The prayer which the Lord taught His disciples contains the essentials of all worship, all doctrine, all life. It is to be addressed to the Lord as the Divine Human, the Source and creative Origin of human life. Our first petition should be that we be moved to hallow His name that we be brought to acknowledge His Divine qualities as they are revealed in the Word and from this in the church, in its doctrine and in its states of innocence and spiritual charity. The second petition is that His kingdom may come.
It might seem that it would be unnecessary to pray for the coming of the Lord's kingdom. Indeed the inner truth which the Church acknowledges is that the Lord alone rules the universe of His own creation. The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. The heavens are His. His order is impressed on all things, spiritual and natural. His laws are universal and unchangeable and cannot be defeated. This is the comfort and joy of all good men, and is expressed at the close of the Lord's Prayer by the phrase, "For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."
There is no need, then, for man to implore the Lord to rule His universe. But there is need for man to understand this government and to consent to it in his heart.
Our human idea of an omnipotent government savors of the notion of tyranny and compulsion. As we behold the unyielding structure of the natural world and the laws of space and time and motion which govern it, and the inevitable sequences of natural effects from material causes, we are tempted to think that all things and events therein are predetermined with mechanical precision. And from the Writings we learn that even the spiritual world has its laws, and that this spiritual creation—which has its source in the Heavenly Sun, with its proceeding atmospheres and with its visible ultimates—is also substantial and ruled by the laws of God which cannot he altered nor abolished, being founded in the eternal Divine truth. "To each and every thing in the worlds of nature and in the worlds above nature He alone gives life; and ... no angel, spirit, or man is able to move a hand or foot except from Him" (AE 726:2). If this be so, what is man but a slave of destiny? and what is our human existence but an illusion—a phantasmal dream not of our own making.
Yet such a thought is founded on a fabric of errors. For the structure of the two worlds with their unchanging laws is not what is meant by "the kingdom of God" for which we pray. These two worlds are and were created, and are everlastingly ordered by the Lord, not for His own sake, but for man's. They are but the foundations and the media for the production of a kingdom of immortal human life which can become the kingdom of the Lord.
It is necessary to reflect that God is Divine Love itself—love in its infinite purity. Love in its essence is such that it does not build up a world to manifest its unlimited power or to display its glory! Love can take no satisfaction in creating a domain where not only every atom yields unfailing mechanical obedience, but where every thought or feeling of man also would be predestined and controlled. So shallow an ambition is unworthy even of the nobler loves which man can feel within himself.
Only by knowing God can we come to understand the functions and purposes of His Creation. His Creation was designed to convey of His life that others might live—live as if of themselves and thus be capable of receiving the love which He offered, receiving it for themselves alone, or receiving it to transmit it to fellow beings and to share it with them.
For this kind of reception of life, freedom is imperative and indispensable. Not freedom from the laws, whether of nature or of life, for they constitute the frame-work within which our finite existence is carried on. But the freedom to make use of these laws is within our limited scope and power. And these laws give ample room for choice and liberty. The force which carries the stone to the depths of the sea also causes the air to rise. The power that enables us to destroy can be used to save and deliver. These laws of the universe are not set up to predestine our human spirits, but to make our freedom possible. There can be no freedom, and therefore no love, except within the compass of an established order, ruled by a Creator of infinite wisdom and mercy.
Now life comes in many forms—even in lowly forms as in the kingdom of plant-life and in animal creation. Each form manifests a certain image of freedom, though limited by the order of its creation. Only in man does this freedom become rational and conscious of its destiny, taking on the power to decide its own degree of responsibility, and coming to understand the laws which limit it, and the Divine Source from which it springs. Not only can man ferret out the operations of nature, but he can perceive and intelligently grasp spiritual laws when these are revealed by his Maker.
By spiritual laws we mean here the truths which tell of the Lord's end in creation—tell of the purpose of human life, the reason for our existence. Spiritual law is the law of love, which enlightens man to see his duties and debts of charity and to respond with gratitude to the provisions of his Creator. Such law comes from the spiritual world, and when the mind of man becomes perceptive of this law and in freedom responds to its government and takes delight in its operations and modes, then the kingdom of the Lord begins to be established within him.
The Word, as explained in the Heavenly Doctrine, tells the story of this kingdom of God: how it came into being in the innocency of the celestial race signified by Adam; how it declined with these but was renewed with the men of spiritual genius signified by Noah; how it was preserved as a symbolic hope among the descendants of Abram, and, being threatened with extinction, was founded anew by the Lord incarnate; only to be again perverted and demolished by men, yet to be restored as an eternal kingdom by the descent of the New Jerusalem from God out of heaven.
The Gospel of the New Church is that the Lord Jesus Christ now reigneth, of whose kingdom there shall be no end (TCR 791). For the laws of perpetual judgment have now been revealed, in the spiritual sense of the Word. This is the Divine promise. But still the kingdom can be established only in human minds and hearts; and we are therefore told that whoever learns about "the second coming of the Lord, and of the New Heaven and the New Church, and thus of the Lord's kingdom, ought to pray that it may come"; and that whoever thirsts for truths ought to pray the Lord for light, and that then "he who loves truth will receive them from the Lord without labor of his own" (AR 956). The Word in its letter closes with this prayer: "The Spirit and the Bride say, Come! And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that thirsteth come, and let him who willeth take the water of life freely."
The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. For it is within you. It is not imposed upon man by any omnipotent act of Deity or by Divine prophecy, or by any compelling decree, nor by the pressure of external circumstances. It can come only as the fruit of prayer a prayer not of the lips alone, but of the heart and the life; a prayer taught by the Lord.
But if the silent prayers of men's hearts proceed instead from self-will and are filled with the phantasies of sensual passions, filled with pride and the lust for gain and personal admiration, there arises another immortal kingdom within which is not the Lord's. It is a dominion which is named as that of "the Devil" and "Satan", the dominion of evil loves—of hell. The existence, the very possibility, of such a domain of evil is the proof of human freedom and of the essence of God's love which tolerates the abuse of the gifts of conscious life rather than denying them to all. If there is to be a kingdom of God—a heaven from the human race founded in human freedom—by which Divine Love may impart its life and the delight of life to finite individuals in numberless worlds and to ages of ages; then there must also be a law of permission which implies the possibility of immortal souls rebelling against the order of heavenly life and making their own "heavens" of ill-will and lust.
It is not to be thought that the hells are beyond or outside of the Lord's universal government. For the Lord rules most particularly the thoughts, intentions, and wills of all (AE 726:2). His laws of grace and permission determine and order the influxes of life, the faculties and modes of human thinking, the limits of man's power to abuse, so that evil can never lastingly injure any final good, but will ever lead to its own retribution. It is of doctrine that what guards and rules hell is the sphere of Divine Truth separated from the Divine Good (AC 9534); for the evil do not receive Divine Good (AC 4180). This sphere of Divine truth is also called the Lord's universal presence, or His external presence, which is perpetual with every man (TCR 719, 774).
In appearance, this infernal kingdom defeats and denies the omnipotent Will of God, and glories in a presumed power of breaking the Divine laws, and even repeatedly destroying the external order which would bind it. For men on earth, evil seems to possess an undue power; and every crime and ugly passion, every breach against justice or decency, every abuse of privilege, every falsity that triumphs, seems to demonstrate that the Lord does not rule in human affairs. And when man turns to nature, with its apparently ruthless waste of life and the mute sufferings which attend the endless processes of birth and death, he finds difficulty in seeing therein any unanimous testimony to the omnipotent rule of a God of Love!
But man has set up a scale of values which look only to the delight and comfort of the moment. Having eaten from the tree of knowledge, he believes that he can recognize good from evil; not reflecting that the greatest gifts of life are often wrapped in repulsive garbs lest man should grasp for them before their proper use can be appreciated. The delight of living, with every creature, outweighs its sufferings. Death, which men so fear, is but a tool of new creation, and has its part to serve, both in propagation and in the fulfillment of the end—the realization of the final good. Evil, when its effort is spent and its judgment comes, has harmed only those who deliberately confirm the appearance that man lives from himself—that his life is self-derived and must look only to his own gain, power and dignity. And though at times the apparent power of evil threatens human liberty itself, it can achieve nothing except to arrest for a while the growth of the human spirit towards maturity and freedom.
At such times, more than ever, must we pray for the coming of the kingdom of our heavenly Father. For the portent of its approach is that truth, Divinely revealed, which breaks down the illusive power of evil in our minds. At the end of a Church, the Lord comes again as a King to bring about a new order. A king is the source and symbol of the laws of his realm. He typifies the law of truth in its acknowledged majesty and power, the law from which the order of the nation springs.
Order is the beginning of progress. If we consider the many sufferings which are the aftermaths of every state of unjust passion or of appetites that are not controlled; the disillusionments which impatience brings about; the confusion and disappointment that are the fruit of self-confidence and conceit; the indifference and lethargy which are spawned by misunderstandings and false beliefs; it must appear how urgent is the need of order in man's mind: order and subordination not only in our thoughts, but among our many affections and desires, our yearnings and instincts. And order comes only where there is truth, where principles rule, where there is a clear sight of the two worlds in which we live and a knowledge of ourselves and our relation to others and to our Maker.
But the kingdom of God comes not by prayer alone. It must be sought. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all things shall be added unto you." It must be sought, not for recompense or profit, but for its justice. We must seek it seek the Divine truth from a love of the kingdom of spiritual uses which we may gradually come to see crystallizing before us as a city of light for all peoples and tongues, while we study the pages of the revealed Writings.
It is one of the marvels of heaven that the angels, who have the kingdom of heaven within them, are also surrounded with the external beauty and peace, the sincere friendships, the plenty, and often the wealth and splendor, which men first think of when they long for heaven. These things, the Lord promised, shall be added as free, undeserved gifts, to those who seek His justice, and whose hearts are not set to earthly values.
The Lord's kingdom must be within, in the realm of the loves that continually resist evil and falsity and form the interior motives which fashion our lives. Yet the kingdom will not come within us except so far as we, while on earth, seek to promote its establishment in the uses about us. Outside of us, it exists as the Specific Church (which guards and teaches the Heavenly Doctrine) and in a wider and vaguer sense the Church Universal. Our prayer would be futile if we fail to respond—each in our own way and according to our abilities—to the needs of the Church and to the call for understanding and mutual charity through which the government of the Lord may be established, as in heaven, so upon the earth.
Luke 11:2; Dan. 7:1-3, 9-28; John 18:33-19:4; AE 726:2
