“Father, the hour is come.”

“Father, the hour is come.” The hour; the hour of all hours the most important. What hour like that in interest, what hour so big with momentous issues on all the past, and on all the future! That was the central hour of all time’s hours. The confluence of the two eternities was at that time-point. That hour was the keystone of time’s huge arch, that arch which rests on the one side, and the other on eternity. Many hours in the world’s history are marked and memorable. The hour of the birth or death, the crisis-hour of one of the world’s great ones, a thinker, worker, statesman, or warrior; the hour which gave birth to and introduced some mighty revolution, which proved to be the birth or death hour of a nation, altering the destiny of millions of our race for weal or for woe, is important and to be marked; but what hour like this! an hour which had its bearing on the whole universe, and whose transactions were to effect eternally God and man, angels and devils. It was for this hour that the great clock of Time was set in motion at first. It was for this hour that the world was created and upheld; for this hour Heaven’s justice waited; in it sin was made an end of, and transgression was finished; in it the law of God was magnified, and made honourable; holiness was vindicated; the devil and his work virtually destroyed; death slain, and God’s chosen people saved with an everlasting salvation. The hour is come. The time was numbered to an hour. The betrayer had gone forth on his fell errand; the machinery of death was prepared, and the Victim was ready to bleed and die on the altar. And He it is who reminds the Father that the hour is come. It is Isaac that tells Abraham that it is time he should be laid on the wood and the knife be upraised. The Lamb of God says, It is time He should die, to take away the sin of the world. The hour is come: how solemn and how applicable are the words! This hour was long in coming, but it has come at last. The eye of many a priest and prophet, king and peasant, of the olden time, had been strained in looking earnestly across the intervening ages towards that hour; but, one by one, the eye of these men grew dim with age and closed in death, and still it came not.