ow do me no good by watching, for the
time is past, and he who betrayed me is at hand; ye might as well sleep
on now and take your rest, for I need not try you any longer." But, as
the time was really pressing, and there was a possibility that they
might have misunderstood his words, and have really continued to sleep,
he immediately added in different language, "Rise, let us be going;
behold, he is at hand that doth betray me." We must be prepared, then,
to find that our Lord's language, not only to the Jews at large, but
even to his own disciples, is commonly parabolical; the worst
interpretation which we can give to it is commonly the literal one. His
conversation with his disciples, just before he went out to the garden
of Gethsemane, as recorded in the thirteenth, and following chapters of
St. John, is a most striking proof of this. If any one looks through
them, he will find how many are the comparisons, and figurative manners
of speaking, which abound in them, and how often his disciples were at a
loss to understand his meaning, And he himself declares this, for, at
the end of the sixteenth chapter, he says expressly, "These things I
have spoken unto you in proverbs;"--that is, language not to be taken
according to the letter;--"the time is coming when I will no more speak
unto you in proverbs, but will show you plainly of the Father." And
then, when he goes on to declare, what he never, it seems, had before
told them in such express and literal language, "I came forth from the
Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world, and go to
my Father," his disciples seem to have welcomed with joy this departure
from his usual manner of speaking, and said immediately, "Lo! now
speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb: now we know that thou
knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by
this we believe that thou earnest forth from God."

But let us observe what it is that he said: "A time is coming when I
shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but shall show you plainly of
the Father." That time came immediately. He spoke to them after his
resurrection, opening their understandings to understand the Scriptures:
he spoke yet more fully, by his Spirit, after the day of Pentecost,
leading them into all truth. And what they thus heard in the ear, they
proclaimed, according to his bidding, upon the house-tops. When the Holy
Spirit brought to their remembrance all that he had said to