DISCOURSE XX.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

FROM THAT TIME JESUS BEGAN TO PREACH, AND TO SAY, REPENT, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND.— Matthew iv. 17.

In the analysis of the New Testament in which we have been engaged, three elements have already been discussed,-historical facts, doctrines, opinions. There remains a fourth element, Phraseology, modes of speech belonging to the language, the nation, and the age. These are carefully to be observed, as they have been a fruitful source of error and misapprehension in other nations and other times.

Much of the language of Christ and his Apostles was conventional. That is to say, it was not invented and introduced by Christ for the first time. It was adopted by Christ, because it was already in use, and applied to purposes for which he used it. It was better and more to his purpose, therefore, than a language altogether new. But he often took the liberty of using the old language with a new signification, corresponding to the facts of the

case.

Christ's mission, or the New Dispensation, was not a sudden, unanticipated phenomenon upon the earth. The world had been preparing for it from the beginning. The whole Jewish religion had been introductory to it. Judaism was the stock upon which Christianity was engrafted, and the previous existence of Judaism made Christianity possible. Had Christ gone into any heathen nation, and attempted to set up his religion, the attempt would have been wholly abortive. He would have been obliged to have gone back and begun at the beginning, by laying again the foundation of the patriarchal and Mosaic religions. He would have been obliged first to destroy and root up idolatry, and establish the knowledge and worship of the true God. Otherwise, when he told them that he brought them a message from Jehovah, they would have been obliged to ask him who the God was from whom he professed to come. His phraseology would have been altogether new, and he would have been compelled to interpret and explain almost every sentence he uttered. I do not say too much, then, when I affirm that, without the basis of Judaism, the establishment of Christianity would have been impossible. It is true, the Gospel was propagated in heathen lands, but it was at first only through the synagogue. In every considerable city of the Roman empire, the Jews had established their synagogues, and it was into them that the Apostles first entered to preach Christ and Christianity. The Jews first listened, then the proselytes, then the heathen. What would have taken place everywhere without the preface of Judaism, we see by what

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happened when Paul accidentally found himself called upon to preach on Mars' Hill, at Athens, to an audience of idolaters and polytheists, unenlightened by one ray of supernatural revelation, though the most intellectual and literary people upon earth. His eloquent discourse, instead of producing conviction, excited nothing but wonder and ridicule and scorn, and he barely escaped a civil prosecution as a setter forth of strange gods.

The Jews were prepared for the mission of Christ, not only by previous knowledge and culture, but by previous expectation. They had been expecting a new order of things for centuries. That new order of things they had denominated "the kingdom of God," or "the kingdom of Heaven," Heaven being put for God. This phraseology was founded mainly on two passages of the book of Daniel, the first of which is found in the second chapter: "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and shall stand for ever." The other is found in the seventh chapter: "I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him; and there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." The book of Daniel embodies and represents the Messianic

expectations of the Jews, and most of the language current at the time of Christ, concerning the Messiah and his kingdom, is taken from it.

This expectation had become so intense in the time of Christ, that it frequently gave rise to political commotions. The nation was then in a state of bondage, being a conquered province of the Roman Empire. The Jews had lost their independence, and were subjected to the most grinding oppression. Their cities and fortresses were garrisoned by Roman armies, their citizens were subjected to enormous taxation, their temple and their sacred rites were exposed to wanton insult, and the Roman eagles, everywhere conspicuous, were at once the symbols of their national degradation, and of the idolatry which their national religion taught them to hold in utter abomination.

Under these circumstances, the Messiah was expected both as a religious reformer and a temporal monarch. But the pressing evils and calamities of the times led the Jews to fix their hopes on their expected Messiah chiefly in his temporal relations, as a king. He was not only to deliver his countrymen from a foreign yoke, but was to carry conquest into foreign lands. It was with this expectation, probably, that the disciples at first followed Christ and attached themselves to his cause. It was evidently with this hope, that Salome, the mother of James and John, during his last journey to Jerusalem, requested of him "that her two sons might sit the one on his right hand, and the other on his left, when he came to the kingdom." And even after his resurrection, his disciples inquired of him, "if he were now about to restore the kingdom to Israel."

The ideas of the Jews in relation to their expected Messiah were theocratical. They looked upon their own nation as under the especial providence and government of God. God had been their Lawgiver at first, and so he was their invisible Sovereign and Ruler perpetually. Their kings ruled only under him. Saul and David were chosen, not by popular election, but by God. God, by his prophet Samuel, anointed them both. When Samuel went to the

family of Jesse to choose a king from among his sons, Eliab, his eldest, was first brought before the prophet, and, seeing his commanding appearance, he said: "Surely the Lord's Anointed," in Hebrew, the Lord's Messiah, "is before him." This, in the Greek translation, which had been chiefly in use among the Jews for two hundred years before the time of the Saviour, is rendered Christos or Christ. So Samuel in that translation is made to say, "Surely the Lord's Christ is before him."

So, in the second Psalm, one of the kings of Israel seems to be addressed as God's Messiah; in the Greek, Christos or Christ. "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed," his Messiah, or Christ, "saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us." That this was spoken primarily of one of the kings of Israel appears clearly from the manner in which he is to maintain his authority over the nations. "Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." But this king is spoken of in the same Psalm as not only