les on which our Saviour lived.

So absolutely had He emptied Himself that He never spake His own words:
"The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself." He never did
His own works: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. . . . The
Father abiding in Me doeth His works." This was the result of that
marvellous self-emptying of which the Apostle speaks. Our Lord speaks
as though, in His human nature, He had a choice and will of His own.
"Not My will, but Thine be done," was His prayer. Perhaps it was to
this holy and divine personality that Satan made appeal in the first
temptation, bidding Him use His powers for the satisfaction of His
hunger, and in independence of His Father's appointment. But however
much of this independence was within our Lord's reach, He deliberately
laid it aside. Before He spoke, His spirit opened itself to the
Father, that He might speak by His lips; before He acted. He stilled
the promptings of His own wisdom, and lifted Himself into the presence
of the Father, to ascertain what He was doing, and to receive the
inflow of His energy (John v. 19; xii. 44, 49).

These are great mysteries, which will engage our further consideration.
In the meanwhile, let us reason that if our Lord was so careful to
subordinate Himself to the Father that He might be all in all, it well
becomes us to restrain ourselves, to abstain from speaking our own
words or doing our own works, that Jesus may pour His energies through
our being, and that those searching words may be fulfilled in us also,
"Striving according to His working, which worketh in Me mightily."

VII

The Great Deeds of Prayer

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works
that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do;
because I go unto My Father."--JOHN xiv. 12.

Whenever our Lord was about to say something usually important, He
introduced it by the significant expression, "_Verily, verily_"; or, as
it is in the original, "Amen, amen, I say unto you." The words well
become His lips, who in the Book of Revelation is called "the Amen, the
Faithful and True Witness." They are really our Lord's most solemn
affirmation of the truth of what He was about to utter, as well as an
indication that something of importance is about to be revealed.

Indeed, it was necessary in the present case that the marvellous
announcement of the text should receive unusual confirmation, because
of its