IV.
And after all, the failure of the disciples was very human. Their eyes were heavy. They were weary and sore tired. This, too, is typical of many of the losses we Salvationists are called upon to suffer. Some on whom we have relied and trusted grow weary in well-doing. The strain is so great! The tax on brain and heart and hand is so constant! Life becomes so burdened with watchings and prayings and sufferings for and with others, that there is little, if any, time or strength left for oneself! And so they cannot keep up, but seek rest and quiet for themselves elsewhere. They are heavy, and no longer feel the need to watch with us.
Dear comrade, in your like trial do not doubt that the Lord Jesus is with you. Suffering of this kind will help to liken you to Him--it is a very real bearing of the Cross of Christ. Pitiful followers of Him should we be, if we wished to have only joy when He had only suffering.
V.
But the disciples' strange failure did not call forth one word of bitterness from our Lord's lips. A gentle reproach was certainly implied in the words, "Could ye not watch with Me one hour?" but no shade of personal displeasure expressed itself, much as the occasion might seem to warrant it. No! Jesus knew the failures begotten of human weakness, as well as the horror of human sin. And so He made allowances, and was as patient with those who left Him, as He was tender to those who were steadfast. He loved them both.
Go thou, and do likewise. In your home; in your family circle; in your Corps; in your office; in your work, be it what it may; when men fail and forsake your Lord; even if all disappoint and desert you, you must love them still. Be faithful with them; but, above all, be steadfast in your own purpose, and devote all your zeal and strength to finish the work that God has given you to do. In short, go forward without them; but let your words, and thoughts, and prayers for them be like your Master's.
And Jesus utters no word of complaint about this failure. The silence all through that great anguish is indeed very wonderful. Abandoned by man, He abandoned Himself all the more earnestly to His work for men without a murmur. And abandoned by God--as for a little time it seemed--He all the more completely abandoned Himself to God. To have fellowship with Him, you and I will have to walk the same path, and mind the same rule.
When friends, or followers, or comrades trample upon the solemn covenants made alike to us and to God, and forsake, and leave us to finish our work and tread our winepress alone, let there be no moaning because of the pain it inflicts. When those upon whom we had a right--right by reason of natural law, or right by reason of the obligations and precious vows of friendship, or right on the ground of spiritual indebtedness--when those, I say, upon whom we had a right to depend fail us, let there be no complaining of their treatment because it is painful to us. Let there be no filling of the earth with laments and wailings, no accusing of our accusers, no reviling of those who revile us. Let us be silent in the patience of Jesus and in the strength of His love, and let His way of meeting the loneliness of desertion be our way--let us pray.
But all the same, that sleep, that failure to respond to the personal claim of Jesus, was a sure forerunner of the cowardly flight, and the deadly denial which followed it. The seeds of Peter's lies and curses were sown in the selfishness and slumber of the garden; they came to maturity in the kitchen of the judgment hall. Poor Peter! How many hours of bitter self-reproach would you have been spared, had you but held out during that one brief hour of your watch in Gethsemane! How differently we could have regarded your poor wobbling nature! How differently, too, your Lord's great trial would have come to Him! How different might have been the history of mankind!
VI.
The method of love which Jesus adopted towards the forsakers received the sanction of success, for they all came back. In spite of their shame and their fears, they returned to their allegiance, with, I think, much more than their old faith and love. Judas was the only exception, and even he sought a place of repentance, and, but for his horrid league with the jealous and cruel religionists, would, I think, have found one.
You see the lesson? If you go on with your work for God, and finish it, paying no heed to those who, having put their hand to the plough, look back; and if, in spite of your sorrow, you will struggle steadily forward in the face of the coldness and carelessness of those between whom and you there was once the tenderest love, God will not only carry you through your appointed labour for the world, but He will restore many of those others to their allegiance to Him and His.
Will they ever be quite the same? Will they not have lost something? Yes, they will indeed have lost; but, if they come back, in reality they will gain more. The new union will be more divine than the former one. They will not merely
... rise on stepping stones
Of their dead selves to higher things;
but the beauty, and excellence, and glory of love, the exceeding profitableness of enduring grace, and the sweet aroma of faithfulness, will be the more clearly manifest to the sons of men by reason of the weakness and breakableness of the human vessel.
Let us, then, press forward, without one backward glance, until we finish our work. Let us thank God for those who are faithful; let us love and pray for those who fail, expecting to see them restored, healed, and purified.