Only one thing his true disciples hate—sin; only one thing is worth striving, living and dying for—goodness: which is another name for Christ-likeness.
CHAPTER X.
THE MAGNITUDE OF THE END HE PROPOSED AND SET ABOUT.
Let us now consider briefly the magnitude of the work Jesus proposed to do as the end of his mission to men.
It is the baldest commonplace to say the work Jesus proposed to accomplish transcends all the dreams of the boldest imagination.
It is a deep offense that once, at St. Helena, Napoleon contrasted the work Jesus proposed to do with the dreams that he and Alexander and Julius Cæsar had indulged of world-changing conquests. It is no great thing that selfish, ambitious, and gifted men have dreamed of conquering what we call the world by force. Cæsar, Alexander, Mohammed, Napoleon, even poor wild El Mahdi of the desert, may dream such dreams. But what are such dreams when we think of Jesus and the work he proposed to do and set himself to do?
We do not like to think of the dreams of ambition, the loftiest that ever dared or planned a worldwide scheme of conquest, when we are listening to Jesus concerning his mission to men. Jesus speaks of the conquest of all nations, not as they then were, but of all nations for all times. It is nothing less and nothing else than the moral and spiritual re-creation of the human race, the absolute conquest of the love of men’s hearts for time and eternity.
Say what men may of Jesus, it was worth dying, in shame and agony, upon a Roman cross to have had such thoughts, even for one moment. No mere man ever had such thoughts, could originate such thoughts, or for long hold such thoughts in his grasp. The end Jesus proposed to himself is as far above the noblest thoughts of the noblest men as the splendors of the midnight heavens are above the cheap glitter of a toy-shop.
The thought of saving a race was as extra-human and superhuman as the thought of the universe; the saving of a race, the saving of one man, is as far beyond man’s power as the creation itself.