turning to Peter, and using his old name, He says, “Simon, Simon, behold Satan asked to have you that he might sift you as wheat, but I made supplication for thee that thy faith fail not.” He had been praying for Peter by name! That was one of His prayer-habits, praying for others.  And He has not broken off that blessed habit yet.  He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near to God through Him seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.  His occupation now seated at His Father’s right hand in glory is praying for each of us who trust Him.  By name?  Why not?

The thirteenth mention is the familiar one in John, chapter seventeen, and cannot be studied within these narrow limits, but merely fitted into Us order.  The twelfth chapter contains His last words to the world.  In the thirteenth and through to the close of this seventeenth He is alone with His disciples.  If this prayer is read carefully in the revised version it will be seen that its standpoint is that of one who thinks of His work down in the world as already done (though the chief scene is yet to come) and the world left behind, and now He is about re-entering His Father’s presence to be re-instated in glory there.  It is really, therefore, a sort of specimen of the praying for us in which He is now engaged, and so is commonly called the intercessory or high-priestly prayer.  For thirty years He lived a perfect life.  For three and a half years He was a prophet speaking to men for God.  For nineteen centuries He has been high priest speaking to God for men.  When He returns it will be as King to reign over men for God.

The fourteenth mention brings us within the sadly sacred precincts of Gethsemane garden, one of His favourite prayer-spots, where He frequently went while in Jerusalem.  The record is found in Matthew twenty-six, Mark fourteen, and Luke twenty-one.  Let us approach with hearts hushed and heads bared and bowed, for this is indeed hallowed ground.  It is a little later on that same Thursday night, into which so much has already been pressed and so much more is yet to come.  After the talk in the upper room, and the simple wondrous prayer, He leads the little band out of the city gate on the east across the swift, muddy Kidron into the inclosed grove of olive trees beyond.  There would be no sleep for Him that night.  Within an hour or two the Roman soldiers and the Jewish mob, led by the traitor, will be there searching for Him, and He meant to spend the intervening time in prayer.  With the longing for sympathy so marked during these latter months, He takes Peter and James and John and goes farther into the deeply-shadowed grove.  But now some invisible power tears him away and plunges Him alone still farther into the moonlit recesses of the garden; and there a strange, awful struggle of soul ensues.  It seems like a renewal of the same conflict He experienced in John twelve when the Greeks came, but immeasurably