of prayer knots up the kindly act.
The warm hand-grasp knots the timely word. The added word and act tie up
all that's gone before. Hate imitates love the best it can. But its
intense fires are never so hot.

The rest of John's book is simple. It is tying knots on the ends of
threads. Five knots are tied on the ends of these same three threads we
have been tracing.

There's a triple knot on the end of the blue thread of acceptance; an
ugly tangled knotty knot on the end of that black thread of opposition
and rejection; and a knot of wondrous beauty on the end of that yellow
thread of winsome wooing. Chapters eighteen and nineteen tie two of
these, the black and the glory-coloured.

Chapters thirteen through seventeen, is the first knot on the faith
thread, the betrayal-night knot. Chapter twenty is the second, the
Resurrection knot; chapter twenty-one the extra knot, the love-service
knot. We take a look now at the patient skilful tying of the first knot
on the end of that true-blue faith thread.

It's taken a good bit of careful work to _get_ that thread, tearing
loose, cleansing, spinning, twisting, careful handling, till at last a
good thread is gotten, and is being woven into the warp. Now a knot is
tied on its end to hold what has been gotten, and keep it from ravelling
out, for there's a desperately hard place coming in the weaving.

There's a clean finish at the end of the twelfth chapter of John.
There's a sharp break, an abrupt turn off to something quite different.
The direct-wooing case is made up. There is no more added to it, except
the indirect, the incidental. The evidence is all in. Wondrous wooing it
has been, in its winsomeness, its faithfulness, its rare power. Now it
is over. It's done, and well done. That door is shut, the national door.

Now another door opens. The inner door into Jesus' heart is being opened
by Him. And the inner door into the disciples' heart is being knocked at
that it, too, may open. It is the betrayal night. Jesus is alone with
the inner circle. They have received Him. Now He will receive them into
closer intimacy than yet before. They have opened their hearts to His
love. Now He opens His heart to let out more the love that is there.
Love accepted is free to reveal itself. And love revealing its warmth
and tenderness and depth yet more calls out quickly a deeper, a tenderer
love.

It's the Passover evening. They have met, the twelve and their Master,
by appointment,