Secrecy and Suddenness of Divine Visitations.
I. It is impossible that the visitations of God should be other than secret and sudden, considering how the world goes on in every age. Men who are plunged in the pursuits of active life are no judges of its course and tendency on the whole. They confuse great events with little, and measure the importance of objects, as in perspective, by the mere standard of nearness or remoteness. It is only at a distance that one can take in the outlines and features of a whole country. It is but holy Daniel, solitary among princes, or Elijah, the recluse of Mount Carmel, who can withstand Baal, or forecast the time of God's providences among the nations. To the multitude all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. The business of state affairs, the movements of society, the course of nature, proceed as ever, till the moment of Christ's coming. Pride infatuates man, and self-indulgence and luxury work their way unseen like some smouldering fire, which for a time leaves the outward form of things unaltered. At length the decayed mass cannot hold together, and breaks by its own weight, or on some slight and accidental external violence. This inward corruption of a nation seems to be meant in our Lord's words when He says of Jerusalem, "Where soever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together."
II. From the occurrences of this day let us take comfort when we despond about the state of the Church. Perhaps we see not God's tokens; we see neither prophet nor teacher remaining to His people; darkness falls over the earth, and no protesting voice is heard. Yet, granting things to be at their very worst, still, when Christ was presented in the Temple, the age knew as little of it as it knows of His providence now. Rather, the worse our condition is, the nearer to us is the advent of our Deliverer. Even though He is silent, doubt not that His army is on the march towards us. He is coming through the sky, and has even now His camp upon the outskirts of our world. The greater His delay, the heavier will be His vengeance, and the more complete the deliverance of His people.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. ii., p. 107.
I. "Not with observation." "God manifest in the flesh" was a phenomenon the like of which had never yet been seen, and which throws every other event in the annals of man utterly into the shade. And what amount of public notice did it attract? The villagers of Bethlehem could find no room for the heavenly Visitant in their hostelry; they little heeded the manger-grotto outside where He, the, Infinite in human form, was laid alongside of the ox and the ass. Truly then the kingdom of God had come, but "not with observation."
II. And when He who was the Centre and Sun of the Church, Jesus our Lord, had been crucified and had risen and founded His kingdom as His own Church, it still for many a year continued to illustrate this its early and Divine characteristic: it came among men "not with observation."
III. As with the Church so with the soul, the law holds good that the kingdom comes not with observation. The great change of conversion most assuredly "cometh not with observation." All the more solemn and precious incidents in the life of the spirit of man do not court observation, but they elude, they shrink from it.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit,No. 1,126.
We must be careful to distinguish concerning what kingdom and what coming our Saviour is speaking.
I. The Pharisees who in common not only with their own countrymen, but almost with the whole Eastern world, were looking at that moment, though not according to knowledge, for the expectation of Israel demanded one day of Christ "when the kingdom of God should come." And to them He made the answer, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation." Now the answer must have run in the line of the question; and therefore it must have referred to the first and then expected advent of our Lord; and it was concerning the establishment of the kingdom of grace that He said, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation."
II. It is interesting and very important to trace for it contains a deep, spiritual lesson how unobservableness is the characteristic of all God's great approaches to man. The workings of God's grace are, for the most part, not only beyond but contrary to, our calculation. God is mounting up to His grand design; but we cannot see the steps of His ascent. We look back, but we marvel at the line of the processes; and as each came in its order it was so simple that it escaped our observation, or so minute that it baffled our perception.
III. It seems to be the general rule of all that is sublime that its motions shall be unseen. Who can discern the movements of the planets whose evolutions we admire, whose courses guide our path? The day breaks, and the day sets, but who can fix the boundaries of the night, the boundaries of the darkness? You may watch the departing of summer beauty as the leaves are swept by the autumn wind but can the eye trace its movements? Does not everything on the earth and in the earth proclaim that "the kingdom of God cometh not with observation"? We must remember that the principle of God's universal government is to produce the grandest issues by the unlikeliest of means. Only give your best and do your best, and thus, by these little ripples, the great tide of truth sets in upon this world. Great opportunities pass by noiselessly, the highest claims plead quietly, and the deepest responsibilities roll in their stillnesses "for the kingdom of God cometh not with observation."
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,2nd series, p. 257.