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.

The simplicity of speech here catches the ear. The holy intimacy of contact with God hushes the spirit. The certainty of the Father's presence awes the heart greatly. The unquestioning confidence in the outcome is to one's faith like a glass of kingdom wine fresh from the King's own hand. The tenseness and yet exquisite quietness holds one's being still with a great stillness. Both shoes and hat go off instinctively and we stand with head bowed low and heart hushed for this is holiest ground.

Of course, no paraphrase of this prayer can possibly approach its own beauty and simplicity. But it may perhaps send one back to the prayer itself to see better what is there.

They're out in the open, down near the Kidron. Jesus stops and looks up towards the blue, the Father's open door, and quietly talks out of His heart into His Father's heart, "Father: the hour is come"; talked of long before this errand was started upon, brooded over these human years, felt in His inner being as it ticked itself nearer in the tremendous passing events. Now it is come. The clock is striking the hour, striking on earth and echoed distinctly in the Father's ear.

"Father: reveal now the true character of the Son; yet only that the Son may reveal Thy true character.[121] Thou hast already done so in the control Thou hast given Him over all men, that so He may give to them the eternal life. And this is the real life to come into intimate touch of heart and life with Thee and with Thine anointed One, Jesus."

"I have already revealed Thy character in doing fully the errand Thou didst send Me on. (And it was fully done in all the active part, though the greatest thing yet remained to be done in the tremendous yielding, the strong passive yielding to Hate's worst that so Love's truest and best might be clearly seen by men.) And now I am coming back to be recognized and acknowledged and received by Thine own self even as it was before I came away on this errand."

Thus far He has been alone with the Father face-to-face; just the two together in closest communion. Now the prayer moves on from communion and petition to intercession. He is thinking of others, of these men who are grouped near by. He has prayed for them before. He is simply picking up the thread of the accustomed prayer He had prayed, and would still pray when He had gone from them up through the doorway of the blue.

He has revealed the Father to them, and they have understood and believed and have followed. Now He prays for them, that they may be kept; not taken out of the world; kept in it, giving their witness to it, yet never of its spirit, always controlled by another Spirit. They were being sent into the world for witness even as He had been.

And a great word breaks out like the bursting of a flood of sunlight out of dark clouds, -- joy. He had used it that evening before in the upper room, and again along the road. Now it flashes out again. This reveals the meaning of that good-cheer and overcome with which the roadway talk closed. With the clouds of hate at their blackest, and the storm just about to break in uncontrolled wild fury, He speaks of "My joy." He is singing. In the thick of hatred and plotting here's the bit of music, in the major key, rippling out. Such a spirit cannot be defeated. Joy is faith singing in the storm because it sees already the clearing light beyond.

And so He prays on, touching the same keys of the musical instrument of His heart, back and forth, yet ever advancing in the theme. Now He broadens out, in clear vision, beyond the gathering storm, to those, through all the earth, and down the centuries, who would believe through these men who are listening. What a sweep of faith. That singing cleared His vision.

And then He sees them all, of many races and languages and radical differences, all blended into one body of earnest loving believers drawn by the one vision of Himself back in the glory of the Father's presence, where they will all gather. And then love ties the knot on the end. A personal love ties together Father and Son and -- us, who humbly give the glad homage of our hearts.

Right in the very midst of the prayer lies that innermost heart of which I spoke a moment ago. It is in verse ten. Jesus says, "All things that are Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine." There lies the very inner heart of all carried to the last degree. There is glad giving and full taking; surrender and appropriation. He who gives all may reach in and take all. Here is, humanly, the secret of Jesus' stupendous character and career.

And it is the same for the humblest of us. The road is no different. We may say, by His great grace, in the insistence of our sovereign wills, "All that is mine is Thine: I give it Thee. I give it back to Thee: I use all the strength of my will in yielding all to Thee, and in doing it habitually."

Then we can say, with greatest reverence and humility and yet bold confidence, "All that is Thine is mine." Yet being mine it is Thine. Still being Thine it is mine. So comes the perfection of the rhythmic action of love. Our love gives our all to Him. And then takes the greater all of His -- no, not from Him, for Him, held in trust, used for Him, while we keep knees and face close to the ground, lest we stumble and slip and worse.

So the prayer closes. And if we might go back over it, alone in secret, prayerfully, quietly thinking thoughtfully into it, until this great simple prayer gets its hold upon our hearts. And then gradually it would come to us that so He is now praying for us, you and me.

What must it have meant to these men to stand there quietly, awed as they listen to Him praying that prayer. How it reveals the deep consciousness of the intimacy of relation between Father and Son. How it must have touched and stirred them to the very depths to hear Jesus telling the Father so simply about their faith in Himself, and their obedience, their break with their national allegiance to follow Himself. And that word joy -- did they wonder about it? And wonder more later that night, and the days after? But the key-note of the music caught, and soon they were singing the same tune, and in the same pitch.

What wooing! This was the closest wooing. The fine wooing of this matchless Lover came to its superlative degree that night. Positive degree, that touch upon their feet; comparative, that talk about the board and along the road; superlative, this taking them in for a brief moment into the secrecy of His inner communion with the Father.