I.
Without Observation.
The first thing Christ says here about the Kingdom is that it comes without observation. Its advance is not obvious to the senses and curiosity of men ; it moves onwards and diffuses itself without being perceived and commented on. And the reason for this is, that the Kingdom is in its essence not a purely political fabric, such as the materialized and unspiritual fancy of the later Jews, misled by a false patriotism, had conceived it to be, but a spiritual realm, touching this earth indeed by its contact with, and empire over, human souls, but reaching far, far away from the sphere of sense, even to the utmost confines of the world invisible. Men are not to say, " Lo, here ! or. There ! for lo, the kingdom of God is within " them. Its seat of power lies wholly beyond the province and capacity of eye and ear ; it is set up in the hearts and consciences and wills of men; and until the most secret processes of the human soul can be displayed in sensuous forms beneath the light of day, the coming of such a Kingdom must needs be " not with observation." ]
II The word " observation " is used not in the modern active sense of observing, watching closely, but in the old sense of being observed, having attention paid to it. This is the sense in which Walton in his Compleat Angler uses the word : " I told you Angling is an art, either by practice or a long observation or both."i
1. This is true of Nature. The mightiest agencies ever pro- duce effects which are silently accomplished. There is no noise in the morning of spring when the grass of the field and the trees of the forest clothe themselves with beauty in their robes of green. There is no noise on earth when the snow falls or when the seed fructifies that is yet to grow into all the richness of harvest, and become food for the millions that inhabit the surface of our globe. There is no noise when the sun rises in the east and wakes the world from slumber. Gently and noiselessly is the dew distilled beneath the stars, and as gently and noiselessly does it depart before the breath of the morning. The mighty power that
* J. Hastings, in Dictionary of the Bible, iii. 582.
366 THE KINGDOM THAT IS WITHIN
bears along the worlds above us in their orbits through the immensity of space makes no noise as it speeds them in their rapidity of flight.
There are many who might be apt to think light of a very tame and feeble agency, because it is noiseless. An earthquake seems to be charged with mightier power. It thunders through the solid foundations of nature, and rocks a whole continent. In a moment the works of man are shattered and cities levelled with the ground. And yet, let the light of day cease, and there would be the reign of universal death. The vegetable world would be destroyed, the vital power of the whole animal world would be extinguished. The earth would be frozen in its centre, and the earthquake itself would cease. Such is light, that comes to us so noiselessly and gently that it would not wake an infant from its sleep, and yet every morning rescues a world from death.
^ " Thy kingdom come," we are bid to ask then ! But how shall it come ? With power and great glory, it is written ; and yet not with observation, it is also written. Strange kingdom ! Yet its strangeness is renewed to us with every dawn.
When the time comes for us to wake out of the world's sleep, why should it be otherwise than out of the dreams of the night ? Singing of birds, first, broken and lov/, as, not to dying eyes, but eyes that wake to life, " the casement slowly grows a glimmering square " ; and then the gray, and then the rose of dawn ; and last the light, whose going forth is to the ends of heaven.
This kingdom it is not in our power to bring; but it is, to receive. Nay, it is come already, in part; but not received, because men love chaos best ; and the Night, with her daughters. That is still the only question for us, as in the old Elias days, " If ye will receive it." ^
2. This holds good also in every region of human activity, with but few exceptions. Every great movement, great event, great institution, all in short, or well-nigh all, that has exercised a deep and lasting influence on the after-history of the world, has had small and unobserved beginnings, has grown up like the mustard seed, without observation ; while loud and grand com- mencements, summoning as with the sound of a trumpet the whole world to behold what a mighty birth is at hand, or what a ^ Buskin, Modem Painters, v. ( JVorks, vii. 469),
ST. LUKE XVII. 20, 21 367
glorious thing has just been born — these are almost sure to come to nothing, to end in shameful discomfiture and defeat.
^ Who has ever traced the obscure rudiments, the first founda- tions of that wondrous city on the banks of the Tiber, which was for so many centuries queen and mistress of the world ; and which, when the sceptre of temporal sovereignty dropped from her aged hand, presently grew young again, and wielded, as with a new lease of life and of power, a spiritual dominion more wide and wonderful than ever her temporal had been ? Who knows the secrets of the birth of Eome ? But who does not know with how loud a promise, with how vainglorious an announcement, an older city was proposed to be built, the city and the tower whose top should reach unto heaven ; what a name and a fame its builders designed beforehand for themselves, organizing, as they purposed to do, into one grand society all the tribes and families of the earth; and how, in a little while, nothing but a deformed and shapeless mass of bricks remained to tell of the city which should have been at once the symbol and the centre of their world-wide sovereignty and dominion ? ^