Greatest
Thing in the
World
The
Founding of the
Society
By:
Henry Drummond
It
is a somewhat startling
thought—it will not be
misunderstood—that Christ
probably did not save many people
while He was here. Many an
evangelist, in that direction,
has done much more. He never
intended to finish the world
single-handed, but announced from
the first that others would not
only take part, but do
“greater things” than
He.
For amazing
as was the attention He was able
to give to individuals, this was
not the whole aim He had in view.
His immediate work was to enlist
men in His enterprise, to rally
them into a great company or
Society for the carrying out of
His plans.
The name by
which this Society was known was
The Kingdom of God. Christ did
not coin this name; it was an old
expression, and good men had
always hoped and prayed that some
such Society would be born in
their midst. But it was never
either defined or set agoing in
earnest until Christ made its
realization the passion of His
life.
How keenly
He felt regarding His task, how
enthusiastically He set about it,
every page of His life bears
witness. All reformers have one
or two great words which they use
incessantly, and by mere
reiteration imbed indelibly in
the thought and history of their
time.
Christ’s
great word was the Kingdom of
God. Of all the words of His that
have come down to us this is by
far the commonest. One hundred
times it occurs in the Gospels.
When He preached He had almost
always this for a text. His
sermons were explanations of the
aims of His Society, of the
different things it was like, of
whom its membership consisted,
what they were to do or to be, or
not do or not be. And even when
He does not actually use the
word, it is easy to see that
all He
said and did had reference to
this. Philosophers talk about
thinking in categories— the
mind living, as it were, in a
particular room with its own
special furniture, pictures, and
viewpoints, these giving a
consistent direction and colour
to all that is there thought or
expressed.
It was in
the category of the Kingdom that
Christ’s thought moved.
Though one time He said He came
to save the lost, or at another
time to give men life, or to do
His Father’s will, these
were all included among the
objects of His
Society.
No one can
ever know what Christianity is
till he has grasped this leading
thought in the mind of Christ.
Peter and Paul have many
wonderful and necessary things to
tell us about what Christ was and
did; but we are looking now at
what Christ’s own thought
was.
Do not
think this is a mere modern
theory. These are His own
life-plans taken from His own
lips. Do not allow any isolated
text, even though it seem to sum
up for you the Christian life, to
keep you from trying to
understand Christ’s
Programme as a whole.
The
perspective of Christ’s
teaching is not everything, but
without it everything will be
distorted and untrue. There is
much good in a verse, but often
much evil. To see some small soul
pirouetting throughout life on a
single text, and judging all the
world because it cannot find a
partner, is not a Christian
sight. Christianity does not
grudge such souls their comfort.
What it grudges is that they make
Christ’s Kingdom
uninhabitable to thoughtful
minds. Be sure that whenever the
religion of Christ appears small,
or forbidding, or narrow, or
inhuman, you are dealing not with
the whole —which is a
matchless moral symmetry—
nor even with an arch or
column—for every detail is
perfect—but with some cold
stone removed from its place and
suggesting nothing of the
glorious structure from which it
came.
Tens of
thousands of persons who are
familiar with religious truths
have not noticed yet that Christ
ever founded a Society at all.
The reason is partly that people
have read texts instead of
reading their Bible, partly that
they have studied Theology
instead of studying Christianity,
and partly because of the
noiselessness and invisibility of
the Kingdom of God itself.
Nothing truer was ever said of
this Kingdom than that “It
cometh without observation.”
Its first
discovery, therefore, comes to
the Christian with all the force
of a revelation. The sense of
belonging to such a Society
transforms life. It is the
difference between being a
solitary knight tilting
single-handed, and often
defeated, at whatever enemy one
chances to meet on one’s
little acre of life, and the feel
of belonging to a mighty army
marching throughout all time to a
certain victory.
This note
of universality given to even the
humblest work we do, this sense
of comradeship, this link
with history, this thought of a
definite campaign, this promise
of success, is the possession of
every obscurest unit in the
Kingdom of God.
Christian
books
|
