In the seventeenth chapter of John we learn what was in the thought of Jesus as he prayed for his disciples. The Christ-mission of revealing Truth to the world, he was now entrusting to them. They were to be his witnesses; they were to carry on his preaching and healing; they were to organize his church.
The evidence of the greatness of his message, the proof of the infinity of its power and import to the world, were now to be borne by them. He had sought to prepare them for their task. He had not hidden from them men's hatred of the Christ. But he had shown them the inability of evil to withstand or deflect God's power. That they might be preserved; that their unity with God might be maintained; that divinity might be expressed in their lives, healing and delivering mankind—this was the subject of his profoundly revealing prayer. He prayed that this oneness of being, which had been revealed to him, might be revealed to them also, and through them to the world.
No plan did Jesus lay down; he inaugurated no policy, foreshadowed no human goal. Nevertheless, he who reads the seventeenth chapter of John in the light of Christian Science; he who is inspired by the selflessness, steadfastness, and compassion of the life borne witness to, knows that in these final words are summed up his message and its power to overcome all resistance: "And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them."
