by Himself.

'Hitherto I have spoken to you in proverbs,' or parables. The word
means, not only a comparison or parable, but also, and perhaps
primarily, a mysterious and enigmatical saying. The reference is, of
course, directly to the immediately preceding thoughts, in which His
departure and the sorrow that accompanied it and was to merge into
joy, were described under that touching figure of the woman in
travail. But the reference must be extended very much farther than
that. It includes not only this discourse, but the whole of His
teaching by word whilst He was here upon earth.

Now the first thing that strikes me here is this strange fact. Here
is a man who knew Himself to be within four-and-twenty hours of His
death, and knew that scarcely another word of instruction was to come
from His lips upon earth, calmly asserting that, for all the
subsequent ages of the world's history, He is to continue its
Teacher. We know how the wisest and profoundest of earthly teachers
have their lips sealed by death, so as that no counsel can come from
them any more, and their disciples long in vain for responses from
the silenced oracle, which is dumb whatever new problems may arise.
But Jesus Christ calmly poses before the world as not having His
teaching activity in the slightest degree suspended by that fact
which puts a conclusive and complete close to all other teachers'
words. Rather He says that after death He will, more clearly than in
life, be the Teacher of the world.

What does He mean by that? Well, remember first of all the facts
which followed this saying--the Cross, the Grave, Olivet, the
Heavens, the Throne. These were still in the future when He spoke.