our Lord is in this sense actually 'Lord of lords and King of kings.' The Cross already stands above the Crown. But authority 'in heaven,' in that unseen and eternal order which is altogether beyond human knowledge or control, is another matter; yet this also is claimed by the risen Christ. It is the unique reward of His unique victory over sin and death that all spiritual powers, no less than those which move the phenomenal world, are put under His feet. At the beginning of His ministry the Tempter had shewn Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and promised to give Him all if He would do homage to Evil.1 And now, at the end of His career, He has gained all these and infinitely more by His refusal. The Father, whom He obeyed ! even unto death, has set Him far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.2

But what is the purpose for which the Lord speaks on this occasion of His immense authority? The next words explain: Go ye therefore and disciple all the nations. The Eleven are to be sent on an oecumenical mission, and they must know that they have behind them an authority

1 Mt. iv. 9. Cf. H. J. C. Knight, The Temptation, p. 112 ff. 2 Eph. i. 21; cf. Phil. ii. 9 ff., Col. i. 16, 20, ii. 10.

which is oecumenical. Their mission, although fulfilled on earth, will deal with things belonging to the unseen order, and they must know that they have been sent by One who has authority in heaven as well as on earth. For both needs the Lord's great saying provides.

On Easter night the Lord had already entrusted them with a mission to which were attached spiritual powers: As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you . . . receive ye the Holy Ghost. But whither was He sending them? When they were sent into the towns and villages of Galilee their commission ran, Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.1 But now this restriction is not only taken off, but the original precept is almost reversed; they are sent not to Israel, but to all the nations, the heathen nations, of the world. The contrast between the two commands is as great as possible; and the postResurrection charge is 'thrown into brilliant relief.' Yet there is no inconsistency. The barriers imposed by the Lord at the first sending of the Twelve were temporary; the full tide of spiritual life which came

1 Mt. x. 5.

2 πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, not perhaps excluding the λαός, but certainly emphasizing the Gentile world as the chief scene of the Church's future work. Contrast Lc. ii. 32.

in with the Resurrection has swept them away; universal authority is now in the hands of Jesus Christ, and with it has come the universal mission of His Church. The Eleven, it need scarcely be said, must have failed to grasp the full meaning of their new commission at the time when it was given. Then and for years afterwards a mission to the Gentiles could only mean to them a mission to bring the nations into the fold of Judaism by preaching the faith of Jesus the Messiah. It may be doubted whether the original Apostolate, with a few exceptions, ever fully understood either the words of Christ on the Galilean hills or even such events as the vision of S. Peter and the call and preaching of S. Paul. Nevertheless, the greatest saying of the risen Lord season. From the first it of the future Church, and it missionary work from the first twentieth. To-day, in the yearly ties of intercourse between the world, we hear afresh the call, the nations.

bore fruit in due outlined the policy has inspired all her century to the increasing facilipeoples of the Go, disciple1 all

The Lord adds his directions how this is to be done. First by baptizing them. John the Forerunner had made disciples in this way, and the early

1 1μаlηтEÚσатE: а Matthaean word (xiii. 52, xxvii. 57, xxviii. 19), but occurring also once in the Acts (xiv. 21).

disciples of Jesus had followed his example,1 but apparently only for a short time, and in Judaea : in Galilee a disciple of Jesus seems to have been known only by his personal attendance on the Master. Such attendance was now impracticable, for the Lord was withdrawing Himself from the visible world. The great oecumenical society, the Catholic Church which was to embrace all nations, needed some note of discipleship which was universally applicable, and Baptism was such a note, and was already familiar to the Eleven in this light. So Baptism was revived, and made the first sacrament of the new order. But Jesus never simply continues the old; in the very act of reviving it, He invests it with new powers, the powers of the world to come. His Baptism is to be not simply a Baptism of repentance, but a Baptism into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.2

These last words have commonly been regarded as a form prescribed by Christ for use in the act of baptizing, and they have been used in this

1Jo. iv. I.

2 Because Eusebius of Caesarea in quoting Mt. xxviii. 19 often omits or varies these words, it has been recently conjectured that they were an early interpolation into the saying of Christ. But the conjecture has no support from MSS. or versions of the N.T. or from other patristic writers. The whole question is discussed by Bp. Chase in the Journal of Theological Studies, vi. p. 131 fi.

way by the Church from the second century.1 But there is no evidence that they were so understood from the first; certainly there is no reference to them in any of the references to the administration of Christian Baptism which are found in the Acts and Epistles. Men are said to have been | baptized into the name of Lord Jesus, or into Christ, and not into the Name of the Three. Well advised as the Church has doubtless been in adopting the very words of Christ as the formula of Christian Baptism, it is probable that they were spoken with the more important purpose of investing Baptism with a significance which did not belong to earlier rites. The essence of Christian Baptism, according to this saying, is that it introduces men into a mystical relation to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and marks them as consecrated to the service of the Three, as being in some high sense identified with the Three to whom henceforth they belong. This is to us a

1See Didache, 7; Justin, Apol. i. 61; Tertullian, de baptismo, 6. 2 Acts. ii. 38, viii. 16, x. 48, xix. 5.

Rom. vi. 3, Gal. iii. 27.

In such a phrase the name is not the mere title by which a person is known, but rather the person himself, so that baptism into the name of the Three is a dedication to Their use and ownership. See Deissmann (Bible Studies, p. 146 f., 197 ff.), who quotes from the papyri the phrase ἔντευξις εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ βασιλέως, α petition to the king's majesty.