!S^Si&-!S^\iN»!«:*iSiNS!S>& 'MX PRINCETON, N. J. Shelf.... BS 2615 .L25 Lang, John Marshall, 1834- 1909. The last supper of our Lord "She Dau0choll) l^ibniru of €.\'pasition. "The design of the Household Library of Exposition lias our heartiest sympathy." — C. //. Spurgcon. "Promises to render important aid to the teacher and preacher no less than to the general Christian reader." — Christian. "Small volumes, convenient in size and price, in which are embodied the matured thoughts and the results of the careful reading of some of our most eminent preachers will, we cannot but think, be hailed by numbers of Christian families as meeting a distinct want. They are practical and devotional — not critical — and are admirably adapted for quiet reading. They are companions which the devout man may enjoy anywhere ; they are suited for the closet, and they will be useful also for family reading." — Congregational ist. "The Household Library of Exposition was a happy thought, and as volume after volume passes into our hands, we find that the realisa- tion of the thought is being fully and adequately wrought out." — Daily Kevieio. "Admirable, timely, and useful series." — Literary IForlJ. NO IV READY. THE LIFE OF DAVID AS REFLECTED IN HIS PSALMS. By the Rev. Alexander AL\claren, D.D., Manchester. Fourtli Edition. Three Shillings and Sixpence. k\:)k\A, NOAH, AND ABRAHAM: Readings in the Book of Genesis. By the Rev. Joseph Parker, D.D. , London. Author of " Ecce Deus, " &c. Second Edition. Three Shillings. \'^kkC:., JACOB, AND JOSEPH. By the Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D., Glasgow. Third Edition. Three Shillings and Sixpence. THE LAST SUPPER OF OUR LORD. By the Rev. J. Marshall Lang, D.D., Glasgow. Three Shillings and Sixpence. Ihc f}oxi5tholl) fibvart) of fopositiou. IX PREPARATION. THE TWELVE AND THE SEVENTY. By the Rev. A. B. Gkosart, LL. I)., Blackburn. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF HAPPINESS. By the Rev. Professor A. B. Bruce, D. D., Glasgow. THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. By the Rev. ^Lvrcls Dods, D.D., Glasgow. THE SEVEN WORDS ON THE CROSS. By the Rev. Alexander Maclarex, D.D., Manchester. THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD. By the Rev. Professor Lai dlaw, D.D., Edinburgh. THE TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. By the Rev. G. S. Barrett, B.A., Norwich. THE LORD'S PRAYER. By the Rev. Charles Stanford, D.D., London. The following Authors are also expected to contribute to the Series : — The Rev. HENRY ALLON, D.D., London. The Rev. J. OSWALD DYKES, D.D., London. ■ The Rev. DONALD ERASER, D.D., London. The Rev. Professor GRAHAM, D.D., London. The Rev. J. GUINESS ROGERS, B.A., London. The Rev. ADOLPH SAPHIR, D.D., London. The Rev, W. FLEMING STEVENSON, D.D., Dublin. EDINBURGH : MACNIVEN & WALLACE, 144 PRINCES STREET. Zbc Iboueebolb Xibrav^ ot lEyposition. THE LAST SUPPER OF OUR LORD. '""^^^^^ THE LAST SUPPER OF OUR LORD HIS WORDS OF CONSOLATION TO THE DISCIPLES BY J. MARSHALL LANG, D.D. MINISTER OF THR BARONY PARISH. GLASGOW. NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO. ^ PRUT 01]^;. / hiiC. iV!AB1882 ^ ■ • .' • . .-'V • 'i - CONTENTS. CHAP. I. THE FAREWELL TO THE WORLD . n. THE SUPPER— PREPARATIONS in. THE SUPPER— FIRST WORDS IV. THE WASHING OF THE FEET V. THE BETRAYER .... VI. THE WORD OF RELIEF . VII, THE BREAD AND THE CUP . VIII. THE LORD'S SUPPER IN HIS CHURCH IX. THE TABLE-TALK .... X. THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE XI. AN INTERRUPTION XII. THE REQUEST OF PHILIP . XIII. THE GREATER WORKS . 14 26 40 56 67 76 96 146 155 IV CONTENTS. .HAH. ' ■ ■ . 1 XIV. THE son's prayer AND THE FAIHER's <;iFT i66 XV. A FAREWELL GREETING . , . l8o XVL THE DLSCOURSE RESUMED — THE VINE AND THE 1!RANCHES . . . I92 XV n. CONFLICT AND HELP .... 207 XVI I L SORROW TURNED INTO JOY . . . 227 XIX. THE INTERCESSORY PRAYER . . 240 I 3881HVW 'O^'-J !' THE FAREWELL TO THE WORLD. St John xii. 31-50. " Before the feast of the Passover," the short but wonderful Hfe has been lived. Only three years of teaching and labour ! But if we "count time by heart-throbs," if we measure existence by the thought, the feeling, the action, com- pressed within it, what ages on ages do these three years represent ! The Evangelist, with a simplicity which appeals to the heart, closes his Gospel with the sentence, " There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books joim xxi 25. that should be written." It is to a very brief portion of this life — one night, only a part of that one night — that, in the following pages, our attention will be drawn. The night in which the fulness of the Saviour's love is poured forth and His deepest longing is told ! The part of that night which was spent in the upper room at Jerusalem, and on the way thence towards the brook Kedron ! We join the disciples at the Supper Table where the earthly- 2 THE FAREWELL TO THE WORLD. human fellowship of the Son of God with those who hear His voice is consummated, where also the cloud begins to receive Him out of their sight. Truly "the place whereon we stand is holy ; " let us seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit of Truth, of whom it is said, " He shall glorify me : for He shall receive of mine, and johnxvi. 14. shall shew it unto you." " Before the feast of the Passover " the last words of Jesus to the world were spoken. These words are set before us between the 35th and the 50th verses of the twelfth chapter of St John's Gospel ; St John interjecting an ex- planation, for which he claims divine authority, of the unbelief of the people. Solemn and weighty is the Farewell-testimony of the In- carnate Truth ! The verses which contain the testimony are regarded by many commentators, not as marking a discourse uttered at one time, but " as a summary of the Lord's teaching "^s^peakir's gathered up in view of the approaching crisis." I can scarcely reconcile the language of the 44th verse with this view. "Jesus cried and said " is suggestive to me, not of an epitome of many sayings scattered over a period, but of a distinct and definite speech. And I am disposed, there- fore, to look on the passage thus introduced as the concluding part of the address broken off towards the end of the 36th verse, to be reckoned Commen- tary," p. 187 THE FAREWELL TO THE WORLD. 3 among those things of which it is affirmed that when Jesus had spoken them, "He departed and did hide Himself." '«■• 36- Taken in this connection, the Valedictory- Discourse, with the interjected explanation of St John, invites the exercise of prayerful reflec- tion before we proceed to the more private self- revelation of Christ. Thus — in the consideration of warnings and exhortations which bid us ex- amine ourselves to know whether it is "our earnest desire to withstand all unbelief," and to keep His commandment which is life everlast- ing — shall we be prepared in some measure for nearer communion with our Lord in the trans- actions and conversations of His Holy Supper. The subject set before us is that Faith in Himself, which is Christ's first and last demand. Three points are suggested ; two by the par- enthesis of the Apostle, and the third by the words of Christ, viz. : — The Temperament ivJiicJi renders faith impos- sible. T/ie Inaction which involves the loss of faith. The Action by which faith is preserved and perfected. "Therefore they could not believe." Thever.39. sentence is a very strong one. It is a conclusion arrived at from the study of a scripture of Isaiah, " He hath blinded their eyes, and Cf. Isa. vi. 9, 4 THE FAREWELL TO THE WORLD. hardened their heart : that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their yen4o. heart, and be converted, and I should heal them." Let us apprehend the point of the Evangelist's sentence and the Prophet's Scripture. It is not, we may be assured, an arbitrary act of Divine sovereignty which is referred to in the clauses of the Old Testament saying. What that saying contemplates is a moral con- dition to which blindness and insensibility be- long as necessarily as darkness belongs to night. The Hebrews never conceived of — they knew nothing of — a mere mechanical law. They re- garded all law, all sequence, as a mode of God's power. And as, overlooking intermediate and subordinate causes, they spoke of Him as making day and night, as related directly and personally to all that is, so they spoke of Him as also caiLsing spiritual day and night. In the stolidity which is inevitable when the soul refuses the report of the messengers of God, and closes itself against the evidence of light, they beheld law ; and, beholding law, they discerned God. In the working of the law they did not hesitate to trace the action of God, to declare, " It is He who has blinded tlie eyes and hardened the heart." In point of fact, the blindness is because the necessary conditions of spiritual sight have been traversed. St John dwells much on cans and cannots. " The Son THE FAREWELL TO THE WORLD. 5 can do nothing of Himself, but what he seeth the ' Father ' do." " I can of mine own self do v. 19. nothing." That is, " it is the necessity of the v. 30. Divine Sonship to do all in perfect sympathy with and correspondence to the Father." And, again, as to Discipleship : " No man can come ^i- 4+- to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." " Except a man be born again, he Hi. 3. cannot see the Kingdom of God." In these and in other places the can and cannot have a moral significance. They refer to impossibilities which have their root in the presence or absence of certain inward states or dispositions. And similarly, the conld not of the passage before us implies the want of the disposition to believe, the operation of a spirit of mind which is wholly incompatible with a loyal and earnest trust in Jesus Christ. For example, the people, we are told, meet the Lord with the objection, " We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever : and how sayest thou. The Son of man must be lifted up .■' who is this Son of man .-' " Two difficulties have xii. 34. been raised in their minds by the saying, " I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." The one ; the law speaks of a king xii.sz. whose "dominion is an everlasting dominion." Yet Jesus speaks of being " lifted up from the earth." The other; Jesus assumes the title Son of Man, yet they knew the Messiah as the Son 6 THE FAREWELL TO THE WORLD. of David. Was then the Son of Man other than the Messiah ? If not other, if the same, why use the «., between 3 and 6 P.M., by the Levites before the altar of brass in the Temple, was received from the Priest with imposing ceremonial, and was borne to the place of assembly to be roasted in preparation for the evening. All the re- quirements of a becoming celebration of the rite would be attended to by those whom the Lord had commissioned. Very simple the supper to which He and His own sat down : only to the spiritual eye could it announce the over. THE SUPPER — PREPARATIONS. 2 7, " feast of fat things, of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined," which on mount Zion the Lord God isa. xxv. e. was preparing for all people, " Clirist our Passover " is ready. He knows that " the hour is come " — the hour for which He had come into the world. Loving hands have anointed His body for the burial. To His human soul the sign of the glorifying through sorrow has been given. As, at the birth, the men from the East came to offer gifts, so, on one of the busy days in the Temple, in the week which the Triumphal Entry ushered in, Greeks came from the West to prefigure, by their request, " We would see Jesus," the catho- stier, vol. 6, P- 78, 79- lie nature and blessings of His kingdom. That request, we are told, stirred the soul of Jesus with a strange emotion. First, solemnly tri- umphant, as conveying an intimation which others John xii. 23- could not discern that the sacrifice was due — (might not their desire have been expressed on the loth of the month, the day on which the unblemished one of the flock was chosen for the offering ?) — that, now, the seed must fall into the ground and die, and in death be quickened into the glory of the Resurrection. And, then, for an instant a shadow plays across the countenance : only to bring into fuller relief the consecration of the will. " Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say.'' Father save 24 THE SUPPER PREPARATIONS. me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name." Yes : it is finished — the witness-bearing, the manifestation of the kingdom of God. For one day He has waited in the deep seclusion of Bethany. There is no record of word or deed on the Wednesday before He suffered. A portion of its time, we may conceive, had been devoted to the instruction of His Apostles : the greater portion of it to conference with the Father, and the anointing of soul supplied through such conference. We seem to hear, rising from the quiet of the mountain village, the sentences of that 22nd Psalm which the voice from the cross proves to have been specially present to Him in His last time on the earth. " Be not far from me ; for trouble is near ; for there is none to help. Many bulls have compassed me about : strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and roaring lion. ... Be not Thou far from me, O Ps xxii. II- Lord : O my strength, haste Thee to help me." But the veil of an impenetrable secresy hides that day from our view. It was a Sabbath to the spirit of Christ, and "that Sabbath was a high day." The making ready of the anti-typal Passover involved another and a fearfully contrasting act. Early in the week, the Chief Priests and Scribes 19. THE SUPPER PREPARATIONS. 25 and Elders had resolved, by fair means or foul, Matt. xxvi. to get rid of their Judge and Condemner. The sooner the better : for every day the crowd of pilgrims increased, and who could answer for the commotion which might be excited? We can imagine the consultations in the dimly- lighted chamber — the partial light only bring- ing into more lurid relief the lines on the faces of the Counsellors. " They sought how they might kill him," says St Luke. Whether on Luke xxii. 2. the Tuesday or Wednesday does not appear : but their deliberations were cast into something like shape by the tidings that one of the twelve was ready to forward their guilty project. And we are informed of the satisfaction which lighted their countenances as they concluded the bargain with Judas Iscariot. Outside Ver. 5. Jerusalem, love is directing its prayer and looking up : in the House of Jehovah, hatred and malice are plotting the death, and thirsting for the blood, of the Innocent. But man in his hatred only prepares for God in His- love. Judas has secured the sacrifice of the Lamb that shall take away the sin of the world. " All things are noiv ready T " Whe?i the hour ivas come. He sat doiv}i, and the iivelve Apostles ivith Him" III. THE SUPPER — FIRST WORDS. St Luke xxii. 14. Probably before the time of our Lord the older ritual of the Paschal Supper had been modified — departed from at some points, and added to at others. The earlier attitude of standing with loins girt, shoes on feet, and staff in the hand had been superseded by the practice of reclin- ing, as was customary at meals, on small couches or cushions placed around the table. Otherwise, many petty observances had been introduced, the effect of which was to make the ceremonial more elaborate and stately. If the statements of the Mishna and the Talmud are to be relied upon as accurately representing the usage then existing, we are able to reproduce the procedure of such a company as that which A.D, 33 assembled in the guest-room of the unknown disciple at Jerusalem. We suppose that the ablutions preparatory to the celebration of a feast have been per- formed. The master of the family has seated himself on the central couch, the senior or the most honoured members of the party being next him. He raises a cup which had been filled THE SUPPER — FIRST WORDS. 1"] with the juice of the grape, blesses " the King of the universe who had created the fruit of the vine," drinks the cup in token that all should follow his example. This done, the hands of all are washed. Next, the door of the chamber opens, and a small table or tray is brought in on which are placed the bitter herbs, the un- leavened bread, the Paschal Lamb, the CJiagigaJi or appointed feast offering of the flock, and the sauce or cake so compressed as to resemble clay- in remembrance of the bitter toil of the Israelite in Egypt. Reverently the master raises his eye to heaven, blessing the name of the Eternal, and from the tray selects a herb — the company imitating the action — dips it in the sauce, and eats it. This done, he sets the smaller table aside, and recites the tale of the deliverance from the house of bondage, concluding with the pouring of wine into the cup. " What mean ye by this service.-*" interposes the youngest of the guests, and the master responds in prescribed liturgical form, beginning, " How different is this night from all other nights," and he bids the table again be set before him, and announces the meaning of the Passover ; first, expound- ing the symbolism of the bitter herbs, then, the symbolism of the unleavened bread ; and calling those present " to confess, to praise, to laud, to glorify, to honour, to extol, to magnify, and to ascribe victory to Him who did unto our 28 THE SUPPER FIRST WORDS. Fathers and unto us all these signs, and who brought us forth from bondage to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from darkness to marvellous light, and to say before Him, Halleluiah." In obedience to this command, the first part of the Hallel — the 113th and 114th Psalms — is sung. At its conclusion the cup which had previously been prepared is drunk. And again the hands are washed. Now begins the eating of the Passover, introduced by the breaking of two cakes Avith both hands, and pronouncing over them a formula of blessing. A small portion is given to each person, with the sentence, " This is the bread of affliction .which our fathers did eat in the land of Egypt," and each person eats, dipping the portion into the sauce. The partaking of the lamb is proceeded with, and the " children of the family " converse on the works of the Lord, and the "years of the ancient times." The last food tasted is the flesh of the lamb. And when all are satisfied, the third cup is elevated and blessed, and, repeating the same sentence, all drink together. The thanksgiving is prolonged — special reference being made to the covenant made with Abraham, and the Law which came by Moses. A fourth cup is filled, and high praise is rendered through the repeti- tion of Psalms, especially the 145th. When this cup is quaffed the feast is at an end. A fifth cup, preceded by the great Hallel— the 136th Psalm — may be taken, but the probabilities are THE SUPPER FIRST WORDS. 29 that it is not. With the singing of Hymns or parts of the Hallel, the master and his associates Kitto's exchange farewells, and quit the scene of their diar An^ holy assembly. Such was the etiquette of the supper which our Lord and His twelve Apostles celebrated. Whether all minutiae were adhered to we cannot say. But, connecting the narratives of the Evangelists with the account of the ceremonial with which the Rabbinical books supply us, there can be little doubt that, omitting perhaps mere petty ordinances, all that was necessary to the orderly observance of the meal was com- plied with. St Luke tells us of two cups, which we have little difficulty in distinguishing as the y^^.^ ^^^ ^o. first or introductory cup and the third or the cup of Benediction. We recognize the point in the order of the meal at which the breaking of bread occurred — the new formula " This is my body broken for you," taking the place of the old, " This is the bread of affliction." The washing of the feet seems to belong to the stage when, after the second cup, all washed : the strange thing being that the Lord washed the disciples, and not the hands but the feet. The Hymn sung before the departure to the mount Matt. xxvi. of Olives we identify as the customary parting ^°' act of praise. Enough, in short, is presented in the gospels to assure us that it was not a quasi, but a real Paschal meal to which Jesus sat down on the night of His betrayal. 30 THE SUPPER FIRST WORDS. But it is impossible exactly to harmonize the four testimonies, or to assign to each of the incidents related its precise place in the Pass- over ritual. The notices of the evening are very brief and fragmentary. That which the Synoptists are careful to record is the Institu- tion of the Holy Eucharist : but whether, with Matt.xxvi. 5t- Matthew and St Mark, we are to regard the 21. ' " Markxiv.18. announcement of the traitor as before, or with St Luke XXII. 21. Luke, as after, the Institution, or whether there were two announcements, the one before and the other after: when the strife related by St Luke as to which of the Apostles should be accounted the greatest occurred — at the beginning or in the middle of the feast, previous to, or subsequent to, the feet-washing mentioned alone by St John : the precise time of the feet washing : the precise time of the departure of Judas : the precise time of the warning to Simon : — these are points which, in consequence of our imperfect knowledge of all that happened, cannot abso- lutely be determined. Let us not insist that " every part shall be tesselated into one complete and consistent whole." That the attempt must be hopeless is an evidence of the inartistic construction of the gospels, and of the inde- pendence of the sacred Biographers. There is no straining after effect. There could have been no collusion between writers whose ac- counts, identical as to the main facts, are yet separate, almost different, as to their details. THE SUPPER FIRST WORDS. 3 I Premising therefore that only a probable out- line can be presented — an outline to which, at several points, exception may be taken by the reader, let us endeavour to recall and to con- sider the meaning of the transactions of the upper room in which Peter and John had made ready the supper. The soil gathered in the short journey from Bethany having been removed by the washing " with pure water," the Lord and His own have taken their seats. It is possible that the con- tention over the relative greatness of the twelve, or, as has been supposed, of the three, Peter, James, and John, may have been occasioned in connection with the question who should sit next the Master. I am disposed, however, to relegate this contention to a later period in the evening. I suppose that, without unseemly wrangling, all have bent down and are reclining in expectation of the introductory act. Every eye is fixed on Jesus. The cup which it is customary at once to fill is before Him. He fills it : but before raising it in His right hand. He looks to either side, the countenance beaming with the light of an unspeakable love, and utters the first word of the feast ; " With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with yo2i before I suffer : for I say iintoyoic I will not any more eat thereof until it be fulfilled in the Vers. 15, 16. kingdom of God!' 32 THE SUPPER FIRST WORDS. Thus the shepherd of the httle flock, the father of the family now convened, pours forth His heart. The saying is charged with intense emotion : — to say, I desire, were insufficient, the phrase employed is the emphatic, " ardently, vehemently have I desired." This Passover has been contemplated for many days — Ah ! shall we speak only of days .'* — and always as an event so significant, so fruitful of blessing, that the craving for it has overcome the shrinking of the sensitive soul from the im- mediately impending passion. The human heart has been ivearying for its hour of supreme rejoicing love, when it shall be free to abandon itself to communion with its brethren, un- restrained by the shadow of a hostile world, and to give them its best — the secret of its own peace and triumph. We cannot doubt that the longing for such fellowship and self-bestow- ment was an essential element in the ardour which, having for long been pent up as in a sealed fountain, now finds expression. We turn to this word as a consecration of all that is purest and loftiest in the brotherhood of men. It is the man Christ Jesus who craves to eat with His brother men. Even as, after- wards in Gethsemane He seeks the support of the chosen three, and articulates the dis- appointment of His soul when He finds them sleeping in the cry "What! could ye not watch Mark xxvi. with mc onc hour.'"' so in the prospect of suffering, 40. THE SUPPER FIRST WORDS. 33 of that baptism of blood for which His soul was straitened until it should be accomplished, He anticipates, feeds on the anticipation of, the strength which He should receive through the responsive love of those whom He had called to Himself He did not ask from them more than that they should receive Him, that they should open their souls to Him, that He should know that He had given the Father's word to them and they had trusted Him, and that He and they were one. All this is beautifully, unselfishly, human. And because it is so, I take it to be a mirror of the love of God. For the heart of God is human, and longs to find itself welcomed, understood, and responded to. Its delight is to eat with us, and when the door of thought is closed against its light, and the warmth of affection and the energy of will are withdrawn from its communion, the condemnation is, " I was an hungered, but you gave me no meat : I was thirsty, but you gave me no drink : I was a stranger, j/^« took me not in." Matt. xxv. But the first sentences of Jesus at the supper table are not a mere utterance of human tenderness : they are full of the purpose and " travail " of the Redeemer. " This Passover^' — why tliis ? why was the Passover distinctively present to his mind .? Why should it be a desire so strong to share this particular festival before He suffered .-' There was much indeed C 34 THE SUPPER — FIRST WORDS. which appealed to all that was heroic and national in the great annual festival. But there is an element in the longing of Christ above and beyond the feeling of the Israelite. It is the last Passover of the true spiritual Israel of God. His last, not simply because He must depart out of this world to the Father, but because His departure is the sign that with it the entire system of which the Passover was the crown must disappear. It was ready to vanish away. It was not to be lost. Nothing is lost. It is not God's way to destroy. He carries the bud on into the flower, the germ into the fruit, the child into the man, the shadow into the sub- stance : the one is done away because it is fulfilled in the other. And it is because the prophetic eye of Jesus sees the kingdom of God ; the real, true. Heavenly Commonwealth which all that was in the past typified, prepared for, had led up to ; the kingdom to be built on a New Testament in the blood of "the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world ;" the kingdom which is "righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost " ; because He sees this kingdom coming, yea, in that house at that moment, that the ardour of the spirit approaches the confines of impatience. He is looking to the feast of spiritual fellowship in which the heart of man shall eat, not the bread of affliction, but the bread of the Eternal Life. Pull in His view is the com- THE SUPPER — FIRST WORDS. 35 plete in-gathering of the "redeemed from all lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south," and "until this Ps. cvii. 3. last most blessed re-union and re-instatement of fellowship He takes farewell" of earthly siier, vii. 37. rite and ordinance. " / will not any niore eat thereof r — Nay; holding the cup in His hand. He cries, " Take this and divide it aino7ig your- selves. I have done with all cup-drinkings Ver. 17. which precede the cup of benediction to be shortly put into your hands. The time of the Re-formation has arrived. / will not drink of the fniit of the vine until the kingdom of God shall comer Ver. is. The sower of tares is never far behind the householder who sows the good seed. After the introductory words — at some point in the earlier portion of the feast — I insert the strife mentioned by St Luke. True, the account of the strife would seem to be connected with that of the questioning caused by the intimation that the hand of the betrayer was with the Lord on the Table. " They began to inquire among themselves ivhich of them it was that should do this thing. And there zuas also a j^r//^." Vers. 23, 2+. The contention might, with no violence to the probabilities of things, have arisen at the very time of the solemn impression which had been excited. Alas ! who of us does not know how 36 THE SUPPER FIRST WORDS. rapidly the mind slides from thought the most solemn into mere trivialities ! Nor could we deny that the protestations of the Disciples might, naturally enough, lead on to assertions of devotion, and from assertions of devotion to the urging of claims for the higher places in the expected kingdom. But, in his statement of the events of the Supper, St Luke does not aim at exact chronological sequence. His also may imply nothing more than that the dispute as to preeminence was one of the features of the evening. Now, there is an undoubted con- nection between the dispute and the feet-wash- ing. The language of the 27th verse proves this. Which of the two preceded the other } I think it on the whole more likely that the dispute preceded, and was the occasion of, the notable act of the Lord. In this case, we must transfer the occurrence to a point in the Supper previous to the institution of the Eucharist. When we study the thirteenth chapter of St John's Gospel, we can scarcely find space for the strife and the word with regard to it after Jesus had "taken his garments and was set down again." It is the old contention with which the Master Mark XX.20- had prcviously dealt: the contention, let it be said, as old as our sinful human nature. Are we not sometimes conscious of its shadow across our soul "> The "chief seats," the great positions THE SUPPER FIRST WORDS. T^'J — how men have wrangled for them, how men lust after them in their hearts even in holy- convocations and at holy seasons ! Perhaps, one of the number was dissatisfied at the place assigned to him at the table. Perhaps — a more probable explanation — the reference recently made to the coming Kingdom of God had aroused in the as yet carnal minds of the twelve the idea of dignities and ranks. So it is : they grow hot and eager over the question ''who should be accounted the greatest T ver 24. The controversy is observed by the Lord. My readers, when the mind is full of a holy thought, when the level of feeling is high, when the soul is aglow with some great and noble purpose, what can so irritate every finer sensi- bility as to realize, through the glance or speech of those with whom you are associated, not only that there is an imperfect appreciation of what most inspires you, but that their spirits are out of tune with yours and are influenced by things petty and earthly } What must it have been to Christ to listen to the murmurings — selfish and small — of the men over whom His heart was yearning in that hour of special and solemn con- ference ! How marvellously patient is the Son of God ! How gentle, withal how pungent. His reproof as He recalls the lines of His past exposure of the mistake which they committed, and brings them back to the truth of His king- 38 THE SUPPER — FIRST WORDS. dom as exemplified in Himself! As if His kingdom were some earthly principality, some tetrarchate like that of Herod, or even empire like that of Rome, in which lordships are exer- cised and sycophants extol potentates as bene- factors ! Had He not told them before ; must He tell them again, " Ye shall not be so, but he that is greatest among y oil let him be as the younger, and he that is chief as he that doth serve. For zvJiether is greater, he that sittetli at meat or he that serveth ? is not lie that sittetJi at meat ? But I am among Vers. s6, 27. yo2i as lie that servetJir Yes ! He is about to give such an enforce- ment of this lesson as His church shall never forget. Meanwhile — before he embodies His instruction in deed — He gives a gracious and encouraging message. In loving embrace He takes these foolish, slow-hearted Disciples again to His heart. Had they not accompanied Him during the past three years .'' Had they not trusted Him, even although they did not under- stand Him .'' In spite of hard sayings, of de- fections, of oppositions, had they not loyally clung to Him .-' He cannot forget this. In His own large and generous way, He must speak as if He were their debtor for all this faithfulness, for the child-like confidence which they had re- posed in Him. He will assure them of the true kingdom. He will declare to them the princi- THE SUPPER FIRST WORDS. 39 palities, the thrones which are awaiting them — thrones not such as they dreamt of, but better far; thrones in which they shall sit with Him as His assessors, judging the tribes of Israel : " in which, having become members of His body through the participation of His flesh and blood, in the power of His spirit and of His love they shall serve while they rule : " stjer, vol. " Ye are they who have continued with Me in My teinptatio7is, and I appoint tmto you a king- dom as My Father hath appointed unto Me. That ye may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the tzvelve tribes of Israel" Vers. 28-; IV. THE WASHING OF THE FEET. St John xiii. 1-16. " I am among you as he that seneth." Not, as might be supposed, when supper was ended ; rather, whilst supper is proceeding ; possibly, after the drinking of the second cup, when the custom was to wash the hands. Then Jesus gives the great sign of His kingdom, and, in so doing, enforces in a way never to be for- gotten His rebuke of all contentions about pre- cedences and dignities. The unadorned tale of the Evangelist is the evidence of the profound impression made by the event which he relates. He contrasts the real and essential glory of the Lord with the lowliness of the service He per- forms. Reading the third and fourth verses, we feel that the secret strain which His soul re- peats is that elsewhere expressed, " Behold what manner of love!" And the account of the action is such as only one who had been an eye witness could produce : it is so graphic and vivid in its minuteness that we see how every feature of the Lord and His work had been THE WASHING OF THE FEET. 4 1 photographed in the mind. The Scripture is this :— "//ig broken," — the same consciousness of the death as already a fact which appeared in the exclamation, " Now is the Son of Man glorified." The earlier speaks only of the Jlesh, the later speaks of "the body;'' and it is difficult to dissociate from the " body " the fuller new testa- ment conception of the Church as Christ's body — Himself being its head — so that the bread of the sacrament may be regarded as the repre- sentation of the whole Christ, Head and body, the unity formed and fulfilled in the sacrifice of the flesh. But the essential point of the teaching in the earlier sermon, which we transfer to our under- standing of the Eucharist, is that in it we are called, in a true although spiritual sense, to realise our part in, to eat and drink of, the body and blood of the Son of God. Every- thing connected with such a rite has its 94 THE BREAD AND THE CUP. value. We may note the change of tone in regard to its two parts. The one part is directly- related to " My body ; " the other, which was "after the Supper," is directly related to the new testament i7i the blood, not to the blood itself. The one points us to the seat and prin- ciple of all our nourishment in body and soul — we live out of, we live by, the humanity of the risen Christ ; the other reminds us of the position which we occupy, and calls us individually to realise its blessedness. "You who are feeding on Christ in your hearts with thanksgiving, drink ye all of the new testament in His blood." And what, my readers, is the pledge which, through the action He appoints, our Lord is giving us .'' Is it not that when, in obedience to Him, we do this, He makes our doing effectual to spiritual nourishment and growth in grace } By the co-operating power of the Holy Spirit, there is, simultaneously with the eating and ■ drinking of the sacramental mysteries, an eating and drinking of the truths which they represent, Christ, in His broken body, gives Himself anew to us; we appropriate anew our share in His testament with all its benefits. It is not an empty rite — not a mere, although touching, cere- mony — it is a transaction between Christ and us, the measure or proof of which is not our feeling of something, but His will to bestow, %vho is " able to do exceeding abundantly above all that THE BREAD AND THE CUP. 95 we ask or thinks I believe that the Lord's EpUesians table is indeed the communion table ; that it is the place and the manner of special communion, Christ with the life of man as well as the life of man with Christ. "We partake not now of a dead sacrifice, such as the Israelites ate, but of a living, the life and immortal communication of which was not attained to in the old covenant." "Stier," vii. This sacrifice is communicated to the Church "^' through the Supper of the Lord, and each person, in the membership of the Church, whose mouth is opened to receive and assimilate it is, in the Supper of the Lord, a communicant in this sacrifice. " Eat," " My flesh is meat indeed ; " "Drink," "My blood is drink indeed. As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me shall live by Me." J°''" "'• ^'=- An ordinance thus related to the person and work of Christ cannot but occupy a place of marked importance in the life and discipline of tJie Church. To define this place, as fore- shadowed in the institution and illustrated by Christian experience, will be the object of the following chapter. VIII. THE lord's supper IN HIS CHURCH. St John xiii. 33-35 ; St Matt. xxvi. 29 ; St Mark xiv. 25. "When ye come together. . . . to eat the Lord's Supper " — I Cor. xi. 20. To the first disciples the recollection of the evening in the upper room was enhanced and enforced by the recollection of appearances after the resurrection in which their Lord " was Lukexxiv. known of them in breaking of bread." When johnxxi. 13. the Holy Ghost brought "all things to their re- membrance," and taught them the meaning of these things, as embodied both in word and deed, the meal which had been instituted be- came the most prominent feature of their fellow- ship. In the course of time, there grew up around it conceptions which in part were borrowed from the heathen mystery, and in part were the expression of the sacrificial aspect of the Paschal Supper. And thus the notion of a sacrifice — not merely an " oblation of all pos- sible praise " to God, but a presentation, a repetition, of the offering made by Christ, gradually overshadowed and obscured the earlier THE LORDS SUPPER IN HIS CHURCH. 97 and purer ideas of memorial and communion. But no such notion confused the thought of Christians in the apostoHc period and in tlie century succeeding. Happy men ! They knew nothing of Eucharistic controversies ! Tliey were content to recall what their Master had said and done ; they felt — without needing to elaborate any system or doctrine on the subject — that the " cup of blessing which they blessed was the communion of the blood of Christ, and the bread which they broke was the communion of the body of Christ." i cor. xi. 16. A beautiful glimpse of the Christian com- munity in the first hour of morning is given in a passage from the book of the Acts of the Apostles previously alluded to. The " three thousand souls" added to the church on the day of Pentecost, " continued stedfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in break- i^^S of bread and in prayers." "And all that believed. . . . continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did cat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart." There can be little doubt Acts h. 42-46. that this eating of meat had a symbolic and sacramental character. Probably, a simple, social feast was held of which all shared, and in which, as its climax, there was the special re- membrance of Jesus in the blessing of the bread and the cup. How this would be done we are G 98 THE lord's supper IN HIS CHURCH. enabled to conceive from the description of the custom of the churches given by Justin, who was put to death about the year 165 A.D. " There is brought," he says, " to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mingled with water, and he, taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the Universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at His hands. And when He has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mingled with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and for those "First Apo- who are absent they carry away a portion." Uj^gy, cap. g^^j^j^ ^^,^g ^^Q practice in the assemblies of believers in the second century, when, in consequence of abuses which had occasioned scandal, the reception " of the food called the Eucharist" was disengaged from the meal in I Cor. xi. 21. which "every one took his own supper." In the beginning, when it was the crowning act of such a meal, the custom must have been even more simple than that sketched by the Christian Father. Taking a more general view of the ordinance, the inquiry awaiting our consideration is, What THE LORD S SUPPER IN HIS CHURCH. 99 has its appointment and observance secured for the life and discipline of the church ? A wide question, at only three sides of which we can glance ! It is the Ark of tJie Chiirclis Testimony. — "As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye do show, *or preach,' the Lord's death." There is i Cor. xi. 26. the central point of Christian truth — the person of Christ. There is the central position of Christian faith — the death of Christ as the basis of reconciliation with God and all spiritual blessing. There is the central privilege of Chris- tian fellowship — the proclaiming or preaching of that death. The Lord's Supper stands in the midst of Christendom the abiding witness for essential and everlasting verity. Is not this an unspeakable gain } Recollect, for instance, some of the tendencies of thought which have been manifest in successive ages ; and see how good it has been that the Lord has " lifted up a standard against the enemy coming in like a flood." isa. Hx-. 19. One of such tendencies is towards a kind of philosophical speculation whicJi uses historical fact only as a convenient symbol. In the early times, there were those who spiritualised Scripture to such an extent that the literal sense was "nothing accounted of;" on the words of Scripture was constructed an edifice of fan- lOO THE lord's supper IN HIS CHURCH- tastic creations, sometimes beautiful, sometimes really interpreting a hidden truth, but some- times also far-fetched, even " handling the word of God deceitfully." Against this school of allegorists, there remained ever the protest of a rite which had no meaning at all, unless the plain fact of Christ's death, with the history to which it belonged, was fully admitted. And so with regard to " the generation, O how lofty its eyes ! " who in these same times spun their fancies about the gnosis, the inner, recondite truth, to which only the initiated might attain, who developed what St Paul saw to be working in his day, " the profane and vain babblings " against which he warned the ministers of God. Let us not think that our age is, or any age can be, free from the peril of systems of thought which would separate religion from any special record of history. Indeed, that represents a marked feature in much of the culture of the day. The facts to which Christianity appeals are regarded as mere shapes in which religious ideas have taken form — shapes to be retained or set aside in proportion as their fitness is recognised by the mind. But, what is to be made of the rite which the immemorial use of the Christian Church has hallowed as the sign and seal of the Catholic faith 1 Turn where we may, it meets our view, and always it points to Jesus Christ, who was born, lived, THE LORD S SUPPER IN HIS CHURCH. lOI " suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, buried, and rose again on the third day." It insists on keeping the truth as it is in Jesus firmly rooted and grounded in the soil of sober history. From all intellectual wanderings, it draws the heart ever to the fire — ever to the cross and the death of the Lord. It is a law and testimony; if any speak not according to it, it is because the true Christian isa. viii. ^o. light is not in them. Another tendency fraught with danger is to substitute a mere religious morality for salvatioji from sin through the blood of Christ. The revolt of many minds from what is called " the blood theology " is undoubted. And it must be con- fessed that occasion for this revolt has, too often, been given by hard and harsh utterances as to the satisfaction of the eternal righteous- ness demanded from and yielded by the Redeemer. But who can say, remembering that of which all are invited to drink — "the new testament in my blood shed for many, for the remission of sins^' — that it is possible, consist- ently with its own claim, to reduce the new testa- ment of our Lord to an ethic, however pure and lofty ; to think of Him as only an example, however perfect, of obedience to the will of God and sympathy with men. So long as the Lord's Supper is exalted in the Church, it will be impossible to expel the conviction that there I02 THE LORDS SUPPER IN HIS CHURCH. is something in the death of Christ which the thought of an example cannot exhaust, some- thing more in His sufferings than the pain of the righteous, than even the pressure on a pure and unspotted heart of the consciousness of "our exceeding misery ;" that, beyond all this, in a region which we cannot penetrate, there was on the Cross made "a full, and perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, satisfaction, and oblation, for the sin of the whole world." It is enough to say this ; and, for the rest, to imitate the wise reticence of Bishop Butler — '^ How and in what particular way it had this efficacy there are not wanting persons who have endeavoured to explain, but I "Analogy," do not find that Scripture has explained it." partn.cap.5. ^j^^^ is the testimony of the Lord's Supper.^ Let me state it in the words of a prelate re- markable for his shrewdness — " If Christ had ■ been merely a martyr — the greatest of all martyrs — to the cause of divine truth, it would indeed have been natural that his death should have been in some vv^ay solemnly commemo- rated by the Church ; and perhaps by some symbolical commemoration of the deatJi itself; but not by the eating and drinking of the sym- bols of His body and blood. This would be an unmeaning and utterly absurd kind of ceremo- nial in celebrating a mere martyrdom, such as ^rhf Sacra- that of Stephen, for instance, or of any other ^oe"'*'" P' martyr however eminent," THE lord's supper IN HIS CHURCH. IO3 Thus, then, in eating the Lord's Supper we show the Lord's death ; we take our part in the preaching of the sermon " world without end," whose text is, "Jesus Christ and Him crucified." As the word of testimony was contained in the ark, so the word, the ministry of reconciliation, is contained in the ordinance which Christ ap- pointed on the night in which He was betrayed. The Lord's Supper is the sign of the one body, the expression and bond of Christian union. I do not suppose, as some thoughtful expositors have suggested, that the matter of the new command- ment recorded by St John was the institution of the Supper ; and that the latter part of the verse in his Gospel, " That ye love one another ; as I have loved yon^ that ye also love one another',' describes only the intention of, the john xiii. 34- purpose to be served by, the commandment, or the meal which Christ enjoined. This seems to me a forced and unnatural interpretation. The substance of the commandment, which is called nezv, is Love ; and that which makes it new is the measure now presented, the rule now given, the motive power now called into exercise. That men should love one another is a teaching of any and every form of natural piety : it is a law as old as human nature. But that men had not fulfilled this law, that the perception of its universal character had scarcely visited and r04 THE LORDS SUPPER IN HIS CHURCH. influenced human thought, is simply the teach- ing of history. A man as such was not accounted a brother. It was a virtue to hate the foreigner. The slave was the mere chattel of his master. The neighbour was a fact recognised only in so far as it was convenient to recognise him. What was wanting was that which Christ supplied — a standard to which the appeal of the heart was straight and direct; a centre of unity ; a spirit of life prompting irresistibly to love ; a fellowship which would educate the charity which " still enlarged as it receives the grace includes creation in its wide embrace " — " Even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." The " new commandment " is a word at once of the Father to His little children, and of the Master to His disciples. A word of the Father spoken in the prospect of being shortly separated from His own, of His going whither they cannot follow. In His absence. He reminds them that they shall find their solace and strength, they shall realise, too. His spiritual presence, in the warmth of a mutual love derived from and resembling His love to them. A luord of the Master, assuring them that their witness for Him, and their highest power on the world outside would be found, not in mighty works which should excite wonder and admiration, but in the silent, yet ever convincing action of THE lord's supper IN HIS CHURCH. IO5 love. " In this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another !' johnxiii.ss- So it was. We recall — we read with some- thing of mournful interest, because the expres- sion of the love is fainter in the Church of this day than it should be — we recall the words of the Christian apologist, in which he witnesses for the spirit of the Church before yet the third century of the Christian period had dawned, and exhibits the width of the interval by which the new commandment had separated it from the world. Addressing the rulers of the Roman Empire thus, he writes : — " It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See, they say, how they love one another, for themselves are animated by mutual hatred ; how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves will sooner put to death. And they are wroth with us, too, be- cause we call each other brethren, for no other reason, as I think, than because among them- selves names of consanguinity are assumed in mere pretence of affection. But we are your brethren as well, by the law of our common mother nature, though you are hardly men, because brothers so unkind." "TenuUian Now, in the ordinance of Christ's Supper all cus," par. 39. the essentials of the new commandment are presented. The commandment is the soul of the new testament in the Redeemer's blood of I06 THE lord's supper IN HIS CHURCH. which, in the cup, we drink. It is the life of the Life which we receive through the body, of which, in the bread, we sacramentally eat. More particularly, we may observe — In the commandment Christ does not bid His disciples love men as men. That was the end to which He looked forward, but, as the means to this end, He proposed a love, man to man, in and because of the love of men to Himself. It is to this love and loyalty that the Holy Supper calls us. What it asks is a supreme and con- stant devotion to Him. Creed, ritual, govern- ment — all are moved aside ; it is purely and only into the remembrance of Him that we " do this." In the commandment Christ speaks of the infusion of His own love, His own Self, into all thus loving Him and keeping His words. Their love is but the outward movement of His love in them, the manifestation of Himself as truly dwelling in them. The reality of the Holy Supper is this indwelling of Christ, this passing of His life into, that it may be assimilated by, the spiritual nature, as food is assimilated by the physical. In the consciousness of union with Him we may feel ourselves so possessed by His spirit that it is not the language of exaggeration to say, " I live ; yet not I, but Gal. ii. 20. Christ liveth in me." And, as each type of existence yields fruit after its kind, so this THE LORDS SUPPER IN HIS CHURCH. \Oj Divine eternal life has its natural organic ex- pression in a love to others, such as His love in us. In the new commandment, Christ implies the fact of a society, with a distinct corporate char- acter, whose members are bound to each other in a speciality of relation, in affections and sym- pathies of peculiar vitality and warmth. After- wards, in His prayer to the Father, He dwells on the truth of this communion, "I in them and Thou in Me, that they may be one in us." The Holy Supper is the token and pledge of this fellow- ship, "We being many are" declared to be "one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of j c^r. x. 17. that one bread." There is no feature more distinctive than this — that all Christians are members one of another, because they are all members of the one Christ. " Is Christ divided ? Yea, for us. The one white loaf He breaks ; But every piece is bread, and thus Of one strength each partakes." Nor do we limit this fellowship to those actually associated with us in the celebration of the meal ; not even to those who form Christ's family on earth. The Lord's table, wherever it is spread, is the gathering point for all the family. There the whole Church is together. A pity it is that the rite which we name the Covimuiiion should so often be regarded as a line of separation, rather than that in which ro8 THE lord's supper in his church. all lines of separation are obliterated, and we are borne into the midst of the One Body. Oh, my reader, shall we not seek deliverance from all that narrows the sense of the Com- munion of Saints ? Shall we not cherish more the feeling of Christendom ? Shall we not endeavour more vividly to realise that Christendom is a larger word than we can measure ; that it includes the dead who have died, as well as the living who live, in the Lord ; that " death makes no vacancy in its lists, but at its banquet-table the perfected spirits of just men, with an innumerable company of angels, sit down beside those who have not yet sur- Ecce Homo, rendered their bodies to the grave." Thus the Lord's Supper, substantiating the new commandment, is the sign of the One Body; and as such it is scarcely possible to over-esti- mate its influence on the history and discipline of the Church. It has kept the heart warm. Its "still small voice," overborne by the strife of controversy, has always been heard after the earthquake. It has supplied a force which works deeper than all that breaks the unity of the body. It has its word of separation — separation from "the world that lieth in wicked- ness." But it binds the separated people to- gether ; presenting the hallowed memorial, it repeats the gentle word, " Love one ajiotJier, as I have loved y oil, that ye also love one another" THE lord's SUrPER IN HIS CHURCH. IO9 Finally, the Lord's Supper marks the horizon of all Christian zuorship and service. " Till He i Cor. xi. 26. cojne " is part of the institution as received by St Paul. And is not this clause only the epitome of the word which two of the evangelists report our Lord to have uttered after He had charged His disciples to drink of the cup. Let my readers observe that there is a Jirst, and that there is a second, announcement as to the drink- ing of Christ with His own. The first, related by St Luke, preceded the appointment of the Eucharist. It was the declaration that He Luke xxH. would not share the Passover-cup with them until it had received its completion in the sacra- ment to be observed after He had risen from the dead. But now, having instituted the sacra- ment, there is still the look forward ; there is the second of the announcements referred to, and this time we trace a difference. Having- passed the cup, the Master subjoins, " But I say unto you, ' I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day zvhen I drink it neiv zuith you in Jl/y Fathers kingdom' " Mark, Matt. xxvi. it is not merely "drink wine aneiu with you." Mark xi v. 25. What is pointed to is a neia luine — wine of a higher quality, of another kind and character — that which is to be drunk when the kingdom of the Father is fully come. The Apostle's clause identifies this kingdom-coming with the Church's " blessed hope " — the coming of her Lord. I lO THE LORD S SUPPER IN HIS CHURCH. Therefore, the Holy Supper is prophetic as well as commemorative. We not only rest in thought on what has been finished ; we anticipate in desire the glory yet to be manifested. Our thanksgiving is for the death, in the expecta- tion of the appearing, of the Lord. In every celebration of the rite, there is a witness borne to the still imperfect condition of the Church. We have only the first fruits of the spirit. The kingdom is, but it is only in its beginning. We possess but the token-penny, the earnest, of the inheritance. This is not the final dispensation. We have not yet attained, neither are we perfect. It were sad to be shut up to the belief that the period which began when the Lord was received out of sight is the realisation of His marriage supper. No ; we are seeing through a glass darkly : the seeing face to face is yet to be. We have truths, festivals, governments, minis- tries, only in fragments ; the harmony, the order in which all is proportioned — "that which is perfect " — is to come. This is what the table prepared for us certifies. Many minds have many opinions as to the manner of the second advent ; but all Christians, in eating and drink- ing according to Christ's commandment, are exhorted to look for, and hasten the day of, the Lord — " that day when He shall drink the new cup with His Disciples in His Father's king- dom." " Even so, come Lord Jesnsr IX. THE TABLE-TALK. St John xiii. 23-25, and 36-38. Conversation usually followed the passing of the third cup at the Paschal Supper. The ceremonial of the feast having been observed, there was then liberty for the exchange of thought among the members of the family. Thus, after the blessing of the bread and the cup by our Lord, the fulness of speech, hitherto restrained, poured forth. Follow the course of the stream as it rolls on to the end of the seventeenth chapter — oh, my readers, what depths of love are there ! It is related that, towards the close of his life, the illustrious Vinet contemplated the exposition of these precious words. He stopped : He exclaimed, " A Divine confusion ! " It is difficult to dis- tinguish the sequences and connections of the discourse. We cannot divide it into paragraphs, each presenting a point distinct from all the others. The speech is too spontaneous, too much the thinking aloud of love intense in its I I 2 THE TABLE-TALK. consciousness, and seeing the truth it expresses, to be held in by the bit and bridle of human logic. Let it be said with reverence that it o belongs to a region in which the poor rules of composition and utterance avail not. Who would describe it as eloquent .-* Who would attach to it any of the phrases which we are wont to attach to the excellency of the wisdom of men } No ; this outpouring of the heart of Christ must not be too minutely analysed ; we must not insist on measuring it by the canons of rhetoric, or mapping it out according to the plan of the dialectician. With regard to it, preeminently, the voice of the Eternal may be heard, " To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that isa.ixvi. 2. trevibleth at My zvord." Let us say, with Vinet, "A Divine confusion," and forbear from search- ing for a scheme or schedule in which a place is found for every sentence, and a consecutive development of ideas is traced. It is a consolation which Christ unfolds. We can see that, in the unfolding, He passes from the condition of His disciples immediately con- sequent on His departure to the more general condition of His disciples as such. The near and the remote are included in the perspective, but they are always mingled ; the Lord returns from one to another, and unites both in many of His sayings. The substance of the consolation THE TABLE-TALK. I I 3 is — Himself. It begins, continues, and ends in sublime self-assertion. We can discern the stripes of light in, but always in, this self- assertion. First, there is Himself in the mystery of His ozvn being; secondly. Himself in the relation of His person to His own, as the centre and principle of their life. In the first, the predominating consciousness is the Father ; the glance of the Son is to the glory with "the Father's own self, which He had before the John .wii. 5. world was." In the second, the predominating consciousness is the Church ; its union with Him; its indwelling Guide and Illuminator; its antagonisms and conflicts ; its final and ever- lasting blessedness. But, here again, there is no clear separation of topics ; it is not with sharply cut divisions, but, as has already been said, with stripes of light that we have to do. I will not farther analyse. I will not attempt to arrange the discourse in sections. I have read and studied many such sectional arrangements, and none of them has fully satisfied me. Rather let us follow the Master whithersoever, in the revelation of His mind. He goes ; seeking only that we listen to Him for His word not for con- ceptions or commentary of our own, and praying in the Holy Ghost for the Holy Ghost whose " anointing teacheth of all things, and is truth, and is no lie." Verily, we are drawing near i John ii. ^7. H 1 14 THE TABLE-TALK. to the Holy of Holies in the life of the Son of God. " That wonderful passage," as one has written in glowing sentences, " from every line of which shines forth the Divinity of Him who spake, though each syllable be tinged with the sadness of a soul which even now gazed full on the agony in the garden, and bore, in prospect, the crown of thorns — syllables, too, which were uttered from the very shadow of the tomb ! Who is there that peruses these solemn words whose heart does not burn within him, as each expression of human affection — that sympathy with His earthly brethren which every tone conveys — became the point of contact through which those revelations of the eternal word reach the spirit of man ? . . , When difficulties embarrass the reason, and perplexities entangle the intellect — and who is that man over whose understanding doubt has not at times cast its shadow, or whose faith the stern realities of life have not put to the trial ? — the fainting soul will find its refuge in the words which introduce this series of promise and encouragement, words which still whisper to our ear the same assurance that once supported the Apostle sinking in the wind-tossed sea : " Let not your heart be troubled, Lee on yc belicvc in God, believe also in Me." Inspiration, PP- 35. 36. Before we attempt to glean in the fields of THE TABLE-TALK. 1 I 5 thought to which the address of our Lord invites us, let us regard what I may call some prdiniinary speech between Him and His disciples. Is not this an interesting glimpse ? " Noiv, tJiere was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of His disciples wJiom Jesus loved!' The little com- Ver. 23. pany assembled in the upper room at Jerusalem was the first CEcumenical Council of the Christian Church. The Apostles " sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel," — interpre- ters of the universal theocracy, the true Israel of God. In them the Church of all times, in the manifoldness of the operations, and the diversity of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, was represented on the night in which the Lord was betrayed. The men rich in the practical wisdom of the spiritual life are there — personated in St James. There, too, are the men of critical temperament, ready to believe yet insisting that the ground be sure — the variety personated in St Thomas. There, likewise, are the men of fervent spirit, impetuous resolution, and eager purpose — the variety personated in St Peter. All are within the sphere of Jesus' attraction. But the bosom is reserved for, it is the throne of, the Johns. They feel the throbs of the Saviour's heart. They know Him as He knows the Father, Whose is the Gospel that leads to the Holy of Holies, that opens the door into the Lord's innermost self.? I imagine that none but he Il6 THE TABLE-TALK. who lay on Jesus' breast had the outline of the last discourse and the last prayer com- plete in its links, complete in its clothing, in His remembrance. The secret of the Lord was with him — " the disciple whom Jesus loved." There is a type of mind for which the Lord has prepared " a pavilion from the strife of Ps. xxxi 20. tongues." Affectionate, disposed to lean, de- pending on others "not from want of courage, or from weakness of intellect, but from intensity of affections, because of the trembling spirit of Robertson's humanity in them," learning Christ by a kind Sermons, p. -' ' c> . j 25'- of spiritual intuition — the receptive faculty not hindered by the interception of the combative or critical spirit, — for tJiis mind the pavilion is Jesus' bosom. Observe the 24th verse. To know the thought of the Lord's heart, the Simon Peters, the leaders, the primates of the Church, ver. 24. rnust " beckon " to the Johns. Theirs is the power of asking the questions which reach Ps. xci. I. into " the secret place of the Most High." Between tJieni and Christ there are passages along which His voice is borne to them as it is not borne to others. Observe, too, what is suggested by the 25th verse. Before he asks, John is described as leaning ; wlien he asks, he Ver. 25. is lying on the breast — his ear, as it were, at the very lips of the Master — reposing and listening, and so listening that not the softest tone shall THE TABLE-TALK, I I 7 escape him, that he shall catch the whisper of those private communications, through which is bestowed that "hidden manna, and that white stone with the new name written in it, which no man knoweth saving he who receiveth it." My Rev. ii. 17. readers, it is in the mind thus bent, all its weight on the Saviour's love, its ear turned to hear, that the music of the Eucharist is evoked, " Blessed be the Lord : for He hath shewed me His marvellous kindness in the city fenced from the pride of man " — the strong city of Jesus' bosom. Ps. xxxi. 21. But the narrative sets another disciple in our view. It is reserved to Simon Peter more immediately to introduce the conference which Jesus holds with His own. We have already considered the dialogue between Simon and his Master occasioned by the washing of the feet. The closing part of the chapter under review proves that, although he may have been for the time solemnised, he is the same Simon Peter still, full of " that impetuous curiosity which springs from a lack of self-knowledge and self- stier, vol. 6, communion." " As I said unto the Jews," Jesus ^"^■*" had said, " Whither I go, ye cannot come ; so now I say to you." Was the jealously-loving ver. 33. Simon offended that a word addressed to tJie Jezvs should be applied to his brethren and himself.'' Anyhow, what can this intimation of sroiiior somewhere mean } Where can He g-o Il8 THE TABLE-TALK. that they cannot accompany Him ? What new move is contemplated ? They had, only a few days ago, followed Him from the farther side of Jordan, although knowing the perils which beset their path ; and they are as ready to retrace their steps, to follow Him anywhere from Dan to Beersheba. For the slow-hearted man had failed to penetrate the real meaning of the announcement ; and thus there is given the Ver. 36. hasty reply, " Lord, whither goest Thou ? " Kind yet significant is the answer : " Whither I go, thou canst not follow Me nozv ; bnt thou Ver. 36. shalt follow Me afterwards." " Not noza, only afterwards. Why not now, Lord ? I will lay Ver. 37. down my life for Thy sake." Ah, we can imagine the gentle light in " the quiet eye " of the Master as, bending forward, He asks, with a pathos whose impression will never fade from the soul until the oneness of disciple and Master is declared on the Martyr's cross, " Wilt thou lay down thy life for My sake ? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not Ver. 38. crow, till thou hast denied Me thrice," O Peter ! there are days of sorrow between thee and the hour " when thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, Chap.xxi.i8. and carry thee whither thou wouldest not." Later in this evening, a shadow will again flit across the countenance of the Lord, and omin- ous words concerning the Satan who desired to THE TABLE-TALK. I 1 Q have thee and the little flock, that he might sift you as wheat, will fall from His lips. Again, from thee shall rise the bold protestation, to which the twice repeated warning will have given increased momentum, that though all should forsake Him, yet not thou. O Simon the LuUe xxii. disciple ! there is yet a great gulph between thee and Peter the Apostle. Thou hast yet to learn the lesson which poor human nature learns only through sharp discipline, through many thrusts of that two-edged sword, experience — the lesson that all self-nourished strength is only weakness. Brave, very brave, thou art ; but to the eye of Him with whom thou hast to do, there is present the scene in the High Priest's palace : already He hears the words in which thou shalt flaunt thy denial of Him. Blessed be His name! the warning precedes the fall ; and more than the warning, the intimation of the prayer that has ascended for thee, " that thy faith fail not : and that when thou art con- Luke xxii. verted, thou shalt be able to strengthen thy ^^' brethren." The remembrance of that warning, the virtue of that intercession, will call thee back ; it will cause the bitter tear, " the godly sorrow that worketh repentance." And Christ will not fail thee until thy thrice-told denial is wiped away by His thrice-asked question, " Lovest thou Me ? " and His thrice-given charge, " Feed My chap. xxi. sheep, Feed My lambs." ""^- I 20 THE TABLE-TALK. The discourse begins. ^ At first' jt is inter- rupted by questions or remarks from one or another of the disciples. Gradually they cease from asking anything, and listen in silence to Him whose life-giving words flow over their souls. For my part, I thank Thomas and Philip and Judas not Iscariot. Their inter- ruptions serve as pauses which permit us to linger over things too deep and high for us. There is a charm, moreover, in this, that, by means of them, the utterance of the Lord is more than a monologue. It is a communion — He with them and they with Him. May we not change the pronouns]? — He whh.'iis and we with Him. X. THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. St. John xiv, 1-3. " Let not yoicr heart he troubled ; " thus begins a ver. i discourse which extends far into the night. The disciples, we suppose, are sad and silent. Simon Peter, from eager protestations of readi- ness to suffer and die, has been sent back into his own heart to commune and be still. And enough has been said and done to excite in every mind the apprehension of impending sorrow — of a time, not far distant, when those now assembled in the upper room shall be left as sheep without a shepherd. Hitherto the utterance of Christ, although gentle and tender, has been authoritative as that of a master speak- ing to his scholars, or a father to his children ; now all relations must blend in the one, tJie Comforter. Only a little while is left to Him, and that little while must be devoted to the strengthening of His own against the trials and sorrows awaiting them. He contemplates the future rather than the present ; in advance of I 2 2 THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. the dark days which He beholds as already- near He would provide them, and all who shall believe in Him through their word, with " a strong consolation." Very artless, very human, are the sentences through which His comfort is conveyed. But how profound the truth with which they are charged ! " Those three chapters which M. Renan pronounces to be full of ' the dryness of metaphysics and the darkness of abstract dogmas,' have been, as a matter of fact, watered by the tears of all the purest love and deepest sorrow of Christian humanity for eighteen centuries. Never is the New Testa- ment more able to dispense with external evidence than in those matchless words ; no- Liddon's where more than here is it sensibly divine." Bampton Lectures, p. *^'' The demand which Christ makes is an illustra- tion of the simplicity of manner and fulness of meaning alluded to. When all that lies beyond the hour is enwrapped in gloom, and the feeling of uncertainty is predominant, what more natural than to insist that there must be one fixed point, and that fixed point a loyal trust in Jesus Himself.^ It had been His way, in past times, to make this the condition of the blessing which it was in His heart to give. Now, more than ever, is it called for. The spiritual susten- ance of His followers, in the circumstances through which they must pass, is wholly depend- THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. I 23 ent on the relation of their hearts to Him. They must confide in Him absolutely and with unfaltering devotion, in spite of appearances and of all kinds of hostile influences ; they must rely on Him as the One who has access to the hidden realms, and who only knows the Father, to whom the future is naked and opened, and who, having all things in His hands, will never fail and never forsake. Therefore the charge, so sweetly peremptory, " Ye believe in God, believe also in MeT Ver. i. It is doubtful whether we should regard the two believes in this charge as both indicatives, or, as in the authorised version, the one indicative and the other imperative, or as both imperatives. The last of these views commends itself to me. The disciples needed the one believing as well as the other ; they had yet to realise what is involved in a true faith in God. But, however we take the verbs, the essential matter set forth is that Christ claims a confidence, not only like to, but simultaneous with, confidence in the living God. How terrible the blasphemy of such a claim if made by a mere creature of the Eternal! How distinct the witness which it gives that He who spoke the word deemed it no self-enrich- ment to claim equality with God! For we must keep the also where and as the Lord placed it. The latter believe implies the same conditions as the former; it cannot mean a less and lower 124 THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. faith than the former. The commandment is, to trust God for being that Father whom the Son has declared, and also to trust Him for being the Son to whom God has testified — to trust Him as God alone is to be trusted, and as, indeed, the Lord and God of the human heart. Is not Christendom built on the also of Christ's supper table } Luther has remarked that in this fourteenth chapter " we have the great articles of Christian doctrine in most impressive exhibi- tion, and fundamentally established as in hardly- Quoted by another place of Scripture." This is true. Let Stier, vol. 6, , ^ P- 183. the reader observe, for instance, the unfolding of the cardinal doctrine of the Trinity. But the first verse is especially significant. Sometimes we turn with a sigh from the elaborate confes- sions of later ages to the confession summed up in the short saying of the Lord. Less than this there may not be, more than this there need not be, in the faith of a Christian. The also must stand out in bold relief, rightly apprehended and firmly grasped ; but when it is so grasped the mind holds the essential Christian verity. Is it not this also which we have in view in all mission-labour } " Why think of the conversion of the Jews," said a friend lately to one who had appealed to his interest ; "the Jews believe as well as ourselves in God, and is not that enough } " Clearly it was not enough, else Christ would not have come into the world and suffered and died. THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. I 25 Clearly it was not enough, else Christ would not have spoken His also. To publish it, and all that it implies, is the duty which He lays on His Church, as being necessary to the salvation of the world, to the possession of the life eternal. It is the plus in respect of which the faith of the Christian Church is apart from and more than every mere theistic religion — a phis that is not an addition only, but a new faith. For the trust in God, which is also with trust in Christ, is not the same as the trust which is without ; it is an incalculable difference that is realised when we say, " Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." 2 Cor. i. 3. This, then, is the mainstay of the comfort which the Lord would give. Before He opens up its wealth, He asks from His disciples, "Believe in God, believe also in Me." But He is going away into some unseen state or world. What can His little children hence- forth have in common with Him } They will not even know whither He has vanished. And wherever His abode may be, will He not be separated from them } What can they rest on 1 What is there longer to cling to .'' Trust Him } But where will He be ? What relations will He hold to them ,-' What is the hope of any reunion with Him .? of any recovery of that fellowship so soon to be broken ? These are the thoughts I 26 THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. which have arisen in their minds ; and He answers them in speech pre-eminently cheering, adapted to their capacity, but partly revealing, and partly concealing, truths and hopes in which troubled hearts of all times should find Isaiah xxxii. " the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.** Let us endeavour to gather up some crumbs of the "feast spread in the words — How sweet is their rhythm ! " In My Father's house are many mansions : if it were not so, I would have told yon, I go to prepare a place for you. A nd if I go and prepare a place for yon, I tvill come again, and i^eceive you 7into Myself ; that ivJieve I am, there ye may be Vers. 2, 3. also. So familiar, be it observed, is the circle of ideas presented. A Father's house — home with its solid and enduring bliss, its refreshments and solaces, its duties and enjoyments, its sober liberty and beauteous order. The assurance of Him who, as the Son of the Father, abides in John vi;;. 35. that house for ever is that He will secure for all His little children a right to the good fore- shadowed. That to which He points them is not a mere guest-chamber like the one in which they are then assembled. It is a spacious palace with many mansions, with room for them all, and abundance of light and peace ; and in due time He pledges them that He will return to reconstitute the broken fellowship and reunite THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. I 27 the scattered family. How partially they to whom He spoke entered into His mind in thus speaking, the interruptions which follow prove ; but the testimony was given in expectation of the day when the spirit of truth should bring all things to remembrance, and open up their hidden meanings, To us, my readers, on whom the mystery of the future and the unseen presses, how precious the glimpses which are furnished of " that sweet and blessed country which eager hearts expect ! " May we not, from Christ's word, infer that tJie visible and the invisible alike are in His Fathers ho2ise ? We distinguish between things seen and things unseen as if they belonged to opposite realms. But there is no such distinc- tion in the mind of God. He is equally in all realms. We do read of a "heaven of heavens." i Kings vUi. Jewish Rabbis spoke of seven heavens ; but all ^^' such classifications and divisions are only im- perfect signs of fellowships more or less intimate between the spirit purified by love and Him who is love. In respect of this science, in its progres- sive discoveries, is the minister of faith, because it is ever completing the evidence of the unity of all worlds. The same great laws, we know, universally operate, the same forces act ; all planets, bodies, beings, things, are bound together in mutual and reciprocal influence. All are only 128 THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. different portions of the one Father's house. Solemn and sweet to reflect that, go where we may, we never 'can go from Him, that one place is as much God's as another's. " Everything," as John Sterling writes, " is so wonderful, great, and holy, so sad and yet not bitter, so full of death cariyie-s aud SO bordcring on heaven." Solemn and sweet ling!" p'-lS' also to reflect that, whatever death may be, God is more than death ; and whithersoever the soul may be bound, it can only pass into some other room in the house. " If I ascend up into heaven. Thou art there ; if I make my bed in sheol, behold, Thou art there. . . . The darkness hideth not from Thee ; but the night shineth as the day : the darkness and the light are both Ps. cxxxix. alike to Thee." What is the comfort which the Lord offers to the children of the house .? Standing beside us on the earth, and speaking of that upper king- dom into which He is about to pass, He puts this thread into our hands : " You know one thing ; you know My Father. You have seen what He is to Me ; you have felt what, in Me, He is to you. When you are sure of Him, for all that is beyond you have nothing to fear. He will be the same to you tJiere as He has been in your sight here ; the same love and gentle- ness and wisdom in which I have lived penetrate every mansion." When I hold this thread, and, holding it, read between the lines of Jesus' 8-12 THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. I 29 word, a certain home-likeness and homeliness invest the thought of the life that shall be. For it occurs to me to argue thus. Sometimes a person has many mansions. When I am familiar with one of them — with what is characteristic in it of taste, genius, and position — I form an idea concerning the others. I say to myself that what I have found in the one I know will be evidenced in them likewise. Thus, with regard to the unseen and the seen, Christ who came from the one saw everywhere its likenesses and coun- terparts in the other. And shall not we, going from this world, find the unseen wondrously like to all that spoke to us of our Father here ? It will be no strange land ; it will be the reality of which this present is the shadow — the light seen in the very light of God. Anyhow, " there or here," whispers our guide, " it is equally My Father's house. In all possible states and condi- tions that house encompasses you, with its revela- tions of unspeakable love and tenderness. And for all there is a welcome, since in it there are many mansions." Do we not, in Christ's word, perceive that He has a work zviiJi reference to His oivn in both the zvorlds seen and unseen ? " I go," He says, " to prepare a place for you." The sentence rises to the heart when we meditate on the dread fact of death. There is I 130 THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. a temperament which the petulant, passionate cry of Job interprets, "I would not live alway: Job vu. IS, my soul chooseth death rather than my life." 16. , •' But this temperament is morbid. A mind healthy in its action is free from it. No doubt, there is an approach to it often to be traced in nobler souls. Wearied by conflict with incerti- tudes, or by the continual fight with sin, or by the experience of their own ideals remaining mere broken fragments, not seldom do we find men craving release from the burden of the flesh, so that either the wished for light and truth may be enjoyed, or the everlasting silence entered. But, speaking generally, there is a deep, desperate grudge between death and life. To die, when one feels the bound of strength, the thrill of love ! To see the countenance changing, and know, as we see it, that a presence is being sent away ; that we may long for the " sound of a voice that is still," but the longing can never be answered — man does ask, man has ever asked, " Can this cruel captivity be carried captive .'' " What we want is not to lose being, but to have more being ; to have better instru- ments with which to mine in the depths of truth, or, at least, the power of more nobly using the instruments we have ; to be able to carry out all the thought, the desire, the aim of the spirit at the moments of its highest inspiration — not, as now, ever beaten back and bafilcd and THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. I3I worsted ; to be purer, truer, wiser, more blessed ; to " know the love of Christ, which passeth know- ledge, and be filled according to all the fulness of God." Does not Jesus interpret this want when Ephes.iii.19. He bids us think of Him as the Forerunner who for us " has entered within the veil ? " when He Heb. vi. 20. says, I am going to fulfil that desire, to prepare a place for you — " Where faith is lost in sight, And patient hope is crowned. And everlasting light Its glory throws around." A place made ready by Him ! " It was reserved for Christ," remarks a commentator, " to throw heaven open, in the first instance, by His zvord'xw the farewell discourses, and, secondly, by His act in the ascension itself." T\iQ going, Langeon st " the being taken up into heaven," was, in a real "^°''"' ''' ''^'^' sense, the opening of heaven to us. How, what the effect of, this entrance of the glorified body of the Lord into the Heavenlies we need not farther inquire. Nor need we enter at length on the ques- tion what the preparation of the place includes. Peter and John, listening to their Master, could recall that they had been sent in advance of the rest to prepare the room and the Passover. They must have understood — and this is suffi- cient for us — that the Lord's making ready for His own covers all that is needful, whether in the heavenlies or in them, for the enjoyment of the 132 THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. glorious things which the Father had prepared for Him and His. It comprehends the whole preparatory discipline of earth, the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the " making meet for the inheritance;" although the specific thought in His utterance is confined to that which is to be done in the state whither He goes. The place, let us assure ourselves, is there — the mansion for each of the trusting followers ; each his own place, his own crown, his own sphere, his own knowledge of the Lord. As manifold as the character, experiences, aptitudes, of the blessed are the mansions which Christ ensures shall exactly correspond to the persons and the per- sons to them. For each there shall be the perfected participation in the joy of the Lord ; rest from labour, yet rest in service; freedom to be and to do all which perfect sympathy with the thought and will of the Eternal Love shall prompt ; increasing desire, but no pain in the desire ; running, but no weariness ; walking, but no faintness. "There is a place by Me," said Jehovah to Moses, "and thou shalt stand upon- a rock : and it shall come to pass, while My glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift Exodus of the rock." What says Jehovah-Jesus to His own.'' "A place by Me — I take you to it, that there, not as a mere passing sight but an abiding vision, you may behold My glory." He would not entrust its preparation to other hands : " / xxxiu. 21,22. THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. I 33 go to prepare ; / come to receive you to My- self." Does not the word of Christ shed some light on the question as to the continnance of relation- ships and intimacies betzveen the dead and the living? Is death the end of those connec- tions in which life is linked to life ? The African savage has his dead laid near his dwelling. In so doing, he darkly feels " They are not lost." Through all sorts of vagaries and superstitions we can trace the idea that the world into which the departed enter is around us, and that between ours and it the communica- tion is unceasing. When we commit the remains of the beloved to the dust, and turn from the hallowed spot, feeling that " there hath passed away a glory from the earth," does there not rise from the inmost self the protest, It is not, it cannot be all over between us ; the love that united us is too precious to be lost .-* And docs there not rise towards '* the sightless range " which holds the vanished a breathing such as that which the poet has interpreted in his verse .'* " Descend, and touch and enter ; hear The wish too strong for words to name ; That in this bhndness of the frame My ghost may feel that Thine is near." in Memori- am, 92. Ah, we wonder and question ! Sometimes we think it strange that He who has " the keys of I 34 THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. Hades and death " should never have opened the hidden regions to our sight, should never have given us more than the hints that are furnished by His last discourse and prayer. The gates are but a little way unlocked ; and, as Bunyan says when his wonderful dream had reached its consummation, " the gates are quickly shut up again," and we are left only to wish ourselves among the blest. But is there not wisdom in this reticence ? Otherwise might not the strength of our interest be diverted from that which is its true course, fellowship with the Eternal and Holy One, to the comparatively pro- fitless course of "seeking, the living to the dead ?" But here is a fact full of meaning. There is no break in the relation between Christ and His own. He had never deceived them. He had announced to them beforehand what would happen. He had been perfectly honest and candid with them. And He would have given them notice that the hour which removed Him from their sight was the conclusion of their intercourse, if that had been possible. It was impossible. The con- solation mainly depends on the pledged continu- ance of Jesus with them, nay, on the assurance that, through His departure. His union with them would pass into a higher form, would become more real and intimate than ever. Now, my belief is that the resurrection of Christ is, in all belonging to it, exemplary. He was " the THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. 135 first begotten of the dead," "the first fruits of Rev : , them that slept." If death could not alter the .co.xv. realities of His communion with men, if it only made that communion more blessed and close, may we not conceive that so it is with ours and us ? Was He lost when He passed out of sight .? Why shall we think that t/iej are lost when^our eyes no longer behold them ? Did He cease to care for His flock when He went to the Father ? Why shall we think that t/iej^ have ceased to care for us .? Were there no ways of speech from Him to those who waited for His word after He had gone .? Why shall we think that there can be no speaking from "the quiet shore," spirit to spirit .? I, for one, cannot believe that there is a great, bridgeless, gulph between the hving and the dead. We are, they are; they m mansions we cannot discern, but the mansions are all in our Father's house ; and the heavens are open, and God and His holy ones are con- tinually ascending and descending on the Son of Man. John i. 51. Is not Christ's word the token t/iat in both the seen and the nnseen worlds the life and joy of the spiritual being are the same? The house is blessed because it is His Father's; it is the vision of the Father, the satisfaction with His like- ness, which suffices for the archangel that never sinned as for the sinner who has been snatched 136 THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. like a brand from the burning. And the home- coming, how is it ? " / zvill come and receive yoit ver. 3. to Myself, that wJiere I am, there ye may be also!' When Martha met Jesus on His way to the house of death she had faith enough to say, " I know that my brother will rise again in the Chap. xi. 24. resurrection at the last day." Her verb was in the future tense ; and future is too often the tense of Christians when they think of the resurrection. Christ's tense is the present : " I am the resurrection and the life : he that liveth Chap. xi. 25. and believeth in Me shall never die!' He has already risen. This is the victory over death ; to be now in conscious possession of a life over which death has no dominion ; to have interests and associations which join us to what is death- less, because it is divine ; to have the existence wedded to that Christ on whom the spiritual eye is gazing, and receiving power to become the son of God ; to know that we are partakers of the eternal life, and that nothing can " sepa- rate from the love of God which is in Jesus Rom. viii. 39. UiiriSt. Therefore, in the word of comfort, Jesus de- scribes the blessedness of the unseen future as being that — nothing else, and nothing less — which had measured the blessedness of His dis- ciples during the time of their intercourse — ** where I am, there ye may be also!' This, at least, was a teaching which they could grasp, a THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. I 37 promise on which they could feed. And He sur- rounds the promise with an inviolable yea and amen, when He solemnly protests that He will come again and receive them : that His going is for their gain, and if He goes assuredly He will return. At the resurrection, they obtained the first instalment of the coming ; on the day of Pentecost, they were still farther enriched ; in the quickened spiritual life of faith, the believer realises that his Lord has come : the article of death is the taking of the redeemed away to the rest in God ; the appearing in glory is the completion and fulfilment of the coming. Then shall the family be gathered together " from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the Matt. xxW. other," and so shall they be for ever with the ^'' Lord in the perfect light of His Father's house. Be still, then, O troubled heart. Have faith in God ; have faith also in Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. Trust Him for the future. Trust Him in the present. Trust Him with thyself. " Go thou thy way till the end be." Only be Daniel xii. sure that thine eyes are ever towards the Lord, '^' approaching as thou dost gaze, transfigured as thou dost approach — resemblance becoming ever more deep and heavenly as thou passest into the sunlight of the glory. What the glory is, who can say ? *' Lord, I know but faintly what it shall be, and I ask not to know. Only assure 138 THE BEGINNING OF THE DISCOURSE. me that Thou wilt be there. I have long been accustomed to gather my every conception of happiness around Thy name ; Thou art to me the abstract and representative of it all. Be but Thyself there : I know my only heaven Butler's Ser- in Thce." monSjSecond series, p. 45. XL AN INTERRUPTION. St John xiv. 4-7. To the blessed promise of the Father's house, and the preparation of the place, and the com- ing again to receive His own to Himself, the Lord added the sentence, " zvhither I go, ye kiiozv the way!' It would seem that the sen- Chap. xiv. 4, tence perplexed the minds of those who heard Version. it. They could not apprehend its meaning. Had not Simon Peter, only a short time be- fore, asked for some information as to the scene to which their Master proposed to withdraw } And, although they had been told of many abiding places in a Father's house, they had not yet ascertained where that house was. They still thought only of some other locality to which Jesus would convey Himself, for they were very foolish, and slow of heart. It is too much to be addressed as if they were acquainted with the path which their Master was about to take. Simon has no heart to speak; but Thomas, called the Twin, interprets the feeling of his com- panions in the interruption. " Stay, Lord : tve 140 AN INTERRUPTION. know not whither TJiou goest; and how can we Ver. s. knoiu the zvay t " It is Thomas who says this. There are only three occasions on which the name of this apostle occurs with special prominence. The first was in connection with the proposed return of Jesus to Judea, when the message as to Lazarus reached Him. The disciples remon- strated on the dangers of such a return : when remonstrances proved unavailing, Thomas ex- claimed, " Let us also go, that we may die with Chap. xi. Him," He had made up his mind that the issue of the journey must be fatal, but he was ready to share the consequences. The last of the three times was when, after the resurrection, re- fusing to believe the tale told by his brethren, he was addressed by the risen Saviour in terms of distinct, although gentle, rebuke ; and from his heart of hearts was elicited the expression chap.xx. 24- of unbounded self-surrendering faith. At the 29. , '-' supper table, we find him, abruptly, yet with in- genuous frankness, proclaiming the ignorance which he and those around him felt. Gathering > up the conjunct testimony of these glimpses, the impression which we form of him is, that he was a man slow in apprehension, wanting in ima- gination and in the faculty of intuitively discern- ing a truth, — one who worked heavily towards a conclusion. But the conclusion once got, it is grasped, and it is held with invincible tena- AN INTERRUPTION. I4I city. There is a capacity of indefinite sacrifice when the assent of the mind is once obtained, but tlie reflective so largely preponderates over the impulsive, that enthusiasm comes somewhat late in the day. He has been named the " Rationalist of the Apostles ; " may every rationalist be as candid in the investigation of truth as he was, as wishful to see, as earnest in welcoming the light when it would enter the soul, as pure and unfaltering in the conse- cration of all energies to Him whom reason and affection embrace, uniting in the answer, " My Lord and my God." Chap. xx. 28 His protestation — " Thy whither and TJiy how, what of them .''" — Christ meets with a word which does not seem to be a reply to it. In point of fact it is ; because, for the man Christ Jesus as for us, the way to the Father is the will which was glorified in the Son. The sonship in Christ is the only path to the Father. But, as is the manner of the Lord, He takes the mind beyond the immediate question raised. The interrup- tion of the discourse carries it on to a still farther point, but always in harmony with the note which had been struck, " Believe in God, believe also in Me." The attention is at once withdrawn from the %vJiitlier ; the reminder is given that this is to be found in the zvay ; and forth comes the manifesto of our King — " / am the way, and the truth, and the life : no man cometh nnto the Father but by Me^ '^'^'■- 142 AN INTERRUPTION. To recur to a topic in the previous chapter of this volume, I always associate this manifesto with the utterance of the Lord to Martha, when she met Him after the death of Lazarus. There are some striking points of resemblance. In the sister's mind the thought of resurrection was dis- sociated from the person of Christ. She con- ceived of it simply as the result of the mighty power of God to be fulfilled at the last day. It was a distant prospect. It was something quite apart from any conception of spiritual life. The aim of Christ was to raise her faith from the level thus described ; to bring her to realise that resur- rection is a present fact, and that the continuance of personal being is certain for all who live and believe in Him because of the life that is in Himself. '' I am the resurrection and the life. . . . chrp xi. 21- Believest thou this .'' " Now, similarly, these slow- hearted disciples conceived of the place and the path at which the Master had hinted, as wholly external to Him. They were mentally debating how He would reach it, what route He would take, and what kind of home it would be. From all such wanderings He brings them back to His initial demand, "faith in me." He tells them that it is to Himself they must look ; that He is not speaking of things vague and future ; that they will know what they crave only by letting Him unfold the secret of His presence and love. From discussion of goals and ways, 20. AN INTERRUPTION. 1 43 of ends and means, He sets them right before — Himself " I am — not I show the way, or I speak the truth, or I reveal the life — but, / am the way, and the truth, and the life." My readers, shall we not pause over this say- ing, so regal and yet so gracious .'' Shall we not, for an instant or two, detain every portion of it, that we may realise the feast of fat things which it spreads for us .'' We must not separate, and yet we must not depress, any of the three affirmations to which the " I am " is prefixed. They have been thus paraphrased, "The true way of life." But this is to weaken the force of the saying, inas- much as it loses the distinction intimated by the connecting a)ids. No; He is the tnitJi ; the absolute reality, underlying and expressing itself through all appearances ; who is the substance of all that is good and lovely ; the Word in whom all the thought of God is articulated to man, and all the right thought of man is articu- lated to God ; the Sun, rays of whose light pene- trate all the universe of God, whatsoever is true anywhere being the reflection of His infinite fulness. He is tJie life ; the source and seat of all life in man, creature, thing ; the sum of all that is created ; of whom, in our being, we have received, and by whom alone we are enabled in spirit and soul and body to realise continuous existence ; who is more especially the cause and 144 AN INTERRUPTION. the sustenance of that higher life which is death- less, because it is the eternal life of God in man. Therefore He is the way ; the only medium between the worlds seen and unseen, between the Father of Spirits and the spirits of men. Not as if He were apart from the Father and the Father from Him ; for not only is He as the Father, but the Father is in Him. His humanity is the Shekinah of an indwelling God, and to have fellowship with Him is to have fellowship with the Eternal Himself But the high priest- hood of men, which is in the very idea of " The Chap. i. I. Word who was with God and was God," has been substantiated for us sinners in the incarnation, and the crucifixion to Avhich, in His last supper, Jesus looks forward. Through death He passes into the presence of God — the Man with an un- changeable priesthood. As the God-man pre- senting the accepted sacrifice, " He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto Heb. vii. »s. God by Him." Nor let us limit the thought. To say that all coming to God the Father is through the Son who dwelt among us, is not to say that only they have access who know and are in conscious sympathy with Jesus Christ. To reject Christ when declared is one thing, not to know Christ because He has not been declared is another thing. Is not the assurance implied in the word of the Lord i* — " Wherever anyone is in the way to the Father I am that way. Wherever anyone finds truth, that truth is some- AN INTERRUPTION. 145 thing of Mine and testifies of Me. For I am ever from age to age the life and the light of men. Every way not absolutely false leads to the truth ; every real truth has life in itself, but all in Christ." stier, vol. vi. Ah, it is a gloriously comprehensive, whilst yet it is a jealously exclusive, manifesto. On the pulpit of a church in Bohemia that is associated with the memory of John Huss, the manifesto is written — a fit and becoming symbol for the Reformer, whose life was a contention against the error of intermediaries between the one Mediator and men. Yet Protestants also need to be reminded that neither book nor system must interpose their shadow — that Christ Himself is the all in all. Beautiful is the com- ment of Thomas a Kempis ; may it interpret, and interpreting, elevate our thought — " Without the way tJiere is no going ; zvithout the truth there is no knoiving ; luithout the life there is Jio living. I am the luay zvJiicJi thou oughtest to follow ; the truth zvhich thou oughtest to trust ; the life zvhich thou oughtest to hope for. " / am the inviolable zvay, the infallible truth, the endless life. " / am the straightcst way, the supreme truth, t/ie true, the blessed, the uncreated life. " If thou remain in My way thou shall knozu the truth, and the truth shall make thee free, rt-//^ imitation thou shalt lay hold on eternal life.'' t'^vSx.'' y- chap. 56 XII. THE REQUEST OF PHILIP. St John xiv. 8-11. "Show us the Father." ^^ If ye had known Me ye should have known My Father also ; from he?iceforth ye know Him and v=r-7- have seen Him." This is a word which anew perplexes the disciples. They must often have spoken one to another of their Lord's habitual reference to God as His Father. To them the Eternal was one so awful that they scarcely dared to utter "the glorious and fearful name "Jehovah. But He lifted up His eyes to heaven, felt Himself as He did so in heaven, and calmly said to the unseen Presence, Father. They had seen Him retiring to lonely places where, undisturbed by the strife of tongues. He might spend the night in communion with His Father. He had told them that He lived by the Father ; that His meat was to do the Father's will ; that He did nothing of Himself but what He saw the Father do. Who was He in whose society Jesus thus THE REQUEST OF PHILIP. I 4.7 lived ? Could He not be made visible also to them ? I imagine that with this question their minds had not seldom been occupied. It is almost forced on them now by the sentence to which they had listened. Without reflecting on all that it implied, they fasten on the latter part of it, which asserts that, from the hour then passing, there should begin a distinct and satis- fying sight of the Father, and assumes that already they had a discernment of Him. " Nay," cries Philip ; " we have not seen, but we long to see ; Lord show us the Father, and it sufficeth us!" Ver. 8 The exclamation is one which accords with all our information concerning Philip. On three other occasions he is specially mentioned in this Gospel ; and the impression of him which all ch^p. i 43- the notices sustain is that of a man without 1 ' Lhap. VI 5-7. guile, ingenuous, downrightly realistic. He is chap. xii 21, not like Thomas, of a temperament morbid and ^^' slow, brooding over hozvs and intrenching himself behind excepts. On the contrary, he is eager, confiding, anxious only to possess the great fact. If he can behold the Father, goal and way and all else are out of reckoning : that is enough. Slow and carnal although his ap- prehension is, still there is the heart of faith beating through it. He has a right thought, a lofty thought, although he approaches it in a wrong direction. His cry is the reverberation 148 THE REQUEST OF PHILIP. of the deep longing of humanity. And he ac- knowledges Christ as having the power to satisfy this longing. " Previous to the true ' my Lord and my God,' there was no greater honour given to Christ, no higher power ascribed to Him, than stier, vol. vi. in this Lord show us the Father." p. 206. Therefore, Jesus bears with the interruption. It is a trial of His patience. Because it evi- dences the hankering, after the fashion of the Jew, for a sign — a revelation external to Him- self conveyed in a bodily shape, at least in a form which the senses can recognise. When the Eternal spoke to him " as a man speaketh to his Exodus friend," Moses entreated for a manifestation of xxxm. 34. j^.^ glory ; and he was placed in a clift of the rock, and the Eternal passed by and proclaimed the adorable name. Might not such a vision now be vouchsafed for the sake of Him whom Jehovah heard alway } Well, Christ will not overlook the request, because it is the prayer of faith. But first there is a gentle yet touching remonstrance. Surely, these scholars of His might have attained to a higher standard of perception. After the progressive revelations of Himself which they had enjoyed, surely they might have realised who was in Him. ^' Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast tJion not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father ; and hoiv sayest thou then, Shew ., us the Father ? " Ver. 9. THE REQUEST OF PHILIP. 1 49 The saying of Christ, called forth by the apostle's demand, marks the climax of what has been described as His self-assertion. It claims nothing less than an essential unity of Being with the Father. We can affirm of any good man that he dwells in God and God in him ; but we dare not affirm of any that to see him is to see the Father also. Taken in connection with the promise of the Comforter which follows, the language of our passage is equivalent to the teaching that the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Jesus bodily. Father and Son are united in His person, and in His name the Holy Ghost shall be sent. Yet it is necessary to keep in view the distinction of the two selves, Father and Son. Jesus is the Son, but He is not the Father ; the Father is in Him. The one- ness is not identification ; it is because of a perfect mutual operation, in consequence of which the Father originates and sustains all that the Son does, the Son responds to and fulfils all that the Father wills. It is this har- mony, this reciprocal life, wrought out in our flesh, making all the thought and action of the man Christ Jesus divine, which constitutes the mirror of the Fatherhood of God. " From henceforth, we know, we have seen, the Father." Than this showing there is, there can be no other. For the Father as such can be revealed only 150 THE REQUEST OF PHILIP. in the Son. And when we speak of God other- wise than as our Father, what conception, clear or dim, have we? The Infinite ? The Absolute? Mere abstractions, these. God can be discerned only through the relations in which His being is connected with ours. And relations are under- stood through their correlations; and the correla- tion of Fatherhood is Sonship. I may know a person in various ways — as a business man, or a social man, or in respect of some personal characteristics — but I cannot know him as a father except through the observation of what he is to his child, and his child is to him. If, for example, I see one wholly devoted to some great enterprise, giving his own life away for the good of others, — one of a rarely beautiful as well as energetic character, — and I learn from him- self that, in all his conduct, he is only carry- ing out the will of his father, interpreting the mind with which he is in constant communion, I am taught, as otherwise I cannot be taught, what that father in his will and character is. He is revealed to me in the son. Assume that Jesus is the Son of God ; trust Him for being so ; then God is manifested to us in such wise that we can hold Him as it were by the hand, and live in open converse and sympathy with Him. For we see the Father. No doubt, there are many unveilings of the Eternal in the things around us. Many are the THE REQUEST OF PHILIP. I 5 I " lattices " through which there looks forth a face above the brightness of the sun. But, in regard even to such glimpses, it must be said that wc see only with the eyes which we bring. A hard, undevout, mind can look up, and down, and around, and say, There is no God. A mind severely logical and exact may say that, on the whole, the probabilities are on the side of the existence of a Supreme Being; but that the evidence of goodness and love being His pre- dominant attributes is not sufficient. Nature is a cipher. Great are its messages, manifold its witness for God, when we have found the key. But it is an unread cipher until we have found the key. Is there any sermon to the sinner in the stones which the geologist handles > Interrogate it as you will, has the universe anything to say as to a personal relation between us individu- ally and God > Has it any assurance of an eternal life } Granting that it suggests, that it authorises the soul to say, God is Almighty, All- wise, the tendency of His rule ever towards righteousness ; what does it teach .? what can it teach as to a place inside His righteousness for the guilty, as to His disposition towards His lost and alienated children } But there is no difficulty in grasping the words " God is love," when we gaze on the love which has been mani- fested in the sending of the only begotten Son. There is no difficulty in believing that He has 152 THE REQUEST OF PHILIP. commended His love towards us as sinners when we behold His Son turning to the woman laden with sin as she bends over His feet in godly sorrow, and saying to her, " Thy sins are for- Luke vii. 48. given." There is no difficulty in crediting that, despite appearances, He wills that " all men shall be saved and come unto the knowledge of I Tim. ii, 4. the truth" when we follow His Son to "the place called Calvary," and witness that last act of filial love in which He pours out His life a ran- som for many. Oh ! there is no difficulty in yielding up the inmost soul to the asking love of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ; and accounting it "a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation," that what Fatherhood was shown to be in the Sonship of Jesus, that the Father- hood of God is to us and all men. Philip is right. To see the Father sufficeth. But, oh, Philip, to have lived in the light of the Eternal Life as thou hast done, and not seen Him ! " No man knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will Matt. xi. 27. reveal Him." And He has been willing to reveal the All-Blessed to thee. " Hast thou not known Me," is the touching appeal. Thou who hast been associated with Him in the most dear and intimate companion- ship, to have missed the Father whom He was revealing to thee ! Thou didst hear that Father in the tones of Jesus' voice. Thou didst THE REQUEST OF PHILIP. I 53 behold Him in the glance of Jesus' eye. Thou didst feel Him in the breath of Jesus' mouth. Thou didst converse with Him in the discourse on grassy upland, in the parables by the side of Galilee's lake, on the mount of Olives, in the house at Bethany. He has been com- muning with thee at the supper-table, and yet thou art asking, as if He were a stranger to thee, " Show us the Father ! " Very significant is the utterance in which the Lord addresses those who are seated be- side Him. Turning to the whole company He recalls the words which He had spoken in that room and at previous times. In them what was most intimately personal to Him had been declared ; and the child of the Kingdom should have asked nothing more. " If you are a believer," said Chrysostom on one occasion, "as you ought to be, and love Christ as you ought to love Him, you have no need of miracles, for these are given to unbelievers." Christ assumes that those who love Him have no need of miracles. " The words that I speak unto yon I speak not of Myself." Had they not discerned ver. lo. in them the operation of the Father in Him, His words, the Father's ivorks ? If the force of this inner testimony is not acknowledged ; if the Father-evidencing char- acter of the words is not perceived; the disciples 154 THE REQUEST OF PHILIP. must take the lower ground which He had been content to reserve for the Jews. Thus, at the feast of dedication, when the people came "round about Him " and demanded an explicit statement as to His Messiahship, He concluded the statement He did make with the challenge, " If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do, though ye believe not Me, believe the works : that ye may know and believe Chap. X. 37, that the Father is in Me, and I in Him." TJien, ^ ' we see, He refers only to the ivorks, — -tJiese were for the unbelieving Jews. He calls them to rise from the testimony of the works which were pre-eminently the sign of the Father in Him, to the reception of the ivords which were pre-emi- nently the sign of Him in the Father. Must He set this course before His own ? Must He tell them that, since they cannot at once respond to the light that is in the words, since they can- not, with the insight of faith, realise the truth of His person, they, too, must begin with the out- ward acts, with the miracles which are for un- believers .■* There is the sense of disappoint- ment in the alternative presented — "-Believe Me that I am in the Father, and tlie Father in Me ; Ver. II. or else believe Me for the very works' sake'.' XIII. THE GREATER WORKS. St John xiv. 12-15. "Greater works .... because I go unto My Father." " Verily, verily, I say unto yon T Thus we are pre- ver 12 pared for a word of special importance. Hither- to, the discourse of Christ, prolonged by the interruptions of the disciples, has been mainly occupied with His relation to the Father. Now, He would pass to the thought of His relation to His followers — to His Church until the end of the ages. And the announcement prefaced by the double Amen marks the transition from the one point to the other. In this way : — The works on account of which He claims the faith of men are not to be regarded as isolated and exceptional, with no successions and no exten- sions. Far from this, they are only the tokens of a power which shall continue to act, — nay, which shall find immeasurably ampler scope and larger results because of His going to the Father. He has summoned those around Him 156 THE GREATER WORKS. to a faith in Himself, of the same kind and measure as their faith in God. He has told them, if they cannot respond immediately to the truth of His own personality, to consider the evidence furnished by His works. At once. He reminds them that the faith which He demands is the condition of an union with Him, so ener- getic that " he that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these ver. 12. shall he do ; because I go unto My Father!' Are we not tempted to interpose the question. How can this be } The believer in Christ to do Christ's very works, ay, and greater than His — surely this cannot literally be true ! What deed of Apostle or Christian in any time can equal or surpass the raising of Lazarus, or the feeding of the thousands in the desert place, or the cure of the sick, and the blind, and the deaf, who were brought to the Prophet of Nazareth } To affirm that such pov/er is possessed by the one who trusts Jesus, may be possessed by ourselves; nay, that more splendid trophies of victory, mightier activities far, are in the grasp of the Church since, and on account of, the departure of Jesus — must not this be accepted as only a bold, paradoxical form of speech } Against such a view there sounds the solemn " Verily, verily, I say unto yon^" Christ's language is not that of figure : it is the distinct forecast of fact. THE GREATER WORKS. I 5 7 The writers and preachers of the early Christian centuries dwelt often on this forecast. They beheld its fulfilment in the more striking displays of miraculous power by the Apostles and the Church in its first days, — such as the strange tongues in which men declared the works of God, the healing of the sick by the shadow of Peter, and so forth. They pointed to the vast number of miracles, to the extension of the scene of their performance beyond Judea, and the wider effect which they exercised. They referred, above all, to the ingathering at Pentecost of three thousand souls, whereas only one hundred and twenty are mentioned as con- tinuing in prayer after the departure of Jesus. And then they described the spread of His Gospel throughout the different parts of the Roman Empire, until, within a comparatively short period, the sound of the Apostles' testimony had gone through all the earth. Says Luther, interpreting the mind of these Fathers, " Christ took but a little corner for Himself to preach and work miracles in ; whereas the Apostles and Quoted by their followers have spread themselves over the menfary,"?"" whole world." ^"' We may dismiss all comparisons in respect of what is merely wonderful in outward act be- tween our Lord's works and those of believers. Such "a mechanical measurement" of the great- ness of miracles, as it has well been said, is 158 THE GREATER WORKS. entirely foreign to the New Testament. " The term greater does not indicate more astounding miracles, but miracles of a more excellent Oodet's nature." tary"p!2'47. ChHst, as wc havc seen, placed His words on a far higher level than His works, understanding by His works the outward manifestations of supernatural force. To these, so far as they were wonders, He attached little consequence. It was a pain to Him, that except men saw John iv. 48. these wonders, they would not believe. He never put forth His power for mere effect. Whatever He did was related, directly or indirectly, to a moral end or to a purpose of love. Given the conception of the Son of God, with the heart and the will of the Eternal Love, having access to, rather having in Himself, a reserve of infinite power — it is impossible to conceive that He could be deaf to the appeals continually pre- sented to Him, that He could refuse the help which misery asked. Some indications of His will, some flashes of His redemptive energy, we would assured 1)^ expect. He would not have revealed the Father if it had been otherwise. Could the Father have refused to put forth the hand and touch the shrivelled and emaciated figure and said, "I will, be thou clean," when the leper came, beseeching and kneeling, and Mark i. 40, crying, "If Thou wilt, Thou canst." It is the ^'" moving of Jesus' heart with compassion and the THE GREATER WORKS. I 59 action obedient to this which manifests God. But there is always an ethical or spiritual ele- ment in the work wherein He would have men look for the sign of Him. He bids them from what is external to what is internal. Even, sometimes, in the manner, always in the farther reference of His doing, the spiritual is declared to be the sphere of the greater work. In that sphere is the more excellent counterpart of His activity which He predicts for the believer. For, in the history of the Church, we trace, although not under the same special forms, the same kind of energy as that which characterised the life of Jesus. Not a man, called out of the tomb in which he had lain four days, but a Lazarus — a dead community, decaying faiths, consciences whose vitality was suspended — a Lazarus on a larger scale, so to say, has often been quickened, summoned from the sepulchre, loosed and let go. Administering the word and sacraments which Christ has blessed, thousands and tens of thousands have been fed on what seemed a provision wholly inadequate : " The little one has become a thousand, and the small one a strong nation." Yielding to the guidance isa. i> of the spirit of the life in Christ, ministries and agencies of healing have been multiplied, so that every day, in vast numbers and through delicate appliances, by a skill and devotion which themselves are miracles, the sick are l6o THE GREATER WORKS. cured, the demon-possessed are exorcised, the diseased and the weary are blessed. In a sense, and a true sense too, it may be said that all the trophies of civilisation, all the marvels of science, all the potencies whose secret the years are more and more yielding up to us, point to works anti- cipated, in prophetic act, in Christ's, and are thus far the fruit of faith, that confidence in Christ first set the human mind free, by the power of truth, for the pursuit of all that is true and good. But, limiting the promised works to the moral or spiritual realm, whether we regard what Christianity has developed, or regard the develop- ment of Christianity itself, surely, we find the ancient description verified : " These signs shall follow them that beheve ; in My name shall they cast out devils ; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them ; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall Mark.xvi.17, recover." " Prayers and pains," said the devoted Elliot, " through faith in Christ Jesus will accomplish almost anything." These are the continuation, yet the amplifica- tion, of Christ's works. Greater ; as the grown- up man is greater than the child ; as the language, "fitly framed together and compacted," is greater than the rudiments ; as the plan is greater than the first sketch, or the building greater than the plan ; as the harvest is greater THE GREATER WORKS. l6l than the seed-time, the reaper than the sower ; as the spiritual is greater than the physical ; as the end is greater than the means ; so are the energies and activities of the Church directed to and instrumental in the regeneration and redemption of the world greater than the energies and activities which visibly radiated from the man Christ Jesus during the time that He went out and in amongst the men of Galilee. Observe, in the two verses which follow, what the Lord says as to the administration and tJic conditions of realising this sovereign, victorious pozver. The source is the Father. Christ declares of His own works, that " it is the Father who doeth them." But the power is in the hands of the Son who goes to the Father. Hence the promise is, " Whatever ye ask, that will / do ; " hence it is added, " that the Father may be glorified in the Ver. 13. So7i.'' The honouring of the Son is the glory- fying of the Father. Hence, finally, the clause, Ver. 14. " Ask in My nanier Not as if that clause meant merely the use of the name of Jesus at the end of prayer, adopting such a formula as " for Christ's sake," or "through Christ." The name, when em- ployed in Scripture with reference to God, repre- sents the person " in the whole compass of its properties." Thus, the warning to Israel as to L 1 62 THE GREATER WORKS. the Angel whom Jehovah would send is based Exodus xxiii. on the sentence, "My name is in him;" and the assurance given as to the altars which would be reared is, " In all places where I record My name I will come unto thee, and I will bless Exodus .XX. thee." Similarly the name of Jesus denotes all ^'^' that is personal to Him as Lord and Christ. To ask in His name is to have the request accor- dant with His mind, His spirit, His will, to make it in the consciousness of the affiance of our heart with Him. For, the energy fulfilled in the works is His. It is He who baptiseth with the Holy Ghost. " Being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this, Acts ii. 33. which ye now see and hear," testified St Peter to the amazed and doubting multitude on the day of Pentecost. What are the conditions of realising the gifts which the Saviour, having gone to the Father, has " received for men, that the Lord God might Psiim ixviii. dwell among them " .■' 18. * . First, a living, self-surrendering faith. " He that bclievetJi on Me, the ivorks that I do shall ver. 12. he do also." Not otherwise than through this confidence, opening the heart to Christ that He may come in with His great power, can the spiritual energy referred to be developed in the Church. " Why could not we cast him out ^ " ask the apostles ; and the answer is, " Because THE GREATER WORKS. l6 O of your unbelief." For the same reason how Matt. xvii. much power is lost ! How many of our signs have vanished ! How cold and unfruitful are the ministries ! How barren of blessing too often the ordinances of God's Zion ! We know that the Lord has not withdrawn His gifts. What He shed forth on Pentecost was not a mere passing shower, it was the beginning of a plenteous rain, in which He has willed that His congregation should dwell. Why is it, then, that we see not His mighty arm, as we desire to see it, in the midst of His people .-• Why do we not behold the promised "greater works" in the measure and to the extent of His promise .'' Why are our missions so hindered .'' Admitting that much has been done to preach the gospel for a witness to all the nations, why is it still the day of small things .'' Why, in Christendom, do so " many children seek for the Lord's refreshing grace and return empty, or wander without shepherds, having none to guide or recover them " ? Is this because we have forgotten our confidence in the Lord.'* because we have learned to trust more in the operations of man than in the powers of the world to come .-' because we have not, as we should have, the faith which approves itself by seeking to complete the order of the Lord's house, and by leaning only on Him who is faithful to the pledge that He is with His Church always, even to the end ? Shall we not I 64 THE GREATER WORKS. reflect on this, and renew the prayer of the Luke xvii. 5. apostles, " Lord increase our faith." For there is, as the farther condition of blessing, t/ie preparation of prayer — that prayer which is the necessary outcome and manifestation of faith. Ask is the command of Christ. It represents the activity of reception in the disciple which corresponds to the activity of bestowment in the Lord. How wonderful is the assurance, " What- soever ye shall ask in My name, tJiat will I do : " " If ye shall ask any tJiing in My name, I will do Vers. 13, ,4. it." Can we forget that such asking preceded the most remarkable exercise of divine power recorded in the history of the Church } The disciples had been for days united in supplica- tion. They were waiting for the earnest of the inheritance ; and they waited, contmuing in prayer. It was when they were " all with one accord in Acts ii. I. one place " that the power came upon them. And the narrative of that day is the type and ensample for all days. Christ's Church has one strength, all-sufficient, but only one. The strength is in God, and the way of that strength is the channel of fervent, persevering, united asking. Promise on His part does not supersede, it pro- ceeds on the supposition of action, of prayer, on our part. "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew Isaiah xi. 31. their strength." The waiting, as is shown in the first chapter of the Acts, is in prayer. Unbelief, or half-belief, as to the cfifcctualness of pra}-er is THE GREATER WORKS. I 65 the paralysis of the Church. Surely the word is sounding in the ear of all who wait, " Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give Him no rest, till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth." is.iiahix Finally, the power is conditioned on the ^' love which is evidenced in obedience. " If ye love Me keep" or, "ye ivill keep, My eoniniandnients!' Ver. 15. The speech passes from believing, as the main requirement, to loving. But is not love the germ of faith } The Lord does not say. Love Me, as He says, Believe on Me. He assumes the love as indeed the first faith, to be perfected as faith increases, but in the heart as the faith of the heart. And we notice of what kind the love is. Not a mere luxury of sentiment, not a mere blissfulness of feeling, but a real oneness of will with Christ, fulfilled in the earnest, practical subjection to His commandments. For him who thus believes, thus prays, thus obeys, the going forth of the promise of the Father is pre- pared : ''And I zv ill pray the Father, and He shall give you" — what .^ whom .? Let our next ver. 16. chapter unfold the kernel of the great consola- tion. XIV. THE SON'S PRAYER AND THE FATHER'S GIFT. St John xiv. 16-24. ' ' Another Comforter. " Now the discourse returns to the point at which Thomas interposed his question. The subject- matter of the consolation has not yet been fully declared. One part of it only has been presented, the care and work of Jesus for His own in that Father's house to which He is going. But there remains the other part which deals with their position when He is taken from them. However inspiriting may be the assur- ance of a power exceeding abundant above all that they could ask or think, it does not meet the whole need and craving of the heart. These poor disciples who had hitherto depended entirely on their Master are to be left as sheep in the midst of wolves — lonely orphaned souls, scholars without a teacher, children without a parent. To exhibit His provision for them in this state of apparent bereavement is the desire THE son's prayer AND FATHER'S GIPT. I 6; of Christ. And in the gracious sentences before us He proceeds to cheer them with the solemn pledge that if He goes from them in bodilv presence it is only that He may come to them ni a nearer and more blissful intimacy than they had ever realised, that His connection With them will remain unbroken, and that in a- day of clearer illumination, which shall dawn after a little while, they will know what had perplexed them, they will perceive the truth of His Person, and be conscious of somethino- more-they will know that He is in the Fathe? and they in Him, and He in them. ' ,-^^ ^^ All that this word contains and suggests is summed up in the promise of the Father, which IS for the first time unfolded. Yes ; hints, fore- shadowmgs of it had been given at sundry times during the Lord's ministry. But the first plain word, directly and explicitly presenting the office and work of the Holy Ghost, is spoken at the supper table. It lies before us in the six- teenth and seventeenth verses. There are three other descriptions of the mission of this Blessed One in the portion of the address which follows and, referring to them, we shall afterwards have occasion to glance at some aspects of His mission. But there is a beauty, there is a meaning, peculiar to the earliest of the intima tions. It is " the private and confidential " one Its particular purpose is to s\^o^x how there 1 68 THE son's prayer and father's GH^'T. shall be such a continuation of the old ties and the old relations, of the help which His followers had ever found in Jesus, that although the world will see Him no more, they and all His believing people will see Him and share in His Ver. 19. life. Let us try to gather up some crumbs of the feast which is spread in the saying under review. The introductory clauses are significant. One of these has already been noticed ; one which reminds us both of the end of all true prayer and the reality of all true faith. The disciple who asks in the name of Christ desires a part in the greater works only in so far as the Father may be glorified in the Son. His wish is that in all things he shall fill " a little space," that in all things Christ shall have the pre-eminence. From this love to Him there comes the one supreme longing breathed through all prayer, that the will may be lifted up to Christ's, made one with Christ's, be kept in a constant and entire devotion to Christ's commandments. In such obedience the way is prepared for spiritual blessing. And, therefore, the Lord conjoins with the word enforcing it, the assur- ance, "/, for My part, %vill pray the Father, and He shall give you — thus loving Me and keeping vcr. 16. My commandments — anotJier Comforter^ Observe the language. The verb employed to denote Jesus' asking is not the same as that THE son's prayer AND FATHEr's GIFT. 1 69 employed in a preceding verse to denote the asking of the disciples. It is expressive of a more familiar pleading ; " rather, perhaps, a manner of asking, implying actual presence and ■^}^°'^^'^ o' i. ■/ c> J ^ Commentary nearness." It is the praying of the Mediator after He ascended on high, "through His own blood entering in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for Hebrews ix. us." There is a beautiful commentary on the conjunction of the obedient church and the praying Saviour in the first chapter of the Book of the Acts. " Wait," was the parting injunction of Christ, " for the promise of the Father which Acts i 4. ye have heard of Me." They kept the command- ment. For ten days they continued in prayer and supplication, waiting. And what was the evi- dence that He had fulfilled His covenant, that He had prayed the Father .'' Pentecost was the evidence. He had received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost. Observe the order : " / will pray. . . . The Father shall give!' The Comforter is the Father's gift, " sent from the Father,'' " pro- ceeding from the Father." But the Son also chap.xv. 26. sends : He receives the Father's gift, and in His name \.\\Q Spirit of Truth is sent. That is chap. xiv. . 26 to say, this Holy Comforter is in the whole truth of Jesus' Person, and the whole truth of Jesus' Person is in Him. He is sent, not as a substitute for the Christ whom the men who I 70 THE SON S PRAYER AND FATHER S GIFT. - had been given to Him knew, but as the Revela- tion to them of that very Christ. He is in the name of the man Christ Jesus, and all which this name represents is realised in His communion with men. This is the Redeemer's reward. This is the neiv thing in the Promise which is declared. God's Spirit had always striven with men. From His inspiration come all true thought and right action ; but, since the man was glorified, there has been a new tabernacling of God with men — God in the humanity which Christ took into the Godhead supping with men and they with Him. For what is the substance of the Promise .-' Pause, dear reader, over the expression, ^'a?iother Coinfortci-r Much has been written in elucida- tion of that phrase, the Comforter. It is the translation of the Greek term Paraclete. Else- where it is translated advocate; "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the I John ii. I. Righteous." And there is no doubt that it signifies " one who stands as the counsel of an accused party, who pleads his cause and serves him by advice and help, admonition and en- couragement, as his case needs." Our English Testament, from the days when the first version was prepared by Wyclifte, and distributed over England by his poor priests, has rendered the word as used in the Gospel, Comforter. And THE SON S PRAYER AND FATHER S GIFT. I 7 I we would not have it otherwise, for it is en- deared to us by long use, by tender associations, and by its own attractiveness. But we must recollect that the word comprehends more than is usually attached to the notion of a comforter. WyclifFe meant more when he pressed it into service. Thus, he translates the sentence as to the angel in the garden, " there appeared an angel comforting Him," not merely consoling, but as we read, '' strengtJiening Him!' It is a helper ; one who will be what Jesus, in the days of His flesh, had been : a Counsellor, Teacher, Father, " Guide, Philosopher, Friend " — going before them, leading them, suggesting the thought and the word and giving boldness for the deed, and " interceding within them with groanings which cannot be uttered " — whom the Father has given that He may abide with His Church for ever. "Eveji the Spirit of Truth ." The Spirit who Ver. 17. is truth because He proceedeth from the Father in the name of the Son, and is therefore the tri-unity of God, in whom God is, and is revealed in the spirit of man. The Spirit whose sphere of operation is truth : who receives of Christ the Incarnate Truth, and shows what is Christ's in Nature, in Providence, above all, in the word. The Spirit who leads into and produces the truth in the soul that is opened in trust to Him, by manifesting the correspondence between the I ']2 THE SON S PRAYER AND FATHER S GIFT. revelation of the Father in the Son and the need and craving of man, by enlightening the eyes to see " the gleam of love and prayer that dawns on every cross and care," and to realise the glorious things which God has prepared for them that love Him, by sanctifying in the truth of the illumined and vivified word. The Spirit who makes true by imparting His own nature, by dwelling within as the " Spirit of wisdom and Eph. i. i8. revelation," " of power and love and of a sound 2 lim. 1. 7. ^ Rom.viii.is. niind," "of adoption," "of holiness," "of com- Kom. I. 4. ^ Acts ix. 31. fort" — "the Spirit of God's Son," and thus Gal. IV. 6. '■ Eph. i. 13. '< the seal " of the believer's Sonship. Oh, how great and precious the promise ! the gift of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ! And if it is said that this Spirit " tJic zvorld Vcr. 17. cannot receive" \\Q^ do not need to inquire into the ground of the inability thus asserted. The world that zvonld not receive Christ, that saw no beauty in Him, that had no sympathy with the mind that was in Him, could not re- ceive the other Comforter. Where there is no desire connecting the soul with Christ, no affiance of heart to Him, there is no capacity for the spiritual presence and office of the Comforter. A certain kinshijD, at least a certain moral attraction, is necessary to fellowship be- tween one person and another. Where the moral conditions of a life arc alienated from the life of the Father, there is no readiness for THE SON S PRAYER AND FATHER S GIFT. I 73 the quickening touch and renovating agency of the Holy Ghost. As there cannot be vision without an organ of sight, knowledge without a faculty of reception, so, in the words of Jesus, the world cannot receive the One whom He will send, " because it seeth Him not, neither knozveth HiinT Ver. 17. This is easily understood. But the meaning of what follows is not so plain : " Ye knoiv Him, for He dzvelleth with you, and shall be in Ver. 17. youT Was not this a new promise .'' Did not this new promise announce a Presence hitherto un revealed .-* The explanation I take to be this : — Although they did not understand the scope of the Life manifested to them in Christ, the disciples had been in communion with this Holy Spirit ; for this Holy Spirit had been speaking to them, breathing on them, circling around them with His gracious influences in the Person of Christ. He was present in Christ, just as, afterwards, they knew Christ to be present in the Spirit. Christ is the one Comforter. The Spirit, who is in the name of Christ, is the other Comforter. Another, not in the sense of a different, but the same only in another mode of Being. As we sometimes phrase it, the alter ego, the other I. What is pledged to us, therefore, is that the departure of Christ in a visible corporeity ensures the coming of the very self that was I 74 THE SON S PRAYER AND FATHER S GIFT. incarnated in Christ in a form in which this self shall be more closely and permanently personal to us. " Think," says the Lord, " of what I was when I went out and in among you. Reflect on the manner of person you have found Me to be ; as, in that manner of person, you beheld the Heart and Will of the Father, so in it you have been beholding the character, the work, the Person of the Comforter whom the Father shall give." Let me repeat what I have already said : do not allow thought to conceive of the Holy Spirit as taking Christ's place, as doing duty for the absent Saviour ; let us always remember that in Him the place for Christ is secured in the heart. He comes that, by His coming, Christ may abide, not carnally or visibly, but really and spiritually with or by His Church, and may enter into and dwell within those who love the Lord and keep His word. Behold the two great features of the Presence Ver. 17. of the Spirit — "//t' abides with tJic C/uiir/i." He is not one who sometimes comes and then goes. It is to be feared that even the language of faith occasionally encourages this conception. We pray for visitations of the Spirit ; we plead, "Pass me not, O mighty Spirit;" we refer to works of the Spirit in one place as if there were no such works in another, or at one season as if there were no permanent occupation of the Church by THE SON S "prayer AND FATHERS GIFT. 1 75 the Holy Ghost. No doubt there is often a right apprehension of the Lord's saying in such speech, and those who use it are truly resting on the promise. But I cannot help thinking that the belief of the Church needs to be lifted to the height which has been set before us. God's Spirit is not a visitor of the Church. He has been given that He may abide by it for ever. It is His home. We do not require to ask for a grace which is above us in some heaven, or below us in some depth. It is nigh us, even in our mouth and in our heart. Times of special blessing are not the arrivals of a stranger ; they are the tokens of one who is amongst us, — special tokens indicating what we are apt to forget, that He is waiting to be gracious, that there is a plenitude of good which we are not realizing, only because men are not opening the door of their hearts to Him, and because God's faithful people are not vividly and earnestly welcoming, and working in the consciousness of, the Holy Ghost who has been shed abroad. Oh, Spirit of God ! wilt Thou not revive us again that Thy people may rejoice in Thee— ps. kxxv. 6. abiding for ever. And with this is connected the other feature of the promise. He shall be in you — an inward, ver. 17. spiritual revelation through the immaneiice, the indwelling of the Spirit. The two last clauses of the verse have been accepted as corresponding I 76 THE son's traver and father's gift. to the two ideas of the Comforter and the Spirit of Truth. The Comforter shall abide ; the Spirit shall be in you. For this is the characteristic of the Christian state until the coming of the Lord. We know Christ through the experience of Christ. We see Him through what we possess of Him. St Paul prays that his brethren may be "strengthened mightily by the Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in the heart F.ph. iii. 16, by faith." The Holy Spirit i]i the inner man is the cause, faith is the welcome, of the indwelling Christ. It is observable that the disciples did not know Christ until they had ceased to see Him ; they beheld Him only when He had gone in the bodily presence, and come in the Spirit who had entered into them. In the shcwings of Himself during the forty days which intervened between the resurrection and the ascension, after the eyes had been opened to recognise Him, He vanished out of sight. He was preparing them for the vision of the latter days — the vision by faith of the indwelling Christ — " He passed from His hiding place of sight without knowledge to Newm.^n-8 tj-^^t of knowlcds^e without sicrht." Sermons \'o\. vi. p. 144. Thus the great promise is unfolded Avhich pledges that the eleven now seated with their Lord, and all trusting souls then or since, shall not be left as orphans ; that although the Jesus whom the hands have handled must pass from the outward gaze, the Jesus in whom is all A THE SON S niAYER AND FATHER S GIFT. I 7 7 the soul's salvation and desires remains, that " yet a little while " and although the world would not see Him they would see Him. He has not left us ; He has gone to the Father only that He might come to us. In the days of His flesh He had not actually come as the Saviour and Lord manifesting Himself to the heart. He did thus come only after the sacrifice had been offered and accepted, and " the new and living way" had been opened. Then, in the com- munion of the eternal life, did He draw near to, has He established Himself in the midst of, His own. He is, as the God-man, the " High Priest over the house of God," in His Humanity interceding at the right hand of God for us, and administering the power of heaven and earth. He is, in the Spirit of Truth, the Com- forter sent in His name from the Father, still with us, ever with us, in our hearts and to our faith. And we are sharers, thus, of His own nature — of the Divine nature. We are partakers of His life — the life of Sonship. It is the history of His life that is being continually repeated by His Church and in the believer; it is His life, in all that is essential to it, in all the elements of its divine truth and beauty, that is received and fulfilled in character and in consciousness. We live because of Him ; we live out of Him. In Him we arc partakers of the love wherewith He is loved ; and He, as M T 78 THE son's prayer AND FATIIER's GIFT. the loved of the Father, communicating this Vers. I2-I8. love to mcn, is manifesting Himself to us. But, as the sweet and gracious stream of assur- ance thuspours forth, a question arises inthe mind ofone of the disciples. That one is 3^t(das. Not Iscariot, the Evangelist is careful to add, as if the mere name raised up the protest and horror of his soul. No word addressed to the Lord is recorded ofthemanofKerioth. Persons such as he have little to ask of God. It is Judas Lebbaeus — a. cheerful, honest, simple-hearted inquirer in the temple of truth. "Lord, how is it, or what has come to pass, that Thou wilt manifest Thyself to us and not ver. 22. to the world .'' " Still, we see, a stumbling over the notion of some external manifestation. How could there be such a manifestation in the special and private way which the Lord had marked .■* Well, Jesus, bearing patiently with this slowness of heart, is content to summarise the words which He has already spoken ; to repeat that the condition of all seeing of Him is love ; that the corporeity of love, so to speak, is obedience ; that this obedience is the prelude to, the preparation for, spiritual blessing; that the highest reality of spiritual blessing is the consciousness of His Father's love ; that, in this love, there is a phiral involved — it is the love of the Triune God ; that, in the fulness of this love, Father and Son in the uniting Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, dwell in the faithful soul ; that^ THE SON S PRAYER AND FATHER S GIFT. 1 79 thus truly and verily, God — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — comes to all who love Christ and makes His abode with them. All this, at that Ver. 23. moment, is beyond the spiritual grasp of Judas. But it is sown into his mind, that it may be fructified when the Comforter " shall teach all things, and bring all things to the remembrance, whatsoever He has said unto His own." Ver. 26. It is indeed a marvellous saying, and one which is passed to the humblest and weakest of the disciples of Christ. He takes the most general term : " If a man love Me we Avill come to liiiii, and make our abode with ///;//," It is for thee, my reader, for me, for every one who hears and responds to the call of the Lord. Within the breast of each of us there may dwell the majesty, the blessedness, of God. Ah, what is the place which we can make ready for Him whom " the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain " .? Mark the sentence, " We ivill make our abode.'' The divine love Ver. 26. builds its own house, by the force of its own gentleness, in our rude, rough, unshapen hearts. Not a tent, not a mere temporary residence, an abode, a home ! — that there God may dwell, His love casting out our fear, overcoming our selfish- ness, and subduing all things to itself. Joy, indeed, to thee, O thou lover of Christ, who art keeping His words ! In the gift of the Father to thee, truly thy " fellowship is with the Father, i john i. 3. and with His Son Jesus Christ." XV. A FAREWELL GREETING. St John xiv. 25-31. " Peace I leave with you." Ver. 25. ^^ Being yd present'' — during the " little while " of His abiding with the disciples — the Lord had spoken to His own. But the spirit and life of His words had not been declared. He is merely the sower sowing the good seed. The awaken- ment of the slumbering germ, the growth of the divine nature begotten by means of the word, the "gathering of fruit unto life eternal," is reserved for the day of the Holy Ghost. Thus the mutual relation and office of the Promiser and the Promised, Jesus and the other Comforter, are illustrated. The one soweth, the other Chap. iv. 36, rcapeth ; sower and reaper rejoice together. There is a beautiful unselfishness, I think, in the scriptural setting forth of the work of the Three Persons in the Godhead. The Father glorifies the Son : " When He bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, He saith, And let 37 A FAREWELL GREETING. I Si all the angels of God worship Him." The voice Hebrews i. out of the cloud proclaims to men, " This is My beloved Son, hear Him." The Son glorifies the M.ii-k ix. 7. Father: "He doeth nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do." The Holy chap. v. 19. Spirit manifests the love of the Father and the Son. He loses Himself in the glory of Christ. He is as " the Friend of the Bridegroom who standeth and heareth him, rejoicing greatly because of the Bridegroom's voice." Christ is chap. iii. 29. the Truth ; He is the Spirit of Truth. Christ is the Word ; He is the Expositor. Christ is the Light ; He is the Illuminator. Christ is the Speaker ; He is the Teacher. Apart from Christ there is no revelation. Apart from the Blessed Spirit there is no enlightenment. As the Latin Father has well observed, " We take the words from Christ Avho speaks ; we understand the same words by the Spirit who teaches." Augustine. So is it in Christian experience. In regard to all knowledge, indeed, we can distinguish be- tween the word-speaking and the word-teaching. The material is provided ; laid in order and made ready for the quickening. The germs are implanted, but they must be awakened, and kindled into living consciousness. In every science, in all literature, there is an Eureka — a moment when, through the purging of the inward vision, the inner truths, the import and significance of things, are discerned, and what I 82 A FAREWELL GREETING. was hitherto merely objective to the soul becomes its possession and its joy. And thus likewise as to spiritual verities. We may have them, in their due proportion and arrangement, " bone to his bone, the sinews and the flesh upon them, and the skin covering them above, but no Ezekiei breath in them." The breath is the work of the Holy Spirit ; His the inflatus by which thought is moved, and affection is stirred, and the cor- respondence between the word and the soul's need is discerned. "One thing I know, that, Chap. ix. 25. ivJiereas I zvas blind, nozv I sec." Let us observe the scope of the second refer- ence to the Comforter in the last discourse of our Lord. Two things are noticeable — tJie designation and the fnnction. Here, and here only, He is named the Holy Ver. 26. Ghost. In the other passages which announce His advent He is described as the Spirit of Truth. With this, which relates to the personal reception and recollection of Christ's sayings, is associated the quality of holiness. Farther, it is to be noted that holiness is predicated of Him when the special assurance is added, " The Father will send Him in My name." He is to be the representative of the Holy One, the sent and separated of God. And the element of His 2V/-dwelling is the same as the element of Christ's with-dwQWmg. There is no realisation of Christ, and no knowledge of Christ, except in holiness ; A FAREWELL GREETING. I 83 spiritual sight is possible only to the soul fashioned according to the Christly pattern. An old English writer well remarks : " As the eye cannot behold the sun unless it be sunlike, and hath the form and resemblance of the sun drawn in it, so neither can the soul of man behold God unless it be godlike — hath God formed in it, and be made partaker of the divine nature. The knowledge of divinity that appears in systems and models is but a poor wan light ; but the powerful energy of divine knowledge john Smuh displays itself in purified souls ; here we find mi^he''"'^''^ the land of truth." S,?:ig'to As the Expositor of the words of Christ, this Knowledge Holy Spirit's function is parted into two in the '"'"'°" '' saying concerning Him : '' He shall teach you allYer.26. things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto youT Yet we must not divide the two parts. They have a common reference, "whatsoever I have said." The teaching here does not point to additional de- velopments of truth, to words besides, or revela- tions beyond, the words which Christ has spoken. It stands for the opening up of Christ's mind, as contained implicitly in or declared explicitly by His words. It is the leading of thought into the full significance and consciousness of the Incar- nate Son of God, who is in the Father and in whom the Father is. And this is done by recalling the words, by reproducing them in the 184 A FAREWELL GREETING. memory, and drawing forth their spiritual force and power. On the testimony of the Lord as to the sufficiency of this work of the Holy Ghost Ave base our reception of the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. His all tilings " must not, indeed, be extended to all conceiv- oishausen. able minutifc ; " nor does it assert that the apostles, individually, recollected and discerned the full meaning of c?// that Christ did and spoke; but it is equivalent to a pledge that the apostles conjunctly and personally would be so actuated by the Holy Ghost as that a true, adequate, and full interpretation of Himself, in His character, glory, grace, and truth, would be given, through them, to the Church. And it is permitted us thankfully to believe that, when Jesus says " He shall teach you^' He is not isolating the eleven seated around Him ; that, although in them His assurance was first and most signally fulfilled, they were "the first fruits " of a harvest of renewed and illu- minated souls. The Holy Ghost is still with the Church, teaching the things which Christ has spoken, and leading into further and fuller discoveries of their preciousncss. We have not yet attained, neither are we perfect. The Church is only yet learning her primer. Who can set any limits to the potencies of the development and application of Christian truth .'' Oh, how large, and broad, and deep. A FAREWELL GREETING. I 85 and high is the thought, Christ the Truth ! Where is the measure for the " measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ " ? Blessed be Eph- v. , God, the Holy Spirit has not been withdrawn ! In ministries and ordinances He is the Teacher, He is the Reminder. If our ministries and ordinances were only more complete, and filled with the spirit of grace and supplications, how much more distinct would His teaching be. Let us yield our hearts to the conviction that this Comforter has yet many things to say, that He is bidding our faith upwards and forwards to greater things. All truth was not compressed in statements and formularies of the past. The new ever grows out of and completes the old ; but there is a Jiezv, and there will be an ever newer and newer. The inheritance is ever en- larging ; new light on Christ's words ; new sight into the pastures for thought that are hidden in these words ; new anointings of holiness ; new revelations of the living Christ Himself. Always prophetic, always speaking of what is to be, this saying is the pledge of a divine teacher ever teaching the disciple — " the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the ^ph. i. 17. Lord." " And now, Lord, what wait I for 1 my hope P; is in Thee." In this wise may we conceive the ^' soul of Christ ascending to the Father. He has salm xxxix. Isaiah xxv. 4- I 86 A FAREWELL GREETING. given the promise; He has provided for the wants of His little children. All has been pledged to them in the great words concern- ing the Comforter. May He not, without farther speech, bestow His last benediction, and take the way, through suffering and death, to the glory at the right hand of the Eternal ? " Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you : not as the ivorld giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled^ neither let it be afraid y This is a farewell greeting — a greeting which has respect to the usual salutation at the coming and going of guests — but which, in the hands of Him who makes all things new, is a blessing peculiarly and only His. And every clause of the saying is charged with suggestive thought. The Saviour leaves peace. He, in the body, must go, but this remains. It is His gospel. He has nothing better to bequeath to His little children. For it is not a peace — an ordinary condition of thriving which He marks out — the addition is, " My peace,'' that which is emphati- cally His own — in the right of His Being as the Son of God, in the truth of His possession as the Man according to God's own heart. Had they not felt the majesty of His calm } Had they not seen that, amidst all sorts of disquieting things, " when the blast of the terrible ones was as a storm against the wall ; " and now, in the A FAREWELL GREETING. I 87 immediate prospect of the death of which He had told them, He was "in perfect peace," His isaiah x.wi. heart fixed so that it could not be moved ? Such is the peace that He leaves with them. Ah, His followers know its secret. They know that it keeps the heart and mind, because its root is a perfect, unbounded, trust in the Father ; because the soul is occupied with the Father — the Father that centre which self, in the con- sciousness of the worldly, is ; because desire and purpose dwell in a region above all that speaks of turmoil and strife, and the energy is fed from springs whose source is other and higher than the world. He leaves. Yes ; He gives this peace to all who trust Him. In them it represents a great spiritual deliverance — deliverance from the guilt and bondage of sin, from all that alienates the life, in its main tendencies, from the Father. A threefold grace : " peace with God by the pardon of sin ; peace with themselves by the answer of a good con- science ; peace with one another by mutual Bishop charity." All needful for this grace He has sermoiTon secured, is securing, by the sacrifice of Him- ^^'^'^^"^^'^' self. Pointing to the blood shed for many, and reminding of the prayer for the Com- forter, He can say — I am giving it. Not as the world is wont to give. It identifies peace with outward befallings ; it seeks first some good in condition, and then looks for peace ; it hews I 88 A FAREWELL GREETING. out some broken cistern, and says, Drink, and the soul drinks only to thirst again ; it gives its best at the beginning ; soon the appetite goes, or if it remains, the power of satisfy- ing it diminishes, and it becomes only a pain and bitterness ; its amusements end with being toils ; its pleasures end with being scourges. Not thus with this loving Lord. The good to which He directs is the Eternal. The source of supply which He opens, is a well of water in the life itself, springing up into everlasting blessedness. The joy He imparts is a sovereign energy of goodness and love. He carries beyond what is transient and fleeting, because He unites to Himself at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore. Ah, yes. He has a rule and a measure of His own in giving. But the giving is so royal, the gift so great, that — no matter what the bereavement of the heart — there is a voice behind sounding in the ear, "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid," Thus the quaint Gurnall has paraphrased the sentence of Christ. " He is both the testator to leave, and the executor to give out of His own hands what His love has left to believers; so that there is no fear but that His will shall be performed to the full, seeing He Himself lives to see it done. Not as the ivorld givetJi. The peace I leave with you is not in your houses, but in your hearts. The comfort I give you lies not A FAREWELL GREETING. I 89 in gold and silver, but in pardon of sin, hopes of glory, and inward consolations, and these shall outlive all the world's joy. Many a dying father hath, in a farewell speech to his children, wished them all peace and comfort when he should be dead and gone ; but who besides Jesus Christ could send a comforter into their hearts, and lodge peace and comfort in their bosoms." The chris- tian Armour chap. i.\. Great and precious, in truth, is the promise, '^''"°" ^" the legacy, of Jesus to His own. But their countenances still are clouded. All His assur- ances cannot dispel their gloom. They are brooding, and they keep brooding, heavily over the future before them. The Lord, for an instant, shifts His ground. Why should they think only of themselves ? Are they strangers to the unselfishness of love .'' Do they love Him ? Will they not then rejoice when He tells them that He is going to His Father — to an increase and elevation of bliss : " For Mj' Father is greater than /"? Ver. 2s Men have been puzzled over this sentence as to the Father and the Son. Why should they be so } " In the very name of Father there is something of eminence which is not in that of Son ; and some kind of priority we must ascribe unto Him whom we call the First in respect of Him whom we term the Second Person ; and, as igo A FAREWELL GREETING. Pearson on the Creed, Art i. Ver. 29. Ver. 30. Olshaiiscn. we cannot but ascribe it, so we must endeavour to preserve it." The Son looks up — acknowledges the subordination which does not imply differ- ence of nature — and appeals to those who love Him to forget their own sorrow, to cease from continual self-contemplation, and rejoice with Him in His joy. Nor is it wholly for Himself — although that consideration is made prominent. In His passing to the Father's right hand, the accepted and glorified God-man, His mission shall be accomplished. His Church shall be raised and glorified also, and the blessings represented in the Father's answer to His prayer for the Comforter shall be realised. But the Lord must hasten. The separation is soon to be. He announces it beforehand ; He prepares the minds of His little flock, that their confidence in Him may not be shaken, that they may be assured of the unbroken unity, He in them and they in Him. The final conflict with the Prince of this world is at hand. "As he approached the Redeemer at the commencement of His ministry and tempted Him with the snare of pleasure, so now, at the end of His work. He appears and tempts Him by means oi feavT But in vain. The will is steadfast in obedience. The world-Prince has nothing in the tempted Son of God. In token of the Son's dutiful love He now binds Himself, A FAREWELL GREETING. I9I as it were, with cords on the altar. He offers Himself in sacrifice to be and to bear as the Father gave Him commandment. For Himself and His own the sentence must be uttered : "Arise, and let us go hence.'' ^'^''' ^'" XVI. THE DISCOURSE RESUMED — THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. St John xv. i-ii. "Abide." Between the final word of the previous chap- ter and the beginning of the fifteenth, we may Matt. xxvi. insert the singing of the hymn which, as two of MaikxLv.26. the EvangeHsts inform us, preceded the de- parture to the Mount of Olives. The Passover- meal was frequently, if not always, concluded with the recitation of the Great Hallel or some other sacred hymn. And the moment appropriate to the farewell song was that im- mediately after all had arisen in preparation for going thence. But how could the members of that company, so soon to be bereaved, join with heart-felt gratitude and joy in the refrain, "O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good, for Ps c.Nxxvi. I. His mercy endureth for ever" } The signal to depart rang on their souls like the knell of doom. Hitherto they had been a flock, small THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. I93 but united. So long as their Master was with them they had both a leader and a home ; His removal will scatter them, and send them back into the world disappointed, lonely, home- less. He who read the thoughts of their hearts knew the reason of the saddened countenance and the muffled song. And His '■^ let us go^' must be supplemented by another note. The series of utterances which follows is the unfolding of the sentence '^ Abide m Me." Is not this the twofold idea of the Christian life — movement, conflict, trial in the outer world ; rest, peace, the home of the soul in Christ Himself.'' Where the latter portion of the Lord's dis- course was spoken we cannot determine. The natural interpretation of the narrative is that it was spoken either on the way to the brook Kedron, or at some spot more or less distant from the upper room. And the difference be- tween it and the former address of the Lord bears out the conception of a different scene — one in which the mind is brought more directly into contact with external things, and the im- pression of the hostile external world is more vividly formed. Those who insist that there was always a special occasion for the similitudes and parables of Christ suggest various circum- stances as the ground-work of the similitude with which the resumed speech begins Such N 194 I^HE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. as : the vineyards which the httle company must have skirted on their path, hghted by the Storr. moon then fully shining ; the fires which, at the time of the Passover celebration, were kindled for the burning of the offal of the sacrifices and Lange. the cut off branclics of the vine ; the great vine, described by Josephus, spread on the door of the Temple, its branches and leaves of gold and its clusters of diamonds and pearls, viewed by the Lord who had made a detotiv to the Temple, or from a point in the neighbourhood of the Rosen- city gate. muUer. •' "^ Setting such imaginations aside, the words related by St John may, consistently with pro- babilities, have been uttered in the open air, at a place a little way removed from the ch«p. xviii. crowd. The "going forth over the brook," mentioned in the eighteenth chapter, may refer, not to the quitting of the house in which the feast had been held, but to the passing through the gate, afterwards called St Stephens, to the declivity at whose base the Kedron ran. And it may be noticed that the lifting up of the eyes Chap. xvii. I. to heaven, which immediately preceded the prayer, seems more in consonance with the elevation of the gaze to the "spangled heavens" than the mere upward glance in the room at Jerusalem. It is right, however, to state that another opinion has obtained the warm support of THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. 1 95 expositors such as Stier, Olshausen, EUicott, and Alford. " We can hardly suppose," it is argued, " that discourses Hke those set before us could have been delivered to as many as eleven persons walking by the way, and at a time of such publicity as the Paschal feast." The sup- Aifords* position is that the prospect of separation on srjohn7 " arrested the steps of the disciples ; the as- '""' sembly broke up but no one moved. And then it was that He again opened His lips." A twig, perchance, " stretched through the window into the room, or the apartment was decorated with the foliage of the vine," — hence oishausen. the mould into which the renewed speech was cast. My readers will agree that the time and surroundings of the discourse are of subordinate interest. The revelation of love made in it is the matter which engrosses our attention. What was the need of particular incident or prospect for the suggestion of theme and illus- tration to the Lord ? Had He not been speak- ing already of " t/ie fruit of the vine " ? Had He not passed the cup filled with this fruit as the New Testament in His blood .-' Was not the vine one of the great Old Testament em- blems, occupying a chief place in the circle of prophetic symbols ? Was it not a specially fitting correspondent in the material universe for the truth He desired to enforce — the truth 196 THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. of a spiritual organism in which He and His are for ever one ? In the treasury of Jesus' mind, doubtless, the comparison which He in- stitutes was among the things both old and new, — old, because the expression of reality, new, because so elastic as to admit of ever fresh applications, — which lay ready for His command when the opportunity called it forth. The opportunity had come ; and the great and precious interpretation of the prophetic hiero- glyph is presented. May we discern a part at least of the teaching of Jesus ! The subject of the earlier address was chiefly Christ in His relation to the Father — the Trinity of the Divine Being in Him to be manifested to His own in the other Comforter whom the Father would send. The subject of the address which now begins is chiefly Christ in His relation to His Church; the nature of this relation ; the antagonism between those whom it embraces and the world ; the help ministered by it against such antagonism ; and the final victory and joy which it pledges. When these things have been declared, there comes forth from the inmost consciousness of Jesus that sublime conference with the Father which consummates the ministry of the suffer- ing love of the Son of God on the earth. Thus the address begins : — - THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. 1 97 " / am the true vine" We have already re- ver. i. ferred to the spiritual suggestiveness of the vine. Unsightly in stock, "with no form or comeliness," it spreads its foliage. Wonderfully vital, giving man the most rich and generous of fruits, yet requiring the constant skill and care of the gardener, — it is not to be wondered at that this tree and the place of its cultivation, the vineyard, should in scripture use denote the People specially planted by God in the soil of earth as the repository of His covenant and the sign of His kingdom to the nations. Israel according to the flesh is described by the Pro- phets as "the choice vine on the very fruitful isaiah v. i, 2. hill," the vine which " brought forth branches Ezekiei xix. and shot forth sprigs," " the son of man whom ^kxm ixxx. the Lord had made strong for Himself.'' Now, '''' Christ, transferring to His own person all ex- pressed in this figure, all of which the " crown of the herbs of the field," as a figure of the Church, can speak to the heart, uses an adjective whose meaning must not be overlooked. " The true vine." The student of the New Testament will observe that in the Gospel of St John this adjective — a fuller one than another Greek word also translated true — occurs no less than twenty- two times. And the comparison of the passages will show that " the antithesis cannot lie be- tween the false and the true, but only between the imperfect and the perfect, the shadowy and 198 THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. Trench Synonyms, section 8. the substantial." To recur, for example, to Israel, Christ does not deny that it was a vine of God's planting ; the assertion is that in Him alone the truth of the vine — the blessing which it yields in its clusters of grapes and its wine when the grapes are bruised — is realized to the full. "Whatever the name imports, taken in its highest, deepest, widest sense, whatever according to that the vine ought to be, that Christ fully is." He is " made of God to us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, iCor. i. 30. and redemption." He is "the trunk-root and stem of the kingdom of love." In Him — the Word Incarnate, the man according to God's own heart — is the life of which all the branches receive. " And My Father is the Husbandman!' Not the mere vine-dresser ; the owner and pro- prietor as well. Did not the Son come forth from the Father } But the cultivator, the dresser of the vine also. The word of St Paul just quoted is the sign of the Husbandman- care in regard to Christ Himself. " He was made of God unto us." There was a disciplin- ing, a dealing with the Son in the flesh, needed to the perfecting of Him as the cause of eternal salvation. "Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered." And still the Church which is Christ's body is under the care of the Father. The Holy Ghost Ver, Hebrews v 8. THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. 1 99 is the promise of the Father. In Him the culture of the Divine Fatherhood is realized, The promise is made good, " I, the Lord, do keep the vineyard. I will water it every moment ; lest any hurt it, I will keep it night ^^aiah xxvii and day." And when we reflect on particular branches — on the work of the husbandman, as he scans every sprig and shoot and cluster- is not the assurance of our Lord one of comfort as well as instruction ? My Father ; there is the mark of identification. The Father of Jesus, whom Jesus has revealed, to whom Jesus lifted His eyes— He it is, O Christian, who keeps to Himself the pruning-knife. Dost thou suffer.? His hand is in thy suffering. His heart is with thee. His watchfulness is ordering all. He has a purpose in all, and that purpose will be accomplished. " O what a cross to have no cross !" No cross were the sign that Augustine there is no husbandman. on Amos iii. Now, the point of the Lord's exhortation is, that these poor disciples who think only of His leaving them, that all who " believe in God and believe also in Him," are component parts of the vine which the Eternal Father husbands. The tree is not the stem only, it is the stem and the branches. Christ, the vine is not merely His person, it is His person and His Church. All who are spiritually afiianced to Him are 200 THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. truly parts of Himself, " members of His body, Eph. V. 30. His flesh, and His bones." What would a vine mean without branches ? What would a body be without members and organs ? In the most emphatic way the Lord thus assures His own that they are inseparable from Him ; that the parting which is near, however painful, cannot break the continuity of a relation which is not one of mere sympathy, but is one of life. The one life animates the tree. It is not in any branch apart from another branch ; the branches have it because of their incorporation into the stem, and because, with the stem, they are the tree. TJiey live in Him, out of Him. He has joined them to Himself. Let them realize the truth of this vital incorporative union : "/ mil ver. 5. ■ tJie vine, ye are the brandies y Thus, reminding them of their position, Christ bids the disciples continue where they already are, that they may receive the blessed- ness prepared for them — "Abide in Me and Ver. 4. / ift yoUy' or, as we might otherwise render it, '* Live your life in Me and I shall live My life in you." Truly, a noticeable sentence ! Let us observe /loiv it is enforced and lu/iat it implies. It is enforced by the consideration of utter powerlessness apart from Christ. What pith has the branch in itself.-' Can it be the source THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. 20I of its own life and energy ? As little can the individual be a fountain to himself. All vital power is in God. " What we have from God," says Bernard of Clairvaux, "we cannot keep without God." It is universally true that all real disciple-force is derived from the Living Word. "If it be said, it is not all acting, absolutely, but only what is good that is im- possible, still it must be confessed that only that which is good is real, while what is evil is oishausen. futile." To forget this, or to act as if we were complete in ourselves, is to lose power. ^' Apart Ver. s. fro7n Ale ye can do ?iothing" Nay, to make the assertion still more emphatic, we are reminded of the work of the husbandman. Do we not see him removing all in the tree which tends to mere leaf and wood ^ Not prun- ing but lopping off the branch which is not fulfilling the function of life. What is done with such a branch } Simply cast into the fire. Depend upon it, says the Lord, that there is an analogous dealing with men spiritually — that those who will live from themselves, not from the eternal truth and love of God, shall be cast forth and regarded as amongst the withered things Ver. 6. whose end is to be burned. The abiding insisted on implies the realisation of this dependence of the branch on the tree, the conscious and willing reception of the life which passes from the root-stem into every vital portion 202 THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. of the organism. Because the branches are human souls, the co-operation of will in each branch is demanded. The permanence of the union, the experience of the life-giving power of the Lord, is dependent on the action of the will. What is a promise is also a condition : " Take heed to abide in Me in order that I may abide in you, that, as a little ago I pledged, I may come to you, and live within you in the Comfor- ter, even the Holy Ghost." The sentence immediately preceding this charge has, in connection with it, a special force. Christ testifies that the disciples are already "clean because of the word luhich He lias Ver. 3. spoken to themr The ivord, in the use of the third verse, denotes all the teaching, indeed the ministry, of the Lord which had encompassed the eleven. They had dwelt in it. It had been the means of elevating their desires, of giving a new direction to their activity, a new character to all their aims. They were still foolish and slow to believe. But, so far at least, the thoughts of their hearts had been cleansed ; and He calls them to yield themselves more and more to the influence of that word, illumined as it would be by the Spirit of Truth, to find in it always the meeting-place between Him and them. It is in the word " dwelling richly in the heart " that the mutual abiding of Christ and the believer is evermore accomplished. THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. 203 This can be readily understood. Most of us have known, at least have heard of, some person as to whose goodness and truth there could be no doubt — " whose mere presence has shamed the bad, and made the good better, and been felt at times like the presence of God Himself." p"6j"°'"° Some of my readers may have been brought into familiar intercourse Avith one thus minded, one who, in clearness of apprehension, purity of heart, a certain indefinable elevation and beauty of spirit, was their gladly acknowledged superior. Is it possible to describe the indebtedness to Him ? Is it the language of exaggeration to say that He lives in the soul, and the soul lives in Him ? Well, it is only the highest applica- tion of this kind of influence which is represented in the abiding on which our Lord insists. To dwell from day to day in the secret of His presence; to have the consciousness of Him ensphering our thought and affection ; to keep all the approaches of the spirit so open that there can be a continual influx of His gentleness. His love. His spirit into us ; to search the scriptures, listening for His word, and, through His word, seeking the communion of His mind as our wisdom, and righteousness, and holiness ; thus to live is to fulfil the injunction, "Abide in Me, and I in you." This abiding is the secret of true disciphsJtip, cjfcctual prayer, and Christ-like Joy. 204 THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. Yes ; let us give diligent heed to the saying of our Lord: ^'Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fniit; so shall ye be Aly Ver. 8. disciples y We may notice the honour which He puts on discipleship. The sentence is not, " So shall ye be My apostles." Apostles and all must, before and above everything else, be learners. That is the summit as well as the beginning of the Christian life. And the learning advances in the measure in which the fruit-bearing in- creases. For, in that measure, our sympathy with the Lord, the union of our wills with Him, and therefore our knowledge of Him, is deepened and confirmed. Herein is Jesus' Father glorified. He desires the glory of His Son — that is the Father's glory. He is regarding this in all the discipline of His love. "Whoso knows that the gardener's arm is not set on work by anger, but by skill, will not conclude that he hates the tree he wounds, but that he has a mind to have it fruitful, and judges these harsh means the Boyle's Re- fittcst to producc that effect." Always let us chap""!' say this to ourselves — the mind of my Father in all His dealings with me is to enlarge the capacity of discipleship, of learning the sonship of His Son, of bearing much fruit. Fruit is, so to speak, the concentrated juice or blood of the tree. It is the result and sign of the life which is in that blood. The fruit to which Christ refers is the character, with all its in- THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. 205 fluence, which expresses the cleansing efficacy of His blood, which is the necessary manifesta- tion of the spirit of a Son. " Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance " — thus St Paul describes *^^'- ^• "the fruit of the Spirit." How solemn the reminder, ^^ Duich fruit, so shall ye be My dis- ciples." Ah, to what must we trace the reason of our spiritual poverty and powerlessness but to this, that we are not abiding in Christ, making Him truly our home, under- standing that the order is, first, in Him, the inner life fed out of Him, and second, j^r Him, the outer life His witness to men. Some of us, I daresay, feel that we do not attend sufficiently to tJie springs of action. We are so busy, so engaged in work of one kind or another, that the private, personal, communion with the Lord suffers. Oh, for all right service the need is, Christ at the centre of the being, Christ Himself the being's centre. Mrs Stowe has beautifully interpreted the longing of the true disciple : — " The soul alone, like a neglected harp. Grows out of tune, and needs that hand divine ; Dwell Thou within it, tune and touch the chords, Till every note and string shall answer Thine. " Abide in me, there have been moments pure When I have seen Thy face and felt Thy power ; Then evil lost its charm, and passion hushed, Owned the divine enchantment of the hour. 206 THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. " These were but seasons beautiful and rare ; Abide in me and they shall ever be. I ask Thee now fulfil my earnest prayer, Come and abide in me and I in Thee." The secret of discipleship, and the secret of effectual prayer also, is contained in the word, Abide. How large, yet how carefully defined, is the promise of the seventh verse. How large, " Ye shall ask ivhat ye will, and it shall be done nnto yoii ;'' but how carefully defined, Ver. 7. " U y^ abide in Me, and My words abide in yon." The z/" of the defining clause has its place in the right conception of prayer. Suppose yourself, dear reader, in perfect sympathy with another, thinking in his mind, feeling in his affections, seeing as through his eyes, will not your asking be only the reflection of his purpose .'* Nay, will not your speaking to him be really his spirit speaking out of you .-' Now, if you are in Christ — if His mind is the home of your mind, if His words are the material of your thought, and the life which you live in the flesh is being lived in the faith of the Son of God — what the will, in you thus abiding, prompts is only the echo of His voice. There may be much of your own in the expression of the will, much perhaps that is weak and foolish, but there is a prayer i7i the prayer, an intercession of the spirit with groanings which cannot be uttered. And what is this but the articulated thoupht of God — His THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES. 20/ Spirit speaking from you to Himself? "Lord teach us to pray," said the apostles. The Lord is teaching us to pray when He lays down the fundamental rule, '^ Abide in Me and I in yon y Finally, thus to abide is the secret of Christ- like joy. What was the joy of the Lord .'' His consciousness of the Father's love. The world was nothing to Him, His Father was all. " He kept His Father's commandments, and abode in His love." There is nothing more in the ver. lo. thought of Jesus than that all who are His should be partakers of this sovereign blessed- ness. It could be theirs, as it had been His, only through the possession of a home outside the world. Men had asked Him, " Where dwellest Thou } " and it had been sufficient for Him to point upward, " I dwell with Mine own people, with My Father." He points us upward, ''As t/ie Father hath loved Me, so have I loved yon ; continue ye in My lovey There is the vcr. 9. home, and here is the home-life — " If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love!' Ver. 10. Heaven is where He is, enshrined in obedient, dutiful love. Such love is stronger than the world, stronger than death : " I am persuaded that neither height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord." Rom.viii.39. " These things have I spoken nnto yon, that My Joy might be fnlfilled in you, and that your joy might be fully Vcr. n. XVII. CONFLICT AND HELP. Chaps, xv. 12-27, and xvi. i-ii. "The world hateth you." We notice five pauses in the last discourse of our Lord. Five times He repeats, "These chap.xiv.25. things have I spoken unto you." The prospect chapixvLi!" of the impending separation seems, again and chap/xvi.'as'. again, with new vividness to rise before His mind ; and, as the eye of the soul regards it, He gathers up the purpose of His address, reviews the circumstances of His little flock, passing on to some farther thought or calling back that He may more fully explain some past voice of love. One of such pauses is now Chap. .\v. II. before us. Jesus has illustrated the truth of the union, vital and organic, in which He and His are joined together ; and He has charged His followers to abide in Him, to continue in His love. In this exposition He has presented the ideal of His church, apart from any special surroundinccs. But He must return to the CONFLICT AND HELP. 209 position then occupied by the eleven, and to the condition of all who shall believe in Him through their word, as signified by their sorrow and trials. From the eleventh verse of the fif- teenth chapter and through the sixteenth chap- ter, His utterance relates to the two points, The disciple, and the ivorld, The supports provided for the disciple. Let us endeavour to apprehend the more salient features of the testimony. One issue of the union which has been described is a separation from the world which involves an irreconcilable antagonism. Christ had delayed making the full extent of this an- tagonism known until the night of His betrayal. " These things I said not unto yoiL at the begin- ning^ because I ivas zvith you." Hints and inti- chap. xvi. 4. mations He had indeed repeatedly given. But He had never referred to it so pointedly as then —never "with such disclosure of the deepest ground of the hatred." So long as He went be- fore them, He stood between them and others ; now that He is going away, the plain truth must be plainly told. " If ye were of the world, the world would love his own ; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." chap.xv. 19. See how often in this sentence the term the world is mentioned. There are some Avords o 2IO CONFLICT AND HELP. whose meaning we feel but cannot exactly define ; of such words, " the world " is one. We have all some conception of what it denotes as employed by Christ ; but it is impossible in precise terms to set forth the types of person included in the phrase. To the apostles it sig- nified the mass outside the circle of believers — the Synagogue, the Priesthood, the Schools of the Rabbins, the people soon to be roused to the cry, " Crucify Him, crucify Him." It signi- fied more, as by-and-bye they discovered ; in Luther's pithy phrase, "All Emperors, Kings, Princes, and whatever is noble, rich, great and learned, wise, or anything upon earth." Now, with respect to this mighty opposing force, we can observe a change of tone from previous sayings. In the seventh chapter of this gospel, we read that Jesus declined going up to the temple at the feast of tabernacles because " My time is not yet come : but," turning to the twelve, " your time is alway ready : the world ('hap. vii. 7, cannot hate you, but me it hateth." How dif- ferent the language now ! It is, " The world cannot hit hate you since me it hateth." Master and followers are now identified. He and they are henceforth to be regarded as one — the one tree having the one life. They have been taken out of the world. They have been grafted into Himself TJiercfore the world hates them. There is a remarkable bitterness in the hatred which is predicted. We bid our thought back- Quoted " Hare's Mission of the Com- forter." CONFLICT AND HELP. 2 I I ward, for an instant, to the time of the apostles. How sharp and rugged the outline of the enmity which they encountered ! With regard to the Jews, neither was Jesus nor was His doctrine the fulfilment of the national sentiment concerning the Messiah. But there is a malignity, there is a savage ferocity in the spirit of the Jewish mind for which this will scarcely account. As for the civilisations of Greece and Rome : — why is it that nations so easy, so polite, so deferential to all new doctrines, should kindle into animosity when the truth as it is in Jesus seems to grow and prevail amongst them ? What is there about this truth or its promoters which tends to provoke, and, having provoked, to intensify this antagonism .-* Have we not the answer from Christ Himself? " TAe world loves his oivn." It will tolerate modes of religion however various, so long and so far as it finds its own in them. But this kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ is the solemn condemnation of that which the world loves and idolizes. And it will not consent to be merely tolerated. A niche might have been found for Christ in the Pantheon ; He might have got the place of another Master, another God, a new light of the world ; it might then have been said what, indeed, we do hear in our time, " The Jew goes his way, and the Heathen goes his way, and the Christian goes his way, and they are all so many ways by which men arrive at the one 212 CONFLICT AND HELP. end." But this is the place which Christ de- chnes. The word is, " I am the Light of the world," " I am tJie Way, and the Truth, and the Life." There can be no lowering and no com- promise of the claim. The demand which eighteen hundred years ago met and meets man- kind still is that at the name of Jesus who had been not merely "found in fashion as a man," but rhii. ii. 7-to. had " taken on him the form," not of the mighty or wise, but of the slave, and had undergone the death of the cross, every knee should bow. " Therefore the zuorld hatethJ' The opposition offered by the faith that is in Christ is aggressive, is exasperating. It rouses up the dominant hos- tility of the selfishness and wickedness in which the world is lying. It calls out the resistance of unregenerate nature to the light and truth of God. Its cut is sharper and deeper than a two-edged sword. The enmity is without excuse, yet it is inevitable. Christ's words do not, like the world-religions, merely scratch the surface of the life. They lay bare the inner places of the moral nature. They convict, not of evil only, but of sin. They do not allow a man to be neutral. They demand to be re- ceived or rejected ; and the reception or the rejection is the revelation of the will, of the con- science in a man. " //" / had not come and spoken unto tJiein, they had not had sin : bnt noiu they have no excuse for their sin. . . If / had not done CONFLICT AND HELP. 2 I 3 among tJicvi the %vorks winch Jione other maji did^ they had not had sin : bnt now they have both seen and hated both me and my Fat her ^ Such chap. xv.jj. 24, is Christ's explanation of the world-hatred, its reason and its guilt. The hatred is announced in sentences per- spicuous and prophetic, so plain that those to whom He spoke could not afterwards regard any suffering as strange, could not be offended as if something had been concealed from them. What they would encounter, how they chap, .xvi. i. would be treated are, in precise phraseology, sketched. " They shall put you 02it of the syna- gogue : yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God serviced Chap. xvi. ?. And this is no incident in one age merely : it is descriptive of an opposition of forces which must perpetuate itself " TJie servant is not greater than his lord : if they have persecuted vie, they will also persecute you." The forms of the chap. xv. -o. opposition may vary, but in all times " the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Romans viii St Paul speaks of the " offence of the cross." ^" The object of many, it might appear, is to separate the off"ence from the cross ; to present for the admiration of men a cross which can- not offend ears polite, which is simply a symbol of the beautiful, the pathetic, the self-devoted. Certainly, there is no need to add to the xii. 9. 214 CONFLICT AND HELP. offence ; there is no need to attach to the cross an offence which is not proper to it. But the attitude sometimes assumed by modern aesthetic- ism and culture must be jealously watched. Christianity, persecuted for three centuries by Pagan Rome, ultimately triumphed. But what then ? The Prince of this world is " that old Revelation scrpcnt, Called the Devil and Satan." The Paganism which was conquered was, in one and another and another of its elements, absorbed into the Church, until, in the Church of Rome, the spectacle was exhibited of either — we can scarcely determine which — a Paganised Chris- tianity or a Christianised Paganism. Thus the radical world-hatred, in covert manner, perse- cutes the Church of God. By subtlety, Jacob stole the birthright. May it not be, that, with similar subtlety, we are betimes offered food which has a savour of the Bread of Life, but which wants its pith and pungency — its solemn dealing with conscience, the work, done by no other but done by Christ, that has respect to sin and righteousness and judgment, and the New Testament in His blood shed for many, for the remission of sin .-' The aim is to make religion popular, to send it forth, not in the rough sandals of the soldier, but in the golden slippers of the courtier. Men are more anxious to exhibit the smile than to manifest the frown ; to show how far Christianity goes with the world CONFLICT AND HELP. 2 1 5 than to show where its path and that of the world diverge. So far good. It is a really laud- able and blessed work to remove misconstruc- tions which needlessly embarrass the faith of the thoughtful ; it is good also to reveal that more human side of Christian truth which is vouched for in the name that Christ took to Himself, the Son of Man. But not at the expense of what is spiritual in the truth ; not by hiding the un- alterable demand of the gospel ; not by making Christ crucified a mere apotheosis of self- sacrifice ; not by obliterating or by softening the lines which divide the two camps, the be- lieving church and the unbelieving world. May God help us to be stedfast and unmoveable ; not " to pad the cross we bear," still less to be content with a merely ornamental cross, but to deny self and take up the cross of Jesus and follow Him ! I dread the Judas who conceals his hatred behind a kiss— the one in the position of the disciple who with a kiss betrays the Christ of God into the hands of sinners. So much for the disciple and the world : what are the supports which Christ sets before His little flock thus called to conflict and trial in His name and for His sake ? I distinguish three such supports — T/ie conscioitsness of a Divine election ; The strength of a uniting love ; The power of the testifying spirit of truth. 2 I 6 CONFLICT AND HELP. First, it is a support to realise the election expressed in the sentence : " Ye have not chosen me, hut I have chosen you, and ordained yon that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your Chap. XV. \6. fruit should remain." Let us separate the in- terpretation of these words from applications or misapplications of the doctrine of electing grace. They suggest to us the fact which, is the main- stay of every " good and faithful servant," that God seeks the man before the man seeks Him, that service is only a response to His call, that the soul's love to Him is only "the reflex and reper- cussion of His." In Israel, disciples were wont to choose their own Rabbis, and the disciples of one Rabbi formed a species of club or associa- tion. Jesus reminds His disciples that it had not been so with them ; and, in thus reminding, He gives the hint, afterwards to be filled out, of the truth of His Church. There are unions which, by the mutual consent of associates, may be dissolved. But the action of individuals cannot break up such a union as the Family. " No distance breaks the tie of blood ; Brothers are brothers evermore." The Church is not a dissolvable partnership. Viewed apart from special ecclesiastical constitutions — as the Tree, Stem and Branches, the one Body of the Lord — it stands on the election of the Eternal. It proceeds from the love of the Father and the Son. It may pass into various phases, but CONFLICT AND HELP. 2 I 7 it must live. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but the elective call of the Eternal shall not pass. Now, to the witnesses for Jesus, the sense of this call is an unfailinq- encourae^ement. There is the consciousness of tJie elevation into which it raises. Not servants but friends. Christ does "^'^^p-^^'s not treat His followers as those to whom an order is merely given, without any exposition of the ordering mind, whose part is merely to execute a command. He makes them His com- panions. They are His confidants. The secret of the Lord is with them. He manifests Himself to them, and not to the world : ^^ All tilings tJiat I have heard of my Father I have made kjiozvn to you." Is not this honour enough } Those ^^^p- ^^' '^ who are admitted into the intimacy of the Lord of Glory need not be dismayed because of the brow-beating of the world. With regard to all tribulation, is it not blessed to realise in it the fellowship of His sufferings, to know that they are " made like unto Him by suffering patiently adversities, troubles, sicknesses," that " the way to eternal joy is to suffer here with Him, and the door into eternal life is gladly to die with Him, so as to rise again from death, and dwell with Him in everlasting life .^" Certainly, ^ookof '-' -' ' Common He who called them to partnership with Him- Ppy^^^.- ^ ■■• visitation ol self will not fail or forsake " when comes the t^e sick. evil day." 2l8 CONFLICT AND HELP. Encouragement and stimulus in one! Not only the elevation implied in the call, but the purpose of the call must be vividly before the mind. What is this } " That ye should go and bring forth friiitr A little while before the Lord had said, "Arise, let us go hence." For Him to "go hence" was to bring forth fruit. The corn-seed could be quickened into vitality only by His death. His friends must go also — ever out of self, ever onwards and outwards. " He that loseth his life for my sake shall find Matt. X. 39. it." Is not the philosophy of missions com- pressed in this monosyllable ^(3 .^ Is not the way of holiness, of usefulness, signified in it .-' It is said that Benjamin Franklin chose for a device to his signet-ring the fruit-bearing tree, and that when, near his end, he was asked for some word of wisdom, he breathed into his son's ear the word frnitfjil. It is the word written into the call, into the mission of the disciple — " ordained that you should go and bring forth fruit." Secondly, there is the support of a brother- hood, whose cement is love originated and ruled by the love which laid down its life for the world. I take the seventeenth verse as having special reference to the Church in its fight with Chap. XV. 17^ the world. " Love one another," says Christ ; "in this all my commandments are summed up. This is your strength. It will attract the hos- CONFLICT AND HELP. 219 tility of men, but it will be your power in meet- ing that hostility. The world may hate you, as it has hated me, but, having this love, you will be more than the world ; you will overcome even as I overcame." We can trace a likeness be- tween the thought of Jesus and the beautiful tradition concerning the later years of St John — the tradition that, when old and infirm, he used to be carried into the assembly of Christians at Ephesus, and to say, as he was borne through their midst, " My children, love one another ; " and that when asked why he always said the same thing, he replied, " If this one thing were attained it would be enough." Enough ! — but alas, has it been attained .'' The emphasis with which the new command- ment is enforced in the last words of Jesus before He suffered is very observable. As if He had foreseen that the occasions of departure from it would multiply as the area of the Church enlarged. The brotherly covenant is the essential feature of His cause, the condition of effectual witnessing against unbelieving man- kind ; and the danger of lapsing from it, and thus weakening His testimony, is apparently present to the mind of the Lord. Certainly in our day, the love of Christianlfor Christian, although still a powerful factor, is not the ardent force that He de- sired it should be. Christendom is now so mighty a thing, and, like the net of the parable, so gathers 2 20 CONFLICT AND HELP. Matt.xm.47. to itself "of every kind," that love for another simply on account of his Christian profession can scarely be a warm and intense affection. Hence the tendency to limit the action of sym- pathy to smaller sections of the Church, to the denomination to which we belong, or, at least, to a range not far outside of it. Must we not confess that we have too little of the consciousness of the "Holy Catholic Church throughout the world " } that we are not interested as we should be in the welfare of its whole estate, and the several parts of it } Shall we not admit that, beyond certain boundaries, our neighbour Chris- tian is to us but a shadow ? How few in our Protestant churches realise that Catholicity which was one of the noblest features of the See D'Au- Reformation in the sixteenth century, and are bigne's . History of alivc to thc duty restmg on the stronger com- theRefoima- . 111 1 • 1 tion. munion to help the weaker m the common battle with the world and Belial ! Nay, shall we not take guilt to ourselves for our dissensions and jealousies, in consequence of which our churches betimes stand "like cliffs which have been rent 'asunder " .-' Oh what dishonour has been done to Christ ! What harm to His little ones ! What waste of energy, what loss of power in many ways by the strifes which, if they prove a zeal for light, evidence the want of love ! The Church needs a new lesson in the command, Love one another. How shall we best help in CONFLICT AND HELP. 22 1 counteracting the evil which all true Christians deplore ? One way at least is open to us. Let us love Christ more. Let us live more with Christ Himself. Let us draw water, not out of broken cisterns of man's hewing, but out of the wells of salvation. To love Christ with all our strength is " to love one another with a pure heart fervently." " The quickest way to meet," i Peter i. 22. says one who is now beholding the King, " is, I believe, not so much by seeking to approach one another along the outward rim of the circle as by striving each from his own point towards the one centre — towards the heart of God. Every step in that direction is a step towards unity. As the radii converge to the centre, they approach Robertsons , , 1 )> Pastoral more nearly among themselves. Counsels, But finally, as the great support of the dis- ciple in his conflict with the world, there is tJie promise, twice repeated in this connection, of the co-zvitncssiiig Spirit of Truth. I ought to pre- sent the promise otherwise, for the order of the clauses in the former of the two announce- ments is noteworthy. " When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me, and ye also shall bear witness." The testifier is the chap. .w. 26. Spirit of Truth. The also is applied to the dis- ciples. It is God's work, and God Himself takes charge of it. The complementary witness 22 2 CONFLICT AND HELP. is that of the Church, necessary, essential, but it is along with, second to, the Spirit of Truth. " Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, Zechariah saith thc Lord of Hosts." This is comforting, I think. Inspiring as well. We, too, are sum- moned to " speak of what we know, and testify of what we have seen," ever realising that the power of God's Spirit is not a mere accompaniment of the work of man, but that the work of man is only the accompaniment of a direct activity of the Holy Ghost, testifying of Christ to the world, aye, and against the world. The assurance becomes more explicit still in the latter of the announcements. It is flushed with the sense of victory. Hitherto the world has been viewed as actively hostile to Christ. Now this Holy One, in His coming, will carry the war into the camp of the world. The Lord is so occupied with the grandeur of this aggres- sive warfare, that He bids His followers dismiss their sorrow, and rejoice with Him in the gain to be secured by His departure, and the conse- Chap. xvi. 7. quent sending of the Spirit of Truth. His coming is the signal of a new movement into the outlying darkness, a movement summed up in the significant sentence — "//" JVailace. EDITED BY PROFESSOR S ALMOND, D.D., ABERDEEN. THE LIFE OF DAVID. By the late Rev. Peter Thomson, M.A., St Fergus. With Maps. Fourth Thousand, 96 pp., price 6d., cloth, 8d. The Dean of Norwich (E. M. 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