This, however, is not entirety satisfactory. Doubt- less there was much of this obscuration of our Saviour's mind [see Crucifixion] ; but it would appear to have had reference to another point, and one connected with his condition and circumstances at the time, rather than with any future act or consequences. The apostle's inspired remark in Heb. v, 7, has not been sufficiently attended to by interpreters, " Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that [i. e. as to what] he feared." We arc here distinctly informed, respecting this agony of Christ, that he u-as delivered from the object of dread, what- ever it was ; but this was not true in any sense of his future passion, which he suffered, and could not con- sistently have expected to have avoided, in its full ex- tent. The mission of the angels, also, shows that some relief was administered to him on the spot : "There appeared an angel unto him from heaven strengthening him" (Luke xxii, 43). The strength imparted appears to have been physical, thus, as the passage in Hebrews intimates, saving him from the death which would otherwise have instantly super- vened from the force of his emotions. This death Jesus was anxious to avoid jtist at that time; his work was not yet done, and the "cup" of sacrificial atone- ment would have been premature. His heavenly Fa- ther, in answer to his prayer, removed it for the time from his lips, by miraculously sustaining his bodily powers, and his mind soon recovered its usual tone of equanimity. The emotions themselves under which he labored were evidently the same as those that op- pressed him while hanging on the cross, and on other occasions in a less degree, namely, a peculiar sense of abandonment by God. This distress and perplexity cannot be attributed to a mere dread of death in how- ever horrid a form, without degrading Christ's magna- nimity below heathen fortitude, and contradicting his usually calm allusions to that event, as well as his collected endurance of the crucifixion tortures. Nei~ ther can they well be attributed (as above) to any un- certainty as to whether he had thus far fulfilled the will of God perfectly, and would be enabled in any future emergency to fulfil it as perfectly, without a gratuitous contradiction of all his former experience
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and statements, and assigning him a degree of faith unworthy of his character. The position thus assign- ed him is incompatible with every thing hitherto in his history. Some other explanation must be sought. The state of mind indicated in his expiring cry upon the cross, " My God, my God, why hast Thou for- saken me?" seems to betray the secret ingredient that gave the atoning cup its poignant bitterness. This appears to have been the consciousness of enduring the frown of God in the place of sinful man ; without which sense of the divine displeasure, by a temporary withholding of his benign complacency, personally ex- perienced by the Redeemer, although in others' be- half, the full penalty of transgression could not have been paid. See Atonement. Jesus must suffer (in character) what the sinner would have suffered, and this with the concentrated intensity of a world's in- finite guilt. The sacrifice of his human body could only have redeemed man's body ; his soul's beclouded anguish alone could represent the sentence passed upon men's souls. This view essentially agrees with that taken by Olshausen (Comment, in loc).
See Posner, De sudore Chr. sanguineo (Jen. 1665); Bethem, id. (ib. 1607) ; Clotz. De Moribus animm J. C. (Hamb. 1670) ; Hasaeus, De Jesu patiente in horto (Brem. 1703) ; Hekel, Iter Christi trans Cedron (Cygn. 1676) ; Hoffman, Jesu anxietas ante mortem, (Lips. 1330); Koepken, De, Servatore dolente (Rost. 1723); Krackewitz, De Sponsoris animi doloribus (Rost. 1716) ; Lange, De Christi angoribus (Lips. 1666) ; Nitzsche, De horto Gethsemane (Viteb. 1750) ; Voetius, De agonia Christi, in his Disputt. Theol. ii, 161 sq. ; Wolftlin, Christus agonizans (Tubing. 1668) ; Ziebich, In hist. Servatoris dywvi&pkvov (Viteb. 1744); Zorn, Opusc. ii, 530 sq., 300 sq. ; Buddensieg, Matth. (in loc.) enarratus et defcnsus (Lips. 1818); Gurlitt, Ex- plicate (in loc.) Matth. (Magdeb. 1800); Schuster, in Eichhorn's Bibl. ix, 1012 sq. ; Baumgarten, De preca- tione Ch. pro avertendo calice (Hal. 1785) ; Kraft, De Ch. calicem deprecante (Erlang. 1770); Ncunhofcr, De precibus Chr. Gethsemaniticis (Altenb. 1760); Qucn- stedt, De deprecatione calicis Christi (Viteb. 1675, and in Ikenii Thes. dispp. ii, 204 sq.) ; Scepseophilus, Christus in Gethsemane precans (Essl. 1743); Schinid, De Chr. calicem passionis deprecante (Lips. 1713) ; Nehring, De precatione Chr. pro avertend) calice (Hal. 1735) ; Cyprian, De sudor iis Christi (Helmst. 1098, 1726, also in his Pent. Diss, ii) ; Gabler, Ueber d. Engel der Jesum gestdrkt habin soil (in his Theol. Journ. xii, 109 sq.) ; Hilscher, De angelo luctante cum Christo (Lips. 1731) ; Huhn, De apparitione angeli Chr. confortantis (Lips. 1747); Pries, Modus confortationis angelica; illuslratus (Rost. 1754) ; Rosa, Chr. in horto Getks. afflictissimus (Rudolphop. 1744) ; Carpzov, Spi- cileg. ad verba (in loc.) Luc. (Helmst. 1784) ; Bossuet, inflexions sur Vagonie de J. C. (in his QCuvres, xiv, 240) ; Moore, The Nature and Causes of the Agony in the Garden (Lond. 1757) ; Mayer, De confortatione an- gelica agonizantis Jesu (Viteb. 1674, 1735).