ike God." The lost soul matters to God. He sums up his own work in
the world in much the same language as he uses about the shepherd in
the parable: "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which
is lost" (Luke 19:10). The taunt that he was the "friend of
publicans and sinners" really described what he was and wished to be
(Luke 7:34). God was their Heavenly Father. The sight, then, of the
masses of his countrymen, like worried sheep, worn, scattered, lost,
and hopeless, waked in him no shade of doubt--on the contrary, it
was further proof to him of the soundness of his message. Changing
his simile, he told his disciples that the harvest was great, but
the labourers few, and he asked them to pray the Lord of the harvest
to thrust forth labourers into His harvest (Matt. 9:38). The very
name "Lord of the harvest" implies faith in God's competence and
understanding. From the first, he seems to have held up before his
followers that this wide service was to be their work--"Come ye
after me," he said, "and I will make you to become fishers of men"
(Mark 1:17)--men, who should really "catch men" (Luke 5:10).

Like all for whom the world has had a meaning, Jesus, as we have
seen, accepted the necessary conditions of man's life. Human misery
and need were widespread, but God's Fatherhood was of compass fully
as wide, and Jesus relied upon it. "Your heavenly Father knows," he
said (Matt. 6:32), and "with God all things are possible" (Mark
10:27). The very miseries of the oppressed and hopeless people added
grounds to his confidence. People who had touched bottom in sounding
the human spirit's capacity for misery, were for him the "ripe
harvest" (Matt. 9:37), only needing to be gathered (Mark 4:29). He
understood them, and he knew that he had the healing for all their
troubles. With full assurance of the truth of his words, he cried:
"Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). He spoke of a rest which careless
familiarity obscures for us. What understanding and sympathy he
shows, when he adds: "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light!"
Misery, poverty and hunger, he had found, taught men to see
realities. The hungry, at least, were not likely to mistake a stone
for bread--they had a ready test for it, on which they could rely.
Poverty threw open the road to the Kingdom of God. The clearing away
of all temporary satisfactions, of all that cloaked the soul's
deepest needs,