THE LIFE OF CHRIST.

XIV. HIS AGONY IN GETHSEMANE.

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ST. MARK xiv. 32-42.

And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and He "saith to His disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. And He taketh "with Him Peter, and James, and John, and began to be sore amazed, "and to be very heavy; and saith unto them, My soul is exceeding "sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. And He went for"ward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were pos"sible, the hour might pass from Him. And He said, Abba, Father, "all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from Me: never"theless not what I will, but what thou wilt. And He cometh, and "findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? "couldest not thou watch one hour? Watch ye, and pray, lest ye enter "into temptation: the spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak. And again He went away, and prayed, and spake the same words. And "when He returned, He found them asleep again; (for their eyes were "heavy;) neither wist they what to answer Him. And He cometh the "third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: "it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed "into the hands of sinners. Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth "Me is at hand."

WE now come to a scene in the Life of our blessed Lord which it becomes us to approach with feelings of solemnity and deepest reverence-" to put off our

shoes from off our feet" while we tread this "holy ground," where is disclosed a mystery so awful, so sacred, as to make us hesitate to discourse of it. But it is written for our instruction. Our Lord also took with Him witnesses of this transaction. He therefore intends that we should look into it and learn from it. He invites us in their persons to draw near and see this wondrous sight-the Agony of the Redeemer. May we retire from the contemplation affected as He would have us!

Following the narrative our attention will be first directed to the Agony itself; then to the Saviour's thrice repeated Prayer; and, lastly, to the lesson from the scene to the Witnesses and in them to all His disciples.

I. Though the account given us is brief, yet there is sufficient to shew that the Agony of our Lord on this occasion was intense beyond conception. Thus, in the passage before us we read-"He began to "be sore amazed, and to be very heavy: and saith "unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto "death" to which St. Luke adds-"And there "appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strength"ening Him: and, being in an agony, He prayed

more earnestly, and His sweat was as it were great

drops of blood falling down to the ground;" (ch.

xxii. 43, 44): whence we infer that there must have been a cause for His sorrow at that hour over and above the anticipation of His crucifixion—that somewhat more was then endured by Him than would be occasioned by the prospect of death even in its most painful or ignominious form; that His sufferings were not merely bodily, but, (which we know to be far more severe and intolerable), mental and internal, such as to be judged of by us only from the extraordinary effects on His agonized frame here mentioned.

But we are not left to inference. The Scriptures at once confirm the fact and account for it, when they tell us that in these sufferings He was accomplishing the work of our redemption—a work which involved a supernatural "conflict," (as the word "agony" denotes), and one which none but He could have sustained. For,

1. In the first place, He had to encounter,-now, indeed, for the last time, but in his strongest holdthe great Enemy of man, in order to rescue the captives whom he had enslaved: "through death to

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destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the "Devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage" (Heb. ii. 15). This "conflict," we have seen, commenced so soon as He entered on His office and mission as

"The Christ:" so soon as He was "anointed" at His Baptism by the Holy Spirit descending on Himthat new power with which the humanity was in His person endowed as the Second Adam, as undertaking for man to set him up again in the standing of Life and give to him a new Head; and which was now to be tried that it might be seen whether this new and spiritual man were One who could indeed show himself to be proof against all the temptations and assaults of him by whom the first Adam was overcome-One able to stand where he fell. Then 66 was He led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil," who, defeated though he was in all his attempts, was not yet finally overcome, but departed from Him for a season:" implying that his assaults would be renewed, as they were again and again, and never (we must conclude) more fiercely than at the end, when-as said of him on another occasion, in reference to his last and yet future persecution of the Church, the body of Christ, herein to be conformed to its Head in suffering before entering into His glory, he would "have great wrath knowing that He had but a short time," exasperated, moreover, by all his former defeats. As indeed our Lord intimated, when, a few moments before, on His way to Gethsemane, He said to His disciples (St. John xiv. 30) "Hereafter I will not talk much

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"with you; for the Prince of this world cometh, " and hath nothing in me. But, that the world may "know that I love the Father, and as the Father "gave me commandment, even so I do:" that is, 'He hath nothing in me, but I submit thus to be assailed by him to prove that it is so that the world may know that in love to the Father and obedience to His will, I, as the Son of Man, am without fault.' And a little after, to those sent to arrest Him-" This is your hour and the power of darkness," (Luke xxii. 53). While,

2. Again,-" His soul was exceeding sorrowful unto death," not only as death was thus to Him arrayed in all the terrors with which he who has the power of death could invest it, but, because He was doomed to meet it without that consolation which none as He could appreciate, and with a cause of grief which none as He could feel. For, having vouchsafed to give His life "an offering for sin," and in His death to bear its curse, to Him it was death indeed. Unalleviated by the Hope, unillumined by the Light which attends it to His redeemed, to whom it has lost its sting by the victory He then achieved; it was the darkness itself of "the valley of the shadow of death" that confronted Him: the cup filled to the full for Him which we but taste, and mixed with every most bitter ingredient that our sin

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