d the idea of the Kingdom of God ever play a part in your religious
education?

2. Did you feel any response to it in studying this lesson? Does it have
reality?

3. Suppose an entire study group should fail to see anything in it, would
that prove it valueless?

II. _Historical Changes in the Kingdom Ideal_

1. How did the Kingdom ideal take shape in the minds of the Hebrew
prophets?

2. Explain the nature of the apocalyptic hope and its divergence from the
prophetic ideal.

3. What passages seem to throw the most light on Jesus' conception of it,
and his feeling about it? What do you think about the Beatitudes from this
point of view?

4. At what points did Jesus clarify and elevate the hereditary hope of his
nation? Summarize the conception of the Kingdom as it lay in the mind of
Jesus.

III. _Present Possibilities of the Kingdom Idea_

1. What value would the preaching of the Kingdom of God have in
evangelistic work today?

2. How would it affect religious education and the moral outlook of the
young?

3. How would the possession of the Kingdom faith equip the Church for
leadership in an age of social movements and unrest?

4. How does the Kingdom hope add to the joyousness of the Christian life?

5. How does Jesus' conception of the Kingdom of God connect with the great
social and national hopes of today?

IV. _For Special Discussion_

1. How does a man realize himself in seeking the Kingdom? How does a man
realize the Kingdom in developing himself?

2. Does the idea seem to offer a religious vehicle for conceptions you
have derived from sociological work?

3. Does a social concept like the "Kingdom of God" gain anything for its
practical efficiency today from being ancient, and from being religious?

4. Will such a concept ever be effective with the masses unless it is
essentially religious?

Chapter V. The Kingdom Of God: Its Tasks

_The Right Social Order is the Supreme Task for Each_

The perfect social order is the highest good. In so far as it is a gift of
God, offered to the individual like the fertile earth and the oxygen of
the air, we must appropriate it and enjoy every approximation to the
perfect society. But what is the responsibility of the individual toward
the achievement of the ideal social order? What task does it lay on him?
How did Jesus see this problem? It is finely stated in the words with
which Emile de Laveleye closes his book "Sur la propriete": "There is