Pax Vobiscum | Page 9

Him to us. What is passed on is His method of getting it. There
is, indeed, a sense in which we can share another's joy or another's
sorrow. But that is another matter. Christ is the source of Joy to men in
the sense in which He is the source of Rest. His people share His life,
and therefore share its consequences, and one of these is Joy. His
method of living is one that in the nature of things produces Joy. When
He spoke of His Joy remaining with us He meant in part that the causes
which produced it should continue to act. His followers, that is to say,
by repeating His life would experience its accompaniments. His Joy,
His kind of Joy, would remain with them.
The medium through which this Joy comes is next explained: "He that
abideth in Me, the same bringeth forth much fruit." Fruit first, Joy next;
the one the cause or medium of the other. Fruit-bearing is the necessary
antecedent; Joy both the necessary consequent and the necessary
accompaniment. It lay partly in the bearing fruit, partly in the
fellowship which made that possible. Partly, that is to say, Joy lay in
mere constant living in Christ's presence, with all that that implied of
peace, of shelter, and of love; partly in the influence of that Life upon
mind and character and will; and partly in the inspiration to live and
work for others, with all that that brings of self-riddance and Joy in
others' gain. All these, in different ways and at different times, are
sources of pure Happiness. Even the simplest of them--to do good to
other people--is an instant and infallible specific. There is no mystery
about Happiness whatever. Put in the right ingredients and it must
come out. He that abideth in Him will bring forth much fruit; and
bringing forth much fruit is Happiness. The infallible receipt for
Happiness, then, is to do good; and the infallible receipt for doing good
is to abide in Christ. The surest proof that all this is a plain matter of

Cause and Effect is that men may try every other conceivable way of
finding Happiness, and they will fail. Only the right cause in each case
can produce the right effect.
Then the Christian experiences are our own making? In the same sense
in which grapes are our own making, and no more. All fruits
_grow_--whether they grow in the soil or in the soul; whether they are
the fruits of the wild grape or of the True Vine. No man can make
things grow. He can get them to grow by arranging all the
circumstances and fulfilling all the conditions. But the growing is done
by God. Causes and effects are eternal arrangements, set in the
constitution of the world; fixed beyond man's ordering. What man can
do is to place himself in the midst of a chain of sequences. Thus he can
get things to grow: thus he himself can grow. But the grower is the
Spirit of God.
What more need I add but this--test the method by experiment. Do not
imagine that you have got these things because you know how to get
them. As well try to feed upon a cookery book. But I think I can
promise that if you try in this simple and natural way, you will not fail.
Spend the time you have spent in sighing for fruits in fulfilling the
conditions of their growth. The fruits will come, must come. We have
hitherto paid immense attention to effects, to the mere experiences
themselves; we have described them, extolled them, advised them,
prayed for them--done everything but find out what caused them.
Henceforth let us deal with causes. "To be," says Lotze, "is to be in
relations." About every other method of living the Christian life there is
an uncertainty. About every other method of acquiring the Christian
experiences there is a "perhaps." But in so far as this method is the way
of nature, it cannot fail. Its guarantee is the laws of the universe, and
these are "the Hands of the Living God."

THE TRUE VINE
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in
me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth
fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean
through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in
you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine;
no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the

branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth
much fruit: