ot to Palestine; that was only the door He used for entrance. It was from
Him that John learned, what he wrote down, that He was to "lighten <i>every
man</i> that cometh into <i>the world</i>."

To the Jewish senator of the inner national circle He said plainly in that
great sentence that contains the gist of the whole Bible--John, three,
sixteen--that it was <i>a world</i> he was after. <i>A saved world</i> was the one
purpose of His errand to the earth. He had come to "<i>save the world</i>,"[2]
and would stop at nothing short of giving His very self "for the life of
<i>the world</i>."

He tells His own inner circle that "the field" is a <i>world</i>. And that it
is to be won by the means He Himself was using; namely, men, human beings,
"sons of the kingdom"[3] were to be sown as seed all over its vast extent.

You remember, that last week, the request of the Greeks for an
interview?[4] The outside non-Jewish world came to Him in the visit and
earnest request of those Greeks. And His whole being became greatly
agitated. It was as when one, at last, after years of labor without any
seeming success, gets a first faint glimpse of the results he longs so
earnestly for. Here was a touch, a glimpse of the very thing on which His
heart was so set. The great outside world was coming to Him.

The realization of its tremendous meaning, the sure promise it held of the
day when <i>all the world would be coming</i> seems to set Him all a-tremble
with intensest emotion. The delight of the possible realizing of His
life-dream, His earth errand, and yet the terrific conviction that only by
travelling the red road of the cross could that world be won, made a
fierce conflict within. It was the world-vision that agitated Him.

And it was that same world-vision that held Him steady. He would not
scatter. By concentrating all in one act He would generate and set off a
dynamic power on Calvary that would shake and then shape a world. The
knowledge that all men would be irresistibly drawn by the loadstone of the
cross steadied His steps.

A few days later, as He sat resting a bit, on the side of the Hill of
Olivet, the disciples earnestly ask for some idea of His plan. And He
explains that the Gospel was to be "preached to the <i>whole inhabited
earth</i>."[5] That conception was never out of His mind. How could it be!

But the great purpose and passion of His life stands out most sharply in
the words of that last imperial command. He