Modern Christianity; Or, the Plain Gospel Modernly Expounded

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1909. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... REVOLUTIONARY CHRISTIANITY St. Matthew xx., 16: So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called but few chosen. YOU cannot define the kingdom of God in terms of business service. It is not a legal proposition nor a business proposition. It is a question of the relation of man to God, a question of a man's entering into the spirit of God and the love of God. Whoever does that, however he does it, whensoever he does it, enters into the kingdom and shares in the glory and the reward of that kingdom. The kingdom of God is revolutionary, in that it reverses the common conceptions of men, Jews and non-Jews alike, on which they base the practice of their religion and their life. The national religious idea was not confined to the Jews. It merely received a somewhat different development and interpretation among them. The fundamental conception of a Greek state limited the rights and privileges of that state to a certain number of citizens. This limitation was really part of the religious as well as the national conception of the Greek state. As over against the outside world the outlook of the Greeks is well shown in the name which they applied to all non-Greeks, --barbarians. They had nothing in common with them. They looked down upon them and despised them. The Roman took the same attitude, and though in the latter years of the republic and in the empire men not Romans might acquire the citizenship of Rome, yet that very fact only helps to emphasise the attitude of the Roman toward the non-Roman world. Dominion belonged to the Roman. Others were meant to work for him, to be subject to him. For the Roman there was one law, for the non-Roman another law. Between the two there was a barrier. Similarly the Jew regarded himself as alien from and superior to ...