c11lled Getbeem11ne. It belongs to the horrors which preceded it and o.ccompanied Lntin communit,Y in Jerui!lllem. In it nre it-to the trrason of J nclas; the denial or eight very e.nc1ent olive treee. When Peter ; the desertion of the apostles: the Henry Mo.undrell visited the spot, in 1697, cruel, relentless enmity of the priests antl these eight o.ged trees were believed to be rulers: the heartless abandonment of the the se.me the.t stood there in the blessed people; the insults; the scourging: and Saviour's time. Bove the botanist, in then the shameful and e.~ouizing lin~er- Ritter's 'Geography of Palestine,' vol. iv., ing death which wa~ to close the Passion; quoted by Dean Mamel, so.ye these vener- and, more dreadful than all, the reo.son why able olive trees are two thousand years old. he was here in Gethsemane; why he was Josephus, however, rein.tea tho.t in the great to drink this dreadful cup of suffering; the siege the soldiers of Titus cut down all memory of all the sin of man I To drink the trees in the Jerusalem suburbs. Even if this cup of a suffering, measureless, incon- this be assumed, the~e soldiers, from some ceivable, the Redeemer for a moment shrank ftcling of awe stirred up by the tradition back, and asked the Father if the cross was which hung, of course, round this he.llowed the only means of gaining the glorious end spot, might have spa.red this lit tie se.cred in view-the saving the souls of unnumbered grove; or they might at the time have been millions. Could not God in his unlimited still young se.plings, of no use for the pur- power' find another way of reconciliation? pose of the siege opemtions. "In spite of And yet beneath this awful agony, the in- all the doubts that can be raised against tensity of which we a.re utterly incapable of their antiquity, the eight aged olive trees, grasping-beneath it there lay the intensest if only by their manifest difference from all desire that his Father's wish and will should others on the mountain, have always struck be done. That wish and will were in reality even the most indifferent observers. They his own. The prayer was made and answered. will remain, so long as their already pro- It was not the Father's will that the cup tracted life is spared, the most venerable of should pass away, and the Son's will was their race on the surface of the ee.rth. 'fheir entirely the same; it toas ansioered by the gnarled trunks and scanty folio.ge will gift of strength-strength from heaven being always be regarded o.s the most affecting of given to enable the Son to drink the cup the sacred memorials in or o.bout J erusnlem of agony to its dregd. How this strength -the most nearly approaching to the ever- was given St. Luke relates m the next lasting hills themselves in the force with verse. whioh they carry us back to the events of Ver. 43.-And there appeared e.n angel the gospel history" (Dean Stanley, • Sinai unto him from heaven, strengthening him. and Palestine,' p. 455). The Lord's words reported by St. Matthew Ver. 40.-Pray that ye enter not into were ao mere figure of rhetoric. " My soul temptation. The tempte.tion in question is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." was the grove sin of moro.l cowardice into The anguish and horror were so great thnt which so soon the disciples fell. Had tl,ey he himself, according to his hnmunity, must prayed instead of yielding to the overpower- ho.vo before the time become the victim of ing sense of weariness and sleeping, they deo.th h11d he not been specially strengthened would never have forsaken their Mllllter in from above. This is the deep significnnce his hour of trial and danger. and ueces;;ity of the angel's appearance. Ver. 42,-Saying, Father, if thou be So Stier and Godct, the latter of wl.torn willing, remove this oup from me: never- writes," As when in the wilderness under theless not my will, but thine, be done. the pressure of famine he felt himself The three s1noptists give this prayer in dying, the presence of this heavenly being slightly varyrng terms; "but the figure of sends a vivifying breath over him,-n Di- the cup is common to all the three; it was vine refreshing pervndes him, body and so111, indelil,Jy impressed on tradition. This cup, a.nd it is thus he received strength to con- which Jesus entreats God to ea.use to pass tinue to the lflst the struggle." from before (1rapcl) his lips, is tlie ~ymbol Ver. 44.-And his sweat was e.s it were of that terrible punishment, tho dreadful groat drops of blood falling down to tho 11-nd IllOUrnful picture of whid1 is traced ground. Some (for instance, Throphylflct) before him o.t this moment by n. skilful uuderstnml this "as it were" to signify painter with extraordinary vividneas. Tke thn.t the expression, "drops of blood," wns painter is the some who in tho wilderness, simply parnbolic; Lut it is far Letter to using o. like illusion, passed before his view understn.od the words in their liteml sense, the magirnl scene of the glories belonging as our Churoh docs when it prays, "Dy to tho Messianic kingdom" (Godot). lj thine agony and bloody sweat." Athun11sius thou b• ioilling. He looked on in this even goes so far as to pronounce a. b,in UJJOU supreme hour, just before "the Pnssion" those who deny this sweat of blood. Coru- really began, to the Crucifixion and all the ruentators lrive inst.:.mces of this bloo(l-!,,~'\t 'rTIE GOSPEL ACCORtHKG 1.'0 S1', LlJRE. [cu. xxn. 1-11.
under abnormal pnt.hological circumstances. " 'Forsake the Christ thou so.west tro.ns• Som<·, though by no means all of the oldest fig-ured I him nuthorities omit these Inst rn:o 'l'erscs (43, Who tr01l the sco. and brou"'ht the dead H). Tlieir omfasion in many of these to lifo? 0