7. _It would belong to Christ._ Col. 1:13. “Hath translated us into the kingdom of his Son.” Luke 22:30. “Ye shall eat and drink in my kingdom.” John 18:36. “My kingdom is not of this world.” Matt. 16:28. “Shall see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” 8. _It would be finally given up to God._ 1 Cor. 15:24. “Then the end; when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father,” &c. 9. _It is a spiritual kingdom._ Rom. 14:17. “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” 10. _Flesh and blood cannot inherit it._ 1 Cor. 15:50. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” 11. _The conditions of admission are spiritual._ John 3:3. “Except a man be born again,” &c. Matt. 5:3. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” &c. 1 Cor. 6:9. “The unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” See Gal. 5:21. Eph. 5:5. 12. _The kingdom was to be established by the Son of man at his coming._ Matt. 24:30; 25:1. “They shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven,” &c. “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened.”(69) Christ, therefore, had in his mind, as the direct object of his coming, to cause God’s kingdom to come, and his will to be done on earth as in heaven. It was not his direct purpose to teach the truth in abstract forms, like the philosophers; nor to make atonement by his death for human sins; nor to set an example of a holy life; nor to make a revelation of God and immortality; nor to communicate new life to the world. These he did; but they came as a part of the kingdom of heaven. They were included in this great idea. His kingdom was a kingdom of _truth_, in which his _word_ was to be the judge. He was to reconcile the world to God by his death. He was to show what man was made to be and could become. He was to reveal God as a Father to his human children. He was to set in motion a tide of new spiritual life. But the METHOD by which all this was to be done was the method of a community of disciples and brethren, who should be his apostles and missionaries. They were to be an outward, visible association with the symbols of baptism and the supper. They were also to be an influence in the world, a current of religious life. We find that such was the result. We see the disciples embodied and united in a visible community, which spread through all the Roman empire, which soon had its teachers, officers, its meetings, its worship, its sacred books, its sacred days. But we find also the larger and deeper current of life, which constitutes the invisible Church, flowing, like a great river, down through the centuries. All Christians in all Christian lands drink from this stream, and all their ideas of God, man, duty, immortality, are colored and tinged by it. We read the Bible by the light of the convictions we absorbed at our mother’s knee in our infancy. We carry on