22 6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



He was continually telling His covenant people that 

 their history was included in a larger and grander 

 history ; that in their seed all the families of the earth 

 should be blessed. But the best and wisest of them 

 were continually misunderstanding His intentions, and 

 gauging them by their own narrow prejudices. If there 

 was one thing especially opposed to the whole tenor of 

 Jewish thought, it was Christ's command to go into 

 all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. 

 And to us in the Christian Church, who have been 

 placed on a more elevated standing-point, and have 

 been educated by eighteen centuries of Christian ex- 

 perience, the range of the Divine regard seems as 

 limited as ever. We are accustomed to hear about 

 the strait gate and the narrow way and the few who 

 find it; and we make out of the saying a straitened 

 faith and a narrow Gospel. To take an image from 

 the garden instead of the seashore, our Christianity is 

 too much like a trained tree, stretched flat along a 

 trellised wall that looks to the south, fastened by nails 

 and rags of party, Church creeds and ordinances. We 

 do not believe much in a Christianity that grows like 

 a standard freely all round, with branches, blossoms, 

 and fruits stretched out in every direction to the 

 north as well as to the south, to the east as well as 

 to the west. We fancy that there is no salvation out 

 of the Church or the denomination to which we our- 

 selves belong; that the sun of God's favour shines 

 only in the little circle of holy ground in which we our- 

 selves move. The Kingdom of Heaven which even the 



