And, further, we shall continue in His love by obedience, inasmuch as every emotion which finds expression in our daily life is strengthened by the fact that it is expressed. The love which works is love which grows, and the tree that bears fruit is the tree that is healthy and increases. So note how all these deepest things of Christian teaching come at last to a plain piece of practical duty. We talk about the mysticism of John's Gospel, about the depth of these last sayings of Jesus Christ. Yes! they are mystical, they are deep--unfathomably deep, thank God!--but connected by the shortest possible road with the plainest possible duties. 'Let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous.' It is of no use to talk about communion with Jesus Christ, and abiding in Him, in possession of His love, and all those other properly mystical sides of Christian experience, unless you verify them for yourselves by the plain way of practice. Doing as Christ bids us, and doing that habitually, and doing it gladly, then, and only then, are we in no danger of losing ourselves on the heights, or of forgetting that Christ's mission has for its last result the influencing of character and of conduct. 'If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love, even as I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love.' III. Lastly, note the joy which follows on this practical obedience. 'These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain,' (or 'might _be_') 'in you, and that your joy might be full.' 'My joy might be in you'--a strange time to talk of His 'joy.' In half an hour he would be in Gethsemane, and we know what happened there. Was Christ a joyful man? He was a 'Man of sorrows' but one of the old Psalms says, 'Thou hast loved righteousness ... therefore God hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.' The deep truth that lies there is the same that He here claims as being fulfilled in His own experience, that absolute surrender and submission in love to the beloved commands of a loving Father made Him--in spite of sorrows, in spite of the baptism with which He was baptized, in spite of all the burden and the weight of our sins--the most joyful of men.