Then it was, while they were there together in that upper room, for the consummating of that blood-covenant of friendship, that Jesus said to his disciples: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do the things which I command you. No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends [friends in the covenant of blood-friendship now]; for all things that I heard from my Father, I have made known unto you.”[626] A common life, through oneness of blood, secures an absolute unreserve of intimacy; so that neither friend has aught to conceal from his other self. “Abide in me, and I in you; ... for apart from me ye can do nothing,” was the injunction of Jesus to his blood-covenant friends, at this hour of his covenant pledging. “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”[627] Then it was, also, that the prayer of Jesus for his new blood-covenant friends went up: “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee: even as thou gavest him authority over all flesh, that whatsoever [whomsoever] thou hast given him, to them he should give eternal life [in an eternal covenant of blood]. And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send [as the means of life], even Jesus Christ.... Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are.... Neither for these [here present] only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me.”[628] Here was declared the scope of this blood-covenant, and here was unfolded its doctrine. It was not an utterly new symbolism that Jesus was introducing into the religious thought of the world: it was rather a new meaning that he was introducing into, or that he was disclosing in, an already widely recognized symbolism. The world was familiar with the shadow of truth; Jesus now made clear to the world, the truth’s substance. Man’s longing to be a partaker of the divine nature, had manifested itself, through all the ages and everywhere. Jesus now showed how that longing of death-smitten man could be realized. “The appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ ... abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel”[629] of his blood-covenant.