Gethsemane—Continued

There is one remaining question which must be answered ere we quit the Garden. What was the ultimate issue of this sorrow of Jesus? Was His prayer for the passing of the cup granted or rejected? It is frequently referred to as one of those petitions which have been denied. But a very early authority, a man who stands in the very front of the gallery, has taken the opposite view; and as that view is supported by the subsequent demeanour of Jesus Himself, I adopt it without hesitation. The witness of whom I speak is the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. He declares in the most explicit terms that the prayer of Jesus was answered, ‘He was heard in the thing He feared.’

Any one who thinks that the cup from which

Jesus shrank was the fact of dying must find in these words the wildest of paradoxes. If death in the abstract was the thing He feared, then He was not heard in that thing. The cup of death was not averted from Him; He went out from the Garden to the grave. It is clear that, in the view of this writer, the thing Jesus feared was not death in the abstract. It was a fear of a different kind — a fear associated with the prospect of His death, but separable from it — a cup which could be removed even while the cup of death remained. Can we conceive such a dread; can we figure such a cup? That is the question I have tried to answer in last chapter. I have expressed my conviction that the thing which made Jesus recoil from- the prospect of His own death was the fear lest His reconciling work should be crushed by the world’s culminating sin of crucifying * the Holy One of God.’ This was the danger, in the dread of which He breathed the prayer, * Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me! ’

Now, was this prayer answered? The writer to the Hebrews says it was. But, waiving the writer to the Hebrews, we have a yet stronger testimony — Jesus Himself. We see Him before He enters the solitude; His soul is filled with heaviness. We see Him for a time in the midst of the solitude; and the drops of anguish are falling from His brow. We see Him emerging from the solitude; and, lo! all is changed! His step is elastic, His eye serene, His air confident! Death is nearer to Him than ever, but He is undismayed! He repudiates the thought that the surrender to death is involuntary. He maintains that it is an act of His own will, ‘Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels! ‘He says it is His own will just because He has found it to be the will of His Father, ‘The cup which my Father hath given me to drink, shall I not drink it! ‘Even in His moment of anguish He had expressed His willingness to take the cup of death provided only He knew that it was a part of God’s plan, that it was not simply the will of the world. He had said, ‘If this cup may not pass from me except I drink it ’ — if it is no human accident but something designed as a part of the picture, ‘Thy will be done! ‘And now He has solved that question. He has found the taking of the cup of death to be the will of His Father, and therefore it has become His will. He has found that this cup is no longer the cup He dreaded. It has not passed from Him; but something has passed from it. He has been ’ heard in the thing He feared.’ His prayer has been answered — answered before He emerged from the solitude — answered in a way that makes Him come out stronger than He went in. Something must have occurred between the agony and the exit — something to clear the air, something to lift the heart. What was it?

In the great gallery it is portrayed physically. We see an angel flying through the night, bearing on his wings a Divine message to Jesus. To us the interesting thing is not the angel but the message. Let us open it. We can only do so in fancy. We have no record of the words; we are merely told that the message brought strength to Jesus. But we know what was the ground of His weakness. It was His pain, His sympathy with the Father’s pain, in seeing about to be perpetrated the culminating act of the world’s sin. If this was the source of weakness, we can imagine what His message of strength would be. May not we render it thus: ‘My beloved Son, this moral pain of Thine for the world’s unrighteousness is to me the sweetest music. It is the music I have long waited for, long listened for in vain. It outweighs all the discord; it prevails over all the jarring. I have brought Thee to this hour that I may hear Thy music. Thy pain for this dark deed is itself my rainbow in the flood; Thy beauty has condoned the deformities of men.’

I find such an assurance as this quite necessary to account, not only for the demeanour of Jesus immediately afterwards, but for His whole future demeanour. We shall never again, in my opinion, see any sign in Him of mentally sinking under His sorrow. I say, mentally. The flesh may remain weak after the spirit is willing; or, to speak more correctly, the depression of the spirit may tell upon the body even after that depression is cured. In point of fact, the only trace of this struggle which the future scenes of the gallery reveal appears in the physical nature of Jesus. As yet the physical nature has exhibited no weakness. His bodily strength contrasts favourably with that of His disciples. When He returns to the spot where He had left Peter, James, and John, He finds them asleep. He had set them to watch for, and to report, the approach of enemies; He did not wish to be seen by these enemies in an attitude of sorrow. As a matter of fact, it is His eye and not theirs that detects the foe; it is His voice and not theirs that gives the alarm, ‘He is at hand that doth betray me.’

Then follows a scene of dramatic interest. Rome and Judea gather round the Galilean. The one is represented by the swords of a cohort, the other by the staves of a Levite band. By the gleam of torches the secular and the sacred powers come out in battle array to fight the Man of Sorrows! They have expected a fight; they have not dreamed that Jesus would have a guard so small. Small as it is, that guard is prepared to do battle — not in despair, but in perfect confidence of victory. They are but eleven in number, but their Leader makes a twelfth; and that twelfth is the fourth man of Daniel’s furnace! They who go with Him can receive no hurt! He can cast out devils; He can tread down scorpions! With Him as leader the little band need fear no legions, no armies! Let Him but give the word, and they will fight, and conquer! Already a sword is drawn; already an advance is made! Suddenly, from that Leader a word of command does come forth; but it is the opposite word to that for which they have waited. It is not the signal of battle; it is not the call to scatter their enemies; it is the awful mandate, ‘Let us surrender! ’

A strange scene then presents itself. Amid the gleaming torches, under the moonlit sky, the cohort advances to arrest Jesus and His band. Jesus awaits their coming; but He awaits them alone. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the league of pity is dissolved! With ignominious haste, with abject fear, without casting a glance behind them, the eleven flee — flee, to a man! The higher and the lower disciples are at last united — in a common degradation; the jealousy of Judas has its wish fulfilled! They had striven who should be nearest their Leader; the strife now is, who shall be farthest away! It seemed in that moment as if the first were about to be made last. Nay, it appeared for an instant as if the converse were to be also true — as if the last were to be made first. As the Roman escort emerges from the Garden bearing Jesus as their prisoner, a nameless young man follows the august Captive for a few steps of the way. It is but for a few steps; the officers lay their hands upon his garment; he leaves it in their hands, and flees. Yet these few steps were in the track of the Lord Jesus on His road to the cross, and they have deservedly made this young man, though nameless, immortal! He did what the men of the Garden failed to do — he made an effort not to flee. His admiration for Jesus carried him for a few moments into fellowship with His cross, and, spite of the travesty which completes the story, these brief moments of fellowship shall be counted to him for righteousness.

The league of pity, as I have said, was for the time dissolved. It had yielded to panic. True, the germs of reconstruction were there; and reconstruction came. Panic is like a flood; it covers, but it does not necessarily destroy. These men still retained Mount Ararat below the waters, and, when the waters passed, they again rested there. Yet, for the moment Jesus was more alone than He had ever been. On this side of death He never met that league of pity as a united body again. On this side of death He never with the human eye saw more than two of its members, and on these His gaze rested but for a moment. Truly, if the fault of the band was great, it brought to them the penalty of a great privation!

VOL. II. R

Perhaps, instead of wasting time in recrimination, it will be more profitable to ask wherein lay the weakness of these men. I have said they were under the influence of panic. The question is, Why? Why did these disciples, who had received so many exceptional privileges, show to such disadvantage in the hour of danger? The common answer will be, their faith failed them. Strictly speaking, I do not think this is correct. I believe that at the time of their flight every man of that company had the same confidence in the power of Jesus which he had when he entered the Garden. When Peter drew his sword and made an actual assault on the foe he was not trusting in any power but the power of Jesus. He showed at that moment very great faith. Did he imagine that the natural power of the eleven was any match for the strength of a Roman cohort? Assuredly not. Why, then, did he attempt to wage so unequal a war? Because he was not looking to the natural power of the eleven. He was looking simply and solely to the supernatural power of the twelfth Man. Every other element was dis counted. The weakness of his own band and the strength of the opposing band went equally for nothing in the presence of the fact that Jesus was there. Here is a strange psychological study! In the moment immediately preceding their abject cowardice, Peter and those beside him had the most absolute, the most uncompromising faith that Jesus possessed an unlimited physical power. Why, then, in the next instant did their faith die?

I answer, it did not die; it remained where it was; but it was no longer available. They believed as firmly as ever in Christ’s unlimited physical power; but He had refused to use it. A new kind of faith was demanded of them — faith in an unseen force which moved without sound, assailed without weapons, conquered without strife. They had no experience of such a force — such a power of the spirit. To them the glory of Jesus was the glory of manifestation. They had lived in an atmosphere of physical wonders. They had seen their Master in visible contact with visible ills. They had seen Him heal the sick, cleanse the leper, calm the demoniac, light the blind. They had believed in His power to do these things; they believed in it still. But that was a power addressed to the senses, testified to by the senses. That there existed in the soul of Jesus a power over men which the senses could not recognise, that there lay in the bosom of Jesus a reserve strength of miraculous energy which could influence the mind of man where no outward hand appeared — this was a thought which they had not yet conceived. It was a thing they had not been accustomed to. That strength should emerge from physical weakness seemed to them a contradiction in terms. They could understand how Jesus could dominate the weak in body; but that Jesus Himself should become weak in body and still retain His power, was an idea which transcended the utmost flight of their fancy!

And yet within a few days these men are to reach that height! Within a few days they are to scale that ascent which here, in the Garden, is impossible to them, and are to plant their feet upon a purely spiritual faith! It is one of the most remarkable facts of all history. No transformation is perhaps so wonderful — not even that of Saul of Tarsus! The transformation of Saul was but the trans planting of a fine intellect from one piece of ground into another. But within a few days these men were to experience not merely the transplanting but the actual birth of an intellect — the transformation of natures purely physical into minds whose bent was to be distinctly inward, and whose belief was to rest in a house not made with hands. Can we explain this marvellous change? Can we account for a transformation so remote from all analogy, so contrary to all expectancy, so inexplicable on any known principle of development? We can only explain it on the supposition that between the night of the betrayal and the dawn of the new consciousness something intervened — something in the sphere of physical fact itself which revealed to these external minds the power of the spirit in the absence of the flesh.

T7ORBID, O Lord, that after being with Thee in the Garden I should desert Thee in the public street! Often have I been guilty of that sin. I have gone into Thy temple to worship; I have sung hymns to Thy praise; I have breathed prayers in Thy name. But, when I have come out into the world, when I have seen the flaring torches of popular and brilliant vices, I have yielded to the spell. At such times, O Lord, send me comfort! There are seasons when Thy best gift is pain. When I have fled from Thee, send me Thy gift of pain! I have heard men say, ‘There is life for a look at the crucified One.’ Yes; but to Peter the life of that look came in bitter tears. So let it be with me when I forget that I am of Galilee! Send forth from Thy presence a Divine unrest! Let the evidence of Thy nearness be my own disquiet! Let the proof of Thy continued interest be the tossing of my soul! Let the dove find no rest outside the ark! When I imitate the tones of vice, let my Galilean accent betray me! For indeed I am of Galilee — even when

I flee! The memories of the Garden are too strong for me; they pull me back, they will not let me go. I cannot break Thy bands asunder, nor cast Thy cords from me; Thou that sittest in the heavens shalt laugh at my efforts to get free! Ever hold my spirit in these golden bands 1