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, 3 that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have 4 spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of 5 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 6 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, 7 and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what 8 ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear 9 much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved 10 you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. 11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.

EVERY need of life is absolutely guaranteed to him that rests under the wing of God. SECURITY? The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. PROVISION? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? GRACE? My grace is sufficient for thee. LOVE? That deepest, most unutterable, most insatiable of all the needs of man! When God can be faint or weary, when he can turn his face from the poor destitute in anger or scorn, when he can grow cold toward those whom he has loved and redeemed and called, then our doubts and fears may have some foundation.

Blessed, blessed truth of the sufficiency and faithfulness of God, if we would but let it possess our hearts! Whatever our needs, he can supply them, for he is God. He will supply them, for “God is love.” Incessant as may be our wants, small and trifling as may be our cares, harassing and anxious as, with the manliest and strongest of us, this daily earthly life must sometimes be, the Son of God is still Son of man. In his own human nature, glorified indeed, yet human still, human always, “He ever liveth to make intercession for us.” Let us believe, let us believe, and our joy shall be full. Be as willing to receive as he is willing to bestow. Give him the only thing in the world he cares for; the only thing we have to give him worth giving; the only thing he will not take by force; for unless given freely it is worthless; the gift that he has himself first given us, only it does not seem worth our looking at—even the heart; and then he will possess what he died to win; we shall be the dwelling-place of God. A. W. T.

THAT our Lord uttered the discourses in the fifteenth and two following chapters in the paschal apartment, on the point of departure, and with the disciples standing round him, seems most natural. E.

The heart of Jesus overflowing with love to his own, he still lingered awhile, in order once more to speak to them the peace-giving words, “Let not your heart be troubled;” to deposit precious pearls of comfort in the secret storehouse of their heart, which the Comforter should by and by bring forth from thence to be the everlasting riches, both of them and of all believers. The eternal communion of love between Christ and Christians, and the fruit which springs therefrom, is the subject of this discourse. Peace in believing is the first gift of the Comforter; the second is, the fruit of the life in love. R. B.

1-8. The spiritual oneness of Christ and his people, and his relation to them as the source of all their spiritual life and fruitfulness, are here beautifully set forth by a figure familiar to Jewish ears. B.—The parabolic discourse or allegory of the vine and the branches illustrates, under the figure of fruit bearing plants, the precious truth of the organic life-union of Christ with believers. He is the only source of their spiritual life and fruitfulness; they live in him and of him, and apart from him they must inevitably wither and die, like the branches cut off from the parent stem, although they may retain for a little while a deceitful greenness and appearance of life. The same truth is set forth by Paul under the similitude of the head and the members. Lange.

He called their attention specially to two thoughts: that the relation which had subsisted between them was to remain, only that they would be internally allied to and dependent on him; and that they must now become self-active agents for the spread of the kingdom of God, but that they could only become such by continued communion with him. To illustrate these points, he made use of the similitude of a vine: God, the vine-dresser; Christ, the vine; his followers, the branches. The fructifying sap flows from the vine-stock through all the branches, and without it they can produce no fruit; so the followers of Christ can only obtain, by inward and inseparable communion with him, the divine life which can fit them to be productive lalaborers in the kingdom of God. The branches wither when torn from the vine and deprived of its vital sap; so, also, the disciples of Christ live and prosper only in continuous communion with him. N.

1. I am the true vine. In these words that which is the keynote to the whole of these discourses—viz., “Let not your heart be troubled”—sweetly rings again, and all the more distinctly since the Lords adds, and my Father is the husbandman. R. B.—It was of the very essence of his mediatorial work, of the daysman who should lay his hands upon both, that as on the one side he could say, “I and my Father are one,” so upon the other, “I and my brethren are one;” and he is here asserting the latter relation, not excluding the former. But while the vine and the vine-branches must thus both be partakers of the same nature, he will presently challenge for himself a share in the work of the husbandman. He too has power to purge or cleanse through his word (verse 3). T.

2. Every non-bearing branch he taketh away; every branch that beareth, he taketh away from it; i. e., taketh away the superfluous shoots that rob the young fruit-clusters. The antithesis between taking away the whole branch that promises no fruit, and taking away from the fruit-bearing branch its superfluous growths, is put at once clearly, tersely, and forcibly. H. C.

The vine-dresser cuts off all useless branches, which consume the vital power of the vine without bearing fruit; so will all those who do not manifest the divine life in fruitful works, proving by this deficiency that their communion with Christ is but apparent, be cut off from the kingdom of God. But even the productive branches stand in constant need of the vine-dresser’s care; all exuberant growth must be trimmed; all excrescences hindering the course of the vital sap must be pared away; so the disciples, even those who enjoy the divine life in communion with Christ, must be purified constantly from foreign elements, that there may be no obstacles to the development of the divine life within them, or of the outward activity corresponding to it. N.

Either take away or purge, either cut off or prune: one of the two the Gardener does to every branch of the vine; and those who will not submit to the purging process of pruning, are taken away by being cut off. R. B.—If thou wilt not endure that what is evil in thee shall be taken away, thou must endure being taken away thyself. Beng.

Clean and yet needing to be cleansed. We have a hint here of that double relation in which every believing man stands to God, more fully stated in some of the Pauline epistles, yet distinctly anticipated here, and at John 13 : 10. The faithful in Christ Jesus are “clean,” being by faith justified from all things, and having thus a standing-ground before God; yet needing by the same faith to appropriate ever more and more of those purifying influences, which continually stream forth from him on all them that are his. T.

The continued cleansing of those who, by the word of Jesus, have been already pronounced clean, corresponds exactly to the continued washing of the feet of those who in the morning bath have washed wholly clean. The bath of justification comes first, the sanctifying feet-washing comes after. He who is not washed, who has not become, through faith and repentance, and forgiveness of sins in this way attained, wholly clean in his inmost heart—so clean that God looks upon him as righteous—such a one gets no good from any feet-washing; it will avail naught for him though he should outwardly cease from this or that sin; he cannot follow after sanctification—a reconciled heart is indispensable.

3. And what was it that made the disciples clean? The word. The word of life, the sweet gospel which the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, and which they had received in faith into their hearts. None but Jesus can comfort thus. R. B.

4-6. The discourse shades off gradually from the figure—the vine-branches—to the thing illustrated, viz., the human soul as being in Christ. The figure, however, still helps us to apprehend the spiritual fact. The central idea in these verses is the abiding; the sustained life-connection of the soul with Christ. As the branch, severed from the parent vine, is cut off from nutrition, can bear no fruit and dies, so the soul that abides not in Christ can bear no fruit—can not even live—but withers, dies, is cut away, fit only for burning. Human souls, abiding in Christ, bear much fruit; severed from him, as a branch may be severed from its parent stock, they can do nothing. The sense of the original in the phrase “without me ye can do nothing,” is precisely this: apart from me—severed from me like a branch cut off—ye are powerless as to spiritual fruitage. H. C.

4. Take heed that ye abide in me, and that I abide in you. The second clause is not promise, any more than the first; they are precept both. T.—Christ abides in them who abide in him. It is he who commences this gracious union; but if he should ever leave us, it would be because we shall first have left him. Nothing is more pitiable than a Christianity which, instead of present life, brings before God the recollected leavings of past life. It is surely not without meaning that the twelve loaves of shew-bread, in which Israel presented to the Lord the fruits of his good pleasure to them, were required every week to be renewed. Mouldy bread he will not eat.

5. The vine may live without the branches, and is able to replace three fresh ones for one that is cast off; but the branch cannot live without the vine. With impressive earnestness the Lord would engrave it on our memory: “I am the VINE, ye are the BRANCHES.” It is the vine which bears both branch and fruit, and the vine’s sap it is which runs through both. The Christian’s holy thoughts, his words and works which are pleasing to God, are simply fruits of the branches which abide on the vine, and which have running through them the life-sap of the vine. So soon as the commerce is interrupted between our poverty and Christ’s riches, it is all over with our doing; or if we do anything which looks like fruit from the branch, it is nothing but wild grapes, “servant’s toil, not the child’s work.”

For without me ye can do nothing. Our power to do reaches exactly so far as our abiding in Christ and his abiding in us; out of him we can do nothing; in him we can do much, ay, all things. Believers must, without ceasing, be spelling at these words. R. B.—We have a warning here to the regenerate man that he never seek to do aught of himself; not a declaration that the unregenerate is unable to do aught. “Being in me, only through putting forth of my power, suffering me effectually to work in and through you, can you accomplish anything”—a truth which needs to be evermore repeated, for it is evermore in danger of being forgotten by us.

6. Not that the branch, because withered, is therefore cast forth, but, because cast forth, therefore it is withered. An unfruitful branch is not withered when broken off from its parent stem; on the contrary, it retains a deceitful greenness for a little while; deceitful, because upon all this the sentence of death has irrevocably passed. T.—The cast-out branch withers; whatever remains of sap it might have had so long as it hung on ever so slightly to the vine, now quickly dries up; it becomes a hard piece of wood, which can no longer be bent, only broken. A man may refuse to be bent by grace, but he cannot hinder himself from being broken by wrath. Judas is a fearful example of this: he withered in one day. R. B.—They are burned; or, in its simplicity more terrible still, and they burn. But all which is here expressed or implied, of “the fire,” “the flame,” “the flaming fire,” “the lake of fire,” “the everlasting fire,” with all the secrets of anguish which words like these, if there be any truth in words, must involve, demands rather to be trembled at than needs to be expounded. T.

The one proper use of the vine is to bear fruit; failing this, it is good for one other thing—fuel. How awfully striking the figure, in this view of it! B.—There are trees which may be turned to secondary uses, if they fail to fulfil their primary. Not so the vine. As timber it is utterly valueless. It is with it exactly as with the saltless salt, which, having lost its savor, is fit only to be cast out of doors; both of them being meet emblems of the spiritual man who is not spiritual, who is good neither for the work of this world nor of a higher. T.

7. Ye abide in me.** “Abiding” means to keep up a habit of constant close communion with Christ, to be always resting on him, and pouring out our hearts to him, as our chief companion and best friend. So abiding, we shall “receive” and “find.” J. C. R.

And my words in you. When Christ said “I abide in you,” even an honest, truth-seeking heart might ask—What can I do to keep Christ abiding in me? But when Jesus substitutes “my words” for “I,” we see at once how the thing is to be done. We are to hold his words close to our own living, loving heart; study their significance; absorb their living force; breathe their spirit; conform our voluntary activities evermore to their demands. He who loves Christ’s words and keeps them in abiding force upon his own moral nature certainly has Jesus himself abiding in the heart. Fulfilling these conditions “ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” What richer promise could the very soul of want frame for itself? What more should the children of poverty and need desire than the privilege of asking what one will, to be granted him? H. C.

8. In the tenderest and most comforting way the Lord illustrates the meaning of this one necessary thing: abiding in him. No less than ten times does he here mention it; and so deeply was it engraven in the heart of John, that in his epistle all his exhortations to Christians are made to converge to this as their centre. If we abide in him, his words—the cause of our being clean—abide in us; and if his words abide in us, because in the obedience of faith we live upon these words, “doing what they command and loving what they promise,” we then bear much fruit, for we may ask whatever we will—that is, with a disciple’s will having respect to these words—and it shall be granted us. R. B.

So shall ye be my disciples. For this and only this is learning truly of me; imbibing my spirit; walking in my footsteps. For this I have called, taught, trained you all; this work, therefore, I expect at your hands. H. C.

9. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.** Here the Lord names the true element of life in the vine and in the branches, viz., love—the love with which the Father has from all eternity loved the Son and the Son the Father; the love with which the incarnate Saviour loved us even to the end, that in return we might love him, and in him one another. Behold, what kind of love Christ has shown to us! He has loved us even as he—in the beginning and also in the flesh—has been loved by the Father. R. B.

In my love. The “love of Christ” always in the New Testament means Christ’s love to his people—not their love to him; and the cognate expression “my joy,” in the context, does not signify “a joy experienced by you in reference to me,” but “the joy which I have in you.” The injunction, “continue in my love,” therefore means: “Habitually cherish those tempers, and follow that course of conduct, which, being accordant to my will, may secure the continuance of my regard and favor.” J. B.

10. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love.** The obedient spirit of true discipleship cherishing and attracting the continuance and increase of Christ’s love. B.—The love of Christ constrains us to love Christ. And both these two, the cause and the effect, are contained in abiding in his love; namely, that we believingly abide in his love to us, and that we joyfully abide in our love to him.

11. Christ’s heart is a joyful heart even in the deepest suffering; for he abides in his Father’s love, and that is the source and essence of all joy. This joy of Jesus Christ should become our joy. In him it is full; in us it becomes full, it grows with our growing faith until it reaches its fulness, when he will satisfy us with the joys of his countenance in heaven. R. B.—Feeding on him, dying with him, at liberty with his freedom, walking daily in his light, forgiven through his mediation, enriched and sanctified by his intercession—thus abiding in his love, what can the brave, true Christian need more? His tranquillity will be like that of the sea when the storm had been subdued—not a dead or stagnant “calm,” but the rippling calm that laughs, because it moves and makes music and catches all the light of heaven. F. D. H.

Section 144.—Last Discourse: Mutual Love.

The Guest-Chamber.

12,13. This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater 14 love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my 15 friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all 16 things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in 17 my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that ye love one another. 18, 19 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I 20 have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have per- secuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my saying, they will keep 21 yours also. But all these things they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they 22 know not him that sent me. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not 23 had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hateth me, hateth my 24 Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen, and hated both me and my Father. 25 But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause. 26 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even 27 the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me. And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.

FRIENDSHIP is such a relation of man to man, that from mutual esteem, admiration, and attachment, rather than from regard to interest, each desires the welfare of the other, and delights in his company; and consequently each is ready to fulfil the wishes of the other and to make sacrifices for his pleasure. It is a flowing of soul to soul. Even in common society, its triumphs are sometimes beautiful and ennobling, but it is nowhere so pure and unearthly as where it subsists between souls which have been touched by the Spirit of God. Then it is a fountain which wells forth from the cross of the heavenly Friend. The twelve, the seventy, the holy women who companied with him, the thousands of less distinguished disciples, all stood to him in the relation of friends. It was not merely John who reclined on his bosom, or James and Cephas who shared his more sacred retirements, or Lazarus whom he loved, or Mary and Martha who ministered to him; but all who hearkened to his words and sought his companionship.

When he spoke of dying for his friends, he had a perfect foresight of the scenes which were to mark the next few eventful hours. He saw the mysterious shadow of Gethsemane, the agony and bloody sweat. He saw the midnight assault, the arrest, the hurrying by torchlight from tribunal to tribunal, the cords, the scourging, the robes of scorn, the insults of the populace, the languor, the exposure, the ignominy, the blasphemy, the crown of thorns. He saw the accursed tree, the nails, the spear, the desertion, the blood and anguish, the complicated dying. He saw this to be a substitution, a suffering for others, for friends, for those who should forsake and deny him, for millions who were as yet his enemies. And seeing all this, he said, with an emphasis which we can now better understand, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” J. W. A.

THE Sermon on the Mount at the opening of Christ’s ministry, and this address in the upper room delivered at its close, are separated from each other not only by difference of circumstance and feeling, but as implying on the part of the hearers wholly different stages in the knowledge of truth. The first discourse is the voice of a minister of the circumcision, clearing and confirming the divine teaching given to the fathers. Blessings, laws, and promises, are alike founded on the Old Testament language, which the speaker at the same time adopts and interprets. He keeps in a line with the past, while he makes a clear step in advance. He gives, not so much a new code, as a new edition of the old one. The word of authority, “I say unto you,” is directed not to destroy but to fulfil. It is the original law-giver, clearing up his own intentions, and disallowing the perversions of men. As plainly as the first discourse links itself to the past, so plainly does the last discourse reach on to the future. If the one reverts to what was said in old time, the other casts the mind forward on a day of knowledge which is dawning, and a new teacher who is coming. In passing from the one point to the other, we have entered a new world of thought, and hear a new language which is being created for its exigencies. What makes the thought and language new? It is that the true relation of the Lord Jesus to the spiritual life of his people is now in a measure revealed. All subjects have here assumed their distinctively Christian character: they are in Christ Jesus. The faith fixes itself on him, and on the Father through him. The prayer is in his name. The love is a response to his love. The service is the fruit of union with him. The hope is that of being with him where he is; to abide in him is the secret of life, safety, fruitfulness, and joy; and the guiding power of this new state is not the explanation of a law, but the gift of the Holy Ghost the Comforter. Compare these ideas with those which characterize the first gospel teaching, and you see how much must have intervened in the gradual revelation of Christ, and in the gradual advance of his teaching, before such a stage of doctrine could be reached. T. D. B.

12. Nothing less than his matchless love toward sinners should be the measure and standard of love to one another. He that supposes he is right in the sight of God because his doctrinal views are correct, while he is unloving in his temper and sharp and ill-natured in the use of his tongue, exhibits ignorance of the first principles of Christ’s gospel. J. C. R.

14. His preventing love makes us, who otherwise would have remained enemies, friends to his Saviour’s heart; it draws us into the blessed bond of friendship with him, wherein we delight to do that which he commands us. R. B.

We have but to fill and follow up that gospel, to embody it entire in our own personal history, turning its precepts into a law, and its faith into a living principle. All the elements of moral grace and grandeur are there—the sublime devotion—the expansive charity—the greatness of soul, inspired not by the visions but the clear and certain views of immortality—the habit of unwearied well-doing, even in the midst of surrounding apathy, or it may be of calumny and injustice—those heaven-born virtues which spring not from earth, but are nurtured by prayer, and descend on the breast of every true believer from the upper sanctuary: and, to crown the whole, the single-hearted loyalty to him who poured out his soul unto the death for us, and who, himself the exemplar of all righteousness, tells his disciples that he will hold them to be indeed his friends, if they but love one another and keep his commandments—these are the simple and sublime lessons which all the wisdom of all the schools never could have reached, and most certainly can never realize. T. C.

15. Christ was a teacher, and gathered disciples; he was a master, and his disciples were his servants; he was a king, and they were also his subjects. But he chose a more close and endearing name to express the relation in which he would stand to his followers: “I have called you friends"—a title of affection and of confidence. J. P. T.

The Saviour dwells tenderly upon this name—friends, which he has given his disciples. To invite a joyful fulfilment of the duty which as friends they owed him, he reminds them of the friend’s rights which he had imparted to them. Hitherto the disciples had stood to their Lord in the relation of a servant, who knows not what his lord does. But henceforth the Comforter, putting them in remembrance, was to make clear to them all things that the only-begotten Son had heard for them from the Father, and in the gospel had made known to them. They are no longer servants, but children, because they have received the Spirit of adoption; they are no longer servants, but heirs, because they abide forever in the house with the Son, as joint heirs with him; they are no longer servants, but friends, being admitted into the secrets of their Lord, through the unction of the Holy Ghost. R. B.

Love is the greatest of human affections, and friendship is the noblest and most refined improvement of love. We have here an account of Christ’s friendship to his disciples; that is, we have the best of things represented in the greatest of examples. In other men we see the excellency, but in Christ the divinity of friendship. Christ took upon him flesh and blood, that he might have the relenting, the tenderness, and the compassions of human nature, which render it properly capable of friendship; in a word, that he might have our heart, and we have his. He who will give to Christ a faith unfeigned and a sincere obedience to his righteous laws, shall be sure to find love for love, and friendship for friendship. For Christ freely offers his friendship to all, and sets no other rate upon so vast a purchase, but only that we suffer him to be our friend. R. S.

16. The discourse returns again to the figure of the vine and the branches. As the branches do not exist before the vine but the vine before the branches, so it was not the disciples who first chose the Lord but the Lord who first chose the disciples to be his friends: the free, sovereign, gracious gift of his friendship is alone the ground and soil upon which they grow and thrive, and bring forth fruit which remains; because the Father “hears the Son always,” and they are the praying friends of the Son, who therefore are also heard. To go forth, to spread abroad, to increase in joyous growth, as branches fresh and vigorous with life do, and to bring forth fruit that may remain: this it is to which the friends of Jesus Christ are ordained; the apostles, that they bring forth the fruits of apostles; the whole company of Christians, that they may bring forth the fruits of Christians, such as may remain for the eternal harvest and follow them into eternal rest. But then will the saints eagerly throw the crown of their fruit at the feet of that Lord in whose name they went forth, praying and laboring, and to all eternity will thank the Father for so richly granting all the petitions which, as friends of his dear Son, and as taught by the Holy Ghost, they have brought before his throne.

In my name. Prayer in the name of Jesus—it is repeated in all the three chapters of this farewell discourse—this is the beginning, the middle, and the end of what we have to do in order to make our calling and election sure; for we as branches are directed to be mere recipients, and every one that asketh receiveth. R. B.

22. They had not had sin.** That is, not the sin which makes all other sin especially sinful and inexorable—the sin of not believing on him. No man shall die in his sins except him who, through unbelief, thrusts from him the forgiveness of sin, which, in the name of Jesus, is offered to him. This is the real sin which contains all others. Luther.

24. The Father’s word which Christ spoke, he confirmed by his Father’s works, which he did—works in which he revealed his glory as the only-begotten Son of the Father, and the love-imbued power of which had so often drawn from the people the acknowledgment of their praise. But the world, which is averse to the love of God, joins together things which to souls susceptible of truth are separated by poles asunder, viz., seeing and hating. R. B.

26. The Spirit of truth shall testify of me.** As the first discourse linked the personal teaching of Christ to the Law and the Prophets which went before it, so the last discourse links that teaching to the dispensation of the Spirit, which is to come after it. The fact on which the first is founded is that the Law of God has been given to men as the guide to righteousness; the fact on which the last is founded is that Jesus himself has now been presented to men as the object of faith. T. D. B.

27. Ye shall bear witness.** Not through suggestions from heaven communicated directly to man in general, nor yet by visibly appearing, will the Holy Ghost testify; but in the hearts and through the mouth of the apostles (“and in fact ye shall bear witness” is the exact reading of the text). And it is no new thing, before unheard of, that he will announce; but he will testify what the apostles have from the beginning seen and heard with Christ, teaching and bringing to their remembrance, and thus opening the word of life to their new and more complete understanding. R. B.

When the apostles give their human testimony to Jesus, the Holy Ghost watches over their discourse, guards them from error, purifies, elevates, strengthens their memory, and imparts fitting words; and while each apostle speaks in his own peculiar way, he is yet wholly imbued with the Spirit. Thus, we recognize one and the same word to be at the same time both human and divine; appearing as one, we yet acknowledge it to be two joined together, and the God-man’s twofold nature in one person is mirrored as a twofold, at once divine and human, witness in one and the same word. All that the apostles speak is at the same time divine and human. Löhe.

THE hour would come—was not far hence even then—when such words from Jesus would be supremely inspiring. How they must have come up to their minds afresh amid the glories of the great Pentecost! How the witnessing testimonies of that scene must have quenched the fear of the disciples lest their Master’s claims and cause were doomed to go down in dishonor and oblivion! H. C.

Section 145.—Persecution foretold. Office Work of the Spirit.

The Guest-Chamber.