It is impossible in a short chapter to study the whole of this
wonderful farewell address; only a few of its great features can be
gathered together. It began with an exhortation, a new
commandment,--"That ye love one another." We cannot understand how
really new this commandment was when given to the Master's friends.
The world had never before known such love as Jesus brought into its
wintry atmosphere. He had lived out the divine love among men; now his
friends were to continue that love. "As I have loved you, that ye also
love one another." Very imperfectly have the friends of the Master
learned that love; yet wherever the gospel has gone, a wave of
tenderness has rolled.

Next was spoken a word of comfort whose music has been singing through
the world ever since. "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in
God, believe also in me." Unless it be the Twenty-Third Psalm, no
other passage in all the Bible has had such a ministry of comfort as
the first words of the fourteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel. They
told the sorrowing disciples that their Master would not forget them,
that his work for them would not be broken off by his death, that he
was only going away to prepare a place for them, and would come again
to receive them unto himself, so that where he should be they might be
also. He assured them, too, that while he was going away, something
better than his bodily presence would be given them instead,--another
Comforter would come, so that they should not be left orphans.

Part of the Master's farewell words were answers to questions which his
friends asked him,--a series of conversations with one and another.
These men had their difficulties; and they brought these to Jesus, and
he explained them. First, Peter had a question. Jesus had spoken of
going away. Peter asked him, "Lord, whither goest thou?" Jesus told
him that where he was going he could not follow him then, but he should
follow him by and by. Peter was recklessly bold, and he would not have
it said that there was any place he could not follow his Master. He
declared that he would even lay down his life for his sake. "Wilt thou
lay down thy life for my sake?" answered the Master. "Wilt thou,
indeed?" Then he foretold Peter's sad, humiliating fall--that, instead
of laying down his life for his Lord.

After the words had been spoken about the Father's house and the coming
again of Jesus for his friends, Thomas had a question