^[ No system thinks so condemnatorily of human nature as it is, none thinks so glowingly of human nature as it may become, as does the religion of the cross. There are bass notes far down beyond the limits of the scale to which ears dulled by the world and sin and sorrow are sensitive ; and there are clear, high tones, thrilling and shrilling far above the range of perception of such ears. The man that is in the lowest depths may rise with Jesus to the highest, but it must be by the same road by which the Master went. " If we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him," and only " if." There is no other path to the throne but
ST. MATTHEW xxviu. 18-20 443
the cross. Via cruris, via lucis — the way of the cross is the way of light. It is to those who have accepted their Gethsemanes and their Calvarys that He appoints a kingdom, as His father has appointed unto Him.1
II.
The Commission.
"Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations."
The all-ruling Christ calls for the universal proclamation of His sovereignty by His disciples. He craves no empty rule, no mere elevation by virtue of Divine supremacy, over men. He regards that elevation as incomplete without the voluntary surrender of men to become His subjects and champions. With- out its own consent He does not count that His universal power is established in a human heart. Though that dominion be all- embracing like the ocean, and stretching into all corners of the universe, and dominating over all the ages, yet in that ocean there may stand up black and dry rocks, barren as they are dry, and blasted as they are black, because, with the awful power of a human will, men have said, "We will not have this man to reign over us." It is willing subjects that Christ seeks, in order to make the Divine grant of authority a reality.
^[ This command must appear, when we consider it, to be simply astonishing. Here is, as it seems, a Jewish peasant, surrounded by a small company of uneducated followers, bidding them address themselves in His name to races, ancient, powerful, refined ; to win their intellectual and moral submission to doctrines and precepts propounded by Himself. " Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations." The only idea of empire of which the world knew was the empire of material force. Wher- ever the legions of Rome had penetrated, there followed the judge and the tax-collector: and the nations submitted to what they could not resist, until at length their masters became too weak to control or to protect them. As for an empire of souls, the notion was unheard of. No philosopher could found it, since a philosopher's usual occupation consisted mainly in making intel-
1 A. Maclaren.
444 CHRIST'S PARTING CHARGE
lectual war upon his predecessors or contemporaries. No existing religion could aim at it, since the existing religions were believed to be merely the products of national instincts and aspirations ; each religion was part of the furniture of a nation, or at most of a race. Celsus, looking out on Christianity in the second century of our era, with the feelings of Gibbon or of Voltaire, said that a man must be out of his mind to think that Greeks and Barbarians, Eomans and Scythians, bondmen and freemen, could ever have one religion. Nevertheless this was the purpose of our Lord. The Apostles were bidden to go and make disciples of all the nations. Yes ; all the nations. There was no nation in such religious circumstances, none so cultivated, none so degraded, as to be able to dispense with the teaching and healing power of Jesus Christ, or to be beyond the reach of His salvation.1
1. The great aim of the missionary is to make disciples. No doubt he is a civilizer, but he does not go to heathen lands in the interests of civilization ; he goes to proclaim salvation by grace. He is the friend of commerce, education, freedom of every kind, and rapidly promotes them wherever he goes ; but he does not go to China, India, and the islands of the South Seas in order to circulate Western ideas of trade, culture, good government, and social weal ; he goes to represent the character, announce the will, illustrate the grace, offer the salvation, and promote the reign of the God whom Christ has made real and saving to us. And whatever improvements he may help to make in the outward conditions in which the people live, he has not fulfilled his distinctive mission until he has given them " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," and won them to a trust in and love of God that will free them from their idolatries, cleanse them from their immoralities, and make them worshippers with intelligent conviction, zeal and courage in their devotion. Indeed to give them Western civilization without Western religion, with its powerful ethic to illumine and discipline their conscience, would be to multiply their power of sin and mischief and tend to their corruption. To give China, with her vast population and material resources, the civilization of Europe and America without the Christ who is its light and salt would be to make her the menace of the world, and to create a " yellow peril " indeed.