God's Kingdom Invisible.
The true character of God's kingdom is ghostly and inward. It has its seat in the hearts of men, in their moral habits, in their thoughts, actings, and affections, in the form and the bias of their moral being; the visible forms we see are but the shadow of the reality. God's kingdom is the obedience of the unseen spirit of man to the unseen Lord of all. We see, then, whatit is; and we see, therefore, how we may fall into a fault like that of the Jews, by transmuting the true idea of its spiritual character into the base alloy of earthly notions.
I. If we look for Christ's kingdom among the popular theories of religious and political speculators, we shall look for the living among the dead. We have great need to guard against this danger, for the popular opinion of this day, whether in politics or religion, leads to an earthly conception of the Church, as of a thing subject to the senses and understanding of man. A second danger to which men are now tending is, to think that God's kingdom is to be spread by visible excitement of people's minds. The whole scheme of modern religion is visible motion. All its machinery is on the surface; all its momentum is from without. There has been, from the beginning of the Gospel, an inwardness, an invisibleness, about all great movements of Christ's Church which ought to abash the hasty, talkative zeal of men into a reverent silence.
II. Knowing, then, the character of God's kingdom we shall know how to keep ourselves from these delusive schemes, and how to spread it on the earth. We shall know (1) that the way to spread it is to have it ruling in ourselves, to have our own spirit brought into harmony with its secret workings. It is still by the strength of a holy character that we must leave the stamp of God upon the world. (2) And by knowing the character of that kingdom, we shall know, too, how to make that character our own; that is, chiefly by a life of inward holiness. (3) And to sustain this character within us, at all times, we must remember that God's kingdom is at all times present with us.
H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. i., p. 172.
References: Luke 17:20. H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 353; J. H. Thom, Laws of Life,vol. ii., p. 76. Luke 17:20; Luke 17:21. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi. p. 173; Ibid.,vol. xxii., p. 121.