spiritual and the eternal; teaching them that it is not His plan to
put them on His right hand and His left, and trying to lift them up
toward a spiritual and eternal kingdom. So He keeps on all the time,
lifting them out of their littleness, saying to them later: "You shall
be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and in the
uttermost parts of the earth." They did not know what to make of that.
He was lifting them out of their narrowness. And so He pushes on still
further with them, lifting them up, until, in the supreme hour of His
earthly history--after His agony, after the cross, after He had broken
asunder the bars of the sepulcher, after He had risen, and been
declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead--He
hovers over the Church, coming down to speak to them by the sea-side
and mountain-side; appearing to them suddenly, vanishing as quickly;
offering His hands to their touch, showing His body to their vision,
yet all the time lifting them up, until He brought them to the thought
and gave to the Church the idea of His ubiquity, saying: "Lo! I am
with you alway, even unto the end of the world"; and they appreciated
the feeling that He was within hand-reach, and that this was a
spiritual kingdom, and that they could take hold upon the great
spiritual forces. And thus He lifted them up and prepared them for
His great truth, until at last, in the supreme moment of His earthly
history, we see Him yonder on the summit of the mount--the earth
beneath Him, the angels gathered above Him--with His hands spread out
over His followers, with the summit of Olivet receding beneath His
feet. He cries out to them: "All power is given unto me in heaven and
in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father, and 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." And the
unspeakable glory took Him out of their sight.