e shall give you another
Comforter, that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit
of truth."_--JOHN xiv. 16.

_"It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not
away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I
will send Him unto you."_--JOHN xvi. 7.

It was the night in which He was betrayed. Jesus and His disciples were
spending their last hours together before His death. For Him the morrow
could bring with it no surprise. He knew that His hour was come--the
hour to which all other hours of His past had pointed; and He was ready.
Before He left that Upper Room, He lifted up His eyes to heaven and
said, "Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son." But to the disciples
that night was a night of darkness, and terror, and confusion. They
remembered how He had told them He must die; they knew the bloodhounds
in Jerusalem were on His track; they could see the shadow's black edge
creeping nearer and nearer; and yet they could do nothing; they could
not even persuade Him that anything needed to be done. Nay, it almost
seemed as if He were taking part with His enemies against them. "It is
expedient for you," He said, "that I go away"--veiling in His pity the
horror of His going. "Expedient" for them? How could He speak like that?
Was He not everything to them? If He went away, what was to befall them?
They would be as sheep in the midst of wolves, as orphans in an unkindly
world. Is it any wonder that sorrow filled their hearts?

And not only to these His first disciples, but to many of His followers
in later days, this word of Jesus has proved a hard saying. If only, we
think, He were with us as He was with Peter and James and John; if only
we could hear Him teach in our streets, or in our church, as once He
taught in the streets of Jerusalem and the synagogue at Nazareth; if
only He could enter our homes, as once He entered the home at Bethany,
how easy it would be to believe! But, now He is no longer here, the air
is filled with doubting voices, and faith is very hard.

So sometimes we speak. But, have we noticed, this is never the language
of the New Testament. To begin with, it is not the language of Christ.
There is an unmistakable emphasis in His words: "Because I have spoken
these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless, I
tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go away." When Paul
was a prisoner in Rome, he wrote to the Philippians, sayi