is certainly no objection against our doing,) as expressing not merely one idea in three forms, increasing upon each other in intensity, but three different ideas, though, to be sure, after all, they constitute one sentiment and practically amount to the same thing. I shall take for granted that Jesus means to express three distinct thoughts when he calls himself the way, the truth, and the life, and it will be my endeavor to show what those designations severally imply. - - The way, the truth, — the life. — In regard to these expressions, I would begin by remarking, generally, that he who knew what was in man," seems here to have chosen his words so as most felicitously and forcibly to reveal and show up to the human soul, every human soul,-its three greatest wants and yearnings,-or, rather, the three most prominent forms in which the grand want of the human heart manifests itself. There is a craving in man, -in every man, (poorly concealed and never wholly appeased by the best worldly show and satisfaction,) a craving to find out that path which it is said "no fowl knoweth, and the vulture's eye hath not seen;" a sacred curiosity and a solemn anxiety in general to know the truth, the one thing needful; and, finally, a deep-seated longing to live by the truth, and thus to possess that good part which nothing can ever take away. What is the way," the way of the Spirit," not only through this world but out of this world; where is the way of truth - the way to the truth amidst so many diverse and adverse opinions and paths; and, finally, among so many shows of life, so many preparatory circumstances of life,— where is life itself, that life which may really, without any misnomer, be called living? It seems to me, that it is not over-refining to insist, that in these three forms we have the stress of the human heart's utterance in regard to its greatest wants and necessities. But let us consider each of these three forms of the great human want, which we have indicated, and which Jesus himself indicates, by itself. We shall see that, although there is a vital and radical connection between them, though they are but branches of one root, they are yet sufficiently distinct to demand a separate consideration, and that they strengthen each other, and send down increased strength into the truth which lies at the bottom of all. The way, and the truth, and the life. First, then, there is a way, which, as we said, no fowl knoweth, and yet which every soul incarnate in these earthly tabernacles yearns to know. Poetry only expresses the universal feeling of the human heart in that lofty invocation of hers: "Answer me, burning stars of night! Where is the spirit gone, That past the reach of human sight, The Roman Emperor Adrian, in that dying address to his soul, which is ascribed to him, and which has been made over into a Christian hymn by an English poet, did, though in a style somewhat playful for the solemnities of a death-bed, but give utterance to the same universal yearning of our finite but immortal nature : "Fond, flattering, fleeting spirit - thou Guest and companion of this clay! No more with wonted jests to lighten up this brow?" But there may be hours during life, more sober and solemn than the death-hour shall be, there are such seasons, when the soul, neither stupified, nor made giddy by physical derangement or unnatural opiates, distinctly, though it were but momentarily, beholds the great realities that await it, sees the dread brink from which the last plunge must be made, from which souls are already daily hourly plunging-souls, perchance, to which it is attached by ties which, though stretched, cannot be sundered ties that powerfully draw surviving affection up out of this world and impel it to ask in earnest, “what has become of the departed-whither have they departed and where do they dwell? what has become of them, and what, after a few more years, perhaps days, shall become of us?" And to such a state of mind the language of Jesus to his disciples, from amidst which our text is taken, comes directly home. "Let not your heart be - troubled" let it not be troubled either on account of others, or on account of yourselves not on their account, for whatever their character and spiritual condition have been, may "" ye believe in God," a God of mercy, no less than of justice and of holiness, and who is not a God of the dead but of the living, because all live to Him, and wherever your departed are, they are in his presence, of whom it was said, "Though I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there." But if they were disciples and followers of the Son of Man-he saith, “Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions"- many apartments. This world is but one mansion in the great temple of the universe, “I go" through the veil into other apartments of this house "to prepare a place for you for all who live and die in me, who make my cause their own; of such I say, "where I am, there shall also my servant be " In words like these, for I have not taken pains to distinguish his express words from what his spirit assures me he would have said, if he has not virtually said it here. and there in his Gospel, does Jesus still, as he did in the first instance, encourage the children of men to come to him, and through him to the Father. "Whither 1 go," he says, "ye know, and the way ye know." We know, indeed, a little more than the first disciples did, than they were willing to know before the event. We know as much as this, that Jesus has gone down through the dark road of the valley of shadows home to his and our Father. Whither he has gone, we know, and yet our hearts whisper that beyond the grave the way we know not. Let us then consider the answer which Jesus still made to his disciples, when he found they persisted in trying to extort from him a local and material definition and description of his and their future condition, and what that answer should teach us. It seems to me, that Jesus, finding that they would not take spiritually his figurative language, felt that he must close the door at once upon this disposition to localize and materialize, (if I may say so,) spiritual things, and that he did so when he pronounced that comprehensive sentence, I am the way." Was not this as much as to say, that it mattered nothing to them which was the way, in any literal sense of the word, or whether, for spirits, there were any such thing as change of place. Perhaps it would be inferring too much from our Savior's language to say, that he would have us desist from attaching any ideas of locality to the spiritual world and the condition of the soul. And yet I cannot but feel that such is the tendency of his teachings. Certainly it seems to me that whosoever believeth in Jesus and is fully im bued with the sentiment that he is the way, will not be greatly exercised about questions of where and whither. We naturally send our thoughts upward in prayer, and yet is it not, surely, that we think our God is above rather than beneath? While we are looking in one direction for heaven, the worshippers of an opposite hemisphere are looking heavenward in exactly the opposite direction; we are all, however, looking out from this little earth into immensity, and feeling for Him of whom the infinite is the home. A popular writer of our day, in his Philosophy of a Future State, seems to believe that there is somewhere a centre of this immense and infinite universe, and there in the midst of suns of suns, a literal throne of God and of glory; and he indulges in mathematical calcula tions and astronomical speculations on this subject. But this really seems like child's play in the presence of the great spiritual realities which Jesus has revealed, and which centre in him. Jesus says, with deep significance and strong emphasis, "I am the way; " and whoever is found in him, in his spirit and obedience to his precepts, is in the way, and the more he grows in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the farther is he on in that only way which the soul recognises, the way to that heaven (not which makes the soul happy, but) which the happy and holy soul makes. It has become natural for us to feel that we are journeying onward to unknown places, and often to ask ourselves whither. But the more we learn to live in Christ, the more unconcerned shall we feel about the whither of our destiny, and the more exclusively concerned about building up in ourselves and helping each other attain that character and spirit which alone can make any place |