ment, manliness, and consciousness of victory. We behold him coming forth triumphantly from the conflict, and armed and prepared for all that is to follow. "Sleep on, now, and take your rest," he begins to say with mournful and reproving seriousness, "It is enough." "For my sake"-is his meaning -"you need no longer watch; I require your assistance no more. My conflict is ended."

But what means the addition, "It is enough ?" What else than "Your slumbers will now cease of themselves?" The words that immediately follow require this explanation. “The hour is come; behold the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners." He intends by these words to say, "The body is now concerned, and your liberty is at stake; who will think any longer of sleeping under such circumstances? He knows what hour has struck. Not without a degree of apprehension, but still perfect master of his feelings, he courageously prepares for being delivered into the hands of sinners, with whom, by this expression, he evidently contrasts himself as the Holy One.

"Rise up!" says he at the close, expressive of the valorous resolution which his language breathed. "Let us go," continues he, “Lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand!" What a momentous appeal is this! The champion of Israel goes forth to attack and overcome, in our stead, death, hell, and the devil, in their strongest holds. Let us adoringly bow the knee to him and accompany him with hallelujahs.

Thus, has the most mysterious scene the world ever witnessed passed before us in all its affecting circumstances; and which of my readers has not felt that to solve its enigmas, the keys which human science puts into our hands are insufficient. In no earthly martyrdom is there any thing which remotely corresponds with the conflict in Gethsemane. It is obvious, on the contrary, that in treating of it, we have to do with sufferings which are unique in their kind. I might, however, observe that the antithetical obscurity of the conflict places itself in light and splendor before us, as soon as it reaches its culminating point. It is only by the guiding clew of these ideas, that we find our way out of the labyrinth. If we believingly follow

that clew, which is not drawn by the arbitrary will of man, but is put into our hands by the word of God, we shall discover the source of our eternal peace, where, at the commencement, nothing but horror and distress took possession of us; and shall joyfully finish, by ascribing thanksgiving, and blessing, and praise unto him, who endured such great things for us.

XIII.

GETHSEMANE-IMPORT AND RESULT.

THE apostle, in writing to the Hebrews, concerning the priesthood of Jesus Christ, expresses himself in a remarkable manner, when he says in chap. v. 7, 8, "Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared: though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience from the things that he suffered.”

The apostle has evidently reference here to the conflict in Gethsemane, and expressly designates what the Lord Jesus endured and accomplished there, as sacrificial. According to the apostle's view, the Lord there struggled in the agonies of death; and he represents the deliverance from death as the object of his supplications. But the death with which the divine sufferer strove, could not be that which delivers the soul from the prison of the body: but only that, the power over which is possessed by the devil, and which, while separating mankind from fellowship with God, weighs upon them as the curse and wages of sin.

The apostle says, Christ was "heard in that he feared"that is, was delivered from the fear and horror of God. It follows of course, that this fear must not be understood as godly fear or filial reverence; but as horror and terror at the majesty of the Thrice Holy One in the heavens; for the being heard, can only have reference to this fear. But the Father's

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hearing" was experienced only after Christ, by his sufferings, had learned obedience-that is, when he uttered the words, Father, not as I will, but as thou wilt," and had, without reserve, accepted the cup from him. In the midst of strong crying and tears, the Lord offered himself up as the Lamb which, as the representative of a sinful world, presented himself at the bar of divine judgment. For as Isaiah says, "He was taken from prison and from judgment."—Chap. liii. 8.

I confess that whenever I am called upon to treat of the sacred mysteries of Gethsemane, I can not divest myself of a certain degree of awe. I feel as if there stood at the gate of that garden a cherub, who, if not with a flaming sword, yet with a repelling gesture refused admittance, and emphatically repeated our Lord's injunction to tarry outside, while he retires to pray. A feeling always seizes me, as if it were unbecoming to act as a spy on the Son of the living God in his most secret transactions with his heavenly Father; and that a sinful eye ventures too much in daring to look upon a scene in which the Lord appears in such a state of weakness and abandonment that places him on the same footing with the most miserable among men. Besides, I know that I am expected to introduce the reader into depths which make the head turn giddy to look down upon; to solve enigmas, the complete deciphering of which I must despair of on this side of eternity; to explain mysteries, for the unsealing of which, my own soul vainly languishes; and to draw aside vails, which, as often as I attempt it, seem the more to thicken. But the Gospel brings the mysterious narrative before us for consideration, and hence it is incumbent upon us to enter into its sacred gloom, and seek to comprehend as much of it as human apprehension is capable of.

The events in the garden of Gethsemane, with their scenes of horror, have passed in review before us. If we are not entitled to regard the position in which we find the Saviour there, as altogether extraordinary, superhuman, and singular; we should do better to close the gate of that inclosure, and withdraw the Holy One of Israel from the eyes of the world, if we wish to save his honor, and that of his Father. If, in

"From distress or terror." German version.

Gethsemane, we have to do with Jesus only as a prophet or teacher, his office, as such, there suffered the most complete shipwreck; since we can not then avoid the conclusion, that he must, himself, have been at fault with regard to his doctrine, and have lost the courage to die for it. If he is to be regarded in Gethsemane only as the model of unconditional resignation to God; we must say that he scarcely attained even to this; since Stephen and many other martyrs have appeared infinitely greater than the trembling Jesus, with his bloody sweat and agonizing prayer that the cup might pass from him. If we are to look upon Jesus only as a man desirous, by his example, of sealing the truth that in the time of distress, the Lord God is near his people with his help and consolation-the question again recurs, where does such a tranquilizing fact appear; since the very opposite shows itself, and the holy sufferer languishes from being forsaken of God? If, finally, he must be viewed as a proof of that overcoming peace which never departs from the just, but accompanies him in every season of distress: we look around us in vain, even for such a testimony; for instead of peace, a horror seizes upon the Holy One of God, like that of a guilty malefactor, which renders him restless and fugitive, and even gives him the appearance of one who is on the brink of despair.

We must, therefore, have to do, in Gethsemane, with something essentially different to what I have just mentioned, or Gethsemane becomes the grave of the Lord's glory. If he were fighting a battle, only similar to that which every martyr for the kingdom of heaven has fought before and since the scholars are then superior to their Master, and the latter is thrown by them far into the shade. All belief in the government of a holy and righteous God in the world, must be stamped as a delusion, if, in the suffering of Jesus, we apply no other criterion than that of an ordinary testing and purifying trial. Heaven must fall, the order of the divine government be annihilated, and Christianity be forever destroyed, if the Holy Scriptures compel us to regard the cup, which Jesus drank, as essentially the same as that of which Job, Jeremiah, Paul, and many others partook.

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Know, however, that the combatant in Gethsemane loses nothing in our esteem by his being sore amazed and very heavy;" nor are we mistaken in him, in whatever degree he may seem to have lost his self-possession. We do not stumble at seeing him tear himself loose from his disciples, with the violence of one beside himself, and then, prostrate in the dust, hear him mournfully exclaim, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death!" Even his thrice uttered anxious petition, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me!" and his taking refuge with his weak disciples, as well as his requesting them to watch with him one hour for his consolation-nay, even the bloody sweat, which flowed from his veins, and dropped from his sacred body to the ground-however much we may feel astonished, whatever sorrow it may cause our hearts, and however deeply it may horrify us-it does not make us take offense, nor cause our faith to suffer shipwreck. In our view, brilliant stars shine over the darkness of Gethsemane. We possess the key to its mysteries and the depth of its horrors; and we find it in the sentiment, which, in every variety of form, pervades the whole Bible: "God hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." As long as Christ's position, as Mediator, is not acknowledged, the events in Gethsemane will continue a sealed mystery. Every attempt to explain them, otherwise than by the fundamental article of his vicarious mediation, must be forever unavailing. Only through the light which it affords us, is every thing rendered clear and intelligible to us in that appalling scene. The most striking contradictions are then reconciled, and that which is the most strange and apparently incomprehensible, disappears, and seems perfectly natural. The divine sufferer in Gethsemane must be regarded, not as that which he is abstractedly, but in his mysterious relation to sinners. He here appears as 'the second Adam," as the Mediator of a fallen world, as the Surety, on whom the Lord "laid the iniquities of us all."

Three causes lay at the basis of Jesus's mental sufferings-the one more awful than the other. His agony was caused, first, by his horror of sin, by amazement at the abominations of our