i^-^ ■-^^'.''■•*-,Zl '. '^C^^!^^\*^.' Z^^^h ^;t^'X^' rjJ^'-' -J»^*^^. • -»•" -•'*- *••*",*»»#*•*" ;:•.«;:■ :^--' *7"- J.»;-" '■^'iC*^'"';; ir » OCT 9^ 1950 Logical sy*5 \ EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE Expositions of Holy Scripture A Commenlary on the Entire Bible, to be Completed in Thirty Volumes ALEXANDER MACLAREN, P .P., LIT.P. To be published in series of six largfl octavo volumes, magnificently bound in red buckram cloth, printed in special type of unique and beautiful face, and on specially imported English feather- weight paper. HIIr. Alexander Maclaren's incomparable positio i as the prince mil of expositors has for more than a generation been recognized throughout the English-speaking world. He holds an unchallenged position, and it it is believed that this series, embodying as it does the treasure store of Dr. Maclaren's life-work, will be found of price- less value by preachers, teachers, and readers of the bible generally. What Ministers say of Dr. Maclaren What the Press says of Dr.MacIaren Theodorb L. Cuyler, D.D. : " Al- exander Maclaren is the liing of Preach- ers." W. ROBKRTSON NiCOLL, D.D., LL.- D. : " He is the Prince of Expositors." Donald Sags Mackay, D.D.: "The present idea of gathering the cream of Dr. Maclaren's expository genius from Genesis to Revelation is a fitting'.climax to his splendid contributions to scripture exposition." Marcus Dods, D.D. : "Dr. Maclar- en is one of those exceptional men who can afford to print all they utter. Spir- itual wisdom, sound and lucid exposi- tion, apt and picturesque illustrations." " These volumes are a treasury of thought for preachers, Sunday-school teachers and all who study the scriptures for a practical purpose." — The Outlook, New York. " Unless we are very much mistaken 'Expositions of Holy Scripture' will have a permanent place in the library, of every thoughtful minister and lay- man." — The British Weekly, London, England. " Taken all in all 'Expositions of Holy Scripture' equal if not exceed in value for ministers any similar body of production ^ancient or modem." — The Observer, New York. SOLP ONLY IN SERIES OF SIX VOLUMES $7.50 net FIRST SERIES, SIX VOLUMES Genesis Isaiah Jeremiah St. Matthew (3 vols.) SECOND SERIES, SIX VOLUMES Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers Deuteronomy, Joshua Judges and Ruth ist and 2D Samuel ist and zd Kings St. Mark (2 vols.) Acts (ist vol.) THIRD SERIES, SIX VOLUMES: Acts, Vol. 2 St. John, Vols, i, 2, 3 Second Book of Kings, from Chap. 7. >.•'.: Chronicles, Ezra Nehemiah Esther Job Proverbs , Ecclesiastes A'. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN CHAPTERS IX. TO XIV. ■'■w(j;,.,i\ BY ALEXANDER MACLAREN DD., LiTT.D. NEW YORK A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 3 & 5 WEST EIGHTEENTH STREET LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON MCMVin CONTENTS PAGE Onb Metaphor and two Meanings (John ix. 4; Romans xiii. 12) ...... 1 The Sixth Miracle in John's Gospel— The Blind made TO See, and the Seeing made Blind (John ix. 6, 7) 11 The Gifts to the Flock (John x. 9) • • .24 The Good Shepherd (John x. 14, 15) • , , 34 •Other Sheep' (John X. 16 R.V.) . . , .40 The Delays of Love (John xi. 5, 6) . . .74 Christ's Question to Each (John xi. 26, 27) , .81 The Open Grave at Bethany (John xi. 30-45) . . 01 VI GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN Thk Seventh Miracle in John's Gospel— The Raising OF Lazarus (John xi. 43, 44) ... 98 Caiaphas (John xi. 49, 50) , . . • Love's Prodigality Censured and Vindicated (John xli. 1-11) • • . • . A New Kind of King (John xii. 12-26) , After Christ : with Christ (John xii. 26) . The Universal Magnet (John xii. 32) , . The Son of Man (John xii. 34) . . • A Parting Warning (John xii. 35, 36 R.V.) • The Love of the Departing Christ (John xiii. 1) The Servant-Master (John xiii. 3-5) . • The Dismissal of Judas (John xiii. 27) . The Glory of the Cross (John xiii. 31, 32) . Cannot and Can (John xiii. 33) . . ' . Seeking Jesus (John xiii. 33) . . . 107 119 125 131 140 150 162 170 180 190 199 210 217 CONTENTS vii PAcni ' As I HAVE LOVBD ' (John xiii. 34, 35) . , .226 ' Quo Vadis ? ' (John xiii. 37, 38) . , . .235 A Rash Vow (John xiii. 38) ... .243 Faith in God and Christ (John xiv. 1) . • • 253 ' Many Mansions ' (John xiv. 2) . • • • 263 The Forerunner (John xiv. 2, 3) . , . . 272 The Way (John xiv. 4-7) . . . . .281 The True Vision of God (John xiv. 8-11) . . . 291 Christ's Works and Ours (John xiv. 12-14) • , 301 Love and Obedience (John xiv. 15) • , . 312 The Comforter Given (John xiv. 16, 17) • • . 320 The Absent Present Christ (John xiv. 18, 19) . . 330 The Gifts op the Present Christ (John xiv. 20, 21) . 340 Who bring Christ (John xiv. 22-24) . • . 350 viii GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN PAGB The Teacher Spirit (John xiv. 25, 26) , . .361 Christ's Peace (John xiv. 27) . . , .372 Joy and Faith, the Fruits of Christ's Departure (John xiv. 28, 29) .... . 382 Christ Foreseeing His Passion (John xiv. 30, 31) . 392 ONE METAPHOR AND TWO MEANINGS ' I must work the works of Him that sent Me, whUe it is day : the night cometh when no man can work.'— John ix. L ' The night is far spent, the day is at hand : let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.'— Romans xiii. 12. The contrast between these two sayings will strike you at once. Using the same metaphors, they apply them in exactly opposite directions. In the one, life is the day, and the state beyond death the night; in the other, life is the night, and the state beyond death the day. Remarkable as the contrast is, it comes to be still more so if we remember the respective speakers. For each of them says what we should rather have expected the other to say. It would have been natural for Paul to have given utterance to the stimulus to diligence caused by the consciousness that the time of work was brief ; and it would have been as natural for Jesus, who, as we believe, came from God, from the place of the eternal supernal glory, to have said that life here was night as compared with the illumina- tion that He had known. But it is the divine Master who gives utterance to the common human conscious- ness of a brief life ending in inactivity, and it is the servant who takes the higher point of view. So strange did the words of my first text seem as coming from our Lord's lips, that the sense of incon- gruity seems to have been the occasion of the remark- able variation of reading which the Revised Version has adopted when it says • We must work the works VOL. II. A 2 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. ix. of Him that sent Me.' But that thought seems to me to be perfectly irrelevant to our Lord's purpose in this context, where He is vindicating His own action, and not laying down the duty of His servants. He is giving here one of these glimpses, that we so rarely get, into His own inmost heart. And so we have to take the sharp contrast between the Master's thought and the servant's thought, and to combine them, if we would think rightly about the present and the future, and do rightly in the present. I. Let me ask you to look at the Master's thought about the present and the future. As I have already said, our Lord gives utterance here to the very common, in fact, universal human consciousness. The contrast between the intense little spot of light and the great ring of darkness round about it ; between ' the warm precincts of the cheerful day ' and the cold solitudes of the inactive night has been the commonplace and stock-in-trade of moralists and thoughtful men from the beginning; has given pathos to poetry, solemnity to our days ; and has been the ally of base as well as of noble things. For to say to a man, 'there are twelve hours in the day of life, and then comes darkness, the blackness that swallows up all activity,' may either be made into a support of all lofty and noble thoughts, or, by the baser sort, may be, and has been, made into a philosophy of the 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die' kind; 'Gather ye roses while ye may'; 'A short life and a merry one.' The thought stimulates to diligence, but it does nothing to direct the diligence. It makes men work furiously, but it never will prevent them from working basely. ' Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,' is a conclusion from the con- V.4] ONE METAPHOR: TWO MEANINGS 3 sideration that ' there is neither wisdom nor knowledge nor device in the grave whither we go,' but what the hand should find to do must be settled from altogether different considerations. Our Lord here takes the common human point of view, and says, 'Life is the time for activity, and it must be the more diligent because it is ringed by the darkness of the night.' What precisely does our Lord intend by His use of that metaphor of the night? No figures, we know, run upon all-fours. The point of comparison may be simply in some one feature common to the two things compared, and so all sorts of mischief may be done by trying to extend the analogy to other features. Now, there are a great many points in which day and night may respectively be taken as analogues of Life and Death and the state beyond death. There is a 'night of weeping'; there is a ' night of ignorance.' But our Lord Himself tells us what is the one point of comparison which alone is in His mind, when He says, 'The night cometh, when no man can work.' It is simply the night as a season of compulsory inactivity that suggests the comparison in our text. And so we have here the presentation of that dear Lord as influenced by the common human motive, and feeling that there was work to be done which must be crowded into a definite space, because when that space was past, there would be no more opportunity for the work to be done. Look at how, in the words of my first text, we have, as I said, a glimpse into His inmost heart. He lets us see that all His life was under the solemn compulsion of that great must which was so often upon His lips, that He felt that He was here to do the Father's will, and that that obligation lay upon Him 4 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. ix. with a pressure which He neither could, nor would if He could, have got rid of. There are two kinds of * musts ' in our lives. There is the unwelcome necessity which grips us with iron and sharpened fangs; the needs-be which crushes down hopes and dreams and inclinations, and forces the slave to his reluctant task. And there is the ' must ' which has passed into the will, into the heart, and has moulded the inmost desire to conformity with the obligation which no more stands over against us as a taskmaster with whip and chain, but has passed within us and is there an inspiration and a joy. He that can say, as Jesus Christ in His humanity could, and did say: 'My meat' — the refreshment of my nature, the necessary sustenance of my being — 'is to do the will of my Father'; that man, and that man alone, feels no pressure that is pain from the in- cumbency of the necessity that blessedly rules His life. When ' I will ' and * I choose ' coincide, like two of Euclid's triangles atop of one another, line for line and angle for angle, then comes liberty into the life. He that can say, not with a knitted brow and an unwilling ducking of his head to the yoke, 'I must do it,' but can say, ' Thy law is within my heart,' that is the Christlike, the free, the happy man. Further, our Lord here, in His thoughts of the present and the future, lets us see what He thought that the work of God in the world was. The disciples looked at the blind man sitting by the wayside, and what he suggested to them was a curious, half theo- logical, half metaphysical question, in which Rabbinical subtlety delighted. 'Who did sin, this man or his parents?' They only thought of talking over the theological problem involved in the fact that, before V.4] ONE METAPHOR: TWO MEANINGS 5 he had done anything in this world to account for the calamity, he was born blind. Jesus Christ looked at the man, and He did not think about theological cobwebs. What was suggested to Him was to fight against the evil and abolish it. It is sometimes neces- sary to discuss the origin of an evil thing, of a sorrow or a sin, in order to understand how to deal with and get rid of it. But unless that is the case, our first business is not to say, 'How comes this about?' but our business is to take steps to make it cease to come about. Cure the man first and then argue to your heart's content about what made him blind, but cure him first. And so Jesus Christ taught us that the meaning of the day of life was that we should set ourselves to abolish the works of the devil, and that the work of God was that we should fight against sin and sorrow, and in so far as it was in our power, abolish these, in all the variety of their forms, in all the vigour of their abundant growth. Sorrow and sin are God's call to every one of His sons and daughters to set themselves to cast them out of His fair creation ; and ' the day ' is the opportunity for doing that. Our Lord here, as I have already suggested, shows us very touchingly and beautifully, how entirely He bore our human nature, and had entered into our conditions, in that He, too, felt that common human emotion, and was spurred to unhasting and yet un- resting diligence by the thought of the coming of the night. I suppose that although we have few chrono- logical data in this Gospel of John, the hour of our Lord's death was really very near at that time. He had just escaped from a formidable attempt upon His life. 'They took up stones to stone Him, but He, passing through the midst of them, went His way,' 6 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. ix. is the statement which immediately precedes the account of His meeting with this blind man. And so under the pressure, perhaps, of that immediate experience which revealed the depths of hatred that was ready for anything against Him, He gives utterance to this expression: 'If it be the case that the time is at hand, then the more need that, Sabbath day as it is, I should pause here.' Though the multitude were armed with stones to stone Him, He stopped in His flight because there was a poor blind man there whom He felt that He needed to cure. Beautiful it is, and drawing Him very near to us, — and it should draw us very near to Him — that thus He shared in that essen- tially human consciousness of the limitation of the power to work, by the ring of blackness that encircled the little spot of illuminated light. But some will say, ' How is it possible that such a consciousness as this should really have been in the mind of Jesus Christ?' 'Did He not know that His death was not to be the end of His work? Did He not know, and say over and over again, in varying forms, that when He passed from earth, it was not into inactivity? Is it not the very characteristic of His mission that it is different from that of all other helpers and benefactors and teachers of the world, in that His death stands in the very middle of His work, and that on the one side of it there is activity, and on the other side of it there is still, and in some sense loftier and greater, activity ? ' Yes ; all that is perfectly true, and I do not for a moment believe that our Lord was forgetting that the life on the earth was but the first volume of His biography, and of the records of His deeds, and that He contemplated them, as He con- templated always, the life beyond, as working in and V.4] ONE METAPHOR: TWO MEANINGS 7 on and over and through His servants, even unto the end of the world. But you have only to remember the difference between the earthly and the heavenly life of the Lord fully to understand the point of view that He takes here. The one is the basis of the other; the one is the seedtime, the other is the harvest. The one has only the limited years of the earthly life, in which it can be done; the other has the endless years of Eternity, through which it is to be continued And if any part of that earthly life of the Lord had been void of its duty, and of its discharge of the Father's will, not even He, amidst the blaze of the heavenly glory, could have thereafter filled up the tiny gap. All the earthly years were needed to be filled with service, up to the great service and sacrifice of the Cross, in order that upon them might be reared the second stage and phase of His heavenly life. With regard to the one. He said on the Cross, ' It is finished.' But when He died He passed not into the night of inactivity, but into the day of greater service. And that higher and heavenly form of His work continues, and not until ' the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ,' and the whole benefit and effect of His earthly life are imparted to the whole race of man, will it be said, ' It is done,' and the angels of heaven proclaim the completion of His work for man. But seeing that that work has its twofold forms, Jesus, like us, had to be conscious of the limitations of life, and of the night that followed the day. II. And now turn, in the second place, to the servant's thought. As I have already pointed out, it is the precise reversal 8 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.ix. of the other. What to Christ is * day ' to Paul is ' night.' What to Christ is ' night ' to Paul is ' day.' Now the first point that I would make is this, that the future would never have been * day ' to Paul if Jesus had not gone down into the darkness of the 'night.' I have said that there was only one point of comparison in our Lord's mind between night and death. But we may venture to extend the figure a little, and to say that the Light went into the 'valley of the shadow of Death,' and lit it up from end to end. The Life went into the palace of Death, and breathed life into all there. There is a great picture by one of the old monkish masters, on the walls of a Florentine convent, which represents the descent of Jesus to that dim region of the dead. Around Him there is a halo of light that shines into the gloomy corridor, up which the thronging patriarchs and saints of the Old Dispensa- tion are coming, with outstretched hands of eager welcome and acceptance, to receive the blessing. Ah ! it is true, 'the people that walked in darkness have seen a great Light; and to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, unto them hath the Light shined.' Christ the Light has gone down into the darkness, and what to Him was night He has made for us day. Just as Scripture all but confines the name of death to Christ's experience upon the Cross, and by virtue of that experience softens it down for the rest of us into the blessed image of sleep, so the Master has turned the night of death into the dawning of the day. Further, to the servant the brightness of that future day dimmed all earth's garish glories into darkness. It was because Paul saw the Beyond flaming with such lustre that the nearer distance to him seemed to V.4] ONE METAPHOR: TWO MEANINGS 9 have sunk into gloom. Just as a man or other object between you and the western sky when the sun is there will be all dark, so earth with heaven behind it becomes a mere shadowy outline. The day that is beyond outshines all the lustres and radiances of earth, and turns them into darkness. You go into a room out of blazing tropical sunshine, and it is all gloom and obscurity. He whose eyes are fixed on the day that is to come will find that here he walks as one in the night. And the brightness of that day, as well as the darkness of the present night, directed the servant as to what he should be diligent in. Since it is true that ' the day is at hand,' let us put on .the armour of light, and dress ourselves in garb fitting for it. Since it is true that 'the night is far spent' let us put off the works of darkness. III. And so that brings me to the last point, and that is the combination of the Master's and the servant's thought, and the effect that it should produce upon us. It is not enough either for our hearts or our minds that we should say 'the night cometh when no man can work.' Life is day, but it is night also. Death is night but it is dawning as well. We cannot under- stand either the present or the future unless we link them together. That death which is the cessation of activity in one aspect, is, for Christ's servants, as truly as for Christ, the beginning of an activity in a higher and nobler form. I do not believe in a heaven of rest, meaning by that, inaction ; I still less believe in a death which puts an end to the activity of the human spirit. I believe that this world is our school, our apprentice- ship, the place where we learn our trade and exercise our faculties, where we paint the picture, as it were, 10 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.ix. which we offer when we desire to be admitted to tho great guild of artists, and according to the result of which, in the eye of the Judge, is oiir place hereafter. What the Germans call 'proof pieces' — that is the meaning of life. And though ' the night cometh when no man can work,' the day cometh when the char- acters we have made ourselves here, the habits we have cultivated and indulged in, the capacities we have exercised, and the set and drift of all our activity upon earth, will determine the work that we get to do there. So then, stereoscoping these two thoughts, we get the solid image that results from them both. And it teaches us not only diligence, and thus supplies stimulus, but it determines the direction of our dili- gence, and thus supplies guidance. We ought to be misers of our time and opportunities. Jesus Christ said, 'I must work the work of Him that sent Me while it is day ; the night cometh.' How much more ought you and I to say so? And some of us ought very specially to say it, and to feel it, because the hour when we shall have to lay down our tools is getting very near, and the shadows are lengthening. If you had been in the fields in these summer evenings during the last few days, you would have seen the haymakers at work with more and more diligence as the evening drew on darker and darker. Dear friends, some of us are at the eleventh hour. Let us fill it with diligent work. The night cometh. But my texts not only stimulate to diligence, but they direct the diligence. If it be that there is a day beyond, and that Christ's folk are ' the children of the day,' then 'let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober.' We have to cast ourselves on V. 4] THE SIXTH MIRACLE 11 Him as our Saviour, to love Him as our Lord and Friend, to take Him as our Pattern and our Guide, our Help, our Light, and our Life. And then we shall neither be deceived by life's garish splendours nor oppressed by its gloom and its sorrow ; we shall neither shrink from that last moment, as a night of inaction, nor be too eager to cast off the burden of our present work, but we shall cheerfully toil at what will prepare us for •the day,' and the bell at night that rings us out of mill and factory will not be unwelcome, for it will ring us in to higher work and nobler service. The transition will be like one of those summer nights in the Arctic circle, when the sun does not dip. Through a little thin film of less light we shall pass into the perfect day, where 'the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the light thereof,' and 'there shall be no m.ore night.' THE SIXTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL— THE BLIND MADE TO SEE, AND THE SEEING MADE BLIND 'When Jesus had thus spoken, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, 7. And said unto hira, Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation. Sent). He went his way, therefore, and washed, and came seeing.'— John ix. 6, 7. The proportionate length at which this miracle and its accompanying effects are recorded, indicates very clearly the Evangelist's idea of their relative import- ance. Two verses are given to the story of the miracle ; all the rest of the chapter to its preface and its issues. It was a great thing to heal a man that was blind from his birth, but the story of the gradual illumination of his spirit until it came to the full light of the percep- 12 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.ix. tion of Christ as the Son of God, was far more to the Evangelist, and ought to be far more to us than giving the outward eye power to discern the outward light. The narrative has a prologue and an epilogue, and the true point of view from which to look at it is found in the solemn words with which our Lord closes the incident. ' For judgment am I come into this world, that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind.' So then the mere sign, important as it is, is the least thing that we have to look at in our contemplations now. I. We have here our Lord unveiling His deepest motives for bestowing an unsought blessing. It is remarkable, I think, that out of the eight miracles recorded in this Gospel, there is only one in which our Lord responds to a request to manifest His miraculous power ; the others are all spontaneous. In the other Gospels He heals sometimes because of the pleading of the sufferer; sometimes because of the request of compassionate friends or bystanders ; sometimes unasked, because His own heart went out to those that were in pain and sickness. But in John's Gospel, predominantly we have the Son of God, who acts throughout as moved by His own deep heart. That view of Christ reaches its climax in His own pro- found words about His own laying down of His life: *I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go unto the Father.' So, not so much influenced by others as deriv- ing motive and impulse and law from Himself, He moves upon earth a fountain and not a reservoir, the Originator and the Beginner of the blessings that Ha bears. V8.6,7] THE SIXTH MIRACLE 18 And that is the point of view from which most strikingly the prologue of our narrative sets forth His action in the miracle here. * As Jesus passed by,' says the story, ' He saw a man which was blind from his birth.' He fixes His eye upon him. No cry from the blind man's lips draws Him. He sits there unconscious of the kind eyes that were fastened upon him. The disciples stand at Christ's side, and have no share in His feelings. They ask Him to do nothing. To them the blind man is — what ? A theological problem. No trace of pity touches their hearts. They do not even seem to have reckoned upon or expected Christ's miraculous intervention. And that is a very remarkable feature in the Gospels. At all events, they evidently do not expect it here ; but all that the sight of this lifelong sufferer does in them is to raise a question, ' Who did sin ; he or his parents ? ' Perhaps they do not quite see to the bottom of the alternative that they are suggest- ing ; and we need not trouble ourselves to ask whether there was a full-blown notion of the pre-existence of the man's soul in their minds as they ask the question. Perhaps they remembered the impotent man to whom our Lord said, ' Go and sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee.' And they may have thought that they had His sanction to the doctrine — as old as Job's friends — that wherever there was great suffering there must first have been great sin. That is all that the sight of sorrow does for some people. It leads to censorious judgments, or to mere idle and curious speculations. Christ lets us see what it did for Him, and what it is meant to do for us. * Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but he is born blind that the works of God may be made manifest in him,' That is to say, human sorrow is to be looked at 14 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.ix. by us as an opportunity for the manifestation through us of God's mercy in relieving and stanching the wounds through which the lifeblood is ebbing away. Do not stand coldly curious or uncharitably censorious. Do not make miserable men theological problems, but see in them a call for service. See in them an oppor- tunity for letting the light of God, so much of it as is in you, shine from you, and your hands move in works of mercy. And then the Master goes on to state still more dis- tinctly the law which dominated His life, and which ought to dominate ours : ' I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work.' Then poor men's misery is an occasion for the love of God manifesting itself. Yes. But the love of God manifests itself through human media, through persons; and if we adopt the reading of these words which you will find in the Revised Version, and instead of saying '/ must work,' read ' We must work,' then we have Christ extending the law which ruled over His own life to all His followers, and making it supremely obligatory and binding upon each of us. He for His part, as I have said, moves through this Gospel as the Son of God, whose mercy, and all whose doings are self-originated. But the other side of that is that He moves through this Gospel in the humble attitude of filial obedience, ever recognising that the Father's will is supreme in His life ; and that He is bound, with an obligation in which He rejoices, to do the will of Him that sent Him. The consciousness of a mission, the sense of filial obedience, the joyful surrender and harmonising of the will of the Son with the will of the Father; these things were the secret of the Master's life. vs. 6, 7] THE SIXTH MIRACLE 15 And coupled with them, even in Him there was the consciousness that time was short; and although be- yond the Cross and the grave there stretched for Him an eternity in which He would work for the blessing of the world, yet the special work which He had to do, while wearing the veil and weakness of flesh, had but few days and hours in which it could be done. There- fore, as we ought to do, He worked under the limita- tions of mortality, and recognised in the brevity of life another call to eager and continuous service. These were His motives which, in common with Him, we may share. But He adds another in which we have no share ; and declares the unique consciousness which ever stirred Him to His self-manifesting and God- manifesting acts : ' As long as I am in the world I am the Light of the world.' Thus, moved by sorrow, recognising in man's misery the dumb cry for help, seeing in it the opportunity for the manifestation of the higher mercy of God ; taking all evil to be the occasion for a brighter display of the love and the good which are divine; feeling that His one purpose upon earth was to crowd the moments with obedience to the will, and with the doing of the works of Him that sent Him ; and possessing the sole and strange consciousness that from His person streams out all the light which illuminates the world — the Christ pauses before the unconscious blind man, and looking upon the poor, useless eyeballs, unaware how near light and sight stood, obeys the impulse that shapes His whole life, ' and when He had spoken thus^ proceeds to the strange cure. II. So we come, in the next place, to consider Christ as veiling His power under material means. There is only one other instance in the Gospels 16 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.ix. where a miracle is wrought in the singular fashion which is here employed, namely, the healing of the deaf-mute recorded in Mark's Gospel, where, in like manner, our Lord makes clay of the spittle, and anoints the ears of the deaf man with the clay. The variety of method in our Lord's miracles serves important pur- poses, as teaching us that the methods are nothing, and that He moved freely amongst them all, the real cause in every case being one and the same, the bare forth-putting of His will ; and teaching us further that in each specific case there were reasons in the moral and religious condition of the persons operated upon for the adoption of the specific means employed, which we of course have no means of discovering. There is here, first then, healing by material means. The clay had no power of healing ; the water of Siloam had no power of healing. The thing that healed was Christ's will, but He uses these externals to help the poor blind man to believe that he is going to be healed. He con- descends to drape and veil His power in order that the dim eye, unaccustomed to the light, may look upon that shadowed representation of it when it could not gaze upon the pure brightness; as an eye may look upon a shaded lamp which could not bear its brilliance un- sof tened and naked. This healing by material means in order to accommo- date Himself to the weak faith which He seeks to evoke, and to strengthen thereby, is parallel, in principle, to His own Incarnation, and to His appoint- ment of external ritfes and ordinances. Baptism, the Lord's Supper, a visible Church, outward means of worship, and so on, all these come under that same category. There is no life nor power in them except His will works through them, but they are crutches vs. 6, 7] THE SIXTH MIRACLE 17 and helps for a weak and sense-bound faith to climb to the apprehension of the spiritual reality. It is not the clay, it is not the water, it is not the Church, the ordi- nances, the outward worship, the form of prayer, the sacrament — it is none of these things that have the healing and the grace in them. They are only ladders by which we may ascend to Him. So let us neither presumptuously antedate the time when we shall be able to do without them — the Heaven in * which there is no Temple' — nor grovellingly and superstitiously elevate them to a place of importance and of power in the Christian life which Christ never meant them to fill. He heals through material means; the true source of healing is His own loving will. Further, He heals at a distance. We have here a parallel with the story of the nobleman's son at Capernaum, which we have already considered. There, too, we have the same phenomenon, the healing power sent forth from the Master, and operating far away from His corporeal personal presence. This was a test of faith, as the use of the clay had been a help to faith. Still He works His healing from afar, because to Him there is neither near nor far. In His divine ubiquity, that Son of Man, who in His glorified manhood is at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, is here and everywhere where there are weakness and suffering that turn to Him ; ready to help, ready to bless and heal. *Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.' Our Evangelist sees in the very name of that fountain in which the man washed, a symbol which is not to be passed by. 'Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam,' which, says John, • is by interpretation, SenU We have heard VOL. II. B 18 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. ix. already about the Pool of Siloam in this section o£ the Gospel. In Chapter vii. we read, ' In the last day, that great day of the Feast, Jesus stood, and said, " If any man thirst let him come to Me and drink.'" These words were probably spoken on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, on which one part of the cere- monial was the drawing, with exuberant rejoicing, of water from the Pool of Siloam, and bearing it up to the Temple. In these words Christ pointed to that fountain which rises ' fast by the oracles of God,' and wells up from beneath the hill, that on which the Temple is built, as being a symbol of Himself. And here the Evangelist would have us suppose that, in like manner, the very name which the fountain bore (whether as being an outgush from beneath the Temple rock, or whether as being the gift of God) as applicable to Himself. The lesson to be learned is that the fountain in which we have to be cleansed 'from sin and from uncleanness,' whose waters are the lotion that will give eyesight to the blind, the true ' fountain of perpetual youth,' which men have sought for in every land, is Christ Himself. In Him we have the welling forth of the heart of God, the water of life, the water of gladness, the immortal stream of which • whoso drinketh shall never thirst,' and which, touch- ing the blind eyeballs, washes away obscuration and gives new power of vision. III. Then, still further, we have here our Lord sus- pending healing on obedience. 'Go and wash.' As He said to the impotent man: ' Stretch forth thine hand ' ; as He said to the paralytic in this Gospel : ' Take up thy bed and walk ' ; so here He says, ' Go and wash.' And some friendly hand being stretched out to the blind man, or he himself feeling vs. 6, 7] THE SIXTH MIRACLE 19 his way over the familiar path, he comes to the pool and washes, and returns seeing. There is a double lesson there, on which I have no need to dwell. There is, first, the general truth that healing is suspended by Christ on compliance with His conditions. He does not simply say to any man. Be whole. He could and did say so sometimes in regard to bodily healing. But He cannot do so as regards the cure of our blind souls. To the sin-sick and sin-blinded man He says, ' Thou shalt be whole, if ' — or ' I will make thee whole, provided that' — what? — provided that thou goest to the fountain where He has lodged the healing power. The condition on which sight comes to the blind is compliance with Christ's invitation, 'Come to Me ; trust in Me ; and thou shalt be whole.' Then there is a special lesson here, and that is, Obedience brings sight. ' If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine.' Are there any of you groping in darkness, compassed about with theological perplexities and religious doubts? Obey what you know. Do what you see clearly you ought to do. Bow your wills to the recognised truth. He who has turned all his knowledge into action will get more knowledge as soon as he needs it. ' Go and wash ; and he went, and came seeing.' IV. And now, lastly, we have here our Lord shadow- ing His highest work as the Healer of blind souls. It is impossible for me to enter upon that wonderfully dramatic and instructive narrative which follows the account of the miracle, and describe the controversies between the sturdy, quick-witted, candid, blind man, and the narrow, bitter Pharisees. But just notice one or two points. The two parties are evidently represented as types 20 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.ix. of two contrasted classes. The blind man stands for an example of honest ignorance, knowing itself ignorant, and not to be coaxed or frightened or in any way pro- voked to pretending to knowledge which it does not possess ; firmly holding by what it does know, and because conscious of its little knowledge, therefore waiting for light and willing to be led. Hence he is at once humble and sturdy, docile and independent, ready to listen to any voice which can really teach, and formidably quick to prick with wholesome sarcasm the inflated claims of mere official pretenders. The Pharisees, on the other hand, are sure that they know everything that can be known about anything in the region of religion and morality, and in their absolute confidence of their absolute possession of the truth, in their blank unconsciousness that it was more than their official property and stock-in-trade, in their complete incapacity to discern the glory of a miracle which con- travened ecclesiastical proprieties and conventionalities, in their contempt for the ignorance which they were responsible for and never thought of enlightening, in their cruel taunt directed against the man's calamity, and in their swift resort to the weapon of excommuni- cation of one whom it was much easier to cast out than to answer, are but too plain a type of a character which is as ready to corrupt the teachers of the Church as of the synagogue. One cannot but notice how constantly the phrase *We know' occurs. The parents of the man use it thrice. The Pharisees have it on their lips in their first interview with him : ' "We know that this man is a sinner.' He answers, declining to affirm anything about the character of the Man Jesus, because he, for his part, 'knows not,' but standing firmly by the vs. 6, 7] THE SIXTH MIRACLE 21 solid reality which he ' knows,' in a very solid fashion, that his eyes have been opened. So we have the first encounter between knowledge which is ignorant, and ignorance which knows, to the manifest victory of the latter. Again, in the second round, they try to over- bear the man's cool sarcasm with their vehement asser- tion of knowledge that God spake to Moses, but by the admission that even their knowledge did not reach to the determination of the question of the origin of Jesus' mission, lay themselves open to the sudden thrust of keen-eyed, honest humility's sharp rapier- like retort. 'Herein is a marvellous thing,' that you Knoio-alls, whose business it is to know where a pro- fessed miracle- worker comes from, 'know not from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes.' •Now ice knoio' (to use your own words) 'that God heareth not sinners, but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth His will, him He heareth.' Then observe how, on both sides, a process is going on. The man is getting more and more light at each step. He begins with 'a Man which is called Jesus.' Then he gets to a ' prophet,' then he comes to ' a wor- shipper of God, and one that does His will.' Then he comes to, ' If this man were not of God,' in some very special sense, ' He could do nothing.' These are his own reflections, the working out of the impres- sion made by the fact on an honest mind ; and because he had so used the light which he had, therefore Jesus gives him more, and finds him with the question, ' Dost thou believe on the Son of God ? ' Then the man who had shown himself so strong in his own convictions, so independent, and hard to cajole or coerce, shows him- self now all docile and submissive, and ready to accept whatever Jesus says : * Lord, who is He, that I might 22 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.ix. believe on Him ? ' That was not credulity. He already knew enough of Christ to know that he ought to trust Him. And to his docility there is given the full revelation ; and he hears the words which Pharisees and unrighteous men were not worthy to hear : ' Thou hast both seen Him — with these eyes to which I have given sight — and it is He that talketh with thee.' Then intellectual conviction, moral reliance, and the utter prostration and devotion of the whole man bow him at Christ's feet. ' Lord, I believe ; and He worshipped Him.' There is the story of the progress of an honest, ignorant soul that knew itself blind, into the illumina- tion of perfect vision. And as he went upwards, so steadily and tragically, downwards went the others. For they had light and they would not look at it ; and it blasted and blinded them. They had the manifestation of Christ, and they scoffed and jeered at it, and turned their backs upon it, and it became a curse to them ; falling not like dew but like vitriol on their spirits, blistering, not refreshing. Therefore Christ pronounces their fate, and sums up the story in the solemn two-edged sentence : ' For judgment am I come into the world, tbat they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind.' The purpose of His coming is not to judge, but to save. But if men will not let Him save, the effect of His coming will be to harm. Therefore, His coming will separate men into two parts, as a magnet will draw all the iron filings out of a heap and leave the brass. He comes not to judge, but His coming does judge. He is set for the rise or for the fall of men. vs. 6, 7] THE SIXTH MIRACLE 23 and is * a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.' Light has a twofold effect. It is torture to the diseased eye ; it is gladdening to the sound one. Christ is the light, as He is also both the power of seeing and the thing seen. Therefore, it cannot but be that His shining upon men's hearts shall judge them, and shall either enlighten or darken. We all have eyes — the organs by which we may see * the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.' We have all blinded ourselves by our sin. Christ is come to show us God, to be the light by which we see God, and to strengthen and restore our faculty of seeing Him. If you welcome Him, and take Him into your hearts, He will be at once light and eyesight to you. But if you turn away from Him He will be blindness and darkness to you. He comes to pour eyesight on the blind, but He comes therefore also, most assuredly, to make still blinder those who do not know themselves to be blind, and conceit themselves to be clear-sighted. ' I thank Thee, Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.' They who see themselves to be blind, who know themselves to be ignorant, the lowly who recognise their sinfulness and misery and helplessness, and turn in their sore need to Christ, will be led by paths of growing knowledge and blessedness to the perfect day where their strengthened vision will be able to see light in the blaze which to us now is darkness. They who say ' I see,' and know not that they are miserable and blind, nor hearken to His counsel to ' anoint their eyes with eye salve that they may see,' will have yet another film drawn over their eyes by the shining of the light which they reject, and will pass into darkness where 24 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.x. only enough of light and of eyesight remain to make guilt. Jesus Christ is for us light and vision. Trust to Him, and your eyes will be blessed because they see God. Turn from Him and Egyptian darkness will settle on your soul. ' To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away.' THE GIFTS TO THE FLOCK I , . By Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.'— John x. 9. One does not know whether the width or the depth of this marvellous promise is the more noteworthy. Jesus Christ presents Himself before the whole race of man, and declares Himself able to deal with the needs of every individual in the tremendous whole. ' If any man ' — no matter who, where, when. For all noble and happy life there are at least three things needed : security, sustenance, and a field for the exercise of activity. To provide these is the end of all human society and government. Jesus Christ here says that He can give all these to every one. The imagery of the sheep and the fold is still, of course, in His mind, and colours the form of the representation. But the substance is the declaration that, to any and every soul, no matter how ringed about with danger, no matter how hampered and hindered in work, no matter how barren of all supply earth may be. He will give these, the primal requisites of life. 'He shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.' Now I only wish to deal with these three aspects of V. 9] THE GIFTS TO THE FLOCK 25 the blessedness of a true Christian life which our Lord holds forth here as accessible to us all: security, the unhindered exercise of activity, and sustenance or provision. I. First, then, in and through Christ any man may be saved. I take it that the word • saved ' here is rather used with reference to the imagery of the parable than in its full Christian sense of ultimate and everlasting salvation, and that its meaning in its present connec- tion might perhaps better be set forth by the ren- dering ' safe ' than ' saved.' At the same time, the two ideas pass into one another ; and the declaration of my text is that because, step by step, conflict by conflict, in passing danger after danger, external and internal, Jesus Christ, through our union with Him, will keep us safe, at the last we shall reach eternal and ever- lasting salvation. *He will save us' by the continual exercise of His protecting power, ' into His everlasting kingdom.' There is none other shelter for men's defenceless heads and naked, soft, unarmed bodies except only the shelter that is found in Him. There are creatures of low grade in the animal world which have the instinct, because their own bodies are so undefended and impotent to resist contact with sharp and penetrating substances, that they take refuge in the abandoned shells of other creatures. You and I have to betake ourselves behind the defences of that strong love and mighty Hand if ever we are to pass through life without fatal harm. For consider that, even in regard to outward dangers, union with Jesus Christ defends and delivers us. Sup- pose two men, two Manchester merchants, made bank- rupt by the same commercial crisis ; or two shipwrecked 26 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.x. sailors lashed upon a raft ; or two men sitting side by- side in a railway carriage and smashed by the same collision. One is a Christian and the other is not. The same blow is altogether different in aspect and actual effect upon the two men. They endure the same thing externally, in body or in fortune. The outward man is similarly affected, but the man is differently affected. The one is crushed, or embittered, or driven to despair, or to drink, or to something or other to soothe the bitterness; the other bows himself with 'It is the Lord ! Let Him do what seemeth Him good.' So the two disasters are utterly different, though in form they may be the same, and he that has entered into the fold by Jesus Christ is safe, not from outward disaster — that would be but a poor thing — but in it. For to the true heart that lives in fellowship with Jesus Christ, Sorrow, though it be dark-robed, is bright- faced, soft-handed, gentle-hearted, an angel of God. ' By Me if any man enter in, he shall be safe.' And further, in our union with Jesus Christ, by simple faith in Him and loyal submission and obedi- ence, we do receive an impenetrable defence against the true evils, and the only things worth calling dangers. For the only real evil is the peril that we shall lose our confidence and be untrue to our best selves, and depart from the living God. Nothing is evil except that which tempts, and succeeds in tempt- ing, us away from Him. And in regard to all such danger, to cleave to Christ, to realise His presence, to think of Him, to wear His name as an amulet on our hearts, to put the thought of Him between us and temptation as a filter through which the poisonous air shall pass, and be deprived of its virus, is the one secret of safety and victory. V. 9] THE GIFTS TO THE FLOCK 27 Real gift of power from Jesus Christ, the influx of His strength into our weakness, of some portion of the Spirit of life that was in Him into our deadness, is pro- mised, and the promise is abundantly fulfilled to all men who trust Him when their hour of temptation comes. As the dying martyr, when he looked up into heaven, saw Jesus Christ 'standing at the right hand of God' ready to help, and, as it were, having started from His eternal seat on the Throne in the eagerness of His desire to succour His servant, so we may all see, if we will, that dear Lord ready to succour us, and close by our sides to deliver us from the evil in the evil, its power to tempt. If we could carry that vision into our daily life, and walk in its light, when temptation rings us round, how poor all the induce- ments to go away from Him would look ! There is a power in the remembrance of Jesus to slay every wicked thought; and the things that tempt us most, that most directly appeal to our worst sides, to our sense, our ambition, our pride, our dis- trust, our self-will, all these lose their power upon us, and are discovered in their emptiness and insignifi- cance, when once this thought flashes across the mind — Jesus Christ is my Defence, and Jesus Christ is my Pattern and my Companion. Oh, brother ! do not trust yourself out amongst the pitfalls and snares of life without Him. If you do, the real evil of all evils will seize you for its own ; but keep close to that dear Lord, and then ' there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.' The hidden temptation thou wilt pass by without being harmed ; the manifest temptation thou wilt trample under foot. ' Thou shalt not be afraid for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the 28 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.x. destruction that wasteth at noonday.' Hidden and known temptations will be equally powerless; and in the fold into which all pass by faith in Christ thou shalt be safe. And so, kept safe from each danger and in each moment of temptation, the aggregate and sum of the several deliverances will amount to the ever- lasting salvation which shall be perfected in the heavens. Only remember the condition, 'By Me if any man enter in.' That is not a thing to be done once for all, but needs perpetual repetition. When we clasp anything in our hands, however tight the initial grasp, unless there is a continual effort of renewed tighten- ing, the muscles become lax, and we have to renew the tension, if we are to keep the grasp. So in our Christian life it is only the continual repetition of the act which our Lord here calls 'entering in by Him' that will bring to us this continual exemption from, and immunity in, the dangers that beset us. Keep Christ between you and the storm. Keep on the lee side of the Rock of Ages. Keep behind the breakwater, for there is a wild sea running outside ; and your little boat, undecked and with a feeble hand at the helm, will soon be swamped. Keep within the fold, for "wolves and lions lie in every bush. Or, in plain English, live moment by moment in the realising of Christ's presence, power, and grace. So, and only so, shall you be safe. II. Now, secondly, note, in Jesus Christ any man may find a field for the unrestricted exercise of his activity. That metaphor of 'going in and out' is partly ex- plained to us by the image of the flock, which passes into the fold for peaceful repose, and out again, ▼.9] THE GIFTS TO THE FLOCK 29 without danger, for exercise and food; and is partly explained by the frequent use, in the Old Testament and in common conversation, of the expression * going out and in ' as the designation of the two-sided activity of human life. The one side is the contemplative life of interior union with God by faith and love; the other, the active life of practical obedience in the field of work which God provides for us. These two are both capable of being raised to their highest power, and of being discharged with the most unrestricted and joyous activity, on condition of our keeping close to Christ, and living by the faith of Him. Note, then, ' He shall go in.' That comes first, though it interferes with the propriety of the metaphor, since the previous words already contemplate an initial 'entering in by Me, the Door.' That is to say, that, given the union with Jesus Christ by faith, there must then, as the basis of all activity, follow very frequent and deep inward acts of contemplation, of faith, and aspiration, and desire. You must go into the depths of God through Christ. You must go into the depths of your own souls through Him. You must become accustomed to withdraw yourselves from spreading yourselves out over the distractions of any external activity, howsoever imperative, charitable, or neces- sary, and live alone with Jesus, ' in the secret place of the Most High.' It is through Him that we have access to the mysteries and innermost shrine of the Temple. It is through Him that we draw near to the depths of Deity. It is through Him that we learn the length and breadth and height and depth of the largest and loftiest and noblest truths that concern the spirit. It is through Him that we become familiar with the inmost secrets of our own selves. And only 30 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.x. they who habitually live this hidden and sunken life of solitary and secret communion will ever do much in the field of outward work. Christians of this genera- tion are far too much accustomed to live only in the front rooms of the house, that look out upon the street; and they know very little — far too little for their soul's health, and far too little for the freshness of their work and its prosperity — of that inward life of silent contemplation and expectant adoration, by which all strength is fed. Do not keep all your goods in the shop windows, and have nothing on your shelves but dummies, as is the case with far too many of us to-day. Remember that the Lord said first, ' He shall go in,' and unless you do you will not be ' saved.' But then, further, if there have been, and continue to be, this unrestricted exercise through Christ of that sweet and silent life of solitary communion with Him, then there will follow upon that an enlargement of opportunity, and power for outward service such as nothing but emancipation by faith in Him can ever bring. Howsoever, by external circumstances, you and I may be hampered and hindered, however often we may feel that if something outside of us were different, the development of our active powers would be far more satisfactory, and we could do a great deal more in Christ's cause, the true hindrance lies never with- out, but within ; and it is only to be overcome by that plunging into the depths of fellowship with Him. And then, if w^e carry with us into the field of work, whether it be the commonplace, dusty, tedious, and often repul- sive duties of our monotonous business ; or whether it be the field of more distinctly unselfish and Christian service — if we carry with us into all places where we go to labour, the sweet thought of His presence, of His V. 9] THE GIFTS TO THE FLOCK 31 example, of His love, and of the smile that may come on His face as the reward of faithful service, then we shall find that external labour, drawing its pattern, its motive, its law, and the power for its discharge, from communion with Him, is no more task-w^ork nor slavery; and even 'the rough places will be made smooth, and the crooked things will be made straight,' and distasteful work will be made at least tolerable, and hard burdens will be lightened, and the things that are 'seen and temporal' will shimmer into transparency, through which will shine out the things that are ' unseen and eternal.' Some of us are constitutionally made to prefer the one of these forms of Christian activity ; some of us to prefer the other. The tendencies of this generation are far too much to the latter, to the exclusion of the former. It is hard to reconcile the conflicting claims, and I know of no better way to hit the just medium than by trying to keep ourselves always in touch with Jesus Christ, and then outward labour of any sort, whether for the bread that perishes or for His king- dom and righteousness, will never become so absorbing but that in it we may have our hearts in heaven, and the silent hour of communion with Him will never be so prolonged as to neglect outward duties. There was a demoniac boy in the plain, and therefore it was im- possible to build tabernacles on the Mount of Trans- figuration. But the disciples that had not climbed the Mount were all impotent to cast out the demoniac boy. We, if we keep near to Jesus Christ, will find that through Him we can 'go in and out,' and in both be pursuing the one uniform purpose of serving and pleasing Him. So shall be fulfilled in our cases the Psalmist's prayer, that 'I may dwell in the house of 32 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.x. the Lord all the days of my life, to behold His beauty, and to inquire in His Temple.' III. Lastly, in Jesus Christ any man may receive sustenance. ' They shall find pasture.' The imagery of the sheep and the fold is still, of course, present to the Master's mind, and shapes the form in which this great promise is set forth. I need only remind you, in illustration of it, of two facts, one, that in Jesus Christ Himself all the true needs of humanity are met and satisfied. He is 'the Bread of God that came down from heaven to give life to the world.' Do I want an outward object for my intellect ? I have it in Him. Does my heart feel with its tendrils, which have no eyes at the ends of them, after something round which it may twine, and not fear that the prop shall ever rot or be cut down or pulled up ? Jesus Christ is the home of love in which the dove may fold its wings and be at rest. Do I want (and I do if I am not a fool) an absolute and authorita- tive command to be laid upon my will; some one 'whose looks enjoin, whose lightest words are spells'? I find absolute authority, with no taint of tyranny, and no degradation to the subject, in that Infinite Will of His. Does my conscience need some strong deter- gent to be laid upon it which shall take out the stains that are most indurated, inveterate, and ingrained? I find it only in the ' blood that cleanseth from all sin.' Do my aspirations and desires seek for some solid and substantial and unquestionable and imperishable good to which, reaching out, they may be sure that they are not anchoring on cloudland ? Christ is our hope. For all this complicated and craving commonwealth that I carry within my soul, there is but one satisfaction, even Jesus Christ Himself. Nothing else nourishes the V.9] THE GIFTS TO THE FLOCK 83 whole man at once, but in Him are all the constituents that the human system requires for its nutriment and its growth in every part. So in and through Christ we find ' pasture.' But beyond that, if we are knit to Him by simple and continual faith, love, and obedience, then what is else barrenness becomes full of nourishment, and the unsatisfying gifts of the world become rich and pre- cious. They are nought when they are put first, they are much when they are put second. I remember when I was in Australia seeing some wretched cattle trying to find grass on a yellow pas- ture where there was nothing but here and there a brown stalk that crumbled to dust in their mouths as they tried to eat it. That is the world without Jesus Christ. And I saw the same pasture six weeks after, when the rains had come, and the grass was high, rich, juicy, satisfying. That is what the world may be to you, if you will put it second, and seek first that your souls shall be fed on Jesus Christ. Then, and only then, will what is else water be turned by His touch and blessing into wine that shall fill the great jars to the brim, and be pronounced by skilled palates to be the good wine. 'I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be. There shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel.' VOL. n. THE GOOD SHEPHERD ' I am the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine. 15. As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father : and I lay down My life for the sheep.'— John x. 14, 15. * I AM the Good Shepherd.' Perhaps even Christ never spoke more fruitful words than these. Just think how many solitary, wearied hearts they have cheered, and what a wealth of encouragement and comfort there has been in them for all generations. The little child as it lays itself down to sleep, cries — ♦ Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me, Bless Thy little lamb to-night,' and the old man lays himself down to die murmuring to himself, ' Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.' 'I am the Good Shepherd.' No preaching can do anything but weaken and dilute the force of such words, and yet, though in all their sweet, homely simplicity they appeal to every heart, there are great depths in them that are worth pondering, and pro- found thoughts that need some elucidation. There are three points to be noticed — First, the general force of the metaphor, and then the two specific applications of it which our Lord Himself makes. I. First of all, then, let me say a few words as to the general application of the metaphor. The usual notion of these words confines itself to the natural meaning, and runs out into very true, but perhaps a little sentimental, considerations, laying hold of what is so plain on the very surface that I need not spend any 84 vs. 14, 15] THE GOOD SHEPHERD 35 time in speaking about it. Christ's pattern is my law; Christ's providence is my guidance and defence — which in the present case means Christ's companion- ship — is my safety, my sustenance — which in the pre- sent case means that Christ Himself is the bread of my soul. The Good Shepherd exercises care, which absolves the sheep from care, and in the present case means that my only duty is meek following and quiet trust. *I am the Good Shepherd' — here is guidance, guardianship, companionship, sustenance — all responsi- bility laid upon His broad shoulders, and all tender- ness in His deep heart, and so for us simple obedience and quiet trust. Another way by which we get the whole signifi- cance of this symbol is by noticing how the idea is strengthened by the word that accompanies it. Christ does not say ' I am a Shepherd,' but He says, * I am the good Shepherd.' At first sight that word •good' is interpreted, as I have said, in a kind of sentimental, poetic way, as expressing our Lord's tenderness and love and care ; but I do not think that is the full meaning here. You find up and down this Gospel of St. John phrases such as, 'I am the true bread,' 'I am the true vine,' and the meaning of the word that is here translated 'good' is very nearly parallel with that idea. The true bread, the true vine, the true Shepherd — which comes to this, to use modern phraseology, that Jesus Christ, in His relation to you and me, fulfils all that in figure and shadow is repre- sented to the meditative eye by that lower relation- ship between the material shepherd and his sheep. That is the picture, this the reality. There is another point to be made clear, and that is, that whilst the word 'good' is perhaps a fair enough representation 36 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.x. of that which is employed by our Lord, there is a special force and significance attached to the original, which is lost in our Bible. I do not know that it could have been preserved ; but still it is necessary to state it. The expression here is the one that is generally rendered 'fair,' or 'lovely,' or 'beautiful,' and it belongs to the genius of that wonderful tongue in which the New Testament is written that it has a name for moral purity, considered as being lovely, the highest goodness, and the serenest beauty, which was what the old Greeks taught, howsoever little they may have practised it in their lives. And so here the thought is that the Shepherd stands before us, the realisation of all which that name means, set forth in such a fashion as to be infinitely lovely and perfectly fair, and to draw the admiration of any man who can appreciate that which is beautiful, and can admire that which is of good report. There is another point still in reference to this first view of the text. Our Lord not only declares that He is the reality of which the earthly shepherd is the shadow, and that He as such is the flawless, perfect One, but that He alone is the reality. ' I am the Good Shep- herd ; in Me and in Me alone is that which men need.' And that leads me to another point which must just be mentioned, that we shall not reach the full meaning of these great words without taking into account the history of the metaphor in the Old Testament. Christ gives a second edition of the figure, and we are to re- member all that went before. ' The Lord is my Shep- herd, I shall not want ' ; ' Thou leddest Thy people like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.' These are but specimens of a continuous series of utterances in the old Revelation in which Jehovah Himself is the vs. u, 15] THE GOOD SHEPHERD 87 Shepherd of mankind; and there is also another class of passages of which I will quote one or two. *He shall feed His flock like a shepherd, and carry them in His arms.' 'Awake, O sword, against the Man who is my fellow ; smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.' There were, we should remember, two streams of representation, according to the one of which God Himself was the Shepherd of Israel, and according to the other of which the Messiah was the Shepherd ; and here, as I believe, Jesus lays His hand on both the one and the other, and says: 'They are Mine, and they testify of Me.' So sweet, so gracious are the words, that we lose the sense of the grandeur of them, and need to think before we are able to understand how great and immense the claim that is made here upon our faith, and that this Man stands before us and arrogates to Himself the divine prerogative witnessed from of old by psalmist and prophet, and says that for Him were meant the prophecies of ancient times that spake of a human shepherd, and asserts that all the sustenance, care, authority, command, which the emblem suggests meet in Him in perfect measure. II. Now let us turn to the two special points which our Lord emphasises here, as being those in which His relation as the Good Shepherd is most conspicuously given. The language of my text runs : ' I am the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine. As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father.' Our Western ways fail to bring out the full meaning of the emblem ; but all Eastern travellers tell us what a strange bond of sympathy and loving regard, and docile recognition, springs up between the shepherd and his sheep away there in the Eastern 38 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.x. pastures and deserts; and how he knows every one, though to a stranger's eye they are so like each other ; and how even the dumb instincts and the narrow intelli- gence of the silly sheep recognise the shepherd, and will not be deceived by shepherd's garments worn to deceive, and will not follow the voice of a stranger. But we must further note that Christ lays hold of the dumb instincts of the animal, as illustrating, at the one end of the scale, the relation between Him and His followers, and lays hold of the communion between the Father and the Son at the other end of the scale, as illustrating the same thing. * I know My sheep.' That is a knowledge like the knowledge of the shepherd, a bond of close intimacy. But He does not know them by reason of looking at them and thinking about them. It is something far more blessed than that. He knows me because He loves me ; He knows me because He has sympathy with me, and I know Him, if I know Him at all, by my love, and I know Him by my sympathy, and I know Him by my communion. A loveless heart does not know the Shepherd, and unless the Shepherd's heart was all love He would not know His sheep. The Shepherd's love is an individualised love. He knows His flock as a flock because He knows the units of it, and we can rest ourselves upon the personal knowledge, which ia personal love and sympathy, of Jesus Christ. 'And My sheep know Me ' — not by force of intellect, not by understanding certain truths, all-important as that may be, but by having our hearts harmonised in Him, and our spirits put into sympathy and communion with Him. ' They know Me,' and rest comes with the knowledge ; ' they know Me,' and in that knowing is the best answer to all doubt and fear. They are exposed vs. 14, 15] THE GOOD SHEPHERD 89 to danger, but in the fold they can go quietly to rest, for they know that He is at the door watching through all dangers. III. Turn for a moment to the last point, ' I lay down My life for the sheep.' I have said that our Western ways fail to bring out fully the element of the m9taphor which refers to the kind of sympathy between the shepherd and the sheep; and our Western life also fails to bring out this other element also. Shepherds in England never have need to lay down their life for the sheep. Shepherds in Palestine often did, and some- times do. You remember David with the lion and the bear, which is but an illustration of the reality which underlies this metaphor. So, then, in some profound way, the shepherd's death is the sheep's safety. First of all, look at that most unmistakable, emphatic — I was going to say vehement, at any rate, intense — expression of the absolute voluntariness of Christ's death, ' I lay down My life,' as a man might strip off a vesture. And this application of the metaphor is made all the stronger by the words which follow : ' Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.' We read, 'Smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered,' but here, somehow or other, the smiting of the Shepherd is not the scattering but the gathering of the flock. Here, somehow or other, the dead Shepherd has power to guard, to guide, to defend them. Here, somehow or other, the death of the Shepherd is the security of the sheep; and I say to you, the flock, that for every soul the entrance into the flock of God is through the door of the dying 40 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. x. Christ, who laid down His life for the sheep, and makes them His sheep who trust in Him. •OTHER SHEEP'* ' other sheep I have, which are not of this fold : them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice ; and they shall become one flock and one Shepherd.' —John x. 16 (R.V.). There were many strange and bitter lessons in this discourse for the false shepherds, the Pharisees, to whom it was first spoken. But there was not one which would jar more upon their minds, and as they fancied, on their sacredest convictions, than this, that God's flock was wider than God's fold. Our Lord distinctly recognises Judaism with its middle wall of partition as a divine institution, and then as distinctly carries His gaze beyond it. To His hearers 'this fold,' their own national polity, held all the flock. Without were dogs, a doleful land, where 'the wild beasts of the desert met with the wild beasts of the islands.' And now this new Teacher, not content with declaring them hirelings, and Himself the only true Shepherd of Israel, breaks down the hedges and speaks of Himself as the Shepherd of men. No wonder that they said, ' He hath a devil and is mad.' During His earthly life our Lord, as we know, con- fined His own personal ministry for the most part to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Not exclusively so, for He made at least one journey into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, teaching and healing; a Syro-Phoenician woman held His feet, and received her request; and one of His miracles, of feeding the multitude, was wrought for hungry Gentiles. But while His work 1 Preached before the Baptist Missionary Society. V. 16] ' OTHER SHEEP ' 41 was in Israel, it was for mankind; and while 'this fold,' generally speaking, circumscribed His toils, it did not confine His love nor His thoughts. More than once world-wide declarations and promises broke from His lips, even before the final universal commission, ' Preach the Gospel to every creature.' * I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.' 'I am the Light of the world.' These and other similar sayings give us His lofty consciousness that He has received 'the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession.' Parallel with them in substance are the words before us, which, for our present purpose, we may regard as containing lessons from our Lord Himself of how He looked and would have us look on the heathen world, on His work and ours, and on the certain issues of both. I. We have here Christ teaching us how to think of the heathen world. Observe that His words are not a declaration that all mankind are His sheep. The previous verses have distinctly defined a class of men as possessing the name, and the succeeding ones reiterate the de- finition, and with equal distinctness exclude another class. 'Ye believe not, because ye are not My sheep as I said unto you.' His sheep are they who know Him and are known of Him. Between Him and them there is a communion of love, a union of life, and a consequent reciprocal knowledge, which transcends the closest intimacies of earthly life, and finds its only analogue in that deep and mysterious oneness which subsists between the Father, who alone knoweth the Son, and the only begotten Son, who being ever in the bosom of the Father, alone knoweth Him and revealeth Him to us. ' I know My sheep and am known of Mine ; 42 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. x. as the Father knoweth Me and I know the Father. They hear My voice and follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life.' Such are the characteristics of that relation between Christ and men by which they become His sheep. It is such souls as these whom our Lord beholds in the wasteful wilderness. He is speak- ing not of a relation which all men bear to Him by virtue of their creation, but of one which they bear to Him who believe in His name. Now this interpretation of the words does by no means contradict, but rather presupposes and rests upon the truth that all mankind come within the love of the divine heart, that He died for all, that all may be the subjects of His mediatorial kingdom, re- cipients of the offered mercy of God in Christ, and com- mitted to the stewardship of the missionary Church. Resting upon these truths, the words of our text advance a step further and contemplate those who ' shall hereafter believe on Me.' Whether they be few or many is not the matter in hand. Whether at any future time they shall include all the dwellers upon earth is not the matter in hand. That every soul of man is included in the adaptation and intention and offer of the Gospel is not the matter in hand. But this is the matter in hand, that Jesus Christ in that moment of lofty elevation when He looked onwards to giving His life for the sheep, looked outwards also, far afield, and saw in every nation and people souls that He knew were His, and would one day know Him, and be led by Him 'in green pastures and beside still waters.' But where or what were they when He spoke ? He does not mean that already they had heard His voice and were following His steps, and knew His love, and V.16] 'OTHER SHEEP' 43 had received eternal life at His hand. This He cannot mean, for the plain reason that He goes on to speak of His 'bringing' them and of their 'hearing,' a work yet to be done. It can only be, then, that He speaks of them thus in the fullness of that divine knowledge which ' calls things that are not as though they were.' It is then a prophetic word which He speaks here. We have only to think of the condition of the civi- lised heathendom of Christ's own day in order to feel the force of our text in its primary application. While the work of salvation was being prepared for the world in the life and death of our Lord, the world was being prepared for the tidings of salvation. Everywhere men were losing their faith in their idols, and longing for some deliverer. Some had become weary of the hollowness of philosophical speculation, and, like Pilate, were asking ' What is truth ? ' whilst, unlike Him, they waited for an answer, and will believe it when it comes from the lips of the Incarnate wisdom. Such were the Magi who were led by their starry science to His cradle, and went back to the depths of the Eastern lands with a better light than had guided them thither. Such were not a few of the early Christian converts, who had long been seeking hopelessly for goodly pearls, and had so been learning to know the worth of the One when it was offered to them. There were men who had been long sickening with despair amidst the rottenness of decaying mythologies and corrupting morals, and longing for some breath from heaven to blow health to themselves and to the world, and had so been learning to welcome * the rushing mighty wind ' when it came in power. There were simple souls, without as well as within the chosen people, waiting for the Consolation, though they knew not whence it 44 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.x. was to come. There were many who had already learned to believe that * salvation is of the Jews,' though they had still to learn that salvation is in Jesus. Such were that Ethiopian statesman who was poring over Isaiah when Philip joined him, the Roman centurion at Caesarea whose prayers and alms came up with acceptance before God, these Greeks of the West who came to His cross as the Eastern sages to His cradle, and were in Christ's eyes the advance guard and first scattered harbingers of the flocks who should come flying for refuge to Him lifted on the Cross, ' like doves to their windows.' The whole world showed that the fullness of tim.e had come ; and the history of the early years of the Church reveals in how many souls the process of preparation had been silently going on. It was like the flush of early spring, when all the buds that had been maturing and swelling in the cold, burst, and the tender flowers that had been reaching upwards to the surface in all the hard winter laugh out in beauty, and a green veil covers all the hedges at the first flash of the April sun. Not only these were in our Lord's thoughts when He saw His sheep in heathen lands. There were many who had no such previous preparation, but were plunged in all the darkness, nor knew that it was dark. Not only those wearied of idolatry, and dis- satisfied with creeds outworn, but the barbarous people of Illyricum, the profligates of Corinth, hard rude men like the jailer at Philippi, and many more were before His penetrating eye. He who sees beneath the surface, and beyond the present, beholds His sheep where men can only see wolves. He sees an Apostle in the blaspheming Saul, a teacher for all generations in the African Augustine while yet a sensualist and a V.16] 'OTHER SHEEP* 45 Manichee, a reformer in the eager monk Luther, a poet-evangelist in the tinker Bunyan. He sees the future saint in the present sinner, the angel's wings budding on many a shoulder where the world's burdens lie heavy, and the new name written on many a fore- head that as yet bears but the mark of the beast, and the number of His name. And the sheep whom He sees while He speaks are not only the men of that generation. These mighty words are world-wide and world-lasting. The whole of the a^ges are in His mind. All nations are gathered before His prophetic vision, even as they shall one day be gathered before His judgment throne, and in all the countless mass His hand touches and His love clasps those who to the very end of time shall come to His call with loving faith, shall follow His steps with glad obedience. Thus does Christ look out upon the world that lay beyond the fold. I cannot stay to do more than refer in passing to the spirit which the words of our text breathe. There is the lofty consciousness that He is the Leader and Guide, the Friend and Helper of all, that He stands solitary in His power to bless. There is the full confidence that the earth is His to its uttermost border. There is the clear vision of the sorrowful con- dition of these heathen people, without a shepherd and without a fold, wandering on every high mountain and dying in every thirsty land where there is no water. There are the tenderest pity and yearning love for them in their extremity. There is the clear assur- ance that they will come and be blessed in Him. I pass by all the other thoughts, which naturally found them- selves on these words, in order to urge the one which is most appropriate to our present engagement. Let 46 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. x. us, dear brethren, take Christ as our pattern in our contemplations of the heathen world. He has set us the example of an outgoing look directed far beyond the limits of the existing churches, far beyond the point of present achievement. We are but too apt to circumscribe our operative thoughts and our warm sympathies within the circle of our sight, or of our own personal associations. Our selfish- ness and our indolence affect the objects of our con- templations quite as much as they do the character of our work. They vitiate both, by making ourselves the great object of both, and by weakening the force of both in a ratio that increases rapidly with the increas- ing distance from that favourite centre. It is but a subtle form of the same disease which keeps our thoughts penned within the bounds of any fold, or limited by the progress already achieved. For us the whole world is the possession of our Lord, who has died to redeem us. By us the whole ought to be contem- plated with that same spirit of prophetic confidence which filled Him when He said, ' Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.' To press onwards, 'for- getting the things that are behind, and reaching forth to those which are before,' is the only fitting attitude for Christian men, either in regard to the gradual purifying of their own characters, or in regard to the gradual winning of the world for Christ. We ought to make all past successes stepping-stones to nobler things. The true use of the present is to reach up from it to a loftier future. The distance beckons ; well for us if it do not beckon us in vain. We have yet to learn the first lesson of our Master's spirit, as ex- pressed in these words, if we have not become familiar with the pitying contemplation of the wastes beyond V. 16] * OTHER SHEEP ' 47 the fold, nor fixed deep in our minds the faith that the amplitude of its walls will have to be widened with growing years till it fills the world. The cry echoes to us from of old, ' Lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes, for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left.' We take the first step to respond to the summons when we make the 'regions beyond' one of the standing subjects of our devout thoughts, and take heed of supposing that the Church as we know it, has the same measurement which the man with the golden rod has measured for the eternal courts of Jerusalem, that shall be the joy of the whole earth. The very genius of the Gospel is aspiring. It is content with nothing short of univer- sality for the sweep, and eternity for the duration, and absolute completeness for the measure, of its bestow- ments on man. We should be like men on a voyage of discovery, whose task is felt to be incomplete until headland after headland that fades in the dim dis- tance has been rounded and surveyed, and the flag of our country planted upon it. After each has been passed another arises from the water, onwards we must go. There is no pause for our thoughts, none for our sympathy, none for our work, till our keels have visited, and the ' shout of a King ' has been heard on every shore that fills ' the breadth of Thy land, O Emmanuel ! ' The limits of the visible community of Christ's Church to-day are far within the borders to which it must one day stretch. It is for us, taught by His words, to understand that we are yet as it were but encamped by Jericho, and at the beginning of the campaign. Ai and Bethhoron, and many a fight more are before us yet. The camp of the invaders, when they lay around the city of palm-trees, with the mountains in front and 48 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. x. the Jordan behind, was not more unlike the settled order of the nation when it filled the land, than the ranks of Christ's army to-day are to the mighty multi- tudes that shall one day name His name, and follow His banner. Let us live in the future, and lay strongly hold on the distant ; for both are our Lord's, and by so doing we shall the better do our Master's work in the present, and at hand. He has set us the example of a penetrating gaze into heathenism, which reveals beneath its monotonous miseries, the souls that are His. We ought to look on every field of Christian effort with the assurance that in it there are some who will hear His voice. As it was when He came, so it is ever and everywhere. The world is being prepared for the Gospel. In some broad regions, faith in idolatry is dying out, and the moral condition of the people is undergoing a slow elevation. Individuals are being weaned from their gods, they know not how, and they will not know why till they hear of Christ. He sees in every land where the Gospel is being taken — ' a people prepared for the Lord.' He sees the gold gleaming in the crevices of the caves, the gems, rough and unpolished, lying in the matrix. He looks not merely on the great mass of idolaters, but He sees the single souls who shall hear. It is for us to look on the same mass with confidence caught from His. Neither apathetic indifference nor faint-hearted doubt should be permitted to weaken our hands. The prospect may seem very dark, the power of the enemy very great, our resources very inadequate ; but let us look with Christ's eye, we shall know that everywhere we may hope to find a response to our message. Who they may be, we know not. How many they may be, we know not. How they may be guided by Him, they V. 16] * OTHER SHEEP ' 49 know not. But He knows all. We may know that they are there. And as we cannot tell who they are but only that they are, we are bound to cherish hopes for all — the most degraded and outcast of our race. We have no right to give up any field or any man as hope- less. Christ's sheep will be found coming out of the midst of wolves and goats. Darkness may cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but if we look upon it as Christ did, and as He would have us to look, we shall see lights flickering here and there in the obscurity, which shall burst out into a blaze. The prophetic eye, the boundlessly hopeful heart, the strong confidence that in every land where He is preached there will be those who shall hear — these are what He gives us when He says, ' Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.' There is one other thought connected with these words which may be briefly referred to. It is that even now, in all lands where the Gospel has been preached, there are those whom Christ has received, although they have no connection with His visible Church. There are many goats within the fold. There are many sheep without it. Even in lands where the Gospel has long been preached, we do not venture to identify profession by Church fellowship with living union with Christ. Much more is this true of our missionary efforts, and the apparent converts whom they make. The results that appear are no measure of the results that have actually been accom- plished. We often hear of men who had caught up some stray word in a Bengali market-place, or received a tract by the roadside from some passing missionary, and who, having carried a^vay the seed in their hearts, had long been living as Christians remote from all VOL. II. D 50 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.x. churches and unknown by any. We can easily con- ceive that timidity in some cases, and distance in others, swell the ranks of these secret disciples. Though they follow not the footsteps of the flock, the Shepherd will lead them in their solitude. There will be many more names in the Lamb's book of life, depend upon it, than ever are written on the roll-calls of our churches, or in missionary statistics. The shooting- stars that yearly fill our sky are visible to us for a moment, when their orbit passes into the lighted heavens, and then they disappear in the shadow of the earth. But astronomers tell us that they are always there though to us they seem to blaze but for a moment. We cannot see them, but they move on their darkling path and have a sun round which they circle. So be sure that in many heathen lands there are believing souls, seen by us but for an instant and then lost, who yet fill their unseen place, and move obedient round the Sun of Righteousness. Their names on earth are dark, but when the manifestation of the sons of God shall come, they shall shine as the bright- ness of the firmament, and as the stars for ever and ever. Our work has results beyond our knowledge now. When the Church, the Lamb's wife, shall lift up her eyes at the end of the days, prophecy tells us that she shall wonder to see her thronging children, whom she had never known till then, and will say, 'Who hath begotten me these? Behold I was left alone. These, where had they been?' These were God's hidden ones, nourished and brought up beyond the pale of the outward Church, but brought at last to share her triumph, and to abide at her side. ' Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.' What confidence then, what tender pity, what hope V. 16] ' OTHER SHEEP ' 51 should fill our minds when we look on the heathen world! We must never be contented with present achievements. We are committed to a task which cannot end till all the world hears the joyful sound and is blessed by walking in the light of His counten- ance. When the great Roman Catholic missionary, the Apostle of the East, was lying on his dying bed among the barbarous people whom he loved, his pass- ing spirit was busy about his work, and, even in the article of death, while the glazing eye saw no more clearly and the ashen lips had begun to stiffen into eternal silence, visions of further conquests flashed before him, and his last word was ' Amplius' — Omcard! It ought to be the motto of the missionary work of us, who boast a purer faith, to carry to the heathen and to fire our own souls. If ever we are tempted to repose, to despondency, to rest and be thankful when we num- ber up our work and our converts, let us listen to His voice as it speaks in that supreme hour when He beheld the vision of the Cross, and beyond it that of a gathered world : ' Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.' We have here — II. Christ teaching us how to think of His work and ours. ' Them also I must bring.' A necessity is laid upon Him, which springs at once from that divine work which is the law of His life, and from His own love and pity. The means for accomplishing this necessary work are implied in the context, as in other parallel Scriptural sayings, to be His pro- pitiatory death. The instrumentality employed is not only His own personal agency on earth, nor only His throned rule on the right hand of God with power over the Spirit of holiness, but also the work of His 52 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. x. Church, and His work through them. Of that He is mainly speaking when He says, 'Them also I must bring.' Here, then, are some truths which ought to underlie and shape as well as animate our efforts for heathenism. And first, remember that the same sovereign neces- sity which was laid on Him presses on us. The ' Spirit of life ' which was in Christ had its ' law,' which was the will of God. That shaped all His being, and He set us the example of perfectly clear recogni- tion of, and perfect obedience to it, from the first moment when He said, ' I must be about My Father's business,' to the last, when He sighed forth, 'Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit.' Hence the frequent sayings setting forth His work as determined by an imperative ' must,' which, whether it be alleged in reference to some apparently small or to some manifestly great thing in His life, is always equally imperative, and whether it seem to be based on the need for the fulfilment of some prophetic word, or on the proprieties and congruities of sonship, reposes at last on the will of God. His final words on the Pass- over night, before he went out to Gethsemane in the moonlight, contain the influence which moulded His whole earthly life, ' As the Father gave Me command- ment, even so I do.' And this divine will constitutes for Him the deepest ground of the necessity in the case before us. The eternal counsels of God had willed that ' all the ends of the earth should see the salvation of the Lord ' ; therefore, whatever the toils and the pains, the loss and the death, He, whose meat and drink was to do the will of Him that sent Him, must give Himself to the task, nor rest till, one by one, the weary wanderers V. 16] * OTHER SHEEP * 58 are brought back on His shoulders and folded in His love. In all which, let us remember, Jesus Christ is our pattern, not in His work for the salvation of men, but in the spirit in which He did His work. The solemn law of duty before which He bowed His head is a law for us also. The authoritative imperative which He obeyed has power over us. If we would have our lives holy and strong, wise and good, we must have ' the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, making us free from the law of sin and death,' for the obedience to the higher law enfranchises from slavery to the lower, and all other authority ceases over us when we are Christ's men. We are bound to service directed to the same end as His — even the salvation of the world. The same voice which says to Him, 'I will give Thee for a light to the Gentiles,' says to us, *Ye are My witnesses, and My servant whom I have chosen.' The same Will which hath constituted Him the anointed Prophet, says of us, 'Touch not Mine anointed and do My prophets no harm.' We are redeemed that we may show forth God's praises. Not for ourselves alone, nor for purposes terminating in our own personal acceptance with God, or the perfect- ing of our own characters, priceless as these are, but for ends which affect the world has God had mercy on us. We are bought with a price that we may be the servants of God. We have received that we may give forth, ' God doth with us, as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves.' • Arise, shine, for thy light is come.' This missionary work of ours, then, is not one that can be taken up and laid down at our own pleasure. It is no excrescence, or accidental outgrowth of the 54 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.x. Church's life. We are all too apt to think of it as an extra, a kind of work of supererogation, which those may engage in who have a liking that way, and which those who do not care about it may leave alone, and no harm done. When shall we come to feel deeply, constantly, practically, that it must be done, and that we are sinning when we neglect it? Dear brethren, have we laid on our hearts and consciences the solemn weight of that necessity which moulded His life? Have we felt the awful power of God's plainly spoken will, driving us to this task? Do we know anything of that spirit which hears ever-pealing in our ears that awful commandment, ' Go, go to all the world, preach, preach the Gospel to every crea- ture?' God commands us to take the trumpet, and if we would not soil our souls with gross and palpable sin, we must set it to our lips and sound an alarm, that by His grace shall wake the sleepers, and make the hoary walls of the robber-city that has afflicted the earth for so many weary millenniums, rock to their fall, that the redeemed of the Lord may pass over and set the captives free. If we felt this as we ought, surely our consecration would be more complete, and our service more worthy. A clear conviction of God's will pointing the path for us, is, in all things, a wondrous help to vigorous action, to calmness of heart, and thus to success. In this mighty work, it w^ould brace us for larger efforts, and fit us for larger results. It would simplify and deepen our motives, and thus evolve from them nobler deeds and purer sacrifices. To all objections from so-called prudence, to all calculations from sparse results, to all cavils of onlookers who may carp and seek to hinder, we should have one all-sufficient answer. It is not for V. 16] 'OTHER SHEEP* 55 us to bandy arguments on such points as these. We care nothing for difficulties, for discouragements, for cost. We may think about these till we lose all the manly chivalry of Christian character, like the Apostle who gazed on the white crests of the angry breakers flashing in the pale moonlight, till he forgot who stood on the storm, and began to sink in his great fear. A nobler spirit ought to be ours. The toil is sore, the sacrifices many, and the yield seems small. Be it so ! To all such thoughts we have one answer — Oh ! that we felt more its solemn power! — such is the will of God. We are doing as we are bid, and we mean to go on. 'Them also must I bring,' says the Master. 'Necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is me if I preach not the Gospel,' echoes the Apostle. Let us, in the consecration of resolved hearts, and in trembling obedience to the divine will, add our choral Amen, and in the face of all the paralysing suggestions of our own selfishness, and all the tempting voices of worldly wisdom and unbelieving scornfulness that would stay our enterprise, let us fling back the grand old answer, 'Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.' We must not forget, how^ever, that it was no ab- horrent toil to which Christ reluctantly consented. But in this case, as always with Him, the words of prophecy were true. 'I delight to do Thy will.' The schism between law and choice had no existence for Him; and when He says that He must bring the wandering sheep into the fold. He means not more because of God's will than because of His own yearn- ing desire to pour out the treasures of His mercy. So it ought to be with us. Our missionary work 56 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. x. should not be degraded beneath the level of duty indeed, but neither should it be left on that level. We ought not only to be led to it by a power without, but impelled by an energy within. If we would be like our Master, we must know the necessity arising from our own heart's promptings, which leads us to work for Him. He has very imperfectly caught the spirit of the Gospel who has never felt the word as a fire in his bones, making him weary of forbearing. If we only take to this work because we are bid, and without sympathy for men, and longing desire to bring them all to Him who has blessed us, we may almost as well leave it alone. We shall do very little good to any- body, to ourselves little, to the world less. That our own hearts may teach us this necessity, we must live near our Master, and know His grace for ourselves. In proportion as w^e do, we shall be eager to proclaim it, and not stand idling in a corner of the market-place, till some unmistakable order sends us into the vine- yard, but go for the relief of our own feelings. ' This is a day of good tidings, and we cannot hold our peace,' said the poor lepers in the camp to one another. The same feeling that we must tell the good news just be- cause we know it, and it will make our brethren glad, is part of the Christian character. A blessed necessity, then, is laid upon us. A blessed work is given us, which brings with it at once the joy of obedience to our Father's will, and the joy of gratifying a deep instinct of our nature. 'Them also must I bring,' said the Saviour, because He loved men. ' To me who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches, echoes the Apostle. Let us live in the light of our Lord's eye, and drink deep of His spirit, till the task V.16] * OTHER SHEEP* 57 becomes a grace and privilege, not a burden, and till silence and idleness in His cause shall be felt to be impossible, because it would be violence to our own feelings, and the loss of a great joy as well as sin against our Father's will. Consider again, by what means the sheep are to be brought to Christ ? The context distinctly answers the question. There His propitiatory death is emphatically set forth as the power by which it is to be accomplished. The verse before our text says, ' I lay down My life for the sheep ' ; that after our text says, ' Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life.' It is the same connection of means and end as appears in the wonderful words with which He received the Greeks who came up to the feast, and heard the great truth, for want of which their philosophy and art came to nothing. 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone ' — ' I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto Me.' Yes, brethren! the Cross of Christ, and it alone, gathers men into a unity ; for it alone draws men to Christ. His death, as our propitiation, effects such a change in the aspects of the divine government, and in the incidence of the divine justice, that ' we who were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.' His death, as the constraining motive of life in the hearts which receive it, draws them away from their own ways by the cords of love, and binds them to Him. His death is His purchase of the gifts of that divine Spirit for the rebellious, who now convinces the world and endows the Church, 'till we all come unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.' The First Begotten from the dead is therefore the prince of all the kings of the earth, and He so rules among the 58 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. x. nations as to bring the world to HirAself. The philo- sophy of history lies in the words, ' Other sheep I have; them also I must bring.' Christian missions abundantly prove that the Cross and the proclamation of the Cross have this power, and that nothing else has. It is not the ethics of Chris- tianity, nor the abstract truths which may be deduced from its story, but it is the story of the suffering Redeemer that gives it its power over human hearts, in all conditions, and climates, and stages of culture. The magnetism of the Cross alone is mighty enough to overcome the gravitation of the soul to sin and the world. We hear much nowadays about a new refor- mation which is to be effected on Christianity, by purifying it of its historical facts and of its repulsive sacrificial aspect. When this is done, and the pure spiritual ideas are disengaged from their fleshly garb, then, we are told, will be the apotheosis and glorifica- tion of Christ. This will be the real lifting up from the earth; this will draw all men. Aye, and when this is done what will be left? Christianity will be purified back again into a vague Deism, which one would have thought had proved itself toothless and impotent, centuries ago. Spiritualising will turn out to be very like evaporating, the residuum will be a miserably unsatisfactory something, near akin to nothing, and certainly incapable either of firing its disciples with a desire to spread their faith, if we may call it so by courtesy, or of drawing men to itself. A Christianity without a Sacrifice on the altar will be a Christianity without worshippers in the Temple. The King of Kings who rides forth conquering is clothed in a vesture dipped in blood. The Christian Emperor saw in the heavens the Cross, with the legend : ' In V.16] * OTHER SHEEP' 59 this sign thou shalt conquer!' It is an emblem true for all time. The Cross is the power unto salvation. The races scattered on the earth have often sought to make for themselves a rallying-point, and their attempts at union have become Babels, centres of re- pulsion and confusion. God has given us the Centre, the Tree of life in the midst. The crucified Saviour is the Root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign for the people ; to it shall the Gentiles seek, and resting beneath the shadow of the Cross be at peace. * I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.' Once more our Lord teaches us here to identify the work of the Church with His own. What His servants do for Him He does, for from Him they derive the power to do it, and from Him comes the blessing which makes it effectual. He works in us, He works with us, He works for us. He works in us. We have the grace of His Spirit to touch our hearts and sanctify us for service. He puts it into the wills and desires of His Church to consecrate themselves to the task. He teaches them sympathy and self-devotion. He breathes world-wide aspirations into them. He raises up men to go forth. He works \cith us, helping our weakness, enlightening our ignorance, directing our steps, giving power to the student at his dry task of grammar and dictionary, being mouth and wisdom to them that speak in His name, touching the hearts of them that hear. In our basket He puts the seed-corn; the furrows of the field He makes soft with showers, and when it is sown He blesses the springing thereof. He works for us, opening doors among the nations, ordering the courses of providence, and holding His hand around His servants, so that they are immortal till their work is done ; and can ever lift up thankful 60 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. x. voices to Him who leads them joyful captives at His own triumphal car, as it rolls on its stately march, scattering the sweet odours of His name wherever the long procession sweeps through the world. We neither go a warfare at our own charges, nor in our own might. He will fight with us, and He will pay us liberally at the last. When we count up our own resources, do not we often leave Christ out of the reckoning ? Do we not measure our strength against the enemies', and forget that one weak man, plus Christ, is always in the majority ? * It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of My Father which speaketh in you.' 'I laboured, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.' So helped, so inspired, we are wrong to despond ; we are wrong not to expect great things and attempt great things; we are wrong not to dare, we are wrong to do the work of the Lord negligently. Let us feel that Christ's work is ours, and we shall be bowed beneath the solemnity of the thought, shall accept joyfully the necessity. Let us feel that our work is Christ's, and we shall rejoice in infirmity that His power may rest upon us, shall bid adieu to faint-hearted fears, and be sure that then it must prosper. 'Arise, O Lord! plead Thine own cause.' Not unto us, O Lord ! not unto us, but to Thy name give glory. ' The Lord ascended into Heaven and sat on the right hand of God, and they went everywhere preaching the word.' It seems a strange contrast between the rest of the Lord, sitting in sublime expectancy of conscious power till His enemies become His foot- stool, and the toils of His scattered disciples. It is like that moment which the genius of the great painter has caught in an immortal work, when Jesus in rapt V.16] 'OTHER SHEEP' 61 communion with the mighty dead, and crowned with the accepting word from Heaven, floated transfigured above the Holy Mount, while below His disciples wrestled impotently with the demon that would not be cast out. But it is not really contrast. He has not so parted the toils as that His are over ere ours begin. He has not left His Church militant to bear the brunt of the battle while the Captain of the Lord's host only watches the current of the heady fight — like Moses from the safe mountain. The Evangelist goes on to tell us that the Lord also was working with them and sharing their toils, lightening their burdens, preparing for them successes on earth, and a rest like His when He shall gird Himself and serve them. Thus, the first time that the heavens opened again to mortal eyes after they closed on His ascending form, was to show Him to the martyr in the council chamber, not sitting careless or restful, but standing at the right hand of God, to intercede for, to strengthen, to receive and glorify His dying servant. He goes with us where we go, and through our works and gifts and prayers, through our proclamation of the Cross, He worketh His will, and shall finally accomplish that great necessity laid upon Him by the Father's counsels, and upon us by His commandment, and to be effected by His death, that He should die, not for that nation only, but also that He should gather together in one the children of Grod who are scattered abroad. We have here — III. Our Lord teaching us how to think of the certain issues of His work and ours. 'They shall hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one Shepherd.' We may regard these words as embracing two things ; a nearer issue, namely, the 62 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. x. response that will always attend His call ; and a more remote, namely, the completion of His work. There is, of course, a very blessed sense in which the latter words are true now, and have been ever since Paul could say to those who had been aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, ' He hath made both one. Now, therefore, ye are no more foreigners but fellow- citizens with the saints.' But the fold which now exists, limited in numbers, with its members but partially conscious of their unity, and surrounded by those who follow hireling shepherds, does not exhaust these great words. They shall not be accomplished till that far-off future have come. But for the present we have the predictions of the former clause, 'They shall hear My voice.' What manner of expectations does it teach us to cherish? It seems to speak not of universal reception of Christ's message, but of some as hearing and some as for- bearing. It teaches us to look for divers results attending our missionary work. There will always be a Dionysius the Areopagite, the woman Lydia, the kindly barbarians, the conscience-stricken jailer. There will always be the scoffers, who mock when they hear of * Jesus and the resurrection ' ; the hesi- tating who compound with conscience by promising to hear again of this matter, the fierce opponents who invoke constituted authorities or mob violence to crush the message. Again, the words seem to contemplate a long task. There is nothing about the rate at which His Kingdom shall spread, not a syllable to answer inquiries as to when the end shall come. The whole tone of the language suggests the idea that bringing back the sheep is to take a long time, and to cost many a V.16] 'OTHER SHEEP 63 tedious journey into the wilderness. Not a sudden outburst, but a slow kindling of the flame, is what our Lord teaches us here to expect. But while thus calm in tone and moderate in ex- pectation, the words breathe a hope as confident as it is calm, as clear as it is moderate. There will always be a response. His voice shall never be lifted up in the snow-storm or lonely hillsides only to be blown back into His own ears, unheard and unheeded. Be they few or many, they shall hear. Be the toil longer or shorter, more or less severe, it shall not be in vain. And to these expectations we shall do wisely if we attune ours. Omit from your hopes what your Lord has omitted from His promises; do not ask what He has not told. Do not wonder if you encounter what He met, for the disciple is not greater than his Master, and only if they have kept My saying will they keep yours also. But, on the other hand, es;pect as much as He has prophesied ; accept it when it comes as the fruit of His work, not of yours, and build a firm faith that your labour shall not be in vain on these calm and prescient words. So much for the course of the kingdom. And what of the end? One by one the sheep have been brought, at last they are all gathered in, not a hoof left behind. The stars steal singly into their places in the heavens as the darkness deepens, and He 'bringeth them forth by number,' until at the noon of night the sky is crowded with their lights, and 'for that He is great in power, not one faileth.' What ex- pectations are we here taught to cherish then of the final issue ? Mark, to begin with, that there is implied the uiti- 64 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. x. mate universality of His dominion and sole supremacy of His throne. There is to be but one Shepherd, and over all the earth a great unity of obedience to Him. Here is the knell of all authority that does not own Him, and the subordination of all that does. The hirelings, the blind guides, that have misled and afflicted humanity for so many weary ages, shall be all sunk in oblivion. The false gods shall be dis- crowned, and lie shattered on their temple-sill, and there shall be no worshippers to care for or to try to repair their discomfiture. Bow your heads before Him, thinkers who have led men on devious paths and spoken but a partial truth and a wisdom all confused with foolishness ! Lower your swords before Him, warriors who have builded your cities on blood and led men like sheep to the slaughter ! He is more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey. Cast your crowns before Him, princes and all judges of the earth, for He is King by right of the crown of thorns ! This is the Lord of all — Teacher, Leader, Ruler of all men. All other names shall be forgotten but His shall abide. If they have been shepherds who would not come in by the door, a ransomed world shall rejoice over their fall with the ancient hymn, ' Other gods beside Thee have had dominion over us; they are dead, they shall not live. Thou hast destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.' If they have been subject to the chief Shepherd and ensamples to the flock, they will rejoice to decrease before His increase, and having helped to bring the Bride to the Bridegroom, will gladly stand aside and be for- gotten in the perfect love that enters into full fruition at the last. Then when none contest nor intercept the reverential obedience that the whole V.16] 'OTHER SHEEP' 65 world brings to Him, shall be fulfilled the firm promise which declared long ago: 'I will set up one Shep- herd over them, and He will feed them and be their Shepherd.' Mark again the blessed nature of the relation be- tween Christ and all men which is here foretold. From of old, the shepherd has been in all nations the emblem of kingly power, of leadership of every sort. How often the fact has contradicted the symbol let history tell. But with Jesus the reality does not only contradict, but even transcends, the tender old com- parison. He rules with a gentle sway. His sceptre is no rod of iron, but the shepherd's crook, and the inmost meaning of its use is that it may ' comfort ' us, as David learned to feel. There gather round the metaphor all thoughts of merciful guidance, of tender care, of a helping arm when we are weak, of a loving bosom where we are carried when we are weary. It speaks of a seeking love that roams over every high hill till it finds, and of a strong shoulder that bears us back when He has found. It tells of sweet hours of rest ir: the hot noontide by still waters, of ample provision for all the soul's longings in green pastures. It speaks of footsteps that go before, in which men may follow and find them ways of pleasantness. It speaks of gentle callings by name which draw the heart. It speaks of defence when lion and bear come ravening down, and of safe couching by night when the silent stars behold the sleeping sheep and the wakeful shepherd. He Himself gives its highest significance to the emblem, in the words of this great discourse, when He fixes on His knowledge. His calling of His sheep, His going before them. His giving His life for them. Such are the gracious blessings which here He teaches us to think VOL. II. E GQ GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.x. of as possessed in the happy days that shall be, by all the world. And, on the other hand, the symbol speaks of con- fiding love in the hearts of men, of a great peacefulness of meek obedience stilling and gladdening their wills, of the consciousness of His perfect love, and the know- ledge of all His gracious character, of sweet answering communion with Him, of safety from all enemies, of freedom, of familiar passage in and out to God. Thus knit together shall be the one fold and the one Shepherd. 'They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places. They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor sun smite them, for He that hath mercy on them shall feed them, even by the springs of water shall He guide them.' \ Mark again what a vision is here given of the rela- tions of men with one another. They are to be all gathered into a peaceful unity. They are to be one because they all hearken to one voice. It is to be observed that our Lord does not say, as our English Bible makes Him say, that there is to be one fold. He drops that word of set purpose in the latter clause of our text, and substitutes for it another, which may perhaps be best rendered flock. Why this change in the expression ? Because, as it would seem, he would have us learn that the unity of that blessed future time is not to be like the unity of the Jewish Church, a formal and external one. That ancient polity was a fold. It held its members together by outward bonds of uniformity. But the universal Church of the future is to be a flock. It is to be really and visibly one. But it is to be so, not because it is hemmed in by one enclosure, but because it is to V.16] * OTHER SHEEP' 67 be gathered round one Shepherd. The more closely they are drawn to Him, the more near will they be to each other. The centre in which all the radii meet keeps them all in their places. ' We being many are one bread, for we are all partakers of that one bread.' In the ritual of the Old Covenant, the great golden candle- stick with its seven branches stood in the court of the Temple, emblem of the formal oneness of the people, which was meant to be the light of the Lord to a dark world. In the vision of the New Covenant, the seer in Patmos beheld not the one lamp with its branches, but the seven golden candlesticks, which were made into a holier and a freer unity because the Son of Man walked in their midst — emblem of the oneness in diversity of the peoples, who were sometimes darkness, but shall one day be light in the Lord. There may continue to be national distinctions. There may or there may not be any exter- nal unity. But at all events our Lord turns away our thoughts from the outward to the inward, and bids us be sure that though the folds be many the flock shall be one, because they shall all hear and follow Him. The words, however, suggest for us the blessed thought of the peaceful relations that shall then sub- sist among men. The tribes of the earth shall couch beside each other like the quiet sheep in the fold, and having learned of His great meekness, they shall no more bite nor devour one another. Alas ! alas ! the words seem too good to be true. They seem long, long of coming to pass. Ever since they were spoken the old bloody work has been going on, and the old lusts of the human heart have been busy sowing the dragon's teeth that shall spring up in wars and fightings. In savage lands warfare rages on, ceaseless, ignoble, unrecorded, and seemingly purposeless as that of animal- 68 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. x. cules in a drop of water. On civilised soil, men, who love the same Christ and worship Him in the same tongue, are fronting each other at this hour. The war of actual swords, and the war of conflicting creeds, and the jostling of human selfishness in the rough road of life, are all around us, and their seeds are within our- selves. The race of men do not live like folded sheep, rather like a flock of wolves, who first run over and then devour their weaker fellows. But here is a fairer hope, and it will be fulfilled when all evil thoughts, and all selfish desires, and all jealous grudgings shall vanish from men's hearts, as unclean spirits at cockcrow, and shall leave them, self-forgetful, yielding of their own prerogatives, de- sirous of no other man's, abhorrent of inflicting, and patient of receiving wrong. There will be no fuel then to blow into sulphurous flame, though all the blasts from hell were to fan the embers. But peace and concord shall be in all men, for Christ shall be in all. National distinctions may abide, but national enmities — the oldest and deepest, shall disappear. There shall still be Assyria, and Egypt, and Israel, but their former relation will be replaced by a bond of amity in their common possession of Him who is our peace. 'In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt, and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord shall bless, saying. Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.' God be thanked ! that though we see, and our fathers have seen, so much that seems to contradict our hopes of a peaceful world, and though to-day the hell-hounds of war are baying over the earth, and though nowhere can we see signs even of the approach of the halcyon time, yet we can wait V. 16] 'OTHER SHEEP' 69 for the vision, knowing that it will come at the appointed time, when ♦ No war or battle's sound Is heard the world around, The idle spear and shield are high uphung ; The trumpet speaks not to the armed throng, And Kings sit still, with awful eye. As if they surely knew their Sovereign Lord was by.' Such are the thoughts which our Lord would teach us as to the present and as to the future of our missionary- work. For the one, moderate expectations of success, not unchequered by disappointment, and a brave patience in long toil. For the other, hopes which can- not be too glowing, and a faith which cannot be too obstinate. The one is being fulfilled in our own and our brethren's experience even now ; we may be there- fore all the more sure that the other will be so in due time. If we look with Christ's eyes, we shall not be depressed by the apparent unbroken surface of heathen- ism but see, as He did, everywhere souls that belong to Him, who may and must be won ; we shall joyfully embrace the work which He has given us to do; we shall arm ourselves against the discouragements of the present, by living much in the past at the foot of the Cross, till we catch the true image of the Saviour's love, and much in the future in the midst of the ran- somed flock, till we too behold the roses blossoming in the wilderness, the bright waters covering all the dry places in the desert, and the families of men sitting, clothed and in their right mind, at the feet of Jesus. Our missionary work is the pure and inevitable result of a belief in these words of my text. Can a man believe that Christ has other sheep for whom He died because He must bring them in, whom He will bring in because 70 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHX [ch.x. He died, and not work according to his power in the line of the divine purposes? The niissionarj- spirit is but the Christian spu'it working in one particular direction. Missionary societies are but one of the authentic outcomes of Christian principles, as natural as holiness of life, or the act of prayer. io secure, then, a more vigorous energy in such work, we need chiefly what we need for all Christian growth — namely, more and deeper communion with Christ, a more vivid realisation of His grace and love for our- selves. And then we need that, under the double stimulus of His love and of His commandment — which at bottom are one — our minds should be more frequently occupied with this subject of Christian missions. Most of us know too little about the matter to feel very much. Ajnd then we need that we should more seriously reflect upon the facts in relation to our own personal respon- sibihty and duty. You complain of the triteness of such appeals as this sermon. Brethren, have you ever tried that recipe for freshening up well-worn truths, namely, thinking about them in connection with the simplest, most important of all questions — what, then, ought I to do in view of these truths ? Am I exagger- ating when I say, that not one-half of the professing Christians of our day give an hour in the year to pondering that question, with reference to missionary work ? Oh I dear friends, see to it that you Hve in Christ for yourselves, and then see to it that you think His thoughts about the heathen world, till your pity is stirred and your mind braced to the firm resolve that you too will work the works of Christ and bring in the wanderers. VTe have had as large results as Christ has led us to expect, and far larger than we deserved. Christian V. 16] 'OTHER SHEEP' 71 missions are yet in their infancy — alas I that it should be so. But in these seventy years since they may be said to have begun, Tvhat wonderful successes have been achieved. We are often told that we have done nothing. Is it so? The plant has been got together, methods of w^orking have been systematised, mistakes in some measure corrected. We have spent much of our time in learning how to work, and that process is by no means over yet. But with all these deductions, which ought fairly to be made, how much has been accom- plished? The Bible has been put into the languages of seven hundred millions of men. The beginnings of a Christian literature have been supplied for five-sixths of the world. Half a million of professed converts have been gathered in, or as many as there were at the end of the fii^st century, after about the same number of years of labour, and with apostles for missionaries and miracles for proof. And if these still bear on their ankles the marks of the fetters, and limp as they walk, or cannot see very clearly at fii'st, it is no more than might be expected from their long darkness in the prison-house, and it is no more than Paul had to contend with at Ephesus and Corinth. Every church that has engaged in the toil ha* shared in the blessing, and has its own instances of special prosperity. We have had Jamaica; the London Missionary Society, Madagascar, and the South Seas ; the Wesleyans, Fiji ; the Episcopal Societies, Tinne- velly ; the American brethren, Burmah, and the Karens. Some of the ruder mythologies have been so utterly extirpated that the children of idolaters have seen the gods whom their fathers worshipped for the fii'st time in the British Museum. While over those more compact and scientific systems which lie like an 72 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.x. incubus on mighty peoples, there has crept a sickening consciousness of a coming doom, and they already half own their conqueror in the Stronger One than they. ' They feel from Judah's land The dreaded Infant's hand.' ' Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, the idols are upon the beasts.' Surely God has granted us success enough for our thankful confidence, more than enough for our deserts. I repeat it, it is as much as He promised, as much as we had any right to expect, and it is a vast deal more than any other system of belief or of no belief, any of your spiritualised Christianities, or still more intangible creeds has ever managed, or ever thought of trying. To those who taunt us with no success, and who perhaps would not dislike Christian missions so much if they disliked Christian truth a little less, we may very fairly and calmly answer — This rod has budded at all events ; do you the same with your enchantments. But the past is no measure of the future. From the very nature of the undertaking the ratio of progress increases at a rapid rate. The first ten years of labour in India showed twenty-seven converts, the seventh ten showed more than twenty-seven thousand. The pre- paration may be as slow as the solemn gathering of the thunder-clouds, as they noiselessly steal into their places, and slowly upheave their grey billowing crests ; the final success may be as swift as the lightning which flashes in an instant from one side of the heavens to the other. It takes long years to hew the tunnel, to ' make the crooked straight, and the rough places plain,' and then smooth and fleet the great power rushes along the rails. To us the cry comes, 'Prepare ye in the desert an highway for our God.' The toil is sore and V.16] 'OTHER SHEEP' 73 long, but * the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.' The Alpine summits lie white and ghastly in the spring sunshine, and it seems to pour ineffectual beams on their piled cold ; but by slow degrees it is silently loosening the bands of the snow, and after a while a goat's step, as it passes along a rocky ledge, or a breath of wind will move a tiny particle, and in an instant its motion spreads over a mile of mountain side, and the avalanche is rushing swifter and mightier at every foot down to the valley below, where it will all turn into sweet water, and ripple glancing in the sunshine. Such is our work. It may seem very hopeless, and be mostly unobservable in surface results, but it is very real for all that. The conquering impulse, for which our task may have been to prepare the way, will be given, and then we shall wonder to see how surely the kingdom was coming, even when we observed it not. Ye have need of patience, and to feed your patience, ye have need of fellowship with Christ, of faith in His promises, of sympathy with His mind. God has given us, dear brethren, special reason for renewed consecration to this service in the blessings which have during the year terminated our anxieties and crowned our work for our own Society. But let us not dwell upon what has been done. These successes are brooks by the way at which we may drink — nothing more. We ought to be like shepherds in the lonely mountain glens, who see in the fast-falling snow and the bitter blast a summons to the hillside, and there all the night long wherever the drift lies deepest and the wind bites the most sharply, search the most eagerly for the poor half-dead creatures, and as they find each, bear it back to the safe shelter, nor stay 74 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. behind to count the rescued, nor to rest their weariness, for all the bright light in the cottage and the blackness without, but forth again on the same quest, till all the Master's sheep have been rescued from the white death that lay treacherous around, and are sleeping at peace in His folds. A mighty Voice ought ever to be sounding in our ears, ' Other sheep I have,' and the answer of our hearts and of our lives should be, ' Them also, O Lord ! will I try to bring.' Not till the far-off issue is accom- plished shall we have a right to rest, and then we, with all those He has helped us to gather to His side, shall be among that flock, whom He w^ho is at once Lamb and Shepherd, our Brother and our Lord, our Sacrifice and King, ' shall feed and lead by living fountains of waters,' in the sweet pastures of the upper world, where there are no ravening wolves, nor false guides to terrify and bewilder His flock any more at all for ever. THE DELAYS OF LOVE ' Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When He had heard therefore that he was sick, He abode two days still in the same place where He was.'— John xi. 5, 6. We learn from a later verse of this chapter that Lazarus had been dead four days when Christ reached Bethany. The distance from that village to the probable place of Christ's abode, when He received the message, was about a day's journey. If, therefore, to the two days on which He abode still after the receipt of the news, we add the day which the messengers took to reach Him and the day which He occupied in travelling, we get the four days since which Lazarus had been laid in his grave. Conse- quently the probability is that, when our Lord had vs. 5, 6] THE DELAYS OF LOA^E 75 the message, the man was dead. Christ did not remain still, therefore, in order to work a greater miracle by raising Lazarus from the dead than He would have done by healing, but He stayed — strange as it would appear— for reasons closely connected with the highest well-being of all the beloved three, and because He loved them. John is always very particular in his use of that word 'therefore,' and he points out many a subtle and beautiful connection of cause and effect by his employment of it. I do not know that any of them are more significant and more full of illumination with regard to the ways of divine providence than the instance before us. How these two sisters must have looked down the rocky road that led up from Jericho during those four weary days, to see if there were any signs of His coming. How strange it must have appeared to the disciples themselves that He made no sign of movement, notwithstanding the message. Perhaps John's scrupulous carefulness in pointing out that His love was Christ's reason for His quiescence may reflect a remembrance of the doubts that had crept over the minds of himself and his brethren during these two days of strange in- action. The Evangelist will have us learn a lesson, which reaches far beyond the instance in hand, and casts light on many dark places. I. Christ's delays are the delays of love. We have all of us, I suppose, had experience of desires for the removal of bitterness or sorrows, or for the fulfilment of expectations and wishes, which we believed, on the best evidence that we could find, to be in accordance with His will, and which we have been able to make prayers out of, in true faith and 76 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. submission, which prayers have had to be offered over and over and over again, and no answer has come. It is part of the method of Providence that the lifting away of the burden and the coming of the desires should be a hope deferred. And instead of stumbling at the mystery, or feeling as if it made a great demand upon our faith, would it not be wiser for us to lay hold of that little word of the Apostle's here, and to see in it a small window that opens out on to a bound- less prospect, and a glimpse into the very heart of the divine motives in His dealings with us ? If we could once get that conviction into our hearts, how quietly we should go about our work! What a beautiful and brave patience there would be in us, if we habitually felt that the only reason which actuates God's providence in its choice of times of fulfilling our desires and lifting away our bitterness is our own good! Nothing but the purest and simplest love, transparent and without a fold in it, sways Him in all that He does. Why should it be so difficult for us to believe this? If we were more in the way of looking at life, with all its often unwelcome duty, and its arrows of pain and sorrow, and all the disappoint- ments and other ills that it is heir to, as a discipline, and were to think less about the unpleasantness, and more about the purpose, of what befalls us, we should find far less difficulty in understanding that His delay is born of love, and is a token of His tender care. Sorrow is prolonged for the same reason as it was sent. It is of little use to send it for a little while. In the majority of cases, time is an element in its working its right effect upon us. If the weight is lifted, the elastic substance beneath springs up again. As soon as the wind passes over the cornfield, the vs. 5, 6] THE DELAYS OF LOVE 77 bowing ears raise themselves. You have to steep foul things in water for a good while before the pure liquid washes out the stains. And so time is an element in all the good that we get out of the discipline of life. Therefore, the same love which sends must necessarily protract, beyond our desires, the discipline under which we are put. If we thought of it, as I have said, more frequently as discipline and schooling, and less frequently as pain and a burden, we should understand the meaning of things a great deal better than we do, and should be able to face them with braver hearts, and with a patient, almost joyous, endurance. If we think of some of the purposes of our sorrows and burdens, we shall discern still more clearly that time is needed for accomplishing them, and that, therefore, love must delay its coming to take them away. For example, the object of them all, and the highest blessing that any of us can obtain, is that our wills should be bent until they coincide with God's, and that takes time. The shipwright, when he gets a bit of timber that he wants to make a 'knee' out of, knows that to mould it into the right form is not the work of a day. A will may be broken at a blow, but it will take a while to hend it. And just because swiftly passing disasters have little permanent effect in moulding our wills, it is a blessing, and not an evil, to have some standing fact in our lives, which will make a continual demand upon us for continually repeated acts of bowing ourselves beneath His sweet, though it may seem severe, will. God's love in Jesus Christ can give us nothing better than the opportunity of bowing our wills to His, and saying, ' Not mine, but Thine be done.' If that is why He stops on the other side of Jordan, and does not come even to the loving 78 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. messages of beloved hearts, then He shows His love iu the sweetest and the loftiest form. So, dear friends, if you carry a lifelong sorrow, do not think that it is a mystery why it should lie upon your shoulders when there are omnipotence and an infinite heart in the heavens. If it has the' effect of bending you to His purpose, it is the truest token of His loving care that He can send. In like manner, is it not worth carrying a weight of unfulfilled wishes, and a weari- ness of unalleviated sorrows, if these do teach us three things, which are one thing — faith, endurance, prayer- fulness, and so knit us by a threefold cord that cannot be broken, to the very heart of God Himself ? II. This delayed help always comes at the right time. Do not let us forget that Heaven's clock is different from ours. In our day there are twelve hours, and in God's a thousand years. What seems long to us is to Him 'a little while.' Let us not imitate the short- sighted impatience of His disciples, who said, 'What is this that He saith, A little while? We cannot tell what He saith.' The time of separation looked so long in anticipation to them, and to Him it had dwindled to a moment. For two days, eight-and-forty hours, He delayed His answer to Mary and Martha, and ^ey thought it an eternity, while the heavy hours crept by, and they only said, ' It 's very weary, He cometh not, they said.' How long did it look to them when they had got Lazarus back ? The longest protraction of the fulfilment of the most yearning expectation and fulfilled desire will seem but as the winking of an eyelid when we get to estimate duration by the same scale by which He estimates it, the scale of Eternity. The ephemeral insect, born in vs. 5, 6] THE DELAYS OF LOVE 79 the morning and dead when the day fades, has a still minuter scale than ours, but we should not think of regulating our estimate of long and short by it. Do not let us commit the equal absurdity of regulating the march of His providence by the swift beating of our timepieces. God works leisurely because God has eternity to work in. The answer always comes at the right time, and is punctual though delayed. For instance, Peter is in prison. The Church keeps praying for him ; prays on, day after day. No answer. The week of the feast comes. Prayer is made intensely and fervently and continuously. No answer. The slow hours pass away. The last day of his life, as it would appear, comes and goes. No answer. The night gathers ; prayer rises to heaven. The last hour of the last watch of the last night that he had to live has come, and as the veil of darkness is thinning, and the day is beginning to break, 'the angel of the Lord shone round about him.' But there is no haste in his deliverance. All is done leisurely, as in the confidence of ample time to spare, and perfect security. He is bidden to arise quickly, but there is no hurry in the stages of his liberation. 'Gird thyself and bind on thy sandals.' He is to take time to lace them. There is no fear of the quaternion of soldiers waking, or of there not being time to do all. We can fancy the half-sleeping and wholly-bewildered Apostle fumbling at the sandal-strings, in dread of some move- ment rousing his guards, and the calm angel face looking on. The sandals fastened, he is bidden to put on his garments and follow. With equal leisure and orderliness he is conducted through the first and the second guard of sleeping soldiers and then through the prison gate. He might have be m lifted at once cleap 80 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. out of his dungeon, and set down in the house where many were gathered praying for him. But more signal was the demonstration of power which a deliver- ance so gradual gave, when it led him slowly past all obstacles and paralysed their power. God is never in haste. He never comes too soon nor too late. 'The Lord shall help them, and that right early.' Senna- cherib's army is round the city, famine is within the walls. To-morrow will be too late. But to-night the angel strikes, and the enemies are all dead men. So God's delay makes the deliverance the more signal and joyous when it is granted. And though hope deferred may sometimes make the heart sick, the desire, when it comes, is a tree of life. III. The best help is not delayed. The principle which we have been illustrating applies only to one half — and that the less important half — of our prayers and of Christ's answers. For in regard to spiritual blessings, and our petitions for fuller, purer, and diviner life, there is no delay. In that region the law is not ' He abode still two days in the same place,' but ' Before they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear.' If you have been praying for deeper knowledge of God, for lives liker His, for hearts more filled with the Spirit, and have not had the answer, do not fall back upon the misapplication of such a principle as this of my text, which has nothing to do with that region ; but remember that the only reason why good people do not immediately get the blessings of the Christian life for which they ask lies in themselves, and not at all in God. ' Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask and have not, because ' — not because He delays, but because — *ye ask amiss,' or because, having asked, you get up from your knees and go vs. 5, 6] CHRIST'S QUESTION TO EACH 81 away, not looking to see whether the blessing is coming down or not. Ah! there is a sad amount of lying and hypocrisy in prayers for spiritual blessings. Many petitioners do not want to have them. They would not know what to do with them if they got them. They make the requests because their fathers did so before them, and because these are the right kind of things to say in a prayer. Such prayers get no answers. If a man prays for some spiritual enlargement, and then goes out into the world and lives clean contrary to his prayers, what right has he to say that God delays His answers ? No, He does not delay His answers, but we push back His answers, and the gift that is given we will not take. Let us remember that the two halves of the divine dealings are not regulated by the same principle, though they be regulated by the same motive; and that the love which often delays for our good, in regard to the desires that have reference to outward things, is swift as the lightning to answer every petition which moves within the circle of our spiritual life. ' Whatsoever things ye desire, when ye stand praying, believe that' then and there 'ye receive them'; and the undelaying God will take care that * you shall have them.' CHRIST'S QUESTION TO EACH For the Young *. . . Believest thou this? She saith unto Him, Yea, Lord.'— John xi. 26, 27. As each of these annual sermons which I have preached for so long comes round, I feel more solemnly the grow- VOL. II. F 82 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xi. ing probability that it may be the last. Like a man nearing the end of his day's work, I want to make the most of the remaining moments. Whether this is the last sermon of the sort that I shall preach or not, it is certainly the last of the kind that some of you will hear from me, or possibly from any one. So, dear friends, I have felt that neither you nor I can afford to waste this hour in considering subjects of secondary interest, appropriate as some of them might be. I wish to come to the main point at once, and to press upon you all, and especially on the younger por- tion of this audience, the question of your own personal religion. The words of my text, as you will probably remem- ber, were addressed by our Lord to Martha, as she was writhing in agony over her dead brother. Christ proclaims, with singular calmness and majesty, His character and work as the Resurrection and the Life, and then seeks to draw her from her absorbing sorrow to an effort of faith which shall grasp the truths He proclaims. He flashes out this sudden question, like the swift thrust of a gleaming dagger. It is a demand for credence to His assertion — on His bare word — tremendous as that assertion is. And nobly was the demand met by the as swift, unfaltering answer, ' Yea, Lord,' I believe in Thee, and so I believe in Thy word. Now, friends, Jesus Christ is putting the same ques- tion to each of us. And I pray that our answers may be Martha's. I. Note, first, the significance of the question. ' This.' What is this ? The answer will tell us what are the central essential facts, faith in which makes a Christian. Of course the form in which our Lord's vs. 26, 27] CHRIST'S QUESTION TO EACH 83 previous utterance was cast was coloured by the cir- cumstances under which He spoke, and was so shaped as to meet the momentary exigency. But whilst thus the form is determined by the fact that He was speak- ing to a heart wrung by separation, and as a pre- liminary to a mighty act of resurrection, the essential truths which are so expressed are those which, as I believe, constitute the fundamental truths of Chris- tianity — the very core and heart of the Gospel. Turn, then, but for a moment, to what immediately precedes my text. Our Lord says three things. First, He asserts His supernatural character and divine relation to life : ' I am the Resurrection and the Life.' Next, He declares that it is possible for Him to com- municate to dying and to dead men a life which triumphs over death, and laughs at change, and persists through the superficial experience which we christen by the name of Death, unaffected, undiminished, as some sweet spring might gush up in the heart of a salt, solitary sea. And then He declares that the con- dition on which He, the Life-giver, gives of His immortal life to dying men, is their trust in Him. /^ These three — His character and work, the gifts of which His hands are full, and the way by which the gifts may be appropriated by us men — these three are, as I take it, the central facts of Christianity. ' Believest thou this ? ' The question comes to us all; and in these days of unsettlement it is well to have some clear understand- ing of what is the ' irreducible minimum ' of Christian teaching. I take it that it lies here. There are two opposite errors which, like all opposite errors, are bolted together, and revolve round a common centre. The one of them is the extreme conservative tendency 84 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. which regards every pin and bolt of the tabernacle as if it were equally sacred with the altar and the ark. And the other is the tendency which christens itself * liberal and progressive,' and which is always ready to exchange old lamps, though they have burnt brightly in the past, for new ones that are as yet only glittering metal and untried. In these days, when it is a pre- sumption against any opinion, that our fathers believed it (an error into which young people are most prone to fall), and when, by the energy of contradiction, that error has evoked, and is evoking, the opposite exag- geration that adheres to all that is traditional, to all that has been regarded as belonging to the essentials of the Christian faith, and so is fearful, trembling for the Ark of God when there is no need, let us fall back upon these great words of the Master, and see that the things which constitute the living heart of His message and gift to the world are neither more nor less than (these three : the supernatural Christ, the life which He imparts, and the condition on which He bestows it^ ' Believest thou this ? ' If you do, you need take very little heed of the fluctuations of contemporary opinion as to other matters, valuable and important as these may be in their place ; and may let men say what they will about disputed questions — about the method by which the vehicle of revelation has been created and preserved, about the regulation of the external forms of the Church, about a hundred other things that men often lose their tempers and spoil their Christianity by fighting for, and fall back upon the great central verity, a Christ from above, the Giver of Life to all that put their trust in Him. Let me expand this question for you. ' We all have sinned and come short of the glory of God ' — ' believest vs. 26, 27] CHRIST'S QUESTION TO EACH 85 thou this ? ' * We must all appear before the judgment- seat of Christ '-^* believest thou this ? ' ' God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish' — 'be- lievest thou this ? ' ' The Son of Man came ... to give His life a ransom for many' — 'believest thou this?' ' Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ ' — ' believest thou this ? ' ' Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept ' — 'believest thou this ? ' 'I go to prepare a place for you ' — ' believest thou this ? ' ' Where I am there shall also My servant be ' — ' believest thou this ? ' * So shall we ever be with the Lord ' — ' believest thou this ? ' That is Christianity ; and not theories about inspiration, and priesthood, and sacramental efficacy, or any of the other thorny questions which have, in the course of ages, started up. Here is the living centre ; hold fast, I beseech you, by it. Then, again, the significance of this question is in the direction of making clear for us the way by which men lay hold of these great truths. The truths are of such a sort as that merely to say, ' Oh yes, I believe it ; it is quite true ! ' is by no means sufficient. If a man tells me that two parallel lines produced ever so far will never meet, I say, ' Yes, I believe it ' ; and there is nothing more to be done or said. If a man says to me, ' Two and two make four,' I say, ' Yes ' ; and there my assent ends. If a man says, ' It is right to do right,' it is quite clear that the attitude of intellectual assent, which was quite enough for the other order of state- ments, is not enough for this one ; and to merely say, ' Oh yes, it is right to do right,' is by no means the only attitude which we ought to take in regard to such a truth. And if God comes to me and says, ' Thou art a 86 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. sinful man, and Jesus Christ has died for thee ; and if thou takest Him for thy Saviour thou shalt be saved in this life, and saved for ever,' it is just as clear that no mere acceptance of the saying as a verity exhausts my proper attitude in reference to it. Or to come to plainer words, no man v^ill really, and out and out, and adequately, believe this gospel unless he does a great deal more than assent to it or refrain from contradicting it. So I desire to urge this form of the question on you now. Dear brethren, do you trust in ' this,' which you say you believe ? There is no greater enemy of the Christian faith than the ordinary lazy — what the philosophers call otiose, which is only a grand word for lazy — assent of the understanding, because men will not take the trouble to contradict it or think about it. That is the sort of Christianity which is the Chris- tianity of a good many church and chapel-goers. They do not care enough about the subject to contradict the ordinary run of belief. Of all impotent things there is nothing more impotent than a creed which lies idly in a man's head, and never has touched his heart or his will. Why, I should get on a great deal better if I were talking to people that had never heard anything about the gospel than I have any chance of getting on with you, who have been drenched with it all your days, till it goes over you and runs off like water off a duck's back. The shells that were hurled against the earthworks of Sebastopol broke away the front surface of the mounds, and then the rubbish protected the fortifications; and that is what happens with many of my hearers. You have heard the gospel so often that the debris of your old hearings is raised between you and me, and my words cannot get at you. 'Be- lie vest thou this ? ' — not in the fashion in which people vs. 26, 27] CHRIST'S QUESTION TO EACH 87 stand up in church or chapel and look about them and rattle off the Creed every Sunday of their lives, and attach not the ghost of an idea to a single clause of it ; but in the sense that the conviction of these truths is so deep in your hearts that it moves your whole nature to cast yourselves on Jesus Christ as your Saviour and your all. That is the belief to which alone the life that is promised here will come. Oh ! brethren, I have no business to ask you the question, and you have no need to answer it to me! Sometimes good, well-meaning people do a mint of harm by pushing such questions into the faces of people unprepared. But take the ques- tion into your own hearts, and remember what belief is, and what it is that you have to believe, and answer according to its true significance, and in the light of conscience, the solemn question that I press upon you. II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to think of what depends upon the answer. In the case before us — if I may look back to it for an instant — there is a very illuminative instance of what did depend upon it. Martha had to believe that Christ was the Resurrection and the Life as a condition pre- cedent to her seeing that He was so. For, as He said Himself before He spoke the mighty word which raised Lazarus, ' Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God ? ' and so her faith was the condition of her being able to verify the facts which her faith grasped. Well, let me put that into plainer words. It is just this — a man gets from Christ what he trusts Christ to give him, and there is no other way of proving the truth of His promises than by accepting His promises, and then they fulfil themselves. You cannot know that a medicine will cure you till you swallow it. You must first 'taste' 88 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [oh.xi. before you * see that God is good.' Faith verifies itself by the experience it brings. And what does it bring? I said, all for which a man trusts Christ. All is summed up in that one favourite word of our Lord as revealed in this fourth Gospel, which includes in itself everything of blessed- ness and of righteousness — life, life eternal. Dear brethren, you and I, apart from Jesus Christ, are dead in trespasses and sins. The life that we live in the flesh is an apparent life, which covers over the true death of separation from God. And you young people, fix this in your minds at the beginning, it will save you many a heartache, and many an error — there is nothing worth calling life, except that which comes to a quiet heart submissive and enfranchised through faith in Jesus Christ. And if you will trust your- selves to Him, and answer this question with your ringing ' Yea, Lord ! ' then you will get a life which will quicken you out of your deadness; a life which will mould you day by day into more entire beauty of character and conformity with Himself; a life which will shed sweetness and charm over dusty commonplaces, and make sudden verdure spring in dreary, herbless deserts; a life which will bring a solemn joy into sorrow, a strength for every duty; which will bring manna in the wilderness, honey from the rock, light in darkness, and a present God for your sufficient portion; a life which will run on into the dim glories of eternity, and know no change but advancement, through the millenniums of ages. But, dear brethren, whilst thus, on condition of their faith, the door into all divine and endless blessed- ness and progress is flung wide open for men, do not forget the other side of the issues which depend on vs. 26, 27] CHRIST'S QUESTION TO EACH 89 this question. For if it is true that Jesus Christ is Life, and the Source of it, and that faith in Him is the way by which you and I get it, then there is no escape from the solemn conclusion that to be out of Christ, and not to be exercising faith in Him, is to be infected with death, and to be shut up in a charnel- house. I dare not suppress the plain teaching of Jesus Christ Himself: 'He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son hath not life.' The issues that depend upon the answer to this question of my text may be summed up, if I may venture to say so, by taking the words of our Lord Himself and convert- ing them into their opposite. He said, 'He that be- lieveth . . . though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.' That implies, He that believeth not in Christ, though he were living, yet shall he die, and whosoever liveth and believeth not shall never live. These are the issues — the alternative issues — that depend on your answer to this question. III. And now, lastly, let me ask you to think of the direct personal appeal to every soul that lies in this question. I have dwelt upon two out of the three words of which the question is composed — ' helievest thou this ? ' Let me dwell for a moment on the third of them — 'helievest thou?' Now that suggests the thought on which I do not need to dwell, but which I seek briefly to lay upon your hearts and consciences — viz., the intensely personal act of your own faith, by which alone Jesus Christ can be of any use to you. Do not be led away by any vague notions which people have about the benefits of a Church or its ordinances. Do not suppose that any 90 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. sacraments or any priest can do for you what you have to do in the awful solitude of your own deter- mining will — put out your hand and grasp Jesus Christ. Can any person or thing be the condition or channel of spiritual blessing to you, except in so far as your own individual act of trust comes into play? You must take the bread with your own hands, you must masticate it with your own teeth, you must digest it with your own organs, before it can minister nourishment to your blood and force to your life. And there is only one way by which any man can come into any vital and life-giving connection with Jesus Christ, and that is, by the exercise of his own personal faith. And remember, too, that as the exercise of uniting trust in Jesus Christ is exclusively your own affair, so exclusively your own affair is the responsibility of answering this question. To you alone is it addressed. You, and only you, have to answer it. There was once a poor woman who went after Jesus Christ, and put out a pale, wasted, tremulous finger to touch the hem of His garment. His fine sensitiveness detected the light pressure of that petitioning finger, and allowed virtue to go out, though the crowd surged about Him and thronged Him. No crowds come be- tween you and Jesus Christ. You and He, the two of you, have, so to speak, the world to yourselves, and straight to you comes this question, ' Believest thou ? ' Ah ! brethren, that habit of skulking into the middle of the multitude, and letting the most earnest appeal from the pulpit go diffused over the audience is the reason why you sit there quiet, complacent, perhaps wholly unaffected by what I am trying to make a pointed, individual address. Suppose all the other V8. 20,27] OPEN GRAVE AT BETHANY 91 people in this place of worship were away but you and I, would not the word that I am trying to speak come with more force to your hearts than it does now? Well, think away the world and all its millions, and realise the fact that you stand in Christ's presence, with all His regard concentrated upon you, and that to thee individually this question comes from a gracious, loving heart, which longs that you answer, ' Yea, Lord, I believe ! ' Why should you not ? Suppose you said to Him, * No, Lord, I do not'; and suppose He said, 'Why do you not?' what do you think you would say then? You will have to answer it one day, in very solemn circum- stances, when all the crowds will fall away, as they do from a soldier called out of the ranks to go up and answer for mutiny to his commanding officer. ' Every one of us shall give an account of himself,' and the lips that said so lovingly at the grave of Lazarus, ' Believest thou this ? ' and are saying it again, dear friend, to you, even through my poor words, will ask it once more. For this is the question the answer to which settles whether we shall stand at His right hand or at His left. Say now, with humble faith, 'Yea, Lord!' and you will have the blessing of them who have not seen, and yet have believed. THE OPEN GRAVE AT BETHANY * Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met Him. The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there. Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her. He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled. And said, Where have ye laid him ? They say unto fUm, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved hiia! Aad some of them said, Could not this Man, which opened the 92 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died ? Jesua therefore again groaning in Himself, cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said. Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord, by this time he stinketh : for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her. Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up His eyes, and said. Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me. And I knew that Thou hearest Me always : but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes : and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go. Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on Him.'— John xi. 3045. Why did Jesus stay outside Bethany and summon Martha and Mary to come to Him ? Apparently that He might keep Himself apart from the noisy crowd of conventional mourners whose presence affronted the majesty and sanctity of sorrow, and that He might speak to the hearts of the two real mourners. A divine decorum forbade Him to go to the house. The Life-bringer keeps apart. His comforts are spoken in solitude. He reverenced grief. How beautifully His sympathetic delicacy contrasts with the heartless rush of those who 'were comforting' Mary when they thought that she was driven to go suddenly to the grave by a fresh burst of sorrow! If they had had any real sympathy or perception, they would have stayed where they were, and let the poor burdened heart find ease in lonely weeping. But, like all vulgar souls, they had one idea — never to leave mourners alone or let them weep. Three stages seem discernible in the self-revelation of Jesus in this crowning miracle : His agitation and tears, His majestic confidence in His life-giving power now to be manifested, and His actual exercise of that power. I. The repetition by Mary of Martha's words, as her first salutation, tells a pathetic story of the one thought vs. 30-45] OPEN GRAVE AT BETHANY 93 that had filled both sisters' hearts in these four dreary- days. Why had He not come ? How easily He could have come ! How surely He could have prevented all this misery ! Confidence in His power blends strangely with doubt as to His care. A hint of reproach is in the words, but more than a hint of faith in His might. He does not rebuke the rash judgment implied, for He knew the true love underlying it ; but He does not directly answer Mary, as He had done Martha, for the two sisters needed different treatment. We note that Mary has no such hope as Martha had expressed. Her more passive, meditative disposition had bowed itself, and let the grief overwhelm her. So in her we see a specimen of the excess of sorrow which indulges in the monotonous repetition of what would have happened if something else that did not happen had happened, and which is too deeply dark to let a gleam of hope shine in. Words will do little to comfort such grief. Silent sharing of its weeping and helpful deeds will do most. So a great wave of emotion swept across the usually calm soul of Jesus, which John bids us trace to its cause by ' therefore ' (ver. 33). The sight of Mary's real, and the mourners' half -real, tears, and the sound of their loud 'keening,' shook His spirit, and He yielded to, and even encouraged, the rush of feeling (' troubled Himself). But not only sympathy and sorrow ruffled the clear mirror of His spirit; another disturbing element was present. He 'was moved with indigna- tion' (Rev. Yer. marg.). Anger at Providence often mingles with our grief, but that was not Christ's indignation. The only worthy explanation of that strange ingredient in Christ's agitation is that it was directed against the source of death, — namely, sin. He 94 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xi. saw the cause manifested in the effects. He wept for the one, He was wroth at the other. The tears wit- nessed to the perfect love of the man, and of the God revealed in the man ; the indignation witnessed to the recoil and aversion from sin of the perfectly righteous Man, and of the holy God manifested in Him. We get one glimpse into His heart, as on to some ocean heaving and mist-covered. The momentary sight proclaims the union in Him, as the Incarnate Word, of pity for our woes and of aversion from our sins. His question as to the place of the tomb is not w^hat we should have expected; but its very abruptness indicates effort to suppress emotion, and resolve to lose no time in redressing the grief. Most sweetly human are the tears that start afresh after the moment's repression, as the little company begin to move towards the grave. And most sadly human are the unsympathetic criticisms of His sacred sorrow. Even the best affected of the bystanders are cool enough to note them as tokens of His love, at which perhaps there is a trace of wonder; while others snarl out a sarcasm which is double-barrelled, as casting doubt on the reality either of the love or of the power. *It is easy to weep, but if He had cared for him, and could work miracles. He might surely have kept him alive.' How blind men are! 'Jesus wept,' and all that the lookers-on felt was astonishment that He should have cared so much for a dead man of no importance, or carping doubt as to the genuineness of His grief and the reality of His power. He shows us His pity and sorrow still — to no more effect with many. II. The passage to the tomb was marked by his continued agitation. But his arrival there brought calm and majesty. Now the time has come which He vs. 30-45] OPEN GRAVE AT BETHANY 95 had in view v^^hen He left his refuge beyond Jordan ; and, as is often the case with ourselves, suddenly tremor and tumult leave the spirit when face to face with a moment of crisis. There is nothing more re- markable in this narrative than the contrast between Jesus weeping and indignant, and Jesus serene and authoritative as He stands fronting the cave-sepulchre. The sudden transformation must have awed the gazers. He points to the stone, which, probably like that of many a grave discovered in Palestine, rolled in a groove cut in the rocky floor in front of the tomb. The com- mand accords with His continual habit of confining the miraculous within the narrowest limits. He will do nothing by miracle which can be done without it. Lazarus could have heard and emerged, though the stone had remained. If the story had been a myth, he very likely would have done so. Like 'loose him, and let him go,' this is a little touch that cannot have been invented, and helps to confirm the simple, histori- cal character of the account. Not less natural, though certainly as unlikely to have been told unless it had happened, is Martha's interrup- tion. She must have heard what was going on, and, with her usual activity, have joined the procession, though we left her in the house. She thinks that Jesus is going into the grave; and a certain reverence for the poor remains, as well as for Him, makes her shrink from the thought of even His loving eyes seeing them now. Clearly she has forgotten the dim hopes which had begun in her when she talked with Jesus. There- fore He gently reminds her of these ; for His words (ver. 40) can scarcely refer to anything but that inter- view, though the precise form of expression now used is not found in the report of it (vers. 25-27). 96 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. We mark Christ's calm confidence in His own power, His identification of its effect with the outflashing of the glory of God, and His encouragement to her to exercise faith by suspending her sight of that glory upon her faith. Does that mean that He would not raise her brother unless she believed ? No ; for He had determined to * awake him out of sleep ' before He left Peraea. But Martha's faith was the condition of her seeing the glory of God in the miracle. We may see a thousand emanations of that glory, and see none of it. We shall see it if we exercise faith. In the natural world, 'seeing is believing '; in the spiritual, believing is seeing. Equally remarkable, as breathing serenest confidence, is the wonderful filial prayer. Our Lord speaks as if the miracle were already accomplished, so sure is He : ' Thou heardest Me.' Does this thanksgiving bring Him down to the level of other servants of God who have wrought miracles by divine power granted them? Certainly not ; for it is in full accord with the teaching of all this Gospel, according to which ' the Son can do nothing of Himself,' but yet, whatsoever things the Father doeth, 'these also doeth the Son likewise.' Both sides of the truth must be kept in view. The Son is not independent of the Father, but the Son is so constantly and perfectly one with the Father that He is conscious of unbroken communion, of continual wielding of the whole divine power. But the practical purpose of the thanksgiving is to be specially noted. It suspends His whole claims on the single issue about to be decided. It summons the people to mark the event. Never before had He thus heralded a miracle. Never had He deigned to say thus solemnly, 'If God does not work through Me now, / vs. 30-15] OPEN GRAVE AT BETHANY 97 reject Me as an impostor ; if He does, yield to Me as Messiah.' The moment stands alone in His life. What a scene ! There is the open tomb, with its dead occu- pant ; there are the eager, sceptical crowd, the sisters pausing in their weeping to gaze, with some strange hopes beginning to creep into their hearts, the silent disciples, and, in front of them all, Jesus, with the radiance of power in the eyes that had just been swimming in tears, and a new elevation in His tones. How all would be hushed in expectance of the next moment's act ! III. The miracle itself is told in the fewest words. What more was there to tell ? The two ends, as it were, of a buried chain, appear above ground. Cause and effect were brought together. Rather, here was no chain of many links, as in physical phenomena, but here was the life-giving word, and there was the dead man living again. The * loud voice ' was as needless as the rolling away of the stone. It was but the sign of Christ's will acting. And the acting of His will, without any other cause, produces physical effects. Lazarus was far away from that rock cave. But, wherever he was, he could hear, and he must obey. So, with graved© thes entangling his feet, and a napkin about his livid face, he came stumbling out into the light that dazed his eyes, closed for four dark days, and stood silent and motionless in that awestruck crowd. One Person there was not awestruck. Christ's calm voice, that had just reverberated through the regions of the dead, spoke the simple command, ' Loose him, and let him go.' To Him it was no wonder that He should give back a life. For the Christ who wept is the Christ whose voice all that are in the graves shall hear, and shall come forth. VOL. II. Q THE SEVENTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL— THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 'And when Jeaus thus had spoken. He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, Come forth. 44. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave- clothes ; and his face was bound about with a napkin.'— John xi. 43, 44. The series of our Lord's miracles before the Passion, as recorded in this Gospel, is fitly closed ^dth the raising of Lazarus. It crowns the whole, whether we regard the greatness of the fact, the manner of our Lord's working, the minuteness and richness of the accom- panying details, the revelation of our Lord's heart, the consolations which it suggests to sorrowing spirits, or the immortal hopes which it kindles. And besides all this, the miracle is of importance for the development of the Evangelist's purpose, in that it makes the immediate occasion of the embittered hostility which finally precipitates the catastrophe of the Cross. Therefore the great length to which the narrative extends. Of course it is impossible for us to attempt, even in the most cursory manner, to go over the whole. We must content ourselves with dealing with one or two of the salient points. And there are three things in this nar- rative which I think well worthy of our notice. There is the revelation of Christ as our Brother, by emotion and sorrow. There is the revelation of Christ as our Lord by" His consciousness of divine power. There is the revela- tion of Christ as our Life by His mighty life-giving word. And to these three points I ask you to turn briefly. I. First, then, we have here a revelation of Christ as our Brother, by emotion and sorrow. This miracle stands alone in the whole majestic series of His mighty works by the fact that it is preceded by a storm of emotion, which shakes the frame of the vs. 43,44] THE SEVENTH MIRACLE 99 Master, which He is represented by the Evangelist not so much as suppressing as fostering, and which diverges and parts itself into the two feelings expressed by His groans and by His tears. The word which is rendered in our version 'He groaned in the spirit,' and which is twice repeated in the narrative, is, according to the in- vestigations of the most careful philological commenta- tors, expressive not only of the outward sign of an emotion, but of the nature of it. And the nature of the emotion is not merely the grief and the sympathy which distilled in tears, but it is something deeper and other than that. The word contains in it at least a tinge of the passion of ' indignation ' (as it is expressed in the margin of the Revised Version). What caused the indignation ? Cannot we fancy how there rose up, as in pale, spectral procession before His vision, the whole long series of human sorrows and losses, of which one was visible there before Him ? He saw, in the one individual case, the whole genus. He saw the whole mass represented there, the ocean in the drop, and He looked beyond the fact and linked it with its cause. And as there rose before Him the reality of man's desolation through sin, and the thought that all this misery, loss, pain, parting, death, was a contradiction of the divine purpose, and an interruption of God's order, and that it had all been pulled down upon men's desperate heads by their own evil and their own folly, there rose in His heart the anger which is part of the perfectness of humanity when it looks upon sorrow linked by adamantine chains with sin. But the lightning of the wrath dissolved soon into the rain of pity aiid of sorrow, and, as we read, 'Jesus wept.' Looking upon the weeping Mary and the lamenting crowd, and Himself feeling the pain of the 100 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. parting from the friend whom He loved, the tears, which are the confession of human nature that it is passing through an emotion too deep for words, came to His all-seeing eyes. Oh ! brethren, surely — surely in this manifestation, or call it better, this revelation of Christ the Lord, expressed in these two emotions — surely there are large and blessed lessons for us ! On them I can only touch in the lightest manner. Here, for one thing, is the blessed sign and proof of His true brotherhood with us. This Evangelist, to whom it was given to tell the Church and the world more than any of the others had imparted to them of the divine uniqueness of the Master's person, had also given to him in charge the corresponding and complementary message — to insist upon the reality and the verity of His manhood. His proclamation was 'the Word was made flesh,' and he had to dwell on both parts of that message, showing Him as the Word and showing Him as flesh. So he insists upon all the points which emerge in the course of his narrative that show the reality of Christ's corporeal manhood. He joins with the others, who had no such lofty pro- clamation entrusted to them, in telling us how He was 'bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh,' in that He hungered and thirsted and slept, and was wearied ; how He was man, reasonable soul and human spirit, in that He grieved and rejoiced, and wondered and desired, and mourned and wept. And so we can look upon Him, and feel that this in very deed is One of ourselves, with a spirit participant of all human experiences, and a heart tremulously vibrating with every emotion that belongs to man. Here we are also taught the sanction and the limits V3. 43,41] THE SEVENTH MIRACLE 101 of sorrow. Christianity has nothing to do with the false Stoicism and the false religion which is partly pride and partly insincerity, that proclaims it wrong to weep when God smites. But just as clearly and dis- tinctly as the story before us says to us, ' Weep for yourselves and for the loved ones that are gone,' so distinctly does it draw the limits within which sorrow is sacred and hallowing, and beyond which it is harm- ful and weakening. Set side by side the grief of these two poor weeping sisters, and the grief of the weeping Christ, and we get a large lesson. They could only repine that something else had not happened differently which would have made all different. * If Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.' One of the two sits with folded arms in the house, letting her sorrow flow over her pained head. Martha is unable, by reason of her grief, to grasp the consolation that is held out to her ; her sorrow has made the hopes of the future seem to her very dim and of small account, and she puts away ' Thy brother shall rise again ' with almost an impatient sweep of her hand. * I know that he will rise in the resurrection at the last day. But oh ! that is so far away, and what I want is present comfort.' Thus oblivious of duty, murmuring with regard to the accidents which might have been different, and unfitted to grasp the hopes that fill the future, these two have been hurt by their grief, and have let it overflow its banks and lay waste the land. But this Christ in His sorrow checks His sorrow that He may do His work ; in His sorrow is confident that the Father hears ; in His sorrow thinks of the bystanders, and would bring com- fort and cheer to them. A sorrow which makes us more conscious of communion with the Father who is always listening, which makes us more eonscioua of 102 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xi. power to do that which He has put it into our hand to do, which makes us more tender in our sympathies with all that mourn, and swifter and readier for our work — such a sorrow is doing what God meant for us ; and is a blessing in so thin a disguise that we can scarcely call it veiled at all. And then, still further, there are here other lessons on which I cannot touch. Such, for instance, is the revelation in this emotion of the Master's, of a personal love that takes individuals to His heart, and feels all the sweetness and the power of friendship. That personal love is open to every one of us, and into the grace and the tenderness of it we may all penetrate. 'The disciple whom Jesus loved' is the Evangelist who, without jealousy, is glad to tell us that the same loving Lord took into the same sanctuary of His pure heart, Mary and Martha, and her brother. That which was given to them was not taken from him, and they each possessed the whole of the Master's love. So for every one of us that heart is wide open, and you and I, brethren, may contract such personal relations to the Master that we shall live with Christ as a man with his friend, and may feel that His heart is all ours. So much for the lessons of the emotions whereby Christ is manifested to us as our Brother. II. And now turn, in the next place, and that very briefly, to what lies side by side with this in the story, and at first sight may seem strangely contradictory of it, but in fact only completes the idea, viz. the majestic, calm consciousness of divine power by which He is revealed as our Lord. At one step from the agitation and the storm of feel- ing there comes, 'Take ye away the stone.' And in vs. 43, 44] THE SEVENTH MIRACLE 103 answer to the lamentations of the sister are spoken the great and wonderful words, ' Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God?' And He looks back there to the message that had been sent to the sisters in response to their unspoken hope that He would come, * This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.' And He shows us that from the first moment, with the spontaneousness which, as I have already remarked in previous sermons on these * signs,' characterises all the miracles of John's Gospel, ' He Himself knew what He would do,' and in the con- sciousness of His divine power had resolved that the dead Lazarus should be the occasion for the manifesta- tion, the flashing out to the world, of the glory of God in the life-giving Son. And then, in the same tone of majestic consciousness, there follows that thanksgiving prior to the miracle as for the accomplished miracle. ' I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me, and I knew that Thou hearest Me always : but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me.' The best commentary upon these words, the deepest and the fullest exposition of the large truths that lie in them concerning the co-operation of the Father and the Son, is to be found in the passage from the fifth chapter of this Gospel, wherein there is set forth, drawn with the firmest hand, the clearest lines of truth upon this great and profound subject. ' The Son does nothing of Him- self,' but ' whatsoever the Father doeth, that doeth the Son likewise.' A consciousness of continual co-opera- tion with the Almighty Father, a consciousness that His will continually coincides with the Father's w^ill, that unto Him there comes the power ever to do all 104 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xi. that Omnipotence can do, and that though we may speak of a gift given and a power derived, the relation between the giving Father and the recipient Son is altogether different from, and other than the relation between, the man that asks and the God that bestows. Poor Martha said, ' I know that even now, whatsoever Thou askest of God He will give Thee.' She thought of Him as a good Man whose prayers had power with Heaven. But up into an altogether other region soars the consciousness expressed in these words as of a divine Son whose work is wholly parallel with the Father's work, and of whom the two things that sound contradictory can both be said. His omnipo- tence is His own ; His omnipotence is the Father's : • As the Father hath life,' and therefore power in Him- self, ' so hath He given ' — there is the one half of the paradox — ' so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself; there is the other. And unless you put them both together you do not think of Christ as Christ has taught us to think. III. Lastly, we have here the revelation of Christ as our Life in His mighty, life-giving word. The miracle, as I have said, stands high in the scale, not only by reason of what to us seems the greatness of the fact, though of course, properly speaking, in miracles there is no distinction as to the greatness of the fact, but also by reason of the manner of the working. The voice thrown into the cave reaches the ears of the sheeted dead : ' Lazarus, come forth ! ' And then, in words which convey the profound impression of awfulness and solemnity which had been made upon the Evangelist, we have the picture of the man with the graveclothes wrapped about his limbs, stum- bling forth ; and loving hands are bidden to take away vs. 43, 44] THE SEVENTH MIRACLE 105 the napkin which covered his face. Perhaps the hand trembled as it was put forth, not knowing what awful sight the veil might cover. With tenderest reticence, no word is spoken as to what followed. No hint escapes of the joy, no gleam of the experiences which the traveller brought back with him from that ' bourne ' whence he had come. Surely some draught of Lethe must have been given him, that his spirit might be lulled into a wholesome forgetfulness, else life must have been a torment to him. But be that as it may, what we have to notice is the fact here, and what it teaches us as a fact. Is it not a revelation of Jesus Christ as the absolute Lord of Life and Death, giving the one, putting back the other? Death has caught hold of his prey. ' Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, and the lawful captive delivered ? Yea, the prey shall be taken from the mighty.' His bare word is divinely operative. He says to that grisly shadow ' Come ! ' and he cometh ; He says to him ' Go ! ' and he goeth. And as a shepherd will drive away the bear that has a lamb between his bloody fangs, and the brute retreats, snarling and growling, but dropping his prey, so at the Lord's voice Lazarus comes back to life, and disappointed Death skulks away to the darkness. The miracle shows Him as Lord of Death and Giver of Life. And it teaches another lesson, namely, the con- tinuous persistency of the bond between Christ and His friend, unbroken and untouched by the superficial accident of life or death. Wheresoever Lazarus was he heard the voice, and wheresoever Lazarus was he knew the voice, and wheresoever Lazarus was he obeyed the voice. And so we are taught that the 106 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xi. relationship between Christ our life, and all them that love and trust Him, is one on which the tooth of death that gnaws all other bonds in twain hath no power at all. Christ is the Life, and, therefore, Christ is the Resurrection, and the thing that we call death is but a film which spreads on the surface, but has no power to penetrate into the depths of the relationship be- tween us and Him. Such, in briefest words, are the lessons of the miracle as a fact, but before I close I must remind you that it is to be looked at not only as a fact, but as a prophecy and as a parable. It is a prophecy in a modified sense, telling us at all events that He has the power to bid men back from the dust and darkness, and giving us the as- surance which His own words convey to us yet more distinctly : ' The hour is coming when all that are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth.' My brother ! there be two resurrections in that one promise : the resurrection of Christ's friends and the resurrection of Christ's foes. And though to both His voice will be the awakening, some shall rise to joy and immortality and ' some to shame and everlasting con- tempt.' You will hear the voice; settle it for your- selves whether when He calls and thou answerest thou wilt say, ' Lo ! here am I,' joyful to look upon Him ; or whether thou wilt rise reluctant, and ' call upon the rocks and the hills to cover thee, and to hide thee from the face of Him that sitteth upon the Throne.' And this raising is a parable as well as a prophecy ; for even as Christ was the life of this Lazarus, so, in a deeper and more real sense, and not in any shadowy, metaphorical, mystical sense, is Jesus Christ the life of every spirit that truly lives at all. We are ' dead in vs. 43, 44] CAIAPHAS 107 trespasses and sins.' For separation from God is death in all regions, death for the body in its kind, death for the mind, for the soul, for the spirit in their kinds ; and only they who receive Christ into their hearts do live. Every Christian man is a miracle. There has been a true coming into the human of the divine, a true supernatural work, the infusion into a dead soul of the God-life which is the Christ-life. And you and I may have that life. What is the con- dition? 'They that hear shall live.' Do you hear? Do you welcome ? Do you take that Christ into your hearts ? Is He your Life, my brother ? It is possible to resist that voice, to stuff your ears so full of clay, and worldliness, and sin, and self- reliance as that it shall not echo in your hearts. ' The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and they that hear shall live,' and obtain to-day ' a better resurrection ' than the resurrection of the body. If you do not hear that voice, then you will 'remain in the congregation of the dead.' CAIAPHAS ' And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them. Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for ns, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.'— St. John xi. 49, 50. The resurrection of Lazarus had raised a wave of popular excitement. Any stir amongst the people was dangerous, especially at the Passover time, which was nigh at hand, when Jerusalem would be filled with crowds of men, ready to take fire from any spark that might fall amongst them. So a hasty meeting of the principal ecclesiastical council of the Jews was sum- 108 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. moned, in order to discuss the situation, and concert measures for repressing the nascent enthusiasm. One might have expected to find there some disposition to inquire honestly into the claims of a Teacher who had such a witness to His claims as a man alive that had been dead. But nothing of the sort appears in their ignoble calculations. Like all weak men, they feel that • something must be done,' and are perfectly unable to say what. They admit Christ's miracles: 'This man doeth many miracles,' but they are not a bit the nearer to recognising His mission, being therein disobedient to their law and untrue to their office. They fear that any disturbance will bring Rome's heavy hand down on them, and lead to the loss of what national life they still possess. But even that fear is not patriotism nor religion. It is pure self- interest. ' They will take away our place' — the Temple, probably — 'and our nation.' The holy things were, in their eyes, their special property. And so, at this supreme moment, big with the fate of them- selves and of their nation, their whole anxiety is about personal interests. They hesitate, and are at a loss what to do. But however they may hesitate, there is one man who knows his own mind — Caiaphas, the high priest. He has no doubt as to what is the right thing to do. He has the advantage of a perfectly clear and single purpose, and no sort of restraint of conscience or delicacy keeps him from speaking it out. He is im- patient at their vacillation, and he brushes it all aside with the brusque and contemptuous speech : * Ye know nothing at all ! ' ' The one point of view for us to take is that of our own interests. Let us have that clearly understood ; when we once ask what is " expedient for vs. 49, 50] CAIAPHAS 109 us," there will be no doubt about the answer. This man must die. Never mind about His miracles, or His teaching, or the beauty of His character. His life is a perpetual danger to our prerogatives. I vote for death!' And so he clashes his advice down into the middle of their waverings, like a piece of iron into yielding water ; and the strong man, restrained by no conscience, and speaking out cynically the thought that is floating in all their minds, but which they dare not utter, is master of the situation, and the resolve is taken. ' From that day forth ' they determined to put Him to death. But John regards this selfish, cruel advice as a prophecy. Caiaphas spoke wiser things than he knew. The Divine Spirit breathed in strange fashion through even such lips as his, and moulded his savage utterance into such a form as that it became a fit expression for the very deepest thought about the nature and the power of Christ's death. He did indeed die for that people — thinks the Evangelist — even though they have rejected Him, and the dreaded Romans have come and taken away our place and nation — but His death had a wider purpose, and was not for that nation only, but that also ' He should gather together in one the children of God that are scattered abroad.' Let us, then, take these two aspects of the man and his counsel: the unscrupulous priest and his savage advice; the unconscious prophet and his great pre- diction. I. First, then, let us take the former point of view, and think of this unscrupulous priest and his savage advice. * It is expedient for us that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.' Remember who he was, the high priest of the nation, 110 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xi. with Aaron's mitre on his brow, and centuries of illus- trious traditions embodied in his person ; set by his very office to tend the sacred flame of their Messianic hopes, and with pure hands and heart to offer sacrifice for the sins of the people ; the head and crow^n of the national religion, in whose heart justice and mercy should have found a sanctuary if they had fled from all others ; whose ears ought to have been opened to the faintest whisper of the voice of God ; whose lips should ever have been ready to witness for the truth. And see what he is ! A crafty schemer, as blind as a mole to the beauty of Christ's character and the great- ness of His words ; utterly unspiritual ; undisguisedly selfish ; rude as a boor ; cruel as a cut- throat ; and having reached that supreme height of wickedness in which he can dress his ugliest thought in the plainest words, and send them into the world unabashed. What a lesson this speech of Caiaphas, and the character disclosed by it, read to all persons who have a profes- sional connection with religion ! He can take one point of view only, in regard to the mightiest spiritual revelation that the world ever saw ; and that is, its bearing upon his own miserable personal interests, and the interests of the order to which he belongs. And so, whatever may be the wisdom, or miracles, or goodness of Jesus, because He threatens the prerogatives of the priesthood. He must die and be got out of the way. This is only an extreme case of a temper and a tend- ency which is perennial. Popes and inquisitors and priests of all Churches have done the same, in their degree, in all ages. They have always been tempted to look upon religion and religious truth and religious organisations as existing somehow for their personal vs. 49, 50] CAIAPHAS 111 advantage. And so ' the Church is in danger ! * gene- rally means ' my position is threatened,' and heretics are got rid of, because their teaching is inconvenient for the prerogatives of a priesthood, and new truth is fought against, because officials do not see how it harmonises with their pre-eminence. It is not popes and priests and inquisitors only that are examples of the tendency. The warning is needed by every man who stands in such a position as mine, whose business it is professionally to handle sacred things, and to administer Christian institutions and Christian ritual. All such men are tempted to look upon the truth as their stock-in-trade, and to fight against innovations, and to array themselves instinc- ti\ely against progress, and frown down new aspects and new^ teachers of truth, simply because they threaten, or appear to threaten, the position and prerogatives of the teachers that be. Caiaphas's sin is possible, and Caiaphas's temptation is actual, for every man whose profession it is to handle the oracles of God. But the lessons of this speech and character are for us all. Caiaphas's sentence is an undisguised, unblush- ing avowal of a purely selfish standpoint. It is not a common depth of degradation to stand up, and without a blush to say: 'I look at all claims of revelation, at all professedly spiritual truth, and at everything else, from one delightfully simple point of view — I ask myself, how does it bear upon what I think to be to my advantage ? ' What a deal of perplexity a man is saved if he takes up that position ! Yes ! and how he has damned himself in the very act of doing it ! For, look what this absorbing and exclusive self-regard does in the illustration before us, and let us learn what it will do to ourselves. 112 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xi. This selfish consideration of our own interests will make us as blind as bats to the most radiant beauty of truth ; aye, and to Christ Himself, if the recognition of Him and of His message seems to threaten any of these. They tell us that fishes which live in the water of caverns come to lose their eyesight ; and men that are always living in the dark holes of their own selfishly absorbed natures, they, too, lose their spiritual sight ; and the fairest, loftiest, truest, and most radiant visions (which are realities) pass before their eyes, and they see them not. When you put on regard for your- selves as they do blinkers upon horses, you have no longer the power of wide, comprehensive vision, but only see straiglit forward upon the narrow line which you fancy to be marked out by your own interests. If ever there comes into the selfish man's mind a truth, or an aspect of Christ's mission, which may seem to cut against some of his practices or interests, how blind he is to it! When Lord Nelson was at Copen- hagen, and they hoisted the signal of recall, he put his telescope up to his blind eye and said, 'I do not see it!' And that is exactly what this self-absorbed regard to our own interests does with hundreds of men who do not in the least degree know it. It blinds them to the plain will of the Commander-in-chief flying there at the masthead. 'There are none so blind as those who will not see'; and there are none who so certainly will not see as those who have an uneasy suspicion that if they do see they will have to change their tack. So I say, look at the instance before us, and learn the lesson of the blindness to truth and beauty which are Christ Himself, which comes of a regard to one's own interests. Then again, this same self-regard may bring a vs. 49, 50] CAIAPHAS 113 man down to any kind and degree of wrongdoing. Caiaphas was brought down by it, being the supreme judge of his nation, to be an assassin and an accomplice of murderers. And it is only a question of accident and of circumstances how far that man will descend who once yields himself up to the guidance of such a disposition and tendency. We have all of us to fight against the developed selfishness which takes the form of this, that, and the other sin ; and we have all of us, if we are wise, to fight against the undeveloped sin which lies in all selfishness. Remember that if you begin with laying down as the canon of your con- duct, * It is expedient for me,' you have got upon an inclined plane that tilts at a very sharp angle, and is very sufficiently greased, and ends away down yonder in the depths of darkness and of death, and it is only a question of time how far and how fast, how deep and irrevocable, will be your descent. And lastly, this same way of looking at things which takes 'It is expedient' as the determining considera- tion, has in it an awful power of so twisting and searing a man's conscience as that he comes to look at evil and never to know that there is anything wrong in it. This cynical high priest in our text had no con- ception that he was doing anything but obeying the plainest dictates of the most natural self-preservation when he gave his opinion that they had better kill Christ than have any danger to their priesthood. The crime of the actual crucifixion was diminished because the doers were so unconscious that it was a crime ; but the crime of the process by which they had come to be unconscious— Oh how that was increased and deepened ! So, if we fix our eyes sharply and exclusively on what makes for our own advantage, and take that as the VOL. II. H 114 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xi. point of view from which we determine our conduct, we may, and we shall, bring ourselves into such a con- dition as that our consciences will cease to be sensitive to right and wrong ; and we shall do all manner of bad things, and never know it. We shall ' wipe our mouths and say : " I have done no harm." ' So, I beseech you, remember this, that to live for self is hell, and that the only antagonist of such selfishness, which leads to blindness, crime, and a seared conscience, is to yield ourselves to the love of God in Jesus Christ and to say: 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.' II. And now turn briefly to the second aspect of this saying, into which the former, if I may so say, melts away. We have the unconscious prophet and his great prediction. The Evangelist conceives that the man who filled the office of high priest, being the head of the theocratic community, was naturally the medium of a divine oracle. When he says, 'being the high priest that year, Caiaphas prophesied,' he does not imply that the high priestly office was annual, but simply desires to mark the fateful importance of that year for the history of the world and the priesthood. 'In that year ' the great ' High Priest for ever ' came and stood for a moment by the side of the earthly high priest — the Substance by the shadow — and by His offering of Himself as the one Sacrifice for sin for ever, deprived priesthood and sacrifice henceforward of all their validity. So that Caiaphas was in reality the last of the high priests, and those that succeeded him for something less than half a century were but like ghosts that walked after cock-crow. And what the Evangelist would mark is the importance of 'that vs. 49, 50] CAIAPHAS 115 year,' as making Caiaphas ever memorable to us. Solemn and strange that the long line of Aaron's priesthood ended in such a man — the river in a putrid morass — and that of all the years in the history of the nation, ' in that year ' should such a person fill such an office! ♦Being high priest he prophesied.' And was there anything strange in a bad man's prophesying? Did not the Spirit of God breathe through Balaam of old ? Is there anything incredible in a man's prophesying unconsciously ? Did not Pilate do so, when he nailed over the Cross, 'This is the King of the Jews,' and wrote it in Hebrew, and in Greek, and in Latin, con- ceiving himself to be perpetrating a rude jest, while he was proclaiming an everlasting truth ? When the Pharisees stood at the foot of the Cross and taunted Him, 'He saved others. Himself He cannot save,' did they not, too, speak deeper things than they knew? And were not the lips of this unworthy, selfish, un- spiritual, unscrupulous, cruel priest so used as that, all unconsciously, his words lent themselves to the proclamation of the glorious central truth of Chris- tianity, that Christ died for the nation that slew Him and rejected Him, nor for them alone, but for all the world? Look, though but for a moment, at the thoughts that come from this new view of the words which we have been considering. They suggest to us, first of all, the twofold aspect of Christ's death. From the human point of view it was a savage murder by forms of law for political ends : Caiaphas and the priests slaying Him to avoid a popular tumult that might threaten their preroga- tives, Pilate consenting to His death to avoid the unpopularity that might follow a refusal. From the 116 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. divine point of view it is God's great sacrifice for the sin of the world. It is the most signal instance of that solemn law of Providence which runs all through the history of the world, whereby bad men's bad deeds, strained through the fine network, as it were, of the divine providence, lose their poison and become nutri- tious and fertilising. ' Thou makest the wrath of men to praise Thee ; with the residue thereof Thou girdest Thyself.' The greatest crime ever done in the world is the greatest blessing ever given to the world. Man's sin works out the loftiest divine purpose, even as the coral insects blindly build up the reef that keeps back the waters, or as the sea in its wild, impotent rage, seek- ing to overwhelm the land, only throws upon the beach a barrier that confines its waves and curbs their fury. Then, again, this second aspect of the counsel of Caiaphas suggests for us the twofold consequences of that death on the nation itself. This Gospel of John was probably written after the destruction of Jeru- salem. By the time that our Evangelist penned these words, the Romans had come and taken away their place and their nation. The catastrophe that Caiaphas and his party had, by their short-sighted policy, tried to prevent, had been brought about by the very deed itself. For Christ's death was practically the reason for the destruction of the Jewish commonwealth. When ' the husbandmen said, Come ! let us kill Him, and seize on the inheritance,' which is simply putting Caiaphas's counsel into other language, they thereby deprived themselves of the inheritance. And so Christ's death was the destruction and not the salvation of the nation. And yet, it was true that He died for that people, for every man of them, for Caiaphas as truly as for John, for Judas as truly as for Peter, for all the Scribes and vs. 49, 50] CAIAPHAS 117 the Pharisees that mocked round His Cross, as truly as for the women that stood silently weeping there. He died for them all, and John, looking back upon the destruction of his nation, can yet say, ' He died for that people.* Yes ! and just because He did, and because they rejected Him, His death, which they would not let be their salvation, became their destruction and their ruin. Oh ! brethren, it is always so ! He is either ' a savour of life unto life, or a savour of death unto death ! ' * Behold ! I lay in Zion for a foundation, a tried Stone.' Build upon it and you are safe. If you do not build upon it, that Stone becomes ' a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence.' You must either build upon Christ or fall over Him ; you must either build wpon Christ, or be crushed to powder under Him. Make your choice ! The twofold effect is wrought ever, but we can choose which of the two shall be wrought upon us. Lastly, we have here the twofold sphere in which our Lord's mighty death works its effects. I have already said that this Gospel was written after the fall of Jerusalem. The whole tone of it shows that the conception of the Church as quite separate from Judaism was firmly established. The narrower national system had been shivered, and from out of the dust and hideous ruin of its crushing fall had emerged the fairer reality of a Church as wide as the world. The Temple on Zion — which was but a small building after all — had been burned with fire. It was their place, as Caiaphas called it. But the clearing away of the narrower edifice had revealed the rising walls of the great temple, the Christian Church, whose roof overarches every land, and in whose courts all men may stand and praise the Lord. So John, in his home in Ephesus, surrounded by flourishing churches in which Jews formed a small and 118 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xi. ever-decreasing element, recognised how far the dove with the olive-branch in its mouth flew, and how cer- tainly that nation was only a little fragment of the many for whom Christ died. 'The children of God that were scattered abroad' were all to be united round that Cross. Yes ! the only thing that unites men together is their common relation to a Divine Redeemer. That bond is deeper than all national bonds, than all blood-bonds, than community of race, than family, than friendship, than social ties, than community of opinion, than community of pur- pose and action. It is destined to absorb them all. All these are transitory and they are imperfect; men wander isolated notwithstanding them all. But if we are knit to Christ, we are knit to all who are also knit to Him. One life animates all the limbs, and one life's blood circulates through all the veins. ' So also is Christ.' We are one in Him, in whom all the body fitly joined together maketh increase, and in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth. If we have yielded to the power of that Cross which draws us to itself, we shall have been more utterly alone, in our penitence and in our conscious surrender to Christ, than ever we were before. But He sets the solitary in families, and that solemn experience of being alone with our Judge and our Saviour will be followed by the blessed sense that we are no more solitary, but ' fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God.' That death brings men into the family of God. He will 'gather into one the scattered children of God.' They are called children by anticipation. For surely nothing can be clearer than that the doctrine of all John's writings is that men are not children of God by virtue of their humanity, except in the inferior sense of vs. 49, 50] LOVE'S PRODIGALITY 119 being made by Him, and in His image as creatures with spirit and will, but become children of God through faith in the Son of God, which brings about that new birth, whereby we become partakers of the Divine nature. ' To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.' So I beseech you, turn yourselves to that dear Christ who has died for us all, for us each, for me and for thee, and put your confidence in His great sacrifice. You will find that you pass from isolation into society, from death into life, from the death of selfishness into the life of God. Listen to Him, who says: 'Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice : and there shall be one flock ' because there is ' one Shepherd.' LOVE'S PRODIGALITY CENSURED AND VINDICATED ' Then Jesus, six days before the passover, came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom He raised from the dead. There they made Him a supper ; and Martha served : but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with Him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair : and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then saith one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray Him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor ? This he said, not that he cared for the poor ; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. Then said Jesus, Let her alone : against the day of My bury- ing hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you ; but Me ye have not always. Much people of the Jews therefore knew that He was there : and they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom He had raised from the dead. But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death ; Because that by reason of him many of the Jewa went away, and believed on Jesus.'— John xii. 1-11. Jesus came from Jericho, where He had left Zacchseus rejoicing in the salvation that had come to his house, and whence Bartimseus, rejoicing in His new power of 120 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xii. vision, seems to have followed Him. A few hours brought Him to Bethany, and we know from other Evangelists what a tension of purpose marked Him, and awed the disciples, as He pressed on before them up the rocky way. His mind was full of the struggle and death which were so near. The modest village feast in the house of Simon the leper comes in strangely amid the gathering gloom ; but, no doubt, Jesus accepted it, as He did everything, and entered into the spirit of the hour. He would not pain His hosts by self-absorbed aloofness at the table. The reason for the feast is obviously the raising of Lazarus, as is suggested by his being twice mentioned in verses 1 and 2. Our Lord had withdrawn to Ephraim so immediately after the miracle that the opportunity of honouring Him had not occurred. It was a brave tribute to pay Him in the face of the Sanhedrim's commandment (ch. xi. 57). This incident sets in sharpest contrast the two figures of Mary, the type of love which delights to give its best, and Judas, the type of selfishness which is only eager to get ; and it shows us Jesus casting His shield over the uncalculating giver, and putting meaning into her deed. I. In Eastern fashion, the guests seem to have all been males, no doubt the magnates of the village, and Jesus with His disciples. The former would have become accustomed to seeing Lazarus, but Christ's immediate followers would gaze curiously on him. And how he would gaze on Jesus, whom he had pro- bably not seen since the napkin had been taken from his face. The two sisters were true to their respective characters. The bustling, practical Martha had perhaps not very fine or quickly moved emotions. She could not say graceful things to their benefactor, and pro- vs. 1-11] LOVE'S PRODIGALITY 121 bably she did not care to sit at His feet and drink in His teaching; but she loved Him with all her heart all the same, and showed it by serving. No doubt, she took care that the best dishes were carried to Jesus first, and, no doubt, as is the custom in those lands, she plied Him with invitations to partake. We do Martha less than justice if we do not honour her, and recognise that her kind of service is true service. She has many successors among Christ's true followers, who cannot ' gush ' nor rise to the heights of His loftiest teaching, but who have taken Him for their Lord, and can, at any rate, do humble, practical service in kitchen or workshop. Their more 'intellectual' or poetically emotional brethren are tempted to look down on them, but Jesus is as ready to defend Martha against Mary, if she depreciates her, as He is to vindicate Mary's right to her kind of expression of love, if Martha should seek to force her own kind on her sister. * There are differ- ences of ministries, but the same Lord.' Mary was one of the unpractical sort, whom Martha is very apt to consider supremely useless, and often to lose patience with. Could she not find something use- ful to do in all the bustle of the feast? Had she no hands that could carry a dish, and no common sense that could help things on ? Apparently not. Every one else was occupied, and how should she show the love that welled up in her heart as she looked at Lazarus sitting there beside Jesus? She had one costly possession, the pound of perfume. Clearly it was her own, for she would not have taken it if Lazarus and Mary had been joint owners. So, without thinking of anything but the great burden of love which she blessedly bore, she ' poured it on His head ' (Mark) and on His feet, which the fashion of reclining 122 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xii. at meals made accessible to her, standing behind Him. True love is profuse, not to say prodigal. It knows no better use for its best than to lavish it on the beloved, and can have no higher joy than that. It does not stay to calculate utility as seen by colder eyes. It has even a subtle delight in the very absence of practical results, for the expression of itself is the purer thereby. A basin of water and a towel would have done as well or better for washing Christ's feet, but not for relieving Mary's full heart. Do we know anything of that omni- potent impulse ? Can we complacently set our givings beside Mary's ? II. Judas is the foil to Mary. His sullen, black selfishness, stretching out hands like talons in eager- ness to get, makes more radiant, and is itself made darker by, her shining deed of love. Goodness always rouses evil to self-assertion, and the other Evangelists connect Mary's action with Judas's final treachery as part of its impelling cause. They also show that his specious objection, by its apparent common sense and charitableness, found assent in the disciples. Three hundred pence' worth of good ointment wasted which might have helped so many poor! Yes, and how much poorer the world would have been if it had not had this story ! Mary was more utilitarian than her censors. She served the highest good of all generations by her uncalculating profusion, by which the poor have gained more than some few of them might have lost. Judas's criticism is still repeated. The world does not understand Christian self-sacrifice, for ends which seem to it shadowy as compared with the solid realities of helping material progress or satisfying material wants. A hundred critics, who do not do much for the vs. Ml] LOVE'S PRODIGALITY 123 poor themselves, will descant on the v^aste of money in religious enterprises, and smile condescendingly at the enthusiasts who are so unpractical. But love knows its own meaning, and need not be abashed by the censure of the unloving. John flashes out into a moment's indignation at the greed of Judas, which was masquerading as benevol- ence. His scathing laying bare of Judas's mean and thievish motive is no mere suspicion, but he must have known instances of dishonesty. When a man has gone so far in selfish greed that he has left common honesty behind him, no wonder if the sight of utterly self- surrendering love looks to him folly. The world has no instruments by which it can measure the elevation of the godly life. Mary would not be Mary if Judas approved of her or understood her. III. Jesus vindicates the act of His censured servant. His words fall into two parts, of which the former puts a meaning into Mary's act, of which she probably had not been aware, while the latter meets the carping criticism of Judas. That Jesus should see in the anointing a reference to His burying, pathetically indicates how that near end filled His thoughts, even while sharing in the simple feast. The clear vision of the Cross so close did not so absorb Him as to make Him indifferent either to Mary's love or to the villagers' humble festivity. However weighed upon. His heart was always sufficiently at leisure from itself to care for His friends and to defend them. He accepts every offering that love brings, and, in accepting, gives it a significance beyond the offerer's thought. We know not what use He may make of our poor service; but we may be sure that, if that which we can see to is right— namely, its motive,— He will take care of what 124 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xii. we cannot see to — namely, its effect, — and will find noble use for the sacrifices which unloving critics pronounce useless waste. ' The poor always ye have with you.' Opportunities for the exercise of brotherly liberality are ever present, and therefore the obligation to it is constant. But these permanent duties do not preclude the oppor- tunities for such special forms of expressing special love to Jesus as Mary had shown, and as must soon end. The same sense of approaching separation as in the former clause gives pathos to that restrained * not always.' The fact of His being just about to leave them warranted extraordinary tokens of love, as all loving hearts know but too well. But, over and above the immediate reference of the words, they carry the wider lesson that, besides the customary duties of generous giving laid on us by the presence of ordinary poverty and distresses, there is room in Christian experience for extraordinary outflows from the fountain of a heart filled with love to Christ. The world may mock at it as useless prodigality, but Jesus sees that it is done for Him, and therefore He accepts it, and breathes meaning into it. * Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.* The Evangelist who records that promise does not mention Mary's name ; John, who does mention the name, does not record the promise. It matters little whether our names are remembered, so long as Jesus bears them graven on His heart. A NEW KIND OF KING ' On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, Took branches of palm-trees, and went forth to meet Him, and cried, Hosanna : Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord. And Jesus, when He had found a young ass, sat thereon : as it is written. Fear not, daughter of Sion : behold, thy King Cometh, sitting on an ass's colt. These things understood not His disciples at the first : but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of Him, and that they had done these things unto Him. The people therefore that was with Him when He called Lazarus out of his grave, and raised him from the dead, bare record. For this cause the people also met Him, for that they heard that He had done this miracle. The Pharisees there- fore said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? behold, the world is gone after Him. And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast : The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying. Sir, we would see Jesus. Philip cometh and teUeth Andrew : and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus, And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of Man should be glorified. VerUy, verily, I say unto yon. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it ; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve Me, let him follow Me ; and where I am, there shall also My servant be : if any man serve Me, him will My Father honour.'— John xii. 12-26. The difference between John's account of the entry into Jerusalem and those of the Synoptic Gospels is very characteristic. His is much briefer, but it brings the essentials out clearly, and is particular in showing its place as a link in the chain that drew on the final catastrophe, and in noting its effect on various classes. ' The next day ' in verse 12 was proba-bly the Sunday before the crucifixion. To understand the events of that day we must try to realise how rapidly, and, as the rulers thought, dangerously, excitement was rising among the crowds who had come up for the Passover, and who had heard of the raising of Lazarus. The Passover was always a time when national feeling was ready to blaze up, and any spark might light the fire. It looked as if Lazarus were going to be the match this time, and so, on the Saturday, the rulers had made up their minds to have him put out of the way in order to 125 126 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xii. stop the current that was setting in, of acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah. They had already made up their minds to dispose of Jesus, and now, with cynical contempt for justice, they determined to 'put Lazarus also to death.' So there were to be two men who were to ' die for the people.' Keeping all this wave of popular feeling in view, it might have been expected that Jesus would, as hitherto, have escaped into privacy, or discouraged the offered homage of a crowd whose Messianic ideal was so different from His. John is mainly concerned in bringing out two points in his version of the incident. First, he tells us what we should not have gathered from the other Evange- lists, that the triumphal procession began in Jerusalem, not in Bethany. It was the direct result of the ebul- lition of enthusiasm occasioned by the raising of Lazarus. The course of events seems to have been that ' the common people of the Jews ' came streaming out to Bethany on the Sunday to gape and gaze at the risen man and Him who had raised him, that they and some of those who had been present at the raising went back to the city and carried thither the intelligence that Jesus was coming in from Bethany next day, and that then the procession to meet Him was organised. The meaning of the popular demonstration was plain, both from the palm branches, signs of victory and rejoicing, and from the chant, which is in part taken from Psalm cxviii. The Messianic application of that quotation is made unmistakable by the addition, 'even the King of Israel.' In the Psalm, 'he that Cometh in the name of Jehovah,' means the worshipper drawing near to the Temple, but the added words divert the expression to Jesus, hail Him as the King, vs. 12-26] A NEW KIND OF KING 127 and invoke Him as 'Saviour.' Little did that shout- ing crowd understand what sort of a Saviour He was. Deliverance from Rome was what they were think- ing of. We must remember what gross, unspiritual notions of the Messiah they had, and then we are prepared to feel how strangely unlike His whole past conduct Jesus' action now was. He had shrunk from crowds and their impure enthusiasm; He had slipped away into solitude when they wished to come by force to make Him a King, and had in every possible way sought to avoid publicity and the rousing of popular excitement. Now He deliberately sets Himself to in- tensify it. His choice of an ass on which to ride into Jerusalem was, and would be seen by many to be, a plain appropriation to Himself of a very distinct Messianic prophecy, and must have raised the heat of the crowd by many degrees. One can fancy the roar of acclaim which hailed Him when He met the multi- tude, and the wild emotion with which they strewed His path with garments hastily drawn off and cast before Him. Why did He thus contradict all His past, and court the smoky enthusiasm which He had hitherto damped ? Because He knew that ' His hour ' had come, and that the Cross was at hand, and He desired to bring it as speedily as might be, and thus to shorten the suffering that He would not avoid, and to finish the work which He was eager to complete. The impatience, as we might almost call it, which had marked Him on all that last journey, reached its height now, and may indicate to us for our sympathy and gratitude both His human longing to get the dark hour over and His fixed willingness to die for us. 128 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [oh.xil But even while Jesus accepted the acclamations and deliberately set Himself to stir up enthusiasm, He sought to purify the gross ideas of the crowd. What more striking way could He have chosen of declaring that all the turbulent passions and eagerness for a foot-to-foot conflict with Rome which were boiling in their breasts were alien to His purposes and to the true Messianic ideal, than that choosing of the meek, slow-pacing ass to bear Him? A conquering king would have made his triumphal entry in a chariot or on a battle-horse. This strange type of monarch is throned on an .ass. It was not only for a verbal fulfilment of the prophecy, but for a demonstration of the essential nature of His kingdom, that He thus entered the city. John characteristically takes note of the effects of the entry on two classes, the disciples and the rulers. The former remembered with a sudden flash of en- lightenment the meaning of the entry when the Cross and the Resurrection had taught them it. The rulers marked the popular feeling running high with be- wilderment, and were, as Jesus meant them to be, made more determined to take vigorous measures to stop this madness of the mob. The second incident in this passage contrasts re- markably with the first, and yet is, in one aspect, a continuation of it. In the former, Jesus brought into prominence the true nature of His rule by His choosing the ass to carry Him, so declaring that His dominion rested, not on conquest, but on meekness. In the latter. He reveals a yet deeper aspect of His work, and teaches that His influence over men is won by utter self- sacrifice, and that His subjects must tread the same path of losing their lives by which He passes to His glory, vs. 12-26] A NEW KINi? OF KING 129 The details of the incident ar \ of small importance as compared with that great an^! solemn lesson; but we may note them in a few words. The desire of a few Greeks to see Him was probably only a reflection of the popular enthusiasm, and 7as prompted mainly by curiosity and the characteris ic Greek eagerness to see any ' new thing.' The addi assing of the request to Philip is perhaps explainCvl by the fact that he ' was of Bethsaida of Galilee,' am^ had probably come into contact with these Greeks 'n the neighbouring Decapolis, on the other side of the lake. Philip's consultation of his fellow-townsman, Andrew, who is associated with him in other places, probably implies hesitation in granting so unprecedented a request. They did not know what Jesus might say to it. And what He did say was very unlike anything that they could have anticipated. The trivial request was as a narrow window through which Jesus' yearning spirit saw a great expanse — nothing less than the coming to Him of myriads of Gentiles,- the 'much fruit' of which He immediately speaks, the ' other sheep ' whom He ' must bring.' The thought must have been ever present to Him, or it would never have leaped to utterance on such an occasion. The little window shows us, too, what was habitually in His inind and heart. He, as it were, hears the striking of the hour of His glorification ; in which expression the ideas of His being glorified by drawing men to the knowledge of His love, and of the Cross being not the lowest depth of His humilia- tion, but the highest apex of His glory — as it is always represented iji this Gospel — seemed to be fused together. The seed must die if a harvest is to spring from it. VOL. II. I 130 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xii. That is the law for ? ;1 moral and spiritual reforma- tions. Every cause . /lust have its martyrs. No man can be fruit-bearing unless he sacrifices himself. We shall not 'quicken' our fellows unless w^e 'die,' either literally or by the n )t less real martyrdom of rigid self-crucifixion and suj pression. But that necessity is not only for Apostles or missionaries of great causes ; it is the condition of all true, noble life, and prescribes the path not only for those who would live for others, but for all who wouM truly live their o vn lives. Self-renunciation guards the way to the ' tre 3 of life.' That lesson was specially needed by ' Greeks,' for ignorance of it was the worm that gnawed the blossoms of their trees, whether of art or of literature. It is no less needed by our sensuously luxurious and eagerly acquisitive generation. The world's war-cries to-day are two — 'Get!' 'Enjoy!' Christ's command is, ' Renounce ! ' And in renouncing we shall realise both of these other aims, which they who pursue them only, never attain. Christ's servant must be Christ's follower: indeed service is following. The Cross has aspects in which it stands alone, and is incapable of being reproduced and makes all repetition needless. But it has also an aspect in which it not only Tnay, but must, be re- produced in every disciple. And he who takes it for the ground of his trust only, and not as the pattern of his life, has need to ask himself whether his trust in it is genuine or worth anything. Of course they who follow a leader will arrive where the leader has gone, and though our feet are feeble and our progress devious and slow, we have here His promise that we shall not be lost in the desert, but, sustained by Him, will reach His side, and at last be where He is- AFTER CHRIST: WITH CHRIST ' If any man serve Me, let him follow Me ; and where I am, there shall also My servant be.'— John xii. 26. Our Lord was strangely moved by the apparently trivial incident of certain Greeks desiring to see Him. He recognised and hailed in them the first-fruits of the Gentiles. The Eastern sages at His cradle, and these representatives of Western culture within a few hours of the Cross, were alike prophets. So, in His answer to their request, our Lord passes beyond the immediate bearing of the request, and contemplates it in its relation to the future developments of His work. And the thought that the Son of Man is now about to begin to be glorified, at once brings Him face to face with the fact which must precede the glory, viz.. His death. That great law that a higher life can only be reached by the decay of the lower, of which the Cross is the great instance, He illustrates, first, by an example from Nature, the corn of wheat which must die ere it brings forth fruit. Then He declares that this is a universal law, 'He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.' And then He declares that this universal law, which has its adumbration in Nature, and applies to all mankind, and is manifested in its highest form on the Cross, is the law of the Christian discipleship. 'If any man serve Me, let him follow Me,' and, as a consequence, 'where I am, there shall also My servant be.' In two clauses He covers the whole ground of the present and the future. Many thinkers and teachers isi 182 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xii. have tried to crystallise their systems into some brief formula which may stick in the memory and be capable of a handy application. ' Follow Nature,' said ancient sages, attaching a nobler meaning to the condensed commandment than its modern repeaters often do ; 'Follow duty,' say others; 'Follow Me,' says Christ. That is enough for life. And for all the dim regions beyond, this prospect is sufficient, ' Where I am, there shall also My servant be.' One Form towers above the present and the future, and they both derive their colouring and their worth from Him and our relation to Him. ' To follow ' — that is the condensed summary of life's duty. 'To be with' — that is the crystallising of all our hopes. I. The all-sufficient law for life. 'If any man serve Me, let him follow Me.' Every- thing is smelted down into that; and there you have a sufficient directory for every man's every action. Now although it has nothing to do with my present purpose, I can scarcely avoid pausing, just for a moment, to ask you to consider the perfect uniqueness of such an utterance as that. Think of one Man standing up before all mankind, and coolly and de- liberately saying to them, ' I am the realised Ideal of human conduct; I am Incarnate Perfection; and all of you, in all the infinite variety of condition, culture, and character, are to take Me for your pattern and your guide.' The world has listened, and the world has not laughed nor been angry. Neither indignation nor mockery, which one might have expected would have extinguished such absurdity, has waited upon Christ's utterance. I have no time to dwell on this ; it is apart from my purpose, but I would ask you fairly to consider how strange it is, and to ask how it is to V. 26] AFTER CHRIST : WITH CHRIST 133 be accounted for, that a Man said that, and that the wisest part of the world has consented to take Him at His own valuation ; and after such an utterance as that, yet calls Him ' meek and lowly of heart.' But I pass away from that. What does He mean by this commandment, ' Follow Me ' ? Of course I need not remind you that it brings all duty down to the imitation of Jesus Christ. That is a commonplace that I do not need to dwell upon, nor to follow out into the many regions into which it would lead us, and where we might find fruitful subjects of contem- plation; because I desire, in a sentence or two, to insist upon the special form of following which is here enjoined. It is a very grand thing to talk about the imitation of Christ, and even in its most superficial acceptation it is a good guide for all men. But no man has penetrated to the depths of that stringent and all-comprehensive commandment who has not recognised that there is one special thing in which Christ is to be our Pattern, and that is in regard to the very thing in which we think that He is most unique and inimitable. It is His Cross, and not His life ; it is His death, and not His virtues, which He is here thinking about, and laying it upon all of us as the encyclopaedia and sum of all morality that we should be conformed to it. I have already pointed out to you in my introductory remarks the force of the present context. And so I need not further enlarge upon that, nor vindicate my declaration that Christ's death is the pattern which is here set before us. Of course we cannot imitate that in its effects, except in a very secondary and figurative fashion. But the spirit that underlay it, as the supreme Example of self- sacrifice, is commended to us all as the royal law for 134 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xii. our lives, and unless we are conformed thereto we have no right to call ourselves Christ's disciples. To die for the sake of higher life, to give up our own will utterly in obedience to God, and in the unselfish desire to help and bless others, that is the Alpha and the Omega of discipleship. It always has been so and always will be so. And so, dear brethren, let us lay it to our own hearts, and make very stringent inquiry into our own conduct, whether we have ever come within sight of what makes a true disciple — viz., that we should be ' conformable unto His death.' Now our modern theology has far too much obscured this plain teaching of the New Testament, because it has been concerned — I do not say too much, but too exclusively, concerned — in setting forth the other aspect of Christ's death, by which it is what none of ours can ever even begin to be, the sacrifice for a world's sin. But, mind, there are two ways of looking at Christ's Cross. You must begin with recognising it as the basis of all your hope, the power by which you are delivered from sin as guilt, habit, and con- demnation. And then you must take it, if it is to be the sacrifice and atonement for your sins, for the example of your lives, and mould yourselves after it. ' If any man serve Me, let him follow Me,' and here is the special region in which the following is to be realised : ' He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life shall keep it unto life eternal.' Now, further, let me remind you that this brief, crystallised commandment, the essence of all practical godliness and Christianity, makes the blessed peculiarity of Christian morality. People ask what it is that dis- tinguishes the teaching of the New Testament in regard to duty, from the teaching of lofty moralists and sages V.26] AFTER CHRIST: WITH CHRIST 135 of old. Not the specific precepts, though these are, in many cases, deeper. Not the individual command- ments, though the perspective of human excellences and virtues has been changed in Christianity, and the gentler and sweeter graces have been enthroned in the place vv^here the world's morality has generally set the more ostentatious ones; the hero is, roughly speaking, the world's type, the saint is the New Testa- ment's. But the true characteristic of Christian teach- ing as to conduct lies in this, that the law is in a Person, and that the power to obey the law comes from the love of the Person. All things are different ; unwelcome duties are made less repulsive, and hard tasks are lightened, and sorrows are made tolerable, if only we are following Him. You remember the old story in Scottish history of the knight to whom was entrusted the king's heart ; how, beset by the bands of the infidels, he tossed the golden casket into the thickest of their ranks and said, ' Go on, I follow thee ' ; and death itself was light when that thought spurred his steed forward. And so, brethren, it is far too hard a task to tread the road of duty which our consciences command us, unless we are drawn by Him Who is before us there on the road, and see the shining of His garments as He sets His face forward, and draws us after Him. It is easy to climb a glacier when the guide has cut with his ice-axe the steps in which he sets his feet, and we may set ours. The sternness of duty, and the rigidity of law, and the coldness of 'I ought,' are all changed when duty consists in following Christ, and He is before us on the rocky and narrow road. This precept is all-sufficient. Of course it will be a task of wisdom, of common sense, of daily culture in 136 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xii. prudence and other graces ; to apply the generaKsed precept to the specific cases that emerge in our lives. But whilst the application may require a great many subordinate by-laws, the royal statute is one, and simple, and enough. ' Follow Me.' Is it not a strange thing — it seems to me to be a perfectly unique thing, inexplicable except upon one hypothesis — that a life so brief, of which the records are so fragmentary, in which some of the relationships in which we stand had no place, and which was lived out in a world so utterly different from our own, should yet avail to be a guide to men, not in regard to specific points, so much as in regard to the imperial supremacy in it of these motives — ' Even Christ pleased not Himself ' ; * My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me.' And so, brethren, take this sharp test and apply it honestly to your own lives, day by day, in all their minutice as well as in their great things. ' If any man serve Me,' how miserably that Christian 'service' has been evacuated of its deepest meaning, and super- ficialised and narrowed ! ' Service ' — that means people getting into a building and singing and praying. Service — that means acts of beneficence, teaching and preaching and giving material or spiritual helps of various kinds. These things have almost monopolised the word. But Christ enlarges its shrivelled contents once more, and teaches us that, far above all specifi- cally so-called acts of religious worship, and more in- dispensable than so-called acts of Christian activity and service, lies thj self-sacrificing conformity of character to Him. ' If any man serve Me,' let him sing and praise and pray ? Yes ; ' If any man serve Me,' let him try to help other people, and in the service of man do service to Me ? Yes ; but deeper than all, and fundamental to V.26] AFTER CHRIST: WITH CHRIST 137 the others, ' If any man serve Me, let him follow Me ' — Is that my discipleship ? Let each one of us professing Christians ask himself. II. We have here the all-sufficient hope for the future. I know few things more beautiful than the perfectly naive way in which the greatest of thoughts is here set forth by the simplest of figures. If two men are walk- ing on the same road to a place, the one that is in front will get there first, and his friend that is coming up after him will get there second, if he keeps on ; and they will be united at the end, because, one after the other, they travel the road. And so says Christ : * Of course, if you follow Me, you will join Me ; and where I am, there shall also My servant be.' The implications of a Christian life, which is true following of Christ here, necessarily led to the confidence that in that future there will be union with Him. That is a deep thought, which might afford material for much to be said, but on which I cannot dwell now. I remarked at an early stage of this sermon how singular it was that our Lord should present Himself as the Pattern for all human excellence. Is it not even more singular that He should venture to present His own companionship as the sufficient recompense for every sorrow, for every effort, for all pain, for all pilgrimage? To be with Him, He thinks, is enough for any man and enough for all men. Who did He think Himself to be? What did He suppose His re- lation to the rest of us to be, who could thus calmly suggest to the world that the only thing that a heart needed for blessedness was to be beside Him? And we believe it, too little as it influences our lives. * To be with Christ ' is ' very much better '; better than all I eneath the stars ; better than all on this side eternity. 138 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xii. What does our Lord mean by this all-sufficient hope ? We know very little of that dim region beyond, but we know that until He comes again His departed servants are absent from the body. And, in our sense of the word, there can be no place for spirits thus free from corporeal environment. And so place, to-day at all events for the departed saints, and in a subordinate degree all through eternity, even when they are clothed with a glorified body, must be but a symbol of state, of con- dition, of spiritual character. ' Where I am there shall My servant be,' means specially ' What I am, that shall My servant be.' This perfect conformity to that dear Lord, whose footsteps we have followed ; assimilation there, which is the issue of imitation here, though broken and imperfect, this is the hope that may gladden and animate every Christian heart. To be with Him is to be like Him, and therefore to be conscious of His presence in some fashion so intimate, so certain, as that all our earthly notions of presence, derived from the juxtaposition of corporeal frames, are infinite distance as compared with it. That is what my text dimly shadows for us. We know not how that union, which is to be as close as is possible while the distinction of personality is retained, may be accomplished. But this we know, that the coalescence of two drops of mercury, the running together of two drops of water, the blending of heart with heart here in love, are distance in comparison with the complete union of Christ and of the happy soul that rests in Him, as in an atmosphere and an ocean. Oh, brethren ! it is not a thing to talk about ; it is a thing to take to our hearts, and in silence to be thankful for ; ' absent from the body ; present with the Lord.' And is that not enough ? The ground of it is enough. V.26] AFTER CHRIST: WITH CHRIST 139 * If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.' That future companionship is guaranteed to the Christian man by the words of Incarnate Truth, and by the resurrection of his Lord. The ground of it is enough, and the contents are enough — enough for faith ; enough for hope ; enough for peace ; enough for work ; and eminently enough for comfort. Ah ! there are many other questions that we would fain ask, but to which there is no reply; but as the good old rough music of one of the eighteenth-century worthies has it, we have sufficient. ♦ My knowledge of that life is small, The eye of faith is dim ; But 'tis enough that Christ knows all, And I shall be with Him.' *It is enough for the disciple that he be as* (that is, with) ' his Master.' So let us take that thought to our hearts and animate ourselves with it, for it is legitimate for us to do so. That one hope is sufficient for us all. Only let us remember that, according to the teaching of my text, the companionship that blesses the future is the issue of following Him now. I know of no magic in death that is able to change the direction in which a man's face is turned. As he is travelling and has travelled, so he will travel when he comes through the tunnel, and out into the brighter light yonder. The line of a railway marked upon a map may stop at the boundaries of the country with which the map is concerned, but it is clearly going somewhere, and in the same direction. You want the other sheet of the map in order to see whither it is going. That is like 140 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xii. your life. The map stops very abruptly, but the line does not stop. Take an unfinished row of tenements. On the last house there stick out bricks preparatory to the continuation of the row. And so our lives are, as it were, studded over with protuberances and pre- parations for the attachment thereto of a ' house not made with hands,' and yet conformed in its architecture to the row that we have built. The man that follows will attain. For life, the all-sufficient law is, after Christ; for hope, the all-sufficient assurance is, with Christ. THE UNIVERSAL MAGNET ' I, if I be lifted up . . . will draw all men unto Me.'— John xii. 32. ' Never man spake like this Man,' said the wondering Temple officials who were sent to apprehend Jesus. There are many aspects of our Lord's teaching in which it strikes one as unique ; but perhaps none is more singular than the boundless boldness of His assertions of His importance to the world. Just think of such sayings as these : ' I am the Light of the world ' ; ' I am the Bread of Life ' ; ' I am the Door ' ; ' A greater than Solomon is here ' ; ' In this place is One greater than the Temple.' We do not usually attach much importance to men's estimate of themselves ; and gigantic claims such as these are generally met by incredulity or scorn. But the strange thing about Christ's loftiest assertions of His world-wide worth and personal sinlessness is that they provoke no contradiction, and that the world takes Him at His own valuation. So profound is the impression that He has made, that men assent when He says, ' I am meek and lowly in heart,' and do not answer V.32] THE UNIVERSAL MAGNET 141 as they would to anybody else, * If you were, you would never have said so.' Now there is no more startling utterance of this ex- traordinary self-consciousness of Jesus Christ than the words that I have used for my text. They go deep down into the secret of His power. They open a glimpse into His inmost thoughts about Himself which He very seldom shows us. And they come to each of us with a very touching and strong personal appeal as to what we are doing with, and how we individually are responding to, that universal appeal on which He says that He is exercising. I. So I wish to dwell on these words now, and ask you first to notice here our Lord's forecasting of the Cross. A handful of Greeks had come up to Jerusalem to the Passover, and they desired to see Jesus, perhaps only because they had heard about Him, and to gratify some fleeting curiosity ; perhaps for some deeper and more sacred reason. But in that tiny incident our Lord sees the first green blade coming up above the ground which was the prophet of an abundant harvest ; the first drop of a great abundance of rain. He recognises that He is beginning to pass out from Israel into the world. But the thought of His world-wide influence thus indicated and prophesied immediately brings along with it the thought of what must be gone through before that influence can be established. And he dis- cerns that, like the corn of wheat that falls into the ground, the condition of fruitfulness for Him is death. Now we are to remember that our Lord here is within a few hours of Gethsemane, and a few days of the Cross, and that events had so unfolded themselves that it needed no prophet to see that there could only be one end to the duel which he had deliberately 142 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xii. brought about between Himself and the rulers of Israel. So that I build nothing upon the anticipation of the Cross, which comes out at this stage in our Lord's history, for any man in His position might have seen, as clearly as He did, that His path was blocked, and that very near at hand, by the grim instrument of death. But then remember that this same expression of my text occurs at a very much earlier period of our Lord's career, and that if we accept this Gospel of John, at the very beginning of it He said, ' As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up ' ; and that that was no mere passing thought is obvious from the fact that midway in His career, if we accept the testimony of the same Gospel, He used the same expression to cavilling opponents when He said : ' "S\Tien ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am He.' And so at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of His career the same idea is cast into the same words, a witness of the hold that it had upon Him, and the continual presence of it to His consciousness. I do not need to refer here to other illustrations and proofs of the same thing, only I desire to say, as plainly and strongly as I can, that modern ideas that Jesus Christ only recognised the necessity of His death at a late stage of His work, and that like other reformers, He began with buoyant hope, and thought that He had but to speak and the world would hear, and, like other reformers, was disenchanted by degrees, are, in my poor judgment, utterly baseless, and bluntly contra- dicted by the Gospel narratives.. And so, dear brethren, this is the image that rises before us, and that ought to appeal to us all very plainly ; a Christ who, from the fii-st moment of His consciousness of Messiahship— and V.32] THE UNIVERSAL MAGNET 143 how early that consciousness was I am not here to inquire — was conscious likewise of the death that was to close it. * He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,' and likewise for this end, ' to give His life a ransom for the many.' That gracious, gentle life, full of all charities, and long-suffering, and sweet goodness, and patience, was not the life of a Man whose heart was at leisure from all anxiety about Himself, but the life of a Man before whom there stood, ever grim and distinct away on the horizon, the Cross and Himself upon it. You all remember a well-known picture that suggests the 'Shadow of Death,' the shadow of the Cross falling, unseen by Him, but seen with open eyes of horror by His mother. But the reality is a far more pathetic one than that; it is this, that He came on purpose to die. But now there is another point suggested by these remarkable words, and that is that our Lord regarded the Cross of shame as exaltation or ' lifting up.' I do not believe that the use of this remarkable phrase in our text finds its explanation in the few inches of eleva- tion above the surface of the ground to which the crucified victims were usually raised. That is there, of course, but there is something far deeper and more wonderful than that in the background, and it is this in part, that that Cross, to Christ's eyes, bore a double aspect. So far as the inflicters or the externals of it were concerned, it was ignominy, shame, agony, the very lowest point of humiliation. But there was another side to it. What in one aspect is the nadir, the lowest point beneath men's feet, is in another aspect the zenith, the very highest point in the bending heaven above us. So throughout this Gospel, and very emphatically in the text, we find that we have the complement of the 144 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xii. Pauline view of the Cross, which is, that it was shame and agony. For our Lord says, * Now the hour is come when the Son of Man shall be glorified.' Whether it is glory or shame depends on what it was that bound Him there. The reason for His enduring it makes it the very climax and flaming summit of His flaming love. And, therefore, He is lifted up not merely because the Cross is elevated above the ground on the little eleva- tion of Calvary, but that Cross is His throne, because there, in highest and sovereign fashion, are set forth His glories, the glories of His love, and of the * grace and truth ' of which He was ' full.' So let us not forget this double aspect, and whilst we bow before Him who ' endured the Cross, despising the shame,' let us also try to understand and to feel what He means when, in the vision of it, He said, ' the hour is come that the Son of Man shall be glorified.' It was meant for mockery, but mockery veiled unsuspected truth when they twined round His pale brows the crown of thorns, thereby setting forth unconsciously the ever- lasting truth that sovereignty is won by suffering ; and placed in His unresisting hand the sceptre of reed, thereby setting forth the deep truth of His kingdom, that dominion is exercised in gentleness. Mightier than all rods of iron, or sharp swords which con- querors wield, and more lustrous and splendid than tiaras of gold glistening with diamonds, are the sceptre of reed in the hands, and the crown of thorns on the head, of the exalted, because crucified, Man of Sorrows. But there is still another aspect of Christ's vision of His Cross, for the * lifting up ' on it necessarily draws after it the lifting up to the dominion of the heavens. And so the Apostle, using a word kindred with that of my text, but intensifying it by addition, says, 'He V.32] THE UNIVERSAL MAGNET 145 became obedient even unto the death of the Cross, wherefore God also hath highly lifted Him up.' So here we have Christ's own conception of His death, that it was inevitable, that it was exaltation even in the act of dying, and that it drew after it, of inevitable necessity, dominion exercised from the heavens over all the earth. He was lifted up on Calvary, and because He was lifted up He has carried our manhood into the place of glory, and sitteth at the right hand of the Majesty on high. So much for the first point to which I would desire to turn your attention. II. Now we have here our Lord disclosing the secret of His attractive power. ' I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.' That 'if expresses no doubt, it only sets forth the condition. The Christ lifted up on the Cross is the Christ that draws men. Now I would have you notice the fact that our Lord thus unveils, as it were, where His power to influence individuals and humanity chiefly resides. He speaks about His death in altogether a different fashion from that of other men, for He does not merely say, ' If I be lifted up from the earth, this story of the Cross will draw men,' but He says, * I will ' do it ; and thus contemplates, as I shall have to say in a moment, continuous personal influence all through the ages. Now that is not how other people have to speak about their deaths, for all other men who have in- fluenced the world for good or for evil, thinkers and benefactors, and reformers, social and religious, all of them come under the one law that their death is no part of their activity, but terminates their work, and that thereafter, with few exceptions, and for brief periods, their influence is a diminishing quantity. So VOL. II. K 146 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xii. one Apostle had to say, ' To abide in the flesh is more needful for you,' and another had to say, ' I will en- deavour that after my decease ye may keep in mind the things that I have told you ' ; and all thinkers and teachers and helpers glide away further and further, and are wrapped about with thicker and thicker mists of oblivion, and their influence becomes less and less. The best that history can say about any of them is, ' This man, having served his generation by the will of God, fell on sleep.' But that other Man who was lifted on the Cross saw no corruption, and the death which puts a period to all other men's work was planted right in the centre of His, and was itself part of that work, and was followed by a new form of it which is to endure for ever. The Cross is the magnet of Christianity. Jesus Christ draws men, but it is by His Cross mainly, and that He felt this profoundly is plain enough, not only from such utterances as this of my text, but, to go no further, from the fact that He has asked us to remember only one thing about Him, and has estab- lished that ordinance of the Communion or the Lord's Supper, which is to remind us always, and to bear witness to the world, of where is the centre of His work, and the fact which He most desires that men should keep in mind, not the graciousness of His words, not their wisdom, not the good deeds that He did, but ' This is My body broken for you . . . this cup is the New Testament in My blood.' A religion which has for its chief rite the symbol of a death, must enshrine that death in the very heart of the forces to which it trusts to renew the world, and to bless individual souls. If, then, that is true, if Jesus Christ was not all V.32] THE UNIVERSAL MAGKET 147 wrong when He spoke as He did in my text, then the question arises, what is it about His death that makes it the magnet that will draw all men ? Men are drawn by cords of love. They may be driven by other means, but they are drawn only by love. And what is it that makes Christ's death the highest and noblest and most wonderful and transcendent manifestation of love that the world has ever seen, or ever can see ? No doubt you will think me very narrow and old- fashioned when I answer the question, with the pro- foundest conviction of my own mind, and, I hope, the trust of my own heart. The one thing that entitles men to interpret Christ's death as the supreme mani- festation of love is that it was a death voluntarily undertaken for a world's sins. If you do not believe that, will you tell me what claim on your heart Christ has because He died ? Has Socrates any claim on your heart ? And are there not hundreds and thousands of martyrs who have just as much right to be regarded vrith reverence and affection as this Galilean carpenter's Son has, unless, when He died, He died as the Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, and for yours and mine ? I know all the pathetic beauty of the story. I know how many men's hearts are moved in some degree by the life and death of our Lord, who yet would hesitate to adopt the full-toned utterance which I have now been giving. But I would beseech you, dear friends, to lay this question seriously to heart, whether there is any legitimate reason for the reverence, the love, the worship, which the world is giving to this Galilean young man, if you strike out the thought that it was because He loved the world that He chose to die to loose it from the bands of its sin. It may be, it is, a most pathetic and lovely story, 148 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xii. but it has not power to draw all men, unless it deals with that w^hich all men need, and unless it is the self- surrender of the Son of God for the whole world. III. And now, lastly, we have here our Lord antici- pating continuous and universal influence. I have already drawn attention to the peculiar full- ness of the form of expression in my text, which, fairly interpreted, does certainly imply that our Lord at that supreme moment looked forward, as I have already said, to His death, not as putting a period to His work, but as being the transition from one form of influence operating upon a very narrow circle, to another form of influence which would one day flood the world. I do not need to dwell upon that thought, beyond seeking to emphasise this truth, that one ought to feel that Jesus Christ has a living connection now with each of us. It is not merely that the story of the Cross is left to work its results, but, as I for my part believe, that the dear Lord, who, before He became Man, was the Light of the World, and enlightened every man that came into it, after His death is yet more the Light of the World, and is exercising influence all over the earth, not only by conscience and the light that is within us, nor only through the effects of the record of His past, but by the continuous operations of His Spirit. I do not dwell upon that thought further than to say that I beseech you to think of Jesus Christ, not as One who died for our sins only, but as one who lives to-day, and to-day, in no rhetorical exaggeration but in simple and profound truth, is ready to help and to bless and to be with every one of us. * It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right band of God, who also maketh intercession for us.' V. 32] THE UNIVERSAL MAGNET 149 But, beyond that, mark His confidence of universal influence : ' I will draw all men.' I need not dwell upon the distinct adaptation of Christian truth, and of that sacrifice on the Cross, to the needs of all men. It is the universal remedy, for it goes direct to the universal epidemic. The thing that men and women want most, the thing that you want most, is that your relation with God shall be set right, and that you shall be delivered from the guilt of past sin, from the exposure to its power in the present and in the future. Whatever diversities of climate, civilisation, culture, character the world holds, every man is like every other man in this, that he has ' sinned and come short of the glory of God.' And it is because Christ's Cross goes direct to deal with that condition of things that the preaching of it is a gospel, not for this phase of society or that type of men or the other stage of culture, but that it is meant for, and is able to deliver and to bless, every man. So, brethren, a universal attraction is raying out from Christ's Cross, and from Himself to each of us. But that universal attraction can be resisted. If a man plants his feet firmly and wide apart, and holds on with both hands to some staple or holdfast, then the drawing cannot draw. There is the attraction, but he is not attracted. You demagnetise Christianity, as all history shows, if you strike out the death on the Cross for a world's sin. What is left is not a magnet, but a bit of scrap iron. And you can take yourself away from the influence of the attraction if you will, some of us by active resistance, some of us by mere negligence, as a cord cast over some slippery body with the purpose of drawing it, may slip off, and the thing lie there unmoved. 150 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xii. And so I come to you now, dear friends, with the plain question, What are you doing in response to Christ's drawing of you ? He has died for you on the Cross ; does that not draw ? He lives to bless you ; does that not draw ? He loves you with love change- less as a God, with love warm and emotional as a man ; does that not draw? He speaks to you, I venture to say, through my poor words, and says, ' Come unto Me, and I will give you rest ' ; does that not draw ? We are all in the bog. He stands on firm ground, and puts out a hand. If you like to clutch it, by the pledge of the nail-prints on the palm. He will lift you from 'the horrible pit and the miry clay, and set your feet upon a rock.' God grant that all of us may say, * Draw us, and we will run after Thee ' ! THE SON OF MAN '. . . Who is this Son of Man?'— John xii. 34. I HAVE thought that a useful sermon may be devoted to the consideration of the remarkable name which our Lord gives to Himself — 'the Son of Man.' And I have selected this instance of its occurrence, rather than any other, because it brings out a point which is too frequently overlooked, viz. that the name was an entirely strange and enigmatical one to the people who heard it. This question of utter bewilderment distinctly shows us that, and negatives, as it seems to me, the supposition which is often made, that the name ' Son of Man,' upon the lips of Jesus Christ, was equivalent to Messiah. Obviously there is no such significance attached to it by those who put this question. As obviously, for another reason, the two names do not cover the same V.34] THE SON OF MAN 151 ground ; for our Lord sedulously avoided calling Him- self the Christ, and habitually called Himself the Son of Man. Now one thing to observe about this name is that it is never found upon the lips of any but Jesus Christ. No man ever called him the Son of Man whilst He was upon earth, and only once do we find it applied to Him in the rest of Scripture, and that is on the occasion on which the first martyr, Stephen, dying at the foot of the old wall, saw ' the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.' Two other apparent instances of the use of the expression occur, both of them in the Book of Revelation, both of them quotations from the Old Testament, and in both the more probable reading gives ' a Son of Man,' not ' the Son of Man.' One more preliminary remark and I will pass to the title itself. The name has been often supposed to be taken from the remarkable prophecy in the Book of Daniel, of one ' like a son of man,' who receives from the Ancient of Days an everlasting kingdom which triumphs over those kingdoms of brute force which the prophet had seen. No doubt there is a connection between the prophecy and our Lord's use of the name, but it is to be observed that what the prophet speaks of is not ' the Son,' but ' one like a son of man ' ; or in other words, that what the prophecy dwells upon is simply the manhood of the future King in contradis- tinction to the bestial forms of Lion and Leopard and Bear, whose kingdoms go down before him. Of course Christ fulfils that prediction, and is the ' One like a son of man,' but we cannot say that the title is derived from the prophecy, in which, strictly speaking, it does not occur. 152 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xii. What, then, is the force of this name, as applied to Himself by our Lord? First, we have in it Christ putting out His hand, if I may say so, to draw us to Himself— identifying Himself with us. Then we have, just as distinctly, Christ, by the use of this name, in a very real sense distinguish- ing Himself from us, and claiming to hold a unique and solitary relation to mankind. And then we have Christ, by the use of this name in its connection with the ancient prophecy, pointing us onward to a wonder- ful future. I. First then, Christ thereby identifies Himself with us. The name Son of Man, whatever more it means, declares the historical fact of His Incarnation, and the reality and genuineness, the completeness and fullness, of His assumption of humanity. And so it is signi- ficant to notice that the name is employed continually in the places in the Gospels where especial emphasis is to be placed, for some reason or other, upon our Lord's manhood, as, for instance, when He would bring into view the depth of His humiliation. It is this name that He uses when He says: 'Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.' The use of the term there is very significant and profound; He contrasts His homelessness, not with the homes of men that dwell in palaces, but with the homes of the inferior creatures. As if He would say, ' Not merely am I indi- vidually homeless and shelterless, but I am so because I am truly a man, the only creature that builds houses, and the only creature that has not a home. Foxes have holes, anywhere they can rest, the birds of the air have,' not as our Bible gives it, * nests,' but ' roost- ing-places; any bough will do for them. All living V.34] THE SON OF MAN 153 creatures are at home in this material universe ; I, as a Representative of humanity, wander a pilgrim and a sojourner.' We are all restless and homeless; the creatures correspond to their environment. We have desires and longings, wild yearnings, and deep-seated needs, that ' wander through eternity ' ; the Son of Man, the representative of manhood, ' hath not where to lay His head.' Then the same expression is employed on occasions when our Lord desires to emphasise the completeness of His participation in all our conditions. As, for in- stance, 'the Son of Man came eating and drinking,' knowing the ordinary limitations and necessities of corporeal humanity; having the ordinary dependence upon external things; nor unwilling to taste, with pure and thankful lip, whatever gladness may be found in man's path through the supply of natural appetites. And the name is employed habitually on occasions when He desires to emphasise His manhood as having truly taken upon itself the whole weight and weari- ness of man's sin, and the whole burden of man's guilt, and the whole tragicalness of the penalties thereof, as in the familiar passages, so numerous that I need only refer to them and need not attempt to quote them, in which we read of the Son of Man being ' betrayed into the hands of sinners ' ; or in those words, for instance, which so marvellously blend the lowli- ness of the Man and the lofty consciousness of the mysterious relation which He bears to the whole world; 'The Son of Man came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for the many.' Now if we gather all these instances together (and 154 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xii. they are only specimens culled almost at random), and meditate for a moment on the Name as illuminated by such words as these, they suggest to us, first, how truly and how blessedly He is * bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh.' All our human joys were His. He knew all human sorrow. The ordinary wants of human nature belonged to Him ; He hungered, He thirsted, and was weary; He ate and drank and slept. The ordinary wants of the human heart He knew ; He was hurt by hatred, stung by ingratitude, yearned for love ; His spirit expanded amongst friends, and was pained when they fell away. He fought and toiled, and sorrowed and enjoyed. He had to pray, to trust, and to weep. He was a Son of Man, a true man among men. His life was brief ; we have but fragmentary records of it for three short years. In outward form it covers but a narrow area of human experience, and large tracts of human life seem to be unrepresented in it. Yet all ages and classes of men, in all circumstances, however unlike those of the peasant Rabbi who died when he was just entering mature manhood, may feel that this man comes closer to them than all beside. Whether for stimulus for duty, or for grace and patience in sorrow, or for restraint in enjoyment, or for the hallowing of all circumstances and all tasks, the presence and ex- ample of the Son of Man are sufficient. Wherever we go, we may track His footsteps by the drops of His blood upon the sharp flints that we have to tread. In all narrow passes, ^vhere the briars tear the wool of the flock, we may see, left there on the thorns, what they rent from the pure fleece of the Lamb of God that went before. The Son of Man is our Brother and our Example. And is it not beautiful, and does it not speak to ua V.34] THE SON OF MAN 155 touchingly and sweetly of our Lord's earnest desire to get very near us and to bring us very near to Him, that this name, which emphasises humiliation and weakness and the likeness to ourselves, should be the name that is always upon His lips ? Just as, if I may compare great things with small, some teacher or philanthropist, that went away from civilised into savage life, might leave behind him the name by which he was known in Europe, and adopt some barbarous designation that was significant in the language of the savage tribe to whom he was sent, and say to them : ' That is my name now, call me by that,' so this great Leader of our souls, who has landed upon our coasts with His hands full of blessings. His heart full of love, has taken a name that makes Him one of ourselves, and is never wearied of speaking to our hearts, and telling us that it is that by which He chooses to be known. It is a touch of the same infinite condescen- sion which prompted His coming, that makes Him choose as His favourite and habitual designation the name of weakness and identification, the name 'Son of Man.' II. But now turn to what is equally distinct and clear in this title. Here we have our Lord distinguish- ing Himself from us, and plainly claiming a unique relationship to the whole world. Just fancy how absurd it would be for one of us to be perpetually insisting on the fact that he was a man, to be taking that as his continual description of himself, and pressing it upon people's attention as if there was something strange about it. The idea is preposterous ; and the very frequency and emphasis with which the name comes from our Lord's lips, lead one to suspect that there is something lying behind it more than 156 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xii. appears on the surface. That impression is conjfirmed and made a conviction, if you mark the article which is prefixed, the Son of Man. A Son of man is a very different idea. When He says ' the Son of Man ' He seems to declare that in Himself there are gathered up all the qualities that constitute humanity ; that He is, to use modern language, the realised Ideal of manhood, the typical Man, in whom is everything that belongs to manhood, and who stands forth as complete and per- fect. Appropriately, then, the name is continually used with suggestions of authority and dignity contrasting with those of humiliation. ' The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath,' ' The Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins,' and the like. So that you cannot get away from this, that this Man whom the whole world has conspired to profess to admire for His gentleness, and His meekness, and His lowliness, and His religious sanity, stood forward and said : ' I am complete and perfect, and everything that belongs to manhood you will find in Me.' And it is very significant in this connection that the designation occurs more frequently in the first three Gospels than in the fourth ; which is alleged to present higher notions of the nature and personality of Jesus Christ than are found in the other three. There are more instances in Matthew's Gospel in which our Lord calls Himself the Son of Man, with all the implication of uniqueness and completeness which that name carries ; there are more even in the Gospel of the Servant, the Gospel according to Mark, than in the Gospel of the Word of God, the Gospel according to John. And so I think we are entitled to say that by this name, which the testimony of all our four Gospels makes it certain, even to the most suspicious reader, that Christ applied V.34] THE SON OF MAN 157 to Himself, He declared His humanity, His absolutely perfect and complete humanity. In substance He is claiming the same thing for Him- self that Paul claimed for Him when he called Him 'the second Adam.' There have been two men in the world, says Paul, the fallen Adam, with his infantile and undeveloped perfections, and the Christ, with His full and complete humanity. All other men are fragments, He is the 'entire and perfect chrysolite.' As one of our epigrammatic seventeenth-century divines has it, ' Aristotle is but the rubbish of an Adam,' and Adam is but the dim outline sketch of a Jesus. Between these two there has been none. The one Man as God meant him, the type of man, the perfect humanity, the realised ideal, the home of all the powers of manhood, is He who Himself claimed that place for Himself, and stepped into it with the strange words upon His lips, ' I am meek and lowly of heart.' ' Who is this Son of Man ? ' Ah, brethren ! ' who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean ? Not one.' A perfect Son of Man, born of a woman, ' bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh,' must be more than a Son of Man. And that moral completeness and that ideal perfection in all the faculties and parts of His nature which drove the betrayer to clash down the thirty pieces of silver in the sanctuary in despair that ' he had betrayed inno- cent blood ' ; which made Pilate wash his hands ' of the blood of this just person ' ; which stopped the mouths of the adversaries when He challenged them to con- vince Him of sin, and which all the world ever since has recognised and honoured, ought surely to lead us to ask the question, 'Who is this Son of Man?' and to answer it, as I pray we all may answer it, * Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God ! ' 158 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xii. This fact of His absolute completeness invests His work with an altogether unique relationship to the rest of mankind. And so we find the name employed upon His own lips in connections in which He desires to set Himself forth as the single and solitary medium of all blessing and salvation to the world — as, for instance, 'The Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for the many'; 'Ye shall see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.' He is what the ladder was in the vision to the patriarch, with his head upon the stone and the Syrian sky over him — the Medium of all communica- tion between earth and heaven. And that ladder which joins heaven to earth, and brings all angels down on the solitary watchers, comes straight down, as the sun- beams do, to every man wherever he is. Each of us sees the shortest line from his own standing-pl.ice to the central light, and its beams come straight to the apple of each man's eye. So because Christ is more than a man, because He is the Man, His blessings come to each of us direct and straight, as if they had been launched from the throne with a purpose and a message to us alone. Thus He who is in Himself perfect man- hood touches all men, and all men touch Him, and the Son of Man, whom God hath sealed, will give to every one of us the bread from heaven. The unique relation- ship which brings Him into connection with every soul of man upon earth, and makes Him the Saviour, Helper, and Friend of us all, is expressed when He calls Himself the Son of Man. III. And now one last word in regard to the predic- tive character of this designation. Even if we cannot regard it as being actually a quota- tion of the prophecy in the Book of Daniel, there is an V.34] THE SON OF MAN 159 evident allusion to that prophecy, and to the whole circle of ideas presented by it, of an everlasting dominion, which shall destroy all antagonistic power, and of a solemn coming for judgment of One like a Son of Man. We find, then, the name occurring on our Lord's lips very frequently in that class of passages with which we are so familiar, and which are so numerous that I need not quote them to you ; in which He speaks of the second coming of the Son of Man; as, for instance, that one which connects itself most distinctly with the Book of Daniel, the words of high solemn import before the tribunal of the High Priest. 'Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming in the glories of heaven'; or as when He says, 'He hath given Him authority to execute judg- ment also because He is the Son of Man ' ; or as when the proto-martyr, with his last words, declared in sudden burst of surprise and thrill of gladness, ' I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.' Two thoughts are all that I can touch on here. The name carries with it a blessed message of the present ac- tivity and perpetual manhood of the risen Lord. Stephen does not see Him as all the rest of Scripture paints Him, sitting at the right hand of God, but standing there. The emblem of His sitting at the right hand of God represents triumphant calmness in the undisturbed confidence of victory. It declares the completeness of the work that He has done upon earth, and that all the history of the future is but the unfolding of the conse- quences of that work which by His own testimony was finished when He bowed His head and died. But the dying martyr sees him standing, as if He had sprung to His feet in response to the cry of faith from the first of 160 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xii. the long train of sufferers. It is as if the Emperor upon His seat, looking down upon the arena where the gladi- ators are contending to the death, could not sit quiet amongst the flashing axes of the lictors and the purple curtains of His throne, and see their death-struggles, but must spring to His feet to help them, or at least bend down with the look and with the reality of sym- pathy. So Christ, the Son of Man, bearing His man- hood with Him, * Still bends on earth a Brother's eye,* and 19 the ever-present Helper of all struggling souls that put their trust in Him. Then as to the other and main thought here in view — the second coming of that perfect Manhood to be our Judge. It is too solemn a subject for human lips to say much about. It has been vulgarised, and the power taken out of it by many well-meant attempts to impress it upon men's hearts. But that coming is certain. That manhood could not end its relationship to us with the Cross, nor yet with the slow, solemn, upward progress which bore Him, pouring down blessings, up into the same bright cloud that had dwelt between the cherubim and had received Him into its mysterious recesses at the Transfiguration. That He should come again is the only possible completion of His work. That Judge is our Brother. So in the deepest sense we are tried by our Peer. Man's knowledge at its highest cannot tell the moral desert of anything that any man does. You may judge action, you may sentence for breaches of law, you may declare a man clear of any blame for such, but for any one to read the secrets of another heart is beyond human power ; and if He that is the Judge were only a man V. 34] THE SON OF MAN 161 there would be wild work, and many a blunder in the sentences that were given. But when we think that it is the Son of Man that is our Judge, then we know that the Omniscience of divinity, that ponders the hearts and reads the motives, will be all blended with the tenderness and sympathy of humanity ; that we shall be judged by One who knows all our frame, not only with the knowledge of a Maker, if I may so say, as from outside, but with the knowledge of a possessor, as from within ; that we shall be judged by One who has fought and conquered in all temptations ; and most blessed of all, that we shall be judged by One with whom we have only to plead His own work and His own love and Hig Cross that we may stand acquitted before His throne. So, brethren, in that one mighty Name all the past, present, and future are gathered and blended together. In the past His Cross fills the retrospect : for the future there rises up, white and solemn. His judgment throne. * The Son of Man is come to give His life a ransom for the many ' ; that is the centre point of. all history. The Son of Man shall come to judge the world ; that is the one thought that fills the future. Let us lay hold by true faith on the mighty work which He has done on the Cross, then we shall rejoice to see our Brother on the throne, when the 'judgment is set and the books are opened.' Oh, friends, cleave to Him ever in trust and love, in communion and imitation, in obedience and confession, that ye may be accounted worthy 'to stand before the Son of Man ' in that day 1 VOL. II. A PARTING WARNING ' Jesus therefore said unto them, Yet a little while is the light among you. Walk while ye have the light, that darkness overtake you not : and he that walketh in the darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have the light, believe on the light, that ye may become sons of light.'— John xii. 35, 36 (R. V.). These are the last words of our Lord's public ministry. He afterwards spoke only to His followers in the sweet seclusion of the sympathetic home at Bethany, and amid the sanctities of the upper chamber. ' Yet a little while am I with you ' ; — the sun had all but set. Two days more, and the Cross was reared on Calvary, but there was yet time to turn to the light. And so His divine charity ' hoped all things,' and continued to plead with those who had so long rejected Him. As befits a last appeal, the words unveil the heart of Christ. They are solemn with warning, radiant with promise, almost beseeching in their earnestness. He loves too well not to warn, but He will not leave the bitterness of threatening as a last savour on the palate, and so the lips, into which grace is poured, bade farewell to His enemies with the promise and the hope that even they may become ' the sons of light.' The solemnity of the occasion, then, gives great force to the words ; and the remembrance of it sets us on the right track for estimating their significance. Let us see what lessons for us there may be in Christ's last words to the world. I. There is, first, a self -revelation. It is no mere grammatical pedantry that draws atten- tion to the fact that four times in this text does our Lord employ the definite article, and speak of ' the light.' And that that is no mere accident is obvious from the fact that, in the last clause of our text, where the 162 vs. 35. 36] A PARTING WARNING 163 general idea of light is all that is meant to be enii)hatic, the article is omitted. 'Yet a little while is the light with you ; walk while ye have the light. . . . While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.' So then, most distinctly here, in His final appeal to the world. He draws back the curtain, as it were, takes away the shade that had covered the lamp, and lets one full beam stream out for the last impression that He leaves. Is it not profoundly significant and impressive that then, of all times, over and over again, in the compass of these short verses, this Galilean peasant makes the tremendous assertion that He is what none other can be, in a solitary and transcendent sense, the Light of Mankind ? Undismayed by universal rejection, unfaltering in spite of the curling lips of incredulity and scorn, unbroken by the near approach of certain martyrdom. He presents Himself before the world as its Light. Nothing in the history of mad, fanatical claims to inspiration and divine authority is to be compared with these assertions of our Lord. He is the fontal Source, He says, of all illumination ; He stands before the whole race, and claims to be ' the Master-Light of all our seeing.' Whatsoever ideas of clearness of knowledge, of rapture of joy, of whiteness of purity, are symbolised by that great emblem. He declares that He manifests them all to men. Others may shine ; but they are, as He said, ' lights kindled,' and therefore ' burning.' Others may shine, but they have caught their radiance from Him. All teachers, all helpers, all thinkers draw their inspiration, if they have any, from Him, in whom was life, and the Life was the Light of men. There has been blazing in the heavens of late a 164 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xn. new star, that burst upon astonished astronomers in a void spot ; but its brilliancy, though far transcending that of our sun, soon began to wane, and before long, apparently, there will be blackness again where there was blackness before. So all lights but His are tempo- rary as well as derived, and men ' willing for a season to rejoice ' in the fleeting splendours, and to listen to the teacher of a day, lose the illumination of his presence and guidance of his thoughts as the ages roll on. But the Light is ' not for an age, but for all time.' Now, brethren, this is Christ's estimate of Himself. I dwell not on it for the purpose of seeking to exhaust its depth of significance. In it there lies the assertion that He, and He only, is the source of all valid know- ledge of the deepest sort concerning God and men, and their mutual relations. In it lie the assertion that He, and He only, is the source of all true gladness that may blend with our else darkened lives, and the further assertion that from Him, and from Him alone, can flow to us the purity that shall make us pure. We have to turn to that Man close by His Cross, on whom while He spoke the penumbra of the eclipse of death was beginning to show itself, and to say to Him what the Psalmist said of old to the Jehovah whom he knew, and whom we recognise as indwelling in Jesus : ' With Thee is the fountain of life. Thou makest us to drink of the river of Thy pleasures. In Thy light shall we see light.' So Christ thought of Himself ; so Christ would have us to think of Him. And it becomes a question for us how, if we refuse to accept that claim of a solitary, underived, eternal, and universal power of illuminating mankind, we can save His character for the veneration vs. 35, 36] A PARTING WARNING 165 of the world. We cannot go picking and choosing amongst the Master's words, and say • This is historical, and that mythical.' We cannot select some of them, and leave others on one side. You must take the whole Christ if you take any Christ. And the whole Christ is He who, within sight of Calvary, and in the face of all but universal rejection, lifted up His voice, and, as His valediction to the world, declared, ' I am the Light of the world.' So He says to us. Oh that we all might cast ourselves before Him, with the cry, 'Lighten our darkness, O Lord, we beseech Thee!' II. Secondly, we have here a double exhortation. ' Walk in the light ; believe in the light.' These two sum up all our duties; or rather, unveil for us the whole fullness of the possible privileges and blessings of which our relation to that light is capable. It is obvious that the latter of them is the deeper in idea, and the prior in order of sequence. There must be the 'belief in the light before there is the 'walk' in the light. Walking includes the ideas of external activity and of progress. And so, putting these two exhorta- tions together, we get the whole of Christianity con- sidered as subjective. ' Believe in the light ; trust in the light,' and then ' walk ' in it. A word, then, about each of these branches of this double exhortation. ' Trust in the light.' The figure seems to be dropped at first sight ; for it wants little faith to believe in the sunshine at midday; and when the light is pouring out, how can a man but see it? But the apparent incongruity of the metaphor points to something very deep in regard to the spiritual side. We cannot but believe in the light that meets the eye when it meets it, but it is possible for a man to blind himself to the 166 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xii. shining of this light. Therefore the exhortation is needed — ' Believe in the light,' for only by believing it can you see it. Just as the eye is the organ of sight, just as its nerves are sensitive to the mysterious finger of the beam, just as on its mirroring surface impinges the gentle but mighty force that has winged its way across all the space between us and the sun, and yet falls without hurting, so faith, the ' inward eye which makes the bliss ' of the solitary soul, is the one organ by which you and I can see the light. 'Seeing is believing,' says the old proverb. That is true in regard to the physical. Believing is seeing, is much rather the way to put it in regard to the spiritual and divine. Only as we trust the light do we see the light. Unless you and I put our confidence in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, we have no adequate knowledge of Him and no clear vision of Him. We must know that we may love ; but we must love that we may know. We must believe that we may see. True, we must see that we may believe, but the pre- liminary vision which precedes belief is slight and dim as compared with the solidity and the depth of assurance with which we apprehend the reality and know the lustre of Him whom our faith has grasped. You will never know the glory of the light, nor the sweetness with which it falls upon the gazing eye, until you turn your face to that Master, and so receive on your susceptible and waiting heart the warmth and the radiance which He only can bestow. ' Believe in the light.' Trust it; or rather, trust Him who is it. He cannot deceive. This light from heaven can never lead astray. Absolutely we may rely upon it ; uncondi- tionally we must follow it. Lean upon Him — to take vs. 35, 36] A PARTING WARNING 167 another metaphor — with all your weight. His arm is strong to bear the burden of our weaknesses, sorrows, and, above all, our sins. 'While ye have light, trust the light.' But then that is not enough. Man, with his double relations, must have an active and external as well as an inw^ard and contemplative life. And so our Lord, side by side with the exhortation on which I have been touching, puts the other one, ' Walk in the light.' Your inward emotions, however deep and precious, however real the affiance, however whole-hearted the love, are maimed and stunted, and not what the light requires, unless there follows upon them the activity of the walk. What do we get the daylight for? To sit and gaze at it? By no means; but that it may guide us upon our path and help us in all our work. And so all Christian people need ever to remember that Jesus Christ has indissolubly bound together these two phases of our relation to Him as the light of life — inward and blessed contemplation by faith and outward practical activity. To walk is, of course, the familiar metaphor for the external life of man, and all our deeds are to be in conformity with the Light, and in communion with Him. This is the deepest desig- nation, perhaps, of the true character of a Christian life in its external aspect — that it walks in Christ, doing nothing but as His light shines, and ever bearing along with it conscious fellowship with Him who is thus the guiding and irradiating and gladdening and sanctifying life of our lives. ' Walk in the light as He is in the light.' Our days fleet and change; His are stable and the same. For, although these words which I have quoted, in their original application refer to God the Father, they are no less true about Him 168 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xii. who rests at the right hand of God, and is one light with Him. He is in the light. We may approximate to that stable and calm radiance, even though our lives are passed through changing scenes, and effort and struggle are their characteristics. And oh ! how blessed, brother, such a life will be, all gladdened by the unsetting and unclouded sunshine that even in the shadiest places shines, and turns the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death into solemn light; teaching gloom to glow with a hidden sun ! But there is not only the idea of activity here, there is the further notion of progress. Unless Christian people to their faith add work, and have both their faith and their consequent work in a continual con- dition of progress and growth, there is little reason to believe that they apprehend the light at all. If you trust the light you will walk in it; and if your days are not in conformity nor in communion with Him, and are not advancing nearer and nearer to the central blaze, then it becomes you to ask yourselves whether you have verily seen at all, or trusted at all, • the Light of life.' III. Thirdly, there is here a warning. 'Walk whilst ye have the light, lest the darknesa come upon you.' That is the summing up of the whole history of that stiff-necked and marvellous people. For what has all the history of Israel been since that day but groping in the wilderness without any pillar of fire ? But there is more than that in it. Christ gives us this one solemn warning of what falls on us if we turn away from Him. Rejected light is the parent of the densest darkness, and the man who, having the light, does not trust it, piles around himself thick clouds of obscurity and gloom, far more doleful vs. 35, 36] A PARTING WARNING 169 and impenetrable than the twilight that glimmers round the men who have never known the daylight of revelation. The history of un-Christian and anti- Christian Christendom is a terrible commentary upon these words of the Master, and the cries that we hear all round us to-day from men who will not follow the light of Christ, and moan or boast that they dwell in agnostic darkness, tell us that, of all the eclipses that can fall upon heart and mind, there is none so dismal or thunderously dark as that of the men who, having seen the light of Christ in the sky, have turned from it and said, 'It is no light, it is only a mock sun.' Brethren, tempt not that fate. And if Christian men and women do not advance in their knowledge and their conformity, like clouds of darkness will fall upon them. None is so hopeless as the unprogressive Christian, none so far away as those who have been brought nigh and have never come any nigher. If you believe the light, see that you growingly trust and walk in it, else darkness will come upon you, and you will not know whither you go. IV. And lastly, there is here a hope and a promise. ' That ye may be the sons of light.' Faith and obedience turn a man into the likeness of that in which he trusts. If we trust Jesus we open our hearts to Him ; and if we open our hearts to Him He will come in. If you are in a darkened room, what have you to do in order to have it filled with glad sunshine? Open the shutters and pull up the blinds, and the light will do all the rest. If you trust the light, it will rush in and fill every crevice and cranny of your hearts. Faith and obedience will mould us, by their natural effect, into the resemblance of that on 170 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. which we lean. As one of the old German mystics said, ' What thou lovest, that thou dost become.' And it is blessedly true. The same principle makes Chris- tians like Christ, and makes idolaters like their gods. ' They that make them are like unto them ; so is every one that trusteth in them,' says one of the Psalms. ' They followed after vanity and are become vain,' says the chronicler of Israel's defections. 'We with un- veiled faces beholding' — or mirroring — 'the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image.' Trust the light and you become ' sons of the light.' And so, dear friends, all of us may hope that by degrees, as the reward of faith and of walking, we still may bear the image of the heavenly, even here on earth. While as yet we only believe in the light, we may participate in its transforming power, like some far-off planet on the utmost bounds of some solar system, that receives faint and small supplies of light and ^varmth, through a thick atmosphere of vapour, and across immeasurable spaces. But we have the assurance that we shall be carried nearer our centre, and then, like the planets that are closer to the sun than our earth is, we shall feel the fuller power of the heat, and be saturated with the glory of the light. 'We shall see Him as He is'; and then we too 'shall blaze forth like the sun in the kingdom of our Father.' THE LOVE OF THE DEPARTING CHRIST * . . . When Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.'— John xiii. 1. The latter half of St. John's Gospel, which begins with these words, is the Holy of Holies of the New V. 1] THE DEPARTING CHRIST 171 Testament. Nowhere else do the blended lights of our Lord's superhuman dignity and human tender- ness shine with such lambent brightness. Nowhere else is His speech at once so simple and so deep. No- where else have we the heart of God so unveiled to us. On no other page, even of the Bible, have so many eyes, glistening with tears, looked and had the tears dried. The immortal words which Christ spoke in that upper chamber are His highest self-revelation in speech, even as the Cross to which they led up is His most perfect self-revelation in act. To this most sacred part of the New Testament my text is the introduction. It unveils to us gleams of Christ's heart, and does what the Evangelists very seldom venture to do, viz. gives us some sort of analysis of the influences which then determined the flow and the shape of our Lord's love. Many good commentators prefer to read the last words of my text, 'He loved them unto the utter- most ' rather than ' unto the end ' — so taking them to express the depth and degree rather than the permanence and perpetuity of our Lord's love. And that seems to me to be by far the worthier and the nobler meaning, as well as the one which is borne out by the usual signification of the expression in other Greek authors. It is much to know that the emotions of these last moments did not interrupt Christ's love. It is even more to know that in some sense they perfected it, giving even a greater vitality to its tenderness, and a more precious sweetness to its manifestations. So understood, the words explain for us why it was that in the sanctity of the upper chamber there ensued the marvellous act of the foot- washing, the marvellous discourses which follow, and 172 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. the climax of all, that High-priestly prayer. They give utterance to a love which Christ's consciousness at that solemn hour tended to shapen and to deepen. So, under the Evangelist's guidance, we may venture to gaze at least a little way into these depths, and with all reverence to try and see something at all events of the fringe and surface of the love 'which passeth knowledge.' 'Jesus, knowing that His hour was come, that He should depart out of the world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, loved them then unto the uttermost.' My object will be best accomplished by simply following the guidance of the words before us, and asking you to look first at that love as a love which was not interrupted, but perfected by the prospect of separation. I. It would take us much too far away, however interesting the contemplation might be, to dwell with any particularity upon our Lord's consciousness as it is here set forth in that ' He knew that His hour was come, that He should depart out of the world unto the Father.' But I can scarcely avoid noticing, though only in a few sentences, the salient points of that Christ-consciousness as it is set forth here. 'He knew that His hour was come.' All His life was passed under the consciousness of a divine neces- sity laid upon Him, to which He lovingly and cheer- fully yielded Himself. On His lips there are no words more significant, and few more frequent, than that divine ' I must ! ' 'It behoves the Son of Man ' to do this, that, and the other— yielding to the necessity imposed by the Father's will, and sealed by His own loving resolve to be the Saviour of the world. And in like manner, all through His life He declares Him- v.l] THE DEPARTING CHRIST 173 self conscious of the hours which mark the several crises and stages of His mission. They come to Him and He discerns them. No external power can coerce Him to any act till the hour come. No external power can hinder Him from the act when it comes. When the hour strikes He hears the phantom sound of the bell; and, hearing, He obeys. And thus, at the last and supreme moment, to Him it dawned unquestion- able and irrevocable. How did He meet it? Whilst on the one hand there was the shrinking of which we have such pathetic testimony in the broken prayer that He Himself amended — * Father ! save Me from this hour. . . . Yet for this cause came I unto this hour,' — there is a strange, triumphant joy, blending with the shrinking, that the decisive hour is at last come. Mark, too, the form which the consciousness took — not that now the hour had come for suffering or death or bearing the sins of the world — all which aspects of it were nevertheless present to Him, as we know ; but that now He was soon to leave all the world beneath Him and to return to the Father. The terror, the agony, the shame, the mysterious burden of a world's sins were now to be laid upon Him — all these elements are submerged, as it were, and become less conspicuous than the one thought of leaving behind all the limitations, and the humilia- tions, and the compelled association with evil which, like a burning brand laid upon a tender skin, was an hourly and momentary agony to Him, and soaring above them all, unto His own calm home, His habita- tion from eternity with the Father, as He had been before the world was. How strange this blending of shrinking and of eagerness, of sorrow and of joy, of human trembling consciousness of impending death, 174 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. and of triumphant consciousness of the approach of the hour when the Son of Man, even in His bitterest agony and deepest humiliation, should, paradoxically, be glorified, and should 'leave the world to go unto the Father'! We cannot enter with any particularity or depth into this marvellous and unique consciousness, but it is set forth here — and that is the point to which especially I desire to turn your, attention — as the basis and the reason for a special tenderness soften- ing His voice, and taking possession of His heart, as He thought of the impending separation. And is that not beautiful? And does it not help us to realise how truly ' bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh,' and bearing a heart thrilling with all innocent human emotions that divine Saviour was ? We, too, have known what it is to feel, because of approaching separation from dear ones, the need for a tenderer tenderness. At such moments the masks of use and wont drop away, and we are eager to find some word, to put our whole souls into some look, our whole strength into one clinging embrace that may express all our love, and may be a joy to two hearts for ever after to remember. The Master knew that longing, and felt the pain of separation; and He, too, yielded to the human impulse which makes the thought of parting the key to unlock the hidden chambers of the most jealously guarded heart, and let the shyest of its emotions come out for once into the daylight. So, 'knowing that His hour was come. He loved them unto the uttermost.' But there is not only in this a wonderful expression of the true humanity of the Christ, but along with that a suggestion of something more sacred and V. 1] THE DEPARTING CHRIST 175 deeper still. For surely amidst all the parting scenes that the world's literature has enshrined, aindst all the examples of self - oblivion at the last moment, when a martyr has been the comforter of his weep- ing friends, there are none that without degradation to this can be set by the side of this supreme and unique instance of self-oblivion. Did not Christ, for the sake of that handful of poor people, first and directly, and for the rest of us afterwards, of course, secondarily and indirectly, so suppress all the natural emotions of these last moments as that their absolute absence is unique and singular, and points onwards to something more, viz. that this Man who was susceptible of all human affections, and loved us with a love which is not merely high above our grasp, absolute, perfect, changeless and divine, but with a love like our own human affection, had also more than a man's heart to give us, and gave us more, when, that He might comfort and sustain, He crushed down Him- self and went to the Cross with words of tenderness and consolation and encouragement for others upon His lips ? Knowing all that was lying before Him, He was neither absorbed nor confounded, but carried a heart at leisure to love even then ' unto the uttermost.' And if the prospect only sharpened and perfected, nor interrupted for one instant the flow of His love, the reality has no power to do aught else. In the glory, when He reached it, He poured out the same loving heart ; and to-day He looks down upon us with the same Face that bent over the table in the upper room, and the same tenderness flows to us. When John saw his Master next, after His Ascension, amidst the glories of the vision in his rocky Patmos, though His face was as the sun shineth in his strength, it was 176 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. the old face. Though His hand bore the stars in a cluster, it was the hand that had been pierced with the nails. Though the breast was girded with the golden girdle of sovereignty and of priesthood, it was the breast on which John's happy head had lain ; and though the ' Voice was as the sound of many waters,' it soothed itself to a murmur, gentle as that with which the tideless sea about him rippled upon the silvery sand when He said, 'Fear not ... I am the First and the Last.' Knowing that He goes to the Father, He loves to the uttermost, and being with the Father, He still so loves. II. And now I must, with somewhat less of detail, dwell upon the other points which this text brings out for us. It suggests to us next that we have in the love of Jesus Christ a love which is faithful to the obliga- tions of its own past. Having loved. He loves. Because He had been a certain thing, therefore He is and He shall be that same. That is an argument that implies divinity. About no- thing human can we say that because it has been there- fore it shall be. Alas ! about much that is human we have to say the converse, that because it has been, there- fore it will cease to be. And though, blessed be God ! they are few and they are poor who have had no experi- ence in their lives of human hearts whose love in the past has been such that it manifestly is for ever, yet we cannot with the same absolute confidence say about one another, even about the dearest, * Having loved, he loves.' But we can say so about Christ. There is no exhaustion in that great stream that pours out from His heart; no diminution in its flow. They tell us that the central light of our system, that great sun itself, pouring out its rays exhausts its V. 1] THE DEPARTING CHRIST 177 warmth, and were it not continually replenished, must gradually, and even though continually replenished, will ultimately cease to blaze, and be a dead, cold mass of ashes. But this central Light, this heart of Christ, which is the Sun of the World, will endure like the sun, and after the sun is cold. His love will last for ever. He pours it out and has none the less to give. There is no bankruptcy in His expenditure, no exhaustion in His effort, no diminution in His stores. 'Thy mercy endureth for ever'; 'Thou hast loved, therefore Thou wilt love ' is an inference for time and for eternity, on which we may build and rest secure. III. Then, still further, we have here this love sug- gested as being a love which has special tenderness towards its own. 'Having loved His own. He loved them to the uttermost.' These poor men who, with all their errors, did cleave to Him ; who, in some dim way, understood somewhat of His greatness and His sweetness — and do you and I do more? — who, with all their sins, yet were true to Him in the main ; who had surrendered very much to follow Him, and had identified themselves with Him, were they to have no special place in His heart because in that heart the whole world lay? Is there any reason why we should be afraid of saying that the universal love of Jesus Christ, which gathers into His bosom all mankind, does fall with special tenderness and sweet- ness upon those who have made Him theirs and have surrendered themselves to be His ? Surely it must be that He has special nearness to those who love Him ; surely it is reasonable that He should have special delight in those who try to resemble Him ; surely it is only what one might expect of Him that He should in VOL. II. M 178 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. a special manner honour the drafts, so to s^eak, of those who have confidence in Him, and are building their whole lives upon Him. Surely, because the sun shines down upon dunghills and all impurities, that is no reason why it should not lie with special brightness on the polished mirror that reflects its lustre. Surely, because Jesus Christ loves — Blessed be His name ! — the publicans and the harlots and the outcasts and the sinners, that is no reason why He should not bend with special tenderness over those who, loving Him, try to serve Him, and have set their whole hopes upon Him. The rainbow strides across the sky, but there is a rain- bow in every little dewdrop that hangs glistening on the blades of grass. There is nothing limited, nothing sectional, nothing narrow in the proclamation of a special tenderness of Christ towards His own, when you accompany with that truth this other, that all men are besought by Him to come into that circle of ' His own,' and that only they themselves shut any out therefrom. Blessed be His name ! the whole w^orld dwells in His love, but there is an inner chamber in which He discovers all His heart to those who find in that heart their Heaven and their all. * He came to His own,' in the wider sense of the word, and ' His own received Him not'; but also, 'having loved His own He loved them unto the end.' There are textures and lives which can only absorb some of the rays of light in the spectrum ; some that are only capable of taking, so to speak, the violet rays of judgment and of wrath, and some who open their hearts for the ruddy bright- ness at the other end of the line. Do you see to it, brethren, that you are of that inner circle who receive the whole Christ into their hearts, and to whom He can unfold the fullness of His love. v.l] THE DEPARTING CHRIST 179 IV. And, lastly, my text suggests that love of Christ as being made sxDccially tender by the necessities and the dangers of His friends. ' He loved His own which were in the world,' and so loving them, 'loved them to the uttermost.' We have, running through these precious discourses which follow my text, many allusions to the separation which was to ensue, and to His leaving His followers in circumstances of peculiar peril, defenceless and solitary. ' I come unto Thee, and am no more in the world,' says He in the final High-priestly prayer, ' but these are in the world. Holy Father, keep them through Thine own name.' The same contrast between the certain security of the Shepherd and the troubled perils of the scattered flock seems to be in the words of my text, and suggests a sweet and blessed reason for the special tenderness with which He looked upon them. As a dying father on his deathbed may yearn over orphans that he is leaving defenceless, so Christ is here represented as conscious of an accession even to the tender longings of His heart, when He thought of the loneliness and the dangers to which His followers were to be exposed. Ah ! It seems a harsh contrast between the Em- peror, sitting throned there between the purple curtains, and the poor athletes wrestling in the arena below. It seems strange to think that a loving Master has gone up into the mountain, and has left His disciples to toil in rowing on the stormy sea of life ; but the contrast is only apparent. For you and I, if we love and trust Him, are with Him ' in the heavenly places ' even whilst we toil here, and He is with us, working with us, even whilst He ' sitteth at the right hand of God.' "We may be sure of this, brethren, that that love ever 180 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. increases its manifestations according to our deepening necessities. The darker the night the more lustrous the stars. The deeper, the narrower, the savager, the Alpine gorge, usually the fuller and the swifter the stream that runs through it. And the more that enemies and fears gather round about us, the sweeter will be the accents of our Comforter's voice, and the fuller will be the gifts of tenderness and grace with which He draws near to us. Our sorrows, dangers, necessities, are doors through which His love can come nigh. So, dear friends, we have had experience of sweet and transient human love ; we have had experience of changeful and ineffectual love ; turn away from them all to this immortal, deep heart of Christ's, welling over with a love which no change can affect, which no separa- tion can diminish, which no sin can provoke, which becomes greater and tenderer as our necessities in- crease, and ask Him to fill your hearts with that, that you may ' know the length and breadth and depth and height of that love w^hich passeth knowledge,' and so * be filled with all the fullness of God.* THE SERVANT-MASTER • Jesas knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God, and went to God ; He riseth from supper, and laid aside His garments; and took a towel, and girded Himself. After that He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded.' — John xiii. 3-5. It has been suggested that the dispute as to ' which was the greatest,' which broke the sanctities of the upper chamber, was connected with the unwillingness of each of the Apostles to perform the menial office of washing the feet of his companions. They had come in vs. 3-5] THE SERVANT-MASTER 181 from Bethany, and needed the service. But apparently it was omitted, and although we can scarcely suppose that the transcendent act which is recorded in my text was performed at the beginning of the meal, yet I think we shall not be wrong if we see in it a reference to the neglected service. The Evangelist who tells us of the dispute, and does not tell us of the foot-washing, preserves a sentence which finds its true meaning only in this incident, * I am among you as He that serveth.' And although John is the only recorder of this pathetic incident, there are allusions in other parts of Scripture which seem to hint at it. As, for instance, when Paul speaks of * taking upon Him the form of a servant ' ; and still more strikingly when Peter employs the remarkable word, which he does employ in his exhortation, ' Be ye clothed with humility.' For the word rendered there ' clothed ' occurs only in that one place in Scripture, and means literally the putting on of a slave's costume. One can scarcely help, then, seeing in these three pas- sages to which I have referred echoes of this incident which John alone preserves to us. And so we get at once a hint of the harmony and of the incompleteness of the Gospel records. I. Consider the motives of this act. Now that is ground upon which the Evangelists very seldom enter. They tell us what Christ did, but very rarely do they give us any glimpses into why He did it. But this section of the Gospel is remarkable for its full and careful analysis of what Christ's impelling motives were in the final acts of His life. How did John find out why Christ did this deed ? Perhaps he who had ' leaned upon His bosom at supper,' and was evidently very closely associated with Him, may, in 182 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. some unrecorded hour of intimate communion during the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascen- sion, have heard from the Master the exposition of His motives. But more probably, I think, the long years of growing likeness to his Lord, and of meditation upon the depth of meaning in the smallest events that his faithful memory recalled, taught him to understand Christ's purpose and motives. ' The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him,' and the liker we get to our Master and the more we are filled with His Spirit, the more easy will it be for us to divine the purpose and the motives of His actions, whether as they are recorded in the Scripture or as they come to us in the experience of daily life. But, passing that point, I desire for a moment to fix your attention on the twofold key to our Lord's action which is given in this context. There is, first of all, in the first verse of the chapter, a general exposition of what was uppermost in His mind and heart during the whole of the period in the upper room. The act in our text, and the wonderful words which follow in the subsequent chapters, crowned by that great interces- sory prayer, seem to me to be all explained for us by this first unveiling of His motives. ' When Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.' And then the words of my text, which apply more specifically to the single incident with which they are brought into connection, tell us in addition why this one manifestation of Christ's love was given. ' Know- ing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God, and went to God.' There, then, are two explanations of motive, the one vs. 35] THE SERVANT-MASTER 183 covering a wider area than the other, but both con- verging on the incident before us. The first of these is just this — the consciousness of impending separation moved Christ to a more than ordinarily tender manifestation of His love. For the ren- dering which you will find in the margin of the Revised Version, ' He loved them to the uttermost,' seems to me to be truer to the Evangelist's meaning than the other, * He loved them unto the end.' For it was more to John's purpose to tell us that the shadow of the Cross only brought to the surface in more blessed and wonderful representation the deep love of His heart, than simply to tell us that that shadow did not stop its flow. It is much to know that all through His sorrow He continued to love ; it is far more to know that the sorrow sharp- ened its poignancy, and deepened its depth, and made more tender its tenderness. How near to the man Christ that thought brings us ! Do we not all know the impulse to make parting moments tender moments? The masks of use and wont drop off ; the reticence which we, perhaps wisely, ordinarily cultivate in regard to our deepest feelings melts away. We yearn to condense all our unspoken love into some one word, act, look, or embrace, which it may afterwards be life to two hearts to remember. And Jesus Christ felt this. Because He was going away He could not but pour out Himself yet more com- pletely than in the ordinary tenor of His life. The earthquake lays bare hidden veins of gold, and the heart opens itself out when separation impends. We shall never understand the works of Jesus Christ if we do as we are all apt to do, think of them as having only a didactic and doctrinal purpose. We must remember that there is in Him the true play of a human heart, 184 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. and that it was to relieve His own love, as well as to teach these men their duty, that He rose from the supper, and prepared Himself to wash the disciples' feet. Then, on the other hand, the other motive which is brought by the Evangelists more immediately into con- nection with this incident is, ' knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God, and went to God.' The consciousness of the highest dignity impels to the lowliest submission. 'All things given into His hands,' means universal and absolute dominion. ' That He was come from God,' means pre-existence, voluntary incarnation, an eternal divine nature, and unbroken communion with the Father. ' That He went to God,' means a voluntary departure from this low world, and a return to ' His own calm home, His habitation from eternity.' And, gathered all together, the phrases imply His absolute consciousness of His divine nature. It was that that sent Him with the towel round His loins to wash the foul feet of the pedestrians who had come by the dusty and hot way from Bethany, and through all the abominations of an Eastern city, into the upper chamber. This was He who from the beginning ' was with God, and was God.' This was He who was the Lord of Death, Victor over the grave. This was He who by His own power ascended up on high, and reigns on the throne of the universe to-day. This was He whose breast the same Evangelist had seen before he wrote his Gospel, •girded with the golden girdle' of priesthood and of sovereignty; and holding, in the hands that had laid the towel on the disciples' feet, the seven stars. vs. 3-5] THE SERVANT-MASTER 185 Oh, brethren 1 if we believed our creeds, how our hearts would melt with wonder and awe that He who was so high stooped so low ! ' Knowing that He came from God, and went to God,' and that even when He was kneeling there before these men, ' the Father had given all things into His hands,' what did He do ? Triumph? Show His majesty? Flash His power? Demand service ? * Girded Himself with a towel and washed His disciples' feet ' ! The consciousness of loftiness does not alone avail to explain the transcendent lowliness. You need the former motive to be joined with it, because it is only love which bends loftiness to service, and turns the con- sciousness of superiority into yearning to divest one- self of the superiorities that separate, and to emphasise the emotions which unite. II. The detailed completeness of the act. The remarkable particularity of the account of the stages of the humiliation suggests the eye-witness. John carried them all in his mind ineffaceably, and long, long years after that memorable hour we hear him recalling each detail of the scene. We can see the little group startled by the disturbance of the order of the meal as He rose from the table, and the hushed wonder and the open-lipped expectation with which they watched to see what the next step would be. He rises from the table and divests Himself of the upper garments which impeded movement. 'What will He do next ? ' He takes the basin, standing there to be ready for washing the apostles' feet, but unused, and not even filled with water. He fills it Himself, asking none to help Him. He girds the towel round Him ; and then, perhaps, begins with the betrayer ; at any rate, not with Peter. 186 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. Cannot you see them, as they look? Do not you feel the solemnity of the detailed particular account of each step ? And may we not also say that all is a parable, or illustration, on a lower level, of the very same principles which were at work in the mightier fact of the greater condescension of His * becoming flesh and dwelling among us'? He 'rose from the table,' as He rose from His place in 'the bosom of the Father.' He disturbed the meal as He broke the festivities of the heavens. He divested Himself of His garments, as 'He thought not equality with God a thing to be worn eagerly'; and 'He girded Himself with the towel,' as He put on the weakness of flesh. Himself He filled the basin, by His own work providing the means of cleansing ; and Himself applied the cleansing to the feet of those who were with Him. It is all a working out of the same double motive which drew Him downwards to our earth. The reason why He stooped, with His hands to wash the disciples' feet, is the same as the reason why He had hands to wash with — viz., that knowing Himself to be high over all, and loving all, He chose to become one with us, that we might become like unto Him. So the de- tails of the act are a parable of His incarnation and death. III. And then, still further, note the purpose of the deed. Now although I have said that we never rightly understand our Lord's actions if we are always looking for dogmatic or doctrinal purposes, and thinking of them rather as being lectures, and sometimes rebukes in act, than as being the outgush of His emotions and His human-divine nature, yet we have also to take VB 3-5] THE SERVANT-MASTER 187 into account their moral and spiritual lessons. His acts are \a ords and His words are acts. And although the main and primary purpose of this incident, in so far as it had any other purpose than to relieve Christ's own love by manifesting itself, and to comfort the disciples' hearts by the tender manifestation, was to teach them their duty, as we shall presently see, yet the special aspect of cleansing, which comes out so emphatically and prominently in the episode of Peter's refusal, is to be carried all along through the interpretation of the incident. This was the reason why Jesus Christ came from heaven and assumed flesh, and this was the reason why Jesus Christ, assuming flesh, bowed Himself to this menial office — to make men clean. I venture to say that we never understand Jesus Christ and His work until we recognise this as its pro- minent purpose, to cleanse us from sin. An inadequate conception of what we need, shallow, superficial views of the gravity and universality and obstinacy of the fact of sin, are an impenetrable veil between us and all real understanding of Jesus Christ. There is no adequate motive for such an astounding fact as the incarnation and sacrifice of the Son of God, except the purpose of redeeming the world. If you do not believe that you — you individually, and all of us your brethren — need to be cleansed, you will find it hard to believe in the divinity and atonement of Jesus Christ. If you have been down into the depths of your own heart, and found out what tremendous, diabolic power your own evil nature and sin have upon you, then you will not be content with anything less than the incarnate God who stoops from heaven to bear the burden of your sin, and to take it all away. If you want to understand why He laid aside His garments 188 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. and took the servile form of our manhood, the appeal of man's sin to His love and the answer of His Divine condescension are the only explanation. Again, let me remind you that there is no cleansing without Christ. Can you do it for yourselves, do you think ? There is an old proverb, ' One hand washes the other.' That is true about stains on the flesh. It is not true about stains on our spirits. Nobody can do it for us but Jesus Christ alone. He kneels before us, having the right and the power to wash us because He has died for us. Kings of England used to touch for ' the king's evil,' and lay their pure fingers upon feculent masses of corruption. Our King's touch is sovereign for the corruption and incipient putrefaction of our sin ; and there is no power in heaven or earth that will make a man clean except the power of Jesus Christ. It is either Jesus Christ or filthiness. If I might pass from my text for one moment, I would remind you of the episode which immediately follows, and suggest that if Jesus Christ is not cleans- ing us He is nothing to us. ' If I wash thee not, thou hast no part in Me.' I know, of course, that it is possible to have partial, rudimentary, and sometimes reverent conceptions of that Lord without recognising in Him the great 'Fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness.' But I am sure of this, that there is no real, living possession of Jesus Christ such as men's souls need, and such as will outlast the disintegrating influences of death, unless it be such a possession of Him as appropriates for its own, primarily. His cleansing power. First of all He must cleanse, and then all other aspects of His glory, and gifts of His grace, will pour into our hearts. No understanding of Christ, then, without the recog* V3.3-5] THE SERVANT-MASTER 189 nition that cleansing is the purpose and the vindication of His incarnation and sacrifice ; no cleansing without Christ ; no Christ worth calling by the name without cleansing. IV. And so, lastly, note the pattern in this act. You will remember that it is followed by solemn words spoken after He had taken His garments and resumed His place at the table, in which there blended, in the most wonderful fashion, the consciousness of authority, both as Teacher of truth and as Guide of life, and the sweetest and most loving lowliness. In them Jesus prescribed the wonderful act of His con- descending love and cleansing power as the law of the Christian life. There are too many of us who profess to be quite willing to trust to Jesus Christ as the Cleanser of our souls who are not nearly so willing to accept His Example as the pattern for our lives ; and I would have you note, as an extremely remarkable point, that all the New Testament references to our Lord as being our Example are given in immediate connection with His passion. The very part of His life which we generally regard as being most absolutely unique and inimitable is the fact in His life which Apostles and Evangelists select as the one to set before us for our example. Do you ask if any man can copy the sufferings of Jesus Christ ? In regard to their virtue and efficacy. No. In regard to their motive — in one aspect, No ; in another aspect, Yes. In regard to the spirit that impelled Him we may copy Him. The smallest trickle of water down a city gutter will carve out of the mud at its side little banks and cliffs, and exhibit aU the phenomena of erosion on the largest scale, as the Mississippi does over half a continent, and the tiniest 190 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. little wave in a basin will fall into the same curves as the billows of mid-ocean. You and I, in our little lives, may even aspire to ' do as I have done to you.' The true use of superiority is service. Noblesse oblige ! Rank, wealth, capacity, talents, all things are given to us that we may use them to the last particle for our fellows. Only when the world and society have awakened to that great truth which the towel- girded, kneeling Christ has taught us, will society be organised on the principles that God meant. But, further, the highest form of service is to cleanse. Cleansing is always dirty work lov the cleaners, as every houfeemaid knows. You cannot make people clean by scolding them, by lecturing them, by patronis- ing them. You have to go down into the filth if you mean to lift them out of it ; and leave your smelling- bottles behind; and think nothing repulsive if your stooping to it may save a brother. The only way by w^hich w^e can imitate that example is by, first of all, participating in it for ourselves. We must, first of all, have the Cross as our trust, before it can become our pattern and our law^. We must first say, ' Lord ! not my feet only, but also my hands and my head,' and then, in the measure in which w^e ourselves have received the cleansing benediction, we shall be impelled and able to lay our gentle hands on foulness and leprosy; and to say to all the impure, 'Jesus Christ, who hath cleansed me, makes thee clean.' THE DISMISSAL OF JUDAS *. . . Then said Jesus unto Judas, That thou doest. do quickly.'— John xiii. 27. When our Lord gave the morsel, dipped in the dish, to Judas, only John knew the significance of the act. But V.27] THE DISMISSAL OF JUDAS 191 if we supplement the narrative here with that given by Matthew, we shall find that, accompanying the gift of the sop, was a brief dialogue in which the betrayer, with unabashed front, hypocritically said, * Lord ! Is it I ? ' and heard the solemn, sad answer, ' Thou sayest ! ' Two things, then, appealed to him at the naoment : one, the conviction that he was discovered ; the other, the wonderful assurance that he was still loved, for the gift of the morsel was a token of friendliness. He shut his heart against them both ; and as he shut his heart against Christ he opened it to the devil. So ' after the sop Satan entered into him.' At that moment a soul committed suicide ; and none of those that sat by, with the exception of Christ and the 'disciple whom He loved,' so much as dreamed of the tragedy going on before their eyes. I know not that there are anywhere words more weighty and wonderful than those of our text. And I desire to try if I can at all make you feel as I feel, their solemn signification and force. ' That thou doest, do quickly.' I. I hear in them, first, the voice of despairing love abandoning the conflict. If I have rightly construed the meaning of the in- cident, this is the plain meaning of it. And you will observe that the Revised Version, more accurately and closely rendering the words of our text, begins with a ' Therefore' ' Therefore said Jesus unto him,' because the die was cast; because the will of Judas had con- clusively welcomed Satan, and conclusively rejected Christ; therefore, knowing that remonstrance was vaiii, knowing that ohe deed was, in effect, done, Jesua Christ, that Incarnate Charity which 'believeth all things, and hopeth all things,' abandoned the man to 192 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. himself, and said, * There, then, if thou wilt thou must. I have done all I can ; my last arrow is shot, and it has missed the target. That thou doest, do quickly.' There is a world of solemn meaning in that one little word ' doest.' It teaches us the old lesson, which sense is so apt to forget, that the true actor in man's deeds is ' the hidden man of the heart,' and that when it has acted, it matters comparatively little whether the mere tool and instrument of the hands or of the other organs have carried out the behest. The thing is done before it is done when the man has resolved, with a fixed will, to do it. The betrayal was as good as in process, though no step beyond the introductory ones, which could easily have been cancelled, had yet been accomplished. Be- cause there was a fixed purpose which could not be altered by anything now, therefore Jesus Christ regards the act as completed. It is what we think in our hearts that we are ; and our fixed determinations, our inclina- tions of will, are far more truly our doings than the mere consequences of these, embodied in actuality. It is but a poor estimate of a man that judges him by the test of what he has done. What he has wanted to do is the true man ; what he has attempted to do. ' It was well that it was in thine heart ! ' saith God to the king who thought of building the Temple which he was never allowed to rear. ' It is ill that is in thine heart,* says He by whom actions are weighed, to the sinner in purpose, though his clean hands lie idly in his lap. These hidden movements of desii-e and will that never come to the surface are our true selves. Look after them, and the deeds will take care of themselves. Serpent's eggs have serpents in them. And he that has determined upon a sin has done the sin, whether his hands have been put to it or no. V.27] THE DISMISSAL OF JUDAS 193 But, then, turn for a moment to the other thought that is suggested here — that solemn picture of a soul left to do as it will, because divine love has no other restraints which it can impose, and is bankrupt of motives that it can adduce to prevent it from its madness. Now I do not believe, for my part, that any man in this world is so all-round ' sold unto sin ' as that the seeking love of God gives him up as irre- claimable. I do not believe that there are any people concerning whom it is true that it is impossible for the grace of God to find some chink and cranny in their souls through which it can enter and change them. There are no hopeless cases as long as men are here. But, then, though there may not be so, in regard to the whole sweep of the man's nature, yet every one of us, over and over again, has known what it is to come exactly into that position in regard to some single evil or other, concerning which we have so set our teeth and planted our feet at such an angle of resistance as that God gives up dealing with us and leaves us, as He did with Balaam when He opposed his covetous inclinations to all the remonstrances of Heaven. God said at last to him ' Go ! ' because it was the best way to teach him what a fool he had been in wanting to go. Thus, when we determine to set ourselves against the pleadings and the beseechings of divine love, the truest kindness is to fling the reins upon our necks, and let us gallop ourselves into a sweat and weariness, and then we shall be more amenable to the touch of the rein thereafter. Are there any people whom God is teaching obedience to His light touch, by letting them run their course after some one specific sin ? Perhaps there are. At all events, let us remember that that position of being allowed to VOL. II. N 194 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. do as we like is one to which we all tend, in the measure in which we indulge our inclinations, and shut our hearts against God's pleadings. There is such a thing as a conscience seared as with a hot iron. They used to say that there were witches' marks on the body, places where, if you stuck a pin in, there was no feeling. Men cover themselves all over with marks of that sort, which are not sensitive even to the prick of a divine remonstrance, rebuke, or retribution. They ' wipe their mouths and say I have done no harm,' You can tie up the clapper of the bell that swings on the black rock, on which, if you drift, you go to pieces. You can silence the Voice by the simple process of neglecting it. Judas set his teeth against two things, the solemn conviction that Jesus Christ knew his sin, and the saving assurance that Jesus Christ loved him still. And whosoever resists either of these two is getting perilously near to the point where, not in petulance but in pity, God will say, ' Very well, I have called and ye have refused. Now go, and do what you want to do, and see how you like it when it is done. "What thou doest, do quickly.' Do you remember the other word, ' If 'timre done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly ' ? But since consequences last when deeds are past, perhaps you had better halt before you determine to do them. II. Now, secondly, I hear in these words the voice of strangely blended majesty and humiliation. 'What thou doest, do!' Judas thought he had got possession of Christ's person, and was His master in a very real sense. When lo ! all at once the victim assumes the position of the Lord and commands, showing the traitor that instead of thwarting and counterworking, he was but carrying out the designs V.27] THE DISMISSAL OF JUDAS 195 of his fancied victim ; and that he was an instrument in Christ's hands for the execution of His will. And these two thoughts, how, in effect, all antagonism, all malicious hatred, all violent opposition of every sort but work in with Christ's purpose, and carry out His intention; and how, at the moments of deepest ap- parent degradation. He towers, in manifest Majesty and Masterhood, seem to me to be plainly taught in the word before us. He uses his foes for the furtherance of His pur- pose. That has been the history of the world ever since. ' The floods, O Lord, have lifted up their voice.' And what have they done? Smashing against the breakwater, they but consolidate its mighty blocks, and prove that * the Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters.' It has been so in the past, it is so to-day; it will be so till the end. Every Judas is unconsciously the servant of Him whom he seeks to betray; and finds out to his bewilderment that what he meant for a death-blow is fulfilling the very purpose and will of the Lord against whom he has turned. Again, the combination here, in such remarkable juxtaposition, of the two things, a willing submission to the utmost extremity of shame, which the treasonous heart can froth out in its malice and, at the same time, a rising up in conscious majesty and lordship, are suggested to us by the words before us. That combina- tion of utter lowliness and transcendent loftiness runs through the whole life and history of our Lord. Did you ever think how strong an argument that strange combination, brought out so inartificially throughout the whole of the Gospels, is for their historical ver- acity ? Suppose the problem had been given to poets 196 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. to create and to set in a series of appropriate scenes a character with these two opposites stamped equally upon it, neither of them impinging upon the domain of the other — viz., utter humility and humiliation in circumstance, and majestic sovereignty and elevation above all circumstances — do you think that any of them could have solved the problem, though ^schylus and Shakespeare had been amongst them, as these four men that wrote these four little tracts that we call Gospels have done ? How comes it that this most difficult of literary problems has been so triumphantly solved by these men? I think there is only one answer, 'Because they were reporters, and imagined nothing, but observed everything, and repeated what had happened.' He reconciled these opposites who was the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, and yet the Eternal Son of the Father; and the Gospels have solved the problem only because they are simple records of its solution by Him. Wherever in His history there is some trait of lowli- ness there is by the side of it a flash of majesty. Wherever in His history there is some gleaming out from the veil of flesh of the hidden glory of divinity, there is immediately some drawing of the veil across the glory. And the two things do not contra- dict nor confuse, but we stand before that double picture of a Christ betrayed and of a Christ command- ing His betrayer, and using his treason, and we say, ♦ The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.' III. Again, I hear the voice of instinctive human weakness. •That thou doest, do quickly.' It may be doubtful, and some of you perhaps may not be disposed to follow me in my remark, but to my ear that sounds just like V.27] THE DISMISSAL OF JUDAS 197 the utterance of that instinctive dislike of suspense and of the long hanging over us of the sword by a hair, which we all know so well. Better to suffer than to wait for suffering. The loudest thunder-crash is not so awe-inspiring as the dread silence of nature when the sky is black before the peal rolls through the clouds. Many a martyr has prayed for a swift ending of his troubles. Many a sorrowing heart, that has been sitting cowering under the anticipation of coming evils, has wished that the string could be pulled, as it were, and they could all come down in one cold flood, and be done with, rather than trickle drop by drop. They tell us that the bravest soldiers dislike the five minutes when they stand in rank before the first shot is fired. And with all reverence I venture to think that He who knew all our weaknesses in so far as weakness was not sin, is here letting us see how He, too, desired that the evil which was coming might come quickly, and that the painful tension of expecta- tion might be as brief as possible. That may be doubt- ful ; I do not dwell upon it, but I suggest it for your consideration. IV. And then I pass on to the last of the tones that I hear in these utterances — the voice of the willing Sacrifice for the sins of the world. 'That thou doest, do quickly.' There is nothing more obvious throughout the whole of the latter portion of the Gospel narrative than the way in which, increasingly towards its close, Jesus seemed to hasten to the Cross. You remember His own sayings : ' I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished. I am come to cast fire on the earth ; would it were already kindled ! ' You remem- ber with what a strange air — I was going to use an 198 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xhi. inappropriate word, and say, of alacrity; but, at all events, of fixed resolve — He journeyed from Galilee, in that last solemn march to Jerusalem, and hov^^ the disciples followed, astonished at the unwonted look of decision and absorption that was printed upon His coun- tenance. If we consider His doings in that last week in Jerusalem, how he courted publicity, how He avoided no encounter with His official enemies, how He sharpened His tones, not exactly so as to provoke, but certainly so as by no means to conciliate, we shall see, I think, in it all, His consciousness that the hour had come, and His absolute readiness and willingness to be offered for the world's sin. He stretches out His hands, as it were, to draw the Cross nearer to Himself, not with any share in the weakness of a fanatical aspiration after martyrdom, but under a far deeper and more wonderful impulse. Why was Christ so willing, so eager, if I may use the word, that His death should be accomplished? Two reasons, which at the bottom are one, answer the ques- tion. He thus hastened to His Cross because He would obey the Father's will, and because He loved the whole world — you and me and all our fellows. We were each in His heart. It was because He wanted to save thee that He said to Judas, 'Do it quickly, that the world's sal- vation and that man's salvation may be accomplished.' These were the cords that bound Him to the altar. Let us never forget that Judas with his treachery, and rulers with their hostility, and Pilate with his authority, and the soldiers with their nails, and centurions with their lances, and the grim figure of Death itself with its shaft, would have been all equally powerless against Christ if it had not been his loving will to die on the Cross for each of us. V.27] THE GLORY OF THE CROSS 199 Therefore, brethren, as we hear this voice, let us discern in it the tones which warn us of the danger of yielding to inclination and stifling His rebukes, till He abandons us for the moment in despair ; let us hear in it the pathetic voice of a Brother, who knows all our weak- nesses and has felt our emotions ; let us hear the voice of Sovereign Authority which uses its enemies for its purposes, and is never loftier than when it is most lowly, whose Cross is His throne of glory, whose exaltation is His deepest humiliation, and let us hear a love which, •discerning each of us through all the ages and the crowds, went willingly to the Cross because He willed that He should be our Saviour. And seeing that time is short, and the future pre- carious, and delay may darken into loss and rejection, let us take these words as spoken to us in another sense, and hear in them the warning that ' to-day, if we will hear His voice, we harden not our hearts,' and when He says to us, in regard to repentance and faith, and Christian consecration and service, 'That thou doest, do quickly,' let us answer, 'I made haste and delayed not, but made haste to keep Thy command- ments.' THE GLORY OF THE CROSS ' Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said. Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him.'— John xiii. 31, 32. There is something very weird and awful in the brief note of time with which the Evangelist sends Judas on his dark errand. ' He . . . went immediately out, and it was night.' Into the darkness that dark soul went. That hour was ' the power of darkness,' the very key- 200 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. stone of the black arch of man's sin, and some shadow of it fell upon the soul of Christ HimseK. In immediate connection with the departure of the traitor comes this singular burst of triumph in our text. The Evangelist emphasises the connection by that : ' Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said.' There is a wonderful touch of truth and naturalness in that connection. The traitor was gone. His presence had been a restraint ; and now that that ' spot in their feast of charity' had disappeared, the Master felt at ease; and like some stream, out of the bed of which a black rock has been taken, His words flow more freely. How intensely real and human the narrative becomes when we see that Christ, too, felt the oppres- sion of an uncongenial presence, and was relieved and glad at its removal! The departure of the traitor evoked these words of triumph in another way, too. At his going away, we may say, the match was lit that was to be applied to the train. He had gone out on his dark errand, and that brought the Cross within measurable distance of our Lord. Out of a new sense of its nearness He speaks here. So the note of time not only explains to us why our Lord spoke, but puts us on the right track for understanding His words, and makes any other interpretation of them than one impossible. What Judas went to do was the beginning of Christ's glorifying. We have here, then, a triple glorification— the Son of Man glorified in His Cross; God glorified in the Son of Man ; and the Son of Man glorified in God. Let us look at these three thoughts for a few moments now. I. First, we have here the Son of Man glorified in His Cross. The words are a paradox. Strange, that at such a vs. 31, 32] THE GLORY OF THE CROSS 201 moment, when there rose up before Christ all the vision of the shame and the suffering, the pain and the death, and the mysterious sense of abandonment, which was worse than them all. He should seem to stretch out His hands to bring the Cross nearer to Himself, and that His soul should fill with triumph ! There is a double aspect under which our Lord re- garded His sufferings. On the one hand we mark in Him an unmistakable shrinking from the Cross, the innocent shrinking of His manhood expressed in such words as ' I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished ' ; and in such incidents as the agony in Gethsemane. And yet, side by side with that, not overcome by it, but not overcoming it, there is the opposite feeling, the reaching out almost with eagerness to bring the Cross nearer to Himself. These two lie close by each other in His heart. Like the pellucid waters of the Rhine and the turbid stream of the Moselle, that flow side by side over a long space, neither of them blending discernibly with the other, so the shrinking and the desire were contemporaneous in Christ's mind. Here we have the triumphant anticipation rising to the surface, and conquering for a time the shrinking. Why did Christ think of His Cross as a glorifying ? The New Testament generally represents it as the very lowest point of His degradation ; John's Gospel always represents it as the very highest point of His glory. And the two things are both true ; just as the zenith of our sky is the nadir of the sky for those on the other side of the world. The same fact which in one aspect sounds the very lowest depth of Christ's humiliation, in another aspect is the very highest cul- minating point of His glory. 202 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. How did the Cross glorify Christ ? In two ways. It was the revelation of His heart ; it was the throne of His sovereign power. It was the revelation of His heart. All his life long He had been trying to tell the world how much He loved it. His love had been, as it were, filtered by drops through His words, through His deeds, through His whole demeanour and bearing; but in His death it comes in a flood, and pours itself upon the world. All His life long he had been revealing His heart, through the narrow rifts of His deeds, like some slender lancet windows ; but in His death all the barriers are thrown down, and the brightness blazes out upon men. All through His life He had been trying to communicate His love to the world, and the fragrance came from the box of ointment exceeding precious, but when the box was broken the house was filled with the odour. For Him to be known was to be glorified. So pure and perfect was He, that revelation of His character and glorification of Himself were one and the same thing. Because His Cross reveals to the world for all time, and for eternity, too, a love which shrinks from no sacrifice, a love which is capable of the most entire abandonment, a love which is diffused over the whole surface of humanity and through all the ages, a love which comes laden with the richest and the highest gifts, even the turning of selfish and sinful hearts into its own pure and perfect likeness, therefore does He say, in contemplation of that Cross which was to reveal Him for what He was to the world, and to bring His love to every one of us, ' Now is the Son of Man glorified.' We can fancy a mother, for instance, in the anticipa- tion of shame, and ignominy, and suffering, and sorrow, vs. 31. 32] THE GLORY OF THE CROSS 203 and death which she encounters for the sake of some prodigal child, forgetting all the ignominy, and the shame, and the suffering, and the sorrow, and the death, because all these are absorbed in the one thought: 'If I bear them, my poor, wandering, re- bellious child will know at last how much I loved him.' So Christ yearns to impart the knowledge of Himself to us, because by that knowledge we may be won to His love and service; and hence when He looks forward to the agony, and contumely, and sorrow of the close, every other thought is swallowed up in this one : ' They will be the means by w^hich the whole world will find out how deep my heart of love to it was.' Therefore does He triumph and say, 'Now is the Son of Man glorified.' Still further, He regards His Cross as the means of His glorifying, because it is His throne of saving power. The paradoxical words of our text rest upon His pro- found conviction that in His death He was about to put forth a mightier and diviner power than ever He had manifested in His life. They are the same in effect and in tone as the great words :' I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.' Now I want you to ask yourselves one question : In what sense is Christ's Cross Christ's glorifying, unless His Cross bears an altogether different relation to His life from what the death of a great teacher or benefactor ordinarily bears to his ? It is impossible that Christ could have spoken such words as these of my text if He had simply thought of His death as a Plato or a John Howard might have thought of his, as being the close of his activity for the welfare of his fellows. Unless Christ's death has in it some substantive value, unless it is something more than the mere termination of His work for the 204 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [oh. xiii. world, I see not how the words before us can be in- terpreted. If His death is His glorifying, it must be because in that death something is done which was not completed by the life, however fair ; by the words, however wise and tender; by the works of power, however restorative and healing. Here is something more than these present. What more? This more, that His Cross is the * propitiation for the sins of the whole world.' He is glorified therein, not as a Socrates might be glorified by his calm and noble death; not because nothing in His life became Him better than the leaving of it; not because the page that tells the story of His passion is turned to by us as the tenderest and most sacred in the world's records; but because in that death He wrestled with and overcame our foes, and because, like the Jewish hero of old, dying, He pulled down the house which our tyrants had built, and overwhelmed them in its ruins. ' Now is the Son of Man glorified.' And so, brethren, there blend, in that last act of our Lord's — for His death was His act — in strange fashion, the two contradictory ideas of glory and shame ; like some sky, all full of dark thunderclouds, and yet be- tween them the brightest blue and the blazing sunshine. In the Cross, Death crowns Him the Prince of Life, and His Cross is His throne. All His life long He was the Light of the World, but the very noontide hour of His glory was that hour when the shadow of eclipse lay over all the land, and He hung on the Cross dying in the dark. At His ' eventide it was light.' ' He en- dured the Cross, despising the shame'; and lo ! the shame flashed up into the very brightness of glory, and the ignominy and the suffering became the jewels of His crown. ' Now is the Son of Man glorified.' vs. 31, 32] THE GLORY OF THE CROSS 205 II. Now let us turn for a moment to the second of the threefold glorijfications that are set forth here : God glorified in the Son of Man. The mystery deepens as we advance. That God should be glorified in a man is not strange, but that He should be so glorified in the eminent and special fashion which Jesus contemplates here, is strange ; and stranger still when we think that the act in which He was to be glori- fied was the death of an innocent Man. If God, in any special and eminent manner, is glorified in the Cross of Jesus Christ, that implies, as it seems to me, two things at all events — many more which I have not time to touch upon, but two things very plainly. One is that ' God was in Christ,' in some singular and eminent manner. If all His life was a continual manifestation of the divine character, if Christ's words were the divine wisdom, if Christ's compassion was the divine pity, if Christ's lowliness was the divine gentleness, if His whole human life and nature were the brightest and clearest manifestation to the world of what God is, we can understand that the Cross was the highest point of the revelation of the divine nature to the world, and so was the glorifying of God in Him. But if we take any lower view of the relation between God and Christ, I know not how we can acquit these words of our Master of the charge of being a world too wide for the facts of the case. The words involve, as it seems to me, not only that idea of a close, unique union and indwelling of God in Christ, but they involve also this other: that these sufferings bore no relation to the deserts of the person who endured them. If Christ, with His pure and perfect character — the innocency and nobleness of which all that read the Gospels admit — if Christ 206 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. suffered so ; if the highest virtue that was ever seen in this world brought no better wages than shame and spitting and the Cross; if Christ's life and Christ's death are simply a typical example of the world's treat- ment of its greatest benefactors ; then, if they have any bearing at all on the character of God, they cast a shadow rather than a light upon the divine govern- ment, and become not the least formidable of the difficulties and knots that will have to be untied here- after before it shall be clear that God did everything well. But if we can say, ' He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows '; if w^e can say, ' God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself '; if we can say, that His death was the death of Him whom God had appointed to live and die for us, and ' to bear our sins in His own body on the tree,' then, though deep mysteries come with the thought, still we can see that, in a very unique manner, God is glorified and exalted in His death. For if the dying Christ be the Son of God dying for us, then the Cross glorifies God, because it teaches us that the glory of the divine character is the divine love. Of wisdom, or of pow^er, or of any of the more ' majestic ' attributes of the divine nature, that weak Man, hanging dying on the Cross, was a strange em- bodiment ; but if the very heart of the divine bright- ness be the pure w^hite fire of love ; if there be nothing diviner in God than His giving of Himself to His creatures ; if the highest glory of the divine nature be to pity and to bestow, then the Cross upon which Christ died towers above all other revelations as the most awful, the most sacred, the most tender, the most com- plete, the most heart-touching, the most soul-subduing manifestation of the divine nature ; and stars and vs. 31, 32] THE GLORY OF THE CROSS 207 worlds, and angels and mighty creatures, and things in the heights and things in the depths, to each of which have been entrusted some broken syllables of the divine character to make known to the world, dwindle and fade before the brightness, the lambent, gentle brightness that beams out from the Cross of Christ, which proclaims — God is love, is pity, is pardon. And is it not so— is it not so? Is not the thought that has flowed from Christ's Cross through Christen- dom of what our Father in Heaven is, the highest and the most blessed that the world has ever had? Has it not scattered doubts that lay like mountains of ice upon man's heart ? Has it not swept the heavens clear of clouds that wrapped it in darkness? Has it not delivered men from the dreams of gods angry, gods capricious, gods vengeful, gods indifferent, gods simply mighty and vast and awful and unspeakable ? Has it not taught us that love is God, and God is love ; and so brought to the whole w^orld the true Gospel, the Gospel of the grace of God? In that Cross the Father is glorified. III. Now, lastly, we have here the Son of Man glori- fied in the Father. The mysteries and the paradoxes seem to deepen as we advance. * If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him.' Do these words sound to you as if they expressed no more than the confidence of a good man, who, when he was dying, believed that he would be accepted of a loving Father, and would be at rest from his sufferings ? To me they seem to say infinitely more than that. * He shall also glorify Him in Himself.' Mark that ' in Himself.' That is the obvious antithesis to what has been spoken about in the previous clause, 208 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. a glorifying which consisted in a manifestation to the external universe, whereas this is a glorifying within the depths of the divine nature. And the best com- mentary upon it is our Lord's own words: 'Father! glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.' We get a glimpse, as it were, into the very centre of the brightness of God ; and there, walking in that beneficent furnace, we see • One like unto the Son of Man.' Christ anticipates that, in some profound and unspeakable sense. He shall, as it were, be caught up into the divinity, and shall dwell, as indeed He did dwell from the beginning, ' in the bosom of the Father.' ' He shall glorify Him in Himself.' But then mark, still further, that this reception into the bosom of the Father is given to the Son of Man. That is to say, the Man Christ Jesus, the Son of Mary, the Brother of us all, • bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh,' the very Person that walked upon earth and dwelt amongst us is taken up into the heart of God, and in His manhood enters into that same glory, which, from the beginning, the Eternal Word had with God. And still further, not only have we here set forth, in most wondrous language, the reception and incorpora- tion, if we may use such words, into the very centre of divinity, as granted to the Son of Man, but we have that glorifying set forth as commencing immediately upon the completion of God's glorifying by Christ upon the Cross. * He shall straightway glorify Him.' At the instant then, that He said, ' It is finished,' and all that the Cross could do to glorify God was done, at that instant there began, with not a pin-point of interval between them, God's glorifying of the Son in Himself. It began in that Paradise into which we know that upon that day He entered. It was manifested to the vs. 31, 32] THE GLORY OF THE CROSS 209 world when He 'raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory.' It reached a still higher point when ' they brought Him near unto the Ancient of Days,' and ascending up on high, a dominion and a throne and a glory were given to Him which last now, whilst the Son of Man sits in the heavens on the throne of His glory, wielding the attributes of divinity, and adminis- tering the laws of the universe and the mysteries of providence. It shall rise to its highest manifestation before an assembled world, when He ' shall come in His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations.' This, then, was the vision that lay before the Christ in that upper room, the vision of Himself glorified in His extreme shame, because His Cross manifested His love and His saving power ; of God glorified in Him above all other of His acts of manifestation when He died on the Cross, and revealed the very heart of God ; and of Himself glorified in the Father when, exalted high above all creatures. He sitteth upon the Father's throne and rules the Father's realm. And yet from that high, and, to us, inaccessible and all but inconceivable summit of His elevation. He looks down ready to bless each poor creature here, toiling and moiling amidst sufferings, and meannesses, and commonplaces, and monotony, if we wdll only put our trust in Him, and love Him, and see the brightness of the Father's face in Him. He cares for us all ; and if we will but take Him as our Saviour, His all-prevalent prayer, presented within the veil for us, will certainly be fulfilled at last : ' Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory.* VOL. II. CANNOT AND CAN ' Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek Me : and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go ye cannot come ; so now I say to you.'— John xiii. 33. The preceding context shows how large and black the Cross loomed before Jesus now, and how radiant the glory beyond shone out to Him. But it was only for a moment that either of these two absorbed His thoughts; and with wonderful self-forgetfulness and self-command, He turned away at once from the con- sideration of how the near future was to affect Him, to the thought of how it was to affect the handful of helpless disciples who had to be left alone. Impend- ing separation breaks up the fountains of the heart, and we all know the instinct that desires to crowd all the often hidden love into some one last token. So here our Lord addresses His disciples by a name that is never used except this once, 'little children,' a fond diminutive that not only reveals an unusual depth of tender emotion, but also breathes a pity- ing sense of their defencelessness when they are to be left alone. So might a dying mother look at her little ones. But the words that follow, at first sight, are dark with the sense of a final and complete separation. *Ye shall seek Me' — and not only so, but He seems to put back His humble friends into the same place as had been occupied by His bitter foes — 'as I said to the Jews, whither I go ye cannot come; so now I say to you.' There was something that prevented both classes alike from keeping Him company; and He had to walk His path both into the darkness and into the glory, alone. 210 V.33] CANNOT AND CAN 211 The words apply in their fullness only to the paren- thesis of time whilst He lay in the grave, and the disciples despairingly thought that all was ended. It was a brief period : it was a revolutionary moment ; and though it was soon to end, they needed to be guarded against it. But though the words do not apply to the permanent relation between the glorified Christ and us, His disciples, yet partly by similarity, and still more by contrast, they do suggest great Christian blessedness and imperative Christian duties. These gather themselves mainly round two contrasts, a transitory 'cannot' soon to be changed into a per- manent ' can ' ; and a momentary seeking, soon to be converted into a blessed seeking which finds. I now deal only with the former. We have here a transitory 'cannot' soon to b^ changed into a permanent * can.' 'Whither I go ye cannot come.' Does not one hear a tone of personal sorrow in that saying ? Jesus had always hungered for understanding and sympathetic companions, and one of His lifelong sorrows had been His utter loneliness; but He had never, in all the time that He had been with them, so put out His hand, feeling for some warm clasp of a human hand to help Him in His struggle, as He did during the hours terminating with Gethsemane. And perhaps we may venture to say that we hear in this utterance an expression of Christ's sorrow for Himself that He had to tread the dark way, and to pass into the bright- ness beyond, all alone. He yearned for the impossible human companionship, as well as sorrowed for the imperfections which made it impossible. Why was it that they could not ' follow Him now ' ? The answer to that question is found in the considera- 212 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. tion of whither it was that He went. When that bright Shekinah-cloud at the Ascension received Him into its radiant folds, it showed why they could not follow Him, because it revealed that He went unto the Father, when He left the world. So we are brought face to face with the old, solemn thought that character makes capacity for heaven. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place ? ' asked the Psalmist ; and a prophet put the question in a still sharper form, and by the very form of the question suggested a negative answer — ' Who among us shall dwell with the devour- ing fire; who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings ? ' Who can pass into that Presence, and stand near God, without being, like the maiden in the old legend, shrivelled into ashes by the contact of the celestial fire ? ' Holiness ' is that ' without which no man shall see the Lord.' And we, all of us, in the depths of our own hearts, if we rightly under- stand the voices that ever echo there, must feel that the condition which is, obviously and without any need for arguing it, required for abiding with God, and so going into the glory where Christ is, is a condition which none of us can fulfil. In that respect the imperfect and immature friends, the little children, the babes who loved and yet knew not Him whom they loved, and the scowling enemies, were at one. For they had all of them the one human heart, and in that heart the deep-lying alienation and contrariety to God. Therefore Christ trod the winepress alone, and alone ' ascended up where He was before.' But let us remember that this ' cannot ' was only a transitory cannot. For we must underscore very deeply that word in my text ' so now I say to you,' V. 33] CANNOT AND CAN 213 and a moment afterwards, when one of the Apostles puts the question : * Why cannot I follow Thee now ? ' the answer is : ' Thou canst not follow Me now ; but thou shalt follow Me afterwards.' The text, too, is succeeded immediately by the wonderful parting con- solations and counsels spoken to the disciples, through all of which there gleams the promise that they will be with Him where He is, and behold His glory. Set side by side with these sad words of our Lord in the text, by which He unloosed their clasping hands from Him, and turned His face to His solitary path, the triumphant language in which habitually the rest of the New Testament speaks of the Christian man's relation to Christ. Think of that great passage : ' Ye are come unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusa- lem, . . . and to God the Judge of all, . . . and to Jesus the Mediator of the new Covenant.' What has become of th e impossibility ? Vanished. Where is the ' cannot ' ? Turned into a blessed 'can.' And so Apostles have no scruple in saying, 'Our citizenship is in Heaven,' nor in saying, ' We sit together with Him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' The path that was blocked is open. The impossibility that towered up like a great black wall has melted away; and the path into the Holiest of all is made patent by the blood of Christ. For in that death there lies the power that sweeps away all the impediments of man's sin, and in that life of the risen, glorified, indwelling Christ there lies the power which cleanses the inmost heart from 'all filth iness of flesh and spirit,' and makes it possible for our mortal feet to walk on the immortal path, and for us, with all our unworthiness, with all our shrinking, to stand in His presence and not be ashamed or consumed. ' Ye cannot come ' was true for a few 214 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. days. ' Ye can come ' is true for ever ; and for all Christian men. But let us not forget that the one attitude of heart and mind, by which a poor, sinful man, who dare not draw near to God, receives into himself the merit and power of the death, and the indwelling power of the life, of Jesus Christ, is personal faith in Jesus Christ. To trust Him is to come to Him, and it is represented in Scripture as conferring an instan- taneous fitness for access to God. People pray some- times that they may be made ' meet for the inheritance of the saints in light,' and the prayer is, in a sense, wise and true. But they too often forget that the Apostle says, in the original connection of the words which they so quote : ' He hath translated us from the tyranny of the darkness, and hath made us meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.' That is to say, whenever a poor soul, compassed and laden with its infirmity and sin, turns itself to that Lord whose Cross conquers sin, and whose blood infused into our veins — the Spirit of whose life granted to us — gives us to partake of His own righteousness, that moment that soul can tread the path that brings into the presence of God, and ' has access with confidence by the faith of Him.' So, brethren, seeing that thus the incapacity may all be swept away, and that instead of a ' cannot,' "which relegates us to darkness, we may receive a ' can ' which leads us into the light, let us see to it that this communion, which is possible for all Christian men, is real in our cases, and that we use the access which is given to us, and dwell for ever in, and with, the Lord. I have said that the act of faith, by associating a man with Jesus Christ in the power of His death and of His V.33] CANNOT AND CAN 215 life, makes any who exercise it capable of passing into the presence of God. But I would remind you, too, that to make us more fit for more full and habitual communion is the very purpose for which all the dis- cipline of our earthly life, its sorrows and its joys, its tasks and its repose, is exercised upon us — ' He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness.' Surely if we habitually took that point of view in refer- ence to our work, in reference to our joys, in reference to our trials, everything would be different. We are being prepared with sedulous love, with patient reitera- tion of ' line upon line, precept upon precept,' with singu- larly varied methods but a uniform purpose, by all that meets us in life, to be more capable of treading the eternal path into the eternal light. Is that how we daily think of our own circumstances ? Do we bring that great thought to bear upon all that we, sometimes faithlessly, call mysterious or murmuringly think of — if we dare not speak our thought — as being cruel and hard ? What does it matter if some precious things be lifted off our shoulders, and out of our hearts, if their being taken away makes it more possible for us to tread with a lighter step the path of peace ? What matters it though many things that we would fain keep are withdrawn from us, if by the withdrawal we are sent a little further forward on the road that leads to God? As George Herbert says, sorrows and joys are like battledores that drive a shuttlecock, and they may all * toss us to His breast.' In faith, however infantile it may be, there is an undeveloped capacity, a germ of fitness, for dwelling with God. But that capacity is meant to be increased, and the little children are meant to be helped to grow up into full-grown men, ' the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,' by all 216 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. that conies here to them on earth. Do you not think we should understand life better, do you not think it would all be flashed up into new radiance, do you not think we should more seldom stand bewildered at what we choose to call the inscrutable dispensations of Provi- dence, if this were the point of view from which we looked at them all— that they were fitting us for perpetual abiding with our Father God ? Nor let us forget that there was a transient 'cannot' of another sort. For ' flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.' So, as life is changed when we think of it as helping us toward Him, death is changed when we think of it as being, if I may so say, the usher in attendance on the Presence-chamber, who draws back the thin curtain that separates us from the throne, and takes us by the hands and leads us into the Pre- sence. Surely if we habitually thought thus of that otherwise grim chamberlain, we should be willing to put our hands into His, as a little child will, when stray- ing, into the hands of a stranger who says, ' Come with me and I will take you home to your father.' 'As I said unto the Jews ... so now I say to you, whither I go, ye cannot come.' Let us press on you and on myself the one thought that comes out of all that I have been saying, the blessed possibility, which, because it is a possibility, is an obligation, to use far more than most of us do, the right of access to the King who is our Father. There are nobles and corporate bodies, who regard it as one of their chief distinctions that they have always the right of entr4e to the court of the sovereign. Every Christian man has that. And in old days, when a baron did not show himself at court, suspicion naturally arose, and he was in danger of being thought disaffected, if not V.33] SEEKING JESUS 217 traitorous. Ah ! if you and I were judged according to that law, what would become of us ? We can go when we like. How seldom we do go ! We can live in the heavens whilst our work lies down here. We prefer the low earth to the lofty sky. ' We are come '—ideally, and in the depths of our nature, our affinities are there — 'unto God, the Judge of all, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new Covenant.' Are we come ? Are we day by day, in all the pettiness of our ordinary lives, when compassed by hard duties, weighed upon by sore dis- tress — still keeping our hearts in heaven, and our feet familiar with the path that leads us to God ? ' Set your affection on things above, where Jesus is, sitting at the right hand of God.' For there is no ' cannot ' for His servants in regard to their access to any place where He is. SEEKING JESUS *. . . Ye shall seek Me.'— John xiii. 33. In the former sermon on this verse I pointed out that it, in its fullness, applies only to the brief period between the crucifixion and the resurrection, but that, partly by contrast and partly by analogy, it suggests per- manent relations between Christ and His disciples. These relations were mainly — as I pointed out then — two : there was that one expressed by the subsequent words of the verse, ' Whither I go, ye cannot come ' — a brief 'cannot,' soon to be changed into a permanent •can'; and there was a second, a brief, sad, and vain seeking, soon to be changed into a seeking which finds. It is to the latter that I wish to turn now. * Ye shall seek Me ' fell, like the clods on a coffin-lid, 218 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. with a hollow sound on the hearts of the Apostles. It conies to us as a permission and a command and a promise. I do not dwell on that sad seeking, which was so brief but so bitter. We all know what it is to put out an empty hand into the darkness and the void, and to grope for a touch which we know, whilst we grope, that we shall not find. And these poor, helpless disciples, by their forlorn sense of separation, by their yearning that brought no satisfaction, by their very listless despair, were saying, during these hours of agony into which an eternity of pain was condensed, ' Oh ! that He were beside us again ! ' That sad seeking ended when He came to them, and * then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.' But another kind of seeking began, when 'the cloud received Him out of their sight ' ; as joyful as the other was laden with sorrow, as sure to find the object of its quest as the other was certain to be disappointed. What He said in the darkness to them. He says in the light to us : What ' I say unto you I say unto all,' Seek ! So now we have to deal with that joyful search which is sure of finding its object, and is only a little, if at all, less blessed than the finding itself. I. Every Christian is, by his very name, a seeker after Christ. There are two kinds of seeking, one like that of a bird whose young have been stolen away, which flutters here and there, because it knows not where that is which it seeks ; another, like the flight of the same bird, when the migrating instinct rises in its little breast, and straight as an arrow it goes, not because it knows not its goal, but because it knows it, yonder where the sun is warm and the sky is blue, and winter is left behind in the cold north. 'Ye shall seek Me' is the V.33] SEEKING JESUS 219 word of promise, which changes the vain search that is ignorant of where the object of its quest is, into a blessed going out of the heart towards that which it knows to be the home of its homelessness. Thus the text brings out the very central blessedness and peculi- arity of the Christian life, that it has no uncertainty in its aims, and that, instead of seeking for things which may or may not be found, or if found may or may not prove to be what we dreamt them to be, it seeks for a Person whom it knows where to find, and of whom it knows that all its desires will be met in Him. We have, then, on the one side the multifarious, divergent searchings of man ; and on the other side the one quest in which all these others are gathered up, and translated into blessedness — the seeking after Jesus Christ. Men know that they need, if I may so put it, four things : truth for the understanding, love round which the heart may coil, authority for the will which may direct and restrain, and energy for the practical life. But, apart from the quest after Christ, men for the most part seek these necessary goods in divers objects, and fragmentarily look for the completion of their desires. But fragments will never satisfy a man's soul, and they who have to go to one place for truth, and to another for love, and to another for authority, and to another for energy, are wofuUy likely never to find what they search for. They are seeking in the mani- fold what can be found only in the One. It is as if some vessel, full of precious stones, were thrown down before men, and whilst they are racing after the diamonds, they lose the emeralds and the sapphires. But the wise concentrate their seekings on the ' one Pearl of great price,' in whom is truth for the brain, love for the heart, authority for the will, power for 220 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. the life, and all summed in that which is more blessed than all, the Person of the Brother who died for us, the Christ who lives to fill our hearts for ever. One sun dims all the stars ; and the ' one entire and perfect Chrysolite' beggars and reduces to fragments 'all the precious things that thou canst desire.' To seek Him is the very hall-mark of a Christian, and that seeking comes to be an earnest desire and effort after more conscious communion with Him, and a more entire possession of His imparted life which is righteous- ness and peace and joy and power. According to the Rabbis, the manna tasted to each man what each man most desired. The manifoldness of the one Christ is far more manifold than the manifoldness of the multiplicity of fragmentary and partial aims which foolish men perceive. The ways of seeking are very plain. First of all, we seek if, and in proportion as, we make the effort to occupy our thoughts and minds, not with theological dogmas, but with the living Christ Himself. Ah ! brethren, it is hard to do, and I daresay a great many of you are thinking that it is far harder for you, in the distractions and rush and conflict of business and daily life, than it is for people like me, whom you imagine as sitting in a study, with nothing to dis- tract us. I do not know about that; I fancy it is about equally hard for us all ; but it is possible. I have been in Alpine villages where, at the end of every squalid alley, there towered up a great, pure, silent, white peak. That is what our lives may be; however noisome, crowded, petty the little lane in which we live, the Alp is at the end of it there, if we only choose to lift our eyes and look. It is pos- sible that not only 'into the sessions of sweet silent V.33] SEEKING JESUS 221 thought,' but into the rush and bustle of the work- shop or the exchange, there may come, like ' some sweet, beguiling melody, so sweet we know not we are listening to it,' the thought that changes petti- ness into greatness, that makes all things go smoothly and easily, that is a test and a charm to discover and to destroy temptation, the thought of a present Christ, the Lover of my soul, and the Helper of my life. Again, we seek Him when, by aspiration and desire, we bring Him — as He is always brought thereby — into our hearts and into our lives. The measure of our desire is the measure of our possession. "Wishing is the opening of our hearts, but, alas, often we wish and desire, and the heart opens and nothing enters. Wishes are like the tentacles of some marine organism waving about in a waste ocean, feeling for the food that they do not find. But if we open our hearts for Him, that is simultaneous with the coming of Him to us. 'Ye have not, because ye ask not.' Do not forget, dear friends, that desire, if it is genuine, will take a very concrete form and will be prayer. And it is prayer — by which I do not mean the utterance of words without desire, any more than I mean desire without the direct casting of it into the form of supplication — it is prayer that brings Christ into any, and it is prayer that will bring Him into every, life. Nor let us forget that there is another way of seek- ing besides these two, of looking up to Him through, and in the midst of, all the shows and trifles of this low life, and the reaching out of our desires towards Him, as the roots of a tree beneath the soil go straight for the river. That other way is imitation and obedi- 222 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. ence. It is vain to think of Him, and it is unreal to pretend to desire Him, if we are not seeking Him by treading in the path that He has trod, and which leads to Him. Imitation and obedience — these are the steps by which we go straight through all the trivialities of life into the presence of the Lord Himself. The smallest deflection from the path that leads to Him will carry us away into doleful wastes. The least invisible cloud that steals across the sky will blot out half a hemisphere of stars ; and we seek not Christ unless, thinking of Him, and desiring Him, we also walk in the path in which He has walked, and so come where He is. He Himself has said that if His servant follows Him, where He is there shall also His servant be. These things make up the seeking which ought to mark us all. I note that — II. The Christian seeker always finds. I pointed out in- my last sermon the strange identity bf our Lord's words to His humble friends, with those 'which on another occasion He used to His bitter enemies. He reminds the disciples of that identity in the verse from which my text comes : ' As I said to the Jews ... so now I say to you.' But there was one thing that He said to the Jews that He did not say to them. To the former He said, 'Ye shall seek Me, and shall not find Me ' ; and He did not say that — even for the sad hours it was not quite true — He did not say that to His followers, and He does not say it to us. If we seek we shall find. There is no disappointment in the Christian life. Anything is possible rather than that a man should desire Christ and not have Him. That has never been the experience of any seeking V. 33] SEEKING JESUS 223 soul. And so I urge upon you what has already been suggested, that inasmuch as, by reason of His infinite longing to give truth and love and guidance and energy and His whole Self, to all of us, the amount of our possessioji of the power and life of Jesus Christ depends on ourselves. If you take to the fountain a tiny cup, you will only bring away a tiny cupful. If you take a great vessel you will bring it away full. As long as the woman in the old story held out her vessels to the miraculous flow of the oil, the flow continued. When she had no more vessels to take, the flow stopped. If a man holds a flagon beneath a spigot with an un- steady hand, half of the precious liquor will be spilt on the ground. Those who fulfil the conditions, of which I have already been speaking, may make quite sure that according to their faith will it be unto them. And if you, dear friend, have not in your experience the conscious presence of a Christ who is all that you need, there is no one in heaven or earth or hell to blame for it but only your own self. *I have never said to any of the seed of Jacob, Seek ye My face in vain ' ; and when the Lord said, ' Ye shall seek Me,' He was implicitly binding Himself to meet the seeking soul, and give Himself to the desiring heart. Remember, too, that this seeking, which is always crowned with finding, is the only search in which failure is impossible. There is only one course of life that has no disappointments. We all know how frequently we are foiled in our quests; we all know how often a prize won is a bitterer disappointment than a prize unattained. Like a jelly-fish in the water, as long as it is there its tenuous substance is lovely, expanded, tinged with delicate violets and 224 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. blues, and its long filaments float in lines of beauty. Lay it on the beach, and it is a shapeless lump, and it poisons and stings. You fish your prize out of the great ocean, and when you have it, does it dis- appoint, or does it fulfil, the raised expectations of the quest? There is One who does not disappoint. There is one gold mine that comes up to the pro- spectus. There is one spring that never runs dry. The more deep our Christian experience is, the more we shall take the rapturous exclamation of the Arabian queen to ourselves: *The half was not told us!' And so, lastly, I suggest that — III. The finding impels to fresh seeking. The object of the Christian man's quest is Jesus Christ. He is Incarnate Infinitude; and that cannot be exhausted. The seeker after Jesus Christ is the Christian soul. That soul is the incarnate possibility of indefinite expansion and approximation and assimi- lation ; and that cannot be exhausted. And so, with a Christ who is infinite, and a seeker whose capacities may be indefinitely expanded, there can be no satiety, there can be no limit, there can be no end to the process. This wine-skin will not burst when the new wine is put into it. Rather like some elastic vessel, as you pour it will fill out and expand. Possession enlarges, and the more of Christ's fullness is poured into a human heart, the more is that heart widened out to receive a greater blessing. Dear brethren, there is one course of life, and I believe but one, on which we may all enter with the sure confidence that in the nature of things, in the nature of Christ, and in the nature of ourselves, there is no end to growth and progress. Think of the fresh- V.33] SEEKING JESUS 225 ness and blessedness and energy that puts into a life. To have an unattained and unattainable object, a goal to which we can never come, but to which we may ever be approximating, seems to me to be the secret of perpetual joy and of perpetual youthfulness. To say, 'forgetting the things that are behind, I reach forward unto the things that are before,' is a charm and an amulet that repels monotony and weariness, and goes with a man to the very end, and when all other aims and objects have died down into grey ashes, that flame, like the fabled lamp in Virgil's tomb, burns clear in the grave, and lights us to the eternity beyond. For certainly, if there be neither satiety nor limit to Christian progress here, there can be no better and stronger evidence that Christian progress here is but the first 'lap' of the race, the first stadium of the course, and that beyond that narrow, dark line which lies across the path, it runs on, rising higher, and will run on for ever. * On earth the broken arc ; in heaven the perfect round.' Seek for what you are sure to find; seek for what will never disappoint you; seek for what will abide with you for ever. The very first word of Christ's recorded in Scripture is a question which He puts to us all : * What seek ye ? ' Well for us, if like the two to whom it was originally addressed, we answer, ' We are not seeking a What ; we are seeking a Whom. — Master, where dwellest Thou ? ' And if we have that answer in our hearts, we shall receive the invitation which they received, ' Come and see,' — come and seek. ' Ye shall seek Me' is a gracious invitation, an imperative com- mand, and a faithful promise that if we seek we shall find. ' Whoso findeth Him findeth life ; whoso misseth VOL. II. P 226 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. HiTn' — whatever else he has sought and found — • wrongeth his own soul.' 'AS I HAVE LOVED' • A new commandment T give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.'— John xiii. 34, 35. Wishes from dying lips are sacred. They sink deep into memories and mould faithful lives. The sense of impending separation had added an unwonted tenderness to our Lord's address, and He had designated His disciples by the fond name of ' little children.' The same sense here gives authority to His words, and moulds them into the shape of a command. The disciples had held together because He was in their midst. Will the arch stand when the keystone is struck out? Will not the spokes fall asunder when the nave of the wheel is taken away ? He would guard them from the disintegrating tendencies that were sure to set in when He was gone ; and He would point them to a solace for His absence, and to a kind of substitute for His presence. For to love the brethren whom they see would be, in some sense, a continuing to love the Christ whom they had ceased to see. And so, immedi- ately after He said : ' Whither I go ye cannot come,' He goes on to say : ' Love one another as I have loved you.' He called this a 'new commandment,' though to love one's neighbour as one's self was a familiar com- monplace amongst the Jews, and had a recognised position in Rabbinical teaching. But His command- ment proposed a new object of love, it set forth a new measure of love, so greatly different from all that had preceded it as to become almost a new kind of love, and vs. 34, 35] *AS I HAVE LOVED' 227 it suggested and supplied a new motive power for love. This commandment 'could give life' and fulfil itself. Therefore it comes to us as a 'new commandment' — even to us — and, unlike the words which preceded it, which we were considering in former sermons, it is wholly and freshly applicable to-day as in the ages that are passed. I ask you, first, to consider — I. The new scope of the new commandment. 'Love one another.' The newness of the precept is realised, if we think for a moment of the new pheno- menon which obedience to it produced. When the words were spoken, the then-known civilised Western world was cleft by great, deep gulfs of separation, like the crevasses in a glacier, by the side of which our racial animosities and class differences are merely superficial cracks on the surface. Language, religion, national animosities, differences of condition, and saddest of all, difference of sex, split the world up into alien fragments. A ' stranger ' and an ' enemy ' were expressed in one language, by the same word. The learned and the unlearned, the slave and his master, the barbarian and the Greek, the man and the woman, stood on opposite sides of the gulfs, flinging hostility across. A Jewish peasant wandered up and down for three years in His own little country, which was the very focus of narrowness and separation and hostility, as the Roman historian felt when he called the Jews the 'haters of the human race'; He gathered a few disciples, and He was crucified by a contemptuous Roman governor, who thought that the life of one fanatical Jew was a small price to pay for popularity with his troublesome subjects, and in a generation after, the clefts were being bridged and all over the Empire a strange new sense of unity was being breathed, 228 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. and 'Barbarian, Scythian, bond and free,' male and female, Jew and Greek, learned and ignorant, clasped hands and sat down at one table, and felt themselves ' all one in Christ Jesus.' They were ready to break all other bonds, and to yield to the uniting forces that streamed out from His Cross. There never had been anything like it. No wonder that the world began to babble about sorcery, and conspiracies, and complicity in unnameable vices. It was only that the disciples were obeying the 'new commandment,' and a new thing had come into the world — a community held together by love and not by geographical accidents or linguistic aJBfinities, or the iron fetters of the conqueror. You sow the seed in furrows separated by ridges, and the ground is seamed, but when the seed springs the ridges are hidden, no division appears, and as far as the eye can reach, the cornfield stretches, rippling in unbroken waves of gold. The new commandment made a new thing, and the world wondered. Now then, brethren, do not let us forget that, although to obey this commandment is in some respects a great deal harder to-day than it was then, the diverse circumstances in which Christian individuals and Christian communities are this day placed may modify the form of our obedience, but do not in the smallest degree weaken the obligation, for the indi- vidual Christian and for societies of Christians, to foUow^ this commandment. The multiplication of numbers, the cessation of the armed hostility of the world, the great varieties in intellectual position in regard to the truths of Christianity, divergencies of culture, and many other things, are separating forces. But our Christianity is worth very little, if it cannot master these separating tendencies, even as in the vs. 3 i, 35] 'AS I HAVE LOVED* 229 early days of freshness, the Christianity that sprang in these new converts' minds mastered the far more powerful separating tendencies with which they had to contend. Every Christian man is under the obligation to recog- nise his kindred with every other Christian man — his kindred in the deep foundations of his spiritual being, which are far deeper, and ought to be far more operative in drawing together, than the superficial differences of culture or opinion or the like, which may part us. The bond that holds Christian men together is their common relation to the one Lord, and that ought to influence their attitude to one another. You say I am talking commonplaces. Yes; and the con- dition of Christianity this day is the sad and tragical sign that the commonplaces need to be talked about, till they are rubbed into the conscience of the Church as thoy never have been before. Do not let us suppose that Christian love is mere sentiment. I shall have to speak a word or two about that presently, but I would fain lift the whole subject, if I can, out of the region of mere unctuous words and gush of half -feigned emotion, which mean nothing, and would make you feel that it is a very practical com- mandment, gripping us hard, when our Lord says to us, ' Love one another.' I have spoken about the accidental conditions which make obedience to this commandment difficult. The real reason which makes the obedience to it difficult is the slackness of our own hold on the Centre. In the measure in which we are filled with Jesus Christ, in that measure will that expression of His spirit and His life become natural to us. Every Christian has affinities with every other Christian, in the depths of his being, 230 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. so as that he is a great deal more like his brother, who is possessor of ' like precious faith,' however unlike the two may be in outlook, in idiosyncrasy, and culture and in creed, than he is to another man with whom he may have a far closer sympathy in all these matters than he has with the brother in question, but from whom he is parted by this, that the one trusts and loves and obeys Jesus Christ, and the other does not. So, for individuals and for churches, the commandment takes this shape — Go down to the depths and you w^ill find that you are closer to the Christian man or community which seems furthest from you, than you are to the non-Christian who seems nearest to you. Therefore, let your love follow your kinship, and your heart recognise the oneness that knits you together. That is a revolutionary commandment ; what would become of our present organisations of Christianity if it were obeyed ? That is a revolutionary commandment ; what would become of our individual relations to the whole family who, in every place, and in many tongues, and with many creeds, call on Jesus as on their Lord, their Lord and ours, if it were obeyed ? I leave you to answer the question. Only I say the commandment has for its first scope all who, in every place, love the Lord Jesus Christ. But there is more than that involved in it. The very same principle which makes this love to one another imperative upon all disciples, makes it equally im- perative upon every follower of Jesus Christ to em- brace in a real affection all whom Jesus so loved as to die for them. If I am to love a Christian man because he and I love Christ, I am to love everybody, because Christ loves me and everybody, and because He died on the Cross for me and for all men. And vs. 34, 35] 'AS I HAVE LOVED* 231 so one of the other Apostles, or, at least, the letter which goes by his name, laid hold on the true con- nection when, instead of concentrating Christian affec- tion on the Church, and letting the world go to the devil as an alien thing, he said: 'Add to your faith,' this, that, and the other, and ' brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, charity.' The particular does not exclude the general, it leads to the general. The fire kindled upon the hearth gives warmth to all the chamber. The circles are concentric, and the widest sweep is struck from the same middle point as the narrow. So the new commandment does not cut humanity into two halves, but gathers all diversity into one, and spreads the great reconciling of Christian love over all the antagonisms and oppositions of earth. Let me ask you to notice — II. The example of the new commandment, *As I have loved you.' That solemn ' as ' lifts itself up before us, shines far ahead of us, ought to draw us to itself in hope, and not to reiDel us from itself in despair. 'As I have loved' — what a tremendous thing for a man to stand up before his fellows, and say, ' Take Me as the perfect example of perfect love ; and let My example — un- dimmed by the mists of gathering centuries, and un- weakened by the change of condition, and circumstance, fresh as ever after ages have passed, and closely-fitting as ever all varieties of human character and condi- tion — stand before you ; the ideal that I have realised, and you will be blessed in the proportion in which you seek, though you fail, to realise it!' There is, I venture to believe, only one aspect of Jesus Christ in which such a setting forth of Himself as the perfect Incarnation of perfect love is warrantable; and that 232 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. is found in the old belief that His very birth was the result of His love, and that His death was the climax of that love. And if so, we have to turn to Bethlehem, and the whole life, and the Cross at its end, as being the Christ-given example and model for our love to our brethren. What do we see there? I have said that there is too much of mere sickly sentimentality about the ordinary treatment of this great commandment, and that I desired to lift it out of that region into a far nobler, more strenuous, and difficult one. This is what we see in that life and in that death: — First of all — the activity of love — ' Let us not love in words, but in deed and in truth '; then we see the self-f orgetf ulness of love — 'Even Christ pleased not Himself; then we see the self-sacrifice of love — 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' And in these three points, on which I would fain enlarge if I might, active love, self-oblivious love, self-sacrificing love, you have the pattern set for us all. Christian love is no mere sickly maiden, full of sentimental emotions and honeyed words. She is a strenuous virgin, girt for service, a heroine ready for dangers, and prepared to be a martyr if it be needful. Love's language is sacrifice. 'I give thee myself,' is its motto. And that is the pattern that is set before us all — ' as I have loved you.' I have tried to show you how the commandment was new in many particulars, and it is for ever new in this particular, that it is for ever before us, unattained, and drawing faithful hearts to itself, and ever opening out into new heroisms and, therefore, blessedness, of self- sacrifice, and ever leading us to confess the differences, deep, tragic, sinful, between us and Him who — we vs. 34, 35] *AS I HAVE LOVED' 233 Bometimes think too presumptuously — we venture to say is our Lord and Master. Did you ever see in some great picture gallery a copyist sitting in front of a Raffaelle, and comparing his poor feeble daub, all out of drawing, and with little of the divine beauty that the master had breathed over his canvas, even if it preserved the mere mechanical outline? That is what you and I should do with our lives : take them and put them down side by side with the original. We shall have to do it some day. Had we better not do it now, and try to bring the copy a little nearer to the masterpiece; and let that 'as I have loved you' shine before us and draw us on to unattainable heights ? And now, lastly, we have here — III. The motive power for obedience to the command- ment. That is as new as all the rest. That 'as' expresses the manner of the love, but it also expresses the motive and the power. It might be translated into the equivalent 'in the fashion in which,' or it might be translated into the equivalent ' since — ' ' I have loved you.' The original might bear the rendering, ' that ye also may love one another.' That is to say, what keeps men from obeying this commandment is the instinctive self-regard which is natural to us all. There are muscles in the body which are so constructed that they close tightly; and the heart is something like one of these sphincter muscles — it shuts by nature, especially if there has been anything put inside it over which it can shut and keep it all to itself. But there is one thing that dethrones Self, and enthrones the angel Love in a heart, and that is, that into that heart there shall come surging the sense of the great 234 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. love 'wherewith I have loved you.' That melts the iceberg ; nothing else will. That love of Christ to us, received into our hearts, and there producing an answering love to Him, will make us, in the measure in which we live in it and let it rule us, love everything and every person that He loves. That love of Jesus Christ, stealing into our hearts and there sweetening the ever-springing ' issues of life,' will make them flow out in glad obedience to any commandment of His. That love of Jesus Christ, received into our hearts, and responded to by our answering love, will work, as love always does, a magical transformation. A great monastic teacher wrote his precious book about The Imitation of Christ. 'Imitation' is a great word, 'Transformation' is a greater. ' We all,' receiving on the mirror of our loving hearts the love of Jesus Christ, 'are changed into the same likeness.' Tl;ius, then, the love, which is our pattern, is also our motive and our power for obedience, and the more we bring ourselves under its influences, the more we shall love all those who are beloved by, and lovers of, Jesus. That is the one foundation for a world knit together in the bonds of amity and concord. There have been attempts at brotherhood, and the guillotine has ended what was begun in the name of 'fraternity.' Men build towers, but there is no cement between the bricks, unless the love of Christ holds them together, and therefore Babel after Babel comes down about the ears of its builders. But notwithstanding all that is dark to-day, and though the war-clouds are lowering, and the hearts of men are inflamed with fierce passions, Christ's commandment is Christ's promise ; and though the vision tarry, it will surely come. So even to-day vs. 34, 35] QUO VADIS? 235 Christian men ought to stand for Christ's peace, and for Christ's love. The old commandment which we have had from the beginning, is the new command- ment that fits to-day as it fits all the ages. It is a dream, say some. Yes, a dream ; but a morning dream which comes true. Let us do the little we can to make it true, and to bring about the day when the flock of men will gather round the one Shepherd, who loved them to the death, and who has bid them and helped them to 'love one another as' — and since — *He has loved them.' QUO VADIS? ' Peter said unto Him, Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now f I will lay down my life for Thy sake. Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for My sake ? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied Me thrice.'— John xiii. 37, 38. Peter's main characteristics are all in operation here ; his eagerness to be in the front, his habit of blurting out his thoughts and feelings, his passionate love for his Master, and withal his inability to understand Him, and his self-confident arrogance. He has broken in upon Christ's solemn words, entirely deaf to their deep meaning, but blindly and blunderingly laying hold of one thought only, that Jesus is departing, and that he is to be left alone. So he asks the question, 'Lord! whither goest Thou ? '—not so much caring about that, as meaning by his question — ' tell me where, and then I will come too '; pledging himseK to follow faithfully, as a dog behind his master, wherever He went. Our Lord answered the underlying meaning of the words, repeating with a personal application what He had just before said as a general principle— 'Whither I 236 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xm. go thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow Me afterwards.' Then followed this noteworthy dialogue. The whole significance of the incident is preserved for us in the beautiful legend which tells us how, near the city of Rome, on the Appian Way, as Peter was flying for his life, he met the Lord, and again said to Him : ' Lord, whither goest Thou ? ' The words of the ques- tion, as given in the Vulgate, are the name of the site of the supposed interview, and of the little church which stands on it. The Master answered: *I go to Rome, to be crucified again.' The answer smote the heart of the Apostle, and turned the cowardly fugitive into a hero ; and he followed his Lord, and went gladly to his death. For it was that death which had to be accomplished before Peter was able to follow his Lord. Now, as to the words before us, I think we shall best gather their significance, and lay it upon our own hearts, if we simply follow the windings of the dialogue. There are three points : the audacious question, the rash vow, and the sad forecast. I. The audacious question. As Peter's first question, ' Lord, whither goest Thou ? ' meant not so much what it said, as ' I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest ; tell me, that I may ' ; so the second question, in like manner, is really not so much a question, *Why cannot I follow Thee now?' as the nearest possible approach to a flat contradiction of our Lord. Peter puts his words into the shape of an inter- rogation ; what he means is, ' Yes, I can follow Thee ; and in proof thereof, I will lay down my life for Thy sake.' The man's persistence, the man's love leading him to lack of reverence, came out in this (as I have ventured to call it) audacious question. Its underlying vs. 37, 38] QUO VADIS ? . 237 meaning was a refusal to believe the Master's word. But yet there was in it a nobility of resolution — broken afterwards, but never mind about that — to endure any- thing rather than to be separate from the Lord. Yet, though it was noble in its motive, but lacking in rever- ence in its form, there was a deeper error than that in it. Peter did not know what * following ' meant, and he had to be taught that first. One of the main reasons why he could not follow was because he did not under- stand what was involved. It was something more than marching behind his Master, even to a Cross. There was a deeper discipline and a more strenuous effort needed than would have availed for such a kind of following. Let us look a little onwards into his life. Recall that scene on the morning of the day by the banks of the lake, when he waded through the shallow water, and cast himself, dripping, at his Master's feet, and, having by his threefold confession obliterated his threefold denial, was taken back to his Lord's love, and received the permission for which he had hungered, and which he had been told, in the upper room, could not ' now ' be given : ' Jesus said to him, Follow thou Me.' What a flood of remembrances must then have rushed over the penitent Peter ! how he must have thought to him- self, ' So soon, so soon is the ** canst not " changed into a canst ! So soon has the " afterwards " come to be the present ! ' And long years after that, when he was an old man, and experience had taught him what /oZZoiom^ meant, he shared his privilege with all the dispersed strangers to whom he wrote, and said to them, with a definite reference to this incident, and to the other after the Resurrection, 'leaving us an example, that we (not I 238 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. only, as I used to think, in my exuberant days of ignor- ance) should follow in His steps.' So, brethren, this blundering, loving, audacious ques- tion suggests to us that to follow Jesus Christ is the supreme direction for all conduct. Men of all creeds, men of no creed, admit that. The ' Loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought,' which is set forth in that life constitutes the living law to which all conduct is to be conformed, and will be noble in proportion as it is conformed. There is the great blessing, and solemn obligation, and lofty prerogative of Christian morality, that for obedience to a precept it substitutes following a Person, and instead of saying to men ' Be good,' it says to them ' Be Christlike.' It brings the conception of duty out of the region of abstractions into the region of living realities. For the cold statuesque ideal of perfection it substitutes a living Man, with a heart to love, and a hand to help us. Thereby the whole aspect of striv- ing after the right is changed ; for the work is made easier, and companionship comes in to aid morality, when Jesus Christ says to us, ' Be like Me ; and then you will be good and blessed.' EfPort will be all but as blessed as attainment, and the sense of pressing hard after Him will be only less restful than the conscious- ness of having attained. To follow Him is bliss, to reach Him is heaven. But in order that this following should be possible, there must be something done that had not been done when Peter asked, 'Why cannot I follow Thee now?' One reason why he could not was, as I said, because he did not know yet what * following ' meant, and because vs. 37, 38] QUO VADIS? 239 he was yet unfit for this assimilation of his character and of his conduct to the likeness of his Lord. And another reason was because the Cross still lay before the Lord, and until that death of infinite love and utter self-sacrifice for others had been accomplished, the pattern was not yet complete, nor the highest ideal of human life realised in life. Therefore the ' following ' was impossible. Christ must die before He has com- pleted the example that we are to follow, and Christ must die before the impulse shall be given to us, which shall make us able to tread, however falteringly and far behind, in His footsteps. The essence of His life and of His death lies in the two things, entire suppression of personal will in obedi- ence to the will of the Father, and entire self-sacrifice for the sake of humanity. And however there is — and God forbid that I should ever forget in my preaching that there is — a uniqueness in that sacrifice, in that life, and in that death, which beggars all imitation, and needs and tolerates no repetition whilst the world lasts, still along with this, there is that which is imitable in the life and imitable in the death of the Master. To follow Jesus is to live denying self for God, and to live sacrificing self for men. Nothing less than these are included in the solemn words, ' leaving us ' — even in the act and article of death when He ' suffered for us ' — ' an example that we should follow His steps.' The word rendered ' example ' refers to the headline which the writing-master gives his pupils to copy, line by line. We all know how clumsy the pothooks and hangers are, how blurred the page with many a blot. And yet there, at the top of it, stands the Master's fair writing, and though even the last line on the page will be blotted and blurred, when we turn it over and begin 240 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. on the new leaf, the copy will be like the original, * and we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.' 'Thou shalt follow Me afterwards' is a commandment ; blessed be God, it is also a promise. For let us not for- get that the ' following ' ends in an attaining ; even as the Lord Himself has said in another connection, when He spake : ' If any man serve Me, let him follow Me, and where I am, there shall also My servant be.' Of course, if we follow, we shall come to the same place one day. And so the great promise will be fulfilled; 'they shall follow the Lamb,' in that higher life, • whithersoever He goeth '; and not as here imperfectly, and far behind, but close beside Him, and keeping step for step, being with Him first, and following Him afterwards. But let us remember that with regard to that future following and its completeness, the same present in- capacity applies, as clogs and mars the ' following,' which is conforming our lives to His. For, as He Him- self has said to us, * I go to prepare a place for you,' and until He had passed through death and into His glory, there was no standing-ground for human feet on the golden pavements, and heaven was inaccessible to man until Christ had died. Thus, as all life is changed when it is looked upon as being a following of Jesus, so death becomes altogether other when it is so regarded. The first martyr outside the city wall, bruised and bat- tered by the cruel stones, remembered his Master's death, and shaped his own to be like it. As Jesus, when He died, had said: 'Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit,' Stephen, dying, said : ' Lord Jesus, receive My spirit.' As the Master had given His last breath to the prayer, ' Father, forgive them ; they know not what they do,' so Stephen shaped his last utterance vs. 37, 38] QUO VADIS? 241 to a conformity with his Lord's, in which the difference is as significant as the likeness, and said, ' Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.' And then, as tho record beautifully says, amidst all that wild hubbub and cruel assault, 'he fell on sleep,' as a child on its mother's breast. Death is changed when it becomes the follow- ing of Christ. II. We have here a rash vow. ' I will lay down my life for Thy sake.' What a strange inversion of parts is here ! ' Lay down thy life for My sake ' — with Calvary less than f our-and-twenty hours off, when Christ laid down His life for Peter's sake. Peter was guilty of an anachronism in the words, for the time did not come for the disciple to die for his Lord till after the Lord had died for His disciple. But he was right in feeling, though he felt it only in regard to an external and physical act, that to follow Jesus, it was necessary to be ready to die for Him. And that is the great truth which underlies and half redeems the rash- ness of this vow, and needs to be laid upon our hearts, if we are ever to be the true followers of the Master. Death for Christ is necessary if we are to follow Him. There is nothing that a man can do deeply and truly, in a manner worthy of a Christian, which has not under- lying it, either the death of self-will and all the godless nature, or if need be the actual physical death, which is a much smaller matter. You cannot follow Christ except you die daily. No man has ever yet trodden in His footsteps except on condition of, moment by moment, slaying self, suppressing self, abjuring self, breaking the connection of self with the material world, and yielding up himself as a living sacrifice, in a living death, to the Lord of life and death. Do not think that 'following Christ' is a mere sentimental VOL. II. O 242 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. expression for so much morality as we can conveniently get into our daily life. But remember that here, with all his rashness, with all his ignorance, with all his superficiality, the Apostle has laid hold upon the great permanent, but alas ! much-forgotten principle, that to die is essential to following Jesus. This daily dying, which is a far harder thing to do than to go to a cross once, and have done with it — was impossible for Peter then, though he did not know it. His vow was a rash one, because the laying down of Christ's life, for Peter's sake and for ours, had not yet been accomplished. There is the motive-power by which, and by which alone, drawn in gratitude, and melted down from all our selfishness, we, too, in our measure and our turn, are able to yield ourselves, in daily crucifixion of our evil, and daily abnegation of self-trust, and self-pleasing, and self-will, to the Lord that has died for us. He must lay down His life for our sakes, and we must know He has done it, and rest upon Him as our great Sacrifice and our atoning Priest, or else we shall never be so loosed from the tyranny of self as to be ready to live by dying, and to die that we may live for His sake. ' I go to Rome to be crucified again ' were the words in which the old legend braced the fugitive and made a hero of him, and sent him back to be crucified like his Lord and to offer up his physical life, as he had long since offered up his self-will and his arrogance to the Lord that had died for him. O Lord our Father ! help us, we beseech Thee, that we may be of the sheep that hear the Shepherd's voice and follow Him. Strengthen our faith in that dear Lord who has laid down His life for us, that we may daily, by self-denial and self-sacrifice, lay down our lives for Him, and follow Him here in all the footsteps of His love. A RASH VOW Jesus answered him. Wilt thou lay down thy life for My sake ? Verily, verily. I say unto thee. The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied Me thrice.'— John xiii. 38. In the last sermon I partly considered the dialogue of which this is the concluding portion, and found that it consisted of an audacious question: 'Why canuot I follow Thee now?' which really meant a contradiction of our Lord ; of a rash vow : ' I will lay down my life for Thy sake' — and of a sad fore- cast : ' The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied Me thrice.' I paused in the middle of considering the second of these three stages, the rash vow. I then pointed out that, however ignorant the Apostle was of what 'following Christ' meant, he had hit the mark, and stumbled unknowingly upon the very essence of the Christian life, and an eternal truth, when he recognised that, somehow or other, to • follow Christ ' meant to die for Him. That is so, and is so always, for there is no following Christ which is not a 'dying daily,' by self-immolation and detachment from the world, and from the life of sense and self. But this rash vow has to be looked at from a somewhat different point of view, and we have to consider not only the strangely blended right and wrong, error and deep truth, that lie in its substance, but the strangely blended right and wrong in the state of feeling and thought, on the part of the Apostle, which it represents. And taking up the dropped thread, I first deal with that, and then with the sad forecast which follows. So then, looking at these words as being like all MS 244 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. our words, even the best of them, strangely mingled of right and wrong, good and evil, I find in them — I. A noble, sincere, but transient emotion and impulse. ' I will lay down my life for Thy sake.' Peter meant it, every word of it; and he would have done it too, if only a gibbet or cross could have been set up then and there in the upper room. But unfortunately the moments of elevation and high-wrought enthusiasm, and the calls to martyrdom, do not always coincide. In the upper room, with its sacred atmosphere, it was easy to feel, and would have been easy to do, nobly. But it was not so easy, lying drowsily in Gethsemane, in the cold spring night, waiting for the Master's coming out from beneath the trembling shadows of the olive trees, or huddled up by the fire at the lower end of the hall in the grey morning, when vitality is at its lowest. So the sincere, noble utterance was but the ex- pression of impulse and emotion which lifted Peter for a moment, and did him good, but which likewise, running through him, left him dry, and all the weaker because of the gush of feeling which had foamed itself away in empty words. For let us never forget that however high, noble, or divinely inspired emotion may be, in its nature it is transient and is sure to be followed by reaction. Like the winter torrents in some parched land, the more they foam, the more speedily does the bed of them dry up again, and the more they carry down the very soil in which growth and fertility would be possible. A rush of feeling is apt to leave behind hard, insensitive rock. There is a close connection between a predominantly emotional Christianity and a very imperfect life. Feeling is apt V.38] A RASH VOW 245 to be a substitiito for action. Is it not a very rejuark- able thing that the word 'benevolence,' which means 'kindly feeling,' has come to take on the meaning rightly belonging to ' beneficence,' which means ' kindly doing'? The emotional man blinds and hoodwinks himself, by thinking that his quick sensibility and lofty enthusiasm and warmth of emotion are action or as good as action. 'Be thou warmed and filled,' he says to his brother, and, in a lazy expansion of heart, forgets that he has never lifted a finger to help. God forbid that I should seem to deprecate emotional religion or religious emotion! that is the last thing that needs to be done in this generation. If the Churches want one thing more than another, it is that their Christianity should become far more emotional than it is, and their impulses stronger, swifter, more spontaneous, more overmastering, and that they should be urged by these, and not merely by the reluctant recognition that such and such a piece of sacrifice or effort is a debt that they are obliged to clear off. Their service will be glad service, only when it is impulsive service and emotional service. Dear brethren, a Christian man whose life is not influenced by the deepest and most fervid emotion of love to the great Love that died for him, is a monster. ' The Lord's fire is in Jerusalem, and His furnace in Zion' — is that a description of the fervour of this Church, or of any Church in Christendom? A furnace? An ice-house! Think of some deserted cottage, with the roof fallen in, and in the cold chimney-place a rusty grate with some dead embers in it, and the snow lying upon the top of it — that is a truer description of a great many of our churches than 'the Lord's furnace.' 246 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. But the lesson to be taken from this incident before us is not the danger of emotion; it is rather the necessity of emotion, but with two provisoes, that it shall be emotion based upon a clear recognition of the great truth that He has laid down His life for me ; and that it shall be emotion harnessed to work, and not wasted in words. The mightier the plunge of the fall, the more electrical energy you can get out of it, and set that to work to drive the wheels of life. Do not be afraid of emotion ; you will make little of your Christianity unless you have it. But be sure that it is under the guidance of a clear perception of the truth that evokes it, and that it is all used to turn the wheels of life. ' Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.' Better is it that emotion should be reticent and active than that it should be voluble and idle. It is a good servant, but a bad master. A man that trusts to impulse and emotion to further his Christian course, is like a ship in that belt of variable winds that lies near the Equator, where there will be a fine ten-knot breeze for an hour or two, and then a sickly, stagnating calm. Push further south, and get into the steady 'trades,' where the wind blows with equable and persistent force all the year round in the same direction. Convert impulses and emotions into steadfast principle, warmed by emotion and borne on by impulse. II. Again, this rash vow is an illustration of a con- fidence, also strangely blended of good and evil. ' I will lay down my life for Thy sake.' As I have said, Peter meant it. His words are paralleled by other words, in which two of the Lord's disciples answered His solemn question: 'Are ye able to drink V.38] A RASH VOW 247 of the cup that I drink of?' with the unhesitating answer, ' We are able.' A great teacher has regarded that saying as one of ' the ventures of faith.' Perhaps it was. Perhaps there was as much self-confidence as faith in it. Certainly there was more self-confidence than faith in Peter's answer, and his self-confidence collapsed when the trial came. The world and the Church hold entirely antagonistic notions about the value of self-reliance. The world says that it is a condition of power. The Church says that it is the root of weakness. Self-confidence shuts a man out from the help of God, and so shuts him out from the source of power. For if you will think for a moment, you will see that the faith which the New Testament, in conformity with all wise know- ledge of one's self, preaches as the one secret of power, has for its obverse — its other side — diffidence and self-distrust. No man trusts God as God ought to be trusted, who does not distrust himself as him- self ought to be distrusted. To level a mountain is the only way to carry the water across where it stood. You can, by mechanism and locks, take a canal up to the top of a hill, but you cannot take a river up to the top, and the river of God's help flows through the valley and seeks the lowest levels. Faith and self-despair are the upper and the under sides of the same thing, like some cunningly-woven cloth, the one side bearing a different pattern from the other, and yet made of the same yarn, and the same threads pass- ing from the upper to the under sides. So faith and self-distrust are but two names for one composite whole. I was once shown an old Jewish coin which had on the one side the words 'sackcloth and ashes,' and 248 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. on the other side the words 'a crown of gold.' The coin meant to contrast what Israel had been with what Israel then was. The crown had come first; the sackcloth and ashes last. But we may use it for illustrating this point, on which I am now dwelling. Wherever, and only where, there are the sackcloth and ashes of self-despair there will be the crown of gold of an answering faith. When thus, as Wesley has it, in his great hymn : ' Confident in self-despair,' we cling to God, then we can say : ' When I am weak then am I strong,' 'Behold! we have no might, but our eyes are upon Thee.' If Peter had only said, ' By Thy help I will lay down my life for Thy sake,' his confidence would have been reasonable and blessed self-confidence, because it would have been confidence in a self inspired by divine power. And so, brethren, whilst utter diffidence is right for us, and is the condition of all our reception of energy according to our need, the most absolute confidence — a confidence which, to the eye of the man that measures only visible things, will seem sheer insanity — is sobriety for a Christian. The world is perfectly right when it says : ' If you believe you can do a thing, you have gone a long way towards doing it.' The expectation of success has often the knack of fulfilling itself. But the world does not know our secret, and our secret is that our humble faith brings into the field the reserves with the Captain of our salvation at their head. Therefore a self-distrusting Christian can say, and say without exaggeration or presumption, ' I can do all things in Christ, strengthen- ing me from within.' The Church's ideals are possibilities, when you bring God into the account, and they look like insanity when V. 38] A RASH VOW 249 you do not. Take, for instance, missions. What an absurdity to talk about a handful of Christian people — for we are only a handful as compared with the whole world — carrying their Gospel into every corner of the earth, and finding everywhere a response to it. Yes; it is absurd ; but, wise Mr. Calculator, counter of heads, you have forgotten God in your estimate of whether it is reasonable or unreasonable. Again, take the Christian ideal of absolute perfection of character. 'What nonsense to talk as if any man could ever come to that.' Yes ! — as if any ina7i could come to that, I grant you. But if God is with him, the nonsense is to suppose that he will not come to it. Here is a row of cyphers as long as your arm. They mean nothing. Put a 1 at the left-hand end of the row ; and what does it mean then? So the faith that brings Christ into the life, and into the Church, makes 'nobodies' into mighty men — 'laughs at impossibilities, and cries, It shall be done ! ' Still further, here, in this rash vow, we have an underestimate of difficulties. There was another incident in the life of the Apostle, a strange replica of this one, into which he pushed himself, just as he did into the high priest's hall, partly out of curiosity and a wish to be prominent ; partly out of love to his Master. Without a moment's consideration of the peril into which he was thrusting himself, he sat in the boat, and said, * Bid me come to Thee on the water.' He forgot that He was heavy, and that water was not solid, and that the wind was high and the lake rough, and when he put his foot over the side and felt the cold waves creeping up his knees, his courage ebbed out with his faith, and he began to sink. Then he cried, 'Lord! help me!' If he had thought for a 250 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiii. moment of the reality of the case, he would have sat still in the boat. If he had thought of what would be in his way in following Jesus to death, he would have hesitated to vow. But it is so much easier to resolve heroisms in a quiet corner than to do them when the strain comes, and it is so much easier to do some one great thing that has in it enthusiasm and nobility, and conspicuousness of sacrifice, especially if it can be got over in a moment, like having one's head cut off with an axe, than it is to ' die daily.' Ah ! brethren, it is the little difficulties that make the difficulty. You read in the newspapers in the autumn, every now and then, of trains, in that wonderful country across the water, being stopped by caterpillars. The Christian train is stopped by an army of caterpillars, far oftener than it is by some solid and towering barrier. Our Christian lives are a great deal likelier to come to failure, because we do not take into account the multiplied small antagonisms than because we are not ready to face the greater ones. What would you think of a bridge-builder, who built a bridge across some moun- tain torrent and made no allowance for freshets and floods when the ice melted ? His bridge and his piers would be gone the first winter. You remember who it was that said that he went into the Franco- German War ' with a light heart,' and in seven weeks came Sedan and the dethronement of an Emperor, and the surrender of an army. ' Blessed is he that f eareth always.' There is no more fatal error than an underestimate of our difficulties. III. Let me say a word about the sad forecast here. ' Thou shalt deny me thrice.' We cannot say that poor Peter's fall was at all an anomB.lpus or uncommon thing. He did exactly what V.38] A RASH VOW 251 a great many of us are doing. He could — and I have no doubt he would — have gone to the death for Jesus Christ ; but he could not stand being laughed at for Him. He would have been ready to meet the execu- tioner's sharp sword, but the servant-girl's sharp tongue was more than he could bear. And so he denied Jesus, not because he was afraid of his skin — for I do not suppose that the servants had any notion of doing anything more than amusing themselves with a few clumsy gibes at his expense — but because he could not bear to be made sport of. Now, dear brethren, I suppose we are all of us more or less movers in circles in which it sometimes is not considered ' good form ' to show that we are Christian people. You young men in your warehouses, you students at the University, where it is a sign of being * fossils ' and ' behind the times ' and ' not up to date ' to say * I am a Christian,' and all of us in our several places have sometimes to gather our courage together, and not be afraid to declare whose we are. No doubt life is a better witness than words, but no doubt also life is not so good a witness as it might be, unless it sometimes has the commentary of words as well. Thus, to confess Christ means two things ; to say sometimes — in the face of a smile of scorn, which is often harder to bear than something much more dangerous — 'I am His,' and to live Christ, and to say by conduct ' I am His.' 'Whosoever shall confess Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father, and whosoever shall deny Me, him will I also deny.' Do not button your coats over your uniform. Do not take the cockade out of your hats when you go amongst 'the other side.' Live Jesus, and, when advisable, preach Jesus. But Peter's fall, which is typical of what we are all 252 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiii. tempted to do, has in it a gracious message ; for it proclaims the possibility of recovery from any depth of descent, and of coming back again from any distance of wandering. Did you ever notice how Peter's fall was burnt in upon his memory, so as that when he began to preach after Pentecost, the shape that his indictment of his hearers takes is, ' Ye denied the Holy One and the Just,' and how, long after — if the second Epistle which goes by his name is his — in summing up the crimes of the heretics whom he is branding, he speaks of their 'denying the Lord that bought them.' He never forgot his denial, and it remained with him as the expression for all that was wrong in a man's relation to Jesus Christ. And I suppose not only was it burnt in upon his memory, but it burnt out all his self- confidence. It is beautiful to see how, in his letter, he speaks over and over again of ' fear ' as being a wise temper of mind for a Christian. As George Herbert has it, 'A sad, wise valour is the true complexion.' Thus the man that had been so confident in himself learned to say ' Be ready to give to every man that asketh you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.' And do you not think that his fall drew him closer to Jesus Christ than ever he had been before, as he learned more of His pardoning love and mercy ? Was he not nearer the Lord on that morning when the two together, alone, talked after the Resurrection? Was he not nearer Him when he struggled to his feet from the boat on the lake, on that morning when he was received back into his office as Christ's Apostle ? Did he ever forget how he had sinned ? Did he ever forget how Christ had pardoned ? Did he ever forget how Christ loved and would keep him ? Ah, no ! The V.38] FAITH IN GOD AND CHRIST 253 rope that is broken is strongest where it is spliced, not because it was broken, but because a cunning hand has strengthened it. We may be the stronger for our sins, not because sin strengthens, for it weakens, but because God restores. It is possible that we may build a fairer structure on the ruins of our old selves. It is possible that we may turn every field of defeat into a field of victory. It is possible that we may • Fall to rise ; be beaten, to fight better.' If only we cling to the Lord our Strength, the promise shall be ours — whatever our failures, denials, backslidings, inconsistencies — 'though he fall he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with His hand.' FAITH IN GOD AND CHRIST ' Let not your heart be troubled . . . believe in God, believe also in Me.' John xiv. 1. The twelve were sitting in the upper chamber, stupe- fied with the dreary, half-understood prospect of Christ's departure. He, forgetting His own burden, turns to comfort and encourage them. These sweet and great words most singularly blend gentleness and dignity. Who can reproduce the cadence of soothing tenderness, soft as a mother's hand, in that ' Let not your heart be troubled ' ? And who can fail to feel the tone of majesty in that 'Believe in God, believe also in Me'? The Greek presents an ambiguity in the latter half of the verse, for the verb may be either indicative or imperative, and so we may read four different ways, 254 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. according as we render each of the two ' believes ' in either of these two fashions. Our Authorised and Revised Versions concur in adopting the indicative ' Ye believe ' in the former clause and the imperative in the latter. But I venture to think that we get a more true and appropriate meaning if we keep both clauses in the same mood, and read them both as imperatives: ' Believe in God, believe also in Me.' It would be harsh, I think, to take one as an affirmation and the other as a command. It would be irrelevant, I think, to remind the disciples of their belief in God. It would break the unity of the verse and destroy the relation of the latter half to the former, the former being a negative precept: * Let not your heart be troubled '; and the latter being a positive one : ' Instead of being troubled, believe in God, and believe in Me.' So, for all these reasons, I venture to adopt the reading I have indicated. I. Now in these words the first thing that strikes me is that Christ here points to Himself as the object of precisely the same religious trust which is to be given to God. It is only our familiarity with these words that blinds us to their wonderfulness and their greatness. Try to hear them for the first time, and to bring into re- membrance the circumstances in which they were spoken. Here is a man sitting among a handful of His friends, who is within four-and-twenty hours of a shameful death, which to all appearance was the utter annihilation of all His claims and hopes, and He says, ' Trust in God, and trust in Me ' ! I think that if we had heard that for the first time, we should have under- stood a little better than some of us do the depth of its meaning. What is it that Christ asks for here ? Or rather let V. 1] FAITH IN GOD AND CHRIST 255 me say, What is it that Christ offers to us here ? For we must not look at the words as a demand or as a command, but rather as a merciful invitation to do what it is life and blessing to do. It is a very- low and inadequate interpretation of these words which takes them as meaning little more than ' Believe in God, believe that He is ; believe in Me, believe that I am.' But it is scarcely less so to suppose that the mere assent of the understanding to His teaching is all that Christ is asking for here. By no means ; what He invites us to goes a great deal deeper than that. The essence of it is an act of the will and of the heart, not of the understanding at all. A man may believe in Him as a historical person, may accept all that is said about Him here, and yet not be within sight of the trust in Him of which He here speaks. For the essence of the whole is not the intellectual process of assent to a proposition, but the intensely personal act of yielding up will and heart to a living person. Faith does not grasp a doctrine, but a heart. The trust which Christ requires is the bond that unites souls with Him ; and the very life of it is entire committal of myself to Him in all my relations and for all my needs, and absolute utter confidence in Him as all-sufficient for everything that ■ I can require. Let us get away from the cold intellectualism of ' belief ' into the warm atmosphere of * trust,' and we shall understand better than by many volumes what Christ here means and the sphere and the power and the blessedness of that faith which Christ requires. Further, note that, whatever may be this believing in Him which He asks from us or invites us to render, it is precisely the same thing which He bids us render to God. The two clauses in the original bring out that idea even 256 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. more vividly than in our version, because the order of the words in the latter clause is inverted; and they read literally thus : * Believe in God, in Me also believe.' The purpose of the inversion is to put these two, God and Christ, as close together as possible ; and to put the two identical emotions at the beginning and at the end, at the two extremes and outsides of the whole sentence. Could language be more deliberately adopted and moulded, even in its consecution and arrangement, to enforce this thought, that whatever it is that we give to Christ, it is the very same thing that we give to God ? And so He here proposes Himself as the worthy and adequate recipient of all these emotions of confidence, submission, resignation, which make up religion in its deepest sense. That tone is by no means singular in this place. It is the uniform tone and characteristic of our Lord's teaching. Let me remind you just in a sentence of one or two instances. What did He think of Himself who stood up before the world and, with arms outstretched, like that great white Christ in Thorwaldsen's lovely statue, said to all the troop of languid and burdened and fatigued ones crowding at His feet : ' Come unto Me all ye that are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest ' ? That surely is a divine prerogative. What did He think of Himself who said, ' All men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father'? What did He think of Himself who, in that very Sermon on the Mount (to which the advocates of a maimed and mutilated Christianity tell us they pin their faith, instead of to mystical doctrines) declared that He Himself was the Judge of humanity, and that all men should stand at His bar and receive from Him ' accord- ing to the deeds done in their body ' ? Upon any honest Y.l] FAITH IN GOD AND CHRIST 257 principle of interpreting these Gospels, and unless you avowedly go picking and choosing amongst His words, accepting this and rejecting that, you cannot eliminate from the scriptural representation of Jesus Christ the fact that He claimed as His own the emotions of the heart to which only God has a right and only God can satisfy. I do not dwell upon that point, but I say, in one sentence, we have to take that into account if we would estimate the character of Jesus Christ as a Teacher and as a Man. I would not turn away from Him any imperfect conceptions, as they seem to me, of His nature and His work — rather would I foster them, and lead them on to a fuller recognition of the full Christ — but this I am bound to say, that for my part I believe that nothing but the wildest caprice, dealing with the Gospels according to one's own subjective fancies, irrespective altogether of the evidence, can strike out from the teaching of Christ this its charac- teristic difference. What signalises Him, and separates Him from all other religious teachers, is not the clear- ness or the tenderness with which He reiterated the truths about the divine Father's love, or about morality, and justice, and truth, and goodness ; but the peculi- arity of His call to the world is, ' Believe in Me.' And if He said that, or anything like it, and if the represen- tations of His teaching in these four Gospels, which are the only source from which we get any notion of Him at all, are to be accepted, why, then, one of two things follows. Either He was wrong, and then He was a crazy enthusiast, only acquitted of blasphemy because con- victed of insanity ; or else — or else — He was ' God, mani- fest in the flesh.' It is vain to bow down before a fancy portrait of a bit of Christ, and to exalt the humble VOL. II. R 258 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. sage of Nazareth, and to leave out the very thing that makes the difference between Him and all others, namely, these either audacious or most true claims to be the Son of God, the worthy Recipient and the adequate Object of man's religious emotions. ' Believe in God, in Me also believe.' II. Now, secondly, notice that faith in Christ and faith in God are not two, but one. These two clauses on the surface present juxtaposi- tion. Looked at more closely they present interpene- tration and identity. Jesus Christ does not merely set Himself up by the side of God, nor are we worshippers of two Gods when we bow before Jesus and bow before the Father ; but faith in Christ is faith in God, and faith in God which is not faith in Christ is imperfect, incomplete, and will not long last. To trust in Hkn is to trust in the Father ; to trust in the Father is to trust in Him. What is the underlying truth that is here? How comes it that these two objects blend into one, like two jBgures in a stereoscope ; and that the faith which flows to Jesus Christ rests upon God? This is the under- lying truth, that Jesus Christ, Himself divine, is the divine Revealer of God. I need not dwell upon the latter of these two thoughts : how there is no real knowledge of the real God in the depth of His love, the tenderness of His nature or the lustrousness of His holiness ; how there is no certitude ; how the God that we see outside of Jesus Christ is sometimes doubt, some- times hope, sometimes fear, always far-off and vague, an abstraction rather than a person, ' a stream of tendency' without us, that which is unnameable, and the like. I need not dwell upon the thought that Jesus Christ has showed us a Father, has brought a God to our v.l] FAITH IN GOD AND CHRIST 259 hearts whom we can love, whom we can know really though not fully, of whom we can be sure with a certi- tude which is as deep as the certitude of our own personal being ; that He has brought to us a God before whom we do not need to crouch far off, that He has brought to us a God whom we can trust. Very signifi- cant is it that Christianity alone puts the very heart of religion in the act of trust. Other religions put it in dread, worship, service, and the like. Jesus Christ alone says, the bond between men and God is that blessed one of trust. And He says so because He alone brings us a God whom it is not ridiculous to tell men to trust. And, on the other hand, the truth that underlies this is not only that Jesus Christ is the Revealer of God, but that He Himself is divine. Light shines through a window, but the light and the glass that makes it visible have nothing in common with one another. The Godhead shines through Christ, but He is not a mere transparent medium. It is Himself that He is showing us when He is showing us God. ' He that hath seen Me hath seen' — not the light that streams through Me — but ' hath seen,' in Me, ' the Father.' And because He is Himself divine and the divine Revealer, therefore the faith that grasps Him is inseparably one with the faith that grasps God. Men could look upon a Moses, an Isaiah, or a Paul, and in them recognise the eradiation of the divinity that imparted itself through them, but the medium was forgotten in proportion as that which it revealed was beheld. You cannot forget Christ in order to see God more clearly, but to behold Him is to behold God. And if that be true, these two things follow. One is that all imperfect revelation of God is prophetic of, 260 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. and leads up towards, the perfect revelation in Jesus Christ. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews gives that truth in a very striking fashion. He compares all other means of knowing God to fragmentary syllables of a great word, of which one was given to one man and another to another. God 'spoke at sundry times and in manifold portions to the fathers by the prophets ' ; but the whole word is articulately uttered by the Son, in whom He has ' spoken unto us in these last times.' The imperfect revelation, by means of those who were merely mediums for the revelation, leads up to Him who is Himself the Revelation, the Revealer, and the Revealed. And in like manner, all the imperfect faith that, laying hold of other fragmentary means of knowing God, has tremulously tried to trust Him, finds its climax and consummate flower in the full-blossomed faith that lays hold upon Jesus Christ. The uncon- scious prophecies of heathendom ; the trust that select souls up and down the world have put in One whom they dimly apprehended; the faith of the Old Testament saints ; the rudimentary beginnings of a knowledge of God and of a trust in Him which are found in men to-day, and amongst us, outside of the circle of Christianity — all these things are as manifestly incomplete as a building reared half its height, and waiting for the corner-stone to be brought forth, the full revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and the intelligent and full acceptance of Him and faith in Him. And another thing is true, that without faith in Christ such faith in God as is possible is feeble, incom- plete, and will not long last. Historically a pure theism is all but impotent. There is only one example of it on a large scale in the world, and that is a kind of v.l] FAITH IN GOD AND CHRIST 261 bastard Christianity — Mohammedanism; and we all know what good that is as a religion. There are plenty of people amongst us nowadays who claim to be very advanced thinkers, and who call themselves Theists, and not Christians. Well, I venture to say that that is a phase that will not last. There is little substance in it. The God whom men know outside of Jesus Christ is a poor, nebulous thing ; an idea, not a reality. He, or rather It, is a film of cloud shaped into a vague form, through which you can see the stars. It has little power to restrain. It has less to inspire and impel. It has still less to comfort ; it has least of all to satisfy the heart. You will have to get something more substantial than the far-off god of an unchristian Theism if you mean to sway the world and to satisfy men's hearts. And so, dear brethren, I come to this — perhaps the word may be fitting for some that listen to me — 'Believe in God,' and that you may, 'believe also in Christ.' For sure I am that when the stress comes, and you loant a god, unless your god is the God revealed in Jesus Christ, he will be a powerless deity. If you have not faith in Christ, you will not long have faith in God that is vital and worth anything. III. Lastly, this trust in Christ is the secret of a quiet heart. It is of no use to say to men, ' Let not your hearts be troubled,' unless you finish the verse and say, ' Believe in God, believe also in Christ.' For unless we trust we shall certainly be troubled. The state of man in this world is like that of some of those sunny islands in southern seas, around which there often rave the wildest cyclones, and which carry in their bosoms, beneath all their riotous luxuriance of verdant beauty, 262 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. hidden fires, which ever and anon shake the solid earth and spread destruction. Storms without and earth- quakes within — that is the condition of humanity. And where is the 'rest' to come from? All other defences are weak and poor. We have heard about ' pills against earthquakes.' That is what the comforts and tranquillising which the world supplies may fairly be likened to. Unless we trust we are, and we shall be, and should be, ' troubled.' If we trust we may be quiet. Trust is always tranquillity. To cast a burden off myself on others' shoulders is always a rest. But trust in Jesus Christ brings infinitude on my side. Submission is repose. When we cease to kick against the pricks they cease to prick and wound us. Trust opens the heart, like the windows of the Ark tossing upon the black and fatal flood, for the entrance of the peaceful dove with the olive branch in its mouth. Trust brings Christ to my side in all His tenderness and greatness and sweetness. If I trust, 'all is right that seems most wrong.' If I trust, conscience is quiet. If I trust, life becomes 'a solemn scorn of ills.' If I trust, inward unrest is changed into tranquillity, and mad passions are cast out from him that sits 'clothed and in his right mind ' at the feet of Jesus. 'The wicked is like the troubled sea which cannot rest.' But if I trust, my soul will become like the glassy ocean when all the storms sleep, and 'birds of peace sit brooding on the charmed wave.' 'Peace I leave with you.' 'Let not your hearts be troubled. Trust in God ; trust also in Me.' Help us, O Lord ! to yield our hearts to Thy dear Son, and in Him to find Thyself and eternal rest. •MANY MANSIONS' 'In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.'— John xiv. 2. Sorrow needs simple words for its consolation ; and simple words are the best clothing for the largest truths. These eleven poor men were crushed and desolate at the thought of Christ's going ; they fancied that if He left them they lost Him. And so, in simple, childlike words, which the weakest could grasp, and in which the most troubled could find peace. He said to them, after having encouraged their trust in Him, 'There is plenty of room for you as well as for Me where I am going ; and the frankness of our intercourse in the past might make you sure that if I were going to leave you I would have told you all about it. Did I ever hide from you anything that was painful ? Did I ever allure you to follow Me by false promises ? Should I have kept silence about it if our separation was to be eternal ? ' So, simply, as a mother might hush her babe upon her breast. He soothes their sorrow. And yet, in the quiet words, so level to the lowest apprehension, there lie great truths, far deeper than we yet have appreciated, and which will enfold themselves in their majesty and their greatness through eternity. • In My Father's house are many mansions ; if it were not so, I would have told you.' I. Now note in these words, first, the 'Father's house,' and its ample room. There is only one other occasion recorded in which our Lord used this expression, and it occurs in this same Gospel near the beginning ; where in the narra- 263 264 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. tive of the first cleansing of the Temple we read that He said, ' Make not My Father's house a house of merchandise.' The earlier use of the words may help to throw light upon one aspect of this latter employ- ment of it, for there blend in the image the two ideas of what I may call domestic familiarity, and of that great future as being the reality of which the earthly Temple was intended to be the dim prophecy and shadow. Its courts, its many chambers, its ample porches with room for thronging worshippers, repre- sented in some poor way the wide sweep and space of that higher house; and the sense of Sonship, which drew the Boy to His Father's house in the earliest hours of conscious childhood, speaks here. Think for a moment of how sweet and familiar the conception of heaven as the Father's house makes it to us. There is something awful, even to the best and holiest souls, in the thought of even the glories beyond. The circumstances of death, which is its portal, our utter unacquaintance with all that lies behind the veil, the terrible silence and distance which falls upon our dearest ones as they are sucked into the cloud, all tend to make us feel that there is much that is solemn and awful even in the thought of eternal future blessedness. But how it is all softened when we say, * My Father's house.' Most of us have long since left behind us the sweet security, the sense of the absence of all responsi- bility, the assurance of defence and provision, which used to be ours when we lived as children in a father's house here. But we may all look forward to the renewal, in far nobler form, of these early days, when the father's house meant the inexpugnable fortress where no evil could befall us, the abundant home where all wants were supplied, and where the shyest and V. 2] * MANY MANSIONS ' 265 timid est child could feel at ease and secure. It is all coming again, brother, and amidst the august and unimaginable glories of that future the old feeling of being little children, nestling safe in the Father's house, will fill our quiet hearts once more. And then consider how the conception of that Future as the Father's house suggests answers to so many of our questions about the relationship of the inmates to one another. Are they to dwell isolated in their several miansions ? Is that the way in which children in a home dwell with each other? Surely if He be the Father, and heaven be His house, the relation of the redeemed to one another must have in it more than all the sweet familiarity and unrestrained frankness which subsists in the families of earth. A solitary heaven would be but half a heaven, and would ill correspond with the hopes that inevitably spring from the repre- sentation of it as * my Father's house.' But consider further that this great and tender name for heaven has its deepest meaning in the conception of it as a spiritual state of which the essential elements are the loving manifestation and presence of God as Father, the perfect consciousness of sonship, the happy union of all the children in one great family, and the derivation of all their blessedness from their Elder Brother. The earthly Temple, to which there is some allusion in this great metaphor, was the place in which the divine glory was manifested to seeking souls, though in symbol, yet also in reality, and the representation of our text blends the two ideas of the free, frank inter- course of the home and of the magnificent revelations of the Holy of holies. Under either aspect of the phrase, whether we think of ' my Father's house ' as temple or 266 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. as home, it sets before us, as the main blessedness and glory of heaven, the vision of the Father, the conscious- ness of sonship, and the complete union w^ith Him. There are many subsidiary and more outvrard blessed- nesses and glories which shine dimly through the haze of metaphors and negations, by which alone a state of which we have no experience can be revealed to us; but these are secondary. The heaven of heaven is the possession of God the Father through the Son in the expanding spirits of His sons. The sovereign and filial position which Jesus Christ in His manhood occupies in that higher house, and which He shares with all those who by Him have received the adoption of sons, is the very heart and nerve of this great metaphor. But I think we must go a step further than that, and recognise that in the image there is inherent the teach- ing that that glorious future is not merely a state, but also a place. Local associations are not to be divorced from the words; and although we can say but little about such a matter, yet everything in the teaching of Scripture points to the thought that howsoever true it may be that the essence of heaven is condition, yet that also heaven has a local habitation, and is a place in the great universe of God. Jesus Christ has at this moment a human body, glorified. That body, as Scripture teaches us, is somewhere, and where He is there shall also His servant be. In the context He goes on to tell us that ' He goes to prepare a place for us,' and though I would not insist upon the literal interpretation of such words, yet distinctly the drift of the representa- tion is in the direction of localising, though not of materialising, the abode of the blessed. So I think we can say, not merely that what He is that shall also His V.2] *MANY MANSIONS' 267 servants be, but that where He is there shall also His servants be. And from the representation of my text, though we cannot fathom all its depths, we can at least grasp this, which gives solidity and reality to our contemplations of the future, that heaven is a place, full of all sweet security and homelike repose, where God is made known in every heart and to every con- sciousness as a loving Father, and of which all the inhabitants are knit together in the frankest fraternal intercourse, conscious of the Father's love, and rejoicing in the abundant provisions of His royal House. And then there is a second thought to be suggested from these words, and that is of the ample room in this great house. The original purpose of the words of my text, as I have already reminded you, was simplj'- to soothe the fears of a handful of disciples. There was room where Christ went for eleven poor men. Yes, room enough for them ! but Christ's pre- scient eye looked down the ages, and saw all the unborn millions that would yet be drawn to Him up- lifted on the Cross, and some glow of satisfaction flitted across His sorrow, as He saw from afar the result of the impending travail of His soul in the multitudes by whom God's heavenly house should yet be filled. * Many mansions ! ' the thought widens out far beyond our grasp. Perhaps that upper room, like most of the roof-chambers in Je^vish houses, was open to the skies, and whilst He spoke, the innumerable lights that blaze in that clear heaven shone down upon them, and He may have pointed to these. The better Abraham per- haps looked forth, like His prototype, on the starry heavens, and saw in the vision of the future those who through Him should receive the ' adoption of sons ' and dwell for ever in the house of the Lord, *so many as 268 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable.' Ah! brethren, if we could only widen our measure- ment of the walls of the New Jerusalem to the measure- ment of that 'golden rod which the man, that is the angel,' as John says, applied to it, we should under- stand how much bigger it is than any of these poor sects and communities of ours here on earth. If we would lay to heart, as we ought to do, the deep mean- ing of that indefinite 'many' in my text, it would rebuke our narrowness. There will be a great many occupants of the mansions in heaven that Christian men here on earth — the most Catholic of them — will be very much surprised to see there, and thousands will find their entrance there that never found their entrance into any communities of so-called Christians here on earth. That one word ' many ' should deepen our confidence in the triumphs of Christ's Cross, and it may be used to heighten our own confidence as to our own poor selves. A chamber in the great Temple waits for each of us, and the question is. Shall we occupy it, or shall we not? The old Rabbis had a tradition which, like a great many of their apparently foolish sayings, covers in picturesque guise a very deep truth. They said that, however many the throngs of worshippers who came u]3 to Jerusalem at the passover, the streets of the city and the courts of the sanctuary were never crowded. And so it is with that great city. There is room for all. There are throngs, but no crowds. Each finds a place in the ample sweep of the Father's house, like some of the great palaces that barbaric Eastern kings used to build, in whose courts armies might encamp, and the chambers of which were counted by V. 2] * MANY MANSIONS ' 269 the thousand. And surely in all that ample accom- modation, you and I may find some corner where we, if we will, may lodge for evermore. I do not dwell upon subsidiary ideas that may be drawn from the expressions. ' Mansions ' means places of permanent abode, and suggests the two thoughts, so sweet to travellers and toilers in this fleeting, labouring life, of unchangeableness and of repose. Some have supposed that the variety in the attainments of the redeemed, which is reasonable and scriptural, might be deduced from our text, but that does not seem to be relevant to our Lord's purpose. One other suggestion may be made without enlarging upon it. There is only one other occasion in this Gospel in which the word here translated 'mansions' is employed, and it is this : ' We will come and make our abode with him.' Our mansion is in God ; God's dwelling-place is in us. So ask yourselves, Have you a place in that heavenly home ? When prodigal children go away from the father's house, sometimes a broken- hearted parent will keep the boy's room just as it used to be when he was young and pure, and will hope and weary through long days for him to come back and occupy it again. God is keeping a room for you in His house ; do you see that you fill it. II. In the next place, note here the sufficiency of Christ's revelation for our needs. . ' If it were not so I would have told you.' He sets Himself forward in very august fashion as being the Revealer and Opener of that house for us. There is a singular tone about all our Lord's few references to the future — a tone of decisiveness ; not as if He were speaking, as a man might do, that which he had thought out, or which had come to him, but as if He 270 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. was speaking of what he had Himself beheld. *We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen.' He stands like one on a mountain top, looking down into the valleys beyond, and telling His comrades in the plain behind Him what He sees. He speaks of that unseen world always as One who had been in it, and who was reporting experiences, and not giving forth opinions. His knowledge was the knowledge of One who dwelt with the Father, and left the house in order to find and bring back His wandering brethren. It was ' His ow^n calm home. His habitation from eternity,' and therefore He could tell us with decisive- ness, with simplicity, with assurance, all which we need to know about the geography of that unknown land — the plan of that, by us unvisited, house. Very remarkable, therefore, is it, that with this tone there should be such reticence in Christ's references to the future. The text implies the rationale of such re- ticence. ' If it were not so I would have told you.' I tell you all that you need, though I tell you a great deal less than you sometimes wish. The gaps in our knowledge of the future, seeing that we have such a Revealer as we have in Christ, are re- markable. But my text suggests this to us — we have as much as we need. / know, and many of you know, by bitter experience, how many questions, the answers to which would seem to us to be such a lightening of our burdens, our desolated and troubled hearts suggest about that future, and how vainly we ply heaven with questions and interrogate the unreplying Oracle. But we know as much as we need. We know that God is there. We know that it is the Father's house. We know that Christ is in it. We know that the dwellers there are a family. We know that sweet security and V.2] * MANY MANSIONS' 271 ample provision are there; and, for the rest, if we needed to have heard more, He would have told us. ' My knowledge of that life is small, The eye of faith is dim ; But 'tis enough that Christ knows all ; And I shall be with Him.' Let the gaps remain. The gaps are part of the revela- tion, and we know enough for faith and hope. May we not widen the application of that thought to other matters than to our bounded and fragmentary conceptions of a future life ? In times like the present, of doubt and unrest, it is a great piece of Christian wisdom to recognise the limitations of our knowledge and the sufficiency of the fragments that we have. What do we get a revelation for ? To solve theological puzzles and dogmatic difficulties? to inflate us with the pride of quasi-omniscience ? or to present to us God in Christ for faith, for love, for obedience, for imita- tion? Surely the latter, and for such purposes we have enough. So let us recognise that our knowledge is very partial. A great stretch of wall is blank, and there is not a window in it. If there had been need for one, it would have been struck out. He has been pleased to leave many things obscure, not arbitrarily, so as to try our faith — for the implication of the words before us is that the relation between Him and us binds Him to the utmost possible frankness, and that all which we need and He can tell us He does tell — but for high reasons, and because of the very conditions of our present environment, which forbid the more complete and all-round knowledge. So let us recognise our limitations. We know in 272 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. part, and we are wise if we affirm in part. Hold by the Central Light, which is Jesus Christ. 'Many things did Jesus which are not written in this book,' and many gaps and deficiencies from a human point of view exist in the contexture of revelation. 'But these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ,' for which enough has been told us, ' and that, believing, ye may have life in His name.' If that pur- pose be cxcomplished in us, God will not have spoken, nor we have heard, in vain. Let us hold by the Central Light, and then the circumference of darkness will gradually retreat, and a wider sphere of illumina- tion be ours, until the day when we enter our mansion in the Father's house, and then ' in Thy Light shall we see light '; and we shall ' know even as we are known.' Let your Elder Brother lead you back, dear friend, to the Father's bosom, and be sure that if you trust Him and listen to Him, you will know enough on earth to turn earth into a foretaste of Heaven, and will find at last your place in the Father's house beside the Brother who has prepared it for you. THE FORERUNNER ' ... I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself ; that where I am, there ye may be also.'— John xiv. 2, 3. What divine simplicity and depth are in these words ! They carry us up into the unseen world, and beyond time ; and yet a little child can lay hold on them, and mourning hearts and dying men find peace and sweet- ness in them. A very familiar image underlies them. It was customary for travellers in those old days to send some of their party on in advance, to find lodging 78.2,3] THE FORERUNNER 273 and make arrangements for them in some great city. Many a time one or other of the disciples had been ' sent before His face into every place where He Him- self should come.' On that very morning two of them had gone in, at His bidding, from Bethany to make ready the table at which they were sitting. Christ here takes that office upon Himself. The emblem is homely, the thing meant is transcendent. Not less wonderful is the blending of majesty and lowliness. The office which He takes upon Himself is that of an inferior and a servant. And yet the dis- charge of it, in the present case, implies His authority over every corner of the universe, His immortal life, and the sufficiency of His presence to make a heaven. Nor can we fail to notice the blending of another pair of opposites : His certainty of His impending death, and His certainty, notwithstanding and thereby, of His con- tinual work and His final return, are inseparably inter- laced here. How comes it that, in all His premonitions of His death, Jesus Christ never spoke about it as failure or as the interruption or end of His activity, but always as the transition to, and the condition of. His wider work? 'I go, and if I go I return, and take you to Myself.' So, then, there are three things here, the departure with its purpose, the return, and the perfected union. I. The Departure. Our Lord's going away from that little group was a journey in two stages. Calvary was the first ; Olivet was the second. He means by the phrase the whole continuous process which begins with His death and ends in His ascension. Both are embraced in His words, and each co-operates to the attainment of the great purpose. VOL. II. s 274 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. He prepares a place for us by His death. The High Priest, in the ancient ritual, once a year was privileged to lift the heavy veil and pass into the darkened chamber, where only the light between the cherubim was visible, because he bore in his hand the blood of the sacrifice. But in our New Testament system the path into * the holiest of all,' the realisation of the most intimate fellowship with heavenly things and com- munion with God Himself, are made possible, and the way patent for every foot, because Jesus has died. And as the communion upon earth, so the perfecting of the communion in the heavens. Who of us could step within those awful sanctities, or stand serene amidst the region of eternal light and stainless purity, unless, in His death, He had borne the sins of the world, and, having ' overcome ' its ' sharpness ' by endur- ing its blow, had ' opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers ' ? Old legends tell us of magic gates that resisted all attempts to force them, but upon which, if one drop of a certain blood fell, they flew open. And so, by His death, Christ has opened the gates and made the heaven of perfect purity a dwelling-place for sinful men. But the second stage of His departure is that which more eminently is in Christ's mind here. He prepares a place for us by His entrance into and His dwelling in the heavenly places. The words are obscure be- cause we have but few others with which to compare them, and no experience by which to interpret them. We know so little about the matter that it is not w^ise to say much ; but though there be vast tracts of dark- ness round the little spot of light, this should only make the spot of light more vivid and more precious. We vs. 2, 3] THE FORERUNNER 275 know little, but we know enough for mind and heart to rest upon. Our ignorance of the ways in which Christ by His ascension prepares a heaven for His followers should neither breed doubt nor disregard of His assurance that He does. If Christ had not ascended, would there have been *a place' at all? He has gone with a human body, which, glorified as it is, still has relations to space, and must be somewhere. And we may even say that His ascending up on high has made a place where His servants are. But apart from that suggestion, which, perhaps, is going beyond our limits, we may see that Christ's presence in heaven is needful to make it a heaven for poor human souls. There, as here (Scrip- ture assures us), and throughout eternity as to-day, Jesus Christ is the Mediator of all human knowledge and possession of God. It is from Him and through Him that there come to men, whether they be men on earth or men in the heavens, all that they know, all that they hope, all that they enjoy, of the wisdom, love, beauty, peace, power, which flow from God. Take away from the heaven of the Christian expecta- tion that which comes to the spirit through Jesus Christ, and you have nothing left. He and His media- tion and ministration alone make the brightness and the blessedness of that high state. The very glories of all that lies beyond the veil would have an aspect appalling and bewildering to us, unless our Brother were there. Like some poor savages brought into a great city, or rustics into the presence of a king and his court, we should be ill at ease amidst the glories and solemnities of that future life unless we saw standing there our Kinsman, to whom we can turn, and who makes it possible for us to feel that it 276 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. is home. Christ's presence makes heaven the home of our hearts. Not only did He go to prepare a place, but He is continuously preparing it for us all through the ages. We have to think of a double form of the work of Christ, His past work in His earthly life, and His present in His exaltation. We have to think of a double form of His present activity — His work with and in us here on earth, and His work for us there in the heavens. We have to think of a double form of His work in the heavens — that which the Scripture represents in a metaphor, the full comprehension of which surpasses our present powers and experiences, as being His priestly intercession ; and that which my text represents in a metaphor, perhaps a little more level to our apprehension, as being His preparing a place for us. Behind the veil there is a working Christ, who, in the heavens, is preparing a place for all that love Him. II. In the next place, note the Return. The purpose of our Lord's departure, as set forth by Himself here, guarantees for us His coming back again. That is the force of the simple argumentation of my text, and of the pathetic and soothing repetition of the sweet words, * I go to prepare a place for you ; and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself.' Because the departure had for its purpose the preparing of the place, therefore it is necessarily followed by a return. He who went away as the Forerunner has not done His work until He comes back, and, as Guide, leads those for whom He had prepared the place to the place which He had prepared for them. Now that return of our Lord, like His departure, may vs. 2, 3] THE FORERUNNER 277 be considered as having two stages. Unquestionably the main meaning and application of the words is to that final and personal coming which stands at the end of history, and to which the hopes of every Chris- tian soul ought to be steadfastly directed. He will * so come in like manner as ' He has gone. We are not to water down such words as these into anything short of a return precisely corresponding in its method to the departure ; and as the departure was visible, corporeal, literal, personal, and local, so the return is to be visible, corporeal, literal, personal, local too. He is to come as He went, a visible Manhood, only throned amongst the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. This is the aim that He sets before Him in His departure. He leaves in order that He may come back again. And, oh, dear friends ! remember — and let us live in the strength of the remembrance — that this return ought to be the prominent subject of Christian aspira- tion and desire. There is much about the conception of that solemn return, with all the convulsions that attend it, and the judgment of which it is preliminary, that may well make men's hearts chill within them. But for you and me, if we have any love in our hearts and loyalty in our spirits to that King, ' His coming ' should be 'prepared as the morning,' and we should join in the great burst of rapture of many a psalm, which calls upon rocks and hills to break forth into singing, and trees of the field to clap their hands, because He cometh as the King to judge the earth. His own parable tells us how we ought to regard His coming. When the fig-tree's branch begins to supple, and the little leaves to push their way through the polished stem, then we know that summer is at hand. 278 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. His coining should be as the approach of that glori- ous, fervid time, in which the sunshine has tenfold brilliancy and power, the time of ripened harvests and matured fruits, the time of joy for all creatures that love the sun. It should be the glad hope of all His servants. We have a double witness to bear in the midst of this as of every generation. One half of the witness stretches backwards to the Cross, and proclaims ' Christ has come ' ; the other reaches onwards to the Throne, and proclaims ' Christ will come.' Between these two high uplifted piers swings the chain of the world's history, which closes with the return, to judge and to save, of the Lord who came to die and has gone to prepare a place for us. But do not let us forget that we may well take another point of view than this. Scripture knows of many comings of the Lord preliminary to, and in prin- ciple one with. His last coming. For nations all great crises of their history are ' comings of the Lord,' the Judge, and we are strictly in the line of Scripture analogy when, in reference to individuals, we see in each single death a true coming of the Lord. That is the point of view in which we ought to look upon a Christian's death-bed. 'The Master is come, and calleth for thee.' Beyond all secondary causes, deeper than disease or accident, lies the loving will of Him w^ho is the Lord of life and of death. Death is Christ's minister, 'mighty and beauteous, though his face be dark,' and he, too, stands amidst the ranks of the 'ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation.' It is Christ that says of one, 'I will that this man tarry,' and to another, ' Go ! ' and he goeth. But whensoever a Christian man vs. 2. 3] THE FORERUNNER 279 lies down to die, Christ says, ' Come ! * and he conies. How that thought should hallow the death-chamber as with the print of the Master's feet! How it should quiet our hearts and dry our tears! How it should change the whole aspect of that 'shadow feared of man ' ! With Him for our companion, the lonely road will not be dreary ; and though in its anticipation, our timid hearts may often be ready to say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me,' if we have Him by our sides, 'even the night shall be light about us.' The dying martyr beneath the city wall lifted up his face to the heavens, and said, ' Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ! ' It was the echo of the Master's promise, ' I will come again, and receive you to Myself.' III. Lastly, notice the Perfected Union. The departure for such a purpose necessarily in- volved the return again. . Both are stages in the process, which is perfected by complete union — 'That where I am there ye may be also.' Christ, as I have been saying, is Heaven. His presence is all that we need for peace, for joy, for purity, for rest, for love, for growth. To be ' with Him,' as He tells us in another part of these wonderful last words in the upper chamber, is to ' behold His glory.' And to behold His glory, as John tells us in his Epistle, is to be like Him. So Christ's presence means the communication to us of all the lustre of His radiance, of all the white- ness of His purity, of all the depth of His blessedness, and of a share in His wondrous dominion. His glori- fied manhood will pass into ours, and they that are with Him where He is will rest as in the centre and home of their spirits, and find Him all-sufficient. His presence is my Heaven. That is almost all we know. Oh ! it is more than all 280 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. we need to know. The curtain is the picture. It is because what is there transcends in glory all our present experience that Scripture can only hint at it and describe it by negations — such as 'no night,' 'no sorrow,' ' no tears,' ' former things passed away ' ; and by symbols of glory and lustre gathered from all that is loftiest and noblest in human buildings and society. But all these are but secondary and poor. The living heart of the hope, and the lambent centre of the brightness, is, ' So shall we ever be with the Lord.' And it is enough. It is enough to make the bond of union between us in the outer court and them in the holy place. Parted friends will fix to look at the same star at the same moment of the night and feel some union ; and if we from amidst the clouds of earth, and they from amidst the pure radiance of their heaven, turn our eyes to the same Christ, we are not far apart. If He be the companion of each of us. He reaches a hand to each, and, clasping it, the parted ones are united; and 'whether we wake or sleep we live together,' be- cause we both live with Him. Brother! Is Jesus Christ so much to you that a heaven which consists in nearness and likeness to Him has any attraction for you ? Let Him be your Saviour, your Sacrifice, your Helper, your Companion. Obey Him as your King, love Him as your Friend, trust Him as your All. And be sure that then the darkness will be but the shadow of His hand, and instead of dreading death as that which separates you from life and love and action and joy, you will be able to meet it peace- fully, as that which rends the thin veil, and unites you with Him who is the Heaven of heavens. He has gone to prepare a place for us. And if we will let Him, He will prepare us for the place, and then vs. 2, 3] THE WAY 281 come and lead us thither. 'Thou wilt show me the path of life' which leads through death. 'In Thy presence is fullness of joy, and at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.' THE WAY 'And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, we know not whither Thou goest ; and how can we know the way ? Jesus saith unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life : no man cometh unto the Father, hut by Me. If ye had known Me, ye should have known My Father also: and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.'— John xiv. 4-7. Our Lord has been speaking of His departure, of its purpose, of His return as guaranteed by that purpose, and of His servants' eternal and perfect reunion with Him. But even these cheering and calming thoughts do not exhaust His consolations, as they did not satisfy all the disciples' needs. They might still have said, • Yes ; we believe that You will come back again, and we believe that we shall be together ; but what about the parenthesis of absence ? ' And here is the answer, or at least part of it : * Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know'; or, if we adopt the shortened form which the Revised Version gives us, ' Whither I go ye know the way.' When you say to a man, 'You know the way,' you mean * Come.' And in these words there lie, as it seems to me, a veiled invitation to the disciples to come to Him before He came back for them, and the assur- ance that they, though separated, might still find and tread the road to the Father's house, and so be with Him still. They are not left desolate. The Christ who is absent is present as the path to Himself. And so the parenthesis is bridged across. Now in these verses we 282 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. have several large and important lessons which I think may best be drawn by simply seeking to follow their course. I. Observe the disciples' unconscious knowledge. Jesus Christ says : ' Ye know the way and ye know the goal.' One of them ventures flatly to contradict Him, and to traverse both assertions with a brusque and thorough -going negative. *We do not know whither Thou goest,' says Thomas ; ' how can we know the way ? ' He is the same man in this conversation that we find him in the interview before our Lord's journey to raise Lazarus, and in the interview after our Lord's resurrection. In all three cases he appears as mainly under the dominion of sense, as slow to apprehend anything beyond its limits, as morbidly melancholy and disposed to take the blackest possible view of things — a practical pessimist — and yet with a certain kind of frank outspokenness which half redeems the other characteristics from blame. He could not understand all the Lord's deep words just spoken. His mind was befogged and dimmed, and he blurts out his ignorance, knowing that the best place to carry it to is to the Hluminator who can make it light. ' We know not whither Thou goest, and how can we know the way ? ' Was Jesus right ? was Thomas right ? or were they both right ? The fact is that Thomas and all his fellows knew, after a fashion, but they did not know that they knew. They had heard much in the past as to where Christ was going. Plainly enough it had been rung in their ears over and over again. It had made some kind of lodgment in their heads, and, in that sense, they did know. It is this unused and un- conscious knowledge of theirs to which Christ appeals, vs. 4-7] THE WAY 283 and which He tries to draw out into consciousness and power when He says, ' You know whither I am going, and you know the road.' Is not that exactly what a patient teacher will do with some flustered child when he says to it : ' Take time ! You know it well enough if you will only think ' ? So the Master says here : ' Do not be agitated and troubled in heart. Reflect, re- member, overhaul your stores, and think what I have told you over and over again, and you will find that you do know whither I am going, and that you do know the way.' The patient gentleness of the Master with the slow- ness of the scholars is beautifully exemplified here, as is also the method, which He lovingly and patiently adopts, of sending men back to consult their own con- sciousness as illuminated by His teaching, and to see whether there is not lying somewhere, unrecked of and unemployed in some dusty corner of their mind, a truth that only needs to be dragged out and cleaned in order to show itself for what it is, the all-sufficient light and strength for the moment's need. The dialogue is an instance of what is true about us all, that we have in our possession truths given to us by Jesus Christ, the whole sweep and bearing of which, the whole majesty and power and illuminating capa- city of which, we do not dream of yet. How much in our . creeds lies dim and undeveloped ! Time and cir- cumstances and some sore agony of spirit are needed in order to make us realise the riches that we possess, and the certitudes to which our troubled spirits may cling; and the practice of far more patient, honest, profound meditation and reflection than finds favour with the average Christian man is needed, too, in order that the truths possessed may be possessed, and 284 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xxv. that we may know what we know, and understand • the things that are given to us of God.' In all your creeds, there are large tracts that you, in some kind of a fashion, do believe ; and yet they have no vitality in your consciousness nor power in your lives. And the Master here does with these disciples exactly what He is trying to do day by day with us, namely, fling us back on ourselves, or rather upon His revelation in us, and get us to fathom its depths and to walk round about its magnitudes, and so to under- stand the things that we say we believe. All our knowledge is ignorance. Ignorance that confesses itself to Him is in the way of becoming knowledge. His light will touch the smoke and change it into red spires of flame. If you do not know, go to Him and say, 'Lord! I do not.' An accurate understanding of where the darkness lies is the first step to the light. We are meant to carry all our inadequate and superficial realisations of His truth into His presence, that, from Him, we may gain deeper knowledge, a firmer faith, and a more joyous certitude in His inexhaustible lessons. In every article and item of the Christian faith there is a transcendent element which surpasses our present comprehension. Let us be confident that the light will break; and let us welcome the new illumination when it comes, sure that it comes from God. Be not puffed up with the conceit that you know all. Be sure of this, that, according to the good old metaphor, we are but as children on the shore of the great ocean, gathering a few of the shells that it has washed to our feet, itself stretching boundless, and, thank God! sunlit, before us. ' Ye know the way.' ' Master, we know not the way ' vs. 4-7] THE WAY 285 II. Observe here, in the second place, our Lord's great self-revelation which meets this unconscious knowledge. 'Jesus saith unto him: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life ; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.' Now it is quite plain, I think, from the whole strain of the context and the purpose of these words that the main idea in them is the first — 'I am the Way.' And that is made more certain because of the last words of the verse, which, summing up the force of the three preceding assertions, dwell only upon the metaphor of the Way; 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.' So that of these three great words, the Way, the Truth, the Life, we are to regard the second and the third as explanatory of the first. They are not co-ordinate, but the first is the more general, and the other two show how the first comes to be true. * I am the Way ' because ' I am the Truth and the Life.' There are no words of the Master, perhaps, to which my previous remarks are more necessary to be applied than these. We know ; and yet oh ! what an overplus of glory and of depth is here that we do not know and never can know. The most fragmentary and in- adequate grasp of them with heart and mind will bring light to the mind and quietness and peace to the heart ; but the whole meaning of them goes beyond men and angels. We can only skim the surface and seek to shift back the boundaries of our knowledge a little further, and to embrace within its limits a little more of the broad land into which the words bring us. So just take a thought or two which may tend in that direction. Note, then, as belonging to all three of these 286 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. clauses that remarkable '/ awi.' We show a way, Christ is it. We speak truth, Christ is it. Parents impart life, which they have received, Christ is Life. He separates Himself from all men by that representa- tion that He is not merely the communicator or the teacher or the guide, but that He Himself is, in His own personal Being, Way, Truth, Life. He said that, when Calvary was within arm's-length. What did He think about Himself, and what should we think of Him? And then note, further, that He sets forth His unique relation to the truth as being one ground on which He is the Way to God. He is the Truth in reference to the divine nature. That Truth, then, is not a mere matter of words. It is not only His speech that teaches us, but Himself that shows us God. His whole life and character. His personality, are the true representation within human conditions of the Invisible God ; and when He says, * I am the Way and the Truth,' He is saying substantially the same thing as the great pro- logue of this Gospel says when it calls Him the Word and the Light of men, and as Paul says when he names Him ' the Image of the Invisible God.' There is all the difference between talking about God and showing Him. Men reveal God by their words ; Christ reveals Him by Himself and the facts of His life. The truest and highest representation of the divine nature that men can ever have is in the face of Jesus Christ. I need only remind you in a sentence about other and lower applications of this great saying, which do not, as I think, enter into the purpose of the context- He is the Truth, inasmuch as, in the life and historical manifestation of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Scrip- tures, men find foundation truths of a moral and vs. 4-7] THE WAY 287 spiritual sort. 'Whatsoever things are true, what- soever things are noble, whatsoever things are lovely and of good report,' He is these, and all true ethics is but the formulating into principles of all the facts of the life and character of Jesus Christ. Further, my text says He is the Way because He is the Life. On the one side God is brought to all hearts, and in some real sense to our comprehension, by the life of Jesus Christ, and so He is the Way. But that is not enough. There must be an action upon us as well as an action having reference to the divine nature. God is brought to men by the manifestation in Christ ; and we, the dead, are quickened by the communication of the Life. The one phrase points to all His work as a Revealer, the other points to all His work upon us as life-giving Spirit, a Quickener and an Inspirer. Dead men cannot walk a road. It is of no use to make a path if it starts from a cemetery. Christ taught that men apart from Him are dead, and that the only life that they can have by which they can be knit to God is the divine life which was in Himself, and of which He is the source and the principle for the whole world. He does not tell us here what yet is true, and what He abundantly tells in other parts of this great conver- sation, that the only way by which the life which He brings can be diffused and communicated is by His death. * Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.' He is the Life, and — para- dox of mystery and yet fact which is the very heart and centre of His Gospel — His only way of giving His life to us is by giving up His physical life for us. He must die that He may be the life-spring for the world. The alabaster box must be broken if the ointment and its fragrance are to be poured out ; and ' death is the 288 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. gate of life' in a deeper than the ordinary sense of the saying, inasmuch as the death of the Life which is Christ is the life of the death which we are. And so, because, on the one hand, He brings a God to our hearts that we can love and trust, and because, on the other. He communicates to our spirits, dead in the only true death which is the separation from God by sin, the life by which we are knit to God, He is the Way to the Father. And what about people that never heard of Him, to whom that Way has been closed, to whom that Truth has never been manifested, to whom that Life has never been brought ? Ah ! Christ has other ways of working than through His historical manifestation, for there is no truth more plainly taught in this great fourth Gospel than this, that that Light 'lighteth every man that cometh into the world,' The eternal Word works through all the earth, in ways beyond our ken, and wherever any man has, however imper- fectly, felt after and grasped the thought of a Father in the heavens, there the Word, which is the Light of men, has wrought. But for us to whom this Book has come, for what people call in bitter irony * Christendom,' the law of my text rigidly applies, and it is being worked out all round us to-day. 'No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.' And here we are, in this England of ours, and in our sister nations on the continent of Europe and in America, face to face as I believe with this alter- native — either Jesus Christ the Revealer of God and the Life of men, or an empty Heaven. And for you, individually, it is either — take Christ for the Way, or wander in the wilderness and forget your Father. It is either— take Christ for the Truth, or be given over to vs. 4-7] THE WAY 289 the insufficiencies of mere natural, political, and intel- lectual truths, and the shows and illusions of time and sense. It is either — take Christ for your Life, or remain in your deadness, separate from God. III. Lastly, we have here the disciples' ignorance and the new vision which dispels it. 'If ye had known Me, ye should have known My Father also, and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.' Our Lord accepts for the moment Thomas's standpoint. He supplements His former alle- gation of the disciples' knowledge with the admission of the ignorance which went with it as its shadow, and was only too sadly and plainly shown by their failure to discern in Him the manifestation of the Father. He has just told them that they did know what they thought they knew not ; He now tells them that they did not know what they thought they knew so well, after so many years of companionship — even Himself. The proof that they did not is that they did not know the Father as revealed in Him, nor Him as revealing the Father. If they missed that, they missed every- thing ; and for all they had known of His graciousness, were strangers to His truest Self. Their ignorance would turn out knowledge, if they would think, and their supposed knowledge would turn out ignorance. The lesson for us is that the true test of the com- pleteness and worth of our knowledge of Christ lies in its being knowledge of God the Father, brought near to us by Him. This saying puts a finger on the radical deficiency of all merely humanitarian views of Christ's person, however clearly they may see and admiringly extol the beauty of His character and the 'sweet reasonableness' of His wisdom. They all break down here, and are arraigned as so shallow and incomplete VOL. n. T 290 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. that they do not deserve to be called knowledge of Him at all. If you know anything about Jesus Christ rightly, this is what you know about Him, that in Him you see God. If you have not seen God in Him, you have not got to the heart of the mystery. The knowledge of Christ which stops with the Man and the Martyr, and the Teacher and the beautiful, gentle Brother, is know- ledge so partial that even He cannot venture to call it other than ignorance. Oh ! brethren, do our concep- tions of Him meet this test which He Himself has laid down, and can we say that, seeing Him, we see in Him God? And then our Lord passes on to another thought, the new vision which at the moment was being granted to this unconscious ignorance that was pass- ing into conscious knowledge. 'From henceforth ye know Him and have seen Him.' We must give that 'from henceforth,' as a note of time, a somewhat liberal interpretation, and apply it to the whole series of utterances and deeds of which the words of our text are but a portion. And, if so, we come to this — it was in the wisdom, and the gentleness, and the deep truths of that upper chamber; it was in the agony and submission of Gethsemane ; it was in the meek patience before the judges, and the silent acceptance of ignominy and shame; it was in the willing, loving endurance of the long hours upon the Cross, that Christ inaugurated the new stage in His revelation of God and in His life-giving to the world. And it is from thenceforth and thereby that in the man Jesus, men know and see 'the Father' as they never did before. The Cross and the Passion of Christ are the unveiling to the world of the heart of God; and by the side of that new vision the fairest and the loftiest vs. 4-7] THE VISION OF GOD 291 and the sweetest of Christ's former manifestations and utterances sink into comparative insignificance. It is the dying Christ that reveals the living God. So, dear friends, He is your way to God. See that ye seek the Father by Him alone. He is your Truth ; grapple Him to your hearts, and by patient meditation and continual faithfulness enrich yourselves with all the communicated treasures that you have already received in Him. He is your Life ; cleave to Him, that the quick Spirit that was in Him may pass into you and make you victors over all deaths, temporal and eternal. Know Him as a Friend, not as a mere histori- cal person, or with mere head-knowledge, for to know a friend is something far deeper than to know a truth. ' Acquaint thyself with Him and be at peace.' ' This is life eternal, to know,' with the knowledge which is life and possession, 'Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' THE TRUE VISION OF GOD 'Philip saith xinto Jesus, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. 9. Jesus saith unto Him. Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the E'ather ? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself: but the Father, that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me : or else believe Me for the very works' sake.'— John xiv. 8-11. The vehement burst with which Philip interrupts the calm flow of our Lord's discourse is not the product of mere frivolity or curiosity. One hears the ring of earnestness in it, and the yearnings of many years find voice. Philip had felt out of his depth, no doubt, in the profound teachings which our Lord had been giving, but His last words about seeing God set a 292 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. familiar chord vibrating. As an Old Testament believer he knew that Moses had once led the elders of Israel up to the mount where 'they saw the God of Israel,' and that to many others had been granted sensible manifestations of the divine presence. As a disciple he longed for some similar sign to confirm his faith. As a man he was conscious of the deep need which all of us have, whether we are conscious of it or not, for something more real and tangible than an un- seeable and unknowable God. The peculiarities of Philip's temperament strengthened the desire. The first appearance that he makes in the Gospels is characteristically like this his last. To all Nathanael's objections he had only the reply, ' Come and see.' And here he says : ' Oh ! if we could see the Father it would be enough.' He was one of the men to whom seeing is believing, and so he speaks. His petition is childlike in its simplicity, beautiful in its trust, noble and true in its estimate of what naen need. He longs to see God. He believes that Christ can show God ; he is sure that the sight of God will satisfy the heart. These are errors, or truths, according to what is meant by ' seeing.' Philip meant a palpable manifestation, and so far he was wrong. Give the word its highest and its truest meaning, and Philip's error becomes grand truth. Our Lord gently, lovingly, and with only a hint of rebuke, answers the request, and seeks to disengage the error from the truth. His answer lies in the verses that we have read. Let us try to follow them, and, as we may, to skim their surface, for their depths are beyond us. First of all, then, we have the sight of God in Christ as enough to answer men's longings. There is a world of sadness and tenderness, of suppressed pain vs. 8-11] THE VISION OF GOD 293 and of grieved affection, in the first words of our Lord's reply. 'Have I been so long time w^ith you, and yet hast thou not know^n Me, Philip ? ' He seldom names His disciples. When He does, there is a deep cadence of affection in the designation. This man was one of the first disciples, the little original band called by Christ Himself, and thus had been with Him all the time of His ministry, and the Master wonders with a gentle wonder that, before eyes that loved Him as much as Philip's did, His continual self-revela- tion had been made to so little purpose. In the answer, in its first portion, there lies the reiteration of the thoughts that I was trying to dwell upon in the last sermon, which, therefore, I may lightly touch now — viz., that the sight of Christ is the sight of God — 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father' — and that not to know Christ as thus showing God is not to know Him at all — 'Thou hast not known Me, Philip.' Further, there is the thought that the sight of God in Christ is sufficient, 'How sayest thou. Shew us the Father?' From all this we may gather some thoughts on which I lightly touch. I. The first is, that we all do need to have God made visible to us. The history of heathendom shows us that. In every land men have said, ' The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men.' And the highest cultivation of this highly cultivated and self-conscious twentieth century has not removed us from the same necessity that the rudest savage has, to have some kind of manifestation of the divine nature other than the dim and vague ones which are possible apart from the revelation of God in Christ. A God who is only the product of inferences from creation, or providence, 294 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. or the mysteries of history, or the wonders of ray own inner life, the creature of logic or of reflection, is very powerless to sway and influence men. The limitations of our faculties and the boundlessness of our hearts both cry out for a God who is nearer to us than that, and whom we can see and love and be sure of. The whole world wants the making visible of divinity as its deepest want. And your heart and mind require it. Nothing else will ever stay pur hunger, will ever answer our questioning minds. Christ meets this need. How can you make wisdom visible? How can a man see love or purity? How do I see your spirit? By the deeds of your body. And the only way by which God can ever come near enough to men to be a constant power and a constant motive in their lives is by their seeing Him at work in a Man, who amongst them is His image and revela- tion. Christ's whole life is the making visible of the invisible God. He is the manifestation to the world of the unseen Father. That vision is enough — enough for mind, enough for heart, enough for will. There is none else that is sufficient, but this is. ' How sayest thou, Shew us the Father?' If we can see God it suffices us. Then the mind settles down upon the thought of Him as the basis of all being, and of all change, and the heart can twine itself round Him, and the seeking soul folds its wings and is at rest, and the troubled spirit is quiet, and the accusing conscience is silent, and the rebellious will is subdued, and the stormy passions are quieted, and in the inner kingdom is a great jDeace. The sight of God in Christ brings rest to every heart, and, Oh ! the absence of the vision is the true secret of all disquiet. We are troubled and careful, and vs. 8-11] THE VISION OF GOD 295 tossed from one stormy billow to another, and swept over by all the winds that blow, because we see not God, our Father, in the face of Jesus. 'Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us,' is either a puerile petition, or the deepest and noblest prayer of the human heart. Blessed are they who have learned what it is to see, and know where that great sight is to be seen ! Our present knowledge and vision are far higher than that mere external symbol of God which this man wanted. The elders of Israel saw the God of Israel, but what they saw was but some symbolical manifestation of that which in itself is unseen and unattainable. But we who see God in Christ see no symbol but the Reality, and there is nothing more possible or to be hoped for here. Our present mani- festation and sight of God in Christ does fall, in some ways unknown to us, beneath the bright hopes that we are entitled to cherish. But howsoever imperfect it may be, as measured against the perfection of the vision when we shall see face to face, and knovr even as we are known, it is enough, and more than enough, for all the questionings and desires of our hungering spirits. II. Our Lord goes on to a further answer, and points to the divine and mutual indwelling by which this sight is made possible. 'Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me ? The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself, but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.' There are here, mainly, two things, Christ's claim to the oneness of unbroken communion, and Christ's claim, consequently, to the oneness of complete co-operation. ' I am in the Father ' indicates the suppression of all independent and there- 296 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. fore rebellious will, consciousness, thought and action ; ' And the Father in Me ' indicates the influx into that perfectly filial Manhood of the whole fullness of God in unbroken, continuous, gentle, deep flow. These are the two sides of this great mystery on which neither wisdom nor reverence lead us to dilate; and they combine to express the closest and most uninterrupted blending, interpenetration, and communion. And then follows the other claim, that because of this continuous mutual indwelling there is perfect co- operation. This is also stated in terms corresponding to the preceding double representation. 'The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself,' cor- responds to, *I am in the Father.' 'The Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works,' corresponds to 'The Father in Me.' The two put together teach us this, that by reason of that mysterious and ineffable union of communion, Jesus Christ in all His words and in all His works is the perfect instrument of the divine will, so that His words are God's words, and His works are God's works ; so that, when He speaks, His gentle wisdom, His loving sympathy. His melting tenderness, His authoritative commands. His prophetic threaten- ings, are the speech of God, and that when He acts, whether it be by miracle or in the ordinary deeds of His life, what we see is God working before our eyes as we never see Him in any human being. And from all this follow just two or three considera- tions which I name. Note the absolute absence of any consciousness on Christ's part of the smallest deflection or disharmony between Himself and the Father. Two triangles laid on each other are in every line, point, and angle absolutely coincident. That humanity is vs. 8-11] THE VISION OF GOD 297 capable of receiving the w^hole inflov^?^ of God, and that indwelling God is perfectly expressed in the humanity. There is no trace of a consciousness of sin. Every- thing that Jesus Christ said He knew to be God's speaking; everything that He did He knew to be God's acting. There were no barriers between the two. Jesus Christ was conscious of no separation — not the thinnest film of air between these Two who adhered and inhered so closely and so continuously. It is an awful assertion. Now I pray you to ask yourselves the question : If this was what Christ said, what did He think of Him- self? And is this a Man, like the rest of us, with blotches and sins, with failures to embody His own ideas, and still more to carry out in life the will that He knows to be God's will ? Is this a man like other men who thus speaks to us ? If Jesus had this con- sciousness, either He was ludicrously, tragically, blas- phemously, utterly mistaken and untrustworthy, or He is what the Church in all ages has confessed Him to be, ' the Everlasting Son of the Father.' III. Lastly, our Lord further sets before us the faith to which He invites us on the ground of His union with, and revelation of, God. ' Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the very works' sake.' Observe that the verb at the beginning of this last verse of our text passes into a plural form. Our Lord has done with Philip especially, and speaks now to all who hear Him, and to us amongst the rest of His auditors. He bids us believe Him, and believe some- thing about Him on the strength of His own testi- mony, or, in default of that, and as second best, believe Him on the testimony of His works. I gather 298 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. together what I have to say about this point into three remarks. The true bond of union between men and Jesus Christ is faith. We have to trust, and that is better than sight. We have to trust Him. He is the personal Object of our faith. In all faith there is what I may call a moral and a voluntary element. A man believes a proposition because it is forced upon him, and his intelligence is obliged to accept it. A man trusts Christ because he will trust Him, and the moral and voluntary element carries us far beyond the mere intellectual conception of faith as the assent to a set of theological propositions. Faith really is the out- going of the whole man — heart, will, intellect, and all — to a person whom it grasps. But the Christ that you and I have to trust is the Christ as He Himself has declared Himself to us. ' Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.' There is a bastard, mutilated kind of thing that calls itself Christian faith, that goes about the world in this generation, which believes in Jesus Christ in all sorts of beautiful ways, but it will not believe in Him as the Personal Revelation and making visible of the unseen God. Jesus Christ Himself tells us here that that is not the kind of faith which He invites us to put forth. If we put forth that only, we have not yet come to under- stand Him. Oh, dear friends ! Christ as here declared to us by Himself is the only Christ to whom it is right to give our trust. If He be not God manifest in the flesh, I ought not to trust Him. I may admire Him as a historical personage; I may reverence Him for His wisdom and beauty; I may even in some vague way have a kind of love to Him. But what in the name of common sense shall I trust Him for ? And why should vs. 8-11] THE VISION OF GOD 299 He call upon me to exercise faith in Him unless He stand before me as the adequate Object of a man's trust — namely, the manifest God ? And then, further, note that believing in the sense of trusting is seeing and knowing. Philip said, ' Shew us the Father.' Christ answers, 'Believe, and thou dost see.' If you look back upon the previous verses of this chapter, you will find that in the earlier portion of them the key- word is ' know ' ; that in the second portion of them the key- word is ' see ' ; that in this portion of them the key-word is ' believe.' The world says, * Ah ! seeing is believing.' The Gospel says, 'Believing is seeing.' The true way to knowledge, and to a better vision than the uncertain vision of the eye, is faith. In certitude and in directness, the knowledge of God that we have through faith in the Christ whom our eyes have never seen is far ahead of the certitude and the directness that attach to our mere bodily sight ; and so the key to all divine knowledge, and the sure road to the truest vision of God, is faith. Further, faith, even if based upon lower than the highest grounds, is still faith, and acceptable to Him : * Or else believe Me for the very works' sake.' The ' works ' are mainly, I suppose, though not exclusively, His miracles. And if so, we are here taught that, if a man has not come to that point of spiritual suscepti- bility in which the image of Jesus Christ lays hold upon His heart and obliges him to trust Him and to love Him, there are yet the miracles to look at; and the faith that grasps them, and by help of that ladder climbs to Him, though it be second best, is yet real. The evidence of miracles is subordinate, and yet it is valid and true. So our Lord contradicts both the exaggerations of past generations and the exaggera- 300 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. tions of this, and neither asserts that the great reason for faith is miracles, nor that miracles are of no use at all. Former centuries in the Christian Church reiterated the former exaggeration, and thus partly provoked the exaggeration of this day. Let us keep the middle course : there is a better way of coming to Christ than through the gate of miracles, and that is that He should stamp His own divine sweetness and elevation upon our minds and hearts. But if we have not reached that point, do not let us kick away the ladder that may help us to it. 'Believe Him for the very works' sake.' Imperfect faith may be the high- way to perfection. Let us follow the light, if it be but a far-off glimmer, sure that it will bring us into noon- tide day if we are faithful to its leading. On the other hand, dear friends, let us remember that no faith avails itself of all the treasures laid up for it, which does not lay hold upon Christ in the character in which He presents Himself. The only adequate, worthy trust in Him is the trust which grasps Him as the Incarnate God and Saviour. Only such a faith does justice to His own claim. Only such a faith is the sure path to vision and to knowledge. Only such a faith draws down the blessing of a ques- tioning intellect answered, a hungry heart satisfied, a conscience, accusing and prophetic of a judgment to come, cleansed and purified. To each of us Christ addresses His merciful invitation, ' Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.' May we all answer, 'We believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God I * CHRIST'S WORKS AND OURS ' Verily, verily, I say unto you. He that believeth on Me, the works that I do Bhall he do also ; and greater works than these shall he do ; because I go unto My Father. 13. And whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 11. If ye shall ask any thing in My name, I will do it.'— John xiv. 12-14. I HAVE already pointed out in a previous sermon that the key-word of this context is ' Believe ! ' In three successive verses we find it, each time widening in its application. We have first the question to the single disciple : ' Philip ! believest thou not ? * We have then the invitation addressed to the whole group : ' Believe Me ! ' And here we have a wholly general expression referring to all who, in every generation and corner of the world, put their trust in Christ, and extending the sunshine of this great promise to whosoever believeth in Him. Our Lord has pointed to believing as the great antidote to a troubled heart, as the sure way of know- ing the Father, as the better substitute for sight ; and now here He opens before us still more wonderful pre- rogatives and effects of faith. His words carry us up into lofty and misty regions, where we can neither breathe freely nor see clearly, except as we hold to His words. Therefore He prefaces them with His ' Verily, verily ! ' bidding us listen to them with sharpened attention as the disclosure of something wonderful, and receive them with unfaltering confi- dence, on His authority, however marvellous and otherwise undiscoverable they may be. What is it, then, that He thus commends to our acceptance? If I may venture a paraphrase which may at least have the advantage of being cast into less familiar words, it is just this, that because of, and after, Christ's departure from earth, He will, in 801 302 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. response to prayer, work upon faithful souls in such a fashion as that they will do what He did, and in some sense will do even more. I. We have here the continuous work of the exalted Lord for and through His servants. These disciples, of course, were trembling and oppressed with the thought that the departure of Jesus would be the end of His ceaseless activity for them, on which they had depended implicitly for so long. Henceforward, whatever distress or need might come, that Voice would be silent, and that Hand motionless, and they would be left to face every storm, uncompanioned and uncounselled. Some of us know how dreary such experience makes life, and we can understand how these men shrank from the prospect. Christ's words give strength to meet that trial, and not only tell them that after He is gone they will be able to do what they cannot do now, and what He used to do for them, but that in them He will work as well as for them, and be the power of their action, after He has departed. For, notice the remarkable connection of the words with which we are dealing. ' He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do,' and the ground of that is ' because I go to My Father,' and whatsoever the believer ' shall ask, / will do.' So, then, there are here two very distinct paths on which Christ represents to us that His future activity will travel ; the one, that of doing for us, in response to our prayers; the other that of working on us and in us, so that our acts are His and His acts are ours. We may look at these two for a moment separately. Here, then, there is clearly stated this great thought, vs. 12-14] CHRIST'S WORKS AND OURS 303 that Christ's removal from the world is not the end of His activity in the world and on material things, but that, absent, He still is a present power, and having passed through death, and been removed from sense. He can still operate upon the things round us, and move these according to His will. We are not to water down such words as these into any such thought as that the continuous influence of the memory and history of His past will be a present power in all ages. That is true, gloriously and uniquely true, but that is not the truth which He speaks here. Over and above that perpetual influence of past recorded work, there is the present influence of His present work, and to-day He is working as truly as He wrought when on earth. One form of His work was finished on Calvary, as His dying breath proclaimed; but there is another work of Christ in the midst of the ages, moving the pawns on the chessboard of the world, and presiding over the fortunes of the solemn conflict, which will not be ended until that day when the angel voices shall chant, ' It is done ! The kingdoms of the world are the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ.' The living Christ works by a true forth- putting of His own present power upon material things, and amidst the providences of life. And therefore these disciples were not to be cast down as if His work for them were ended. Now it is clear, of course, that such words as these do demand for their vindication something perfectly unique and solitary in the nature and person of Jesus Christ. All other men's work is cut in twain by death. ' This man, having served his generation by the will of God, fell on sleep and was gathered to his fathers, and saw corruption,' that is the epitaph over the 304 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. greatest thinkers, statesmen, heroes, poets, the epitaph for the tenderest and most hopeful. Father, mother, husband, wife, child, friend, all cease to act when they die, and though thunders should break, they are silent and can help no more. But Christ is living to-day, and working all around us. Now, brethren, it is of the last importance for the joyousness of our Christian lives, and for the courage of our conflict with sorrow and sin, that we should give a very prominent place in our creeds, and our hearts, to this great truth of a living Christ. What a joyful sense of companionship it brings to the solitary, what calmness of vision in contemplating the complications and calamities of the world's history, if we grasp firmly the assurance that the living Christ is actually working by the present forth-putting of His power in the world to-day ! But that is not all. There is another path on which our Lord shows us here a glimpse of His working, not only for us, but on and in and therefore through us, so that the deeds that we do in faith that rests upon Him are in one aspect His, and in another ours. 'The works that I do shall He do also'; because ' whatsoever ye shall ask I will do it.' We have not to think only of a Lord whose activity for us, beneficent and marvellous as it is, was finished in the misty past upon the Cross, nor have we only to think of a Lord whose activity for us, mighty and comforting as it is to all the solitary and struggling, is wrought as from the heights of the heavens, but we have to think of One who is beside us and in us and knows the hidden paths that no eye sees, and no foot but His can tread, into the inmost recesses of our souls, and there can enter as King and righteousness, VS.12-U] CHRIST'S WORKS AND OURS 305 as life and strength. This is the deepest of the lessons that He would teach us here. * I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,' and through me, if I keep close to Him, will work mightily in forms that my poor manhood could never have reached. The emblem of the vine and the branches, and the other emblem of the house and its inhabitants, and the other of the head and the members, all point to this one same thing which shallow and unspiritual men call 'mystical,' but which is the very heart of the Christian prerogative and the anchor of the Christian hope. Christ in us is our present righteousness and our hope of a future glory. And now mark that a still more solemn and mysterious aspect of this union of Jesus Christ and the believer is given, since it is set forth as resulting in our doing Christ's works, and Christ doing ours ; and therein is paralleled with the yet more wonderful and ineffable union between the Father and the Son. It is no accident that in one clause He says, ' I am in the Father, and the Father in Me. The words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself, but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works'; and that in the next He says, ' The works that I do shall he do also ' ; and so bids us see in that union between the Father and the Son, and in that con- sequent union of co-operation between Him and His Father, a pattern after which our union with Him is to be moulded, both as regards the closeness of its intimacy and as regards the resulting manifestations in life. Christ is in us and we in Christ in some measure as the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son. And the works that we do He does in some fashion that faintly echoes and shadows the perfect VOL. II. u 306 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. co-operation of the Father and the Son in the works that the Christ did upon the earth. All the doings of a Christian man, if done in faith, and holding by Christ, are Christ's doings, inasmuch as He is the life and the power which does them all. And Christ's deeds are reproduced and perpetuated in His humble follower, inasmuch as the life which is imparted will unfold itself according to its own kind ; and he that loves Christ will be changed into His likeness, and become a partaker of His Spirit. So let us curb all self-dependence and self-will, that that mighty tide may flow into us; and let us cast from us all timidity, distrust, and gloom, and be strong in the assurance that we have a Christ living in the heavens to work for us, and living within us to work through us. There is no record of the Ascension in John's Gospel, but these words of my text unveil to us the inmost meaning of that Ascension, and are in full accord with the great picture which one of the Evan- gelists has drawn — a picture in two halves, which yet are knit together into one. 'So then, after He had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat at the right hand of God; and they went forth and preached everywhere.' What a contrast between the two — the repose above, the toil below! Yes ! But the next words knit them together — ' The Lord also working with them, and confirming the word with signs following.' II. Note, in the next place, the greater work of the servants on and for whom the Lord works. 'Greater works than these shall he do.' Is, then, the servant greater than his Lord, and he that is sent greater than He that sent him? Not so, for what- VS.12-U] CHRIST'S WORKS AND OURS 307 soever the servant does is done because the Lord is with and in him, and the contrast that is drawn between the works that Christ does on earth and the greater works that the servant is to do here- after is, properly and at bottom, the contrast between Christ's manifestations in the time of His earthly limitation and humiliation, and His manifestations in the time of His Ascension and celestial glory. We need not be afraid that such great words as these in any measure trench on the unique and un- approachable character of the earthly work of Christ in its two aspects, which are one — of Revelation and Redemption. These are finished, and need no copy, no repetition, no perpetuation, until the end of time. But the work of objective Revelation, which was completed when He ascended, and the work of Redemption which was finished when He rose — these require to be applied through the ages. And it is in regard to the appli- cation of the finished work of Christ to the actual accomplishment of its contemplated consequences, that the comparison is drawn between the limited sphere and the small results of Christ's work upon earth, and the worldwide sweep and majestic magni- tude of the results of the application of that work by His servants' witnessing work. The wider and more complete spiritual results achieved by the ministration of the servants than by the ministra- tion of the Lord is the point of comparison here. And I need only remind you that the poorest Christian who can go to a brother soul, and by word or life can draw that soul to a Christ whom it apprehends as dying for its sins and raised for its glorifying, does a mightier thing than it was possible for the Master to do by life or lip whilst He was here upon earth. For 308 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. the Redemption had to be completed in act before it could be proclaimed in word ; and Christ had no such weapon in His hands with which to draw men's souls, and cast down the high places of evil, as we have when we can say, 'We testify unto you that the Son of God hath died for our sins, and is raised again according to the Scriptures.' Nor need I do more than remind you of the comparison, so exalting for His humi- lity and so humbling for our self-exaltation, between the narrow sphere in which His earthly ministrations had to operate and the worldwide scope which is given to His servants. 'He laid His hands on a few sick folk, and healed them'; and at the end of His life there were one hundred and twenty disciples in Jerusalem and five hundred in Galilee, and you might have put them all into this chapel and had ample room to spare. That was all that Jesus Christ had done; while to-day and now the world is being leavened and the kingdoms of the earth are beginning to recognise His name. 'Greater works than these shall he do ' who lets Christ in him do all His works. III. Lastly, notice the conditions on which the exalted Lord works for and on His servants. These are two, faith and prayer. ' He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also.' Faith, the simple act of loving trust in Jesus Christ, opens the door of our hearts and natures for the entrance of all His solemn Omnipotence, and makes us possessors of it. It is the condition, and the only condition, and plainly the indispensable con- dition, of possessing this divine Christ's power, that we should trust ourselves to Him that gives it. And if we do, then we shall not trust in vain, but to us there will come power that will surpass our desire, vs. 12-U] CHRIST'S WORKS AND OURS 809 and fill us with its own rejoicing and pure energy. Faith will make us like Christ. Faith is intensely practical. ' He that believeth shall do' It is no mere cold assent to a creed which is utterly impotent to operate upon men's acts, no mere hysterical emotion which is utterly impotent to energise into nobilities of service and miracles of consecration, but it is the affiance of the whole nature which spreads itself before Him and prays, 'Fill my emptiness and vitalise me with Thine own Spirit.' That is the faith which is ever answered by the inrush of the divine power, and the measure of our capacity of receiving is the measure of His gift to us. So if Christian individuals and Christian communi- ties are impotent, or all but impotent, there is no difficulty in understanding why. They have cut the connection, they have shut the tap. They lack faith ; and so their power is weakness. * Why could we not cast him out?' said they, perplexed when they had no need to be. 'Why could you not cast him out? Because you do not believe that I, working in you, can cast him out. That is why ; and the only why.' Let us learn that the secret of Christians' weakness is the weakness of their Christian faith. And the other condition is prayer. ' Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name I will do it,' and He repeats it, for confirmation and for greater emphasis. ' If ye shall ask anything in My name,' or, as perhaps that clause ought to be read with some versions, 'If ye shall ask Me anything in My name I will do it.' Three points may be named here. Our power de- pends upon our prayer. God's and Christ's fullness and willingness to communicate do not depend upon our prayer. But our capacity to receive of that fullness, and 310 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. so the possibility of its communication to us, do depend upon our prayer. ' We have not because we ask not.' The power of our prayer depends upon our conscious oneness with the revealed Christ. ' If ye shall ask in My name,' says He. And people think they have fulfilled the condition when, in a mechanical and ex- ternal manner, they say, as a formula at the end of petitions that have been all stuffed full of self-will and selfishness, 'for Christ's sake. Amen!' and then they wonder they do not get them answered ! Is that asking in Christ's name ? Christ's name is the revelation of Christ's character, and to do a thing in the name of another person is to do it as His representa-tive, and as realising that in some deep and real sense — for the present purpose at all events — we are one with Him. And it is when we know ourselves to be united to Christ and one with Him, and representative in a true fashion of Himself, as well as when, in humble reliance on His work for us and His loving heart, we draw near, that our prayer has power, as the old divines used to say, 'to move the Hand that moves the world,' and to bring down a rush of blessing upon our heads. Prayer in the name of Christ is hard to offer. It needs much discipline and watchfulness ; it excludes all self-will and selfishness. And if, as my text tells us, the end of the Son's working is the glory of the Father, that same end, and not our own ease or comfort, must be the end and object of all prayer which is offered in His name. When we so pray we get an answer. And the reason why such multitudes of prayers never travel higher than the roof, and bring no blessings to him who prays, is because they are not prayers in Christ's name. vs. 12-14] CHRIST'S WORKS AND OURS 811 Prayer in His name will pass into prayer to Him. As He not obscurely teaches us here (if we adopt the reading to which I have already referred), He has an ear to hear such requests, and He wields divine power to answer. Surely it was not blasphemy nor any diversion of the worship due to God alone, when the dying martyr outside the city wall cried and said, 'Lord Jesus ! receive my spirit.' Nor is it any departure from the solemnest obligations laid upon us by the unity of the divine nature, nor are we bringing idolatrous peti- tions to another than the Father, when we draw near to Christ and ask Him to give us that which He gives as the Father's gift, and to work on us that which the Father that dwelleth in Him works through Him for us. Trust yourselves to Christ, and let your desires be stilled, to listen to His voice in you, and )ei that voice speak. And then, dear brethren, we shall be lifted above ourselves, and strength will flow into us, and we shall be able to say, * I can do all things, through the Christ that dwells in me and makes me strong.' And just as the glad, sunny waters of the incoming tide fill the empty places of some oozy harbour, where all the ships are lying as if dead, and the mud is festering in the sun- shine, so into the slimy emptiness of our corrupt hearts there will pour the flashing sunlit wave, the ever fresh rush of His power ; and ' everything will live whither- soever it Cometh,' and we shall be able to say in all humility, and yet in glad recognition of Christ's faithfulness to this, His transcendent promise, 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,' 'because the life which I live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God.' LOVE AND OBEDIENCE •If ye love Me, keep My commandments.'— John xiv. 15. As we have seen in former sermons, the keyword of the preceding context is 'Believe!' and that word passes now into 'Love.' The order here is the order of experience. There is first the believing gaze upon the Christ as He is revealed— the image of the invisible God. That kindles love, and prompts to obedience. There is another very beautiful and subtle link of connection between these words and the preceding. Our Lord has just been saying, ' Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do.' Is the parallel wholly accidental or fanciful between the Lord who does aa the servant asks and the servant who is to do as the Lord commands ? On both sides there is love delight- ing to be set in motion by a message from the other side. On the one part there is love supreme which commands and delights to be asked, on the other part there is love dependent, which asks and delights to be commanded ; and though the gulf between the two is great, and the difference between Christ's law and our petitions is infinite, yet there is an analogy. I pause on these words, though they are introduced here only as the basis of the great promise which follows, because they open out into such wide fields. They contain the all-sufficient law of Christian con- duct. They contain the one motive adequate to bring that law into realisation. They disclose the very roots of Christian morality, and part of the secret of Christ's unique power and influence amongst men. They come with a message of encouragement to all souls despair- ing of being able to do that which they would, and of V.15] LOVE AND OBEDIENCE 813 freedom to all men burdened with a crowd of minute and external regulations. 'If ye love Me, keep My commandments' — there are three points to be dwelt upon here — namely, the all-sufficient ideal or guide of life, the all-powerful motive which Christ brings to bear, and the all-subduing gaze of faith by which that motive is brought into action. I. We have here the all-sufficient ideal or guide for life. Jesus Christ is not speaking merely to that little handful of men in the upper chamber, but to all generations and to all lands, to the end of time and round the world. The authoritative tone which He assumes here is very noteworthy. He speaks as Jehovah spoke from Sinai, and quotes the very words of the old law when He speaks of 'keeping My com- mandments.' There are distinctly involved in this quite incidental utterance of Christ's two startling things — one the assumption of His right to impose His will upon every human being, and the other His assumption that His will contains the all-sufficient directory for human conduct. What, then, are His commandments? Those which He spoke are plain and simple ; and people who wish to pick holes in the greatness of Christ's work in the world tell us that you can match almost all His precepts up and down amongst moralists and philo- sophers, and they crow very loud if, scratching amongst Rabbinical dust-heaps, they find something that looks like anything that He once said. Be it so ! What does that matter? Christ's 'commandments' are Christ Himself. This is the originality and unique- ness of Christ as a moral Teacher, that He says, not •Do this, that, and the other thing,' but 'Copy Me.' 314 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. 'Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.' His commandments are Himself; and the sum of them all is this — a character perfectly self - oblivious, and wholly penetrated and saturated with joyful, filial submission to the Father, and uttermost and entire giving Himself away to His brethren. That is Christ's commandment which He bids us keep, and His law is to be found in His life. And then, if that be so, what a change passes on the aspect of law, when we take Christ as being our living embodiment of it! Everything that was hard, repellent, far-ofP, cold, vanishes. We have no longer 'tables of stone,' but 'fleshy tables of the heart'; and the Law stands before us, a Being to be loved, to be clung to, to be trusted, and whom it is blessedness to know and perfection to resemble. The rails upon which the train travels may be rigid, but they mean safety, and they carry men smoothly into otherwise inaccessible lands. So the life of Jesus Christ brought to us is the firm and plain track along which we are to travel ; and all that was difficult and hard in the cold thought of duty becomes changed into the attraction of a living Pattern and Example. This living and breath- ing and loving commandment is all-sufficient for every detail and complexity of human life. It is so by the confession of believers and of unbelievers, by the joyful confession of the one, and by the frank acknow- ledgment of many of the others. Listen to one of them. 'Whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left, a unique Figure, not more unlike all His predecessors than all His followers. . . . Religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in selecting this Man as the ideal Representative and Guide of humanity ; nor even now V.15] LOVE AND OBEDIENCE 315 would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the ab- stract into the concrete than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life.' It is enough for conduct, it is enough for character, it is enough in all perplexities of conflicting duties, that we listen to and obey the voice that says, ' Keep My commandments.' II. Now note, secondly, the all-powerful motive. Probably my text is best understood as the Revised Version understands it, which reads, ' If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments,' making it an assur- ance and not an injunction. Christ speaks with the calm confidence that love to Him will have power enough to sway the life. His utterance here is not the addition of another commandment to the list, but rather the pointing out of how they may all be kept. The principle that underlies these words, then, is this, that love is the foundation of obedience, and obedience is the sure outcome and result of love. That is true in regard to those lower forms of love, which may teach us something of the operation of the higher. We all know that love which is real, and not simply passion and selfishness with a mask on, delights most chiefly in knowing and conforming to the will of the beloved, and that there is nothing sweeter than to be commanded by the dear voice and to obey for dear love's sake. And you have only to take that which is the experience of every true heart, in a thousand sweet ways in daily life, and to lift it into the higher region, and to transfer it to the bond that unites us with Jesus Christ, to see that He has invoked no illusory, but an omnipotent power when He has rested the whole force of His transforming and sanctifying 316 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. energy upon this one principle, 'If ye love Me, the Lawgiver, ye will keep the commandnients of My Law.' That is exactly what distinguishes and lifts the morality of the Gospel above all other systems. The worst man in the world knows a great deal more of his duty than the best man does. It is not for want of knowledge that men go to the devil, but it is for want of power or will to live their knowledge. And what morality fails to do, with its clearest utterances of human duty, Christ comes and does. The one law is like the useless proclamations posted up in some rebellious district, where there is no army to back them, and the king's authority from whom they come is flouted. The other law gets itself obeyed. Such is the difference between the powerless morality of the world and the commandment of Jesus Christ. Here is the road plain and straight. What matters that, if there is no force to draw the cart along it ? There might as well be no road at all. Here stand all your looms, polished and in perfect order, but there is no steam in the boilers ; and so there is no motion, and nothing is woven. What we want is not law, but power, and what the Gospel gives us, and stands alone in giving us, is not merely the knowledge of the will of God, and the clear revela- tion of what we ought to be, but the power to be- come it. Love does that, and love alone. That strong force brought into action in our hearts will drive out from thence all rivals, all false and low things. The true way to cleanse the Augean stables, as the old myth has it, was to turn the river into them. It would have been endless work to wheel out the filth in wheel- barrows loaded by spades: turn the stream in, and it will sweep away all the foulness. When the Ark V.15] LOVE AND OBEDIENCE 817 comes into the Temple, Dagon lies, a mutilated stump, upon the threshold. When Christ comes into my heart, then all the obscene and twilight-loving shapes that lurked there, and defiled it, will vanish like ghosts at cock-crowing before His calm and pure Presence. He, and He alone, entering my heart by the portals of my love, will coerce my evil and stimu- late my good. And if I love Him, I shall keep His commandments. Now, brethren, here is a plain test and a double- barrelled one, which tries both our love and our obedience with a sharp touchstone. ' If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments.' That implies, first, that there is no love worth calling so which does not keep the commandment. All the emotional and the mystic, and the so-called higher parts of Christian experience, have to be content to submit to this plain test — do they help us to live as Christ would have us, and that because He would have us? Love to Him that does not keep His commandments is either spurious or dangerously feeble. The true sign of its presence in the heart and the noblest of its operations is not to be found in high-pitched expressions of fervid emotion, nor even in the sacred joys of solitary com- munion, but in its making us, while in the rough struggle of daily life, and surrounded by trivial tasks, live near Him, and by Him, and for Him, and like Him. If I live so, I love Him ; if not, not. Not that I mean to say that in regard to each individual action of a Christian man's life there must be the conscious presence of reference to the supreme love, but that each individual action of the life ought to come from a character of which that reference to the supreme love is the very formative principle and foundation. 318 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. The colouring matter put in at the fountain will dye every drop of the stream; and they whose inmost hearts are tinged and tinctured with the sweet love of Jesus Christ, from their hearts will go forth issues of life all coloured and moulded thereby. Test your Christian love by your practical obedience. And, on the other hand, there is no obedience worth calling so which is not the child of love ; and all the multitude of right things which Christians do without that motive are made short work of by that con- sideration. Obedience which is formal, mechanical, matter-of-course, without the presence in it of a loving submission of the will; obedience which is reluctant, calculated, forced upon us by dread, imitated from others — all that is nothing ; and Jesus Christ does not count it as obedience at all. This is a sieve with very small meshes, and there will be a great deal of rubbish left in it after the shaking. ' If ye love Me, keep My commandments.' The ' keeping of My commandments ' which has not ' love to Me ' underlying it is no keeping at all. III. And so, lastly, notice the all-subduing gaze. That is not included in my text, but it is necessary in order to complete the view of the forces to which Jesus Christ here entrusts the hallowing of life and the sanctifying of our nature ; and we are led to refer to it by what I have already pointed out ; the connec- tion between the 'love' of my text and the 'believe' of the preceding verses. I can fancy a man saying, ' Keep His commandments ? Woe is me ! How am I to keep ? ' The answer is ' Love.' And I can fancy him saying ' Love ? ' Yes ! ' And how am I to love ? I cannot get up love at the word of command, or by any voluntary effort.' And the answer comes again, V.16] LOVE AND OBEDIENCE 319 * Believe ! ' Trust Christ, and you will love Him. Love Him and you will do His will. And then the ques- tion comes again, 'Believe what?' And the answer comes, 'Believe that He is the Son of God who died for you.' Nothing else will kindle a man's love than the faithful contemplation and grasp of Christ in that character and aspect. Only the redeeming Christ affords a reasonable ground for our love to Him. Here is a dead man, dead for nineteen centuries, expecting you and me to have towards Him a vivid personal affection which will influence our conduct and our character. What right has He to expect that ? There is only one reasonable ground upon which I may be called to love Jesus Christ, and that is that He died for me, and such a love towards such a Christ is the only thing which will wield power sufficient to guide, to coerce, to restrain, to constrain, and to sustain my weak, wayward, rebellious, and sluggish will. All other emotions of so-called admiration and worship and reverence and affection for Jesus Christ are apt to be tepid ; but this one has power and warmth in it. Here is a unique fact in the history of the world, that not only did He make this astounding claim upon all subsequent generations ; but that all subsequent generations have responded to it, and that to-day there are millions of men who love Jesus Christ with a love warm, personal, deep, powerful— the spring of all their goodness and the Lord of their lives. Why do they? For one reason only. Because they believe that He died for them individually, and that He lives an ascended yet ever-present Helper and Lover of their souls. My brethren, that conviction, and that conviction 320 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. only, as I venture to affirm, has power to send a glow of love into the heart which will move all the limbs in swift and happy obedience. That conviction, and that conviction alone, will melt the thick-ribbed ice of our spirits and will make it flow down in sweet waters. The love that has looked upon the Cross will be the fulfilling of the law of Him that speaks from the Throne. When our faith has grasped Him, as enduring that cross for us, then our love will be awakened to hear and to do His commandments. 'We love Him because He first loved us,' and such love will flower and fruit in obedience. I shall keep His commandments when I love Him. I shall love Him with a love that makes my will plastic and my life a glad service, when by faith I grasp Him as the Incarnate Lord, 'who loved me and gave Himself for me.' THE COMFORTER GIVEN •And I will pray the Father, and He shall give yon another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of Truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him : but ye know Him ; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.'— John xiv. 16, 17. The 'and' at the beginning of these words shows us that they are continuous with and the consequence of what precedes. ' If ye love Me, ye will keep My com- mandments, and / will pray . . . and He will send.' Such is the series; but we must also remember that, as we have seen in previous sermons, the obedience spoken of in the clause before my text is itself treated as a con- sequence of some preceding steps. The ladder that is fixed upon earth and has its summit in heaven has vs. 16, 17] THE PRAYING CHRIST 821 for its rungs, first and lowest, ' believe ' ; second, * love ' ; third, ' obey.' And thus the context carries us from the very basis of the Christian life up into its highest reward, even the larger gift to an obedient spirit of that Great Spirit, who is the Comforter and the Teacher. And there is another very striking link of connection between these words and the preceding. There are, if I may so say, two telephones across the abyss that separates the ascended Christ and us. One of them is contained in His words, *If ye ask anything in My name I will do it ' ; the other is contained in these words, 'If ye keep My commandments I will ask.' Love on this side of the great cleft sets love on the other side of it in motion in a twofold fashion. If we ask. He does ; if we do. He asks. His action is the answer to our prayers, and His prayers are the answer to our obedient action. So we have here these points — the praying Christ and the giving Father ; the abiding Gift ; the blind world and the recipient disciples. I. Note, then, first, the praying Christ and the giving Father. 'I will ask and He will give' seems a strange drop from the lofty claims with which we have become familiar in the earlier verses of this chapter. ' Believe in God, believe also in Me'; 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father'; 'If ye shall ask anything in My name I will do it ' ; ' Keep My commandments.' All these distinctly express, or necessarily imply, divine nature, prerogatives, and authority. But here the voice that spake the perfect revelation of God, and gave utterance authoritatively to the perfect law of life, softens and lowers its tones in petition ; and Jesus Christ joins the rank of the suppliants. Now common sense tells us that apparently diverse views lying so VOL. II. X 322 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. close together in one continuous stream of speech cannot have seemed to the utterer of them to be contradictory ; and I venture to affirm that there is no explanation which does justice to these two sides of Christ's consciousness — the one all divine and authori- tative and lofty, and the other all lowly and identifying Himself with petitioners and suppliants everywhere — except the old-fashioned and to-day discredited belief that He is ' God manifest in the flesh,' who prays in His Manhood and hears prayer in His Divinity. The bare humanistic view which emphasises such utterances as these of my text does not, for the life of it, know what to do with the other ones, and cannot manage to unite these two images into a stereoscopic solid. That is reserved for the faith which believes in the Manhood and in the Deity of our Lord and Saviour. His intercession is the great hope of the Christian heart. His intercession is the great activity of His present exalted and glorious state. His intercession is no mere verbal utterance, nor the representation to the Father of an alien or a diverse will, but His inter- cession, mysterious as it is, and unfathomable to our poor, short lines and light plummets, must mean this at all events — His continual activity in presenting before the divine Father, as the motive and condition of His petition being granted, His own great work upon the Cross. The High Priest passes within the veil, bearing in His hand the offering which He has made, and by reason of that offering, and of His powerful presence before the mercy -seat, all the spiritual gifts which redeem and regenerate and sanc- tify humanity are for ever coming forth. ' I will pray, and He will give,' is but one way of saying, 'Seeing then, that we have a great High Priest over the vs. 16, 17] THE PRAYING CHRIST 323 House of God who is entered within the veil, let us draw near.' But I would have you notice how, as is always the case in all utterances of Jesus Christ which express the lowest humiliation and completest identification of Himself with humanity, there is ever present some touch of obscured glory, some all but suppressed flash of brightness which will not be wholly concealed. Note two things in this great utterance; one, Christ's quiet assumption that all through the ages, and to- day, nineteen centuries after He died. He knows, at the moment of their being done. His servants' deeds. ' Keep my commandments, and, knowing that you keep them, I will then and there pray for you.' He claims in the lowly words an altogether supernatural, ab- normal, divine cognisance of all the acts of men down the ages and across the gulf between earth and heaven. And the other signature of divinity stamped on the prayer of Christ is His certitude of the answer. 'I will ask and He will give ' : He puts, as it were, the Father's act in pledge to us, and assures us, in a tone of certainty, which is not merely the assurance of faith, but the certitude of One who is 'one with the Father,' that His prayer brings ever its answer. 'Father! I will that they whom Thou hast given Me be with Me.' How strange ! How far beyond the warrantable language of man!' And how impossible for a fisherman of Bethsaida to imagine, if he had not heard, that strange blending of submission and of authority which speaks in such words ! Then, remember what I have already said, that, according to the teaching of this verse, taken in con- nection with its context, that which put in motion 324 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. Christ's intercessory activity, as represented in my text, is the obedience of a Christian man. If you obey He will pray, and the Father will send. So the reward of imperfect obedience is the larger measure given to us of that divine Spirit by whose indwelling obedience becomes possible, and self -surrender a joy and a power. And that is not merely because of the natural opera- tion by which any kind of conduct tends to repeat itself in more complete measure, nor is it merely a case of ' to him that hath shall be given ' ; as a man's arm is strengthened by exercise, and any faculty becomes more assured, and swift, and at the command of its owner, by use. But there is a distinct supernatural impartation to every obedient heart of divine gifts which come straight through Jesus Christ to it. He Himself, in this immediate context, says, ' If I depart I will send Him unto you,' and the true conception is that in that Spirit's gift, which is a reality waiting as its crown and reward upon our poor stained obedience, the whole Godhead is present ; the Father the Source, the Son the Channel, the Spirit the Gift. II, And so, secondly, note what our text tells us of that abiding gift. * He will send another Comforter,' ' that He may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth.' I suppose I may take it for granted that most of my audience know all that need be said as to the mean- ing of this word 'Comforter.' In our present modern English it has a very much narrower range of mean- ing than its etymology would give it, and than pro- bably it had when it was first used in an English translation. 'Comforter' means a great deal more than 'consoler,' though we have narrowed it to that signification almost exclusively. It means not only vs. 16, 17] THE PRAYING CHRIST 325 one who administers sweet whispers of consolation in sorrow, but one who, in any circumstances, by his presence makes strong. And the original Greek word, of which it is the translation here, has a precisely analogous meaning ; its original signification being that of 'one who is called to the aid of another,' primarily as an advocate in a court of law, but more widely as a helper in any form whatsoever. And that is the idea which is to be attached to the word here : — a Comforter who makes strong by His presence ; the Paraclete, who is our Advocate, Helper, Guide, and Instructor. Need I dwell upon the great thoughts that spring from that metaphor ; how we have to look for a Person, and not merely a vague influence ; a divine Person who will be by our sides on condition of our faith, love, and obedience, to be our Strength in all weakness, our Peace in all trouble, our Wisdom in all darkness, our Guide in every perplexity, our Comforter and Cherisher, our Righteousness when sin is strong, the Victor over our temptations, and the Companion and Sweetener of our solitude ? The meta- phors with which Scripture represents this great personal Influence are full of instruction and beauty. He comes as 'the Fire,' which melts, which warms, which cleanses, which quickens. He comes as the 'rushing, mighty Wind,' which bears health upon its wings, and sometimes breathes softly as an infant's breath, and sometimes sweeps with irresistible power. He comes as the 'Oil,' gently flowing, lubricating, making every joint supple, nourishing. He comes as the 'Water of Life,' refreshing, vitalising, quickening all growth. He comes fluttering down as the Dove of God, the bird of peace that will brood upon our hearts. The predicates which Scripture attaches to that great 326 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. Name are equally various, and are full of teaching as to the manner in which He is the Comforter and the Advocate. He is the Spirit of Holiness, the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of Wisdom, the Spirit of Power, the Spirit of Love, the Spirit of a sound Mind, the Spirit of Sonship, the Spirit of Supplication, and of many great things besides. And this sweet, strong, all-sufficient Person is offered to each of us, and waits to enter our hearts. And, says Christ, this Strengthener and Advocate is to replace Me and to carry on My work. 'He will send another Comforter.' Who was the other but the Master who was speaking? So all that that handful of men had found of sweetness and shelter and assured guidance, and stay for their weakness, and enlighten- ment for their darkness, and companionship for their solitude, and a breast on which to rest their heads, and love in which to bathe their hearts, all these this divine Spirit will bring to each of us if we will. And further, our Lord tells us that this strong continuer of His presence will be a permanent Com- panion. ' He will abide with you for ever.' He w^as comforting the disciples who were trembling at the thought of His departure, and knowing that all the sweetness of these three short years had come to an end ; and He says to them, and through them to all the ages to the end of time : ' Here is the abiding Guest, that nothing but your own ein will ever cast out from your hearts.' And Christ tells us how this great Spirit will do His work. He is the 'Spirit of Truth,' not as if He brought new truth. To suppose that He does so, opens the door to all manner of fanaticism, but the truth, the revelation of which is all summed and finished vs. 16,17] THE PRAYING CHRIST 827 in the person and work of Jesus Christ, is the weapon by which the divine Spirit works all His conquests, the staff on which He makes us lean and be strong. He is the Spirit by whom the truth passes into our personal possession, by no mere imperfect form of outward teaching which is always confused and insufficient, but by the inward teaching that deals with our hearts and our spirits. But Christ speaks, too, of the blind world. There is a tone of deep sadness in His words. The thought of the immense multitude of men who were incapacitated to receive this Strengthener steals across and casts a momentary shadow upon even the brightness and greatness of His promise. 'The world cannot receive because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.' The * world ' is the mass of man, considered as godless and separate from Him, and there is a bit of the world in us all; but there are men who are wholly under its influence and dominion. And these men, says Christ, are perfectly incapable of receiving the teaching of this divine Comforter. Of course there are other operations of that Great Spirit of which we shall have to hear as we go on further in this context, in which His work 'convicts the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.' But what our Lord is speaking of here is the work of that Spirit who comes in response to His prayer which rises in consequence of our obedience, and who, coming, brings with Him strength and purity and peace and wisdom ; and that aspect of His operations a heart that is all full and seething with the world is unfit to receive. It cannot see Him. Embruted natures are altogether incapacitated for high thoughts, for the perception of natural beauty, for the appreciation of art; and worldly men, by the 328 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. very same law, are incapable of receiving this divine Spirit. A savage stares at the sunshine and sees nothing but a glare. And worldly men — that is to say, men whose tastes, inclinations, desires, hopes, purposes, strivings, are all bound by this visible diurnal round — lack the organ that enables them to see that divine Spirit moving round about them. Whether you have put your eyes out by fleshly lusts, or, as many men in this generation have done, by intellectual self- sufficiency and conceit, if the world, in its grosser oi in its most refined forms, is your master, you are stone blind to all the best realities of the universe, and you cannot see the things that are. If you look out upon the history of the Church, or upon the present condition of Christendom, and say, *I see no divine Spirit working there ' ; well, then, the only thing that is to be said to you is, * Go to an oculist ; your sight is bad. Perhaps there is solid land, as some of us see it, where you see only mist.' This generation needs the preaching of a supernatural power at work beside us, and among us, and until we come to believe that, we do not understand the fullness of Christ's gift. III. Then, lastly, note the recipient disciples. Observe that the order of clauses is reversed in the last part of the text. The world cannot receive, because it does not know. The disciple knows, because he receives. Possession and knowledge reciprocally inter- change places, and may be regarded as cause and effect of one another. That is to say, at bottom they are one and the same thing. Knowledge is possession, and possession is the only knowledge. These disciples knew Christ in a fashion. He had just been telling them that they did not know Him; but so far as they did dimly grasp Him, they saw the Spirit — in vs. 16,17] THE PRAYING CHRIST 329 another form, indeed, than they would hereafter see — but still truly, though imperfectly. Beholding the Spirit, though ' through a glass darkly,' and cherishing their partial possession of Him, they will come to more, and steadfastly increase from the morning's twilight to the midday glory. So He says : * He dwelleth with you ' now, and ' He shall be in you ' hereafter. There is a better form of possession opening before them, which came at Pentecost, and has lasted ever since. From thenceforward we have a Spirit that not only stands by our sides and holds fellowship with us (for the two 'withs' of our text are two different words, expressing respectively proximity and com- munion), but who actually dwells in the central depths of our natures, and whom we thus possess more perfectly and blessedly than is possible to even the closest out- ward proximity, and the sweetest outward fellow- ship. That possession of an abiding and indwelling Spirit is the gift of Christ to every Christian soul, and is to be found by us all upon the path so plainly marked out in our text and its connections — ' believe,' ' love,' ' obey.' Then the Dove of God will flutter down upon our heads and nestle in our hearts, and brooding over the solemn and solitary sea of our chaotic spirits, will bring up from it a new world glistening in fresh order and beauty, and ' very good ' in its Maker's eyes. THE ABSENT PRESENT CHRIST 'I will not leave you comfortless ; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more ; but ye see Me : because I live, ye shall live also.' —John xiv. 18, 19. The sweet and gracious comf ortings with which Christ had been soothing the disciples' fears went very deep, but hitherto they had not gone deep enough. It was much that they should know the purpose of His going, whither He went, and that they had an interest in His departure. It was much that they should have before them the prospect of reunion ; much that they should know that all through His absence He would be working in them, and that they should be assured that, absent. He would send them a great gift. But reunion, influence from afar, and gifts from the other side of the gulf were not all that their hearts needed. And so here our Lord gives yet more, in the paradoxes that, absent He will be present, unseen visible, and dying will be for them for ever, living and life-giving. These great thoughts go to the centre of their needs and of ours ; and on them I now touch briefly. There are then in the words I have read, though they be but a fragment of a closely-linked-together con- text, these three great thoughts : the absent Christ the present Christ ; the unseen Christ the seen Christ ; the Christ who dies the living and life-giving Christ. Let us look at these as they stand. I. First, then, the absent Christ is the present Christ. ' I will not leave you comfortless,' or, as the Revised Version has it, ' desolate — I come to you.' Now, most of us know, I suppose, that the literal meaning of the word rendered • comfortless,' or * desolate,' is ' orphans' But that is rather an unusual form in which to repre- sent the relation between our Lord and His disciples, 330 vs. 18,19] ABSENT PRESENT CHRIST 331 and so, possibly, our versions are accurate in giving the general idea of desolation rather than the specific idea conveyed directly by the word. But still it is to be remembered that this whole conversation begins with ' Little children '; and there seems to be no strong reason for suppressing the literal meaning of the word, if only it be remembered that it is employed not so much to define Christ's relation to his brethren as to describe the comfortless and helpless condition of that little group when left by Him. They would be like fatherless and motherless children in a cold world. And what is to hinder that? One thing only. 'I come to you.' ' Then, and only then, will you cease to be desolate and orphans. My presence will change everything and turn winter into glorious summer.' Now, what is this 'coming'? It is to be observed that our Lord says, not 'I will,' as a future, but 'I come,' or ' I am coming,' as an immediately impending, and, we may almost say, present, thing. There can be no reference in the word to that final coming to judgment which lies so far ahead ; because, if there were, then there would follow from the text, that, until that period, all that love Him here upon earth are to Avander about as orphans, desolate and forsaken ; and that certainly can never be. So that we have to recognise here the promise of a coming which is con- temporaneous with His absence, and which is, in fact, but the reverse side of His bodily absence. It is true about Him that He * departs from ' His people in bodily form 'for a season, that they may receive Him ' in a better form ' for ever.' This, then, is the heart and centre of the consolation here, that how- soever the external presence may be withdrawn, and the 'foolish senses' may have to speak of an absent 332 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. Christ, we may rejoice in the certainty that He is with all those that love Him, and all the more with them because of the very withdrawal of the earthly mani- festation which has served its purpose, and now is laid aside as an impediment rather than as a help to the full communion. We confound bodily with real. The bodily presence is at an end ; the real presence lasts for ever. I do not need to insist, I suppose, upon the manifest implication of absolute divinity which lies in such words as these. ' I come.' ' Being absent, I am present in all generations. I am present with every single heart.' That is equivalent to the Omnipresence of deity; that is equivalent to or implies the undying existence of the divine nature, and He that says, when He is leaving earth and withdrawing the sweet- ness of His visible form from the eyes of men, ' I come,' in the very act of going, ' and I am with you always, with all of you to the end of the ages,' can be no less than God, manifest in the flesh for a time, and present in the Spirit with His children for ever. I cannot but think that the average Christian life of this day wofully fails in the simple, conscious realisation of this great truth, and that we are all far too little living in the calm, happy, strengthening assurance that we are never alone, but have Jesus Christ with each of us more closely, more truly, in a more available fashion, and with more omnipotence of influence, than they had who were nearest Him during the days that He lived upon earth. Oh, brethren ! if we really believed, not as an article of our creed which has become so familiar to us that it produces little impression upon us, but as a vital and ever-present conviction of our souls, that with us there vs. 18, 19] ABSENT PRESENT CHRIST 333 was ever the real presence of the real Christ, how all burdens and cares would be lightened, how all per- plexities would begin to smooth themselves out and be straightened, how all the force would be sucked out of temptations, and how sorrows and joys and all things would be changed in their aspect by that one conviction intensely realised and constantly with us ! A present Christ is the Strength, the Righteousness, the Peace, the Joy, and as we shall see, in the most literal sense, the Life of every Christian soul. Then, note, further, that this coming of our Lord is identified with that of His divine Spirit. He has been speaking of sending that ' other Comforter,' but though He be Another, He is yet so indissolubly united with Him who sends as that the coming of the Spirit is the coming of Jesus. He is no gift wafted to us as from the other side of a gulf, but by reason of the unity of the Godhead and the divinity of the sent Spirit, Jesus Christ and the Spirit whom He sends are inseparable though separate, and so indissolubly united that where the Spirit is, there is Christ, and where Christ is, there is the Spirit. These are amongst the deep things which the disciples were ' not able to carry ' at that stage of their development, and which waited for a further explanation. Enough for them and enough for us, to know that we have Christ in the Spirit and the Spirit in Christ ; and to remember ' that if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.' We stand here on the margin of a shoreless and fathomless sea ; and for my part I venture to think that the men who talk about the incredibilities and the contradictions of the orthodox faith would show themselves a little wiser if they were more conscious of the limitation of human faculty, and remembered 334 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. that to pronounce upon contradictions in the doctrine of the divine Nature implies that the pronouncer stands above and goes round about the whole of that nature. So, for my part, abjuring omniscience and the comprehension of Deity, I accept the statement that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit come together and dwell in the heart. Then, note, further, that this present Christ is the only Remedy for the orphanhood of the world. The words had a tender and pathetic reference to that little, bewildered group of followers, deprived of their Guide, their Teacher, and their Companion. He who had been as eyes to their weak vision, and Counsellor and Inspirer and everything for three blessed years, was going away to leave them unsheltered to the storm, and we can understand how forlorn and terrified they were, when they looked forward to fronting the things that must come to them, without His presence. Therefore He cheers them with the assurance that they will not be left without Him, but that, present still, just because He is absent. He will be all that He ever had been to them. And the promise was fulfilled. How did that dis- spirited group of cowardly men ever pluck up courage to hold together at all after the Crucifixion? Why was it that they did not follow the example of John's disciples, and dissolve and disappear ; and say, ' The game is up. It is no use holding together any longer ' ? The process of separation began on the very day of the Crucifixion. Only one thing could have stopped it, and that is the Resurrection and the presence with His Church of the risen Christ in His power and in all the fullness of His gifts. If it had not been that He came to them, they would have disappeared, and Chris- vs. 18, 19] ABSENT PRESENT CHRIST 335 tianity would have been one more of the abortive sects forgotten in Judaism. But, as it is, the whole of the New Testament after Pentecost is aflame with the con- sciousness of a present Christ, working amongst His people. And although it be true that, in one aspect, we are absent from the Lord when we are present with the body, in another aspect, and an infinitely higher one, it is true that the strength of the Christian life of Apostles and martyrs was this, the assurance that Christ Himself — no mere rhetorical metaphor for His influence or His example, or His memory lingering in their imaginations, but the veritable Christ Himself — was present with them, to strengthen and to bless. That same conviction you and I must have, if the world is not to be a desert and a dreary place for us. In a very profound sense it is true that if you take away Jesus Christ, the elder Brother, who alone re- veals to men the Father, we are all orphans, fatherless children, who look up into an empty heaven and see nothing there. It is only Christ who reveals to us the Father and makes our happy hearts feel that we are of His children. And in the wider sense of the word ' orphans,' is not life a desolation without Him ? Hollow joys, fleeting blessednesses, roses whose thorns last long after the petals have dropped, real sorrows, shows and shams, bitternesses and disappointments — are not these our life, in so far as Christ has been driven out of it? Oh! there is only one thing that saves us from being as desolate, fatherless children, groping in the dark for the lost Father's hand, and dying for want of it, and that is that the Christ Him- self shall come to us and be with us. II. The unseen Christ is a seen Christ. It is clear that the period referred to in the second 836 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xtv. clause of our text is the same as that referred to in the first, that ' yet a little while ' covers the whole space up to His Ascension ; and that if there be any reference at all to the forty days of His earthly life, during which literally, the worlO ' saw Him no more,' but the Apostles ' saw Him,' that reference is only secondary. These transitory appearances are not of sufficient moment or duration to bear the weight of so great a promise as this. The vision, which is the consequence of the coming, has the same extension in time as the coming — that is to say, it is continuous and permanent. We must read here the great promise of a perpetual vision of the present Christ. It is clear, too, that the word ' see ' is employed in these two clauses in two different senses. In the former it refers only to bodily sight, in the latter to spiritual perception. For a few short hours still, the ungodly mass of men were to have that outward vision which might have been so much to them, but which they had used so badly that ' they seeing saw not.' It was to cease, and they who loved Him would not miss it when it did ; but the with- drawal which hid Him from sense and sense-bound souls would reveal Him more clearly to His friends. They, too, had but dimly seen Him while He stood by them ; they would gaze on Him with truer insight when He was present though absent. So this is what every Christian life may and should be — the continual sight of a continually-present Christ. It is His part to come. It is ours to see, to be con- scious of Him who does come. Faith is the sight of the soul, and it is far better than the sight of the senses. It is more direct. My eye does not touch what I look at. Gulfs of millions of miles may lie between me and it. But my faith is not vs. 18, 19] ABSENT PRESENT CHRIST 337 only eye, but hand, and not only beholds, but grasps, and comes into contact with that to which it is directed. It is far more clear. Sense may deceive; faith, built upon His Word, cannot deceive. Its information is far more certain, far more valid. I have better reason for believing in Jesus Christ than I have for believing in the things that I touch and handle. So that there is no need for men to say, ' Oh, if we had only seen Him with our eyes ! ' You would very likely not have known Him if you had. There is no reason for thinking that the Church has retro- graded in its privileges, because it has to love instead of beholding, and to believe instead of touching. That is advance, and we are better than they, inasmuch as the blessing of those * who have not seen, and yet have believed,' comes down upon our heads. The vision of Christ which is granted to the faithful soul is better and not worse, more and not less, other in kind indeed, but loftier in degree too, than that which was granted to the men who saw Him upon earth. Sense disturbs, faith alone beholds, 'The world seeth Me no more.' Why? Because it is a world. ' Ye see Me.' Why ? Because, and in the measure in which you have turned away your eyes from seeing vanity. If you want the eye of the soul to be opened, you must shut the eye of sense. And the more we turn away from looking at the dazzling lies with which time and the material universe befool and bewilder us, the more shall we see Him whom to see is to live for ever. Oh, brethren! does that strong word 'see' in any measure express the vividness, the directness, the cer- tainty of our realisation of our Master's presence ? Is Jesus Christ as clear, as perceptible, as sure to us as VOL. II. Y ySS GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. the men round us are? Which are the shadows and which are the realities to us? The things which are seen, which the senses crown as 'real,' or the things which cannot be seen because they are so great, and tower above us, invisible in their eternity? Which world are our eyes most open to, the world where Christ is, or the world here ? Our happy eyes may behold and our blessed hands may handle the Word of Life which was manifested to us. Let us beware that we turn not away from the one thing worthy to be looked at, to gaze upon a desolate and dreary world. III. Lastly, the present and seen Christ is living and life-giving. The last words of my text may be connected with the preceding, as the marginal rendering of the Revised Version shows. But it is probably better to take them as standing independently, and presenting another and co-ordinate element of the blessedness arising from the coming of the Christ. Because He comes, His life passes into the hearts of the men to whom He comes, and who gaze upon Him. Time forbids me to dwell upon that majestic pro- clamation of His own absolute and divine life, from lips that were so soon to be paled with death. Mark the grand 'I live' — the timeless present tense, which expresses unbroken, underived, undying, and, as I believe, divine life. It is all but a quotation of the great Old Testament name ' Jehovah.' The depth and sweep of its meaning are given to us in this Apostle's Apocalypse, where Christ is called 'the living One,' who lived whilst He died, and having died ' is alive for evermore.' And this Christ, coming to all His friends, possessor of the fullness of life in Himself, and proclaiming His vs. 18, 19] ABSENT PRESENT CHRIST S39 absolute possession of that life, even whilst He stands within arm's-length of Calvary, is Life-giver to all that love Him and trust Him. We live because He lives. In all senses of the word * life,' as I believe, the life of men is derived from the Christ who is the Agent of creation, the channel from whom life passes from the Godhead into the creatures, and who is also the one means by whom any of us can ever hope to live the better life which is the only true one, and consists in fellowship with God and union to Him. We shall live as long as He lives, and His being is the pledge and the guarantee of the immortal being of all who love Him. Anything is possible, rather than that it should be credible that a soul, which has drawn spiritual life from Jesus Christ here upon earth, should ever be rent apart from Him by such a miserable and external trifle as the mere dissolution of the bodily frame. As long as Christ lives our life is secure. If the Head has life, the members * cannot see corruption.' ' Take »ne not away in the midst of my days : Thy years are throughout all generations* was the prayer of a saint of old, deeply feeling the contrast of the wor- shipper's transiency and God's eternity, and dimly hoping that the contrast might be changed into like- ness. The great promise of our text answers the prayer, and assures us that the worshipper is to live as long as does He whom He adores. We shall live as He lives, nor ever cease the appro- priation of His being until all His life we know, and all its fullness has expanded our natures — and that will be never. Therefore we shall not die. Men's lives have been prolonged by the transfusion of blood from vigorous frames. Jesus Christ passes 340 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. His own blood into our veins and makes us immortal. The Church chose for one of its ancient emblems of the Saviour the pelican, which fed its young, according to the fable, with blood from its own breast. So Christ vitalises us. He in us is our Life. Brethren, without Jesus Christ we are orphans in a fatherless world. Without Him, our wearied and yet unsatisfied eyes have only trifles and trials and trash to look at. Without Him, we are * dead whilst we live.' He and He only can give us back a Father, and renew in us the spirit of sons. He and only He can satisfy our eyes with the sight which is purity and restfulness and joy. He and He only can breathe life into our death. Oh ! let Him do it for you. He comes to us with all these gifts in His hands, for He comes to give us Himself, and in Himself, as ' in a box where sweets compacted lie,' are all that lonely hearts and wearied eyes and dead souls can ever need. All are yours if you are Christ's. All are yours if He is yours. And He is yours if by faith and love you make yourself His and Him your own. THE GIFTS OF THE PRESENT CHRIST * At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you. He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me : and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.'— John xiv. 20, 21. We have heard our Lord in the previous verse unveil- ing His deepest and strongest encouragements to His downcast followers. These were : His presence with them, their true sight of Him, and their participation in His life. The first part of our present text is closely connected with these, for it gives us their upshot and vs. 20, 21] GIFTS OF PRESENT CHRIST 341 consequence. Because Christ's true disciple is conscious of Christ's presence, sees Him with the eyes of his spirit, and draws life from Him, therefore he will know by experience the deep truths of Christ's indwelling at once in the Father and in His servant, and of His servant's indwelling in Him. Our Lord had just pre- viously been exhorting His disciples to believe that He was in the Father and the Father in Him; and had been gently wondering at the slowness of their faith. Now He tells them that, when He is gone, their spiritual stature will be so increased as that they shall know the thing which, with Him by their side, they found it so hard to believe. The second part of our present text is the close of this whole section of our Lord's discourse, and in it He urges the requirement of practical obedience, as the sign and test of love, and as the condition of receiving these high and wonderful things of which He has been speaking. He has been unveiling spiritual blessings, which may seem recondite and up in the clouds, and which, as a matter of fact, have often been perverted into dreamy mysticisms of a most immoral and unprac- tical kind. And so He brings us sharp back again here to very plain truths, and would teach us that all these lofty and ineffable gifts of which He has been dimly speaking are to be reached only by the commonplace road of honest obedience and simple conformity to His commandments. In these last words of my text, He administers the antidote and the check to the possible abuses of the great things which He has been saying. I. Note, then, first, the knowledge that comes with the Christ who comes. 'At that day' covers the whole period of which He has been speaking, between His withdrawal from the 342 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. disciples and His final corporeal coming to judgment — that great day of which generations are hut the moments. In it the men who love Him are to have His presence, His vision, His life, and because they have, ' Ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.' The principle that underlies these wonderful words is that Christian experience is the best teacher of fundamental Christian truth. Observe ^th what decision, and with what strange boldness, our Lord carries that principle into regions where we might suppose at first sight that it was altogether inapplicable. ' Ye shall know that I am in My Father.' How can such a thing as the relation between Christ and God ever be a matter of consciousness to us here upon earth? Must it not always be a truth that we must take on trust and believe because we have been told it, without having any verification in ourselves ? Not so; remember what has gone before. If a man has the consciousness of Christ's presence with Him, sees Him with the true inward eye, which is the only real organ of real vision, and is drawing from Him, moment by moment, His own high and immortal life, then is it not true that this man's experiences are of such a sort as to be utterly inexplicable, except on the ground that they come from a divine source? If I have these experiences I know that it is Jesus Christ who gives them, and I know that He could not give them, if He did not dwell in God and were not divine. These new influ^ences, this revolution in my being, this healing, constraining, cleansing touch, these calming, gladden- ing, elevating powers, these new hopes, these reversed desires, loving all to which I was formerly indifferent, and growing dead to all that formerly appealed most strongly to me ; all these things bear upon their very vs. 20, 21] GIFTS OF PRESENT CHRIST 343 front the signature that they are wrought by a divine hand, and as sure as I am of my own Christian con- sciousness, so sure am I that all its experiences proclaim their Author, and that Christ who gives me them is in God. ' Ye shall know that I am in My Father.' The New Testament, as I read it, is full at every point of the divinity of Jesus Christ; and many pro- found and learned arguments on that subject have been urged by theologians, and these are all well and needful in their places, but the true way to be sure of it is to have Him dwelling with us and working in us ; and then what was an article of belief becomes an article of knowledge, and we know Him to be our Saviour and the Son of God. In like manner, and yet more obviously, the other elements of this knowledge which Christ promises here may be shown to flow naturally and necessarily from Christian experiences. ' That ye are in Me, and I in you,' — if a Christian man carries the consciousness of Christ's presence, and has Him as a Sun in his darkness, and as a Life-source feeding his deadness with life, then he knows with a consciousness which is irrefragable that Jesus Christ is in him, for he feels Ilis touch ; and he knows that he is in Christ, for he is aware of the power that girdles him, and in which he has peace and righteousness and all. So, dear brethren, let us learn what the Christian man's experience ought to be and to do for him. It should change the articles of our creed into elements of our consciousness. It should make all the funda- mentals of the Gospel vitally and vividly true ; and certified by what has passed within our own spirits. We should be able to say: 'We have the witness in ourselves.' And though there will remain much that 344 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. is uncertain, much in Christian doctrine which is not capable of that clear and all-sufficing verification ; much about which we must still depend on the mere teaching of others, or on our own study, the central facts which make the Gospel may all become, by this plain and short path, elements of our very conscious- ness which stand undeniable to us, whosoever denies them. Such a direct way to knowledge is reasonable, is in full analogy with the manner by which we attain to the knowledge of everything except the mere external facts, the knowledge of which has arrogated to itself the exclusive name of 'science.' How do you know anything about love? You may read poems and tragedies to the end of time, and you will not under- stand it until you come under its spell for yourself; and then all the things that men said about it cease to be mere words, because you yourself have experienced the emotion. * He must be loved, ere that to you He will seem worthy of your love,' and the only way to be sure, with a vital certitude, of Christ, is to take Christ for your very own, and then He comes into your very being, and dwells there quickening, the Sun and the Life. So, dear brethren, though such certitude arising from experience, which in its nature is the very highest, is not available for other people, the fact that so many millions of men allege that in varying degrees they possess this certitude is available for other people, and there is nothing to be said by the unbeliever to this, the attestation of the Christian consciousness to the truth of the truths which it has tried. * Whether vs. 20, 21] GIFTS OF PRESENT CHRIST 345 this man be a sinner or no, I know not.' You may jangle as much as you like about the questionable and controversial points that surround the Christian revelation. I do not care in the present connection what answer you give to them. ' Whether this man be a sinner or no, I know not. One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.' And we may push the war into the enemy's quarters, and say: 'Why! herein is a marvellous thing, that you that know everything do not know whence this man is, and yet He has opened mine eyes. You want facts ; there are some. You want verification; we have verified by experience, and we set to our seals that God is true.' ' Oh but,' you say, * this is not a fair account of the way in which Christian men and women generally feel about this matter.' Well, all that I can say about that is, so much the worse for the so-called Christian men and women. And if they are Christians, and do not know by this inward experience that Christ is divine and their Saviour, then there is only one of two reasons to be given for it; either their experience is so wretchedly superficial and fragmentary, so rudi- mentary as to be scarcely worth calling by the name ; or, having the facts, they have failed to appreciate their significance, and to make their own by reflection the certitudes which are their own. Brethren, it becomes every Christian man and woman to be able to say, * Because I have Christ with me, and see Him, and derive my life from Him, I know that He is in the Father, and I in Him, and He in me.' And if you cannot say that, it is your own grasp of Him, or your meditation upon what you have got by your grasp, that is painfully and sinfully defective. 346 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. II. My text speaks of the obedience whicli is the sign and test of love. The words here are substantially equivalent to former words in the chapter which we have already considered, where our Lord says : ' If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments.' There is, however, a slight difference in the point of view in the two sayings; the former begins with the root and traces it upwards and outwards to its fruits, love blossoming into obedience. Our text reverses the process, and takes the thing by the other end ; begins with the fruits and traces them downwards and in- wards to the root. 'He that hath and keepeth My commandments, he it is that loveth Me.' The two sayings substantially mean the same thing ; but in the one love is put first as the cause of obedience, and in the other obedience is put first, as the certain fruit and sure sign of love. The connection between these and the preceding words is, as I have already pointed out, that our Lord here brings all His lofty promises down to the sharp, practical requirement of obedience, as the only condition on which they can be fulfilled. So note, and very briefly about this matter, how re- markably our Lord here declares the possession of His commandments to be a sign of love to Him. ' He that hath,' a word which is generally passed over in our reading — 'He that hath My commandments, He it is that loveth Me.' Of course there are two ways of having His commandments ; there is having them in the Bible, and there is having them in the heart; — present before my eye, as a law that I ought to obey, or present within my will, as a power that shapes it. And the latter is the only kind of ' having ' that Christ regards as real and valid. The rest is only preparatory Ts.20,21] GIFTS OF PRESENT CHRIST 347 and superficial. Love possesses the knowledge of the loved one's will. Is not that true? Do we not all know how strange is the power of divining desires that goes along with true affection, and how the power, not only of divining, but of treasuring, these desires is the test and the thermometer of our true love ? Some of us, perhaps, keep laid away in sacred, secret places tattered, yellow, old bits of paper with the words of a dear one on them, that we would not part with. ' He that hath My commandments' laid up in lavender in the deepest recesses of his faithful heart, he it is * that loveth Me.' In like manner, our Lord says, the practical obedi- ence to His commandments is the sure sign and test of love. I need not dwell upon that. There are two motives for keeping commandments — one because they are commanded, and one because we love Him that commands. The one is slavery, the other is liberty. The one is like the Arctic regions, cold and barren, the other is like tropical lands, full of warmth and sun- shine, glorious and glad fertility. The form of the sentence suggests how easy it is for people to delude themselves about their love to Jesus Christ. That emphatic 'he,' and the putting first of the character before its root is pointed out, are directed against false pretensions to love. The love that Christ stamps with His hall-mark, and passes as genuine, is no mere emotion, however passionate, however sweet ; no mere sentiment, however pure, however deep. The tiniest little rivulet that drives a mill is better than a Niagara that rushes and foams and tumbles idly. And there is much so-called love to Jesus Christ that goes masquerading up and down the world, from which the paint is stripped by the sharp application of 348 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. the words of my text. Character and conduct are the true demonstrations of Christian love, and it is only- love so attested that He accepts. III. Lastly, notice the further and sweeter gifts of divine love and manifestation which reward our love and obedience. ' He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.' Two things, then. He tells us, are the rich rewards and sparkling crowns with which He crowns our poor love to Him — the love of the Father and the love of the Christ, separate and yet united, and the further manifestation of Christ's sweetness to the waiting heart. Note, as to the first, the extraordinary boldness of that majestic saying : ' If a man loves Me, My Father will love him.' God regards our love to Jesus Christ as the fulfilling of the law, as equivalent to our supreme love to Himself, as containing in it the germ of all that is pleasing in His sight. And so, upon our hearts, if we love Christ, there falls the benediction of the Father's love. Of course I need not remind you that our Lord here is not beginning at the very beginning of everything ; for prior to all men's love to Christ is Christ's love to men, and ours to Him is but the reflectipn and the echo called forth by His to us. ' We love Him because He first loved us' digs a story deeper down in the building than the words of my text, which is speaking, not of the process by which a man comes to receive the love of God for the first time, but of the process by which a Christian man grows in his possession of it. That being understood, here is a great lesson. It is not all the same to God whether a man is a scoundrel or a saint. The divine love is over all its works, and vs. 20, 21] GIFTS OF PRESENT CHRIST 349 embraces every variety of humanity, the most de- graded, alien, hostile. But in this generation, as it seems to mo, there is great need for preaching that whilst that is gloriously and blessedly true, the other thing is just as true, that to know the deepest depth and to taste the sweetest sweetness of the love of our Father God, there must be in our hearts love to Him whom He has sent, which manifests itself by our obedience. God's love is a moral love ; and whilst the sunbeams play ujDon the ice and melt it sometimes, they flash back from, and rest most graciously and fully on, the rippling stream into which the ice has turned. God loves them that love Him not, but the depths of His heart and the secret, sacred favours of His grace can only be bestowed upon those who in some measure are conformed, and are growingly being conformed, to His likeness in Jesus Christ, and who love Him and obey Him. And, in like manner, my text tells us that if we wish to know all that it is possible for us here, amidst the clouds, and shadows, and darknesses, to know of that dear Lord, the path to such knowledge is plain. Walk in the way of obedience, and Christ will meet you with the unveiling of more and more of His love. To live what we believe is the sure way to increase its amount. To be faithful to the little is the certain way to inherit the much. And Christ manifests Him- self, in all deep and recondite sweetness, gentleness, constraining power, to the men who treasure the partial knowledge as yet possessed, in their loving hearts and obedient wills, and who make a conscience of translating all their knowledge into conduct, and of basing all their conduct on knowledge of Him. He gives us His whole self at the first, but we traverse 350 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. the breadth of the gift by degrees. He puts Himself into our hands and into our hearts when we humbly trust Him and imperfectly try to love Him. But the flower is but a bud when we get it, and, as we hold it, it opens its petals to the light. So, if 'any man wills to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine'; and if, touched by His divine love and infinite sacrifice for me, I cast my poor self upon Him, and try to love Him back again, and to keep His commandments because I love, then day by day I shall realise more and more of His strong, immortal, all-satisfying love, and see more and more deeply into that Saviour, whose infinite beauties remain unrevealed after all revelation, and to know more and more of whom shall be the Heaven of Heavens yonder, as it is the joy and life of the soul here. WHO BRING CHRIST ' Judas saith unto Him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thy- self unto us. and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love Me he wiU keep My words : and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our ahode with him. He that loveth Me not, keepeth not My sayings : and the word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father's which sent Me.'— John xiv. 22-24. This Judas held but a low place amongst the Apostles. In all the lists he is one of the last of the groups of fours, into which they are divided, and which were evidently arranged according to their spiritual nearness to the Master. His question is exactly that which a listener, with some dim, confused glimmer of Christ's meaning, might be expected to ask. He grasps at His last words about manifesting Himself to certain persons; he rightly feels that he and his brethren possess the qualification of love. He rightly understands that our vs. 22-24] WHO BRING CHRIST 851 Lord contemplates no public showing of Himself, and that disappoints him. It was only a day or two ago that Jesus seemed to them to have begun to do what they had always wanted Him to do, manifest Himself to the world. And now, as he thinks, something un- known to them must have happened in order to make Him change His course, and go back to the old plan of a secret communication. And so he says, 'Lord! what has come to pass to induce you to abandon and falter upon the course on which we entered, when you rode into Jerusalem with the shouting crowd ?' His question is no better in intelligence, though it is a great deal better in spirit, than the taunt of Christ's brethren, ' If Thou do these things, show Thyself to the world.' Judas, too, thought of the simple flashing of His Messianic glory, in some visible, vulgar form, before else blind eyes. How sad and chilling such a question must have been to Jesus! Slow scholars we all are; and with what wonderful patience, without a word of pain, or of rebuke. He reiterates His lesson, here a little and there a little, and once more unfolds the conditions of His self-revelation, and the fullness of the blessings that He brings. He moulds His words so as to meet both the clauses of Judas's foolish question — 'To us, not to the world ' ; and quietly tells them the positive conditions and the negative disqualifications for His self-revelation. So my text deals with two things, the crown of loving obedience in the possession of a fuller Christ, and the impassable barrier to His mani- festation which unloving disobedience makes. Or to put it into briefer words, we have in one of the verses — first, what brings Christ and what Christ brings; and, in the other, second, what keeps away Christ 352 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. and all His gifts. Now let us look at these two things. I. We have what brings Christ and what Christ brings. ' If a man love Me, He will keep My word ' (not 'words,' as our Authorised Version has it), 'and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.' Now notice how here, in the first part of this verse, our Lord subtly and signifi- cantly alters the form of the statement which He has already made. He had formerly said, • If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments,' but now He casts it into a purely impersonal form, and says, * If a man,' anybody, not 'you' only, but anybody — 'If a man love Me, he,' anybody, ' will keep My word.' And why the change ? Why, I suppose, in order to strike full and square against that complacent assumption of Judas that it was ' to us and not to the world ' that the show- ing was to take place. Our Lord, by the studiously impersonal form into which He casts the promise, pro- claims its universality, and says this to His ignorant questioner, 'Do not suppose that you Apostles have the monopoly. You may not even have a share in My self -manifestation. Anybody may have it. And there is no " world," as you suppose, to which I do not show Myself. Anybody may have the vision if he observes the conditions.' Now I need not dwell at any length upon the earlier words of this text, because we have had to consider them in previous sermons on the former verses of this chapter. I need only remark that here, as there, our Lord brings out the thought that the very life-blood of love is the treasuring of the word of the beloved One ; and that there is no joy comparable to the joy of the vs. 22 24] WHO BRING CHRIST 353 loving heart that yields itself to the Beloved's will. That is true about earth, and it makes the sweetest and selectest blessedness of our ordinary existence. And it is true about heaven, and it makes the liberty and the gladness of the bond that knits us to Him. But I would like just to notice, before I come to the more immediate subject of my discourse, that remarkable expression, ' He will keep My word.' That is more than a 'commandment,' is it not? Christ's 'word' is wider than 'precept. It includes all His say- ings, and it includes them all as in one vital unity and organic whole. We are not to go picking and choosing among them ; they are one. And it includes this other thought, that every word of Christ, be it revelation of the deep things of God, or be it a promise of the great shower of blessings which, out of His full hand. He will drop upon our heads, enshrines within itself a commandment. He utters no revelations, simply that we may know. He utters no comforting words, simply that our sore hearts may be healed, but in all His utterances there is a practical bearing; and every word of His teaching, every word of His sweet, whispered assurances of love and favour to the wait- ing heart, has in it the imperativeness of His mani- fested will, and has a direct bearing upon duty. All His icords are gathered into one word, and all the variety of His sayings is, in their unity, the law of our lives. So much by way of observation on the mere language of my text. And now let us look at what, as He says to us here, are the rewards and crown of loving obedience. Christ will show Himself to the loving heart. That is true on the very lowest level. Every act of obedience to any moral truth is rewarded by additional VOL. II. z 354 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. insight. Every act of submission to His will cleanses the lenses of the telescope from some film that has gathered upon them, and so the stars look brighter and larger and nearer. All duty done opens out into a loftier conception of duty, and a clearer vision of Him. 'To him that hath shall be given.' As we climb the hill we get a wider view. Obedience is in all things the parent of insight. But in reference to our relation to Him, we have to do not with truths only, but with a Person. How do we learn to know people? There is only one way — that is, by loving them. Sympathy is the parent of all true knowledge of one another. They tell us in the foolish old proverb that * love is blind.' No ! There is not such a pair of clear eyes anywhere as the eyes of love ; and if we want to see into a man, the first condition is that we feel kindly towards him. Sym- pathy is the parent of insight into persons, as Obedience is the parent of insight into duty. But both of these illustrations are only imperfect preparations for the great truth here, which is that our loving obedience to the discerned w^ill of Jesus Christ has not only an operation inwards upon us, but has an effect outwards upon Him. I am afraid that Christian people in this generation have but a very imperfect belief in the actual, supernatural, and, if you like to call it so, miraculous manifestation of Jesus Christ, His very Self, to men that love Him and cleave to Him. Do you believe as a simple revealed truth, plain as a sunbeam in such words as these, that Jesus Christ Himself will do something on you, and in you, and for you, if you love Him and trust Him ; that His hand will be laid on your eyes as it was laid of old; that He will indeed, in no metaphor, but in vs. 22-24] WHO BRING CHRIST 355 reality, show Himself to you? I may be mistaken, but I think that too commonly it is the case, that even good Christian people have a far more vivid and realising and real faith in the past work of Christ on earth than in the present work of Christ in them- selves. They think the one a plain truth, and the other something like a metaphor, whereas the New- Testament teaches us, as plainly as it can teach us anything, that, far above all the natural operations of truth upon our understandings, hearts, and wills, there is an actual, supernatural, continuous communi- cation of Christ to hearts that love Him, which leads day by day, if they be faithful, to a fuller know- ledge, a sweeter love, a larger possession, of a fuller Christ. And it is this that He tells us of, to fire our ambition to attain, in such words as these. Brethren, one piece of honest, loving obedience is worth all the study and speculation of an unloving heart when the question is, 'How are we to see Christ?' Again, Jesus shows Himself to the obedient heart in indissoluble union with the Father. Look at the majesty, and, except upon one hypothesis, the insane presumption, of such words as these : * If a man love ilfe, My Father will love him ' ; as if identifying love to Christ with love to Himself. And look at that wondrous union, the consciousness of which speaks in ' We will come.' Think of a man saying that. It is blasphemous insanity ; or else the speech of Him who is conscious of union with the Father, close and in- dissoluble and transcending all analogies. ' We will come,' together, hand-in-hand, if I may so say; or rather. His coming is the Father's coming. Just as in heaven so closely are they represented as united, that there is but one throne ' for God and the Lamb,' 356 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. 80 on earth so closely are they represented as united, that there is but one coming of the Father in the Son. And this is the only belief, as it seems to me, that will keep this generation from despair and moral suicide. The question for this generation is, Is it possible for men to know God ? Science, both of material things and of inward experiences, is more and more unanimous in its proclamation ; ' Behold ! we know not anything ' ; and the only attitude to take before that great black vault above us is to say, ' We know nothing.' The world has learned half of a great verse of the Gospel : ' No man hath seen God at any time, nor can see Him.' If the world is not to go mad, if hearts are not to be tortured into despair, if morality and enthusiasm and poetry and everything higher and nobler than the knowledge of material phenomena and their sequences is not to perish from the earth, the world must learn the next half of the verse, and say, ' The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.' Christ shows Himself in indissoluble union with the Father. Lastly about this matter, Christ shows Himself to obedient love by a true coming. 'We will come and make our mansion with him.' And that coming is a fact of a higher order, and not to be confounded either with the mere divine Omnipresence, by which God is everywhere, nor to be reduced to a figment of our own imaginations, or a strong way of promising increased perception on our part of Christ's fullness. That great central Sun, if I might use so violent a figure, draws nearer and nearer and nearer to the planets that move about it, and having once been far off on an almost infinitely distant horizon, approaches until planet and Sun unite. vs. 22-24] WHO BRING CHRIST 857 Dear brethren, if we could only get to the attitude of simple acceptance of this as a literal truth, and believe that, in prose reality, Christ comes to every heart that loves Him, would not all the world be different to us ? That coming is a permanent residence: 'We will make our abode with him.' Very beautiful is it to notice that our Lord here employs that same sweet and significant word, with which He began this wonder- ful series of encouragements, when He said, 'In My Father's house are many mansions' Yonder they dwell for ever with God ; here God in Christ for ever dwells with the loving heart. It is a permanent abode so long as the conditions are fulfilled, but only so long. If self-will, rising in the Christian heart from its torpor and apparent death, reasserts itself and shakes off Christ's yoke, Christ's presence vanishes. In the last hours of the Holy City there was heard by the trem- bling priests amidst the midnight darkness the motion of departing Deity, and a great voice said: 'Let us depart hence '; and to-morrow the shrine was empty, and the day after it was in flames. Brethren, if you would keep the Christ in whom is God, remember that He cannot be kept but by the act of loving obedience. II. Now, in the next place, my text gives us the negative side, and shows us what keeps away Christ and all His blessings. An unloving disobedience closes the eyes to the vision, and the heart against the entrance, of that dear Lord. Our Master lays down for us two prin- ciples, and leaves us to draw the conclusion for ourselves. The first is, 'He that lovetli Me not, keepeth not My sayings.' No love, no obedience. That is plainly true, because the heart of all the commandments is 358 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. love, and where that is not, disohedience to their very spirit is. It is plainly true, because there is no power that will lead men to true obedience to Christ's yoke except the power of love. His commandments are too alien from our nature ever to be kept, unless by the might of love. It was only the rising sunbeam that could draw music from the stony lips of Memnon, as he gazed out across the desert, and it is only when Christ's love shines on our faces that we open our lips in praise, and move our hands in service. Those great rocking-stones down in Cornwall stand unmoved by any tempest, but a child's finger, laid on the right place, will set them vibrating. And so the heavy, hard, stony bulk of our hearts lies torpid and immovable, until He lays His loving finger upon them, and then they rock at His will. There is no keeping of Christ's commandments without love. That makes short work of a great deal that calls itself Christianity, does it not? Reluctant obedience is no obedience ; self-interested obedience is no obedience; constrained obedience is no obedience; outward acts of service, if the heart be wanting, are rubbish and dung. Morality without religion is nought. The one thing that makes a good man is love to Jesus Christ; and where that is, there, and only there, is obedience. ' Talk they of morals ? O Thou Bleeding Lamb 1 The grand morality is love of Thee.' ' If a man love Me not, he will not keep My words.' Then the second principle is, disobedience to Christ is disobedience to God. ' The Word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father's.' Christ's consciousness of union so speaks out here as that He is quite sure that VS.22-24J WHO BRING CHRIST 859 all His words are God's words, and that all God's words are spoken by Him. Paul has to say, ' So speak I, not the Lord.' And you would not think a man a very sound or safe religious teacher who said to you, to begin with, ' Now, mind, everything that I say, God says.' There are no errors then, no deterioration of the treasure by the vessel in which it lies. The water does not taste of the vase in which it is carried. The personality of Jesus Christ is never, through all His utterances, so separated from God but that God speaks in Him ; and, listening to His voice, we hear the absolute utterance of the uncreated and eternal Wisdom. Therefore follows the conclusion, which our Lord does not state, but leaves us to supply. If it be true that the absence of love of Him is disobedience to Him, and if it be true that disobedience to Him is disobedience to God, then it plainly follows that what keeps away Christ and all His gifts, and God in Him, is unloving obedience. What brings Him is the obedience of love ; what repels Him is alienation and rebellion. If the heart be full of confusion, of the world, of self, of unbridled inclinations, of careless indifference to His bleeding love. He ' can but listen at the gate and hear the household jar within.' And so, dear friends, from all this there follow one or two points, which I touch very briefly. One is, that it is possible for men not to see Christ, though He stands there close before them. It is possible to grope at noonday as at midnight, to see only 'bracken green and cold grey stone ' on the hillside, where another man sees the chariots of fire and the horses of fire. It is possible for you — and, alas ! it is the condition of some of my hearers — to look upon Christ and to turn 360 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. away and say, ' I see no beauty in Him that I should desire Him,' whilst the man beside you, looking at the same facts and the same face, can see in Him tte • Chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.' Another thought is, that Christ's showing of Himself to men is in no sense arbitrary. It is you that deter- mine what you shall see. You can hermetically seal your heart against Him, you can blind yourself to all His beauty. The door of your hearts is hinged to open from within, and if you do not open it, it remains shtlt, and Christ remains outside. Another thought is, that you do not need to do anything to blind yourselves. Simple negation is fatal. ' If a man love not ' ; that is all. The absence of love is your ruin. And the last thought is this, that my text does not begin at the beginning. Jesus Christ has been speak- ing about manifestations of Himself to the loving and obedient; but there are manifestations of Himself made that we may become loving and obedient. You can build a barrier over which these sweeter revela- tions, of which loyal love and docile submission are the conditions, cannot rise. But you cannot build a barrier over which the prior revelations to the un- thankful and disobedient cannot rise. No mountains of sin and neglect and alienation can be piled so high but that the flood of pardoning grace will rise above their crests, and pour itself into your hearts. You ask, How can I get the love and obedience of which you have been singing the praises now ? There is only one answer, brethren. We know that we love Him when we know that He loves us; and we know that He loves us when we see Him dying on His Cross. So here is the ladder, that is planted in the miry clay vs. 22-24] THE TEACHER SPIRIT 861 of the horrible pit, and fastens its golden hooks on His throne. The first round is, Behold the dying Christ and His love to me. The second is, Let that love melt my heart into sweet responsive love. The third is, Let my love mould my life into obedience. And then Christ, and God in Him, will come to me and show Himself to me ; and give me a fuller knowledge and a deeper love, and make His dwelling with me. And then there is only one round still to reach, and that will land us by the Throne of God, in the many mansions of the Father's house, where we shall make our abode with Him for evermore. THE TEACHER SPIRIT 'These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.'— John xiv. 25, 26. This wonderful outpouring of consolation and instruc- tion with which our Lord sought to soothe the pain of parting is nearing its end. We have to conceive of a slight pause here, whilst He looks back upon what He has been saying and contrasts His teaching with that of the Comforter, whom He has once already, though in a different connection, promised to His followers. He speaks of His earthly residence with them as being *an abiding,' distinctly therein referring to what He has just said, that the Father and He will, in the future, * make their abode ' with His disciples. He con- trasts the outward and transitory presence which was now nearing its end, with the inward and continuous presence, which its end was to inaugurate. And, in like manner, with, at first sight, startling 362 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. humility, He contrasts 'these things,' the partial and to a large extent unintelligible utterances which He had given with His human lips, with the complete, universal teaching of that divine Spirit, who was to instruct in 'all things' pertaining to man's salvation. We have then, here, sketched in broad outline, the great truths concerning the ever-present, inward Teacher of God's Church who is to come, now that the earthly manifestation of Christ, whom the twelve called their 'Teacher,' had reached a close. I think we may best gain the deep instruction which lies in the words before us, if we look at three points of view which they bring into prominence : the Teacher, His lesson, and His scholars. I. Now, as to the first, the promised Teacher. I need not repeat what I have said in former sermons as to the wide sweep of that word ' the Com- forter,' beyond just reminding you that it means literally one who is called to the side of another, primarily for the purpose of being his representative in some legal process; and, more widely, for any purpose of help, encouragement, and strength. That being so, ' Comforter,' in its modern sense of Consoler, is far too narrow for the full force of the word, which means much rather 'Comforter,' in its ancient and etymological sense of one who, in company with another, makes Him strong and brave. But the point to which I desire to turn attention now is this, that this comforting and strengthening office of the divine Spirit is brought into immediate connection here with the conception of Him as a Teacher. That is to say, the best strength that God, by His Spirit, can give us is by our firm grasp and growing clearness of understanding of the truths vs. 25, 26] THE TEACHER SPIRIT 363 which are wrapped up in Jesus Christ. All power for endurance, for service, is there, and when the Spirit of God teaches a man what God reveals in Christ, He therein and thereby most fully discharges His office of Strengthener, Then note still further the other designation of this divine Teacher which is here given : ' The Com- forter, which is the Holy Ghost.' We might have expected, as indeed we find in another context in this great final discourse, the ' Spirit of Truth ' as appropriate in connection with the office of teach- ing. But is there not a profound lesson for us here in this, that, side by side with the thought of illumination, there lies the thought of purity built upon consecration, which is the Scripture definition of holiness? That suggests that there is an indis- soluble connection between the real knowledge of God's truth and practical holiness of life. That con- nection is of a double sort. There is no holiness with- out such knowledge, and there is no such knowledge without holiness. There is no real knowledge of Christ and His truth without purity of heart. The man who has no music in his soul can never be brought to understand the deep harmonies of the great masters and magicians of sound. The man who has no eye for beauty can never be brought to bow his spirit before some of those embodiments of loveliness and sublimity which the painter's brush has cast upon the canvas. And the man who has no longings after purity, nor has attained to any degree of moral conformity with the divine image, is not in possession of the sense which is needed in order that he should understand the * deep things of God.' 364. GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. The scholars in this school have to wash their hands before they go to school, and come there with clean hands and clean hearts. Foulness and the love of it are bars to all understanding of God's truth. And, on the other hand, the truest inducements, motives, and powers for purity are found in that great word which is all 'according to godliness,' and is meant much rather to make us good than to make us wise. So, in this designation of the teaching Spirit as holy, there lie lessons for two classes of people. All fanatical professions of possessing divine illumination, which are not warranted and sealed by purity of life, are lies or self-delusion. And, on the other hand, cold- blooded intellectualism will never force the locks of the palace of divine truth, but they that come there must have clean hands and a pure heart; and only those who have the love and the longing for goodness will be wise scholars in Christ's school. Your theology is nothing unless its distinct outcome is morality, and you must be prepared to accept the painful, the punitive, the purifying influences of that divine Spirit on your moral natures if you want to have His enlightening influences shining on the 'truth as it is in Jesus.' 'If any man wills to do His will, he,' and only he, ' shall know of the doctrine.' Knowledge and holiness are as inseparable in divine things as light and heat. And still further note that this great Teacher is • sent by God ' in Christ's name. That pregnant phrase, ' In My name,' cannot be represented by any one form of expression into which we may translate it, but covers a larger space. God in Christ's name sends the Spirit. That is to say, in some deep sense God acts as Christ's representative; just as Christ comes in the vs. 25, 26] THE TEACHER SPIRIT 365 Father's name and acts as His representative. And, again, God sends in Christ's name; that is, the his- torical manifestation of Christ is the basis on which the sending of the Spirit is possible and rests. The revelation had to be complete before He who came to unfold the meaning of the revelation had material to work upon. The Spirit, which is sent in Christ's name, has, for the basis of His mission, and the means by which He acts, the recorded facts of Christ's life and death, these and none other. And then note finally about this matter, the strong and unmistakable declaration here, that that divine Spirit is a person: 'He shall teach you all things.' They tell us that the doctrine of the Trinity is not in the New Testament. The word is not, but the thing is. In this verse we have the Father, the Son, and the Spirit brought into such close and indissoluble union as is only vindicated from the charge of blasphemy by the belief in the divinity of each. Just as the Apostolic benediction, ' The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit' necessarily involves the divinity of all who are thus invoked, so we stand here in the presence of a truth which pierces into the deeps of Deity. That divine Spirit is more than an influence. 'He shall teach,' and He can be grieved by evil and sin. I do not enlarge upon these thoughts. My purpose is mainly to bring them out clearly before you. II. I pass in the second place to the consideration of the Lesson which this promised Teacher gives. Mark the words, * He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever / have said unto you.' Now as we have seen in the exposition of the words 'in My name,' the whole 366 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. subject-matter of the divine Spirit's teaching is the life and work and death and person of Jesus Christ. ' He shall teach you all things ' is wider than * He shall bring all things which I have said to you to your re- membrance.' But whilst that is so, the clear implica- tion of the words before us is that Christ is the lesson book, of which the divine Spirit is the Teacher. His weapon, to take another metaphor, with which He plies men's hearts and minds and wills, convincing the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment, and leading those who are convinced into deeper knowledge and larger wisdom, is the recorded facts concerning the life and manifestation of Jesus Christ. The significance of this lesson book, the history of our Lord, cannot be unfolded all at once. There is something altogether unique in the incorruption and germinant power of all His deeds and of all His words. This Carpenter of Nazareth has reached the heights which the greatest thinkers and poets of the past have never reached, or only in little snatches and fragments of their words. His words open out, gene- ration after generation, into undreamed-of wisdom, and there are found to be hived in them stores of sweetness that were never suspected until the occa- sion came that drew them forth. The world and the Church received Christ, as it were, in the dark; and, as with some man receiving a precious gift as the morning was dawning, each fresh moment revealed, as the light grew, new beauties and new preciousness in the thing possessed. So Christ, in His infinite significance, fresh and new for all generations, was given at first, and ever since the Church and the world have been learning the meaning of the gift which they received. Christ's words are inexhaustible, vs. 25, 26] THE TEACHER SPIRIT 367 and the Spirit's teaching is to unveil more and more of the infinite significance that lies in the apparently- least significant of them. Novp^, then, note that if this be our Lord's meaning here, Jesus Christ plainly anticipated that, after His departure from earth, there should be a development of Christian doctrine. We are often taunted vv^ith the fact, v^hich is exaggerated for the purpose of contro- versy, that a clear and full statement of the central truths which orthodox Christianity holds, is found rather in the Apostolic epistles than in the Master's words, and the shallow axiom is often quoted with great approbation : ' Jesus Christ is our Master, and not Paul.' I do not grant that the germs and the central truths of the Gospel are not to be found in Christ's words, but I admit that the full, articulate statement of them is to be found rather in the servant's letters, and I say that that is exactly what Jesus Christ told us to expect, that after He was gone, words that had been all obscure, and thoughts that had been only fragmentarily intelligible, would come to be seen clearly, and would be discerned for what they were. The earlier disciples had only a very partial grasp of Christ's nature. They knew next to nothing of the great doctrine of sacrifice ; they knew nothing about His resurrection ; they did not in the least understand that He was going back to heaven ; they had but glimmering conceptions of the spirituality or univer- sality of His Kingdom. Whilst they were listening to Him at that table they did not believe in the atone- ment ; but they dimly believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ ; they did not believe in His resurrection ; they did not believe in His ascension ; they did not believe that He was founding a spiritual kingdom, a kingdom 368 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. that was to rule over all the world till the end of time. None of these truths were in their mind. They had all been in germ in His words. And after He was gone, there came over them a breath of the teaching Spirit, and the unintelligible flashed up into significance. The history of the Church is the proof of the truth of this promise, and if anybody says to me, 'Where is the fulfilment of the promise of a Spirit that will bring all things to your remembrance ? ' I say — here in this Book! These four Gospels, these Apostolic Epistles, show that the word which our Lord here speaks has been gloriously fulfilled. Christ anticipated a develop- ment of doctrine, and it casts no slur or suspicion on the truthfulness of the apostolic representation of the Christian truths, that they are only sparsely and frag- mentarily to be found in the records of Christ's life. Then there is another practical conclusion from the words before us, on which I touch for a moment, and that is, that if Jesus Christ and the deep understanding of Him be the true lesson of the divine, teaching Spirit, then real progress consists, not in getting beyond Christ, but in getting more fully into Him. We hear a great deal in these days about advanced thought and progressive Christianity. I hope I believe in the con- tinuous advance of Christian thought as joyfully as any man, but my notion of it— and I humbly venture to say Christ's notion of it — is to get more and more into His heart, and to find within Him, and not away from Him, ' all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.' We leave all other great men behind. All other teachers' words become feeble by age, as their persons become ghostly, wrapped in thickening folds of oblivion; but the progress of the Church consists in absorbing more and more of Christ, in understanding Him better, and vs. 25, 26] THE TEACHER SPIRIT 869 becoming more and more moulded by His influence. The Spirit's teaching brings out the ever fresh signifi- cance of the ancient and perpetual revelation of God in Jesus Christ. III. And now, lastly, note the Scholars. Primarily, of course, these are the Apostolic group ; but the Apostles, in all these discourses, stand as the representatives of the Church, and not as separated from it. And w^hilst the teaching Spirit could 'bring to the remembrance' of those only who first heard them ' the words that He said unto them,' that Spirit's teaching function is not limited to those who listened to the Lord Jesus. The fire that was kindled on Pentecost has not died down into grey ashes, nor the river that then broke forth been sucked up by thirsty sands of successive generations, but the fire is still with us, and the river still flows near our lips, and we, too, may be taught by that divine Spirit. For this very Evangelist, in writing his Epistle, has at least two distinct references to, and almost verbal quotations of, this promise, when he says, addressing all his Asiatic brethren, 'Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things.' And again, ' The unction which ye have of Him abideth with you, and ye need not that any man should teach you.' So, then, Christian men and women, every believing soul has this divine Spirit for His Teacher, and the humblest of us may, if we will, learn of Him and be led by Him into prof ounder knowledge of that great Lord. Oh ! dear brethren, the belief in the actual presence with the Church of a Spirit that teaches all faithful members thereof, is far too much hesitatingly held by the common Christianity of this day. We ought to bo the standing witnesses in the world of the reality VOL. II. 2 A 370 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. of a supernatural influence, and how can we be, if we do not believe it ourselves, and never feel that we are under it ? But whilst a continuous inspiration from that self- same Spirit is the prerogative of all believing souls, let us not forget that the early teaching is the standard by which all such must be tried. As to the first disciples the office of the divine Spirit was to bring before them the deep significance of their Master's life and words, so to us the office of the teaching Spirit is to bring to our minds the deep significance of the record by these earliest scholars of what they learned from Him. The authority of the New Testament over our faith is based upon these words, and Paul's warning applies especially to this generation, with its thoughts about a continuous inspiration and outgrowing of the New Testament teaching : ' If a man think himself to be spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.' Now from all this take three counsels. Let this great promise fill us with shame. Look at Christen- dom. Does it not contradict such words as these? Disputatious sects. Christians scarcely agreed upon any one of the great central doctrines, seem a strange fulfilment. The present condition of Christendom does not prove that Jesus Christ did not send the Spirit, but it does prove that Christ's followers have been wofully remiss and negligent in their acceptance and use of the Spirit. What slow scholars we are! How little we have learnt ! How we have let passion, pre- judice, human voices, the babble of men's tongues, anybody and everybody, take the office of teaching us God's truth, instead of waiting before Him and letting vs. 25, 26] THE TEACHER SPIRIT 871 His Spirit teach us ! It is the shame of us Christians that, with such a Teacher, we, ' when for the time we ought to be teachers, have need that one teach us again which be the first principles of the oracles of Christ!' Let it fill us with desire and with diligence. Let it fill us with calm hope. They tell us that Christianity- is effete. Have we got all out of Jesus Christ that is in Him ? Is the process that has been going on for all these centuries to stop now ? No ! Depend upon it that the new problems of this generation will find their solu- tion where the old problems of past generations have found theirs, and the old commandment of the old Christ will be the new commandment of the new Christ. Foolish men, both on the Christian and on the anti- Christian side, stand and point to the western sky and say, 'The Sun is setting.' But there is a flush in the opposite horizon in an hour, as at midsummer; and that which sank in the west rises fresh and bright in the east for a new day. Jesus Christ is the Christ for all the ages and for every soul, and the world will only learn more and more of His inexhaustible fullness. So let us be ever quiet, patient, hopeful amidst the babble of tongues and the surges of controversy, assured that all change will but make more plain the inexhaustible significance of the infinite Christ, and that humble and obedient hearts will ever possess the promised Teacher, nor ever cry in vain, ' Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God. Thy Spirit is good, lead me into the land of uprightness.* CHRIST'S PEACE 'Peace I leave with you. My peace 1 give unto you : not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.'— John xiv. 27. ' Peace be unto you ! ' was, and is, the common Eastern salutation, both in meeting and in parting. It carries us back to a state of society in which every stranger might be an enemy. It is a confession of the deep unrest of the human heart. Christ was about closing His discourse, and the common word of leave-taking came naturally to His lips ; just as when He first met His followers after the Resurrection, He soothed their fears by the calm and familiar greeting, ' Peace be unto you ! ' But common words deepen their force and meaning when He uses them. In Him 'all things become new,' and on His lips the conventional thread- bare salutation changes into a tender and mysterious communication of a real gift. His words are deeds, and His wishes for His disciples fulfil themselves. I. So we have here, first, the greeting, which is a gift. * Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you.' We have seen, in former discourses on this chapter, how prominently and repeatedly our Lord insists on the great truth of His dwelling with and in His disciples. He gives His peace because He gives Him- self; and in the bestowal of His life He bestows, in so far as we possess the gift, the qualities and attri- butes of that life. His peace is inseparable from His presence. It comes with Him, like an atmosphere; it is never where He is not. It was His peace inasmuch as, in His own experience, He possessed it. His man- 372 V.27] CHRIST'S PEACE 373 hood was untroubled by perturbation or tumult, by passions or contending desires, and no outward things could break His calm. If we open our hearts by lowly faith, love, and aspiration for His entrance, we too may be at rest ; for His peace, like all which He is and has, is His that it may be ours. The first requisite for peace is consciousness of har- monious and loving relations between me and God. The deepest secret of Christ's peace was His unbroken consciousness of unbroken communion with the Father, in which His will submitted and the whole being of the man hung in filial dependence upon God. And the centre and foundation of all the peace-giving power of Jesus Christ is this, that in His death, by His one offering for sin for ever, He has swept away the occasion of antagonism, and so made peace between the twain, the Father in the heavens and the child, rebellious and prodigal, here below. Little as these disciples dreamed of it, the death impending, which was already beginning to cast its shadow over their souls, was the condition of securing to them and to us the true beginning of all real peace, the rectifying of our antagonistic relation to God, and the bringing Him and us into perfect concord. My brother, no man can be at rest down to the very roots of His being, in the absence of the consciousness that he is at peace with God. There may be tumults of gladness, there may be much of stormy brightness in the life, but there cannot be the calm, still, impreg- nable, all-pervading, and central tranquillity that our souls hunger for, unless we know and feel that we are right with God, and that there is nothing between us and Him. And it is because Jesus Christ, dying on the Cross, has made it possible for you and me to feel this, 374 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. that He is our peace, and that He can say, 'Peace I leave with you.' Another requisite is that we must be at peace with ourselves. There must be no stinging conscience, there must be no unsatisfied desires, there must be no inner schism between inclination and duty, reason and will, passion and judgment. There must be the quiet of a harmonised nature which has one object, one aim, one love; which — to use a very vulgar phrase — has 'all its eggs in one basket,' and has no contradic- tions running through its inmost self. There is only one way to get that peace — cleaving to Jesus Christ and making Him our Lord, our righteousness, our aim, our all. Your consciences will sting, and that destroys peace ; or if they do not sting, they will be torpid, and that destroys peace, for death is not peace. Unless we take Christ for our love, for the light of our minds, for the Sovereign Arbiter and Lord of our will, for the home of our desires, for the aim of our efforts, we shall never know what it is to be at rest. Unsatisfied and hungry we shall go through life, seeking what nothing short of an Infinite Humanity can ever give us, and that is a heart to lean our heads upon, an adequate object for all our faculties, and so a quiet satisfaction of all our desires. 'Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread?' A question that no man can answer without convicting himself of folly ! There is One, and only One, who is enough for me, poor and weak and lowly and fleeting as I am, and as my earthly life is. Take that One for your Treasure, and you are rich indeed. The world without Christ is nought. Christ without the world is enough. Nor is there any other way of healing the inner T.27] CHRIST'S PEACE 875 discord, schism, and contradiction of our anarchic nature, except in bringing it all into submission to His merciful rule. Look at that troubled kingdom that each of us carries about within himself, passion dragging this way, conscience that, a hundred desires all arrayed against one another, inclination here, duty there, till we are torn in pieces like a man drawn asunder by wild horses. And what is to be done with all that rebellious self, over which the poor soul rules as it may, and rules so poorly ? Oh ! there is an inner unrest, the necessary fate of every man who does not take Christ for his King. But when He enters the heart with His silken leash, the old fable comes true, and He binds the lions and the ravenous beasts there with its slender tie and leads them along, tamed, by the cord of love, and all harnessed to pull together in the chariot that He guides. There is only one way for a man to be at peace with himself through and through, and that is that he should put the guidance of his life into the hands of Jesus Christ, and let Him do with it as He will. There is one power, and only one, that can draw after it all the multitudinous heaped waters of the weltering ocean, and that is the quiet, silver moon in the heavens that pulls the tidal wave, into which melt and merge all currents and small breakers, and rolls it round the whole earth. And so Christ, shining down lambent, and gentle, but changeless, from the darkest of our skies, will draw, in one great surge of harmonised motion, all the else contradictory currents of our stormy souls. ' My peace I give unto you.' Another element in true tranquillity, which again is supplied only by Jesus Christ, is peace with men. 'Whence come wars and fightings amongst you? 376 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. From your lusts.' Or to translate the old-fashioned phraseology into modern English, the reason why men are in antagonism with one another is the central selfishness of each, and there is only one way by which men's relations can be thoroughly sweetened, and that is, by the divine love of Jesus Christ pouring into their hearts, and casting out the devil of selfish- ness, and so blending them all into one harmonious whole. The one basis of true, happy relations between man and man, without which there is not the all-round tranquillity that we require, lies in the common rela- tion of all, if it may be, but certainly in the individual relation of myself, to Him who is the Lover and the Friend of all. And in the measure in which the law of the Spirit of life which was in Jesus Christ is in me, in that measure do I find it possible to reproduce His gentleness, sympathy, compassion, insight into men's sorrows, patience with men's offences, and all which makes, in our relations to one another, the harmony and the happiness of humanity. Another of the elements or aspects of peace is peace with the outer world. * It is hard to kick against the pricks,' but if you do not kick against them, they will not prick you. We beat ourselves all bruised and bleeding against the bars of the prison-house in trying to escape from it, but if we do not beat ourselves against them, they will not hurt us. If we do not want to get out of prison, it does not matter though we are locked in. And so it is not external calamities, but the resistance of the will to these, that makes the disturb- ances of life. Submission is peace, and when a man with Christ in his heart can say what Christ said, ' Not My will, but Thine be done,' Oh ! then, some faint V.27] CHRIST'S PEACE 377 beginnings, at least, of tranquillity come to the most agitated and buffeted ; and even in the depths of our sorrow we may have a deeper depth of calm. If we have yielded ourselves to the Father's will, through that dear Son who has set the example and communi- cates the power of filial obedience, then all winds blow us to our haven, and all 'things work together for good,' and nothing 'that is at enmity with joy' can shake our settled peace. Storms may break upon the rocky shore of our islanded lives, but deep in the centre there will be a secluded, inland dell • which heareth not the loud winds when they call,' and where no tempest can ever reach. Peace may be ours in the midst of warfare and of storms, for Christ with us reconciles us to God, harmonises us with ourselves, brings us into amity with men, and makes the world all good. II. So, secondly, note here the world's gift, which is an illusion. • Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.' Our Lord contrasts, as it seems to me, primarily the manner of the world's bestowment, and then passes insensibly into a contrast between the character of the world's gifts and His own. That phrase 'the world' may have a double sense. It may mean either mankind in general or the whole external and material frame of things. I think we may use both significations in elucidating the words before us. Regarding it in the former of them, the thought is suggested — Christ gives ; men can only wish. ' Peace be unto you ' comes from many a lip, and is addressed to many an ear, unfulfilled. Christ says 'peace,' and His word is a conveyance. How little we can do for one another's tranquillity, how soon we come to the 378 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. limits of human love and human help! How awful and impassable is the isolation in which each human soul lives! After all love and fellowship we dwell alone on our little island in the deep, separated by 'the salt, unplumbed, estranging sea,' and we can do little more than hoist signals of goodwill, and now and then for a moment stretch our hands across the 'echoing straits between.' But it is little after all that husband or wife can do for one another's central peace, little that the dearest friend can give. We have to depend upon ourselves and upon Christ for peace. That which the world wishes Christ gives. And then, if we take the other signification of the • world,' and the other application of the whole promise, we may say — Outward things can give a man no real peace. The world is for excitement ; Christ alone has the secret of tranquillity. It is as if to a man in a fever a physician should come and say : • I cannot give you anything to soothe you ; here is a glass of brandy for you.' That would not help the fever, would it ? The world comes to us and says : ' I cannot give you rest : here is a sharp excitement for you, more highly spiced and titillating for your tongue than the last one, which has turned flat and stale.' That is about the best that it can do. Oh! what a confession of unrest are the rush and recklessness, the fever and the fret of our modern life with its ever renewed and ever disappointed quest after good ! You go about our streets and look men in the face, and you see how all manner of hungry desires and eager wishes have imprinted themselves there. And now and then — how seldom ! — you come across a face out of which beams a deep and settled peace. How many of you are there who dare not be quiet because V.27] CHRIST'S PEACE 379 then you are most troubled? How many of you are there who dare not reflect because then you are wretched? How many of you are uncomfortable when alone, either because you are utterly vacuous, or because then you are surrounded by the ghosts of ugly thoughts that murder sleep and stuff every pillow with thorns ? The world will bring you excitement ; Christ, and Christ alone will bring you rest. The peace that earth gives is a poor affair at best. It is shallow ; a very thin plating over a depth of rest- lessness, like some skin of turf on a volcano, where a foot below the surface sulphurous fumes roll, and hellish turbulence seethes. That is the kind of rest that the world brings. Oh ! dear friends, there is nothing in this world that will fill and satisfy your hearts except only Jesus Christ. The world is for excitement ; and Christ is the only real Giver of real peace. III. Lastly, note the duty of the recipients of that peace of Christ's : ' Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.' The words that introduced this great discourse return again at its close, somewhat enlarged and with a deepened soothing and tenderness. There are two things referred to as the source of restlessness, troubled agitation or disturbance of heart ; and that mainly, I suppose, because of terror in the outlook towards a dim and unknown future. The disciples are warned to fight against these if they would keep the gift of peace. That is to say, casting the exhortation into a more general expression, Christ's gift of peace does not dispense with the necessity for our own effort after tranquillity. There is much in the outer world that 380 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. will disturb us to the very end, and there is much within ourselves that will surge up and seek to shake our repose and break our peace ; and we have to coerce and keep down the temptations to anxiety, the temptations to undue agitation of desire, the temptations to tumults of sorrow, the temptations to cowardly fears of the unknown future. All these will continue, even though we have Christ's peace in our hearts, and it is for us to see to it that we treasure the peace, * and in everything by prayer and supplica- tion with thanksgiving let our requests be made known unto God,' that nothing may break the calm which we possess. So, then, another thought arises from this final ex- hortation, and that is, that it is useless to tell a man, •Do not be troubled, and do not be afraid,' unless he first has Christ's peace as his. Is that peace yours, my brother, because Jesus Christ is yours? If so, then there is no reason for your being troubled or dreading any future. If it is not, you are mad not to be troubled, and you are insane if you are not afraid. The word for you is, 'Be troubled, ye careless ones,' for there is reason for it, and be afraid of that which is certainly coming. The one thing that gives security and makes it possible to possess a calm heart is the possession of Jesus Christ by faith. Without Him it is a waste of breath to say to people, ' Do not be fright- ened,' and it is wicked counsel to say to men, 'Be at ease.' They ought to be terrified, and they ought to be troubled, and they will be some day, whether they think so or not. But then the last thought from this exhortation is — and now I speak to Christian people — your imperfect possession of this peace is all your own fault. V.27] CHRIST'S PEACE 381 Why, there are hundreds of professing Christian people who have some kind of faint, rudimentary- faith, and there are many of them, I dare say, lis- tening to me now, who have no assured possession of any of those elements, of which I have been speaking, as the constituent parts of Christ's peace. You are not sure that you are right with God. You do not know what it is to possess satisfied desires. You do know what it is to have conflicting inclinations and impulses ; you have envy and malice and hostility against men ; and the world's storms and disasters do strike and disturb you. Why? Because you have not a firm grasp of Jesus Christ. * I have set the Lord always at my right hand, therefore I shall not be be moved'; there is the secret. Keep near Him, my brother ; and then all things are fair, and your heart is at peace. I remember once standing by the side of a little Highland loch on a calm autumn day, when all the winds were still, and every birch-tree stood unmoved, and every twig was reflected on the steadfast mirror, into the depths of which Heaven's own blue seemed to have found its way. That is what our hearts may be, if we let Christ put His guarding hand round them to keep the storms off, and have Him within us for our rest. But the man who does not trust Jesus ' is like the troubled sea which cannot rest,' but goes moaning round half the world, homeless and hungry, rolling and heaving, monotonous and yet changeful, salt and barren — the true emblem of every soul that has not listened to the merciful call, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' JOY AND FAITH, THE FRUITS OF CHRIST'S DEPARTURE ' Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father : for My Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.'— John xiv. 28, 29. Our Lord here casts a glance backward on the course of His previous words, and gathers together the sub- stance and purpose of these. He brings out the in- tention of His warnings and the true effect of the departure, concerning which He had given them notice, as being twofold. In the first verse of my text His words about that going away, and the going away itself, are represented as the source of joy, which is an advance on the peace that He had just previously been promising. In the second of our verses these two things — His words, and the facts which they revealed — are represented as being the very ground and nourish- ment of faith. So, then, we have these two thoughts to look at now, the departed Lord, the fountain of joy to all who love Him ; the departed Lord, the ground and food of faith. I. The departure of the Lord is a fountain of joy to those who love Him. In the first part of our text the going away of Jesus is contemplated in two aspects. The first is that with which we have already become familiar in previous sermons on this chapter — viz., its bearing upon the disciples; and in that respect it is declared that Christ's going is Christ's coming. But then we have a new aspect, one on which, in His sublime self -repression, He very seldom touches — viz., 383 vs. 28, 29] JOY AND FAITH 383 its bearing upon Himself ; and in that aspect we are taught here to regard our Lord's going as ministering to His exaltation and joy, and therefore as being a source of joy to all His lovers. So, then, we have these thoughts, Christ's going is Christ's coming, and Christ's going is Christ's exalta- tion, and for both reasons that departure ought to minister to His friends' gladness. Let us look at these three things for a little while. First of all, there comes a renewed utterance of that great thought which runs through the whole chapter, that the departure of Jesus Christ is in reality the coming of Christ. The word ' again ' is a supplement, and somewhat restricts and destroys the true flow of thought and meaning of the words. For if we read, as our Authorised Version does, * I go away and come again unto you,' we are inevitably led to think of a coming, separated by a considerable distance of time from the departure, and for most of us that which is suggested is the final coming and return, in bodily form, of the Lord Jesus. Now great and glorious as that hope is, it is too far away to be in itself a sufficient comfort to the mourn- ing disciples, and too remote to be for us, if taken alone, a sufficient ground of joy and of rest. But if you strike out the intrusive word ' again,' and read the sentence as being what it is, a description of one continuous process, of which the parts are so closely connected as to be all but contemporaneous, you get the true idea. ' I go away, and I come to you.' There is no gap, the thing runs on without a break. There is no moment of absolute absence ; there are not two motions, one from us and the other back again towards us, but all is one. The 'going' is the 'coming'; the solemn series 384 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. of events which began on Calvary, and ended on Olivet, to the eye of sense were successive stages in the departure of Jesus Christ. But looked at with a deeper understanding of their true meaning, they are successive stages in His approach towards us. His death, His resurrection, His ascension, were not steps in the cessation of His presence, but they were simply steps in the transition from a lower to a higher kind of that presence. He changed the limitations and externalities of a mere bodily, local nearness for the realities of a spiritual presence. To the eye of sense, the * going away ' was the reality, and the ' coming ' a metaphor. To the eye enlightened to see things as they are, the dropping away of the visible corporeal was but the inauguration of the higher and the more real. And we need to reverse our notions of what is real and what is figurative in Christ's presence, and to feel that that form of His presence which we may all have to-day is far more real than the form which ceased when the Shekinah cloud 'received Him out of their sight,' before we can penetrate to the depth of His words, or grasp the whole fullness of blessing and of consolation which lie in them here. In a very deep and real sense, ' He therefore departed from us for a season that we might receive Him for ever.' The real presence of Jesus Christ to-day, and through the long ages with every waiting heart, is the very keynote to the solemn music of these chapters. And again I press upon you, and upon myself, the question, Do we believe it ? Do we live in the faith of it ? Does it fill the same place in the perspective of our Christian creed as it does in the revelation of the Scripture, or have we refined it and watered it down, until it comes to be little more than merely the continuous v8.28,29] JOY AND FAITH 885 influence of the record of His past, just as any great and sovereign spirit that has influenced mankind may- still * rule the nations from his urn ' ? Or do we take Him at His word, and believe that He meant what He said, in something far other than a violent figure for the continuance of His influence and of the inspiration drawn from Him, ' Lo ! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world ' ? ' Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend up into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down from above, the Word,' the Incarnate Word, * is nigh thee, in thy heart,' if thou lovest and trustest Him. Then, again, the other aspect of our Lord's coming, which is emphasised here, is that in which it is re- garded as affecting Himself. Christ's going is Christ's exaltation. Now observe that, in the first clause of our verse, there is simply specified the fact of departure, w^ithout any reference to the ' whither ' ; because all that was wanted was to contrast the going and the coming. But, in the second clause, in which the emphasis rests not so much upon the fact of departure as upon the goal to which He went, we read : ' I go ^o the Father' Hitherto we have been contemplating Christ's depar- ture simply in its bearing upon us, but here, with exquisite tenderness, He unveils another aspect of it, and that in order that He may change His disciples' sadness into joy ; and says to them, * If ye were not so absorbed in yourselves, you would have a thought to spare about Me, and you would feel that you should be glad because I am about to be exalted.' Very, very seldom does He open such a glimpse into His heart, and it is all the more tender and impressive when He does. What a hint of the continual self- VOL. IT. 2 b 386 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. sacrifice of the human life of Jesus Christ lies in this thought, that He bids His disciples rejoice with Him, because the time is getting nearer its end, and He goes back to the Father! And what shall we say of the nature of Him to whom it was martyrdom to live, and a supreme instance of self-sacrificing humiliation to be • found in fashion as a man ' ? He tells His followers here that a reason for their joy in His departure is to be found in this fact, that He goes to the Father, who is greater than Himself. Now mark, with regard to that remarkable utter- ance, that the whole course of thought in the context requires, as it seems to me, that we should suppose that for Christ to 'go to the Father' was to share in the Father's greatness. Why else should the disciples be bidden to rejoice in it ? or why should He say any- thing at all about the greatness of the Father ? If so, then this follows, that the greatness to which He here alludes is such as He enters by His ascension. Or, in other words, that the inferiority, of whatever nature it may be, to which He here alludes, falls away when He passes hence. Now these words are often quoted triumphantly, as if they were dead against w^hat I venture to call the orthodox and Scriptural doctrine of the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it may be worth while to remark that that doctrine accepts this saying as fully as it does Christ's other w^ord, ' I and My Father are one.' I venture to think that it is the only construc- tion of Scripture phraseology which does full justice to all the elements. But be that as it may, I wish to remind you that the creed which confesses the unity of the Godhead and the divinity of Jesus Christ is not to be overthrown by pelting this verse at it ; for vs. 28, 29] JOY AND FAITH 387 this verse is part of that creed, which as fully declares that the Father is greater than the Son, as it declares that the Son is One with the Father. You may be satisfied with it or no, but as a matter of simple honesty it must be recognised that the creed of the Catholic Church does combine both the elements of these representations. Now we can only speak in this matter as Scripture guides us. The depths of Deity are far too deep to be sounded by our plummets, and he is a bold man who ventures to say that he knows what is impossible in reference to the divine nature. He needs to have gone all round God, and down to the depths, and up to the heights of a bottomless and summitless infinitude, before he has a right to say that. But let me remind you that we can dimly see that the very names 'Father' and 'Son' do imply some sort of subordina- tion, but that that subordination, inasmuch as it is in the timeless and inward relations of divinity, must be supposed to exist after the ascension, as it existed before the incarnation; and, therefore, any such mysterious difference is not that which is referred to here. What is referred to is what dropped away from the Man Jesus Christ, when He ascended up on high. As Luther has it, in his strong, simple way, in one of his sermons, 'Here He was a poor, sad, suffering Christ ' ; and that garb of lowliness falls from Him, like the mantle that fell from the prophet as he went up in the chariot of fire, when He passes behind the brightness of the Shekinah cloud that hides Him from our sight. That in which the Father was greater than He, in so far as our present purpose is concerned, was that which He left behind when He ascended, even the pain, the suffering, the sorrow, the restrictions, 388 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. the humiliation, that made so much of the burden of His life. Therefore we, as His followers, have to rejoice in an ascended Christ, beneath whose feet are foes, and far away from whose human personality are all the ills that flesh is heir to. ' If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for My Father is greater than I.' So then the third thought, in this first part of our subject, is that on both these grounds Christ's ascension and departure are a source of joy. The two aspects of His departure, as affecting Him and as affecting us, are inseparably welded together. There can be no presence with us, man by man, through all the ages> and in every land, unless He, whose presence it is, participates in the absolute glory of divinity. For to be with you and me and all our suffering brethren, through the centuries and over the world, involves something more than belongs to mere humanity. Therefore, the two sources of gladness are confluent — Christ's ascension as affecting us is inseparably woven in with Christ's ascension as affecting Himself. Love will delight to dwell upon that thought of its exalted Lover. We may fairly apply the simplicity of human relationships and affections to the elucidation of what ought to be our affection to Him, our Lord. And surely if our dearest one were far away from us, in some lofty position, our hearts and our thoughts would ever be going thither, and we should live more there than here, where we are 'cribbed, cabined, and confined.' And if we love Jesus Christ with any depth of earnestness and fervour of affection, there will be no thought more sweet to us, and none which will more naturally flow into our hearts, whenever they are for a moment at leisure, than this, the thought vs. 28, 29] JOY AND FAITH 889 of Him, our Brother and Forerunner, who has ascended up on high; and in the midst of the glory of the throne bears us in His heart, and uses His glory for our blessing. Love will spring to where the beloved is ; and if we be Christians in any deep and real sense, our hearts will have risen with Christ, and we shall be sitting with Him at the right hand of God. My brother, measure your Christianity, and the reality of your love to Jesus Christ, by this — is it to you natural, and a joy, to turn to Him, and ever to make present to your mind the glories in which He loves and lives, and intercedes, and reigns, for you ? ' If ye love Me, ye will rejoice, because I go unto the Father.' II. And now I can deal with the second verse of our text very briefly. For our purpose it is less important than the former one. In it we find our Lord setting forth, secondly, His departure and His announcement of His departure as the ground and food of faith. He knew what a crash was coming, and with exquisite tenderness, gentleness, knowledge of their necessities, and suppression of all His own feelings and emotions, He gave Himself to prepare the dis- ciples for the storm, that, forewarned, they might be forearmed, and that when it did burst upon them, it might not take them by surprise. So He does still, about a great many other things, and tells us beforehand of what is sure to come to us, that when we are caught in the midst of the tempest we may not bate one jot of heart or hope. • Why shoiild I complain Of want or distress. Temptation or pain ? He told me no less.' 390 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. And when my sorrows come to me, I may say about them what He says about His departure — He has told us before, that when it comes we may believe. But note how, in these final words of my text, Christ avows that the great aim of His utterances and of His departure is to evoke our faith. And what does He mean by faith ? He means, first of all, a grasp of the historic facts — His death, His resurrection. His ascension. He means, next, the understanding of these as He Himself has explained them — a death of sacrifice, a resurrection of victory over death and the grave, and an ascension to rule and guide His Church and the world, and to send His divine Spirit into men's hearts if they will receive it. And He means, there- fore, as the essence of the faith that He would produce in all our hearts — a reliance upon Himself as thus revealed, Sacrifice by His death, Victor by His resurrec- tion, King and interceding Priest by His ascension — a reliance upon Himself as absolute as the facts are sure, as unfaltering as is His eternal sameness. The faith that grasps the Christ, dead, risen, ascended, as its all in all, for time and for eternity, is the faith which by all His work, and by all His words about His work. He desires to kindle in our hearts. Has He kindled it in yours ? Then there is a second thought — viz., that these facts, as interpreted by Himself, are the ground and the nourishment of our faith. How differently they looked when seen from the further side and when seen from the hither side! Anticipated and dimly antici- pated, they were all doleful and full of dismay; re- membered and looked back upon, they were radiant and bright. The disciples felt, with shrinking hearts and fainting spirits, that their whole reliance upon vs. 28, 29] JOY AND FAITH 891 Jesus Christ was on the point of being shattered, and that everything was going when He died. ' We trusted,' said two of them, with such a sad use of the past tense, ' we trusted that this had been He which should have redeemed Israel. But we do not trust it any more, nor do we expect Him to be Israel's Redeemer now.' But after the facts were all unveiled, there came back the memory of His words, and they said to one another, ' Did He not tell us that it was all to be so ? How blind we were not to understand Him ! ' And so 'the Cross, the grave, the skies,' are the foundations of our faith ; and they who see Him dying^ rising, ascended, henceforth will find it impossible to doubt. Feed your faith upon these great facts, and take Christ's own explanation of them, and your faith will be strong. Again, we learn here that faith is the condition of the true presence of our absent Lord. Faith is that on our side which corresponds to His spiritual coming to us. Whosoever trusts Him possesses Him, and He is with and in every soul that, loving Him, relies upon Him, in a closeness so close and a presence so real that heaven itself does not bring the spirit of the believer and the Spirit of the Lord nearer one another, though it takes away the bodily film that sometimes seems to part their lives. We, too, may and should be glad when we lift our eyes to that Throne where our Brother reigns. We too, may be glad that He is there, because His being there is the reason why He can be here ; and we, too, may feed our faith upon Him, and so bring Him in very deed to dwell in our hearts. If we would have Christ within us, let us trust Him dying, rising, living in the heavens; and then we shall learn how, by all 392 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. three apparent departures, He is drawing the closer to the souls that love and trust. CHRIST FORESEEING HIS PASSION ' Hereafter I will not talk much with you : for the Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me. But that the world may know that I love the Father ; and as the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do. Arise, Let us go hence.'— John xiv. 30, 31. The summons to departure which closes these verses shows that we have now reached the end of that sacred hour in the upper room. In obedience to the summons, we have to fancy the little group leaving its safe shelter, as sailors might put out from behind a breakwater into a stormy sea. They pass from its seclusion and peace into the joyous stir of the crowded streets, filled with feast-keeping multitudes, on whom the full paschal moon looked down, pure and calming. Somewhere between the upper chamber and the cross- ing of the brook Kedron, the divine words of the following chapters were spoken, but this discourse, closely connected as it is with them, reaches its fitting close in these penetrating, solemn words of outlook into the near future, so calm, so weighty, so resolute, so almost triumphant, with which Christ seeks finally to impart to His timorous friends some of His own peace and assurance of victory. They lead us into a region seldom opened to our view, and never to be looked upon but with reverent awe. For they tell us what Christ thought about His sufferings, and how He felt as He went down to that cold, black river, in which He was to be bap- tized. 'Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place where thou standest is holy ground.' vs. 30, 31] FORESEEING HIS PASSION 393 So, reverently listening to the words, sacred because of the Speaker, the theme, and the circumstances, v^e note in them these things: His calm anticipation of the assailant, His unveiling of the secret and motive of His apparent defeat, and His resolute advance to the conflict. Let us look at these three points. I. First, we have here our Lord's calm anticipation of the assailant. • Hereafter I will not talk much with you : for the Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me.' One of the other Gospels tells us, in finishing its account of our Lord's temptation in the wilderness, that when Satan had ended all these temptations ' he departed from Him for a season.' And now we have the second and the intenser form of that assault. The first was addressed to desires, and sought to stimulate ambition and ostentation and the animal appetites, and so, through the cravings of human nature, to shake the Master's fixed faith. The second used sharper and more fatal weapons, and appealed, not to desire of enjoyment, or ease, or good, but to the natural human shrinking from pain and suffering and shame and death. He that was impervious on the side of natural necessities and more subtle spiritual desires might yet be reached through terror. And so the second form of the assault, instead of tempting the traveller by the sunshine to cast aside his cloak, tempted him by storm and tempest to fling it aside ; and the one, as the other, was doomed to failure. Note how the Master, with that clear eye which saw to the depths as well as the heights, and before which men and things were but, as it were, trans- parent 7nedia through which unseen spiritual powers wrought, just as He discerns the Father's will as 394 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. supreme and sovereign, sees here — beneath Judas's treachery, and Pharisees' and priests' envy, and the people's stolid indifference, and the Roman soldiers' impartial scorn — the workings of a personal source and centre of all. The 'Prince of this world,' who rules men and things when they are severed from God, * Cometh.' Christ's sensitive nature apprehends the approach of the evil thing, as some organisations can tell when a thunderstorm is about to burst. His divine Omniscience, working as it did, even within the limits of humanity, knows not only when the storm is about to burst upon Him, but knows who it is that has raised the tempest. And so He says, ' The Prince of this world cometh.' But note, as yet more important, that tremendous and unique consciousness of absolute invulnerability against the assaults. 'He hath nothing in Me.' He is 'the Prince of the world,' but His dominion stops outside My breast. He has no rule or authority there. His writs do not run, nor is His dominion recognised, within that sacred realm. Was there ever a man who could say that? Are there any of us, the purest and the noblest, who, standing single-handed in front of the antagonistic power of evil, and believing it to be consolidated and consecrated in a person, dare to profess that there is not a thing in us on which he can lay his black claw and say — 'That is mine?' Is there nothing injflam- mable within us which the * fiery darts of the wicked ' can kindle? Are there any of us who bar our doors so tightly as that we can say that none of his seductions will find their way therein, and that nothing there will respond to them ? Christ sets Him- self here against the whole embattled and embodied vs. 30, 31] FORESEEING HIS PASSION 395 power of evil, and puts Himself in contrast to the universal human experience, when He calmly declares 'He hath nothing in Me.' It is an assertion of His absolute freedom from sinfulness, and it involves, as I take it, the other assertion — that as He is free from sin, so He is not subject to that consequence of sin, which is death, as we know it. Another part of Scripture speaks to us in strange language, which yet has in it a deep truth, of ' him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.' Men fall under the rightful dominion of the king of evil when they sin, and part of the proof of his dominion is the fact of physical death, with its present accompaniments. Thus, in His calm anticipation, Jesus stands waiting for the enemy's charge, knowing that all its forces will be broken against the serried ranks of His im- maculate purity, and that He will come from the dreadful close unwounded all, and triumphant for evermore. But do not let us suppose that because Christ, in His anticipation of suffering and death, knew Him- self invulnerable, with not even a spot on His heel into which the arrow could go, therefore the conflict was an unreal or shadowy one. It was a true fight» and it was a real struggle that He was anticipating, thus calmly in these solemn words, as knowing Him- self the Victor ere He entered on the dreadful field. II. So note, secondly, in these words, our Lord's unveiling of the motive and aim of His apparent defeat. 'But that the world might know that I love the Father, and, as the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do.' There may be some uncertainty about the exact grammatical relation of these clauses to one 396 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch. xiv. another, with which I need not trouble you, because it does not affect their substantial meaning. However we solve the mere grammatical questions, the funda- mental significance of the whole remains unaffected, and it is this : that Christ's sufferings and death were, in one aspect, for the purpose that the world might know His love to the Father, and, in another aspect, were obedience to the Father's commandment. And if we consider these two aspects, I think we shall get some thoughts worth considering as to the way in which the Master Himself looks upon these sufferings and that death. The first point I note in this division of my discourse is, that Christ would have us regard His sufferings and His death as His own act. Note that remarkable phrase, * thus I do.' A strange word to be used in such a connection, but full of profound meaning. We speak, and rightly, of the solemn events of these coming days as the passion of our Lord, but they were His action quite as much as His passion. He was no mere passive sufferer. In them all He acted, or, as He says here, we may look upon them all, not as things inflicted upon Him from without by any power, how- ever it might seem to have the absolute control of His fate, but as things which He did Himself. There is one Man who died, not of physical necessity, but because of free choice. There is one Man who chose to be born, and who chose to die ; who, in His choosing to be born, chose humiliation, and who, in choosing to die, chose yet deeper humiliation. This sacrifice was a voluntary sacrifice, or, to speak more accurately. He was both Priest and Sacrifice, when ' through the Eternal Spirit He offered Himself with- out spot unto God.' The living Christ is the Lord of vs. 30, 31] FOKESEEING HIS PASSION 397 Life, and lives because He will ; the dying Christ is the Lord of Death, and dies because He chose. He would have us learn that all His bitter sufferings, inflicted from without as they were, and traceable to a deeper source than merely human antagonism, were also self-inflicted and self -chosen, and further traceable to the Father's will in harmony with His own. 'Thus I do,' and thus He did when He died. Then, further, our Lord would have us regard these sufferings and that death as being His crowning act of obedience to His Father's will. That is in accordance with the whole tone of His self-consciousness, especially as set before us in this precious Gospel of John, which traces up everything to the submission of the divine Son to the divine Father, a submission which is no mere external act, but results from, and is the ex- pression of, the absolute unity of will and the per- fect oneness of mutual love. And so, because He loved the Father, therefore He came to do the Father's will, and the crowning act of His obedience was this, that He was * obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.' It was a voluntary sacrifice, but that voluntariness was not self-will. It was a sacrifice in obedience to the Father's will, but that obedience was not reluctant. Christ was the embodiment of the divine purpose, formed before the ages and realised in time, when He bowed His head and yielded up the ghost. The highest proof of His filial obedience was the Cross. And to it He points us, if we would know what it is to love and obey the Father. Now it is to be noticed that this motive of our Lord's death is not the usual one given in Scripture. And I can suppose the question being put, * Why did not Jesus Christ say, in that supreme moment, that He 398 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. went to the Cross because of His love to us rather than because of His love to the Father ? ' But I think the answer is not far to seek. There are several satis- factory ones which may be given. One is that this making prominent of His love to God rather than to us, as the motive for His death, is in accordance with that comparative reticence on the part of Jesus as to the atoning aspect of His death, which I have had fre- quent occasion to point out, and which does not carry in it the implication that that doctrine was a new thing in the Christian preaching after Pentecost. Another reason may be drawn from the whole strain and tone of this chapter, which, as I have already said, traces up everything to the loving relations of obedience between the Father and Son. And yet another reason may be given in that the very statement of Christ's love to God, and loving obedience to the Father's commandment as the motive of His death, includes in it necessarily the other thing — love to us. For what was the Father's commandment which Christ with all His heart accepted, and with His glad will obeyed unto death ? It was that the Son should come as the Ransom for the world. The Son of man was sent, ' not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a Ransom for many.' Or, as He Himself said, in one of His earliest discourses, ' God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish.' And for what He gave that Son is clearly stated in the context itself of that passage — ' As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.' To speak of Christ's acceptance of the Father's commandment, then, is but another way of saying vs. 30,31] FORESEEING HIS PASSION 399 that Christ, in all the fullness of His self-surrender, entered into and took as His own the great, eternal divine purpose, that the world should be redeemed by His death upon the Cross. The heavenward side of His love to man is His love to the Father, God. Now there is another aspect still in which our Lord would here have us regard His sufferings and death, and that is that they are of worldwide significance. Think for a moment of the obscurity of the speaker, a Jewish peasant in an upper room, with a handful of poor men around Him, all of them ready to forsake Him, within a few hours of His ignominious death; and yet He says, * I am about to die, that the echo of it may reverberate through the whole world.' He puts Himself forth as of worldwide significance, and His death as adapted to move mankind, and as one day to be known all over the world. There is nothing in history to approach to the gigantic arrogance of Jesus Christ, and it is only explicable on the ground of His divinity. 'This I do that the world may know.' And what did it matter to the world ? Why should it be of any importance that the world should know? For one plain reason, because true knowledge of the true nature and motive of that death breaks the dominion of the Prince of this world, and sets men free from his tyranny. Emancipation, hope, victory, purity, the passing from the tyranny of the darkness into the blessed kingdom of the light — all depend on the world's knowing that Christ's death was His own voluntary act of submission to the infinite love and will of the Father, which will and love He made His own, and therefore died, the sacrifice for the world's sin. 400 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. The enemy was approaching. He was to be hoist with his own petard. * He digged a pit ; he digged it deep,' and into the pit which he had digged he himself fell. ' Oh, death ! I will be thy plague ' by entering into thy realm. ' Oh, grave ! I will be thy destruction ' by dwelling for a moment within thy dark portals and rending them irreparably as I pass from them. The Prince of this world was defeated when he seemed to triumph, and Christ's mighty words came true : ' Now shall the Prince of this world be cast out.' He would have the world know — with the knowledge which is of the heart as well as the head, which is life as well as understanding, which is possession and appropriation — the mystery, the meaning, the motive of His death, because the world thereby ceases to be a world, and becomes the kingdom of Jesus Christ. III. Lastly, notice here the resolute advance to the conflict. 'Arise, let us go hence' — a word of swift alacrity. Evidently He rose to His feet whilst they lay round the table. He bids them rise with Him and follow Him on the path. But there is more in the words than the mere close of a conversation, and a summons to change of place. They indicate a kind of divine impatience to be in the fight, and to have it over. The same emotion is plainly revealed in the whole of the latter days of our Lord's life. You remember how His disciples followed amazed, as He strode up the road from Jericho, hastening to His Cross. You remember His deliberate purpose to draw upon Himself public notice during that dangerous and explosive week before the Passover, as shown in the publicity of His entry into Jerusalem, His sharp rebukes of the rulers in the Temple, and in every other vs. 30, 31] FORESEEING HIS PASSION 401 incident of those days. You remember His words to the betrayer : ' That thou doest, do quickly.' These latter hours of the Lord were strongly marked by the emotion to which He gave utterance in His earlier words : ' I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished ! ' Perhaps that feeling indicated His human shrinking ; for we all know how we sometimes are glad to precipitate an unwelcome thing, and how the more we dread it, the more we are anxious to get it over. But there is far more than that in it. There is the resolved determina- tion to carry out the Father's purpose for the world's salvation, which was His own purpose, and was none the less His though He knew all the suffering which it involved. Let us adore the steadfast will, which never faltered, though the natural human weakness was there too, and which, as impelled by some strong spring, kept persistently pressing towards the Cross that on it He might die, the world's Redeemer. And do not let us forget that He summoned His lovers and disciples to follow Him on the road. ' Let us go hence.' It is ours to take up our cross daily and follow the Master, to do with persistent resolve our duty, whether it be welcome or unwelcome, and to see to it that we plant no faltering and reluctant foot in our Master's footsteps. For us, too, if we have learned to flee to the Cross for our redemption and salvation, the resolve of our Redeemer and the very passion of the Saviour itself become the pattern and law of our lives. We, too, have to cast ourselves into the fight, and to take up our cross, ' that the world may know that we love the Father, and as the Father hath given us commandment.' And if we so live, then our VOL. II. 2 c 402 GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN [ch.xiv. death, too, in some humble measure, may be like His — the crowning act of obedience to the Father's will ; in which we are neither passively nor resistingly dragged under by a force that we cannot effectually resist, but in which we go down willingly into the dark valley where death 'makes our sacrifice complete.' BND OF VOL. II. Date Due *v ., , i;;