What must it have meant to these men to stand there quietly, awed as they listen to Him praying that prayer.  How it reveals the deep consciousness of the intimacy of relation between Father and Son.  How it must have touched and stirred them to the very depths to hear Jesus telling the Father so simply about their faith in Himself, and their obedience, their break with their national allegiance to follow Himself.  And that word joy—­did they wonder about it?  And wonder more later that night, and the days after?  But the key-note of the music caught, and soon they were singing the same tune, and in the same pitch.

What wooing!  This was the closest wooing.  The fine wooing of this matchless Lover came to its superlative degree that night.  Positive degree, that touch upon their feet; comparative, that talk about the board and along the road; superlative, this taking them in for a brief moment into the secrecy of His inner communion with the Father.

Simplified Spelling.

And this closer wooing is not over.  It hasn’t quit yet.  That vine is still hanging out in fine view, all softly ablaze with the clear beautifying light, not of a fine Passover moon; no, the light of His face, His life, His words.  That vine becomes for all time to every heart the pictured meaning of abide.  And that word abide gives the whole of the true life.

We say Christian life, and rightly.  I like to say also, the true, the natural, life.  Any other is abnormal, unnatural, untrue.  I might say, “of the higher Christian life,” following the common usage of these latter days.  I still prefer to say true life.  Higher means that there is a lower life.  And that this lower is reckoned Christian, too.  That is the bother, the cheapening of things; we call a thing Christian which is less than the thing it is called.

Some of us need to go to school, and to sit down in the lower classes where spelling is taught.  We can spell believe in the common way with seven letters.  We must learn to spell it with four letters—­l-o-v-e.  We need to learn to spell love with a b and a y—­o-b-e-y.  We need to learn to spell obey with five letters a-b-i-d-e.  We need to find that abide is spelled best with four letters o-b-e-y.

We need to learn this simplified spelling a bit, then all will become simplified, living, loving, witnessing, praying, winning, singing with joy over the results of our new spelling in the syllables of daily life.  Blessed Master, we would come to school to Thee to-day.  Please let us start down in the spelling class.  And teach us, Thou Thyself teach us.

But the vine—­let us make that the central picture on the wall, with the Master in the picture pointing to the vine.  And under the picture the one word abide.  Then the whole story is in easy shape to help, pictured before our eyes.  Abide—­that is Jesus walking around in your shoes, looking out through your eyes, touching in your hand, speaking through your lips and your presence.  He is free to; that’s your side of it.  He’s unhindered.  He does it; that’s His side of it.