The last thought that is here is that this union and fruitfulness lead to the noble ends of glorifying God and increasing discipleship.
Herein is My Father glorified, that ye hear much fruit.' Christ's life was all for the glorifying of God. The lives which are ours in name--but being drawn from Him, in their depths are much rather the life of Christ in us than our lives--will have the same end and the same issue.
Ah, dear brethren, we come here to a very sharp test for us all. I wonder how many of us there are, on whom men looking think more loftily of God and love Him better, and are drawn to Him by strange longings. How many of us are there about whom people will say, There must be something in the religion that makes a man like that'? How many of us are there, to look upon whom suggests to men that God, who can make such a man, must be infinitely sweet and lovely? And yet that is what we should all be--mirrors of the divine radiance, on which some eyes, that are too dim and sore to bear the light as it streams from the Sun, may look, and, beholding the reflection, may learn to love. Does God so shine in me that I lead men to magnify His name? If I am dwelling with Christ it will be so.
I shall not know it. Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone'; but, in meek unconsciousness of the glory that rays from us, we may walk the earth, reflecting the light and making God known to our fellows.
And if thus we abide in Him and bear fruit we shall be,' or (as the word might more accurately be rendered), we shall become His disciples.' The end of our discipleship is never reached on earth: we never so much are as we are in the process of becoming, His true followers and servants.
If we bear fruit because we are knit to Him, the fruit itself will help us to get nearer Him, and so to be more His disciples and more fruitful. Character produces conduct, but conduct rests on character, and strengthens the impulses from which it springs. And thus our action as Christian men and women will tell upon our inward lives as Christians,and the more our outward conduct is conformed to the pattern of Jesus Christ, the more shall we love Him in our inmost hearts. We ourselves shall eat of the fruit which we ourselves have borne to Him.
The alternatives are before us--in Christ, living and fruitful; out of Christ, barren, and destined to be burned. As the prophet says, Will men take of the wood of the vine for any work?' Vine-wood is worthless, its only use is to bear fruit; and if it does not do that, there is only one thing to be done with it, and that is, They cast it into the fire, and it is burned.'
