The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1906-11-08


owy valley; brook on its way to
a Sea of Death, and running red
with the blood of two hundred
thousand lambs slain that day;
gnarled old olive trees, whose
twisted trunks seemed to express
for the vegetable world that tribu-
lation under which the whole Gre
alton groaneth.
As Jesus passed the snowy
porches of the temple, and came
down into the forbidding chasm,
would He not recall to Him how
His 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 barefoot.
The separation of the disciples
into two bands was not an act of
caprice or favoritism. In this in
stance, paradoXically, the station
most remote from the Shepherd
was the safest. The feeling that
can be touched for human infrm-
ity showed itself in the very dis
position which Jesus on this OCCa-
sion made of His followers. And
if even on the burning edge of His
inscrutable sorrow He could still
think Of and provide for the safety
of His own, will 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
baptized with His baptism, and
the one who had first acknowledge
ed Him the Son Of God-these
three, the same who had gone
with Him to the TRANSPORTATION
height-were deemed best Injured
to go with Him into the depth of
His humiliation. Jesus wanted
the consciousness that human SYM
pathizers were near; wanted to be
guarded from intrusion; wanted
that there should be witnesses,
50 that the scene might be trans
nitted to the Church. The dis
Ciples were drowsy, but not wholly
disqualified for this threefold pur-
pose. Even to these comparatively
hardy companions He does not
bluntly announce the nature of
His ordeal, lest He should terrify
them. He says only, and consid-
crately, that He goes to pray.
The source and nature of Jesus
agony is ineXplicable. If you say
it was natural shrinking from the
hour and article Of death, then l
must say Jesus appears to have
died less heroically than many a
martyr-nay, even infdel, heath
en-, or apostate. The suffering of
Jesus seems to be unlike in nature,
and to surpass in degree human
anguish with which we are ia
miliar.
I suggest that, though the suf-
fering manifested itself in His
physical nature, the chief seat of
it was in His moral nature. 1t was
reversed on Golgotha There only
one word out of seven indicated
any degree of moral suffering.
Away with the idea that Jesus
had a sense of personal condemna-
ton, as if He were the object of
His Fathers wrath, and SO that,
in that sense, Gethsemane,was the
Hell of the Son OF good" 1t
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
degree as that it became Ills
very own, and well-nigh insup-
portable. May not this have been
that cup which, if it were morally
possible, He wished might be sup.
planted by some other?
l t was with Him only ques
ton Of means. His mistaken pur.
pose is to do His Fathers will
The Father is not marrying the
Son on to something from which
He reyolts. Fathers will is Sons
delight.