G. Campbell Morgan

The Missionary Manifesto: G. Campbell Morgan

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ...ideal. With inimitable skill Luke, in the earlier parts of his treatise, portrayed the perfection of his Master. This portrayal proceeds along the natural line of development, as it presents first the physical in the story of the birth; and then proceeds to record what no other evangelist refers to, the mental development as manifest in what to-day we should describe as the period of adolescence; finally telling of how, in the fullness of manhood, the essential spiritual life came to its perfection for service by the mystic anointing of the Holy Spirit. Beyond that, he shows how that perfect Personality was vocationally perfected through processes of temptation, and teaching, until it reached the crowning glory of the transfiguration mount. The vision of Jesus on the mount of transfiguration is that of the fulfillment of the highest and richest conceptions of Greek idealism. The story, however, is not finished. Luke has now to tell how, to the amazement of lovers and friends, He turned His back upon that mountain height, and passing through the valley of suffering, set His face towards the Cross which, as Paul the friend of Luke declared, was to the Greek foolishness. To the Greek it must indeed have been unutterable foolishness, for the Cross spoiled the individual perfection, and broke as into a thousand fragments the great ideal. As imaginatively I watch Luke at his work, I seem to see him with growing wonder setting forth the developing perfection of this Man, until all the highest and best of that system of philosophy in which he had been trained was fulfilled before his eyes in the radiant splendour of the crowned humanity on the holy mount. Then I seem to see him amazed and perplexed as he follows the history until he sees the beauty...