CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY 421
ther growth, like the seed in the ground nourished and made great by the surroundings within which it finds itself.
But at one point the analogy fails. Jesus never for an instant thought of the kingdom as ultimately merely a world within a world. The plant can never make the earth from which it grows wholly its own and itself, but there was to be no such dualism in the case of society. With the modification to be considered presently, Jesus expected the new society to be at last coextensive with all society ; or, more truly, he expected that at last the world would be so thoroughly transformed into the kingdom as to cease to be distinct from it. The three measures of meal would all be leavened. The prince of this world had already been judged, 1 the twelve were to sit as judges of the new Israel, 3 the Son of Man was at last to come in the glory of an undisputed ruler. 3
3. But evidently this process of assimilation must be preceded by a transformation that is moral. 4 Evil men are not to share in the joys of this new society. It is not enough with Jesus to improve the conditions of human life. The mere conquest of matter, the exploitation of natural resources, as seen clearly enough today, need not of necessity imply any essential advance in civilization. To clothe a man and to feed him well, to enable him to build up great buildings and establish large businesses, to enable an entire people so to develop its land and its mineral deposits as to become rich, may be the furthest possible from building that person or that people into a more fraternal life. To each alike comes the warning of Jesus : " Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be demanded of thee." 5 But to bring the constructive forces of a man or a nation into subjection to lofty ideals ; to make that which is wrong hated and that which is good loved ; so to transform and improve and ennoble a man that instead of seeking his own selfish interests he will find his life by spontaneously losing it in the society of other lives about him; to develop a love for men because one is one's self a child of God; in a word, to make normal
'John 16:11. 'Matt 16: 2?; 19 '**', aS'S*-
Matt. 19:28. 'Matt. 12:33; 7 : 17, 18; 12:34, 35. 'Luke 12:20.
