This joy of Christ in the approach of extremest earthly anguish and sorrow is one of the beautiful mysteries of our faith. It is a holy night-flower, opening only in darkness, and shedding in the very shadow of death light and perfume; or like the solemn splendor of the stars, to be seen only in the deepest darkness. In the representations made of our Lord as a man of sorrows we are too apt to forget the solemn emphasis with which he asserts this fullness of joy. But let us look at his position on the mere human side. At the hour when he thus spoke he knew that, so far as the salvation of his nation was concerned, his life-work had been a failure. His own people had rejected him and had bargained with a member of his own family to betray him. He knew the exact details of the scourging, the scoffing, the taunts, the torture, the crucifixion; and to a sensitive soul the hour of approach to a great untried agony is often the hour of bitterest trial. It is when we foresee a great trouble in the dimness of to-morrow that our undisciplined hearts grow faint and fail us. But he who had long foreseen--who had counted in advance--every humiliation, every sorrow, and every pain, spoke at the same time of his joy as an overflowing fullness. He spoke of his peace as something which he had a divine power to give away. The world saw that night a new sight--a sufferer who had touched the extreme of all earthly loss and sorrow, who yet stood, like a God, offering to give Peace and Joy--even fullness of joy. For our Lord intensifies the idea. He wants his children not to have joy merely, but to be full of joy. This is the meaning of the words to "have my joy fulfilled in them." We shall see in the affecting history of the next few hours of the life of Jesus that this heavenly joy was capable of a temporary obscuration. He was aware that a trial was coming from a direct collision with the Evil Spirit. "The Prince of this world cometh, but hath nothing in me."