THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN. (=Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42; John 18:1)
This is one of those scenes in the Evangelical History which, to have been written, must have been real. If we could conceive the life of Christ to be but a pious Romance or a mythical Legend, such a scene would have been the last to be thought of, or imagined only to be rejected as a discordant note, a literary blemish. But the existence of such a scene in the Gospel History does more than prove the historic reality of the scene itself: it is a bright testimony to the severe fidelity of the Narrative that contains it. Had the three Evangelists who record this scene, and the fourth who has one remarkably like it (John 12:27, etc.), been guided in their selection of the materials before them by the desire to glorify their Master in the eyes of their readers, we may be pretty sure they would have omitted what could not fail to repel many well-inclined readers, to stagger for a time even attached disciples, and occasion perplexity and discordance among the most established in the faith. Certain it is that in t he age immediately succeeding that of the apostles, some vindication of it was felt to be necessary even for those who were well affected to Christianity (see a remarkable allusion to this scene in the Apocryphal "Gospel of Nicodemus," or "Acts of Pilate," Luke 20:1-47); while its enemies-as Celsus at the beginning of the second century, and Julian in the fourth-held it up to contempt for the pusillanimity which it displayed, in contrast with the magnanimity of dying Pagans. Some of the vindications of this scene in later times have laid themselves open to the hostile criticism of Strauss ("Leben Jesu," 3: 3, section 125, 4th edit.); although his own mythical theory cuts a pitiful figure when it has to deal with such unique materials as those of Gethsemane.
The three narratives of this scene, when studied together, will be found to have just that diversity which throws additional light on the whole transaction. That the fourth Evangelist, though himself an eye- witness. has not recorded it, is only, in accordance with the plan of his Gospel, which omits the other two scenes of which he was one of three chosen witnesses-the resurrection of Jairus' daughter, and the transfiguration. But just as in place of the one of these-the resurrection of Jairus' daughter-it is the beloved disciple alone who records the grander resurrection of Lazarus; and in place of the other of these-the transfiguration-that beloved disciple records a series of passages in the life, and discourses from the lips, of his Master, which are like a continued transfiguration: so it is he alone who records that mysterious prelude to Gethsemane, which the visit of the Greeks to Him, after His last entry into Jerusalem, seems to have occasioned, (John 12:27, etc.) In the three priceless narratives of this scene, the fullness of the picture is such as to leave nothing to be desired, except what probably could not have been supplied in any narrative; the lines are so vivid and minute and life-like, that we seem ourselves to be eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses of the whole transaction; and no one who has had it brought fully before him can ever again have it effaced from his mind.
In this instance, we must deviate somewhat from our usual plan of comment first, and Remarks following. We shall try to sketch the scene, interweaving the triple text, with such slight expository remarks as it requires; and in place of closing Remarks, we shall expatiate at some length upon the successive phases of the scene as they open upon us.
Jesus had passed through every stage of His suffering history except the last, but that last was to be the great and dreadful stage. Nothing now remained but that He should be apprehended, arraigned, condemned, and led forth to Calvary. And how far off was this seizure? Not more probably than one brief hour. Like the "silence in heaven for the space of half an hour," between the breaking of the apocalyptic seals and the peal of the trumpets of war, so was this brief, breathless silence, before the final stage of Christ's career. How, then, was it spent? It was night. Men slept. A profound, Sodom-like security overspread the city that "killed the prophets and stoned them that were sent unto it." But our Shepherd of Israel slept not. "He went forth" - from the upper room and from the city - "over the Brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which he entered, with his (eleven) disciples.
And Judas which betrayed him knew the place; for Jesus ofttimes resorted there with his disciples" (John 18:1-2). With what calm sobriety does the basest of all treacheries begin here to be related! No straining after effect. The traitor knows His favourite resort, and takes it for granted he shall find Him there. Perhaps the family of Bethany were told the night before, in the hearing of the Twelve, that that night the Lord would not be with them. But this as it may, if Jesus had wished to elude His enemies, nothing would have been easier. But he would not. Already He had said, "No man taketh My life from me; but I lay it down of myself." So He "went as a lamb to the slaughter." The spot selected was well suited to His present purpose. The upper room would not have done; nor would he cloud the hallowed associations of the last Passover, and the first Supper, the heaven-breathing discourse at the supper table and the high-priestly prayer which wound up the whole, by discharging the anguish of His soul there. Nor was Bethany so suitable, But the garden was ample enough, while the stillness, and the shady olives, and the end eared recollections of former visits, rendered it congenial to His soul. Here He had space enough to withdraw from His disciples, and yet be within view of them; and the solitude that reigned here would only be broken, at the close of the scene, by the tread of the traitor and his accomplices.
The walk to Gethsemane, we incline to think, was taken in silence. But no sooner was He on the spot, than having said to the whole of them, "Pray that ye enter not into temptation" (Luke 22:40), the internal commotion-which may have begun as soon as the "hymn" that closed the proceedings of the upper room died away in silence-would no longer conceal. As soon as He was "at the place," having said to eight out of the eleven, "Sit ye here while I go anti pray yonder," He took Peter and James and John aside by themselves, or a little in advance of the rest, and "saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here and watch with Me" (Matthew 26:38; Mark 14:34). Not, Come and see Me, to be My witnesses; but, Come and watch with Me, to bear Me company. It did Him good, it seems, to have them by Him. For He had a true humanity, only all the more tender and susceptible than ours, that it was not blunted and dulled by sin. You may say, indeed, if company was what He wanted, He got little of it. True enough. They fell asleep. "I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none" (Psalms 69:20). It would have soothed His burdened spirit to have had their sympathy, contracted at its best though it behoved to be. But He did not get it. They were broken reeds. And so He had to tread the wine-press alone. Yet was their presence, even while asleep, not quite in vain. Perhaps the spectacle would only touch His sensibilities the more, and rouse into quickened action His great-hearted compassions. In fact, He did not want even them too near Him. For it is said, "He went forward a little;" or, as Luke (Luke 22:41), more precisely expresses it, "was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast." Yes, company is good, but there are times when even the best company can hardly be borne.
But now let us reverently draw near and see this great sight, the Son of God in a tempest of mysterious internal commotion - "the bush burning, and the bush not consumed." Every word of the three-fold record is weighty, every line of the picture awfully bright. "Let us put off the shoes from off our feet, for the place whereon we stand is holy ground." "He began," says Matthew, "to be sorrowful and very heavy," or, "to be sorrowful and oppressed" х lupeisthai (G3076) kai (G2532) adeemonein (G85)], Matthew 26:37. Mark uses the last of these words, but places before it one more remarkable: "He began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy;" or better, perhaps, "to be appalled and to be oppressed" х ekthambeisthai (G1568) kai (G2532) adeemonein (G85)], Mark 14:33; and see the former word again in Luke 16:5-6. Although through life He had been "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," there is no ground to think that even the selectest circle of His followers was made privy to them, except on one occasion before this, after His final entry into Jerusalem, when, upon the Greeks "desiring to see Jesus" - which seems to have brought the hour of His "uplifting" overwhelmingly before Him-He exclaimed, "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour.
But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name" (John 12:27-28). This was just Gethsemane anticipated. But now the tempest rose as never before. He began to be sorrowful," as if until this moment unacquainted with grief. So new to Him, indeed, was the feeling, that Mark, using a singularly bold word, says, He was "appalled" at it; and under the joint action of this "sorrow" and "amazement,'" He was "very heavy," oppressed, weighed down-so much so, that He was fain to tell it to the three He had taken aside, and most affectingly gave this as His reason for wishing their company: "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; tarry ye here and watch with me." 'I feel as if nature were sinking under this load-as if life were ebbing out-as if death were coming before its time-as if I could not survive this.' It is usual to compare here such passages as that of Jonah, "I do well to be angry even unto death" (Luke 4:9), and even some classical passages of similar import; but these are all too low. In dealing with such scenes as this, one feels as if even the most ordinary phraseology must be interpreted with reference to the unique circumstances of the case.
What next? He "kneeled down," says Luke; He "fell on his face," says Matthew; or "fell on the ground," as Mark expresses it (Luke 22:41; Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:35). Perhaps the kneeling posture was tried for a moment, but quickly became intolerable: and unable to bear up under a pressure of spirit which felt like the ebbing out of life itself, He was fain to seek the dust! And now went up a cry such as never before ascended from this earth; no, not from those lips which dropt as an honeycomb: "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt (Matthew 26:39). The variations in Mark (Mark 14:36) and Luke (Luke 22:42) are worthy of note. Mark's double form of the invocation, "Abba, Father," we may pretty confidently conjecture was the very one our Lord used-the hallowed, endeared form of the mother-tongue "Abba," followed emphatically by the term "Father," that of educated life (Romans 8:15).
Then Mark breaks up the one expression of Matthew, "If it be possible, let this cup pass," into these two, identical in meaning, "All things are possible unto thee; take away this cup;" while Luke`s expression, "If thou be willing to remove this cup" (as in the Greek), shows that the "possibility" of the other two Evangelists was understood to be purely of divine will or arrangement, insomuch that the one word came naturally to be interchanged with the other. (To suppose that our Lord used the identical words of all the three accounts is absurd.) That tears accompanied this piercing cry, is not reported by any of the Evangelists-who appear to give rigidly what was seen by the three favoured disciples in the clear moonlight, and heard by them in the unbroken stillness of the night air of Gethsemane, before sleep overpowered their exhausted frames. But those remarkable words in the Epistle to the Hebrews-which, though they seem to express what often took place, have, beyond all doubt, a special reference to this night of nights-leave no doubt of it, as a fact well known in the Christian churches, that on this occasion the tears of the Son of God fell fast upon the earth, while His cries rent the heavens: " Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears," etc. (Hebrews 5:7). Exquisite here are the words of old Traill, which, though before quoted, are peculiarly appropriate here: "He filled the silent night with Him crying, and watered the cold earth with His tears, more precious than the dew of Hermon, or any moisture, next unto His own blood, that ever fell on God's earth since the creation."
But now let us listen to the cry itself. "The cup" to which the Son of God was so averse - "the cup," the very prospect of drinking which so appalled and oppressed Him - "the cup," for the removal of which, if it were possible, He prayed so affectingly-that cup was assuredly no other than the death He was about to die. Come, then, thoughtful reader, and let us reason together about this matter. Ye that see nothing in Christ's death but the injustice of it at the hands of men, the excruciating mode of it, and the uncomplaining sub-mission to it of the innocent victim-put me through this scene of agonies and cries at the near approach of it. I will not ask you whether you go the length of those pagan enemies of the Gospel, Celsus and Julian, who could see nothing but cowardice in this Gethsemane scene, as compared with the last hours of Socrates and other magnanimous pagans; or whether you are prepared to applaud that wretch who, in the days of Henry IV of France, went to execution jeering at our Lord for the bloody sweat which the prospect of death drew from Him, while he himself was about to die unmoved.
But I do ask you, in view of hundreds, if not thousands of the martyrs of Jesus who have gone to the rack or to the flames for His sake, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for His name, Are you prepared to exalt the servants above their Master, or, if not, can you give any rational account of the amazing difference between them, to the advantage of the Master? You cannot, nor on your principles is the thing possible. Yet which of these dear servants of Jesus would not have shuddered at the thought of comparing themselves with their Lord? Is not your system, then, radically at fault? I am not now addressing myself to professed Unitarians, who, with the atonement, have expunged the divinity of Christ from their biblical beliefs. If any such would but give me a hearing, I think I have something to say which is not unworthy of their attention. But I address myself more immediately to an increasing class within the pale of orthodox Christianity-a class embracing many cultivated minds-a class who, while clinging sincerely, though vaguely, to the divinity of Christ, have allowed themselves to let go, as something antiquated and scholastic, the vicarious element in the sufferings and death of Christ, and now view them purely in the light of a sublime model of self-sacrifice.
According to this view, Christ suffered nothing whatever in the stead of the guilty, or in order that they might not suffer, but rather that men might learn from Him how to suffer: Christ simply inaugurated in His own Person a new Humanity, to be "made perfect through sufferings," and hath thus "left, us an Example that we should follow His steps." Now, I have no quarrel with this exemplary theory of Christ's sufferings. It is too clearly expressed by our Lord Himself, and by His apostles too frequently echoed, for any Christian to have a doubt of it. But my question is, Will it solve the mystery of Gethsemane? Will any one venture to say that for a Christian man, who would know how to suffer and die, the best model he can follow is Christ in Gethsemane-Christ, in the prospect of His own death, "sore amazed and very heavy, exceeding sorrowful even unto death" - Christ piercing the heavens with that affecting cry, thrice repeated, with His face upon the ground, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me" - Christ agonizing until the sweat fell in bloody drops from His lace upon the ground: and all this at the mere prospect of the death He was going to die? But He added, you say, "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done." I know it well. It is my sheet-anchor. But for this, my faith in the Son of God as the Redeemer of the world would real to and fro and stagger like a drunken man. But with all this, will you affirm that these feelings of Christ in Gethsemane are those which best befit any other dying man? You cannot. And if not, does not the hollowness of this view of Christ's sufferings, as an exhaustive account of them, or even as the chief feature of them, stand frightfully revealed!
How, then do you explain them? may the reader ask. It is a pertinent question, and I refuse not to meet it. Tell me, then, what means that statement of the apostle Paul, "He hath made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21); and that other, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13). The ablest and most recent rationalizing critics of Germany-DeWette, for example-candidly admit that such statements can mean nothing but this, that the absolutely Sinless One was regarded and treated as the Guilty one, in order that the really guilty might in Him be regarded and treated as righteous. If it be asked in what sense and to what extent Christ was regarded and treated as the Guilty One, the second passage replies, "He was "made a curse for us" - language so appallingly strong, that Bengel with reason exclaims, as he does also on the other passage, 'Who would have dared to use such language if the apostle had not gone before him?' Says Meyer-a critic not over fastidious in his orthodoxy but honest as an interpreter-`The curse of the law would have had to be realized; all who render not complete satisfaction to the law (which no one can do) must experience the infliction of the Divine "wrath;" but that Christ, to rescue them from this outlawry by the curse, is introduced dying as the Accursed One, and as by a purchase-price, dissolving that curse-relation of the law to them. Compare 1 Corinthians 6:20; 1 Corinthians 7:23.
Now, is this to be regarded as a true representation of the character in which Christ suffered and died? With those who sit quite loose to apostolic authority, and regard all such statements as expressing merely Paul's opinions, we have here nothing to do. Strange to say we have now-a-days men high in our schools of learning and in ecclesiastical place, who scruple not to affirm this and many other strange things. But we write for those who regard the statements of the apostle as authoritative, and to them we submit this question: If Christ felt the penal character of the sufferings and death which He had to undergo-if, though feeling this more or less throughout all His public life, it was now borne in upon His spirit in unrelieved, unmitigated, total force, during the dread, still hour between the transactions of the upper room and the approach of the traitor-does not this furnish an adequate key to the horror and sinking of spirit which he then experienced? Just try it with this this furnish an adequate key to the horror and sinking of spirit which he then experienced? Just try it with this key.
In itself, the death He had to die-being in that case not the mere surrender of life in circumstances of pain and shame, but the surrender of it under the doom of sin, the surrender of it to the vengeance of the law, which regarded Him as the Representative of the guilty (to use again the language even of de Wette, could not but be purely revolting. Nor is it possible for us otherwise to realize the horror of His position, as the absolutely Sinless One, now emphatically made sin for us. In this view of it we can understand how He could only brace Himself up to drink the cup because it was the Father's will that He should do it, but that in that view of it He was quite prepared to do it. And thus have we here no struggle between a reluctant and a compliant will, nor between a human and a divine will; but simply between two views of one event: between penal sufferings and death considered in themselves-in other words, being "bruised, put to grief, made an offering for sin" - and all this considered as the Fathers will.
In the one view, this was, and could not but have been, appalling, oppressing, ineffably repulsive: in the other view, it was sublimely welcome. When He says, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me," He tells me He didn't like it, and couldn't like it; its ingredients were too bitter, too revolting; but when He says, "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done," He proclaims in mine ear His absolute obediential subjection to the Father. This view of the cup quite changed its character, and by the expulsive power of a new affection-I will not say, turned its bitterness into sweetness, for I see no signs of sweetness even in that sense, but-absorbed and dissolved His natural repugnance to drink it up. If you still feel the theology of the matter encompassed with difficulty, let it alone. It will take care of itself. You will never get to the bottom of it here. But take it as it stands, in all its wonderful naturalness and awful freshness, and rest assured that just as, if this scene had not actually occurred, it never would nor could have been written down, so on any other view of the Redeemer's extraordinary repugnance to drink the cup than the penal ingredient which He found in it, His magnanimity and fortitude, as compared with those of myriads of His adoring followers, must be given up.
But to return to the conflict, whose crisis is yet to come. Getting a momentary relief-for the agitation of His spirit seems to have come upon Him by surges-He returns to the three disciples, and finding them sleeping, He chides them, particularly Peter, in terms deeply affecting: "He saith unto Peter, What! could ye not watch with me one hour?" In Mark (which may almost be called Peter's own Gospel) this is particularly affecting, "He saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? Couldest not thou watch one hour? Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak." How considerate and compassionate this allusion to the weakness of the flesh was at that moment, appears by the explanation which Luke gives of the cause of it-an explanation beautifully in accordance with his profession as "the beloved physician" (Colossians 4:14) - "that He found them sleeping for sorrow" (Luke 22:45).
What now? "Again He went away, and prayed, and spake the same words" (Mark 14:39). He had nothing more, it seems, and nothing else to say. But now the surges rise higher, beat more tempestuously, and threaten to overwhelm Him. To fortify Him against this, "there appeared an, angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him:" not to minister to Him spiritually by supplies of heavenly light or comfort-of that He was to have none during this awful scene; nor if it had been otherwise, would it seem competent for an angel to convey it-but simply to sustain and brace up sinking nature for a yet hotter and fiercer struggle. (On this interesting subject, see the notes at John 5:1-47, Remark 1 at the close of that section.) And now that He can stand it. "He is in an agony, and prays more earnestly" х ektenesteron (G1617)], 'more intensely or vehemently.' What! Christ pray at one time more earnestly than at another? will some exclaim.
O if people would but think less of a systematic or theological Christ, and believe more in the biblical, historical Christ, their faith would be a warmer, aye, and a mightier thing, because it would then be not human but divine. Take it as it stands in the record. Christ's prayer, it teaches you, did at this moment not only admit of more vehemence, but demand it. For "His sweat was as it were great drops," literally, 'clots' х thromboi (G2361)] "of blood falling down to the ground." [We cannot stay to defend the text here.] What was this? It was just the internal struggle, apparently hushed somewhat before, but now swelling up again, convulsing His whole inner man, and this so affecting His animal nature, that the sweat oozed out from every pore in thick drops of blood, falling to the ground. It was just shuddering nature and indomitable will struggling together. Now, if death was to Christ only the separation of soul and body in circumstances of shame and torture, I cannot understand this in one whom I am asked to take as my Example, that I should follow His steps. On this view of His death, I cannot but feel that I am asked to copy a model far beneath that of many of his followers. But if death in Christ's case had those elements of penal vengeance, which the apostle explicitly affirms that it had-if the Sinless One felt Himself divinely regarded and treated as the Sinful and Accursed One, then I can understand all this scene; and even its most terrific features have to me something sublimely congenial with such circumstances, although only its having really occurred could explain its being so written.
But again there is a lull; and returning to the three, "He found them asleep again (for their eyes were heavy), neither wist they what to answer Him" (Mark 14:40), when He chid them, perhaps in nearly the same terms. And now, once more, returning to His solitary spot, He "prayed the third time," saying the same words; but this time slightly varied. It is not now, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;" but, "O my Father, if this cup may not pass from me, except I drink it, thy will be done," Had only one of those two forms of the petition occurred in the same Gospel, we might have thought that they were but verbal differences in the different reports of one and the same petition. But as they both occur in the same Gospel of Matthew, we are warranted in regarding the second as an intentional, and in that case momentous, modification of the first. The worst is over. The bitterness of death is past. He has anticipated and rehearsed His final conflict. The victory has now been won on the theatre of an invincible will-to "give His life a ransom for many." He shall win it next on the arena of the Cross, where it is to become an accomplished fact. "I will suffer" is the result of Gethsemane: "It is finished," bursts from the Cross. Without the deed, the will had been all in vain. But His work was then consummated when into the palpable deed He carried the now manifested will - "by the which WILL we are sanctified THROUGH THE OFFERING OF THE BODY OF JESUS CHRIST ONCE FOR ALL" (Hebrews 10:10).
At the close of the whole scene, returning once more to His three disciples, and finding them still sleeping, worn out with continued sorrow and racking anxiety, He says to them, with an irony of tender but deep emotion, "Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going: behold he is at hand that doth betray me" (Matthew 26:45-46). While He yet spake, Judas appeared with his armed band, and so they proved miserable comforters, broken reeds. But thus in His whole work He was alone, and "of the people there was none with Him."
Much is said about the necessity of an atonement, some stoutly affirming it, while others accuse the thought of presumption. Of antecedent necessity, on such subjects, I know nothing at all; and it is possible that some who dispute the position mean nothing more than this. But one thing I know, that God under the law did so educate the conscience that there was seen written, as in letters of fire, over the whole Levitical economy --
WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD NO REMISSION
while the great proclamation of the Gospel is --
PEACE THROUGH THE BLOOD OF THE CROSS
And ever as I deal with God on this principle, I find my whole ethical nature so exalted and purified-my views and feelings as to sin and holiness and the sinner's relation to Him with Whom he has to do, so deepened enlarged, and sublimed-while on no other do I find any footing at all-that I feel I have been taught what I am sure I could never have antecedently discovered, the necessity, in its highest sense the necessity, that is, in order to any right relation between God and me-of the expiatory death of the Lord Jesus; and when, thus educated, I anew approach Gethsemane, that I may witness the conflict of the Son of God there, and listen to His "strong crying and tears to Him that was able to save Him from death," I seem to myself to have found that key to it all, without which it is a blot in His life that will not wipe out, but in the use of which I can open its most difficult wards, and let in light upon its darkest chambers.