''Whereunto then shall I liken the kingdom of God" as now (continued)
designed method of it? Christ speaks as one considering and consulting with Himself, how to illustrate it with an apt similitude. 'With what comparison shall we compare it?" Shall we fetch it from the motions of the sun, or the revolutions of the moon? No, the comparison is borrowed from this earth. "It is like a grain of mustard seed." He had compared it to the seed sown, now He will compare it to that seed itself.
The beginnings of the Gospel kingdom would be very small, like that which is ''one of the least of all seeds'. When the Christian Church was sown in the earth it was all contained in one room, and the number of the names was but one hundred and twenty (Acts i. 15); as the children of Israel when they went down into Egypt were but seventy souls. The work of grace in the soul is at first but the "day of small things' —'"'a cloud no bigger than a man's hand''. Never were there such great things undertaken by such an inconsiderable handful as that of the discipling of the nations by the ministry of the apostles; nor a work that was to end in such great glory as the work of grace, raised from such weak and unlikely beginnings. The Gospel kingdom in the world shall increase, and spread to the remotest nations of the earth, and shall continue to the Jatest ages of time.
6. THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM
It may have been towards that perfect consummation of the kingdom that the guest was looking when he said, "' Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God" (Luke xiv. 15). (a) Some say this was a commonly used catch phrase among the rabbis. But with what design does this man bring it in here? Perhaps this man, observing that Christ reproved, first the guests and then the master of the house, fearing he should put the company out of humour, started this to divert the discourse to something else. (b) Or, admiring the good rules of humility and charity which Christ had now given, but despairing to see them lived up to in the present degenerate state of things, he longs for the kingdom of God, when these and other good laws shall obtain, and pronounced them blessed who shall have a place in that kingdom. (c) Or, Christ having mentioned the resurrection of the just, as a recompense for acts of charity to the poor, he here confirms what He had said, "' Yea,