Christ's teaching?"-I should myself have no hesitation in answering, "The principle that Humanity is one family of God. . . . One is your Father and all ye are brethren.'”

I feel that, on this side, the parable of the Prodigal Son is central in Christ's teaching. Humanity itself, in this parable, comes back to God, after all its wanderings, with the words,

"I will arise and go unto my Father, and will say unto Him, 'Father I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.'"

The answer which God gives to this cry of Humanity is immediate,

"This, my son, was dead, and is alive again: he was lost, and is found."

It is quite in keeping with this elemental teaching of Christ, that, at every point, He lays stress upon the family life and its sanctions. Fatherhood, in Christ's view of human life, is the final attribute of God. Therefore the family, which fatherhood connotes, is sacred.

Christ showed, by His deeds of mercy and love, how He regarded this family life. His ministry began with a rich blessing on a wedding festival. Mothers, with their little children, called forth His tenderest welcome. The inviolability of the married life is set forth in unmistakable terms to all his followers.

While Christ thus so practically upheld the sanctities of the family life, He carried, at the same time, its ideas into the wider social sphere. For the one prayer which He taught His own disciples to utter was this,—

"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."

The smaller family of the individual home is to be realised in the larger sphere of humanity itself. For humanity is the family of God, who is 'Our Father'.

But in this very prayer itself, which Christ thus taught, we find one further conception of the new social order, which demands most careful consideration,-the conception of the coming of the Kingdom of God. It is impossible to do more than give in outline the main points involved in this metaphor of the Kingdom. I shall try to do this very briefly.

Christ's words make it abundantly clear that the Kingdom has two aspects. The former of these two is that of silent growth. The Kingdom "cometh not with observation." This aspect of the Kingdom is in accord with the principle of the home life which I have already mentioned. Just as the family life of man is a growth, so the Kingdom is likened by Christ to the seed growing secretly," first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear."

There are very many sayings of Christ about the coming of the Kingdom of God which bear this

character. In them there is no hint at all of violent change. The parables of this type are drawn and taken from the silent processes of nature. Let me quote one of his sayings only,—perhaps the most beautiful of all. I have cited it before, but it cannot be quoted too often. It runs as follows:

'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin:

"And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

"Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? . . .

"

But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."

Here we are in the very heart of nature, in its simple, quiet, orderly processes of growth. We are told by Christ that our human lives should be daily lived like that, in the same natural, spontaneous way.

But in addition to these normal and natural functions in God's world, there are also volcanic forces in nature. Christ tell us that, in the same manner, besides the normal process of growth, there is another aspect of the coming of the Kingdom of God, which is catastro phic. He says,—

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.

"And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven."

Here, the picture of the coming of the Kingdom of God is volcanic and revolutionary, not gradual and silent. Even the quiet of the family life itself is broken up amid such convulsions. Christ said,

"Think not that I am come to send peace on the earth. I come not to send peace, but a sword.

"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household."

We are told by Christ, quite plainly, that there shall be such "days of the Son of Man,"-days of crisis and judgment, of destruction and upheaval, which shall usher in, like some great storm in nature, the ultimate Kingdom of Peace and Love.

This Session of Christ in awful judgment in a world where evil abounds, and at last comes to the full, is really, if we come to think of it, the one sure and certain hope for human progress. For the process of growth inevitably involves, as nature is now constituted, an overgrowth,-a growth of weeds, or tares, as well as the growth of the good seed. Therefore, there must be, when the appointed time comes, the burning of the tares, as well as the storing of the good grain; and this implies an annihilation, a destruction, which must precede all renovation and reconstruction.

Such times of destruction are distinctly contemplated by Christ in the Gospels. They are His ' days' of judgment. We can see examples of such "days of the Son of Man" in human history. The destruction of Jerusalem itself, which Christ pointed to as one of the immediate signs of His coming in Judgment, was volcanic in its effect upon the Christian faith. It shook, with an earthquake shock, the primitive Christian ideal, and freed it from the dead hand of Judaism. In the Middle Ages again, we can trace the new life which sprang up out of the Franciscan movement, sudden and startling in its development, and revolutionary and volcanic in its action upon society, bringing democracy to the birth amid the throes of social convulsion.

Thus the picture which Christ gives us, when we analyse it without losing its inner spirit, is that of a new social order, called the Kingdom of God, which is all the while being slowly built up, like the silent, unseen processes of natural growth, and at the same time is also ushered in, from age to age, by sudden shocks of dissolution, by revolutionary changes, by volcanic upheavals.

I do not think that it is possible to separate these two strains in Christ's teaching; just as it is not possible to separate these two diverse aspects in nature herself. They run through all his utterances, like a double motif in some great orchestral music.