ild them up in the presumption that happiness can be
found in the pursuit of selfish objects and worldly comfort? It is when
a man stands, as these disciples stood, detached from worldly hopes and
finding all in Christ, so clearly apprehending the sweep and benignity
of Christ's will as to see that it comprehends all good to man, and that
life can serve no purpose if it do not help to fulfil that will--it is
then a man prays with assurance and finds his prayer answered. Christ
had won the love of these men and knew that their chief desire would be
to serve Him, that their prayers would always be that they might fulfil
His purposes. Their fear was, not that He would summon them to live
wholly for the ends for which He had lived, but that when He was gone
they should find themselves unfit to contend with the world.

And therefore He gives them the final encouragement that He would still
be with them, not indeed in a visible form apparent to all eyes, but in
a valid and powerful spiritual manner appreciable by those who loved
Christ and strove to do His will. "If ye love Me, keep My commandments.
And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter,"
another _Advocate_, one _called to_ your aid, and who shall so
effectually aid you that in His presence and help you will know Me
present with you. "I will not leave you comfortless, like orphans: I
will come to you." Christ Himself was still to be with them. He was not
merely to leave them His memory and example, but was to be with them,
sustaining and guiding and helping them even as He had done. The only
difference was to be this--that whereas up to this time they had
verified His presence by their senses, seeing His body, hearing His
words, and so forth, they should henceforward verify His presence by a
spiritual sense which the world of those who did not love Him could not
make use of. "Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more; but ye
see Me: because I live, ye shall live also." They would find that their
life was bound up in His; and as that new life of theirs grew strong and
proved itself victorious over the world and powerful to subdue men's
hearts to Christ and win the world to Christ's kingdom, they should feel
a growing persuasion, a deepening consciousness, that this life of
theirs was but the manifestation of the continued life of Christ. "At
that day they would know that Christ was in the Father, and they in Him,
and He in them."

Consci