subjects, while He spake to them such searching spiritual words that
they conceived a great dread of His kingly commands and claims. He bade
them begin to rule themselves when they were dreaming of a splendid rule
over the gentiles; and He turned inwards on the inner obliquity,
foulness, and deformity, those eyes which were watching eagerly for the
signs of an approaching advent of a glorious, celestial imperator to the
world. Jesus looked on Pilate's kingship, and fathomed it perfectly. He
knew from whence the power sprang, and by what springs it was fed, which
seated Pilate's master on the world's imperial throne. Pilate found the
royalty of Jesus unfathomable; none of his worldly experiences helped
him to understand it. Art Thou a king then, poor, worn, tear-stained
Outcast, forsaken of every subject, of every friend, in the hour of Thy
bitter need? And yet the nascent smile of scorn was checked by something
which cast a spell even on that worn-out profligate's heart. That lonely
wasted Man there had that about Him which made the representative of the
world's master afraid. It seemed mere idle talk to a man like Pilate: "a
kingdom not of this world;" "witnessing to truth;" "disciples of the
truth:" it was all childish to the trained intellect of this experienced
ruler; and yet there seemed to be some power beyond the grasp of his
intellect, which something within him recognised, and which might create
and rule a kingdom after a fashion which till then had never even
crossed his dreams. But to him the mystery remained insoluble. He wrote
a title to which his instinct gave a reality that his intellect denied,
"JESUS OF NAZARETH, KING OF THE JEWS." And here in this passage we have
the Lord's own declaration of the constitution and aims of His kingdom;
the kingdom which, from that hour, has been the ruling element in the
history of this world, and, as we learn from the Apocalypse, of all the
worlds of the great universe of God. And men persistently misread it as
they misread Him, and employ His words as they employed His works, to
frustrate the purpose for which He entered into the world.

Let us see how the misunderstanding of these words arose.

"My kingdom is not of this world:" literally "not from," originally "out
of" this world. A clear understanding of the full force of this will
give us the clue to the interpretation of our Lord's words. There is an
old sense of the preposition "of," which closely corresponds with