An Expedient Departure

Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you.—John 16:7.

One of the most distinctive things in the story of Christ’s earthly ministry is the perfect calmness which He manifested in regard to the future course and fate of the disciples He had gathered round Him and of the work He had begun. He has a clear gaze forward: no weight of disappointment for His own career cut short is permitted to dull His apprehension of what lies beyond the time of His departure: no overwhelming heaviness or consuming fever of regret possesses Him so strongly as to cloud His vision of what would happen when the Cross had brought His earthly labours to a close; and His thought leaps over Calvary’s torture and the sepulchre’s darkness to the wondrous processes of spiritual development which would begin with His death.

So untroubled are the clear depths of Christ’s soul, so unruffled is His sacred quietude—even here as He is almost entering upon the last experience of pain and lifting the cup of bitterness to His lips—that He can discern the actual relation between His departure from His disciples and the future Divine visitations which His disciples would know; and He can see that for their perfecting in grace it is expedient that He should go away. Truly, this was the Son of God; for man’s thought grows feeble and his face grows pale and his heart beats so loudly as to drown all whispers of hope, when he stands before the great crisis of his life: only to the Christ was it given to preserve the perfect serenity of His soul when the supreme moment came and the last dark shadows stretched themselves across His way.

1. “I tell you the truth.”—One does not wonder that our Lord should feel it needful, for the second time, to assure His bewildered and astounded disciples that He is telling them the simple truth. He had told them of the many mansions of the Father’s house, that He might still the trouble of their hearts at His departure. “If it were not so, I would have told you.” They would feel the force of His appeal to what they knew of His veracity, exactness, and love. And now again: “I tell you the truth. Notwithstanding the sorrow with which My going away has filled your hearts, it is better for you that I should go”—an assertion more difficult to believe than even that about the many mansions.

2. “It is expedient for you that I go away.”—Is not the expression used by the Lord something stronger than we should venture to use if we had not His own authority for it? Literally, “It is profitable for you.” There is no ambiguity in the word. It is found several times in the Gospels, and always with the same meaning. “It is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell.” “If the case is so, … it is not expedient to marry.” “Whoso shall cause a little one to stumble, it is expedient for him that he should be drowned in the sea.” “It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people.” Of two possible alternatives, that one is preferable which is introduced by the word, “it is expedient.” And in the phrase before us, the two alternatives are the departure and the visible presence of the Lord. “It is expedient for you that I go away.” It is better for you that I should go and send the Comforter than that I should stay with you in closest earthly fellowship for ever. Better for the world that Jesus should be removed from the eyes of men than that He should lead them to Himself by the magic of His words and the wonder of His works!

Why did Jesus go away? We all remember a time when we could not answer that question. We wished He had stayed, and had been here now. The children’s hymn expresses a real human feeling, and our hearts burn still as we read it:—

I think, when I read that sweet story of old,

When Jesus was here among men,

How He called little children as lambs to His fold

I should like to have been with them then;

I wish that His hands had been placed on my head,

That His arms had been thrown around me,

And that I might have seen His kind look when He said,

“Let the little ones come unto Me.”

Jesus must have had reasons for disappointing a human feeling so deep, so universal, and so sacred. We may be sure, too, that these reasons intimately concern us. He did not go away because He was tired. It was quite true that He was despised and rejected of men; it was quite true that the pitiless world hated and spurned and trod on Him. But that did not drive Him away. It was quite true that He longed for His Father’s house and pined and yearned for His love. But that did not draw Him away. No. He never thought of Himself. It is expedient for you, He says, not for Me, that I go.1 [Note: H. Drummond, The Ideal Life, 63.]

I

The Departure of Jesus

Christ has to recall His disciples from the contemplation of their own impending loss to the great gift which should follow upon that “going” which they deplored, but which they so little understood. He had shielded them hitherto, and the thought that that shelter was to be removed filled their hearts with sorrow. So full were they of their loss that no one asked how this departure affected Him, and thus they were in danger of missing the abiding significance of His departure for themselves. There are three words for “going away” used over and over again in these chapters, and there is a fruitful study to be found in the changes rung on these “bells of sweet accord.” Let it suffice to say that departure from the point of view of mere separation passes into the idea of a journey, and thence into that of a goal to be reached, a “going home.”

1. It was that parting hour of mysterious thoughts, of agonized affections, which is sometimes experienced when we are sure that death stands at the door and waits; when but a few minutes are given for parting words and loving reciprocations. Only, their Master was in the fulness of life and health. But for this mysterious assurance they could not have thought of His death. He reiterated it in their incredulous ears, and poured out mysterious and lofty consolations—greater thoughts, more spiritual sanctities, more loving sympathies than had ever fallen from His lips before. They were awed and perplexed as well as sorrowful.

2. Then His departure was the disappointment of their greatest hopes. Upon their Jewish standing-ground all their hopes of His Messianic Kingdom were frustrated—they “trusted that it had been he who should have redeemed Israel”; and now He tells them that, instead of sitting upon the throne of His father David, He is about to die. Not only were they losing more than affection ever lost before, but the fabric of their most cherished hopes lay in ruins at their feet. And it seems to have produced in them a stupor of feeling almost approaching to paralysis. “Does none of you even ask Me whither I go? Hath sorrow so entirely filled your heart because I have spoken these things? Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. Whatever sorrow My going away may cause you, it will be to you a transcendent blessing. If I go not away, the Comforter will not come to you, but if I depart I will send Him unto you; and when He is come He will work mightily in men, convincing them of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. You cannot understand now the things that I have to say to you concerning this great mission of the Holy Spirit. I can only assure you of its truth and greatness and blessing. It will be to you more than even My personal presence with you.”

3. Why, then, was it expedient for them that He should go away?

(1) Absence is better than presence under certain conditions.—The influence of the absent is not only sometimes stronger in its degree, it is always purer in its kind, than the influence exerted by presence. Sometimes, dimly, we have been conscious of the truth enshrined in these words. We have recognized the fact that the influence of absence leaves its spirit; and the more we think why we are here, the more we understand it. We are made to be tried, proved, tested, and the conditions of our trial are, or seem to be, whether we will do what is right when we are left to ourselves.

When was it that this or that man began to be so increasingly enterprising and energetic, to take a higher range, to produce his best, to be so wonderfully useful? When, perhaps, the outward support, the soothing praise, the popularity he had enjoyed, ceased to be his; when this and that pleasant prop upon which he had rested was removed. How it set free and drew out the forces latent in him, and made him thenceforth the braver, better, more efficient workman that he was capable of being! Many are the instances—more than we know, doubtless—in which greater and higher achieving, or beautiful developments of character and gift, have been largely due to some painful loss. Not seldom has such loss helped to promote superior performance, to give us noble labours and famous accomplishings with which otherwise the world might never have been blessed. And all that we want often, in order to our becoming more useful or more successful, in order to our attaining the heights that remain afar off, and that we vainly wish we could reach—all that we want often, is not that something should be added to us which we have not, but that we should just lose something. While we are crying fretfully, “Oh that such and such things were mine of which others are possessed! then would I conquer and do grandly,” the hindrance is not in what is withheld from us, but in what cleaves to us—in some little indulged weakness, in some infirmity or false habit of ours, simply to get rid of which would be our transformation into new creatures; would leave us armed and equipped for speedy triumph. Have we not known men concerning whom we have thought, What might they not be and do, if only they could lose a little, here and there?

As the wind extinguishes a taper but kindles the fire, so absence is the death of an ordinary passion, but lends strength to the greater.1 [Note: Maxims of La Rochefoucauld, 54.]

Even the holiest influences may deaden spiritual activity. St. Paul himself finds it necessary to detach himself, and though he had known Christ after the flesh, henceforth to know Him so no more. So for those disciples it was worth while to lose Jesus, if they might find for themselves the way into that spiritual world in which they had seen Him moving. For He did not come to be adored by men who could never reach His secret. It was His will that those who had been given Him should be with Him where He was.1 [Note: J. Kelman, Ephemera Eternitatis, 140.]

(2) But Jesus would be with them still, though not in bodily form.—If we would feel the full force and singularity of this saying of our Lord’s, let us put side by side with it that other one, “I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.” Why is it that the Apostle says, “Though I want to go, I am bound to stay”? and why is it that the Master says, “It is for your good that I am going,” but because of the essential difference in the relation of the two to the people who are to be left, and in the continuance of the work of the two after they had departed? St. Paul knew that when he went, whatever befell those whom he loved and would fain help, he could not stretch a hand to do anything for them. He knew that death dropped the portcullis between him and them, and, whatever their sore need on the one side of the iron gate, he on the other could not succour or save. Jesus Christ said, “It is better for you that I should go,” because He knew that all His influences would flow through the grated door unchecked, and that, departed, He would still be the life of them that trusted in Him; and, having left them, would come near them by the very act of leaving them.

When Christ went up to Heaven the Apostles stayed

Gazing at Heaven with souls and wills on fire,

Their hearts on flight along the track He made,

Winged by desire.

Their silence spake: “Lord, why not follow Thee?

Home is not home without Thy Blessed Face,

Life is not life. Remember, Lord, and see,

Look back, embrace.

Earth is one desert waste of banishment,

Life is one long-drawn anguish of decay.

Where Thou wert wont to go we also went:

Why not to-day?”

Nevertheless a cloud cut off their gaze:

They tarry to build up Jerusalem,

Watching for Him, while thro’ the appointed days

He watches them.

They do His Will and doing it rejoice,

Patiently glad to spend and to be spent:

Still He speaks to them, still they hear His Voice

And are content.1 [Note: C. G. Rossetti, Poems, 170.]

(3) He would be nearer than before.—Our first thought may perhaps be, Who can be so near Jesus now as the Apostles were during all the time that He went in and out among them? Yet these same men found themselves far nearer Him after He had gone away. In the days of His flesh He had sat with them; but after His ascension He not only seemed to hover round them, and brood over them, but He sent His Spirit to dwell within them. And thus believers now, seeing that they possess the indwelling Spirit, are really much nearer the Lord Jesus Christ than Peter and James and John were during the time from the baptism of John, unto that same day that He was taken up from them.

But God is never so far off

As even to be near;

He is within: our spirit is

The home He holds most dear.

To think of Him as by our side

Is almost as untrue

As to remove His throne beyond

Those skies of starry blue.

So all the while I thought myself

Homeless, forlorn, and weary,

Missing my joy, I walked the earth,

Myself God’s sanctuary.2 [Note: F. W. Faber.]

(4) And He would be nearer, not to them only, but to all.—Upon Wesley’s tablet in Westminster Abbey may be read that proud word of his: “I look upon all the world as my parish.” The qualifying words have no place on the tablet: “Thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty to declare, unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation.” Wesley’s heart was as big as the world, but he could only be in one little corner of it at once; even there he could speak only to those that were “willing to hear.” What limitations are these! The Spirit’s parish is the world. Every corner of it, every soul in it, owns His presence, and none can fence himself off from His approach or shut up the avenues by which conviction may come home.1 [Note: J. Telford, The Story of the Upper Room, 184.]

Suppose Jesus were still in the Holy Land, at Jerusalem. Every ship that started for the East would be crowded with Christian pilgrims. Every train flying through Europe would be thronged with people going to see Jesus. Every mail-bag would be full of letters from those in difficulty and trial, and gifts of homage to manifest men’s gratitude and love. You yourself, let us say, are in one of those ships. The port, when you arrive after the long voyage, is blocked with vessels of every flag. With much difficulty you land, and join one of the long trains starting for Jerusalem. Far as the eye can reach, the caravans move over the desert in an endless stream. You do not mind the scorching sun, the choking dust, the elbowing crowds, the burning sands. You are in the Holy Land, and you will see Jesus! Yonder, at last, in the far distance, are the glittering spires of the Holy Hill, above all the burnished Temple dome beneath which He sits. But what is that dark seething mass stretching for leagues and leagues between you and the Holy City? They have come from the north and from the south, and from the east and from the west, as you have, to look upon their Lord. They wish

That His hands might be placed on their head;

That His arms might be thrown around them.

But it cannot be. You have come to see Jesus, but you will not see Him. They have been there weeks, months, years, and have not seen Him. They are a yard or two nearer, and that is all. The thing is impossible. It is an anti-climax, an absurdity. It would be a social outrage; it would be a physical impossibility.2 [Note: H. Drummond, The Ideal Life, 66.]

(5) But again, it was expedient that He should go away in order that they might he weaned from thoughts of earthly greatness.—For Christ in heaven is and must be infinitely greater to the soul and heart of men than even He could be, seen by us with our bodily eyes on earth, living with us, and belonging to this earthly state of things which is for the present life—infinitely greater even than if He had been with us in the glorified body which He had after His resurrection, and in which He appeared and conversed with His disciples during the forty days before He ascended. It is because His Kingdom is not of this world—it is because He came to open and draw up men’s hearts to what is infinitely above this world, and anything that ever belonged to it—it is because He came to teach, and to give them what “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,” of the good things “which God hath prepared for them that love him”—it was for this that, having shown Himself in the world, He did not stay in it. If He had stayed in it, our thoughts would have been towards Him, as still belonging to this world. We see how difficult it was to wean the thoughts of His own disciples from hopes and expectations of earthly greatness. “Wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” was their question when He had risen. How much more difficult it would have been if He had still continued with them, in human form, even though glorified! How could that lifting up of their minds to what was spiritual and eternal have been accomplished? How could they have been taught those great lessons of inner and spiritual religion, if the great Object of their faith was still visibly present with them, and as one of them? How could they have been made to feel as they did, that the Kingdom of God was within them, that man has to deal and commune with his God in the secret reality and truth of his heart and spirit—how could they have been made to unlearn all that was outward and visible in their religious thoughts, and have had the eyes of their understanding opened to eternal truths, and to a religion that was all of heaven and in heaven—if they still could find, and see, and hear on earth the form and voice of the greatest of their teachers?

Many of us must recall the parable of an Alpine sunset. We gaze on the vast bare rocks and snow-slopes transfigured in a flood of burning light. In a moment there falls over them an ashy paleness as of death, cold and chilling. While we strive to measure our loss a deepening flush spreads slowly over the mountain sides, pure and calm and tender, and we know that the glory which has passed away is not lost even when it fades again from our sight. So it is with the noblest revelations which God makes to us. They fill us at first with their splendid beauty. Then for a time we find ourselves, as it were, left desolate while we face the sadnesses of an unintelligible world. But as we gaze the truth comes back with a softer and more spiritual grace to be the spring of perpetual benediction.1 [Note: B. F. Westcott, Lessons from Work, 110.]

(6) He went away that henceforth we may walk by faith, not by sight.—In that one word “faith” we get at the root of the whole matter. If His Presence were not unseen, if we had certainty as to action and a fixed rule with no possibility of deviation, faith would not, it could not, even exist on its higher side, for faith is realization of things hoped for and insight into things invisible; it sees what is out of sight as though it were here—it sees Him in His invisible Presence, and it brings a far greater blessing than sight: “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

Faith is the one characteristic which raises man above the animal, above the natural—without which he cannot “please God” or be of any use to men. It sees in darkness, it believes without evidence, it is certain of the impossible, it is the highest reflection of Divine power within men. Faith as a moral faculty puts you face to face with the treasures of the universe; and where others see nothing, you see everything; where others see only bands of Syrians, you see the angels of God; where others see a blind force, you see the workings of a right loving Will, overruling all things. And you are rich for the sight; you grow, you increase, you become more and more conscious of the possibilities of your own life and of the universe, and you grow into the possibilities which you see. But without faith, you grovel through a purblind, naked, starved, diseased existence, seeing emptiness everywhere, because you are so empty; seeing darkness in every noble deed, because you are so dark; seeing all things dead or dying, because you have no life in you, with no soul for greatness in man or in the history of your race, with no enthusiasm, no stirring within you at great and enthralling sights, but dull, barren, poor, weak, and that because you have no faith, no insight, and therefore no goodness.2 [Note: R. Eyton, The True Life, 67.]

(7) Last of all, He must go that the Spirit may come.—And the Spirit could not come until Christ was glorified. In a comment upon our Lord’s words about the fountains of “living water,” which were to spring up in those who believed on Him, St. John says: “This spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified”; and this comment is but a brief and explicit statement of a truth which is wrought into the very substance of the New Testament. That a new and higher form of spiritual life has appeared in Christian times than appeared in the times before our Lord, is certain. This life is attributed to the “coming” of the Holy Spirit. Can we discover why it is that the Spirit did not—could not—come, till Christ was “glorified”?

What is meant by our Lord being “glorified”? It means infinitely more than we can know; but at least it means this, that when our Lord returned to the Father, His human nature, in all its capacities and powers, was wonderfully expanded and exalted. Even while He was on earth His human life, as it was gradually developed and as it rose, through righteousness and patient suffering, to a higher and still higher perfection, was more and more completely penetrated with the Divine life of the Eternal Word. It still remained human; but, in it and through it, that “eternal life, which was with the Father, was manifested” to men. When He returned to the Father He did not cease to be man, but it would appear that His human life was wholly transfigured by the life of the Eternal Son, who was in the beginning with God and who was God.

“It is expedient for you that I go away.” Yes! we understand Him now. It is expedient that perfect humanity should thus be associated on the Throne of Heaven with the Infinite and the Eternal. If we are to give our hearts and wills to the Author and End of our existence, if Christian worship is to be not a coldly calculated compliment, but the outcome of a pure and soul-consuming passion, it is well that on the heights of heaven there should throb to all eternity a human heart—the Sacred Heart of Jesus; and that in the adoration which we pay Him we should know that we are expending the inmost resources of our natures at the feet of the One Being who has upon them the claim, if I may dare speak thus, of relationship as well as the claim of Deity. And thus in the worship of the Church, inspired on the one hand by an awful sense of the inaccessible majesty of God, and on the other by a trustful, tender passion which has its roots in the consciousness of a human fellowship with its awful Object, we find that which we find nowhere else on earth, and understand the words, “It is expedient for you that I go away.”1 [Note: H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of Christ, 336.]

II

The Coming of the Spirit

Christ’s going away was a provision for the future life. The absent Lord prepares a place there; the absent Object of faith educates the souls of the faithful to possess and enjoy it. But He provides for the life that now is. And His going away has to do with the present as much as with the life to come.

One day when Jesus was in Peræa, a message came to Him that a very dear friend was sick. He lived in a distant village with his two sisters. They were greatly concerned about their brother’s illness, and had sent in haste for Jesus. Now Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus their brother; but He was so situated at the time that He could not go. Perhaps He was too busy, perhaps He had other similar cases on hand; at all events, He could not go. When He went ultimately, it was too late. Hour after hour the sisters waited for Him. They could not believe He would not come; but the slow hours dragged themselves along by the dying man’s couch, and he was dead and laid in the grave before Jesus arrived. You can imagine one of His thoughts, at least, as He stands and weeps by that grave with the inconsolable sisters,—“It is expedient that I go away. I should have been present at his death-bed scene if I had been away. I will depart and send the Comforter. There will be no summons of sorrow which He will not be able to answer. He will abide with men for ever. Everywhere He will come and go. He will be like the noiseless invisible wind, blowing all over the world wheresoever He listeth.”1 [Note: H. Drummond, The Ideal Life, 72.]

1. The Spirit comes to continue Christ’s ministry. The spiritual and distinctive ministry of the Holy Spirit follows the personal and Messianic ministry of the Christ. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are represented as conditioned upon the mediatorial work of the Christ. The Father purposes human redemption; the Son, by His atoning work, enables the righteous forgiveness of sin; and the Holy Spirit quickens spiritual life in forgiven men. The dispensation of the Father is followed by the dispensation of the Son; the dispensation of the Son by the dispensation of the Spirit.

The development of Christian experience, throughout all its changes, depends upon one unchanging personality. The Christ was to depart and the Comforter was to come, but the Comforter was to come as the messenger of the departing Christ. “If I go, I will send him unto you.” There is no real brokenness in spiritual experience, in spite of what seem to us to be variations in its intensity or gaps in its record or occasional hours in which its life has lain in trance: behind it all has been and is to-day the power of the ever-living Christ. And this is the one great fact to which we must come back for security when our faith in Divine things is like to fail because we do not always see them with the same clear sight, and because they do not always thrill us with the same sweeping currents of joy—the fact that in whatever way holy things may touch us, it is Christ who brings them near, that whether they rouse a passion of holy rapture or draw out the quieter sensibilities lying hidden in our souls, it is Christ who orders their attendance upon us; that the outward spiritual ministries which excited the earliest stirrings of our faith, and the inward spiritual ministries by which we live to-day, have all been under Christ’s control.1 [Note: H. W. Clark, Laws of the Inner Kingdom, 68.]

2. The outward is changed to the inward. The Divine presence and teaching, and redeeming death of the Son were, so to speak, outside the man. Hence but little spiritual result followed Christ’s personal ministry. He made but few disciples: “the Spirit was not yet given.” Though He had done so many mighty works among them, yet did they not believe on Him. He promised, therefore, a still greater ministry than His own—a life-giving Power, who should quicken religious feeling within them, who should be, not an outward teacher, but an indwelling life-giver and sanctifier; and who should do His mighty spiritual work by taking the things of Christ and showing them unto us. Henceforth the Spirit would work in the hearts of men, not through the partial and imperfect truths of the old Jewish dispensation, but through the new and transcendent truths of Christ’s incarnation and atonement.

The Day of Pentecost was simply the special manifestation, the formal inauguration of the dispensation of the Spirit. Henceforth, men were to be taught by purely spiritual ideas, and were to be made holy by purely spiritual forces. Miracles and prophesyings were to cease; the personal teaching and example of Christ were withdrawn; the atoning death was accomplished; and Christ ascended to heaven. The revelation of God’s truth and love was completed; and henceforth only spiritual forces were to work in the hearts of men.

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 interchange 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 necessity 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.1 [Note: H. W. Clark, Laws of the Inner Kingdom, 64.]

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 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 withdrawn 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 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.1 [Note: L. Abbott, Signs of Promise, 44.]

(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 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.1 [Note: L. Abbott, Signs of Promise, 45.]

4. The Spirit conies 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 ourselves 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.2 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 9.]

An Expedient Departure

Literature

Abbott (L.), Signs of Promise, 41.

Allon (H.), The Indwelling Christ, 187.

Bernard (J. H.), Via Domini, 199.

Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, 3rd Ser., 163.

Clark (H. W.), Laws of the Inner Kingdom, 57.

Dale (R. W.), Christian Doctrine, 124.

Davies (J. P.), The Same Things, 126.

Drummond (H.), The Ideal Life, 61.

Eyton (R.), The Glory of the Lord, 36.

Eyton (R.), The True Life, 61.

Holdsworth (W. W.), The Life of Faith, 71.

Jerdan (C.), For the Lord’s Table, 323, 333.

Kelman (J.), Ephemera Eternitatis, 138.

Liddon (H. P.), Sermons on Some Words of Christ, 325.

Maclaren (A.), The Holy of Holies, 267.

Manning (H. E.), The Teaching of Christ, 181.

Murphy (J. B. C.), The Journey of the Soul, 100.

Telford (J.), The Story of the Upper Room, 181.

Thom (J. H.), Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ, 2nd Ser., 380.

Tipple (S. A.), Sunday Mornings at Norwood, 284.

Westcott (B. F.), Lessons from Work, 96.

Westcott (B. F.), Peterborough Sermons, 85.

Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), Mission Sermons for a Year, 235.