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of God, and to perpetrate all the evil and wickedness that
the Devil could devise. All the glory of these great Powers
consisted in their worshipping the Devil; and it was this
“glory” that the “Prince of the Darkness” promised to
grant to Jesus Christ (pbuh) from the top of a high mountain
if he were only to follow him and worship him.

2. Christ and his disciples preached the Kingdom of God

They were, it is true, the harbingers of the Kingdom

of God upon earth. The soul and the kernel of the Gospel
of Jesus (pbuh) is contained in that famous clause in his
prayer: “Thy Kingdom come.” For twenty centuries,
the Christians of all denominations and shades of belief
have been praying and repeating this invocation. “Thy
Kingdom come,” and God alone knows how long they
will continue to pray for and vainly anticipate its coming.
This Christian anticipation of the coming of the Kingdom
of God is of the same nature as the anticipation of Judaism
for the coming of Messiah. Both these anticipation exhibit
an inconsiderate and thoughtless imagination, and the
wonder is that they persistently cling to this futile hope. If
you ask a Christian priest or parson what he thinks of the
Kingdom of God, he will tell you all sorts of illusory and
meaningless things. This Kingdom is, he will affirm, the
Church to which he belongs when it will overcome and
absorb all the other heretical Churches. Another parson or
priest will harangue on the “millennium.”

A Salvationist or a Quaker may tell you that according
to his belief the Kingdom of God will consist of the new-
born and sinless Christians, washed and cleansed with the
blood of the Lamb; and so forth.

The Kingdom of God does not mean a triumphant
Catholic Church, or a regenerated and sinless Puritan
State. It is not a visionary “Royalty of the Millennium.” It
is not a Kingdom composed of celestial beings, including