a very manifoldedness of life. Otherwise would it have remained alone. This is the great
paradox of the Kingdom of God - a paradox which has its symbol and analogon in
nature, and which has also almost become the law of progress in history: that life which
has not sprung of death abideth alone, and is really death, and that death is life. A
paradox this, which has its ultimate reason in this, that sin has entered into the world.
And as to the Master, the Prince of Life, so to the disciples, as bearing forth the life. If, in
this world of sin, He must fall as the seed-corn into the ground and die, that many may
spring of Him, so must they also hate their life, that they may keep it unto life eternal.
Thus serving, they must follow Him, that where He is they may also be, for the Father
will honour them that honour the Son.
It is now sufficiently clear to us, that our Lord spake primarily to these Greeks, and
secondarily to His disciples, of the meaning of His impending Death, of the necessity of
faithfulness to Him in it, and of the blessing attaching thereto. Yet was not unconscious
of the awful realities which this involved.45 He was true, Man, and His Human Soul was
troubled in view of it:46 True Man, therefore He felt it; True Man, therefore He spake it,
and so also sympathised with them in their coming struggle. Truly Man, but also truly
more than Man - and hence both the expressed desire, and at the same tine the victory
over that desire: 'What shall I say? 47 "Father, save Me from this hour?48 But for this
cause came I unto this hour!"' And the seeming discord is resolved, as both the Human
and the Divine in the Son - faith and sight - join in glorious accord; 'Father, glorify Thy
Name!'
45. vv. 27, 28 a.
46. Concurrebat horror mortis et ardor obedientiæ. - Bengel.
47. Quid dicam? non, quid eligam? - Bengel.
48. Professor Westcott has declared himself in favour of regarding this clause, not as a
question, but as a prayer, But this seems to me incompatible alike with the preceding and
the succeeding clause.
Such appeal and prayer, made in such circumstances, could not have remained
unacknowledged, if He was the Messiah, Son of God. As at His Baptism, so at this
Baptism of self-humiliation and absolute submission to suffering, came the Voice from
Heaven, audible to all, but its words intelligible only to Him: 'I both glorified it, and will
again glorify it!'49 Words these, which carried the Divine seal of confirmation to all
Christ's past work, and assured it for that which was to come. The words of confirmation
could only be for Himself; 'the Voice' was for all. What mattered it, that some spoke of it
as thunder on a spring -evening, while others, with more reason, thought of Angel-
Voices? To him it bore the assurance, which had all along been the ground of His
claims, as it was the comfort in His Sufferings, that, as God had in the past glorified
Himself in the Son, so would it be in the future in the perfecting of the work given Him to
do. And this He now spake, as, looking on those Greeks as the emblem and firstfruits of
the work finished in His Passion, He saw of the travail of His Soul, and was satisfied. Of
both He spake in the prophetic present. To His view judgement had already come to
this world, as it lay in the power of the Evil One, since the Prince of it was cast out from