Notice how, in His reply, our Lord subtly and significantly alters the form of the statement which He has already made. He had formerly said, " If ye love me, ye will keep my command- ments," but now He casts it into a purely impersonal form, and says, " If a, man" anybody, not you only, but anybody — "if a man love me, he," anybody, " will keep my word." And why the change ? Probably in order to strike full and square against that complacent assumption of Judas that it was " to us and not to the world " that the showing was to take place. Our Lord, by tlie
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studiously impersonal form into which He casts the promise, proclaims its universality, and says to His ignorant questioner, "Do not suppose that you Apostles have the monopoly. You may not even have a share in My self -manifestation. Anybody may have it. And there is no ' world,' as you suppose, to which I do not show Myself. Anybody may have the vision if he observes the conditions."
2. " He will keep my word!' That is more than a " command- ment," is it not ? It includes all His sayings, and it includes them all as in one vital unity and organic whole. We are not to go picking and choosing among them; they are one. And it includes this other thought, that every word of Christ, be it revelation of the deep things of God, or be it a promise of the great shower of blessings which, out of His full hand, He will drop upon our heads, enshrines within itself a commandment. He utters no revelations simply that we may know. He utters no comforting words simply that our sore hearts may be healed. In all His utterances there is a practical bearing ; and every word of His teaching, every word of His sweet, whispered assurances of love and favour to the waiting heart, has in it the imperativeness of His manifested will, has a direct bearing upon duty. All His ivords are gathered into one word, and all the variety of His sayings is, in their unity, the law of our lives.
Here we have laid down for all time in precise language the condition of Divine manifestation, and the realization of Divine and quickening power as the reward of fulfilling that condition.
I.
The Condition is Loving Obedience.
He that longs for more satisfying knowledge of spiritual realities, he that thirsts for certainty and to see God as if face to face, must expect no sudden or magical revelation, but must be content with the true spiritual education which proceeds by loving and living. To the disciples the method might seem slow ; to us also it often seems slow ; but it is the method which nature
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requires. Our knowledge of God and our belief that in Christ we have a hold of ultimate truth and are living among eternal verities, grow with our love and service for Christ. It may take us a lifetime — it will take us a lifetime — to learn to love Him as we ought ; but others have learned and we also may learn, and there is no possible experience so precious to us.
^ Obedience is the very pulse of spiritual life.^
% This universe is governed by laws. At the bottom of every- thing here there is a law. Things are in this way and not that ; we call that a law or condition. All departments have their own laws. By submission to them, you make them your own. Obey the laws of the body : such laws as say, Be temperate and chaste ; or of the mind : such laws as say, Fix the attention ; strengthen by exercise; and then their prizes are yours — health, strength, pliability of muscle, tenaciousness of memory, nimbleness of imagination, etc. Obey the laws of your spiritual being, and it has its prizes too. For instance, the condition or law of a peaceful life is submission to the law of meekness : " Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." The condition of the beatific vision is a pure heart and life : " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." To the impure, God is simply invisible. The condition annexed to a sense of God's presence — in other
words, that without which a sense of God's presence cannot be
is obedience to the laws of love : " If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." The condition of spiritual wisdom and certainty in truth is obedience to the will of God, surrender of private will.^
1. The source of true obedience is love. — Love and obedience have always been the condition on which the enjoyment of the Divine Presence depended. The sum of the Ten Commandments is, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength and mind, and thy neighbour as thyself." And these words, of course, mean the same thing. They take us back, like the commandments, to His Father's authority, and they bring into force all those declarations of the Old Testament in which the keeping of the commandments is laid down as the con- dition of fellowship. " If ye walk in my statutes ... I will be your God, and ye shall be my people." Now it is love, and now it is obedience, that is named as the condition of union and