In this scene we have the beating of Christ's heart and the vision of His soul. Here He is, we may say, in His habitual considerateness and sympathy, in the quick, tender considerate- ness and sympathy that characterized Him all through His course, from the moment when, at the beginning of His ministry. He was filled with compassion for the multitude because they were as sheep without a shepherd, to the moment when, in the night of His betrayal, He pleaded, " If ye seek me, let these go their way."
42 SECRET OF THE UNTROUBLED HEART
2. Night had fallen with Oriental swiftness upon Jerusalem ; and there, in the guest-chamber of a friend's house, Jesus was partaking of the Passover Supper with His disciples. Not with all of them. Judas had gone on his mission of darkness. The shadow of some boding treachery had fallen on these men and chilled their hearts. " One of you shall betray me." In the intense quiet that had followed those words, they had looked at one another and doubted one another ; they had searched their own hearts and almost doubted themselves. Only one of them had been free from doubt, and he had something worse — he knew. But he had gone ; and after his departure the cup of foreboding was filled to the brim by Jesus Himself. Quietly, but with an awful intensity of meaning, He told them that He too was going away — going where they could not follow Him then. Not by any dusty Syrian highway was He going from them.
No farewell in history approaches this in bitterness. Before another sun had set Jesus was lying low in death. His disciples were orphaned. No wonder that they were troubled. Their universe seemed shaken. Every ambition, every hope, was taken from them. Failure appeared to be written on their Lord's mission and on their own. Such trouble is not mere sorrow. That may be hard to bear, but this is the collapse of all plans of service, all visions of future good and blessing. The sky was falling; all the lights in the firmament were being put out. Their life had become like a heaving sea, and even Jesus seemed powerless to quiet it. Their Master bids them conquer that passion of anxiety, of fear, of bitter disappointment. They are not to yield to it, for yielding means despair ; it is paralysis for every hope of influence and usefulness. There is a glorious picture in St. John's Apocalypse : God " shall wipe away every tear from their eyes." That is a golden promise. Here is something still more suggestive. The disciples are themselves to dry up the fountain of tears ; they are to quiet their own heaving breasts. Trouble has come, but Jesus bids them master it.
3. How does He comfort them ? Not by commonplace ethics or moralizings, but by drawing aside the veil that conceals the spiritual world, and revealing to them entirely new conceptions concerning the Father Himself, the future life, and their own
ST. JOHN XIV. I 43
relations to it. He, their Lord, is the Lord of life, and He will prepare for them a place in the glorious world which He Himself is about to enter. He does not so much teach truths as reveal facts about the future life. He "brings life and immortality to light." He is to depart, they are to remain. More remains concealed than even He can reveal to them. They can only trust Him, their loving Lord, and wait for the heavenly life of which He assures them. His chief urgency is that they should implicitly trust in Him — trust Him even as they trusted God Himself : " Ye believe in God, believe also in me."
^ My last lesson was the fullest revelation of the master (James Prince Lee). I was staying with him for a day or two at Mauldeth, a short time before his death. We were alone. After dinner I turned the conversation from work at Manchester to work at Birmingham. He was glad, I think, to go back to the old days. He spoke with proud delight of his favourite classical authors, as if they were still his familiar companions. He poured out quotation after quotation as we used to hear them at school, and dwelt on that finest single line, as he said, in Latin literature, "Virtutem videant intabescantque relicta." Graver, sadder subjects followed; memories of failures and disappointments. Then came a long silence. It was growing dark. Suddenly he turned to me and said, "Ah, Westcott, fear not, only believe." In those four words — no more was spoken — there was a true interpretation of life as the teacher saw it, and as he prepared his scholars to see it: Work to be done, work to be done in the face of formidable difficulties, work to be done in faith on God.^
Faith in God.
**Ye believe in God."
"As ye believe in God, so believe in me." This seems to be the true relation of the two clauses of our Lord's command. The words of the original are capable of a fourfold interpretation, but this seems to be the simplest, and most consistent with the moral and spiritual truth of our Lord's teaching.
He would not call them to believe in God as they believed in * Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, i. 28.