Article January 29, 1903 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from David Starr Jordan

The promised Messiah was to become the world's king. Jesus had been hailed as the Messiah, and did not discourage the belief. But he showed no disposition to assume the earthly powers which the Jews ascribed to their expected king. And so they asked, When is the kingdom coming—when will this power be assumed? His reply was that it will not come in such a way as to be seen with the eye, not with the glitter of a court, the expansion of a nation, the march of soldiery, the increase of wealth and luxury. The real kingdom is of the spirit of truth and love. It is even here now, among you. Its knig is here, although those who are looking for pomp and circumstance do not recognize Him. The kingdom of God is among you and within you. It is a kingdom of the soul—a reality more glorious than it hath entered into the heart of man to understand. It is a kingdom of loving unselfishness, of good will, of peace, of heaven; and it will be established within the human heart whenever the heart accepts and adopts these principles as its laws of life, and the leadership of the king who reveals them, and whose presence alone inspires men to follow them.

After teaching the Pharisees, and through them the whole world, this great truth that His kingdom was a kingdom of spiritual love and life, built upon the acknowledgement of the source of these heavenly qualities, he turns to his disciples and says: "The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it."

How true this is, even literally! For many centuries the hills and vales of Palestine have been sought by pilgrims in the endeavor to walk in the paths where he trod, to look upon the scenes, which, as child and man, he beheld, and thus to understand more perfectly the book which contains the record of his life and words, and bring the past into the present as vividly as possible, and thus to behold once more the days of the Son of man upon the earth.

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