(2) They did not understand His teaching till the Spirit came and interpreted it. When He went away, the blessing that He promised as more than compensation for His presence was that they should enter into the significance of His past companionship with them, that the Spirit should bring to their remembrance whatsoever He had said unto them, and, in the light of His death and exaltation, become the Interpreter of all the deeper things which in their natural intercourse with Him their eyes had not been open to perceive.
When the Comforter came, all things were brought back to their remembrance. Old truths and perplexing memories received their true solution. Words they had mused upon in doubt were interpreted ; sayings they had thought already clear were seen to have profounder meanings ; a fountain of light sprang up within them, an illumination cast from an unseen teacher unfolded to their consciousness the deep things of God and of His Christ. Their very faculties were enlarged : they were no longer pent up by narrow senses and by the succession of time, but were lifted into a light where all things are boundless and eternal. A new power of insight was implanted in their spiritual being, and a new world rose up before it ; for the Spirit of truth dwelt in them, and the world unseen was revealed.
^ The great truths are never apprehended while the great teachers of those truths are living to expound them. The death of a great teacher deepens and disseminates the knowledge of the truth. It was so with the death of Christ. It has been so with the death of every great teacher since Christ died. For the truth is always greater than the individual expounder of it — deeper, higher, broader, larger. The death of the teacher deepens the knowledge of the truth. While he lives, multitudes of men are attracted by his own personality, by the peculiar form in which he puts the truth, by the amplitude of illustration, by the vehemence of utterance and strength of conviction, by qualities that are in himself ; and those qualities, while in one sense they interpret, in another sense they obscure, the truth. No man realizes this like the man who is trying to interpret a great truth
> L. Abbott, Signs of Promise, 41.
ST. JOHN XVI. 7 217
to mankind. In him it dwells ; in him it burns as a fire. He seeks to fling open the doors of his heart that men may look in and see, not him, but the truth that is the power within himself ; and he is perplexed and humiliated and distraught and sorrow-stricken that men will not see the truth, but will look only at him, at his words, at his figures, at his illustrations, at his genius, at his gestures. But when he has gone, and these outward interpretations and semblances begin to fade from their memory, that which they really obscured, but which they seemed to interpret, — or for the time did really though imperfectly and obscurely interpret, — that begins to dawn upon them. The truth grows larger, deeper, in their apprehension; they look beyond the man to feel that the utterance was made eloquent by the truth within him ; that the truth was the real inspiration.^
4. The Spirit comes to make us able to witness for Christ. The work of the Spirit is wrought through Christians. His work is our work ; and because He works through us, and not in our- selves only, our work becomes possible. We are called upon to make known in act and word that men are made for fellowship with God; that even in the tumults and disorders of life the Divine law can be fulfilled and alone brings rest ; that Christ and not the Evil One is the rightful sovereign of all. This is the interpretation of Christ's life which the Spirit gives through the Church, through us.
^ Is not the trouble with most of our witnessing for God that it is inconstant and inconsistent, lacking unity as well as continuity? What is our hope but the indwelling Spirit of Christ, to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, to inspire every word and deed by His love ? Then will " broken lights " blend in steady shining, the fractional be summed up in the integral, and life, unified and beautified by the central Christ, radiate God's glory, and shine with Divine effulgence.^
* L. Abbott, Signs of Promise, 45.
' M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 9.
The Spirit and the World.
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LITERATURE.
Bushnell (H.), Christ and His Salvation, 98. Davies (J. LI.), Spiritual Apprehension, 40. Forsyth (P. T.), Missions in State and Church, 51. Hull (E. L.), Sermons preached at King's Lynn, 2nd Ser., 14, 29. Jenkins (E. E.), Life and Christ, 143. Liddon (H, P.), Sermons on Some Words of Christ, 342. Maclaren (A.), The Holy of Holies, 279. Moule (H. C. Q.), From Sunday to Sunday, 188. Mozley (J. B.), Sermons Parochial and Occasional, 160. Nicoll (W. R.), Sunday Evening, 3, 21. Selby (T. Q,), The Holy Spirit and Christian Privilege, 43. Wilkinson (G. H.), The Invisible Glory, 233.
Christian World Pulpit, Ivi. 120 (Macdonald); Ixii. 395 (Campbell Morgan).
The Spirit and the World.
And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment : of sin, because they believe not on me ; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more ; of judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged.— John xvi. 8-1 1.