There is another point brought out in this later ministry; Christ does not look forward to ultimate visible success in the way of making converts. No hope is held out of the whole world being eventually won over to allegiance—of a spiritual conquest, any more than of a material one—“Howbeit,” says He—and who would have said this but Christ?—“when the Son of man cometh shall he find Faith upon the earth?” No other than Christ ever dared to tell his followers, not only that their Master would be put to death, and they themselves ill used, but also that it was very doubtful whether their cause, as far as visible appearances went, would finally prevail. With Christ indeed as with God, there is no speaking of such a thing as either failure or success at all; He moves steadily onward toward the development of the Design of the World. But this men do not easily perceive; adversaries of the Faith are apt to say “If this religion were of God, the world would have been compelled to accept it.” But of what good could such acceptance have been? Christianity is not a project of God, which it gratifies Him for men to be made to fall in with. Christ views His word as a winnowing fan sorting out those who are God’s, that they may be brought to that knowledge of Him in which eternal life resides. At some epochs of the world’s history, the yield will be rich and at others poor; and although Christ may come at a moment when the wheat is almost lost in the abundance of the chaff; nevertheless the grain of earlier harvests will have been sifted out and garnered in heaven, and Christ’s work will have accomplished its end. But besides sifting out those who could be educated to eternal life, it is by Christ’s words and work that the world has been preserved such that Holiness can grow in it; without this it might have perished of evil. Wickedness might have so got the Mastery that the world could not have served its purpose as an exercise ground for man’s capacity for reaching the knowledge of God. The whole scheme of Christ’s action is made complete by the promise, “I am with you always until the end of the world.” Not only is it in virtue of this truth that the Church is a living organism, and not merely a body dispensing doctrines or following directions which have been received once for all, but I also see the fulfilment of this promise in the alacrity and vigour which characterised the Apostles’ work. They must have felt that they were something more than a society of men held together by love for a lost Leader; and I cannot explain how the eleven held together, and subordinated every personal care to their Master’s glory;—I cannot account for this personal transformation of them, _everyone_,—except by supposing them animated by the feeling that Christ was among them still.