Observe that His words are not a declaration that all mankind are His
sheep. The previous verses have distinctly defined a class of men as
possessing the name, and the succeeding ones reiterate the definition,
and with equal distinctness exclude another class. 'Ye believe not,
because ye are not My sheep as I said unto you.' His sheep are they who
know Him and are known of Him. Between Him and them there is a
communion of love, a union of life, and a consequent reciprocal
knowledge, which transcends the closest intimacies of earthly life, and
finds its only analogue in that deep and mysterious oneness which
subsists between the Father, who alone knoweth the Son, and the only
begotten Son, who being ever in the bosom of the Father, alone knoweth
Him and revealeth Him to us. 'I know My sheep and am known of Mine; as
the Father knoweth Me and I know the Father. They hear My voice and
follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life.' Such are the
characteristics of that relation between Christ and men by which they
become His sheep. It is such souls as these whom our Lord beholds in
the wasteful wilderness. He is speaking not of a relation which all men
bear to Him by virtue of their creation, but of one which _they_ bear
to Him who believe in His name.
Now this interpretation of the words does by no means contradict, but
rather presupposes and rests upon the truth that all mankind come
within the love of the divine heart, that He died for all, that all may
be the subjects of His mediatorial kingdom, recipients of the offered
mercy of God in Christ, and committed to the stewardship of the
missionary Church. Resting upon these truths, the words of our text
advance a step further and contemplate those who 'shall hereafter
believe on Me.' Whether they be few or many is not the matter in hand.
Whether at any future time they shall include all the dwellers upon
earth is not the matter in hand. That every soul of man is included in
the adaptation and intention and offer of the Gospel is not the matter
in hand. But this is the matter in hand, that Jesus Christ in that
moment of lofty elevation when He looked onwards to giving His life for
the sheep, looked outwards also, far afield, and saw in every nation
and people souls that He knew were His, and would one day know Him, and
be led by Him 'in green pastures and beside still waters.'
But where or what were they when He spoke? He does not mean that
already they had heard His voice and were following His steps, and knew
His love, and had received eternal life at His hand. This He cannot
mean, for the plain reason that He goes on to speak of His 'bringing'
them and of their 'hearing,' a work yet to be done. It can only be,
then, that He speaks of them thus in the fullness of that divine
knowledge which 'calls things that are not as though they were.' It is
then a prophetic word which He speaks here.
We have only to think of the condition of the civilised heathendom of
Christ's own day in order to feel the force of our text in its primary
application. While the work of salvation was being prepared for the
world in the life and death of our Lord, the world was being prepared
for the tidings of salvation. Everywhere men were losing their faith in
their idols, and longing for some deliverer. Some had become weary of
the hollowness of philosophical speculation, and, like Pilate, were
asking 'What is truth?' whilst, unlike Him, they waited for an answer,
and will believe it when it comes from the lips of the Incarnate
wisdom. Such were the Magi who were led by their starry science to His
cradle, and went back to the depths of the Eastern lands with a better
light than had guided them thither. Such were not a few of the early
Christian converts, who had long been seeking hopelessly for goodly
pearls, and had so been learning to know the worth of the One when it
was offered to them. There were men who had been long sickening with
despair amidst the rottenness of decaying mythologies and corrupting
morals, and longing for some breath from heaven to blow health to
themselves and to the world, and had so been learning to welcome 'the
rushing mighty wind' when it came in power. There were simple souls,
without as well as within the chosen people, waiting for the
Consolation, though they knew not whence it was to come. There were
many who had already learned to believe that 'salvation is of the
Jews,' though they had still to learn that salvation is in Jesus. Such
were that Aethiopian statesman who was poring over Isaiah when Philip
joined him, the Roman centurion at Caesarea whose prayers and alms came
up with acceptance before God, these Greeks of the West who came to His
cross as the Eastern sages to His cradle, and were in Christ's eyes the
advance guard and first scattered harbingers of the flocks who should
come flying for refuge to Him lifted on the Cross, 'like doves to their
windows.' The whole world showed that the fullness of time had come;
and the history of the early years of the Church reveals in how many
souls the process of preparation had been silently going on. It was
like the flush of early spring, when all the buds that had been
maturing and swelling in the cold, burst, and the tender flowers that
had been reaching upwards to the surface in all the hard winter laugh
out in beauty, and a green veil covers all the hedges at the first
flash of the April sun.
Not only these were in our Lord's thoughts when He saw His sheep in
heathen lands. There were many who had no such previous preparation,
but were plunged in all the darkness, nor knew that it was dark. Not
only those wearied of idolatry, and dissatisfied with creeds outworn,
but the barbarous people of Illyricum, the profligates of Corinth, hard
rude men like the jailer at Philippi, and many more were before His
penetrating eye. He who sees beneath the surface, and beyond the
present, beholds His sheep where men can only see wolves. He sees an
Apostle in the blaspheming Saul, a teacher for all generations in the
African Augustine while yet a sensualist and a Manichee, a reformer in
the eager monk Luther, a poet-evangelist in the tinker Bunyan. He sees
the future saint in the present sinner, the angel's wings budding on
many a shoulder where the world's burdens lie heavy, and the new name
written on many a forehead that as yet bears but the mark of the beast,
and the number of His name.
And the sheep whom He sees while He speaks are not only the men of that
generation. These mighty words are world-wide and world-lasting. The
whole of the ages are in His mind. All nations are gathered before His
prophetic vision, even as they shall one day be gathered before His
judgment throne, and in all the countless mass His hand touches and His
love clasps those who to the very end of time shall come to His call
with loving faith, shall follow His steps with glad obedience.
Thus does Christ look out upon the world that lay beyond the fold. I
cannot stay to do more than refer in passing to the spirit which the
words of our text breathe. There is the lofty consciousness that He is
the Leader and Guide, the Friend and Helper of all, that He stands
solitary in His power to bless. There is the full confidence that the
earth is His to its uttermost border. There is the clear vision of the
sorrowful condition of these heathen people, without a shepherd and
without a fold, wandering on every high mountain and dying in every
thirsty land where there is no water. There are the tenderest pity and
yearning love for them in their extremity. There is the clear assurance
that they will come and be blessed in Him. I pass by all the other
thoughts, which naturally found themselves on these words, in order to
urge the one which is most appropriate to our present engagement. Let
us, dear brethren, take Christ as our pattern in our contemplations of
the heathen world.
He has set us the example of an outgoing look directed far beyond the
limits of the existing churches, far beyond the point of present
achievement. We are but too apt to circumscribe our operative thoughts
and our warm sympathies within the circle of our sight, or of our own
personal associations. Our selfishness and our indolence affect the
objects of our contemplations quite as much as they do the character of
our work. They vitiate both, by making ourselves the great object of
both, and by weakening the force of both in a ratio that increases
rapidly with the increasing distance from that favourite centre. It is
but a subtle form of the same disease which keeps our thoughts penned
within the bounds of any fold, or limited by the progress already
achieved. For us the whole world is the possession of our Lord, who has
died to redeem us. By us the whole ought to be contemplated with that
same spirit of prophetic confidence which filled Him when He said,
'Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.' To press onwards,
'forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth to those
which are before,' is the only fitting attitude for Christian men,
either in regard to the gradual purifying of their own characters, or
in regard to the gradual winning of the world for Christ. We ought to
make all past successes stepping-stones to nobler things. The true use
of the present is to reach up from it to a loftier future. The distance
beckons; well for us if it do not beckon us in vain. We have yet to
learn the first lesson of our Master's spirit, as expressed in these
words, if we have not become familiar with the pitying contemplation of
the wastes beyond the fold, nor fixed deep in our minds the faith that
the amplitude of its walls will have to be widened with growing years
till it fills the world. The cry echoes to us from of old, 'Lengthen
thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes, for thou shalt break forth on the
right hand and on the left.' We take the first step to respond to the
summons when we make the 'regions beyond' one of the standing subjects
of our devout thoughts, and take heed of supposing that the Church as
we know it, has the same measurement which the man with the golden rod
has measured for the eternal courts of Jerusalem, that shall be the joy
of the whole earth. The very genius of the Gospel is aspiring. It is
content with nothing short of universality for the sweep, and eternity
for the duration, and absolute completeness for the measure, of its
bestowments on man. We should be like men on a voyage of discovery,
whose task is felt to be incomplete until headland after headland that
fades in the dim distance has been rounded and surveyed, and the flag
of our country planted upon it. After each has been passed another
arises from the water, onwards we must go. There is no pause for our
thoughts, none for our sympathy, none for our work, till our keels have
visited, and the 'shout of a King' has been heard on every shore that
fills 'the breadth of Thy land, O Emmanuel!' The limits of the visible
community of Christ's Church to-day are far within the borders to which
it must one day stretch. It is for us, taught by His words, to
understand that we are yet as it were but encamped by Jericho, and at
the beginning of the campaign. Ai and Bethhoron, and many a fight more
are before us yet. The camp of the invaders, when they lay around the
city of palm-trees, with the mountains in front and the Jordan behind,
was not more unlike the settled order of the nation when it filled the
land, than the ranks of Christ's army to-day are to the mighty
multitudes that shall one day name His name, and follow His banner. Let
us live in the future, and lay strongly hold on the distant; for both
are our Lord's, and by so doing we shall the better do our Master's
work in the present, and at hand.
He has set us the example of a _penetrating_ gaze into heathenism,
which reveals beneath its monotonous miseries, the souls that are His.
We ought to look on every field of Christian effort with the assurance
that in it there are some who will hear His voice. As it was when He
came, so it is ever and everywhere. The world is being prepared for the
Gospel. In some broad regions, faith in idolatry is dying out, and the
moral condition of the people is undergoing a slow elevation.
Individuals are being weaned from their gods, they know not how, and
they will not know why till they hear of Christ. He sees in every land
where the Gospel is being taken 'a people prepared for the Lord.' He
sees the gold gleaming in the crevices of the caves, the gems, rough
and unpolished, lying in the matrix. He looks not merely on the great
mass of idolaters, but He sees the single souls who shall hear. It is
for us to look on the same mass with confidence caught from His.
Neither apathetic indifference nor faint-hearted doubt should be
permitted to weaken our hands. The prospect may seem very dark, the
power of the enemy very great, our resources very inadequate; but let
us look with Christ's eye, we shall know that everywhere we may hope to
find a response to our message. Who they may be, we know not. How many
they may be, we know not. How they may be guided by Him, they know not.
But He knows all. We may know that they are there. And as we cannot
tell who they are but only that they are, we are bound to cherish hopes
for all—the most degraded and outcast of our race. We have no right to
give up any field or any man as hopeless. Christ's sheep will be found
coming out of the midst of wolves and goats. Darkness may cover the
earth, and gross darkness the people; but if we look upon it as Christ
did, and as He would have us to look, we shall see lights flickering
here and there in the obscurity, which shall burst out into a blaze.
The prophetic eye, the boundlessly hopeful heart, the strong confidence
that in every land where He is preached there will be those who shall
hear—these are what He gives us when He says, 'Other sheep I have,
which are not of this fold.'
There is one other thought connected with these words which may be
briefly referred to. It is that even now, in all lands where the Gospel
has been preached, there are those whom Christ has received, although
they have no connection with His visible Church.
There are many goats within the fold. There are many sheep without it.
Even in lands where the Gospel has long been preached, we do not
venture to identify profession by Church fellowship with living union
with Christ. Much more is this true of our missionary efforts, and the
apparent converts whom they make. The results that appear are no
measure of the results that have actually been accomplished. We often
hear of men who had caught up some stray word in a Bengali
market-place, or received a tract by the roadside from some passing
missionary, and who, having carried away the seed in their hearts, had
long been living as Christians remote from all churches and unknown by
any. We can easily conceive that timidity in some cases, and distance
in others, swell the ranks of these secret disciples. Though they
follow not the footsteps of the flock, the Shepherd will lead them in
their solitude. There will be many more names in the Lamb's book of
life, depend upon it, than ever are written on the roll-calls of our
churches, or in missionary statistics. The shooting-stars that yearly
fill our sky are visible to us for a moment, when their orbit passes
into the lighted heavens, and then they disappear in the shadow of the
earth. But astronomers tell us that they are always there though to us
they seem to blaze but for a moment. We cannot see them, but they move
on their darkling path and have a sun round which they circle. So be
sure that in many heathen lands there are believing souls, seen by us
but for an instant and then lost, who yet fill their unseen place, and
move obedient round the Sun of Righteousness. Their names on earth are
dark, but when the manifestation of the sons of God shall come, they
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for
ever and ever. Our work has results beyond our knowledge now. When the
Church, the Lamb's wife, shall lift up her eyes at the end of the days,
prophecy tells us that she shall wonder to see her thronging children,
whom she had never known till then, and will say, 'Who hath begotten me
these? Behold I was left alone. These, where had they been?' These were
God's hidden ones, nourished and brought up beyond the pale of the
outward Church, but brought at last to share her triumph, and to abide
at her side. 'Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.'
What confidence then, what tender pity, what hope should fill our minds
when we look on the heathen world! We must never be contented with
present achievements. We are committed to a task which cannot end till
all the world hears the joyful sound and is blessed by walking in the
light of His countenance. When the great Roman Catholic missionary, the
Apostle of the East, was lying on his dying bed among the barbarous
people whom he loved, his passing spirit was busy about his work, and,
even in the article of death, while the glazing eye saw no more clearly
and the ashen lips had begun to stiffen into eternal silence, visions
of further conquests flashed before him, and his last word was
'Amplius'—_Onward_! It ought to be the motto of the missionary work of
us, who boast a purer faith, to carry to the heathen and to fire our
own souls. If ever we are tempted to repose, to despondency, to rest
and be thankful when we number up our work and our converts, let us
listen to His voice as it speaks in that supreme hour when He beheld
the vision of the Cross, and beyond it that of a gathered world: 'Other
sheep I have, which are not of this fold.'