The kingdom of heaven here and hereafter

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Contents

The Kingdom of Heaven . ...

Hn. The Parable of the Sower; or, of the Good Seed

III. The Parable of the Tares of the Field

Preface

T N the following pages will be found an attempt -*- to estimate once more our Lord's teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven. It is an arduous undertaking, in which any large measure of success can scarcely be looked for. But the present time offers some advantages which may seem to warrant the taking it in hand. We have shaken ourselves clear of certain conventional ways of treating our Lord's discourses which greatly spoilt their effectiveness and even obscured their meaning. We do not in the least desire to treat the Bible like any other book, or to rank our Lord with other Teachers of mankind. But we see quite clearly that being made Man, and speaking to His hearers in their own language, it was of necessity that He should so order His words as to produce the effect which He desired upon their minds. He spoke indeed as never man spake, but all the same He spoke as Man to men. He used a style which was distinctively Eastern, constantly figurative, not infrequently viii PREFACE

hyperbolical. Parables, proverbial sayings, figures of speech, prophetical formulas adapted from the Old Testament, were constantly on His lips. To object to this fact, as if it were in any conceivable sense derogatory or surprising, would only be to object to His being Incarnate when and where He was. To ignore this fact in interpreting His language, is to set aside the Will of God for one's private fancies. It pleased the Father that the Incarnate Word should think the thoughts and speak the language of a Jew of Palestine nineteen centuries ago. Given the Incarnation, nothing else indeed was possible. The clearest recognition of this fact does not diminish in the least from the reverence due to our Lord's words. On the contrary it adds to that reverence because it makes it more intelligent. But it does affect our interpretation of those words, when we understand that they are very far removed in literary character from the ordinary prose of modern Western life. It is a fact that our Lord desired and designed to impress upon the minds of His followers certain great ideas connected with His Kingdom. It is a fact that He had to use whatever language was then and there best adapted (or most available) for producing the desired effect. It is a fact that He actually used the language of the Prophet and

PREFACE ix

the Poet, not that of the essayist or annalist, not that of the modern moralist or preacher. It is only when we recognize these facts that we can contemplate our Lord's teaching in anything like the true light. It is only when we recognize the limitations which our Lord set upon His teaching, when we cease to demand of Him definite predictions and dogmatic utterances, that our minds become really open to the splendid effectiveness of that teaching. There never was anything like it — save here and there when His Spirit spake by the Prophets of Israel. There never will be anything like it again. To treat it in the hopelessly prosaic and pedantic (spirit in which it has been so often treated is (with the best intentions) to do Him a dreadful wrong. If anyone thinks the following pages chargeable with too much freedom of treatment, or with too wide departure from conventional ideas as to what our Lord must have meant, he is only asked to weigh each case on its merits, and to credit the author with as devout a reverence for the Incarnate Word as he has himself. It is agreed that it is not in all cases easy to know what our Lord really meant. It is agreed that it has always been an open question (and a question very ill understood by many) how far the elements of poetry and of x PREFACE

figure and of picture-language enter into our Lord's discourse. If the author is convinced that these elements are in fact far larger and more extensive than is generally allowed, he may be wrong — but he is not therefore to be accused of want of reverence or want of faith. Nothing is further from his mind than to take up a negative attitude towards our Lord's teaching. If on the contrary he shall have done anything to bring out the magnificent and astonishing effectiveness of that teaching, and to free it from entanglements of misunderstanding, then his object will have been gained. The effort is probably worth very little : whatever it is worth, it is offered to Him.

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN HERE AND HEREAFTER

i.

THERE is a very marked tendency in the present day to get back to our Lord's own teaching on platters of religion. This need not be either doubted or deplored. The tendency may itself take an exaggerated form, like every movement which is largely prompted by hostility to established modes of thinking. It is in point of fact often completely vitiated by prejudice and dislike : but in itself the tendency is hopeful. It is sufficiently evident that in many ways a great deal has been read into the Master's teaching which does not belong to it. It is natural and right that those who revere Him most should wish to strip off these accretions, and to realize as distinctly as possible what He Himself really taught about religion. In order to share this wish, it is not at all necessary to set up the authority of the Master in any kind of opposition against the authority of the apostles to whom He promised the gift of the

Spirit to guide them into all truth : or against the authority of the Church which is the pillar and ground of the truth. Theoretically, there can be no such opposition, for then would the Spirit and the truth be divided against itself. Practically, whatever opposition may appear will fall to be explained by some mistake on our part. We have misread the Apostles, or misjudged the voice of the Church. We may leave that for the present, convinced that no true development of Christian teaching (whatever its degree of inspiration) can gainsay the teaching of the Master or be (in any sense) inconsistent with it. It is true then that in point of fact the appeal is constantly being made to what our Lord taught on certain subjects ; it is certainly lawful to ask ourselves what that teaching really comes to. And this may be especially asserted with regard to a subject which He made peculiarly His own, and as it were reserved for His own explication. Everyone knows that He spoke very often about the Kingdom of Heaven, that it was a favourite topic of His, that He chose to dwell upon it in His public teaching in a very emphatic way, that it commended itself to Him as a heading or title under which He could most conveniently and profitably arrange His teachings concerning those things which it most concerned us to understand. It was His mission to proclaim, to found, that Kingdom. It was the Kingdom which interested Him, and in which He sought to interest us. It certainly represented something very real and practical to Him, and yet so inclusive that whatever was not of it was nothing worth. If the phrase

" Kingdom of Heaven " called up in our minds what it called up in His — nothing more and nothing less — we should be wise indeed ! It is, however, evident that to this wisdom there is no short cut. To this particular phrase there is no paraphrase, no precise equivalent in any language. No doubt the phrase itself implies something. It takes for granted the fact that the world is in some sense alienated from God. It takes for granted that amidst this general alienation there is a process of recovery which has God for its author ; a limited sphere within which He is working in a peculiar way, ruling and overruling, to bring men back to Him. So we cannot doubt that in the Divine thought this Kingdom has an absolute unity and identity. In human thought and speech, however, it is far otherwise. The moment we look at our Lord's teaching about the Kingdom we are struck with the fact that it is extraordinarily varied and discursive. We are confronted with a number of outline sketches so diverse one from another as to have almost nothing in common. Our first difficulty is to conceive how similitudes so apparently inconsistent can be true likenesses of the same divine institution. Our first lesson is one of wide-mindedness. It is indeed possible that as we go on we shall perceive some sort of unity, rising through the partial and manifold to the one and the complete. It is also possible that this is not to be realized here and now. At any rate we must be content with any amount of seeming incongruity to start with, and refuse to be tempted by that forced exegesis which has for its aim at any cost to

"reconcile" scripture with scripture, or scripture as it is with our conception of scripture as it ought to be. A bitter experience has taught us both what this kind of treatment can do, and what it cannot do. On the face of things it is omnipotent. It is always possible by means of glosses and explanations to put such a face upon any scripture as that it shall at least be dumb and not give the lie to our reading of any other scripture. But in the end it is impotent. It never satisfies people who think. The written record remains, infinitely patient indeed of arbitrary treatment and violence, but always bearing its own witness, and always finding some ears open to that witness. Our first lesson then is one of comprehensiveness. The Kingdom of Heaven in our Lord's presentation of it is like unto a dozen different things — so different that theology can find no common measure for them. Yet we cannot doubt that the truth of the Kingdom is to be found not in the exclusive contemplation of any one or two of these aspects, but in giving due place and full importance to every aspect in its turn. There are those who are in favour of very short formulas in religion : they cannot be in harmony with our Lord's teaching in the Gospels. There are those who insist much upon the simplicity of the Gospel. They are right in their way, but they need to recognize that our Lord's teaching was simple because each picture that He held up was so clear and so incisive, not at all because the pictures were the same or were even alike. Simplicity must never be confounded with narrowness of view, or with failure to grasp the many co-ordinate and complemental elements in our Lord's teaching, and in the teaching of scripture generally. If that teaching had been " simple" in the sense often claimed for it, He would doubtless have found one parable in which He might express the truth of the Kingdom. It is evident that He could not do this : the many-sidedness of the Kingdom forbade it. The parables of the Kingdom are like pictures or photographs of some great edifice taken from points of view so various that they bear almost no resemblance to one another. Any one or two, taken apart from the rest, would be erroneous because fatally incomplete. And yet each is absolutely true in itself, and its truth is substantiated by Christian history and Christian experience, so far as these have gone. What we have do do, therefore, if we wish to understand the Kingdom of Heaven as our Lord thought of it, is to take all these parables as they are, to place ourselves at their varying standpoints, and to realize that aspect of the Kingdom which is presented in each.

Of set parables concerning the Kingdom of Heaven there are fourteen in St. Matthew, and one (additional) in St. Mark. Pre-eminent amongst these are the two great series of seven parables in St. Matthew xiii., and of three in St. Matthew xxv. Besides these there is a large number of sayings about the kingdom, especially in St. Luke, which are of the greatest importance. It must be evident to every careful reader that the Gospels are full of sayings which only need working up in order to be called parables. They are the raw material of parable. They are pregnant sayings, illustrations, similitudes, which the evangelists in some cases actually call parables (as in St. Luke v. 36, St. Mark xiii. 28), but which are not in fact elaborated into the word-picture to which we restrict the name. For affirming the distinctive features of the Kingdom they may be equally important, though not nearly so striking. We must try not to lose sight of these, while we give chief attention to the two great groups of parables in St. Matthew's Gospel. It may indeed be argued that the former of these groups is an artificial one, that they have only been gathered together here for convenience. But our Lord's question in St. Matthew xiii. 51, "Have ye understood all these things ? " seems to imply that all these parables belong together, and need to be taken in connection with one another in order tr be properly understood. Of course we cannot take the apostles' answer, "Yea, Lord," as representing the fact. It measured their ignorance rather than their knowledge — their ignorance of all the wisdom which lies within these parables, which nineteen centuries have failed to exhaust. But all the same our Lord's words serve to gather together all these parables of the Kingdom, and to present them to us as an object of devout study in their unity as well as in their variety.

Before taking up the detailed examination of these parables, however, it will be well to point out what the time relations of the Kingdom of Heaven are, in our Lord's use of the phrase. It has relations with past, present, and future. Where, for instance, our

Lord says that "the children of the Kingdom shall be cast out," 1 it is manifest from the context that He is speaking of Jews, who by reason of their privileged position under the old dispensation might naturally claim the freedom of the Kingdom more than any others. Nor does He exactly disallow that claim. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob do belong to the Kingdom, and are prominent in it. 2 But these "sons of the Kingdom," as they are by hereditary right, must nevertheless be excluded since they have no real congruity with it. The Kingdom of which our Lord thought had therefore a sort of preliminary (or anticipatory) and partial existence in the past, in that Old Testament economy which He came at once to fulfil and to supersede.

But it is certain that this existence of the Kingdom in the past has but a small and casual place in our Lord's teaching, and it is only necessary to point ijt out for the sake of completeness. Generally speaking He is at pains to emphasize the fact that the Kingdom has only come with Himself, and is only now available. Even John the Baptist, to whom He pays so high a tribute of praise, is not (properly speaking) within the Kingdom. 3 Close as he stands to the Messiah, he does not himself belong to the Christian order of things, and so remains inferior to many commonplace people in point of position and privilege. To be fairly within the Kingdom of Heaven it is not enough to be even the forerunner of our Lord : one must be distinctly a follower of His. Habitually our Lord speaks of the Kingdom

1 Matt viii. 12. a Ibid, 11. 3 Matt. xi. 11.

in the present tense; "no doubt the Kingdom of God is come upon you " ; " the Kingdom of God is within you " (or perhaps " among you "). x That manner of speech may be said to be usual with Him. But at the same time He speaks of it as future, and that emphatically. Thus He does not encourage the popular idea that "the Kingdom of God should immediately appear," 2 and He teaches the disciples to pray " Thy Kingdom come." 3 Concerning some of them He asserts that they " shall not taste of death until they see the Kingdom of God," 4 and He tells the twelve at the Last Supper that He " will not drink from henceforth of the fruit of the vine, until the Kingdom of God shall come." 5 It is obvious that this emphatic reference to the future does not in itself raise any difficulty, any more than that other and slighter reference to the past. If, as we should naturally suppose, the Kingdom is essentially a state of things introduced into the world by our Lord, it would necessarily have its more or less shadowy anticipations in the past ; still more necessarily its historical developments in the future. The Jewish " children of the Kingdom " did really possess the earthly counterpart of the heavenly reality of that Kingdom. When we pray "Thy Kingdom come," we mean " come in its perfect fulness." Those who were to survive (no doubt very unexpectedly and by the singular favour of God) to "see the Kingdom of God," were (as St.

1 Luke xvii. 21. 2 Luke xix. II.

3 Matt. vi. io; Luke ix. 2. 4 Luke ix. 27.

5 Luke xxii. 18.

Mark indeed expresses it, ix. 1) to "see the Kingdom of God come with power" i.e., in some startling development of its boundless influence for good. Those who are to drink the cup of blessing new with their Lord in the Kingdom of God will drink it (whatever that may mean) "in the regeneration," i.e., in the age to come when the Kingdom shall have reached its final stage of absolute perfection. There is nothing whatever arbitrary in this, because the coming of the Kingdom is so often and so clearly thought of as being gradual and progressive. In the one parable peculiar to St. Mark (iv. 26-9) there is no other point than this. Gradually, and even insensibly, while men pursue their ordinary avocations, and the earth swings round and round upon its axis, the seed is growing and ripening towards maturity. When that maturity is finally reached, there will be no delay in reaping the fruits ; but until that hour is

,)come it will just go on growing, ripening, developing, maturing, or by whatever other word one may choose

Vto describe the evolution of the Kingdom. No one has ever made anything else of the parable. But in this simple and obvious sense it is perfect. There are moments in the growth of the corn when men remark with a certain surprise on the change which has come over its appearance. As a rule they pay no heed to it. But it goes on growing none the faster for their regard, and none the slower for their disregard. So is the Kingdom of God, always past (since He "left not Himself without witness from the beginning" 1 ), always present (since "here and

1 Acts xiv. 17.

io THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

now" is the law of man's responsibility), always future (since "the Kingdom" is also "the patience of Jesus Christ" 1 ).

Moreover it is entirely after our Lord's manner to use words and phrases with a singular absoluteness and absence of qualification, leaving it to His hearers to explain them by the context, or to modify them by complemental sayings. That is the case in things far more important and difficult than time-relations. It should not then (and would not, apart from preconceived theories) cause us any surprise, or give us any trouble, if we find Him speaking simply and absolutely of "the Kingdom," whether He was at the moment thinking of it as past, present, or future, in its anticipation, in its essential character, or in its development. This being so, it is clear that in considering any particular parable of the Kingdom w$ must carefully interrogate Christian history as to any light which that history can throw upon it, since, every distinctive feature of the Kingdom must leave unmistakable marks upon the course of events. No one doubts that Christianity has profoundly affected the progress of affairs from the first, and no one doubts that the Kingdom of Heaven stands in close relationship to what we call Christianity, although much which is included under that name is not of the Kingdom. Christian history therefore should help us very much, both positively by suggesting the true line of interpretation, and negatively by barring the false. We need, however, to rely upon broad and general views of history only, and not 1 Rev. i. 9.

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN u

upon narrow or detailed applications. It is not necessary to ask whether our Lord had before His mind the whole sequence of the future of this world. It is enough to know (as we really may know for certain) that if He had He never made the slightest use of that knowledge. Beyond the destruction of Jerusalem (so often depicted by the prophets of Israel) He never foretold one single event in history, and even those few prognostications that He made of the fate which awaited some of His disciples 1 were couched in terms of such studied vagueness that only the event could determine what they meant. This reticence was no doubt intentional, and all really reverent minds will hold it in absolute respect. Practically, our Lord predicted nothing in the way of what we call occurrences. What He did was to forecast certain lines along which His Kingdom would develop, because these lines corresponded to its essential features. It is in this respect, !nd only this, that we must seek for light from Christian history. To anticipate very briefly what */ill appear further on, it may be granted that as the parable of the sower deals primarily with the conditions of the apostolic age, so the parable of the tares is primarily concerned with such spurious imitations of Christianity as formed a very prominent feature of the second century. The parable of the mustard-seed depicts the surprisingly swift growth of Christianity as a corporate institution, while that of the leaven sets forth as clearly the far wider extension of its characteristic ideas. All that corresponds 1 Matt. xx. 23 j John xxi. 18, 22.

markedly in a broad sense to the actual course of things, but it cannot be carried any further. We might infer that our Lord's vision of the future did not extend further, or pass more into detail, than that. Such an inference would be precarious. But we are bound to treat the parables as if it were true. Whatever limits He Himself imposed upon His utterances we must absolutely respect : and when history shows clearly that such limits existed, we must conclude that He Himself imposed them. That is the only reasonable or reverent line to take, even if it cut the ground from beneath a vast edifice of assertion or of speculation. To this limited use of Christian history may be added an almost .unlimited use of Christian experience, since the Kingdom fulfils and unfolds itself in and for the individual quite as much as in and for the community. The parables, e.g., of the hid treasure and of the pearl are obviously to be expounded from the records of the inner life : like certain other parables of the; Kingdom, they absolutely decline to concern them/- selves with Christians in general, they will only take men one by one in the most personal way possible.

One more "foreword." No attempt will be made to go behind the Gospel narratives. They will be taken as they stand. And this, not out of any desire to judge others or to limit their liberty, but out of conviction that the path in that direction leads to nothing. If a hundred men started off to cross a level and featureless moorland on a dark and windless night, when the moon did not shine, and the few stars visible could not be recognized, the value of their explorations would be nil. Their devious course until the dawn would be determined only by the action and reaction of the unimportant and superficial inequalities of the surface upon their personal idiosyncrasies. No conceivable value would attach to the result. Equally useless, because equally casual and unaccountable, is the blind guessing of those who wish to go behind the Gospels. Doubtless they form opinions, but they have not any data to form them on. The Gospels are in possession. They have been in possession from a date which every fresh discovery tends to put nearer and nearer to the apostolic days. No one who really believes in the love and wisdom of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ can lightly believe that the Gospels are not authentic for all practical purposes.

II. The Parable Of The Sower; Or, Of The Good Seed

St. Matt. xiii. 3-8.

Behold, a sower went forth to sow : And when he sowed some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up : Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth : and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth : And when the sun was up, they were scorched: and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them : But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

St. Mark iv. 3-8

Hearken ; behold, there went out a sower to sow : And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth ; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth : But when the sun was up, it was scorched ; and because it had no root, itwitheredaway. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased, and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred.

St. Luke viii. 5-8.

A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side ; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it.

And some fell upon a rock ; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fellH among thorns ; an|l the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold.

St. Matt. xiii. 18-23.

Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower. When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one % and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side. But he that received the seed into stony places, the sam* is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it : Yet hatn he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecutidki ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended.

He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word ; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he become t h unfruitful.

But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the

St. Mark iv. 14-20.

The sower soweth the word. And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown ; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground ; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness ; and have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time : afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's sake, immediately they are offended.

And these are they which are sown among thorns ; such as hear the word.

And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. And these are they which are sown on good ground; such as hear the

St. Luke viii. 11-15.

Now the parable is this : The seed is the word of God.

Those by the way side are they that hear ; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they> which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep #, and bring forth fruit with patience.