THE GOSPEL FOR ALL

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 14, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 24.

THE GOSPEL FOR ALL.

THIS is well set forth by the following from Dr. Alex. McLaren, in an article in the Sunday School Times: 'The high priest therefore asked Jesus of his disciples, and of His teaching!' If they did not know about either, why had they arrested Him? Cunning outwits itself, and falls into the pit it digs for the innocent. Jesus passed by the question as to His disciples unnoticed, and by His calm answer as to His teaching showed that He saw the snare. He reduced Caiaphas and Annas to perpetrating plain injustice, or to letting Him go free. Elementary fair play to a prisoner prescribes that he should be accused of some crime by some one, and not that he should furnish his judges with materials for his own indictment.

'Why asked thou Me? ask them that have heard Me,' is unanswerable, except by such an answer as the officious 'servant' gave,—a blow and a violent speech. But Christ's words reach far beyond the momentary purpose; they contain a wide truth. His teaching loves the daylight. There are no muttered oracles, no whispered secrets for the initiated, no double voice, one for the multitude, and another for the adepts. All is aboveboard, and all is spoken openly to the world. Christianity has no cliques or coteries, nothing sectional, nothing reserved. It is for mankind, for all mankind, all for mankind. True, there are depths in it; true, the secrets which Jesus can only speak to loving ears in secret are His sweetest words, but they are 'spoken in the ear' that they may be 'proclaimed on the housetops.'