Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/329

 They will have built their houses on rocks, from which the storms which usher in the kingdom will not dislodge them. Those, however, who hear these sayings, and neglect to perform them, will be like foolish men who have built their houses on sand, where the storms will beat them down, and great will be their fall (Mt. vii. 22-29). That the kingdom is to be on earth, not in some unknown heaven, is manifest from the numerous references of Jesus to the time when the Son of man will "come;" a time which none can know, yet for which all are to watch. He never speaks of men "going" to the kingdom of heaven; it is the kingdom of heaven which is to come to them. And the most remarkable of the many contrasts will be that between the present humiliation of the Son and his future glory. He will return to execute his Father's decrees. His judges themselves will see him "sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Mt. xxvi. 64). instead of standing as a prisoner at the bar, he will then be enthroned as a judge. "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he shall sit on the throne of his glory; and all the nations 'shall be collected before him, and he shall separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and he shall put the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left." The goats, who have done harm, are then to go into everlasting punishment; and the sheep, who have done good, are to pass into eternal life (Mt. xxv. 31-46).

This equitable adjustment of rewards and punishments to merit and demerit is the leading conception in the revolution which the kingdom of heaven is to make. The faithful servant is to be made ruler over his master's goods; the unfaithful one to be cut off and assigned a portion with the hypocrites. The virgins whose lamps are ready burning will be admitted to the marriage festival. The servants who make the best use of the property committed to their charge will be rewarded, while those who have failed to employ it properly will be cast into outer darkness (Mt. xxiv. 42-xxv. 30). So also the wicked husbandman in the vineyard, who ill treated their master's servants and killed his heir, are to be destroyed when he comes, and the vineyard is to be committed to other cultivators (Mk.