[101] I Tim., vi, 4.
[102] II Cor., iii, 15, 16.
[103] I Cor., xv, 9.
[104] In his very interesting history, The Church of the Restoration, Dr. Stoughton says, most truly of both Anglicans and Puritans in 1660: 'It is necessary to bear in mind this circumstance, that both parties were advocates for a national establishment of religion.' Vol. i, p. 113.
[105] For example, what an antidote to the perilous Methodist doctrine of instantaneous sanctification is this saying of Bishop Wilson: 'He who fancies that his mind may effectually be changed in a short time, deceives himself.'
[106] Nothing can be more certain than that the kingdom of God meant originally, and was understood to mean, a Messianic kingdom speedily to be revealed; and that to this idea of the kingdom is due much of the effect which its preaching exercised on the imagination of the first generation of Christians. But nothing is more certain, also, than that while the end itself, the Messianic kingdom, was necessarily something intangible and future, the way to the end, the doing the will of God by intently following the voice of the moral conscience, in those duties, above all, for which there was then in the world the most crying need,—the duties of humbleness, self-denial, pureness, justice, charity,—became from the very first in the teaching of Jesus something so ever-present and practical, and so associated with the essence of Jesus himself, that the way to the kingdom grew inseparable, in thought, from the kingdom itself, and was bathed in the same light and charm. Then, after a time, as the vision of an approaching Messianic kingdom was dissipated, the idea of the perfect accomplishment on earth of the will of God had to take the room of it, and in its own realisation to place the ideal of the true kingdom of God.
[107] II Tim., ii, 19; Gal., v, 22, 23.
[108] Address of the Rev. G. W. Conder at Liverpool, in the Lancashire Congregational Calendar for 1869-70.
[109] The Rev. G. W. Conder, ubi supra.