"These are in the world; and I am coming to Thee" (John 17:11.)

Have you ever known what it is to lean, with intimate and long-accustomed reliance upon a friend fully worthy of your trust-one who combined in a noble way the qualities of strength and tenderness, who had allowed himself to enter deeply into your mind, your problems, your fears and hopes; one linked to you by a thousand delicate ties of association as well as sympathy? And then, to announce to you, it may be on a sudden, that he must leave you-perhaps for the other hemisphere of earth, perhaps for the many mansions out of sight?

Such was the experience of the disciples. For three wonderful years they had gone in and out with this perfect Companion, this absolutely true and wise Leader and Lord-

"No more to see Thy face-to meet no more
Till on that undiscovered unknown shore!
To turn to life again, and toil our day,
Glory so distant still, and Thou away,
While earth's dark future on us frowns, all viewed
As one severe extended solitude!"

Such, faintly imaged, would be their outlook. And we know what, as a matter of fact, their actual experience of its apparent realization was, when for one complete day and two very long nights (between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection) they had lost sight of His presence, and as yet did not know how it was to be more than restored.

A more wonderful, more beautiful view of the life which they were yet to experience is given us in the Acts and Epistles-a life of light, liberty, and divine companionship. In spite of widely differing characters and temperaments, these men after a very few weeks (at the close of which their Lord actually did "leave the world ") entered upon an existence in which the highest happiness which they had enjoyed at the side of their visible Lord Jesus, was far surpassed, so to speak. What was their new-found, their open secret? It was-so they said with one voice, and their life amply proved it-a Risen Saviour and a living and indwelling Paraclete, in whose power they acted, suffered, preached, and wrote like men transformed into a "sober certainty of waking bliss." The past was lighted up by the triumph of their redeeming Lord, in the rays of which even their own unfaithfulness to Him was so shot through with mercy that the memory of it apparently did not depress them. The present was one wonderful experience of the quiet courage which can say, "I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me," and the future was changed from gloom literally into glory by the certainty of the return of their Beloved.

This great paradox is an abiding gospel for our own daily need. It assures us (for whom also the Lord is no longer in the world) that nevertheless He is so with us "all the days," that our past, present, and to-morrow are to be transformed like theirs. Our life also is to shine with the tender and living daylight of His presence-a presence which is such as to be positively better than it would be if able every day to visit some Jerusalem, or Bethany, or Nazareth, and there to see His visible features and get His spoken answers to our words. Such a presence as that, conditioned as we are now, would be limited to the narrowest locality. As it is, Jesus is with His disciple, at all times, and in all places. Bishop Moule