Father that you may be bearers of such fruit." The "things asked of the Father in Christ's name" are that the disciple may be a vessel meet for the Master's use, a branch pregnant with holy fruit; and there is therefore a deep and living correspondence between the bearing and the asking. Now here again is the operation of the Spirit, "the Spirit of grace and Zech. xii, 10 of supplications." The prayer here meant is no mere devout performance of duty, the due utterance of an expression of reverence and dependence; it is prayer in the Holy Ghost," who "maketh in

Jude 20.

Rom. viii, 26, 27. tercession for us

according to

(the will of) God." It is the prayer of a heart filled with Him, and therefore filled with the humble but intense desire that His will may be done, and in particular that His implement may be used for His glory. Results of life, word, and work in answer to such prayer are "fruit that remaineth." And indeed it is "fruit of the Spirit."

I write1 close to the tenth anniversary of the

THE LATE MISS F. R. HAVERGAL. 139

blessed death of that truly sanctified servant of God, the late Miss Frances Havergal. Her life and work has just now been much in my mind, with its rich lesson and holy example. Speaking not for myself only but assuredly for a multitude of other readers, I may truly say that I never read her words of witness for our Lord without a sense of peculiar spiritual weight, influence, and holy persuasion, coming from those words to my heart. In a very marked manner her fruit seems to me to "remain;" the personal warmth and emphasis of her testimony "remains," as if the page had a living voice. And for my part I attribute this to the fact that while that devoted Christian was kept by the Spirit of God remarkably loyal to the foundation truths of the ancient and only Gospel of grace she was by the same Spirit led to, and kept in, an attitude of unreserved self-consecration to the holy Master's work and will which characterized her every effort, literary or otherwise, in His service. By the Spirit she asked to be fruitful, and by the Spirit she bore fruit indeed, "fruit that remaineth," and shall remain. In our measure, as we too are "vessels of the Lord," let it be likewise with us, by the same

secret.

Is it not somewhere in this direction that the humble Christian may look for God's fulfilment, in His own way, of that mysterious promise, John xiv. 12. "Greater works than these shall he do"? Very possibly these words bear in their ultimate meaning not so much on the personal work of the individual Christian as on that of the Christian as a member of the Body and Bride of Christ; as if to say, "He shall have a real, living, full share in that wonderful work of ingathering and upbuilding which I his Master did but 'begin,' leaving it to My Bride to do more in that See Col. i. 24. kind than I had done." But such a view of the passage can only be true if it leaves clear the fact that wonderful possibilities of fruitful service are open, in the life of the Spirit, to the individual disciple who by the Spirit really lives and walks as a servant and implement of Christ.

Acts i. 1.

John xiv. 26; xvi. 13; xvii. 7.

Another class of passages in this

divine Discourse bears explicitly

upon the teaching work of the Holy Spirit

THE TEACHING “UNCTION.”

141

Here, I willingly and reverently own, we have a plain primary reference to the special knowledge and authoritative, infallible teaching of the inspired Apostles. But I do not think the words can be wholly limited to them. An instructive parallel is 1 John ii. 20, 27, where an inspired Apostle is addressing all the "little children" of his flock, and reminding them of their heavenly "unction," and of its mysterious power to give supernatural knowledge. And I gather from that passage that the true disciple is promised, not apostolic infallibility, but a more than natural instinct, in the use of divine revelation, to discern between essential error and essential truth in the things of salvation; a divinely given feeling, if I may put it so, for the sound word and against the illusory, counterfeiting substitute for it; and that this is the gift, the presence, the light, of the Holy Spirit in the soul regenerated by Him. Like many other great promises it needs to be read side by side with complementary and cautionary truths; but it is there, it is a reality, it is never to be forgotten, it is to be welcomed and used.

And the Holy Worker is to be blessed and thanked.

John xvii. 11,

In closing I point to those precious words of the High Priestly Prayer which speak of the "keeping" and the "sanctifying" of the disciples by the Father, who has given them eternal life in the Son : Holy 15, 17. Father, keep in Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, as We are; " " I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil;" "Sanctify them in Thy truth; Thy word is truth." Need we'elaborately explain that here the Spirit's work is to be seen, though His name is not named? How in fact was this prayer of the Son answered in the life and history of the Church of the children of God? It was by the effusion of the Spirit, by whom, in a sense and mode so large and full that it was more than compensation for the seen presence of the Son, the true members and the true body were 'governed and sanctified" in the new, wonderful life of the Gospel. By Him they possessed,