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antecedent to that which began by coming into the world.

Thus the Apostles understood the words, and felt therefore that they had
gained a new platform of faith. This they felt to be plain-speaking,
meant to be understood. It so precisely met their craving and gave them
the knowledge they sought, that they felt more than ever Christ's
insight into their state of mind and His power to satisfy their minds.
At length they are able to say with assurance that He has come forth
from God. They are persuaded that behind what they see there is a higher
nature, and that in Christ's presence they are in the presence of One
whose origin is not of this world. It was this pre-existence of Christ
with God which gave the disciples assurance regarding all He taught
them. He spoke of what He had seen with the Father.

This belief, however, assured though it was, did not save them from a
cowardly desertion of Him whom they believed to be God's representative
on earth. They would, when confronted with the world's authorities and
powers, abandon their Master to His fate, and "would leave Him alone."
He had always, indeed, been alone. All men who wish to carry out some
novel design or accomplish some extensive reform must be prepared to
stand alone, to listen unmoved to criticism, to estimate at their real
and very low value the prejudiced calumnies of those whose interests are
opposed to their design. They must be prepared to live without reward
and without sympathy, strong in the consciousness of their own rectitude
and that God will prosper the right. Jesus enjoyed the affection of a
considerable circle of friends; He was not without the comfort and
strength which come of being believed in; but in regard to His purpose
in life He was always alone. And yet, unless He won men over to His
views, unless He made some as ardent as Himself regarding them, His work
was lost. This was the special hardship of Christ's solitariness. Those
whom He had gathered were to desert Him in the critical hour; but the
sore part of this desertion was that they were to go "each to his
own"--oblivious, that is to say, of the great cause in which they had
embarked with Christ.

At all times this is the problem Christ has to solve: how to prevail
upon men to look at life from His point of view, to forget their own
things and combine with Him, to be as enamoured of His cause as He
Himself is. He looks now upon us with our honest professions of faith
and growin