foresight of their forsaking Him, He is yet only

anxious about them.

the world."

"In the world ye shall have

tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome

SECTION LXXII.

THE LAST SUPPER-THE LORD'S PARTING PRAYER,

"THESE

JOHN Xvii. I—8.

HESE words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, 'Father, the hour

And now the Lord, having counselled, comforted, encouraged His disciples with all that anxious reiteration of topics which, though to the indifferent it seems like tedious repetition, is the natural language of a loving farewell, turns to His Father to give back into His hands the charge He had received from Him, and solemnly to ask His continued sanction and blessing.

One hardly dares to analyse and comment on words so sacred-and yet they have been preserved as the heritage of the Church, and the great truths they unveil are such as we cannot afford to pass over without careful consideration.

Let us reverently note the arrangement of the thoughts in this great prayer. In the first eight verses the Lord seems to render up to the Father the account of His stewardship, so far as regarded the period of His personal work on earth. There shall come a time when the whole of the mediatorial

ministry of the Son of God shall be thus replaced in the Father's hands-" then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power."* Of that yet future time this solemn surrender of the personal ministry of Christ was a kind of instalment.

"Father, the hour is come;" the great and decisive hour, to which all the preceding hours of the Saviour's life had been introductory. "Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee.” God did glorify His Son-by the portents at His crucifixion, forcing from even the heathen spectator the exclamation "Certainly this was a righteous man.” But above all He glorified Him by raising Him from the dead, and declaring Him to be the Son of God with power. And being thus glorified, the Son also did glorify God, and is glorifying Him still by the effects of His great sacrifice. "God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."+

"As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.” "Humanity was placed before Him as the object of His ministry, and His exalted vocation was to bring to it eternal life-the communication of which to mankind is the very thing in which the glorification of the Father through the

* I Cor. xv. 24.

+ Phil. ii. 9-II,

Son consists."* The power is on all flesh-the gift to each as brought to Christ.

"And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." The knowledge of God as manifested in Christ, is the true complement of man's being.

"I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." The Lord speaks in full prophetic confidence of His work as finished. He anticipates the moment when on the cross He should be able to say with stricter meaning, "It is finished." "And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.' "We see," says the Epistle to the Hebrews, "Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour"t— with that glory and honour which was His "before the world was." He had always had this glory as the Son of God-He was now to receive it as also the Son of man, the Head and Representative of man, the Mediator of the new covenant.

"I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me." "No man," said our Lord on another occasion, can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him."‡ The disciples were God's children, and under His training, and He brought them to His Son. they have kept Thy word," that word which Christ

"And

* Olshausen.

+ Heb. ii. 9.

John vi. 44.

had made known to them. "Now they have known that all things whatsoever Thou hast given Me are of Thee. For I have given unto 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."

SECTION LXXIII.

THE LAST SUPPER-THE LORD'S PARTING PRAYER.

“I

JOHN Xvii. 9-26.

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 now the Lord solemnly commits the charge of these His beloved disciples into His Father's hands. His personal superintendence of them was soon to cease. "And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given 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 have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition."

What a solemn-what an affecting exception! Let us think for a moment-how could we bear that in looking back on a congregation, on a family, the Saviour should have it to say of one of us-" Those

that Thou gavest Me I have kept, and none of them is lost,"-but-such-a-one! And observe, it is in the name, by the truth and realities of God's character as manifested in Christ-not by irresistible power that the disciples were kept-not by the exertion of miraculous power. Judas was proof against all these spiritual influences-no force was put forth to retain him.

"And now come I to Thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them Thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." They were possessed of a spirit other than that of the worlda spirit like His, and derived from Him.

"I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world,”—no, He prayed not for this, for in the world was their work and mission,-" 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"-set them apart from evil, consecrate them to good" through Thy truth; Thy word is truth. As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." The office of the disciples was a continuation and carrying out of the mission of the Saviour to the world. "And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." Heb. ii. 10, 11, is the best comment on these words. "It became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through