Gethsemane

“AND WHEN THEY HAD SUNG AN HYMN, THEY WENT OUT INTO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES.” — MARK XIV. 26.

THEN COMETH JESUS WITH THEM UNTO A PLACE CALLED GETHSEMAKE, AND SAITH UNTO THE DISCIPLES, SIT YE HERE, WHILE I GO AND PRAT YON-DER.” — MATT. XXVL 36.

‘* AND HE CAME OUT, AND WENT, AS HE WAS WONT, TO THE MOUNT OP OLIVES; AND HIS DISCIPLES ALSO FOLLOWED HIM. AND WHEN HE WAS AT THE PLACE, HE SAID UNTO THEM, PRAY THAT YE ENTER NOT INTO TEMPTATION. AND HE WAS WITHDRAWN FROM THEM ABOUT A STONE’S CAST, AND KNEELED DOWN, AND PRAYED, SAYING, FATHER, IP THOU BE WILLING, REMOVE THIS CUP FROM ME; NEVERTHELESS, NOT MY WILL, BUT THINE, BE DONE. AND THERE APPEARED AN ANGEL UNTO HIM FROM HEAVEN, STRENGTHENING HIM. AND, BEING IN AN AGONY, HE PRAYED MORE EARNESTLY AND HIS SWEAT WAS AS IT WERE GREAT DROPS OF BLOOD FALLING DOWN TO THE GROUND. AND WHEN HE ROSE UP FROM PRAYER, AND WAS COME TO HIS DISCIPLES, HE FOUND THEM SLEEPING FOR SOR-ROW, AND SAID UNTO THEM, WHY SLEEP YE? RISE AND PRAY, LEST YE ENTER INTO TEMPTATION.” — LUKE XXH. 39-46.

We approach now, — let it be with reverent steps, — the most deeply sacred of all the memories of Olivet.

However hallowed it be to follow the Divine Redeemer to His most cherished and frequented Home on the Mount, or to track His footsteps to its oratories for midnight prayer; — however delightful to join in thought the jubilant multitudes on the Hosanna road and listen to their glad acclaims, far more solemn and impressive surely is it, to enter the precincts of that lonely Olive Garden — the scene of the last agony — the field whereon was waged the stupendous conflict, on whose issues was suspended the world’s redemption. If around no other spot of the Mount there gathered hallowed memories but this, Gethsemane alone would have given to Olivet peerless and undying sacredness. No locality is visited with intenser interest by the traveller in Palestine, than that cluster of venerable olives, with “their gnarled trunks and scanty foliage” — the reputed relics of earth’s most sanctified scene of anguish and suffering.* Even though there be a difficulty — an impossibility — in identifying with certainty the precise spot, this we confidently know, that if the traditional scene be rejected, (which we are not disposed to do,) the true locality must at all events be close at hand. Let us

* See introductory chapter, p. 22.

gather then in imagination eighteen centuries ago, within these consecrated precincts, and watch Redeeming Love in its deepest agony and most glorious triumph. Let us turn aside and see this great sight — the bush burning with fire, and lo! the bush is not consumed. From the old Fathers Cyril and Augustine, downwards, in commenting on the transcendent subject which is now to engage our thoughts, an appropriate comparison and contrast has been drawn between the first and the second Adam; a garden bein<y, in either case, the scene of conflict. “Gethsemane,” says a later German divine, “becomes to us an Eden, and is transformed with its horrors into a peaceful retreat. Within its circuit we are safe from the judicial inquiry, *Adam, where art thou?’ In this garden flows the never-failing river of God which waters the new Paradise.”

We shall limit ourselves, in the present chapter, to the SCENE itself and its accompaniments; reserving for the next, the consideration of its deeper mysteries.

It may help us in the contemplation of the outer framework of this mysterious picture, to mark a few of the preliminary details given by the diflferent Evangelists. On the evening of the day corresponding to our Thursday, the Lord of Glory, at the close of the Paschal Supper, in the small upper room on Mount Zion, had instituted, in the presence of His disciples, the great New Testament memorial feast: ‘’And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives.”* What else could this hymn be, which rose from the lips of these assembled guests, but the well

* Mark xiv. 26.

known Hebrew Hallel, that cluster of time-honoured psalms which had been for centuries used on the same occasion by thousands and tens of thousands; and which, that very night, was being intoned by thousands more? That “Hymn “was a nation’s prayer for the coming of her King; a nation’s supplication for the offering of the great sacrificial Oblation. But it contained in a nobler, truer sense, the utterances of Messiah Himself, — the sublime words with which He went forth to His mysterious struggle as the Vanquisher of Death, and “to open the kingdom of Heaven to all believers.” The annals of the suffering Church record, how her martyrs braced themselves for rack and flame, by making their cells — like the apostle-prisoners at Philippi — vocal with songs of praise; or in some of those bloody encounters, where truth and conscience were at stake, we have read of strains of Christian melody rising to heaven, when the ranks were in the act of forming in battle. How interesting to think of this Prince of Martyrs, this great Captain of Salvation, (Himself about to be made perfect through suffering,) singing these songs of Zion on the eve of conflict — the earnest and pledge of victory! Strange and incongruous indeed may seem such jubilant melodies, preceding the darkest ‘memory of Olivet,’ when the Divine Sufferer had unveiled to His omniscient eye, all His untold and imutterable anguish. But for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame. In crossing the brook Kedron — the “brook by the way” — He could with joy “lift up his head,” (Ps. ex. 7.) God, His Heavenly Father, who giveth “songs in the night,” (Job XXXV. 10,) had imparted, in His case, a new and holier meaning to the prophetic words, “Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One of Israel,” (Isa. XXX. 29.) Christ “singing a hymn” ere He went to ’ the Mount!’ It was like the first note of the “new sons:” that was to be sung through everlasting ages in heaven, by the “hundred and forty and four thousand” — the ingathered church of the Redeemed. That Hallel, as we have just said, was on the lips of rejoicing multitudes throughout the land, at that hour. But one alone, had the right to take up and appropriate, in the truest sense, its loftiest strains — “The Lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation. The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous: the right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly. The right hand of the Lord is exalted: the right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly. I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. The Lord hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over unto death. Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord,” (Ps. cxviii. 14-1 9.)

Having sung this Paschal hymn, they went out immediately in the direction of the Mount of Olives, — descending from Mount Zion by the King’s Gardens, or traversing the pathway which in all likelihood would lead then, as now, under the eastern wall of the city. In either case, they would cross the Valley of Jehoshaphat — where the Kedron, (the black brook, as the word means,) swollen it may be by the last of the latter rains, murmured along its rocky gorces.*

* Dr Barclay supposes that the Saviour and His disciples approached

It was night — probably the last watch, — between our eleven and twelve o’clock;* night in its silent hour, yet not night in its darkness. The bright passover moon, with its attendant stars, shone in the quiet heavens. A few twinkling lights may have lingered in the city close by, or among the white tents that covered the slopes of Mount Olivet, and told of the great yearly convocation from all parts of Palestine to keep the solemn anniversary. Nigh the eastern bank of the Kedron was this olive grove or plantation: in the present moonlight, the shadow from the opposite side of the ravine may have been projected upon it, veiling it in partial darkness. Jesus, as we have noted

Gethsemane rather by the streets of Jerusalem, crossing the TyropcBon by the great bridge of Solomon; passing through the Temple, (whose gates were kept open at night during the passover season,) and thence across the Kedron by the Bed heifer or Scapegoat Bridge, — at whose eastern terminus he is disposed to place, the upper portion at least, of Gethsemane. This, he conceives, would give more truth and significance to the expression, “He went forth with His disciples over the brook Kedron, where was a garden,” &c., thus crossing the brook by the elevated viaduct. With reference to the Red heifer Bridge, while these pages are passing through the press, a letter has appeared in the Times of September 24, 1867, from the head of the Palestine exploration party, from which I extract the following: — “I am also excavating near the Golden Gate, where a fellah says he found a tower, which may possibly be the remains of steps; but it is too far north for the remains of the Red heifer Bridge... I was quite sceptical about the existence of such a bridge, until within the last fortnight, but the Mishna is so explicit about it, that I have taken it up in earnest. I have already excavated to a depth of about twenty feet below the present east side of th Haram Area, where there are two stones bulging out — something like the springing of an arch — with no result. The bridge, I think, must have commenced from a point 600 feet north of the south-east angle.” Such is the latest information on a question of much interest. The researches of these laborious investigators, whom we saw personally at work nigh this very spot, may, in a few months, throw much valuable light on this * Olivet memory. ’

* Greaswell.

particularly in a previous chapter, was no stranger to that Garden. Some indeed suppose it to have been an olive yard or farm, belonging to a disciple who had joyfully granted it to his Divine Master. St Luke, introducing the history, says, “He went, as lie was wont,’* to the Mount of Olives. That same spot, as we have also previously observed, had doubtless oft before listened to His prayers, as if He had been desirous, by previous fellowship with His Father in Heaven on the same hallowed ground, to consecrate it, and to nerve Himself for that struggle on which He was now to enter 1 The betrayer, too, seemed to have been familiar vnth the favoured resort He may have often tarried at the gate of that garden, and heard the same direction, which was now to be given under more awful circumstances,” Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.” Nor need we limit it to a place of devotion. We may here repeat the surmise, that it may have shared the honour with Bethany, of being the Judean Home or Lodging-place of the Divine Pilgrim. That houseless Wanderer who slept on the planks of a fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee, may have pillowed His weary head, oft and again, on the sod underneath these sheltering olive-boughs: as a stranger in the land, and a wayfaring man, He may have turned oft aside here to tarry for a night. Gethsemane may even have been a place of resort — a rendezvous — for inquiring disciples. Who can tell, but it may have been there that Nicodemus came “by night,” to speak of the deeper mysteries of the kingdom? If so, we

* St Luke seems further to indicate a well known locality on the Mount of Olives. He does not mention the word Gethsemane. It is ‘’at the place,” {Jswl ToO rbirov, )

should be warranted in including that beautiful and instruc-^ five third chapter of St John’s Gospel (wherein are some of the most gracious and precious utterances of Redeeming love) among the memories of ’ the Mount/

While on the way to the Garden, Jesus seems to have delivered His farewell discourse (or the latter portion of it at least) in hearing of His disciples. At the close of the 14th chapter of St John, He suddenly interrupts His solemn address — His wondrous words of comfort, — as if some sudden impulse had seized Him, or some inner voice had whispered that “His hour was, come.” He pauses at the supper-table and gives the summons, Arise, let us go hence r — Hence? Where? From the hour of communion to the place and the season of conflict. He resumes the interrupted valedictory by His well-known spiritual comparison of the Vine and its branches. The new figure is supposed by some to have been suggested by an actual vine revealed in the moonlight as they walked along, in one of the Jehoshaphat vineyards, or on the slopes of Olivet. But His own agony is at hand. The olive-grove is in sight. He dare not keep His disciples longer in ignorance of the impending trial. The discourse being finished, and they proceeding as we may suppose for a while in profound silence, wrapt in meditative thought, with a strange unde-.. fined presentiment of what was at hand. He makes the revelation, “All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad,” (Matt, xxvi. 31.) “The hour is now come,” says He again, as they have reached the depths of the valley — (to Him truly in a

u figurative sense “the Valley of the shadow of Death “) — *’ that ye shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone!’’ These were, doubtless, to them, starts ling announcements. The disciples were very familiar with that road, especially so, during the preceding days. Each evening of that eventful week, as we have seen, had been spent in the quiet village of Bethany, under the roof of Lazarus. Doubtless, therefore, in rising from the supper-table and taking the wonted path conducting to the Mount, most (or all) of them would imagine, that their Divine Mas* ter was about to resort, as heretofore, to the same hallowed retreat, and renew congenial seclusion and fellowship among the friends He loved. But on reaching the gate of the olive-garden, there is a different resolve announced; and He thus alike prepares them and Himself for His hour of trial, “Sit ye here while I go and pray yonder!”

Let us mark at the threshold of this mysterious place, His gentle, tender, unselfish dealing towards His apostles. Throughout His whole valedictory discourses, ’ there is not a word breathed of His own sorrows. The opening sentence is the key-note to all: it is their broken hearts alone He thinks of, ‘*Let not your hearts be troubled.” And again, when He alludes, for the first time, to their ’ scattering’ — forsaking Him when their sympathy would be most needed — He adds, in the same breath, the merciful and kindly promise, “But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.’’ As much as to say, ‘Think not of this gloomy period of anguish and desertion. Ye shall be offended because of me; I know too well you will act an unworthy part; but here is a keepsake for you — a word of solace which I ask you to treasure in your memories. I am to triumph over this mystery of darkness. Though ignominy and death are this night before me, I shall rise again; and, remember the word I now speak — I shall go before you into Galilee; there, I shall forget and forgive all your weakness of faith and unrequited love; there, I shall see you and meet you and comfort you!’ And again, in this first injunction at the garden-gate, mark, once more, His considerate reticence. He does not wish to affright them with a full revelation of that tragedy of woe, which was all unfolded to His own inner gaze. He speaks of it as gently as He can. He uses the mildest description of what is before Him, ‘* Sit ye here,” (not while I go to that uttermost conflict,) but “Sit ye here while I go and pray!” It was indeed ‘prayer;’ but such a wrestling — such a soul-struggle, as neither earth nor heaven had ever before witnessed — prayer “with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was able to save him from death,” (Heb. v. 7.)

The eleven are left at the outer precincts; but three out of the sacred company are permitted more nearly to approach: just as in His Church still, there are some privileged to gaze more deeply than others into the mysteries of His love, and to hold with an unseen Saviour more intimate and endearing fellowship. The three apostles here selected to be within a stone’s cast of their beloved Master, and to be witnesses of His humiliation, are the same three who had been the witnesses of His glory on the Mount of Transfiguration. Peter, who had made the magnanimous but too confident avowal of fidelity, and the two sons of Zebedee, to whom He had previously promised fellowship in His cup of suffering.

While these follow their great Lord amid the deeper shades of the garden, the mysterious Sufferer himself seems to have plunged farther still into the solitude. A horror of great darkness comes upon Him. Mark says, “He became Bore amazed and very heavy.” Matthew says, “His soul became sorrowful” — “exceeding sorrowful,” (encompassed and environed, as the word means, round and round with grief) — “sorrowful even unto death ‘” * He fell on His face. He is prostrated on the cnld clay amid the chilling dews of diat season and that niiduight hour. Great drops of blood mingling with His sweat, are the exponents of superhmnan agony, and moisten the turf to which He convulsively clings. In these momenta of intense and vehement emotion, feeling Himself conipanionlesa, alone, — three times He rises and goes to the three disciples, telling them of His anguish, and then returning afresh to the conflict.

Oh touching testimony, in the midst of this tremendous scene, to the perfect manhood of the great Redeemer — His yearniug after human sympathy. It is too solemn an hour and spectacle for the eyes of all the eleven: but He seems as if He could not dispense with a limited number; — “Tarry ye here and watch with me!” — With met ‘Your presence is the only prop and support I have in this fearful strugwle 1’ And when, on His return, He found them “asleep,” see how

lnii«tJa!ij)iow?i’”.. “Tfpftiwii.” Mark,“iaro
yita.” The following ara the different renderiogs
icLiF — 1360, “He began for to dread and to be
B in agony, and prayed the longer.” Tyni)ai:.b — ibashed and to be in an agony — My houI is very
Gemya — 1657, “He began to wax aorrowful and
He began to be afraid and in great heavineao.”
itofMT and to be heavy.” — Sm Bag$ter’« Hexapla

He monrns the absence of the sympathy He so needed. “What! could ye not watch with me one hour?” He returns a second and third time, even though He knows their eyes are sealed in slumber; just as the child clings to its parent in the thunderstorm, and clasps that parent’s hands; although he can render no aid, the very feeling of presence mitigates fear and dispels a sense of danger. But, what a withering rebuke! It might well have gone as an arrow to their hearts, “could ye not watch with Me f*’ ‘Ye promised to die with me, Can ye not watch one hour? Often, faithless ones, for whole nights have ye toiled at your nets on Gennesaret, and surrendered your hours of needed repose. On this one night of temptation and anguish can ye not spare your Lord one hour? Simon, where is thy boasting,” Sleepest thou?** John, where is thy love? Where is he who so lately leant on my breast at supper? I have come looking for pity and I find none, and for comforters and I find none! * If He were to have uttered the challenge now, “Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism which I am baptized with?” which of the coward sleepers could dare venture on the old presumptuous answer, “We are able?”

In connexion with these sufferings. He speaks of some mysterious cup. You will observe, this cup, whatever it be, formed the main cause of His woe. At the sight of it or thought of it, His soul recoiled. As He holds it with trembling hand, He utters the prayer, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me!” It seems to have been after the first approach to the disciples, and after the first utterance of the prayer for the passing of the cup, that a new incident arrests ns in the inspired narrative — a new personage appears. Hitherto the Lord had been alone; not a sound of step or voice obtruded on His silent agony. The hum of the Paschal multitudes in the city was hushed at that midnight hour; nothing was heard, but perchance the murmur of the Kedron, or the rustle of the olive boughs in the nightly breeze. But a bright angel from the mansions of heaven is now seen by His side, — an angel “strengthening Him.” We dare not be wise beyond what is written. What that angel did or said is unrecorded. Man — His own disciples — had denied Him sympathy in sufi’ering; While the Divine Bridegroom tarried, they slumbered and slept. It would seem as if the arrested gaze of the celestial multitudes was directed on the spot where their great Lord was bowed in anguish; and a representative was sent down to assure Him, that if earth was wrapt in grief and unconscious slumber, all Heaven was watching, in silent expectancy, the stupendous conflict. One thing we may well believe, the angel did not tell Him. He did not tell Him that he was sent to answer the thrice-uttered prayer, and to proclaim it ’ possible ’ that the cup might pass: if so, the disciple representatives of the Church on earth, might well remain outside the gates * sleeping with sorrow ’ — sunk in the slumbers of everlasting despair! If we can dare surmise what passed, (if aught passed these angelic lips,) would it not be, to rehearse the awful necessity for these sufferings, and the glorious rewards consequent on them? would it not be to tell of the crown rising above the cross — the resurrection morning — the triumphal ascension to Heaven, as Conqueror over sin and death — the glories of the second Advent — the everlasting joy and triumph of His ransomed Churchthrough eternity. Or possibly, that celestial Visitant may have been delegated to convey no more, than some solacing but all-glorious message of love from the Eternal Father. Be this as it may, the angelic appearance had mightily invigorated Him. His great depression, after that, is over. The language of the Prayer is changed. Convinced of the impossibility of eluding the cup, He says, “my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me except I drink it; thy will be done.” At last, the conflict is ended, (the soul conflict at least.) Though other sufierings are at hand, physical suffering is little to Him, after the moral contest from which He had now come forth as conqueror. Oh, as the torchlight and the moonlight together reveal to us the Person of the Sufferer, as we see Him coming forth from the gate of the olive-garden, perhaps with the drops of agony still crimsoning His attire, we are led to adopt the language of the prophet, and to listen to the Redeemer’s reply, “Who is this that Cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine-fat? I have trodden the wine-press alone; and of the people there was none with me!”

“He knelt, the Saviour knelt and pray’d.
When but His Father’s eye
Look’d through the lonely garden’s shade
On that dread agony;
The Lord of all, above, beneath,
Was bow’d with sorrow unto death.

‘’ The sun set in a fearful hour.
The stars might well grow dim.
When this mortality had power
So to o’ershadow Him,

That He who gave man’s breath, might know
The very depths of human woe.

“He proved them all; the doubt, the strife,
The faint perplexing dread.
The mists that hung o’er parting life,
All gather’d round His head.
And the Deliverer knelt to pray — Yet pass’d it not, that cup away.

“It pass’d not — though the stormy wave
Had sunk beneath His tread;
It pass’d not — though to Him the grave
Had yielded up its dead.
But there was sent Him from on high
A gift of strength for man to die.

“And was the sinless thus beset
With anguish and dismay?
How may we meet our conflicts yet,
In the dark and narrow way?
Through Him, through Him, that path who trod.
Save, or we perish. Son of God.”