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BELFAST.

THE REV. R. M. HENRY requests the insertion of the following list of subscriptions in aid of the Chapel Building Fund. The case is earnestly commended to the liberal support of British Christians. If BELFAST be rightly occupied, its influence will be felt throughout the North of Ireland :

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£. d.

Glasgow 100

William Jones
John R. Wilkinson
Henry M'Clelland
Robert Graham

James Smily
Mrs. Smily
John Blaney
Mrs. Blaney
Dr. M'Munn

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Taylor & Wilson

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H. G. Macpherson

20 100

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W. C. Shaw

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James A. Campbell

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William Campbell

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James Weatherup

Jane and Margaret Boyd.

James Nelson

Rev. R. M. Henry:

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Arnott & Co.

500

John Getty

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Richard Waring

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Thomas Sinclair

R. Henderson & Son

Sir H. McCalmont Cairns, M.P.

Robert Roddy

James Carlisle

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600 Mrs. Johnston

500 Mrs. Blair, Bridge of Allan

H. Drummond

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Dunfermline

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A Friend

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H. Rose

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00

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Mr. Hartley
Charles Eason
W. Cherry
Orlando Beater

Mr. Wilkinson

Joseph Tritton

Sir M. and Lady Peto

Thomas Pewtress
George Lowe

G. B. Woolley

E. J. Oliver

E. Rawlings
E. K.
G. 8. B.

Dublin 5 0 0

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5 0 0

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Whitehaven 5 0 0

London 5 0 0

10 0 0

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J. B. Bacon

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Joseph Rowell

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J. C. Bowser

100 Baptist Church (Silver St.), coll.

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Joseph Burgess

1 0 0 Mrs. M'Donald

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Mrs. Hassall

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J. Inglis

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Mrs. Gouldsmith

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Paisley 10 0

Robert Lush

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Miss Oswald

Glasgow 5

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Nelson & Matheson

Gibson & Service

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0 Thomas N. Macalpine

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Dunoon 20

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David Eglin

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Received in behalf of the Baptist Irish Society, from November 19th, 1860,

London-

to December 18th, 1860.

By Rev. J. G. McVicker, Aylsham

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G. Gowland

110

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William Hope

500

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R. Rankin

100

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John Moore

100

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John Roche

100

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Misses Houghton

100

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J. Cripps

100

Mrs. Stowe

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220

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William Crosfield

100

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Subscriptions & Donations by Secretary 3 11 0 Ditto, by Rev. W. Tulloch

Leighton, by Mr. C. B. Sell

Liverpool Auxiliary-A Lady, Grange
Lane Chapel, Birkenhead, for London-
derry

Maidstone, by Miss Watts

Milton-Dent, Mrs. and Miss

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Norfolk-

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IRELAND.

Athlone, by Rev. T. Berry
Londonderry, by Mr. D. Stevenson

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The thanks of the Committee are presented to Miss Harper, Cheltenham, for a parcel
of clothing; also to Mrs. Beetham, of Cheltenham, for a box of clothing and blankets,
and two parcels of books for lending libraries.

Contributions of clothing are greatly needed.

THE

BAPTIST MAGAZINE.

FEBRUARY, 1861.

GETHSEMANE.

BY THE REV. D. KATTERNS.

CHRIST entered upon his earthly ministry by retirement and prayerwhen he fasted forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. By prayer: and solitude he prepares to bring it to a close. Prayer and retirement are ever and anon mingled with his public engagements. In a solemn, humble, heavenly spirit he begins, carries on, and finishes his mediatorial undertaking. His first, last, and intermediate acts, are all clothed in the same sanctifying dispositions. Prayer is the first step: prayer the last. It was the baptism that consecrated him at the beginning: it was the baptism of agony that intensified the sublimity of the end.

There is not only analogy in the facts, but also in the circumstances. His fasting and devotion in the wilderness were distinguished by a conflict of temptation. His solitude and prayer in Gethsemane are marked by a struggle of another kind, but much more severe. Though he is said to have been "seen of angels," yet twice only in his life did angels visibly appear to him. In the desert, when the devil had ended all the temptations, they came and ministered unto him; in the garden there came one to strengthen him. Let us contemplate this latter agony. The Sun of Righteousness rises in a tempest and sets in blood.

There were some ancient interpreters who would fain have blotted out this passage of Christ's history from the sacred narrative. They thought that our Lord's Divine character was degraded by the exhibition of so much human suffering and infirmity. They would also have expunged those instances of weeping which the evangelists have faithfully recorded, first at the grave of Lazarus, and afterwards over the anticipated ruin of Jerusalem. Blessed be God that these records are not lost! that the evangelists were simple-minded men, who wrote precisely what they knew, and suppressed nothing. They delineate, therefore, not only God dwelling among men, but manifest in the flesh, in a man. We see not only a Redeemer, but a brother. There is more mystery in his life it is true, but also more beauty. The doctrinal difficulties are increased: but

VOL. T.-NEW SERIES.

5

in the same proportion the consolation is more abundant. We know him now to have been of the same nature with us; that he was tempted, that he prayed, that he suffered pain of mind and body; that he felt what it was to hope and fear, to rejoice and be sorry, to experience weakness and strength. Thus we distinctly see the grand qualifications of our Great High Priest. He is taken from among men;-a greater than Aaron-infinitely above us, and yet a brother. He has drank of the same cup, and understands our griefs and infirmities.

We have full proof of this in the Garden of Gethsemane. This scene excites the interest of believers hardly less than the cross itself. In the latter there was more of public ignominy, but perhaps not more of actual suffering. The garden, lighted by a full moon, so calm and solemn, might have been a place for quiet and happy contemplation, if distress, and trouble of soul, and thoughts of the impending future, had not supervened. But no sooner did our blessed Lord reach the hallowed spot, than all the horror of his situation falls upon him, nor can he refrain from pouring out his emotions upon the ears of his helpless and trembling disciples: "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death." It is some relief to reveal our anguish to those who are greater or stronger than ourselves. But when we speak to the feeble and timid, upon whose fortitude the mind cannot rest for support-from whom we can expect no comfort-complaint, in our case, though not in his, can be but the language of frantic despair, which breaks out because it cannot be controlled, and utters only the incoherent expressions of a thoughtless passion. Think, therefore, of the low estate to which the Saviour was reduced, reduced to complain to those who themselves needed that very strength to lean upon which now seems ready to sink under its own burden, who had not a word of comfort to offer, nor the least power to relieve. Only the strong can help the weak. What could creatures do, what could they answer, when the mighty Redeemer cried, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful"? I am ready to die with grief before my sacrifice begins.

The extent of our Saviour's agony may be collected from more than one circumstance. It may be inferred, for example, from the agitation of his manner and from the frequency of his movements. There is a grief that remains fixed and immovable; either calm and settled, or else sunk in stupefied astonishment. But great suffering, when it is fully felt, is active; it admits of no repose; it cannot sit, nor stand, nor abide in one place; the softest pillow is as if it were planted with torturing thorns. Thus our Saviour, though engaged in solemn, earnest, prayer, prayer so earnest that one would have thought it might have rent the very heavens, yet he can neither abide in the same place, nor in one position. He withdraws from his disciples, and then returns again: he renews his solitude and prayers, and again comes back to them when they slept. While he is alone in supplication we notice the same restlessness. First he kneels, then he bends lower and lower, till he lies prostrate, and yet again he ises and returns. Observe these circumstances; they are not recorded in vain. The movements of the body are, in such cases, an index to the state of the soul. Afflicted men may be tossed about with

They may be still from
But here was neither

impatience; but here there was no impatience. sullenness, or, like the disciples, sleep for sorrow. sullenness nor sleep. Here is a perfect man, whose thoughts are all awake and active; whose feelings are all alive to the circumstances of his condition; who does not move about as other men, from impatience or passion, but who walks to and fro and changes his position every moment, without the least admixture of any other cause but that he suffers to the very utmost extent of human endurance.

It may be collected from his prayers-For what does he pray? He prays for that for which at another time he refused to pray, though at that time also he was so troubled that he was constrained to give it utterance: "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Shall I say, Father, save me from this hour? but for this cause came I unto this hour." Therefore, how great soever the anguish of that moment may have been, this goes beyond it. He had before said, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened,”—narrowed, pent up, till it be accomplished, as if he longed for it, not for his own sake indeed, but that it might be over, and give place to the glorious issue of his atonement. Now he asks that, if it be possible, he may escape it. Afterwards he so far recovered himself as to say to a disciple who drew his sword in his defence, "Put up thy sword in its sheath; the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it ?" Now he prays, "Let this cup pass from me." Before he had rebuked Peter for shrinking from the contemplation of his sufferings. Now-now he himself pleads in amazement and horror, and pleads too with strong crying and tears to Him that was able to save him from death. These facts, I am aware, create some doctrinal difficulties, but just now I am appealing to them only as facts, from all which it appears that, while we have a picture of perfect resignation to the will of God, which we ourselves may copy with advantage, we have also exhibited a state of mind that approaches so nearly an utter distraction of disconsolate misery that the best we can say of it is, He bore it without the smallest taint of sin. Had not the suffering been immensely great, the Son of God would not have shown these signs of infirmity, though it was sinless. But the infirmity did not prevail; it stands on record only to show the severity of the struggle as well as the greatness of the victory.

The intensity of the suffering may also be collected from the effect which it produced. His sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling from his face to the earth. We are not ignorant that in the times of Hilarius and Jerome this and the adjoining verse of Luke were both absent from certain codices. But it is much easier to account for their suppression than for their insertion; and, besides, we have the testimony of Justin Martyr and of Irenæus, as quoted by Theodoret, that they were acknowledged in the second century after our Saviour's birth. Justin Martyr says, in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, that in the books which have been composed by his disciples and their followers, it is recorded that his sweat, as it were drops of blood, flowed down while he prayed, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." But our medita

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