Bible Commentaries
Luke 17

Verse 17

Ingratitude

And Jesus answering said, Were not the ten cleansed? but where are the nine?— Luke 17:17.

It was when He was on His last journey towards Jerusalem on the frontier of Galilee and Samaria, that our Lord saw, on the road towards a village which is not named, ten lepers. They might not come near the gates, as being tainted with the fatal disease and lying under the ban of God. They kept together in a band, endeavouring no doubt to find in each other’s company some solace for their sufferings, for their sense of humiliation and disgust, for their exclusion from the civil and religious life of their countrymen.

Misfortune makes strange associates: and of these lepers one was a Samaritan. Illness, too, will make men think of God who have never thought of Him before: and as our Lord passed along the way He attracted the attention of these poor outcasts. Conscious of their misery, they stood afar off; and yet—even if nothing came of it—they must appeal to Him. They might have heard that one of the distinctive features of His work was that “the lepers were cleansed”; they might have heard that He had commissioned His representatives not merely to heal the sick, but specifically to “cleanse the lepers.” They had an indistinct idea that He was in some sense the Healer of mankind; and so, as He passed, they lifted up their voices and said: “Jesus, Master! have mercy on us.” This prayer was itself an act of faith: and, as such, our Lord at once accepted and tested it. There they were, all ten, covered with leprosy, but He bade them do that which already implied that they were perfectly cleansed; they were to take a long journey, which would have been a waste of labour unless they could believe that He would make it worth their while. “Go,” He said, “shew yourselves unto the priests.” To go to the priests for inspection unless they were healed would only have led to a repetition of their sentence as proved lepers; and therefore, in the miracle after His Sermon on the Mount, He first healed the leper and then sent him to undergo the prescribed inspection. Here—it must have perplexed them sorely—He does nothing but bids them go, as if already cleansed. Could they trust Him sufficiently to make the venture, to obey when obedience seemed irrational at the moment, in firm persuasion that it would be justified by the event?

Yes; they took Him at His word: they set out for Jerusalem—a distant journey, along an unwelcome road. But lo! as they went, and, as it would seem, before they had gone far, a change was already upon them. They looked each at the others, each at himself, and they saw that an Unseen Power was there, cleansing them, they knew not how, of the foul disease, and restoring to them the freshness and purity of early years. “As they went they were cleansed.” It was in the act of obedience that they obtained the blessing; it was by assuming that our Lord could not fail that they found Him faithful.

They were all cleansed—all ten. But, like Naaman the Syrian returning with his blessing for the man of God, one of them thought that something was due to the author of so signal a deliverance. He left the others to pursue their onward road; they might go on to claim at the hands of the priests their restoration to the civil and religious life of Israel. He left them; ho turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and then he prostrated himself at the feet of his Deliverer, thanking Him for this act of mercy and power. And our Lord blessed him once more in another and a higher way. A greater possession than even that of freedom from leprosy was assured to the poor Samaritan in Christ’s parting words, “Thy faith hath made thee whole.” But ere He did this our Lord also uttered the noteworthy exclamation, “Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God save this stranger.” 1 [Note: H. P. Liddon.]

In a sermon on this text, Luther says: “This is the right worship of God, to return glorifying God with a loud voice. This is the greatest work in heaven and earth, and the only one which we may do for God; for of other works He stands in need of none, neither is He benefited by them.” Luther is surely right; for we have nothing to give to God, because what we have is all His gift; but this we may do, we may return thanks to Him for the goodness and mercy with which He blesses us, and that this is well pleasing to Him we learn from His words in the 50th Psalm, saying: “If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the Most High.” 1 [Note: F. Kuegele, Country Sermons, iv. 547.]

I believe thanksgiving a greater mark of holiness than any other part of prayer. I mean special thanksgiving for mercies asked and received. It is a testimony to prayers being remembered, and therefore earnest prayer. It is unselfish, and more loving. 2 [Note: Norman Macleod, in Memoir, ii. 21.]

The subject is Ingratitude. Let us look at—

I. Its Extent.

II. Its Causes.

III. Its Penalty.

I

The Extent of Ingratitude

1. Ten lepers were cleansed. Nine went on their way, with never a word of thankfulness. The averages of gratitude and ingratitude do not vary much from age to age, and the story suggests that ninety per cent. of those who receive God’s benefits are more or less wanting in gratitude. Man is prone to forget his benefits and mercies. He lays more stress upon what he has not than upon what he has. It is our human tendency to take our blessings for granted and as a matter of course. Man seems to look upon all good things—pleasurable sensations, comforts, even luxuries—as his birthright, upon which he has a natural inalienable claim, giving him just ground for complaint if he does not receive them. A stroke of good fortune, an agreeable surprise, creates only a transient ripple and leaves but a dim impression! Instead of being thankful for it as a sheer gratuity, an extra dividend, the individual only finds in it a reason why he should receive more of the same kind and oftener.

If you search the world around, among all choice spices you shall scarcely meet with the frankincense of gratitude. It ought to be as common as the dew-drops that hang upon the hedges in the morning; but, alas, the world is dry of thankfulness to God! Gratitude to Christ was scarce enough in His own day. I had almost said it was ten to one that nobody would praise Him; but I must correct myself a little; it was nine to one. One day in seven is for the Lord’s worship; but not one man in ten is devoted to His praise. 1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]

(1) Those who frankly believe are not all ready to praise. These ten men did believe, but only one praised the Lord Jesus. Their faith was about the leprosy; and according to their faith, so was it unto them. This faith, though it concerned their leprosy only, was yet a very wonderful faith. It was remarkable that they should believe the Lord Jesus though He did not even say, “Be healed,” or speak a word to them to that effect, but simply said, “Go shew yourselves unto the priests.” With parched skins, and death burning its way into their hearts, they went bravely off in confidence that Jesus must mean to bless them. It was admirable faith; and yet none of the nine who thus believed ever came back to praise Christ for the mercy received.

In an address Dr. Wilson once said: “There is a man who has a nickname. In the different parts of the country to which he goes he is known by the name of ‘Hallelujah.’ When he stops at a hotel and goes into the commercial room, the travellers say, ‘Here comes Hallelujuh So-and-So.’ Why? Because he is a praising Christian. I think if I had the choosing of a nickname I would choose that. Supposing that my joy were rightly grounded, I would prefer ‘Hallelujah’ almost to any other name that could be given to me.” 2 [Note: Life of James Hood Wilson, 433.]

Many of our modern Christian writers are lacking in true rapture. I took up a book of devotion by a saintly Presbyterian—the Rev. George Matheson— Moments on the Mount, a book of real value. There are one hundred and eight meditations in it, but there is not one that passes into rapturous praise. Again, we all love the Christian Year more and more the older we grow, but the sobriety of tone that it claims as its distinctive note does, I think, deprive us of the note of gratitude amounting to rapture. It is the same with Keble’s Lyra Innocentium; wondrous beauty is there, but he does not strike all the chords at once for the great chorus of praise. It is almost true also of Newman, except in the well-known “Angels’ Song.” I dare to say it is the same with Tennyson and with Wordsworth: and all these were Christian men, some of them fervently and wholeheartedly so to an extent that makes them wear the title “saintly” with absolute propriety.

I then extended my researches further back in time and at once I discovered the note I sought. They were not greater Christians than those I have mentioned, but their note has more rapture. Spenser, George Herbert, Milton, Henry Vaughan, Addison, Ken, Watts, Newton. You cannot read their poetry or hymns without feeling the thrill of rapture. I do not say it is indispensable to a most noble Christianity; yet it works miracles because it means intensity. I have reserved one name for separate mention. I have looked over four hundred and fifty hymns of Charles Wesley, and anyone who does so will allow there is rapture there, and gratitude, and praise deep and returning again and again. And in this respect Wesley has a successor in our Heber, whose name I had also kept back as one who may be called a modern, but who certainly has rapture in his music. 1 [Note: Bishop Montgomery, in The Church Family Newspaper, 11th March 1910, p. 202.]

(2) Those who diligently pray do not all praise. These ten men that were lepers all prayed. Poor and feeble as their voices had become through disease, yet they lifted them up in prayer, and united in crying: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” They all joined in the Litany, “Lord, have mercy upon us! Christ, have mercy upon us!” But when they came to the Te Deum, magnifying and praising God, only one of them took up the note. We should have thought that all who prayed would praise, but it is not so. Cases have been where a whole ship’s crew in time of storm have prayed, and yet none of that crew have sung the praise of God when the storm has become a calm. Multitudes of our fellow-citizens pray when they are sick, and near to dying; but when they grow better, their praises grow sick unto death. The angel of mercy, listening at their door, has heard no canticle of love, no song of thankfulness.

It is well to notice that when we draw the closest to God it is not in the exercise of prayer we do so. We draw nearer still in praise, for praise is the eternal and supreme employment of the perfected in heaven. In praise we come to the very foundation of all truth—to that which is deepest in our nature—reverence, love, trust, the overflowing outcome of our whole hearts in worship, and that is the highest exercise in which our souls can ever hope to engage. 1 [Note: J. M. Sloan, in Memories of Horatius Bonar, 89.]

The greatest contribution that the Anglican Church has ever made to Christendom is the “Devotions of Bishop Andrewes,” and the reason is that he has culled all that is deepest and highest in the Old Testament and in the New Testament to put in to our utterances before God, mingled with a touch of his own genius. I am not aware of any crime so great, any horror in life so dreadful, that it cannot find fit expression before God in those “Devotions.” Likewise there is no rapture of gratitude and praise which is not also there, nor any intercession or yearning which is not written therein. We are told that Andrewes’ awful penitence is owed to one act he committed under pressure. And if so, then that same act is responsible for the notes of praise also from one who, though a sinner, trusted his God utterly. We are almost tempted (be it said with reverence and as a paradox) to thank God that he fell into one heinous sin, since he made such good use of it for all future generations. If ever the grateful leper of the miracle had a counterpart it was in the person of Bishop Andrewes in his own estimation as he lay for years at his Master’s feet pouring out his gratitude. 2 [Note: Bishop Montgomery.]

A joyful and pleasant thing it is to be thankful. Unworthy before let me not be ungrateful after. 3 [Note: Bishop Andrewes, Preces Privatœ, 156.]

(3) Those who readily obey do not always praise. When Jesus said, “Go shew yourselves unto the priests,” off they went—all ten of them; not one stopped behind. Yet only one came back to behold a personal Saviour, and to praise His name. External religious exercises are easy enough, and common enough; but the internal matter, the drawing out of the heart in thankful love, how scarce a thing it is!

Begin at once, humbly and simply as a little child, to glorify God in the only way in which it will ever be in your power to glorify Him or that He would value, by making your life worth as much as ever you can in the outpouring of the spirit of good-will, human fellowship, and mutual understanding, upon the struggling weary world. 4 [Note: R. J. Campbell, A Rosary from the City Temple, 17.]

2. Our Lord expresses surprise at man’s ingratitude. He speaks with a sort of mournful and painful wonder; and, indeed, it must appear to us a circumstance marvellous and almost incredible; such as we could not understand and scarcely believe, were it not that it is such an exact picture of our own hearts. Notwithstanding all the deceits we put upon ourselves, we cannot but acknowledge it, although there is no truth in the world more sad and melancholy than this; in all our manifold deliverances from sickness and dangers and distresses, we may be full of faith, full of prayer, full of holy resolutions, when we feel God’s chastening hand pressing hard upon us; but when it is removed, this is all gone away and forgotten; the very feeling of thankfulness is but as the morning cloud which passes away, as the morning cloud which catches a few gleams from the sun, and is radiant for a moment, or which lets fall, it may be, a few drops of tears; but, look again, and it is gone away and not found.

Where else, in all our English tongue, will you find the piteous cry of wounded love which you find in King Lear? Where else will you encounter the wild storms which there break over the outraged father’s soul? I remember a great critic describing the Lear which he had just witnessed, its darkness, its splendours, its rage, tears, pity. And he ended his notice with some such words as these: “And so I stepped forth out of the world of the theatre into the real world of the streets. Real? But what is real, if King Lear is not?” 1 [Note: C. F. Aked, The Courage of the Coward, 157.]

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

Thou dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remember’d not. 2 [Note: Shakespeare, As You Like It, II. vii. 173.]

It is related in the memoirs of Caulaincourt, that when the minister was admitted in the early morning (after the Emperor’s attempt to poison himself), Napoleon’s “wan and sunken eyes seemed struggling to recall the objects round about; a universe of torture was revealed in the vaguely desolate look.” Napoleon is reported as saying: “God did not will it. I could not die.” Why did they not let me die? It is not the loss of the throne that makes existence unendurable; my military career suffices for the glory of a single man. Do you know what is more difficult to bear than the reverses of fortune; It is the baseness, the horrible ingratitude of men. Before such acts of cowardice, before the shamelessness of their egotism, I have turned away my head in disgust and have come to regard my life with horror.… Death is rest.… Rest at last.… What I have suffered for twenty days no one can understand.” 1 [Note: W. M. Sloane, Napoleon Bonaparte, iv. 130.]

II

The Causes of Ingratitude

1. One common cause of ingratitude is thoughtlessness. Those nine who did not come back were simply average and ordinary people in this matter: they did not think. They did not impress upon their own minds that they henceforth owed everything to Christ; that, whatever other people might do or say with regard to Christ, their course was clear. Or perhaps something of this kind happened in their case, certainly the like of it does happen. They had the feeling, of course, that they had been most wonderfully restored, that they had reason to be thankful to God, that Providence had been kind to them. But gradually Jesus slipped out of their thought, even in connexion with their cure, until, long afterwards, if any one of those nine had been asked to recall the circumstances under which he had been healed, he would have said, “Ah! it was very wonderful; we were going along the way when we all suddenly felt that we were clean. No doubt just before that we had spoken to a stranger, who told us to go to the high-priest.” “And did that stranger do nothing that contributed to your recovery?” “Oh dear no! It all simply happened; no one touched us.” Thus they might tell the story afterwards—as an instance of their own good fortune, or perhaps as an example of the general goodness of God working in human lives, but not as an illustration of what, because it happened to themselves, may happen to others who come to a standstill in the journey of their lives, and who out of some despair lift up their broken hearts to Jesus Christ.

Familiarity breeds forgetfulness. If a man has a hair’s-breadth escape from drowning, or comes safe out of a disastrous railway accident, he kneels down and thanks God for such a signal mercy; or if some long-desired but long-denied thing comes into his life, he will say to himself, “What a cause for thankfulness!” But the daily bread that nourishes him, the daily health that makes life a joy to him, the friendships that cheer him, the love of wife and children that fills his home with brightness and comfort, are, or become, so much a matter of course that it hardly occurs to him that they should “be received with thanksgiving.” You see the same kind of spirit in the earthly home; and in this, as in so much else, the child is father of the man. If the father brings home some pretty toy to his child, he is overwhelmed with thanks and caresses; but that same child eats its daily bread and enjoys its daily blessings provided by a father’s toil without a thought of gratitude. This is perfectly natural and blameless in a little child, but surely inexcusable as between a man and his Maker. Should not every mercy remind us of the overshadowing love of God, and help to keep our hearts tender and responsive to our Father in heaven? 1 [Note: G. S. Streatfeild.]

The bridegroom may forget the bride

Was made his wedded wife yestreen;

The monarch may forget the crown

That on his head an hour has been;

The mother may forget the child

That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;

But I’ll remember thee, Glencairn,

And a’ that thou hast done for me! 2 [Note: Burns, Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn.]

2. Another cause of ingratitude is found in pride. Only the stranger returned to give thanks. Perhaps it was partly just because he was a stranger that he was the one to return. The Jew was apt to take everything that came to him as a matter of right, and wonder that he did not get more, as being one of God’s peculiar people. Any blessing vouchsafed to him was one of the “sure mercies of David.” If Jesus was the Messiah, had not the Jew reason to expect an exercise of power on his behalf? The Samaritan, doubtless, was not without his temptation to spiritual pride. He, too, claimed descent from Abraham; he had his sacred books, his temple, and his holy hill; but, as compared with the Jew, there was less of that spirit of conscious superiority which cried, “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we”; less of that temper which the Baptist rebuked when he said, “Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” There was, it may be, a deeper sense of unworthiness in the Samaritan, and therefore a deeper sense of gratitude. Humility is at the root of gratitude, and when we have learned to humble ourselves beneath the mighty hand of God, we shall have learned at least the first principle of gratitude.

I must send you a word that you may know of God’s dealings with us. You know how ill my Mary [Bishop Collins’s wife] has been for long, and for some little time now we have known that it was either a tumour or abscess on the brain, and that there was but little hope of recovery if the latter, none, if the former, since it was evidently so deep-seated. To-day, Sir Victor Horsley operated. They find that there is a very large solid tumour, and that there is no hope at all. So we are trusting that at least she may have relief, and that God of His mercy will give her a peaceful passing. That is all that there is to tell, excepting that she is just bearing it all and using it all as the saint that she is, and that we are not unhappy, and are full of thankfulness. I ought to have nothing but praise for the rest of my life; and we are thankful to have been able to bring her safely from Germany to England; and we have had much precious time together lately and have been able to speak quite openly and get behind and above separation and things present and things to come or any other creature. 1 [Note: Bishop Collins, in Life by A. J. Mason, 160.]

3. Men are apt to be thankless, when they do not see their benefactor. When this miracle was wrought upon the lepers, the Worker was out of sight. He had walked towards the village, and they, avoiding the village, were pursuing their way towards Jerusalem. At that moment of awe and blessing they did not see Him. No shadowy form hovered about them to remind them that He was present in power to heal them. No word like the “I will, be thou clean,” which had healed the leper at Capernaum two years before, now fell upon their ears; no hand was raised in benediction; and yet, minute by minute, the foul disease was disappearing, when or how they could not exactly tell: and at last they saw that they were healed. But the Healer Himself they did not see; as now in His Church, so then, He was out of sight, even when His action was most felt and energetic. His words still lingered on their ears, but it was not impossible, amid the distractions of a new scene, to forget their import: and thus, out of the ten men, nine did forget it.

A strong man says in the pride of achievement, “Never since I was a boy have I been under obligation to any human being.” Nonsense! You are under obligation to a hundred unknown, lowly workers, and under obligation, too, to the greatest of mankind. You are debtor to the policeman on his beat, the deep sea fishermen off the banks, the stoker in the furnace-room of the ocean liner, the driver on the swift express or electric car, and the man who drops the fenders between the ferry-boat and the landing-stage! Many years ago, Rudyard Kipling administered a rebuke to the swash-bucklers of Empire who, in time of disturbance, fawn upon the private soldier as though he were one of the immortal gods descended from Olympus, and then, when the war-drum has ceased for a time its feverish throbbing, treat the same man as though he were the offscouring of humanity. You remember:

Makin’ mock at uniforms that guard you while you sleep Is cheaper than them uniforms, and they’re starvation cheap! 1 [Note: C. F. Aked, The Courage of the Coward, 160.]

III

The Penalty of Ingratitude

Ingratitude closes the door against the deeper blessings of life. We cannot be wanting in this great duty of thankfulness without being untrue to the law of our existence—without the worst results upon ourselves. For what is thankfulness such as God demands but that which is at the bottom of all human excellence—the frank acknowledgment of truth? As prayer is a recognition of our dependence upon God amid the darkness and uncertainties of the future, so thankfulness is a recognition of our indebtedness to Him for the blessings of the past. To acknowledge truth is always moral strength; to refuse to acknowledge it is always moral weakness. Accordingly the worst excesses of heathenism are traced by St. Paul to the ingratitude of the Gentile nations for the light of nature and conscience. “When they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”

He who forgets to be thankful, may one day find himself with nothing to be thankful for. 1 [Note: Bishop Thorold, in Life by C. H. Simpkinson, 141.]

1. The grateful man received a greater blessing. “And he said unto him, Go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole.” This does not mean that this man alone was ultimately cleansed out of the ten. It was not the manner of Jesus to withdraw His gifts because they were not appreciated at their true worth, any more than it is the Father’s way to take back His blessings from men who misuse them; for He “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust,” and “is kind toward the unthankful and evil.” But in the mind of Jesus, physical healing was the least part of His purpose in bestowing health on people. He ever thought of their souls; and unless the bodily benefit He bestowed blossomed into some spiritual grace, He was troubled and unsatisfied. Those nine had been healed, and remained healed, but they were not “made whole”; only he could be made whole who was lifted into the circle of Divine relationship, and acknowledged God as the Giver of health and all good things.

The secular temper takes everything as it comes, without any realization of its Divine source; the spiritual temper refers everything to its heavenly origin and author. “Where does the corn come from?” “From the ground,” says the materialist. “From the Father of lights,” says the Christian. And there is a whole world of difference between these points of view. If we stop with Nature, which produces corn and wine and fruit, and whose laws become our willing servants when once we learn to understand and control them, we may possess continents, and yet our souls be starved. But he who lifts his eyes above, and sees in every fact a blessing, in every possession a gift, in every incident a Divine influence, will live a life in which all lower good is still his, but crowned with a higher good that redoubles its value and makes it a spiritual treasure beyond price. 1 [Note: E. Griffith-Jones, The Miracles of Jesus, 273.]

I thank God for the removal of sickness; but I have been able to give thanks for sickness, for health, for light, for darkness, for the hiding of God’s face. 2 [Note: “Rabbi” Duncan, in Recollections by A. Moody Stuart, 221.]

(1) Gratitude is a self-rewarding virtue.—Who can doubt that this man was far happier in his condition of mind, that he felt a more full and ample and inspiriting enjoyment of his cure, that he experienced more exquisite sensations than any of the nine who departed without uttering a word of thankfulness? His supreme joyfulness and exultation are proclaimed in the tones with which he utters them, in the loud voice with which he glorified God. What strength of feeling is here! Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh; he is not silent; he cannot restrain his voice: he cannot bear that his thankfulness should be felt only within his own breast; he must utter it; he must utter it aloud; all shall know how he rejoices for the mercy bestowed, all shall hear him thank God for what He has done for him. How superior his delight in God’s gift, to that of the other nine who slunk away, and how much stronger! We see that he was transported, and that he was filled to overflowing with joy of heart, and that he triumphed in the sense of the Divine goodness. It was the exultation of faith; he felt there was a God in the world, and that God was good. What greater joy can be imparted to the heart of man than that which this truth, thoroughly embraced, imparts?

It was in the last days of his life that Dean Stanley told me how on the occasion of the funeral of Dr. Arnold he spoke afterwards to the widow, pouring out his heart first in gratitude for having been under the great headmaster, and all it meant to him of inspiration; and then he said, “I told her that so long as I lived never should this day pass without her hearing from me in token that I could never forget the debt I owed her husband.” Then he exclaimed, “And she never failed to get that letter!” It is good to dwell on such things, for they are beautiful. 1 [Note: Bishop Montgomery.]

(2) Gratitude, powerfully stimulates to active well-doing.—A man will do out of gratitude much more than he will do out of fear, or from hope of reward. Thankfulness for redemption was the motive power of a life like that of St. Paul, as it has been the motive power of all the greatest and most fruitful lives that have been lived in Christendom. Christ “died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves”—this is the motto of such lives. Gratitude, like love, lives not in words, but in deed and in truth. Often those who feel most what has been done for them say least about it; but they do most. Gratitude can work; gratitude can suffer; gratitude can persevere. But one thing gratitude cannot do: it cannot bring itself to feel that it has done enough; it cannot, in this world, lie down with a sense that it has really paid off its debt to the Redeemer.

A few months before the death of Robert Louis Stevenson, certain Samoan chiefs whom he had befriended while they were under imprisonment for political causes, and whose release he had been instrumental in effecting, testified their gratitude by building an important piece of road leading to Mr. Stevenson’s Samoan country house, Vailima. At a corner of the road there was erected a notice, prepared by the chiefs and bearing their names, which reads:

“The Road of the Loving Heart. Remembering the great love of his highness, Tusitala, and his loving care when we were in prison and sore distressed, we have prepared him an enduring present, this road which we have dug to last for ever.” 2 [Note: J. A. Hammerton, Stevensoniana, 125.]

A well-known temperance lecturer was once being driven in a carriage to address a meeting. He noticed that the driver bent forward before the front window in a strange way, with his head as much as possible before the glass. The lecturer thought the man was ill, but he answered, “No.” Then he was asked the reason of his conduct, and he replied that the window was broken, and that he was trying to keep the cold draught from the passenger. “But why,” asked the lecturer, “do you do this for a stranger?” Then the driver said, “I owe all I have in the world to you. I was a ballad singer, drunken and disreputable, dragging a miserable wife along the streets of Edinburgh. I went to hear you, and you told me that I was a man, and might live as a man again. I went home, and I said, ‘By the help of God, I’ll be a man.’ God bless you, sir; I would put my head anywhere if it would do you good.” 1 [Note: H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, By Word and Deed, 130.]

2. Those nine ungrateful ones did not receive more, they lost even what they had. They did not become leprous again, the gift of bodily health was not withdrawn from them, but they lost their faith and their good conscience. They were now cured, and were free to go to their homes, but they did not carry a joyous heart in their bosom like the Samaritan; they were rather pursued by the consciousness of having acted wickedly towards Him who had restored them to health. So it always is; he that gives thanks to God receives more and more, but the ungrateful loses that he has; as the Lord says, “Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.”

Only one hears the gracious words, “Thy faith hath made thee whole,” or, as the Greek means, “Thy faith hath saved thee.” For a man is neither “saved,” nor “made whole,” by being made sound in body. Whatever his “faith,” no man is a whole or a saved man until faith has unsealed the fountains of wonder and thankfulness and love within him. Better that the body be consumed by the most loathsome disease, so that the soul be in health and prosper, than that the soul dead to wonder and gratitude and love should dwell in the healthiest of frames and the happiest outward conditions. For the soul has the power of weaving a body, and even many bodies, for itself, and is always, I suppose, busily weaving for itself the “spiritual body,” in which it will abide when once it has “shuffled off this mortal coil.” Sooner or later the body must come right if only the soul be right with God. So that these nine thankless lepers—cleansed, but not saved; healed, and yet not made whole—had far better have remained lepers, if their misery would have helped to make whole or complete men of them, if it would have helped to “save” them, by making them feel their need of God, and by drawing them nearer to the Fountain of all love and goodness. 2 [Note: S. Cox, Expositions, iii. 398.]

But one alone

Turns back that gift of God’s great love to own,

His thanks and praise to tell;

Son of Samaria’s race,

In him is seen a fuller, worthier grace,

Than aught in Israel.

And is it not so still?

Are not we slow to own the Mighty Will

That works to save and bless?

We, who so much receive,

The speech of joy and praise to others leave,

Whom God endowed with less.

We lose what God has given,

The prize for which our feeble faith has striven

Because we thank Him not;

Though healed the leprous taint,

Yet still the head is sick and heart is faint;

We crave we know not what.

Wilt thou full health attain,

Let thy heart utter joy’s exulting strain;

To Christ who cleansed thee turn;

Then shalt thou know, at last,

A fuller bliss than all thy unblest past,

High thoughts that cleanse and burn. 1 [Note: E. H. Plumptre.]

Ingratitude

Literature

Aked (C. F.), The Courage of the Coward, 153.

Arnot (W.), The Anchor of the Soul, 314.

Blunt (J. J.), Plain Sermons, i. 250.

Cox (S.), Expositions, iii. 397.

Fürst (A.), True Nobility of Character, 66.

Gibbons (J.), Discourses and Sermons, 409.

Griffith-Jones (E.), The Miracles of Jesus, 267.

Hughes (D.), The Making of Man, 32.

Hutton (J. A.), The Soul’s Triumphant Way, 41.

Jones (J. S.), Seeing Darkly, 145.

Knight (G. H.), The Master’s Questions to His Disciples, 178.

Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., iv. 541.

Leathes (A. S.), The Kingdom Within, 205.

Liddon (H. P.), Sermons on Some Words of Christ, 206.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: St. Luke xiii.–xxiv., 127.

Mozley (J. B.), University Sermons, 253.

Neale (J. M.), Sermons for Children, 204.

Roberts (A.), Plain Sermons on Gospel Miracles, 238.

Robinson (C. H.), College and Ordination Addresses, 125.

Salmon (G.), Sermons preached in Trinity College, Dublin, 190.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxxii. (1886), No. 1935; li. (1905), No. 2960.

Streatfeild (G. S.), in Sermons for the People, New Ser., vi. 101.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xv. (1877), No. 1045.

Williams (J.), Sermons on the Epistles and Gospels, ii. 218.

Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), By Word and Deed, 123.

Christian World Pulpit, viii. 40 (T. de W. Talmage); xxxviii. 168 (H. S. Holland); xl. 155 (F. O. Morris).

Church of England Pulpit, xl. 184 (J. Silvester).

Churchman’s Pulpit. Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, xii. 65 (H. Goodwin).

Verses 20-21

The Kingdom that is Within

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.— Luke 17:20-21.

1. “The kingdom of God is within you.” That would indeed be a most pregnant and decisive utterance, if we could be sure that our Lord meant it so. Unfortunately we cannot take it with the unhesitating simplicity of the author of the Imitation of Christ, because as the words stand in the Greek they are susceptible of another rendering. The Revised Version has in the margin, “The kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” As far as the grammar is concerned, either translation is equally tenable, and the choice between them turns upon considerations which are fairly well balanced. The immediate context favours “in the midst of you,” for our Lord was speaking to the Pharisees who expected the Kingdom to be ushered in with signs and portents, with pomp and circumstance. That, He said, was a fundamental error. It was the very nature of the Kingdom to come in quietness and without attracting observation. Men would not be able to point the finger at it and say “Here it comes”; “for, behold, the kingdom of God is [already] amongst you.” If we take it so, we recall at once the words of John the Baptist ( John 1:26), “in the midst of you standeth one whom ye know not.” It is true that the two words are not identical: but they seem to be indistinguishable in meaning. In both cases the Jews overlooked the really important and crucial fact because they were looking at or looking for something more conspicuous. By the singularity of his life and preaching John the Baptist had forced himself upon the attention of all the people, and even of the rulers. They discussed the question whether he could be the Expected, wholly oblivious of the fact that the Expected had been for thirty years domiciled among them. So again they discussed the signs of the promised Kingdom, and asked our Lord’s opinion about them, in total ignorance of the fact that the Kingdom was already set up in their midst. It was undoubtedly all part of the same fundamental and persistent error, and it was rebuked in almost identical words. “He is here”; “it is here; here—in the very midst of you—if you only knew it.” There is no doubt that such is the common-sense interpretation of those memorable words, and as such it must always command our respectful acquiescence, if nothing more.

But there is much to be said on the other side. “The kingdom of God is within you” goes further than the other, further than the immediate occasion required; moreover it is addressed, not to the rulers, but to mankind at large. But all that is quite in keeping with our Lord’s manner. When, e.g., our Lord exclaimed ( John 4:48) “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will in no wise believe,” He was assuredly not speaking to that simple-minded nobleman from Capernaum. Only a hopeless stupidity will go on maintaining that. He had in His mind’s eye the general mass of the Galileans, who received Him because they had seen or heard of His miracles, but had no mind to accept His claims or His teachings; He saw behind them an innumerable multitude of all nations whose attitude towards the Kingdom would be equally unspiritual and unsatisfactory; and in the sorrow of His heart He spoke to them, as represented (for the moment) by the supplicant before Him. It is impossible to doubt that His words over and over again surpassed the scope and range of what was immediately present. We are justified therefore in thinking it possible, and even probable, that, in answering the question of the Pharisees, He gave utterance to a saying of the widest and most lasting significance. “The kingdom of God is within you”; i.e., its most characteristic development, its most proper and necessary manifestation, is an inward one—inward to the souls of men. In other words the Kingdom of God is a state of mind and soul which is reproduced in a multitude of individuals—a state which is characterized by the action of certain spiritual powers, by the dominance of certain moral and religious principles.

If you want to find the Kingdom of God, our Lord would say, you need not expect to read of its advent in the daily papers, or to hear the news in the gossip of the market-place; its progress will not be reported in Reuter’s telegrams, nor will its shares be quoted on the Stock Exchange: it will not fall under the cognizance of parliaments, or convocations, or councils: whatever outward connections and developments it may have, these will not be of its essence, because that is and must be inward to the souls of men. 1 [Note: R. Winterbotham, The Kingdom of Heaven, 221.]

Let every man retire into himself, and see if he can find this Kingdom in his heart; for if he find it not there, in vain will he find it in all the world besides. 2 [Note: J. Hales, Golden Remains.]

What are the signs by which our loyalty as citizens of the Kingdom of God will be proved? Not any uniform which can be laid aside when we enter our secret chamber; not any watchword which we can learn by an easy tradition, but a character which clothes itself in deeds, a creed which is translated into a life. The citizen must, according to the measure of his powers, embody the notes of the Kingdom, and the Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. In “righteousness, peace, joy,” we can recognize “equality, liberty, fraternity,” interpreted, purified, and extended. They tell us that the community and not the individual is the central thought in the life of men. They tell us that the fulfilment of duties and not the assertion of rights, is the foundation of the social structure. They tell us that the end of labour is not material well-being, but that larger, deeper, more abiding delight which comes from successfully ministering to the good of others. They tell us that over all that is transitory in the form of the Kingdom, over all the conditions which determine its growth, there rests the light, the power of an eternal presence. 3 [Note: Bishop B. F. Westcott.]

2. If then we take it that our Lord’s meaning is best expressed by “the kingdom of God is within you,” there are two things to be said about it.

(1) In the first place, it requires balancing, like everything else which concerns the Kingdom. For, however much the Kingdom of God is within us, its manifestation will and must pass out into life and action. We cannot help that. We cannot really cry “hands off” to Christ in the name of politics, for example. We cannot seriously maintain that the citizen or the official or the statesman should restrict his Christianity entirely to his private life because the Kingdom of God is within us. It is indeed notorious that well-meaning people allow themselves to do a thousand things in a public capacity which they would never do as private Christians; but it is certain that in this matter they are self-deceived, and will suffer a rude awakening some day. As Christians we are bound to give the most careful and scrupulous heed to a multitude of outward questions and considerations.

(2) But in the second place, we must never quit our grasp upon the fundamental principle of the inwardness of the Kingdom. We are driven to deal with the outsides of things, with tests, observances, statistics, organizations, and so on. As far as other people are concerned, we can get at the Kingdom only from outside. And so it comes to pass that for an innumerable number the outside becomes almost everything. They never get beyond it; it absorbs all their interest. What a fearful lot of arithmetic has got into the Kingdom of Heaven in our days! What counting of heads, what touting for mere numbers, what adding up of figures, of attendances, of statistics of all kinds! “Religious statistics,” they are called, by a curious euphemism, since no art of human nomenclature can make statistics religious.

We cannot too highly value the services which the shell renders to the nut that grows and ripens within its shelter. But if one should spend his time in gathering nut-shells, quite indifferent as to whether there was any nut inside or not, he would be exactly like some very active “religious” workers of to-day. One is indeed sometimes disposed to think that the enormous growth of religious agencies and organizations in the present age must be a bitter disappointment to the Lord of the Harvest; for there is no corresponding increase of inward religion. Increase there may be; but nothing commensurate with the immense expansion of machinery. There are indeed no outward and visible criteria of the true welfare of the Kingdom. There is a vast amount of action and reaction between the outward and visible, and the inward and invisible, but the one gives no direct clue to the other: and it is within, and out of sight, that the essential truth of the Kingdom is to be found. 1 [Note: R. Winterbotham, The Kingdom of Heaven, 223.]

I

Without Observation

The first thing Christ says here about the Kingdom is that it comes without observation. Its advance is not obvious to the senses and curiosity of men; it moves onwards and diffuses itself without being perceived and commented on. And the reason for this is, that the Kingdom is in its essence not a purely political fabric, such as the materialized and unspiritual fancy of the later Jews, misled by a false patriotism, had conceived it to be, but a spiritual realm, touching this earth indeed by its contact with, and empire over, human souls, but reaching far, far away from the sphere of sense, even to the utmost confines of the world invisible. Men are not to say, “Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the kingdom of God is within” them. Its seat of power lies wholly beyond the province and capacity of eye and ear; it is set up in the hearts and consciences and wills of men; and until the most secret processes of the human soul can be displayed in sensuous forms beneath the light of day, the coming of such a Kingdom must needs be “not with observation.”

The word “observation” is used not in the modern active sense of observing, watching closely, but in the old sense of being observed, having attention paid to it. This is the sense in which Walton in his Compleat Angler uses the word: “I told you Angling is an art, either by practice or a long observation or both.” 1 [Note: J. Hastings, in Dictionary of the Bible, iii. 582.]

1. This is true of Nature. The mightiest agencies ever produce effects which are silently accomplished. There is no noise in the morning of spring when the grass of the field and the trees of the forest clothe themselves with beauty in their robes of green. There is no noise on earth when the snow falls or when the seed fructifies that is yet to grow into all the richness of harvest, and become food for the millions that inhabit the surface of our globe. There is no noise when the sun rises in the east and wakes the world from slumber. Gently and noiselessly is the dew distilled beneath the stars, and as gently and noiselessly does it depart before the breath of the morning. The mighty power that bears along the worlds above us in their orbits through the immensity of space makes no noise as it speeds them in their rapidity of flight.

There are many who might be apt to think light of a very tame and feeble agency, because it is noiseless. An earthquake seems to be charged with mightier power. It thunders through the solid foundations of nature, and rocks a whole continent. In a moment the works of man are shattered and cities levelled with the ground. And yet, let the light of day cease, and there would be the reign of universal death. The vegetable world would be destroyed, the vital power of the whole animal world would be extinguished. The earth would be frozen in its centre, and the earthquake itself would cease. Such is light, that comes to us so noiselessly and gently that it would not wake an infant from its sleep, and yet every morning rescues a world from death.

“Thy kingdom come,” we are bid to ask then! But how shall it come? With power and great glory, it is written; and yet not with observation, it is also written. Strange kingdom! Yet its strangeness is renewed to us with every dawn.

When the time comes for us to wake out of the world’s sleep, why should it be otherwise than out of the dreams of the night? Singing of birds, first, broken and low, as, not to dying eyes, but eyes that wake to life, “the casement slowly grows a glimmering square”; and then the gray, and then the rose of dawn; and last the light, whose going forth is to the ends of heaven.

This kingdom it is not in our power to bring; but it is, to receive. Nay, it is come already, in part; but not received, because men love chaos best; and the Night, with her daughters. That is still the only question for us, as in the old Elias days, “If ye will receive it.” 1 [Note: Ruskin, Modern Painters, v. (Works, vii. 459).]

2. This holds good also in every region of human activity, with but few exceptions. Every great movement, great event, great institution, all in short, or well-nigh all, that has exercised a deep and lasting influence on the after-history of the world, has had small and unobserved beginnings, has grown up like the mustard seed, without observation; while loud and grand commencements, summoning as with the sound of a trumpet the whole world to behold what a mighty birth is at hand, or what a glorious thing has just been born—these are almost sure to come to nothing, to end in shameful discomfiture and defeat.

Who has ever traced the obscure rudiments, the first foundations of that wondrous city on the banks of the Tiber, which was for so many centuries queen and mistress of the world; and which, when the sceptre of temporal sovereignty dropped from her aged hand, presently grew young again, and wielded, as with a new lease of life and of power, a spiritual dominion more wide and wonderful than ever her temporal had been? Who knows the secrets of the birth of Rome? But who does not know with how loud a promise, with how vainglorious an announcement, an older city was proposed to be built, the city and the tower whose top should reach unto heaven; what a name and a fame its builders designed beforehand for themselves, organizing, as they purposed to do, into one grand society all the tribes and families of the earth; and how, in a little while, nothing but a deformed and shapeless mass of bricks remained to tell of the city which should have been at once the symbol and the centre of their world-wide sovereignty and dominion? 1 [Note: R. C. Trench, Sermons, 300.]

3. This silent coming of whatever shall prove great indeed, true in many regions of human activity, is truest of all in that highest region of all, where human and Divine must work together. “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter.” If other momentous births “come not with observation,” with pomp and circumstance and pride, challenging notice, noised abroad by the thousand tongues of rumour and report, least of all does the Kingdom of God come with these.

I see how you are and what you feel: you want to have room to develop in, and quietness for the purpose. In this you are quite right. But you think that the requisite room has a local habitation if it could only be discovered; and that quietness also is to be found somewhere or other. Let me use the language of Jesus: “If any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ, or lo, there, go not after him. The kingdom of God is within you.” It is most profoundly true: all development is from within, and for the most part is independent of outward circumstances. 2 [Note: Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, i. 326.]

(1) Never did the Kingdom of God come among men in a manner so direct, so blessed, and yet so awful, as when He, the King of kings, the Infinite and Everlasting Being, deigned, in His unutterable love and condescension, to robe Himself with a human body and a human soul in the womb of a Virgin mother, and thus in human form to hold high court among the sons of men. Never did the King of heaven so come among us men as when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judæa. Compared with this stupendous event, the greatest catastrophes, the sublimest triumphs, the most critical epochs in the world’s history, dwindle into insignificance; “God manifest in the flesh” was a phenomenon the like of which had never yet been seen, and it must throw into the shade every other event in the annals of mankind. And what amount of public notice did it attract? What were the thoughts and interests of the mass of men in Palestine on the day of the Nativity? The last news from Rome, the seat of empire; the sayings and doings of the able but capricious statesman who for a few years held in his hands the fate of the civilized world; the last reports from the frontier, from the Rhine, from the Danube, from the Euphrates; the state and prospects of trade in the Eastern Mediterranean; the yield of the taxes in this province or that; the misconduct of one provincial governor or of another: or matters more local than these—some phase of a long controversy between the soldiers and the civilians, between Roman officials and Jewish mobs, between this and that class of a subject population; the rivalries, the efforts, the failures, the successes, the follies, the crimes, the misfortunes of a hundred contemporaries;—of these things men were thinking when our Lord was born. The common staple of human thought and human talk, sometimes embracing the wider interests of the race, more often concentrating itself upon the pettiest details of daily, private, and domestic life, was in those days what it is in these. On that wonderful night it was so even with the villagers of Bethlehem; they could find no room for the Heavenly Visitor in the village hostelry; they little heeded the manger grotto outside, where He, the Infinite in human Form, was laid along with the ox and the ass. Truly, then the Kingdom of God came “not with observation.”

(2) It was so with the early establishment of the Kingdom, its first announcement and propagation. Twelve uneducated men possessed of little property, having few friends, obscure in social position, utterly destitute of all the usual means of extending their authority, or propagating their opinions—these twelve men, fishermen, peasants, poor and powerless, commenced a controversy against the government, the power, the wealth, the learning, the philosophy of their own and every other country. What a conflict was this! How unequally matched the combatants! How unequal in their numbers, how unequal in their circumstances, how unequal in their weapons! But these weak, defenceless, and personally insignificant men had in them a secret which was mighty to move the world. Wheresoever they went it went likewise, strange and silent. Everywhere they had the mastery, and yet there was no cry as of them that strive. Everywhere they had the mastery, yet the kings and kingdoms of the earth did not fall before them. All these stood visibly as before, but the unclean spirit was cast out of them.

Contrast this characteristic of Christ’s Kingdom with what we find elsewhere. No one would say that the religion of Muhammad made its way in the world without observation. It burst upon civilization as the war-cry of an invading host: it was dictated at the point of the scimitar to conquered populations, as the alternative to ruin or death. The history of its propagation throughout the eastern world was written in characters of blood and fire; the frontier of its triumphs was precisely determined by the successes of its warriors; and in these last centuries it has receded in a degree exactly corresponding to the progressive collapse of the barbarous forces to which it was indebted for its earlier expansion.

(3) So has been, and still is, the Kingdom of God among us—from that day, and in all the world—in this land, and at this hour. There are about us the visible structures which enshrine its presence, the outward tokens of God’s service, and the loud schemings of men who, under the name of the Church, would serve themselves of the Church as a contrivance for civilizing mankind; but they are not God’s Kingdom. There is, under the badge of religion, a strife and struggle for mastery among men that bear the sacred name which the saints first bore at Antioch; but God’s Kingdom is not in their heady tumult: there are the visible hurryings to and fro of a worldly Jehu-like zeal for the Lord; and there are the plottings of earthly Christians—for men may plot for Christ’s Church as well as against it. The same earthly and faithless temper of mind which resists God’s will may also insinuate itself into His service. Men may think, and do think, to spread His Kingdom by the stir and noise of popular excitement; but God’s Kingdom, like God Himself when He communed with His prophet on the mountain-height, is not in the boisterous and fleeting forms of earthly power. As its coming and its course, so is its character. It is not in any of these; but verily it is in the midst of us; in the still small voice of the holy Catholic faith; in the voiceless teaching of Christ’s holy sacraments, through which mysteries of the world unseen look out upon us; in the faithful witness of the Apostles of Christ, who, through their ghostly lineage, live among us still.

(4) Now, in what has been said surely there is a great lesson for our guidance whenever we attempt to spread Christianity either at home or abroad. We cannot hope to extend it successfully unless we proceed on the same method as was observed in planting it. It began by seizing strongly upon the soul of man, and passed on, after it had done its work there, by a natural expansion, not by a forcible imposition, into his outward life. But how many are there who are for inverting this order of things, who begin by assaulting the outward in order that they may carry the inward! How many, for example, there are who enter upon a crusade against certain worldly amusements, the sinfulness of which in themselves is at least questionable, or who advocate severe restriction upon ordinary pursuits on the Christian Sabbath, as if such outward restraints could in themselves make men spiritually-minded, or secure the hallowing of the sacred day of rest. Let such persons alter their course of proceeding. Let them begin by attacking the sentiments and convictions of the human soul. A man in whose soul the earnestness created by the thought of death and judgment has found place can never be frivolous in his recreations; questionable amusements, if they once had a hold upon him, will drop off when that new life circulates and stirs within him, as the snake casts its old slough in the spring. And a man who has really tasted the peace and pleasantness of communion with God would sooner deprive himself of natural repose than desecrate holy seasons. Plant, by God’s grace, the faith and love of Christ in any man’s soul, and you have then a perfect security for the innocence of his recreations and for the devout consecration of a just proportion of his time to God.

Our life can have no other meaning than the fulfilment, at any moment, of what is wanted from us by the power that sent us into life and gave us in this life one sure guide—our rational consciousness. And so this power cannot want from us what is irrational and impossible—the establishment of our temporal, carnal life, the life of society or of the state. This power demands of us what alone is certain and rational and possible—our serving the Kingdom of God, that is, our co-operation in the establishment of the greatest union of everything living, which is possible only in the truth, and, therefore, the recognition of the truth revealed to us, and the profession of it, precisely what alone is always in our power. “Seek ye the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” The only meaning of man’s life consists in serving the world by co-operating in the establishment of the Kingdom of God; but this service can be rendered only through the recognition of the truth, and the profession of it, by every separate individual. “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.” 1 [Note: Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You (Works, xx. 379).]

Islam is growing to-day even faster in some lands than it did in the days of Lull. And yet in other lands, such as European Turkey, Caucasia, Syria, Palestine, and Turkestan, the number of Moslems is decreasing. In Lull’s day the empire of Moslem faith and Moslem politics nearly coincided. Nowhere was there real liberty, and all the doors of access seemed barred. Now five-sixths of the Moslem world are accessible to foreigners and missionaries; but not one sixtieth has ever been occupied by missions. More than 125,000,000 Moslems are now under Christian rulers. The keys to every gateway in the Moslem world are to-day in the political grasp of Christian Powers, with the exception of Mecca and Constantinople. Think only, for example, of Gibraltar, Algiers, Cairo, Tunis, Khartum, Batoum, Aden, and Muskat, not to speak of India and the farther East. It is impossible to enforce the laws relating to renegades from Islam under the flag of the “infidel.” How much more promising too is the condition of Islam to-day! The philosophical disintegration of the system began very early, but has grown more rapidly in the past century than in all the twelve that preceded. The strength of Islam is to sit still, to forbid thought, to gag reformers, to abominate progress. But the Wahabis “drew a bow at a venture” and smote their king “between the joints of the harness.” Their exposure of the unorthodoxy of Turkish Mohammedanism set all the world thinking. Abd-ul-Wahâb meant to reform Islam by digging for the original foundations. The result was that they now must prop up the house! In India they are apologizing for Mohammed’s morals and subjecting the Koran to higher criticism. In Egypt prominent Moslems advocate abolishing the veil. In Persia the Babi movement has undermined Islam everywhere. In Constantinople they are trying to put new wine into the old skins by carefully diluting the wine; the New Turkish party is making the rent of the old garment worse by its patchwork politics. In addition to all this, the Bible now speaks the languages of Islam, and is everywhere preparing the way for the conquest of the Cross. Even in the Moslem world, and in spite of all hindrances, “It is daybreak everywhere.” 1 [Note: S. M. Zwemer, Raymund Lull, 151.]

II

In the Heart

1. The Kingdom of God comes “without observation” because it is not outward or material but spiritual and of the heart. The heart of man is God’s domain; not the only place where He would rule, but the first and essential. Here is the seat of His empire—in the heart. God’s throne must be set up and His authority recognized.

What is the Kingdom of God? It is the place where the King is, where He reigns—whether in heaven or in our hearts. Wherever anyone does a kind deed, or speaks a kind word—there is the Kingdom of God. Wherever anyone gives up his own way to please another, for Jesus’ sake, there is the Kingdom of God. Wherever anyone lets Jesus have His holy will, wherever anyone tries to think what Jesus would do, there is the Kingdom of God. To come into the Kingdom is just to take Jesus for our Master, to let Jesus take us and make us what He wants us to be. 2 [Note: R. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 87.]

The heaven is here for which we wait,

The life eternal now!—

Who is this lord of time and fate?

Thou, brother, sister, thou.

The power, the kingdom, is thine own:

Arise, O royal heart!

Press onward past the doubting-zone

And prove the God thou art!

2. Hence at the outset certain fundamental truths about this Kingdom are brought home to us which it is all-important for us not to lose sight of.

(1) If the Kingdom of God begins within the man, then this Kingdom is not merely a visible organization. It is that; it must be, if it is to fulfil the end for which God has founded it; but it is more than that. For if it were all organization, and yet had no organic life, a body made in perfect proportion, but no vitality, it would be only a beautiful piece of machinery but without any inherent force.

(2) The Kingdom of God does not consist merely in numbers, nor is it measured only by size. In our day, especially, there is a tendency among men, like David numbering the people, to place reliance on statistics and to find in figures arguments for or against the progress of the Kingdom of God among men. And even earnest Christians are apt to forget, as they speak of or pray for the growth of this Kingdom, that there can be true growth only where there is inner life and vitality.

(3) The evidence of the Kingdom of God is not merely outward profession. True, the form of godliness is all-important. Yet, if there be no living spirit within, the form is dead and useless. No, the first requirement of the Kingdom is that it must be a personal thing. God begins His reign by claiming sovereignty over the inner being of each. He must reign within the man. We can understand why this must be so when we call to mind what the heart of the man is. It is the citadel of the man’s being; it is the centre of existence in spiritual as in physical life. “Keep thy heart above all that thou guardest; for out of it are the issues of life.”

If you do not wish for His kingdom, don’t pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must work for it. And, to work for it, you must know what it is; we have all prayed for it many a day without thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom that is to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also, it is not to be a kingdom of the dead, but of the living. Also, it is not to come all at once, but quietly; nobody knows how. “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.” Also, it is not to come outside of us, but in our heart: “the kingdom of God is within us.” And, being within us, it is not a thing to be seen, but to be felt; and though it brings all substance of good with it, it does not consist in that: “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost”—joy, that is to say, in the holy, healthful, and helpful Spirit. Now, if we want to work for this kingdom, and to bring it, and enter into it, there’s one curious condition to be first accepted. You must enter it as children, or not at all: “Whosoever will not receive it as a little child shall not enter therein.” And again, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” 1 [Note: Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive, § 46. (Works, xviii. 427).]

O Thou, that in our bosom’s shrine

Dost dwell, unknown because divine!

I thought to speak, I thought to say,

“The light is here,” “behold the way,”

“The voice was thus” and “thus the word,”

And “thus I saw,” and “that I heard,”—

But from the lips that half essayed

The imperfect utterance fell unmade.

Unseen, secure in that high shrine

Acknowledged present and divine,

I will not ask some upper air,

Some future day, to place Thee there;

Nor say, nor yet deny, such men

And women saw Thee thus and then:

Thy name was such, and there or here

To him or her Thou didst appear.

| Do only Thou in that dim shrine,

Unknown or known, remain, divine;

There, or if not, at least in eyes

That scan the fact that round them lies,

The hand to sway, the judgment guide,

In sight and sense Thyself divide:

Be Thou but there,—in soul and heart,

I will not ask to feel Thou art. 2 [Note: A. H. Clongh, Poems, 69.]

3. How reasonable, then, is the claim that God makes when He appeals to a man to give Him his heart.

(1) It is reasonable because this King is the God of Love, who is not satisfied without love on the part of those over whom He reigns. He is a King who loves and would be loved. “Son,” He says, “give me thy heart.”

(2) It is reasonable because the gospel of His Kingdom is a gospel of love, “God so loved the world.” This is the starting point of the Royal proclamation. Its subjects are drawn not by fear but by love;” The love of Christ constraineth us.”

(3) It is reasonable because service in this Kingdom is a service of love. It not only has its source in a sense of duty or obedience; it is a willing, grateful service. There are no slaves in this Kingdom, only freed men. Love is the starting point of all Christian devotion and worship; “We love him because he first loved us,” and the cry of each emancipated subject must always be, “Forgiven greatly, how I greatly love.” Love is the measure of every act, prayer, worship, work; “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”

(4) It is reasonable because it recognizes a correspondence between God’s rule and the constitution of man as he has been made by God. The heart of man is always seeking an object worthy of its love; always hungry, it craves for this food; always thirsty, this is the only water which will quench its thirst. And God alone can satisfy the desire He Himself has implanted in man.

(5) Once more, it is reasonable because the heart holds the supremacy within the man. All else follows the lead of the human heart—conscience, will, reason, character—and if the heart goes wrong, all go astray. He who gives his heart gives his best, and grudges nothing, as surely as the stream takes its rise in and depends upon its source. When the heart is given to God, all is given. Other loves take their rightful place within the man. Lawful loves are raised, hallowed, lit up, regulated, and adjusted. Unlawful loves depart, cast out of the Kingdom by the allegiance of the heart to the rightful King.

Beware of the damnable doctrine that it is easy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It is to be obtained only by the sacrifice of all that stands in the way, and it is to be observed that in this, as in other things, men will take the first, the second, the third—nay, even the ninety-ninth step, but the hundreth and last they will not take. 1 [Note: Mark Rutherford.]

Oh, glorious truth and holy,

Of Christ enthroned within;

A kingdom for Him solely,

That once was dark with sin.

My heart in full surrender,

With every pulse and thought

I’ve opened to the Monarch

Whose love the right has bought.

My Saviour reigning in me

My will no longer mine:

A sanctuary kingdom—

Amazing grace Divine!

The will of my Redeemer

Controlling every power,

His purpose working in me

And through me hour by hour.

The glory of Thy presence

For evermore I crave,

From ever looking backward

My pardoned soul to save;

A kingdom and a temple—

Let every idol fall!—

My life Thy full possession,

And Christ my All in all! 1 [Note: Alfred S. Dyer.]

4. Last of all, if the Kingdom of God is within, it is not constrained by anything outward or material, however close that thing may come or however hard it may press its claim. Take two such urgent things.

(1) Inheritance.—Our essential self sympathizes with the right and pure, but our inherited nature is infected and treacherous. With the dawning of consciousness we discover in ourselves the impulses of evil derived from our ancestry. We are vain and ambitious, the victims of ungovernable temper; we are selfish and self-willed, tormented by fleshly appetites and passions. The physical and mental bias to lawlessness painfully asserts itself. The entail of evil is often simply awful, and in all of us it is deeply disquieting and humiliating. What view ought we, then, to take of these constitutional defects? Ought we tamely to permit our abnormal weaknesses and predispositions to rule and destroy us?

Let us realize distinctly and vividly what our true nature is. Our deepest nature is not animal or fiendish, but Divine; it therefore brings with it the obligation to high conduct, and competence for such conduct. “Being then the offspring of God, we ought not.…” What negatives arise out of that relationship! The offspring of God ought not to change the glory of the incorruptible One into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of beasts and creeping things. Blind passion, wilfulness, inordinate desire, dishonouring of the body, and degradation of the mind, utterly misbecome creatures made in the image of the Divine spirituality, infinity, and immortality. “Being then the offspring of God, we ought.…” What positives are implied in that relationship! The offspring of the wise, righteous, loving God, of Him who is light and in whom there is no darkness at all, ought only to be great and pure. Instead of levelling down to the beasts which perish, we ought diligently and joyously to level ourselves up to the Holiest in the height. “Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” “To the end that ye should walk worthily of God, who calleth you into his own kingdom and glory.” “Children of God without blemish.” “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God: and such we are.” “Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be.” These are the royal thoughts we ought to ponder, such the pride of long descent which ought to ennoble us and to constrain to the Christ-like life. It may be true that we were preceded by men and women of infirmity; that, however, need not dishearten us. Some in the line of Joseph were far from being perfect; but the righteous God is at one end of the pedigree, and a just man at the other; because the first link is gold, the last link may be gold also, however equivocal some of the intermediate links may be.

Heredity, in the deeper meaning, is not destructive but constructive. It works for the conservation and transmission of what is favourable to an organism. It makes for health, life, perpetuation; not for disease, disorder and destruction. It tends to neutralize and eliminate the unhealthy elements which have invaded the system. But, without being in the least instructed or definite in his thinking, the average man reckons the law of inheritance as being entirely against him, and he freely imputes his faults to its working. This popular conception of heredity is practically most mischievous, and wholly false. The degrading notion has taken possession of us that we are dominated by the “dead hand,” and by it coerced to dark ways and deeds, with which we have no sympathy. Let us utterly renounce this superstition.

I believe more deeply to-day than ever that the man endowed with grace can triumph over every infirmity, and bias, and lust of our animal self. There is not a bitter man who can not go out sweet. There is not a mean man but may become magnanimous. There is not a man who has yielded to passion who may not become sober and rational. There is not a man, however subject to the flesh and the world, who may not go out and walk with raiment whiter than any bleaching on earth can make it; and I assure you that in those very moments when you have not been master of yourself, if when you have ever fallen a victim to your impulses and passions and temptations, you seek but the hand of Christ, you shall go forth in this great city and “the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.” 1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

With all our belief in Heredity, the transmission from generation to generation of characteristic traits, virtues, vices, habits, tendencies, etc., we must not ignore the factor of freewill, which cannot but modify and restrict the fact and limitations of Heredity. I am always reminded, when I hear the remark alluded to made, of quaint Fuller, in his Good Thoughts for Bad Times. “Lord! I find the genealogy of my Saviour strangely chequered. Roboam begat Abia— i.e., a bad father begat a bad son. Abia begat Asa, a good father and a good son. Asa begat Jehoshaphat, a good father and a bad son. Jehoshaphat begat Josiah, a good father and a good son. I see, Lord, from hence that my father’s piety cannot be entailed: that is bad news for me. But I see also that actual impiety is not always hereditary: that is good news for my son.” 2 [Note: Dean Pigou, Odds and Ends, 67.]

(2) Environment.—When some of us were young the “environment” was not discovered. We used to call it circumstance, but enough years of progress are registered in the change of the name. And every schoolboy to-day loves to talk about the environment, and for some of us the environment proves most useful. What splendid people we should be if it were not for that unfriendly environment! It is fine, is it not, to think about it? How reasonable, how noble, how pure we should be if we had only been lucky enough to drop upon a nice sphere; but it is the environment that plays us false. What does it mean? Would it mean that if there were no drink we would all be sober? and if there were no money there would be no speculation? and if people did not provoke us we should be all sweet-tempered? It is the environment, and we have been unhappy enough to drop upon a miserable surrounding; and some of our writers teach us that when we get a better surrounding in another world we shall all be right.

Do not we grant too much in this perpetual talk of environment? There is a great deal about us that sets environment at a defiance. To look at it physically one would think that we have no option but to succumb to an ugly environment. Is it so, physically? I noticed the other day that in London seven tons of poisonous elements are discharged into the atmosphere every week. Seven tons of poisonous material distributed over the metropolis every week! Why, when you come to think about it, if we had any sense of scientific propriety we ought all to expire, but we do not. Oh, no! the air is there. The environment no one will deny. But we have some of the finest birds in the world in London, and some one has made a collection of butterflies, every one of them a magnificent creature, caught in the metropolis. In our parks are charming blooms, and something like six or seven millions of people manage to live, some of them to the delicate age of seventy years.

How men resist the environment intellectually! Look to the masters and you will see how little they care about the environment; how little they are in need of it. Look at a man like Shakespeare, with little or no education; what did that matter? There was something within him that dispensed with circumstance. He swept into the front rank and remained there, when the marching days were done. Look at a man like Handel, with no general education, scarcely any musical education, stepping out and blowing his golden trumpet, and the world is charmed and will be until the years are ended. Look at a man like Turner, his father a poor barber; the fellow was born in a London slum, never had a day’s education in his life; what about that? He walked up between all his canvases covered with prismatic splendour, and if you were in London you would see a crowd about his pictures. They have been there all the time ever since I have known of the place, and if you were to come back in five hundred years you would find a crowd still there.

If a man can triumph over circumstances, physically and intellectually, I rejoice to think he can triumph over them gloriously in morals and in things of character and of conduct. Your scientists say that the conditions of things must be right or the thing can not survive; if you have a rose it must have the sun; if you have a willow it must have the water-course; if you have a fern it must have a damp place. You can not change anything unless in a corresponding change of conditions. Now, I dare say that is perfectly right, but I can show you some wonderful variations from that in another sphere. I can show you lovely flowers in cellars, I can show you honeysuckle climbing icicles, I can show you roses in December snows, I can find you a lily in a cesspool; or, if you like to drop the imagery, I can find you the noblest men and the purest women in conditions that seem utterly to defy the presence of nobleness and purity; you find the most spiritual of men in Babylon; you find men with white souls in Sodom. The grace of my Master can make us to triumph over any environment and to walk in blamelessness and honour. I tell you I have seen with my own eyes a snowdrop thrust itself through three inches of macadam. The delicate stem, frail beyond language, thrust itself through three inches of macadam. It did not believe in environment. The power of God was in its root, and it thrust itself through until it saw the blue of the sky and received the kiss of the sun; and I tell you it can be with us in the same fashion. If the power of God in a root can lift a delicate flower into the sun, the power of Christ in a human heart can make us triumph over the most uncongenial surroundings. 1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

The paradox, “Verum est quia impossible,” which Tertullian uttered concerning doctrine, it is time for us boldly to apply to action, saying, “It is practicable because it is impossible”; for, under the dispensation of the Spirit, our ability is no longer the measure of our responsibility. “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God,” and therefore possible for us who have been united to God through faith. Since the Holy Ghost has been given, it is not sufficient for the servant to say to his Master, “I am doing as well as I can,” for now he is bound to do better than he can. Should a New York merchant summon his commercial agent in Boston to come to him as quickly as possible, would he be satisfied if that agent were to arrive at the end of a week, footsore and weary from walking the entire distance, with the excuse, “I came as quickly as I could”? With swift steamer or lightning express at his disposal would he not be bound to come more quickly than he could? And so, with the power of Christ as our resource, and His riches in glory as our endowment, we are called upon to undertake what of ourselves we have neither the strength nor the funds to accomplish. 1 [Note: A. J. Gordon: A Biography, 252.]

The Kingdom that is Within

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