said "Our Father" when speaking of Himself and His disciples. He makes the distinction, "Your Father and my Father-your God and my God," as if, even in His closest approaches to them, there was an infinite distance between man and God. He prayed many a time for His disciples, but He never asked their prayers. Their sympathy, indeed, He was thankful for; but though He prayed often that their faith might not fail, He never asked them to plead that His might stand.

Again, when He prayed He received special manifestations of the divine favor. Having referred to these elsewhere, we need not say much of them now. Thus at the Baptism, when He was dedicated to His work, and when the voice of God attested Him as His Son, we are told that He was praying. At the Transfiguration He became clad in raiment like snow; His form was illuminated, and He was transfigured before His disciples. And then, again, God spake to Him. Now it is clear that these manifestations were in a sense lonely and supernatural. We cannot share in them fully, and yet there is a part that we need not miss. At the Transfiguration, when He prayed, the weariness, the

wrinkles, the marks of pain went out of His face, and He received His true likeness; and even to men something of the same wonderful light has come and may come. If we want to have the wrinkles wiped out of our face, and be transfigured with the coming glory, and to have the stains of sins washed away, we too must pray. Especially in death, when it is noble and believing, there may be seen something of that smile which was on the face of Stephen when he beheld Christ. There may be even in life that light like an Italian morning on the face. It will come if we pray. He will say to us even, "Thou art my son," and we shall know it to be true in spite of all that makes against it,—in spite of sin, and sorrow, and death. But such manifestations as these received by Christ in answer to His prayers must be held to mark Him out as divine.

Again, the most superficial reader cannot but feel in perusing especially the intercessory prayer of Christ, that its tone is quite different from any prayer of ours. He makes Himself equal with God. It is probable that the prayer was lifted in the Temple courts. At the Passover the gates of the Temple were opened at midnight. But

whether this be so or not, He prays standing upon the steps of the throne. "This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." "All mine are Thine, and Thine are mine, and I am glorified in them." Is that the voice of a man? Does not He speak who counts it no robbery to be equal with God? Then mark how He prays here. He does not plead as the frail, unworthy suppliant, uncertain of the issue of his prayer, but He is as one who has power with God and who prevails. "Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given me may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which Thou hast given." Praying for Himself, He uses the language of deep submission; but praying for others, He speaks the tranquil irresistible word we would not dare to use. "My glory," He says, when the glooms of death were thickest," the glory which I had with Thee before the world was, and will have after the world has been." So we see that though He was true man, and prayed like us with tears and agonies and cries, nevertheless even in the deepest hour of darkness He was God; and His Godbead shines luminous through all His sorrow,

and we know Him to be the eternal Son of God who has become man.

We repeat, then, in closing, that His humanity teaches us to pray as a preliminary before solemn duty, as a rest after service, and as a preparation for great agonies. We are taught His divinity by the entire absence of confession of sin from His prayers, by the loneliness of His prayers, by the wonderful effect they produced, and by His speaking to God in prayer as to His equal.

It is deeply suggestive to reflect that He is still the praying Christ, only now He is the Intercessor. Before Gethsemane He said, "Sit ye here while I go and pray yonder." He says to us now, "Labor, struggle, suffer, pray, while I go and pray yonder." He is praying for us, and by and by He will pray us into heaven. The day will come when it will be His time to say for one, for another, "Father, I will that he whom Thou hast given me may be with me where I am, to behold my glory."

CHAPTER XI.

Christ dealing with Enquirers.

"I saw all Israel scattered upon the hills, as sheep that have not a shepherd."

M

"He took the suffering human race,

He read each wound, each weakness clear,
And struck His finger on the place,

And said, Thou ailest here and here."

M. ARNOLD.

UCH of the Gospels is taken up with conversations between Christ and individuals. Teaching so startling and difficult as His, with such an element in it of attraction and hope, naturally drew around Him many who sought to know further what this gospel meant. He on His part was as eager to meet inquirers as they were to seek Him; and we find that He bestowed as much care and pains in expounding the nature of His kingdom to individuals, as He did when He was speaking to great multitudes. The audience, if small, was fit.

Not only so, but we find that He put Himself