So He goes on ringing the changes back and forth on this in simple conversational style.  And now they are silent.  The narrow street is quite shadowed.  He lets them think a bit over His words.  And the personal part takes hold most.  And they talk softly together of what this means,—­a little while and He is gone; again a little while, and He is back.  They’re plainly puzzled, yet restrained from breaking in upon His deep mood.

But with characteristic gentleness He speaks of what they would ask.[119] Clearly there is some terrible experience for Him and for them just at hand.  But He reaches past to the joy beyond, as the mother forgets sharp pains in the joy of her new-born babe.  And as He talks they think they understand now, but again He gently reminds of the storm about to break.  And then He leaves them three wondrous words,—­peace, good-cheer, overcome.  In the midst of the worst storm there may be peace.  In the thickest of tribulation the song of cheer may ring out.  He has overcome.  The outcome is settled.  No doubts need nag.  Sing!  Sing louder! Christ is Victor!

This is the second bit of the evening’s closer wooing, this long quiet talk about the supper table and along the road.  It is wooing them up to more intelligence in their believing and loving.  It’s wooing them to trust Him, hold hard to Him, during the coming storm, when they wouldn’t understand.  Even when they can’t understand, but stand in hopeless helpless bewilderment, they still can trust Him.

Taken into the Innermost Life.

They’re outside the city-gate now, going down the path towards the Kidron Brook.  Now comes the third bit of that evening’s closer wooing.[120] And this is the tenderest, the most personal, the least resistible bit, the closest wooing of all.  He takes them into His innermost heart-life for a brief moment.  It must have reminded John afterwards of that mountain-top experience when Jesus drew aside the drapery of His humanity and let a little of the inner glory shine out.  Here He takes them with Him into the holy of holies of His own inner life with His Father.

Let not any one think that Jesus was simply letting them hear Him pray, so they might learn.  Not that; not that.  He was taking them into the sacred privacy of His own innermost life.  That was a bit of the wooing, under the desperate happenings just ahead.  But now as He takes them in He quite forgets them, though He knows they are there. He is absorbed with the Father.  He isn’t thinking now of the effect of all this on them.  That’s past.  He is alone in spirit with the Father, talking out freely even as though actually quite alone.

We are in the innermost holy of holies here.  The heart of the world’s life is its literature.  The heart of all literature is this sacred Book of God.  The heart of this Book is the Gospels.  The heart of these four Gospels is John’s.  The heart of John’s is this exquisite bit, chapters thirteen to seventeen.  And there’s yet an inner heart here.  It is this bit, the seventeenth chapter, where the inner side of Jesus’ prayer-life lies open to us.  And we shall find an innermost heart yet again here.