i8 74 ] NEWMAN S THEORY OF PROPHECY 283 



not then true that Christ s Kingdom would be more real 

 if it possessed the outward form of a world-kingdom. 

 It is not true that it was essentially easier to believe in 

 God s Kingdom when it took the form of an earthly 

 power. Rather the necessity of such a theocracy as that 

 of the earthly Israel is a mark of the inferiority of a 

 dispensation in which spiritual truth had not yet shaken 

 itself free from limitations that disappeared in Christ. 

 And so the Kingdom of Christ is the fulfilment of the 

 Old Testament Theocracy, because it contains all that 

 made of it a God-Kingdom, though it has shaken itself free 

 from the forms of a world-kingdom. And this change the 

 prophets themselves, in some degree at least, anticipate 

 when they prophesy that in the Messianic age God s law 

 shall be written on men s hearts. For this is a mark 

 that the forms of a world-kingdom, in which the law 

 is always something external administered by a visible 

 executive, shall in the future theocracy be broken through. 

 (3) And yet Christianity, as we now see it, is not yet 

 the actual, though it is the potential, fulfilment of the 

 prophet s hopes. In Christ the Kingdom of God is 

 equipped with all the world-subduing powers which the 

 old theocracy did not possess. The victory is already 

 sure, but it is not already complete. This is a distinction 

 not foreign to the Old Testament prophecy. First the 

 spiritual renewal of Israel gathered around the Messiah 

 then the victorious advance against the world-powers 

 such is always the Old Testament conception. And such, 

 too, is the teaching of Christ. We are still saved by hope- 

 by a hope not yet seen. W T e are still looking for the day 

 when the Kingdom of the world shall become the Kingdom 

 of our Lord and of His Christ (Rev. xi. 5), nay more, 

 for the day &quot; when the creation itself shall be delivered 

 from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the 

 glory of the children of God.&quot; And in the New Testa 

 ment, as in the Old, it is everywhere clear that when the 

 victory of God s Kingdom is thus complete, it shall be 



