LECTURE VIII.

THE 'KINGDOM THAT CANNOT BE MOVED.'

Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God.
S. MARK IV. II.

THE question we proposed to consider in these Enquiry

hitherto

Lectures was one of historical analysis, 'What was conducted. Christianity as first given to the world?'—which resolved itself into an examination of the life and writings of S. Paul, in which the earliest facts of the Gospel come before us. Our object was a very practical one.

you.'

I.

I. The foundations of general religion and morals are so deeply disturbed among us, that every one dom of God The Kingwho would bear the name of Christian is bound to is among know what he is resting on. The narrowness and variety of beliefs found in our ranks are, to some, discrediting Christianity itself; and the professor of any compact system of à priori unbelief not unfrequently appears at advantage in controversy, the grounds of dispute being misapprehended on both sides.

In beginning to give serious attention to those subjects of truth and duty which none can ultimately

Historical reality now felt to be indispensa

ble.

tion

avoid, every one brings with him some previous conceptions of right which, however scanty, are for the time his philosophy. The successful popular reasoner is he who can make the readiest appeal to such primary intellectual condition; and in proportion as a code of faith or of thought is artificial, it is likely to be worsted in any such appeal. And indeed it ought to be so: for popular first principles may suffice to confront the unreal. But this concise treatment soon reaches its limits, becomes inaccurate, and is corrected by maturer experience.

They who have no other wish than to abide by facts, can afford to wait till false reasoning has exhausted itself; and this attitude alone becomes us at any time as Christians, subjects of that Kingdom which cannot be moved.' The old theoretical efforts of unbelief are unsatisfactory to all in these days; and even such writers as Strauss and Renan know at least that they must in some way deal with our historical beginnings. So much however still passes for Christianity which, strictly speaking, has no history and no philosophy, and of course therefore no real ground in the writings which are sacred to us, that we should wish it to be refuted by any one, even though the exposure of a widely-trusted fanaticism may, for the time, occasion a painful blank.

Recapitula- We will briefly recapitulate the course which has necessary. seemed in our present position the most practical.

Retrospect

of the

position.

The Roman world, as it appeared when Christianity came to it, was that which we had first to con

sider; and we next watched the earliest historical
signs of the change which made itself felt towards
the close of the Augustan era.
We saw that the
Gospel began when the debasement of society was at
the lowest point, and that it immediately organized
what might be called 'Societies of Purity' based on a
Theism or faith in God' previously lost, or nearly
so, among mankind.

This faith had arisen from no speculations, and from no estimate of probabilities; it was apparently a new hold on things unseen' to which human hope still tenaciously clung. It had been quickened by the life and teaching of One Who had been put to death in the reign of Tiberius, and in Whose Resurrection from the dead large multitudes of men in different parts of the world steadily believed, even Jesus Christ.

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decay, and

reconstruc

A reality and firmness, unknown before, was given Social to religious faith as a principle of action, when asso- attempted ciated as it thus was with the certainty of life with tion. God beyond the grave. Of the Resurrection as a fact, and no longer a mere possibility, assured to all men by the Prophet of Nazareth returning from the dead, there appeared not so much as any contradiction of a distinct kind, recorded by either Jews or heathen at the time. This was the more to be noted because they who preached 'Jesus and the Resurrection' willingly rested everything on the truth of the fact; and their confidence seemed abundantly known even to those who, like Tacitus and Pliny, were otherwise indistinctly acquainted with the Christian story,

understanding little beyond the existence of certain societies in which Christ was worshipped as Goda.'

It would here almost have appeared that the historical investigation would for a time have stopped, but for the information to be gathered from those societies, Churches' as they called themselves, whose internal life is found authenticated immediately by letters addressed to them, the genuineness of which no one now The social questions. We next turned therefore to these letters, and read them in their chronological order deterChurches, mined as to all chief particulars by internal evidence. of Purity. In them the incidents of the then-growing Christian life, as to times, places, and persons, are intermingled in the most natural way with the opinions, practices, and prospects of the followers of the Gospel.

and ethical

revival begun in

or' Societies

Our enquiry was thus principally directed to the interior system and doctrine of these Churches,' and we found that their ethical character was their most patent and permanent feature; all else being to a great extent incidental. Of course it is all invaluable as history; but history passes away— mere elements of the natural life indeed must pass, and the moral alone abides.

Whenever in these letters the changing events of the writer's career, or the persecutions, troubles, and difficulties of others, are mentioned, there is a moral object paramount. The righteousness, the purity, the perfection of the followers of Christ, is everything. If the evangelical story itself be alluded to, even in its most sacred particulars, such as the death

and resurrection of the Lord, and the gift of the

،

in the

subordi

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nated to the

ethical.

Spirit, it is to urge a death unto sin,' ' a rising unto Everything righteousness,' and 'a walking in the Spirit;' and so Churches is of all else. If 'Baptism,' or the 'Eucharist,' or the order of the Society, be the topic, the occasion and the treatment are invariably ethical. The Christianity as a system and a fact is all assumed. None of these letters narrate even the life of Christ; yet all refer to it. None define creed or sacrament; but all take them to be known in the Churches. The Kingdom of God was among them,' and to them it had been given to know the mystery of that Kingdom.'’

In addition, however, to their historical consciousness as to their origin and customs, and their high ethical aims, the Churches thus addressed were in possession of a moral standard, which they seemed ready at any moment to assert against the world: and this is the next point specifically observed. What we must regard as an ethical decision of its The own, a rule of 'holiness,' is the Church's most uni- assert an form characteristic, implying a claim so clear, positive, standard. and immutable, as to give rise from the first to a special action of Christianity on the whole social system. Not that this action ever allowed itself to be political, in any constructive sense, for, as far as we could see, it remained purely ethical.

Indeed, whenever the formal, or legal, basis of Roman society was concerned, the Church distinctly upheld it, seeking any social re-construction as a matter of inward principle. Even while deprecating the customs of the people, the Church had sympathy with, and

Churches

ethical