And as Judas goes out into the night, a new hymn rises to heaven, and a new commandment is given on earth. 'Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you. A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.'
Does it not sound tremendous that the Son of Man is exalted, in the voluntary exile of a human being from the society of his fellow-men, from all communion with his Lord? It is tremendous; but must it not be so? Is not the spirit of selfishness that which has destroyed human society, that which wars against the Son of Man, that which declares that man shall not show forth the image of the perfect and unselfish God? Must it not, shall it not be cast forth utterly from the Church of God? And ought not all humanity, all nature, to join in the Song of praise of the Great High Priest, that Judas did go out into the night to achieve that purpose, to bring about that death, by which God was glorified in His Son, and which led to the glorification of the Son in Himself?
Perhaps the other portion of the passage seems to you plain enough. 'The command to the disciples to love one another—that sounds so beautiful! there is nothing in that to which every heart must not respond.' Brethren, I will tell you plainly: I find far greater difficulty in this commandment than in all the rest of the discourse. The Church has been trying to construe it for eighteen hundred years, and has succeeded miserably ill. I will go further. I will say that, if it is a mere precept written in letters in a book, it is the cruelest precept that was ever uttered. Men say so when they are honest: they say, 'Tell us to do anything but this. We will give, if it is necessary, ten thousand rivers of oil, the first-born of our body for the sin of our soul. But do not tell us to love. That we can do in obedience to no statute, from dread of no punishment.' Even so. If God demands that we should bring this offering to Him or perish, we must perish. But if He says, 'My name and nature is love; my Son has manifested my name and nature to you: you are created in Him; you are created to obey Him: you need not resist Him: His Spirit shall be with you that you may do His will as He has done mine,'—then the precept is not cruel, but blessed and divine. For then in the commandment is life—life for those who first heard it, life for us. He was going away from them where they could not follow Him, that He might make it effectual for those who never saw Him, but over whom He reigns the same Son of Man, the same Son of God, to-day and for ever.
'Simon Peter said unto Him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered Him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now: but thou shalt follow me afterwards. Peter said unto Him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake. Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice.'
This is the commentary on the new commandment and on the whole discourse. Let St. Peter's-day fix it deeply in our hearts. Where lay his error? Why was it inevitable that he should fall? He thought he loved. He fancied his love would stand him in some stead. That delusion must be thoroughly purged away from him. The washing of the feet did not cleanse him as long as he gave himself credit for possessing that which was God's own possession, which none can enter into till he gives up himself. The prophecy to Peter, fearful as it was to him, fearful as it should be to every one of us, is yet the induction to the words, 'Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me,' and to all the depths of consolation which Christ opened to His disciples in His Paschal discourses.
[Lincoln's Inn, 8th Sunday after Trinity, July 13, 1856.]
St. JohnXIV. 25, 26.
These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
The words to St. Peter, with which the 13th chapter closes, must have been a cause of dismay and confusion to all the disciples as well as to him. But it was not the only cause. The words, 'Whither I go, ye cannot follow me,' had called forth his passionate question, and the expression of his readiness to lay down his life. They were terrible enough in themselves, even without reference to betrayal and denial. They must have mixed with the prophecies of both. He spoke of going away. He must mean that a death, a violent death, was awaiting Him. Why He did not say so plainly they could not tell. The darkness of the language added to the gloom of their spirits.
Then He spake again, 'Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare aplace for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.'
He addresses Himself here to all the causes of their trouble. The first was the deepest; for they had been told that a love which they supposed nothing could shake would be shaken to its foundations. They had believed in themselves; that belief would be found to rest upon the sand. The refuge was in another kind of belief altogether. Our translation assumes that they had a belief in God already; that it was to be fortified by a belief in Jesus. There is a justification for that rendering; perhaps it is the right one. But if we take both verbs to be in the imperative, the sense will be good. 'For your faith in your own willingness to follow me substitute a faith in me.' The result of the two constructions is not very different. The disciples had no doubt a faith in God, however feeble a one. It might be made firm and efficient if faith in His Son was joined with it. They wanted a faith as well in God as in Him. Neither could live without the other.
And here also is the deliverance from the other source of anxiety. By uniting the belief in God to the belief in Him, by no longer accepting the first as a tradition from their fathers, the second as belonging especially to themselves, by perceiving that the one is involved in the other, they would enter into the mystery of His speech respecting His own departure; they would see that it was not wilfully obscure; they would know what hindered them from following them, and how they might follow Him. He could not talk of going to the grave—that would convey altogether a false impression about Him and themselves. He had not come out of the grave; that had not been His original home; and to His original home He was returning. There was no other mode of speaking: He was going to His Father's house. And that was their house too. He was not entering it to claim it for Himself, but for them. There were dwellings in it for them all; if not so, He 'would have told them.'
Why would He have told them? Because He had been continually speaking to them of a Father who had sent Him, of a Father whom they were to know, of a Father who was drawing them towards Him. If there was no issue of His mission; if He had done all His work by merely giving them a glimpse of a divine kingdom; if they and He were not to rest in it together; would He not have scattered the false hopes which they were beginning to form, which His own language had kindled?
Yes, brethren! that awful dream which shook the heart of the German poet,—the dream of Christ coming into the world with the message, 'There is no God. You have no Father,' must have been realized, if He did not come with the other message, 'I can declare to you the name of your God. You have a Father. I am come to lead you to Him.' He himself shows us that this is the alternative. 'I would have told you,—I would have sent you to tell the world,—that all the thoughts it has ever entertained of an intercourse between earth and heaven, of a ladder by which man may ascend to God, are lying thoughts, inspired by the spirit of lies; unless I could have said, "There is a Father's house; there are many mansions in it; and I am going to prepare a place for you."' Oh! let us consider it well. Our Christianity must either sweep away all that has sustained the life and hopes of human creatures to this hour; it must become the most inhuman, the most narrow, the most God-denying system that the world has yet seen; it must prepare the way for a general atheism; or it must proclaim a Son of Man who unites mankind to God, who is a way by which the spirit of every man may ascend to the Father who is seeking it.
He had a right then to say, 'Whither I go ye know;' for the knowledge of a Father was that which He had been all along imparting to them. It was that which the whole heart of humanity, expressing itself through songs, myths, forms of worship, had been aiming at. Doctors might have crushed it out of their hearts; peasants could not. And had not the disciples heard of a way to God? What had John the Baptist come for but to prepare such a way? What had the call to repentance, what had the message concerning a kingdom of heaven at hand, and a Word who is the light of men, been, but an opening of this way?
The difficulty was to connect this way with that by which Jesus said He was going. Thomas gave utterance to the difficulty with singular frankness. 'Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?'
Would that we were all as honest in asking questions as he was; then we should be prepared to receive the answer. 'Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.'
Are you so familiar with the first of these verses that it leaves no impression upon you? Connect it with the second, from which, in general, it is widely disjoined, and you will see how much of its meaning we have all still to learn. We think of a way toheaven. Christ, we say, is that way. Even so. But the old question which we saw was so intensely puzzling to the people of Capernaum—which is not less so to us—recurs at each step, 'What is heaven?' Jesus answers by saying that He is the way to the Father. 'No man cometh to the Father but by me.' So the words, 'I am the truth,' acquire an infinite significance. Christ is the way to the eternal truth, which makes free. He is both the way and the truth, because He is one with the Father, who is that eternal truth. And the words, 'I am the life,' are but the same, proceeding from His own lips, which we heard before from the lips of His Evangelist—'In the Word was life.' They are but the gathering up of all the signs which have manifested Him as the Life-giver to the bodies of men,—as Giver of a divine and eternal life to their spirits. But if we forget that Christ's work is to bring men to their Father; and that He is distinct from the Father, as well as one with the Father: if we exchange this evangelical statement for some miserable one of our own, about 'the happiness of a future state,' the announcement of Christ as the way and the truth becomes a mere self-contradiction.
Our Lord's teaching was not in vain. One of the disciples perceived that to know the Father was all in all,—that he wanted nothing but this. 'Philip saith unto Him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.'
We are now, surely, ready for the reply, wonderful as it is: 'Jesus saith unto Him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?'
The revelation of the Father in the Son was then the revelation of the kingdom of heaven; it was the revelation of God Himself. There could be no higher. It was a revelation to that which was highest in man, to that which really constitutes the man. And for the man really to enter into the knowledge and communion of God, to be able to pass out of the fetters and limitations of mortality into this blessedness, this eternal life, must be the consummation of all that Jesus came to do.
He therefore adds: 'Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me He doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.'
Perhaps, when the question took this form, Philip might be startled. He might say to himself, 'Do I believe this? Is this what I mean?' And he might, for a while, be at a loss for the answer. But he could not say, 'I do not believe it,' without saying, 'I do not believe this, and this, and this, which I have heard Jesus say, and seen Jesus do.' However he might wonder at the strangeness and awfulness of the truth, yet he had been led into it most carefully and gradually. It had seemed to come out of himself; to be implied in his acts, and thoughts, and intuitions. It was not like something new which had been given him, but something very old, which he had now for the first time been able to recognise. And his Teacher still deals with him in the same gentle, even method. 'Believe this,' He says, 'on its own ground, on its own evidence, because it explains to you what would be else inexplicable in yourself and in others. Or else believe it for the very works' sake. That, too, is a legitimate process,—for some minds, the easiest and most natural. The works lead back to the Worker. The laws and principles in His mind lead back to the original of them in the mind of the Father.
The works lead back to the Worker. They would do so even when Jesus was no longer the visible instrument in effecting them. 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also. And greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father.' St. Luke says, in the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, that he had written before a treatise of all that Jesusbeganboth to do and to teach. He intimates that he is now going to continue that treatise, to show how much more Jesus did and taught, after He ascended into heaven, than when He was on earth. Here, in the most solemn manner, Jesus makes the same assertion to His disciples. The works that He did upon earth were only the beginning of what He would do—the signs, as St. John has expressed it so constantly, of a power to be more completely exerted, of a purpose to be fulfilled. His returning to the Father is to be the crisis and commencement of a new life to the world,—the pledge that all the influences for health and renovation which the Son of Man had put forth, instead of being exhausted, were to go on proving their vigour and winning their victories from generation to generation.
In the next verse He assigns the reason: 'And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.' He had taught them to pray, saying, 'Our Father.' No doubt they had done as He had bidden them. And the thought, 'He taught us so to speak,' must have been a mighty help when the effort was hardest, when it seemed most impossible to conceive that they had a Father. But to prayin His name, what a new world was opened to them, if they might do that! If there was One who did bind them all together, One in whom they were one, what an emphasis was there in that word, 'Our!' If this Son of Man were indeed the Son of God, what life, what reality there was in the word 'Father!' It was not that the prayer wanted its virtue till the name of Christ was openly, formally introduced into it. If that had been so, His own prayer must have been unfit for the Apostles and for us. All prayer that had ever ascended to God had ascended in His name. The Word was with God; the Word was the light of men. All things were created by Him, and in Him. When He had taught His spiritual creatures to feel they had need of a Father of their spirits, He had awakened in them the impulse to pray. The Father of those spirits was seeking such to worship Him, and owned their worship as that of children made in His image, unable to live apart from Him. In the Mediator, He could meet those to whom He had thus given power to become sons of God; He could own them as the spokesmen of humanity. But now it could be declared in what name men had prayed; how it was that the spirits in them answered to each other; in whom God had looked upon them, and been satisfied. No such revelation had yet been made, no such assurance had been given, that every beggar who desired that God's will might be done on earth as it is in heaven, was praying for that which Christ Himself must certainly accomplish. He goes on, 'If ye love me, keep my commandments.' The Apostles thought, as we saw last Sunday, that they could suffer for Christ because they loved Him. They were right in believing that love is the ground of all action and of all suffering, but they were utterly wrong in supposing that their own love could be the ground of either. If this love were in any degree an effort of their own, if it were not God's love working in them, it would prove, as He had warned Peter that it would, the weakest of all things; before the cock crowed, it might be found good for nothing. But if they loved Him, let them keep His commandments; let them submit themselves to the will of One in whom love dwells perfectly, from whom it flows forth freely. 'And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him. But ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.'
This promise, I believe, is the characteristical one of those Paschal conversations; it is that which distinguishes them from our Lord's discourses to the multitude. It is most important, therefore, to observe how the subject is introduced, and how it is connected with the passages we have just been considering. The new commandment, which we find in the previous chapter, had been, 'Love one another, as I have loved you;' which was further expounded by the words, 'As I have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet.' It had been a social commandment. Each obeyed it in so far as he regarded himself as one of a family, under a Master who was his Elder Brother. The loss of fellowship was the loss of allegiance; the loss of allegiance was the loss of fellowship. Since He had given them this commandment, He had been speaking to them of His own union with the Father, of His own obedience to the Father. One truth lay beneath the other; they must be learnt together.Theirunion would be the way to the apprehension of this union.Theirobedience would enable them to enter into this obedience. But, on the other hand, they would find union among themselves impossible till they had a glimpse of the fundamental unity; they would find human obedience impossible till they believed that there was a divine obedience.
But how should they bind these two truths together in their hearts? What would save them from revolving in a hopeless circle, never knowing whether the divine lesson or the human practice must come first?
Before they well knew what they wanted, what deliverer they could have in their infinite perplexity, He, their Head, would pray the Father, and He would give them a Paraclete, one who would be always ready to help when they called for Him, one who should not be with them to-day and gone to-morrow, but with them for ever; not an external Teacher, but a Guide of their spirits; not a Spirit who would obey their fancies or notions, but a Spirit of truth, to whom they must yield, that they might be freed from their confusions and falsehoods. This Spirit, it is added, 'the world could not receive.' That world or order which does not own a Head, which is made up of sections and parties, to which the Word of God comes, and which rejects Him,—such a world is not capable of a uniting, fusing Spirit, not capable even of conceiving how there can be such a Spirit, how He can enter into human beings with all their different tastes and propensities, all their contradictions, to mould them into one, how He can give them one heart and one soul. But the Apostles did know it. They had the germs of unity within them; amidst all their rivalries and discords, they aspired to be one. The Spirit was dwellingwiththem even then; He should beinthem.
I wish you to observe how every word and every symbolical act of Christ has pointed to the disciples as a body, as a family; how all commandments and all promises have reference to them in this character; how the difference between them and the world was not that they were individually better than the persons of whom it consisted, not that they had blessings which the world was not intended to be a partaker of, but simply that the Son of Man had chosen them, and had constituted them His witnesses to the world. And to those who owned Him as the Head of their body, whether they saw Him or not, He would come. 'I will not leave you orphans,' He says; 'I will come to you.' If they were left without Him who alone had told them of a Father, who was their only bond to a Father, they would be in the strictest sense orphans. These last words took off the rough edge of that sentence which, with all its apparent fulness and richness, must have sounded sorrowful in the ears of the disciples, as if there could be a substitute for Him, another Paraclete. In some wonderful manner He would Himself be among them; in some wonderful manner His Father would be among them. Else why did He speak of orphans? And the next words made His meaning more definite, if not at once more clear, to them: 'Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me. Because I live, ye shall live also.' 'The world, which judges only by sense, whichbelievesnothing, will have no organ by which to apprehend me. I shall seem to it to be far away. It will proclaim that it has got rid of me. But you will apprehend me through the spirit's organ. Your inner life will rest upon my life. In your own selves you will be in contact with me.'
'At that day,' He goes on, 'ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.' 'In that day, when you shall begin truly to see me, when you shall know me more fully than you have ever known me yet, in that day the great mystery of my union with the Father will come out fully before you. It will come forth to explain another mystery, which without it would be incredible, that as I am in Him, so you are in me; that as He is in me, so am I in you.'
We shall find how this mystery, in connexion with the other, becomes the subject of the subsequent discourse, till it finds its fullest expansion and expression in the prayer of the 17th chapter. But it was necessary that He should set before them once again the nature of the mystery, and the way to the knowledge of it, lest they should lose themselves in abortive efforts to embrace it. 'He that hath my commandments,' He says, 'and keepeth them, He it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father; and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.' The love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father, was the ground of their union. He who would remember Christ's commandments that they should love one another, and would watch over them and cherish them in his heart, he would show his love to Christ; and to him the love of the Father would be manifested, to him the Son would manifest Himself.
This idea of a secret manifestation which the world could not share in, may have seemed merely astonishing to some of the disciples,—may have awakened certain feelings of vanity, as if they would be His exclusive favourites, in others of them. Either feeling might have been in Jude, or both might have been mixed, when he said, 'Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?' The answer is one which, if it were taken in, would destroy all exclusiveness, but would not diminish wonder: 'Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my words: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.' If a man loved Christ, he would hold fast those words of His in which He said that God 'loved the world, and gave His only-begotten Son for it;' that God 'sent not His Son to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.' And then, because these words were dear to him, and he wished to live in the spirit of them, the Father who loved the world would come and make His abode with him, would impart to him His own likeness, and enable him in a measure to enter into His love. But one who cared nothing for Christ, would not care for these words of His, would not keep them in his heart, would not really believe them, would not desire to have his own mind fashioned in accordance with them. And seeing that Christ's word is not His, but the Father's who sent Him, that Father would remain to such a person always hidden and unknown.
'These things,' He adds, 'have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance.' It may be hypercritical to complain of our translators for rendering μένων by 'being yet present;' but I cannot help thinking that 'remaining,' or 'while I remain with you,' would have diminished the likelihood of a misapprehension which must make much of what He says here and afterwards unintelligible. That He was going away He had told them; only one day longer He would remain among them as their visible Teacher. But, assuredly, He declares solemnly that He shall not cease to be present with them; it is the express object of His conversation to give them that assurance. Nowhere does it come forth more strongly than in this sentence. What He said to them while they could look into His face, while they could see His lips moving, was but poorly apprehended by them; only a small portion of its meaning passed into them. Their real learning would come hereafter,—the vital recollection and understanding of the very words they were listening to then. Did they not feel that they wanted some one to fix the sense in their hearts, before the sounds mingled with the common air? Did they not want an interpreter, who should not translate one set of phrases by another, but should translate phrases into realities, and should open the spirit to entertain them? Were they not conscious of a hebetude and dulness, which the divinest wisdom could not penetrate as long as it remained on the outside of them? Did not the dulness hinder their intercourse with each other? Did any know exactly what the other meant? Did they not talk of trifles, because they despaired of breaking through the ice which enclosed their neighbour's heart, and had not even learnt the secret of thawing their own?
Yes; in this way they were taught that they must have a Spirit such as He spoke of, to be with them, not occasionally, but continually; to be with them, not as separate creatures, but as fellow-men; to be the Inspirer of their memories, their understandings, their affections; to be their Deliverer from shallowness; to be their Guide to that well of living water at the bottom of which truth lies. It was thus that they learnt, however imperfectly, that this Spirit must be a Divine Person,—could not be a mere vague and floating influence. It was thus that they sprung to the conviction, however hard it might be, which our Lord had expressed, and which He repeated in another form of words here, that the Spirit must bring Him near to them, must come in His name, must bind them together in His name. It was thus they learnt that a Spirit, which did not proceed from a Father and testify of a Father, could not be the Spirit of truth or the Spirit of peace.
He had been described already by one of these names. Our Lord now fixed the thoughts of His disciples upon the other. 'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.' It was the legacy which they needed above all others. But how could it be received? How can a treasure which all experience proclaims to be open to thefts, lessened by a thousand accidents, dependent upon mental and bodily temperament,—how can this be actually left, not to one, two, or three, upon certain conditions, but to a whole body permanently and not capriciously, 'as the world giveth?' Christ's words imported this; the Apostles must have felt that He was deceiving them if less than this was meant or was performed. Only a Spirit to abide for ever with them; a Paraclete to whom they could have recourse when fightings were most terrible without; One whom they might find beneath all the wars and fightings within themselves; one who could unite them to each other, because He united them to the Father;—only such a Spirit could be the gift of peace which Christ bestowed; only concerning such a Spirit could He have said, 'This is my peace.'
He repeats the words He had used a short time before. He said, 'Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.' He could utter them now with a new and mightier force; for now, far better than before, He could remove that cause of trouble, the dread that He was going away from them. 'Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.'
The explanation of His going is the same as before. It is the return to a Father's house,—a house with many mansions,—a house for them as for Him. But, since the promise of the Spirit has been given, He can say, 'I come again unto you.' 'It is not merely that you will know I am in a home which you cannot see, in a home which is out of the reach of the tumults and distractions that surround you—a home of peace, and truth, and love; it is that here, in the midst of this earth, peace and truth and love shall abide with you. It is that I have a kingdom in this world; it is that my Spirit will be with you, to enable you to make continual inroads upon the world which "sees me not, neither knows me," to bring fresh portions of it under my government.' This coming again into the regions of earth—coming as a king and conqueror, yet still as a fellow-sufferer to bear the cross with His disciples, is a new element of consolation. But it does not displace the former. The celestial house is still to be the object and final resting-place of their thoughts and hopes. They were to rejoice that their Lord was there, in His proper and eternal dwelling, united as a Son to a Father, doing homage as a Son to a Father, confessing there, as He did on earth, His own glory to be derived from the Father. They were to rejoice for His sake, because they loved Him; and that rejoicing for His sake would be the greatest elevation, and the highest satisfaction to themselves. They would look through Christ to the Father; they would see all things issuing from Him, and tending to their fruition and perfection in Him.
'And now,' He concludes, 'I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe. Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me. But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.'
That which was coming to pass, we can have no doubt, was the death of the Son of Man, His ascension, the gift of the Spirit; for of all these He has discoursed, as if they were inseparably connected. Each event would be imperfectly understood till the next came to expound it. When the Spirit was given, there would be a flood of light upon all the acts of Christ; all the lines of the world's history would be seen to be converging towards Him. But an hour of darkness must precede this illumination, an hour in which the living Word, the upholder of all things, would be almost silent; the hour, He calls it, of the prince of this world, the hour when righteousness would seem to be put down for ever, when the priestly tyrants of Judæa, and the imperial tyrants of Rome, would seem to have established their supremacy. But their master hadnothing in Jesus. The cross upon which they raised Him would stand forth as the perfect opposite of his selfishness the perfect manifestation of the Divine love. For the world's sake, that cross would be set up; for the world's sake, He spoke these things to His disciples. He would have the world know that He loved the Father, and that He was fulfilling His Father's commandment in dying for it. What a wonderful conclusion to a discourse which He had addressed to His own, whom He had chosen out of the world! What a wonderful preparation for that discourse concerning the vine and the branches, which He seems to have spoken as He walked with His disciples towards the Garden of Gethsemane!
[Lincoln's Inn, 9th Sunday after Trinity, July 20, 1856.]
St. JohnXV. 1.
I am the true Vine, and my Father is the Husbandman.
The words, 'Arise, let us go hence,' with which the 14th chapter concludes, have been taken by some to indicate that our Lord was about to lead His disciples into a higher region of thought and of hope than they had yet visited. The feeling is a very natural one that everything in these conversations must have a sublime sense, that no words can be used in them in their common earthly sense. But it is not an altogether healthy feeling. It may lead us to forget that the disciples were sitting in an actual room, at an actual supper; it may give us the notion that we have been transported into some fantastical world. That is a heavy price to pay for a refined or spiritual interpretation. It may make the whole life of the Son of Man unintelligible to us.
From the beginning of the 13th chapter, our Lord has been preparing them to 'arise and go hence.' He has been leading them towards that Father's house, whither He is going and to which He is the way. We might say that He reaches the mountain summit, in His prayer in the 17th chapter; yet even that must be said with caution, because His death and ascension were yet to come, and the Spirit had not yet been poured upon them. But though nothing which He ever spoke is deeper, or has had a mightier effect on mankind, than the passage of which I am about to speak, we do not conceive of it rightly if we describe it as a departure from earthly facts or earthly images. We are about to be told of the discipline which is necessary for those who are upon earth fighting, not transfigured, and how the discipline will be administered. The old form of speaking by parables, which the disciples might easily have thought was intended only for the multitude, and might be discarded in the more advanced stages of their education, is resorted to again. The forms of earth are still claimed as interpreters of the kingdom of heaven.
I think it is better, therefore, to take the words in their simplest sense,—to suppose that our Lord and His disciples did arise from the supper as He spoke, and that the first object which they saw as they walked towards the Mount of Olives was avine. That tree had been the old lesson-book of Prophets. They had watched its growth; had wondered at the life which circulated through its branches; had thought of the care which was needful in the choice of a place to plant it in; of the incessant vigilance which must be bestowed upon it after it had grown. 'Thou hast brought,' they said in their songs, 'a vine out of Egypt, and planted it.' 'The house of Israel,' they said in their discourses, 'is the Lord's vineyard, and Judah His pleasant plant.' Then the question arose, 'Why does it bring forth wild grapes? Will it never fill the land?' Which led to the other deeper questions, 'How is it that these comparisonsmustbe true in spite of all experience which seems to prove them deceitful? What makes our nation one,—what gives it life, though we seem a mere set of loose, wretched, dead sticks, trying to be separate?'
Here was the answer, 'I am the true Vine.' As the words, 'I am the good Shepherd,' explained all the previous uses ofthatsymbol, and showed why they were not fictitious, so this sentence interprets all the passages of the Old Testament which connect the life of trees with the life of man. 'You have been told that you were the branches of a vine; that God was pruning you, and lopping off dead boughs from you. Now, look into the heart of this mystery. In me you have been made one; from me you have drawn life.My FatherHimself has been, andis, theHusbandman. It was over His own Son that He was watching. It was the branches inMEwhich were not bearing fruit that He was taking away. It was every branch inMEthat beareth fruit which He was purging, that it might bring forth more fruit.' Here was the interpretation of the unity of the nation; for here is the interpretation of the unity of man. We shall find no wider, or deeper, or more practical one. The more we apply it to all the circumstances of our lives, and to all the problems of history, the more satisfactory it will appear to us. But first, as always, Christ Himself applies it to the persons immediately before Him.
'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. 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.' The words in the 13th chapter, 'Ye are clean, but not all,' led me to anticipate what I should say about these, 'Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.' I said that He treated them as a pure and holy body, and that the unclean person was he who would not belong to the body, but chose to dwell in his own isolation. What is added to that statement here is, that Christ's word was that which purified them. They had no unity of their own, or purity of their own. He spoke to them in their inmost hearts, claimed them as His. That quickening, uniting, purifying word, going forth from Him, was the source of their life, their purity, their unity. What they had to do was not to put forth self-willed efforts for the sake of making themselves better, or wiser, or more united, but simply to abide in Him, to believe that they were His, to act as if they were. I resort to other forms of expression, as if I hoped to make that which He chose clearer; but, in fact, that is immeasurably plainer, and fuller, and deeper, than any I can imagine. 'Abide in me' at once recals the natural analogy, while it is in strictness appropriate only to the condition of a voluntary being. It implies a possible separation, an act of adhesion; and yet it implies that this separation is altogether monstrous and anomalous; that this adhesion is merely the refusal to break a cord of love with which God is actually binding us. 'Abide in me' is doubtless a command; but it is supported by the other clause, 'and I in you.' 'Rest in me as if you were united to me; and a living power shall go forth from me to sustain and quicken you. And all this that you maybear fruit.' That part of the symbol is never for a moment lost sight of. The relation of the branch to the stem implies the passage of a productive life from one into the other. The secret processes within are tending to a result which shall be visible. Christ tells them that they can bear nothing, that they will be utterly barren and dry, unless they retain their attachment to Him, unless He communicates a sap to them continually. He is not satisfied with the comparison; He again puts the doctrine into a more direct form, as if to assure them that He was not using metaphors, that He was taking the most direct method of bringing before them that which was not real butthereality, notafact, butthefact of their existence. 'I am the Vine, ye are the branches.' 'The energies and powers within you, when I quicken them, shall bring forth thoughts, deeds, words, that shall be living, and shall spread life. Without me all is dead.'
The last clause has brought the law home to the disciples themselves; but the former was more general: 'He that abideth in me, and I in him.' And so is the 6th verse: 'Except a man' (any one) 'abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.' That 'any one' gives the sentence a fearful significance. Let us think well of it. Have we never felt as if, though no voice had cut us off from the fellowship of our brethren, we had cut ourselves off? Have we never felt an internal withering, as if the springs of life in us were all dried up? What was the secret of this condition, which we could trace to no outward violence? Or do we ask, 'What is the cure? How may that separation be put an end to before it becomes fixed and everlasting? How may that secret withering be arrested before it ends in absolute death?' The evil is traced to its source when we are told that we have not abided in Him; the remedy lies in that command, and in no other. The dead sticks are gathered into a bundle and burnt. But the sap has not gone out of the Vine; that may still make the bough to sprout and bud.
The next verses take us a step further. '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.' He had said, 'Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will do it.' He can now give the words, 'in my name,' their full force. It is not the name of one who may have power with Him to whom they are pleading, but who is far fromthem. It is the name of Him in whom they are actually dwelling, in whom they are one. And His words are the expression of His Father's will. So far, then, as those words dwell in them, and ascend up from them in prayer to God, so far they are asking according to His will, and He is doing that will in granting them their petitions. Not merely, as we render the passage, 'It shall be done for you,' but 'It shall become to you.' God's will shall work with your will, which it is moulding to itself. And so God is glorified in the fruit which you bring forth. The more rich you are in love and good works, the more is He Himself manifested in you, the more are you Christ's disciples.
Thus we are brought back to the ultimate ground of this relation between Christ and human beings. 'As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: abide in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in His love.' This is the continually recurring burden of this divine song. The love of the Father is at the root of all. The Son can do nothing but in obedience to that. He believes it, obeys it, and so lives in it. The law of the disciples' being is the same. They are to believe in the love which is the manifestation and reflection of this love, to obey it, to live in it.
And now another gift is bestowed which we expect less, on this night of sorrow, than even that gift of peace of which I spoke last Sunday. 'These things have I said unto you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full' (or fulfilled). Remember that this was spoken after He had been 'troubled in spirit' at the thought of His betrayal, not long before He was to pass through the agony. If any one says to himself,—who has not said it to himself?—'What is joy to me? how can I ever be partaker of that?' let him think thus. 'Christ knew, as none of us ever have known or shall know, what the death and extinction of all joy means; what it is to be alone; what it is to feel deserted of men and deserted of God. And yet He spoke of His joy, and of communicating that joy to the disciples. Whence came it? What was it? How could it be communicated? It was obedience to His Father's commands. It came from His submitting to those commands, though they brought Him to suffering, and desertion, and death. It is communicated to men along with that same power of obedience and endurance. His joy was to do a will which He knew to be a loving will, into whatsoever heights or depths it might bring Him. That obedience with all its consequences, He says, He will impart to us if we will receive it.'
Therefore He goes on: '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. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I commandyou. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth. But I have called you friends; for all things which I have heard from my Father, I have made known unto you.'
You see how earnestly He repeats those words which to many of us have such a paradoxical sound. 'Icommandyou to love.' 'Just the thing,' we say in our hearts, 'which cannot be commanded, which must come from choice.' 'Just that,' He answers, 'which cannot come from choice, which must come from submission.' If a loving Being were not the Lord of our wills, were not the Lord of the universe, we might make mighty efforts to love, supposing we had been taught by some visitant from another region what love was; and every such effort would be a rebellious struggle against our Master and our destiny. If there is a perfect Love creating and sustaining all things, if men have a Father, then such efforts cannot be rebellious, must be in conformity to this law: 'Love as I have loved you.' I have said this before, while dwelling on another part of this discourse; but I must say it again and again, for it is the principle which underlies the whole of it, and upon which the distinction that is made here between servants and friends entirely depends. Christ manifests the greatest love which, He says, can be manifested. The love which He manifests is His Father's. He lays down His life in submission to that. They become His friends by yielding to that love, by confessing it, by allowing it to have dominion over them. He calls them no longer servants, but friends, because servants only know what they are to do, without knowing why they are to do it; whereas He has told them the very secret of His Father's mind, the ground on which His acts and His precepts rest. It is not that the friend is less under authority than the servant. It is not that the one does what He is bidden, and the other may do what he likes. It is that the friend enters into the very nature of the command,—that it is a command which is addressed to his will, and which moulds his will to its own likeness.
In strict consistency with this language, He goes on: 'Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and have ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He may give it you.'All sectarianism, all self-seeking and self-willed religion, is based upon the idea, 'We have chosen Him. By an act of faith, or an act of love, we have entered into a relation with Him, which but for that act would not be.' And the whole Gospel turns upon the opposite maxim to this: 'I have chosen you.' 'You are merely obeying a call. You are merely confessing a relation, with the making of which you had nothing to do.' Even when this doctrine of election has taken a narrow form,—even when it has been recognised chiefly as exclusive,—it has had a mighty power over the hearts of men. They have given themselves up, as they never could do when they thought they had selected their own Master, or were going upon errands of their own. But when it takes the form which it has here; when Christ, who has loved them to the death, commands them to love others as He has loved; when He tells them that He has placed them in their different circumstances that they may go and bring forth fruit,—that fruit being the men whom they shall persuade that they too belong to a race for which Christ has died, and which the Father loves;—there cannot be any principle which is at once so humbling and so elevating, which so takes away all notion from the disciple that there is any worth in his own deeds or words, which gives him so confident an assurance that God's word, spoken through him or through any man, will not return to Him void. And that, if I am not mistaken, is the reason why the promise, that whatever is asked of the Father in Christ's name shall be granted, is again introduced here with the variation, 'He may give it,' instead of 'I will do it.' A man who feels that he is called to a work, does not therefore feel power to accomplish it. He may feel—as Moses did, and as Jeremiah did—an increased feebleness, an utter childishness; but he understands that he may ask the Father, whose will he is called to do, that that will may be done; so he wins a strength which is and is not his own.
We wonder to find the command which we have heard so often, delivered once more in the 17th verse. But we presently discover that it is as an introduction to a new subject, and that in relation to that subject the old words have a new force. 'These things I command you, that ye love one another. 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 its 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 which I spake to you, The servant is not greater than his Master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also.' Here the love which He commands them to have for one another—the love which is His own, and which He inspires—is contrasted with the hatred of the world. The one difference which we have already discovered between the world and those whom He chooses out of it, is that they confess a Centre, and that the world confesses none; that they desire to move, each in his own orbit, about this Centre, and that the world acknowledges only a revolution of each man about himself. The world, indeed, cannot realize its own principles. It must have companies, parties, sects,—bodies acknowledging some principle of cohesion, aspiring after a kind of unity. Still, as a world, this is the description of it; and therefore, as a world, it must hate all who say, 'We are a society bound together, not by any law of our own, not by an election of our own, but by God's law and election. And His law is a law of sacrifice. He gives up His Son; His Son gives up Himself. We are to give up ourselves in obedience to His Spirit, that we may do His work.'
As He had so lately called them friends, not servants, we may be surprised that here He gave them the old name again. But the title, servant, is not now a dishonourable title for those whom He has called friends. Since the Master became a servant, His friends must be content to be servants, otherwise they do not know what their Lord doeth; they cannot enter into His mind. With this service, too, they must take the hatred and persecution of the world as part of their endowment, as one of the treasures which their Lord shares with them. If it does not hate them, they must always fear that they are not loving each other, or loving it as God loves it.
'But all these things will they do to 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 nowhave they both seen and hated both me and my Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, They hated me without a cause.' These are, perhaps, the most terrible words in the Old or New Testament. No descriptions of divine punishment which are written anywhere, can come the least into comparison with them for awfulness and horror. This gratuitous hatred—this hatred of Christ by men because they hate God, this hatred of God because He has manifested and proved Himself to be love—is something which passes all our conceptions, and yet which would not mean anything to us if our consciences did not bear witness that the possibility of it lies in ourselves. And do not let us put away that thought, brethren, or the other which is closely akin to it, that such hatred is only possible in a nation which, like the Jewish, is full of religious knowledge and of religious profession. There, our Lord tells us Himself, was a hatred of Him and of His Father which could be found nowhere else,—there, among scribes, and Pharisees, and chief priests. Let us ask God, that none of us may say of his brother, 'This crime may be committed by thee;' but each of himself: 'God be merciful to me a sinner. Keep me by Thy love, abiding in Thy love. Help me to keep Christ's commandment of loving my brother as well as Thee; else, if I am left to myself, I may sink into such a hell of hatred, as would be worse than all other hells that men have ever feared to think of.'
Let us pray this prayer, and then our Lord's last words in this chapter will come to us as the most wonderful relief, as the very answer which we long for. 'But when the Comforter shall come, whom I will send to you fromthe 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.' To have the Comforter, the Paraclete, with us, this is the security that the spirit of hatred shall not overcome us. To have the Spirit of truth with us, this is the security that we shall not be brought to believe a lie, or to disbelieve in the God of truth. To have Him testifying of Christ, the Son of Man and the Son of God, is the security that we shall abide in Him who has given the greatest proof of love that can be given, by laying down His life for His friends. To be able to testify of Him because we have been with Him, even when He was hidden from us, and we did not know how near He was; to testify of Him by our words and our deeds; this is the security that He is using us for His own gracious purpose, and that He will be glorified in the fruits which He will cause us to bring forth.
[Lincoln's Inn, 10th Sunday after Trinity (Morning), July 27, 1856.]
St. JohnXVI. 1.
These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.
The things which Jesus had just spoken to the disciples were, that His countrymen 'hated Him without a cause;' that they 'hated both Him and His Father.' These things were to take away the scandal which it would be to them to find that they made themselves hated by proclaiming a Gospel of peace and good will. 'They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.' It would be a strange result; fellowship with their brethren destroyed because they proclaimed the ground of fellowship; death inflicted upon them because they preached that death was overcome. Might not poor Galilæans, conscious of folly and sin, often say to themselves: 'We must be wrong; the rulers of the land must be wiser than we are. Ought we to turn the world upside down for an opinion of ours?' But 'these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.' 'They have not known what the Lord and Light of their spirit meant: do you think they can know what you mean? They have hated my character; they have hated God in His own essential nature: would you expect them to love you who are sent forth to testify what that nature is, and how it has been manifested?'
All His education had been gradual; no word had been spoken till it was needed. So it is now. '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?' His meaning would only be entered into fully when the events explained it; but what a difference would it make to them that they could assure themselves then, 'ItisHis meaning! All this He told us of.' And this would be no mere act of memory, at least if memory is only concerned with the past. It would do more than anything else to remove the confusion which beset them, which His own words seemed almost to increase, as to His absence from them, and His presence with them. He had said that He was going to the Father; He had said that His going would be an elevation and a blessing to them. He had said that He should come to them. They could not see their way through these apparent inconsistencies. They had begun to ask whither He was going, but they had stopped short in the inquiry. The news of His departure possessed them; that was an unspeakable weight upon their minds. They scarcely thought that any knowledge of the 'where' would materially lighten it.
'Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for youthat 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.' It was the hardest of all truths; the hearts which grief had occupied could afford little room for it. 'It is expedient that I should go away.' Again the doubt will have come back in its full force: 'What compensation can there be for His absence? What new friend can take His place?' Before, the promise, however difficult to comprehend, 'I will come to you,' had taken away some of the bitterness of their anticipations. Now it was necessary that they should face the whole subject; that they should apprehend the Comforter as a distinct Person from Him who was speaking to them; that they should rise by degrees to feel how compatible this distinctness was with perfect unity. We, with our rough blundering dogmatism, may think that we can teach these lessons at once; and when we find how difficult it is for men to take them in, because they are men like ourselves—incapable of seeing more than half a truth at a time—may conclude just as rashly that no processes can ever bring any but a few learned and subtle men to such a discovery. But He who knew what was in man, was content to give His disciples line upon line; to go over the steps of His teaching often again; to make them conscious first of one need of their spirits, then of another; to present each by turns with the satisfaction which it demands; to be indifferent about apparent contradictions, so long as real contradictions were escaped. He who knew what was in man was sure that it is not the doctor or the systematizer, but the human being, who wants to be instructed in the distinction of Persons and the unity of Substance; that our minds rest upon the principles to which these opposing words are the indices; that the fisherman or the publican feels after them with his heart, and assumes them in his discourse; that he and the doctor may enter into them together, when both are willing to perform the highest demand of science as well as of faith, by becoming little children.
Here, then, He tells them that His departure out of their sight was actually necessary in order that the Paraclete—whom He had spoken of as the bond of their union, as their efficient Teacher and Friend—should come to them. You would have supposed, perhaps, that He would have gone on to tell them what blessings the coming of this Paraclete would confer uponthem, which He would not confer upon the world, since He had said that the world would not receive Him or know Him. It may cause us some surprise, then, to read: 'And when He is come, He will reprove theWORLDof sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 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.' It is impossible to get rid of this difficulty by any loose interpretation of the wordworld. It is one of the characteristic and vital words in all this discourse. It is used, as I think, with great precision and uniformity throughout St. John: to evade its force here, is to destroy his meaning altogether. On the other hand, if we will adhere steadfastly to the language as it stands, we gain a fresh and brilliant illustration of the work to which our Lord had destined His disciples, and apart from their performance of which they could look for no blessings to themselves. They were to be witnesses to a world which had forgotten its Centre, concerning that Centre; witnesses to a world which was created by a righteous God, and was meant to show forth His righteousness, in whom this righteousness dwelt, and how it was to be sought after; witnesses to a world which had set up a prince of its own, that his power must come to an end, that it had been proved to be weakness.
How could they fulfil such a mission as this? What could their arguments or their rhetoric avail to bring home such convictions to a single Jew or a single idolater, to say nothing of a world of Jews, or a world of idolaters? By their very nature, such convictions must be inward and radical. They could not play about the surface of men's hearts, but must penetrate into them. Whence could come this demonstration? Our Lord tells the disciples at once that they are to despair of its ever coming from them, that they are to be sure it will come from the Spirit with which He will endue them. Not they, but He, will convince the world; because, though the world may not receive Him neither know Him, it has been formed to receive all quickening life from Him; it must confess His presence, even if it would hide itself from His presence. And the disciples were to go forth in this faith; in the certainty that wherever they met a man, Jew or Gentile, there was one whose Head was Christ, who owed his life to Christ, who was receiving light from Christ, and who only sinned because he did not own this Head, confess this Life, open his conscience and heart to this Light. The Spirit in them would show them this truth concerning themselves, and would only show it to them concerning themselves, because they were partakers of the nature which every worshipper of Jupiter or Brahm had as much as they. The disciples were to go forth in the certainty that the righteous Man whom they had once seen upon earth, in whom they had beheld the grace and truth of the Father, was the same when they saw Him no more. They were to believe in Him as the Lord their righteousness; they were to believe that the righteousness of God was in Him; so they were to rise up righteous men, children bearing the image of their Father. The Spirit within them would give them this faith; the Spirit within them would make them partakers of this righteousness. And that same Spirit would convince the world of this righteousness, would bring this standard continually before it, would make this standard the real measure of its laws, its polity, its customs; the measure of its deflections from right and truth. There would be an inward conviction, a continually growing conviction among men, that nothing short of this could be the human standard, even when they were setting up another, even when they were pronouncing this to be unattainable, even when they said that they would rather not attain it if they could. The disciples were to go forth in the belief that when the spirit of selfishness seemed strongest in themselves, strongest among their fellows,—when they were most disposed to bow to him and acknowledge him as their king,—he was not their king, but a lying usurper, whose pretensions Christ had confounded in the wilderness and on the cross, whom they could trample underfoot if they remembered that Christ's Father was their Father. The Spirit would teach them that this prince of the world was not their prince. He would teach them, therefore, that he was not indeed, and by right, any man's prince, that all might disclaim him, that for the sake of all he had been judged. And the Spirit would convince the world also of this, that the untruths to which it bows down can have only a brief dominion; that that which is, must prevail over that which is not; that all evil lingers on under a curse which has been pronounced, and shall be fully and eternally executed.
All this they would learn hereafter; it could only be prophecy to them now. And there were many things which it would be of no avail to utter even in prophecy. 'I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now. But,' our Lord goes on, 'when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all truth,'—into the whole truth, not merely into scattered fragments of it. For He shall have dominion over your whole being. He shall guide it into that fulness which it longs for, the fulness of God Himself. But it shall be still aguidance; He will take you by regular steps along the road which leads to this satisfaction. 'For He shall not speak of Himself, but what He shall hear that shall He speak, and He shall tell you things to come.' We should not, perhaps, be able to make out the force of the words, 'He shall not speak of Himself,' if the history of the Church and the world had not expounded them. Again and again there have been teachers in the Church who have spoken loudly of an illuminating Spirit. They have said that a dispensation of the Spirit had come, which made the old Gospel of Jesus Christ poor and obsolete; they have said that now the Spirit was all that men had to think of or believe in. So spoke a portion of the Franciscans, in the thirteenth century; some of the brethren and sisters of the Free Spirit, in the fourteenth; some of the Anabaptists, in the sixteenth; some of the Quakers, in the seventeenth; so speak not a few who are revolting against Materialism, without having found any safe standing-ground from which to oppose it, in our own. The spirit in such men speaks 'of itself.' Such a spirit, our Lord says, is not the Holy Spirit; for He will speak whatsoever things He hears; He will bring to us the message of a Father, from whom He comes. He will not make us impatient of a Lord and Ruler, but desirous of one, eager to give up ourselves to His guidance, eager to get rid of our own fancies and conceits, and to enter more into fellowship with all men. He will not allow us to be satisfied with our advanced knowledge or great discoveries, but will always be showing us things thatare coming; giving us an apprehension of truths that we have not yet reached, though they be truths which are 'the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.' That may not be the whole meaning of the words, 'things to come;' the phrase may intimate that foresight which is given to those who study principles, meditating on the past, and believing in God. The Spirit which our Lord promises is assuredly the Spirit who spoke by the prophets of old, and has spoken by all His servants who have humbled themselves, and sought light and wisdom from above. But these two senses do not contradict each other; and the first is, I think, more directly suggested by the context. It may also imply that the Spirit, who does not speak of Himself, leads men away from that incessant poring over the operations and experiences of their inner life, which is unhealthy and morbid, to dwell upon the events which are continually unfolding themselves in God's world under His providence, and teaches them to expect the final issue of those events in the complete manifestation and triumph of the Son of God.
The last meaning would connect the 13th verse with the 14th, 'He shall glorify me.' 'Whenever the Spirit of truth is working most energetically in you, the effect will be that the glory of the Deliverer and Head of man becomes more dear to you; that you proclaim me more and more earnestly in that character.' 'For He, the Comforter, shall take of mine, and shall shew it to you.' 'He shall, in your hours of deepest gloom and despondency, reveal to you One who is above yourselves, One in whom you may forget yourselves, One in whom you may see all that perfection of your nature which it will drive you to despair to seek in yourselves. Not, indeed, that you could be satisfied with even this vision, if it were only the vision of a Son of Man, of what is most glorious in humanity.' 'But all things which the Father hath are mine.' 'All the glory of the Godhead shines forth in the Manhood; all that original goodness and truth and love which man is created to long for and to show forth.' 'Therefore, said I, He shall take of mine and shall shew it to you.'
He has returned to the point from which He started. His going to the Father has been the subject of His discourse ever since He met them in the upper room at the feast. That has led Him to speak of the Comforter who should tell them of His Father; afterwards of His own eternal union to them, as the root of their fellowship, as the spring of their life; then again of the Comforter who should teach them of both Him and the Father, who should make them witnesses of their eternal unity to men. It is no break in the discourse when He adds, '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.' The words which we translate 'see' in the two clauses, are different. I do not know that I can discern the shades of their meaning; but I am sure that there is a reason for the variation, and that it should not be overlooked. The word θεωρεῖτε may, perhaps, intimate that for a time they would lose all perception of Him, even an intellectual perception; the word ὄψεσθε, that they should see Him again with the eyes of the body as well as of the mind, may have cheered the disciples afterwards; at present it added to their confusion. '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.' They are like men awakening out of a dream, full of troubles and of joys mixed strangely together. He was departing from the earth; He was going to the Father; He was to prepare a place for them. What did it all mean? They thought He was about to tell them; these words 'a little while' seem to throw them back into more than their old perplexity.
'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?' He knew that they were desirous to ask Him, because He had taught them to ask. The processes of their minds were under His guidance, as well as the issues of the processes. He determined nothing for them till He had led them to feel after it. So their conversations have become lesson-books for all ages; not resolutions of doubts by peremptory decisions, but histories of transactions in the hearts of men like ourselves, whom the Divine Word chose as instances of the method by which He educates us. And the sentences which follow show us something more of this method, and make us understand how little even the most celestial food can nourish us if it is taken in without being digested.
'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.'
Their thoughts of the 'little while' had been half sad, half frivolous. They supposed that He could at once tell them what He meant by telling them how long He would be absent, and in what place and under what circumstances He would meet them again. He presents the subject in an altogether different light; for He tells them that the little while in which He shall be hidden from them will be an hour of travail and of death, and that the little while of His reappearance will be the hour of the birth of a man into the world. We feel at once that these cannot be metaphors; that if the death of Christ is anything, and the resurrection of Christ is anything, this must bethelanguage, the most exact and living which Christ Himself could speak, or we could hear, to determine the signification of them. Here, as throughout the conversation, our Lord connects the world with His disciples, and at the same time contrasts the one with the other. They will mourn that they have lost a friend; the world will rejoice that it has got rid of an enemy. But their ultimate joy must be that aMan,theMan for whom the world has been waiting so long, has been born into it. They can have no joy for themselves which is not a joy for mankind, which is not a thanksgiving for its victory. 'And ye now therefore havesorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.' They should see Him returning the Conqueror of death, the Conqueror of man's enemy; that should be a joy not dependent upon the sight of their eyes, not dependent upon His visible continuance with them; it should be a joy of the heart, and it should be a joy which no man could take from them. Their own weakness, or sin, or death, could not, for this joy would raise them above themselves; this would give them an inheritance in One in whom was no sin or ignorance, and over whom death had no power. The unbelief of others could not, for the fact of His triumph would remain the same whether men confessed it or no.
He goes on: '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.' This was the secret, half-understood cause of their grief, as it is one cause of the grief of all who are about to lose a friend. We can go to him no more; we can tell him of no more difficulties; we can ask him no more questions. 'But in that day,' He says, 'when you shall see me again,—in that day of full, satisfying joy,—you will not feel this want; you will not be longing to ask that which only concerns yourselves; you will feel yourselves bound together in my name, a family of brothers in an Elder Brother. The vision of a Father will open clearly upon you; and verily whatever you ask Him in my name,—in the name of Him who binds you to one another, and binds you all to the Father of heaven and earth,—He will give it you. For you will desire that which He desires, that which I have died and risen again to work out, the glory of His name, the coming of His kingdom, the doing of His will. Hitherto you have not entered into this joy. Your thoughts have been narrow, weak, limited to yourselves. When you pray to the Father in my name, when you enter into communion with Him, your joy will be full; you will attain the highest blessedness of which man is capable.'