We must understand the type, or we can not understand the antitype. We must understand that which is natural before we can understand that which is spiritual. What, then, are the essential elements of a kingdom as existing among men? They are five--viz.: King, Constitution, Subjects, Laws and Territory. Such are the essential parts of every political kingdom, perfect in its kind, now existing on earth.

      In forming a state, the essential elements are people and country. The people make a constitution, and this makes a President or a King, citizens or subjects, and everything else belonging to a state. It is, then, the relation into which the people resolve themselves, which makes it a republic, an aristocracy, a monarchy. Do they choose a monarchy? They first make a constitution, and this places one upon the throne--makes them subjects, and he gives them laws. Although the constitution is first, in the order of nature, of all the elements of a kingdom, for it makes one man a king and the rest subjects; yet we can not imagine a constitution in reference to a kingdom, without [238] king and subjects. In speaking of them in detail, we can not then speak of any one of them as existing without the others--we must regard them as correlates, and as coming into existence contemporaneously. There is no husband nor wife before marriage, neither can there be a husband without a wife; yet one of the parties must be made before the other. Marriage makes a husband out of the groom, and a wife out of the bride. So the constitution makes the king or the governor, the citizens or subjects, out of the people, as the case may be: for there never can be a king or subject without a constitution, or, what is the same thing, an agreement, verbal or written, for certain privileges stipulated and conditioned. In every well regulated political kingdom, in the order of nature, the elements stand thus--1. Constitution; 2. King; 3. Subjects; 4. Laws; 5. Territory.

      In the kingdom which God set up by Moses, the elements stood in this order. The constitution was first proposed under which God condescended to be their King, and they were to be regarded as his people or subjects; he then gave them laws and established them in the territory before promised.

      But in the kingdom of nature, or in the original kingdom of God, the elements are only four, and the order in which they stand, are--1. King; 2. Subjects; 3. Laws; 4. Territory. As Father and Creator of that kingdom, God himself was absolute Sovereign, whose will is the supreme law of the whole realm of nature.

[A. C.]      

Source:

Alexander Campbell. "The Elements of the Kingdom." The Millennial Harbinger Extra 5 (August 1834): 403-404.

[MHA1 238-239]