spake, to impress upon His hearers' minds the truths, divinest truths, which with tireless, tender, patient iteration He taught them day by day. Herein, surely, as in all things else, our Exemplar hath left us an example that we may follow in His steps. To this day the teacher can find no simpler or more effective expositor than Nature; the young, the old, the learned, and the ignorant are alike amenable to its voice, and when the books of Nature and of Revelation are read together, when the one is studied in the light of the other, the truest wisdom is revealed in the clearest guise. Then, Wordsworth's lines are true indeed "One impulse from a vernal wood Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can." Thomas Carlyle calls nature "the time-vesture of God, that reveals Him to the wise and hides Him from the foolish." This is perfectly true, but then, alas, the sage as usual forgets to tell his disciples how the wisdom which may discover God through the vesture is to come. He who seeks it in the pages of the inspired Volume, and from the Wellspring, himself shall— "Genuine wisdom learn. Nearly the whole pathway from the upper room where they had kept their Passover, to the green suburban slopes to which they were now going, lay through a succession of vineyards—a scene of beauty and delight. On either side of the embowered way the graceful vines were growing; some were creeping along the ground, some were twining around supporting poles, or around the trunk and boughs of convenient trees, while others were trellised to rude lattices, according to the cultivator's taste and skill. Possibly the expanding foliage half concealed the young clusters which gave promise of the purple riches which in due time would reward the toil of the husbandman, and stain the garments of the merry youths employed in treading out the grapes. It was the Saviour's habit to talk and teach as He walked along. Passing "through the cornfields," or across the furrowed glebe where the "sower" had gone "forth to sow," or along the highway under shade of fig tree or sycamine, He taught as He travelled, and turned His journeying hours to doubly wise account. It is more than likely, therefore, that as He and His disciples sauntered along the green arcades, the young vine-leaves brushing their garments as they passed, the Teacher found His suggestive text, and from the vines then present to the eye, taught of spiritual life, of soul-growth, of divine culture and of holy fruit. "I am the true Vine and My Father is the Husbandman. I am the Vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in Me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit." It is a beautiful figure. From the Master's lips, and pictured in the Master's language, it is incomparably beautiful, and is laden with lessons of highest meaning, redolent with grace and truth and love. As I have said, it is the last of the numberless parables which left His sacred lips; and being spoken when the immediate shadow of the Cross lay dark upon His path, there is a peculiarly sweet and touching pathos in it, which must impress upon the hearts and minds of them that love Him the vital life-lessons which it contains. Oh, for the Spirit of life and light to "take of" these "things of" Christ "and show them unto us," that their beauties may be revealed, that their holy teachings may be unfolded and applied! Fain would we learn, O Noble Vine ! Come, O Thou south wind! Wake, O north! While here expectant we recline O gracious Spirit, kind and true! Send Thou Thy sunlight streaming through; And help us in the Vine, to trace His love, our life, the Father's grace. |