What Reformer, other than Jesus Christ, ever held to his followers such language? Who else than God could have imparted to their language such virtue that they would in obedience to it sacrifice with joy not merely all the good things of this life, but life itself? Nevertheless, one of those apostles, and the first of them all, Peter, evinces some disquietude, if not at their lot in this world, at least at their destinies in the kingdom of heaven. "Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life." [Footnote 95]
[Footnote 95: Matthew xix. 27-29.]
But Jesus does not intend that the prospect of their lofty inheritance should inspire in the minds of any of his apostles, and not more in that of Peter than the rest, any proud presumptuousness, and He immediately adds, "But many that are first, shall be last; and the last shall be first." [Footnote 96]
[Footnote 96: Matthew xix. 30.]
The world's history may be perused and reperused; the causes of all the revolutions that have taken place in the world, whether religious or political, may be probed and investigated; but we shall nowhere be able to trace in the dealings of chiefs and accomplices, of originators and fellow-workmen, the divine characteristics of absolute and uncompromising sincerity that reign throughout the actions and language of Jesus Christ in His conduct towards His apostles. Them He has chosen and loved; to them He has entrusted His work; but He practises with them no arts of worldly wisdom; He withholds nothing from them; here is no faltering encouragement, no exaggeration in the promises that He makes or in the hope that He holds forth; He speaks to them the language of pure truth, and it is in the name of that truth that He gives them His commands and transfers to them His mission. "Never did man speak like this man," [Footnote 97] nor so deal with men.
[Footnote 97: John vii. 46.]
II. Jesus Christ And His Precepts.
Jesus speaks:—and it is at one time with His disciples alone, at another surrounded by eager, astonished multitudes; now from the mount, now on the shore of the sea of Gennesareth, from a bark; by the road side; in the house of the Pharisee, Simon, and the toll-gatherer, Levi; in the synagogue of Nazareth, in the Temple of Jerusalem:—Jesus speaks, "not like the scribes," not like the philosophers; He expounds no system; He discusses no question; He does not pace up and down like Socrates with his learned friends in the gardens of the Academy, nor lose himself in the mazes of the human understanding. Jesus speaks to men, to all men without distinction; He speaks to them of man's life, man's soul, man's destiny, of matters that touch all alike. And He speaks to them "as one having authority."