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have "laid help upon one that is mighty" to save, and that our hopes are founded, not upon a foundation of sand, but upon the everlasting Rock of ages, and we shall be enabled with humble faith to join in those words of rejoicing; "Lo! this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is the Lord; we have waited for Him; we will be glad, and rejoice in His salvation!"*

* Isaiah xxv. 9.

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SERMON VII.

ST. JOHN xiv. 22, 23.

"Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, 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."

In this and the two next chapters, St. John has recorded the last conversation of our blessed Lord with his disciples before His crucifixion. His object in them seems chiefly to have been to comfort their hearts in the prospect of His removal from the world, and to explain to them more clearly and fully than He

had hitherto done, the spiritual nature of that kingdom which He came into the world to establish, and the manner in which He should hereafter work with them, and support them through their future difficulties and persecutions, which He did not attempt to disguise from them, but rather set them forth in the fullest and clearest manner, telling them, "they shall put you out of the synagogues; yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doeth God service."

It required, therefore, some very strong and consoling arguments to support the hearts of the disciples, and these He accordingly labours to suggest to their minds, by the assurance that He was going before to prepare a place for them. in His Father's house; by the promise that "whatsoever they should ask of the Father in His name, He would do it ;" and that, if they believed in Him, they should not only do the miraculous works which He did, but "greater works" than

He farther promised

even He had done. that He would "pray to the Father, and He should give them another Comforter, who should abide with them for ever, even the Spirit of truth;" and then, finally, he assures them not only that the Holy Ghost should dwell in them and be in them, but He Himself would "come to them;" that although the world should, after a little while, see Him no more, they should still see Him; that from His life they should draw their life-that they should be the objects of His love, and of His Father's love, and that He would. manifest Himself to them in an especial manner. "I will not leave you comfortless," are His words; "I will come to you; yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in me, and I in you.

mandments and

my Father, and ye in

He that hath my com

keepeth them, He it is

that loveth me: and He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will

This

love him, and will manifest myself to him." This promise our blessed Lord evidently intended to apply to His universal Church; to his present disciples, and to all who should hereafter believe upon Him through their word. He meant it, however, to be a promise of spiritual presence and manifestation, not of temporal and bodily presence in a kingdom of this world. distinction the apostles did not then fully perceive; and therefore one of them, Judas, (whom the evangelist carefully notes not to have been the traitor, Judas Iscariot, but Judas, the brother of James, whose epistle is preserved in the New Testament, under the title of the General Epistle of St. Jude,) inquired of Him, "Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world," i. e. "How is it that thou wilt manifest thyself in power as the Messiah, the restorer of the kingdom to Israel, and the conqueror of all their enemies, and yet confine that manifestation to us, who are but few in numberhow can the world be shut out from any

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