ST. LUKE XVII. 20, 21 363
^ If you want to find the Kingdom of God, our Lord would say, you need not expect to read of its advent in the daily papers, or to hear the news in the gossip of the market-place ; its progress will not be reported in Eeuter's telegrams, nor will its shares be quoted on the Stock Exchange: it will not fall under the cognizance of parliaments, or convocations, or councils : whatever outward connections and developments it may have, these will not be of its essence, because that is and must be inward to the souls of men.^
T[ Let every man retire into himself, and see if he can find this Kingdom in his heart ; for if he find it not there, in vain will he find it in all the world besides.^
^ What are the signs by which our loyalty as citizens of the Kingdom of God will be proved ? Not any uniform which can be laid aside when we enter our secret chamber ; not any watch- word which we can learn by an easy tradition, but a character which clothes itself in deeds, a creed which is translated into a life. The citizen must, according to the measure of his powers, embody the notes of the Kingdom, and the Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. In " righteousness, peace, joy," we can recognize " equality, liberty, fraternity," interpreted, purified, and extended. They tell us that the community and not the individual is the central thought in the life of men. They tell us that the fulfil- ment of duties and not the assertion of rights, is the foundation of the social structure. They tell us that the end of labour is not material well-being, but that larger, deeper, more abiding delight which comes from successfully ministering to the good of others. They tell us that over all that is transitory in the form of the Kingdom, over all the conditions which determine its growth, there rests the light, the power of an eternal presence.^
2. If then we take it that our Lord's meaning is best expressed by " the kingdom of God is within you," there are two things to be said about it.
(1) In the first place, it requires balancing, like everything else which concerns the Kingdom. For, however much the Kingdom of God is within us, its manifestation will and must pass out into life and action. We cannot help that. We cannot really cry " hands off" to Christ in the name of politics, for example.
* R. Winterbotham, The Kingdom of Heaven, 221.
' J. Hales, Oolden Remains. ^ Bishop B. F. Westcott,
364 THE KINGDOM THAT IS WITHIN
We cannot seriously maintain that the citizen or the official or the statesman should restrict his Christianity entirely to his private life because the Kingdom of God is within us. It is indeed notorious that well-meaning people allow themselves to do a thousand things in a public capacity which they would never do as private Christians ; but it is certain that in this matter they are self-deceived, and will suffer a rude awakening some day. As Christians we are bound to give the most careful and scrupulous heed to a multitude of outward questions and considerations.
(2) But in the second place, we must never quit our grasp upon the fundamental principle of the inwardness of the King- dom. We are driven to deal with the outsides of things, with tests, observances, statistics, organizations, and so on. As far as other people are concerned, we can get at the Kingdom only from outside. And so it comes to pass that for an innumerable number the outside becomes almost everything. They never get beyond it ; it absorbs all their interest. What a fearful lot of arithmetic has got into the Kingdom of Heaven in our days! What counting of heads, what touting for mere numbers, what adding up of figures, of attendances, of statistics of all kinds ! " Eeligious statistics," they are called, by a curious euphemism, since no art of human nomenclature can make statistics religious.
1[ We cannot too highly value the services which the shell renders to the nut that grows and ripens within its shelter. But if one should spend his time in gathering nut-shells, quite in- different as to whether there was any nut inside or not, he would be exactly like some very active " religious " workers of to-day. One is indeed sometimes disposed to think that the enormous growth of religious agencies and organizations in the present age must be a bitter disappointment to the Lord of the Harvest ; for there is no corresponding increase of inward religion. Increase there may be ; but nothing commensurate with the immense expansion of machinery. There are indeed no outward and visible criteria of the true welfare of the Kingdom. There is a vast amount of action and reaction between the outward and visible, and the inward and invisible, but the one gives no direct clue to the other : and it is within, and out of sight, that the essential truth of the Kingdom is to be found.^
* B. Wintecbothain, The Kingdom of Heaven, 22&.
ST. LUKE XVII. 20, 21 365