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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John
+Chaps. XV to XXI, by Alexander Maclaren
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI
+
+Author: Alexander Maclaren
+
+Posting Date: October 19, 2012 [EBook #8381]
+Release Date: June, 2005
+First Posted: July 5, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks, John Hagerson and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+ST. JOHN Chaps. XV to XXI
+
+
+
+EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+ST. JOHN Chaps. XV to XXI
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE TRUE VINE (John xv. 1-4)
+
+THE TRUE BRANCHES OF THE TRUE VINE (John xv. 5-8)
+
+ABIDING IN LOVE (John xv. 9-11)
+
+THE ONENESS OF THE BRANCHES (John xv. 12, 13)
+
+CHRIST'S FRIENDS (John xv. 14-17)
+
+SHEEP AMONG WOLVES (John xv. 18-20)
+
+THE WORLD'S HATRED, AS CHRIST SAW IT (John xv. 21-25)
+
+OUR ALLY (John xv. 26, 27)
+
+WHY CHRIST SPEAKS (John xvi. 1-6)
+
+THE DEPARTING CHRIST AND THE COMING SPIRIT (John xvi. 7, 8)
+
+THE CONVICTING FACTS (John xvi 9-11)
+
+THE GUIDE INTO ALL TRUTH (John xvi. 12-15)
+
+CHRIST'S 'LITTLE WHILES' (John xvi. 16-19)
+
+SORROW TURNED INTO JOY (John xvi. 20-22)
+
+'IN THAT DAY' (John xvi. 23, 24)
+
+THE JOYS OP 'THAT DAY' (John xvi. 25-27)
+
+'FROM' AND 'TO' (John xvi. 28)
+
+GLAD CONFESSION AND SAD WARNING (John xvi. 29-32)
+
+PEACE AND VICTORY (John xvi. 33)
+
+THE INTERCESSOR (John xvii. 1-19)
+
+'THE LORD THEE KEEPS' (John xvii. 14-16)
+
+THE HIGH PRIEST'S PRAYER (John xvii. 20-26)
+
+THE FOLDED FLOCK (John xvii. 24)
+
+CHRIST'S SUMMARY OF HIS WORK (John xvii. 26)
+
+CHRIST AND HIS CAPTORS (John xviii. 6-9)
+
+JESUS BEFORE CAIAPHAS (John xviii. 15-27)
+
+'ART THOU A KING?' (John xviii. 28-40)
+
+JESUS SENTENCED (John xix. 1-16)
+
+AN EYE-WITNESS'S ACCOUNT OF THE CRUCIFIXION (John xix. 17-30)
+
+THE TITLE ON THE CROSS (John xix. 19)
+
+THE IRREVOCABLE PAST (John xix. 22)
+
+CHRIST'S FINISHED AND UNFINISHED WORK (John xix. 30; Rev. xxi. 6)
+
+CHRIST OUR PASSOVER (John xix. 36)
+
+JOSEPH AND NICODEMUS (John xix. 38, 39)
+
+THE GRAVE IN A GARDEN (John xix. 41, R.V.)
+
+THE RESURRECTION MORNING (John xx. 1-18)
+
+THE RISEN LORD'S CHARGE AND GIFT (John xx. 21-23)
+
+THOMAS AND JESUS (John xx. 28)
+
+THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE (John xx. 30, 31)
+
+AN ELOQUENT CATALOGUE (John xxi. 2)
+
+THE BEACH AND THE SEA (John xxi. 4)
+
+'IT IS THE LORD' (John xxi. 7)
+
+'LOVEST THOU ME?' (John xxi. 15)
+
+YOUTH AND AGE, AND THE COMMAND FOR BOTH (John xxi. 18, 19)
+
+'THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY STAND AND WAIT' (John xxi. 21, 22)
+
+
+
+THE TRUE VINE
+
+'I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman. Every branch in
+Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away; and every branch that beareth
+fruit He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are
+clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in Me, and I
+in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in
+the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.'--JOHN xv. 14.
+
+WHAT suggested this lovely parable of the vine and the branches is
+equally unimportant and undiscoverable. Many guesses have been made,
+and, no doubt, as was the case with almost all our Lord's parables,
+some external object gave occasion for it. It is a significant token of
+our Lord's calm collectedness, even at that supreme and heart-shaking
+moment, that He should have been at leisure to observe, and to use for
+His purposes of teaching, something that was present at the instant.
+The deep and solemn lessons which He draws, perhaps from some vine by
+the wayside, are the richest and sweetest clusters that the vine has
+ever grown. The great truth in this chapter, applied in manifold
+directions, and viewed in many aspects, is that of the living union
+between Christ and those who believe on Him, and the parable of the
+vine and the branches affords the foundation for all which follows.
+
+We take the first half of that parable now. It is somewhat difficult to
+trace the course of thought in it, but there seems to be, first of all,
+the similitude set forth, without explanation or interpretation, in its
+most general terms, and then various aspects in which its applications
+to Christian duty are taken up and reiterated, I simply follow the
+words which I have read for my text.
+
+I. We have then, first, the Vine in the vital unity of all its parts.
+
+'I am the True Vine,' of which the material one to which He perhaps
+points, is but a shadow and an emblem. The reality lies in Him. We
+shall best understand the deep significance and beauty of this thought
+if we recur in imagination to some of those great vines which we
+sometimes see in royal conservatories, where for hundred of yards the
+pliant branches stretch along the espaliers, and yet one life pervades
+the whole, from the root, through the crooked stem, right away to the
+last leaf at the top of the farthest branch, and reddens and mellows
+every cluster, 'So,' says Christ, 'between Me and the totality of them
+that hold by Me in faith there is one life, passing ever from root
+through branches, and ever bearing fruit.'
+
+Let me remind you that this great thought of the unity of life between
+Jesus Christ and all that believe upon Him is the familiar teaching of
+Scripture, and is set forth by other emblems besides that of the vine,
+the queen of the vegetable world; for we have it in the metaphor of the
+body and its members, where not only are the many members declared to
+be parts of one body, but the name of the collective body, made up of
+many members, is Christ. 'So also is'--not as we might expect, 'the
+Church,' but--'Christ,' the whole bearing the name of Him who is the
+Source of life to every part. Personality remains, individuality
+remains: I am I, and He is He, and thou art thou; but across the awful
+gulf of individual consciousness which parts us from one another, Jesus
+Christ assumes the Divine prerogative of passing and joining Himself to
+each of us, if we love Him and trust Him, in a union so close, and with
+a communication of life so real, that every other union which we know
+is but a faint and far-off adumbration of it. A oneness of life from
+root to branch, which is the sole cause of fruitfulness and growth, is
+taught us here.
+
+And then let me remind you that that living unity between Jesus Christ
+and all who love Him is a oneness which necessarily results in oneness
+of relation to God and men, in oneness of character, and in oneness of
+destiny. In relation to God, He is the Son, and we in Him receive the
+standing of sons. He has access ever into the Father's presence, and we
+through Him and in Him have access with confidence and are accepted in
+the Beloved. In relation to men, since He is Light, we, touched with
+His light, are also, in our measure and degree, the lights of the
+world; and in the proportion in which we receive into our souls, by
+patient abiding in Jesus Christ, the very power of His Spirit, we, too,
+become God's anointed, subordinately but truly His messiahs, for He
+Himself says: 'As the Father hath sent Me, even so I send you.'
+
+In regard to character, the living union between Christ and His members
+results in a similarity if not identity of character, and with His
+righteousness we are clothed, and by that righteousness we are
+justified, and by that righteousness we are sanctified. The oneness
+between Christ and His children is the ground at once of their
+forgiveness and acceptance, and of all virtue and nobleness of life and
+conduct that can ever be theirs.
+
+And, in like manner, we can look forward and be sure that we are so
+closely joined with Him, if we love Him and trust Him, that it is
+impossible but that where He is there shall also His servants be; and
+that what He is that shall also His servants be. For the oneness of
+life, by which we are delivered from the bondage of corruption and the
+law of sin and death here, will never halt nor cease until it brings us
+into the unity of His glory, 'the measure of the stature of the
+fullness of Christ.' And as He sits on the Father's throne, His
+children must needs sit with Him, on His throne.
+
+Therefore the name of the collective whole, of which the individual
+Christian is part, is Christ. And as in the great Old Testament
+prophecy of the Servant of the Lord, the figure that rises before
+Isaiah's vision fluctuates between that which is clearly the collective
+Israel and that which is, as clearly, the personal Messiah; so the
+'Christ' is not only the individual Redeemer who bears the body of the
+flesh literally here upon earth, but the whole of that redeemed Church,
+of which it is said, 'It is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth
+all in all.'
+
+II. Now note, secondly, the Husbandman, and the dressing of the vine.
+
+The one tool that a vinedresser needs is a knife. The chief secret of
+culture is merciless pruning. And so says my text, 'The Father is the
+Husbandman.' Our Lord assumes that office in other of His parables. But
+here the exigencies of the parabolic form require that the office of
+Cultivator should be assigned only to the Father; although we are not
+to forget that the Father, in that office, works through and in His Son.
+
+But we should note that the one kind of husbandry spoken of here is
+pruning--not manuring, not digging, but simply the hacking away of all
+that is rank and all that is dead.
+
+Were you ever in a greenhouse or in a vineyard at the season of cutting
+back the vines? What flagitious waste it would seem to an ignorant
+person to see scattered on the floor the bright green leaves and the
+incipient clusters, and to look up at the bare stem, bleeding at a
+hundred points from the sharp steel. Yes! But there was not a random
+stroke in it all, and there was nothing cut away which it was not loss
+to keep and gain to lose; and it was all done artistically,
+scientifically, for a set purpose--that the plant might bring forth
+more fruit.
+
+Thus, says Christ, the main thing that is needed--not, indeed, to
+improve the life in the branches, but to improve the branches in which
+the life is--is excision. There are two forms of it given
+here--absolutely dead wood has to be cut out; wood that has life in it,
+but which has also rank shoots, that do not come from the all-pervading
+and hallowed life, has to be pruned back and deprived of its shoots.
+
+It seems to me that the very language of the metaphor before us
+requires us to interpret the fruitless branches as meaning all those
+who have a mere superficial, external adherence to the True Vine. For,
+according to the whole teaching of the parable, if there be any real
+union, there will be some life, and if there be any life, there will be
+some fruit, and, therefore, the branch that has no fruit has no life,
+because it has no real union. And so the application, as I take it, is
+necessarily to those professing Christians, nominal adherents to
+Christianity or to Christ's Church, people that come to church and
+chapel, and if you ask them to put down in the census paper what they
+are, will say that they are Christians--Churchmen or Dissenters, as the
+case may be--but who have no real hold upon Jesus Christ, and no real
+reception of anything from Him; and the 'taking away' is simply that,
+somehow or other, God makes visible, what is a fact, that they do not
+belong to Him with whom they have this nominal connection.
+
+The longer Christianity continues in any country, the more does the
+Church get weighted and lowered in its temperature by the aggregation
+round about it of people of that sort. And one sometimes longs and
+prays for a storm to come, of some sort or other, to blow the dead wood
+out of the tree, and to get rid of all this oppressive and stifling
+weight of sham Christians that has come round every one of our
+churches. 'His fan is in His hand, and He will throughly purge His
+floor,' and every man that has any reality of Christian life in him
+should pray that this pruning and cutting out of the dead wood may be
+done, and that He would 'come as a refiner's fire and purify' His
+priesthood.
+
+Then there is the other side, the pruning of the fruitful branches. We
+all, in our Christian life, carry with us the two natures--our own poor
+miserable selves, and the better life of Jesus Christ within us. The
+one flourishes at the expense of the other; and it is the Husbandman's
+merciful, though painful work, to cut back unsparingly the rank shoots
+that come from self, in order that all the force of our lives may be
+flung into the growing of the cluster which is acceptable to Him.
+
+So, dear friends, let us understand the meaning of all that comes to
+us. The knife is sharp and the tendrils bleed, and things that seem
+very beautiful and very precious are unsparingly shorn away, and we are
+left bare, and, as it seems to ourselves, impoverished. But Oh! it is
+all sent that we may fling our force into the production of fruit unto
+God. And no stroke will be a stroke too many or too deep if it helps us
+to that. Only let us take care that we do not let regrets for the
+vanished good harm us just as much as joy in the present good did, and
+let us rather, in humble submission of will to His merciful knife, say
+to Him, 'Cut to the quick, Lord, if only thereby my fruit unto Thee may
+increase.'
+
+III. Lastly, we have here the branches abiding in the Vine, and
+therefore fruitful.
+
+Our Lord deals with the little group of His disciples as incipiently
+and imperfectly, but really, cleansed through 'the word which He has
+spoken to them,' and gives them His exhortation towards that conduct
+through which the cleansing and the union and the fruitfulness will all
+be secured. 'Now ye are clean: abide in Me and I in you. As the branch
+cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye
+except ye abide in Me.'
+
+Union with Christ is the condition of all fruitfulness. There may be
+plenty of activity and yet barrenness. Works are not fruit. We can
+bring forth a great deal 'of ourselves,' and because it is of ourselves
+it is nought. Fruit is possible only on condition of union with Him. He
+is the productive source of it all.
+
+There is the great glory and distinctive blessedness of the Gospel.
+Other teachers come to us and tell us how we ought to live, and give us
+laws, patterns and examples, reasons and motives for pure and noble
+lives. The Gospel comes and gives us life, if we will take it, and
+unfolds itself in us into all the virtues that we have to possess. What
+is the use of giving a man a copy if he cannot copy it? Morality comes
+and stands over the cripple, and says to him, 'Look here! This is how
+you ought to walk,' and he lies there, paralysed and crippled, after as
+before the exhibition of what graceful progression is. But Christianity
+comes and bends over him, and lays hold of his hand, and says, 'In the
+name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk,' and his feet and
+ankle bones receive strength, and 'he leaps, and walks, and praises
+God.' Christ gives more than commandments, patterns, motives; He gives
+the power to live soberly, righteously, and godly, and in Him alone is
+that power to be found.
+
+Then note that our reception of that power depends upon our own
+efforts. 'Abide in Me and I in you.' Is that last clause a commandment
+as well as the first? How can His abiding in us be a duty incumbent
+upon us? But it is. And we might paraphrase the intention of this
+imperative in its two halves, by--Do you take care that you abide in
+Christ, and that Christ abides in you. The two ideas are but two sides
+of the one great sphere; they complement and do not contradict each
+other. We dwell in Him as the part does in the whole, as the branch
+does in the vine, recipient of its life and fruit-bearing energy. He
+dwells in us as the whole does in the part, as the vine dwells in the
+branch, communicating its energy to every part; or as the soul does in
+the body, being alive equally in every part, though it be sight in the
+eyeball, and hearing in the ear, and colour in the cheek, and strength
+in the hand, and swiftness in the foot.
+
+'Abide in Me and I in you.' So we come down to very plain, practical
+exhortations. Dear brethren, suppress yourselves, and empty your lives
+of self, that the life of Christ may come in. A lock upon a canal, if
+it is empty, will have its gates pressed open by the water in the canal
+and will be filled. Empty the heart and Christ will come in. 'Abide in
+Him' by continual direction of thought, love, desire to Him; by
+continual and reiterated submission of the will to Him, as commanding
+and as appointing; by the honest reference to Him of daily life and all
+petty duties which otherwise distract us and draw us away from Him.
+Then, dwelling in Him we shall share in His life, and shall bring forth
+fruit to His praise.
+
+Here is encouragement for us all. To all of us, sometimes, our lives
+seem barren and poor; and we feel as if we had brought forth no fruit
+to perfection. Let us get nearer to Him and He will see to the fruit.
+Some poor stranded sea-creature on the beach, vainly floundering in the
+pools, is at the point of death; but the great tide comes, leaping and
+rushing over the sands, and bears it away out into the middle deeps for
+renewed activity and joyous life. Let the flood of Christ's life bear
+you on its bosom, and you will rejoice and expatiate therein.
+
+Here is a lesson of solemn warning to professing Christians. The lofty
+mysticism and inward life in Jesus Christ all terminate at last in
+simple, practical obedience; and the fruit is the test of the life.
+'Depart from Me, I never knew you, ye that work iniquity.'
+
+And here is a lesson of solemn appeal to us all. Our only opportunity
+of bearing any fruit worthy of our natures and of God's purpose
+concerning us is by vital union with Jesus Christ. If we have not that,
+there may be plenty of activity and mountains of work in our lives, but
+there will be no fruit. Only that is fruit which pleases God and is
+conformed to His purpose concerning us, and all the rest of our busy
+doings is no more the fruit a man should bear than cankers are roses,
+or than oak-galls are acorns. They are but the work of a creeping grub,
+and diseased excrescences that suck into themselves the juices that
+should swell the fruit. Open your hearts to Christ and let His life and
+His Spirit come into you, and then you will have 'your fruit unto
+holiness, and the end everlasting life.'
+
+
+
+THE TRUE BRANCHES OF THE TRUE VINE
+
+'I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in
+him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do
+nothing. If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is
+withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they
+are burned. If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask
+what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is My Father
+glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be My disciples.'--JOHN
+xv. 5-8.
+
+No wise teacher is ever afraid of repeating himself. The average mind
+requires the reiteration of truth before it can make that truth its
+own. One coat of paint is not enough, it soon rubs off. Especially is
+this true in regard to lofty spiritual and religious truth, remote from
+men's ordinary thinkings, and in some senses unwelcome to them. So our
+Lord, the great Teacher, never shrank from repeating His lessons when
+He saw that they were but partially apprehended. It was not grievous to
+Him to 'say the same things,' because for them it was safe. He broke
+the bread of life into small pieces, and fed them little and often.
+
+So here, in the verses that we have to consider now, we have the
+repetition, and yet not the mere repetition, of the great parable of
+the vine, as teaching the union of Christians with Christ, and their
+consequent fruitfulness. He saw, no doubt, that the truth was but
+partially dawning upon His disciples' minds. Therefore He said it all
+over again, with deepened meaning, following it out into new
+applications, presenting further consequences, and, above all, giving
+it a more sharp and definite personal application.
+
+Are we any swifter scholars than these first ones were? Have we
+absorbed into our own thinking this truth so thoroughly and constantly,
+and wrought it out in our lives so completely, that we do not need to
+be reminded of it any more? Shall we not be wise if we faithfully
+listen to His repeated teachings?
+
+The verses which I have read give us four aspects of this great truth
+of union with Jesus Christ; or of its converse, separation from Him.
+There is, first, the fruitfulness of union; second, the withering and
+destruction of separation; third, the satisfaction of desire which
+comes from abiding in Christ; and, lastly, the great, noble issue of
+fruitfulness, in God's glory, and our own increasing discipleship. Now
+let me touch upon these briefly.
+
+I. First, then, our Lord sets forth, with no mere repetition, the same
+broad idea which He has already been insisting upon--viz., that union
+with Him is sure to issue in fruitfulness. He repeats the theme, 'I am
+the Vine'; but He points its application by the next clause, 'Ye are
+the branches.' That had been implied before, but it needed to be said
+more definitely. For are we not all too apt to think of religious truth
+as swinging _in vacuo_ as it were, with no personal application to
+ourselves, and is not the one thing needful in regard to the truths
+which are most familiar to us, to bring them into close connection with
+our own personal life and experience?
+
+'I am the Vine' is a general truth, with no clear personal application.
+'Ye are the branches' brings each individual listener into connection
+with it. How many of us there are, as there are in every so-called
+Christian communion, that listen pleasedly, and, in a fitful sort of
+languid way, interestedly, to the most glorious and most solemn words
+that come from a preacher's lips, and never dream that what he has been
+saying has any bearing upon themselves! And the one thing that is most
+of all needed with people like some of you, who have been listening to
+the truth all your days, is that it should be sharpened to a point, and
+the conviction driven into you, that _you_ have some personal concern
+in this great message. 'Ye are the branches' is the one side of that
+sharpening and making definite of the truth in its personal
+application, and the other side is, 'Thou art the man.' All preaching
+and religious teaching is toothless generality, utterly useless, unless
+we can manage somehow or other to force it through the wall of
+indifference and vague assent to a general proposition, with which
+'Gospel-hardened hearers' surround themselves, and make them feel that
+the thing has got a point, and that the point is touching their own
+consciousness. '_Ye_ are the branches.'
+
+Note next the great promise of fruitfulness. 'He that abideth in Me,
+and I in Him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.'
+
+I need not repeat what I have said in former sermons as to the plain,
+practical duties which are included in that abiding in Christ, and
+Christ's consequent abiding in us. It means, on the part of professedly
+Christian people, a temper and tone of mind very far remote from the
+noisy, bustling distractions too common in our present Christianity. We
+want quiet, patient waiting within the veil. We want stillness of
+heart, brought about by our own distinct effort to put away from
+ourselves the strife of tongues and the pride of life. We want
+activity, no doubt, but we want a wise passiveness as its foundation.
+
+  'Think you, midst all this mighty sum
+    Of things for ever speaking,
+  That nothing of itself will come,
+    But we must still be seeking?'
+
+Get away into the 'secret place of the Most High,' and rise into a
+higher altitude and atmosphere than the region of work and effort; and
+sitting still with Christ, let His love and His power pour themselves
+into your hearts. 'Come, My people, enter thou into thy chambers and
+shut thy doors about thee.' Get away from the jangling of politics, and
+empty controversies and busy distractions of daily duty. The harder our
+toil necessarily is, the more let us see to it that we keep a little
+cell within the central life where in silence we hold communion with
+the Master. 'Abide in Me and I in you.'
+
+That is the way to be fruitful, rather than by efforts after individual
+acts of conformity and obedience, howsoever needful and precious these
+are. There is a deeper thing wanted than these. The best way to secure
+Christian conduct is to cultivate communion with Christ. It is better
+to work at the increase of the central force than at the improvement of
+the circumferential manifestations of it. Get more of the sap into the
+branch, and there will be more fruit. Have more of the life of Christ
+in the soul, and the conduct and the speech will be more Christlike. We
+may cultivate individual graces at the expense of the harmony and
+beauty of the whole character. We may grow them artificially and they
+will be of little worth--by imitation of others, by special efforts
+after special excellence, rather than by general effort after the
+central improvement of our nature and therefore of our life. But the
+true way to influence conduct is to influence the springs of conduct;
+and to make a man's life better, the true way is to make the man
+better. First of all be, and then do; first of all receive, and then
+give forth; first of all draw near to Christ, and then there will be
+fruit to His praise. That is the Christian way of mending men, not
+tinkering at this, that, and the other individual excellence, but
+grasping the secret of total excellence in communion with Him.
+
+Our Lord is here not merely laying down a law, but giving a promise,
+and putting his veracity into pawn for the fulfilment of it. 'If a man
+will keep near Me,' He says, 'he shall bear fruit.'
+
+Notice that little word which now appears for the first time. 'He shall
+bear _much_ fruit.' We are not to be content with a little fruit; a
+poor shrivelled bunch of grapes that are more like marbles than grapes,
+here and there, upon the half-nourished stem. The abiding in Him will
+produce a character rich in manifold graces. 'A little fruit' is not
+contemplated by Christ at all. God forbid that I should say that there
+is no possibility of union with Christ and a little fruit. Little union
+will have little fruit; but I would have you notice that the only two
+alternatives which come into Christ's view here are, on the one hand,
+'no fruit,' and on the other hand, 'much fruit.' And I would ask why it
+is that the average Christian man of this generation bears only a berry
+or two here and there, like such as are left upon the vines after the
+vintage, when the promise is that if he will abide in Christ, he will
+bear much fruit?
+
+This verse, setting forth the fruitfulness of union with Jesus, ends
+with the brief, solemn statement of the converse--the barrenness of
+separation--'Apart from Me' (not merely 'without,' as the Authorised
+Version has it) 'ye can do nothing.' _There_ is the condemnation of all
+the busy life of men which is not lived in union with Jesus Christ. It
+is a long row of figures which, like some other long rows of algebraic
+symbols added up, amount just to _zero_. 'Without me, nothing.' All
+your busy life, when you come to sum it up, is made up of plus and
+minus quantities, which precisely balance each other, and the net
+result, unless you are in Christ, is just nothing; and on your
+gravestones the only right epitaph is a great round cypher. 'He did not
+do anything. There is nothing left of his toil; the whole thing has
+evaporated and disappeared.' That is life apart from Jesus Christ.
+
+II. And so note, secondly, the withering and destruction following
+separation from Him.
+
+Commentators tell us, I think a little prosaically, that when our Lord
+spoke, it was the time of pruning the vine in Palestine, and that,
+perhaps, as they went from the upper room to the garden, they might see
+in the valley, here and there, the fires that the labourers had kindled
+in the vineyards to burn the loppings of the vines. That does not
+matter. It is of more consequence to notice how the solemn thought of
+withering and destruction forces itself, so to speak, into these
+gracious words; and how, even at that moment, our Lord, in all His
+tenderness and pity, could not but let words of warning--grave, solemn,
+tragical--drop from His lips.
+
+This generation does not like to hear them, for its conception of the
+Gospel is a thing with no minor notes in it, with no threatenings, a
+proclamation of a deliverance, and no proclamation of anything from
+which deliverance is needed--which is a strange kind of Gospel! But
+Jesus Christ could not speak about the blessedness of fruitfulness and
+the joy of life in Himself without speaking about its necessary
+converse, the awfulness of separation from Him, of barrenness, of
+withering, and of destruction.
+
+Separation is withering. Did you ever see a hawthorn bough that
+children bring home from the woods, and stick in the grate; how in a
+day or two the little fresh green leaves all shrivel up and the white
+blossoms become brown and smell foul, and the only thing to be done
+with it is to fling it into the fire and get rid of it? 'And so,' says
+Jesus Christ, 'as long as a man holds on to Me and the sap comes into
+him, he will flourish, and as soon as the connection is broken, all
+that was so fair will begin to shrivel, and all that was green will
+grow brown and turn to dust, and all that was blossom will droop, and
+there will be no more fruit any more for ever.' Separate from Christ,
+the individual shrivels, and the possibilities of fair buds wither and
+set into no fruit, and no man is the man he might have been unless he
+holds by Jesus Christ and lets His life come into him.
+
+And as for individuals, so for communities. The Church or the body of
+professing Christians that is separate from Jesus Christ dies to all
+noble life, to all high activity, to all Christlike conduct, and, being
+dead, rots.
+
+Withering means destruction. The language of our text is a description
+of what befalls the actual branches of the literal vine; but it is made
+a representation of what befalls the individuals whom these branches
+represent, by that added clause, 'like a branch.' Look at the
+mysteriousness of the language. 'They gather them.' Who? 'They cast
+them into the fire.' Who have the tragic task of flinging the withered
+branches into some mysterious fire? All is left vague with unexplained
+awfulness. The solemn fact that the withering of manhood by separation
+from Jesus Christ requires, and ends in, the consuming of the withered,
+is all that we have here. We have to speak of it pityingly, with
+reticence, with terror, with tenderness, with awe lest it should be our
+fate.
+
+But O, dear brethren! be on your guard against the tendency of the
+thinking of this generation, to paste a bit of blank paper over all the
+threatenings of the Bible, and to blot out from its consciousness the
+grave issues that it holds forth. One of two things must befall the
+branch, either it is in the Vine or it gets into the fire. If we would
+avoid the fire let us see to it that we are in the Vine.
+
+III. Thirdly, we have here the union with Christ as the condition of
+satisfied desires.
+
+'If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye
+will, and it shall be done unto you.' Notice how our Lord varies His
+phraseology here, and instead of saying 'I in you,' says 'My words in
+you.' He is speaking about prayers, consequently the variation is
+natural. In fact, His abiding in us is largely the abiding of His words
+in us; or, to speak more accurately, the abiding of His words in us is
+largely the means of His abiding in us.
+
+What is meant by Christ's words abiding in us? Something a great deal
+more than the mere intellectual acceptance of them. Something very
+different from reading a verse of the Gospels of a morning before we go
+to our work, and forgetting all about it all the day long; something
+very different from coming in contact with Christian truth on a Sunday,
+when somebody else preaches to us what he has found in the Bible, and
+we take in a little of it. It means the whole of the conscious nature
+of a man being, so to speak, saturated with Christ's words; his
+desires, his understanding, his affections, his will, all being steeped
+in these great truths which the Master spoke. Put a little bit of
+colouring matter into the fountain at its source, and you will have the
+stream dyed down its course for ever so far. See that Christ's words be
+lodged in your inmost selves, by patient meditation upon them, by
+continual recurrence to them, and all your life will be glorified and
+flash into richness of colouring and beauty by their presence.
+
+The main effect of such abiding of the Lord's words in us which our
+Lord touches upon here is, that in such a case, if our whole inward
+nature is influenced by the continual operation upon it of the words of
+the Lord, then our desires will be granted. Do not so vulgarise and
+lower the nobleness and the loftiness of this great promise as to
+suppose that it only means--If you remember His words you will get
+anything you like. It means something a great deal better than that. It
+means that if Christ's words are the substratum, so to speak, of your
+wishes, then your wishes will harmonise with His will, and so 'ye shall
+ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.'
+
+Christ loves us a great deal too well to give to our own foolish and
+selfish wills the keys of His treasure-house. The condition of our
+getting what we will is our willing what He desires; and unless our
+prayers are a great deal more the utterance of the submission of our
+wills to His than they are the attempt to impose ours upon Him, they
+will not be answered. We get our wishes when our wishes are moulded by
+His word.
+
+IV. The last thought that is here is that this union and fruitfulness
+lead to the noble ends of glorifying God and increasing discipleship.
+
+'Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.' Christ's life
+was all for the glorifying of God. The lives which are ours in
+name--but being drawn from Him, in their depths are much rather the
+life of Christ in us than our lives--will have the same end and the
+same issue.
+
+Ah, dear brethren, we come here to a very sharp test for us all. I
+wonder how many of us there are, on whom men looking think more loftily
+of God and love Him better, and are drawn to Him by strange longings.
+How many of us are there about whom people will say, 'There must be
+something in the religion that makes a man like that'? How many of us
+are there, to look upon whom suggests to men that God, who can make
+such a man, must be infinitely sweet and lovely? And yet that is what
+we should all be--mirrors of the divine radiance, on which some eyes,
+that are too dim and sore to bear the light as it streams from the Sun,
+may look, and, beholding the reflection, may learn to love. Does God so
+shine in me that I lead men to magnify His name? If I am dwelling with
+Christ it will be so.
+
+I shall not know it. 'Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone';
+but, in meek unconsciousness of the glory that rays from us, we may
+walk the earth, reflecting the light and making God known to our
+fellows.
+
+And if thus we abide in Him and bear fruit we shall 'be' or (as the
+word might more accurately be rendered), we shall '_become_ His
+disciples.' The end of our discipleship is never reached on earth: we
+never so much _are_ as we are in the process of _becoming_, His true
+followers and servants.
+
+If we bear fruit because we are knit to Him, the fruit itself will help
+us to get nearer Him, and so to be more His disciples and more
+fruitful. Character produces conduct, but conduct rests on character,
+and strengthens the impulses from which it springs. And thus our action
+as Christian men and women will tell upon our inward lives as
+Christians, and the more our outward conduct is conformed to the
+pattern of Jesus Christ, the more shall we love Him in our inmost
+hearts. We ourselves shall eat of the fruit which we ourselves have
+borne to Him.
+
+The alternatives are before us--in Christ, living and fruitful; out of
+Christ, barren, and destined to be burned. As the prophet says, 'Will
+men take of the wood of the vine for any work?' Vine-wood is worthless,
+its only use is to bear fruit; and if it does not do that, there is
+only one thing to be done with it, and that is, 'They cast it into the
+fire, and it is burned.'
+
+
+
+ABIDING IN LOVE
+
+'As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you: continue ye In My
+love. If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I
+have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love. These things
+have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your
+joy might be full.'--JOHN xv. 9-11.
+
+The last of these verses shows that they are to be taken as a kind of
+conclusion of the great parable of the Vine and the branches, for it
+looks back and declares Christ's purpose in His preceding utterances.
+The parable proper is ended, but the thoughts of it still linger in our
+Lord's mind, and echo through His words, as the vibration of some great
+bell after the stroke has ceased. The main thoughts of the parable were
+these two, that participation in Christ's life was the source of all
+good, and that abiding in Him was the means of participation in His
+life. And these same thoughts, though modified in their form, and free
+from the parabolical element, appear in the words that we have to
+consider on this occasion. The parable spoke about abiding in Christ;
+our text defines that abiding, and makes it still more tender and
+gracious by substituting for it, 'abiding in His love.' The parable
+spoke of conduct as 'fruit,' the effortless result of communion with
+Jesus. Our text speaks of it with more emphasis laid on the human side,
+as 'keeping the commandments.' The parable told us that abiding in
+Christ was the condition of bearing fruit. Our text tells us the
+converse, which is also true, that bearing fruit, or keeping the
+commandments, is the condition of abiding in Christ. So our Lord takes
+His thought, as it were, and turns it round before us, letting us see
+both sides of it, and then tells us that He does all this for one
+purpose, which in itself is a token of His love, namely, that our
+hearts may be filled with perfect and perennial joy, a drop from the
+fountain of His own.
+
+These three verses have three words which may be taken as their
+key-notes--love, obedience, joy. We shall look at them in that order.
+
+I. First, then, we have here the love in which it is our sweet duty to
+abide. 'As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide ye in
+My love.'
+
+What shall we say about these mysterious and profound first words of
+this verse? They carry us into the very depths of divinity, and suggest
+for us that wonderful analogy between the relation of the Father to the
+Son, and that of the Son to His disciples, which appears over and over
+again in the solemnities of these last hours and words of Jesus. Christ
+here claims to be, in a unique and solitary fashion, the Object of the
+Father's love, and He claims to be able to love like God. 'As the
+Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you'; as deeply, as purely, as
+fully, as eternally, and with all the unnameable perfectnesses which
+must belong to the divine affection, does Christ declare that He loves
+us.
+
+I know not whether the majesty and uniqueness of His nature stand out
+more clearly in the one or in the other of these two assertions. As
+beloved of God, and as loving like God, He equally claims for Himself a
+place which none other can fill, and declares that the love which falls
+on us from His pierced and bleeding heart is really the love of God.
+
+In this mysterious, awful, tender, perfect affection He exhorts us to
+abide. That comes yet closer to our hearts than the other phrase of
+which it is the modification, and in some sense the explanation. The
+command to abide in Him suggests much that is blessed, but to have all
+that mysterious abiding in Him resolved into abiding in His love is
+infinitely tenderer, and draws us still closer to Himself. Obviously,
+what is meant is not our continuance in the attitude of love to Him,
+but rather our continuance in the sweet and sacred atmosphere of His
+love to us. For the connection between the two halves of the verse
+necessarily requires that the love in which we are to abide should be
+identical with the love which had been previously spoken of, and _that_
+is clearly His love to us, and not ours to Him. But then, on the other
+hand, whosoever thus abides in Christ's love to Him will echo it back
+again, in an equally continuous love to Him. So that the two things
+flow together, and to abide in the conscious possession of Christ's
+love to me is the certain and inseparable cause of its effect, my
+abiding in the continual exercise and outgoing of my love to Him.
+
+Now note that this continuance in Christ's love is a thing in our
+power, since it is commanded. Although it is His affection to us of
+which my text primarily speaks, I can so modify and regulate the flow
+of that divine love to my heart that it becomes my duty to continue in
+Christ's love to me.
+
+What a quiet, blessed home that is for us! The image, I suppose, that
+underlies all this sweet speech in these last hours, about dwelling in
+Christ, in His joy, in His words, in His peace, and the like, is that
+of some safe house, into which going, we may be secure. And what sorrow
+or care or trouble or temptation would be able to reach us if we were
+folded in the protection of that strong love, and always felt that it
+was the fortress into which we might continually resort? They who make
+their abode there, and dwell behind those firm bastions, need fear no
+foes, but are lifted high above them all. 'Abide in My love,' for they
+who dwell within the clefts of that Rock need none other defence; and
+they to whom the riven heart of Christ is the place of their abode are
+safe, whatsoever befalls. 'As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved
+you. Abide ye in My love.'
+
+II. Now note, secondly, the obedience by which we continue in Christ's
+love.
+
+The analogy, on which He has already touched, is still continued. 'If
+ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept
+My Father's commandments and abide in His love.' Note that Christ here
+claims for Himself absolute and unbroken conformity with the Father's
+will, and consequent uninterrupted and complete communion with the
+Father's love. It is the utterance of a nature conscious of no sin, of
+a humanity that never knew one instant's film of separation, howsoever
+thin, howsoever brief, between Him and the Father. No more tremendous
+words were ever spoken than these quiet ones in which Jesus Christ
+declares that never, all His life long, had there been the smallest
+deflection or want of conformity between the Father's will and _His_
+desires and doings, and that never had there been one grain of dust, as
+it were, between the two polished plates which adhered so closely in
+inseparable union of harmony and love.
+
+And then notice, still further, how Christ here, with His consciousness
+of perfect obedience and communion, intercepts _our_ obedience and
+diverts it to Himself. He does not say, 'Obey God as I have done, and
+He will love you'; but He says, 'Obey _Me_ as I obey God, and _I_ will
+love you.' Who is this that thus comes between the child's heart and
+the Father's? Does He come _between_ when He stands thus? or does He
+rather lead us up to the Father, and to a share in His own filial
+obedience?
+
+He further assures us that, by keeping His commandments, we shall
+continue in that sweet home and safe stronghold of His love. Of course
+the keeping of the commandments is something more than mere outward
+conformity by action. It is the inward harmony of will, and the bowing
+of the whole nature. It is, in fact, the same thing (though considered
+under a different aspect, and from a somewhat different point of view),
+as He has already been speaking about as the 'fruit' of the vine, by
+the bearing of which the Father is glorified. And this obedience, the
+obedience of the hands because the heart obeys, and does so because it
+loves, the bowing of the will in glad submission to the loved and holy
+will of the heavens--this obedience is the condition of our continuing
+in Christ's love.
+
+He will love us better, the more we obey His commandments, for although
+His tender heart is charged towards all, even the disobedient, with the
+love of pity and of desire to help, He cannot but feel a growing thrill
+of satisfied and gratified affection towards us, in the measure in
+which we become like Himself. The love that wept over us, when we were
+enemies, will 'rejoice over us with singing,' when we are friends. The
+love that sought the sheep when it was wandering will pour itself yet
+more tenderly and with selector gifts upon it when it follows in the
+footsteps of the flock, and keeps close at the heels of the Good
+Shepherd. 'If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love,' so
+we will put nothing between us and Him which will make it impossible
+for the tenderest tenderness of that holy love to come to your hearts.
+
+The obedience which we render for love's sake will make us more capable
+of receiving, and more blessedly conscious of possessing, the love of
+Jesus Christ. The lightest cloud before the sun will prevent it from
+focussing its rays to a burning point on the convex glass. And the
+small, thin, fleeting, scarcely visible acts of self-will that
+sometimes pass across our skies will prevent our feeling the warmth of
+that love upon our shrouded hearts. Every known piece of rebellion
+against Christ will shatter all true enjoyment of His favour, unless we
+are hopeless hypocrites or self-deceived. The condition of knowing and
+feeling the warmth and blessedness of Christ's love to me is the honest
+submission of my nature to His commandments. You cannot rejoice in
+Jesus Christ unless you do His will. You will have no real comfort and
+blessedness in your religion unless it works itself out in your daily
+lives. That is why so many of you know nothing, or next to nothing,
+about the joy of Christ's felt presence, because you do not, for all
+your professions, hourly and momentarily regulate and submit your wills
+to His commandments. Do what He wants, and do it because He wants it,
+if you wish that His love should fill your hearts.
+
+And, further, we shall continue in His love by obedience, inasmuch as
+every emotion which finds expression in our daily life is strengthened
+by the fact that it is expressed. The love which works is love which
+grows, and the tree that bears fruit is the tree that is healthy and
+increases. So note how all these deepest things of Christian teaching
+come at last to a plain piece of practical duty. We talk about the
+mysticism of John's Gospel, about the depth of these last sayings of
+Jesus Christ. Yes! they are mystical, they are deep--unfathomably deep,
+thank God!--but connected by the shortest possible road with the
+plainest possible duties. 'Let no man deceive you. He that doeth
+righteousness is righteous.' It is of no use to talk about communion
+with Jesus Christ, and abiding in Him, in possession of His love, and
+all those other properly mystical sides of Christian experience, unless
+you verify them for yourselves by the plain way of practice. Doing as
+Christ bids us, and doing that habitually, and doing it gladly, then,
+and only then, are we in no danger of losing ourselves on the heights,
+or of forgetting that Christ's mission has for its last result the
+influencing of character and of conduct. 'If ye keep My commandments,
+ye shall abide in My love, even as I have kept My Father's
+commandments, and abide in His love.'
+
+III. Lastly, note the joy which follows on this practical obedience.
+'These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain,' (or
+'might _be_') 'in you, and that your joy might be full.'
+
+'My joy might be in you'--a strange time to talk of His 'joy.' In half
+an hour he would be in Gethsemane, and we know what happened there. Was
+Christ a joyful man? He was a 'Man of sorrows' but one of the old
+Psalms says, 'Thou hast loved righteousness ... therefore God hath
+anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.' The deep
+truth that lies there is the same that He here claims as being
+fulfilled in His own experience, that absolute surrender and submission
+in love to the beloved commands of a loving Father made Him--in spite
+of sorrows, in spite of the baptism with which He was baptized, in
+spite of all the burden and the weight of our sins--the most joyful of
+men.
+
+This joy He offers to us, a joy coming from perfect obedience, a joy
+coming from a surrender of self at the bidding of love, to a love that
+to us seems absolutely good and sweet. There is no joy that humanity is
+capable of to compare for a moment with that bright, warm, continuous
+sunshine which floods the soul, that is freed from all the clouds and
+mists of self and the darkness of sin. Self-sacrifice at the bidding of
+Jesus Christ is the recipe for the highest, the most exquisite, the
+most godlike gladnesses of which the human heart is capable. Our joy
+will remain if His joy is ours. Then our joy will be, up to the measure
+of its capacity, ennobled, and filled, and progressive, advancing ever
+towards a fuller possession of His joy, and a deeper calm of that pure
+and perennial rapture, which makes the settled and celestial bliss of
+those who have 'entered into the joy of their Lord.'
+
+Brother! there is only one gladness that is worth calling so--and that
+is, that which comes to us, when we give ourselves utterly away to
+Jesus Christ, and let Him do with us as He will. It is better to have a
+joy that is central and perennial--though there may be, as there will
+be, a surface of sorrow and care--than to have the converse, a surface
+of joy, and a black, unsympathetic kernel of aching unrest and sadness.
+In one or other of these two states we all live. Either we have to say,
+'as sorrowful yet always rejoicing' or we have to feel that 'even in
+laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is
+heaviness.' Let us choose for ourselves, and let us choose aright, the
+gladness which coils round the heart, and endures for ever, and is
+found in submission to Jesus Christ, rather than the superficial,
+fleeting joys which are rooted on earth and perish with time.
+
+
+
+THE ONENESS OF THE BRANCHES
+
+'This is My commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
+Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for
+his friends.'--JOHN xv. 12, 13.
+
+The union between Christ and His disciples has been tenderly set forth
+in the parable of the Vine and the branches. We now turn to the union
+between the disciples, which is the consequence of their common union
+to the Lord. The branches are parts of one whole, and necessarily bear
+a relation to each other. We may modify for our present purpose the
+analogous statement of the Apostle in reference to the Lord's Supper,
+and as He says, 'We being many, are one body, for we are all partakers
+of that one bread,' so we may say--The branches, being many, are one
+Vine, for they are all partakers of that one Vine. Of this union
+amongst the branches, which results from their common inherence in the
+Vine, the natural expression and manifestation is the mutual love,
+which Christ here gives as _the_ commandment, and commends to us all by
+His own solemn example.
+
+There are four things suggested to me by the words of our text--the
+Obligation, the Sufficiency, the Pattern, and the Motive, of Christian
+love.
+
+I. First, the Obligation of love.
+
+The two ideas of commandment and love do not go well together. You
+cannot pump up love to order, and if you try you generally produce,
+what we see in abundance in the world and in the Church, sentimental
+hypocrisy, hollow and unreal. But whilst that is true, and whilst it
+seems strange to say that we are commanded to love, still we can do a
+great deal, directly and indirectly, for the cultivation and
+strengthening of any emotion. We can either cast ourselves into the
+attitude which is favourable or unfavourable to it. We can either look
+at the facts which will create it or at those who will check it. We can
+go about with a sharp eye for the lovable or for the unlovable in man.
+We can either consciously war against or lazily acquiesce in our own
+predominant self-absorption and selfishness. And in these and in a
+number of other ways, our feelings towards other Christian people are
+very largely under our own control, and therefore are fitting subjects
+for commandment.
+
+Our Lord lays down the obligation which devolves upon all Christian
+people, of cherishing a kindly and loving regard to all others who find
+their place within the charmed circle of His Church. It is an
+obligation because He commands it. He puts Himself here in the position
+of the absolute Lawgiver, who has the right of entire and authoritative
+control over men's affections and hearts. And it is further obligatory
+because such an attitude is the only fitting expression of the mutual
+relation of Christian men, through their common relation to the Vine.
+If there be the one life-sap circling through all parts of the mighty
+whole, how anomalous and how contradictory it is that these parts
+should not be harmoniously concordant among themselves! However unlike
+any two Christian people are to each other in character, in culture, in
+circumstances, the bond that knits those who have the same relations to
+Jesus Christ one to another is far deeper, far more real, and ought to
+be far closer, than the bond that knits either of them to the men or
+women to whom they are likest in all these other respects, and to whom
+they are unlike in this central one. Christian men! you are closer to
+every other Christian man, down in the depths of your being, however he
+may be differenced from you by things that are very hard to get over,
+than you are to the people that you like best, and love most, if they
+do not participate with you in this common love to Jesus Christ.
+
+I dread talking mere sentiment about this matter, for there is perhaps
+no part of Christian duty which has been so vulgarised and pawed over
+by mere unctuous talk, as that of the fellowship that should subsist
+between all Christians. But I have one plain question to put,--Does
+anybody believe that the present condition of Christendom, and the
+relations to one another even of good Christian people in the various
+churches and communions of our own and of other lands, is the sort of
+thing that Jesus Christ meant, or is anything like a fair and adequate
+representation of the deep, essential unity that knits us all together?
+
+We need far more to realise the fact that our emotions towards our
+brother Christians are not matters in which our own inclinations may
+have their way, but that there is a simple commandment given to us, and
+that we are bound to cherish love to every man who loves Jesus Christ.
+Never mind though he does not hold your theology; never mind though he
+be very ignorant and narrow as compared with you; never mind though
+your outlook on the world may be entirely unlike his. Never mind though
+you be a rich man and he a poor one, or you a poor one and he rich,
+which is just as hard to get over. Let all these secondary grounds of
+union and of separation be relegated to their proper subordinate place;
+and let us recognise this, that the children of one Father are
+brethren. And do not let it be possible that it shall be said, as so
+often has been said, and said truly, that 'brethren' in the Church
+means a great deal less than _brothers_ in the world. Lift your eyes
+beyond the walls of the little sheepfold in which you live, and hearken
+to the bleating of the flocks away out yonder, and feel--'Other sheep
+He has which are not of this fold'; and recognise the solemn obligation
+of the commandment of love.
+
+II. Note, secondly, the Sufficiency of love.
+
+Our Lord has been speaking in a former verse about the keeping of His
+commandments. Now He gathers them all up into one. 'This is my
+commandment, that ye love one another' All duties to our fellows, and
+all duties to our brethren, are summed up in, or resolved into, this
+one germinal, encyclopaediacal, all-comprehensive simplification of
+duty, into the one word 'love.'
+
+Where the heart is right the conduct will be right. Love will soften
+the tones, will instinctively teach what we ought to be and do; will
+take the bitterness out of opposition and diversity, will make even
+rebuke, when needful, only a form of expressing itself. If the heart be
+right all else will be right; and if there be a deficiency of love
+nothing will be right. You cannot help anybody except on condition of
+having an honest, beneficent, and benevolent regard towards him. You
+cannot do any man in the world any good unless there is a shoot of love
+in your heart towards him. You may pitch him benefits, and you will
+neither get nor deserve thanks for them; you may try to teach him, and
+your words will be hopeless and profitless. The one thing that is
+required to bind Christian men together is this common affection. That
+being there, everything will come. It is the germ out of which all is
+developed. As we read in that great chapter to the Corinthians--the
+lyric praise of Charity,--all kinds of blessing and sweetness and
+gladness come out of this, It is the central force which, being
+present, secures that all shall be right, which, being absent, ensures
+that all shall be wrong.
+
+And is it not beautiful to see how Jesus Christ, leaving the little
+flock of His followers in the world, gave them no other instruction for
+their mutual relationship? He did not instruct them about institutions
+and organisations, about orders of the ministry and sacraments, or
+Church polity and the like. He knew that all these would come. His one
+commandment was, 'Love one another,' and that will make you wise. Love
+one another, and you will shape yourselves into the right forms. He
+knew that they needed no exhortations such as ecclesiastics would have
+put in the foreground. It was not worth while to talk to them about
+organisations and officers. These would come to them at the right time
+and in the right way. The 'one thing needful' was that they should be
+knit together as true participators of His life. Love was sufficient as
+their law and as their guide.
+
+III. Note, further, the Pattern of love.
+
+'As I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man
+lay down his life for his friends.' Christ sets Himself forward then,
+here and in this aspect, as He does in all aspects of human conduct and
+character, as being the realised Ideal of them all. And although the
+thought is a digression from my present purpose, I cannot but pause for
+a moment to reflect upon the strangeness of a man thus calmly saying to
+the whole world, 'I am the embodiment of all that love ought to be. You
+cannot get beyond Me, nor have anything more pure, more deep, more
+self-sacrificing, more perfect, than the love which I have borne to
+you.'
+
+But passing that, the pattern that He proposes for us is even more
+august than appears at first sight. For, if you remember, a verse or
+two before our Lord had said, 'As the Father hath loved Me so I have
+loved you.' Now He says, 'Love one another as I have loved you.' There
+stand the three, as it were, the Father, the Son, the disciple. The Son
+in the midst receives and transmits the Father's love to the disciple,
+and the disciple is to love his fellows, in some deep and august sense,
+as the Father loved the Son. The divinest thing in God, and that in
+which men can be like God, is love. In all our other attitudes to Him
+we rather correspond than copy. His fullness is met by our emptiness,
+His giving by our recipiency, His faithfulness by our faith, His
+command by our obedience, His light by our eye. But here it is not a
+case of correspondence only, but of similarity. My faith _answers_
+God's gift to me, but my love is _like_ God's love. 'Be ye, therefore,
+imitators of God as beloved children'; and having received that love
+into your hearts, ray it out, 'and walk in love as God also hath loved
+us.'
+
+But then our Lord here, in a very wonderful manner, sets forth the very
+central point of His work, even His death upon the Cross for us, as
+being the pattern to which our poor affection ought to aspire, and
+after which it must tend to be conformed. I need not remind you, I
+suppose, that our Lord here is not speaking of the propitiatory
+character of His death, nor of the issues which depend upon it, and
+upon it alone, viz., the redemption and salvation of the world. He is
+not speaking, either, of the peculiar and unique sense in which He lays
+down His life for us, His friends and brethren, as none other can do.
+He is speaking about it simply in its aspect of being a voluntary
+surrender, at the bidding of love, for the good of those whom He loved,
+and that, He tells us--that, and nothing else--is the true pattern and
+model towards which all our love is bound to tend and to aspire. That
+is to say, the heart of the love which He commands is self-sacrifice,
+reaching to death if death be needful. And no man loves as Christ would
+have him love who does not bear in his heart affection which has so
+conquered selfishness that, if need be, he is ready to die.
+
+The expression of Christian life is not to be found in honeyed words,
+or the indolent indulgence in benevolent emotion, but in
+self-sacrifice, modelled after that of Christ's sacrificial death,
+which is imitable by us.
+
+Brethren, it is a solemn obligation, which may well make us tremble,
+that is laid on us in these words, 'As I have loved you.' Calvary was
+less than twenty-four hours off, and He says to us, '_That_ is your
+pattern!' Contrast our love at its height with His--a drop to an ocean,
+a poor little flickering rushlight held up beside the sun. My love, at
+its best, has so far conquered my selfishness that now and then I am
+ready to suffer a little inconvenience, to sacrifice a little leisure,
+to give away a little money, to spend a little dribble of sympathy upon
+the people who are its objects. Christ's love nailed Him to the Cross,
+and led Him down from the throne, and shut for a time the gates of the
+glory behind Him. And He says, 'That is your pattern!'
+
+Oh, let us bow down and confess how His word, which commands us, puts
+us to shame, when we think of how miserably we have obeyed.
+
+Remember, too, that the restriction which here seems to be cast around
+the flow of His love is not a restriction in reality, but rather a
+deepening of it. He says, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a
+man lay down his life for his friends.' But evidently He calls them so
+from His point of view, and as He sees them, not from their point of
+view, as they see Him--that is to say, He means by 'friends' not those
+who love Him, but those whom He loves. The 'friends' for whom He dies
+are the same persons as the Apostle, in his sweet variation upon the
+words of my text, has called by the opposite name, when He says that He
+died for His 'enemies.'
+
+There is an old, wild ballad that tells of how a knight found, coiling
+round a tree in a dismal forest, a loathly dragon breathing out poison;
+and how, undeterred by its hideousness and foulness, he cast his arms
+round it and kissed it on the mouth. Three times he did it undisgusted,
+and at the third the shape changed into a fair lady, and he won his
+bride. Christ 'kisses with the kisses of His mouth' His enemies, and
+makes them His friends because He loves them. 'If He had never died for
+His enemies' says one of the old fathers, 'He would never have
+possessed His friends.' And so He teaches us here in what seems to be a
+restriction of the purpose of His death and the sweep of His love, that
+the way by which we are to meet even alienation and hostility is by
+pouring upon it the treasures of an unselfish, self-sacrificing
+affection which will conquer at the last.
+
+Christ's death is the pattern for our lives as well as the hope of our
+hearts.
+
+IV. Lastly, we have here by implication, though not by direct
+statement, the Motive of the love.
+
+Surely that, too, is contained in the words, 'As I have loved you.'
+Christ's commandment of love is a new commandment, not so much because
+it is a revelation of a new duty, though it is the casting of an old
+duty into new prominence, as because it is not merely a revelation of
+an obligation, but the communication of power to fulfil it. The novelty
+of Christian morality lies here, that in its law there is a
+self-fulfilling force. We have not to look to one place for the
+knowledge of our duty, and somewhere else for the strength to do it,
+but both are given to us in the one thing, the gift of the dying Christ
+and His immortal love.
+
+That love, received into our hearts, will conquer, and it alone will
+conquer, our selfishness. That love, received into our hearts, will
+mould, and it alone will mould, them into its own likeness. That love,
+received into our hearts, will knit, and it alone will knit, all those
+who participate in it into a common bond, sweet, deep, sacred, and
+all-victorious.
+
+And so, brethren, if we would know the blessedness and the sweetness of
+victory over these miserable, selfish hearts of ours, and to walk in
+the liberty of love, we can only get it by keeping close to Jesus
+Christ. In any circle, the nearer the points of the circumference are
+to the centre, the closer they will necessarily be to one another. As
+we draw nearer, each for himself, to our Centre, we shall feel that we
+have approximated to all those who stand round the same centre, and
+draw from it the same life. In the early spring, when the wheat is
+green and young, and scarcely appears above the ground, it comes up in
+the lines in which it was sown, parted from one another and distinctly
+showing their separation and the furrows. But when the full corn in the
+ear waves on the autumn plain, all the lines and separations have
+disappeared, and there is one unbroken tract of sunny fruitfulness. And
+so when the life in Christ is low and feeble, His servants may be
+separated and drawn up in rigid lines of denominations, and churches,
+and sects; but as they grow the lines disappear. If to the churches of
+England to-day there came a sudden accession of knowledge of Christ,
+and of union with Him, the first thing that would go would be the
+wretched barriers that separate us from one another. For if we have the
+life of Christ in any adequate measure in ourselves, we shall certainly
+have grown up above the fences behind which we began to grow, and shall
+be able to reach out to all that love the Lord Jesus Christ, and feel
+with thankfulness that we are one in Him.
+
+
+
+CHRIST'S FRIENDS
+
+'Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I
+call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth:
+but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My
+Father I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen Me, but I have
+chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit,
+and that your fruit should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the
+Father in My name, He may give it you. These things I command you, that
+ye love one another.'--JOHN xv. 14-17.
+
+A wonderful word has just dropped from the Master's lips, when He spoke
+of laying down His life for His friends. He lingers on it as if the
+idea conveyed was too great and sweet to be taken in at once, and with
+soothing reiteration He assures the little group that they, even they,
+are His friends.
+
+I have ventured to take these four verses for consideration now,
+although each of them, and each clause of them, might afford ample
+material for a discourse, because they have one common theme. They are
+a description of what Christ's friends are to Him, of what He is to
+them, and of what they should be to one another. So they are a little
+picture, in the sweetest form, of the reality, the blessedness, the
+obligations, of friendship with Christ.
+
+I. Notice what Christ's friends do for Him.
+
+'Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.' In the former
+verse, 'friends' means chiefly those whom He loved. Here it means
+mainly those who love Him. They love Him because He loves them, of
+course; and the two sides of the one thought cannot be parted. But
+still in this verse the idea of friendship to Christ is looked at from
+the human side, and He tells His disciples that they are His lovers as
+well as beloved of Him, on condition of their doing whatsoever He
+commands them.
+
+He lingers, as I said, on the idea itself. As if He would meet the
+doubts arising from the sense of unworthiness, and from some dim
+perception of how He towers above them, and their limitations, He
+reiterates, 'Wonderful as it is, you poor men, half-intelligent lovers
+of Mine, _you_ are My friends, beloved of Me, and loving Me, if ye do
+whatsoever I command you.'
+
+How wonderful that stooping love of His is, which condescends to array
+itself in the garments of ours! Every form of human love Christ lays
+His hand upon, and claims that He Himself exercises it in a
+transcendent degree. 'He that doeth the will of My Father which is in
+heaven, the same is My brother and sister and mother.' That which is
+even sacreder, the purest and most complete union that humanity is
+capable of--that, too, He consecrates; for even it, sacred as it is, is
+capable of a higher consecration, and, sweet as it is, receives a new
+sweetness when we think of 'the Bride, the Lamb's wife,' and remember
+the parables in which He speaks of the Marriage Supper of the Great
+King, and sets forth Himself as the Husband of humanity. And passing
+from that Holy of Holies out into this outer court, He lays His hand,
+too, on that more common and familiar, and yet precious and sacred,
+thing--the bond of friendship. The Prince makes a friend of the beggar.
+
+Even if we do not think more loftily of Jesus Christ than do those who
+regard Him simply as the perfection of humanity, is it not beautiful
+and wonderful that He should look with such eyes of beaming love on
+that handful of poor, ignorant fishermen, who knew Him so dimly, and
+say: 'I pass by all the wise and the mighty, all the lofty and noble,
+and My heart clings to you poor, insignificant people?' He stoops to
+make them His friends, and there are none so low but that they may be
+His.
+
+This friendship lasts to-day. A peculiarity of Christianity is the
+strong personal tie of real love and intimacy which will bind men, to
+the end of time, to this Man that died nineteen hundred years ago. We
+look back into the wastes of antiquity: mighty names rise there that we
+reverence; there are great teachers from whom we have learned, and to
+whom, after a fashion, we are grateful. But what a gulf there is
+between us and the best and noblest of them! But here is a dead Man,
+who to-day is the Object of passionate attachment and a love deeper
+than life to millions of people, and will be till the end of time.
+There is nothing in the whole history of the world in the least like
+that strange bond which ties you and me to the Saviour, and the paradox
+of the Apostle remains a unique fact in the experience of humanity:
+'Jesus Christ, whom, having not seen, ye love.' We stretch out our
+hands across the waste, silent centuries, and there, amidst the mists
+of oblivion, thickening round all other figures in the past, we touch
+the warm, throhbing heart of our Friend, who lives for ever, and for
+ever is near us. We here, nearly two millenniums after the words fell
+on the nightly air on the road to Gethsemane, have them coming direct
+to our hearts. A perpetual bond unites men with Christ to-day; and for
+us, as really as in that long-past Paschal night, is it true, 'Ye are
+My friends.'
+
+There are no limitations in that friendship, no misconstructions in
+that heart, no alienation possible, no change to be feared. There is
+absolute rest for us there. Why should I be solitary if Jesus Christ is
+my Friend? Why should I fear if He walks by my side? Why should
+anything be burdensome if He lays it upon me and helps me to bear it?
+What is there in life that cannot be faced and borne--aye, and
+conquered,--if we have Him, as we all may have Him, for the Friend and
+the Home of our hearts?
+
+But notice the condition, 'If ye do what I command you.' Note the
+singular blending of friendship and command, involving on our parts the
+cultivation of the two things which are not incompatible, absolute
+submission and closest friendship. He commands though He is Friend;
+though He commands He is Friend. The conditions that He lays down are
+the same which have already occupied our attention in former sermons of
+this series, and so may be touched very lightly. 'Ye are My friends if
+ye do the things which I command you,' may either correspond with His
+former saying, 'If a Man love Me he will keep My commandments,' or with
+His later one, which immediately precedes our text, 'If ye keep My
+commandments ye shall abide in My love.' For this is the relationship
+between love and obedience, in regard to Jesus Christ, that the love is
+the parent of the obedience, and the obedience is the guard and
+guarantee of the love. They who love will obey, they who obey will
+strengthen love by acting according to its dictates, and will be in a
+condition to feel and realise more the warmth of the rays that stream
+down upon them, and to send back more fully answering obedience from
+their hearts. Not in mere emotion, not in mere verbal expression, not
+in mere selfish realising of the blessings of His friendship, and not
+in mere mechanical, external acts of conformity, but in the flowing
+down and melting of the hard and obstinate iron will, at the warmth of
+His great love, is our love made perfect. The obedience, which is the
+child and the preserver of love, is something far deeper than the mere
+outward conformity with externally apprehended commandments. To submit
+is the expression of love, and love is deepened by submission.
+
+II. Secondly, note what Christ does for His friends.
+
+'Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what
+his lord doeth.' The slave may see what his lord does, but he does not
+know his purpose in his acts--'Theirs not to reason why.' In so far as
+the relation of master and servant goes, and still more in that of
+owner and slave, there is simple command on the one side and
+unintelligent obedience on the other. The command needs no explanation,
+and if the servant is in his master's confidence he is more than a
+servant. But, says Christ, 'I have called you friends'; and He had
+called them so before He now named them so. He had called them so in
+act, and He points to all His past relationship, and especially to the
+heart-outpourings of the Upper Room, as the proof that He had called
+them His friends, in the fact that whatsoever He had heard of the
+Father He had made known to them.
+
+Jesus Christ, then, recognises the obligation of absolute frankness,
+and He will tell His friends everything that He can. When He tells them
+what He can, the voice of the Father speaks through the Son. Every one
+of Christ's friends stands nearer to God than did Moses at the door of
+the Tabernacle, when the wondering camp beheld him face to face with
+the blaze of the Shekinah glory, and dimly heard the thunderous
+utterances of God as He spake to him 'as a man speaks to his friend.'
+That was surface-speech compared with the divine depth and fullness of
+the communications which Jesus Christ deems Himself bound, and assumes
+Himself able, to make to them who love Him and whom He loves.
+
+Of course to Christ's frankness there are limits. He will not pour out
+His treasures into vessels that will spill them; and as He Himself says
+in the subsequent part of this great discourse, 'I have many things to
+say unto you, but you are not able to carry them now.' His last word
+was, 'I have declared Thy name unto My brethren, and _will declare_
+it.' And though here He speaks as if His communication was perfect, we
+are to remember that it was necessarily conditioned by the power of
+reception on the part of the hearers, and that there was much yet to be
+revealed of what God had whispered to Him, ere these men, that
+clustered round Him, could understand the message.
+
+That frank speech is continued to-day. Jesus Christ recognises the
+obligation that binds Him to impart to each of us all that each of us
+is in our inmost spirits capable of receiving. By the light which He
+sheds on the Word, by many a suggestion through human lips, by many a
+blessed thought rising quietly within our hearts, and bearing the token
+that it comes from a sacreder source than our poor, blundering minds,
+He still speaks to us, His friends.
+
+Ought not that thought of the utter frankness of Jesus make us, for one
+thing, very patient, intellectually and spiritually, of the gaps that
+are left in His communications and in our knowledge? There are so many
+things that we sometimes think we should like to know, things about
+that dark future where some of our hearts live so constantly, things
+about the depths of His nature and the divine character, things about
+the relation between God's love and God's righteousness, things about
+the meaning of all this dreadful mystery in which we grope our way.
+These and a hundred other questionings suggest to us that it would have
+been so easy for Him to have lifted a little corner of the veil, and
+let a little more of the light shine out. He holds all in His hand. Why
+does He thus open one finger instead of the whole palm? Because He
+loves. A friend exercises the right of reticence as well as the
+prerogative of speech. And for all the gaps that are left, let us bow
+quietly and believe that if it had been better for us He would have
+spoken. 'If it were not so I would have told you.' 'Trust Me! I tell
+you all that it is good for you to receive.'
+
+And that frankness may well teach us another lesson, viz., the
+obligation of keeping our ears open and our hearts prepared to receive
+the speech that does come from Him. Ah, brother! many a message from
+your Lord flits past you, like the idle wind through an archway,
+because you are not listening for His voice. If we kept down the noise
+of that 'household jar within'; if we silenced passion, ambition,
+selfishness, worldliness; if we withdrew ourselves, as we ought to do,
+from the Babel of this world, and 'hid ourselves in His pavilion from
+the strife of tongues'; if we took less of our religion out of books
+and from other people, and were more accustomed to 'dwell in the secret
+place of the Most High,' and to say, 'Speak, Friend! for Thy friend
+heareth,' we should more often understand how real to-day is the voice
+of Christ to them that love Him.
+
+  'Such rebounds the inward ear
+     Catches often from afar;
+  Listen, prize them, hold them dear,
+     For of God--of God--they are.'
+
+III. Thirdly, notice how Christ's friends come to be so, and why they
+are so.
+
+'Ye have not chosen,' etc. (verse 16).
+
+Our Lord refers here, no doubt, primarily to the little group of the
+Apostles; the choice and ordaining as well as 'the fruit that abides,'
+point, in the first place, to their apostolic office, and to the
+results of their apostolic labours. But we must widen out the words a
+great deal beyond that reference.
+
+In all the cases of friendship between Christ and men, the origination
+and initiation come from Him. 'We love Him because He first loved us.'
+He has told us how, in His divine alchemy, He changes by the shedding
+of His blood our enmity into friendship. In the previous verse He has
+said, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
+for his friends.' And as I remarked in my last sermon, the friends here
+are the same as 'the enemies' for whom, the Apostle tells us that
+Christ laid down His life. Since He has thus by the blood of the Cross
+changed men's enmity into friendship, it is true universally that the
+amity between us and Christ comes entirely from Him.
+
+But there is more than that in the words. I do not suppose that any
+man, whatever his theological notions and standpoint may be, who has
+felt the love of Christ in his own heart in however feeble a measure,
+but will say, as the Apostle said, 'I was apprehended of Christ.' It is
+because He lays His seeking and drawing hand upon us that we ever come
+to love Him, and it is true that His choice of us precedes our choice
+of Him, and that the Shepherd always comes to seek the sheep that is
+lost in the wilderness.
+
+This, then, is how we come to be His friends; because, when we were
+enemies, He loved us, and gave Himself for us, and ever since has been
+sending out the ambassadors and the messengers of His love--or, rather,
+the rays and beams of it, which are parts of Himself--to draw us to His
+heart. And the purpose which all this forthgoing of Christ's initial
+and originating friendship has had in view, is set forth in words which
+I can only touch in the lightest possible manner. The intention is
+twofold. First, it respects service or fruit. 'That ye may _go_'; there
+is deep pathos and meaning in that word. He had been telling them that
+He was going; now He says to them, 'You are to go. We part here. My
+road lies upward; yours runs onward. Go into all the world.' He gives
+them a _quasi_-independent position; He declares the necessity of
+separation; He declares also the reality of union in the midst of the
+separation; He sends _them_ out on their course with His benediction,
+as He does _us_. Wheresoever we go in obedience to His will, we carry
+the consciousness of His friendship.
+
+'That ye may bring forth fruit'--He goes back for a moment to the sweet
+emblem with which this chapter begins, and recurs to the imagery of the
+vine and the fruit. 'Keeping His commandments' does not explain the
+whole process by which we do the things that are pleasing in His sight.
+We must also take this other metaphor of the bearing of fruit. Neither
+an effortless, instinctive bringing forth from the renewed nature and
+the Christlike disposition, nor a painful and strenuous effort at
+obedience to His law, describe the whole realities of Christian
+service. There must be the effort, for men do not grow Christlike in
+character as the vine grows its grapes; but there must also be,
+regulated and disciplined by the effort, the inward life, for no mere
+outward obedience and tinkering at duties and commandments will produce
+the fruit that Christ desires and rejoices to have. First comes unity
+of life with Him; and then effort. Take care of modern teachings that
+do not recognise these two as both essential to the complete ideal of
+Christian service--the spontaneous fruit-bearing, and the strenuous
+effort after obedience.
+
+'That your fruit should remain'; nothing corrupts faster than fruit.
+There is only one kind of fruit that is permanent, incorruptible. The
+only life's activity that outlasts life and the world is the activity
+of the men who obey Christ.
+
+The other half of the issues of this friendship is the satisfying of
+our desires, 'That whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name He may
+give it you.' We have already had substantially the same promise in
+previous parts of this discourse, and therefore I may deal with it very
+lightly. How comes it that it is certain that Christ's friends, living
+close to Him and bearing fruit, will get what they want? Because what
+they want will be 'in His name'--that is to say, in accordance with His
+disposition and will. Make your desires Christ's, and Christ's yours,
+and you will be satisfied.
+
+IV. And now, lastly, for one moment, note the mutual friendship of
+Christ's friends.
+
+We have frequently had to consider that point--the relation of the
+friends of Christ to each other. 'These things I command you, that ye
+love one another.' This whole context is, as it were, enclosed within a
+golden circlet by that commandment which appeared in a former verse, at
+the beginning of it, 'This is My commandment, that ye love one
+another,' and reappears here at the close, thus shutting off this
+portion from the rest of the discourse. Friends of a friend should
+themselves be friends. We care for the lifeless things that a dear
+friend has cared for; books, articles of use of various sorts. If these
+have been of interest to him, they are treasures and precious evermore
+to us. And here are living men and women, in all diversities of
+character and circumstances, but with this stamped upon them
+all--Christ's friends, lovers of and loved by Him. And how can we be
+indifferent to those to whom Christ is not indifferent? We are knit
+together by that bond. We are but poor friends of that Master unless we
+feel that all which is dear to Him is dear to us. Let us feel the
+electric thrill which ought to pass through the whole linked circle,
+and let us beware that we slip not our hands from the grasp of the
+neighbour on either side, lest, parted from them, we should be isolated
+from Him, and lose some of the love which we fail to transmit.
+
+
+
+SHEEP AMONG WOLVES
+
+'If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you.
+If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye
+are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore
+the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The
+servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted Me, they
+will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep
+yours also.'--JOHN xv. 18-20.
+
+These words strike a discord in the midst of the sweet music to which
+we have been listening. The key-note of all that has preceded has been
+love--the love of Christ's friends to one another, and of all to Him,
+as an answer to His love to all. That love, which is one, whether it
+rise to Him or is diffused on the level of earth, is the result of that
+unity of life between the Vine and the branches, of which our Lord has
+been speaking such great and wonderful things. But that unity of life
+between Christians and Christ has another consequence than the spread
+of love. Just because it binds them to Him in a sacred community, it
+separates them from those who do not share in His life, and hence the
+'hate' of our context is the shadow of 'love'; and there result two
+communities--to use the much-abused words that designate them--the
+Church and 'the World'; and the antagonism between these is deep,
+fundamental, and perpetual.
+
+Unquestionably, our Lord is here speaking with special reference to the
+Apostles, who, in a very tragic sense, were 'sent forth as sheep in the
+midst of wolves.' If we may trust tradition, every one of that little
+company, Speaker as well as hearers, died a martyr's death, with the
+exception of John himself, who was preserved from it by a miracle. But,
+be that as it may, our Lord is here laying down a universal statement
+of the permanent condition of things; and there is no more reason for
+restricting the force of these words to the original hearers of them
+than there is for restricting the force of any of the rest of this
+wonderful discourse. 'The world' will be in antagonism to the Church
+until the world ceases to be a world, because it obeys the King; and
+then, and not till then, will it cease to be hostile to His subjects.
+
+I. What makes this hostility inevitable?
+
+Our Lord here prepares His hearers for what is coming by putting it in
+the gentle form of an hypothesis. The frequency with which 'If' occurs
+in this section is very remarkable. He will not startle them by the
+bare, naked statement which they, in that hour of depression and
+agitation, were so little able to endure, but He puts it in the shape
+of a 'suppose that,' not because there is any doubt, but in order to
+alleviate the pain of the impression which He desires to make. He says,
+'If the world hates,' not 'if the world hate'; and the tense of the
+original shows that, whilst the form of the statement is hypothetical,
+the substance of it is prophetic.
+
+Jesus points to two things, as you will observe, which make this
+hostility inevitable. 'If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me
+before it hated you.' And again, 'If ye were of the world, the world
+would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have
+chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.' The very
+language carries with it the implication of necessary and continual
+antagonism. For what is 'the world,' in this context, but the aggregate
+of men, who have no share in the love and life that flow from Jesus
+Christ? Necessarily they constitute a unity, whatever diversities there
+may be amongst them, and necessarily, that unity in its banded phalanx
+is in antagonism, in some measure, to those who constitute the other
+unity, which holds by Christ, and has been drawn by Him from 'out of
+the world.'
+
+If we share Christ's life, we must, necessarily, in some measure, share
+His fate. It is the typical example of what the world thinks of, and
+does to, goodness. And all who have 'the Spirit of life which was in
+Jesus Christ' for the animating principle of their lives, will, just in
+the measure in which they possess it, come under the same influences
+which carried Him to the Cross. In a world like this, it is impossible
+for a man to 'love righteousness and hate iniquity,' and to order his
+life accordingly, without treading on somebody's corns; being a rebuke
+to the opposite course of conduct, either interfering with men's
+self-complacency or with their interests. From the beginning the blind
+world has repaid goodness by antagonism and contempt.
+
+And then our Lord touches another, and yet closely-connected, cause
+when He speaks of His selecting the Apostles, and drawing them out of
+the world, as a reason for the world's hostility. There are two groups,
+and the fundamental principles that underlie each are in deadly
+antagonism. In the measure in which you and I are Christians we are in
+direct opposition to all the maxims which rule the world and make it a
+world. What we believe to be precious it regards as of no account. What
+we believe to be fundamental truth it passes by as of little
+importance. Much which we feel to be wrong it regards as good. Our
+jewels are its tinsel, and its jewels are our tinsel. We and it stand
+in diametrical opposition of thought about God, about self, about duty,
+about life, about death, about the future; and that opposition goes
+right down to the bottom of things. However it may be covered over,
+there is a gulf, as in some of those American canons: the towering
+cliffs may be very near--only a yard or two seems to separate them; but
+they go down for thousands and thousands of feet, and never are any
+nearer each other, and between them at the bottom a black, sullen river
+flows. 'If ye were of the world, the world would love its own.' If it
+loves you, it is because ye are of it.
+
+II. And so note, secondly, how this hostility is masked and modified.
+
+There are a great many other bonds that unite men together besides the
+bonds of religious life or their absence. There are the domestic ties,
+there are the associations of commerce and neighbourhood, there are
+surface identities of opinion about many important things. The greater
+portion of our lives moves on this surface, whore all men are alike.
+'If you tickle us, do we not laugh; if you wound us, do we not bleed?'
+We have all the same affections and needs, pursue the same avocations,
+do the same sort of things, and a large portion of every one's life is
+under the dominion of habit and custom, and determined by external
+circumstances. So there is a film of roofing thrown over the gulf. You
+can make up a crack in a wall with plaster after a fashion, and it will
+hide the solution of continuity that lies beneath. But let bad weather
+come, and soon the bricks gape apart as before. And so, as soon as we
+get down below the surface of things and grapple with the real,
+deep-lying, and formative principles of a life, we come to antagonism,
+just as they used to come to it long ago, though the form of it has
+become quite different.
+
+Then there are other causes modifying this hostility. The world has got
+a dash of Christianity into it since Jesus Christ spoke. We cannot say
+that it is half Christianised, but some of the issues and remoter
+consequences of Christianity have permeated the general conscience, and
+the ethics of the Gospel are largely diffused in such a land as this.
+Thus Christian men and others have, to a large extent, a common code of
+morality, as long as they keep on the surface; and they not only do a
+good many things exactly alike, but do a great many things from
+substantially the same motives, and have the same way of looking at
+much. Thus the gulf is partly bridged over; and the hostility takes
+another form. We do not wrap Christians in pitch and stick them up for
+candles in the Emperor's garden nowadays, but the same thing can be
+done in different ways. Newspaper articles, the light laugh of scorn,
+the whoop of exultation over the failures or faults of any prominent
+man that has stood out boldly on Christ's side; all these indicate what
+lies below the surface, and sometimes not so very far below. Many a
+young man in a Manchester warehouse, trying to live a godly life, many
+a workman at his bench, many a commercial traveller in the inn or on
+the road, many a student on the college benches, has to find out that
+there is a great gulf between him and the man who sits next to him, and
+that he cannot be faithful to his Lord, and at the same time, down to
+the depths of his being, a friend of one who has no friendship to his
+Master.
+
+Still another fact masks the antagonism, and that is, that after all,
+the world, meaning thereby the aggregate of godless men, has a
+conscience that responds to goodness, though grumblingly and
+reluctantly. After all, men do know that it is better to be good, that
+it is better and wiser to be like Christ, that it is nobler to live for
+Him than for self, and that consciousness cannot but modify to some
+extent the manifestations of the hostility, but it is there all the
+same, and whosoever will be a Christian after Christ's pattern will
+find out that it is there.
+
+Let a man for Christ's sake avow unpopular beliefs, let him try
+honestly to act out the New Testament, let him boldly seek to apply
+Christian principles to the fashionable and popular sins of his class
+or of his country, let him in any way be ahead of the conscience of the
+majority, and what a chorus will be yelping at his heels! Dear
+brethren, the law still remains, 'If any man will be a friend of the
+world he is at enmity with God.'
+
+III. Thirdly, note how you may escape the hostility.
+
+A half-Christianised world and a more than half-secularised Church get
+on well together. 'When they do agree, their agreement is wonderful.'
+And it is a miserable thing to reflect that about the average
+Christianity of this generation there is so very little that does
+deserve the antagonism of the world. Why should the world care to hate
+or trouble itself about a professing Church, large parts of which are
+only a bit of the world under another name? There is no need whatever
+that there should be any antagonism at all between a godless world and
+hosts of professing Christians. If you want to escape the hostility
+drop your flag, button your coat over the badge that shows that you
+belong to Christ, and do the things that the people round about you do,
+and you will have a perfectly easy and undisturbed life.
+
+Of course, in the bad old slavery days, a Christianity that had not a
+word to say about the sin of slave-holding ran no risk of being tarred
+and feathered. Of course a Christianity in Manchester that winks hard
+at commercial immoralities is very welcome on the Exchange. Of course a
+Christianity that lets beer barrels alone may reckon upon having
+publicans for its adherents. Of course a Christianity that blesses
+flags and sings _Te Deums_ over victories will get its share of the
+spoil. Why should the world hate, or persecute, or do anything but
+despise a Christianity like that, any more than a man need to care for
+a tame tiger that has had its claws pared? If the world can put a hook
+in the nostrils of leviathan, and make him play with its maidens, it
+will substitute good-nature, half contemptuous, for the hostility which
+our Master here predicts. It was out-and-out Christians that He said
+the world would hate; the world likes Christians that are like itself.
+Christian men and women! be you sure that you deserve the hostility
+which my text predicts.
+
+IV. And now, lastly, note how to meet this antagonism.
+
+Reckon it as a sign and test of true union with Jesus Christ. And so,
+if ever, by reason of our passing at the call of duty or benevolence
+outside the circle of those who sympathise with our faith and
+fundamental ideas, we encounter it more manifestly than when we 'dwell
+among our own people,' let us count the 'reproach of Christ' as a
+treasure to be proud of, and to be guarded.
+
+Be sure that it is your goodness and not your evils or your weakness,
+that men dislike. The world has a very keen eye for the inconsistencies
+and the faults of professing Christians, and it is a good thing that it
+has. The loftier your profession the sharper the judgment that is
+applied to you. Many well-meaning Christian people, by an injudicious
+use of Christian phraseology in the wrong place, and by the glaring
+contradiction between their prayers and their talks and their daily
+life, bring down a great deal of deserved hostility upon themselves and
+of discredit upon Christianity; and then they comfort themselves and
+say they are bearing the 'reproach of the Cross.' Not a bit of it! They
+are bearing the natural results of their own failings and faults. And
+it is for us to see to it that what provokes, if it does provoke,
+hostile judgments and uncharitable criticisms, insulting speeches and
+sarcasms, and the sense of our belonging to another regiment and having
+other objects, is our cleaving to Jesus Christ, and not the
+imperfections and the sins with which we so often spoil that cleaving.
+Be you careful for this, that it is Christ in you that men turn from,
+and not you yourself and your weakness and sin.
+
+Meet this antagonism by not dropping your standard one inch. Keep the
+flag right at the masthead. If you begin to haul it down, where are you
+going to stop? Nowhere, until you have got it draggling in the mud at
+the foot. It is of no use to try to conciliate by compromise. All that
+we shall gain by that will be, as I have said, indifference and
+contempt; all that we shall gain will be a loss to the cause. A great
+deal is said in this day, and many efforts are being made--I cannot but
+think mistaken efforts--by Christian people to bridge over this gulf in
+the wrong way--that is, by trying to make out that Christianity in its
+fundamental principles does approximate a great deal more closely to
+the things that the world goes by than it really does. It is all vain,
+and the only issue of it will be that we shall have a decaying
+Christianity and a dying spiritual life. Keep the flag up; emphasise
+and accentuate the things that the world disbelieves and denies, not
+pushing them to the 'falsehood of extremes,' but not by one jot
+diminishing the clearness of our testimony by reason of the world's
+unwillingness to receive it. Our victory is to be won only through
+absolute faithfulness to Christ's ideal.
+
+And, lastly, meet hostility with unmoved, patient, Christlike, and
+Christ-derived love and sympathy. The patient sunshine pours upon the
+glaciers and melts the thick-ribbed ice at last into sweet water. The
+patient sunshine beats upon the mist-cloud and breaks up its edges and
+scatters it at the last. And our Lord here tells us that our
+experience, if we are faithful to Him, will be like His experience, in
+that some will hearken to our word though others will persecute, and to
+some our testimony will come as a message from God that draws them to
+the Lord Himself. These are our only weapons, brethren! The only
+conqueror of the world is the love that was in Christ breathed through
+us; the only victory over suspicion, contempt, alienation, is pleading,
+persistent, long-suffering, self-denying love. The only way to overcome
+the world's hostility is by turning the world into a church, and that
+can only be done when Christ's servants oppose pity to wrath, love to
+hate, and in the strength of His life who has won us all by the same
+process, seek to win the world for Him by the manifestation of His
+victorious love in our patient love.
+
+Dear brethren, to which army do you belong? Which community is yours?
+Are you in Christ's ranks, or are you in the world's? Do you love Him
+back again, or do you meet His open heart with a closed one, and His
+hand, laden with blessings, with hands clenched in refusal? To which
+class do I belong?--it is the question of questions for us all; and I
+pray that you and I, won from our hatred by His love, and wooed out of
+our death by His life, and made partakers of His life by His death, may
+yield our hearts to Him, and so pass from out of the hostility and
+mistrust of a godless world into the friendships and peace of the
+sheltering Vine. And then we 'shall esteem the reproach of Christ' if
+it fall upon our heads, in however modified and mild a form, 'greater
+riches than the treasures of Egypt,' and 'have respect unto the
+recompense of the reward.'
+
+May it be so with us all!
+
+
+
+THE WORLD'S HATRED, AS CHRIST SAW IT
+
+'But all these things will they do unto you for My name's sake, because
+they know not Him that sent Me. If I had not come and spoken unto them,
+they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin. He that
+hateth Me, hateth My Father also. If I had not done among them the
+works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they
+both seen and hated both Me and My Father. But this cometh to pass,
+that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They
+hated Me without a cause.'--JOHN XV. 21-25.
+
+Our Lord has been speaking of the world's hostility to His followers,
+and tracing that to its hostility to Himself. In these solemn words of
+our text He goes still deeper, and parallels the relation which His
+disciples bear to Him and the consequent hostility that falls on them,
+with the relation which He bears to the Father and the consequent
+hostility that falls on Him: 'They hate you because they hate Me.' And
+then His words become sadder and pierce deeper, and with a tone of
+wounded love and disappointed effort and almost surprise at the world's
+requital to Him, He goes on to say, 'They hate Me, because they hate
+the Father.'
+
+So, then, here we have, in very pathetic and solemn words, Christ's
+view of the relation of the world to Him and to God.
+
+I. The first point that He signalises is the world's ignorance.
+
+'These things they will do unto you,' and they will do them 'for My
+name's sake'; they will do them 'because they know not Him that sent
+Me.'
+
+'The world,' in Christ's language, is the aggregate of godless men. Or,
+to put it a little more sharply, our Lord, in this context, gives in
+His full adhesion to that narrow view which divides those who have come
+under the influence of His truth into two portions. There is no mincing
+of the matter in the antithesis which Christ here draws; no hesitation,
+as if there were a great central mass, too bad for a blessing perhaps,
+but too good for a curse; which was neither black nor white, but
+neutral grey. No! however it may be with the masses beyond the reach of
+the dividing and revealing power of His truth, the men that come into
+contact with Him, like a heap of metal filings brought into contact
+with a magnet, mass themselves into two bunches, the one those who
+yield to the attraction, and the other those who do not. The one is 'My
+disciples,' and the other is 'the world.' And now, says Jesus Christ,
+all that mass that stands apart from Him, and, having looked upon Him
+with the superficial eye of those men round about Him at that day, or
+of the men who hear of Him now, have no real love to Him--have, as the
+underlying motive of their conduct and their feelings, a real ignorance
+of God, 'They know not Him that sent Me.'
+
+Our Lord assumes that He is so completely the Copy and Revealer of the
+divine nature as that any man that looks upon Him has had the
+opportunity of becoming acquainted with God, and that any man who turns
+away from Him has lost that opportunity. The God that the men who do
+not love Jesus Christ believe in, is not the Father that sent Him. It
+is a fragment, a distorted image tinted by the lens. The world has its
+conception of God; but outside of Jesus Christ and His manifestation of
+the whole divine nature, the world's God is but a syllable, a fragment,
+a broken part of the perfect completeness. 'The Father of an infinite
+majesty,' and of as infinite a tenderness, the stooping God, the
+pitying God, the forgiving God, the loving God is known only where
+Christ is accepted. In other hearts He may be dimly hoped for, in other
+hearts He may be half believed in, in other hearts He may be thought
+possible; but hopes and anticipations and fears and doubts are not
+knowledge, and they who see not the light in Christ see but the
+darkness. Out of Him God is not known, and they that turn away from His
+beneficent manifestation turn their faces to the black north, from
+which no sun can shine. Brother, do you know God in Christ? Unless you
+do, you do not know the God who is.
+
+But there is a deeper meaning in that word than simply the possession
+of true thoughts concerning the divine nature. We know God as we know
+one another; because God is a Person, as we are persons, and the only
+way to know persons is through familiar acquaintance and sympathy. So
+the world which turns away from Christ has no acquaintance with God.
+
+This is a surface fact. Our Lord goes on to show what lies below it.
+
+II. His second thought here is--the world's ignorance in the face of
+Christ's light is worse than ignorance; it is sin.
+
+Mark how He speaks: 'If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had
+not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin.' And then again:
+'If I had not done amongst them the works which none other men did,
+they had not had sin.' So then He puts before us two forms of His
+manifestation of the divine nature, by His words and His works. Of
+these two He puts His words foremost, as being a deeper and more
+precious and brilliant revelation of what God is than are His miracles.
+The latter are subordinate, they come as a second source of
+illumination. Men who will not see the beauty and listen to the truth
+that lie in His word may perchance be led by His deed. But the word
+towers in its nature high above the work, and the miracle to the word
+is but like the picture in the child's book to the text, fit for feeble
+eyes and infantile judgments, but containing far less of the revelation
+of God than the sacred words which He speaks. First the words, next the
+miracles.
+
+But notice, too, how decisively, and yet simply and humbly and
+sorrowfully, our Lord here makes a claim which, on the lips of any but
+Himself, would have been mere madness of presumption. Think of any of
+us saying that our words made all the difference between innocent
+ignorance and criminality! Think of any of us saying that to listen to
+us, and not be persuaded, was the sin of sins! Think of any of us
+pointing to our actions and saying, In these God is so manifest that
+not to see Him augurs wickedness, and is condemnation! And yet Jesus
+Christ says all this. And, what is more wonderful, nobody wonders that
+He says it, and the world believes that He is saying the truth when He
+says it.
+
+How does that come? There is only one answer; only one. His words were
+the illuminating manifestation of God, and His deeds were the plain and
+unambiguous operation of the divine hand then and there, only because
+He Himself was divine, and in Him 'God was manifested in the flesh.'
+
+But passing from that, notice how our Lord here declares that in
+comparison with the sin of not listening to His words, and being taught
+by His manifestation, all other sins dwindle into nothing. 'If I had
+not spoken, they had not had sin.' That does not mean, of course, that
+these men would have been clear of all moral delinquency; it does not
+mean that there would not have been amongst them crimes against their
+own consciences, crimes against the law written on their own hearts,
+crimes against the law of revelation. There were liars, impure men,
+selfish men, and men committing all the ordinary forms of human
+transgression amongst them. And yet, says Christ, black and bespattered
+as these natures are, they are white in comparison with the blackness
+of the man who, looking into His face, sees nothing there that he
+should desire. Beside the mountain belching out its sulphurous flame
+the little pimple of a molehill is nought. And so, says Christ, heaven
+heads the count of sins with this--unbelief in Me.
+
+Ah, brother, as light grows responsibility grows, and this is the
+misery of all illumination that comes through Jesus Christ, that where
+it does not draw a man into His sweet love, and fill him with the
+knowledge of God which is eternal life, it darkens his nature and
+aggravates his condemnation, and lays a heavier burden upon his soul.
+The truth that the measure of light is the measure of guilt has many
+aspects. It turns a face of alleviation to the dark places of the
+earth; but just in the measure that it lightens the condemnation of the
+heathen, it adds weight to the condemnation of you men and women who
+are bathed in the light of Christianity, and all your days have had it
+streaming in upon you. The measure of the guilt is the brightness of
+the light. No shadows are so black as those which the intense sunshine
+of the tropics casts. And you and I live in the very tropical regions
+of divine revelation, and 'if we turn away from Him that spoke on earth
+and speaketh from heaven, of how much sorer punishment, think you,
+shall we be thought worthy' than those who live away out in the
+glimmering twilight of an unevangelised paganism, or who stood by the
+side of Jesus Christ when they had only His earthly life to teach them?
+
+III. The ignorance which is sin is the manifestation of hatred.
+
+Our Lord has sorrowfully contemplated the not knowing God, which in the
+blaze of His light can only come from wilful closing of the eyes, and
+is therefore the very sin of sins. But that, sad as it is, is not all
+which has to be said about that blindness of unbelief in Him. It
+indicates a rooted alienation of heart and mind and will from God, and
+is, in fact, the manifestation of an unconscious but real hatred. It is
+an awful saying, and one which the lips 'into which grace was poured'
+could not pronounce without a sigh. But it is our wisdom to listen to
+what it was His mercy to say.
+
+Observe our Lord's identification of Himself with the Father, so as
+that the feelings with which men regard Him are, _ipso facto_, the
+feelings with which they regard the Father God. 'He that hath seen Me
+hath seen the Father.' 'He that hath loved Me hath loved the Father.'
+'He that hath hated Me hath hated the Father.' An ugly word--a word
+that a great many of us think far too severe and harsh to be applied to
+men who simply are indifferent to the divine love. Some say, 'I am
+conscious of no hatred. I do not pretend to be a Christian, but I do
+not hate God. Take the ordinary run of people round about us in the
+world; if you say God is not in all their thoughts, I agree with you;
+but if you say that they _hate_ God, I do not believe it.'
+
+Well, what do you think the fact that men go through their days and
+weeks and months and years, and have not God in all their thoughts,
+indicates as to the central feeling of their hearts towards God?
+Granted that there is not actual antagonism, because there is no
+thought at all, do you think it would be possible for a man who loved
+God to go on for a twelvemonth and never think of, or care to please,
+or desire to be near, the object that he loved? And inasmuch as, deep
+down at the bottom of our moral being, there is no such thing possible
+as indifference and a perfect equipoise in reference to God, it is
+clear enough, I think, that--although the word must not be pressed as
+if it meant conscious and active antagonism,--where there is no love
+there is hate.
+
+If a man does not love God as He is revealed to him in Jesus Christ, he
+neither cares to please Him nor to think about Him, nor does he order
+his life in obedience to His commands. And if it be true that obedience
+is the very life-breath of love, disobedience or non-obedience is the
+manifestation of antagonism, and antagonism towards God is the same
+thing as hate.
+
+Dear friends, I want some of my hearers to-day who have never honestly
+asked themselves the question of what their relation to God is, to go
+down into the deep places of their hearts and test themselves by this
+simple inquiry: 'Do I do anything to please Him? Do I try to serve Him?
+Is it a joy to me to be near Him? Is the thought of Him a delight, like
+a fountain in the desert or the cool shadow of a great rock in the
+blazing wilderness? Do I turn to Him as my Home, my Friend, my All? If
+I do not, am I not deceiving myself by fancying that I stand neutral?'
+There is no neutrality in a man's relation to God. It is one thing or
+other. 'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.' 'The friendship of the world
+is enmity against God.'
+
+IV. And now, lastly, note how our Lord here touches the deep thought
+that this ignorance, which is sin, and is more properly named hatred,
+is utterly irrational and causeless.
+
+'All this will they do that it might be fulfilled which is written in
+their law, They hated Me without a cause.' One hears sighing through
+these words the Master's meek wonder that His love should be so met,
+and that the requital which He receives at men's hands, for such an
+unexampled and lavish outpouring of it, should be such a carelessness,
+reposing upon a hidden basis of such a rooted alienation.
+
+'Without a cause'; yes! that suggests the deep thought that the most
+mysterious and irrational thing in men's whole history and experience
+is the way in which they recompense God in Christ for what He has done
+for them. 'Be astonished, O ye heavens! and wonder, O ye earth!' said
+one of the old prophets; the mystery of mysteries, which can give no
+account of itself to satisfy reason, which has no apology, excuse, or
+vindication, is just that when God loves me I do not love Him back
+again; and that when Christ pours out the whole fullness of His heart
+upon me, nay dull and obstinate heart gives back so little to Him who
+has given me so much.
+
+'Without a cause.' Think of that Cross; think, as every poor creature
+on earth has a right to think, that he and she individually were in the
+mind and heart of the Saviour when He suffered and died, and then think
+of what we have brought Him for it. De we not stand ashamed at-if I
+might use so trivial a word,--the absurdity as well as at the
+criminality of our requital? Causeless love on the one side, occasioned
+by nothing but itself, and causeless indifference on the other,
+occasioned by nothing but itself, are the two powers that meet in this
+mystery-men's rejection of the infinite love of God.
+
+My friend, come away from the unreasonable people, come away from the
+men who can give no account of their attitude. Come away from those who
+pay benefits by carelessness, and a Love that died by an indifference
+that will not cast an eye upon that miracle of mercy, and let His love
+kindle the answering flame in your hearts. Then you will know God as
+only they who love Christ know Him, and in the sweetness of a mutual
+bond will lose the misery of self, and escape the deepening
+condemnation of those who see Christ on the Cross and do not care for
+the sight, nor learn by it to know the infinite tenderness and holiness
+of the Father that sent Him.
+
+
+
+OUR ALLY
+
+'But when the Comforter Is come, whom I will send unto you from the
+Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He
+shall testify of Me: And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have
+been with Me from the beginning.'--JOHN xv. 26, 27.
+
+Our Lord has been speaking of a world hostile to His followers and to
+Him. He proceeds, in the words which immediately follow our text, to
+paint that hostility as aggravated even to the pitch of religious
+murder. But here He lets a beam of light in upon the darkness. These
+forlorn Twelve, listening to Him, might well have said, 'Thou art about
+to leave us; how can we alone face this world in arms, with which Thou
+dost terrify us?' And here He lets them see that they will not be left
+alone, but have a great Champion, clad in celestial armour, who, coming
+straight from God, will be with them and put into their hands a weapon,
+with which they may conquer the world, and turn it into a friend, and
+with which alone they must meet the world's hate.
+
+So, then, we have three things in this text; the great promise of an
+Ally in the conflict with the world; the witness which that Ally bears,
+to fortify against the world; and the consequent witness with which
+Christians may win the world.
+
+I. Now consider briefly the first of these points, the great promise of
+an Ally in the conflict with the world.
+
+I may touch, very lightly, upon the wonderful designation of this
+Champion-Friend whom Christ sends, because on former occasions in this
+course of sermons we have had to deal with the same thoughts, and there
+will be subsequent opportunities of recurring to them. But I may just
+emphasise in a few sentences the points which our Lord here signalises
+in regard to the Champion whom He sends. There is a double designation
+of that Spirit, 'the Comforter' and 'the Spirit of truth.' There is a
+double description of His mission, as being 'sent' by Jesus, and as
+'proceeding from the Father,' and there is a single statement as to the
+position from which He comes to us. A word about each of these things.
+
+I have already explained in former sermons that the notion of
+'Comforter,' as it is understood in modern English, is a great deal too
+restricted and narrow to cover the whole ground of this great and
+blessed promise. The Comforter whom Christ sends is no mere drier of
+men's tears and gentle Consoler of human sorrows, but He is a mightier
+Spirit than that, and the word by which He is described in our text,
+which means 'one who is summoned to the side of another,' conveys the
+idea of a helper who is brought to the man to be helped, in order to
+render whatever aid and succour that man's weakness and circumstances
+may require. The verses before our text suggest what sort of aid and
+succour the disciples will need. They are to be as sheep in the midst
+of wolves. Their defenceless purity will need a Protector, a strong
+Shepherd. They stand alone amongst enemies. There must be some one
+beside them to fight for them, to shield and to encourage them, to be
+their Safety and their Peace. And that Paraclete, who is called to our
+side, comes for the special help which these special circumstances
+require, and is a strong Spirit who will be our Champion and our Ally,
+whatever antagonism may storm against us, and however strong and
+well-armed may be the assaulting legions of the world's hate.
+
+Then, still further, the other designation here of this strong
+Succourer and Friend is 'the Spirit of truth,' by which is designated,
+not so much His characteristic attribute, as rather the weapon which He
+wields, or the material with which He works. The 'truth' is His
+instrument; that is to say, the Spirit of God sent by Jesus Christ is
+the Strengthener, the Encourager, the Comforter, the Fighter for us and
+with us, because He wields that great body of truth, the perfect
+revelation of God, and man, and duty, and salvation, which is embodied
+in the incarnation and work of Jesus Christ our Lord. The truth is His
+weapon, and it is by it that He makes us strong.
+
+Then, still further, there is a twofold description here of the mission
+of this divine Champion, as 'sent' by Christ, and 'proceeding from the
+Father.'
+
+In regard to the former, I need only remind you that, in a previous
+part of this wonderful discourse, our Lord speaks of that divine Spirit
+as being sent by the Father in His name and in answer to His prayer.
+The representation here is by no means antagonistic to, or diverse
+from, that other representation, but rather the fact that the Father
+and the Son, according to the deep teaching of Scripture, are in so far
+one as that 'whatsoever the Son seeth the Father do that also the Son
+doeth likewise,' makes it possible to attribute to Him the work which,
+in another place, is ascribed to the Father. In speaking of the
+_Persons_ of the Deity, let us never forget that that word is only
+partially applicable to that ineffable Being, and that whilst with us
+it implies absolute separation of individuals, it does not mean such
+separation in the case of its imperfect transference to the mysteries
+of the divine nature; but rather, the Son doeth what the Father doeth,
+and therefore the Spirit is sent forth by the Father, and also the Son
+sends the Spirit.
+
+But, on the other hand, we are not to regard that divine Spirit as
+merely a Messenger sent by another. He 'proceeds from the Father.' That
+word has been the battlefield of theological controversy, with which I
+do not purpose to trouble you now. For I do not suppose that in its use
+here it refers at all to the subject to which it has been sometimes
+applied, nor contains any kind of revelation of the eternal depths of
+the divine Nature and its relations to itself. What is meant here is
+the historical coming forth into human life of that divine Spirit. And,
+possibly, the word 'proceeds' is chosen in order to contrast with the
+word 'sent,' and to give the idea of a voluntary and personal action of
+the Messenger, who not only is _sent_ by the Father, but of Himself
+_proceeds_ on the mighty work to which He is destined.
+
+Be that as it may, mark only, for the last thought here about the
+details of this great promise, that wonderful phrase, twice repeated in
+our Lord's words, and emphasised by its verbal repetition in the two
+clauses, which in all other respects are so different--'from the
+Father.' The word translated '_from_' is not the ordinary word so
+rendered, but rather designates _a position at the side of_ than an
+_origin from_, and suggests much rather the intimate and ineffable
+union between Father, Son, and Spirit, than the source from which the
+Spirit comes. I touch upon these things very lightly, and gather them
+up into one sentence. Here, then, are the points. A Person who is
+spoken of as 'He'--a divine Person whose home from of old has been
+close by the Father's side--a Person whose instrument is the revealed
+truth ensphered and in germ in the facts of Christ's incarnation and
+life--a divine Person, wielding the truth, who is sent by Christ as His
+Representative, and in some sense a continuance of His personal
+Presence--a divine, personal Spirit coming from the Father, wielding
+the truth, sent by Christ, and at the side of all the persecuted and
+the weak, all world-hated and Christian men, as their Champion, their
+Combatant, their Ally, their Inspiration, and their Power. Is not that
+enough to make the weakest strong? Is not that enough to make us 'more
+than conquerors through Him that loved us'? All nations have legends of
+the gods fighting at the head of their armies, and through the dust of
+battle the white horses and the shining armour of the celestial
+champions have been seen. The childish dream is a historical reality.
+It is not we that fight, it is the Spirit of God that fighteth in us.
+
+II. And so note, secondly, the witness of the Spirit which fortifies
+against the world.
+
+'He shall bear witness of Me.' Now we must especially observe here that
+little phrase, 'unto you.' For that tells us at once that the witness
+which our Lord has in mind here is something which is done within the
+circle of the Christian believers, and not in the wide field of the
+world's history or in nature. Of course it is a great truth that long
+before Jesus Christ, and to-day far beyond the limits of His name and
+knowledge, to say nothing of His faith and obedience, the Spirit of God
+is working. As of old He brooded over the chaotic darkness, ever
+labouring to turn chaos into order, and darkness into light, and
+deformity into beauty; so today, all over the field of humanity, He is
+operating. Grand as that truth is, it is not the truth here. What is
+spoken of here is something that is done in and on Christian men, and
+not even through them on the world, but in them for themselves. 'He
+shall testify of Me' to you.
+
+Now it is to be noted, also, that the first and special application of
+these words is to the little group listening to Him. Never were men
+more desolate and beaten down than these were, in the prospect of
+Christ's departure. Never were men more utterly bewildered and
+dispirited than these were, in the days between His crucifixion and His
+resurrection. Think of them during His earthly life, their narrow
+understandings, their manifold faults, moral as well as intellectual.
+How little perception they had of anything that He said to them, as
+their own foolish questions abundantly show! How little they had drunk
+in His spirit, as their selfish and ambitious janglings amongst
+themselves abundantly show! They were but Jews like their brethren,
+believing, indeed, that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, but not knowing
+what it was that they believed, or of what kind the Messiah was in whom
+they were thus partially trusting. But they loved Him and were led by
+Him, and so they were brought into a larger place by the Spirit whom
+Christ sent.
+
+What was it that made these dwarfs into giants in six weeks? What was
+it that turned their narrowness into breadth; that made them start up
+all at once as heroes, and that so swiftly matured them, as the fruits
+and flowers are ripened under tropical sunshine? The resurrection and
+ascension of Jesus Christ had a great deal to do with the change; but
+they were not its whole cause. There is no explanation of the
+extraordinary transformation of these men as we see them in the pages
+of the Gospels, and as we find them on the pages of the Acts of the
+Apostles, except this--the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus
+Christ as facts, and the Spirit on Pentecost as an indwelling
+Interpreter of the facts. He came, and the weak became strong, and the
+foolish wise, and the blind enlightened, and they began to
+understand--though it needed all their lives to perfect the
+teaching,--what it was that their ignorant hands had grasped and their
+dim perceptions had seen, when they touched the hands and looked upon
+the face of Jesus Christ. The witness of the Spirit of God working
+within them, working upon what they knew of the historical facts of
+Christ's life, and interpreting these to them, was the explanation of
+their change and growth. And the New Testament is the product of that
+change. Christ's life was the truth which the Spirit used, and a
+product of His teaching was these Epistles which we have, and which for
+us step into the place which the historical facts held for them, and
+become the instrument with which the Spirit of God will deepen our
+understanding of Christ and enlarge our knowledge of what He is to us.
+
+So, dear friends, whilst here we have a promise which specially
+applies, no doubt, to these twelve Apostles, and the result of which in
+them was different from its result in us, inasmuch as the Spirit's
+teaching, recorded in the New Testament, becomes for us the
+authoritative rule of faith and practice, the promise still applies to
+each of us in a secondary and modified sense. For there is nothing in
+these great valedictory words of our Lord's which has not a universal
+bearing, and is not the revelation of a permanent truth in regard to
+the Christian Church. And, therefore, here we have the promise of a
+universal gift to all Christian men and women, of an actual divine
+Spirit to dwell with each of us, to speak in our hearts.
+
+And what will He speak there? He will teach us a deeper knowledge of
+Jesus Christ. He will help us to understand better what He is. He will
+show us more and more of the whole sweep of His work, of the whole
+infinite truth for morals and religion, for politics and society, for
+time and for eternity, about men and about God, which is wrapped up in
+that great saying which we first of all, perhaps under the pressure of
+our own sense of sin, grasp as our deliverance from sin: 'God so loved
+the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
+in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' That is the sum
+of truth which the Spirit of God interprets to every faithful heart.
+And as the days roll on, and new problems rise, and new difficulties
+present themselves, and new circumstances emerge in our personal life,
+we find the truth, which we at first dimly grasped as life and
+salvation, opening out into wisdom and depth and meaning that we never
+dreamed of in the early hours. A Spirit that bears witness of Christ
+and will make us understand Him better every day we live, if we choose,
+is the promise that is given here, for all Christian men and women.
+
+Then note that this inward witness of Christ's depth and preciousness
+is our true weapon and stay against a hostile world. A little candle in
+a room will make the lightning outside almost invisible; and if I have
+burning in my heart the inward experience and conviction of what Jesus
+Christ is and what He has done and will do for me--Oh! then, all the
+storm without may rage, and it will not trouble me.
+
+If you take an empty vessel and bring pressure to bear upon it, in go
+the sides. Fill it, and they will resist the pressure. So with growing
+knowledge of Christ, and growing personal experience of His sweetness
+in our souls, we shall be able, untouched and undinted, to throw off
+the pressure which would otherwise have crushed us.
+
+Therefore, dear friends, here is the true secret of tranquillity, in an
+age of questioning and doubt. Let me have that divine Voice speaking in
+my heart, as I may have, and no matter what questions may be doubtful,
+this is sure--'We know in whom we have believed'; and we can say,
+'Settle all your controversies any way you like: one thing I know, and
+that divine Voice is ever saying it to me in my deepest
+consciousness--the Son of God is come and hath given us an
+understanding that we may know Him that is true; and we are in Him that
+is true.' Labour for more of this inward, personal conviction of the
+preciousness of Jesus Christ to strengthen you against a hostile world.
+
+And remember that there are conditions under which this Voice speaks in
+our souls. One is that we attend to the instrument which the Spirit of
+God uses, and that is 'the truth.' If Christians will not read their
+Bibles, they need not expect to have the words of these Bibles
+interpreted and made real to them by any inward experience. If you want
+to have a faith which is vindicated and warranted by your daily
+experience, there is only one way to get it, and that is, to use the
+truth which the Spirit uses, and to bring yourself into contact,
+continual and reverent and intelligent, with the great body of divine
+truth that is conveyed in these authoritative words of the Spirit of
+God speaking through the first witnesses.
+
+And there must be moral discipline too. Laziness, worldliness, the
+absorption of attention with other things, self-conceit, prejudice,
+and, I was going to say, almost above all, the taking of our religion
+and religious opinions at secondhand from men and teachers and books--all
+these stand in the way of our hearing the Spirit of God when He
+speaks. Come away from the babble and go by yourself, and take your
+Bibles with you, and read them, and meditate upon them, and get near
+the Master of whom they speak, and the Spirit which uses the truth will
+use it to fortify you.
+
+III. And, lastly, note the consequent witness with which the Christian
+may win the world.
+
+'And ye also shall bear witness of Me, because ye have been with Me
+from the beginning.' That 'also' has, of course, direct reference to
+the Apostles' witness to the facts of our Lord's historical appearance,
+His life, His death, His resurrection, and His ascension; and therefore
+their qualification was simply the companionship with Him which enabled
+them to say, 'We saw what we tell you; we were witnesses from the
+beginning.'
+
+But then, again, I say that there is no word here that belongs only to
+the Apostles; it belongs to us all, and so here is the task of the
+Christian Church in all its members. They receive the witness of the
+Spirit, and they are Christ's witnesses in the world.
+
+Note what we have to do--to bear witness; not to argue, not to adorn,
+but simply to attest. Note what we have to attest--the fact, not of the
+historical life of Jesus Christ, because we are not in a position to be
+witnesses of that, but the fact of His preciousness and power, and the
+fact of our own experience of what He has done for us. Note, that that
+is by far the most powerful agency for winning the world. You can never
+make men angry by saying to them, 'We have found tho Messias.' You
+cannot irritate people, or provoke them into a controversial opposition
+when you say, 'Brother, let me tell you my experience. I was dark, sad,
+sinful, weak, solitary, miserable; and I got light, gladness, pardon,
+strength, companionship, and a joyful hope. I was blind--you remember
+me when my eyes were dark, and I sat begging outside the Temple; I was
+blind, now I see--look at my eyeballs.' We can all say that. This is
+the witness that needs no eloquence, no genius, no anything except
+honesty and experience; and whosoever has tasted and felt and handled
+of the Word of Life may surely go to a brother and say, 'Brother, I
+have eaten and am satisfied. Will you not help yourselves?' We can all
+do it, and we ought to do it. The Christian privilege of being
+witnessed to by the Spirit of God in our hearts brings with it the
+Christian duty of being witnesses in our turn to the world. That is our
+only weapon against the hostility which godless humanity bears to
+ourselves and to our Master. We may win men by that; we can win them by
+nothing else. 'Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord, and My servants
+whom I have chosen.' Christian friend, listen to the Master, who says,
+'Him that confesseth Me before men, him will I also confess before My
+Father in heaven.'
+
+
+
+WHY CHRIST SPEAKS
+
+'These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.
+They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that
+whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these
+things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father,
+nor Me. But these things have I told you, that, when the time shall
+come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said
+not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you. But now I go My
+way to Him that sent Me; and none of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou?
+But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your
+heart.'--JOHN xvi. 1-6.
+
+The unbroken flow of thought, and the many subtle links of connection
+between the parts, of these inexhaustible last words of our Lord make
+any attempt at grouping them into sections more or less unsatisfactory
+and artificial. But I have ventured to throw these, perhaps too many,
+verses together for our consideration now, because a phrase of frequent
+recurrence in them manifestly affords a key to their main subject.
+Notice how our Lord four times repeats the expression, 'These things
+have I spoken unto you.' He is not so much adding anything new to His
+words, as rather contemplating the reasons for His speech now, the
+reasons for His silence before, and the imperfect apprehension of the
+things spoken which His disciples had, and which led to their making
+His announcement, thus imperfectly understood, an occasion for sorrow
+rather than for joy. There is a kind of landing place or pause here in
+the ascending staircase. Our Lord meditates for Himself, and invites us
+to meditate with Him, rather upon His past utterances than upon
+anything additional to them. So, then, whilst it is true that we have
+in two of these verses a repetition, in a somewhat more intense and
+detailed form, of the previous warnings of the hostility of the world,
+in the main the subject of the present section is that which I have
+indicated. And I take the fourfold recurrence of that clause to which I
+have pointed as marking out for us the leading ideas that we are to
+gather from these words.
+
+I. There is, first, our Lord's loving reason for His speech.
+
+This is given in a double form. 'These things have I spoken unto you,
+that ye should not be offended.' And, again, 'These things have I told
+you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of
+them.' These two statements substantially coalesce and point to the
+same idea.
+
+They are separated, as I have said, by a reiteration, in more emphatic
+form, of the dark prospect which He has been holding out to His
+disciples. He tells them that the world which hates them is to be fully
+identified with the apostate Jewish Church. 'The synagogue' is for them
+'the world.' There is a solemn lesson in that. The organised body that
+calls itself God's Church and House may become the most rampant enemy
+of Christ's people, and be the truest embodiment on the face of the
+earth of all that He means by 'the world.' A formal church is the true
+world always; and to-day as then. And such a body will do the cruellest
+things and believe that it is offering up Christ's witnesses as
+sacrifices to God. That is partly an aggravation and partly an
+alleviation of the sin. It is possible that the inquisitor and the man
+in the _San Benito_, whom he ties to the stake, may shake hands yet at
+His side up yonder. But a church which has become, the world will do
+its persecution and think that it is worship, and call the burning of
+God's people an _auto-da-fe_ (act of faith); and the bottom of it all
+is that, in the blaze of light, and calling themselves God's, 'they do
+not know' either God or Christ. They do not know the one because they
+will not know the other.
+
+But that is all parenthetical in the present section, and so I say
+nothing more about it; and ask you, rather, just to look at the loving
+reasons which Christ here suggests for His present speech--'that ye
+should not be offended,' or stumble. He warns them of the storm before
+it bursts, lest, when it bursts, it should sweep them away from their
+moorings. Of course, there could be nothing more productive of
+intellectual bewilderment, and more likely to lead to doubt as to one's
+own convictions, than to find oneself at odds with the synagogue about
+the question of the Messiah. A modest man might naturally say, 'Perhaps
+I am wrong and they are right.' A coward would be sure to say, 'I will
+sink my convictions and fall in with the majority.' The stumbling-block
+for these first Jewish converts, in the attitude of the whole mass of
+the nation towards Christ and His pretensions, is one of such a
+magnitude as we cannot, by any exercise of our imagination, realise.
+'And,' says Christ, 'the only way by which you will ever get over the
+temptation to intellectual doubt or to cowardly apostasy that arises
+from your being thrown out of sympathy with the whole mass of your
+people, and the traditions of the generations, is to reflect that I
+told you it would be so, before it came to pass.'
+
+Of course all that has a special bearing upon those to whom it was
+originally addressed, and then it has a secondary bearing upon
+Christians, whose lot it is to live in a time of actual persecution.
+But that does not in the slightest degree destroy the fact that it also
+has a bearing upon every one of us. For if you and I are Christian
+people, and trying to live like our Master, and to do as He would have
+us to do, we too shall often have to stand in such a very small
+minority, and be surrounded by people who take such an entirely
+opposite view of duty and of truth, as that we shall be only too much
+disposed to give up and falter in the clearness, fullness, and
+braveness of our utterance, and think, 'Well, perhaps after all it is
+better for me to hold my tongue.'
+
+And then, besides this, there are all the cares and griefs which befall
+each of us, with regard to which also, as well as with regard to the
+difficulties and dangers and oppositions which we may meet with in a
+faithful Christian life, the principles of my text have a distinct and
+direct application. He has told us in order that we might not stumble,
+because when the hour comes and the sorrow comes with it, we remember
+that He told us all about it before.
+
+It is one of the characteristics of Christianity that Jesus Christ does
+not try to enlist recruits by highly-coloured, rosy pictures of the
+blessing and joy of serving Him, keeping His hand all the while upon
+the weary marches and the wounds and pains. He tells us plainly at the
+beginning, 'If you take My yoke upon you, you will have to carry a
+heavy burden. You will have to abstain from a great many things that
+you would like to do. You will have to do a great many things that your
+flesh will not like. The road is rough, and a high wall on each side.
+There are lovely flowers and green pastures on the other side of the
+hedge, where it is a great deal easier walking upon the short grass
+than it is upon the stony path. The roadway is narrow, and the gateway
+is very strait, but the track goes steadily up. Will you accept the
+terms and come in and walk upon it?'
+
+It is far better and nobler, and more attractive also, to tell us
+frankly and fully the difficulties and dangers than to try and coax us
+by dwelling on pleasures and ease. Jesus Christ will have no service on
+false pretences, but will let us understand at the beginning that if we
+serve under His flag we have to make up our minds to hardships which
+otherwise we may escape, to antagonisms which otherwise will not be
+provoked, and to more than an ordinary share of sorrow and suffering
+and pain. 'Through much tribulation we must enter the Kingdom.'
+
+And the way by which all these troubles and cares, whether they be
+those incident and peculiar to Christian life, or those common to
+humanity, can best be met and overcome, is precisely by this thought,
+'The Master has told us before.' Sorrows anticipated are more easily
+met. It is when the vessel is caught with all its sails set that it is
+almost sure to go down, and, at all events, sure to be badly damaged in
+the typhoon. But when the barometer has been watched, and its fall has
+given warning, and everything movable has been made fast, and every
+spare yard has been sent below, and all tightened up and
+ship-shape--then she can ride out the storm. Forewarned is forearmed.
+Savages think, when an eclipse comes, that a wolf has swallowed the
+sun, and it will never come out again. We know that it has all been
+calculated beforehand, and since we know that it is coming to-morrow,
+when it does come, it is only a passing darkness. Sorrow anticipated is
+sorrow half overcome; and when it falls on us, the bewilderment, as if
+'some strange thing had happened,' will be escaped when we can remember
+that the Master has told us it all beforehand.
+
+And again, sorrow foretold gives us confidence in our Guide. We have
+the chart, and as we look upon it we see marked 'waterless country,'
+'pathless rocks,' 'desert and sand,' 'wells and palm-trees.' Well, when
+we come to the first of these, and find ourselves, as the map says, in
+the waterless country; and when, as we go on step by step, and mile
+after mile, we find it is all down there, we say to ourselves, 'The
+remainder will be accurate, too,' and if we are in 'Marah' to-day,
+where 'the water is bitter,' and nothing but the wood of the tree that
+grows there can ever sweeten it, we shall be at 'Elim' to-morrow, where
+there are 'the twelve wells and the seventy palm trees.' The chart is
+right, and the chart says that the end of it all is 'the land that
+flows with milk and honey.' He _has_ told us _this_; if there had been
+anything worse than this, He would have told us _that_. 'If it were not
+so I would have told you.' The sorrow foretold deepens our confidence
+in our Guide.
+
+Sorrow that comes punctually in accordance with His word plainly comes
+in obedience to His will. Our Lord uses a little word in this context
+which is very significant. He says, 'When _their hour_ is come.'
+
+'Their hour'--the time allotted to them. Allotted by whom? Allotted by
+Him. He could tell that they would come, because it was as His
+instruments that they came. 'Their time' was His appointment. It was
+only an 'hour,' a definite, appointed, and brief period in accordance
+with His loving purpose. It takes all sorts of weathers to make a year;
+and after all the sorts of weathers are run out, the year's results are
+realised and the calm comes. And so the good old hymn, with its rhythm
+that speaks at once of fear and triumph, has caught the true meaning of
+these words of our Lord's--
+
+  'Why should I complain
+    Of want or distress,
+  Temptation or pain?
+    He told me no less.'
+
+'These things have I spoken unto you that ye might not be offended.'
+
+II. Still further, note our Lord's loving reasons for past silence.
+'These things I said not unto you from the beginning, because I was
+with you.'
+
+Of course there had been in His early ministry hints, and very plain
+references, to persecutions and trials, but we must not restrict the
+'these things' of my text to that only, but rather include the whole of
+the previous chapter, in which He sets the sorrow and the hostility
+which His servants have to endure in their true light, as being the
+consequences of their union with Him and of the closeness and the
+identity of life and fate between the Vine and the branches. In so
+systematic and detailed fashion, and with such an exhibition of the
+grounds of its necessity, our Lord had not spoken of the world's
+hostility in His earlier ministry, but had reserved it to these last
+moments, and the reason why He had given but passing hints before was
+because He was there. What a superb confidence that expresses in His
+ability to shield His poor followers from all that might hurt and harm
+them! He spreads the ample robe of His protection over them, or rather,
+to go back to His own metaphor, 'as a hen gathereth her chickens under
+her wings' so He gathers them to His own breast, and stretches over
+them that which is at once protection and warmth, and keeps them safe.
+As long as He is there, no harm can come to them. But He is going away,
+and so it is time to speak, and to speak more plainly.
+
+That, too, yields for us, dear brethren, truths that apply to us quite
+as much as to that little group of silent listeners. For us, too,
+difficulties and sorrows, though foretold in general terms, are largely
+hidden till they are near. It would have been of little use for Christ
+to have spoken more plainly in those early days of His ministry. The
+disciples managed to forget and to misunderstand His plain utterances,
+for instance, about His own death and resurrection. There needs to be
+an adaptation between the hearing ear and the spoken word, in order
+that the word spoken should be of use, and there are great tracts of
+Scripture dealing with the sorrows of life, which lie perfectly dark
+and dead to us, until experience vitalises them. The old Greeks used to
+send messages from one army to another by means of a roll of parchment
+twisted spirally round a baton, and then written on. It was perfectly
+unintelligible when it fell into a man's hands that had not a
+corresponding baton to twist it upon. Many of Christ's messages to us
+are like that. You can only understand the utterances when life gives
+you the frame round which to wrap them, and then they flash up into
+meaning, and we say at once, 'He told us it all before, and I scarcely
+knew that He had told me, until this moment when I need it.'
+
+Oh, it is merciful that there should be a gradual unveiling of what is
+to come to us, that the road should wind, and that we should see so
+short a way before us. Did you never say to yourselves, 'If I had known
+all this before, I do not think I could have lived to face it'? And did
+you not feel how good and kind and loving it was, that in the
+revelation there had been concealment, and that while Jesus Christ had
+told us in general terms that we must expect sorrows and trials, this
+specific form of sorrow and trial had not been foreseen by us until we
+came close to it? Thank God for the loving reticence, and for the as
+loving eloquence of His speech and of His silence, with regard to
+sorrow.
+
+And take this further lesson, that there ought to be in all our lives
+times of close and blessed communion with that Master, when the sense
+of His presence with us makes all thought of sorrows and trials in the
+future out of place and needlessly disturbing. If these disciples had
+drunk in the spirit of Jesus Christ when they were with Him, then they
+would not have been so bewildered when He left them. When He was near
+them there was something better for them to do than to be 'over
+exquisite to cast the fashion of uncertain evils' in the
+future--namely, to grow into His life, to drink in the sweetness of His
+presence, to be moulded into the likeness of His character, to
+understand Him better, and to realise His nearness more fully. And,
+dear brethren, for us all there are times--and it is our own fault if
+these are not very frequent and blessed--when thus, in such an hour of
+sweet communion with the present Christ, the future will be all radiant
+and calm, if we look into it, or, better, the present will be so
+blessed that there will be no need to think of the future. These men in
+the upper chamber, if they had learnt all the lessons that He was
+teaching them then, would not have gone out, to sleep in Gethsemane,
+and to tell lies in the high priest's hall, and to fly like frightened
+sheep from the Cross, and to despair at the tomb. And you and I, if we
+sit at His table, and keep our hearts near Him, eating and drinking of
+that heavenly manna, shall 'go in the strength of that meat forty days
+into the wilderness,' and say--
+
+  'E'en let the unknown to-morrow
+  Bring with it what it may.'
+
+III. Lastly, I must touch, for the sake of completeness, upon the final
+thought in these pregnant verses, and that is, the imperfect
+apprehension of our Lord's words, which leads to sorrow instead of joy.
+
+'Now I go My way to Him that sent Me; and none of you asketh Me,
+Whither goest Thou? But because I have said these things unto you,
+sorrow hath filled your heart.' He had been telling them--and it was
+the one definite idea that they gathered from His words--that He was
+going. And what did they say? They said, 'Going! What is to become of
+_us_?' If there had been a little less selfishness and a little more
+love, and if they had put their question, 'Going! What is to become of
+_Him_?' then it would not have been sorrow that would have filled their
+hearts, but a joy that would have flooded out all the sorrow, 'and the
+winter of their discontent' would have been changed into 'glorious
+summer,' because He was going to Him that sent Him; that is to say, He
+was going with His work done and His message accomplished. And
+therefore, if they could only have overlooked their own selves, and the
+bearing of His departure, as it seemed to them, on themselves, and have
+thought of it a little as it affected Him, they would have found that
+all the oppressive and the dark in it would have disappeared, and they
+would have been glad.
+
+Ah, dear brethren, that gives us a thought on which I can but touch
+now, that the steadfast contemplation of the ascended Christ, who has
+gone to the Father, having finished His work, is the sovereign antidote
+against all sense of separation and solitude, the sovereign power by
+which we may face a hostile world, the sovereign cure for every sorrow.
+If we could live in the light of the great triumphant, ascended Lord,
+then, Oh, how small would the babble of the world be. If the great
+White Throne, and He that sits upon it, were more distinctly before us,
+then we could face anything, and sorrow would 'become a solemn scorn of
+ills,' and all the transitory would be reduced to its proper
+insignificance, and we should be emancipated from fear and every
+temptation to unfaithfulness and apostasy. Look up to the Master who
+has gone, and as the dying martyr outside the city wall 'saw the
+heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing'--having sprung to His feet
+to help His poor servant--'at the right hand of God,' so with that
+vision in our eyes and the light of that Face flashing upon our faces,
+and making them like the angels', we shall be masters of grief and
+care, and pain and trial, and enmity and disappointment, and sorrow and
+sin, and feel that the absent Christ is the present Christ, and that
+the present Christ is the conquering power in us.
+
+Dear brethren, there is nothing else that will make us victors over the
+world and ourselves. If we can grasp Him by our faith and keep
+ourselves near Him, then union with Him as of the Vine and the
+branches, which will result inevitably in suffering here, will result
+as inevitably in joy hereafter. For He will never relax the adamantine
+grasp of His strong hand until He raises us to Himself, and 'if so be
+that we suffer with Him we shall also be glorified together.'
+
+
+
+THE DEPARTING CHRIST AND THE COMING SPIRIT
+
+'Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go
+away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but
+if I depart, I will send Him unto you. And when He is come, He will
+_convince_ the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of
+judgment.'--JOHN xvi. 7, 8.
+
+We read these words in the light of all that has gone after, and to us
+they are familiar and almost thread-bare. But if we would appreciate
+their sublimity, we must think away nineteen centuries, and all
+Christendom, and recall these eleven poor men and their peasant Leader
+in the upper room. They were not very wise, nor very strong, and
+outside these four walls there was scarcely a creature in the whole
+world that had the least belief either in Him or in them. They had
+everything against them, and most of all their own hearts. They had
+nothing for them but their Master's promise. Their eyes had been dimmed
+by their sorrowful hearts, so that they could not see the truth which
+He had been trying to reveal to them; and His departure had presented
+itself to them only as it affected themselves, and therefore had
+brought a sense of loss and desolation.
+
+And now He bids them think of that departure, as it affects themselves,
+as pure gain. 'It is for your profit that I go away.' He explains that
+staggering statement by the thought which He has already presented to
+them, in varying aspects, of His departure as the occasion for the
+coming of that Great Comforter, who, when He is come, will through them
+work upon the world, which knows neither them nor Him. They are to go
+forth 'as sheep in the midst of wolves,' but in this promise He tells
+them that they will become the judges and accusers of the world, which,
+by the Spirit dwelling in them, they will be able to overcome, and
+convict of error and of fault.
+
+We must remember that the whole purpose of the words which we are
+considering now is the strengthening of the disciples in their conflict
+with the world, and that, therefore, the operations of that divine
+Spirit which are here spoken of are operations carried on by their
+instrumentality and through the word which they spake. With that
+explanation we can consider the great words before us.
+
+I. The first thing that strikes me about them is that wonderful thought
+of the gain to Christ's servants from Christ's departure. 'It is
+expedient for you that I go away.'
+
+I need not enlarge here upon what we have had frequent occasion to
+remark, the manner in which our Lord here represents the complex whole
+of His death and ascension as being His own voluntary act. He 'goes.'
+He is neither taken away by death nor rapt up to heaven in a whirlwind,
+but of His own exuberant power and by His own will He goes into the
+region of the grave and thence to the throne. Contrast the story of His
+ascension with that Old Testament story of the ascension of Elijah. One
+needed the chariot of fire and the horses of fire to bear him up into
+the sphere, all foreign to his mortal and earthly manhood; the Other
+needed no outward power to lift Him, nor any vehicle to carry Him from
+this dim spot which men call earth, but slowly, serenely, upborne by
+His own indwelling energy, and rising as to His native home, He
+ascended up on high, and went where the very manner of His going
+proclaimed that He had been before. 'If _I go_ away, I will send Him.'
+
+But that is a digression. What we are concerned with now is the thought
+of Christ's departure as being a step in advance, and a positive gain,
+even to those poor, bewildered men who were clustering round Him,
+depending absolutely upon Himself, and feeling themselves orphaned and
+helpless without Him.
+
+Now if we would feel the full force and singularity of this saying of
+our Lord's, let us put side by side with it that other one, 'I have a
+desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better.
+Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.' Why is it
+that the Apostle says, 'Though I want to go I am bound to stay?' and
+why is it that the Master says, 'It is for your good that I am going,'
+but because of the essential difference in the relation of the two to
+the people who are to be left, and in the continuance of the work of
+the two after they had departed? Paul knew that when he went, whatever
+befell those whom he loved and would fain help, he could not stretch a
+hand to do anything for them. He knew that death dropped the portcullis
+between him and them, and, whatever their sore need on the one side of
+the iron gate, he on the other could not succour or save. Jesus Christ
+said, 'It is better for you that I should go,' because He knew that all
+His influences would flow through the grated door unchecked, and that,
+departed, He would still be the life of them that trusted in Him; and,
+having left them, would come near them, by the very act of leaving them.
+
+And so there is here indicated for us--as we shall have occasion to see
+more fully, presently,--in that one singular and anomalous fact of
+Christ's departure being a positive gain to those that trust in Him,
+the singularity and uniqueness of His work for them and His relation to
+them.
+
+The words mean a great deal more than the analogies of our relation to
+dear ones or great ones, loves or teachers, who have departed, might
+suggest. Of course we all know that it is quite true that death reveals
+to the heart the sweetness and the preciousness of the departed ones,
+and that its refining touch manifests to our blind eyes what we did not
+see so clearly when they were beside us. We all know that it needs
+distance to measure men, and the dropping away of the commonplace and
+the familiar ere we can see 'the likeness' of our contemporaries 'to
+the great of old.' We have to travel across the plains before we can
+measure the relative height of the clustered mountains, and discern
+which is manifestly the loftiest. And all _this_ is true in reference
+to Jesus Christ and His relation to us. But that does not go half-way
+towards the understanding of such words as these of my text, which tell
+us that so singular and solitary is His relation to us that the thing
+which ends the work of all other men, and begins the decay of their
+influence, begins for Him a higher form of work and a wider sweep of
+sway. He is nearer us when He leaves us, and works with us and in us
+more mightily from the throne than He did upon the earth. Who is He of
+whom this is true? And what kind of work is it of which it is true that
+death continues and perfects it?
+
+So let me note, before I pass on, that there is a great truth here for
+us. We are accustomed to look back to our Lord's earthly ministry, and
+to fancy that those who gathered round Him, and heard Him speak, and
+saw His deeds, were in a better position for loving Him and trusting
+Him than you and I are. It is all a mistake. We have lost nothing that
+they had which was worth the keeping; and we have gained a great deal
+which they had not. We have not to compare our relation to Christ with
+theirs, as we might do our relation to some great thinker or poet, with
+that of his contemporaries, but we have Christ in a better form, if I
+may so speak; and we, on whom the ends of the world are come, may have
+a deeper and a fuller and a closer intimacy with Him than was possible
+for men whose perceptions were disturbed by sense, and who had to
+pierce through 'the veil, that is to say, His flesh,' before they
+reached the Holy of Holies of His spirit.
+
+II. Note, secondly, the coming for which Christ's going was needful,
+and which makes that going a gain.
+
+'If I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart
+I will send Him unto you.' Now we have already, in former sermons,
+touched upon many of the themes which would naturally be suggested by
+these words, and therefore I do not propose to dwell upon them at any
+length. There is only one point to which I desire to refer briefly
+here, and that is the necessity which here seems to be laid down by our
+Lord for His departure, in order that that divine Spirit may come and
+dwell with men. That necessity goes down deeper into the mysteries of
+the divinity and of the processes and order of divine revelation than
+it is given to us to follow. But though we can only speak superficially
+and fragmentarily about such a matter, let me just remind you, in the
+briefest possible words, of what Scripture plainly declares to us with
+regard to this high and, in its fullness, ineffable matter. It tells us
+that the complete work of Jesus Christ--not merely His coming upon
+earth, or His life amongst men, but also His sacrificial death upon the
+Cross--was the necessary preliminary, and in some sense procuring
+cause, of the gift of that divine Spirit. It tells us--and there we are
+upon ground on which we can more fully verify the statement--that His
+work must be completed ere that Spirit can be sent, because the word is
+the Spirit's weapon for the world, and the revelation of God in Jesus
+must be ended, ere the application of that revelation, which is the
+Spirit's work, can be begun in its full energy.
+
+It tells us, further, (and there our eyesight fails, and we have to
+accept what we are told), that Jesus Christ must ascend on high and be
+at the right hand of God, ere He can pour down upon men the fullness of
+the Spirit which dwelt uncommunicated in Him in the time of His earthly
+humiliation. 'Thou hast ascended up on high,' and therefore 'Thou hast
+given gifts to men.' We accept the declaration, not knowing all the
+deep necessity in the divine Nature on which it rests, but believing
+it, because He in whom we have confidence has declared it to us.
+
+And we are further told--and there our experience may, in some degree,
+verify the statement,--that only those, in whose hearts there is union
+to Jesus Christ by faith in His completed work and ascended glory, are
+capable of receiving that divine gift. So every way, both as regards
+the depths of Deity and the processes of revelation, and as regards the
+power of the humanity of Christ to impart His Spirit, and as regards
+the capacity of us poor recipients to receive it, the words of my text
+seem to be confirmed, and we can, though not with full insight, at any
+rate with full faith, accept the statement, 'If I go not away, the
+Comforter will not come to you.'
+
+That coming is gain. It teaches a deeper knowledge of Him. It teaches
+and gives a fuller possession of the life of righteousness which is
+like His own. It draws us into the fellowship of the Son.
+
+III. Lastly, note here the threefold conflict of the Spirit through the
+Church with the world.
+
+'When He is come He will convict the world' in respect 'of sin and of
+righteousness and of judgment.' By the 'reproof,' or rather
+'conviction,' which is spoken about here, is meant the process by which
+certain facts are borne in upon men's understanding and consciences,
+and, along with these facts, the conviction of error and fault in
+reference to them. It is no mere process of demonstration of an
+intellectual truth, but it is a process of conviction of error in
+respect to great moral and religious truth, and of manifestation of the
+truths in regard to which the error and the sin have been committed. So
+we have here the triple division of the great work which the divine
+Spirit does, through Christian men and women, in the world.
+
+'He shall convict the world of sin.' The outstanding first
+characteristic of the whole Gospel message is the new gravity which it
+attaches to the fact of sin, the deeper meaning which it gives to the
+word, and the larger scope which it shows its blighting influences to
+have had in humanity. Apart from the conviction of sin by the Spirit
+using the word proclaimed by disciples, the world has scarcely a notion
+of what sin is, its inwardness, its universality, the awfulness of it
+as a fact affecting man's whole being and all his relations to God. All
+these conceptions are especially the product of Christian truth.
+Without it, what does the world know about the poison of sin? And what
+does it care about the poison until the conviction has been driven home
+to the reluctant consciousness of mankind by the Spirit wielding the
+word? This conviction comes first in the divine order. I do not say
+that the process of turning a man of the world into a member of
+Christ's Church always begins, as a matter of fact, with the conviction
+of sin. I believe it most generally does so; but without insisting upon
+a pedantic adherence to a sequence, and without saying a word about the
+depth and intensity of such a conviction, I am here to assert that a
+Christianity which is not based upon the conviction of sin is an
+impotent Christianity, and will be of very little use to the men who
+profess it, and will have no power to propagate itself in the world.
+Everything in our conception of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and of His
+work for us depends upon what we think about this primary fact of man's
+condition, that he is a sinful man. The root of all heresy lies there.
+Every error that has led away men from Jesus Christ and His Cross may
+be traced up to defective notions of sin and a defective realisation of
+it. If I do not feel as the Bible would have me feel, that I am a
+sinful man, I shall think differently of Jesus Christ and of my need of
+Him, and of what He is to me. Christianity may be to me a system of
+beautiful ethics, a guide for life, a revelation of much precious
+truth, but it will not be the redemptive power without which I am lost.
+And Jesus Christ will be shorn of His brightest beams, unless I see Him
+as the Redeemer of my soul from sin, which else would destroy and is
+destroying it. Is Christianity merely a better morality? Is it merely a
+higher revelation of the divine Nature? Or does it _do_ something as
+well as _say_ something, and what does it do? Is Jesus Christ only a
+Teacher, a Wise Man, an Example, a Prophet, or is He the Sacrifice for
+the sins of the world? Oh, brethren, we must begin where this text
+begins; and our whole conception of Him and of His work for us must be
+based upon this fact, that we are sinful and lost, and that Jesus
+Christ, by His sweet and infinite love and all-powerful sacrifice, is
+our soul's Redeemer and our only Hope. The world has to be convicted
+and convinced of sin as the first step to its becoming a Church.
+
+The next step of this divine Spirit's conviction is that which
+corresponds to the consciousness of sin, the dawning upon the darkened
+soul of the blessed sunrise of righteousness. The triple subjects of
+conviction must necessarily belong to the world of which our Lord is
+speaking. It must be the world that is convinced, and it must be the
+world's sin and the world's righteousness and the world's judgment of
+which my text speaks. How, then, can there follow on the conviction of
+sin as mine a conviction of righteousness as mine? I know but one way,
+'Not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which
+is of God through faith.' When a man is convinced of sin, there will
+dawn upon the heart the wondrous thought that a righteousness may be
+his, given to him from above, which will sweep away all his sin and
+make him righteous as Christ is righteous. That conviction will never
+awake in its blessed and hope-giving power unless it be preceded by the
+other. It is of no use to exhibit medicine to a man who does not know
+himself diseased. It is of no use to talk about righteousness to a man
+who has not found himself to be a sinner. And it is of as little use to
+talk to a man of sin unless you are ready to tell him of a
+righteousness that will cover all his sin. The one conviction without
+the other is misery, the second without the first is irrelevant and far
+away.
+
+The world as a world has but dim and inadequate conceptions of what
+righteousness is. A Pharisee is its type, or a man that keeps a clean
+life in regard to great transgressions; a whited sepulchre of some sort
+or other. The world apart from Christ has but languid desires after
+even the poor righteousness that it understands, and the world apart
+from Christ is afflicted by a despairing scepticism as to the
+possibility of ever being righteous at all. And there are men listening
+to me now in every one of these three conditions--not caring to be
+righteous, not understanding what it is to be righteous, and cynically
+disbelieving that it is possible to be so. My brother, here comes the
+message to you--first, Thou art sinful; second, God's righteousness
+lies at thy side to take and wear if thou wilt.
+
+The last of these triple convictions is 'judgment.' If there be in the
+world these two things both operating, sin and righteousness, and if
+the two come together, what then? If there is to be a collision, as
+there must be, which will go down? Christ tells us that this divine
+Spirit will teach us that righteousness will triumph over sin, and that
+there will be a judgment which will destroy that which is the weaker,
+though it seems the stronger. Now I take it that the judgment which is
+spoken about here is not merely a future retribution beyond the grave,
+but that, whilst that is included, and is the principal part of the
+idea, we are always to regard the judgment of the hereafter as being
+prepared for by the continual judgment here.
+
+And so there are two thoughts, a blessed one and a terrible one,
+wrapped up in that word--a blessed thought for us sinful men, inasmuch
+as we may be sure that the divine righteousness, which is given to us,
+will judge us and separate us day by day from our sins; and a terrible
+thought, inasmuch as if I, a sinful man, do not make friends with and
+ally myself to the divine righteousness which is proffered to me, I
+shall one day have to front it on the other side of the flood, when the
+contact must necessarily be to me destruction.
+
+Time does not allow me to dwell upon these solemn matters as I fain
+would, but let me gather all I have been feebly trying to say to you
+now into one sentence. This threefold conviction, in conscience,
+understanding, and heart, of sin which is mine, of righteousness which
+may be mine, and of judgment which must be mine--this threefold
+conviction is that which makes the world into a Church. It is the
+message of Christianity to each of us. How do you stand to it? Do you
+hearken to the Spirit who is striving to convince you of these? Or do
+you gather yourselves together into an obstinate, close-knit unbelief,
+or a loose-knit indifference which is as impenetrable? Beware that you
+resist not the Spirit of God!
+
+
+
+THE CONVICTING FACTS
+
+'Of sin, because they believe not on Me; Of righteousness, because I go
+to My Father, and ye see Me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of
+this world is judged.'--JOHN xvi. 9-11.
+
+Our Lord has just been telling His disciples how He will equip them, as
+His champions, for their conflict with the world. A divine Spirit is
+coming to them who will work in them and through them; and by their
+simple and unlettered testimony will 'convict,' or convince, the mass
+of ungodly men of error and crime in regard to these three things--sin,
+righteousness, and judgment.
+
+He now advances to tell them that this threefold conviction which they,
+as counsel for the prosecution, will establish as against the world at
+the bar, will be based upon three facts: first, a truth of experience;
+second, a truth of history; third, a truth of revelation, all three
+facts having reference to Jesus Christ and His relation to men.
+
+Now these three facts are--the world's unbelief; Christ's ascension and
+session at the right hand of God; and the 'judgment of the prince of
+this world.' If we remember that what our Lord is here speaking about
+is the work of a divine Spirit through the ministration of believing
+men, then Pentecost with its thousands 'pricked to the heart,' and the
+Roman ruler who trembled, as the prisoner 'reasoned of righteousness
+and judgment to come,' are illustrations of the way in which the humble
+disciples towered above the pride and strength of the world, and from
+criminals at its bar became its accusers.
+
+These three facts are the staple and the strength of the Christian
+ministry. These three facts are misapprehended, and have failed to
+produce their right impression, unless they have driven home to our
+consciences and understandings the triple conviction of my text. And so
+I come to you with the simple questions which are all-important for
+each of us: Have you looked these three facts in the face--unbelief,
+the ascended Christ, a judged prince of the world, and have you learned
+their meaning as it bears on your own character and religious life?
+
+I. The first point here is the rejection of Jesus Christ as the climax
+of the world's sin.
+
+Strange words! They are in some respects the most striking instance of
+that gigantic self-assertion of our Lord, of which we have had occasion
+to see so many examples in these valedictory discourses. The world is
+full of all unrighteousness and wickedness, lust and immorality,
+intemperance, cruelty, hatred; all manner of buzzing evils that stink
+and sting around us. But Jesus Christ passes them all by and points to
+a mere negative thing, to an inward thing, to the attitude of men
+towards Himself; and He says, 'If you want to know what sin is, look at
+that!' _There_ is the worst of all sins. There is a typical instance of
+what sin is, in which, as in some anatomical preparation, you may see
+all its fibres straightened out and made visible. Look at that if you
+want to know what the world is, and what the world's sin is.
+
+Some of us do not think that it is sin at all; and tell us that man is
+no more responsible for his belief than he is for the colour of his
+hair, and suchlike talk. Well, let me put a very plain question: What
+is it that a man turns away from when he turns away from Jesus Christ?
+The plainest, the loveliest, the loftiest, the perfectest revelation of
+God in His beauty and completeness that ever dawned, or ever will dawn
+upon creation. He rejects that. Anything more? Yes! He turns away from
+the loveliest human life that ever was, or will be, lived. Anything
+more? Yes! He turns away from a miracle of self-sacrificing love, which
+endured the Cross for enemies, and willingly embraced agony and shame
+and death for the sake of those who inflicted them upon Him. Anything
+more? Yes! He turns away from hands laden with, and offering him, the
+most precious and needful blessings that a poor soul on earth can
+desire or expect.
+
+And if this be true, if unbelief in Jesus Christ be indeed all this
+that I have sketched out, another question arises, What does such an
+attitude and act indicate as to the rejector? He stands in the presence
+of the loveliest revelation of the divine nature and heart, and he sees
+no light in it. Why, but because he has blinded his eyes and cannot
+behold? He is incapable of seeing 'God manifest in the flesh,' because
+he 'loves the darkness rather than the light.' He turns away from the
+revelation of the loveliest and most self-sacrificing love. Why, but
+because he bears in himself a heart cased with brass and triple steel
+of selfishness, against the manifestation of love? He turns away from
+the offered hands heaped with the blessings that he needs. Why, but
+because he does not care for the gifts that are offered? Forgiveness,
+cleansing, purity a heaven which consists in the perfecting of all
+these, have no attractions for him. The fugitive Israelites in the
+wilderness said, 'We do not want your light, tasteless manna. It may do
+very well for angels, but we have been accustomed to garlic and onions
+down in Egypt. They smell strong, and there is some taste in _them_.
+Give us _them_.' And so some of you say, 'The offer of pardon is of no
+use to me, for I am not troubled with my sin. The offer of purity has
+no attraction to me, for I rather like the dirt and wallowing in it.
+The offer of a heaven of your sort is but a dreary prospect to me. And
+so I turn away from the hands that offer precious things.' The man who
+is blind to the God that beams, lambent and loving, upon him in the
+face of Jesus Christ--the man who has no stirrings of responsive
+gratitude for the great outpouring of love upon the Cross--the man who
+does not care for anything that Jesus Christ can give him, surely, in
+turning away, commits a real sin.
+
+I do not deny, of course, that there may be intellectual difficulties
+cropping up in connection with the acceptance of the message of
+salvation in Jesus Christ, but as, on the one hand, I am free to admit
+that many a man may be putting a true trust in Christ which is joined
+with a very hesitant grasp of some of the things which, to me, are the
+very essence and heart of the Gospel; so, on the other side, I would
+have you remember that there is necessarily a moral quality in our
+attitude to all moral and religious truth; and that sin does not cease
+to be sin because its doer is a thinker or has systematised his
+rejection into a creed. Though it is not for us to measure motives and
+to peer into hearts, at the bottom there lies what Christ Himself put
+His finger on: 'Ye _will_ not come to me that ye might have life.'
+
+Then, still further, let me remind you that our Lord here presents this
+fact of man's unbelief as being an instance in which we may see what
+the real nature of sin is. To use learned language, it is a 'typical'
+sin. In all other acts of sin you get the poison manipulated into
+various forms, associated with other elements, disguised more or less.
+But here, because it is purely an inward act having relation to Jesus
+Christ, and to God manifested in Him, and not done at the bidding of
+the animal nature, or of any of the other strong temptations and
+impulses which hurry men into gross and coarse forms of manifest
+transgression, you get sin in its essence. Belief in Christ is the
+surrender of myself. Sin is living to myself rather than to God. And
+there you touch the bottom. All those different kinds of sin, however
+unlike they may be to one another--the lust of the sensualist, the
+craft of the cheat, the lie of the deceitful, the passion of the
+unregulated man, the avarice of the miser--all of them have this one
+common root, a diseased and bloated regard to self. The definition of
+sin is,--living to myself and making myself my own centre. The
+definition of faith is,--making Christ my centre and living for Him.
+Therefore, if you want to know what is the sinfulness of sin, there it
+is. And if I may use such a word in such a connection, it is all packed
+away in its _purest_ form in the act of rejecting that Lord.
+
+Brother, it is no exaggeration to say that, when you have summoned up
+before you the ugliest forms of man's sins that you can fancy, this one
+overtops them all, because it presents in the simplest form the
+mother-tincture of all sins, which, variously coloured and perfumed and
+combined, makes the evil of them all. A heap of rotting, poisonous
+matter is offensive to many senses, but the colourless, scentless,
+tasteless drop has the poison in its most virulent form, and is not a
+bit less virulent, though it has been learnedly distilled and
+christened with a scientific name, and put into a dainty jewelled
+flask. 'This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world,
+and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.'
+I lay that upon the hearts and consciences of some of my present
+hearers as the key to their rejection or disregard of Christ and His
+salvation.
+
+II. Now, secondly, notice the ascension of Jesus Christ as the pledge
+and the channel of the world's righteousness--'Because I go to the
+Father, and ye see Me no more.'
+
+He speaks as if the process of departure were already commenced. It had
+three stages--death, resurrection, ascension; but these three are all
+parts of the one departure. And so He says: 'Because, in the future,
+when ye go forth to preach in My name, I shall be there with the
+Father, having finished the work for which He sent Me; therefore you
+will convince the world of righteousness.'
+
+Now let me put that briefly in two forms. First of all, the fact of an
+ascended Christ is the guarantee and proof of His own complete
+fulfilment of the ideal of a righteous man. Or to put it into simpler
+words, suppose Jesus Christ is dead; suppose that He never rose from
+the grave; suppose that His bones mouldered in some sepulchre; suppose
+that there had been no ascension--would it be possible to believe that
+He was other than an ordinary man? And would it be possible to believe
+that, however beautiful these familiar records of His life, and however
+lovely the character which they reveal, there was really in Him no sin
+at all? A dead Christ means a Christ who, like the rest of us, had His
+limitations and His faults. But, on the other hand, if it be true that
+He sprang from the grave because 'it was not possible that He should be
+holden of it,' and because in His nature there was no proclivity to
+death, since there had been no indulgence in sin; and if it be true
+that He ascended up on high because that was His native sphere, and He
+rose to it as naturally as the water in the valley will rise to the
+height of the hill from which it has descended, then we can see that
+God has set His seal upon that life by that resurrection and ascension;
+and as we gaze on Him swept up heavenward by His own calm power, a
+light falls backward upon all His earthly life, upon His claims to
+purity, and to union with the Father, and we say, 'Surely this was a
+perfectly righteous Man.'
+
+And further let me remind you that with the supernatural facts of our
+Lord's resurrection and ascension stands or falls the possibility of
+His communicating any of His righteousness to us sinful men. If there
+be no such possibility, what does Jesus Christ's beauty of character
+matter to me? Nothing! I shall have to stumble on as best I can,
+sometimes ashamed and rebuked, sometimes stimulated and sometimes
+reduced to despair, by looking at the record of His life. If He be
+lying dead in a forgotten grave, and hath not 'ascended up on high,'
+then there can come from His history and past nothing other in kind,
+though, perhaps, a little more in degree, than comes from the history
+and the past of the beautiful and white souls that have sometimes lived
+in the world. He is a saint like them, He is a teacher like them, He is
+a prophet like some of them, and we have but to try our best to copy
+that marble purity and white righteousness. But if He hath ascended up
+on high, and sits there, wielding the forces of the universe, as we
+believe He does, then to Him belongs the divine prerogative of
+imparting His nature and His character to them that love Him. Then His
+righteousness is not a solitary, uncommunicative perfectness for
+Himself, but like a sun in the heavens, which streams out vivifying and
+enlightening rays to all that seek His face. If it be true that Christ
+has risen, then it is also true that you and I, convicted of sin, and
+learning our weakness and our faults, may come to Him, and by the
+exercise of that simple and yet omnipotent act of faith, may ally our
+incompleteness with His perfectness, our sin with His righteousness,
+our emptiness with His fullness, and may have all the grace and the
+beauty of Jesus Christ passing over into us to be the Spirit of life in
+us, 'making us free from the law of sin and death.' If Christ be risen,
+His righteousness may be the world's; if Christ be not risen, His
+righteousness is useless to any but to Himself.
+
+My brother, wed yourself to that dear Lord by faith in Him, and His
+righteousness will become yours, and you will be 'found in Him without
+spot and blameless,' clothed with white raiment like His own, and
+sharing in the Throne which belongs to the righteous Christ.
+
+III. Lastly, notice the judgment of the world's prince as the prophecy
+of the judgment of the world.
+
+We are here upon ground which is only made known to us by the
+revelation of Scripture. We began with a fact of man's experience; we
+passed on to a fact of history; now we have a fact certified to us only
+on Christ's authority.
+
+The world _has_ a prince. That ill-omened and chaotic agglomeration of
+diverse forms of evil has yet a kind of anarchic order in it, and, like
+the fabled serpent's locks on the Gorgon head, they intertwine and
+sting one another, and yet they are a unity. We hear very little about
+'the prince of the world' in Scripture. Mercifully the existence of
+such a being is not plainly revealed until the fact of Christ's victory
+over him is revealed. But however ludicrous mediaeval and vulgar
+superstitions may have made the notion, and however incredible the
+tremendous figure painted by the great Puritan poet has proved to be,
+there is nothing ridiculous, and nothing that we have the right to say
+is incredible, in the plain declarations that came from Christ's lips
+over and over again, that the world, the aggregate of ungodly men,
+_has_ a prince.
+
+And then my text tells us that that prince is 'judged.' The Cross did
+that, as Jesus Christ over and over again indicates, sometimes in plain
+words, as 'Now is the judgment of this world,' 'Now is the prince of
+this world cast out'; sometimes in metaphor, as 'I beheld Satan as
+lightning fall from heaven,' 'First bind the strong man and then spoil
+his house.' We do not know how far-reaching the influences of the Cross
+may be, and what they may have done in those dark regions, but we know
+that since that Cross, the power of evil in the world has been broken
+in its centre, that God has been disclosed, that new forces have been
+lodged in the heart of humanity, which only need to be developed in
+order to overcome the evil. We know that since that auspicious day when
+'He spoiled principalities and powers, making a show of them openly and
+leading them in triumph,' even when He was nailed upon the Cross, the
+history of the world has been the judgment of the world. Hoary
+iniquities have toppled into the ceaseless washing sea of divine love
+which has struck against their bases. Ancient evils have vanished, and
+more are on the point of vanishing. A loftier morality, a higher notion
+of righteousness, a deeper conception of sin, new hopes for the world
+and for men, have dawned upon mankind; and the prince of the world is
+led bound, as it were, at the victorious chariot wheels. The central
+fortress has been captured, and the rest is an affair of outposts.
+
+My text has for its last word this--the prince's judgment prophesies
+the world's future judgment. The process which began when Jesus Christ
+died has for its consummation the divine condemnation of all the evil
+that still afflicts humanity, and its deprivation of authority and
+power to injure. A final judgment will come, and that it will is
+manifested by the fact that Christ, when He came in the form of a
+servant and died upon the Cross, judged the prince. When He comes in
+the form of a King on the great White Throne He will judge the world
+which He has delivered from its prince.
+
+That thought, my brother, ought to be a hope to us all. Are you glad
+when you think that there is a day of judgment coming? Does your heart
+leap up when you realise the fact that the righteousness, which is in
+the heavens, is sure to conquer and coerce and secure under the hatches
+the sin that is riding rampant through the world? It was a joy and a
+hope to men who did not know half as much of the divine love and the
+divine righteousness as we do. They called upon the rocks and the hills
+to rejoice, and the trees of the forest to clap their hands before the
+Lord, 'for He cometh to judge the world.' Does your heart throb a glad
+Amen to that?
+
+It ought to be a hope; it is a fear; and there are some of us who do
+not like to have the conviction driven home to us, that the end of the
+strife between sin and righteousness is that Jesus Christ shall judge
+the world and take unto Himself His eternal kingdom.
+
+But, my friends, hope or fear, it is a fact, as certain in the future,
+as the Cross is sure in the past, or the Throne in the present. Let me
+ask you this question, the question which Christ has sent all His
+servants to ask--Have you loathed your sin? have you opened your heart
+to Christ's righteousness? If you have, when men's hearts are failing
+them for fear, and they 'call on the rocks and the hills to cover them
+from the face of Him that sitteth upon the Throne,' you will 'have a
+song as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept,' and lift up your
+heads, 'for your redemption draweth nigh.' 'Herein is our love made
+perfect, that we may have boldness before Him in the day of judgment.'
+
+
+
+THE GUIDE INTO ALL TRUTH
+
+'I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
+Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into
+all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall
+hear, that shall He speak: and He will show you things to come. He
+shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto
+you. All things that the Father hath are Mine: therefore said I, that
+He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto you.'--JOHN xvi. 12-15.
+
+This is our Lord's last expansion, in these discourses, of the great
+promise of the Comforter which has appeared so often in them. First, He
+was spoken of simply as dwelling in Christ's servants, without any more
+special designation of His work than was involved in the name. Then,
+His aid was promised, to remind the Apostles of the facts of Christ's
+life, especially of His words; and so the inspiration and authority of
+the four Gospels were certified for us. Then He was further promised as
+the witness in the disciples to Jesus Christ. And, finally, in the
+immediately preceding context, we have His office of 'convincing,' or
+convicting, 'the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.'
+And now we come to that gracious and gentle work which that divine
+Spirit is declared by Christ to do, not only for that little group
+gathered round Him then, but for all those who trust themselves to His
+guidance. He is to be the 'Spirit of truth' to all the ages, who in
+simple verity will help true hearts to know and love the truth. There
+are three things in the words before us--first, the avowed
+incompleteness of Christ's own teaching; second, the completeness of
+the truth into which the Spirit of truth guides; and, last, the unity
+of these two.
+
+I. First, then, we have here the avowed incompleteness of Christ's own
+teaching.
+
+'I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.'
+Now in an earlier portion of these great discourses, we have our Lord
+asserting that '_all_ things whatsoever He had heard of the Father He
+had made known' unto His servants. How do these two representations
+harmonise? Is it possible to make them agree? Surely, yes. There is a
+difference between the germ and the unfolded flower. There is a
+difference between principles and the complete development of these. I
+suppose you may say that all Euclid is in the axioms and definitions. I
+suppose you may also say that when you have learned the axioms and
+definitions, there are many things yet to be said, of which you have
+not grown to the apprehension. And so our Lord, as far as His frankness
+was concerned, and as far as the fundamental and seminal principles of
+all religious truth were concerned, had even then declared all that He
+had heard of the Father. But yet, in so far as the unfolding of these
+was concerned, the tracing of their consequences, the exhibition of
+their harmonies, the weaving of them into an ordered whole in which a
+man's understanding could lodge, there were many things yet to be said,
+which that handful of men were not able to bear. And so our Lord
+Himself here declares that His words spoken on earth are not His
+completed revelation.
+
+Of course we find in them, as I believe, hints profound and pregnant,
+which only need to be unfolded and smoothed out, as it were, and their
+depths fathomed, in order to lead to all that is worthy of being called
+Christian truth. But upon many points we cannot but contrast the
+desultory, brief, obscure references which came from the Master's lips
+with the more systematised, full, and accurate teaching which came from
+the servants. The great crucial instance of all is the comparative
+reticence which our Lord observed in reference to His sacrificial
+death, and the atoning character of His sufferings for the world. I do
+not admit that the silence of the Gospels upon that subject is fairly
+represented when it is said to be absolute. I believe that that silence
+has been exaggerated by those who have no desire to accept that
+teaching. But the distinction is plain and obvious, not to be ignored,
+rather to be marked as being fruitful of blessed teaching, between the
+way in which Christ speaks about His Cross, and the way in which the
+Apostles speak about it after Pentecost.
+
+What then? My text gives us the reason. 'You cannot bear them now.' Now
+the word rendered 'bear' here does not mean 'bear' in the sense of
+endure, or tolerate, or suffer, but 'bear' in the sense of carry. And
+the metaphor is that of some weight--it may be gold, but still it is a
+weight--laid upon a man whose muscles are not strong enough to sustain
+it. It crushes rather than gladdens. So because they had not strength
+enough to carry, had not capacity to receive, our Lord was lovingly
+reticent.
+
+There is a great principle involved in this saying--that revelation is
+measured by the moral and spiritual capacities of the men who receive
+it. The light is graduated for the diseased eye. A wise oculist does
+not flood that eye with full sunshine, but he puts on veils and
+bandages, and closes the shutters, and lets a stray beam, ever growing
+as the curve is perfected, fall upon it. So from the beginning until
+the end of the process of revelation there was a correspondence between
+men's capacity to receive the light and the light that was granted; and
+the faithful use of the less made them capable of receiving the
+greater, and as soon as they were capable of receiving it, it came. 'To
+him that hath shall be given.' In His love, then, Christ did not load
+these men with principles that they could not carry, nor feed them with
+'strong meat' instead of 'milk,' until they were able to bear it.
+Revelation is progressive, and Christ is reticent, from regard to the
+feebleness of His listeners.
+
+Now that same principle is true in a modified form about us. How many
+things there are which we sometimes feel we should like to know, that
+God has not told us, because we have not yet grown up to the point at
+which we could apprehend them! Compassed with these veils of flesh and
+weakness, groping amidst the shadows of time, bewildered by the
+cross-lights that fall upon us from so many surrounding objects, we
+have not yet eyes able to behold the ineffable glory. He has many
+things to say to us about that blessed future, and that strange and
+awful life into which we are to step when we leave this poor world, but
+'ye cannot bear them now.' Let us wait with patience until we are ready
+for the illumination. For two things go to make revelation, the light
+that reveals and the eye that beholds.
+
+Now one remark before I go further. People tell us, 'Your modern
+theology is not in the Gospels.' And they say to us, as if they had
+administered a knockdown blow, 'We stick by Jesus, not Paul.' Well, as
+I said, I do not admit that there is no 'Pauline' teaching in the
+Gospels, but I do confess there is not much. And I say, 'What then?'
+Why, this, then--it is exactly what we were to expect; and people who
+reject the apostolic form of Christian teaching because it is not found
+in the Gospels are flying in the face of Christ's own teaching. You say
+you will take His words as the only source of religious truth. You are
+going clean contrary to His own words in saying so. Remember that He
+proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us, for the fuller
+knowledge of the truth of God, to a subsequent Teacher.
+
+II. So, secondly, mark here the completeness of the truth into which
+the Spirit guides.
+
+I must trouble you with just a word or two of remark as to the language
+of our text. Note the personality, designation, and office of this new
+Teacher. 'He,' not '_it_,' He, is the Spirit of truth whose
+characteristic and weapon is truth. 'He will guide you'--suggesting a
+loving hand put out to lead; suggesting the graciousness, the
+gentleness, the gradualness of the teaching. 'Into all truth '--that is
+no promise of omniscience, but it is the assurance of gradual and
+growing acquaintance with the spiritual and moral truth which is
+revealed, such as may be fitly paralleled by the metaphor of men
+passing into some broad land, of which there is much still to be
+possessed and explored. Not to-day, nor to-morrow, will all the truth
+belong to those whom the Spirit guides; but if they are true to His
+guidance, 'to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant,' and
+the land will all be traversed at the last. 'He shall not speak of
+Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear that shall He speak.' Mark the
+parallel between the relation of the Spirit-Teacher to Jesus, and the
+relation of Jesus to the Father. Of Him, too, it is said by Himself,
+'All things whatsoever I have heard of the Father I have declared unto
+you.' The mark of Satan is, 'He speaketh of his own'; the mark of the
+divine Teacher is, 'He speaketh not of Himself, but whatsoever things,'
+in all their variety, in their continuity, in their completeness, 'He
+shall hear,'--where? yonder in the depths of the Godhead--'whatsoever
+things He shall hear there,' He shall show to you, and especially, 'He
+will show you the things that are to come.' These Apostles were living
+in a revolutionary time. Men's hearts were 'failing them for fear of
+the things that were coming on the earth.' Step by step they would be
+taught the evolving glory of that kingdom which they were to be the
+instruments in founding; and step by step there would be spread out
+before them the vision of the future and all the wonder that should be,
+the world that was to come, the new constitution which Christ was to
+establish.
+
+Now, if that be the interpretation, however inadequate, of these great
+and wonderful words, there are but two things needful to say about
+them. One is that this promise of a complete guidance into truth
+applies in a peculiar and unique fashion to the original hearers of it.
+I ventured to say that one of the other promises of the Spirit, which I
+quoted in my introductory remarks, was the certificate to us of the
+inspiration and reliableness of these Four Gospels. And I now remark
+that in these words, in their plain and unmistakable meaning, there lie
+involved the inspiration and authority of the Apostles as teachers of
+religious truth. Here we have the guarantee for the authority over our
+faith, of the words which came from these men, and from the other who
+was added to their number on the Damascus road. They were guided 'into
+_all_ the truth,' and so our task is to receive the truth into which
+they were guided.
+
+The Acts of the Apostles is the best commentary on these words of my
+text. There you see how these men rose at once into a new region; how
+the truths about their Master which had been bewildering puzzles to
+them flashed into light; how the Cross, which had baffled and dispersed
+them, became at once the centre of union for themselves and for the
+world; how the obscure became lucid, and Christ's death and the
+resurrection stood forth to them as the great central facts of the
+world's salvation. In the book of the Apocalypse we have part of the
+fulfilment of this closing promise: 'He will show you things to come';
+when the Seer was 'in the Spirit on the Lord's Day,' and the heavens
+were opened, and the history of the Church (whether in chronological
+order, or in the exhibition of symbols of the great forces which shall
+be arrayed for and against it, over and over again, to the end of time,
+does not at present matter), was spread before Him as a scroll.
+
+Now, dear friends, this great principle of my text has a modified
+application also to us all. For that divine Spirit is given to each of
+us if we will use Him, is given to any and every man who desires Him,
+does dwell in Christian hearts, though, alas! so many of us are so
+little conscious of Him, and does teach us the truth which Christ
+Himself left incomplete.
+
+Only let me make one remark here. We do not stand on the same level as
+these men who clustered round Christ on His road to Gethsemane, and
+received the first fruits of the promise--the Spirit. They, taught by
+that divine Guide and by experience, were led into the deeper
+apprehension of the words and the deeds, of the life and the death, of
+Jesus Christ our Lord. We, taught by that same Spirit, are led into a
+deeper apprehension of the words which they spake, both in recording
+and interpreting the facts of Christ's life and death.
+
+And so we come sharp up to this, 'If any man thinketh himself to be a
+prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I
+speak unto him are the commandments of the Lord.' That is how an
+Apostle put his relation to the other possessors of the divine Spirit.
+And you and I have to take this as the criterion of all true possession
+of the Spirit of God, that it bows in humble submission to the
+authoritative teaching of this book.
+
+III. Lastly, we have here our Lord pointing out the unity of these two.
+
+In the verse on which I have just been commenting He says nothing about
+Himself, and it might easily appear to the listeners as if these two
+sources of truth, His own incomplete teaching, and the full teaching of
+the divine Spirit, were independent of, if not opposed to, one another.
+So in the last words of our text He shows us the blending of the two
+streams, the union of the two beams.
+
+'He shall glorify Me.' Think of a _man_ saying that! The Spirit who
+will come from God and 'guide men into all truth' has for His
+distinctive office the glorifying of Jesus Christ. So fair is He, so
+good, so radiant, that to make Him known _is_ to glorify Him. The
+glorifying of Christ is the ultimate and adequate purpose of everything
+that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has done, because the
+glorifying of Christ is the glorifying of God, and the blessing of the
+eyes that behold His glory.
+
+'For He shall take of Mine, and show it unto you.' All which that
+divine Spirit brings is Christ's. So, then, there is no new revelation,
+only the interpretation of the revelation. The text is given, and its
+last word was spoken, when 'the cloud received Him out of their sight,'
+and henceforward all is commentary. The Spirit takes of Christ's;
+applies the principles, unfolds the deep meaning of words and deeds,
+and especially the meaning of the mystery of the Cradle, and the
+tragedy of the Cross, and the mystery of the Ascension, as declaring
+that Christ is the Son of God, the Sacrifice for the world. Christ
+said, 'I am the Truth.' Therefore, when He promises, 'He will guide you
+into all the truth,' we may fairly conclude that 'the truth' into which
+the Spirit guides is the personal Christ. It is the whole Christ, the
+whole truth, that we are to receive from that divine Teacher; growing
+up day by day into the capacity to grasp Christ more firmly, to
+understand Him better, and by love and trust and obedience to make Him
+more entirely our own. We are like the first settlers upon some great
+island-continent. There is a little fringe of population round the
+coast, but away in the interior are leagues of virgin forests and
+fertile plains stretching to the horizon, and snow-capped summits
+piercing the clouds, on which no foot has ever trod. 'He will guide you
+into all truth'; through the length and breadth of the boundless land,
+the person and the work of Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+'All things that the Father hath are Mine, therefore said I that He
+shall take of Mine and show it unto you.' What awful words! A divine,
+teaching Spirit can only teach concerning God. Christ here explains the
+paradox of His words preceding, in which, if He were but human, He
+seems to have given that teaching Spirit an unworthy office, by
+explaining that whatsoever is His is God's, and whatsoever is God's is
+His.
+
+My brother! do you believe that? Is that what you think about Jesus
+Christ? He puts out here an unpresumptuous hand, and grasps all the
+constellated glories of the divine Nature, and says, 'They are Mine';
+and the Father looks down from heaven and says, 'Son! Thou art ever
+with Me, and all that I have is Thine.' Do you answer, 'Amen! I believe
+it?'
+
+Here are three lessons from these great words which I leave with you
+without attempting to unfold them. One is, Believe a great deal more
+definitely in, and seek a great deal more consciously and earnestly,
+and use a great deal more diligently and honestly, that divine Spirit
+who is given to us all. I fear me that over very large tracts of
+professing Christendom to-day men stand up with very faltering lips and
+confess, 'I believe in the Holy Ghost.' Hence comes much of the
+weakness of our modern Christianity, of the worldliness of professing
+Christians, 'and when for the time they ought to be teachers, they have
+need that one teach them again which be the first principles of the
+oracles of God.' 'Quench not, grieve not, despise not the Holy Spirit.'
+
+Another lesson is, Use the Book that He uses--else you will not grow,
+and He will have no means of contact with you.
+
+And the last is, Try the spirits. If anything calling itself Christian
+teaching comes to you and does not glorify Christ, it is
+self-condemned. For none can exalt Him highly enough, and no teaching
+can present Him too exclusively and urgently as the sole Salvation and
+Life of the whole earth, And if it be, as my text tells us, that the
+great teaching Spirit is to come, who is to 'guide us into all truth,'
+and therein is to glorify Christ, and to show us the things that are
+His, then it is also true, 'Hereby know we the Spirit of God. Every
+spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of
+God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in
+the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of Antichrist.'
+
+
+
+CHRIST'S 'LITTLE WHILES'
+
+'A little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again, a little while,
+and ye shall see Me, because I go to the Father. Then said some of His
+disciples among themselves, What is this that He saith unto us, A
+little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again, a little while, and
+ye shall see Me: and, Because I go to the Father? They said therefore,
+What is this that He saith, A little while? we cannot tell what He
+saith. Now Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask Him, and said unto
+them, Do ye inquire among yourselves of that I said, A little while,
+and ye shall not see Me: and again a little while, and ye shall see
+Me?'--JOHN xvi. 16-19.
+
+A superficial glance at the former part of these verses may fail to
+detect their connection with the great preceding promise of the Spirit
+who is to guide the disciples 'into all truth.' They appear to stand
+quite isolated and apart from that. But a little thought will bring out
+an obvious connection. The first words of our text are really the
+climax and crown of the promise of the Spirit; for that Spirit is to
+'guide into all the truth' by declaring to the disciples the things
+that are Christ's, and in consequence of that ministration, they are to
+be able to see their unseen Lord. So this is the loftiest thought of
+what the divine Spirit does for the Christian heart, that it shows Him
+a visible though absent Christ.
+
+Then we have in the subsequent part of our text the blundering of the
+bewildered disciples and the patient answer of the long-suffering
+Teacher. So that there are these three points to take up: the times of
+disappearance and of sight; the bewildered disciples; and the patient
+Teacher.
+
+I. First of all, then, note the deep teaching of our Lord here, about
+the times of disappearance and of Sight.
+
+The words are plain enough; the difficulty lies in the determination of
+the periods to which they refer. He tells us that, after a brief
+interval from the time at which He was speaking, there would come a
+short parenthesis during which He was not to be seen; and that upon
+that would follow a period of which no end is hinted at, during which
+He is to be seen. The two words employed in the two consecutive
+clauses, for 'sight,' are not the same, and so they naturally suggest
+some difference in the manner of vision.
+
+But the question arises, Where are the limits of these times of which
+the Lord speaks? Now it is quite clear, I suppose, that the first of
+the 'little whiles' is the few hours that intervened between His
+speaking and the Cross. And it is equally clear that His death and
+burial began, at all events, the period during which they were not to
+see Him. But where does the second period begin, during which they are
+to see Him? Is it at His resurrection or at His ascension, when the
+process of 'going to the Father' was completed in all its stages; or at
+Pentecost, when the Spirit, by whose ministration He was to be made
+visible, was poured out? The answer is, perhaps, not to be restricted
+to any one of these periods; but I think if we consider that all
+disciples, in all ages, have a portion in all the rest of these great
+discourses, and if we note the absence of any hint that the promised
+seeing of Christ was ever to terminate, and if we mark the diversity of
+words under which the two manners of vision are described, and, above
+all, if we note the close connection of these words with those which
+precede, we shall come to the conclusion that the full realisation of
+this great promise of a visible Christ did not begin until that time
+when the Spirit, poured out, opened the eyes of His servants, and 'they
+saw His glory.' But however we settle the minor question of the
+chronology of these periods, the great truth shines out here that,
+through all the stretch of the ages, true hearts may truly see the true
+Christ.
+
+If we might venture to suppose that in our text the second of the
+periods to which He refers, when they did not see Him, was not
+coterminous with, but preceded, the second 'little while,' all would be
+clear. Then the first 'little while' would be the few hours before the
+Cross. 'Ye shall not see Me' would refer to the days in which He lay in
+the tomb. 'Again, a little while' would point to that strange
+transitional period between His death and His ascension, in which the
+disciples had neither the close intercourse of earlier days nor the
+spiritual communion of later ones. And the final period, 'Ye shall see
+Me,' would cover the whole course of the centuries till He comes again.
+
+However that may be, and I only offer it as a possible suggestion, the
+thing that we want to fasten upon for ourselves is this--we all, if we
+will, may have a vision of Christ as close, as real, as firmly
+certifying us of His reality, and making as vivid an impression upon
+us, as if He stood there, visible to our senses. And so, 'by this
+vision splendid' we may 'be everywhere attended,' and whithersoever we
+go, have burning before us the light of His countenance, in the
+sunshine of which we shall walk.
+
+Brother! that is personal Christianity--to see Jesus Christ, and to
+live with the thrilling consciousness, printed deep and abiding upon
+our spirits, that, in very deed, He is by our sides. O how that
+conviction would make life strong and calm and noble and blessed! How
+it would lift us up above temptation! 'He endured as seeing Him who is
+Invisible.' What should terrify us if Christ stood before us? What
+should charm us if we saw Him? Competing glories and attractions would
+fade before His presence, as a dim candle dies at noon. It would make
+all life full of a blessed companionship. Who could be solitary if he
+saw Christ? or feel that life was dreary if that Friend was by his
+side? It would fill our hearts with joy and strength, and make us
+evermore blessed by the light of His countenance.
+
+And how are we to get that vision? Remember the connection of my text.
+It is because there is a divine Spirit to show men the things that are
+Christ's that therefore, unseen, He is visible to the eye of faith. And
+therefore the shortest and directest road to the vision of Jesus is the
+submitting of heart and mind and spirit to the teaching of that divine
+Spirit, who uses the record of the Scriptures as the means by which He
+makes Jesus Christ known to us.
+
+But besides this waiting upon that divine Teacher, let me remind you
+that there are conditions of discipline which must be fulfilled upon
+our parts, if any clear vision of Jesus Christ is to bless us pilgrims
+in this lonely world. And the first of these conditions is--If you want
+to see Jesus Christ, think about Him. Occupy your minds with Him. If
+men in the city walk the pavements with their eyes fixed upon the
+gutters, what does it matter though all the glories of a sunset are
+dyeing the western sky? They will see none of them; and if Christ stood
+beside you, closer to you than any other, if your eyes were fixed upon
+the trivialities of this poor present, you would not see Him. If you
+honestly want to see Christ, meditate upon Him.
+
+And if you want to see Him, shut out competing objects, and the
+dazzling cross-lights that come in and hide Him from us. There must be
+a 'looking _off_ unto Jesus.' There must be a rigid limitation, if not
+excision, of other objects, if we are to grasp Him. If we would see,
+and have our hearts filled with, the calm sublimity of the solemn,
+white wedge that lifts itself into the far-off blue, we must not let
+our gaze stop on the busy life of the valleys or the green slopes of
+the lower Alps, but must lift it and keep it fixed aloft. Meditate upon
+Him, and shut out other things.
+
+If you want to see Christ, do His will. One act of obedience has more
+power to clear a man's eyes than hours of idle contemplation; and one
+act of disobedience has more power to dim his eyes than anything
+besides. It is in the dusty common road that He draws near to us, and
+the experience of those disciples that journeyed to Emmaus may be ours.
+He meets us in the way, and makes 'our hearts burn within us.' The
+experience of the dying martyr outside the city gate may be ours.
+Sorrows and trials will rend the heavens if they be rightly borne, and
+so we shall see Christ 'standing at the right hand of God.' Rebellious
+tears blind our eyes, as Mary's did, so that she did not know the
+Master and took Him for 'the gardener.' Submissive tears purge the eyes
+and wash them clean to see His face. To do His will is the sovereign
+method for beholding His countenance.
+
+Brethren, is this our experience? You professing Christians, do you see
+Christ? Are your eyes fixed upon Him? Do you go through life with Him
+consciously nearer to you than any beside? Is He closer than the
+intrusive insignificances of this fleeting present? Have you Him as
+your continual Companion? Oh! when we contrast the difference between
+the largeness of this promise--a promise of a thrilling consciousness
+of His presence, of a vivid perception of His character, of an
+unwavering certitude of His reality--and the fly-away glimpses and
+wandering sight, and faint, far-off views, as of a planet weltering
+amid clouds, which the most of Christian men have of Christ, what shame
+should cover our faces, and how we should feel that if we have not the
+fulfilment, it is our own fault! Blessed they of whom it is true that
+they see 'no man any more save Jesus only'! and to whom all sorrow,
+joy, care, anxiety, work, and repose are but the means of revealing
+that sweet and all-sufficient Presence! 'I have set the Lord always
+before me, therefore I shall not be moved.'
+
+II. Now notice, secondly, these bewildered disciples.
+
+We find, in the early portion of these discourses, that twice they
+ventured to interrupt our Lord with more or less relevant questions,
+but as the wonderful words flowed on, they seem to have been awed into
+silence; and our Lord Himself almost complains of them that 'None of
+you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou?' The inexhaustible truths that He
+had spoken seem to have gone clear over their heads, but the verbal
+repetition of the 'little whiles,' and the recurring ring of the
+sentences, seem to have struck upon their ears. So passing by all the
+great words, they fasten upon this minor thing, and whisper among
+themselves, perhaps lagging behind on the road, as to what He means by
+these 'little whiles.' The Revised Version is probably correct, or at
+least it has strong manuscript authority in its favour, in omitting the
+clause in our Lord's words, 'Because I go to the Father.' The disciples
+seem to have quoted, not from the preceding verse, but from a verse a
+little before that in the context, where He said that 'the Spirit will
+convince the world of righteousness because I go to My Father, and ye
+see Me no more.' The contradiction seems to strike them.
+
+These disciples in their bewilderment seem to me to represent some very
+common faults which we all commit in our dealing with the Lord's words,
+and to one or two of these I turn for a moment.
+
+Note this to begin with, how they pass by the greater truths in order
+to fasten upon a smaller outstanding difficulty. They have no questions
+to ask about the gifts of the Spirit, nor about the unity of Christ and
+His disciples as represented in the vine and the branches, nor about
+what He tells them of the love that 'lays down its life for its
+friends.' But when He comes into the region of chronology, they are all
+agog to know the 'when' about which He is so enigmatically speaking.
+
+Now is not that exactly like us, and does not the Christianity of this
+day very much want the hint to pay most attention to the greatest
+truths, and let the little difficulties fall into their subordinate
+place? The central truths of Christianity are the incarnation and
+atonement of Jesus Christ. And yet outside questions, altogether
+subordinate and, in comparison with this, unimportant, are filling the
+attention and the thoughts of people at present to such an extent that
+there is great danger of the central truth of all being either passed
+by, or the reception of it being suspended on the clearing up of
+smaller questions.
+
+The truth that Christ is the Son of God, who has died for our
+salvation, is the heart of the Gospel. And why should we make our faith
+in that, and our living by it, contingent on the clearing up of certain
+external and secondary questions; chronological, historical, critical,
+philological, scientific, and the like? And why should men be so
+occupied in jangling about the latter as that the towering supremacy,
+the absolute independence, of the former should be lost sight of? What
+would you think of a man in a fire who, when they brought the
+fire-escape to him, said, 'I decline to trust myself to it, until you
+first of all explain to me the principles of its construction; and,
+secondly, tell me all about who made it; and, thirdly, inform me where
+all the materials of which it is made came from?' But that is very much
+what a number of people are doing to-day in reference to 'the Gospel of
+our salvation,' when they demand that the small questions--on which the
+central verity does not at all depend--shall be answered and settled
+before they cast themselves upon that.
+
+Another of the blunders of these disciples, in which they show
+themselves as our brethren, is that they fling up the attempt to
+apprehend the obscurity in a very swift despair. 'We cannot tell what
+He saith, and we are not going to try any more. It is all cloud-land
+and chaos together.'
+
+Intellectual indolence, spiritual carelessness, deal thus with
+outstanding difficulties, abandoning precipitately the attempt to grasp
+them or that which lies behind them. And yet although there are no
+gratuitous obscurities in Christ's teaching, He said a great many
+things which could not possibly be understood at the time, in order
+that the disciples might stretch up towards what was above them, and,
+by stretching up, might grow. I do not think that it is good to break
+down the children's bread too small. A wise teacher will now and then
+blend with the utmost simplicity something that is just a little in
+advance of the capacity of the listener, and so encourage a little hand
+to stretch itself out, and the arm to grow because it is stretched. If
+there are no difficulties there is no effort, and if there is no effort
+there is no growth. Difficulties are there in order that we may grapple
+with them, and truth is sometimes hidden in a well in order that we may
+have the blessing of the search, and that the truth found after the
+search may be more precious. The tropics, with their easy, luxuriant
+growth, where the footfall turns up the warm soil, grow languid men,
+and our less smiling latitude grows strenuous ones. Thank God that
+everything is not easy, even in that which is meant for the revelation
+of all truth to all men! Instead of turning tail at the first fence,
+let us learn that it will do us good to climb, and that the fence is
+there in order to draw forth our effort.
+
+There is another point in which these bewildered disciples are
+uncommonly like the rest of us; and that is that they have no patience
+to wait for time and growth to solve the difficulty. They want to know
+all about it now, or not at all. If they would wait for six weeks they
+would understand, as they did. Pentecost explained it all. We, too, are
+often in a hurry. There is nothing that the ordinary mind, and often
+the educated mind, detests so much as uncertainty, and being
+consciously baffled by some outstanding difficulty. And in order to
+escape that uneasiness, men are dogmatical when they should be
+doubtful, and positively asserting when it would be a great deal more
+for the health of their souls and of their listeners to say, 'Well,
+really I do not know, and I am content to wait.' So, on both sides of
+great controversies, you get men who will not be content to let things
+wait, for all must be made clear and plain to-day.
+
+Ah, brethren! for ourselves, for our own intellectual difficulties, and
+for the difficulties of the world, there is nothing like time and
+patience. The mysteries that used to plague us when we were boys melted
+away when we grew up. And many questions which trouble me to-day, and
+through which I cannot find my way, if I lay them aside, and go about
+my ordinary duties, and come back to them to-morrow with a fresh eye
+and an unwearied brain, will have straightened themselves out and
+become clear. We grow into our best and deepest convictions, we are not
+dragged into them by any force of logic. So for our own sorrows,
+questions, pains, griefs, and for all the riddle of this painful world,
+
+  'Take it on trust a little while,
+  Thou soon shalt read the mystery right,
+  In the full sunshine of His smile.'
+
+III. Lastly, and very briefly, a word about the patient Teacher.
+
+'Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask Him.' He knows all our
+difficulties and perplexities. Perhaps it is His supernatural knowledge
+that is indicated in the words before us, or perhaps it is merely that
+He saw them whispering amongst themselves and so inferred their wish.
+Be that as it may, we may take the comfort that we have to do with a
+Teacher who accurately understands how much we understand and where we
+grope, and will shape His teaching according to our necessities.
+
+He had not a word of rebuke for the slowness of their apprehension. He
+might well have said to them, 'O fools and slow of heart to believe!'
+But that word was not addressed to them then, though two of them
+deserved it and got it, after events had thrown light on His teaching.
+He never rebukes us for either our stupidity or for our carelessness,
+but 'has long patience' with us.
+
+He does give them a kind of rebuke. 'Do ye inquire _among yourselves_?'
+That is a hopeful source to go to for knowledge. Why did they not ask
+Him, instead of whispering and muttering there behind Him, as if two
+people equally ignorant could help each other to knowledge? Inquiry
+'among yourselves' is folly; to ask Him is wisdom. We can do much for
+one another, but the deepest riddles and mysteries can only be wisely
+dealt with in one way. Take them to Him, tell Him about them. Told to
+Him, they often dwindle. They become smaller when they are looked at
+beside Him, and He will help us to understand as much as may be
+understood, and patiently to wait and leave the residue unsolved, until
+the time shall come when 'we shall know even as we are known.'
+
+In the context here, Jesus Christ does not explain to the disciples the
+precise point that troubled them. Olivet and Pentecost were to do that;
+but He gives them what will tide them over the time until the
+explanation shall come, in triumphant hopes of a joy and peace that are
+drawing near.
+
+And so there is a great deal in all our lives, in His dealings with us,
+in His revelation of Himself to us, that must remain mysterious and
+unintelligible. But if we will keep close to Him, and speak plainly to
+Him in prayer and communion about our difficulties, He will send us
+triumphant hope and large confidence of a coming joy, that will float
+us over the bar and make us feel that the burden is no longer painful
+to carry. Much that must remain dark through life will be lightened
+when we get yonder; for the vision here is not perfect, and the
+knowledge here is as imperfect as the vision.
+
+Dear friends! the one question for us all is, Do our eyes fix and
+fasten on that dear Lord, and is it the description of our own whole
+lives, that we see Him and walk with Him? Oh! if so, then life will be
+blessed, and death itself will be but as 'a little while' when we
+'shall not see Him,' and then we shall open our eyes and behold Him
+close at hand, whom we saw from afar, and with wandering eyes, amidst
+the mists and illusions of earth. To see Him as He became for our sakes
+is heaven on earth. To see Him as He is will be the heaven of heaven,
+and before that Face, 'as the sun shining in His strength,' all
+sorrows, difficulties, and mysteries will melt as morning mists.
+
+
+
+SORROW TURNED INTO JOY
+
+'Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the
+world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall
+be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because
+her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she
+remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the
+world. And ye now, therefore, have sorrow; but I will see you again,
+and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from
+you.'-JOHN xvi. 20-22.
+
+These words, to which we have come in the ordinary course of our
+exposition, make an appropriate text for Easter Sunday. For their one
+theme is the joy which began upon that day, and was continued in
+increasing measure as the possession of Christ's servants after
+Pentecost. Our Lord promises that the momentary sadness and pain shall
+be turned into a swift and continual joy. He pledges His word for that,
+and bids us believe it on His bare word. He illustrates it by that
+tender and beautiful image which, in the pains and bliss of motherhood,
+finds an analogy for the pains and bliss of the disciples, inasmuch as,
+in both cases, pain leads directly to blessedness in which it is
+forgotten. And He crowns His great promises by explaining to us what is
+the deepest foundation of our truest gladness, 'I will see you again,'
+and by declaring that such a joy is independent of all foes and all
+externals, 'and your joy no man taketh from you.'
+
+There are, then, two or three aspects of the Christian life as a glad
+life which are set before us in these words, and to which I ask your
+attention.
+
+I. There is, first, the promise of a joy which is a transformed sorrow.
+
+'Your sorrow shall be turned into joy,' not merely that the one emotion
+is substituted for the other, but that the one emotion, as it were,
+becomes the other. This can only mean that _that_, which was the cause
+of the one, reverses its action and becomes the cause of the opposite.
+Of course the historical and immediate fulfilment of these words lies
+in the double result of Christ's Cross upon His servants. For part of
+three dreary days it was the occasion of their sorrow, their panic,
+their despair; and then, all at once, when with a bound the mighty fact
+of the resurrection dawned upon them, that which had been the occasion
+for their deep grief, for their apparently hopeless despair, suddenly
+became the occasion for a rapture beyond their dreams, and a joy which
+would never pass. The Cross of Christ, which for some few hours was
+pain, and all but ruin, has ever since been the centre of the deepest
+gladness and confidence of a thousand generations.
+
+I do not need to remind you, I suppose, of the value, as a piece of
+evidence of the historical veracity of the Gospel story, of this sudden
+change and complete revolution in the sentiments and emotions of that
+handful of disciples. What was it that lifted them out of the pit? What
+was it that revolutionised in a moment their notions of the Cross and
+of its bearing upon them? What was it that changed downhearted,
+despondent, and all but apostate, disciples into heroes and martyrs? It
+was the one fact which Christendom commemorates to-day: the
+resurrection of Jesus Christ. That was the element, added to the dark
+potion, which changed it all in a moment into golden flashing light.
+The resurrection was what made the death of Christ no longer the
+occasion for the dispersion of His disciples, but bound them to Him
+with a closer bond. And I venture to say that, unless the first
+disciples were lunatics, there is no explanation of the changes through
+which they passed in some eight-and-forty hours, except the
+supernatural and miraculous fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ
+from the dead. That set a light to the thick column of smoke, and made
+it blaze up a 'pillar of fire.' That changed sorrow into joy. The same
+death which, before the resurrection, drew a pall of darkness over the
+heavens, and draped the earth in mourning, by reason of that
+resurrection which swept away the cloud and brought out the sunshine,
+became the source of joy. A dead Christ was the Church's despair; a
+dead and risen Christ is the Church's triumph, because He is 'the
+Christ that died... and is alive for evermore.'
+
+But, more generally, let me remind you how this very same principle,
+which applies directly and historically to the resurrection of our
+Lord, may be legitimately expanded so as to cover the whole ground of
+devout men's sorrows and calamities. Sorrow is the first stage, of
+which the second and completed stage is transformation into joy. Every
+thundercloud has a rainbow lying in its depths when the sun smites upon
+it. Our purest and noblest joys are transformed sorrows. The sorrow of
+contrite hearts becomes the gladness of pardoned children; the sorrow
+of bereaved, empty hearts may become the gladness of hearts filled with
+God; and every grief that stoops upon our path may be, and will be, if
+we keep near that dear Lord, changed into its own opposite, and become
+the source of blessedness else unattainable. Every stroke of the
+bright, sharp ploughshare that goes through the fallow ground, and
+every dark winter's day of pulverising frost and lashing tempest and
+howling wind, are represented in the broad acres, waving with the
+golden grain. All your griefs and mine, brother, if we carry them to
+the Master, will flash up into gladness and be "turned into joy."
+
+II. Still further, another aspect here of the glad life of the true
+Christian is, that it is a joy founded upon the consciousness that
+Christ's eye is upon us.
+
+'I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice.' In other parts of
+these closing discourses the form of the promise is the converse of
+this, as for instance--'Yet a little while, and ye shall see _Me_.'
+Here Christ lays hold of the thought by the other handle, and says,
+'_I_ will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice.' Now these two
+forms of putting the same mutual relationship, of course, agree, in
+that they both of them suggest, as the true foundation of the
+blessedness which they promise, the fact of communion with a present
+Lord. But they differ from one another in colouring, and in the
+emphasis which they place upon the two parts of that communion. '_Ye_
+shall see _Me_' fixes attention upon us and our perception of Him. '_I_
+will see you' fixes attention rather upon Him and His beholding of us.
+'Ye shall see Me' speaks of our going out after Him and being satisfied
+in Him. 'I will see you' speaks of His perfect knowledge, of His loving
+care, of His tender, compassionate, complacent, ever-watchful eye
+resting upon us, in order that He may communicate to us all needful
+good.
+
+And so it requires a loving heart on our part, in order to find joy in
+such a promise. 'His eyes are as a flame of fire,' and He sees all men;
+but unless our hearts cleave to Him and we know ourselves to be knit to
+Him by the tender bond of love from Him, accepted and treasured in our
+souls, then 'I will see you again' is a threat and not a promise. It
+depends upon the relation which we bear to Him, whether it is
+blessedness or misery to think that He whose flaming eye reads all
+men's sins and pierces through all hypocrisies and veils has it fixed
+upon us. The sevenfold utterance of His words to the Asiatic
+churches-the last recorded words of Jesus Christ-begins with 'I know
+thy works.' It was no joy to the lukewarm professors at Laodicea, nor
+to the church at Ephesus which had lost the freshness of its early
+love, that the Master knew them; but to the faithful souls in
+Philadelphia, and to the few in Sardis, who 'had not defiled their
+garments,' it was blessedness and life to feel that they walked in the
+sunshine of His face.
+
+Is there any joy to us in the thought that the Lord Christ sees us? Oh!
+if our hearts are really His, if our lives are as truly built on Him as
+our profession of being Christians alleges that they are, then all that
+we need for the satisfaction of our nature, for the supply of our
+various necessities, or as an armour against temptation, and an amulet
+against sorrow, will be given to us, in the belief that His eye is
+fixed upon us. _There_ is the foundation of the truest joy for men.
+'There be many that say, Who will show us any good? Lord, lift Thou up
+the light of Thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my
+heart more than in the time when their corn and their wine abound.' One
+look _towards_ Christ will more than repay and abolish earth's sorrow.
+One look _from_ Christ will fill our hearts with sunshine. All tears
+are dried on eyes that meet His. Loving hearts find their heaven in
+looking into one another's faces, and if Christ be our love, our
+deepest and purest joys will be found in His glance and our answering
+gaze.
+
+If one could anyhow take a bit of the Arctic world and float it down
+into the tropics, the ice would all melt, and the white dreariness
+would disappear, and a new splendour of colour and of light would
+clothe the ground, and an unwonted vegetation would spring up where
+barrenness had been. And if you and I will only float our lives
+southward beneath the direct vertical rays of that great 'Sun of
+Righteousness,' then all the dreary winter and ice of our sorrows will
+melt, and joy will spring. Brother! the Christian life is a glad life,
+because Christ, the infinite and incarnate Lover of our souls, looks
+upon the heart that loves and trusts Him.
+
+III. Still further, note how our Lord here sets forth His disciples'
+joy as beyond the reach of violence and independent of externals.
+
+'No man taketh it from you.' Of course, that refers primarily to the
+opposition and actual hostility of the persecuting world, which that
+handful of frightened men were very soon to face; and our Lord assures
+them here that, whatsoever the power of the devil working through the
+world may be able to filch away from them, it cannot filch away the joy
+that He gives. But we may extend the meaning beyond that reference.
+
+Much of our joy, of course, depends upon our fellows, and disappears
+when they fade away from our sight and we struggle along in a solitude,
+made the more dreary because of remembered companionship. And much of
+our joy depends upon the goodwill and help of our fellows, and they can
+snatch away all that so depends. They can hedge up our road and make it
+uncomfortable and sad for us in many ways, but no man but myself can
+put a roof over my head to shut me out from God and Christ; and as long
+as I have a clear sky overhead, it matters very little how high may be
+the walls that foes or hostile circumstances pile around me, and how
+close they may press upon me. And much of our joy necessarily depends
+upon and fluctuates with external circumstances of a hundred different
+kinds, as we all only too well know. But we do not need to have all our
+joy fed from these surface springs. We may dig deeper down if we like.
+If we are Christians, we have, like some beleaguered garrison in a
+fortress, a well in the courtyard that nobody can get at, and which
+never can run dry. 'Your joy no man taketh from you.'
+
+As long as we have Christ, we cannot be desolate. If He and I were
+alone in the universe, or, paradoxical as it may sound, if He and I
+were alone, and the universe were not, I should have all that I needed
+and my joy would be full, if I loved Him as I ought to do.
+
+So, my brother! let us see to it that we dig deep enough for the
+foundation of our blessedness, and that it is on Christ and nothing
+less infinite, less eternal, less unchangeable, that we repose for the
+inward blessedness which nothing outside of us can touch. That is the
+blessedness which we may all possess, 'For I am persuaded that neither
+death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
+present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
+creature, shall be able to separate us' from the eye and the heart of
+the risen Christ who lives for us. But remember, though externals have
+no power to rob us of our joy, they have a very formidable power to
+interfere with the cultivation of that faith, which is the essential
+condition of our joy. They cannot force us away from Christ, but they
+may tempt us away. The sunshine did for the traveller in the old fable
+what the storm could not do; and the world may cause you to think so
+much about it that you forget your Master. Its joys may compel Him to
+hide His face, and may so fill your eyes that you do not care to look
+at His face; and so the sweet bond may be broken, and the consciousness
+of a living, loving Jesus may fade, and become filmy and unsubstantial,
+and occasional and interrupted. Do you see to it that what the world
+cannot do by violence and directly, it does not do by its harlot kisses
+and its false promises, tempting you away from the paths where alone
+you can meet your Master.
+
+IV. Lastly, note that this life of joy, which our Lord here speaks of,
+is made certain by the promise of a faithful Christ.
+
+'Verily, verily, I say unto you,'--He was accustomed to use that
+impressive and solemn formula, when He was about to speak words beyond
+the reach of human wisdom to discover, or of prime importance for men
+to accept and believe. He tells these men, who had nothing but His bare
+word to rely upon, that the astonishing thing which He is going to
+promise them will certainly come to pass. He would encourage them to
+rest an unfaltering confidence, for the brief parenthesis of sorrow,
+upon His faithful promise of joy. He puts His own character, so to
+speak, in pawn. His words are precisely equivalent in meaning to the
+solemn Old Testament words which are represented as being the oath of
+God, 'As I live saith the Lord,' 'You may be as sure of this thing as
+you are of My divine existence, for all My divine Being is pledged to
+you to bring it about.' 'Verily, verily, I say unto you,' 'You may be
+as sure of this thing as you are of Me, for all that I am is pledged to
+fulfil the words of My lips.'
+
+So Christ puts His whole truthfulness at stake, as it were; and if any
+man who has ever loved Jesus Christ and trusted Him aright has not
+found this 'joy unspeakable and full of glory,' then Jesus Christ has
+said the thing that is not.
+
+Then why is it that so many professing Christians have such joyless
+lives as they have? Simply because they do not keep the conditions. If
+we will love Him so as to set our hearts upon Him, if we will desire
+Him as our chief good, if we will keep our eyes fixed upon Him, then,
+as sure as He is living and is the Truth, He will flood our hearts with
+blessedness, and His joy will pour into our souls as the flashing tide
+rushes into some muddy and melancholy harbour, and sets everything
+dancing that was lying stranded on the slime. If, my brother, you, a
+professing Christian, know but little of this joy, why, then, it is
+_your_ fault, and not _His_. The joyless lives of so many who say that
+they are His disciples cast no shadow of suspicion upon His veracity,
+but they do cast a very deep shadow of doubt upon their profession of
+faith in Him.
+
+Is your religion joyful? Is your joy religious? The two questions go
+together. And if we cannot answer these questions in the light of God's
+eye as we ought to do, let these great promises and my text prick us
+into holier living, into more consistent Christian character, and a
+closer walk with our Master and Lord.
+
+The out-and-out Christian is a joyful Christian. The half-and-half
+Christian is the kind of Christian that a great many of you are--little
+acquainted with 'the joy of the Lord.' Why should we live half way up
+the hill and swathed in mists, when we might have an unclouded sky and
+a visible sun over our heads, if we would only climb higher and walk in
+the light of His face?
+
+
+
+'IN THAT DAY'
+
+'And in that day ye shall ask Me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto
+you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it
+you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name: ask, and ye shall
+receive, that your joy may be full.'--JOHN xvi. 23, 24.
+
+Our Lord here sums up the prerogatives and privileges of His servants
+in the day that was about to dawn and to last till He came again. There
+is nothing absolutely new in the words; substantially the promises
+contained in them have appeared in former parts of these discourses
+under somewhat different aspects and connections. But our Lord brings
+them together here, in this condensed repetition, in order that the
+scattered rays, being thus focussed, may have more power to illuminate
+with certitude, and to warm into hope. 'Ye shall ask Me nothing.... Ask
+and ye shall receive.... Your joy shall be full.' These are the jewels
+which He sets in a cluster, the juxtaposition making each brighter, and
+gives to us for a parting keepsake.
+
+Now it is to be noticed that the two askings which are spoken of here
+are expressed by different words in the Greek. Our English word 'ask'
+means two things, either to question or to request; to ask in the sense
+of interrogating, in order to get information and teaching, or in the
+sense of beseeching, in order to get gifts. In the former sense the
+word is employed in the first clause of my text, with distinct
+reference to the disciples' desire, a moment or two before, to ask Him
+a very foolish question; and in the second sense it is employed in the
+central portion of my text.
+
+So, then, there are three things here as the marks of the Christian
+life all through the ages: the cessation of the ignorant questions
+addressed to a present Christ; the satisfaction of desires; and the
+perfecting of joy. These are the characteristics of a true Christian
+life. My brother, are they in any degree the characteristics of yours?
+
+I. Note then, first, the end of questionings.
+
+'In that day ye shall ask Me nothing,' and do not you think that when
+the disciples heard that, they would be tempted to say, 'Then what in
+all the world are we to do?' To them the thought that He was not to be
+at their sides any longer, for them to go to with their difficulties,
+must have seemed despair rather than advance; but in Christ's eyes it
+was progress. He tells them and us that we gain by losing Him, and are
+better off than they were, precisely because He does not any longer
+stand at our sides for us to question. It is better for a boy to puzzle
+out the meaning of a Latin book by his own brains and the help of a
+dictionary than it is lazily to use an interlinear translation. And,
+though we do not always feel it, and are often tempted to think how
+blessed it would be if we had an infallible Teacher visible here at our
+sides, it is a great deal better for us that we have not, and it is a
+step in advance that He has gone away. Many eager and honest Christian
+souls, hungering after certainty and rest, have cast themselves in
+these latter days into the arms of an infallible Church. I doubt
+whether any such questioning mind has found what it sought; and I am
+sure that it has taken a step downwards, in passing from the spiritual
+guidance realised by our own honest industry and earnest use of the
+materials supplied to us in Christ's word, to any external authority
+which comes to us to save us the trouble of thinking, and to confirm to
+us truth which we have not made our own by search and effort. We gain
+by losing the visible Christ; and He was proclaiming progress and not
+retrogression, when He said: 'In that day ye shall ask Me no more
+questions.'
+
+For what have we instead? We have two things: a completed revelation,
+and an inward Teacher.
+
+We have a completed revelation. Great and wonderful and unspeakably
+precious as were and are the words of Jesus Christ, His deeds are far
+more. The death of Christ has told us things that Christ before His
+death could not tell. The resurrection of Christ has cast light upon
+all the darkest places of man's destiny which Christ, before His
+resurrection, could not by any words so illuminate. The ascension of
+Christ has opened doors for thought, for faith, for hope, which were
+fast closed, notwithstanding all His teachings, until He had burst them
+asunder and passed to His throne. And the facts which are substituted
+for the bodily presence of Jesus with His disciples tell us a great
+deal more than they could ever have drawn from Him by questionings,
+however persistent and however wisely directed. We have a completed
+revelation, and therefore we need 'ask Him nothing.'
+
+And we have a divine Spirit that will come to us if we will, and teach
+us by means of blessing the exercise of our own faculties, and guiding
+us, not, indeed, into the uniform perception of the intellectual
+aspects of Christian truth, but into the apprehension and the loving
+possession, as a power in our lives, of all the truth that we need to
+mould our characters and to raise us to the likeness of Himself.
+
+Only, brother! let us remember what such a method of teaching demands
+from us. It needs that we honestly use the revelation that is given us;
+it needs that we loyally, lovingly, trustfully, submit ourselves to the
+teaching of that Spirit who will dwell in us; it needs that we bring
+our lives up to the height of our present knowledge, and make
+everything that we know a factor in shaping what we do and what we are.
+If thus we will to do His will, 'we shall know of the doctrine'; if
+thus we yield ourselves to the divine Spirit, we shall be taught the
+practical bearings of all essential truth; and if thus we ponder the
+facts and principles that are enshrined in Christ's life, and the
+Apostolic commentary on them, as preserved for us in the Scripture, we
+shall not need to envy those that could go to Him with their questions,
+for _He_ will come to us with His all-satisfying answers.
+
+Ah! but you say experience does not verify these promises. Look at a
+divided Christendom; look at my own difficulties of knowing what I am
+to believe and to think. Well, as for a divided Christendom, saintly
+souls are all of one Church, and however they may formulate the
+intellectual aspects of their creed, when they come to pray, they say
+the same things. Roman Catholic and Protestant, and Quaker and
+Churchman, and Calvinist and Arminian, and Greek and Latin
+Christians--all contribute to the hymn-book of every sect; and we all
+sing their songs. So the divisions are like the surface cracks on a dry
+field, and a few inches down there is continuity. As for the difficulty
+of knowing what I am to believe and think about controverted questions,
+no doubt there will remain many gaps in the circle of our knowledge; no
+doubt there will be much left obscure and unanswered; but if we will
+keep ourselves near the Master, and use honestly and diligently the
+helps that He gives us--the outward help in the Word, and the inward
+help in His teaching Spirit--we shall not 'walk in darkness,' but shall
+have light enough given to be to us 'the Light of Life.'
+
+Brother, keep close to Christ, and Christ--present though absent--will
+teach you.
+
+II. Secondly, satisfied desires.
+
+This second great promise of my text, introduced again by the solemn
+affirmation, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you,' substantially appeared
+in a former part of these discourses with a very significant
+difference. 'Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name that will I do.' 'If ye
+shall ask anything in My name I will do it.' There Christ presented
+Himself as the Answerer of the petitions, because His more immediate
+purpose was to set forth His going to the Father as His elevation to a
+yet loftier position. Here, on the other hand, He sets forth the Father
+as the Answerer of the petitions, because His purpose is to point away
+from undue dependence on His own corporeal presence. But the fact that
+He thus, as occasion requires, substitutes the one form of speech for
+the other, and indifferently represents the same actions as being done
+by Himself and by the Father in heaven, carries with it large teachings
+which I do not dwell upon now. Only I would ask you to consider how
+much is involved in that fact, that, as a matter of course, and without
+explanation of the difference, our Lord alternates the two forms, and
+sometimes says, 'I will do it,' and sometimes says, 'The Father will do
+it.' Does it not point to that great and blessed truth, 'Whatsoever
+thing the Father doeth, that also doeth the Son likewise?'
+
+But passing from that, let me ask you to note very carefully the
+limitation, which is here given to the broad universality of the
+declaration that desires shall be satisfied. 'If ye shall ask anything
+in My name'; there is the definition of Christian prayer. And what does
+it mean? Is a prayer, which from the beginning to the end is reeking
+with self-will, hallowed because we say, as a kind of charm at the end
+of it, 'For Christ's sake. Amen'? Is _that_ praying in Christ's name?
+Surely not! What is the 'name' of Christ? His whole revealed character.
+So these disciples could not pray in His name 'hitherto,' because His
+character was not all revealed. Therefore, to pray in His name is to
+pray, recognising what He is, as revealed in His life and death and
+resurrection and ascension, and to base all our dependence of
+acceptance of our prayers upon that revealed character. Is that all?
+Are any kind of wishes, which are presented in dependence upon Christ
+as our only Hope and Channel of divine blessing, certain to be
+fulfilled? Certainly not. To pray 'in My name' means yet more than
+that. It means not only to pray in dependence upon Christ as our only
+Ground of hope and Source of acceptance and God's only Channel of
+blessing, but it means exactly what the same phrase means when it is
+applied to us. If I say that I am doing something in your name, that
+means on your behalf, as your representative, as your organ, and to
+express your mind and will. And if we pray in Christ's name, that
+implies, not only our dependence upon His merit and work, but also the
+harmony of our wills with His will, and that our requests are not
+merely the hot products of our own selfishness, but are the calm issues
+of communion with Him. _Thus_ to pray requires the suppression of self.
+Heathen prayer, if there be such a thing, is the violent effort to make
+God will what I wish. Christian prayer is the submissive effort to make
+my wish what God wills, and that is to pray in Christ's name.
+
+My brother! do we construct our prayers thus? Do we try to bring our
+desires into harmony with Him, before we venture to express them? Do we
+go to His footstool to pour out petulant, blind, passionate,
+un-sanctified wishes after questionable and contingent good, or do we
+wait until He fills our spirits with longings after what it must be His
+desire to give, and then breathe out those desires caught from His own
+heart, and echoing His own will? Ah! The discipline that is wanted to
+make men pray in Christ's name is little understood by multitudes
+amongst us.
+
+Notice how certain such prayer is of being answered. Of course, if it
+is in harmony with the will of God, it is sure not to be offered in
+vain. Our Revised Version makes a slight alteration in the order of the
+words in the first clause of this promise by reading, 'If ye ask
+anything of the Father He will give it you _in My name_.' God's gifts
+come down through the same channel through which our prayer goes up. We
+ask in the name of Christ, and get our answers in the name of Christ.
+
+But, whether that be the true collocation of ideas or not, mark the
+plain principle here, that only desires which are in harmony with the
+divine will are sure of being satisfied. What is a bad thing for a
+child cannot be a good thing for a man. What is a foolish and wicked
+thing for a father down here to do cannot be a kind and a wise thing
+for the Father in the heavens to do. If you wish to spoil your child
+you say, 'What do you want, my dear? tell me and you shall have it.'
+And if God were saying anything like that to us, through the lips of
+Jesus Christ His Son, in the text, it would be no blessing, but a
+curse. He knows a great deal better what is good for us; and so He
+says: 'Bring your wishes into line with My purpose, and then you will
+get them'; 'Delight thyself in the Lord, and He will give thee the
+desires of thine heart.' If you want God most you will be sure to get
+Him; if your heart's desires are after Him, your heart's desires will
+be satisfied. 'The young lions do roar and suffer hunger.' That is the
+world's way of getting good; fighting and striving and snarling, and
+forcibly seeking to grasp, and there is hunger after all. There is a
+better way than that. Instead of striving and struggling to snatch and
+to keep a perishable and questionable portion, let us wait upon God and
+quiet our hearts, stilling them into the temper of communion and
+conformity with Him, and we shall not ask in vain.
+
+He who prays in Christ's name must pray Christ's prayer, 'Not My will,
+but Thine be done.' And then, though many wishes may be unanswered, and
+many weak petitions unfulfilled, and many desires unsatisfied, the
+essential spirit of the prayer will be answered, and, His will being
+done in us and on us, our wishes will acquiesce in it and desire
+nothing besides. To him who can thus pray in Christ's name in the
+deepest sense, and after Christ's pattern, every door in God's
+treasure-house flies open, and he may take as much of the treasure as
+he desires. The Master bends lovingly over such a soul, and looks him
+in the eyes, and with outstretched hand says, 'What wilt thou that I
+should do unto thee? Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.'
+
+III. Lastly, the perfect joy which follows upon these two.
+
+'That your joy may be fulfilled.' Again we have a recurrence of a
+promise that has appeared in another connection in an earlier part of
+this discourse; but the connection here is worthy of notice. The
+promise is of joy that comes from the satisfaction of meek desires in
+unison with Christ's will. Is it possible then, that, amidst all the
+ups and downs, the changes and the sorrows of this fluctuating,
+tempest-tossed life of ours we may have a deep and stable joy? 'That
+your joy may be full,' says my text, or 'fulfilled,' like some
+jewelled, golden cup charged to the very brim with rich and quickening
+wine, so that there is no room for a drop more. Can it be that ever, in
+this world, men shall be happy up to the very limits of their capacity?
+Was anybody ever so blessed that he could not be more so? Was your cup
+ever so full that there was no room for another drop in it? Jesus
+Christ says that it may be so, and He tells us how it may be so. Bring
+your desires into harmony with God's, and you will have none
+unsatisfied amongst them; and so you will be blessed to the full; and
+though sorrow comes, as of course it will come, still you may be
+blessed. There is no contradiction between the presence of this deep,
+central joy and a surface and circumference of sorrow. Rather we need
+the surrounding sorrow, to concentrate, and so to intensify, the
+central joy in God. There are some flowers which only blow in the
+night; and white blossoms are visible with startling plainness in the
+twilight, when all the flaunting purples and reds are hid. We do not
+know the depth, the preciousness, the power of the 'joy of the Lord,'
+until we have felt it shining in our hearts in the midst of the thick
+darkness of earthly sorrow, and bringing life into the very death of
+our human delights. It may be ours on the conditions that my text
+describes.
+
+My dear friends! there are only two courses before us. Either we must
+have a life with superficial, transitory, incomplete gladness, and an
+aching centre of vacuity and pain, or we may have a life which, in its
+outward aspects and superficial appearance, has much about it that is
+sad and trying, but down in the heart of it is calm and joyful. Which
+of the two do you deem best, a superficial gladness and a rooted
+sorrow, or a superficial sorrow and a central joy? 'Even in laughter
+the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness.' But,
+on the other hand, the 'ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to
+Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain
+joy and gladness; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.'
+
+
+
+THE JOYS OF 'THAT DAY'
+
+'These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh,
+when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you
+plainly of the Father. At that day ye shall ask in My Name: and I say
+not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: For the Father
+Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I
+came out from God.'--JOHN xvi. 25-27.
+
+The stream which we have been tracking for so long in these discourses
+has now nearly reached its close. Our Lord, in these all but final
+words, sums up the great salient features which He has already more
+than once specified, of the time when His followers shall live with an
+absent and yet present Christ. He reiterates here substantially just
+what He has been saying before, but in somewhat different connection,
+and with some slight expansion. And this reiteration of the glad
+features of the day which was about to dawn suggests how much the
+disciples needed, and how much we need, to have repeated over and over
+again the blessed and profound lessons of these words.
+
+What a sublime self-repression there was in the Master! Not one word
+escapes from His lips of the personal pain and agony into which He had
+to plunge and be baptized, before that day could dawn. All that was
+crushed down and kept back, and He only speaks to the disciples and to
+us of the joy that comes to them, and not at all of the bitter sorrow
+by which it is bought. There are set forth in these words, as it seems
+to me, especially three characteristics which belong to the whole
+period between the ascension of Jesus Christ and His coming again for
+judgment. It is a day of continual and clearer teaching by Him. It is a
+day of desires in His name. It is a day of filial experience of a
+Father's love. These are the characteristics of the Christian period,
+and they ought to be the characteristics of our individual Christian
+life. My brother! are they the characteristics of yours?
+
+Let us note them in order.
+
+I. First, our Lord tells us that the whole period of the Christian life
+upon earth is to be a period of continuous and clearer teaching by
+Himself.
+
+'Hitherto I have spoken to you in proverbs,' or parables. The word
+means, not only a comparison or parable, but also, and perhaps
+primarily, a mysterious and enigmatical saying. The reference is, of
+course, directly to the immediately preceding thoughts, in which His
+departure and the sorrow that accompanied it and was to merge into joy,
+were described under that touching figure of the woman in travail. But
+the reference must be extended very much farther than that. It includes
+not only this discourse, but the whole of His teaching by word whilst
+He was here upon earth.
+
+Now the first thing that strikes me here is this strange fact. Here is
+a man who knew Himself to be within four-and-twenty hours of His death,
+and knew that scarcely another word of instruction was to come from His
+lips upon earth, calmly asserting that, for all the subsequent ages of
+the world's history, He is to continue its Teacher. We know how the
+wisest and profoundest of earthly teachers have their lips sealed by
+death, so as that no counsel can come from them any more, and their
+disciples long in vain for responses from the silenced oracle, which is
+dumb whatever new problems may arise. But Jesus Christ calmly poses
+before the world as not having His teaching activity in the slightest
+degree suspended by that fact which puts a conclusive and complete
+close to all other teachers' words. Rather He says that after death He
+will, more clearly than in life, be the Teacher of the world.
+
+What does He mean by that? Well, remember first of all the facts which
+followed this saying--the Cross, the Grave, Olivet, the Heavens, the
+Throne. These were still in the future when He spoke. And have not
+these--the bitter passion, the supernatural resurrection, the
+triumphant ascension, and the everlasting session of the Son at the
+right hand of God--taught the whole world the meaning of the Father's
+name, and the love of the Father's heart, and the power of the Father's
+Son, as nothing else, not even the sweetest and tenderest of His
+utterances, could have taught them? When, then, He declares the
+continuance of His teaching functions unbroken through death and beyond
+it, He refers partly to the future facts of His earthly manifestation,
+and still more does He refer to that continuous teaching which, by that
+divine Spirit whom He sends, is granted to every believing soul all
+through the ages.
+
+This great truth, which recurs over and over again in these discourses
+of our Lord, is far too much dropped out of the consciousness and
+creeds of the modern Christian Church. We call ourselves Christ's
+disciples. If there be disciples, there must be a Master. His teaching
+is by no means merely the effect of the recorded facts and utterances
+of the Lord, preserved here in the Book for us, and to be pondered upon
+by ourselves, but it is also the hourly communication, to waiting
+hearts and souls that keep themselves near the Lord, of deeper insight
+into His will, of larger views of His purposes, of a firmer grasp of
+the contents of Scripture, and a more complete subjection of the whole
+nature to the truth as it is in Jesus. Christian men and women! do you
+know anything about what it is to learn of Christ in the sense that He
+Himself, and no poor human voice like mine, nor even merely the records
+of His past words and deeds as garnered in these Gospels and expounded
+by His Apostles, is the source of your growing knowledge of Him? If we
+would keep our hearts and minds clearer than we do of the babble of
+earthly voices, and be more loyal and humble and constant and patient
+in our sitting on the benches in Christ's school till the Master
+Himself came to give us His lessons, these great words of my text would
+not, as they so often do in the mass of professing Christians, lack the
+verification of experience and the assurance that it is so with us.
+Have you sat in Christ's school, and do you know the secret and
+illuminative whispers of His teaching? If not, there is something wrong
+in your Christian character, and something insincere in your Christian
+profession.
+
+Notice, still further, that our Lord here ranks that subsequent
+teaching before all that He said upon earth, great and precious as it
+was. Now I do not mean for one moment to allege that fresh
+communications of truth, uncontained in Scripture, are given to us in
+the age-long and continuous teaching of Jesus Christ. That I do not
+suppose to be the meaning of the great promises before us, for the
+facts of revelation were finished when He ascended, and the inspired
+commentary upon the facts of revelation was completed with these
+writings which follow the Gospels in our New Testament. But Christ's
+teaching brings us up to the understanding of the facts and of the
+commentary upon them which Scripture contains, so that what was parable
+or proverb, dimly apprehended, mysterious and enigmatical when it was
+spoken, and what remains mysterious and enigmatical to us until we grow
+up to it, gradually becomes full of significance and weighty with a
+plain and certain meaning. This is the teaching which goes on through
+the ages--the lifting of His children to the level of apprehending more
+and more of the inexhaustible and manifold wisdom which is stored for
+us in this Book. The mine has been worked on the surface, but the
+deeper it goes the richer is the lode; and no ages will exhaust the
+treasures that are hid in Christ Jesus our Lord.
+
+He uses the new problems, the new difficulties, the new circumstances
+of each successive age, and of each individual Christian, in order to
+evolve from His word larger lessons, and to make the earlier lessons
+more fully and deeply understood. And this generation, with all its new
+problems, with all its uneasiness about social questions, with all its
+new attitude to many ancient truths, will find that Jesus Christ is, as
+He has been to all past generations,--the answer to all its doubts,
+using even these doubts as a means of evolving the deeper harmonies of
+His Word, and of unveiling in the ancient truth more than former
+generations have seen in it. 'Brethren, I write unto you no new
+commandment. Again, a new commandment I write unto you.' The
+inexhaustible freshness of the old word taught us anew, with deeper
+significance and larger applications, by the everlasting Teacher of the
+Church, is the hope that shines through these words. I commend to you,
+dear brethren, the one simple, personal question, Have I submitted
+myself to that Teacher, and said to men and systems and preachers and
+books and magazines, and all the rest of the noisy and clamorous
+tongues that bewilder under pretence of enlightening this
+generation--have I said to them all, 'Hold your peace! and let me, in
+the silence of my waiting soul, hear the Teacher Himself speak to me.
+Speak, Lord! for Thy servant heareth. Teach me Thy way and lead me, for
+Thou art my Master, and I the humblest of Thy scholars'?
+
+II. In the next place, another of the glad features of this dawning day
+is that it is to be a day of desires based upon Christ, and Christlike.
+
+'In that day ye shall ask in My name.' Our translators have wisely put
+a colon at the end of that clause, in order that we may not hurry over
+it too quickly in haste to get to the next one. For there is a
+substantial blessing and privilege wrapped up in it. Our Lord has just
+been saying the same thing in the previous verses, but He repeats it
+here in order to emphasise it, and to set it by the subsequent words in
+a somewhat different light. But I dwell upon it for a very simple,
+practical purpose. I have already explained in former sermons the full,
+deep meaning of that phrase, 'asking in Christ's name,' and have
+suggested to you that it implies two things--the one, that our desires
+should all be based upon His great work as the only ground of our
+acceptance with God; and the other, that our desires should all be such
+as represent His heart and His mind. When we 'ask in His name' we ask,
+first, for His sake, and, second, as in His person. And such desires,
+resting their hopes of answer solely upon His mighty sacrifice and
+all-sufficient merit, and shaped accurately and fully after the pattern
+of the wishes that are dear to His heart, are to be the prerogative and
+the joy of His servants, in the new 'day' that is about to dawn.
+
+Note how beautifully this thought, of wishes moulded into conformity
+with Jesus Christ, and offered in reliance upon His great sacrifice,
+follows upon that other thought, 'I will tell you plainly of the
+Father.' The Master's voice speaks, revealing the paternal heart, the
+scholar's voice answers with desires kindled by the revelation.
+Longings and aspirations humbly offered for His sake, and after the
+pattern of His own, are our true response to His teaching voice. As the
+astronomer, the more powerful his telescope, though it may resolve some
+of the nebulae that resisted feebler instruments, only has his bounds
+of vision enlarged as he looks through it, and sees yet other and
+mightier star-clouds lying mysterious beyond its ken--so each new
+influx and tidal wave of knowledge of the Father, which Christ gives to
+His waiting child, leads on to enlarged desires, to longings to press
+still further into the unexplored mysteries of that magnificent and
+boundless land, and to nestle still closer into the infinite heart of
+God. He declares to us the Father, and the answer of the child to the
+declaration of the Father is the cry, 'Abba! Father! show me yet more
+of Thy heart.' Thus aspiration and fruition, longing and satisfaction
+in unsatiated and inexhaustible and unwearying alternation, are the two
+blessed poles between which the life of a Christian may revolve in
+smoothness and music.
+
+My friend! is that anything like the transcript of our experience, that
+the more we know of God, the more we long to know of, and to possess,
+Him? and the more we long to know of, and to possess, Him, the more
+full, gracious, confidential, tender, and continuous are the teachings
+of our Master? Is not this a far higher level of Christian life than
+that we live upon? And why so? Is Christ's word faithless? Hath He
+forgotten to be gracious? Was this promise of His idle wind? Or is it
+that you and I have never grasped the fulness of privileges that He
+bestows upon us?
+
+III. Note, lastly, that that day is to be a day of filial experience of
+a Father's love.
+
+'I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father
+Himself loveth you because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I
+came out from God.' Jesus Christ does not deny His intercession. He
+simply does not bring it into evidence here. To deny it would have been
+impossible, for soon afterwards we find Him saying, 'I pray for them
+which Thou hast given Me, for they are Thine.' But He does not
+emphasise it here, in order that He may emphasise another blessed
+source of solace--viz., that to those who listen to the Master's
+teaching, and have their desires moulded into harmony with His, and
+their wishes and hopes all based upon His sacrifice and work, the
+divine Father's love directly flows. There is no need of any
+intercession to turn Him to be merciful. Men sometimes caricature the
+thought of the intercession of Christ, as if it meant that He, by His
+prayer, bent the reluctant will of the Father in heaven. All such
+horrible misconceptions Christ sweeps out of the field here, even
+whilst there remains, in the fact that the prayers of which He is
+speaking are offered in His name, the substance and reality of all that
+we mean by the intercession of Jesus Christ.
+
+And now note that God loves the men who love Jesus Christ. So
+completely does the Father identify Himself with the Son, that love to
+Christ is love to Him, and brings the blessed answer of His love to us.
+Whosoever loves Christ loves God.
+
+Whosoever loves Christ must do so, believing that He 'came forth from
+God.' There are the two characteristics of a Christian disciple,--faith
+in the divine mission of the Son, and love that flows from faith. Now,
+of course, it does not follow from the words before us, that this
+divine love which comes down upon the heart which loves Christ is the
+original and first flow of that love towards that heart. 'We love Him
+because He first loved us.' Christ is not here tracking the stream to
+its source, but is pointing to it midway in its flow. If you want to go
+up to the fountain-head you have to go up to the divine Father's heart,
+who loved when there was no love in us; and, because He loved, sent the
+Son. First comes the unmotived, spontaneous, self-originated,
+undeserved, infinite love of God to sinners and aliens and enemies;
+then the Cross and the mission of Jesus Christ; then the faith in His
+divine mission; then the love which is the child of faith, as it grasps
+the Cross and recognises the love that lies behind it; and then, after
+that, the special, tender, and paternal love of God falling upon the
+hearts that love Him in His Son. There is nothing here in the slightest
+degree to conflict with the grand universal truth that God loves
+enemies and sinners and aliens. But there is the truth, as precious as
+the other, that they who have 'known and believed the love that God
+hath to us' live under the selectest influences of His loving heart,
+and have a place in its tenderness which it is impossible that any
+should have who do not so love. And that sweet commerce of a divine
+love answering a human, which itself is the answer to a prior divine
+love, brings with it the firm confidence that prayers in His name shall
+not be prayers in vain.
+
+So, dear friends, growing knowledge, an ever-present Teacher, the peace
+of calm desires built upon Christ's Cross and fashioned after Christ's
+Spirit, and the assurance in my quiet and filial heart that my Father
+in the heavens loves me, and will neither give me 'serpents' when I ask
+for them, thinking them to be 'fishes,' nor refuse 'bread' when I ask
+for it--these things ought to mark the lives of all professing
+Christians. Are they our experience? If not, why are they not, but
+because we do not believe that 'Thou art come forth from God,' nor love
+Thee as we ought?
+
+
+
+'FROM' AND 'TO'
+
+'I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I
+leave the world, and go to the Father.'--JOHN xvi. 28.
+
+These majestic and strange words are the proper close of our Lord's
+discourse, what follows being rather a reply to the disciples'
+exclamation. There is nothing absolutely new in them, but what is new
+is the completeness and the brevity with which they cover the whole
+ground of His being, work, and glory. They fall into two halves, each
+consisting of two clauses; the former half describing our Lord's
+_descent_, the latter His _ascent_. In each half the two clauses deal
+with the same fact, considered from the two opposite ends as it were--the
+point of departure and the point of arrival. 'I came forth _from_
+the Father, and am come _into the world: again I _leave_ the world and
+go _to_ the Father.' But the first point of departure is the last point
+of arrival, and the end comes round to the beginning. Our Lord's
+earthly life is, as it were, a jewel enclosed within the flashing gold
+of His eternal dwelling with God.
+
+So I think we shall best apprehend the scope, and appropriate to
+ourselves the blessing and power of these words, if we deal with the
+four points to which they call our attention--the dwelling with the
+Father; the voluntary coming to the earth; the voluntary departure from
+the earth; and, once more, the dwelling with the Father. We must grasp
+them all if we would know the whole Christ and all that He is able to
+do and to be to us and to the world. So, then, I deal simply with these
+four points.
+
+I. Note then, first, the dwelling with the Father.
+
+If we adopt the most probable reading of the first clause of my text,
+it is even more forcible than in our version: 'I came forth _out of_
+the Father.' Such an egress implies a being _in_ the Father in a sense
+ineffable for our words, and transcending our thoughts. It implies a
+far deeper and closer relation than even that of juxtaposition,
+companionship, or outward presence.
+
+Now, in these great words there is involved obviously, to begin with,
+that, during His earthly life, our Lord bore about with Him the
+remembrance and consciousness of an individual existence prior to His
+life on earth. I need not remind you how frequently such hints drop
+from His lips--'Before Abraham was, I am,' and the like. But beyond
+that solemn thought of a remembered previous existence there is this
+other one--that the words are the assertion by Christ Himself of a
+previous, deep, mysterious, ineffable union with the Father. On such a
+subject wisdom and reverence bid us speak only as we hear; but I cannot
+refrain from emphasising the fact that, if this fourth Gospel be a
+genuine record of the teaching of Jesus Christ--and, if it is not, what
+genius was he who wrote it?--if it be a genuine record of the teaching
+of Jesus Christ, then nothing is more plain than that over and over
+again, in all sorts of ways, by implication and by direct statement, to
+all sorts of audiences, friends and foes, He reiterated this tremendous
+claim to have 'dwelt in the bosom of the Father,' long before He lay on
+the breast of Mary. What did He mean when He said, 'No man hath
+ascended up into heaven save He which came down from heaven'? What did
+He mean when He said, 'What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend
+up where He was before'? What did He mean when He said, 'I came down
+from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent
+Me'? And what did He mean when, in the midst of the solemnities of that
+last prayer, He said, 'Glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with
+Thee before the world was'?
+
+Dear friends! it seems to me that if we know anything about Jesus
+Christ, we know _that_. If we cannot believe that He thus spoke, we
+know nothing about Him on which we can rely. And so, without venturing
+to enlarge at all upon these solemn words, I leave this with you as a
+plain fact, that the meekest, lowliest, and most sane and wise of
+religious teachers made deliberately over and over again this claim,
+which is either absolutely true, and lifts Him into the region of the
+Deity, or else is fatal to His pretensions to be either meek or modest,
+or wise or sane, or a religious teacher to whom it is worth our while
+to listen.
+
+II. Note, secondly, the voluntary coming into the world.
+
+'I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world.' We all talk
+in a loose way about men coming into the world when they are born; but
+the weight of these words and the solemnity of the occasion on which
+they were spoken, and the purpose for which they were spoken--viz., to
+comfort and to illuminate these disciples--forbid us to see such a mere
+platitude as that in them. There would have been no consolation in them
+unless they meant something a great deal more than the undeniable fact
+that Jesus Christ was born, and the melancholy fact that Jesus Christ
+was about to die.
+
+'I am _come_ into the world.' There has been a Man who chose to be
+born. There has been a Man who appeared here, not 'of the will of the
+flesh, nor of the will of man,' but by His own free choice. He willed
+to take upon Him the form of humanity. Now the voluntariness of the
+entrance of Jesus Christ into the conditions of our human life is
+all-important for us, for it underlies the whole value of that life and
+its whole power to be blessing and good to us. It underlies, for
+instance, the personal sinlessness of Jesus Christ, and hence His power
+to bring a new beginning of pure and perfect life into the midst of
+humanity. All the rest of mankind, knit together by that mysterious
+bond of natural descent which only now for the first time is beginning
+to receive its due attention on the part of men of science, by heredity
+have the taint upon them. And if Jesus Christ is only one of the
+series, then there is no deliverance in Him, for there is no
+sinlessness in that life. However fair its record may seem on the
+surface, there is beneath, somewhere or other, the leprosy that infects
+us all. Unless He came in another fashion from all the rest of us, He
+came with the same sin as all the rest of us, and He is no deliverer
+from sin. Rather He is one of the series who, like the melancholy
+captives on the road to Siberia, each carries a link of the hopeless
+chain that binds them all together. But, if it be true that of His own
+will He took to Himself humanity, and was born as the Scripture tells
+us He was born, His birth being His 'coming' and not His being brought,
+then, being free from taint, He can deliver us from taint, and, Himself
+unbound by the chain, He can break it from off our necks. The stream is
+fouled from its source downwards, and flows on, every successive drop
+participant of the primeval pollution. But, down from the white snows
+of the eternal hills of God, there comes into it an affluent which has
+no stain on its pure waters, and so can purge that into which it
+enters. Jesus Christ willed to be born, and to plant a new beginning of
+holy life in the very heart of humanity which henceforth should work as
+leaven.
+
+Let me remind you, too, that this voluntary assumption of our nature is
+all-important to us, for unless we preserve it clear to our minds and
+hearts, the power to sway our affections is struck away from Jesus
+Christ. Unless He voluntarily took upon Himself the nature which He
+meant to redeem, why should I be thankful to Him for what He did, and
+what right has He to claim my love? But if He willingly came down
+amongst us, and 'to this end was born, and for this cause,' of His own
+loving heart, 'came into the world,' then I am knit to Him by cords
+that cannot be broken. One thing only saves for Jesus Christ the
+unbounded and perpetual love of mankind, and that is, that from His own
+infinite and perpetual love He came into the world. We talk about kings
+leaving their palaces and putting on the rags of the beggar, and
+learning 'love in huts where poor men lie,' and making experience of
+the conditions of their lowliest subjects. But here is a fact,
+infinitely beyond all these legends. It is set forth for us in a
+touching fashion, in the incident that almost immediately preceded
+these parting words of our Lord, when 'Jesus, knowing that He came
+forth from God, laid aside His garments and took a towel, and girded
+Himself,' and washed the foul feet of these travel-stained men. That
+was a parable of the Incarnation. The consciousness of His divine
+origin was ever with Him, and that consciousness led Him to lay aside
+the garments of His majesty, and to gird Himself with the towel of
+service. That He had a body round which to wrap it was more humiliation
+than that He wrapped it round the body which He took. And we may learn
+there what it is that gives Him His supreme right to our devotion and
+our surrender--viz., that, 'being in the form of God, He thought not
+equality with God a thing to be covetously retained, but made Himself
+of no reputation, and was found in fashion as a Man.'
+
+III. Note the voluntary leaving the world.
+
+The stages of that departure are not distinguished. They are threefold
+in fact--the death, the resurrection, the ascension, and in all three
+we have the majestic, spontaneous energy of Christ as their cause.
+
+There was a voluntary death, I have so often had occasion to insist
+upon that, in the course of these sermons, that I do not need to dwell
+upon it now. Let me remind you only how distinctly and in what various
+forms that thought is presented to us in the Scriptures. We have our
+Lord's own words about His having 'power to lay down His life.' We have
+in the story of the Passion hints that seem to suggest that His
+relation to death, to which He is about to bow His head, was altogether
+different from that of ours. For instance, we read: 'Into Thy hands I
+_commend_ My Spirit'; and 'He _gave up_ the Spirit.' We have hints of a
+similar nature in the very swiftness of His death and unexpected
+brevity of His suffering, to be accounted for by no natural result of
+the physical process of crucifixion. The fact is that Jesus Christ is
+the Lord of death, and was so even when He seemed to be its Servant,
+and that He never showed Himself more completely the Prince of Life and
+the Conqueror of Death than when He gave up His life and died, not
+because He must, but because He would. There is a scene in a modern
+book of fiction of a man sitting on a rock and the ocean stretching
+round him. It reaches high upon his breast, but it threatens not his
+life, till he, sitting there in his calm, bows his head beneath the
+wave and lets it roll over him. So Christ willed to die, and died
+because He willed.
+
+There was also a voluntary resurrection by His own power; for although
+Scripture sometimes represents His rising again from the dead as being
+the Father's attestation of the Son's finished work, it also represents
+it as being, in accordance with His own claim of 'power to lay down My
+life, and to take it again,' the Son's triumphant egress from the
+prison into which, for the moment, He willed to pass. Jesus 'was raised
+from the dead by the glory of the Father,' but also Jesus rose from the
+dead by His own power.
+
+There was also a voluntary ascension to the heavens. There was no need
+for Elijah's chariot of fire. There was no need for a whirlwind to
+sweep a mortal to the sky. There was no need for any external vehicle
+or agency whatsoever. No angels bore Him up upon their wings. But, the
+cords of duty which bound Him to earth being cut, He rose to His own
+native sphere; and, if one might so say, the natural forces of His
+supernatural life bore Him, by inverted gravitation, upward to the
+place which was His own. He ascended by His own inherent power.
+
+Thus, by a voluntary death, He became the Sacrifice for our sins; by
+the might of His self-effected resurrection He proclaimed Himself the
+Lord of death and the resurrection for all that trust Him; and by
+ascending up on high He draws our hearts' desires after Him, so that
+we, too, as we see Him lost from our sight, behind the bright Shekinah
+cloud that stooped to conceal the last stages of His ascension from our
+view, may return to our lowly work 'with great joy,' and 'set our
+affection on things above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand
+of God.'
+
+IV. So, lastly, we have here the dwelling again with the Father.
+
+But that final dwelling with God is not wholly identical with the
+initial one. The earthly life was no mere parenthesis, and He who
+returned to the Throne carried with Him the manhood which He had
+assumed, and bore it thither into the glory in which the Word had dwelt
+from the beginning. And this is the true consolation which Christ
+offered to these His weeping servants, and which He still offers to us
+His waiting children, that now the manhood of Jesus Christ is exalted
+to participation in the divine glory, and dwells there in the calm,
+invisible sweetness and solemnity of fellowship with the Father.
+
+If that be so, it is no mere abstract dogma of theology, but it touches
+our daily life at all points, and is essential to the fullness of our
+satisfaction and our rest in Christ.
+
+'We see not all things put under Him, but we see Jesus.' Our Brother is
+elevated to the Throne, and, if I might so say, He makes the fortunes
+of the family, and none of them will be poor as long as He is so rich.
+He sends us from the far-off land where He is gone precious gifts of
+its produce, and He will send for us to share His throne one day.
+
+Christ's ascension to the Father is the elevation of our best and
+dearest Friend to the Throne of the Universe, and the hands that were
+pierced for us on the Cross hold the helm and sway the sceptre of
+Creation, and therefore we may calmly meet all events.
+
+The elevation of Jesus Christ to the Throne fills Heaven for our faith,
+our imagination, and our hearts. How different it is to look up into
+those awful abysses, and to wonder where, amidst their crushing
+infinitude, the spirits of dear ones that are gone are wandering, if
+they are at all; and to look up and to think 'My Christ hath passed
+through the Heavens,' and is somewhere with a true Body, and with Him
+all that loved Him. Without an ascended Christ we recoil from the cold
+splendours of an unknown Heaven, as a rustic might from the
+unintelligible magnificence of a palace. But if we believe that He is
+'at the right hand of God,' then the far-off becomes near, and the
+vague becomes definite, and the unsubstantial becomes solid, and what
+was a fear becomes a joy, and we can trust ourselves and the dear dead
+in His hands, knowing that where He is they are, and that in Him they
+and we have all that we need.
+
+So, dear friends! it all comes to this--make sure that you have hold of
+the whole Christ for yourselves. His earthly life is little without the
+celestial halo that rings it round. His life is nothing without His
+death. His death without His resurrection and ascension maybe a little
+more pathetic than millions of other deaths, but is nothing, really, to
+us. And the life and death and resurrection are not apprehended in
+their fullest power until they are set between the eternal glory before
+and the eternal glory after.
+
+These four facts--the dwelling in the Father; the voluntary coming to
+earth; the voluntary leaving earth; and, again, the dwelling with the
+Father--are the walls of the strong fortress into which we may flee and
+be safe. With them it 'stands four square to every wind that blows.'
+Strike away one of them, and it totters into ruin. Make the whole
+Christ your Christ; for nothing less than the whole Christ, 'conceived
+of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, ... crucified, dead, and
+buried, ... ascended into Heaven, and sitting at the right hand of
+God,' is strong enough to help your infirmities, vast enough to satisfy
+your desires, loving enough to love you as you need, or able to deliver
+you from your sins, and to lift you to the glories of His own Throne.
+
+
+
+GLAD CONFESSION AND SAD WARNING
+
+'His disciples said unto Jesus, Lo! now speakest Thou plainly, and
+speakest no proverb. Now are we sure that Thou knowest all things, and
+needest not that any man should ask Thee: by this we believe that Thou
+earnest forth from God. Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold,
+the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every
+man to his own, and shall leave Me alone: and yet I am not alone,
+because the Father is with Me.'--JOHN xvi. 29-32.
+
+The first words of these wonderful discourses were, 'Let not your heart
+be troubled.' They struck the key-note of the whole. The aim of all was
+to bring peace and confidence unto the disciples' spirits. And this
+joyful burst of confession which wells up so spontaneously and
+irrepressibly from their hearts, shows that the aim has been reached.
+For a moment sorrow, bewilderment, dullness of apprehension, had all
+passed away, and the foolish questioners and non-receptive listeners
+had been lifted into a higher region, and possessed insight, courage,
+confidence. The last sublime utterance of our Lord had gathered all the
+scattered rays into a beam so bright that the blindest could not but
+see, and the coldest could not but be warmed.
+
+But yet the calm, clear eye of Christ sees something not wholly
+satisfactory in this outpouring of the disciples' confidence. He does
+not reject their imperfect faith, but He warns them, as if seeing the
+impending hour of denial which was so terribly to contradict the
+rapture of that moment. And then, with most pathetic suddenness, He
+passes from them to Himself; and in a singularly blended utterance lets
+us get a glimpse into His deep solitude and the companions that shared
+it.
+
+My words now make no attempt at anything more than is involved in
+following the course of thought in the words before us.
+
+I. Note the disciples' joyful confession.
+
+Their words are permeated throughout with allusions to the previous
+promises and sayings of our Lord, and the very allusions show how
+shallow was their understanding of what they thought so plain. He had
+said to them that, in that coming day which was so near its dawn, He
+would speak to them 'no more in proverbs, but show them plainly of the
+Father'; and they answer, with a kind of rapture of astonishment, that
+the promised day has come already, and that even now He is speaking to
+them 'plainly,' and without mysterious sayings. Did they understand His
+words when they thought them so plain? 'I came forth from the Father,
+and am come into the world? Again I leave the world and go unto the
+Father,' that summary statement of the central mysteries of
+Christianity, which the generations have found to be inexhaustible, and
+which to so many minds has been absolutely incredible, seemed to the
+shallow apprehension of these disciples to be sun-clear. If they had
+understood what He meant, could they have spoken thus, or have left Him
+so soon?
+
+They begin with what they believed to be a fact, His clear utterance.
+Then follows a conviction which has allusion to His previous words.
+'Now', say they, 'we know that Thou knowest all things, and needest not
+that any man should ask Thee.' He had said to them, 'In that day ye
+shall ask Me nothing'; and from the fact that he had interpreted their
+unspoken words, and had anticipated their desire to ask what they durst
+not ask, they draw, and rightly draw, the conclusion of His divine
+Omniscience. They think that therein, in His answer to their question
+before it is asked, is the fulfilment of that great promise. Was that
+all that He meant? Certainly not. Did He merely mean to say, 'You will
+ask Me nothing, because I shall know what you want to know, without
+your asking'? No! But He meant, 'Ye shall ask Me nothing, because in
+that day you will have with you an illuminating Spirit who will solve
+all your difficulties.' So, again, a shallow interpretation empties the
+words which they accept of their deepest and most precious meaning.
+
+And then they take yet a further step. First, they begin with a fact;
+then from that they infer a conviction; and now, upon the basis of the
+inferred conviction, they rear a faith, 'We believe that Thou camest
+forth from God.' But what they meant by 'coming forth from God' fell
+far short of the greatness of what He meant by the declaration, and
+they stand, in this final, articulate confession of their faith, but a
+little in advance of Nicodemus the Rabbi, and behind Peter the Apostle
+when he said: 'Thou art the Son of the living God.'
+
+So their confession is a strangely mingled warp and woof of insight and
+of ignorance. And they may stand for us both as examples to teach us
+what we ought to be, and as beacons teaching us what we should not be.
+
+Let me note just one or two lessons drawn from the disciples' demeanour
+and confession.
+
+The first remark that I would make is that here we learn what it is
+that gives life to a creed--experience. These men had, over and over
+again, in our Lord's earlier utterances, heard the declaration that 'He
+came forth from God'; and in a sort of fashion they believed it. But,
+as so many of our convictions do, it lay dormant and half dead in their
+souls. But now, rightly or wrongly, experience had brought them into
+contact, as they thought, with a manifest proof of His divine
+Omniscience, and the torpid conviction flashed all up at once into
+vitality. The smouldering fire of a mere piece of abstract belief was
+kindled at once into a glow that shed warmth through their whole
+hearts; and although they had professed to believe long ago that He
+came from God, now, for the first time, they grasp it as a living
+reality. Why? Because experience had taught it to them. It is the only
+teacher that teaches us the articles of our creed in a way worth
+learning them. Every one of us carries professed beliefs, which lie
+there inoperative, bedridden, in the hospital and dormitory of our
+souls, until some great necessity or sudden circumstance comes that
+flings a beam of light upon them, and then they start and waken. We do
+not know the use of the sword until we are in battle. Until the
+shipwreck comes, no man puts on the lifebelt in his cabin. Every one of
+as has large tracts of Christian truth which we think we most surely
+believe, but which need experience to quicken them, and need us to grow
+up into the possession of them. Of all our teachers who turn beliefs
+assented to into beliefs really believed none is so mighty as Sorrow;
+for that makes a man lay a firm hold on the deep things of God's Word.
+
+Then another lesson that I draw from this glad confession is--the bold
+avowal that always accompanies certitude. These men's stammering
+tongues are loosed. They have a fact to base themselves upon. They have
+a piece of assured knowledge inferred from the fact. They have a faith
+built upon the certitude of what they know. Having this, out it all
+comes in a gush. No man that believes with all his heart can help
+speaking. You silent Christians are so, because you do not more than
+half grasp the truth that you say you hold. 'Thy word, when shut up in
+my bones, was like a fire'; and it ate its way through all the dead
+matter that enclosed it, until at last it flamed out heaven high. Can
+you say, 'We know and we believe,' with unfaltering confidence? Not 'we
+argue'; not 'we humbly venture to think that on the whole'; not 'we are
+inclined rather to believe'; but 'we _know_--that Thou knowest all
+things, and that Thou hast come from God.' Seek for that blessed
+certitude of knowledge, based upon the facts of individual experience,
+which 'makes the tongue of the dumb sing,' and changes all the deadness
+of an outward profession of Christianity into a living, rejoicing power.
+
+Then, further, I draw this lesson. Take care of indolently supposing
+that you understand the depths of God's truth. These Apostles fancied
+that they had grasped the whole meaning of the Master's words, and were
+glad in them. They fed on them, and got something out of them; but how
+far they were from the true perception of their meaning! This
+generation abhors mystery, and demands that the deepest truths of the
+highest subject, which is religion, shall be so broken down into
+mincemeat that the 'man in the street' can understand them in the
+intervals of reading the newspaper. There are only too many of us who
+are disposed to grasp at the most superficial interpretation of
+Christian truth, and lazily to rest ourselves in that. A creed which
+has no depth in it is like a picture which has no distance. It is flat
+and unnatural, and self-condemned by the very fact. It is better that
+we should feel that the smallest word that comes from God is like some
+little leaf of a water plant on the surface of a pond; if you lift that
+you draw a whole trail after it, and nobody knows how far off and how
+deep down are the roots. It is better that we should feel how Infinity
+and Eternity press in upon us on all sides, and should take as ours the
+temper that recognises that till the end we are but learners, seeing
+'in a glass, in a riddle,' and therefore patiently waiting for light
+and strenuously striving to stretch our souls to the width of the
+infinite truth of God.
+
+II. So, then, look, in the second place, at the sad questions and
+forebodings of the Master.
+
+'Do ye _now_ believe?' That does not cast doubt on the reality of their
+faith so much as on its permanence and power. 'Behold the hour cometh
+that ye shall be scattered'--as He had told them a little while before
+in the upper room, like a flock when the shepherd is stricken
+down--'every man to his own.' He does not reject their imperfect
+homage, though He discerns so clearly its imperfection and its
+transiency, but sadly warns them to beware of the fleeting nature of
+their present emotion; and would seek to prepare them, by the
+knowledge, for the terrible storm that is going to break upon them.
+
+So let us learn two or three simple lessons. One is that the dear Lord
+accepts imperfect surrender, ignorant faith and love, of which He knows
+that it will soon turn to denial. Oh! if He did not, what would become
+of us all? _We_ reject half hearts; we will not have a friendship on
+which we cannot rely. The sweetness of vows is all sucked out of them
+to our apprehension, if we have reason to believe that they will be
+falsified in an hour. But the patient Master was willing to put up with
+what you and I will not put up with; and to accept what we reject; and
+be pleased that they gave Him even that. His 'charity suffereth long,
+and is kind.' Let us not be afraid to bring even imperfect
+consecration--
+
+  'A little faith all undisproved'--
+
+to His merciful feet.
+
+Then another lesson is the need for Christian men sedulously to search
+and make sure that their inward life corresponds with their words and
+professions. I wonder how many thousands of people will stand up this
+day and say, 'I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ
+His only Son,' whose words would stick in their throats if that
+question of the Master's was put to them, '_Do_ ye now believe?' And I
+wonder how many of us are the fools of our own verbal acknowledgments
+of Christ. Self-examination is not altogether a wholesome exercise, and
+it may easily be carried too far, to the destruction of the spontaneity
+and the gladness of the Christian life. A man may set his pulse going
+irregularly by simply concentrating his attention upon it, and there
+may be self-examination of the wrong sort, which does harm rather than
+good. But, on the other hand, we all need to verify our position, lest
+our outward life should fatally slip away from correspondence with our
+inward. Our words and acts of Christian profession and service are like
+bank notes. What will be the end if there is a whole ream of such going
+up and down the world, and no balance of bullion in the cellars to meet
+them? Nothing but bankruptcy. Do you see to it that your reserve of
+gold, deep down in your hearts, always leaves a margin beyond the notes
+in circulation issued by you. And in the midst of your professions hear
+the Master saying, '_Do ye_ now believe?'
+
+Another lesson that I draw is, trust no emotions, no religious
+experiences, but only Him to whom they turn.
+
+These men were perfectly sincere, and there was a glow of gladness in
+their hearts, and a real though imperfect faith when they spoke. In an
+hours time where were they?
+
+We often deal far too hard measure to these poor disciples, in our
+estimate of their conduct at that critical moment. We talk about them
+as cowards. Well, they were better and they were worse than cowards;
+for their courage failed second, but their faith had failed first. The
+Cross made them dastards because it destroyed their confidence in Jesus
+Christ.
+
+'We _trusted_.' Ah! what a world of sorrow there is in those two final
+letters of that word! 'We trusted that it had been He who should have
+redeemed Israel.' But they do not trust it any more, and so why should
+they put themselves in peril for One on whom their faith can no longer
+build?
+
+Would we have been any better if we had been there? Suppose you had
+stood afar off and seen Jesus die on the cross, would your faith have
+lived? Do we not know what it is to be a great deal more exuberant in
+our professions of faith--and real faith it is, no doubt--in some quiet
+hour when we are with Him by ourselves, than when swords are flashing
+and we are in the presence of His antagonists? Do we not know what it
+is to grasp conviction at one moment, and the next to find it gone like
+a handful of mist from our clutch? Is our Christian life always lived
+upon one high uniform level? Have we no experience of hours of
+exhaustion coming after deep religious emotion? 'Let him that is
+without sin among you cast the first stone'; there will not be many
+stones flung if that law be applied. Let us all, recognising our own
+weakness, trust to nothing, either in our convictions or our emotions,
+but only to Him, and cry, 'Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe!'
+
+III. Lastly, note the lonely Christ and His companion.
+
+'Ye shall leave Me alone'; there is sadness, though it be calm, in that
+clause, and then, I suppose, there was a moment's pause before the
+quiet voice began again: 'And yet I am not alone, for the Father is
+with Me.' There are two currents there, both calm; but the one bright
+and the other dark.
+
+Jesus was the loneliest man that ever lived. All other forms of human
+solitude were concentrated in His. He knew the pain of unappreciated
+aims, unaccepted love, unbelieved teachings, a heart thrown back upon
+itself. No man understood Him, no man knew Him, no man deeply and
+thoroughly loved Him or sympathised with Him, and He dwelt apart. He
+felt the pain of solitude more sharply than sinful men do. Perfect
+purity is keenly susceptible; a heart fully charged with love is
+wounded sore when the love is thrown back, and all the more sorely the
+more unselfish it is.
+
+Solitude was no small part of the pain of Christ's passion. Remember
+the pitiful appeal in Gethsemane, 'Tarry ye here and watch with Me!'
+Remember the threefold vain return to the sleepers in the hope of
+finding some sympathy from them. Remember the emphasis with which, more
+than once in His life, He foretold the loneliness of His death. And
+then let us understand how the bitterness of the cup that He drank had
+for not the least bitter of its ingredients the sense that He drank it
+alone.
+
+Now, dear friends! some of us, no doubt, have to live outwardly
+solitary lives. We all of us live alone after all fellowship and
+communion. Physicists tell us that in the most solid bodies the atoms
+do not touch. Hearts come closer than atoms, but yet, after all, we die
+alone, and in the depths of our souls we all live alone. So let us be
+thankful that the Master knows the bitterness of solitude, and has
+Himself trod that path.
+
+Then we have here the calm consciousness of unbroken communion. Jesus
+Christ's sense of union with the Father was deep, close, constant, in
+manner and measure altogether transcending any experience of ours. But
+still He sets before us a pattern of what we should aim at in these
+great words. They show the path of comfort for every lonely heart. 'I
+am not alone, for the Father is with Me.' If earth be dark, let us look
+to Heaven. If the world with its millions seems to have no friend in it
+for us, let us turn to Him who never leaves us. If dear ones are torn
+from our grasp, let us grasp God. Solitude is bitter; but, like other
+bitters, it is a tonic. It is not all loss if the trees which with
+their leafy beauty shut out the sky from us are felled, and so we see
+the blue.
+
+Christ's company is to us what the Father's fellowship was to Christ.
+He has borne solitude that He might be the companion of all the lonely,
+and the same voice which said, 'Ye shall leave Me alone,' said also, 'I
+am with you always, even to the end of the world.'
+
+But _that_ communion of Christ with the Father was broken, in that
+awful hour when He cried: 'My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' We tread
+there on the verge of mysteries, beyond our comprehension; but this we
+know--that it was our sin and the world's, made His by His willing
+identifying of Himself with us, which built up that black wall of
+separation. That hour of utter desolation, forsaken by God, deserted by
+men, was the hour of the world's redemption. And Jesus Christ was
+forsaken by God and deserted by men, that you and I might never be
+either the one or the other, but might find in His sweet and constant
+companionship at once the society of man and the presence of God.
+
+
+
+PEACE AND VICTORY
+
+'These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace.
+In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have
+overcome the world.'--JOHN xvi. 33.
+
+So end these wonderful discourses, and so ends our Lord's teaching
+before His passion. He gathers up in one mighty word the total
+intention of these sweet and deep sayings which we have so long been
+pondering together. He sketches in broad outline the continual
+characteristics of the disciples' life, and closes all with the
+strangest shout of victory, even at the moment when He seems most
+utterly defeated.
+
+We shall, I think, best lay on our hearts and minds the spirit and
+purpose of these words if we simply follow their course, and look at
+the three things which Christ emphasises here: the inward peace which
+is His purpose for us; the outward tribulation which is our certain
+fate; and the courageous confidence which Christ's victory for us gives.
+
+I. Note, then, first, the inward peace.
+
+'These things have I spoken unto you that in Me ye might have peace.'
+Peace is not lethargy; and it is very remarkable to notice how, in
+immediate connection with this great promise, there occur words which
+suggest its opposite--tribulation and battle. 'In the world ye have
+tribulation.' 'I have overcome'--that means a fight. These are to go
+side by side with the peace that He promises. The two conditions belong
+to two different spheres. The Christian life bifurcates, as it were,
+into a double root, and moves in two realms--'in Me' and 'in the world'
+And the predicates and characteristics of these two lives are, in a
+large measure, diametrically opposite. So here, without any
+contradiction, our Lord brackets together these two opposite conditions
+as both pertaining to the life of a devout soul. He promises a peace
+which co-exists with tribulation and disturbance, a peace which is
+realised in and through conflict and struggle. The tree will stand,
+with its deep roots and its firm bole, unmoved, though wildest winds
+may toss its branches and scatter its leaves. In the fortress,
+beleaguered by the sternest foes, there may be, right in the very
+centre of the citadel, a quiet oratory through whose thick walls the
+noise of battle and the shout of victory or defeat can never penetrate.
+So we may live in a centre of rest, however wild may be the uproar in
+the circumference. 'In Me... peace,' that is the innermost life. 'In
+the world... tribulation,' that is only the surface.
+
+But, then, note that this peace, which exists with, and is realised
+through, tribulation and strife, depends upon certain conditions. Our
+Lord does not say, 'Ye have peace,' but 'These things I have spoken
+that you _may_ have it.' It is a possibility; and He lays down
+distinctly and plainly here the twofold set of conditions, in
+fulfilment of which a Christian disciple may dwell secure and still, in
+the midst of all confusion. Note, then, these two.
+
+It is peace, if we have it at all, _in Him_. Now you remember how
+emphatically and loftily, as one of the very key-notes of these
+discourses, our Lord has spoken to us, in them, of 'dwelling in Him' as
+the prerogative and the duty of every Christian. We are in Him as in an
+atmosphere. In Him our true lives are rooted as a tree in the soil. We
+are in Him as a branch in the vine, in Him as the members in a body, in
+Him as the residents in a house. We are in Him by simple faith, by the
+trust that rests all upon Him, by the love that finds all in Him, by
+the obedience that does all for Him. And it is only when we are 'in
+Christ' that we rest, and realise peace. All else brings distraction.
+Even delights trouble. The world may give excitement, the world may
+give vulgar and fleeting joys, the world may give stimulus to much that
+is good and true in us, but there is only one thing that gives peace,
+and that is that our hearts should dwell in the Fortress, and should
+ever be surrounded by Jesus Christ. Brother! let nothing tempt us down
+from the heights, and out from the citadel where alone we are at rest;
+but in the midst of all the pressing duties, the absorbing cares, the
+carking anxieties, the seducing temptations of the world, and in the
+presence of all the necessity for noble conflict which the world brings
+to every man that is not its slave, let us try to keep the roots of our
+lives in contact with that soil from which they draw all their
+nourishment, and to wrap ourselves round with the life of Jesus Christ,
+which shall make an impenetrable shield between us and 'the fiery darts
+of the wicked.' Keep on the lee side of the breakwater and your little
+cock-boat will ride out the gale. Keep Christ between you and the
+hurtling storm, and there will be a quiet place below the wall where
+you may rest, hearing not the loud winds when they call. 'These things
+have I spoken that in Me ye might have peace.'
+
+But there is another condition. Christ speaks the great words which
+have been occupying us so long, that they may bring to us peace. I need
+not do more than remind you, in a sentence, of the contents of these
+wonderful discourses. Think of how they have spoken to us of our
+Brother's ascension to Heaven to prepare a place for us; of His coming
+again to receive us to Himself; of His presence with us in His absence;
+of His indwelling in us and ours in Him; of His gift to us of a divine
+Spirit. If we believed all these things; if we realised them and lived
+in the faith of them; if we meditated upon them in the midst of our
+daily duties; and if they were real to us, and not mere words written
+down in a Book, how should anything be able to disturb us, or to shake
+our settled confidence? Cleave to the words of the Master, and let them
+pour into your hearts the quietness and confidence which nothing else
+can give. And then, whatsoever storms may be around, the heart will be
+at rest. We find peace nowhere else but where Mary found her repose,
+and could shake off care and 'trouble about many things,' sitting at
+the feet of Jesus, wrapt in His love and listening to His word.
+
+II. Then note, secondly, the outward tribulation which is the certain
+fate of His followers.
+
+Of course there is a very sad and true sense in which the warning, 'In
+the world ye shall have tribulation,' applies to all men. Pain and
+sickness, loss and death, the monotony of hard, continuous, unwelcome
+toil, hopes blighted or disappointed even in their fruition, and all
+the other 'ills that flesh is heir to,' afflict us all. But our Lord is
+not speaking here about the troubles that befall men as men, nor about
+the chastisement that befalls them as sinners, nor about the evils
+which dog them because they are mortal or because they are bad, but of
+the yet more mysterious sorrows which fall upon them because they are
+good, 'In the world ye have tribulation,' is the proper rendering and
+reading. It had already begun, and it was to be the standing condition
+and certain fate of all that followed Him.
+
+I have already said that the Christian life moves in two spheres, and
+hence there must necessarily be antagonism and conflict. Whoever
+realises the inward life in Christ will more or less, and sooner or
+later, find himself coming into hostile collision with lives which only
+move on the surface and belong to the world. If you and I are
+Christians after the pattern of Jesus Christ, then we dwell in the
+midst of an order of things which is not constituted on or for the
+principles that regulate our lives and the objects at which we aim. And
+hence, in that fundamental discordance between the Christian life and
+society as it is constituted, there must always be, if there be honesty
+and consistency on the side of the Christian man, more or less of
+collision between him and it. All that you regard as axiomatic the
+world regards as folly, if you take Christ for your Teacher. All that
+you labour to secure the world does not care to possess, if you have
+Him for your aim. All that you live to seek it has abandoned; all that
+you desire to obey it will not even consult, if you are taking Christ
+and His law for your rule. And therefore there must come, sooner or
+later, and more or less intensely in all Christian lives, opposition
+and tribulation. You cannot get away from the necessity, so it is as
+well to face it.
+
+No doubt the form of antagonism varies. No doubt the more the world is
+penetrated by Christian principles divorced from their root and source,
+the less vehement and painful will the collision be. But _there_ is the
+gulf, and there it will remain, until the world is a Church. No doubt
+some portion of the battlements of organised Christianity has tumbled
+into the ditch, and made it a little less deep. Christians have dropped
+their standard far too much, and so the antagonism is not so plain as
+it ought to be, and as it used to be, and as, some day, it will be. But
+there it is, and if you are going to live out and out like a Christian
+man, you will get the old sneers flung at you. You will be 'crotchety,'
+'impracticable,' 'spoiling sport,' 'not to be dealt with,' 'a wet
+blanket,' 'pharisaical,' 'bigoted,' and all the rest of the pretty
+words which have been so frequently used about the men that try to live
+like Jesus Christ. Never mind! 'In the world ye have tribulation.' 'I
+bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus,' the branding-iron which
+tells to whom the slave belongs. And if it is His initials that I carry
+I may be proud of the marks.
+
+But at any rate there will be antagonism. You young men in your
+warehouses, you men that go on 'Change', we people that live by our
+pens or our tongues, and find ourselves in opposition to much of the
+tendencies of the present day--we have all, in our several ways, to
+bear the cross. Do not let us be ashamed of it, and, above all, do not
+let us, for the sake of easing our shoulders, be unfaithful to our
+Master. 'In the world ye have tribulation'; and the Christian man's
+peace has to be like the rainbow that lives above the cataract--still
+and radiant, whilst it shines above the hell of white waters that are
+tortured below.
+
+III. Lastly, notice the courageous confidence which comes from the
+Lord's victory.
+
+'Be of good cheer!' It is the old commandment that rang out to Joshua
+when, on the departure of Moses, the conduct of the war fell into his
+less experienced hands: 'Be strong, and of a good courage; only be thou
+strong and very courageous.' So says the Captain of salvation, leaving
+His soldiers to face the current of the heady fight in the field. Like
+some leader who has climbed the ramparts, or hewed his way through the
+broken ranks of the enemies, and rings out the voice of encouragement
+and call to his followers, our Captain sets before us His own example:
+'I have overcome the world,' He said that the day before Calvary. If
+that was victory, what would defeat have been?
+
+Notice, then, how our Lord's life was a true battle. The world tried to
+draw Him away from God by appealing to things desirable to sense, as in
+the wilderness; or to things dreadful to sense, as on the cross; and
+both the one and the other form of temptation He faced and conquered.
+It was no shadow fight which evoked this paean of victory from His
+lips. The reality of His conflict is somewhat concealed from us by
+reason of its calm and the completeness of His conquest. We do not
+appreciate the force that drives a planet upon its path because it is
+calm and continuous and silent, but the power that kept Jesus Christ
+continually faithful to His Father, continually sure of that Father's
+presence, continually averse to all self-will and selfish living, was a
+power mightier then all others that have been manifested in the history
+of humanity. The Captain of our salvation has really fought the fight
+before us.
+
+But mark, again, that our Lord's life is the type of all victorious
+life. The world conquers me when it draws me away from God, when it
+makes me its slave, when it coaxes me to trust it, and urges to despair
+if I lose it. The world conquers me when it comes between me and God,
+when it fills my desires, when it absorbs my energies, when it blinds
+my eyes to the things unseen and eternal. I conquer the world when I
+put my foot upon its temptations, when I crush it down, when I shake
+off its bonds, and when nothing that time and sense, with their
+delights or their dreadfulnesses, can bring, prevents me from cleaving
+to my Father with all my heart, and from living as His child here.
+Whoso thus coerces Time and Sense to be the servants of his filial love
+has conquered them both, and whoso lets them draw him away from God is
+beaten, however successful he may dream himself to be and men may call
+him.
+
+My friends! there is a lesson for Manchester people. Jesus Christ was
+not a very successful man according to the standard of Market Street
+and the Exchange. He made but a poor thing of the world, and He was
+going to be martyred on the cross the day after He said these words.
+And yet that was victory. Ay! Many a man beaten down in the struggle of
+daily life, and making very little of it, according to our vulgar
+estimate, is the true conqueror. Success means making the world a
+stepping-stone to God.
+
+Still further, note our share in the Master's victory--'_I_ have
+overcome the world. Be _ye_ of good cheer.' That seems an irrelevant
+way of arguing. What does it matter to me though He has overcome? So
+much the better for Him; but what good is it to me?
+
+It may aid us somewhat to more strenuous fighting, if we know that a
+brother has fought and conquered, and I do not under-estimate the
+blessing and the benefit of the life of Jesus Christ, as recorded in
+these Scriptures, even from that, as I conceive it, miserably
+inadequate and imperfect point of view. But the victory of Jesus Christ
+is of extremely little practical use to me, if all the use of it is to
+show me how to fight. Ah! you must go a deal deeper than that. 'I have
+overcome the world, and I will come and put My overcoming Spirit into
+your weakness, and fill you with My own victorious life, and make your
+hands strong to war and your fingers to fight; and be in you the
+conquering and omnipotent Power.'
+
+My friends! Jesus Christ's victory is ours, and we are victors in it,
+because He is more than the pattern of brave warfare, He is even the
+Son of God, who gave Himself for us, and gives Himself to us, and
+dwells in us our Strength and our Righteousness.
+
+Lastly, remember that the condition of that victory's being ours is the
+simple act of reliance upon Him and upon it. The man who goes into the
+battle as that little army of the Hebrews did against the
+wide-stretching hosts of the enemy, saying, 'O Lord! we know not what
+to do, but our eyes are up unto Thee,' will come out 'more than
+conqueror through Him that loved him.' For 'this is the victory that
+overcometh the world, even our faith.'
+
+
+
+THE INTERCESSOR
+
+'These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said,
+Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may
+glorify Thee: As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He
+should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him. And this is
+life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus
+Christ, whom Thou hast sent. I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have
+finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do. And now, O Father,
+glorify Thou Me with Thine own Self with the glory which I had with
+Thee before the world was. I have manifested Thy name unto the men
+which Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest
+them Me; and they have kept Thy word. Now they have known that all
+things whatsoever Thou hast given Me, are of Thee. For I have given
+unto them the words which Thou gavest Me; and they have received them,
+and have known surely that I came out from Thee, and they have believed
+that Thou didst send Me. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but
+for them which Thou hast given Me; for they are Thine. And all Mine are
+Thine, and Thine are Mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no
+more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy
+Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me, that
+they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept
+them in Thy name: those that Thou gavest Me I have kept, and none of
+them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be
+fulfilled. And now come I to Thee; and these things I speak in the
+world, that they might have My joy fulfilled in themselves. I have
+given them Thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are
+not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that Thou
+shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them
+from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the
+world. Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth. As Thou hast
+sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.
+And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be
+sanctified through the truth.'--JOHN xvii. 1-19.
+
+We may well despair of doing justice to the deep thoughts of this
+prayer, which volumes would not exhaust. Who is worthy to speak or to
+write about such sacred words? Perhaps we may best gain some glimpses
+of their great and holy sublimity by trying to gather their teaching
+round the centres of the three petitions, 'glorify' (vs. 1, 5), 'keep'
+(v. 11), and 'sanctify' (v. 17).
+
+I. In verses 1-5, Jesus prays for Himself, that He may be restored to
+His pre-incarnate glory; but yet the prayer desires not so much that
+glory as affecting Himself, as His being fitted thereby for completing
+His work of manifesting the Father. There are three main points in
+these verses-the petition, its purpose, and its grounds.
+
+As to the first, the repetition of the request in verses 1 and 5 is
+significant, especially if we note that in the former the language is
+impersonal, 'Thy Son,' and continues so till verse 4, where 'I' and
+'Me' appear. In verses 1-3, then, the prayer rests upon the ideal
+relations of Father and Son, realised in Jesus, while in verses 4 and 5
+the personal element is emphatically presented. The two petitions are
+in their scope identical. The 'glorifying' in the former is more fully
+explained in the latter as being that which He possessed in that
+ineffable fellowship with the Father, not merely before incarnation,
+but before creation. In His manhood He possessed and manifested the
+'glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth';
+but that glory, lustrous though it was, was pale, and humiliation
+compared with the light inaccessible, which shone around the Eternal
+Word in the bosom of the Father. Yet He who prayed was the same Person
+who had walked in that light before time was, and now in human flesh
+asked for what no mere manhood could bear. The first form of the
+petition implies that such a partaking in the uncreated glory of the
+Father is the natural prerogative of One who is 'the Son,' while the
+second implies that it is the appropriate recompense of the earthly
+life and character of the man Jesus.
+
+The petition not only reveals the conscious divinity of the Son, but
+also His willing acceptance of the Cross; for the glorifying sought is
+that reached through death, resurrection, and ascension, and that
+introductory clause, 'the hour is come,' points to the impending
+sufferings as the first step in the answer to the petition. The
+Crucifixion is always thus treated in this Gospel, as being both the
+lowest humiliation and the 'lifting up' of the Son; and here He is
+reaching out His hand, as it were, to draw His sufferings nearer. So
+willingly and desiringly did this Isaac climb the mount of sacrifice.
+Both elements of the great saying in the Epistle to the Hebrews are
+here: 'For the joy that was set before Him, [He] endured the Cross.'
+
+The purpose of the petition is to be noted; namely, the Son's
+glorifying of the Father. No taint of selfishness corrupted His prayer.
+Not for Himself, but for men, did He desire His glory. He sought return
+to that serene and lofty seat, and the elevation of His limited manhood
+to the throne, not because He was wearied of earth or impatient of
+weakness, sorrows, or limitations, but that He might more fully
+manifest by that Glory, the Father's name. To make the Father known is
+to make the Father glorious; for He is all fair and lovely. That
+revelation of divine perfection, majesty, and sweetness was the end of
+Christ's earthly life, and is the end of His heavenly divine activity.
+He needs to reassume the prerogatives of which He needed to divest
+Himself, and both necessities have one end. He had to lay aside His
+garments and assume the form of a servant, that He might make God
+known; but, that revelation being complete, He must take His garments
+and sit down again, before He can go on to tell all the meaning of what
+He has 'done unto us.'
+
+The ground of the petition is twofold. Verses 2 and 3 represent the
+glory sought for, as the completion of the Son's mission and task.
+Already He had been endowed with 'authority over all flesh,' for the
+purpose of bestowing eternal life; and that eternal life stands in the
+knowledge of God, which is the same as the knowledge of Christ. The
+present gift to the Son and its purpose are thus precisely parallel
+with the further gift desired, and that is the necessary carrying out
+of this. The authority and office of the incarnate Christ demand the
+glory of, and consequent further manifestation by, the glorified
+Christ. The life which He comes to give is a life which flows from the
+revelation that He makes of the Father, received, not as mere
+intellectual knowledge, but as loving acquaintance.
+
+The second ground for the petition is in verse 4, the actual perfect
+fulfilment by the Son of that mission. What untroubled consciousness of
+sinless obedience and transparent shining through His life of the
+Father's likeness and will He must have had, who could thus assert His
+complete realisation of that Father's revealing purpose, as the ground
+of His deserving and desiring participation in the divine glory! Surely
+such words are either the acme of self-righteousness or the
+self-revealing speech of the Son of God.
+
+II. With verse 6 we pass to the more immediate reference to the
+disciples, and the context from thence to verse 15 may be regarded as
+all clustered round the second petition 'keep' (v. 11). That central
+request is preceded and followed by considerations of the disciples'
+relation to Christ and to the world, which may be regarded as its
+grounds. The whole context preceding the petition may be summed up in
+two grounds for the prayer--the former set forth at length, and the
+latter summarily; the one being the genuine, though incomplete
+discipleship of the men for whom Christ prays (vs. 6-10), and the
+latter their desolate condition without Jesus (v. 11).
+
+It is beautiful to see how our Lord here credits the disciples with
+genuine grasp, both in heart and head, of His teaching. He had shortly
+before had to say, 'Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast
+thou not known Me?' and soon 'they all forsook Him and fled.' But
+beneath misconception and inadequate apprehension there lived faith and
+love; and He saw 'the full corn in the ear,' when only the green
+'blade' was visible, pushing itself above the surface. We may take
+comfort from this generous estimate of imperfect disciples. If He did
+not tend, instead of quenching, 'dimly burning wicks,' where would He
+have 'lights in the world?'
+
+Verse 6 lays down the beginning of discipleship as threefold: Christ's
+act in revealing; the Father's, in giving men to Jesus; and men's, in
+keeping the Father's word. 'Thy word' is the whole revelation by
+Christ, which is, as this Gospel so often repeats, not His own, but the
+Father's. These three facts underlying discipleship are pleas for the
+petition to follow; for unless the feeble disciples are 'kept' in the
+name, as in a fortress, Christ's work of revelation is neutralised, the
+Father's gift to Him made of none effect, and the incipient disciples
+will not 'keep' His word. The plea is, in effect, 'Forsake not the
+works of thine own hands'; and, like all Christ's prayers, it has a
+promise in its depths, since God does not begin what He will not
+finish; and it has a warning, too, that we cannot keep ourselves unless
+a stronger Hand keeps us.
+
+Verses 7 and 8 carry on the portraiture of discipleship, and thence
+draw fresh pleas. The blessed result of accepting Christ's revelation
+is a knowledge, built on happy experience, and, like the acquaintance
+of heart with heart, issuing in the firm conviction that Christ's words
+and deeds are from God. Why does He say, 'All things whatsoever Thou
+hast given,' instead of simply 'that I have' or 'declare'? Probably it
+is the natural expression of His consciousness, the lowly utterance of
+His obedience, claiming nothing as His own, and yet claiming all, while
+the subsequent clause 'are of Thee' expresses the disciples'
+conviction. In like fashion our Lord, in verse 8, declares that His
+words, in their manifoldness (contrast v. 6, 'Thy word'), were all
+received by Him from the Father, and accepted by the disciples, with
+the result that they came, as before, to 'know' by inward acquaintance
+with Him as a person, and so to have the divinity of His Person
+certified by experience, and further came to 'believe' that God had
+sent Him, which was a conviction arrived at by faith. So knowledge,
+which is personal experience and acquaintance, and faith, which rises
+to the heights of the Father's purpose, come from the humble acceptance
+of the Christ declaring the Father's name. First faith, then knowledge,
+and then a fuller faith built on it, and that faith in its turn passing
+into knowledge (v. 25)--these are the blessings belonging to the growth
+of true discipleship, and are discerned by the loving eye of Jesus in
+very imperfect followers.
+
+In verse 9 Jesus assumes the great office of Intercessor. 'I pray for
+them' is not so much prayer as His solemn presentation of Himself
+before the Father as the High-priest of His people. It marks an epoch
+in His work. The task of bringing God to man is substantially complete.
+That of bringing men by supplication to God is now to begin. It is the
+revelation of the permanent office of the departed Lord. Moses on the
+Mount holds up the rod, and Israel prevails (Exod. xvii. 9). The
+limitation of this prayer to the disciples applies only to the special
+occasion, and has no bearing on the sweep of His redeeming purpose or
+the desires of His all-pitying heart. The reasons for His intercession
+follow in verses 9-11a. The disciples are the Father's, and continue so
+even when 'given' to Christ, in accordance with the community of
+possession, which oneness of nature and perfectness of love establish
+between the Father and the Son. God cannot but care for those who are
+His. The Son cannot but pray for those who are His. Their having
+recognised Him for what He was binds Him to pray for them. He is
+glorified in disciples, and if we show forth His character, He will be
+our Advocate. The last reason for His prayer is the loneliness of the
+disciples and their exposure in the world without Him. His departure
+impelled Him to Intercede, both as being a leaving them defenceless and
+as being an entrance into the heavenly state of communion with the
+Father.
+
+In the petition itself (v. 11b), observe the invocation 'Holy Father!'
+with special reference to the prayer for preservation from the
+corruption of the world. God's holiness is the pledge that He will make
+us holy, since He is 'Father' as well. Observe the substance of the
+request, that the disciples should be kept, as in a fortress, within
+the enclosing circle of the name which God has given to Jesus. The name
+is the manifestation of the divine nature. It was given to Jesus,
+inasmuch as He, 'the Word,' had from the beginning the office of
+revealing God; and that which was spoken of the Angel of the Covenant
+is true in highest reality of Jesus: 'My name is in Him.' 'The name of
+the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it and is safe.'
+
+Observe the issue of this keeping; namely, the unity of believers. The
+depths of that saying are beyond us, but we can at least see thus
+far--that the true bond of unity is the name in which all who are one
+are kept; that the pattern of the true unity of believers is the
+ineffable union of Father and Son, which is oneness of will and nature,
+along with distinctness of persons; and that therefore this purpose
+goes far deeper than outward unity of organisation.
+
+Then follow other pleas, which are principally drawn from Christ's
+relation to the disciples, now ending; whereas the former ones were
+chiefly deduced from the disciples' relation to Him. He can no more do
+what He has done, and commits it to the Father. Happy we if we can
+leave our unfinished tasks to be taken up by God, and trust those whom
+we leave undefended to be shielded by Him! 'I kept' is, in the Greek,
+expressive of continuous, repeated action, while 'I guarded' gives the
+single issue of the many acts of keeping. Jesus keeps His disciples now
+as He did then, by sedulous, patient, reiterated acts, so that they are
+safe from evil. But note where He kept them--'in Thy name.' That is our
+place of safety, a sure defence and inexpugnable fortress. One, indeed,
+was lost; but that was not any slur on Christ's keeping, but resulted
+from his own evil nature, as being 'a son of loss' (if we may so
+preserve the affinity of the words in the Greek), and from the divine
+decree from of old. Sharply defined and closely united are the two
+apparent contradictories of man's free choice of destruction and God's
+foreknowledge. Christ saw them in harmony, and we shall do so one day.
+
+Then the flow of the prayer recurs to former thoughts. Going away so
+soon, He yearned to leave them sharers of His own emotions in the
+prospect of His departure to the Father, and therefore He had admitted
+them (and us) to hear this sacred outpouring of His desires. If we laid
+to heart the blessed revelations of this disclosure of Christ's heart,
+and followed Him with faithful gaze as He ascends to the Father, and
+realised our share in that triumph, our empty vessels would be filled
+by some of that same joy which was His. Earthly joy can never be full;
+Christian joy should never be anything less than full.
+
+Then follows a final glance at the disciples' relation to the world, to
+which they are alien because they are of kindred to Him. This is the
+ground for the repetition of the prayer 'keep', with the difference
+that formerly it was 'keep _in_ Thy name,' and now it is '_from_ the
+evil.' It is good to gaze first on our defence, the 'munitions of
+rocks' where we lie safely, and then we can venture to face the thought
+of 'the evil,' from which that keeps us, whether it be personal or
+abstract.
+
+III. Verses 16-19 give the final petition for the immediate circle of
+disciples, with its grounds. The position of alienation from the world,
+in which the disciples stand by reason of their assimilation to Jesus,
+is repeated here. It was the reason for the former prayer, 'keep'; it
+is the reason for the new petition, 'sanctify.' Keeping comes first,
+and then sanctifying, or consecration. Security from evil is given that
+we may be wholly devoted to the service of God. The evil in the world
+is the great hindrance to that. The likeness to Jesus is the great
+ground of hope that we shall be truly consecrated. We are kept 'in the
+name'; we are consecrated 'in the truth,' which is the revelation made
+by Jesus, and in a very deep sense is Himself. That truth is, as it
+were, the element in which the believer lives, and by abiding in which
+his real consecration is possible.
+
+Christ's prayer for us should be our aim and deepest desire for
+ourselves, and His declaration of the condition of its fulfilment
+should prescribe our firm adhesion to, and constant abiding in, the
+truth as revealed and embodied in Him, as the only means by which we
+can attain the consecration which is at once, as the closing verses of
+the passage tell us, the means by which we may fulfil the purpose for
+which we are sent into the world, and the path on which we reach
+complete assimilation to His perfect self-surrender. All Christians are
+sent into the world by Jesus, as Jesus was sent by the Father. We have
+the charge to glorify Him. We have the presence of the Sender with us,
+the sent. We are inspired with His Spirit. We cannot do His work
+without that entire consecration which shall copy His devotion to the
+Father and eager swiftness to do His will. How can such ennobling and
+exalted consecration be ours? There is but one way. He has 'consecrated
+Himself,' and by union with Him through faith, our selfishness may be
+subdued, and the Spirit of Christ may dwell in our hearts, to make us
+'living sacrifices, consecrated and acceptable to God.' Then shall we
+be truly 'consecrated,' and then only, when we can say, 'I live; yet
+not I, but Christ liveth in me.' That is the end of Christ's
+consecration of Himself--the prayer which He prayed for His
+disciples--and should be the aim which every disciple earnestly pursues.
+
+
+
+
+'THE LORD THEE KEEPS'
+
+'...They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray
+not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou
+shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I
+am not of the world.'--JOHN xvii. 14-16.
+
+We have here a petition imbedded in a reiterated statement of the
+disciples' isolated position when left in a hostile world without
+Christ's sheltering presence. We cannot fathom the depth of the mystery
+of the _praying_ Christ, but we may be sure of this, that His prayers
+were always in harmony with the Father's will, were, in fact, the
+expression of that will, and were therefore promises and prophecies.
+What He prays the Father for His disciples He gives to His disciples.
+Once only had He to say, 'If it be possible'; at all other times He
+prayed as sure that 'Thou hearest Me always,' and in this very prayer
+He speaks in a tone of strange authority, when He prays for all
+believers in future ages, and says: 'I will that, where I am, they also
+may be with Me.' In this High-priestly prayer, offered when Gethsemane
+was almost in sight, and the Judgment Hall and Calvary were near, our
+Lord's tender interest in His disciples fills His mind, and even in its
+earlier portion, which is in form a series of petitions for Himself, it
+is in essence a prayer for them, whilst this central section which
+concerns the Apostles, and the closing section which casts the mantle
+of His love and care over all who hereafter shall 'believe on Me
+through their word,' witnesses to the sublime completeness of His
+self-oblivion. Gethsemane heard His prayer for Himself; here He prays
+for His people, and the calm serenity and confident assurance of this
+prayer, set against the agitation of that other, receives and gives
+emphasis by the contrast.
+
+Our text falls into two parts, the enclosing circle of the repeated
+statement of the disciples' isolation in an alien world, and the
+enclosed jewel of the all-sufficient prayer which guarantees their
+protection. We shall best make its comfort and cheer our own by dealing
+with these two successively.
+
+I. The disciples' isolation.
+
+Of course we are to interpret the 'world' here in accordance with the
+ethical usage of that term in this Gospel, according to which it means
+the aggregate of mankind considered as apart from and alien to God. It
+is roughly equivalent to the modern phrase, 'society.'
+
+With that order of things Christ's real followers are not in accord.
+
+That want of accord depends upon their accord with Jesus.
+
+Every Christian has the 'mind of Christ' in him, in the measure of his
+Christianity. 'It is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master'
+But Christian discipleship has a better guarantee for the assimilation
+of the disciple to his Lord than the ordinary forms of the relation of
+teacher and taught ever present. There is a participation in the
+Master's life, an implantation in the scholar's spirit of the Teacher's
+Spirit. 'Christ in us' is not only 'the hope of glory,' but the power
+which makes possible and actual the present possession of a life
+kindred with, because derived from, and essentially one with, His life.
+
+They whose spirits are touched by the indwelling Christ to the 'fine
+issues' of sympathy with the law of His earthly life cannot but live in
+the world as aliens, and wander amid its pitfalls with 'blank
+misgivings' and a chill sense that this is not their rest. They are
+knit to One whose 'meat and drink' was to do the will of the Father in
+heaven, who 'pleased not Himself,' whose life was all one long service
+and sacrifice for men, whose joys were not fed by earthly possessions
+or delights. How should they have a sense of community of aims with
+grovelling hearts that cling to wealth or ambition, that are not at
+peace with God, and have no holdfasts beyond this 'bank and shoal of
+time'? A man who has drunk into the spirit of Christ's life is thereby
+necessarily thrown out of gear with the world.
+
+Happy is he if his union with Jesus is so deep and close that it is but
+deepened by his experience of the lack of sympathy between the world
+and himself! Happy if his consciousness of not being 'of the world' but
+quickens his desire to help the world and glorify his Lord, by bringing
+His all-sufficiency into its emptiness, and leading it, too, to discern
+His sweetness and beauty!
+
+But how little the life of the average Christian corresponds to this
+reiterated utterance of our Lord! Who of us dare venture to take it on
+our lips and to say that we are 'not of the world even as He is not of
+the world'? Is not our relation to that world of which Jesus here
+speaks a contrast rather than a parallel to His? The 'prince of this
+world' had nothing in Christ, as He himself declared, but He has much
+in each of us. There are stored up heaps of combustibles in every one
+of us which catch fire only too swiftly, and burn but too fiercely,
+when the 'fiery darts of the wicked' fall among them. Instead of an
+instinctive recoil from the view of life characteristic of 'the world,'
+we must confess, if we are honest, that it draws us strongly, and many
+of us are quite at home with it. Why is this but because we do not
+habitually live near enough to our Lord to drink in His Spirit? The
+measure of our discord with the world is the measure of our accord with
+our Saviour. It is in the degree in which we possess His life that we
+come to be aliens here, and it is in the degree in which we keep in
+touch with Jesus, and keep our hearts wide open for the entrance of His
+Spirit, that we possess His life. A worldly Christian--no uncommon
+character--is a Christian who has all but shut himself off from the
+life which Christ breathes into the expectant soul.
+
+II. The disciples' guarded security.
+
+Jesus encloses His prayer between the two parts of that repeated
+statement of the disciples' isolation. It is like some lovely, peaceful
+plain circled by grim mountains. The isolation is a necessary
+consequence of the disciples' previous union with Him. It involves much
+that is painful to the unrenewed part of their natures, but their
+Lord's prayer is more than enough for their security and peace.
+
+'I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world.' They are
+in it by God's appointment for great purposes, affecting their own
+characters and affecting the world, with which Christ will not
+interfere. It is their training ground, their school. The sense of
+belonging to another order is to be intensified by their experiences in
+it, and these are to make more vivid the hopes that yearn towards the
+true home, and to develop the 'wrestling thews that throw the world.'
+The discipline of life is too precious to be tampered with even by a
+Saviour's prayer, and He loves His people too wisely to seek to shelter
+them from its roughness, and to procure for them exemption which would
+impoverish their characters.
+
+So let us learn the lesson and shape our desires after the pattern of
+our Lord's prayer for us, nor blindly seek for that ease which He would
+not ask for us. False asceticism that shrinks from contact with an
+alien world, weak running from trials and temptations, selfish desires
+for exemption from sorrows, are all rebuked by this prayer. Christ's
+relation to the world is our pattern, and we are not to seek for
+pillows in an order of things where He 'had not where to lay His head.'
+
+But He does ask for His people that they may be kept 'from evil,' or
+from 'the evil One.' That prayer is, as we have said, a promise and a
+prophecy. But the fulfilment of it in each individual disciple hinges
+on the disciple's keeping himself in touch with Jesus, whereby the
+'much virtue' of His prayer will encompass him and keep him safe. We do
+not discuss the alternative renderings, according to one of which 'the
+evil' is impersonal, and according to the other of which it is
+concentrated in the personal 'prince of this world.' In either case, it
+is 'the evil' against which the disciples are to be guarded, whether it
+has a personal source or not.
+
+Here, in Christ's intercession, is the firm ground of our confidence
+that we may be 'more than conquerors' in the life-long fight which we
+have to wage. The sweet strong old psalm is valid in its assurances
+to-day for every soul which puts itself under the shadow of Christ's
+protecting intercession: 'The Lord shall keep thee from all evil, He
+shall keep thy soul.' We have not 'to lift up our eyes unto the hills,'
+for 'vainly is help hoped for from the multitude of the mountains,' but
+'Our help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth.' Therefore
+we may dwell at peace in the midst of an alien world, having the Father
+for our Keeper, and the Son, who overcame the world, for our
+Intercessor, our Pattern and our Hope.
+
+The parallel between Christ and His people applies to their relations
+to the present order of things: 'They are not of the world, even as I
+am not of the world.' It applies to their mission here: 'As Thou didst
+send Me into the world, even so sent I them into the world.' It applies
+to the future: 'I am no more in the world, but these are in the world,
+and I come to Thee,' and in that 'coming' lies the guarantee that His
+servants will, each in his due time, come out from this alien world and
+pass into the state which is home, because He is there. The prayer that
+they might be kept from the evil, while remaining in the scene where
+evil is rampant, is crowned by the prayer: 'I will that, where I am,
+they also may be with Me, that they may behold My glory.'
+
+
+
+THE HIGH PRIEST'S PRAYER
+
+'Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe
+on Me through their word; That they all may be one; as Thou, Father,
+art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us: that the
+world may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the glory which Thou
+givest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
+I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and
+that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as
+Thou hast loved Me. Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given
+Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou
+hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.
+O righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee: but I have known
+Thee, and these have known that Thou hast sent Me. And I have declared
+unto them Thy name, and will declare it; that the love wherewith Thou
+hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.'--JOHN xvii. 20-26.
+
+The remainder of this prayer reaches out to all generations of
+believers to the end. We may incidentally note that it shows that Jesus
+did not anticipate a speedy end of the history of the world or the
+Church; and also that it breathes but one desire, that for the Church's
+unity, as though He saw what would be its greatest peril.
+Characteristic, too, of the idealism of this Gospel is it that there is
+no name for that future community. It is not called 'church,' or
+'congregation,' or the like--it is 'them also that believe on Me
+through their word,' a great spiritual community, held together by
+common faith in Him whom the Apostles preached. Is not that still the
+best definition of Christians, and does not such a conception of it
+correspond better to its true nature than the formal abstraction, 'the
+Church'?
+
+We can but touch in the most inadequate fashion the profound words of
+this section of the prayer which would take volumes to expound fitly.
+We note that it contains four periods, in each of which something is
+asked or stated, and then a purpose to be attained by the petition or
+statement is set forth.
+
+First comes the prayer for unity and what the answer to it will effect
+(v. 21). Now in this verse the unity of believers is principally
+regarded as resulting from the inclusion, if we may so say, of them all
+in the ineffable union of the Father and the Son. Jesus prays that
+'they may all be one,' and also 'that they also may be in us' (Rev.
+Ver.). And their unity is no mere matter of formal external
+organisation nor of unanimity of creed, or the like, but it is a deep,
+vital unity. The pattern of it is the unity of the Father and the Son,
+and the power that brings it about is the abiding of all believers 'in
+us.' The result of such a manifestation in the world of a multitude of
+men, in all of whom one life evidently moves, fusing their
+individualities while retaining their personalities, will be the
+world's conviction of the divine mission of Jesus. The world was
+beginning to feel its convictions moving slowly in that direction, when
+it exclaimed: 'Behold how these Christians love one another!' The
+alienation of Christians has given barbs and feathers to its arrows of
+scorn. But it is 'the unity of the Spirit,' not that of a, great
+corporation, that Christ's prayer desires.
+
+The petitions for what would be given to believers passes for a moment
+into a statement of what Jesus had already given to them. He had begun
+the unifying gift, and that made a plea for its perfecting. The 'glory'
+which He had given to these poor bewildered Galilaeans was but in a
+rudimentary stage; but still, wherever there is faith in Him, there is
+some communication of His life and Spirit, and some of that veiled and
+yet radiant glory, 'full of grace and truth,' which shone through the
+covering when the Incarnate Word 'became flesh.' It is the Christ-given
+Christ-likeness in each which knits believers into one. It is Christ in
+us and we in Christ that fuses us into one, and thereby makes each
+perfect. And such flashing back of the light of Jesus from a million
+separate crystals, all glowing with one light and made one in the
+light, would flash on darkest eyes the lustre of the conviction that
+God sent Christ, and that God's love enfolded those Christlike souls
+even as it enfolded Him.
+
+Again (v. 24) comes a petition with its result. And here there is no
+mention of the effect of the answer on the world. For the moment the
+thoughts of isolation in, and a message to, the world fade away. The
+partially-possessed 'glory' seems to have led on Christ's thoughts to
+the calm home of perfection waiting for Him who was 'not of the world'
+and was sent into it, and for the humble ones who had taken Him for
+Lord. 'I will that'--that is a strange tone for a prayer. What
+consciousness on Christ's part does it involve? The disciples are not
+now called 'them that should believe on Me,' but 'that which Thou hast
+given Me,' the individuals melt into the great whole. They are
+Christ's, not merely by their faith or man's preaching, but by the
+Father's gift. And the fact of that gift is used as a plea with Him, to
+'perfect that which concerneth' them, and to complete the unity of
+believers with Jesus by bringing them to be 'with Him' in His
+triumphant session at the right hand. To 'behold' will be the same as
+to share His glory, not only that which we beheld when He tabernacled
+among us, but that which He had in the pouring out on Him of God's love
+'before the foundation of the world.' Our dim eyes cannot follow the
+happy souls as they are lost in the blaze, but we know that they walk
+in light and are like Him, for they 'see Him as He is.'
+
+The last statement (vs. 25, 26) is not petition but vow, and, to our
+ears, promise. The contrast of the world and believers appears for the
+last time. What made the world a 'world' was its not knowing God; what
+made believers isolated in, and having an errand to, the world, was
+that they 'knew' (not merely 'believed,' but knew by experience) that
+Jesus had been sent from God to make known His name. All our knowledge
+of God comes through Him; it is for us to recognise His divine mission,
+and then He will unveil, more and more, with blessed continuity of
+increasing knowledge, the Name, and with growing knowledge of it
+growing measures of God's love will be in us, and Jesus Himself will
+'dwell in our hearts by faith' more completely and more blessedly
+through an eternity of wider knowledge and more fervent love.
+
+
+
+THE FOLDED FLOCK
+
+'I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am;
+that they may behold My glory.'--JOHN xvii. 24.
+
+This wonderful prayer is (_a_) for Jesus Himself, (_b_) for the
+Apostles, (_c_) for the whole Church on earth and in heaven.
+
+I. The prayer.
+
+'I will' has a strange ring of authority. It is the expression of His
+love to men, and of His longing for their presence with Him in His
+glory. Not till they are with Him there, shall He 'see of the travail
+of His soul and be satisfied.'
+
+We have here a glimpse of the blessed state of the dead in Christ.
+
+(_a_) Local presence with Christ. His glorified body is somewhere. The
+value of this thought is that it gives solidity to our ideas of a
+future life. There they _are_. We need not dwell on the metaphysical
+difficulties about locality for disembodied spirits.
+
+If a spirit can be localised in a body, I suppose it can be localised
+without a body; but passing by all that, we have the hope held out here
+of a real local presence with the glorified humanity of our Lord. We
+speak of the dead as gone _from us_, and we have that idea far more
+vividly in our minds than that of their having gone _to Him_. We speak
+of the 'departed,' but we do not think of them as 'arrived.' We look
+down to the narrow grave, but we forget 'He is not here, He is risen.
+Why seek ye the living among the dead?' Ah! if we could only bring home
+to our hearts the solid prose of the conviction that where Christ is
+there His servants are, and that not in the diffused ubiquity of His
+Divine Omnipresence, it would go far to remove the darkness and vague
+mist which wrap the future, and to set it as it really is before us, as
+a solid definite reality. We see the sails glide away out into the west
+as the sun goes down, and we think of them as tossing on a midnight
+sea, an unfathomable waste. Try to think of them more truly. As in that
+old miracle, He comes to them walking on the water in the night watch,
+and if at first they are terrified, His voice brings back hope to the
+heart that is beginning to stand still, and immediately they are at the
+land whither they go. Now, as they sink from our sight, they are in
+port, sails furled and anchor dropped, and green fields round them,
+even while we watch the sinking masts, and cannot yet rightly tell
+whether the fading sail has faded wholly.
+
+(_b_) Communion with Christ.
+
+Our Lord says not only 'that where I am, they also may be,' but adds
+'with Me.' That is not a superfluous addition, but emphasises the
+thought of a communion which is more intimate and blessed than local
+presence alone would be.
+
+The communion here is real but imperfect. It is perfected there on our
+part by the dropping away of flesh and sin, by change of circumstances,
+by emancipation from cares and toils necessary here, by the development
+of new powers and surroundings, and on His side by new manifestations.
+
+(_c_) Vision of His glory.
+
+The crown of this utterance of Christ's will is 'that they may behold
+My glory.' In an earlier part of this prayer our Lord had spoken of the
+'glory which I had with Thee before the world was.' But probably the
+glory 'given' is not that of essential Divinity, but that of His
+mediatorial work. To His people 'with Him where He is,' are imparted
+fuller views of Christ as Saviour, deeper notions of His work, clearer
+perception of His rule in providence and nature. This is the loftiest
+employment of the spirits who are perfected and lapped in 'pleasures
+for evermore' by their union with the glorified Jesus.
+
+Surely this is grander than all metaphorical pictures of heaven.
+
+II. The incipient fulfilment now going on.
+
+The prayer has been in process of fulfilment ever since. The dead in
+Christ have entered on its answer now.
+
+We need not discuss difficulties about the 'intermediate state,' for
+this at all events is true, that to be 'absent from the body' is to be
+'present with the Lord.'
+
+A Christian death is an answer to this prayer. True, for Christians as
+for all, the physical necessity is an imperative law. True, the
+punitive aspect of death is retained for them. But yet the law is
+wielded by Christ, and while death remains, its whole aspect is
+changed. So we may think of those who have departed in His faith and
+fear as gone in answer to this prayer.
+
+How beautiful that is! Slowly, one by one, they are gathered in, as the
+stars one by one light up. Place after place is filled.
+
+Thus through the ages the prayer works on, and our dear ones have gone
+from us, but they have gone to Him. We weep, but they rejoice. To us
+their departure is the result of an iron law, of a penal necessity, of
+some secondary cause; but to them it is seen to be the answer to His
+mighty prayer. They hear His voice and follow Him when He says, 'Come
+up hither.'
+
+III. The final fulfilment still future.
+
+The prayer looks forward to a perfect fulfilment. His prayer cannot be
+vain.
+
+(_a_) Perfect in degree.
+
+(_b_) Perfect in extent, when all shall be gathered together and the
+'whole family' shall be 'in heaven,' and Christ's own word receives its
+crowning realisation, that 'of all whom the Father hath given Him He
+has lost nothing.'
+
+And these are not some handful picked out by a decree which we can
+neither fathom nor alter, but Christ is given to us all, and if we
+choose to take Him, then for us He has ascended; and as we watch Him
+going up the voice comes to us: 'I go to prepare a place for you. I
+will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there ye
+may be also.'
+
+
+
+CHRIST'S SUMMARY OF HIS WORK
+
+'I have declared onto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love
+wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.'--JOHN
+xvii. 26.
+
+This is the solemn and calm close of Christ's great High-priestly
+prayer; the very last words that He spoke before Gethsemane and His
+passion. In it He sums up both the purpose of His life and the
+petitions of His prayer, and presents the perfect fulfilment of the
+former as the ground on which He asks the fulfilment of the latter.
+There is a singular correspondence and contrast between these last
+words to God and the last words to the disciples, which immediately
+preceded them. These were, 'In the world ye shall have tribulation, but
+be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.' In both He sums up His
+life, in both He is unconscious of flaw, imperfection, or limitation;
+in both He shares His own possessions among His followers. But His
+words to men carry a trace of His own conflict and a foreboding of
+theirs. For Him life had been, and for them it was to be, tribulation
+and a battle, and the highest thing that He could promise them was
+victory won by conflict. But from the serene elevation of the prayer
+all such thoughts disappear. Unbroken calm lies over it. His life has
+been one continual manifestation of the name of God; and the portion
+that He promises to His followers is not victory won by strife, but the
+participation with Himself in the love of God.
+
+Both views are true--true to His experience, true to ours. The
+difference between them lies in the elevation of the beholder's eye.
+Looked at on the outward side, His life and ours must be always a
+battle and often a sorrow. Looked at from within, His life was an
+unbroken abiding in the love of God, and a continual impartation of the
+name of God, and our lives may be an ever growing knowledge of God,
+leading to and being a fuller and fuller possession of His love, and of
+a present Christ. So let us ponder these deep words: our Lord's own
+summing up of His work and aims; His statement of what we may hope to
+attain; and the path by which we may attain it. I shall best bring out
+the whole fullness of their meaning if I simply follow them word by
+word.
+
+I. Note, first, the backward look of the revealing Son.
+
+'I have declared Thy name.'
+
+The first thing that strikes one about these words is their boldness.
+Remember that they are spoken to God, at the close of a life the
+heights and depths of which they sum up. They are an appeal to God's
+righteous judgment of the whole character of the career. Do they
+breathe the tone that we might expect? Surely the prophet or teacher
+who has most earnestly tried to make himself a mirror, without spot to
+darken and without dint to distort the divine ray, will be the first to
+feel, as he looks back, the imperfections of his repetition of his
+message. But Jesus Christ, when He looks back over His life, has no
+flaw, limitation, incompleteness, to record or to confess. As always so
+here, He is absolutely unconscious of anything in the nature of
+weakness, error, or sin. As when He looked back upon His life as a
+conflict, He had no defeats to remember with shame, so here, when He
+looks upon it as the revelation of God He feels that everything which
+He has received of the Father He has made known unto men.
+
+And the strange thing is that we admit the claim, and have become so
+accustomed to regard it as being perfectly legitimate that we forget
+how enormous it is. He takes an attitude here which in any other man
+would be repulsive, but in Him is supremely natural. We criticise other
+people, we outgrow their teachings, we see where their doctrines have
+deviated from truth by excess or defect, or disproportion; but when He
+says 'I have declared Thy name,' we feel that He says nothing more than
+the simple facts of His life vindicate and confirm.
+
+Not less remarkable is the implication in these words, not only of the
+completeness of His message, but of the fullness of His knowledge of
+God, and its entirely underived nature. So He claims for Himself an
+altogether special and unique position here: He has learned God from
+none; He teaches God to all. 'That was the true Light which lighteth
+every man that cometh into the world.'
+
+Looking a little more closely at these words before us, we have here
+Christ's own account of His whole life. The meaning of it all is the
+revelation of the heart of God. Not by words, of course; not by words
+only, but far more by deeds. And I would have you ask yourselves this
+question--If the deeds of a man are a declaration of the name of God,
+what sort of a man is He who thus declares Him? Must we not feel that
+if these words, or anything like them, really came from the lips of
+Jesus Christ, we are here in the presence of something other than a
+holy life of a simple humanity, which might help men to climb to the
+apprehension of a God who was perfect love; and that when He says 'He
+that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' we stand before 'God manifest
+in the flesh.'
+
+What is that name of God which the revealing Son declares? Not the mere
+syllables by which we call Him, but the manifested character of the
+Father. That one name, in the narrower sense of the word, carries the
+whole revelation that Jesus Christ has to make; for it speaks of
+tenderness, of kindred, of paternal care, of the transmission of a
+nature, of the embrace of a divine love. And it delivers men from all
+their creeping dreads, from all their dark peradventures, from all
+their stinging fears, from all the paralysing uncertainties which, like
+clouds, always misty and often thunder-bearing, have shut out the sight
+of the divine face. If this Christ, in His weakness and humanity, with
+pity welling from His eyes, and making music of His voice, with the
+swift help streaming from His fingers-tips to every pain and weariness,
+and the gracious righteousness that drew little children and did not
+repel publicans and harlots, is our best image of God, then love is the
+centre of divinity, and all the rest that we call God is but
+circumference and fringe of that central brightness.
+
+  'So through the thunder comes a human voice
+  Saying, "O heart I made! a heart beats here."'
+
+He has declared God's name, His last best name of Love.
+
+Need I dwell for one moment on the fact that that name is only declared
+by this Son? There is no need to deny the presence of manifold other
+precious sources in men's experience and lives from which something may
+be inferred of what God truly is. But all these, rich and manifold as
+they are, fall into nothingness before the life of Jesus Christ,
+considered as the making visible of God. For all the rest are partial
+and incomplete. 'At sundry times and in divers manners' God flung forth
+syllables of the name, and 'fragments of that mighty voice came rolling
+down the wind.' But in Jesus Christ the whole name, in all its
+syllables, is spoken. Other sources of knowledge are ambiguous, and
+need the interpretation of Christ's life and Cross ere they can be
+construed into a harmonious whole. Life, nature, our inmost being,
+history, all these sources speak with two voices; and it is only when
+we hear the deep note that underlies them in the word of Christ that
+their discord becomes a harmony. Other sources lack authority. They
+come at the most with a 'may be.' He comes with a 'Verily, verily.'
+Other sources speak to the understanding, or the conscience, or to
+fear. Christ speaks to the heart. Other sources leave the man who
+accepts them unaffected. Christ's message penetrates to the
+transforming and assimilation of the whole being.
+
+So, dear brethren! for all generations, and for this generation most of
+all, the plain alternative lies between the declaration of the name of
+God in Jesus Christ and a godless and orphan world. Modern thought will
+make short work of all other sources of certitude about the character
+of God, and will leave men alone in the dark. Christ, the historical
+fact of the life and death of Jesus Christ, is the sole surviving
+source of certitude, which is blessedness, as to whether there is a
+God, and what sort of a God He is.
+
+II. Secondly, note here that strange forward look of the dying Man: 'I
+have declared Thy name and _will declare it_.'
+
+And that was said within eight and forty hours of the Cross, which, if
+He had been a simple human teacher and martyr, would have ended all His
+activity in the world. But here He is not merely summing up His life,
+and laying it aside, writing the last sentence, as it were, which
+gathers up the whole of the completed book, but He is closing the first
+volume, and in the act of doing so He stretches out His hand to open
+the second. 'I will declare it.' When? How? Did not earthly life, then,
+put a stop to this Teacher's activity? Was there still prophetic
+function to be done after death had sealed His lips? Certainly.
+
+That anticipation, which at once differentiates Him from all the brood
+of merely human teachers and prophets, even the highest, does indeed
+include as future, at the moment when He speaks, the swiftly coming and
+close Cross; but it goes beyond it. How much of Christendom's knowledge
+of God depended upon the Passion, on the threshold of which Christ was
+standing? He, hanging on the Cross in weakness, and dying there amidst
+the darkness that overspread the land, is a strange Revealer of the
+omnipotent, infinite, ever-blessed God. But Oh! if we strike Gethsemane
+and Calvary out of Christ's manifestation of the Father, how infinitely
+poorer are we and the world! 'God commendeth,' (rather 'establisheth,')
+'His love toward us in that whilst we were yet sinners Christ died for
+us.' And so as we turn ourselves to the little knoll outside the gate,
+where the Nazarene carpenter hangs faint and dying, we--wonder of
+Wonders, and yet certainty of certainties!--have to say, 'Lo! this is
+our God; we have waited for Him.'
+
+But that future revelation extends beyond the Cross, and includes
+resurrection, ascension, Pentecost, and the whole history of the Church
+right onwards through the ages. The difference between the two volumes
+of revelation--that which includes the work of Christ upon earth, and
+that which includes His revelation from the heavens--is this, that the
+first volume contains all the facts, and the second volume contains His
+interpretation and application of the facts in the understandings and
+hearts of His people. We have no more facts from which to construe God
+than these which belong to the earthly life of Jesus Christ, and we
+never shall have, here at all events. But whilst the first volume to
+the bottom of the last page is finished and tolerates and needs no
+additions, day by day, moment by moment, epoch by epoch Christ is
+bringing His people to a fuller understanding of the significance of
+the first volume, and writing the second more and more upon their
+hearts.
+
+So we have an ever-living Christ, still the active Teacher of His
+Church. Times of unsettlement and revolutionary change and the 'shaking
+of the things that are made,' like the times in which we live, are but
+times in which the great Teacher is setting some new lesson from the
+old Book to His slow scholars. There is always a little confusion in
+the schoolroom when the classes are being rearranged and new books are
+being put into old hands. The tributary stream, as it rushes in, makes
+broken water for a moment. Do not let us be afraid when 'the things
+that can be shaken' shake, but let us see in the shaking the attendant
+of a new curriculum on which the great Teacher is launching His
+scholars, and let us learn the new lessons of the old Gospel which He
+is then teaching.
+
+III. Thirdly, note the participation in the Father's love which is the
+issue of the knowledge of the Father's name.
+
+Christ says that His end, an end which is surely attained in the
+declaration of the divine name, is that 'the love wherewith Thou hast
+loved Me may be in them.' We are here touching upon heights too dizzy
+for free and safe walking, on glories too bright for close and steady
+gaze. But where Christ has spoken we may reverently follow. Mark, then,
+that marvellous thought of the identity between the love which was His
+and the love which is ours. 'From everlasting' that divine love lay on
+the Eternal Word which in the hoary beginning, before the beginning of
+creatures, 'was with God, and was God.' The deepest conception that we
+can form of the divine nature is of a Being who in Himself carries the
+Subject and the Object of an eternal love, which we speak of in the
+deep emblem of 'the Word,' and the God with whom He eternally 'was.'
+That love lay upon Christ, without limitation, without reservation,
+without interruption, finding nothing there from which it recoiled, and
+nothing there which did not respond to it. No mist, no thunderstorm,
+ever broke that sunshine, no tempest ever swept across that calm.
+Continuous, full, perfect was the love that knit the Father to the Son,
+and continuous, full, and perfect was the consciousness of abiding in
+that love, which lay like light upon the spirit of Him that said 'I
+delight to do Thy will.' 'The Father hath not left Me alone.'
+
+And all that love Christ gives to us as deep, as continuous, as
+unreserved. Our consciousness of God's love is meant by Christ to be
+like His own. Alas! alas! is that our experience, Christian people? The
+sun always shines on the rainless land of Egypt, except for a month or
+two in the year. The contrast between the unclouded blue and continuous
+light and heat there, and our murky skies and humid atmosphere, is like
+the contrast between our broken and feeble consciousness of the shining
+of the divine love and the uninterrupted glory of light and joy of
+communion which poured on Christ's heart. But it is possible for us
+indefinitely to approximate to such an experience; and the way by which
+we reach it is that plain and simple one of accepting Christ's
+declaration of the Father's name.
+
+IV. And so, lastly, notice the indwelling Christ who makes our
+participation in the divine love possible: 'And I in them.'
+
+One may well say, 'How can it be that love should be transferred? How
+can it be that the love of God to me shall be identical with the love
+of God to Christ?' There is only one answer. If Christ dwells in me,
+then God's love to Him falls upon me by no transference, but by my
+incorporation into Him. And I would urge that this great truth of the
+actual indwelling of Christ in the soul is no mere piece of rhetorical
+exaggeration, nor a wild and enthusiastic way of putting the fact that
+the influence of His teaching and the beauty of His example can sway
+us; but it is a plain and absolute truth that the divine Christ can
+come into and abide in the narrow room of our poor hearts. And if He
+does this, then 'he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit'; and the
+Christ in me receives the sunshine of the divine love. That does not
+destroy, but heightens, my individuality. I am more and not less myself
+because 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'
+
+So, dear brethren! it all comes to this--we may each of us, if we will,
+have Jesus Christ for Guest and Inhabitant in our hearts. If we have,
+then, since God loves Him, He must love me who have Him within me, and
+as long as God loves Christ He cannot cease to love me, nor can I cease
+to be conscious of His love to me, and whatsoever gifts His love
+bestows upon Jesus, pass over in measure, and partially, to myself.
+Thus immortality, heaven, glory, all blessedness in heaven and earth,
+are the fruit and crystallisation, so to speak, of that oneness with
+Christ which is possible for us. And the conditions are simply that we
+shall with joyful trust accept His declaration of the Father's name,
+and see God manifest in Him; and welcome in our inmost hearts that
+great Gospel. Then His prayer, and the travail of His soul, will reach
+their end even in me, and 'the love wherewith the Father loved the Son
+shall be in me,' and the Son Himself shall dwell in my heart.
+
+
+
+CHRIST AND HIS CAPTORS
+
+'As soon then as He had said unto them, I am He, they went backward,
+and fell to the ground. Then asked He them again, Whom seek ye? And
+they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am
+He: if therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way: That the saying
+might be fulfilled, which He spake, Of them which Thou gayest Me have I
+lost none.'--JOHN xviii. 6-9.
+
+This remarkable incident is narrated by John only. It fits in with the
+purpose which he himself tells us governed his selection of the
+incidents which he records. 'These things are written,' says he, near
+the end of the Gospel, 'that ye might believe that Jesus is the Son of
+God, and that, believing, ye might have life in His name.' The whole of
+the peculiarities of the substance of John's Gospel are to be explained
+on the two grounds that he was writing a supplement to, and not a
+substitute for, or a correction of, the Gospels already in existence;
+and that his special business was to narrate such facts and words as
+set forth the glory of Christ as 'the Only Begotten of the Father.'
+
+The incident before us is, as I think, one of these. The Evangelist
+would have us see in it, as I gather from his manner of narrating it,
+mainly three things. He emphasises that strange recoil of the would-be
+captors before Christ's majestic, calm 'I am He'; that was a
+manifestation of Christ's glory. He emphasises our Lord's patient
+standing there, in the midst of the awe-struck crowd, and even inciting
+them, as it would seem, to do the work for which they had come out;
+that was a manifestation of the voluntariness of Christ's sufferings.
+And He emphasises the self-forgetting care with which at that supreme
+moment He steps between His faithless, weak friends and danger, with
+the wonderful words, 'If ye seek Me, let these go their way'; to the
+Evangelist that little incident is an illustration, on a very low
+level, and in regard to a comparatively trivial matter, of the very
+same principle by which salvation from all evil in time and in
+eternity, is guaranteed to all that believe on Him:--
+
+I. First, then, consider this remarkable, momentary manifestation of
+our Lord's glory.
+
+'I am He!' When the Band were thus doubly assured by the traitor's kiss
+and by His own confession, why did they not lay hands upon Him? There
+He stood in the midst of them, alone, defenceless; there was nothing to
+hinder their binding Him on the spot. Instead of that they recoil, and
+fall in a huddled heap before Him. Some strange awe and terror, of
+which they themselves could have given no account, was upon their
+spirits. How came it about? Many things may have conspired to produce
+it. I am by no means anxious to insist that this was a miracle. Things
+of the same sort, though much less in degree, have been often enough
+seen; when some innocent and illustrious victim has for a moment
+paralysed the hands of his would-be captors and made them feel, though
+it were but transiently, 'how awful goodness is.' There must have been
+many in that band who had heard Him, though, in the uncertain light of
+quivering moonbeams and smoking torches, they failed to recognise Him
+till He spoke. There must have been many more who had heard of Him, and
+many who suspected that they were about to lay hands on a holy man,
+perhaps on a prophet. There must have been reluctant tools among the
+inferiors, and no doubt some among the leaders whoso consciences needed
+but a touch to be roused to action. To all, His calmness and dignity
+would appeal, and the manifest freedom from fear or desire to flee
+would tend to deepen the strange thoughts which began to stir in their
+hearts.
+
+But the impression which the narrative seems intended to leave, appears
+to me to be of something more than this. It looks as if there were
+something more than human in Christ's look and tone. It may have been
+the same in kind as the ascendency which a pure and calm nature has
+over rude and inferior ones. It may have been the same in kind as has
+sometimes made the headsman on the scaffold pause before he struck, and
+has bowed rude gaolers into converts before some grey-haired saint or
+virgin martyr; yet the difference is so great in degree as practically
+to become quite another thing. Though I do not want to insist upon any
+'miraculous' explanation of the cause of this incident, yet I would
+ask, May it not be that here we see, perhaps apart from Christ's will
+altogether, rising up for one moment to the surface, the indwelling
+majesty which was always there?
+
+We do not know the laws that regulated the dwelling of the Godhead,
+bodily, within that human frame, but we do know that at one other time
+there came upon His features a transfiguration, and over His very
+garments a lustre which was not thrown upon them from without, but rose
+up from within. And I am inclined to think that here, as there, though
+under such widely different circumstances and to such various issues,
+there was for a moment a little rending of the veil of His flesh, and
+an emission of some flash of the brightness that always tabernacled
+within Him; and that, therefore, just as Isaiah, when He saw the King
+in His glory, said, 'Woe is me, for I am undone!' and just as Moses
+could not look upon the Face, but could only see the back parts, so
+here the one stray beam of manifest divinity that shot through the
+crevice, as it were, for an instant, was enough to prostrate with a
+strange awe even those rude and insensitive men. When He had said 'I am
+He,' there was something that made them feel, 'This is One before whom
+violence cowers abashed, and in whose presence impurity has to hide its
+face.' I do not assert that this is the explanation of that panic
+terror. I only ask, May it not be?
+
+But whatever we may think was the reason, at all events the incident
+brings out very strikingly the elevation and dignity of Christ, and the
+powerful impressions made by His personality, even at such a time of
+humiliation. This Evangelist is always careful to bring out the glory
+of Christ, especially when that glory lies side by side with His
+lowliness. The blending of these two is one of the remarkable features
+in the New Testament portraiture of Jesus Christ. Wherever in our
+Lord's life any incident indicates more emphatically than usual the
+lowliness of His humiliation, there, by the side of it, you get
+something that indicates the majesty of His glory. For instance, He is
+born a weak infant, but angels herald His birth; He lies in a manger,
+but a star hangs trembling above it, and leads sages from afar, with
+their myrrh, and incense, and gold. He submits Himself to the baptism
+of repentance, but the heavens open and a voice proclaims, 'This is My
+beloved Son!' He sits wearied, on the stone coping of the well, and
+craves for water from a peasant woman; but He gives her the Water of
+Life. He lies down and sleeps, from pure exhaustion, in the stern of
+the little fishing-boat, but He wakes to command the storm, and it is
+still. He weeps beside the grave, but He flings His voice into its
+inmost recesses, and the sheeted dead comes forth. He well-nigh faints
+under the agony in the garden, but an angel from Heaven strengthens
+Him. He stands a prisoner at a human bar, but He judges and condemns
+His judges. He dies, and that hour of defeat is His hour of triumph,
+and the union of shame and glory is most conspicuous in that hour when
+on the Cross the 'Son of Man is _glorified_, and God is glorified in
+Him.'
+
+This strange blending of opposites--the glory in the lowliness, and the
+abasement in the glory--is the keynote of this singular event. He will
+be 'delivered into the hands of men.' Yes; but ere He is delivered He
+pauses for an instant, and in that instant comes a flash 'above the
+brightness of the noonday sun' to tell of the hidden glory.
+
+Do not forget that we may well look upon that incident as a prophecy of
+what shall be. As one of the suggestive, old commentators on this verse
+says: 'He will say "I am He," again, a third time. What will He do
+coming to reign, when He did this coming to die? And what will His
+manifestation be as a Judge when this was the effect of the
+manifestation as He went to be judged?' 'Every eye shall see Him'; and
+they that loved not His appearing shall fall before Him when He cometh
+to be our Judge; and shall call on the rocks and the hills to cover
+them.
+
+II. There is here, secondly, a manifestation of the voluntariness of
+our Lord's suffering.
+
+When that terrified mob recoiled from Him, why did He stand there so
+patiently? The time was propitious for flight, if He had cared to flee.
+He might have 'passed through the midst of them and gone His way.' as
+He did once before, if He had chosen. He comes from the garden; there
+shall be no difficulty in finding Him. He tells who He is; there shall
+be no need for the traitor's kiss. He lays them low for a moment, but
+He will not flee. When Peter draws his sword He rebukes his ill-advised
+appeal to force, and then He holds out His hands and lets them bind
+Him. It was not their fetters, but the 'cords of love' which held Him
+prisoner. It was not their power, but His own pity which drew Him to
+the judgment hall and the Cross.
+
+Let us dwell upon that thought for a moment. The whole story of the
+Gospels is constructed upon the principle, and illustrates the fact,
+that our Lord's life, as our Lord's death, was a voluntary surrender of
+Himself for man's sin, and that nothing led Him to, and fastened Him
+on, the Cross but His own will. He willed to be born. He 'came into the
+world' by His own choice. He 'took upon Him the form of a servant.' He
+'took part' of the children's 'flesh and blood.' His birth was His own
+act, the first of the long series of the acts, by which for the sake of
+the love which He bore us, He 'humbled Himself.' Step by step He
+voluntarily journeyed towards the Cross, which stood clear before Him
+from the very beginning as the necessary end, made necessary by His
+love.
+
+As we get nearer and nearer to the close of the history, we see more
+and more distinctly that He willingly went towards the Cross, Take; for
+instance, the account of the last portion of our Lord's life, and you
+see in the whole of it a deliberate intention to precipitate the final
+conflict. Hence the last journey to Jerusalem when 'His face was set,'
+and His disciples followed Him amazed. Hence the studied publicity of
+His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Hence the studied, growing severity
+of His rebukes to the priests and rulers. The same impression is given,
+though in a somewhat different way, by His momentary retreat from the
+city and by the precautions taken against premature arrest, that He
+might not die before the Passover. In both the hastening toward the
+city and in the retreating from it, there is apparent the same design:
+that He Himself shall lay down His life, and shall determine the how,
+and the when, and the where as seems good to Him.
+
+If we look at the act of death itself, Jesus did not die because He
+must. It was not the nails of the Cross, the physical exhaustion, the
+nervous shock of crucifixion that killed Him. He died because He would.
+'I have power to lay down My life,' He said, 'and I have power'--of
+course--'to take it again.' At that last moment, He was Lord and Master
+of death when He bowed His head to death, and, if I might so say, He
+summoned that grim servant with a 'Come!' and he came, and He set him
+his task with a 'Do this!' and he did it. He was manifested as the Lord
+of death, having its 'keys' in His hands, when He died upon the Cross.
+
+Now I pray you to ask yourselves the question, if it be true that
+Christ died because He would, why was it that He would die? If because
+He chose, what was it that determined His choice? And there are but two
+answers, which two are one. The divine motive that ruled His life is
+doubly expressed: 'I must do the will of My Father,' and 'I must save
+the world.'
+
+The taunt that those Jewish rulers threw at Him had a deeper truth than
+they dreamed, and was an encomium, and not a taunt. 'He saved
+others'--yes, and _therefore_, 'Himself He cannot save.' He cannot,
+because His choice and will to die are determined by His free love to
+us and to all the world. His fixed will 'bore His body to the tree,'
+and His love was the strong spring which kept His will fixed.
+
+You and I have our share in these voluntary sufferings, and our place
+in that loving heart which underwent them for us. Oh! should not that
+thought speak to all our hearts, and bind us in grateful service and
+lifelong surrender to Him who gave Himself for us; and _must_ die
+because He loved us all so much that He _could not_ leave us unsaved?
+
+III. We have, lastly, here, a symbol, or, perhaps, more accurately, an
+instance, on a small scale, of Christ's self-sacrificing care for us.
+
+His words: 'If ye seek Me, let these go their way,' sound more like the
+command of a prince than the intercession of a prisoner. The calm
+dignity of them strikes one just as much as the perfect
+self-forgetfulness of them.
+
+It was a very small matter which He was securing thereby. The Apostles
+would have to die for Him some day, but they were not ready for it yet,
+and so He casts the shield of His protection round them for a moment,
+and interposes Himself between them and the band of soldiers in order
+that their weakness may have a little more time to grow strong. And
+though it was wrong and cowardly for them to forsake Him and flee, yet
+these words of my text more than half gave them permission and warrant
+for their departure: 'Let these go their way.'
+
+Now John did not think that this small deliverance was all that Christ
+meant by these great words: 'Of them which Thou gavest Me have I lost
+none!' He saw that it was one case, a very trifling one, a merely
+transitory one, yet ruled by the same principles which are at work in
+the immensely higher region to which the words properly refer. Of
+course they have their proper fulfilment in the spiritual realm, and
+are not fulfilled, in the highest sense, till all who have loved and
+followed Christ are presented faultless before the Father in the home
+above. But the little incident may be a result of the same cause as the
+final deliverance is. A dew-drop is shaped by the same laws which mould
+the mightiest of the planets. The old divines used to say that God was
+greatest in the smallest things, and the self-sacrificing care of Jesus
+Christ, as He gives Himself a prisoner that His disciples may go free,
+comes from the same deep heart of pitying love, which led Him to die,
+the 'just for the unjust.' It may then well stand for a partial
+fulfilment of His mighty words, even though these wait for their
+complete accomplishment till the hour when all the sheep are gathered
+into the one fold, and no evil beasts, nor weary journeys, nor barren
+pastures can harass them any more.
+
+This trivial incident, then, becomes an exposition of highest truth.
+Let us learn from such an use of such an event to look upon all common
+and transitory circumstances as governed by the same loving hands, and
+working to the same ends, as the most purely spiritual. The visible is
+the veil which drapes the invisible, and clings so closely to it as to
+reveal its outline. The common events of life are all parables to the
+devout heart, which is the wise heart. They speak mystic meanings to
+ears that can hear. The redeeming love of Jesus is proclaimed by every
+mercy which perishes in the using; and all things should tell us of His
+self-forgetting, self-sacrificing care.
+
+Thus, then, we may see in that picture of our Lord's surrendering
+Himself that His trembling disciples might go free, an emblem of what
+He does for us, in regard to all our foes. He stands between us and
+them, receives their arrows into His own bosom, and says, 'Let these go
+their way.' God's law comes with its terrors, with its penalties, to us
+who have broken it a thousand times. The consciousness of guilt and sin
+threatens us all more or less, and with varying intensity in different
+minds. The weariness of the world, 'the ills that flesh is heir to,'
+the last grim enemy, Death, and that which lies beyond them all, ring
+you round. My friends! what are you going to do in order to escape from
+them? You are a sinful man, you have broken God's law. That law goes on
+crashing its way and crushing down all that is opposed to it. You have
+a weary life before you, however joyful it may sometimes be. Cares, and
+troubles, and sorrows, and tears, and losses, and disappointments, and
+hard duties that you will not be able to perform, and dark days in
+which you will be able to see but very little light, are all certain to
+come sooner or later; and the last moment will draw near when the King
+of Terrors will be at your side; and beyond death there is a life of
+retribution in which men reap the things that they have sown here. All
+that is true, much of it is true about you at this moment, and it will
+all be true some day. In view of that, what are you going to do?
+
+I preach to you a Saviour who has endured all for us. As a mother might
+fling herself out of the sledge that her child might escape the wolves
+in full chase, here is One that comes and fronts all your foes, and
+says to them, 'Let these go their way. Take Me.' 'By His stripes we are
+healed.' 'On Him was laid the iniquity of us all.'
+
+He died because He chose; He chose because He loved. His love had to
+die in order that His death might be our life, and that in it we should
+find our forgiveness and peace. He stands between our foes and us. No
+evil can strike us unless it strike Him first. He takes into His own
+heart the sharpest of all the darts which can pierce ours. He has borne
+the guilt and punishment of a world's sin. These solemn penalties have
+fallen upon Him that we, trusting in Him, 'may go our way,' and that
+there may be 'no condemnation' to us if we are in Christ Jesus. And if
+there be no condemnation, we can stand whatever other blows may fall
+upon us. They are easier to bear, and their whole character is
+different, when we know that Christ has borne them already. Two of the
+three whom Christ protected in the garden died a martyr's death; but do
+you not think that James bowed his neck to Herod's sword, and Peter let
+them gird him and lead him to his cross, more joyfully and with a
+different heart, when they thought of Him that had died before them?
+The darkest prison cell will not be so very dark if we remember that
+Christ has been there before us, and death itself will be softened into
+sleep because our Lord has died. 'If therefore,' says He, to the whole
+pack of evils baying round us, with their cruel eyes and their hungry
+mouths, 'ye seek Me, let these go their way.' So, brother, if you will
+fix your trust, as a poor, sinful soul, on that dear Christ, and get
+behind Him, and put Him between you and your enemies, then, in time and
+in eternity, that saying will be fulfilled in you which He spake, 'Of
+them which Thou gavest Me, have I lost none.'
+
+
+
+JESUS BEFORE CAIAPHAS
+
+'And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple: that
+disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into
+the palace of the high priest. But Peter stood at the door without.
+Then went out that other disciple, which was known unto the high
+priest, and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter.
+Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter, Art not thou also
+one of this Man's disciples? He saith, I am not. And the servants and
+officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals; for it was cold:
+and they warmed themselves: and Peter stood with them, and warmed
+himself. The high priest then asked Jesus of His disciples, and of His
+doctrine. Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I ever
+taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always
+resort; and in secret have I said nothing. Why askest thou Me? ask them
+which heard Me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I
+said. And when He had thus spoken, one of the officers which stood by
+struck Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying, Answerest Thou the high
+priest so? Jesus answered him, If I have spoken evil, bear witness of
+the evil: but if well, why smitest thou Me? Now Annas had sent Him
+bound unto Caiaphas the high priest. And Simon Peter stood and warmed
+himself. They said therefore unto him, Art not thou also one of His
+disciples? He denied it, and said, I am not. One of the servants of the
+high priest, being his kinsman whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did not
+I see thee in the garden with Him? Peter then denied again: and
+immediately the cock crew.'--JOHN xviii. 15-27.
+
+The last verses of the preceding passage belong properly to this one,
+for they tell us that Jesus was 'first' brought before Annas, a fact
+which we owe to John only. Annas himself and his five sons held the
+high-priesthood in succession. To the sons has to be added Caiaphas,
+who, as we learn from John only, was Annas' son-in-law, and so one of
+the family party. That Jesus should have been taken to him, though he
+held no office at the time, shows who pulled the strings in the
+Sanhedrim. The reference to Caiaphas in verse 14 seems intended to
+suggest what sort of a trial might be expected, presided over by such a
+man. But verse 15 tells us that Jesus entered in, accompanied by
+'another disciple,' 'to the court,' not, as we should have expected, of
+Annas, but 'of the high priest,' who, by the testimony of verse 13, can
+be no one but Caiaphas. How came that about? Apparently, because Annas
+had apartments in the high-priest's official residence. As he obviously
+exercised the influence through his sons and son-in-law, who
+successively held the office, it was very natural that he should be a
+fixture in the palace.
+
+What John's connection was with this veteran intriguer (assuming that
+John was that 'other disciple') we do not know. Probably it was some
+family bond that united two such antipathetic natures. At all events,
+the Apostle's acquaintance with the judge so far condoned his
+discipleship to the criminal, that the doors of the audience chamber
+were open to him, though he was known as 'one of them.'
+
+So he and poor Peter were parted, and the latter left shivering outside
+in the grey of the morning. John had not missed him at first, for he
+would be too much absorbed in watching Jesus to have thoughts to spare
+for Peter, and would conclude that he was following him; but, when he
+did miss him, like a brave man he ran the risk of being observed, and
+went for him. The sharp-witted porteress, whose business it was to
+judge applicants for entrance by a quick glance, at once inferred that
+Peter 'also' was one of this man's disciples. Her 'also' shows that she
+knew John to be one; and her 'this man' shows that either she did not
+know Jesus' name, or thought Him too far beneath her to be named by
+her! The time during which Peter had been left outside alone, repenting
+now of, and alarmed for what might happen to him on account of, his
+ill-aimed blow at Malchus, and feeling the nipping cold, had taken all
+his courage out of him. The one thing he wished was to slip in
+unnoticed, and so the first denial came to his lips as rashly as many
+another word had come in old days. He does not seem to have remained
+with John, who probably went up to the upper end of the hall, where the
+examination was going on, while Peter, not having the _entree_ and very
+much terrified as well as miserable, stayed at the lower end, where the
+understrappers were making themselves comfortable round a charcoal
+fire, and paying no attention to the proceedings at the other end. He
+seemed to be as indifferent as they were, and to be intent only on
+getting himself warmed. But what surges of emotion would be tossing in
+his heart, which yet he was trying to hide under the mask of being an
+unconcerned spectator, like the others!
+
+The examination of our Lord was conducted by 'the high priest,' by
+which title John must mean Caiaphas, as he has just emphatically noted
+that he then filled the office. But how is that to be reconciled with
+the statement that Jesus was taken to Annas? Apparently by supposing
+that, though Annas was present, Caiaphas was spokesman. But did not a
+formal trial before Caiaphas follow, and does not John tell us (verse
+24) that, after the first examination, Annas sent Jesus bound to
+Caiaphas? Yes. And are these things compatible with this account of an
+examination conducted by the latter? Yes, if we remember that flagrant
+wresting of justice marked the whole proceedings. The condemnation of
+Jesus was a judicial murder, in which the highest court of the Jews
+'decreed iniquity by a law'; and it was of a piece with all the rest
+that he, who was to pose as an impartial judge presently, should, in
+the spirit of a partisan, conduct this preliminary inquiry. Observe
+that no sentence was pronounced in the case at this stage. This was not
+a court at all. What was it? An attempt to entrap the prisoner into
+admissions which might be used against Him in the court to be held
+presently. The rulers had Jesus in their hands, and they did not know
+what to do with Him now that they had Him. They were at a loss to know
+what His indictment was to be. To kill Him was the only thing on which
+they had made up their minds; the pretext had yet to be found, and so
+they tried to get Him to say something which would serve their purpose.
+
+'The high priest therefore asked Jesus of His disciples, and of His
+teaching'! If they did not know about either, why had they arrested
+Him? Cunning outwits itself, and falls into the pit it digs for the
+innocent. Jesus passed by the question as to His disciples unnoticed,
+and by His calm answer as to His teaching showed that He saw the snare.
+He reduced Caiaphas and Annas to perpetrating plain injustice, or to
+letting Him go free. Elementary fair play to a prisoner prescribes that
+he should be accused of some crime by some one, and not that he should
+furnish his judges with materials for his own indictment. 'Why askest
+thou Me? ask them that have heard Me,' is unanswerable, except by such
+an answer as the officious 'servant' gave--a blow and a violent speech.
+But Christ's words reach far beyond the momentary purpose; they contain
+a wide truth. His teaching loves the daylight. There are no muttered
+oracles, no whispered secrets for the initiated, no double voice, one
+for the multitude, and another for the adepts. All is above-board, and
+all is spoken 'openly to the world.' Christianity has no cliques or
+coteries, nothing sectional, nothing reserved. It is for mankind, for
+all mankind, all for mankind. True, there are depths in it; true, the
+secrets which Jesus can only speak to loving ears in secret are His
+sweetest words, but they are 'spoken in the ear' that they may be
+'proclaimed on the housetops.'
+
+The high-priest is silent, for there was nothing that he could say to
+so undeniable a demand, and he had no witnesses ready. How many since
+his day have treated Jesus as he treated Him--condemned Him or rejected
+Him without reason, and then looked about for reasons to justify their
+attitude, or even sought to make Him condemn Himself!
+
+An unjust judge breeds insolent underlings, and if everything else
+fails, blows and foul words cover defeat, and treat calm assertion of
+right as impertinence to high-placed officials. Caiaphas degraded his
+own dignity more than any words of a prisoner could degrade it.
+
+Our Lord's answer 'reviled not again.' It is meek in majesty and
+majestic in meekness. Patient endurance is not forbidden to remonstrate
+with insolent injustice, if only its remonstrance bears no heat of
+personal anger in it. But Jesus was not so much vindicating His words
+to Caiaphas in saying, 'If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the
+evil,' as reiterating the challenge for 'witnesses.' He brands the
+injustice of Caiaphas, while meekly rebuking the brutality of his
+servant. Master and man were alike in smiting Him for words of which
+they could not prove the evil.
+
+There was obviously nothing to be gained by further examination. No
+crime had been alleged, much less established; therefore Jesus ought to
+have been let go. But Annas treated Him as a criminal, and handed Him
+over 'bound,' to be formally tried before the man who had just been
+foiled in his attempt to play the inquisitor. What a hideous mockery of
+legal procedure! How well the pair, father-in-law and son-in-law,
+understood each other! What a confession of a foregone conclusion,
+evidence or no evidence, in shackling Jesus as a malefactor! And it was
+all done in the name of religion! and perhaps the couple of priests did
+not know that they were hypocrites, but really thought that they were
+'doing God service.'
+
+John's account of Peter's denials rises to a climax of peril and of
+keenness of suspicion. The unnamed persons who put the second question
+must have had their suspicions roused by something in his manner as he
+stood by the glinting fire, perhaps by agitation too great to be
+concealed. The third question was put by a more dangerous person still,
+who not only recognised Peter's features as the firelight fitfully
+showed them, but had a personal ground of hostility in his relationship
+to Malchus.
+
+John lovingly spares telling of the oaths and curses accompanying the
+denials, but dares not spare the narration of the fact. It has too
+precious lessons of humility, of self-distrust, of the possibility of
+genuine love being overborne by sudden and strong temptation, to be
+omitted. And the sequel of the denials has yet more precious teaching,
+which has brought balm to many a contrite heart, conscious of having
+been untrue to its deepest love. For the sound of the cock-crow, and
+the look from the Lord as He was led away bound past the place where
+Peter stood, brought him back to himself, and brought tears to his
+eyes, which were sweet as well as bitter. On the resurrection morning
+the risen Lord sent the message of forgiveness and special love to the
+broken-hearted Apostle, when He said, 'Go, tell My disciples and
+Peter,' and on that day there was an interview of which Paul knew (1
+Cor. xv. 5), but the details of which were apparently communicated by
+the Apostle to none of his brethren. The denier who weeps is taken to
+Christ's heart, and in sacred secrecy has His forgiveness freely given,
+though, before he can be restored to his public office, he must, by his
+threefold public avowal of love, efface his threefold denial. We may
+say, 'Thou knowest that I love thee,' even if we have said, 'I know Him
+not,' and come nearer to Jesus, by reason of the experience of His
+pardoning love, than we were before we fell.
+
+
+
+ART THOU A KING?
+
+'Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it
+was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest
+they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover. Pilate
+then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against
+this Man? They answered and said unto him, If He were not a malefactor,
+we would not have delivered Him up unto thee. Then said Pilate unto
+them, Take ye Him, and judge Him according to your law. The Jews
+therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to
+death: That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which He spake,
+signifying what death He should die. Then Pilate entered into the
+judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto Him, Art Thou the
+King of the Jews? Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of
+thyself, or did others tell it thee of Me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew?
+Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered Thee unto me:
+what hast Thou done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world:
+if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I
+should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My kingdom not from
+hence. Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art Thou a king then? Jesus
+answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for
+this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the
+truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice. Pilate saith
+unto Him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again
+unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in Him no fault at all. But
+ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the passover:
+will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews? Then
+cried they all again, saying, Not this Man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas
+was a robber.'--JOHN xviii. 28-40.
+
+John evidently intends to supplement the synoptic Gospels' account. He
+tells of Christ's appearance before Annas, but passes by that before
+Caiaphas, though he shows his knowledge of it. Similarly he touches
+lightly on the public hearing before Pilate, but gives us in detail the
+private conversation in this section, which he alone records. We may
+suppose that he was present at both the hearing before Annas and the
+interview within the palace between Jesus and Herod, for he would not
+be deterred from entering, as the Jews were, and there seems to have
+been no other impediment in the way. The passage has three stages--the
+fencing between the Sanhedrists and Pilate, the 'good confession before
+Pontius Pilate,' and the preference of Barabbas to Jesus.
+
+I. The passage of arms between the priests and the governor. 'It was
+early,' probably before 6 A.M. A hurried meeting of the Sanhedrim had
+condemned Jesus to death, and the next thing was to get the Roman
+authority to carry out the sentence. The necessity of appeal to it was
+a bitter pill, but it had to be swallowed, for the right of capital
+punishment had been withdrawn. A 'religious' scruple, too, stood in the
+way--very characteristic of such formalists. Killing an innocent man
+would not in the least defile them, or unfit for eating the passover,
+but to go into a house that had not been purged of 'leaven,' and was
+further unclean as the residence of a Gentile, though he was the
+governor, that would stain their consciences--a singular scale of
+magnitude, which saw no sin in condemning Jesus, and great sin in going
+into Pilate's palace! Perhaps some of our conventional sins are of a
+like sort.
+
+Pilate was, probably, not over-pleased at being roused so early, nor at
+having to defer to a scruple which would to him look like insolence;
+and through all his bearing to the Sanhedrim a certain irritation shows
+itself, which sometimes flashes out in sarcasm, but is for the most
+part kept down. His first question is, perhaps, not so simple as it
+looks, for he must have had some previous knowledge of the case, since
+Roman soldiers had been used for the arrest. But, clearly, those who
+brought him a prisoner were bound to be the prosecutors.
+
+Whether or not Pilate knew that his question was embarrassing, the
+rulers felt it so. Why did they not wish to formulate a charge? Partly
+from pride. They hugged the delusion that their court was competent to
+condemn, and wanted, as we all often do, to shut their eyes to a plain
+fact, as if ignoring it annihilated it. Partly because the charge on
+which they had condemned Jesus--that of blasphemy in calling Himself
+'the Son of God'--was not a crime known to Roman law, and to allege it
+would probably have ended in the whole matter being scornfully
+dismissed. So they stood on their dignity and tried to bluster. 'We
+have condemned Him; that is enough. We look to you to carry out the
+sentence at our bidding.' So the 'ecclesiastical authority' has often
+said to the 'secular arm' since then, and unfortunately the civil
+authority has not always been as wise as Pilate was.
+
+He saw an opening to get rid of the whole matter, and with just a faint
+flavour of irony suggests that, as they have 'a law'--which he, no
+doubt, thought of as a very barbarous code--they had better go by it,
+and punish as well as condemn. That sarcastic proposal compelled them
+to acknowledge their subjection. Pilate had given the reins the least
+touch, but enough to make them feel the bit; and though it went sore
+against the grain, they will own their master rather than lose their
+victim. So their reluctant lips say, 'It is not lawful for us.' Pilate
+has brought them on their knees at last, and they forget their dignity,
+and own the truth. Malicious hatred will eat any amount of dirt and
+humiliation to gain its ends, especially if it calls itself religious
+zeal.
+
+John sees in the issue of this first round in the duel between Pilate
+and the rulers the sequence of events which brought about the
+fulfilment of our Lord's prediction of His crucifixion, since that was
+not a Jewish mode of execution. This encounter of keen wits becomes
+tragical and awful when we remember Who it was that these men were
+wrangling about.
+
+II. We have Jesus and Pilate; the 'good confession,' and the
+indifferent answer. We must suppose that, unwillingly, the rulers had
+brought the accusation that Jesus had attempted rebellion against Rome.
+John omits that, because he takes it for granted that it is known. It
+is implied in the conversation which now ensued. We must note as
+remarkable that Pilate does not conduct his first examination in the
+presence of the rulers, but has Jesus brought to him in the palace.
+Perhaps he simply wished to annoy the accusers, but more probably his
+Roman sense of justice combined with his wish to assert his authority,
+and perhaps with a suspicion that there was something strange about the
+whole matter--and not least strange that the Sanhedrim, who were not
+enthusiastic supporters of Rome, should all at once display such
+loyalty--to make him wish to have the prisoner by himself, and try to
+fathom the business. With Roman directness he went straight to the
+point: 'Art Thou the King of the Jews, as they have been saying?' There
+is emphasis on 'Thou'--the emphasis which a practical Roman official
+would be likely to put as he looked at the weak, wearied, evidently
+poor and helpless man bound before him. There is almost a touch of pity
+in the question, and certainly the beginning of the conviction that
+this was not a very formidable rival to Caesar.
+
+The answer to be given depended on the sense in which Pilate asked the
+question, to bring out which is the object of Christ's question in
+reply. If Pilate was asking of himself, then what he meant by 'a king'
+was one of earth's monarchs after the emperor's pattern, and the answer
+would be 'No.' If he was repeating a Jewish charge, then, 'a king'
+might mean the prophetic King of Israel, who was no rival of earthly
+monarchs, and the answer would be 'Yes,' but that 'Yes' would give
+Pilate no more reason to crucify Him than the 'No' would have given.
+
+Pilate is getting tired of fencing, and impatiently answers, with true
+Roman contempt for subject-people's thoughts as well as their weapons.
+'I ... a Jew?' is said with a curl of the firm lips. He points to his
+informants, 'Thine own nation and the chief priests,' and does not say
+that their surrender of a would-be leader in a war of independence
+struck him as suspicious. But he brushes aside the cobwebs which he
+felt were being spun round him, and comes to the point, 'What hast Thou
+done?' He is supremely indifferent to ideas and vagaries of
+enthusiasts. This poor man before him may call Himself anything He
+chooses, but _his_ only concern is with overt acts. Strange to ask the
+Prisoner what He had done! It had been well for Pilate if he had held
+fast by that question, and based his judgment resolutely on its answer!
+He kept asking it all through the case, he never succeeded in getting
+an answer; he was convinced that Jesus had done nothing worthy of
+death, and yet fear, and a wish to curry favour with the rulers, drove
+him to stain the judge's robe with innocent blood, from which he vainly
+sought to cleanse his hands.
+
+Our Lord's double answer claims a kingdom, but first shows what it is
+not, and then what it is. It is 'not _of_ this world,' though it is
+_in_ this world, being established and developed here, but having
+nothing in common with earthly dominions, nor being advanced by their
+weapons or methods. Pilate could convince himself that this 'kingdom'
+bore no menace to Rome, from the fact that no resistance had been
+offered to Christ's capture. But the principle involved in these great
+words goes far beyond their immediate application. It forbids Christ's
+'servants' to assimilate His kingdom to the world, or to use worldly
+powers as the means for the kingdom's advancement. The history of the
+Church has sadly proved how hard it is for Christian men to learn the
+lesson, and how fatal to the energy and purity of the Church the
+forgetfulness of it has been. The temptation to such assimilation
+besets all organised Christianity, and is as strong to-day as when
+Constantine gave the Church the paralysing gift of 'establishing' it as
+a kingdom 'of this world.'
+
+Pilate did pick out of this saying an increased certainty that he had
+nothing to fear from this strange 'King'; and half-amused contempt for
+a dreamer, and half-pitying wonder at such lofty claims from such a
+helpless enthusiast, prompted his question, 'Art Thou a king then?' One
+can fancy the scornful emphasis on that 'Thou.' and can understand how
+grotesquely absurd the notion of his prisoner's being a king must have
+seemed.
+
+Having made clear part of the sense in which the avowal was to be
+taken, our Lord answered plainly 'Yes.' Thus before the high-priest, He
+declared Himself to be the Son of God, and before Pilate He claimed to
+be King, at each tribunal putting forward the claim which each was
+competent to examine--and, alas! at each meeting similar levity and
+refusal to inquire seriously into the validity of the claim. The solemn
+revelation to Pilate of the true nature of His kingdom and of Himself
+the King fell on careless ears. A deeper mystery than Pilate dreamed of
+lay beneath the double designation of His origin; for He not only had
+been 'born' like other men, but had 'come into the world,' having 'come
+forth from the Father,' and having been before He was born. It was
+scarcely possible that Pilate should apprehend the meaning of that
+duplication, but some vague impression of a mysterious personality
+might reach him, and Jesus would not have fully expressed His own
+consciousness if He had simply said, 'I was born.' Let us see that we
+keep firm hold of all which that utterance implies and declares.
+
+The end of the Incarnation is to 'bear witness to the truth.' That
+witness is the one weapon by which Christ's kingdom is established.
+That witness is not given by words only, precious as these are, but by
+deeds which are more than words. These witnessing deeds are not
+complete till Calvary and the empty grave and Olivet have witnessed at
+once to the perfect incarnation of divine love, to the perfect
+Sacrifice for the world's sin, to the Victor over death, and to the
+opening of heaven to all believers. Jesus is 'the faithful and true
+Witness,' as John calls Him, not without reminiscences of this passage,
+just because He is 'the First-begotten of the dead.' As here He told
+Pilate that He was a 'king,' because a 'witness,' so John, in the
+passage referred to, bases His being 'Prince of the kings of the earth'
+on the same fact.
+
+How little Pilate knew that he was standing at the very crisis of his
+fate! A yielding to the impression that was slightly touching his heart
+and conscience, and he, too, might have 'heard' Christ's voice. But he
+was not 'of the truth,' though he might have been if he had willed, and
+so the words were wind to him, and he brushed aside all the mist, as he
+thought it, with the light question, which summed up a Roman man of the
+world's indifference to ideas, and belief in solid facts like legions
+and swords. 'What is truth?' may be the cry of a seeking soul, or the
+sneer of a confirmed sceptic, or the shrug of indifference of the
+'practical man.'
+
+It was the last in Pilate's case, as is shown by his not waiting for an
+answer, but ending the conversation with it as a last shot. It meant,
+too, that he felt quite certain that this man, with his high-strained,
+unpractical talk about a kingdom resting on such a filmy nothing, was
+absolutely harmless. Therefore the only just thing for him to have done
+was to have gone out to the impatient crowd and said so, and flatly
+refused to do the dirty work of the priests for them, by killing an
+innocent man. But he was too cowardly for that, and, no doubt, thought
+that the murder of one poor Jew was a small price to pay for popularity
+with his troublesome subjects. Still, like all weak men, he was not
+easy in his conscience, and made a futile attempt to get the right
+thing done, and yet not to suffer for doing it. The rejection of
+Barabbas is touched very lightly by John, and must be left unnoticed
+here. The great contribution to our knowledge which John makes is this
+private interview between the King who reigns by the truth, and the
+representative of earthly rule, based on arms and worldly forces.
+
+
+
+JESUS SENTENCED
+
+'Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged Him. And the soldiers
+platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and they put on Him
+a purple robe. And said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote Him
+with their hands. Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto
+them, Behold, I bring Him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no
+fault in Him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and
+the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the Man! When the
+chief priests therefore and officers saw Him, they cried out, saying,
+Crucify Him, crucify Him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye Him, and
+crucify Him: for I find no fault in Him. The Jews answered him, We have
+a law, and by our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son
+of God. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more
+afraid; And went again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus,
+Whence art Thou? But Jesus gave him no answer. Then saith Pilate unto
+Him, Speakest Thou not unto me I knowest Thou not that I have power to
+crucify Thee, and have power to release Thee? Jesus answered, Thou
+couldest have no power at all against Me, except it were given thee
+from above: therefore he that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater
+sin. And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release Him: but the Jews
+cried out, saying, If thou let this Man go, thou art not Caesar's
+friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar. When
+Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat
+down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but
+in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of the passover,
+and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King!
+But they cried out, Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him! Pilate
+saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered,
+We have no king but Caesar. Then delivered he Him therefore unto them
+to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led Him away.'--JOHN xix.
+1-16.
+
+The struggle between the vacillation of Pilate and the fixed malignity
+of the rulers is the principal theme of this fragment of Christ's
+judicial trial. He Himself is passive and all but silent, speaking only
+one sentence of calm rebuke. The frequent changes of scene from within
+to without the praetorium indicate the steps in the struggle, and
+vividly reflect the irresolution of Pilate. These changes may help to
+mark the stages in the narrative.
+
+I. The cruelties and indignities in verses 1-3 were inflicted within
+the 'palace,' to which Pilate, with his prisoner, had returned after
+the popular vote for Barabbas. John makes that choice of the robber the
+reason for the scourging of Jesus. His thought seems to be that Pilate,
+having failed in his attempt to get rid of the whole difficulty by
+releasing Jesus, according to the 'custom,' ordered the scourging, in
+hope that the lighter punishment might satisfy the turbulent crowd,
+whom he wished to humour, while, if possible, saving their victim. It
+was the expedient of a weak and cynical nature, and, like all weak
+attempts at compromise between right and wrong, only emboldened the
+hatred which it was meant to appease. If by clamour the rulers had
+succeeded in getting Pilate to scourge a man whom he thought innocent,
+they might well hope to get him to crucify, if they clamoured loudly
+and long enough.
+
+One attitude only befitted Pilate, since he did not in the least
+believe that Jesus threatened the Roman supremacy; namely, to set Him
+at liberty, and let the disappointed rulers growl like wild beasts
+robbed of their prey. But he did not care enough about a single
+half-crazy Jewish peasant to imperil his standing well with his awkward
+subjects, for the sake of righteousness. The one good which Rome could
+give to its vassal nations was inflexible justice and a sovereign law;
+but in Pilate's action there was not even the pretence of legality.
+Tricks and expedients run through it all, and never once does he say,
+This is the law, this is justice, and by it I stand or fall.
+
+The cruel scourging, which, in Roman hands, was a much more severe
+punishment than the Jewish 'beating with rods' and often ended in
+death, was inflicted on the silent, unresisting Christ, not because His
+judge thought that it was deserved, but to please accusers whose charge
+he knew to be absurd. The underlings naturally followed their betters'
+example, and after they had executed Pilate's orders to scourge,
+covered the bleeding wounds with some robe, perhaps ragged, but of the
+royal colour, and crushed the twisted wreath of thorn-branch down on
+the brows, to make fresh wounds there. The jest of crowning such a
+poor, helpless creature as Jesus seemed to them, was exactly on the
+level of such rude natures, and would be the more exquisite to them
+because it was double-barrelled, and insulted the nation as well as the
+'King.' They came in a string, as the tense of the original word
+suggests, and offered their mock reverence. But that sport became tame
+after a little, and mockery passed into violence, as it always does in
+such natures. These rough legionaries were cruel and brutal, and they
+were unconscious witnesses to His Kingship as founded on suffering; but
+they were innocent as compared with the polished gentleman on the
+judgment-seat who prostituted justice, and the learned Pharisees
+outside who were howling for blood.
+
+II. In verses 4-8 the scene changes again to without the palace, and
+shows us Pilate trying another expedient, equally in vain. The
+hesitating governor has no chance with the resolute, rooted hate of the
+rulers. Jesus silently and unresistingly follows Pilate from the hall,
+still wearing the mockery of royal pomp. Pilate had calculated that the
+sight of Him in such guise, and bleeding from the lash, might turn hate
+into contempt, and perhaps give a touch of pity. 'Behold the man!' as
+he meant it, was as if he had said, 'Is this poor, bruised, spiritless
+sufferer worth hate or fear? Does He look like a King or a dangerous
+enemy?' Pilate for once drops the scoff of calling Him their King, and
+seeks to conciliate and move to pity. The profound meanings which later
+ages have delighted to find in his words, however warrantable, are no
+part of their design as spoken, and we gain a better lesson from the
+scene by keeping close to the thoughts of the actors. What a contrast
+between the vacillation of the governor, on the one hand, afraid to do
+right and reluctant to do wrong, and the dogged malignity of the rulers
+and their tools on the other, and the calm, meek endurance of the
+silent Christ, knowing all their thoughts, pitying all, and fixed in
+loving resolve, even firmer than the rulers' hate, to bear the utmost,
+that He might save a world!
+
+Some pity may have stirred in the crowd, but the priests and their
+immediate dependants silenced it by their yell of fresh hate at the
+sight of the prisoner. Note how John gives the very impression of the
+fierce, brief roar, like that of wild beasts for their prey, by his
+'Crucify, crucify!' without addition of the person. Pilate lost
+patience at last, and angrily and half seriously gives permission to
+them to take the law into their own hands. He really means, 'I will not
+be your tool, and if my conviction of "the Man's" innocence is to be of
+no account, _you_ must punish Him; for _I_ will not.' How far he meant
+to abdicate authority, and how far he was launching sarcasms, it is
+difficult to say. Throughout he is sarcastic, and thereby indicates his
+weakness, indemnifying himself for being thwarted by sneers which sit
+so ill on authority.
+
+But the offer, or sarcasm, whichever it was, missed fire, as the appeal
+to pity had done, and only led to the production of a new weapon. In
+their frantic determination to compass Jesus' death, the rulers
+hesitate at no degradation; and now they adduced the charge of
+blasphemy, and were ready to make a heathen the judge. To ask a Roman
+governor to execute their law on a religious offender, was to drag
+their national prerogative in the mud. But formal religionists,
+inflamed by religious animosity, are often the degraders of religion
+for the gratification of their hatred. They are poor preservers of the
+Church who call on the secular arm to execute their 'laws.' Rome went a
+long way in letting subject peoples keep their institutions; but it was
+too much to expect Pilate to be the hangman for these furious priests,
+on a charge scarcely intelligible to him.
+
+What was Jesus doing while all this hell of wickedness and fury boiled
+round Him? Standing there, passive and dumb, 'as a sheep before her
+shearers,' Himself is the least conspicuous figure in the history of
+His own trial. In silent communion with the Father, in silent
+submission to His murderers, in silent pity for us, in silent
+contemplation of 'the joy that was set before Him,' He waits on their
+will.
+
+III. Once more the scene changes to the interior of the praetorium (vs.
+9-11). The rulers' words stirred a deepened awe in Pilate. He 'was the
+more afraid'; then he had been already afraid. His wife's dream, the
+impression already produced by the person of Jesus, had touched him
+more deeply than probably he himself was aware of; and now this charge
+that Jesus had 'made Himself the Son of God' shook him. What if this
+strange man were in some sense a messenger of the gods? Had he been
+scourging one sent from them? Sceptical he probably was, and therefore
+superstitious; and half-forgotten and disbelieved stories of gods who
+had 'come down in the likeness of men' would swim up in his memory. If
+this Man were such, His strange demeanour would be explained. Therefore
+he carried Jesus in again, and, not now as judge, sought to hear from
+His own lips His version of the alleged claim.
+
+Why did not Jesus answer such a question? His silence was answer; but,
+besides that, Pilate had not received as he ought what Jesus had
+already declared to him as to His kingdom and His relation to 'the
+truth,' and careless turning away from Christ's earlier words is
+righteously and necessarily punished by subsequent silence, if the same
+disposition remains. That it did remain, Christ's silence is proof. Had
+there been any use in answering, Pilate would not have asked in vain.
+If Jesus was silent, we may be sure that He who sees all hearts and
+responds to all true desires was so, because He knew that it was best
+to say nothing. The question of His origin had nothing to do with
+Pilate's duty then, which turned, not on whence Jesus had come, but on
+what Pilate believed Him to have done, or not to have done. He who will
+not do the plain duty of the moment has little chance of an answer to
+his questions about such high matters.
+
+The shallow character of the governor's awe and interest is clearly
+seen from the immediate change of tone to arrogant reminder of his
+absolute authority. 'To me dost Thou not speak?' The pride of offended
+dignity peeps out there. He has forgotten that a moment since he half
+suspected that the prisoner, whom he now seeks to terrify with the
+cross, and to allure with deliverance, was perhaps come from some misty
+heaven. Was that a temper which would have received Christ's answer to
+his question?
+
+But one thing he might be made to perceive, and therefore Jesus broke
+silence for the only time in this section, and almost the only time
+before Pilate. He reads the arrogant Roman the lesson which he and all
+his tribe in all lands and ages need--that their power is derived from
+God, therefore in its foundation legitimate, and in its exercise to be
+guided by His will and used for His purposes. It was God who had
+brought the Roman eagles, with their ravening beaks and strong claws,
+to the Holy City. Pilate was right in exercising jurisdiction over
+Jesus. Let him see that he exercised justice, and let him remember that
+the power which he boasted that he 'had' was 'given.' The truth as to
+the source of power made the guilt of Caiaphas or of the rulers the
+greater, inasmuch as they had neglected the duties to which they had
+been appointed, and by handing over Jesus on a charge which they
+themselves should have searched out, had been guilty of 'theocratic
+felony.' This sudden flash of bold rebuke, reminding Pilate of his
+dependence, and charging him with the lesser but yet real 'sin,' went
+deeper than any answer to his question would have done, and spurred him
+to more earnest effort, as John points out. He 'sought to release Him,'
+as if formerly he had been rather simply unwilling to condemn than
+anxious to deliver.
+
+IV. So the scene changes again to outside. Pilate went out alone,
+leaving Jesus within, and was met before he had time, as would appear,
+to speak, by the final irresistible weapon which the rulers had kept in
+reserve. An accusation of treason was only too certain to be listened
+to by the suspicious tyrant who was then Emperor, especially if brought
+by the authorities of a subject nation. Many a provincial governor had
+had but a short shrift in such a case, and Pilate knew that he was a
+ruined man if these implacable zealots howling before him went to
+Tiberius with such a charge. So the die was cast. With rage in his
+heart, no doubt, and knowing that he was sacrificing 'innocent blood'
+to save himself, he turned away from the victorious mob, apparently in
+silence, and brought Jesus out once more. He had no more words to say
+to his prisoner. Nothing remained but the formal act of sentence, for
+which he seated himself, with a poor assumption of dignity, yet feeling
+all the while, no doubt, what a contemptible surrender he was making.
+
+Judgment-seats and mosaic pavements do not go far to secure reverence
+for a judge who is no better than an assassin, killing an innocent man
+to secure his own ends. Pilate's sentence fell most heavily on himself.
+If 'the judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted,' he is tenfold
+condemned when the innocent is sentenced.
+
+Pilate returned to his sarcastic mood when he returned to his
+injustice, and found some satisfaction in his old jeer, 'your King.'
+But the passion of hatred was too much in earnest to be turned or even
+affected by such poor scoffs, and the only answer was the renewed roar
+of the mob, which had murder in its tone. The repetition of the
+governor's taunt, 'Shall I crucify your King?' brought out the answer
+in which the rulers of the nation in their fury blindly flung away
+their prerogative. It is no accident that it was 'the chief priests'
+who answered, 'We have no king but Caesar.' Driven by hate, they
+deliberately disown their Messianic hope, and repudiate their national
+glory. They who will not have Christ have to bow to a tyrant. Rebellion
+against Him brings slavery.
+
+
+
+AN EYE-WITNESS'S ACCOUNT OF THE CRUCIFIXION
+
+'And He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a
+skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: Where they crucified
+Him, and two other with Him, on either side one, and Jesus in the
+midst. And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the
+writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then
+read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh
+to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. Then
+said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of
+the Jews; but that He said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered,
+What I have written I have written. Then the soldiers, when they had
+crucified Jesus, took His garments, and made four parts, to every
+soldier a part; and also His coat: now the coat was without seam, woven
+from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let us
+not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the
+scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted My raiment among
+them, and for My vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the
+soldiers did. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and his
+mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When
+Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom He
+loved, He saith unto His mother, Woman, behold Thy Son! Then saith He
+to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple
+took her unto his own home. After this, Jesus knowing that all things
+were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I
+thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a
+spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth.
+When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished:
+and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.'--JOHN xix. 17-30.
+
+In great and small matters John's account adds much to the narrative of
+the crucifixion. He alone tells of the attempt to have the title on the
+Cross altered, of the tender entrusting of the Virgin to his care, and
+of the two 'words' 'I thirst' and 'It is finished.' He gives details
+which had been burned into his memory, such as Christ's position 'in
+the midst' of the two robbers, and the jar of 'vinegar' standing by the
+crosses. He says little about the act of fixing Jesus to the Cross, but
+enlarges what the other Evangelists tell as to the soldiers 'casting
+lots.' He had heard what they said to one another. He alone distinctly
+tells that when He went forth, Jesus was bearing the Cross which
+afterwards Simon of Cyrene had to carry, probably because our Lord's
+strength failed.
+
+Who appointed the two robbers to be crucified at the same time? Not the
+rulers, who had no such power but probably Pilate, as one more shaft of
+sarcasm which was all the sharper both because it seemed to put Jesus
+in the same class as they, and because they were of the same class as
+the man of the Jews' choice, Barabbas, and possibly were two of his
+gang. Jesus was 'in the midst,' where He always is, completely
+identified with the transgressors, but central to all things and all
+men. As He was in the midst on the Cross, with a penitent on one hand
+and a rejecter on the other, He is still in the midst of humanity, and
+His judgment-seat will be as central as His Cross was.
+
+All the Evangelists give the title written over the Cross, but John
+alone tells that it was Pilate's malicious invention. He thought that
+he was having a final fling at the priests, and little knew how truly
+his title, which was meant as a bitter jest, was a fact. He had it put
+into the three tongues in use--'Hebrew,' the national tongue; 'Greek,'
+the common medium of intercourse between varying nationalities; and
+'Latin' the official language. He did not know that he was proclaiming
+the universal dominion of Jesus, and prophesying that wisdom as
+represented by Greece, law and imperial power as represented by Rome,
+and all previous revelation as represented by Israel, would yet bow
+before the Crucified, and recognise that His Cross was His throne.
+
+The 'high-priests' winced, and would fain have had the title altered.
+Their wish once more denied Jesus, and added to their condemnation, but
+it did not move Pilate. It would have been well for him if he had been
+as firm in carrying out his convictions of justice as in abiding by his
+bitter jest. He was obstinate in the wrong place, partly because he was
+angry with the rulers, and partly to recover his self-respect, which
+had been damaged by his vacillation. But his stiff-necked speech had a
+more tragic meaning than he knew, for 'what he had written' on his own
+life-page on that day could never be erased, and will confront him. We
+are all writing an imperishable record, and we shall have to read it
+out hereafter, and acknowledge our handwriting.
+
+John next sets in strong contrast the two groups round the Cross--the
+stolid soldiers and the sad friends. The four legionaries went through
+their work as a very ordinary piece of military duty. They were well
+accustomed to crucify rebel Jews, and saw no difference between these
+three and former prisoners. They watched the pangs without a touch of
+pity, and only wished that death might come soon, and let them get back
+to their barracks. How blind men may be to what they are gazing at! If
+knowledge measures guilt, how slight the culpability of the soldiers!
+They were scarcely more guilty than the mallet and nails which they
+used. The Sufferer's clothes were their perquisite, and their division
+was conducted on cool business principles, and with utter disregard of
+the solemn nearness of death. Could callous indifference go further
+than to cast lots for the robe at the very foot of the Cross?
+
+But the thing that most concerns us here is that Jesus submitted to
+that extremity of shame and humiliation, and hung there naked for all
+these hours, gazed on, while the light lasted, by a mocking crowd. He
+had set the perfect Pattern of lowly self-abnegation when, amid the
+disciples in the upper room, He had 'laid aside His garments,' but now
+He humbles Himself yet more, being clothed only 'with shame.' Therefore
+should we clothe Him with hearts' love. Therefore God has clothed Him
+with the robes of imperial majesty.
+
+Another point emphasised by John is the fulfilment of prophecy in this
+act. The seamless robe, probably woven by loving hands, perhaps by some
+of the weeping women who stood there, was too valuable to divide, and
+it would be a moment's pastime to cast lots for it. John saw, in the
+expedient naturally suggested to four rough men, who all wanted the
+robe but did not want to quarrel over it, a fulfilment of the cry of
+the ancient sufferer, who had lamented that his enemies made so sure of
+his death that they divided his garments and cast lots for his vesture.
+But he was 'wiser than he knew,' and, while his words were to his own
+apprehension but a vivid metaphor expressing his desperate condition,
+'the Spirit which was in' him 'did signify' by them 'the sufferings of
+Christ.' Theories of prophecy or sacrifice which deny the correctness
+of John's interpretation have the New Testament against them, and
+assume to know more about the workings of inspiration than is either
+modest or scientific.
+
+What a contrast the other group presents! John's enumeration of the
+women may be read so as to mention four or three, according as 'His
+mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas,' is taken to mean one woman
+or two. The latter is the more probable supposition, and it is also
+probable that the unnamed sister of our Lord's mother was no other than
+Salome, John's own mother. If so, entrusting Mary to John's care would
+be the more natural. Tender care, joined with consciousness that
+henceforth the relation of son and mother was to be supplanted, not
+merely by Death's separating fingers, but by faith's uniting bond,
+breathed through the word, so loving yet so removing, 'Woman, behold
+thy son!' Dying trust in the humble friend, which would go far to make
+the friend worthy of it, breathed in the charge, to which no form of
+address corresponding to 'Woman' is prefixed. Jesus had nothing else to
+give as a parting gift, but He gave these two to each other, and
+enriched both. He showed His own loving heart, and implied His faithful
+discharge of all filial duties hitherto. And He taught us the lesson,
+which many of us have proved to be true, that losses are best made up
+when we hear Him pointing us by them to new offices of help to others,
+and that, if we will let Him, He will point us too to what will fill
+empty places in our hearts and homes.
+
+The second of the words on the Cross which we owe to John is that
+pathetic expression, 'I thirst.' Most significant is the insight into
+our Lord's consciousness which John, here as elsewhere, ventures to
+give. Not till He knew 'that all things were accomplished' did He give
+heed to the pangs of thirst, which made so terrible a part of the
+torture of crucifixion. The strong will kept back the bodily cravings
+so long as any unfulfilled duty remained. Now Jesus had nothing to do
+but to die, and before He died He let flesh have one little
+alleviation. He had refused the stupefying draught which would have
+lessened suffering by dulling consciousness, but He asked for the
+draught which would momentarily slake the agony of parched lips and
+burning throat.
+
+The words of verse 28 are not to be taken as meaning that Jesus said 'I
+thirst' with the mere intention of fulfilling the Scripture. His
+utterance was the plaint of a real need, not a performance to fill a
+part. But it is John who sees in that wholly natural cry the fulfilment
+of the psalm (Ps. lxix. 21). All Christ's bodily sufferings may be said
+to be summed up in this one word, the only one in which they found
+utterance. The same lips that said, 'If any man thirst, let him come
+unto Me, and drink,' said this. Infinitely pathetic in itself, that cry
+becomes almost awful in its appeal to us when we remember who uttered
+it, and why He bore these pangs. The very 'Fountain of living water'
+knew the pang of thirst that every one that thirsteth might come to the
+waters, and might drink, not water only, but 'wine and milk, without
+money or price.'
+
+John's last contribution to our knowledge of our Lord's words on the
+Cross is that triumphant 'It is finished,' wherein there spoke, not
+only the common dying consciousness of life being ended, but the
+certitude, which He alone of all who have died, or will die, had the
+right to feel and utter, that every task was completed, that all God's
+will was accomplished, all Messiah's work done, all prophecy fulfilled,
+redemption secured, God and man reconciled. He looked back over all His
+life and saw no failure, no falling below the demands of the occasion,
+nothing that could have been bettered, nothing that should not have
+been there. He looked upwards, and even at that moment He heard in His
+soul the voice of the Father saying, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I
+am well pleased!'
+
+Christ's work is finished. It needs no supplement. It can never be
+repeated or imitated while the world lasts, and will not lose its power
+through the ages. Let us trust to it as complete for all our needs, and
+not seek to strengthen 'the sure foundation' which it has laid by any
+shifting, uncertain additions of our own. But we may remember, too,
+that while Christ's work is, in one aspect, finished, when He bowed His
+head, and by His own will 'gave up the ghost,' in another aspect His
+work is not finished, nor will be, until the whole benefits of His
+incarnation and death are diffused through, and appropriated by, the
+world. He is working to-day, and long ages have yet to pass, in all
+probability, before the voice of Him that sitteth on the throne shall
+say 'It is done!'
+
+
+
+THE TITLE ON THE CROSS
+
+'Pilate wrote a title also, and put it on the cross.'--JOHN xix. 19.
+
+This title is recorded by all four Evangelists, in words varying in
+form but alike in substance. It strikes them all as significant that,
+meaning only to fling a jeer at his unruly subjects, Pilate should have
+written it, and proclaimed this Nazarene visionary to be He for whom
+Israel had longed through weary ages. John's account is the fullest, as
+indeed his narrative of all Pilate's shufflings is the most complete.
+He alone records that the title was tri-lingual (for the similar
+statement in the Authorised Version of Luke is not part of the original
+text). He alone gives the Jews' request for an alteration of the title,
+and Pilate's bitter answer. That angry reply betrays his motive in
+setting up such words over a crucified prisoner's head. They were meant
+as a savage taunt of the Jews, not as an insult to Jesus, which would
+have been welcome to them. He seems to have regarded our Lord as a
+harmless enthusiast, to have had a certain liking for Him, and a
+languid curiosity as to Him, which came by degrees to be just tinged
+with awe as he felt that he could not quite make Him out. Throughout,
+he was convinced that His claim to be a king contained no menace for
+Caesar, and he would have let Jesus go but for fear of being
+misrepresented at Rome. He felt that the sacrifice of one more Jew was
+a small price to pay to avert his accusation to Caesar; he would have
+sacrificed a dozen such to keep his place. But he felt that he was
+being coerced to do injustice, and his anger and sense of humiliation
+find vent in that written taunt. It was a spurt of bad temper and a
+measure of his reluctance.
+
+Besides the interest attaching to it as Pilate's work, it seems to John
+significant of much that it should have been fastened on the Cross, and
+that it should have been in the three languages, Hebrew (Aramaic),
+Greek, and Latin.
+
+Let us deal with three points in succession.
+
+I. The title as throwing light on the actors in the tragedy.
+
+We may consider it, first, in its bearing on Jesus' claims. He was
+condemned by the priests on the theocratic charge of blasphemy, because
+He made Himself the Son of God. He was sentenced by Pilate on the civil
+charge of rebellion, which the priests brought against Him as an
+inference necessarily resulting from His claim to be the Son of God.
+They drew the same conclusion as Nathanael did long before: 'Rabbi,
+Thou art the Son of God,' and therefore 'Thou art the King of Israel.'
+And they were so far right that if the former designation is correct,
+the latter inevitably follows.
+
+Both charges, then, turned on His personal claims. To Pilate He
+explained the nature of His kingdom, so as to remove any suspicion that
+it would bring Him and His subjects into collision with Rome, but He
+asserted His kingship, and it was His own claim that gave Pilate the
+material for His gibe. It is worth notice, then, that these two claims
+from His own lips, made to the authorities who respectively took
+cognisance of the theocratic and of the civic life of the nation, and
+at the time when His life hung on the decision of the two, were the
+causes of His judicial sentence. The people who allege that Jesus never
+made the preposterous claims for Himself which Christians have made for
+Him, but was a simple Teacher of morality and lofty religion, have
+never fairly faced the simple question: 'For what, then, was He
+crucified?' It is easy for them to dilate on the hatred of the Jewish
+officials and the gross earthliness of the masses, as explaining the
+attitude of both, but it is not so easy to explain how material was
+found for judicial process. One can understand how Jesus was detested
+by rulers, and how they succeeded in stirring up popular feeling
+against Him, but not how an indictment that would hold water was framed
+against Him. Nor would even Pilate's complaisance have gone so far as
+to have condemned a prisoner against whom all that could be said was
+that he was disliked because he taught wisely and well and was too good
+for his critics. The question is, not what made Jesus disliked, but
+what set the Law in motion against Him? And no plausible answer has
+ever been given except the one that was nailed above His head on the
+Cross. It was not His virtues or the sublimity of His teaching, but His
+twofold claim to be Son of God and King of Israel that haled Him to His
+death.
+
+We may further ask why Jesus did not clear up the mistakes, if they
+were mistakes, that led to His condemnation. Surely He owed it to the
+two tribunals before which He stood, no less than to Himself and His
+followers, to disown the erroneous interpretations on which the charges
+against Him were based. Even a Caiaphas was entitled to be told, if it
+were so, that He meant no blasphemy and was not claiming anything too
+high for a reverent Israelite, when He claimed to be the Son of God. If
+Jesus let the Sanhedrim sentence Him under a mistake of what His words
+meant, He was guilty of His own death.
+
+We note, further, the light thrown by the Title on Pilate's action. It
+shows his sense of the unreality of the charge which he basely allowed
+himself to be forced into entertaining as a ground of condemning Jesus.
+If this enigmatical prisoner had had a sword, there would have been
+some substance in the charge against Him, but He was plainly an
+idea-monger, and therefore quite harmless, and His kingship only fit to
+be made a jest of and a means of girding at the rulers. 'Practical men'
+always under-estimate the power of ideas. The Title shows the same
+contempt for 'mere theorisers' as animated his question, 'What is
+truth?' How little he knew that this 'King,' at whom he thought that he
+could launch clumsy jests, had lodged in the heart of the Empire a
+power which would shatter and remould it!
+
+In his blindness to the radiant truth that stood before him, in the
+tragedy of his condemnation of that to which he should have yielded
+himself, Pilate stands out as a beacon for all time, warning the world
+against looking for the forces that move the world among the powers
+that the world recognises and honours. If we would not commit Pilate's
+fault over again, we must turn to 'the base things of this world' and
+the 'things that are not' and find in them the transforming powers
+destined to 'bring to nought things that are.'
+
+Pilate's gibe was an unconscious prophecy. He thought it an exquisite
+jest, for it hurt. He was an instance of that strange irony that runs
+through history, and makes, at some crisis, men utter fateful words
+that seem put into their lips by some higher power. Caiaphas and he,
+the Jewish chief of the Sanhedrim and the Roman procurator, were
+foremost in Christ's condemnation, and each of them spoke such words,
+profoundly true and far beyond the speaker's thoughts. Was the
+Evangelist wrong in saying: 'This spake he not of himself?'
+
+II. The Title on the Cross as unveiling the ground of Christ's dominion.
+
+It seemed a ludicrous travesty of royalty that a criminal dying there,
+with a crowd of his 'subjects' gloating on his agonies and shooting
+arrowy words of scorn at him, should be a King. But His cross _is_ His
+throne. It is so because His death is His great work for the world. It
+is so because in it we see, with melted hearts, the sublimest
+revelation of His love. Absolute authority belongs to utter
+self-sacrifice. He, and only He, who gives Himself wholly to and for
+me, thereby acquires the right of absolute command over me. He is the
+'Prince of all the kings of the earth,' because He has died and become
+the 'First-begotten from the dead.' From the hour when He said, 'I, if
+I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me,' down to the hour when the
+seer heard the storm of praise from 'ten thousand times ten thousand,
+and thousands of thousands' breaking round the throne, every New
+Testament reference to Christ's dominion is accompanied with a
+reference to His cross, and every reference to His cross merges in a
+reference to His throne. The crown of thorns was a revelation of the
+inmost nature of Christ's rule. The famous Iron Crown of Milan is a
+hard, cold circlet within a golden covering blazing with jewels.
+Christ's right to sway men, like His power to do so, rests on His
+sacrifice for men. A Christianity without a Cross is a Christianity
+without authority, as has been seen over and over again in the history
+of the Church, and as is being seen again today, if men would only
+look. A Christ without a Cross is a Christ without a Kingdom. The
+dominion of the world belongs to Him who can sway men's inmost motives.
+Hearts are His who has bought them with His own.
+
+III. The Title as prophesying Christ's universal dominion.
+
+The three tongues in which it was written were chosen simply to make it
+easy to read by the crowd from every part of the Empire assembled at
+the Passover. There were Palestinian Jews there who probably read
+Aramaic only, and representatives from the widely diffused Jewish
+emigration in Greek-speaking lands, as well as Roman officials and Jews
+from Italy who would be most familiar with Latin. Pilate wanted his
+shaft to reach them all. It was, in its tri-lingual character, a sign
+of Israel's degradation and a flourishing of the whip in their faces,
+as a government order in English placarded in a Bengalee village might
+be, or a Russian ukase in Warsaw. Its very wording betrayed a foreign
+hand, for a Jew would have written 'King of Israel,' not 'of the Jews.'
+
+But John divined a deeper meaning in this Title, just as he found a
+similar prophecy of the universality of Christ's death in the analogous
+word of Caiaphas. As in that saying he heard a faint prediction that
+Jesus should die 'not for that people only, but that He might also
+gather into one the scattered children of God,' so he feels that Pilate
+was wiser than he knew, and that his written words in their threefold
+garb symbolised the relation of Christ and His work to the three great
+types of civilisation which it found possessed of the field. It bent
+them all to its own purposes, absorbed them into itself, used their
+witness and was propagated by means of them, and finally sucked the
+life out of them and disintegrated them. The Jew contributed the
+morality and monotheism of the Old Testament; the Greek, culture and
+the perfected language that should contain the treasure, the fresh
+wine-skin for the new wine; the Roman made the diffusion of the kingdom
+possible by the _pax Romana_, and at first sheltered the young plant.
+All three, no doubt, marred as well as helped the development of
+Christianity, and infused into it deleterious elements, which cling to
+it to-day, but the prophecy of the Title was fulfilled and these three
+tongues became heralds of the Cross and with 'loud, uplifted trumpets
+blew' glad tidings to the ends of the world.
+
+That Title thus became an unconscious prophecy of Christ's universal
+dominion. The Psalmist that sang of Messiah's world-wide rule was sure
+that 'all nations shall serve Him,' and the reason why he was certain
+of it was '_for_ He shall deliver the needy when he crieth.' We may be
+certain of it for the same reason. He who can deal with man's primal
+needs, and is ready and able to meet every cry of the heart, will never
+want suppliants and subjects. He who can respond to our consciousness
+of sin and weakness, and can satisfy hungry hearts, will build His sway
+over the hearts whom He satisfies on foundations deep as life itself.
+The history of the past becomes a prophecy of the future. Jesus has
+drawn men of all sorts, of every stage of culture and layer of
+civilisation, and of every type of character to Him, and the power
+which has carried a peasant of Nazareth to be the acknowledged King of
+the civilised world is not exhausted, and will not be till He is
+throned as Saviour and Ruler of the whole earth. There is only one
+religion in the world that is obviously growing. The gods of Greece and
+Rome are only subjects for studies in Comparative Mythology, the
+labyrinthine pantheon of India makes no conquests, Buddhism is
+moribund. All other religions than Christianity are shut up within
+definite and comparatively narrow geographical and chronological
+limits. But in spite of premature jubilations of enemies and much hasty
+talk about the need for a re-statement (which generally means a
+negation) of Christian truth, we have a clear right to look forward
+with quiet confidence. Often in the past has the religion of Jesus
+seemed to be wearing or worn out, but it has a strange recuperative
+power, and is wont to startle its enemies' paeans over its grave by
+rising again and winning renewed victories. The Title on the Cross is
+for ever true, and is written again in nobler fashion 'on the vesture
+and on the thigh' of Him who rides forth at last to rule the nations,
+'KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.'
+
+
+
+THE IRREVOCABLE PAST
+
+'What I have written I have written.'--JOHN xix. 22.
+
+This was a mere piece of obstinacy. Pilate knew that he had prostituted
+his office in condemning Jesus, and he revenged himself for weak
+compliance by ill-timed mulishness. A cool-headed governor would have
+humoured his difficult subjects in such a trifle, as a just one would
+have been inflexible in a matter of life and death. But this man's
+facile yielding and his stiff-necked obstinacy were both misplaced. 'So
+I will, so I command. Let my will suffice for a reason,' was what he
+meant. He had written his gibe, and not all the Jews in Jewry should
+make him change.
+
+But his petulant answer to the rulers' request for the removal of the
+offensive placard carried in it a deeper meaning, as the Title also
+did, and as the people's fierce yell, 'His blood be on us and on our
+children,' did. Possibly the Evangelist had some thought of that sort
+in recording this saying; but, at all events, I venture to take a
+liberty with it which I should not do if it were a word of God's, or if
+it were given for our instruction. So I take it now as expressing in a
+vivid way, and irrespective of Pilate's intention, the thought of the
+irrevocable past.
+
+I. Every man is perpetually writing a permanent record of himself.
+
+It is almost impossible to get the average man to think of his life as
+a whole, or to realise that the fleeting present leaves indelible
+traces. They seem to fade away wholly. The record appears to be written
+in water. It is written in ink which is invisible, but as indelible as
+invisible. Grammarians define the perfect tense as that which expresses
+an action completed in the past and of which the consequences remain in
+the present. That is true of all our actions. Our characters, our
+circumstances, our remembrances, are all permanent. Every day we make
+entries in our diary.
+
+II. That record, once written, is irrevocable.
+
+We all know what it is to long that some one action should have been
+otherwise, to have taken some one step which perhaps has coloured
+years, and which we would give the world not to have taken. But it
+cannot be. Remorse cannot alter it. Wishes are vain. Repentance is
+vain. A new line of conduct is vain.
+
+What an awful contrast in this respect between time future and time
+past! Think of the indefinite possibilities in the one, the rigid
+fixity of the other. Our present actions are like cements that dry
+quickly and set hard on exposure to the air--the dirt of the trowel
+abides on the soft brick for ever. Many cuneiform inscriptions were
+impressed with a piece of wood on clay, and are legible millenniums
+after.
+
+We have to write _currente calamo_, and as soon as written, the MS. is
+printed and stereotyped, and no revising proofs nor erasures are
+possible. An action, once done, escapes from us wholly.
+
+How needful, then, to have lofty principles ready at hand! The fresco
+painter must have a sure touch, and a quick hand, and a full mind.
+
+What a boundless field the future offers us! How much it may be! How
+much, perhaps, we resolve it shall be! What a shrunken heap the harvest
+is! Are you satisfied with what you have written?
+
+III. This record, written here, is read yonder.
+
+Our actions carry eternal consequences. These will be read by
+ourselves. Character remains. Memory remains.
+
+We shall read with all illusions stripped away.
+
+Others will read--God and a universe.
+
+'We shall all be _manifested_ before the judgment-seat of Christ.'
+
+IV. This record may be blotted out by the blood of Christ.
+
+It cannot be made not to have been, but God's pardon will be given, and
+in respect to all personal consequences it is made non-existent.
+Circumstances may remain, but their pressure is different. Character
+may be renewed and sanctified, and even made loftier by the evil past.
+Our dead selves may become 'stepping-stones to higher things.'
+
+Memory may remain, but its sting is gone, and new hopes, and joys, and
+work may fill the pages of our record.
+
+'He took away the handwriting that was against us, nailing it to His
+Cross.'
+
+Our lives and characters may become a palimpsest. 'I will write upon
+him My new name.' 'Ye are an epistle of Christ ministered by us.'
+
+
+
+CHRIST'S FINISHED AND UNFINISHED WORK
+
+'Jesus ... said, It is finished.'--JOHN xix. 30.
+
+'He said unto me, It is done.'--REV. xxi. 6.
+
+One of these sayings was spoken from the Cross, the other from the
+Throne. The Speaker of both is the same. In the one, His voice 'then
+shook the earth,' as the rending rocks testified; in the other, His
+voice 'will shake not the earth only but also heaven'; for 'new heavens
+and a new earth' accompanied the proclamation. In the one, like some
+traveller ready to depart, who casts a final glance over his
+preparations, and, satisfied that nothing is omitted, gives his
+charioteer the signal and rolls away, Jesus Christ looked back over His
+life's work, and, knowing that it was accomplished, summoned His
+servant Death, and departed. In the other, He sets His seal to the
+closed book of the world's history, and ushers in a renovated universe.
+The one masks the completion of the work on which the world's
+redemption rests, the other marks the completion of the age-long
+process by which the world's redemption is actually realised. The one
+proclaims that the foundation is laid, the other that the headstone is
+set on the finished building. The one bids us trust in a past perfected
+work; the other bids us hope in the perfect accomplishment of the
+results of that work. Taken singly, these sayings are grand; united,
+they suggest thoughts needed always, never more needful than to-day.
+
+I. We see here the work which was finished on the Cross.
+
+The Evangelist gives great significance to the words of my first text,
+as is shown by his statement in a previous verse: 'Jesus, knowing that
+all things were now accomplished, said, I thirst,' and then--'It is
+finished.' That is to say, there is something in that dying voice a
+great deal deeper and more wonderful than the ordinary human utterance
+with which a dying man might say, 'It is all over now. I have done,'
+for this utterance came from the consciousness that all things had been
+accomplished by Him, and that He had done His life's work.
+
+Now, there, taking the words even in their most superficial sense, we
+come upon the strange peculiarity which marks off the life of Jesus
+Christ from every other life that was ever lived. There are no loose
+ends left, no unfinished tasks drop from His nerveless hands, to be
+taken up and carried on by others. His life is a rounded whole, with
+everything accomplished that had been endeavoured, and everything done
+that had been commanded. 'His hands have laid the foundation; His hands
+shall also finish.' He alone of the sons of men, in the deepest sense,
+completed His task, and left nothing for successors. The rest of us are
+taken away when we have reared a course or two of the structure, the
+dream of building which brightened our youth. The pen drops from
+paralysed hands in the middle of a sentence, and a fragment of a book
+is left. The painter's brush falls with his palette at the foot of his
+easel, and but the outline of what he conceived is on the canvas. All
+of us leave tasks half done, and have to go away before the work is
+completed. The half-polished columns that lie at Baalbec are but a
+symbol of the imperfection of every human life. But this Man said, 'It
+is finished,' and 'gave up the ghost.' Now, if we ponder on what lies
+in that consciousness of completion, I think we find, mainly, three
+things.
+
+Christ rendered a complete obedience. All through His life we see Him,
+hearing with the inward ear the solemn voice of the Father, and
+responding to it with that 'I must' which runs through all His days,
+from the earliest dawning of consciousness, when He startled His mother
+with 'I must be about My Father's business,' until the very last
+moments. In that obedience to the all-present necessity which He
+cheerfully embraced and perfectly discharged, there was no flaw. He
+alone of men looks back upon a life in which His clear consciousness
+detected neither transgression nor imperfection. In the midst of His
+career He could front His enemies with 'Which of you convinceth Me of
+sin?' and no man then, and no man in all the generations that have
+elapsed since--though some have been blind enough to try it, and
+malicious enough to utter their attempts,--has been able to answer the
+challenge. In the midst of His career He said, 'I do always the things
+that please Him'; and nobody then or since has been able to lay his
+finger upon an act of His in which, either by excess or defect, or
+contrariety, the will of God has not been fully represented. At the
+beginning of His career He said, in answer to the Baptist's
+remonstrance, 'It becometh us to fulfil all righteousness,' and at the
+end of His career He looked back, and knowing that He had thus done
+what became Him--namely, fulfilled it all--He said, 'It is finished!'
+
+The utterance further expresses Christ's consciousness of having
+completed the revelation of God. Jesus Christ has made known the
+Father, and the generations since have added nothing to His revelation.
+The very people, to-day, that turn away from Christianity, in the name
+of higher conceptions of the divine nature, owe their conceptions of it
+to the Christ from whom they turn. Not in broken syllables; not 'at
+sundry times and in divers manners,' but with the one perfect,
+full-toned name of God on His lips, and vocal in His life, He has
+declared the Father unto us. In the course of His career He said, 'He
+that hath seen Me hath seen the Father'; and, looking back on His life
+of manifestation of God, He proclaimed, 'It is finished!' And the world
+has since, with all its thinking, added nothing to the name which
+Christ has declared.
+
+The utterance farther expresses His consciousness of having made a
+completed, atoning Sacrifice. Remember that the words of my first text
+followed that awful cry that came from the darkness, and as by one
+lightning flash, show us the waves and billows rolling over His head.
+'My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?' In that infinitely
+pathetic and profound utterance, to the interpretation of which our
+powers go but a little way, Jesus Christ blends together, in the most
+marvellous fashion, desolation and trust, the consciousness that God is
+His God, and the consciousness that He is bereft of the light of His
+presence. Brethren! I know of no explanation of these words which does
+justice to both the elements that are intertwined so intimately in
+them, except the old one, which listens to Him as they come from His
+quivering lip, and says, 'The Lord hath made to meet on Him the
+iniquity of us all.'
+
+Ah, brethren! unless there was something a great deal more than the
+physical shrinking from physical death in that piteous cry, Jesus
+Christ did not die nearly as bravely as many a poor, trembling woman
+who, at the stake or the block, has owed her fortitude to Him. Many a
+blood-stained criminal has gone out of life with less tremor than that
+which, unless you take the explanation that Scripture suggests of the
+cry, marred the last hours of Jesus Christ. Having drained the cup, He
+held it up inverted when He said 'It is finished!' and not a drop
+trickled down the edge. He drank it that we might never need to drink
+it; and so His dying voice proclaimed that 'by one offering for sin for
+ever,' He 'obtained eternal redemption' for us.
+
+II. Now, secondly, note the work which began from the Cross. Between my
+two texts lie untold centuries, and the whole development of the
+consequences of Christ's death, like some great valley stretching
+between twin mountain-peaks on either side, which from some points of
+view will be foreshortened and invisible, but when gazed down upon, is
+seen to stretch widely leagues broad, from mountain ridge to mountain
+ridge. So my two texts, by the fact that millenniums have to interpose
+between the time when 'It is finished!' is spoken, and the time when
+'It is done!' can be proclaimed from the Throne, imply that the
+interval is filled by a continuous work of our Lord's, which began at
+the moment when the work on the Cross ended.
+
+Now it has very often been the case, as I take leave to think, that the
+interpretation of the former of these two texts has been of such a kind
+as to distort the perspective of Christian truth, and to obscure the
+fact of that continuous work of our Lord's. Therefore it may not be out
+of place if, in a sentence or two, I recall to you the plain teaching
+of the New Testament upon this matter. 'It is finished!' Yes; and as
+the lower course of some great building is but the foundation for the
+higher, when 'finished' it is but begun. The work which, in one aspect,
+is the close, in another aspect is the commencement of Christ's further
+activity. What did He say Himself, when He was here with His disciples?
+'I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.' What was the
+last word that came fluttering down, like an olive leaf, into the
+bosoms of the men as they stood with uplifted faces gazing upon Him as
+He disappeared? 'Lo! I am with you alway, even to the end of the ages.'
+What is the keynote of the book which carries on the story of the
+Gospels in the history of the militant Church? 'The former treatise
+have I made... of all that Jesus _began_ both to do and to teach, until
+the day in which He was taken up'--and, being taken up, continued, in a
+new form, both the doing and the teaching. Thus that book, misnamed the
+Acts of the Apostles, sets Him forth as the Worker of all the progress
+of the Church. Who is it that 'adds to the Church daily such as were
+being saved?' The Lord. Who is it that opened the hearts of the hearers
+to the message? The Lord. Who is it that flings wide the prison-gates
+when His persecuted servants are in chains? The Lord. Who is it that
+bids one man attach himself to the chariot of the eunuch of Ethiopia,
+and another man go and bear witness in Rome? The Lord. Through the
+whole of that book there runs the keynote, as its dominant thought,
+that men are but the instruments, and the hand that wields them is
+Christ's, and that He who wrought the finished work that culminated on
+Calvary is operating a continuous work through the ages from His Throne.
+
+Take that last book of Scripture, which opens with a view of the
+ascended Christ 'walking in the midst of the seven candlesticks, and
+holding the stars in His right hand;' which further draws aside the
+curtains of the heavenly sanctuary, and lets us see 'the Lamb in the
+midst of the Throne,' opening the seven seals--that is to say, setting
+loose for their progress through the world the forces that make the
+history of humanity, and which culminates in the vision of the final
+battle in which the Incarnate Word of God goes forth to victory, with
+all the armies of heaven following Him. Are not its whole spirit and
+message that Jesus Christ, the Lamb who is the Antagonist of the Beast,
+is working through all the history of the world, and will work till its
+kingdoms are 'become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ?'
+
+Now, that continuous operation of Jesus Christ in the midst of men is
+not to be weakened down to the mere continued influence of the truths
+which He proclaimed, or the Gospel which He brought. There is something
+a great deal more than the diminishing vibrations of a force long since
+set in operation, and slowly ceasing to act. Dead teachers do still
+'rule our spirits from their urns'; but it is no dead Christ who, by
+the influence of what He did when He was living, sways the world and
+comforts His Church; it is a living Christ who to-day is working in His
+people, by His Spirit. Further, He works on the world through His
+people by the Word; they plant and water, He 'gives the increase.' And
+He is working in the world, for His Church and for the world, by His
+wielding of all power that is given to Him, in heaven and on earth. So
+that the work that is done upon earth He doeth it all Himself; and
+Christian people unduly limit the sphere of Christ's operations when
+they look back only to the Cross, and talk about a 'finished work'
+there, and forget that that finished work there is but the vestibule of
+the continuous work that is being done to-day.
+
+Christian people! The present work of Christ needs working servants. We
+are here in order to carry on His work. The Apostle ventured to say
+that he was appointed 'to fill up that which is behind of the
+sufferings of Christ'; we may well venture to say that we are here
+mainly to apply to the world the benefits resulting from the finished
+work upon the Cross. The accomplishment of redemption, and the
+realisation of the accomplished redemption, are two wholly different
+things. Christ has done the one. He says to us, 'You are honoured to
+help Me to do the other.' According to the accurate rendering of a
+great saying of the Old Testament, 'Take no rest, and give Him no rest,
+till He establish and make Jerusalem a praise in the earth, Christ's
+work is finished; there is nothing for us to do with it but trust it.
+Christ's work is going on; come to His help. Ye are fellow-labourers
+with and to the Incarnate Truth.
+
+III. I need not say more than a word about the third thought, suggested
+by these texts--viz., the completion of the work which began on the
+Cross.
+
+'It is done!' That lies, no man knows how far, ahead of us. As surely
+as astronomers tell us that all this universe is hastening towards a
+central point, so surely 'that far-off divine event' is that 'to which
+the whole creation moves.' It is the blaze of light which fills the
+distant end of the dim vista of human history. Its elements are in part
+summed up in the context--the tabernacle of God with men, the perfected
+fellowship of the human with the divine, the housing of men in the very
+home and heart of God; 'a new heaven and a new earth,' a renovated
+universe; the removal of all evil, suffering, sorrow, sin, and tears.
+These things are to be, and shall be, when He says 'It is done!'
+
+Brethren! nothing else than such an issue can be the end of Creation,
+for nothing else than such is the purpose of God for man, and God is
+not going to be beaten by the world and the devil. Nothing else than
+such can be the issue of the Cross; for 'He shall see of the travail of
+His soul, and shall be satisfied,' and Christ is not going to labour in
+vain, and spend His life, and give His breath and His blood for nought.
+
+Nothing but the work finished on the Cross guarantees the coming of
+that perfected issue. I know not where else there is hope for mankind,
+looking on the history of humanity, except in that great message, that
+Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come, has died, lives for ever, and
+is the world's King and Lord.
+
+So for ourselves, in regard to the one part of the work, let us listen
+to Him saying 'It is finished!' abandon all attempts to eke it out by
+additions of our own, and cast ourselves on the finished Revelation,
+the finished Obedience, the finished Atonement, made once for all on
+the Cross. But as for the continuous work going on through the ages,
+let us cast ourselves into it with earnestness, self-sacrifice,
+consecration, and continuity, for we are fellow-workers with Christ,
+and Christ will work in, with, and for us if we will work for Him.
+
+
+
+CHRIST OUR PASSOVER
+
+'These things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone
+of Him shall not be broken.'--JOHN xix. 36.
+
+The Evangelist, in the words of this text, points to the great Feast of
+the Passover and to the Paschal Lamb, as finding their highest
+fulfilment, as he calls it, in Jesus Christ. For this purpose of
+bringing out the correspondence between the shadow and the substance he
+avails himself of a singular coincidence concerning a perfectly
+unimportant matter--viz., the abnormally rapid sinking of Christ's
+physical strength in the crucifixion, by which the final indignity of
+breaking the bones of the sufferers was avoided in His case. John sees,
+in that entirely insignificant thing, a kind of fingerpost pointing to
+far more important, deeper, and real correspondences. We are not to
+suppose that he was so purblind, and attached so much importance to
+externals, as that this outward coincidence exhausted in his conception
+the correspondence between the two. But It was a trifle that suggested
+a greater matter. It was a help aiding gross conceptions and common
+minds to grasp the inward relation between Jesus and that Passover
+rite. But just as our Lord would have fulfilled the prophecy about the
+King coming 'meek, and having salvation,' though He had never ridden on
+a literal ass into the literal Jerusalem, so our Lord would have
+'fulfilled' the shadow of the Passover with the substance of His own
+sacrifice if there had never been this insignificant correspondence, in
+outward things, between the two.
+
+But whilst my text is the Evangelist's commentary, the question arises,
+How did he come to recognise that our Lord was all which that Passover
+signified? And the answer is, he recognised it through Christ's own
+teaching. He does not record the institution of the Lord's Supper. It
+did not fall into his scheme to deal with external events of that sort,
+and he knew that it had been sufficiently taught by the three earlier
+Gospels, to which his is a supplement. But though he did not narrate
+the institution, he takes it for granted in the words of my text, and
+his vindication of his seeing the fulfilment of 'A bone of Him shall
+not be broken' in the incident to which I have referred, lies in this,
+that Jesus Christ Himself swept away the Passover and substituted the
+memorial feast of the Lord's Supper. 'This do in remembrance of Me,'
+said at the table where the Paschal lamb had been eaten, sufficiently
+warrants John's allusion here.
+
+So then, marking the fact that our Evangelist is but carrying out the
+lesson that he had learned in the upper room, we may fairly take the
+identification of the Paschal lamb with the crucified Christ as being
+the last instance in which our Lord Himself laid His hand upon Old
+Testament incidents and said, 'They all mean Me.' And it is from that
+point of view, and not merely for the purpose of dealing with the words
+that I have read as our starting-point, that I wish to speak now.
+
+I. Now then, the first thing that strikes me is that in this
+substitution of Himself for the Passover we have a strange instance of
+Christ's supreme authority.
+
+Try to fling yourself back in imagination to that upper room, where
+Jesus and a handful of Galileans were sitting, and remember the
+sanctity which immemorial usage had cast round that centre and apex of
+the Jewish ritual, established at the Exodus by a solemn divine
+appointment, intended to commemorate the birth of the nation, venerable
+by antiquity and association with the most vehement pulsations of
+national feeling, the centre point of Jewish religion. Christ said:
+'Put it all away; do not think about the Exodus; do not think about the
+destroying Angel; do not think about the deliverance. Forget all the
+past; do this in remembrance of Me.' Take into account that the
+Passover had a double sacredness, as a religious festival, and also as
+commemorating the birthday of the nation, and then estimate what a
+strange sense of His own importance the Man must have had who said:
+'That past is done with, and it is _Me_ that you have to think of now.'
+If I might venture to take a very modern illustration without
+vulgarising a great thing, suppose that on the other side of the
+Atlantic somebody were to stand up and say, 'I abrogate the Fourth of
+July and Independence Day. Do not think about Washington and the
+establishment of the United States any more. Think about me!' That is
+exactly what Jesus Christ did. Only instead of a century there were
+millenniums of observance which He thus laid aside. So I say that is a
+strange exercise of authority.
+
+What does it imply? It implies two things, and I must say a word about
+each of them. It implies that Christ regarded the whole of the ancient
+system of Judaism, its history, its law, its rites of worship, as
+pointing onwards to Himself, that He recognised in it a system the
+whole _raison d'etre_ of which was anticipatory and preparatory of
+Himself. For Him the Decalogue was given, for Him priests were
+consecrated, for Him kings were anointed, for Him prophets spake, for
+Him sacrifices smoked, for Him festivals were appointed, and the nation
+and its history were all one long proclamation: 'The King cometh! go ye
+forth to meet Him.' You cannot get less than that out of the way in
+which He handled, as is told in this Gospel, Jacob's ladder, the
+Serpent in the wilderness, the Manna that fell from Heaven, the Pillar
+of Cloud that led the people, the Rock that gushed forth water, and
+now, last of all, the Passover, which was the very shining apex of the
+whole sacrificial and ritual system.
+
+And remember, too, that this way of dealing with all the institutions
+of the nation as meaning, in their inmost purpose, Himself, is exactly
+parallel to His way of dealing with the sacred words of Mosaic
+commandment and prohibition in the Sermon on the Mount, where He set
+side by side as of equal--I was going to say, and I should have been
+right in saying, identical--authority what was 'said to them of old
+time' and what 'I say unto you.' Amidst the dust of our present
+controversies as to the processes by which, and the times at which, the
+Old Testament books assumed their present form, there is grave danger
+that the essential thing about the whole matter should be obscured. The
+way in which what is called Higher Criticism may finally locate the
+origins and dates of the various parts of that ancient record and that
+ancient system does not in the slightest degree affect the outstanding
+characteristic of the whole, that it is the product of the divine hand,
+working (if you will) through men who had more freedom of action whilst
+they were its organs than our grandfathers thought. Be it so; but still
+that divine Hand shaped the whole in order that, besides its
+educational effects upon the generations that received it, there should
+shine through it all the expectation of the coming King. And I venture
+to say that, however grateful we may be to modern investigation for
+light upon these other points to which I have referred, the ignorant
+reader that reads Jesus Christ into all the Old Testament may be very
+uncritical and mistaken in regard to details, but he has got hold of
+the root of the matter, and is nearer to the apprehension of the
+essence and spirit and purpose of the ancient Revelation than the most
+learned critic who does not see that it is the preparation for, and the
+prophecy of, Jesus Christ Himself. And the vindication of such a
+position lies in this, among other facts, that He in the upper room, in
+harmony with, and in completion of, all that He had previously spoken
+about His relation to the Old Testament, claimed the Passover as the
+prophecy of Himself, and said, 'I am the Lamb of God.'
+
+I need not dwell, I suppose, on the other consideration that is
+involved in this strange exercise of authority--viz., the naturalness,
+as without any sense of doing anything presumptuous or extraordinary,
+with which Christ assumes His right to handle divine appointments with
+the most perfect freedom, to modify them, to reshape them, to divert
+them from their first purpose, and to enjoin them with an authority
+equal to that with which the Lord said unto Moses, 'Keep ye this day
+through your generations.' There is only one supposition on which I,
+for my part, can understand that conduct--that He was the possessor of
+authority the same as the Authority that had originally instituted the
+rite.
+
+And so, dear brethren! when our Lord said, 'Do this in remembrance of
+Me,' I pray you to ask yourselves, What did that involve in regard to
+His nature and the source of His authority over us? And what did it
+involve in regard to His relation to that ancient Revelation?
+
+II. And now another point that I would suggest is--we have, in this
+substitution of the new rite for the old, our Lord's clear declaration
+of what was the very heart of His work in the world.
+
+'This do in remembrance of Me.' What is it, then, to which He points?
+Is it to the wisdom, the tenderness, the deep beauty, the flashing
+moral purity that gleamed and shone lambent in His words? No! Is it to
+the gracious self--oblivion, the gentle accessibility, the loving pity,
+the leisurely heart always ready to help, the eye ready to fill with
+tears, the hand ever outstretched and ever laden with blessings? No! It
+is the death on the Cross which He, if I might so say, isolates, at
+least which He underscores with red lines, and which He would have us
+remember, as we remember nothing else. Brethren, rites are
+insignificant in many aspects, but are often of enormous importance as
+witnesses to truths. And I point to the Lord's Supper, the one rite of
+the Christian Church, which is to be repeated over and over and over
+again, and see in it the great barrier which has rendered it
+impossible, and will render it impossible, as I believe, for evermore,
+that a Christianity, which obscures the atoning sacrifice of Christ on
+the Cross, should ever pose as the full representation of the Master's
+mind, or as the full expression of the Saviour's word.
+
+What do men and churches that falter in their allegiance to the truth
+of Christ's redemptive death do with the Lord's Supper? Nothing! For
+the most part they ignore it, or if they retain it, do not, for the
+life of them, know how to explain it, or why it should be there. The
+explanation of why it is there is the great truth, of which it is the
+clear utterance and the strong defence, the truth that 'Jesus Christ
+died for our sins according to the Scriptures,' and that 'the Son of
+Man came... to give His life a ransom for the many.'
+
+What did that Passover say? Two things it said, the blood that was
+sprinkled on the lintels and on the door-posts was the token to the
+destroying Angel, as with his broad, silent pinions he swept through
+the land, bringing a blacker night into Egyptian darkness, and leaving
+behind him no house 'in which there was not one dead.' All the houses
+of which the occupants had put the ruddy mark on the lintels and on the
+doorposts, and were wise enough not to go forth from behind the shelter
+of that mark on the door, were safe when the morning dawned. And so to
+us all who, by our sinfulness, have brought down upon our heads
+exposedness to that retribution, which, in a righteously governed
+universe, must needs follow sin, and to that death which the separation
+from God--the necessary result of sin--most surely is, there is
+proffered in that great Sacrifice shelter from the destroying sword.
+
+But that is not all. Whilst the blood on the posts meant security, the
+Lamb on the table meant emancipation. So they who find in the dying
+Christ their exemption from the last consequences of transgression,
+find, in partaking of the Christ whose sacrifice is their pardon, the
+communication of a new power, which sets them free from a worse than
+Egyptian bondage, and enables them to shake from their emancipated
+limbs the fetters of the grimmest of the Pharaohs that have wielded a
+tyrannous dominion over them. Pardon and freedom, the creation of a
+nation subject only to the law of Jehovah Himself--these were the facts
+that the Passover festival and the Passover lamb signified, and these
+are the facts which, in nobler fashion, are brought to us by Jesus
+Christ. So, I beseech you, let Him teach you what His work in the world
+is, as He lays His own hand on that highest of the ancient festivals,
+and endorses the Baptist's declaration, 'Behold the Lamb of God, which
+taketh away the sin of the world!'
+
+III. Now, lastly, let me ask you to notice how, in this regal and
+authoritative dealing by our Lord with that ancient festival, there
+lies a loving provision for our weakness.
+
+Surely we may venture to say that Jesus Christ desired to be
+remembered, even by that handful of poor people, and by us, not only
+for our sakes, but because His heart, too, craved that He should not be
+forgotten by those whom He was leaving. As you may remember, the dying
+king turned to the bishop standing by him, with the enigmatical word
+which no one understood but the receiver of it--'Remember!' so did
+Jesus Christ. He appeals to our thankfulness, He appeals to our
+affections, He lets us see that He wishes to live in our memories,
+because He delights in it, as well as because it is for our profit.
+
+The Passover was purely and simply a rite of remembrance. I venture to
+believe that the Lord's Supper is nothing more. I know how people talk
+about the bare, bald, Zwinglian ideas of the Communion. They do look
+very bald and bare by the side of modern notions and mediaeval notions
+resuscitated. Well, I had rather have the bareness than I would have it
+overlaid by coverings under which there is room for abundance of vermin
+to lurk. Christ puts the Lord's Supper in the place of the Passover.
+The Passover was a purely memorial rite. You Christian people will
+understand the spirituality of the whole Gospel system, and the nature
+of the only bond which unites men to Jesus and brings spiritual
+blessings to them--viz. faith--all the better, the more you cling, in
+spite of all that is going on round us to-day, to that simple,
+intelligible, Scriptural notion that we commemorate the Sacrifice, not
+offer the Sacrifice. Jesus Christ said that the Lord's Supper was to be
+observed 'in remembrance of Me.' That was His explanation of its
+purpose, and I for one am content to take as the expounder of the laws
+of the feast, the feast's own Founder.
+
+Now one more word. In the Passover men fed on the Sacrifice. Jesus
+Christ presents Himself to each of us as at once the Sacrifice for our
+sins and the Food of our souls. If you will keep your minds in touch
+with the truth about Him, and with Him whom the truth about Him reveals
+to you, if you will keep your hearts in touch with that great and
+unspeakable sign of God's love, if you will keep your wills in
+submission to His authority, if you will let His blood, 'which is the
+life,' or as you may otherwise word it, His Spirit, come into your
+lives, and be your spirit, your motive, then you will go out from the
+table, not like the disciples to flee, and deny, and forget, nor like
+the Israelites to wander in a wilderness, but strengthened for many a
+day of joyous service and true communion, and will come at last to what
+He has promised us: 'Ye shall sit with Me at My table in My Kingdom,'
+whence we shall go 'no more out.'
+
+
+
+JOSEPH AND NICODEMUS
+
+'And after this Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but
+secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away
+the body of Jesus; ... And there came also Nicodemus which at the first
+came to Jesus by night.'--JOHN xix. 38, 39.
+
+While Christ lived, these two men had been unfaithful to their
+convictions; but His death, which terrified and paralysed and scattered
+His avowed disciples, seems to have shamed and stung them into courage.
+They came now, when they must have known that it was too late, to
+lavish honour and tears on the corpse of the Master whom they had been
+too cowardly to acknowledge, whilst acknowledgment might yet have
+availed. How keen an arrow of self-condemnation must have pierced their
+hearts as they moved in their offices of love, which they thought that
+He could never know, round His dead corpse!
+
+They were both members of the Sanhedrim; the same motives, no doubt,
+had withheld each of them from confessing Christ; the same impulses
+united them in this too late confession of discipleship. Nicodemus had
+had the conviction, at the beginning of Christ's ministry, that He was
+at least a miraculously attested and God-sent Teacher. But the fear
+which made him steal to Jesus by night--the unenviable distinction
+which the Evangelist pitilessly reiterates at each mention of
+him--arrested his growth and kept him dumb when silence was treason.
+Joseph of Arimathea is described by two of the Evangelists as 'a
+disciple'; by the other two as a devout Israelite, like Simeon and
+Anna, 'waiting for the Kingdom of God.' Luke informs us that he had not
+concurred in the condemnation of Jesus, but leads us to believe that
+his dissent had been merely silent. Perhaps he was more fully convinced
+than Nicodemus, and at the same time even more timid in avowing his
+convictions.
+
+We may take these two contrite cowards as they try to atone for their
+unfaithfulness to their living Master by their ministrations to Him
+dead, as examples of secret disciples, and see here the causes, the
+misery, and the cure of such.
+
+I. Let us look at them as illustrations of secret discipleship and its
+causes.
+
+They were restrained from the avowal of the Messiahship of Jesus by
+fear. There is nothing in the organisation of society at this day to
+make any man afraid of avowing the ordinary kind of Christianity which
+satisfies the most of us; rather it is the proper thing with the bulk
+of us middle-class people, to say that in some sense or other we are
+Christians. But when it comes to a real avowal, a real carrying out of
+a true discipleship, there are as many and as formidable, though very
+different, impediments in the way to-day, from those which blocked the
+path of these two cowards in our text. In all regions of life it is
+hard to work out into practice any moral conviction whatever. How many
+of us are there who have beliefs about social and moral questions which
+we are ashamed to avow in certain companies for fear of the finger of
+ridicule being pointed at us? It is not only in the Church, and in
+reference to purely religious belief, that we find the curse of secret
+discipleship, but it is everywhere. Wherever there are moral questions
+which are yet the subject of controversy, and have not been enthroned
+with the hallelujahs of all men, you get people that carry their
+convictions shut up in their own breasts, and lock their lips in
+silence, when there is most need of frank avowal. The political,
+social, and moral conflicts of this day have their 'secret disciples,'
+who will only come out of their holes when the battle is over, and will
+then shout with the loudest.
+
+But to turn to the more immediate subject before us, how many men and
+women, I wonder, are there who ought to be and are not, distinctly and
+openly united with the Christian community?
+
+I do not mean to say--God forbid that I should--that connection with
+any existing church is the same as a connection with Jesus Christ, or
+that the neglect to be so associated is tantamount to secret
+discipleship; I know there are plenty of other ways of acknowledging
+Him than that, but I am quite sure that this is one department in which
+a large number of men, in all our congregations--and there are not a
+few in this congregation--need a very plain word of earnest
+remonstrance. It is one way of manifesting whose you are, that you
+should unite yourselves openly with those who belong to Him, and who
+try to serve Him. I do not dwell upon this matter, because I do not
+wish to be misunderstood, as if I supposed that union to a church is
+equivalent to union with Him; or that a connection with a church is the
+only, or even the principal way of making an open avowal of Christian
+principle; but I am certain that amongst us in this day there is a
+laxity in this matter which is doing harm both to the Church and to
+some of you. Therefore I say to you, dear friends, suffer the word of
+exhortation as to the duty of openly uniting yourselves with the
+Christian community.
+
+But far higher and more important than that--do you ever say anyhow
+that you belong to Jesus Christ? In a society like ours, in which the
+influence of Christian morality affects a great many people who have no
+personal connection with Him, it is not always enough that the life
+should preach, because over a very large field of ordinary daily life
+the underground influence, so to speak, of Christian ethics has
+infiltrated and penetrated, so that many a tree bears a greener leaf
+because of the water that has found its way to it from the river,
+though it be planted far from its banks. Even those who are not
+Christians live outward lives largely regulated by Christian principle.
+The whole level of morality has been heaved up, as the coastline has
+sometimes been by hidden fires slowly working, by the imperceptible,
+gradual influence of the gospel.
+
+So it needs sometimes that you should _say_ 'I am a Christian,' as well
+as that you should live like one. Ask yourselves, dear friends! whether
+you have buttoned your greatcoat over your uniform that nobody may know
+whose soldier you are. Ask yourselves whether you have sometimes held
+your tongues because you knew that if you spoke people would find out
+where you came from and what country you belonged to. Ask yourselves,
+Have you ever accompanied the witness of your lives with the commentary
+of your confession? Did you ever, anywhere but in a church, stand up
+and say, 'I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, _my_ Lord'?
+
+And then ask yourselves another question: Have you ever dared to be
+singular? We are all of us in this world often thrust into
+circumstances in which it is needful that we should say, 'So do not I
+because of the fear of the Lord.' Boys go to school; they used always
+to kneel down at their bedsides and say their prayers when they were at
+home. They do not like to do it with all those critical and cruel
+eyes--and there are no eyes more critical and more cruel than young
+eyes--fixed upon them, and so they give up prayer. A young man comes to
+Manchester, goes into a warehouse, pure of life, and with a tongue that
+has not blossomed into rank fruit of obscenity and blasphemy. And he
+hears, at the next desk there, words that first of all bring a blush to
+his cheek, and he is tempted into conduct that he knows to be a denial
+of his Master. And he covers up his principles, and goes with the
+tempters into the evil. I might sketch a dozen other cases, but I need
+not. In one form or other, we have all to go through the same ordeal.
+We have sometimes to dare to be in a minority of one, if we will not be
+untrue to our Master and to ourselves.
+
+Now the reasons for this unfaithfulness to conviction and to Christ,
+are put by the Apostle here in a very blunt fashion--'For fear of the
+Jews.' That is not what we say to ourselves; some of us say, 'Oh! I
+have got beyond outward organisations. I find it enough to be united to
+Christ. The Christian communities are very imperfect. There is not any
+of them that I quite see eye to eye with. So I stand apart,
+contemplating all, and happy in my unsectarianism.' Yes, I quite admit
+the faults, and suppose that as long as men think at all they will not
+find any Church which is entirely to their mind; and I rejoice to think
+that some day we shall all outgrow visible organisations--when we get
+there where the seer 'saw no temple therein.' Admitting all that, I
+also know that isolation is always weakness, and that if a man stand
+apart from the wholesome friction of his brethren, he will get to be a
+great diseased mass of oddities, of very little use either to himself,
+or to men, or to God. It is not a good thing, on the whole, that people
+should fight for their own hands, and the wisest thing any of us can do
+is, preserving our freedom of opinion, to link ourselves with some body
+of Christian people, and to find in them our shelter and our home.
+
+But these two in our text were moved by 'fear.' They dreaded ridicule,
+the loss of position, the expulsion from Sanhedrim and synagogue,
+social ostracism, and all the armoury of offensive weapons which would
+have been used against them by their colleagues. So, ignobly they kept
+their thumb on their convictions, and the two of them sat dumb in the
+council when the scornful question was asked, 'Have any of the rulers
+or of the Pharisees believed on Him?' when they ought to have started
+to their feet and said 'Yes, we have!' And when Nicodemus ventured a
+feeble remonstrance, which he carefully divested of all appearance of
+personal sympathy, and put upon the mere abstract ground of fair
+play--'Doth our law judge any man before it hear him?'--one
+contemptuous question was enough to reduce him to silence. 'Art thou
+also of Galilee?' was enough to cow him into dropping his timid plea
+for Him whom in his heart he believed to be the Messiah.
+
+So with us, the fear of loss of position comes into play. I have heard
+of people who settled the congregation which they should honour by
+their presence from the consideration of the social advantages which it
+offered. I have heard of their saying, 'Oh! we cannot attach ourselves
+to such and such a community; there is no society for the children.'
+Then many of us are very much afraid of being laughed at. Ridicule, I
+think, to sensitive people in a generation like ours, is pretty nearly
+as bad as the old rack and the physical torments of martyrdom. We have
+all got so nervous and high-strung nowadays, and depend so much upon
+other people's good opinion, that it is a dreadful thing to be
+ridiculed. Timid people do not come to the front and say what they
+believe, and take up unpopular causes, because they cannot bear to be
+pointed at and pelted with the abundant epithets of disparagement,
+which are always flung at earnest people who will not worship at the
+appointed shrines, and have sturdy convictions of their own.
+
+Ridicule breaks no bones. It has no power if you make up your mind that
+it shall not have. Face it, and it will only be unpleasant for a moment
+at first. When a child goes into the sea to bathe, he is uncomfortable
+till his head has been fairly under water, and then after that he is
+all right. So it is with the ridicule which out-and-out Christian
+faithfulness may bring on us. It only hurts at the beginning, and
+people very soon get tired. Face your fears and they will pass away. It
+is not perhaps a good advice to give unconditionally, but it is a very
+good one in regard of all moral questions--always do what you are
+afraid to do. In nine cases out of ten it will be the right thing to
+do. If people would only discount 'the fear of men which bringeth a
+snare' by making up their minds to neglect it, there would be fewer
+'dumb dogs' and 'secret disciples' haunting and weakening the Church of
+Christ.
+
+II. I have spent too much time upon this part of my subject, and I must
+deal briefly with the following. Let me say a word about the
+illustrations that we have in this text of the miseries of this secret
+discipleship.
+
+How much these two men lost--all those three years of communion with
+the Master; all His teaching, all the stimulus of His example, all the
+joy of fellowship with Him! They might have had a treasure in their
+memories that would have enriched them for all their days, and they had
+flung it all away because they were afraid of the curled lip of a
+long-bearded Pharisee or two.
+
+And so it always is; the secret disciple diminishes his communion with
+his Master. It is the valleys which lay their bosoms open to the sun
+that rejoice in the light and warmth; the narrow clefts in the rocks
+that shut themselves grudgingly up against the light, are all dank and
+dark and dismal. And it is the men that come and avow their
+discipleship that will have the truest communion with their Lord. Any
+neglected duty puts a film between a man and his Saviour; any conscious
+neglect of duty piles up a wall between you and Christ. Be sure of
+this, that if from cowardly or from selfish regard to position and
+advantages, or any other motive, we stand apart from Him, and have our
+lips locked when we ought to speak, there will steal over our hearts a
+coldness, His face will be averted from us, and our eyes will not dare
+to seek, with the same confidence and joy, the light of His countenance.
+
+What you lose by unfaithful wrapping of your convictions in a napkin
+and burying them in the ground is the joyful use of the convictions,
+the deeper hold of the truth by which you live, and before which you
+bow, and the true fellowship with the Master whom you acknowledge and
+confess. And when these men came for Christ's corpse and bore it away,
+what a sharp pang went through their hearts! They woke at last to know
+what cowardly traitors they had been. If you are a disciple at all, and
+a secret one, you will awake to know what you have been doing, and the
+pang will be a sharp one. If you do not awake in this life, then the
+distance between you and your Lord will become greater and greater; if
+you do, then it will be a sad reflection that there are years of
+treason lying behind you. Nicodemus and Joseph had the veil torn away
+by the contemplation of their dead Master. You may have the veil torn
+away from your eyes by the sight of the throned Lord; and when you pass
+into the heavens may even there have some sharp pang of condemnation
+when you reflect how unfaithful you have been.
+
+Blessed be His name! The assurance is firm that if a man be a disciple
+he shall be saved; but the warning is sure that if he be an unfaithful
+and a secret disciple there will be a life-long unfaithfulness to a
+beloved Master to be purged away 'so as by fire.'
+
+III. And so, lastly, let me point you to the cure.
+
+These men learned to be ashamed of their cowardice, and their dumb lips
+learned to speak, and their shy, hidden love forced for itself a
+channel by which it could flow out into the light; because of Christ's
+death. And in another fashion that same death and Cross are for us,
+too, the cure of all cowardice and selfish silence. The sight of
+Christ's Cross makes the coward brave. It was no small piece of courage
+for Joseph to go to Pilate and avow his sympathy with a condemned
+criminal. The love must have been very true which was forced to speak
+by disaster and death. And to us the strongest motive for stiffening
+our vacillating timidity into an iron fortitude, and fortifying us
+strongly against the fear of what man can do to us, is to be found in
+gazing upon His dying love who met and conquered all evils and terrors
+for our sakes.
+
+That Cross will kindle a love which will not rest concealed, but will
+be 'like the ointment of the right hand which bewrayeth itself.' I can
+fancy men to whom Christ is only what He was to Nicodemus at first, 'a
+Teacher sent from God,' occupying Nicodemus' position of hidden belief
+in His teaching without feeling any need to avow themselves His
+followers; but if once into our souls there has come the constraining
+and the melting influence of that great and wondrous love which died
+for us, then, dear brethren, it is unnatural that we should be silent.
+If those 'for whom Christ has died' should hold their peace, 'the
+stones would immediately cry out.' That death, wondrous, mysterious,
+terrible, but radiant, and glorious with hope, with pardon, with
+holiness for us and for all the world--that death smites on the chords
+of our hearts, if I may so speak, and brings out music from them all.
+The love that died for me will force me to express my love, 'Then shall
+the tongue of the dumb sing,' and silence will be impossible.
+
+The sight of the Cross not only leads to courage, and kindles a love
+which demands expression, but it impels to joyful surrender. Joseph
+gave a place in his own new tomb, where he hoped that one day his bones
+should be laid by the side of the Master against whom he had
+sinned--for he had no thought of a resurrection. Nicodemus brought a
+lavish, almost an extravagant, amount of costly spices, as if by honour
+to the dead he could atone for treason to the living. And both the one
+and the other teach us that if once we gain the true vision of that
+great and wondrous love that died on the Cross for us, then the natural
+language of the loving heart is--
+
+  'Here, Lord! I give _myself_ away;
+  'Tis all that I can do.'
+
+If following Him openly involves sacrifices, the sacrifices will be
+sweet, so long as our hearts look to His dying love. All love delights
+in expression, and most of all in expression by surrender of precious
+things, which are most precious because they give love materials which
+it may lay at the beloved's feet. What are position, possessions,
+reputation, capacities, perils, losses, self, but the 'sweet spices'
+which we are blessed enough to be able to lay upon the altar which
+glorifies the Giver and the gift? The contemplation of Christ's
+sacrifice--and that alone--will so overcome our natural selfishness as
+to make sacrifice for His dear sake most blessed.
+
+I beseech you, then, look ever to Him dying on the Cross for each of
+us. It will kindle our courage, it will make our hearts glow with love,
+it will turn our silence into melody and music of praise; it will lead
+us to heights of consecration and joys of confession; and so it will
+bring us at last into the possession of that wondrous honour which He
+promised when He said, 'He that confesseth Me before men, him will I
+also confess; and he that denieth Me before men, him will I also deny.'
+
+
+
+THE GRAVE IN A GARDEN
+
+'In the garden a new tomb.'--JOHN xix. 41 (R.V.).
+
+This is possibly no more than a topographical note introduced merely
+for the sake of accuracy. But it is quite in John's manner to attach
+importance to these apparent trifles and to give no express statement
+that he is doing so. There are several other instances in the Gospel
+where similar details are given which appear to have had in his eyes a
+symbolical meaning--e.g. 'And it was night.' There may have been such a
+thought in his mind, for all men in high excitement love and seize
+symbols, and I can scarcely doubt that the reason which induced Joseph
+to make his grave in a garden was the reason which induced John to
+mention so particularly its situation, and that they both discerned in
+that garden round the sepulchre, the expression of what was to the one
+a dim desire, to the other 'a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus
+Christ from the dead'--that they who are laid to rest in the grave
+shall come forth again in new and fairer life, as 'the garden causeth
+the things that are sown in it to bud.'
+
+To us at all events on Easter morning, with nature rising on every hand
+from her winter death, and 'life re-orient out of dust,' that new
+sepulchre in the garden may well serve for the starting-point of the
+familiar but ever-precious lessons of the day.
+
+I. A symbol of death and decay as interwoven with all nature and every
+joy.
+
+We think of Eden and the first coming of death.
+
+The grave was fittingly in the garden, because nature too is subject to
+the law of decay and death. The flowers fade and men die. Meditative
+souls have ever gathered lessons of mortality there, and invested death
+with an alien softness by likening it to falling leaves and withered
+blooms. But the contrast is greater than the resemblance, and painless
+dropping of petals is not a parallel to the rending of soul and body.
+
+The garden's careless wealth of beauty and joy continues unconcerned
+whatever befalls us. 'One generation cometh and another goeth, but the
+earth abideth for ever.'
+
+The grave is in the garden because all our joys and works have sooner
+or later death associated with them.
+
+Every relationship.
+
+Every occupation.
+
+Every joy.
+
+The grave in the garden bids us bring the wholesome contemplation of
+death into all life.
+
+It may be a harm and weakening to think of it, but should be a strength.
+
+II. The dim hopes with which men have fought against death.
+
+To lay the dead amid blooming nature and fair flowers has been and is
+natural to men. The symbolism is most natural, deep, and beautiful,
+expressing the possibility of life and even of advance in the life
+after apparent decay. There is something very pathetic in so eager a
+grasping after some stay for hope.
+
+All these natural symbols are insufficient. They are not proofs, they
+are only pretty analogies. But they are all that men have on which to
+build their hopes as to a future life apart from Christ. That future
+was vague, a region for hopes and wishes or fears, not for certainty, a
+region for poetic fancies. The thoughts of it were very faintly
+operative. Men asked, Shall we live again? Conscience seemed to answer,
+Yes! The instinct of immortality in men's souls grasped at these things
+as proofs of what it believed without them, but there was no clear
+light.
+
+III. The clear light of certain hope which Christ's resurrection brings.
+
+The grave in the garden reversed Adam's bringing of death into Eden.
+
+Christ's resurrection as a fact bears on the belief in a future state
+as nothing else can.
+
+It changes hope into certainty. It shows by actual example that death
+has nothing to do with the soul; that life is independent of the body;
+that a man after death is the same as before it. The risen Lord was the
+same in His relations to His disciples, the same in His love, in His
+memory, and in all else.
+
+It changes shadowy hopes of continuous life into a solid certainty of
+resurrection life. The former is vague and powerless. It is impossible
+to conceive of the future with vividness unless as a bodily life. And
+this is the strength of the Christian conception of the future life,
+that corporeity is the end and goal of the redeemed man.
+
+It changes terror and awe into joy, and opens up a future in which He
+is.
+
+We shall be with Him.
+
+We shall be like Him.
+
+Now we can go back to all these incomplete analogies and use them
+confidently. Our faith does not rest upon them but upon what has
+actually been done on this earth.
+
+Christ is 'the First fruits of them that slept.' What will the harvest
+be!
+
+As the single little seed is poor and small by the side of the gorgeous
+flower that comes from it; so will be the change. 'God giveth it a body
+as it hath pleased Him.'
+
+How then to think of death for ourselves and for those who are gone?
+Thankfully and hopefully.
+
+
+
+THE RESURRECTION MORNING
+
+'The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet
+dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the
+sepulchre. Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the
+other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken
+away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have
+laid Him. Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came
+to the sepulchre. So they ran both together: and the other disciple did
+outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he stooping down,
+and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then
+cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and
+seeth the linen clothes lie, And the napkin, that was about His head,
+not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by
+itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the
+sepulchre, and he saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the
+scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples
+went away again unto their own home. But Mary stood without at the
+sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into
+the sepulchre, And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the
+head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And
+they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them,
+Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have
+laid Him. And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw
+Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her,
+Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing Him to be
+the gardener, saith unto Him, Sir, if thou have borne Him hence, tell
+me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away. Jesus saith unto
+her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto Him, Rabboni; which is to
+say, Master. Jesus saith unto her, Touch Me not; for I am not yet
+ascended to My Father: but go to My brethren, and say unto them, I
+ascend unto My Father, and your Father; and to My God, and your God.
+Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord,
+and that He had spoken these things unto her.'--JOHN xx. 1-18.
+
+John's purpose in his narrative of the resurrection is not only to
+establish the fact, but also to depict the gradual growth of faith in
+it, among the disciples. The two main incidents in this passage, the
+visit of Peter and John to the tomb and the appearance of our Lord to
+Mary, give the dawning of faith before sight and the rapturous faith
+born of sight. In the remainder of the chapter are two more instances
+of faith following vision, and the teaching of the whole is summed up
+in Christ's words to the doubter, 'Because thou hast seen Me, thou hast
+believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed!'
+
+I. The open sepulchre and the bewildered alarm it excited. The act of
+resurrection took place before sunrise. 'At midnight,' probably, 'the
+Bridegroom came.' It was fitting that He who was to scatter the
+darkness of the grave should rise while darkness covered the earth, and
+that no eye should behold 'how' that dead was 'raised up.' The
+earthquake and the descent of angels and the rolling away of the stone
+were after the tomb was empty.
+
+John's note of time seems somewhat earlier than that of the other
+Gospels, but is not so much so as to require the supposition that Mary
+preceded the other women. She appears alone here, because the reason
+for mentioning her at all is to explain how Peter and John knew of the
+empty tomb, and she alone had been the informant. In these Eastern
+lands, 'as it began to dawn,' 'very early at the rising of the sun,'
+and 'while it was yet dark,' are times very near each other, and Mary
+may have reached the sepulchre a little before the others. Her own
+words, 'We know not,' show that she had spoken with others who had seen
+the empty grave. We must therefore suppose that she had with the others
+come to it, seen that the sacred corpse was gone and their spices
+useless, exchanged hurried words of alarm and bewilderment, and then
+had hastened away before the appearance of the angels.
+
+The impulse to tell the leaders of the forlorn band the news, which she
+thinks to be so bad, was womanly and natural. It was not hope, but
+wonder and sorrow that quickened her steps as she ran through the still
+morning to find them. Whether they were in one house or not is
+uncertain; but, at all events, Peter's denial had not cut him off from
+his brethren, and the two who were so constantly associated before and
+afterwards were not far apart that morning. The disciple who had stood
+by the Cross to almost the last had an open heart, and probably an open
+house for the denier. 'Restore such an one, ... considering thyself.'
+
+Mary had seen the tomb empty, and springs to the conclusion that
+'they'--some unknown persons--have taken away the dead body, which,
+with clinging love that tries to ignore death, she still calls 'the
+Lord.' Possibly she may have thought that the resting-place in Joseph's
+new sepulchre was only meant for temporary shelter (ver. 15). At all
+events the corpse was gone, and the fact suggested no hope to her. How
+often do we, in like manner, misinterpret as dark what is really
+pregnant with light, and blindly attribute to 'them' what Jesus does! A
+tone of mind thus remote from anticipation of the great fact is a
+precious proof of the historical truth of the resurrection; for here
+was no soil in which hallucinations would spring, and such people would
+not have believed Him risen unless they had seen Him living.
+
+II. Peter and John at the tomb, the dawning of faith, and the
+continuance of bewildered wonder. In the account, we may observe,
+first, the characteristic conduct of each of the two. Peter is first to
+set out, and John follows, both men doing according to their kind. The
+younger runs faster than his companion. He looked into the tomb, and
+saw the wrappings lying; but the reverent awe which holds back finer
+natures kept him from venturing in. Peter is not said to have looked
+before entering. He loved with all his heart, but his love was
+impetuous and practical, and he went straight in, and felt no reason
+why he should pause. His boldness encouraged his friend, as the example
+of strong natures does. Some of my readers will recall Bushnell's noble
+sermon on 'Unconscious Influence' from this incident, and I need say no
+more about it.
+
+Observe, too, the further witness of the folded grave-clothes. John
+from outside had not seen the napkin, lying carefully rolled up apart
+from the other cloths. It was probably laid in a part of the tomb
+invisible from without. But the careful disposal of these came to him,
+when he saw them, with a great flash of illumination. There had been no
+hurried removal.
+
+Here had been no hostile hands, or there would not have been this
+deliberation; nor friendly hands, or there would not have been such
+dishonour to the sacred dead as to carry away the body nude. What did
+it mean? Could He Himself have done for Himself what He had bade them
+do for Lazarus? Could He have laid aside the garments of the grave as
+needing them no more? 'They have taken away'--what if it were not
+'they' but He? No trace of hurry or struggle was there. He did 'not go
+out with haste, nor go by flight,' but calmly, deliberately, in the
+majesty of His lordship over death, He rose from His slumber and left
+order in the land of confusion.
+
+Observe, too, the birth of the Apostle's faith. John connects it with
+the sight of the folded garments. 'Believed' here must mean more than
+recognition of the fact that the grave was empty. The next clause seems
+to imply that it means belief in the resurrection. The scripture, which
+they 'knew' as scripture, was for John suddenly interpreted, and he was
+lifted out of the ignorance of its meaning, which till that moment he
+had shared with his fellow-disciples. Their failure to understand
+Christ's frequent distinct prophecies that He would rise again the
+third day has been thought incredible, but is surely intelligible
+enough if we remember how unexampled such a thing was, and how
+marvellous is our power of hearing and yet not hearing the plainest
+truth. We all in the course of our lives are lost in astonishment when
+things befall us which we have been plainly told will befall. The
+fulfilment of all divine promises (and threatenings) is a surprise, and
+no warnings beforehand teach one tithe so clearly as experience.
+
+John believed, but Peter still was in the dark. Again the former had
+outrun his friend. His more sensitive nature, not to say his deeper
+love--for that would be unjust, since their love differed in quality
+more than in degree--had gifted him with a more subtle and
+swifter-working perception. Perhaps if Peter's heart had not been
+oppressed by his sin, he would have been readier to feel the sunshine
+of the wonderful hope. We condemn ourselves to the shade when we deny
+our Lord by deed or word.
+
+III. The first appearance of the Lord, and revelation of the new form
+of intercourse. Nothing had been said of Mary's return to the tomb; but
+how could she stay away? The disciples might go, but she lingered,
+woman-like, to indulge in the bitter-sweet of tears. Eyes so filled are
+more apt to see angels. No wonder that these calm watchers, in their
+garb of purity and joy, had not been seen by the two men. The laws of
+such appearance are not those of ordinary optics. Spiritual
+susceptibility and need determine who shall see angels, and who shall
+see but the empty place. Wonder and adoration held these bright forms
+there. They had hovered over the cradle and stood by the shepherds at
+Bethlehem, but they bowed in yet more awestruck reverence at the grave,
+and death revealed to them a deeper depth of divine love.
+
+The presence of angels was a trifle to Mary, who had only one
+thought--the absence of her Lord. Surely that touch in her unmoved
+answer, as if speaking to men, is beyond the reach of art. She says 'My
+Lord' now, and 'I know not,' but otherwise repeats her former words,
+unmoved by any hope caught from John. Her clinging love needed more
+than an empty grave and folded clothes arid waiting angels to stay its
+tears, and she turned indifferently and wearily away from the
+interruption of the question to plunge again into her sorrow.
+Chrysostom suggests that she 'turned herself' because she saw in the
+angels' looks that they saw Christ suddenly appearing behind her; but
+the preceding explanation seems better. Her not knowing Jesus might be
+accounted for by her absorbing grief. One who looked at white-robed
+angels, and saw nothing extraordinary, would give but a careless glance
+at the approaching figure, and might well fail to recognise Him. But
+probably, as in the case of the two travellers to Emmaus, her 'eyes
+were holden,' and the cause of non-recognition was not so much a change
+in Jesus as an operation on her.
+
+Be that as it may, it is noteworthy that His voice, which was
+immediately to reveal Him, at first suggested nothing to her; and even
+His gentle question, with the significant addition to the angels'
+words, in 'Whom seekest thou?' which indicated His knowledge that her
+tears fell for some person dear and lost, only made her think of Him as
+being 'the gardener,' and therefore probably concerned in the removal
+of the body. If He were so, He would be friendly; and so she ventured
+her pathetic petition, which does not name Jesus (so full is her mind
+of the One, that she thinks everybody must know whom she means), and
+which so overrated her own strength in saying, 'I will take Him away,'
+The first words of the risen Christ are on His lips yet to all sad
+hearts. He seeks our confidences, and would have us tell Him the
+occasions of our tears. He would have us recognise that all our griefs
+and all our desires point to one Person--Himself--as the one real
+Object of our 'seeking,' whom finding, we need weep no more.
+
+Verse 16 tells us that Mary turned herself to see Him when He next
+spoke, so that, at the close of her first answer to Him, she must have
+once more resumed her gaze into the tomb, as if she despaired of the
+newcomer giving the help she had asked.
+
+Who can say anything about that transcendent recognition, in which all
+the stooping love of the risen Lord is smelted into one word, and the
+burst of rapture, awe, astonishment, and devotion pours itself through
+the narrow channel of one other? If this narrative is the work of some
+anonymous author late in the second century, he is indeed a 'Great
+Unknown,' and has managed to imagine one of the two or three most
+pathetic 'situations' in literature. Surely it is more reasonable to
+suppose him no obscure genius, but a well-known recorder of what he had
+seen, and knew for fact. Christ's calling by name ever reveals His
+loving presence. We may be sure that He knows us by name, and we should
+reply by the same swift cry of absolute submission as sprung to Mary's
+lips. 'Rabboni! Master!' is the fit answer to His call.
+
+But Mary's exclamation was imperfect in that it expressed the
+resumption of no more than the old bond, and her gladness needed
+enlightenment. Things were not to be as they had been. Christ's 'Mary!'
+had indeed assured her of His faithful remembrance and of her present
+place in His love; but when she clung to His feet she was seeking to
+keep what she had to learn to give up. Therefore Jesus, who invited the
+touch which was to establish faith and banish doubt (Luke xxiv. 39;
+John xx. 27), bids her unclasp her hands, and gently instils the ending
+of the blessed past by opening to her the superior joys of the begun
+future. His words contain for us all the very heart of our possible
+relation to Him, and teach us that we need envy none who companied with
+Him here. His ascension to the Father is the condition of our truest
+approach to Him. His prohibition encloses a permission. 'Touch Me not!
+for I am not yet ascended,' implies 'When I am, you may.'
+
+Further, the ascended Christ is still our Brother. Neither the mystery
+of death nor the impending mystery of dominion broke the tie. Again,
+the Resurrection is the beginning of Ascension, and is only then
+rightly understood when it is considered as the first upward step to
+the throne. 'I ascend,' not 'I have risen, and will soon leave you,' as
+if the Ascension only began forty days after on Olivet. It is already
+in process. Once more the ascended Christ, our Brother still, and
+capable of the touch of reverent love, is yet separated from us by the
+character, even while united to us by the fact, of His filial and
+dependent relation to God. He cannot say 'Our Father' as if standing on
+the common human ground. He is 'Son' as we are not, and we are 'sons'
+through Him, and can only call God our Father because He is Christ's.
+
+Such were the immortal hopes and new thoughts which Mary hastened from
+the presence of her recovered Lord to bring to the disciples. Fragrant
+though but partially understood, they were like half-opened blossoms
+from the tree of life planted in the midst of that garden, to bloom
+unfading, and ever disclosing new beauty in believing hearts till the
+end of time.
+
+
+
+THE RISEN LORD'S CHARGE AND GIFT
+
+'Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto yon: as My Father hath
+sent Me, even so send I you. And when He had said this, He breathed on
+them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose soever sins
+ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain,
+they are retained.'--JOHN xx. 21-23.
+
+The day of the Resurrection had been full of strange rumours, and of
+growing excitement. As evening fell, some of the disciples, at any
+rate, gathered together, probably in the upper room. They were brave,
+for in spite of the Jews they dared to assemble; they were timid, for
+they barred themselves in 'for fear of the Jews.' No doubt in little
+groups they were eagerly discussing what had happened that day. Fuel
+was added to the fire by the return of the two from Emmaus. And then,
+at once, the buzz of conversation ceased, for 'He Himself, with His
+human air,' stood there in the midst, with the quiet greeting on His
+lips, which might have come from any casual stranger, and minimised the
+separation that was now ending: 'Peace be unto you!'
+
+We have two accounts of that evening's interview which remarkably
+supplement each other. They deal with two different parts of it. John
+begins where Luke ends. The latter Evangelist dwells mainly on the
+disciples' fears that it was some ghostly appearance that they saw, and
+on the removal of these by the sight, and perhaps the touch, of the
+hands and the feet. John says nothing of the terror, but Luke's account
+explains John's statement that 'He showed them His hands and His side,'
+and that, 'Then were the disciples glad,' the joy expelling the fear.
+Luke's account also, by dwelling on the first part of the interview,
+explains what else is unexplained in John's narrative, viz. the
+repetition of the salutation, 'Peace be unto you!' Our Lord thereby
+marked off the previous portion of the conversation as being separate,
+and a whole in itself. Their doubts were dissipated, and now something
+else was to begin. They who were sure of the risen Lord, and had had
+communion with Him, were capable of receiving a deeper peace, and so
+'Jesus said to them again, Peace be unto you!' and thereby inaugurated
+the second part of the interview.
+
+Luke's account also helps us in another and very important way. John
+simply says that 'the disciples were gathered together,' and that might
+mean the Eleven only. Luke is more specific, and tells us what is of
+prime importance for understanding the whole incident, that 'the
+Eleven... and they that were with them' were assembled. This interview,
+the crown of the appearances on Easter Day, is marked as being an
+interview with the assembled body of disciples, whom the Lord, having
+scattered their doubts, and laid the deep benediction of His peace upon
+their hearts, then goes on to invest with a sacred mission, 'As My
+Father hath sent Me, even so send I you'; to equip them with the needed
+power, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost'; and to unfold to them the solemn
+issues of their work, 'Whose sins ye remit they are remitted; and whose
+sins ye retain they are retained.' The message of that Easter evening
+is for us all; and so I ask you to look at these three points.
+
+I. The Christian Mission.
+
+I have already said that the clear understanding of the persons to whom
+the words were spoken, goes far to interpret the significance of the
+words. Here we have at the very beginning, the great thought that every
+Christian man and woman is sent by Jesus. The possession of what
+preceded this charge is the thing, and the only thing, that fits a man
+to receive it, and whoever possesses these is thereby despatched into
+the world as being Christ's envoy and representative. And what are
+these preceding experiences? The vision of the risen Christ, the touch
+of His hands, the peace that He breathed over believing souls, the
+gladness that sprang like a sunny fountain in the hearts that had been
+so dry and dark. Those things constituted the disciples' qualification
+for being sent, and these things were themselves--even apart from the
+Master's words--their sending out on their future life's-work. Thus,
+whoever--and thank God I am addressing many who come under the
+category!--whoever has seen the Lord, has been in touch with Him, and
+has felt his heart filled with gladness, is the recipient of this great
+commission. There is no question here of the prerogative of a class,
+nor of the functions of an order; it is a question of the universal
+aspect of the Christian life in its relation to the Master who sends,
+and the world into which it is sent.
+
+We Nonconformists pride ourselves upon our freedom from what we call
+'sacerdotalism.' Ay! and we Nonconformists are quite willing to assert
+our priesthood in opposition to the claims of a class, and are as
+willing to forget it, should the question of the duties of the priest
+come into view. You do not believe in priests, but a great many of you
+believe that it is ministers that are 'sent,' and that you have no
+charge. Officialism is the dry-rot of all the Churches, and is found as
+rampant amongst democratic Nonconformists as amongst the more
+hierarchical communities. Brethren! you are included in Christ's words
+of sending on this errand, if you are included in this greeting of
+'Peace be unto you!' 'I send,' not the clerical order, not the priest,
+but 'you,' because you have seen the Lord, and been glad, and heard the
+low whisper of His benediction creeping into your hearts.
+
+Mark, too, how our Lord reveals much of Himself, as well as of our
+position, when He thus speaks. For He assumes here the royal tone, and
+claims to possess as absolute authority over the lives and work of all
+Christian people as the Father exercised when He sent the Son. But we
+must further ask ourselves the question, what is the parallel that our
+Lord here draws, not only between His action in sending us, and the
+Father's action in sending Him, but also between the attitude of the
+Son who was sent, and of the disciples whom He sends? And the answer is
+this--the work of Jesus Christ is continued by, prolonged in, and
+carried on henceforward through, the work that He lays upon His
+servants. Mark the exact expression that our Lord here uses. 'As My
+Father _hath_ sent,' that is a past action, continuing its consequences
+in the present. It is not 'as My Father _did_ send once,' but as 'My
+Father _hath_ sent,' which means 'is also at present sending,' and
+continues to send. Which being translated into less technical
+phraseology is just this, that we here have our Lord presenting to us
+the thought that, though in a new form, His work continues during the
+ages, and is now being wrought through His servants. What He does by
+another, He does by Himself. We Christian men and women do not
+understand our function in the world, unless we have realised this:
+'Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ' and His interests and His
+work are entrusted to our hands.
+
+How shall the servants continue and carry on the work of the Master?
+The chief way to do it is by proclaiming everywhere that finished work
+on which the world's hopes depend. But note,--'_as_ My Father hath sent
+Me, so send I you,'--then we are not only to carry on His work in the
+world, but if one might venture to say so, we are to reproduce His
+attitude towards God and the world. He was sent to be 'the Light of the
+world'; and so are we. He was sent to 'seek and to save that which was
+lost'; so are we. He was sent not to do His own will, but the will of
+the Father that sent Him; so are we. He took upon Himself with all
+cheerfulness the office to which He was appointed, and said, 'My meat
+is to do the will of Him that sent Me,--and to finish His work'; and
+that must be our voice too. He was sent to pity, to look upon the
+multitudes with compassion, to carry to them the healing of His touch,
+and the sympathy of His heart; so must we. We are the representatives
+of Jesus Christ, and if I might dare to use such a phrase, He is to be
+incarnated again in the hearts, and manifested again in the lives, of
+His servants. Many weak eyes, that would be dazzled and hurt if they
+were to gaze on the sun, may look at the clouds cradled by its side,
+and dyed with its lustre, and learn something of the radiance and the
+glory of the illuminating light from the illuminated vapour. And thus,
+'as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.'
+
+Now let us turn to
+
+II. The Christian Equipment.
+
+'He breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost!' The
+symbolical action reminds us of the Creation story, when into the
+nostrils was breathed 'the breath of life, and man became a living
+soul.' The symbol is but a symbol, but what it teaches us is that every
+Christian man who has passed through the experiences which make him
+Christ's envoy, receives the equipment of a new life, and that that
+life is the gift of the risen Lord. This Prometheus came from the dead
+with the spark of life guarded in His pierced hands, and He bestowed it
+upon us; for the Spirit of life, which is the Spirit of Christ, is
+granted to all Christian men. Dear brethren! we have not lived up to
+the realities of our Christian confession, unless into our death has
+come, and there abides, this life derived from Jesus Himself, the
+communication of which goes along with all faith in Him.
+
+But the gift which Jesus brought to that group of timid disciples in
+the upper room did not make superfluous the further gift on the day of
+Pentecost. The communication of the divine Spirit to men runs parallel
+with, depends on, and follows, the revelation of divine truth, so the
+ascended Lord gave more of that life to the disciples, who had been
+made capable of more of it by the fact of beholding His ascension, than
+the risen Lord could give on that Easter Day. But whilst thus there are
+measures and degrees, the life is given to every believer in
+correspondence with the clearness and the contents of his faith.
+
+It is the power that will fit any of us for the work for which we are
+sent into the world. If we are here to represent Jesus Christ, and if
+it is true of us that 'as He is, so are we, in this world,' that
+likeness can only come about by our receiving into our spirits a
+kindred life which will effloresce and manifest itself to men in
+kindred beauty of foliage and of fruit. If we are to be 'the lights of
+the world,' our lamps must be fed with oil. If we are to be Christ's
+representatives, we must have Christ's life in us. Here, too, is the
+only source of strength and life to us Christian people, when we look
+at the difficulties of our task and measure our own feebleness against
+the work that lies before us. I suppose no man has ever tried honestly
+to be what Christ wished him to be amidst his fellows, whether as
+preacher or teacher or guide in any fashion, who has not hundreds of
+times clasped his hands in all but despair, and said, 'Who is
+sufficient for these things?' That is the temper into which the power
+will come. The rivers run in the valleys, and it is the lowly sense of
+our own unfitness for the task which yet presses upon us, and
+imperatively demands to be done, that makes us capable of receiving
+that divine gift.
+
+It is for lack of it that so much of so-called 'Christian effort' comes
+to nothing. The priests may pile the wood upon the altar, and compass
+it all day long with vain cries, and nothing happens. It is not till
+the fire comes down from heaven that sacrifice and altar and wood and
+water in the trench, are licked up and converted into fiery light. So,
+dear brethren! it is because the Christian Church as a whole, and we as
+individual members of it, so imperfectly realise the A B C of our
+faith, our absolute dependence on the inbreathed life of Jesus Christ,
+to fit us for any of our work, that so much of our work is ploughing
+the sands, and so often we labour for vanity and spend our strength for
+nought. What is the use of a mill full of spindles and looms until the
+fire-born impulse comes rushing through the pipes? Then they begin to
+move.
+
+Let me remind you, too, that the words which our Lord here employs
+about these great gifts, when accurately examined, do lead us to the
+thought that we, even we, are not altogether passive in the reception
+of that gift. For the expression, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost' might,
+with more completeness of signification, be rendered, 'take ye the Holy
+Ghost.' True, the outstretched hand is nothing, unless the giving hand
+is stretched out too. True, the open palm and the clutching fingers
+remain empty, unless the open palm above drops the gift. But also true,
+things in the spiritual realm that are given have to be asked for,
+because asking opens the heart for their entrance. True, that gift was
+given once for all, and continuously, but the appropriation and the
+continual possession of it largely depend upon ourselves. There must be
+desire before there can be possession. If a man does not take his
+pitcher to the fountain the pitcher remains empty, though the fountain
+never ceases to spring. There must be taking by patient waiting. The
+old Friends had a lovely phrase when they spoke about 'waiting for the
+springing of the life.' If we hold out a tremulous hand, and our cup is
+not kept steady, the falling water will not enter it, and much will be
+spilt upon the ground. Wait on the Lord, and the life will rise like a
+tide in the heart. There must be a taking by the faithful use of what
+we possess. 'To him that hath shall be given.' There must be a taking
+by careful avoidance of what would hinder. In the winter weather the
+water supply sometimes fails in a house. Why? Because there is a plug
+of ice in the service-pipe. Some of us have a plug of ice, and so the
+water has not come,
+
+'_Take_ the Holy Spirit!'
+
+Now, lastly, we have here
+
+III. The Christian power over sin.
+
+I am not going to enter upon controversy. The words which close our
+Lord's great charge here have been much misunderstood by being
+restricted. It is eminently necessary to remember here that they were
+spoken to the whole community of Christian souls. The harm that has
+been done by their restriction to the so-called priestly function of
+absolution has been, not only the monstrous claims which have been
+thereon founded, but quite as much the obscuration of the large effects
+that follow from the Christian discharge by all believers of the office
+of representing Jesus Christ.
+
+We must interpret these words in harmony with the two preceding points,
+the Christian mission and the Christian equipment. So interpreted, they
+lead us to a very plain thought which I may put thus. This same Apostle
+tells us in his letter that 'Jesus Christ was manifested to take away
+sin.' His work in this world, which we are to continue, was 'to put
+away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.' We continue that work when,--as
+we have all, if Christians, the right to do--we lift up our voices with
+triumphant confidence, and call upon our brethren to 'behold the Lamb
+of God which taketh away the sin of the world!' The proclamation has a
+twofold effect, according as it is received or rejected; to him who
+receives it his sins melt away, and the preacher of forgiveness through
+Christ has the right to say to his brother, 'Thy sins are forgiven
+because thou believest on Him.' The rejecter or the neglecter binds his
+sin upon himself by his rejection or neglect. The same message is, as
+the Apostle puts it, 'a savour of life unto life, or of death unto
+death.' These words are the best commentary on this part of my text.
+The same heat, as the old Fathers used to say, 'softens wax and hardens
+clay.' The message of the word will either couch a blind eye, and let
+in the light, or draw another film of obscuration over the visual orb.
+
+And so, Christian men and women have to feel that to them is entrusted
+a solemn message, that they walk in the world charged with a mighty
+power, that by the preaching of the Word, and by their own utterance of
+the forgiving mercy of the Lord Jesus, they may 'remit' or 'retain' not
+only the punishment of sin, but sin itself. How tender, how diligent,
+how reverent, how--not bowed down, but--erect under the weight of our
+obligations, we should be, if we realised that solemn thought!
+
+
+
+ THOMAS AND JESUS
+
+'And after eight days, again His disciples were within, and Thomas with
+them. Then came Jesus.'--JOHN xx. 26.
+
+There is nothing more remarkable about the narrative of the
+resurrection, taken as a whole, than the completeness with which our
+Lord's appearances met all varieties of temperament, condition, and
+spiritual standing. Mary, the lover; Peter, the penitent; the two
+disciples on the way to Emmaus, the thinkers; Thomas, the stiff
+unbeliever--the presence of the Christ is enough for them all; it cures
+those that need cure, and gladdens those that need gladdening. I am not
+going to do anything so foolish as to try to tell over again, less
+vividly, this well-known story. We all remember its outlines, I
+suppose: the absence of Thomas from Christ's first meeting with the
+assembled disciples on Easter evening; the dogged disbelief with which
+he met their testimony; his arrogant assumption of the right to lay
+down the conditions on which he should believe, and Christ's gracious
+acceptance of the conditions; the discovery when they were offered that
+they were not needful; the burst of glad conviction which lifted him to
+the loftiest height reached while Christ was on earth, and then the
+summing up of all in our Lord's words--'Blessed are they that have not
+seen and yet have believed!'--the last Beatitude, that links us and all
+the generations yet to come with the story, and is like a finger
+pointing to it, as containing very special lessons for them all.
+
+I simply seek to try to bring out the force and instructiveness of the
+story. The first point is--
+
+I. The isolation that misses the sight of the Christ.
+
+'Thomas, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.' No
+reason is assigned. The absence may have been purely accidental, but
+the specification of Thomas as 'one of the Twelve,' seems to suggest
+that his absence was regarded by the Evangelist as a dereliction of
+apostolic duty; and the cause of it may be found, I think, with
+reasonable probability, if we take into account the two other facts
+that the same Evangelist records concerning this Apostle. One is his
+exclamation, in which a constitutional tendency to accept the blackest
+possibilities as certainties, blends very strangely and beautifully
+with an intense and brave devotion to his Master. 'Let us also go,'
+said Thomas, when Christ announced His intention, but a few days before
+the Passion, of returning to the grave of Lazarus, 'that we may die
+with Him.' 'He is going to His death, that I am sure of, and I am going
+to be beside Him even in His death.' A constitutional pessimist! The
+only other notice that we have of him is that he broke in--with
+apparent irreverence which was not real,--with a brusque contradiction
+of Christ's saying that they knew the way, and they knew His goal.
+'Lord! we know not whither Thou goest'--there spoke pained love
+fronting the black prospect of eternal separation,--'and how can we
+know the way?'--there spoke almost impatient despair.
+
+So is not that the kind of man who on the Resurrection day would have
+been saying to himself, even more decidedly and more bitterly than the
+two questioning thinkers on the road to Emmaus had said it, 'We trusted
+that this had been He, but it is all over now'? The keystone was struck
+out of the arch, and this brick tumbled away of itself. The hub was
+taken out of the wheel, and the spokes fell apart. The divisive
+tendency was begun, as I have had occasion to remark in other sermons.
+Thomas did the very worst thing that a melancholy man can do, went away
+to brood in a corner by himself, and so to exaggerate all his
+idiosyncrasies, to distort the proportion of truth, to hug his despair,
+by separating himself from his fellows. Therefore he lost what they
+got, the sight of the Lord. He 'was not with them when Jesus came.'
+Would he not have been better in the upper room than gloomily turning
+over in his mind the dissolution of the fair company and the shipwreck
+of all his hopes?
+
+May we not learn a lesson? I venture to apply these words, dear
+friends, to our gatherings for worship. The worst thing that a man can
+do when disbelief, or doubt, or coldness shrouds his sky, and blots out
+the stars, is to go away alone and shut himself up with his own,
+perhaps morbid, or, at all events, disturbing thoughts. The best thing
+that he can do is to go amongst his fellows. If the sermon does not do
+him any good, the prayers and the praises and the sense of brotherhood
+will help him. If a fire is going out, draw the dying coals close
+together, and they will make each other break into a flame. One great
+reason for some of the less favourable features that modern
+Christianity presents, is that men are beginning to think less than
+they ought to do, and less than they used to do, of the obligation and
+the blessing, whatever their spiritual condition, of gathering together
+for the worship of God. But, further, there is a far wider thought than
+that here, which I have already referred to, and which I do not need to
+dwell upon, namely, that, although, of course, there are very plain
+limits to be put to the principle, yet it is a principle, that solitude
+is not the best medicine for any disturbed or saddened soul. It is true
+that 'solitude is the mother-country of the strong,' and that unless we
+are accustomed to live very much alone, we shall not live very much
+with God. But on the other hand, if you cut yourself off from the
+limiting, and therefore developing, society of your fellows, you will
+rust, you will become what they call eccentric. Your idiosyncrasies
+will swell into monstrosities, your peculiarities will not be subjected
+to the gracious process of pruning which society with your fellows, and
+especially with Christian hearts, will bring to them. And in every way
+you will be more likely to miss the Christ than if you were kindly with
+your kind, and went up to the house of God in company.
+
+Take the next point that is here:
+
+II. The stiff incredulity that prescribed terms.
+
+When Thomas came back to his brethren, they met him with the witness
+that they had seen the Lord, and he met them as they had met the
+witnesses that brought the same message to them. They had thought the
+women's words 'idle tales.' Thomas gives them back their own
+incredulity. I need not remind you of what I have already had occasion
+to say, how much this frank acknowledgment that none of these, who were
+afterwards to be witnesses of the Resurrection to the world, accepted
+testimony to the Resurrection as enough to convince them, enhances the
+worth of their testimony, and how entirely it shatters the conception
+that the belief in the Resurrection was a mist that rose from the
+undrained swamps of their own heated imaginations.
+
+But notice how Thomas exaggerated their position, and took up a far
+more defiant tone than any of them had done. He is called 'doubting
+Thomas.' He was no doubter. Flat, frank, dogged disbelief, and not
+hesitation or doubt, was his attitude. The very form in which he puts
+his requirement shows how he was hugging his unbelief, and how he had
+no idea that what he asked would ever be granted. 'Unless I have
+so-and-so I will not,' indicates an altogether spiritual attitude from
+what 'If I have so-and-so, I will,' would have indicated. The one is
+the language of willingness to be persuaded, the other is a token of a
+determination to be obstinate. What right had he--what right has any
+man--to say, 'So-and-so must be made plain to me, or I will not accept
+a certain truth'? You have a right to ask for satisfactory evidence;
+you have no right to make up your minds beforehand what that must
+necessarily be. Thomas showed his hand not only in the form of his
+expression, not only in his going beyond his province and prescribing
+the terms of surrender, but also in the terms which he prescribed.
+True, he is only saying to the other Apostles, 'I will give in if I
+have what you had,' for Jesus Christ had said to them, 'Handle Me and
+see!' But although thus they could say nothing in opposition, it is
+clear that he was asking more than was needful, and more than he had
+any right to ask. And he shows his hand, too, in another way. 'I will
+not believe!'--what business had he, what business have you, to bring
+any question of will into the act of belief or credence? Thus, in all
+these four points, the form of the demand, the fact of the demand, the
+substance of the demand, and the implication in it that to give or
+withhold assent was a matter to be determined by inclination, this man
+stands not as an example of a doubter, but as an example, of which
+there are too many copies amongst us always, of a determined
+disbeliever and rejecter.
+
+So I come to the third point, and that is:
+
+III. The revelation that turned the denier into a rapturous confessor.
+
+What a strange week that must have been between the two Sundays--that
+of the Resurrection and the next! Surely it would have been kinder if
+the Christ had not left the disciples, with their new-found, tremulous,
+raw conviction. It would have been less kind if He had been with them,
+for there is nothing that is worse for the solidity of a man's
+spiritual development than that it should be precipitated, and new
+thoughts must have time to take the shape of the mind into which they
+come, and to mould the shape of the mind into which they come. So they
+were left to quiet reflection, to meditation, to adjust their thoughts,
+to get to understand the bearings of the transcendent fact. And as a
+mother will go a little way off from her little child, in order to
+encourage it to try to walk, they were left alone to make experiments
+of that self-reliance which was also reliance on Him, and which was to
+be their future and their permanent condition. So the week passed, and
+they became steadier and quieter, and began to be familiar with the
+thought, and to see some glimpses of what was involved in the mighty
+fact, of a risen Saviour. Then He comes back again, and when He comes
+He singles out the unbeliever, leaving the others alone for the moment,
+and He gives him back, granted, his arrogant conditions. How much
+ashamed of them Thomas must have been when he heard them quoted by the
+Lord's own lips! How different they would sound from what they had
+sounded when, in the self-sufficiency of his obstinate determination,
+he had blurted them out in answer to his brethren's testimony! There is
+no surer way of making a good man ashamed of his wild words than just
+to say them over again to him when he is calm and cool. Christ's
+granting the request was Christ's sharpest rebuke of the request. But
+there was not only the gracious and yet chastising granting of the
+foolish desire, but there was a penetrating warning: 'Be not faithless,
+but believing.' What did that mean? Well, it meant this: 'It is not a
+question of evidence, Thomas; it is a question of disposition. Your
+incredulity is not due to your not having enough to warrant your
+belief, but to your tendency and attitude of mind and heart.' There is
+light enough in the sun; it is our eyes that are wrong, and deep below
+most questions, even of intellectual credence, lies the disposition of
+the man. The ultimate truths of religion cannot be matters of
+demonstration any more than the fundamental truths of any science can
+be proved; any more than Euclid's axioms can be demonstrated; any more
+than the sense of beauty or the ear for music depend on the
+understanding. 'Be not faithless, but believing.' The eye that is sound
+will see the light.
+
+And there is another lesson here. The words of our Lord, literally
+rendered, are, 'become not faithless, but believing.' There are two
+tendencies at work with us, and the one or the other will progressively
+lay hold upon us, and we shall increasingly yield to it. You can
+cultivate the habit of incredulity until you descend into the class of
+the faithless; or you can cultivate the opposite habit and disposition
+until you rise to the high level of a settled and sovereign belief.
+
+It is clear that Thomas did not reach forth his hand and touch. The
+rush of instantaneous conviction swept him along and bore him far away
+from the state of mind which had asked for such evidence. Our Lord's
+words must have pierced his heart, as he thought: 'Then He was here all
+the while; He heard my wild words; He loves me still.' As Nathanael,
+when he knew that Jesus had seen him under the fig-tree, broke out with
+the exclamation, 'Rabbi! Thou art the Son of God,' so Thomas, smitten
+as by a lightning flash with the sense of Jesus' all-embracing
+knowledge and all-forgiving love, forgets his incredulity and breaks
+into the rapturous confession, the highest ever spoken while He was on
+earth: 'My Lord and my God!' So swiftly did his whole attitude change.
+It was as when the eddying volumes of smoke in some great conflagration
+break into sudden flame, the ruddier and hotter, the blacker they were.
+Sight may have made Thomas believe that Jesus was risen, but it was
+something other and more inward than sight that opened his lips to cry,
+'My Lord and my God!' Finally, we note--
+
+IV. A last Beatitude that extends to all generations.
+
+'Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.' I need not
+do more than just in a sentence remind you that we shall very poorly
+understand either this saying or this Gospel or the greater part of the
+New Testament, if we do not make it very clear to our minds that
+'believing' is not credence only but trust. The object of the
+Christian's faith is not a proposition; it is not a dogma nor a truth,
+but a Person. And the act of faith is not an acceptance of a given
+fact, a Resurrection or any other, as true, but it is a reaching out of
+the whole nature to Him and a resting upon Him. I have said that Thomas
+had no right to bring his will to bear on the act of belief, considered
+as the intellectual act of accepting a thing as true. But Christian
+faith, being more than intellectual belief, does involve the activity
+of the will. Credence is the starting-point, but it is no more. There
+may be belief in the truth of the gospel and not a spark of faith in
+the Christ revealed by the gospel.
+
+Even in regard to that lower kind of belief, the assent which does not
+rest on sense has its own blessing. We sometimes are ready to think
+that it would have been easier to believe if 'we had seen with our
+eyes, and our hands had handled the (incarnate) Word of Life' but that
+is a mistake.
+
+This generation, and all generations that have not seen Him, are not in
+a less advantageous position in regard either to credence or to trust,
+than were those that companied with Him on earth, and the blessing
+Which He breathed out in that upper room comes floating down the ages
+like a perfume diffused through the atmosphere, and is with us fragrant
+as it was in the 'days of His flesh.' There is nothing in the world's
+history comparable to the warmth and closeness of conscious contact
+with that Christ, dead for nearly nineteen centuries now, which is the
+experience today of thousands of Christian men and women. All other
+names pass, and as they recede through the ages, thickening veils of
+oblivion, mists of forgetfulness, gather round them. They melt away
+into the fog and are forgotten. Why is it that one Person, and one
+Person only, triumphs even in this respect over space and time, and is
+the same close Friend with whom millions of hearts are in loving touch,
+as He was to those that gathered around Him upon earth?
+
+What is the blessing of this faith that does not rest on sense, and
+only in a small measure on testimony or credence? Part of its blessing
+is that it delivers us from the tyranny of sense, sets us free from the
+crowding oppression of 'things seen and temporal'; draws back the veil
+and lets us behold 'the things that are unseen and eternal.' Faith is
+sight, the sight of the inward eye. It is the direct perception of the
+unseen. It sees Him who is invisible. The vision which is given to the
+eye of faith is more real in the true sense of that word, more
+substantial in the true sense of that word, more reliable and more near
+than that sight by which the bodily eye beholds external things. We
+see, when we trust, greater things than when we look. The blessing of
+blessings is that the faith which triumphs over the things seen and
+temporal, brings into every life the presence of the unseen Lord.
+
+Brethren! do not confound credence with trust. Remember that trust does
+involve an element of will. Ask yourselves if the things seen and
+temporal are great enough, lasting enough, real enough to satisfy you,
+and then remember whose lips said, 'Become not faithless but
+believing,' and breathed His last Beatitude upon those 'who have not
+seen and yet have believed.' We may all have that blessing lying like
+dew upon us, amidst the dust and scorching heat of the things seen and
+temporal. We shall have it, if our heart's trust is set on Him, whom
+one of the listeners on that Sunday spoke of long after, in words which
+seem to echo that promise, as 'Jesus in whom though now ye see Him not,
+yet believing ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory,
+receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.'
+
+
+
+THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE
+
+'And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples,
+which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye
+might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that
+believing ye might have life through His name.'--JOHN XX. 30, 31.
+
+It is evident that these words were originally the close of this
+Gospel, the following chapter being an appendix, subsequently added by
+the writer himself. In them we have the Evangelist's own acknowledgment
+of the incompleteness of his Gospel, and his own statement of the
+purpose which he had in view in composing it. That purpose was first of
+all a doctrinal one, and he tells us that in carrying it out he omitted
+many things that he could have put in if he had chosen. But that
+doctrinal purpose was subordinate to a still further aim. His object
+was not only to present the truth that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of
+God, but to present it in such a way as to induce his readers to
+believe in that Christ. And he desired that they might have faith in
+order that they might have life.
+
+Now, it is a very good old canon in judging of a book that 'in every
+work' we are to 'regard the writer's end,' and if that simple principle
+had been applied to this Gospel, a great many of the features in it
+which have led to some difficulty would have been seen to be naturally
+explained by the purpose which the Evangelist had in view.
+
+But this text may be applied very much more widely than to John's
+Gospel. We may use it to point our thoughts to the strange silences and
+incompletenesses of the whole of Revelation, and to the explanation of
+these incompletenesses by the consideration of the purpose which it all
+had in view. In that sense I desire to look at these words before us.
+
+I. First, then, we have here set forth the incompleteness of Scripture.
+
+Take this Gospel first. Anybody who looks at it can see that it is a
+fragment. It is not meant to be a biography; it is avowedly a
+selection, and a selection under the influence, as I shall have to show
+you presently, of a distinct dogmatic purpose. There is nothing in it
+about Christ's birth, nothing in it about His baptism, nor about His
+selection of His Apostles. There is scarcely anything about the facts
+of His outward life at all. There is scarcely a word about the whole of
+His ministry in Galilee. There is not one of His parables, there are
+only seven of His miracles before the Resurrection, and two of these
+occur also in the other Evangelists. There is scarcely any of His
+ethical teaching; there is not a word about the Lord's Supper.
+
+And so I might go on enumerating many remarkable gaps in this Gospel.
+Nearly half of it is taken up with the incidents of one week at the end
+of His life, and the incidents of and after the Resurrection. Of the
+remainder-by far the larger portion consists of several conversations
+which are hung upon miracles that seem to be related principally for
+the sake of these. The whole of the phenomena show us at once the
+fragmentary character of this Gospel as stamped upon the very surface.
+
+And when we turn to the other three, the same thing is true, though
+less strikingly so. Why was it that in the Church, after the completion
+of the Scriptural canon, there sprang up a whole host of Apocryphal
+Gospels, full of childish stories of events which people felt had been
+passed over with strange silence, in the teachings of the four
+Evangelists: stories of His childhood, for instance, and stories about
+what happened between His death and His resurrection? A great many
+miracles were added to those that have been told us in Scripture. The
+condensed hints of the canonical Gospels received a great expansion,
+which indicated how much their silence about certain points had been
+felt. What a tiny pamphlet they make! Is it not strange that the
+greatest event in the world's history should be told in such brief
+outline, and that here, too, the mustard seed, 'less than the least of
+all seeds,' should have become such a great tree? Put the four Gospels
+down by the side of the two thick octavo volumes, which it is the
+regulation thing to write nowadays, as the biography of any man that
+has a name at all, and you will feel their incompleteness as
+biographies. They are but a pen-and-ink drawing of the Sun! And yet,
+although they be so tiny that you might sit down and read them all in
+an evening over the fire, is it not strange that they have stamped on
+the mind of the world an image so deep and so sharp, of such a
+character as the world never saw elsewhere? They are fragments, but
+they have left a symmetrical and an unique impression on the
+consciousness of the whole world.
+
+And then, if you turn to the whole Book, the same thing is true, though
+in a modified sense there. I have no time to dwell upon that fruitful
+field, but the silence of Scripture is quite as eloquent as its speech.
+Think, for instance, of how many things in the Bible are taken for
+granted which one would not expect to be taken for granted in a book of
+religious instruction. It takes for granted the being of a God. It
+takes for granted our relations to Him. It takes for granted our moral
+nature. In its later portions, at all events, it takes for granted the
+future life. Look at how the Bible, as a whole, passes by, without one
+word of explanation or alleviation, a great many of the difficulties
+which gather round some of its teaching. For instance, we find no
+attempt to explain the divine nature of our Lord; or the existence of
+the three Persons in the Godhead. It has not a word to say in
+explanation of the mystery of prayer; or of the difficulty of
+reconciling the Omnipotent will of God on the one hand, with our own
+free will on the other. It has not a word to explain, though many a
+word to proclaim and enforce, the fact of Christ's death as the
+atonement for the sins of the whole world. Observe, too, how scanty the
+information on points on which the heart craves for more light. How
+closely, for instance, the veil is kept over the future life! How many
+questions which are not prompted by mere curiosity, our sorrow and our
+love ask in vain!
+
+Nor is the incompleteness of Scripture as a historical book less
+marked. Nations and men appear on its pages abruptly, rending the
+curtain of oblivion, and striding to the front of the stage for a
+moment, and then they disappear, swallowed up of night. It has no care
+to tell the stories of any of its heroes, except for so long as they
+were the organs of that divine breath, which, breathed through the
+weakest reed, makes music. The self-revelation of God, not the acts and
+fortunes of even His noblest servants, is the theme of the Book. It is
+full of gaps about matters that any sciolist or philosopher or
+theologian would have filled up for it. There it stands, a Book unique
+in the world's history, unique in what it says, and no less unique in
+what it does not say.
+
+'Many other things truly did' that divine Spirit in His march through
+the ages, 'which are not written in this book; but these are written
+that ye might believe.'
+
+II. And so that brings me next to say a word or two about the more
+immediate purpose which explains all these gaps and incompletenesses.
+
+John's Gospel, and the other three Gospels, and the whole Bible, New
+Testament and Old, have this for their purpose, to produce in men's
+hearts the faith in Jesus as 'the Christ' and as 'the Son of God.'
+
+I need not speak at length about this one Gospel with any special
+regard to that thought. I have already said that the Evangelist avows
+that his work is a selection, that he declares that the purpose that
+determined his selection was doctrinal, and that he picked out facts
+which would tend to represent Jesus Christ to us in the twofold
+capacity,--as the Christ, the Fulfiller of all the expectations and
+promises of the Old Covenant, and as the Son of God. The one of these
+titles is a name of office, the other a name of nature; the one
+declares that He had come to be, and to do, all to which types and
+prophecies and promises had dimly pointed, and the other declares that
+He was 'the Eternal Word,' which 'in the beginning was with God and was
+God,' and was manifest here upon earth to us.
+
+This was his purpose, and this representation of Jesus Christ is that
+which shapes all the facts and all the phenomena of this Gospel, from
+the very first words of it to its close.
+
+And so, although it is wide from my present subject, I may just make
+one parenthetical remark, to the effect that it is ridiculous in the
+face of this statement for 'critics' to say, as some of them do: 'The
+author of the fourth Gospel has not told us this, that, and the other
+incident in Christ's life, therefore, he did not know it.' Then some of
+them will draw the conclusion that John's Gospel is not to be trusted
+in the given case, because he does not give us a certain incident, and
+others might draw the conclusion that the other three Evangelists are
+not to be trusted because they do give it us. And the whole fabric is
+built up upon a blunder, and would have been avoided if people had
+listened when John said to them: 'I knew a great many things about
+Jesus Christ, but I did not put them down here because I was not
+writing a biography, but preaching a gospel; and what I wanted to
+proclaim was that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.'
+
+But now we may extend that a great deal further. It is just as true
+about the whole New Testament. The four Gospels are written to tell us
+these two facts about Christ. They are none of them merely biographies;
+as such they are singularly deficient, as we have seen. But they are
+biographies _plus_ a doctrine; and the biography is told mainly for the
+sake of carrying this twofold truth into men's understandings and
+hearts, that Jesus is, first of all, the Christ, and second, the Son of
+God.
+
+And then comes the rest of the New Testament, which is nothing more
+than the working out of the theoretical and practical consequence of
+these great truths. All the Epistles, the Book of Revelation, and the
+history of the Church, as embodied in the Acts of the Apostles,--all
+these are but the consequences of that fundamental truth; and the whole
+of Scripture in its later portions is but the drawing of the inferences
+and the presenting of the duties that flow from the facts that 'Jesus
+is the Christ, the Son of God.'
+
+And what about the Old Testament? Why, this about it: that whatever may
+be the conclusion as to the date and authorship of any of the books in
+it,--and I am not careful to contend about these at present;--and
+whatever a man may believe about the verbal prophecies which most of us
+recognise there,--there is stamped unmistakably upon the whole system,
+of which the Old Testament is the record, an onward-looking attitude.
+It is all anticipatory of 'good things to come,' and of a Person who
+will bring them. Sacrifice, sacred offices, such as priesthood and
+kingship, and the whole history of Israel, have their faces turned to
+the future. 'They that went before, and they that followed after, cried
+"Hosanna! Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord!"' This
+Christ towers up above the history of the world and the process of
+revelation, like Mount Everest among the Himalayas. To that great peak
+all the country on the one side runs upwards, and from it all the
+valleys on the other descend; and the springs are born there which
+carry verdure and life over the world.
+
+Christ, the Son of God, is the centre of Scripture; and the
+Book--whatever be the historical facts about its origin, its
+authorship, and the date of the several portions of which it is
+composed--the Book is a unity, because there is driven right through
+it, like a core of gold, either in the way of prophecy and
+onward-looking anticipation, or in the way of history and grateful
+retrospect, the reference to the one 'Name that is above every name,'
+the name of the Christ, the Son of God.
+
+And all its incompleteness, its fragmentariness, its carelessness about
+persons, are intended, as are the slight parts in a skilful artist's
+handiwork, to emphasise the beauty and the sovereignty of that one
+central Figure on which all lights are concentrated, and on which the
+painter has lavished all the resources of his art. So God--for _God_ is
+the Author of the Bible--on this great canvas has painted much in
+sketchy outline, and left much unfilled in, that every eye may be fixed
+on the central Figure, the Christ of God, on whose head comes down the
+Dove, and round whom echoes the divine declaration: 'This is My Beloved
+Son, in whom I am well pleased.'
+
+But it is not merely in order to represent Jesus as the Christ of God
+that these things are written, but it is that that representation may
+become the object of our faith. If the intention of Scripture had been
+simply to establish the fact that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of
+God, it might have been done in a very different fashion. A theological
+treatise would have been enough to do that. But if the object be that
+men should not only accept with their understandings the truth
+concerning Christ's office and nature, but that their hearts should go
+out to Him, and that they should rest their sinful souls upon Him _as_
+the Son of God and the Christ, then there is no other way to accomplish
+that, but by the history of His life and the manifestation of His
+heart. If the object were simply to make us know about Christ, we do
+not need a Book like this; but if the object is to lead us to put our
+faith in Him, then we must have what we have here, the infinitely
+touching and tender Figure of Jesus Christ Himself, set before us in
+all its sweetness and beauty as He lived and moved and died for us.
+
+And so, dear friends, let me put one last word here about this part of
+my subject. If this be the purpose of Scripture, then let us learn on
+the one hand the wretched insufficiency of a mere orthodox creed, and
+let us learn on the other hand the equal insufficiency of a mere
+creedless emotion.
+
+If the purpose of Scripture, in these Gospels, and all its parts, is
+that we should believe 'that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,' that
+purpose is not accomplished when we simply yield our understanding to
+that truth and accept it as a great many people do. That was much more
+the fault of the last generation than of this, though many of us may
+still make the mistake of supposing that we are Christians because we
+idly assent to--or, at least, do not deny, and so fancy that we
+accept--Christian truth. But, as Luther says in one of his rough
+figures, 'Human nature is like a drunken peasant; if you put him up on
+the horse on the one side, he is sure to tumble down on the other.' And
+so the reaction from the heartless, unpractical orthodoxy of half a
+century ago has come with a vengeance to-day, when everybody is saying,
+'Oh! give me a Christianity without dogma!' Well, I say that too, about
+a great many of the metaphysical subtleties which have been called
+Doctrinal Christianity. But this doctrine of the nature and office of
+Jesus Christ cannot be given up, and the Christianity which Christ and
+His Apostles taught be retained. Do you believe that Jesus is the
+Christ, the Son of God? Do you trust your soul to Him in these
+characters? If you do, I think we can shake hands. If you do not,
+Scripture has failed to do its work on you, and you have not reached
+the point which all God's lavish revelation has been expended on the
+world that you and all men might attain.
+
+III. Now, lastly, notice the ultimate purpose of the whole.
+
+Scripture is not given to us merely to make us know something about God
+in Christ, nor only in order that we may have faith in the Christ thus
+revealed to us, but for a further end--great, glorious, but, blessed be
+His Name! not distant--namely, that we may 'have life in His name.'
+'Life' is deep, mystical, inexplicable by any other words than itself.
+It includes pardon, holiness, well-being, immortality, Heaven; but it
+is more than they all.
+
+This life comes into our dead hearts and quickens them by union with
+God. That which is joined to God lives. Each being according to its
+nature, is, on condition of the divine power acting upon it. This bit
+of wood upon which I put my hand, and the hand which I put upon it,
+would equally crumble into nothingness if they were separated from God.
+
+You can separate your wills and your spiritual nature from Him, and
+thus separated you are 'dead in trespasses and in sins.' And, O
+brother! the message comes to you: there is life in that great Christ,
+'in His name'; that is to say, in that revealed character of His by
+which He is made known to us as the Christ and the Son of God.
+
+Union with Him in His Sonship will bring life into dead hearts. He is
+the true 'Prometheus' who has come from Heaven with 'fire,' the fire of
+the divine Life in the 'reed' of His humanity, and He imparts it to us
+all if we will. He lays Himself upon us, as the prophet laid himself on
+the little child in the upper chamber; and lip to lip, and beating
+heart to dead heart, He touches our death, and it is quickened into
+life.
+
+The condition on which that great Name will bring to us life is simply
+our faith. Do you believe in Him, and trust yourself to Him, as He who
+came to fulfil all that prophet, priest, and king, sacrifice, altar,
+and Temple of old times prophesied and looked for? Do you trust in Him
+as the Son of God who comes down to earth that we in Him might find the
+immortal life which He is ready to give? If you do, then, dear
+brethren! the end that God has in view in all His revelation, that
+Christ had in view in His bitter Passion, has been accomplished for
+you. If you do not it has not. You may admire Him, you may think
+loftily of Him, you may be ready to call Him by many great and
+appreciative names, but Oh! unless you have learned to see in Him the
+divine Saviour of your souls, you have not seen what God means you to
+see.
+
+But if you have, then all other questions about this Book, important as
+they are in their places, may settle themselves as they will; you have
+got the kernel, the thing that it was meant to bring you. Many an
+erudite scholar, who has studied the Bible all his life, has missed the
+purpose for which it was given; and many a poor old woman in her garret
+has found it. It is not meant to wrangle over, it is not meant to be
+read as an interesting product of the religious consciousness, it is
+not to be admired as all that remains of the literature of a nation
+that had a genius for religion; but it is to be taken as being God's
+great Word to the world, the record of the revelation that He has given
+us in His Son. The Eternal Word is the theme of all the written word.
+Have you made the jewel which is brought us in that casket your own? Is
+Jesus to you the Son of the living God, believing on whom you share His
+life, and become 'sons of God' by Him? Can you take on to your thankful
+lips that triumphant and rapturous confession of the doubting
+Thomas,--the flag flying on the completed roof-tree of this Gospel--'My
+Lord and my God'? If you can, you will receive the blessing which
+Christ then promised to all of us standing beyond the limits of that
+little group, 'who have not seen and yet have believed'--even that
+eternal life which flows into our dead spirits from the Christ, the Son
+of God, who is the Light of the world, and the Life of men.
+
+
+
+AN ELOQUENT CATALOGUE
+
+'There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and
+Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of
+His disciples.'--JOHN xxi. 2.
+
+This chapter, containing the infinitely significant and pathetic
+account of our Lord's appearance to these disciples by the Sea of
+Tiberias, is evidently an appendix to the Gospel of John. The design of
+that Gospel is complete with the previous chapter, and there is a
+formal close, as of the whole book, at the end thereof. But whilst
+obviously an appendix, this chapter is as obviously the work of the
+same hand as wrote the Gospel. There are many minute points of identity
+between the style of it and of the rest of the work, so that there can
+be no difficulty or doubt as to whence it came. This enumeration of
+these seven disciples, regarded as being the work of John himself,
+seems to me to be significant, and to contain a good many lessons. And
+I desire to turn to these now.
+
+I. First of all, the fact that they were together is significant.
+
+How did they come to hold together? How had they not yielded to the
+temptation to seek safety by flight, which would have been the natural
+course after the death of their Leader on a charge of treason against
+the Roman power? The process of disintegration had begun, and we see it
+going on in the conduct of the disciples before the Resurrection. The
+'Shepherd was smitten,' and, as a matter of course, 'the sheep' began
+to 'scatter.' And yet here we find them back in Galilee, in their old
+haunts, and not trying to escape by separation, which would have been
+the first step suggested to ordinary men in an ordinary state of
+things. But where everybody knew them, and they knew everybody, and
+everybody knew them to be disciples of Jesus Christ, thither they go,
+and hold together as if they had still a living centre and a uniting
+bond. How did that come about? The fact that after Christ's death there
+was a group of men united together simply and solely as disciples, and
+exhibiting their unity as disciples conspicuously, in the face of the
+men that knew them best, this forms a strange phenomenon that needs an
+explanation. And there is only one explanation of it, that Jesus Christ
+had risen from the dead. That drew them together once more. You cannot
+build a Church on a dead Christ; and of all the proofs of the
+Resurrection, I take it that there is none that it is harder for an
+unbeliever to account for, in harmony with his hypothesis, than the
+simple fact that Christ's disciples held together after He was dead,
+and presented a united front to the world.
+
+So, then, the fact of the group is itself significant, and we may claim
+it as being a morsel of evidence for the historical veracity of the
+resurrection of Jesus Christ.
+
+II. Then the composition of this group is significant.
+
+Taken in comparison with the original nucleus of the Church, the
+calling of which we find recorded in the first chapter of this Gospel,
+it is to be noticed that of the five men who made the Primitive Church,
+there are three who reappear here by name--viz. Simon Peter, John and
+Nathanael, and Nathanael never appears anywhere else except in these
+two places. Then, note that there are two unnamed men here, 'two other
+of His disciples'; who, I think, in all probability are the two of the
+original five that we do not find named here--viz. 'Philip and Andrew,
+Simon Peter's brother'--both of them connected with Bethsaida, the
+place where probably this appearance of the risen Lord took place.
+
+So, then, I think, the fair inference from the list before us is that
+we have here the original nucleus again, the first five, with a couple
+more, and the couple more are 'Thomas, who is called Didymus'--and we
+shall see the reason for _his_ presence in a moment--and the brother of
+John, one of the first pair.
+
+Thus, then, to the original little group that had gathered round Him at
+the first, and to whom He had been so often manifested in this very
+scene where they were standing now, He is revealed again. There, along
+the beach, is the place where James and John and Simon and Andrew were
+called from their nets three short years ago. Across yonder, on the
+other side of the lake, is the bit of green grass where the thousands
+were fed. Behind it is the steep slope down which the devil-possessed
+herd rushed. There, over the shoulder of the hill, is the road that
+leads up to Cana of Galilee, which they had trod together on that
+never-to-be-forgotten first morning, and from which little village one
+of the group came. They who had companied with Him all the time of His
+too short fellowship, and had seen all His manifestations, were
+fittingly chosen to be the recipients of this last appearance, which
+was to be full of instruction as to the work of the Church, its
+difficulties, its discouragements, its rewards, its final success, and
+His benediction of it until the very end of time. It was not for
+nothing that they who were gathered together were that first nucleus of
+the Church, who received again from their Master the charge to be
+'fishers of men.'
+
+And then, if we look at the list, having regard to the history of those
+that make it up, it seems to me that that also brings us some valuable
+considerations. Foremost stand, as receiving this great manifestation
+of Jesus Christ, the two greatest sinners of the whole band, 'Simon
+Peter, and Thomas, which is called Didymus,' the denier and the
+doubter. Singularly contrasted these two men were in much of their
+disposition; and yet alike in the fact that the Crucifixion had been
+too much for their faith. The one of them was impetuous, the other of
+them slow. The one was always ready to say more than he meant; the
+other always ready to do more than he said. The one was naturally
+despondent, disposed to look ahead and to see the gloomiest side of
+everything--'Let us also go that we may die with Him'--the other never
+looking an inch beyond his nose, and always yielding himself up to the
+impulse of the moment. And yet both of them were united in this, that
+the one, from a sudden wave of cowardice which swept him away from his
+deepest convictions and made him for an hour untrue to his warmest
+love, and the other, from giving way to his constitutional tendency to
+despondency, and to taking the blackest possible view of
+everything--they had both of them failed in their faith, the one
+turning out a denier and the other turning out a doubter. And yet here
+they are, foremost upon the list of those who saw the Risen Christ.
+
+Well, there are two lessons there, and the one is this--let us
+Christian people learn with what open hearts and hands we should
+welcome a penitent when he comes back. The other is,--let us learn who
+they are to whom Jesus Christ deigns to manifest Himself--not
+immaculate monsters, but men that, having fallen, have learned humility
+and caution, and by penitence have risen to a securer standing, and
+have turned even their transgressions into steps in the ladder that
+lifts them to Christ. It was something that the first to whom the risen
+Saviour appeared when He came victorious and calm from the grave, was
+the woman 'out of whom He had cast seven devils,' and the blessed truth
+which that teaches is the same as that which is to be drawn from this
+list of those whom He regarded, and whom we regard, as then
+constituting the true nucleus of His Church--a list which is headed by
+the blackest denier and the most obstinate and captious sceptic in the
+whole company. 'There were together Simon Peter and Thomas, which is
+called Didymus,' and the little group was glad to have them, and
+welcomed them, as it becomes us to welcome brethren who have fallen,
+and who come again saying, 'I repent.'
+
+Well, then, take the next: he was 'Nathanael, of Cana in Galilee'; a
+guileless 'Israelite indeed,' so swift to believe, so ready with his
+confession, so childlike in his wonder, so ardent in his love and
+faith. The only thing that Christ is recorded as having said to him is
+this: 'Because I said... believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things
+than these.' A promise of growing clearness of vision and growing
+fullness of manifestation was made to this man, who never appears
+anywhere else in Scripture but in these two scenes, and so may stand to
+us as the type of the opposite kind of Christian experience from that
+stormy one of the doubter and the denier--viz. that of persistent,
+quiet, continuous growth, which is marked by faithful use of the
+present amount of illumination, and is rewarded by a continual increase
+of the same. If the keynote to the two former lives is, that sin
+confessed helps a man to climb, the keynote to this man's is the other
+truth, that they are still more blessed who, with no interruptions,
+backslidings, inconsistencies, or denials, by patient continuousness in
+well-doing, widen the horizon of their Christian vision and purge their
+eyesight for daily larger knowledge. To these, as to the others, there
+is granted the vision of the risen Lord, and to them also is entrusted
+the care of His sheep and His lambs. We do not _need_ to go away into
+the depths and the darkness in order to realise the warmth and the
+blessedness of the light. There is no _necessity_ that any Christian
+man's career should be broken by denials like Peter's or by doubts like
+Thomas's, but we may 'grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord
+and Saviour.' 'So is the kingdom of heaven, first the blade, then the
+ear, after that the full corn in the ear.'
+
+Then, still further, there were here 'the two sons of Zebedee.' These
+were the men of whom the Master said that they were 'sons of thunder,'
+who, by natural disposition, in so far as they resembled one another
+(which they seem to have done), were eager, energetic, somewhat
+bigoted, ready with passionate rebukes, and not unwilling to invoke
+destructive vengeance, all for the love of Him. They were also touched
+with some human ambition which led them to desire a place at His right
+hand and His left, but the ambition, too, was touched with love towards
+Him, which half redeemed it. But by dwelling with Him one of them, at
+least, had become of all the group the likest his Master. And the old
+monastic painters taught a very deep truth when, in their pictures of
+the apostles, they made John's almost a copy of the Master's face. To
+him, too, there was granted in like manner a place amongst this blessed
+company, and it is surely a trace of _his_ hand that his place should
+seem so humble. Any other but himself would certainly have put James
+and John in their natural place beside Peter. It must have been himself
+who slipped himself and his brother into so inconspicuous a position in
+the list, and further veiled his personality under the patronymic, 'the
+sons of Zebedee.'
+
+Last of all come 'two other of His disciples,' not worth naming.
+Probably, as I have said, they were the missing two out of the five of
+the first chapter; but possibly they were only 'disciples' in the wider
+sense, and not of the Apostolic group at all. Nobody can tell. What
+does it matter? The lesson to be gathered from their presence in this
+group is one that most of us may very well take to heart. There is a
+place for commonplace, undistinguished people, whose names are not
+worth repeating in any record; there is a place for us one-talented
+folk, in Christ's Church, and we, too, have a share in the
+manifestation of His love. We do not need to be brilliant, we do not
+need to be clever, we do not need to be influential, we do not need to
+be energetic, we do not need to be anything but quiet, waiting souls,
+in order to have Christ showing Himself to us, as we toil wearily
+through the darkness of the night. Undistinguished disciples have a
+place in His heart, a sphere and a function in His Church, and a share
+in His revelation of Himself.
+
+III. The last point that I touch is this, that the purpose of this
+group is significant.
+
+What did they thus get together for? 'Simon Peter saith, I go a
+fishing. They say, We also go with thee.' So they went back again to
+their old trade, and they had not left the nets and the boats and the
+hired servants for ever, as they once thought they had.
+
+What sent them back? Not doubt or despair; because they had seen Jesus
+Christ up in Jerusalem, and had come down to Galilee at His command on
+purpose to meet Him. 'There shall ye see Him, lo! I have told you,' was
+ringing in their ears, and they went back in full confidence of His
+appearance there. It is very like Peter that he should have been the
+one to suggest filling an hour of the waiting time with manual labour.
+The time would be hanging heavily on his hands. John could have 'sat
+still in the house,' like Mary, the heart all the busier, because the
+hands lay quietly in the lap. But that was not Peter's way, and John
+was ready to keep him company. Peter thought that the best thing they
+could do, till Jesus chose to come, was to get back to their work, and
+he was sensible and right. The best preparation for Christ's
+appearance, and the best attitude to be found in by Him, is doing our
+daily work, however secular and small it may be. A dirty, wet fishing
+boat, all slimy with scales, was a strange place in which to wait for
+the manifestation of a risen Saviour. But it was the right place,
+righter than if they had been wandering about amongst the fancied
+sanctities of the synagogues.
+
+They went out to do their work; and to them was fulfilled the old
+saying, 'I, being in the way, the Lord met me.' Jesus Christ will come
+to you and me in the street if we carry the waiting heart there, and in
+the shop, and the factory, and the counting-house, and the kitchen, and
+the nursery, and the study, or wherever we may be. For all things are
+sacred when done with a hallowed heart, and He chooses to make Himself
+known to us amidst the dusty commonplaces of daily life.
+
+He had said to them before the Crucifixion: 'When I sent you forth
+without purse or scrip, lacked ye anything? And they said, Nothing.'
+And then He said, as changing the conditions: 'But now he that hath a
+purse or scrip, let him take it.' As long as He was with them they were
+absolved from these common tasks. Now that He had left them the
+obligation recurred. And the order of things for His servants in all
+time coming was therein declared to be: no shirking of daily tasks on
+the plea of wanting divine communications; keep at your work, and if it
+last all night, stick to it; and if there are no fish in the net, never
+mind; out with it again. And be sure that sooner or later you will see
+Him standing on the beach, and hear His voice, and be blessed by His
+smile.
+
+
+
+THE BEACH AND THE SEA
+
+'When the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore; but the
+disciples knew not that it was Jesus.'--JOHN xxi. 4.
+
+The incident recorded in this appendix to John's Gospel is separated
+from the other appearances of our risen Lord in respect of place, time,
+and purpose. They all occurred in and about Jerusalem; this took place
+in Galilee. The bulk of them happened on the day of the Resurrection,
+one of them a week after. This, of course, to allow time for the
+journey, must have been at a considerably later date. Their object was,
+mainly, to establish the reality of the Resurrection, the identity of
+Christ's physical body, and to confirm the faith of the disciples
+therein. Here, these purposes retreat into the background; the object
+of this incident is to reveal the permanent relations between the risen
+Lord and His struggling Church.
+
+The narrative is rich in details which might profitably occupy us, but
+the whole may be gathered up in two general points of view in
+considering the revelation which we have here in the participation of
+Christ in His servants' work, and also the revelation which we have in
+the preparation by Christ of a meal for His toiling servants. We take
+this whole narrative thus regarded as our subject on this Easter
+morning.
+
+I. First we have here a revelation of the permanent relation of Jesus
+Christ to His Church and to the individuals who compose it, in this,
+that the risen Lord on the shore shares in the toil of His servants on
+the restless sea.
+
+The little group of whom we read in this narrative reminds us of the
+other group of the first disciples in the first chapter of this Gospel.
+Four out of the five persons named in our text appear there: Simon
+Peter, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, James and
+John. And a very natural inference is that the 'two others' unnamed
+here are the two others of that chapter, viz. Andrew and Philip. If so,
+we have at the end, the original little group gathered together again;
+with the addition of the doubting Thomas.
+
+Be that as it may, there they are on the shore of the sea, and Peter
+characteristically takes the lead and suggests a course that they all
+accept: 'I go a fishing.' 'We also go with thee.'
+
+Now we must not read that as if it meant: 'It is all over! Our hopes
+are vain! We dreamed that we were going to be princes in the Messiah's
+Kingdom, we have woke up to find that we are only fishermen. Let us go
+back to our nets and our boats!' No! all these men had seen the risen
+Lord, and had received from His breath the gift of the Holy Spirit.
+They had all gone from Jerusalem to Galilee, in obedience to His
+command, and were now waiting for His promised appearance. Very noble
+and beautiful is the calm patience with which they fill the time of
+expectation with doing common and long-abandoned tasks. They go back to
+the nets and the boats long since forsaken at the Master's bidding.
+That is not like fanatics. That is not like people who would be liable
+to the excesses of excitement that would lead to the 'hallucination,'
+which is the modern explanation of the resurrection faith, on the part
+of the disciples.
+
+And it is a precious lesson for us, dear brethren! that whatever may be
+our memories, and whatever may be our hopes, the very wisest thing we
+can do is to stick to the common drudgery, and even to go back to
+abandoned tasks. It stills the pulses. 'Study to be quiet; and to do
+our own business' is the best remedy for all excitement, whether it be
+of sorrow or of hope. And not seldom to us, if we will learn and
+practise that lesson, as to these poor men in the tossing fisherman's
+boat, the accustomed and daily duties will be the channel through which
+the presence of the Master will be manifested to us.
+
+So they go, and there follow the incidents which I need not repeat,
+because we all know them well enough. Only I wish to mark the distinct
+allusion throughout the whole narrative to the earlier story of the
+first miraculous draught of fishes which was connected with their call
+to the Apostleship, and was there by Christ declared to have a
+symbolical meaning. The correspondences and the contrasts are obvious.
+The scene is the same; the same green mountains look down upon the same
+blue waters. It was the same people that were concerned. They were,
+probably enough, in the same fishing-boat. In both there had been a
+night of fruitless toil; in both there was the command to let down the
+net once more; in both obedience was followed by instantaneous and
+large success.
+
+So much for the likenesses; the contrasts are these. In the one case
+the Master is in the boat with them, in the other He is on the shore;
+in the one the net is breaking; in the other, 'though there were so
+many, yet did it not break.' In the one Peter, smitten by a sense of
+his own sinfulness, says, 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O
+Lord!' In the other, Peter, with a deeper knowledge of his own
+sinfulness, but also with the sweet knowledge of forgiveness, casts
+himself into the sea, and flounders through the shallows to reach the
+Lord. The one is followed by the call to higher duty and to the
+abandonment of possessions; the other is followed by rest and the
+mysterious meal on the shore.
+
+That is to say, whilst both of the stories point the lesson of service
+to the Master, the one of them exhibits the principles of service to
+Him whilst He was still with them, and the other exhibits the
+principles of service to Him when He is removed from struggling and
+toiling on the billows to the calm of the peaceful shore in the morning
+light.
+
+So we may take that night of toil as full of meaning. Think of them as
+the darkness fell, and the solemn bulk of the girdling hills lay
+blacker upon the waters, and the Syrian sky was mirrored with all its
+stars sparkling in the still lake. All the night long cast after cast
+was made, and time after time the net was drawn in and nothing in it
+but tangle and mud. And when the first streak of the morning breaks
+pale over the Eastern hills they are still so absorbed in their tasks
+that they do not recognise the voice that hails them from the nearer
+shore: 'Lads, have ye any meat?' And they answer it with a half surly
+and wholly disappointed monosyllabic 'No!' It is an emblem for us all;
+weary and wet, tugging at the oar in the dark, and often seeming to
+fail. What then? If the last cast has brought nothing, try another. Out
+with the nets once more! Never mind the darkness, and the cold, and the
+wetting spray, and the weariness. You cannot expect to be as
+comfortable in a fishing-boat as in your drawing-room. You cannot
+expect that your nets will be always full. Failure and disappointment
+mingle in the most successful lives. Christian work has often to be
+done with no results at all apparent to the doer, but be sure of this,
+that they who learn and practise the homely, wholesome virtue of
+persistent adherence to the task that God sets them, will catch some
+gleams of a Presence most real and most blessed, and before they die
+will know that 'their labour has not been in vain in the Lord.' 'They
+that sow in tears shall reap in joy.'
+
+And so, finally, about this first part of my subject, there stands out
+before us here the blessed picture of the Lord Himself, the Risen Lord,
+with the halo of death and resurrection round about Him; there, on the
+firm beach, in the increasing light of the morning, interested in,
+caring about, directing and crowning with His own blessing, the
+obedient work of His servants.
+
+The simple prose fact of the story, in its plain meaning, is more
+precious than any 'spiritualising' of it. Take the fact. Jesus Christ,
+fresh from the grave, who had been down into those dark regions of
+mystery where the dead sleep and wait, and had come back into this
+world, and was on the eve of ascending to the Father--this Christ, the
+possessor of such experience, takes an interest in seven poor men's
+fishing, and cares to know whether their ragged old net is full or is
+empty. There never was a more sublime and wonderful binding together of
+the loftiest and the lowliest than in that question in the mouth of the
+Risen Lord. If men had been going to dream about what would be fitting
+language for a risen Saviour, if we had to do here with a legend, and
+not with a piece of plain, prosaic fact, do you think that the
+imagination would ever have entered the mind of the legend-maker to put
+such a question as that into such lips at such a time? 'Lads, have ye
+any meat?'
+
+It teaches us that anything that interests us is not without interest
+to Christ. Anything that is big enough to occupy our thoughts and our
+efforts is large enough to be taken into His. All our ignoble toils,
+and all our petty anxieties, touch a chord that vibrates in that deep
+and tender heart. Though other sympathy may be unable to come down to
+the minutenesses of our little lives, and to wind itself into the
+narrow room in which our histories are prisoned, Christ's sympathy can
+steal into the narrowest cranny. The risen Lord is interested in our
+poor fishing and our disappointments.
+
+And not only that, here is a promise for us, a prophecy for us, of
+certain guidance and direction, if only we will come to Him and
+acknowledge our dependence upon Him. The question that was put to them,
+'Lads, have ye any meat?' was meant to evoke the answer, 'No!' The
+consciousness of my failure is the pre-requisite to my appeal to Him to
+prosper my work. And just as before He would, on the other margin of
+that same shore, multiply the loaves and the fishes, He put to them the
+question, 'How many have ye?' that they might know clearly the
+inadequacy of their own resources for the hungry crowd, so here, in
+order to prepare their hearts for the reception of His guidance and His
+blessing, He provides that they be brought to catalogue and confess
+their failures. So He does with us all, beats the self-confidence out
+of us, blessed be His name! and makes us know ourselves to be empty in
+order that He may pour Himself into us, and flood us with the joy of
+His presence.
+
+Then comes the guidance given. We may be sure that it is given to us
+all to-day, if we wait upon Him and ask Him. 'Cast the net on the right
+side of the ship, and ye shall find.' His command is followed by swift,
+unanswering, unquestioning obedience, which in its turn is immediately
+succeeded by the large blessing which the Master then gave on the
+instant, which He gives still, though often, in equal love and
+unquestioned wisdom, it comes long after faith has discerned His
+presence and obedience has bowed to His command.
+
+It may be that we shall not see the results of our toil till the
+morning dawns and the great net is drawn to land by angel hands. But we
+may be sure that while we are toiling on the tossing sea, He watches
+from the shore, is interested in all our weary efforts, will guide us
+if we own to Him our weakness, and will give us to see at last issues
+greater than we had dared to hope from our poor service. The dying
+martyr looked up and saw Him 'standing at the right hand of God,' in
+the attitude of interested watchfulness and ready help. This Easter
+morning bids us lift our eyes to a risen Lord who 'has not left us to
+serve alone,' nor gone up on high, like some careless general to a safe
+height, while his forsaken soldiers have to stand the shock of onset
+without him. From this height He bends down and 'covers our heads in
+the day of battle.' 'He was received up,' says the Evangelist, 'and sat
+on the right hand of God, and they went forth and preached everywhere.'
+Strange contrast between His throned rest and their wandering toils for
+Him! But the contrast gives place to a deeper identity of work and
+condition, as the Gospel goes on to say, 'The Lord also _working with
+them_ and confirming the word with signs following.'
+
+Though we be on the tossing sea and He on the quiet shore, between us
+there is a true union and communion, His heart is with us, if our
+hearts be with Him, and from Him will pass over all strength, grace,
+and blessing to us, if only we know His presence, and owning our
+weakness, obey His command and expect His blessing.
+
+II. Look at the other half of this incident before us. I pass over the
+episode of the recognition of Jesus by John, and of Peter struggling to
+His feet, interesting as it is, in order to fix upon the central
+thought of the second part of the narrative, viz. the risen Lord on the
+shore, in the increasing light of the morning, 'preparing a table' for
+His toiling servants. That 'fire of coals' and the simple refreshment
+that was being dressed upon it had been prepared there by Christ's own
+hand. We are not told that there was anything miraculous about it. He
+had gathered the charcoal; He had procured the fish; He had dressed it
+and prepared it. They are bidden to 'bring of the fish they had
+caught'; He accepts their service, and adds the result of their toil,
+as it would seem, to the provision which His own hand has prepared. He
+summons them to a meal, not the midday repast, for it was still early
+morning. They seat themselves, smitten by a great awe. The meal goes on
+in silence. No word is spoken on either side. Their hearts know Him. He
+waits on them, making Himself their Servant as well as their Host. He
+'taketh bread and giveth them and fish likewise,' as He had done in the
+miracles by the same shore and on that sad night in the upper room that
+seemed so far away now, and in the roadside inn at Emmaus, when
+something in His manner or action disclosed Him to the wondering two at
+the table.
+
+Now what does all that teach us? Two things; and first--neglecting for
+a moment the difference between shore and sea--here we have the fact of
+Christ's providing, even by doing menial offices, for His servants.
+
+These seven men were wet and weary, cold and hungry. The first thing
+they wanted when they came out of the fishing-boat was their breakfast.
+If they had been at home, their wives and children would have got it
+ready for them. Jesus had a great deal to say to them that day, a great
+deal to teach them, much to do for them, and for the whole world, by
+the words that followed; but the first thing that He thinks about is to
+feed them. And so, cherishing no overstrained contempt for material
+necessities and temporal mercies, let us remember that it is His hand
+that feeds us still, and let us be glad to think that this Christ,
+risen from the dead and with His heart full of the large blessings that
+He was going to bestow, yet paused to consider: 'They are coming on
+shore after a night's hard toil, they will be faint and weary; let Me
+feed their bodies before I begin to deal with their hearts and spirits.'
+
+And He will take care of you, brother! and of us all. The 'bread will
+be given' us, at any rate, and 'the water made sure.' It was a modest
+meal that He with His infinite resources thought enough for toiling
+fishermen. 'One fish,' as the original shows us, 'one loaf of bread.'
+No more! He could as easily have spread a sumptuous table for them.
+There is no covenant for superfluities, necessaries will be given. Let
+us bring down our wishes to His gifts and promises, and recognise the
+fact that 'he who needs least is the nearest the gods,' and he that
+needs least is surest of getting from Christ what he needs.
+
+But then, besides that, the supply of all other deeper and loftier
+necessities is here guaranteed. The symbolism of our text divides,
+necessarily, the two things which in fact are not divided. It is not
+all toiling on the restless sea here, any more than it is all rest and
+fruition yonder; but all that your spirit needs, for wisdom, patience,
+heroism, righteousness, growth, Christ will give you _in_ your work;
+and that is better than giving it to you after your work, and the very
+work which is blessed by Him, and furthered and prospered by Him, the
+very work itself will come to be moat and nourishment. 'Out of the
+eater will come forth meat,' and the slain 'lions' of past struggles
+and sorrows, the next time we come to them, will be 'full of honey.'
+
+Finally, there is a great symbolical prophecy here if we emphasise the
+distinction between the night and the morning, between the shore and
+the sea. We can scarcely fail to catch this meaning in the incident
+which sets forth the old blessed assurance that the risen Lord is
+preparing a feast on the shore while His servants are toiling on the
+darkling sea.
+
+All the details, such as the solid shore in contrast with the changeful
+sea, the increasing morning in contrast with the toilsome night, the
+feast prepared, have been from of old consecrated to shadow forth the
+differences between earth and heaven. It would be blindness not to see
+here a prophecy of the glad hour when Christ shall welcome to their
+stable home, amid the brightness of unsetting day, the souls that have
+served Him amidst the fluctuations and storms of life, and seen Him in
+its darkness, and shall satisfy all their desires with the 'bread of
+heaven.'
+
+Our poor work which He deigns to accept forms part of the feast which
+is spread at the end of our toil, when 'there shall be no more sea.' He
+adds the results of our toil to the feast which He has prepared. The
+consequences of what we have done here on earth make no small part of
+the blessedness of heaven.
+
+  'Their works and alms and all their good endeavour
+  Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod.'
+
+The souls which a Paul or a John has won for the Master, in their
+vocation as 'fishers of men,' are their 'hope and joy and crown of
+rejoicing, in the presence of our Lord Jesus.' The great benediction
+which the Spirit bade the Apocalyptic seer write over 'the dead which
+die in the Lord,' is anticipated in both its parts by this mysterious
+meal on the beach. 'They rest from their labours' inasmuch as they find
+the food prepared for them, and sit down to partake; 'Their works do
+follow them' inasmuch as they 'bring of the fish which they have
+caught.'
+
+Finally, Christ Himself waits on them, therein fulfilling in symbol
+what He has told us in great words that dimly shadow wonders
+unintelligible until experienced: 'Verily I say unto you, He shall gird
+Himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth, and
+serve them.'
+
+So here is a vision to cheer us all. Life must be full of toil and of
+failure. We are on the midnight sea, and have to tug, weary and wet, at
+a heavy oar, and to haul an often empty net. But we do not labour
+alone. He comes to us across the storm, and is with us in the night, a
+most real, because unseen Presence. If we accept the guidance of His
+directing word, His indwelling Spirit, and His all-sufficient example,
+and seek to ascertain His will in outward Providences, we shall not be
+left to waste our strength in blunders, nor shall our labour be in
+vain. In the morning light we shall see Him standing serene on the
+steadfast shore. The 'Pilot of the Galilean lake' will guide our frail
+boat through the wild surf that marks the breaking of the sea of life
+on the shore of eternity; and when the sun rises over the Eastern hills
+we shall land on the solid beach, bringing our 'few small fishes' with
+us, which He will accept. And there we shall rest, nor need to ask who
+He is that serves us, for we shall know that 'It is the Lord!'
+
+
+
+'IT IS THE LORD!'
+
+'Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the
+Lord.--JOHN xxi. 7.
+
+It seems a very strange thing that these disciples had not, at an
+earlier period of this incident, discovered the presence of Christ,
+inasmuch as the whole was so manifestly a repetition of that former
+event by which the commencement of their ministry had been signalised,
+when He called them to become 'fishers of men.' We are apt to suppose
+that when once again they embarked on the lake, and went back to their
+old trade, it must have been with many a thought of Him busy at their
+hearts. Yonder--perhaps we fancy them thinking--is the very point where
+we saw Him coming out of the shadows of the mountains, that night when
+He walked on the water; yonder is the little patch of grass where He
+made them all sit down whilst we bore the bread to them: there is the
+very spot where we were mending our nets when He came up to us and
+called us to Himself; and now it is all over. We have loved and lost
+Him; He has been with us, and has left us. 'We trusted that it had been
+He who should have redeemed Israel,' and the Cross has ended it all!
+So, we are apt to think, they must have spoken; but there does not seem
+to have been about them any such sentimental remembrance. John takes
+pains in this narrative, I think, to show them to us as plain, rough
+men, busy about their night's work, and thinking a great deal more of
+their want of success in fishing, than about the old associations which
+we are apt to put into their minds. Then through the darkness He comes,
+as they had seen Him come once before, when they know Him not; and He
+speaks to them as He had spoken before, and they do not detect His
+voice yet; and He repeats the old miracle, and their eyes are all
+holden, excepting the eyes of him who loved, and _he_ first says, 'It
+is the Lord!' Now, besides all the other features of this incident by
+which it becomes the revelation of the Lord's presence with His Church,
+and the exhibition of the work of the Church during all the course of
+the world's history, it contains valuable lessons on other points, such
+as these which I shall try to bring before you.
+
+Now and always, as in that morning twilight on the Galilean lake,
+Christ comes to men. Everywhere He is present, everywhere revealing
+Himself. Now, as then, our eyes are 'holden' by our own fault, so that
+we recognise not the merciful Presence which is all around us. Now, as
+then, it is they who are nearest to Christ by love who see Him first.
+Now, as then, they who are nearest to Him by love, are so because He
+loves them, and because they know and believe the love which He has to
+them. I find, then, in this part of the story three thoughts,--First,
+they only see aright who see Christ in everything. Secondly, they only
+see Christ who love Him. Lastly, they only love Him who know that He
+loves them,
+
+I. First then, they only see aright who see Christ in everything.
+
+This word of John's, 'It is the Lord!'--ought to be the conviction with
+the light of which we go out to the examination of all events, and to
+the consideration of all the circumstances of our daily life. We
+believe that unto Christ is given 'all power in heaven and upon earth.'
+We believe that to Him belongs creative power--that 'without Him was
+not anything made which was made.' We believe that from Him came all
+life at first. In Him life was, as in its deep source. He is the
+Fountain of life. We believe that as no being comes into existence
+without His creative power, so none continues to exist without His
+sustaining energy. We believe that He allots to all men their natural
+characters and their circumstances. We believe that the history of the
+world is but the history of His influence, and that the centre of the
+whole universe is the cross of Calvary. In the light of such
+convictions, I take it, every man that calls himself a Christian ought
+to go out to meet life and to study all events. Let me try, then, to
+put before you, very briefly, one or two of the provinces in which we
+are to take this conviction as the keynote to all our knowledge.
+
+No man will understand the world aright, to begin with, who cannot say
+about all creation, 'It is the Lord!' Nature is but the veil of the
+invisible and ascended Lord: and if we would pierce to the deepest
+foundations of all being, we cannot stop until we get down to the
+living power of Christ our Saviour and the Creator of the world, by
+whom all things were made, and whose will pouring out into this great
+universe, is the sustaining principle and the true force which keeps it
+from nothingness and from quick decay.
+
+Why, what did Christ work all His miracles upon earth for? Not solely
+to give us a testimony that the Father had sent Him; not solely to make
+us listen to His words as a Teacher sent from God; not solely as proof
+of His Messiahship,--but besides all these purposes there was surely
+this other, that for once He would unveil to us the true Author of all
+things, and the true Foundation of all being. Christ's miracles
+interrupted the order of the world, because they made visible to men
+for once the true and constant Orderer of the order. They interrupted
+the order in so far as they struck out the intervening links by which
+the creative and sustaining word of God acts in nature, and suspended
+each event directly from the firm staple of His will. They revealed the
+eternal Orderer of that order in that they showed the Incarnate Word
+wielding the forces of nature, which He has done from of old and still
+does. We are then to take all these signs and wonders that He wrought,
+as a perennial revelation of the real state of things with regard to
+this natural world, and to see in them all, signs and tokens that into
+every corner and far-off region of the universe His loving hand
+reaches, and His sustaining power goes forth. Into what province of
+nature did He not go? He claimed to be the Lord of life by the side of
+the boy's bier at the gate of Nain, in the chamber of the daughter of
+Jairus, by the grave of Lazarus. He asserted for Himself authority over
+all the powers and functions of our bodily life, when He gave eyes to
+the blind, hearing to the deaf, feet to the lame. He showed that He was
+Lord over the fowl of the air, the beasts of the earth, the fish of the
+sea. And He asserted His dominion over inanimate nature, when the
+fig-tree, cursed by Him, withered away to its roots, and the winds and
+waves sunk into silence at His gentle voice. He let us get a glimpse
+into the dark regions of His rule over the unseen, when 'with authority
+He commanded the unclean spirits, and they came out.' And all these
+things He did, in order that we, walking in this fair world,
+encompassed by the glories of this wonderful universe, should be
+delivered from the temptation of thinking that it is separated from
+Him, or independent of His creative and sustaining power; and in order
+that we should feel that the continuance of all which surrounds us, the
+glories of heaven and the loveliness of earth, are as truly owing to
+the constant intervention of His present will, and the interposition
+beneath them of His sustaining hand, as when first, by the 'Word of
+God' who 'was with God and who was God,' speaking forth His fiat, there
+came light and beauty out of darkness and chaos.
+
+O Christian men! we shall never understand the Christian thought about
+God's universe, until we are able to say, Preservation is a continual
+creation; and beneath all the ordinary workings of Nature, as we
+faithlessly call it, and the apparently dead play of secondary causes,
+there are welling forth, and energising, the living love and the
+blessed power of Christ, the Maker, and Monarch, and Sustainer of all.
+'It is the Lord!' is the highest teaching of all science. The mystery
+of the universe, and the meaning of God's world, are shrouded in
+hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a
+Lawgiver, and that all working involves a divine energy; and that
+beneath all which appears there lies for ever rising up through it and
+giving it its life and power, the one true living Being, the Father in
+heaven, the Son by whom He works, and the Holy Ghost the Spirit.
+Darkness lies on Nature, except to those who in
+
+    'the light of setting suns,
+  And the round ocean, and the living air,
+  And the blue sky,'
+
+see that Form which these disciples saw in the morning twilight. Let
+'It is the Lord!' be the word on our lips as we gaze on them all, and
+nature will then be indeed to us the open secret, the secret of the
+Lord which 'He will show to them that fear Him.'
+
+Then again, the same conviction is the only one that is adequate either
+to explain or to make tolerable the circumstances of our earthly
+condition. To most men--ah! to all of us in our faithless times--the
+events that befall ourselves, seem to be one of two things equally
+horrible, the play of a blind Chance, or the work of an iron Fate. I
+know not which of these two ghastly thoughts about the circumstances of
+life is the more depressing, ruining all our energy, depriving us of
+all our joy, and dragging us down with its weight. But brethren, and
+friends, there are but these three ways for it--either our life is the
+subject of a mere chaotic chance; or else it is put into the mill of an
+iron destiny, which goes grinding on and crushing with its remorseless
+wheels, regardless of what it grinds up; or else, through it all, in it
+all, beneath it and above it all, there is the Will which is Love, and
+the Love which is Christ! Which of these thoughts is the one that
+commends itself to your own hearts and consciences, and which is the
+one under which you would fain live if you could? I understand not how
+a man can front the awful possibilities of a future on earth, knowing
+all the points at which he is vulnerable, and all the ways by which
+disaster may come down upon him, and retain his sanity, unless he
+believes that all is ruled, not merely by a God far above him, who may
+be as unsympathising as He is omnipotent, but by his Elder Brother, the
+Son of God, who showed His heart by all His dealings with us here
+below, and who loves as tenderly, and sympathises as closely with us as
+ever He did when on earth He gathered the weary and the sick around
+Him. Is it not a thing, men and women, worth having, to have this for
+the settled conviction of your hearts, that Christ is moving all the
+pulses of your life, and that nothing falls out without the
+intervention of His presence and the power of His will working through
+it? Do you not think such a belief would nerve you for difficulty,
+would lift you buoyantly over trials and depressions, and would set you
+upon a vantage ground high above all the petty annoyances of life? Tell
+me, is there any other place where a man can plant his foot and say,
+'Now I am on a rock and I care not what comes'? The riddle of
+Providence is solved, and the discipline of Providence is being
+accomplished when we have grasped this conviction--All events do serve
+me, for all circumstances come from His will and pleasure, which is
+love; and everywhere I go--be it in the darkness of disaster or in the
+sunshine of prosperity--I shall see standing before me that familiar
+and beloved Shape, and shall be able to say, 'It is the Lord!' Friends
+and brethren, that is the faith to live by, that is the faith to die
+by; and without it life is a mockery and a misery.
+
+Once more this same conviction, 'It is the Lord! should guide us in all
+our thoughts about the history and destinies of mankind and of Christ's
+Church. The Cross is the centre of the world's history, the incarnation
+and the crucifixion of our Lord are the pivot round which all the
+events of the ages revolve. 'The testimony of Jesus was the spirit of
+prophecy,' and the growing power of Jesus is the spirit of history, and
+in every book that calls itself the history of a nation, unless there
+be written, whether literally or in spirit, this for its motto, 'It is
+the Lord!' all will be shallow and incomplete.
+
+'They that went before and they that came after,' when He entered into
+the holy city in His brief moment of acceptance and pomp, surrounded
+Him with hosannas and jubilant gladness. It is a deep and true symbol
+of the whole history of the world. All the generations that went before
+Him, though they knew it not, were preparing the way of the Lord, and
+heralding the advent of Him who was 'the desire of all nations' and
+'the light of men'; and all the generations that come after, though
+they know it not, are swelling the pomp of His triumph and hastening
+the time of His crowning and dominion. 'It is the Lord!' is the secret
+of all national existence. It is the secret of all the events of the
+world. The tangled web of human history is only then intelligible when
+that is taken as its clue, 'From Him are all things, and to Him are all
+things.' The ocean from which the stream of history flows, and that
+into which it empties itself, are one. He began it, He sustains it.
+'The help that is done upon earth He doeth it Himself,' and when all is
+finished, it will be found that all things have indeed come from
+Christ, been sustained and directed by Christ, and have tended to the
+glory and exaltation of that Redeemer, who is King of kings and Lord of
+lords, Maker of the worlds, and before whose throne are for ever
+gathered for service, whether they know it or not, the forces of the
+Gentiles, the riches of the nations, the events of history, the fates
+and destinies of every man.
+
+I need not dwell upon the way in which such a conviction as this, my
+friends, living and working in our hearts, would change for us the
+whole aspect of life, and make everything bright and beautiful, blessed
+and calm, strengthening us for all which we might have to do, nerving
+us for duty, and sustaining us against every trial, leading us on,
+triumphant and glad, through regions all sparkling with tokens of His
+presence and signs of His love, unto His throne at last, to lay down
+our praises and our crowns before Him. Only let me leave with you this
+one word of earnest entreaty, that you will lay to heart the solemn
+alternative--either see Christ in everything, and be blessed; or miss
+Him, and be miserable. Oh! it is a waste, weary world, unless it is
+filled with signs of His presence. It is a dreary seventy years,
+brother, of pilgrimage and strife, unless, as you travel along the
+road, you see the marks that He who went before you has left by the
+wayside for your guidance and your sustenance. If you want your days to
+be true, noble, holy, happy, manly, and Godlike, believe us, it is only
+when they all have flowing through them this conviction, 'It is the
+Lord!' that they all become so.
+
+II. Then, secondly, only they who love, see Christ.
+
+John, the Apostle of Love, knew Him first. In religious matters, love
+is the foundation of knowledge. There is no way of knowing a Person
+except love. The knowledge of God and the knowledge of Christ are not
+to be won by the exercise of the understanding. A man cannot argue his
+way into knowing Christ. No skill in drawing inferences will avail him
+there. The treasures of wisdom--earthly wisdom--are all powerless in
+that region. Man's understanding and natural capacity--let it keep
+itself within its own limits and region, and it is strong and good; but
+in the region of acquaintance with God and Christ, the wisdom of this
+world is foolishness, and man's understanding is not the organ by which
+he can know Christ. Oh no! there is a better way than that: 'He that
+loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.' As it is, in feebler
+measure, with regard to our personal acquaintance with one another,
+where it is not so much the power of the understanding, or the
+quickness of the perception, or the talent and genius of a man, that
+make the foundation of his knowledge of his friend, as the force of his
+sympathy and the depth of his affection; so--with the necessary
+modification arising from the transference from earthly acquaintances
+to the great Friend and Lover of our souls in heaven--so is it with
+regard to our knowledge of Christ. Love will trace Him everywhere, as
+dear friends can detect each other in little marks which are
+meaningless to others. Love's quick eye pierces through disguises
+impenetrable to a colder scrutiny. Love has in it a longing for His
+presence which makes us eager and quick to mark the lightest sign that
+He for whom it longs is near, as the footstep of some dear one is heard
+by the sharp ear of affection long before any sound breaks the silence
+to those around. Love leads to likeness to the Lord, and that likeness
+makes the clearer vision of the Lord possible. Love to Him strips from
+our eyes the film that self and sin, sense and custom, have drawn over
+them. It is these which hide Him from us. It is because men are so
+indifferent to, so forgetful of, their best Friend that they fail to
+behold Him, 'It is the Lord!' is written large and plain on all things,
+but like the great letters on a map, they are so obvious and fill so
+wide a space, that they are not seen. They who love Him know Him, and
+they who know Him love Him. The true eye-salve for our blinded eyes is
+applied when we have turned with our hearts to Christ. The simple might
+of faithful love opens them to behold a more glorious vision than the
+mountain 'full of chariots of fire,' which once flamed before the
+prophet's servant of old--even the august and ever-present form of the
+Lord of life, the Lord of history, the Lord of providence. When they
+who love Jesus turn to see 'the Voice that speaks with them,' they ever
+behold the Son of Man in His glory; and where others see but the dim
+beach and a mysterious stranger, it is to their lips that the glad cry
+first comes, 'It is the Lord!'
+
+And is it not a blessed thing, brethren! that thus this high and
+glorious prerogative of recognising the marks of Christ's presence
+everywhere, of going through life gladdened by the assurance of His
+nearness, does not depend on what belongs to few men only, but on what
+may belong to all? When we say that 'not many wise men after the flesh,
+not many mighty, not many noble, are called'--when we say that love is
+the means of knowledge--we are but in other words saying that the way
+is open to all, and that no characteristics belonging to classes, no
+powers that must obviously always belong to but a handful, are
+necessary for the full apprehension of the power and blessedness of
+Christ's Gospel. The freeness and the fullness of that divine message,
+the glorious truth that it is for all men, and is offered to all, are
+couched in that grand principle, Love that thou mayest know; love, and
+thou art filled with the fullness of God, Not for the handful, not for
+the _elite_ of the world; not for the few, but for the many; not for
+the wise, but for all; not for classes, but for humanity--for all that
+are weak, and sinful, and needy, and foolish, and darkened He comes,
+who only needs that the heart that looks should love, and then it shall
+behold!
+
+But if that were the whole that I have to say, I should have said but
+little to the purpose. It very little avails to tell men to love. We
+cannot love to order, or because we think it duty. There is but one way
+of loving, and that is to see the lovely. The disciple who loved Jesus
+was 'the disciple whom Jesus loved.' Generalise that, and it teaches us
+this, that
+
+III. They love who know that Christ loves them. His divine and eternal
+mercy is the foundation of the whole. Our love, brethren, can never be
+any thing else than our echo to His voice of tenderness than the
+reflected light upon our hearts of the full glory of His affection. No
+man loveth God except the man who has first learned that God loves him.
+'We love Him, because He first loved us.' And when we say, 'Love
+Christ,' if we could not go on to say, 'Nay, rather let Christ's love
+come down upon you'--we had said worse than nothing. The fountain that
+rises in my heart can only spring up heavenward, because the water of
+it has flowed down into my heart from the higher level. All love must
+descend first, before it can ascend. We have, then, no Gospel to
+preach, if we have only this to preach, 'Love, and thou art saved.' But
+we have a Gospel that is worth the preaching, when we can come to men
+who have no love in their hearts, and say, 'Brethren! listen to
+this--you have to bring nothing, you are called upon to originate no
+affection; you have nothing to do but simply to receive the everlasting
+love of God in Christ His Son, which was without us, which began before
+us, which flows forth independent of us, which is unchecked by all our
+sins, which triumphs over all our transgressions, and which will make
+us--loveless, selfish, hardened, sinful men--soft, and tender, and full
+of divine affection, by the communication of its own self.
+
+Oh, then, look to Christ, that you may love Him! Think, brethren, of
+that full, and free, and boundless mercy which, from eternity, has been
+pouring itself out in floods of grace and loving-kindness over all
+creatures. Think of that everlasting love which presided at the
+foundation of the earth, and has sustained it ever since. Think of that
+Saviour who has died for us, and lives for us. Think of Christ, the
+heart of God, and the fullness of the Father's mercy; and do not think
+of yourselves at all. Do not ask yourselves, to begin with, the
+question, Do I love Him or do I not? You will never love by that means.
+If a man is cold, let him go to the fire and warm himself. If he is
+dark, let him stand in the sunshine, and he will be light. If his heart
+is all clogged and clotted with sin and selfishness, let him get under
+the influence of the love of Christ, and look away from himself and his
+own feelings, towards that Saviour whose love shed abroad is the sole
+means of kindling ours. You have to go down deeper than _your_
+feelings, _your_ affections, _your_ desires, _your_ character. There
+you will find no resting-place, no consolation, no power. Dig down to
+the living Rock, Christ and His infinite love to you, and let _it_ be
+the strong foundation, built into which you and your love may become
+living stones, a holy temple, partaking of the firmness and nature of
+that on which it rests. They that love do so because they know that
+Christ loves them; and they that love see Him everywhere; and they that
+see Him everywhere are blessed for evermore. And let no man here
+torture himself, or limit the fullness of this message that we preach,
+by questionings whether Christ loves Him or not. Are you a man? are you
+sinful? have you broken God's law? do you need a Saviour? Then put away
+all these questions, and believe that Christ's personal love is
+streaming out for the whole world, and that there is a share for you if
+you like to take it and be blessed!
+
+There is one last thought arising from the whole subject before us,
+that may be worth mention before I close. Did you ever notice how this
+whole incident might be turned, by a symbolical application, to the
+hour of death, and the vision which may meet us when we come thither?
+It admits of the application, and perhaps was intended to receive the
+application, of such a symbolic reference. The morning is dawning, the
+grey of night going away, the lake is still; and yonder, standing on
+the shore, in the uncertain light, there is one dim Figure, and one
+disciple catches a sight of Him, and another casts himself into the
+water, and they find 'a fire of coals, and fish laid thereon, and
+bread,' and Christ gathers them around His table, and they all know
+that 'It is the Lord!' It is what the death of the Christian man, who
+has gone through life recognising Christ everywhere, may well
+become:--the morning breaking, and the finished work, and the Figure
+standing on the quiet beach, so that the last plunge into the cold
+flood that yet separates us, will not be taken with trembling
+reluctance; but, drawn to Him by the love beaming out of His face, and
+upheld by the power of His beckoning presence, we shall struggle
+through the latest wave that parts us, and scarcely feel its chill, nor
+know that we _have_ crossed it; till falling blessed at His feet, we
+see, by the nearer and clearer vision of His face, that this is indeed
+heaven. And looking back upon 'the sea that brought us thither,' we
+shall behold its waters flashing in the light of that everlasting
+morning, and hear them breaking in music upon the eternal shore. And
+then, brethren, when all the weary night-watchers on the stormy ocean
+of life are gathered together around Him who watched with them from His
+throne on the bordering mountains of eternity, where the day shines for
+ever--then He will seat them at His table in His kingdom, and none will
+need to ask, 'Who art Thou?' or 'Where am I?' for all shall know that
+'It is the Lord!' and the full, perfect, unchangeable vision of His
+blessed face will be heaven!
+
+
+
+'LOVEST THOU ME?'
+
+'Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more
+than these? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love
+Thee. He saith unto him, Feed My lambs.'--JOHN xxi. 15.
+
+Peter had already seen the risen Lord. There had been that interview on
+Easter morning, on which the seal of sacred secrecy was impressed;
+when, alone, the denier poured out his heart to his Lord, and was taken
+to the heart that he had wounded. Then there had been two interviews on
+the two successive Sundays in which the Apostle, in common with his
+brethren, had received, as one of the group, the Lord's benediction,
+the Lord's gift of the Spirit, and the Lord's commission. But something
+more was needed; there had been public denial, there must be public
+confession. If he had slipped again into the circle of the disciples,
+with no special treatment or reference to his fall, it might have
+seemed a trivial fault to others, and even to himself. And so, after
+that strange meal on the beach, we have this exquisitely beautiful and
+deeply instructive incident of the special treatment needed by the
+denier before he could be publicly reinstated in his office.
+
+The meal seems to have passed in silence. That awe which hung over the
+disciples in all their intercourse with Jesus during the forty days,
+lay heavy on them, and they sat there, huddled round the fire, eating
+silently the meal which Christ had provided, and no doubt gazing
+silently at the silent Lord. What a tension of expectation there must
+have been as to how the oppressive silence was to be broken! and how
+Peter's heart must have throbbed, and the others' ears been pricked up,
+when it was broken by 'Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?' We may
+listen with pricked-up ears too. For we have here, in Christ's
+treatment of the Apostle, a revelation of how He behaves to a soul
+conscious of its fault; and in Peter's demeanour an illustration of how
+a soul, conscious of its fault, should behave to Him.
+
+There are three stages here: the threefold question, the threefold
+answer, and the threefold charge. Let us look at these.
+
+I. The threefold question.
+
+The reiteration in the interrogation did not express doubt as to the
+veracity of the answer, nor dissatisfaction with its terms; but it did
+express, and was meant, I suppose, to suggest to Peter and to the
+others, that the threefold denial needed to be obliterated by the
+threefold confession; and that every black mark that had been scored
+deep on the page by that denial needed to be covered over with the
+gilding or bright colouring of the triple acknowledgment. And so Peter
+thrice having said, 'I know Him not!' Jesus with a gracious violence
+forced him to say thrice, 'Thou knowest that I love Thee.' The same
+intention to compel Peter to go back upon his past comes out in two
+things besides the triple form of the question. The one is the
+designation by which he is addressed, 'Simon, son of Jonas,' which
+travels back, as it were, to the time before he was a disciple, and
+points a finger to his weak humanity before it had come under the
+influence of Jesus Christ. 'Simon, son of Jonas,' was the name that he
+bore in the days before his discipleship. It was the name by which
+Jesus had addressed him, therefore, on that never-to-be-forgotten
+turning-point of his life, when he was first brought to Him by his
+brother Andrew. It was the name by which Jesus had addressed him at the
+very climax of his past life when, high up, he had been able to see
+far, and in answer to the Lord's question, had rung out the confession:
+'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!' So the name by which
+Jesus addresses him now says to him in effect: 'Remember thy human
+weakness; remember how thou wert drawn to Me; remember the high-water
+mark of thy discipleship, when I was plain before thee as the Son of
+God, and remembering all these, answer Me--lovest thou Me?'
+
+The same intention to drive Peter back to the wholesome remembrance of
+a stained past is obvious in the first form of the question. Our Lord
+mercifully does not persist in giving to it that form in the second and
+third instances: 'Lovest thou Me more than these?' More than these,
+what? I cannot for a moment believe that that question means something
+so trivial and irrelevant as 'Lovest thou Me more than these nets, and
+boats, and the fishing?' No; in accordance with the purpose that runs
+through the whole, of compelling Peter to retrospect, it says to him,
+'Do you remember what you said a dozen hours before you denied Me,
+"Though all should forsake Thee, yet will not I"? Are you going to take
+that stand again? Lovest thou Me more than these that never discredited
+their boasting so shamefully?'
+
+So, dear brethren! here we have Jesus Christ, in His treatment of this
+penitent and half-restored soul, forcing a man, with merciful
+compulsion, to look steadfastly and long at his past sin, and to
+retrace step by step, shameful stage by shameful stage, the road by
+which he had departed so far. Every foul place he is to stop and look
+at, and think about. Each detail he has to bring up before his mind.
+Was it not cruel of Jesus thus to take Peter by the neck, as it were,
+and hold him right down, close to the foul things that he had done, and
+say to him, 'Look! look! look ever! and answer, Lovest thou Me?' No; it
+was not cruel; it was true kindness. Peter had never been so abundantly
+and permanently penetrated by the sense of the sinfulness of his sin,
+as after he was sure, as he had been made sure in that great interview,
+that it was all forgiven. So long as a man is disturbed by the dread of
+consequences, so long as he is doubtful as to his relation to the
+forgiving Love, he is not in a position beneficially and sanely to
+consider his evil in its moral quality only. But when the conviction
+comes to a man, 'God is pacified towards thee for all that thou hast
+done'; and when he can look at his own evil without the smallest
+disturbance rising from slavish fear of issues, then lie is in a
+position rightly to estimate its darkness and its depth. And there can
+be no better discipline for us all than to remember our faults, and
+penitently to travel back over the road of our sins, just because we
+are sure that God in Christ has forgotten them. The beginning of
+Christ's merciful treatment of the forgiven man is to compel him to
+remember, that he may learn and be ashamed.
+
+And then there is another point here, in this triple question. How
+significant and beautiful it is that the only thing that Jesus Christ
+cares to ask about is the sinner's love! We might have expected:
+'Simon, son of Jonas, are you sorry for what you did? Simon, son of
+Jonas, will you promise never to do the like any more?' No! These
+things will come if the other thing is there. 'Lovest thou Me?' Jesus
+Christ sues each of us, not for obedience primarily, not for
+repentance, not for vows, not for conduct, but for a heart; and that
+being given, all the rest will follow. That is the distinguishing
+characteristic of Christian morality, that Jesus seeks first for the
+surrender of the affections, and believes, and is warranted in the
+belief, that if these are surrendered, all else will follow; and love
+being given, loyalty and service and repentance and hatred of self-will
+and of self-seeking will follow in her train. All the graces of human
+character which Christ seeks, and is ready to impart, are, as it were,
+but the pages and ministers of the regal Love, who follow behind and
+swell the _cortege_ of her servants.
+
+Christ asks for love. Surely that indicates the depth of His own! In
+this commerce He is satisfied with nothing less, and can ask for
+nothing more; and He seeks for love because He is love, and has given
+love. Oh! to all hearts burdened, as all our hearts ought to be--unless
+the burden has been cast off in one way--by the consciousness of our
+own weakness and imperfection, surely, surely, it is a gospel that is
+contained in that one question addressed to a man who had gone far
+astray, 'Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou?'
+
+Here, again, we have Jesus Christ, in His dealing with the penitent,
+willing to trust discredited professions. We think that one of the
+signs of our being wise people is that experience shall have taught us
+'once' being 'bit, twice' to be 'shy,' and if a man has once deceived
+us by flaming professions and ice-cold acts, never to trust him any
+more. And we think that is 'worldly wisdom,' and 'the bitter fruit of
+earthly experience,' and 'sharpness,' and 'shrewdness,' and so forth.
+Jesus Christ, even whilst reminding Peter, by that 'more than these,'
+of his utterly hollow and unreliable boasting, shows Himself ready to
+accept once again the words of one whose unveracity He had proved.
+'Charity hopeth all things, believeth all things,' and Jesus Christ is
+ready to trust us when we say, 'I love Thee,' even though often in the
+past our professed love has been all disproved.
+
+We have here, in this question, our Lord revealing Himself as willing
+to accept the imperfect love which a disciple can offer Him. Of course,
+many of you well know that there is a very remarkable play of
+expression here. In the two first questions the word which our Lord
+employs for 'love' is not the same as that which appears in Peter's two
+first answers. Christ asks for one kind of love; Peter proffers
+another. I do not enter upon discussion as to the distinction between
+these two apparent synonyms. The kind of love which Christ asks for is
+higher, nobler, less emotional, and more associated with the whole mind
+and will. It is the inferior kind, the more warm, more sensuous, more
+passionate and emotional, which Peter brings. And then, in the third
+question, our Lord, as it were, surrenders and takes Peter's own word,
+as if He had said, 'Be it so! You shrink from professing the higher
+kind; I will take the lower; and I will educate and bring that up to
+the height that I desire you to stand at.' Ah, brother! however stained
+and imperfect, however disproved by denials, however tainted by earthly
+associations, Jesus Christ will accept the poor stream of love, though
+it be but a trickle when it ought to be a torrent, which we can bring
+Him.
+
+These are the lessons which it seems to me lie in this triple question.
+I have dealt with them at the greater length, because those which
+follow are largely dependent upon them. But let me turn now briefly, in
+the second place, to--
+
+II. The triple answer.
+
+'Yea, Lord! Thou knowest that I love Thee.' Is not that beautiful, that
+the man who by Christ's Resurrection, as the last of the answers shows,
+had been led to the loftiest conception of Christ's omniscience, and
+regarded Him as knowing the hearts of all men, should, in the face of
+all that Jesus Christ knew about his denial and his sin, have dared to
+appeal to Christ's own knowledge? What a superb and all-conquering
+confidence in Christ's depth of knowledge and forgivingness of
+knowledge that answer showed! He felt that Jesus could look beneath the
+surface of his sin, and see that below it there was, even in the midst
+of the denial, a heart that in its depths was true. It is a tremendous
+piece of confident appeal to the deeper knowledge, and therefore the
+larger love and more abundant forgiveness, of the righteous Lord--'Thou
+knowest that I love Thee.'
+
+Brethren! a Christian man ought to be sure of his love to Jesus Christ.
+You do not study your conduct in order to infer from it your love to
+others. You do not study your conduct in order to infer from it your
+love to your wife, or your husband, or your parents, or your children,
+or your friend. Love is not a matter of inference; it is a matter of
+consciousness and intuition. And whilst self-examination is needful for
+us all for many reasons, a Christian man ought to be as sure that he
+loves Jesus Christ as he is sure that he loves his dearest upon earth.
+
+It used to be the fashion long ago--this generation has not depth
+enough to keep up the fashion--for Christian people to talk as if it
+were a point they longed to know, whether they loved Jesus Christ or
+not. There is no reason why it should be a point we long to know. You
+know all about your love to one another, and you are sure about that.
+Why are you not sure about your love to Jesus Christ? 'Oh! but,' you
+say, 'look at my sins and failures'; and if Peter had looked only at
+his sins, do you not think that his words would have stuck in his
+throat? He did look, but he looked in a very different way from that of
+trying to ascertain from his conduct whether he loved Jesus Christ or
+not. Brethren, any sin is inconsistent with Christian love to Christ.
+Thank God, we have no right to say of any sin that it is incompatible
+with that love! More than that; a great, gross, flagrant, sudden fall
+like Peter's is a great deal less inconsistent with love to Christ than
+are the continuously unworthy, worldly, selfish, Christ-forgetting
+lives of hosts of complacent professing Christians to-day. White ants
+will eat up the carcase of a dead buffalo quicker than a lion will. And
+to have denied Christ once, twice, thrice, in the space of an hour, and
+under strong temptation, is not half so bad as to call Him 'Master' and
+'Lord,' and day by day, week in, week out, in works to deny Him. The
+triple answer declares to us that in spite of a man's sins he ought to
+be conscious of his love, and be ready to profess it when need is.
+
+III. Lastly, we have here the triple commission.
+
+I do not dwell upon it at any length, because in its original form it
+applies especially to the Apostolic office. But the general principles
+which underlie this threefold charge, to feed and to tend both 'the
+sheep' and 'the lambs,' may be put in a form that applies to each of
+us, and it is this--the best token of a Christian's love to Jesus
+Christ is his service of man for Christ's sake. 'Lovest thou Me?' 'Yea!
+Lord.' Thou hast _said_; go and _do_, 'Feed My lambs; feed My sheep.'
+We need the profession of words; we need, as Peter himself enjoined at
+a subsequent time, to be ready to 'give to every man that asketh us a
+reason of the hope,' and an acknowledgment of the love, that are in us.
+But if you want men to believe in your love, however Jesus Christ may
+know it, go and work in the Master's vineyard. The service of man is
+the garb of the love of God. 'He that loveth God will love his brother
+also.' Do not confine that thought of service, and feeding, and
+tending, to what we call evangelistic and religious work. That is one
+of its forms, but it is only one of them. Everything in which Christian
+men can serve their fellows is to be taken by them as their worship of
+their Lord, and is taken by the world as the convincing proof of the
+reality of their love.
+
+Love to Jesus Christ is the qualification for all such service. If we
+are knit to Him by true affection, which is based upon our
+consciousness of our own falls and evils, and our reception of His
+forgiving mercy, then we shall have the qualities that fit us, and the
+impulse that drives us, to serve and help our fellows. I do not
+say--God forbid!--that there is no philanthropy apart from Christian
+faith, but I do say that, on the wide scale, and in the long run, they
+who are knit to Jesus Christ by love will be those who render the
+greatest help to all that are 'afflicted in mind, body, or estate'; and
+that the true basis and qualification for efficient service of our
+fellows is the utter surrender of our hearts to Him who is the Fountain
+of love, and from whom comes all our power to live in the world, as the
+images and embodiments of the love which has saved us that we might
+help to save others.
+
+Brethren! let us all ask ourselves Christ's question to the denier. Let
+us look our past evils full in the face, that we may learn to hate
+them, and that we may learn more the width and the sweep of the power
+of His pardoning mercy. God grant that we may all be able to say, 'Thou
+knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee!'
+
+
+
+YOUTH AND AGE, AND THE COMMAND FOR BOTH
+
+_Annual Sermon to the Young_
+
+'... When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither
+thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy
+hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou
+wouldest not.... And when He had spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow
+Me.'--JOHN xxi. 18, 19.
+
+The immediate reference of these words is, of course, to the martyrdom
+of the Apostle Peter. Our Lord contrasts the vigorous and somewhat
+self-willed youth and the mellowed old age of His servant, and shadows
+forth his death, in bonds, by violence. And then He bids him,
+notwithstanding this prospect of the issue of his faithfulness, 'Follow
+Me.'
+
+Now I venture, though with some hesitation, to give these words a
+slightly different application. I see in them two pictures of youth and
+of old age, and a commandment based upon both. You young people are
+often exhorted to a Christian life on the ground of the possible
+approach of death. I would not undervalue that motive, but I seek now
+to urge the same thing upon you from a directly opposite consideration,
+the probability that many of you will live to be old. All the chief
+reasons for our being Christians are of the same force, whether we are
+to die to-night, or to live for a century. So in my text I wish you to
+note what you are now; what, if you live, you are sure to become; and
+what, in the view of both stages, you will be wise to do. 'When thou
+wast young thou girdedst thyself, and wentest whither thou wouldest.
+When thou shalt be old another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither
+thou wouldest not.' Therefore, 'Follow Me.'
+
+I. So, then, note the picture here of what you are.
+
+Most of you young people are but little accustomed to reflect upon
+yourselves, or upon the special characteristics and prerogatives of
+your time of life. But it will do you no harm to think for a minute or
+two of what these characteristics are, that you may know your
+blessings, and that you may shun the dangers which attach to them.
+
+'When thou wast young thou girdedst thyself.' _There_ is a picture
+easily translated, and significant of much. The act of girding implies
+preparation for action, and may be widened out to express that most
+blessed prerogative of youth, the cherishing of bright imaginations of
+its future activity and course. The dreams of youth are often laughed
+at, but if a young man or woman be faithful to them they are the
+prophecies of the future, and are given in order that at the opening of
+the flower nature may put forth her power; and so we may be able to
+live through many a dreary hour in the future. Only, seeing that you do
+live so much in rich foreshadowings and fair anticipations of the times
+that are to come, take care that you do not waste that divine faculty,
+the freshness of which is granted to you as a morning gift, the 'dew of
+your youth.' See that you do not waste it in anticipations which cling
+like mist to the low levels of life, but that you lift it higher and
+embrace worthy objects. It is good that you should anticipate, that you
+should live by hope. It is good that you should be drawn onwards by
+bright visions, whether they be ever fulfilled or no. But there are
+dangers in the exercise, and dreaming with some of you takes the place
+of realising your dreams, and you build for yourselves fair fabrics in
+imagination which you never take one step to accomplish and make real.
+Be not the slaves and fools of your imaginations, but cultivate the
+faculty of hoping largely; for the possibilities of human life are
+elastic, and no man or woman, in their most sanguine, early
+anticipations, if only these be directed to the one real good, has ever
+exhausted or attained the possibilities open to every soul.
+
+Again, girding _one's self_ implies independent self-reliance, and that
+is a gift and a stewardship given (as all gifts are stewardships) to
+the young. We all fancy, in our early days, that we are going to build
+'towers that will reach to heaven.' Now _we_ have come, and we will
+show people how to do it! The past generations have failed, but ours is
+full of brighter promise. There is something very touching, to us older
+men almost tragical, in the unbounded self-confidence of the young life
+that we see rushing to the front all round us. We know so well the
+disillusion that is sure to come, the disappointments that will cloud
+the morning sky. We would not carry one shadow from the darkened
+experience of middle life into the roseate tints of the morning. The
+'vision splendid'
+
+    Will fade away
+  Into the light of common day,'
+
+soon enough. But for the present this self-reliant confidence is one of
+the blessings of your early days.
+
+Only remember, it is dangerous, too. It may become want of reverence,
+which is ruinous, or presumption and rashness. Remember what a cynical
+head of a college said, 'None of us is infallible, not even the
+youngest,' and blend modesty with confidence, and yet be buoyant and
+strong, and trust in the power that may make you strong. And then your
+self-confidence will not be rashness.
+
+'Thou wentest whither thou wouldest.' That is another characteristic of
+youth, after it has got beyond the schoolboy stage. Your own will tends
+to become your guide. For one thing, at your time of life, most other
+inward guides are comparatively weak. You have but little experience.
+Most of you have not cultivated largely the habit of patient
+reflection, and thinking twice before you act once. That comes: it
+would not be good that it should be over-predominant in you. 'Old heads
+on young shoulders' are always monstrosities, and it is all right that,
+in your early days, you should largely live by impulse, if only, as
+well as a will, there be a conscience at work which will do instead of
+the bitter experience which comes to guide some of the older of us.
+
+Again, yours is the age when passion is strong. I speak now especially
+to young men. Restraints are removed for many of you. There are dozens
+of young men listening to me now, away from their father's home,
+separated from the purifying influence of sisters and of family life,
+living in solitary lodgings, at liberty to spend their evenings where
+they choose, and nobody be a bit the wiser. Ah, my dear young friend!
+'thou wentest whither thou wouldest' and thou wouldest whither thou
+oughtest not to go.
+
+There is nothing more dangerous than getting into the habit of saying,
+'I do as I like,' however you cover it over. Some of you say, 'I
+indulge natural inclinations; I am young; a man must have his fling.
+Let me sow my wild oats in a quiet corner, where nobody will see the
+crop coming up; and when I get to be as old as you are, I will do as
+you do; young men will be young men,' etc., etc. You know all that sort
+of talk. Take this for a certain fact: that whoever puts the reins into
+the charge of his own will when he is young, has put the reins _and the
+whip_ into hands which will drive over the precipice.
+
+My friend! 'I will' is no word for you. There is a far diviner and
+better one than that--'I ought.' Have you learnt that? Do you yield to
+that sovereign imperative, and say, 'I _must_, because I _ought_ and,
+therefore, I _will_'? Bow passion to reason, reason to conscience,
+conscience to God--and then, be as strong in the will and as stiff in
+the neck as ever you choose; but only then. So much, then, for my first
+picture.
+
+II. Now let me ask you to turn with me for a moment to the second
+one--What you will certainly become if you live.
+
+I have already explained that putting this meaning on the latter
+portion of our first verse is somewhat forcing it from its original
+signification. And yet it is so little of violence that the whole of
+the language naturally lends itself to make a picture of the difference
+between the two stages of life.
+
+All the bright visions that dance before your youthful mind will fade
+away. We begin by thinking that we are going to build temples, or
+'towers that shall reach to heaven,' and when we get into middle life
+we have to say to ourselves: 'Well! I have scarcely material enough to
+carry out the large design that I had. I think that I will content
+myself with building a little hovel, that I may live in, and perhaps it
+will keep the weather off me.' Hopes diminish; dreams vanish; limited
+realities take their place, and we are willing to hold out our hands
+and let some one else take the responsibilities that we were so eager
+to lay upon ourselves at the first. Strength will fade away. 'Even the
+youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail.'
+Physical weariness, weakness, the longing for rest, the consciousness
+of ever-narrowed and narrowing powers, will come to you, and if you
+grow up to be old men, which it is probable that many of you will do,
+you will have to sit and watch the tide of your life ebb, ebb, ebbing
+away moment by moment.
+
+Self-will will be wonderfully broken, for there are far stronger forces
+that determine a man's life than his own wishes and will. We are like
+swimmers in the surf of the Indian Ocean, powerless against the
+battering of the wave which pitches us, for all our science, and for
+all our muscle, where it will. Call it environment, call it fate, call
+it circumstances, call it providence, call it God--there is something
+outside of us bigger than we are, and the man who begins life, thinking
+'Thus I will, thus I command, let my determination stand instead of all
+other reason'; has to say at last, 'I could not do what I wanted. I had
+to be content to do what I could.' Thus our self-will gets largely
+broken down; and patient acceptance of the inevitable comes to be the
+wisdom and peace of the old man.
+
+And, last of all, the picture shows us an irresistible approximation to
+an unwelcome goal: 'Another shall carry thee whither thou wouldest not.'
+
+Life to the old seems to you to be so empty and ashen grey that you
+wonder they care to live. But life to them, for all its
+disappointments, its weariness, its foiled efforts, its vanished hopes,
+its departed companions, is yet life, and most of them cling to it like
+a miser to his gold. But yet, like a man sucked into Niagara above the
+falls, they are borne on the irresistible, smooth flood, nearer and
+nearer to the edge of the rock, and they hear the mighty sound in their
+ears long before they reach the place where the plunge is to be taken
+from sunshine into darkness and foam.
+
+So 'when thou shalt be old' your fancy will be gone, your physical
+strength will be gone, your freshness will be gone, your faculty of
+hoping will work feebly and have little to work on; on earth your sense
+of power will be humbled, and yet you will not want to be borne to the
+place whither you must be borne.
+
+Fancy two portraits, one of a little chubby boy in child's dress, with
+a round face and clustering curls and smooth cheeks and red lips, and
+another of an old man, with wearied eyes, and thin locks, and wrinkled
+cheeks, and a bowed frame. The difference between the two is but the
+symbol of the profounder differences that separate the two selves,
+which yet are the one self--the impetuous, self-reliant, self-willed,
+hopeful, buoyant youth, and the weary, feeble, broken, old man. And
+that is what you will come to, if you live, as sure as I am speaking to
+you, and you are listening to me.
+
+III. And now, lastly, what in the view of both these stages it is wise
+for you to do.
+
+'When He had spoken thus, He saith unto him, Follow Me.' What do we
+mean by following Christ? We mean submission to His authority. 'Follow
+Me' as Captain, Commander, absolute Lawgiver, and Lord. We mean
+imitation of His example. These two words include all human duty, and
+promise to every man perfection if he obeys. 'Follow Me'--it is enough,
+more than enough, to make a man complete and blessed. We mean choosing
+and keeping close to Him, as Companion as well as Leader and Lord. No
+man or woman will ever be solitary, though friends may go, and
+associates may change, and companions may leave them, and life may
+become empty and dreary as far as human sympathy is concerned--no man
+or woman will ever be solitary if stepping in Christ's footsteps, close
+at His heels, and realising His presence.
+
+But you cannot follow Him, and He has no right to tell you to follow
+Him, unless He is something more and other to you than Example, and
+Commander, and Companion. What business has Jesus Christ to demand that
+a man should go after Him to the death? Only this business, that He has
+gone to the death for the man. You must follow Christ first, my friend,
+by coming to Him as a sinful creature, and finding your whole salvation
+and all your hope in humble reliance on the merit of His death. Then
+you may follow Him in obedience, and imitation, and glad communion.
+
+That being understood, I would press upon you this thought, that such a
+following of Jesus Christ will preserve for you all that is blessed in
+the characteristics of your youth, and will prevent them from becoming
+evil. He will give you a basis for your hopes and fulfil your most
+sanguine dreams, if these are based on His promises, and their
+realisation sought in the path of His feet. As Isaiah prophesies, 'the
+mirage shall become a pool.' That which else is an illusion, dancing
+ahead and deceiving thirsty travellers into the belief that sand is
+water, shall become to you really 'pools of water,' if your hopes are
+fixed on Jesus Christ. If you follow Him, your strength will not ebb
+away with shrunken sinews and enfeebled muscles. If you trust Christ,
+your self-will will be elevated by submission, and become strong to
+control your rebellious nature, because it is humble to submit to His
+supreme command. And if you trust and follow Jesus Christ, your hope
+will be buoyant, and bright, and blessed, and prolong its buoyancy, and
+brightness, and blessedness into 'old age, when others fade.' If you
+will follow Christ your old age will, if you reach it, be saved from
+the bitterest pangs that afflict the aged, and will be brightened by
+future possibilities. There will be no need for lingering laments over
+past blessings, no need for shrinking reluctance to take the inevitable
+step. An old age of peaceful, serene brightness caught from the nearer
+gleam of the approaching heaven, and quiet as the evenings in the late
+autumn, not without a touch of frost, perhaps, but yet kindly and
+fruitful, may be ours. And instead of shrinking from the end, if we
+follow Jesus, we shall put our hands quietly and trustfully into His,
+as a little child does into its mother's soft, warm palm, and shall not
+ask whither He leads, assured that since it is He who leads we shall be
+led aright.
+
+Dear young friends! 'Follow Me!' is Christ's merciful invitation to
+you. You will never again be so likely to obey it as you are now. Well
+begun is half ended. 'I would have you innocent of much transgression.'
+You need Him to keep you in the slippery ways of youth. You could not
+go into some of those haunts, where some of you have been, if you
+thought to yourselves, 'Am I following Jesus as I cross this wicked
+threshold?' You may never have another message of mercy brought to your
+ears. If you do become a religious man in later life, you will be
+laying up for yourselves seeds of remorse and sorrow, and in some cases
+memories of pollution and filth, that will trouble you all your days.
+'To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.'
+
+
+
+'THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY STAND AND WAIT'
+
+'Peter, seeing him, saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do!
+Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that
+to thee? Follow thou Me.'--John xxi. 21, 22.
+
+We have seen in a former sermon that the charge of the risen Christ to
+Peter, which immediately precedes these verses, allotted to him service
+and suffering. The closing words of that charge 'Follow Me!' had a deep
+significance, as uniting both parts of his task in the one supreme
+command of imitation of his Master.
+
+But the same words had also a simpler meaning, as inviting the Apostle
+to come apart with Christ at the moment, for some further token of His
+love or indication of His will. Peter follows; but in following,
+naturally turns to see what the little group, sitting silent there by
+the coal fire on the beach, may be doing, and he notices John coming
+towards them, with intent to join them.
+
+What emboldened John to thrust himself, uncalled for, into so secret an
+interview? The words in which he is described in the context answer the
+question. 'He was the disciple whom Jesus loved, which also leaned on
+His breast at Supper, and said, Lord! which is he that betrayeth Thee?'
+He was also bound by close ties to Peter. So with the familiarity of
+'perfect love which casteth out fear,' he felt that the Master could
+have no secrets from him, and no charge to give to his friend which he
+might not share.
+
+Peter's swift question, 'Lord! and what shall this man do?' though it
+has been often blamed, does not seem very blameworthy. There was
+perhaps a little touch of his old vivacity in it, indicating that he
+had not been sufficiently subdued and sobered by the prospect which
+Christ had held out to him; but far more than that there was a natural
+interest in his friend's fate, and something of a wish to have his
+company on the path which he was to tread. Christ's answer, 'If I will
+that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou Me!'
+gently rebukes any leaven of evil that there may have been in the
+question; warns him against trying to force other people into his
+groove; with solemn emphasis reiterates his own duty; and, in effect,
+bids him let his brother alone, and see that he himself discharges the
+ministry which he has received of the Lord.
+
+The enigmatical words of Christ, and the long life of the Apostle,
+which seemed to explain them, naturally bred an interpretation of them
+in the Early Church which is recorded here, as I believe, by the
+Evangelist himself, to the effect that John, like another Enoch at the
+beginning of a new world, was to escape the common lot. And very
+beautiful is the quiet way in which the Evangelist put that error on
+one side, by the simple repetition of his Master's words, emphasising
+their hypothetical form and their enigmatical character: 'Jesus said
+not unto him, He shall not die; but _if_ I will that he _tarry_ till I
+come, what is that to thee?'
+
+Now all this, I think, is full of lessons. Let me try to draw one or
+two of them briefly now.
+
+I. First, then, we have in that majestic 'If I will!' the revelation of
+the risen Christ as the Lord of life and death.
+
+In His charge to Peter, Christ had asserted His right absolutely to
+control His servant's conduct and fix his place in the world, and His
+power to foresee and forecast his destiny and his end. But in these
+words He goes a step further. 'I _will_ that he tarry'; to communicate
+life and to sustain life is a divine prerogative; to act by the bare
+utterance of His will upon physical nature is a divine prerogative.
+Jesus Christ here claims that His will goes out with sovereign power
+amongst the perplexities of human history and into the depths of that
+mystery of life; and that He, the Son of Man, 'quickens whom He will,'
+and has power 'to kill and to make alive.' The words would be absurd,
+if not something worse, upon any but divine lips, that opened with
+conscious authority, and whose Utterer knew that His hand was laid upon
+the innermost springs of being.
+
+So, in this entirely incidental fashion, you have one of the strongest
+and plainest instances of the quiet, unostentatious and habitual manner
+in which Jesus Christ claimed for Himself properly divine prerogatives.
+
+Remember that He who thus spoke was standing before these seven men
+there, in the morning light, on the beach, fresh from the grave. His
+resurrection had proved Him to be the Lord of death. He had bound it to
+His chariot-wheels as a Conqueror. He had risen and He stood there
+before them with no more mark of the corruption of the grave upon Him
+than there are traces of the foul water in which a sea bird may have
+floated, on its white wing that flashes in the sunshine as it soars.
+And surely as these men looked to Christ, 'declared to be the Son of
+God with power, by His resurrection from the dead, 'they may have
+begun, however 'foolish and slow of heart' they were 'to believe,' to
+understand that 'to this end Christ both died and rose and revived,
+that He might be the Lord both of the dead and of the living,' both of
+death and of life.
+
+These two Apostles' later history was full of proofs that Christ's
+claim was valid. Peter is shut up in prison and delivered once, at the
+very last moment, when hope was almost dead, in order that he might
+understand that when he was put into another prison and _not_
+delivered, the blow of martyrdom fell upon him, not because of the
+strength of his persecutors, but because of the will of his Lord. And
+John had to see his brother James, to whom he had been so closely knit,
+with whom he had pledged himself to drink the cup that Christ drank of,
+whom he had desired to have associated with himself in the special
+honours in the Messianic Kingdom--he had to see him slain, first of the
+Apostles, while he himself lingered here long after all his early
+associates were gone. He had, no doubt, many a longing to depart.
+Solitary, surrounded by a new world, pressed by many cares, he must
+often have felt that the cross which he had to carry was no lighter
+than that laid on those who had passed to their rest by martyrdom. To
+him it would often be martyrdom to live. His personal longing is heard
+for a moment in the last words of the Apocalypse, 'Amen! even so, come,
+Lord Jesus!'--but undoubtedly for the most part he stayed his heart on
+his Lord's will, and waited in meek patience till he heard the welcome
+announcement, 'The Master is come and calleth for thee.'
+
+And, dear friends! that same belief that the risen Christ is the Lord
+of life and death, is the only one that can stay our hearts, or make us
+bow with submission to His divine will. He who has conquered death by
+undergoing it is death's Lord as well as ours, and when He wills to
+bring His friends home to Himself, saith to that black-robed servant,
+'Go, and he goeth; do this and he doeth it.' The vision which John saw
+long after this on another shore, washed by a stormier sea, spoke the
+same truth as does this majestic 'I will'--'He that liveth and became
+dead and is alive for evermore,' is by virtue of His divine eternal
+life, and has become in His humanity by virtue of His death and
+resurrection the Lord of life and death. The hands that were nailed to
+the Cross turn the keys of death and Hades. 'He openeth and no man
+shutteth; He shutteth and no man openeth.'
+
+II. We have here before us, in this incident, the service of patient
+waiting.
+
+'If I will that he tarry, what is that to thee? Follow thou Me.' Peter
+is the man of action, not great at reflection; full of impulse,
+restless until his hands can do something to express his thoughts and
+his emotions. On the very Mount of Transfiguration he wanted to set to
+work and build 'three tabernacles,' instead of listening awed to the
+divine colloquy. In Galilee he cannot wait quietly for his Master to
+come, but must propose to his friends to 'go a fishing.' In the
+fishing-boat, as soon as he sees the Lord he must struggle through the
+sea to get at Him; whilst John sits quiet in the boat, blessed in the
+consciousness of his Master's presence and in silently gazing at Him
+verily there. All through the first part of the Acts of the Apostles
+his bold energy goes flashing and flaming. It is always his voice that
+rings out in the front, whether preaching on the Pentecost Day,
+bringing healing to the sick, or fronting the Sanhedrim. His element is
+in the shock of conflict and the strain of work.
+
+John, on the other hand, seldom appears in the narrative. When he does
+so he stands a silent figure by the side of Peter, and disappears from
+it altogether before very long. We do not hear that he did anything. He
+seems to have had no part in the missionary work of the Church.
+
+He 'tarried,' that was all. The word is the same--'abide'--which is so
+often upon his lips in his Gospel and in his Epistles, as expressive of
+the innermost experience of the Christian soul, the condition of all
+fruitfulness, blessedness, knowledge and Christ-likeness. Christ's
+charge to John to 'tarry' did not only, as his brethren misinterpreted
+it, mean that his life was to be continued, but it prescribed the
+manner of his life. It was to be patient contemplation, a 'dwelling in
+the house of the Lord,' a keeping of his heart still, like some little
+tarn up amongst the silent hills, for heaven with all its blue to
+mirror itself in.
+
+And that quiet life of contemplation bore its fruit. In his meditation
+the deeds and words of his Master slowly grew ever more and more
+luminous to him. Deeper meanings came out, revealing new
+constellations, as he gazed into that opening heaven of memory. He
+reaped 'the harvest of a quiet eye' and garnered the sheaves of it in
+his Gospel, the holy of holies of the New Testament; and in his
+Epistles, in which he proclaims the first and last word of revelation,
+'God is love'--the pure diamond that hangs at the end of the golden
+chain let down from Heaven. Often, no doubt, his brethren thought him
+'but an idler in the land,' but at last his 'tarrying' was vindicated.
+
+Now, dear brethren! in all times of the world's history that form of
+Christian service needs to be pressed upon busy people. And there never
+was a time in the world's history, or in the Church's history, when it
+more needed to be pressed upon the ordinary Christian man than at this
+day. The good and the bad of our present Christianity, and of our
+present social life, conspire to make people think that those who are
+not at work in some external form of Christian service for the good of
+their fellows are necessarily idlers. Many of them are so, but by no
+means all, and there is always the danger that the external work which
+good, earnest people do shall become greater than can be wholesomely
+and safely done by them without their constant recourse to this
+solitary meditation, and to tarrying before God.
+
+The stress and bustle of our everyday life; the feverish desire for
+immediate results; the awakened conviction that Christianity is nothing
+if not practical; the new sense of responsibility for the condition of
+our fellows; the large increase of all sorts of domestic, evangelistic,
+and missionary work among all churches in this day--things to be
+profoundly thankful for, like all other good things have their possible
+dangers; and it is laid on my heart to warn you of these now. For the
+sake of our own personal hold on Jesus Christ, for the sake of our
+progress in the knowledge of His truth, and for the sake of the very
+work which some of us count so precious, there is need that we shall
+betake ourselves to that still communion. The stream that is to water
+half a continent must rise high in the lonely hills, and be fed by many
+a mountain rill in the solitude, and the men who are to keep the
+freshness of their Christian zeal, and of the consecration which they
+will ever feel is being worn away by the attrition even of faithful
+service, can only renew and refresh it by resorting again to the
+Master, and imitating Him who prepared Himself for a day of teaching in
+the Temple by a night of communion on the Mount of Olives.
+
+Further, there is here a lesson of tolerance for us all. Practical men
+are always disposed, as I said, to force everybody else into their
+groove. Martha is always disposed to think that Mary is idle when she
+is 'sitting at Christ's feet,' and wants to have her come into the
+kitchen and help her there. The eye which sees must not say to the hand
+which toils, nor the hand to the eye, 'I have no need of thee.' There
+are men who cannot think much; there are men who cannot work much.
+There are men whom God has chosen for diligent external service; there
+are men whom God has chosen for solitary retired musing; and we cannot
+dispense with either the one or the other. Did not John Bunyan do more
+for the world when he was shut up in Bedford Gaol and dreamed his dream
+than by all his tramping about Bedfordshire, preaching to a handful of
+cottagers? And has not the Christian literature of the prison, which
+includes three at least of Paul's Epistles, proved of the greatest
+service and most precious value to the Church?
+
+We need all to listen to the voice which says, 'Come ye apart by
+yourselves into a solitary place, and rest awhile.' Work is good, but
+the foundation of work is better. Activity is good, but the life which
+is the basis of activity is even more. There is plenty of so-called
+Christian work to-day which I fear me is not life but mechanism; has
+slipped off its original foundations, and is, therefore, powerless. Let
+us tolerate the forms of service least like our own, not seek to force
+other men into our paths nor seek to imitate them. Let Peter flame in
+the van, and beard high priests, and stir and fight; and let John sit
+in his quiet horns, caring for his Lord's mother, and holding
+fellowship with his Lord's Spirit.
+
+III. Lastly, we have here the lesson of patient acquiescence in
+Christ's undisclosed will.
+
+The error into which the brethren of the Apostle fell as to the meaning
+of the Lord's words was a very natural one, especially when taken with
+the commentary which John's unusually protracted life seemed to append
+to it. We know that that belief lingered long after the death of the
+Apostle; and that legends, like the stories that are found in many
+nations of heroes that have disappeared, but are sleeping in some
+mountain recess, clustered round John's grave; over which the earth was
+for many a century believed to heave and fall with his gentle breathing.
+
+John did not know exactly what his Master meant. He would not venture
+upon a counter-interpretation. Perhaps his brethren were right, he does
+not know; perhaps they were wrong, he does not know. One thing he is
+quite sure of, that what his Master said was: '_If_ I will that he
+tarry.' And he acquiesces quietly in the certainty that it shall be as
+his Master wills; and, in the uncertainty what that will is, he says in
+effect: 'I do not know, and it does not much matter. If I am to go to
+find Him, well! If He is to come to find me, well again! Whichever way
+it be, I know that the patient tarrying here will lead to a closer
+communion hereafter, and so I leave it all in His hands.'
+
+Dear brethren! that is a blessed state that you and I may come to; a
+state of quiet submission, not of indifference but of acquiescence in
+the undisclosed will of our loving Christ about all matters, and about
+this alternative of life or death amongst the rest. The soul that has
+had communion with Jesus Christ amidst the imperfections here will be
+able to refer all the mysteries and problems of its future to Him with
+unshaken confidence. For union with Him carries with it the assurance
+of its own perpetuity, and 'in its sweetness yieldeth proof that it was
+born for immortality.' The Psalmist learned to say, 'Thou shalt
+afterward receive me to glory,' because he could say, 'I am continually
+with Thee.' And in like manner we may all rise from the experience of
+the present to confidence in that immortal future. Death with his
+'abhorred shears' cuts other close ties, but their edge turns on the
+knot that binds the soul to its Saviour. He who has felt the power of
+communion with the ever-living Christ cannot but feel that such union
+must be for ever, and that because Christ lives, and as long as Christ
+lives, he will live also.
+
+Therefore, to the soul thus abiding in Christ that alternative of life
+or death which looms so large to us when we have not Christ with us,
+will dwindle down into very small dimensions. If I live there will be
+work for me to do here, and His love to possess; if I die there will be
+work for me to do there too, and His love to possess in still more
+abundant measure. So it will not be difficult for such a soul to leave
+the decision of this as of all other things with the Lord of life and
+death, and to lie acquiescent in His gracious hands. That calm
+acceptance of His will and patience with Christ's '_If_' is the reward
+of tarrying in silent communion with Him.
+
+My dear friend! has death to you dwindled to a very little thing? Can
+you say that you are quite sure that it will not touch your truest
+self? Are you able to leave the alternative in His hands, content with
+His decision and content with the uncertainty that wraps His decision?
+Can you say,
+
+  'Lord! It belongs not to my care,
+  Whether I die or live'?
+
+The answer to these questions is involved in the answer to the
+other:--Have you trusted your sinful soul for salvation to Jesus
+Christ, and are you drawing from Him a life which bears fruit in glad
+service and in patient communion? Then it will not much matter whether
+you are in heaven or on earth, for in both places and states the
+essence of your life will be the same, your Companion one, and your
+work identical. If it be 'Christ' for me to live it will be 'gain' for
+me to die.
+
+
+
+END OF VOL. III.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Expositions of Holy Scripture: St.
+John Chaps. XV to XXI, by Alexander Maclaren
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