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Volume I. now ready, price 24s., bound in half calf. Princeton Theological Essays. First Series. [Royal Svo, 10s. 6d. ILLUSTRATIONS, EXPOSITOKY AND PEAOTICAL, OF THE FAREWELL DISCOURSE OF JESUS BEING A SEKIES OF LECTUEES FOUETEENTH, FIFTEENTH, AND SIXTEENTH CHAPTERS OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. BY THE LATE KEY. JOHN B. PATTERSON, M.A., MINISTER OF FALKIRK. ^Konb ^/bitioiu EDINBURGH: T. & T. CLAEK, 88 GEOEGE STEEET. .ONDON : HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO. DUBLIN : JOHN ROBERTSON. PHILADELPHIA: SMITH, ENGLISH, & CO. MDCCCLIX. EDINBURGH: TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PHIXTERs', HANOVER STREET. PREFACE When, in 1830, my dear Brother, the accomplished and excellent Author of these Discourses, entered on his paro- chial ministr}^ at Falkirk, he commenced a course of Expository Lectures on the Gospel of St. John ; and when, in 1835, death put a period to his useful and honourable life, he had proceeded in that course as far as the nine- teenth chapter. Soon after tlie appearance of the Memoir and Eemains of Mr. Patterson which were published in 1836, there was a call for some, at least, of his Lectures on the Gospel of St. John. From his Manuscripts, accord- ingly, the Lectures on our Lord's Farewell -Discourse — recorded in the 14th, loth, and 16th chapters of that Gospel — were selected, as containing an exposition of a specially precious portion of the New Testament, and as furnishing a characteristic specimen of the ordinary minis- trations of the lamented Author. These were given to the Public several years ago, and have been regarded by many competent judges as remarkable for accurate exegesis, elevated thought, and felicitous expression. I myself am fully persuaded that they are not all that the Author could have made them; and that he would not have permitted them to appear in his own life-time, without IV PREFACE. a thorough re\dsion by his critical and classic taste. Agreeing, however, with those who have welcomed them as a valuable addition to our Expository Literature, and hnding that the republication of them has been earnestly called for, I have consented to edite this new Edition. It is presented to the public eye in the firm persua- sion that the work is not unworthy of my Brother's memory, hut with a trembling fear lest that memory should, in any respect, suffer at the hands of one to whom it is very precious. While the sheets of this Edition were passing through the Press, one wdio had paid a public tribute to the w^orth of these Discourses — my dear and venerable kinsman. Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh — passed away. I hoped to have been able to place a copy in his hands before he left us ; but death has blighted the anticipation. In mat- ters of opinion, Mr. Patterson did not, in every instance, thoroughly agree with Dr. Brown; and their minds were cast in somewhat different moulds. But they were knit together here by mutual affection and esteem; and wlio may doubt that they have met, as congenial spirits, in a loftier land? Alex. S. Patterson. Glasgow, Novemher 1858. CONTENTS Lecture I., Chap. xiv. 1, 2 Lecture II., Chap. xiv. 2, 3 Lecture III., Chap. xiv. 4 — 6 Lecture IV., Chap. xiv. 7 Lecture V., Chap. xiv. 8, 9 Lecture VI., Chap. xiv. 10 Lecture VIL, Chap. xiv. 12 Lecture VIII., Chap. xiv. 13, 14 Lecture IX., Chap. xiv. 15, 16 Lecture X., Chap. xiv. 16, 17 Lecture XL, Chap. xiv. 16. 17 Lecture XIL, Chap. xiv. 18 Lecture XIIL, Chap. xiv. 19 Lecture XIV., Chap. xiv. 19., 20 Lecture XV., Chap. xiv. 21 — 24 Lecture XVL, Chap. xiv. 25 — 27 Lecture XVIL, Chap. xiv. 28—31 Lecture XVIII., Chap. xv. 1, 2 Lecture XIX., Chap. xv. .3 — 6 Lecture XX., Chap. xv. 7 — 10 Lecture XXL, Chap. xv. 11 — 13 Lecture XXII.. Chap. xv. 14, 15 1 18 31 45 55 72 86 101 116 129 140 154 166 178 192 207 221 236 249 262 277 291 CONTENTS. Lecture XXIII., Chap. XV. 16 . . 306 Lecture XXIV., Chap. xv. 16—19 320 Lecture XXV., Chap. xv. 20, 21 336 Lkcture XXVL, Chap. xv. 22—25 348 Lecture XXVII., Chap. xv. 26, 27 364 Lecture XXVIIL, Chap. xvi. 1—3 378 Lecture XXIX., Chap. xvi. 4—1 1 393 Lecture XXX., Chap. xvi. 12—1.5 409 Lecture XXXL, Chap. 16—22 423 Lecture XXXII., Chap. xvi. 23—25 438 Lecture XXXIIL, Chap. xvi. 26—32 452 Lecture XXXIV., Chap. xvi. 33 466 LECTURES ox THE FOUETEENTH, FIFTEENTH, AND SIXTEENTH CHAPTEKS OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL. LECTURE I Chap. xiv. 1, 2. '• Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in nie. In my Father's house are many mansions : if it were not so, I would have told you." If there be any of our Master's divine discourses Avliicli it is lawful to pronounce diviner than the rest, — if any, to speak more guardedly, which have been practically felt by Christians more copious sources of believing, sanctifying, and consoling thought, — of faith, and holiness, and hope, and joy, — they are His parting exhortations addressed to His disciples, followed up by His parting prayers on their behalf, recorded in this and the three succeeding chapters. In these w^e see, as it were, fulfilled the fable of the an- cients respecting that melodious bird which reserves its sweetest and most touching music for its last, breathing out its soul in ecstasies of pathetic song, — we behold the Sun of Eighteousness bursting forth in one fareweU gleam of tenderest beauty, — tearfully smiling, — ere He plunged into the chaos of dark thunder-clouds which waited on the horizon to receive Him. Tlie discourses and the prayers contained in these chap- 2 LECTUEE I. ters are avowedly of the nature of farewell-exliortations and farewell-petitions. Tliey contain a series of counsels and of consolations expressly adapted to the peculiar cir- cumstances in which the disciples were erelong to be placed, when separated from Him who had so long been their present Guide and Guardian, their living Counsellor and Comforter. The duties, the encouragements, the hopes, connected with the condition of His disciples during His absence, — these form the subject of the whole passage. And as in respect of this circumstance, on the supposition of which the whole proceeds, — namely, the personal ab- sence of the Saviour, — the Christians of all following ages have been placed in exactly the same situation as the primitive disciples, it is not wonderful that the same exliortations, and the same consolations, which Avere pri- marily addressed to the latter, should have all along been felt most happily adapted to the circumstances and the feel- ings of the former. It will be necessary, however, to keep it constantly in view, as a principle of exposition, in the consideration of these chapters, that the case which Jesus had primarily before Him was that of his original disciples, — that consequently there occur, in the course of His remarks, observations and advices which refer to them peculiarly, in the character of His apostles, and cannot therefore with- out force be applied to ordinary Christians ; while on the other hand, by far the greater part of what He addresses to them respects their character and situation, not specially as apostles, but generally as Christians, and is, therefore, immediately applicable to believers of all countries and all ages, so long as Christ's visible presence is absent from the earth, — so long as they " walk by faith and not by sight," "loving Him whom yet they have not seen, believing in Him though now they see Him not." JOHN XIV. 1,2. 3 Our Saviour, then, begins His farewell-discourse to tlie beloved eleven by informing tbem that the mere fact of His departure, and His anticipated absence from them for a lengthened period, was not one to overwhelm them with hopeless sorrow and dismay. He perceived, — most pro- bably from the agitation and anxiety which were painted on their countenances, which spoke, perchance, in their troubled gestures and their glistening eyes, — how deeply they were struck with regret, on the one hand, and with consternation, on the other, by the intimations He had given them in the preceding chapter that He was about to leave them, and that they were for the present to be for- bidden from following Him. How could they but be pierced with sorrow to hear that they were soon to be deprived of the most precious and delightful communion of Him to follow whom they had forsaken all, — whom they loved in their heart of hearts, and justly, more than father or mother, or sister or brother, or wife of their youth or friend of their bosom, — more than all to whom the soul of man is linked and grappled by those bonds of which the continuance imparts the sweetest pleasure, of which the dissolution inflicts the sharpest and bitterest pang? How could they but be stricken with alarm when they anticipated the situation in which His departure would leave them, — at war with a world whose scorn and Enmity they cared not that they had provoked while they had the guiding wisdom and the guardian power of their Eedeemer- Lord to trust to ; while, forsaken by Him, they felt that they had no resources of their own to cope with the sharp- ened subtlety, and the exasperated might, which were armed to crush them — that they were cast forth as sheep in the midst of wolves, weak and defenceless victims to the gaunt and ravenous devourers? In these circumstances, no one 4 LECTUEE I. will doubt, nor did Jesus deny, that there was reason for grief and fear on the part of His disciples. He who " knoweth our frame," both because He at first created it, and because, in the fulness of the times, He took it, — who "remembereth that we are dust," — was not, be sure, offended if the eleven accounted His departure a loss to be regretted, or the ensuing peril a trial to be dreaded. He is not now offended if, to a certain extent, believers feel that, while severed from Him, they are by that circum- stance placed in a situation of imperfection and of jeo- pardy. But still. His exhortation to the apostles first, and to Christians at large, is to the effect, — that they should learn to moderate at once their regrets and their appre- hensions on this account, — that they should beware of suf- fering such emotions to get the mastery of their thoughts and feelings, or of surrendering their souls to that mood of tempestuous agitation, raised by the storm and Avhirl- wind of emotion, in which the voice of reason and religion are alike unheard, — in which the promises and consolations of the gospel fall powerless on the convulsed and labour- ing heart, as a strain of soothing melody upon the deaf and raving seas. Jesus, however, was too profoundly acquainted with the liuman heart to think that, under the apprehension of just cause for grief or for alarm, it could be simply commanded into tranquillity and calm. He had but to speak to the midnight winds and the darkling waves, " Peace, be still; and immediately the wind ceased, and there was a great calm." But the tempests of the soul are not so to be appeased ; they yield not to the constraint of a physical omnipotence, but to the sway of moral infiuences; and He knew that, before even He could expect the agitated and trembling spirit to subside at His bidding into equani- JOHN XIV. 1, 2. 5 inity and peace, it was necessary to say why and how its sorrows were to be assuaged, its apprehensions to be over- come. Having, therefore, begun by exhorting His disciples, •' Let not your heart be troubled," He proceeds to address them with consolations appropriate to their sorrows, with encouragements adapted to their fears : — " Believe in God," He says, " believe also in me." It is one of the imperfections of the Greek language, among many singular excellences which it possesses as an organ of speech, that the indicative and imperative of its verbs are in certain cases the same. The idea, " believe ye," is expressed by precisely the same form as the other idea, " ye believe ; " and it seems to us, that in the passage now before us the whole context and bearing very distinctly show that the rendering, " believe in God," is to be pre- ferred to that which our translators have adopted, "ye believe in God." It would he very difficult to assign any satisfactory reason for the difference of rendering in the two connected clauses, — where, in the original, the words thus variously rendered are precisely the same, — "Ye believe in God, believe also in me." It will, we think, be admitted that the natural and obvious way of translating the words, — from which we are never, without strong rea- son, to depart, — would lead us to assign them the same force and meaning in either case. Nor does there seem any sufficient ground in the actual state of the disciples' minds for making so marked a distinction as the vernacu- lar rendering suggests between the character of their faith in God and of their faith in Jesus Christ. If the former was real, so was the latter ; if the latter was imperfect, so was the former. In all these circumstances, we entertain no doubt that the meaning of our Saviour in the clause before us, is, — " Believe in God, and believe in me." This 6 LECTUEE I. He recommends to tliem as the great tranquillizer of the troubled heart, the holy unction that stills the stormy waters, — faith in God and in Himself; that is, the assured and realizing recollection of all those blessed truths and promises referring to the character and disposition of the Father and the Son towards their people on the earth when placed in such circumstances of sorrow and alarm as those in wdiich the disciples now were standing. Tliey had heard, — and thou hast heard, 0 Christian, — that God is He who, for His servants' liighest, their eternal good, orders and determines all the circumstances of their lot, and more especially the measure and the manner, the time and the continuance, of their persecutions and afflic- tions ; so that, in looking back even on the severest of their trials, they should have cause to acknowledge with the Psalmist — " I know, 0 Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me."* Tliey had heard that nothing could befall them, whether pleasing or painful, except by the permission and appointment of their Father, who " maketh the wrath of man to praise Him, and restraineth the remainder of his wrath;" that "the very hairs of their head were all numbered," and "not one of them could fall to the ground without their Father." t They had heard that God Himself had promised to be the Comforter and the Supporter of His own in the hour of sorrow and alarm : — " The Lord, He is their strength in the time of trouble ; the Lord shall help them and deliver them;" "Wait on the Lord, and be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thy heart;" " Cast thy burden on the Lord, and He will sustain thee." | They had heard that even when environed with circumstances of extremesi ♦ Psal. cxix. 75. t Tsal. Ixxvi. 10; Matt. x. 30. X Psal. xxxvii. 39, 40; xxvii. 14; Iv. 22. JOHN XIV. 1, 2. 7 affliction and most formidable terror, the people of God had His security and pledge, that while they were steadfast to their duty and allegiance to Himself, no real evil should befall them : — " The Lord will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in the times of trouble;" " AA^ien thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the floods, they shall not overflow thee ; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burnt, neither shall the flame kindle u.pon thee ;" "I am the Lord thy God." * They had heard that even while He permitted the trials of His people to continue for the advancement of ends in order to which they would themselves have chosen to be afflicted, He pitied the pangs, and sympathized with the emotions, of their labouring hearts : — " His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel;" " In aU their affliction He was afflicted;" " Even as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him."*|* They had heard, in fine, that God would not always suffer His children to continue under affliction and distress ; that He would in due time accom- plish their deliverance and perfect their felicity; that though " many are the afflictions of the righteous, yet out of them aU the Lord delivereth them;" that "the redeemed 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."| This they had heard concerning the character of God their Father as the Helper, the Comforter, the Saviour, of his people in the time of trouble. Nor less refreshing and exhilarating were the views which have been given to Chris- tians, and in great part had been already given to the eleven, of the character of Jesus their Eedeemer-Lord, as the * Ps. ix. 9; Is. xliii. 2, 3. f Judg. x. 16; Is. Ixiii. 9; Ps. ciii. 13. I Psal. xxxiv. 19; Isa. xxxv. 10. 8 LECTURE I. Man who should be " as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest ; as rivers of water in a dry place, and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land," — as a High-priest, " not such an one as cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who was in all points tried like as we are, and having suffered, being tried, is therefore able to succour them that are tried," — as one who identifies Himself with His believing and obedient children on the earth, and had assured them that, if they were par- takers of His sufferings here, they should be partakers of His glory and His joy hereafter, — as one on whom the Spirit of Jehovah rested mthout measure, " to bind up the broken-hearted, and to comfort all that mourn ; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness."* But in order to obtain the benefit and comfort of declarations and promises such as these, it is obvious, from the nature of the case, that a man must first believe them, and believingiy remember them; while it is equally obvious, on the other hand, that whoever does believe them, assured at the same time that he is of that blessed number to Avhom they appertain, possesses in these facts the grounds and elements of a celestial peace which all the shocks and agitations of the world should be unable to disturb. Often has the efficacy of the cure which Jesus here prescribes for the agitations of a convulsed and troubled soul, pierced with sharp anguisli or shaken with restless fear, been proved in the experience of believers. This faith it was that inspired and upheld tlie song of clear triumphant confidence with which the Church of old, amidst the shock of warring elements, while * Isa. xxxii. 2; Ilcb. iv. 15, ii. 18; Isa. Ixi. 1—.*^. JOHN XIV. 1, 2. 9 all around was shaking with the tumult of the lashing waves and the uprooted hills, is heard cleaving the clam- orous storm : — " God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble : therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be car- ried into the midst of the sea ; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountams shake with the swelling thereof"* This faith it was that strengthened and emboldened the holy Psalmist thus to reason with his soul when " afflicted, tossed with tempest and not com- forted,"— when the " sorrows of death environed him, and the floods of the ungodly came round about him," — when " deep called unto deep at the noise of heaven's rushing waterspouts, and all God's billows and His waves went over him:" — "Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope in God: for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my coun- tenance, and my God/'f This faith it was that dictated to the apostle, in the name of all believing men, the lofty defiance which he cast abroad to all the powers of perse- cution and affliction, — wherein, even in that day of fierce and fiery trial when, for the sake of Jesus, "they were killed all the day long, and counted as sheep for the slaughter," he challenged them to violate his present safety or frustrate his final victory: — "AVlio shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or nakedness, or famine, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us."i This faith it is that even now, when the course and current of events seems to run most vehemently adverse to the believer's interests and * Psal. xlvi. 1—3. t Psal. xliii. 5. J Rom. viii. 35—37. 10 LECTUEE I. hopes, — when, swept by the bleak winds, and mantled with the wild night, of disappointment and calamity, his soul is stirred from its inmost depths, like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, — is able to tame the maned billows, and call Peace the halcyon to brood with downy plume upon the waters as they rock themselves to rest from the tempest: — "Sing, 0 heavens, and be joyful, 0 earth; for the Lord hath comforted his people. He will have mercy upon his afflicted ;" " Thou wilt keep him, 0 Lord, in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee. Trust in the Lord for ever : for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength."* But while the exhortation of this first verse, in its wid- est possible sense, as applicable to all seasons and emer- gencies of affliction and distress in which the disciples could possibly be placed, was appropriate to their case, and is appropriate to that of all believing men ; it w^as, no doubt, intended to be used by them with an especial refer- ence to that event on accou.nt of which sorrow had now filled their hearts, — the approaching departure of their beloved Master. In reference to that event, the exhortation to "believe in God," to "believe also in Christ" Jesus, was an intimation to them that, though they were about to be deprived of the immediate and personal presence which they had hitherto enjoyed of Him whom they revered and loved as their constant Friend, and Guide, and Guardian, tliey would have, in the power of faith, what would, for all practical and necessary purposes, almndantly compensate for the lack of sight. That mighty principle, whose office, as defined by the apostle, is to make the absent present, and bring the distant near, — realizing the character of the Father and the Son as both willing and able, though in- * Isa. xlix. 13; xxvi. 3, 4. JOHN XIV. 1, 2. 11 visible, to impart to those who trusted in their omnipresent Providence all needful supplies of directing, defending, and consoling grace, — would enable them to feel that they had not been left, as they apprehended they should be, orphans in a fatherless and forsaken world, but were to God, and to Jesus too, the objects of a care as real, as affectionate, as practically efi&cacious, when the heavens had received Him out of their sight, to retain Him in their inaccessible pavilion of august retirement until the restitu- tion of all things, as when He went in and out before them a fellow-pilgrim with themselves upon the world's highway, and they could pour directly into his human bosom all their cares and all their wants as they successively arose; so that in Him, although they saw Him not, yet believing, they might not merely repose their steadfast trust and confidence amidst all the tribulations through which they were to enter the kingdom of heaven, but micrht even " re- joice with a joy unspeakable and full of glory." Mean- while, that their consolation in regard to this particular might be full and overflow, the compassionate Saviour, who had deigned to call His disciples friends, proceeds to assure them that the personal separation which was at hand, and which, with all its alleviating circumstances, could not but be felt at the time a bitter and painful one, was but for a little while ; that the transient parting would be erelong succeeded by an eternal re-union; that they were travellers to a common home, though for a little space di\dded from each other by the way; and that in that celestial home He and they should form, throughout eter- nity, one undivided family, of which every member should enjoy his own especial share in a common glory and feli- city,— in which all together should inhabit one " house of many mansions." 12 LECTUEE I. " In my Father's house," says Jesus, " are many man- sions." That the house of God here mentioned and de- scribed is heaven, will be at once apparent to every one at all familiar with the phraseology of Scripture, who remem- bers how customary it is with the sacred writers to describe the celestial world as the palace and abode of the Eternal Majesty. Not that, strictly speaking, the presence of In- finite Divinity can be said to reside more properly in one region of the universe than in another, — " Behold heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain Him;" "Do not I fill heaven and earth ? saith the Lord : " but partly, that in heaven Jehovah intimates His presence and His power by more glorious manifestations still than even the most glorious with which He has irradiated all the other departments of His magnificent creation, — that in heaven is situated that glory of inaccessible light which the Bible calls "the throne of the Living God;" and partly, that hea- ven is the place where, from the beginning of the world, the blessed spirits that never fell, with those w^ho, from af]je to af(e, have been gathered from the earth, ransomed and regenerated, to the pure and blessed family above, have enjoyed that nearer contemplation of Jehovah's ex- cellence, and that directer experience of His love, which form the felicity for which angels and men were made, — the vision and fruition of their God. Now, in this, the brightest and most blessed place of all creation, — most refulgent with the display of the divine perfections, and most replenished with the fulness of the divine beauty, — in which it is most conspicuously manifested to the view and to the sense of all the pure inhabitants that " God is Light" and that " God is Love," — we are told that there is separate provision and accommodation, so to speak, for every individual dweller, or at least for each individual JOHN XIV. 1, 2. 13 household, there. " In my Father s house are many man- sions,"— a several place of rest and of refection for every immortal spirit, or consociated group of immortal spirits, embraced in the great family of light. Amidst all the dif- fusive and pervading happiness which is the very element of heaven, it would seem that there is provision made for that tendency to concentrate and individualize our feelings, to fix our affections with peculiar warmth and intensity upon the special sphere" in which we have been severally placed, and to which our habits have been severally ad- justed,— to perceive an especial charm and beauty on that one spot of earth, or, as it would seem, of heaven, which we can call peculiarly our own ; the tendency which is the genial product of the love of country and the love of home — which renders our own, our native land, — our own fami- liar dwelling — our own accustomed couch of rest, — dearer and more precious to our hearts than goodlier lands afar, or statelier mansions, or more luxurious beds. There are many, I doubt not, here, whose hearts, replete with domestic asso- ciations and domestic sympathies, it will thrill with not mere sentimental and illusive tenderness, to be told, as we are here, that there are homes in heaven. But we are further told, that in the " better country, that is, the heavenly," — " the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God," the " building of God, the house not made with hands eternal in the heavens" — the individual mansions, the several homes are many ; that is to say, that heaven is an ample, and is intended to be a populous, place, — where there are abodes of rest and blessedness provided not only for all the shining hosts of the unfallen, the " in- numerable company of angels," but for all " the nations of the saved" — for the innumerable multitude, ''redeemed from the earth, out of every kindred and people and 14 LECTURE I. tongue," who through eternity shall reign and minister as anointed kings and consecrated priests to God, even our Father. By thus assuring the eleven of the ample provi- sion which the "house of God eternal in the heavens" contains for all the many sons of God whom the Captain of salvation hath undertaken to bring to glory, Jesus gives them to understand that the object of His hastening departure was not, as they might be ready to imagine, that He should reign apart in unapproachable and solitary grandeur, — exalted out of the reach of human sympathies and human fellowship, to some august and lonely sphere of majesty, where they might never hope to see Him more, or, if allowed to see Him, might not expect, at least, to renew with Him that dear and intimate communion which had been so long the solace of their souls, — contented if they might ' behold His utmost skirts of glory, and far off His steps adore,' — but that, in going home to His Father and their Father, to His God and their God, He was going where there shoukl be ' ample room and verge enough' to comprehend them all, and a countless host besides, in one holy and happy family, of which He Him- self should be the Elder Brother, nor think Himself degraded by allowing every one of them to associate with Him for ever on the terms of fraternal amity. Jesus had said to Peter immediately before, — " AVliither I so thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me afterwards." But not to Peter did He wish to confine this blessed assurance. He desired that not Peter alone, l)ut all the company of His disciples, — that not they alone, but all who should believe on Him to the end of the world, — should be assured that access to the abodes of immortality was free and open to them all, — that in these bright aljodes there was room for them all, and a welcome for them all. JOHN XIV. 1, 2. 15 And that they might feel the full force and value of this gracious assurance, He appeals to the experience which they had enjoyed, and the opinion which they had formed, of His own candour and veracity : — " If it were not so, I would have told you." He was not the person to mock them with vain hopes, to cheat them into His service Avith empty and fallaciou.s promises. He coukl appeal to their own recollection and experience, whether they had been so coldly loved by Him, or so negligently cared for, as that He should have suffered them to entertain and cherish such exalted expectations only that they might be stung at last with a bitterer disappointment. He had never scrupled to tell them forcibly how grievously they were deluded by the phantoms and the day-dreams with which they suffered their imaginations to be dazzled, in connection with His anticipated reign. Their fond visions of earthly pomp, and power, and pleasures. He had unsparingly exposed and dissipated by the light of austerest truth, — telling them that their portion in the world as His servants and His followers was not, as they fancied, to be wealth, and fame, and happiness, but poverty and want, reproach and scorn, persecution, and suffering, and death. And, in the ingenuous and unhesitating openness with which He had aU along rebuked and disallowed their most cherished opinions, and hopes, and wishes, when they had no foundation in reality, He had given them the most convincing pledge that, if their anticipations of the " inheritance, incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away," had been equally unfounded and illu- sory. He would not have spared to tear from their bosoms the dear deceit, the beautiful delusion ; He would not have invited them to sacrifice aU that they had esteemed most precious in the world, — to forsake all and follow Him, — 16 LECTUEE I. in order to embrace an unreal shade, — in order to pur- chase an eternal disappointment. It is a declaration, then, which, in all its weight of precious meaning, whatever we know of the character of Jesus assures us is and must be true, — one on which we may suspend securely the interests of our eternity, and leaning on which, as a staff of hope both sure and steadfast, we may pursue our pilgrim-path to heaven, — that in His " Father's house are many man- sions,"— that all things are there provided, on a scale of magnificence befitting the majesty of the eternal King, for the entertainment and repose, not of one or of a few selected champions and leaders of the host, but of the whole army of the faithfid. from every tribe of the peopled earth, from every age of the history of man. A glorious com- pany are there already around their Saviour-Lord, resting from their labours, and followed by their works. Thou- sands even now are pressing thither along the arduous path that leads to " glory, and honour, and immortality." Thither we are every one of us invited to aspire, and assured that if we shall pursue that lofty mark of our high calling in the way revealed, prescribed, and sanctified, by God, we shall not be disappointed of a mansion in the everlasting habitations — an immortal home in the immor- tal heavens. That way, as so plainly and impressively described by Jesus in the context, we shall soon have an opportunity of expounding more at large. Meanwhile, suffice it to remark, that Jesus is Himself the way ; no man can come unto His Father or His Father's house except by Him; none can be admitted there Ijut those who are entitled, and those who are prepared, — and none of tlie guilty and polluted race of man can have either title or meetness for the inheritance of lii;ht, save those who, by faith in Jesus as their Saviour, JOHN XIV. 1, 2. 17 and submission to Him as tlieir Lord, have been interested in His all-sufficient merits, and renewed after His all-excel- lent example. Oh, then, if there be an}i;hing attractive to your hearts in the hope of finding at last a home in heaven — of being numbered with the family of God in glory everlasting — let all the power of this attractiveness be a force that draws you to the Saviour, — an argument that persuades you to build on His mediation all your hopes, to dedicate to His service all your powers ; so that, when at last the warfare of time is accomplished, and these mortal taberna- cles in which it is performed are taken down, your lot may be secure in those bright abodes which know no dissolu- tion nor decay, — the " kingdom which cannot be moved," — the " building of God," — the " house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." LECTUEE II. Chap. xiv. 2, 3. *' I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." This most impressive and interesting portion of holy \YTit contains, as yon are aware, a series of exhortations addressed by the Saviour to His disciples, for the purpose of pointing out to them at once the duties and the consolations, spring- ing from their relation to Himself, which should ere long become appropriate to the circumstances of their condi- tion, when they were left without His personal presence on the earth to guide, to guard, and to befriend them. In administering to them the consolation which the case ad- mitted, He shows Himself peculiarly desirous of placing that event, in anticipation of which " sorrow had filled their hearts,"|in the most animating and cheering points of view ; of showing them that what they were ready to imagine an event fraught with unmingled sorrow and alarm, was in truth an event that, rightly considered, afforded tlie most abundant cause of joy, of confidence, of triumph, — that His departure from the world would prove not only most happy and illustrious to Himself, but most propitious and beneficent to them. In this spirit it is, that, having assured them that in His Father's house above there was room for JOHN XIV. 2, 3. 19 tlieni all, and a welcome for tliem all, and that aU their past experience of His sincerity and candour might suffice to convince them that, in reference to the prospects and privileges pertaining to them as His disciples. He would not delude them with idle visions and fallacious hopes, He goes on to explain the exact connection which His departure had with their future admission to the realms of everlasting peace : — " I go to prepare a place for you." The image is borrowed from the case of a company ol' travellers towards a common destination, of whom one undertakes to go before to the place where they propose to take their refreshment and repose, in order to provide suit- able accommodations — to have every thing in order for their reception when they shall arrive, — so that they shall have nothing to do but to sit down and enjoy the satisfac- tion and the rest thus without their care provided: and then, having completed all the necessary arrangements, he goes forth to meet them as they draw nigh ; he congratu- lates them on the close of their tedious and toilsome jour- ney, and Avelcomes them with benevolent satisfaction to the immediate enjoyment of all the ample and various pro- vision he has made for their comfort. Such is the inter- esting illustration which the Saviour gives to His trembling and sorrowful disciples of the nature and results of the fact that He was to leave the world before them, — so intimating, on the one hand, that their separation was not to be final or perpetual, and, on the other hand, that while it lasted, thdy had the amplest assurance that their great Friend, 'not lost but gone before/ was engaged, on their behalf, in oc- cupations mightily conducive to their ultimate and ever- during interests, — in preparing a place for their perpetual dwelling and their perpetual bliss, — in taking care that theie were ready for all of them in heaven, the mansions 20 LECTURE 11. of eternal abode, the couclies of eternal rest, the board of an eternal festival. There are two ways in which the Saviour's departure from the earth was to have the effect of preparing a place in heaven for His disciples. In the first place, His meritorious death and passion, — *•' the blood of the everlasting covenant," by the shedding of which He, according to the evangelist's expression, " accom- plished His departure at Jerusalem," — were that by which tlie incorruptible inheritance was purchased for His people, and the way to everlasting life Avas opened to all believing men. Tliis we are not to understand as if heaven had not been prepared for any before the death and ascension of the Son of God in human nature. But without His merit, either as having died, or as yet to die, — as having ascended, or as yet to ascend, — no man hath had, or can have, access into heaven. Thus " it became Him of whom are all things, and to whom are all things, in bringing many ^ .s(nis unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect," — to render Him a fully accomplished Guide to everlasting happiness, — "through sufferings." "Nei- ther by the l)lood of bulls nor of goats, but by His own blood, He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us;" and thus we too liave liberty to enter with filial "boldness into the holiest of all through the blood of Jesus."* Because from before the beginning of the world it was clearly and infallibly foreseen that the incarnate Only-begotten would, by dying, satisfy the justice of Heaven for the sins of all believers, ;ind so render it an honourable, or, in other words, a pos- sihlc, thing for the ])ure and righteous Divinity to admit * Ilel). ii. 10; ix. 1'-'; x. 1!». JOHN XIV. 2, 3. 21 the guilty into His favour and eternal fellowship, — there- fore is the celestial heritage described as " a kingdom pre- pared for the blessed of the Lord from before the foundation of the world;" and therefore, through all descending gen- erations, since the first promise made to fallen man informed him that restoration to his primeval dignity through a Saviour, one day to appear in the form and nature of humanity, was not impossible, they who by faith received testimony that they pleased God, have been gathered gradually thither, to " the general assembly and church of the first-born, whose names are written in hea- ven." Had it been possible, as it was not, that Jesus should have failed in His obedience unto death, even the death of the cross, — had He not been "given for our offences, and raised again for our justification," — all the dignity and all the blessedness which the spirits of olden saints had enjoyed before that terrible catastrophe, the failure of the plan for the accomplishment of human sal- vation, had occurred, would have been enjoyed in direct violation of all the established principles of Jehovah's government, — in direct inconsistency with all the most essential attributes of Jehovah's character; and from that day forward, be sui'e, not only those who had hitherto by mistake enjoyed them would have been hurled from their seats of glory into the ruin from which they should never have emerged, but care would have been taken that no such fatal mistake should ever be committed more by the admission of one actually unransomed soul into the everlasting habitations. Let us be excused if thus we speak of what would necessarily have ensued had an im- possibility been possible, in order that we may the more strongly show how indissolubly connected the departure of Jesus out of the world by death is with the admission of '1'2 LECTURE 11. His people to the purer, happier, and sublimer world, wliere death and separation are unknown, — how His de- cease is to be esteemed the condition and the cause of their felicity, — how, 'having overcome the sharpness of death. He opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.' TVliile, therefore, the disciples seem fondly to have ex- pected, according to the common imagination of their countrymen, that the Messiah, when He came, should con- tinue ever, and under this apprehension would have detained Him, if possible, from the cross and from the sepulchre, they little thought that the fulfilment of their wishes would have been the subversion of the whole object for which Messiah came, — the ruin of that kingdom of heaven for which they professed to long, — the dethronement of their patriarch and sainted fathers from their ancient seats in glory, — and their own final and irreversible exclusion from the dignities and privileges of the reign of God's Anointed. Not only, however, in this sense did Jesus, by His de- parture to the Father, prepare a place in heaven for all who were, or should become, His followers, to the end of the world, — in that by His death He purchased for them all the right of entrance into the celestial kingdom ; but also in tliat, by carrying up with Him his human nature to the throne of God, He, as the Elder Brother, the Surety and Representative, of His redeemed, has taken possession, as it were, of heaven in our name and our behalf, — so that from that moment forward it might be said of genuine Christians, in the words wliich holy writ, in point of fact, employs, that " their life is hid with Christ in God," — that they " are raised up with Him, and made to sit in hea- venly places in Christ Jesus." " For us " believers " the Forerunner hath entered within the vail, even Jesus, made JOHN XIV. 2, 3. 23 an High Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek,"* and, like that ancient high priest of the seed of Aaron, bearing our names upon His heart, — presenting for us the merit of His blood before the Lord continually, — pour- ing out on us His Holy Spirit, to make us " meet for the inheritance of the saints in light," — and by His continual intercession procuring for us all needful supplies of guid- ing and guardian grace to bring us in safety thither. So that His ascension is the pledge of ours, — the assurance that our destined inheritance will be kept secure till we be ripe for its actual and full enjoyment. Finally, — for all the explanations we have hitherto given are obviously insufficient to exhaust the meaning of the phrase, " I go to prepare a place for you," — we seem entitled to gather from it that Jesus, where He now dwells in ma- jesty and blessedness ineffable, and where He means ere long to gather around Him the whole of the redeemed family, is actually employed in adapting the scenes, the occupations, the arrangements of the heavenly world for imparting to the soul of every Cliristian, as he ascends into those glo- rious regions, a higher degree of happiness, suited to his nature and his circumstances, than had otherwise been possible, — that He takes advantage of His personal presence in the land of immortality in order to see that, for every soul that loves Him, as it successively arrives, there is provided a mansion richly furnished with every thing most suitable for the divine refection and divine repose of that individual soul. Nor is there any representation in the w^hole range of Scripture calculated to excite in our hearts a livelier idea of the august magnificence of the abodes prepared for the Christian's liberated spirit, than the repre- * Heb. vi. 20. 24 LECTURE II. sentation wliicli the text contains of a certain lengthened and laborious preparation expended on their construction, and furniture, and decoration, by Him who, in rearing up the glorious fabric of the visible creation, — in calling into existence this beautiful earth, with all its goodly garniture, and yonder 'dread magnificence of heaven,' — had but to speak, and it w^as done, — to command, and it stood fast. We are taught to think of the skill and might of Jesus, — the skill of Him in whom " are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," — the might of Him who, by " the working of His mighty power, is able even to subdue all things to Himself," — as employed and tasked, so to speak, in order to produce a structure for the habitation of the glorified immortals which, for curious and exquisite con- trivance, for lavish and accumulated grandeur, shall utterly eclipse the brightest of those visible glories in which we are now invited to contemplate the ordinances of His Avis- dom, and the work of His fingers, and to which when we gaze upwards, we are forced to feel, in the ecstasy of our astonished admiration, " What is man that Thou art mind- ful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him?" In what particular forms of external arrangement, in what detailed provision of the materials of blessedness, — the displays of majesty and loveliness, the divine omnipotence of Jesus, consulting and acting for the happiness of the redeemed, shows itself in the celestial sanctuary, we are not informed, and we dare not conjecture; for "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things whicli God hath prepared for them that love Him." One circumstance, however, by means of which the depaiture of Jesus from our earth to the w(nid of invisible glory, is fitted to prepare that world for the residence of the lioly soul, is very obvious; and JOHN XIV. 2, 3. 25 that is, the simple fact that He is present there. It is uni- formly represented in Scripture as forming among the very chiefest elements of the celestial blessedness, that there those who have been redeemed from the earth behold the glorious countenance, and enjoy the personal communion, of the Eedeemer-Lord. Thus Jesus Himself describes it in the following verse; and thus it appears that it was necessary for Jesus to go away in order that earth might not appear to His people a more desirable place than hea- ven,— in order that they might not have occasion to re- verse the apostle's maxim, and to say, To remain and to be with Christ is far better. You easily perceive how much more ample a fund of blessedness, as derived from the presence of the Saviour, is enjoyed by the church at large, than had He realized the fond desire of His original disciples, and remained for ever on the earth, the Head and Sovereign of an earthly monarchy. Before the great day of final consummation, when Christ shall have accom- plished the number of His chosen, and gathered them all in one holy commonwealth, that, body and soul, they may have their perfect consummation and bliss, and reign with Him in life eternal, — before the coming of that day, every true believer that has been and that is, almost every true believer that shall be to the end of the world, — every one save of the two concluding generations of our race, — has a longer time, in most cases a time immensely longer, to spend in heaven than on the earth. And it is for you to say, — considering that one primary source of the felicity of heaven is the presence of the exalted Mediator there, — whether it would be most for the advantage of the church, that, previous to the day of " the restitution of all things,'' she should live in exile from her Lord during her abode in this world, or during her residence in the world celestial. 26 LECTURE 11. In order, tlierefore, that heaven, the paradise above, where, delivered from the burthen of the flesh, and rescued from the miseries of life, " the spirits of the just made perfect" have their appointed dwelling, might really become to Christians in our world the object of hope and of desire, — in order that " the heaven of heavens" itself might be fitted to impart felicity such as their renewed natures could relish and rejoice in, — in order that it might be for them a pre- pared and congenial place, it was necessary that Jesus should be there. " The Lamb is the light thereof;" and were that light extinguished or withdrawn, how deep and disastrous the shade which would at that instant fall over all the gran- deur and the loveliness of heaven! Well, therefore, might the eleven — the honoured and blessed company who best had known what spiritual and sublime delight there was in gazing on the countenance of Him in whom alone the lofty description of 'the human face divine' was fully verified, — in listening to the words of Him " into whose lips gTace was poured," and " who spake as never man spake," — in contemplating the character and work of Him in whom, the Living Image of the Invisible God, 'without cloud made manifest, the Almighty Father shone,' — well might they be convinced that their Master's speedy return to heaven, however it might for the moment pierce their hearts with sorrow and alarm, would ultimately prove for their advantage and felicity, — that the withdrawal of His beatific presence from the world in which they were to spend the few fleeting years of their mortal pilgrimage, was only in order to its permanent location in another, a brighter and happier, world, in which it should diffuse its blessed influence over a wider sphere and throughout a mightier duration, — in wliich they, individually, should enjoy His presence and most intimate comnuinion through JOHN XIV. 2, 3. 27 ages more numerous than the moments of their separation, and should, at every instant of the flight of those innumer- able ages, feel that it was expedient for them that He should go away, because He had gone to prepare a place for them. It was not enough, however, that Jesus should prepare a habitation for His followers, however^stately and magni- ficent,— however provided with the means and materials of enjo}Tiient. It was necessary that He should make pro- vision of means for conducting and introducing those for whom that habitation was intended into its pure and bliss- ful mansions. And, therefore, having said, " I go to pre- pare a place for you," He adds — " And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." I have no doubt that those interpreters have rightly understood these words, who refer them, — not so much to that magnificent occasion which is commonly set forth in Scripture under the idea of Christ's second coming, when He is " to gather together His elect from the four winds of heaven," and receive them to Himself in one vast society, — ^but to the reception which He gives at the hour of death to every individual Christian, and the welcome with which He hails them to the land of everlasting peace. It seems very unlikely, and alien indeed from the whole plan and tenor of this discourse, — which finds all its consolatory topics in matters near at hand, — that Jesus should have referred His apostles, for comfort and support under a pre- sent grief, to a prospect so remote ; while the description of the state into which, by His return and reception of them, they are to be admitted, as a state of close proximity to Jesus, and of intimate communion with Him, is the familiar and customary description of the intermediate blessedness to be enjoyed by the unembodied spirit between 28 LECTURE II. death and resurrection. Tliis is the very hope by which the sacred oracles teach and pre^oare the Christian to depart in peace, in trust, in triumph, — to be "confident, and willing rather to be absent from the body," — the hope of thereby becoming " present with the Lord." No sooner does any one of them cross the boundary of time, and com- mit his naked and lonely spirit to the vast unknown beyond, than, lo ! he perceives the Divine Deliverer wait- ing, as it were, on the threshold to receive him, — advancing to meet and welcome him into the realms of everlasting joy, to animate his failing heart, to guide his trembling footsteps amidst the giant scenes and objects of that new and awful world, to " show him the path of life," and, with His own supporting arm around him, to lead him along the upward path which, as our Forerunner, He Himself hath trod, — which, as our Saviour, He Himself has opened, — the path which leads to glory and to God. Conducted tlius in safety to its destined mansion in the palace of the King Eternal, radiant all with the splendours of the beatific vision, and echoing all with the symphonies of heavenly voices, the ascended soul is overwhelmed, and pervaded, from a thousand points, with thrilling sensations of a "joy that is unspeakable and full of glory," — it loses itself in astonished rapture amidst the visions of unimaginable glory Hashing on its sight from every point in the circumference of that magnific world, and the billowy tide of song rolling on the ear from every voice in that innumerable multitude, " like the sound of many waters," of mighty and melodious thunderings. Yet, anudst all the splendours and all the harmonies of heaven, by which the soul of each new-coming pilgrim, as he reaches the house of his eternal rest, is enti-anced and overwhelmed, till he ' feels that he is hap- pier than he knows,' one object there is more glorious to JOHN XIV. 2, 8. 29 his eye, one sound more grateful to his ear, than all the rest, — the countenance, the voice, of the God-Man, his Anointed and Exalted Saviour. For the sensible presence, the intimate communion, the perpetual society, of Jesus, is always represented by Himself and His apostles as the primary element of that pure, and perfect, and permanent bliss which is reserved for Christians in the world unseen. To gaze upon His sacred person more directly, to contem- plate His transcendent character more closely and compre- hend it more completely, to cherish towards Him the feel- ings of an intenser love, and to receive from Him the tokens of a more exuberant benignity, dwelling together as in one palace-home, and the heirs together of one unending life, — this, this it is which chiefly attracts to heaven the aspirations of the regenerated soul, and con- strains it with groanings of desire, with agonies of prayer, to cry, " Wlien shall I come and appear before God?" or, with the mystic spouse, when sighing for the return of her departed Lord, " Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice ; for, sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely." Tliis, therefore, is the circumstance on which our Saviour fixes here in His description of the celestial inheritance, — not more in accordance with the actual exi- gencies and feelings of the eleven, stricken to the dust with grief and terror in the prospect of His apjDroaching depar- ture, than with the native breathings of each renewed heart after intercourse and fellowship with its Saviour- God, — this is the circumstance by which He seeks to recommend their destined home to their wishes and their aims, so that they might derive from the anticipation " strong consolation " and " living hope," — that it wdll be a place of everlasting union to Him, of everlasting commu- nion with Him: — "I will receive you to myself; that .30 LECTURE II. where I am, there ye may be also." Oh, when the Chris- tian shall reflect how much of holy peace and joy, — of "peace that passeth understanding," of "joy that is unspeak- able and full of glory," — even in this land of exile and remoteness, in which he "walked by faith, and not by sight," he has derived from an invisible union to Jesus, from an indirect communion with Jesus, — sensations that have proved themselves irradiations from above, the morn- ing-beams of immortality, the antepasts of heaven, — what may he not expect when that rich and radiant scene shall unfold itself into the perfect day, these sweet and precious foretastes be succeeded by the full fruition, — when Chris- tian faith shall be exchanged for the beatific vision, and Christian love be ripened into celestial commmiion, and Christian joy expanded into felicity without measure and without end? "Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face ; now we know in part, but then we shall know even as we are known ; while, streaming from His unveiled face, — the Sun of the spiritual universe, — love and joy, purity and bliss, blent and commingled in one element and flood of radiant influence, shall absorb our spirits, and fulfil in us the Psalmist's glorious hope — " As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness ; 1 shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness."* * 1 Cor. xiii. 12; Psal. xvii. 15. LECTUEE III. Chap. xiv. 4 — 6. " And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." You recollect that the occasion of the discourse contained in this and the following chapters was the approaching departure of Christ Jesus from the world He had so long irradiated with His presence, — the departure which He had intimated to be now near at hand, when He said to His disciples, "Little children, yet a little wliile I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now say I to you." Because, therefore, He had said these things unto them, " sorrow had filled their hearts ;" and to dispel or mitigate that sorrow, is the object of His present exhortations. With this view. He had already suggested various topics of most powerful and persuasive consolation, well fitted to assuage the grief, and to allay the fear, which His former communication had inspired. He had told them, that for Him they had no reason to sorrow, inasmuch as He was going where He would be happy for evermore, — to His Father's house, the home of His eternity ; that they had no reason to sorrow for themselves, inasmuch as, where He was going, there was room for them all, — "many man- 32 JOHN XIV. 4—6. sions" for the "many, sons" of God whom He had under- taken to bring to glory; that the object of His departure thither before them was, as their Forerunner, to secure and to prepare for them the dwellings of immortal bliss ; that whensoever these were ready for every several soul that loved Him, He would personally interpose to gather it in safety thither, meeting it, as it were, at the gate of eter- nity, and showing it the path of life which leads to the fulness of joy before Jehovah's face; and that so they should be ever with the Lord. All this Jesus had inti- mated to them in words which, though in some portion figurative, might have been expected to be most readily intelligible to the minds of His disciples. They knew right well that God was His Father, — and what, therefore, could they rationally suppose, the phrase, " my Father's house," to signify, but heaven, the throne and palace of the Ever- lasting? This expression is plainly the key of the whole discourse, and, once understood, might have been expected to leave no mystery remaining in our Lord's remarks. Hence, He goes on to observe, at the 4th verse, — "And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know," — Now surely, after all the hints I have given you, you cannot but be aware of my destination, and of the way which leads to it. This form of speech, by which we tell a person that he knows — meaning that he might know, that he ought to know — is quite familiar in our own language as well as in that of the original Scriptures. Nor was it any more than might have been expected of the disciples, that they should now have a clear conception, both of the place to whicli their Master was about to depart, and of the way by which they might follow Him thither. On the one hand, with regard to His place of destination, He had not only, on the JOHN XIV. 4 — 6. 33 present occasion, distinctly informed tliem tliat He was going to His Father's house, but He had often, in former conversations, given them to understand that, as He had come from God, so He Avent to God, — that the time was coming when the Son of Man should ascend up where He was before, — that but a little while He should continue in the world, and then He should go to Him that sent Him. On the other hand, in regard to the way. He had, with still greater distinctness, if possible, informed them that the only path by which they might ascend to join Him in His Father's presence, was the path which He had opened up, — that He Himself was the Author of eternal salvation to those who believed. That He was the only and all-suffi- cient Saviour, through faith in whom alone any sinner of the human race could enter heaven, was, in truth, the main point of His doctrine, which He had all along been pressing on their attention in innumerable varieties of statement and of illustration ; it was what they themselves, as a general prin- ciple, did most firmly believe in their hearts, and had more than once confessed most courageously with their lips : — *' Lord, to whom can we go but unto Thee? Thou hast the words of eternal life." Eecollecting this, we may perhaps interpret our Saviours declaration, "Wliither I go ye know, and the way ye know," — not, as we have already suggested, as equivalent to. Ye might know, or, Ye ought to know, — but rather, as an assertion, on the part of Jesus, that His disciples were, in point of fact, already acquainted with the substantial truth which He was now teaching them respecting heaven as the ultimate destination both of Himself and of His followers, and respecting His own saving merits and saving grace as the only means by which any human sinner can attain to heaven ; although some of them, one of them we should rather say, — for it would be c 34 LECTURE III. rash to conclude from the ignorance of Thomas, that all the rest of the eleven were equally ignorant with him, — did not recognise that truth in the form in which it was at present expressed, the figurative attire in which it was at present clothed. Such was the fact with that interesting disciple, — in- ferior to none, as the few incidents recorded of him show, in warm and vehement attachment to the person of his Master, though distinguished from them all by a certain passionate straining after the highest possible evidence in reference to every demand, which, in his Master's name, was made on his belief, — as eager of emotion as he was apt to be slow of conviction. With his characteristic dis- position to seek on every subject the last degrees of clear- ness and of certainty, — to maintain his own opinions till absolutely forced from them by resistless weight of evidence and perspicuity of demonstration, — we find him, in the text, more unwilling, apparently, than any of his brethren, to part from the dream with which they seem all to have originally soothed and flattered their imaginations, that the intended departure of their Saviour was on some pilgrimage or expedition, connected, though they knew not exactly how, with the speedy establishment of that reign of earthly splendour and felicity in which they still expected, erelong, to behold the Anointed of the Lord enthroned, with them- selves upon His right hand and His left, and the crowns and sceptres of the nations at their feet. Eesolved to cling while it w^as possible to the glittering hopes of worldly ambition which had played so long before his dazzled fancy, he is determined not to perceive in the idea of his Lord's departure the idea of His death, — His separation from them by more than land or sea, — and therefore, with an inexcusably determined and pertinacious incredulity, JOHN XIV. 4 — 6. 35 contradicts in form, tliougli without by any means invali- dating in substance, in the sense in which we have ex- plained it, the declaration of Jesus, " Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know." — " Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?" The reasoning of Thomas is obvious and luminous enough. The very notion of a way implies a term to which it tends, and in the nature of things we cannot choose our means till we conceive distinctly of our end, — we cannot select our path till we know what our destination is to be. It was well, if Thomas was indeed still ignorant of what his Master meant, that he should thus frankly confess it, and ask for further light from Him wdio was the embodied Truth and Wisdom of the Highest. The ignorant who feel and confess their ignorance are on the way to learn ; and many might have arrived at wisdom, had they not imagined themselves to have arrived at it already. But it was not well, that, after instructions which ought to have been so plain and perspicuous, and must have been so to every mind sincerely and candidly desirous of simply knowing the truth, he should yet have clung so immovably to carnal prejudices and earthly hopes. Nor was it well that he should so rashly have ascribed to his brother-disciples an equal obscurity of apprehension with himself, when doubtless there were some among them not so blinded in their understanding as not to have perceived that the home of which their Master spoke as the common destination of Himself and them was the palace of the King Eternal in the heavens, and the way by which He summoned them to follow Him thither was what they knew, with all the indistinctness, first of their information, and then of their recollection, to be the way of salvation — faith in Jesus as 36 LECTURE III. their Saviour, and obedience and submission to Him as their Lord. Condescending, however, to His servant's weakness, that Teacher, " meek and lowly of heart," without reproving as He might the slowness of heart to understand and to believe which the question showed, returns a most explicit and satisfactory reply to either point of the inquiry. The end of the journey which He now was meditating, and in which He hoped erelong to be followed by the eleven, was the presence of the Father, and the eternal life that is with Him ; and the only way in which any one of them, — in which any of the race of Adam, — might follow Him to that blessed termination, was by availing themselves of His interposition as the " one Mediator between God and man :" — " I," says He, " am the way, and the truth, and the life ; no man cometh unto the Father but by me." There can be little doubt, to any one familiar with the sacred idiom, that the appellations, " the Truth " and " the Life," by which our Saviour follows up the declaration that He was " the AVay," are to be understood as containing in themselves a repetition of the first epithet, qualified by the attributes of Truth and Life ; and that the full import of His words is this, — I am tlie way, I am the way of truth, I am the way of life, I am the only way to the presence of the Father. These several statements may be most con- veniently illustrated, perhaps, by considering apart what they teach us concerning the end and concerning the means. As to the end to be aimed at by the disciples, they describe it as life : — " I am the life," the way of life ; and as the presence of the Father: — "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." Tn the Bible, such expressions as, life, and, life eternal, include the idea of happiness, — denote not merely immortal JOHN XIV. 4 — 6. 37 being, but immortal well-being. "A man's life," our Saviour remarks, — that is, ob^dously, the happiness of his life, — " consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." Thus God is described as having in Him- self "the fountain of life," — the source of being and enjoy- ment; while, in direct reference to the future world, we find the expressions, " life," and, " life eternal," used per- petually as the equivalents of, salvation, everlasting sal- vation, and as the direct contrast of such formidable phrases as, " destruction," the " fire that never shall be quenched," " condemnation," " perdition," " everlasting punishment," " shame and everlasting contempt."* This, tlien, is the life which Jesus here professes Himself to be, to which He here professes Himself to be the way, — a life which, begun in every genuine Christian even on the earth, expects its fidl development and consummation in the heavens. In the rectification of the ruling powers and principles of his being, — in the peace and harmony with which his faculties now act according to their original nature and towards their appointed ends, — in the re-estab- lishment of favourable intercourse between his soul and the great Father-Spirit of the universe, — in the thought which he is now permitted with humble confidence to cherish, God loves me — a thought in which there lies enfolded profounder cause of happiness than the created universe can furnish, — in the glad sense of present safety, and the bright hope of future glory ; even now, according to the testimony of his Lord, he " hath eternal life," — he has within him an antepast of heaven, a specimen of immor- tality."!" Yet are all these hut a specimen, hut an antepast, — the first-fruits of the hastening harvest. Not till he is ♦ Luke xii. 13; Psal. xxxvi. 9, &c. t John vi. 47, 54. 38 LECTURE III. translated to that brighter world where Jesus dwells, shall the Christian enter on the full inheritance of life eternal, — the plenitude of everlasting joy. The elements of wliich this perfect and unfading felicity shall be composed I will not now attempt to describe ; knowing that they are things which " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man " to conceive. Enough, that it includes in it abundance of all that can contribute to satisfy the soul to everlasting ages, — the materials of end- less growth in the perfection, the glory, and the blessedness of an immortal being. Now, as ec[uivalent to the idea of enjoying this majestic and imperishable life, we find the Saviour, in the last clause of the verse, employing the idea of being brought unto the Father ; and He does so in entire conformity with the general train and tenor of sacred conception and phraseolog}^ in which such ideas and expressions as " to come to God," "to see God," "to appear before God," "to draw near to God," "to have fellowship with God," are continually employed as emphatical descriptions of the supreme felicity of man. They are figurative phrases, denoting in general the admission of the creature to the love and enjoyment of the omnipotent and everlasting Creator, — the maintenance of favourable intercourse with Him " in whose favour there is life, whose loving-kindness is better than life," — the assurance and the experience of His marvellous loving-kindness who hath, in His own unfathomable being, and in His magnificent creation, in- finite resources, and all at His command, for making tliose whom He chooses to bless completely and for ever happy ; with whom is "the fountain of life," — the exhaustless spring of existence and felicity. More particularly, it is obviously employed, upon the present occasion, as express- JOHN XIV. 4—6. 39 ing that fullest and most beatific enjoyment of the hap- piness that flows from the favour of Jehovah, reserved for Christians, at the period when they shall be brought nearest, as it were, to God, — when they shall be admitted into that celestial kingdom in which He is pleased to exhibit more glorious tokens of His presence, more precious and abun- dant proofs of His power and willingness to bless His chosen, than in any other region of His universe, at any other period of their existence. To " come unto the Father," in this place, is obviously fixed down by the context to the sense of entering and dwelling in the Father's " house of many mansions ;" that is, in other words, entering on the actual possession of the "inheritance incorruptible, unde- filed, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for those who are kept by God's power unto salvation," — the actual fruition of that "fulness of joy which is before His face, and of those rivers of pleasure which are at His right hand for evermore," — the actual enjoyment of eternal life. Now, to the presence of the Father, in this sense, and to the everlasting life wdiich in that presence is to be enjoyed, Jesus declares that He is the way; that is, that on His account, and through His mediation, those who make a proper use of His interposition may entertain the Ijope of at length enjoying everlasting life, and dw^elling with Jesus in the eternal home of purity and peace, — the house of His Father and their Father, of His God and their God. To this character Jesus is entitled, not so much because, by His doctrine, He has pointed out the way to heaven, — but because, by His obedience unto death. He has opened up that way. He has made heaven accessible, and because by His intercession, His Spirit, and His power, He actually brings to heaven all those 40 LECTURE III. who seek to enter it through Him, — on the ground of His merits, through the efficacy of His mediation. You know, my brethren, that, according to the doctrine of the Bible, the sin of man, by rendering his enjoy- ment of immortal blessedness without a Mediator incon- sistent with the attributes of Jehovah's character, and the rights of Jehovah's government, — by making it morally impossible that, without an ample satisfaction to the insulted honours of the divine law and the divine perfec- tion, man should be happy, and God remain just, or His throne continue firm, — had, so to speak, interposed an apparently impenetrable and insuperable barrier across the path which led at first from earth to heaven, or, like a tor- rent inundation, had swept the once uninterrupted path away, and interposed between the dwellings of mankind and the land of bliss and immortality, where the palace is erected, and the paradise is planted, of the King Eternal, a great and fixed gulf, overhung with clouds and darkness and horror, across whose gloomy waters whoever sought to ])ush his frail bark to the bright shores beyond, sunk irre- coverably in their profound and treacherous abyss. Now, what Jesus Christ has by His merits effected to remove this mighty barrier, — to bridge from shore to shore this mighty gulf, — is, that liaving taken the nature and the place of man, and in that place and nature having mag- nified the law which man had dishonoured, by a perfect obedience to its precept, and the full endurance of its curse, He has secured that neither the character of Jeho- vah shall be compromised, nor the moral government of Jehovah put in jeopardy, by His receiving even the guilty and rebellious children of men who shall rest their appli- cation for mercy on this ground, into His most blessed favour here and hereafter. Thus the mountain-wall of JOHN XIV. 4 — 6. 41 adamant liatli been removed, — the wild and gloomy torrent has been spanned, — and a free, direct, uninterrupted, if sometimes rough and narrow, path has been opened up, that, setting out from our dim spot of earth, terminates amidst the glories of the inmost heaven. Now, the sinner, who adopts and prosecutes this way to heaven, — that is, who, firmly believing the testimony which God hath given concerning His anointed Son, as having by His merits made salvation possible for the guiltiest of the guilty, and the vilest of the vile, places on these merits all his own personal dependence for pardon, and acceptance, and life eternal, — embraces and acknowledges Christ Jesus as his own almighty, all-sufficient Saviour, while, at the same time, he receives Him with all humble obedience and sub- mission as His righteous Lord, and so, having received Christ Jesus the Lord, is also found walking in Him by a steadfast faith and a persevering holiness, — by "patient continuance in w^ell-doing, seeking for glory, and honour, and immortality," — he is in the act brought back to life and to God, to the happiness and the enjoyment of the Almighty's favour here ; and he has the certainty of being brought to them in a still more emphatic sense, — to per- fect happiness hereafter, and the full enjoyment of the everlasting Source of blessedness in that glorious building of God, " the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." For not only does Jesus call Himself *'the Way," "the Life;" that is, the way of life. He by whom man cometh to the Father; but he styles Himself also, "the Way and the Truth;" that is, the way of truth, the sure way to glory and to God. The first quality which we seek for in any path which we are called to travel, is, that it shall be the true way to our destination, — that it shall really, if followed out, conduct 42 LECTURE III. US tliither. We care not, in comparison, whether it be smooth or rugged, whether it be wide or narrow, whether it be dreary or beautiful of aspect, — all these are secondary and subordinate inquiries; — the first, the main point, is, whether it be the right way, the way of truth. Now, this is what we are assured of in the text, and in innumer- able passages of holy writ besides, concerning the way by which Jesus has made heaven accessible to man. It is a path, in pursuing which you may lay your account with having often to encounter hardships, and toil, and trial ; in which you may often meet with arduous steeps, and peril- ous descents, — mountains of difficulty, and valleys of humi- liation,— mazes of mystery, and dark passages overshadowed with the cloud of sorrow and the wings of death, — fierce assaults of open enmity, and hidden snares of secret guile ; — but then, your support and consolation will be this, that you know it leads to paradise. Even as you tread it, you will feel that it is not all dreary, and dark, and difficult; that even to the pilgrim-wayfarer, while yet his Father's house is far away, there is a ''peace and joy in believing," — a "peace which passeth understanding," a "joy which is unspeakable and full of glory;" that his path is often lightened with glad sunshine, and refreshed with pleasant breezes, — enamelled with sweetest flowers, and embalmed with smells of Eden, — cheered with soft melodies that float around him, breathed from unseen but heavenly harps, and gladdened with the liquid lapse of murmuring streams, the quiet waters of divine consolation and refreshment. But, wdiile you render your cordial thanks to Him who hath thus relieved with the earnests of celestial bliss the labours of your upward way, you will value them most as being only earnests, — as the foretastes of what awaits you at your journey's end, — as messengers from heaven to tell JOHN XIV. 4 — 6. 43 you that you are on the right way, the way that leads to the city of eternal habitations. Finally, my brethren, let us all remember that this, as it is the certain, so it is the only, way to heaven. " No man," saith the Saviour, " cometh unto the Father but by me." The whole spirit and tenor of the New Testament demon- strate that it acknowledges no method of salvation but one, — that Jesus is the only, as He is the all-sufficient, Savi- our. " There is none other name given under heaven and among men whereby we must be saved, but the name of Jesus ; " — " Other foundation can no man lay but that is laid, which is Jesus Christ;" — "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."* Be therefore as sure, my brethren, as that this book contains the oracles of God, that the way here pointed out to hea- ven is the only way in which you can ever reach the mansions of felicity. Adopt what other path you please, in the hope of reaching the " house of many mansions," the home of true felicity and permanent repose, — substi- tute what, or whom, you please, in place of Jesus, — asso- ciate what, or whom, you please, along with Jesus, in the work of bringing you to God, and know that they will lead you only to disappointment and destruction, — you will find the path you have chosen terminate upon that adamantine barrier which sin has erected between God and man, and at another point than where it has been penetrated and made patent to human foot by the power of Jesus, — you will find it land you on the shore of that terrible abyss by which sin has rent asunder heaven and earth, and where there is no bridge across its stormy and devouring waters. Labour to cross that awful gulf by what means you may * Acts iv. 12; 1 Cor. iii. 11; Gal. vi. U. 44 LECTUEE III. of your own devising, the attempt and tlie result will be like those of that presumptuous youth who, as ancient fables tell, aspired to pass the immeasurable deep on waxen wings, and left his name to the ocean that entombed him. Let me beseech you, therefore, brethren, to spare your- selves the disappointment and the agony which shall wring the souls of those, when they are undeceived at length, but undeceived too late, who are travelling, as they think, to heaven by any other way than that which God has sanctioned, — who " go about to establish a righteous- ness of their own, not submitting themselves to the right- eousness of God, which is by faith" in Jesus Christ His Son. Be assured that the incarnate Only-begotten of God would not have lavished such expense of labour, and suffering, and l)lood, — " travailing in the greatness of His strength," and agonizing in the might of His patience, — in order to open up and consecrate a path for guilty men to the celestial blessedness and glory, if means less costly could have accomplished the end, and that, as this is the only way in which it is worthy of Jehovah to grant, so it is the only way in which it is possible for man to receive, access to a holy God, and admission to a holy heaven. LECTURE IV. Chap. xiv. 7. " If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also : and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him." Jesus, you recollect, is employed, in this and the following chapters, in counselling and comforting His disciples with reference to His own approaching departure from our world. He had told them, for their consolation, that they were familiar with the place to which He was going, and that they were perfectly acquainted with the way by which they might in due time follow Him thither, and rejoin Him, never more to be divided. Yet so obtuse were the perceptions, if not of the other disciples, at least of Thomas, — whose character, as unduly difficult of persuasion, is illustrated, not in this incident alone of the evangelic his- tory,— that Jesus had been compelled to explain Himself in the preceding verse still more directly and explicitly respecting both the end to which, and the way 6y which. He encouraged His disciples to hope that they might one day follow Him. " I am the way," He said, " and the truth, and the life ; no man cometh unto the Father but by me;" — thus informing them, in respect of the destination to which He meant to guide them, that it was the enjoy- ment of the Father's beatific communion, and of everlast- ing life in His celestial presence; and in respect of the 46 LECTURE IV. way by which they were to ascend to that illustrious des- tination, that the only path to heaven and heavenly bless- edness which they, or any of the race of Adam, could suc- cessfully pursue, was the believing use of His mediation as the appointed means, — the sure, but only, means of obtaining access now to a holy God, and admission here- after to a holy heaven. Having thus described, therefore, the sum of human perfection and human happiness as consisting in holding a favourable relation, and maintain- ing a favourable intercourse, with God, Jesus proceeds to intimate to them that they could judge for themselves whether the description were not just; that they were in a condition to form something like an adequate idea of the privilege contained in the vision and fruition of God, hav- ing in some degree enjoyed already that inestimable privi- lege : — " If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also." Jesus had, about six months before, — as we read, chap, viii. 19, — made use of very similar terms in upbraiding the obstinate ignorance and unbelief of the Jews ; by which, refusing to know the Son, — to admit that truth which Jesus had often most explicitly declared, and most irre- fragably proved, respecting His own character and work, — they had rendered themselves incapable of knowing the Father, since only in the person, the doctrine, and the achievements of His incarnate Only-begotten, are either the perfections of His own nature, or the relations which He holds to the human race, revealed in a form adapted to human comprehension, and iniiuential on the human heart. It is plain from the form in which the remark now before us is expressed, — " If ye had known me," — that Jesus meant to charge even the chosen eleven as still remaining, to a great degree, under the dominion of that joim XIV. 7. 47 ignorance respecting Himself which He had rebuked so sharply in the unbelieving Jews. They had, indeed, acknowledged Him in the character in which by the Jews He had been rejected, — as the Messiah promised to their fathers, the Anointed Son of God and Deliverer of Israel ; but their notions respecting His office and reign under tliat illustrious character were still, to a degree that, in their circumstances, and with their opportunities, was utterly inexcusable, inadequate and false, — corrupted with the opinions of Jewish prejudice, and the hopes of worldly ambition. It is easy to perceive how the false conceptions of the Messiah's character and office which, at this period, were prevalent among the Jews at large, and still in- fluenced the minds of the apostles in particular, were calculated to damp and darken, even in the apprehensions of those who recognised in Jesus the true Messiah, what- ever that name, the Messiah, might denote, — the exhibition wliich His character and life, in point of fact, contained, of the character and counsels of the Godhead in reference to man. It is in the way of distinctly comprehending the precise object for which the Messiah was anointed, in order to be the spiritual Lord and Saviour of mankind, the Author of a spiritual salvation, the Sovereign of a spiritual empire; it is only by means of this previous knowledge that we can perceive, in all its fulness and its splendour, the illustration which His history affords of the grand moral attributes of Jehovah's character, and moral prin- ciples of Jehovah's government, — attributes and principles at once of infinite righteousness and of infinite benignity, — or even of those physical attributes of a wisdom which no difficulty could baffle, and a power which no resistance could overcome, in consequence of which the gospel is entitled, " the wisdom of God, and the power of God unto 48 LECTURE IV. salvation." In what degree, therefore, the disciples were ignorant of the real nature and object of that commission with which He was intrusted from above, — in what degree their conceptions of His office and His saving work ad- mitted of correction and improvement ; in that degree did their conceptions of the character and counsels of the sovereign Divinity admit of being enlarged and rectified, — in that degree might it be justly said to them by Jesus, " If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also." It would appear, however, that in addition to the pre- judices and false conceptions under which the apostles evidently laboured, during the whole period of our Lord's personal ministry, in regard to the character and office of the Messiah, they entertained comparatively obscure and feeble apprehensions of the actual dignity of His person, as possessed of the divine nature, and invested with divine perfections. * It was one of the characteristics of our Saviour's teaching, that He very seldom made direct claims, or formally laid down express assertions concerning Him- self His more usual manner was to propose questions, to introduce acknowledged principles which would be the seeds of others, and to utter deep and comprehensive asser- tions which carried with them the implication of remoter truths. These He delivered so as to fix them strongly in their minds; and then He left these impressions to produce their proper effect by the exercise of thought and meditation, and by the elucidations that might arise from subsequent connnunications.'* In this way it came to pass, that, wliile Jesus could not be accused of having failed in giving them abundant materials for acquiring a * Pve Smith. JOHN XIV. 7. 49 just conception of the real dignity of His person, as none other than Incarnate Divinity, and while there were occa- sions in which the impressions of the mysterious grandeur of the Being who had deigned to take them into familiar friendship and communion with Himself fell with resistless force upon their souls, — yet, in the general train of their conceptions and their intercourse, they did not, to all appearance, comprehend all that was embraced in the majestic title which they acknowiedged as pertaining to Him, " the Son of God," — they did not feel that they were in the presence and society of a Person who was actually one with the Everlasting Father, possessed of the same divinity and entitled to equal adoration. This fact, — for we admit it to be the fact, — has been urged^with pecuHar strenuousness and triumph by the opposers of our Lord's divinity, as affording a strong, a conclusive presumption against the truth of that magnificent and precious doc- trine,— with how little reason let the text declare. The state of their sentiments and feelings at that period, in regard to the personal dignity of their Divine Master, is there the subject of express disapprobation, of direct reproof To oppose, therefore, as the Antitrinitarian champions have not scrupled to do, the apprehensions of the disciples in regard to the person of Jesus during His abode with them upon the earth, — the period during which, on this and on many other points of fundamental importance in the Christian faith, they were to so great a degree the victims of ignorance and carnal prejudice, — to the distinct testi- monies which, in their latter writings, when rej)lenished with celestial light, the promised inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they bore to the Divine supremacy of their exalted Lord, as " God manifest in the flesh," — is nothing less than to say, that the censure, if not expressed, yet most distinctly D 50 LECTURE IV. implied, when Jesus said, " If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also ;" " Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me?" was a cen- sure unjust and undeserved. For the whole context shows, that it was not merely the mistaken notions they had formed respecting His character and office, but those which they entertained in regard to His person and peculiar relation to the Almighty Father, on which Jesus here reflects in tones of just astonishment, — of deserved, though mitigated, censure and reproof. Had they only entertained correct ideas on this fundamental point, such as they might certainly have gathered, in the course of their previous intercourse w^ith Jesus, from much that He had said and much that He had done; had they only carried about with them the habitual impression, that in all that their Master uttered, in all that their Master acted, it was Divinity — the same Divinity which the Almighty Father Himself possesses — that spoke, and that acted, through the organs of a nature like their owm, — what vast accessions might they not have derived to the extent, the accuracy, and the clearness of their information respecting the Supreme, in the course of those three memorable years during which the Word, becoming Flesh, had dwelt among them, and given them to behold His " glory, the glory as of the Only- begotten of the Father!" And how justly might not that glorious One, when His personal presence was now on the point of being withdrawn from the world which He had consecrated with His holy footstep, — the circle He had honoured with His august society, — thus describe, as here, the loss they had sustained by their failure to improve the opportunities they had enjoyed of acquiring a distinct con- ception of who He was and what, — that mighty and mysterious Stranger who so often gave them occasion to JOHN XIV. 7. ol exclaim, "What manner of man is this!" — "If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also." In order, however, to mitigate any appearance of severity which this remark, however just, might carry, Jesus goes on to express His hope that the comparative ignorance of His Father and Himself in which they had been, till now, by their own fault involved, would from that instant vanish from their minds, and allow " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ," to shine in upon their souls with an unclouded beam: — "From henceforth ye know Him and have seen Him." From that very instant they were furnished with new advantages for acquiring a profounder and more accurate knowledge of God and Jesus Christ whom He had sent, in the very fact of being given to understand that their former conceptions regarding the dignity of their Master's person, and the deductions to be drawn from His character, as developed in the whole course and tenor of His mortal life, had been inexcusably imperfect and obscure. They had in that w^arning what, it might charitably be presumed, would lead them straightway, with aU teachable and humble diligence, to use the means with which they were favoured so abundantly for ascertaining the genuine truth respecting the personal glory of their Saviour-Lord, — to revolve, witli greater care, before their memories and understandings, the manifold intimations which in their presence He had given, by w^ord and deed, of the sovereign grandeur of His being, and so to draw from these the true conclusion, that He belonged to the very highest order of existence in the universe, — that He was none other than " Emmanuel, God with us," — the same in substance as the Father Almighty, and equal in power and glory. This magnificent conclu- sion once distinctly drawn, and firmly grasped by their 52 LECTURE IV. minds, they opened their eyes immediately upon a reve- lation of the Godhead the most distinct, the most copious, the most impressive, — a new and brighter illumination was poured on that, the greatest and worthiest of all possible objects of contemplation and regard, — and, in a sense before inappropriate to their experience, they knew Him and had seen Him. The expression, however, here employed, " from hence- forth," must not be viewed as fixing down the change to be effected on the disciples' mode of viewing Jesus, and God through Him, to that particular instant of time. The phrase is employed to denote, not merely a period already come, but a period near at hand, as in the first chapter of this very Gospel : — " Hereafter ye shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." It seems most probable that even the apostles had not attained to a very distinct and definite conception of the mighty truth concerning the Supreme Divinity of Jesus Christ, till after His earthly history was finished, and they had received the promised ministration of the Spirit, who was to " take of the things of Christ, and show them to " their minds, — not only refreshing their recollections, but enlightening their understanding, — not only "bringing all things to their remembrance," but " leading them into all the truth." It was then, therefore, tliat our Saviour s declaration in the text w^as most conspi- cuously verified in their experience; that, having before their minds the complete picture of their Master's history, — embracing not only His mortal life, but His death and resurrection, His ascension and His reign, — and contem- plated under a new and clearer light, a light that shone abroad from the very Fountain of unerring truth, the illu- mination of the Holy Ghost, — they perceived the true JOHN XIV. 7. 53 glory of that marvellous picture as the very reflection of Divinity. The face of Jesus they then saw to be the mirror of Jehovah ; and thenceforward they could truly say, that they knew the Father and had seen Him. It was not that they had seen the Father in His person, or the Godhead in His essence. In this sense, He is " the King Invisible," " whom no man hath seen neither can see." But they had seen His glory and His grace, His character and counsels, exhibited in that of Avhich they had been eye-witnesses for long, the person and the work of His Anointed Son, — of Him one distinguished part of whose office on the earth was, that He might be " the Image of the invisible God." This is an office frequently ascribed to Jesus in holy writ, and it is one of the most interesting and important of aU the lights in which He is presented to our faith. " He that hath seen me," says He to the Jews, " hath seen the Father ;" and we shall presently find Him making the same statement, in the same terms, to the selected eleven. Hence the Apostle Paul refers us to "the glory of God " as " shining in the face of Jesus Christ," and our great Evangelist de- clares, in the commencement of this Gospel, that when " the Word became flesh and dwelt among us," His followers ** beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father."* And how great an amount of instruction is the history of Jesus, — even so much of it as was transacted before the eyes of mortals, — fitted to communicate con- cerning the perfections and the counsels of the Everlasting Sovereign, to those who recognise in Him the lofty Being that He reaUy was, — "God manifest in the flesh!" Had the disciples only carried about with them, in their daily and familiar intercourse with their Divine Master, the ♦ Col. i. 15; John xiv. 9 ; 2 Cor. iv. 6: John i. 14. 54 LECTURE IV. abiding impression that He was a Being really and su- premely Divine, they were placed in circumstances pecu- liarly favourable for acquiring an exact and adequate impression of the Almighty's character; and as soon as they became fully aware of this majestic fact, which they do not appear to have habitually recognised till after their Master's resurrection, — that He whom they acknowledged as the Son of God was in reality possessed of the essence of God, — they emerged into the light of a brighter revela- tion than yet had shone upon their minds, with respect to the attributes and to the government of the Supreme, whom to contemplate and to know is much of the felicity of heaven. LECTUEE V. Chap. xiv. 8, 9. "Philip satei unto Him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time Avith 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?" You remember, brethren, how Jesus, having had occasion to refer to the vision and the fruition of God as that in which the perfection and the happiness of the human soul consisted, had further congratulated His disciples on the privilege which they possessed in having already, to a cer- tain extent, enjoyed this highest of all honours and most precious of all satisfactions, — in having already had the opportunity of seeing God. You know that what Jesus meant by the intuition of God, the vision of the Father, to which His disciples had been admitted, was the close and familiar view they had enjoyed of Himself, when He taber- nacled among men, the visible Image of the invisible God ; and we noticed, in our last Lecture, the nature of that revelation of the Father which was visibly embodied in the character and life of His incarnate Son. So determined, however, and deep-rooted, in the minds of the apostles, was the habit of viewing every thing con- nected with the Messiah and His kingdom in accordance with the long-cherished anticipations of a sensible glory to be then revealed, and a temporal felicity to be then 5Q LECTTJEE V. enjoyed, that Philip could attach to the expression of see- ing the Father, no other idea than that of having presented to his eyes some visible manifestation of the Eternal Majesty, such as had more than once, in former times, been vouchsafed to the fathers and the prophets ; such, for example, as was enjoyed by the elders on mount Sinai, when, to use the sacred historian's own expression, " they saw the God of Israel," — when they beheld the enthroned effulgence of His presence flashing from above the sapphire pavement, that, in its pure serenity, lay stretched beneath His feet, " like the body of heaven in his clearness," and had all their faculties so strengthened and sublimed for that mysterious intercourse, that, instead of being blasted with the splendours of His brow, they celebrated before Him a feast of holy gladness on the sacred summit : — " On the nobles of Israel He laid not His hand, but they saw God and did eat and drink." By similar magnificent appearances the disciples knew that Jehovah had often manifested Himself under the Old Economy even to the senses of His servants; as to Moses, its founder, when, at the call of Jehovah, he went up into the thick cloud where God was, and where He spake with him face to face, — to the high priest, its leading minister, when, year after year, he passed within the vail into the mystic darkness of the holiest of all, and gazed upon the apt and awful symbol of Him who is at once an Infinite Excellence and an Infinite Mystery, the cloud of spk^ndour throned between the cherubim, — to Isaiah, when he " saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up, and his train" of voluminous cloud and splendour filling the temple, — or to Ezekiel, when, at the flood of Chebar, he saw the Almighty borne upon His car of thunder, cherub-drawn, with wheels of beryl, and careering fires between. Such manifestations JOHN XIV. 8, 9. 57 as these of the adorable Godliead, — by which, though in His essence invisible, and unbounded in His presence, He condescended to afford His favoured servants under the first Testament, the local intimation of His presence, the visible type of His majesty, — the Jews in general believed were to become still more frequent, and still more con- spicuous, under the age of the Messiah. In this sense they interpreted the numerous passages in the prophetic volume where, at the era of the great predicted salvation, God Himself is represented as descending from on high, and bringing deliverance to His people with His own right hand and His holy arm, — as when Isaiah, for example, commanded to comfort the people of the Lord with the tidings of the commg Consolation of Israel, declares, " The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together;" " 0 Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain ; 0 Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength, lift it up, be not afraid. Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! Behold, the Lord Jehovah shall come with strong hand, and His arm shall rule for Him. Behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him," — or when, in the closing oracle of prophetic testimony, Malachi announces, ."Tlie Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple." Following, therefore, the Jewish interpreta- tion of these sublime and animating oracles — as the disci- ples were too apt to do in regard to all predictions con- nected with Messiah's reign, — Philip straightway imagined that the vision of God which Jesus had just announced as immediately to be enjoyed, was to prove the accomplish- ment of all their brightest expectations on this particular ; that erelong the glory of the Father was to effulge upon their view in some overwhelming blaze of visible brightness 58 LECTURE V. and magnificence; that from tliat period forward tliey should bask beneath the glorious and beatific sun-light of the restored Shechinah ; that God Himself, revealed as of old in the pillar of cloud and flame, would interpose to marshal them their way to the expected conquest of the world, and pour the beams of a surpassing splendour around their IVIaster's earthly throne, — ^the throne, to be erected now without delay, of universal rule. In very much the same signification, therefore, as Moses had of old implored, "I beseech thee, 0 Lord, show me thy glory," — Give me to behold some visible symbol, w^orthy to express the majesty of Thy sovereign presence and perfection, — did Philip now in similar terms conjure his Master, "Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us;" — an idiomatic phrase the last, by which we express the vehemence of some particular desire, as, so to speak, absorbing and engrossing all other desires into itself, — the sense we entertain of the magnitude and value of some particular benefit as enough of itself to satisfy the soul, to fill up all its indefinite capacity of happiness. The reasons of the intensity of Philip's desire, and the earnestness of his request, are to be found, not simply in that lofty longing which, in each more erected soul, pants after the discovery of whatever is noble and sublime, magnificent and excellent, — whatever is fitted to "vsTap the spirit in the trance of delighted wonder, the rapture of adoring admiration, — but in the persuasion that the visible interposition of Jehovah, when it did in point of fact arrive, would be in order to effect, by the arm of His Omnipotence made bare in sight of all the nations, the full establishment of the M(\ssiah's reign in all its antici- pated pomp and majesty, dominion and renown. Perceiv- ing in the immediate apposition of the Godhead, the JOHN XIV. 8, 9. 59 immediate fulfilment of their long-cherislied, long disap- pointed hopes, — hopes that, from the tenor of their Mas- ter's recent communications, began to be " like the giving up of the ghost," — Philip eagerly grasps at the idea which Jesus had suggested of their speedy admission to the brighter vision, the directer contemplation, of the Father, and, with a warmth of expression which represented that as the substance and the complement of all their desires, exclaims, — " Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us." No one, however, who had duly attended to the words of Jesus, " If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also ; and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him," — no one who had rightly improved the opportunities which three years' familiar intercourse had afforded of becoming acquainted with the true import of the Messiah's doctrine, the genuine character of the Mes- siah's reign — could have deduced such a meaning from these expressions as Philip had gathered from them with such eager haste, — a haste, indeed, which seemed to indi- cate that he was far from sure of the legitimacy of his own conclusion. Hence the tone of obvious, though mild, reproof in which our Lord's reply is uttered: — "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?" You know how natural it is, in cases like that before us of gentle chiding and rebuke, — when we wish to inti- mate to one we love that some part of his conduct or con- versation was not such as we should have expected from him, — to hint our grief and our surprise by a certain deli- cately emphatic use, such as we see exemplified here, of his proper name. By thus pronouncing his name, we obscurely, yet touchingiy, sum up, as it were, all the cir- 60 LECTURE V. cumstances connected witli his character and condition, rendering the actions and the words which we complain of more extraordinary in his case than in that of others from whom that name distinguishes him. By naming Philip, then, our Lord emphatically intimates that there were persons from whom there would have been less occa- sion of astonishment had such a request proceeded than from him, — those who had not enjoyed the same oppor- tunities of entering into that interior spirit of the doctrine which Jesus taught, and the kingdom which Jesus was to erect on earth. Our Master, however, not willing to trust this topic of deserved reproof to an obscure and evanes- cent implication, distinctly specifies it in so many words, as impartiag a serious aggravation to the ignorance which the petition in question indicated : — " Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?" Philip had been one of those who were earliest called to form part of the chosen circle of our Lord's familiar asso- ciates,— His disciples of interior admission, — His house- hold of acknowledged friends, of adopted children; and for above three years, he had been one of those " eye-wit- nesses and ministers of the Word who companied with the Lord Jesus all the time that He went in and out before the people," approving Himself, by word and deed, the undoubted Son of God, — declaring Himself, by innumer- able verbal intunations and practical demonstrations, the possessor of tlie same supreme Divinity, invested with the same infinite perfections, as God thePather Himself In the course of our last Lecture, we called your attention to tliat peculiarity in the style of the intimations given by our Saviour during His personal ministry, in reference to tlie dignity of His person, as strictly and eternally divine, which made it possible for His disciples not to have JOHN XIV. 8, 9. 61 acquired before His death a distinct and abiding, a prin- cipled and habitual, feeling that He in whose presence and society it was their honour and tlieir privilege habi- tually to move, was none other than " God manifest in flesh," one Being with the everlasting Father. The pecu- liarity was, briefly, this — that He seldom made distinct claims, or laid down express assertions, respecting His own essence and prerogative. He is never recorded to have said in so many words, ' I am God/ — as the apostles, after they had received the Holy Ghost, were wont to say, with no circumlocution or reserve, " The Word was God," " God over all, blessed for evermore," the " great God our Saviour," "the true God and eternal life."* In this way it was possible for the disciples to avoid having the con- viction actually forced in upon their minds that Jesus was Incarnate Jehovah. Yet this did not excuse their ignor- ance and unbelief in regard to this magnificent conclusion. For although, for wise and holy reasons, Jesus did not account it meet to announce this glorious fact in express words, He had announced it frequently by implication, — yet implication so simple and transparent, that none of His disciples who had exerted on the subject even a moderate degree of thought and candid consideration could have failed to reach the august and overwhelming conviction, that, through the organs of that lowly humanity with wMch they saw their Master clothed, it was Divinity itself that spoke and acted. Many such intimations occur in this Gospel ; of which one special end and object, there can be little doubt, was to illustrate the great doctrine of our Lord's Divinity from His own sacred lips, — intimations supported by pas- sages,— not so numerous, yet sufficient to show that our * John i. 1 ; Kom. ix. 5; Tit. ii. 13; 1 Jolm v. 20. 62 LECTURE V. Master's doctrine on this mighty and majestic point was uniform, — occurring in the other three Evangelists. Philip, then, and his brother-disciples had heard their Master, for example, speak of His own sacred person as equally with the Father's beyond the capacity of man to comprehend, — and of Himself, as alone of all existing beings possessing a direct and primary knowledge of the Father, even such as the Father had of Him : — " No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and He to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him ;" " As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father." They had heard Him affirm Himself to be the Son of God in such a sense as to imply equality of power, parti- cipation of omnipotence : — " AVliatsoever things the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." They had heard Him claim for Himself the same right to perform what acts He pleased on the consecrated day of rest as the Father Himself possessed to carry on the works of nature and of providence : — " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." They had heard Him announce Himself as com- missioned to the performance of acts, and the discharge of offices, the performance and discharge of which, even by delegation of authority, required divinity of perfection: — " As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them ; even so the Son quickeneth whom He will;" "I am the resun'cction and the life : he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : and whosoever livetli, and believeth in me, shall never die;" "All that are in their graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they tliat have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damna- tion;" "The Father Himself judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son;" — assigning as the JOHN XIV. 8, 9. 63 reason of these magnificent appointments, tlie Father s good pleasure that " all should honour the Son even as they honour the Father." They had heard Him assert His own identity of saving power with the Father, and in confirma- tion of this, His identity of nature and of essence : — " I give unto my sheep eternal life, — none shall pluck them from my hand, — none can pluck them from my Father's hand, — I and my Father are one." They had heard Him represent Himself as having existed ages before His human birth, as having descended from heaven, as having come from above, as having proceeded forth from God, as having existed before Abraham, — and that with a pecu- liarity of expression which strongly implies His possession of self-existence, and a claim to that incommunicable name by which it is expressed, — "Jehovah, I AM:" — "Before Abraham was, I am." They had received from Him pro- mises of His perpetual presence to attend His people wherever they were scattered, which amounted to an asser- tion of His omnipresent consciousness and agency : — " AVhere two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." They had seen Him receive without rebuke and without hesitation divine names and divine homage, — as when Peter exclaimed in the transport of ecstatic admiration, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord;" and all along, in the days of His humilia- tion, allow Himself to be approached with reverences and prostrations which not prophets only, but "angels, who are gi^eater in power and might," would have rejected and forbidden, as too nearly approaching to the homage due to the Almighty Godhead. They had heard Him assuming a sovereign jurisdiction in matters of moral and religious duty, — proclaiming the oracles of truth and the maxims of duty, not, as a prophet would have done, with the form of 64 LECTUEE V. '' Thus saitli tlie Lord," but with the high expression, " I say unto you." They had heard Him pronounce the for- giveness of sins in a way which seemed distinctly to imply, and which the Jews, uncontradicted by Him, understood as implying, that He did it by His own inherent autho- rity;— "Son, daughter, thy sins are forgiven thee."* Such are some sjoecimens, gathered even from those brief memoirs of the Messiah's life which have been trans- mitted down to us, of the abundant materials of evidence afforded by the previous life of Jesus which might, long ere now, have convinced the disciples that He was none other than " Emmanuel, God with us," — bearing in His person the nature, and exhibiting in His character the attributes, of the Eternal Deity. And such, therefore, are some part of the grounds on which the Saviour might well demand of Philip on the present occasion, in the tone, as it were, of disappointment and surprise, " Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?" That this was the particular point in reference to which the Saviour here complains of the disciple's ignorance, is obvious from the tenor of the whole sur- rounding context. The subject of the whole conversation is the vision of God, the intuition of the Father; and the statement implied, — as a kind of axiom which ought ere now to have been as it were self-evident to His disciples' minds, — in all that our Saviour had declared respecting the opportunities they had enjoyed of seeing God, was this, — that to see Jesus was the same thing as to see God. Now, what was the trutli respecting His own person on which the recognition of this principle depended? What but that * Matt. xi. 27; John x. 15; v. 19, 17. 21 ; xi. 25, 26; v. 28, 22, 23; X. 28—80; viii. .58; Matt, xviii. 20; Luke v. 8; Matt, v, 22, 28, &c.; ix. 2 ; Luke v. 20. JOHN XIV. 8, 9. 65 in Him the perfect glory of the Godhead, the total divine majesty, was really inherent, — that He was a li^dng and personal manifestation of the Divinity itself, — that He was indeed possessed of the same nature, the same pro- perties, the same perfections, as the Father, — in plain words, that He was God. This was the knowledge that the disciples wanted in order to comprehend their Master's discourse; and this, therefore, is the subject in regard to which He speaks as if He marvelled at their ignorance. Finding, however, from Philip's shallow and infantine request, that the spiritual knowledge and penetration even of His most intimate followers was limited and superficial, far beyond what might reasonably have been expected, — He goes on to express in a distinct assertion what He had hitherto implied and taken for granted as a known and acknowledged principle : — " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." This is the same declaration in another form as He had uttered just before, when He said, " If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also ; and from hence- forth ye know Him, and have seen Him," — and was in- tended just to draw the attention of Philip to the true principle of explication on which that former statement was to be understood and to be interpreted. That principle is obviously not, as most interpreters seem to imagine, that Philip referred to a visible, while Jesus spoke only of a moral and intellectual, manifestation of the Godhead. Both refer alike to a sensible, a visible appearance of Jehovah ; and what our Lord declares is, that, whether they knew it or not, whether or not they had with the intellectual eye discerned the spiritual glory of the spectacle, they had, in point of fact, with their bodily eyes seen God, — seen a person who was God, visibly present, visibly acting, in the 66 LECTUEE V. midst of them. True, if you will insist on absolute strict- ness, on the last possible exactness of speech, — even in gazing on the Word made flesh, they did not see God. They saw only part of that human nature which the God- head had assumed. The Godliead remained wrapt in the majestic shroud of that essential invisibility which is a part of its perfection, and therefore an attribute eternal and immutable. " No man hath seen God at any time." Eobed in august impenetrable secrecy, He lives and reigns for ever, — "the King Eternal, Immortal, and Invisible," — an Omnipresent Mystery. Employing, however, the expression of '' seeing God " in the more general and popular sense which the common usage of language allows, and in which it was plain that Philip understood it, of having some visible appearance presented to the senses as an indication that God was immediately present, that God was immediately acting, — Jesus could truly say that, in seeing Him, His followers had for three years past been seeing God. They had been beholding that which is more intimately connected with Jehovah's essence than any other symbol by which He had at any time revealed Himself to saint or patriarch, prophet or priest, — that which was an indication more direct than any among these, of the nearness of Jehovah's presence, the operation of Jehovah's energy, and, above all, of the attributes and perfections of Jehovah's character ; the presence, the energy, the character, the one Divinity, wliich belong ahke to the Father and the Son, and in consequence of possessing wliich the Son is entitled '' the Image of the Invisible God," " the Brightness of the Father's glory and the Express Image of His person."* Hence it is, that, in His concluding words to Philip, Jesus virtually prefers the revelation of the Father which He had ♦ Col. i. 15; TIcb. i. 3. JOHN XIV. 8, 9. 67 made to His disciples before all tlie symbolic visions of the Godliead wbich. had been enjoyed before, or which might be now imagined. For such a preference is not obscurely, I apprehend, implied in the connection of the declaration with the demand : — " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?" Now, in order to understand how much to be preferred the vision of God which the disciples had enjoyed in the face of Jesus was over those vouchsafed from time to time to ancient saints, you must consider that there can be no reasonable doubt, on comparing all the circumstances, that the miraculous appearances and intercourse of God with the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament, — the appearances and intercourse of which Philip now desires the repetition, — were made in the person of the Son. That He who acted as the Almighty Leader and Protector of Israel in their journey ings through the wilderness was the Eternal Son, who afterwards became the Anointed Servant, of the Lord, is plain from the testimony of St. Paul, when he says, that " some of them tempted Christ " in the desert. That it was the Eternal Son whose glory was the Shechinah, the Inhabiting Presence of the holy place, — to whom its altars were erected, and its fragrant censers fumed, — is declared by Malachi in his memorable prediction, — " The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in." That the majestic apparition of "the King, the Lord of hosts," upon His throne, wdiich smote Isaiah to the dust with awe and conscious sinfulness, was the vision of the Eternal Son, St. John has assured us, when he says, — " These things said Isaiah, when he saw His glory and spake of Him."* It should seem as if He who " rejoiced * 1 Cor. X. 9; Mai. iii. 1; John xii. 41, 68 LECTURE V. from the beginning in the habitable parts of the earth, and set His delights upon the sons of men," did, even from the period when He said to the Father, " Lo I come ; a body liast thou prepared me," delight to anticipate His incar- nation, and to present Himself to His chosen servants in the form of that human flesh which He was one day to wear in actual fact and substance among men. Thus it was that all along, in beholding Jesus, Philip and liis brother -disciples had been beholding that very person before whom Abraham and Jacob, Moses and Aaron, Isaiah and Ezekiel, had bowed adoring, when they saw and spake with God. How much more highly favoured than those olden worthies, to whom He vouchsafed in com- parison but transitory glimpses of His glorious form, but partial revelations of His heavenly truth, were those selected eleven whom He now addressed, and who, for three revolv- ing years, exuberant of wonders, had been ever at His side listening to "the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth," and witnessing the marvels of omnipotent benignity by which He manifested forth His glory, " the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father!" True, He did not habitually reveal Himself to them, as He was wont to do to ancient saints and seers, encircled with the lustre of celestial majesty, "covering Himself with light as with a garment," and uttering His holy oracles as with " the sound of many w^aters, and the voice of mighty thunderings ;" although on one conspicuous occasion, as if to demonstrate that it was by His own merciful choice, that, while He tabernacled among men. He laid aside His ancient pomp of insufferable glory, they that were with Him in the holy mount, and were there the eye-witnesses of His majesty, have told the Church, how " He was trans- figured before them," and how "the fashion of His'coun- JOHN XIV. 8, 9. 69 tenance was altered, so that His face did shiiie as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light." But it was in mercy and wisdom that, in His familiar intercourse with men. He chose to lay aside the imperial robe of majesty, and to appear, in the midst of them, a man in the midst of men, that His glory might not repel and overwhelm them, nor His terror make them afraid, — ^that through Him they might become familiar and intimate with God, — that, in the closeness and directness of their communion with Jehovah, Moses might be as far excelled by them as all other prophets were excelled by Moses, by him of whom Jehovah said, " If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and I will speak to him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so ; who is faithful in all my house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches : and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold ;" " And there arose not afterward a prophet in Israel like unto Moses, whom God knew face to face, to whom Jeho- vah spake as a man talketh with his friend."* If, therefore, we are right in supposing that Philip was looking back with enYj on the visions of Divinity with which the fathers of Israel had once been favoured, when he prayed his Mas- ter, " Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufl&ceth us," — how little did he show himself aware of his own prerogative and privilege, and how well did he deserve from Jesus the gentle but penetratmg reproof, — "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 say- est thou then. Shew us the Father ! " I fear, my brethren, that we are often justly liable to the * Num. xii. 6, 7; Deut. xxxiv. 10; Exod. xxxiii. 11. 70 LECTUEE V. veiy same rej^roof, — that those of us who know in general, and acknowledge in the abstract, the majestic truth of our Lord's Supreme Divinity, do not recollect it and apply it with sufficient constancy and care, when we think of Jesus, when we read of Jesus. Oh, what an additional power and splendour w^ould it not infuse into the history of our Redeemer as fitted to tell upon our minds and hearts, — with what irresistible authority it would invest His words, — ^with what surpassing dignity it would illumine His every action, — what a mystery of condescension and of love it w^ould reveal in each detail of His sufferings and His sacrifice, — did we, in calling them to mind, more dis- tinctly realize, more truly conceive, the vast idea, that in all these it is God Incarnate that speaks, that acts, that suffers! And let us farther learn from this instructive passage, — to bethink ourselves how often Jesus, our Lord and Master, in comparing the means and opportunities enjoyed by His people of growing in the knowledge of Himself and of His Father with the progress they have actually made in that high knowledge which is eternal life, has reason to regret and censure the flagrant disproportion between the two. To how many among us, my brethren, might He not say in the same tone of just dissatisfaction, 'Have I been so long time with you," — in my oracles, rand ordinances, and offered grace, — " and yet have ye not know^n me?" As we would, then, escape His merited rebukes, let us labour, brethren, to " grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." And to this end, while we diligently use all appointed and appropriate instruments, let us evermore remember that it is the office of the Holy Spirit to take of the things of Christ, and to show them to our souls in saving light and power, and therefore pray with earnest perseverance that JOHN XIV. 8, 9. 71 " the God of oiir Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give imto ns the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, till we all come into the unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God," — that we " may be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that so we may be fiUed with all the fulness of God." LECTURE VI. Chap. xiv. 10. " 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." YoTJ remember, brethren, in what connection the words we have now been reading are introduced. In answer to the congratulations of Jesus addressed to His disciples on the peculiar opportunities with which they had been favoured, of enjoying a more direct intuition of the Father, a more immediate intercourse with Jehovah, than had been vouch- safed to others, Philip, imagining that Jesus referred to an approaching manifestation of the Godhead, in some such form of physical splendour as had been wont of old to indicate to saint and prophet a present Deity, — the restora- tion of the lost Shechinah, the cloud of excellent glory, to the world, — nor perceiving that what our Lord alluded to was the inestimable privilege they had enjoyed in attend- ing upon Him, of beholding Incarnate Deity, of hearing and seeing Jehovah Himself speaking and acting through the faculties and organs of a man, — had given utterance to his ignorant imaginations and desires in the request, " Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us." The inex- cusable ignorance and indocility which such a request implied on the part of Pliilip, liad drawn forth from Jesus the grave, though tenderly-expressed, rebuke, — " Have I JOHN XIV. 10. 73 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 say est thou then. Shew us the Father?" Thus did the Master intimate, that it was not for want of abundant materials and means of information that Philip had not yet discovered that He in whose presence and society it had been so long the honour and the privilege of the chosen twelve to move, was none other than Emmanuel, " God manifest in the flesh," one Being with the Everlast- ing Father ; and that in seeing Jesus, therefore, they had in fact been seeing Jehovah, — beholding that which, as more intimately connected with Jehovah's essence, was an indication more direct of the nearness of Jehovali's pre- sence, the operation of Jehovah's energy, and, above all, of the attributes and perfections of Jehovah's character, — the presence, the energy, and the perfection, of the one Divi- nity, belonging alike to the Father and the Son, — ^than any other symbol by which He had at any time revealed Him- self to priest or prophet, saint and patriarch, ' By vocal utterance, or blaze of light, Or cloud of darkness, localized in heaven Or earth, enshrined within the wandering ark, Or out of Zion thundering from His throne Between the cherubim.' In the passage we have read, Jesus is continuing His reflections, though in the tone at least as much of pity as of anger, on the lamentable want of faith and of docility which their ignorance of the real nature and character of His connection with the Father shewed: — "Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" The formula to be in any one, obviously expresses in general the most intimate connection with that indivi- dual. But this connection may be of various kinds in 74 LECTURE VI. various cases, and the nature of tlie connection which it indicates in any particular passage must be determined from the context of the passage itself It is frequently used in reference to the union which true believers enjoy with their Saviour and their God; as when, in this very chapter, it is declared, " In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you;" or when our evangelist, in his first Epistle, observes, " If we love one another, God abideth in us, and His love is fulfilled in us. By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, that He hath given us of His Spirit. Wliosoever con- fesseth that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him, and he in God; and we know and are confident of the love which God hath to us. God is love; and he who dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." From these passages it is j)lain, that the idea of a mutual indwelHng is fairly applicable, according to the usage of Scripture, to that union which subsists between genuine Christians and the great Father of spirits, — the interchange of gracious influences on His part, and of devotional affec- tion on theirs, which is denominated in Scripture their com- munion with the Father. But it does not, therefore, fol- low, that when the phrase is applied to the mysterious union which subsists between Jesus and Jehovah, it can signify no more than this. It is an expression intimating the closest possible connection between two parties that the case admits of, though not defining the respect in which the conjunction exists. That is in every separate instance to be determined from the character of the parties, and the bearing of the context. And when, therefore, in the case before us, we consider tlicse, it becomes immediately apparent that the kind of connection here referred to as existing between the Father and the Son nmst consist in JOHN XIV. 10. 75 tlieir possession of a common Divinity. The subject of the whole conversation is the vision of God, the intuition of the Father ; and the statement implied in all that Jesus had declared respected the opportunities enjoyed by His disciples of seeing God, as a kind of axiom, or first prin- ciple, which ought ere now to have been, as it were, self- evident to their minds, is this, — that to see Jesus was the same thing as to see God. Now, what was the truth respecting His own person on which the recognition of this principle depended? What but that in Him the per- fect glory of the Godhead, the total Divine Majesty, was really inherent, — that He was a Living and Personal Manifestation of the Divinity itself, — that He was indeed possessed of the same nature, the same properties, the same perfections, the same Godliead, as the Everlasting Father? This was the faith which Philip wanted in order to comprehend his Master's preceding discourse ; and this, therefore, must be the import of the peculiar expression employed by our Lord in describing the faith of which He regretted the deficiency. Accordingly, He uses the very same formula of speech in circumstances which leave no doubt of His meaning. In the tenth chapter of this Gos- pel, Jesus is introduced as advancing, in presence of the Jews, His lofty claim to the possession of precisely the same Omnipotence of saving power as appertained to God the Father Almighty: — "I give unto my sheep eternal life ; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all ; and none is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one," — one Being, — one in power, and therefore one in nature. And thus, when summoned, by the furious clamours of the multitude accusing Him of open and daring blasphemy, to vindicate 76 LECTUEE VI. the claim He had asserted, He is described as doing so by its re-assertion in different terms, — the terms of the pas- sage now before us, — accompanied by an appeal, as here, to the credentials on the strength of which He was entitled to demand that His hearers should receive whatever He declared respecting Himself, however lofty and magnifi- cent, as the infallible truth of God : — '' If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works ; that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in Him." * In that passage the expression, " the Father is in me, and I in Him," as is obvious from the whole series of the context, is just the repetition of the former statement, " I and my Father are one," and must be considered as having the same meaning, viz., that the Father and the Son are pos- sessed of one Omnipotence, and therefore of one Divinity. In both the passages, therefore, in which our Saviour uses this very remarkable phrase respecting Himself, the con- text and circumstances of the case demonstrate its refer- once to be to that profound and mysterious unity of essence, that sameness and identity of substance, by wliicli the Father and Son are one God. In the place before us, however, Jesus, besides the general statement of the unity of being in which the Eternal Father and the Co-eternal Son exist for ever undivided, as one Supreme Jehovah, carries out the statement into one or two of its immediate consequences, to the effect that, whatever He said and did might, in con- sequence of tliis ineffable unity, be looked upon as said and done by the Almighty Father Himself: — " The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself: the Father, that dwelleth in rae, He doeth the works;" that is ♦ John X. 37, 38. JOHN XIV. 10. 77 to say, So entirely one are the Father and the Son, that whatever of Divine there was in the words or in the acts of Jesus, the Divinity might be regarded as pertaining not less to the latter than to the former.' A\^iat Jesus said, He said not in the exercise of any wisdom or intelligence belonging to Himself alone, but in the exercise of that Divine Omniscience which was not His more than it was the Father's ; what Jesus did. He did not in the exercise of any power which was in contradistinction to that of the other Substances of the mysterious Trinity, but by the energy of that Omnipotence which was the common per- fection of them all, the one attribute of the Father and the Son. The doctrine, the works, the glory, of the one, are the doctrine, and works, and glory, of the other. In one word, the perfections of the Son were those of the Father, the perfections of the Father were those of the Son. So that the chosen twelve, whose honour and privilege it was to " company with the Lord Jesus all the time that He went in and out among them," — to listen to, and " wonder at, the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth,'' — to behold and to admire the miracles wrought by His right hand — had all along been hearing, in these words, the wisdom of the Father, and seeing, in these works, the power of the Father, — had been hearing and seeing God so clearly manifested, that it could only be from inexcus- able ignorance or unbelief in regard to their Master's real character, and real relation to the Sovereign Nature, that any one of them could have besought Him, as for a favour not hitherto enjoyed, " Lord, shew us the Father." They had for three years been gazing upon a more exact and lumin- ous revelation of the Godhead than had they been per- mitted, with Moses and his attendant elders, to see the God of Israel throned upon the sapphire firmament, or to 78 LECTURE VI. pass with tlie liigli-priest, year by year, throiigli tlie cur- tains of that profound and solemn sanctuary where the bright symbol of Jehovah's presence sparkled above the cherub-guarded ark. They had been allowed with undaz- zled eye to contemplate Him, with familiar intercourse to associate with Him, who was the Similitude of Jehovah, the Mirror of the Godliead. This, then, is the sum of our Saviour's explanations in answer to Philip's ignorant request, that, in respect of the Divine essence and perfection, there was no difference between the Father and Himself, — that the Godhead was but one in the person of the Eternal Father and in the person of the Incarnate Son; and He intimates that it might well appear surprising that Philip should still require to be informed on this momentous particular in regard to His Master s person and prerogative : — " 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." We have already explained to you how it came to pass that, in the days of our Saviour's flesh. His immediate fol- lowers and friends could avoid making the discovery of His real dignity and actual relation to the Infinite God- liead ; and we have also endeavoured to prove that if, in their circumstances, ignorance on this point was not im- possible, it was at least entirely inexcusable. That meek and benevolent Teacher, however, — of whom it had been .predicted, that He should not "break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax," — instead of leaving those who ]iad so ill improved their precious advantages to the igno- rance and unbelief under wdiosc shadow they had liitherto, by their own fault, remained, — before He leaves the sub- ject, endeavours to lead tliem into that faitli of His Divine JOHN XIV. 10. 79 essence and Divine perfection witli wliicli He regretted to find them so faintly impressed, by adducing, in confirma- tion of the mighty truth, two descriptions of evidence, on which, as on two immovable pillars, the majestic fabric of His doctrines and His claims reposed, — the evidence of His word, and the evidence of His works : — " Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me : or else believe me for the very works' sake." He accosts them as persons from whom His simple word should be sufficient to elicit the promptest, and liveliest, and most implicit faith. But if Jesus might demand credit for His statements on the simple ground of the honesty and veracity of His human character, how much more on the ground of His divine commission and Messiahship ! For He was now addressing those with whom it was already a point established and admitted, that He was the true Prophet, the faithful Witness, the Christ, the Son of God ; and this previous point once ascer- tained, there could remain no doubt that His simple word and declaration, on any point whatever, ought to be esteemed by them decisive, and that with infinitely better right than were the oracular decisions of that ancient sage among whose followers the brief emphatic argument which solved every doubt, and settled every controversy, was their Master's ipse dixit, ' He hath said it.' No one who had the opportunity of observing the character and life of Jesus could doubt that, if He was nothing more, He was at least the holiest and wisest of men, — that there never existed one who was more loftily remote from the suspicion of wilful fraud and deliberate falsehood, or to whom the apostle's language, so beautiful in its simplicity, could be applied with equal emphasis, " He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." So that. His word once uttered, His testimony once given, every one to whom that 80 LECTURE VI. word and testimony are addressed, is placed in this inex- tricable dilemma, — either that he must at once receive them as the infallible truth of God, — for the case is not one in which it is possible to suppose that Jesus might be Himself deceived, — or that he must impute to Him than whom never did any that wore the human form exhibit such proofs of purest sanctity and highest-toned integrity, charges of the most flagrant imposture, the most audacious blasphemy. Jesus, however, had still more striking evidence to adduce of His unity with God than His own bare, unsupported declaration. AVliat He now asserted in words He had frequently attested by facts, — ^by that crowded and bril- liant train of miracles, countless in number, and endlessly varied in their character and circumstances — embracing in their range every kingdom of nature and every period of human destiny, — by which that mighty man of wonders showed Himself to be in truth " the great power of God." By the miracles and wonders and signs which God wrought through Him, in the midst of Israel, w^as Jesus of Nazareth approved by God to be whatsoever He asserted of Himself. These were the seal and signature of Jehovah, attesting the truth and the authority of whatever Jesus taught in any part of His religious doctrine, and more particularly in regard to His own person and character, and natures, and offices. Nor was this all. The miracles of Jesus not only established the dignity of His person, by proving the truth of His doctrine ; but they were of such a kind, and performed in such a way, as seemed plainly to indicate that they proceeded from a Divine energy that was personally resident in the humanity of Jesus. While other prophets and apostles whom God had honoured to be His instruments in the performance of miraculous works, were always accustomed to give unambiguous intimations JOHN XIV. 10. 81 that the power of which these marvels were the effects was not their own, we find Jesus, on the other hand, on many occasions, speaking and acting as if the wonder-working energy within Him was equally His own as His Father's energy. You recollect the high tone of equality with God in which He once remarked, — "My Father worketh hitherto, I also work." "Whatsoever things the Father doth," He said on another occasion, " these also doth the Son in like manner." How lofty a consciousness of power and prerogative to " quicken whom He w^ould, even as the Father raiseth the dead and quickeneth them," breathes in the expression and the tone with which He summoned the departed back to life from every region of death's gloomy territories ; from tlie couch of dissolution, from the funeral bier, from the tainted darkness of the sepulchre : — "Damsel, I say unto thee. Arise;" "Young man, I say unto thee. Arise;" "Lazarus, Come forth!" With how imhesitating a confidence does He bear Himself in all His miracles of healing, as not the instrument merely, but the Agent, in these memorable proofs of an Omnipotent bene- ficence ; as when of the blind man at the gate of Jericho He demanded, "What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?" or to the confession of the Galilean leper, " Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean," replied, " I will, be thou clean!" How much of manifest Omnipotence flashed from His erected form, and spoke in His uplifted voice, — the Omnipotence which " ruleth in the raging of the sea," which is " mightier than the noise of many waters," — when He rebuked the imperious billows and the raving winds, and at the sovereign mandate, " Peace, be still," im- mediately " the wind ceased, and there was a great calm ! "* * John V. 17, 19, 21; Mark v. 41; Luke vii. 14; John xi. 43; Luke xviii. 41 ; v. 12, 13; Mark iv. 39. F 82 LECTUEE VI. To any one who will compare the record of our Saviour's miracles with that of the miracles performed by His apos- tles, a diversity of tone and of demeanour will become imme- diately apparent, such as befits the diversity of character between the Agent and the instrument. Nay, we find that the apostles, while they manifested a studious desire to avoid any language that could he construed into a representation of themselves as any thing more than power- less instruments in performing works of supernatural might, were in the habit of ascribing the final agency, even in those miracles performed when Jesus in His human nature had departed from our world, "ascending up far above all heavens," to their exalted Master as readily as to God the Father Himself It was " in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth," and with emphatic disavowal of any power or holiness of their own to produce obedience to their bidding, that Peter and John, at the Beautiful gate of the temple, commanded the lame man to arise and walk. The signs and wonders which sanctioned the ministry of St. Paul, and of which the number and variety were so great that his modesty declines to speak of them beyond a slight and necessary allusion, he distinctly ascribes to Christ as their Author. "I speak," says he, "of those things which Christ hath wrought by me to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed, through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God."* There is sufficient reason, therefore, for believing that, in the pas- sage now before us, the words of Jesus were intended to denote, not merely that His miracles, as wrought through Him by the Father, contained the Father's attestation to the truth of all His claims, and among the rest, to that of * Acts iii. 6: lloin. xv. 18. 19. JOHN XIV. 10. 83 the reciprocal indwelling of Himself and His Father, His unity with God ; but that these same miracles, as per- formed by Himself, by a power which was strictly and pro- perly His own, shewed directly that to Him pertained the Omnipotence, and therefore the whole Perfection and the very Essence, of the Divinity, — that in sovereign might and majesty He and the Father were one: — "Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake." Here terminates, then, the interjected discussion into which our Saviour had been led by the culpable ignorance and unbelief of His disciples, — an ignorance and unbelief, however, which were graciously overruled to contribute to the greater edification and consolation of the Church, by leading to so clear a statement, and so luminous an expo- sition, of the truth respecting that manifestation of the Sovereign and Eternal Godhead which was presented to the eyes and ears of men, in the person and the character, the discourses and the actions, of Messiah, — of Him "in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," enshrined in His humanity as in a holier temple and more majestic than that of Zion, where Jehovah had His ancient throne between the cherubim. AVhat, then, remains, but that we labour to be ever more firmly believing, more strongly realizing, and more habitually remembering, that " great mystery of godliness," — " the pillar and ground of truth,'' — " God was manifested in the flesh?" Let us endea- vour more and more distinctly to trace, more and moi*e reverently to recognise, the Divinity which breathed through all His words and all His works. Let us learn to estimate at a proper rate, and to regard with due emo- tions, that meagre shadow and vain usurper of the name of Christianity which refuses to perceive in the Anointed 84 LECTURE VI. Son of God more than a mere mortal man, inspired of God as prophets were inspired of old, — sacrilegiously seek- ing to expel Jehovah from that solemn sanctuary which, above all temples, He hath chosen for His habitation, and of which He hath declared, "This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it;" to empty Jesus of His Godhead, and so to exhaust the gospel of its power, its glory, and its life; to stamp the whole work of the Redeemer with the character of poverty and littleness; and to freeze up all warm and raised emotions towards that Redeemer into chillness and apathy. And while w^e have our minds thus fortified with irrefragable arguments, and our hearts inspired with a generous contempt towards the speculative and avowed Socinianism which reduces all that is most sublime and exuberant and great in Chris- tianity to a thing so poor and paltry, let us learn to be upon our guard against that practical Socinianism which, infinitely far from formally doubting or denying the true character of Jesus the Messiah as Incarnate Jehovah, the visible Image of the Invisible God, yet can too often per- use or listen to the record of His gracious words, and of His wondrous works, with no present apprehension and sense of their Divinity. Let us train ourselves to the habit of tracing, through those innumerable acts of benig- nant Omnipotence which, as a galaxy of heavenly splen- dour, illuminate His life, the finger of God stretched forth, the arm of the Lord made bare. Let us receive each seve- ral word that drops from His sacred lips, the bps into which grace was poured without measure, with the rever- ence and godly awe due to the response of the Omniscient proceeding from the inmost pavilion of His presence, the oracle of the Eternal proclaimed in thunder from the cloud of excellent gloiy. And when we consider that He " who, JOHN XIV. 10. 85 at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son," " let us therefore give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" " See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh ; for if they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that hath spoken to us from heaven." Beware lest in any of you the god of this world should prevail to blind your unbelieving minds, " lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the Image of God, should shine into them ; " but earnestly pray, and diligently seek, that " God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, may shine into your hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ;" that so, " beholding there, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, ye may be changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." LECTUEE VII. Chap. xiv. 12. " Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also ; and greater works than these shall he do ; because I go unto my Father." (^UR Saviour here resumes the train of His consolatory discourse, which had been interrupted by the remarks, first of Thomas, and then of Philip, and which had for its object to reconcile the disciples to His approaching depar- ture from the world, by pointing out the blessed results which should ensue from that event to their best interests both in time and in eternity. Having, from the 2d to the 4th verse, pointed out the favourable bearing which His departure had upon their everlasting salvation and felicity, He now, from the 12th to the 21st verse, enumerates the various blessings which, by means and on account of it, they might expect to enjoy upon the earth. The first of the promises relating to the favourable effects which were to follow from the departure of their Master in the earthly experience of His disciples, is obviously sug- gested by the circumstance of Jesus having been led, imme- diately before, by Philip's interjected ol)jectionsand requests, to advert to the miraculous works by which He Himsel had vindicated the autliority of His mission, and illustrated tlui dignity of His person. Tliat j)romise is to this effect, — that they should have it given tliem to perform the same JOHN XIV. 12. 87 miracles, and greater, as their Master had achieved; and aware of the many considerations which might lead them to account it an incredible, or, at least, an improbable thing that they should be thus honoured and exalted, — that God should give such power unto men, — He intro- duces it by His accustomed form of solemn asseveration, marking at once the weight and the certainty of the decla- ration to which it is prefixed : — " 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 unto the Father." The works here spoken of cannot, in consistency with the context, be understood of any other than miraculous works, employed for the purpose of confirming the truth, and extending the progress, of the gospel. In this connec- tion, it is obvious that the designation, " he who believeth on me," must be taken in a very limited sense, — as refer- ring, not so much to the reception of Christ Jesus as our Saviour and our Lord, on the authority of the divine testi- mony contained in the sacred oracles, which is the faith most commonly described in the gospel, — the faith which justifies and saves, — but to that which has been denomi- nated the faith of miracles, — that persuasion of the power of Christ, and of His disposition to exert that power through persons who in this specific sense believed, of which the apostles, and certain others of His primitive followers, were possessed, and the possession of which constituted the pre- requisite to the performance, through their instrumentality, of miraculous works. That this faith was not necessarily combined with saving faith is obvious, as from the case of Judas, so from various allusions in the sacred books ; as where we read of those who "in that day" shall implore and remonstrate with the Eternal Judge, "Lord, Lord, 88 LECTURE VII. have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonder- ful works," to whom, notwithstanding, that Judge Omni- scient shall profess, " I never knew you ; depart from me, ye that work iniquity;" — or when, in contrast with the Apostle Paul's declaration concerning that faith which jus- tifies and saves, that it is ever found " working by love," we hear Himself, in another place, represent it as a pos- sible thing that he might " have all faith, so that he could remove mountains, and yet, not having love, might after all be nothing."* The description of the faith of miracles con- tained in the last of these passages is obviously borrowed by the apostle from the remarkable promise respecting it given, on two several occasions, by Jesus to His followers ; which, as calculated to throw the clearest light upon the passage immediately before us, it will be proper to quote at length. The former of these cases you may read as recorded by the Evangelist Matthew, ch. xvii. 20 : — " Jesus said unto them. Verily I say unto you. If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place ; and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible to you." The second is related most fully and emphatically by the Evangelist Mark, eh. xi. 22 ; where, on the disciples expressing their surprise at the immediate blight which fell upon the barren fig-tree, when their Master had but spoken the word, we are told that, "Jesus answering said unto them, — Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you. That whosoever shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea ; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he hath saith shall come to pass ; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto ♦ Matt. vii. 22, 23; 1 Cor. xiii. 2. JOHN XIV. 12. 89 you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." From these, and other passages of similar import, we learn that, in the age of miracles, it was necessary that even the apostles, and the primitive disciples to whom the wonder- working energy was given, should, in each particular case of its exertion, made a distinct and believing reference to that promise of their Master which taught them to look for His Omnipotence to exert itself through tlieir instrumen- tality ; that they should take care that the whole glory of the miracle was reflected back on Him, by going about its performance in a single-minded dependence on His power, and with earnest supplication for His assistance ; and that every attempt to exliibit before the eyes of men a sign from heaven, — a supernatural attestation of their heavenly commission, — would cover its authors with disappointment and disgrace, which was not based on the faith of Christ's power and Christ's promise in this particular.* It is easy to see that the special promise to which this special faith referred, — the promise that every attempt, on the part of the chosen eleven, to work a miracle in confirmation of their mission should prove, in point of fact, successful, which was made in the persuasion that through the Omni- potence of Jesus it should be so, — it is plain, I say, that this special promise is of so peculiar a nature, that it might possibly be believed and acted on by one who had not yet been persuaded to believe and act on the other promises of Jesus relating to still more stupendous and inestimable benefits, — to pardon, and sanctification, and life eternal, and all the blessings of "the salvation * An example of such disappointment we have in the remarkable inci- dent which gave occasion to the words we have just been quoting from the Evangelist Matthew : — ch. xvii. 14 — 18. 90 LECTURE VII. which is in Christ Jesus, with everlasting glory." Such seems to have been the case with Judas ; who, though, in the more familiar meaning of the term, he lived without faith as he died without hope, does not seem to have been less endued than his brethren with the wonder-working energy when the Saviour "gave them power over the unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people." It is as plain, however, on the other hand, that whosoever had this special faith of miracles, without possessing the general faith of the gospel, — the faith which could remove mountains, without the faith which is able to save the soul, — was guilty of a most flagrant and criminal incon- sistency. All the truths and promises of the gospel rest on precisely the same foundation of authority as did the promise of miraculous power to those in whose experience it was fulfilled. The precise object, indeed, which was contemplated by the verification of the latter, was to afford a demonstration of the truth of the former ; and no incon- gruity can be conceived more gross, or worthy of severer condemnation, than his who, having the evidence within himself that Jesus was indeed a man approved of God to be whatever He had claimed to be accounted, — that Jesus was indeed invested with " all power in heaven and in earth," and intrusted with the whole dispensation of the Spirit, with the whole application of Omnipotent resources, — did, notwithstanding these, stop short, and refuse to this divinely-commissioned Lord and Saviour the homage of his personal freliance for eternity, and of his practical obe- dience for time. Instances of this kind, it may be weU supposed, though possible, were rare ; and in the case of most, as in that of the eleven whom Jesus now addressed, the faith of this one promise was but a special act of that JOHN XIV. 12. 91 general faith which embraced all the promises and all the truths attested by the same authority, and more especially those which form the grounds of a sinner's confidence in Jesus as his Saviour, — the motives of his submission to Jesus as his Lord. This, then, is the qualification in the apostles, and those who shared with them in the endow- ment of miraculous gifts, which prepared them for enjoying the fulfilment of the promise, — " The works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father." Interpreters have felt themselves very considerably per- plexed in the explanation of this passage, looked upon as a direct prediction, — since it seems apparent that neither in respect of number, nor in respect of kind, could the miracles wrought by the apostles or their coadjutors claim a superiority, or even an equality, to those of their Divine Master. In respect of number, there is no reason to sup- pose,— but every reason to the contrary, — that any one of the apostles was honoured to perform more numerous miracles than He of whom our own evangelist has said, — " Many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book, the which, if they shoidd be written every one, I suppose that the world itseK could not contain the books which should be written ;" while, in respect of intrinsic magnitude and splendour, it is in vain that some have attempted to show that, in certain cases, the miracles of Jesus were surpassed by those of His disciples, — as in the communication of the Holy Ghost by the imposition of their hands, the death of Ananias and Sapphira at the utterance of their rebuke, the healing of the sick on whom their passing shadow fell. Such miracles are of a different description from those performed by Jesus, but surely they are not of more illustrious rank. 92 LECTTJEE VII. They are unexampled, but certainly not unmatched nor unsurpassed. The idea, therefore, which we are disposed to suggest, though, as far as we can find, not countenanced by any former interpreter, is this, — that in the promise now before us, the future is equivalent to the potential, — the expression, " he shall do," to, he may do, he shall have the power to do. Various examples of this meaning con- nected with the sign of the future might be cited ; but we need not go fui'ther than one of the parallel passages we have already adduced, to show, both that it is a legitimate meaning of the term, and that, in this particular case, it is a highly probable meaning : — " Verily I say unto you," says Jesus, in reply to the disciples, asking for information on this very point, " If ye have faith as a grain of mustard- seed, ye shall say," that is, manifestly, ye shall have power to say, "unto this mountain, Eemove hence to yonder place ; and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impos- sible unto you." There is no reason to think that this particular species of miracle, — which, had it literally taken place, might more justly than any recorded sign performed by the apostles have been described as a greater work than those accomplished by their Master, — was ever performed in apostolic times. It is quite certain, on the other hand, that that mountain — the Mount of Olives — on which our Saviour and His followers were standing, and to which in the utterance of the promise He pointed, remains seated on its old foundations to the present hour. Whence it appears, that what He meant to indicate by this emphatical expression was, not that any exertion of mhaculous power to this effect should, in point of fact, take place by the instrumentality of His apostles, but simply, that even an event so stupendous, if on otlicr grounds it were necessary or desirable, should not be beyond the limits of that power JOHN XIV. 12. 93 which, through the channel of faith in His plighted pro- mise, they should derive from His exhaustless Omni- potence. Thus it is that the expression is varied in a corresponding passage of the Gospel of Luke, — where we are told that, when the apostles said unto the Lord, " Increase our faith," He answering said, " If ye had faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye might say unto this syca- more tree, Be thou plucked up by the roots, and be thou planted in the sea, and it should obey you."* The phrases, " ye might say," in this case, and, " ye shall say," in the former, are employed interchangeably, with precisely the same extent of meaning, and so, I apprehend, distinctly point to the true method of interpreting our Saviour's words, — " He that believeth on me, the same works that I do shall he do also, and greater works still shall he do;" that is. Not the splendour and magnificence of my most stupendous miracles shall be beyond the power that shall be given him to rival or surpass, and if the occasion shaU require, — if the Spirit shall prompt, — works shall be done by him which, by their transcendent grandeur and glory, shall utterly eclipse the brightest of those marvels by which my earthly sojournings have been irradiated. If any of you, however, should be dissatisfied with this interpretation of "ye shall," as equivalent to, ye may, the only other explanation which appears to us in the slightest degree probable, is that which supposes that, when our Lord declares that His disciples should perform even greater works than He had Himself exhibited, the reference is not so much to the intrinsic grandeur of the supernatural marvels which they wrought, but to the illustrious effects produced in the extensive conversion of men by their instrumentality to truth and holiness. It is a very fair * Luke xvii. 6. 94 LECTURE vn. principle of classification and comparison, in respect of relative greatness, among mii'aculous events, — events hav- ing for their object to make men perceive and recognise in them the agency of Omnipotence, — to arrange them accord- ing to the extent in which they have produced their intended effect, — in which they have prevailed with men to behold in them the finger of a present Deity. Now, arranged on this principle, it is easy to perceive how the works of the disciples deserve to be called greater works than those performed even by their Master, — considering that the latter, stupendous and thoroughly Divine as they unquestionably were, yet prevailed with comparatively few to embrace Him as the Sent, the Sealed, the Son, of God, while the former were made effectual in gathering in, from a much wider range, a much more numerous host of converted souls to the acknowledgment of Jesus as the Anointed Saviour, and Anointed Lord, of man. But if, in some respects, the works of the disciples might be described as greater works than those of their Master, it did not follow that they were therefore greater than He. " The disciple is not above his "Master, nor the servant above his Lord." The apostles did not, as you know, accomplish these greater effects by their own power or their own holiness, — that they frequently and in express terms themselves denied, — but by the communicated energy and Spu-it of their Master. For observe what Jesus, in pre- dicting the marvels to be wrought by His apostles when He should have receded from the visible stage of life, assigns as the cause which should produce these wonderful effects, — His own power exerted in His glorified state : — '* Greater works than these shall he do, because I go to my Father; and whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the JOHN XIV. 12. 95 Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it." It was from no inferiority in Him, from no superiority in them, that their miracles produced superior effects to His ; seeing that He was Himself the Author of all those splendid effects which followed the exertion of spiritual gifts in the hands of otherwise feeble and powerless men. It was thought meet by the mysterious and sovereign wis- dom of the Father and the Son, for reasons which in their fullest depth and extent we may not pretend to fathom, but some of which the very statement of the case will be sufficient to suggest, that Christ should have finished the work which the Father had given Him to do, — that the system of facts which compose the gospel should have been completed, — that Jesus should have "died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and risen again for our justifica- tion according to the Scriptures," — that He should have fully accomplished the sufferings which were to precede, and should have actually entered on the glory which was to foUow, — before the fruits of His exertions and His suffer- ings should very conspicuously and extensively appear, — before the gifts w^hich He had purchased for men should be shed forth on them in the plenitude of their effusion, — before His apostles were commissioned and empowered to make universal proclamation through the world of His gospel and His reign. The bestowal of the Holy Spirit on His followers, enduing them at once with holy graces and with miraculous gifts, in order that they might be meet heralds of His cross and of His throne, was to be at once a fruit of His death and a part of His reward ; so that the text, when it specifies the departure of Jesus to the Father as the immediate cause of the effusion of miraculous gifts on the apostles, only declares what is the uniform doctrine of holy writ, — ^that if He had not gone away, the Holy Ghost 96 LECTURE VII. would not have come, — that, " when He ascended up on high, leading captivity captive, then He received gifts for men," — that the events of the fatal Passover were the necessary forerunners of the glorious Pentecost. One great and gracious ohject which was answered by this arrangement it is easy to perceive, — that by the descent of the miraculous energies and gifts on the apostles, when they were " endued with power from on high," — " baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire," — both the friends and the enemies of our Master's cause were furnished with a most convincing proof that His disappearance from our world had indeed been followed by His exaltation to the right hand of power, — His accession to the throne of the universe. By previously coupling these two events toge- ther in promise and prediction, Jesus had made the one the proof and the assurance of the other, — that which was visible of that which was invisible ; and as such, accord- ingly, St. Peter used it with resistless power in his magni- ficent and triumphant discourse upon the day of Pente- cost:— "Ye men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by liim in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses. Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear."* And while the postponement of the Holy Spirit's miraculous effusion until the period of the Saviour's * Acts ii. 22, 23, 32, 33. JOHN XIV. 12. 97 departure into the invisible state, was calculated thus to have the happiest effect in strengthening the faith of His apostles, — in assuring them and the world that His condi- tion in that unseen state was one of ineffable majesty and sovereignty and splendour, — it was fitted also to reconcile them to that arrangement of the Almighty's providence which required them to part for a season with the per- sonal presence and society of their beloved Lord. They were not called to make that bitter sacrifice without a compensating advantage in the present state. How the coming of the Spirit woidd compensate, and more than compensate, for His personal absence, Jesus largely explains in the sequel of this discourse. But, in the mean- wliile, it could not fail to impart a lively consolation to their hearts to know that, if they were no longer to behold that mighty Man of wonders displaying visibly before them the marvels of His benignant Omnipotence, such marvels were not, however, to cease, — only, in respect of them, they were to be exalted from spectators into agents, — and that through them the might of their ascended Lord was to pass forth into effects of miracidous grace similar in nature, but vastly superior in effect, to those which had so long excited their admiration and their awful delight, performed by Him in whom were seen the incarnate Omnipotence and Mercy of the Deity. How elevating and transporting the sensations wdiich the actual possession and exercise of miraculous power were calcu- lated to awaken in their bosoms you may gather from the ecstacy with which the Seventy whom, in addition to the twelve apostles. He endowed, in the days of His flesh, with miraculous powers, reported to Him the triumphs of their expedition. The Seventy, we are told, "returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject 98 LECTUEE vn. to US through thy name." The answer of our Lord to this triumphant exclamation is the best practical instruction we can draw from the whole subject we have been now considering: — "In this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject to you; but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven."* You know that, in our own day, the claim to the power of working miracles has been revived, on the strength of the passage now before us, and of some similar passages in Holy Writ, which have been viewed as containing a promise of such extraordinary gifts addressed to all believers of all countries and all ages. Now, it is admitted on all hands, that these promises were at first and primarily addressed to the apostles and their coadjutors in the primi- tive age, and that in none of these promises is it either expressly said, or incontrovertibly intimated, that the gifts in question were to continue uninterrupted and unceasing in the church down to the consummation of all things. If it be urged that^such phrases as that in the text, " he that believeth on me," are indefinite and descriptive of genuine Christians ever3rvvhere and at all times, — we answer, that such indefinite phrases are frequently used in a sense less than universal, and that, according to all the ordinary usages of language, the use of such an expression is abun- dantly justified if any considerable number of believers were endued with the wonder-working energy here described. If the phrases, " he that believeth," " they that believe," in the promises of miraculous power, are to be interpreted as universal, then they must include not only all ages of the Christian Church, but all individual believers of all ages. Yet it has never yet been pretended, in the face of decisive facts, that even in the apostolic times aU that believetl * Luke X. 17, 20. JOHN XIV. 12. 99 were without exception invested with a right, on the faith of the promise before us, to attempt the performance of miracles with the hope and expectation of success. The fact, then, whether miraculous powers do now exist in the Christian Church is to be determined, not by exe- getical, but by historical proofs, — not by the interpreta- tion of passages, but by the allegation of cases. Cases, accordingly, have been alleged, but how unsatisfactor}^ both in respect of number and of circumstances, needs not now be told, — one or two cases of recoveries which all physicians testify to have been quite within the range of natural events, pretensions to the gift of tongues founded on the utterance of a rhapsody of sounds which may safely be pronounced to have no meaning in any dialect of the many-languaged earth; and these among a multitude of cases in which the attempt of work- ing miracles has confessedly been followed by utter dis- comfiture and disappointment. No, my brethren, we must have better evidence before we can believe that any living man is one of those to whom, in the primary sense, the Saviour said, — " 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 unto my Father." Meanwhile, we have no reason to regret it. We have miracles enough on record, as certain as if we had seen them with our eyes, to prove the truth and the divinity of that blessed gospel on which our faith and hope repose; and Jesus has Himself informed us, that the possession of miraculous powers is a privilege infinitely less to be esteemed and valued, than an interest in the spiritual blessings of His spiritual kingdom, — than to be enrolled among that " general assembly and church of the first-born, whose names are wTitten in hea- ven." To the same effect the blessed apostle, having largely 100 LECTUEE VII. explained to the Corintliian converts tlie principles of the dispensation of spiritual gifts, concludes with the exhorta- tion,— " Covet earnestly the best gifts : and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing."* The moral graces of the Christian char- acter, we are thus assured, are infinitely more precious than the greatest splendour of miraculous gifts, — the ordi- nary influences of the Holy Ghost which are continued to the church are infinitely to be preferred to those extra- ordinary operations which are withdrawn. Wliile, there- fore, we gratefully remember the grace and condescension of our God in that of old He gave such power unto men, bearing witness to them and to their testimony "with signs, and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost," let us ' acknowledge His mercy with yet warmer gratitude and admiration in having bestowed upon the church at first, and continued with her until now, those enlightening and enlivening, those sanctifying and consoling, graces of the good Spirit by which we are trans- formed into His spiritual image and made meet for His eternal joy. Let us seek, with all the earnestness of our ■spirits, an interest in that salvation which, beyond all natural, beyond all supernatural, distinctions, is the " one thing needful," and, by making now "our calling and election sure," provide that, if we may not rejoice " that the spirits are subject to" us, we may rejoice in this, that our " names are written in heaven." * 1 Cor. xii. 31 ; xiii, 1. 2. LECTURE VIII. Chap. xiv. 13, 14. " 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 any thing in my name, I will do it." In the verse immediately preceding, Jesus, with the view of reconciling His disciples to His own approaching departure, had assured them that, in consequence and by means of that event, they should be endued with the power of performing the same miracles, — and greater, — as their Master had achieved; that, if they were no longer to behold Him displaying visibly before them the marvels of His benignant Omnipotence, yet through them the might of their ascended Lord was to pass forth into effects of miraculous grace similar in nature, but vastly superior in influence, to those which had so long excited their admir- ation and their awful delight, performed by Him in whom was seen incarnate the merciful Omnipotence of Deity. This magnificent promise was followed up by a statement of the grounds on which they might expect, and of the way in which they might secure, its being carried into complete accomplishment. The ground on which they might expect this was the exaltation of their Master to " the right hand of power" and infinite dominion, — the comple- tion of His atoning work, and the consequent removal of all impediments to the more abundant effusion of God's 102 LECTURE VIII. Almighty Spirit, in the plenitude, at once, of His ordinary graces, and of His extraordinary gifts : — " He that believ- eth on me, the same works that I do, shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father." The way by which they were to obtain its fulfilment was by the believing use of that mighty means of grace and channel of celestial influence by which the weakness of man connects itself with the omnipotence of God — the instrument of believing prayer: — "Whatso- ever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it." That the direct and immediate object of this promise was to encourage the disciples to depend with unshaken confidence upon their Master's strength, and to ask with unhesitating faith their JMaster's aid, in the performance of miraculous works and the discharge of their apostolical commission, is obvious from the whole connection, as well as from the parallel passage in St. Mark, where the pro- mise of miraculous endowments and the promise of an answer to believing prayer are connected in a precisely simi- lar way : — " Have faith in God. For verily 1 say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass ; he shall have whatso- ever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What tilings soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe tliat ye receive them, and ye shall have them.* ]^ut it does not therefore follow that this exhausts the whole import of the promise, expressed as it is in the most comprehensive terms, and ♦ Mark xi. '22—24. JOHN XIV. 18, 14 103 repeated with an emphasis which seems to protest against the limitation and the meagreness of such an exposition. It is a general promise, of which the communication of divine power for. the performance of miraculous w^orks is one, but only one, particular case. All that the context and series of discourse demands is, that the promise should include this at least, — it is far from forbidding that it should include a great deal more. That it was intended really to possess this wider extent of meaning I apprehend is distinctly intimated by the repetition in verse 14 ; of which repetition I suppose the force and emphasis is this : — Do not imagine that I am speaking now of only some particular class of petitions which it may fall to your lot as apostles to present; I speak of aU classes and orders of requests which it becomes you in your character of Chris- tians to offer, — " If ye shaU ask any thing in my name, I will do it." It will be proper, therefore, that we first consider this most blessed promise in its more general meaning, in which, though originally addressed to the chosen apostles, it is the property of all genuine believers throughout all ages of the Christian church, — as a promise that, whatever they shaU. ask in prayer, for their Eedeemer's sake, calcu- lated to promote the glory of God and their own real, that is, their spiritual and eternal, interests, it shall undoubt- edly be effected for them by the merciful Omnipotence of their exalted Lord. That when we speak in general concerning the subjects of acceptable prayer, we are bound to limit the universal expression of the text by such conditions as those we have suggested; that the subject of request should be according to God's will, — as any thing, we know, is according to His will which tends to promote His glory and our own salva- tion,— is plain from many passages of Sacred Scripture ; 104 LECTURE VIII. on the principle of interpretation, which all who are fami- liar with the Bible will admit, that general and universal statements in one place are often to be restricted and modified by conditions which are either obvious of them- selves, or stated expressly in other passages of Holy Writ. That Christians, therefore, are not to imagine, from the pas- sage now before us, that every natural desire which arises in their bosoms they have only to frame into the form of a petition offered in the name of Jesus, and then make themselves secure of having it gratified, let the apostle St. John declare, — who thus points out the limits within which the general promise of the text is uniformly verified, " This is the confidence which we have in Him, that if we ask any thing according to His will. He heareth us;" let our agonizing Lord Himself declare, when, under the crushing burden and in the overwhelming prospect of intenser than mortal agony, He prayed, " Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me ; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt."* The soul and essence of all acceptable prayer, as far as its subject is concerned, are summed up and concentrated in that one petition, " Thy will be done;" and the frame of thought and feeling of which accepted prayer is the native language is that of the soul whose choice and condition, as the subject of Jeho- vah's sovereignty, are now at one, — which feels it sweet, or at least accounts it right, ' to lie passive in His hands, and own no will but His.' It is taken for granted in such universal promises as that before us, that those to whom they appertain have been ah^eady brought into this temper of meek and humble acquiescence in their Heavenly Father's, in their Almighty Saviour's, will; that they will * 1 John V. 14, 15; Matt. xxvi. 39. JOHN XIV. 13, 14. 105 not, in point of fact, be found presenting at tlie throne of gTace any other petitions than they surely know will be according to God's will, — petitions, that is, as absolute and earnest as they can make tliem for blessings spiritual and eternal, petitions for things earthly and temporal with a condition always expressed or understood, the condition, namely, that the enjoyment of such blessings shall appear to our Saviour's Omniscient Benignity consistent with those great ends which alone are worthy to be the princi- pal objects with beings such as we, — the glory of God and the salvation of our own imperishable spirits. So much, therefore, being taken for granted in regard to the nature and character of the petitions which alone, in point of fact, a believer acting in character will present, it is next expressly declared, that, in order to these peti- tions being accepted and successful, they must be pre- sented in the name of Jesus. The name of any being, as you know, is that word which, when uttered, intimates that the speaker has' before his mind, and is desirous that there should be before the mind of the hearers, the idea of the person in question. To perform any act or service, therefore, in the name of Christ, is to perform it in a spirit of habitual reference to the character and claims of Christ, as these are disclosed to us in the scheme, and in the reve- lation, of the gospel. And in this sense are we commanded to perform, not merely every act of prayer, but every ser- vice of devotion and every part of duty, in the name of Jesus. The comprehensive precept, applying to every exercise of thought and feeling, to every word of our lips and every action of our lives, is in these words, — " AVliat- soever ye do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." The promise of His gracious presence, and His effectual blessing on the services of social devotion, is limited to those assem- 106 LECTUEE vin. blies of God's worshippers wliicli meet in His name: — '' Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Wliile, finally, the assurance of being heard and answered in any request whatever pre- sented at the throne of grace is, in other instances than that before us, made dependent on the condition of that request having been presented in the name of Jesus :^ — *' Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you. Ask, and receive, that your joy may be full."* Let me exhort you, therefore, all ye who name the name of Christ, to cultivate more and more this devout and habitual contemplation of Jesus in His revealed char- acter, which is the distinctive feature both of Christian holiness in general, and of Christian devotion in particular. More especially, if we are desirous that any act of suppli- cation should prove either acceptable or useful, let it be begun, conducted, and concluded, in this spirit of habitual reference to Jesus, — with all its texture let the thought of Him be inseparably interwoven. That name which " is as ointment poured forth,"- — let it breathe its sacred odours through all the train of thought, of feeling, and of utter- ance ; a reviving and refreshing perfume to the suppliant's own soul, the savour of a sweet smell before Jehovah's throne. But while it is right that the whole course and tenor of a Christian's i)rayers should be pervaded by this general reference to the general character of the Saviour as revealed in the gospel, there are obviously certain special circum- stances in His character, and parts of His office as Medi- ator, to which a more direct and pecidiar reference is highly appropriate, on the part of him who comes to implore the ♦ Col. iii. 17; Matt, xviii. 20; John xvi. 23, 24. JOHN XIV. 13, 14. 107 aid and blessing of Jehovah; and these are, His atone- ment, viewed as the only ground of a sinner's acceptance with the pure and righteous Majesty of heaven, and His intercession, contemplated as that by which alone the merit of His atonement can be applied, and made avail- able, in each particular case in which an individual sinner approaches to converse with God respecting the supply of his felt necessities and desires. To pray, then, in the name of Jesus Christ, implies, that we use the merits of the Saviour as our leading argument with God why He should bestow on us the benefits we need. For not only are we undeserving of any token of God's favour apart from the merits and the death of Jesus ; but we are deserv- ing of the selectest expressions of His displeasure, and that to such an extent, and in such circumstances, that it would have been eternally dishonourable, and therefore eternally impossible, even for the Omnipotent and most Mercifid. Jehovah to admit us to His favour and His fellow- ship, had not Jesus interposed to do our duty and suffer our desert, and made it so a righteous and possible thing for the Eternal Majesty once more to hold with men pro- pitious intercourse. Habitually to feel, then, and expressly to declare in every act of supplication, that the only ground on which we expect to receive the benefits we ask is what Christ has done and Christ has suffered, is not less a due act of homage to the majesty of God, than it is a suitable expression of gratitude for the love of Christ ; and to sup- pose, or to pray as if we did suppose, that God can or will confer upon us any spiritual or eternal blessing except for the sake of Jesus is, directly or virtually, to express our expectation and desire that the Sovereign of the universe will gratify us by dishonouring Himself. I leave you to conjecture what acceptance such a request is likely to 108 LECTURE VIII. meet with on tlie part of Him whose name is Jealous, and who hath solemnly declared, — " I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified." But while he who would pray in the name of Christ must thus habitually feel and express his reliance on the atonement of the Saviour, he must not forget that it is only through the intercession of the same All-Sufllcient Saviour that the finished atonement is made practically efficacious in any individual case. That one form in which Jesus discharges His celestial function as the Anointed Intercessor on behalf of " those who come unto God by Him,'^ is by offering up their prayers in the sanctuary above, — adopting them as His own, — enforcing them with all the interest which He, the Only-begotten, the well- beloved Son, possesses with the Father, is gathered with sufficient certainty from the analogy between the Jewish and the Christian High Priest, as stated in Holy Writ. It was the part of the former, we know, to present the prayers of Israel before Jehovah's throne and presence in the holiest of all, while the incense of the appointed sacri- fice was fuming on the golden altar in the sanctuary, — a function in obvious reference to which Jesus is said to have entered into the true holiest, the innermost shrine of the universe, the heaven of heavens, there to " appear in the presence of God for us ;" so that, on this account, we are expressly invited to approach the mercy-seat in the confidence of prayer: — " Seeing, then, that we have a great High Priest tliat is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and JOHN XIV. 13, 14. 109 find grace to help in time of need."* It is thus that, in the immediate context, Jesus represents Himself as ready to perform, on the part of His disciples, in that invisible state into which He was about to depart, the office of an Advocate and Intercessor with the Father : — " I will pray the Father,'' He says, " and He will give you another Com- forter, that He may abide with you for ever." And it is thus that genuine Christians of every age may jjray in the encouraging belief that the Saviour — He who, both as the eternal Son of the Father's love, and as the triumphant Vindicator of the Father's honour, hath so omnipotent a claim to receive whatever He is pleased to ask at the Father's hand for Himself or for His chosen — will employ His influence on high, in procuring for His discij)les pray- ing in His name a favourable audience, and a successful issue with Him who is His Father and their Father, His God and their God. — To pray, then, believing the reality, and depending on the power, of the Saviour's intercession, as well as of the Saviour's atonement ; that is to pray in the name of Christ, — in a form and spirit bearing a just reference to His revealed character. Jesus, having thus directed His disciples, and, through them the Christians of all following ages, to the plea which is recognised above as irresistible, — the word of might which opens heaven, — the talisman which puts in their power the resources of Omnipotence, — goes on to assure them of the success which the believing use of this prevailing name will infallibly secure : — " Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will do it." On no subject are the declarations of God's word more numerous or more express than in regard to the efficacy of believing prayer: — "The Lord is nigh * Heb. iv. 14-16. 110 LECTURE VIII. unto them that call on Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. He will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him ; He also will hear their cry, and will save them ; " — " The effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much." " Ask," says our Lord Himself on another occa- sion, " and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you : for every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened," — and again, in a subsequent part of this very discourse, " Verily, verily, I say unto you. Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name. He will give it you;" — promises these in recollec- tion of which the beloved apostle remarks, " Whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him. And this is the confidence which we have in Him, that, whatsoever we ask according to His will. He heareth us. And if we know that He heareth us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we desired of Him." " If any man lack wisdom," says his brother apostle, St. James, " let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not ; and it shall be given him," — and again, addressing those who either altogether restrained prayer before God, or endeavoured to pervert it from its holy purposes to be the instrument and slave of their own propensities, " Ye have not, because ye ask not; ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss."* While, therefore, the passage now before us coincides with the whole bearing of Holy W^rit in assuring us of the efficacy of believing prayer, the peculiarity by which it is distinguished from other passages to the same general effect is this, — that Jesus here represents Himself as the * Psal. cxlv. 18, 19; James v. 16; Matt. vii. 7, 8; John xvi. 23; I John V. 14, 15; James i. 5; iv. 2, 3. JOHN XIV. 13, 14 111 immediate Agent in bringing about tlie fulfilment of His people's prayers ;' thereby exhibiting Himself to our adora- tion and our confidence as invested with the perfections, and exercising the powers, of the Supreme Divinity. To any one who will compare the phraseology of this verse with that of the 16th verse of the fifteenth chapter, and the 23d verse of the sixteenth chapter — " A\^iatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He shall give it you," — it will be obvious that Jesus, in the text, assumes, as His own undoubted prerogative, an equal honour with the Everlasting Father as the proper Object, the omniscient Hearer, the all-sufficient Answerer, of prayer. Yet, while the Incarnate Son of God did neither on this nor on other proper occasions hesitate to avow, by the distinctest impli- cations. His natural equality with God, He was careful, at the same time, when speaking in the character of Media- tor, always to associate His loftiest claims to the honours of Divinity wdth intimations and acknowledgments of His official subordination to the Father, as His Minister and Servant in effecting the salvation of lost mankind ; and therefore He follows up the assertion of His own Omni- science and Omnipotence, plainly involved in the declara- tion, " Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will do it," by a solemn recognition of the Father's glory as the ulti- mate object, the highest and the worthiest end, to be answered by this and every other part of His mediatorial function: — "that the Father may be glorified through the Son." On precisely the same principle we find it testi- fied, Philip ii. 9-11, that the homage of the whole creation rendered to Christ Jesus, as the exalted Saviour, is intended finally to illustrate and set forth the Father's sovereign majesty and honour: — "God hath given Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus 112 LECTURE VIII. every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." The whole scheme and method, indeed, of the Christian salvation has this for its grand end and object, "that the Father may be glorified through the Son;" that is, that the perfections of the Everlasting Godhead, — the majesty of which it is the Father's part in the economy of mercy to sustain, — His justice and His grace, His wisdom and His power, His holiness and His truth, — might be manifested in clearer and sublimer illus- tration before the eyes, not merely of mankind, but of all the intelligent universe. And this great end is more especially answered when, in the exercise of those exalted prerogatives and powers with which the perfected Eedeemer has been invested by the Father, He bestows on His sup- pliant and believing people the blessings they implore; partly, because the way in which they are asked is an acknowledgment, and the way in which they are bestowed is a display, of that blended benignity and righteousness which form His moral character ; and partly, because the blessings themselves, when actually conferred, are intended, both in each particular case and in the general system of things, to contribute towards the advancement of His own purpose and cause, — the maturity of that wondrous scheme from the full development of which there will accrue a brighter revenue of glory than all His other works have furnished to Him whose glory is the end, whose will is the law, of the universe, — the God who shall at last be all in all. We have said that the promise of the text is in its own nature, and, as we suppose, in our Lord's intention, general and universal, — comprehending an assurance addressed to JOHN XIV. 18, 14. 113 the apostles, and, by parity of reason, to all Christians, that they should undoubtedly receive whatever they asked for in their Master's name that was really necessary, and really desirable, in the particular circumstances in which they might severally be placed. Viewed, therefore, as ori- ginally addressed to the eleven, and taken in connection with the immediately preceding context, it obviously includes a promise to them in particular, that, in the con- duct of their inspired ministry, whatever exertion of mira- culous power they should pray for, in dependence on His merits and power, which should be necessary or desirable, with the view of demonstrating the divinity of their mis- sion and the truth of their doctrine, should be graciously vouchsafed to them by the Omnipotence of their exalted Lord. Even in this particular application, the strong and all-comprehending expression, "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name," is to be understood, no doubt, not in the strictest and most absolute sense, but, as in reference to temporal blessings which may become the subjects of prayer, under certain conditions tacitly supposed ; namely, that what is asked shall be according to God's will, fitted to promote His glory and the suppliant's own true interests, — his spiritual improvement, his everlasting salvation. It does not appear that the apostles, even on the faith of this memorable promise, had a right, in aU circumstances and at all times, to ask of the Lord their God whatever sign they pleased in the depth or in the height above, — unless, indeed, we shall suppose that, guided as they were by the unerring Spirit in all their choice and their procedure in connection with their apostolic ministry, they never were in danger of asking the performance of a miracle the per- formance of which was not absolutely proper in the cir- cumstances,— agreeably to the Almighty's purpose, and 114 LECTURE VIII. fitted to promote His cause. However this may be, — whether or not they were at any time exposed to the temp- tation of asking for any exertion of miraculous power but such as the honour of their Master permitted, and the interests of His kingdom required, — certain it is they never asked for such a miracle but it was performed, — per- formed for the sake, and by the power, of their exalted Mas- ter ; performed for His sake, and therefore to be implored in His name, — performed by His power, and therefore to be acknowledged as His act. We find, accordingly, that the apostles were most express and punctual, when called to the exertion of their miraculous powers, in invoking previously the name of Jesus ; and in proclaiming, both in the act and after the effect, that the work was not their own, but their exalted Lord's. " In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth," says St. Peter, " rise up and walk." " Eneas," says the same apostle on another occasion, "Jesus Christ maketh thee whole." And in regard to the whole splendid series of marvellous works by which the apostolical commission of St. Paul was sealed, he declares that they were " wrought in him by Jesus Christ, to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed, through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spmt of God."* It was thus that the honour of these stupendous works was most justly rendered by the feeble instrument to the Almighty Agent; while by Him it was again reflected upwards upon that Sovereign Divi- nity under whose authority He had, for a mighty purpose of love, condescended to act as man's Eedeemer. The Son was glorified in His commissioned apostles; the Father was glorified in His Anointed Son ; and the effect of all was rapidly and powerfully to advance the progress of that » Acts iii. 6: ix. 34: Koni. xv. 18, 19. JOHN XIV. 13, 14. 115 cause in the commencement, the development, and the consummation, of which the universe is summoned to con- template the brightest illustration which the annals of eter- nity record of the perfections of Jehovah's character and the principles of Jehovah's government, — the most illus- trious contribution which the mighty host of being, the mighty series of events, has rendered, or will render ever, to the praise of His glory " of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things ; to whom be glory for ever. Amen." LECTUEE IX. Chap. xiv. 15, 16. " If ye love me, keep my commandments ; and I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever." You know, my brethren, that the general object of this discourse of Jesus, delivered to His chosen followers imme- diately before His final sufferings and death, is to afford them direction, support, and consolation, for the period when they were to be left forlorn of His personal presence, to prosecute their noble but arduous and perilous under- taking, as His heralds and apostles, in the midst of a hos- tile world. With this view, He had already adduced a number of important considerations admirably fitted to admonish tliem respecting the duties, and to encourage them amidst the difficulties and the trials, of the season they so much dreaded. In tlie verses now before us, He proceeds to adduce several new considerations of great weight and moment, directed to the same benevolent olrject of soothing His discijjles' sorrows, and re-animating their shaken courage, in the prospect of approaching separation from Himself The emphasis which the prospect of that approaching separation imparts to the solemn charge contained in verse 15, will be felt and recognised by every heart which has JOHN XIV. 15, 16. 117 experienced the power of separation, — and especially of that separation which divides us from our friends by more than land or sea, — in developing all our deepest affections towards the loved ones of our hearts, the loved and lost. Never do we feel more deeply the pathetic and constrain- ing force of the appeal, " If ye love me," than when the friend who utters it is hovering on the brink of that dark gulf of unpenetrated gloom into which no ministries of ours, nor direct assurances of love, can follow him, — ready to go hence and to be no more seen ; or when we can ima- gine it proceeding from the bosom of the darkness where lie has his dwelling now, — a voice from the departed, more touching and more awful than any that living lips can utter. It is of this natural and most powerful sentiment of the human heart that our Saviour takes advantage here, in order to secure for His injunctions, after His departure from the world, the cordial and affectionate obedience of His followers : — " If ye love me, keep my command- ments." It was not that He doubted their sincere and profound attachment to His sacred person, — the attach- ment which expressed itseK so visibly and forcibly in the sorrow which, because He said unto them, " I go away," had filled their hearts ; in the profound regrets and vivid apprehensions with which they anticipated the loneliness and desolation of their lot when they should be bereft of His beloved presence. But He was anxious to direct the stream of their affections into another channel, — a channel in which when rightly guided it should be capable of pro- ducing effects at once more beneficial to the world, and more consolatory to themselves, than had it been left to expend itself in vain regrets for losses which could not be repaired, for events which could not be undone. In no case are we allowed, when bereaved even of the 118 LECTURE IX. dearest and most valued friend by his departure into another world, to sit down permanently in the indolence of sorrow, and to account our love for the departed suffi- ciently declared by the tempest of our barren tears and ineffectual sighs. Some moments, minutes, days, when the feeling of desolation is yet new and overwhelming, it may perhaps be permitted by Him who " knoweth our frame, who remembereth that we are dust," that we sit idly on the ground, in the trance of our impassioned sor- rows, under the stun and stupor of the severing blow. But this may not always last. We must awake from the vacancy and dreaminess of grief into the activities of real life. We must call in our straggling thoughts from vague excursions into the 'undiscovered country' into which, with our departed friends, all the interest of life at first appears to have been absorbed and swallowed up, and mingle, once more, in the scene of visible objects, and the intercourse of living men. The reign of musing sorrow must expire, and the claims of practical duty resume their interrupted sway. And, while this is the course which propriety in all cases, in most cases necessity, demands of the bereaved and desolate ; so it has been graciously ordered that it should be the course that tends most powerfully to heal the wounds of the stricken spirit, and with gentlest relief beguile it of its sorrows. To him whose soid has been untuned and smitten, as it were, into collapse by the shock of some fierce bereavement, there is no surer method of recovering his just tone and elasticity of soul than, with a qui(it fortitude, to make the effort, — an eftbrt it may prove at first, but one that will every day become easier, and every day extract more effectually the venom, and more benignly mellow the acerbity of grief, — to make the effort of setting about the appointed duties of liis station JOHN XIV. 15, 16. 119 in this living and breathing world, and persevering with a steady patience in their performance, till experience has convinced him, that even by the most desolating sweep of mortal privation the world has not been left without an interest, nor his existence here without an object. And oh, who has not felt how greatly this natural tendency and power of active engagement in the appointed duties of our station gradually to abate and overcome the poignancy of sorrow for the lost is assisted and enhanced, if the fact be so that, in the act of discharging these, we are not only performing what is required by our relations to the living, but what is due to the sacred memory of the dead, and especially if we can persuade ourselves that, though escaped from this visible orb, beyond the reach of our vision and the sphere of our acquaintance, we are not invisible to them; that from their seats in glory, — I speak of those concerning whom " we sorrow not as having no hope," — they are bending down with eyes of love to watch our steps, and are capable of deriving from our conduct the assurance, of perceiving in it the proofs, that we love them still, and wish to honour them by every possible expression of our reverence and affection, — if the duties to which we betake ourselves are those which the friend whose rapture from our world appeared at first to turn that world into a void commended to us with his dying breath, — and if we can believe that our diligence in the discharge of these can convey to him, even through the mysterious veil which hides his personal presence from our view, the assurance of our unfailing remembrance and of our unchangeable affec- tion? Now, this is the power of consolation which, in the verse before us, Jesus puts in full operation on behalf of His disciples, in the anticipation of His own approaching departure from the bosom of their personal and familiar 120 LECTURE IX. fellowsliip. He directs them, when that dreaded calamity should have befallen them, to occupy themselves, not with regretful musings on the loss of His society, but with active diligence in the keeping of His commandments. He assures them that this would be, in point of fact, a nobler and more convincing expression of regard to Him than loudest lamentation, or torrents of exuberant tears. And by the whole train and tenor of the passage, especially the connection of this verse with the verse that follows, He intimates that such an expression of affection would not pass by Him unnoticed or unknown, — that it would send a thrill of holy satisfaction, not lost nor overborne even amidst the raptures of eternity, up to His l)osom where He dwells most high in the glory of the Father, and is made *' most blessed for ever" with gladness from Jehovah's countenance. You see, then, the appositeness, the beauty, and the pathos, of the exhortation in the text, as occurring in a discourse of consolation, designed to comfort and support His followers under the severest bereavement which ever a human being's departure into another world occasioned. And while you perceive its beautiful propriety in reference to the peculiar case of the original disciples, you will not be slack, I trust, to gather for yourselves some portion of the practical instruction which it is fitted to convey, not to the eleven alone, but to Christians of all countries and all generations. It reminds us, that one characteristic mark of every true disciple is tliat lie loves his Saviour, although departed and invisible : — " Whom having not seen ye love ; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice;" " H" any man love not tlie Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anatliema."* It reminds us, that in order to acquire the character of a sincere lovcn-, a true disciple, of Jesus * 1 Pet. i. 8; 1 Cor. xvi. 22. JOHN XIV. 15, IG. 121 Christ, it is not enougli that we loudly profess our attach- ment to His person and His cause ; or even that we feel our bosoms from time to time enkindled with sudden fer- vours of admiration and delight, in contemplating His ^\ character. His achievements, His sufferings. His glory. These sentiments, however thrilling, however glowing, may be but passive affections of a taste constitutionally sensitive to impressions of grandeur and of loveliness, — susceptible of the fine enthusiasm which is awakened in the breasts of many by the mere contemplation of the heroic or the touching in human character and human life. The love of Christ which is the test of Christianity is the love which is the principle of action, — the spring of holy exertion and activity ; which leads a man, above all other ends, to desire and to endeavour that, in all he thinks and says and does, he may afford the greatest possible satisfaction to Him whom his soul loveth ; which constrains a man to " live no more unto himself, but unto Him that died for him and that rose again." It also reminds us, on the other hand, that the obedience which alone is suited to the nature of the gospel and the character of the Christian is that which finds its native impulse, and its sustaining energy, in love to tlie unseen Eedeemer, — the affectionate obedience of those who love the law because they love the Lawgiver; who count the most arduous, the most perilous, duties sweet for the affection which they bear to Him who recommended them to their attention in His departing charge and counsel ; and who find the most constraining of all motives to a faithful and diligent observance of Jehovah's command- ments, in the epithet by which Jesus has described them when He said, " If ye love me, keep my commandments." But while, as we have seen, the exhortation to obe- dience as the only satisfactory evidence of love was, in its 122 LECTURE IX. owTi nature, admirably fitted to contribute, if faitlifullv obeyed, to the support and consolation of the disciples, under the calamity of their Master's departure to another sphere, by giving them, in the first place, something else with which to occupy their thoughts than such regrets and unavailing lamentations, and by intimating, in the second, that their affection towards Him would thus express itself in a way at once more appropriate in its own nature, and more pleasing to His heart ; it was fitted to promote the same, and still more effectually, in another form, inasmuch as it set them in the right way to obtain the influences of that Celestial Comforter in whose descent from heaven to earth, in plenitude of sevenfold grace. His own ascent from earth to heaven was to be compensated, and the place which He had left empty was to be illustriously supplied : — " If ye love me, keep my commandments ; and I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Comforter,'' — or, to retain the original word for reasons which will presently appear, " another Paraclete, — that He may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth." The first particular which in this verse solicits our atten- tion is the very peculiar appellation which Jesus here ascribes at once to Himself and to the Holy Spirit, when He calls the latter " another Paraclete." The literal sense of Paraclete is, a person who has been called beside another; but technically it is employed, both in pure Greek and in the only other passage of the New Testament where it occurs, to signify a person who patronizes and appears in support of another's cause. It was tlie custom before the tribunals of ancient Greece, for tlie parties in any cause to appear in court attended by one or more of their most powerful and influential friends; who were not properly advocates in our sense of the term, employed and paid to JOHN XIV. 15, 16. 123 conduct and to plead the cause, but who, prompted only by the affection which they bore their friend, undertook to stand by him in the controversy he was maintaining, — to countenance him and his cause by the authority and influ- ence of their characters, to impart to him their best advice in regard to the proper methods of asserting his rights, and supporting his interests, in each emergency of the case, and to give him the benefit, not merely of their counsel, but of their eloquence, — to interpose an observation or to plead at large in his defence, when opportunity offered and occasion required. Now, these individuals in the Athenian courts were called the party's Paracletes, — in the Eoman courts, his Advocates. And that the word in this particular sense was not unknown to the writers of the New Testament, or to our own evangelist in particular, is obvious from the passage in the beginning of the 2d chapter of his first epistle, the only other passage in the New Testament where the remarkable word in question may be found ; where he says : — " My little children, these things I write unto you that ye sin not ; and if any man sin, we have a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;" that is, we have before the Sovereign Judicature of the universe, — the august tribunal of Him who is the Judge of all the earth, — one who is ready, for the friendship which He bears us, to appear, as it were, beside us at the bar; to interpose His character and influence on our behalf; to patronise our cause, and conduct our plea ; and, by the virtue of His merits, and the prevalence of His intercession, to procure our dismissal uncondemned, absolved, and blessed of the Pather, from before the judgment-throne even of Eternal Eighteousness. These things being so, — this being the familiar sense in which the word occurs among the writers of classical Greek, and being also the only sense in which 124 LECTURE IX. it occurs elsewhere in the Greek Scriptures, — I can have no hesitation in ascribing to it the same signification in the verse before us. Nor will it be dilSicult to perceive, on a very slight reflection, how singularly appropriate it is to all the circumstances of the case. The disciples, as the chosen champions and defenders of infant Christianity, the ambassadors and heralds of Messiah's kingdom, the preachers of His gospel and witnesses of His glory, had become involved in a controversy with the human race of mightier import than Attic eloquence had ever pleaded, or the tribunals of imperial Eome, where puissant kings and nations were the parties, ever had decided. On this momentous plea they had perilled their characters, their fortunes, their lives, their all, when first they obeyed the command of Jesus, '' Follow me ;" and more especially, when first they accepted the lofty, but, in proportion to its loftiness, arduous and perilous, rank of His apostles to the nations. Against them were arrayed the banded subtlety and might of Jew and Gentile, of priest and sage, of emperor and king, — the prejudices, the institutions, the imagined interests, the wisdom, and the power, of an oppos- ing world. The controversy was ere now conclusively begun, the gauntlet thrown down, the stake committed, the risk incurred. Nor had they not already had experience of the bitterness, the fierce exasperation, the deadly hate, with which their antagonists were prepared to pursue their cause and themselves, its selected champions, to the veiy death. But what recked they, or at least, what needed they to reck, of the world's dreadest laugh, her fiercest frown, her keenest-edged reproach, her most appalling threats, her deadliest hate, — what needed they to reck of the confe- derate enmity of earth and hell, — while they had beside them a Paraclete so mighty and so wise, to counsel and to JOHN XIV. 15, 16. 125 guide, to vindicate and to protect, them, as their E^deemer- Lord? While the Lord thus stood at their right hand, they felt that they could not be greatly moved, — that Eternal Wisdom was their Counsellor, Omnipotence their Guardian. Assured of infallible direction and of unconquerable defence, they could in conscious security defy the most formidable league and coalition of their foes. But behold 1 they had scarcely in this exulting con- fidence committed themselves to the contest, and jeoparded their all on its results, than the intimation reached them that their Almighty Paraclete was called away from their side, — translated from the scene of conflict and debate to the orb of eternal tranquillity and rest, while they were left behind to struggle alone, as they imagined, helpless and friendless, against the enmity of a challenged and exasperated world. The very idea struck dismay into their trembling hearts ; and the visions of discomfiture and ruin usurped the place, in their imaginations, of the glorious and triumphant issues in the confidence of which they had so bravely, — said they not, rashly? — joined issue with the adversary. In these circumstances it is, that Jesus inter- poses here to reanimate their drooping courage, to dispel their unworthy fears, to pour into their hearts the fresh inspiration of hope and of assured victory, by the promise of another Paraclete, another Friend, of power and wis- dom equal to His own, to stand by them while, in the face of an adversary-world, they testified for Jesus; to guide them by His unerring counsel, and to supply them with inexhaustible resources in the conduct of their sacred and illustrious cause ; to encourage them to a heroic bold- ness and heroic constancy, in standing for the right; to make them "valiant for the truth" upon the earth; and to direct the controversy, when at length the period of deci- 126 LECTURE IX. sion should arrive, to an expected issue, glorious for them, and triumphant for their cause. Now, exactly a character like this describes the office and work of the Holy Spirit on behalf of the disciples as the apostles of Jesus, — the assertors of His rights and proclaimers of His truths. You know how He habitually directed all their measures, in labouring for the promulgation, and standing for the defence, of the gospel ; or if you know not, the book of their Acts will tell you how at the bidding of the Holy Ghost they went, — how at the bidding of the Holy Ghost they came, — how by His motions and His impulses they decided every question of their plans, and regulated every step of their procedure. You know how, in pleading the mighty cause intrusted to their advocacy. He inspired their hearts with the light of heavenly truth, and touched their lips with the altar-fire of heavenly eloquence ; how, when they lifted up their voice, as witnesses for Christ, before governors and kings, in councils and synagogues, it was " given them in that same hour what they should say," so that it was not " they who spake, but the Spirit of their Father who spake in them;" how "they spake with tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance," and made known to men the mysteries of the kingdom "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." You know how He supplied them with resources for the maintenance and vindication of their cause, in the exuberance of miraculous power with which He armed them as its chosen champions, and in which God Himself appeared as a visible witness to the truth of their doctrine and the rigliteousness of their claims. You know with what noble resolution, and ardour, and steadfastness, and patience. He inspired their martyr- bosoms in the lioly contest which they waged for truth JOHN XIV. 15, 16. 127 and rigliteousness, for Christ and God, against tlie guile, the power, the malice, of the enemy ; with what a lustre of grace and godlike virtue He adorned their character, reflecting brighter and more persuasive glory on their cause than even the blaze of miracles in which it shone forth on the astonished nations attested and owned of God, You know what triumphs He, in a thousand instances, achieved for them, and for the truth they stood for, in vanquishing the opposition of the unbelieving world, and bringing many hearts "into captivity to the obedience of Christ;" con- victing the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, and subduing to the dominion of the right innumerable souls regenerated by His power, — whole nations baptized with His influence. And you know that, when the fierce controversy which has so long divided our race shall be at length determined, and the claims of Christianity shall even in our world, where they have been met so long with proud denial and bitter scorn and eager opposition, be recognised as demonstrated and paramount, the great result wiU have been wrought out by the countenance and agency of the same Almighty Paraclete of truth and righteous- ness : — " Not by power nor by might, but by my Spirit, saith Jehovah." Tliere are many other particulars of the highest import- ance either expressly contained, or distinctly implied, in the memorable promise contained in this and the imme- diately succeeding verse, on which it is impossible to touch at present. I now conclude, then, by reminding Christians, that it is theirs, in their place and generation, to plead the same cause, to maintain the same controversy, which the apostles pleaded and maintained so zealously of old; and that, therefore, it should be theirs to seek the same aid, to be strong in the same power, in which these primeval wit- 128 LECTURE IX. nesses for Christ are here summoned to confide. You have risked your all, my brethren, your everlasting all, on the validity of a plea and a protest which you have brought against the system of feeling and opinion and conduct avowed and acted on by the majority of men. You have virtually, as Holy Writ declares of Noah, alleged an accu- sation,— pronounced condemnation upon the present worhl; and the question which is now of main interest to you is, where you may find wisdom and strength and consolation to enable you, in all emergencies, to demean yourselves as the defenders of such a cause, against all seduction, tempta- tion, persecution. The text informs you where, — in the countenance and aid of that Almighty Spirit, who, though He no longer seconds and sustains the efforts of the faithful by imbuing their utterance with celestial inspiration, or investing their persons with miraculous power, is still the only source of all that spiritual light, and zeal, and courage, and strength, and patience, which are necessary fitly to endow and qualify the defenders, whether by word or act, of the good, but not the popular, cause. To Him we must look respectively for all that gi^ace which is required for the right conduct of the Christian ministry, and the faithful prosecution of the Christian life. On Him we depend for that convincing energy and influence wliich alone can make our holy argument, embodied whether in discourse or life, effectual on the minds of others. On Him, in one word, the universal church must evermore rely for all that can contribute to the safety, the progress, and the triumph, of that magnificent and awful cause committed to her keeping, — till at length this mighty controversy, on which the destinies of man are hung, shall have been solemnly decided by the infallible arbitrement of God, the irrevocable sentence of eternity. LECTURE X. Chap. xiv. IC, 17. "And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may ahide with you for ever; cvcmi 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," In our last Lecture we entered on the consideration of tliis blessed promise. Havinf,^ in that discourse, exphiined tlie meaning of the tenn by wliich the office of the Holy Spirit in reference to the apostles is described, we now proceed to the account here given of tlie Being by whom tliis dis- tinguished office should be undertaken: — "even the Spirit of truth." The first particular of importance which seems here to be intimated respecting this exalted Being is His real personality. This is the main question concerning the Holy Spirit on the determination of which hinges the belief of His Divinity and the Trinity of Persons, — the threefold distinction of subsistences in the one Infinite and Ever- lasting Godliead. Now, in reference to this fundamental point to the whole doctrine of the Holy Spirit, no passage supplies us with distincter information than the notices which our Saviour's parting discourse contains of the nature, the mission, and the work of that second Paraclete by whose descent from heaven to earth His own depar- 1 30 LECTURE X. ture from earth to heaven was to be compensated to His disciples. In the first place, the very name of Paraclete is obviously the name of a person, and not merely of an influence. It is a concrete, not an abstract term, — denot- ing, not help, but an helper. And, though no one is igno- rant of the frequent use in all languages of the figure called personification, — ^by which abstract qualities are represented embodied and impersonated under the idea of separate intelligent and active beings, — yet no one is ignorant any more that this is a figure for the use of which there are appropriate occasions and occasions inappro- priate ; nor will any one looking to the circumstances of the passage now before us think that it afforded a fit opportunity for the introduction of so bold an instance of figured speech. To obviate all doubt, however, the Holy Ghost, you will observe, is here entitled not merely a Para- clete, but " another Paraclete," — one who was to succeed into the place of Christ, — to be the disciples' Advocate and Helper, as Jesus had been such in the days of His flesh, that is, by personal presence, personal instruction, and personal agency. Accordingly, throughout the Sacred Volume, we find the Holy Spirit spoken of as possessed of understanding, of will, of love, of power, — we find Him commanding, forbidding, testifying, acting, and all along described as exercising affections, and performing actions, which it were stretching personification to utter- most extravagance did we ascribe to a mere energy or power of the Father or the Son. The same inference follows very directly from those passages in which we find the Holy Ghost associated with the Father and the Son in a way which could not fail of appearing very strange and incongruous, if He were not possessed of personality as distinct as theirs ; as, for example, in tlie formuki of baptism JOHN XIV. IG, 17. 181 into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and in the apostolic benediction, " The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the com- munion of the Holy Ghost be with you all."* While, finally, in the sequel of this very discourse, and of this very sen- tence, the personality of the Sacred Spirit is described in a manner too explicit and direct to be mistaken. Had the " Spirit of truth " been merely the Scriptural name for Divine influence, then the grammar of our tongue, and not less that of the original Greek, would have required that we should read " it " and " which," for " he " and " him " and " whom," in all the passages of this discourse where the Holy Ghost is mentioned. Observe, in all the following passages, how regularly the pronouns which denote an intelligent and active Being are employed in reference to the Holy Spirit, in places where, if the term denote merely an energy and influence, there must be, as every one acquainted with the original language knows, a direct vio- lation of the simplest rules of construction, — and say whether, interpreting the Holy Scriptures without bias or prepossession, you can believe that Jesus, in these passages, did not refer to a person, an intelligent agent, a conscious and active subsistence like Himself: — " I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide wdth 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 clwelleth with you, and shall be in you ;" " The Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name. He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remem- brance whatsoever I have said unto you ;" " The Spirit of * Matt, xxviii. 19: 2 Cor. xiii. 14. 132 LECTURE X. truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me ;" " 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 shew you things to come. He shall glorify me, for He shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you." Having thus with sufficient evidence ascertained the personality, let us now attend to the character, of the pro- mised Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, as it is here set forth by the appellation, " the Spirit of truth." This appellation is appropriate to the Eternal Spirit, partly, on account of the infinitude of His knowledge, — that stupendous Omni- science to w^hich the whole circuit of the universe, in both its kingdoms of matter and of mind, and the whole lapse and series of duration, past, present, and to come, are for ever present in one unvaried, undivided, thought, — that wondrous attribute in respect of which it is elsewhere written of this Divine Subsistence, " that the Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep things of God ;" and partly, on account of the veracity of His word, — that sacred and inviolable attribute, essentially inherent in Him alike as in the Father and the Son, by which it is impossible for God either to deceive or to be deceived, and in respect of which it is de- clared concerning the Holy Ghost, " It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth," — an Infallible and Incorruptible Veracity. To these reasons for the appellation here ascribed to the Celestial Paraclete, derived from His original perfections and attributes as, with the Father and the Son, the one Living and True God, may be added one derived from the office which He discharged at first in behalf of the apostles, in leading them into all the truth, — in revealing to them, by His pure inspiration, the system of holy doctrine and holy precept of which the}' JOHN XIV. 16, 17. 133 were rendered tlius the infallible interpreters to man — and which He still discharges on behalf of all believing men, by opening their minds to the spiritual perception of the truth He has Himself revealed, — acting as " the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Christ," — "enlightening the eyes of their understanding, that they may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe."* Such, therefore, being the description of the person and character of that promised Paraclete who was to supply to the disciples the blank occasioned by their Master's per- sonal departure fi'om our world, we find the manner in which the apostles were to become partakers of this invalu- able gift described by an enumeration of the various act? performed to this effect by the Sacred Persons of the Ever- lasting Godhead : — " I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever." We have the intercession of the Son followed by the grant of the Father, and both succeeded by the descent and permanent abode with men of the Holy Spirit, — a concatenation of acts which is only a specimen, in an indi- vidual case, of the uniform and inviolable order observed in bestowing spiritual blessings upon men, according to the revealed economy of God's almighty grace. As the only foundation on the ground of which depraved and guilty man can receive any spiritual blessing whatsoever is the obedience and atonement of the Son of God, accomplished in our nature and our room ; it has seemed good to the Sovereign Wisdom of the universe, in order to make * Eph. i. 17-19. 134? LECTURE X. this connection the more conspicuous and palpable, to inform us, that Jesus, on hehalf of His disciples, for ever pleads in heaven what He performed on earth, — that His atonement is made effectual in each individual case by His intercession, — that what He has purchased for His people by merit He actually procures for His people by prayer. The intercessions and the prayers, again, which are thus offered, in the heavenly sanctuary, by Him who is our High Priest within the vail, our Advocate before the throne, are represented always as addressed to the Eternal Father ; to whom it appertains, in the economy of grace, to support the legislative honours of the Godliead, — the inviolable sanctity of the Divine perfections, the inviolable equity of the Divine administration. It was for Him at first to determine, in reference to the mediation of His Incarnate Son, whether it had been so accomplished as worthily to vindicate eternal righteousness, and justify the Holy Majesty of heaven in receiving our fallen race into the possibilities of mercy; and it is for Him, at every period in the progress of the scheme, to decide whether what the Mediator asks in each particular case is consis- tent with the rights of eternal justice and of universal law, as these have been modified, in their reference to man, by the Saviour's obedience, in his room, to " death, even the death of the cross." But though, according to the theory and strictest principles of the scheme of mercy, it is undoubtedly the Father's prerogative to decide, whether or not the bestowal of any particular blessing in any particu- lar case is within the provisions of the covenant ; yet, in point of fact, in the actual working of the scheme, the case never has occurred, never can occur, that the Mediator should ask for any thing which the Father should find it necessar}^ or should judge it proper, to refuse. This the JOHN XIV. 16, 17. 135 participation by the Mediator of the essence and perfec- tions of the Father, — the wisdom and the rectitude by which He infallibly perceives whatever is fit, whatever is right, necessarily and eternally forbade; and therefore, Jesus knowing, as He expressly remarked on another occa- sion, that the Father heard Him always, assures His dis- ciples of the infallible success which should crown His petition on their behalf: — " I w^ill pray the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete." The Saviour adds : — " that He may abide with you for ever." The ground of the sorrow which had on this emer- gency filled the disciples' hearts was, that their former Paraclete, — He who had hitherto stood by them with His counsel and His help, and under whose auspices alone they could feel themselves prepared to encounter the oppo- sition and the scorn of a hostile w^orld, was about to for- sake them, — to cast them, as they thought, ujDon their ow^n resources, and leave them to buffet as they might with the exigences of that fierce controversy to which He had com- mitted them. Having reassured their trembling spirits, •therefore, by the promise of another Helper as wise and as mighty as Himself, He carries up the consolation to its acme, by assuring them that the Omniscient Guide, the Almighty Helper, whom He was about to send, would never leave them, and never forsake them. In every period of their Christian life, and of their apostolic ministry, — at every emergency of the contest to which they had been sent forth against the world lying in wickedness. He would be at hand, to furnish them with instruction and direction, with wisdom and utterance, with strength and courage, with consolation and refreshment; and not until their course was finished and their warfare accomplished, — not until He had conducted them to " the land of uprightness," 136 LECTURE X. and restored them to the immediate presence and imme- diate guardianship of Him whose approaching departure they so bitterly deplored, — would He resign the office of their Paraclete, — their affectionate Patron, — their guiding and protecting Friend. Nay, not even then ; for there is nothing which should lead us to limit the "for ever" of the text to the present brief and transitory state, — nothing which should interfere with our believing that throughout that bright and blissful immortality in which the plenitude of spiritual blessings, " the fulness of God," as the Bible calls it, is to be enjoyed by Christians, the Holy Spirit shall continue to be the Agent by whose immediate influences on their intellectual and moral natures, their progress in celestial wisdom and holiness and joy shall be eternally sustained. You know, my brethren, how the promise of the text was actually fulfilled in the experience of the apostles. From the time that the influences of the Celestial Para- clete descended upon them in such exuberance and power on the day of Pentecost, there is no reason to suppose that they ever lacked those resources of heavenly inspiration and of miraculous might which were then bestowed to fit them for the conduct of that illustrious cause intrusted to their pleading and their management. But we are not to imagine that the promise of the text refers to those extra- ordinary gifts alone which were the peculiar property of the primitive believers, as peculiarly appropriate to that condition of the clmrch on which their lot was cast, ere yet the canon of the Christian Scriptures was completed, or the commission of the original proclaimers and assertors of the truth, — of those on wliose credit the credit of tlie cause in all future time depended, — had been sufficiently established. It is quite plain from the following verse. JOHN XIV. 16, 17. 187 that the discharge of the office of Paraclete by the Holy- Ghost on behalf of the disciples was understood by Jesus as including the ministration of those more ordinary aids, of those more purely spiritual influences, the enjoyment of which was common to them with Christians of every age, and formed, indeed, the distinctive criterion between the converted church and the unregenerate world. These, after all, my brethren, as far as the apostles were them- selves concerned, were the most precious of all the influ- ences vouchsafed to them by the indwelling Paraclete ; and St. Paul has told us how trifling in worth the richest endowments of inspiration and the mightiest powers of miracle deserved to be esteemed, when separated from those less brilliant and ostentatious, but more vital and essential, graces, which form the spiritual character, and maintain the spiritual life. It was by quickening their Christian faith, — by strengthening their Christian principle, — by in- spiring them with holy love, and zeal, and magnanimity, and patience, and hope, and peace, and joy, — that He most effectually stood by them, and counselled and assisted them in the discharge of their perilous and arduous enter- prise; and, — what it is our consolation and our blessed- ness to know, — it is in this way that He still stands by and aids, that He still instructs and strengthens, every one who relies on Him for wisdom to direct, and grace to help, him in the time of need. In regard to these blessed influ- ences, that is true of every genuine believer which Jesus promised at first to the selected eleven, — " The Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, shall abide with you for ever." For of them it is declared, that the water which Jesus gives them, when He pours upon their barren souls the quickening and refreshing influences of His free Spirit, " shall be within them a well of water springing up into everlasting life ; " 138 LECTURE X. and tliey are represented as " sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the earnest of their inheritance, unto the redemption of the purchased possession." How highly, then, should we esteem the privilege enjoyed by every Christian man, in being made partaker of the Holy Ghost ; in being placed by God under the guiding and the guardian care of a Paraclete so wise, so mighty, and so merciful ; in knowing that no emergency can arise in his condition, amidst all the vicissitudes and the convulsions, the toils, and trials, and temptations, of his earthly pilgrimage and warfare, in which he may not find, if he only seek in the appointed way, counsel, and consolation, and support, directly drawn from the resources of Divinity, directly min- istered by an Almighty and All-wise, an Ever-present and Ever- watchful, Friend; and in the assurance with which he may be " confident of this very thing, that He who hath begun a good work within him will perfect it unto the day of God!" How earnestly should each of us desire, and use the means of having our desire fulfilled, to have our own hearts imbued with His sacred unction, dignified with His residence, and blessed with His friendship ! How eagerly should we avoid the enormous guilt, the no less enormous calamity, of resisting, of quenching, the Holy Spirit! How solicitous should even those of us approve ourselves, who may already have enjoyed the largest mea- sure of that spiritual grace which, once infused, shall never fail, — lest, by thought or feeling, by word or deed, we should offend that best of counsellers, of guardians, and of friends, — lest we should " grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom we have been sealed unto the day of redemption ! " And how unutterably thankful should we be to the " God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory," that He has been pleased so pathetically to assure us of JOHN XIV. 16, 17. 139 His more than parental readiness to confer on every one of us that really desires it, this most invaluable of all benefits, the communion of the Holy Ghost ! " If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? or if he shall ask an egg, will he give him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him!"* Pray we then, with all the earnestness which a blessing of inestimable worth deserves, as David prayed of old: — "Cast us not from thy presence, 0 Lord, neither take thy Holy Spirit from us. Bestow on us the joys of thy salvation, uphold us with thy free Spirit," — or, as the ancient church was wont to sing : — ' Creator-Spirit, by whose aid The world's foundations once were laid, O Source of uncreated Light, The Father's promised Paraclete, Thrice-holy Fount, thrice-holy Fire, Our souls with heavenly love inspire. Plenteous in grace, descend from high, Rich in thy sevenfold energy. Thou Strength of His Almighty hand Whose power doth heaven and earth command. Chase from our minds the infernal foe, And peace, the fruit of love, bestow. Refine and purge our earthly parts, But oh ! inflame and fire our hearts. Make us eternal truth receive, And practise all that we believe. Give us Thyself, that we may see The Father and the Son in Thee.' * Luke xi. 13. LECTURE XI Chap. xiv. 16, 17. ** 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." We have already, in two distinct Lectures, been engaged in considering tlie illustrious promise here contained of another Paraclete, to be sent to the disciples in order to compensate for the departure of Him who had hitherto discharged towards them that gracious and benignant office. You are aware that Paraclete is a designation which was, in ancient times, applied to such influential and powerful friends as might undertake to stand by a man engaged in a judicial controversy ; to countenance him with their sup- port: to tiDunsel him by their wisdom; to support him with their resources ; to appear in court along with him ; to give him and his cause the benefit of their public appro- bation ; to direct, encourage, and assist him in the conduct of his plea; and, in one word, to appear and to act as per- sons who identified themselves with him, and took up his side in the controversy as of personal interest and personal concern. I regret that in order to make your conceptions precise, and your recollections distinct, of this, the established meaning of the term here used, I JOKN XIV. 16, 17. 141 cannot embody the preceding description in a phrase so brief and memorable as I could desire. The shortest para- phrase of the word I can propose would be to some such effect as this : — The Giver of friendly aid, at hand in a disputed cause. This is the classical meaning of the word ; this is its Scriptural meaning elsewhere ; and certain it is that no denomination could be more accurately descriptive of the part which Jesus, in the first instance, and the Holy Spirit, in the next, performed on behalf of the chosen dis- ciples, the selected heralds and apostles of His truth. As the champions and defenders of infant Christianity, they had become involved in a controversy with the unbelieving world on which not only their individual characters and fortunes and lives were jeoparded, but the most important public interests of the human race, — the most illustrious and sublime prerogatives of the Almighty's government. In the conduct of this momentous plea, they had hitherto experienced in Jesus a mighty Paraclete, — a Giver of friendly aid, always at hand to instruct them with His infallible direction, to guard them with His unconquerable defence ; and it is to console and soothe them under the prospect of losing His personal and present aid that Jesus, in the text, assures them of the arrival, in consequence of His departure, of another Paraclete — another Friend as mighty and as wise as He, — to stand by them in their cause. Concerning the person and character of this second Paraclete we spoke at large in our last Lecture, in illustra- tion of the name here given to Him, — " the Spirit of truth." We saw, from an extensive induction of particulars, and especially from the circumstances and the manner in which the Holy Ghost is introduced throughout the discourse of Jesus now before us, that this must be the name not merely of an influence, an energy, a power, but of a person, an in- 142 LECTUEE XL telligent agent, a conscious and active subsistence ; and we saw how justly this illustrious Being was entitled in the text, " the Spirit of truth," when w^e remembered that to His infinite knowledge all truth and science are for ever present, that to His infinite veracity all falsehood and error are for ever impossible, that from His celestial inspiration have flowed aU those communications of heavenly wisdom of which the holy apostles were made by Him the infallible interpreters, and which for their certainty and their extent, their glory and their preciousness, deserve to be entitled, as they are entitled so often, by excellence, the truth. This, then, is the illustrious Being who was to be the suc- cessor of Jesus on His departure from our world, in the beneficent office of Paraclete to the chosen disciples, — who was to afford them the communications of His friendly and ever-present aid in the conduct of that magnificent and awful cause for which they stood against a hostile world. You know, no doubt, how, in point of fact, the Holy Ghost fulfilled this gracious office to the primitive believers ; partly in the exuberance of extraordinary gifts, — gifts of celestial inspiration and of miraculous might, — in jwhich He descended on the day of Pentecost, and with which He accompanied them through all their conduct of the noble but arduous cause committed to their champion- sliip, until its claims were fully vindicated, and its triumph was finally secured ; but partly also, by the ministration of those more ordinary aids, — of those more purely spiritual influences, — the enjoyment of which was not peculiar to the first disciples, but by the participation of which the Christians of all times are admitted into the honour and the blessedness of " the communion of the Holy Ghost." That these more ordinary influences of the Almighty JOHN XIV. 16, 17. 143 Spirit, thougli not exclusively intended, yet are most cer- tainly included in the office here assigned to the Holy Ghost as the Paraclete of the first disciples, is very obvious from the latter part of the verse before us ; where it is de- clared that, in the sense here meant, " the world cannot receive" Him. By "the world" in this place, as in in- numerable other passages of the Holy Volume, we are to understand all those who, having refused to submit their minds to the faith, and their hearts to the authority, of the gospel, still remain in the condition of depravity into which they were born, and which is still the characteristic condition of the greater part of the human species, — in one word, all unconverted men. Now, that it was possible even for unconverted men to be partakers of the extraor- dinary influences of the Holy Ghost, — that the gifts of prophetic inspiration and of miraculous agency were no infallible criterions of the presence of saving grace, — seems obvious from various intimations in Holy Writ ; from the example of Balaam, who " heard the words of God and saw the vision of the Almighty," although he " loved the wages of unrighteousness," and perished fighting against God in the ranks of Midian ; from the case of those who, accord- ing to the apostle's supposition, might " have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and aU knowledge, and have all faith so that they could remove mountains," and yet be destitute of charity, and therefore, after all, be nothing; from the case, in fine, of those, the many of whom our Saviour hath Himself predicted, that, at the awful day of revelation and of doom, they " shall say mito Him, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name cast out devils, and in thy name done may wonder- ful works?" to whom, notwithstanding, He " shall pro- fess,— I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work 144 LECTURE XI. iniquity."* The influences, then, by which the Holy Ghost discharged to the apostles the part and office of a Paraclete, and by their enjoyment of which they were distinguished from the world around, — the mass of un- converted and unregenerated men, — included, besides the endowment of celestial wisdom and celestial power by which they were so marvellously signalized, those en- lightening and enlivening graces, those sanctifying and consoling operations, of the Almighty Spirit, of which every Christian soul is still the subject; and in reference to these it is that Jesus describes the Paraclete as the Spirit of truth " whom the world cannot receive." This clause is introduced for the purpose, no doubt, of setting forth the value of the blessing which, in being made partakers of the Holy Ghost, not the apostles only, but Christians of our own with those of all former and all following times, enjoy. It is no common-place nor vulgar gift, but the choice and distinguishing expression of Jehovah's special love. It is no natural nor ordinary blessing, of native growth to the present world, or suited to the faculties and tastes of man's merely physical being. The most exalted and most transporting blessedness of which the world affords the sources and materials is poor and worthless compared with this. The most pure and elevated and refined capacities of a human nature that has been born but once are still too gross and earthly to enjoy a blessing so ethereal and sublime as this. It is part of the chosen and selected heritage of God's redeemed, which, like the " hidden manna," and the " name which no man knoweth save he wlio boars it," God has reserved for those with whom is the secret of the Lord, and to whom ♦ 2 Tet. ii. 1.'): 1 Cor. xiii. 2; Matt. vii. 22, 23. JOHN XIV. 16, 17. 145 He hath shown His holy covenant. " The world cannot receive" it; that is to say, not, that it is absolutely impos- sible for a worldly man to become a Christian, and so a partaker of the Holy Ghost, but, that it requires a change of nature, a revolution on his being, a transformation of faculty and taste, to do so. The Holy Spirit cannot become the inhabitant of an unholy nature ; — of an uncon- secrated dwelling-place. True, the conversion and renewal of the soul is itself the work of the Holy Ghost, and the influence, therefore, of which these are the fruits, is first exerted on the soul in its original depraved and worldly state. But this is not the receiving of the Holy Ghost of -which the passage before us speaks. It is rather an opera- tion upon the soul than an admission into the soul. It is the Holy Ghost preparing a habitation for Himself, rather than the Holy Ghost received and welcomed as an inmate there. And this is just the truth which the text declares, — that the world, the unconverted portion of mankind, cannot receive Him, — none can become partakers of His assisting and consoling, unless they have previously been made partakers of His renewing and regenerating, grace. To be prepared for participating in His habitual fellowship requires that a man have undergone a change of nature, — that he shall no longer belong to the community entitled in Holy Writ, the world, but that, no longer conformed to the present evil world, he shall have been " transformed in the renewing of His mind," and numbered and naturalized among that peculiar people, who have been "begotten again," and consecrated to royal priesthood, to " shew forth the praises of Him who hath caUed them out of darkness into His marvellous light." All others reject, despise, resent, and scorn, the heavenly Paraclete; nor is their ability less than their desire to have their hearts brought K 146 LECTURE XL under His sacred influence, and converted into temples for His pure abode. In order, however, that no reflection might be cast upon the value of that transcendent gift by which Jesus was to compensate to His followers for His own departure, in consequence of the neglect and scorn with which it was treated by the multitude of men ; He goes on to state what was the true origin of the want of welcome which the Holy Spirit meets with in an ungodly world : — " They see Him not, neither know Him ;" — they have no experimental acquaintance with the nature of His influences, the effects of His inhabitation. Those among you, my brethren, who have already undergone the transforming change which prepares you for enjoying the habitual presence in your souls of the anointing Spirit, will well understand — you only can — the force of your Saviour's reasoning in this verse. You can remember how utterly ignorant and in the dark you used to be in regard to what the fellowship of the Spirit really meant, — ^what spiritual thought and spiritual feeling really were. You had no distinct idea of their nature, far less a definite conception of their sweetness, — and how then could you fail to undervalue and contemn them, as you see the mass of men around you undervalue and contemn them still, so making it impossible that they should receive the Holy Ghost till, by the power of that Almighty Spirit Himself, their natures are regenerated, and they made capable of holy sentiment, susceptible of holy emotion? But who that has had his soul enlightened to understand and to enjoy "the things which have been freely given us of God" will the less esteem the heavenly gift, because of the general contempt? Who would value at a lower rate a pearl of price, a jewel that contained a prince's ransom, because the feathered reasoner in the JOHN XIV. 16, 17. 147 fable despised it for a grain of barley, — because an infant would prefer to it an apple or a toy? The true reason, my brethren, of the contempt or the indifference with which the influences of the celestial Paraclete, that is to say, the exercises and the principles of spiritual piety, are treated by the multitude of men, is not that they are not precious beyond all measures of preciousness the world can furnisli, that they are not sweet beyond all images of sweetness which nature can supply; it is that they want the facul- ties which can appreciate such worth, the tastes which can relish such delight. " The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; for they are foolishness unto him ; neither can he know them ; because they are spirit- ually discerned."* '' The world cannot receive the Spirit of truth, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him." My brethren, the statement thus made at once by the apostle, and by the Lord of apostles, that " the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, because they are spiritually discerned," — that " the world cannot receive" the blessed Paraclete " because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him," — richly deserves to be pondered by us all, as affording the key to that preposterous preference which we see the multitude of men giving to the things of the world above the things of the Spirit. There is no compa- rison,— as the testimony of the Sacred Word and the experience of all those who know experimentally what spiritual religion is, combine to show, — between the preciousness and sweetness of the one and of the other, viewed according to their own intrinsic worth. But then, the worldly man has faculties and tastes for the one which he has not for the other. He knows, and he can relish, * 1 Cor. ii. 14. 148 LECTURE XI. the attractions of the world, — its imposing pomps, its fasci- nating vanities, its spnit-stirring enterprises, and its sense- dissolving pleasures; while, all the time, he has neither perception nor desire for those charms which belong to the experience of the Holy Spirit's influence upon the soul, to the renovated character and state of human nature, — its joys wdth which a stranger intermeddles not, its peace which passeth understanding, the revelation of Himself which Jesus maketh to the soul in another way than He doth unto the world. Such expressions are to him phrases, words, — no more ; so that to exchange the things of the world for the things of the Spirit as the main objects, and the chosen portion of his soul, appears as if it w^ere to for- sake realities for shadows, the certain for the doubtful, the warm familiar earth which has hitherto so solidly sustained him, for a thin and unsubstantial void, peopled with fan- tasies and airy dreams. No wonder, therefore, that he has no desire after the Holy Ghost, — the Author and the Source of all spiritual thought and spiritual feeling; and that, having no desire, he has no capacity, for partaking of His celestial benedictions. Oh, if there are any here who are conscious in their secret souls that something such as this is their state of feeling in reference to the pursuits and the enjoyments of the present world, as compared with the exercises and emotions of inward spiritual Chris- tianity,— let them be assured that it is their ignorance alone, profound and most ill-judging ignorance, which leads them thus to think and thus to feel. Every Christian man will assure them, on the evidence of his own experience, that it is their ignorance. The blessed apostle tells them, by the authority of his celestial inspiration, that it is their ignorance. Jesus tells them, — " the Amen, the True and I'aithful Witness," that it is their ignorance. Will they JOHN XIY. 16, 17. 149 not be persuaded by such assurances as these to take the fact on trust, — to desire and pray for that which, though as yet they do not comprehend it, though as yet they can- not directly relish it, yet they have such ample reason to believe is divinely precious and divinely sweet ? If even such a desii'e were only implanted in any bosom, — if even such a prayer were only breathed from any heart, — I should hail it as the dawning and commencement of the Holy Spirit's saving operation on the soul, — I should believe that He who hath promised to give the Holy Ghost to them who ask Him would, in due season, satisfy that earnest desire, and answer that humble prayer, by first enduing the suppliant soul with spiritual capacities, and then replenishing those new capacities with the communi- cations of spiritual gi^ace, — the blessed unction of the Holy One, — the light and liberty and love, the mighty aids and precious consolations, of the promised Paraclete from God. Oh, happy they on whom this spiritual transformation has already passed ; who have already been admitted into the sacred communion of the Holy Ghost ; to whom, in contrast with the world, Jesus can say, as once to His selected eleven — " But ye know Him ; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you!" True, the disciples had not yet attained that ample knowledge of the Spirit, in His power and excellence, with which they were after- wards endued. But even then they had some degree of experimental acquaintance with the influences of His grace, the operations of His power, upon their minds and hearts, their characters and lives. They had already acquired some portion of that spiritual discernment for want of which " the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit;" and this was proved by the fact that the Spirit 150 LECTURE XI. Himself, who never dwells with any save those who have heen already furnished with the faculty to apprehend and to relish His communications, had actually taken up His abode with them. Of this peculiar meaning of the particle " for," — ^by which it is employed in reasoning forward from the cause to the effect, while its accustomed use is in arguing back from the effect to the cause, — you have a striking example in the explanation which our Saviour gave of the conduct of that weeping penitent who " anointed His feet with ointment, and wiped them with the hairs of her head," Luke vii. 47 : — " Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much ; but to whom little is for- given, the same loveth little." It is plain, not only from the principles of the gospel, but from the nature of the case and the Avhole tenor of the context, that the woman's love was the effect of her forgiveness, and that, according to the more customary usage of language, " therefore " might be substituted in place of " for." And so, the con- nection and contrast between the former part and the latter of the verse before us requires that we consider the obser- vation respecting the disciples as importing, — " Ye know the Holy Ghost, and therefore He dwelleth with you and shall be in you." There is an obvious progression and climax in these words on which much of their force and meaning depends. The heavenly Paraclete, you will observe, is represented, in reference to those who know Him, first, as dwelling with them, and then, as dwelling within them; this intimating, that, in the ordinary ope- rations of God's grace upon the soul, the work of the Holy Ghost is gradual and progressive, and that, in proportion as believers faithfully improve their means of knowing Him, the blessed communion which He permits them with Himself becomes ever more intimate, more familiar, more JOHN XIV. 16, 17. 151 -affectionate, more thoroughly sanctifying, more intensely satisfying. " Then shall ye know, if ye follow on to know the Lord His coming is prepared as the morning, as the early and the latter rain upon the earth." Let me exhort you, therefore, my believing brethren, to labour, in the use of all appointed and appropriate means, that in you the promise of the text may be fulfilled; that the Holy Spirit may be daily taking more complete pos- session of your nature, — becoming not merely the com- panion of your lives, but the inhabitant of your souls, — not only dwelling with you, but being in you. Oh, think how high a dignity is that to which ye are here invited and encouraged to aspire; that of having your human natures, — natures that have lain so long in ^vreck and ruin, — their majesty defaced, their holiness profaned, their altars overthrown, — fashioned and consecrated into habi- tations of God through the Spirit, into living temples of the Eternal Majesty. You remember in how profoimd an ecstasy the great soid of Solomon was wrapt by the very thought that He " whom heaven, the heaven of heavens, could not contain," should deign to " dwell with men upon the earth." How intense, then, should not our rapture be of admiration and gratitude and awe, to feel in our experience the overwhelming idea realized, and. our own souls become the chosen seat, the immediate shrine, of Deity! For " Know ye not," says the apostle to all believing men, " that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" And again, " Ye are the temple of the Living God ; as He hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."* Oh, what unpolluted sanctity of feeling, what * 1 Cor. iii. 16: 2 Cor. vi. 16. 152 LECTURE XI. inviolable purity of life, what sacred dignity of character, are incumbent upon those who have thus been set apart as sacred and devoted beings, whose slightest sin partakes of the guilt of sacrilege, — a wrong and insult offered to Jehovah in His own immediate dwelling-place! With what sleepless vigilance should we watch, with what ear- nest deprecation should we pray, that no thought or feeling may be allowed admission to our hearts but such as befits the residence of that Holy One who is " of purer eyes than to behold iniquity," in whose presence evil cannot abide ! How jealous should we be lest any idol should be found usurping that place in our affections which belongs of right to Him who "will not give His glory to another!" How careful that every vain imagination, and "every high thought within us which exalteth itself against the know- ledge of God " is cast down before the ark of His presence, and the Lord alone exalted, — enshrined in the inmost sanctuary of our minds, enthroned in the very heart of our affections ! With what prompt fidelity should we comply with the whispers of His Spirit, the oracular voices re- sounding from the Holiest, the heavenly inspirations breathing through the shrine ; and with what persevering ardour pray that He who prefers ' Before all temples the upright heart and pure ' would Himself, by the transforming might of His presence and His power, sanctify us more and more, in body, soul, and spirit, — cleanse us from all pollutions of the flesh and of the mind, — baptize each vessel of the sanctuary in His own regenerating laver, or purify it in His refining fire, — illumine in us what is dark, rectify what is perverse, exalt what is debased, and make us, through every faculty JOHN XIV. 16, 17. 153 and region of our being, temples such as He Himself may choose, as when, of old. He chose Mount Zion, and desired her for His habitation : — " This is my rest ; here will I dwell ; for I have desired it ! " LECTURE XII. Chap. xiv. 18. " I will not leave you comfortless ; I will come to you." The object of Jesus, you are aware, in the whole of this discourse, is to comfort and encourage His disciples in the prospect of His speedy departure from the world. Among many other topics of consolation to which He had ad- verted, He had, in the preceding paragraph, referred to the coming of another Paraclete, another heavenly Patron and Helper, to stand by them in the controversy to which, as the assertors of infant Christianity, they were committed with a hostile world, and, in the management of this mo- mentous plea, to perform on their behalf the friendly offices which He had hitherto Himself discharged. The attacli- ment, however, of the disciples to their Lord was not of so purely selfish and interested a description that its regrets for His departure should be satisfied by the promise merely of another Paraclete, should He even do as much for them, or more, than their former Paraclete had done. They had loved Him for Himself, and not merely for His benefits ; and your hearts will tell you that to sucli an affection it affords a very insufficient consolation to be told that, by the departure of a benefactor or a friend, they that are left behind will lose nothing, that is to say, will lose nothing but himself. Why, this is the very loss which JOHN XIV. 18. 155 such affection will account most grievous, by which to purchase the most distinguished personal advantage the heart would despise itself if it could willingly consent. To satisfy, therefore, this instinct of a pure and generous regard, the Saviour, having in so far comforted His fol- lowers by the assurance that, in the way of spiritual help and spiritual advantage, they should not suffer by His departure, — followed as it should be by the descent of the Eternal Spirit to aid, to bless, and to console, them, — fills up the measure of the consolation by assuring them, that the coming of the Holy Ghost as another Paraclete did not imply their final and perpetual separation from Him who had hitherto discharged, on their behalf, the duties of that sacred and benignant charge. Having first encour- aged them with the assurance, — " I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete," He perfects and completes the encouragement by adding, — " I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you." You have probably been informed ere now that the original term here rendered " comfortless" is that which, strictly taken, signifies, orphans. It is, in fact, no other than the very word orphans, — a word which has been adopted from the Greek into several languages besides our own. It was common among the Jews to describe the relation between a teacher and his disciples by expressions borrowed from the endearing relation of parent and child. Thus, we frequently find those who, under the government of the judges and the kings, received their education in the schools of the prophets, spoken of by the appellation of " sons of the prophets;" and we hear Elisha exclaiming, as his eager gaze followed the bright traces of the celestial coursers and the rushing wheels that rapt Elijah into heaven, — " My father, my father ; the chariot of Israel 1.56 LECTURE XII. and the horsemen thereof." So spake EJisha when he lost liis master. And how naturally might the chosen eleven, whom Jesus had so long instructed, guided, protected, and consoled with more than parental tenderness and care, apprehend that, bereft of His sacred and beloved presence, they had nothing before them but to wander, as desolate orphans, along a fatherless and forsaken world, dwelling with sorrowful remembrance on the tokens of paternal endearment which they used to share, the words of paternal kindness they were wont to hear, the gifts of paternal love they were accustomed to enjoy, feeling that such things were, — sad contrast to the things that are ! Natural, how- ever, as such desponding views of their condition and their prospects might be to the minds of the disciples, — ^they are exhorted by their Master to banish them from their imagi- nations, and, on the other hand, to comfort their hearts with the assurance that even His translation into another sphere, His departure to 'that undiscovered country whence no traveller returns,' should not divide them from His presence, from His love, and from His power : — " I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you." Oh, my brethren, how precious, how distinguishing, a privilege was this enjoyed by the disciples, — to have a Father who could say, in the immediate anticipation of His own departure from the sphere of human things, " I will not leave you orphans;" whose power to provide for, to defend, to bless, His own, even the stroke of the great dis- severer could not impair; who, at the period when an (lai-thly parent must leave his children, as far as mortal assistance can avail, dependent upon strangers and exposed to enemies, could confidently assure them of His uninter- rupted and unbroken care, as "the Everlasting Father," whose affection and whose power, — His willingness, at JOHN XIV. 18. 157 once, and His ability to bless His people, — no change can alter, no accident impair. And oh, how earnestly should not each one of us desire to have a personal interest secured in the love of that Immutable Friend who, amidst all the vicissitudes and all the bereavements by which we are deprived of those on whose guiding wisdom and guardian care we were accustomed to depend, can never leave and never fail us, — that better Parent who, in a thousand instances, according to His promise, has approved Himself to His own, when the stroke of the destroyer had left them forlorn of earthly friend or comforter, and turned the world around them into a desolate wilderness, " a father of the fatherless, the stranger's shield and the orphan's stay ! " Our Saviour assures His disciples, however, not merely negatively, "I will not leave you orphans," but positively, " I will come to you." There has been much discussion among interpreters in regard to the precise import of this animating promise, and the exact nature of the coming which its speaks of on the part of the Eedeemer. One class of commentators understand it literally, and refer it exclusively to His resurrection and reappearance to the disciples in bodily presence after that illustrious event. Others, taking the expression in a figurative sense, limit its significance to the most real, though invisible, presence which, even in His exalted state at the right hand of God, He maintains with all His believing followers, and of which He speaks once and again, when He says, — " Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them;'' "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."* I apprehend, my brethren, that there are sufficient reasons why we should, instead of * Matt, xviii. 20: xxviii. 20. 158 LECTURE XII. limiting the promise to one or other of these senses, under- stand it as including both. On the one hand, the expres- sions in the following verse seem distinctly to specify the Saviour's restoration to life, as at least very intimately con- nected with His return to His disciples ; while, on the other, it is not obvious in what sense Jesus could on the ground of His promised return declare to His disciples, " I will not leave you orphans," if that return referred merely to the brief interval of time which He spent with them between His resurrection and ascension, — during which, too, it is obvious from the sacred history. He did not even remain continuously, as He had been wont to do before, in the society of His followers. Moreover, it is certain that that remarkable increase of knowledge concerning the person and the character of Jesus which is mentioned in the 20tli verse as the effect of His return, did not take place till after His ascension to the right hand of Heavenly Majesty, and the illumination of their minds in celestial truth by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. The true interpreta- tion of the promise, therefore, must be that which refers it to the whole course and series of Christ's presence with His followers in His exalted state, commencing with His resurrection from the dead, and continuing till the con- summation of all things ; whether that presence be visibly displayed, or only invisibly enjoyed. It includes in it His return to life ; His re-assumption of human existence in its completest form as an embodied spirit; His reap- pearance to His followers as their immutable and now immortal friend; and His renewal with them of affec- tionate society and intercourse, — an intercourse and society to be thenceforward continued without interruption and without end. It would liavo little availed to soothe the sorrow which had filled their hearts at the prospect of JOHN XIV. 18. 159 losing the Master they adored, to entertain the hope of receiving from Him, ere long, a visit so brief and transitory as the shortness of His abode upon the earth subsequently to His resurrection permitted. And therefore, not only by implication in the verse before us, but by direct asser- tion in other cases, He takes care to inform them that His ascension into glory was to produce no change on the reality, however it might interrupt the visibility, of His presence and His intercourse. The more effectually to dispel the apprehension, — so natural to minds over which sense exerts so constraining an influence, — that His disap- pearance from their view was His withdrawal from their society, almost the last words He spake before the heavens received Him out of their sight were these, " Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world," — not, I will be, but I am; that is. My presence, which has hitherto been with you, shall continue with you to the end, — even the mighty and magnificent transition which is now upon the eve of accomplishment, and by which my human nature is to be rapt away from earth to an immeasurable loftiness, shall produce no change on the reality of my presence and my intercourse with you upon the earth, and with every several Christian soul, through all descending ages, down to the term of time, the consummation of the imiverse. That the continued presence so distinctly and unam- biguously predicted in this the final promise of our ascend- ing Lord, is implied in the promise now before us, " I will not leave you fatherless, I will come unto you," we have already sufficiently proved. And that the promise can in neither case be fitly understood except of a real personal presence, — that it is in vain to interpret it of the disciples acquir- ing a deeper and more vivid insight into the truth respect- 1 60 LECTUEE XII. ing His person and His work than they before possessed, — none, I apprehend, who candidly considers the meaning of the terms will question. Thus, following out the prin- ciples of fair and honest interpretation, we are led, no doubt, into a statement which, in reference to any ordinary human being, would be manifestly absurd, — we must believe that Jesus Christ, the exalted Mediator, is not confined, like all created beings, to one region of the universe at one period of duration. You know, my bre- thren, how, with respect to Jesus, this mystery is solved, — how, since the period of His ascension into glory, He has been at all times present, at once with His Father and His glorified saints in heaven, and with His yet militant and mortal followers on the earth. His, you are aware, is the immensity of that divine essence which fiUeth all things, and by which Jehovah is at once " a God at hand and a God afar off;" and by its union to this the Omni- potent Godhead, even the humanity of Jesus is invested, not, indeed, with a strict and actual, but with what we may truly call a virtual Omnipresence. For, though to speculate on such questions too deeply or too confidently is not for faculties like ours, still, we cannot but believe that, united as, they are in the one Person of Immanuel, the consciousness of the Divine and that of the human nature maintain a constant and uninterrupted communica- tion, so that what is perceived and present to the one, extended as it is throughout illinntable space, is at the instant perceived and therefore virtually present to the other, where it dwells in heaven at the right hand of Majesty. Thus may we conceive that complete intelli- gence to be poured into the human consciousness, and that ready sympathy awakened in the human heart, of Jesus which we know that, even in the sphere of distant glory JOHN XIV. 18. 161 which has now received Him, He still possesses and cher- ishes in regard to the present state of His people here below. Around that human nature as a centre, if we may venture so to speak, that mighty Essence is expanded which fills immensity, and thither thrills, with more than the rapidity of light, every impulse or impression made at any single point of that uncircumscribed ocean of exist- ence. And thus it is that, when " the man Christ Jesus" was on the very point of being taken from their view up to an unmeasured and unknown remoteness, He could assure His disciples, "Lo, I am with you always;" thus, that He continued through all their mortal existence, that He continues still in every following generation of the Church, to fulfil the promise of the text,—" I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you." The connection of the promise, however, distinctly shows that it is not the mere fact of the Eedeemer's presence with His followers that is here asserted, but that of His gracious and benignant presence. The promise is obviously equi- valent to, — I will come to you, I will abide with you, as a Protector and a Friend. It is to prevent His people being left as fatherless and orphans in the world that He tells them He will come ; that is, will come to perform on their behalf the office of a Father, — to guide them with His counsel, to protect them by His power, to feed them with His bounty, to cheer them with His consolations, to satisfy them with His love. This is the blessed assurance which the text conveyed to the apostles, and which it still con- veys to all who, like them, have acknowledged Jesus for their Saviour and their Lord, — that they have ever at their side an Invisible and Almighty Friend ; that the presence from which they cannot escape, with which they dwell perpetually surrounded, is that of the great Lover of their L 162 LECTURE XII. souls, whose eye is ever set on tliem to mark tlie varying circumstances of tlieir lot and exigencies of their history, — whose ear is ever open to catch the first whispers of their prayer, the dim sigh or the unuttered groan in which, when words are too imperfect and too gross a vehicle for the emotions of their hearts, the Spirit within them maketh intercession, — whose heart is evermore in closest communication with theirs, beating with a responsive throb to all their innocent emotions, touched with a fellow- feeling of all their innocent infirmities. How high an honour, how rich a blessedness, is this which apper- tains to every Christian, — to believe, to know, that he is constantly in contact with his Saviour, even though that Saviour testify His presence by no visible tokens such as, of old, brought the sense of His presence home to the minds of the chosen twelve ! Simply to know this on sufficient evidence is itself a consolation. For a child to be aware that his father is beside him, even though that father be for the time silent and inactive and invisible, — though he is wrapt in the shade of night and locked in the arms of slumber, — carries alon^r with it a deliohtful sense of safety, and feeling of satisfied repose. Even so it is with believers and the Father who hath promised that He will not leave them orphans ; that He will come to them, and abide with them for ever. He is invisible, indeed, as in the shade of night, — silent, as in the calm of sleep. But He is near, for ever near; so that there is not an instant in the believer's history in which He may not find in Him liis very present help, and pillow his head in peace on the breast of an affectionate Omnipotence. Yet let it not be thought from the figure I have used, that, because a silence and a dimness as of slumber- and of niglit invest His pre- sence, therefore He is indeed asleep, unconscious and JOHN XIV. 18. 163 inactive, as a child may find an earthly parent. " He that keepeth Israel, He slnmbereth not nor sleepeth." He is ever at their right hand, not merely to soothe them with the persuasion and the feeling of His presence, but to afford them active assistance, and active protection, suited to their varying circumstances. This also you are called to believe, 0 Christian, on the authority of the word which never has deceived you, and never can deceive you, — that Jesus is near, not only to regard and pity, but to help and save, you. And though, in this brief season of invisible intercourse. His person and His power may be alike unperceived by the eyes of flesh, yet mayest thou be as certain as the word of the Living God can warrant, that, as thou canst never escape from His pervading presence, so canst thou never be forsaken of His help and saving strength. "The Lord is thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade on thy right hand. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil. The Lord shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from henceforth and for ever." Therefore, " 0 Lord, I am continually with thee ; thou hast holden me by my right hand. Because the Lord is at my right hand, I shall not be greatly moved." Such I apprehend to be the true import of the promise, " I will come to you," in its connection with that which precedes, " I will not leave you orphans," — My presence shall return to you, and shall abide with you for ever, and that the presence of an affectionate Father, of an Almighty Friend. In this sense the promise is alike fulfilled by the visible abode of Jesus with the disciples after His resur- rection from the dead, and by His invisible abode with all His believing people on the earth from the period of His ascension to that of the consummation of all things. Nor 164 LECTURE XII. should we altogether exclude from the scope and compre- hension of this inestimable promise, — though undoubtedly it is not exclusively intended, — the period when the assur- ance already delivered by our Lord in the 3d verse, — " And if I go away, I will come again and Avill receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also," — shall receive its glorious accomplishment; the period when the glorified Eedeemer shall come forth to meet the soul of each departing Christian as it struggles out into the unembodied space, to show it the path of life, to welcome it into the gates of heaven, and to establish it in the bright mansion of eternal joy which He has been preparing for it, — and the period, too, when He shall again descend in like manner as the disciples saw Him go into heaven, to per- fect the salvation of His chosen, to gather them unto Him- self, in their completed natures, from the four winds of heaven, that so they may be ever with the Lord, and to present before the Eternal Father His whole ransomed Church in perfect bliss and beauty, — a glorious family now finally collected around their glorious Head, — exclaiming, " Behold, I and the children whom Thou hast given me." Oh happy, thrice and four times happy they who are indeed the children of this Almighty Father, the heirs of this celestial home, — that is, all those who now confide in Jesus as their Saviour, all those who now obey Him as their Lord! This is a happiness, my brethren, open to us all, offered to us all. Oh, let its attainment form to us all the highest object of our and)ition and pursuit; that, while yet it is possible, we may escape from the sad condition in which we have already been involved by our rebellion, — the con- dition of strayed and prodigal children, wandering at random through this sad and perilous world, cheered by no Parent's love, and shielded by no Parent's care; and JOHN XIV. 18. 165 that we come not at last into the doom of those who, having obstinately refused, while it was still the accepted time, while it was still the day of salvation, to return into the bosom of their heavenly Father's family and love, shall be left through eternity to roam unsheltered, unconsoled, along the desert of interminable woe, the orphans of the universe, the outcasts of creation. LECTUEE XIIL Chap. xiv. 19. '' Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more ; but ye see me." In illustrating the verse immediately preceding, " I will not leave you orphans, I will come imto you," that is, I will come in order to abide with you as your Father and your Friend, — we endeavoured to show that the coming there spoken of was not to be confined, either to the visible re- appearance of Jesus to His disciples after His resurrection, or to the invisible presence which we know from other passages He maintained with them after His ascension, and will maintain with all His believing people " always, even unto the end of the world ;" but that it includes the whole course and series of His intercourse with the dis- ciples in His estate of exaltation, both visible and invisible, both before and after His departure to that sphere of distant glory which has received and must retain Him until the restitution of all things. His presence and His intercourse with His disciples were quite as real after that illustrious event as they were before it; and I cannot perceive, in the mere circumstantial difference that, — while, in the brief space between His resurrection and ascension, His presence was oft(;n .sensil)le and visible, — through the long years and centuries which have elapsed since He was received up into glory, it has been for the most part a JOHN XIV. 19. . 167 presence to be realized by faith and not to be discerned by sense, any reason why His visible and His invisible presence should not be included in one promise, under the notion of that coming to His disciples, and consequent abode with them, by which He was to provide that they should not be left as orphans amidst this bleak and perilous world. If we have in this respect rightly explained the verse preceding, the interpretation of the passage now before us will proceed with comparative fluency and ease. The extent of significance in the phrase, " Ye shall see me," is obviously to be regulated by the corresponding extent of meaning in the phrase preceding, "I will come to you,'' with the supplement imphed in it, I will dwell with yoa If the latter refer, — as we have endeavoured to establish that they do, — both to the visible and to the invisible presence of Jesus with His followers; then the former refers to the perception which they enjoyed both of the one and of the other, — of the one by the bodily sense, of the other by the faith which is the mind's eye, the vision of the soul. The word before us is frequently used in the Bible, and particularly in the writings of our evangelist and the discourses of our Lord recorded by him, in reference to intellectual apprehensions : — " Whosoever seeth the Son, and believeth on His name, shall have everlasting life ;" "I speak that which I have seen with my Father, and ye do that which ye have seen with your father ;" " I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete, even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him."* We do not say that the word "to see," * John vi. 40; viii. 38; xiv. 16, 17. 168 LECTURE XIII. standing where it does in this passage, has two differ- ent senses, — a principle of interpretation most dangerous to admit. We say that it has one sense ; only, that sense is a general one, — capable of being explained in different modes, embracing different particulars. We take the expression in the simple but comprehensive meaning of, to perceive, or to discern ; and it depends on circumstances whether this perception or discernment takes place by means of the bodily organs, or by the instrumentality of the intellectual faculties. AVhensoever the disciples of Jesus, after the departure which He accomplished at Jerusalem, whether by the aid of their senses or their faith, were conscious and aware that He was really present with them ; so often was the promise of the text fulfilled, " Ye see me," — that is, according to an idiom frequent in the Scripture style. Ye shall see me. It was not the whole of the con- solation prepared for believers in what would have been otherwise their orphan and desolate condition, that Jesus, " the Everlasting Father," — whom, at His death, the first disciples were ready to lament as finally departed, — was actually to return, and actually to remain with them until the consummation of all things. It was provided that they should enjoy the comfort of His return, and of His gracious presence, by actually perceiving for themselves that He was returned, — that He was present according to His word; and therefore the encouragement afforded by the 1 8tli verse, " I will come to you," is crowned and com- pleted by the 19th, "Ye shall see me." They saw Him returning after what they apprehended was to prove a final and hopeless separation, when, once and again. He reappeared to them in His resurrection body, the Victor of the grave and Heir of immortality, — " the Sun of Eight- eousness" emerging 'with new spanglpd ore,' from under JOHN XIV. 19. 169 the shadows of its brief, but bloody and dire, eclipse; appointing to them the places where they should meet Him, inviting them to behold and see that it was He Him- self, and affording them the most convincing and delight- ful demonstrations that He was among them of a truth. "Then," says the holy evangelist, ''were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord;" and even the incredulous Thomas, in the ecstasy of the unhoped for vision, prostrate at the feet of the glorious presence, exclaimed, " My Lord, and my God." Nor was this all. For even after Jesus was again, though in another w^ay, withdrawn from their corporeal view, — even after the heavens had received Him out of their sight, to retain Him in glorious concealment within their sacred veil until those heavens themselves shall have passed away, — they still continued, in the sense which the promise principally intended, to behold Him by that pure and piercing vision which penetrates the veil, — the faith which "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Whenever a Christian realizes his Master's presence, — is aware in his deep soul that Jesus is really beside him, assured of this cheering and elevating truth by the word of the Saviour's own infallible promise, and by the experience which he himself enjoys of operations on his mind and heart which he can trace to none but the Saviour's agency, — so often he participates with the first apostles in the fulfilment of the promise, " Ye shaU see me." And, as the way of beholding Jesus was formerly changed from a corporeal into a mental perception, so shall it hereafter be transformed again from mental to corporeal, — w^hen, as it is written, they " shall see Him as He is," — when in their flesh they shall see God. The whole train and series of the perceptions, therefore, of which Jesus is the object to His believing people, seems 170 LECTURE XIII. to US included under the assurance of the text; the note of time, " Yet a little while," obviously referring to the commencement of that discernment of the exalted Saviour's presence of which the promise assures the disciples, — the first perceptions they should enjoy of Jesus as returned, and making His abode with them. Ere three full days had run their course from the period when He now addressed His followers, the time of His absence should have begun and terminated, and they should have had restored to them the conscious enjoyment of that gracious presence which was to remain with them " always, even to the end of the world." For scarcely more than two brief days they were to have the feeling on their minds that they were orphans ; and well, therefore, might it avail to assuage the sorrow that, "because He said, " I go away," had filled their hearts, to know that their sorrow was not only so certainly, but so soon, to be turned into joy, — a joy which none should take away from them. The value of the privileges which Christians were to enjoy in the ever-abiding consciousness of their Saviours presence is here still farther represented, from the consi- deration that it was no common-place nor vulgar blessing of which they were thus assured, but one peculiar to them- selves as the selected ol)jects of Divine beneficence, — the peculiar favourites of heaven. Exactly as Jesus had, immediately before, set forth the magnitude and precious- ness of the gift of the Holy Ghost by the announcement, that the world saw Him not, neither knew Him ; so, by the same argument, does He assure His people of tlie value of the gift prepared for them in the enjoyment of His own paternal presence, by the intimation, — " Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me." " The world," in tliis, as in the former case, is obviously JOHN XIV. 19. 171 an expression denoting the whole community of unbeliev- ing and unconverted men, — constituting as they do so much the majority of mankind, and therefore, on the ordi- nary principle of human language by which the name of the whole is familiarly used as that of the major part, com- monly described in Scripture as "the world." In this sense " the world," as represented by the great body of the Jewish nation, had hitherto enjoyed, in common with His more immediate followers, the opportunity of beholding the visible form, ' the human face divine,' in which the Only-Begotten tabernacled among men, moving among them as a breathing living man, and, through the organs of a human nature, exerting and exhibiting the attributes of Deity. But the time was now close at hand when even that privilege was to be withdrawn; the privilege, — of little value, indeed, as the apostle has assured us, when unattended by the power of spiritual perception, — of know- ing Jesus after the flesh. On the next succeeding day, the unbelieving Jews for the last time beheld Him, trans- fixed with agony and crowned with shame, — suffering and expiring, by their own wicked hands, on the accursed tree, — consigned in lowly funeral, with maimed and hasty rites, to the dust and darkness of the sepidchre. That was the last occasion when they saw Him: for, when He rose again, He justly reckoned it no more than a righteous retribution for the scorn and unbelief and disobedience with which all former revelations of His glory had been treated by a perverse and froward generation, that He should not again expose His sacred person to their view, to be assailed with fresh insults and fresh persecutions unsuited to the character of His now glorified humanity, or, at the best, calculated to stir the vacant wonder, to gratify the idle curiosity, of a populace athirst for excite- 172 LECTURE xni. ment and voracious of marvels. Having made ample provision of evidence for the fact of His resurrection, — evidence which, both for the number of the witnesses and the quality of the testimony, should be sufficient to set its reality beyond all suspicion to every candid mind, — we say that He did no more than beseemed Him to do, — however the infidel may cavil and object, — He did no more than a righteous respect for Himself and for His cause imperiously demanded, — when He refused to exhibit Himself a public spectacle to a people who had already treated Him with the last extremes of contumely and of cruelty, when He dwelt among them a man " approved of God with signs and wonders and divers miracles, which God did by Him in the midst of them." " We are w^it- nesses," said the ardent Peter, in his own glowing and animated style, "We are witnesses of all things which Jesus did, both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusa- lem ; whom they slew and hanged on a tree. Him God raised up the third day, and shewed Him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before of God, who did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead; and hath commanded us to preach unto all the people, and to testify that it is He wdiom God hath ordained to be the Judge of the quick and of the dead."* Nor, while, in righteous judgment, the sight of Jesus in bodily presence after His resurrection was denied to those who had so little improved the sight of Him in this way before His death, was the loss of this privilege compensated to the world, — to any who continued mem- bers of the unbelieving and unconverted community whom that name designates, — by the faculty of spiritual vision ; that faculty which enables a man to realize the presence * Acts X. 39-42. JOHN XIV. 19. 173 of God and Jesus, when sense can discern no tokens of their nearness, no footsteps of their procedure, — by which we look at the things which are not seen, and live " as seeing Him who is invisible." It is not, you will observe, denied that Jesus should be actually present even to the unbelieving and disobedient world. In the way which, in our last Lecture, we endea- voured to explain, — the actual presence of His boundless Godhead through all the immeasurable universe, and the virtual presence even of His limited humanity with aU that lives and moves and is throughout immensity, in con- sequence of the immediate and unbroken communication kept up between the human soul and the Omnipresent Deity of the God-man, our exalted Mediator, — in this way Christ Jesus must be present alike to every human being, whether that human being be His follower or His foe. The distinctive difference in this particular between the church and the world is not in respect of the fact of the exalted Mediator's presence, — that is a fact in regard alike to the one and to the other, — but in respect of its char- acter,— inasmuch as to the former it is the presence of a Father and a Friend, to the latter not so, — and also in respect of the perception of it, which the one enjoys and the other wants : — " The world seeth me not, but ye see me." The men of the world have no perception of what is, notwithstanding, the fact, — a mighty fact of most momen- tous bearing on the character and fate of every soul of man, — that Jesus is evermore beside, around, within, them; that in their path and in their bed, their sitting down and their rising up, they are evermore environed and enveloped with His immensity ; that their consciousness is bare to His unslumbering eye; that their natures are encircled with His all-embracing power. Destitute of that faith 17-4 LECTURE XIII. which makes a man a Christian, and turns the statements and the promises of the Bible all into realities, the uncon- verted man wants the faculty for discerning invisible beings and invisible objects, — ^the essences and the occurrences of that unseen, but most real and substantial, world with which we dwell surrounded, and in which the beings exist, and the events occur, which are, by infinite degrees, the most important to our present condition and to our future fate. And as he wants the faculty, so lacks he also the motive which should make him desire to realize the thought of Jesus as, at all times and in all places, near and present. He wants that spirit of affection towards Jesus, and that well- grounded assurance of the affection of Jesus towards him, which alone can make the idea attractive and delightful. Did he, in his present state, realize the presence of the Saviour whom he has all along rejected and despised, in the aspect which that presence really bears to him; he would start and tremble to perceive himself so near, — near without hope of evasion or escape, — to one whom he has done so much to provoke ; he would feel himself encircled with an ever-brooding melancholy, an ever-impending fear, — haunted by a perpetual spectre, — grasped, crushed, and overwhelmed, by a clinging and tenacious foe. And then, in regard to that beatific vision of the Enthroned Lamb in which tlie promise shall receive its last and most trium- phant accomplishment, — true it is that at "the glorious appearing of the great God our Saviour," when the ran- somed church shall begin to see Him as He is, even the ungodly world shall, for one rapid and terrific day, behold the Saviour-Judge. " Hereafter," He Himself announced to the proud priest who adjured Him by the living God, seated where he was on the tribunal of unrighteousness, the head of the unbelieving world among the Jewish people. JOHN XIV. 19. 175 — " Hereafter ye shall see the Son of man seated on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." " Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him ; and all the kin- dreds of the earth shall wail because of Him."* We hear, from the shrieks of earth's wailing families, how little that hurrying glimpse of Jesus ' when He comes triumphant, dooming the nations,' will be to them a blessing and a joy. And then, that awful, that soul-withering glimpse shall be to them the last which they shall have to all eternity, of the majestic countenance which shall prove to all but them the Sun of an unsetting day, — whose smiles shall beam felicity through Paradise. Excluded from the vision of that glorious Being on whom to feast their adoring gaze is the felicity of the redeemed, the rapture of the unfallen, their tortured sense must dwell for ever on scenes of deformity, spectacles of horror, reflected from every region of their inclement habitation, and turning their sight, like every other faculty and organ of their being, into a source of suffering and an instrument of woe. " They shall be mad, for the fear of their hearts wherewith they shall fear, and for the sight of their eyes which they shall see." In conclusion, brethren, let me invite you seriously and solemnly to apply to yourselves the test which the verse before us suggests, — the discriminating test between those who belong to the adopted company of true disciples, and those who appertain to the outcast community of the unbelieving world, — in that the former, in the habitual course of their mental perceptions, see the Saviour, while the latter see Him not. Is it characteristic of the ordi- nary course of your ideas and your emotions habitually, * Matt. xxvi. 64 : Rev. i. 7. 176 LECTURE XIII. or at all events frequently, to perceive, to feel, to be aware, that Jesus is present with you, and present with you as a gracious Parent with his children, having come to you expressly for that end that ye might not be left as orphans in a fatherless and forsaken world? Have the eyes of your understanding been enlightened to perceive that there are more beings and more objects round about you, — close upon you, — in immediate and inseparable contact with you, — than those of whose existence and vicinity any of your senses can inform you, and that the relation which you bear to that unseen and spiritual system of existence is one of mightier import, and more momentous influence, than all those combined which you hold to the visible and material universe? Have you learned to look into that veiled and solemn world, and to become familiar with its great realities, by the power of that mighty ]3rinciple which lifts aside the curtains of invisibility, and makes unseen, eternal, essences the objects of discernment to the human soul? Have you learned from Paul, to look at the things unseen, and with Moses, to " endure as seeing Him who is invisible?" And then, are ye accustomed to observe, con- spicuous and prominent among all that it contains, your exalted, yet ever-present. Lord? Know ye what it is habi- tually to converse with Him, to solicit His advice as your ever-present Counsellor in all your perplexities, to ask His consolations as your ever-present Comforter in all your afflictions, to breathe your sighs into His bosom, to pillow your head upon His breast, and, in one woi'd, in all the exigencies of your life, in all the changes of your history, to know, and to act upon the knowledge, that you have a mightier and more benignant than earthly parent, nearer you than tliose who cling to you the closest of mortal rela- tives, and friends, and comforters, — a Friend that sticketh JOHN XIV. 19. 177 closer than a brother, from whom none of the events of this changing world can ever more divide yon, and to whom he who exults in breaking up the closest intimacies and rending the dearest ties asunder. Death the disseverer and destroyer, can only bring you nearer and bind you closer? 0 cultivate, I pray you, this inestimable faculty, — inestim- able, at once, in order to your sanctification, and in order to your consolation, — of realising the perpetual and gracious presence of your Lord. Only so shall ye be living up to your exalted privileges. Only so shall ye experience the full benefit of having such a Saviour, such a Friend. Only so shall ye enjoy, as far as the present state of shadows and of imperfection will admit, the fore- tastes of that celestial state when " that which is in part shall be done away, and that which is perfect shall have come;" when faith shall be transformed into immediate vision, and hope shall be ripened into full fruition ; when believers shall see no longer, " as by a mirror, darkly, but face to face;" when, purified and unsealed at the fount of immortality, their now too feeble sense shall be strengthened to gaze upon the enthroned Eedeemer, — ' That glorious form, that light unsufFerable, And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,' before whose visible effulgence, but half-unveiled to mor- tal sight, saints and prophets used to sink swooning to the earth ; when their eyes shall see " the King in His beauty," and not be blasted with the glories of His brow. M LECTUEE XIV. Chap. xiv. 19, 20. " Because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." The particular topic of consolation on whicli Jesus was now insisting was tlie consideration that His anticipated departure, which had filled the minds of the disciples with such profound regret, was not to be the withdrawal from them of His actual presence, — of His perceived society, — of His experienced love and quickening power. It was not to be the withdrawal of His presence as a real fact : — " I win not leave you orphans," He says, " I will come to you." It was not to be the withdrawal of His presence as an object of distinct perception: — " Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more ; but ye see me." It was not to be the withdrawal, finally, of that beneficial influence, really and practically exerted on their character and con- dition, which had hitherto flowed from the relation which they held to Jesus : — " Because I live, ye shall live also." This gracious assurance consists of two parts, — an ante- cedent and a consequent; the antecedent asserting that, even after the departure the disciples so much dreaded, He Himself should continue to live, and the consequent declaring, that, as the result of His living, they should live iilso. JOHN XIV. 19, 20. 179 Even after Jesus, according to the expression of the evangelist, had "yielded up the ghost," we know that, though He had been " put to death in the flesh," He still was " quickened in the Spirit ;" and that, according to His gracious promise to His penitent companion in death, that day He w^as present, in conscious and powerful exist- ence, with all the saved in Paradise. The reference, h()w- ever, in the place before us is, obviously, not so much to that continuance of consciousness and activity in respect of the immaterial portion of His human nature, by which, like every other human being, He was in a certain sense immortal; but to that new and majestic life, in respect of His w^hole completed and reconstructed nature as the Mediator between God and man, by which He liveth and reigneth everlastingly at the right hand of Heavenly Majesty and Might. He knew that " it was not possible that He should be holden of the bands of death ; " for thus, in His person, had the holy Psalmist sung : — " Thou wilt not leave my soul among the dead, neither wilt Thou give Thine Holy One to see corruption."* He could, therefore, with the fullest confidence, assure His disciples that, thouoh for a season He was about to become the victim of death, the tenant of the grave, they should not long lament His dissolution, their sorrow should soon be turned into joy, and they invited to rejoice in Him as risen and revived, alive for evermore, and holding in His victor-hand the keys of death and of the sepulchre. Nor was this the whole amount of consolation which Jesus conveyed to the disciples in prospect of His return to life. He assures them that, in the very fact that He lived, they should live along with Him. It seems obvious that ="■ Fsal. xvi. 10; Acts ii. 24-31. 180 LECTURE XIV. this assurance, — like all those with which it is associated, — refers, not exclusively, indeed, but in part, undoubtedly, to a privilege to be enjoyed by His apostles, and by all true believers equally with them, in the present state ; and that those, therefore, very unduly limit the application of the promise who refer it solely to the fact that, Christ having arisen as " the first-fruits of them that sleep," they also that are Christ's shall arise to meet Him at His coming. The whole context both before and after, plainly refers to topics of consolation of which the disciples were to enjoy the benefit in consequence of His resurrection from the dead, — and that during the term of their mortal, as well as their immortal, being. Now, in order to understand the propriety of the descrip- tion which the verse before us gives of the privilege even now enjoyed by Christians as alive through the life of Jesus, you must remember that there is no representation more common in the Bible than that which describes believers as so identified with Jesus Christ that, even as His death, according to the phraseology of the Holy Spirit, is their death, so His resurrection from the dead is theirs, and His life and reign at the right hand of power is theirs: — " We are buried with Him by baptism into death, that, like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we also should walk in newness of life;" — " Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him;" — " For in that He died, He died unto sin once; but in that He liveth. He liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye yourselves to be dead, indeed, unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord ; " — " Ye have been buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye arc risen with Him, through the faith of the opera- tion of God, who raised Him from the dead;" — " God, JOHN XIY. 19, 20. 181 wlio is rich in mercy, for His great love wlierewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace are ye saved,) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Jesus Christ;" — " If ye, then, be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God ; " — " Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory;" — "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."* From these passages it is plain, that the scriptural mode of view- ing the connection between believers and the Saviour is to contemplate them as one with Him, — one in His death, one in His resurrection, one in His immortality, — so that the life which He now is living in the power of God, He lives in their name, as their Eepresentative and Head. " In that I live," He is saying to every one of them, " ye live also." Even now, their life is hid with Him, — even now, they " sit with Him in heavenly places." Nor is the vital unity of Christ and Christians of which these places speak a mere form of human conception. It represents the very light in which the blessed relation that binds together the Saviour and His people is regarded by God Himself, — according to whose conception of their existence and operation, all things do really, in point of fact, exist and operate. And when you consider all the blessed consequences which, according to the passages we have been quoting, flow from the fact that, in the estima- * Rom. vi. 4, 8, 10, 11 ; Col. ii. 12 ; Eph. ii. 4-6 ; Col. iii. 1, 3, 4 ; Gal. ii. 20. ] 82 LECTUEE XIV. tion of Jehovah, Christians are one with Jesus, — alive because He is alive, — you will immediately perceive how rich a fund of encouragement and consolation is wrapt up in the assurance, thus interpreted, — " Because I live, ye shall live also.'' It implies, in the first place, their justifi- cation from the guilt of all those offences of wdiich, by becoming " obedient unto death," He in their room, — they in His person, — have paid the penalty. To testify His acceptance of the mighty sacrifice which the Incarnate Word had offered as a satisfactory atonement for all the guilt which He bore upon His substituted head, was the express end for which " the God of peace brought again from the dead the Lord Jesus by the blood of the ever- lasting covenant ;" and in contemplating, as He does con- template, all Christ's believing people, — the " members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones," — as sharing His immortal life, the Omniscient Holiness regards them as, equally with Him, their Living Head, delivered from the guilt of sin, — having paid its penalty, and therefore being now absolved from its condemnation. — It implies, in the second place, their sanctification, — their deliverance from the reigning power of depravity, — the infusion and the gradual development within them of a new and purer nature, the seed of an imperishable life. This is another reason why they are described in Scripture, or, in other words, are by God regarded, as having one life with the risen and exalted Saviour, — that aU those acts of holy thought and holy feeling, of holy conversation and holy conduct, which constitute what is termed the spiritual life, are prompted and sustained by an influence derived from Him, their exalted Prince and Saviour, — the Som^ce, according to the constitution of mercy, of all pure and spiritual influences, — so that the manifestations of Christ's JOHN XIV. 19, 20. 183 holiness which appear in the characters and lives of Christ's disciples are but the pulsations, and the vital ope- rations, in the limbs, of the life which has its fountain and its fulness in the Immortal Head, and which circulates thence through the whole extent of the sacred body in heaven and on earth, — " the fulness of Him who filleth all in all." — Another consequence which is, in Scripture, attached to the fact that believers are regarded by God as having one life with Jesus Christ, their exalted Saviour, is this, — that they shall all be finally translated, in their whole natures, — soul and body, — into that glorious form of life on which the Saviour entered at His resurrection from the dead and His ascension into glory. The incon- gruity cannot be permitted to exist for ever, — although, for wise reasons, the Great Arranger of the universe hath allowed it for a season, — that those whom God Himself regards as forming only different parts of one body, one system of holy life, should remain, the one enjoying an existence of boundless glory, of sinless perfection, of unmingled and incorruptible felicity, — the other degraded in rank, corrupted with depravity, afflicted with suffering. The members must be conformed, in the whole mode and fashion of their being, to the illustrious Head. And it is in reference to the Divine decree, and the moral necessity, that this should be at last the case, that the Apostle says, " Your life is hid with Christ in God," — while, with respect to its ultimate accomplishment in the final glorification of believers after the example of their Lord, He adds, " Wlien Christ, who is our life, shall appear, ye also shall appear with Him in glory."* The " vile bodies " of believers shall be themselves transfigured into the likeness of " His body * Col. iii. 3, 4. 18 4 LECTURE XIV. of glory ;" wliile still more in the nobler part of their being, purified from every stain of pollution and every shade of imperfection, they shall become, as it were, the perfect mirrors of His spiritual character, — they shall reflect from all their souls, in full limb and lineament, the moral image of Him who is the Model and the Mould of heavenly excel- lence and beauty, — they " shall be like Him, for they shall see Him as He is." Such, therefore, I suppose to be the true import of the consoling promise here addressed by the Saviour to His disciples — " Because I live, ye shall live also." And that we have rightly interpreted the promise thus, of the vital unity subsisting between the exalted Saviour and His believing people, we have a strong confirmation in the words which follow : — " And at that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." The subjects in regard to which Jesus, in this part of the passage, promises to His disciples a large increase of experimental knowledge are two, — the sacred union which subsists between the Father and the Son, and that which, in like manner, subsists between the Son and His believing people. The nature of the union in these two different cases is, no doubt, in many respects infinitely different. There are those, indeed, who maintain that the unity between the Father and the Son is not essentially diverse from that between Jesus and His people, and who refer, in proof of their assertion, to this very passage, — where, to express these several unities, precisely the same form of expression is employed. But how irrelevant any such appeal is to prove the point they would establish will appear, when we consider that the phrase of a reciprocal indwelling or inbeing does, as we interpret it, express no more than the existence, in point of fact, of a most inti- JOHN XIV. 19, 20. ]85 mate and endearing connection, without expressing any idea whatever with respect to the nature and the mode of that connection. To say in regard to two different groupes of human beings, that the parties hold a most intimate relation to each other, does by no means imply that the relation in each case is of the same description ; and exactly so, to say that the Father is in Jesus, and that Jesus is in His people, does undoubtedly mean that in either case the Father and the Son, the Saviour and the Church, are most closely and affectionately united, but does by no means necessarily imply that they are united by a bond precisely similar. We must judge from the nature and the circumstances of the application, — we must judge from the information communicated in other passages of Holy Writ, — what is the exact nature of the union which the expres- sion of a mutually interpenetrated being signifies ; always adhering to the general idea which in every usage it implies, of a connection as close and as loving as the cir- cumstances show to be' possible. What, then, is the nature of the connection between Jesus and the Father which the expression before us sig- nifies, judging from other passages in which the same phrase is employed in the same signification? In the 10th chapter of this Gospel, at the 38th verse, we find our Lord declaring, " I am in the Father, and the Father in me," — a phrase Avhich is obviously the repetition, in another form, of the phrase in the 30th verse, " I and my Father are one," and must be considered as having the same meaning which the context there renders unavoidable, namely, that the Father and the Son are possessed of one Omnipotence, and, therefore, of one Divinity. In like manner, at the 10th verse of this very chapter, Jesus demands of His weak and short-sighted disciple, " Believest 186 LECTURE XIV. thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" as a reason for what He had just before declared, that whosoever " had seen Him had seen the Father," — that He was a visible Eepresentative of Deity, Incarnate Jehovah, God manifest in the flesh. It is, therefore, with the most satisfactory and ample warrant of Holy Writ that, when we find the expression in the text applied to the relation between the Father and the Son, we understand it of their existence together in the unity of the indivisible Godhead, and of that unparalleled and inconceivable affection which circulates, with all the power belonging to the emotions of the Infinite Mind, through the inmost heart, if we may so express it, of Divinity. But while it is held forth as an important branch of the truth which it is the believer's privilege to know, that Jesus is in the Father ; not less is it an important part of the same exalted privilege to know that Jesus is in His followers, and they in Him. This remarkable expression is one that frequently occurs, especially in the writings of our evangelist. He introduces our Lord employing it on various occasions besides the present, in the course of His earthly ministry ; while to his own mind it seems to have been an expression possessed of a peculiar charm. For no less than eight or nine times does he either quote, or allude to, it in his first brief epistle; and throughout the whole course of that epistle, he deduces from the principle of the union between God and Christ on the one hand, and Christians on the other, which the phrase expresses, the whole doctrinal system, and the whole practical power, of genuine Chris- tianity. It seems obvious that this is the general meaning of the phrase, — that it represents the mutual relation of .Jesus and His people by the image of a most intimate and JOHN XIV. 19, 20. 187 indissoluble connection of their beings. You are aware with what overflowing fulness and variety, both of diction and of imagery, this sacred union has been set forth by the Holy Writers. They have exhausted, in its illustration, all descriptions borrowed from the closest and most affec- tionate relations of earth, — not only those which unite together different individuals, but those which subsist between the constituent parts of a single being, — between the vine and the branches, between the members and the head ; while, in such expressions as that before us, a still more intimate conjunction seems to be expressed than even between the several parts of a single substance, — the com- mixture, as it were, of essences, the mutual incorporation of beings. Now, while it would be improper to press such expressions more closely, or to interpret them more literally, than . the tenor of the context, and the circum- stances of the case, shall, in every particular instance, warrant ; it is plain that we cannot, on the other hand, but extenuate their force, and leave them to appear unrea- sonable and extravagant, unless we admit that there does really exist between Christ and His people a relation more intimate than any Avhich images borrowed from earthly things and human beings can properly represent. Of this Divine relation we find various particulars stated in the Sacred Eecord, in respect of which believers are mentioned as being in Christ and He in them, even as if they constituted one individual person. They are one inasmuch as He has borne their guilt and they have been invested with His righteousness. They are one in so far as, by an influence derived from Him, their exalted Head, through the communication of His Holy Spirit, they are enabled to think and feel, to speak and act, as He in their circumstances would have done. They are one inasmuch 188 LECTUEE XIV. as they are reciprocally moved to one another with the most profound and tender sympathy. They are one inas- much as they hope to spend together a vast eternity in the dearest fellowship of love, of common glory, and of mutual joy. It is a union this which, once really formed, can never be destroyed. Its bond is stronger and more pre- cious than adamant. The shocks of earthly change cannot rend it. The touch of Death, the great disseverer, cannot dissolve it. The lapse of endless ages cannot waste it. In this life, in the life to come, to all eternity, Jesus, in this relation, loves, helps, defends, delivers, adorns, and blesses, His chosen, — while they continually, in the same relation, adore and love and trust Him as the Author and the Finisher of their redemption ; and thus, to everlasting days, He dwells in them and they in Him. The two branches of knowledge, however, respecting the union of the Father and the Son, and the union of the Son with His believing people, are here set forth, not as constituting two separate and unconnected facts, but only as different links in one blessed chain and sequence of relations by which, through their common connection with Christ Jesus, the Father and the Church are nmtually con- nected with each other. Jesus appears as the true Imma- nuel; the Mediator between God and man; the bond of spiritual union between heaven and earth, — united at once to the Judge and the sinner, and binding them both together in the strictest and holiest ties of amity and love. And we are thus assured of the glorious and animating truth, that all the infinite complacency with which, in con- sequence of that profound and ineffable relation between them, the Father contemplates the character and work of His Incarnate Only-begotten flows down upon believers through the channel of that relation which binds them to JOHN XIV. 19, 20. 189 their Saviour-God. The Father regards them, — the Father treats them, — as one with His Anointed; and so, as we have seen, because He lives, they live also. The glorious immortality which the Father bestowed upon the Son, when "He raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory," is enjoyed by Jesus in their name; and all that it implies to Him of deliverance from the curse of sin, of free development afforded to all the principles of moral excellence and spiritual perfection, of completed glorifica- tion at once in His corporeal and in His spiritual nature, — all this it implies to them. All this, — in consequence of the Father's love to Jesus, and the majestic life He has conferred on Him in token of His love, — believers even now enjoy in foretaste, in their present justification, in their begun and advancing sanctification, in their assured hopes of perfect glory and perfect bliss to come. All this they shall hereafter enjoy in its fulness and perfection, when the hope they have been taught to cherish, the hope that " maketh not ashamed," shall have been fulfilled in the inheritance of absolute and unalloyed perfection, — in their entrance on that bright and everlasting world whither Jesus hath already gone, that there He may pre- pare a place for them. In the knowledge of these two blessed facts, — the rela- tion which the Incarnate Son bears to the Everlasting Father, and the relation which Christ's believing people bear to Him, and, through Him, to Jehovah, — is com- prised, in all its main and essential points, the knowledge of the gospel. And so, the promise of the text, " At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you," was fulfilled in that vast accession which, after the resurrection of the Saviour, was made, by the communication of the Holy Ghost, to the knowledge of the 190 LECTURE XIV. disciples in the mystery of Christ, — and especially in the fact of their being then made more abundantly partakers of all those spiritual blessings of which they knew that the source was the love of the Father, and the channel the mediation of the Son. In the more ]3lenteous residence and the more powerful working of divine grace upon their souls, they had an experimental proof, — they had the evi- dence within themselves, — that Jesus maintained and owned a near and affectionate relation to them, that God had not ceased to hold and to acknowledge a most inti- mate and most endeared relation to the Saviour; know- ing, as they did, that no such blessings are conferred on any sinful man except for the Saviour's sake, and except in consequence of his connection with the Saviour. 0 let us, my brethren, with all the earnestness of our souls, seek the experimental knowledge of God and of His Son, — whom in this way to know is eternal life. By labouring, after the appointed order, and in the use of the appointed means, to obtain possession and experience of so much of Christ's salvation as is to be enjoyed on earth, — the sense of pardon, the elements of holiness, the spirit of adoption, assurance of God's love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, a clear and animating hope of immortal life and joy, — and all this as flowing forth from God, the Fountain of life and of felicity, through Jesus Christ, the channel of gracious communication, the Mediator of favour- able intercourse between heaven and earth, — let us seek to have the evidence within ourselves that, through Him in whom all things are reconciled, " whether they be things in heaven or things on earth," a bond of sacred and friendly relation has indeed been constituted between the sinner and his Judge, between Jehovah and ourselves. For th(^ excellency of this knowledge let us reckon all else but loss. JOHN XIV. 19, 20. 191 And let us daily be labouring to acquire it in a more exalted and more blessed degree, until we reach at last the world of perfect light and perfect glory, and there, in the visible perception of the union between the Father and the Son, and between the Son and His ransomed and now glorified church, as well as in the 'full experience of His completed salvation, — " the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory," proceeding for ever, through Jesus as its medium, from Jehovah as its source, — shall enjoy, in its most exalted form, the fulfilment of the promise, " At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." LECTUEE XV. Chap. xiv. 21 — 24. " He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. Judas saith unto him, (not Iscariot,) Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world? 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 sayings : and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me." Jesus, in His gracious attem]3ts to comfort His disciples in the prospect of His departure from tlie world, had been insisting on this, among other topics of consolation, that the approaching change upon His manner of existence would have, at least, no influence unfavourable for them upon the relation which bound them to Him, and their mutual intercourse in that relation ; that His elevation to a new and more majestic life was not inconsistent with the continuance of His habitual presence with them, or of their habitual perception of Him ; that, on the other hand, their very natures should be so incorporated with His, their lives identified with His, that all the glory and benefit which should actually accrue to Him by His resurrection to immortal life should virtually even now, and in fall perfection ultimately, be enjoyed by them: — "I will not leave you orphans, 1 will come to you. Yet a little while, JOHN XIV. 21—24 198 and the world seeth me no more ; but ye see me. Because I live ye shall live also. And in that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you." Jesus, however, throughout the whole of this discourse, has shown Himself sedulously desirous of guarding His disciples against the too natural, but most dangerous and destructive, error which divides in imagination the bond, in fact indissoluble, which connects duty with enjoyment, the precept with the promise, Christian character with Christian privilege. In connection with the illustrious promise which He had shortly before delivered for their consolation, of the descent of another Paraclete celestial like Himself, He had expressly given them to understand, that they alone who loved Him, and kept His command- ments, might reasonably look for its fulfilment. " If ye love me," He said, " keep my commandments, — and I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever." And now He takes occasion to remind them, that the same condition and qualification under which they held the promise of another, was implied in the promise which assured them of the continued presence of their former, Paraclete ; which declared that Pie would come to them, that He would be seen of them, that in His hfe they should live, and that, by a vital and indissoluble union, they should be, as it were, incorporated with Him, and so connected, by a sacred tie of amity and love, with His Father and their Father, with His God and their God : — " He that hath my com- mandments, 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 disciples are once more reminded, then, — and, through them, all others who shall at any period aspire N 194 LECTURE XV. to have their right acknowledged to the Christian name, and to the privileges which that name implies, — that one characteristic mark of every genuine disciple is that he loves his Saviom^ — according as it is written, " If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema jMaranatha ;" and again, where, describing the character of those who shall be acknowledged and rewarded at " the glorious appearing of the great God our Saviour Jesus Christ/' the apostle adds, "AVhom having not seen ye love."* And tliey are reminded further, that in order to assert for themselves the character of sincere lovers, true disciples, of Jesus Christ, it was not enough that they loudly professed attachment to His person and His cause, that they lamented His departure with the bitterest tokens and expressions of regret, that they dwelt with softened contemplation and remembrance on His character and achievements. His sufferings and glory, or that they expe- rienced in their fullest force all those passive and indo- lent emotions of admiration and delight and tenderness which lead to no practical result, — which afford a mere sentimental excitement to the heart, but communicate no necessary impression to the character, no holy impulse to the life; that, on the other hand, the love of Christ which is tlie test of Christianity was a principle of action, a spring of lioly exertion. The amount of the duty of a Christian man in reference to the commandments of his Lord is here described by the phrases of having, that is, knowing, and of keeping , that is, performing, them. It is obvious, on the one hand, that none can obey commandments which he does not know, and that, therefore, the first duty of eveiy individual wlio * 1 Cor. xvi. 22; 1 Pet. i. 8. JOHN XIV. 21—21 195 wishes to render to his Saviour-Lord that proof of attach- ment which alone will be received as satisfactory is, that he labour to acquire, by all appropriate means, an exten- sive and accurate acquaintance with his Master's will, — with the particulars which that will includes, with tlie grounds on which the obligation to obey it rests, with the motives and inducements which render compliance Avitli its requirements natural, easy, and delightful. It is equally manifest, on the other hand, that no amount of knowledge which does not result in obedience can have any other effect than to aggravate the present guilt, and inflame the future condemnation, of those " who hold the truth in unrighteousness;" because so they sin against clearer light, — with more marked contempt of the Master s claims, and more deliberate rejection of His authority. There is, in truth, no single remark which the Great Teacher was accustomed to urge with greater force and frequency upon His followers than this, — that hearing without doing, knowledge divorced from practice, the science separated from the art of reKgion, is ruinous to the soul, instead of saving: — "The servant that knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did accord- ing to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes;" " If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them."* And while these two things in reference to Christ's command- ments,— knowledge and obedience, — are thus connected with one another ; it is easy to perceive how they are both connected with the principle of love, as its natural dictates, and therefore its legitimate tests. You know how desirous even an earthly affection renders him who feels it to dis- cover by all possible means and opportunities, — to collect * Luke xii. 47; John xiii. 17. 196 LECTUEE XV. from hints, to infer from glances, — the pleasure and desire of the beloved object, and this for the very purpose that he may have the means of contributing to that pleasure, of fulfilling that desire ; to know that he may do. And so you perceive the force and the propriety of the specific and discriminating tests which Jesus in the text, has demanded of genuine attachment to Himself: — " He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." Jesus, however, — while He at all times shewed HimseK most desirous of impressing His disciples with the sen- timent, that only in the performance of Christian duty might they look for the enjoyment of Christian privilege, — is equally careful to assure them, for their consolation, that, in the practical cultivation of the spiritual life, they might be certain that they would enjoy the most encouraging experience of spiritual blessedness : — " He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father." The certainty of this promise rests on the veracity of Him who made it, — of Him in whom every genuine Christian recognises " the faithful and true Witness," and on whose simple word he can repose a more imwaver- ing confidence than on all that creation presents to his attention most stable and inviolable, — on the steadfastness of the firm-set earth, or the ancient ordinances of the sky ; for heaven and earth, he knows, shall pass away, but one word that Jesus has spoken shall in nowise pass away. And oh, my brethren, who shall rightly estimate the value of the privilege enjoyed by every genuine Christian, in being loved of God, — of Him who, of all beings in the universe, is the most excellent, tlie most powerful, the most permanent, and therefore, surely, among them all, the best of possible friends ? If the value of a friendship bears JOHN XIV. 21 — 24. 197 any proportion to the excellence of him with whom that friendship associates us, — how blessed beyond compare the love of Him in whose being are hidden all the treasures of j .' infinite perfection ; of whose grandeur and excellence all -X that is great and good in the creation is but a distant ' ^ reflection, a faint and feeble image ; whom to admire, whom to love, too deeply, is a thing impossible! Or if the value of a friendship bears any proportion to its object's power to bless, — then what friendship may be likened to the friendship of Him who is not only the most glorious and excellent Being, but the most high and mighty Euler of all; of Him whose power is Omnipotence, whose dominion is the universe, — with whom there can be no limitations such as are wont, in innumerable cases, to make the kind wishes and attempts of earthly friendship power- less,— and who is able to fill the vastest capacity, to satisfy the most eager desire, of enjoyment, either from the streams of happiness which bend their bright course wherever He directs them, or from Himself, the radiant Fountain of living water, the exhaustless Source of glory and of goodness? Or if, finally, the value of a friendship bear any proportion to the intensity of affection with which we are regarded by him to whom it links us,— how shall we form a due con- ception of Jehovah's love, in attempting to convey but a feeble and faint idea of which the Holy Spirit^exhausts the riches and the power of aU the imagery which earth's most affectionate relations can supply ; — " The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save. He will rejoice over thee with joy; He wHl rest in His love, He will joy over thee with singing;" " As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee;" "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him;" "Can a woman forget her sucking child, 198 LECTURE XV. that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will not I forget thee.''* Nor is it only the love of the Eternal Father of which those who have, and who keep, the commandments of the Saviour are here assured as tlieir portion, — hut the love besides, of the Incarnate Son. And if we shall endeavour to estimate the value of such a friendship by the same tests as in the former case, — how shall we place a suitable estimate upon the love of Jesus? In His transcendent character, whatever is august and lovely in the perfection of Deity is met and harmonised with whatever is great and fair in the attributes of a sinless humanity. His power to bless is nothing less than that Omnipotence which rules and controls the universe, — for He hath received " power over all flesh, that He may give eternal life to as many as the Father hath given Him."*|* The depth and intensity of His affection were fiercely tried, and illustriously displayed, when many waters came in upon His soul, but could not quench the generous flame, — when the floods baptized Him with their angry spray, and all God's billows and His waves went over Him, but could not drown His love, — for that was stronger than death, " even the death of the cross." Having once been tried in all points like as His servants are, more deeply than His servants can be ever, — He still, from the throne of everlasting brightness, looks down on them, amidst the toils and tears of their desert-pilgrimage, with affectionate regard ; enters into all tlieir concerns with something like fraternal kindness, yea, with a friendship that sticketh closer than a brother's ; enters into all their feelings, what in them is impure alone excepted, — into the joys with which a stranger inter- * Zeph. iii. 17 ; Isa. Ixii. 5; Psal. ciii. 13; Isa. xlix. 15. t John xvii. 2. JOHN XIV. 21—24 199 meddles not, into the dim anguish of the heart which "knowethits own bitterness/' — with a fellow-feeling warmer than the warmest sympathies of hearts which have, as it were, one pulse, deeper than the sonl's own deepest con- sciousness. And, finally, having loved His owti which are in the world. He will love them even to the end, — so that they may defy the universe to divide them from the love of Christ, and proclaim aloud, with the apostle, their jubilant persuasion, 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 them from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus their Lord."* Still further, they who love the Saviour, and keep His commandments, are here informed by Him that they shall be convinced of His affection, not merely on the faith of His word, but by the evidence of their own experience : — " I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him ; " that is, as the context proves, I will reveal myself unto him who loves me, — I will show myself to be his friend, — I will give him distinct and perceptible tokens of my affection and regard, — I will afford him experimental con- viction of my love. This promise was fulfilled in the experience of the aj)Ostles. It has also been fulfilled in the experience of all believing men as often as they have been made par- takers of any of those spiritual blessings which it is the office of Jesus to bestow in the present state, — as often as they have had sensible enjoyment, in any particular instance, of the " righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost" of which the kingdom of heaven * Rom. viii. 38, 39. 200 LECTURE XV. consists, and every special case of wliicli they know, from the infallible Oracles, to be a special instance of the Saviour's love. Every Christian, on the authority of the Bible, is entitled to regard every spiritual bless- ing he enjoys, — every communication of heavenly light, and liberty, and truth, and holiness, and hope, and spiritual blessedness, of which he may be conscious, — as well as all the circumstances, — the means of grace and the conjunctions of events, — by the instrumentality of wdiich such communications have been poured into his heart, as the direct results and significations of the Saviour's special love to him. And whensoever, from the actual reception and experience of such benefits, he has drawn the infer- ence, Jesus loves me, so often He has had fulfilled in His experience the promise of the text, — " I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him." Meanwhile, that in this sense it is the ordinary practice, the established rule, of the Saviour's government in the Church, thus to manifest Himself and His affection to those who keep His commandments, is the distinct testimony of all those who alone are qualified to judge, and whose testimony on this subject should be final and conclusive, — I mean those who are really entitled to the name of serious, spiritual, practical believers. They will, with one voice, declare, that the Saviour has not forgotten, at any period of the Church, to give, in the way we have described, refreshing intimations of His love to those who love Him. They will, with equal unanimity, affirm, that just in proportion as they have exhibited the character, have they enjoyed the privilege, which the text describes; in propoi-tiori as their h)ve to Christ's person has been fer- vent, and their obedience to His comman(hnents has he.vii faithful, they have been '' filled with peace and joy in JOHN XIV. 21 — 24. 201 believing," — the "peace wliicli passetli understanding," the "joy which is unspeakable and full of glory," — they have more distinctly perceived their interest in His salva- tion, they have more abundantly enjoyed the tokens of His tenderness, they have been more divinely elevated in the hope of His eternal glory, they have found themselves more gloriously illumined and circumfused with the light of their Lord's benignant revelation of Himself, and they have more profoundly felt what it was the Psalmist longed for when he prayed : — " Many there be which say, ^^^lo will shew us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon me. Thou hast put more gladness into my heart than they can taste, when their corn and their wine and their oil are increased." That it is to such spiritual manifestations of His love as we have now been speaking of that the Saviour in the text refers, will, we think, be sufficiently obvious to Christians of these later times who have been instructed in the spiritual nature of Messiah's salvation and Messiah's reign. The original disciples, however, to whom this divine discourse was originally delivered, clung with pertinacious adherence, up to the very period when their minds were opened to larger and more spiritual views by the descent of the illuminating Spirit upon the day of Pentecost, to those carnal and worldly conceptions of the expected king- dom of heaven which they had imbibed from the atmo- sphere of opinion, — from the pervading popular conviction in the midst of which they had lived so long. Under the influence, apparently, of this long-cherished prepossession, we find one of the twelve interpreting the promise of some visible and external revelation of Christ Jesus in the full splendour, — at length, though late, assumed by Him, — of the Messiah's royalty, and finding some difficulty, as well he 202 LECTURE XV. might, of reconciling the promise thus understood witli what Jesus had declared, obviously in reference to the same period of His history, — " Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me." The disciple who ventured to suggest to Jesus the diffi- culty of which, it is probable, his brother-disciples were equally conscious, was Judas, — "not Iscariot," as the sacred historian adds with emphasis ; supposing, as it were, that the very name might have become so indelibly tainted and engrained with infamy in the recollection of his readers, that a parenthesis was necessary expressly guarding them against the influence of so dark an association, even wdien it was sufficiently obvious, from the context and circum- stances of the case, that it was not Iscariot that was here referred to, but he whose name from a similar sentiment to that we have ascribed to the evangelist, is rendered by our translates, in their version of his Epistle, Jude, — the same who elsewhere bears the name of Thaddeus and Leb- beus, and, from his near connection with Jesus Christ according to the flesh, is dignified with the appellation of *' brother of the Lord." He it was who, — speaking, no doubt, the feeling of his companions, — inquired, "Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?" that is. How is it that Thou canst assume the visible splendours of thy long expected reign, and confine the view of that effulgent magnificence to us? Shall not thy bright epiphany blaze forth upon the eyes of all the nations, and the whole earth be filled with thy glory? Shall not the Gentiles flock to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising? To understand tlie true spirit of the question, it is pro- per that you should be informed, that the word " How," does here by no means signify, In what manner, as if the JOHN xiY. 21—24 203 apostle's question liad simply for its object to obtain infor- mation in reference to the nature and mode of that peculiar intercourse which Jesus had just been promising them with Himself The original, literally rendered, is in these words, — How has it happened? How comes it to pass? The tone is one of disappointment, of remonstrance, of regret; resembling, as nearly as possible, that in which we are told that, on a former occasion, the brethren of Jesus, — Judas, very probably, among the rest, — had said to Him, — " Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples there also may see the w^orks that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be know^n openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world."* Understanding the question thus, — as an inquiry into the reason why, and not into the manner how, Jesus should reveal Himself to some, and conceal Himself from others, — you Avill immediately per- ceive the force and appositeness of our Lord's reply: — " Jesus answered and said xmio him, If a man love me, lie will keep my words : and my Father will love him, and we wdll come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me." The reason why the exalted Saviour here reveals Him- self as lo\TJig some is, — that they love Him, and show their love by keeping His commandments. Tlie reason why He does not reveal Himself as loving others is, — that they do not love Him, and show^ that they do not love Him by not keeping His comnandments. The love of which the Saviour here speaks is not that primary and preventing * John vii. 3, 4. 204 LECTURE XV. love with wliicli He regards His people previous to any movement in their hearts of affection towards Him, and of which the apostle declares, '^ We love Him because He first loved us ;" but that consequent love of complacency and holy satisfaction wdth wdiich He contemplates His own w^ork in the faithful as worthy of Himself, — delights in the fruits of holy feeling and holy living which that work produces, — and rewards their affection to Him with fresh tokens of His affection towards them, shedding abroad His love upon their hearts, and opening to them the treasures of His more abundant grace. This flow of His divine affection is, by the very constitution of the gospel, limited to those who have already become the true disciples of Christ Jesus, — who have already learned in some degree to love and obey Him. It is their distinctive dignity and blessedness. There is, therefore, an amply satisfactory reply to the question, " Lord, how conies it to pass that thou wilt not manifest thyself unto the world?" in the declaration, ver. 24, — " He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings ;" — therefore I do not reveal myself as a Friend to him, nor yet my Father, inasmuch as, in disobeying me, he disobeys Him ; — " for the word which ye hear is not mine," — not mine alone, — " but the Father's which sent me." And, then, with respect to the other branch of the inquiry, " How comes it to pass that thou wilt manifest thyself to us," thy followers and disciples, while thou passest by the w^orld? the answer, proceeding on the same principle, is expressed in ver. 23: — " If a man love me, he will keep my words ;" — therefore, " my Father will love him," for my words are the Father's also ; — " and we will come to him, and make our al)ode with [him." Thus, in reference to tlie Father and the Son, the same illustrious promise is repeated to believers which had before been JOHN XIV. 21 — 24. 205 given them in reference to the Holy Ghost, — " I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever," (ver. 16.) Behold, my brethren, the majestic privilege enjoyed by each sincere, however humble, Christian, — the gracious visits, not merely the visits short and far between, but the perpetual abode with him, of the Infinite Divinity, — the Father, the Son, the Spirit of Holiness. True, in one sense, it is no peculiar prerogative of the believer to enjoy the perpetual presence of the Godhead. " In Him we live, and move, and have our being," — each one of us enveloped and involved in the immensity of Jehovah's essence. He is " about our path and our lying down." He hath " beset us behind and before." " Whither can we go from His pre- sence? Wliither can we flee from His Spirit? If we ascend into heaven. He is there ; if we make our bed in hell, behold. He is there. If we take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall His hand lead us, and His right hand shall hold us." But the specific idea which the promises before us express is that not merely of actual presence, but of propitious intercourse. The Eternal Divinity dwells with those who love the Saviour as One of the same family, — as their Guide and Guardian, — their Benefactor and their Father. To them the Omnipresence of Jehovah is the Omnipresence of a Friend; and in the assurance of the coming and the abode of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they have the assurance of enjoying "the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the communion of the Holy Ghost," now, henceforth, and for ever, — each several person of the glorious Trinity performing His own benevo- lent part in making them completely and everlastingly glorious and excellent and happy. Surely, my brethren. 206 LECTURE XV. tliis is an lionovir and felicity worthy of being songht with most vehement desire, — pursued with most intense endea- vour. The way to its enjoyment is conspicuous and open. The promise is to those who love the Saviour, and who show that they love Him by keeping His commandments. Seek, then, my brethren, — as you value the friendship and fellowship of God, — in the use of all appropriate means, to have that purest and most delicious of emotions implanted, and daily cherished more and more, in your inmost souls. By dwelling, in devout meditation, on the glorious excellences, the incomparable beauties, that meet in the transcendent character of Christ, — nor less on all the stupendous instances which He has given of generous, self-denying, self-sacrificing, love to men, — seek to foster and to fan the holy flame, till all the dross of earthly desires is melted and consumed, — till, under its influence, your spirits glow through all their faculties, and all your natures are absorbed into the sacred element. And remem- bering, too, that that love alone is acceptable, alone is beneficial, which is practical, — which moulds the character and regulates the life, — 0 let the love of Christ constrain you to live no more to yourselves, but to Him that died and rose again: and so, in the discharge of the requisite condition, expect the fulfilment of the glorious promise, — " If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever;" " If a man love me, lie will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto liim, and make our abode ^^'ith him." LECTUEE XVI. Chap. xiv. 25 — 27, "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. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." The circumstance last recorded in the preceding context was a complaint, on the part of one of our Lord's disciples, of the obscurity, and inconsistency with all their previous notions, of some part of what He had been just declaring, and the consequent explanation which that complaint elicited from the Eedeemer. The explanation, however, was obviously of such a kind that, — while it contained a direct reply to the difficulty actually alleged by Judas respecting the reasons of the difference between believers and the world, in the manifestation of Jesus to be made to them respectively after His triumph and His glorification, — it still left them, in many particulars, under the power of those misconceptions and prejudices respecting the char- acter of the Messiah's work and reign which lay at the root of their specific objections and perplexities from time to time expressed. Jesus, therefore, in order to reKeve His followers from any feeling of unsatisfactoriness which they 208 LECTURE XVI. might entertain in reference to the explanations He had given, or any part of the doctrine He had taught, refers them to the provision He had made for their ultimate illu- mination and instruction by the coming of the Holy Ghost, and encourages them to bear with patience, for the pre- sent, whatever obscurities might hang about the doctrine He had personally taught, under the firm persuasion that the dawning of a brighter day was nigh at hand, when " in the light of God they should see light," and all their diffi- culties should be solved by an infallible Interpreter: — "These things I have spoken unto you, being yet with you;" that is, I have fully and distinctly delivered to you the truth with which I am intrusted ; it was my part to make the statements, — it is the part of another fully to unfold their meaning, and to clear away the obscurity with which, to your apprehensions, they appear beset; "but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit/' — appellations which we have already explained with abundance of illustration and detail, — " whom the Father shall send in my name," — that is, from regard to me and to my prayers, — " He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." It is worthy of remark in passing, that the insertion of the word " He" between the appellation "the Holy Ghost" and the verbs with which that appellation agrees, as well as the whole tenor and character of the passage, render it one of the most distinct attestations to the personality of the Holy Ghost which the Sacred Volume contains. And having called your attention by the way to this remark, — which formerly we illustrated at sufficient length, — we pro- ceed to observe that the office here ascril^ed to this Divine and Celestial Agent is twofold, — the office, in the first place, of communicating new truth to the apostles' mind. JOHN XIV. 25—27. 209 and, in the second, of recalling to their memories the truth before communicated by their Lord. First, it is said, — " He shall teach you all things," that is, obviously, all things which it concerned them to know ; all things in which they might justly expect to be instructed ; all things of which the knowledge was requisite to qualify them for the discharge of their apostolic function, — the foundation and the erection of the kingdom of heaven. In this sense, as denoting the knowledge of all necessary truths, expressions which literally taken would signify a strict Omniscience are frequently employed in Holy Writ; as when our Lord again remarked in reference to the teaching of the Spirit, "He shall guide you into all truth," — when, in allusion, no doubt, to these, the promises of his Master, our evangelist observes in his first epistle, " Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things," — or when the royal preacher delivers it, as at once, the resiilt of his own enlarged observation and experience, and the dictate of the heavenly inspiration that breathed within him, " Evil men understand not judgment, they that seek the Lord understand all things.''* It is the whole circle and mass of truths necessary to be known by the first teachers of religion that is here opposed to the instructions they had hitherto enjoyed, — adapted as these had been to the weakness of their understanding and to the peculiarity of their circumstances, and, for that reason, falling short of absolute perfection. 'It entered,' to use the language of a modern writer^-f- ' into the scheme of Divine Wisdom, that while the Messiah was actually sojourning among men, and was pursuing the preliminary objects of His mission, the truth * John xvi. 13; 1 John ii. 20; Prov. xxviii. 5. t Pye Smith. O 210 LECTURE XVI. concerning His person and His offices,' and the whole doctrine of His religion, should be slowly and gradually unfolded, and that even His most intimate friends and followers should not be suddenly and at once set free from the dominion of the prejudices and obscurities of concep- tion in reference to the kingdom of heaven which prevailed throughout the Jewish nation at large ; and, although ' such a plan of studied reserve and slow development would not have been chosen or approved by human wisdom, yet, whether we can penetrate the reasons for it or not, the fact itself is indisputable, that such was the course adopted' by the Author and Finisher of our faith, and, just because it was adopted by Him, the wisest and best which, in the circumstances, could have been pursued. The reasons of this mysterious procedure are nowhere fully and distinctly stated in the Bible itself Only this much is plainly inti- mated, that, in order to the disciples being made capable of fully and clearly comprehending the truth, without suffer- ing, in the mental revolution, so great a shock as should be highly prejudicial to their intellectual and moral health, it was requisite that they should be conducted through a lengthened course of training and of discipline, — that their perceptions should be quickened, and their faculties invi- gorated, by that indwelling Spirit whose office was not more to reveal the truth, than to make them capable of bearing it, and whose descent, for reasons of which even we can perceive the wisdom, was to be the consequence and the demonstration of the Saviour's ascent to glory. " I have yet many things to say unto you," our Lord remarks in a subsequent part of this very discourse, " but ye cannot bear them now." To the same efll'ct it is observed by the evangelist Mark, in reference to one memorable series of parabolical instructions delivered early in the course of our JOHN XIV. 25 — 27. 211 Saviour's public ministry, — " With many other parables spake He unto t^iem, as they were able to hear it." And, — recognising the same principle of accommodating the quantity and quality of the instruction delivered to the degree in which the previous spiritual discipline of His disciples had made them capable of turning it to good account, — the apostle Paul, once and again, expresses his regret that those to whom he wrote required to be " fed with milk and not with strong meat," " because," he adds in one case, " ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able."* That the incapacity of the apostles for understanding and receiving more of Christ's celestial doctrine than they did receive arose from their own fault, and is therefore in several places spoken of in the language of blame, is certain. And yet, on the other hand, it is obvious that, had it been essential to their Master's plan that they should early rise superior to the prejudices of their condition, and become capable of receiving a full illumination from above. He wanted not the means to have at once dispelled all the errors and all the obscurities with which their concep- tions were chargeable, and introducing them at once into all the truth. If, therefore, their comparative ignorance was justly chargeable upon themselves, as implying mis- improvement of privileges and opportunities before en- joyed,— still there must have been ulterior reasons why Jesus did not interfere to cure even their blameable ignorance ; as He would have done had it been necessary for the plan which He had ordained for the first promul- gation of the gospel, and as He did when it became necessary in the actual prosecution of that plan. One of * John xvi. 12; Mark iv. 33; 1 Cor. iii. 2. 212 LECTURE XVI. these reasons, we doubt not, was to put honour on the Holy Ghost, and to prevent the disciples from feeling it a degradation and a loss when, in the progress of the Divine economy, they passed over from the teaching of the Son to that of the Spirit. It was reserved to be a point of advantage in the dispensation of the Spirit over that of the Saviour's personal ministry, and a topic of consolation, therefore, in the prospect of the latter being superseded by the former. Such is the view of the fact presented to us in the verse before us. The apostles are there invited to look forward to the advent of the Paraclete consequent on the departure of the Saviour as that which should be the means of unfolding to them, in full and bright illumina- tion, the truths which, dimly shining from their Master's words through the hazy mists of long-cherished prejudice, had hitherto appeared so ill-defined and wavering and dim. For it was to be the Spirit's office to act at once as a Eevealer and a Eemembrancer, — to make known to the disciples whatever amount of truth untaught before was necessary to complete the system and the circle of Christi- anity, and to recall to their recollection all the intimations, obscure at first, which they used, in the days of their Master s flesh, to receive from Him of truths to be more fully developed, and more distinctly defined, thereafter: — " He shall teach you all things, and shall bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said to you." To the fulfilment of the latter part of this most memor- able promise, the divine composition in which that promise is embodied and inchased, and the illustration of which has now so long engaged our attention, — not unaccompanied, I trust, with holy edification and delight, — is a standing and conspicuous proof By the aids of that promised Spirit it was, that the blessed evangelist was enabled to JOHN XIV. 25—27. 213 recall and to record, with such minuteness of detail, those inestimable discousres of which the greater part of this thrice-precious document consists, fresh and unmingled as they proceeded from the lips of Him who spake as never man spake, — into whose lips grace was poured, — from whose mouth salvation flowed. The confidence which we have that this, the assurance of " the Faithful and True Witness" whose words can in no wise pass away, would certainly, in point of fact, be fulfilled, is one main founda- tion on which we rest our belief in the inspiration of the apostolic records of oar Master's life, — and not of those alone, but of all the writings which apostles have be- queathed to the church in professed exposition of that religion of which they were appointed the authorized interpreters and heralds. The former case is provided for in the clause of the promise which declares, " He shall bring all things to your remembrance;" the latter, in the part of the prediction which assures them, " He shall teach you all things." One important consequence there is following from the view here given of the imperfect knowledge which, during the days of the Eedeemer's flesh, even His most intimate followers enjoyed of the truth relating to His person, His work, and His religion, and the large additions and clearer illustrations which that knowledge was to receive from subsequent communications; and it is this, — that 'we should always study the doctrines and discourses of Jesus Christ by the aid of a constant comparison with the apos- tolic writings, which were intended from the beginning to be the ministration of the Spirit in the full and final devel- opment of the Christian system.' You may be aware that many of the opponents of what we justly account the fun- damental doctrines of the gospel, have insisted much on 214 LECTURE XVL the comparative infrequency and obscurity with which the all-important truths of the Divinity and the atonement of Christ are taught in the recorded discourses of our Lord Himself, and the apparent ignorance of His own disciples and constant attendants respecting any such extraordinary facts. Some among them have even ventured so far as to represent the statements of Jesus and His followers not as coincident, but as conflicting, authorities, and to proclaim it as the watchword of the religion they profess, ' Not Paul but Jesus.' Now, independently of the exaggeration and the overstatement with which they are chargeable in rela- tion to the facts, as if it could be truly said that the allu- sions to the Divinity and to the atonement of Christ Jesus contained in the gospels were really as few and faint as they allege, — we have, in the fact which the text discloses, that which makes it a presumption, not against, but for, the doctrines in question, that they were obviously more clearly communicated to the disciples after their Lord's departure than before, more distinctly apprehended by them, and more explicitly proclaimed. Jesus had Himself assured them that this would be the case, — that the disclo- sures of celestial truth which they would receive from the inspiration of the Holy Ghost would be vastly more ample and detailed, and the knowledge which they would acquire, both from these new disclosures, and from His own dis- courses miraculously recalled to their remembrance, infi- nitely more extended and more accurate. Therefore it is, that, in expounding to you this precious portion of the Sacred Eecord, — in which the Incarnate Son appears so often delivering in person the oracles of everlasting truth, — we have not confined our illustrations to the statement of that wliich the disciples might gather at the time from the announcements of their Master, but have endeavoured JOHN XIV. 25—27. 215 to view all His declarations in the light of that more com- plete illumination which was afterwards reflected on them by the complete development of the Christian scheme, and the complete exhibition of the Christian revelation. And therefore it is, that all who, in support of their opinions, appeal from the views of the apostles after the descent of the Spirit, to those which they held before the departure of the Saviour, do, by the very fact, confess that, before their sentiments can assume even the semblance of Chris- tian truth, they must be withdrawn from under the beams of meridian revelation into the dim twilight of a merely preparatory dispensation, when truths imperfectly disclosed were still more imperfectly perceived. Jesus, having thus, for the consolation of His followers in the prospect of His departure, told them that they should not be losers in respect of knowledge, proceeds to complete the consolation by assuring them that, in like manner, they should be no sufferers in respect of enjoy- ment; that the diffusion of a holy light through their minds should be accompanied by the diffusion of a holy peace through their hearts : — " Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you." The peace of which our Eedeemer is speaking here is, obviously, that blessed calm and tranquillity of soul which is the opposite of what we mean by mental perturbation, convulsion, and storm; the reverse, more especially, of those agitating emotions of sorrow and of fear particular- ized in the conclusion of the verse : — " Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." There were many circumstances in the prospect which lay before our Lord's disciples calculated to excite either of these painful emo- tions in their breast, — to overwhelm them with sorrow and 216 LECTURE XVI. dismay. But even in these circumstances, their Master addresses to them the admonition, that they should learn to moderate at once their regrets and their apprehensions ; that they should beware of suffering such emotion to get the mastery of their souls. For why, He had provided for them a sacred and celestial peace, — an inward store of tranquil and reposing happiness, — of depth and energy sufficient, if applied to that purpose, to prove itself an antagonist, and a victorious power, against all the agitat- ing forces of this tempestuous world. This holy and celes- tial peace, — " the peace of God," as it is termed by the apostle, ''which passeth all understanding,"* — is that which has its main foimtain in the persuasion that God loves us; that Jehovah is our Father, that Jesus is our Friend, that the Holy Ghost is our perpetual Paraclete. How ample a provision is there not contained in the assurances to this effect which the preceding part of this chapter embodies, for maintaining the tranquillity of the disciples' mind in the peculiar circumstances of grief and terror in which they were placed by the anticipation of their Masters near departure! To be assured, — as they had been, with such strength and variety of expression, assured, — that the Father Himself loved them, and would dwell with them for ever; that Jesus, though, in visible appearance, rapt away, would still be near, affectionately near, them; and that, besides the presence of the Father and the Son, their souls should become the peculiar resi- dence of the Eternal Spirit of truth and holiness and joy, — that it should be His to lead them into all truth, to direct them in all perplexity, to encourage them amidst every danger, to console them under every sorrow ; — surely * rhil. iv. 7. JOHN XIV. 25 — 27. 217 in all this there was a ground of peace set before them which, even in prospect of that formidable event on account of which sorrow had filled their hearts, — the loss of their beloved Lord, — might well make the admonition seem appropriate, " Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." Yet not to the apostles is this gi'ound of holy and celes- tial peace confined, nor its application limited to the parti- cular circumstances in which the apostles stood. Oh, for believers, in any circumstances of trial or of fear, to know that nothing can befall them, whether pleasing or painful, except by the permission and appointment of one who loves them with more than a father's tenderness, and more than a father's wisdom, — that, even when involved in cir- cumstances of extremest affliction and most formidable terror, they have His inviolable pledge that, while they cleave to Him, no real evil can befall them, no real plague come nigh them, — that, while He permits the trials of His people to continue for the sake of ends in order to which they would themselves have chosen to be afflicted, He pities their pangs, and sympathizes with their sorrows, — that when the high and precious ends for which affliction was appointed shall have been fulfilled, He will grant them a happy issue from them all, and finally, a glorious entrance into that world of pure delight where " sorrow and sighing shall flee away," where " God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;" for Christians to know that in Jesus they have " not such an High Priest as cannot be touched with a feeling of their infirmities," but one who, even from the throne of eternity, is bending down on them the glance of fraternal sympathy, and sending forth to them the tokens of His affectionate remembrance, — one who is " anointed to bind up the broken-hearted, and to 218 LECTURE XVI. comfort all that mourn, — to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;" for Christians to know that in the Holy Spirit of promise they have one prepared to be the helper of their infirmities, and, even in those hours of mysterious and overmastering emotion, of dim and voiceless agony, for which articulate language contains no suitable expression, to " make intercession for them with groanings which can- not be uttered;" — have they not in all this the materials of an inward and abiding peace such as no tribulations should be able to dispel or to disturb, — such as, when even the wildest blasts of this convulsed and agitated world are howling around them, should make perpetual light and music in the sanctuary of the soul, that sits reposing on the promise of its God, and only feels more vividly the holy calm within from the contrast with the storm that howls without? This peace the Saviour promises under the appellation of His peace, that is, the peace which He, and He alone, has to bestow ; and concerning it He says : — " Peace I leave with you," — When I depart, my peace shall remain behind, to be for ever your companion and your comforter; the enjoyment of that celestial peace does not depend upon my bodily presence ; it may be, and shall be, continued when I am gone, and prove itself an effectual antidote to the bitterness of that bereavement ; — " My peace I give unto you," — I solemnly confer on you the right, and entreat you daily to improve the inestimable privilege, of taking for your own, of considering as addressed specifically to you, all those assurances and promises from the belief of which that peace arises. " Not as the world giveth," the Saviour adds, " give I unto you." All the peace the world JOHN XIV. 25 — 27. 219 has to bestow is, at the best, but superficial and external, so that, in the enjoyment of all that it can bestow to pro- duce contentment, satisfaction, and repose, the heart shall be only torn and rent, — heaving with the storm and swell of uncontrollable distress, " like the troubled sea when it cannot rest." Christ's peace, on the other hand, is pro- found and spiritual; reaching to the deepest springs of feeling ; and in the heart as its peculiar sphere, laying to rest the turbulence of passion, and saying to the convulsed and labouring spirit, " Peace, be still ! " — The peace which the world bestows is uncertain and inconstant, — liable to interruption and extinction by every change of circum- stances in this troubled scene of perpetual fluctuation. Christ's peace is solid, stable, and immutable. Although, peradventure, those to whom it appertains may, by their own fault and folly, suffer it to be disturbed, from time to time, in their own souls, by the eruption of evil passions, or the influence of external circumstances, yet this is their infirmity; the grounds on which it rests are unchangeable as the oath and the throne of the Eternal, — His oath, by which the covenant of His peace is ratified, — His throne, under which that covenant is secured. The peace which the world has to bestow is that which death affrights and eternity extinguishes for ever. — The Saviour's peace is that which converts death into a messenger of joy, and eternity into the scene of boundless blessedness and glory. — To all which add that, even in respect of that slight, and change- able, and perishable peace which the world has to bestow, she often promises far more than she performs ; while the promises of Jesus, in the experience of all who cast their souls upon Him in cordial submission and reliance, are evermore not merely realized, but outdone, by the accom- plishment. 220 LECTURE XVI. And wlio would not desire to secure, as his own portion and inheritance, that holy and celestial peace which Jesus here confers on His disciples? That peace, it is stiU the office, it is still the delight, of Jesus to bestow. Seek to obtain it, brethren, in the cordial acceptance of His gospel as the record of eternal truth, the charter of everlasting hope, — of Himself as your all-sufficient Saviour, your acknowledged and most rightful Governor and Lord. So shall you find that there are indeed " peace and joy in believing ;" a peace which the world cannot give and can- not take away, — which shall diffuse itself like a holy unction all around, stilling the stormy waters through which your voyage lies over life's perilous sea, and shall brood at last, a spirit of undisturbed calm, over that bright ocean of eternal blessedness ' Where ye shall bathe your weary soul In seas of heavenly rest, And not a wave of trouble roll Across your peaceful breast/ LECTUEE XVII. Chap. xiv. 28 — 31. " Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe. 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." In this passage, Jesus concludes the first part of the con- solatory discourse delivered by Him, upon the vespers of the Passion, to those affectionate disciples over whose minds the prospect of His departure had shed so deep and so disastrous a gloom. And He begins His peroration, so to call it, by distinctly adverting to the main circumstance which had given occasion to the whole address, — the inti- mations which He had, more than once of late, been giving them, that the period was at hand when the decease should be fulfilled which He was destined to accomplish at Jerusalem : — " Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away." But He goes on to remind them, that this was not the whole of His statement, — that there was a counterpart assurance always to be borne in mind, in order that they might have the case fully before them, and look upon it with that balance of feelings which, contemplated in its circumstances 222 LECTUEE XVII. and all its bearings, it was fitted to inspire, — a balance in which the causes of joy and triumph should be felt infinitely to outweigh those of disappointment and regret. " Ye have heard," says He, " how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you;" referring^, as we have already seen at length, partly to His \ : '; return to them after His resurrection from the dead, — j)^^'^ly ^^ ^^^ invisible, but most real and most influential, presence in which He visited them and remained beside them, and has promised to continue with His Church at all times, " even to the end of the world," — partly to His coming forth to welcome each individual believer at the gate of Paradise, as he takes his departure to be with Christ, — and partly, in fine, to His advent at the great day of His glorious appear- ing, to receive the whole risen and immortal Church into His everlasting kingdom. Jesus, however, was willing that the disciples should draw their consolations, in prospect of His departure, not merely from the lower considerations of the effect wdiich it would have on their condition, but from the purer, loftier, and more generous contemplation of the results it would have on His. He now appeals, in order to reconcile them to the approaching event, not simply to their concern for themselves, but to their love for Him; applying to His peculiar case that rich consolation which, in more ordinary instances of bereavement, it is still the happiness of Chris- tians to enjoy in reference to Christians gone, when they consider that the survivor's loss is the departed's gain: — " If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father." Of course, in urging the expression, " If ye loved me,' Jesus entertained ?io doubt of the sincerity of the disciples' attachment and regard. His words are obviously to be JOHN XIV. 28 — 31. 223 interpreted according to that customary figure of speech by which words, in addition to their accustomed significa- tion, are employed to indicate something connected with it as a quality, adjunct, or condition. The meaning ob- viously is : — If ye loved me as ye ought, — if you regarded me with an enlightened attachment, — if your affection rested on a just acquaintance with all the circumstances, and, more especially, with all the results which are to ensue from my departure in reference to myself, — the sen- timent of affection in your hearts, that pure and generous emotion which finds one of its deepest satisfactions in the advantage and the happiness of the beloved object, would derive a deep and hallowed content from the prospects with which my departure hence is connected. And the first consideration which Jesus suggests as calculated, when rightly apprehended, to afford high gratification and delight to all those who truly loved Him, and therefore wished to see Him happy, is the fact that He was going to His Father, — to Him in whose bosom, the bosom of bliss unspeakable. He had reposed from everlasting, glorified with the glory which, before the world was, replenished and illumined the dwelling-place of Him who inhabiteth eternity. This glory and felicity He had, in some myste- rious sense, for a season laid aside. Of this, to use the strong expression of St. Paul, He had " emptied himself," when He took into indissoluble sympathy and union with the eternal Godhead a feeble and suffering humanity. But into the full inheritance of that glory and felicity He entered once again when He ascended, God-man, into the immediate presence and communion of the Father, — being, both as the only-begotten Son of God, and as the perfected Kedeemer of men, glorified once more with "the glory which He had with the Father before the world was," and 224 LECTURE XVII. made " most blessed for ever in the light of His " paternal " countenance." The second reason which Jesus gives for the affectionate rejoicing of the disciples in the prospect of His departure to be with the Father, is more obscurely expressed when He adds, " My Father is greater than I." These words have been grasped with extraordinary eagerness by those who oppose the glorious doctrine of our Lord's supreme Divinity, as if they contained a strong disavowal on His part that He possessed any claim to Divine prerogatives and honours, or, at least, an intimation that, according to the Arian hypothesis, He was only a subordinate and secondary Deity, — entitled to thename of God only on the same principle, though perhaps in a higher degree, on which that appellation is ascribed to created thrones and dominions on earth and in heaven. In answer, however, to such arguments as these, — opposed to a doctrine w^hich is elsewhere written as with a sun- beam in the Sacred Oracles, and not with least distinct- ness in the divine book before us, — the doctrine that Jesus, though sprung " from the seed of David according to the flesh," was none other by original dignity than " God (wer all and blessed for evermore," — the adherents of that doctrine have conclusively observed, that there is nothing in the truth which tliey maintain, viewed in its fulness and its symmetry, inconsistent with the remark of Jesus, '' The Father is greater than I." We maintain, not merely that Jesus was, by original dignity, God, but that He became, by voluntary condescension, man, — " the Word was God," " the Word became flesh," — and that as man, though, by His personal union witli Divinity, the most dignifled of all created natures, yet still. He was a crea- ture, and, as sucli, inferior to the Father. We liold, not JOHN XIV. 28—31. 225 merely that, as man, He is by birth and nature, but that, as God-man, — our Eedeemer-Mediator between God and man, — He is in office and function, subordinate to the Father. Throughout the whole of this discourse, — through- out the whole of this gospel, — throughout the whole pro- phetic and apostolic writings, — the Saviour is described as, in respect of office, the Messenger, the Minister, the Servant, of the Father, from whom He had received com- mission, and to whom He was to render account ; for w^hose glory, and under whose authority, He spoke and acted at every step of His mediatorial ministry; and to w^hom, at the close of His mortal life, He thus discharged himself of His responsibility, — " I have glorified Thee upon the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do." In both these senses, — viewed in His person as man, and viewed in His office as Mediator, — Christ is admitted by those who do most firmly believe, and most strenuously maintain, His essential and eternal Divinity, to be inferior to the Eternal Father; and in both these senses, therefore, have different interpreters explained the particular expres- sion now before us, "The Father is greater than I." I confess, however, that to my mind, — while either explana- tion is undoubtedly true in itself, — neither seems appro- priate to the place which the words before us occupy. I do not perceive how the fact that, in respect either of His human nature or of His official function, Jesus was inferior to the Father, contains a very clear or intelligible reason why the disciples should rejoice in the prospect of His returning to the Father. I am therefore disposed to sug- gest a third view, which I have not seen proposed by commentators, and in which Jesus might not only truly but appropriately declare that the Father was greater than the Son, — and thai la, not only in respect of nature, not 226 LECTURE XVII. anly in respect of office, but in respect of condition. " You know," my brethren, " the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, liow that, though He was rich, He became poor," — though He " was in the form of God, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God, He yet made himself of no reputa- tion, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and, being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."* Meantime, while the Eternal Son, — self-divested of the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, — was thus pursuing on the earth His overclouded path of shame and wxarmess and woe, " despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," — the Father, still enthroned on high in the central brightness of the inaccessible light, retained His glory uneclipsed. His felicity unimpaired; displaying still, in visible exhibition, the full majesty of the Supreme Divinity, and attracting to Himself the adora- tions of the heavens as " the Blessed and Only Potentate," the Immortal and Immutable Jehovah. With allusion, therefore, to this diversity of condition, as we suppose, the Incarnate Son, in these "the days of His liesh," — the period of His humiliation, — alleged the argument that the Father was greater than He, in order to reconcile His dis- ciples to the thought that He was now about to go unto the Father ; implying that, in the very fact of going to be with one so much more glorious, so much more blessed, He should Himself ))ecome partaker of that superior glory and that superior blessedness. From the fact that the Father " is greater than all," — that He is supreme over the universe in grandeur, in excellence, in felicity, — it follows ♦ 2 Cor. viii. 9: riiil. ii. G— 8. JOHN XIV. 28—31. 227 that, in proportion as any intelligent being is brought nearer to Him, in that proportion he is exalted, — brought up from a lower to a loftier position in the scale of dignity and of enjoyment. And so, in respect of the Incarnate Son Him- self, the statement that, while He tabernacled on the earth, the Father's condition was more glorious and more blessed than His, was the foundation of a most legitimate inference, that, in going to the Father, He should ascend, He should enjoy a vast advancement of condition. He should realize a gain unspeakable, — and therefore might expect that, by those who truly loved Him, the tidings should be received with joy, and not with grief, — should be the subject of con- gratulation, and not of complaint. Especially might it be expected that such should be the feelings of those who had gathered, from the frequent intimations He had given of His primeval dignity, that His inferiority to the Father was not natural but assumed, — the result of voluntary conde- scension, of a humiliation chosen and endured to serve a special end. They might readily conjecture, that for one whose voluntary descent from heaven to earth it was that made it possible for Him to say, "The Father is greater than I," — for such an one to return to the Father, — was for Him to resume His former majesty, — to put on again " the form of God," — to make again conspicuous His equality with God, — to be "glorified" once more " with the glory which He had with the Father before the world was." To those who had entered so far as this into " the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh," — to them at least the argument would appear at once most luminous and most convincing, " If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father; for my Father is greater than I." In the 29th verse, Jesus, with reference to the intima- 228 LECTURE XVII. tions He had been giving of His approaching departure, repeats what, in the 19th verse of the chapter preceding, He had said, in predicting the first step towards it, the dark treason of Iscariot : — " Now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe." One great object contemplated in all the prophecies with which the discourses of Jesus and the Holy Books at large are studded is this, — that the correspondence of the event with the prediction may be, to all who can compare the two, the proof that He who delivered the oracle which the result has ratified is indeed the messenger of Him " who seeth the end from the beginning," who " frustrateth the tokens of the liars and maketh diviners mad," but who " confirmeth the word of His servants, and performeth the counsel of His messengers." Yet it is worthy of particular observation in this particular case, with what holy and benevolent ingenuity Jesus provides, by the prediction to which the text refers, — the prediction of His own departure, — that the event which would otherwise have proved the disappointment of all their hopes, the overthrow and ruin of their faith, might become, except for their own fault, only a fresh argument to hope even against hope, and not to " stagger at the promise of God through unbelief" True, when the exigency came, — when Jesus was at length torn from their embraces by the hand of perfidy and ruthless cruelty, — some of them, at least, through forgetfulness of His parting words, seem to have failed in gathering from the circumstances of the case the confirmation and encouragement to their faith which even that sad and terrible event carried in its bosom. Still deeply imbued with those prejudiced conceptions of the Messiah's character and reign which represented Him as the destined Conqueror and Monarch (jf the world, to appear amidst a JOHN XIV. 28—31. 229 blaze of earthly power and splendour such as never yet had dawned upon the eyes of men, and so to " reign upon mount Zion before His ancients gloriously," — they seem to have looked upon the ignominies and the agonies with w^hich they had seen Him driven out from the light of the living as affording the conclusive refutation of His claims. AVhen Jesus bowed His head on the accursed tree, and rendered up His spirit, their hope too would appear to have become " like the giving up of the ghost ; " and during the dreary day, and the two yet more dreary nights, during which their Master lay entombed, their expectations lay sunk and buried in His grave. " We trusted," they exclaimed, "that it had been He who should have redeemed Israel." Yet surely, had not their minds been stunned and stupefied with sorrow, they might have remembered His own words explicitly predicting, once and again, not only in general terms, but wdth detail of special circumstances, that dread catastrophe ; and remembering these, they must have per- ceived that, so far from affording gi'ound for aught of sus- picion in derogation of His Divinity or His Messiahship, the actual occurrence of all the disasters and calamities, the insults and the cruelties, which He predicted, exactly as He predicted them, was the strongest proof of both which the case admitted of, and, as such, had been pressed by Jesus on their consideration in immediate prospect of that trying hour. Meanwhile, the time that was thus to try the disciples' faith was approaching fast. With every sentence that the Saviour uttered, with every breath He drew, He perceived the distance between Him and His conflict sensibly dimi- nishing ; and therefore He gives His followers warning to store and treasure up His words in their deepest hearts, as these precious words were now well nigh His last. " Here- 230 LECTUEE XVIL after," says He, " I will not talk miicli witli you;'' and He adds the reason, " For the prince of this world cometh." You know to whom the bad eminence belongs which this appellative denotes. It was an appellative, even before our Saviour's time, in use among the Jews, for that guileful and destroying angel who, having refused to keep his principality in heaven, having left his own habitation in proud revolt against the King of kings, and having, therefore, been hurled down to bottomless perdition, him- self and all his host, by God's vindictive thunder, — stirred up with envy and revenge, invaded the holy bowers of Paradise, and seduced our original parents to join him in his base and ruinous rebellion ; who, having thus laid the foundation of his malignant kingdom in our world, has ever since been employed in diffusing, cherishing, and ripening that moral evil, that alienation from God, that rebellion against God, which is his element and his delight, until, by its all but universal prevalence among mankind, — by the all but universal bondage in which he leads human spirits captive at his pleasure, — he has established only too good a claim to the title here assigned him by our Lord, — " the prince of this world," or, — as, to the same effect, though, if possible, still more strongly, he is denominated by the apostle, — the demon or " god of this world,'* the ruler of this darkness, " the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." Never, however, did he more distinctly prove himself the prince of this world, the ruler of this darkness, than in that " hour and power of darkness," when he stirred against the Lord's Anointed " both Herod and Pontius Pilate, and the Gentiles, and the people of Israel," — when, arrayed under his accursed bamier, and goaded on by his fiery instigations, the powers of earth JOHN XIV. 28 — 81. 231 combined with tlie principalities of liell to crush and over- whelm the mighty champion of Jehovah's glory and of man's salvation. For, that the dark angel of sin and death, the head of evil principalities and powers, took an active and presiding part in the instigation, the contrivance, and the execution, of that unparalleled crime by which the Prince of life was slain, the Lord of glory crucified, is plain from many intimations of Holy Writ ; as well as that the Ad- versary-tyrant seized that hour of direst extremity when, in his body and his soul, the Saviour was called to struggle with ten thousand meeting agonies, from human cruelty and from Almighty vengeance, in order to let loose upon his human soul the whole collected might of hell, the uttermost resources of fiendish fraud and force and fury. This was the vision that now flashed upon the inward eye of Jesus, and bade Him, in what remained of His discourse, be brief. He saw the monarch of the pit assembling his pale terrific bands ; He saw the spiritual wickednesses mustered and marshalled for the onset ; He saw the plans of their human instruments completed, the high priest and his satellites convening; the traitor's lantern lighted, the armed men girding on their swords and grasping their gnarled staves ; He saw the hostile troops in motion, with their leader, the lost archangel, at their head, advancing with still accelerated pace, and rushing upon Him single- handed, as at the charging step, — and Lo ! he exclaimed, *' the prince of this world cometh." But did He quail or tremble, think you., in prospect of that tremendous conflict? Did He for a moment sink in flat despair, or even did He count the struggle of doubtful issue, when alone He stood against the ruler of the dark- ness, and the armed might of all his malignant empire ? Far other, my brethren, were the feelings that nerved His 232 LECTUEE XVII. steadfast heart, and breathed in His calmly resolute expres- sions : — " The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me;" that is, There is nothing in my nature or my character, — nothing in me or about me, of which he can take advantage; he can obtain no hold of me; he can secure no success against me. True, the dread crime was consummated which Satan put it into the heart of Judas and the Jews, of Pilate and the Gentiles, to commit against the Lord of life and glory. The serpent bruised the Anointed's heel, and perhaps for one brief moment thought, when " the seed of the woman " hung expiring on the tree, — such was his short-sighted folly, — that his machin- ations had prevailed to the ruin of the Saviour's enterprise, xlgainst any such imagination, however, as utterly un- founded and unjust, Jesus is careful, in the text, to guard His disciples' minds, by explaining to them, first, what was not, and secondly, what was, the reason of the death which was now impending over Him. The Epistle to the Hebrews describes the devil as armed with the " power of death;" meaning, that it is as slaves of Satan that men at large are the victims of dissolution, — as sinners that we die. Not such, however, was the death of Jesus ; not as Himself a sinner, the subject of the Evil One, did Christ expire. This seems, indeed, to have been the main end and object to compass which the Enemy assailed the mind of Jesus with the utmost terrors and resources of temptation, in that fearful hour when even His great soul seemed ready to sink beneath the weight of crusliing agony. The tempter knew that could he but extort from the suffering humanity of that Holy One of God an act, a word, a feeling, or a thought, in any, the minutest, degree diverging from the duty, — the duty of unparalleled severity and arduousness, — which His JOHN XIV. 28—31. 233 Father then required of Him, the victory would have been secured for hell, — the life of Jesus would have been forfeited on His own account, — the sacrifice would have been tainted, and so the redemption must have ceased for ever, — Messiah would have been cut off, cut off for Himself, and His sacred life have become the conquest and the prey of " him who hath the power of death, that is, the devil." I speak, my brethren, the demon's thoughts ; God forbid that we should entertain them as expressing the actual, the possible, event. Says Jesus, — " The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." The Saviour's death was no indication of the tempter's victory ; nay rather, it was the means of the tempter's overthrow. " By dying. He destroyed death, and him that had the power of death." On the cross, " He spoiled principalities and powers, triumphing over them in it."* The true account of the Messiah's death was, not that He sank under the power of Satan, but that He was constrained by the love of God : — " That the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do." His death was the grand appointed means by which the honour of the Eternal's character and govern- ment was to be asserted upon earth in the salvation of lost men. As such, it had formed the subject of a solemn compact between the Father and the Son, in the august recesses of primeval eternity; and so, the subject of a high command on the part of the Eternal, when, according to the provisions of the covenant of peace, the Only-begot- ten entered on His work as the Servant and Minister of the Most High. Thus it was, that for Jesus, though ''without sin," to die, was a proof of love, and a part of * Heb. ii. 14; Col. ii. 15. 234 LECTUEE XVII. obedience, to the Father. Herein, therefore, lay the neces- sity which bound Him on the altar, which consigned Him to the grave, — that in the face of man, in the face of the gazing universe. He might afford a demonstration, such as has never before or since been given, of love and loyalty to God. Therefore it was, that, when called to become " obedient unto death, even the death of the cross," He went forward to the conflict with a certain divine and awful satisfaction, exclaiming, — " Lo, I come ; I delight to do thy will, 0 my God ; yea, thy law is within my heart." Therefore it was, that, knowing what awaited Him without, — that in crossing the threshold of that retired and consecrated chamber, and setting out upon a journey which led, by three melancholy stages, to the garden of mysterious agony, to the tribunal of unjust condemnation, to the tree of agony and shame and Almighty malediction, — He did not shrink nor hesitate, but, with steadfast heart and high, invited His disciples to attend Him on that awful journey, and to observe, in the resignation, the patience, the alacrity, with which He should encounter its unimagined horrors, the proof how fervently He loved the Father, — how fully He was prepared, as the Father gave Him commandment, even so to do. "Arise," He says, " let us go hence." In conclusion, brethren, let us, with profoundest amazci- ment and gratitude, remember that, while in the prospect and the endurance of that mighty agony which purchased pardon, the force which sustained the Saviour's spirit was the energy of love, it was a love which flowed not merely upwards to the Everlasting Father, but downwards to us unworthy. Herein indeed tlie love of Christ is manifested, that He laid down His life for us. He loved us, and gave Himself for us. Let the love of Christ constrani us ; and JOHN XIV. 28—31. 235 let us, from His briglit example, learn to make it hence- forward the great object of our lives that we may show our love to God by the keeping of His commandments, — that, at what expense soever of toil and sacrifice and suf- fering, we may glorify Him upon the earth, and may finish the work which He has given us to do. So, having followed Him in the course of duty, we shall follow Him at last along the path to heaven ; ascending to His Father and our Father — to His God and our God ; and, as it were, addressing those, with our departing breath, who may honour us so far as to regret our loss, even as our Lord addressed His mourning followers, — " If ye loved us, ye would rejoice, because we go unto the Father." LECTUEE XVIII. Chap. xv. 1, 2. *' 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." The last words on which we commented, as addressed by Jesus to His disciples, were these, — " Arise, let us go hence." It is obvious, therefore, that between the close of the fourteenth, and the opening of the fifteenth, chapter, some considerable movement and change of position had taken place among the inmates of that upper chamber at Jerusalem where the interesting discourses had been delivered which have been engaging our attention. But to what length the movement had proceeded, and in what situation the little sacred band of Jesus and His followers were placed, when the former proceeded with the exhorta- tions in the chapter now before us, has been the subject of considerable difference of opinion among interpreters. Many suppose that these were delivered after the company had arisen in obedience to the direction in the verse pre- ceding, but before they finally left the chamber of passover and eucharist. In confirmation of their opinion, they appeal to the commencement of the eighteenth chapter, where, not till after the conclusion of our Lord's discourse addressed to His disciples, and of His intercessory prayer JOHN XV. 1, 2. 237 directed to His Father, it is said : — " When Jesus had spoken these words, He went forth," — that is, as these interpreters suppose, He left the house with His disciples. Those who are of this opinion further conjecture, — in order to account for the sudden and abrupt transition to the image of the vine, — that the chamber-window may have looked out upon a vineyard near, or even that some spread- ing vine may have been trained against the walls of the house itself, and, fringing the casement with its ample verdure, may have caught the Saviour's eye as He arose, suggesting that picturesque and vivid image of the union between Himself and His disciples on which He here expatiates ; or they observe, that the very wine upon the table which had been provided for the paschal feast, and with which He had so recently crowned the cup of eucharist and blessing, — " the fruit of the vine,'' as He Himself had termed it, — may have given the first origin and impulse to the train of association of which we have the result and development before us. I confess, however, that, for my own part, I am much more disposed, — though feeling that the case does not admit of absolute certainty, — to join in opinion with those who think that this and the two fol- lowing chapters contain what fell from our Eedeemer after leaving the place of sacred festival, and setting out upon His journey to Gethsemane. In the first place, I do not see why the parenthesis with which the last chapter con- cludes, " Arise, let us go hence," should have been intro- duced at all unless to intimate that the Saviour with His followers did then in fact arise, and in fact go thence. Again, it seems quite obvious that, in the passage before us, we have the commencement of a new discourse on the part of Jesus, distinct and separate from that in the chapter preceding, — referring, indeed, to the same general subject, 238 LECTURE XVIII. but not cohering with the former so as to suggest the idea of its being a simple sequel and continuation. Once more, I find it said in the commencement of the seventeenth chap- ter, " Tliese words spake Jesus and lifted up His eyes to heaven," — an expression which, as well as the corresponding phrases of lifting up, or spreading forth, the hands to heaven, is always used in the Bible of worship rendered in the open air, under the cope of the ethereal firmament. And lastly, the statement in the beginning of the eighteenth chapter, that Jesus " went forth," does not of necessity denote His going out of some particular dwelling, but may very pro- perly describe His going forth beyond what was strictly the precincts of the city, as He did by the act of crossing the torrent of Kedron. The order of occurrences I suppose to have been the following : — In obedience to their Master's direction in the close of the last chapter, the disciples arose from the couches that encircled the paschal board, and girt themselves for their nocturnal walk. Leaving that hallowed chamber, they passed in silence along the streets of the slumbering city, till they reached the path that, sloping down mount Zion, led to the valley of the Kedron, by which the sacred hill was separated from the opposite mount of Olives. Somewhere on or near that for the pre- sent unfrequented path they paused, adjacent to some verdant and exuberant vineyard, — for with these we know the banks of the Kedron were abundantly adorned, — which, gleaming in the pale moonlight with its broad foliage and its purple clusters, and testifying by easily- distinguished tokens to the care and prudent culture which its keeper had bestowed, gave apt and beautiful occasion for that image with which the Master resumed the train of His parting consolations and instructions, — " I am the tnie vine, and my Father is the husbandman." JOHN XV. 1, 2. 239 All who are in any degree acquainted with our Lord's manner, — of which we have so many instances in the Gospels, — of founding His instructions on allusions to points of natural scenery, or circumstances of actual occur- rence, around, will feel the intrinsic probability of the supposition we have made. But whatever may be our particular judgment respecting the circumstances in which the parable before us was delivered, and the accession of picturesque associations and immediate effect which it may have derived from these ; certain it is that, viewed in itself, apaii: from all local and circumstantial peculiarities, few images can be conceived setting forth in a more lively and interesting form the importance and the necessity of their vital union with Himself, in order, at once, to their spiritual safety, and to their spiritual fruitfulness. " I am the vine," says Jesus, — that is, I occupy to the church the relation, I discharge to them the function, which the vine-stock and its roots bear and perform to the shoots and branches ; I am the channel through which my disciples derive all their spiritual life, and vigour, and pro- ductiveness. There are those who limit the application of this striking image of intimate and efficacious union to the Saviour, to the case of the apostles, and to the depend- ence which they were to feel on Jesus, and the help which they were to receive from Jesus, in the discharge of their apostolic ministry. Now, it is by all means to be acknow- ledged and remembered in the interpretation of this dis- course, that it was originally addressed to the eleven, for their immediate instruction and consolation; but that it was addressed to them in their whole character, — at once as believers and as apostles, — and that, while we should be cautious of rashly generalizing and extending what refers to them peculiarly under the latter character, w^e are 24j0 lectuee XVIII. not only warranted, but bound, to apply whatever our Master said to them in tlieir capacity of believers on His name to all who have received "like precious faith" with them. The whole context of the passage now before us, compared with parallel and analogous passages in which the statements and promises here contained are distinctly extended to all the faithful, sufficiently assure us that the parable with which this chapter commences is addressed to the eleven not simply as apostles, but as Christians ; and that its commencement, therefore, asserts that they were indebted to their Divine Master, not only for the energy which characterized, and the success which fol- lowed, their apostolic labours, but for all that they pos- sessed of Christian character and Christian comfort, — for all the capacities which they enjoyed of tliinking and feeling, speaking and acting, in accordance with the will of God, and in due order towards the eternal inheritance, — for all their faith and love, for all their hope and holiness. In reference to the epithet " true," which our Lord here attaches to the symbolic vine, — you must have observed that, according to His custom in this Gospel, the sensible and earthly, when employed as the image of the heavenly and divine, is always represented as something unsubstan- tial, imperfect, visionary, in contrast with the reality, the perfection, and the truth, of those celestial objects which it is used to shadow forth. As, in former parts of this Gos- pel, the Redeemer is described as "the true light," "the true bread ;" so here we find Him taking the appellation of " the true vine," — that is, He to whom all the qualities do with special truth belong of which the vine is here the emblem, — He who, in a nobler and more effectual way, performs to His believing people what the vine performs JOHN XV. 1, 2. 241 to the branches which draw from it their life, their sap, their fruitfulness. "And my Father," it. is added, "is the husbandman." In conformity with the uniform doctrine of our Lord, ascribing to the Father Everlasting the supremacy in the whole contrivance and arrangement, — the whole com- mencement, progress, and completion, — of the method of human salvation, Jesus here describes the Father as the husbandman whose part it was to prepare the chosen soil ; to plant the mystic vine ; to graft appropriate shoots into the sacred stock ; to cli^rish and direct its spreading and ascending growth ; to protect it from the violence and tlie guile of the destroyers, — " the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines," — the bear out of the forest that would rend them, the wild beast of the field that would devour them ; to take His pastime and delight amidst its loveli- ness and vernal fragrance ; and to gather for Himself the overflowing fruitage which shall at last be seen purpling every bough with its rich deliciousness. That is, in plain and literal expressions, — the Saviour here introduces the Eternal Father in the light in which many other passages of Scripture represent Him, as having made all necessary preparation and pre-arrangement for the manifestation and saving work of His Incarnate Son; as having at length appointed and constituted Him, as Mediator, the only channel of saving grace, and spiritual influence, to tlie children of men ; as having united to His sacred person, so as to enjoy the benefits of His salvation, the whole community of converted men, — the whole vital church of them that shall be saved; as watching and promoting, with tenderest concern, the progress of the Saviour's work and of His cause, — ^the growth of holy thought and feeling, of spiritual peace and joy, in the church at large, and in Q 24-2 LECTURE XVIII. each individual member of tlie cliurch particularly; as watering the spiritual vineyard every moment, and " keep- ing it, lest any hurt it, night and day;" as regarding ever, with holy satisfaction and complacency, the spectacle of spiritual loveliness which Jesus and His people, united as one holy community, present, all fresh and fragrant with " tlie beauties of holiness;" and finally, as gathering at last from the whole mighty scheme of union between the Re- deemer and His people, with all its productions and results, an abundant harvest of everlasting honour to the praise of His own glory, — " the praise of the glory of His grace." Of all the various functions, however, performed by the Sovereign Father on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ, corresponding to those which the skilful and experienced husbandman discharges towards the vine which he culti- vates and tends, our Saviour, in the 2d verse, selects two for more particular description: — "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit He taketh away ; and every branch that beareth fruit. He purgeth it, that it may luring forth more fruit." It is quite ol)vious from the explanations wliicli have been already made, what is meant by the branches in the parable before us ; and, indeed, it is specifically stated in tlie 5th verse, where, addressing His disciples as members •and representatives of the visible Church, Jesus observes, " I am the vine, ye are the branches." That in the ima- gery of the text the denomination of "the branches" includes all the members of the visible, and not merely •those of the vital and spiritual. Church, is obvious from :the fact, — which the verse before us assumes, — that there are branches which are barren, — which are finally severed fioin the disburdened stock, and consigned as fuel rii)e for JOHN xv. 1, 2. 243 burning to the unpitying flame. The " branch that beareth not fruit" is obviously the symbol of an insincere, a self- deceived, or a hypocritical, professor of Christianity, — one who, while he holds, and glories, perhaps, in holding, an external and visible relation to the Church of Christ, yet shows that he is either involuntarily deceiving himself, or wilfully endeavouring to deceive others, by the fact that his profession is contradicted, or, at least, is not confirmed and verified, by his character. The satisfactory, the one satisfactory, test of sincerity which Jesus requires of His professed disciples is this, — a truly Christian character; and this He always represents as so natural, so necessary, a fruit of vital union to Himself, that He has once and again and frequently, with all solemnity, discharged us from supposing ourselves and others spiritually connected with His person, or interested in the blessings and the hopes of His salvation, unless we and they are found a *•' people zealous of good works," abounding in the work of the Lord, and fertile in the fruits of righteousness: — '' By their fruits ye shall know them ;" " If ye love me, keep my commandments;" "Wliy call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say unto you?"'* Oh, how intensely solicitous, my brethren, should this consideration render us, in " examining ourselves whether we be in the faith, — in "proving our own selves," — in ascertaining, by the appropriate test that Jesus Christ is in us, that we are indeed '' partakers of the root and fat- ness " of that celestial stock ! Alas ! how many are there among those who, mth the most solemn rites and ratify- ing mysteries, avow themselves the disciples of the Lord, and most confidently claim the privileges which union to * Matt. vii. 16: John xiv. 15: Luke vi. 46. 244 LECTUEE XVIll. Christ implies, to whom, nevertheless, it were a question admitting of no satisfactory reply, What are the fruits they bear as branches of the holy vine? Oh, let us recollect, my brethren, that they are no professions of outward cere- monial, no verbal testimonies from the lips, no feelings, sentiments, and impulses of the heart, which admit of being separated from sanctity of character and holiness of life, — that can prove a man a Christian, a Christian in spirit and in truth. Not foliage but fruit is what the Heavenly Vine-dresser requires. And let the imfertile branch put forth, in richest verdure, its luxuriant leaves, — let it twine its lithe gracefulness into the form most absolute and exquisite of sylvan beauty, — nay, let it inwreathe and interweave itself into one mass and tex- ture with the surrounding boughs, and clasp with tenacious tendrils whatever may outwardly connect it with the celes- tial stem, — it is, in the eye of Him who keepeth the holy vineyard with an omniscient inspection, as well as an omnipotent defence, a useless load, a noxious burden, a cumberer of the vine, and must erelong experience the sharpness of the severing steel, to relieve the encumbered stem from its weight of barren and superfluous verdure : — "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit He taketh away," — that is. All those whose professed and outward attachment to the Saviour is not verified by a Christian character and practice, God will finally expel from the communion of Jesus and His Church. Even in this present time, the insincere professors of the Gospel, — the self-deceiver and the hypocrite, — may expe- rience the fulfilment of this awful threatening, by being placed, in the course of God's all-ruling providence, in circumstances which shall lay bare the hoUowness of their profession; which shall expose them in then- real JOHN XV. ] , 2. 24.5 character before the eyes of men ; which shall force on the conviction of all observers that they have neither part nor lot among the sanctified ; and which shall visibly divide them even from the earthly fellowship of Christ and of His Church. But let the false professor enjoy even to the end of this vanishing life his usurped prerogatives and honours, as a member, acknowledged among men, of the visible community of Christians, — there comes an hour, an awful hour, of searching and infallible discrimination, before the blaze of which the self-deceiver's hope shall perish, and the confidence of the hypocrite shall be cut off. Death, the great undeceiver, and Judgment, the revealer of secrets, are at hand; and the test of that tremendous inquisition which shall sit at the day of dissolution, and the day of doom, on every spirit of man, is just the test which the text suggests, — the test of Christian character and Christian conduct. With the rigour of an omniscient examination, shall every branch be then inspected of the mystic vine, and of every branch the fruits of holy living be demanded; while on every one that has them not to show, the word, the condemning word, of the Most High, — " quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword," — shall fall, dividing it, at once and for ever, from the immortal Plant which shall for evermore adorn the Paradise of God, — rendering it useless to any end in the universe of good or of enjo3rtnent. For so, concerning the unfruitful vine-branch torn from its stem, the prophet has strikingly observed, — "Is it meet for any work? behold, it is cast into the fire for fuel."* But while the Great Husbandman is thus careful to remove from the sacred vine the entirely barren boughs, * Ezek. XV. 4. 246 LECTUEE XVIII. not less is His diligence and skill displayed in the means which He employs to render the bearing branches produc- tive more and more : — " Every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." Our Heavenly Teacher, it is obvious, by the purgation of which He here speaks, alludes to the operations of the pruning-knife, — by which the art of the vine-dresser tames and coerces the gadding l)oughs ; checking their involved and erratic lapse ; preventing the tender shoots from run- ning into dry impervious wood, and the prolific sap and vigour transmitted from the root from wasting itself on a prodigal and stifling exuberance of leaves. The value of the knife to each fruit-bearing bough, in lopping its w^anton growth, and concentrating the vegetable vigour in the creation of a richer and more exquisite produce, is a thing of familiar knowledge to us all. Even so, it is a proof of the great Husbandman's regard to the vine which " His own hand hath planted, the branch which He hath made strong for Himself," that He does not spare, when needful, the salutary steel, nor suffer the superfluous shoots and suckers, with licentious overgrowth, to drain away the prolific juice, reserved for worthier purposes. Eor, like the unpruned and undirected vine, the soul of man, — even of regenerate man, — is ever ready, when withdrawn from under the control of strict and hardy discipline, to luxuriate into a swoln and barren rankness. Even the believer in the present state, when left too long unvisited by the severer applications of God's word and providence, is apt to feel a spirit of easy, self-indulgent, indolence creeping over his spiritual faculties, under which the display of Christian character, the exercise of Christian principles, the exhibition of Christian conduct, grows faint and lan- guid; while, like a luxuriance of idle foliage, enfeebling JOHN XV. 1, 2. 247 his soul's productive energies, a x^rofusion of worldly tastes and principles and habits effloresces and overruns his soul. Nor will the Christian, aware, from observation and from experience, how naturally all this is the result of continued exemption from the severe, but salutary, discipline of the amputating knife, fail to consider it as a special privilege and cause of thankfulness to God, that, by His oracles of sharp rebid\e, or His strokes of afflictive visitation, the Heavenly Husbandman is careful to tame and chastise, in all His chosen, the gadding luxuriance of their spirits, and, — scattering on the dust, or on the sweeping blast, the leafy honours with which they thought themselves so richly clad, stripping them bare of their dearest worldly hopes and secular delights, — to concentrate all their energies on the one great end and object of their regenerate being, — that they may " grow in grace, and in the knowledge of their Saviour," and in meetness for the inheritance above, -^that they may more and more " abound in every good word and work, which is, by Jesus Christ, to the glory and the praise of God." However keen the stroke, however deep the wound, — though the biting steel has penetrated to the quick, and left him absolutely naked to the storm of outward beauty and defence, — this is the word on the faith of which he is patient and resigned, say rather, he glories even in tribulation, — that, by all this, the Celestial Husbandman is purifying his spiritual nature, that he may bring forth more abundant fruit; that, though ''no chas- tening," no reproof, " seemeth for the present to be joyous but grievous, yet afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fmits of righteousness," and that his " light afflictions, which are but for a moment, shall work out for" him at last "a far more exceeding and an eternal weight of glory." Gladly shall he feel himself ripening and maturing, by whatever !248 LECTURE xvm. means, for that expected day when, transplanted from this ungenial atmosphere into the eternal paradise of God, — decked with nnfadinof verdure, and laden on all its bou^'hs with overflowing fruit, cheered by the sunshine of Jeho- vah's smile, and watered by the perennial streams of life, the holy vine which the Lord Himself shall then have brought out of Egypt, and planted securely in the heavenly Canaan, preparing room before it, shall stretch its fair and fertile branches immeasurably round, till it hath filled the land, — till its boughs are like the goodly cedars, and the hills of immortality are covered with its shade. LECTUEE XIX. Chap. xr. 3—6. " 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. 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." The Saviour, you may recollect, in the commencement of this chapter, had represented the general truth concerning the relation subsisting between Him and the visible Church by the image of a vine, with its multitude of branches ; some of them fertile and productive in their measure, others utterly barren and useless ; the latter destined to entire and remorseless abscission from the holy society to which they visibly belonged, the former intended to be gradually improved and strengthened in their spiritual productiveness by the pruning-knife of God's word and providence, — by the removal of all carnal and worldly excrescences and superfluities of idle foliage which might deaden and enfeeble the productive energy of the holy stock diffused into each individual branch and shoot. In the passage before us, the Heavenly Teacher proceeds to apply the general statements of the two preceding verses to the individual case of those to whom, in the first 250 LECTURE XIX. instance, the parable of the vine was specifically addressed. He had spoken of two distinct classes of members in the visible Church, — ^the fruitful and the barren; those whose doom is to be finally among the reprobate, — and those to whom the promise appertains of progressive improvement in spiritual vitality and vigour, till they are transplanted to the Paradise on high, to flourish there in perfect beauty and perpetual fruitfulness. In the 3d verse, therefore, our Lord commences His application of the statements preced- ing to the particular case of the disciples, by stating, — for their comfort, encouragement, and excitement to abound in all the fruits of righteousness, — to which of these two classes they were, in His infallible judgment, to be assigned : — " Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." In allusion to another figure which our Lord had then been employing to represent the same thing, we find Him, at the 1 0th verse of the thirteenth chapter, observing, " Ye are clean," that is, as the context shows, — Ye have, with one exception, been bathed in the fountain, though still ye require from time to time to wash your feet ; ye have been generally pardoned and regenerated, justified and cleansed, forgiven for all your past offences, and purified in the grand j)rinciples of your character and the main tenor of your lives, — Ijut still, there are omissions and offences daily occurring in your practice, there are spots of defile- ment daily appearing on your character, which require you daily to have recourse to the blood which cleanseth from all sin, and to those means of still advancing sanctili- cation through which tlie baptism of the Holy Ghost descends on them who duly wait for it. Precisely the same sentiment is here expressed, though with an allusion to another figure, when Jesus declares to the eleven, as JOHN XV. 3 — 6. 251 branches of tlie living vine, " Ye are clean," that is, — Ye have been so far renewed and sanctified, so far imbued with emanations of that pure and sacred influence wdiich, streaming upwards from the mystic root, consecrates and fertilizes every branch, that ye have been enabled in some degree to bring forth the fruits of godly living; though still we require that the Heavenly Husbandman, from day to day, should purge you, that ye may bring forth more fruit. On the former occasion when Jesus said to His disciples, " Ye are clean," He added, " but not all;" alluding to the presence of the traitor, which then cast, as it were, a foul polluting blot upon the sacredness of the scene and the society.* But now, when the dark-souled son of perdition had relieved them of his uncongenial presence, and they stood around their Lord, — a company of sincere and loyal, though imperfect and weak, disciples, — upon the vine-clad banks of Kedron, He assures them, with no subjoined exception, "Ye are clean." Now, the question which I wish to ask, in the present circumstances of this congrega- tion, is — which of those two forms of expression ought, in truth and justice, to be applied to those of us who lately, by solemnly enrolling ourselves among the members of the visible, did as solemnly declare ourselves members of the vital, church? Is that Omniscient Saviour who hath said, " Let all the churches know that I am He who searcheth the hearts and trieth the reins of the children of men," — is He now saying to us, as He did to the eleven upon the bank of Kedron, "Ye are clean," or, as to the twelve in the paschal chamber, " Ye are clean, but not all?" Alas! alas! my brethren, dare we flatter ourselves with the belief that * John xiii. 10, 11, 252 LECTURE XIX. the proportion, among us, between the precious and the vile, approaches even to that which divided the chosen company of whom the Heart-searcher testified, — "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" Dare we reckon, think you, among those who, last Lord's-day, encompassed the sacred board, one traitor to every twelve? That man is a traitor, — Iscariot is his type, — who, after having, with such august and sacred rites, professed him- self a follower of the Lord, shall not, in all time to come, assert and vindicate that sacred profession by a correspond- ing character and conduct, — by a life of which the ruling powers are, respect for the Saviour's authority, and grati- tude for the Saviour's love, — by a life that, in the sense of this parable, shall show that he is clean, and that he is fruitful, by " cleansing himself from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, and by perfecting holiness in the fear of God." While, therefore, the true communicants read their duty, let false communicants read their doom, in the words of the Eedeemer now before us. To the former He speaks in the third and the two succeeding verses, — to the latter, in the verse that follows these. To the one He begins by saying, " Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken to you." For it is the constant doctrine of Sacred Writ, that, in the sanctification of be- lievers, as the Holy Ghost is the All-powerful Agent, so the word of God is the appointed and appropriate instrument. To the same effect we find our Lord, in the prayer sub- joined to this divine discourse, entreating, — " Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth." In like manner, the apostle declares it to have been the Saviour's object in loving the Cliurch and giving himself for it, — " that He might sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of JOHN XV. 3—6. 253 water, tlirougli the word."* Whence let every one who is sincerely desirous that the work of sanctiii cation should either be begun, or be promoted, in his heart and character and life, learn that, for this end, he bring his thoughts and feelings as much as possible into direct, immediate, permanent, contact with the Oracles of God; laying his whole nature as open as possible to their native in- fluence, and evermore entreating that, by means of that influence, the Holy Spirit would work His effectual work ; — ^that, " being begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever," he may continually derive from the same enlivening truth of which Jesus Himself hath said, " The words which I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life," fresh supplies of liveliness, vigour, alacrity, and energy, to his spiritual existence ; that he may find the same word which was the instrument of his regenera- tion still proving its nature and its strength by becoming that of his sanctification, and come experimentally to know the sequence and connection of his Master s words, " Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." Your duty, my brethren, whom the Holy Ghost has once renewed, and whom He is purifying, day by day, through the truth, — the word of the Omniscient, which is truth, — the Saviour has taught you in the words which next solicit our attention : — " Abide in me, and I in you." " Abide in" Christ, — that is, Continue in all those holy acts and habits which are appropriate to the connection that subsists between your Saviour and your souls ; con- tinue loving, admiring, trusting, serving, glorifying, and imitating, Him, — seeking and expecting only from Him, * John xvii. 17 ; Eph. v. 25, 26. 254 LECTUEE XV. through His Holy Spirit, those supplies of grace which you need to guide, sustain, quicken, refresh, and comfort, you in your spiritual course, regarding your connection with Him, and with God through Him, as infinitely the closest and most endearing, as well as the most permanent and momentous, relation in which you stand, — making Him your Prophet, your Priest, your King, your Shepherd, your Example, your All in All : and as the very foundation of your continuance in all these holy acts and habits, you must continue especially in believing. It was by believing the truth respecting Him you were first ingrafted as living branches into the living vine; and it is just by continuing to believe that truth, that you fulfil the exhortation to abide in Him. For it is God's revelation concerning His Incarnate and Anointed Son which alone affords the materials of every act, whether of thought or feeling, in respect of Him that is not mere delusion and enthusiasm ; so that from the very nature of the thing it follows, that perse- vering faith in Christ is the only possible principle of abiding union with Christ. Let, then, the value and importance of this as the grand bond of union by which the soul is connected with the Saviour be settled in your minds ; and be it more and more your endeavour to realize, in your personal experience, the description given by the great apostle, — faith's chosen champion in word and in deed, — in which he portrays so strongly, at once the closeness of his felt relation to his Lord, and the power of that fundamental principle by which it was constituted and maintained, — " I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me : and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son gf God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."* And ♦ Gill. ii. 20. JOHN XV. 3 — 6. 255 then, for your encouragement in the discharge of this great duty of abiding in Christ, remember, my brethren, that it is so, and only so, that you can enjoy the lofty privilege of Christ abiding in you, — that is, continuing to convey to you, through the appointed means, the supplies of that gracious influence on which all your spiritual im- provement, and all your spiritual enjoyment, are depen- dent. As the more entirely you give yourselves to Christ, the more abundantly you will feel Him given to you ; so, the more perseveringly you abide in Him by faith and holiness, the more habitually He will abide in you in strength and courage, in peace and joy. This is His own gracious promise implied in the text, — a promise couched in the bosom of the exhortation, to render it the more attractive to the Christian's heart, — a promise of which the whole mass of Christian experience felt by the individual believer, or recorded for the profit of the collective church, is one great confirmation. But besides the implicit promise by which the duty here enjoined is recommended, the Saviour proceeds, by explicit argument, to enforce its absolute necessity in order to the present fruitfulness, and therefore, to the ultimate salva- tion, of every Christian man. The argument He embodies in two distinct propositions, — first, that separation from Him is necessarily connected with spiritual barrenness; and, secondly, that union to Him is as necessarily con- nected with spiritual productiveness. First, Jesus declares that a state of separation from Him is, by necessity of nature, a state of spiritual barren- ness : — '' As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me:" and again, at the close 'of the 5th verse, — "Without me," — severed from me, — " ye can do nothing ; " or, as the word 256 LECTUEE XIX. " do" is frequently used in the original language in such a connection, ye can produce nothing, — no blossom of spi- ritual beauty, no fruit of spiritual holiness. These words, — which are too plain to require any remarks by v/ay of interpretation, — constitute one of the strongest and most decisive testimonies which the word of God contains to the humbling, yet most certain and most important, truth of the complete moral impotence of human nature, — its incapacity, even at its best estate, for the discharge of any single duty in such a way as shall be acceptable to the great Lawgiver of morality and Arbiter of doom, except in so far as it is immediately the subject of Divine influence, of heavenly grace. For this spiritual incapacity of which we speak is not to be conceived of as if it were applicable to human nature only in its unrenewed condition ; though such be its predominant and pervading prevalence in that condition of our being, that even the brightest displays of heroic character and amiable feeling which may illuminate the history of those who are living without Christ in the world, deserve no higher name than that which an ancient Father gave them, of plausible and splendid sins. We are to feel that even after our regeneration, — after we have become, in the ruling principles of our character and the general tenor of our life, the subjects of a celestial agency, — every thought, and word, and action is in such a degree imperfect and impure, as to be unacceptable in the sight of " Him with whom we have to do," which does not flow specifically and directly from the promptings and tlie power of that superior agency. " We are not sufficient," says the apostle, " of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;" "It is God who worketh in us to will and to do of His good pleasure."* * 2 Cor. iii. 5: Thil. ii. 13. JOHN XV. 8 — 6. 257 And while it is thus certain that every degree of spiritual holiness which any single believer is permitted to attain, every act of spiritual holiness which he is enabled to per- form, is the fruit of a Divine influence ; it is no less cer- tain that that influence, in every case, flows down on that believer s character and life from Jesus as its source. It is, no doubt, directly and immediately the influence of the Holy Ghost ; but then, it is an influence exerted, in every particular instance, at the pleasure, — according to the will, — of the exalted Mediator. "When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and received gifts for men,"* — all the sevenfold gifts of spiritual grace and spi- ritual power. The whole dispensation of the Spirit was committed to His hands, to the end that He might bestow it where and how He pleased; and in the text He has distinctly told us where and how He does please, in point of fact, that that power from on high should be communi- cated by which, and which alone, we can truly please the Father, — ^by which alone we can "have our fruit unto holiness," and " prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God." Such communications of heavenly grace and strength, we are here assured, are reserved exclusively for those who have been ingrafted into Christ by the primary and initial operation of the same almighty influence leading them to set to their seal to God's testi- mony concerning Him, and who, by the persevering and habitual belief of that celestial testimony as "a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation," abide in Him, — continue exercising towards Him all those emotions and regards of which He is the appropriate object to each believing souL ♦ Psal. Ixviii. 18; Eph. iv. 8. E 258 LECTURE XIX. And then, while, on the one hand, the Saviour declares negatively, — "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me;" so, positively. He testifies, upon the other, — " He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit." This is another principle of Christ's administration in the kingdom of heaven, — here, at the out- set, announced and proclaimed by Him for the direction of His subjects, and, through all succeeding ages, as the experience of the church declares, confirmed and verified by fact, — that just in proportion to the intensity, the firm- ness, and the constancy, with which a believing soul adheres to Him in the exercise of a strong and steadfast faith, in that proportion shall it be replenished with those (M)mmunications of celestial grace which shall display their ])urity and power by clothing and adorning the whole character with a bright array of various excellence, glorify- ing to God and beneficent to man, — enwreathing the living bough's far-spreading growth with the verdure of holy l)eauties, and hanging on every shoot the clustered fruits of righteousness. Let every Christian, then, who lately bound himself by the most solemn obligations as at the altar of the Lord, and witli the solemnities of a ratifying sacrifice, — the same august and awful sacrifice by the blood of wliicli "the everlasting covenant" is sealed, — to be found more and more " steadfast and unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord," learn, from the place l)efore us, how, and liow alone, he may fulfil that solemn sacrament, — by keeping close to Christ; by cleaving to tlie Lord with full purpose of heart; by cherishing and (•ultivating into greater clearness and greater strength that fundamental grace of faith which is the very bond of vital JOHN XV. 3 — 6. 259 union between the Saviour and the soul ; by keeping the communication free and undisturbed between his spiri- tual nature and Him who is the vital source of spiritual life, and strength, and hope, and joy; by cultivating every day a more profound conviction of his own feebleness and helplessness and nothingness away from Christ; and by casting himself with more entire and unreserved depen- dence on the promise and the power of Him who hath declared, — " My grace is sufficient for thee, my strength is perfected in weakness."* And while the sincere professor of Christianity is here instructed in his duty, let the hypocrite and the self- deceiver here also read his doom. " If a man abide not in me," says " the Faithful and True Witness," — that is. If any one who has professed himself my disciple, and, in c-onsequence of that profession, has been received into my visible church, — externally connected with the holy and spiritual vine, — shall fail to verify his profession by a life and conversation becoming the gospel, — to prove the vital- ity of his connection with the sacred stock by the produc- tion of sacred fruit, — " he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." As the unfruitful boughs in a vineyard are lopped away, and cast beyond the precincts they deformed ; so the time is coming when each untrue, ungodly, unspiritual, pretender to the name of Christian shall be severed, by the avenging stroke of the Almighty, from the communion of the faithful, — shall be degraded and excluded from the enjoyment of all the rights and pri- vileges and rewards pertaining to the holy society; even as the Jews are described by the apostle under the image * 2 Cor. xii. 9. 260 LECTUEE XIX. of "branches broken off/' when "the kingdom of God was taken from them, and given to another nation, which should bring forth the fruits thereof" 'Nov only so ; but, as the dissevered vine-branch may no more be reunited to the stem, but, lying neglected in the dust, waxes sere and red, and droops its leaves and perishes, till, as Ezekiel has strikingly described, it becomes " meet for no manner of work," fit only to serve as fuel to the flames, — so shall the outcast hypocrite, at last, wither without hope of restora- tion or revival, lose all the semblance he once presented of spiritual life, of holy beauty, of Christian excellence and Christian hope, and, with disastrous rapidity, ripen for destruction, — become useless in the universe except to suffer, and to give his wicked and miserable nature a fit prey to the flames that never shall be quenched. And then, as men are wont to gather, at fit seasons, the faded refuse of a vineyard to a heap, and, that it may no more deform the aspect of the surrounding soil with its unsightly accumulation, to bid the crackling tire consume it from the face of the earth, — even so, the time is coming when " the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those that know not God, and obey not the gospel of the Lord Jesus Clirist, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power." Then " shall He send forth His angels, and gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them whicli do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."* And remember, bre- thren, that, according to the declaration of the text, tliis is the appointed doom not merely of him who avows himself ♦ 2 Thess. i. 7—9 ; Matt. xiii. 41, 42. JOHN XV. 3—6. 261 an alien from the commonwealth of Israel, and disdains even the semblance of a Christian profession, but of him who, however decided, however w^ell-sustained, his pro- fession may have been in the sight of men, shall be judged by the Omniscient Holiness at last to have prevaricated in that profession with his conscience and his God. Are there none among ourselves, my brethren, conscious of having, only last Lord's day, committed this base and ruinous offence? Oh! it were a blessed thought, — if we could reasonably entertain it, — that each individual man and woman who then appeared at the sacred board had come prepared with " the preparation of the sanctuary," — that every one was indeed in Christ who professed to be so at His table ; so believing, " our heart should rejoice, even ours." But ah 1 my brethren, we dare not, we cannot. We judge no man. We know not Avho it is ; but there is one, — but there are many, — on whom the transactions of the late solemnity have entailed the guilt of false profes- sion,— that fearful guilt whose fearful doom is here described in characters of lightning, in tones of menacing thunder. Who is it? who are they? I leave the answer to your conscience now, or to your Judge hereafter, as ye shall prefer. But how much better now to ascertain the truth, when conviction may lead the way to pardon, than then when it shall only be preliminary to doom ! LECTUEE XX. CnAP. XV. 7—10. " If ye abide in me, and rnv words abide in yon, 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. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved yoii; 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." Our Lord had been employed, in the preceding context, in setting forth the value and necessity of that vital union between Himself and His disciples which was essential at once to their safety and to their productiveness, — to their escape from final conflagration and destruction, and to their inheritance of a full reward. In the passage before us, He continues His illustration of the advantages to be derived, on the part of the disciples, from their persevering continuance in this sacred union, — that is, as we have already explained, in the exercise of all those habits of thought, of feeling, and of action, which were appropriate to the relation subsisting between Him and them, and more particularly, of tlie persevering faith which is tlie very basis and bond of that peculiar connexion which binds tlie Christian to the Saviour. The expression which Jesus employs in order to denote the fact (jf the union in question varies somewhat in form JOHN XV. 7—10. 263 from that which He had just before been using, but in its meaning and substance is the same : — " If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you." For it is not by immediate and essential incorporation of His being with theirs, that Jesus fulfils to His people His promise of dwelling in them, — but by the medium of His word understood, believed, and kept in memory. This is the foundation, the necessary foundation, of all those acts of thought, of emotion, and of action, the constancy of which is repre- sented by the believer's remaining in Christ ; and it is the channel, the appointed channel, of all those communications of special love and grace from Jesus to His people, the uninterrupted continuance of which is described by Christ remaining in believers. So that, if any one desires that the sacred and saving relation should either be formed, or cherished, in his soul, which is the basis of that blessed interchange of love and loyalty, on the one hand, and of superior love, of protecting care, of gracious influence, of saving mercy, on the other, between the sinner and the Saviour, his course is plain, — to betake himself to the serious study of God's testimony touching His Anointed Son, in its meaning and its evidence, until that testimony be firmly rooted in his steadfast faith and his habitual remembrance: — "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom." " Let that abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning: if that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, then shall ye con- tinue in the Father and the Son." * The duty of thus holding fast the words of Christ, and so remaining in steadfast union to His person, is here enforced by an exceeding great and precious promise, — a * CoLiii. 16; iJohn ii. 24. 264 LECTUEE XX. promise comprehending in its ample bosom all that we can imagine, or can desire, of blessedness : — " If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye wiU, and it shall be done unto you." It will be plain, at the first glance, to every one familiar with the analogy of faith, and the manner of our Lord in the enunciation of His general maxims, that this apparently universal and unlimited promise is to be understood with certain restrictions, — suggested by other parts of Scripture, as well as by the context of this very place. For since it is the doctrine of the Bible that often even the faithful " know not wdiat things to ask for as they ought," and since it is the testimony of experience that certain rem- nants of short-sighted desire, and of corrupt propensity, adhere to the will even of the most thoroughly regenerate of mortal men, — since the disciples themselves, to whom the promise was first of all addressed, frequently showed themselves imprudent and perverse in the matter of their most intense petitions, — it is plain that Jesus could not have intended, under the name and aspect of a blessing, to inllict on His beloved so ruinous a curse, as to put it simply and absolutely in their power to ask for anything whatever in the power of Omnipotence to effect or to bestow, and then to make themselves sure of receiving whatsoever it might be they had demanded. That such a promise as we have supposed would have been in truth a curse under the guise of a blessing, every one endued with the most ordinary powers of reflection and observation will admit. Even heathen moralists have remarked how often the gifts which men have sought from Heaven with eagerest desire, and most passionate entreaty, have been in point of fact, or might have l)een in point of probability, the very things which contributed most directly to their disadvantage, their over- JOHN XV. 7—10. 265 throw and ruin. By an induction of numerous and diversi- fied instances from real history, they have detected and ex- posed, as they express it, ' the secret ambush of a specious prayer,' and have thence recommended those who would enjoy long life and see good days, that, in their supplications to the power eternal, they should not too rashly judge for themselves of what was expedient and desirable, nor too narrowly limit the procedure of those whom they adored as hearers and answerers of supplications. And if the ancient sages, who gathered their principles merely from such observation and experience as the present world of temporary arrangements and undeveloped results sup- plied, could thus find reason to rebuke the folly of dictating to Providence, seeing how impossible it was for man to tell what would be really " good for him all the days of this vain life which he spendeth on the earth as a shadow," — ^how much more readily and deeply should we imbibe the lesson, — we who, in judging of what is good and what is evil, have to calculate not merely from the term of a man's life, but from that of his existence ; who know how possible it is for a man to be " clothed in purple and fine linen, and to fare sumptuously every day," and then, '* in hell, being in torment," to lift up his eyes in vain expec- tation of but one drop of comfort amidst the waste of boundless agony, — how possible it is, upon the other hand, for afi&ictions, bitter and tedious as we may account them now, "light and but for a moment" as we shall reckon them hereafter, to "work out a far more exceeding and an eternal weight of glory " in the kingdom of the blessed ; who know how even " the Captain of salvation was made perfect through sufferings," and by the cross, around which were gathered like a cloud all circumstances of earthly shame and agony, ascended to inherit the imperial crown 266 LECTUEE XX. of all creation. I am sure, then, tliat no Christian mind will feel as if we sought to curtail him of his privilege, or as if we represented Jesus as having promised His disciples more than He actually bestows, when we say, that the statement in tlie text, — though at first appearance unlimited in expression, — is very considerably limited in fact, and is to be understood and interpreted in strict accordance with that other declaration of Holy Writ on this most interesting point, — " This is the confidence that we have in Him, that we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us/'* It is not necessary, however, that we travel to unconnected and distant passages of the Sacred Eecord in order to per- ceive the just limitations under which the promise before us must be understood. It is addressed to those in whom Christ's words abide, — that is, to those who always act under the belief, and in the recollection, of the truths He has revealed, and the duties He has enjoined. If you insist on the promise being simply, literally, unreservedly fulfilled on His part, I, in His name, insist on the condition being simply, literally, unreservedly fulfilled on yours. I know that whatsoever petition ye shall present in the believing and obedient remembrance of Christ's truths and Christ's commands will be, must be, according to God's will. I know that such a petition will implore of God none but spiritual blessings with absolute, uncon- ditional, importunate entreaty ; that for temporal blessings it will be couched in the terms, and offered in the tones, of filial submission to your Heavenly Father's all-loving affec- tion ; that only in reference to benefits connected with your S(juls and with eternity will you then take upon yourselves t