The more deeply we know the love of Jesus the more unknowable we find it to be. It is not a blind love that may awaken to find flaws and faults in its objects that it knew not of, for it knew from the beginning with omniscient certainty all about the loved ones. It knew, also, with the unerring knowledge of God, the whole way of sorrow that must be trodden in order to obtain its desire. It is a love that cannot be disappointed or alarmed, and when the great tests came it neither faltered nor fled. We need not fear that it will break down or change now: it has been fully proved.

How hideous, how hellish did the treachery and hatred of the human heart appear in that torchlight glare! Yet that band was but an advance guard, behind them lay the hosts of darkness, waiting to crush and overwhelm Him. They were but as the spray of a stormy ocean cast up upon the sand: behind them surged the seas of sorrow, frightful and unfathomed. But how did He meet the crisis? He met it by saying, “Let these go their way.” He might have escaped what lay before, for two words of His were enough to paralyze His foes. But He would not use His divine might to save Himself, for had He done so He would have lost His loved ones.

In their fervid devotion His disciples might well have put that band to flight, but He would not let them fight. Of what use would their feeble arms have been against all that lay behind that band of men who came to take Him with Judas as their leader? He saw what lay behind them, the awful sorrow, the malignity of Satan, the judgment of God, and He said, “Let these go their way.”