Watching and Praying in Gethsemane
IN these most expressive words there is a tone of rebuke, not to say even of reproach. And not without reason. For with Jesus it was the hour of his intensest trial and agony. Never in all his life had there been an hour when he so much needed a dear friend to watch and pray with him. We have no record to show that ever before he had solicited this favor of his friends. But on this occasion he had. Selecting out of the twelve three on whom he could most rely, the same three who were with him in his transfiguration, he had taken them with him to a retired part of the garden of Gethsemane, and had said to them, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; tarry ye here and watch with me." Such words should have startled them to wakeful sympathy and solicitude. They should have said to each other—Is our master so borne down with anguish that it seems to him he cannot live? "Sorrowful," he said, "exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." O let us watch and pray with him in the hour of his temptation and sore agony! So it seems to us they should have said; yet it does not appear that they did say or think on this wise. What they did think does not appear from the record; but we have the sad humiliating fact that instead of either watching or praying they fell asleep. The favored three of all his living disciples, the only men of all the myriads who have been redeemed by Jesus' blood, and whose hearts have loved him, sometimes even to the death, yet out of all this vast family of attached friends, the only three who could be there, thus signally failed him in his hour of greatest need. Viewed in its bearings upon Christ's people, it is humiliating. We are ashamed that the men who should have represented the responsive sympathy of the whole church universal, and should have consecrated the utmost energy of their hearts' sympathy, watching and prayer, to his comfort and aid, should have proved so recreant to their high privilege and responsibility. We are almost ripe for indignation and protest. But we check ourselves with the thought that it would not have been unlike our own human nature, if we had in their circumstances proved as treacherous and unreliable as they. In fact we are afraid their sleep should rather be taken as a prophecy of the cold hearts and heavy souls of most if not all his disciples in all ages and climes. Indeed, we know but too well that it would be so, save as his own grace should avail to stir them to more fidelity and sympathy toward their Lord. A sad picture this of the best human hearts, while not yet deeply baptized in the Holy Ghost. How could they have felt so little sympathy with one so good, one to whom they were so much indebted, yet who was now in a sea of sorrows so deep, and buffeting against waves of temptation so terrible and so well nigh overwhelming! We must not forget how keenly this very failure of his dearest and most reliable friends must have stung that anguished heart in this hour of its sorrows. Jesus had human sympathies. He chose these three friends and asked them to go with him because his heart was human and he felt the need of human sympathy and prayer. It is not given to us to analyze and fathom all the anguish of his soul in the garden of Gethsemane. It is, however, plain enough that the sum total of the agonies of his atoning sacrifice was present most vividly—as if its contents were compressed into one cup, and this cup was put to his lips in this anticipated hour. He saw it all. He saw it so that he felt its bitterest anguish. He saw what it must be to stand alone, and bear in the sinner's stead the manifested wrath of God against sin. Ah, he never had known before by experience the darkness and the horrors that come over the soul when God hides the light of his face. It seemed to him insupportable. We do not wonder he should have shrunk back, crying, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me!" Nor do we wonder that the thought came forcibly to his soul—O if I could only have the sympathy and the prayers of a few faithful friends! O, if Peter, James and John might only stand by me while I bear this fearful load, and while I drink this dreadful cup of sorrow! As we dwell on these aspects of the case it seems hard to forgive our three honored brethren for their sad, sad failure to sympathize with Jesus in that hour of his extremest need. But as we have already intimated, there is in their failure a home lesson which it were not well for us to miss. May not Jesus be saying the same to us? May it not be that already he has ground for keener rebuke and more cutting reproof against us than against them? Have we "watched with him" at every call of his providence, or on every motion of his Spirit? When his cause has languished and seemed to be passing through some eventful crisis of its destiny, and he has most manifestly summoned us to watch with him one hour, has he not found us sleeping? Nay, have we not accounted it our fittest time to sleep, just when, on every side, the Saviour's cause has been low, and few came to the solemn assemblies of Zion? Have we at all realized this fact—that seasons of declension in the churches are precisely the time of greatest trial and anguish to Jesus Christ, and that it is peculiarly afflictive to his heart that his most reliable Peters and Jameses and Johns should be found not watching and praying but sleeping then? O if our hearts were really in sympathy with Christ's heart, we should surely think more of the anguish he feels over his church in her days of darkness and spiritual declension. We would rush to his side as we saw him enter the garden of Gethsemane, borne down with sorrow, and should deem it our princely privilege to watch with him one hour then. But how has it in fact been? Have our hearts been quick to the touch of every appeal from the trembling lips of our Lord to watch and pray with him in the hour of Zion's need? Do we vividly remember that Jesus—now no longer living among us in human flesh—yet does truly live among us in the life of his own cause? Do we consider that all his soul identifies itself with the welfare and progress of truth and holiness on the earth? From this obvious truth we naturally reach the inference that his seasons of greatest trial with his people, are those of widest, deepest declension. As each season of this sort approaches, we may hear him say as to the twelve—"Watch and pray lest ye enter into temptation." As the darkness thickens, and the sorrow of his soul becomes more intense, we can understand him to call out Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and tenderly entreat them to watch and pray with him one hour. And what if they should fail him? What if they restrain prayer, sink down under the general stupor of the times, and when the sorrowing Jesus comes back from his prayer of anguish, are found to be fast asleep! This would be re-enacting the sad, heart-sickening unfaithfulness which we complain of so justly in the case of Peter and the two brothers in the garden. Alas! how sad, and how humiliating! Who of us, brethren, fall under this condemnation? Who of us in condemning that favored three, have passed sentence on ourselves? We each of us have in our turn the blessed privilege of watching and praying with Jesus in some night of his sorrows; does our heart leap to improve it? With all the sympathy of our soul do we say, Give me many a night of watching and prayer with my Lord in his sorrows over the darkness and backslidings of his church. It is but little at the utmost that I can do in this life for him who bore my griefs and carried my sorrows; let me at least have the luxury of watching with Jesus in prayer over the desolations that pain his heart so deeply. Beloved, is it not the case with some of us that our Christianity has little of Christ in it, and that consequently the question how He feels in view of our present state of heart and in view of the state of others' hearts around us, has little to do with our Christian sympathies and activities? Does it often occur to us how much our blessed Lord lives in the prosperity of his cause, and mourns in sorrow over its decline and its low estate? Do we naturally sympathize with these seasons of reviving, or of declension, because we know that Jesus does? This is what we mean by living in sympathy with our divine Lord. Do you know what it is?—Ob. Evan.