^ 77m! Life of Henry Drummond, 472.
i88 THE TRUE VINE
^ Thou art the Vine,
And I, 0 Jesus, am a branch of Thine;
And day by day from Thee
New life flows unto me.
Nought have I of my own,
But all my strength is drawn from Thee alone.
As, severed from the tree, the branch must die,
So even I
Could never live this life of mine
Apart from Thee, 0 living Vine;
But Thou dost dwell in me,
And I in Thee!
Yea, Thine own life through me doth flow,
And in Thyself I live and grow.^
(2) The vine is nothing without its branches. ' It is the oranches that bear the fruit, and this is their office. Jesus wants us, and, with all reverence be it said, He cannot do without us. Of course, if He had pleased. He could ; but since He has chosen to make us branches in the vine, He requires us each one. All are in the vine, and all are needed.
A vine bears fruit — how? Through its branches. On the branches and on their fruitfulness all the vine's fruitfulness de- pends. One branch may wither, yet another bear ; but if it were possible that all should fail, there would be no fruit. It is a wonderful honour, then, to be called " branches " by Him who is the Vine. It means no less than this : " I entrust My cause to you ; I am content to wait for My fruit till you bear it ; through you I choose to live My life ; with all My yearning for fruit I inspire you ; what you bear, I shall own."
3. The branches are dependent on one another.
(1) As we are one with Christ and Christ with us, so we are one with other men. Our own bodies are so transitory, we seem to stand so far apart from one another, the sense of individuality within us is so much stronger and so much more obtrusive than the sense of dependence, that we are apt to lose sight of our intimate and indissoluble connexion with others as men and as Christian men. Hero again the image of the tree comes to our ' E. H. Divall, A Believer's Songs, 32.
ST. JOHN XV. I, 2 189
assistance. Nothing could show us more clearly that there is a unity between us as we now work together in our several places, and a unity between us and all who have gone before us. We are bound together in the present, even as the tree has one life, though the life is divided through a thousand forms, and we are children of the former time, even as the tree preserves in itself the results of its past life, which has reached, it may be, over a thousand years. These two ideas of a present unity and a historic unity are not equally easy to grasp. We can all see the present unity of the parts of the tree ; we can all rise from that to the conception of the unity of men in the nation or in the Church. However imperfectly the idea is worked out in thought, however imperfectly it is realized in practice, yet it is not wholly strange or ineffective among us. But that other unity, the unity of one generation with another which has been and with another which will be hereafter, is as yet imfamiliar to most men. The tree may help us to learn it. Cut down the tree, and you will read its history in the rings of its growth. We count and measure them, and reckon that so long ago there was a year of dearth, so long ago a year of abundance. The wound has been healed, but the scar remains to witness to its infliction. The very moss upon its bark tells how the tree stood to the rain and the sunshine. The direction of its branches reveals the storms which habitually beat upon them. We call the whole perennial, and yet each year sees what is indeed a new tree rise over the gathered growths of earlier time and die when it has fulfilled its work. And all this is true of the society of men. We are what a long descent has made us.
^ Moses was a thinker ; Aaron was a speaker. Aaron was to be to Moses instead of a mouth, and Moses was to be to Aaron instead of God. Thus one man has to be the complement of another. No one man has all gifts and graces. The ablest and best of us cannot do without our brother. There is to be a division of labour in the great work of conquering the world for God. The thinker works ; so does the speaker ; so does the writer. We are a chain, not merely isolated links; we belong to one another, and only by fraternal and zealous co-operation can we secure the great results possible to faith and labour. Some men are fruitful of suggestion. They have wondrous powers of indica- tion ; but there their special power ends. Other men have great gifts of expression ; they can put thoughts into the best words ;
I90 THE TRUE VINE
they have the power of music; they can charm, fascinate, and persuade. Such men are not to undervalue one another; they are to co-operate as fellow-labourers in the Kingdom of God.^