The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-11-10
Fourth Quartsr Lesson VI Matt. Sxvi, 30-bO November 1T, I800
 JESUS IN GEsTHSEMA ANFs.

Tho harvest moon ughtcd coldiy a
 weird scene--pale faces af tombs peer
 ing down into a shadoway valley; a
 brook on its way to a Sea of Death.
 and running red with the biqod of two
 hundred thousand lambs slain that
 day; gnarled old olive trees. whose
 twisted trunks seemed to express for
 the vegetable world that tribulatfon
 under which the whole creation groan- 9th.
 As Jesus passed the snowy porches of th9 temple, and came down into the forbidding chasm, would He not recall to Him now His great progenitor, thrust out of the same city, had crossed this very brook Cedron with face toward the wilderness; how as he went up the further side. he wept and had his head covered and went bare foot.
 The separation of the disciples into two bands was not an act of caprice or favoritism. In this instance, para doxically, the station most remote from the Shepherd was the safest The feeling that can be touched for hu- man infirmity showed Itself in the very disposition which Jesus on this occafson made of His followers. And I if even on the burning edge of His inscrutable sorrow He could still think of and provide for the safety of His own. viii He neglect us now. that He is exalted to the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens?
 The two who had asked to be bap- tized with His baptism, and the one i who had first acknowledged Him the Son of God--these three, the same who had gone with Him to the Transfig- uration height--were deemed best inured to go with Him into the depth of His humiliation. Jesus wanted the consciousness that human sympathiz- CTS were near: wanted to be guarded | from intrusion: wanted that there should be witnesses, so that the scene might be transmitted to the church. | The disciples were drowsy, but not wholly disqualified for this threefold purpose. Even to these comparative lily hardy companions He does not | bluntly announce the nature of Ills | ordeal, lest He should terrify them He says only. and considerably. that He goes to pray. | The source and nature of Jesus agony is inexplicable. If. you say il was natural shrinking from the hour | and article of death, then must say I Jesus appears to have died less heroi- I calTy than many martyr--nay, even l infideI, heather, or apostate. The suf-
 fering of Jesus seems to be unlike m I nature, and to surpass in degree hu- \ man anguish with which we are fa-
 suggest that though the physical nature, the chief seat, of it | was in His neral nature. It was re- versed on Goigotha. There only one word out of seven indicated any de- gree of moral suffering.
 Away with the idea that Jesus had a sense of personal condemnation, as if He were the object of His Fathers
 wrath, and so that, in that sense, Gethsemane was the Hell of the Son of Godl" It occurs to me that He so became one with us as to appreciate | the grief and sorrow of the whole race | with such a keenness and to such a | degree as that 1t became his very own and we'll nigh insupportable. May not this have been that cup which, it were
 morally possible, He wished might be
 supplanted by some other9
 It is with Him only question oi
 l neans His unshaken purpose Is tC
 | do His Fathers will The Father if
 not hurrying the Son on to something