» J. H. Jowctt, in The Examiner, April 12, 1906, p. 348. ' T. Crawford, Horee Serena, 18.
ST. JOHN XIII. I 9
•' draw all men unto himself." But the love for His own which are in the world is no longer mere desire and endeavour. It is being realized in results intended. It has found response, and is generating a reciprocal life, and has the joy of exercising an attraction which is felt and owned, and of carrying on a work which imparts blessing and tends to perfection, restoring men to God through relations with Him who has loved them, relations which are spiritual, intimate, and eternal. Such love enters into the inner life of the beloved, and finds occasion for its exercise in their needs and dangers, their infirmities and failings. It delights to comfort and protect, to cleanse, to heal, to strengthen, to exalt. It is an inexhaustible fountain of gifts ; it is the " love of Christ which passeth knowledge." Yet, being true love, it is not content to give. It desires also to receive. It would be understood and trusted and confided in. It invites sympathy and fellowship. It claims reciprocity of ajffection. It would not only love, but be loved. Even in these last respects this is the character of the love which these chapters disclose. For our sake they disclose it, teaching us how He once loved, and by consequence how He ever loves, how He now loves. His own which are in the world.
^ Is there any reason why we should be afraid of saying that the universal love of Jesus Christ, which gathers into His bosom all mankind, does fall with special tenderness and sweetness upon those who have made Him theirs and have surrendered them- selves to be His ? Surely it must be that He has special near- ness to those who love Him; surely it is reasonable that He should have special delight in those who try to resemble Him ; surely it is only what one might expect of Him that He should in a special manner honour the drafts, so to speak, of those who have confidence in Him, and are building their whole lives upon Him. Surely, because the sun shines down upon dunghills and all impurities, that is no reason why it should not lie with special brightness on the polished mirror that reflects its lustre. Surely, because Jesus Christ loves the publicans and the harlots and the outcasts and the sinners, that is no reason why He should not bend with special tenderness over those who, loving Him, try to serve Him, and have set all their hopes upon Him, The rainbow strides across the sky, but there is a rainbow in every little dew- drop that hangs glistening on the blades of grass.^
^ A. Maclaren.
lo THE LOVE OF JESUS FOR HIS OWN
^ True charity or love in its noblest forms is in some measure like the Divine love. In some ways it is ubiquitous, though in other ways it seems condensed or concentrated. As Dr. Martineau said concerning the omnipresence of God and His special presence in the soul of Christ, no distant star missed Him the more because He shone with such peculiar brightness in the fair glory of that pure life.^
^ Perhaps we do not yet know what the word " to love " means. There are within us lives in which we love unconsciously. To love thus means more than to have pity, to make inner sacri- fices, to be anxious to help and give happiness ; it is a thing that lies a thousand fathoms deeper, where our softest, swiftest, strong- est words cannot reach it.^
2. He loved His own which were in the world. For He must leave them in the world. For many years after He has reached His glory, they will be exposed to pain and peril. So, in His tender pitying love for " his own," He devoted His l&.8t free hours of life to their instruction and warning, and comfort. In the majesty of His humility the Only-begotten Son of God washed the disciples' feet, even those of the traitor Judas. He instituted the blessed Sacrament of the Supper as the memorial of His love. He gave the disciples the promise of the Comforter. He left them the legacy of His own peace. He poured out in their behalf as well as His own the povs^erful pleadings of His great intercessory prayer.
^ The emigrant who, after years of absence in a foreign land, is at length on the eve of returning to his native shores, may be excused if he allows the new ties formed in the strange country to slacken, seeing he has the near prospect of looking again upon the old familiar scenes, and upon the faces of father and mother, in his childhood's home. But who can conceive the attractions and associations of the Eedeemer's home ? In going back to God He was returning to the glories of heaven, to the throne of the universe, to the companionships of eternity, to the bosom of the Father ! And yet, in this same glorious hour, so far from being self-absorbed, His love begins to burn with irrepressible ardour for "his own," whom He is to leave behind.^
' A. H. Craufurd, TTie Eelujion and Ethics of Tolstoy, 74. ^ M. Maeterlinck, The Treasure of the Humble, 162. ' C. Jerdan, Fw the Lord's Table, 36.