But it was in his soul chiefly that his pains so much exceeded those of all other men —
[Who can conceive the agonies he endured in the garden, before his body had been subjected to any suffering from man? Then it was that the cup of affliction was put into his hands by God himself; and he was constrained to drink it even to the very dregs, till, through the agonies of his mind, the blood issued from every pore of his body, and he was, literally as it were, baptized in blood. Nor can we by any means conceive what his pure and holy mind must have endured, whilst he encountered such " contradiction of sinners against himself f,"
both in the courts of justice and on the cross Hear
him, under the hidings of his Father's face, crying, " My God, my God ! why hast thou forsaken me ? " Can any finite ima- gination conceive of the agonies he then sustained, when the sins of the whole world were laid upon him, and the debt of the whole human race was exacted at his hands ? ]
But if this baptism was so terrible, what reason can be assigned, 1 1 . Why he so earnestly longed for its accomplishment —
Were it only as a woman longs for the pains which shall soon terminate in the birth of her child, he might well desire their speedy arrival, in order to their speedier termination g. But he had far higher reasons for the desire which he expressed. He longed for this baptism,
1. Because by it the Father would be glorified —
[This, in particular, operated upon his mind, at the time that he deprecated the bitter cup : " 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. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it againV It was by this event that all the perfections of the Godhead were to be dis- played and therefore our adorable Saviour longed for
the time when this most desirable object should be consum- mated ]
2. Because by it his own work, so far as it was to be carried on in this world, was to be completed —
[Christ had undertaken to " make his soul an offering for sin','' and, by death, to expiate the sins of our fallen race.
f Heb. xii. 3. s John xvi. 21.
h John xii. 27, 28. * Isai. liii. 10.