he world as already done (though the chief scene is yet to come)
and the world left behind, and now He is about re-entering His Father's
presence to be re-instated in glory there. It is really, therefore, a sort
of specimen of the praying for us in which He is _now_ engaged, and so is
commonly called the intercessory or high-priestly prayer. For thirty years
He lived a perfect life. For three and a half years He was a prophet
speaking to men for God. For nineteen centuries He has been high priest
speaking to God for men. When He returns it will be as King to reign over
men for God.

_The fourteenth mention_ brings us within the sadly sacred precincts of
Gethsemane garden, one of His favourite prayer-spots, where He frequently
went while in Jerusalem. The record is found in Matthew twenty-six, Mark
fourteen, and Luke twenty-one. Let us approach with hearts hushed and
heads bared and bowed, for this is indeed hallowed ground. It is a little
later on that same Thursday night, into which so much has already been
pressed and so much more is yet to come. After the talk in the upper room,
and the simple wondrous prayer, He leads the little band out of the city
gate on the east across the swift, muddy Kidron into the inclosed grove of
olive trees beyond. There would be no sleep for Him that night. Within an
hour or two the Roman soldiers and the Jewish mob, led by the traitor,
will be there searching for Him, and He meant to spend the intervening
time in _prayer_. With the longing for sympathy so marked during these
latter months, He takes Peter and James and John and goes farther into the
deeply-shadowed grove. But now some invisible power tears him away and
plunges Him alone still farther into the moonlit recesses of the garden;
and there a strange, awful struggle of soul ensues. It seems like a
renewal of the same conflict He experienced in John twelve when the Greeks
came, but immeasurably intenser. He who in Himself knew no sin was now
beginning to realize in His spirit what within a few hours He realized
_actually_, that He was in very deed to be made sin for us. And the awful
realization comes in upon Him with such terrific intensity that it seems
as though His physical frame cannot endure the strain of mental agony. The
_actual_ experience of the next day produced such mental agony that His
physical strength gave way. For He died not of His physical suffering,
excruciating as that was, but literally of a broken heart, its