CONDITIONS OF ADMISSION.

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and this was so different from all that they had known before, that they could describe it only as a new birth. Jesus himself is reported to have said: "Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven;" and, in speech yet more searching, "Except a man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God."2 We can teach doctrines and prescribe commandments to every man of ordinary intelligence; but "the vision and the faculty divine" we cannot shut up in a creed or a law, and hand on like a parcel to the unprepared, nor, when the eye of the soul is asleep, can we paint the heavenly glories on its retina. These thoughts give rise to many questionings on which we cannot enter now. We must be content with noting the fact that entering the kingdom of God implies, in the Christian view, the perception of a spiritual scene, as full of marvel, and beauty, and hope, as this material world when it reveals itself to the freshly-opened eyes and dawning intelligence of a child.

The preceding remarks will enable us to understand how it is that a kingdom which is present in men's hearts is nevertheless spoken of as future. The pro

1 Matt. xviii. 3.

M

2 John iii. 3.

clamation, "The kingdom of God is at hand," with which Jesus began his preaching,1 and which he handed on to his disciples; 2 the prayer, "Thy kingdom come;" the warning to watch, for we know not the day nor the hour,3-point to something unfulfilled, some future crisis of our fate, which may come at any moment and find us unprepared. And so it is with all our ideals. They are here, but they are not yet realized. They are working powerfully among little groups, but centuries may elapse before they have permeated society and changed the face of the world. They may come as the lightning flash or as the trumpet's note, revealing to us new possibilities of nobleness, and summoning us to some new service of God, and find us unprepared, owing to the indolence of habit or the cowardice of self-indulgence. And then the high advantages and long laziness of culture shut us out, while fresh and buoyant life comes from east and west and north and south to take our forfeited place. 4

1 Mark i. 14 sq.; Matt. iv. 17.

2 Matt. x. 7; Luke x. 9, 11.

3 Matt. xxv. 13; Luke xii. 40.

4 Matt. viii. 11 sq.; Luke xiii. 28 sq.

THE COMING OF THE SON OF MAN.

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The advent of the ideal time is described in the earliest Christian teaching as a coming of the Son of Man, who is to appear on the clouds, in the glory of the Father, and attended by a retinue of angels, to judge the world and establish his kingdom.1 This coming belongs to the eschatology of which I spoke in an earlier part of this Lecture, and is encrusted with the Messianic idea of the Jews. This is not the place to enter into a critical examination of the passages where the coming of the Son of Man is alluded to; but I may be permitted to observe that, to a large extent, they are expressed in the style of Oriental imagery, and readily lend themselves to poetical interpretation. We may look upon them as the pictorial drapery of aspiration and faith; and we must not, owing to the altered figures of our own speech, forget the central thought which no accessories have obliterated from the vision of Daniel. Whatever else the coming of the Son of Man may have suggested, it

1 See Matt. x. 23, xiii. 41, xvi. 27 sq.; Matt. xix. 28, Luke xxii. 28; Matt. xxiv. 30, Mark xiii. 26; Matt. xxiv. 37 sqq., Luke xvii. 22 sqq.; Matt. xxv. 13, 31; Matt. xxvi. 64, Mark xiv. 62, Luke xxii. 69; Mark viii. 38, Luke ix. 26, xii. 8; Luke xii. 40, xviii. 8, xxi. 27 sqq.; Matt. xx. 20 sqq., Mark x. 35 sqq. Cf. Matt. xxvi. 29, Mark xiv. 25, Luke xxii. 18.

implied the advent of a true and divine humanity, and the final suppression of the inhuman and brutal forces under which the world has groaned so long. And what if the reign of righteousness and truth is coming with the soft steps and silent splendours of a summer's dawn, and not with the rustling of angel's wings and the blare of trumpets in the sky? Is it less real or sublime? The glory of the Father is all around us in earth and heaven, and we are encompassed by his angels, the men and women who serve the world in love, and bring messages of brotherly kindness to our selfishness and strife. If we will receive it, the Son of Man has come, and the throne of his glory is the human heart.

But turning from the language of Jewish Apocalypse, we find the deliberate thought of Jesus expressed in parables, in which he clearly recognizes the slow and silent methods of Divine Providence, and the analogy which exists in this respect between the material and the spiritual creations. The kingdom of God is as if a man should fling his seed upon the ground, and sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, he knows not how. For the ground bears fruit spontaneously; first the blade, then

ITS SLOW AND SILENT COMING.

165

the ear, then the full corn in the ear.1 Or it is like a grain of mustard-seed, which grows from such small beginnings into a great shrub.2 Or, again, it is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until it was all leavened.3 Such language is unmistakable in its meaning, and is wholly inconsistent with the pageantry of a Messianic advent, with its procession of angels, and fearful portents in earth and sky. It accords with our experience of spiritual forces, which come not in the earthquake and the storm, but as the soft breath of evening, whispering messages of love within the soul. Steadfastly they work within the recesses of the heart, slowly ripening the character of individuals, and bringing society, step by step, from its state of animal hatred and warfare into the peace and mutual kindness which mark a brotherhood of the children of God. The things which God has prepared for those who love him are not for the carnal and if we would see his king

eye

and ear;

dom and his righteousness, we need not the heavens to be rent, but the eye of the spirit to be opened.

1 Mark iv. 26 sqq.

2 Matt. xiii. 31 sq.; Mark iv. 31 sq.; Luke xiii, 19.

3 Matt. xiii. 33; Luke xiii. 21.