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categorically, but gently, delicately, and by implication, that his expectations are erroneous. not in the kingdom of God, as he might suppose, by virtue of his birth as a Jew, of the seed of Abraham, nor does the kingdom of God belong to the Jews as a nation. He must be born into it by outward profession and by spiritual renovation. He must be born of water and spirit. The kingdom of God is as invisible as the wind. It is of the mind. It is coincident with no outward, visible organization. It consists not of the seed of Abraham, but of God's spiritual children. And he then goes on to tell the astonished Rabbi, that the Messiah, so far from reigning on earth as a temporal king, is to be "lifted up," like the serpent in the wilderness, to be crucified, and to save men, not by the arm of physical strength, but by the power of faith. And more than all this, the true Messiah is not to be a Messiah of conquest; he does not come "to condemn the world," to conquer and destroy the nations, but that the nations may believe on him and be saved.

As the ministry of Jesus advanced, he proceeded gradually, but steadily, to undermine those expectations which the ambition and worldliness of the Jews had led them to fix upon their Messiah, and which they hoped to realize in him. By his teaching, and especially his parables, he opened to their minds the fact, that what they looked for as an outward kingdom was in fact to be a spiritual religion. The kingdom of God was to be established, not by violence, by revolution, or by conquest, but by moral means. It was to grow as the grain of mustard seed grows, from being the smallest of all seeds,

to become a tree, so that the fowls of heaven come and lodge in the branches of it. It was to spread abroad, not with force and noise and commotion, but as a little leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

Towards the latter end of his ministry, it was inquired of him directly when the kingdom whose advent he proclaimed should come, when it should assume an outward form and manifestation; and he plainly told the inquirers, that there was to be nothing of the kind; that his kingdom was to have nothing of a temporal, worldly, or material character, but related entirely to the hidden man of the heart. There was to be no gathering together to him as to a military leader or worldly monarch, and he cautions his followers against those false Christs who should attempt to make such a demonstration. "And when he was demanded of the Pharisees when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. And he said unto the disciples, The days will come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and ye shall not see it." When these political troubles should come on, which were to end in the destruction of the Jewish people, they would earnestly desire the personal presence, guidance, and protection of the Messiah, and they would be tempted to run after this impostor and that, who should give out that he was the expected deliverer; but they were to give no heed, for there

was to be no personal, local manifestation, but the coming of the Son of Man was to be like the lightning, undoubted in its certainty, not local in its manifestation, but illuminating equally a wide extent of country, and shining around the whole hori"And they shall say to you, See here! or, See there! go not after them nor follow them. For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, and shineth unto the other part under heaven, so shall also the Son of Man be in his day."

zon.

The time at length came, however, when he was compelled to be more explicit. The national disappointment of the Jews in Jesus as their expected Messiah led to his rejection, and persecution as an impostor. His spiritual teaching, his open rebukes of the vices of the age, and his denunciation of those in power, stirred up an enmity to him that could be appeased only with his blood. It was easy enough to obtain his condemnation before the Jewish council, for most of them hated him cordially. But they had not the power of life and death, and it was necessary, in order to destroy him, to obtain the concurrence of the Roman governor. There was some difficulty in doing this, for the Roman governor knew little or nothing of the peculiarities of their religion, or of their private grievances against Jesus. It was necessary to convict him of a capital offence against the Roman Empire. The readiest way to do this was to prove that he had pretended to be a king, and thus had been guilty of treason. This accusation of sedition they did not hesitate to make, though they knew it to be utterly groundless, though they knew that he had

repeatedly refused to be made a king, when he might have done so. In this accusation they had a double purpose. They intended to bring Christ into an inextricable dilemma. In professing to be the Messiah according to the Jewish conceptions, he had claimed to be "King of Israel," which was one of the titles of the Messiah. If, to escape the accusation of sedition against the Romans, he had denied that he was a king, then the Jews would have had it to say, that, when brought to the test, and in peril of his life, he renounced the very claim he had set up, and was, after all, not the Messiah he had professed to be.

This ensnaring accusation was made against Christ, not in his presence, but in his absence. When brought before Pilate, he was taken into the judgment-hall, but his accusers could not enter, for fear of being defiled. Pilate therefore went out to them, in order to learn the charges brought against the prisoner. The accusation was, "We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Cæsar, saying, that he himself is Christ, a king." "Then Pilate entered into the judgment-hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews? Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me. What hast thou done?"

From the avowal that he was a king, though wholly untrue in the sense of the accusation, Jesus could not shrink, without apparent contradiction, without abandoning the position he had assumed. He therefore explained himself, by declaring what

his kingdom was not. "Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence."

Every one that is of the

This would have been sufficient in justice to escape the charge of sedition, and here the matter might have rested. But Pilate goes on to inquire how he could be a king, and still have no earthly kingdom. “Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then?" The answer of Christ is sublimely wise and sublimely true, and furnishes the key to all the regal phraseology which Jesus applied to himself, from the beginning of the Gospel to the end. "Thou sayest well that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. truth heareth my voice." As much as if he had said: "Truth is the true sovereign of the human mind and the true ruler of mankind. It is irresistible, it is universal. Every good and true man obeys it, and precisely to the measure of his goodness and truth. I am the organ and the instrument of establishing the truth in the earth. I am its witness, and shall be its martyr. It transcends the limits of time and space. Its empire extends wherever man is man. Its dominion, therefore, may spread from sea to sea, and from shore to shore. Its dominion may be universal and perpetual; for truth is as eternal as the soul of - man."

Finally, the figure of the new dispensation as the kingdom of heaven, and himself as its king under God, becomes the source of the scenic sublimity of