Father, save me from this hour;" and again, in reference to the same, that when about to pour forth His heart in His last prayer for His people, He made the announcement, "Father, the hour is come!"

This crisis, or "hour," dreaded as it was by reason of its attendant and ineffable sufferings, was nevertheless desired by Christ in His inmost soul, by reason of the achievement it should involve. Thus He spake:-"I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" On this point His mind seems to have been ever and intently fixed. He never lost sight of it. It was for this, indeed, that, as declared by Himself in the passage already quoted, He endured to the end: "For this cause came I to this hour;" as it was for this, indeed, that a body was prepared for Him in the beginning-a body wherein and whereby He might be susceptible of the sufferings of that hour, and thus, finishing transgression and making an end of sin, bring in an everlasting salvation for an otherwise lost and perishing world.

Betwixt the announcement of this crisis, or "hour," and its actual commencement, there was an interval in the Saviour's history-a calm or lull, for so we may call it, exceedingly interesting and affecting. It was a period, though but short, of entire separation, on His part, from the unbelieving and ungodly world around Him, and of uninterrupted and exclusive fellowship with His own, His true and faithful disciples: the traitor was then gone out from among them, and none remained with Christ but the eleven alone.

Shortly after the announcement that His "hour" was come, in John xii. 23, and immediately in connection with the reiteration of the same in John xiii. 1, we have the incident recorded of washing the disciples' feet, at the close of which the Lord dismisses Judas, admonishing him, by means of the sop, of the tremendous act he was about to perpetrate, and accompanying the admonition with the significant injunction, "That thou doest, do quickly." Judas, we are told, "went immediately out;" and Jesus, left alone with the eleven, having uttered the triumphant exclamation, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him," proceeded at once to pour forth His soul in the surpassing lessons of wisdom and comfort, together with the unequalled prayer, found in the immediately succeeding chapters of the same Gospel. This was the interval, the calm or lull; a period, no doubt, of exceeding enjoyment and refreshment to His own soul, so appropriate and so much needed on the eve of the commencement of that terrible "HOUR."

Now it was, when these discourses were concluded, or, as the Scripture says, "when Jesus had spoken these words,” that He went forth with His disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into which He entered, and His disciples. And then it was, as we believe, that the crisis in question actually had its beginning; then

sounded forth the first stroke of that "hour," of which, even in His eventful and" afflicted" life, no parallel, for interest or suffering, had as yet been realized.

He cometh to Gethsemane! Yes, and full well did He know all that awaited Him there; open and naked were all things before Him; not a drop in the "cup," not an ingredient in its mixture, but He knew altogether, the power of darkness and its terrible pressure ; the agony and bloody sweat; the betrayal of Judas; the desertion by his disciples;-all, all was before Him, as though depicted in a map; yet" He cometh," despite it all, "He cometh !" nothing doubting, nothing hesitating, "He cometh to Gethsemane !"

And He knew the place, and He knew it well. Oft had He resorted thither, oft for prayer and communion with God! For prayer; yes, it was a place of prayer, and therefore also a place of safety. Mark this well-prayer and safety are inseparably linked together: make every place a place of prayer, and you make every place a place of safety. Temptation may still come, as come it will, but fearlessly then you may meet it; Satan falls before God; temptation is powerless against prayer. Jesus knew this, and therefore the place of prayer was chosen by Him as the place where temptation, in its direct form, should be permitted to assail Him.

Gethsemane was a garden. A garden! How does man's lot, man's interest, seem associated, well-nigh bound up, with a garden! In a garden it was that he was created; in a garden it was that he was primarily placed; there did he realize his original perfection; and there did he lose it! The garden of Eden! what thoughts, what reminiscences, are stirred up in the soul at the very mention of its name! The garden of Eden! What was man originally in that garden? What did man subsequently become there? Like God in the first instance; like Satan in the second! Yes, so it was; modify and explain away the matter as we may, nevertheless the truth remains. Man was made in the image of God; and man, by listening to temptation, substituted for God's image the image of the tempter. He fell !-fell from light to darkness, from purity to pollution, from a state of perfection to one of ruin, from Heaven's brightness in destiny, to Hell's blackness in desert! He fell, and "God drove out the man!" The garden of Eden was no longer his!

Adam fell! But, behold, another Adam, a second Man, is prepared to remedy and rectify the catastrophe of the first; and another garden is ready for his reception. And again, not at the commencement, but at the close of his life, is man called to enter it; and again is the tempter, ever the same as before, to ply his power and exercise his subtlety; and again is man-this second Man, the head and representative of His own peculiar race-to enter the lists, and peril the encounter; and again is all of human hope and human prospect to be staked on

the issue! A garden still, yes, a garden still the scene of action; a garden still the place of trial; a garden still the arena of desperate conflict; a garden still the battle-field, where hell's united host shall make assault on the workmanship of God! Therefore He cometh ; -for so it must needs be,-therefore "He cometh to a place called Gethsemane," a place "where was a garden;" and in that garden is to be enacted a scene which, for interest and importance, is, if possible, unrivalled even by the history of Eden itself. It was well, it was needful, then, that He went to the garden. Let us bless God and be thankful that He did so. But He went not alone thither; others went with Him. We proceed to consider who they were. The eleven, it appears, all accompanied Christ into the garden; but when there He took three to be with Him as His immediate companions; these were Peter, James, and John. To the eight He said, "Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder;" to the three, "Tarry ye here, and watch with Me."

These three apostles were evidently privileged, even beyond and above the rest. Specially were they chosen to behold the glory, the power, and the agony of their Lord, as manifested respectively in the spectacles of the transfiguration, the resurrection of Jairus's daughter, and the suffering in the garden. Difficult it is to say in which of these cases—of the first and last, at least―the greatest honour and greatest privilege was conferred upon them. To see the glory, as they did see it, on the "holy mount," how entrancing, how overwhelming! It "was good indeed to be there ;" but yet to be called to the fellowship of His sufferings, even as witnesses and watchers; to be with Him and near Him in the time of His agony and bloody sweat, what shall we say of this? What estimate can we form of such a distinction, such an honour? But we need not compare or contrast these things. We need not question or consider which was the greater privilege. They who were called to the one participated in the other; and so it is, and ever will be. The mount and the valley are rarely, if ever, disunited, at least in regard to the visitors of either. The most exalted experience is essentially connected with the deepest humiliation; to follow Christ in His temptation is the way to follow Him in His glory; and they whom He designs to behold Him in the latter He infallibly takes as His associates in the former.

But the companions-why any companions on this occasion? Why take Peter, and James, and John, or any, to be with Him then? Various reasons, no doubt, might be assigned for this-all-sufficient reasons; but the obvious, and, as I believe, primary and real reasons were the Edification that the scene should involve to His companions and the Comfort their presence and sympathy should involve to Him.

Christ has, by the assumption of the nature of man, and by the work done in that nature, so identified Himself with humanity, that He is

literally no longer independent of it-of it, not only as appertaining to Himself personally, but also officially. He is now head of the human redeemed body; and as the body cannot say to the head, I have no need of you, so neither can the head say to the body, I have no need of you. Oh no! He has need, great need, of us: His heart's affections are bound up with us; He loves us with an intensity of love inexpressible; our every interest is His own interest; our every feeling is His own feeling; if we are hurt, He is hurt; if we are happy, He is happy; if we rejoice in His love, He rejoices in ours; if His sympathy is precious to us, our sympathy is likewise, even now, now that He is in heaven's highest glory-for there is He still in humanity-precious to Him; and how much more so then, as we may safely judge, when on earth's highway, as "a Man of sorrows," or in Gethsemane's garden, as a Man of agony, He said to His disciples, His chosen three, "Tarry ye here, and watch with Me"! It was for His own comfort, as well as for the edification and benefit of the disciples themselves, that the Lord took with Him into the garden, and to the very scene of His agony, Peter, and James, and John. Other reasons, no doubt, weighed in His own mind, but these are obvious to us, and they are abundantly sufficient.

And now let us contemplate the experience of Jesus himself at the outset of His passion: "He began to be sorrowful and very heavy." Began to be! but how so? Had He not been so already? had not His life been a life of sorrow?-when had He been free from it? Surely sorrow had been His portion all the day long; even from Bethlehem up to that moment it had been bound up with His very existence. Yes, undoubtedly so; but there was a crisis in His existence, a crisis or turning-point, when sorrow such as even Hethe Man of sorrows-had as yet been a stranger to was to begin. All hitherto realized had been but the sparks from the furnace ; now was the furnace itself, heated even as God's wrath to the uttermost alone could heat it, to be encountered; all yet but the droppings from the cloud, significant indeed, and fearful enough, but now was the cloud itself about to burst, and the fiery storm and tempest about to be let go, in all its fury, on His devoted head. The "HOUR" was come-the "hour" so noted, so terrible, so dreaded, yet so inevitable and essential in order to the accomplishment of His work-that "hour" was come, and with it the commencement of the crisis;" He began to be sorrowful and very heavy:" nor did it close; nay, verily, but rather did it, in all its appalling circumstances and characteristics, continue to gather strength, till all was expended that the vials of wrath contained, and the justice of God denounced against offending man; till the Substitute for a world's sin, the voluntary Victim for human transgression, had cried from the accursed tree, "It is finished," and gave up the ghost.

The sufferings of Christ were of course, and of necessity must have been, in many respects infinitely mysterious, and infinitely beyond human conception and comprehension. The very nature of Christ would itself even seem to involve this,-not His divine nature, but the perfection of His human: His perfection in this respect, physical and moral, would itself involve a kind and degree of sensibility, both as to physical and moral experience, which would place the subject of it at an infinite and unapproachable distance from sinful man, and cause that experience to be at a proportionate distance too. Besides, let it be remembered that Christ, when smitten, was smitten as a Son by a Father, Himself loving and being Himself beloved beyond all expression. How is it possible for man to enter into this? How is it possible for man, sinful man, man full of evil and enmity-how is it possible for such a one to appreciate the feelings of Christ when smitten of God?-to comprehend what those feelings must have been when, at the moment that the blows fell upon Him, He was, and knew that He was, the beloved Son, in whom the Father was well pleased? Ah, no! we know—we can know— nothing really about it; His sufferings, as to their actual experience, their intensity, must be for ever hidden from our perception; and all we can do is to skim the surface of the ocean into which He plunged, and observe the appearance and external circumstances, as it were, of the fiery ordeal to which He was subjected. This we will endeavour to do; and for our help, much information, valuable and deeply affecting, is afforded in the record of Christ's history.

The sufferings of Christ, viewed as to their origin, both in a moral and physical sense, were the result exclusively of external causes; as it was the sin of others, and not His own sin, which morally induced His sufferings, so was it the agency of others, and not His own agency-or the working of His own conscience, or of any internal principle at all-which instrumentally inflicted His sufferings. The agency through which and by which Christ's sufferings were inflicted was threefold,—the agency of God, the agency of man, and the agency of the devil. These three agencies were at work, directly or indirectly, simultaneously or separately, during the whole of His earthly career,-at work in regard to His sufferings, producing those sufferings, and incessantly accumulating those sufferings upon Him.

Christ was a sin offering; He became sin for us, and subjected Himself therefore to sin, in all its liabilities and penalties. Now sin arms all creation against its subject; heaven and earth and hell are all at one here; they are all united in this-though in nothing else,that the sinner shall find no friend in either, no help, no sympathy, no comfort. God's blessing brings with it universal blessings; God's curse carries with it universal curse. When God smites, creation must