se we find it difficult to appreciate how utterly revolutionary
the Gospel teaching continually is, not because we have become
accustomed to follow it, but because we have got used to hearing it and
evacuating it of most of its meaning by clever glossing. It was thus
that the teaching classes in Jerusalem avoided the pressure of Old
Testament ideals by a facile system of interpretation which made "void
the Word of God by their traditions." Human nature has not altered; and
we succeed by the same method in making the Gospel of none effect. We
are so well accustomed to do this that we lose the point and pungency of
much of our Lord's teaching. But we know that the apostles did not. We
know that they presented that teaching in all its sharpness to would-be
disciples. It could not be otherwise with those who for three years had
been in day by day intimacy with our Lord and had assimilated His point
of view and his judgment on life.

One effect of their contact with our Lord in the days following the
resurrection would be that whatever changes the passage to a new level
of existence had wrought in Him, it had not changed either the tone of
His teaching or the beauty and attractiveness of His Personality. The
concluding charges that were given them, the great commission of
proclaiming the Kingdom with which they were now definitely endued, the
powers which were committed to them in the great words: "All power is
given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all
nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of 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," would but confirm and strengthen all that had gone before in
their experience of Him. The Jesus of the resurrection was no pale ghost
returned from the grave, intermittently to appear to them to assure them
of the fact of immortality. He was "the same Jesus" Whom they had known
for three years, and whose return from the dead triumphant over the
powers that had opposed Him, set quite plainly and definitely the seal
of indisputable authority upon all the teaching and the example that had
gone before. The period of their probation was over: The commission was
theirs: It remained that they should abide in Jerusalem until they
should be "endued with power from on high."

Proclaimed Queen and Mother of a God,
The Light of eart