out new rules for conduct, as to
strive to renew our hold upon Christ and intelligently to enter into His
purposes. "Abide in Him." This is the secret of fruitfulness. All that
the branch needs is in the Vine; it does not need to go beyond the Vine
for anything. When we feel the life of Christ ebbing from our soul, when
we see our leaf fading, when we feel sapless, heartless for Christian
duty, reluctant to work for others, to take anything to do with the
relief of misery and the repression of vice, there is a remedy for this
state, and it is to renew our fellowship with Christ--to allow the mind
once again to conceive clearly the worthiness of His aims, to yield the
heart once again to the vitalising influence of His love, to turn from
the vanities and futilities with which men strive to make life seem
important to the reality and substantial worth of the life of Christ. To
abide in Christ is to abide by our adoption of His view of the true
purpose of human life after testing it by actual experience; it is to
abide by our trust in Him as the true Lord of men, and as able to supply
us with all that we need to keep His commandments. And thus abiding in
Christ we are sustained by Him; for He abides in us, imparts to us, His
branches now on earth, the force which is needful to accomplish His
purposes.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] That the vine was a recognised symbol of the Messiah is shown by
Delitzsch in the _Expositor_, 3rd series, vol. iii., pp. 68, 69. See
also his _Iris_, pp. 180-190, E. Tr.

XIII.

_NOT SERVANTS, BUT FRIENDS._

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends. Ye are My friends, if ye do the things which I
command you. No longer do I call you servants; for the servant
knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for
all things that I heard from My Father I have made known unto you.
Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye
should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide: that
whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it
you. These things I command you, that ye may love one
another."--JOHN xv. 13-17.

These words of our Lord are the charter of our emancipation. They give
us entrance into true freedom. They set us in the same attitude towards
life and towards God as Christ Himself occupied. Without this
proclamation of freedom and all it covers we