thought fit to leave the glory I had with the Father, and for which I
have spent all--this I leave in your hands. It is in this world of men
the whole results of the Incarnation are to be found, and it is on you
the burden is laid of applying to this world the work I have done. You
live for Me. But on the other hand I live for you. "Because I live, ye
shall live also." I do not really leave you. If I say, "Abide in Me," I
none the less say, "and I in you." It is in you I spend all the Divine
energy you have witnessed in my life. It is through you I live. I am the
Vine, the life-giving Stem, sustaining and quickening you. Ye are the
branches, effecting what I intend, bearing the fruit for the sake of
which I have been planted in the world by My Father, the Husbandman.

II. The second idea is that this unity of the tree is formed by unity
_of life_. It is a unity brought about, not by mechanical juxtaposition,
but by organic relationship. "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself,
but must abide in the vine, so neither can ye except ye abide in Me." A
ball of twine or a bag of shot cannot be called a whole. If you cut off
a yard of the twine, the part cut off has all the qualities and
properties of the remainder, and is perhaps more serviceable apart from
the rest than in connection with it. A handful of shot is more
serviceable for many purposes than a bagful, and the quantity you take
out of the bag retains all the properties it had while in the bag;
because there is _no common life_ in the twine or in the shot, making
all the particles one whole. But take anything which is a true unity or
whole--your body, for example. Different results follow here from
separation. Your eye is useless taken from its place in the body. You
can lend a friend your knife or your purse, and it may be more
serviceable in his hands than in yours; but you cannot lend him your
arms or your ears. Apart from yourself, the members of your body are
useless, because here there is one common life forming one organic
whole.

It is thus in the relation of Christ and His followers. He and they
together form one whole, _because_ one common _life_ unites them. "_As_
the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, so neither can ye." Why can the
branch bear no fruit except it abide in the vine? Because it is a
_vital_ unity that makes the tree one. And what is a vital unity between
persons? It can be nothing else than a spiritual unity--a unity not of
a bodily