The interior of the kingdom

CHAPTER I. Page

CHAPTER n.

The Entrance . ^ 10

CHAPTER in.

The Kingdom 18

CHAPTER IV.

The New Outlook 25

CHAPTER V.

Consolation in Sorrow 32

CHAPTER VI.

The Food of the Soul 40

' " CHAPTER VII.

The Fruit of Righteousness 47

CHAPTER VIII.

The Condition of the Vision 54

Contents.

CHAPTER IX.

Page

CHAPTER X.

The Beatitude of the Persecuted 72

CHAPTER XL The Pattern on the Mount 80

CHAPTER XII.

The Ideal Realized 87

CHAPTER XIII.

The Living Organism 95

CHAPTER XIV.

The Apostolic Method 104

CHAPTER XV.

The Holy Spirit in Relation to Daily Toil 112

CHAPTER XVI.

The Threefold Attitude 122

Prefatory Note

FROM the thirteen provinces of Japan the Buddhists view the mountain of Fusji-san. Not to cHmb the mountain once in a Hfetime is considered a breach of Japanese duty to the ancient gods. On the top of the mountain the pilgrims from the different provinces meet. Here their white vestments are stamped and sealed by the priests. The mountain towers aloft 12,000 feet, but to view and admire it at a distance will not secure priestly benediction ; the pilgrims must climb every inch of the way.

In the Beatitudes we have the real mountain of God. It is the mountain of benediction and blessing. To secure its blessings it must be climbed. Many view it and admire it at a distance, but they are too much attached to the cosmetic attractions of the valley to begin to climb. But the spiritual climber alone enjoys its blessing. ''Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon that have I given unto you.'' Mountain climbing is irksome, it is real soul- work, but it is the only way to the mountain top. Every step in the upward march develops spiritual muscle and bone; it strengthens the soul and dilates the heart. "Who will ascend into the hill of the Lord?" With the Holy Spirit we may climb to the top, and from Zion's lofty peak we may gaze on the thrilling visions of the Kingdom of God. ''The King's daughter is all glorious within/' The higher we climb upward, great things become greater, and small things become smaller.

Hence, the mountain top is the meeting-place of the radiant inner circle. Here they are above the fog; here they understand each other. Here they walk in the light as He is in the light, and ''We have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.''

The object of this book is to show the way to the mountain top. Many professing Christians are living perpetually in the valley ; hence, they have no peace, no joy, no strength. Others live on the northern slope of the mountain where there are perpetual mists, and frost and snow, cold winds and sunless skies. But, in thus calling attention to the mountain top, we have not overlooked the relation which the top sustains to the base and to the valley. The base and the top form one mountain; so the physical and the spiritual form one life. There is a great deal of false Mysticism in these days, which i& nothing but vaporized spiritual talk. There can be no antagonism between the " inner " and the " outer " life. Any spiritual talk that does not end in practical good to mankind is mere affectation. If Christ dwells in the inner He will control the outer life. Nothing is of any value in the spiritual life except that which ends in practice.

The title ''The Interior of the Kingdom'' implies the existence of an exterior. But with the official and doctrinal exterior of the Kingdom we have nothing to do in this book. Our object is to describe the internal riches and graces of the Kingdom, and their practical application to daily life.

D. V. GWILYM.

CHAPTER I.

THE FRONTIER AND THE INTERIOR.

OF all the mountains mentioned in the Bible none can be more sacred to the Christian than the one on which Jesus delivered the laws of His Kingdom. Our interest in the mountain, and in the truths which were proclaimed there, is the result of our vital interest in His personality. As He sat in the midst of His disciples, He was the very embodiment of spiritual reality. All the hidden potentialities, all the grace and power of the New Kingdom, were then summed up and gathered together in His own person. He was the beginning and end of a new creation — of a New Kingdom.

The New Kingdom is founded on the Incarnation. Christ became man in order that He might, through the Holy Spirit, live in man. On the mount of the Beatitudes, He was a visible person with His followers. They could see Him with their eyes, they could feel the touch of His sympathy as He lived and labored among them ; but still He was not in them. He became visible, that is, a person outside of His followers, in order that He might more fully and wonderfully dwell in them after the Day of Pentecost. Man needs Divine power. With sin inside and God outside, the struggle with sin becomes hopeless.

The New Kingdom is the means through which Christ communicates His own fulness to His followers. It is the means through which He extends, stretches out, and perpetuates His life among men. He came into the world to establish a Kingdom. His whole ministry was a definite preparation for it. His very first public utterance was a reference to the Kingdom. After the record of His temptation we read: ''From that time Jesus began to preach, and say. Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.'' From the very beginning of His ministry, the heart of Christ was wrapped up in the idea of the Kingdom, for He longed to dwell in His followers, and thus perpetuate His life among them. This is what makes the study of the laws of His Kingdom so interesting to us. It is because we know Him that we understand them.

Children often read books without taking any interest in the personality of the author; but mature minds read them chiefly because they reveal the soul of the author. It is the same with regard to music or painting. They are loved best when they are loved as forms of expression, as utterances of a spirit Hke our own. The pianola makes fine music, but it can never supplant the piano, because its music is soulless. It lacks the vital touch. The connection between it and the originating mind is too remote to arouse an interest.

Now, the Incarnation brings Christ very near to us. He lives in us through the Holy Spirit. For this reason the words He spoke whilst on earth move our souls. They are His words; they express His personality, His mind, His soul. He still speaks them to us, it is His voice we hear as we read them. A company on board a boat at nightfall looks toward the lighthouse lamp. Who cares, of all on board, what hand kindled the flame ? They cry, ''There it is!'' But one man on board knows that the lamp has been lit by the loving hand of his wife, so while others cry '' There it is ! " he whispers "She is there!"

This is an illustration of the different minds with which people read the laws of the New Kingdom^. Some say: ''There they are/' But those who know the King say lovingly, "Here He is!" To those who know Him, they are pictures of His loving heart. Even in their sequence and alternations the Beatitudes describe His life. His life was an alternation of solitude and activity, of contemplation and work. The very place that He selected to deliver the Beatitudes was in keeping with His private custom. After preaching and performing works of mercy in the valley, it was His custom to seek the solitude of the mountain slope. After working and toiling in the busy streets, He got away from the noise and bustle of the world to hold communion with His Father.

But it was not for mere convenience that He ascended the mountain to deliver the laws of the New Kingdom. ''When He went up into the mountain" with others, it was to mark some special occasion, some exceptional turning-point in the fulfilment of His earthly mission. Our Lord on this occasion ascended the mountain, not merely as a Teacher, but as the Legislator and Founder of the New Kingdom. If we bear this in mind, it will help us to understand the legislative character of the Beatitudes, and the relation they bear to the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. All the circumstances connected with the Beatitudes, including the remote and proximate preparation for their promulgation, show not only that they were intended to be the permanent laws of the New Kingdom, but they show also the essential nature of the New Kingdom.

Every item in the preparation reveals the loving heart of Christ. Let us glance for a moment at the remote preparation and contrast it with the preparation which preceded the promulgation of the Decalogue. The Israelites needed a long preparation before they could receive the Ten Commandments as a permanent standard and rule of life. But notice the character of the preparation — a series of miracles of punishment and destruction, the plagues of Egypt and submersion of Pharaoh. Christ, on the other hand, prepared His disciples for the laws of the New Kingdom by a series of miracles of mercy — ^healing the sick and delivering men from the power of the evil one.

Christ also prepared the way for the promulgation of the Beatitudes by definite preaching. His fame as a preacher ''went throughout all Syria." His journeys through the towns of Galilee, and other parts of Palestine, preaching and healing the sick, drew around Him a great multitude of people. It was when He saw the multitude that He realized that the time had come for the promulgation of the permanent laws of His Kingdom — ''The Kingdom that shall have no end.*'

Let us now notice the proximate preparation. "And seeing the multitudes He went up into a mountain: and when He was set, His disciples came unto Him.'' Notice, how climbing the mountain, on this occasion, reveals the heart of Jesus. He knew that climbing the mountain would have a powerful sifting influence on the multitude. It would test the sincerity of His followers. It acted on those who had followed Him from town to town out of curiosity, like Gideon's test. Those who had followed Him out of mere curiosity would not take the trouble to climb the mountain in order to be with Him. Thus the final preparation for the promulgation of the new laws afforded ample protection against an utterly promiscuous multitude. There is no reason, however, for limiting the company to twelve; for the selection of the twelve had not taken place when the Beatitudes were delivered. Our Lord was doubtless followed up the mountain by a large company, but a company sufficiently prepared by His teaching, and attached to His person, as to be known as His disciples. Thus the very preparation shows the nature of the New Kingdom. Only the spiritual mountain-climber, who turns his back on the valley in order to be with Christ, can enjoy the New Kingdom.

Again, the position Christ occupied on the mountain, in the midst of His disciples, is symbolical of the difference between the Old and the New dispensation. At Mount Sinai, God was on the top of the mountain, away from the people. On the mount of the Beatitudes, Christ sits lovingly in the midst of His disciples — ''Emmanuel, God with us.'' At Sinai, the people were afraid of the Lawgiver, here they press close to Him, eager not to lose one word of truth which falls from His gracious lips.

Again, the whole scenery of the two legislations is characteristically different. Here, instead of the savage desolation of the wilderness, we have the smiling beauty of the mount of the Beatitudes, near the dwellings of men. Instead of the peals of thunder, and terrifying words, we have the Prince of Peace talking lovingly to His disciples.

But greater than the difference in the external circumstances of the two legislations is the difference in their substance. The old is a law of prohibitions and threats, the new is a series of blessings and promises. The old appeals to the motive of fear, the new holds up the flag of eternal progress and appeals to the motive of hope. There is, however, no antagonism between the Old and the New. The Old Law is just as much an arrangement of love as the New. The Ten Commandments are simply the landmarks of love. They are a fence placed by a God of love to prevent His children from going astray. God is eternal love. His threats andjprohibitions are just as really utterances of love as His promises. The Old Law is a fence placed by God on the Frontier of the Kingdom. To cross the fence at any point is to be in the enemy's country — in the realm of heinous sin. This shows us the 'essential malice of sin. To cross the boundary line placed by a God of love is not only to'^set up our judgment against God's judgment, but it is a crime against our own souls as well.

In giving the Ten Commandments God appealed to the only motive that man at that stage of his development could understand. It was by listening to the Law, the Old Schoolmaster, that man was prepared for the promises and blessings of the New Kingdom. The Old Law, then, is the Frontier, the New is the Interior, of the Kingdom. Instead of appealing to the motive of fear, the new legislation opens before the mind's eye visions of spiritual wealth and glory. Every note in the new legislation is optimistic. The New Kingdom is the realm of realization, the realm of hope, the realm of untold spiritual wealth. The prohibitions of the Old Law become the songs of the New Kingdom. The old landmark says, ''Thou shalt have none other gods but me," but the man under the dominion of the new legislation sings: ''Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth I desire beside Thee."

The old law could make nothing perfect ; it could not supply the dynamic of obedience, it could not deliver man from the thraldom of sin; but it prepared the way for the bringing in of "a better hope" through which we can be transformed into the image of God's Son. The New Kingdom is the realm of spiritual power. The King Himself supplies the power of obedience. He is the food of the Kingdom. Some day we shall be like Him. He came to show us the way, He came to lift us up, He came to make us like Himself. '' Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him ; for we shall see Him as He is.''

To be under the dominion of the new legislation is to burn with a desire to be like Him. The very beauty of His life attracts us on, and His grace impels us. Climb, climb, the mount of the Beatitudes ! Reader, turn thy back on the Frontier and press bravely on to the Interior of the Kingdom !

Chapter II. The Entrance

WHAT a wonderful moment that was in the history of the Kingdom of God when Christ sat in the midst of His disciples ! Perhaps the disciples, as they sat at the Master's feet, were filled with conflicting emotions and wondered among themselves what His first word would be. At last our Lord ''opened His mouth'' and said ''Blessed." The very first word in the new legislation reveals the purpose for which the Kingdom of God exists. Christ came into the world to bless mankind and to make them happy. All men, whether Christians or not, seek happiness. But it is in their notion of what happiness is, that they differ. Many have tried to find it outside of God, but have failed. The Beatitudes are a series of Divine paradoxes to rectify the notions of mankind in relation to true happiness. Our Lord, in showing in what true

THE ENTRANCE. II

happiness consists, shows also the way in which it is to be secured.

Blessedness is the possession or proper quality of God Himself. He alone is the Blessed One. Christ came to make us partakers of the Divine nature — came to communicate His own blessedness to us. Our Lord's first word, therefore, promises a participation in the blessedness of His own person. The promise of blessedness was not altogether new ; for the same words are found several times in the Psalms: ''Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly." '' Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." ''Blessed are the undefiled in the way," etc.

All these are blessed in various ways; but our Lord in the Beatitudes is laying the foundation of a new legislation, and a new philosophy based on His own Person — ^based on the Incarnation — and so He says: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven."

Our Lord in making self-abnegation the condition of entrance into His Kingdom strikes at the root principle of sin. Selfishness is the starting-point in the history of wrong-doing. It is the cause of all our misery. An angel in heaven said "I," and at once became a devil. Isa. XIV. 12-15.

The first sin committed was an act of rebellion against God. It was man seeking to be a god to himself; seeking his own way, his own happiness outside of God. Selfishness has been the secret of all failure in human history.

When Christ came into the world, He saw, as no one else ever saw, the torrents of iniquity and corruption that streamed like a black Niagara from the roots of selfishness. It carried the principle of ruin and decay into every department of life. The world had accomplished much in the way of philosophy, art, culture, patriotism, politics, statesmanship, and legislation. But selfishness blasted all its beauty, destroyed its harmony and sapped out all its strength. It ruined the family, ruined the State, it ruined Greece, it ruined Rome. It is the great disintegrating force in human life.

Selfishness is a brute force, and for that very reason it is a scattering force. Whenever men seek their own individual good without any regard for the common welfare, fraud and oppression must follow.

When Christ came into the world all men sought their own: they sought riches, wealth, and possession for their own exclusive enjoyment. Selfishness was triumphant and, therefore, sin and misery, death and darkness reigned everywhere. Christ came into the world to deliver mankind from the thraldom and bondage of selfishness. Not merely to deliver the little world of Judea, two thousand years ago, but the great world of all the nations

THE ENTRANCE. 13

and of all the ages. He came to deliver us. He came to found a New Kingdom, a new spiritual force based on His own Person. Selfishness is a scattering force. The New Kingdom is a gathering force. The New Kingdom is the very antithesis and antidote to selfishness.

The only way to enter the New Kingdom is to acknowledge the failure of the selfish, or unit, principle, and to make an unconditional surrender to the King of the New Kingdom. The New Kingdom is the realm of co-operation and love, within its borders no one liveth unto himself. The root principle of sin is selfishness, the root principle of the New Kingdom is self-abnegation. Its foundation stone was laid in the virtue of self-emptying. It became a possibility only when He for our sakes became poor. The New Kingdom began, not by accumulating for selfish use, but by giving for the use of others.

The Father gave His Son, the Son emptied Himself of His glory. The principle of serving others runs through the Kingdom. Every one who enters shares the spirit of the King, who took upon Himself the form of a servant. Now, before we can give, we must have somewhat to offer; before we can serve the King, we must renounce the principle which is hostile to Him.

Many people in these days, who are trying to eliminate the cross from Christianity, say, ''Give us the Sermon on the Mount." And yet the first sentence in the Sermon on the Mount embodies the principle which they do not like. Self-confidence must be broken down before we enter the Kingdom. A real sense of need, of nothingness, and of absolute dependence on God is the only condition the King requires of those who wish to enter His Kingdom.

The very term which our Lord uses helps us to understand this principle. Everybody knows what is meant by poverty. The idea is easily understood by all. Actual poverty is a type of spiritual need. The actually poor have nothing; they depend on others. Thus actual poverty becomes a type of that profound spiritual need which secures for the penitent an entrance into the Kingdom of God. The way to the Kingdom is open to all. Kings and beggars, but all must pass through the narrow gate of self-abnegation. The characteristic tone of feeling required is that of the publican smiting his breast, or the hunger-tortured prodigal, or the once self-righteous Paul — "wretched man that I am!'' It is the acknowledgment of the need of a new power, a new center of life, that secures an entrance into the Kingdom. The Holy Spirit is the Agent through whom the work of initiation is done. He is the Porter that opens the door.

To be in the Kingdom implies soul-kinship with

THE ENTRANCE. I 5

the King. Those who are united to Him have His tastes, His interests, His sympathies. His spirit. Union with Christ is the basis of Christian service. Beneath the fact of what we do is the fact of what we are. If the Hfe is Christ -centered, then we will serve others as Christ did. St. Paul says, '' Not I, but Christ." There was a great deal of the '' I " about Paul before he entered the New Kingdom. But after he was ''translated" into the Kingdom of God's dear Son his only boast was the cross of Christ. "God forbid," he says, "that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world."

It is difficult for us to fully appreciate the completeness of the self-abnegation implied in these words. Since those days, the cross has become outwardly respectable. It has been so rayed with secular glory by poet and painter, that his words do not strike us as they must have struck those to whom he wrote.

It meant in those days what the gallows, or the electric-chair, means in these. To give his words a modern color we should have to substitute the word gallows, or electric-chair, for cross. His words would then read: "God forbid that I should glory save in the gallows by which I am hanged unto the world and the world is hanged unto me!''

l6 THE INTERIOR OF THE KINGDOM.

Now, what did Paul mean when he said that he was crucified to the world? He meant that the cross had forever separated him from the accumulated fruit of selfishness which is known as worldliness. Through the cross the selfish principle had been dethroned and Christ enthroned. He was, therefore, dead to worldliness; because it is ever hostile to the interests of the New Kingdom. But the world is quite another thing. It was in this world the Kingdom was formed; here it was established. It is God's world and, therefore, there can be no antagonism between it and the New Kingdom. The King is human and Divine. Every human virtue and Divine perfection are blended and eternally glorified in Him. He is the Carpenter of Nazareth and the King of glory. His Kingdom partakes of the same nature. It is a blending of the physical and the spiritual, of the temporal and eternal.

We must first seek the Kingdom of heaven for ourselves, before we can labor for its establishment in others. For just as heaven must be in us before we can enter heaven, so we may speak indifferently of our entrance into the Kingdom of God, or of the entrance of the Kingdom of God into us.

In any case we must first possess the Kingdom before we can work for its establishment in the individual, in the home and in the State.

THE ENTRANCE. I 7

The King has taught us to pray: ''Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." The Kingdom of God means more than grace in the soul, it means the reign of righteousness in daily life. Crime and vice, dishonesty and tricks of trade, are. the outworking of the unit principle. The initial virtue of the New Kingdom dethrones selfishness and enthrones the spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice. The law of service runs through the New Kingdom. The Father gave His Son, the Son gave His life to the last drop of blood. He still gives Himself. To all who enter His Kingdom He says: ''As my Father sent me, even so send I you.'' The Kingdom is for those who have renounced the unit principle, and who live and labor for others.

Chapter III. The Kingdom

SOUL-KINSHIP with the King implies that the Kingdom is a present possession. Our Lord does not say that He will give the Kingdom of heaven to the poor in spirit ; but He says : ''of such is the Kingdom.'' They now enjoy the Kingdom, because they are what they are. The moment of their subraission to the King was the moment of their emancipation from the false attractions of earth. When they gave up all, the doors of the Kingdom were opened and they entered into the realm of spiritual power and wealth. Only the poor in spirit who have soul-kinship with the King possess the Kingdom. They alone can appreciate its glories and riches. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. ' ' ' ' Except a man be bom again he cannot see the Kingdom of God." The poor in spirit are born into the Kingdom. They see what they see, because they are what they are. They who give up all get all. ''Theirs is the Kingdom,'' says the King. "All things are yours," writes Paul.

THE KINGDOM. 19

Now, it is of the utmost importance to understand in what sense the poor in spirit possess the Kingdom. The new possession is the result of a new relation. The Kingdom sustains the same relation to poverty of spirit that the flower does to the root from which it springs.

When the poor in spirit surrender to the King they do so without any thought of other gain. It is the King Himself they seek. No one seeks personal gain in the New Kingdom. It is because they seek nothing that they gain everything. The Apostles themselves did not fully understand this principle till after the Day of Pentecost. On one occasion St. Peter asked, '' Behold, we have forsa.ken all and followed Thee, what shall we have therefore ?" The Apostles had been listening to our Lord's conversation with the rich young man. The young man wanted life eternal, wanted to enter the Kingdom without surrendering the selfish, or unit, principle. To him the supreme test was his wealth. Peter heard our Lord saying: '*Go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, and follow me.'' The young man could not make the surrender, and for that reason went awa}^ sorrowfully. The Apostles were amazed at what our Lord said after the rich young man had gone away. They wondered what this treasure in heaven might be which He promised to those who surrendered all for His sake. The Apostles had surrendered all to follow Him, and so Peter said, ''What shall we have therefore?" The question reveals a spirit in Peter like that of the rich young man. He had given up all to follow Christ, but he expected a return here on earth. The Apostles at this time expected an earthly Kingdom. They did not understand the nature of the New Kingdom. Our Lord in answering Peter said that those who have forsaken houses, or brethren or sisters, or father or mother, or wife or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundred-fold and shall inherit everlasting life.

It is only those who follow the King out of personal love, only those who leap forward and say, ''Where Thou goest I will go, where Thou lodgest I will lodge,'' that receive the manifold, or hundred-fold, more in this present time.

Now this is enough to show that the reward of the first Beatitude is not something added to the virtue of poverty of spirit, but that it belongs to it. The possession of the Kingdom springs from the disposition. The term ''Kingdom" will help us to understand the greatness of the reward. Even an earthly kingdom may be viewed from many sides, and present many aspects.