And is it not beautiful to see how Jesus Christ, leaving the little
flock of His followers in the world, gave them no other instruction
for their mutual relationship? He did not instruct them about
institutions and organisations, about orders of the ministry and
sacraments, or Church polity and the like. He knew that all these
would come. His one commandment was, 'Love one another,' and that
will make you wise. Love one another, and you will shape yourselves
into the right forms. He knew that they needed no exhortations such
as ecclesiastics would have put in the foreground. It was not worth
while to talk to them about organisations and officers. These would
come to them at the right time and in the right way. The 'one thing
needful' was that they should be knit together as true participators
of His life. Love was sufficient as their law and as their guide.

III. Note, further, the Pattern of love.

'As I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends.' Christ sets Himself forward then,
here and in this aspect, as He does in all aspects of human conduct
and character, as being the realised Ideal of them all. And although
the thought is a digression from my present purpose, I cannot but
pause for a moment to reflect upon the strangeness of a man thus
calmly saying to the whole world, 'I am the embodiment of all that
love ought to be. You cannot get beyond Me, nor have anything more
pure, more deep, more self-sacrificing, more perfect, than the love
which I have borne to you.'

But passing that, the pattern that He proposes for us is even more
august than appears at first sight. For, if you remember, a verse or
two before our Lord had said, 'As the Father hath loved Me so I have