Matthew 28:19 Go you therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Now one of the laws which God has arranged, and which He observes is this — the higher the form of life, the longer it is in coming to the fulness of its power, to maturity and perfection. For instance, a child continues helpless longer, and takes far more time and care to rear and train than does the offspring of any one of the lower animals. It is even so among these lower animals themselves, for "the lion has a longer infancy than the sheep, and the sagacious elephant than either." Take, again, a more abstract illustration. For example, how rapidly does a man's physical life grow and develop compared with his mental or moral. So, too, with society: shops grow faster than schools, and a nation, as our own has done, may progress in a most marked manner in the region of politics or commerce, and yet, like our own again, lag sadly behind in the matter of education. Besides, how much more is education than the diffusion of information or the quickening of intelligence? Is there not the difficult task of upbuilding character, and, alas! how marked often is the discrepancy between the intellectual standard and the moral tone? Thus the law runs: the higher the goal to be gained or the good to be sought, the slower is the race or the individual in its pursuit, the longer in its attainment. In the light of this law, we at once see that it is just what might be expected, that Christianity, as the highest possible form or principle of life, should be, speaking of it as a whole, the most gradual in its progress and realization, and, further, that it is according to all nature and analogy that Christianity, as the grandest and most delicate order of life, should be at once the most sensitive to the unfavourable touch of man, as well as the soonest subject to the prejudicial effects of his mistakes or defects. (J. T. Stannard.) Parallel Verses KJV: Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: |
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