Tj The word " ransom," though not rare in the Old Testament,
1 J. Ker, Thought* for Heart and Life, 148.
ST. MATTHEW xx. 28 385
is used in the New Testament, only in this context ; and the English phrase, " a ransom for many," is not likely to be misunder- stood. It means a ransom by means of which many are set free — from bondage, or captivity, or penalties, or sentence of death. But the Greek phrase might be misunderstood ; " a ransom instead of many " might be thought to mean that many ought to have paid ransom, but that He paid it instead of them; which is not the meaning. And the indefinite " many " does not mean that there were some whom He did not intend to redeem ; that He did not die for all. " Many " is in opposition to one ; it was not for His own personal advantage that He sacrificed His life, but one life was a ransom for many lives. Here, where Christ for the first time reveals that His death is to benefit mankind, He does not reveal the whole truth. Compare 1 Tim. ii. 6 and 1 John ii. 2, where the more comprehensive truth is stated.1
^f When prisoners were bartered at the conclusion of a war, the exchange was not always simply man for man. An officer was of more value than a common soldier, and several soldiers might be redeemed by the surrender of one officer. For a woman of high rank or extraordinary beauty a still greater number of prisoners might be exchanged ; and by the giving up of a king's son many might be redeemed. So the sense of His own unique dignity and His peculiar relation to God is implied in the statement that Christ's life would redeem the lives of many. St. Paul expresses the truth still more boldly when he says that Jesus gave His life a ransom " for all " ; but the two phrases come to the same thing ; because the " many " spoken of by Jesus really include " all " who are willing to avail themselves of the opportunity.2
II.
The Obligation of Service.
" Even as the Son of man came."
1. He came as a servant, and He has the right to ask service of us. We must give Him what He asks; not only because reason says that His claim is just, not only because conscience tells us there can be no peace till we take up His yoke and follow in His steps, but also because we are bound to the King by ties
1 A. Plumnier.
2 J. Stalker, The Christology oj Jesus, 184. ST. MATT. — 25
386 THE MINISTERING MASTER
of gratitude : "The love of Christ constraineth us, . . . that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, hut unto him who for their sakes died and rose again."
Tf Long ago Lord Wolseley wrote in his Soldiers Pocket-Book a sentence which deserves to live — " The officers must try to get killed." The matter could not be more conclusively put. Not in the battlefield alone, but everywhere and always, except among the few lost souls of whom men do not speak, has that great rule won simple unthinking obedience. Every physician goes by it to the haunt of contagion. John Richard Green wrote his beloved history when the pains of death gat hold upon him ; Archbishop Temple's father made provision for his widow and family by taking a government appointment in a deadly climate and leaving them a pension after two years' service. Undistinguished men and women are spending their slender capital of health and life with but a plain idea of doing right by those they love, and with no talk of sacrifice. So vast and lovely are man's possibilities when he turns his face to Right — which is God ! l
2. The soul finds its life only in action, in going forth out of itself. Neither mind nor heart matures, however fine its training or abundant its resources, if it simply appropriates to itself, giving nothing out. Its strength and power come as it begins to react upon the world. Self-culture, however noble an aim, is never the noblest. Good for our earlier years, it must be replaced in later life by some great purpose beyond — the love of truth for its own sake, the desire for power, or the pure longing to serve humanity. Between the life spent in such intellectual pursuits as will simply gratify the tastes, stimulate the mind, or kill time, and the life spent in some actual service to society is all the distance between the dilettante and the man. The advantage of great qualities of mind or heart lies not half so much in what they directly bring to us as in the larger strength and capacity which we gain through their exercise. The more keenly we learn to realize others' wants and desires, as though they were our own, the wider the sympathies by which we act, the further away from ourselves our affections are turned, so much the larger and more vigorous does the soul become. The morbid nature, as you sometimes encounter it, at home only with its own griefs, or dwelling solely in its own past, or in love with its own fastidiousness, or finding nothing