We can only meet our full responsibilities and fulfill our high mission when we go forth sanctified as Christ our Lord was sanctified. He sends us into the world just as His Father sent Him into the world. He expects us to be as He was, to do as He did, and to glorify the Father just as He glorified the Father.
What longings He had to have us with Him in Heaven: “Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me.” What response do our truant hearts make to this earnest, loving, Christly longing? Are we as eager for Heaven as He is to have us there? How calm, how majestic and how authoritative is His “I will”!
He closes His life with inimitable calmness, confidence and sublimity. “I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.”
The annals of earth have nothing comparable to it in real serenity and sublimity. May we come to our end thus in supreme loyalty to Christ.
XII
THE GETHSEMANE PRAYER
The cup! the cup! the cup! Our Lord did not use many words: but He used His few words again and again, till this cup! and Thy will!—Thy will be done, and this cup—was all His prayer. “The cup! The cup! The cup!” cried Christ: first on His feet: and then on His knees: and then on His face.... “Lord, teach us to pray!”—Alexander Whyte, D.D.
We come to Gethsemane. What a contrast! The sacerdotal prayer had been one of intense feelings of universal grasp, and of world-wide and illimitable sympathy and solicitude for His church. Perfect calmness and perfect poise reigned. Majestic He was and simple and free from passion or disquiet. The Royal Intercessor and Advocate for others, His petitions are like princely edicts, judicial and authoritative. How changed now! In Gethsemane He seems to have entered another region, and becomes another man. His sacerdotal prayer, so exquisite in its tranquil flow, so unruffled in its strong, deep current, is like the sun, moving in meridian, unsullied glory, brightening, vitalising, ennobling and blessing everything. The Gethsemane prayer is that same sun declining in the west, plunged into an ocean of storm and cloud, storm-covered, storm-eclipsed with gloom, darkness and terror on every side.
The prayer in Gethsemane is exceptional in every way. The super-incumbent load of the world’s sin is upon Him. The lowest point of His depression has been reached. The bitterest cup of all, His bitter cup, is being pressed to His lips. The weakness of all His weaknesses, the sorrow of all His sorrows, the agony of all His agonies are now upon Him. The flesh is giving out with its fainting and trembling pulsations, like the trickling of His heart’s blood. His enemies have thus far triumphed. Hell is in a jubilee and bad men are joining in the hellish carnival.
Gethsemane was Satan’s hour, Satan’s power, and Satan’s darkness. It was the hour of massing all of Satan’s forces for a final, last conflict. Jesus had said, “The prince of this world cometh and findeth nothing in me.” The conflict for earth’s mastery is before Him. The spirit led and drove Him into the stern conflict and severe temptation of the wilderness. But His Comforter, His Leader and His inspiration through His matchless history, seems to have left Him now. “He began to be sorrowful and very heavy,” and we hear Him under this great pressure exclaiming, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” The depression, conflict and agony had gone to the very core of His spirit, and had sunk Him to the very verge of death. “Sore amazed” He was.
Surprise and awe depress His soul. “Very heavy” was the hour of hell’s midnight which fell upon His spirit. Very heavy was this hour when all the sins of all the world, of every man, of all men, fell upon His immaculate soul, with all their stain and all their guilt.