Shaping a Prayer on the Anvil of the Knees.


The last of these pictures is like Raphael's Sistine Madonna in the
Dresden gallery; it is in a room by itself. One enters with a holy hush
over his spirit, and, with awe in his eyes, looks at _Jesus in
Gethsemane_. There is the Kidron brook, the gentle rise of ground, the
grove of gnarled knotty old olive trees. The moon above is at the full.
Its brightness makes these shadowed recesses the darker; blackly dark.
Here is a group of men lying on the ground apparently asleep. Over yonder
deeper in among the trees a smaller group reclines motionless. They, too,
sleep. And, look, farther in yet is that lone figure; all alone; nevermore
alone; save once--on the morrow.

There is a foreshadowing of this Gethsemane experience in the requested
interview of the Greeks just a few intense days before. In the vision
which the Greeks unconsciously brought the agony of the olive grove began.
The climax is among these moon-shadowed trees. How sympathetic those inky
black shadows! It takes bright light to make black shadows. Yet they were
not black enough. Intense men can get so absorbed in the shadows as to
forget the light.

This great Jesus! Son of God: God the Son. The Son of Man: God--a man! No
draughtsman's pencil ever drew the line between His divinity and humanity;
nor ever shall. For the union of divine and human is itself divine, and
therefore clear beyond human ken. Here His humanity stands out,
pathetically, luminously stands out. Let us speak of it very softly and
think with the touch of awe deepening for this is holiest ground. The
battle of the morrow is being fought out here. Calvary is in Gethsemane.