Jesus Christ could not speak about the blessedness of fruitfulness
and the joy of life in Himself without speaking about its necessary
converse, the awfulness of separation from Him, of barrenness, of
withering, and of destruction.

Separation is withering. Did you ever see a hawthorn bough that
children bring home from the woods, and stick in the grate; how in a
day or two the little fresh green leaves all shrivel up and the white
blossoms become brown and smell foul, and the only thing to be done
with it is to fling it into the fire and get rid of it? 'And so,'
says Jesus Christ, 'as long as a man holds on to Me and the sap comes
into him, he will flourish, and as soon as the connection is broken,
all that was so fair will begin to shrivel, and all that was green
will grow brown and turn to dust, and all that was blossom will
droop, and there will be no more fruit any more for ever.' Separate
from Christ, the individual shrivels, and the possibilities of fair
buds wither and set into no fruit, and no man is the man he might
have been unless he holds by Jesus Christ and lets His life come into
him.

And as for individuals, so for communities. The Church or the body of
professing Christians that is separate from Jesus Christ dies to all
noble life, to all high activity, to all Christlike conduct, and,
being dead, rots.

Withering means destruction. The language of our text is a
description of what befalls the actual branches of the literal vine;
but it is made a representation of what befalls the individuals whom
these branches represent, by that added clause, 'like a branch.' Look
at the mysteriousness of the language. 'They gather them.' Who? 'They