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The Shadow of Calvary Chp 5:
Gethsemane a Prayer-Chamber for Disciples

Hugh Martin

“Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples”  John 18:2

Would it not be well if disciples ofttimes resorted thither with Jesus? Is there not, indeed, a sense in which Gethsemane ought to be regarded as the very oratoire of the Church, the closet, spiritually, where we may, with many precious aids to faith, pray to our Father who seeth in secret and rewardeth openly, as we shall see he rewarded the Man of Sorrows?

It has been said - and well said - that a sinner should not only come to the cross, but dwell there; that the believer should abide at Calvary. Inspired warrant for the saying is found in Paul’s experience: “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life that I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). I am spiritually identified with Christ in his cross. I am united to Christ the crucified one. I am always offered up unto God, in and with him who offered himself in death a sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savour unto God. “Nevertheless,”it is as a living sacrifice that I am offered up; for he with whom I am crucified was crucified for me; and even in dying he was the Living One: therefore I live also; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Therefore I live at the cross, because I live by the cross. My home, my fortress, my high tower and dwelling-place is Calvary.

On the same principles and warrants of faith may not the believer say, My soul’s secret prayer chamber shall be Gethsemane?

Great shall be his reward. For there are three things he will find Gethsemane can furnish him with in prayer: in the first place, a blessed and perfect warrant; in the second place, a precise and comprehensive subject; and, in the third place, an honourable and a blessed fellowship.

Let these be your inducements to make Gethsemane the scene of your own believing prayers. Come ye hither, to this garden of the Lord, to be the Lord’s remembrancers and give him no rest till he arise and have mercy upon you and on Zion his holy habitation. Come ye hither, and ye shall find a high warrant and assurance of success; the true topic and full compass of your petitions; and companionship in prayer that will make you least alone when alone with Jesus as in Gethsemane.

I.  A BLESSED AND PERFECT WARRANT FOR PRAYER

In the first place, then, by praying as in Gethsemane you have the blessed advantage of knowing your right or liberty of praying - your warrant or assurance of being heard. For it is in reality here, in Gethsemane, that there resounds the glorious oracle: “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

See on what foundation the truth of that blessed saying rests and where it was at first proclaimed. We must by no means separate this most precious announcement from the reason which the Lord himself assigns for issuing it, nor forget the place from which at first it issued. Now, in point of fact, it rests upon the prayers of Jesus and the answers which were vouchsafed to him. The time was when Jesus had to cry for acceptance and salvation - when he had to watch for the acceptable time and improve the day of salvation. “Salvation” was the burden of what he sought from God in agony with strong crying and with tears; he cried “unto him that was able to save him from death.” And “ ”acceptance is the grand leading element in salvation; acceptance as righteous in God’s sight; hence Jesus says, in expressing his faith and prospects, “He is near that justifieth6  I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.
7  For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore I shall not be confounded: therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.
8  He is near that justifieth me; who will contend with me? Let us stand together: who is mine adversary? Let him come near to me.
Isaiah 50:6-8 me.” These, then, were what he needed in the days of his flesh: justification or acceptance as God’s righteous servant - deliverance or salvation from the dominion of death. And he found them both. He was delivered from death by his own “obedience unto death,” and thus his “soul was not left in the state of the dead, nor did he, the Holy One, see corruption.” And he was accepted or justified also - “justified in the Spirit” - through his willing endurance of condemnation in the room and stead of his guilty but beloved people. Of this salvation from death by dying, and of this acceptance or justification by his willingness to be condemned, the Prophet Isaiah testifies, or, rather, by the Spirit of inspiration, Jehovah, the Father, testifies, in converse with Jehovah, the Son, the covenant-head and suretySURETY n. a person who makes himself responsible for another’s performance of an undertaking or payment of a debt.
[Latin securitas - security]
Christ is his people’s surety in the Covenant of Grace, because he paid their debt as their substitute, in laying down his life in their place.

By so much was Christ made a surety of a better covenant.
Hebrews 7:22

I will be surety for him;
of my hand shalt thou require him:
if I bring him not unto thee, and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame for ever:
Genesis 43:9. For thus saith “Jehovah, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One,” “to him whom man despiseth” - to him who was despised and rejected of men: “In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth and to cause to inherit the desolate heritages; that thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go forth; and to them that sit in darkness, Show yourselves” (Isa 49:7-9 7  Thus saith the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship, because of the LORD that is faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose thee.
8  Thus saith the LORD, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages;
9  That thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Shew yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places.
Isaiah 49:7-9). Thou shalt be made perfect and become the author of eternal salvation; thou shalt acquire the right and power of translating sinners out of darkness, and redeeming slaves from bondage; thou shalt have the prevailing sovereign right of combined authority and grace to say to the prisoners, Go forth, and to them that sit in darkness, Show yourselves; on condition that thou criest unto me for thine own acceptance in an acceptable time. Offering up “supplications to him that is able to save” thee in a “day of salvation,” thou shalt be heard and helped - helped from the sanctuary and strengthened out of Zion - saved in that thou hast feared. Yea, “behold the Lord God will help thee, who is he that shall condemn thee?” “Thou art my servant in whom I will be glorified.” “Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” “In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee.” Such is the covenant promise to the Son.

Surely this promise received a very signal fulfilment in Gethsemane, when there appeared unto him from heaven an angel strengthening him. And his Father strengthened him inwardly with strength in his soul, and filled him with all grace and love and patience, and calm courage and resolve to endure the cross despising the shame. Never more than in Gethsemane did Jesus find his prayer to be unto the Lord “in an acceptable time and in the truth of his salvation” (Ps 49:13).

And now having obtained an acceptable time and a day of salvation to himself, does he keep these great blessings to himself, or does he freely lay them open to participation on the part of all who will count them blessings indeed, all who will consent to accept them at his hands? There is indeed to sinners now a day of salvation, an acceptable time - a time of seeking while the Lord may be found, a time of calling on him while he is near. But what is this accepted time, this day of salvation? What is it but the participation, the prolongation of Christ’s own accepted time? It is into it that we are called to enter, with all the high warrant an assurance of acceptance and salvation which his acceptable time and his day of salvation afford.

It is thus that the Apostle Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, finds all our warrant for acceptable prayer springing out of the accepted and answered prayers of Jesus himself. Quoting from Isaiah, in his second epistle to Corinth (6:2), he rehearses the words of Jehovah the Father to Jehovah Jesus promising to hear and answer and help him, and grounds upon them the glorious assurance, without which we can neither believe nor hope nor pray, “We beseech you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain; for he saith” - he saith to Jesus - “I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold,” then, O Corinthians, “now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Yes, it is because Jesus was heard in a time accepted that you can now pray with the hope of acceptance: it is because he was heard in that he feared when he prayed to him that was able to save him from death that you have now a day of salvation. Now indeed does the blessed Saviour - the suppliant of Gethsemane, heard and answered - now does he draw near to the slaves of darkness and sin, to bring them forth to the light and salvation of his own kingdom. Now does he truly say to the prisoner, “Go forth,” and to thee, O soul, still in darkness, he saith, “Show thyself.” And why shouldst thou refuse, when he comes to share with thee his own “accepted time,” to make thee a partaker of his own “day of salvation” - to give as sure salvation to thy person, and as sure acceptance to thy prayer, as he himself found for his own person and his own prayers in Gethsemane, when the Father heard him out of Zion, and saved him from falling under the dominion of death?

In Gethsemane, then, you have your high warrant for prayer. In Gethsemane you find the acceptable time - the day of salvation; true and sure and infallible as the salvation which the person of Jesus found - the acceptance which the prayer of Jesus met with. In Gethsemane you seek the Lord in a time when he may be found, you call upon him in a place where he is very near.

And here let me speak to the prayer less and procrastinating. Knowing the terrors of Gethsemane, we would desire to persuade you to seek the Lord while he may be found, to call upon him while he is near. For, oh! be persuaded that if Gethsemane warrants the prayer of faith and assures its answer, it warrants also the justice and assures the certainty of terrible damnation to those who do not pray. That sufferer and suppliant who wrestles there in such anguish and amazement and heaviness and sorrow inexpressible and unparalleled, is bearing nothing more than what he is bearing away from them that believe, but which will abide for ever upon them that believe not. Such as it was to him who stood in the room of the guilty, wuch will it be without abatement to the guilty who through love to sin and of the world and in unbelief continue to stand in their own name before the Holy One of Israel, having no lot nor part in the Saviour s salvation, but despising the acceptable time which Jesus found for himself and would willingly share with you. Was his soul “exceeding sorrowful” under the imputation of the sins of sinners? And what shall your sorrow be if ye awake into eternity with your sins still on your own head - on your own head for ever? Would it be fair or righteous that, with others’ sins lying to his charge, his soul should be very heavy, crushed within him, pressed down to death with sorrow and your sorrow should be less? Nay; “their sorrows shall be multiplied” that live and die impenitent and out of Christ. Was he amazed, “sore amazed”? Sinners that meet their own reckoning, unrelieved and unforgiving through that reckoning which justice had with Jesus in Gethsemane, shall be filled , in their horror and damnation, with terrible amazement. Why should he be, and not you - you who defy God in your deadly unconcern and reject and despise his Son by your careless and prayerless unbelief? “The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites; who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings”?

Ah! if with the holy and spiritual and far-sighted soul of Jesus, imputation of sin when it came near upon him, took even him by surprise; filled him with sore amazement, assumed an aspect of horror which, when at a distance, though he had all along expected its advent and laid his account in holy intelligence with being made a curse, he could not have expected to be so crushing, so full of the wine of astonishment, and thus in trembling and in tears and in blood, the Lord God Omnipotent in the likeness of sinful flesh threw himself upon the cold ground and moaned in the anguish of his spirit and his sweat was it were great drops of blood: what horrible surprise and amazement and blank terror for ever shall seize on you, O prayerless soul, when, awakened from your carnal sleep, arrested by the ministers of divine vengeance, and flung out, a cast-away, on the dread plains of eternity, you find that the accepted time is past, the day of salvation that Gethsemane secured gone, and nothing yours from Gethsemane at all, except the sorrow and the amazement and the agony, remediless and merciless for ever! Choose ye this day which you will accept: the agony of prayer in a time of acceptance, the agonising to enter in at the strait gate in a day of salvation, and glory for ever beyond - or the agony of sorrow, with nothing but a fearful looking for of vengeance and fiery indignation. Choose, do I say? O how little room for choice! Accept at once and improve the time of acceptance. Be saved now in the day of salvation. Let your prayer be offered now in the acceptable time, in the multitude of the Lord’s mercy and the truth of his salvation. Bless God that prayerless-ness and procrastination have not already sealed your doom. Draw near to Gethsemane to pray, tremblingly grateful that it gives you liberty and warrant to pray in the full assurance of faith and of acceptance, and henceforth be followers of them who through faith and patience are now inheriting the promises.

And ye, to whom the high duty and privilege of prayer is not unknown, ye who are the Lord’s remembrancers - rest your warrant, your assurance on the answered prayers of Jesus, and ye too shall receive an answer. The battle of believing prayer is won. It was won in Gethsemane. Ye are but following up the victory. Come ye, therefore, to Gethsemane and offer here your supplications. Here was your Lord himself accepted - here was he heard and helped and saved from death; and here, therefore, the living oracle resounds to you: “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

II.  A PRECISE AND COMPREHENSIVE SUBJECT FOR PRAYER

But, in the second place, you will find also in Gethsemane the true topic and the full compass of all acceptable supplications. Here you will find a distinct and all-embracing subject of prayer. For, as the sum and substance of all that you ask of God, you simply adopt the prayer of Gethsemane, “O my Father, thy will be done.”

Now this does not mean simply that in every prayer of yours you are to seek a spirit of submission to the Father’s will and acquiescence therein. That is indeed conveyed under this lesson as part of the truth involved. And it lies in the very essence of prayer that we should seek, and indeed desire, nothing but what is agreeable to the will of God. So very elementary and obvious is this that, to see its truth, we have only to contemplate the proposal of asking something in opposition to the divine will, to feel the recoil which the mind instantly makes from the idea as the worst form of deliberate impiety. Assuredly it is the dictate both of reason and of Scripture that only when “we ask anything according to his will can we have the confidence that he heareth us” (1 John 5:14). And this lesson Gethsemane very solemnly confirms and enforces. “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will but thine be done. O my Father, since this cup may not pass from me, thy will be done.”

Thus far we are supplied in Gethsemane with a rule of prayer - a general principle or maxim applicable to prayer at all times, whatsoever may be the subject of the petitions, namely, that we must ask what things are agreeable to the will of God.

But we mean something more than this when we say that Gethsemane furnishes, briefly yet comprehensively, the very subject, the topic, the matter of prayer. Come ye here and learn of Jesus what to pray for. Come ye here and enter into the mind and spirit of Jesus in reference to that same will of God which he prays may now be done. And how well may you accept the invitation, and what a price to get spiritual riches does such an invitation put into your hand! This will of God is the same which Jesus came from heaven to do, and not his own. “Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me; I delight to do thy will, O my God.” Come then and lay hold on that same will of God and see how thou art enriched with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

(1)  Separated Unto the Lord

For, first of all, the immediate blessing which you receive by doing so is that you are separated at once unto the Lord. You come out and are separate, and the Lord is a Father unto you, and ye are his sons and his daughters. His will separates you in destiny from the world far as the east is distant from the west, and separates your guiltiness and sin equally far away from you. For do we not read concerning this will which Jesus came to do: “O my Father thy will be done” (Matt 26:42); “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God” (Heb 10:9); do we not read, “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ once for all” (Heb 10:10)? We are sanctified, that is, set apart to God, separated to him as his peculiar possession, consecrated by the blood of Jesus, redeemed to the Lord, not our own but bought with a price. Taking hold, then, on this will of God, you find it separates you from the world; it withdraws and translates you out of darkness into God’s marvellous light and into the kingdom of the Son of his love; having in it a resistless efficacy to claim and take and keep you as the Lord’s peculiar inheritance. For by this will of God ye are sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ once for all.

How blessed, then, to come into Gethsemane and there to deal in prayer and supplication with that same will of God with which Jesus was so sorrowfully yet so faithfully concerned. You come to give yourself unto the Lord, to surrender your soul and body and love and service to the God of salvation. You do so in Gethsemane. You do so with express reference, in the prayer of faith, to that will of God which Jesus came to do, and for the doing of which a body was prepared him. You learn the topic of your prayer in this garden of the Lord’s agony. You lay hold on the will of God and surrender yourself to him. Be assured it is a time of acceptance. Your surrender is accepted in deed and in truth. The Lord cannot reject what is his own; and by this will of God you are sanctified, separated to him as his own, whom he cannot disallow. For the Lord knoweth them that are his.

Is this comfort too high for you? Is it, as it were, meat too strong for thee, O meek and contrite soul, who art in thine own estimation no better than a babe in Christ - glad couldst thou but realise that even that blessed state and character are thine? Still we say to you, come here into Gethsemane and learn from Jesus to pray concerning this same will of God with which all his prayer is conversant.

(2)  Coming to Christ

For, in the second place, you know, do you not, that “all whom the Father giveth to him shall come to him, and him that cometh he will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). Ah, this blessed twofold truth! This assurance, so glorious and consoling to Jesus, that “all whom the Father hath given him shall come to him”; and this other assurance, so gracious and consoling to you, that “him that cometh he will in no wise cast out”; they both alike rest upon this same will of God, and by it Jesus will ever vindicate and verify them.

For we often lose the full strength of the sayings of Christ, by detaching them from the connection in which they originally appear. No doubt, we often so detach and isolate them in order that we may hide them in our heart, and perhaps few of the blessed Saviour s ever memorable announcements have been more frequently or more deeply graven on the fleshly tables than that ever precious word which liveth and abideth for ever, to shut out all our dark misgivings and obviate all our guilty and (but for Jesus) well grounded fears, and silence all our doubts and unbelieving objections - the ever gracious word of the Lord - “Him that cometh I will in no wise cast out.” Doubtless, also, though it stood alone and by itself, this word of Christ were very precious, and exceedingly abundantly sufficient as a warrant to bring near to him the guiltiest of the children of men, however great and numerous their provocations and backslidings, however debasing and vile their sin. Still it is best to note the full strength which this word of the Lord derives from other truths which he allies and binds up with it; and to see the foundation or the ground on which Jesus sets forth his warrant to proclaim it as a truth. “All whom the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh I will in no wise cast out.” Why are these things so? Why should it be so certain that all whom the Father hath given to Jesus shall come to him, and why so equally sure that him that cometh, whosoever he may be, or whatsoever he may have been or done, shall in no wise be cast out? Does Jesus assign any reason for these things, any evidence that they are true and sure? He does. They are both true and sure, “for,” saith he, “I came down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” Thus Jesus at once binds in the truth of this two-fold assurance with that will of God which he came to do. Every elect soul shall come and every soul that cometh shall be welcome, “for I came down from heaven to do the Father’s will: for, lo, I come, to do thy will, O God.” But how should this will of God, which Jesus came to do, secure on the one hand the coming of those whom the Father hath given him and secure on the other hand the gracious reception or acceptance of him, whosoever he may be, that cometh? Very clearly and very surely because these are the things which that will of God contemplates and provides for and guarantees. For there is a two-fold assurance - the first bearing more upon the secret things of God and relating to his people’ election; the second, more upon the things that are revealed, that pertain to his people’s calling, and both are founded on that will of God. The first declares that all that are given him shall come to him, for Jesus in this respect came to do the Father’s will, and “this is the Father’s will that hath sent me, that of all whom he hath given me I should lose nothing but should raise it up at the last day” (verse 39). The second declares that whosoever cometh I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven to do the will of him that sent me: and on this point, “This is the will of him that sent me, that everyone that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, should have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (verse 40).

When, therefore, in Gethsemane the Lord said, “O my Father, since this cup may not pass from me, thy will be done; O my Father, thy will be done”; that will of thine be done which I came down from heaven to do - for which thou didst prepare for me a body that I might do it; the subject of his prayer embraced the coming to him of all whom the Father gave him, and a blessed and assured welcome to every one whosoever he may be that cometh.

Again, then, we say, Come ye to Gethsemane and take hold on this prayer of Jesus. Learn from him the subject of your supplication. Take hold with him upon the will of God, which he came from heaven to do; especially on that which is revealed in all its fulness, even that every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him shall have eternal life, and Jesus shall raise him up at the last day; that him that cometh he will in no wise cast out; for that is the will of God with which Gethsemane’s prayer is so solemnly concerned. Come ye to him in this garden where the will of his Father is so dear to him and costs him so much in his agony. And if that very will of his Father be to the effect that you, coming, shall in no wise be cast out, Oh! with what readiness, with what joy, with what full assurance of faith may you come! Oh! let us draw near with a true heart and in the full assurance of faith. Yes, and thus having made our calling, let us also make our election sure, persuaded that it was not only of the Father’s will that on coming to Jesus we have been welcome, but that it was of the Father’s will that we have come, being indeed of the number whom the Father hath given to the Son; and so we have not chosen him, but he hath chosen us, when in the volume of the book it was written of Jesus, and all his members also were written (Ps 40:7Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me,
Psalm 40:7; 139:16Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
Psalm 139:16). Here, then, again is the will of God, the same by which we are sanctified or separated to him, by the offering of the body of Christ once for all.

(3)  Sanctification

And now, thirdly, being thus in no wise cast out, but rather sanctified and consecrated by this will of God, on which you lay hold in the prayer of faith in Gethsemane, remember now that “this is the will of God, even your sanctification,” your sanctification not merely in the sense of separation to the Lord, but of being holy to him now that you are separated. “Be ye perfect and complete in all the will of God”; and be so just by realising that you are separated unto him and have all that freedom from evil, and that access by faith unto all grace, which such separation requires. By that will of God ye are sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ once for all (Heb 10:10). And by that one offering also Jesus hath for ever perfected them that are sanctified (Heb 10:14). He hath given you a perfect acceptance, and a perfect adoption. Made perfect himself through the instrumentality of his own prayers and their answer (Heb 5:9), he hath perfected also those whom he hath consecrated to his God, whom he hath washed from their sins in his own blood and made them kings and priest unto his Father. He presents you to God justified in his sight - justified perfectly, with no taint whatever, and no stain of condemnation on you any more. He presents you to God adopted into the household of faith - adopted perfectly, with no trace of slavery of strangeness or foreign origin at all - no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, to go no more out for ever, but to be followers of God as dear children. Oh! what remains, then, but that having acceptance most free and perfect; adoption, also, gratuitous and complete and sure; you should now be perfect and complete also in doing the will of God - walking before him and being perfect? Justified in the righteousness of Jesus, that pure and spotless robe, and the King’s eye resting on you with approbation, will you not keep your honour bright and your garments unspotted from the world? Enrolled for ever among the free born sons of God, will you no go and work to-day in his vineyard, and occupy until he come, your eye beaming keen with love and looking for the glory to be revealed? And praying ever in Gethsemane, in the full compass of Christ’s own prayer concerning the Father’s will, will you not remember, among other elements of that will, and as indeed crowning the other with the beauties of holiness - that “this is the will of God, even your sancitfication”?

Thus praying always with all prayer and supplication in Gethsemane you shall neither want a high warrant and assurance of success, nor a rich, full theme for your petitions.

But there is a third advantage to be found from praying as in Gethsemane.

III.  AN HONOURABLE AND A BLESSED FELLOWSHIP IN PRAYER

You shall have company most honourable and blessed. Here you will have Jesus for your companion. Here you will have communion or fellowship or partnership in prayer with him. For as on Calvary you have fellowship with him in his sufferings, being crucified with Christ; and as in Golgotha you have fellowship with him in his grave, being buried with him by baptism unto death; and as in his resurrection you have fellowship with him, knowing him in the power thereof and raised up with him unto newness of life; even so, come, and by the same faith have fellowship with him in Gethsemane in prayer. Come here to pray. Resort thither often to pray, as he did. And realise that you do not enter on this high privilege of prayer, which still is a very arduous duty, alone. You have company here, company the highest and the best. Of the people there is One with you, one chosen out of the people, one like unto the Son of Man, your leader and commander, your forerunner in all things, your pattern, your more than pattern, your Prince in prayer. You do not come to ground unoccupied, to ground where you shall stand - or kneel - alone. You do not betake yourself to prayer in your own name at all or with your own voice alone, as if you could pray with a prevailing voice. No. But you draw near to Jesus. You pray side by side with him. You fall into the fellowship and concert of his very prayer. By faith you adjoin and identify your prayer with his. “I beseech you that ye all speak the same thing” with him, “being perfectly joined with him in one mind, and in one Spirit” - the Spirit of the Son in you crying, Abba Father!

Ah! your closet, where your Father in heaven seeth in secret, is no dull, blank, dreary place of enforced resort, if it thus becomes to you, by faith, as it were the garden of Olives, where Jesus prayed. There you find the fellowship of Jesus in his prayer, in his wrestling love to that will of God. It is to you a place of true and deep communion. You watch there and pray with Jesus!

True it is that Jesus is not now literally in Gethsemane. He is in the Most Holy Place not made with hands. But you do not come to Gethsemane as if Jesus had never been there. No, it is very much changed to you because Jesus has been there before you. All is bright to you and safe because Jesus was there. For whosesoever he hath been as the forerunner, he hath left some radiance of heaven and some sweet smelling myrrh behind him. The grave itself is irradiated to the eye of faith, and its corruption and offensiveness suppressed in the estimation of faith because Jesus himself has been there. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. He is not here, he is risen as he said. There is no terror here. There is a glory here that annihilates the shame. There is no dominion of death here; no destroying sway. For you know that your Redeemer has been here; and that he was dead and is alive again, and behold he liveth for evermore. You know that your Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after you skin worms destroy this body, yet in your flesh shall you see God. O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory? There is no divination at all against Israel, and specially no victory and dominion over Israel in the grave, for Jesus has been there. Come, see the place where the Lord lay!

Come, in like manner, to Gethsemane. Come, see the place where the Lord prayed! Here he prayed with supplications and strong crying and tears, wrestling even unto blood. True, he is not here. He is ascended as he said. And his prayers now are glorified, even as his person is. But still, even as the grave is sweetened with the fragrant savour of his burial, and the believer’s body there shall rest, still united to Christ, till the resurrection, so now when you enter Gethsemane, is it not fragrant with the savour and the success of him whose strong crying and tears Gethsemane witnessed; and may you not here continue instant in prayer, united to and in communion with him, and having fellowship in the prayer of him who was here as your forerunner? For in leading you forth as his own sheep, he ever goeth before you. In Gethsemane he goeth before you in prayer: he seeks to associate you there in prayer with himself, that so your failure or success may all rest upon his responsibility.

Wilt thou not, O my soul, agree with the suppliant sufferer, thy Saviour, in his most blessed proposal to watch and pray with him? Oh! why shouldest thou refuse? For how great shall be thy gain! Thy prayer now placed on the same footing with his; resting on the same promise and covenant; embracing the self-same theme; cast in the same mould; directed to the same aim; prompted by the name Spirit of the Son crying, Abba Father; and risked upon the same destiny and issue; thy prayer with his; bound up and identified with his; cannot but be heard, as his was heard in that he feared. Be thou separated from Christ, standing apart in thine own righteousnesses, which are filthy rags; leaning on thine own strength, or following the dictates of thine own understanding. And there is no acceptance for thy prayer at all. The proud and the self-sufficient he seeth afar off. But be thou one with the suffering suppliant in Gethsemane. By faith, fall thou into the strain and concert and fellowship of that very prayer whereby he prevailed with God - the true Israel and Prince with God - the Prince of life, the Prince of peace, the Prince of prayer; and thou shalt never miss the blessing. The King will crown thee with his love.

Yes, believer; your prayer of faith may well be linked on by faith and identified with Christ’s prayer, for is it not very closely bound up with it already and from the first? Is not every prayer of faith allied to Christ’s prayer by this most singular and interesting bond, that it is in part the very answer of that prayer of Christ? Is it not in answer to his very prayer that you have been taught and led, by the Spirit of faith and adoption, to pray? Was not this, in part, what Jesus sought, when he prayed that his Father’s will might be done - by the which will we are sanctified, set apart to God, set apart to that life of which prayer is the vital breath and element? Why! what is your prayer of faith but the fruit of what Jesus in his prayer sowed? He sowed his prayer in tears; and he watered it with blood; and he pressed it down in the ground by his death and in his grave. “For except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” Thus spake Jesus of his person, which by death should become a living root of innumerable redeemed ones, rising in him to newness of life. The principle is true of his prayer as well as of his person. The prayers of faith are the fruit of his prayer, even as the children of faith are the travail of his soul. And as the persons of the redeemed are united to the person of Christ, the prayers of the redeemed are one with his prayer. Realise, then, your fellowship in Gethsemane in prayer with Jesus, for this is no fancy but an animating spiritual truth. Realise the union of your prayer with his prayer, even as also of your person with his person. Abide in him and he in you; with your prayer also abiding in his, and identified therewith; and his words and his prayers abiding in you. And you shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

Thus will you learn to wield with growing spiritual power and wisdom your liberty of praying in the name of Jesus. You pray not only in the merit, but in the strength and the fellowship and the succession of his own prayer. And then your answer is secure. For as Jesus in his own risen person is the first fruits of them that slept, assuring the resurrection in due time of all his own; so the answer of his prayer is the first fruits of all answers whatsoever. For his prayer, in a high sense, is in reality the first answered prayer among the sons of men; and all others have received, or shall receive, an answer, only by falling into the concert of this, into the succession and series of which this is the leading type and forerunner - the series of which this prayer, like Jesus himself, is the first-born and the beginning, in all things having the pre-eminence. True, in mere point of time others had been answered before it: just as in mere point of time Lazarus, and the widow’s son of Nain, and the man whose body touched the dead prophet’s bones, and others were raised before - some of them long before - the Lord died and rose and was revived. Yet in reality he is “the first that should rise from the dead” (Acts 26:23): he is the first fruits form the dead, and every one in his own order. And so his answered prayer of Gethsemane was the first fruits of all answers to prayer. It takes the lead. It gloriously leads on the prayers of faith in all climes and ages. Oh! follow thou here where Jesus leads. Pray thou in Gethsemane where Jesus prays. Be thou with him here, though it should be with strong crying and tears. Be thou with him here, where the kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. Be thou with him here, agonizing to enter in at the strait gate; taking the kingdom of heaven by force, as he did; and do it, in and with him. Be thou one with him in his faithfulness and importunity; and thou shalt be one with him in his high success.

And now, if you disdain not to associate with Christ in prayer amidst the tears and cries and blood of Gethsemane, thou shalt be with him also by faith, and that even now, in the unutterable glory of the Most Holy Place, sitting with him already by faith in the heavenly places. For the principle is that if we suffer with him we shall also reign with him. And if you fall into the concert of his humiliation prayer, you shall partake with him in the glorious fruit of his sovereign and authoritative intercession at the right hand of the majesty on high. For in this respect will God fulfil to you the promise that he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. He fulfilled this promise to Jesus. And not a single point in which he was abased, but correspondingly was he glorified. Was his person, in this garden, rolled in blood, stained with the dust of battle and the soil of earth? Ah! who can comprehend the glory of his humanity now as, possessing the power of an endless life, and inheriting incorruption, he stands in the midst of the throne, radiant in the glory which he had with the Father before the world was? But his prayers also are glorified. Yes; they are as free from strong crying and tears as his blessed person is purged from the blood of his conflict and the soil of his prostration on the ground. And what difference there is between his person as then and now; the same difference there is between his supplications in the days of his flesh and his mighty and majestic intercessions at his Father’s right hand. For whereinsoever he was abased, the Lord also hath highly exalted him; and his person and his pleadings, which were alike in humiliation, are now glorified together. Dost thou, O believer, join thyself in the prayer of humiliation with Jesus in the garden? The Lord exalts thee in his own estimation by seeing thee in Christ in the Holy Place not made with hands. Oh! how grand the reward! How precious the inducement to prayer! Thy prayers, as they come up for a memorial before God, are purged from all imperfection, and glorified in this High Priest’s censer. Thy many painful wanderings of heart; thy manifold infirmities; thy distressing conflicts with unbelief and temptation , which in prayer are thine own burden and thy constant cause of humiliation and of shame; are all - if thou dost only pray in faith and in fellowship with Jesus - all intercepted and disentangled and annihilated by the intercessory advocacy of thy glorified head. All thy supplications are cleansed and purified and glorified, and fragrant with added incense; free from all stain of sin and of the soil and blood and dust of battle as surely as the person of the Advocate himself is glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and his intercession is free from crying and from tears. And wilt thou barter this privilege of prayer, O my soul, for any mess of pottage or any pleasure this world can give, or any bribe with which the powers of hell can tempt thee? Be ashamed and confounded, for thy little valuation of it in the time that is past; and hence forth abide thou with Christ, though it be in Gethsemane; and thou shalt ask what thou wilt and it shall be given thee. What though, to thine own sense and feeling, thou art still in the garden of wrestling, where strong crying and tears can often be by no means dispensed with? The Father seeth thee already spiritually raised up together with the Son and made to sit together with him in the heavenly places. By faith and hope thou enterest within the veil, where Jesus hath already entered as the forerunner. And what by faith and hope is already thine shall be thine in the glory that cometh, when the Lord himself shall come and bid thee enter into the joy of thy Lord, where Gethsemane’s strong crying and tears and bloody sweat shall no more come into remembrance, save as the purchase price of the blood-washed and white-robed throng to whom Gethsemane hath been, through grace, a vestibule to that glory in which God shall wipe away all tears from all faces.

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