phrase "_kingdom of God_" will be readily understood. Though it has,
by different writers, been made to bear many different significations,
yet we shall take the liberty to contend that it simply means as
follows--1. First an immortal existence beyond the grave brought to
light by the resurrection of Christ;--and 2. Second a belief in _that
reality_ is the kingdom of God we here enter and enjoy _by faith_.
Into this kingdom, infants, idiots and heathen and unbelievers do not
enter, because faith is the only condition. This is the kingdom of
heaven that men, blind leaders of the blind, shut up. They neither
enter themselves, nor suffer those that would enter to go in. They
keep the evidence of the reality out of sight so that men cannot look
beyond the vail to its brighter glories and enjoy its peaceful reign
in their hearts by faith. When faith is lost in certainty, _then_ this
kingdom will be delivered up, and to know shall be life eternal. This
definition we believe will hold good, and apply to any passage in the
New Testament where it may occur. Though some contend that it very
seldom has reference to an immortal existence, yet we strenuously
contend that there is no propriety in the phrase only in connexion
with such an existence. We cannot enter or be born into the kingdom of
God by faith, unless we admit the reality in the first place to have
an existence, any more than we could, by faith, enjoy eternal life
unless there is such a reality as eternal life beyond the grave. The
above, the reader will please to fix in his mind.

We now perceive that man drops into the sleep of death, and that the
resurrection, or new birth is his only hope of a future happy state of
existence, and is the only change that can free him from imperfection,
and sin, and make him a new creature in a new and immortal existence
beyond the grave.