Here was the answer, '_I am the true Vine_.' As the words, '_I am the good Shepherd_,' explained all the previous uses of _that_ symbol, and showed why they were not fictitious, so this sentence interprets all the passages of the Old Testament which connect the life of trees with the life of man. 'You have been told that you were the branches of a vine; that God was pruning you, and lopping off dead boughs from you. Now, look into the heart of this mystery. In me you have been made one; from me you have drawn life. _My Father_ Himself has been, and _is_, the _Husbandman_. It was over His own Son that He was watching. It was the branches in ME which were not bearing fruit that He was taking away. It was every branch in ME that beareth fruit which He was purging, that it might bring forth more fruit.' Here was the interpretation of the unity of the nation; for here is the interpretation of the unity of man. We shall find no wider, or deeper, or more practical one. The more we apply it to all the circumstances of our lives, and to all the problems of history, the more satisfactory it will appear to us. But first, as always, Christ Himself applies it to the persons immediately before Him. '_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: for without me ye can do nothing._' The words in the 13th chapter, '_Ye are clean, but not all_,' led me to anticipate what I should say about these, '_Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you_.' I said that He treated them as a pure and holy body, and that the unclean person was he who would not belong to the body, but chose to dwell in his own isolation. What is added to that statement here is, that Christ's word was that which purified them. They had no unity of their own, or purity of their own. He spoke to them in their inmost hearts, claimed them as His. That quickening, uniting, purifying word, going forth from Him, was the source of their life, their purity, their unity. What they had to do was not to put forth self-willed efforts for the sake of making themselves better, or wiser, or more united, but simply to abide in Him, to believe that they were His, to act as if they were. I resort to other forms of expression, as if I hoped to make that which He chose clearer; but, in fact, that is immeasurably plainer, and fuller, and deeper, than any I can imagine. '_Abide in me_' at once recals the natural analogy, while it is in strictness appropriate only to the condition of a voluntary being. It implies a possible separation, an act of adhesion; and yet it implies that this separation is altogether monstrous and anomalous; that this adhesion is merely the refusal to break a cord of love with which God is actually binding us.