past, present, or future, according to our point of view.  In the sense that it has not yet fully come, that its final consummation is still waited for, it is future; and so sometimes Christ speaks of it.  But it is simply impossible to do justice to all His sayings and deny that in His thought the kingdom is also present.  Its consummation may belong to the future, its beginnings are here already.  When Christ calls it the kingdom of heaven, it is rather its origin and character that are suggested than the sphere of its realization.  In parable after parable He speaks of it as a secret silent energy already at work in the world.  He called on men here and now to seek it, and to enter it.  So eagerly were the lost and the perishing pressing into it that once He declared that from the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven suffered violence.  Not in some future heaven but here “on earth” He bade His disciples pray that God’s will might be done.  “When Jesus said the kingdom of heaven, be sure He did not mean an unseen refuge, whither a handful might one day escape, like persecuted and disheartened Puritans fleeing from a hopeless England, but He intended what might be and then was in Galilee, what should be and now is in England."[30] “Thy kingdom come”—­it is here on earth we must look for the answer to our prayer.  And every man who himself does, and in every possible way strives to get done, God’s will among men, is Christ’s co-worker and fellow-builder.

    “I will not cease from mental fight,
       Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
    Till we have built Jerusalem
       In England’s green and pleasant land.”

That is the spirit of all the true servants of Jesus.

(3) But the most important fact concerning the kingdom in Christ’s view of it is that it is spiritual.  And, because it is spiritual, it failed wholly to satisfy the earth-bound ambitions of the Jews.  For generations they had fed their national pride with visions of a world obedient to Israel’s sway, and when one who claimed to be the Messiah nevertheless told them plainly that His kingdom was not of this world, they turned from Him as from one that mocked.  He and they both spoke of a kingdom of God, but while they emphasized the “kingdom” He emphasized “God.”  So wholly did men fail to enter into His mind that on one occasion two of His own disciples came to Him asking that they might sit, one on the right hand, and one on the left hand in His glory.  And even when He was just about to leave them, and to return to His Father, the old ambitions still made themselves heard.  “Lord,” said they, “dost Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” But with all such dreams of temporal sovereignty Christ would have nothing to do; He had put them from Him, definitely and for ever, in the Temptation in the wilderness.  He completely reversed the current notions concerning the kingdom.  “Being asked by the Pharisees