f the Kingdom it must be swept aside. So our Lord
declared in one of the most searching of His utterances; one of the
utterances which we feel could come only from the lips of God: "Think
not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but
a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and
the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be those of his own household. He
that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he
that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

That is the teaching of the incident before us. Our Lord's primary
mission is to declare the will of God, and to make known the mind of the
Father to all who will heed. Their acceptance of this will of the Father
will bring them into a new relation to Him more important than, and
transcending, all relations of flesh and blood. But--and this is
important to mark--it does not exclude relations of flesh and blood; but
it demands that they shall be put on a new basis and be assimilated to
the higher relation. In our Lord's case they were in fact so
assimilated. The blessed Mother and the brethren did not resist God's
will when they came to understand it. They were, we know, glad of the
higher relation, the new privilege. There is no ground at all for the
suggestion of any breach between them. They are of the inner circle
always in the Kingdom of the regenerate.

This fundamental truth of Christ's teaching, that through Him a new and
closer relation to the Father becomes possible, and that the Kingdom is
its embodiment, is one of the truths which have received constant
lip-service, but have never been really assimilated in the working life
of the Church. That the Church is the Body of Christ and we His members,
and that by virtue of this membership in Him we are also members one of
another; that we are, at our entrance into the Kingdom, made, as the
Catechism puts it, members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the
kingdom of Heaven are truths of most marvellous reach and of splendid
social implications. But can we say that they have very wide or real
acknowledgment?

In face of a divided Christendom it seems almost farcical to talk of a
Christian Brotherhood. The baptismal membership of the Church of God has
fallen into group organisations whose mutual antagonism is of the
bitterest kind. The so-called "religious press"