^ At first the inner life depends largely upon stimulus from without: the soul lies to a great extent inactive unless some external influence rouses it from its sleep ; and, in the early days of our Christian discipleship, it is often the more public, the more outward, channels through which Christ's influence comes down that best satisfy our heart's need and most perfectly fill our craving for consciousness of the Master's presence. We go back in memory to the far-off time and the distant land which He blest by His benignant life, and we seem to walk with Him then and there, to hear the word of healing or forgiveness coming upon the sufferers who saw His human face ; we enter into converse about Him with those who are like-minded, and in that -friendly inter- change of thought we find our joy quickened and our peace made deeper ; and by many outward helps such as these the things of Christ are made more real to us and set into contact with our inner life. But slowly the soul reaches its own vision ; the neces- sity for any outward aids to realize the presence of Christ grows less, because in the new strength of the inward sight we behold Him companying with us ; and while the external means which formerly assisted us to a consciousness of His nearness are still there and still to a certain extent useful in their place, yet we no longer depend upon them to wake our spiritual apprehension or to raise our Christian emotion to its needed heat. The old things go away, and it is expedient that they should : the ministry of the Divine works directly upon our deepest lives, without the interposition of any intermediate agencies. We look for our Christ, not to any memories of far-off years, not to any words that others speak, not to any light that breaks upon others' faces like the out-shining of His glory — not, at any rate, primarily to these things ; we find and touch Christ by the immediate out- reaching of the soul.^
3. The work of the Spirit is not only to continue Christ's work ; it is to commend Christ.
(1) The disciples did not know Christ till the Spirit came.
It is a law of our nature that we lose in the breadth and accuracy
of our knowledge by too close and continuous physical proximity
to the object of knowledge. This is true as regards both things
* H. W. Clark, Laws of the Inner Kingdom, 64.
ST. JOHN XVI. 7 215
and persons. We cannot see the beauties of a great painting by standing close to the canvas. The tourist enjoys best the sights which he has seen during his tour as memory and imagination recall them after he has returned home. We learn to appraise our greatest blessings at their proper value — such blessings as health, youth, gospel privileges — only after they have been with- drawn from us.
Now, in like manner, the Lord's absence has brought to His Church the gain of better knowledge of Him. The Apostles knew their Master better, and appreciated Him more, after His departure than they had done during all the time that He went in and out among them. As a vehicle of Christian teaching His presence with them did not after all accomplish very much. For they saw the Son of Man in His personal poverty, in His human weakness, in His extreme humiliation. It was too hard for them to realize that that wayworn and weary Man, who clung to them for sympathy even when He inspired and attracted, was indeed the Mighty God. So long as He was among them, they really did not know Him. They could not understand the simplest truths about Himself which He taught them — for instance, the fact that He was to die as a martyr, and to rise again from the dead.
But how different these same men became after their Master had gone away ! The Comforter came to them at Pentecost, and all their dulness passed from them. The scales fell from their eyes ; or rather, they became full of eyes within. Their language now is : " Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." They knew Him not now in the carnal aspect of Him, but in His new life-giving power.
^ You know that the mother always loves best the child that is dead. It is not because the child that is dead was better than all the children that are living, but because death brings the loved ones nearer to us than life ever brings them. You will never know your wife till she has gone from you. We never realize the meaning of Good-morning until we have said Good-bye. The hand-shake and the sad farewell bring hearts nearest to one another. So the world never knows its great men while they live. We have many illustrations of this. While he lived, Abraham Lincoln was the most hated man of all Americans throughout the South, The moment that man who counted himself Abraham Lincoln's enemy, but proved unwittingly a
2i6 AN EXPEDIENT DEPARTURE
friend to his memory, shot him, that moment the South began to recover its reason, and to-day the martyred President is honoured South as well as North.^