that He would be the independent holder of blessings in the heavenly life, which He could give them apart from the will and working of the heavenly Father, since He rather possesses only what the Father has and what He obtains from the Father (xiv. 28; xvi. 15); but He only seeks impressively to bring out that the intercessory interest and work on behalf of His disciples, which He has hitherto exercised on earth, is not lost with death, but is rather enhanced on account of the still more immediate fellowship with God, upon which He enters in heaven. His disciples indicated as actually existing at that present time: "For the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I am come from God" (cf. xvii. 7 f., where this faith of the disciples is designated, not as one that is to exist in the future, but as one already existing). It is to be noticed that Jesus, in xvi. 26, does not simply say that He will not make intercession with His Father for the disciples, but it is said, "I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you.” Jesus by no means excludes the fact of His intercession; only He will now make no reference to this fact in promising the hearing of prayer to His disciples (ver. 26). The reason appended by Him shows, however, that it is not at all because His intercession is a matter of course, and because His disciples know of it already, that He will not speak of it, but because this speaking of His intercession is not necessary in order to inspire His disciples with right trust in the hearing of their prayers on the part of the Father. In chap. xiv. He spoke to them of His intercession in order thereby to encourage them to trust; for the thought that He is helpful for them as their intercessor with the Father can bring them comfort, when otherwise the thought of His departure and of the ceasing of His intercession for them would awaken sorrow. On the other hand, in the passage xvi. 26, where He wishes to indicate the strongest motive which guarantees to the disciples the hearing of their prayers, namely, the love of the Father for them, He can quite well say that He is silent in regard to His own intercession for the disciples as a motive for the hearing of their prayers. We can formulate in the following way His idea in regard to His heavenly intercession: He indeed regards it as actually existent in the future, but not as necessary for the purpose of favourably inclining the will of God to the disciples; and He indeed assumes that the thought of His heavenly intercession will be comforting to His disciples on earth, but not that it is indispensably necessary to them for their assurance of salvation.

shall lose nothing, but shall rather gain more, by His advancement.

So He promises to them in particular His intercession with God for the sending of the Holy Spirit as their advocate (xiv. 16). Hitherto He, Jesus, had Himself counselled and instructed them, and rendered the due testimony before the world. But now when He is leaving them, and they are to testify for Him, they will nevertheless not be left to their own resources; but in His room they will receive the Holy Ghost as another advocate, who shall abide with them for ever (xiv. 16 f.), and shall do all for them which He, Jesus, has hitherto done for them. He shall bring Jesus' words to their remembrance (xiv. 26; xvi. 14), as the Spirit of rectitude (of the axea) He would instruct them in the right conduct (xvi. 13), and render them capable of giving a right testimony to Him before the world (xv. 26 f.); that is, of giving convincing testimony to the fact that the world, by its unbelieving rejection of Jesus, is in unrighteousness and sin; that, on the contrary, He, Jesus, has fulfilled righteousness, and by His death has entered upon the heavenly life with the Father, and that the rejection, which He now experiences from the world, by no means implies the annihilation of His work, but that rather by His death His saving work shall be brought to completion, and Satan's power and supremacy over the world shall be virtually broken (xvi. 8-11).

We must explain Jesus' course of thought in relation to the sending of the Spirit, in His last discourses, as a result and expression of His trustful conviction

that His death, which, according to outward appearance, brought arrest and ruin upon His work, would yet prove the fitting means of making His previous work completely influential and permanent in His disciples. For, in accordance with this general conviction, He could understand the thought that, after having hitherto been the instructor and counsellor of His disciples, and having externally influenced, and in a manner tutored them, His departure would now form a stage of progress for them in bringing them to independent inward understanding and application of all that He had furnished to them. He saw that, without His outward departure from them, this inward gain and progress could not be made by them. But since He also knew how immature they yet were, and how incapable of maintaining and setting forth the revelation received from Him, and how many things were still unspoken which might have been communicated for their instruction, but which they could not yet comprehend (xvi. 12), He gained the certainty that, nevertheless, His death would result in their inward progress, and formed the confident hope and promise that God by His Spirit would work in them in order to this inward progress. According to this chain of thought, Jesus judged that, if He did not leave His disciples, the Holy Ghost would not come to them as their advocate (xvi. 7); according to this chain of thought, however, He did not speak of any sort of new or miraculous manifestations and revelations of the promised Spirit, which should proceed independently alongside of the work of Jesus hitherto exercised in revealing and imparting the

teaching of revelation and salvation,' but He thought of the influences of the Spirit as rather standing in immediate connection with His own work of teaching, with the object of fully disclosing His Messianic work to the consciousness of the disciples, and of strengthening them in its right use.

6. With this thought, however, that His departure would result in His disciples receiving the Holy Spirit, and that He Himself, as the Risen One, would make intercession with God for the sending of this Spirit, Jesus connects that thought in the farewell prayer that He Himself would return to His disciples, reveal Himself to them, and abide continually with them: "I will not leave you orphans; I will come unto you. Yet a little while, and the world beholdeth me no more; but ye behold me: because I live, ye shall live also. In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and manifest myself to him. . . . If a man love me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him" (xiv. 18-23). “A little while, and ye behold me no more;

1 The closing words of xvi. 13, καὶ τὰ ἐρχόμενα ἀναγγελεῖ ὑμῖν, are certainly an addition of the evangelist in redacting the Johannine source, since this thought, that the Spirit would be efficient in the disciples as a faculty of prophecy of future events, has no support in the adjoining context of the passage, nor does it occur elsewhere in the Johannine farewell discourses. But to the evangelist of the post-apostolic generation, this function of the Holy Ghost in the Christian Church must have appeared too important to be passed over in silence. Cf. L. J. i. p. 281.

and again a little while, and ye shall see me. . . . Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but when she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for the joy that a man is born into the world. And ye therefore now have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh away from you. And in that day ye shall ask me nothing” (xvi. 16–23).

Are these words of Jesus to be understood as predictions of such outwardly visible appearances among His disciples after His death as the company of the disciples afterwards were certain of having seen? It must at all events be acknowledged that the fulfilment did not strictly correspond to the prediction. For in these words Jesus does not express a coming in sight and appearance for once or several times, to be followed by a speedy departure and vanishing, but a continual coming and abiding, such as should remove the orphaned condition of the disciples, and fill them with abiding joy. But also this coming and appearance was promised by Him, not only to the disciples to whom He directly spoke, but quite in general, and without limitation as to time, to every one who keeps His commandments as a genuine disciple, and who loves Him and accordingly will be loved by Him and the Father (xiv. 21); and He thinks of this coming to the disciples and abiding in them in indissoluble connection with the coming and