and
did continue in actual, personal, living existence. This was the glory
He prayed for, and this therefore must also have been the glory He had
before the world was. It was a glory of which it was proper to say, "_I
had_ it," and not merely God conceived it: it was enjoyed by Christ
before the worlds were, and was not only in the mind of God.

What that glory was, who can tell? We know it was a glory not of
position only, but of character--a glory which disposed and prepared Him
to sympathize with suffering and to give Himself to the actual needs of
men. From that glory He came to share with men in their humiliation, to
expose Himself to their scorn and abuse, to win them to eternal life and
to some true participation in His glory.

But Christ's removal from the earthly and visible life involved a great
change in the condition of the disciples. Hitherto He had been present
with them day by day, always exhibiting to them spiritual glory, and
attracting them to it in His own person. So long as they saw God's glory
in so attractive and friendly a form it was not difficult for them to
resist the world's temptations. "While I was with them in the world, I
kept them in Thy name"--that is, by revealing the Father to them; but
"now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come
to Thee. Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast
given Me. Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth." Christ
had been the Word Incarnate, the utterance of God to men; in Him men
recognised what God is and what God wills. And this sanctified them;
this marvellous revelation of God and His love for men drew men to Him:
they felt how Divine and overcoming a love this was; they adored the
name Father which Christ the Son made known to them; they felt
themselves akin to God and claimed by Him, and spurned the world; they
recognised in themselves that which could understand and be appealed to
by such a love as God's. Their glory was to be God's children.

But now the visible image, the Incarnate Word, is withdrawn, and Christ
commits to the Father those whom He leaves on earth. "Holy Father," Thou
whose holiness moves Thee to keep men separate to Thyself from every
evil contagion, "keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given
Me." It is still by the recognition of God in Christ that we are to be
kept from evil, by contemplating and penetrating this great
manifestation of God to us, by listening