heavenly kingdom is its refusal to employ force. Its servants do not
fight. In the garden the King had repudiated the use of force, bidding
His servant sheathe His sword. Whenever you encounter a system that
cannot stand without the use of force, that appeals to the law court or
bayonet, you are sure that, whatever else it is, it is not the Kingdom
of Christ. Christ's kingdom distinctly and forever refuses to allow
its subjects to fight. They who would surround Christianity with
prestige, endow it with wealth, and guard it with the sword, expel its
Divine Spirit, and leave only its semblance dead upon the field. But
if the aid which might be deemed essential is withheld, whether of
funds or force, it thrives and spreads until the hills are covered with
its goodly shadow, and its products fill the earth with harvests of
benediction. All the Gospel asks for is freedom--freedom to do what
Jesus did, in the way He did it; freedom because of its belief that the
power of truth is greater than all the power of the Adversary. Oh for
a second Pentecost! Oh for the holy days of Apostolic trust and
simplicity! Oh for one of the days of the Son of Man, who came to our
world armed with no authority save that of truth, clothed with no power
but that of love.

In Pilate's next question there seems a touch of awe and respect: "Art
Thou a king then?" That moral nature which is in all men, however
debased, seemed for a moment to assert itself, and a strange spell lay
on his spirit.

With wondrous dignity our Lord immediately answered, "Thou sayest that
I am--a king." But He hastens to show that it was a kingship not based
upon material force like that of the Caesars, nor confined to one race
of men: "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the
world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Every one that is of
the truth heareth My voice." There is no soul of man, in any clime or
age, devoted to the truth, which does not recognize the royalty and
supremacy of Jesus Christ. There is an accent in His words which all
the children of the truth instantly recognize. The idea here given of
Jesus gazing ever into the depths of eternal truth, and bearing witness
of what He saw, not in His words alone, but in His life and death; and
of the assent given to His witness by all who have looked upon the
sublime outlines of truth, is one of those majestic conceptions which
cannot be accounted for on any hypothesis than