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unity of one will, one purpose, one destiny. We are too apt to speak of an ideal as something wholly unattainable, and to excuse ourselves for not living the ideal life by saying that it is ideal ; that is not the sense in which our Lord speaks of the Kingdom of God. It is rather an ideal to be realized in every act, and therefore within our reach at every moment ; imperfect as we are, it is to be embodied in us, and made visible to the world through our lives. To seek for the material objects, the subordinate aims of life first, before this ideal is apprehended, is to invert the order in which God would have us live ; to immerse ourselves in details, without constant reference to the ideal, is to break up our lives, our characters, our institutions, into incoherent fragments devoid of all unity. The details are not indeed unimportant, but they are important only in relation to the ideal, which gives to them all their beauty, all their excellence. Without it they are but as the random streaks of colour on a painter's palette ; with it, and in due subordination to it, they are as the various brush-strokes which gradually realize on the canvas the one purpose of the painter's mind. "All these things," these lesser objects, these fragmentary aims, these partial goods, shall be not theirs who strive for them alone, but theirs who seek first the ideal, the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Tf In all ages men have dreamed of isles of the blessed and Elysian fields. Some have dreamed of Utopias in this world. But in all these dreams only externals have been considered. Pindar sings :
For them the night all through,
In that broad realm below,
The splendour of the sun spreads endless light;
'Mid rosy meadows bright . . .
There with horses and with play
With games and lyres they while the hours away.
And Plato in his ideal republic, and modern dreamers, plan only for an equitable distribution of property and the elimination of poverty, that should accompany the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. But the first characteristic of the Kingdom of Heaven is that it is inward. Facts prove that men can be rich and educated and yet vile. Nations have been prosperous and cultured, but rotted away because of their sin. The Kingdom of Heaven is in the heart of men. St. Paul said, " The kingdom of
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God is not meat and drink ; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." 1
3. The "Kingdom of God," to use Bishop Gore's terse and pregnant definition, is, " human society as organized according to the will of God," just as " the world " of the New Testament is "human society as organized apart from the will of God." It means the will of the Father-king " done in earth, as it is in heaven." Now to take up our ordinary daily work, whatever it be, as a ministry of human service fitting into the great plan of God for a redeemed universe, and to do it to that end, to set that high purpose and ideal over it all and be absolutely faithful to that, cost what it may of success or gain, whether in the form of wages or profits, to eliminate the mercenary motive and substitute that spiritual purpose — that is to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness in our common occupations.
The Kingdom of God is an empire with three provinces. One province is a man's own heart, when the throne of Christ is once really set up in it. Another province is the Church as it is established upon the earth. And another is that final and mag- nificent condition of all things, when Christ shall come and reign in His glory. There are, then, before every one these three great primary objects : the first is to have the whole of one's own heart in subjugation to God ; the second is to extend the Church ; and the third is to long and pray for, and help on, the Second Coming of Christ. If we have begun to make the Kingdom of God our great object, then our first desire is that Christ may have His proper place in our hearts. Our great longing is after holiness. We are more anxious about our holiness than we are about our happiness. And then every day we are trying to make some one happier and better. We have in our circles inner ones and outer ones. We do not neglect the nearer for the sake of the farther one ; but yet we do not so confine ourselves to that which is close that we do nothing for that which is far off. But we love the Church, the whole Church of Christ ; we are trying to increase the Church of Christ; we go about with a missionary spirit. And, further, our eye is looking for the coming of Jesus. It is a happy thought to us every day, "Now the coming of Jesus is
1 H. K. Ebright.
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nearer than it was yesterday," because it is to us no fear ; we are not watching against it, we are watching for it ; it is the climax of all pleasant things to us.