SECTION II

the foot-washing. the Passover. the institution of the holy communion. the parting words of the lord. the high-priestly prayer. the going out into the mount of olives

(Mat 26:20-35; Mar 14:17-31; Luk 22:14-39; Joh 13:1-38, Joh 14:1-31, Joh 15:1-27, Joh 16:1-33, Joh 17:1-26)

It was not yet six o’clock in the evening on the 14th Nisan, when Jesus with His disciples arrived at the room where those who had preceded them had made ready the Passover.¹

The company at once sate down-the Lord and His disciples. The supper was already beginning,² although as yet no resource had been found to supply a want which, according to the Israelitish institution, ought now to be provided for. The festal company, namely, were seated with unwashen feet; and yet they ought to have their feet washed before they could begin the festival with undistracted festal feeling.³ Even although the master of the house was devoted to the Lord, yet it may be easily explained how, in the hurry of this day, or busied with his own Passover feast, he might have forgotten to care for this matter. But among the disciples themselves, it occurred to none to undertake this business of caring for their associates. Nay, it may perhaps be reasonably supposed⁴ that the necessity had been spoken of among them, but that nobody would resolve to undertake in humility the lowly office. In this manner they may have arrived again unconsciously at the dispute about their relations of rank; and thus even at the last supper the controversy would be again renewed which among them was the greatest. Probably this led the Evangelist Luke to unite this controversy with the narrative of the last supper, which it follows.⁵

There was thus an actual historical impulse which induced the Lord to undertake the foot-washing. That is to say, the foot-washing was not entirely symbolic, but primarily real; an act of real humility and voluntary service. This truth, indeed, does not militate against its being at the same time represented as a symbol, and treated as a symbol by the Lord.

Thus they were already seated at the table, and already was the supper about to begin, when the foot-washing was still unprovided for. Already they begin to raise some perplexity about it. Then the Lord addressed Himself to conduct the business.

John apprehended this fact as the last great proof of love which the Lord gave to His disciples before His exit from the world; which He gave them, notwithstanding that the band of disciples was already defiled by the treasonable project of Judas; notwithstanding that His soul was already filled with the presentiment of His transition to glory with the Father. On the threshold of the throne of glory He still washed His disciples’ feet; a company in whose midst sate the traitor with the design of the black deed—with the devil in his heart.

And how easily and calmly He addressed Himself to the new service! He stands up, lays aside the upper garment, binds around Him a linen napkin, pours water into the basin, and begins to wash the disciples’ feet, and to dry them with the napkin.

Thus He comes to Peter also. We gather generally throughout this notice of the Evangelist, that in all probability He cannot have begun with Peter.⁶ He refuses to allow so great a manifestation of grace to be made to him. ‘Lord, dost Thou wash my feet?’ Jesus requires submission, and promises subsequent explanation: ‘What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.’ The disciple thinks that he is maintaining his humility and reverence for Jesus in a special measure, in speaking a word which testifies of want of humility and hard self-will against the Lord—a word of decided opposition. ‘Lord, Thou shalt never wash my feet.’ He thus, in fact, was placing his whole relation to Jesus in jeopardy; and with heavenly severity must the Lord have expressed the word of the highest heavenly mildness: ‘If I wash thee not, thou hast no part in Me.’

This is the strongest expression of the Gospel in the strongest form of legality, just as Peter needed it when he with hard determination established his position against the fulness of the Gospel.

Christ washes His disciples; washes their feet, makes them clean: thus they obtain part in Him; thus they become redeemed.

Against that which was humbling in this heavenly humility of free grace, the mind of Peter struggles in false humility. He will maintain against the Lord an apparently more humble, but a substantially prouder position. ‘Thou shalt never wash my feet,’ says the disciple Simon, son of Jonas, as the type of a certain tendency in the Church. He says it so loudly, that it echoes through the ages.

But the Lord sets will against will, law against law. He gives even to the Gospel of His grace a legal expression, as against this principle.

Still the characteristic of freedom remains. He does not constrain Peter; He leaves it to him to consider whether he will have part in Him or not. But if he wishes to have part in Him, he must reconcile himself to the majesty of his Master, even to the majesty of His ministering love.

The absolute word of the Master breaks down the opposition of the disciple; but still it does not fully break down his self-will. He answers, ‘Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and my head.’ Thus once more, out of the word of submission, springs up a last convulsion of self-will. He will now again have something according to his own mind, over and above the mind of Christ; a more elaborate ceremonial of foot-washing, not the simply expressive foot-washing of Christ.

Jesus answers him: ‘He who is washed needeth not, save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.’

That was the theocratic privilege in Israel. According to the law of washing, he who could claim to be pure was substantially only bound to wash his feet on coming from the street and wishing to take part in a banquet—theocratically pure. But here Christ expresses the word in its religious significance. The disciples were washed for the festival of the new covenant, by the baptism of John, and by their believing entry into the fellowship of Christ. They had embraced, by their faith in Him, the principle which purified their life. Thus they needed no other washing than this daily purification from daily pollutions, by means of continually new manifestations of the grace of Jesus, conditioned upon daily repentance and submission to His will.

It is perhaps not without significance that the Lord spoke this word to Peter. The Church which refers itself to him is always wishing, after their legal meaning, to wash the hands and the heads of those who are already washed.

‘And ye are clean,’ said Jesus further, consolingly to the disciples; but He added, with meaning, ‘but not all.’ This He said, as John observes, with reference to His betrayer.

When He had finished the washing, He put on again His upper garment, sate down, and began to explain to them His conduct. ‘Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call Me Master and Lord: and ye do well; for so I am. If, then, I, your Master and Lord, have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do unto one another as I have done unto you.’

And if the Lord, on this occasion, cries ‘Verily, verily!’ to add force to the word, ‘The servant is not greater than his Lord, and the apostle not greater than He that sent him,’ it is because this assertion is of the deepest importance. Wherever Christ is to recognize once more pure Christianity, He will behold it again in servants, in scholars, who are subordinated to Him in this respect as well as others. Such servants or apostles as exalt themselves over those whose feet He has washed, He cannot acknowledge as His apostles or as His servants.

This saying is not to be confused with the similar one, in which He calls His disciples to suffer with Him (Mat 10:24).

Moreover, the Lord well knew that it is much easier to apply this doctrine in theory than in practice-easier to represent it in poetry than in life—more convenient in merely symbolic medals than in the actual current coin of life.⁷ Therefore He adds, ‘If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.’

The Evangelist Luke also informs us of these exhortations of Jesus, but in a less definite form (Luk 22:24-27).

Now, moreover, Jesus tells them why He had wished to manifest Himself to them as a servant. After He has put them to shame, He will again cheer them: ‘Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations. And I assure unto you, by an institution (by the Lord’s Supper), the kingdom, as My Father hath assured it unto Me. Ye are to eat and drink at My table in the kingdom of the Father.’ Thus He appoints unto them His own inheritance. In the kingdom of the Father they are not only to be His companions in the kingdom—not only His house-companions, but His table-friends. Thus they are to come to full enjoyment with Him of His blessedness. This is to be their position inwardly. But outwardly, ‘Ye shall sit upon thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.’ In the kingdom of reality they are, as spiritual powers, to rule over, to appoint, and to lead the glorified humanity with Him. Here, probably, He would connect the word which John records in another association: ‘I speak not of you all; for I know whom I have chosen: I know My election. But it cannot be otherwise—thus it must be,’ He appears to mean further on, as He continues: ‘For the Scripture must be fulfilled.’ Even the word, ‘He that eateth My bread, lifteth up His heel against Me,’⁸ is purposing to raise his foot against Me.

That bitter experience which David went through in his flight from Absalom, that Ahithophel, his confidential counsellor, was a traitor to him, he recorded in an utterance which served for an unconscious typical prophecy of the treachery of Judas.

But wherefore did the Lord make this disclosure to the disciples? Himself declares the reason: ‘Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe on Me.’ If they had kept the full meaning of this word, even the treacherous sign itself, which Judas gave to the enemies in Gethsemane, would have been the strongest assurance to their faith. In this betrayal itself, if they had acknowledged the glory of their Lord in His prescience, this testimony of His glory would have been to them a consoling pillar of fire, deep in the awful midnight; and they would have taken heart for watchfulness in the hour of grievous temptation.

Thus far the discourse may have progressed before the beginning of the supper. What, according to John, was said besides, is doubtless connected with the Passover itself.

The paschal feast⁹ was substantially a double feast—as festival of the pascha (Pass-over) of exemption,¹⁰ and as a festival of unleavened bread¹¹ or the bread of affliction,¹² combined with the eating of bitter herbs¹³ and the enjoyment of the cup of thanksgiving. But both feasts were associated into one, by their essential relation to the one fact of the deliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt. A third occasion of the festival was less essential, namely, the celebration of the commencement of harvest. This last fact represented the reconciliation and association between the theocratic life and the nature-life of the people of Israel.

The Passover, in the narrowest sense, is of a sadly joyous kind. It is related to the deliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt, which could only be effected by means of a great twofold sacrifice, by which Israel must be separated from the Egyptians. The first sacrifice occurred in a terrible manner. It was a real (although only a preliminary) atonement-the judgment of God upon the Egyptian first-born—the actual judgment, which exempted none, in which the first-born of Egypt as the sin-offering, or as the sin itself, was blotted out. The second side was the thank-offering, which the Israelites brought when they slaughtered the lamb, and struck the blood of the sacrifice on the door-posts, to serve to the destroying angel, who was passing round without, for a sign, that he might pass over the houses of the children of Israel: thus the offering of thanksgiving was for this passing over, by which the exemption was declared. The proper Easter feast thus refers back, as a feast of thank-offering, to a reconciliation already effected, in which the sin-offering and the thank-offering are already brought.

The Passover lamb of the Jews, moreover, had from the beginning a twofold relation. It was related, first, as a feast of thank-offering, back to the terrible sacrifice of judgment, to the sin-offering by which God had redeemed Israel out of Egypt, when He brought destruction on the first-born of Egypt. But the theocratic spirit knew that this redemption was itself only typical-that the true essential redemption of the true essential Israel was still to come. As, therefore, that redemption had been a typical suggestion of this real redemption, so also the Passover feast was a suggestion of a real reconciliation,—thus, also, of a great and real sin-offering, and of a great and real thank-offering which should be related to that sin-offering. It was thus a suggestion of the death of Christ.

The death of Christ embraces both kinds of offering in its reality—the actual sin-offering and the actual thank-offering.

His people thrust Him out and killed Him, as if He were the very sin itself,—the actual curse,—as if He must perish in order that the people might be saved in the sense of Caiaphas. Thus in the eyes of Israel He resembled the first-born of Egypt, which had been formerly destroyed. But God did actually thus allow Him to be made sin and a sin-offering. Yea, He Himself made Him so in another and a heavenly sense, by suffering Him to die, as the true and sinless first-born of His people, for the sins of the people.¹⁴

But because Christ thus, as the sinless one, died for the sinner, His death was not for Him perdition or destruction; but it became His liberation out of the Israelitish house of bondage, the transfiguration of His life into a new life: and thus He also became the life of His new people, the life of the faithful. Thus the sin-offering, because it had no sin in itself, became altogether a thank-offering, and hence a festival nourishment of the life of the Church of Christ. Thus Christ is the veritable Passover Lamb.

Both the aspects of the Passover—the mournful one which subsisted in its reference to a foregone judgment, as well as the joyous one which was expressed in its representation of the certainty of exemption and deliverance—were manifested plainly in the form and manner in which the feast was held. The lamb of a year old was roasted just as it was killed, without being dismembered. It was consumed by one family, which consisted variously of members of the household, and of those who were associated as friends,—thus of an actual family which enlarged itself into an ideal one. The celebrants ate it originally in travelling costume, standing, their staves in their hands (Exo 12:11). In all, there was expressed the midnight alarm of judgment, to which this celebration was due: the hardly surmounted anxiety, the great excitement in which they passed over from the deepest necessity and danger by God’s gracious exemption, to the joy of an unexpected and yet so certain deliverance The eating of bitter herbs, which preceded the meal and accompanied it, pointed still farther back to the sufferings which the people had endured in Egypt. But still the deliverance was the prominent thing. It expressed itself in the eating of the thank-offering, in the uniting into families of larger groups of people who celebrated the Passover together.

With this sadly joyous feast, however, is associated, in an inward unity, the joyously mournful festival of unleavened bread. From the great deliverance itself proceeds, namely, the enfranchisement, which, however, first of all, is a flight into the wilderness, in which the people must partake of a bread unleavened—a bread of affliction. This aspect of the future deliverance—the enfranchisement of the people, as a flight out into the privations of the wilderness—is represented by the feast of unleavened bread. The eating of unleavened bread indicates, first of all, the complete separation from the Egyptian condition—all the leaven of the Egyptians has been cleansed out.¹⁵ Connected with that is the indication of this partaking as of a holy thing; for the temple bread, which was offered before Jehovah, was unleavened.¹⁶ Thirdly (as partaking of the bread of affliction, of bread that was less palatable), it points to the hurry and flight of the departure, and the privation which the people after their enfranchisement had still to endure in the wilderness. But the special reality of the celebration was still illustrated by the spirit of joy and of thanksgiving. The four cups of wine especially expressed this, which, according to the developed paschal rite, the father of the family handed round in distinct pauses with words of thankfulness; still more, the song of praise with which this partaking was accompanied.¹⁷

When the Lord sate down, after the foot-washing, to begin the festival in the midst of His disciples, He said, ‘With desire I have desired¹⁸ to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.’ This word attains its full importance for us when we reflect that Jesus beheld in the supper the celebration of His own appointed death, and the heavenly fruit of that death. How resolute, how decided must His soul have been, to be able to long painfully for such a celebration! If we conceive of the interest of Christ in the celebration of the Passover, as from His childhood upward it occurred annually, we cannot but suppose that from year to year this commemoration affected Him more seriously, with deeper significance, more painfully, and more happily. From year to year the thought must have more clearly disclosed itself to Him in this solemnity, that He Himself was the proper and real Passover Lamb. How often would His soul quake, His countenance grow pale, and wear the most speaking expression of a presentiment that deeply agitated Him, when He celebrated this festival in the company of His disciples! Yet at this last celebration, at which the keeping of the Passover was to Him, in the most special sense, the festal eve of His death, He could speak the wondrous word, that He had desired it with desire.

But what in this case chiefly affects Him is, according to Luke, the distinct presentiment of His victory and His glory: ‘For I say unto you,’ said He, ‘I will not any more eat thereof until it be fulfilled—find its full fulfilment—in the Father’s kingdom.’ With these words, He appears to consecrate the meal of the sacrificial flesh. He points onward to the real fulfilment of this type, to the heavenly Lord’s Supper, the perfect enjoyment of blessedness in His kingdom. Then they were to be in perfect enjoyment of the food—which is identical with His life—of His life sacrificed and consecrated by the sacrifice, and of His heavenly manifestation. There with He unites the distribution of the first cup under the usual thanksgiving with the words, ‘Take this, and divide it among you; for I say unto you, I will not henceforth drink of this fruit of the vine till the kingdom of God shall come.’ As thus the real fulfilling of the paschal lamb shall be given for the enjoyment of His people in the future appearance of the Lord, so is the real fulfilling of the cup of thanksgiving to consist in the future manifestation of the glory of the Church, next to the joy of the Lord.

Thus Christ refers first of all to the real and eternal antitype of the paschal feast, to the everlasting banquet of the kingdom of His glorified Church, to the glorious form of the eternal Lord’s Supper, whose precursor in the New Testament communion feast He is now purposing to establish. He thus hands them the cup, as a farewell until that highest reunion.

But we learn how this reunion is to be effected when we turn again to John. ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you,’ said the Lord, ‘He that receiveth whomsoever I send, receiveth Me; and he that receiveth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me.’ Thus speaking He shuddered deeply, remembering that Judas still sate among His disciples, and thus still seemingly belonged to His messengers, and that thus it might appear as if He had spoken this great word of promise of him also.

Against the possibility of this application of His word, His heavenly sense of truth revolted, which made it altogether impossible to allow the traitor to take part in the promises which subsequently He had to communicate, and to confirm to the disciples. Thereupon it is declared that, upon the assurance, ‘Verily, verily, he that receiveth whomsoever I send, receiveth Me; and he that receiveth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me,’ follows anew an assertion which John expressively characterizes as a testimony of the Lord, as a protestation which He made with great mental agitation of spirit: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, That one of you shall betray me.’ ‘One who eateth with Me,’ is said besides in Mark; ‘The hand of My betrayer is with Me on the table,’ it is said in Luke.

The disciples looked on one another in perplexity; their looks asked one another whom He means; they were sore troubled, and began to make inquiry who it might be. ‘Lord, is it I?’ individuals began to ask; and this question ran round the company. With this question they repented of the spirit of worldliness in which they had themselves been so long standing, and in which they had fostered the serpent of treachery in their bosom, in giving confidence to the traitor in conducting him—as we must perhaps assume—to the Lord, and in having so long in their blindness esteemed him highly.

This blindness John had not shared; the dark nature of Judas appears to have been deeply repugnant to him. He lay, as the confidant of Jesus, on His breast at the feast.¹⁹ Therefore Simon Peter signed to him to find out who the betrayer was. Then John leans his head on the breast of Jesus, and asks Him. Jesus gave the intimation in such a way that, according to Matthew, all could understand;²⁰ but still, according to John, all do not appear actually to have understood exactly. ‘He it is to whom I shall give the morsel when I have dipped it.’²¹ Hereupon He dipped the morsel and gave it to Judas Iscariot. Jesus added the terribly solemn words intelligibly to all the disciples: ‘The Son of Man goeth indeed as it is written of Him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! it were better for him that he had never been born.’

It is immeasurable ruin and immeasurable curse which He thus indicates. Moreover, the woe which he invokes upon Judas is a deep woe to His soul. He is deeply moved to pity for that man, even for his birth. He fears for the time and eternity of that man so deeply, that He can forget His own woe, which that man is preparing for Him, in his misery; all the more that He knows that that reprobate one can design nothing else for Him than what the Father has ordained for Him. ‘The Son of man goeth as it is written of Him.’

Such a word of thunder had now become necessary for the heart of the disciple. Judas had, as it appears, hitherto been silent during the self-trial of the disciples-in gloomy reserve. But now he gathered himself up with a most terrible effort, under this overwhelming word of Christ, which plainly enough pointed to him as the most unhappy man. He took the morsel, as if nothing had happened to him, and asked, ‘Master, is it I?’ There with it was all over with him. Up to that point his soul had still played with the counsel of hell. Now this counsel played with him. ‘After the sop,’ says John, ‘Satan entered into him.’ He retained indeed, even now, the formal freedom and control of his consciousness, and in that respect he was distinguished from demoniacs. But his moral liberty he had altogether surrendered to the influence and dominion of Satan the prince of darkness, and as his slavish instrument he was now driven out into the night. He had become the point of union of all the dark powers of earth and hell. He flew like a whirring arrow of the evil one to wound the heart of his Master to death—the heart of Jesus. Jesus answered his desperate question, ‘Thou hast said;’ and added, ‘What thou doest, do quickly.’

He did not thus bid him do what possibly he was still not willing to do; but to do quickly what he had entirely resolved to do. There need be no difficulty here; the question is merely of the form of the address. As if, for example, a human sacrifice under the knife of his destroyer were to ask him to put him to death speedily.

What thou wilt do, do quickly. These words were an indirect banishment of the traitor out of the company of the disciples. They might suggest many thoughts as to the true form of true, actual excommunication. Jesus only insists upon the publicity of the decision—on the open consequence of the secret consequence of evil—on the bringing to light of the position already determined on by the traitor; and therewith the result follows of itself.

John gives us a profound glance into the awful spiritual significance of the situation. Only the traitor understood the great saying of Jesus, and he, indeed, only in the deepest misconception. Of the others who sate at meat with Him not one understood it at all; some of them were altogether mistaken in it, thinking that, because Judas carried the money-bag, Jesus had given him a commission possibly to buy as soon as might be what was necessary for the feast, or to provide for a gift for the poor. How discouraging must such an interpretation of the word of Jesus in this company, after this conversation, appear! It belongs to the many contributions which the disciples have made to the characterization of a pre-pentecostal exegesis.

As certainly, however, as these disciples did not understand the lofty heroic spirit in the word of Christ, as little did they conceive the satanic meaning with which the traitor took in the word. It was thus to them, in a peculiar sense, an enigma, when their ancient comrade rose up as soon as he had received the sop, and quickly went out. ‘And it was night,’ writes John, with a slight reference possibly to the mistaken notion of the disciples, that purchases for the feast could be made so late; but at the same time, certainly, with the full feeling of the significance of what he was saying in respect of the position of Judas,—he went out into the night.²²

Thus, in this spiritual emergency, in which He was cutting off the miserable son of perdition, in a purely spiritual and public manner, from His disciples, Jesus stood most absolutely alone, although surrounded by His disciples. They did not fully apprehend the fearful aversion of Christ’s Spirit from the spirit of Judas—the shudder of heavenly purity of their Master at the frightful impurity of the traitor; and the triumph of Christ’s spiritual peace and serenity over the dark semblance of peace and self-assertion of the revolted and faithless disciple. It was as if a battle of giants had been fought out over the heads of children; for Judas had attained the age of manhood in evil much more rapidly than the disciples had attained it in good. He was able now to strive as a representative of the prince of darkness with the Lord. The struggle declared itself in the disposition, in the aversion, in the glance, in the mien of both the combatants. But John felt most of all the horror of the moment. He anticipated the glory of his Master in the heavenly calm wherewith He drove out the Satan from the company of His disciples, so quietly, so composedly, that the greater part of the disciples did not immediately perceive it. Yes, possibly the high-thoughted disciple for the first time conceived the entire impression of the terrible greatness of the spiritual night upon earth, and of the symbolical significance of the earthly night, when he saw at this time the son of night stagger forth into the black darkness; even as he possibly for the first time then appreciated the greatness of his Lord’s glory, who overcame the night as the Prince of Light.

For that the Lord had at this moment gained a great triumph, is indicated by the rejoicing words of exultation into which He breaks forth as soon as Judas is gone forth: ‘Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him.’ He had fulfilled His work in the Spirit, in altogether vanquishing the spirit of Judas; and in an entirely free contest, without any impulse of legal constraint or force. had removed him from the company of His disciples, by the influence of a merely Gospel power. For thus he had maintained His life in its New Testament spirituality: even the treachery of a Judas had not prevailed to throw him back on the Old Testament ground of legal wrath; still less on to the pagan standings of vengeance, or of despondency, or of political expediency. And He had thus at once purged the body of His disciples from the coils of a serpent-like worldliness, of a devilishly polluted chiliasm, and from the deceptive and paralyzing ascendancy of an instrument of the powers of darkness. And thus, for the third time, substantially He had determined the redemption and purification of His Church from the hypocritical forms of dark powers, which had designed to break through into the inner and inmost circle of the Church’s life. He had, moreover, cut off His Church from the demons of hell arrayed in light—from the corruptions of flatterers, from the projects of worldliness. He had delivered His institution for ever from the danger of corruption under such influences; and thus had vanquished on its behalf all those spirits of the abyss. But He attained the victory at the price of being betrayed by the false disciple, forsaken by the other disciples, rejected by His people, crucified by the world! For this destiny of death is decided in the moment of His victory over Judas. Therefore in the deepest meaning He is able to utter the word: Now is the Son of man glorified. He has accomplished the determination of His spiritual glory, of His spiritual victory over the world. Moreover, as He has approved Himself, not in isolated humanity, but as the God-man, thus God is glorified also in Him.

The power of God had constantly illustrated itself in His life. But the moment in which He overcame Judas was the climax of the spiritual revelation of God. In this moment God in human form was gloriously opposed to Satan, in the nature of a man filled with him; and drove him forth from the company of disciples. It was a spiritual struggle. Therefore it was so imperceptible, that the disciples did not at all understand what was then going forward; still less the people who were moving about outside in the streets. It was a divine victory, and therefore infinitely rich in results.

Jesus fully perceived how completely unappreciated this great event had been by His disciples. But to Him it was certain that the turning-point for this concealment of God’s glory in Him had now arrived. ‘If God be glorified in Him,’ He continues, ‘God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him.’ Now, when God, veiled in the lowliness and misconception to which Christ had been subject, and in His perfectly completed spirit-struggle, has accomplished His highest work—now will follow also the time when Christ is glorified in Him, that thus the glory of Christ is made plain to the world in the government of God, and to the revelation of His highest glory.

Thus, moreover, Christ regards the victory of His Spirit over the spirit of Judas, gained with the deepest sufferings, as the deepest spiritual foundation of His passion, and of His victory over the kingdom of darkness entirely. Here is decided the Spirit’s passion and the Spirit’s victory, as in Gethsemane the soul’s passion of Jesus was accomplished, and the triumph of His soul decided. Thus in the spirit even already does Jesus welcome the dawning of His glory.²³

And now His whole heart expresses itself to the disciples. ‘Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek Me—that is, painfully seek and sorrowfully find Me wanting—and as I said to the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say unto you.’ He thus refers to the great sorrows of the privation of His presence which fell upon His first disciples in their earthly pilgrimage after His ascension; and as these are appointed for all His disciples, the entire militant Church for the time to come, He now expresses this sympathy with the orphaned ones, which He had often expressed before, in the deepest emotion of His soul.

With these feelings he instituted the holy communion, which was appointed to supply to His disciples, in conjunction with His word and Spirit, the deepest and most consolatory compensation for His absence till His return.

Doubtless John refers to this institution when he continues the words of Jesus, ‘A new commandment I give unto you, in order that (ἵνα) ye may love one another;’²⁴ as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.’ This is the essential element of the Lord’s Supper in the Johannic view. He assumes the rite of the Lord’s Supper and the history of its institution to be known. To him the chief matter is, that the communion is acknowledged as the new law of love, as the legal designation of the new covenant. For, substantially, the communion is in effect the only New Testament law,—the essence and centre of all New Testament legality. Baptism is only the introduction to this new law of life; the Lord’s-day and all other ecclesiastical ordinances are only the development and the surrounding of the same.

The most essential definition of the communion, however, is to hold together and to unite the disciples in love, through the representation and assurance of the love of Christ. They are to love one another, and to do so in the spirit of sacrifice in the heroic style, as the love of Christ is represented to them in the celebration of His sacrificial death. And it was to be the token of recognition of the disciples of Christ—their Church communion appointed by Christ in its entire living truth, attested by the essential communion in love.

Christ appointed the holy communion, by giving to the breaking of bread at the partaking of the Passover, and the distribution of the cup of thanksgiving after it, a new significance. Thus, in this act, He caused the flower of New Testament reality to break forth from the bud of the Old Testament type, or the kernel of the New Testament symbol of reality to burst from the shell of Old Testament typical symbol. Thus, as in Christian baptism, the holy washing loosened itself from the element of circumcision with which, in the conception of the perfect Israelite consecration, it was united in one; as denoting the new birth, by the putting to death, and new enlivening power of the Spirit. Thus, in this appointment, the holy breaking of bread and the distribution of the cup disengaged itself from the celebration of the Passover with which it had been closely connected, as a symbol of the holy nourishment of the high life, by the partaking of the high nourishment of life of the thank-offering. Thus circumcision, as the national substance of the institution, fell away, whilst its universal kernel, the holy washing, developed itself to its full significance in holy baptism. Here henceforth the celebration of the Passover fell away, because it likewise represented the national side of the subject; on the other hand, the universal kernel developed itself—the sacred partaking of bread and wine at the holy communion. In the place of the typical circumcision appeared in the new covenant the actual circumcision, the new birth by the Spirit of Christ; therefore the old circumcision itself could not continue in the Christian Church, but only its universal image, the religious washing, as a sacrament, or as a symbolical representation and confirmation of new birth. In the place of the typical Passover, moreover, appeared the real Passover, in the faithful partaking of the fruit of the death of Jesus. Thus, there was needed here only the assurance of this partaking through that universal image of the Passover, which was given in the breaking of unleavened bread in union with the cup of thanksgiving. Thus were type and symbol united together: the type, as the historical legal foresign of the fact not yet present, and fulfilled in the essence of the Spirit; the symbol, as an everlasting counterpart, mirror, and seal of the eternally fulfilled fact represented in the phenomenal world. Here the reality comes in the place of the type; the symbol continues, but it obtains a new significance in appearing now in relation to the reality, established, fulfilled, and inspired, by the spirit of reality—a sacrament!

Thus, as the celebration of the Passover was referred back as a thank-offering to the completed sin-offering, so Jesus, in the appointment of the New Testament thank-offering, already presupposed the certainty of His sacrificial death, and the spiritual perception of the same. He represents His body as already broken, His blood as already shed; body and blood as already separated and transformed into the nourishment of the life of His disciples.²⁵

In consistency with the Passover, and in the manner of that feast,²⁶ Jesus took the bread, the unleavened cake, said over it the thanksgiving, which at the same time was the blessing of the gift,²⁷ brake the bread, and shared it among the disciples. Instead of the Old Testament words of distribution,²⁸ however, He spoke entirely new ones: ‘Take, eat; this is My body, which is given for you:²⁹ this do in remembrance of Me.’

And He took the cup, the third³⁰ ritually appointed cup, as it followed upon the meal, spake the words of consecration and thanksgiving³¹ over it, and gave it to them, with the words, ‘Drink ye all of it,’ and they all drank of it (Mar 14:23). Then He spake again, ‘This is My blood, the blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. Do this, as oft ye shall drink it, in remembrance of Me’ (1Co 11:25).

In this distribution of bread and wine we conceive of the Lord no longer as among the partakers.³² He has previously before this celebration, at the partaking of the Passover, drunk with them for the last time of the cup, wherewith the Passover began. Consequently, in all probability, the words which the Evangelists Matthew and Mark place here belong to the place where Luke has written them.

The words, ‘Do this in remembrance of Me,’ are preserved³³ by the Apostle Paul as well as by the Evangelist Luke, doubtless upon the ground of a certain tradition. If, however they were spoken for the first time at the distribution of the bread, as Luke records them, it probably belongs as certainly to the rhythm of the speech that they should be here spoken for the second time at the distribution of the wine, as we are to suppose according to Paul. The fact that Christ distributes to His disciples His body and His blood in the bread and wine while He is still living, proves that here there can be no reference to a corporeal change of substance in His body and His blood. Could it be supposed that here a new Christ, and indeed, a dead Christ, was created by the side of the living one? From the same fact it follows that here there cannot be present the body and the blood of Christ in the bread and wine in the sense of a substantial presence. For in this manner Christ would already have been present as the crucified One, in the elements of the communion, whilst He stood before His disciples as the still uncrucified One—as the still living One.

It is thus plain that Christ, in speaking the words, while yet alive, which refer to His body and to His blood, intends to represent His body and His blood to the disciples in picturesque signs. That is, in other words, the bread and the wine which previously were not yet His body and His blood, become now consecrated to signify His body and His blood—to signify,³⁴ and indeed not in an allegorical, but in a symbolical sense.

But here, when the disciples of Christ partook of the Lord’s Supper from His own hand, with the word of His mouth, under His eyes, it is entirely plain that they were fed not only with signs of remembrance on the historical Christ, but with the Spirit and life of the eternally living Christ.³⁵

But to them it is not only their partaking that makes His presence, but moreover, His presence makes to them their partaking. He not only communicates to them His word, but also His living breath; not only His spiritual power, but also His manifestation of life in the Supper, which thus forms, together with His whole presence, a living unity. They partake of Himself, in His real life, in the bread and wine.³⁶

Nay, as this communion is appointed to aspire entirely to the sacred purpose of uniting the partakers wholly with Christ, so it is appointed to change itself in them, according to His working, wholly into the body and the blood of Christ.³⁷

In other words, they partake, first of all, of the historical, the crucified Christ, and certainly in sign and seal. Next, they partake of the spiritual Christ, as the eternally living One, constantly present in the Spirit. They partake of Him, moreover, as the glorified One, whose entire power of life is communicated to His word and to His institution. Finally, they partake of Him as the ideal-universal, who draws up heaven and earth into the life of His life, who changes the whole new humanity into His body; and even the world of creatures, whose symbol here is bread and wine, He transforms into an organ of His life-giving life.

It is now perhaps proved, that this partaking in this consecration can never be a matter of indifference, so as that the receivers should only receive in the communion mere bread and wine. In every case they are placed in contact with the body and blood of Christ; either so, that its power fills them as believers, or drives them and terrifies them further away as unbelievers; the unrepentant and the hypocrites eat and drink to themselves condemnation.³⁸ Thus, as to the faithful, the communion is an anticipation of the feast of the kingdom; to the unbelieving it is an anticipation of condemnation.

To the faithful, the communion is to restore the visible fellowship of Christ, as the special New Testament ordinance, as the innermost centre of the Church—the peculiar point of sight of the pure visibility and the visible purity of the Church. The communicants are to show forth the Lord’s death till He come again. Thus, the communion is the means of the perfect fellowship with the Lord, and indeed, first of all, of the fellowship of His death; secondly, of the fellowship of His life; thirdly, of the fellowship of His kingdom. Every one of these three characteristics embraces two blessings; the six blessings, moreover, which flow there from, combine in the unity of one seventh.

The communion is, first of all, the fellowship of the death of Jesus. It is related to the perfected sin-offering in His death. The communicants enter into the fellowship of the body and the blood of Christ.³⁹ They die with Him to sin, and to the world; share with Him in the judgment in His spirit; devote their old life in the power of His death-to death. But whilst they receive the sublimely pure blessing of the consecration to death, they obtain also, at the same time, the fruit of his death—reconciliation. It is assured to them, that His body broken, His blood shed, has become a remission for them. This is thus the first double blessing: the perfecting of repentance in the consecration of death; the perfecting of faith in the reconciliation with God by the celebration of the self-sacrifice of Christ.

But this first characteristic, the celebration of the fellowship of the death of Christ, forms in the holy communion the introduction to the second—to the celebration of the fellowship of His life. In respect of this relation of the two characteristics, there is in this relation a definite contrast, not to be denied, between holy baptism and holy communion. In the former, the celebration of death, the representation and assurance of dying with Christ, is the eventual characteristic; the celebration of the new life, on the other hand, appears as the conclusion of this consecration of death: it is rather hinted at than developed; it appears as the tender delicate bud of the mystic passion-flower which is represented in baptism. In the celebration of the holy communion, on the other hand, the death of Christ is represented as a fact already completed, and a foundation for the attaining of the new life. Moreover, the consecration to death of the communicant is here already supposed. It has, for instance, begun in baptism; it has been repeated and deepened in the preparation and absolution which precede the communion (points which at the institution of the communion were symbolized by the foot-washing); and in the communion itself it is still only completed and assured. Thus far the Lord’s Supper is rather a celebration of the renewed joyfulness of death, than of the first consecration to death of the faithful. But how can the festival of the fellowship of Christ’s death be changed into the festival of the fellowship of His life? This change is a consequence of the fact, that His death itself, as the highest fact of His life,—a free surrender to the judgment of God on the sins of the world,—has also become the highest attainment of life—resurrection; that the sin-offering has been entirely changed in the fire of divine government into a thank and peace offering for the world, because it was altogether made a sin-offering by the priestly authorities of the world, and was yet wholly without sin, because in Him there was nothing to destroy, to judge, or to put to death, but the historical connection with the ancient Israel, with the ancient world. Thus Christ became a thank-offering, a holy partaking of life and bread of life, for those who with Him have died to the old world. They partake in the holy communion the fellowship of His life, and indeed this again in twofold blessing. The first is the entire perception with what power of sacrifice Christ has loved them, and eternally loves them; the second is, that they are united to one another in this love. John has put forward these two blessings as those which form the peculiar centre of the festival as the effluence of the fellowship of the love of Christ.

With the celebration of the fellowship of the new love of Christ, moreover, there is, thirdly, established the celebration of the fellowship of His kingdom. The Lord’s Supper is the anticipatory celebration of the future glory of the kingdom of believers, and so far is itself a type of the future actual feast of the kingdom to which Christ has pointed the disciples.⁴⁰ It represents prefiguratively the future manifestation of the Church of the kingdom; the glorification of their partaking in divine blessedness; the inheritance of the world in the Spirit of glory; the consecration of its elements to the body and blood of Christ, embracing and glorifying the new humanity. But the two blessings which this characteristic embraces, are, first of all, the renewal of the pilgrim-feeling and the pilgrim-disposition in the midst of the privations and sorrows of time, which continue for the Church even to the return of Christ, the vivid representation that a special Lord’s Supper may be held in the times of the world’s evening, in expectation of the advent of the Lord. Secondly, the anticipation of the heavenly feast of the kingdom, or the perfect experience of the everlasting presence of Christ. But all these blessings are included in the seventh. The Lord’s Supper is a celebration of the everlasting life which Christians find in commemorating, as a confirmation of the faith, their becoming one with the Three in One, or in keeping the actual communion with the Father and with the Son in the Holy Ghost (Joh 14:23; Rev 3:20).

Although we cannot but recognize a great proof of human weakness in the fact, that the disciples could forsake the Lord on the same night that they had received the sacred symbols from the Lord’s hands, yet we must not forget to ask ourselves, what would have become of them if, in that terrible hour of temptation, He had not communicated to them His blessing? Yea, what would have become of His Church, if He had not united it by this wonderful bond of fellowship indissolubly with His heart? It is indeed certain, not only that Christ delivered the Church by His death and victory, and converted it by His word and by His Spirit, but completed and confirmed it by this institution.

That He appointed the Lord’s Supper with the anticipation of the great temptation which the disciples had to undergo, He announced, immediately after its celebration, in the significant and admonitory words wherewith He prepared Peter for what was coming:

‘Simon, Simon (not Peter, Peter), behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.’

Satan desires to have men separate from God; Christ prays for them. The kingdom of the evil one thinks to have a claim to sinners, when they have at all meddled with it. It fancies itself invincible with its pleasures, and perfectly irresistible with its terrors; and all evil ones fancy that those who have escaped from the net of their pleasures, are still holden by the magic of their terrors. Above all things, the prince of evil thinks this; and because even the apparently pious, the priests, even the disciples of Jesus, are not approved as holy,—because even in them is sin, or even only because they are men in whom, as such, sin appears to exist,—thus he searches, even in them, for what is his own; he wishes to draw it and them forcibly to himself. For all evil hangs together; every evil attracts every other evil; and this powerful attraction of hell is individualized; it has its organ, it has its animating centre.

Thus the evil one desires to winnow all men, because as sinners they actually have evil in them, or because as men they wear in themselves the appearance of sinners. He makes claim to them according to the right of consistency—of consequence.

In this apparently rightful claim of the kingdom of darkness, there really is, moreover, a true characteristic of equity. Man cannot, for instance, come to the righteousness of the new world until he is free from the lust and from the terror of the old world. Hell could not slay him as its prey with the arrow of lust or of fear, if he already stood upon heavenly ground. He must thus pass through the refining fire of the terrors of hell, if he is to be approved for heaven. He is not in his spirit master of his life, until he has undergone not only the pleasure, but also the suffering, of life.

And yet the rightful claim of the evil one on men is converted in his sense to injustice. The evil one desires that a sinner should remain a sinner, according to the law of consequence. The pretence of consequentiality, however, here becomes the most abstract and deadest right, and thus the deepest wrong.⁴¹ But it could not become wrong if there were not, à priori, a fallacy contained in it. This fallacy is the false assumption, that the sinner has been seeking sin itself in sin. But the case is altogether different. Even in sin he seeks the well-being of his soul, although he misses it by his evil delusion. But if he is freed from his delusion, he must seek the life of his soul according to the claim of consequence in an altogether opposite direction, and thus set at defiance all the lust and all the fear of hell. And just for that reason that he thus proves himself, he must show that the claim of darkness and of Satan on his soul is a falsehood and an illusion. Then he must be sifted by the terrors of hell after he has renounced the attractions of hell. The sifting cannot be spared him; but, by the grace of God, by the intercession of Christ, it is to redound to his salvation. Precisely for that reason, God allows the kingdom of the evil one to have power, gives it room to sift His people as wheat under His supreme dominion, in order to bring to nothing the power of the evil one.

In this spirit of glorification of the divine government, Christ speaks of the desire of Satan. It is Satan’s care, by the operation of his magical winnow, to make all wheat (which he regards as only seeming wheat) to appear as chaff. The Lord’s care is therefore to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The Baptist had said of Christ, ‘Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly cleanse His floor.’ Since here Christ declares of Satan, that He would sift his wheat, He thus declares that He is ruling over him, that He will make him serviceable to Himself, that He will bring to nothing his design, and turn his attacks to the best account.

But what does He oppose to the evil one’s bold assertion of right in the presence of God? Pious prayer! Satan appeals violently to right, and uses actual force against the pious; Christ, on the other hand, turns prayerfully to grace. He knows that the claim can do nothing against love; that right becomes false, and the deepest wrong, if it is to be serviceable to hatred; moreover, that love, in its desire to deliver by intercession, is one with the grace and righteousness of God, the source out of whom right proceeds. He knows that in God righteousness is one with grace, not in opposition to it, but operative for its kingdom; that thus before God the pious prayer of compassion has right against the daring claim of the accuser of men; that, finally, even the gentle, peaceable powers of intercession have greater influence upon the hearts of the wavering disciples in their temptation, than the dazzling and terrible powers of the kingdom of darkness. Thus He prayed for Peter.

He plainly foresees with certainty, that the faith of the disciple will waver, because there is still much unholiness in him which belongs to the world; but it is also certain to Him that he will not utterly fail,—that a spark of faith is to remain alive in him.

He points out both to him. Yea, He explains, at the same time, that he should come forth from his fall with a rich power of grace, in that He gives him the command, ‘When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.’ It is thus at once intimated that all his brethren should also waver in the temptation. But he is to return from his deeper fall with the richer experience of grace, which they should then need for their strengthening. This prediction of the Lord was perfectly fulfilled after the resurrection. Peter had in the greatest degree undergone the terror of the world and of hell, and experienced the delivering hand of grace; thence the courage which strengthened his brethren. With this divine security and truth the master-glance of the Lord controlled the way of His disciples, even in those hours when His own soul was most deeply afflicted.

Peter, moreover, could not yet comprehend the whole import of this word. That Jesus had kept with them in the Lord’s Supper the precursory celebration of His death—this was clear to him. But this had rather developed in him the heroic desire to die with Him, than the understanding of His going to death. He believed that Jesus would now separate from their midst, in order to undergo apart from them a great contest. ‘Lord, whither goest thou?’ asked he Him. Jesus answered him, ‘Whither I go, thou canst not follow Me now; but thou shalt follow Me hereafter,’—a reference to His departure by a martyr’s death. ‘Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now?’ answered the disciple; ‘I will lay down my life for Thy sake.’ ‘I am ready,’ said he, according to Luke, ‘to go with Thee both to prison and to death.’ At this word of presumptuous self-sufficiency he must hear the terribly solemn announcement, ‘Wilt thou lay down thy life for My sake? Verily, verily, I say unto you, That this day, yea, even in this night, the cock shall not crow twice before thou shalt have denied Me thrice.’

After this severe word of terror, in which the disciple might fancy he saw an accusation as yet unintelligible to him, it was now the part of the Lord to discover to him the most peculiar reason of his weakness and enervation, and of his sudden fall. He knew that Simon had already thought of the means of resistance and self-help; that he would lose his courage of witness-bearing, because he had a desire to tread the way of earthly strength. He wished now to bring this circumstance to light. He asks the disciples, ‘When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything?’ They answered, ‘Nothing.’ These were the fair days, when they moved among the enthusiastic welcomes of His people. His name was everywhere sufficient recommendation to them. But now other days have come. They must now prepare themselves for the enmity of the world. They must be ready for a great abandonment and a great struggle. Thus He continues: ‘But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip, if he has one.’ As if He should say, The matter is now a thorough emigration out of the old world. Then He adds, ‘He that is not yet provided with a sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.’

Here it becomes entirely clear that He recommended to them the highest result of spiritual preparation—a preparation for need and death. It is almost superfluous to observe, that the swords can only be understood figuratively; for at that late evening hour nobody could think of buying a sword in an actual sense.

Moreover, it is equally plain for what reason Jesus has chosen the expression ‘sword’ to recommend to them spiritual preparation. With the same view, to bring them to the discovery and exhibition of their means of strength, He goes on: ‘For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in Me, He was reckoned among the transgressors,’ the lawless, the law-breakers, the seditious. This had been prophecied of the great reconciling Sufferer of the theocracy (Isa 53:1-12) He adds, ‘For the things concerning Me (in Scripture) have an end.’ The finger of Scripture points to the end. He knows that His end is near. Moreover, He sees His end sketched in the prophecies of Scripture; hence this passage also, that He should be counted as a transgressor among the transgressors. It is thus certain to Him that this doom is impending closely. Just for this reason He says, Make the greatest preparation.

The disciples have followed the external sound of His words, but not their spirit. They think that He is referring to the speedy coming of the necessity of armed resistance to the enemy, and cry out, apparently with confidence and triumph, as being armed, ‘Behold, Lord, here are swords—two!’

‘It is enough,’ said the Lord, doubtless with the most painful expression, and with the smile of holy sorrow. Enough—more than enough. The manner in which He said it must have told the disciples how painfully their blindness grieved Him. Two swords to defend twelve persons—to defend them against the power of the Jewish magistracy, and against the legions of the Roman empire; yea, to defend them against the spirits of evil and against all the powers of darkness! Two swords for this war!

‘Yea, it is enough,’ said He. As if He would have said: Enough to make manifest your want of understanding; to explain your approaching fall; and to suggest to My enemies the suspicion that My cause is one with that of the malefactors.

That Jesus did not want the two swords literally, is plain from the requirement that He had given them, that every disciple was to have his own sword, even although he should sell his garment for it; and, possibly, He had led the discourse to this point, with the view that the swords might be brought forward; because He wished to manifest the weakness by which Peter was soon to fall.

But even then the disciples did not sufficiently understand the heavy sigh of Jesus: as is plain from the subsequent incident in Gethsemane—the fact that there Peter struck with the sword.

But by an exegetic fatality of world-wide significance, the Romish theology upon these two swords founds the theory of the spiritual and the secular sword, of which the one is the attribute of the Pope, the other of the Emperor; but still in such a manner that the latter is mediately at the disposal of the Pope.

It is enough: a sigh of the God-man, who thus breathes forth a lament over Romish swords and martyr-piles; over the wars of the Paulicians and Hussites; over all the physical forces of the New Testament era, whereby men seek to further His cause. All these applications of physical force are enough to show that the true Christian spirit is still wanting to such combatants, and that to the false efforts of carnal bravery will succeed the denials of carnal faint-heartedness.

The celebration was now concluded by singing at its close the usual song of praise (Psa 115:1-18, Psa 116:1-19, Psa 117:1-2, Psa 118:1-29) At that time probably the fourth cup was not drunk; still less a fifth; which was sometimes drunk when the feast was prolonged during the singing of other psalms (Psa 120:1-7, Psa 121:1-8, Psa 122:1-9, Psa 123:1-4, Psa 124:1-8, Psa 125:1-5, Psa 126:1-6, Psa 127:1-5, Psa 128:1-6, Psa 129:1-8, Psa 130:1-8, Psa 131:1-3Psa 132:1-18, Psa 133:1-3, Psa 134:1-3, Psa 135:1-21, Psa 136:1-26, Psa 137:1-9) The partaking of the last cup pointed, perhaps, from the first to the kingdom of glory. At least, even at the beginning of the supper, the Lord seems to announce to His disciples that the festival should be fulfilled in His kingdom. It is scarcely needful to point out that what is meant here is a celebration in a higher sense-an element of the heavenly life; but certainly also a real celebration, in the most literal, and in the highest sense.

According to the three first Evangelists, Christ, after the song of praise, went out with His disciples to the Mount of Olives. The two first relate, that on the way He declared to them, that in that same night, which had then some time begun, all of them would be offended at Him. The Evangelist John records the solemn parting discourses which Christ uttered to His disciples in connection with His intercession for them, as occurring in the interval between the close of the Passover and the arrival at Gethsemane. The question here is, How are we to conceive of the local circumstances under which Jesus spoke the larger discourses, and how are they related to the account of the three first Evangelists?

It is first to be considered here, that the words which, according to the two first Evangelists, Jesus spoke to the disciples on the way to the Mount of Olives, bear a considerable resemblance to the words which John (Joh 16:32) attributes to Him, announcing to them that the hour was come when they should be scattered from Him. Moreover, it is to be noted that even John misplaces this address to the disciples on the way to the Mount of Olives, when he relates this departure in Joh 14:31, but does not allow the crossing over the Kedron to follow, till the moment indicated in Joh 18:1. Thus, what in Joh 14:1-31, Jesus at first said to the disciples, was said in the moment of departure. This is indicated by all the considerations which underlie this discourse. The departure and the going forth into a great peril form the foreground of the representation. The question of the whither, and of the way, is the fundamental thought. The consideration of the night is markedly prominent, very probably also that of the starry heaven. Above all, we should thus have to distinguish one special discourse which Jesus addressed to His disciples at His departure to the Mount of Olives, from the more lengthy conversations.⁴²

The following discourse (Joh 15:1-27 and Joh 16:1-33) cannot thus have been spoken on the same occasion.⁴³ Not only is the fundamental thought of it a new one, but it intimates also a new mode of consideration. The image of the vine, of the vine just pruned and purged, whose branches will now soon bring forth fruit; and the contrast of those unfruitful branches cut off and withered, which are to be cast into the fire: this is plainly the starting-point of the discourse. Let the reader now picture to himself the way which leads to the Mount of Olives, by Gethsemane, out of the city of Jerusalem. It passes by gardens in the valley,⁴⁴ in which doubtless are vines.⁴⁵ Moreover, it is probably in harmony with the season, if we suppose that these had been pruned⁴⁶ a short time before, and that the branches cut off had already withered. And perhaps here and there are still some garden-fires burning low, which might have been lighted on the eve of the festival.⁴⁷ As, in consistency, we are now to look for the Lord, as He utters this discourse, between the city of Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, we cannot but think that on the way, in the neighbourhood of gardens, He is induced, by special considerations which occurred to Him (to which perhaps Joh 16:25 refers), to make a characteristic pause, in order to point out to the disciples the glimpse of the fair Whitsuntide, when they ought to bear the ripe fruits of His life in the fellowship of His Spirit; in order, moreover, at the same time, to make them acquainted with the severe trial and jeopardy of soul which even now awaits them-the risk of being cut off and cast away as useless branches from Him. This He does now, at this point, in His second larger farewell discourse.

It is not probable that He uttered the solemn intercessory prayer (Joh 17:1-26) during a third pause, at a third and different point. The connection between Joh 16:33; Joh 17:1 appears at least to suggest the contrary. Moreover, from the passage Joh 17:26, the conclusion may be gathered, that Jesus delivered the high-priestly prayer immediately before His final going over the brook Kedron. Thus, it may be supposed that He was already at the foot of the acclivity beyond the city, when He spoke the parabolic discourse of the purged vine, and of the burning branches (a reference to Judas, who was already cut off from Him, and a warning to them, who were in danger of allowing themselves to separate from Him). For just here the vineyards must have come under His view in the plainest manner; and if perchance here and there a garden-fire was burning, it was here most distinctly visible. And then Jesus turned to Kedron. The crossing over it was the last decisive act of His going to death; at the same time, it was the advance of His disciples into the deepest peril of soul: therefore He committed them previously in faithful intercession to His Father.

We have constantly seen before how much the statements of the Evangelist John everywhere depend upon the most decidedly concrete views of a history connectedly progressing. This is the case here. Through the more ideal estimate of the Johannic farewell discourses of Jesus, are sharply seen, with the most marked and lively features, their historical motives and impulses.

Jesus thus spoke the first farewell word to His disciples on leaving the room. They went forth into the night,⁴⁸ and felt conscious that they were going forth into a peril of death, still concealed, but terrible. Whither they went, they themselves knew not. But the Lord saw clearly in the Spirit that they from henceforward would be strangers and foreigners upon earth, in a totally different sense from that in which they had hitherto been so. His homeless, His hearthless followers! that the security and glory of life in the old home of this world was now passing away for them. And so also for His people in all future times. In this sympathy He consoles them, as the representatives of His Church, by pointing them to the inheritance in heaven, and to His everlasting life in this inheritance for them.

And this is just the fundamental thought of the first address. They were to know that He knows of a heaven for them, for them,—is going into that heaven, ministers in heaven,—returns from heaven!

‘Let not your heart be troubled’ (Do not lose composure!), He cries to them. They must take courage for the bold step of faith which greets the old Here as a stranger, the new Hereafter as the home. ‘Believe in God,’ He continues, ‘believe also in Me.’ From the simplest but the deepest faith in God, is to issue the faith in the truth of His progress of life, through the death of the cross to the glory of the new life. There is a new home, says He to them there, in the words, ‘In My Father’s house are many mansions.’ His Father’s house is the universe: thus, perhaps, the many mansions appear to them in the glittering lights of the starry heaven. If we picture to ourselves that at this moment Jesus is about to step forth with His disciples under the starry canopy, we can hardly conceive but that He must with these words have pointed upwards to those testimonies of the heavenly habitations. And they were now to know, that there are many dwellings there in a new life for Him and for them,—to receive Him when He parts from them; to receive them when they follow Him, through the misery of the cross, and the martyr’s death—when they are driven forth from the old earth. At the same time is declared the certainty of their personal immortality—of their continuance in the other world-of their new life with the Lord in the Father’s house. All this they were now certainly to know.

‘If it were not so, would I tell you that I go to prepare a place for you?’⁴⁹

This word of Jesus is plain. With the fullest conviction He declares before His disciples-before His Church-before the future of humanity-that He knows what He is saying when He affirms, I go to prepare a place for you. Thus, were there no future existence, no hereafter, no inheritance above for His people, then He expressly declares that He could not give His disciples a promise of this kind. He has therein most solemnly guarded against the assertions of those who pretend that in this place, as in similar ones, He has only veiled more general religious ideas already existing in the conceptions of the people, or that He has uttered promises in unconscious religiousness of the same kind. We are sure of it, His consciousness on this subject is thoroughly awake and thoroughly defined. He stakes His own credibility on this promise; or rather, He gives His promise as a pledge that there is such an inheritance for them. It is as if He had spoken thus definitely, with a distinct foresight of the most remote times. But even His disciples needed this assurance.

Therefore He assures them, ‘I go to prepare a place for you.’ And then He adds, ‘And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.’ They are to regard His departure from them in this light. There is a pure paradisaical sphere in the house of the Father, which is appointed as a habitation for them. He will make this place their home; by His presence He will fill it with Christ-like life-Christianize it. Thus He will thereabove labour only for them. And as He prepares the place for them, He will also prepare them for the place. He will constantly come back to them by His Spirit, and fill them with the life of heaven-come again to individuals in the hour of death-come again to the collective Church at the end of the world, when at His appearing the great barrier between time and eternity shall fall down. What they must now grasp and maintain in faith is, that He will wholly live for them when He is parted from them-that He will live to them as if they could see Him. For this is just the Christian mode of viewing the world. Christ lives for His people in heaven, as the security and founder of an everlasting inheritance in the new world. But He knows full well, that in the hearts of His disciples, as in the dispositions of sinful humanity everywhere, many objections arise against this bold way of regarding things by Christian faith. These objections He desires to remove, and He effectually removes them in calling forth their expression by apparently paradoxical statement.

Thomas proposes the first difficulty, Philip the second, Judas Lebbæus the third. Each one opposes to Him exactly the scruple that had been most easily matured in the peculiarity of his own nature, in which He might thus actually become a representative of the band of disciples and of the world.

The first expression He calls forth with the word, ‘And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.’

It is too much for Thomas, to whom, generally, the way of hope melts away so easily before the gaze of his doubting disposition. He answers plainly, ‘Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way?’ He concludes, because we know not the end, we cannot therefore know the way.

But Jesus inverts the matter. ‘Ye do know the way, consequently ye must know the destination also.’ This inversion is fully justified by the nature of the case. In external life, the way has no other importance than that which arises from the fact of its leading to the destination. But in the divine life the way is itself a revelation of the end-one with the end; thus, whoever in this case knows the way, substantially knows the end also.

Thus, he who knows not of the future, knows not of it for the reason that he knows not of the heart of the present. He who cannot grasp the consciousness of the future existence of the soul, has no substantial experience of the temporal energies of the soul in its essence. (He knows the royal monad only as he knows the monads of worms.) In proportion as he misconceives the heaven of Christ in the high places of the world, just as much, not more, but also not less, he misconceives the heaven in the depths of the life of Christ. For with the peculiarity of the life is assumed the peculiarity of his way, and with this the peculiarity of his end. He who thus knows Christ in the glory of His inner life, knows also in substance of the condition and of the kingdom of His glory, and knows that the way by which he attains to that end is none other than his own life in its perfected development.

With this meaning Christ says, ‘I am the way;’ and, by way of explanation, adds, ‘as well the truth as the life;’ thus, as well the perfect clearness of the way, as the perfect power of movement in this way. And, indeed, the one and the other, as well for Himself as for His people. For them He is the truth, which leads them surely to life—the life which keeps them faithfully from perishing on the way. But because He is the true way, He is the way to the Father; for this is the only way for the child of man—the way absolutely. And because He is this way in truth, He is also the only way. ‘No man,’ says He, ‘cometh to the Father but through Me.’ And because they thus know Him, the way, they must also in Him know the end, the Father in the Father’s house, to which He is preceding them: ‘If ye had known Me,’ says He, ‘ye should have known My Father also.’

And immediately He calls forth a new scruple, by making use of the strong enigmatical expression, ‘And from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.’

Philip, a disciple, who was in the habit of making much of visible evidences, now broke in with the remark, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.’ This word of Jesus had thus found the strongest opposition in his peculiar disposition. This much is plain, that he conceives of still greater testimonies, still more manifest revelations of the Father, than are given to him in Christ. His look is still not sufficiently devoted and spiritual, to see in the manifestation of the life of Jesus, as conditioned by humanity, the unconditioned Father (conditioning Himself nevertheless in the Son)—to see in the historical lowliness of the Son the everlasting majesty of the Father. He seeks for phenomena of the Godhead beside Jesus, which should still more fully accredit as well Himself as His promise that He would prepare a place for them with the Father in the Father’s house. He has thus not sufficiently recognized the grand original revelation of God, which gives them perfect security for the future life.

The Lord makes known to him His amazement that he is still so much involved in old prejudices. ‘Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father.’

He who hath really known Him by the vision of the Spirit, must have known the Father; not indeed as the Father Himself, but as the very image of the Father—as the perfect revelation of the Father.

But He Himself interprets the deeply significant word with the question, ‘Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?’

Christ is in the Father. He lives, speaks, and acts continually in the consciousness of perfect union with Him, as conceived, appointed, loved, and decreed by Him, going forth out of the depth of His nature and will, and continually absorbed in the same depth again, and Himself comprehending and determining Himself in it, infinitely conditioned in the Father, and always with freedom consenting to this conditionality, as though He constantly disappeared in the Father.

Reciprocally the Father is in Him—speaks and acts through Him as through the life-principle of humanity, and of the world and Himself; reveals Himself as the unconditioned Lord of all things. Christ makes known the agency of the Father, as if the Father were visible in Him.

He who sees Christ sees again always the Son in the Father, and the Father in the Son, for He beholds everlasting love in its manifestation,—in the lowliness of the form of a servant,—in the majesty of Heaven; Himself prophetically revealing Himself; Himself in priestly character offering Himself for the world; and therein Himself declaring Himself with royal and victorious power.

He gives the proof of this. ‘The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself (from any arbitrary or egoistic principle): but the Father, that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.’ Christ’s words are all interchangeably the Father’s works, manifestations of His divine energy. Thus in all His words the Father Himself is operative; that is proved by the fact, that every word is a thunder and lightning of everlasting power, or rather a light-beam of everlasting love. Thus He may reasonably ask, ‘Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.’

Then He adds very significantly, ‘or else believe Me for the very works’ sake;’ that is, for the works’ sake, so far as these could be considered abstractly and separately, as undeniable miracles proceeding from Christ, and thus testifying of Him, in contrast with the loftier view which regards these miracles,—His words as the expressions and effusions of His innermost life, single beams which find their explanation in the nature of His glory.

Christ Himself has thus closely distinguished between the standpoint of faith in Him for the sake of the works,⁵⁰ as the works, and the stand-point of faith in Him for the sake of His words, as divine words proceeding from the spirit of the Father. He has characterized the former as the subordinate standing. But He has recognized it as a provisional one for a necessity; nay, for the case of necessity He has required it. But He has appointed to it the life discipline of striving after the higher point, and of attaining to it.

This appears from the following assurance: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that I do (as far as these are concerned) shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.’

Still greater than these, certainly not in respect of the power of operation, and of the wondrous form of their manifestation, but possibly in respect of the spiritual progress and the historical sphere of action; thus, greater inasmuch as Christ Himself is always performing, through His people, more glorious, deeper, more developed, and more comprehensive works.

That He thus intended the word, is plain from what follows: ‘Because I go to the Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.’ He repeats the word with emphasis, but so that at the same time the condition, in My name, is more markedly prominent: ‘If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it.’

That they shall thus do greater works than those which He had hitherto done, appears from a sorites of the essential relations of faith in the following manner:—Christ goes to the Father, to the source of power. He goes from the position of the infinite conditionality of the Son, which He had as the centre of all the conditionality of the world, over into the consummation of His life, in His self-conditioning, or in His union with the Father; thus in sympathy with the unconditionality of the Father, outwardly represented by the entirely supra-mundane stand-point which henceforth He occupies. He becomes one with the Father in the carrying out of His world government,—the organ of His power, and of His mighty control over the world. But His disciples also come into union with this heavenly power: first of all, by adopting His name, the definition of His spiritual essence with their being, and thus also the determination of His love upon the world; and, secondly, by asking for themselves in His name His blessings for the world.

In this manner they become the organs of His power, as He is the organ of the Father’s power; and thus bring it about that He can do in the world greater and ever greater works which He equally characterizes as their works, because they perform them in the highest energy of their free life. Moreover, these works must be performed, because the Father must be glorified in the Son. The glory is the power of the Spirit over life in the spiritualized manifestation of life. The Father is to be glorified; that is, it is to become manifest in the phenomenal world, that its whole life is pervaded thoroughly by His Spirit. Moreover, He is to be glorified through the Son; that is, by the continually increasing manifestation that the Son is the pre-eminently moving power of the world, enlightening everything by His Spirit. Thus is to become revealed the hidden majesty of the Father, which thus pervades the world through the Son. It is promised to the disciples, that this agency of God’s glory shall be unfolded to them in a continually higher degree through their life of faith, only they must not forget, entirely and ever more entirely, to ask in His name. And they will always ask more entirely, if they ever acknowledge more fully that it is He who does it.

But as He Himself is the glorious centre of His work, so also are the disciples to rejoice in an inner life, which can maintain itself as the free and blessed centre of their efficacy. Christ now indicates this stand-point in the words: ‘If ye love Me (Myself), ye will keep My commandments: and I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Advocate,⁵¹ that He may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.’

Faith in Christ is the source of the energy in the works of God, which are done in His name to the honour of God. Moreover, from faith in Him proceeds love to Him, which brings about obedience to His commandments. Especially also, the faithful observance of His institution, and which is therefore blessed with the gift of the Holy Spirit. He who loves Christ acknowledges Him in His everlasting nature, and therefore acknowledges also the everlasting value of His appointments. He observes them as the enduring testimonies of the beloved but absent Lord. And thus they become to Him, in consequence of Christ’s intercession, media through which He receives the Holy Spirit. As the loving Christian is wholly turned towards his Lord in the living remembrance wherewith he observes his institutions and ordinances, so Christ in His glory is wholly turned in His living intercession to him. The desire of the Christian and the blessing of Christ meet together. And thus the Christian receives the Spirit of his beloved Lord as the life of His commandment, as the living unity of his own Christian life, as the soul of his union with Christ. The Holy Spirit becomes to him a mediator, an advocate, inasmuch as He perfects, advocates, and establishes his own life in the judgment which the old world determines upon him; but becomes another advocate, in that He supplies to him the presence of Christ, who was to him the first advocate who gave to him courage and joyous power in abundance against all the world. This Comforter will abide with him for ever, will thus supply to him the presence of Christ, and will give to him security for the inheritance hereafter which Christ is preparing for him.

It is the characteristic feature of this Spirit, that He is the Spirit of truth. The Spirit of the Spirit in the word, in the life, one may say, in the world, and in the history of Christ. The truth is an infinitely subtle existence in the world, but in relation to the Spirit of God it is comparable to the body; whereas this Spirit may be likened to the soul, as the celestially pure divine consciousness concerning the living connection of all God’s works and words. For this reason, therefore, the Holy Spirit is so foreign to the world. The world is perhaps familiar with the spirit of the age, with the spirit of phenomenal nature, of external forms—of the progressive manifestations of the world; but it cannot receive the Spirit of God. It sees Him not in God’s works and testimonies before its eyes—not at all in the centre of all His revelations in Christ; it acknowledges Him not in His influences upon its own life. But the disciples know Him; for, first of all, He abides with them, in influencing them by the word of Christ; and one day He will be in them, when they have received Him into their innermost life.

With the promise of the Holy Spirit, Jesus announced to His disciples that He would make amends to them for His absence, by His spiritual presence; He declares this still more definitely: ‘I will not leave you orphans; I am coming to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more; but ye shall see Me.’

‘Because I live, ye shall live also.’ Christ lives in the absolute sense. Therefore He goes forth again even from death; and He exists for ever as the eternally living One. And He makes His disciples partakers of the same life, by His Spirit. They also shall live through Him. Therefore they also shall certainly see Him—Him the living One, they the living ones; not only externally after His resurrection, but in the Spirit continually. Then, when they thus see Him, will be the manifestation of the glorious day of the Spirit. ‘In that day,’ says He, ‘ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.’ I in the Father—absorbed into the depth of His being, and operating in His glory; ye in Me—transplanted with Me into His eternal being, into the sphere of His might; I in you—living on in your inmost nature, through the other Comforter, ministering on through you in the world.

And once more He tells them how they are to attain this result. In keeping His commandments, they prove their love to Him. Thus they become alive to the experience of the love of God; and with the love of God flows into them the love of Christ so powerfully, that they rejoice in spirit at the revelation of His nature.

Thus Jesus explains that He will reveal Himself in the glory of His kingdom only to those who love Him. This, again, is a declaration which offends the disciples, and most of all Judas Lebbæus: ‘Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?’ We have before seen that this Judas belonged to the brethren of Jesus, who always wished to urge Him forward on to the stage of the highest publicity; and that he probably was, in fact, the soul of such endeavours, the soul of a family spirit which would fain have seen the Lord in the glory of the world’s acknowledgment (vol. i. p. 336). Hence it is accounted for that Judas considered himself engaged before the rest to propose to the Lord this new doubt as to His future mysterious relation to His disciples and to the world. This is the third difficulty which the worldly mind can find in the doctrine of Christ concerning His government hereafter in the new life. It finds it surprising that He will reveal Himself only to His disciples. Thus the worldly mind continues to ask wherefore Christ thus makes Himself known.

Wherefore is it that only His disciples know of Him? wherefore does He not reveal Himself to the world? Thereupon the Lord answers to the questioner, first of all, ‘If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.’ The Father imparts Himself to him, because He finds His image reflected in Him—the love of Christ. Christ imparts Himself to him, because He finds His image in him—His word. The Father and the Son visit him from heaven through the Spirit. They condescend to him, because his heart, by the word of Christ, has attained the certainty of life wherein the Spirit of Christ, the presence of the Father, makes itself known-the focus wherein the everlasting Sun inflames and brings to view the heart’s own life. Thus familiar is he with the Father, with the Son, that they become his housemates in his heart; his inward nature becomes a resting-place of Christ, a throne of God. Thus it is brought about completely, that Christ reveals Himself to such an one.

But this mediation is exactly what is wanting between Christ and the world. ‘He that loveth Me not,’ He continues, ‘keepeth not My sayings,’ And therewith is expressed the fact also, that he keepeth not the words of the Father. Christ explains this in the saying, ‘The word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father’s which sent Me.’ Thus, to such an one is wanting the condition on which the Father and the Son make themselves known to the human spirit: the word as the spiritual determination of the revelation of Christ, which He fills with His Spirit, and thereby makes into His presence; the word as the brightness of the knowledge of God, in which the Father makes known His nature and life to the soul. Now the world is just in this case. The world, as world, is humanity, which is lost in the world, is ensnared into the finite, and refers everything only to the finite. Therefore it cannot love Christ, because His nature just consists in revealing the infinite life of the Father; and because it cannot love Him generally, on account of its love of the finite, it cannot keep His words—it cannot even receive them in their Christ-like ideality, as single light-forms of infinity. And thus, moreover, it is incapable of experiencing the life-operation of Christ, of receiving His Spirit. It has only forebodings of the eternal, obscured by worldly illusions; not the defined light pictures of the knowledge of the everlasting in His word. Therefore it cannot receive the full operation of Christ and of the Father; it cannot perceive the Holy Spirit, but only the vanishing forms of the time-spirits, which come and go with the changeful appearances of the finite. The sun can only increase its operation, so as to give intelligence of its energetic presence, when its beams are not checked, when its light can freely go forth. Thus it is also with the manifestation of Christ. Only where His light is present in His word this light is gradually filled with the entire power of His life, so that He is dynamically present, although in His glorified humanity He is throned in heaven. And where the fulness of His being manifests itself, there the Father Himself is manifested.

Moreover, in the degree that the world has Him not, it has not the Father. In the same degree, the everlasting living and personal God is unknown to it. It has dim, cloudy, and distorted heathenish forms of God; perhaps after the conception of the Brachmans, or of the Buddhists; perhaps in the likeness of a Zeus, or of a Woden; but the essential manifestation of the Father has never dawned upon it.

Thus much on this subject, on the continued life for them and in them which He will carry on in heaven, Christ says, He had wished to say unto them while He was still with them. But He declares further, they should learn much more upon the subject from the Paraclete. ‘But the Paraclete,’ says He—‘the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you.’ He will thus produce a threefold result. He will quicken the word of Christ in them. He will glorify His name to them. He will reveal the Father to them. Thus these results He will operate in them by the one operation of instructing them as the Holy Ghost—as the Life-Spirit of the unity and perfection of all the revelations of God—which is opposed to all the finiteness of the world, and contradicts all its mortality—which restores men from the unholy relations of perishableness back into their eternal relation to the Eternal God, which thus sanctifies them, and instructs them in the same degree; that is, makes them more and more capable of the knowledge of the Everlasting, and fills them more and more with this knowledge.

With this promise Christ says, He will now take leave of them, or rather salute them in the power of His nature, as He breaks forth into the words, ‘Peace I leave with you (separating from them as if for a farewell greeting), My peace I give unto you (as the greeting of everlasting fellowship, and therefore suggestive of the earliest meeting again⁵²): not as the world gives it, give I the farewell greeting—the salutation of peace.’

In that hour the world also gave to the disciples its farewell greeting—it gave to them a dismissal with terror and for ever. Thus it likes to take leave, although its greeting of welcome has flattered and deceived, and its greeting in daily intercourse has been without spirit and without blessing. Not so Christ. His farewell, in His last salutation of peace to His disciples, is the bequest of heavenly peace itself, and the pledge of the new salutation, soon returning with the richest measure of heavenly peace. In this power He says to them: I leave you My farewell; I offer you My living salutation—in the promise, namely, I live, and ye shall live also. Thus it might perhaps be said that this is the real adieu which He gives to them; that He goes to the Father, and assures them that He will return to them with the Father by His Spirit, wherewith also they come with Him to the Father.

Thus He comes back to the word of exhortation wherewith He began this address: ‘Let not your heart be troubled nor cast down, neither let it be afraid.’⁵³

Stagger not at the glory—not at the glory of the certainty of God—of the certainty of Christ—of the certainty of immortality-of the certainty of victory and resurrection, He, as it were, cries to them as He leaves them, repeating once more the great word of consolation: Ye have heard that I have said to you, I go away, and come again to you.’ His going away itself is a powerful coming again to His disciples.

By way of encouragement and reproof, He then adds: ‘If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice, because I go to the Father: for the Father is greater than I.’

Between the two last passages there is a thought unexpressed which forms the transition. By ascertaining what this thought is, we shall perhaps explain the last words.

The disciples ought to rejoice that Christ goes to the Father, if they truly love Him. Why? Because the Father is greater than He. The significance of this argument only subsists in the fact that a change will arise in His relation to the greater Father by His going to Him—that He Himself shall thereby, in some sense, become greater. And thus it is, in fact, He will be glorified in going to the Father.

In His human pilgrimage He appears as the infinitely conditioned Son of the everlasting, unconditioned, all-conditioning Father. In His going home to the Father, on the contrary, He returns to the participation of His supra-mundane, all-controlling majesty. He is glorified. The eternal priority, indeed, which the Father has as the Father is thus not abolished; but the everlasting oneness of the Son with the Father,—the likeness of essence,—is set forth even in its world-historical perfection. The Holy Spirit will give to His disciples testimony of this glory of the Son.

Thus He continues: ‘And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.’ And why does He wish to commend to them so earnestly this proof of faith? ‘Hereafter’, says He, ‘I will not talk much with you.’

‘For the prince of this world cometh (is already near), and has nothing which belongs to him in Me.’

The world, as world, in its perishableness is now opposing itself to the Lord as the reflection of the Eternal Father for a decisive struggle. In this hostility it is governed and led on by its prince the devil, as prince of this world-as the innermost principle of all the mortality of humanity in that which is finite (as the ὁ διάβολος who confuses everything) which disturbs the ideal unity of life. He draws near to the Prince of Light, in order to tempt Him also with the storm of the horror of death.

He has nothing that belongs to him in Me, says Christ. Thus He not only declares His own righteousness, but also the certainty of His victory and resurrection. Everything in Him belongs to the kingdom of light, even His body also. Thus, moreover, is decided the early separation from the disciples. Christ again overcomes the world. But at the same time is declared thereby, that Christ experiences no wavering of His courage—knows no fear, in the face of the approaching and threatening prince of this world.

He declares this in His conclusion: ‘But that the world may know that I love the Father, and that I exactly fulfil the commission of the Father as He gave it me, prepare yourselves,⁵⁴ and let us go hence.’ He has thus a perfectly clear consciousness that He is yielding not to the force of the prince of this world, but to the might of the Father, and solemnly announces that in this step is no remnant of unfreedom or constraint, but the free purpose of surrender to the decree of the Father. Thus was the departure accomplished.

Before crossing the Kidron, however, the Lord was once more induced to utter a longer discourse to His disciples. This address forms a distinct contrast with the previous one. In the former, Christ shows how He would be their Advocate in heaven with the Father, and how they in union with Him would lead a life above the world; in the present, on the other hand, He shows how they were to set forth His life on earth in the present world, and how He would continue to govern in them, and through them, upon earth.

At first the Lord sets before the disciples, in a parabolic discourse, how they are to prosecute His life in the world (Joh 15:1-8); then He gives them a closer explanation of this discourse (Joh 15:9-17). Hereupon He shows them how, in the manifestation of His life in the world, they must incur substantially the same hatred which He Himself has undergone, and still undergoes (Joh 15:18, Joh 16:6). This leads Him further to renew to them the promise of the Holy Spirit, because this is to be their Advocate in the most glorious manner in the face of the world, and endow them with all the fulness of God and of His life (Joh 16:7-16). To this are linked the final explanations on the manner in which He will take His departure from them, and in which He will return (Joh 16:17-30; comp. Mat 26:32; Mar 14:28). Then He knows that they are sufficiently prepared to receive as a body His announcement that they would be offended at Him—would faint-heartedly forsake Him (Joh 16:31-32; comp. Mat 26:31; Mar 14:31). But His closing word confirms to them the bequest of His peace, and gives to them the assurance that He has substantially already overcome the world (Joh 16:33). In this assurance He commits them to the Father in the most earnest intercession (Joh 1:1-26).

The suggestion which prompted to Jesus the parable of the vine, has been sought for by different people in various circumstances. Some thought that they found it in the partaking of wine in the holy communion; others supposed that a vine must have grown around the guest-chamber where the Lord and His disciples were assembled, and must so have offered itself to the Lord for the similitude; others, again, referred it to that gorgeous metallic vine with which Herod had adorned the high door of the temple.⁵⁵ It may not perhaps be denied that some relation between the significance of the wine in the Lord’s Supper and the fruits of the vine of which the Lord is here speaking, subsists in this place; but the fundamental view is in this instance a totally different one. Here, for instance, it is the vine branches especially that are in question—their relation to the vine, to the vine-dresser, and to the purpose of the vine to bear fruit. But as to the relation of the parable to a vine on the house where the guest-chamber was, we have to consider that the distinct summons of Jesus to departure is gone by; that house has already disappeared from our sight. To the symbolic vine on the temple mountain, moreover, Jesus hardly came with the disciples on that night; besides, it is not to be supposed that the lively symbol of Jesus is to be referred to an artificial symbol in the temple.⁵⁶

Besides, it has been remembered how significant is the feature that the unfruitful branches were cut off, that they were cast into the fire. This characteristic especially places us, in our consideration, actually among the vineyards, and therein gives us also, as we have already seen, the historical connection.

‘I am the true⁵⁷ vine,’ says Christ, ‘and My Father is the vine-dresser.’ Into this simple and noble representation He gathers up in this terrible night His entire relation to the world and to the disposal of the Father. What the vine is in the sense of an earthly, transient, and symbolic phenomenon, He Himself is in the sense of the highest Realism of the imperishable relations of the eternal world. The eternal vine in the midst of the world, and of humanity, in which the typical designation of Israel to be the vine of the nations⁵⁸ has been fully developed and fulfilled, whose shoots are represented by men in their relation to Him, especially in the historical relation of discipleship to Him, and whose roots in the Life of the Logos permeate the entire territory of the world—or rather, as life-element of its innermost nature, project out of themselves and take back into themselves—He is the true vine. From this representation is explained His whole nature and destiny, the nobleness of His being, the weakness of His appearance, the power of His ministry, the glory of His results, the greatness of His sufferings in the season when He comes under the knife of the pruner, the greatness of the jubilee in the day of His harvest. But it is especially to be considered as a characteristic of the glorious and complete confidence in the view of Christ, that He points to the Father as the vine-dresser.

Thus, simply, on this night does He bring the entire dark arrangement of His Father into the view of the most conscious, most subtle, and most noble activity. Thus the Father is to Him, thus to His disciples, in all His decrees, in His heaviest judgments even, He has nothing else in view than the progress of the vine, the cultivation of its branches, the fruits of the harvest.

Still, the Lord has especially to do with the image of the branches, to which He first of all likens His disciples. At first their relation to the vine-dresser comes into consideration. They are to know that they must undergo the sorrows which await them, just because they are branches in Him. The branches must be pruned; the knife of the vine-dresser passes threateningly around all, and all must suffer. Still He makes a great distinction. ‘Every branch which bears no fruit is cut off (that the vine may be purified from it); but every branch which bears fruit is purified, is thus pruned,⁵⁹ that it may bear more fruit.’ Thus are the disciples instructed that sorrows await them from the hand of the vine-dresser. Still He gives them the consolation, that they shall not be cut off if they only stedfastly abide in Him. ‘Ye are pure,’ says He, ‘through the word that I have spoken to you.’ They have already the first form of purity—the pure relation to the vine—in that they are united with Christ in a living manner through the word of His life which He has given them. If they keep this word they shall not be cut off from Him, but shall once more be purified only through sorrow, according to their destination for the harvest.

Thus is the relation of the branches to the vine indicated: ‘Abide in Me, and I in you.’ How? He tells them subsequently; at present they are first to consider that they must abide in Him. ‘As the branch,’ says the Lord, ‘cannot bring forth fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing.’ Thus, as the branches must receive their life, their sap, their power to bring forth fruit, from the vine, so must the disciples from Christ. This is their only, their highest law of life. To abide in the vine—to abide in the energy of the vine—to abide deep in the life and the living impulse of its root and of its sap, so that the vine also abides in them-that they are associated with it, not as languid or wild sprouts, as strange shoots, alienated from the spirit of growth.

It is not the external connection with the vine that is the abiding of the branch in it. If the internal connection of the branch with the vine ceases,—the unity in respect of the energy of putting forth fruit—it is only a hurtful and troublesome stick on the vine. And because it has remained united with it, but not internally, the pruner destroys even the outward connection—it is cut off.

‘Thus,’ says Christ, ‘the disciple who abides not in Him is cast away-cast forth as a branch-he is withered;⁶⁰ and is thus heaped together with other branches as brushwood, cast into the fire, and in flickering light flame is consumed by the fire’ (καὶ καίεται).

But as the excellent branch is to be regretted if it thus fails of its purpose, and perishes as worthless fuel in a light flickering fire of brushwood, so it is a terrible misfortune if, in like manner, a disciple falls short of his purpose. How plainly, doubtless, the frightful destiny of Judas occurs to the soul of the Lord, as He utters these words! But how entirely different is the lot of the disciples if they fulfil their appointment; that is, if they abide in Christ in such a manner as that His words abide in them actually as His words, namely, as bright certainties of life and principles of life. In that case, He says, they shall ask what they will, and it shall be done unto them. Their entire wish before God will thus be bestowed on them. Moreover, they will attain their true destination in a threefold form. They will, in the first place, bear much fruit. The new wine of peace and joy of the eternal feast of the kingdom of heaven will be communicated by their means in abundant measure to humanity. Thus, moreover, in the second place, they will, for the first time, perfectly become⁶¹ the disciples of Jesus in the highest sense—organs, copies, representatives of His life in the world. Then, thirdly, again they will thereby add to the glory of the Father. Through them it will be fully manifest and notorious, that the Lord of the world is not a Fate—not a Saturn or a Pan, or any other dim form of divinity, but the living God, who has revealed Himself in Christ, and reconciled the world—even the Father—the Godhead, which, with its Spirit, pervades all the life of all the universe round about, and through and through. Through them, this glory of the Father shall become manifest.

They will thus come to the highest satisfaction of their life as far as they are concerned; and this satisfaction will appear as the most glorious blessing, first of all, in relation to humanity; secondly, in relation to Christ; thirdly, in relation to the Father.

Hereupon Jesus passes on to explain to them the parable still more in detail, especially in the point, that they are, and how they are, to abide in Him.

The fundamental law for this abode of the disciples in Christ is this: ‘As the Father hath loved Me (hath chosen Me unto love), so have I loved you; continue ye in My love.’

The Father beholds the Son as His express image—looks on Him in His unity with satisfaction from eternity—in this love He has chosen Him. It is, therefore, a word of unspeakable importance, when Christ says to the disciples, ‘So have I loved you.’ Thus He has acknowledged, saluted, chosen them, with perfect view of their features of character, of their destiny, of the certainty of their association with Him. And as it is His blessedness and righteousness continually to contemplate and to be absorbed into the love of the Father, and to find Himself beloved in it; thus it must be their blessedness and righteousness to be absorbed into this love, and to find themselves again in this love, and to learn to comprehend how they are in Him.

If they would thus abide in Him, they must abide in His love. But how do they abide in His love? Here there is no mention of the production and maintenance of a constant ecstatic state. ‘If ye keep My commandments (the New Testament ordinances of Jesus), ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments (the Old Testament covenant institutions of God, which are leading Him through the law even to the death on the cross), and abide in His love.’

He then explains to them the intention with which He has now pressed upon their heart the admonition to remain in His love. ‘These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.’ The joy of Christ is the eternally free, festal, undulating movement of His soul in the consciousness of the Father’s love; therefore imperishable, because He knows Himself always beloved by the Father, however much the perception of it may be obscured by the judgment of the world. This joy moves Him even now, while the disciples are moving joylessly around Him. They must thus know what is wanting to them. They must thus be absorbed in the consciousness of being Christ beloved beings in the fellowship of the God—beloved Lord—of being beloved by Him, and in Him—of being beloved by the Father, whereby they thus stand in direct relation to the everlasting fountain of joy, whereby the joy of Christ flows over upon them, till their joy is completed in the blessedness.

But He finds it necessary now more fully to explain to them the instruction to keep His commandment.

‘This is My commandment (the substance of My lawgiving or institution), that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.’ And how has He loved them? ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ From His standpoint Christ knows that He only dies for His friends although He dies for men, even although they are still enemies; for they become His friends in the power of His death, and they only experience the power of His death in the degree in which they become His friends. This truth binds the believers all the more to acknowledge that they were not yet His decided friends when He gave His life for them. Nay, that they were all still His enemies, inasmuch as His determination to die for men precedes all acts of surrender on the part of men to Him.⁶² Jesus Himself intimates, that He could only call His disciples His friends conditionally, so far as He looks to their position towards Him. ‘Ye are my friends,’ says He, ‘if ye do whatsoever I command you.’ But as for Him, He will, notwithstanding, from henceforward call them friends, but not servants. For what constitutes the servant is, that he knoweth not what his lord doeth. He knows only his separate commands. He is not initiated into his motive, nor placed on his stand-point by affinity and fellowship of spirit. It is otherwise in this case. Christ tells the disciples that He has made known unto them all that He has heard of the Father (all that was intrusted to Him for them).⁶³ And thus even already He has saluted them as friends. On His side the friendship was thus actually decided, if it also, on their side, in some measure should stand the test. But thus He further says it is fitting, as He reminds them, ‘Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.’

He had chosen them and ordained them. This ordination has a twofold expression. First, it declares their mission as it appears in the conditioning of their life. They are to go forth (to go forth in their apostolic calling, and in their earthly separation from Him, into the contest), and to bring forth fruit, and to leave the fruit behind, as abiding, as an imperishable seed of the kingdom of God in the world. Then He declares the unconditionality of their mission-that they were appointed to it; whatsoever they should ask of the Father in His name, He would give them. Hereupon He repeats the commandment in which the whole law of life is comprised by Him, that they were to love one another. This He enjoins upon them first of all by His word, then by His example-His death, which is a death first of all for them⁶⁴—finally, by His Spirit.

The mutual love of Christians, in the measure and in the power of the love which Christ has shown to them, is the essence of the Christian law of life. Moreover, as Christ died for true Christians who once had been no friends of His, and whose friendship was still unapproved in any individual, the reciprocity of His disciples’ love must consist not merely in the love of decided believers for those who stand upon the same ground as themselves, but also for those in whom they must first seek out and enliven the features of relationship, as Christ sought out and quickened them in His disciples.

Thus shall He know His appointment in a distinct and approved manner. The kingdom of light—the Church of His disciples—is the kingdom of mutual love, of love in the divine heroic measure, according to which the one can sacrifice his life for the other. Here is declared, first of all, that this kingdom must separate itself in the sharpest manner from the dominion of the world that hates it. Secondly, that it must excite this hatred, and experience it in its whole development towards itself. Thirdly, that it must overcome it, precisely by refusing to be confounded by its perils, but remaining always self-possessed.

The disciples, moreover, need not be confounded in their vocation of representing the life of Christ in the world. ‘If the world hate you,’ says the Lord and Master, ‘ye know that it hated Me before it hated you.’ Yea, they were to take to themselves this hatred as a good sign: ‘If ye were of the world, the world would love his own (his own self-entanglement in you). But because (by the dominant principle of your life) ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore (because of the character which Christ has recognized in you, which He develops in you, because ye are thus elected and beloved of Christ) the world hateth you. Remember the word which I said unto you,⁶⁵ The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also.’

And once again He tells them that it is not their own that the world hates in them, but His—His name; yea, that the enmity of the world against Him allows itself to be manifested so much, only because it does not know the Father. For the name of the Son is actually the expression for the being of the Father (Heb 1:3). If, then, the world hates His name, it cannot possibly acknowledge with love the being of the Father.

But this denial of the Father is a guilt of the world. ‘If I had not come,’ says He, ‘and spoken unto them, they had not had sin’ (the sin of the positive denial of the Father as the Father). This sin, for instance, in its mature form, was not possible until the manifestation of the Son, who revealed the Father to the world. But in its beginnings it is contained in every sin; for every sin is an offence against the secret testimony of the Logos-against the beginnings of the teaching of the Word of God in the heart,—of the Word (of the eternal brightness), by which the Father makes Himself known. Since the revelation of Christ, however, it became the great sin of the new age to deny the Father, in order to establish in His place the threadbare images of God of the heathenish world-view. Thus now, as it seems, just for that reason they have no cloke for their sin. Moreover, that he by this sin of unbelief signifies the positive denial of the Father, He plainly declares: ‘He that hateth Me, hateth My Father also.’ This word expresses the counterpart of the previous one: Whosoever hath seen Me, hath seen the Father. And, as Christ then observed (Joh 14:11), if a man do not believe Him for His own sake, yet He must still be believed for the very works’ sake, He must even now characterize the unbelief which could still hold out against His works as the most decided form of unbelief: ‘If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin. But now have they seen Me and My Father (in the works), and have hated Me and Him.’ This is the case continuously of all ministries of Christ through Christianity in the world. ‘But this cometh to pass,’ He adds, ‘that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hate Me without a cause.’ Even this word found in Christ, for the first time, its highest fulfilment; perfectly sinless, He must experience the perfectly groundless hatred. It is the first comfort, that all this hatred is foreseen by God—is determined in His decree. The second is this, it is utterly without reason, and therefore also utterly vain. And this is the third consolation: the Paraclete whom Christ will send to His disciples from the Father—that Spirit of Christ’s life whom He can communicate to His people when He is returned home to the Father—that Spirit, as the Spirit of truth, who goes forth from the Father, will testify of Him. Firstly, because He is the Spirit of the truth which appeared bodily in Him whose King and centre He is, who must always refer back again to Him; then also because He comes from the Father, reciprocally with the fact that Christ is gone to the Father. But this witness of the Holy Spirit will be united with their witness as its living soul: ‘And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning.’ Thus this was to be their relation, as opposed to the hatred of the world.

And as He said to them of His love, that they must continue in it, that their joy might be full, so He said the worst to them of the hatred of the world. And as they were to resist it by the testimony of Christ in union with the testimony of the Holy Spirit, so they were not to be offended—not to lose their faith in Him, by the experience of this hatred of the world.

The persecution, He says, will begin by their being thrust out of the synagogue, or excommunicated; and it will become more severe, till the time shall come when it will be considered an act of divine service⁶⁶ to slay them. Moreover, this fanatical hatred will always have the same foundation-an equal denial of the Father as of the Son. (Thus it is not at all any partial denial of the Son in one-sided but true adoration of the brightness and majesty of the Father,—or the reverse.)

It is true that the Lord had predicted to them from the beginning that they, in following Him, must expect privations (Mat 8:20). He had also subsequently announced to them, that for His sake they would have to undergo great sufferings (Mat 10:1-42) But He said to them now for the first time, that it would one day be considered by the world as meritorious—that the world would make of it a kind of God’s service—to put them to death; or, moreover, that they would be hated even to death by those who professed to be God’s servants—the fanatically pious in the world-and that they would be sacrificed to the prince of this world in horrible Moloch-offerings, under the delusion that it was rendering God Himself a service thereby. Thus the disciples were in the position now of hearing for the first time of the sorrows which awaited them in following Jesus. They were terribly discouraged.

This discouragement induced the Lord to assure them that He had said this in order to provide them with a sign for the hour of their calamity itself. When, by and by, their sorrows came, they might remember Him—that He has foretold it to them—and on this sign of His prescient Spirit they might then take courage and comfort in affliction.

At the same time, He tells them why He had not spoken to them these extreme and painful things from the beginning, namely, because He was then with them. ‘But now,’ He adds, ‘I go My way to Him that sent Me.’ He would not tell them the grievous word before the time; but, also, He would not let them become acquainted with their painful course too late. This is according to the divine arrangement. The kindness of Providence conceals from man the terrors that are to come upon Him so long as the knowledge of them would only perplex him, or, rather, so long as he neither will nor can apprehend the announcement of them; but the truthfulness of Providence begins to withdraw from him the veil which hides these terrors—by portents, so soon as he needs this withdrawal for his preparation. And thus the Lord perceives it to be necessary now to place His disciples absolutely in front of the picture of what was impending over them. Still, even here, He neither can nor may oppose to the statement: ‘Hitherto I have been with you;’—the words, ‘Henceforth I shall no more be with you.’ For although, indeed, He goes His way, yet it is to the Father, that He may live there for them.

But this word of consolation is far from making a lively impression on them yet. He cannot but cry with amazement, ‘And none of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou?’ Assuredly the disciples were still in a mood to maintain very energetically the interest of the present life. Certainly enthusiasm for the interest of time cannot be asserted to be a new idea. Once in the earlier and fairer days of Israel, this enthusiasm, in its artlessly religious form, was perfectly in bloom. It occupied so prominently the religious consciousness of the Israelites, that many have thought that the doctrine of immortality was wanting in the Old Testament—the doctrine, namely, of the higher life of the world to come. But in the days of the Israelitish nation’s misfortune, the prophetic spirit had already begun to elicit the doctrine of the future which lay à priori in the theocratic germ of Christianity.⁶⁷ Notwithstanding, the predilection for a visible glorification of the present was always tending to become powerful among the Jews, and begat various chiliastic fanciful forms. And thus, in these moments, the disciples appeared as advocates of that mighty prepossession against the importance of the future world. They look sadly, gloomily, doubtingly upon all the mysterious intimations of Jesus, rich in promises as they were,—so sorrowfully, that it never occurs to one of them to inquire after the nature of that inheritance into which their Master is going, or after the manner and form of the new life.

It is quite plain here, that fuller disclosures about the future life would have even then been given in reply to the anxiety of the disciples of Christ, had they manifested, or been able to manifest, a stronger inclination, and thence also a susceptibility and capacity, to receive those fuller revelations. Even in the later and more considerable disclosures of this kind which the Lord gave to the apostles, He adapted Himself to the ripeness of their susceptibility for the revelation of the future state, and to the necessities of His Church. Thus the richest communications of this nature which were given to the maturest apostles in their moments of highest illumination, had for the more ordinary mind of the Church an enigmatical and obscure character. The mind of Christians is, commonly, still too much entangled in the course of this world’s life, and in the pain of the death which leads beyond it; but especially in the thousandfold sorrow of parting and separation which is associated with that last journey, to be able in this relation to reach so easily from the stand-point of the vastest spirit-labour to that of the serene spirit-festival, and thus to comprehend the higher communications of the Lord on the subject of the future life.

But this disposition is still prevalent in the disciples in considerable measure. Instead of their interest being in some degree aroused by the declaration of Jesus, so full of promise, their heart, as the Lord now expressly says, was completely filled with sadness. Thus He goes further now, and tells them most definitely, that even for their present life it would be an advantage that He should part from them. ‘Moreover I tell you the truth, It is expedient for you that I go away.’ This is the important passage which serves to the Christian for the first spiritual glorification of the present state. The proof is divided into two parts. First of all, Christ supposes the case of His not going away; then, says He, the Paraclete will not come to you. Then He declares the result of the fact of His actual departure: ‘But if I go away, I will send Him unto you.’

Thus the Lord returns, with the repeated announcement of His departure, to the promise of the Holy Spirit. This promise is associated with the condition, that He Himself in His visible manifestation should leave His disciples and go out of the world.

Humanity is so deeply sunken by sin into fleshliness and unspiritualized sensuousness, that it has unlearned the faculty of seeing the reality of the spirit before it or around it. Everywhere the immediate reality appears to it obscured and perished, not only because it is mostly darkened by sin, and testifies of sin, but rather because it is most looked upon by sinful eyes. Hence the immense contrast between poetry and reality. Man regards the ideal as unreal, the real as not ideal. He attributes to the spirit no substantiality, to substantiality no spirit. In reality he not only characterizes the sin as evil, but the suffering too. Nay, he rather calls the suffering the sin, although the suffering is the reaction against the sin, the first natural judgment upon it, which in consequence everywhere secures the relative ideality of the reality. And not only does he call suffering evil, but even the appearance of suffering manifested to him according to his sinful suppositions; for instance, that Christ grew up in Nazareth—that He does not change the stones into bread—that He does not expel the Romans from the land—that He is ready to suffer.

Therefore man never beholds the working of God except when He has passed by,⁶⁸ or with the glimpse of hope as He is advancing, but not in His actual presence. Faith does not fully grasp the present grace and truth, save by the remote beat of the wings of memory and of hope. Generally, man thus beholds the earth on its fairer and more poetic side only in the blue haze of distance, and he does not appreciate the poetry of home till in a wholly foreign land he learns it in the home sorrow that vents itself in poesy.⁷⁰ Hence he sees in the circumstances that lie nearest to him incompleteness⁷¹ prevailing—in his nearest associations the constant prevalence only of labour and effort; his eye is always captivated by what he cannot possess and cannot reach, as being the more perfect thing. And thus also he looks upon heaven as only beyond the stars, or in the starry world; but the heavenly upon earth disappears from him. Even in those moments when Christ wandered upon earth, this was the prevalent disposition with the disciples: it is the same in later times, when He is continually upon earth in His Church and by His Spirit. In a word, man cannot see the working of God in the world purely, because the world has become to him by his worldliness an enchanted labyrinth of endlessly complicated limitations, and the incarnation of Infinity itself in Christ seems to him, under the thousand reflected lights of the finite (in the fact, for instance, that Christ is a Nazarene, a Jew, nay, even that He is a man), as a finite fact; nay, actually Christ Himself appears to him as the nature laden with the whole curse of finiteness.

And everything appears to him in this way, because, as the victim of sinful entanglement, he will see in the divine ordinance of conditionality only the curse of finiteness, and not the grace and truth of the divine definition.

Therefore humanity could not possibly arrive at a clear knowledge of the revelation of God in Christ so long as Christ was with His disciples on earth. If He purposed to complete the revelation of God as the greatest prophet, He must go far away from the sinful, carnal eyes of His disciples, and the world—far away into a remote land (Luk 19:12). Humanity must first learn again to look⁷² out of the depth of its nature, and before all things it must first again learn to see in spirit. This going away of Christ happened in a threefold gradation with threefold effect. By His death He was crucified to visible things. Moreover, by it visible things (in their old, dim, finite, decaying light) were crucified to His disciples.⁷³ Nay, thereby was likewise crucified⁷⁴ their former manner of beholding with bewildered eye, in manifold phenomena, only the fallacious glitter of the lust of the eyes, of the flesh, and of the pride of life,⁷⁵ and not of discerning the substantial lustre, the beautiful, and in it the Spirit. By His resurrection He revealed Himself as the living originator of a visibility which is entirely glorified into spirit (Luk 24:37), of a spirit-life which is manifested in perfect visibility (Joh 20:27). Then, secondly, He thereby set Himself forth as the principle and the pledge of a new world, which in like manner was to reveal the glory of God-that is, the pervading rule of God’s Spirit through all flesh. And thus He called forth in His disciples the beginning of this new power of vision out of the inmost soul, and in the entire power of bodily vision (Joh 20:16). At His ascension He finally comprehended both these operations in a third, into the highest consummation of the poetic effect which ideal distance produces upon man. He made His life the centre of all the aspiration of the higher human life into the dim distance—the centre of all the affectionate, and as it were homesick, remembrance of His disciples—of every longing hope contained in the gaze into the future. And thus He made His retreat, His heaven the paradise of all the real poetry of the affections, of pious yearning, of memory, and of hope upon earth. And thus, finally, to dwell with Him became the great aim of life to Christian humanity.

And thus Jesus could complete the revelation of God to His disciples by withdrawing from them to the Father, and leaving behind to them the memory of His life. But not only as the great Prophet of God, but also as the High Priest, and as the King of humanity, He must first by His going home complete His work in the threefold gradation of His death, His resurrection, and ascension, before He could communicate the Holy Spirit to them. We are able at this place only to throw out suggestions, as we must return to this point subsequently.

As in the character of Prophet He abolished the illusion of the flesh by His death, set forth the truth of the flesh by His resurrection, and established the glorification of the flesh by His ascension; so in the character of High Priest, by His death on the cross He expiated the guilt of all the fleshliness of the world; by His resurrection He affirmed the everlasting claim and the value of corporeity; and in His ascension laid the foundation for the appearance of humanity before God hereafter in the priestly robes of a perfected corporeity devoted to God. Moreover, as the King of humanity, He has by His death taken away all the weakness of the flesh (for instance, the fear of death); by His resurrection He brought to light the imperishable power of victory over death of the spiritual bodiliness; by His ascension, finally, He laid the foundation for a kingdom in which the Spirit is everlastingly to pervade and renew all corporeity—wherein corporeity, received into the consciousness of spirit, is to permeate the world with spiritual power.

In such a manner He completed His life in His going home to the Father—completed it for the world. And thus it must be completed, if His disciples were to become partakers of the Holy Ghost. For, first of all, the Holy Ghost is the living unity of the perfected revelation—of the perfected life of Christ. Thus, so long as His life was not completed in all its characteristics, the Spirit, as the Spirit of Christ, could not in its fulness pass over to His disciples. He is, moreover, the Spirit of the Father. Therefore, so long as the revelation of the Father was not completed in the exaltation of Christ, He could not, in this determination of His nature, go forth from the Father. Finally, He is the Holy Spirit in respect of His own life, the Spirit which absolutely denies every perishable nature of finiteness in the world; and in every consciousness filled therewith, makes known His own consciousness in every consecrated personality—makes known His own personality in every focus of His manifestation—makes known the infinitely free, blessed comprehension of all His life. Therefore He could not make Himself known to the disciples of Christ, so long as the old world was not abolished by the death of Christ—so long as the new world was not established by the exaltation of Christ, and both as well before their eyes as in their hearts.

By the continued abode of the historic Christ in the old world, there would have been established a threefold, or rather a thrice threefold deficiency, which must have continued to afflict His disciples. The world would have remained to them the old world, in its deceiving, blinding lights, in its terrifying shadows, in its profane secularity—penetrated with the fear of judgment, with temptations to sullen self-immolation, with the appearance of an everlasting war of extermination between spirit and sense—filled with the terror of death, with contradictions of the possibility of the glorification of the body, of the hope of eternal life;—that is, that to them the world would have remained filled with sheer hindrances to the revelation of that Spirit which in all the world denies nothing but sin, and which, notwithstanding, sin denies through all the world; and which actually, as the Holy Spirit, presupposes the absolutely completed holy life in order to make it a principle of sanctification, and so at the same time of regeneration and glorification of all life.

It was thus actually a gain for Christendom, for humanity, that Christ departed from the earth home to His Father. Under this condition alone, He came entirely close to humanity—He became entirely its own. We may stand too near to external objects to see them truly, especially to the forms of the beautiful; we may stand externally too near to men to estimate them entirely, or to appreciate them, especially great men. But Christ must stand face to face with humanity in the remoteness of heaven, in order to grasp it by means of the threefold inwardness of its memory, its hope, and its desire, in the most intimate manner, till He could become altogether present to it by His Spirit.

The result has confirmed the truth of His word. For the first time His Spirit came upon His disciples after His ascension, and then in its fullest streams. And where it has been wished to approach more closely to the Lord in an external manner—where it has been sought to represent Him by official symbols in the phenomenal world, there His Spirit has gradually altogether retreated, until a frightful abandonment of the Spirit has been the consequence. But to the entrance into the heart turned towards Him—to the remembrance associated with His word and His communion, He has always revealed Himself anew as the historical Christ—to the hope, as the future Christ—to the prayerful desire, as the heavenly Christ, who makes Himself known from Heaven by His Spirit.

Thus were the disciples to learn to believe in the advantage which the going home of Christ brings to them. Not perhaps because the Paraclete which He sends to them from the Father would be greater than Christ, but because even Christ first attains His full greatness for them and communicates His full blessing to them by the Paraclete. This He now explains to them.

The Holy Spirit will supply to them in a twofold manner the visible presence of the Lord: first, by granting to them the most glorious protection against the world; then by unveiling to them the riches of the life of Jesus wholly, and making it the property of their inner life.

‘And when He is come, He will (through you and for you) reprove the world (thus vanquish and cast down, teachingly and punishingly overcome) in respect of sin, and in respect of righteousness, and in respect of judgment.’ Thus, in the most glorious gradation of His victory, He will bring to nought the enmity of the world against the Lord and His disciples.

First of all, He will charge upon the world as sin, the sin of not believing on Christ. He will increasingly bring to light the identity between the unbelief and the sin which became so clearly manifest in the crucifixion of Christ—will prove that unbelief against Christ is the great world-historical sin, that of the new apostacy; and therewith it will also become plain, that at all times, according to its innermost nature, unbelief was against the everlasting Christ,—to wit, misconduct against the Logos as the Light which is everywhere in the world, and shines out into the darkness. And thus the whole sin of the world should absolutely be brought to light as the one sin, which has been discovered and judged in the crucifixion of Christ.

But how could the Holy Spirit effect this historically great repentance of the world, if it did not at the same time fill the world with the faith in Christ? The knowledge of sin can only be accomplished in the world by the knowledge of Christ. Thus also He will cause righteousness to be recognized in all the world—righteousness simply, as it is opposed to sin simply, as it made itself known in opposition to that concentrated sin which crucified the Son of God, as the concentrated world-historically revealed Righteousness. But He illustrates the perfected revelation of righteousness by revealing anew to the world the whole significance of Christ’s ascension to the Father. The return of Christ to the Father is the unveiling and glorification of righteousness in its entire glory—of righteousness as it puts to death and makes alive, as it is manifest in Him and upon Him,⁷⁶ and illuminates the world through Him like a day of judgment; but as the deliverance of the world, justifies sinners. But as His return to the Father in the abstract develops itself in the three characteristics of His death, His resurrection, and His ascension, so also the revelation of righteousness is threefold. We behold in the death of Jesus the entire destroying power of righteousness. The righteousness of the Father allows the Son to suffer and to die on account of His human and historical fellowship with sinners. And it was actually the faithfulness with which the Son maintained His righteousness in the most fearful temptation that brought Him to death. And this death becomes also the sentence of death upon the blinded world which inflicted it on Him. The Father Himself makes the greatest sacrifice—the Son dies: humanity is judged and appears destroyed. It is the majesty of righteousness in its absolute proceedings against sin. Death, and nothing but death, from heaven, even to the abyss! But therein is established the deliverance of the world. Righteousness proves itself to be righteousness even by remaining one with life and love, and therefore allows life to proceed out of the death which it inflicts. This becomes plain in the resurrection of Christ. His righteousness breaks through death as life, and is revealed in His new life: the righteousness of the Father raises Him up for the sake of His own essential righteousness; after that, for the sake of his connection with the world, it has allowed Him to suffer and to die. But therewith it establishes Him as the righteousness of humanity, as the Head of humanity glorified in judgment, in which all men may find their reconciliation with God. Thus righteousness appears now as a new life, which goes quickening from heaven even to the abyss.⁷⁷ But once more it expressed itself in a new form in the ascension of Christ. The ascension is always the comprehension of the death and of the life of Christ in a higher condition, which has taken up and entwined the death into itself; and thus also it is here. The perfecting of Christ’s righteousness has His life in glory as its result. He goes as the holy One to the Father; the holy Father separates Him as high as heaven from the sinners, by conferring the reward. But now, first in His glory, He sends to His disciples the Holy Spirit, to fill the world with His righteousness. Thus righteousness prevails now as holiness, killing and making alive, as sanctifying from the height of heaven down into the depth of the world. Thus, in proportion as the Holy Spirit unveils the departure of Christ to the world, He discloses to it the great revelation of righteousness.

With these two great effects of the Holy Spirit, the third is already announced. As He calls the world to repentance, and fills it with faith, He leads it also to sanctification, in bringing it over from judgment; He unveils to it the perfected judgment, in showing to it that the prince of this world is judged. As the sin of the world has made itself known in the crucifixion of Christ, and the everlasting righteousness in His return to His father, both of them in world-historical definiteness and concentration, so in the same sense the judgment of righteousness upon the sin in that centre of the world has become manifest—judgment simply, in its centre. The prince of this world, for instance, is judged in that fact. But that is the judgment—that the completed sin has become spoiled in its completed conflict with perfected righteousness in slaying (as a deed of the whole world) the Son of God, and thus the very image of God Himself, on the cross. Hence, for instance, it has become plain that evil operates upon earth not only as a dismembered and scattered force, but as a dark world-power, whose centre is a diabolical consciousness, which stands behind and above all individual human sins, in the gloomy background of a fallen spirit-kingdom, and, as prince of the world in its corruption, weaves all the threads of evil into one web of enmity against God, and thence especially against the God-man. Moreover, it has become plain that the world is enslaved by this prince—that, ensnared by all its individual sins in his devices, it is enslaved to his service. Finally, moreover, the absolute venomousness of evil has been manifested. Sin, in its actual virulent opposition to God, has been characterized as decided enmity against God, even into all its gloomy elements. And this is, in fact, the judgment of the Spirit. When the prince of this world was unmasked, the world also was unmasked, as it served this prince, and the service with which it was devoted to him. In its world-historical centre, evil was now lighted up and judged. Moreover, it was not only now judged spiritually, but also as a matter of fact, and historically, to wit, by the victory of Christ. By His resurrection were shown the stupidity of the serpent, in the cunning of the serpent; the powerlessness of the evil one, in the power of the evil one; the humiliation of the world, in the pomp of the world. The whole great scheme of the evil one appeared, as it were, metamorphosed into the great furtherance of God’s purpose. As well evil itself, as the evil one and the kingdom of the evil one, appeared destroyed and made a mockery of. Moreover, the judgment of God which one day is to be revealed at the world’s end in the last judgment as a developed and completed phenomenon, is thereby decided according to its historical foundation. The head of the serpent is crushed. It is easy to recognize in the light of Christ’s victory, that the tremendous convulsions of its body are not the movements of a powerful life, but the writhings of death, as it is now the work of the Holy Spirit to make the world acquainted with the mystery of this judgment. He delivers men from the distinctive superstition respecting the power of the evil one, from the cowardly torpor caused by the Medusa’s head of dark power, which always results in the fall. He fills them with the spirit of victory, which streams forth from the victor and the victory, and thereby leads them up in the way of sanctification to the holiness and the ideality of the new world.

Thus will the promised Spirit of Truth form the relation in which the disciples are to stand to the world. The old world is, so to speak, to vanish before the glorious power of the Holy Spirit which will fill them. But this victory of the disciples over the world can only be accomplished by the life of Christ being perfectly opened to them, by His work and the nature of His kingdom being fully illustrated to them. And this is actually the operation of the Spirit in the relation in which the disciples stand to Jesus. First, the Holy Spirit will disclose to them all the fulness of Christ; and by that disclosure He will make them conquerors of the world, but not in such a way as to lead them away from the personality of Christ. In this sense Christ says: ‘I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.’ (The communication of them would transcend your present powers of faith and knowledge.)

Thus, in precise accordance with the will of the Father, He spares them in their weakness; for He has entrusted to them all that the Father has given to Him for them. From the following words of the Lord, probably appears in what consist those lessons which they could not yet bear. He says, ‘When the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth.’ This points especially, no doubt, to the living developments and applications of the principles which He had already declared to them, especially also to those consequences which, in part, were most decidedly opposed to their previous Jewish presumptions. Even the subsequent history of the disciples shows us how it was especially those consequences with which they first of all needed to be entrusted by the Holy Ghost,⁷⁸ and which they could not possibly have comprehended à priori, particularly the release of the institution of Christ from the husk of the Israelitish element. But even the Holy Spirit will not tell them all at once. Even as Christ in His instruction proceeds methodically, so also will the Spirit proceed methodically (ὁδηγήσει); and will therefore not disclose to them the whole truth except in gradual development. ‘For He shall not speak of Himself,’ says Christ, as He has declared this previously of Himself, of the Son. ‘But whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak.’ This passage is explained by what Christ has said of His own relation to the Father. Thus, as He Himself has only expressed what the Father has communicated to Him, so the Holy Spirit will only declare what the Father speaks through the Son. Thus, whatever is suggested, whatever is expedient, whatever comes with the power of God’s word into His sphere, into the circle of the inmost life of the congregation, He will announce and bring to recognition. Nevertheless He will not in any wise allow them to remain on an imperfect grade of knowledge; but it is further said, ‘He will show you things to come.’ He will thus unveil to them in prophetic manner the future developments according to their grand outlines. Thus will the Holy Spirit first of all carry on the work of enlightenment according to the will of the Father, and in relation to Him and to His ministry. With similar precision He will, moreover, secondly, refer Himself to the Son, and to His work: ‘He will glorify Me,’ says Christ; for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you.’ Thus He will spiritually set forth the nature of Christ in its perfect brightness, by bringing all the words, acts, and impulses of His life into complete development, also by unfolding the depths of the life of humanity and of creation in their relation to the nature of Christ; thus also further disclosing the manifestation of the christological ideality in the fundamental plan of the world. That Christ in the deeper meaning was thus speaking of His own, is proved by the context: ‘For all that the Father hath is Mine: therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto you.’ Thus, also, what is the Father’s is the Son’s; and this, moreover, is all the Holy Ghost’s. But the Holy Ghost makes it the inheritance of the Church of Christ.⁷⁹

As thus this view of the Holy Spirit and His operation is distinct from those which Spiritualism in its most varied forms has constructed for itself, so truly also is it distinct from those which a lifeless doctrine of inspiration has created for itself. Spiritualism, in its forms of religious excitement, in the school of Montanism, in the motive power of the ‘Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit,’ and in other sects, has always spoken of one period of the Holy Spirit’s agency in which His work is to appear more or less severed from that of the Father and of the Son. The relation of the Paraclete, according to Christ’s intimation, is altogether otherwise. He operates according to the impulses of the Father, and in perfect accordance with the Son, glorifying His word and work. Still more distinct, moreover, is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, from that spiritual form which the secularized spiritualism celebrates, confounding it altogether without misgiving with the Holy Spirit. This spiritualism reverences the image of the world-spirit, which, in the succession of time-spirits, always contradicts itself, always anew abolishes itself, because the time-spirits are only the impulses of the unity of the changing phases of time, while the Holy Spirit remains eternally like Himself, because He is the unity of the manifold impulses of eternity in time—of the revelation of the Father and the Son. Moreover, as pure and immutable as this Spirit is in relation to the Father and the Son, so living is His operation in the apostles; and it is likewise false to suppose, according to any abstract orthodox scholastic conception, that He has all at once expressed everything in all persons in an unconditionally developed inspiration. Certainly it is decidedly declared that the Holy Ghost would communicate to the apostles not only the full revelation according to the necessities of the time present, that He not only would unveil to them the whole riches of the life of Christ, but that He would reveal to them also the form of the Church’s future in its great outlines.

In that perfected endowment which the apostles received for their vocation of establishing the Church, the further operations of the Holy Spirit were not superfluously brought to a complete development of revelation. Rather it is here indicated, as the aim of His efficiency, that He will disclose and reveal all the depths of life which belong to the sphere of the Vates, in their relation to the life of Christ, as being His own; then He will carry on to fulfilment the glorification of the world in Christ, and of Christ in the world.

This promise of the perfect glorification of the world, as the Holy Ghost should effect it, in its relation to Christ, entirely corresponds with the complete conquest and destruction of the old world, as He was to effect it in relation to the world. For thus Christ showed to His disciples in what degree He would abide by His Spirit in them in this life, while He in His individual ministry would be acting for them in the world to come. In this respect the contrast between the present and the future life is for the faithful disciples substantially done away. Their entire future was to be so glorified by the fellowship with Christ, and by the seeing of Christ again, that the brief time of separation from Him which before that glory they were still to undergo, must appear as a small one, as a brief period of tribulation.

This, then, is the view in which the Lord comprehends the whole consolatory representation of the future which He gave to the disciples in the words, ‘A little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again a little while,⁸⁰ and ye shall see Me (again); for I go to the Father.’

To see Him and be with Him—that is even now their happiness and their life: thus He may lay out the picture of their entire future in the contrast between their soon seeing Him no more, and soon thereafter seeing Him again. It is the most lively expression of the fact, that in their relation to Him they would pass through brief sorrows to eternal joys. ‘It is yet but a little while, and ye see Me no more.’ He thus tells them that they are already drawing near to the great sorrow which begins with the separation from Him, and peculiarly consists in that separation. That they, however, shall then see Him no more, is perhaps said with emphasis, just as the following words that they should afterwards see Him again. In the hour of separation from Him, it shall be to them as if they had lost Him, as if He were destroyed, and for them irrevocably gone. Then they should still be connected with Him in their deepest soul only by the power of faith and their love for Him. And yet, moreover, He will not then have passed away—only their eyes shall see Him no more. But as quickly as this sad time comes, so quickly it will pass by. Again a little while, and they shall see Him again. And then they were actually to see Him, and in the manner in which they see Him now (in the light of the Spirit), eternally see Him (not, perchance, merely in the interval between Easter and Ascension). The eternal spiritual seeing, again, of Christ, which is appointed for them, will begin with the historical seeing again (in His resurrection), will be ever and anon pervaded by Him (in the death of the individual disciples), will finally be completed in Him (with the future re-appearance of Christ). The certainty of both announcements lies in the one assurance, ‘for I go to the Father.’ His going home to the Father is thus appointed. It will proceed through the periods of the death, of the resurrection, and of the ascension, and be certified in the effusion of the Holy Spirit.

Thus would Jesus speak to the disciples by way of consolation; they would now soon have to undergo with Him a sad but brief sorrow, but only to pass over into an endless period of festival and joy. Even at this time, however, He had so chosen His expression, that the disciples were induced to declare their latest offence at His communications. And thus, moreover, they found in fact His new announcement totally unintelligible. Some among them began to dispute with one another about it. What can it mean, it is said, that He says about a little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again a little while, and ye shall see Me; and then again, For I go to the Father! First of all, it was enigmatical to them that they were so soon to see Him no more, and what that was to import. Then it was to them still more enigmatic, that they should then after a little while see Him again; and especially they knew not how to reconcile themselves finally to His adding, that ‘He was going to the Father.’⁸¹ Speedy going away, and speedy meeting again, and withal, most decided going to the Father, how were they to be enlightened upon this? It was most difficult for them to solve this great riddle in such great haste. Thus they remained standing astonished, and wondering, ‘What is this that He saith, A little while?’

How could a man have foreseen that the whole marvellous turn and decision of His and their future would be compressed in the period of three days? This wonder even remains a riddle still to the mind of man entangled with earthly things. He stands overcome before that great catastrophe, and comprehends not that it could come to pass so rapidly and so terribly; that it could bring about the most tremendous crisis; that it could transplant the Lord, and with Him the disciples, yea, the entire human race, first of all into the depth of the abyss, then into the height of heaven. The disciples must have fully undergone and expressed in that hour the doubting astonishment of the human mind upon this problem. They could not get away from the question, What can He mean by this mysterious saying, A little while?

In the expression itself lay something which pleased them, and again something which terrified and embarrassed them. They would have liked to ask the Lord what He meant by the expression, and still did not accomplish it. But the Lord saw plainly that they would like to ask Him, and met their wish with the words, ‘Do ye inquire among yourselves of that I said, A little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again a little while, and ye shall see Me? Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; ye shall⁸² be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.’ The first points to them the great suffering that threatens them in its first vivid form, as opposed to the jubilee of the world; the second expression indicates the same great sorrow in its purer inwardness, as it shall be changed into rejoicing for themselves.⁸³

They are thus to know especially that their sorrow shall indeed be great, but that it shall only endure for a short time; and that it is the inevitable condition under which alone they could arrive at the new position of victorious rejoicing in the kingdom of God—that it is the suffering itself which is to be changed for them into joy.

He now sets forth this truth to them in the beautiful parabolic discourse of the woman in travail. ‘The woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour (the definite moment of peril) is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more her anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.’ He shows to them thus that their sorrows are the birth-pains of the new era, which they must undergo with Him. The great joy of the new period will swallow up the affliction of their pains. The woman in this parable refers to the heavenly or ideal Church, still more the man who is born into the world, to the risen Lord, in whom the beginning of the new æon—the first-born from the dead,⁸⁴ the principle of the divine-human glorification of humanity and of the world—is given to humanity.

The Lord Himself gives to His parable a practical explanation, as the disciples are now in need of it: ‘And ye now therefore have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.’ That is the first fruit of this glorious meeting again,—imperishable effect, imperishable joy. The second is this—they shall then have the most satisfying disclosure of all that which now is still enigmatical to them. ‘And in that day,’ says the Lord, ‘ye shall ask Me nothing.’

A short time previously, He had reproached them that they did not ask Him (in the right sense) whither He was going. Still in their own fashion they have asked Him much;—Peter and Thomas, Philip and Judas Lebbæus, at last all of them together. But soon, says He, it shall be entirely otherwise with them: they shall have full explanation; they shall no more in this grievous way find everywhere in His words and ways such difficulty, enigmas, and hindrance. In this He promised them complete enlightenment about Himself and the course of His life. But they would not probably be enlightened about Him as about a foreign subject passively; they themselves must be thoroughly drawn into the fellowship of His new life. ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you,’ thus runs His promise, ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it you.’ He commends to them the significance of this word, by adding, ‘Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name.’ They have not yet attained to the simple knowledge of His essential character, still less to resignation to Him, and thus also not to the pure interest for Him and His work out of which proceeds the simple prayer in His strength. They could not then stand and pray in His name, until that name was wholly glorified by His Spirit, as it had expressed itself in word and life, and as it was further to express itself in death and resurrection, and until they in that name had themselves died and become alive again; but then the whole wish of their whole inward life, the entire fulfilment of the entire petition, was moreover secured to them. ‘Then ask,’ He exhorts them, ‘and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.’

It is deeply to be considered how pointedly the Lord, before His departure, exhorted the disciples to seek for themselves the pentecostal blessing of the Spirit. It is not to be denied that He has here this blessing in view again, and promises it to them, and that this promise is to Him of the like significance with that of the seeing them again. He refers also, in any case, to the external seeing again by the disciples after the resurrection, in its connection with the spiritual one, which should be fulfilled by the mission of the Holy Spirit. He describes the effect of this seeing again, as the attainment of an imperishable perfect joy that should not be taken from them. They should have the spring of joy in themselves, the everlasting power of an eternal festal exaltation of soul, and elevation of life with God the Holy Ghost. This spirit will then enable them to dispense with the external association with Christ in a twofold manner, by bringing about for them an eternal meeting again with Christ in the Spirit. First, as the spirit of enlightenment: they shall have a clear understanding about Him; they shall understand the individual impulses of His life, of His words and works, in the living unity of His nature and ministry in His Spirit. The Spirit will interpret everything to them, unfold everything. But, moreover, as the Spirit of the power of faith, He will unite them with Christ. They shall not stand outside the power of Christ’s name, but in it; therefore in the power of prayer, and in the might of God, who grants their prayer.

In this place, He casts a look back on His previous intercourse with them, and shows them how His future association with them would be distinguished from it:⁸⁵ ‘(All) these things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you in plain immediate speech of the Father.’ All intercourse between men, in which the simple interposition of the Divine Spirit is wanting, is an intercourse in words of the manner of a similitude, or even in proverbial expressions.⁸⁶ This was peculiarly the case, therefore, between Christ and His disciples before their enlightenment by the Holy Spirit. Although He did not speak to them in parables, as He did to the people, yet still He spoke in words of a parabolic kind. Thus even at the last He spoke to them of His death as a departure to prepare for them a dwelling in the Father’s house; likened their relation to Him to that of the branch to the vine; showed them the suffering which awaited them by the sorrow of a woman in travail. Nay, even although He spoke to them in words without a figure, yet the word acquired a figurative covering and restriction, even in the dim medium of their comprehension, as the sun’s ray becomes coloured in the darkened atmosphere. But now this is to be changed. In the day of His return in the Spirit, He will speak with them in the heart itself, in the full plainness, immediateness, and unveiledness in which spirit speaks to spirit. They shall not be any more embarrassed in the figure, in the fragmentary knowledge, but shall always perceive in the individual the whole, the infinite. Thus He will entirely fulfil to them then the knowledge of the Father which He brought them; the deep, beautiful, blessed heavenly secret of His Father’s name He will entirely reveal to them. And as He shall stand to them, so they shall stand to Him. He can say to them with certainty, ‘In that day ye shall ask in My name.’ He adds, ‘And I say not, that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father Himself loveth you.’ Herein lies certainly the assurance of His intercession for them, but at the same time the assurance that His intercession is not to be regarded as an external work of mediation (external to the Father and to them), but as an affection of His life for them, wherein the living affection of the Father made itself known to them, and which impressed itself on their own inmost life’s affection. His intercession for them should one day appear to them entirely as a manifestation of the Father’s love to them, as it is declared in their own love by their praying to the Father in the name of Christ.

Similarly also He will speak to them in their heart by the Holy Spirit, in such a way as if the Father Himself spoke to them immediately; they should speak in His name, and in the blessing of His intercession, so powerfully to the Father, as if they were speaking immediately to the Father. The revelation of the Spirit in their heart will thus not merely complete the revelation of Christ in them, but through this also the revelation of the Father.

‘For,’ He says now by way of explanation, ‘the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me (have grown to love Me), and have believed that I came out from God.’ Their love to Him was expressed in their recognition of the divine lineaments in Christ, by faith. But their love to Him is a love for the Father; for it is a love of the divine origin—of the divine nature—of the features of the Father in Him. Even still more is their love for the Father a love of the Father to them; for they would not have known Him by His lineaments in the Son, if He had not lovingly beheld and enlightened them—if He had not made Himself known to them. Therefore it is, moreover, pledged to them, that the Father will fully reveal Himself in their heart by His Spirit.

In the last word to the disciples, ‘And ye have believed that I came out from God,’ Jesus expressed the entire advantage that resulted from their previous intercourse with Him. To this benefit of their foregone discipleship was to be linked, moreover, the benefit of their future experience, that they should learn to understand His going home to the Father. Therefore He now addresses Himself to their thoughtfulness with an expression which contains the watchword of His whole life: ‘I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.’

From the certainty which they already possess, that He came forth from the Father, they must go on to learn, that He can only go to the Father again if He goes away. And the higher the import of the word rises, that He was with the Father, the more fully is unfolded to them the significance of the saying, that He shall be with the Father. And further, if they knew what a descent into the depth was involved in His going out from the Father and coming into the world, it will also be plain to them what an exaltation it must be when He now soon departs from them to the Father. Yes, this going home to the Father itself appears to them all the more essential, in proportion to their being penetrated with the knowledge that His present and previous position in the world was not in accordance with His actual glory. And if, finally, they could consider His going forth from the Father into the world not as a purposeless work, but as a heroic undertaking to deliver the world, His return home to the Father may appear to them only as the progress of the victor, who leads back with Him to the Father in His Spirit them and the world (the substantial God-beloved world) out of the world (the form of worldliness).

Thus, in the same degree as they understood, with faith full of anticipation, the first passage, I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world, a wonderful clearness must needs spread itself for them over the second. Again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.

And thus in fact it happened. A bright beam of light poured, with the Lord’s last word, through the soul of His disciples—the first flush of the dawning which announced the day that the Easter sun would bring. Overjoyed, they cried out, ‘So now speakest Thou in this direct manner—no more in proverbs.’ Thus they certainly describe a powerful impression—a distinct presentiment of the future of the Spirit. They add, ‘Now are we sure that Thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask Thee’ (should first propose to Thee this question). It has been supposed⁸⁷ that the disciples had misunderstood the announcement of Jesus, that they should one day have no need to ask Him. This supposition originates probably in a mistake of the characteristic point. The disciples were standing just on the last mountain-peak of the growing knowledge of Christ, as it preceded their perfect enlightenment, They now believe so heartily in the word of His promise, that it is to them as if it were already beginning to be fulfilled. They have attained to this point in a twofold manner: first, by the Lord’s drawing forth their question before they had proposed it to Him, and by His thus entirely seeing through their inmost mind; and then by His giving to them, by His watchword, a disclosure which shed abroad a bright light in their soul, and gave them the first clear view of the significance of His going home to the Father. Therefore they say that they already perceived that it would come to pass as He had said. Already His last address must be such a word of immediateness (of the Spirit), so really He has advanced them. Even already they were sure that He knew all things. And if He has promised them that they would soon need no more to ask Him, they observe to Him, that also on His side there is no need first of all to hear the question—that He anticipates, with His all-comprehending spiritual glance, the questioning minds, and gives to them unasked the desired information. Their answer is immediately to be referred to the announcement of Jesus-One day ye shall have no need to ask Me anything. By a beautiful turn they say, Even already Thou needest not that the question should be proposed to Thee. The expression has the charm of that enthusiastic feeling which graced the words of Nathanael, who immediately upon the testimony of Christ, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!—broke forth into the words, Rabbi, Thou art the King of Israel!

They manifest that they have perfectly understood His last expression, by the word, Herein is our faith established, that Thou camest forth from God. They thus confirm the fact, that this starting-point of their faith which His coming was to illustrate to them, was actually established as He had said. The Lord made use of this moment to say to them the saddest thing that He still had to tell them, the rather that they were over-valuing the importance of their disposition, and were expressing themselves as if they already stood on the summit of the promised enlightenment: ‘Now ye believe.’ He cried to them (now, as if He would say, There is to you a fair but fleeting moment of the blooming of faith), ‘Behold, the hour cometh, and is now already come, that ye shall be scattered every one to his own concerns;’ that is, that every one shall be broken loose, according to that which is sinful and self-seeking in the character of his own individuality, away from the head and from the members, into some peculiar mode of despondency. This scattering tendency is displayed most vividly later in their flight, in the denial of Peter, in the going apart of Thomas, in the solitary journeys of the female and male disciples to the grave, and in the lonely walk of the two disciples who went to Emmaus.

‘Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own,’ said He; and added, with deep significance, ‘and shall leave Me alone.’⁸⁸ But, comforting them, He gave them the assurance, ‘And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.’

According to the Synoptists, He carried this statement further. Thus, as He predicted to Judas that he should betray Him, as he received the sop from His hand with the hypocritical question, Is it I? (am I the traitor?), which ought to have been an assurance of innocence,—as He announced to Peter his fall, when he was protesting that he would go with Him to death,—so He foretold to the disciples their faithless flight, just as they had believed, in their bright presentiment of the new pentecostal time, that they had already past beyond all difficulties.

‘All ye,’ said He, ‘shall be offended because of Me this night;’ that is to say, none of you will entirely endure the temptation of seeing Me in this night so apparently helpless and undone. Every one will waver in faith, and will more or less be shaken by unbelief. This was not only certain to Him by His glimpse into the circumstances, but also by His knowledge of Scripture; ‘for it is written,’ said He, ‘I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.’ That portion of Scripture in the prophet Zechariah (13:7) to which the Lord refers, is not quoted literally, but in free recollection. Moreover, it points not merely in typical prefiguration, but with definite prophetic consciousness, forward into the days of the Messiah,—namely, into the days wherein in Jerusalem a fountain should be opened for sin and unrighteousness, and when not only the idols, but also the false prophets and impure spirits, should be removed out of the land,—thus to the days of the completed revelation.⁸⁹

He then declares plainly, that in this manner they shall be scattered from Him in consequence of a feeble-faithed wavering in their hearts. Yet He still gives them the promise, that in this temptation they shall not wholly be ruined; He will gather them again. ‘After My resurrection,’ He says, ‘I will go before you into Galilee.’ In the notion that this announcement does not agree with the narrative that Jesus first of all revealed Himself to the disciples after His resurrection in Judea,⁹⁰ is involved an oversight of the leading thought of this announcement. Here, for instance, the Lord promises that after His resurrection He will gather together again His scattered people in Galilee; and, in fact, that happened in Galilee. That the disciples, moreover, were to tarry at Jerusalem till after the publication of His resurrection, is distinctly declared in the assertion, that after His resurrection He would go before them into Galilee.

The disciples, however, agreed to the disheartening announcement of Jesus, that they would all be offended in Him, just as little as Peter had acquiesced in the shameful disclosure of what would happen to Him. They protested that they would hold by Him even to death (

Mar 14:31). Moreover, it appears that they were induced and stimulated thereto by renewed assurances of fidelity on the part of Peter, by the definite form of the recorded word of Peter: ‘Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended.’ Still more plainly does this appear from the narrative of Mark (Mar 14:31), according to which Peter protested so stedfastly and repeatedly that he would not deny the Master, that he was ready to go with Him to death, after He had already announced to him distinctly his fall.

Finally, the Lord comprehended all that He had spoken to the disciples by way of consolation and warning, into the word, ‘These things have I spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’

Immediately, and in future times generally, there were impending over them great afflictions in the world; nevertheless, they were to have peace by losing themselves in Him. Moreover, they were to stimulate the consciousness of this peace in themselves, in order to lift themselves courageously above the suffering of the world, to break through the suffering of the world. And how were they to stimulate this consciousness in themselves? By their sympathy with the certainty of His consciousness that He is the overcomer of the world; that He has already actually, in the sphere of the Spirit, overcome the world, by the assertion of His eternal purity, of His perfect divine consciousness as opposed to its endless self-darkening (the representative of which had withstood Him bodily in the person of Judas, and had gone forth into the night before the power of His Spirit); that He would confirm in His departure the peace attained by this victory—would realize it in their necessities, and would extend it through the whole world.

After the Lord had concluded His address to the disciples, He looked up to heaven, and addressed the Father in a prayer which may well be called the high-priestly prayer, since it is wholly inspired by the spirit of sacrifice to the Father. With the full certainty of victory which He had announced to the disciples, but also in the presentiment of the suffering of the world, which now was impending over His disciples, and first of all over Himself, he said, ‘Father, the hour is come.’ He then commended to Him His own life and ministry, the life and ministry of the disciples, and the salvation of His future Church, in an earnestness of entreaty, in a depth and vividness of representation, which proves that the whole work of the glorification of the world presented itself to His soul as a work decided before God by His victory. First of all He committed to the Father His own life (vers. 1-8).

‘Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may also glorify Thee: as Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to the entire community which Thou hast given Him. And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee (in Thy heaven) before the world was. I have manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me; and they have kept Thy word (have apprehended it to keep it). Now they have known that all things, whatsoever Thou hast given Me, are of Thee: for I have given them the words which Thou gavest Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send Me.’

This is His first entreaty, that the Father would now make it manifest, let it appear, that, in the power of His Spirit, He is the pervading principle, the Prince of all life,—that His spiritual glory is the principle of the spiritual glorification of the world, of its sanctification and ideality. But he only craves this in order to manifest that the Father (in Him), in the power of His Spirit, rules over and pervades everything. This glorification is founded on the fact that the Father has given Him à priori power over all flesh, in that He created in Him, and for Him, humanity and the world; but that especially He has given Him a community which was to be unfolded out of its generality (πᾶν) into a Church of individually defined believers (δώσῃ αὐτοῖς, &c.), in that He bestows upon them everlasting life. And His glorification was to be developed, and with it the glorification of the Father, in the fact that these chosen ones receive everlasting life. If they themselves become, through Christ in His Spirit, possessors of their own life, and joyous, free from the world,—lords over nature, assured in God of immortality, a people of kings and priests, who are leading back the earth into the ideality of the kingdom of God, and still all united under Christ the Head,—it is evident that He is the King of glory, that through Him the Father governs the world.

But it is primarily manifest by the kind and manner of the foundation of their eternal life in God and in Christ. Their spiritual power and blessedness proceed from the living knowledge that the Father of their Lord Jesus Christ is the only and essential God. Thus, also, through all their spiritual power, world-renewing energy and blessedness, He is revealed as the only and essential God, whose glory shows forth all other false images of God—world-spirit notions—attempts at creature deification—as empty phantasms and larvæ. And since the glorification of the Father is only brought about by the glorification of the Son, the knowledge, also, that He also is an essential God, must proceed from the knowledge that Jesus, the sent of God, is both in one, the Jesus and the Christ,⁹¹ the Son of man and the Son of God, and therefore the everlasting Prophet, Priest, and King of humanity; and as the former knowledge was the glorification of the Father, so this is the glorification of the Son. But both these facts of knowledge are, according to their nature, one—the one harmony of the one eternal life, in which the living Christ, exalted above the world, testifies of the Christ that liveth and ruleth over the world of God-that liveth and pervadeth the world.

Thus Christ indicated the purpose of His entire mission. The God who pervades the whole world in spiritual glory, as He has founded and completed His work in His express image, must be revealed in the free, world-conquering, spiritual life of His people. We now therefore perceive how far this work of Christ is already perfected, and how far it still remains to be perfected.

He glorified the Father upon the earth, in discharging the mission of His pilgrimage upon earth—in substantially completing His whole eternal work—to wit, by having revealed His name to the elect, whom the Father took out of the world and led to Him (Joh 6:44). That is the process of their development. They were the Father’s (in the special sense in which the elect are His, in the higher tendency of their spiritual life, which is a tendency of the Father to the Son); but the Father brought them to the Son and gave them to Him, by leading them according to the dim but higher impulse of their life, which attained its end in faith in Christ. Moreover, that they were given to Him, is proved by their having kept His word, as the Word of the Father in its divine accuracy and brightness. Consequently they arrived at first at the manifold knowledge, that the acts and words of Christ are from God. They allowed themselves to be penetrated and filled with the divine operation of this testimony of God, as Christ was perfectly the medium of it to them. Finally, also, these facts of knowledge resulted in the light of the one knowledge, that Christ went out from the Father, and was sent by the Father.

This is the present position of the disciples. But Christ has thereby perfected His work in them, and consequently as to its foundation in the world. He has made it a living certainty and experience of humanity, that the Father in heaven, as the living God, has revealed Himself through Him in the world. He has made Himself known to them—He has chosen in them for Himself organs by His word to represent the whole world as pervaded by Him as a kingdom of His Spirit. The Father is glorified upon earth, fundamentally, as far as the work of Christ is completed. But now must this seed be developed in the glorification of the Son in heaven with the Father. First of all, the Father must of Himself approve Him, as the power of the Spirit, which has power over all things, by bringing Him through death to the resurrection. Then He further glorifies Him with Himself, by proclaiming Him as the Prince of Life, who has overcome the whole world, enlightening, reconciling, and sanctifying it by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from Him, and abides still with Him (so far as He enters into those to whom His name is glorified). Moreover, He carries through and completes His glorification by perfectly revealing, from the deep ground of His life, formed through the renewing of the world in His Spirit, the glory which Christ already had with Him before the foundation of the world—by thus also bringing out into manifestation the ideality which forms the ground-plan of the world in its relation to the Son in a spiritually glorified world. This is the next entreaty of Christ, in which His necessity is one with that of the disciples, and with which He passes on to the intercession for the disciples (Joh 17:9-19): ‘I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which Thou hast given Me; for they are Thine. And all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine. And I am glorified in them, and I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy name in which (ᾧ) Thou hast given them Me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Thy name: those that Thou gavest Me I preserved, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. And now come I to Thee; and these things I speak in the world (as departing, and as it were calling back a last word to the world), that they might have My joy as the perfected joy of their inner life. I have given them Thy word; and the world hateth them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth: Thy word is the truth. As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified in the truth.’

Christ prays, then, for His disciples, but not for the world. Thus He expresses the power of the solicitude with which He commends the disciples to God. As in the first part He Himself is more than the world, and for that very reason Reconciler of the world; thus, in the second part, His apostles, as the bearers of the entirety of His life, have a purely incalculable value. If they are saved, the deliverance of the world is secured; He declares that in the strongest manner. And so far His word is an assertion that He would not now pray for the world, because the security of this His apostolic Church was His care before the Father, prior to that of millions besides. But He does not pray generally for the world, inasmuch as He here understands by the world the old worldly form, which is already overcome and judged with its prince, but out of which all who are given to Him by the Father are delivered. He knows certainly that for these disciples He prays effectually. Because they are His, they are the Father’s also; and therefore they shall be kept faithful.

But because they are the Father’s, they are also His; and this is the circumstance on account of which He must earnestly pray for them. They are His, for His name is already glorified in them as well as the Father’s. They have acknowledged Him as the Lord of glory. But precisely on that account they stand in greater peril. And not only they are threatened, but also His work in them.

They bear His name and His work in their heart, but in great weakness. And yet He can do nothing more in the world for them henceforth; that is to say, nothing to supply His place to them by others, to strengthen them, because He is no more in the world. The word is to be understood in a peculiar meaning; it is explained by the connection. Christ has already concluded His work in the world, as He formerly established it. He can thus no longer extend His institution. He must rather consider the disciples, or the fact that He is glorified in them, as the clear result of His ministry. Thus, when they are threatened, His work is threatened; moreover, if His work is threatened, it is they, and, in them, humanity, which is imperilled.

And they are remaining behind in the world, in all the dangers of the world, while He goes home to the Father. The deepest sentiment is expressed in this contrast; this is plain from the exclamation of Jesus in imploring intercession: Holy Father, keep them!

He here cries to the Father as the Holy One, because He is the source of all brightness and purity, as opposed to all the self-complication and darkness of the world, and who accordingly, also, sanctifying His disciples, and lifting them up into His own brightness, keeps them from the magical spirits of error in the world.

The preserving power, however, lies in the name of the Father. As long as men know the Father in truth, they are children. If, however, the name of the Father is confused and darkened to them, if it is distorted in them by the falsehood of the world, degraded and dissolved into the apparent names of other divinities, then they are no more children. In that illumination of the name of Father for them, as it is one with the truth,⁹² it happened that they also acknowledged the name of Christ, that they were given to Him. And the keeping of the disciples of Jesus will be attested by their remaining one. The measure of their disunion is the measure of their danger, and of the darkening of their clear recognition of the name of the Father. But the oneness is not the means of their acknowledgment of the name of Father; but the preservation in the name of the Father is the means of their being one. Thence, before all things, their unity is the important point in the foundation, from the foundation, and for the foundation of their salvation; whereby unity in appearance may in many ways be obscured, while an external appearance of unity is able to hide the most fearful abysses of disunion in relation to the acknowledgment of the one name. That is the test of the true agreement: they are to be one, as the Father and Son. Not only so essentially, so freely, so lovingly, so perfectly one; but equally also so personally one, that the contrast and difference of the personal is not defaced, but glorified by the unity. Thereupon is the true church-unity of the disciples to be acknowledged, that it entirely depends upon liberty, subsists in the Spirit, makes itself known in love, and glorifies the associated individuals without losing sight of their individuality.

This essential oneness of the Church of Christ, however, is the proof that it is based in the name of the Father, in the brightness of the fundamental view of His revelation in Christ; and that it is therewith delivered and protected in its opposition to the corruption of the world, which has its origin in the self-darkening of the world, especially in relation to the true knowledge of the name of God. The essential confession will always be the characteristic sign of the Church of Christ, in contrast with the essential confusion which is the characteristic sign of the world.

The word of Jesus becomes now that of most earnest intercession, as He declares that henceforth the disciples need a new form of divine protection. For so long as He was with them, He kept them; yes, faithfully protected them, as a shepherd his flock, so that none of them is lost, except the child of perdition. What an assurance! Yet the flight of the disciples was impending, the fall of Peter, and all the doubt of Thomas. Nevertheless, the Master knows that in the impending temptation the entire company will not be lost. And thus, likewise, it is imminent that Judas, in the pangs of despair, will curse his treachery. Nevertheless, Christ knows that he goes thereby into immeasurable perdition. He names him, in this foresight which is associated with the piercing glance into his heart of hearts, the child of perdition, possibly with reference to the children of perdition which, in the prophet Isaiah (Isa 57:4),⁹³ are opposed to the righteous man (Isa 57:1), who, indeed, also perishes, but comes to peace in his chamber. They are traitors to the righteous man (Isa 57:4-5), servants of Moloch, offering (Isa 57:5) their evil sacrifices ‘in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks.’ Their form, however, is changed gradually in the view of the prophet into the form of one individual,⁹⁴ who has his portion and perishes in the rocky valley on the stream (Isa 57:6), of a lover of the world (Isa 57:7), of a restless one (Isa 57:10), of a crafty one (Isa 57:11), who however is unmasked (Isa 57:12), and at length perishes in his despair without deliverance (Isa 57:12-13). To this last text the declaration of Jesus probably refers, that Judas perished according to the Scripture.⁹⁵ For here in the prophet the image of the traitors to the sacred cause of the theocracy was delineated even with the highest energy, even to individualizing them; therefore the passage was a type which found in Judas its last and highest fulfilment. And thus also in this point the Scripture must be fulfilled, not as a fatalistic foretelling of that which is still uncertain, but as the design completed with divine foresight of an operation which must attain in the evil, as in the good, its highest point.

But the certainty of the Lord, that He till now has securely kept the company of His disciples, with the exception of Judas, does not exclude His anxiety for their future. He looked through the danger which would arise for them from the circumstance, that for the future they must stand alone. But as He now must depart from them, He could not only by His intercession, in their presence (while still speaking in the world), commit them to the Father, but also animate them to the belief, that to them, the perfect joy of His own heart, the Holy Spirit should be communicated. This is generally the preservation which He desires for them. Then He declares Himself more definitely. First of all, on the danger which they were encountering. Precisely because He has given them the word from the Father, they are hated by the world. The world, as the kingdom of self-confusion, hates the Lord, as the Prince of world-enlightenment; therefore hates His disciples also, who have taken up into themselves the principle of that brightness and glorification (and are not of the world). But hatred is essentially the negation of love, and of the clearness that is in it; it is a principle of obscuration, and seeks to draw those who love into its dark circle, by the magical inbreathing of obscurity. Nevertheless Christ cannot ask that God would take them out of the world. He will neither have His disciples freed from the world by death, nor through a monkish, world-forsaking disposition. It is His desire that they should remain in the world, in the relations of this present life, but that the Father should keep them from the evil which rules the world.

‘They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.’ For the first time Christ expressed this fact to explain the hatred of the world against His disciples. For the second time, on the other hand, He declares it to explain His assurance that the Father would keep them. Moreover, they were to be kept for this reason, that living in the world, they are for evermore separated from the world. This is plain from the petition, Sanctify them in Thy truth. This it is which was to distinguish and separate, and thus to sanctify them from the world, which was to lead them back into their eternal original relation to God through Christ, as the ideality of their life—not the Levitical separation, not the priestly garment, not office, not pious seeming, not external hypocrisy, but the truth, the breaking through of the everlasting determination and operation of God, through the illusions and seeming relations of their life. But the heart and soul of this efficiency of the truth, or of the truth of the efficiency, is the word of God, which Christ has given to them—the name of the Father. Thus they must be sanctified therein. Whilst they were thus inwardly being ever separated from the ungodly nature of the world by the word of God, they were constantly most deeply to enter externally into the world with this word, in order to deliver the world itself from worldliness. Nay, Christ will send them into the world as decidedly, as definitely, and with as full power, as the Father sent Him into the world. But that this mission might be possible, He sanctifies Himself for them, that they also might be sanctified in the truth. But how can the Holy One sanctify Himself anew, except through going home to the Father (by death, resurrection, and ascension),—leaving the world, and going to the Father, and appearing in the holiest of all for them? (Heb 9:24). Only by Christ’s going out of the world to the Father is the work of reconciliation completed, and the Spirit purchased, in whose power the disciples might go out into the world deeply, with an apparently opposite direction. They must in Christ have their fulcrum at the throne of God, in order thus to lift the world from its centres. The real externally perfected sanctification of the inwardly holy (making unworldly), is the condition under which those who are not yet even inwardly sanctified, may become, by their fellowship with Him, holy in their connection with the world. For by this relation they attain, by the Spirit of truth, life in the truth, which Christ has committed to them in His word; but the truth sanctifies man because it brings him back out of the seeming relations into the essential relations of his life.

As Christ, then, sends forth His people into the world as sanctified bearers of His life, it is plain that He desires the sanctification of the world. Thus, therefore, is introduced His intercession for those who are still in the world, but are appointed to become His disciples (Joh 17:20-24).

‘Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word: that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us:⁹⁶ that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me. Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.’

This intercession forms a definite progression in these petitions, in which Christ, pressing forward, requests greater and greater things for humanity from God the Father.

He prays, first of all, for those who believe through the word of His apostles. They were all to be one by faith. All; and indeed as the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father, thus were they to be in the Son and in the Father, and by that means one. They were not only to be in the Son, but also in the Father—not only in the Father, but also in the Son; so that the Father and the Son reveal themselves through them in their unity, or glorifying power, which moves the world. This is the perfect unity of all Christians, consistent with perfect freedom and distinctness of individualities (in that all are as definitely stamped as the personality of the Father in that of the Son, and the reverse). Thus they were to form a glorious, universal, and free Church,—a divine marvel, which constrains the whole of the rest of the world to the belief that Jesus came from the Father.

In the second petition Christ declares that He has committed to His disciples His spiritual power which the Father gave Him. He will so fill them with His Spirit, that they shall be perfected, and therewith perfectly one. The effect of such a manifestation of the royal-priestly people, however, should be that the world not only believes but acknowledges, and not only acknowledges that the Father hath sent Christ, but also that He loves believers even as He loves Christ. In this the glory of the people of Christ has produced a yet much greater effect on the world.

Still more powerful and comprehensive is the expression of Christ’s petition at the third stage. In the consciousness of oneness with the Father, He says, Father, I will. As assured as is His will in God, so certain also is this, that His disciples shall one day be where He is, with Him in His heavenly kingdom. It was to be the aim of their life to see His glory which the Father gave Him, in which He already before the foundation of the world looked upon Him and loved Him in His eternal nature. The glory of Christ is also to be manifested, and be the centre as the unity of a phenomenal world filled with that manifestation; and the contemplation of this glory shall be the perfected blessedness of perfected Christians. They shall see God in the glory of the Son.

The first petition refers to the believing Church, which has it in charge continually to realize the unity in Christ; and still continually to convince the world that actually Christ their Head is from God. A powerful world is opposed to it. It prays for the glorification of the Church in its unity, and has entirely the character of petition. The second refers to the Church, as in the character of Church of the kingdom it shall abide to the end of the world, mightily filled with Christ—so that every one determines himself in the spirit of Christ Himself, free and spiritually strong—all of them His likeness; so that the world, that still opposes itself, is startled by the contemplation, All these are beloved of God, and God’s heroes, images of Christ. This second petition is based upon the character of the promise (δέδωκα αὐτοῖς). The third petition finally refers to the relation of the people of Christ to Him in the kingdom of glory. It is not put forward in the form of a prayer, because the blessedness proceeds as a certain result from the preservation and confirmation of the faithful. It has therefore the air of prophecy. Here the world—which withstood the Church, as being in the first stage interfered with; in the second, as altogether startled by it—has entirely disappeared from the sphere of vision; only a slight notion of the contrast returns in the word, Thou hast loved Me before the foundation of the world. But here He shows us the world as it is in the light of its foundation, which it has from God; no more in the twilight of its perishableness, which it gave to itself. Even in its foundation, or in its substantial nature, it undoubtedly forms a contrast to Christ; but this contrast is no hostile one; it only expresses the fact that Christ is the living principle of the created world, but that it extends itself before Him and beneath Him into an immeasurable region, which is appointed in endlessly varied degrees to declare and to set forth His glory.

That was the destination of the world. And yet the world is thus wholly changed, wholly estranged from its purpose. This contrast touches the Lord’s heart in its full power, and the feeling of it expresses itself in the close of His prayer:

‘O righteous Father, and thus (even) the world⁹⁷ hath not known Thee: but I have known Thee, and these have known that Thou hast sent Me. And I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it; that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.’

The expression, ‘righteous Father,’ is in its entire precision to be maintained. Nay, the seldomer it appears, the greater is here its emphasis, its significance. It expresses at first probably the presentiment of Christ, that He must now experience the full reality of the righteousness of God in His life, as He acknowledges Him in His Spirit. This experience is actually formed out of the contradiction involved in the world’s ignorance of the Father, and His knowledge of Him. The world knows not the Father, not even as the Righteous One, although the righteousness of God is actually purposing to express it to it in the heaviest judgment. But Christ knows the Father—He knows Him even as the Righteous One—just because He is one with Him in His love; therefore He experiences in His heart the judgment of God upon the world for the salvation of the world. In the power of His divine feeling, He is able to combine the expressions, righteous, and Father!—expressions which the worldly-entangled mind is not in a position to comprehend together without the first melting into the second, or the second into the first, in its acceptation. In the judgment of God upon the world, He can acknowledge, greet, experience, comprehend, and attain the reconciliation of the world. Moreover, thus He can also expect of the righteousness of the Father, that He would give, even in His disciples, to His Son the victory over the world. And this is the ground-thought in this conclusion of His prayer.⁹⁸ The world, as world, as knowing not God, according to everlasting justice, must succumb and melt away in the strife with Him in whom is the knowledge of God. For His knowledge of God is founded in His divinity, in His inner, living fellowship with God—is thus itself manifestly divine power and righteousness. In proportion, on the other hand, as the world has not known God, it is estranged from God; the degree of its ignorance is the degree of its self-frustration, its powerlessness, its unrighteousness. Therefore Christ’s knowledge of God must maintain the victory over the world’s forgetfulness and ignorance of God. But as it must maintain the victory in His case, so also in that of the disciples to whom He has communicated it. They have already attained the knowledge that Christ is sent into the world from the Father, and so far they have also attained the knowledge of God. But if they have already known the Son as the Messiah of the Father, they have not yet known Him as the everlasting image of the Father in His glory before the world. And as much as is still wanting to them of the knowledge of Christ, so much is still wanting to them likewise of the knowledge of the Father. But now Christ prayed for them, that their knowledge might be perfect. He addresses Himself finally for them to the righteousness of God itself. Even in the meaning and according to the equity of righteousness, He is certain of the hearing of His intercession. He declares this in the words, ‘I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it.’

This, moreover, is the purpose and the result,—that that love wherewith the Father hath loved the Son will also be in them; as love to the Son and as love to them, His members, in one love. Thus shall believers find themselves again in God through Christ. Thus also will Christ be in them, dwell in them, on the earth. It is the Amen of this great prayer, the certainty that Christ abides in His people upon earth till His work is completed.

After the Lord, in this intuitive assurance of dependence, had committed Himself, His disciples, and His work to the Father, He took the final decisive step by crossing over the brook Kidron.

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Notes

1. There has seldom been a more unblushing proof that antagonistic criticism is at variance, not singly with the theologic world-view of the New Testament, but just as much also with its moral spirit, than in the terrible indignation with which Bruno Bauer (Kritik der Evang. Geschichte, iii. 229-232) treats the gradual unmasking of the traitor in the company of the disciples, according to the representation of John.

2. The words καλὸν ἦν αὐτῷ, εἰ οὐκ ἐγεννήθη ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐκεῖνος, would perhaps be more fittingly rendered, It were better for him that he had never been born as that man! instead of, as usually, It would be better for that man that he had never been born. Comp. Joh 9:2. In the first case, Jesus indeed beholds in the earthly birth of Judas already the one evil he has brought with him into the world-a fatal disposition in his special origin. This thought is perfectly consistent with the Christian view of life. On the other hand, it is more difficult, if, according to the ordinary interpretation, the curse on the general growth of Judas is attributed to human existence. For the reality of his existence must be maintained, as of a human existence, and of an existence humanly appointed by God.

3. Neander finds in Joh 13:32-33, ‘the most suitable place for the institution of the Lord’s Supper.’ But, in fact, a consistent and harmonious discourse would thereby be broken through just at the beginning. Against the view that the institution of the Lord’s Supper followed between what Christ says in Joh 13:33 and what Peter says, Joh 13:36, Neander observes, that in this case ‘the attention of the disciples must needs have been especially directed to this last significant discourse of Christ;’ and that it cannot be supposed ‘that Peter would have still been specially thinking on what Christ had previously spoken, Joh 13:33, when these words must have been rather detached from their meaning to him, by the interpolated discourse of the institution of the Lord’s Supper.’ But there would have been no danger of this, since even the Lord’s Supper referred to the departure of Christ, and actually had the design to compensate to the disciples for the absence of Jesus till His return to them. We place the appointment of the Lord’s Supper, notwithstanding, substantially, not between various verses in John, but in, or even after, the Joh 13:34-35.

4. Even Sepp has declared himself (iii. 376), with many arguments, against the supposition that Christ partook of the paschal feast at the legally appointed time, and was crucified on the first festival day of the Passover. He brings forward, among other things, that on great feast-days no judgments were given among the Jews, least of all on the night of the Passover. But compare what Tholuck has produced against this argument in his Commentary on the Gospel of John (316). We must take into consideration the quotation from the Gemara tr. Sanhedrim: ‘The Sanhedrim assembles in the session-room of the stone-chamber from morning to evening sacrifice; but on Sabbaths and feast-days they assemble בְּחִיל, i.e., in the lower enclosure, which surrounded the greater, in the neighbourhood of the fore-court of the women.’ But especially the citation from the Mischna: ‘An elder who does not submit himself to the judgment of the Sanhedrim, shall be taken from his dwelling to Jerusalem, there kept until one of these festivals, and on the festival put to death for the purpose alleged, Deu 17:13.’ The circumstance, that in the night of the betrayal Peter produced two swords, probably proves nothing, although, according to the Mischna, it was forbidden to go out on the festival Sabbath with arms. It may be asked how far such ordinances as these were actually binding at that time, and how far they were conditional; in any case, they might be to the Lord and His disciples probably just as little synonymous with the Mosaic law as other institutions of a like kind. At least in so extraordinary a night! That the water-carrier whom the disciples meet at the entrance to the city when they are going to prepare the Passover, meets them just before sunset, is a supposition which Sepp indulges, as groundlessly as the one that he had been fetching water for preparing the unleavened bread. Just as arbitrarily, he assumes that when Simon of Cyrene was laid hold of and laden with the cross of Jesus, had been publicly carrying wood on the Sabbath-day, home from the field. As little is the opinion established, that the women after the crucifixion had made haste to buy the ointment (before the beginning of the Sabbath). Moreover, that during the feast, they, just as Nicodemus also, might care for the preparing of the ointment, does not suggest any difficulty. Besides, the expression of Joh 19:31, that that approaching day after the crucifixion was a great feast-day, is only referrible to the first feast-day, since the Jews only considered the first and the last feast-days as great feast-days, but not the intervening ones, which only formed half holidays. But is the latter true of a special Sabbath-day which fell in the festival time?

Finally, the expression of the Apostle Paul, 1Co 5:7, that Christ was slain for us as the true Passover lamb, cannot with any probability prove anything about the time.

5. That the Passover was a sacrifice, is distinctly asserted in Scripture (Exo 34:25). This appears also from the precept, that the paschal lamb (sheep or goat) must be male, of one year old, and without blemish; that it must be put to death in the fore-court of the temple; that its blood (which, in the first celebration, was stricken on the door-posts) must be caught by a priest, and poured out on the altar; that, finally, the portions of fat of the animal were placed upon the altar and burnt. But, as a sacrifice, the Passover could only fall under the category of thank- or peace-offering (זֶבַח שְֹלָמִים), especially of offering of praise (comp. Lev 7:1-38) Hence the freer treatment of the preparation of this sacrifice. Especially is it worthy of note, that every Israelite might kill this sacrifice. Therein was the foundation of the special priesthood in Israel expressed, or the general priesthood of the Israelitish fathers of families. After the taking away of the most special parts of the sacrifice (fat and blood), the offering was entirely eaten. There could be nothing of the flesh reserved for a special meal; all that remained must be burnt. The meal must be partaken of in the place of the sanctuary,—the booths of the pilgrims, even in the neighbourhood of the city, being doubtless reckoned as such. But as a kind of praise-offering, which is related to the atonement, it pre-supposes the sin-offering (Lev 16:1-34 and Lev 17:1-16); and it is a complete mistake of the character of this sacrifice, to seek to bring it into the category of sin-offerings.⁹⁹ Hence also it may be explained, that the Jews liked to put to death on the feast-days (thus also probably on the Passover feast) such as appeared to be punishable as false prophets; and besides, seditious persons (comp. Tholuck, John, 317). We must, in this place, also have in mind the robbers. As far as concerns the celebration of the sacrifice, it is plain that the later ritual differs in some points from that of the first Passovers. Then, the blood of the Passover lamb was stricken on the door-posts; later, it was poured out on the altar in the temple. The guests in the former case partook of the meat standing, in travelling dress; in the latter they partook reclining round the table. There, in that night of terror, they dared not go before the door; here they partake of the meal in many other houses than those in which they dwell (in this case the master of the house received the skin of the roasted Passover lamb, and the earthen vessel that was used); only it is prescribed that they are not to leave the holy city (i.e., its precincts possibly). Originally the festival was celebrated according to the appointment, that one family alone consumed the lamb; or if it were not sufficiently numerous, it included some persons more. Later, it was established that the number of guests was not to be under ten, and not over twenty. Originally all the members of the family, without exception, were guests; subsequently, those of the female sex were not bound to participate, although they were not positively excluded. It is, moreover, to be noticed, that, according to the perfection of the Levitical ordinance, the levitically impure were not to partake of the Passover lamb. They must hold their Passover on the fourteenth day of the following month (Zif); those likewise who had been prevented from taking part in the great passover. This celebration was called the latter Passover. Besides, it is perhaps possible that in later times the Rabbis totally obscured and altered many characteristies of original significance: as, for example, this kind of thing has occurred to the Roman Catholic theologians with the holy communion, in that they have changed this real thank- and peace-offering into a continuous sin-offering.

The feast began with washing of hands and prayer. Thanksgiving for the feast-day followed, by the declaration that the feast is for a remembrance of the exodus from Egypt. Thereupon followed the benediction of the first cup, with the thanksgiving, ‘Praised be Thou, Lord our God, the King of the world, who has created the fruit of the vine.’ To this point Christ first of all gave a new meaning, in indicating (Luke) the festival as a pre-celebration of His death, and as a type of a new celebration which He should hold with His disciples in His kingdom. [¹⁰⁰(1.) The paschal supper began with a cup of wine; for the enjoyment of which, and for the day, the father of the family gives thanks, saying, ‘Blessed be He that created the fruit of the vine;’ and then he repeats the consecration of the day, and drinks up the cup. And afterward he blesseth concerning the washing of hands, and washeth. (2.) Then the bitter herbs (מרורים) are set on, brought on the table ready covered. Of these the father partakes, and gives thanks for the eating of the herbs, dipped in sour sauce. And this first dipping is used only for that reason, that children may observe and inquire; for it is unusual for men to eat herbs before meat. (3.) Afterward there is set on unleavened bread, and the sauce called חרוסת, and the lamb.] Then began the meal, probably thus kept with a view to make it appear at first as a dim enigma. The table with the food was placed in the midst. The father of the household praised God for the fruits of the earth. He then dipped for every guest a portion of bitter herbs as large as an olive [less than the quantity of an olive he must not eat] into a jelly of apples and almonds (called charoseth), and handed it to them. The table was again put on one side, possibly to increase¹⁰¹ the expressiveness of the riddle. [Now they mingle the second cup for the father.] Here came the question of the son to the father of the family, and then followed the announcement, as first generally with the performance of the biblical hymn, Deu 26:5. To this moment of the feast, the so-called Hagada—the announcement—probably the word of the Apostle Paul refers: As often as ye eat of this bread, and drink of this cup, ye shall show forth the Lord’s death till He come.

Then began the more definite explanation of the feast. The table was again drawn back. First of all the Passover in general was interpreted: ‘Because in Egypt God passed over the dwellings of the forefathers.’ Then the householder lifted on high bitter herbs, and declared their meaning: ‘Because the Egyptians visited the life of our fathers with bitterness, as is written of them (Exo 1:14), they made their lives bitter.’ In the same manner he raised on high an unleavened loaf, and gave an answer to the question, Wherefore do we eat this unleavened bread? with the word, ‘The dough of our fathers was not yet leavened when the Almighty God led them suddenly forth from Egypt, as appears in the law’ (Exo 12:39). Hereupon follows the thanksgiving for the miracle of redemption [viz., ‘Blessed be Thou, O Lord God, our King eternal, redeeming us, and redeeming our fathers out of Egypt, and bringing us to this night; that we may eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs’]. The song of praise [Psa 113:1-9 and Psa 114:1-8, the first part of the Hallel] was sung, and the second cup, filled with red wine [mixed previously, as mentioned above], was consecrated with thanksgiving, and went the round. These portions of the festival probably belong to the announcement, as the more distinct explanations thereof.

Then, however, began the peculiar feast, to which the guests lay down, whereas hitherto they had been standing—the partaking of the paschal lamb. They eat to it single pieces of bread, which they dipped into the jelly, or into the sauce which stood on the table, and into which also the bitter herbs were dipped. Hereupon followed the solemn breaking of bread with which the second half of the celebration, the feast of unleavened bread, took its beginning. ‘As the Oriental expresses his joy by a superfluity of meats, so his grief is expressed by a more limited meal; therefore in this night bread could only be furnished in pieces, and was also blessed in this manner.’¹⁰² This is the distribution of bread which Jesus consecrated for a remembrance of His broken body.¹⁰³ As soon as the meal was ended, the third cup was distributed. Thus, as the first cup intimated the beginning of the solemnity, and thus was devoted to the feast-day, and as the second celebrated the announcement, thus in like manner the third pointed to the thanksgiving for the meal partaken of. Thus it was the cup of thanksgiving, the Eucharist in a narrow sense [כסא הברכה]. This cup Christ consecrated into the cup of the new covenant in His blood. Thence it follows probably that with the third cup was always closed the solemnity of the old covenant.

Finally were then sung once more some psalms [Psa 115:1-18, Psa 116:1-19, Psa 117:1-2, Psa 118:1-29, the second part of the Hallel], and with the partaking of the fourth cup the assembly was broken up.¹⁰⁴ The festival must be brought to an end before midnight.

But now the solemnity of the new era of liberation went on through the circle of the feast-days: the partaking of unleavened bread in these days indicated the poor but consecrated and joyous wandering life of the people of God. The consecration of the beginning harvest, which took place on the second feast-day, when the sheaf of first-fruits was brought into the fore-court of the temple, and the grain was there extracted and ground, and out of the meal a meat-offering was prepared (Lev 2:14), expressed the blending of the theocratic institution with the blessing of civilization. Also the partaking of wine referred, probably, not only to the blood of the thank-offering, but also to the festal joy which wine, as the blood of the grape vine, the noblest tree of nature, diffuses, and by which it is appropriated to the representation in speaking symbol and seal of the highest festal disposition of men, who attain it by the partaking of the blood of Christ, of the innermost expression of His heartfelt surrender and offering up to God for them. The noblest means of nourishment, and the noblest means of enlivening on the earth, were consecrated as symbols of the noblest means of nourishment and of making alive from heaven. The Passover brought to light the character of the great feast of thank-offering, in which it formed the contrast to the great feast of sin-offering, by the fact, that besides the special burnt-offerings which were daily offered in behalf of the nation, thank-offerings were again offered for individuals, which then served for special times of sacrificial feasts. The people celebrated a common and happy feast of thank-offering of this kind generally just before the expiration of the 15th Nisan, the so-called Chagiga, in which small or great cattle, male or female, were used. This sacrificial meal was probably the strongest expression of the feast of thank-offering that was celebrated through the entire Passover feast.

6. In reference to the rearing of the vine in the East, Jahn observes (Bibl. Antiq., sec. 68), according to Bochart, ‘that the inhabitants in Antaradus (in Phœnicia) pruned the vine three times a year—the first time in March; and after the stem had hereupon borne grapes, they again cut off the twigs which had no fruit. The stem then in April bore new twigs, on some of which again appeared clusters of grapes; but those which were without fruit were again cut off in May: the stem then shot forth for the third time, and the new shoot bore new grapes.’ Hence it is not difficult to suppose that there were laid heaps of cut-off and withered branches in the gardens of the valleys near Jerusalem, at the time that Jesus went forth from Jerusalem over the Kidron (in the night of the 14th Nisan, 6th April). There might be a reason for piling up brushwood of this kind, if by help of the same the remains of the paschal lamb were burnt up on the paschal night (Exo 12:10; Num 9:12; Friedlieb, Archäol. 59). Here it is to be considered, that formerly the city of Jerusalem extended more deeply downwards below Gethsemane, as far as the valley. If we conceive ourselves outside the valley on the banks of the Kidron, surrounded with pilgrims’ booths, and with Passover seasons in all their dwellings, which had been just a little before concluded, it is obvious to suppose that in many cases, in the gardens around, the remains of the feast (even although it were only the bones) were burnt by the help of the garden brushwood that lay there, especially as in this case the Sabbath was so close at hand.

That this burning must have happened in part outside the booths or tents, is suggested by the probable danger of fire. It is very remarkable that the lighting up of the Easter light in the Romish Church is referred to the night of the paschal solemnity, and at the same time to the pillar of fire which formerly preceded the children of Israel. (The connection between the paschal feast and the pillar of fire appears to be suggested in Num 9:16. See Staudenmeier, ‘der Geist des Christenthums,’ 503.) If now even in the Gallic Church and in the British Church the new fire was lighted on the night of Thursday in Passion-week (Binterim’s Archäologie), this points back probably from the varying use of the West to the original custom of the Lord’s Supper of Asia Minor, on the evening after the 14th Nisan, as a characteristic which must have originally harmonized with this. The whole symbolic nature of lights, however, will, as well as the Easter fire, become more intelligible if we return to the supposition that the Jews, on the paschal night, must have already lighted numerous fires, and that these must probably have been publicly lighted in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, probably abundantly, according to the situations of the dwellings in the gardens. From this reference is explained the fact, that the Passover fire, even in Jerusalem, still plays so considerable a part.

1) Πρὸ δὲ τῆς ἑορτῆς τοῦ πάσχα. It is thus that John defines this moment. It is not possible that this is meant merely as a general intimation of the time—perhaps it was intended to convey that the feast-time had not yet begun. This word must rather be taken with the notice that follows further on that Jesus knew that His hour was come ; further still with the intimation, ver. 29, according to which some thought that Jesus had urged Judas to make haste to provide purchases for the feast, and with the subsequent remark of the Evangelist, ἥν δὲ νύξ. Thus we obtain the general view of John as to the time. Jesus sate down with the disciples before sun set, undertook the foot-washing, and began the Passover with the disciples. This was just the time when it was neither quite day nor night. But when Judas went out it was already night.

2) Probably this is the meaning here of δείπνου γευομένου. [For examples of this use of the Aorist, see Lightfoot or Alford, in loc. Tischendorf and Meyer read γινομένου, which gives the same meaning.—ED.]

3) [It does not appear, from anything adduced by commentators, that washing the feet was customary before a meal, though it was the first mark of hospitality given to a guest off a journey. The quotations cited by Lightfoot show that foot- washing was the work of a slave, hut do not show its propriety before a feast. Lampe thinks that, at the paschal feast, which was eaten by those who had their staves in their hands, and their shoes on their feet, as if starting on a journey and not finishing one, there is a difficulty in seeing its propriety. May it not have been used on this occasion, because our Lord and His disciples had been journeying, though but a short distance?—ED.]

4) Ebrard, 400.

5) Luke xxii. 21-30.

6) [For the various and strange arrangements made by ancient interpreters, see Lampe in loc. Those 'in the Romish interest' suppose the ceremony to have begun with Peter; but so also Ewald, Alford, and others. It seems impossible to decide whether the οὖν of ver. 6 indicates the pursuance of the intention expressed by ἦρξατο or not. Meyer thinks it does not.—ED.]

7) [The acute remark of Bengel will be remembered: 'Magis admirandus foret pontifex, uirius regis, quatn duodecim pauperum pedes, seria humilitate lamans.'—ED.]

8) Ps. xli. 10.

9) Exod. xii.

10) פֶּסַח πάσχα.

11) חַג הַמַּצּוֺת ἑορτὴ των ἀζύμων.

12)  לֶחֶם עֳנִי

13)  מְדֺרִים πικρίδες. Endives—wild lettuce.

14) 2 Cor. v. 21; Gal. iii. 13.

15) Matt. xvi. 6; 1 Cor. v. 8

16) Bähr, Symbolik des Mos. Cultûs, i. 432.

17) Ps. cxiii.-cxviii.

18) Ἐπιθυμίυᾳ ἐπεθυμήσα.

19) The guests leant upon the left hand at the table, and were thus turned towards their neighbours .on the right. Consequently, John sat on the right hand of Jesus.

20) [The narrative seems rather to require that we should suppose the answer of our Lord, given in Matthew, to be still general, and not specifically to indicate Judas. Our Lord first of all announces that He is to be betrayed by one of them; on this they ask, Lord, is it I? To this He replies in words that depict the general standing of the traitor. He tells them that it is one of the twelve, one who was then at table, and eating with Him. It was necessary to insert this general description, for the sake of exhibiting the fulfilment of Ps. xli., and of prolonging the self- examination of the disciples. After that, Peter signs to John to ask the Lord who was meant in particular ; and the answer seems to be given to John alone [so Byneeus, i. 437: 'Johannes rogaverat voce submission, quisnam esset ille homo nefarius . . . Jesus submissa itidem voce indicaverat.' He also quotes Theophylact, to the effect that had Peter heard who the traitor was, he would speedily have drawn his ready sword and made an end of him], and to be overheard by Judas, who was certainly sitting close to Jesus. The sign which Jesus had specified, not the general ὁ ἐμβαπτόμενος which applied to all, but the definite ᾤ εγω βάψω τὸ ψωμίον καὶ δώσω αὐτῳ, is now accomplished. He gives the sop to Judas, and Judas asks, Lord, is it I? This course of events seems best to satisfy every part of the narrative.—ED.]

21) Or, who dips his hand with Me in the dish. The handing of the morsel took place, probably, over the dish. Or perhaps Judas, in his mental excitement, would anticipate that which was remarkable in this transfer by hastening with his hand to meet the hand of the Lord, and receiving the morsel while it was still in the dish.

22) [The question whether or not Judas was present at the institution of the Eucharist has been very much discussed, and has been connected with the dogmatic question of the spiritual efficacy of the sacraments. The very great majority of the Fathers and the Schoolmen, and some of the Reformers, were of opinion that Judas did not leave the paschal supper until a later period, and received along with the others the symbols of the Lord s body and blood. Among recent commentators, however, Stier and Alford are almost alone in their advocacy of this view. Xeander, Meyer, Ebrard, Lichtenstein, Riggenbach, Ellicott, and Andrews, agree with the author in thinking that it was not till Judas left the company that the communion was instituted. A full account of the patristic and mediaeval opinions on this point is given by Bynscus, De Morte Jesu Christi, Amstel. 1691-98, vol. i. 443-448.—ED.]

23) But still not as if these individual results were accomplished and experienced for their own sake. Christ undergoes all His sorrows in the completeness of His divine humanity. But the trial of sorrow which He has to endure is, first of all, especially a trial of the Spirit, and spiritual; then especially soul-sorrow, psychical; finally (in the cross), especially bodily torment, and physical.

24) Probably the institution of the holy communion itself might be comprehended as the ἐντολὴ καινὴ, as the great institution of the new covenant, and the subsequent ἵνα. consequently indicates in the strictest sense the object of the holy communion. The external similarity of the text, 1 John ii. 7, 8, where the law of love is indicated as that which in one relation is new, in the other is old, must not lead us to an identification of the two expressions. The distinction between the two passages appears indeed from the fact, that there the law of love is represented as at once new and old. The ἐντολὴ καινὴ thus indicates perhaps the same as διαθήκη καινὴ. Here with is at the same time solved the difficulty (which otherwise has not yet been sufficiently removed) which arises if the expression is referred to the commandment of love itself,—the question, namely, how Jesus could speak of this ἐντολὴ as a new one, when the command of love of one s neighbour was already present in the Old Testament. Comp. Olshaxisen, iv. 51. On the omission of the narrative of the celebration of the Lord s Supper in John, compare Ebrard, 409.

25) Thus it is false when the Catholic Church identifies the celebration of the Lord s Supper with the atoning sacrifice of Christ, just as when it conceives, in justification of withholding the cup, that it may say that the blood is nevertheless contained in the body. Nam panis et vinum respondeat causi et umguini a se invicem separatis et sic in hostia oblatis. Cocceius, Aphorismi, Disputatio, xxxi. §7. [Bynæus quotes from Keuchenius: Nimirum in omnibus victimis duæ erant partes essentiales, caro et sanguis. Vocem autem בשר seu carnis LXX. interpretes quandoque per σῶμα exprimunt. Cf. Heb. xiii. 11. His own conclusion is, that no one can doubt that Jesus meant here to signify Corpus suum exanime et mortuum, quale pependit in cruce. The primary reason for the use of the word σῶμα, and not σάρξ is, that the former is the whole which was offered on the cross: each part was σάρξ; but it was not a part, nor any number of parts, but the whole, which was the sacrifice, and which could be presented symbolically to the disciples.—ED.]

26) Εσθιόντων δὲ αὐτῶν.

27) Praised be Thou, our God, Thou King of the world, who bringest forth bread out of the earth.—Friedlieb, 56

28) This is the bread of affliction which our fathers did eat in Egypt.

29) Διδόμενον. 1 Cor. xi. 24, κλώμενον.

30) Μετὰ τὸ δειπνῆσαι. The cup of blessing, כּוֺס הַבְּדָכָה. [The ritual observed among the Jews may be seen in Lightfoot's Hor. Hebr. on Matt. xxvi. 26, or in Bynæus, De Morte Christi, i. 8. Lightfoot says of this cup, The cup certainly was the same with the "cup of blessing;" namely, when, according to the custom, after having eaten the farewell morsel of the lamb, there was now an end of supper, and thanks were to be given over the third cup after meat, He takes that cup, &c. Bynæus does not express himself decidedly (p. 622), but inclines to the opinion that this was the fourth cup.—ED.

31) Praised be Thou, Lord our God, Thou King of the world, who hast created the fruit of the vine.

32) In this Olshausen finds a reason against the personal communication of the clergy. It is, perhaps, not altogether evangelical to assume that the clergyman, at the distribution of the Lord s Supper, stands in the place of Christ as opposed to the people. But only by considering him as a member of the congregation, and the congregation as itself priests, is the difficulty of the actual communication of the officiating clergy man to be set aside.

33) The Apostle Paul illustrates the words, 'Do this in remembrance of Me,' by adding 'In so often as ye do eat this bread, and drink of this cup, ye do show forth the Lord s death till He come.'

34) This is the Zwinglian characteristic, the relation of the Lord's Supper to the history of the death of Jesus, absolutely indispensable, if the doctrine of the holy communion is not to run into superstition, but only the foundation indeed for the subsequent characteristics.

35) This is the Calvinistic characteristic.

36) This is the Lutheran characteristic.

37) This is the old Catholic characteristic, which is totally distinct, plainly, from the doctrine of transubstantiation: for first of all, here the change does not transpire in the hand of the priest, and by its means, but in the partaker himself; secondly, it is not a change into the material, but into the Christian ideal.

38) Thus, perhaps, is arranged the difference which arose between the Lutheran and the Reformed churches, on the question whether unbelievers as well as believers receive in the communion the body and the blood of Christ.

39) 1 Cor. x. 16.

40) The Lord s Supper is a symbol as celebration of the fellowship of the death of Christ, a sacrament as celebration of the fellowship of His life, a type as celebration of the fellowship of His kingdom: as a symbol, it refers to the sacrifice of the death of Christ; as a type, it points to the future blessedness of the Church of His kingdom ; as a sacrament, it sets forth the partaking in the life of Christ in the power of representation and assurance. But as this centre of the celebration commands and embraces all the characteristics of it, both the typical and the symbolical side have a sacramental character.

41) Summum jus, suinma injuria.

42) [The fact that Matthew and Mark seem to place our Lord's prediction of Peter's fall after they left the supper-room, while John very distinctly places it before, has caused some difficulty in the arrangement of this part of the narrative. Alford thinks the prediction in John is distinct from that in Matthew ; and certainly there is nothing improbable in the supposition that Peter should, on the way to Gethsemane, renew his protestations of fidelity. Augustine (followed by Greswell) holds a threefold prediction: 'Ter eum expressisse præsumptionem suam diversis locis sermonis Christi, et ter illi a Domino responsum quod eum esset ante galli canturn ter negaturus' (De Consens. Evan. iii. 2). Riggenbach (623) thinks there was but one prediction, which Matthew and Mark insert somewhat later than it actually took place. On the use of τότε in Matthew, as an indication of time, see Riggenbach, p. 424.—ED.]

43) As, for example, Tholuck supposes, p. 343. I have already suggested this view in my first vol., p. 219. ['That the discourse in chaps, xv. and xvi., with the prayer in chap, xvii., was spoken in the supper-room, appears very clearly from chap, xviii. 1, where it is said, "When Jesus had spoken these words, He went forth with His disciples over the brook Cedron," which can scarcely refer to a departure from any other place, although referred by some to His going out of the city. It appears also from this, that after His words, "Arise, let us go hence," no change of place is mentioned till the prayer is ended, and from the improbability that such a discourse would be spoken by the way. We conclude, therefore, that the Lord, after the disciples had arisen, and while still standing in the room, continued His discourse, and ended it with the prayer."—Andrews, p. 411. And so Meyer, Stier, Alford, and Ellicott.—ED.]

44) The garden of Gethsemane is even still surrounded by other enclosures. See Robinson, i. 234. Compare Tischendorf, Reise in den Orient, i. 313.

45) On the burning up of the vine-cutting, compare Ezek. xv. 6.

46) That the vine was cultivated at Jerusalem, appears very clearly from 2 Kings xviii. 31; compare Zech. iii. 10; Micah iv. 4. Of the existing Jerusalem, Robinson
relates, Neither vines nor fig-trees thrive on the high ground round the city, although the latter are found in the gardens beyond Siloam.

47) It appears from Exod. xxii. 6, that in Palestine, about the time of the beginning of harvest, frequent garden or field fires were burning.

48) [Our Lord probably set out for the Mount of Olives about eleven o'clock. Some make it earlier. Greswell says (Dissert, in. 192): 'The period of the year was the vernal equinox, and the day of the month about two days before the full moon, in which case the moon would be now not very far past her meridian, and the night would be enlightened until a late hour towards the morning.' Of course the possibility of clouds must be taken into account.—ED.]

49) My earlier interpretation of this passage, in the treatise, Das Land der Herrlichkeit, p. 87, incurs the twofold objection—1. That Jesus wishes actually to say to His disciples that He is going to prepare a place for them. 2. That, according to christologic principles, the operation of Christ must not be so conceived as if He would of Himself provide habitations in the event of the Father omitting to do so. My present view is adopted by Lücke, p. 592, who remarks, that the expression εἶπον ἄν might be thus taken—an dicerem vobis, quod jam dicturus sum? Lücke, indeed, observes, that it is not to be supposed that Jesus would introduce a new suggestion of consolation (πορεύομαι) in this form. But a similar form occurs at other times in the life of Jesus ; for example, at the healing of the man sick of the palsy, Matt. ix. 6. The ὅτι before πορεύομαι,, which in this case is necessary, is actually found in the reading adopted by Lachmann. Certainly the construction, 'If it were not so, I would tell you,' would give no feeble meaning. Rather a very forcible one, since it must be supposed that Christ therein had in view the contradictions that would arise in the succeeding age to the doctrine of the future life, and the immortality of the individual. But it involves the difficulty of supposing that He had thought it necessary to instruct His disciples as to the conditions of hopelessness. Perhaps as with a like view (speaking ironically), Jean Paul constructed against atheism, 'A discourse of the dead Christ that there is no God.'

50) As it appears again in the apologetic stand-point of the more abstract supernaturalism.

51) That the word Paraclete in the Johannic usus loquendi might signify the Advocate, the Intercessor, the Mediator, is shown from 1 John ii. 1. There Jesus is the Paraclete of His people in the presence of the Father, Here, on the other hand, the Holy Spirit the perfecter of the disciples, is their Advocate in the face of the condemning world. Their first Paraclete, in the judgment of the world, was Christ. He sheltered them against the world, and secured to them a free departure (John xviii. 8). But after His ascension He sent to them another Paraclete, who continually gave to them the ascendancy in the face of the world, nay, who Himself condemns the world that condemns; and thus, on behalf of the disciples, changed the defensive into a victorious offensive attitude (John xvi. 8). Comp. Tholuck, 337. [Lightfoot, while he admits that the sense Advocate may be allowed to the word in this place, adds that it may seem more fit to render it by Comforter; for, amongst all the names and titles given to the Messiah in the Jewish writers, that of "Menahem," or the Comforter, hath chiefly obtained; and the days of the Messiah, amongst them, are styled "the days of consolation." For the generally received meaning, see Alford's note, with the reference to Hare's Mission of the Comforter. Bishop Pearson's note on the word is also valuable, and proves that the notion of intercession cannot at least be omitted from the idea signified (On the Creed, p. 477, ed. 1835.)—ED.]

52) The formula שָֹלוֺם לְךָ לָכֶם may also be understood as a formula of farewell—not only as a formula of salutation. Lücke, ii. 617. That in the present case both are intended—the farewell and the assurance of continued fellowship and of speedy meeting again—is proved by the distinction ἀφίημι ὑμῖν—δίδωμι ὑμῖν. Equally so also by the previous passage, ver. 26. But in the subsequent verse this thought comes most plainly forward in the words ὑπάγω καὶ ἔρχομαι, &c.

53) Μηδὲ δειλιάτω. [Cf. Isa. xiii. 7, 8 (LXX.), and Lampe in loc.]

54) The expression ἐγείρεσθε implies, perhaps, an encouragement to the exercise of the highest courage and resolution not merely a summons to get up, as if until then they had been lying down.

55) See Lücke, ii. 627. According to Lücke, the notice, xviii. 1, is inconsistent with Christ being at this time passing between vineyards. But the ἐξῆλθεν in that place does not perhaps necessarily refer to the departure of Christ from the walls of Jerusalem—the less that it may probably be supposed that the precincts of the city had extended down as far as the Kidron. The leading thought of the text lies in the reference of ἐξῆλθεν to the more special definition, πέραν τοῦ χειμάρρου τοῦ Κεδρών.

56) [Tholuck supposes that the similitude was suggested by a vine perhaps [trailing by the side of the window, i.e., of the supper room. Lampe (iii. 200) thinks (and so Meyer and Ellicott) that the occasion of the figure was the fruit of the vine, which had just been used as the symbol of all the benefits of the New Testament. He adds, 'Forte quoque Jesus e regione et ad radices montis Templi ad torrentem Kidron accedens respicere potuit ad vitem illam auream, quse secundum Josephum et alios insigne Templi secundi ornamentum fuit, et limen atrii obumbravit.' Stier gives a threefold ground for the image: 'The two certain and related grounds are nature in itself and the prophetic phraseology which interprets nature, the third is introduced by the recently instituted Supper.' In Alford s note on this passage, for Lampe read Lange.—ED.]

57) Ἠ ἄμπελος ἡ ἀληθινὴ. Compare vol. i. p. 475. ['Ἀληθινὸς est, qui non tanturn nomen habet et speciem, sed veram naturam et indolem, quæ nomini conveniat.' Tittmann, Synonyms of the N. T., ii. 28.—ED.]

58) Isa. v. 1.

59) The contrast: αἴρει αὐτό and καθαίρει αὐτό comes out clearly.

60) The aorist form is here significant, ἐβλήθη; ἐξηράνθη. In such a case, the disciple who does not abide in Jesus is in fact already cast off, and is conceived of as on the way to wither.

61) They must previously be true disciples of Jesus to bring forth fruits, that is specifically Christ-like fruits ; for the fruit does not constitute the branch, still less the vine ; rather the fruit proceeds from the branch, the branch from the vine. And still, on the other hand, they do not become in the highest and most perfect sense His disciples until they are approved by bringing forth fruit.

62) There is thus no contradiction between John xv. 13 and Rom. v. 7-10. Compare John xv. 16.

63) Thus this passage agrees with v. 16, 12. Vide Tholuck, 347.

64) See John xviii. 8.

65) Compare Matt. x. 24.

66) A festival of faith, an auto-da-fé.

67) Compare Isa. liii. 8

68) Compare Ex. xxxiii. 2360)

70) Ps. cxxxvii.

71)

Ach, Kein Steg will dahin führen,
Ach, der Himmel, über mir
Will die Erde nie berühren,
Und das Dort ist niemals Hier.
—SCHILLER, Der Pilgrim. Compare Faust, Pfc. 2, Act 5.

72) Compare Matt. xiii. 16. Probably the reference here is to that emphatic seeing and hearing which began in the life of the disciples, when they saw Him who was
the express image of the Father, heard Him who was the Eternal Word.

73) 2 Cor. iv. 18.

74) Gal. vi. 14.

75) 1 John ii. 16.

76) The disposition to complete these three great statements about sin about righteousness—about judgment—by closer definitions, and, e.g., to apprehend the righteousness only as the righteousness of Christ, amounts in this case to a narrowing, and hence to an altering of the simple and grand meaning of the passage. Its precision lies strictly in its apparent want of precision.

77) Comp. Rom. iii. 26. Εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὑτὸν δὶκαιον καὶ δικαιοῦντα, τὸν ἐκ πὶστεως Ἰησοῦ. It is a false abstract comprehension of the divine righteousness which sets it in opposition to grace, by ascribing to it merely destroying effects, not also quickening ones. Even the righteousness of God may communicate itself, by making alive ; but where there is sin, the killing effect must precede. Compare 1 John iii. 7.

78) Vide Acts i. 6; ch. x. 9.

79) 'This is the circle, round, and closed, and compacted—all three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, into one eternal divine Being.'—Luther.

80) The first μικρόν is like the μικρόν of ch. xiv. 19. It embraces the time from the journey to Gethsemane to the death of Jesus ; the second μικρόν indicates the limit from the burial of the Lord to the showing of His resurrection.

81) 'The questioners take the enigmatical expression to pieces, and reflectively consider every individual word. At length, in ver. 18, they pause upon the doubled μικρόν as the most difficult.'—Lücke.

82) According to Lachmann, ὑμεῖς λυπηθήσεσθε, without the connecting δὲ, which is found in the usual reading.

83) 'As soon as the glory of Christ begins to reveal itself, there arises for the world the painful ἔλεγχος of the Spirit. It can, if it believes, take part in the joy of the disciples of Jesus; but, so long as it remains the world, it will not. But this aspect of the subject is not carried on.'—Lücke.

84) See Col. i. 18, 19.

85) 'It is plain that the dear Lord loved to speak with the disciples in the last hour, and did not like to leave them in sadness about His separation from them. Therefore He uses so many words, makes a conclusion as if He had done speaking, and still begins again, as people do who dearly love one another and must separate, and nevertheless continue to talk, and bid good-night again and again.'—Luther.

86) The entire speech is a great παροιμία, a, as long as the Spirit does not explain it; proverbial saying, so far as it is identified with the usual modes of representation; figurative expression, so far as its figuration of the immortality of the spiritual relations is not adequate; enigmatical expression, so far as the difference of the manner of thought between the speaker and the hearer darkens and conceals the meaning of the words.

87) See Lücke, ii. 663.

88) Compare Isa. lxiii.

89) The prophet hears in the Spirit how Jehovah summons the sword to come upon the man of His fellowship, to smite the Shepherd that the flock may be scattered. Here every expression is eminently characteristic : the sword in its generality indicating the worldly power in its judicial operation ; the man of Jehovah s fellowship indicating His Elected One; the Shepherd absolutely, and the flock absolutely, signifying the Messiah and the people of God; the scattering of the sheep of the flock intimating in general, and chiefly, the separation of the godly of the disciples connected with the Shepherd in the external theocratic Church. That Jehovah could not decree the sword upon an actual גֶבֶר עֲמִתוֹ as Hitzig supposes (die Kl. Propheten, 153), is an assumption that has no foundation either in the prophets (Isa. lxii.) or in the actual history.

90) Vide Strauss, ii. 589.

91) The emphasis lies in both the designations, and in the unity of both. John, in all probability, had this ground-thought of his theology from the mouth of Jesus Himself.

92) Compare ver. 11 with vers. 15-17.

93) As τέκνα, ἀπωλείας—σπέρμα ἄνομον.

94) Originally of the apostate people.

95) Lücke refers this word (678) to the text, Ps. xli. 10, with reference to chap. xiii. 18, and brings forth the ground-thought, that, according to the arrangement of the righteousness of God in the world by reason of sin, even in the holiest company is one traitor. But this thought has already been fulfilled in the reference of the moment of John xiii. 18 to Ps. xli. 10. But here what is spoken of is the perdition of that traitor.

96) The passage is more significant if, with Lachmann, according to important authorities, we reject the ἕν. First of all it was said, that believers should be one ; then it is said, how? For instance, as the Father is in Christ, and Christ in the Father, so were they also to be in them (in the Father and the Son), and by that means one. This may be characterized as the Johannic Catholicism.

97) There must certainly be in this place a reference back (although it is disputed by Tholuck) to the words καταβολὴ κόσμου in the preceding passage, even although 'κόσμος is here used in an ethical, and there in a physical sense.' For in any case there is a relation between the fact that the Father loved Christ before the foundation of the world, and that Christ has acknowledged Him in the world. The same relation must, however, subsist between the fact that the world in its physical form (as substantial) was subordinate in the love of God to the Son, and the manifestation that now (as ethical in its self-frustration) it has not known God. It is a moral relation, as between the servant who has only one pound and the fact that he buries it in the earth, in contrast with the servant who has the ten pounds and gains ten pounds. The relation indicated, however, is in no way fatalistic. This appeal s for the most part from the freedom of the life of Christ ; here also, from the fact that Christ calls on the Father as the Righteous One, with reference to this circumstance.

98) Tholuck, p. 375.

99) [Kurtz (History of the 0. Covenant, ii. 297) shows the bearing of this question on the Romish view of the Eucharist as a repetition of the sacrifice of Christ ; and that the proper defence of the Protestant theory is not the denial of the sacrificial nature of the paschal lamb, but the maintenance of its typical character. The true nature of the paschal feast he declares in the following words: 'If the door-posts of the Israelites had to be sprinkled with the blood of the slain lamb, in order that the judicial wrath of God might not smite them with the Egyptians; and if Jehovah spared their houses solely because they were marked with this blood, the only inference that can be drawn is, that the blood was regarded as possessing an expiatory virtue, by which their sins were covered and atoned for, though otherwise they would have exposed them to the wrath of God. And if so, then whether it had all the ritual characteristics of a sin-offering or not (and we are to bear in mind that the ritual of Moses was not yet appointed), it certainly possessed the essential nature and the full efficacy of such sacrifices, and pointed distinctly to the one sacrifice for sin. And thus the Lord s Supper is its exact counterpart, it also being a Eucharist, only because it is a symbolic commemoration of the same one sin-offering.—ED.]

100) [The interpolations in this note are from Lightfoot's Hor. Heb. on Matt. xxvi. 26, whose account of the Passover is derived from Maimonides and the Talmudic tract Pesachin. A very interesting chapter on the Passover will be found in Witsius, De Œcon. Fed. iv. 9, founded upon the elaborate treatment of the subject by Bochart in his Hierozoic. ii. 50. See also Kurtz, as above.—ED.]

101) This ceremony was probably less essential, just as the frequent hand-washings of the father of the family at various parts of the meal.

102) Friedlieb, 56.

103) [Washing his hands, and taking two loaves, he breaks one, and lays the broken upon the whole one, and blesseth it, Blessed be He who causeth bread to grow out of the earth ; and putting some bread and bitter herbs together (Meyer says, wrap ping a piece of bread round with bitter herbs ), he dips them in the sauce charoseth, and blessing, Blessed be Thou, Lord God, our eternal King, He who hath sanctified us by His precepts, and hath commanded us to eat ; he eats the unleavened bread and bitter herbs together. From thenceforward he lengthens out the supper, eating this or that as he hath a mind; and last of all he eats of the flesh of the Passover, at least as much as an olive; but after this he tastes not at all of any food.]

104) [Lightfoot does not mention a fifth cup, but Meyer cites an authority to show that a fifth cup, with the singing of Psalms cxx.-cxxxvii., might still follow. So also Bynseus De Morte Christi, i 618) quotes Maimonides to the following effect : Potest tamen infundi calix quintus, et dici super eo hymnus magnus (the Great Hallel) a : Celebrate Jehovam, quia bonus, usque: Ad flumina Babelis. Sed calix hie non est ex debito, sicutalii quatuor calices.—ED.]