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9. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.

10. If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

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The argument contained in these two verses is this: My love to you is founded upon the same motives as my Father's love to me; he loves me because of fulfilling his will by a steady profession of the truth, and I have loved you hitherto for a like reason; if you wish for a continuance in my love, persevere in the same conduct.

11. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy in you might remain, and that your joy might be full.

I have delivered these exhortations to a stedfast adherence to my gospel, that I may not be deprived by your apostacy of the pleasure which I have received from beholding your faith; and that the satisfaction which you derive from that gospel may be lasting and complete, and not partial and temporary, as must be the case if you now renounce it.

12. This is my commandment; my new commandment (see xii. 34.) that ye love one another, as I have loved you.

13. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

The highest proof of disinterested affection which one man can give to another, is to expose or sacrifice

his life for the benefit of his friend. Of this disinter ested affection Christ was about to give them an example, and he requires that they imitate it, by showing a like affection to one another. To enjoin the most disinterested benevolence, and to inforce it by his own example, was highly necessary in regard to men who, like the apostles, were to be exposed to the most imminent danger in preaching the gospel and at length to suffer death.

He next intimates that then only they would continue to be regarded as his friends, when they showed their love to their brethren in this manner, by complying with this most difficult of his precepts.

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14. Ye are my friends, " you will my friends," if ye do whatsoever I command you.

Having called his disciples friends, he justifies the application of that honourable appellation, by showing that he had treated them in the character of friends, and not of servants.

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Henceforth I call you not servants: for the servant knoweth not what his master doeth; but I have called, or, I call you friends: for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

I have spoken to you in the style of a master; giv ing you my commands, and you have called me by that name; but I have treated you more like friends than servants, having freely communicated to you whatever I have learnt by divine inspiration from the Father, and what it was proper for you to know; contrary to the practice of masters, who conceal from their servants and slaves all their important secrets. He tells them afterwards that there were many things which even now they were not able to bear, and that

the disclosure of them would be deferred till after his resurrection and the descent of the Holy Spirit, xvi. 12. Accordingly we find that he instructed them further when he rose from the dead. Acts i. 3.

He now mentions, as a further proof of the disinterested nature of the affection which he felt for them, that he had chosen them to the office of being his companions while he lived, and his apostles after his death, not in consequence of any regard which they had shown to him, but merely from his own good will.

16. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you, rather, " placed you," that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain, " continue;" that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name he may give it you.

"Ordained you." The original signifies "placed you," that is, in the vine; for Christ still continues the metaphor, and his meaning is that he had given them a place in the vine as branches, that is, in himself, in order that they might bear the fruits of virtue, and that those fruits might be permanent, by which means alone their petitions for miraculous powers in the exercise of their apostolic office could be rendered effectual.

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These things I command you, love one another.

REFLECTIONS.

1.

From the language of Christ upon this occasion we may learn the importance of preserving our con

nection with him as our teacher and head; it is as useful and necessary to us as to the first disciples. Thus connected, superior piety and virtue will as certainly be produced in our characters as the branches of a good vine produce good fruit: one event is as necessary and natural as the other. And it is equally certain that separated from him we can produce nothing valuable. Let no one, therefore, persuade you to break off your connection with him. connection with him. What mankind could do without Christ, is an experiment that was tried many thousand years before his appearance, with what success let the idolatries and corruption of the heathen world testify: but some persons seem resolved to make the experiment a second time, and to try what they can do with the religion of nature, in a country where the religion of Christ is professed. There is reason to apprehend, however, that neither their plan of worship nor their system of morals will be mended hereby, and to suspect that every thing which they possess of superior value is borrowed from Christ. Without him there is no clear rule of duty, to guide the conduct towards men, and no idea of a pure and rational worship towards God; no example of superior excellence in our nature, to kindle emulation; no certain prospect of immortal happiness to animate our hopes, or of future punishment to awaken our fears. Without him, the mind of man is deprived of its best comforts, and virtue of its best sanctions; it is necessarily blasted and withered.

2. Let us remember that whatever virtue there may be in the vine, or whatever fruit in the branches, God is the husbandman, and that both owe all their excellencies to his cultivation. I make this observ ation, because some persons ascribe every thing to Christ, regarding him as the sole proprietor of the vineyard, and the vine-dresser; whereas it appears from his own language that he maintains only a subordinate situation; being the channel for conveying benefits to others, and being himself under the direction and discipline of a superior Being.

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Let us patiently submit to such treatment as the master of the vineyard may think necessary, in order to make us bring forth more fruit. This may sometimes be severe, and be, in our apprehensions, what pruning the tree appears to those who are ignorant of its utility, likely to endanger the existence of what it is intended to improve. But we cannot be in better hands than those of infinite wisdom and perfect goodness. The methods which God adopts must be the wisest and best that could be chosen for our cultivation, and will terminate not only in accomplishing his wishes, but likewise in promoting our own benefit.

4. Let us deeply impress upon our minds the injunction so often delivered by Christ to his apostles, to love one another as he had loved them. And in what manner had he shown his love to them? Was it not by communicating to them all the supernatural knowledge of religion which he had received from the Father? Was it not by professing the truth which he was authorized to communicate, at all times, at the constant hazard of his life, and with the certain prospect before him of the loss of it? If he requires his apostles, and, by the same reasoning, his disciples in every future age, to love as he has done, his injunction can be complied with only by acting in like manner. Let us, therefore, show our love to our brethren by inviolably maintaining what we have learnt of Christ, and by professing it at all hazards: we cannot render our brethren a more essential and important service.

John xv. 18. to the end.

Jesus is still pursuing the design of fortifying the minds of his disciples against the time of his death, and that of their subsequent trials and dangers. In the beginning of this chapter he informed them of the intimate connection subsisting between himself and them, telling them that he was the vine and that they were the branches, and inculcating the necessity of

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