t it
seeks the world as the sphere of its influence, the field of its
conquest, the realm of its rule. With yearning desire, eagerly as man
yearns for fellowship, a friend for the brother of his spirit, the
bridegroom for the bride, I seek and claim this world as My own"?

Here are the two ideas of the meaning of these words of our Lord set
fairly against each other. The number of those who would deliberately
adopt and justify the former is happily growing less year by year. Were
we caring only for formal misunderstandings of important passages of
Scripture in these discourses, it would be hardly worth while to discuss
seriously a perversion which is vanishing with the changed aspects of
the times. But the spirit, the savour, of an error continues long to
work after it has been formally exploded; and we discuss this passage
in this present discourse under the strong conviction that the false
view which we have described above continues to tincture very deeply our
theology, our preaching, and our social ideas and habits, even in those
who would utterly repudiate the formal idea of the Lord's kingdom on
which it rests.

Some of the results of this misconception of the true nature of the
kingdom have been as follow:--

1. The idea has been widely entertained that the aim of the Lord has
been, not to save the world, but to save a chosen few out of the world,
leaving calmly the great mass to go to wreck. The favourite notion has
been that the Lord's disciples have been in all ages, and still will be,
an isolated band, like Israel in Egypt; hating the world around them,
hated by it, and waiting only the happy opportunity, the hour of
deliverance, to pass out of it triumphant, and leave it to perish by the
strokes of the Lord's avenging hand. This idea, that the Church is a
little band of chosen ones in the midst of a hostile and reprobate
world, is a very favourite one with the disciples in all ages; and it is
nourished by the tone in which the apostles wrote and spoke to the few
poor men and women who were to begin the work of restoration, and who
needed to be upborne against tremendous pressure by the assurance of the
special and personal intervention of the God of heaven on behalf of the
little company whom He loved. They needed a strong support against a
world which was bent on destroying them as it had destroyed their Lord;
and so the apostle wrote, "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal
priesthood, an holy nation,