'His disciples said unto Jesus, Lo! now speakest Thou plainly, and
speakest no proverb. Now are we sure that Thou knowest all things, and
needest not that any man should ask Thee: by this we believe that Thou
earnest forth from God. Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold,
the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every
man to his own, and shall leave Me alone: and yet I am not alone,
because the Father is with Me.'--JOHN xvi. 29-32.
The first words of these wonderful discourses were, 'Let not your heart
be troubled.' They struck the key-note of the whole. The aim of all was
to bring peace and confidence unto the disciples' spirits. And this
joyful burst of confession which wells up so spontaneously and
irrepressibly from their hearts, shows that the aim has been reached.
For a moment sorrow, bewilderment, dullness of apprehension, had all
passed away, and the foolish questioners and non-receptive listeners
had been lifted into a higher region, and possessed insight, courage,
confidence. The last sublime utterance of our Lord had gathered all the
scattered rays into a beam so bright that the blindest could not but
see, and the coldest could not but be warmed.
But yet the calm, clear eye of Christ sees something not wholly
satisfactory in this outpouring of the disciples' confidence. He does
not reject their imperfect faith, but He warns them, as if seeing the
impending hour of denial which was so terribly to contradict the
rapture of that moment. And then, with most pathetic suddenness, He
passes from them to Himself; and in a singularly blended utterance lets
us get a glimpse into His deep solitude and the companions that shared
it.
My words now make no attempt at anything more than is involved in
following the course of thought in the words before us.