act of obedience it was, that Jesus made atonement for sin, and repaired the ruin of the first transgression, and reopened to us the way to God, and made peace between heaven and earth, and restored to all who receive him that blissful immortality which was lost by the fall. Oh for this love, let rocks and hills And all harmonious human tongues When Jesus had received by the angel the Father's answer to his prayer, and the fearful agony was past, he came to his disciples the third time, and finding them again sleeping, he said to them: "Sleep on now, and take your rest," etc. This is according to the common English translation. But that Jesus did not mean that the disciples should now sleep on and take their rest, is evident from what he immediately adds: “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." In these words he tells them plainly that there was now no time for sleeping and taking rest: the die was cast, and they must arise and go with him. Some commentators think that Jesus said these words in a taunting way, meaning that, inasmuch as they would not be persuaded to watch with him, they should now sleep on and take their rest, if they could, when the enemy was at hand. But the mind of Jesus was not in a frame for taunting and irony: every thing in this part of his history indicates tenderness, meekness and love; and it is in accordance with such a state of his feelings, that we must interpret his words. I prefer, therefore, that interpretation which understands them interrogatively, and makes them mean: "Do ye now, at such a time as this, sleep on and take your rest?" This is Luther's translation: Ach, wollt ihr nun schla fen und ruhen? Ah, will ye now sleep and rest? This sense agrees with the connection, and is doubtless the true one. The words: "Arise, let us go," some infidel may choose to represent as an exhortation to flee, and a proof that Jesus wished to escape, and would have fled, if it had been in his power. It is sufficient for an answer to this objection to turn to the gospel of John, where we read: "When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into which he entered, and his disciples. And Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place; SECOND SERIES, VOL. V, NO. II. 6 suffered there. So also the passage in the epistle to the Hebrews explains the meaning of his prayer: "Who in the days of his flesh offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, to him that was able to deliver him from death,' etc. There can be no doubt that the sacred writer has reference, in this passage, to the scene in Gethsemane. It is from him we first learn that the prayers of Jesus, on that occasion, were uttered with strong crying and tears; and by him we are informed, that the object for which he prayed was a deliverance from the impending death. It is therefore certain that this deep and awful distress of Jesus arose from the contemplation of the horrible death which was now before him. Jesus had long since been familiar with his destination to be made a sin-offering for the human race, and had looked forward to this hour as the appointed termination of his earthly ministry. At the age of twelve years, he knew that he ought to be employed in the affairs of his heavenly Father, and was surprised that when his parents missed him in their company, as they returned from Jerusalem to Nazareth, they should search for him anywhere but in the temple: "How is it," said he, "that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" In the course of his ministry, he taught his disciples, that he was not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." He spoke of his submission to death as his own voluntary act, done in obedience to the will of the Father: "No man taketh it (my life) from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father." He repeatedly foretold the manner and the circumstances of his death, saying that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the chief priests and elders and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again on the third day; that he would be rejected, delivered over to the Gentiles, spit upon, crucified, etc.§ And in the institution of the holy supper, he gave a most impressive and affecting lesson of the certainty that his body would be broken, and his blood shed for the remission of sins. When he looked forward to this destination, as the hour was * Luke 2: 49. § Mark 10: 32-34. John 12: 32, 33. † Matth. 20: 28. John 10: 18. Matth. 16: 21 17, 9-12. 20: 17, 19. approaching, a chill of horror sometimes came over him, and found expression in external signs of distress. At one time he said: "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name."* But on no occasion did he exhibit any very striking evidences of perplexity and anguish. He was usually calm and collected, and if at any time he gave utterance to feelings of distress and horror, he still preserved his self-possession, and quickly checked the rising desire which nature put forth, to be spared from so dreadful a death. In his last address to his sorrowing disciples, he spoke with deep feeling and solemnity, but with perfect calmness. In his prayer at the close of his ministry, nothing is more manifest than a meek and quiet resignation to the Father's will: "Father, the hour is come: glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee." He did not ask to be spared; but that the Father should vindicate his honor from the reproach, so shocking to every virtuous mind, of being reckoned among the vilest malefactors. And, finally, he took no care to avoid the traitor, whose purpose he well knew, but went to the place where he anticipated that Judas would seek him; he went with a settled purpose to submit to the impending stroke; and as he went, he warned his disciples again of the mournful catastrophe which was at hand, and was soon to scatter them like the flock whose shepherd is fallen. It is, therefore, hardly to be supposed that the near approach of his sufferings, awful as they were, apart from every thing else, could alone have wrought so great a change in the mind of Jesus and in his whole demeanor, as soon as he had entered the garden. It is true, indeed, that the nearness of the wo, which he had hitherto viewed in its approach at some distance, was adapted to give a violent shock to his feelings; but the mind of Jesus was not easily shaken; and in this case his anguish and terror were too great to be explained by such a It is manifest, therefore, that something more than the cross was now before him, and that he was now placed in a new and hitherto untried situation. I have no hesitation in believing that he was here put upon the trial of his obedience. It was the purpose of God to subject the obedience of Jesus to a severe ordeal, in order that, like gold tried in the furnace, it * John 12: 27. Compare Luke 12: 49, 50. : might be an act of more perfect and illustrious virtue and for this end he permitted him to be assailed by the fiercest temptation to disobey his will, and to refuse the appointed cup. In pursuance of this purpose, the mind of Jesus was left to pass under a dark cloud, his views lost their clearness, the Father's will was shrouded in obscurity, the cross appeared in tenfold horror, and nature was left to indulge her feelings, and to put forth her reluctance. It is certain that Jesus desired, and desired most earnestly, that, if it were possible, and if it were the will of his heavenly Father, the cup should be removed, and that he put up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, to him who was able to deliver him from death. It is certain, therefore, that the mind of Jesus was now not clear upon these points. It appears farther from the passage in the Hebrews, that there was something connected with the cross that Jesus feared. The words are these: "Who, in the days of his flesh, offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, to him who was able to deliver him from death, and was heard in that he feared :” Εισακουσθεὶς ἀπὸ τῆς ἐυλαβείας,—literally, heard from the fear. This phrase I take to be a Hebraism, the constructio prægnans of the Hebrew verb, like that in Psalm 22:21: "For thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns," i. e. thou hast heard me so as to deliver me from the horns of the unicorns. Being heard from the fear, i. e. from the thing which he feared, must therefore mean, being heard so as to be delivered from that which he feared. He was however not delivered from death: "though he was a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." There was, therefore, something distinct from the death of the cross, but connected with it, which was the object of his fear; something which multiplied and enhanced the terrors of the cross, and was the chief cause of the strong desire he entertained to be saved from that death, if it were possible, and consistent with the will of God. What that was which was at this time connected, in the mind of Jesus, with the death of the cross, and which excited in him so distressing a fear, the sacred writers have not explained, and we are, therefore, left to conjecture respecting it. Perhaps the following considerations may shed light upon this subject, if they cannot be received as a satisfactory explanation. Jesus knew that the salvation of the world was laid upon him; that he was to be the sin-offering for the human race; that his death was to be the atonement for the sins of men; and that, in all its attending circumstances, it was to be a tremendous death. He knew that he must die, as he had lived, without sin, or his death could not atone for the sins of others; but if the extremity of suffering should so far prevail as to provoke him into impatience and murmuring, or into a desire of revenge, this would be sin: and if he should sin, all would be lost. If Jesus knew all this, and if these thoughts had possession. of his mind before he entered into the garden, they must have borne upon him with much more oppressive weight, when the moment had arrived in which all that he had before contemplated was to be realized by actual experience. If the thought now arose, that, though his nature was unpolluted with inherent depravity, it was possible that he should sin, and if the fear was joined with that thought, that he might be overcome in that heavy trial, there was, in this thought and in this fear, a sufficient cause to produce all that mental agony which he exhibited in Gethsemane; and the same cause, superadded to the horrors of the cross, was sufficient to create the desire which he felt, that this cup should be removed. A pious and holy man may look calmly upon death in its most terrific forms, and may endure it with silent resignation, or even with joyous triumph; and such has been the case with many Jewish and Christian martyrs. But the pious and holy man has not a world's salvation laid upon him; the pious and holy man is not obliged to be absolutely perfect before God; the pious and holy man knows, that if he sins, he has an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for his sins; and not for his only, but for the sins of the whole world. If he is entrapped in sin by some overpowering temptation, he can still be saved by the efficacy of the Saviour's death, and all the pious with him. But nothing of this consolation could be presented to the mind of Jesus ;-if he should sin, he must sink forever, and the world with him; there was no other Saviour; and all that he saw before him was a dark abyss, eternal ruin and infinite despair. Here, perhaps, it will be objected, that I do not speak of Jesus with becoming reverence when I suppose him capable of sinning; that he was not a mere man, and that as the Godman he could not sin. This objection, however, notwithstanding its apparent piety, is certainly ill-founded. |