In Gethsemane, as the awful moment came nearer, once more we catch a glimpse of His attitude to the unseen. In place of illuminated form and shining garments, we hear now of a face covered with the sweat and blood of agony. Just in front are the shouting rabble, the cross and the nails, the defeat of lifelong hopes and the defection of the inner fellowship, but the triumphant spirit within Him unites with the infinite will that is steering the world and piloting all lives, and calmly acquiesces with it. But to this suffering soul, battling in the dark night of agony, the infinite will is no abstract Power, no blind fate, to be dumbly yielded to. The great word which breaks out from these quivering lips is the dear word for “Father” that the little child’s lips have learned to say: “Abba.” The will above is His will now and He goes forward to the pain and death in the strength of communion and fellowship with His Abba-Father. There may have been a single moment of desolation in the agony of the next day when the cry escaped, “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” but immediately the inner spirit recovers its connection and its confidence and the crucifixion ends, as it should, with the words of triumphant faith, “Father, into thy hands I intrust my spirit.” The most important fact of this Life, which has ever since poured Alpine streams of power into the life of the world, is its attitude toward the unseen. We miss the heart of things when we reduce the gospel to ethics or when we transform it into dry theology. Through all the story and behind all the teaching is the mighty inner fact of an intimate personal _experience_ of God as Father. To live is to be about the “Father’s business.” In great moments of intercourse there comes to Him a flooding consciousness of sonship, joyous both to Father and Son: “In Him I am well pleased,” and in times of strain and tragedy the onward course is possible because the inner bond holds fast and the Abba-experience abides. It is not strange that a synoptic writer reports the saying: “No man knoweth the Father but the Son.” The passage as it stands reported in Matthew may be colored by later theology, but there is a nucleus of absolute truth hidden in the saying. There is no other way to know God but this way of inner love-experience. Only a son can know a Father. Only one who has trodden the wine-press in anguish and pain, and through it all has felt the enfolding love of an Abba-father really _knows_. Mysticism has its pitfalls and its limitations, but this much is sound and true, that the way to know God is to have inner heart’s experience of Him, like the experience of the Son. CHAPTER III SOME PROPHETS OF THE INNER WAY I THE PSALMIST’S WAY