The answer Christ gave to Pilate suggests the best reply to the question, " What did Christ mean by the Kingdom of God." He was king. He said, in the kingdom of the truth, meaning thereby not a mere dogma, but the truth of God and the truth of man. The kind of power which He here claims is spiritual power, and that is the greatest that can be swayed. For it is spiritual power — true or false — that determines history, shapes the character of society, directs the tendencies of life, the movements of the world. There are uncrowned kings who have swayed the destinies of mankind as no leaders of armies have been able to sway them. There have been poets and teachers who have inspired enthusiasms and kindled hopes that have moved the world, for they have reigned over the domain of human thought and so determined the actions of mankind. There have been kings on other thrones than those of State who have been the real monarchs of humanity, — Gutenberg with his printing-press, Bacon with his inductive method, Isaac Newton, James Watt. What a wide domain of conquest the very mention of these names suggests. May we not say with truth that if we are to find the influences which have given power to any of the great epochs of the world, we must look not to the brute force which was called into exercise, but to the ideas which save nerve to the arms that wielded the force?
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Wherein, for example, lay the power of the armies of revolutionary France ? Not surely in the number of her soldiers or in the genius of her commanders alone. These countless battalions marched with songs of joy against a world in arms because every heart there was stirred with the sense of a grand cause. It was the charmed words Liberty, Equality, Fraternity that excited their enthusiasm into a fierce world-conquering fanaticism. So is it that the true kingdoms which govern men are not those which strike the eye. They do not excite observation. They are the kingdoms of human conviction, thought, aspiration, passion. It is in the sphere of ideas, in the domain of the affections, in the faiths, the hopes, the loves which sway humanity, that we discover the real forces of the world. And so it was that Christ touched the true fountain of all power when He refused to use the forces which the world imagines omnipotent, when He left Geesar on the throne and Pilate in the praetorium, and said, " My kingdom is not of this world : if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight but my kingdom is not from hence. For this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice."
1. The kingdom of truth is wide in extent. — The truth to which Christ bore witness at the first was the truth which concerned His person, and His claims to the love and obedience of men. On the cross He bore witness to the love of God for sinning man. By rising from the dead, and ascending to His Father, He testified that He was indeed the Son of God. By His present spirit He has witnessed ever since for the living God as against the godless- ness and self-worship to which man is prone. To the truth which enforces the duties of men, Christ also bore witness, first by His spotless and inspiring life, by His penetrating and faithful words, and then by the long succession of obedient disciples who have imitated the one and exemplified the other.
There is, however, truth of other descriptions than the truth which we call religious and ethical. There is the truth of science, which is expanded every year into grander proportions ; the truth of letters, which is more and more abundant and instructive ; and the truth of the imagination, which is more and more varied and inspiring. Has Christ any testimony to give concerning these
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kinds of truth ? Does Christ hold any relations to Science, Letters, or Art? And, if so, what are these relations? We believe that they are many and important. We also hold that the spirit of earnest discipleship to Christ always favours, and often inspires, the highest achievements in every one of these forms of truth. We hold not only that Christianity satisfies the wants of which the scholar is conscious as a man, but that it is equally efficient and equally essential in stimulating and guiding him rightly as a scholar. In other words, we contend that allegiance to Christ is a favouring, and in one sense an essential, condition of the best human culture and education.
^ I notice that among all the new buildings which cover your once wild hills, churches and schools are mixed in due, that is to say, in large proportion, with your mills and mansions ; and I notice also that the churches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and mills are never Gothic. May I ask the meaning of this ? for, remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; and when the Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian as well as houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the Cathedral of Antwerp, there is a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at Brussels ; if Inigo Jones builds an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an Italian St. Paul's. But now you live under one school of architecture, and worship under another. What do you mean by doing this ? Am I to understand that you are thinking of changing your architecture back to Gothic : and that you treat your churches experimentally, because it does not matter what mistakes you make in a church ? Or am I to understand that you consider Gothic a pre-eminently sacred and beautiful mode of building, which you think, like the fine frankincense, should be mixed for the tabernacle only, and reserved for your religious services ? For if this be the feeling, though it may seem at first as if it were graceful and reverent, at the root of the matter, it signifies neither more nor less than that you have separated your religion from your life.^