Note also the certainty of His faith in the Hearer of prayer:  “I thank Thee that Thou heardest Me.”  There was nothing that could be seen to warrant such faith.  There lay the dead body.  But He trusted as seeing Him who is invisible.  Faith is blind, except upward.  It is blind to impossibilities and deaf to doubt.  It listens only to God and sees only His power and acts accordingly.  Faith is not believing that He can but that He will.  But such faith comes only of close continuous contact with God.  Its birthplace is in the secret closet; and time and the open Word, and an awakened ear and a reverent quiet heart are necessary to its growth.

The eleventh mention is found in the twelfth chapter of John.  Two or three days before the fated Friday some Greek visitors to the Jewish feast of Passover sought an interview with Him.  The request seemed to bring to His mind a vision of the great outside world, after which His heart yearned, coming to Him so hungry for what only He could give.  And instantly athwart that vision like an ink-black shadow came the other vision, never absent now from His waking thoughts, of the cross so awfully near.  Shrinking in horror from the second vision, yet knowing that only through its realization could be realized the first,—­seemingly forgetful for the moment of the by-standers, as though soliloquizing, He speaks—­“now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say?  Shall I say, Father save Me from this hour?  But for this cause came I unto this hour:  this is what I will say (and the intense conflict of soul merges into the complete victory of a wholly surrendered will) Father, glorify Thy name.”  Quick as the prayer was uttered, came the audible voice out of heaven answering, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”  How near heaven must be!  How quickly the Father hears!  He must be bending over, intently listening, eager to catch even faintly whispered prayer.  Their ears, full of earth-sounds, unaccustomed to listening to a heavenly voice, could hear nothing intelligible.  He had a trained ear.  Isaiah 50:4 revised (a passage plainly prophetic of Him), suggests how it was that He could understand this voice so easily and quickly.  “He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as they that are taught.”  A taught ear is as necessary to prayer as a taught tongue, and the daily morning appointment with God seems essential to both.

Under the Olive Trees.

The twelfth mention is made by Luke, chapter twenty-two.  It is Thursday night of Passion week, in the large upper room in Jerusalem where He is celebrating the old Passover feast, and initiating the new memorial feast.  But even that hallowed hour is disturbed by the disciples’ self-seeking disputes.  With the great patience of great love He gives them the wonderful example of humility of which John thirteen tells, speaking gently of what it meant, and then