s Jesus do on this last Wednesday of his life?
So far as we know, he does nothing at all. It is a day without record.
There is no New Testament passage from which I can read about it. He
appears to have stayed at Bethany, perhaps with his friends, perhaps
for a part of the day alone. His work was done, and he used this last
day for quiet withdrawal.

What self-control and reserve are here! How would one of us have been
inclined to conduct himself, if he found himself with just {155} one
more day for active service? "One more day," he would have said; "then
fill it with the best works and the best words; let me stamp my message
on my time; let me fulfil the work which was given me to do." But
Jesus has no such lust of finishing. He simply commits his spirit to
his Father, and awaits the trial and the cross. And perhaps on that
unrecorded day his real agony was met, and his real cross borne.
Perhaps as he went up on that hillside, which still overlooks the
little village of Bethany, and looked at his past and at his future,
the real spiritual conquest was attained; for he comes back again to
Jerusalem on Thursday morning, not with the demeanor of a martyr but
with the air of a conqueror; and when Pilate asks him if he is a king
he answers him: "Thou hast said it."

So it is with many a life. It has its great days,--its Palm Sundays of
triumphs, its Good Fridays of cross-bearing, and these seem the epochs
of its experience; but when one searches for the sources of its
strength, they lie--do they not?--in some unrecorded day, as the
sources of an abundant river lie hidden in some nook among the hills.

{156}

LXIII

THE ANSWER TO PRAYER

_Luke_ xxii. 39-48.

(PASSION WEEK--THURSDAY)

On Thursday morning of his last week Jesus sends two of his friends
before him into Jerusalem to prepare the Passover meal, while he does
not himself enter the city until the afternoon. There he meets his
friends, and after the supper he takes the bread and wine and with
entire naturalness asks them, as they eat and drink, to remember him.
Then he talks with them and prays with them, and they go out again on
the road toward Bethany; and coming to a little garden at the foot of
the hill called the Mount of Olives he bids his companions wait while
he goes, as his custom was, to pray.

We hear much discussion about prayer and its possibilities,--what we
can pray for and what God can do in return, and what is the true an