Let us imagine ourselves, then, in that sombre and solemn enclosure on the eve of man’s redemption, in company with our Lord and along with Peter and James and John. The same three had been spectators of the Traasfiguration. The same three had stood by while their Master restored to life the ruler of the synagogue’s daughter. The same three are now privileged to be witnesses of that fearful struggle of the Redeemer’s soul, called in this passage his agony. And as we stand in that society and on that spot, eastward rises high above us the lofty summit of Olivet. Westward we are overshadowed, or at least our view is shut in, by the gigantic walls of the holy city. Below us lies the valley of the Kidron, with the little freshet from which it takes its name. Yonder at a distance, amid the gloom of the overhanging olive trees, is seen the Saviour’s person dimly revealed by the pale light of the silvery moon. It is a chilly night, but chilly as is the night-air, the warm perspiration bursts forth from every pore, moistens every limb, and falls like big drops of blood down to the ound. aii. THE STRUGGLE AND ITS SEVERITY. 1. Meaning of the term. The word “agony ” is due to St. Luke, and employed by him only in the record of this transaction ; while the use of this word helps considerably to the right understanding of the whole. The idea of pain so usually associated with agony is not the exact sense of the word. It rather means conflict or struggle. It was a word which the Greeks applied to their games. Tis the runner in the race, the pugilist in the combat, and the wrestler in the contest, were properly said to agonize, Pain connected itself with the word only as a secondary and subordinate notion. But what was the nature of this struggle? It could not be with sin, for he had no'sin; he was “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners.” It was not with the development of any unholy tendency or the uprising of any evil passion ; from all such his rumanity was exempt. Nor yet are we without a hint respecting the sowrce whence the struggle proceeded. If we compare an expression at the close of the temptation with another in the narrative of the agony we may arrive at a tolerably safe conclusion. In the first-named passage Satan is said to have left our Lord for a season, or rather until @ convenient season; while in this passage the subject of prayer, which he suggests to his disciples, was the avoidance of temptation. Putting these two things together, we have good ground to believe that the suitable U
290 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. (on. xiv. 1—72.
season for another onslaught. of the evil one had arrived ; that the attack was renewed ; that Satan had returned; that the tempter, though foiled once and again before, bad resumed with increased facilities, or from a vantage-ground, or at a more favourable opportunity, the terrific trial. A passage in the Epistle to the Colossians favours this view. It is there (Col. ii. 15) said that he stripped off or put away from himself the hostile principalities or powers that clung to him like a deadly Nessus-robe. The thrice-repeated assaults of Satan in the wilderness had been repelled, and the tempter defeated, but only for a time. The attack was renewed in Peter’s effort to dissuade the Saviour from suffering; and unconscious as the apostle was of the source whence the suggestion sprang, it was none the less a device of the great enemy, as we may infer from the sternness of our Lord’s rebuke when he said, ‘‘ Get thee behind me, Satan.” But the tempter was again baffled and beaten. Once more, however, the prince of this world mustered all his forces for the last and fiercest onslaught. This was the hour and power of darkness, beginning with the agony and ending with the Crucifixion. And now Satan and the powers in league with him are not only vanquished, but Jesus “made a show of them openly, triumphing over them,” as we read in that passage of Colossians; that is, they were boldly exhibited as trophies by the Victor, and led in triumph as captives bound to the Conqueror’s car. 2. Point of attack, Still curiosity would desire information with respect to the particulars of the present trial, or the character of the struggle in which the Saviour is now envaged. What was its turning- point? Was he pressed to repudiate the responsibility he had assumed for sinners, dnd did the struzgle consist in resisting such pressure? Was he tempted to renounce the great work of man’s redemption? Was there a shrinking of the flesh from the terrible ordeal that was fast approaching, while the spirit drew in the opposite direction ? It can be no matter of surprise that the pure humanity of our Lord should recoil from what was coming in the near future, for he foresaw it all—the sneer, the scorn, the spitting, and smiting; the robe of mockery, and the thorn crown, together with the scourging and suspension on the cursed tree. We cannot wonder that the anticipation of all this, and vastly more, should produce a struggle of no ordinary kind in the breast of the Son of God. But whatever the exact nature of the struggle was, from whatever cause he agonized, one thing is perfectly plain, and that is the extreme intensity of the agony. 38. Hvidence of its intensity. So unspeakably intense was its severity, that he sweat as it were great drops or clots (@péu8o.) of blood which ran down to the ground. With reference to this proof of its severity, several similar instances of sweating blood have been adduced. Ancient authors and modern writers alike record cases of it. Diodorus of Sicily mentions bloody sweat as resuJting from the bite of Indian serpents. Aristotle speaks of it as caused by a diseased state of the blood. Some recent medical authorities reckon it among the consequences of excessive terror or extreme exhaustion. But by far the most striking case of all is one narrated by the infidel Voltaire. In his essay on the civil wars of France, he says that the king, Charles IX., soon after the Bartholomew Massacre, was attacked by a strange malady, which carried him off at the end of two years. His blood was always oozing out, forcing its way through the pores of the skin—an incomprehensible malady, against which the art and skill of the physicians were unavailing. This, he adds, was regarded as an effect of the Divine vengeance; but elsewhere he attributes it to excessive fear or violent agitation, or toa feverish and melancholy temperament, admitting that other cases of the same have occurred.