Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/431

 CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY 4 1 7

visions of a universal empire does, it must be granted, seem somewhat remarkable. Yet no one can read the words that he spoke during the latter part of his career 1 without being con- vinced that in his expectations the process of regeneration was not one to be limited by either geographical or p6litical boundaries. Nor, even if it be granted as altogether probable that he did not foresee the astonishing changes wrought within Christendom, does a complete synthesis of his words permit the view that this ignorance extended to the general nature of the process that was to lead to the end of one age and the full establishment of that new social order in which God and right- eousness and love were to be supreme. If it be objected that Jesus declared that few found the strait gate and the narrow path, 2 it will be enough to reply that such a remark applied to the immediate circle of his hearers and must be correlated with the other sayings in which he anticipates the evangelization and conquest of the world. Similarly, in ascribing due weight to those sayings of his in which he spoke of his contemporaries' seeing the fulfilment of his prophecies of the coming kingdom, 3 one must remember that this coming was a progression whose inauguration in the new opportunities arising from the fall of the Jewish state might come suddenly, but whose completion was lost in the depths of omniscience itself: 4 In fact, if we are to regard the "great commission" 5 as representing in any faintest way a thought of Jesus, the conclusion cannot be avoided that he was concerned with the evangelization of the world quite as much as with that of Judea and Galilee. The fact that he himself seems deliberately to have declined such wider labors 6 is to be explained as a part of a well-ordered plan in which his own

1 Thus John 12 : 30 : I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me ; Luke 13 : 29: They shall come from the east and the west and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. Cf. John 17 : 18, 20. It cannot escape notice that Wendt's position depends largely upon his belief that Jesus expected that the kingdom would be com- pletely established during the lifetime of his own generation. Teaching o/Jtsus, II,

345-

Matt. 7:13, 14. 3 Matt. 24:34. * Matt. 24:36. s Matt. 28:19.

Edessa, and Jesus, though undoubtedly apocryphal, expresses correctly, perhaps through
 * John 12:20-32. The well-known correspondence between Abgarus, king of