From wakeful disciples to political vigilance
the command that we should _watch_ and pray
The wording belongs to the Gospel language of wakefulness. In Matthew 26:40–41, Jesus finds the disciples asleep in Gethsemane and tells them to watch and pray against temptation. Mark 13:33–37 supplies an especially close parallel to Chesterton's surrounding argument: servants must keep watch while their master is away because they cannot know when he will return. The King James Version has the paired verbs in both passages; the Challoner revision of the Douay-Rheims also has them in Mark 13:33. See KJV Matthew 26 and Mark 13 and Douay-Rheims Mark 13.
Chesterton makes wakefulness into outward attention to rulers and circumstances; his phrase about a deity who disappears also resembles Mark's absent-master setting. These are interpretive extensions. The Gospel commands concern temptation and readiness, not an explicit doctrine that only transcendent theology can sustain political opposition. Since the phrase occurs in more than one passage and translation, it cannot securely identify a single verse or Bible edition used by Chesterton.
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