The Lord's Song

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: JESUS AND JOHN. JESUS AND JOHN. Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist; notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. ? Matt. xi. 11. Let us not go too far nor into doubtful quarters for the true...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: JESUS AND JOHN. JESUS AND JOHN. Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist; notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. ? Matt. xi. 11. Let us not go too far nor into doubtful quarters for the true interpretation of these extraordinary words. They are born of the very spirit of truth and reverence. They are meant, on the one hand, to say that John the Baptist belongs in the rank of the highest men. That is high appreciation; perhaps it is higher than we, recalling the thought of the supreme worthies of ancient days in Palestine and Greece, would of ourselves, apart from the authority of Jesus, accord him. They mean, on the other hand, taking him at this high estimate, to set forth by contrast with his lofty nobleness the grandeur of a higher than John ? a higher than any one soul, even that divine kingdom whose lowly servant and ambassador Jesus held it as his honor to be, as it was John's to be its forerunner and herald. Does he mean literally to say that John was less great than the least in that kingdom ? Perhaps not; for though our common version so gives it, the revised New Testament puts it more mildly, saying, He is but little in the kingdom of heaven, or one of the lesser ones in that kingdom is greater than he. And yet, once we clearly see the central truth and force of Jesus' thought, I suspect we shall feel that the sharp dramatic rendering of our common version does not overstate the truth. And thus it gives us John in all his greatness, Jesus in the new nobleness of a loyalty to truth which would even dare expose himself to misconception, and the kingdom of heaven receiving new illumination from both. The key to the explanation is, I suppose, to...