When Christ stood before Pilate, the Kingdom of God was in appearance, at least, undergoing judgment at the hands of the kingdom of this world; but it is not merely a contrast of good with evil. It is a contrast of the perfect with the very imperfect, but yet not merely evil, power. Pilate is not Satan; and the Lord Himself, in the moment of His trial, recognises that the authority by which He is condemned is an authority that is derived from God—"Thou couldest have no power at all against Me, except it were given thee from above." The kingdoms of this world, which are to become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ, are not simply something evil. The contrast of Church and World is not the contrast between good and evil; but it is the contrast between two stages in the work which God is accomplishing in history, and those two may often come into conflict. Let us then ask what is the central principle of God’s guidance of His people, so far as it may be deduced from the tiny fragment of history that we really know. In that fragment at least, we may say, I think, with little hesitation, that its method and its aim is spiritual growth, or, if you like to put it an expansion and enrichment of personality. We are sometimes inclined to think our own personality is something that is given to us from the outset, and entirely belongs to us; but that idea will not stand examination for a moment. Individual personality is a social product. It can only be developed under social influences. A man may be born with many great talents, but if his environment does not encourage their development, these talents will remain for the most part undeveloped and unknown—either to himself or to anybody else. Indeed the greater the talent with which a man is endowed, the more difference is made to him by the kind of surroundings in which he is put. A man of very few gifts and little natural capacity will be much the same, whether he has abundant opportunity for mental and spiritual growth or little opportunity; but the man of great capacities, needing for their development the encouragement of surroundings, is an entirely different being according as those surroundings are favourable or the reverse; and so we reach the curious result that the greatest personality, while no doubt he must have brought into the world something given to him by God that was capable of development, is yet more entirely dependent upon the society in which he is living than people with a less wide range of gifts.