and the shrewdness of merchantmen; you glory in the strength of character and the sagacity of mind developed by business; this kingdom of heaven is not ashamed to say that it is like the best business man you have amongst you, with an eye as keen, with an ardour as intense, with a shrewdness as far-seeing as his, and having exhausted him, it multiplies itself by infinity.

This testimony, therefore, ought to come to you men of business with great force. The kingdom of heaven is not like unto a dreamer only, like unto a crazy poet, who makes jingling rhymes— the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman who keeps his books, and lays his plans, and awakens his wit, and belabours his energy, and inspires his enthusiasm by daily conquest in daily toil. Wondrous kingdom: it will join any man in his daily toil, and say to him, in so far as he is a wise and honest workman, "I am just like you. It does not merely go into the studies of the artist, into the sanctum of the recluse, into the hermitage of the monk, into the high nest of the poet who loves to dwell in solitude, and say, “I am just like you, great men of imagination and of artistic sensibility and power," but it also comes down to the day labourer, "This is what I do: I dig." It goes to the navigator, and says, 66 This is what I do: I have countless ships, and my meaning is to touch the uttermost parts of the earth with my beneficence and my light." It goes to the carpenter at the bench, and says, "I am just like you, I work all day and I work for a reward, a great prize." So here is a kingdom called the kingdom of heaven, that identifies itself with the business life of the land, and that reveals one shape of its supreme beauty through business, through merchandise.

and says,

While the kingdom of heaven so inspires a man as to lead him to throw off every fascination and inducement of a worldly kind, and to give himself wholly and absolutely to its worship and further pursuit, it may be said that all religions have this effect upon the human mind, which is only a proof that the strongest force which operates upon human intelligence, human inspiration, and human 'ambition is the religious force. Wherein, then, is the difference between the Christian kingdom and those other kingdoms of a religious kind which are not acknowledged by Christian theology? All religions compel devotion, all religions compel more or less of

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CHRIST'S RELIGION SOVEREIGN.

sacrifice wherein, then, is the difference between them and this Christian kingdom of heaven? I will tell you. Jesus Christ came into competition with all the sovereign religions of the world; no religion of a sovereign and absolutely original kind has ventured to show its head since Jesus Christ was born. Let me give you time to lay hold of that suggestion; no great religion of this kind has been set up in the world since the birth of Jesus Christ. Judaism is a great religion, but it has not come into existence during the last eighteen hundred and eighty years. Buddhism, Confucianism, are great religions, but each of them is more than eighteen hundred and eighty years of age, a fact which throws into infinite significance the comparison which Christianity institutes, by which it claims to be "the pearl of great price," the one pearl which lowers the value of every other, and which trusts to its intrinsic value to save it from all competition, and to ensure its ultimate and universal appreciation.

It is something to remember that since the child was born in Bethlehem no great or sovereign religion (with the doubtful exception of Mohammedanism) has established itself upon the earth. Here we come upon historical ground, and are able to fight with the invincible weapon of fact. What independent religion, right or wrong, has arisen since the birth of Jesus Christ? What man has arisen of such boldness of conception, grandeur of character, purity and sublimity of purpose and originality of mind as to rival or eclipse the man of Nazareth? Negative religions enough, if they might be called religions, denials and criticisms in abundance, which owe their temporary life to the very character which they assail-but no man can worship in the temple of doubt, no man can broadly, deeply, and permanently influence the world who has nothing to suggest but a negation; negatives can never ascend the highest seat and rule with dominating and beneficent supremacy. Where is the majestic personality, the profound philosophy, the heroic sacrifice, and the valiant propagandism of a new faith that claims the sovereignty of the world? I do not include perversions and corruptions so foul and obvious as are found in Mohammedanism; I ask for an independent, original, and sovereign competitor. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a pearl of great price; it holds itself up as such, and asks for all the other pearls to be brought that they may be contrasted with its ineffable preciousness. No competing faith has been suggested

with such breadth of suggestion as to get more than a moment's life in the estimation of mankind, and no such faith has embodied itself in any leader that the world has cared to arrest and crucify.

Men have looked

A great argument takes its inception here. for another than Christ, and no other has come with a single tittle of claim that could bear one moment's examination. Negations have no missions, no adventures, no audacities of a beneficent kind; they only live spasmodically and temporarily, they do not live in themselves and by themselves, of their own divinely created force. This faith of Jesus Christ knocks at every door, it thunders upon the door of India and China, and sends its ship in full sail to the islands of the sea, and the cry is, "I am a merchantman who has found a pearl of great price; examine it, test it, receive it but in doing so all other pearls must be given up. If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Go, sell all thou hast and give to the poor, and come and follow me. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life." What are all these quotations and references but so many expansions of the great doctrine of this text that the kingdom of heaven is as a merchantman, who, having seen a pearl more valuable and precious than all others, surrenders the life-gathered store that he may possess himself of this most precious of all pearls?

Where is your competing pearl, where is your competing Christ, where is your nobler love or your grander purpose? The air is troubled with doubts, the night is thick with scepticism, the Church is annoyed now and again with the arrow and the pestilence of ardent foes, but since the star glittered on Bethlehem no man has arisen to claim the heathen for an inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession. Christianity makes this supreme claim to us every one this morning; it asks us to lay our little pearls beside it, that it may show by self-revelation how little they are and poor compared with its magnitude, its quality, and its lustre. Christianity is a comparative religion, a competitive faith; it asks to be looked at in the light of all that has gone before it, and a religion which comes before me with a claim so broad, so substantial, so manifestly profound in its common sense arrests my thoughts and demands my confidence.

A DOUBLE ASPECT OF THE KINGDOM.

Matthew xiii. 33, 47–50.

33. Another parable spake he unto them: The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

47. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind.

48. Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.

49. So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just.

50. And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

L'

ET me try to reveal the kingdom of heaven to-day under two aspects. It has already come before us under the image of the sower, the parable of the tares, the grain of mustard seed, the treasure hid in a field, the pearl of great price-by this time surely we ought to be well acquainted with this kingdom of heaven, yet it is the eternal mystery as surely as it is the eternal revelation. Jesus Christ now gives us two more opportunities of knowing still more clearly what his great kingdom is. He condescends to paint two more pictures, a woman hiding leaven in three measures of meal, and a man casting a net into the sea.

"The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened." It follows then that the kingdom of heaven, like all other truth, is penetrating in its influence. It goes forward to its work little by little it never rests—it cannot rest until it has covered the whole space of its opportunity. It can never give in—all things must go down before it, not violently, but certainly. No great or true idea can be in the human mind without penetrating

that mind through and through, and passing on to other minds and completing the same subduing process there.

Not only is it penetrating, but it is gradual in its process and advancement. Great ideas do not seize the mind all at once and rule it with undisputed domination. One by one, little by little, a man here and a man there-such is the rule of this gradualness. But it never goes back, though appearances may seem sometimes to indicate the contrary. The movement of truth is always forward. The truth was never so fully, broadly, and benignly established in the human mind as it is this day. You can quote a thousand instances to indicate the badness of the race, its love of error and its pursuit of corruption, and every instance that is quoted may be perfectly right, within its own limits. Nevertheless the kingdom moves, the penetrating influence gradually asserts itself. How long will it continue to assert itself? Till the whole is leavened. The time is fixed in the parable, the date is here marked down in plain figures, if we have eyes to read it. This is a dated promise, and the date is "till the whole is leavened."

Have we any parallels in our own life that will enable us to seize, more completely, the gracious and generous meaning of this parable? We have a parallel, certainly, in the education of the mind. No mind is educated in one day: education is not something thrust upon a man which he can seize in a moment and make his own without a long transaction. You cannot tell how you were educated: there is no specific day in our human life upon which we can say we were then educated, in any complete or final sense of the term. We may have vivid memories of certain days, but education is not a day's work, it is not a time work, it is an eternal process. How the light came upon the mind, how the new idea seemed to strike us with instancy and startling suddenness-yet when we came carefully to look into it we found that it was the culminating point of a long process, and that but for the process the culmination never could have supervened. Watch your child's progress in letters, and it will be impossible for you to indicate any time at which he became a scholar. Jesus Christ says, "Just the same in my kingdom: it is not one sermon, one book, one act of prayer, but the repetition of many a process through the whole space of the lifetime. It is not one shower that makes the summer, it is