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peace. This spiritual kingdom is introduced, and the states and empires of the earth are undisturbed. In a humble village of Judea, an inconsiderable province of the empire, angels, in the stillness of the midnight air, announce to shepherds the birth of the Prince of Peace, by the song of peace and good-will to men. At the age of thirty years, this Son of God enters publicly, but quietly, and without ostentation, on the business of his mission. At first he is employed in teaching humility to a few ambitious disciples; he is employed in establishing the influence of the most unaspiring religion in hearts the most adverse to its reception ; and thus, my friends, is God's minister employed upon earth, during a laborious life. We observe in Jesus no solicitude to swell the number of his adherents by flattering promises, and no care to retain those who, from admiration or curiosity, called themselves his disciples. A ruler comes and falls down before him, professing himself his follower. Our Savior, instead of eagerly embracing him as a valuable acquisition to his cause, proposes a severe test of his sincerity: "Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the poor, . . . and then come and follow me." The disappointed ruler departs in sorrow, "for," says the evangelist, "he had great possessions." These, however, to a teacher of worldly views, would have been his highest recommendation.

Let us, in the scond place, endeavor to trace the establishment of this kingdom in the world after the death of its founder. You will naturally ask, What provision is made for its continuance and extension? Without doubt, the world would previously suppose that Jesus, like Mahomet, had appointed his successors, given them minute political instructions, and assigned to them their different departments. Perhaps he had directed them to retire, as they

did, from Jerusalem, to avoid the gathering storm, to collect, in silence, their scattered adherents, to wait in secret the increase of their numbers and their strength, and to return, in due time, to avenge the murder of their Master, and to plant the cross on the ruins of the temple. Not a word of all this. Their Lord is crucified, and the disciples are dispersed. The interests of this desperate cause are left, my friends, to the efforts of the men who had fled in panic from Jerusalem. They are left to the untutored eloquence of Peter, that timid disciple who had denied his Master; to the persuasive and affectionate simplicity of the young John; to the fortitude, the zeal, the learning of Paul, who was now, perhaps, sitting at the feet of Gamaliel, smiling at the unsuccessful ministry of Jesus. And yet these are the means by which the kingdom, "that is not of this world," is to be extended. These are the peaceful arms which are to beat down the strong-holds of vice, and spread the triumphs of the cross, and vanquish the lusts and passions and prejudices of an enlightened age.

Observe the circumstances which attended the progress of this kingdom, and you will see that it neither interfered nor was connected with the kingdoms of the world. It threatens not the established power of a single subordinate officer, throughout the Roman empire. It proposes no change in men's civil relations. It may coëxist with any form of government, and any station of society. The kingdom of heaven is capacious enough to include the slave chained to his task, and the emperor seated on his throne. It requires not the former to break his fetters, nor the latter to cast away his crown. While it was winning its way through the wide extent of the Roman empire, though the workmen," who made silver shrines for Diana," might have

had some cause for their clamor, Cæsar himself had no reason to be alarmed, and no excuse to persecute. Into this kingdom enters Onesimus, the servant of Philemon, and into this kingdom how gladly would have been received the king Agrippa, almost persuaded to be a Christian! Upon this subject of the interference of Christianity with men's civil relations, we need only quote the words of the Apostle: "Is any man called being circumcised, let him not become uncircumcised. . . . Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing," slavery is nothing, and freedom is nothing, "but the keeping of the commandments of God." Further; as the kingdom of Christ, in its establishment, gave no offence to the reigning powers, so it received support from none, while it gave support to all. While it was making men fit to leave the world, it fitted them also to live peaceably in it; and a good subject of Christ was also a good subject of any government on earth. for tolerance, and it gave peace in return. tered the most cruel opposition. Even the benevolent and enlightened Trajan could persecute and burn a Christian without remorse. And what, think you, my friends, would have been the fate of a temporal power, attempting to establish itself, at such a moment, in the centre of the Roman empire? Nay, what, think you, would have been the fate of Christianity itself, if it had then constised, like the religion of many of its professors at the present day, in its public institutions, in the number of its churches, in the reception of the sacrament, in the baptism of children, in the hearing of sermons, and in the peace and splendor and quiet of a church? Thank God! there were subjects of Jesus then existing, to whom the honor and love of their Master were dearer than life. Thank God! there were

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hearts beating with the influence of the gospel, though its rites were secret, and its assemblies small and despised. Hence, when the temples of Christ were burning, the sanctuary in the heart was untouched; when his professors were led to the stake, his subjects were multiplied, and Christianity flourished, though its rites were suppressed, and trodden under the foot of power.

But, my friends, this picture of poverty and persecution is soon to be reversed. This kingdom, which was not of the world, is soon to be united in its forms to the kingdoms of the civil world. Its professors rise to dignities in the empire; the emperor himself adopts it to strengthen his throne; the ministers of the gospel aspire to worldly dominion, and endeavor thus to extend, by the same victory, the borders of the empire and the limits of the church. All is security and wealth and pomp and power without. The empire is Christianized, but yet Christ has hardly gained a subject. Amid all this splendor, the meek spirit of the gospel is lost and overwhelmed; and, after this professed union of the religion of Jesus with the establishments of the world, corruptions, divisions, superstition, and ecclesiastical dominion, more to be dreaded than the hordes of northern barbarians, which overswept the empire, desolated the church; and they have transmitted their deadly influence to these remote ages. Truly, if this work had not been originally of God, it would long since have been destroyed by the very encouragement its profession has received.

We have thus seen that our Lord's kingdom was not of the world in its origin; that it sought no aid from the world in its establishment; that it interfered not with the kingdoms of the world in its extension; and that it receives

no real support from a union with the powers of the world in its interests.

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Consider, in the third place, the subjects of this kingdom, and its spiritual nature will more clearly appear. Do not look for them, my friends, in that long roll of Christian emperors, beginning with the reign of Constantine. You may traverse the galleries of the imperial palace, and through the retinue of courtiers, and, I fear, you will hardly meet a disciple of the humble Nazarene. Do not look for them in the pompous martyrology of persecuting saints, who swell the calendar of the Romish church. I am compelled to say, too, that you must not look for them among those dignitaries who have lorded it over God's heritage, or among those barefooted and bareheaded impostors, who have concealed a vain and aspiring temper under the cloak of pretended mortification. I do not deny that a humble and holy spirit may reside under the purple and the ermine, while a proud heart may beat under haircloth and rags; yet, to find the subjects of Jesus, we must often descend to mean abodes, and often penetrate the recesses of domestic life, where we most often find the humble, the pure, the just, and pious, of whom the world has too often been unworthy.

These are they who have passed through great tribulation; men who have attained an enviable superiority to the pleasures, the pains, the honors, the riches, and the poverty, which surround them. No man can claim the privilege of this government, who has not subdued his passions to the authority of Christ. He seeks no doubting characters, who wish to be indulged in a partial attachment, who are ready to give up one vice, if they may be allowed to retain another, but who revolt at the first bribe which

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