of the coming of this wondrous Redeemer.  It was so dim and uncertain that it was hard to tell what it meant; somehow, somewhere, some time, “the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.”  It was so dim that our first great mother, when she had gotten her first son, cried out in her joy, “I have gotten a man from the Lord!” She thought she had the Redeemer, but she had only a murderer.  It was many a century before the Redeemer would come.  The truth was unfolded little by little; a little brighter it shone on the altars of the patriarchs; it was unfolded a little more in the visions of the prophets; was exemplified in the ceremonials of the temple; and in the fullness of time it came with the Master and His disciples and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.

And then see, when the Master comes, how He takes hold of us, knowing that we are but little, and that we have to be lifted up and enlarged before we can take in these great truths!  He says:  “I have more to tell you:  you cannot bear it to-day; I will tell you to-morrow.”  And so He gives lesson and instruction, and parable and illustration, all through.  His life, teaching these disciples, chosen on account of their particular adaptation for the reception of His truth; walking with them day by day, trying to lift their thought toward the 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.