THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
By the Lord Bishop of Derry.
"Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."—St. Matthew iii., 2.
This proclamation, made by the Baptist, is the best possible beginning for a gospel, since men will never repent unless they feel that better things are open to them.
Therefore, as the next chapter informs us, these same words were the first utterance, the modest germ, of the profounder teaching of our Lord Himself, and He started from the precise point to which the forerunner had led his followers. The next step was to fill up somewhat these slender outlines by saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel" (St. Matthew iv. 17; St. Mark i. 15).
This announcement is necessary still. How often have we excused our misdeeds by the abject plea that we could not help ourselves! It is abject, it is a confession of slavery; but, if true, it is a perfect defence. None may blame us for doing what is inevitable, or failing to do what is impossible. If a giant were to force a torch into my hand and with it to explode a powder magazine, I should not be the murderer of those who perished by my hand. I should feel outraged and indignant, but not remorseful.
And whoever is really certain that he "cannot help" his intemperance, or sloth, or anger, need not feel remorseful any more, but he also ought to feel outraged and indignant. But against whom? God? or Satan? or himself, the self of other days? For, after all, an act which is quite uncontrollable now may have sprung from the wilful acts of long ago, from compliances that forged habits which have now become bands of steel.
At all events, the gospel does not deny man's debasement and thraldom; it asserts, not that you are naturally free, but that you are graciously emancipated; it is preoccupied, not with your strength, but with the approach of reinforcements. "The kingdom of heaven is at hand."
Now think how urgently a kingdom of heaven is required. We know to our cost that there is an awful kingdom of hell—an organised and systematic power of evil. Christ Himself said it. He declared that Satan could not cast out Satan because evil in this world is regulated, coherent, and organic—it is a house, a kingdom, working consistently, and it would fall if it were divided against itself. And we are beset by its forces, entangled, and made captive. Whatever be our frailty, they seize upon it. Am I selfish? The carelessness of others makes me dishonest. Am I uncharitable? Their failings provoke my scorn. Am I light and trifling? Their example beguiles me into excess. Am I irascible? Their injustice lashes me into fury. Am I sensitive? Their neglect discourages, their harshness ulcerates me. Am I affectionate? Their kindness disarms my judgment and drugs my conscience to sleep.
And the evil which these nurse in me becomes in turn a snare to other men.
And all these influences are wielded and swayed by malignant and terrible intelligences, our foes, our tyrants.
Therefore we have need of a kingdom as real, a power of goodness as systematic, to overcome in us this organised pressure from beneath.
And hence it was not mere goodness, but a kingdom of organised and potent goodness, which Jesus from the first proclaimed.
What is the meaning of the phrase, "the kingdom of God"—"of heaven"? Many excellent people believe it to be something still future, the outcome in another dispensation of forces latent still, the millennium, the personal reign of Christ. And we must not deny that there are passages which indicate that such will be the fulness and triumphant issue of His kingdom. But Christ did not say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at least nineteen centuries away from you." And again, when tauntingly questioned as to when this kingdom should come, He answered that it was come already, "not with observation," yet among them.
And, indeed, He, being Himself the Anointed One, was always speaking of the kingdom; so that, while the rest of the New Testament mentions it thirty-three times, it is mentioned in the gospels one hundred and twenty-five times.
For He spoke to men who understood the phrase, being steeped in Old Testament promises of the Messianic time; and they, when their turn came, had to preach where the mention of a new kingdom would be as alarming as it was to Herod.
If, then, our Lord had even once employed a safer expression, this would so much better suit His followers as inevitably to displace among the Gentiles His own favourite phrase, "the kingdom." And so it comes that the word "church," which He is only known to have uttered on two occasions, is found elsewhere one hundred and thirteen times.
This is, indeed, an evidence of the accuracy of the reports, for if the discourses of our Lord were not genuine, how could they have been marked by this distinctive peculiarity when the Church had become used to employ a different word?
And surely it is the Church, this kingdom which our Lord spoke of as a field where tares were growing, as a little seed which became a tree, as a net which embraced alike good fish and bad?
It is the organised coherent power of the world to come, confronting evil with an influence and mastery superior to its own.
Repent, said Christ, because the empire of wickedness is tottering—because the iron sceptre of the tyrant is about to break—because the prince of this world is soon to be cast out.
What do we know of the constitution, and what of the spirit, of this divine kingdom upon earth?
Jesus declared its constitution when He said that, while the kings of this world put forth an imperious sway, and men obsequiously reckon them benefactors who exercise lordship over them, with us the conditions are reversed, and he is greatest who stoops, helps, serves, and forgets the ambitions that usurp and trample.
What encouragement for the penitent! In the realm which he now enters—where he fears to be reproached for his past rebellion—every true leader has it for an ambition to help and serve him; and he is made sharer in a vast and sublime citizenship, where all, from the Prince of Life to the lowliest true servant, are united in desiring his victory and joy.
Oh, if this is true, if the Conqueror of Death and Hell has received gifts for us, and ever liveth to make intercession for us, and if, in one grand and organised strain and stress of effort for the right, angels and principalities and powers, and things present and to come, and Paul and Cephas, all are ours, then, in the approach of such a kingdom, in the voice that bids us rally to such a standard of emancipation, what hope, what animation, what an opening of prison doors!
Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
With mutual help for its constitution, now what is its aim and temper?
"The kingdom of God," said St. Paul, "is not self-indulgence, not eating and drinking, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."
It is not any one of these isolated from the rest.
Righteousness, for instance, means conformity to rule; a sceptre of righteousness is the same thing as a straight sceptre.
But can you not imagine a life of conformity to rule, a life perfectly righteous, being hideous?
Think, for instance, of a slave in a plantation, rising early, toiling until absolute exhaustion arrested his incessant labours, perfectly temperate, sober, and obedient. But all this was because the sound of the lash was in his ears, and the scars of it on his flesh; and all the while his soul was either stupefied or frenzied.
Well, it is not practically possible, but it is conceivable in theory—and Christ conceived it—that, even thus, in the fear which has torment, one should thoroughly obey God, remembering the pangs of remorse, and foreboding those of hell. And I repeat it: such a righteousness, pressed on the reluctant soul by external forces, would be hideous. It is the righteousness of the prodigal's brother: "I never transgressed.... Thou never gavest me a kid."
But the kingdom of God is righteousness combined with peace; it is obedience to an inner law—to a law written in the heart and mind.
"Righteousness, and peace, and joy." How little of real penetrating joy comes into an average human life! "Happy," says Thackeray, who knew men so well, "happy! who is happy?" And even the calm and tranquil Wordsworth, most blameless of the children of his time, complained that—
"We are pressed by heavy laws,
And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of mirth, because
We have been glad before."
Nor, to be frank, is the life of a Christian altogether and perfectly joyful. "Even we ourselves do groan within ourselves," wrote Paul to the same church for which he prayed that the "God of hope would fill them with all peace and joy."
But the reason he groans is because he has only the first fruits of what is coming. He groans waiting for the redemption of the body, and the old nature still has power to hinder and to thwart him. What is new in him tends to happiness, the higher and holier part of him is all for joy; that is true of him in some degree which is observed of his Master (despite one apparent exception by the grave of Lazarus), that He is often said to have His soul troubled, but only once that He rejoiced in spirit. "The kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."
This kingdom, Jesus said, was at hand. And when His disciples were rejected, and shook off the dust of the city from their shoes, He bade them say, "Nevertheless, of this be ye sure, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you."
And it is nigh unto us to-day. It is felt in the inmost soul even of those who would be ashamed to confess its presence.
Even when you are most miserably defeated in striving to be good, most ashamed of failure, even when (to return to our starting-point) you declare that you cannot do the thing that you would, even then you do not entirely believe yourself; the conviction of lofty possibilities will not quite begone; righteousness, and peace, and joy, still haunt your imaginings and disturb your guilty pleasures; you feel, you know, that these things are your heritage, and without them you can never be content.
What does this strange, illogical, incessant experience mean?
There is a beautiful old legend of a Christian girl, betrayed to martyrdom by her pagan lover in the bitterness of his rejection, who promised as she went to die to send him, if it were allowed to her, some proof of her religion. On that same wintry night, as he sat and mourned, the legend says that a fair boy left at his door a basket filled with flowers of such bloom and fragrance as never grew in earthly gardens. Whereupon he arose and confessed Christ, and passed through the same dusky gates of martyrdom to rejoin her in the paradise of God.
Like those flowers of unearthly growth, proclaiming the reality of the unseen, so do our unworldly longings, our immortal spiritual aspirings, our feeling after a Divine Deliverer, if haply we may find Him, prove that the kingdom of God is at hand.
Every thought of God comes from God, and is already the operation of His Spirit.
Every desire for Christ is Christ's forerunner in the soul, and bids us welcome Christ.
"Repent ye, and believe the gospel."
