'I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the worlds were.' It is impossible to say anything which will not weaken the force of these words. All I desire is to show you how they fulfil the idea, which St. John has been presenting to us from the beginning of his Gospel, of a Word who was with God and was God, of a Son who had come forth from the Father to reveal His grace and truth to men, of a Son who was returning to that Father as to His proper home. All is consistent from first to last; all has been divine, and all human. No clashing of the one with the other; but the human showing forth the divine as the perfect light from which it has been derived; the human leading on to the divine as that in which it is satisfied.
Hitherto this prayer has had no special reference to the disciples. He has spoken of His power over all flesh, of eternal life, of the work which He had accomplished. Now it turns to them: 'I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.' We have traced the use of this language through the later discourses of this Gospel, and have seen how entirely they are in harmony with the commencement of it. The disciples are taken out of the narrow exclusive sect-world by which they are surrounded, to be a family of witnesses for the Father and the Son; witnesses of that love which the world—and no part of it so much as the religious world in Jerusalem—was by its acts, its words, its principles, repudiating. To those Jesus had manifested the name of His Father. He had shown them what He was, and that they belonged to Him. Amidst all their confusions and errors, they had kept firm hold of this word. They had yielded to Christ's guidance; believing, when they understood Him least, that there was none else to whom they could go; that He had the words of eternal life. And they had now learnt a deeper lore. They had referred His calling and guidance to the Father. 'Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.' This had been the design of all His discipline. It had been working gradually upon them and in them. But there had been still a clinging to Him as their Master; the vision of a Father had only just dawned upon them. Now in these last discourses they had learnt the mystery of His relation and their relation to the invisible world. Their belief might not be strong enough to be proof against all storms, but it had taken root. Their position was that of friends, not servants; they were waiting for the Comforter to tell them fully of the Father; already they had the sense of not being born of flesh, or of blood, or of the will of men, but of God.
'I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.' It is not because I wish in the least to evade the force of these words as they stand in our version, that I plead for a more exact rendering: 'I am asking concerning them; not concerning the world do I ask, but concerning those whom thou hast given me.' I believe the impression left on many minds by our use of the preposition for, is that Christ is indifferent to the world, and only solicitous on behalf of a certain select circle. I do not say that any one will quite put that thought into words. When he sees it stated, he will shrink from it. Still it lurks in men's minds, and it is very desirable to remove any prop, however feeble and unimportant in itself, which may sustain it there. If any one says, 'But the force of the words lies not in this for, but in the expression, "whom thou hast given me,"' I say at once that, so far from wishing to make that expression less strong, I would insist upon it vehemently, as marking the distinction between a family which stands in its calling by God, and a world which attempts to associate on another ground than that calling, which chooses for itself. Christ is here praying concerning those who are to be the lights of this dark world, the salt of this corrupting earth; those who are to teach the world, in Whom it is constituted, the earth, by Whom it has been created and is kept alive.
'They are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.' All that has been said in the Paschal discourses, concerning the unity of the disciples with Him and His unity with the Father, concerning the essential and eternal dependence of the human unity upon the divine, is here translated into prayer. And yet, translated is an unsatisfactory word. It rather finds its only root and ground in prayer. For what is prayer but that intercourse of the Father with the Son, of the family with its Head, which this unity makes possible? And what is the object and result of all prayer but this, that what is true in the mind of God may be true in the actual condition of men; all the hindrances which self-will has opposed to the divine Will being finally and for ever taken away?
'While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.' Here, no doubt, is an unfathomable abyss; we cannot see down into it; to attempt it, is to hazard the loss of our footing. One of those whom the Father has given to Christ (so the passage seems to say, and we cannot alter the terms of it to fit our fancies or wishes) perishes in his own selfishness and sin. Jesus says so. He says that that which had been written of old had come to pass; curses had come upon the man who loved cursing; he who had chosen death had been left to die. It is terrible to think of. But how infinitely more terrible would this fact, and all the facts that are daily occurring in the world's history, be, if they were not associated with the gift of eternal life, with the cry of the Son to the Holy Father on behalf of all whom He has given Him! What the heights and depths of that prayer are, none of us can know. It is enough to know who spoke and who heard, what love is above all and beneath all, how that love has been manifested and accomplished on this earth of ours. To dwell in it must be eternal life; to be separated from it must be eternal death.
'And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.' The idea of men living as children of God, members of Christ's body, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, with a world and a flesh and an evil spirit striving against them which they can renounce and can overcome, is not one which is strange to any of us. It is only too familiar. We know the sounds so well, and we have repeated them so often and so idly, that the words have lost their significance; we think they are words of art, or words of course. Here we have the beginning and ground of them. Throughout, St. John has been speaking of a race born, not of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of men, but of God. Christ here declares that He has founded such a race upon the earth. He prays His Father to keep it in the world, not to take it out of the world; to keep it by His word, His quickening, uniting word, which a world that is divided and is seeking death must hate; to keep it in the confession of Him who is not of the world, but is the Son of God; to keep it from that evil spirit who would make it selfish, divided, hating, and therefore the worst portion of the world against which it is to bear witness.
'Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.' Surely, brethren, there are no words that we need to meditate on more than these: for it cannot be denied that sanctity and truth have become strangely separated among those who call themselves by Christ's name. Oftentimes it would seem as if holiness were pursued to the utter denial and dereliction of truth; nay, as if it courted an alliance with falsehood. Oftentimes, again, it would seem as if men who desired truth and pursued it, regarded it as a dead and abstract thing, which has no affinity with the life of man, which has no effect in making him purer or better. Nevertheless, the voice has ascended on high, 'Make them holy by truth,' for truth only can make holy. Whatever is contrary to it or mixed with falsehood, must defile and make base. And the prayer has been heard, and will be answered completely at last; for the Son of God, who is the way, and the truth, and the life, took our flesh upon Him, and met falsehood in all the forms in which it presents itself in this world, and sanctified Himself, and kept Himself from all contact with it, only by the might and energy of truth, only by submitting in all things to His Father, who is the God of truth. And these temptations He underwent, and this battle He fought, for the sake of His disciples, that they also might be sanctified by truth and truth only, that it might be an armour to them on the right hand and on the left, that they might live for it, and die for it.
In this second part of the prayer, all has had direct reference to the disciples who surrounded Him, whatever ultimate reference it might have to the remotest corner of the universe. But in the third part of it, He says expressly: 'Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.' Here is a prayer for the whole state of Christ's Church militant here on earth from age to age; a prayer offered by the Head of that Church to His Father, offered on the night before His sacrifice was to be perfected; a prayer grounded not upon some wish or high aspiration hard to be realized, but, as He has just said, upon truth, upon the eternal truth that the Father is in Him and He in the Father, and that He is the Head of all men and that all live by Him. This glory, He says, He has given not to those eleven who were sitting about Him then, but to all everywhere who should believe in Him through their words. He has put this glory upon them; He has given them the name of Himself, and of His Father, and of the Holy Spirit the Comforter, to be their name, that they might dwell in it and abide in it. And He prays for them, that they may not choose to be divided when He has made them one, that they may not make themselves the curses of the world by sharing in all its envies and hatreds, and by pleading God's name as the excuse for them, when He has sent them into the world to be the witnesses that His own Son has declared His love to it, and has gone forth from Him to bring it into the circle of His love.
He began by saying, that eternal life was to know the only true God and His Son Jesus Christ; He ends with saying, that this is the glory which all are created to seek after, and which He has taken flesh that they may attain and possess with Him. 'Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee' (has not known thy righteousness, but has supposed thee to be altogether unrighteous like itself; has not known thee by that name of Father, but has taken thee to be hard-hearted and grudging like itself): 'but I have known thee,' (known thee as the image of thy righteousness, known thee as thy Son,) 'and these have known that thou hast sent me.' These have seen thy light shining forth through me. These have beheld my glory as the glory of an only-begotten Son, full of grace and truth. 'And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it' (to the end of all things): 'that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.'