Verse 12 All night in prayer. This seems to have been in reference to the appointment and commission of the twelve apostles, which was to take place in the morning. It must be remembered that the climate was mild and salubrious, and that the mountainous country about the Sea of Galilee was a region of great beauty and interest, as well as of retirement and solitude. Prayer, too, includes all forms of communion with God--meditation and praise as well as supplication. We must, therefore, not conceive of this night of prayer as one spent in austere exposure, anxiety, and gloom. It was doubtless a season of peace and joy,--of thanksgiving and praise,--of happy contemplation of the vast consequences which were to flow from the great work of salvation which had been so successfully begun,--of heartfelt compassion for man, and devout communion with God. These religious emotions were doubtless heightened by the impression which the solemn glories of the night must have made upon a mind so alive to all natural and moral beauty. At such a time, all the objects in nature,--the cliffs, the ravines,--the chasms, the precipices,--the gray rocks, the dark forests,--all wrapped in shadow and obscurity, assume a peculiar expression of dread sublimity and awe--and the vast expanse of magnificence and brilliancy above, subdued by distance, beams upon the observer, the very type and symbol of eternity. No one who has not experienced the effect, can conceive of the solemn sublimity of midnight among forests and mountains.