h the will of God. For
our present purpose, therefore, we may think of the kingdom as a
spiritual commonwealth embracing all who do God's will. To much that
Christ taught concerning the kingdom--its Head, its numbers, its growth
and development--it is impossible, in one brief discourse, even to
refer. Here again, it must suffice to single out one or two points for
special emphasis:

(1) In the doctrine of the kingdom of God, we have set before us the
social aspect of Christ's teaching; it reminds us of what we owe, not
only to Him who is its King, but to those who are our fellow-subjects.
Of particular duties it is impossible to speak, though these, as we
know, fill a large place in the teaching of Jesus. But let us at least
bring home to ourselves the thought of obligation, obligation involved
in and springing out of our common relationship as members of the
kingdom of God. The obligation is writ large on every page of the New
Testament--in the Gospels, in the doctrine of the kingdom; in the
Epistles, in the corresponding doctrine of the Church. It can hardly be
said too often, that, according to the New Testament ideal, there are no
unattached Christians. The apostles never conceive of religion as merely
a private matter between the soul and God. All true religion, as John
Wesley used to say, is not solitary but social. Its starting-point is
the individual, but its goal is a kingdom. Christ came to save men and
women in order that through them He might build up a redeemed society in
which the will of God should be done. We do, indeed, often hear of
Christians whose religion begins and ends with getting their own souls
saved. This simply means that so far as it is true they are not yet
Christian. To think only of oneself is to deny one of the first
principles of the kingdom. Wesley taught the early Methodists to sing--

"A charge to keep I have.
A God to glorify;
A never-dying soul to save,
And fit it for the sky;"

and some of his followers, both early and later, seem to have thought
that this was the whole of the hymn; but the verse goes on without a
full stop--

"To serve the present age,
My calling to fulfil;
O may it all my powers engage
To do my Master's will!"

And until we who profess and call ourselves Christians have learned this
lesson of service, and have entered into Christ's thought of the
kingdom, with its interlacing network of obligations, we have still