These reflections modify many things in our ordinary thoughts concerning revelation. They bring us to see the essential greatness of the Bible. It is great as the witness of the life of God; it is great as the witness that God has lived in the souls of men; its chief value is as a symbol of life, God's and man's in God. If we use it wisely, we may commune with those in whom God dwelt. It is preceded by life, it will be succeeded by life, and while it lasts it is wholly as the servant of life. The ideal of the soul is in the God of whom the Bible bears witness; the ideal record for the ideal of the soul is not in a book, but in a man and the society of men. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." XXXI THE KINGDOM OF THE IDEAL "The Kingdom of heaven is at hand." Matt. IV, 17. THE kingdom of the ideal opens through many doors into the life of man. By the appeal of nature and of parental affection children are led through wonder into the kingdom of the ideal. Into the same world of splendor, youth, in each successive generation, is carried through the door of love. Manhood comes, and again through manhood's vision exalted or sordid the kingdom of the ideal takes possession of the mind. Wealth, power, and pleasure, while they remained unattained, are phases of the desirable, and in a sense they are forms of the ideal; learning, insight, and character are less attainments than ideals. The men who tell us that they have done with dreams, who assure us that they have turned their backs upon the illusions of youth, have surrendered, although they may not know it, to other forms of the ideal. They may soar where once they groveled, they may grovel where once they soared; in either case they are pursuing the vision of good. When young they followed the gleam sunward; now that manhood is here they follow it swine-ward. Old age, when it revisits early years no less than when it dreams of heaven, is under the spell of the ideal. Imagination filled with the pictured passion of human hearts is the enchanting leader of the race. Because we are poor and want to be rich, mean and desire to be great, weak and long to be strong, sinful and yearn to be pure, without God and cry out for God, children of a day whose foundation is in the dust and crave the glory of going on, we spend our strength in the world of ideals. 1. The kingdom of heaven is first of all the transformation of the ideal world of man, the force that purifies, corrects, and exalts that world. The kingdom of heaven is at once the supreme vision and the supreme reality. It is the image that reflects the highest desire, the loftiest passion of the soul; it is the reflection in a resplendent imagination of the utmost moral longing of man. It is all this and infinitely more. The kingdom of heaven means that God seeks to conform our confused and vexed existence to his purpose as the architect seeks to lift the shapeless mass of material in the fallen building into the embodiment of his design. Thus, as we look at it from the human side, the kingdom of heaven is the splendid imagination that reflects the utmost moral passion of the heart; as we survey it from the divine side, the kingdom of heaven is God's order for man and the society of man seeking entrance through our highest dreams into human life. The pile of stones longs, let us say, to be built into a temple of beauty; the architect with his plan seeks to meet that longing. The soul cries out for the dominion of the Eternal Love; the Eternal Love moves to his dominion over man through the highest visions of man. The world as it is satisfies no man; the actual condition of men is a source of pain and of protest; human society as it stands is a contradiction of human expectation. Everywhere the actual is condemned by the ideal. Lazarus laid at the gate and desiring to be fed by the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table must feel, righteous soul that he is, that society is full of injustice and inhumanity. Dives, clothed with purple and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day, must feel the want of human sympathy, the awful absence of genuine friendship, the terrible destitution of all high regard and all true love. Neither for the pauper nor for the millionaire is the world a complete, or anything like a complete, satisfaction. When we take a nearer view we are at first filled with dismay. We look into human homes and find so much selfishness, disrespect, lovelessness, disappointment, and pain; we look into human society and we find so much mean ambition, * hypocrisy, cruelty, and pettiness; we survey the world of trade and find so much suspicion, distrust, and strife. Capitalists are afraid of one another, and yet they combine because of the greater fear which they entertain against labor; workmen distrust one another, and yet combine, and force one another to combine, because of the hard and cruel heart of capital. You consider political life and discover so little true patriotism in it, so much wild ambition and corruption. You turn your observation upon the various professions. You see the quacks that prey upon the sickness and infirmity of mankind; you behold the wretched lawyers that live upon the strife of men; you note the journalists that find their ideal in the base instincts of the mob; you observe the traders in cheap and foul literature; you reflect upon the incompetent and the unworthy guides of the spirit; you sweep all this terrible actual into your mind and you are filled with dismay, and you cry out: "Who shall deliver mankind from the body of this death?" In your sorrow you begin to dream. You begin to dream of a personal soul whose intelligence is possessed by a vision of the truth, whose heart overflows with deep and pure desire, whose will is commanded by a great and righteous purpose. You think of a home founded wisely, founded reverently, dedicated to high ideals, high |