For He spoke to men who understood the phrase, being steeped in Old Testament promises of the Messianic time; and they, when their turn came, had to preach where the mention of a new kingdom would be as alarming as it was to Herod. If, then, our Lord had even once employed a safer expression, this would so much better suit His followers as inevitably to displace among the Gentiles His own favourite phrase, "the kingdom." And so it comes that the word "church," which He is only known to have uttered on two occasions, is found elsewhere one hundred and thirteen times. This is, indeed, an evidence of the accuracy of the reports, for if the discourses of our Lord were not genuine, how could they have been marked by this distinctive peculiarity when the Church had become used to employ a different word? And surely it _is_ the Church, this kingdom which our Lord spoke of as a field where tares were growing, as a little seed which became a tree, as a net which embraced alike good fish and bad? It is the organised coherent power of the world to come, confronting evil with an influence and mastery superior to its own. Repent, said Christ, because the empire of wickedness is tottering--because the iron sceptre of the tyrant is about to break--because the prince of this world is soon to be cast out. What do we know of the constitution, and what of the spirit, of this divine kingdom upon earth? Jesus declared its constitution when He said that, while the kings of this world put forth an imperious sway, and men obsequiously reckon them benefactors who exercise lordship over them, with us the conditions are reversed, and he is greatest who stoops, helps, serves, and forgets the ambitions that usurp and trample. What encouragement for the penitent! In the realm which he now enters--where he fears to be reproached for his past rebellion--every true leader has it for an ambition to help and serve him; and he is made sharer in a vast and sublime citizenship, where all, from the Prince of Life to the lowliest true servant, are united in desiring his victory and joy. Oh, if this is true, if the Conqueror of Death and Hell has received gifts for us, and ever liveth to make intercession for us, and if, in one grand and organised strain and stress of effort for the right, angels and principalities and powers, and things present and to come, and Paul and Cephas, all are ours, then, in the approach of such a kingdom, in the voice that bids us rally to such a standard of emancipation, what hope, what animation, what an opening of prison doors! Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. With mutual help for its constitution, now what is its aim and temper? "The kingdom of God," said St. Paul, "is not self-indulgence, not eating and drinking, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." It is not any _one_ of these isolated from the rest.