e is to
be no present fulfilment of these visions of millennial glory. That day
and that hour are to be wrapt in unrevealed and impenetrable secrecy.
The Church may not attempt rashly and inquisitively to lift the veil.
She is not to know the _time_ of the Saviour's appearing, that she may
live every day in the frame she would wish to be found in when the cry
shall be heard, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh." The apostolic band are,
in the first instance, to be cross-bearers, as He their Master
was,--witnesses to His sufferings, earthen vessels, defamed, persecuted,
reviled,--before they become partakers of His purchased happiness and
bliss!

Nevertheless, it was a grand and glorious mission He sketched out for
them. How worthy of HIMSELF--of his loving, forgiving, unselfish
Spirit--was the opening clause in that wondrous Missionary Charter He
then put into their hands. Even at the moment when all the memory of
Jewish ingratitude was fresh on His heart, He inserts a wondrous
provision of mercy and grace. They were to proclaim His name through the
wide world; but was JERUSALEM (the scene of His ignominy) to form an
exception? Nay, rather they were to _begin there_! The Gospel-Trumpet
was to be sounded in its streets. The assassins of Gethsemane, the
murderers of Calvary were to listen to the first offers of pardon and
reconciliation--"And He said unto them ... that repentance and remission
of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, _beginning_ at
_Jerusalem_!" Precious warrant, surely, are these words to "the chief of
sinners" to repair to this gracious Saviour. If even for "_the Jerusalem
sinner_" there is mercy, can there be ground for one human being to
despair?

But "_beginning_" at Jerusalem, the Gospel Commission did not _end_
there? It was to embrace, first, "Judea," then "Samaria," then "the
uttermost parts of the earth."[44] The ascending Redeemer's expansive
heart took in with a vast sweep the wide circle of humanity. From the
elevated ridge of Olivet, on which He now stood with the arrested group
around Him, He might tell them to gaze, in thought at least, far north
beyond the Cedar Heights of Lebanon and Hermon;--Southward to the desert
and the Isles of the Ocean;--Westward to the fair lands washed by the
Great Sea;--Eastward across the palm-trees of Bethany and the chain of
Moabite mountains on unexplored continents, where heathenism still
revelled in its rites and orgies of impurity and blood.