so valuable and engrossing
that a man ought to stake his whole life on attaining it, and subordinate
all other aims to this dominant desire.

I

He spoke of this great good as "the Kingdom of God." Even a superficial
reading of the first three Gospels shows that this was the pivot of his
teaching. Yet he nowhere defines the phrase. He took an understanding of
it for granted with his hearers, and simply announced that it was now
close at hand, and they must act accordingly. What did the words mean to
them? The idea covered by the phrase was an historic product of the Jewish
people, and we shall have to understand it as such.

The Hebrew prophets had concentrated their incomparable religious energy
on the simple demand for righteousness, especially in social and national
life. The actual life of the nation, especially of its ruling classes, of
course never squared with the religious ideal. The injustice and
oppression around them seemed intolerable to the prophets, just because
the ethical imperative within them was so strong. So their unsatisfied
desire for righteousness took the form of an ardent expectation of a
coming day when things would be as they ought to be. God would make bare
his holy arm to punish the wicked, to sift the good, to establish his law,
and to vindicate the rights of the oppressed. This great "day of Jehovah"
would inaugurate a new age, the Kingdom of God, the Reign of God. The
phrase, then, embodies the social ideal of the finest religious minds of a
unique people. The essential thing in it is the projection into the future
of the demand for a just social order. The prophets looked to a direct
miraculous act of God to realize their vision, but they were in close
touch with the facts of political life and always demanded social action
on the human side.

Plato's Republic and More's Utopia are intellectual productions which have
appealed to single idealistic minds. The Hebrew prophets succeeded in
socializing their ideal. By the force of religion they wrought the
conception of the Kingdom of God into the common mind of a nation as a
traditional conviction which was assimilated by every new generation.

But when a great idea is appropriated by the masses, it is sure to become
cruder to suit their intellect and their need; and when a national ideal
is handed on for centuries, it will change with the changing fortunes of
the people that holds it. When the Hebrew nation came under the foreign
r