non-Jewish world.  The coming scenes and experiences—­the scene on the little hillock outside the Jerusalem wall—­seem never absent from His thoughts. The sixth mention is made by Luke, chapter nine.  They are up north in the neighbourhood of the Roman city of Caesarea Philippi.  “And it came to pass as He was praying alone, the disciples were with Him.”  Alone, so far as the multitudes are concerned, but seeming to be drawing these twelve nearer to His inner life.  Some of these later incidents seem to suggest that he was trying to woo them into something of the same love for the fascination of secret prayer that He had.  How much they would need to pray in the coming years when He was gone.  Possibly, too, He yearned for a closer fellowship with them.  He loved human fellowship, as Peter and James and John, and Mary and Martha and many other gentle women well knew.  And there is no fellowship among men to be compared with fellowship in prayer.

    “There is a place where spirits blend,
    Where friend holds fellowship with friend,
    A place than all beside more sweet,
    It is the blood-bought mercy-seat.”

The seventh mention is in this same ninth chapter of Luke, and records a third night of prayer.  Matthew and Mark also tell of the transfiguration scene, but it is Luke who explains that He went up into the mountain to pray, and that it was as He was praying that the fashion of His countenance was altered.  Without stopping to study the purpose of this marvellous manifestation of His divine glory to the chosen three at a time when desertion and hatred were so marked, it is enough now to note the significant fact that it was while He was praying that the wondrous change came. Transfigured while praying! And by His side stood one who centuries before on the earth had spent so much time alone with God that the glory-light of that presence transfigured his face, though he was unconscious of it.  A shining face caused by contact with God!  Shall not we, to whom the Master has said, “follow Me,” get alone with Him and His blessed Word, so habitually, with open or uncovered face, that is, with eyesight unhindered by prejudice or self-seeking, that mirroring the glory of His face we shall more and more come to bear His very likeness upon our faces?[45]

    “And the face shines bright
    With a glow of light
    From His presence sent
    Whom she loves to meet.

    “Yes, the face beams bright
    With an inner light
    As by day so by night,
    In shade as in shine,
    With a beauty fine,
    That she wist not of,
    From some source within. 
       And above.

    “Still the face shines bright
    With the glory-light
    From the mountain height. 
    Where the resplendent sight
    Of His face
    Fills her view
    And illumines in turn
    First the few,
    Then the wide race.”