And have not these--the bitter passion, the supernatural
resurrection, the triumphant ascension, and the everlasting session
of the Son at the right hand of God--taught the whole world the
meaning of the Father's name, and the love of the Father's heart, and
the power of the Father's Son, as nothing else, not even the sweetest
and tenderest of His utterances, could have taught them? When, then,
He declares the continuance of His teaching functions unbroken
through death and beyond it, He refers partly to the future facts of
His earthly manifestation, and still more does He refer to that
continuous teaching which, by that divine Spirit whom He sends, is
granted to every believing soul all through the ages.

This great truth, which recurs over and over again in these
discourses of our Lord, is far too much dropped out of the
consciousness and creeds of the modern Christian Church. We call
ourselves Christ's disciples. If there be disciples, there must be a
Master. His teaching is by no means merely the effect of the recorded
facts and utterances of the Lord, preserved here in the Book for us,
and to be pondered upon by ourselves, but it is also the hourly
communication, to waiting hearts and souls that keep themselves near
the Lord, of deeper insight into His will, of larger views of His
purposes, of a firmer grasp of the contents of Scripture, and a more
complete subjection of the whole nature to the truth as it is in
Jesus. Christian men and women! do you know anything about what it is
to learn of Christ in the sense that He Himself, and no poor human
voice like mine, nor even merely the records of His past words and
deeds as garnered in these Gospels and expounded by His Apostles, is
the source of your growing knowledge of Him? If we would keep our
hearts and minds clearer than we do of the babble of earthly voices,
and be more loyal and humble and constant and patient in our sitting