These were the questions which that Passover-night was to answer. Perhaps you will think that as I have spoken so much of Christ's love to the world, of Christ as the Son of Man, I may shrink from what seems the exclusive tone of this sentence: '_He loved_ His own; _He loved_ them _to the end_.' Shrink from it! No, brethren, I would do the utmost to bring forth the full force of these words; to impress their meaning upon you. I would have you observe how carefully we are told that these disciples were chosen by Him; that His love to them did not depend upon their faith, but their faith upon His love. I would have you observe how this love was manifested to them all as a body--to one and another of them individually; how they were taught that it was only this love which was sustaining them then, or could sustain them afterwards. Unless we do that, we shall never understand how they were witnesses against that religious world out of which they were called,--that world of sects and parties,--that world where all were choosing for themselves, and none were acknowledging a loving Will which was ruling them; where all were striving for their own views and opinions, and none were confessing their relations to each other; where each was fighting for ascendency, and none was content to be a servant. We shall never understand how these Apostles were witnesses for the original calling of their nation, how they really represented the tribes in which God had put His name, and through which all the families of the earth were to be blessed. We shall never understand what that Church was which they were to bring out of these twelve tribes to be a witness to the world what its relation to God was, and how, by forgetting that relation, it had sunk into a poor, dark, divided, selfish world. If we look upon His last supper as the special education of the Apostles for that work which they had to do in the world, we shall prize the part of this Gospel upon which we are now entering; we shall perceive how all the discourses of our Lord that are recorded in the other Evangelists, from the time that they left their fathers' ships, or the receipt of custom, till the time that He entered with them into Jerusalem, find their fullest illustration, their deepest root, in the dialogues and in the prayer which St. John has reported to us; we shall perceive how the institution of the Eucharist--which, as I said when I was speaking of the discourse at Capernaum, it was no part of St. John's function to announce--is more perfectly explained, both in its principle and its effects, by these specially sacramental interviews, than it is in any other part of the New Testament. And we shall begin to enter--it can be but the beginning of a lesson which must last to our life's end--into the purport of that sign which, whether it preceded or followed the giving the bread and the pouring out of the wine, teaches us how they are to be received.