^ Before me lies a faded manuscript in the handwriting of a Puritan scholar, containing notes of his conversations with " that holy primate of Ireland, Doctor James Ussher, in the year wherein he died." Early in that year he paid a visit to the writer, who made humble request to him that he would give him on paper his thoughts touching the mysteries of justification and sanctifica- tion, and obtained his promise to do so. A few months later he visited him again, but without the promised document, and said in apology for his failure, " I did begin to write, but when I came to do so of sanctification, that is of the new creature that God forms by His Spirit in every soul which He doth in truth re- generate, I found so little of it wrought in myself that, appre- hending I should write but as a parrot speaketh, by rote, and without knowledge, I durst not presume to do so." A few days later still, in the moment when this meek and holy servant of Christ left the world, the attendant, who saw his lips tremble and bent over to catch the whisper of his last breath, heard it pass away with the prayer, " God be merciful to me a sinner." ^
O God of the Sunlight sweep away,
The memory of that evil day.
That drags me down to death:
"Wash me, and draw me up above,
Cleanse me in Thine own cleansing love,
With Thine own quickening breath:
Make me one with the endless sea;
One with the wind on the rain-drenched lea —
One with Thee— God of Love.^
^ C. Stauford, Symbols of Christ, 317. 2 D. Mountjoy, The Hills of Eell, 21.
I JOHN II. I, 2 255
II.
The Pleadek.
Jesus Christ is our Advocate, our Paraclete, the One called by God Himself to our side in our hour of extremity.
In the literature of devotion the Holy Spirit is frequently styled "the Paraclete." The name is nowhere found in our English version of the Bible, yet it is Scriptural, being a trans- literation of the Greek word which is rendered " Comforter " in St. John's Gospel (xiv. 16, 26, xv. 26, xvi. 7) and " Advocate " in his Krst Epistle (ii. 1) ; and, understanding that the latter is the right rendering, we discover a wealth of profound truth in these passages.
In the days of His flesh Jesus was God's Advocate with men. He told the Eleven in the Upper Eoom that, though He was going away, God would not be left without an Advocate on the earth to plead His cause and win men to faith. " He shall give you another Advocate, that he may abide with you for ever ; even the Spirit of truth" (John xiv. 16, 17). The Holy Spirit has come in the room of Jesus, and still from age to age performs the office of God's Advocate with men. But the advocacy of Jesus has not ceased. He is our Advocate in Heaven, pleading our cause with God.
1. Our Advocate is in the place of influence and power. We have an Advocate with the Father. That is no mere proposition, no mere indication of place. It is a mystic term, standing for something too deep for human language. " In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God ; " not just a position, not neighbourhood, not place, is the primary thought, but an ineffable relation of oneness. " The Word was with God, and the Word was God." And so we have an Advocate with the Father. " I and the Father are one." The advocacy of our blessed Saviour is not felt by the Eternal Father to be a presentation from without ; it is not an external pressure thrusting itself against God to move Him to our aid. The advocacy of Jesus Christ throbs within that bosom of the Father wherein the Son of God for ever is.
The language is figurative. It calls u^d to our minds the
256 AN ADVOCATE WITH THE FATHER
familiar figure of the ordinary intercessor, who pleads for some petitioner, and gets some indulgence for him, which the granter would not have conceded, but for the influence thus brought upon him to change his previous decision. Such a conception might apply to the Homeric and Virgilian ideas of Jupiter, alternately besought by Juno and Venus on behalf of Greeks or of Trojans, but it has no place outside of heathen mythology. Jesus Himself warned His disciples against so thinking of God, telling them that the Father knew their needs, and could be depended on much more than earthly parents to hear His children's prayer. He went further. After He had said, " I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, even the Spirit of truth," He added, as if to exclude the notion that His prayer would be the inducing motive with the Father, " I say not, I will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loveth you."
2. Our Advocate is righteous in character. He is " Jesus Christ tlie righteous." He is at once God our righteousness and humanity righteous through God in it. Jesus Christ is both parts or sides in the unity of God and man, both gratia gratians and gratia gratiata, the Divine grace that graces or confers, and the human grace received and shared. The human righteousness of Jesus Christ, which alone is or can become ours, was humanly both received and wrought by Himself: it was a righteousness alike of perfect faith and of perfect obedience. It was a righteous- ness of which His " blood " was the sole condition, and is the only symbol. Nothing short of that perfect attitude towards sin which is death at once to it and from it, and that perfect attitude towards holiness which is the life of God Himself in us, constitutes the righteousness that Jesus Christ was, and the righteousness that He gives. His blood was not only His own actual death to sin, it must be no less ours also.