II. KNOWLEDGE THROUGH LOSS AND SEPARATION. "NEVERTHELESS I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.” -JOHN 16: 7, 13. I MUST think that there was a touch of sorrow in the tone with which Jesus uttered these words, nearly akin to despair. For think with what argument, and persuasion, and entreaty he had tried to fix the hearts of his friends upon the truth and the right, and not upon his bodily form and presence! How he had repeated the declaration again and again, that he was only the agent of God; the instrument of inevitable spirit-law; the finite example of an infinite mercy, and justice, and love. In every possible way he had tried to force this truth upon them. They thought their Messiah immortal on the earth; but he said, “ I shall be put to death by these religious sects, whose hypocrisy I have rebuked." They thought he would be a great king; but he said, "The Son of Man has not where to lay his head." They thought he would call to his aid a legion of angels, if need were, to fight for him; but he said, "My kingdom is not of this world, else would my servants fight for me." They said, "Show us the Father;" and he said, “The Father can not be seen, except as his nature is seen in the na ture of goodness, beauty, truth." At one time he illustrated his meaning by saying, that he was merely a door through which their mind, and thought, and love, might go in and out, and find pasture. At another time he says, “I am only the vine of which ye are the branches; but my Father is the husbandman. He is the soil, the air, the light, the moisture in which we all grow and have our being." Again, he says, "I am the way, the truth, the life, by which men go to the Father." But neither statement, nor argument, nor illustration could turn their thoughts from the form, and voice, and bodily presence of one they loved so much, to that higher fact of which these were the symbol; and still they clung to the hope that he would restore the kingdom to Israel. They could not cut the rope which held them fast in the haven of his friendship, and strike out into the great ocean of truth, and beauty, and love, steered alone by his spirit and truth. Yet he knew, and taught, that there was no other way for them to inherit eternal life than to do as he had done. And after all forms of speech had been exhausted, to prove that God was the sole Infinite Spirit, and he was a door by which souls were to find him, Philip says, "Show us the Father, and that will satisfy us." From that moment, Jesus seems to have seen that it was best that he should leave them; that they would not be able to conceive of the absolute reality until it became associated with his invisible life; that while he was with them, he was away from them; and could not meet them again, until they met him on the plane of his truth, and love, and hope; until they should suffer, and weep, and rejoice for principle. Then he could meet them, and they him. Then he recounted the trials the truth would cost them, as if half regretting that it must be so. "The world will hate you; but remember that it hated me before it hated you. They will put you out of the synagogues, and they will kill you, in the service of God. But because I have told you these things, sorrow hath filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is best for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come to you. When the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth." And so it proved. They were never further from their Master than when, with dull eyes and heavy ears, they stood close by his side, and saw his face, and heard his word, and knew not that it was Jesus. But when he was gone from them, and all their proud hopes and vain ambitions were buried in his tomb, then they retired to their own souls, their central life of thought and love, and there they met him, and they said; "Lo! he was with us by the wayside, and we knew him not." And when they began to look around for the result of the loved life, and found that it was all given to their keeping, in nothing more tangible than thought, and spirit, and principle, they were roused by every motive of common friendship to stand up and vindicate it. And when, for this fidelity, they met with hatred, and stripes, and flames, and prison-bolts, then he came to them as never before, and their eyes were opened, and they knew him. Poor disciples! But poor we, as well! For their case is ours, because it is that of human nature. The things which are close around us, which we look upon daily, and regard as close companions, lose their best meaning as the symbols of spirit and thought. It is only when sickness, or failure, or death has given them distance and perspective, that we begin to see that their greatest worth was hidden by familiarity. The last reach of spirit-culture is the power of holding common things off in the spaces of thought, so as to see them as they are, and as they will seem to us when taken away. It is our weakness that makes the discipline through which the disciples passed ever necessary to us. For it must be possible for us to look upon blessings, while yet they are ours, as if they were God's talents at interest. It is possible to regard friends, home, wealth, opportunity in relation to the end they are meant to serve in our tuition We may see in the child we play with daily, the angel we should think of if the child were taken away; in the wife or husband who shares life with us, that wealth of love and blessedness which we shall see and realize when they are dead. It is possible to enter into the treasures of health and appropriate the air, and sun, and sky, and stars, and free motions, as we appreciate them when we are sick and see no sun, nor sky, nor stars. But we do not do it. We are always looking far away for pearls which are sprinkled thick in the common road we walk in. We wait for some miracle of mercy, and see not that it is fresh every morning, and renewed every evening. We think only of the visible; we do not penetrate to the inner law, which is the light of setting suns and the life of earnest souls, and is not subject to change. We all talk of angels and saints; did you never think that there is not a home, however homely, which has not in it the germ of angels and saints? yea, real saints and angels, as you shall believe them if God takes from you the outward form, that oftentimes annoys, and distresses, and separates. "Alas! we think not what we daily see About our hearths-angels, that are to be, A child, a friend, a wife, whose soft heart sings The world is always looking for a coming man as unlike real men as wings would make him; but it sees and hails only the going man. One often thinks, when he sees the kid-glove hero-worshipers who have no sympathy with living heroes on account of their roughness, what would these adorers have done had they lived when their hero did? All the men who are crowned with leaf and blossom from the tree of life were men who were heirs to all the ills and annoyances of flesh and blood. Some were wild and reckless, torn by their muse as he had been a demon or fury. Some were cold and stony, and would not see you in the street, nor seek your society nor your opinion; and that while they were the instruments of some great social truth which would warm and bless all coming time with good-will and good cheer. And some were wicked and miserable in life, as if the flint of their genius could only give out the consuming fire of truth when struck against the cold steel of sin. And others were stern, caustic, and contentious men, who rebuked every form and agent of wrong, and, thrusting through the iron harness of show, and cant, and conformity, pricked the very vitals of iniquity. They troubled their friends, they vexed their enemies; they shocked the prudent, and confounded the wise; and seldom have the great men, the saints and heroes, been recognized as such by common consent until they were so surely dead, and so securely buried, that there was not the slightest danger of their saying something to shock their friends, or of their espousing some cause which was not popular at court. Nor is this wholly wrong. Sin is not the less sinful because |