And as Christ teaches us to pray for others, so also does He teach us to
pray for ourselves. Two points only in this connection can be noted.
(1) Let us pray when we enter into our Gethsemane; for every life has
its Gethsemane. Some there are who have not yet entered it; they are
young, and their way thus far has teen among the roses and lilies of
life. But for them, too, the path leads to Gethsemane, and some day they
also will lie prostrate in an agony, under the darkening olive trees.
And some there are to whom life seems but one long Gethsemane. In that
dread agony God help us to pray! Nay, what else then can a man do but,
as Browning says, catch at God's skirts and pray? But that he can do.
Death may build its dividing walls great and high, such as our feet can
never scale; it cannot roof them over and shut us out from God. We
remember how it was with Enoch Arden, stranded on an isle, "the
loneliest in a lonely sea":--
"Had not his poor heart
Spoken with That, which being everywhere
Lets none, who speaks with Him, seem all alone,
Surely the man had died of solitude."
Were it not for the doors opened in heaven what should man that is born
of a woman do? But when in our Gethsemane we offer up "prayers and
supplications, with strong crying and tears," it is after Christ's
manner that we must pray. I said just now that there are some to whom
life seems one long Gethsemane. Can it be because hitherto they have
only prayed, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away
from me"? Not until with Christ we bow our heads and say, "Nevertheless,
not as I will, but as Thou wilt," will the iron gates unfold and the
shadows of the Garden lie behind us.
(2) "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation." And if there be
some to whom my last word had little or no meaning, here, at least,
Christ speaks to all. And this time I have nothing of my own to add by
way of comment; but I copy out this passage from Charles Kingsley's
_Yeast_, for every young man who reads these words to lay to heart: "I
am no saint," says Colonel Bracebridge, "and God only knows how much
less of one I may become; but mark my words--if you are ever tempted by
passion, and vanity, and fine ladies, to form liaisons, as the Jezebels
call them, snares, and nets and labyrinths of blind ditches, to keep you
down through life, stumbling and grovelling, hating yourself and hating
the chain to which you cling--in that hour pray--pray as if the devil
had you by the throat--to Almighty God, to help you out of that cursed
slough! There is nothing else for it!--pray, I tell you!"
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