Matthew records that when his disciples asked Christ Jesus to explain to them the parable of the tares and wheat, "He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom" (13:37, 38). And then he spoke to them not of countries or races which might have a better claim than some others to the harvest of good, but of human beings everywhere. The universal presence and availability of "the good seed" of truth, like brotherly love, are fundamentals of his teachings.
The Master spoke of the kingdom not as a national or political entity but as a state of consciousness wherein, the tares of evil having been uprooted and burned, only good is garnered. This kingdom, he clearly implied, is open to the world's people.
It is significant that while Jesus, like other educated Jews of that period, must have known something of the far reaches of the Roman Empire, of the people of Greece, Assyria, Persia, perhaps of India, and of the teeming millions of North Africa, he himself was in his own time totally unknown beyond the towns and villages where he walked—a narrow strip of land barely a hundred and fifty miles long —and he must have known that too. Yet his love included all mankind, for did he not command his disciples (Mark 16:15), "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature"?
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