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The Shadow of Calvary Chp 1:
The Incidents

Hugh Martin

“Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.”  Matthew 26:36-46

Between the city and the Mount of Olives lay the valley of Jehosaphat, traversed by the little streamlet, or winter-brook, called the Cedron. Across this brook Jesus and the eleven now wend their way by the light of the moon - for at the Passover the moon was full - to a place called Gethsemane, where was a garden.

The transaction of which this ever-memorable garden becomes the scene is, with the exception of our Lord’s actual crucifixion, perhaps the most awful and solemnizing which even the Scriptures of God contain. How can we approach the consideration of it with sufficient reverence? How can we be deeply enough affected with the insight it gives us into the sorrow of the blessed Redeemer’s soul? Shall we not feel and own our utter helplessness to speak or think of this scene in a manner befitting its amazing and affecting disclosures? The Lord give us the Spirit of grace and supplications, that we may look on him whom we have pierced!

Leaving the nature and causes of Christ’s mysterious sorrow, and the nature and meaning of his prayers, to be considered more fully afterwards, and in the meantime speaking of the agony itself only very generally, let us try to place the affecting facts clearly before our minds.

He cometh, then, with the disciples “unto a place called Gethsemane.”

The account given by John is more circumstantial, though he passes over the events of which the garden was the scene. He says, “When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into which he entered and his disciples. And Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place: for Jesus oft-times resorted thither with his disciples” (John 18:1,2).

From this we learn that the garden of Gethsemane was a well-known retreat of the Redeemer. Though about to be the scene of a conflict unparalleled in his history, it had oft-times been the scene of his prayers - the place of his secret meditations and communings with God. For he was emphatically a man of prayer. It was by prayer that he kept up fellowship with the Father from whom he had come forth, and to whom he was soon to return. It was by prayer that he vanquished all the trials and sorrows and griefs assigned to him in his pilgrimage in the flesh. It was by praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, that he sustained his faith in the safety of his person and his cause in the love and faithfulness of his Father. It was by prayer that he sued out all the promises made to him in his covenant with the Father; for concerning his own possession of them, as well as his people’s, it may be said that, while they are absolutely given, and must inevitably be fulfilled, “yet for all these things will I be enquired of, saith the Lord.” The law of his humiliation and reward is in these words - “Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” And in this, as in other respects, his people must be conformed unto him that he may be the first-born among many brethren, he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified being all of one.

Gethsemane, then, had witnessed Jesus many times in prayer and supplication, though never so emptied (Phil 2:7) and abased as now. This was the crowning act of what had indeed been a long series - what had been a habit. “Oft-times he resorted hither.”

And so Judas knew the place. “And Judas also which betrayed him knew the place” (John 18:2). Hence Jesus was not fleeing from his fate when he betook himself to Gethsemane. He was voluntarily going forward to meet the sword of which he had spoken that it should smite him. It was very necessary that his death should be voluntary - that it should be in the spirit of the ancient oracle: “Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me; I delight to do thy will, O my God” (Ps 40:7). Without this it could not have been acceptable to God, nor valuable as a sacrifice for sin. And it was needful also that his death should be seen to be voluntary, that the eleven might not be utterly offended - stumbling to rise again no more - in the conviction that his power was at length exhausted, that against his will he had been arrested or overpowered by a might which he could not set aside.

How numerous were the methods by which Jesus forewarned them that he went forward of his own accord to all his sufferings. “I lay down my life of myself,” saith he; “no one taketh it from me; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (John 10:15-18). And now when the hour is at hand, he leads the way to no place of concealment to baffle the traitor’s design, but to the place which Judas knew, for he ofttimes resorted to it. Every step towards the garden had in it the voice, “Lo, I come! I come, knowing the things which shall befall me here.” Yes: Jesus loved the Church, and gave himself for it. He loved me, says Paul, and gave himself for me.

Arrived within the garden, Jesus stations the larger number of his disciples near the entrance, with the injunction, “Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.” It is the “Captain of Salvation” making disposition of his forces for a battle in which the weapons of warfare should not be carnal, in which he himself should bear all the fire and terror of the conflict, at once the victim and the conqueror, wounded for our transgressions, and ultimately carrying the victory by wielding himself to death. How solemnizing must this have been to the eight disciples to whom he thus assigned their position! They must have felt instinctively, from their Master’s words and tones and manner, that he was himself unusually sad and sorrowful. To the other three, indeed, he was to open up more fully the depths of anguish which now began to distract him. But already even his countenance must have borne traces of the coming conflict of his soul: and his words to them must have implied that such was the crisis now at hand, and such their Master’s views of it, that immediate prayer alone could enable him to meet and face it. “Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.” He speaks with authority, assigning them their post of duty. Yet he speaks to them not as servants, but as friends, telling them plainly what their Lord doeth. “I go,” says he, “I go to pray yonder.” All my hope now lies in prayer. Where will your strength lie? Remember ye the word that I said unto you, “The servant is not greater than his Lord.” Praying always with all prayer and supplication.

“And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee - Peter and James and John - and began to be sorrowful and very heavy.”

Leaving the main body of the disciples, Jesus, we see, advances, as if to meet the adversary in company with the three most valiant of his friends. And yet it is not that he calculates on their strength and aid, for he knows how miserably they will fail in the hour of trial: and their failure serves rather to prove that Jesus wrought a work, and bare a shock in this conflict; to which no mortal power or vigour was adequate. For if these three failed to acquit themselves as the sore exigenciesEXIGENCY n. an urgent need or demand; a trial or emergency. of that dreadful hour demanded, there were none on earth that could stand when they had fallen. They were the strongest of the disciples; the flower and choice of the little flock. They had been more with Jesus than the others. They had been admitted with him where others had been excluded; and especially they had been with him in the holy mount, and were eye-witnesses of his majesty, when he received from God the Father honour and glory. They had seen the Saviour transfigured, his face shining as the sun and his garments white as the light. They had heard the voice from the excellent glory, saying, “This is my beloved Son, hear ye him.” They had seen their beloved Lord in the utmost glory in which he had ever appeared on earth in the days of his flesh. And now they were to see him lying prostrate on the ground, crushed with sorrow, weeping tears of anguish, shedding the blood of the “agony.” Thus high privileges prepare for sore trials; and the abundance of the revelation needs a thorn in the flesh to balance it!

If Peter could have got his own way, he would have been on the transfiguration mountain still, and there never would have been the agony of Gethsemane. He would have made tabernacles and dwelt there enjoying the glory and shrinking from the shame. But then this proposed arrangement of his would have cost the world’s salvation; for it was not amidst the glory and the radiance of the holy mount, but amidst the darkness and anguish of the garden and the desertion of the cross, that redemption was achieved and sealed. Thus the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

Yet, surely those that had seen most of the Saviour’s majesty and glory, and of Heaven’s testimony to his beloved person and his holy mission, were best selected to see also of his terrible trial. Their faith, cherished by such precious recollections, might have been expected to withstand severer ordeals. They who had almost reigned with him on the mountain, might have watched and suffered better with him in his agony - but no. Yet such as they were, they were his only confidants - his truest bosom friends on earth. And so when he began to be sorrowful and very heavy - “to be sore amazed and heavy” (Mark 14:33), he opens up his heart to them, and “saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” Jesus was not wontWONT n. accustomed; what is one’s usual habit.
[Because there was no synagogue at Philippi, on the sabbath Paul went out of the city to “a riverside, where prayer was wont to be made” (Acts 16:13).
This was the place where worshippers usually met for their prayer meetings.] to tell his grief. He had ever been a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. But he had been well accustomed to bear his griefs in secret, and seldom sought relief from making others privy to them. Now his soul is filled with sorrow to overflowing, and so it bursts forth, ans is poured into the bosoms of his friends. He can conceal his anguish no more.

And what, it must be asked, was the cause of the tormenting sorrow and amazement which now so greatly weakened and agitated the Son of God? It is a solemn question, worthy of long and reverent consideration. But doubtless his sorrow arose from the source that his prayer was concerned with - the vivid view and near approach of that cup which the Father was just giving him to drink. That curse of God, from which he came to redeem his elect people - that sword of the Lord’s wrath and vengeance which he had just predicted - the penal desertion on the cross - the withdrawal of all comfortable views and influences - and the present consciousness of the anger of God against him as the surety-substituteSURETY n. a person who makes himself responsible for another’s performance of an undertaking or payment of a debt.
[Latin securitas - security]
Christ is his people’s surety-substitute in the Covenant of Grace, because he paid their debt as their substitute, in laying down his life in their place.

By so much was Christ made a surety of a better covenant.
Hebrews 7:22

I will be surety for him;
of my hand shalt thou require him:
if I bring him not unto thee, and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame for ever:
Genesis 43:9, a person laden with iniquity - these were the elements mingled in the cup of trembling which was now to be put into his hands: and the prospect caused him deadly sorrow!

And he told the three. For sorrow seeketh sympathy when it will conceal no more; and the man of sorrows was in all things lie unto his brethren. The relief which pouring his anguish into their bosom could bring - even this was precious to him in the crisis of his sore affliction!

But it must be poured into his Father’s bosom, for nothing short of that could bring him real relief and strength. And so he plants his three dearest follower on their post of observation, and then advances alone to conflict directly with the hour and the power of darkness.

And now, mark by what successive steps, and how thoroughly, Jesus has separated himself to be alone with God. He and the eleven had left the city, with all its life and stir and care, behind them. Here is the first step. Arrived at the entrance of the garden, he leaves there the greater number of his followers, and advances further with the chosen three. Here is the second step. But anonANON adj. soon, shortly., he must leave these also, and go forward alone, to meet the danger alone, to wrestle and agonize with God concerning it. But before he leaves the three, he gives them also an injunction as he had previously given to the others: “Tarry ye here, and watch with me.” Now this was the injunction which they so blameably neglected to observe. And the circumstances were such as - notwithstanding the excuse which the tender Saviour made for them - rendered them inexcusable in not observing it. How affecting was it to hear him whom they loved imploring the little service which this request implied! That he whom they had learned to regard as the Son of the living God, whom the winds and the sea obeyed, and whom they three had seen as if on the margin of heaven receiving the homage of glorified just men made perfect; that he should be reduced to such extremity as to express his desire that they would help him, by their watching with him in meeting the sore conflict to which he was now going forward alone; ought to have touched all the deepest feelings of their nature; and doubtless it did so, and perhaps more truly and tenderly than we can understand. But if it made this impression at the time - if this patheticPATHETIC adj. arousing pity or sadness.
[From a Greek root meaning “to suffer”.] appeal struck the chords of sympathy in their hearts - the evil was that they did not practically follow up such feelings by a careful persevering, “watchful and prayerful” sympathy unto the end.

“And he went a little farther (or, as Luke says, “he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast”) and fell on his face, and prayed, saying: O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

No language can describe the impression which a statement like this ought to make upon us. The person who is here set before us - the position of prostrate, yea, all but abject supplication - the cry of anguish wrung out from him in the prospect of a stroke about to fall upon him which he trembles lest his weak, frail human nature should be unable to bear - all these considerations, and each of them, ought to fill us with the liveliest and most inexpressible astonishment. It is deeply to be feared that too many read the verses before us in a state of mind indefinitely approaching to unconscious yet real infidelity. Is it possible that there could be such an amount of insensibility in any mind that steadily contemplated this scene as an event which really occurred? Could this transaction be viewed with more indifference than it is by multitudes, even though it were announced as a mere fiction? Nay; suppose it were a fiction, it would be a grander one unspeakably than the imagination of the thoughts of any man ever devised. Regarded as a mere idea, though forgotten as a fact, it is still fitted to produce a most powerful effect, to arrest and compel attention, to fill the mind with amazement and with awe. But the startling idea, the awful conception of the living God, enthroned in the supreme government of a myriad of worlds, each one of which with its countless multitudes of living beings hangs upon his nod: of this great, self-existent, independent Jehovah, with his Godhead dwelling in the frail garb of human nature, lying prostrate on the cold ground in the attitude of deepest abasement and most prostrate prayer; the idea, combined with the assurance that it is an idea that was actually realised in this garden of Gethsemane! Oh! It reveals to us the carnality of our minds when we feel that we can meet a fact like this with so little of that adoring wonder and love and praise which reason and conscience tell us it is worthy and fitted to call forth. Truly no truth is more fully proved by experience and observation than that we need the Spirit to take the things of Christ and show them to us - that we need the Spirit of grace and supplications to be poured upon us ere we can look on him whom we have pierced and mourn.

But how could Jehovah-Jesus, the Eternal Son of the Highest, be reduced to such straits as these, to be prostrate on the ground, and lift the cry of helplessness so affectingly? The answer is that this is exactly “the mind that was in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient - obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil 2:5-8). But did he not speak as one whose faith was shaken? - as one whose fear was awakened? As one whose fear was awakened; yes. But not as one whose faith was shaken. For in the very agony of his sorrow, when he groaned in spirit, he groaned in the Spirit of the Son, crying, “Abba, Father.”  “Father, if it be possible.” But did not this cry imply that he was begun to regret his covenant engagements, and to repine against the sufferings which they entailed? No: for his ;language is full of perfect and absolute submission. “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.”

But did not this imply at least that in some respect Jesus longed earnestly to escape from his sufferings? It did indeed. It implied that, save for his Father’s will, appointing them and appointing his people’s salvation by means of them, save for this, it was most desirable that he should have no such sufferings to undergo. Could they have been real; could they have been anything else than imaginary and feigned; had not this been the Saviour’s feeling concerning them? Could he have had a true body and a reasonable soul, and not sensitively shrunk from undergoing “the terrors of the Lord”? Could his soul have been holy, could he have truly feared God, and not trembled in sorrow and in anguish in the prospect of his anger, or the presence of his wrath? And how could he have “learned obedience by the things which he suffered” save by subduing his natural and sinless repugnanceREPUGNANCE n. strong distaste or objection.
[From a Latin root meaning “to fight against”.] to endure them, and thus denying and sacrificing himself?

But still, was it not something like a weakness and imperfection on the part of Jesus that he should speak as if he thought it possible that this cup should pass from him? “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” And truly it is not to be denied that here we have Jesus revealed to us in weakness, even as the Holy Spirit testifies that he was “crucified through weakness” (2 Cor 13:4). Yet let us mark of what nature this imperfection was. It consisted in nothing more than the powerful predominance - or, we may perhaps say, the sole presence - in his mind, for a moment, of the one thought of the desirableness of being exempted from the abyss of misery which yawned before him in his Father’s curse. That his holy human nature, considering the matter solely in itself, could not but desire to be exempt from such woe, we have already seen. Considered simply in itself, to desire exemption from the wrath of God was the dictate of his holy human nature, considered as at once sensitive and reasonable and holy. Not to have felt this desire, instead of being holiness unto the Lord, would have argued - what we tremble even to think of while we know it could not be - daring contempt of the divine anger and will! Nay: to have such impressive views as Jesus now had of his Father’s wrath, and not be filled with an earnest longing to escape from it (considering the matter simply by itself) would have argued that he did not possess a true human nature with all the sinless sensibilities which are of the essence of humanity. And if Jesus did for a moment consider the matter simply by itself; if he looked to the intense desirableness of this cup passing from him, without for the moment taking the matter in connection with past appointments or future consequences; if there was a moment during which the one only object which stood straight before his mind’s eye and filled all his vision, was the terror of the vengeance of the Omnipotent; did this indicate any imperfection but what was absolutely sinless and holy? His true human soul, not infinite (which is a character only of his Godhead) but finite, without which it had not been true, could not possibly behold all elements of truth in one act of contemplation. In unutterable sorrow and sore amazement, the object of dread for an instant engrossed the whole reflective faculty; and in that moment the desire, not unwarrantable but holy, which was suitable to that one instant of his sore experience, in the view of that one object which for the instant exclusively was in view - the desire, which, limiting his emotions to the single object now awakening them, it would have been unnatural, unreasonable, unholy, not to have felt - was emitted as the true and genuine and not undutiful desire of the moment - “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” - while, immediately admitting other thoughts; looking back on Eternal Counsels and irrefragable Scriptures and promises inviolable; the Saviour’s soul, admitting these other thoughts, and with them the feelings suitable to them also, qualifies his desire with the expression of entire submission - “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” Yea, and the inconceivable intensity with which, without any disparagement of his love to his Father or his love to his Church, he exclaimed - “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” is just an index by which to mark the truth, or a line by which to fathom the depths, of that love to both, under the force of which he added: “Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.” For is it not unutterably desirable to flee from the wrath to come, whether, O sinner, it be in thine own case, or in Christ’s? And if he fled not, it was not because he was insensible to the terrors of his Father’s wrath, as sinners are who do not flee; but he fled not, that sinners might have a hope set before them to flee; he fled not because he was not an hireling, but the Good Shepherd that giveth his life for the sheep.

It is here, doubtless, that we should introduce into the narrative the glorious statement, which is made only by the evangelist Luke: “And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven strengthening him” (Luke 22:43).

Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister unto them that shall be heirs of salvation? What wonder, then, if we find them ministering unto him who is the elder brother, whom God hath appointed heir of all things? We know how they announced and celebrated his advent as the babe of Bethlehem; how they waited on him as the tempted One in the wilderness; how they ministered amidst the transactions of the resurrection morning, rolling away the stone, and guarding the place where the body of Jesus lay. All these and suchlike acts of service to the Mediator’s person, into whose redemption work they desire to look, were so many and very obvious instances of the Father’s glorious oracle concerning him, as it is written, “When he bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, he saith, Let all the angels of God worship him” (Heb 1:6).

We are not told how the angel on this occasion strengthened the agonising Redeemer. Yet if he came that he might visibly fulfil the terms of the oracle and “worship” him, we may see how suitable and seasonable such a ministration must have been, and how strengthening! For it was not with Jesus at this moment as in the times when his mighty and miraculous powers went forth; when the energies of his Godhead were in operation to attest his Messiahship, or bless and relieve his followers. The attributes of his divine nature were at this moment held in abeyance. They slumbered, or retired, to admit of that humiliation which, had all their glories pressed forward into view or into action, would have been impossible. And while the Godhead in the second person was indissolubly and eternally united with humanity in one person in the man Christ, the sufferings of “the man” reached their crisis and their complication - just as the positive action of his Godhead’s powers and attributes was more and more withdrawn and resigned. This was the precise nature of his abasement, that though it was no robbery for him to be equal with God, yet he laid aside the reputation though never really the reality thereof; and, remaining still, as he must ever remain, the same God unchangeable, he yet appeared in the form of a servant, not drawing on his divine might and energies, but denying himself their exercise and putting-forth - concealing, retiring out of view, withdrawing from the field of action, those prerogatives and powers of Deity, which in the twinkling of an eye might have scattered ten thousand worlds and hells of enemies. He withdrew them all from action that he might taste the weakness of created nature. And in thus denying himself the consolation and energy and support which the action of his divine upon his human nature, had he chosen, would have furnished to him boundlessly, in this consisted the test and trial of his submission to his Father’s yoke, in the body which he had prepared him. To draw unduly on the resources of his Godhead, and in a manner inconsistent with his relation and his duty towards the Father, as the Mediator between God and man in the days of his flesh, was precisely that act to which the devil in vain sought to tempt him when he said, “If thou be the Son of God, command these stones that they be made bread.” For Jesus to have done so would have been to “make himself of” some “reputation.” It would have been to resile from the form and the duty of a servant. It would have been to abandon his position as one made under the law.

But pre-eminently in the closing scenes of his obedience and sufferings were all manifestation and action and supporting influence of his divine nature withdrawn, as if all divine glories and perfections enfolded and inwrapt themselves into mysterious concealment within. So that the divine suppliant, though he was indeed divine, lay prostrate on his face upon the ground in all the weakness that could overtake a mere - mere man.

How unspeakably seasonable and consoling, that at such a crisis, by the adoring worship of an angel, the glory of his own Divine Person should be presented to the view of his created mind, to countervailCOUNTERVAIL n. to work against; to counterbalance or counteract. in some measure the anguish and the shame to which in his human nature he was at this moment reduced! True, the very nature of the case forbade that the arm of his omnipotence should spring forth and bear his enweakened body up against the infirmity and trembling which astonishment and sorrow had evoked; or that the light of his omniscience should gush in upon his human soul, as in God’s full flood, and reveal to it the glories and the joys which his sufferings should achieve. Not thus in the hour of his anguish and prostration could his eternal power and Godhead come into action to relieve and comfort him. But if, while all his divine prerogativesPREROGATIVE n.
a right or privilege belonging exclusively to an individual person or class.
[eg. the prerogatives of royalty]
Christ’s divine prerogatives were all those attributes and rights of deity which he voluntarily laid aside in the depths of his humiliation.
The Shorter Catechism (Q27) defines Christ’s humiliation as consisting “in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time.” were retired, withheld and resigned from his enjoyment of them, in order that in creature weakness he might expiate the sins of his elect - what if from heaven there come forth one of those ministers of God that do his pleasure, and literally fulfil the command of the Father, “Let the angels of God worship him!” To be made the object of divine worship and adoration: to be with profoundest love and reverence reminded, that, though reproached of men and despised of the people; though weakened and abased in body and in soul to the utmost extreme of anguish and woe; though avenged upon by God as the surety of countless sinners, bearing their responsibilities and visited with all their curse; though reduced in his created nature to all the extremity of helplessness and anguish of which it was susceptible, that still he was the adorable and true God, the living God and an everlasting king: to be worshipped still, while himself a prostrate agonising worshipper: still to be himself worshipped and adored by the messenger fro heaven with all the adoration that messenger had been rendering even at the Father’s throne. Oh! This was precisely the ministration of strength to his fainting soul which the crisis of his anguish required. This was unto him as the foretaste of his coming glory, when angels and principalities and powers should be subjected to him, and at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. This worshipping angel was unto him as his Father’s messenger, meeting him in the moment of profound abasement to tell him of the exaltation that should follow. This answer to his prayer was like the voice of God saying unto the enfeebled man of Gethsemane: “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.”

The two great themes which engrossed the whole testimony of the Spirit of Christ as he spoke by all the prophets were “the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.” The time had been when that glory, as by anticipation, appeared in blessed foretaste to be realised, and the same three witnesses beheld it. While the “glory” seemed thus revealed, the “sufferings” were the theme presented to the Saviour’s mind, and heavenly messengers descended on the holy mount and talked with him of “the decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.” And now, when the “sufferings” begin to be realised, and are already endured even unto the anguish of death, “the glory that shall follow” is the theme suggested to the mind of Jesus; and an angel comes to strengthen and refresh his drooping spirit with the seasonable and assured conviction that he shall yet be glorified with the glory which he had with the Father before the world was.

Alas! that within a stone-cast of the place, in the immediate view of the very scene, where there seemed to meet in one all the intense variety of the unseen world, ranging in its compass from the cords of death and the pains of hell, to the worship and the glories of the heaven of heavens - even in the immediate view of such things as these, wherein the powers of the world to come had their action so infinitely momentous, so infinitely important even to themselves, the disciples should have so fallen from sympathy with Jesus as to fall asleep!

“And he cometh unto the disciples and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What! Could you not watch with me one hour?”

Ah! but let us beware lest any of us be chargeable with guilt of a similar or even deeper dye. There is such a thing as having the sufferings and anguish of Christ brought under our view, and seeing Christ set forth in ordinances manifestly prostrated, yea “manifestly crucified,” for sin, and yet remaining asleep in sin, yea dead in trespasses and in sins: without fleeing from the hateful evil which entailed upon the Saviour all his anguish, and without, therefore, fleeing from the wrath which Jesus dreaded, yet in love to sinners bore. Oh! Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead. Expose not yourself to such anguish and woe as filled even the soul of the Divine Redeemer with amazement and exceeding sorrow unto death. You cannot but know under a preached gospel, that either there must be some distinct and personal transaction, wherein, you choose this once wearied, afflicted, abased Redeemer as your own, that in those agonies which he suffered and in that death which he ultimately died, divine justice may accept what is due on you part to the law of your God which you have broken; or else, that same justice of God must find the satisfaction of a broken law in your own eternal endurance of the second death, which is the wages of sin. O careless transgressor! Asleep in a world on which the Son of God travailed in spirit, and died a ransom for sin; asleep, it may be, nearer to the unseen world than the three slumbering disciples were now to Jesus, for there may be but a step between you and death. Awake and flee in repentance and in faith to the hope which that suffering Saviour sets before you. Delay no more, lest the sword should find you out of Christ, and slay you with the second death!

But may not even believers be asleep? They were disciples whom Jesus found asleep when he returned from his agonising sufferings and prayers. And may not disciples still too often find that an unseemly slumber is upon their souls? Who among us feels that he is awake and alive, as he ought to be, to the powerful lessons which a scene like that of Gethsemane is fitted to teach us? Rather, who does not feel, in review of such a subject as this, that the sufferings of the Saviour’s soul, and the unparalleled love which led him to endure them - the “love so amazing, so divine” - deserves not only a larger extent but even another kind of requital than any we have rendered? What earnest Christian can fail to be ashamed of the weakness and changeableness of the love which is all that Jesus has ever received at his hands - of the unheartiness and the infrequency of the services he has rendered in his kingdom; of the slow and inconstant steps with which he has followed his example, and the much want of faith and fervency wherein he has failed to cultivate as he ought a holy and joyful fellowship with him in all his ordinances? Were Christians more with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane - more studious to enter in to the mind and love of a suffering Saviour - more given to cultivate the “fellowship of his sufferings,” and to realise the deep glories of their own redemption as up springing endlessly from the unfathomable abysses of the anguish of the Son of God, and boundless and secure to them only because his anguish was so great and all-sufficient - they would be far more awake to the things that are unseen and eternal, and live both more holy and more blessed under the powers of the world to come. Awake, then, ye children of God, to a livelier faith and a more penitent and grateful love to him who died for you and who rose again. It is high time to awake out of sleep, for now is your salvation nearer than when ye believed. He who lay prostrate on the ground in Gethsemane will soon come to sit upon his great white throne. Awake, and serve him in faith and love. Serve him, and fight for him, under the banner of his own most free and forgiving and sanctifying love - the love that braved Gethsemane and the cross for you. And ever tasting that the Lord is gracious, serve him with godly fear, remembering that the Lord our God is holy. So shall you not be ashamed before him at his coming.

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