism, but secular democratic socialism is only self- 
 ishness in another form. It is the selfishness of 
 the multitude instead of the individual. But will it 
 be any easier to deal with selfishness in the aggre- 
 gate than to deal with it in detail? If I am living 
 a truly unselfish life, surely it will be easier for me 
 to persuade some other person — friend or neigh- 
 bor — to live the same kind of life, than to compel 
 a great multitude, to whom I am an utter stranger, 
 to do so. And surely a steady and continuous en- 
 deavor, by all humane and unselfish people, to in- 
 crease the number by inducing others to accept 
 the gospel as a transforming inward power and as 
 a rule of life, will do infinitely more to solve our 
 social problems than an attempt to compel all men 
 by law to live and act as if they were humane and 
 unselfish. 
 
 If I were to assert that the only really humane 
 and unselfish people in the world are Christian 
 people, it would call forth, in some quarters, a 
 storm of dissent. There are those w^ho would 
 quickly answer : * ' You are altogether wrong. Not 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. 85 
 
 only are many of your Christian people the narrow- 
 est and most selfish in the world, but we can point 
 you to many men who repudiate Christianity, whose 
 daily lives show them to be upright, humane, and 
 unselfish — shining examples of the highest virtues, 
 and worthy of imitation by all who aspire to a no- 
 ble ideal." Now, assuming, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, that what is said of this class — or some of 
 them — is true, it shows clearly that they have been 
 approximating the Christian ideal (whether pur- 
 posely or not, or by what means, we need not now 
 inquire), and that what these men are said to have 
 repudiated is not Christianity, but some false, dis- 
 torted image of Christianity which they have seen, 
 or think they have seen, in the average Christian 
 teaching and life of the times. 
 
 Waiving altogether for the present the question 
 of the divine origin of Christianity, there are two 
 things which no intelligent skeptic, with any claim 
 to fairness, has ever ventured to dispute — namely, 
 that Jesus of Nazareth is incomparably the noblest, 
 purest, loftiest type of character that has ever ap- 
 peared among men, and that his gospel embodies 
 principles which, if allowed to govern human af- 
 fairs, would transform society, and bring about 
 here on earth those ideal conditions foreshad- 
 owed in the Christian millennium. It follows, 
 
86 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 therefore, that the noblest type of manhood pos- 
 sible on earth is that which approximates most close- 
 ly to Jesus of Nazareth, and that there is no ap- 
 proach toward real purity and goodness in any 
 other direction. It follows, also, that those who 
 would regenerate society, and lift humanity to a 
 higher plane, cannot adopt a better course than to 
 surrender their own inmost nature to the sway of the 
 gospel, and then press that gospel upon the accept- 
 ance of other men, with a view to its enthrone- 
 ment as the supreme standard of human conduct 
 in all the affairs of life . 
 
 To all this it may be answered: *' What you say 
 may be true in a general w^ay, but what we contend, 
 for is that men have approximated an ideal char- 
 acter, not only without help from Christian teach- 
 ing and influences but in repudiation of them, 
 and therefore your Christianity is quite unnecessary 
 either as a moral force for the upbuilding of char- 
 acter, or as a standard of right for the guidance of 
 conduct." But I reply: How do you know that 
 these ideal characters are not a product of the very 
 Christianity which you affect to despise? The 
 devotees of physical science are never weary of 
 telling us that man, as he exists to-day, is the 
 product of three forces, heredity, evolution, and 
 environment; but the very men who repudiate 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. 87 
 
 Christianity are themselves the heirs of a Christian 
 heredity reaching back through many centuries, 
 and have Hved, moved, and had their being in an 
 environment that throbs with the influence of 
 Christian truth and Christian institutions. To say 
 that a noble life owes nothing to the only influ- 
 ences that can make it truly noble is a strange and 
 unnatural perversion of the truth. 
 
 It has often happened that men, in their desire 
 to avoid a system of ethics which strikes at the 
 root of all self-seeking in Church and State, in 
 business and in social life, have not hesitated to 
 * say that the gospel code is too ethereal for this 
 practical age; that ideal conditions of society 
 may be very well as matters of speculation, befit- 
 ting the rhapsodies of poet or seer, but we need 
 not expect to see them realized this side of heaven. 
 The thought seems to be that Christ's ideal is too 
 lofty for human attainment, and it would be better 
 to concern ourselves with such ameliorations of 
 existing conditions as human legislation and indi- 
 vidual philanthropy can supply; that the world 
 has grown too wise to attempt impossibilities, and 
 is willing to content itself with what lies within 
 reach. But such reasoning is based upon a false 
 assumption. It ignores altogether the divine ele- 
 ment in the gospel, and the regenerating power of 
 
88 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 the Holy Spirit. It puts Jesus Christ on a par 
 with the doctrinaire reformers who have appeared 
 from time to time, and reduces the kingdom of God 
 to the level of Plato's '^RepubHc" or of More's 
 ' ' Utopia. ' ' But Jesus Christ is not like human the- 
 orists. He is contemporary with all the ages, and 
 thought and progress never outrun his teaching. 
 From the beginning he foresaw the failure of hu- 
 man systems, and through the ages was preparing 
 something that would supply their place. It was 
 not his purpose to establish an ideal human govern- 
 ment, but to create an ideal community, in which 
 government, as commonly understood, would cease 
 to be a necessity; not to attack existing abuses 
 and overturn them by force, but to create condi- 
 tions in which the abuses could not exist. Un- 
 like all other social reformers, Christ begins at 
 the center instead of the circumference. Instead 
 of changing a man's environment, he touches the 
 hidden springs of his moral nature, producing new 
 affections, new purposes, new desires, and by car- 
 rying forward this process from man to man he 
 aims to bring about a state of society in which op- 
 pression and wrong become impossible. 
 
 Among the many wonderful sayings of Christ 
 there is one which deserves more careful consid- 
 eration than it has commonly received: "If ye 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. «9 
 
 abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask what- 
 soever ye will, and it shall be done unto you."^ 
 But how can we be said to abide in Christ if we 
 keep not his word? or how can his words be said 
 to abide in us if we refuse to accept them in their 
 obvious meaning, or to put them in practice in our 
 lives? There would appear to be only one way of 
 escaping from the dilemma, and that is to affirm, as 
 some do, that the words of Christ should not be 
 interpreted literally; that they are to be under- 
 stood in a general sense and usually with a spirit- 
 ual meaning — -not in such a way as to conflict with 
 common sense and render the commands them- 
 selves impracticable. But has any one a right to 
 say that the words of Jesus, even when taken liter- 
 ally, are impracticable? One thing is certain, if 
 they were taken in their plain obvious sense and 
 obeyed, society would be quickly transformed, 
 and heaven would begin on earth. And no man 
 has the right to say that Christ's commands are 
 impracticable until he has honestly tried to obey 
 them. Assuredly the practice of explaining away 
 the words of Jesus — of giving them some other 
 meaning than the obvious one — has not been a suc- 
 cess. It has resulted only in robbing the Church 
 
 ijohn XV. 7. 
 
90 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 of her strength and making the promises of God 
 of none effect. 
 
 There is only one way of knowing the truth, and 
 that is by obeying it. Very many have fallen into 
 the error of supposing that truth is reached by 
 controversy or by criticism, and have wearied 
 themselves and weaned the world by suggesting 
 innumerable possible meanings of the words of 
 Scripture, none of which they have thought it 
 necessary to put in practice. The result is that 
 they have not only " darkened counsel by words 
 without knowledge," but have given a bent to 
 their own moral nature which makes the appre- 
 hension of truth a difficult if not an impossible 
 thing. To know the truth and then to dispute 
 about it, or to evade instead of doing it, is morally 
 disastrous in the highest degree. It both darkens 
 the perceptive powers and blunts the moral sense. 
 The only safe course, when once truth is known, 
 is to let it pass into immediate action. Then shall 
 we know more, for there is nothing so illumina- 
 ting as obedience. In all this I am propounding no 
 new doctrine. I am only pleadmg for a practical 
 acceptance of what, as Christians, we already pro- 
 fess to believe. I only ask that Christ's words be 
 taken, just as they stand, as words to be obeyed. 
 No middle course is possible. We must either 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. 9I 
 
 accept the truth as it is and practice it, or we must 
 utterly repudiate it as a rule of life. 
 
 The Church and society are being brought face 
 to face, as never before, with the words of Jesus 
 Christ. So clearly is this perceived that some 
 have boldly challenged the authority of Christ's 
 commands, where they conflict with their own 
 judgment of what is right and proper. Thus a 
 Unitarian divine of the present day,^ speaking of 
 certain words of Jesus, asks: *' What shall we say 
 of these? Are we bound by them in defiance of 
 our common sense and our enlightened Christian 
 judgment? No ! we must conclude that these are 
 the mere details, incidental and unessential; partly 
 of local and temporary expediency, and partly the 
 enthusiastic excesses of a reformer; the extrava- 
 gances of a God-intoxicated idealist. And be- 
 sides, Jesus was a poet. Many of his sayings were 
 poetical. Whole discourses fall into the form of 
 verse. The beautiful, the matchless sfh'it of 
 Jesus' life will ever remain an inspiration to the 
 highest living; his actual words and acts must not, 
 of course, be allowed to weigh against our prac- 
 tical common sense." 
 
 1 Rev. Dr. Brooke Herford, quoted by Rev. William Bayard 
 Hale in "The New Obedience," page 29. 
 
92 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 If such views are to be accepted, then the stand- 
 ard of duty and holy living is no longer the words 
 of the great Revealer of God, but only the '* prac- 
 tical common sense" whereby every man becomes 
 a law unto himself. But that Christ intended his 
 words to be obeyed in their plain obvious meaning 
 is clear from his own teaching. At the close of 
 that wonderful discourse which we call the Sermon 
 on the Mount, he sums up the difference between 
 doing and merely knowing the things he has com- 
 manded, likening the first to a wise man who built 
 his house upon a rock, and the other to a foolish 
 man who built his house upon the sand.^ '* These 
 sayings of mine," as the Master calls them, are 
 not, as the Unitarian divine would have us believe, 
 '*mere details, incidental and unessential"; they 
 are the very foundation without which we cannot 
 build with safety or success. In former times 
 the only dispute was in regard to the meaning of 
 the words themselves, and men tried to evade 
 their force by the plea that they were to be under- 
 stood in some vague spiritual sense; but to-day it 
 is felt that if accepted at all the words must be 
 taken as they are, that the only way of escape is 
 to deny their authority. 
 
 1 Matthew vii. 24-27. 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. 93 
 
 There is a very widespread notion that the gos- 
 pel has to do only with matters purely spiritual; 
 that the kingdom of which it speaks is not here 
 but in the heavens, and that it has nothing to say 
 about the shaping of human conduct in this life. 
 If any attempt is made to apply New Testament 
 principles to everyday life, or to special phases of 
 moral conduct, such as Sabbath observance, the 
 liquor traffic, social vice, the purification of poli- 
 tics, or the like, there are persons not a few who 
 resent such application and say to Christian min- 
 isters: '* Preach the gospel; you have no right to 
 interfere with other things in the pulpit." It need 
 not surprise us if such persons have the idea that 
 there is nothing in the laws of the kingdom of God 
 respecting man's social relations in this world, es- 
 pecially anything that touches the question of 
 property. But a careful reading of the Gospels 
 ought to dispel this illusion. There is no social or 
 even political relation common to man which the 
 gospel does not touch and for which it does not 
 provide. In the nature of the case this must be 
 so. The kingdom of God is first and chiefly in 
 this world, and to establish a kingdom in a world 
 where questions of social relations, of political 
 obligations, of property rights and responsibilities, 
 must continually arise, and yet to have no word as 
 
94 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 to how these various questions should be met and 
 answered, would lead to the conclusion that the 
 Founder of the kingdom must be lacking in ordi- 
 nary common sagacity, let alone in wisdom of a 
 higher kind. 
 
 LECTURE III.— TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES, AND 
 HOW TO MEET THEM. 
 
 A QUESTION of vital importance to the physical, 
 social, and moral well-being of the whole people 
 is the maintenance of the Lord's day as a time of 
 rest for all, and an opportunity for religious wor- 
 ship for such as are willing so to spend it. It 
 would be a great mistake to regard this as a pure- 
 ly religious question. That aspect has an interest 
 for religious people, and properly so; but in its 
 moral and social aspects it has, oi should have, an 
 interest for everybody, whether they are religious 
 or not. That man's physical well-being, to go no 
 farther, demands frequently recurring periods of 
 complete cessation from toil scarcely needs to be 
 affirmed, because the fact is universally recog- 
 nized and admitted. Such periods of rest are de- 
 manded as emphatically by the law of nature as 
 by the law of Moses. It is true that the first ap- 
 pearance of the Sabbath as a positive law, with 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. 95 
 
 specific duties and weighty sanctions, is in the 
 Hebrew code; but the reason assigned for its in- 
 stitution seems to point back to a primal law, while 
 the emphatic statement of Christ that **the Sab- 
 bath was made for man" indicates as plainly as 
 words can do its vast importance as regards hu- 
 man welfare. An institution designed by divine 
 wisdom and goodness expressly for man's benefit 
 should hold no secondary place in any scheme of 
 society or government. 
 
 Those who have watched the trend of affairs 
 must be aware that very serious inroads have been 
 made upon Sabbath rest and quiet within the past 
 four or five decades. Society, in regard to this 
 question, is upon a down grade, and the end is 
 not yet. We have got so far away from the start- 
 ing point of even a generation ago that the battle 
 of the future, for many a day to come, will be an 
 endeavor to recover lost ground as well as to de- 
 fend remaining outposts. A vast amount of work 
 is now done on the Lord's day that was not done 
 on that day thirty or forty years ago, and forms of 
 Sabbath amusement and dissipation are common 
 now that public opinion formerly tabooed. The 
 operating of railways for both freight and passen- 
 ger traffic — of itself an enormous industry — entails 
 a vast amount of Sunday labor, the greater part of 
 
p6 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 it entirely unnecessary. In like manner the car- 
 rying and distribution of mails, the running of a 
 certain class of factories, the publishing of Sun- 
 day newspapers, telephone and telegraphic com- 
 munication, running Sunday street cars, Sunday 
 excursions by train or steamer, open saloons, pub- 
 lic games, and a hundred things besides, have all 
 become common within a generation, involving the 
 compulsory labor of tens of thousands of working 
 people, for no better reason than that they may 
 minister to the greed of some and to the selfish 
 pleasure of others. I am not now raising the 
 question whether Sunday work or Sunday recrea- 
 tions are morally right or wrong ; that is a point to 
 be considered by itself. At present I am only 
 calling attention to the facts in their relation to the 
 physical and social well-being of our fellow-men. 
 
 The right of every man to one day in seven for 
 rest (I do not now say religion) is universal and 
 absolute. It is God's gift to his creatures, and 
 should not be lightly tampered with. It is sanc- 
 tioned by the law of God, and it inheres in the 
 very nature of man. Experience has demonstra- 
 ted that God's division of time subserves the pur- 
 pose of human well-being better than any artificial 
 division that man can make. Nothing answers so 
 well as six days for labor and recreation, with ev- 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. 97 
 
 ery seventh day for rest and worship. France tried 
 the experiment of abolishing the Christian Sab- 
 bath and substituting a tenth-day interval ; but they 
 soon discovered that the change would not answer, 
 and so went back to the seventh day again. But 
 in the meantime the fetters of compulsory Sunday 
 labor had been fastened upon French workmen, 
 just as they are being fastened upon American 
 workmen to-day, and they toil on in the dreary 
 round of drudgery, doing seven days' work for six 
 days' pay. A similar thing has happened in Chi- 
 cago. There wage-earners were induced by cer- 
 tain firms to work on Sunday by the promise of 
 seven days' pay, but when the plan had been fair- 
 ly inaugurated excuses were quickly found for re- 
 ducing the pay to its former figure, but without any 
 corresponding reduction of the hours of work. 
 It has been scientifically demonstrated that per- 
 sons engaged in ordinary labor expend their store 
 of energy in a certain ratio, and that a twenty-four 
 hours' rest, each seventh day, is necessary to re- 
 store it to its former value, and no other method 
 has been discovered that will answer equally well. 
 Attempts to secularize the Christian Sabbath, 
 either by multiplying forms of unnecessary labor 
 or by employing the sacred hours for purposes of 
 
 amusement or dissipation, are based, for the most 
 
 7 
 
98 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 part, upon selfish considerations. A good deal of 
 random talk has been indulged in about a " Puri- 
 tan Sunday" and " Connecticut blue laws," but 
 all this is quite irrelevant. In Sunday observance 
 as we have it on this continent there is little 
 enough, in all conscience, resembling a Puritan 
 Sunday; and in our Sunday laws there is nothing 
 which bears the most distant resemblance to the 
 famous, if somewhat mythical, blue laws. While 
 admitting that what is called a Puritan Sunday may 
 not represent the highest ideal of the Lord's day, 
 yet if we have regard to its influence upon the 
 moral, social, and family life of the people, a Pu- 
 ritan Sunday is much to be preferred to a Parisian 
 or a Chicago Sunday. And if the only alternative 
 were that just presented, even then the clean, if 
 somewhat austere. Sabbath bequeathed b}^ the men 
 of the Mayflower should appeal more strongly to 
 the patriotism and moral sense of the American 
 people than the befouled and corrupted Sabbath 
 which foreign ignorance and atheism and native 
 greed are seeking to impose upon society. Equal- 
 ly irrelevant is the plea that Sabbath laws infringe 
 the liberties of the citizen. Every law upon the 
 statute book restricts the liberty of the individual 
 citizen in some direction for the general good, 
 Sunday laws no more than any other. It is a safe 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. 99 
 
 maxim that *' right wrongs no man," and while 
 contending for our own rights we must take care 
 that we do not deprive other people of theirs. The 
 right of every man to his rest day should be inde- 
 fensible, and only selfishness or greed would seek 
 to deprive him of it. 
 
 At this point I raise a question which may have 
 an appearance of invidiousness, though not so in- 
 tended — namely, Who are the persons or classes 
 who desire to secularize the Lord's day? The 
 question is easily answered. First, those whose 
 object, to state the case with absolute frankness, 
 is to make money out of Sunday labor, and against 
 this considerations of public morality or the rights 
 of workingmen seem to have no weight. Second, 
 the irreligious; the class (not very large, I hope) 
 who would turn God's rest day into a day of 
 amusement, dissipation , and revelry ; the class who 
 neither fear God nor regard man; the class to 
 whom all law is an unwelcome restraint, and who 
 are shrewd enough to see that if God's law is 
 ignored human laws that are good for anything 
 will quickly disappear or be entirely disregarded. 
 Third, a considerable portion of those who, for want 
 of abetter word, I call the non-religious class. Many 
 of these may be upright citizens, and quite sincere; 
 but, having no deep religious convictions, they have 
 
lOO THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 no adequate idea of the value of religious institu- 
 tions, and hence have no conscientious scruples 
 about turning to secular uses a day which God has 
 made sacred to rest and religion. And yet not a 
 few of this very class, who do not value the Sab- 
 bath from religious considerations, see its great 
 value from a social and economic point of view, 
 and for that reason would preserve it as a day of 
 rest. 
 
 The class that wall suffer more than an}^ other 
 from attacks upon the Sabbath is the working class. 
 They are agitating in many places for an eight- 
 hour working day, and to that I offer no objec- 
 tion; but just at present it w^ould be more to the 
 purpose if they would agitate for the protection of 
 the rest day which many of them still have, but 
 which is in danger of ,being lost by the encroach- 
 ments of Mammon on the one hand and of pleas- 
 ure-seekers on the other. It is gratifying to know 
 that workingmen are speaking out on this ques- 
 tion wdth no uncertain voice through their trade 
 and labor councils; and although their appeal is 
 based upon other than religious considerations, they 
 should have the cordial support of all religious peo- 
 ple in the endeavor to defend the day of rest from 
 further encroachments. If it is held that in some 
 places — large cities, for example — some must work 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. lOI 
 
 on the Lord's day to protect property, to supply 
 light and water, to prepare food, to wait upon the 
 sick or the like, it is manifestly the duty of every 
 good citizen, much more of every Christian, to keep 
 these necessary forms of labor within the narrow- 
 est possible limits, rather than to compel men to 
 work where no real necessity exists for so doing. 
 It must be confessed that some Christians have 
 not been consistent in this matter. By patronizing 
 Sunday papers, Sunday street cars, Sunday travel, 
 and by holding their peace when the day is in- 
 creasingly desecrated by various forms of public 
 amusement, they have lent their influence, as far 
 as it goes, to the complete secularization of the 
 Lord's day, and in doing so have helped to bind 
 upon the shoulders of labor a burden which it 
 ought not to bear. 
 
 A great many Christians need to be reminded 
 that the authority of the fourth commandment is 
 not a thing of the past. The Decalogue, as al- 
 ready pointed out, does not belong to the same 
 class of laws as do other parts of the Levitical code, 
 although it is the root of them all. It is a summary 
 of great moral principles, wide as humanity and 
 lasting as time, and there is no hint in the Scrip- 
 tures that any part of it has ever been repealed or 
 has become obsolete. We are not at liberty to 
 
i02 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 tamper with the divine code by ehminating such 
 portions as may interfere with our selfish aims. 
 The same reasoning which discards the fourth 
 commandment, as no longer binding, applies 
 with equal force to the second, or sixth, or eighth, 
 which forbid image worship, murder, and stealing, 
 unless it can be distinctly shown that in the teach- 
 ing of Jesus Christ the fourth commandment was 
 excepted, while others were not. The argument, 
 so often heard, that if the fourth commandment re- 
 mains it must be observed only on the seventh day 
 of the week, and in all the minuti^ of the letter, 
 has no real weight. Revelation has ever been 
 progressive, and the divine purpose in it all has 
 been a steady advance from that which is natural 
 to that which is spiritual. The commandments, 
 as expounded by Jesus Christ, received a new and 
 wider application, as I have elsewhere attempted 
 to show,^ and hence a Jewish fulfillment of the 
 fourth commandment would not measure up to the 
 Christian ideal, for ' ' except * ' our ' ' righteousness ' ' 
 — in this as well as in other matters — '* shall ex- 
 ceed the righteousness of the scribes and Phari- 
 sees," we " shall in no case enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven."^ The change from the seventh day 
 
 ^Lecture II., p. 35. ^Matthew v. 20. 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. IO3 
 
 of the week to the first is justified alike by the 
 circumstances of the case and by the practice 
 of the Church in apostoUc times. It maintained 
 the fundamental principle of one day in seven 
 devoted to rest and worship, thus fulfilling the 
 spirit of the commandment. And as the Jew- 
 ish Sabbath commemorated the finished work of 
 creation when God rested from his labors, the 
 Christian Lord's day commemorates something 
 greater far, even the finished work of redemption 
 when Christ arose from the dead. Paul reminds 
 us that ''without any dispute the less is blessed 
 of the better."^ Now, by so much as the spirit is 
 better than the letter, and the antitype is better 
 than the type, the Christian Lord's day is better 
 than the Jewish Sabbath; hence the latter is not 
 degraded or abrogated by a transference from the 
 seventh day of the week to the first, but is ennobled 
 thereby and consecrated to still higher aims and 
 uses. 
 
 Now, when we consider the important place 
 which the day of rest occupies in the divine 
 scheme of government, its intimate connection 
 with both morals and religion, its beneficial and 
 far-reaching influence upon human character in 
 
 ^ Hebrews vii. 7. 
 
104 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 everything that relates to moral development and 
 to family and social life, the attitude of Christian 
 people toward this beneficent institution, and to- 
 ward all attempts to invade its sacredness, should 
 not be difficult to define. That they are under 
 very weighty obligations to hallow God's day of 
 rest should need no proof, for it is only by hallow- 
 ing it that its benefits can be realized. As Chris- 
 tians we have no right to import into our Sabbath 
 engagements anything that tends to violate its 
 sanctity or to frustrate the purpose for which it 
 was given. If this principle is admitted, it will 
 rule out not a few things in which some who are 
 called Christians now indulge. It will rule out 
 the Sunday newspaper, which is not only demor- 
 alizing in itself but lays upon many an unneces- 
 sary burden of work on the Lord's day. It wall 
 rule out Sunday travel, because it compels others 
 to work for our convenience; and Sunday excur- 
 sions for the same reason, and also because they 
 do not tend to recuperate powers that have been 
 taxed by labor, but leave the participant less fit for 
 resuming life's duties than before. It will rule out 
 Sunday amusements, because they are morally dis- 
 sipating, and open the door for many other evils. 
 It will put an end to Sunday visiting, because, while 
 it may be pleasant recreation to us, it may interfere 
 
irWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. IO5 
 
 with our neighbor's plans for rest and devotion. 
 Should some one object and say that this is draw- 
 ing the checkrein too tightly, it may be sufficient 
 answer to say that every one of the practices just 
 enumerated, with others that might be mentioned, 
 have a direct tendency to pull down instead of build- 
 ing up the kingdom of God among men, and there- 
 fore should be steadily resisted by every loyal citi- 
 zen of the heavenly kingdom. 
 
 There is one other question which, even in this 
 brief survey, must not be overlooked: To what 
 extent are we justified in seeking the aid of the 
 civil power to protect the Sabbath? The answer 
 is not difficult. With the Sabbath as a purely re- 
 ligious institution the civil power has nothing to do ; 
 but with the Sabbath as a rest day, intimately con- 
 nected with man's physical and social well-being, 
 it has much to do. The chief function of govern- 
 ment, as at present constituted, is to protect the 
 life, liberty, and property of every citizen, and 
 among the citizen's most precious liberties is the 
 liberty to enjoy his weekly rest day, unmolested 
 by the selfishness or greed of others. How., then, 
 are Christians to meet the issue forced upon them 
 by encroachments upon the sanctity of the Lord's 
 day? I. By abstaining themselves from all un- 
 necessary labor, and devoting the day to rest 
 
I06 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 and worship. 2. By refusing Christian fellow- 
 ship with those who turn it into a day of money- 
 getting, or of selfish worldly pleasure. 3. By dili- 
 gently instructing the people, in the Church and 
 out of it, as to the blessings and advantages of 
 keeping God's law. 4. By earnest appeals to 
 workingmen, who more than any other class are 
 interested in this matter, to defend their rights and 
 preserve their liberties. 5. By such legislation as 
 will protect all citizens alike from the selfishness 
 of those who would compel any of them to toil 
 seven da3'S in the week. 
 
 Another issue of the gravest kind is presented 
 in the drinking usages of society and the legalized 
 traffic in strong drink. In regard to drinking 
 usages it cannot be said that "the former times 
 were better than these." In this respect there has 
 been a vast change for the better in the last hun- 
 dred years. Not only is drunkenness branded as 
 disgraceful, but social drinking, at one time uni- 
 versal, is now limited to certain sections of soci- 
 ety, and some of these by no means the most 
 reputable. Wine has been banished from ten 
 thousand tables where once it was common.. Ab- 
 stinence, which was ridiculed a hundred years ago 
 as unmanly weakness, is now honored as a social 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. I07 
 
 virtue, and public opinion in some countries is 
 turning strongly in the direction of the entire pro- 
 hibition of the traffic. The scientific aspect of the 
 question is taught in the public schools of the Uni- 
 ted States and Canada, and a whole generation is 
 being trained up with a knowledge of the nature 
 and injurious effects of alcohol far beyond what 
 was known by the average professional man half a 
 century ago. The Churches are almost a unit in 
 regard to the evils of the traffic, and some of them 
 have spoken out again and again with no uncertain 
 sound. In m.any of the denominations on this conti- 
 nent, including the larger and more influential, so- 
 cial drinking is virtually unknown, and they have 
 declared through their representative assemblies, 
 in the most emphatic way, that the liquor traffic 
 cannot be licensed without sin. All this shows 
 how many are the milestones that society has 
 passed on its onward march from universal drink- 
 ing customs toward universal abstinence and the 
 legal prohibition of the traffic. 
 
 At the same time it would be very unwise to 
 conclude that the power of the liquor traffic is 
 wholly broken, or that drinking customs have en- 
 tirely ceased. The battle that seemed to be almost 
 won in one generation has to be fought over again 
 in the next, and the foe dislodged from one strong- 
 
Io8 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 hold seeks refuge in another. The drink traffic 
 as a social custom is weaker than of yore; as a 
 political power it is vastly stronger, and herein hes 
 the chief danger of the future. One mistake of 
 the past has been in allowing this dangerous foe to 
 society to intrench itself behind legislation, and to 
 surround itself with strong legal ramparts. Not 
 content with this, it has laid its hands upon the 
 very sources of political power, so that from the 
 primary caucus to the national convention its pres- 
 ence and power are felt. To dislodge an enemy 
 so intrenched will be no easy task, and it never 
 will be done so long as loyalty to a political party 
 takes precedence of loyalty to Christ and his 
 kingdom. While intemperance as a moral evil 
 can be dealt with only by moral and spiritual 
 forces, it is not going too far to say that the liquor 
 traffic is virtually an organized conspiracy against 
 the sanctity of the home and the freedom of the 
 State that can be met and conquered only at the 
 ballot box. But this is not likely to be done until 
 citizens in general, and Christian citizens in par- 
 ticular, are so convinced of the magnitude of the 
 evil as to make its removal their foremost duty. 
 
 The liquor traffic, beyond all dispute, is the 
 most prodigal waster of both private and national 
 resources, and therefore is a deadly foe to the ma- 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. I09 
 
 terial interests of society. The manufacture in- 
 volves an enormous waste of food products which 
 are sorely needed to feed the hungry. The sale 
 and consumption inflicts further waste by taking 
 from society the products of labor while giving 
 nothing of value in return. The economic results 
 of the traffic are disastrous, but the moral and so- 
 cial results are infinitely worse. It works havoc in 
 the home, blighting character, poisoning domestic 
 happiness, reducing children to beggary, and en- 
 tailing hereditary disease. It is responsible, di- 
 rectly or indirectly, for not less than two-thirds — 
 probably much more — of the pauperism and crime 
 which entail such heavy financial burdens upon 
 society. To sum up the indictment, the liquor 
 traffic wastes resources, degrades character, 
 wrecks the home, corrupts politics, fosters im- 
 morality and crime, fills jails, poorhouses, and 
 asylums, lays upon society a large share of its 
 financial burdens, draws from productive labor 
 enormous revenues, but renders no real service 
 to society in return. In a word, the liquor traffic is 
 a social parasite, costly but useless, whose utter de- 
 struction would inflict no real loss upon the State. 
 The liquor traffic is an unrelenting foe to the 
 kingdom of God — one of the most dangerous and 
 deadly of them all. Worse than war or pestilence. 
 
no THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 it slays not only the bodies, but also the souls of 
 men. The strongest intellects have been para- 
 lyzed by its potent wizardry, and the noblest Chris- 
 tian characters have been debauched by the spell 
 of its unholy enchantments. It has robbed the 
 pulpit of its brightest ornaments, and bench and 
 bar have been darkened by the shadow of its dread 
 eclipse. It benumbs the conscience while it in- 
 flames the passions, and hurls perverted reason 
 from its throne. It steels the heart to the claims 
 of affection, and poisons the springs of happiness 
 at the fountain head. Like the Circean enchant- 
 ress, it changes men into swine by means of a 
 magic drink, and upon such degenerate natures 
 argument and appeal have no effect. Among the 
 barbarous tribes of Africa it constitutes a barrier to 
 the spread of the gospel more difficult to overcome 
 than the darkest heathenism, while the intemper- 
 ance it induces among men from Christian lands is 
 the standing reproach against Christianity among 
 the non-Christian tribes and nations of the world. 
 With such a foe the kingdom of God can hold 
 no parley and make no compromise. Her attitude 
 toward the liquor traffic and the drinking customs of 
 society must be one of resolute and undisguised 
 antagonism. This modern Goliath has defied the 
 armies of the living God, and for them to sound a 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. Ill 
 
 retreat, or even ask for a parley, would be arrant 
 cowardice, as well as disloyalty to their King and 
 Lord. The Church must keep steadily before it, 
 as the ultimate goal, the entire extinction of the 
 traffic, arfd in the meantime must see to it that 
 whoever may afford aid and comfort to this foe of 
 society it shall find no refuge within the limits of 
 the kingdom of God. But all this must be done 
 on grounds and by methods that are in harmony 
 with New Testament ethics and will commend 
 -themselves to thoughtful and impartial men. It is 
 easy, and not uncommon, for advocates of total 
 abstinence and prohibition to overdo things by 
 extravagant statements and random assertions that 
 become boomerangs, rebounding with telling effect 
 upon the hand that flung them. All this is quite 
 unnecessary. A strong and unanswerable impeach- 
 ment of the liquor traffic can be formulated that is 
 well within the lines of truth. Ample reasons to 
 justify total abstinence can be found without the 
 very questionable assertions that the use of wine 
 is always and everywhere condemned in the 
 Scriptures, or that the wine which Jesus used was 
 not fermented. And solid arguments for the legal 
 proscription of the traffic can be constructed with- 
 out making statements that cannot be verified, or 
 manipulating statistics to suit our own views. 
 
112 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 The effect of an organized liquor traffic upon pol- 
 itics, upon trade and commerce, upon the moral, so- 
 cial, and family life of the people, as well as upon 
 individual character, are attracting more and more 
 the attention not only of philanthropists and social 
 reformers, but also of statesmen, scientists, and 
 men of affairs. The issues presented are so grave 
 that they cannot be dealt with by existing ma- 
 chinery, but require a method of treatment pecul- 
 iarly their own. Other forms of industrial activity 
 can be left to develop on their own lines and to any 
 extent, and it is generally admitted that the best 
 results follow when trade is free from all restric- 
 tions within the limits that properly belong to it. 
 But the liquor traffic is the one great exception. 
 It cannot be intrusted with freedom of devel- 
 opment. It must be regulated, controlled, re- 
 pressed, hedged around with restrictions like a 
 dangerous pitfall, lest the helpless or the unwa- 
 ry should fall therein. All this stamps the traffic as 
 a dangerous menace to society — something to be 
 watched and guarded against, or, in the opinion 
 of many, exterminated altogether. That society 
 would gain enormously in wealth, in social com- 
 fort and domestic happiness by the destruction of 
 the traffic, no unprejudiced man who is familiar 
 with the facts can doubt ; but as yet there has not 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. II3 
 
 been, in most places, that consensus of opinion as 
 to methods which admits of effective poHtical ac- 
 tion, and the traffic still continues its deadly work. 
 It is conceded on all sides that the liquor traffic 
 cannot be let alone, for the simple reason that it 
 will not let society alone. It must be dealt with in 
 some way, and the authority to deal with it is based 
 upon the indefeasible right of society to protect it- 
 self against anything which is a menace to its pros- 
 perity or happiness. A great many experiments 
 have been tried, none of which have been entirely 
 successful; but the time and effort have not been 
 altogether wasted. Something has been gained, if 
 only in a negative way, by learning what methods 
 may as well be dropped because they do not meet 
 the case, and what modifications of other methods 
 may lead to ultimate success. Whatever may be 
 said of political or semi-political methods, nothing 
 has yet occurred which discounts the value of 
 moral and spiritual forces in combating the drink- 
 ing customs of society, although it may be feared 
 that in prosecuting so vigorously our appeal unto 
 Caesar the moral and spiritual agencies have fall- 
 en into abeyance. The marked change for the 
 better in the habits of society regarding the use of 
 strong drink has been brought about almost exclu- 
 sively by moral suasion, backed by Christian ex- 
 
114 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 ample, and points to the wisdom of steady and 
 continuous effort along similar lines. Even with 
 prohibition as the result to be aimed at, moral 
 forces, rather than political, must lead the van, for 
 wise and beneficent laws are the effect of enlight- 
 ened public opinion, not its cause; and in a land 
 where the principles of democratic self-government 
 obtain, the best laws would be useless unless sus- 
 tained by a healthy public sentiment. 
 
 The principal methods hitherto tried of dealing 
 with the liquor traffic may be classed under the 
 following heads: i. Free trade in strong drink. 
 This was virtually tried in Norway, where at one 
 period any one who chose might have a private 
 still, and manufacture brandy to any extent. The 
 results were so disastrous that the plan had to be 
 abandoned. 2. Moral suasion, aiming at univer- 
 sal total abstinence, and the consequent discontin- 
 uance of the traffic. 3. Regulation, which in- 
 volves the licensing system, with police supervi- 
 sion. 4. Direct State control. This has assumed 
 two forms, one of which was tried for a brief pe- 
 riod in South Carolina, and the other is now in 
 operation in Scandinavia. 5. Local option, or giv- 
 ing to municipalities the right to prohibit the sale 
 of strong drink within their own borders. 6. En- 
 tire prohibition by the State of the manufacture, 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. II5 
 
 importation, and sale of intoxicating liquors except 
 for manufacturing, medicinal, and scientific pur- 
 poses. Each of these methods, except the first, 
 has strenuous advocates, while most of them are 
 by others strongly opposed. It is necessary, there- 
 fore, that the whole liquor problem should still be 
 carefully studied from every point of view, so that 
 society may be led to adopt those methods which 
 have proved to be mogt efficient in repressing what 
 is admitted on all hands to be a social evil of the 
 first magnitude. 
 
 Of the policy of free trade in strong drink it is 
 not necessary to speak, as scarcely any one pro- 
 poses that. It was advocated some years ago by 
 the late Henry George, of New York, on the 
 ground that all restriction is an error, because it 
 forms a rum power, and this rum power was, in 
 his estimation, the dangerous thing. But he ar- 
 gues on the same ground that there should be no 
 customs duties, and no taxes except on land, be- 
 cause they concentrate business in the hands of a 
 few who become a corrupt and corrupting power. 
 Of moral suasion, and its permanent place in the 
 temperance reform, something more will be said 
 farther on ; meanwhile a little space may be given 
 to the consideration of various forms of regulation 
 or control. The first of these is the present li- 
 
Il6 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 cense system, which goes upon the assumption that 
 as the manufacture and sale of intoxicants cannot 
 be prevented, it ought to be regulated and con- 
 trolled. But this is not all. It goes upon the fur- 
 ther assumption that it is right to license a prolific 
 cause of immoralit}^, pauperism, and crime, and to 
 derive a revenue from the vices of the people. 
 This cannot be admitted. The principle is morally 
 wrong, and " that which is morally wrong, cannot 
 be politically right." Long experience has proved 
 that the licensing system, as we have it, is vicious in 
 principle and powerless as a remedy, and no plea 
 of necessity or expediency can possibly justify it. 
 Whatever may be the attitude of the mere politi- 
 cian to this question, it is clear that men who are 
 citizens of the kingdom of God, and are governed 
 by the ethics of the New Testament, can give no 
 countenance to a system that is morally wrong 
 in principle and morally disastrous in results. If 
 we must have a license system, as some assert, let 
 it be one which derives no public revenue from the 
 debasing business, and which holds those who are 
 engaged in it strictly responsible for any injury to 
 health, life, or property which can be proved to be 
 the direct result of it. 
 
 Direct State control, as already stated, has as- 
 sumed two forms, the one in South Carolina and 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. II 7 
 
 the other in Norway. The South Carolina law was 
 passed in 1892, and although it was subsequently 
 declared unconstitutional by the supreme court 
 of the state, it is referred to as an interesting ex- 
 periment toward solving the problem of the Hquor 
 traffic. According to this law private liquor-sell- 
 ing is abohshed, and a system of state dispensa- 
 ries substituted. There is a state board of con- 
 trol, composed of the governor, comptroller-gen- 
 eral, and attorney-general; a state commissioner, 
 who is an abstainer, and a county board of control 
 composed of three members, also abstainers. Dis- 
 pensaries are opened at the request of a majority 
 of freehold voters. The liquors are purchased by 
 the state commissioner (preference being given to 
 manufacturers doing business in the state), ana- 
 lyzed by the state chemist, put up in quantities 
 varying from half a pint to five gallons, shipped to 
 the dispensaries, and sold at a profit not exceeding 
 fifty per cent.^ Several advantages are claimed 
 on behalf of this system: i. Personal profit being 
 eliminated, all incentive to increase sales is re- 
 moved. 2. Treating is stopped, as the bottles are 
 not opened on the premises. 3. Sales are made 
 only in the daytime. 4. The absence of ice, su- 
 
 ^R. E. L. Gould, in Forum, November, 1894, page 343. 
 
Il8 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 gar, lemons, etc., and the prohibition of sale by 
 the single drink, remove inducements which have 
 led many astray. 5. Sales are for cash only, and 
 there is no *' chalking up " for daily drinks against 
 the w^orkman's pay day. 6. Most important of all, 
 if true, the local whisky rings, which have always 
 controlled municipal elections, have been torn up 
 root and branch.^ On the other hand, it may be 
 alleged that the object of the law was to raise rev- 
 enue rather than to decrease drinking, and that 
 local whisky rings may be replaced by a state 
 politico-liquor machine. But even this might be 
 borne in view of the advantages resulting from, 
 selling only in the daytime, the abolition of treat- 
 ing, and the breaking up of gambling dens and 
 other immoral adjuncts of the saloon. ^ 
 
 The Norwegian system and the South Carolina 
 law are alike in one respect: they both eliminate 
 private profit from the sale of strong drink. In 
 some other respects the methods are widely dif- 
 ferent. In South Carolina the traffic becomes a 
 state monopoly, all the profits going into the pubhc 
 exchequer. This makes liquor-selling a part of 
 the machinery of the government, and almost 
 guarantees the permanency of the traffic. On the 
 
 1 Governor Tillman's Message, 1894. 
 
 2R. E. L. Gould, in Forum, November, 1894, P^g^ 344- 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. II9 
 
 Norwegian plan the municipality benefits by the 
 profits, it is true, which is the weak point in the 
 system, but the companies by whom the traffic is 
 carried on receive no profits beyond the current 
 interest on the small capital invested, the object 
 being to control and restrict the traffic until such 
 time as licensing may be altogether abolished. It 
 is claimed that, as a result of this policy, a ma- 
 jority of the inhabitants of the Scandinavian pen- 
 insula are already under a no-license or local op- 
 tion regime^ while the membership in total absti- 
 nence societies has increased from a mere handful 
 to over three hundred thousand. Moreover, in 
 Norway every vestige of political influence has 
 been eliminated from the traffic. As a further 
 proof of the advantages of the system, it is affirmed 
 by those who are in a position to know the facts: 
 
 1. That no single community in Scandinavia that 
 has tried the plan has afterwards abandoned it. 
 
 2. That liquor-selling has been practically abol- 
 ished throughout the country districts and smaller 
 communities in Norway and Sweden. 3. That 
 the most pronounced temperance men are not 
 seeking to abolish the system, but admit that if 
 liquor is to be sold at all the Norway plan of con- 
 trol is the best that has 3^et been tried. 4. That 
 since the plan was fully adopted the consumption 
 
I20 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 of spirits in Sweden has declined from 14.2 to 6.8 
 quarts per annum for each inhabitant, and in Nor- 
 way from 6.S to 3.3 quarts. It has to be admitted, 
 however, that while the consumption of ardent 
 spirits has greatly dechned, the consumption of 
 beer has largely increased. But as there are no 
 restrictions on the sale of beer, it only shows that 
 the element of private gain is a potent factor in 
 developing the traffic. 
 
 Local option is prohibition on a small scale. It 
 has its advocates, and there may be cases where it 
 would result in certain benefits; but as a method 
 of dealing with the evils of the traffic it is altogeth- 
 er inadequate, and should be accepted, if at all, 
 only under protest and as a temporary expedient. 
 Among other defects, it puts the community in the 
 embarrassing position of trying to enforce prohibi- 
 tion under conditions that permit only the mini- 
 mum of good results. Local option in. a township, 
 or even a county, can be of little use while a city 
 or large town on its borders is under license ; and 
 in any case it tends to develop the traffic in ad- 
 joining municipalities. This was the result in 
 Michigan, where the ratio of hcenses to popula- 
 tion in places not under local option increased, 
 during the last census period, eight per cent. 
 
 From a political and especially a social point of 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. 121 
 
 view, the only rational and effective method of 
 deaHng with the traffic is prohibition, pure and 
 simple, although that may require an educational 
 process by less stringent measures. Either the 
 liquor traffic is a legitimate and useful branch of 
 trade, the general effect of which is beneficial to 
 the community, or it is not. If it is legitimate and 
 beneficial, there is no reason why it should be re- 
 stricted, or why a man should pay a Hcense fee, 
 high or low, for permission to engage in it. The 
 fact is everybody knows, though everybody will 
 not say as much, that the traffic is injurious and 
 dangerous, and that in the interests of society it 
 must be controlled and its ravages restricted within 
 the narrowest possible hmits. To accomplish this 
 the license system has been devised, which proceeds 
 virtually on the monstrous assumption that, although 
 the traffic is most injurious, the Hcense fee which 
 the hquor-seller pays is a sufficient compensa- 
 tion for the injury which his trade inflicts upon 
 the community. Such a pohcy is utterly inde- 
 fensible save on the ground of the alleged fact 
 that pubhc opinion will not, as yet, indorse a 
 strictly prohibitory regime. 
 
 Among the more obvious causes that hinder the 
 complete suppression of the hquor traffic may be 
 reckoned the following: i. A superficial sense of 
 
122 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 the evils of the traffic, and of the drinking cus- 
 toms of society. This is where the forces of 
 moral suasion should come into play, and all 
 Christian men and women should bestir themselves 
 to create a more vigorous public sentiment on the 
 question. 2. The appetite for stimulants, which 
 grows with the rush and hurry of this feverish age. 
 3. The greed of gain. This is one of the strong 
 factors with which we have to reckon, and its 
 power can be broken only by eliminating the ele- 
 ment of gain alike from the persons who carry on 
 the business and from the communities where it 
 is carried on. 4. Partisan politics, the worst hin- 
 drance of all. This, of a truth, is the Goliath 
 that champions the Philistine host and defies the 
 armies of the living God; the insidious power that 
 divides the Church against itself and makes united 
 effort in moral reforms practically impossible. A 
 divided Christian vote is the rampart behind which 
 the liquor traffic lies intrenched, and from that 
 position it cannot be dislodged till Christian citi- 
 zens learn to put principle before party, and to es- 
 teem the triumph of any political organization as 
 of infinitely less moment than the triumph of the 
 kingdom of God. 
 
 The mistake of thousands of professing Chris- 
 tians lies in assuming that a double allegiance is 
 
TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES. 1 23 
 
 possible: that on the rehgious side they can be 
 devoted servants of God, w^hile on the business 
 and political side they are w^orldly in policy, par- 
 tisan in spirit, and selfish in object and aim. The 
 thing is impossible. The kingdom of the v^orld is 
 one thing, the kingdom of God is another, and no 
 man can be a citizen of both at the same time. 
 Under ordinary circumstances this may not be 
 realized, but w^hen great moral issues are to the 
 front then we come to the parting of the ways 
 where each man must decide for himself into 
 which scale his influence shall be cast, and wheth- 
 er loyalty to Christ or political partisanship shall 
 dominate his course of action. In the temperance 
 problem such an issue is before us. The Chris- 
 tian vote, if united and resolute, could outlaw the 
 saloon to-morrow, and sweep away its awful train 
 of attendant miseries, and the only thing that di- 
 vides the vote is our wretched partisan politics. 
 If there be one man claiming citizenship in the 
 heavenly kingdom who hesitates, under these cir- 
 cumstances, as to what course he should take, let 
 him answer it to his conscience and his God. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. 
 
 (125) 
 
"The destruction of the poor is their poverty." (Prov. x. 
 
 " For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I 
 command thee, sajdng, Thou shalt surely open thine hand unto 
 thy brother, to thy needy, and to thy poor; in thy land." (Ueut. 
 
 XV. II.) 
 
 "When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the 
 eye saw me, it gave witness to me: because I delivered the 
 poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to 
 help him." (Job xxix. ii, 12.) 
 
 "By striving to educate, intellectually, morally, sanitarily, 
 the poor, we have made them half conscious of many needs 
 they never recognized before. They were once naked and not 
 ashamed, but we have taught them better. We have raised the 
 standard of the requirements of a decent human life, but we 
 have not increased to a corresponding degree their power to 
 attain them." (John A. Hobson, M.A., " Problems of Pover- 
 ty," p. 28.) 
 
 "For a true human life the essential external requisites are 
 adequate food, shelter, leisure, and provision for incapacity 
 and old age. . . . It is stated on good authority that only 
 one-third of our population are able to live in decent comfort. 
 It is certain that large numbers have no reserve of means, and 
 are unable to make provision for incapacity or old age." 
 (Bishop of Durham, "The Incarnation and Human Duties.") 
 
 "Do we not hear them saying it right out with a bluntness 
 that should make us wince: 'Give us no more of your prom- 
 issory notes; we will cash no more of your bills on a future 
 heaven. Instead of tracts, give us loaves. Instead of a house 
 not made with hands, give us clean and wholesome dwellings. 
 Instead of rest hereafter, give us leisure here to think about 
 it.'" (A. Scott Matheson, "The Church and Social Problems," 
 P- 13.) 
 
 (126) 
 
IV. 
 
 PRELUDE.— INEQUALITY OF WEALTH AND IN- 
 EQUALITl^ OF OPPORTUNITT. 
 
 T^HE pet grievance with many who speak or 
 * write on sociological topics is the unequal dis- 
 tribution of wealth. '' The rich growing richer, and 
 the poor growing poorer," is the postulate upon 
 which the changes are rung with monotonous per- 
 sistency, and the '' injustice " of such a condition is 
 affirmed with a great deal of needlessly vehement 
 rhetoric. Now ''justice" is a grand word, and it 
 stands for a grand idea, but I doubt much if it is 
 the idea which the social agitator has in mind when 
 uttering his diatribes. Equity is probably what he 
 means, for although justice is often used as synon- 
 ymous with equity, each word has its own distinct 
 shade of meaning.^ If justice is what is aimed at, 
 it may be well to remember that an absolutely 
 
 1" In its governmental relations, human or 6.\\\xi&^ justice is 
 the giving to every person exactly what he deserves, not nec- 
 essarily involving any consideration of what any other may de- 
 serve; equity (the quality of being equal) is giving every one 
 as mvich advantage or privilege or consideration as is given to 
 any other."-— /rfwc-^ A. Ferjiald^ ^'■English Symonynis ajid Anto- 
 nyms,'' p. 255. 
 
 (127) 
 
128 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 equal division of the world's wealth might be far- 
 ther from the line of strict justice than the division 
 which obtains at present. " Every man accord- 
 ing to his needs," is the cry of the social agitator; 
 " Every man according to his works," is the dictum 
 of eternal justice. A sober-minded socialist would 
 probably say, '* It is not an absolutely equal divi- 
 sion that is demanded, but a more equitable one 
 than now exists " ; and to this I have no objection 
 to offer. The present distribution of wealth is not 
 only unequal, but from a purely worldly point of 
 view it is inequitable. To a true citizen of the 
 kingdom of God the problem has but little interest 
 so far as he is personally concerned. He seeks 
 first God's kingdom and righteousness, and wheth- 
 er he has much or little of this world's goods 
 makes small difference, for, having food and rai- 
 ment, he is therewith content. But if a more equi- 
 table division of existing wealth will relieve pover- 
 ty, hush the clamor of rival interests, and bring in 
 a reign of peace and contentment, he is quite will- 
 ing to lend his influence in that direction, although 
 there may be serious doubts as to whether the pre- 
 dicted results will follow. 
 
 Now the present unequal condition of affairs can 
 be remedied in but one way — namely, by a redis- 
 tribution, gradual or instantaneous, but made in 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. 1 29 
 
 such a way that the wealth will stay distributed, 
 otherwise there would have to be repeated read- 
 justments at short intervals. There are only three 
 ways that I can think of in which a redistribution 
 of existing wealth could be made : ( i ) By a series 
 of voluntary surrenders on the part of those who 
 have the wealth at present; (2) by violence, which 
 is robbery; or (3) by law, which also inayh^ rob- 
 bery. A more equal distribution of life's com- 
 forts by voluntary surrender would not be out of 
 harmony with the laws of the kingdom of God, 
 but would be valuable just as it became general. 
 A more equal distribution is what we will have 
 some day, when the kingdom of God shall fill the 
 earth; but it will take time, and many think it is 
 too long to wait, even if the result were certain at 
 the end of the waiting. Anarchism would adopt, 
 I suppose, the second method, and redistribute 
 wealth (by no means equally) by violence and 
 barefaced robbery. The third method would be 
 that of socialism pure and simple. 
 
 The present condition of society, that makes it 
 possible for a limited number of persons to amass 
 large possessions, while vast numbers have to con- 
 tent themselves with a modest living, and not a few 
 with much less, may not be the best, but it would 
 
 save much random talk if we would but remember 
 9 
 
^3^ THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 that the condition of society at any particular pe- 
 riod is never the result of a dehberate purpose on 
 the part of society itself, but of ten thousand invis- 
 ible causes, each of which has contributed in some 
 measure to the general result. And even if socie- 
 ty were responsible, in some tangible sense, for 
 existing conditions, no change is conceivable that 
 would render a return to those conditions imfos- 
 sihle^ albeit a general acceptance of the laws of 
 Christ's kingdom would render that return unlike- 
 ly. Here again it is man himself, not his condi- 
 tion, that needs to be changed, for " as long as 
 there are inequalities in human character, they will 
 show themselves in human condition." ^ Individu- 
 al wealth on the one hand, and individual poverty 
 on the other, show inequality, it is true, but inequal- 
 ity and injustice are not synonymous terms. If 
 they were, nothing would be more unjust than the 
 allotments of Providence, which, as far as human 
 vision can see, are very unequal. 
 
 It is both misleading and mischievous to assume 
 that the present condition of societ}^, touching the 
 distribution of wealth, is intentionally unjust, or 
 that the accumulation of vast wealth by individuals 
 necessarily implies dishonest or unfair methods. 
 
 iH. Watterson. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. I3I 
 
 The foundations of many a large fortune have been 
 laid by economy, industry, and thrift, at a time 
 when the builder was comparatively poor; while 
 the superstructure was reared by good judgment, 
 energy, and enterprise; by the quick perception 
 of opportunities, and the ability to seize them at 
 the right moment. In all this there may be no in- 
 justice, no intention of wronging any one, and, 
 indeed, no wrong done. It is freely admitted 
 that present-day industrial and social conditions 
 are far from being ideally the best; but the hope 
 of making them so by legal enactments, without a 
 great change in the moral character of men, is 
 more Utopian than Utopia itself. 
 
 The epithets so freely hurled at capitalists, such 
 as "exploiters of labor," ''enslavers of labor," and 
 the like, are not always or altogether without cause^ 
 but in many instances they are very unjust. The 
 kings of industry who control large and varied in- 
 terests, or those jugglers of finance whose Midas 
 touch turns everything to gold, seldom — perhaps 
 never — set out with the distinct purpose of op- 
 pressing the poor or of enslaving the world's toil- 
 ers; but they follow the law of ambition and wor- 
 ship the goddess of success. They bow down 
 (unconsciously, it may be) at the shrine of Mam- 
 mon, and the oppression of the poor or the en- 
 
132 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 slavement of labor are but incidents inseparable 
 from pursuits that are based on selfishness. At 
 the same time let us be just enough to admit that 
 all capitalists and employers of labor are not un- 
 just, nor is selfishness to be found only on that 
 side. It has become the fashion to write and 
 speak of the capitalist as though he were always a 
 tyrant and an extortioner, and of the workingman 
 as though he were always the innocent and help- 
 less victim of the other's greed. But all this is 
 untrue, and is mischievous in proportion as it is 
 untrue. Are employers sometimes unjust? So 
 are workmen. And the message of the gospel to 
 both alike is: " Take heed, and beware of covet- 
 ousness." For the evils complained of there is 
 but one adequate remedy. Let employers and 
 employed alike accept the laws of Jesus Christ 
 as the standard of conduct in dealing with each 
 other. This will put an end to strife by uprooting 
 the selfishness which is at the bottom of it all. 
 
 When facing that problem which the world's 
 ablest thinkers have vainly endeavored to solve — 
 namely, such a distribution of wealth that each 
 human being might have sufficient for his reason- 
 able needs — the Lord Jesus announced a philoso- 
 phy as startling as it was new, and summed it up 
 almost in a sentence: "Be not therefore anxious 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. 1 33 
 
 for the morrow." ' Experience teaches that much 
 of the anxiety and unrest that embitter human 
 hves arise from anticipations of trouble that never 
 comes. If the average experience of men in this 
 particular is to be our guide, rather than the laws 
 of the kingdom of God, it seems as though we 
 ought to add to some faculty in our universities a 
 chair of hypothetics, w^hich may be defined as the 
 science of what might happen but does not. Take 
 away from men the anxieties which arise from 
 apprehensions of future trouble which may never 
 come, and you relieve them of a large part of life's 
 burdens and cares. And this is just what is 
 blessedly true of those who have 3delded heart 
 and life to Jesus Christ, have become partakers of 
 his Spirit, and are heirs of the kingdom of God. 
 The laws of that kingdom forbid, and its rule in 
 the heart makes impossible, all anxious and cor- 
 roding care ; and so with an undisturbed mind the 
 children of the kingdom are able to "behold the 
 birds of the air," and to ** consider the lilies of the 
 field . ' ' They are no more disquieted with thoughts 
 of food and raiment, because their *' heavenly 
 Father knoweth that" they *'have need of these 
 things " ; but, seeking '' first the kingdom of God, 
 
 ^Matthew vi. 34. 
 
134 ^^^ KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 and his righteousness," they have the assurance 
 that " all these things shall be added unto " them.^ 
 In some parts of these discussions I have em- 
 phasized strongly — some may think too strongly — 
 the earthward side of the kingdom of God, and 
 the material benefits it was intended to confer. 
 Let me guard the point by saying that these are 
 not the only, or indeed the chief, benefits. This 
 appears very clearly in Christ's own teaching, and 
 nowhere more clearly than in an incident of his 
 temptation in the wilderness. After his prolonged 
 fast for forty days and forty nights, the pangs of 
 hunger assailed him. Then came the tempter, 
 saying: " If thou art the Son of God, command 
 that these stones become bread."- To under- 
 stand this we must take in the related circum- 
 stances. Jesus was just entering upon his work 
 of establishing the kingdom of God in the world. 
 This the tempter well knew, and to foil the at- 
 tempt, if it were possible, was his settled purpose. 
 To him the establishment of a spiritual kingdom 
 in the heavens was nothing. That kingdom was 
 already established, and nothing could shake it; but 
 the kingdom of God in a world which Satan claimed 
 as peculiarly his own was an altogether different 
 
 A Matthew vi. 25-32.. ^ jNIatthew iv. 3. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. 1 35 
 
 matter. The temptation, then, was not a mere 
 effort to induce the Saviour to commit a wrong 
 act under the plea of supplying his own urgent 
 needs, but to establish his kingdom on false foun- 
 dations. It was as though the tempter had said: 
 *' If thou art the Son of God, whose kingdom shall 
 be an everlasting kingdom, lay its foundations 
 deep in the most universal need of humanity. 
 Command that these stones become bread; and if 
 thou canst do this to satisfy thine own hunger, thou 
 canst do it to satisfy the hunger of the world. Be- 
 gin thy kingdom by feeding the hungry. Abolish 
 poverty, and all men will follow thee." 
 
 In his reply Jesus does not ignore this universal 
 need of humanity, the hunger for bread, nor does 
 he deny that the cure of poverty will be the out- 
 come of his kingdom; but he recognizes the fact 
 that humanity has other and greater needs which 
 bread cannot supply, and that the abolition of 
 poverty is to be brought about by other means 
 than miraculous intervention. In other words, 
 Jesus deals with poverty not as a disease but as a 
 symptom of a disease which lies deeper in society 
 than surface indications would imply; and he pro- 
 poses to abolish poverty ultimately, in any sense 
 in which it is an evil, by abolishing its causes. In 
 the meantime poverty m the kingdom is to be 
 
136 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 dealt with as something to be relieved until such 
 time as it can be entirely removed. 
 
 A twin grievance of the unequal distribution of 
 wealth seems to be inequality of opportunity. We 
 all know with what persistence the changes are 
 rung on the " justice " of giving every man an 
 " equal chance." An equal chance of what? 
 one might ask, and the answers to the question 
 may be manifold. The phrase may mean an 
 equal chance of life and health; of food, clothing, 
 and shelter; of obtaining remunerative employ- 
 ment; of securing an average share of the com- 
 forts and enjoyments of life, with the time and 
 means and leisure necessary for mental culture, 
 and a hundred things besides. But it matters little 
 what the precise meaning of the phrase may be, 
 for it proceeds upon a wrong assumption. The 
 chances with which men begin life are not depend-, 
 ent upon human choice, and the most that can be 
 done is to improve the chances when they are ca- 
 pable of improvement. Many men who start in life 
 with chances as poor as they well can be, succeed, 
 nevertheless, in almost everything they undertake; 
 while others, who start with the best chances, ei- 
 ther fail altogether or achieve only an indifferent 
 success. If one thousand men could be taken at 
 random from any rank or all ranks of society, and 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. 1 37 
 
 Started with absolutely equal chances to-day, at 
 the end of twenty or thirty years their positions 
 will be as diverse as actually exist under the pres- 
 ent social system. Nay, more; out of one thou- 
 sand men, starting in life at the same time, with 
 chances varying from the poorest to the best, be- 
 fore a generation has run its course some who had 
 the best chances will be at the bottom of the hill, 
 and some who had the worst chances will be at the 
 top. The fact is, success in life depends not half so 
 much upon having precisely equal chances with oth- 
 er people as upon the energy and persistence with 
 which we seize and utilize the chances we have. 
 
 It is much to be deplored that this plaint of un- 
 equal chances has been petted and encouraged by 
 not a few students of social ills as though it were 
 perfectly legitimate, and as though ''society" were 
 to be blamed because every man's chances are not 
 equal. In ancient times men were bolder. Instead 
 of placing the blame upon ''society," they placed it 
 (with just as little justice) upon the Almighty, for 
 they said: " The way of the Lord is not equal." 
 The man who wastes his time complaining of un- 
 equal chances needs a good moral tonic, such as 
 Jupiter is said to have given to the peasant whose cart 
 stuck in the mire, and who cried loudly to the Thun- 
 derer to help him out; whereupon the god, looking 
 
138 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 down, bade him stop his shouting and, instead, put 
 his shoulder to the wheel and whip up his horse. 
 
 Amid all this clamor about equal chances I 
 shrewdly suspect that what is really desired is not 
 an equal chance, but the results of chances which 
 other people have utilized. Some man, we will 
 suppose, has succeeded in life from the worldly 
 point of view; he has amassed a fortune, lives in 
 a fine mansion elegantly furnished, has carriages, 
 servants, and every appliance that wealth can give. 
 Success of this kind (we might almost say only of 
 this kind) breeds envy, and envy is the parent of all 
 uncharitableness. Not only is the man envied for 
 what he has, but many w^ho have not half his brains 
 nor half his energy denounce him as a robber, an 
 exploiter of labor, an oppressor of the poor; and 
 being very desirous of reaching the same position 
 by any road, provided it be an easy one, they are 
 loud in their complaints that the Almighty, or so- 
 ciety, or some other equally intangible power, has 
 not given them an equal chance. This is bad 
 enough, but it is made still worse when there is a 
 chorus of cheap sympathy from a host of amateur 
 social reformers, confirming the vicious, the im- 
 provident, and the willfully indolent in the delusion 
 that they are a class of much-abused innocents 
 that society is bound to pet and pamper. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. 139 
 
 Let US have done with this sentimental way of 
 treating a serious problem, and learn to speak the 
 truth, though the mob may hate it as of old, and 
 cry, * 'Away with it! Crucify it! " Let men who 
 pose as teachers of the people touching social du- 
 ties have the courage of their convictions and say, 
 what they know to be true, that by far the greater 
 part of the social discontent of which we hear so 
 much is the offspring of envy and covetousness, and 
 that men are envious and covetous because they de- 
 liberately reject the teachings of Jesus Christ and 
 trample on the laws of the kingdom of God. If 
 we could but rid the world of the misery that is 
 self-inflicted — if we could abolish the poverty that 
 is the result of viciousness, indolence, intemper- 
 ance, and unthrift — the rest could be easily reached 
 and relieved. Far be it from me to teach, or even 
 hint, that there is no real poverty to be relieved, 
 no real sorrow to be comforted, no chances that 
 need to be improved; but let us look honestly at 
 the facts, so that we may not waste our very hearts 
 in idle sentiment, our time in misdirected effort, 
 our means in undeserved and misnamed charity. 
 
 What, then, is the duty of the Church or of so- 
 ciety in this matter ? It is to see that those with- 
 out chances (if such there be), and able to use 
 them, shall have a chance as soon as possible, and 
 
140 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 that those whose chances are very poor shall have 
 better ones. But let us understand what this means. 
 Neither society, nor the Church, nor the govern- 
 ment, nor any individual or association of individ- 
 uals, is under any obligation to find a man chances 
 to become wealthy — to amass a fortune. All that 
 God or man can justly demand of us is to see that 
 each man or woman who can work, and is willing 
 to do so, shall have a chance to earn an honest 
 living, and receive enough for their labor to pro- 
 vide, at the very least, decent food, clothing, and 
 shelter. But if society does this, it has a right 
 to demand that such persons shall take any work 
 that may be available, provided they have skill and 
 strength to do it. But just here lies the heart of 
 the difficulty. The army of incapables is enor- 
 mous, and its ranks are recruited chiefly from 
 among those who neglected chances when they 
 had them and, Micawber-like, waited for better 
 chances to turn up. The discouraging fact is 
 that thousands who ask for work don't really want 
 work; they want only a situation and a salary. 
 
 I do not say that it is the duty of society to fur- 
 nish every man with equal chances ; the first step is 
 to see that he has a chance, and if he cannot or will 
 not use it he must be dealt with in another way. 
 To furnish some men with the best chances would 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. I4I 
 
 only be to waste them. What we should try to 
 reach in each man's case is the chance that is best 
 for him.. But the same chances are not the best 
 for all. Some years ago the English colliers want- 
 ed a large increase of wages, so that they might 
 have a chance of better living and greater home 
 comforts. They got the increase, and the chances 
 were fairly within their reach. The most obvious 
 result, however, w^as the wholesale importation of 
 champagne at three dollars a bottle, abounding 
 drunkenness and debauchery, while the women 
 and children starved on a pittance, with fewer 
 home comforts than before. It may be said that 
 a man has a right to a fair wage for his work, and 
 society has no right to dictate what he shall do 
 with it; but if society has to support him and his 
 when out of work, as is often the case, then socie- 
 ty has a very manifest right to inquire what he 
 does with good wages when he has them. 
 
 LECTURE IV.— THE PROBLEM OF POVERTT. 
 
 ** Modern life," says a writer of the present day, 
 ** has no more tragical figure than the gaunt, hun- 
 gry laborer, wandering about the crowded centers 
 of industry and wealth, begging in vain for permis- 
 
142 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 sion to share in that industry and to contribute to 
 that wealth ; asking in return not the comforts and 
 luxuries of civilized life, but the rough food and 
 shelter for himself and family which would be prac- 
 tically secured to him in the rudest form of savage 
 society." ^ This picture is typical of what may be 
 found in any crowded center of population, and it 
 represents conditions which constitute one of the 
 gravest problems of modern society. I do not 
 affirm that it is in the power of the Church, or 
 of any other association, to put an end to all pov- 
 erty and the suffering which comes of it; that 
 can be accomplished only when men universally 
 accept and are governed by the precepts of Jesus 
 Christ and are animated by his spirit; but I affirm 
 that no such poverty as has just been described 
 should ever be permitted to exist within the limits 
 of the kingdom of God ; and I further affirm that 
 if the gospel code of social ethics is definitely ac- 
 cepted by the Church as a part of her working 
 creed the time will come, and come soon, when 
 no case of unrelieved poverty wall be found among 
 the followers of Jesus Christ. But before pro- 
 ceeding farther on this line it may be well to con- 
 sider the problem itself. 
 
 ijohn A. Hobson, M.A., "Problems of Poverty," p. 17. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. I43 
 
 Poverty is a comparative term. What is regard- 
 ed as poverty by very many persons in England 
 and America would be regarded by millions in In- 
 dia or China as great comfort, if not as positive 
 luxury. It is important, therefore, to determine 
 just what is meant by poverty, and to what part of 
 society the term " poor " maybe properly applied. 
 The question is not an easy one to answer. We 
 cannot draw a broad line through society, and say 
 the rich are on this side and the poor on that. 
 Social conditions shade off gradually, and it is only 
 when we compare extremes — the very rich with 
 the very poor — that sharp contrasts appear. Per- 
 haps by beginning at the top of the scale and com- 
 ing downward we may reach a point below which 
 all may be regarded as poor in the sense which 
 makes poverty a problem of our civilization. 
 
 Owing to the rapid increase of the world's 
 wealth, coupled with its unequal distribution, a 
 considerable class have become very wealthy. 
 They have accumulated to such an extent that they 
 can live in luxury on a small percentage of the 
 proceeds of their investments, and are constantly 
 accumulating more. Such persons receive much 
 from society without rendering any adequate serv- 
 ice in return, unless, indeed, they belong to the 
 limited class who regard wealth as a trust, and ad- 
 
144 ^^^ KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 minister their large possessions for the common 
 good. Then there is a large class who, partly by 
 work of some kind and partly by income from ac- 
 cumulations, live in comfort, and have no need, 
 so far as their circumstances go, to practice self- 
 denial. Another very large class is composed of 
 those whose income is derived from wages pure 
 and simple, and whose savings, if any, are but 
 small; nevertheless, so long as work is abundant 
 and sickness does not intervene, they are able to 
 provide all the necessaries of life, many of its com- 
 forts, and even some of its luxuries. Among these, 
 however, in some branches of industry — and this 
 is especially true of women and unskilled workers 
 — competition is so keen, and the supply so much 
 greater than the demand, that wages go down to a 
 very low point; and this, together with periods of 
 enforced idleness through sickness or lack of work, 
 makes living exceedingly precarious. This brings 
 us right among the poor; not the lowest strata, it 
 is true, but among those whose poverty constitutes 
 one of the phases of the problem. 
 
 Poverty, in many instances, is a misfortune to 
 be relieved; in many more it is the offspring of 
 idleness, unthrift, or dissipation, and these are 
 vices to be corrected if possible; but there is a 
 yet deeper form of poverty which, to an extent of 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. I45 
 
 which dreaming philanthropists are not aware, is a 
 crime, and the prolific parent of crime, and which 
 society, if only for its own protection, must quaran- 
 tine and stamp out like an infectious disease. But 
 before drastic remedies are applied we must be 
 sure who is the criminal, lest society in its blind- 
 ness should inflict punishment upon the wrong per- 
 son. There is a great deal of deep poverty which 
 implies criminality soinezvhere^ but where ? Some- 
 times, perhaps often, in the man himself. This 
 statement covers probably nine-tenths of the chron- 
 ic beggars and professional tramps who prey upon 
 the industrious part of the community. They de- 
 liberately prefer their life of idleness, with its in- 
 cidental exposure, hunger, and other disadvan- 
 tages, to one of greater outward comfort won by 
 honest labor; and no wonder, for they belong to a 
 class which finds that preying upon society requires 
 less exertion than would be required to earn a liveli- 
 hood by daity toil ; and although they pay a cer- 
 tain penalty by going clothed in rags and filth, and 
 being without permanent shelter, yet the brute na- 
 ture which a life of the kind so quickly develops 
 reconciles them to these incidental disadvantages, 
 especially when they discover that their chosen life 
 frees them at a stroke from all duties and respon- 
 sibilities as members of society, supplies them, as 
 IQ 
 
146 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 a rule, with something to eat and drink, which is 
 about all they care for, and leaves them without a 
 thought for the future as regards this life, and 
 without feeling as regards a life to come. Pau- 
 perism of this type is a social disease so viru- 
 lent that it cannot be cured by ordinary remedies, 
 but requires a method of treatment peculiarly its 
 own. 
 
 The causes of this kind of pauperism are many, 
 and it would be impossible to trace the thousand 
 and one influences which may lead to a result so 
 fatal; but waiving for the present all considerations 
 of heredity and environment, and an inveterate 
 aversion to labor of every kind, it can scarcely 
 be questioned that the chief causes are difficulty 
 of obtaining steady employment, starvation wages, 
 and the drink traffic. To these should be added 
 another cause, though not so widely operative — 
 namely, the case of those who have heedlessly, al- 
 most unintentionally, lapsed into what the law or 
 society calls crime. They have committed some 
 offense, made one false step; and then, finding 
 no place of repentance, though they seek it diligent- 
 ly with tears — no kindly hand stretched out to help 
 them to a better life — they sink step by step to the 
 companionship of society's Ishmaelites, their hand 
 against every man, and every man's hand against 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. 14? 
 
 them. Now, while it is right that society should 
 deal with the causes of pauperism, so far as to put 
 an end, if possible, to a condition of affairs that is 
 a reproach to our boasted civihzation, it is no less 
 important that the existing evil should be dealt with 
 in some effective way. But how is this to be done ? 
 Beyond all cavil, existing methods are not effective ; 
 they do not touch the root of the mischief, and 
 the evil is not diminished, but is on the increase. 
 Among remedial measures the first step is an en- 
 lightenment of pubhc opinion in several directions. 
 The pubhc has yet to learn that willful pauperism 
 —the pauperism that comes of wilHng indolence or 
 dissipation— is a crime against society, and should 
 be punished as such. This class of social parasites 
 should not be pampered and petted, but there 
 should be a stern enforcement of that wholesome 
 law of the kingdom of God, that ''if any will not 
 work, neither let him eat";^ always provided, of 
 course, that there is work for him to do and that 
 he has strength to do it. 
 
 Just here the track we are following branches 
 in two directions. We have to consider the case 
 of those who will not work if they can help it, 
 be work never so abundant, and also of those 
 
 1 3 Thessalonians iii. lO. 
 
148 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 who would be glad to work if only they could get it 
 to do. But these two classes cannot be dealt with 
 alike. The first should be coerced, and the sec- 
 ond should be aided. But how can coercion be 
 applied? By finding something for the tramp or 
 other social parasite to do, and then compelling 
 him to do it. I do not advocate paternalism in 
 government. The notion is mischievous from 
 center to circumference, and wherever it shows 
 itself should be firmly opposed. It has gained a 
 broader foothold on this continent than many peo- 
 ple are aware of, and is steadily reversing all just 
 conceptions of the true relation of the citizen to 
 the government. In former times the chief ques- 
 tion with all patriotic citizens was: "What can 
 we do for the government, to strengthen its hands, 
 maintain its just authority, provide the necessary 
 revenue for legitimate expenses, and help to en- 
 act laws in the interests of the whole people?" 
 Now, to an ominously large extent, the question 
 seems to be: "What can we induce the govern- 
 ment to do for us, to provide us with offices and 
 pensions, with fiat money to pay our debts and 
 real money to expend lavishly in every locality, 
 to make times easy when they are hard and work 
 plentiful when it is scarce?" Government is re- 
 garded by multitudes as a kind of incarnate Provi- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. I49 
 
 dence, whose chief business is to say to the hordes 
 of office seekers, contract seekers, needy and 
 greedy politicians, distressed farmers, and the 
 army of the unemployed: *'Open your mouths 
 wide, and I will fill them." The whole thing is 
 wrong; the principle is vicious, and if it be al- 
 lowed to prevail will tend to produce a whole na- 
 tion of paupers, all gazing governmentward with 
 open mouths, like a nest of robins waiting for the 
 parent bird to drop in a worm. No plan could be 
 devised more destructive to every element of true 
 manhood, or more certain to result in a tyranny 
 worse than we or our fathers ever knew. 
 
 But while holding firmly to this view, I think 
 there are certain directions in which governmental 
 interference might be helpful in solving the prob- 
 lem of poverty, especially in its worse forms. In 
 a country like this, governments can set apart vast 
 tracts of public lands for national parks and pleas- 
 ure grounds. What hinders them from setting 
 apart lands for industrial colonies, where the will- 
 ing poor might get a chance to earn an honest 
 livelihood, instead of leaving it to the Salvation 
 Army or the like; and other colonies where, un- 
 der strict discipline, the tramp and the social para- 
 site might be compelled to contribute something 
 to the productive power of the community, enough 
 
150 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 at least to cover the cost of their own support? 
 Had this course been taken with Coxey and his 
 army, not only would a dangerous tendency in 
 modern society have been repressed, but assurance 
 would have been given to the industrious and the 
 law-abiding that government, even popular govern- 
 ment, is something more than a figurehead. 
 
 There is another point on which the public, the 
 Christian public especially, need to be enlight- 
 ened — namely, that the maxim of the political 
 economists which bids us ** buy in the cheapest 
 market, and sell in the dearest," is flatly anti- 
 christian. It breathes the spirit of that selfish- 
 ness which is characteristic of the kingdom of this 
 world, but is utterly and unalterably opposed to 
 the kingdom of God. The application of this 
 maxim is responsible for much of the suffering in- 
 flicted upon the poor. Investigations by a Royal 
 Commission in England into what is called the 
 ** sweating system" revealed the fact that the 
 worst sweating-master was the British public ; and 
 here is where another phase of the criminality of 
 which I have spoken comes in. The craze for 
 bargains — to buy at the lowest possible figure, with- 
 out reference to the cost of production, and the 
 consequent competition among tradesmen to lower 
 prices at the expense of wages — has inflicted un- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. I5I 
 
 told suffering and injustice upon workmen, and es- 
 pecially upon workwomen. The business house 
 that appeals for patronage on the ground that it 
 sells cheaper than any other is fairly open to the 
 suspicion that it is defrauding the public by false 
 representations, or defrauding the workers by low- 
 ering wages; for abnormally low prices for goods 
 means abnormally low prices for producing them. 
 The familiar legend, " Lowest prices charged 
 here," should be replaced by another, " Highest 
 wages paid here " ; and wherever that is found to 
 be true, there let the patronage of Christian men 
 and women be given. 
 
 In order that we may get a clearer view of the 
 relation of gospel ethics to this difficult social 
 problem, let us try to ascertain just what is implied 
 in the phrase so suggestive of the Saviour's mis- 
 sion: "The poor have the gospel preached unto 
 them." The gospel is emphatically good news to 
 all men, but what does it contain that makes it 
 good news to the poor as distinguished from any 
 other class? It is not a sufficient answer to say 
 that it reveals a future state in which the poor 
 shall be compensated for wrongs they have suf- 
 fered here. The whole drift of gospel teach- 
 ing shows that a man's future state will be deter- 
 mined, not by his social status in this world, but by 
 
152 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 his moral character; that he enters the kingdom 
 of heaven, here or hereafter, not because he is 
 poor in purse, but because he is poor in spirit. If, 
 then, the gospel be good news to the poor, simply 
 as poor, the explanation must be sought in the 
 fact that it proclaims the definite advent of a king- 
 dom in which poverty is no bar to citizenship, and 
 in which poverty, with every disadvantage which 
 that word implies, shall one day cease to be. I 
 do not say that this is all the gospel, or even the 
 chief part of it, but it is that part that makes it 
 good news to the poor as such; and, as the fact 
 that the poor had the gospel preached to them was 
 a plain fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy,^ it is given 
 by the Saviour as a crowning proof of his Mes- 
 siahship. 
 
 If we follow the lines of the prophecy just re- 
 ferred to, and read it in the light of the New Tes- 
 tament, wherein Christ claims its fulfillment in 
 himself, we shall find corroborative proof that the 
 good news included the relief of human sufferings, 
 the redress of human wrongs, and the establish- 
 ment of justice and judgment in the earth, just as 
 certainly as it included the regeneration of the in- 
 dividual and his preparation for heavenly felicity. 
 
 ^ Isaiah Ixi. 1-3. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. 153 
 
 In Isaiah's prophetic announcement the Messiah is 
 " anointed ... to preach good tidings unto 
 the poor," ^ and the nature of the good tidings is 
 outhned in the words that follow. He is "to bind 
 up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the 
 captives, and the opening of the prison to them 
 that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year 
 of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our 
 God" upon the oppressor, and "to comfort all 
 that mourn." If we turn now to the record in the 
 Gospels, we shall see how these predictions had 
 their fulfillment in the natural and literal, as well 
 as in the spiritual and figurative, sense. There 
 are two recorded occasions on which this proph- 
 ecy was quoted by the Saviour: once in the syna- 
 gogue at Nazareth,- and once when John the Bap- 
 tist sent two of his disciples inquiring, "Art thou 
 he that cometh, or look we for another?"" In- 
 stead of giving an immediate reply, Jesus " cured 
 many of diseases and plagues and evil spirits ; and 
 on many that were blind he bestowed sight." 
 Then he said to the messengers: " Go your way 
 and tell John the things ye have seen and heard: 
 the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the 
 
 1 Isaiah Ixvi. i (marginal reading Revised Version). 
 
 2 Luke iv. 16-19. 
 
 3 Matthew xi. 3. 
 
154 ' THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead 
 are raised up, the poor have good tidings preached 
 to them." ^ These were the proofs of his Messiah- 
 ship, and they all had reference to the present 
 world except in so far as the good tidings preached 
 to the poor may have included the grand spiritual 
 truths of the kingdom. 
 
 At the present point the question may arise: 
 If these things are so, and the kingdom of God 
 in the earth is to be an everlasting kingdom, why 
 are not the same works wrought to-day? and even 
 on a grander scale? The words of Christ are 
 very explicit: " Verily, verily, I say unto you. He 
 that believe th on me, the works that I do shall he 
 do also ; and greater works than these shall he do ; 
 because I go unto the Father."^ If these words 
 are to be understood in their plain, obvious mean- 
 ing (and I am unable to assign a reason why they 
 should not be so understood), wh}^ is not the 
 power to do these might}^ works possessed in the 
 Church to-day, especially when the Saviour's dec- 
 laration is followed by another in these words, 
 " Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I 
 do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son,"^ 
 and in the light of the historic fact that the exer- 
 
 1 Matt. xi. 4, 5. ^John xiv. 12. sjohn xiv. 13. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. 155 
 
 cise of this power was not limited to the times of 
 the apostles, but continued in the Church for the 
 greater part of three centuries? One thing is cer- 
 tain : there is no hint in the teaching of Jesus that 
 this gift was to be temporary; and if it has ceased, 
 as must be admitted, the cause must be sought in 
 the Church itself. 
 
 There are two sayings recorded in the Gospels 
 which throw light upon the question. The first is 
 contained in the words of Jesus to his disciples 
 before he suffered: "If ye abide in me, and my 
 words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it 
 shall be done unto you." ^ The second is con- 
 tained in the record of Christ's teaching at Naza- 
 reth, where it is said: ''He could there do no 
 mighty works, save that he laid his hands upon a 
 few sick folk and healed them. And he marveled 
 because of their unbelief." ^ In Matthew the rec- 
 ord is still more emphatic, for it is said: " He did 
 not many mighty works there because of their un- 
 belief." ^ From these passages two things are 
 clear: first, that abiding in Christ and the abiding 
 of his word in us are indispensable conditions of 
 answers to prayer; second, that a prevailing spirit 
 of unbelief may be an insuperable hindrance to 
 
 ijohn XV. 7. 2 Mark vi. 5, 6. s Matthew xiii. 58. 
 
156 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 the mighty works of Christ. Now, if it be true 
 that certain great laws of the kingdom of God 
 (such as the laws regarding property, class dis- 
 tinctions, and the like) have been so neglected 
 that they have dropped out of the faith and almost 
 out of the memory of the Church, and if it be true 
 that the Church has been more or less leavened 
 with the spirit and maxims of the world's unbelief, 
 is it any wonder that the gift of which we are 
 speaking has departed, and that the Church has 
 been shorn of her strength? Beyond all dispute 
 unbelieving men and women by thousands are 
 in the Church to-day; they have brought in with 
 them the worldliness, the pride, the ambition, the 
 self-seeking which belong to the kingdom of this 
 world, and while these remain unchanged they 
 constitute a grievous hindrance to the mighty 
 works of Christ. If any one doubts the preva- 
 lence of this kind of unbelief in the Church, let 
 him propose in sober earnest that the words of 
 Jesus touching these things of which I have 
 spoken be accepted in their plain, obvious mean- 
 ing, and obeyed, and even pious people and reli- 
 gious teachers will call him visionary, a dreamer, 
 an enthusiast, a crank. But in spite of all this I 
 cling to the hope that a day is coming when the 
 words of Jesus will be thus accepted and obeyed; 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. I57 
 
 and when that day comes, the power which the 
 Church has lost will be restored. 
 
 Recalling the law of the kingdom of God touch- 
 ing property and its practical exemplification in 
 the early Church, there are two things about it 
 which I do not hesitate to affirm : first, there must 
 be a return of the Church to this faith and prac- 
 tice before the grand ideal of the kingdom of God 
 on the earth can be realized; and secondly, that 
 the problem of poverty can be solved on this line 
 and cannot be solved on any other. While the 
 Church remained faithful in this respect, the 
 problem was completely solved. For nearly three 
 hundred years there was no poverty within the 
 kingdom of God that was not quickly met and re- 
 lieved, because it was an article of faith with those 
 primitive believers that the average prosperity of 
 each Christian community should extend to each 
 individual member thereof when overtaken by any 
 misfortune. More than this, the practice of ac- 
 cumulating or holding property beyond very mod- 
 erate limits was regarded as characteristic of the 
 kingdom of this world, but utterly foreign to the 
 spirit of the kingdom of God. 
 
 In the course of the first two centuries the cir- 
 cumstances of the Christians changed greatly. 
 Those habits of temperance, frugality, industry, 
 
158 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 and thrift which the gospel inculcated had im- 
 proved their worldly circumstances, and there 
 were whole communities where none were poor 
 in the sense of needing assistance; but every call 
 from presbyter or bishop for help to less fortunate 
 communities ever met with a ready response, and 
 even individual applications were rarely refused. 
 The primitive Christians interpreted literally the 
 words of Jesus: *' Give to him that asketh thee, 
 and from him that would borrow of thee turn not 
 thou away." ^ They regarded their earthly pos- 
 sessions as belonging to God, and themselves as 
 stewards intrusted with the management thereof. 
 And as it is better to help a man out of his poverty 
 than to help him in it, they regarded it as a part of 
 their duty to find employment for every one able 
 and willing to do something for the common good. 
 Hence in the primitive Church none were idle 
 save those who on account of age or infirmity were 
 incapable of work. 
 
 If it should be said that such a system in our 
 day would bring down upon every Christian home 
 a swarm of tramps and paupers who would devour 
 everything, one answer is that the early Christians 
 found it not so. As long as the gospel principle 
 
 1 Matthew v. 42. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. 1 59 
 
 was adhered to they prospered exceedingly, and 
 the more they gave the more they had to give. 
 Within the Church, as I have said, they solved 
 the problem of poverty completely, while beyond 
 the limits of the Church Christian benevolence 
 relieved distress to an extent that is incalculable; 
 and the same thing, as regards the latter point, is 
 true to-day. It was only when the gospel princi- 
 ple was abandoned — when Christians, taking pat- 
 tern from the kingdoms of this w^orld, began to 
 accumulate riches for their own use — that circum- 
 stances changed. Then the forces of poverty 
 swooped down upon the Church and society like 
 an armed host, creating problems which neither 
 governments, nor poor laws, nor fraternal socie- 
 ties, nor insurance companies, nor any other ap- 
 pliance founded on Mammon worship, has yet 
 been able to solve. 
 
 In all this the spirit and practice of the new 
 kingdom was in marked contrast with the king- 
 doms of this world. In the latter the poor were 
 not regarded as of any importance in the general 
 scheme of society; they were regarded rather as 
 an incumbrance, as a class having no rights which 
 the more favored were bound to respect. In the 
 kingdom of God all this was changed. Even in 
 its incomplete development in Old Testament 
 
l6o THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 times the claims of the poor were recognized, and 
 provision for their rehef was regarded as a reli- 
 gious duty; but no plan ever emanated from hea- 
 then governments for the relief of human suffer- 
 ing or for improving the condition of the common 
 people. It was reserved for the kingdom of God 
 to recognize and act upon the principle that with- 
 in the limits of the kingdom there should be no 
 poverty or suffering that the most absolute conse- 
 cration of property or personal service could re- 
 lieve; and if in obedience to this principle the fol- 
 lower of Christ gave without reserve of his sub- 
 stance to feed the poor, it was not because the law 
 of the kingdom said you 7nust, but because the 
 love of Christ said you can, and enlightened con- 
 science said you ought. 
 
 In the primitive Church the phrase " commun- 
 ion of saints" meant something more and some- 
 thing far different than it means in modern creeds. 
 It meant not only spiritual fellowship, but such 
 communion of property rights as made it impos- 
 sible for the humblest believer to suffer for lack 
 of food or raiment. The Church was a partner- 
 ship administered on the principle of equal rights, 
 and this is the very thing which men are now trying 
 to bring about in society by methods which must 
 inevitably frustrate the end in view. Nay, almost 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. 
 
 l6l 
 
 ever since this feature of Christianity was sub- 
 verted in the fourth century, men have been try- 
 ing to find a substitute— first by monastic institu- 
 tions founded on a communistic basis, later by 
 means of legal enactments and benevolent asso- 
 ciations, and now by Christless forms of secular 
 communism and socialism, or a vindictive nihihsm 
 which threatens the very existence of law and 
 
 order. 
 
 There are two ways of helping a poor man: 
 one is to help him in his poverty, the other is to 
 help him out of it; or, better still, to show him 
 how to help himself out of it. The first is the way 
 of " charity," so called; the second is the way of 
 New Testament Christianity. There is no more 
 striking proof of the extent to which the Church 
 has diverged (unwittingly, I fain would hope) 
 from the New Testament ideal than the univer- 
 sality with which Christian people suppose that 
 the so-called charity of to-day is synonymous with 
 that love of the brethren which Christ inculcated, 
 and which Paul enthroned as the cardinal virtue 
 and the crowning grace. Charity, as commonly 
 understood, holds much the same relation to love 
 that a counterfeit holds to a genuine coin. To 
 solve the world's social problems (preeminently 
 the problem of poverty) two things are essential, 
 11 
 
l62 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 namely, brotherhood and stewardship; and these, 
 to be of any real value, must have their source 
 in a regenerated nature, " the love of God shed 
 abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost." 
 
 Next to the difficulty of obtaining steady em- 
 ployment, starvation wages take rank as a cause 
 of deep poverty. It is contended by a certain 
 school of economists that labor is like any other 
 commodity, and that its value is regulated by the 
 law of supply and demand; that when labor is 
 abundant wages go down, and when it is scarce 
 wages rise. The principle is false as well as self- 
 ish. Work cannot be separated from the human 
 beings who perform it, and human souls and 
 bodies are not commodities to be bought in the 
 cheapest possible market. Selfishness may con- 
 done such a practice ; but righteousness repudiates 
 it, and righteousness is the very foundation of the 
 kingdom of God. Perhaps there is no one way in 
 which professing Christians have brought so much 
 reproach upon the Church of God as by this sin 
 of oppressing the hireling in his wages; and the 
 fault cannot be atoned for by munificent gifts to 
 charitable objects. We are to "do justly" as 
 well as to '* love mercy," and in the order of vir- 
 tues justice comes first. After justice is done we 
 can be as generous as we please. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. 163 
 
 Doubtless it is better that a man have employ- 
 ment at small wages than not to be employed at 
 all, but that does not touch the requirements of 
 justice as regards the employer. He has no right 
 to take advantage of a workman's necessities, and 
 reduce wages because the labor market is over- 
 stocked, to offer starvation wages because a dozen 
 persons are competing for a piece of work. In 
 any case the minimum wage should be enough to 
 maintain in reasonable comfort the workman and 
 those depending upon him; and if there is diffi- 
 culty in deciding just how much that ought to be, 
 it might assist in solving the problem if every em- 
 plover would ask himself the question, " What 
 w^ould I consider fair were the case reversed, and I 
 were the workman?" For this is only an indirect 
 way of applying the fundamental law of the king- 
 dom of God: "All things therefore whatsoever 
 ye would that men should do unto you, even so 
 do ye also unto them : for this is the law and the 
 prophets." ^ 
 
 ^Matthew vii. 12. 
 
LECTURE V, 
 
 LABOR DISPUTES, AND HOW TO END 
 
 THEM. 
 
 (165) 
 
"How is this growing wealth divided? Is it rightly or 
 wrongly divided? If it is wrongly divided, has the Christian 
 moralist anything to say about a better way? Christianity, as 
 we have seen, has much to do with the production of wealth; 
 has it anything to do with its distribution?" (Washington 
 Gladden, "Applied Christianity," p. 9.) 
 
 " Every approximation toward a community of goods should 
 be affected by the love of the rich for the poor, and not by the 
 hatred of the poor for the rich. If all men were true Christians, 
 a community of goods might exist without danger. But then, 
 also, the institution of private property would have no dark 
 side to it. Every employer would give his workmen the high- 
 est wages possible, and demand in return only the smallest 
 possible sacrifice." (Professor Rocher, quoted in ''Applied 
 Christianitj'," p. 22.) 
 
 (It should be added that, "if all men were true Christians," 
 not only would "every employer give his workmen the high- 
 est wages possible," but every workman would render the best 
 and most faithful service possible. — A. S.) 
 
 "I believe that in the adoption of the philosophy of the re- 
 ligion of Jesus Christ as a practical creed for the conduct of 
 business lies the surest and speediest solution of those indus- 
 trial difficulties which are exciting the minds of men to-day, 
 and leading many to think that the crisis of government is at 
 hand." (Carroll D. Wright.) 
 
 "All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should 
 do unto you, even so do ye also unto them : for this is the law 
 and the prophets." (Jesus, Matt. vii. 12.) 
 (166) 
 
V. 
 
 PRELUDE.— THE CHURCH''AND WORKINGMEN. 
 
 TESUS CHRIST— I speak it with reverence— 
 ^ was a workingman ; his kingdom was found- 
 ed among workingmen ; his first ministers were 
 workingmen ; a large part of the world's popula- 
 tion are workingmen. If, therefore, the Church is 
 in any measure identical with the kingdom which 
 Christ came to establish, and desires to be true to 
 its origin and divine ideal, there should be every- 
 thing in the Church to attract the world's toilers, 
 and nothing to repel them. But is this the case? 
 Are workingmen attracted to the Church in the 
 present day as they were to Jesus Christ when 
 "the common people heard him gladly"? The 
 most pronounced optimist will scarcely venture to 
 affirm that they are. At the same time I cannot 
 bring myself into sympathy with extremists who 
 declare that there is a mighty chasm between 
 the Church and workingmen that never can be 
 bridged over. The statement has a measure of 
 truth when applied to the unchurched masses of 
 the old world, and to considerable numbers in the 
 great centers of population on this continent; but 
 
 (167) 
 
l68 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 it is an utter exaggeration when applied to the 
 working population as a whole. But although 
 there is as yet no broad chasm, there is a nar- 
 row rift, and unless timely steps are taken this may 
 widen until it becomes a "great gulf fixed," too 
 deep to be fathomed and too wide to be crossed. 
 It will be far easier to close the rift now than to 
 bridge the chasm fifty years hence. 
 
 The Church and the workingmen ought to be 
 firm friends and aUies. AHenation of confidence 
 and sympathy, leading to antagonism, would be an 
 unspeakable calamity to both. The workingmen 
 have need of the Church, and the Church has need 
 of the workingmen. Rather let me say, the work- 
 ingmen should be the Church. It was theirs at 
 the first ; and if they have suffered it to slip out of 
 their hands, the duty of the hour is to claim back 
 their inheritance and insist that the Church shall 
 be what Jesus intended it to be — bread for the 
 hungry, clothing for the naked, protection for the 
 friendless, a refuge for the oppressed; above all, 
 that it should be the one place where arbitrary so- 
 cial distinctions shall disappear, and where, on the 
 foundation of a common brotherhood, rich and 
 poor shall meet together, acknowledging that God 
 is the Maker and Father of them all. 
 
 I do not think that any real antagonism exists be- 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. 169 
 
 tween the Church and the workingmen as such, 
 but only with that class (a small one, I hope) of 
 skeptical and irreligious men who antagonize all 
 religion, or that other class who make the assumed 
 delinquencies of the Church an excuse for the 
 habitual neglect of religion. The fact that in ev- 
 ery Christian congregation workingmen are to be 
 found, sometimes constituting the bulk of the mem- 
 bership, is proof positive that there is no insu- 
 perable barrier between the two. Multitudes of 
 workingmen have found in the Church a congenial 
 spiritual home, and are not slow to acknowledge 
 the benefits derived from the association. At the 
 same time there are vast numbers of working peo- 
 ple, neither skeptical nor irreligious in any strong 
 sense of those terms, who are not in cordial sym- 
 pathy with the Church, who stand aloof from it to 
 the mutual disadvantage of the Church and them- 
 selves. If this is true, it is a serious matter, and 
 demands serious attention in regard to both cause 
 and cure. 
 
 Such antagonism as does exist between the 
 Church and a certain class of workingmen is not to 
 be altogether accounted for on the ground of nat- 
 ural" depravity or the enmity of the carnal mind. 
 Neither would it be wise to assume that the blame 
 is all on one side. The alienation of sympathy 
 
170 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 which does exist is due to causes for which neither 
 party is entirely responsible. There has not been 
 any violent reaction on the part of workingmen 
 against religious teaching as such, nor any super- 
 cilious " passing by on the other side " on the part 
 of the Church ; but gradually a feeling of estrange- 
 ment has crept in, as though the interests of the 
 workingmen were entirely distinct from those of 
 the Church, and could not be combined. This has 
 arisen, in part, from the growing wealth of some, 
 and consequent changes in social position. The 
 thoughts of the average workingman run in one 
 channel, those of the successful business or pro- 
 fessional man run in another; and this tends to 
 produce a class feeling, which sometimes shows 
 itself in the Church as well as out of it. Nor is 
 there anything which can overcome this tendency 
 save that unfeigned Christian sympathy which rec- 
 ognizes the real brotherhood of all believers in 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 Another cause of the lack, of sympathy for the 
 Church on the part of workingmen is the old strife 
 between capital and labor. Strictly speaking, 
 there can be no strife between capital and labor — ^ 
 they are natural partners and allies, and the one is 
 comparatively useless without the other; but there 
 has been strife between capitalists and laborers, 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. I7I 
 
 and as capitalists are sometimes members of the 
 Church, not a few laborers have jumped to the 
 conclusion that the Church on the whole is on the 
 side of the capitalist. I do not regard the con- 
 clusion a just one, but the deference sometimes 
 paid by the Church to wealthy men has given 
 grounds for the suspicion that she is not altogether 
 free from the sin of having " respect of persons." 
 Moreover, the relative rights and duties of employ- 
 ers and employed are questions on which the pul- 
 pit is usually silent; and thus the very person to 
 whom the workingman should naturally look as 
 his friend and champion is regarded as neutral at 
 the best, if not positively unfriendly. From all 
 this it comes to pass that, although the Church may 
 have ready welcome for all who come within her 
 pale, and does w^hat she can to minister to their 
 spiritual needs, the conviction exists that she holds 
 herself aloof from the struggles and aspirations of 
 workingmen as a class; that she does not cham- 
 pion the cause of the poor against the rich, or the 
 weak against the strong; and thus the workingman 
 is led to seek in trades unions and fraternal so- 
 cieties the sympathy and moral support which he 
 does not always find in the Church. 
 
 Among the minor causes which keep many work- 
 ingmen aloof from the Church are such as the fol- 
 
1^2 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 lowing: "The churches are too fine for ordinary 
 working people to attend." '' The system of rent- 
 ing pews at high figures puts churchgoing beyond 
 our means." "Average churchgoers dress so 
 finely that we feel out of place among them in 
 our common clothes." And last, but not least, 
 " When we do go to church no one takes any no- 
 tice of us; we do not feel as if we were made wel- 
 come, and do not care to go again." Now, ad- 
 mitting that there is some truth in all this ; admit- 
 ting that it might have been better if the various 
 denominations had not built so many costly 
 churches, burdened with heavy debts, necessita- 
 ting high pew rents and many other evils ; admit- 
 ting that costly raiment is not only out of place in 
 the house of God, but that it shames the face of 
 the poor; admitting that with most of us there is 
 a foolish reserve which hinders us from giving a 
 welcome to the stranger within our gates that will 
 make him feel entirely at home; admitting that all 
 these hindrances exist in some measure, yet the 
 experience of those who are in the Church shows 
 that they are not insurmountable, and that, as hin- 
 drances, they are larger in imagination than in 
 reality. The chief difficulty here, as elsewhere, is 
 in the man himself; for, no matter what may have 
 been his complaints against the Church, no matter 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. I73 
 
 how strong his disHke of its ministers, teachings, 
 or methods, only let that great spiritual change 
 pass upon him which we call conversion, but which 
 Jesus calls being born from above, and instantly 
 suspicion, dislike, antagonism, vanish away; his 
 complaints are hushed, and in the Church, which 
 once he hated and despised, he finds a congenial 
 spiritual home. 
 
 In seeking to promote more cordial relations be- 
 tween the Church and workingmen it is essential 
 that the representative men of the Church — the 
 ministers and influential members — should learn to 
 look at a great many questions from the working- 
 man's point of view, and thus, as it were, put 
 themselves in his place. And this is the more im- 
 portant because not a few who claim to speak on 
 behalf of workingmen do not always fairly state 
 their views. We must learn to distinguish between 
 the glib utterances of the labor agitator and the 
 deep and often unuttered feelings of the average 
 workingman. To accomplish this, the wisest and 
 best men in the Churches should seek to mingle 
 with the workingmen in their places of business, in 
 their homes, in their association meetings (where 
 that is possible), with a sincere desire to learn their 
 needs, to help in their struggles, to sympathize 
 with their aspirations and hopes. 
 
174 ^^^ KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 In the next place, the Church needs to learn 
 what this meaneth, of " Man shall not live by bread 
 alone " ; no, nor even by religion alone. No one 
 thing — not even religion — can fill the whole round 
 of man's needs, and the Church must learn to 
 champion the cause of the toiling masses in regard 
 to many things which lie outside of the spiritual 
 realm. She has done what she could to teach men 
 those truths of religion which relate to fnward ex-^ 
 periences and a future state, and has not been un- 
 mindful of the great rules of personal morality out- 
 lined in the decalogue; but the broad domain of 
 social ethics has been until recently a virtually un- 
 explored territory. Touching the wide range of 
 man's social needs, we have too often said, like the 
 disciples at Bethsaida, *' Send the multitudes 
 away " ; and where this has been the case we have 
 no right to complain if many of them have taken 
 us at our w^ord, and have gone away to their lodge 
 rooms and their trades unions for the things they 
 needed but could not find in the Church. The 
 Church must correct this. She must make the 
 world's w^orkers see that she is their stanch friend in 
 everything that is '* true, and lovely 5 and of good re- 
 port " ; and that all they need of sympathy, of en- 
 couragement, of cooperation for the promotion of 
 their intellectual, industrial, social, and spiritual 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. 1 75 
 
 interests, they can find in the Church of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Let it not be supposed that nothing has been 
 done in this direction. In great centers of popu- 
 lation, hke London and New York, agencies for 
 the reHef of poverty, and for the educational, 
 moral, and social advancement of the working 
 classes are multiplying every day. One of the 
 most notable of these agencies had its origin in the 
 universities. Groups of refined and cultured men 
 and women have gone into the poorest quarters of 
 London and New York, not to distribute conde- 
 scending charity, but to live right among the poor- 
 est people, sharing their sorrows, sympathizing in 
 their trials, opening avenues of hope for the future, 
 showing the way to a better life here and hereafter. 
 Speaking of such work in the East End of Lon- 
 don, a recent writer observes: " Hence have 
 come Toynbee Hall, with its sane and sagacious 
 belief in the value of art for the squalid East 
 End, and its brave endeavor to educate the uni- 
 versity by means of Whitechapel, and to save 
 Whitechapel by the culture and service of the 
 universities; Oxford House, with its intense con- 
 viction of the mission of the Church to the masses, 
 though of a mission that the ordinary ecclesias- 
 tical agencies and methods are quite unable to 
 
176 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 fulfill;* Mansfield House, with its strong prac- 
 tical spirit, seeking to improve the houses, the 
 amusements, the minds, the relationships, and the 
 lives of the workers in the farther East End; the 
 Wesleyan Settlement at Bermondsey? with its no- 
 ble religious zeal and broad philanthropy, attempt- 
 ing at once to heal the bodies and save the souls 
 of those it can reach ; University Hall, with its in- 
 tellectual energy and its belief in knowledge as a 
 saving and civilizing powder; and besides these, a 
 multitude of houses and missions independently 
 and separately maintained by colleges and public 
 schools." ^ 
 
 And these are but samples of countless Chris- 
 tian agencies that are at w^ork all over the world for 
 the moral, social, intellectual, and spiritual uplift- 
 ing of the race. Notwithstanding all that has been 
 said in disparagement of the Church and its work, 
 it remains true that in all that has yet been done 
 for the betterment of human conditions, especially 
 those of the poor and the toilers, the Church of 
 God has been the most potent factor. 
 
 But if workingmen desire the friendship and 
 cooperation of the Church, there is something for 
 
 1 Principal Fairbairn, "The Church and the Working Class- 
 es," p. 3. 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. I 77 
 
 them to consider. If the workingman has a claim 
 upon the Church, the Church has a claim upon the 
 workingman. Let mutual duties and responsibil- 
 ities be recognized, and the way to cooperation is 
 made plain. It is most important, too, that Chris- 
 tian workingmen who desire to promote harmony 
 and good will between the Church and the labor- 
 ing classes should learn to speak for themselves, 
 instead of being spoken for, as they often are, by 
 irreligious and even skeptical men, whose real ob- 
 ject is not to heal the breach, but to widen it. To 
 sum up, let me repeat that the workingman needs 
 the Church, and the Church needs the working- 
 man. There is every reason why they should be 
 close friends and allies, none why they should be 
 strangers, much less foes. Let them approach 
 each other with mutual confidence and respect, talk 
 over their differences, if such there be, unite their 
 efforts for the promotion of right and the suppres- 
 sion of wrong, and we may rest assured the time 
 is not far distant when it will be felt and seen that 
 the workingman 's best friend is the Church, and 
 that the Church's best friend is the workingman. 
 12. 
 
178 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 LECTURE v.— LABOR DISPUTES, AND HOW TO 
 END THEM. 
 
 Perhaps the most difficult problem confronting 
 the kingdom of God on the earth is found in the 
 social movements and industrial complications of 
 the times. That there is almost universal unrest 
 among the toiling millions, is a fact too apparent to 
 be questioned. That this unrest implies dissatis- 
 faction with existing social conditions, is equally 
 plain; and it may also imply, as many affirm, a 
 growing determination, on the part of working- 
 men, to demand and secure what they conceive to 
 be their rights, peaceably if they can, by violence 
 if they must. The signs of the times make it clear 
 that the conffict between capital and labor is not 
 ended. The very fact that such a conffict exists 
 shows that something is wrong, for in the nature 
 of things capital and labor, being mutually de- 
 pendent upon each other, should be allies and not 
 antagonists. This growing unrest; these plaints 
 of injustice, whether well founded or not; this 
 craving for a larger share of the world's wealth 
 and a more abundant supply of its creature com- 
 forts, whether honestly earned or not; this idea, so 
 persistently drummed into the ears of the toilers, 
 that all poverty and distress are the outcome of in- 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. 1 79 
 
 justice and oppression on the part of the wealthy, 
 are all prophetic of embittered conflicts between 
 class and class that may shake the social fabric to 
 its foundations. And the chief danger lies in this: 
 that unrest and discontent afford the political 
 demagogue and the professional agitator an op- 
 portunity, which they eagerly seize upon, to de- 
 lude and mislead the toiling masses by holding up 
 false and exaggerated pictures of the injustice and 
 tyranny of wealth, and dangling before their eyes 
 pictures of impossible millenniums to be ushered in 
 when wealth is equally divided and a dreary uniform- 
 ity of condition is enforced by law. But admitting 
 this to be true, it may still be said that something is 
 wrong. Yes, something ^s wrong. Human nature 
 is wrong— j^st as wrong in the poor man as in the 
 millionaire; and this is precisely the factor that is 
 left out of account by Utopian dreamers who would 
 have us believe that millenniums can be manufac- 
 tured to order simply by changing a man's envi- 
 ronment, although his inner nature is left un- 
 touched and unchanged. But of this we may rest 
 assured, that a society that is morally wrong can 
 never be made right by poHtical machinery. The 
 reform must begin from within. Make the man 
 right, and his social conditions will soon be recti- 
 fled; leave him the slave of his natural selfish- 
 
l8o THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 ness, and every change in his environment will 
 only aggravate the evils they seek to cure. 
 
 There is no more striking proof of the craft and 
 cunning of Satan than the ease with which he sets 
 men to chasing shadows, while the substance lies 
 neglected within their reach. Thus, instead of 
 each man setting himself to improve his own con- 
 ditions and mend his own morals, they start in 
 pursuit of millenniums that they think can be 
 reached without the subjugation of human pas- 
 sions or the cure of human selfishness. What 
 marvel that the chase always ends in disappoint- 
 ment, and is followed by deeper discontent than 
 before? And yet this very discontent has in it an 
 element of hope, for it serves to show that out oi 
 God in Christ there is no rest for the human soul. 
 And it may be that when tariff millenniums, and 
 fiat money millenniums, and single-tax millen- 
 niums, and socialistic millenniums, and looking- 
 backward millenniums shall have vanished like the 
 mirage of the desert, the disappointed and sor- 
 rowing hearts of men may turn wistfully toward 
 that real millennium, foreshadowed in prophecy 
 and in gospel, when society shall be reconstructed 
 because its units have been regenerated, and so- 
 cial conditions shall be equalized because human 
 hearts have been renewed, and righteousness shall 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. l8l 
 
 reign because Christ is enthroned, and the social 
 justice of which men have dreamed, but have seen 
 only in their dreams, shall be found at last in the 
 divine charity that " seeketh not her own." 
 
 What, then, ought to be the attitude of the 
 Church, and what her duty, as she stands on the 
 shore of this ocean of seething unrest? Is it to 
 look on with stolid indifference while the strife 
 becomes more bitter? Is it to stand on the dema- 
 gogue's platform and shout herself hoarse in the 
 teeth of the human hurricane? Has she no oil to 
 cast on the troubled waters, no voice of power 
 to hush the tumult to calm? Has she no mes- 
 sage of help and hope for the "submerged tenth" 
 as they struggle and sink beneath the flood? If 
 not, it were as well to confess at once that the 
 Christianity of to-day is but a shadow of its divine 
 original. But, thank God ! there is no call for a 
 confession so humiliating. The Church has a 
 message to all classes and conditions of men 
 which, if heeded, will solve industrial and social 
 as well as religious problems, and she must not 
 withhold it at a time like this. But her message 
 is too important and her mission too broad to allow 
 her to lean on any party, or to champion any in- 
 dustrial combine among either master or men. 
 Her great need just now is for men who have time 
 
l82 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 and ability to master social problems; who can 
 stand unmoved amid the surgings of human pas- 
 sion and breast the angry waves of popular excite- 
 ments; who amid the clamor for a larger share of 
 the world's wealth fear not to affirm that man can- 
 not live by bread alone, and that to teach the con- 
 trary, as is done by the demagogue and the dream- 
 er, is to deny God and degrade man; that social 
 problems, in their last analysis, are not questions 
 of private wages or public finance, of government 
 groceries or single tax, but the far more difficult 
 question of selfish human nature, so insistent upon 
 what it considers to be its own rights that it has no 
 thought to spare for the rights of others. Above 
 all does the Church need men who can tell out, in 
 *' thoughts that breathe and words that burn," that 
 there is but one way of solving industrial problems 
 and ending industrial disputes, and that is the ac- 
 ceptance, by masters and men alike, of the law of 
 Christ — the golden rule — and its apphcation to the 
 affairs of the countinghouse and the factor}-, as 
 well as to the Church and the home. This is the 
 solution of all problems, the answer to all ques- 
 tions, the prophecy of all the ages, and the only 
 hope of the world. 
 
 Let no one say that this view is Utopian ; that 
 few will listen to it or be influenced by it. It is 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. 183 
 
 true there was a time when the appeal of men 
 everywhere, on every subject touching human 
 welfare in this life, was to Caesar, and there are 
 many still who think that in civil government and 
 its machinery lies the only hope of society; but 
 this trend of thought is changing, and more and 
 more the appeal is to Jesus the Christ. Once it 
 was supposed that his teachings had reference 
 solely to an invisible state, and to mystical experi- 
 ences in an invisible realm, where few could fol- 
 low him with any satisfying assurance of cer- 
 tainty; but now, in regard to the problems of 
 the present life, there is a large and increasing 
 number who are turning Christward, saying, 
 "We know that thou art a teacher come from 
 God " ; and they are joining to swell the cry that 
 may be the watchword of the not distant future, 
 ''Back to Christ!" Still it must be confessed 
 that even in this apparent movement of human 
 thought Christward there lurks a danger of no or- 
 dinary magnitude. There is a tendency among 
 men who are not in the least degree in sympathy 
 with the spirit and laws of the kingdom of God 
 to make Christ a stalking-horse for every new 
 fad and crude theory in social economics. That 
 Christ was a socialist is confidently affirmed by 
 men whose sociahsm has nothing in common with 
 
184 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 the gospel of the kingdom which he proclaimed; 
 and there is scarcely a social iniquity, from divorce 
 to free love and Mormonism, which does not try to 
 pervert his gospel into a seeming acquiescence, or 
 a wild scheme for the reconstruction of society 
 which does not claim to find its justification in 
 some principle which he taught. This stealing of 
 the livery of heaven in which to serve the devil is 
 no new thing under the sun; but the Church of 
 God must plant itself immovably upon this ground, 
 that Christ is man's Leader and Helper in holiness, 
 not his partisan in strife, much less his apologist 
 in wdckedness; that the foundation principles of 
 his kingdom strike at the root of all selfishness and 
 injustice alike in individual character and in social 
 organization, and that before we can claim his in- 
 dorsement or help there must be an absolute sur- 
 render of our opinions to his teachings, of our 
 hearts and lives to his control, and of our plans 
 for the reconstruction of society to the recognized 
 laws of the kingdom of God. 
 
 While holding that the law^s of the divine king- 
 dom regulate, by broad general principles, every- 
 thing that relates to property and to man's social 
 relations, I do not mean that the Church was con- 
 stituted by its Founder a court of arbitration in 
 property or labor disputes. Indeed, the contrary 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. 185 
 
 may be inferred, for when one appealed to the 
 Master, saying, " Bid my brother divide the in- 
 heritance with me,"' the answer was prompt and 
 decisive: ''Who made me a judge or a divider 
 over you?"^ And then, striking at the root of 
 all property and labor disputes, he adds: ''Take 
 heed and keep yourselves from all covetousness: 
 for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of 
 the things which he possesseth."-' Similar condi- 
 tions prevail in the world to-day; for, although the 
 form of the demand has changed, the principle is 
 the same. Once it was, " Bid my brother divide 
 the inheritance with me"; now it is, "Bid my 
 employer divide the profits with me." But if 
 Christ could not be a judge in such matters, nei- 
 ther can his Church, and there are good reasons 
 why it should not attempt it. There are multi- 
 tudes who would be glad to have the Church cast 
 its influence into the scale in the conflict between 
 capital and labor, with a view to obtaining a more 
 equal division, who have not the slightest intention 
 of submitting themselves to the laws of the divine 
 kingdom or of helping to extend its sway. The 
 first duty of the Church is not to judge, but to 
 teach and exemplify those great truths of the 
 
 1 Luke xii. 13. 2 Luke xii. 14. ^ Luke xii, 15. 
 
1 86 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 kingdom of God which end disputes by eradica- 
 ting the covetousness from which they spring. 
 
 Social and industrial problems admit of no solu- 
 tion along the line of mere human enactments so 
 long as the laws of the kingdom of God are disre- 
 garded. Such enactments cannot touch the seat 
 of the mischief, which lies deep in the nature of 
 man. Much less is it possible to solve them by 
 brute force. Such methods only aggravate the 
 passions in which human wrongs have their origin 
 and from which they derive their strength. It 
 follows, therefore, that if the laws of the kingdom 
 of God are to control Christian men in their con- 
 duct toward their fellow-men they can give no 
 countenance to violent strikes or boycottings on 
 the one hand, or to lockouts on the other, as a 
 means of settling labor disputes. The gospel not 
 only forbids all violent and coercive measures, but 
 it equally opposes the enforcement of personal 
 rights and the revenging of injuries. In the king- 
 dom of this world it is not so. There the ruling 
 policy is to enforce personal rights at all hazards ; 
 to return blow for blow; to demand '* an eye for 
 an eye, a tooth for a tooth " ; to seize the default- 
 ing servant by the throat with an imperative " Pay 
 me that thou owest " ; and if he will not or cannot 
 pay, then to inflict as much punishment upon him 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. 187 
 
 as the laws of the kingdom of this world will al- 
 low. But Jesus teaches the very reverse of all 
 this, and hence to bring the laws of both king- 
 doms to bear in the settlement of labor disputes 
 is a simple impossibiUty. The disputants must 
 choose between the two; and as human laws have 
 not yet ended the strife between capital and labor, 
 but rather have aggravated its bitterness, it would 
 now seem to be in order to try the other method. 
 
 At a mass meeting composed chiefly of work- 
 ing people, I heard a female speaker begin her ad- 
 dress with the words : "Has labor rightsf has labor 
 wrongs? ' ' Of course both questions were answered 
 in the affirmative, and I have no disposition to 
 quarrel with the answer. It is quite true that labor 
 has rights, and it may be equally true that labor 
 has wrongs, and all Christian men should lend a 
 hand to concede the one and redress the other. 
 But the speaker did not go far enough. She 
 should have asked the further questions, " Has 
 labor duties? has labor responsibilities?'' and she 
 should have been brave enough to say that, un- 
 less labor tries honestly to perform its duties and 
 meet its social responsibilities, it cannot with so 
 good a grace demand concession of rights or re- 
 dress of wrongs. Then she might have added that 
 some of the wrongs from which labor suffers are 
 
l88 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 self-inflicted, at least in part, and that so long as la- 
 bor makes little or no effort to free itself of ills that 
 are real and curable it cannot well complain if socie- 
 ty at large does not grow enthusiastic over wrongs 
 that are half imaginary. Still further it should be 
 said that this is not wholly a one-sided question. 
 Capital has its rights (and possibly its wrongs) as 
 well as labor, and this should be remembered in 
 all attempts to adjust their mutual relations. 
 
 Recognizing the existence of widespread social 
 discontent, we should not shut our eyes to the fact 
 that it is by no means universal, even among the 
 wage-earning class. It is found chiefly in the cities, 
 rarely in the country towns ; and it should not be 
 forgotten that in nearly all great social and po- 
 litical movements it is the country vote that tells. 
 As a recent writer has tersely expressed it, "the 
 provinces are not yet prepared to upset the present 
 industrial scheme on the chance that a few des- 
 perate agitators, with a smattering of knowledge, 
 backed by an intrepid vanity, may instantly pro- 
 vide a better. ' ' ^ Recent politico-social movements 
 in some of the western states of the American re- 
 public may seem to contradict this view, but as the 
 same writer remarks, "there is a very common 
 
 ^Octave Thanet, in Forum, October, 1894, p. 204. 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. I Op 
 
 belief that the West is in a sullen revolt against the 
 present, and willing to turn its hand to any vagary 
 in finance or sociology. But this is true not of 
 the West, but only of limited portions of the 
 West " ; ^ and w^here it does obtain it has been due 
 not to labor disputes, but to agricultural depression 
 and exceptional financial conditions. As a rule, the 
 social agitator and the walking delegate have little 
 chance with the workmen in country towns. The 
 latter, very often, are men who have saved some- 
 thing, own their own homes perhaps, have a stake 
 in the community; and if they are industrious and 
 sober, are respected accordingly. They are re- 
 garded as men and as citizens — influential mem- 
 bers of the body politic; whereas workingmen 
 who mass themselves in great cities are in danger 
 of sinking into the position of mere cogs in an in- 
 dustrial machine, to be manipulated by the politi- 
 cian and the demagogue for their own selfish ends. 
 While labor in many of the great cities is in a con- 
 dition of seething unrest, its condition in country 
 towns is not inaptly represented by the replies of 
 two mechanics in an Iowa town during the great 
 railway strike. The remark was made : " You have 
 not struck, I see." *' Struck?'' replied one of 
 
 1 Octave Thane4;,,in iF(^r.v;;/, October, 1894, p. 204. 
 
IpO THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 them. '*I guess it would be like hunting for a 
 needle in a haystack to find a man who has struck 
 in this town. We ain't that kind of fools." 
 When it was suggested that there were not many 
 union men in the place, another mechanic replied: 
 '' I guess that's right; but all the same there's not 
 a town in the country where more workingmen 
 own their own houses or where there's more work- 
 ingmen's money in the savings bank or invested 
 in shares in factories.'' When similar results can 
 be shown in places where trades unionism is in 
 the ascendant, it will do more to attract and hold 
 the sympathy of thoughtful citizens than a hundred 
 strikes, with their attendant miseries, ordered by 
 some irresponsible labor autocrat. 
 
 All discontent should not be denounced as 
 though it were evil and only evil. There is a kind 
 of discontent which is a necessar}^ condition of all 
 progress. People who are perfectl}^ contented 
 with their circumstances, their attainments, their 
 prospects, will never advance a hair's breadth, so- 
 cially or otherwise. Then there is another kind 
 which springs from the perversit}^ of human na- 
 ture, and this is precisely the kind which neither 
 social nor political revolutions nor change of cir- 
 cumstances can ever cure. If all its desire were 
 granted to-day, it would be as clamorous as ever 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. I9I 
 
 over some new grievance to-morrow. But there is 
 still another kind of discontent — or let us say, dis- 
 satisfaction — found chiefly among various classes 
 of wage-earners, with which every Christian man 
 must sympathize where the alleged causes really 
 exist, and it has reference to such things as these: 
 uncertainty of employment, or difficulty of obtain- 
 ing it; insufficient pay and, as a consequence, in- 
 sufficient food, clothing, and shelter; a very un- 
 equal share of life's comforts; and no leisure nor 
 means for improvement or recreation. Put into 
 other words, the discontent among the industrial 
 classes voices itself in the demand for (i) steady 
 employment, (2) shorter hours, (3) better pay; 
 and each of these demands is deserving of serious 
 and sympathetic consideration. But as the first 
 demand belongs to the problem of poverty, and 
 has been discussed in that connection, we may 
 confine our observations to the other two. 
 
 Whether a demand for shorter hours is just or 
 not may depend upon a variety of considerations. 
 The number of hours which is supposed to consti- 
 tute a working day is not the same in all places or 
 in all kinds of labor. As a rule, it is the unskilled 
 laborer that has to work the* longest hours for the 
 smallest pay ; and this in turn is due to the fact that 
 almost everywhere, but especially in the cities, the 
 
192 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 supply of unskilled or low-skilled labor is largely 
 in excess of the demand. As we ascend the scale, 
 the higher the skill required the shorter the hours 
 or the better the pay — one or both. Then again the 
 nature of the work to be done should have some- 
 thing to do in determining the hours. Some kinds of 
 labor are exceedingly fatiguing, and the expendi- 
 ture of vital force is very great; others again are 
 unhealthy, and have to be carried on amid un- 
 healthy surroundings. In all these the hours of 
 consecutive work should be brought within narrow 
 limits. Where work is light and healthful, hours 
 may be extended without injury as far as the phys- 
 ical condition of the worker is concerned, but even 
 here there should be a reasonable limit. In deter- 
 mining what is a reasonable limit there is difficulty 
 on both sides. There are employers who will ex- 
 act all the hours to which workmen can be com- 
 pelled to submit; and workmen who will give just 
 as few hours as the employer can be induced to 
 accept. The gospel law, if allowed to prevail, 
 would correct all this; for then the employer and 
 the workman, instead of considering how they can 
 outwit and take advantage of each other, will con- 
 sider how they can best help each other and pro- 
 mote each other's interests, and this would quick- 
 ly result in an adjustment respecting both hours 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. I93 
 
 and wages that would go far to end disputes. The 
 real trouble is that the whole industrial system un- 
 der present conditions is carried forward on a war 
 footing, and the best that seems practicable is an 
 armed truce between employers and employed that 
 at any moment may end in fresh hostilities. In 
 this contest perhaps neither party is entirely to 
 blame. ** No man," says Carlyle, ''at bottom 
 means injustice ; it is always for some obscure dis- 
 torted image of a right that he contends; an ob- 
 scure image diffracted, exaggerated in the wonder- 
 fulest way, by natural dimness and selfishness, 
 getting tenfold more diffracted by exasperation of 
 contest, . . . yet still the image of a right." 
 
 The demand for better pay, like that for shorter 
 hours, cannot be settled by an i^se dixit, but must 
 be judged, to some extent at least, by circum- 
 stances. ''A fair day's wage for a fair day's 
 work " sounds well, but after all it is only a very 
 inconclusive truism, the force of which depends 
 on the answer to two other questions, namely, 
 What is a fair day's wage ? and What is a fair day's 
 work? Waiving, for the present, a specific answer 
 to these two difficult questions, it may be said in 
 general terms that the prevailing rate of wages, 
 in most branches of productive industry, does not 
 
 represent a fair return for the labor bestowed. It 
 13 
 
194 ^^^ KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 is beyond dispute that within the last hundred 
 years the world's wealth, or rather the wealth of 
 Christian nations, so called, has gone up by leaps 
 and bounds; but the condition of skilled labor — 
 one of the chief factors in producing this increased 
 wealth — shows only moderate improvement; the 
 condition of unskilled labor, little improvement at 
 all; while the condition of the very poor is rela- 
 tively worse than before. In other words, the re- 
 sult, thus far, of the present industrial system has 
 been a fabulous increase of wealth at one end of 
 the social scale, with grinding poverty and untold 
 suffering at the other; and with such a tremen- 
 dous object lesson before us, one has no difficulty 
 in reaching the conclusion that in the distribution 
 of the world's rapidly growing wealth capital has 
 received far more than its equitable share, and 
 labor far less. Now while there is nothing in 
 the ethical code of the New Testament requir- 
 ing an equal division of profits as between em- 
 ployer and employed, there is much in that code 
 as to how wealth should be used by those into 
 whose hands it may fall; and even an ordinary 
 conception of what is just and right as between 
 man and man should be sufficient to show that the 
 first duty of the man who is growing rich on the 
 products of labor is to see that an equitable share 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. I95 
 
 is assigned to those out of whose labor his profits 
 have chiefly been made. Self-interest, to speak 
 of no higher motive, should dictate this course; for 
 ** it is admitted by every economist of note that un- 
 derpayment of labor results at once in inefficient 
 labor and in diminished power of production." ^ 
 
 While adhering firmly to the proposition that the 
 social ethics of the New Testament alone can solve 
 the industrial problems of the times, it would be 
 unwise to expect a sudden and universal accept- 
 ance of that code as the basis of industrial relations 
 throughout the world. The kingdom of God ig 
 like the seed that groweth secretly, or the leaven 
 that works silently and unobserved in the meal; 
 and we must look for its gradual extension rather 
 than for some swift and sudden transformation of 
 society. But in the meantime much may be done 
 to lead men to test the ethics of the gospel in the 
 conduct of business affairs ; and if it should be 
 found, as undoubtedly will be the case, that they 
 furnish an infinitely better basis than the selfish 
 maxim of the laissez faire school of economists for 
 the adjustment of human relations, the way will 
 then be open for their universal acceptance and 
 application. There are certain principles that 
 
 lA. Scott Matheson, 
 
lg6 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 might and should be apphed forthwith. First of 
 all, both capital and labor should assume — and act 
 upon the assumption — that so long as their attitude 
 is one of mutual and bitter antagonism there can be 
 no equitable settlement of labor disputes. Interna- 
 tional wars are often as disastrous to the victors as 
 to the vanquished, and industrial wars are always 
 so. The parties in this dispute must learn to rid 
 themselves of that spirit of distrust and suspicion 
 which only embitters strife and makes amicable re- 
 lations impossible. Mutual good will can settle 
 many things, but mutual antagonism can settle 
 nothing. And as capital has an immense advan- 
 tage in labor disputes because it controls the means 
 of production, it can well afford to be magnani- 
 mous, to make the first advances, to offer to la- 
 bor a more equitable share of the wealth which the 
 latter helps to produce. 
 
 If a question should arise as to how this can 
 best be done, I confess I see no better way at 
 present than by the adoption, in most forms of 
 productive industry, of the principle and practice 
 of profit-sharing. This is no new thing. More 
 than fifty years ago the experiment was tried in 
 France by a single house, and so satisfactory were 
 the results that the example set by Leclaire, of 
 Paris, was followed in many other places; and be- 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. 197 
 
 fore the end of 1880 upward of fifty industrial es- 
 tablishments in France, Alsace, and Switzerland 
 alone were working on similar lines. Methods 
 differ in different houses, especially in regard to 
 details, but the underlying principle is the same, 
 namely, that each permanent employee shall par- 
 ticipate in a fixed part of the net profits of the 
 business in proportion to what he receives as 
 wages. I am unable to say to what extent the 
 principle has been tried in England, but in the 
 United States, three years ago, some ten thousand 
 workmen were sharing the profits of the several 
 industries in which they were engaged. In some 
 cases, it must be confessed, the attem'pts were not 
 successful; but the failures were due to unfavor- 
 able circumstances, or to lack of intelligent zeal in 
 working out the system. All enterprises are not 
 equally adapted to the process of profit-sharing, 
 but experience has proved that the principle is ca- 
 pable of very wide application, and can be carried 
 out to the mutual advantage of employers and em- 
 ployed. The best results are more easily attained 
 in large establishments with a numerous staff, 
 where participation in profits is only a nucleus 
 for a wider circle of agencies having reference to 
 the social, sanitary, educational, moral, and reli- 
 gious well-being of all the participants, and where 
 
198 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 the profit-sharing itself is upon a basis that pro- 
 motes thrift, independence, self-respect, and pru^ 
 dent provision for the time of sickness or old age. 
 The advantages of such a system, wisely admin- 
 istered, are obvious and manifold. At the very 
 outset it would go a long way toward removing 
 that sense of injustice, whether well founded or 
 not, which now embitters the feelings of so many 
 workmen against their employers; it would place 
 in a new light the relations of employer and em- 
 ployed, for the former would no longer be regard- 
 ed a hard taskmaster, intent only on his own in- 
 terests, and the latter would be something more 
 than a bond servant, rendering unwilling service 
 for a price that he considers below his value, but 
 both would be partners in one great enterprise, 
 where success means a real advantage to both, 
 and where the highest success can be reached 
 only through cordial cooperation. Such a system 
 would reduce to a minimum losses caused by 
 waste of time or material, or by defective work- 
 manship; for every workman, being in a sense a 
 partner in the concern, will quickly learn that to 
 guard his own interests he must guard against loss 
 of every kind; and this will lead to a perception 
 of the further truth that his own interests and 
 those of his employer are identical. Such a sys- 
 
LABOR DISPUTES. I99 
 
 tem would raise the character of the workmen, 
 partly by imposing a new sense of responsibility, 
 and partly by its tendency to weed out the indo- 
 lent and the dishonest, and to relegate the ineffi- 
 cient to a lower grade of service, with poorer pay. 
 The educational effect would be incalculable when 
 it was found that it does not pay to employ ineffi- 
 cient workmen, even at lower wages, and that the 
 way to well-paid work is open only to the skillful, 
 the honest, and the efficient. Such a system would 
 increase the productiveness of labor and improve 
 the quality of what is produced, for it stands to 
 reason that he who puts his heart into his task be- 
 cause he shares in the benefits will do more and 
 better work than he who can look for no reward 
 beyond his weekly wage. Above all, it will be a 
 step, a long step, in the direction of improved 
 social conditions for those by whom the w^orld's 
 work is done, and a prophecy of the coming time 
 when all strife and contention shall cease because 
 the causes of strife have been eliminated, and in- 
 stead of mutual suspicion and antagonism between 
 employer and employed there shall be mutual 
 sympathy and confidence. 
 
 It would be very unwise to suppose that such a 
 change in our industrial system can be brought 
 about in a day. Selfishness, cupidity, and the 
 
200 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 jealousies resulting from embittered contests will 
 be arrayed against it. Prophets of evil will pre- 
 dict disaster ; business rivals will denounce a meth- 
 od which they are unwilhng to adopt; while so- 
 cial agitators will antagonize a movement which, 
 if successful, would reduce their influence to zero, 
 and compel them to find some better employment. 
 Worst of all, not a few of the very class who are 
 most to be benefited will be hard to convince, and 
 will attribute all kinds of sinister motives to the 
 man who proposes so unusual a scheme as that of 
 voluntarily sharing his profits with his workmen.^ 
 But patience and perseverance will overcome all 
 these obstacles, and when at last the goal is won — 
 when industrial peace takes the place of angry 
 strife, and "good will toward men" becomes the 
 ruling principle in business affairs — no Christian 
 man will regret the sacrifice by which the results 
 were accomplished, but with a thankful heart will 
 exultingly exclaim, "The kingdom of heaven is 
 at hand!" 
 
 1 When Leclaire, of Paris, first proposed his method of profit- 
 sharing, a section of his workmen, supported by a newspaper, 
 assumed a hostile attitude, and he was accused of seeking to 
 reduce wages. It was only by the first actual distribution of 
 profits that he succeeded in convincing the workmen of the 
 honesty of his intention. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 THE STABILITY, PERPETUITY, AND FI- 
 NAL CONSUMMATION OF THE 
 KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 (201) 
 
"His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion 
 is from generation to generation." (Dan. iv. 3.) 
 
 "The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our 
 Lord, and of his Christ: and he shall reign forever and ever." 
 (Rev. xi. 15.) 
 
 " My purpose is ... to indicate a little more definitelj^ what 
 the results of such an obedience as I have proposed will be in 
 what we are accustomed to think of as the distinctly Christian 
 field — that is, what will ensue when men who call themselves 
 Christians begin seriously to accept and really to obey the 
 plain commandments of the historical personage, Jesus of 
 Nazareth; commandments which, hitherto, we have been sat- 
 isfied to quote with appropriately pious unction, and dismiss 
 with religious alacrity." (Rev. William Bayard Hale, "The 
 New Obedience," p. 19.) 
 
 "My hope for the future is in the ideal of Christ. My hope 
 for man is a more perfect and complete embodiment of the 
 Christian religion. When I look abroad and see the disin- 
 tegrative agencies that are hard at work., the one thing I am 
 anxious to dp is to bring the great constructive . . . principles 
 of our Christian faith into relation with life and action. Every 
 Christian principle embodied in law or society, every Christian 
 deed accomplished in industry, helps on the happier time." 
 (Principal Fairbairn, " Religion in History and in Modern 
 Life," p. 260.) 
 (202) 
 
VI. 
 
 PRELUDE.— SOCIALISM THE WORLD'S COUNTER- 
 FEIT OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 A N old Puritan divine is credited with the re- 
 '**■ mark that " whenever the Almighty sets up 
 his Church in a place, the devil is sure to set 
 up his chapel beside it." In other words, evil 
 does its work by counterfeiting something that is 
 good rather than by showing itself in its own 
 colors. Paul, describing this process, tells how 
 ** Satan fashioneth himself into an angel of light," 
 and warns us to expect that his ministers may do 
 the same. Thus bigotry and intolerance masquer- 
 ade in the garments of religious zeal; uncharita- 
 bleness and evil speaking are defended as fidelity 
 to truth ; the partisan wears the mask of the pa- 
 triot while exploiting his country for his own ad- 
 vantage; false Christs go forth into the world 
 claiming the homage which belongs to the true 
 Christ; science offers itself as a substitute for rev- 
 elation, and reason usurps the place of faith; in- 
 stead of *'the city which hath the foundations," 
 we are pointed to airy places in the cloudland of 
 
 some social Utopia, and the advent of democratic 
 
 (203) 
 
204 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 socialism is heralded as the world's real millenni- 
 um, instead of the reign of the kingdom of God. 
 
 But before conceding so large a claim it may be 
 well to ascertain, if we can, just what socialism 
 is, what it proposes to do, and by what means it 
 expects to accomplish its purpose. This is by 
 no means an easy task. The question, What is 
 socialism? is one which vast numbers who call 
 themselves socialists cannot answer, and of which 
 many of its advocates have only a vague and con- 
 fused notion. The fact is, there is socialism and 
 socialism, and the word does not always mean the 
 same thing. Used in its widest sense, the word 
 might include almost every social movement of 
 which history gives us any account, from the mild- 
 est form of voluntary communism to the most rad- 
 ical form of compulsory State socialism. But in 
 this discussion we must define the term more care- 
 fully, and restrict its meaning within much narrow- 
 er limits. Professor Janet touches the root of the 
 matter when he says: *'We call socialism every 
 doctrine which teaches that the State has a right to 
 correct the inequality of wealth which exists among 
 men, and to legally establish the balance by taking 
 from those who have too much in order to give to 
 those who have not enough, and that in a perma- 
 nent manner, and not in such and such a partic- 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 205 . 
 
 ular case — a famine, for instance, a public calam- 
 ity, etc." ' 
 
 Laveleye expresses himself on similar lines . ' ' In 
 the first place," he remarks, "every sociaHstic 
 doctrine aims at introducing greater equality in so- 
 cial conditions; and in the second place, at reali- 
 zing those reforms by the law of the State. ' ' ^ What 
 we have in mind is the socialism that has made 
 such headway on the continent of Europe, espe- 
 cially in Germany, the most distinguished advo- 
 cate and representative of which is the late Karl 
 Marx. 
 
 Sociahsm of the type just referred to aims at a 
 complete transformation of the present industrial 
 system. Private capital is to be replaced by col- 
 lective capital, and there is to be common owner- 
 ship of all the means of production. This would 
 abohsh at a stroke the present competitive system. 
 Private business and enterprise would cease. All 
 productive labor would be equipped out of collect- 
 ive capital, on the basis of the collective owner- 
 ship of all working materials of labor, and both 
 production and distribution would be controlled 
 and directed by persons in the receipt of salaries. 
 All private profits would cease, and wages, as at 
 
 1 Quoted by T Kirkup in Introduction to "A History of So- 
 cialism." 
 
206 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 present understood, would no longer be paid, but 
 each workman would receive a share of the prod- 
 ucts in proportion to the social value of his labor. 
 This principle would extend to those who are not 
 producers, but who render useful service of other 
 kinds to the community, such as judges, doctors, 
 public officials, teachers, scientific investigators, and 
 the like. These statements supply only a meager 
 outline of the vast revolutionary scheme of modern 
 socialism, but they suffice to show that for its real- 
 ization society wdll require an organization as com- 
 plete and a discipline as absolute as that of an army 
 in the field ; and unless the system is to degenerate 
 into an utter despotism, and labor be exploited 
 worse than before, this industrial army must be 
 officered through all its camps by men of not only 
 transcendent ability, but of absolutely incorrupt- 
 ible integrity, with an unselfishness of aim and a 
 readiness of self-sacrifice never yet witnessed save 
 in Jesus the Christ and in those men and w^omen 
 who have follow^ed closely in his footsteps. 
 
 It is a well-known fact that in society, as at pres- 
 ent constituted, the chief difficulty is to find men of 
 sufficient capacity to organize and direct vast indus- 
 trial movements; of sufficient integrity to be in- 
 trusted with large financial interests; of such un- 
 doubted ability and such lofty patriotism that to 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 207 
 
 them can be committed, without fear, the gravest 
 affairs of State. Industrial and financial corpora- 
 tions are eagerly looking for such men, and when 
 one is found they are willing to pay a very large 
 price to secure his services ; while in public affairs 
 any nation that found itself in possession of a group 
 of men of exceptional sagacity and incorruptible 
 integrity to whom it might safely intrust its desti- 
 nies would consider itself happy and favored be- 
 yond all other nations in the world. Now social- 
 ism, as I understand it, expects to accomphsh all 
 this, on an infinitely larger scale, while systematic- 
 ally repressing the chief incentives to the highest 
 endeavor by aboHshing the rewards which, under 
 the present industrial system, are the sure harvest of 
 success. It expects to find men who can organize 
 and direct schemes so vast and complicated that 
 the most gigantic enterprises of the present system 
 are dwarfed by comparison ; who can exercise au- 
 tocratic power without abusing it; and who can 
 have unlimited opportunities for peculation with- 
 out falHng into the snare. And these men of 
 transcendent ability, of impartial justice, of unim- 
 peachable honesty, must be found in the ranks of 
 the present captains of industry whom socialistic 
 agitators are never weary of denouncing as tyrants 
 and robbers of the worst type. 
 
208 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 Considering the diverse views of many social- 
 istic writers, and the vague notions entertained by 
 others, it is quite likely that some will take excep- 
 tion to my statements as an unfair representation of 
 the principles and aims of socialism. The fact is 
 that thus far the leaders of socialism have been 
 very reticent, as Dr. Schaffle observes, in an- 
 nouncing a definite or positive programme.^ As 
 a rule they content themselves, and very wisely 
 so, with assailing the present industrial and social 
 systems, which are fairly open to attack in many 
 directions. Unlike Christianity, socialism has no 
 " sacred books " to which inquisitive critics might 
 be referred as containing an authoritative state- 
 ment of its principles; and we can only infer from 
 the writings of recognized leaders what the new 
 system will be and do. Still, those who are fa- 
 miliar with the theories propounded by leading 
 thinkers in the socialistic ranks will not regard 
 my statements as overdrawn. 
 
 But how does socialism propose ultimately to 
 bring about this great industrial revolution? The 
 answer is plain: By a system of wholesale confis- 
 cation; or, to use the euphemistic term of the 
 
 ^The student of socialistic literature will readily recognize 
 the author's indebtedness to Dr. Schaffle in some parts of this 
 prelude. 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 2O9 
 
 socialists, by "expropriation." Under the new 
 regime, " society," or the " State," is to take pos- 
 session — peaceably if it can, forcibly if it must — of 
 all the means and materials of production, such as 
 land, buildings, manufactories, tools, machinery, 
 raw materials, and the like; not necessarily with- 
 out compensation, but the compensation, if any, 
 would be in the form of barter — in food supplies, 
 clothing, furniture, or even articles of luxury, but 
 nothing that could be converted into capital, or 
 used as such. This, at least, is what the more 
 liberal-minded socialists propose ; but whether it 
 will or can be carried out when socialism comes to 
 its own, is quite another question. Marx under- 
 takes to show how the capitalistic system grew out 
 of the destruction of small ownerships, in which 
 the workman was owner of his tools and of the 
 produce of his work. When this has been large- 
 ly accomplished then the great capitalist attacks 
 the smaller, creating vast monopolies, the result 
 of which is affirmed to be "a growing mass of 
 misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploita- 
 tion." But along with this there is springing up an 
 organization of labor and a revolt of the working 
 class against existing conditions, and when this has 
 reached a certain stage then " the knell of cap- 
 italist property sounds. The expropriators are the 
 14 
 
2IO THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 expropriated." "In the former case," he adds, 
 " we had the expropriation of the masses of the 
 people by a few usurpers ; in the latter we have 
 the expropriation of a few usurpers by the masses 
 of the people." ' The morality of all this seems to 
 be that when the many take property from the few 
 without their consent, and possibly without com- 
 pensation, it is a virtue; but when the few obtain 
 property from the many, even by fair exchange, it 
 is a crime. In other words, the accumulation of 
 individuals, no matter how obtained, is criminal, 
 but the forcible expropriation of such wealth by 
 the State is not. LawTence Gronlund, a socialist 
 of the Marx school, puts the case in its baldest 
 form thus: " Every millionaire is a criminal. Ev- 
 ery one who amasses a hundred thousand dollars 
 is a criminal. Every one who loans his neighbor 
 one hundred dollars, and exacts one hundred and 
 six in return, is a criminal." ^ 
 
 This is sufficiently plain ; and the same writer, ** in 
 the course of a conjectural discussion of the ways 
 in which socialism may be realized," does not 
 seem to object altogether to dynamite as a last re- 
 sort.^ 
 
 1 Karl Marx, " Das Kapital," concluding chapter. 
 
 2 Quoted by Dr. Gladden, "Applied Christianity," p. 83. 
 ^ Ibid., p. 74. 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 211 
 
 But what place are Christianity and Christian 
 ethics to occupy in the sociahstic scheme of the fu- 
 ture ? As far as I can understand it, they will have 
 no place at all, if the more pronounced socialists 
 can have their way. Undoubtedly Dr. Schaffle is 
 right in saying that '* socialism of the present day 
 is out and out irreligious, and hostile to the Church. 
 It says that the Church is only a police institution 
 for upholding capital, and that it deceives the com- 
 mon people with a ' check payable in heaven ' ; 
 that the Church deserves to perish." ^ 
 
 If this be so, we may safely conclude that when 
 socialism sweeps away private capital it will sweep 
 away, if it can, what it seems to regard as the chief 
 buttress of private capital. Nor will the ethics of 
 Christianity fare much better if Mr. Gronlund, 
 whom I have already quoted, may be taken as a 
 representative of socialistic views. " Children," 
 he tells us, *'do not belong to their parents; they 
 belong to society." And again: *' In the very na- 
 ture of things family supremacy will be absolute- 
 ly incompatible with an interdependent, solidaric 
 commonwealth, for in such a state the first object 
 of education must be to establish in the minds of 
 the children an indissoluble association between 
 
 1 " Quintessence of Socialism," Humboldt Library ed., p. 85. 
 
212 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 their individual happiness and the good of all. To 
 that end family exclusiveness must be broken down 
 first of all." ^ Now whatever be the political unit of 
 the nation, the family is the social unit, and what- 
 ever assails the sacredness and integrity of the 
 home is antichristian — an undisguised foe of so- 
 ciety as well as of the kingdom of God. 
 
 While socialism and the kingdom of God rest 
 upon widely different foundations, and pursue their 
 ends by different means, the results aimed at are, to 
 some extent at least, the same — namely, an era of 
 universal brotherhood, the improvement of social 
 conditions, the reign of social justice and good wiW; 
 in a word, they both aim — professedly at least — at 
 bringing about an ideal condition of society, in 
 which oppression and injustice, and the poverty 
 which causes suffering, shall cease to be. But 
 Christianity proposes something which finds no 
 place in the programme of socialism, but which is 
 an essential factor in securing the results aimed 
 at, namely, the regeneration of the individual. 
 Socialism seeks certain results of Christianity, but 
 repudiates its process. It seeks the temporal ben- 
 efits of Christianity, but spurns its ethical teaching 
 and will not submit to its discipline. It demands 
 
 1 Qvioted by Dr. Gladden, "Applied Christianity," p. 85. 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 213 
 
 social justice, but repudiates moral righteousness. 
 It claims unlimited rights, but seems to recognize 
 no corresponding obligations. It proceeds upon 
 the principle of '' what is yours is mine, and what 
 is mine is my own." Try to disguise it as they 
 may, the foundation of political socialism is self- 
 ishness. 
 
 There are three great social agencies at work in 
 the world to-day — namely, anarchism, socialism, 
 and Christianity. Anarchism is uncontrolled in- 
 dividualism running amuck through society, its 
 spirit destructive, its outcome savagery. Secular 
 socialism is democracy lashing itself into fury; 
 Demos without a master, liable, when a favorable 
 moment comes, to repeat the history to which Ten- 
 nyson refers, when " Celtic Demos rose a demon, 
 shrieked, and slaked the light with blood." ^ Chris- 
 tianity is society organizing itself on a basis of 
 righteousness and good will, the friend of all, the 
 enemy of none. Anarchism proposes to abolish 
 society by violence, and to introduce a social chaos 
 wherein every man shall do only what is right in 
 his own eyes. Socialism proposes to reconstruct 
 society by a wholesale expropriation, and to intro- 
 duce a system which must inevitably end in social 
 
 1 " Sixty Years After," st. 45. 
 
214 ^^^ KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 despotism. Christianity proposes to regenerate 
 society by a mighty spiritual force, and to intro- 
 duce the era of universal brotherhood by a radical 
 change in man himself, and not merely in his en- 
 vironment. Anarchists of the pronounced type 
 are not mistaken raen to be reasoned with, nor or- 
 dinary criminals to be restrained ; they are danger- 
 ous madmen whom society should not suffer to be 
 at large. Socialists of the pronounced type are, 
 for the most part, mischievous agitators, stirring 
 up selfish passions which they cannot allay, and 
 leading the mob they know not whither, in chase 
 of shadows that can never be grasped. Christians, 
 no matter how pronounced, m^ay sometimes be un- 
 wise, and even the best of them may come short of 
 their own ideal, but while they are true to the laws 
 of the kingdom of God they can work no ill to so- 
 ciety, but only good. 
 
 When I speak of sociahsm as the world's coun- 
 terfeit of the kingdom of God, I mean chiefly that 
 form of socialism which is secular, materialistic, 
 and, in its logical outcome, atheistic. This is the 
 socialism with which Christianity will have to reck- 
 on in the near future. It dominates the movement 
 in Europe, and to a large extent in America. I 
 am well aware that there are men who are called — ■■ 
 or who call themselves — socialists, but who have 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. ' 215 
 
 taken the disease in a mild form, who would re- 
 pudiate, on their own behalf at least, the statement 
 just made ; but careful observers of modern tend- 
 encies know that what I say is true. That there 
 is a measure of truth underlying the arguments of 
 democratic socialism I do not deny. If it were all 
 false, it could do nothing, for unmixed falsehood 
 can make no permanent headway. It is because 
 of the truth that is in it that socialism is able to 
 counterfeit the kingdom of God. But, as Joseph 
 Cook said of spiritism, the truth is like a jewel 
 in a toad's head: the jewel is very small, and the 
 toad is very large and very slimy. 
 
 While socialism announces some objects which 
 are in line with Christian teaching, its methods, 
 for the most part, are antichristian. Anarchism 
 teaches that society is nothing and the individual is 
 everything; socialism teaches that the individual 
 is nothing and society is everything; Christ teach- 
 es that both are of infinite value, but that the high- 
 est good of society can be secured only by regen- 
 erating and saving the individual, so that in turn 
 he may contribute to the regeneration of society. 
 Socialism proposes to take forcible possession of 
 all the means of production, and to divide the 
 products on the basis of labor; Christ proposes to 
 take possession of nothing, save the human heart, 
 
2l6 THE KINGDO.^I OF GOD. 
 
 and to divide nothing; but lays down the principle 
 that each man's possessions are a personal trust to 
 be administered as conscience and Providence may 
 direct. Socialism., by its doctrine of state pater- 
 nalism, subverts the principle of self-help, and 
 leads men to depend upon others rather than upon 
 their own exertions; Christ teaches his followers 
 to labor with all diligence so that they may have to 
 give to him that needeth.i Socialism prohibits 
 freedom of acquisition by removing its chief incen- 
 tive ; Christ places no arbitrary limit, provided all 
 accumulations be held as a trust and so adminis- 
 tered. Socialism would rem^ove inequalities of con- 
 dition by the hatred of the poor against the rich; 
 Christ would correct them by teaching the rich to 
 love and help the poor. 
 
 In points like these and a hundred more the dif- 
 ference between the two systems appears, and 
 should convince every thoughtful Christian that 
 secular socialism is the irreconcilable foe of the 
 kingdom of God. How dangerous this foe may 
 become only time can tell, but I sometimes think 
 that perhaps prophecy may yet receive its most 
 startling fulfillment along this line. Listen to this 
 from the second chapter of Second Thessalonians: 
 
 lActs XX. 35; Ephesians iv. 28. 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 21'J 
 
 *' Now we beseech you, brethren, touching the 
 coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gather- 
 ing together unto him; to the end that ye be not 
 quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, 
 either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as from 
 us, as that the day of the Lord is no2f present; let 
 no man beguile you in anywise, for il will not be, 
 except the falling away come first, and the man of 
 sin be revealed, the son of perdition, he that op- 
 poseth and exalteth himself against all that is called 
 God or that is worshiped, so that he sitteth in the 
 temple of God, setting himself forth as God. . . . 
 For the mystery of lawlessness doth already work : 
 only there is one that restraineth now, until he be 
 taken out of the way. And then shall be revealed 
 the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay 
 with the breath of his mouth, and bring to naught 
 by the manifestation of his coming ; even he, whose 
 coming is according to the working of Satan with 
 all signs and lying wonders, and with all deceit of 
 unrighteousness for them that are perishing; be- 
 cause they received not the love of the truth, that 
 they might be saved." 
 
 Whether this will receive its full accomplishment 
 in the logical developments of atheistic socialism the 
 future must reveal. Meanwhile, " he that hath 
 ears to hear, let him hear." 
 
2l8 THE KINGDOxM OF GOD. 
 
 LECTURE VI.— THE STABILITY, PERPETUITT, 
 
 AND FINAL CONSUMMATION OF THE 
 
 KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 The history of astronomical discovery presents 
 some of the most wonderful triumphs of the human 
 intellect to be found in the whole range of scien- 
 tific investigations. The problems encountered 
 were so intricate, the conditions so complex, the ob- 
 jects to be examined so distant, their movements 
 so shrouded, their reciprocal influence so myste- 
 rious, that one could not wonder if the task had 
 been abandoned in despair. But a healthy human 
 mind is so constituted that difficulties only brace 
 it for more resolute effort, and a course of investi- 
 gation once begun is continued with a tenacity of 
 purpose that knows not the meaning of defeat, but 
 is pursued century after century, if need be, till vic- 
 tory crown its endeavors. In early ages the inves- 
 tigator had to make his way, slowly and laborious- 
 ly, through a labyrinth of isolated and seemingly 
 conflicting phenomena, without the aid of those 
 appliances which now render observation compar- 
 atively easy; but when at length his patience and 
 devotion were rewarded by the discovery of the 
 great laws of motion and universal gravitation, as- 
 tronomy was at once elevated to the dignity of a 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 219 
 
 science, and the pathway for future investigators 
 was made plain. 
 
 But the path, though plain, was by no means 
 easy. While each step of progress marked the 
 passage of barriers that once seemed to be insur- 
 mountable, new problems of still greater complex- 
 ity were constantly arising, and difficulties in- 
 creased in almost geometrical ratio. But former 
 triumphs stimulated to fresh endeavor, and the hu- 
 man mind rose to meet each new emergency with 
 an undaunted courage that gave assurance of suc- 
 cess. When observing the motions of a sun and 
 a single planet, or of a planet and its satellite, the 
 problem^s awaiting solution were comparatively 
 simple ; but with the discovery of each additional 
 planet, satellite, or even asteroid, the complexity 
 of the problem w'as greatly increased. For it had 
 already been demonstrated that these bodies were 
 not isolated orbs, but a famil}" of worlds, each re- 
 ciprocally influencing every other. Throughout 
 the whole system '* planet sways planet, and satel- 
 lite bends the orbit of satellite, until the primitive 
 curves lose the simplicity of their character, and 
 perturbations arise which may end in absolute de- 
 struction." ^ 
 
 ^Professor iVlitchell. 
 
220 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 The great problem involved the question of the 
 stability of the entire planetary system, and its so- 
 lution required a delicacy of observation and a 
 povs^er of mathematical analysis that approached 
 the superhuman. It is not necessary to follow in 
 detail the lines of investigation, and I need do lit- 
 tle more than state results. Suffice it to say that in 
 the movements of the planets and their satellites 
 several distinct forces are at work. First, there is 
 the primitive impulse by which they were project- 
 ed through space, and in obedience to which, if 
 free from any disturbing influence, they v\^ould have 
 moved in a straight line forever. Secondly, the 
 central power lodged in the sun, by which* the 
 planets are drawn into circular or elliptical orbits. 
 Thirdly, the mutual influence of the planets upon 
 each other. A knowledge of these forces gave 
 rise to two important questions, the first of which 
 was: Will the central power b}^ which the sun 
 draws a planet to itself finally overcome the origi- 
 nal impulse, so that the orbit will diminish till at 
 the last the planet will plunge bodily into the sun? 
 Rigorous mathematical analysis has answered the 
 question by showing that the amount by which the 
 central power overcomes in a moment of time the 
 effect of the primitive impulse is so infinitesimall}" 
 small that it would become appreciable only at the 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 221 
 
 end of a period infinitely long, repeated an infinite 
 number of times. 
 
 The second question was: Will the mutual at- 
 traction of the planets on each other so change the 
 form of their orbits as to result in the destruction 
 of the system? Observation had shown that the 
 forms of the planetary orbits were really changing ; 
 and if these changes should prove to be progressive 
 in one direction, without compensation, the destruc- 
 tion of the system was inevitable. Here again it is 
 impossible to even catalogue the facts involved in 
 this intricate investigation, or to explain the meth- 
 ods of its solution. Suffice it to say that unspar- 
 ing analysis has demonstrated that the changes in 
 the form of the planetary orbits are not permanent- 
 ly progressive in one direction, but within certain 
 periods of vast duration are entirely compensated, 
 so that the orbits return to their primitive values. 
 Changes there are, but they are within ascertained 
 limits, and so, vibrating to and fro in periods which 
 stun the imagination, the limits are assigned be- 
 yond V\^hich the changes can never pass. Millions 
 of years will elapse before these marvelous move- 
 ments will have run their course, and the whole 
 system return to the exact condition in which it was 
 when the primitive impulse was given ; but the re- 
 sult is sure; the system is stable. It does not, so 
 
222 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 far as motion is concerned, carry within it the 
 seeds of its own destruction, and we may rest as- 
 sured that He who planned this wonderful system 
 does not intend that it shall w^ear out or fall to 
 pieces before a single revolution of its complicated 
 machinery has been accomplished, and the great 
 bell of eternity has sounded — One ! 
 
 Turning from the physical to the moral and spir- 
 itual spheres, we are confronted by a similar prob- 
 lem. There are movements in the realms of mind 
 and morals as well as in the realm of matter. In- 
 fluences are at work w^hich give rise to serious per- 
 turbations in courses of human action which, if 
 continuous without compensation in one direction, 
 would seem to threaten the overthrow of religion 
 and of the morality w^hich is based upon it. Stated 
 in other w^ords, the problem is this : Is the kingdom 
 of God stable? Can it so withstand the strain of 
 antagonistic forces, wdthout or wdthin, that its per- 
 manence may be regarded as assured? If not, it 
 must be because it holds within itself, like the 
 kingdoms of this world, the seeds of decay and ul- 
 timate destruction, or else that the external forces 
 arrayed against it are too strong to be overcome. 
 
 In the investigations of modern science new ex- 
 pressions have come into use to represent new 
 ideas. One of these is the " conservation of ener- 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 223 
 
 gy," or the doctrine that the sum total of the ener- 
 gy of the universe neither diminishes nor increases, 
 although it may assume in succession a diversity 
 of forms; another is the "persistence of force," 
 which is based upon the supposed indestructibility 
 of matter and energy. Assuming that these ex- 
 pressions convey corresponding truths, it is clear 
 that they cannot be limited in their application to 
 the material universe alone. Energy belongs to 
 the spiritual realm as truly as it does to the phys- 
 ical, although the energy is of a different kind and 
 is exerted for a different purpose ; and force is 
 quite as persistent in the former realm as in the 
 latter. In the nature of things it must be so ; for 
 while physical energy is due, as far as we know, to 
 the action and interaction of purely physical causes, 
 spiritual energy has its source in a divine life, im- 
 planted and sustained by the Spirit of God; and 
 this life has in it no seeds of destruction or decay. 
 It may be forfeited by an individual, or be with- 
 drawn from a disobedient Church, but cannot in 
 itself decline or become corrupt ; and as this divine 
 life is of the very essence of the kingdom of God 
 among men, the future of that kingdom, as regards 
 stability, cannot be in any degree uncertain. 
 
 This view finds striking confirmation in the 
 pages of history. Look for a moment at the con- 
 
224 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 dition of affairs when the kingdom of God first en- 
 tered the lists to measure strength with the king- 
 doms of this world. The Founder of the divine 
 kingdom had recently been put to death as a male- 
 factor, and his very name w^as a byword and a 
 reproach. His followers w^ere very few in num- 
 ber, and entirely destitute of that influence which 
 comes from wealth or high social standing. To 
 the Jew their gospel w^as a " stumbling-block," to 
 the Greek it w^as " foolishness," and yet it was '* by 
 the foolishness of preaching " the gospel that they 
 proposed to conquer the w^orld. Could anything 
 be more Utopian? And, as if to crown the ap- 
 parent absurdity, this task was not undertaken at 
 a time when the human intellect had become en- 
 feebled, when systems of government had become 
 effete, when jurisprudence and statesmanship had 
 exhausted their resources in a vain attempt to es- 
 tablish justice and judgment in the earth. On the 
 contrary, it was just w^hen the wisdom of the world's 
 most astute philosophers, the military skill of its 
 greatest generals, the splendor of its unrivaled art, 
 the statecraft of its mightiest kings, had culmina- 
 ted in the magnificent empire of the Ceesars, and 
 w^hen the human mind seemed best fitted to grap- 
 ple with the problems of society and government. 
 That such a time should be chosen for the den- 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 225 
 
 nite advent of a heavenly kingdom seems strange 
 to the last degree. And when we consider that the 
 new kingdom was to be based upon principles that 
 had never before been tried in the affairs of gov- 
 ernment; that it was to be the exponent of princi- 
 ples that must inevitably bring it into collision with 
 the established kingdoms of the world ; that force 
 was to be utterly excluded from its methods of ex- 
 tension and government, and never employed even 
 in self-defense; that, so far from seeking to re- 
 venge injuries, it would never retaliate, save by re- 
 turning good for evil; that it placed itself in direct 
 antagonism to the very things which the world re- 
 garded as indispensable; that it did not conceal 
 its purpose of revolutionizing human governments, 
 of combating the world's philosophers, of over- 
 turning hoary systems intrenched behind the su- 
 perstitions of ages, until the whole face of society 
 would be changed; we may surely conclude that 
 he who could propose such an undertaking, at such 
 a time, must have been dominated by the wildest 
 enthusiasm, or else upheld by the serene conscious- 
 ness of power divine. 
 
 Judged by ordinary human standards, the whole 
 scheme was visionary in the highest degree. To 
 all appearance Christianity was the feeblest and 
 
 most obscure force operating in society. Against 
 15 
 
226 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 it were arrayed the contempt of the learned and 
 wise, the arrogance of wealth, the cruelty of su- 
 perstition, the intolerance of religious bigotry, 
 backed by the power of the mightiest empire the 
 world had ever known, resolute in its purpose 
 to exterminate a sect that w^as everywhere spoken 
 against, and to overthrow utterly a kingdom that 
 had the audacity to avow that it owed no allegiance 
 to the kingdom of this world. But notwithstand- 
 ing the tremendous odds arrayed against it, the 
 growth of the new kingdom became the marvel of 
 history. It overcame the prejudice of the Jew, 
 changed the wisdom of the Greek into foolishness, 
 softened the stern heart of the Roman, overturned 
 the altars of heathenism, established a new code 
 of ethics, brought a fresh lease of life to a dy- 
 ing world, and turned the currents of history into 
 channels entirely new. By the power of that faith 
 which was its animating principle the kingdom of 
 God, even in its infancy, '' subdued kingdoms, 
 wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped 
 the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, es- 
 caped the edge of the sword, from weakness were 
 made strong, waxed mighty in w^ar, turned to flight 
 armies of aliens." And this marvelous *' persist- 
 ence of force " is a guarantee of the stability and 
 perpetuit}^ of the kingdom for all time to come. 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 227 
 
 But suppose the facts to be substantially as I 
 have stated them, does that really guarantee the 
 future of the kingdom ? It is true that Christianity 
 won marvelous triumphs in a ruder age, and more 
 than held its own in the face of such forces as 
 could then be arrayed against it ; but can it do the 
 same thing now ? Times have greatly changed, and 
 men have changed with them. If ignorance was 
 once the mother of devotion, as some one has af- 
 firmed, may not intelligence become its most dan- 
 gerous foe? Christianity withstood the arrows 
 of the ancient barbarian; can it withstand the pol- 
 ished shafts of the modern skeptic ? It feared not 
 to encounter the speculative wisdom of the Greek; 
 but how about the science of the Anglo-Saxon? 
 Its miracles passed muster in an age of supersti- 
 tion; but how will it be now when the search- 
 lights of science, turned to every quarter of the 
 universe, have failed to find the supernatural? 
 Once it could fall back upon an assumption of au- 
 thority, when a ''thus saith the Lord " was deemed 
 a sufficient answer to every objection ; but how 
 about to-day when all authority is challenged, and 
 even the genuineness of the sacred books is called 
 in question? 
 
 To all this it may be answered, in general terms, 
 that there is no reason to anticipate in the future 
 
228 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 more bitter or more dangerous attacks upon Chris- 
 tianity than it has sustained in the past; and if 
 former assaults have failed to shake its foundations, 
 there is no reason to think that future assaults will 
 be more successful. There is scarcely one depart- 
 ment of science or system of philosophy which has 
 not at some time or other been pressed into service 
 against the truth and kingdom of God. Biology 
 in its infancy sneered at the idea that God was the 
 sole Author and Giver of life, and the doctrine of 
 spontaneous generation was boastingly proclaimed ; 
 but time and experiment revealed the mistakes of 
 the methods and the absurdity of the conclusions, 
 and to-day there is no biologist of repute who does 
 not accept and teach the doctrine that life can come 
 only from antecedent life. Professor Tyndall is an 
 unprejudiced witness, and he says: " I affirm that 
 no shred of trustworthy experimental testimony ex- 
 ists to prove that life in our day has ever appeared 
 independently of antecedent life." ^ 
 
 Astronomy thought that it had discovered glaring 
 mistakes, not only in the Mosaic cosmogomy but 
 in the actual structure of the universe, and that it 
 would be easy to plan creation in more perfect ac- 
 cord with the eternal and immutable laws of math- 
 
 '^ Nineteenth Century , 1878, p. 507. 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 229 
 
 ematics; but in time it became clear that the Au- 
 thor of the universe was not only an almighty Cre- 
 ator, but also an infinite Geometer, who in the 
 completion of his creative work had produced not 
 a chaos but a cosmos, every part established, bal- 
 anced, adjusted, with a mathematical precision that 
 man in his best works but feebly and distantly im- 
 itates. 
 
 Archgeology, too, has muttered with antiquated 
 voice against the antiquity ot the sacred records, 
 and from the buried past monuments have been 
 unearthed which at one time were thought to 
 prove that Moses w^as mistaken, and the Bible un- 
 worthy of credence ; but to-day the uncovered 
 ruins of Babylon and Nineveh, with their indeli- 
 ble records of a remote antiquity, come forth to 
 testify, and while men in whom the wish is father 
 to the thought are affirming that the Mosaic rec- 
 ords are disproved, lo ! "the stone" cries "out 
 of the wall, and the beam out of the timber " an- 
 swers it, saying: "The word of our God shall 
 stand forever." Last of all. Geology, youngest of 
 the physical sciences, must needs try its hand, and 
 there are men still living who remember how some 
 of its early discoveries, so called, were hailed as 
 unanswerable evidences of the mistakes of Moses. 
 Two favorite points of attack were the six creative 
 
230 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 days and the story of the flood. But it is well to 
 note that the biblical record of these two events 
 can be made to do service against Christian belief 
 only by interpreting the record in a most crude 
 and literal way, and, in regard to one of them at 
 least, by rejecting the latest discoveries of geo- 
 logical science. Regarding the deluge it may be 
 said that its occurrence and general character are 
 made probable by a remarkable consensus in the 
 traditions of all ancient nations, confirmed by the 
 engraved tablets recently unearthed at Babylon, 
 and further confirmed by the discoveries of Qua- 
 ternary geology. These discoveries have proved 
 beyond dispute that during the latest geologic 
 period, and since man came upon the stage, there 
 has been a deep submergence of immense land 
 areas, far below the surface of the waters, with 
 corresponding elevations of perhaps equal areas, 
 whereby beds of marine shells once on the sea 
 bottom were lifted, and are now found on moun- 
 tain sides or summits hundreds of feet above the 
 present ocean level. If these discoveries have not 
 sufficed to convince scientists with skeptical tend- 
 encies that the Bible account is scientifically true, 
 they have at least taught most of them not to be 
 too hasty in their generalizations, and not to jump at 
 conclusions before the necessary data are at hand. 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 23I 
 
 What, then, on the whole, is the outlook for the 
 stability of the kingdom of God — the permanence 
 of the Church and her institutions? We live in 
 times when, as Joseph Cook puts it, everything is 
 shaken that can be shaken, and everything that 
 can be shaken ought to be shaken. In the mighty 
 shaking that is going on, the shaking of creed and 
 system and dogmatic statement, and even daring 
 attempts to shake the word of God itself, there 
 would seem to be a fulfillment, in another sense 
 than the more obvious one, of that word: "Yet 
 once more I shake not the earth only, but also 
 heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth 
 the removing of those things that are shaken, as 
 of things that are made, that those things which 
 cannot be shaken may remain."^ So let it be. 
 Whatsoever can be shaken let it be shaken, and 
 the sooner the better. We do not want to be 
 found amid rotten foundations and crumbling 
 pillars and crashing roof in the day when the 
 earthquake shock shall try every man's work 
 of what sort it is. But in the future, as in the 
 past, *'the things which cannot be shaken" will 
 "remain." Many a rash hand has been laid 
 upon the pillars of eternal truth — upon miracle and 
 
 Hebrews xii. 26, 27. 
 
232 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 prophecy, incarnation and atonement — as though 
 they were only supports for the roof of some 
 Dagon temple of effete superstition ; but, founded 
 upon the Rock of Ages, the mighty columns stand 
 unshaken still. And when all that man has built 
 upon other foundations shall have left only a ruin 
 to tell where once the structure stood, the eternal 
 purpose of God shall stand, " a kingdom which 
 cannot be moved." 
 
 But what about the consummation of the king- 
 dom? Clearly it has not yet reached the limits 
 of its development. Those ideal conditions fore- 
 shadowed in the Christian millennium are still in 
 the future, and some do not hesitate to affirm that 
 we are, if possible, farther from their realization 
 than ever before. I cannot indorse such a pes- 
 simistic view. Social as well as civil and religious 
 conditions show vast improvement, and the race 
 has advanced a long distance millenniumward in 
 even the last two hundred years. Those who deny 
 this are simply ignorant of the history of the past 
 and the facts of the present. Who would be will- 
 ing, if he had the power, to turn back the shadow 
 on the dial of the world's progress by even two 
 hundred years, and land us in those times when, 
 in what was misnamed *'good" society, manners 
 and morals were coarse beyond description, when 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 233 
 
 conversation, to be appreciated, must be liberally 
 seasoned with profanity ; when after-dinner talk 
 was of such a character that ladies must leave 
 the room before it began, and when it was con- 
 sidered no disgrace for gentlemen to fall under 
 the table in a state of helpless intoxication? Shall 
 we go back to the time when women convicted of 
 offenses were publicly whipped, when prisoners 
 were set in the pillory to be pelted and jeered by 
 the mob, and when the branding of criminals and 
 the cropping of their ears was a common practice? 
 Were those times better than these, when to be poor 
 or insane was worse than death itself; when alms- 
 houses and asylums were almost unknown, and 
 the maintenance of the poor was sold by auction 
 to the lowest bidder, who was left to treat the help- 
 less wretches very much as he pleased? Shall we 
 revert to the time, say two hundred years ago, 
 when popular education, in any sense worthy of the 
 term, had not made a beginning, and when men 
 like Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, could say, " I 
 thank God that we have no free schools or print- 
 ing presses; . . . God keep us from both" ?^ 
 Shall we heave one sigh of regret for those '' good 
 old times " of which we sometimes hear, when, in 
 
 1 Quoted by Minot J. Savage, D.D., in Arena, December, 
 1890, p. 15. 
 
234 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 the material sphere, railways and steamships, tele- 
 graphs and telephones, gas and electricity, were yet 
 undreamed of; when in the industrial sphere the 
 ordinary workman was no better than a slave, for- 
 bidden by law to assemble in public meetings or 
 form any organization to promote his own interests, 
 and when the skilled artisan received less wages 
 and was no better housed or fed than the poorest 
 skilled laborer of to-day; when in the domestic 
 sphere no provision was made for the education 
 of women, and there was no higher conception of 
 woman's mission than to be the slave of man's 
 passions or the drudge of his home; when in the 
 moral sphere there were no abstinence societies to 
 check the spread of intemperance, or healthy sen- 
 timent to repress public immorality or social vice; 
 when in the social sphere there were no associa- 
 tions for the alleviation of poverty and suffering, or 
 the improvement of social conditions; and when 
 in the religious sphere there were no convictions 
 of duty respecting the world's evangelization, but 
 a prevalent spirit of religious indifference on the 
 one hand, and on the other of bigotry and intoler- 
 ance that was more concerned about internal ciis- 
 putes than outward aggression, and attached more 
 importance to dogma and Church order than to 
 charity of spirit and righteousness of life ? 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 235 
 
 No, no. The *' former times " were not '' better 
 than these." The kingdom of God has been go- 
 ing forward, not backward. It faces the sunrise, 
 and the time draws near when its " sun shall no 
 more go down." The moral tone of society is 
 higher, and the common conscience is far more 
 sensitive, than ever before. Appeals for aid in 
 religious and benevolent work meet a readier and 
 more generous response, both in the way of gifts 
 and personal service. No small share of the brain 
 and heart of the world is now enlisted in whatever 
 makes for the uplifting of mankind. Human broth- 
 erhood is no longer the dream of an enthusiast, but 
 the sober belief of thoughtful men, and social jus- 
 tice, once regarded as an unattainable Utopia, is 
 brought w^ithin measurable distance in the purpose 
 and plan of the kingdom of God. 
 
 What, then, is wanted to usher in that consum- 
 mation of the heavenly kingdom which prophets 
 foresaw and of which the world still idly dreams? 
 Will it be accomplished by some new spiritual 
 force, as yet unheard of, w^hich God in his own 
 good time will bring to bear upon society, revolu- 
 tionizing present conditions by a power that can- 
 not be resisted? I see no reason to expect such 
 an intervention, for we have no hint in nature or 
 in revelation of any new moral or spiritual power 
 
236 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 outside of those already known to men. It is true 
 that many are asking in these days concerning 
 the Christ, as did the disciples whom John sent: 
 "Art thou he that should come, or do we look for 
 another?"^ And some tell us that they are lis- 
 tening with the poet for the bells that will ** ring 
 in the Christ that is to be," as though the Christ 
 of Bethlehem and Calvary were a myth, and his 
 very name a worn-out spell. But, believe me, the 
 Christ that is now is the Christ that is to be, and 
 there is no other. If the question of the regener- 
 ation of society w^ere solely a question of divine 
 power, we might well wonder why that power has 
 slumbered so long; but if it is a question of moral 
 forces, in which man's consent and voluntary self- 
 surrender are indispensable factors, it may turn 
 out that what the world is waiting for is already 
 within its reach. 
 
 The world needs no new gospel, but only an un- 
 feigned acceptance of a gospel already proclaimed. 
 " Talk about the questions of the day," said Glad- 
 stone; " there is but 'one question, and that is the 
 gospel. It can and will correct everything need- 
 ing correction." Most true, but only in so far as 
 that gospel is accepted and obeyed. Not by the 
 
 1 Matthew xi. 3. 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 237 
 
 *' enthusiasm of humanity " can this sinning, suffer- 
 ing world be uplifted, and the kingdom of God be 
 established among men. Neither will it be by the 
 enthusiasm of dogma, which has often made void 
 the word of God by its traditions ; nor by the en- 
 thusiasm of denominational zeal, more concerned 
 about the accent of its shibboleth than about 
 ''judgment, mercy, and the love of God"; nor 
 by the enthusiasm of the political demagogue, in- 
 flaming the passions that need to be allayed, and 
 deluding the mutitude for selfish ends ; nor by the 
 enthusiasm of social theorists, who think to cleanse 
 the sepulcher of society by an external coat of 
 whitewash, and to abolish poverty and the suffering 
 which comes of it by taking taxes from one pocket 
 instead of two. Not by such forms of enthusiasm as 
 these will the kingdom of the world be overthrown 
 and the kingdom of God be set up in its place, but by 
 the enthusiasm of obedience^ when Christ's follow- 
 ers shall have learned that his words are not m.ere 
 rhetorical flourishes to be admired, or dogmata 
 about which to dispute; but plain, unmistakable 
 precepts to be accepted and obeyed. 
 
 Let us now consider for a moment what the re- 
 sults would be if the laws of the kingdom of God 
 were accepted as the rule of life in all our social 
 relations — that is, if men v/ould allow the golden 
 
238 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 rule to dominate tlieir conduct in everything re- 
 lating to their fellow-men. Beyond question, the 
 first and most marked results would be in the 
 kingdom itself. Those things which have been a 
 standing reproach to Christianity and have hin- 
 dered its progress would be at once and forever 
 removed. Strife and discord would cease, and the 
 causes which have rent and divided the Church 
 of God would be seen in their true littleness and 
 insignificance. Among the denominations coop- 
 eration would take the place of competition, and 
 each would be anxious to help instead of hinder- 
 ing the others, waiting for the better day when 
 they all shall be one. Brother v/ould no longer go 
 to law with brother, having in remembrance the 
 words of the Lord Jesus : '* If ye forgive men their 
 trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive 
 you."^ The law of a real brotherhood would ob- 
 literate class distinctions, and oneness in Christ 
 would be something more than a form of words. 
 Property, no longer regarded as a private posses- 
 sion, but as a sacred trust to be administered for 
 the common good, would cease to be the supreme 
 object of desire. Poverty that would in any sense 
 involve suffering would not exist, for there would 
 
 1 Matthew vi. 14, 15. 
 
ITS FINAL CONSUMMATION. 239 
 
 be enough for all, and " distributing to the neces- 
 sity of saints " would no longer be an irksome task, 
 but a source of perennial joy. Greed and covet- 
 ousness would cease to be factors in shaping hu- 
 man conduct, for when private rights are surren- 
 dered the most powerful motive prompting men to 
 accumulate vast wealth would no longer operate. 
 Best of all, with a return of primitive obedience 
 would come a return of primitive blessing; and the 
 Holy Spirit, no longer grieved and banished by 
 man's disobedience, would return and dwell among 
 his people, guiding their councils, directing their 
 service, vitalizing all their works with divine life 
 and power. 
 
 But not alone wdthin the limits of the kingdom 
 would results like these be seen, but universal so- 
 ciety would feel the leavening power of a living 
 Christianity, and its methods and maxims, its laws 
 and customs, would show a corresponding change. 
 Even in its present condition of imperfect develop- 
 ment the kingdom of God has influenced the course 
 of human history and modified the policy of nations 
 to a vastly greater extent than is commonly sup- 
 posed . Only let there be a return to first principles, 
 and there will be a return of the ancient power. As 
 a city set on a hill the kingdom of God will not be 
 hid ; as the salt of the earth it will save universal 
 
240 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 society from corruption and decay; as a leaven it 
 will permeate human thought and human plans and 
 institutions until the whole mass is leavened. And 
 then shall dawn the day for which the world so 
 long has waited, when the reign of universal broth- 
 erhood shall usher in the reign of universal peace ; 
 when men will have learned that not in strife and 
 antagonism, but in mutual helpfulness and good 
 will, lies the solution of our social problems, and 
 that helpfulness and good will invariably spring 
 from the same source — the love of God shed 
 abroad in the heart. To some that day may seem 
 far distant, for they think the obstacles in the way 
 are too great to be overcome; but that is because 
 they have never seen the full power which a living 
 Christianity can wield when its precepts are ac- 
 cepted as a rule of life and its votaries live out the 
 religion they profess. I do not mean to teach that 
 the religion of Jesus, when thus lived, will at once 
 win the admiration and love of men. On the con- 
 trary, they will despise it, hate it, crucify it if they 
 can; but though they bury it never so deep, *' on 
 the third day" it "will rise again," radiant in 
 heavenly beauty, triumphant after seeming de- 
 feat; overcoming greed and selfishness by the 
 might of an invincible patience, conquering human 
 pride and hatred by the power of omnipotent love. 
 
Date Due 
 
 
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 ^^f&f^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
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 IN U. S. A.