His own. A rough and intractable flock, needing often to feel the sharpness of the iron with which the shepherd's staff was tipped! A misshapen vessel not meet for the Master's use, needing to be broken up into a thousand fragments that a new and better might take its place! As the first generation looked out upon the world of which the ChristKing had gone to take possession, these words of the second Psalm seemed exactly to describe the process by which His authority would be established. He was born to rule all the nations with the iron rod,1 and even to smite them with the sharp sword of His mouth; it was to be the reward of victory for members of the Church to bear their part in the grim work that lay before Him: he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give authority over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to shivers, as I also have received of my Father3 There is nothing in the Apocalypse more magnificent than its repeated acceptance of the difficult conditions under which the world was to be won by Christ, and by those faithful members of His Church to whom He should delegate His authority. Wherever the Seer looked, he saw either the hostile Empire, or beyond its borders fierce untamed tribes who inspired the provincials with alarm. But the reign

1 1 Apoc. xii. 5.

2 Apoc. xix. 15.

3 Apoc. ii. 26 f.

of Christ must go forwards, and the Church continue her work on earth until all nations, within the Empire or beyond it, were subjugated to the obedience of faith. It may be an outburst of human impatience that demands to see within a single generation the world strewn with the wreckage of a shattered heathenism, but it is a Divine inspiration that will not let men rest till this has been accomplished. Meanwhile there is in the best Christian lives a power which, within narrow limits and on a small scale, exerts Christ's authority -the power of His Spirit which, in itself indomitable, bears down all opposition and in the end triumphs over it. This is never more remarkable than when it is seen in obscure unambitious lives, which, while following in the steps of Christ's sufferings, are at the same time marked by a dignity, a strength, and a victorious purpose that tell of their union with His life in heaven.

To S. John at the end of the first century a thousand years seemed an epoch long enough to allow for the reign of the Saints with Christ on earth. Now that the history of the Church is running to the end of its second millennium, there are those who tell us that the human race is but just entering upon its life, and has before it countless

1 One after another of the early Acta martyrum, after dating the martyr's death by the years of the reigning Emperor, ends with the inspiring words regnante Iesu Christo.

ages of developement. Believers in the Ascension can entertain this possibility without uneasiness. They can witness the material progress of the world without the suspicion that it may supersede the spiritual sovereignty of Christ. They know that He must reign till His rod of iron has done its work on earth, and all enemies are put under His feet.

The reign of the Ascended Christ has a time limit. This point has been worked out by S. Paul in a passage which is not without difficulty. Then (i.e. at the Parousia) cometh the end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father... for he must reign till he (the Father) hath put all his enemies under his feet. ... And when all things have been subjected unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subjected to him that did subject all things unto him, that God may be all in all.1 With the foreseen end there comes into view in this place the purpose of our Lord's present reign. It is seen to be a temporary economy, a parenthesis in God's great scheme of things, called for by the lapse of a part of the creation from its obedience to the Divine King. It is a regency rather than a reign, a vice-royalty, taking for the time the place of direct government.2

11 Cor. xv. 24 ff.

2 This temporary kingdom is, of course, to be distinguished from the kingdom which belongs to the Son as one with the Father, of which the Creed, following Lc. i. 33, says: 'Of whose kingdom there shall be no end.' See Pearson (ed. Burton, i. p. 335; ii. p. 240 f.).

Had not Sin entered the cosmos, and Death, in its spiritual significance, followed Sin, no such episode in the eternal Regnum Dei would have been necessary. The circumstances demanded, it appears, a delegation of the Father's authority over all creation to the Incarnate Son, for the purpose of reducing His rebel creatures to their obedience. The Son, having entered the creation by taking our flesh, and having in that flesh overcome Sin and Death, completes His mission by receiving the submission of all creatures to Himself as the Father's Representative and Plenipotentiary. But the submission completed, or the enemies that refuse submission destroyed, He will no longer retain the authority which He received as the Christ; and as the Incarnate Son, He will lead Creation in the final subjection to the Father, which fulfils the purpose of the Christian economy. Then the great end will have been reached, and God will again be all in all-God, not the Father alone, but in the fulness of the Divine Name-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; His Name hallowed, His Kingdom come, His will done, as in heaven so on earth.

This is the goal to which all history and life are moving, and for which the Ascension and the Session were the starting-point. The reign of the Ascended Christ is preparatory to the Eternal Reign of God.

III.

THE PRIEST.

THE Christ-King is also the Christ-Priest. That the two offices should meet in one person belongs to the Hebrew ideal both of priesthood and of kingship. This comes to light first in the old story of Melchizedek, King of Salem and priest of God most High1 'The intention of the passage seems to be to represent him as the forerunner and prototype of the Israelite monarchy and Israelite priesthood.'2 One prototype served for both, as if to shew that monarchy and priesthood are essentially one. There was a period in the history of the Jewish people when this ideal was nearly realized. From B.C. 142 till the rise of the Herod dynasty Judaea was ruled by a succession of High Priests, who were also civil governors the priest-princes of the Hasmonaean line. In Christian times the mediaeval Papacy claimed to gather into its own hands the reins of all authority, temporal and ecclesiastical; for although 2 Driver, Genesis, ad loc.

1 Gen. xiv, 18 ff.