thout check or limitation, and be at once king and
priest. If the words before us refer to any one but to Christ, the
prophet had an altogether mistaken notion about what would be good for
men, politically and ecclesiastically, and we may be thankful that his
dream has never come true. But if they point to the Son of David who has
died for us, and declare that because He is Priest, He is therefore
King--oh! then they are full of blessed truth concerning the basis and
the nature and the purpose of His dominion, which may well make us lift
up our heads and rejoice that in the midst of tyranny and anarchy, of
sovereignties whose ultimate resort is force, there is another
kingdom--the most absolute of despotisms and yet the most perfect
democracy, whose law is love, whose subjects are every one the children
of a King, the kingdom of that Priest-ruler on whose head is Aaron's
mitre, and more than David's crown.

He does rule. 'The kingdom of Christ' is no unreal fanciful phrase. Take
the lowest ground. Who is it that, by the words He spoke, by the deeds
He did, by the life He lived, has shaped the whole form of moral and
religious thought and life in the civilised world? Is there One among
the great of old, the dead yet sceptred sovereigns, who still rule our
spirits from their urns, whose living power over thought and heart and
deed among the dominant races of the earth is to be compared with His?
And beyond that, we believe that, as the result of His mighty work on
earth, the dominion of the whole creation is His, and He is King of
kings, and Lord of lords, that His will is sovereign and His voice is
absolute law, to which all the powers of nature, all the confusions of
earth's politics, all the unruly wills of men, all the pale kingdoms of
the dead, and all the glorious companies of the heavens, do bow in real
though it be sometimes unconscious and sometimes reluctant obedience.

The foundation of His rule is His sacrifice; or in other words--no truer
though a little more modern in their sound--men will do anything for Him
who does _that_ for them. Men will yield their whole souls to the warmth
and light that stream from the Cross, as the sunflower turns itself to
the sun. He that can give an anodyne which is not an opiate, to my
conscience--He that can appeal to my heart and will, and say, 'I have
given Myself for thee,' will never speak in vain to those who accept His
gift, when He says, 'Now give thyself to Me.'

Bre