intenser.  He who in Himself knew no sin was now beginning to realize in His spirit what within a few hours He realized actually, that He was in very deed to be made sin for us.  And the awful realization comes in upon Him with such terrific intensity that it seems as though His physical frame cannot endure the strain of mental agony.  The actual experience of the next day produced such mental agony that His physical strength gave way.  For He died not of His physical suffering, excruciating as that was, but literally of a broken heart, its walls burst asunder by the strain of soul.  It is not possible for a sinning soul to appreciate with what nightmare dread and horror the sinless soul of Jesus must have approached the coming contact with the sin of a world.  With bated breath and reverent gaze one follows that lonely figure among the trees; now kneeling, now falling upon His face, lying prostrate, “He prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass away from Him.”  One snatch of that prayer reaches our ears:  “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee—­if it be possible let this cup pass away from Me; nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”  How long He remained so in prayer we do not know, but so great was the tension of spirit that a messenger from heaven appeared and strengthened Him.  Even after that “being in an agony He prayed more earnestly (literally, more stretched out, more strainedly) and His sweat became as it were great clots of blood falling down upon the ground.”  When at length He arises from that season of conflict and prayer, the victory seems to be won, and something of the old-time calm reasserts itself.  He goes to the sleeping disciples, and mindful of their coming temptation, admonishes them to pray; then returns to the lonely solitude again for more prayer, but the change in the form of prayer tells of the triumph of soul, “O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away except I drink it, Thy will be done.”  The victory is complete.  The crisis is past.  He yields Himself to that dreaded experience through which alone the Father’s loving plan for a dying world can be accomplished.  Again He returns to the poor, weak disciples, and back again for another bit of strengthening communion, and then the flickering glare of torches in the distance tells Him that “the hour is come.”  With steady step and a marvellous peace lighting His face He goes out to meet His enemies.  He overcame in this greatest crisis of His life by prayer.

The fifteenth mention is the final one.  Of the seven sentences which He spake upon the cross, three were prayers.  Luke tells us that while the soldiers were driving the nails through His hands and feet and lifting the cross into place, He, thinking even then not of self, but of others, said, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”

It was as the time of the daily evening sacrifice drew on, near the close of that strange darkness which overcast all nature, after a silence of three hours, that He loudly sobbed out the piercing, heart-rending cry, “My God, My God, why didst Thou forsake Me?” A little later the triumphant shout proclaimed His work done, and then the very last word was a prayer quietly breathed out, as He yielded up His life, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.”  And so His expiring breath was vocalized into prayer.