leading idea of the parable, in order to impress tlie lesson He is teacliing on the disciples' minds : — " I repeat the assertion I made. The relation between you and Me must be as close and intimate as that between a vine and its branches."
[He that abideth...much fruity Here our Lord gives encour- agement to the disciples to keep up the habit of closest union with Him. This is the secret of bearing " much fruit," and be- ing an eminently holy and useful Christian. The experience of every age of the Church proves the truth of this saying. The greatest saints have always lived nearest to Christ.
Do we not see here that there is a difference in the degrees of f ruitf ulness to which Christians attain ? Is there not a tacit distinction here between " fruit " and " much fruit " ?
[For icUhout Me. ..do nothing.'] The marginal reading gives our Lord's meaning more completely : " Severed from Me, sep- arate from Me, you have no strength, and can do nothing. You are as lifeless as a branch cut off from the parent stem."
We must always take care that we do not misapply and mis- interpret this text. Nothing is more common than to hear some ignorant Christians quoting it partially, as an excuse for indolence, and neglect of means of grace. " Yo-u know we can do nothing," is the cry of such people.— This is dragging out of the text a lesson it was never meant to teach. He that spoke these words to His eleven chosen Apostles, is the same Lord who said to all men who would be saved, — " Strive to en- ter in ; " — " Labor for the meat which endureth to everlasting life ; " — " Repent and believe."
6. — [If a man abide not. ..turned^ The consequence of not abid- ing in Christ, of refusing to live the life of faith in Christ, are here described under a terrible figure. The end of such false professors will be like the end of fruitless and dead branches of a vine. Sooner or later they are cast out of the vineyard as ■withered, useless things, and gathered as firewood to be burn- ed. Such will be the last end of professing Christians who turn their backs on Jesus, and bear no fruit to God's glory. They will finally come to the fire that is never quenched in hell.
These are awful words. They seem, however, to apply spe- cially to backsliders and apostates, like Judas Iscariot. There must be about a man some appearance of professed faith in Christ, before he can come to the state described here. Doubt- less there are those Avho seem to depart from grace, and to go back from union with Christ ; but we need not doubt in such cases that the grace was not real, but seeming, and the union was not true, but fictitious. Once more we must remember that we are reading a parable.
That there is a hell, and that God can punish, seems plainly taught in this verse.