God forbid!  For most miserable were the world, most miserable were mankind, if all that our Lord prophesied had happened, once and for all, at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies.  But most miserable, also, would this world be, and most miserable would be mankind, if these words were not to be fulfilled till some future Last Day, and day of Judgment, for which the Church has now been waiting for more than eighteen centuries—­and, as far as we can judge, may wait for as many centuries more.  Most miserable, if the Son of Man has never come since He ascended into heaven from Olivet.  Most miserable, if the kingdom of God has never been at hand, since He gave that one short gleam of hope to men in Judaea long ago.  Most miserable, if there be no kingdom of God among us even now:  in one word, if God and Christ be not our King; but the devil, as some fancy; or Man himself, as others fancy, be the only king of this world and of its destinies; if there be no order in this mad world, save what man invents; no justice, save what he executes; no law, save what he finds convenient to lay upon himself for the protection of his person and property.  Most miserable, if the human race have no guide, save its own instincts and tendencies; no history, save that of its own greed, ignorance and crime, varied only by fruitless struggles after a happiness to which it never attains.  Most miserable world, and miserable man, if that be true after all which to the old Hebrew prophet seemed incredible and horrible—­if God does look on while men deal treacherously, and does hold His peace when the wicked devours the man who is more righteous than he; and has made men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things that have no ruler over them.

I said—­Most miserable, in that case, was the world and man.  I did not say that they would consider themselves miserable.  I did not say that they would think it a Gospel, and good news, that Christ was their King, and that His Kingdom was always at hand.  They never thought that good news.  When the prophets told them of it, they stoned them.  When the Lord Himself told them, they crucified Him.  Worldly men dislike the message now, probably, as much as they ever did.  But they escape from it, either by treating it as a self-evident commonplace which no Christian denies, and therefore no Christian need think of; or by smiling at it as an exploded superstition, at least as a “Semitic” form of thought, with which we have nothing to do.  They confound it, often I fear purposely, with those fancied miraculous interpositions, those paltry special providences, which fanatics in all ages have believed to be worked for their own special behoof.  Altogether they dislike, and express very openly their dislike, of the least allusion to a Divine Providence “interfering,” as they strangely term it, with them and their affairs.