Abide in Christ; With Christ in the School of Prayer; Humility

'He that abideth in me, and I in him, the samebringeth forth inuch fruit. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit. ' — John xv. 5, 8.

WE all know what fruit is. The produce of the branch, by which men are refreshed and nourished. The fruit is not for the branch, but for those who come to carry it away. As soon as the fruit is ripe, the branch gives it off, to commence afresh its work of beneficence, and anew prepare its fruit for another season. A fruit-bearing tree lives not for itself, but wholly for those to whom its fruit brings refreshment and life. And so the branch exists only and entirely for the sake of the fruit. To make glad the heart of the hnsbandman is its object, its safety, and its glory.

Beautiful image of the believer abiding in Christ! He not^only grows in strength, the union with the Vine becoming ever surer and firmer, he also bears fruit, yea, much fruit. He has the power to offer that to others of which they can eat and live. Amid all who surround him he becomes like a tree of life.

of which they can taste and be refreshed. He is in his circle a centre of life and of blessing, and that simply because he abides in Christ, and receives from Him the Spirit and the life of which he can impart to others. Learn thus, if thou wouldest bless others, to abide in Christ, and that if thou dost abide, thou shalt surely bless. As surely as the branch abiding in a fruitful vine bears fruit, so surely, yea, much more surely^ will a soul abiding in Christ with His fulness of blessing be made a blessing.

The reason of this is easily understood. If Christ, the heavenly Vine, has taken the believer as a branch, then He has pledged Himself, in the very nature of things, to supply the sap and spirit and nourishment to make it bring forth fruit. 'From Me is thy fruit found:' these words derive new meaning from our parable. The soul need but have one care, — to abide closely, fully, wholly. He will give the fruit. He works all that is needed to make the believer a blessing.

Abiding in Him, you receive of Him His spirit of love and compassion toivard sinners, making you desirous to seek their good. By nature the heart is full of selfishness. Even in the believer, his own salvation and happiness are often too much his only object. But abiding in Jesus, you come into contact with His infinite love; its fire begins to burn within your heart; you see the beauty of love; you learn to look upon loving and serving and saving your fellow-men as the highest privilege a disciple of Jesus can have. Abiding in Christ, your heart learns to feel the wretchedness of the sinner still in darkness, and the fearfulness of the dishonour done to your God. With Christ you begin to bear the burden of souls, the burden of sins not your own. As you are more closely united to Him, somewhat of that passion for souls which urged Him to Calvary begins to breathe within you, and you are ready to follow His footsteps, to forsake the heaven of your own happiness, and devote your life to win the souls Christ has taught you to love. The very spirit of the Vine is love; the spirit of love streams into the branch that abides in Him.

The desire to be a blessing is but the beginning. As you undertake to work, you speedily become conscious of your own weakness and the difficulties in your way. Souls are not saved at your bidding. You are ready to be discouraged, and to relax your effort. But abiding in Christ, you receive netv courage and strength for the tvorlc. Believing what Christ teaches, that it is He who through you will give His blessing to the world, you understand that you are but the feeble instrument through which the hidden power of Christ does its work, that His strength may be perfected and made glorious in your weakness. It is a great step when the believer fully consents to his own weakness, and the abiding consciousness of it, and so works faithfully on, fully assured that his Lord is icorhing through him. He rejoices that the excellence of the power is of God, and not of us. Eealizing his oneness with his Lord, he considers no longer his own weakness, but counts on the power of Him of whose hidden working within he is assured. It is this secret assurance that gives a brightness to his look, and a gentle firmness to his tone, and a perseverance to all his efforts, which of themselves are great means of influencing those he is seeking to win. He goes forth in the spirit of one to whom victory is assured; for this is the victory that overcometh, even our faith. He no longer counts it humility to say that God cannot bless his unworthy efforts. He claims and expects a blessing, because it is not he, but Christ in him, that worketh. The great secret of abiding in Christ is the deep conviction that we are nothing, and He is everything. As this is learnt, it no longer seems strange to believe that our weakness need be no hindrance to His saving power. The believer who yields wholly up to Christ for service in the spirit of a simple, childlike trust, will assuredly bring forth much fruit. He will not fear even to claim his share in the wonderful promise: 'He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater ivories than these shall he do, because I go to the Father.* He no longer thinks that He cannot have a blessing, and must be kept unfruitful, that he may be kept humble. He sees that the most heavily laden branches bow the lowest down. Abiding in Christ, he has yielded assent to the blessed agreement between the Vine and the branches, that of the fruit all the glory shall be to the Husbandman, the blessed Father.

Let us learn two lessons. If we are abiding in Jesus, let us begin to work. Let us first seek to influence those around us in daily life. Let us accept distinctly and joyfully our holy calling, that we are even now to live as the servants of the love of Jesus to our fellow-men. Our daily life must have for its object the making of an impression favourable to Jesus. When you look at the branch, you see at once the likeness to the Vine. We must live so that somewhat of the holiness and the gentleness of Jesus ^nay shine out in us. We must live to represent Him. As was the case with Him when on earth, the life must prepare the way for the teaching. What the Church and the world both need is this: men and women full of the Holy Ghost and of love, who, as the living embodiments of the grace and power of Christ, witness for Him, and for His power on behalf of those who believe in Him. Living so, with our hearts longing to have Jesus glorified in the souls He is seeking after, let us offer ourselves to Him for direct work. There is work in our own home.

There is work among the sick, the poor, and the outcast. There is work in a hundred different paths which the Spirit of Christ opens up through those who allow themselves to be led by Him. There is work perhaps for us in ways that have not been opened up by others. Abiding in Christ, let us work. Let us work, not like those who are content if they now follow the fashion, and take some share in religious work. No; let us work as those who are growing liker to Christ, because they are abiding in Him, and who, like Him, count the work of winning souls to the Father the very joy and glory of heaven begun on earth.

And the second lesson is: If you work, abide in Christ. This is one of the blessings of work if done in the right spirit, — it will deepen your union with your blessed Lord. It will discover your weakness, and throw you back on His strength. It will stir you to much prayer; and in prayer for others is the time when the soul, forgetful of itself, unconsciously grows deeper into Christ. It will make clearer to you the true nature of branch-life; its absolute dependence, and at the same time its glorious sufficiency,— independent of all else, because dependent on Jesus. If you work, abide in Christ. There are temptations and dangers. Work for Christ has sometimes drawn away from Christ, and taken the place of fellowship with Him. Work can sometimes give a form of godliness without the power. As you work, abide in Christ. Let a living faith in Christ working in you be the secret spring of all your work; this. will inspire at once humility and courage. Let the Holy Spirit of Jesus dwell in you as the Spirit of His tender compassion and His Divine power. Abide in Christ, and offer every faculty of your nature freely and unreservedly to Him, to sanctify it for Himself. If Jesus Christ is really to work through as, it needs an entire consecration of ourselves to Him, daily renewed. But we understand now, just this is abiding in Him; just this it is that constitutes our highest privilege and happiness. To be a branch bearing much fruit, — nothing less, nothing more, — be this our only joy.

'If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. ' — John

PRAYER is both one of the means and one of the fruits of union to Christ. As a means it is of unspeakable importance. All the actings of faith, all the pleadings of desire, all the yearnings after a fuller surrender, all the confessions of shortcoming and of sin, all the exercises in which the soul gives up self and clings to Christ, find their utterance in prayer. In each meditation on Abiding in Christ, as some new feature of what Scripture teaches concerning this blessed life is apprehended, the first impulse of the believer is at once to look up to the Father and pour out the heart into His, and ask from Him the full understanding and the full possession of what he has been shown in the Word. And it is the believer, who is not content with this spontaneous expression of his hope, but who takes time in secret prayer to wait until he has received and laid hold of what he, has seen, who will really grow strong in Christ.

However feeble the soul's first abiding, its prayer will be heard, and it will find prayer one of the great means of abiding more abundantly.

But it is not so much as a means, but as a fruit of the abiding, that the Saviour mentions it in the Parable of the Vine. He does not think so much of prayer — as we, alas! too exclusively do — as a means of getting blessing for ourselves, but as one of the chief channels of influence by which, through us as fellow-workers with God, the blessings of Christ's redemption are to be dispensed to the world. He sets before Himself and us the glory of the Father, in the extension of His kingdom, as the object for which we have been made branches; and He assures us that if we but abide in Him, we shall be Israels, having power with God and man. Ours shall be the effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous man, availing much, like Elijah's for ungodly Israel. Such prayer will be the fruit of our abiding in Him, and the means of bringing forth much fruit.

To the Christian who is not abiding wholly in Jesus, the difficulties connected with prayer are often so great as to rob him of the comfort and the strength it could bring. Under the guise of humility, he asks how one so unworthy could expect to have influence with the Holy One. He thinks of God's sovereignty, His perfect wisdom and love, and cannot see how his prayer can really have any distinct effect. He prays, but it is more because he cannot rest, without prayer, than from a loving faith that the prayer will be heard. But what a blessed release from such questions and perplexities is given to the soul who is truly abiding in Christ! He realizes increasingly how it is in the real spiritual unity with Christ that we are accepted and heard. The union with the Son of God is a life union: we are in very deed one with Him, — our prayer ascends as His prayer. It is because we abide in Him that we can ask what we will, and it is given to us.

There are many reasons why this must be so. One is, that abiding in Christ, and having His words abiding in us, teach us to pray in accordance with the ivill of God. With the abiding in Christ our selfwill is kept down, the thoughts and wishes of nature are brought into captivity to the thoughts and wishes of Christ; like-mindedness to Christ grows upon us— all our working and willing become transformed into harmony with His. There is deep and oft-renewed heart-searching to see whether the surrender has indeed been entire; fervent prayer to the heart-searching Spirit that nothing may be kept back. Everything is yielded to the power of His life in us, that it may exercise its sanctifying influence even on ordinary wishes and desires. His Holy Spirit breathes through our whole being; and without our being conscious how, our desires, as the breathings of the Divine life.

are in conformity with the Divine will, and are fulfilled. Abiding in Christ renews and sanctifies the will: we ask what we tuilly and it is given to us.

In close connection with this is the thought, that the abiding in Christ teaches the believer in prayer only toseeh the glory of God. In promising to answer prayer, Christ's one thought (see John xiv, IS) is this, * that the father may he glorified in the So7i. ' In His intercession on earth {John xvii.)^ this was His desire and plea; in His intercession in heaven, it is still His great object. As the believer abides in Christ, the Saviour breathes this desire into him. The thought, Okly the Gloky of God, becomes more and more the keynote of the life hid in Christ. At first this subdues, and quiets, and makes the soul almost afraid to dare entertain a wish, lest it should not be to the Father's glory. But when once its supremacy has been accepted, and everything yielded to it, it comes with mighty power to elevate and enlarge the heart, and open it to the vast field open to the glory of God. Abiding in Christ, the soul learns not only to desire, but spiritually to discern what will be for God's glory; and one of the first conditions of acceptable prayer is fulfilled in it when, as the fruit of its union with Christ, the whole mind is brought into harmony with that of the Son as He said: 'Father, glorify Thy name.'

Once more: Abiding in Christ, we can fully avail ourselves of the name of Christ. Asking in the name of another means that that other authorized me and sent me to ask, and wants to be considered as asking himself: he wants the favour done to him. Believers often try to think of the name of Jesus and His merits, and to argue themselves into the faith that they will be heard, while they painfully feel how little they have of the faith of His name. They are not living wholly in Jesus' name; it is only when they begin to pray that they want to take up that name and use it. This cannot be. The promise, ' Whatsoever ye ash in my name^ ' may not be severed from the command, 'Whatsoever ye do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.' If the name of Christ is to be wholly at my disposal, so that I may have the full command of it for all I will, it must be because I first put myself wholly at His disposal, so that He has free and full command of me. It is the abiding in Christ that gives the right and power to use His name with confidence. To Christ the Father refuses nothing. Abiding in Christ, I come to the Father as one with Him. His righteousness is in me. His Spirit is in me; the Father sees the Son in me, and gives me my petition. It is not — as so many think — by a sort of imputation that the Father looks upon us as if we were in Christ, though we are not in Him. No; the Father wants to see us living in Him: thus shall our prayer really have power to prevail. Abiding in

Christ not only renews the will to pray aright, but secures the full power of His merits to us.

Again: Abiding in Christ also works in us the faith that alone can obtain an answer. 'According to your faith be it unto you:' this is one of the laws of the kingdom. 'Believe that ye receive, and ye shall have.' This faith rests upon, and is rooted in the Word; but is something infinitely higher than the mere logical conclusion: God has promised, I shall obtain. No; faith, as a spiritual act, depends upon the words abiding in us as living powers, and so upon the state of the whole inner life. Without fasting and prayer {Marie ix. 29)^ without humility and a spiritual mind {John v. H)^ without a whole-hearted obedience {1 John Hi. 22)^ there cannot be this living faith. But as the soul abides in Christ, and grows into the consciousness of its union with Him, and sees how entirely it is He who makes it and its petition acceptable, it dares to claim an answer because it knows itself one with Him. It was by faith it learnt to abide in Him; as the fruit of that faith, it rises to a larger faith in all that God has promised to be and to do. It learns to breathe its prayers in the deep, quiet, confident assurance: We know we have the petition we ask of Him.

Abiding in Christ, further, keeps us in the place where the answer can he lestoived. Some believers pray earnestly for blessing; but when God comes and looks for them to bless them, they are not to be found. They never thought that the blessing must not only be asked, but waited for, and received in prayer. Abiding in Christ is the place for receiving answers. Out of Him the answer could be dangerous, — we should consume it on our lusts {Jas, iv, S). Many of the richest answers — say for spiritual grace, or for power to work and to bless — can only come in the shape of a larger experience of what God makes Christ to us. The fulness is IK Him: abiding in Him is the condition of power in prayer, because the answer is treasured up and bestowed in Him.

Believer, abide in Christ, for there is the school of prayer, — mighty, effectual, answer-bringing prayer. Abide in Him, and thou shalt learn what to so many is a mystery: Tliat the secret of the prayer of faith is the life offaithy — the life that abides in Christ alone.

'As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: abide ye in my love. ' — John xv. 9.*

BLESSED Lord, enlighten onr eyes to see aright the glory of this wondrous word. Open to our meditation the secret chamber of Thy love, that our souls may enter in, and find there their everlasting dwelling-place. How else shall we know aught of a love that passeth knowledge?

Before the Saviour speaks the word that invites us to abide in His love, He first tells us what that love is. What He says of it must give force to His invitation, and make the thought of not accepting it an impossibility: 'As the Father hath loved me, so I have loved you!'

'As the Father hath loved me.' How shall we be able to form right conceptions of this love? Lord,

* It is diflScult to understand why in our English Bible one Greek v^ord should in the first sixteen verses of John XV. have had three different translations: abide in ver. 4, contimie in ver. 9, and remain in vers. 11 and 16. The Revised Version has of course kept the one word, abide.

teach us. God is love. Love is His very being. Love is not an attribute, but the very essence of His / nature, the centre round which all His glorious attributes gather. It was because He was love that He was the Father, and that there was a Son. Love needs an object to whom it can give itself away, in whom it can lose itself, with whom it can make itself one. Because God is love, there must be a Father and a Son. The love of the Father to the Son is that Divine passion with which He delights in the Son, and speaks, 'My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' The Divine love is as a burning fire; in all its intensity and infinity it has but one object and but one joy, and that is the only-begotten Son. When we gather together all the attributes of God,-^" His infinity, His perfection. His immensity. His majesty, His omnipotence,— and consider them but as the rays of the glory of His love, we still fail in forming any conception of what that love must be. It is a love that passeth knowledge.

And yet this love of God to His Son must serve, 0 my soul, as the glass in which thou art to learn how Jesus loves thee. As one of His redeemed ones, thou art His delight, and all His desire is to thee, with the longing of a love which is stronger than death, and which many waters cannot quench. His heart yearns after thee, seeking thy fellowship and thy love. Were it needed. He could die again to possess thee. ^''

As the Father loved the Son, and could not live without Him, could not be God the blessed without Him, — so Jesus loves thee. His life is bound up in thine; thou art to Him inexpressibly more indispensable and precious than thou ever canst know. Thou art one with Himself. *As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.' What a love!

It is an eternal love. From before the foundation of the world — God's Word teaches us this — the purpose had been formed that Christ should be the Head of His Church, that He should have a body in which His glory could be set forth. In that eternity He loved and longed for those who had been given Him by the Father; and when He came and told His disciples that He loved them, it was indeed not with a; love of earth and of time, but with the love of eteri nity. And it is with that same infinite love that His eye still rests upon each of us here seeking to abide in Him, and in each breathing of that love there is indeed the power of eternity. *I have loved thee with an everlasting love. '

It is a perfect love. It gives all, and holds nothing back. 'The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand.' And just so Jesus loves His own: all He has is theirs. When it was needed. He sacrificed His throne and crown for thee: He did not count His own life and blood too dear to give for thee. His righteousness. His Spirit, His glory, even

His throne, all are thine. This love holds nothing, nothing back, but, in a manner which no human mind can fathom, makes thee one with itself. 0 wondrous love! to love us even as the Father loved Him, and to offer us this love as our every-day dwelling.

It is a gentle and most tender love. As we think of the love of the Father to the Son, we see in the, Son everything so infinitely worthy of that love. When we think of Christ's love to us, there is nothing but sin and unworthiness to meet the eye. And the question comes. How can that love within the bosom of the Divine life and its perfections be compared to the love that rests on sinners? Can it indeed be the same love? Blessed be God, we know it is so. The nature of love is always one, however different the-^ objects. Christ knows of no other law of love but that with which His Father loved Him. Our wretchedness only serves to call out more distinctly the beauty of love, such as could not be seen even in Heaven. With the tenderest compassion He bows to our weakness, with patience inconceivable He bears with our slowness, with the gentlest loving-kindness He meets our fears and our follies. It is the love of the Father to the Son, beautified, glorified, in its / condescension, in its exquisite adaptation to our^ needs.

And it is an unchangeable love. 'Having loved

His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end.' 'The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee.' The promise with which it begins its work in the soul is this: 'I shall not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.' And just as our wretchedness was what first drew it to us, so the sin, with which it is so often grieved, and which may well cause us to fear and doubt, is but a new motive for it to hold to us all the more. And why? We can give no reason but this: 'As the Father hath Igved me, so I have loved you.'

And now, does not this love suggest the 7notive, the measure, and the means of that surrender by which.we yield ourselves wholly to abide in Him?

This love surely supplies a motive. Only look and see how this love stands and pleads and prays. Gaze, 0 gaze on the Divine form, the eternal glory, the heavenly beauty, the tenderly pleading gentleness of the crucified love, as it stretches out its pierced hands and says, 'Oh, wilt thou not abide with me? wilt thou not come and abide in me?' It points thee up to the eternity of love whence it came to seek thee. It points thee to the Cross, and all it has borne to prove the reality of its affection, and to win thee for itself. It reminds thee of all it has promised to do for thee, if thou wilt but throw thyself unreservedly into its arms. It asks thee whether, so far as thou hast come to dwell with it and taste its blessedness, it hath not done well by thee. And with a Divine authority, mingled with such an inexpressible tenderness that one might almost think he heard the tone of reproach in it, it says, 'Soul, as the Father hath loved me, so I have loved you: abide in my love.' Surely there can be but one answer to such pleading: Lord Jesus Christ! here I am. Henceforth Thy love shall be the only home of my soul: in Thy love alone will I abide.

That love is not only the motive, but also the measure, of our surrender to abide in it. Love gives all, but asks all. It does so, not because it grudges us aught, but because without this it cannot get possession of us to fill us with itself. In the love of the Father and the Son, it was so. In the love of Jesus to us, it was so. In our entering into His love to abide there, it must be so too; our surrender to it must have no other measure than its surrender to us. 0 that we understood how the love that calls us has infinite riches and fulness of joy for us, and that what we give up for its sake will be rewarded a hundredfold in this life! Or rather, would that we understood that it is a love with a height and a depth and a length and a breadth that passes knowledge! How all thought of sacrifice or surrender would pass away, and our souls be filled with ivonder at the unspeakable privilege of being loved with such a love, of being allowed to come and abide in it for ever.

And if doubt again suggest the question: But is it possible, can I always abide in His love? listen how that love itself supplies the only means for the abiding in Him: It is faith in that love which will enable us to abide in it. If this love be indeed so Divine, such an intense and burning passion, then surely I can depend on it to keep me and to hold me fast. Then surely all myunworthiness and feebleness can be no hindrance. If this love be indeed so Divine, with infinite power at its command, I surely have a right to trust that it is stronger than my weakness; and that with its almighty arm it will clasp me to its bosom, and suffer me to go out no more. I see how this is the one thing my God requires of me. Treating me as a reasonable being endowed with the wondrous power of willing and choosing, He cannot force all this blessedness on me, but waits till I give the willing consent of the heart. And the token of this consent He has in His great kindness ordered faith to be, — that faith by which utter sinfulness casts itself into the arms of love to be saved, and utter weakness to be kept and made strong. 0 Infinite Love! Love with which the Father loved the Son! Love with which the Son loves us! I can trust thee, I do trust thee. 0 keep me abiding in Thyself.