Love to the Uttermost / Expositions of John XIII.-XXI.

by F. B. Meyer

We have now a story to tell which, in the eye of heaven, will make our world forever memorable and wonderful among her sister spheres. It is the story of the Vine, and how it was the Divine purpose our earth should be its fruitful soil, and our race intimately associated with its growth and history.

"I am the true Vine," said our Lord. Not improbably, as He was passing forth with His disciples into the moonlit air, He perceived a vine clustering around the window or door; and with an eye ever awake to each touch of natural beauty, and a heart always alert for spiritual lessons, He turned to them and said, What that vine is in the world of nature I am in relation to all true and faithful souls. I am the true Vine—true, not as opposed to false, but true in the sense of real, substantial, and enduring. The essential, as distinguished from the circumstantial; the eternal, as distinct from the temporary and transient.

Nature is a parable of God. In each of her forms we have a revelation of God. Not so complete as that given through the mind of prophets, or the life of Jesus Christ, but still a revelation of the Divine. Each natural object, as it stood in Eden's untainted beauty, displayed some aspect of Him, whom no man can see and live. The apple-tree among the trees of the wood; the rose of Sharon: the lily of the vale; the cedar, with its dark green foliage; the rock for strength; the sea for multitudinousness; the heaven with its limpid blue, like the Divine compassion, overarching all—these are some of the forthshadowings in the natural world of spiritual qualities in the nature of God. The vine was made the clinging, helpless plant it is, that it might forever remind men of certain deep characteristics of the Divine nature.

I. THE VINE AND ITS BRANCHES.—The unity of the vine. The vine and its branches constitute one plant. Some branches may be trailed along the trellis-work outside the cottage door, others conducted through hothouse after hothouse; yet one life, one stream of sap, one essential quality and character pervades them all, from the dark root, buried in the soil, to the furthest twig or leaf. Yonder branch, waving its fronds high up against the hothouse glass, cannot say to that long leafless branch hidden beneath the shelf, You do not belong to me, nor I to you. No twig is independent of another twig. However different the functions, root and branches, leaves and cluster, all together make one composite but organic whole. So is it with Christ. All who are one with Him are one with each other. The branches that were nearest the root in the days of Pentecost are incomplete without the last converts that shall be added in the old age of the world. Those without these will not be made perfect.

This is the underlying truth of the holy Catholic Church. Men have tried to show that it must be an outward and visible organization, consisting of those who had received, through a long line of apostolical succession, some mystic power for administering rites and conferring absolution, together with those who came beneath the touch of their priestly hands. That theory has notoriously broken down. But the truth of which it is a grotesque travesty is presented in our Lord's conception of the vine, deeply planted in the dark grave of Joseph's garden, which had reached down its branches through the ages, and in which every believing soul has a part. Touch Christ, become one with Him in living union, abide in Him, and you are one with the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs and the Church of the First-born, whose names are written in heaven.

The pliancy of the vine.—More than most plants it needs a husbandman. It cannot stand upright like other fruit-trees, but requires a skillful hand to guide its pliant branches along the espaliers, or to entwine them in the trellis-work. It suggests a true thought of the appearance presented to the world by Christ and His Church.

Mrs. Hamilton King, in her description of the sermon preached in the hospital by Ugo Bassi, on the eve of the great movement which, by the expulsion of the Austrians, gave Italy to the Italians, specially dwells on this. Down five wards the prisoners are lying on the hospital-beds from which they will never rise again. To them the deep voice of the hero-preacher tells the story of the vine: how "it is tied to a stake, and if its arms stretch out, it is but cross-wise; they are also forced and bound."

Thus it was with Christ. Never following His own way; always bound to the imperative must of the Father's will; yielded to the cross as a willing Sufferer. And so it has been with His followers. Not strong to stand alone, but always yielded to the Father's will, that He should lead them whither He would—to a cross, if needs were; to persecution and shame, if this would better serve His purpose; to a Gethsemane, if that were the only gate to life.

Yield thyself to those loving hands. They may lead thee afar from thy original purpose—twisting thee in and out with many a contortion; fixing thee with nail and fastening; trailing thee over the wall, to droop thy clusters to the hands of strangers. Nevertheless, be sure to let Him have His way with thee; this is necessary for the accomplishment of His purpose.

The suffering of the vine.—When, in the spring, "the grace of the green vine makes all the land lovely, and the shoots begin to wind and wave in the blue air," the husbandman comes in with pruning-hook and shears, and strips it bare of all its innocent pride. Nor is this all. Even in the vintage it is not allowed to glory in the results of the year, "the branches are torn down and trodden in the wine-press, while the vine stands stripped and desolate."