U R Saviour, in the former part of the verse, having told his disciples, That he was the vine, and that they were only branches;– intimating, in what a degree their good fruits, as well as the success of all their endeavours, were to depend upon his communications with them : —he closes the illustration with the inference from it, in the words of Wol, WI. B -the text, For without me, ye can do nothing.—In the 11th chapter to the Romans, where the manner, is explained in which a christian stands by faith, –there is a like illustration made use of, and probably with an eye to this, where St. Paul instrućts us, that a good man stands as the branch of a wild olive does, when it is grafted into a good olive tree;—and that is, -it flourishes not through its own virtue, but in virtue of the root, and such a root as is naturally not its own. It is very remarkable in that pasfage, that the apostle calls a bad man a wild olive tree;—not barely a branch, (as in the other case) but a tree, which having a root of its |