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I. THE POWERLESSNESS OF TRUTH. Jesus continually remembered this. No one, indeed, had more complete experience as to the inability of the natural man to receive spiritual things; and even here, when perhaps the disciples were unusually attentive, Jesus knew that they would be more than ever perplexed. And there was nothing in the mere lapse of time to make the meaning clearer, the promises more receivable, the duties more feasible. Persevering, indomitable students have, ere now, puzzled out some abstruse treatise usually made plain by a teacher who knows it thoroughly. They have not been able to get the teacher, and so they have managed to do without him. But the utterances of Jesus in the Gospels are sealed up, every one of them, to mere intellectual inquiry. The words are there, with a strange attractive power - unique words; and yet the very power that is to make them useful is somehow lacking, or at all events unavailable. No fresh words are needed; it may truly be said there is nothing in the Epistles which is not already in the Gospels, so far as principles are concerned; but something is needed to bring the human heart and the words of Jesus into living contact.

II. WHAT MAKES TRUTH VITAL The energy of the Holy Spirit. He will indeed be a Paraclete, ever coming in with ample and effectual guidance just at the needful moment. What riches have been got out of the Gospels by Spirit-guided men! What a serious accusation if we reject or neglect what has evidently been given to meet the emergency! God never gives anything unnecessary. Let it not be supposed that the Holy Spirit is for the difficulties of some, or for occasions when we cannot see our way to truth unaided. The Holy Spirit is for all and always. The truth as it is in Jesus can never become a real system to us, individually, unless as we accept this guidance provided by Jesus and his Father. How this guidance operates is another matter. That we may not be able to understand. But neither do we understand how the seed bursts into life and develops into plant and fruit. What we need is firm faith and an abiding recollection that the Holy Spirit which the Father sends in the Name of the Son is a real and a present power. The difference between the seed unsown and the seed springing up and moving onwards to fruit, is an analogue of the difference between an utterance of Jesus verbally lodged in the memory, and that same utterance opened up and filled with perennial power by the Holy Spirit.

III. THE TWOFOLD ASPECT OF THE SPIRIT'S WORK HERE PRESENTED.

1. Teaching. The death of Jesus had yet to come, and then the resurrection and ascension. Everything Jesus has ever spoken must be brought into proper relation with these marvelous experiences of his personal life. The Holy Spirit has to explain the sum total of the incarnation.

2. Reminding. To recollect what we know just when we want it, is one of the hardest of things. What is the value of knowledge unless it can be turned to practice just at the right time? The Holy Spirit may be a help to mere memory, far more than we think. - Y.

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KJV: These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.

WEB: I have said these things to you, while still living with you.