He shall have dominion also from sea to sea,
And from the river unto the ends of the earth.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done
In earth, as it is in heaven.
The return of the Christmas season is likely to beget in many thoughtful hearts a querying wonder how long it will yet be before these promises of Christ's universal reign are fulfilled. When one recognizes that at the opening of this twentieth century grossly sensual and sinful conditions abound, even in the most Christian communities; that a very large majority of the people have no interest in spiritual things, and are indifferent in their habits to Christian teaching; that the question of inducing men even to listen to the gospel message is a problem of deep concern to Christian ministers; that war with all its horrors is consented to by many of the professed representatives of the Prince of Peace, as by no means an unmixed evil: that much of the diplomacy between so-called Christian nations is but a selfish and subtle exploitation of the arts of evasion and deceit; that the great body of professing Christians not only look upon many of the injunctions and some of the definite commands of Christ Jesus as altogether impractical, but condemn and "cast out" those who are seeking to honor them; that Christian believers are no less subject to the asserted laws of sickness, accident, and death — the tyrannies from which Jesus definitely taught that they were to be freed— than are the civilized heathen, and that subjection to them is accepted as a part of an experience which is of Divine provision, — when these and many other evidences are noted of the far removal of the kingdom of heaven, not only from Christian realization but from Christian hope, the question inevitably arises as to whether the Christianity which has identified itself with these conditions is the Christianity which Christ Jesus taught and established, and whether there is the least likelihood that it ever will or can effect the redemption of the race.
