words. A strong and overpowering agitation is evident in every movement. He came and went between God and his disciples; his prayers were intensely brief; they were offered at intervals; they were repeated thrice; he besought his chosen friends, saying, "Watch with me;" he retired; he prayed; he rose from his knees in the unutterable fulness of his sorrow; he came to his sleeping disciples; he exclaimed, "What! could ye not watch with me one hour?" Matt. xxvi. 40; he returned again to the throne of grace; he cast himself upon the ground; his burdened, almost bursting heart, could only say the same words as before-grief had dried up the streams of thought, the flow of words, into one only channel; but even that he did not stay to use. His spirit was

disquieted; he had no rest; again he rose from prayer; again he returned to his disciples-still no sympathy, they were all asleep; to them also he spake nearly in the same terms; they wist not what to say. Silence was the only answer he obtained from God and men. "And he left them and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words," Matt. xxvi. 44. His agony increased; a bloody sweat burst from every pore; great drops fell to the ground. He prayed more earnestly, yet still used the same words; probably he now ejaculated some of them more than once, and accompanied each burdened word with intervals of heavy groaning, many tears and strong cries, Heb. v. 7. His perseverance and importunity prevailed; an angel from heaven appeared to him; he felt

strengthened with an assurance that his petition was heard; he rose from prayer calm and self-possessed: the agitation was gone; he could now approach his disciples, and compassionately say, "Sleep on now, and take your rest."

While hanging on the cross on Calvary, our Lord obtained deliverance, in like manner, by the power of prayer. Though forsaken, he did not cease to claim affiance with an absent Father; though all was dark and silent, yet he still cried, and prayed, and interceded. As he bowed submissively in the garden, so did he justify God upon the cross; "Thou turnest from me; thou art silent; but thou art holy," was his immediate acknowledgment. When sore beset by spiritual foes, when his attention was, as it were, distracted by the

malice of men, he returned instantly again to supplication. When obliged to listen to their taunts, when cut to the heart by their reproach, that God would not acknowledge him, he became only more earnest in his appeal, more determined in his grasp of faith, and said, “But thou art my God from my mother's belly." When exquisitely tormented by the aching, quivering, pierced flesh, he turned away from the wicked instruments, and recognised the hand of his Father in it all, saying, "THOU hast brought me into the dust of death." Yet this, instead of driving him further in heart from God, made him press more intensely in spirit towards him. As it were, with a holy violence of importunity, that would take no denial, he cried as in these verses, "Be not Thou far from me, O Lord; O my strength,

haste thee to help me.

soul from the sword; my darling

from the power of the dog.

Deliver my

Save me

from the lion's mouth, and from the horns of the unicorns."

In this powerful and importunate appeal to his Father, it is remarkable to observe in what new forms our Lord presents his former petitions. Necessity invents arguments, and renders the dumb eloquent. 'Though we cannot answer God's logic, yet, with the woman of Samaria, we hope to prevail with the rhetoric of importunity." -Bacon's Christian Paradoxes. Our blessed Saviour still earnestly desired that same blessing of his Father's presence, for which he had been pleading from the commencement of this psalm. His heart was fully set in him to seek after this; therefore, he never wearied or grew faint.

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