SUCH in dimmest
outline is the Programme of Christ's Society. Did you know that
all this was going on in the world? Did you know that
Christianity was such a living and purpose-like thing? Look back
to the day when that Programme was given, and you will see that
it was not merely written on paper. Watch the drama of the moral
order rise up, scene after scene, in history. Study the social
evolution of humanity, the spread of righteousness, the
amelioration of life, the freeing of slaves, the elevation of
woman, the purification of religion, and ask what these can be
if not the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. For it is
precisely through the movements of nations and the lives of men
that this Kingdom comes. Christ might have done all this work
Himself, with His own hands. But He did not. The crowning wonder
of His scheme is that He entrusted it to men. It is the supreme
glory of humanity that the machinery for its redemption should
have been placed within itself. I think the saddest thing in
Christ's life was that after founding a Society with aims so
glorious He had to go away and leave it.
But in reality He did not leave
it. The old theory that God made the world, made it as an
inventor would make a machine, and then stood looking on to see
it work, has passed away. God is no longer a remote spectator of
the natural world, but immanent in it, pervading matter by His
present Spirit, and ordering it by His Will. So Christ is
immanent in men. His work is to move the hearts and inspire the
lives of men, and through such hearts to move and reach the
world. Men, only men, can carry out this work. This humanness,
this inwardness, of the Kingdom is one reason why some scarcely
see that it exists at all. We measure great movements by the
loudness of their advertisement, or the place their externals
fill in the public eye. This Kingdom has no externals. The usual
methods of propagating a great cause were entirely discarded by
Christ. The sword He declined; money He had none; literature He
never used; the Church disowned Him; the State crucified Him.
Planting His ideals in the hearts of a few poor men, He started
them out unheralded to revolutionize the world. They did it by
making friends and by making enemies; they went about, did good,
sowed seed, died, and lived again in the lives of those they
helped. These in turn, a fraction of them, did the same. They
met, they prayed, they talked of Christ, they loved, they went
among other men, and by act and word passed on their secret. The
machinery of the Kingdom of God is purely social. It acts, not
by commandment, but by contagion; not by fiat, but by
friendship. "The Kingdom of God is like unto leaven, which
a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole
was leavened."
After all, like all great
discoveries once they are made, this seems absolutely the most
feasible method that could have been devised. Men must
live among men. Men must influence men. Organizations,
institutions, churches, have too much rigidity for a thing that
is to flood the world. The only fluid in the world is man. War
might have won for Christ's cause a passing victory; wealth
might have purchased a superficial triumph; political power
might have gained a temporary success. But in these, there is no
note of universality, of solidarity, of immortality. To live
through the centuries and pervade the uttermost ends of the
earth, to stand while kingdoms tottered and civilizations
changed, to survive fallen churches and crumbling creeds--there
was no soil for the Kingdom of God like the hearts of common
men. Some who have written about this Kingdom have emphasized
its moral grandeur, others its universality, others its
adaptation to man's needs. One great writer speaks of its
prodigious originality, another chiefly notices its success. I
confess what almost strikes me most is the miracle of its
simplicity.
Men, then, are the only means
God's Spirit has of accomplishing His purpose. What men? You. Is
it worth doing, or is it not? Is it worth while joining Christ's
Society or is it not? What do you do all day? What is
your personal stake in the coming of the Kingdom of Christ on
earth? You are not interested in religion, you tell me; you do
not care for your "soul". It was not about your
religion I ventured to ask, still less about your soul. That you
have no religion, that you do not care for your soul, does not
absolve you from caring for the world in which you live. But you
do not believe in this church, you reply, or accept this
doctrine, or that. Christ does not, in the first instance, ask
your thoughts, but your work. No man has a right to postpone his
life for the sake of his thoughts. Why? Because this is a
real world, not a think world. Treat it as a real world--
act. Think by all means, but think also of what is actual, of
what like the stern world is, of low much even you, creedless
and churchless, could do to make it better. The thing to be
anxious about is not to be right with man, but with mankind.
And, so far as I know, there is nothing so on all fours with
mankind as Christianity.
There are versions of
Christianity, it is true, which no self-respecting mind can do
other than disown--versions so hard, so narrow, so unreal, so
super-theological, that practical men can find in them neither
outlet for their lives nor resting-place for their thoughts.
With these we have nothing to do. With these Christ had nothing
to do-- except to oppose them with every word and act of His
life. It too seldom occurs to those who repudiate Christianity
because of its narrowness or its unpracticalness, its
sanctimoniousness or its dulness, that these were the very
things which Christ strove against and unweariedly condemned. It
was the one risk of His religion being given to the common
people--an inevitable risk which He took without reserve--that
its infinite lustre should be tarnished in the fingering of the
crowd or have its great truths narrowed into mean and unworthy
moulds as they passed from lip to lip. But though the crowd is
the object of Christianity, it is not its custodian. Deal with
the Founder of this great Commonwealth Himself. Any man of
honest purpose who will take the trouble to inquire at first
hand what Christianity really is, will find it a thing he cannot
get away from. Without either argument or pressure, by the mere
practicalness of its aims and the pathos of its compassions, it
forces its august claim upon every serious life.
He who joins this Society finds
himself in a large place. The Kingdom of God is a Society of the
best men, working for the best ends, according to the best
methods. Its membership is a multitude whom no man can number;
its methods are as various as human nature; its field is the
world. It is a Commonwealth, yet it honours a King; it is a
Social Brotherhood, but it acknowledges the Fatherhood of God.
Though not a Philosophy the world turns to it for light; though
not Political it is the incubator of all great laws. It is more
human than the State, for it deals with deeper needs; more
Catholic than the Church, for it includes whom the Church
rejects. It is a Propaganda, yet it works not by agitation but
by ideals. It is a Religion, yet it holds the worship of God to
be mainly the service of man. Though not a Scientific Society
its watchword is Evolution; though not an Ethic it possesses the
Sermon on the Mount. This mysterious Society owns no wealth but
distributes fortunes. It has no minutes for history keeps them;
no member's roll for no one could make it. Its entry-money is
nothing; its subscription, all you have The Society never meets
and it never adjourns. Its law is one word-- loyalty; its Gospel
one message -- love. Verily "Whosoever will lose his life
for My sake shall find it."
The Programme for the other life
is not out yet. For this world, for these faculties, for his one
short life, I know nothing that is offered to man to compare
with membership in the Kingdom of God. Among the mysteries which
compass the world beyond, none is greater than how there can be
in store for man a work more wonderful, a life more God-like
than this. If you know anything better, live for it; if not, in
the name of God and of Humanity, carry out Christ's plan.
