bearing, the appeal of the moral and spiritual truth which he puts forth so positively and illustrates in his own life so consistently, satisfy the yearnings of the aspiring soul. We accept him as the Master of our thinking and the Lord of our life. We say we will conform to his standards of conduct. We go still further and accept him as our Saviour from sin, as the one, and the only one, who can forgive us and renew us and transform us. But after all it is in a certain sense the Jesus who lived in Palestine who comes to us in all these ways, and while with the aid of Christian theology and Christian history you may get a fairly vivid conception of his place in the scheme of redemption you find yourself tarrying in your thought in the Galilee and Jerusalem of the long ago. After all, you say, it is more than 1800 years since these events took place and since this life was lived. It was 5000 miles from here. Is there not something more that shall come closer to our present-day life, that shall be to us, living under such utterly different conditions, what the Son of man himself was as he moved up and down Galilee with his followers?

Just at this point we hear him saying, “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter." What does this mean but that, having been carried along a certain distance in our Christian experiences, we shall not then halt and waver and perhaps turn back. To us as to them it is expedient that Christ should go away—not that we should ever forget him whose "blessed feet were nailed for our advantage on the bitter cross," or that life upon which rested constantly the beauty of holiness, but that we should enter more deeply into a relation with the spiritual and present Christ; should avail ourselves of the force which he is yearning to bestow upon us now and here. It is this kind of a relation to Christ which is testified to by the Christian experience of eighteen centuries and which is the source of any disciple's deepest peace and greatest power.

The promise suits itself particularly to our times. This age is better acquainted with the historic Jesus than any since the apostolic. The last half-century has been prolific in biographies of Jesus, the fruit of patient, minute study of the gospels and of collateral literature that throws light upon his unique personality. The fiercest critical research has left us with the conviction that in the gospels we have a substantially accurate portrayal of the Man of Nazareth and a sufficiently trustworthy representation of his teachings. We can follow the windings of his public career with considerable certainty as respects its successive phases. Moreover, Christian scholars of the type of Bernhard Weiss and Ritschl are constantly striving to penetrate beyond the external facts and features of his life in order to gain a knowledge of the growth of his thought, the deliverances of his marvelous consciousness, as he advanced in wisdom and knowledge. But can we be satisfied with riveting all our attention upon the man who lived and died? What we most need is a fresh interpretation of his mind, the ability to adjust our modern thinking to it, and, more than anything else, the power to reproduce the principles and spirit of his life in the midst of the modern world.

Our need may be sorer even than that of the apostles. They never had to wrestle with scientific thought. Evolution was to them an unknown word, and the process for which it stands an undreamed-of notion. They had no comprehension of the vastness of this universe, of the æons that have gone, of the countless tribes and nations that have been and yet are to be upon the earth. Modern Christianity looks this enlarged world in the face and its problem is to adjust its conception of holy things to the ascertained facts and truths respecting humanity and the universe. How can this be done without the guidance of the Spirit of God?

Again, we look upon social and industrial conditions such as the apostles never knew. Men are asking the Church, What did Jesus mean when he uttered the Sermon on the Mount? The world wants to know what Christianity has to say and do with reference to the vexed problems of human existence. Shall we rise up quickly and explain glibly that this or that is the solution sought; that we know precisely what Jesus meant as respects the precise mutual duties of capital and labor, or as respects international relations; or shall we wait for the promise of the Father and with all our souls believe in and expect such constant, divine illumination as will enable us little by little to point out the path of righteousness and of peace, and not only to point it out to others but to tread it ourselves at whatever cost? Thoroughly to believe in the Holy Ghost means to cherish an unshaken confidence that he dwells to-day in the study of every patient, reverent Christian thinker, that be is out in the world, impelling and guiding every earnest, Christlike movement to lift up the race to the level of life where God would have men dwell. More than a generation ago Horace Bushnell said, “I believe that there is going, finally, to be entered into the world a more general, systematic and soundly intellectual conviction respecting all these secret relations of souls to God. When we have been out into all the fields of science, and gotten our opinion of the scientific order by which God works in matter, and the laws immaterial by which all matter is swayed, I believe that we shall turn round Godward, to consider what our relations may be on that side; and then we shall not only take up the doctrine of the Spirit and of holy inspiration, looking no more, as now, after some mere casual, fitful, partially fantastic visitations of what we call the Spirit, but we shall discover in it the truth of a grand, universal, intelligent, systematic, abiding inspiration, and the whole human race, lifted by this discovery, will fall into this

gift, knowing that in God is the only divine privilege of existence."

To live with such an expectation is to emerge from every shadowed pathway and to dwell on the sunny heights with God.

Howard A. Bridgman.

THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES

JOHN 15: 1–11

"I am the vine, ye are the branches."

This farewell discourse of our Lord is most frequently used by Christians as a comfort and inspiration in spiritual meditation. In reality, it has a much more strenuous purpose. It stands side by side with the Sermon on the Mount, not merely because these are the two extended teachings of Christ preserved to us, but because this supplements that. The sermon proclaimed the character of his kingdom and the temper and life of its subjects; the discourse unfolds the method by which that reign should be perpetuated and extended on earth. That was the ordination service of the Twelve, just chosen for apostles; this is the committal to their hands of the work he is now leaving in the body. Without the discourse, the sermon would be left as a dream of an unrealized Utopia; Christ's ministry unique but not reproductive; a marvelous epoch rather than the introduction of a new era; his crucifixion the consummate tragedy of earth's sin, the resurrection a divine vindication of his righteousness, but not the efficient salvation of the world and the ages.

The earlier part of the discourse is devoted to comforting the disciples over his departure, and explaining the new Presence and Guide who should come to them. Its scene is in their own hearts and their own brotherhood. Now he passes to that real apostleship for which he had chosen and trained them. He had been set in the earth by the