the life;" he assureth them that prayers offered in his name shall, through him, become effectual; he requireth, on their part, love and obedience; promiseth the Holy Ghost the comforter; and leaveth his peace with them.

Great and inestimable promises these; may we be enabled to apply them to ourselves.

But we must believe in Him before we can be entitled to them, and he therefore begins with enjoining us to do so; he says that our belief in Him rests upon the same ground as our belief in God.

Belief in God is indeed the natural foundation of our hopes, and the natural remedy against the troubles of life; but "faith in our Lord Jesus Christ," which is the doctrine of revelation, strengthens our natural hopes; allays our natural apprehensions; and opens prospects and means peculiar to us as Christians, and things which by nature we cannot have. They are founded on what, and on all, that he hath done and spoken; and accordingly he instructs his followers in what he here so plainly states, viz. his being "our Lord, our Saviour, our Redeemer.

coming down from heaven for us men and for our salvation." He directs their thoughts towards that heavenly world from which he came, and whither he was going, and teaches them to find in that both the reason and the relief of all they met with here. He tells them of "a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," in which there are different abodes suited to the capacities and qualifications of those who shall inhabit them; suited, perhaps, in different degrees of glory, according to the degrees of purity and perfection, and to which he would be the means of their attaining. "In my Father's house," says he, “are many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you; but now I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself."2

We may observe throughout the whole conduct and character of our Lord that inherent dignity and divinity, that mild yet powerful teaching "as of one having authority;" when he speaketh of "the things pertaining to the kingdom of

God," his manner and language is not like that of the human mind, overpowered with the greatness of the subject, and labouring for words to express it-he speaketh of them as "his own," as "his to give," and "to whomsoever he wills"-he declares himself the Redeemer, the Advocate, and Judge of the world-he asserts his eternal union with the Father-he has his conversation one while with all the inhabitants of heaven, and the next with his poor and uninformed disciples, bearing with their infirmities, instructing their ignorance, and with compassionate condescension making their very ignorance the occasion of revealing the most sublime and important truths.

And it is in such ways that he still speaks, and to such-to the poor in heart, to those who are willing to learn; he tells us of the joys of heaven and the pains of hell, and how we may obtain or escape them-warns the wicked to "flee from the wrath to come," to leave those ways which tend but to "destroy both body and soul;" or he encourages those that are led by his grace with the prospect of forgiveness of sins through faith in his blood; he assures them of

the brightness of his presence, and "of pleasures which are at his right hand for evermore;" of

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such good things as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive."

They still thought that he spake of temporal things; and, with that degree of doubt which he elsewhere shewed, the incredulous disciple urged, "Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?" "Jesus saith," in that simple and majestic declaration, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life;" it is of things above that I spake, and by me only can

they be known or attained:

unto the Father but by me."

"no man cometh

I am the way to

him, and am "able to save to the uttermost those that come unto God by me." I am the truth, for I have declared it unto you, I have declared myself. And, to know me is "everlasting life," for I alone am the author and the giver of it; "I am the resurrection and the life."

It is in the incidental and occasional expressions of our Lord, to those who had not as yet re

ceived the Holy Ghost or understood the plan of Redemption, that we see the first glimpses of those leading points of revelation, which were afterwards more fully developed. It was in these that he gave to his disciples intimations of the nature of his being, when, in their more retired and private intercourse, they were most fitted to receive them; and it is, perhaps, under similar circumstances, when, in the hours of meditation and devotion, in the hearing or the reading of his word, we seem to "draw nigh" unto Him and again to hear his voice speaking individually to ourselves, that we are more disposed to receive the same, and that those things which can be but spiritually discerned are understood; that "if we know Him, we know the Father also."

St. Philip was struck with this expression, and (alluding, perhaps, to some such manifestation as God had been pleased to make of himself to Moses and Elias, when he talked with them) desired some sensible representation of the Father, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us."

5 Verse 8.