The Secret Prayers of Jesus Christ

And when He had sent them away, He departed into a mountain to pray. — Mark vi. 46.

Sit ye here while I go and pray yonder. And He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, 0 my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt. He went away again the second time, and prayed, sajong, 0 my Father, if this cup may not pass from me, except I drink it, Thy will be done. — Matthew xxvi. 36, 39, 42.

When thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. — Matthew vi. 6.

PRAYER.

Almighty God, Thou hearest the voice of common prayer: Thou hearest also the sighing of the heart in secret. Thine eye is upon us in the house which is called the house of prayer: it is also upon us when we seek Thee in solitude, and speak to Thee without word or sound. Our heart cannot alway utter itself, for love is older and deeper than speech; yet Thou knowest the meaning of our silence, and the design of our tears. Teach us, by the life of Thy dear Son, how near Thou art; how deep is the condescension, and how tender is the pity of God. Help each heart to say, IIij Father, as Jesus did, then in assembling ourselves together we can say, Our Father, as w-ith the voice of manywaters. Watch us in company and in solitude. Nourish our hearts with Thy grace. Fill us with the peace of Jesus Christ, God the Son, through whose blood alone we have the forgiveness of sins. Amen.

Sometimes Jesus Christ prayed publicly; in the cases before us He prayed in secret. The Lords prayer was probably pronounced in the hearing of a great multitude; His intercessory prayer was offered in the presence of the disciples; His prayer at the grave of Lazarus was heard by “them that stood by;” and in other cases He was a public suppliant at the throne of heaven. It is clear, however, that Jesus Christ did not live upon His public prayers. He was religious in secret. He had much to say which none might hear but His Father. For this reason He moved away to the lonely and silent mountain, or passed into some secret shade in the garden. Think of a man holding God in secret converse! Having God all to himself! Surely the place of such converse must be holy — it must be fresh with eternal verdure — it must catch many a breeze from heaven! It is in this way that spots become consecrated; lonely spots, unknown to the fame of romance, but held in imperishable remembrance by the heart. You know the turn in the rugged hill where you said your first prayer to God? You remember the bush behind which on many a summer day you fought the decisive battles of your life? You remember the little green grave yourself on one side and God on the other beside wbicli you renounced the world as nothingness, and accepted heaven as home? Such places seem to hallow the whole earth. When we visit them, we live our lives over again: when we think of them, our slipping feet recover their steadiness: when we are far ofiP in the wilderness, they send after us the fragrance of blossoms, and remind us that even the desert may be turned into a garden of delight.

This morning, gathered though we be in the centre of London, where all languages blend in tumultuous and confusing sounds, we are to pursue the footprints of the Saviour away up the mountain, and through the shaded paths of Gethsemane, that from His own example we may learn the meaning of Eis own words — Pray to thy Father which is in secret.’’^

I. Look at the first case to which the texts call attention. And when He had sent them away. He departed into a mountain to pray.’^ Look at the circumstances in order to understand the meaning of this retirement. A great multitude had been following Jesus Christ in a desert place; they had nothing to eat, and in this extremity the disciples proposed that they should be sent away to buy themselves victuals. Jesus Christ bade the disciples supply Him with such resources as they themselves had, and having distributed these amongst the multitude, the hunger of every man was appeased, and many fragments remained. Having done this wondrous miracle. He retired to the mountain that He might hold secret fellowship with His Father. How many of us fail precisely at this point! We do a cjveat deed, and mistake it for the greatest. Having fed a multitude, what more can possibly be required at our hands? Men pride themselves on the acquisition of then’ laurels, and imagine that they show their discretion by refusingto put those laurels in peril. The common reasoning* of the world says: Let well alone; we have this much, and we shall not make any further attempt lest we undo what we have already accomplished.’’^ If Jesus Christ had finished His whole ministry with the miracle of feeding the five thousand, it would undoubtedly have been, so far as the miraculous element is concerned, a brilliant termination. Having, however, wrought the marvellous deed. He retired into solitude that he might pray. Our temptation is to mistake the intermediate for the final — to mistake the feeding of the multitude for the redemption of the world. Is it not a temptation to which many a jparent is exposed? I have heard i:)arents reason in this fashion: ^’ We have given our children a good education — now they must do the best they can for themselves; we have spared no money upon their schooling, we have supplied their physical wants, we have set our children in the midst of good surroundings, and now we relinquish our hold of them, and throw them upon their own responsibility/^ Beware! You have now reached the moment that is critical. You have undoubtedly done nobly, yet “by the cessation of your effort at this moment you may turn the whole of the past into failure and mortification! You have exhausted yourselves on the physical side of your obligation, now betake yourselves along the foot-prints of the Saviour far away up the lonely mountain, that you may in secret communion with God renew the strength which another struggle will so much require! Does not the same reflection also apply to the minister of the Gospel? Is he not tempted to say, when he has preached the best sermon which it is in his power to compose, that now he will retire from the field in the flush of triumph, and leave everything else to take its own course? There are moments in our ministry when we feel with peculiar effect the consciousness of spiritual power; there are moments in which we are filled with the very spirit of victory; we fear

E that further trial would reveal our weakness rather than discover some new phase of our power, so we are tempted to withdraw from the field whilst our arms are unquestionably in the ascendant. There is infinite danger here. True, we may be unable to continue the splendid service in which we have been so signally honoured before the eyes of men; we are therefore to retire from the field of strife, and the sphere of beneficent activity, that in secret prayer we may become qualified to retmm to work, which has not only taxed but exhausted our powers. Life is not to be one great stretch of doubtful or successful activity; it is to be broken in upon by seasons of religious quietness, periods of the closest fellowship with the One Father. ’

II. Look now afc the case of Gethsemane. The end is at hand. What if there be failure at the very last! The repeated prayers make one very fearful. It seems as if Christ might after all be worsted in the struggle. We become excited when we see Him going away from time to time, that he may be quite alone. In some of the most solemn and glorious moments of His ministry He has taken with Him Peter, James, and John. They accompanied Him up the Mount of Transfiguration: they went with Him into the chamber of death: but now He begins to leave even those favoured disciples behind, and to be much alone. What is the meaning of such secrecy? When physicians retire from the sick chamber, and consult in whispers, terror may well strike the hearts of those who have long been watching by the bed of sickness. Such retirement has deep, sad meaning. In a moment the chief watcher will be called from his watching to hear that the light of hope has been put out! So when Jesus goes away from us, and is overheard praying in the solitude of Gethsemane, may we not tremble lest He be about to relinquish the work which He came to accomplish, and to return to tell us that at last he has yielded to the weakness of the flesh and the importunity of the devil, and that the worlds hope is destroyed?

See from the secret prayer of Gethsemane how far we are at liberty to put before God our own view of the circumstances in which we are placed. Jesus Christ said, “Let this cup pass from me.” This has justified us in many a crisis, in telling our Father what we ourselves would like to be done. We have told Him what lives we wish to have spared, what mountains to have removed, what rivers to have dried up, and with childlike simplicity have declared our own will respecting the issue and destiny of our own life. God knows

r2 how it lias relieved our breaking hearts to be permitted to tell Him just what we wish to be and to do. The mere telling has been rest to the soul. If we could not have spoken according to our ignorance and weakness,, we should have been overburdened, mayhap destroyed; but when in the grace and pity of God we have been allowed to state our case and show the direction of our imperfect will, we have been healed by our own speech, and the sound of our own voice has prepared us to listen the more reverently to the voice of God.

See how elevated are the considerations which are brought to bear upon the case — ^’^if it be possible.’’^ Observe that God Himself is made the judge of the possibility. God’’s possibility is one thing, mans is another. What may appear to be easily possible to man, may in the view of God be impossible. Possibility is one thing in physics, and another in morals. We may be mighty with the arm, and yet powerless in moral force. When therefore we use the word possible in connection with our prayers, we only use it wisely when we remit the question of possibility from the region of our own ignorance and incapacity to the hand of God Himself.

See from the example of Jesus Christ how we may enlarge or amend our prayers. He prayed a second time/^ We cannot always get to the highest point at one step. Prayer helps prayer. Prayer is a strengthening and ascending process. Our first prayer may be very feeble and tremulous, but we gather courage from it to pray again. Some of us have astonished ourselves by the growth and urgency of our prayers. Comparing the prayers of to-day with those which we offered twenty years ago, we are conscious of having increased in reverent familiarity with God, and in power of expressing the greatest wants of our life. This should encourage many hearts. You hear a man pray in public, and are amazed at the richness and fervour of his petitions, and may probably feel proportionately discouraged: remember that the man whose prayers have so excited your astonishment did not himself pray in this manner at the beginning of his Christian career. Then his heart was doubtful, his voice trembled, his manner indicated the utmost fearfulness of spirit; he has grown to trust — go thou and do likewise.

See through the whole of Jesus Christ’s prayers how he persistently calls upon God as His Father, In His deepest sorrow the name of Father is stil? upon His lips. When He addresses the Almighty in terms of personal distress and terrible shrinking from deaths He still uses the most endearing of names. Jesus Christ did not say Eternal Infinite, Everlasting, — He used the sweet and tender name which childhood may use when asking a father’s blessing.

III. In the last place, how Christ’s experience bears

upon Christ’s doctrine. ‘^^ And He shall reward Thee

openly.” Was Jesus Christ openly rewarded after

He had breathed His prayers to His Father in secret?

Follow Him to the Cross! As He hangs upon that

tree, what word is it that breaks from His lips? Hear

Him!” My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken

me?” There is here a great discrepancy. Jesus

expected an open reward; He boldly declared that if

men prayed to their Father in secret, they would be

rewarded openly in the face of day. Yet look at His

own experience in the face of this teaching! The

mn who prayed in secret confessed Himself /ora/je??

on the Cross. What are we to make of a difficulty of

this kind? We are to do with this difficulty as with

all others in the government of God — we are to luait.

The Cross was not the full stop in the ministry of

Jesus Christ. Presently the forsaken one will return

and when we see Him again we shall ask Him

concerning this tremendous contradiction. See, He

comes to meet us upon a mountain in Galilee — there is

fire glowing in His eyes — His attitude is majestic and commanding — listen! All ‘power is given unto me in Heaven and on earth. ^’ Now we see that the discrepancy was but momentary; the reconciliation is profound and eternal. Wait! Gods work is not finished in darkness. We shall meet on the mountain! Our handsj our feet our temples, may bear the marks of cruelty; battle stains may be upon us; but in our hearts there shall be a great victory; and as for our power, it shall be as unwasting as the strength of Grod.