the Greek Church, — "By Thine unknown sufferings, good Lord, deliver us."
Rollock observes here, " If you ask me what the Divine nature in Christ was doing when He said, ' My soul is troubled,' and whether it was divided asunder from His human nature, I reply that it was not divided, but contained itself, or held itself passive, while the human nature was suffering. If it had exercised itself in its full power and glory, our Lord could not possibly have suffered."
(The whole of Rollock's remarks on this difficult verse are singularly good, and deserve close study.)
Hutcheson observes : " The rise and cause of this trouble was thus : the Godhead hiding itself from the humanity's sense, and the Father letting out not only an apprehension of sufferings to come, but a present taste of the horror of His wrath due to man for sin. Christ was amazed, perplexed, and overwhelmed with it in His humanity. And no wonder, since He had the sins of all the elect laid upon Him, by imputation, to suffer for."
Hengstenberg remarks : " The only solution of this extreme trouble is the vicarious significance of the sufferings and death of Christ. If our chastisement was upon Him, in order that we might have peace, then in Him must have been concentrated all the horror of dea h. He bore the sin of the world, and the wages of that sin was death. Death therefore must to Him assume its most frightful form. The physical suffering was nothing compared to the immeasurable suffering of soul which impended over the Redeemer, and the full greatness and depth of which He clearly perceives. Therefore, in Heb. v. 7, 'a fear ' is described as that which pressed with such awful weight upon our Lord. When God freed Him from that, He saved Him from death. Thus, when the suffering of Christ is apprehended as vicarious and voluntary, all the accompanying circumstances can be easily understood."
Let us note the exceeding guilt and sinfulness of sin. The thing which made even God's own Son, who had power to work works that none else did beside Him, groan and cry, " My soul is troubled," can be no light thing. He that would know the full measure of sin and guilt should mark attentively this verse, and the expressions used by our Lord at Gethsemane and Cal- vary.
It is worth noticing that this verse, Matt. xxvi. 38, and Mark xiv. 34, are the only three places in the Gospels where our Lord speaks of " My soul."
The word "now," I suspect, is emphatic: "Now, at this special time, my soul has begun to be specially troubled."
[.And what shall I say?} These words are thought by some,