real judgment, and good, as real salvation, as an all-powerful good, to which even physical evil and death cannot serve as an external limit.

VI

Corresponding to the constant podvig of benevolence was unceasing prayerful podvig, a feat of spirit and vigor. The Gospels tell us how He demanded unceasing, persistent prayer from His disciples, how He Himself, after tiring days of preaching and labor, spent His nights in prayer (e.g., Mark 1:35; 6:46; Luke 3:21; 6:12; 9:18, 28; 11:1; John 18:2). Along with the outward life, Christ had His own constant prayer life, for which we find in the Gospels so many indications, brief, but profoundly significant for anyone familiar with the history of the spiritual life that Jesus began.

This is the whole world of prayer in which Jesus lived and nourished. And in his words to his disciples about the healing of a demon-possessed boy, he himself points to the relationship between faith, prayer and healing. When the disciples asked why they could not heal the boy, He answered: "Because of your lack of faith... this kind cannot come forth except from prayer and fasting" (Matt. 17:20) – in which they saw not without reason Jesus' indication of His fasting and the spiritual victory won in the wilderness.

Christ's prayerful life and His feats of charity shed light on His preaching of the kingdom, explaining to us how the moral and eschatological conception of Him are inseparably linked sides of one and the same religious idea. The Kingdom of God was divine and spiritual for Christ

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a reality experienced by Him in His God-consciousness, a "life" infinitely more intense than any outer, sensual, carnal life. This is the "fire" that He came to bring down on the earth. It is clear that this kingdom is not built by men, but by God, Who gives it and is His active force. On the part of man, faith, prayer and ascesis of personal moral will are required for its assimilation. Faith is required not only of the disciples, of the bearers, of the preachers of the kingdom, of the workers of the work of God, but also of all, not only of the one who gives, but also of the one who receives: "Do you believe?" – this is the question of Christ addressed to those who seek help from him. "All things are possible to the believer" is the result of spiritual experience, of the consciousness of the spiritual life experienced, which appears both as a gift to man and as a task for him. Those words about faith moving mountains, which are so paradoxical to ordinary reason, are imprinted in the life of Christ and testify to the supreme intensity of this spiritual life and to the overwhelming consciousness of the nearness of God as an all-powerful and living God to His kingdom and power.

Let us sum up all the foregoing discussion about the "kingdom." The Kingdom of God in the Gospel preaching is understood as the indivisible dominion of the righteous and merciful Father, prepared from eternity in Himself and having to be realized on earth or "come" in power (ἐν δυνάμει) and glory. It is the highest goal of the world process, as the realization of the divine order, the realization of God or divine life on earth. It is the highest good that is given by God, but together it constitutes the goal and task of the human will, its only true and rational goal. It is "prepared" and "near," and its coming to earth, which is to change the image of "this world" and, as it were, to refine it into the "age of incorruption," is a universal event, dependent solely on the will of the Father and containing in itself the judgment of the whole world, a judgment from which only the "sons" and "heirs" of the kingdom will be saved. Salvation has already come now in the preaching of Christ, in the "word of peace" and the gospel, which is to reconcile people to God and show them His mercy: the "benevolence" of Christ shows that His word contains not only the subjective good, but also the good of salvation; belief

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