Go back over these verses, then, and you will find the Causes of this
Effect, the spring, and the only spring, out of which true Happiness
comes. I am not going to analyse them in detail. I ask you to enter into
the words for yourselves. Remember, in the first place, that the Vine
was the Eastern symbol of Joy. It was its fruit that made glad the heart
of man. Yet, however innocent that gladness--for the expressed juice of
the grape was the common drink at every peasant's board--the gladness
was only a gross and passing thing. This was not true happiness, and the
vine of the Palestine vineyards was not the true vine. _Christ_ was
"the _true_ Vine." Here, then, is the ultimate source of Joy. Through
whatever media it reaches us, all true Joy and Gladness find their
source in Christ. By this, of course, is not meant that the actual Joy
experienced is transferred from Christ's nature, or is something passed
on from Him to us. What is passed on is His method of getting it. There
is, indeed, a sense in which we can share another's joy or another's
sorrow. But that is another matter. Christ is the source of Joy to men
in the sense in which He is the source of Rest. His people share His
life, and therefore share its consequences, and one of these is Joy. His
method of living is one that in the nature of things produces Joy. When
He spoke of His Joy remaining with us He meant in part that the causes
which produced it should continue to act. His followers, that is to say,
by _repeating_ His life would experience its accompaniments. His Joy,
His kind of Joy, would remain with them.

The medium through which this Joy comes is next explained: "He that
abideth in Me, the same bringeth forth much fruit." Fruit first, Joy
next; the one the cause or medium of the other. Fruit-bearing is
the necessary antecedent; Joy both the necessary consequent and the
necessary accompaniment. It lay partly in the bearing fruit, partly in
the fellowship which made that possible. Partly, that is to say, Joy lay