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tion: — It was given to St. John long after the other evangelists had described the Passion to add some details of the deepest interest. The Transfiguration and Gethsemane St. John omits, but here records the significance of both. The Lord passed through a season of profound agitation — the earnest of the Garden; but out of the darkness light unspeakable arose — the reflection of the Mount.

I. THE LORD ENTERS INTO THE DARKNESS OF HIS HOUR AND PROCLAIMS ITS GLORY.

1. "The hour" is the sacred term that marks the Passion as the consummation of the Redeemer's work. He entered the world in the "fulness of time"; He wrought His preparatory work in the "days of the Son of Man"; and now, after ages of waiting had passed into days of fulfilment, the days are compressed into an "hour." From this moment the shadow of the cross throws its sacred gloom upon every incident and word. The Passion has begun, and from that moment went on in its ever-deepening variety of grief, through the indignities of His enemies, the abandonment of His friends, the sense of the world's guilt, to that infinite woe which took from man his curse. It was the first more direct onset since the temptation. It was the beginning of the awful strain on the resources of His lower nature under which He would fain cry "Save me," but that He knows "for this purpose," etc.; the same pressure which caused Him to ask that the cup might pass, a prayer the next moment recalled in the submission of perfect victory.

2. The darkness is not past, but the true light already shines. His first word on entering the dark valley is — "The hour...glorified." His lowest humiliation was His highest dignity. The cross in which His servants gloried He here glories in. In it He beholds the glorification of the Father's attributes (ver. 28), an exhibition of the glory of Divine justice visiting upon sin its penalty, and the glory of the Divine mercy providing salvation for the sinner. To this the Redeemer's final "Lo! I come," there is a sublime response from heaven. For the third time the Father proclaims aloud the secret of His constant complacency in the sacrifice of His Son.

3. The record teaches us two errors we must avoid.

(1) We must not by our feeble theories mitigate the sorrow that wrought out our redemption and exchange it into a mere demonstration of such charity and self-sacrifice as man might rival and which could never redeem man's soul.

(2) It tells us, too, that the Redeemer was filled with a sense of His own glory and His Father's complacency even while He suffered for our sins. He presented Himself as an oblation for man's sin to manifest the love that provided the propitiation, and to declare the glory of the Divine name in the harmony of its perfections.

II. FROM THE HOUR OF THE PASSION TO THE LIFTING UP ON THE CROSS THE TRANSITION IS OBVIOUS. Here also we perceive the blending, of opposite emotions.

1. St. John has already made us familiar with this expression, which serves the double purpose of signifying the crucifixion and the exaltation. But in the gospels it is used to express the act of man that lifted Jesus to His cross. In the beginning of His ministry, our Lord spoke to Nicodemus of this lifting up; in the middle He told the Jews that they would do it; and now He refers to it at the close. But the cross is the symbol here of His own reproach, "Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree."

2. But while His soul is troubled — and only in His deepest anguish does He mention His soul — Jesus still rejoiced in spirit. On either side is a word of triumph.

(1) "The prince of this world is cast out." He had at an earlier time, and in a higher sphere, "beheld Satan as lightning," etc. Now He beholds, as the result of His redeeming death, Satan fall from his power on earth — not, indeed, with the swiftness of lightning, but absolutely and surely.

(2) "I will draw all men unto Me" expresses the tranquil assurance that the virtue of His death would draw in due time — when preached in His word and testified by His spirit — all the children of men to Himself.

3. Here also are two lessons that guard our thoughts.

(1) The reality of Satan's relation to our sin and the world's redemption. A doctrine of atonement finds acceptance, which rejects the personality of the being to whom our Lord alludes. But in so doing they must reconstruct the entire doctrine of the New Testament, wrest the Saviour's words to their own peril, and undermine the whole economy of redemption, which assumes that Satan is the representative and ruler of the world's wickedness, whose power and law is broken.

(2) That through our redemption we are delivered from the reign of sin; that the drawing of Christ is as universal in its influence as the virtue of His atonement; that we may enter into our Master's joy and exult over a vanquished enemy.

III. WE PASS FROM THE HOUR, THROUGH THE LIFTING UP, TO THE SELF-SACRIFICING DEATH WHICH GIVES LIFE TO MULTITUDES. Here again we have two contending emotions.

1. All His allusions to the coming end connect His own loss with our gain, His death with our life. So it is here, only the emblem is the most affecting He ever employed, expressive of the entireness of His surrender, and the absolute connection between His death and the abundant life of His people. What in the similitude of the corn of wheat expresses the deep anguish of this prelude to Gethsemane the Lord does not say. There was a mystery in the anguish of His soul that nothing in the secret of human dying will account for.

2. But the rejoicing of His spirit keeps not silence. He passes immediately to the much fruit that would grow from His death, the example He would set to His saints, and the supreme honour which He and His imitators in the self-renouncing charity of holiness would partake together throughout eternity. Nor is His rejoicing marred by the prospect that His death will not give life to all mankind. And should we be discontented when our Master sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied?Conclusion:

1. The only word of exhortation that we hear in this solemn hour is, "If any man serve Me, let him follow Me." This is the voice of Him who passes through the garden to the cross. There is no loyalty to the Redeemer which does not share His passion. For Him we must sacrifice our sins, and, in imitation of His last example, must live, and, if need be, die for others.

2. "Where I am," etc.; for a short season in the gloom of sorrow and conflict, but forever in His glory.

3. "If any man serve Me," etc.; heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.

(W. B. Pope, D. D.)

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KJV: And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.

WEB: Jesus answered them, "The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.