458 RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE: SOCIAL 



conception of natural law was utterly foreign to their minds, but 

 had natural laws been known to them, they surely would have been 

 considered laws of the kingdom of God. It is good theology, and 

 good philosophy, and not bad science, to regard all natural laws as 

 expressions of the divine will; God's will, therefore, cannot be per- 

 fectly done in the earth until all natural laws are perfectly obeyed. 



Modern science has revealed the intimate connection of mind and 

 body. We are beginning to see that there are physical conditions 

 of moral progress, so that to aim at an ideal moral and spiritual 

 world while ignoring physical causes and conditions would be mere 

 quackery. 



If any one declines to accept this comprehensive conception of the 

 kingdom of God, and objects to our including natural laws among 

 the laws of that kingdom on the ground that this teaching is extra- 

 Scriptural, he should object to all interpretation of Bible truth in 

 the light of modern knowledge. The Scriptures teach that God is 

 the Creator, but the creation which Scriptural writers had in mind 

 was only an infinitesimal part of the universe which has been made 

 known by science. Are we then bound to interpret the Scriptures 

 as teaching that God created only an infinitesimal part of the universe? 



Let us bear in mind, then, that the kingdom of God which the 

 Hebrew prophets foresaw included the physical as well as the moral 

 and spiritual redemption of the world, and all that is necessarily 

 contained in that conception. 



Now Jesus, like his forerunner, John, began his preaching by 

 declaring that this kingdom was already at hand. He nowhere 

 defined the expression, for the obvious reason that it was entirely 

 familiar to all Jewish ears. He allowed his hearers to understand 

 that he meant by it what they had always understood by it. Instead 

 of setting aside the ancient teaching, he took care to say that he 

 came not to destroy the prophets but to fulfill. Like them he recog- 

 nized God in nature, and declared that not even a sparrow falls to 

 the ground without our Father. He also asserted his own dominion 

 over nature, commanding the winds and the waves. Like the 

 prophets he included physical as well as spiritual well-being in his 

 aim, and showed the keenest sympathy with bodily want and sick- 

 ness, feeding the multitude, making the blind to see and the lame to 

 walk, and healing all manner of diseases. 



Jesus made it perfectly clear that he came to set up in the earth 

 this kingdom of God which the prophets of Israel had foretold, and 

 this redeemed world which was the principal subject of his discourse 

 was his social ideal. 



For the realization of this social ideal and for the government 

 of this heavenly kingdom he inculcated and perfectly exemplified 

 three fundamental social laws, viz., the law of service, the law of 



