_THE WATCH IN GETHSEMANE._
Hitherto the life of Jesus has been comparatively free from sorrow and
from pain. With the exception of the narrow strip of wilderness which
fell between the Baptism and His inaugural miracle, the Divine Life has
lain for the most part in the sunshine, above the fret and fever of
anxious thought and care. True, He had enemies, whose hatred was
persistent and virulent; the shafts of calumny fell around Him in one
steady rain; His motives were constantly misconstrued, His words
misunderstood; but with all this His life was peace. How could He have
spoken of "rest" of soul, and have promised it to the weary and
heavy-laden, if He Himself were a stranger to its experience? How could
He have awoke such songs and shouts of gladness, or have strewn the
lives of men with such unusual brightness, without having that
brightness and music coming back in reflections and echoes within His
own heart--that heart which was the fontal source of their new-found
joys? And if many doubted, or even hated Him, there were many who
admired and feared, and not a few who loved and adored Him, and who were
glad to place at His disposal their entire substance, nay, their entire
selves. But if His anointing thus far has been the anointing of
gladness, there is a baptism of sorrow and anguish prepared for Him,
and to that ordeal He now proceeds, first girding up His soul with the
music of a thanksgiving psalm. Let us, too, arise and follow Him; but
taking off our shoes, let us step softly and reverently into the mystery
of the Divine sorrow; for though we must ever stand back from that
mystery more than a "stone's cast," perhaps, if we keep mind and heart
awake and alert, we may read something of its deep meaning.
The whole scene of Gethsemane is unique. Like the Mount of
Transfiguration, the Garden of the Agony stands "apart" from all other
paths, in a profound isolation. And in more senses than this these two
august scenes are related and coincident. Indeed, we cannot fully
understand the mystery of the Garden but as we allow the mystery of the
Mount to explain it, in part at least, so threading the light of the one
into the darkness of the other. On the Mount of Transfiguration the
Divine Life, as we have seen, reached its culminating point, its
perihelion as we may call it, where it touched the very heavens for one
brief night, passing through its out-streaming glories and crossing the
paths of celestials. In Gethsemane we have the antipodal fact; we see
the Divine Life in its far aphelion, where it touches hell itself,
moving round in an awful gloom, and crossing the paths of the "powers of
darkness." And so our best outlook into Gethsemane is not from the Mount
of Olives--though the two names are related, as the two places are
adjacent, Gethsemane lying at the foot of Olivet--but from that more
distant Mount of Transfiguration.
Leaving the "guest-chamber," where a Passover of a new order has been
instituted, and the cup, with its fruit of the vine, has received a
higher consecration, Jesus leads the broken band down the stairs, which
still vibrate with the heavy tread of the traitor, and in the still,
full moonlight they pass out of the city, the gates being open because
of the Passover. Descending the steep ravine, and crossing the brook
Kedron, they enter the enclosure of Gethsemane. Both St. Luke and St.
John tell us that He was accustomed to resort thither--for, strangely
enough, we do not read of Jesus spending so much as one night within the
city walls--and so probably the garden belonged to one of His adherents,
possibly to St. Mark. Bidding the eight remain near the entrance, and
exhorting them to pray that they enter not into, or, as it means here,
that they "yield not to," the temptation which is shortly to come upon
them, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John farther into the garden. They
were witnesses of His Transfiguration, when His face shone like the sun,
and the spirits of the perfected came to do Him homage; they must now
see a transfiguration of sorrow, as that face is furrowed by the sharp
lines of pain, and half-masked by a veil of blood. From the narratives
of St. Matthew and St. Mark it would appear as if Jesus now experienced
a sudden change of feeling. In the guest-chamber He was calmly
confident; and though we may detect in His words and symbolic acts a
certain undertone of sadness, the salutation of one "about to die," yet
there was no tremor, no fear. He spoke of His own death, which now was
near at hand, as calmly as if the Mount of Sacrifice were but another
mountain of spices; while to His disciples He spoke words of cheer and
hope, putting around their hearts a soothing, healing balm, even before
the dreadful wound is made. But now all this is changed: "He began to be
greatly amazed and sore troubled" (St. Mark xiv. 33). The word we here
render "amazed," as St. Mark uses it, has sometimes the element of fear
within it, as when the women were "amazed," or "affrighted," by the
vision of the angels (xvi. 5); and such, we are inclined to think, is
its meaning here. It was not so much wonder as it was trepidation, and a
certain dread, which now fell of a sudden upon the Master. Over that
pure soul, which ever lay calm and serene as the bright heaven which
stooped to embrace it, has broken a storm of conflicting winds, and
dense, murky clouds, and all is disquiet and distress, where before was
nothing but peace. "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;"
such is the strange confession of tremulous lips, as for once He opens
the infinite depths of His heart, and shows the mortal grief which has
suddenly fallen there. It is the first contact of the eclipse, as
between Himself and the Father's smile another world is passing, the
world of the "outer darkness," even hell, throwing down upon His soul a
chilling, awful shadow.
Jesus understands its meaning. It is the signal for the final battle,
the shadow of the "prince of this world," who, rallying all his forces,
cometh to find "nothing in Me." Jesus accepts the challenge, and that He
may meet the enemy single-handed, with no earthly supports, He bids the
three, "Abide ye here, and watch with Me." "With Me," and not "for Me;"
for what could avail to Him the vigilance of human eyes amid this felt
darkness of the soul? It was not for Himself He bade them "watch," but
for themselves, that waking and praying they might gain a strength which
would be proof against temptation, the test which would be keenly
severe, and which now was close at hand.
"And He was parted from them about a stone's cast." The verb implies a
measure of constraint, as if, in the conflict of emotion, the longing
for some human presence and human sympathy held Him back. And why not?
Is not the very presence of a friend a solace in grief, even if no words
are spoken? and does not the "aloneness" of a sorrow make the sorrow
tenfold more bitter? Not like the "stricken deer that left the herd,"
the human heart, when wounded or sore pressed, yearns for sympathy,
finding in the silent look or in the touch of a hand a grateful anodyne.
But this wine-press He must tread alone, and of the people there must be
none with Him; and so the three who are most favoured and most beloved
are left back at a stone's cast from the physical suffering of Christ,
while from His heart-agony they must stand back at an infinite distance.
It was while Jesus was praying upon the holy mount that the heavens were
opened unto Him; and now, as another cloud envelopes Him, not of glory,
but of a thick darkness, it finds Him in the same attitude of prayer. He
at whose feet sinful man had knelt, all unrebuked, Himself now kneels,
as He sends to heaven the earnest and almost bitter cry, "O My Father,
if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me!" The three Evangelists
differ in their wording of the Saviour's petition, showing that the
spirit is more than the letter of prayer; that Heaven thinks more of the
inner thought than of the outward drapery of words; but the thought of
the three is identical, while all make prominent the central figure of
the "cup."
The cups of Scripture are of divers patterns and of varied meanings.
There was the cup of blessing, like that of the Psalmist (Psalm xxiii.
5), filled to the brim and running over with mercy. There was the "cup
of salvation," that sacrament of the Old Testament which kept in memory
one deliverance, that of Israel, while it prophesied of another, the
"great salvation" which was to come. What, then, was the cup Jesus so
feared to drink, and which He asked, so earnestly and repeatedly, that
it might pass from Him? Was it the fear of death? Certainly not; for how
could He be afraid of death, who had so triumphed over it, and who had
proclaimed Himself the Resurrection and the Life? How could He fear
death, when He knew so well "the seraph face that smiled beneath the
frowning mask," and knew that it would end for ever all His sufferings
and His pain? Death to Him was a familiar thought. He spoke of it
freely, not either with the hard indifference of the Stoic, or with the
palsied speech of one whose lips shake with an inward fear, but in calm,
sweet accents, as any child of earth might speak of going home. Was this
"cup," then, the death itself? and when He asked that it might pass
away, was He suggesting that possibly some mode of atonement might be
found other than the cross? We think not. Jesus knew full well that His
earthly life would have, and could have, but one issue. Death would be
its goal, as it was its object. Whether, as Holman Hunt represents, the
cross threw its shadow back as far as the shop at Nazareth, we do not
know, for the record is silent. But we do know that the shadow of death
lay across the whole of His public life, for we find it appearing in His
words. The cross was a dark and vivid certainty that He wished neither
to forget nor to evade, for must not the Son of man be "lifted up," that
He may draw all men to Himself? Must not the corn of wheat be hidden in
its grave before it can become fruitful, throwing itself forward down
the years in hundredfold multiplications? Yes; death to Jesus is the
inevitable, and long before the Roman soldiers have pieced together the
transverse beams Jesus had made His cross, fashioning it in His thought,
and hiding it in His words. Nay, He has this very night instituted a new
sacrament, in which, for all generations, the broken bread shall be the
emblem of His bruised and broken body, and the wine, of His blood, the
blood of the New Testament, which is shed for man. And does Jesus now
seek, by reiterated prayers, to shift that cross from the Divine
purpose, substituting in its place something less painful, less cruel?
does He seek now to annul His own predictions, and to make His own
sacrament void and meaningless? This cannot be; and so, whatever the
"cup" may mean, we cannot take it as a synonym for His death.
What, then, is its meaning? The Psalmist had long before sung--
"For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine foameth;
It is full of mixture, and He poureth out of the same:
Surely the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring
them out, and drink them" (Psalm lxxv. 8);
while St. John, speaking of the last woes (Rev. xiv. 10), tells how they
who have the mark of the beast upon their foreheads "shall drink of the
wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of His
anger." Here, then, is the "cup" which now is set before the Son of man,
the very touch of which fills His soul with unutterable dread. It is the
cup of God's anger, filled to the brim with its strange red wine, the
wine of His wrath. Jesus comes to earth as the Representative Man, the
Second Adam, in whom all shall be made alive. He voluntarily assumes the
place of the transgressor, as St. Paul writes (2 Cor. v. 21), "Him who
knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the
righteousness of God in Him," a passage which corresponds exactly with
the prophetic idea of substitution, as given by Isaiah (liii. 5), "He
was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities:
the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are
healed." And so "the iniquity of us all" was laid on Him, the Holy One.
In His own Person He must feel, in its concentrated forms, the smart and
consequence of sin; and as His physical sufferings are the extremest
pain even sin can produce, so Jesus must suffer, too, all the mental
anguish, the agony of a soul bereft of God. And as Jesus, on the
Transfiguration mount, passed up to the very gate of heaven, so lighting
up with splendour and glory the lost path of unfallen man, so now, in
the Garden, Jesus tracks the path of fallen man, right on to its fearful
consummation, which is the "outer darkness" of hell itself. This vivid
consciousness has been graciously withheld from Him hitherto; for the
terrible pressure would simply have unfitted Him for His ministry of
blessing; for how could He have been the "kindly Light," leading
humanity homeward, heavenward, if that Light Himself were hidden in
"encircling gloom," and lost in a felt darkness? But ere His mission is
complete this is an experience that He must know. Identifying Himself
with sin, He must feel its very farthest consequence, the awful
solitude, and the unutterable anguish, of a soul now bereft of hope and
forsaken of God. In the heathen fable Orpheus goes down, lyre in hand,
to the Plutonic realm, to bring back again to life and love the lost
Eurydice; but Jesus, in His vicarious sufferings, goes down to hell
itself, that He may win back from their sins, and bear in triumph to the
upper heavens, a lost humanity.
Rising from the ground, and going back to His three disciples, He finds
them asleep. The Synoptists all seek to explain, and to apologize for,
their unnatural slumber, St. Matthew and St. Mark telling us that their
"eyes were heavy," while St. Luke states that their sleep was the result
of their grief; for, happily, in the wonderful compensations of nature,
intense grief does tend to induce somnolence. But while the Evangelists
refer their slumber to natural causes, might there not be something more
in it, some supernatural element? Sleep can be caused by natural means,
and yet be an unnatural sleep, as when narcotics benumb the senses, or
some mesmeric spell muffles the speech, and makes the soul for a time
unconscious. And might it not have been some invisible touch which made
their eyes so heavy? for it is an exact repetition of their attitude
when on the holy mount, and in that sleep sorrow certainly had no part.
When St. John saw the vision upon Patmos, he "fell at His feet as one
dead;" and when Saul beheld the light, near Damascus, he fell to the
ground. And how often we find the celestial vision connected with a
trance-like state! and why may not the "trance" be an effect of the
vision, just as well as its cause, or rather its circumstance? At any
rate, the fact is plain, that supernatural visions tend to lock up the
natural senses, the veil which is uplifted before the unseen world being
wrapped around the eyes and the soul of the seer. And this, we are
inclined to think, was a possible, partial cause for the slumber upon
the mount and in the garden, a sleep which, under the circumstances,
was strangely unnatural and almost unpardonable.
Addressing Himself directly to Peter, who had promised to follow His
Lord unto death, but whose heart now strangely lagged behind, and
calling him by his earlier name--for Jesus only once made use of the
name He Himself had chosen; the "Rock" was at present in a state of
flux, and had not yet settled down to its petrine character--He said,
"What, Simon, could ye not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, that
ye enter not into temptation." Then, for a moment forgetting His own
sorrow, and putting Himself in their place, He makes the apology for
them which their lips are afraid to utter: "The spirit indeed is
willing, but the flesh is weak;" so compassionate is He over human
weakness and infirmity, even while He is severity itself towards falsity
and sin.
St. Luke records the narrative only in a condensed form, giving us the
salient points, but not entering so fully into detail. It is from St.
Matthew and St. Mark that we learn how Jesus went back a second time,
and falling prostrate on the ground, prayed still in the self-same
words, and how He returned to His disciples to find them again asleep;
even the reproof of the Master has not been able to counterbalance the
pressure of the supernatural heaviness. No word is spoken this time--at
any rate the Evangelists have not repeated them for us--but how eloquent
would be that look of disappointment and of grief! and how that rebuke
would fall burning hot upon their heart, focussed in the lenses of His
sad and tearful eyes! But the three are dazed, bewildered, and for once
the ready tongue of Peter is speechless; "they wist not what to answer
Him" (Mark xiv. 40).
Not yet, however, is the conflict ended. Three times did the tempter
come to Him in the wilderness, and three times is the fierce battle to
be waged in the garden, the last the sorest. It would almost seem as if
the three assaults were descending steps of sorrow, each marking some
lower deep in the dark mystery; for now the death-sorrow becomes an
"agony" of spirit, a pressure from within so fearful as to arrest the
flow of blood, forcing it through the opened pores in an awful sweat,
until great drops, or "clots," of blood gathered upon His face, and then
fell to the ground. Could there be possibly, even for the lost, an
anguish more intense? and was not Jesus then, as man's Surety, wringing
out and drinking the very last dregs of that cup of His anger which "the
wicked of the earth," if unredeemed, had been doomed to drink? Verily He
was, and the bloody sweat was a part, an earnest, of our atonement,
sprinkling with its redemptive virtues the very ground which was
"cursed" for man's sake (Gen. iii. 17). It was the pledge and the
foregathered fruit of a death already virtually accomplished, in the
absolute surrender of the Divine Son as man's sacrifice.
And so the thrice-uttered prayer of Jesus, even though He prayed the
"more earnestly," was not granted. It was heard, and it was answered,
but not in the specific way of the request. Like Paul's prayer for the
removal of the thorn, and which, though not granted, was yet answered in
the promise of the "sufficient" grace, so now the thrice-uttered prayer
of Jesus does not remove the cup. It is there, and it is there for Him
to drink, as He tastes for man both of the earthly death and of the
bitterness of the after, the second death. But the answer came in the
strengthening of His soul, and in the heavenly greetings the angel
brought down to Him when the conflict was over. But in this reiterated
prayer for the removal of the cup there was no conflict between Himself
and the Father. The request itself was enveloped in submission, the
contingent "if" which preceded it, and the "not My win, but Thine,"
which followed, completely enclosing it. The will of Jesus was ever
adjusted to the will of the Father, working within it in an absolute
precision, with no momentary breaks. But here the "if" implies
uncertainty, doubt. Even Jesus is not quite sure as to what, in the
special case, the Father's will may involve, and so, while He asks for
the removal of the cup, this is the smaller request, inlaid within the
larger, deeper prayer, that "not My will, but Thine, be done." Jesus did
not seek to bend the Father's will, and make it conform to His desires,
but He sought, whatever might be the cost, to configure His desires to
that all-wise and all-loving Will.
So in our smaller lives there may be hours of distress and uncertainty.
We may see, mingled for us, cups of sorrow, loss, or pain, which we fear
to drink, and the shrinking flesh may seek to be exempted from the
ordeal; but let us not too hastily ask that they may be put away, for
fear we may dismiss some cup of blessing from our life. Let us seek
rather for a perfect submission to the will of God, conforming all our
desires and all our prayers to that will. So in that "perfect
acquiescence" there will be for us a "perfect rest." Gethsemane itself
will become bright and all musical with songs, and where the powers of
darkness mocked us Heaven's angels will come, with their sweet ministry.
Nay, the cup of sorrow and of pain, at which we trembled before, if we
see how God's will has wrought and filled it, and we embrace that will,
the cup of sorrow will be a transfigured cup, a golden chalice of the
King, all filled to the brim, and running over, with the new wine of the
kingdom.