Article December 4, 1920 Issue

"Thy kingdom come"

HELEN T. BELFORD

The great prayer which Jesus left the world should prove a constant source of help and inspiration; but unless people are on guard the words of the Lord's Prayer come trippingly on the tongue and the mechanically repeated phrases offer mortal mind an opportunity to wander and stray into many fields of thought. On page 16 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy gives for each separate clause of the prayer the corresponding spiritual interpretation. In the study of these, one may find absolute Christian Science. Take for example the expression, "Thy kingdom come." Can anything be more clear, more convincing, more healing than the spiritual sense which Mrs. Eddy gives of these three words, "Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present"?

The belief that good is something elusive at best and obtainable only by a lucky chance, or that only by dying can one find God, has imposed itself on the human race for so long that it has been accepted as truth. So universal has the acceptance been that poets and philosophers have attempted to immortalize this false belief about good. Pope writes, "Man never is but always to be blest," and all this in the face of the countless assurances found in the Bible of the everlasting now of God, good. "For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation."

The twentieth century has witnessed the destruction, almost in the twinkling of an eye, of many of the material kingdoms of this world. So wholesale has been their elimination that the very word itself has lost much of its original meaning, standing for a seeming substance that proved to be but shadow. In the time of Jesus the word kingdom stood for the acme of mortal power; it represented the state where matter was raised to the nth degree. As the vehicle for conveying thought then was either by parable or descriptive story, it was most natural for Jesus to use the word even when referring to the reign of Spirit, for thus could people more readily realize the omnipotence of God, which Jesus desired to convey.

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