remarkable gifts which might have led us to anticipate this unique
destiny. They had no intellectual qualities of a very high order like
the Greeks--vivid imagination, subtlety of thought, aesthetic taste; no
political capacity like the Romans, no organizing power or faculty of
legislation which might secure for them the ascendency over the
nations of the world. They were, moreover, a stubborn, exclusive,
intolerant people--an unpractical people, without the power, or at
least the will, to adapt themselves to the institutions, the feelings,
and the prejudices of the people with whom they were brought in
contact. They were believed, in consequence, to cherish an universal
hatred against the rest of mankind; and they, in turn, were hated by
all--hated, not with the hatred of an admiring envy, but the hatred of
a supercilious scorn. Of all the tribes on the face of the earth the
Jews, we should have said, were the very last to ingratiate themselves
with the other races of mankind, and to lay the civilised world at
their feet. And now turn from the people themselves to the land of
their abode. Certainly this does not enable us to solve the enigma.
Palestine does not occupy a large space in the Christian's
imagination; for it is a very minute, insignificant spot in the map of
the world. It is, moreover, incapable of expansion, for it is bounded
on all sides either by sea or mountain ranges, or by vast and
impracticable deserts. To a great extent all this country is
mountainous and barren, and even this meagre and unpromising territory
is not all their own. The sea-coast would have been valuable to a
people gifted with commercial instincts. With commerce they might have
extended their influence; but from the sea-coast they were wholly
excluded. The Phoenicians on the north and the Philistines on the
south occupied all the most important harbours; and this territory of
the Jews was so unexpansive, so barren, so unpromising that they were
placed at a still greater disadvantage when compared with the
surrounding people. The Jews are surrounded on all sides, and by the
most formidable neighbours. On the one side by Egypt, a country of the
highest fertility, the foremost military power in the world, with an
ancient civilisation which dated from a period long before the birth
of the father of the Israelite people, whilst it stood foremost of the
human race in works of art in its day. Who was Israel, then, that he
could withstand Egypt? There, again, on the other side, was another
mighty empire, first Assyria, then Babylon, the only rival of Egypt of
the ancient world. In these places they had the same advantage of wide
plains of exceptional fertility, a high and remote civilisation, an
army of tremendous strength, and a centralisation under an absolute
rule, with all the resources which a great and vast dominion could
command. As Persia succeeded Babylon, and as Babylon succeeded
Assyria, so Persia--far more mighty and terrible--overruns and
conquers all Western Asia. Egypt itself falls. Palestine is a mere
speck, surrounded by the huge dominions of the Persian monarch. What
chance has Israel against such terrible neighbours? Must it not be
crushed and ground to atoms and annihilated by its foes? But, at all
events, it might have been supposed that, however stubborn and
impracticable they were in their attitude towards others, they would
at least be united amongst themselves--that they would be loyal to
their country, that they would be faithful to their laws and
institutions, that they would be true to their God. This internal
cohesion would give them strength to resist--this absolute harmony
would win for them an influence that would compensate for the superior
advantages of their more powerful neighbours. But what do we find as a
matter of fact? Their national history is one continuous record of
murmuring, of rebellion, of internal feuds, of moral and spiritual
defection. They have no sooner escaped from their Egyptian bondage,
their necks still bearing the scars of the tyrants' yoke, than they
fall into shameless idolatry. The worship of the golden calf is only
the type and presence of still more guilty lapses in centuries yet to
come; the revolt against Moses and Aaron only the type and shadow of
the rebellious spirit to which Israel rose in the distant future.
Again and again the religion of Jehovah is effaced, or almost effaced,
from the mind of the nation. Again and again the hideous idolatries of
Moloch--idolatries cruel, profligate, and shameless--supplant the
worship of the Lord of heaven and earth. And the political condition
of the nation is not one whit more hopeful than the religious. When
unity alone can save the people then there is disruption. The Ten
Tribes are severed from the House of David, never to be united again.
The power of one kingdom is spent in neutralising the power of the
other. This is a concise history of the race during the period from
the disruption to the captivity. The career of Israel, from first to
last, is a running comment upon the words, "Not for thy righteousness
or for the uprightness of thine heart dost thou go to possess the
land," for "ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that
I knew you." Not once or twice only the Mighty Archer has strung His
weapon and pointed His shaft, and His aim has been frustrated by
Israel's disobedience. His chosen instruments have been snapped in His
hands, starting aside like a broken bow. Indeed, the history of Israel
is quite unique in the chronicles of nations. The chronicles of other
nations record the qualities as well as the crimes of the people whose
career they commemorate. They praise their patriotism, their prowess,
their manifold virtues, their magnificent achievements. But the Bible,
the chronicle of the Jews, is one uninterrupted catalogue of sins and
shortcomings--one long bill of indictment against Israel. One only is
true, one only is faithful, one only is victorious; for he fears not
the nation, but the nation's God. So then, however we look at the
matter, there is nothing which affords ground for hope; and when we
question actual facts, we find they correspond altogether to those
expectations we should have formed beforehand from the character and
position of the nation. Never has any people lived upon the earth who
passed through such terrible disasters as the Jews. Never has any
people been so near to absolute extinction again and again, and yet
have survived. Again and again the vision of the prophet has been
realised. Again and again the valley of the shadow of death has been
strewn with the dry bones of carcases seemingly extinct. Again and
again there have been seasons of dark despair, when even the most
hopeful, challenged by the Divine voice, could only respond, "O Lord
God, Thou knowest!" But again and again there has been a shaking of
the dry bones--the bones have come together, bone to bone; they have
been strung with sinews and clothed with flesh; breath has been
breathed into them, and they have lived, and have become an exceeding
great army. Think of those many centuries of Egyptian bondage, when
the life of the nation seemed to have been strangled in its infancy.
Reflect next on that period in its youthful career, when it is
fighting its way inch by inch, and struggling for very existence in
Palestine, doing battle with nations greater and mightier than itself,
and with "cities fenced high up to heaven." Look forward again, and we
see its fate during the manhood of the nation under its king, the land
now divided against itself and overrun by successive invaders. As of
old so now again, but in a far more terrible sense, Israel finds
himself face to face with the Anakims and with those great empires of
the East before whom he appears but as a grasshopper. The end was
inevitable. For a time Israel was a plaything in the hands of those
terrible neighbours, tossed to and fro between two powerful
rivals--Egypt on the one side, and Assyria and Babylon on the
other--till at length, in a moment of victory, he is swept away, and
his place knows him no more. Could anything seem more hopeless than
the revival of the nation from the Babylonish captivity? Yet from
Babylon, as from Egypt, Israel returned. A new lease of life was
granted, and with it there followed a new lease of disaster also. His
old fate pursued him still. The saying was fulfilled which had been
spoken by the prophet: "That which the locust hath left hath the
canker-worm eaten, and that which the canker-worm hath left hath the
caterpillar eaten." He was rescued from the fangs of Babylon only to
be food for the Assyrians. He was drawn from the feet of the Assyrians
only to be devoured by the insatiable Roman. And yet all the
while--and this is the remarkable fact to which I ask your
attention--amidst calamities the most overwhelming and suffering the
most intense--exiled, enslaved, trampled under foot, only not
annihilated--all the while he was hopeful, was jubilant, was
triumphant still. He was always dying, and behold he lived. Century
after century prophets had declared, in no ambiguous terms, that
despite all these adverse appearances, despite all these wearisome
delays, Israel had a magnificent future. The nations might rage, and
the kings of the earth might do their worst--they were powerless
against Israel's destiny. A sceptre should rise out of Jacob which
would subdue the world, and a King should sit on David's throne before
whose footstool all the nations of the earth should bow. A standard
should be set up in Zion around which all mankind should rally.
"Behold thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations
that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the Lord thy God,
and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee;" "The sons
of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee, and all they
that despised thee shall bow themselves at the soles of thy feet;"
"Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the
curtains of thine habitation; spare not, lengthen thy cords, and
strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt break forth on the right hand
and on the left, and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the
desolated cities to be inhabited."
And these hopes--these extravagant hopes--were more than realized. A
King _did_ rise out of Jacob to whom all the nations of the
civilised world have rendered homage such as no sovereign received
before or after--the homage of their heart, the homage of their lives.
At the call of Israel the Gentiles flocked to the standard set up in
Zion. From far and near, the cultivated Greek, the proud Roman,
Assyrian and Egyptian, master and slave, are flocking around that
standard. From east to west, from the ancient civilisation of India to
the barbarous islands of the Pacific, Israel has dictated its
sentiments, its belief, its morals, its laws and institutions to the
nations. An influence far deeper, far wider, far more tenacious has
appeared from that despised, insulted, down-trodden people than was
ever achieved by the splendid literature of Greece or the historic
empire of Rome. These are not theories, but facts--facts which some
will attempt to explain away, but facts which none can deny.
_Here_ is the prophecy--_there_ is the fulfilment. The prophecy is
not a single isolated prediction of ambiguous meaning, but large
and clear, written across the whole history of a nation from
margin to margin. And the fulfilment corresponds to the prophecy; it
is legible to all men, because stamped on the face of the world. Is
there not here the manifestation of Divine providence? Do we not
rightly claim the Jews as the principal witnesses to Christianity, or
shall we set all this down as mere accident, a freak of fortune, a
superficial correspondence without any essential connection? Shall it
be regarded as mere accident that, within a few years after the
appearing of this King who has thus gathered the Gentiles to His
standard, Jerusalem is destroyed, and the nation scattered to the four
winds of the earth--that the polity of Israel for ever ceased, that
the Temple shook, and that revival was rendered thenceforward
impossible? Shall we say that it is mere argument that for eighteen
centuries--a period as long as that which elapsed from the
proclamation of the law by Moses to the fulfilment of the law by
Christ--this state of things has remained? Or should we not rather say
that in this coincidence also there is a Divine significance--that He
proclaimed with no uncertain sound the obituary of the old order and
the commencement of the new--that God's seal is stamped upon the
character of the Church, whereby Israel after the Spirit is
substituted for Israel after the flesh? Do we ask what it was which
gave the Jewish people this toughness, this vitality, this power? The
answer simply is, "They are Thy people and Thine inheritance, which
Thou broughtest out by Thy mighty power, and by Thy stretched out
arm." It was the consciousness of this close relationship with
Jehovah, the omnipotent and ever-present God--it was the sense of
their glorious destiny, which marked them out as the teachers of
mankind. It was the conviction that they were the possessors of
glorious truths, and that those truths must in the end prevail,
whatever present appearances might suggest--this was the secret source
of their strength, notwithstanding all their faults, and despite all
their disasters. Do we ask again how it came to pass that, when Israel
called to the Gentiles, the Gentiles responded to the call and flocked
to its standard? Here, again, the answer is simple--"Because of the
Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel." The Gentiles had
everything else in their possession, but this one thing they
lacked--knowledge of God, their Father; and without this all their
magnificent gifts could not satisfy--could not save them. Therefore,
when at length the cry went forth, "Ho! every one that thirsteth, come
ye to the waters," they hurried to the fountains of salvation to slake
their burning thirst. Culture and civilisation, arts and commerce,
institutions and laws,--no nation can afford to undervalue these; but
not only do all these things soon fade, but the people themselves fall
into corruption and decay if the Breath of Life be wanting.
And as with nations, so with individuals. We may cultivate the
intellect to the highest pitch; we may surround ourselves with all the
luxuries and refinements of civilisation; we may accumulate all the
appliances which make life enjoyable; but the time will come when
these things will fail to sustain us. It may come in some season of
bereavement, in the hour of sickness or of loss. It may come in the
failure and decay of powers. It may come in the pains of our
death-agony. It may come--and this is the most solemn thought of
all--after we have passed the confines of the grave. But come it must
sooner or later; for we are children of God, and we cannot with
impunity ignore or deny the Father of earth and heaven. There only is
rest and peace; there only is true life for the soul of man.
THE VISION OF GOD.[6]
"And they shall see His face."--REV. xxii. 4.
It is related of the greatest of the Bishops of Durham that, in his
last solemn moments, when the veil of the flesh was even now parting
asunder, and the everlasting sanctuary opening before his eyes, he
"expressed it as an awful thing to appear before the Moral Governor of
the world."
The same thought, which thus accompanied him in his passage to
eternity, had dominated his life in time--this consciousness of an
Eternal Presence, this sense of a Supreme Righteousness, this
conviction of a Divine Order, shaping, guiding, disposing all the
intricate vicissitudes of circumstance and all the little lives of
men--enshrouded now in a dark atmosphere of mystery, revealing itself
only in glimpses through the rolling clouds of material existence,
dimly discerned by the dull and partial vision of finite man,
questioned, doubted, denied by many, yet visible enough now to the eye
of faith, working patiently but working surely, vindicating itself
ever and again in the long results of time, but awaiting its complete
and final vindication in the absolute issues of eternity--the truth of
all truths, the reality of all realities, the one stubborn steadfast
fact, unchangeable while all else is changing--this Presence, this
Order, this Righteousness--in the language of Holy Scripture, this
Word of the Lord which shall outlive the solid earth under foot, and
the starry vault overhead. "They shall perish, but Thou remainest, and
they all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt Thou
fold them, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy
years shall not fail." "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of
man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower
thereof falleth away--but the word of the Lord endureth for ever."
It is no arbitrary conjecture that this was the dominating idea of
Butler's life. Early and late it is alike prominent in his writings.
In the preface to his first great work, his volume of sermons, he
speaks of "the Author and Cause of all things, who is more intimately
present to us than anything else can be, and with whom we have a
nearer and more constant intercourse than we have with any creature."
In his latest work, his Charge to the Clergy of Durham, he urges the
"yielding ourselves up to the full influence of the Divine Presence:"
he bids his hearers "endeavour to raise up in the hearts" of their
people "such a sense of God as shall be an habitual, ready principle
of reverence, love, gratitude, hope, trust, resignation, and
obedience;" he recommends the practice of such devotional exercises as
"would be a recollection that we are in the Divine Presence, and
contribute to our being in the fear of the Lord all the day long."
Thus his death-bed utterance was the proper sequel to his life-long
thoughts. The same awe-inspiring, soul-subduing, purifying,
sanctifying Presence rose before him as hitherto. But the awe, the
solemnity, was intensified now, when the vision of God by faith might
at any moment give place to the vision of God by sight. Not unfitly
did one, writing shortly after his decease, compare him to "the bright
lamps before the shrine," the clear, steady light of the sanctuary,
burning night and day before the Eternal Presence.
In the strength of this belief he had lived, and in the awe of this
thought he now died. This conviction it was--this sense of a present
righteousness, confronting him always--which raised him high above the
level of his age; keeping him pure amid the surroundings of a
dissolute court; modest and humble in a generation of much pretentious
display; high-minded and careless of wealth in a time of gross
venality and corruption; firm in the faith amidst a society cankered
by scepticism; devout and reverent, where spiritual indifference
reigned supreme; candid and thoughtful and temperate, amidst the
temptations and the excitements of religious controversy; careful even
for the externals of worship, where such care was vilified as the
badge of a degrading superstition. Hence that tremendous seriousness
which is his special characteristic--that "awful sense of religion,"
that "sacred horror at men's frivolity," in the language of a living
essayist. Hence that transparent sincerity of character, which never
fails him. Hence that "meekness of wisdom," which he especially urges
his clergy to study, and of which he himself was all unconsciously the
brightest example.
And what more seasonable prayer can you offer for him who addresses
you now, at this the most momentous crisis of his life, than that
he--the latest successor of Butler--may enter upon the duties of his
high and responsible office in the same spirit; that the realisation
of this great idea, the realisation of this great fact, may be the
constant effort of his life; that glimpses of the invisible
righteousness, of the invisible grace, of the invisible glory, may be
vouchsafed to him; and that the Eternal Presence, thus haunting him
night and day, may rebuke, may deter, may guide, may strengthen, may
comfort, may illume, may consecrate and subdue the feeble and wayward
impulses of his own heart to God's holy will and purpose!
And not for the preacher only, but for the hearers also, let the same
prayer ascend to the throne of heaven. In all the manifold trials and
all the mean vexations of life, this presence will be your strength
and your stay. Whatsoever is truthful, whatsoever is real, whatsoever
is abiding in your lives, if there be any antidote to sin, and if
there be any anodyne for grief, if there be any consolation, and if
there be any grace, you will find it here, and here alone--in the
ever-present consciousness that you are living face to face with the
Eternal God. Not by fitful gusts of religious passion, not by fervid
outbursts of sentimental devotion, not by repetition of approved
forms, and not by acquiescence in orthodox beliefs, but by the calm,
steady, persistent concentration of the soul on this truth, by the
intent fixing of the inward eye on the righteousness and the grace of
the Eternal Being before Whom you stand, will you redeem your spirits
and sanctify your lives. So will your minds be conformed to His mind.
So will your faces reflect the brightness of His face. So will you go
from strength to strength, till, life's pilgrimage ended, you appear
in the eternal Zion, the celestial city, wherein is "neither sun nor
moon, for the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light
thereof."
Let this, then, be the theme of our meditation this morning. Many
thoughts will crowd upon our minds and struggle for utterance on a day
like this; but we will put them all aside. Not our hopes, not our
cares, not our burdens; nothing of joy, nothing of sadness shall
interpose now to shut out or obscure the glory of the Presence before
Whom we stand.
Not our hopes, though one hope starts up and shapes itself perforce
before our eyes. It will be the prayer of many hearts to-day that the
inauguration of a new Episcopate may be marked by the creation of a
new See; that Northumberland, which in the centuries long past gave to
Durham her Bishopric, may receive from Durham her due in return in
these latest days; that the Newcastle on the Tyne may take its place
with the Old Castle on the Wear, as a spiritual fortress strong in the
warfare of God.
Not our cares, though at this season one anxiety will press heavily on
the minds of all. The dense cloud, which for weeks past has darkened
the social atmosphere of these northern counties, still hangs sullenly
overhead. God grant that the rift which already we seem to discern may
widen, till the flooding sunlight scatters the darkness, and a lasting
harmony is restored to the relations between the employer and the
employed.
Not our burdens, though on one at least in this Cathedral the sense of
a new responsibility must press to-day with a heavy hand. If indeed
this burden had been self-sought or self-imposed, if his thoughts were
suffered to dwell on himself and his own incapacity, he might well
sink under its crushing weight. But your prayer for him, and his ideal
for himself, will shape itself in the words which were spoken to the
great Israelite restorer of old, "Not by might, nor by power, but by
My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." In this strength only, before you
as before him, will the great mountain become a plain.
Therefore we will lay down now our hopes and our fears, our every
burden, at the steps of the altar, that, entering disencumbered into
the inmost sanctuary, we may fall before the Eternal Presence.
The vision of God is threefold--the vision of Righteousness, the
vision of Grace, the vision of Glory.
I. The vision of Righteousness is first in the sequence. Righteousness
includes all those attributes which make up the idea of the Supreme
Ruler of the universe--perfect justice, perfect truth, perfect purity,
perfect moral harmony in all its aspects. Here, then, is the force of
Butlers dying words. Ask yourselves, Can it be otherwise than "an
awful thing to appear before the Moral Governor of the world"? You
have read, perhaps, the written record of some pure and saintly life,
and you are overwhelmed with shame as you look inward and contrast
your sullied heart and your self-seeking aims with his innocency and
cleanness of heart. You are confronted--you, an avowedly religious
person--in your business affairs with an upright man of the world; and
his straightforward honesty is felt by you as a keen reproach to your
disingenuousness and evasion, all the keener because he makes no
profession of religion. Yes, you know it; this is the very impress of
God's attribute on his soul, though God's name may seldom or never
pass his lips. And if these faint rays of the Eternal Light, thus
caught and reflected on the blurred mirrors of human hearts and human
lives, so sting and pain the organs of your moral vision, what must it
not be, then, when you shall stand face to face before the ineffable
Righteousness, and see Him in His unclouded glory!
It is a vision indeed of awe, transcending all thought; a vision of
awe, but a vision also of purification, of renewal, of energy, of
power, of life. Therefore enter into his presence now and cast
yourself down before His throne. Therefore dare to ascend into the
holy mountain; dare to speak with God amidst the thunders and the
lightnings; dare to look upon the face of His righteousness, that,
descending from the heights, you, like the lawgiver of old, may carry
with you the reflection of His brightness, to illumine and to vivify
the common associations and the every-day affairs of life.
Not a few here will doubtless remember how an eloquent living preacher
in a striking image employs the distant view of the towers of your own
Durham--of my own Durham--seen from the neighbourhood of the busy
northern capital only in the clearer atmosphere of Sundays--as an
emblem of these glimpses of the Eternal Presence, these intervals of
Sabbatical repose and contemplation, when the furnaces and pits cease
for the time to pour forth their lurid smoke, and in the unclouded sky
the towers of the celestial Zion reveal themselves to the eye of
faith. Let this local image give point to our thoughts to-day. "Unto
Thee lift I up mine eyes, O Thou that dwellest in the heavens. Behold,
even as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and
as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress, even so our
eyes wait upon the Lord our God."
II. But the vision of Righteousness is succeeded by the vision of
Grace. When Butler in his dying moments had expressed his awe at
appearing face to face before the Moral Governor of the world, his
chaplain, we are told, spoke to him of "the blood which cleanseth from
all sin." "Ah, this is comfortable," he replied; and with these words
on his lips he gave up his soul to God. The sequence is a necessary
sequence. He only has access to the Eternal Love who has stood face to
face with the Eternal Righteousness. He only who has learned to feel
the awe will be taught to know the grace. The righteous Judge, the
Moral Governor of the World, is a loving Father also, is your Father
and mine. This is the central lesson of Christianity. Of this He has
given us absolute assurance, in the life, the death, the words, and
the works of Christ. The incarnation of the Son is the mirror of the
Father's love. What witness need we more? Happy he who shall realise
this fact in all its significance and fulness. Happy he on whom the
light of the glory of the Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God,
shall shine, he who shall--
"Gaze one moment on the Face Whose beauty
Wakes the world's great hymn;
Feel it one unutterable moment,
Bent in love o'er him;
In that look feel heaven, earth, men, and angels,
Distant grow, and dim;
In that look feel heaven, earth, men, and angels,
Nearer grow through Him."
Yes, it is so indeed. All our interests in life, the highest and the
lowest alike, abandoned, merged, forgotten in God's love, will come
back to us with a distinctness, an intensity, a force, unknown and
unsuspected before. Each several outline and each particular hue will
stand out in the light of His grace. Thus we are bidden to lose our
souls only that we may find them again; we are charged to give up
houses, and brethren, and sisters, and father, and mother, and wife,
and children, and lands--all that is lovely and precious in our
eyes--to give up all to God, only that we may receive them back from
Him a hundredfold, even now in this present time. Our affections, our
friendships, our hopes, our business and our pleasure, our
intellectual pursuits and our artistic tastes--all our cherished
opportunities and all our fondest aims must be brought into the
sanctuary and bathed in the glory of His Presence, that we may take
them to us again, baptized and regenerate, purer, higher, more real,
more abiding far than before.
III. And thus the vision of love melts into the vision of glory. So we
reach the third and final stage in our progress. This is the crowning
promise of the Apocalyptic vision, "They shall see His face." The
vision is only inchoate now; we catch only glimpses at rare intervals,
revealed in the lives of God's saints and heroes, revealed above all
in the record of the written Word and in the Incarnation of the Divine
Son. But then no veil of the flesh shall dim the vision; no
imperfection of the mirror shall blur the image; for we shall see Him
face to face--shall see Him as He is--the perfect truth, the perfect
righteousness, the perfect purity, the perfect love, the perfect
light. And we shall gaze with unblenching eye, and our visage shall be
changed. Not now with transient gleams of radiance, as on the lawgiver
of old, shall the light be reflected from us; but resting upon us with
its own ineffable glory, the awful effluence--
"Shall flood our being round, and take our lives
Into itself."
Of this final goal of our aspirations--of this crowning mystery of our
being--the mind is helpless to conceive, and the tongue refuses to
tell. Silent contemplation, and wondering awe, and fervent
thanksgiving alone befit the theme. Even the inspired lips of an
Apostle are hushed before it. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God,
and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He
shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is"--we
shall see Him as He is.
THE HEAVENLY TEACHER.[7]
"He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto you."--ST. JOHN xvi.
15.