The Kingdom of Christ (Continued)

Translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son. — COLOSSIANS i. 13.

HHHERE was an ancient and universal custom set aside, on his coronation day, by that great emperor who bestrode the world like a Colossus, till we locked him up in a sea-girt prison — chained him, like an eagle, to its barren rock. Promptly as his great military genius was wont to seize some happy moment to turn the tide of battle, he seized the imperial crown. Regard less alike of all precedents, and of the presence of the Roman Pontiff whose sacred office he assumed, he placed the crown on his own head; and, casting an eagle eye over the applauding throng, stood up, in the pride of his power, every inch of him a king. The act was like the man — bold, decisive; nor was it in a sense untrue, its language this, The crown I owe to no man; I myself have won it; my own right arm hath gotten me the victory. Yet, with some such rare exceptions, the universal custom, on such occasions, is to perform this great act as in the presence of God; and, adding the solemnities of religion to the scene, by the hand of her highest minister to crown the sovereign. It is a graceful and a pious act, if, when religion is called to play so conspicuous a part, on such a stage, and in the presence of such a magnificent assembly, all parties intend thereby to acknowledge that crowns are the gift of God, that sovereigns as well as subjects are answerable for their stewardship, and that by Him whose minister performs the crowning act, kings reign, and princes decree justice.

According to that scripture, God sets up one and puts down another, plucks the sceptre from the hand of this man, and gives it to that, and, as our days have seen, makes fugitives of kings, to raise a beggar from the dust and the needy from the dunghill, and set him with princes. And what he does in an ordinary and providential sense to all kings, he did in a high, and pre-eminent, and special sense to his own Son. The “divine right of kings,” with which courtiers have flattered tyrants, and tyrants have sought to hedge round their royalty, is a fiction. In other cases a mere fiction, it is in Christ’s case a great fact. The crown that rests on his head was placed there by the hands of Divinity. It was from his eternal Father that he re ceived the reward of his cross, in that kingdom, which, as we have already shewed, he received neither from the Jews, nor from his own people. “Yet,” says God, “have I set my king upon my holy hill of Sion.” And so I remark —

3. Jesus received the kingdom from God.

When we look at the two occasions — both of them G great occasions — on which our Lord was crowned, what a striking contrast do they present?

The scene of the first is laid on earth. Its circumstances are described by the evangelists — men who were the sad eye-witnesses of the events that they relate. And when we have found ourselves unable, without trembling voice, and swimming eyes, and kindling passions, to read some of those touching letters which tell how brothers, and tender sisters, and little children, and sweet babes, and beloved friends, were pitilessly massacred — when one remembers how, even at this distance from India’s bloody scenes, we were ready to take fire, and swell the cry that called for vengeance on such revolting cruelties, nothing in the Bible seems more divine than the calm, even, unimpassioned tone with which our Lord’s disciples describe the events, and write the moving story of their Master’s wrongs. Where one would fancy an angel might have been stirred to anger, or would have covered his eyes and wept outright for sorrow, their voice seems never to falter, nor their pen to shake, nor their page to be blotted by a falling tear. Where, we are ready to ask, is John’s fond love, Peter’s ardent temper, the strong impetuous passions of these unsophisticated men? Nor is there any way of accounting for the placid flow of their narratives, other than the fact that holy men of old spake and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and were the organs of Him whose complacency no event ruffles, and who, dwelling in the serene altitudes of his divine nature, is raised high above all passion.

Let us look then at the scene of our Lord’s first coronation as they present it. Jesus is handed over to men of blood. Behold him stripped of his raiments! His wasted form — for it is he who speaks in the prophetic words, “I may tell all my bones; they look and stare upon me,” — moves no pity; no more, his meek and patient looks. They tie him to a post. They plough long furrows on his back. And now, cruel work is to be followed by more cruel sport. Laughing at the happy thought, his guards summon all the band, and hurry off their faint and bleeding prisoner to some spacious hall. The expression may seem coarse, but it is true — they make game of the Lord of Glory. And when the shocking play is at its height, what a sight there to any disciple who should venture to look in! Mute and meek, Jesus sits in that hall — a spectacle of woe; an old purple robe on his bleeding back; in his hand a reed; and on his head a wreath — not of laurel, but of thorns, while the blood, trickling down from many wounds over his face, falls on a breast that is heaving with a sea of sorrows. Angels look on, fixed with astonishment; devils stand back, amazed to see themselves outdone; while all around his sacred person the brutal crowd swells and surges. They gibe; they jeer; they laugh; some in bitter mockery bend the knee, as to imperial Caesar; while others, to give variety to the hellish sport, pluck the reed from his unresisting hand, and beat the thorns deep into his brows; and ever and anon they join in wild chorus, making the hall ring to the cry, “Hail, King of the Jews.”

The people of Bethlehem, one day as they looked out at their doors, saw a poor widow, bent and grey with grief and age, walking up their street, who was accompanied by a Moabitess — poorly clad and widowed like herself. She is at length recognised. It is Naomi! The news flies through the town. But when her old acquaintances who hastened to greet her, beheld in such poor guise one who had left them in circumstances of envied affluence, happy with a loving husband at her side, and at her back two gallant sons, they were seized with blank amazement. They held up their hands to cry, “Is this Naomi?” And how might the angels, who had adored the Son as he lay in the bosom of the Father, or, singing in the skies of that same Bethlehem, had bent down to gaze with wonder and admiration on the babe of Mary’s breast, regard the spectacle in that hall with greater bewilderment — exclaiming, “Is this the Son of God?”

These twisted thorns formed the crown wherewith “his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals.” Nor should we leave that to turn our eyes on another scene, till we have thought with godly sorrow of the sins, and with deep affection of the love, which brought Jesus from heaven to meet such sufferings. In these wounds and blows he took our sins upon him; in these indignities he was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Turn now from this cruel mockery to the other scene where he received a different crown, in a different assembly, and from very different hands. The cross is standing vacant and lonely on Calvary — the crowd all dispersed; the tomb is standing empty and open in the garden — the Roman sentinels all withdrawn; and from the vine-covered sides of Olivet a band of men are hastily descending — joy, mingled with amazement, in their looks. With the bearing of those that have a high enterprise before them, they are rushing down the mountain upon the world — a stream of life which is destined to roll on till salvation reaches the ends of the earth. While the disciples come down to the world, Jesus, whom a cloud received from their sight, goes up to heaven; and, corresponding to the custom of those olden days, when the successful champion was carried home in triumph from the field, borne high through applauding throngs on the shields of his companions, our Lord enters into glory, escorted by a host of angels. His battle over, and the great victory won, the conqueror is now to be crowned, throned, installed into the kingdom. Behold the scene as revealed by anticipation to the rapt eyes of Daniel: — “I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.”

Thus our Lord received the crown from his own Father’s hand; and then, it might be said, was the Scripture fulfilled, “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.” Yet observe, I pray you, that, in a sense, he is not satisfied. Is there no satisfying of the greedy grave? None. Death has been feeding its voracious maw these many thousand years; and yet, how does it open that wide black mouth to cry, “Give, give, give?” Nor, in one sense, is there any satisfying of the love of Christ. It is deeper than the grave; and its desires grow with their gratification. Incessantly pleading for more saved ones, Jesus entreats his Father — his cry also, “Give, give.” Yes; he would rather hear one poor sinner pray, than all these angels sing; see one true penitent lying at his feet, than all these brilliant crowns. In glory, where every eye is turned upon himself, his eyes are bent down on earth. I fancy that amid the pomp of state, and splendid enjoyments of the palace, it is little that the sovereign thinks of the poor felon who pines in lonely prison, crushed and terror-stricken, with haggard face and heavy heart, waiting the death to which the law has doomed him; seldom, perhaps, in fancy, does that pallid wretch intrude himself where all wear smiles, or send a hollow groan from his cell to move one thought of pity, or disturb the sparkling flow of royal pleasures. But Jesus does not forget the wretchedness of the lost amid the happiness of the saved. Their miseries are before him; and amid the high hallelujahs of the upper sanctuary, he hearkens to the groans of the prisoner and the cry of the perishing. And — like a mother, whose loving heart is not so much with the children housed at home, as with the fallen, beguiled, and lost one, who is the most in her thoughts, and oftenest mentioned in her prayers — Jesus is thinking now of every poor careless sinner with his lost soul, and the sentence of death hanging over his guilty head. He pities you from his heart. He would save you, would you consent to be saved. And you, who were never honoured with an invitation to a palace on earth, you who are never likely to be so honoured, you, by whom this world’s pettiest monarch would haughtily sweep, nor deem you worthy of the smallest notice, Jesus-, bending from his throne, invites to share his glory, and become with him kings and priests unto God.

III. Let us enquire in what character Jesus holds this kingdom.

It is not as God, nor as man, he holds it; but as both God and man, Mediator of the New Covenant, the monarch of a new kingdom. What he was on earth he is still in heaven — God and man for ever.

Our Lord appeared in both these characters by the grave of Lazarus. “Jesus wept.” Brief but blessed record! These were precious tears. The passing air kissed them from his cheek, or they were drunk up of the earth, or they glistened but for a little, like dew-drops on some lowly flower; yet assuring us of his sympathy in our hours of sorrow, their memory has been healing balm to many a bleeding heart. Weeping, his bosom rent with groans, he stands revealed — bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh — a brother born for adversity, for the bitter hour of household deaths, to impart strength to the arms that lay the dead in the coffin, or slowly lower them into the tomb. Yet mark how, by the same grave, he stands revealed in another character, with his divine majesty plainly unveiled. To weep for the dead may be weakness, but to raise the dead is power. Like the clear shining after rain, when every tree seems hung with quivering leaves of light, and the heath of the moor sparkles, and gleams, and burns with the changing hues of countless diamonds, see how, after that shower of tears, the sun of Christ’s Godhead bursts forth on the scene, and he appears the brightness of his Father’s glory. Men have wept with him; but there, where he stands face to face with grim death, let both men and angels worship him. Death cowers before his eye. He puts off the man, and stands out the God; and the wonder of the dead brought to life is lost in the higher wonder of one who could weep as a man, and yet work as a God.

On the Sea of Galilee also, our Lord appears in both characters. The son of Mary sleeps. His nights have been spent in prayer, and his days in preaching, healing, incessant works of benevolence — he has been teaching us how we also should go about doing good — he has been practically rebuking those whose days are wasted in ease and idleness, or whose evenings, not calm like nature’s, but passed amid the whirl of excitement, or in guilty pleasures, sweet slumbers refuse to bless. Now wearied out with labour, the son of Mary sleeps. There is no sleeping draught, no potion of the apothecary that can impart such deep refreshing slumbers as a good conscience and a busy day’s good work. Proof of that, stretched on his bare, hard couch, Jesus sleeps — amid the howling of the wind, the dash and roar of stormy billows, sleeps as soundly as he ever slept a babe in his mother’s arms. He lay down a weary man; but see how he rises at the call of his disciples to do the work of a God. On awaking, he found the elements in the wildest uproar, the waves were chasing each other over the deep, the heavens were sounding their loudest thunders, the lightnings were playing among the clouds, and the winds, let loose, were holding free revelry in the racked tormented air. As I have seen a master, speaking with low and gentle voice, hush the riotous school into instant silence, so Jesus spake. Raising his hand, and addressing the rude storm, he said “Peace, be still.” The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. No sooner, amid the loudest din, does nature catch the well-known sound of her master’s voice, than the tumult subsides; in an instant all is quiet; and, with a heave as gentle as an infant’s bosom, and all heaven’s starry glory mirrored in its crystal depths, the sea of Galilee lies around that boat — a beautiful picture of the happy bosom into which heaven and its peace have descended. “Justified by faith,” purchased by the blood of Christ, and blessed with his presence, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now those two natures which our Lord thus revealed on earth, he retains in heaven. And as both God and man, he occupies the throne of grace, and the throne of providence — holding under his dominion all worlds, and principalities, and powers; for, in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and he has been made Head over all things to the church. This must be so. He got the kingdom; and, simply as God, there could be no addition made to his possessions. Simply as God, he could get nothing, because all things were already his. You cannot add to the length of eternity; nor extend the measure of infinity; nor make absolute perfection more perfect; nor add one drop to a cup, nor even to an ocean, already full.

And as, on the one hand, our Lord did not get this kingdom simply as God, neither, on the other hand, did he receive it simply as man. To suppose so, were to entertain an idea more absurd, more improbable, more impossible, than the fable of Atlas, who, according to wild heathen legends, bore the world on his giant shoulders. How could an arm that once hung around a mother s neck sustain even this world? But he, who lay in the feebleness of infancy on Mary’s bosom, and rested a wayworn and weary man on Jacob’s well, and, faint with loss of blood, sank in the streets of Jerusalem beneath the burden of a cross, now sustains the weight of this and of a thousand worlds besides. It is told as an extraordinary thing of the first and greatest of all the Csesars, that such were his capacious mind, his mighty faculties, and his marvellous command of them, that he could at once keep six pens running to his dictation on as many different subjects. That may, or may not be true; but were Jesus Christ a mere man, in the name even of reason, how could he guard the interests, and manage the affairs of a people, scattered far and wide over the face of the habitable globe? What heart were large enough to embrace them all; what eyes could see them all; what ears could hear them all? Think of the ten thousand prayers pronounced in a hundred different tongues that go up at once, and altogether, to his ear! Yet there is no confusion; none are lost; none missed in the crowd. Nor are they heard by him as, standing on yonder lofty crag, we hear the din of the city that lies stretched out far beneath us, with all its separate sounds of cries, and rumbling wheels, and human voices, mixed up into one deep, confused, hollow roar — like the boom of the sea’s distant breakers. No; every believer may feel as if he were alone with God — enjoying a private audience of the king in his presence-chamber. Be of good cheer. Every groan of thy wounded heart, thy every sigh, and cry, and prayer, falls as distinctly on Jesus’ ear as if you stood beside the throne, or, nearer still, lay with John in his bosom, and felt the beating of his heart against your own.

Jesus Christ, God and man for ever, what a grand and glorious truth! How full of encouragement and comfort to those, like us, who have sins to confess, sorrows to tell him, and many a heavy care to cast upon his sympathy and kindness. Since Mary kissed his blessed feet, since Lazarus’ tomb moved his ready tears, since Peter’s cry brought him quick to the rescue, since John’s head lay pillowed on his gentle bosom, since a mother’s sorrows were felt and cared for amid the bitter agonies of his dying hour, he has changed his place, but not his heart. True man and Almighty God — God and man for ever — believer, let him sustain thy cares. Thy case cannot be too difficult, nor thy burden too heavy for one who guides the rolling planets on their course, and bears on his unwearied arm the weight of a universe.

IV. Let me urge you to seek an interest in this kingdom.

Your eternal welfare turns on that. You must be saved or damned; crowned in heaven or cursed in hell. Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world; and blessed be God that it is not. For those very features by which it is distinguished from the world’s kingdoms are among its most encouraging aspects to us. They are bright with hope to the chief of sinners.

The poor say there is little chance or hope for them in this hard world. Well, are you poor? I had almost said, so much the better. “To the poor the Gospel is preached.” You can get on well enough to heaven without gold. The wealth on which the kingdoms of this world set so high a value, and which, for all their talk of blood and breeding, has bought the coarse plebeian a marriage into proud patrician families, is here rather a hinderauce than a help. Has not the Lord of this kingdom said, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God?

In tho freest and best governed states, birth, and wealth, and rank, and blood, give to their envied possessors great — often too great advantages. It is the high born chiefly that approach the person of the sovereign, enjoy the honours of the palace, and fill the chief offices of the state. Royal favours seldom descend so low as humble life. The grace of our King, however, is like those blessed dews that, while the mountain tops remain dry, lie thick in the valleys; and, leaving the proud and stately trees to stand without a gem, hang the lowly bush with diamonds, and sow the sward broadcast with orient pearl. This is the kingdom for the mean, and the meek, and the poor, and the humble! Its King has said, Not many mighty, not many noble, are called, Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

There is no degradation in honest poverty. But are you degraded, debased, an outcast from decent, good society — characterless? Nor does that exclude you from the mercy and grace of God — “Go ye,” he said, “into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” Go to the gallows; and preach it to the man with a rope on his neck, and his feet on the drop. Go to the jail; and preach it to the scum of the city. Go to her dens of iniquity; and preach it as freely and fully as in her highest and holiest congregation. Saving, gentle, pitying mercy, turns no more aside from the foulest wretch, than the wind that kisses her faded cheek, or the sunbeam that visits as brightly a murderer’s cell as a minister’s study. Nay — though the holiest of all kingdoms — while we see a Pharisee stand astonished to be shut out, mark how, when she approaches, who, weeping, trembling all over, hardly dares lift her hand to knock, the door flies wide open; and the poor harlot enters to be washed, and robed, and forgiven, and kindly welcomed in.

Have you done nothing to merit this kingdom? Who has? Did Manasseh? Did Simon Peter? Did Saul of Tarsus? Was it his hands, reeking with the blood of Stephen, that earned for him the saving grace, and the honours of the chief apostleship? Was it for one look of pity, one word of kind sympathy from their lips, that, as his murderers nailed him to the tree, our dying Lord raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do? No. They say, and why may not we, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost?

Yet, though not saved by obedience, remember that submission to Christ’s commandments is required of all those who belong to his kingdom; and that the very foundations of spiritual as of common liberty are laid in law — are right government and righteous laws. There is no true liberty without law. Nor can you fancy a more unhappy condition for a country than that of

Israel when, without king or government, “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Ours is a free country, for instance; yet where is law so paramount? The baton of the humblest constable carries more authority here than sceptres have done elsewhere. Liberty is not only the birthright of its sons, but should a slave once touch these shores, he drops his chain, and is free as the waves that beat them. Still, it is freedom under, not without, law. He is not at liberty to do what he chooses — he cannot seize my property. He is not at liberty to go where he chooses — he cannot enter the humblest cottage without its owner’s consent. He is not at liberty to act as he chooses — commit a private wrong, or disturb the public peace. Yet he is free; only, in escaping from a slave-cursed soil to a land of freedom, he has not placed himself beyond authority; but has exchanged lawless oppression for lawful government. So is it with you whom the truth has made free. To you the gospel is “a law of liberty,” because, bursting the bonds of sin and Satan, it sets you free to obey the law of God. The believer gladly accepts of Christ’s yoke, and delights in the law of God after the inward man, saying, Oh how love I thy law, it is my meditation all the day.

In a general sense, we are all the subjects of Christ’s kingdom. It embraces the boundless universe. And, he who once had not a place wherein to lay his head, now reigns over a kingdom, the extent of which reduces our proud boast to contempt. Tell me that the sun never sets on Britain’s empire, and that before he has sunk on one province, he has arisen on another; that sun, which wheels his mighty course in heaven, shines but on an outlying corner of the kingdom over which Jesus reigns. To many of its provinces he appears but as a twinkling star; and in others, lying far beyond the range of his beams, immeasurable distance hides him from view. But no distance removes any part of creation beyond our Saviour’s authority. He stands on the circle of the heavens, and his kingdom ruleth over all.

In a saving sense, however, Christ’s kingdom is not without, but within us. Its seat is in the heart; and unless that be right with God, all is wrong. It does not lie in outward things. It is not meat and drink — not baptism or the communion — not sobriety, purity, honesty, and the other decencies of a life of common respectability. “Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God.” Its grace and power have their emblem in the leaven this woman lays, not on the meal, but in the meal — in the heart of the lump, where, working from within outwards, from the centre to the circumference, it sets the whole mass fermenting — changing it into its own nature. Even so the work of conversion has its origin in the heart. When grace subdues a rebel man, if I may so speak, the citadel first is taken; afterwards, the city. It is not as in those great sieges which we have lately watched with such anxious interest. There, approaching with his brigades, and cavalry, and artillery, man sits down outside the city. He begins the attack from a distance; creeping, like a lion to the spring — with trench, and parallel, and battery — nearer and nearer to the walls. These at length are breached; the gates are blown open; through the deadly gap the red living tide rolls in. Fighting from bastion to bastion, from street to street, they press onward to the citadel; and there, giving no quarter and seeking none, beneath a defiant flag, the rebels, perhaps, stand by their guns, prolonging a desperate resistance. But when the appointed hour of conversion comes, Christ descends by his Spirit into the heart — at once into the heart. The battle of grace begins there. Do you know that by experience? The heart won, she fights her way outward from a new heart on to new habits; a change without succeeds the change within, even until the kingdom — which, in the house of God, by the body of the solemn dead, over the pages of the Bible, amid the wreck of health or ruins of fortune, came not with observation — comes to be observed. A visible change appears in the whole man. May it appear in you! then, though the world may get up the old half-incredulous, half-scornful cry, Is Saul also among the prophets? good men shall rejoice on earth, and angels celebrate the event in heaven.