Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/863

Rh ANALYSIS.] hast no part with Me ; ” and those wl1o laid st.ress on re- peated baptisms or puriﬁcations, “ He that is (wholly) washed (e}ov,ue'vo9) needeth not save to wash (vL'-n--raw) his f get.” Now Judas, the child of darkness, goes forth from the chamber, and the evangelist seizes the moment to tell us that “it was night ” (xiii. 30). Yet in this hour of dark- ness the hour of gloriﬁcation is hailed by Jesus; and He conveys to His disciples, not indeed a new testament, but a new commandment, “that ye love one another ”_(ver. 34). How could this be called a new commandment for those who had been commanded long ago by Jesus to love even their enemies, 1m1ch more their friends? The answer is found in the context: “ As I have loved you, that ye also love one another,” the meaning being, that after the death of Jesus, the memory of His love, enhanced in His absence, would spring up as an entirely new power within their hearts, so that “love” would assume a new meaning, and the command to love—thougl1 as old as the ﬁrst inﬂuence of the Word, and therefore as the creation of man—would become essentially a new commandment. These words occur almost verbatim in the First Epistle of John (ii. 7), and, from their language, they can hardly be accepted as giving the letter of the words of Jesus ; but they go down to the very roots of His teaching. The importance here attached to this new commandment of love leads us to observe that, through- out the whole of these discourses, love, almost as much as the Spirit, occupies the thoughts; and, indeed, in chapters xiii., xiv., xv, and xvii.,1 the word aymrau occurs 24 times, against 10 times in all the rest of the Gospel. The con- nexion is obvious: step by step We are being led up to God ; and God is love. The doctrine of the Spirit can re- veal no higher manifestation of Him than this; and the Spirit itself is a Spirit of love, which will ﬁnd its home only in the hearts of those that love. Although Jesus has not expressly predicted His death, yet the warnings of betrayal and departure have troubled the hearts of His disciples. To comfort them Jesus pro- mises that He will return, and be still present with them. But neither is the path of His departure and return, 11or is His presence itself—so He warns Thomas and Philip-—to be regarded as material. He will (spiritually) be more present with them, when, and because, He will be (materi- ally) absent. Greater works will they do than He has done, because He, abiding with the Father above, will lift up their hearts to heaven——t11cir home henceforth because their treasure, Christ, is there—and will make them one with Himself and with the Father, in will and in power. And here is repeated the saying, also found in the synoptists, that whatsoever the disciples pray for they shall obtain,—— joined with the assurance that they shall do greater works (Epya) than He Himself does (xiv. 12). Note here that our evangelist brings out more clearly than the synoptists the spiritual meaning of the promise concerning prayer, and makes it evident that, as above, the works (Epya) meant are not “miracles” (8wc1,ueL9),—not the casting of a material mountain into the sea, as might be inferred from a misinter- pretation of the synoptists,—but the Messianic “works” of forgiveness and regeneration. The nature of Christ’s future presence in the hearts of His disciples is differently described in different passages. At one time (xiv. 30) He declares that He Himself, together with the Father, will take up His abode in every heart that loves Him ; but more often He uses the word used by Mark above, and speaks of a ;S'pi2-it which shall be sent to them by the Father. He applies to the Spirit the very title we have been led to apply to the Spirit as described by Mark—- the Advocate (Hapo’u<)h71-oc, or Advocatus). As a paracletus or advocatus was wont to explain the law to Greek or 1 Note the curious break in chapter xvi., where the word (iL'ya1rEZu does not occur at all, and 4>tA¢Tv is twice used, xvi. 27. GOSPELS 839 Roman clients, and to put Words into their mouths, or rather to be himself their spokesman, so the spiritual Para- cletc or Advocate would not only put words into the mouths of the disciples when they stood before the bar of kings (Mk. xiii. 11), but would also teach them all things, and bring to their remembrance all the spiritual laws laid down by their lawgiver Christ (xiv. 26). In one sense, the Spirit is a witness,_because He testifies of Christ (xv. 26); but even here He is in reality an advocate, for the testimony is regarded as not uttered by the Spirit directly, but indirectly through the mouths of the inspired disciples who are to be “martyrs” or witnesses (,udp-rvpeg) for Christ (xv. 27). It was very natural that that aspect of the advocate’s work which most impressed the editor of our earliest Gospel should retire into the background when the ﬁrst brunt of the collision between the church and the world was over ; and that gradually the work of the advocate should assume a wider province than that of merely educating the disciples to plead the cause of Christ in the presence of Gentile judges. Hence Paul regards the Spirit as teaching the disciples not so much what to say in their defence before earthly kings as rather i11 their prayers before the King of Kings: “We know not what we should pray for as we ought : but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered ” (Rom. viii. 26) ; “ The Spirit searchcth all things, yea, the deep things of God, . . . which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth” (1 Cor. ii. 10-13). But this conception, carried a stage further, makes the paraclete an advocate not revealing the laws of the celestial kingdom to the enfranchised citizen of it, nor yet revealing the will of the Father in heaven to the child on earth, but rather pleading the cause of the child before the offended Father; and in this sense Philo seems to use the word when he describes the high priest as clothed in the garb which is typical of the invisible universe, z'.e., typical of the Logos or Son of the Supreme Father of the world——bceause it was necessary for the priest consecrated to the Father of the world that he should have as his paraclete the Son, in order (through Him) to obtain pardon of sins and supply of blessings (Life of Zlfoses, 14); and he also introduces Joseph (ch. 40) saying to his brethren, “ I forgive you; seek no other paraclete,” i.e., no one to act between me and you as your advocate ; and lastly, in this sense, the First Epistle of John (i. 1, 2) seems to use the word in the passage, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins.” 2 But though our evangelist uses the word in this somewhat lower ense in the Epistle, in the Gospel he nowhere uses it thus. There the Paraclcte’s function is to be, as in Luke, “ a mouth, a wisdom ” (Lu. xxi. 15) ; to be a substitute for the helping presence of Christ (xiv. 16) ; to teach and remind (xiv. 26) ,- to testify and to aid the disciple to testify (xv. 26) ; and to convict the world of sin (xvi. 8) ;——but nowhere to obtain forgiveness of sins from the Father by pleading the cause of the disciples in His presence. It is not an unreasonable inference that the evangelist’s different use of this word in the Gospel and the Epistle may have arisen from the fact that in the former he is adhering more closely to the original use of it as handed down by Christ Himself. Besides describing the work of the Paraclete as a coil- sequence of the departure of the Son to the Father, the discourse touches upon the enmity which the disciples must be prepared to meet, and enforces the necessity of unity 9 (_'f. Sehoettgen, vol. ii. p. 659, where it is shown that the Jews adopted the Greek word (mu-I;-yopos (not in its classical sense of “ pro- secutor,” but in the sense of “ advocate for the defence "), under the form 'llJ‘JD, and applied it to Michael, who defends Israel from the accusations brought against him in the presence of God.