With yours would mingle somewhat of glad song.
1 too have come through wintry terrors — yea Through tempest and through cataclysm of soul Have come, and am deliver'd. Me the Spring, Me also dimly with new life hath touch'd, And with regenerate hope, the salt of life; And I would dedicate these thankful tears
To whatsoever power beneficent,
Veil'd though his countenance, undivulged his thought,
Hath led me from the haunted darkness forth
Into the gracious air and vernal morn.
And suffers me to know my spirit a note
Of this great chorus, one with bird and stream
And voiceful mountain.^
(2) Christ is the life /or ever. Not only is He the life in us now, but through Him and in Him we never die. Our souls rise up in war against the thought of ending, and as they struggle with
^ William Watson.
126 THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE
their limitations and their chains, the great Deliverer comes, as He came that night to the little group shocked with the sorrow of His departure, and says to us, " I am the life."
^ The man who is sailing under trustworthy captainship, and in company with genial friends, out of one zone into another, is scarcely conscious of the lines of demarcation over which the ship glides. Throughout the months of summer, darkness is unknown in the latitudes of the far north. The rising and the setting suns blend their light without the handbreadth of a shadow between.^
I lift mine eyes to see: earth vanisheth.
I lift up wistful eyes and bend my knee : Trembling, bowed down, and face to face with Death,
I lift mine eyes to see.
Lo what I see is Death that shadows me:- Yet whilst I, seeing, draw a shuddering breath, Death like a mist grows rare perceptibly.
Beyond the darkness light, beyond the scathe Healing, beyond the Cross a palm-branch tree,
Beyond Death Life, on evidence of faith ; I lift mine eyes to see.^
1 T. G. Selby, The Imi^rfect Angel, 256, ' C. G. Rossetti, Foems, 193.
The Giving of the Comforter.
197
Literature.
Aitken (J.), The Abiding Law, 11.
Benson (R. M.), The Final Passover, ii. (pt. i.) 353.
Bernard (T. D.), The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ, 157.
Bishop (J.), Tlie Christian Yea/r in Relation to the Christian Life, 243.
Bourdillon (F.), Short Sermons, 189.
Brown (J. B.), The Divine Mystery of Peace, 65.
Butler (W. J.), Sermons for Working Men, 289.
Churcli (R. W.), Cathedral and University Sermons, 182.
Dick (Q. H.), The Yoke and the Anointing, 160.
Drysdale (A. H.), Christ Invisible our Gain, 175.
Hoare (E.), Great Principles of Divine Truth, 218.
Ingram (A. F. W.), A Mission of the Spirit, 190.
Jackson (G.), The Teaching of Jesus, 65.
Jerdan (C), For the Lambs of the Flock, 346.
Jones (J. D.), Things most surely believed, 126.
Joynt (R. C), Liturgy and Life, 204.
McCosh (J.), Gospel Sermons, 150.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : John ix.-xiv., 320.
Murray (A.), The Spirit of Christ, 60.
Pearson (A.), The Claims of the Faith, 14.
Russell (A.), The Light that lighteth Every Man, 138.
Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 339.
Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, i. 4.
Stevens (W. B.), Sermons, 28.
Thomas (J.), The Mysteries of Grace, 192.
Vaughan (C. J.), Doncaster Sermons, 463.
„ (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser. xiii. No. 1005. Wilson (J. M.), Sermons preached at Clifton College Chapel, i. 165. Christian World Pulpit, ix. 332 (W. Roberts) ; Ixi. 294 (R. J. Campbell).
The Giving of the Comforter.
If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth : whom the world cannot receive ; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him : ye know him ; for he abideth with you, and shall be in you. — John xiv. 15-17.
1. There is no such profoundly moving scene in all history as this last evening of our Lord before His death. We need not, and we may not, add one touch to the simple narrative of St. John; in his words the scene stands out in its absolute simplicity. As we read these last chapters of his Gospel we seem to be admitted to the very scene itself ; to the sorrow, the bewilderment, the helplessness of the Twelve ; to the far-reaching Divine mind and infinite loveliness of the Master.
"We stand before some great picture and strive to read the mind of the artist, and one of us will see one subtle meaning and another another; or we contemplate the many-sided aspect of nature, and each of us reads into it some reflex of his own mind ; and so it is with a great historic scene like this ; according to our spirituality, to our insight, and devotion, and purity, and truth, will be the lessons we shall draw from it. This Scripture is of no private interpretation ; it is wider and larger than any of our little formulas in which we may try to bind it. It is the task of a life to interpret all that is involved in this farewell address of Christ.
2. The disciples were in something like a panic over the announcement made to them by Christ that He was going away. At the bare word the world seemed to become a blank for these men. All the sunshine of life seemed to suffer immediate and total eclipse. For Jesus was everything to them. In a sense they had nothing in the world but Jesus. He was more than their best friend. He was their all in all. For Him they had ST. JOHN (2) — 9