M. Pressensé, J ésus-Christ, pp. 326, 327.

x Channing, Works, ii. 55. ‘We feel that a new Being, of a new order of mind, is taking part in human affairs. There is a native tone of grandeur and authority in His teaching. He speaks as a Being related to the whole human race. A narrower sphere than the world never enters His thoughts, He speaks in a natural spontaneous style of accomplishing the most arduous and important change in human affairs. This unlaboured manner of ex- pressing great thoughts is particularly worthy of attention, You never I from Jesus that swelling, pompous, ostentatious language, which peas ᾿
118 Boldness of Christ’s plan, considered
ceremonial respect at a feast, and He simply announces that the act will be told as a memorial of her throughout the world 9; He bids His Apostles do all things whatsoever He had com- manded them2; He promises them His Spirit as a Guide into all necessary truth®: but He invests them with no such dis- cretionary powers, as might imply that His design would need revision under possible circumstances, or could be capable of improvement. He calmly turns the glance of His thought upon the long and chequered future which lies clearly displayed before Him, and in the immediate foreground of which is his own humiliating Death>. Other founders of systems or of societies have thanked a kindly Providence for shrouding from their gaze the vicissitudes of coming time ; # ¢Prudens futuri temporis exitum Caliginos& nocte premit deus °;’
but the Son of Man speaks as One Who-sees beyond the most distant possibilities, and Who knows full well that His work is indestructible. ‘The gates of hell,’ He calmly observes, ‘sha]l not prevail against it4;’ ‘ Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away &’
Nor is the boldness of Christ’s plan less observable in its actual substance, than in the fact of its original production in such completeness. Look at it, for the moment, from a political point of view. Here is, as it seems, a Galilean peasant, sur- rounded by a few followers taken like Himself from the lowest orders of society; yet He deliberately proposes to rule all human thought, to make Himself the Centre of all human affections, to be the Lawgiver of humanity, and the Object of man’s adoration. He founds a spiritual society, the thought
almost necessarily springs from an attempt to sustain a character above our powers. He talks of His glories, as one to whom they were familiar... . He speaks of saving and judging the world, of drawing all men to Himself, and of giving everlasting life, as we speak of the ordinary powers which we exert.’
Υ St. Matt. xxvi. 13; St. Mark xiv. 9.
* St. Matt. xxviii. 20. ® St. John xvi. 13. b St. Matt. xx. 19; St. Mark viii. 31. © Hor. Od. iii. 29. 29. 4 St. Matt. xvi. 18. © Ibid. xxiv. 35.
£ Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, p. 232. ‘To Jesus alone, the simple Galilean carpenter, it happens... that, having never seen a map of the world in His whole life, or heard the name of half the great nations on it, He undertakes, coming out of His shop, a scheme as much vaster and more difficult than that of Alexander, as it proposes more, and what is more Divinely benevolent.’
[ LECT,
a ee
aes
as a religious and social enterprise. 119
and heart and activity of which are to: converge upon His Person, and He tells His followers that this society which He is forming is the real explanation of the highest visions of seers and prophets, that it will embrace all races and extend throughout all time. He places Himself before the world as the true goal of its expectations, and He points to His proposed work as the one hope for its future. There was to be a universal religion, and He would found it. A universal religion was just as foreign an idea to heathenismé as to Judaism. Heathenism held that the state was the highest form of social life; religious life, like family life. was deemed subordinate to political interests. Morality was pretty nearly dwarfed down to the measure of common political virtue; sin was little else than political misdemeanour; religion was but a subordinate function of national life, differing in different countries according to the varying genius of the people, and rightly liable to being created or controlled by the government. A century and a half after the Incarnation, in his attack upon the Church, Celsus ridicules the idea of a universal religion as a manifest follyh; yet Jesus Christ has staked His whole claim to respect and confidence upon announcing it. Jesus Christ made no concessions to the passions or to the prejudices of mankind. The laws and maxims of His kingdom are for the most part in entire contradiction to the instincts of average human nature ; yet He predicts that His Gospel will be preached in all the world, and that finally there will be one flock and One Shepherd of meni. ‘Go,’ He says to His Apostles, ‘make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever‘ I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,’ He founds a world-wide religion, and He promises to be the present invigorating force of that religion to the end of time. Are we not too accustomed to this language to feel the full force of its original meaning? How startlingly must it not have fallen upon the ears of Apostles! Words like these are not accounted for by any difference between the East and
€ The Stoic ‘cosmopolitanism’ (Sir A. Grant’s Ethics of Aristotle, vol. i. 255; Merivale on Conversion of Roman Empire, p. 60) did not amount to a religion.
h Origen. contr. Celsum, ii. 46.
1 St.John x. 16. Christ and His Apostles were to begin to preach to Israel. St. Matt. xv. 24, x. 5, 6. κ St. Matt. xxviii. 19, 20.
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120 Reaksation of our Lord's ‘plan
the West, between ancient and modern modes of speech. They will not bear honest translation into any modern phrase that would enable good men to use them now. Can we imagine such a command as that of our Lord upon the lips οὗ the best, of the wisest of men whom we have ever known? Would it not be simply to imagine that goodness or wisdom had been exchanged for the folly of an intolerable presumption? Such language as that before us is indeed folly, unless it be some- thing else ; unless it be proved by the event to have been the highest wisdom, the wisdom of One, Whose ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts].