And being by
experience made perfect He then went on to do such and such things for
us. Why, for instance, for one thing, why do you think was our Lord able
to speak with such extraordinary point, impressiveness, and assurance
about prayer; about the absolute necessity and certainty of secret,
importunate, persevering prayer having, sooner or later, in one shape or
other, and in the best possible shape, its answer? Why but because of
His own experience? Why but because His own closet, hilltop, all-night,
and up-before-the-day prayers had all been at last heard and better heard
than He had been able to ask? We can quite well read between the lines
in all our Lord's parables and in all the passages of His sermons about
prayer. The unmistakable traces of otherwise untold enterprises and
successes, agonies and victories of prayer, are to be seen in every such
sermon of His. And so, in like manner, in all that He says to His
disciples about the sweetness of submission, resignation, and
self-denial, as also about the nourishment for His soul that He got out
of every hard act of obedience,--and so on.
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