Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/91

 afar from the abodes of men, from the sound and sight of human cares and sins, alone with his chosen three, on the vast mountains, with the world as far beneath their eyes as its thoughts were below their minds;—in the silence of the night, with the lights of the city and villages faintly gleaming in the distance on the lower hills and the plain,—with no sound near them but the murmuring of the night wind about the rocks,—with the dark canopy of gathering clouds above them,—Jesus prayed. His voice went up from this high altar of earth's wide temple to the throne of his Father, to whom he commended in words of supplication, those who were to labor for him when his earthly work should cease. We may well suppose that the substance of his prayer was, that their thoughts, before so groveling, and now so devotedly clinging to visions of earthly dominion and personal aggrandizement, might "leave all meaner things, to low ambition and the pride of kings," and might rise, as on that high peak, from earth towards heaven, to the just sense of the far higher efforts and honors to which they were destined. With their thoughts and feelings thus kindled with the holy associations of the hour, the place and the person, their souls must have risen with his in that solemn and earnest supplication, and their prayers for new devotion and exaltation of spirit must have been almost equally ardent. Probably some hours were passed in this employment, varied perhaps by the eloquent and pointed instructions given by Jesus, to prepare these chiefs of the apostolic band, for the full understanding of the nature of his mission and theirs. How vastly important to their success in their labors, and to their everlasting happiness, must these prayers and instructions have been! The three hearers, we may presume, gave for a long time the most devoted attention which a scene so impressive could awaken; but yet they were men, and weary ones too, for they had come a considerable distance up a very steep way, and it was now late at night,—no doubt long past their bed-time. The exercise which their journey to the spot had given them, was of a kind for which their previous habits of life had quite unfitted them. They were all fishermen, and had dwelt all their lives in the low flat country on the shores of lake Tiberias and the valley of the Jordan, where they had nothing to do with climbing hills. And though their constant habits of hard labor must have made them stout men in their vocation, yet we all know that the muscles called into action by the management of the boat and net, are very different from those which support