The Surprise of the Righteous.
I. The special peculiarity of the persons of whom our Lord here speaks, is that they did not know, that they had no suspicion, that in showing kindness to men, they were showing kindness to Christ. "Lord," they answer, "when saw we Thee?" It is a revelation to them, in the strictest and deepest sense of the word. A revelation, that is an unveiling, a drawing away of a veil which was before their eyes, and hiding from them a Divine and most blessed fact, of which they had been unaware. But who are they? I think we must agree with some of the best commentators, that they are persons who, till the day of judgment, have never heard of Christ; but who then, for the first time, as Dean Alford says, "are overwhelmed with the sight of the grace which has been working in upon them and the glory which is now their blessed portion."
II. If this be the true meaning of our Lord's words, what comfort and hope they may give us, when we think, as we are bound to think, if we have a true humanity in us, of the hundreds of millions of heathens now alive, and of the thousands of millions of heathens who have lived and died! Sinful they are as a whole. Sinning, it may be without law, but perishing without law. For the wages of sin are death, and can be nothing else. But may not Christ have His elect among them? May not His Spirit be working in some of them? They are Christ's lost sheep, but they are still His sheep who hear His voice. May He not fulfil His own words to them, and go forth and seek such souls, and lay them on His shoulder and bring them home, saying to His Church on earth, and to His Church in heaven: "Rejoice with Me; for I have found My sheep which was lost"?
III. How shall we know Christ's sheep when we see them? How, but by the very test which Christ has laid down, it seems to me, in this very parable? Is there in one of them the high instincts even the desire to do a merciful act? Let us watch for that: and when in the most brutal man or woman we see any touch of nobleness, justice, benevolence, pity, tenderness in one word, any touch, however momentary, of unselfishness let us spring at that, knowing that there is the soul we seek; there is a lost sheep of Christ; there is Christ Himself; working unknown upon a human soul; there is a soul ready for the Gospel, and not far from the kingdom of God.
C. Kingsley, All Saints' Day and Other Sermons,p. 347.