Greatest
Thing in the
World
The
Machinery of the
Society
By:
Henry Drummond
Such
in dimmest outline is the
Programme of Christ’s
Society. Did you know that all
this was going on in the world?
Did you know that Christianity
was such a living and
purpose-like thing? Look back to
the day when that Programme was
given, and you will see that it
was not merely written on paper.
Watch the drama of the moral
order rise up, scene after scene,
in history. Study the social
evolution of humanity, the spread
of righteousness, the
amelioration of life, the freeing
of slaves, the elevation of
woman, the purification of
religion, and ask what these can
be if not the coming of the
Kingdom of God on earth. For it
is precisely through the
movements of nations and the
lives of men that this Kingdom
comes. Christ might have done all
this work Himself, with His own
hands. But He did not. The
crowning wonder of His scheme is
that He entrusted it to men. It
is the supreme glory of humanity
that the machinery for its
redemption should have been
placed within itself. I think the
saddest thing in Christ’s
life was that after founding a
Society with aims so glorious He
had to go away and leave
it.
But in
reality He did not leave it. The
old theory that God made the
world, made it as an inventor
would make a machine, and then
stood looking on to see it work,
has passed away. God is no longer
a remote spectator of the natural
world, but immanent in it,
pervading matter by His present
Spirit, and ordering it by His
Will. So Christ is immanent in
men. His work is to move the
hearts and inspire the lives of
men, and through such hearts to
move and reach the world. Men,
only men, can carry out this
work. This humanness, this
inwardness, of the Kingdom is one
reason why some scarcely see that
it exists at all. We measure
great movements by the loudness
of their advertisement, or the
place their externals fill in the
public eye. This Kingdom has no
externals. The usual methods of
propagating a great cause were
entirely discarded by Christ. The
sword He declined; money He had
none; literature He never used;
the Church disowned Him; the
State crucified Him. Planting His
ideals in the hearts of a few
poor men, He started them out
unheralded to revolutionize the
world. They did it by making
friends and by making enemies;
they went about, did good, sowed
seed, died, and lived again in
the lives of those they helped.
These in turn, a fraction of
them, did the same. They met,
they prayed, they talked of
Christ, they loved, they went
among other men, and by act and
word passed on their secret. The
machinery of the Kingdom of God
is purely social. It acts, not by
commandment, but by contagion;
not by fiat, but by friendship.
“The Kingdom of God is like
unto leaven, which a woman took
and hid in three measures of meal
till the whole was
leavened.”
After all,
like all great discoveries once
they are made, this seems
absolutely the most feasible
method that could have been
devised. Men must live among men.
Men must influence men.
Organizations, institutions,
churches, have too much rigidity
for a thing that is to flood the
world. The only fluid in the
world is man. War might have won
for Christ’s cause a passing
victory; wealth might have
purchased a superficial triumph;
political power might have gained
a temporary success. But in
these, there is no note of
universality, of solidarity, of
immortality. To live through the
centuries and pervade the
uttermost ends of the earth, to
stand while kingdoms tottered and
civilizations changed, to survive
fallen churches and crumbling
creeds—there was no soil for
the Kingdom of God like the
hearts of common men. Some who
have written about this Kingdom
have emphasized its moral
grandeur, others its
universality, others its
adaptation to man’s needs.
One great writer speaks of its
prodigious originality, another
chiefly notices its success. I
confess what almost strikes me
most is the miracle of its
simplicity.
Men, then,
are the only means God’s
Spirit has of accomplishing His
purpose. What men? You. Is it
worth doing, or is it not? Is it
worth while joining Christ’s
Society or is it not? What do you
do all day? What is your personal
stake in the coming of the
Kingdom of Christ on earth? You
are not interested in religion,
you tell me; you do not care for
your “soul”. It was not
about your religion I ventured to
ask, still less about your soul.
That you have no religion, that
you do not care for your soul,
does not absolve you from caring
for the world in which you live.
But you do not believe in this
church, you reply, or accept this
doctrine, or that. Christ does
not, in the first instance, ask
your thoughts, but your work. No
man has a right to postpone his
life for the sake of his
thoughts. Why? Because this is a
real world, not a think world.
Treat it as a real world—
act. Think by all means, but
think also of what is actual, of
what like the stern world is, of
low much even you, creedless and
churchless, could do to make it
better. The thing to be anxious
about is not to be right with
man, but with mankind. And, so
far as I know, there is nothing
so on all fours with mankind as
Christianity.
There are
versions of Christianity, it is
true, which no self-respecting
mind can do other than
disown—versions so hard, so
narrow, so unreal, so
super-theological, that practical
men can find in them neither
outlet for their lives nor
resting-place for their thoughts.
With these we have nothing to do.
With these Christ had nothing to
do— except to oppose them
with every word and act of His
life. It too seldom occurs to
those who repudiate Christianity
because of its narrowness or its
unpracticalness, its
sanctimoniousness or its dulness,
that these were the very things
which Christ strove against and
unweariedly condemned. It was the
one risk of His religion being
given to the common
people—an inevitable risk
which He took without
reserve—that its infinite
lustre should be tarnished in the
fingering of the crowd or have
its great truths narrowed into
mean and unworthy moulds as they
passed from lip to lip. But
though the crowd is the object of
Christianity, it is not its
custodian. Deal with the Founder
of this great Commonwealth
Himself. Any man of honest
purpose who will take the trouble
to inquire at first hand what
Christianity really is, will find
it a thing he cannot get away
from. Without either argument or
pressure, by the mere
practicalness of its aims and the
pathos of its compassions, it
forces its august claim upon
every serious life.
He who
joins this Society finds himself
in a large place. The Kingdom of
God is a Society of the best men,
working for the best ends,
according to the best methods.
Its membership is a multitude
whom no man can number; its
methods are as various as human
nature; its field is the world.
It is a Commonwealth, yet it
honours a King; it is a Social
Brotherhood, but it acknowledges
the Fatherhood of God. Though not
a Philosophy the world turns to
it for light; though not
Political it is the incubator of
all great laws. It is more human
than the State, for it deals with
deeper needs; more Catholic than
the Church, for it includes whom
the Church rejects. It is a
Propaganda, yet it works not by
agitation but by ideals. It is a
Religion, yet it holds the
worship of God to be mainly the
service of man. Though not a
Scientific Society its watchword
is Evolution; though not an Ethic
it possesses the Sermon on the
Mount. This mysterious Society
owns no wealth but distributes
fortunes. It has no minutes for
history keeps them; no
member’s roll for no one
could make it. Its entry-money is
nothing; its subscription, all
you have The Society never meets
and it never adjourns. Its law is
one word— loyalty; its
Gospel one message — love.
Verily “Whosoever will lose
his life for My sake shall find
it.”
The
Programme for the other life is
not out yet. For this world, for
these faculties, for his one
short life, I know nothing that
is offered to man to compare with
membership in the Kingdom of God.
Among the mysteries which compass
the world beyond, none is greater
than how there can be in store
for man a work more wonderful, a
life more God-like than this. If
you know anything better, live
for it; if not, in the name of
God and of Humanity, carry out
Christ’s plan.
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