106 THE REV. PROFESSOR A. S. GEDEN, M.A., D.D., 



mind of the Master and of His disciple. Nor is it meant that 

 Christ Himself laid more stress on one than on another. There 

 are some however, which seem to of!er a more definite and 

 satisfying insight into spiritual truth and the relations of God 

 to man, while others we think to be more limited in range, and 

 expressive to a less degree, if I may use the term, of the Divine 

 purpose or will. Perhaps judgement in this respect goes entirely 

 astray. 



The metaphors indicated, highly charged with spiritual signifi- 

 cance and instruction, are those of the harvest in the fourth 

 chapter and the true vine in the fifteenth. The latter is elaborated 

 in greater detail than any other representation or picture in the 

 Gospel. The speaker is Himself the true, the genuine (clXtjOlvti) 

 vine. His Father is the husbandman ; His hearers the branches. 

 And the simile is carried forward, as it were, into the future 

 history and fate of the branches, until it gradually fuses, as so 

 often in the discourses of the fourth Gospel, with the highest 

 ethical and spiritual precept and exhortation. Once more 

 however, the figure must not be pressed unduly in particulars. 

 No analogy goes, as has been said, on all-fours. There is of 

 necessity inequahty and divergence in some respects between 

 the simile and the meaning or lesson it is intended to convey. 

 The resemblance is never complete, or equivalent to identity. 

 In the world of nature the branches are the vine, and the latter 

 exists only in and through them ; they are throughout of the 

 same nature, possessed of the same properties and vitaHty. 

 While the branches cannot live except in the vine (ver. 6) ; if they 

 are lopped off, they wither and perish ; so on the other hand the 

 vine cannot and does not live except in the branches, and unless 

 it puts forth branches and leaves and fruit, it is at the best 

 dormant and quickly perishes. If that is Christ's meaning, it 

 is pantheism ; and some have found pantheism and pantheistic 

 teaching here. Where analogy and metaphor venture farthest 

 into detail, they most clearly reveal their own inadequacy. 

 The spiritual content always exceeds and overflows the limitations 

 of the earthly figure. 



The figure of the harvest (depia/juo^;, iv, 35) is so familiar, and 

 has been so fully adopted in secular as well as in sacred literature, 

 and in ordinary thought, that it seems hardly to need comment 

 or illustration. It is more fully elaborated under the form of a 

 parable in the Synoptic Gospels (Matt. xiii. 30 &. ; Luke x. 2) 

 and interpreted by Christ Himself ; and it reappears in the 



