world was shaken and the kingdoms remoulded. The seer had learned the
omnipotence of ideas and the weakness of outward force. A thought from
God is stronger than all armies, and outconquers conquerors. By the
mystery of Christ's Incarnation, by the power of weakness in the
preachers of the Cross, by the energies of the transforming Spirit, the
God of heaven has set up the kingdom. 'It shall never be destroyed.' Its
divine origin guarantees its perpetual duration. The kingdoms of man's
founding, whether they be in the realm of thought or of outward
dominion, 'have their day, and cease to be,' but the kingdom of Christ
lasts as long as the eternal life of its King. He cannot die any more,
and He cannot live discrowned. Other forms of human association perish,
as new conditions come into play which antiquate them; but the kingdom
of Jesus is as flexible as it is firm, and has power to adapt to itself
all conditions in which men can live. It will outlast earth, it will
fill eternity; for when He 'shall have delivered up the kingdom to His
Father,' the kingdom, which the God of heaven set up, will still
continue.

It 'shall not be left to other people.' By that, seems to be meant that
this kingdom will not be like those of human origin, in which dominion
passes from one race to another, but that Israel shall ever be the happy
subjects and the dominant race. We must interpret the words of the
spiritual Israel, and remember how to be Christ's subject is to belong
to a nation who are kings and priests.

The destructive power is graphically represented. The stone, detached
from the mountain, and apparently self-moved, dashes against the
heterogeneous mass of iron and clay on which the colossus insecurely
stands, and down it comes with a crash, breaking into a thousand
fragments as it falls. 'Like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors'