XV.

THE COMING KINGDOM.

Thy kingdom come.

THE LORD'S PRAYER.

HAT kingdom is that for which Christ

WHAT

prayed, and which, (for His prayers

were prophecies,) He foretold?

God's kingdom is obviously an order of things where God's will perfectly fulfils itself, where there are no insurgent or unplastic forces to confuse or delay or antagonize its action, where life mounts to its highest pinnacles of knowledge, holiness and love. Men have therefore concluded that the kingdom of God means heaven, or at least, some place outside of this earth, where the divine forces flow into life without the impediments which here disturb their current. Men are daily praying for the coming of God's kingdom who have no dream or expectation that it will ever come,

till God emancipates life from this earthly shell, and sets it in the beatific light and the society of the seraphim. This gives a remoteness and languor to their prayer which I am sure were never in Christ's prayer: "Thy kingdom come."

He certainly never intended that men should spend their lives in praying for death. The life that God has put on this earth is not such a miserable blunder and horrible perversion, that death is the only escape from the devil's clutches and the only door into God's light and joy. This surely is a childish, ignorant, un-Christian interpretation of God's world and Christ's words. When He prayed for the coming of God's kingdom, He did not mean that God had given up this earth to the demons of misrule and misery, and that the only redemption of man hung in the distant heavens beyond the grave.

What did He mean? What did those Jews to whom He gave the prayer understand Him to mean?

They attached certain definite ideas to the word, kingdom. There it was, very visible

and very palpable, stretching its long, strong arm from the throne on the Tiber, griping the throat of their civic life, pressing them at every turn with some touch of foreign law, or alien custom, or insult to their ancient religion. They themselves had once been a kingdom, and their hearts were aflame as they read in their sacred books, of its kings and heroes and saints, its conquests and surrenders, its splendors and its infamies. The Messiah for whom they looked was to restore the kingdom to Israel. Knowing that this thought was brooding in the minds of those Jews, Christ put into the prayer that He gave them, that petition: "Thy kingdom come."

He

God's kingdom meant to them a divine organization of life, life on this earth, life in the home, at the bazaar, in the temple, on the throne. Christ, it is true, did not present Himself as the creature of their dreams. broke their illusions. He spoke of an emancipation and a kinghood, grander than that implied in their aspirations for national sovereignty; but their idea of kingdom He put into His great world-prayer. And there it stands

to-day, echoed round the girdle of the earth. God's kingdom is life organized on the law of God, life not only hereafter, but life here and now, life as it flows to men, day by day, in the relations of the family, the market place, the Church and the State. For the coming of this kingdom of God on earth, Christ prayed, and taught His disciples to pray.

What fathomless depths lie in Christ's words! With every advance of our civilization and knowledge, our plummets of thought are striking deeper into their gulfs of meaning. As never before, we can now take deep-sea soundings in this petition of Christ for the coming of God's kingdom. It is not only a prayer, it is a history; the history of the universe, of this planet, of the manifold life with which God has peopled it.

From the cosmic chaos to the creation of man, the earth has registered on its rocks the prayer for, and the history of, the coming of God's kingdom. Higher and higher, through the geologic ages, life climbed up its colossal ladder to reach a type of being, which would reflect more perfectly the divine life. And