The Kingdom of God and Your Part in it
By Henry Drummond
"The futility of saving men by speech" is not a whole truth, but it is the large part of a truth. Imagine a life-saving crew trying to save wrecked mariners simply by calling to them, and not throwing out a life line or putting off in a boat after them! It is a case of life for life--a man laying down his own life for others, as Christ did.
In talking to a man you want to win, talk to him in his own language. If you want to get hold of an agnostic, try to translate what you have to say into simple words--words that will not be in every case the words in which you got it. It is not cant. Religion has its technical terms just as science, but it can be overdone; and, besides, it is an exceedingly valuable discipline for one's self. Take a text and say, "What does that mean in 19th century English;" and in doing that you will learn the lesson that it is the spirit of truth that does one good, and not the form of words. The form does not matter, if it does you good and draws you nearer to God. Do not be suspicious of it, if it is God's truth, in whatever form it may be.
One has to do a great deal more than display his Christianity. He must not only talk it, but live it. What is the secret of Christianity? It is not picking out a man here and a man there and making them fit to go to heaven. Christ came to this world, as He Himself said, to found a society. Have you ever thought of that conception of Christianity? For hundreds of years it has been utterly lost sight of. It is only lately that men are getting to see the great Christian doctrine of the Kingdom of God. This great phrase was never off Christ's lips. "The Kingdom of God" is by far the commonest phrase in His speech. Have you ever given a month of your life to find out what Christ meant by "the Kingdom of God?" Every day as we pray, "Thy Kingdom come," has our Christian consciousness taken in the tremendous sweep of that prayer, and seen how it covers the length and breadth of this great world and every human being? Christ was continually telling what it was. The Kingdom of heaven is like unto this. The kingdom of heaven is like unto that. If there is one thing more prominent than another in Christ's language it is in explaining what the kingdom of heaven is, and in what the subjects of that kingdom are to busy themselves. The kingdom of God is a society for the best men working for the best end, with the highest motive according to the best principle. The Kingdom of God was to come without observation. Christ likened it to leaven, and one cannot get a better understanding of the meaning of His phrase than by taking His own metaphors. The world is sunken, Christ said, and it must be raised. Leaven comes from the same word as lever. It is that which lifts, elevates, or raises. Christ founded a society of men for the purpose of raising men. This leaven was not to disturb the form of or overturn any institution. When you put leaven into a vessel with anything that is to be leavened, it does not affect the outward form of it; but it changes its spirit.
The Kingdom of God is like leaven. It is to act, raising men by contagion, by the contact of one life with another. Did you ever put a little leaven under a microscope? If you did, you found it was a minute plant, perhaps one six-thousandth of an inch in diameter, with such an amazing power of propagation that, simply in contact with the dough, it has the effect of lifting it by means of the life that is in it. And so the virtue of the Christian's life, not by tempting it in the way of forcing it, but by its spontaneous, natural and beautiful goodness, reacts upon others. When men observe the fragrance of Christ and are reminded of Him, a longing comes over them to live like Him and breathe that air and have that calm, that beauty of character, and all that unconscious influence going out as a contagion to others. By these men the world is raised.
But that is not all. The world is not only sunken, it is sinful. Those of you who know life even an inch below the surface, know that even in this Christian country, in our great cities, the world is rotten. Have you ever thought of the sin of the world? Think of the sin in your own being. Think that the man in the next house has the same amount of sin in him, and all the people in your street are like that. Multiply that by the number of all the streets in your city, and that by the number of cities in your country, and that by the number of countries in the world, and you have a ghastly spectre under which your imagination staggers.
That, however, is only a single glimpse of this sinful world, for the sin can be taken away: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." How does He do it? By forgiving the sin of the world, and by taking it away, through you and me and other subjects of His kingdom.
Christians, the followers of Christ, He said, are the salt of the earth, and it is that salt that takes away the rottenness of the world. He takes away the guilt and the power of it, and you help Him to remove it by being salt in the society in which you live. Salt is that which keeps society from becoming rotten. You put salt upon fish or meat to prevent it from becoming rotten; and it is the Christian men and women in this country who prevent it from becoming absolutely rotten. Christianity is the great antiseptic of society. If you were to take Christianity out of New York, Chicago, Berlin, or Paris, those cities, in a few generations, would go to pieces, even physically, and be swept off the earth. Now, we are to be the salt of Chicago, New York and the great cities of the world. It is our business to make cities and to keep those cities sweet--not only to scavenge away the rottenness after it has grown there, but to prevent the new generation that is growing up from becoming rotten. The work of salt is to prevent this, as well as to cure it. Keep those children pure to the end of their lives. We do not emphasize half enough the prevention side of Christian society. We do not emphasize half enough the making of Christian environment in which a Christ-like life shall be possible--new houses, pure air and water, good schools, bringing the influences of sweetest life and purity to keep those young lives from succumbing to the influences which surround them. The world which you and I have to lift is not only the world of the poor; but we have to lift up our country.
One thing, gentlemen, strikes the stranger in coming to this country. He goes to a city like Boston, and finds the merchants of that city with their heads buried in their ledgers, wholly occupied with their private business, while a few Irishmen, holding the city offices, are carrying on their municipal government. Some one has defined dirt as matter in the wrong place; and it is matter in the wrong place for a company of Irishmen to regulate the affairs of the city of Boston. Therefore, gentlemen, if you are the subjects of the Kingdom of God, you must give to the world and to your country a reformed Boston, a reformed Chicago, above all a reformed New York. You have been taught in your schools of your duties as citizens; but you are taught in this Book just as plainly your duties as Christian citizens. These cities are making the people that are living in them. People will not be righteous. In this country there is not only little honesty and honorableness in municipal life; but, what is a thousand times worse, there is little in its possibility. In my country I have never known or heard of a member of the government, either municipal or state, proving false to his trust. It is your duty to restore righteousness in the high places of this government. Let the people see examples which will help them in their Christian life. I cannot speak too strongly about that, because I know that the thing in process of time can be done. We have had rotten municipal government, and the Christian men of the place have taken the thing up and said, we have determined this shall not be. In the old cities, they have put man after man into the municipal chair simply because they were Christian men, because they would deal with the people righteously, and carry out the programme of Christianity for the city. Let me tell you of the work of some university men in the city of London. They went to a district in the East End--a God-forsaken and sunken place, occupied for miles entirely by working people. They rented a house and became known as settlers in that poor district. They gave themselves no airs of superiority. They did not tell the people they had come to do them good. They went in there and made friends with the people. The leaven went in among the dough. The salt went in beside that which was corrupt. We keep the grains of salt all together, and the other things all together; but the very place where the salt ought not to be is beside the salt. It ought to be scattered over the meat. Well, these men were not in a great hurry. They waited some months and got to know a number of the workmen, and got to understand one another. They had studied the city, and the workingmen were astonished at how much the young fellows knew about city government, city life and education, and sanitation, cleansing and purity in all directions. One day there came a great war of labor. The working men put their heads together and said, "These young fellows have heads. Let us go and talk the matter over with them." In a few months those young men were the arbiters of a strike, and at a single word from them three or four thousand families were saved from being thrown out of work on a great strike. Is that not a Christian thing to do? If you understand the conception of the Kingdom of God as a society of the best men working for the best ends for the amelioration of human life, you will agree with me.
