he had died as the world's Redeemer. His name would have power to
open heaven's treasures only when the atonement had been made, and the
Intercessor was at God's right hand in heaven.

There was one other act in this farewell of Jesus. After he had ended
his gracious words, he lifted up his eyes in prayer to his Father. The
pleading is full of deep and tender affection. It is like that of a
mother about to go away from earth, and who is commending her children
to the care of the heavenly Father, when she must leave them without
mother-love and mother-shelter among unknown and dangerous enemies.

Every word of the wonderful prayer throbs with love, and reveals a
heart of most tender affection. While he had been with his friends,
Jesus had kept them in the shelter of his own divine strength. None of
them had been lost, so faithful had been his guardianship over
them--none but the son of perdition. He, too, had received faithful
care; it had not been the Good Shepherd's fault that he had perished.
He had been lost because he resisted the divine love, and would not
accept the divine will. There must have been a pang of anguish in the
heart of Jesus as he spoke to his Father of the one who had perished.
But the others all were safe. Jesus had guarded them through all the
dangers up to the present moment.

But now he is about to leave them. He knows that they must encounter
great dangers, and will not have him to protect them. The form of his
intercession for them is worthy of note. He does not ask that they
should be taken out of the world. This would have seemed the way of
tenderest love. But it is not the divine way to take us out of the
battle. These friends of Jesus had been trained to be his witnesses,
to represent him when he had gone away. Therefore they must stay in
the world, whatever the dangers might be. The prayer was that they
should be kept from the evil. There is but one evil. They were not to
be kept from persecution, from earthly suffering and loss, from pain or
sorrow: these are not the evils from which men's lives need to be
guarded. The only real evil is sin. Our danger in trouble or
adversity is not that we may suffer, but that we may sin. The pleading
of Jesus was that his friends might not be hurt in their souls, in
their spiritual life, by sin.

If enemies wrong or injure us, the peril is not that they may cause us
to suffer injustice, but that in our suffering we may lose the