CHAPTER XIV.

Calvary—-Contrast between Christ and penitent Thief—-Gethsemane—-Speaker and Actor was Christ in both Natures—-Sufferings there those of Anticipation—-Indications of Dismay—-

It was the Anticipation of Spiritual, not Physical Agonies—Thrice-repeated Prayer—-Appearance of Angel—-“ "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death”—What the dreaded Cup was.

IF we cast our eyes towards Calvary, we behold there the incarnate God suspended on the cross, and by his side the penitent thief. From the latter, it is not intimated that any cry of distress arose. He was just tasting the bliss of sins forgiven. He was to be that day in paradise; and what cared he for the intervening moments of pain? Of the laceration of his quivering flesh his rapt spirit was no longer conscious. The present was lost in the glorious vision of the future. To him the cross was a bed of down. But from the incarnate God, though suffering no greater corporeal pains than the penitent thief, cries loud, plaintive, and repeated arose. He knew that he also was to be that day in paradise: but to him the beatitude of heaven seemed, for the moment, obscured by the agonies of earth. Over his drooping spirit the seraphic future appeared, for the time, to be lost in the present-the absorbing, the all-devouring present. What caused this mighty contrast between the indications of suffering displayed by the frail creature and the omnipotent Creator? But one solution can be found. The penitent thief bore the pains of a man ; Christ endured the agonies of a God. Had the sting of death been pointed at his humanity alone, the cross would have been anticipated with delight and met with triumph. The struggle on Calvary would have been hailed as the joyous termination of his vicarious privations and sufferings; the blissful hour of his deliverancem, nce from the heavy curse of others’” sins; the glorious epoch of his return to his Father’s”s arms, crowned with the laurels of a world redeemed.

But if we would gain deeper views of the dismay and perturbation of our Lord, let us meet him at the garden of Gethsemane. The occurrences of the garden, so far as they relate to our present purpose, are thus related by St. Matthew: “ And he took with him Peter, and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith hlie unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here and watch with me. And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What! could ye not -watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation : the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. He went

****** away again, the second time, and prayed, saying, my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink of it, thy will be done. And he came and found them asleep again; for their eyes were heavy. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.”—-Matthew, 26xxvi. 37, and the verses following.

The narrative of St. Mark is in the following words: “ And he taketh with him Peter, and

James, and

John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy ; and saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death : tarry ye here and watch. And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground and prayed, that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me; nevertheless, not what I willill, but what thou wilt. And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, slteepest thou? couldst not thou watch one hour ? Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak. And again he went away, and prayed and spake the same words. And when he returned he found them asleep again (for their eyes were heavy) ; neither wist they what to answer him. And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough; the hour is come; behold, the Son of manrpau is betrayed into the hands of sinners.”—-. Mark, 14xiv. 33, and following verses.

St. Luke adds the following essential particulars to the narration: “ And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And beingo, in an agony, he prayed more earnestly ; and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”—-Luke, 22xxii. 43, 44.

We have thus transcribed, in connexion, the substance of the several evangelical accounts of the occurrences at Gethsemane, that the mind might take in at one view the stupendous whole. We cannot deem the garden forbidden ground. It is, indeed, a holy place. On entering it, we would lay aside the rough-soled sandals of controversy. We would even cast the shoes from our feet, as we tread the, soil bedewed by the tears and wet with the blood of the redeeming God. Yet was the affecting scene revealed for the edification of man. “ The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us, and to our children for ever.” —-Deunt. 29xxix. 29. “ All scripture was given by di. vine inspiration, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”—@2 Timothy, 3iii. 16. Had not the garden scene been intended for human meditation, it would have found no place, in the Bible. The prevalent theory has locked up the sacred pages in which it is portrayed in seemingly inextricable mystery. To unlock those precious pages there is but one key. Our comments on this memorable scene will be arranged under several heads.

***** Fifthly. The thrice-repeated prayer of the garden ascended from the lips of that august Being who had thought it no robbery to be equal with God; it was pronounced by that almighty voice which had commanded the winds and the waves and they obeyed. With face prone on the cold@ ground, and body quivering with nameless anguish, did the only-begotten, the uncreated, the divine, the incarnated Son utter the piercing cry, “ my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” To drink this very cup he had come into the world. Of this fearful cup he had often spoken. From his contemplation it had never been absent. Had the cup passed from him, the sole purpose of his incarnation would have been frustrated. The universe must have beheld the strange spectacle of a God attempting to redeem by his sufferings a ruined race, and failing in the attempt for want of fortitude to suffer.

Yet, true it is, that, when the dismaying cup was just at hand, the resolution of the incarnate Deity seemed, for a moment, to falter. The piteous cry a-iscended, wafted upward byv more than earthly fervour. The cry, and its fervour, too, are engraved on the Bible’s”s imperishable record, pointing with demonstrative certainty to the awful conclusion, that a single drop from that cup of almighty wrath must have scorched into annihilation the vital elements of the loftiest being ever created by the word of the Highest. That the infinite, the world-redeeming Son, in a moment superadded the pathetic qualification, “ Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt,” while it denotes the patient meekness of him who was “ brought as a lamb to the slaughter” " derogates nothing from the tremendous character of that impending cup, of which none but a God could have drank.

Sixthly. “ And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.” To whom did the angel appear? It appeared “ unto him.” The pronoun “61 him”@” is twice used in the passage from Luke, and the context demonstrates that, in each instance, it was used to designate the Christ, the whole Christ. The angel then appeared, not merely to the human son of the Virgin, but unto the united being of the incarnate God. For what purpose , did the angel appea run unto him? The . r , t

Holy Ghost has informed us. It was to strengthen him. There is no intimation that the angel appeared merely to strengthen the manhood of Christ. The declaration is general, pervading, according to its plain signification, every recess oOf the united natures of the God “66 manifest in the flesh.” The declaration would be cramped and maimed if withdrawn from the infinitude of his united being, to which it properly appertains, and compressed into the finite speck of his humanity. Can reasoning pride erect iitself into a court of review to expand, pride erect abridge, or qupalify,s by its own discretion, the explicit phraseology of the third person of the Trinity?,

Perhaps reasoning pride ma;ky deem it strange and improbable, and therefore not to be believed, even the word of the Holy Ghost, that an angel should appear to strengthen the omnipotent God.

***** If reasoning pride is thus presumptuously arrogant, it may as well aim at consistence in its arrogance. Let it, then, if it dare, seek, by its rash skepticism,” to blot out from scriptural theology the stupendous article of the incarnation. The incarnation was the wonder of wonders. That very God should become very flesh, and verily dwell among us, is surely not less strange than that an angel from heaven should appear unto the incarnate God, “strengthening hi@m.”

The manhood of the Virgin’s”s son needed, ordinarily, no strengthening from above. Its Creator dwelt within; its guardian, its guide, its protector; almighty, never sleeping, ever ready to succour his frail terrestrial companion. To that humanity the indwelling Deity was wedded, and the marriage tie was to be lasting as the right-hand throne of the Eternal. Though a woman may forget her sucking child, “ that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb,” yet could not the incarnate and compassionate God fail to listen to every sigh, and count every tear, and remember, ”as though they had been graven “ upon the palms of his hands,” all the weaknesses, and pains, and fears of that feeble humanity, which he had adopted as his own, and, as it were, incorporated into himself. While the strength of the incarnate Deity remained unimpaired, there was no need that there should appear unto the human son of the Virgin an angel from heaven, “ strengthening him.”

It is true that the created angel had no strength of his own to impart to his Creator. But he bore greetings from the court of heaven. He was the ambassador of the holy Trinity, fraught with every soothing, “strengthening” consideration which could flow from the wisdom and love of the Godhead. It is true that the omnipresent and omniscient Father might doubtless have communicated directly with his omnipresent and omniscient Son. So he might with the prophets and patriarchs of the olden time. But the Father had been wont to communicate with the dwellers upon earth through the instrumentality of ministering spirits. That it seemed wisest to the infinitely wise that -,ain angel from heaven should bear the communication from above to the suffering God at Gethsemane, if it cannot satisfy, should at least silence the cavils of reasoning pride.

The infinite Father,g from his exalted throne, beheld his only-begotten, his well-beloved Son struggling in the garden. He saw him “ sorrowful even unto death;” he saw him “sore amazed;” he beheld him, being in an agony, “sweat as it were great drops of blood, falling down to the ground;” he heard his pathetic cry, “, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;” he saw that even his infinite and omnipotent Son, now made a curse for sin, was almost ready to sink under its more than mountain weight: and it was therefore that “, there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.”

Seventhly. “, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” The true meaning of the original Greek words rendered by our translators p.212 “soul,” becomes here a subject of interest. The divine speaker had a material and immaterial nature. Within his body were lodged a human soul, and that ethereal essence, which constituted the second person of the Trinity; the former bearing to the latter the same proportion as the finite bears to the infinite. The original word, here translated soul, when applied to ordinary men, means the immaterial, breathing, living principle within them. The term finds, within the common children of humanity, no other aliment. But if applied to subjects affording other aliment for its sustenance, then the term spontaneously expands itself, so as to embrace the whole indwelling immateriality, however vast it may be. Plato had received, through the channels of tradition, some few scattered rays of that divine light which, in early ages, had been communicated to man. These rays he carefully concentrated, and was thus enabled to form a theory which advanced one incipient step towards the glorious system of revealed truth. He darkly conceived the outlines of an immaterial, omnipresent, omniscient God, the creator and preserver of the heavens and the earth. To denote this ethereal essence, this immaterial, viewless, living principle, pervading and animating the immeasurable universe, the Athenian philosopher employed the identical Greek word with which the evangelists Matthew and Mark, have opened their narratives of the pathetic wailings of their Lord in the garden, and which has been rendered soul by our translators.

SOUL EXCEEDING SORROWFUL. 213

When Christ said at Gethsemane, “My soul isg exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,” he must have intended to declare that his whole immaterial or spiritual nature was overwhelmed with sorrow. He intimated no distinction between the human and divine portions of his immaterial or spiritual being. He used a general term, applicable to both; a term not technically confined to the human soul; a term comprehensive enough to include his divine as well as his human immateriality; a term which the great master of the Greek tongue had employed to denote the divine essence. When, therefore, reasoning pride seeks to narrow down the term thus used by Christ, so as to confine its meaning to the inferior part of his immaterial or spiritual being, bearing a less proportion to the whole than a single grain of sand bears to the vast earth we inhabit, it seeks to render particular that awful declaration which the Son of God left general. To make the point clearer, let us suppose that the translators, instead of the present version, had translated the passages in question so as to make them conform, in terms, to the limited meaning now sought to be attached to them, by inserting the adjective human before the substantive soul. The exclamation of Christ would then have stood thus, “My human soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death.” This version would doubtless have been startling, even to the advocates of the prevalent theory. But if the adjective “human” is to be insinuated into the passages by construction, it might better have been openly inserted by the pen.

214 THE DREADED CUP.

What were the contents of the cup, whose mere anticipation caused the sorrow, and amazement, and agony of the garden, the human imagination has not powers to conceive. It was “the cup of trembling,” " filled to overflowing with the “fierceness and wrath of almighty God.” The visible agonies of Calvary doubtless bore no comparison to those which were unseen. The real tragedy was behind the curtain. There, impervious to human vision, was perfected the spiritual crucifixion of the eternal Son of God. The body of Christ heeded not the scourgings of the soldiery, but his whole immaterial being writhed under the anguish of those stripes by which we are healed. He looked down with indifference on the vindictive gaze of the crucifying multitude; but he looked upward with dismay at his Father’s”s altered face. Through the opening skies he beheld that coun-, tenance, which, until he became a curse for us, had forever beamed on him with the sunshine of heaven, now darkened with a frown. The draught of mingled vinegar and gall he could reject; but now made sin, though sinless, he was” compelled to drain to the very dregs the terrible cup of infinite wrath. The nails of the cross, which lacerated his quivering flesh, he regarded not; but he, felt in all the elements of his spiritual natures, that invisible, yet flaming sword of the Lord of Hosts, which was piercing him through and through, as the substitute for sinners.

VIEWS OF DOCTOR CHALMERS. 215

But the scene was about to close. The last cry was ascending from the cross. “It is finished!” exclaimed the dying God, and gave up the ghost. “It is finished!” was echoed through the courts of heaven with triumphant acclamations. “It is finished!” was reverberated through the vaults of hell in tones of despair. What was finished? The throes and spasms of a suffering Deity were finished. The reconcilement of infinite justice and infinite mercy was finished. The everlasting triumph over the powers of darkness was finished. The redemption of a world was finished. We close this chapter by presenting to our readers the remarks of one of the master-spirits of the age on the extent and nature of Christ’s”s sufferings. The remarks first reached our knowledge after these sheets were prepared for the press. The great and pious Chalmers says,

“It blunts the gratitude of men when they think lightly of the sacrifice which God had to make when he gave up his Son unto the death; and, akin to this pernicious imagination, our gratitude is farther deadened and made dull when we think lightly of the death itself. This death was an equivalent for the punishment of guilty millions. In the account which is given of it, we behold all the symptoms of a deep and dreadful endurance— of an agony which was shrunk from even by the Son of God, though he had all the strength of the divinity to uphold him— of a conflict, and a terror, and a pain, under which omnipotence itself had well nigh given way, and which, while it proved that the strength of the sufferer was infinite, proved that the sin for which he suffered, in its guilt and in its evil, was infinite also. Christ made not a seeming, but a substantial atonement for the sins of the world. There was something more than an ordinary martyrdom. There was an actual laying on of the iniquities of us all; and, however little we are fitted for diving into the mysteries of the divine jurisprudence—-however obscurely we know of all that was felt by the Son of God when the dreadful hour and power of darkness were upon him, yet we may be well assured that it was no mockery; that something more than the mere representation of a sacrifice, it was most truly and essentially a sacrifice itself a full satisfaction rendered for the outrage that had been done upon the Lawgiver—his whole authority vindicated, the entire burden of his wrath discharged. This is enough for all the moral purposes that are to be gained by our faith in Christ’s”s propitiation. It is enough that we know of the travail of his soul. It is enough that he exchanged places with the world he died for, and that what to us would have been the wretchedness of eternity, was all concentrated upon him, and by him was fully borne.”*

*Chalmer’s Lectures on Romans, pp. 318, 319. Carter’s New York edition.