'_Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you._' Their thoughts of the '_little while_' had been half sad, half frivolous. They supposed that He could at once tell them what He meant by telling them how long He would be absent, and in what place and under what circumstances He would meet them again. He presents the subject in an altogether different light; for He tells them that the little while in which He shall be hidden from them will be an hour of travail and of death, and that the little while of His reappearance will be the hour of the birth of a man into the world. We feel at once that these cannot be metaphors; that if the death of Christ is anything, and the resurrection of Christ is anything, this must be _the_ language, the most exact and living which Christ Himself could speak, or we could hear, to determine the signification of them. Here, as throughout the conversation, our Lord connects the world with His disciples, and at the same time contrasts the one with the other. They will mourn that they have lost a friend; the world will rejoice that it has got rid of an enemy. But their ultimate joy must be that a MAN, _the_ Man for whom the world has been waiting so long, has been born into it. They can have no joy for themselves which is not a joy for mankind, which is not a thanksgiving for its victory. '_And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you._' They should see Him returning the Conqueror of death, the Conqueror of man's enemy; that should be a joy not dependent upon the sight of their eyes, not dependent upon His visible continuance with them; it should be a joy of the heart, and it should be a joy which no man could take from them. Their own weakness, or sin, or death, could not, for this joy would raise them above themselves; this would give them an inheritance in One in whom was no sin or ignorance, and over whom death had no power. The unbelief of others could not, for the fact of His triumph would remain the same whether men confessed it or no.