"So that is what you were talking about," I replied. "Well, I am surprised. I thought you were modern men, and knew that there is no other world. Science, philosophy, religion, and common sense, teach us that there is but one world, a uni-verse. We now live in all the world there is. But since we have not penetrated it very deeply, if your friend had remarked that the minister was no more developed than you, or that he had gone no deeper into the meaning of the universe than you, he would at least have been on debatable ground. When, however, two men of your opportunities could sit there and talk about another world, I am ashamed of you. The universe is as much one as my watch is one. Every particle of it enfolds us continually and never ceases to pour its energies through us. Every part of the universe is beating upon us to waken us, if possible, to its meaning. If I live for an eternity, I shall be in the same world as now, and what I truthfully know about it now will still be true after my body has decayed. God's one-world is the only world."
No wonder that people become confused and mixed up with their plural worlds, and broken fragments of worlds.
5. An inadequate conception of the Kingdom of God
More than a generation ago it came to us like a new discovery that while Jesus rarely spoke of heaven, the expression, "Kingdom of Heaven," was continually on His lips. This discovery turned the whole tide. And since then, "The Kingdom of God on Earth" has been the theme of the Church.
While heartily agreeing with this discovery, and sympathizing with the new aim, I still seriously doubt whether we have seen the kingdom of heaven in any such full-orbed sense as Jesus intended we should. Too often we unwittingly preach a kingdom of earth on earth; we leave something out. That which Jesus preached was somehow more religious. Surely it is an inadequate kingdom of God when it, as so often happens, degenerates into a mere scientific cooking-school, or a mere scientific system of sanitation, or a mere several other things lacking in God motive and God consciousness. The Kingdom of God is more than a program of social service; it is a God-filled and God-ruled society. A genuine Kingdom of God on earth will be pervaded by a heavenly atmosphere. Even a social religion may become so unsocial as to eliminate the Head of society; it may consign Him to the oblivion of forgetfulness.
No woman, whose duty it is to be a cook, can be a perfect Christian while she is careless about the preparation of food for her family. Yet one may be a scientific cook without being a Christian. It requires more than beautiful, material conditions to make the kingdom of God on earth.
I know families with beautiful mahogany dining rooms and all that goes with them, whose good food is so well cooked that it almost melts in their mouths, and yet they give God no thanks. Indeed, there are those thus situated who think nothing about God.
This is not meant to imply that the conditions of poverty and ignorance are any more favorable to a Christian life.
Coming one day from a poor family's home across the street, my little son said:
"Papa, does Mr. R. love the Lord?" When I told him that I did not know, "Well," he replied, "I don't believe he does, because he sat down at the table to-day with his coat off and never thanked the Lord for his food. He just looked around and said, 'Pass the taters,' and that is all he said."