Note 106 — PURITANISM AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

Nothing can be more certain than that the kingdom of God meant originally, and was understood to mean, a Messianic kingdom speedily to be revealed; and that to this idea of the kingdom is due much of the effect which its preaching exercised on the imagination of the first generation of Christians. But nothing is more certain, also, than that while the end itself, the Messianic kingdom, was necessarily something intangible and future, the way to the end, the doing the will of God by intently following the voice of the moral conscience, in those duties, above all, for which there was then in the world the most crying need,—the duties of humbleness, self-denial, pureness, justice, charity,—became from the very first in the teaching of Jesus something so ever-present and practical, and so associated with the essence of Jesus himself, that the way to the kingdom grew inseparable, in thought, from the kingdom itself, and was bathed in the same light and charm. Then, after a time, as the vision of an approaching Messianic kingdom was dissipated, the idea of the perfect accomplishment on earth of the will of God had to take the room of it, and in its own realisation to place the ideal of the true kingdom of God.