The Christ Ideal · 2 of 9

The Kingdom of God

A bove all else, the record of Jesus’s life shows that he was a consecrated soul, giving himself fully, unfalteringly, and on all occasions, that he might serve the Father and his fellow-men. Consequently, he who would even in least measure understand Jesus must in some degree know what it means to be consecrated. The fragment out of which we are to construct the whole body of Jesus’s doctrine must therefore be that part of his teaching which most directly admits us into the heart of his consecrated life.

Perhaps no passage more fully expresses the faith which inspired this consecration than the one which is sometimes quoted as the essence of Jesus’s teaching: “But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” As if in elucidation of what was to follow, Jesus had already said: “For your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” In many other passages the same unqualified faith is expressed. There is no need of anxious thought. Fear and doubt are alike groundless. Simply do the Father’s work, and all that is needed will be provided day by day. It is not even necessary to consider what we shall speak, for when we do the work of the Father it is not we who speak, but the Father who speaketh in us. All that is needed is to enter one’s inner chamber, and close the door to the outside world, that one may feel that spiritual quickening which comes in its fulness from God alone.

To seek the Kingdom of God, therefore, means entire self-dedication, willingness to set aside personal desires and plans, that in their place we may know the divine wisdom and guidance. Only to him that loseth his life in the personal sense shall be given that fulness of life which transfigures merely finite personality and makes it divine.

There is accordingly one rule for all cases: “Not my will but thine be done.” Not what I would seek that it might add glory, wealth and renown to my name; not what I think ought to be; not what my friends advise; but what the Father has chosen as a part of his perfect world-plan—that is for ever to be my guide. And if at any time I know not what to do, I am to remember that if I ask I shall receive, that there is never any turning away from those who give all that they may receive all.

That which is easiest said is, however, sometimes the most difficult to do. We must therefore approach this great thought again and again from many points of view.

Voicing this same spirit of consecration, Jesus also says: “No man can serve two masters.” We must concentrate. Entire allegiance is demanded. If we give this the way will be made plain. If all is not well with us, if the guidance does not come, we may know that it is because we did not truly consecrate all that we are; for what a man pursues and receives is measured by what he desires. No man can defraud the universe by seeming to lay up treasure in heaven while in reality desiring this world’s goods. Where his heart is there his whole life is concentrated, and if he fails to attain that which is spiritual he has only himself to blame.

It is not enough merely to cry out that we believe, to seek the Kingdom as a sort of unsubstantial ideal. “He that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” is he who truly seeks and finds. We must not only seek the Father’s Kingdom but his righteousness. We must both seek and utter the truth, both search for and manifest goodness. We must live for humanity as well as for God; for the Father’s righteousness demands ideal conduct with reference to our fellow-men; it is unselfishness, it is devoted love. Nothing shall be hidden which has been thus revealed.

Here we have a perfectly clear statement of faith, as precise and unmistakable as a proposition in mathematics. To seek the Kingdom of God is to open heart and mind in unqualified consecration to the Father’s work. To seek his righteousness is to be true to the divine guidance in every moment of our individual and social life, whenever it comes, and to follow wherever it leads. And if we are thus faithful we shall be so tenderly and faithfully cared for that from the hour of consecration we need not give secondary things a moment’s anxious thought.

This is essentially a practical faith, for application here and now.

Only he who misunderstands or seeks to evade the law would think of postponing its application until some future state.

Where is the Kingdom of God which we are thus to seek? In a number of passages, Jesus lays special emphasis on the fact that it is within, since here is the secret place where the voice of God is heard; but it would be as serious a misinterpretation of the Master’s teaching to limit the Kingdom to man’s inner consciousness as to deem it a place. The inner realm is the source of all divine guidance, the beginning of all spiritual growth. Unless a man ceases to be cast about by outside influences and begins to listen at home, to become poised, centralised, he will not find the Kingdom though he search the entire universe and sit at the feet of the wisest men. But as we are to seek both the Kingdom, or dominion over self, and the social righteousness, the more important domain in the great Kingdom is the sphere of our social activity.

Except we become at heart as receptive, as pure and true as little children, we shall in no wise enter the Kingdom. Yet having entered we are to perform all the duties of manhood. The finding of the Kingdom is thus the return to nature, the attainment of simplicity, the peace, the solitude of the primitive forest, from which we once more emerge to the duties of the great world of service.

Again, it means adjustment, harmony with natural and spiritual law, the discovery of the divine tendencies in every department of our being, then glad co-operation with these tendencies. For the seeking of the Kingdom does not by any means imply neglect of the body, or any part of daily life. It means the elevation of all this to the spiritual plane, its consecration and purification. It is as far from asceticism as from egoism or self-affirmation.

It is true, one must give up many things, yet to give away all one’s possessions does not make one a denizen of the Kingdom. A man might simulate the garb of poverty, yet be very far from the love of God. The essential is a change of attitude toward the world. By this is meant something very different from the melancholy discovery that one is a “sinner,” as we shall presently see.

Nor is the Kingdom merely of this world, as some maintain who call Jesus a disappointed prophet. Over against the symbolical passages referring to the outward coming of the Kingdom, we may place the specific statement that “the Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, ‘Lo here! or, There!’ for lo, the Kingdom of God is within you.” Unless it first come within it can never come without.

Yet the inner realm is in a sense the universal, invisible realm, whose confines are by no means limited to human consciousness. The belief that “all things shall be added,” that the least as well as the greatest detail shall be cared for, so that “not a sparrow falleth without the Father,” implies the presence of God with every atom, in every event in the great universe.

Consider for a moment what this watchful presence means. It implies that, although man be unconscious of it and untrue to it, there is a guidance which includes every moment in the life of every creature. It means that life in its divine sense is literally one, a single system, including even the infinitesimal details, every one of which is essential to the Father’s worldplan. Consequently, the universe at heart is orderly; it is a divine harmony. There is nothing in all the wide realms of human or world-life which can interfere with the divine order. It is especially noteworthy that there is no room for a devil who can disorganise the world-plan. As much liberty as sinful man may have, he can only play about the surface of the divine stream of life; he cannot alter its course or mar its rhythmic flow.

Since all details are cared for by the Father, it follows that not only is the Father present in spirit but in power. Jesus therefore believed in the God whose “centre is everywhere, and his circumference nowhere.” The Father was not for him a distant God, outside of his world. If transcendent, he must also be immanent; and if immanent, he must be actively present, for he it is who works and speaks through us, even at an “appointed hour.”

The manifestation of the divine life, wisdom, love, is therefore continuous. The Father’s presence is as needfull during every hour in the life of the sparrow as at its fall. If there be constant guidance, there must be constant activity.

It would seem to be in perfect accord with the faith of Jesus to say that there is a perpetual going forth of the divine life, a stream of creative, sustaining and guiding energy whence all forms, beings and species proceed, by which all change or progress is instituted.

The Father creates, not suddenly, but gradually and progressively. It is not merely at the dawn of life that he presides, but at its inception and throughout its history; for from him proceeds the quickening which causes each and every one of the manifold changes in all the realms of being.

It also follows from the premises of Jesus that the Father moves upon us on all planes of life. The guidance applies alike to the words we shall utter, aud to the apparently trivial details which relate to our physical needs. We must emphasise the fact that not only are our souls secret places of the Most High, but that our bodies are temples also. The Father’s presence environs all phases of our life. He is with us in all that we do, in all that we are, even with us when we suffer, when we are tempted.

Since “God is Spirit,” we may conclude that his power, life, presence, is spiritual; that in the ultimate sense the universe is also spiritual. Man is a spiritual being; it is for spiritual ends that we were called into the world. It would be erroneous, then, to define the spiritual as the religious only, as pertaining merely to our hours of worship in the inner sanctuary. When we truly live, all hours and moments are spiritual, for when we truly live we live from God. The spiritual is both for the inner and the outer life; it is the real life of the body, as it is of the soul. For ultimately all life is one, and that one life is a perpetual gift of God.

Seeking the Kingdom of God, therefore, has a far greater significance than is ordinarily realised. In the truest sense the universe is the Kingdom of God, for all life is from him, all worlds exist within his presence. His Kingdom is not apart by itself, in the upper air. Even if his Kingdom were centralised as human kingdoms are, it would only be so because all parts might then constitute an organic whole.

Although souls which have entered the freer life outside the flesh may dwell nearer to God, and even though there be a realm which because of its righteousness is called “heaven,” such a state is possible only where the divine presence is constantly realised, and since the Father is omnipresent, that state is everywhere possible. Wherever love is manifested, there is the Kingdom.

Truly apprehended, the entire visible world is a part of the Kingdom of God, for every moment of its life is a fresh embodiment of the divine presence. The reason it has not been so regarded is found in man’s bondage to sense, his thought of himself as a physical instead of a spiritual being.

Again, the coming of the Kingdom in human consciousness has been impeded by materialistic science, by the dogma that force and matter are alone competent to account for the universe. Nowadays, the foremost scientific men are saying that consciousness is also necessary. It is but one step farther to the spiritual creative power, behind and within consciousness, as the sufficient cause of all evolution.

Evolution, thus considered, is the law of external growth or gradual realisation of the divine ideal, which springs from the mind and heart of God. To find the Kingdom “within” is thus to penetrate far enough to discover the real essence of things. To understand the law of righteousness is to learn the universal plan of creation. To discover the divine order and the divine goodness is to see that all things have been brought into being by love.

Therefore first feel the spirit of the Kingdom in the inner sanctuary of worship and receptive humility, then set your intellect at work to grasp the divine law in its fulness as a universal principle. But always the spirit must come first, then the effort to understand it.

First the great, illimitable, everywhere abiding Spirit,—the Father-Mother, the divine Substance or Reality,—then the going forth of that Spirit in varied forms of manifestation or embodiment. First the invisible, then the visible; first love, then its perfect work.

It is plain that no one who truly grasps this great thought will lead a selfcentred or subjective life. To live in consciousness of the Kingdom does not mean to attain the ease and poise of complacent self-contentment. God is present in our struggles as well as in our happiness; he dwells in the slums; he is present with “the wicked,” and he who shuts himself apart from the struggling submerged classes, or who affirms that God knows nothing about our ills, has not yet found the Kingdom.

The Kingdom is large, noble; the discovery of it inspires an enlarged life. It sends a man forth from his little world of self with as much zeal as though he believed in the old dogma of “lost souls”; for the hour of worship is the hour of preparation. The Kingdom is the domain of life, not of death. The creative life of God ever pulsates forward, and he who feels the divine pulsation is ever active.

But is it practical to seek the Kingdom of God, to carry the consciousness of the divine presence into everything; to trust that all these things shall be added even when one knows not whence the money is coming from? Yes, for all who would be true men and women it is the only course that is practical.

There are thousands ready to testify that the law is true, that it applies in minutest detail. Those who thus testify declare that from the time they began to do all for the Father, the way began to be opened most marvellously and unexpectedly.

Great faith is required, but this is the price of the things that follow. It is for ever true that no man can think first of the “things” and attain the Kingdom. But the moment one begins to live as if one really believed that God exists, the power of the Spirit to command circumstances is seen.

In reality God holds all circumstances in solution. To find his Kingdom is to feel the touch of that power which, even while we adore, is shaping things around and within our life.

Are you willing to pay the price? If so, you shall have the Father’s care.

Do you grasp the law as applied to your individual life? If so, extend its benefits to all.

Do you seek the meaning of the Kingdom as a social law? If so, enlarge that conception until you have a philosophy of the total universe. For the universe is the Kingdom of God; and love, goodness, beauty, justice, are its omnipresent attributes. And if you would begin here and now, to-day, this present hour, to enjoy the benefits of the Father’s care, go apart from your fellow-men for a time, seek the solitudes of the Spirit, as Jesus bade men seek them in his wonderful sermon on the mount. Lay aside all plans, open your mind and heart in receptive worship, consecrate all that you possess, all that you are, to the Father, then be true to the highest thought that comes to you; trust though you see not whither you are going, though your faith be most severely tested. For no man ever sought help in that spirit who came away unfilled.