r Lord obliterates in His reply, "If _any man_
loveth Me, ... We will come to him." He enounces the great spiritual law
that they who seek to have Christ's presence manifested to them must
love and obey Him. He that longs for more satisfying knowledge of
spiritual realities, he that thirsts for certainty and to see God as if
face to face, must expect no sudden or magical revelation, but must be
content with the true spiritual education which proceeds by loving and
living. To the disciples the method might seem slow--to us also it often
seems slow; but it is the method which nature requires. Our knowledge of
God, our belief that in Christ we have a hold of ultimate truth and are
living among eternal verities, grow with our love and service of Christ.
It may take us a lifetime--it will take us a lifetime--to learn to love
Him as we ought, but others have learned and we also may learn, and
there is no possible experience so precious to us.

It is, then, to those who serve Him that Christ manifests Himself, and
manifests Himself in an abiding, spiritual, influential manner. That
those who do not serve Him do not believe in His presence and power is
to be expected. But were those who have served Him asked if they had
become more convinced of His spiritual and effectual presence, their
voice would be that this promise had been fulfilled. And this is the
very citadel of the religion of Christ. If Christ does not now abide
with and energetically aid those who serve Him, then their faith is
vain. If His spiritual presence with them is not manifested in spiritual
results, if they have no evidence that He is personally and actively
employed in and with them, their faith is vain. To believe in a Christ
long since removed from earth and whose present life cannot now
influence or touch mankind is not the faith which Christ Himself
invites. And if His promise to abide with those who love and serve Him
is not actually performed, Christendom has been produced by a mistake
and has lived on a delusion.

At this point (ver. 25) Jesus pauses; and feeling how little He had time
to say of what was needful, and how much better they would understand
their relation to Him after He had finally passed from their bodily
sight, He says: "These things I have spoken to you, while yet I remain
with you; but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, which the Father will send
in My name, He will teach you all things, and will remind you of all
that I have said t