SECTION III

jesus in gethsemane. the struggle and victory of his passion of soul

(Mat 26:36-46. Mar 14:32-42. Luk 22:39-46. Joh 18:1-13)

The garden (κῆπος) of Gethsemane¹ was situated on the farther side of the brook Kidron, at the foot of the Mount of Olives. It was an estate (χωρίον), in all probability, with a dwelling-house upon it, but certainly provided as an olive garden with a wine-press and a tower. Tradition still points out this garden to the traveller in Jerusalem, and we have no ground to dispute the accuracy of this recollection.²

Hence it was probably through what is now known as Stephen’s Gate, or Mary’s Gate,³ that Jesus went forth from the city with the disciples. Down the steep declivity of the temple mountain they descended into the valley, through which ran the torrent Kidron, the black brook,⁴ on its way to the Dead Sea. The road over the brook leads to Bethany.

But at this time the Lord was not going to Bethany. It was too late for that; and besides, it was contrary to the ordinance of the Passover to go at all out of the range of the city. Thus, what the circumstances in this case rendered necessary, harmonized entirely with what God designed. He turned away from the familiar road to Bethany into the fatal garden, although He well knew what would be the result of His entrance there. It was not for the first time indeed that He turned in thtiher. He had often accompanied His disciples thither (συνήχθη). Probably they might often meet there after leaving Jerusalem, one by one, to go to Bethany. This rendezvous might also have served for larger meetings with the company of His hidden disciples in Jerusalem. In any case, we cannot but suppose that Jesus was friendly with the proprietor of that estate; for he had freely allowed Him to make use of his property by day and night.⁵

But as soon as they had entered upon the enclosure of the estate, Jesus was seized and shaken by a marvellous feeling. He neither would nor could endure this experience in their presence! First of all, He hastened on from the sight of the eleven, saying to them, ‘Sit ye here, while I go yonder and pray.’ Then He took farther on with Him the three most confidential disciples, Peter, and the two sons of Zebedee, James and John. But they had not advanced far together, when His sensations became more and more evident (ἤρξατο λυπεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν). He began to be sorrowful and disquieted, and to feel Himself so terribly abandoned, that the disciples observed it. He felt Himself oppressed even to astonishment or terror. This was one aspect of His experience—nameless contrarieties of sensation overwhelmed him, and choked and straitened His heart as if they would have stifled and killed Him.⁶ The infinite living movements of His soul in the Holy Spirit, in the joy of His God,⁷ were restrained by an inconceivable reaction. Moreover, closely connected therewith, He felt Himself namelessly forsaken, as if every heart and life in the world had refused to Him the strength and encouragement of its sympathy⁸—as if in the whole wide world no echo would any more respond to the beating of His heart. These two sensations afflicted Him in so lively a manner, that He came with His companions to a stand-still, acknowledged to them His nameless distress—‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;’ and after still further appealing to them, ‘Stay here and watch!’—which, in its significance, includes in it the words which Luke records, Pray that ye fall not into temptation—He disengaged Himself from them (ἀπεσπάσθη), and hastened forward. But He went only a stone’s-throw farther,⁹ and cast Himself down upon the earth, kneeling; and with His countenance bent to the earth, He prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass away from Him. In these words, often too little considered, Mark has told us the ground—thought of Christ’s supplication. His first petition cried, Father, My Father,¹⁰ all things are possible with Thee. If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me. But not as I will, but as Thou wilt.

Upon this prayer He experienced the first strengthening. Luke indicates it, when he says: And there appeared unto Him an angel from heaven, strengthening Him. That an angel appeared to Him was chiefly certain to the Evangelists, from the fact that He received the first strengthening upon the first prayer. And the latter may be gathered from His being able to return to the disciples after the first prayer. But how could the Evangelists infer the angel from the strengthening? Was, perhaps, the angel to be taken here in an allegorical sense, as the angel of the hearing of prayer?¹¹ Upon this allegorical view, the Evangelists were perhaps led away, by placing themselves by the Spirit of Christ into the situation. What the Lord suffered was, in any case, a consequence of the entire antipathy of the world being now opposed to His soul like a wall (just as formerly, in the wilderness, the entire sympathy of the world had hindered Him like a wall, and driven Him back into the wilderness), whilst the sympathy of His friends was so weak that it could no longer afford Him encouragement. But both the one and the other were God’s ordering, which confounded Him. But when He now rose up again strengthened, what could it have been whereby the Father comforted Him? In the world nothing was yet altered. His prayer had not yet shaken the earth. Perhaps, however, it had shaken heaven! The world of blessed spirits drew nearer to Him, their sympathy revealed itself to Him in a refreshing feeling, which became His by a glimpse into it, in an appearance of angels which strengthened Him. The older scholastic theology has resisted the thought that Christ was strengthened by an angel, because it chose to consider Him most in His Godhead. But Christ, the God-man, might possibly be strengthened by an angel in His human feeling of life. How often the faith even of the little and of the young cheered Him on the way of His pilgrimage! In any case, the Evangelist Luke might possibly know historically of such an angelic appearance; and, moreover, he might have the certainty, through the spirit of revelation, that Christ had been strengthened by a communication from the angel-world (more definitely represented by the appearance of an angel).

Thus Christ returned, strengthened by prayer to the Father, to the disciples. But when He returned to them, He found them sleeping. We might certainly conclude, on the one hand, from this, that the first interval of prayer did not last merely a couple of moments; but on the other hand, also, we might suppose that the three disciples found themselves in an exceedingly peculiar uneasiness and depression. In any case, they certainly had no clear consciousness of the significance of this moment; while a gloomy feeling of the misfortune in which they were, and of the danger which threatened them, a terrible sense of despondency, rather served to overwhelm them with drowsiness than to arouse them (Luk 22:45). Like a giant’s might, the sleep of bodily exhaustion, of spiritual depression and discouragement, fell upon them; and they did not feel how perilous this spirit of slumber was in this condition,—that it was comparable to that craving for sleep which invades the exhausted wanderers in the wintry desert, which induces the inexperienced to surrender themselves to death, while he who knows it gathers himself together with anxiety and agitation to resist the hostile power-labours even to perspiration, and so avoids the danger. Thus the Lord found them sleeping then, although they had just seen Him go away in the deepest suffering. Thus He found them all alike, the spiritual John, the quietly firm James, the fiery Peter. But to the last He addressed with reason the word of reproach, since he had most highly presumed (and perhaps also slept the soundest), ‘Simon, sleepest thou! Could ye not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation (enhancing the temptation by your own fault, changing the external into an inward temptation): the spirit truly is willing (with him, Peter, it is still eagerly willing, πρόθυμον, but the flesh is weak’ (powerless, ἀσθενής). Only the strictest watchfulness can abolish the risk which arises from this absolute contrast between the innermost spiritual impulse and the powerless sensual nature.

With this word, whose sole importance in this moment only Jesus Himself knew, the sense of anguish and desertion, according to Luke, came over Him again even more powerfully, and He hastened away from the disciples a second time. Mark says that it was the same word again which He uttered to the Father. This is perhaps true of the word generally, but in Matthew there appears a somewhat modified conception: ‘My Father, if this cup may not pass from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done.’ The first time He supposed the possibility that the cup of sorrows which was presented to Him might pass away from Him, He asked that it might be averted, with the expression, if it be possible. But, at the same time, He declared the submission of His heart to the will of God. But the second time He expressed His wish that the cup might pass away in a much more subdued manner, and allowed distinctly to appear the feeling that He must drink it, by the words, if it be not possible that the cup should pass from Me. And just as decidedly He declared His readiness to drink it, according to the will of the Father. Thus once again He found consolation, and returned to the three. But again He found them sleeping. Two of the Evangelists add, by way of explanation, that their eyes were heavy with sleep. An inexplicable intoxication of sleep weighed them terribly down; and when. He awakened them, they were so confused, that they knew not what they should answer Him.

He needed only for one moment thus to see them, when once more the unspeakable anguish came over Him. Before they had collected themselves for a reply, He was quickly gone once more from their eyes. He remained away long, at least so long that the disciples, who had been twice warned and awakened, sank back again into their lassitude and helplessness, and for the third time could go to sleep. According to Matthew, He prayed again as on the former time. He surrendered His will, He gave Himself to the Father, yea, He drank the cup. For now, perhaps, arrived the last and greatest crisis of His contest, which Luke depicts to us. His feeling became the most terrible jarring of life, like to a death-struggle (agony). His resistance to the mighty influence which He experienced consisted in the fact that He prayed with the utmost earnestness. The effect of this struggle, moreover, broke forth in His sweat, becoming like drops of blood, which fell down upon the earth.¹² But under this most vehement prayer of surrender, His soul finally attained, for the third time, once more its serenity and rest; and now for ever His victory was decided.

This was manifest in the changed and decisive manner in which He again returned to His disciples. He did not wake them up with the request that they would watch with Him, as the first, and probably also the second time, but with a rebuking word, which expressed the celebration of His returning peace: ‘Do ye sleep on now, and take your rest?’ (the last third pause before the preparation for the crisis). Therewith it is ended. ‘Behold, the hour is come that the Son of man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us depart: behold, he who betrayeth Me is at hand.’ And now, when finally the disciples had entirely recovered themselves, they beheld perhaps the traces of His last struggle still upon His brow, as drops of sweat like to blood trickled down from it. To them it was as if they beheld Him already surrounded with blood, while His soul displayed the noblest majesty of peace.

The narrative of the passion of soul of Jesus in Gethsemane guarantees its authenticity by its enigmatically mysterious nature. It is a representation which lies beyond the mental capacity of ordinary human or Christian invention. It belongs to those portions which the Church, in all its weak moods, members, and theologians, most of all in its weak critics, would have in many ways surrendered, because of presumed offences, and which it has only preserved in consequence of its most substantial motives, namely, in its historical faithfulness in the transmission of this history-in the earnest conviction that there were heavenly depths in it, and in the momentary gleams of knowledge in which they recognized its profound significance.¹³

The manner in which many exegetes have made attempts on this section, reminds us of the slumbrous intoxication of the disciples. The conduct of later criticism, however, in respect of this important moment in the life of the Lord, as it has been manifested in many critics, deserves to be characterized in an entirely different manner.¹⁴

The fact that the Evangelist John does not relate the passion of Jesus in Gethsemane, is explained by the strict exclusiveness of his plan, but not perhaps by the supposition that he followed the rest of the Evangelists, as a gleaner on the field of evangelical history—as completer.¹⁵ Moreover, although this Evangelist had previously described a similar soul-struggle of Jesus, it does not perhaps follow thence that that must be confounded with this passion of Jesus in Gethsemane. On the contrary, even the representation of the passion of Jesus in Gethsemane testifies in itself of a rhythmic return of the fearful presentiment of suffering in His life. Thus it was, moreover, in entire accordance with that wonderful feeling which finally overflowed the soul of Jesus in three great wave-beats, and with its highest point reached its end, that the billows of the same feeling had affected Him long before. The first beginnings of this presentiment occur early in the evangelic history. Thus Jesus heaved a deep sigh in Galilee, when He saw Himself constrained to allow His contest with the Pharisees to appear publicly, and to encourage His little flock to constancy He foretold to them His victory over the hatred of the world; but even with this anticipation of His victory came also the presentiment of His last struggle, and He declared that He was greatly straitened till it was accomplished (Luk 12:50).¹⁶ A similar feeling was manifested when the Pharisees stopped His passage for ever in that region (Mar 8:12). Thus He wept over Jerusalem, when in His festal entry He looked upon the city from the top of the Mount of Olives. Thus His soul was shaken when, in the enclosure of the temple,¹⁷ those Greeks caused themselves to be announced to Him, whom He regarded as the first-fruits of the believing Gentiles. No wonder if this same feeling appeared again subsequently in its highest power, at a moment which was entirely calculated to arouse it.

And thus, as that first stronger manifestation of His anxious presentiment was a consequence of the vivid foresight of His victory; as on the height of the Mount of Olives His great suffering was a consequence of the great exaltation which His people prepared for Him in His elect; and as in the temple enclosure it was the first demonstrations of homage of the Gentile world which filled Him with a stronger presentiment of His approaching end,—thus now also His strongest depression in Gethsemane follows upon the great elevation which His soul had just undergone, in the removal of the power of darkness from the company of disciples, in the institution of the holy communion, and in the great surrender of His life, of His disciples and His work, into the hands of His Father.

And we must lay an altogether special stress upon this connection of the soul-passion of Jesus in Gethsemane, with the preceding consecration of soul, as it was completed in the high-priestly prayer. Superficial and profane criticism¹⁸ finds a contradiction in the facts, that Jesus, first of all, in the prayer above mentioned, ‘had closed His account with the Father,’ and that He then should once more have had to undergo a struggle in Gethsemane. But there is not needed any specially profound acquaintance with the mysteries of the higher life of the soul, especially of the Christian life of the soul, to know that frequently, upon great spiritual victories of self-denial, of surrender, of renunciation, which a man gains, there still follow great spiritual tempests, which are not to be considered as relapses, but as proofs of the greatness and purity of the sacrifice which the heart has made—in that the nature of the sacrificing heart is now claiming its right. How many a man, after that moment in which he has sacrificed to his higher calling, at any time, a happiness of his temporal life, hurries weeping to his closet! And we may gather how much the high-priestly prayer is to be considered chiefly under the aspect of a painful separation—of a great renunciation,—from that word of Christ, ‘I am no more in the world.’ That renunciation in which He had early been compelled to hold afar from Himself, and then, in its enticing deformity to refuse, the attractive picture of a noble, pure, social life with His disciples among His people for humanity, in a paradisaically bright world—that renunciation, which was now wholly completed, He had now in this manner ended. And thus we might consider the passion of Jesus, first of all, as the great sympathy of the infinitely rich, pure, human heart, in the execution of His perfect renunciation. But it was the same curse of sin which brought about this renunciation that made its pains so bitter. Jesus had now for many years sued for the faith of His people, for the love of humanity, and therein had experienced the coldness and the hatred of the world in abundant measure. He had now, in His spirit, resisted the contest with this enmity of the world and of hell continually tempting Him. He had finished His work, and had commended the certainty of His victory to the Father, and had solemnized it before Him. But just now, when thus in spirit He was purified for humanity, and had assured to them His institution as the means of their deliverance—now came over Him the sense of all the injustice suffered—the whole pain of rejected love. When Joseph had once entirely mastered himself in the presence of his brethren (Gen 45:1), there came over his soul a tempest of emotion which broke down his self-command,—every painful feeling of wrong endured, of rejected love and faith, rising into the more terrible pain for the formerly so blinded, now so disheartened, brethren; and he caused all profane spectators to depart before he could make himself known to his brethren; and wept aloud, that the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard it.¹⁹ But how much deeper is the link between Christ and His brethren, than between Joseph and his! Thence we apprehend, that in that moment when He in heart took His leave of the whole world, which disowned Him; when He completed the institution which determines, although yet in germ, only its redemption (for, with the surrender of Christ to the Father, His death also is decided), He is then overcome with a feeling of anguish which threatens to suffocate and to kill Him. It is the great sorrow of unspeakably mistaken love, as it feels it in the moment of its triumph.

But now, it may be asked, why this feeling of Christ expressed itself not in tears, as it did at the grave of Lazarus, but in a dread which is aggravated even into the sweat of terror? Here, probably, we are to consider that the emotion of Christ must immediately be changed into the deepest sympathy with humanity. Even here His care was not about His life for its own sake, but about His life in humanity, and this especially about the life of humanity. Thus He felt His separation as humanity must feel it, and actually experienced, and still experiences it, although unconsciously. His renunciation, as its consequence, appears in the mental life of humanity—namely, in the suffering of the world on behalf of the beautiful temporal life, which, subjected to affliction, first of all by the curse of sin, and then by the cross of Christ, is devoted to transitoriness. That suffering of the world, and of His people in the world, of which He had so lately spoken, has truly, according to its inmost nature, its foundation in this, that the kingdom of glory—the new paradise—must needs have been transferred at the ascension of Christ into the world beyond the grave. This sorrow approached nearer and nearer to Him, and now it seized His soul in all its depth. But as formerly, in the desert, the lust of the world had tempted Him, as impure desire, which was distorted into a temptation of hell; so also now He was laid hold upon, by this suffering of the world, on behalf of the theocratically beautiful present world, so it again became to Him a temptation of hell. In the wilderness, His heart had experienced and resisted the flattering crowd of all chiliastic worldly intoxications in the world. Here He resisted the storm of that chiliastic, poetically-coloured despondency of the heart, rent asunder in the wavering between the world of time and the paradise of eternity,—just as it had restlessly driven Judas about,—just as it brought the other disciples into so great danger,—as it continues to be perceived in the world still in a thousand wild tones of lamentation. But although He got better and maintained it over the Evil One, yet this attack, nevertheless, became to Him a great temptation, through the infinite weight of human feeling which was therein, through the great heart-sorrow of the world at the remoteness of paradise, at the great gulf of death that separates earth from heaven. If thus the entire suffering of the world, all its sadness about the beauteous appearance of the happy life, fell upon His soul by means of His sympathy, and would pull Him down with it into an abyss of despondency, we may probably guess how His soul must be shaken under this influence, in order to resist the paralyzing poison of comfortlessness, especially as in this case no forty days were given Him for the struggle, but only one long hour of the night. How soon, in such a frame of mind, must the first tears which perhaps would spring forth be again dried up, and an intense sweat of anguish gradually take their place!

The retrospect of Jesus upon His life, and upon the significance of His parting, probably led to such a state of mind. But still more did His glance upon His present position. For with His renunciation, and with His separation from the world, was this infinitely terrible position of loneliness also decided, in which He was now placed. The entire world in its ungodliness is related to His godly standing as an infinitely strong antagonism, which as a spiritual opposition falls like a choking simoom upon His soul. In the same measure, moreover, as the antipathy of the world now presses upon His soul, He must be deprived of the sympathy of His disciples. He sees how His most chosen disciples go to sleep again and again before His eyes, even in the view of His anguish. And are not these, in so significant a moment, representations to Him of the intoxication of sleep with which in all times His disciples so often gazed upon the more deeply hidden sorrows of His life? He thus undergoes a twofold horror,—the horror at the antagonism of the entire world, and the horror of complete loneliness in the world. Thus must He tread the wine-press alone in the garden of Olives. This experience found its expression in the prophetic words, Ye shall leave Me alone, and in the appeal to the three, Could ye not watch with Me one hour?

Thus far His experience always appears only as the full sense of the present, as it is developed out of the retrospect upon the past. But how could He hide from Himself the future, for which the past has laid the foundation, that this present is purposing to beget? And the more plainly the image of the future appears to His soul, the greater will be His suspense—His fearful presentiment. To this presentiment He Himself gave the most decided expression, in its entire purity and greatness, in the words, The hour is come, when the Son of man is delivered up, is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Well might He be terrified at the hands of sinners, for He is the Holy One. That which is holy in Him, trembles at this external power of the unholy over His life—the Spirit, at this subjection to the hands—love, at this look of hatred—the feeling of justice, at this burning experience of injustice—the nobility, at the abyss of shame—the heavenly sense of beauty, at the sink of impurity through which He would have to pass—the simple delicate Life, at this coarse and public death.²⁰ But to the Lord, the falling into the hands of sinners was less painful than the being betrayed into the hands of the heathen by His beloved people, the people of the promise; into the hands of dissolute Gentile soldiers, by the fathers who sate in Moses’ seat; to His adversaries, finally, by a disciple from the midst of His company of disciples-by a disciple who, with the most eager wakefulness, skulked about to destroy Him, while the disciples devoted to Him—slept.

Thus the soul-passion of Christ passes over from the sorrow of sympathy at the glimpse upon the past, through the pain of abandonment in the glimpse into the present, to the anguish of fearful presentiment in the glimpse into the future. But, as we have seen, these experiences could not succeed one another in a distinct change of tones; but it was one great sorrow which expressed itself in the modulation of these experiences. The sympathy of Jesus, which at the first predominated as the effect of the high-priestly prayer, and announced itself in the sympathetic words to the disciples, In the world ye have tribulation, continued in the pain of abandonment which made itself known in the most vivid manner in the reproach to the three, Could ye not watch with Me one hour? And, in like manner, this pain continued in the fearful presentiment which finally appeared and manifested itself in the heavy sweat of His brow like unto blood.

But here we come to the most difficult question of all. Wherein consisted the sorrow, for the passing away of which Christ entreated the Father? The older Protestant theologians said rightly that He experienced in Gethsemane the burden of the wrath of God in His soul,²¹ and that it was this cup of anger for the averting of which He prayed. In later days, this view has been considered untenable. It has been found generally objectionable that the wrath of God should be brought into the question, the rather that this wrath should have expressed itself against Jesus, and that He should have been able to experience it as wrath.²² It has thus in late times been supposed that Jesus is once again praying, in deep presentiment of the greatness of His suffering, for the removal of that suffering itself; in which view truly great stress is to be laid on the fact, that He does not pray for this removal unconditionally, but with a complete surrender to the will of the Father.²³ According to this apprehension, His petition has more the meaning only of a lamentable utterance of His emotion; the chief matter of the prayer is, the surrender—the sacrifice. But this view of the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane is, in fact, entangled in a real difficulty in seeking to escape from a supposed one. It calls forth a contradiction in the evangelical history itself. For it is really not to be supposed that Jesus would have now asked the Father, even if it were only conditionally, for the removal of His suffering of the cross itself, after having so distinctly predicted it, after having given Himself over, in the high-priestly prayer to the Father, so decidedly even to death. And what Strauss has said upon the supposed contradiction between the contents of His prayer and the representation of the passion of Jesus in Gethsemane, has really a meaning, so far as it may be only turned against the suggested view of the meaning of the passion of Jesus.²⁴

Jesus had long before foreseen His death in the Spirit, and had offered Himself to the Father as a sacrifice, finally with the most distinct feeling of its approach, in the most solemn manner. But the flood of experiences of sorrow, of pain, and of anguish, which now burst over Him; and, moreover, as sympathy with the disposition of humanity of limitless depth, and full of the elements of temptation-this was new to Him. For this was an experience of His soul which, as such, He could not undergo in the foresight of His Spirit, but must undergo, first of all, in its own place and circumstances, in proportion to the childlikeness of His nature. And thus it came over Him now, as if it would undo and destroy Him.

We must here also remember that the heart of Jesus, even in the might of His experience, must be estimated as the heart of the Son of man, of the Prince of humanity, nay, as the heart of humanity itself, if we would guess at the greatness of these experiences from afar. He had in every situation substantially to do with humanity, with God, and with the prince of this world, the Satan; or, in other words, with sin, with righteousness, and with judgment.

We must, in the next place, especially have in mind that every experience which individual men cause to Him, is, according to His high and world-embracing position, an experience of the relation of the whole of humanity to His life. When thus Jesus was to undergo the hatred of His enemies, the treachery of one disciple, the weakness and unfaithfulness of all the other disciples, this experience became to Him a general sense of the relation of humanity towards His soul. Thence follows that in this He feels the burden of all human evil nature against Him in His soul.

Further, we must moreover vindicate the fundamental fact, that behind all human perversities, Jesus looks upon the diabolical background, always the prince of this world. Thus, in a moment in which He experiences the whole alienation of humanity in His soul, He feels its whole entanglement and bondage in the service of the evil one. Thus also He experiences (through humanity generally)²⁵ the mightiest influence of temptation of the powers of darkness, and indeed in this case, as a temptation to worldly sorrow for the world, to surrender to its sadness and despondency. And as He thrice repelled Satan from Him in the wilderness, when he assailed Him by the enticements of the lust of the world, so must He thrice wrest Himself as a victor from the temptation of Satan which attacks Him with the misery and with the anguish of the world.

Moreover, we know finally also, that in every actual experience Jesus looks beyond, not only past the guilt of the world, but also past the cunning of hell, to the government of God, embracing and appointing everything that is done; and that to Him the ordering of God, even the most painful, remains continually the ordering of His Father; and that here also this glory of His divine consciousness abides, is proved by the expression with which he characterizes the sorrow that is coming over Him. He calls it a cup—a cup, indeed, filled with the bitterest draught, but still a cup, which the hand of the Father has formed perfectly as a cup is formed, which it has filled, which it offers to Him. Thus He also wholly feels that the Father allows this experience to come upon Him.

The Father allows Him here to shudder and to sweat with anguish before the eyes of His confidential disciples, as He had formerly glorified Him before their eyes. And, indeed, He must undergo this on account of His connection with men. When He had wholly got the better of Himself in His Spirit,—and thus for Himself alone, in peace, yea, in triumph, could have given up the world,—there appeared, in conformity with His love to the world, in conformity with His connection with humanity, the deepest suffering—pure compassion about the world, for the world. He thus experienced, in the most peculiar sense, the sorrow of the world in His soul. But as the appointment of God, this sorrow of the world is now, according to its inmost nature, nothing but the judgment of God upon the world. Thus Jesus also experienced in Gethsemane really the judgment of God upon the world in its terrible greatness, as it came upon Him in its spiritual rhythmic process in that storm of the catastrophe which the religious sentiment calls the anger of God,²⁶ with the same justice as the religious spirit characterizes it as the zeal or the energy of His righteousness.

And this experience, in its mysterious greatness, it was which so strongly affected the Lord, that He prayed the Father if it could be possible that He would let this bitter cup of sorrow pass from Him. It was His anxiety in this necessity not to fail, but to assert His confidence in the Father; love to mankind in this anguish not to stand tremblingly before His disciples, as if He were a criminal who trembled at approaching judgment, as He appeared to be, in consequence of the infinite sympathy with the criminal, guilt-laden race. But especially, He felt that in this mind He must not appear before the enemies. Thus, that was the cup for whose removal Jesus prayed, but which He declared Himself to the Father ready to drain even to the dregs; but it was not the sorrows of His death itself. This is intimated in Matthew, by the expression of Jesus’ prayer: If this cup may not pass from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done. But the Evangelist Mark declares still more distinctly the whole solicitude of the contest of Jesus in this sense, in remarking that Jesus prayed the Father that this hour, if it were possible, might pass from Him. Thus He cannot have meant His death-suffering itself, but only that hour of His temptation. Thus the prayer of Christ is similar to that earlier one in an earlier temptation (Joh 12:27), where also the petition fell from His lips that the hour might pass from Him. Finally, it is also to be considered that in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb 5:7) it is said that Jesus had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears, and had been heard (and delivered) from that which was His fear. This passage has with reason been referred to the transaction in Gethsemane. But at the same time should have been considered the exactness with which that transaction is here indicated. Jesus thus also actually drank the cup after His words of submission; and thus also the cup still passed away from Him, according to His prayer for its being turned away: for actually, by virtue of His drinking the cup, drinking it with the purest feeling of human sorrow in it, with the purest resistance to the satanic temptation in it, and with the purest surrender to the government of God in it, it thereby passed away. He suffered this appointment patiently three times as the decree of the Father; three times He underwent it trembling and praying, as the sorrow of humanity; thence He endured it as the temptation of Satan; and in the measure in which He accomplished this surrender in the contest, and this contest in the surrender, sorrowing and struggling, the bitterness of His sorrow was changed into pure peace of soul. Thus He attained the blessing of this victory. First of all, for instance, the immoveable fire-proofness of heart against all storms, sorrows, and pangs which still awaited Him. His soul was now established in the assurance of His Spirit against His death. But that struggle and victory in Gethsemane was, moreover, advantageous to humanity. Herein Jesus won for the spiritual life, especially of His people, an eternal peace—the power of bearing all the attacks of the world upon their sensibility, all the pains of renunciation, all the experiences of oppression and desertion in the world, all the woes of love and of honour—every suffering in respect of life and love—every anxiety of death and of judgment in the presence of God—of glorifying these things in His light-of accepting them from His hand, consecrated and blessed as a cup prepared and accredited by Him; and thereby of overcoming them, or rather of converting them into a fire of proof, that they might become firm in heart against every tempest of life, of death, and even of hell.

We can only very imperfectly figure to ourselves the significance of the soul-passion of Christ in Gethsemane, and the representation of this significance falls even shorter still of the suggestion of its entire importance. But we may say, with many who have already expressed the same thought, that Christ was never greater than actually in the struggle and victory of His soul in Gethsemane. The tranquillity of soul wherewith Socrates drank off his cup of poison has been referred to, in order to represent it as strange that Jesus did not face death in His calm manner equally. Stoic spirits have exulted, with a side-glance to this fearful presentiment of Christ, at the contempt of death with which they have met death generally, or even execution.²⁷ And thus even believing Christians also have sought to explain the great exultation with which individual martyrs have died, only on dogmatic grounds, from the fact that Christ in His contest had first of all to earn the reconciliation of the world for us; while such martyrs could pass and die in the peace of this reconciliation. But in all this it has been totally forgotten that the conception of the harmonious greatness of man demands that he should also have a great heart,—that thus the holy Son of man must be the Prince of humanity, even in the power of holy experience,—that He must be able, in an individual sense, to take up into Himself the consciousness of His whole race, to stand there in the perfected sympathy with humanity, and to tremble with it, and for it, as no other man could. How far, then, does the Lord’s power of feeling transcend that of a Socrates-yea, even transcend His forebodings of feeling, without mentioning that the proud ironical philosopher would hardly have been able to open his heart, in the pulsation of anguish, to his scholars as Jesus revealed Himself to His disciples! And how many have met death thus poor in feeling, and therewith, even in the sense of life, benumbed by death even in life, or drunk with the vanity of life even in death, who in their self-delusion have regarded this state of mind as a peculiar triumph over death! In respect of the martyrs, it is true that the peace which characterized their death was founded upon the struggle and victory of Christ. But it must not be forgotten, in their case, that none of them died in any way with the vividness, spirituality, and depth of the world-embracing consciousness of Christ. As the death of a thoughtless child in a family is related to the death of a man, and that of the head of the house, so the death of Christians is related to the death of Christ; and thus a similar relation subsists between the presentiment of death as it appears in the case of the martyrs, and as it appears in Christ, apart from the many elements of enthusiastic excitement which to many a dying Christian have lightened the external circumstances of his death. But in all these comparisons the main point ought least of all to be left out of sight, namely, that Jesus in this case had not to do with the ordinary fear of death as such; but that a sense of death from the side of the world came over Him, which thrice upon the spot, even in the garden, appeared to wish to destroy Him, and that it was the temptation in this deadly-powerful sensation that He struggled with. How exalted in this contest must Christ be above the dying heroes of our race, is proved by the manifold circumstances which embittered the perceptions of that moment.

If now we would present to ourselves the mind of the Lord approximately, we must remember that all the developments of the nobler and deeper life of sentiment, as they continue to arise in humanity under the influence of Christianity, are to be considered as emanations of feeling out of that spring which began to flow in Christ. Even in its feeling, humanity was benumbed—dead! In Christ, first of all, this fountain began to gush forth once more in its original power: thus also it was in the feelings of pain and of suffering, as in the feelings of peace. Thus, also, every holy capability of feeling, of Christian humanity, leads us back to Gethsemane. We must further recall the bitterest thoughts of our heaviest and holiest hours, and still more the great attacks which the great God’s heroes have endured in the decisive moments of their life. Thus we learn gradually to guess what was the import of the soul’s passion of Christ in Gethsemane.

Moreover, His struggle gives us also the highest security that He led and closed His Redeemer-life in true faithful manhood and humanity. His human nature was distinguished from the divine. His life could be conscious to itself in a desire, a wish which expressed itself and represented itself as adverse to the will of God in His historical procedure, even although it was only to sacrifice itself to Him in fuller self-surrender. He was capable of suffering as man—capable of choice, and subject to temptation as man. And just because His ideally-pure divine-human nature had also an ideal will which pointed towards a paradisaically pure and blessed life (just as is the case also approximately with the better ideals of sinful man), therefore His will must for ever be coming in opposition with the historical course of the world, into which He was involved, and with the government of God therein. But immediately the will of God appeared to Him in this historical form of His government, and immediately He became conscious to Himself of this opposition between this will of God and His own will: this only occurred to fulfil the opposition in pure piety, that is, to lose His will in the will of the Father. Just for that reason, as the faithful High Priest, with supplication and tears, He could sacrifice His life and the volition of His ideally-pure life to the Father for the salvation of the world.²⁸

The great acquisition of the Lord is at once proved by His being able to go through the long martyr course of His sufferings, with His feeling heart and tenderly holy life, in immoveable calmness and firmness, in a tranquillity which almost gives the impression of something spirit-like. This power shows itself at once in the lofty calmness with which He wakes up His disciples, and goes to meet His enemies.

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Notes

1. On the brook Kidron, Robinson observes (i. 232), that it is throughout only a watercourse between high hills, and that the celerated Kidron flows, and flowed probably even in earlier days, over its bed never but in the rainy season. Upon the spot which is indicated as the quondam Gethsemane: ‘Passing down the steep hill from the gate (Stephen’s Gate) into the valley of the Kidron, and crossing the bridge over the dry watercourse, one has on the left the half subterranean church of the Virgin Mary, with an excavated grotto or chapel called her tomb.’ ‘Near the same bridge and church, on the right, is the place fixed on by early tradition as the former garden of Gethsemane. It is a plat of ground nearly square, enclosed by an ordinary stone wall,’ &c. Within this enclosure are eight very old olive-trees, with stones thrown together around their trunks. There is nothing peculiar in this plat to mark it as Gethsemane; for adjacent to it are other similar enclosures, and many olive-trees equally old. (The story that the present trees are the same which stood here at the time of the Saviour, is of course a fable.²⁹). From the bridge three paths lead up to the summit of the Mount of Olives: one a mere footpath, strikes up in a direct course along a steep projecting part of the hill; a second passes up more circuitously to the left, where the hill retires a little, and has a more gradual slope; and the third winds up along the face farther south. The sides of the mountain are still sprinkled with olive-trees, though not thickly, as was probably the case of old, and a few other trees are occasionally seen. I took the middle path, which brought me out at the church of the Ascension and the mosque, situated on the summit. Around them are a few huts, forming a miserable village. Here one is able to look down upon the city, and survey at least the roofs of the houses.’ At the place where Christ must have undergone His contest, a grotto is pointed out. This spot lies to the left from the Kidron bridge, opposite the olive garden, situate to the right of it.—Schubert, ii. 517.

2. Upon the contradictions which Strauss wishes to have found in the account of the soul-passion of Jesus in the several Evangelists, compare Hase, 237; Hug, ii. 143; W. Hoffman, 386; Ebrard, 416. The latter rightly calls attention to the fact, that Strauss’s assertion that Luke says our Lord only prayed once, is set aside by the words in Luke, according to which a gradation appeared in the prayer of Jesus. To that, according to our representation, may be added the significance of the strengthening by the angel in Luke.

3. On the blood-like sweat of Jesus, Hug observes (ii. 145), ‘That thereupon might have been consulted Theophrastus de Sudoribus, p. 456, edit. Heinsii in Wetstein. (Here follows the quotation word by word, then the translation.) There is thus a clear and a dense sweat. The first, originating externally, is watery and clear; the other, coming from a depth, is heavier, almost as if there were flesh become liquid mixed with it.’ Thus also some assert that it had similarity to blood; as Monas the physician says, ‘as if, for instance, it had drawn humours out of the veins.’ Hug adds, ‘It is thus the blood-like and thick and heavy sweat, on account of which it ran down upon the ground.’ To the question, ‘How the disciples from the distance and in the night could observe the down-falling of bloody drops on the body of Jesus?’ Hug retorts, ‘Mr Doctor, at the Israelitish Passover the full moon always shines every year at Jerusalem. As often then as Jesus rose from prayer and went to the disciples, they could see it, and the easier in proportion as the drops of sweat were larger.’ [The passages referred to in Ebrard (as above), and which appear to authenticate instances of bloody sweat, are also cited from the German Ephemerides by Dr Stroud, in his work, ‘A Treatise on the Physical Cause of the Death of Christ,’ p. 383. The most remarkable recorded instances of this phenomenon are there given at length, and lead to the conclusion that violent mental agitation, and especially the fear of death, may occasion a bloody sweat. The instances are certainly few, and in some cases perhaps scarcely authenticated. Maldonatus, e.g., did not (as Ebrard affirms, see an instance of it in Paris, but only says, ‘Audio de his qui viderunt aut cognoverunt ante annos duos, Lutetiæ Parisiorum, hominem robustum et bene valentem, audita in se capitali sententia, sudore sanguineo fuisse perfusum.’ Yet Dr Stroud and other eminent medical authorities think that the occurrence of the phenomenon is both sufficiently established, and that it can be accounted for on known physical laws. But there are many (as Bynæus, ii. 133-5) who admit the possibility of such an occurrence, but deny that the words of the Evangelists require, or even allow us to suppose, that it happened in the case of our Lord. As the work of Bynæus is not always at hand, his conclusion may be quoted: ‘Si enim summus inde mœror angorque perspicitur, quod Jesus sudasse sanguinem dicitur, aut sanguineum sudorem, etiam ex hoc videri potest admodum luculenter, extrema ipsius anxietas, diraque et insolita consternatio, quod sudor emanaverit tanta cum copia, ut grandibus guttis, quales solent esse sanguineæ, defluxerit in terram, cum sudor neutiquam homini, nisi anxio atque perturbato incredibilem in modum, erumpat tam vehementer, præsertim ubi solus, et sub dio, idque media nocte est, et nocte tam frigida, qualis hæc fuit ut ignem accendere necesse sit, uti a servis atque ministris in aula Caiaphæ factum.’—Ed.]

4. [Ellicott shrinks from asserting ‘the punitive withdrawal of the Paternal presence’ from our Lord in Gethsemane (p. 328, note), and refers the bitterness of this cup to ‘the vivid clearness of the Saviour’s knowledge of the awful affinity between death, sin, and the powers of darkness.’ Ought we not rather to maintain that the whole suffering of our Lord was of a punitive nature? From first to last He was our substitute; and whatever throughout His life He did or endured, had virtue towards God in our behalf. But His suffering could not have been thus expiatory without being also penal. For where there is no punishment, there can be no expiation. And while, therefore, we account for this or that pain and sorrow of our Redeemer, and explain the natural causes which produced the suffering endured by Him, we are not to leave out of account the higher and final cause of His suffering, nor to exclude the punitive infliction of God. It was because in one form or another the Lord was ‘bruising’ Him that He suffered; and the moment that we remove the punitive hand of God from Him, we make His bitter pains superfluous. If their cause was not the punitive justice of God, our justification (at the bar of that justice) cannot be their effect.

The great difference between the statements of recent writers and those of the older theologians regarding the passion of our Lord, seems to be, that the latter dwelt with greater emphasis on the effect of His suffering, while the former are accustomed to bring out with greater prominence the constituent elements of His suffering. The earlier writers exhausted the doctrine of Christ’s substitution, and have left later investigators little to do except to analyze this connection of Christ with humanity, as it was actually exhibited in His person and life. Perhaps the former considered too little the personal and individual aspects of that life in which they saw a mediatorial work; perhaps the latter confine themselves too exclusively to the demonstration of the human interests and natural feelings of our Lord, and induce us to forget the divine connections which ruled His life: e.g., we are told in Dr Hanna’s recent volume, The Last Day of our Lord’s Passion (p. 236), that Christ entered into a connection with human sin mainly by ‘realizing, as He only could, its extent, its inveteracy, its malignity;’ and that all this vast iniquity being present to His thoughts, as that of those with whom He was most closely connected, He was seized with the momentary apprehension that in Himself the death due to such iniquity was about to be realized. Now, no doubt there must have been some process of His soul by which He was brought into real contact with the sin of the world. His wide perception enabled Him to realize it, His holy nature was horror-struck in view of it; and being man, He felt shame for His race, as a father feels shame for a guilty family. This was the natural result of His position in this world; so that whether He had come to expiate these sins or no, His feelings would have been profoundly sorrowful. But surely we must take into account that feeling which must have been predominant in the human soul of our Lord, that He was in this world for the purpose of being the sacrifice for sin; that it was not a fanciful but a real connection which He had with sin; and that the death He was to die was not the happy and easy translation due to His innocent life and holy nature, but was a sinner’s death, a ‘cursed’ death. Without taking into account this feeling, we not only do not apprehend the relation which our Lord’s suffering bore to the punitive justice of the Father, but we do not apprehend those human feelings which existed in His soul, and were due, as natural results, to the circumstances in which He was placed in this world. Throughout He had to do with sin, not merely as existing in His presence, but in opposition to Himself. It was He alone who was to do away with all this sin around Him, and all other sins, of which what He saw was but a minute proportion; the greatest of them He was to bear the curse of, the least of them deserved a punishment which none but He could bear. The sins He saw daily accumulating in the world around Him,—all bore reference—a reference of how portentous a character!—to Himself. The children becoming hardened and used to sin, their seniors satiated with common iniquity, and inventing new forms of wickedness;—these were His people whom He had come to save from their sins; these were the future inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.

On the expiatory character of the sufferings in Gethsemane, see two remarkably eloquent and satisfactory paragraphs in Witsius, De Œcon. Fed. II. vi. 12 and 13.-Ed.]

1) נַּתשְֹמָנֵא, oil-press. [The various derivations assigned to this word are given by Bynæus (ii. 73-7). Lightfoot renders it ‘the place of the olive-presses.’ This meaning seems now to be universally adopted, instead of that proposed by the older scholars (Erasmus, Beza, Vossius, and Grotius), who supposed it to be the same name, though of a different place, which is found in Isa, xxviii, 1, נֵּיא־שְֹמָנִים,—ED]

2) Compare Tischendorf, Reise in den Orient, i. 311, 312. Less decidedly, Robinson, 1 i, 285, although he alleges no reasons against the identity of the place.” [‘Thomson (Land and Book, 634) expresses himself strongly against the claims of the spot now shown, He says, ‘The authenticity of this sacred garden Mr. Williams says he chooses rather to believe than to defend. I do not choose even to believe.’ After mentioning that the Latins have chosen one site, the Greeks another, he goes on: ‘My own impression is, that both are wrong. . . . . Lam inclined therefore to place the garden in the secluded vale several hundred yards to the north-east of the present Gethsemane, and hidden, as I hope for ever, from the idolatrous intrusion of all sects and denominations.’—ED.]

3) According to Schulz, Jerusalem (Berlin, 1845), p. 90, identical with the ancient Fish-gate.

4) Κεδρὼν; קִדְרוֹן, the black, dark-coloured, or muddy brook, Probably its name arose from the circumstance that it rushed torrent-wise with muddy waves through the dark rocky valley. During the period of the flourishing temple-worship, its water was likewise darkened by the influx of the blood of the sacrifices from the temple mountain.—Sepp, iii. 453, [Lightfoot, on John xviii. 1, states that the blood ran down through a conduit under ground into the brook Kidron, and was sold to the gardeners to dung their gardens with; so that the Kidron was ‘rather the sink or common sewer of the city than a brook.’—ED.]

5) [There is no doubt that χωρίον frequently means a small estate or property; but it seems doubtful whether it is so used here, or whether it belonged to a friend of our Lord. It may be noticed, in passing, that there were no gardens allowed within the city (except a few of roses), on account of the smell arising from the rotting weeds and manure.—ED.]

6) This is the meaning of λυπεῖσθαι, which Mark at once, in its strongest form, indicates as ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι. They are the sensations of a positive adverse influence, which checks and oppresses the soul in its life movements, as if it would rob it of Spiriritual breath. The first effect of it is pain. The last, anguish, intensely aroused opposition of soul.

7) John xvii. 13.

8) This is expressed by ἀδημονεῖν, whereby is intimated the experience of a negative resistance; first of all, the feeling of remoteness from His people and His father-land, but generally the feeling of abandonment—of discouragement. [The three words expressive of our Lord’s agitation and agony of soul are most fully explained by Pearson (Creed, p. 281, note, ed. 1835), and shown to represent Him ‘suddenly, upon a present and immediate apprehension, possessed with fear, horror, and amazement, encompassed with grief, and overwhelmed with sorrow, pressed down with consternation and dejection of mind, tormented with anxiety and disquietude of spirit. Perhaps the author presses too strongly the etymological signification of ἀδημονεῖν.—ED.

9) Προσελθὼν μικρὸν, say the two first Evangelists.

10) Mark, Ἀββᾶ,, ὁ πατὴρ.. [This is beautifully paraphrased by Sir Matthew Hale in his edifying treatise, Of the Knowledge of Christ Crucified: ‘It is not a stranger that importunes Thee, it is Thy Son; that Son in whom Thou didst proclaim Thy self well pleased; that Son whom Thou hearest always; it is He that begs of Thee, and begs of Thee a dispensation from that which He most declines, because He most loves Thee, the terrible, insupportable hiding Thy face from Me.’ An elaborate discussion of these words, as, indeed, of every point connected with the concluding scenes of our Lord's life, will be found in Bynæus. He has very properly named his work ‘Commentarius Amplissimus.’—ED.]

11) ‘The strengthening by the angel is to be understood of the accession of spiritual power which came to the struggling Redeemer in His deepest destitute.’— Olshausen, in loc.

12) The possibility that, in the case of a man in special circumstances, a bloody sweat might appear, is perhaps sufficiently authenticated. Compare Ebrard, 418. But Olshausen reasonably observes that the ὡσεί would be altogether out of place if special drops of blood were spoken of herewith ; we must refer to the well-known similar but manifestly false view of the ὡσεὶ (ὡσεί περιστερά), Luke iii. 22. Thus the addition, καταβαίνοντες, &c., does not attain its full significance except by the conviction that here is a comparison. The sweat of Jesus is compared to drops of blood; and, indeed, with such as they appear in their great heavy dropping down to the earth. Thus much is now certain. The sweat of Jesus struggle had in it something altogether peculiar, which made it similar to drops of blood—first of all surely the large form of the drops, then the one by one heavy falling down or trickling upon the ground; whether also the bloody hue, does not at least appear from the text. Catholic theologians (Sepp, iii. 458) refer here to the blood of sorrows, which so copiously appears in mystically ecstatic persons in the Catholic Church, by way of imitation, &c. For the explanation of the special nature of these blood-like drops, probably the history of the Stigmata in the Catholic Church might not be altogether without significance. In any case, it stands in close relation to the remaining interpretation of this place. [So far as we know, nothing at all has been advanced which gives ground for departing from the more usual meaning of ὡσεὶ, as denoting likeness, and here meaning that the sweat merely resembled blood as it falls in thick, heavy drops. Alford says that if mere resemblance to blood were meant, the insertion of αἵματος would be absurd; why not drops of anything else?' Because nothing else oozes out from the human body and falls from it, as the sweat was in this case rolling down and falling. 'And drops of blood from what and where?' Why, of course, from a human body, which was here the object in view. Nothing can be more natural and vivid than such a comparison, and no more natural expression could be given to it than is given by the words of the text.—ED,]

13) Strauss, ii. 428.

14) Materialistic modes of viewing,—explanations of the passion of Jesus by a bodily indisposition or cold ; sensualistic, sentimental explanations of it, by the fear of death or the pain of separation, &c. The most prevailing views are recorded by Strauss, ii. 431.

15) The argumentation against the accuracy of this narrative in Strauss (ii. 438), which proceeds on the failure of the history in John, depends here, as in other cases] on the untenable supposition, that every Evangelist purposed to communicate every possible thing in the life of Jesus, without any plan at all.

16) See above, vol. iii. p. 283. Comp. Hug (as above), ii. 144.

17) Probably in the fore-court of the heathens, the symbolic destination of which changed therewith into the real one.

18) Strauss, ii. 440.

19) In Joseph also, the great feeling of agony developed itself in a rhythmical order and recurrence, till it had attained its climax (Gen. xlii. 24, xliii. 30, xlv. 1).

20) Ullmann, The Sinlessncss of Jesus, p. 178. Also the quotation from Luther in Olshauseu upon Matt. xxvi. 38, 39.

21) [E. G. Pearson (Creed, p. 283) says: 'For if the true contrition of one single sinner, bleeding under the sting of the law only for his own iniquities, all which notwithstanding he knoweth not, cannot be performed without great bitterness of sorrow and remorse; what bounds can we set unto that grief, what measures to that anguish, which proceedeth from a full apprehension of all the transgressions of so many millions of sinners? Add unto all these present apprehensions, the immediate hand of God pressing upon Him all this load, laying on His shoulders at once a heap of all the sorrows which can happen unto any of the saints of God. And Sir Matthew Hale (as above) says : The obligation unto the punishment for our sins could not choose but work the same effects in our Saviour as it must do in the sinner (desperation and sin excepted), to wit, a sad apprehension of the wrath of God against Him. . . . As He puts on the person of the sinner, so He puts on the same sorrow, the same shame, the same fear, the same trembling under the apprehension of the wrath of His Father, that we must have done.'—ED.]

22) Assuredly Olshausen s supposition is no decided improvement upon the old view that in this situation, namely, it was only the human ψγχή of Jesus that struggled, while the fulness of the divine life withdrew itself, and that thence it may be explained how an angel could have strengthened Him. But when Strauss criticises this view with strong observations, not wholly without reason (ii. p. 441), it is over looked that Olshausen has rightly referred to the special significance of the psychic element in this struggle, and that an infinitely great divine assistance, to which He is accustomed, truly fails to the man of the help and the sympathy of all souls not only fails, but is directly opposed to Him. Certainly the soul of Jesus had here especially to suffer, in that it bore, in a true struggle of all souls, the temptation of all souls, in the sympathy with the suffering of all souls. But how could it be so without the Spirit, without the spirit of its life in its unity with God,— especially when the soul was hindered on all sides, afflicted through and through? One might thus almost turn the passage of Olshausen round, and say that here the Spirit of Christ has asserted itself in the withdrawal of all inspiration, of all movements of soul. But, moreover, it may not be denied that even the soul of Christ operated here, just for the reason that it must struggle with all souls, but in the power of the Spirit.

23) See De Wette on Matt. xxvi. 36-46.

24) Neander shows very strikingly, against Strauss, that a change of moods, as occurring between the high-priestly prayer and the scene in Gethsemane, has in it nothing contradictory. He puts prominently forward, for instance, that such a change in the disposition of Jesus appears even in the single Synoptists, since every where in them the peaceful institution of the holy communion is placed before the painful contest in Gethsemane. But it is something altogether different to suppose not only a change of the moods, but also of the purposes of Jesus—of His fundamental thoughts upon the progress of His life. The former is not only possible, but necessary; the latter is opposed to the clear determination of the Lord.

25) See my treatise, Worte der Alwehr, p. 45.

26) Those who attack the doctrine of God s wrath have not only to contend with the Old Testament, but also with the New, e.g., with the passage Rom. i. 18. And not only with the New Testament itself, but also with the everlasting operation of the government of the divine righteousness, which corresponds to it. The rule of righteousness is revealed as wrath in the rhythmic process of development which it supposes in the substance of life in nature and history, even to the revelation of the critical catastrophe (ἀποκαλύπτεται ἀπ’ ούρανοῦ) in its victorious contest with the sin striving against it. The most simple religious glance must everywhere acknowledge this objectivity. To such catastrophes belong perhaps altogether peculiarly the moments in which the world, according to God's righteous judgment, advanced on its perverted way in sorrow and despondency. If Jesus thus experienced in Gethsemane, in the power of His sympathy, the sorrow and the despondency of the world, He thus experienced the wrath of God upon the world certainly not as God s wrath against Him. Besides, it is to be observed that the conception of wrath entirely corresponds with the conception of mercy; and that if the one is violated, so is the other also. Yea, if all that is purely human is capable of glorification by means of the divine, yet those who wish not to know of divine wrath, must find human wrath in all forms objectionable. But this is extremely uncertain. It is, however, undoubted that the divine wrath is not to be considered as human affection. This is true, moreover, of the conception of love, c., transferred to God. Finally, we must still make the fact prominent, that that is strictly the conception of the wrath which expresses the unity of the righteousness of God with His life and with His love. [On this comp. Augustin, De Trinitate, vi. 4-7. Turretin says (De Satisfactions Christi, ii. 5): Justitia et Misericordia nou sunt dugo res in Deo nedum contrariee, sed una eademque Dei essentia quae secundum objecta et effecta, diversa distinguitur, non in Be, sed respectu nostri, diciturque Misericordia cum liberat miseros, Justitia cum judicat reos. As to whether our Lord felt the wrath of God against Him, see Witsius, Animadversionee Irenicæ, cap. iii. It is there said, If by an offended and an angry mind, you mean a holy will to punish, Christ the Lord felt and bore the displeasure of God, and the weight of His wrath in the punishment of our sins, which were translated to Him.'—ED.]

27) Strauss, ii. 428.

28) Thus the history of the soul-passion of Jesus in Gethsemane has also a vast importance for general Christology. The separation of the monophysite and monothelite heresies from the doctrine of the Church finds here, as has been elsewhere observed, its strongest confirmation. At the same time, this place is of the greatest importance for Christian ethics. It testifies that heroical apathy does not belong to the original Christian ideal; that rather the moral power of the Christian is the divine, which is mighty in human weakness. See De Wette on Matt. 223.

29) 'Since Josephus declares that Titus in the siege had all the trees in the region round the city cut down to a distance of a hundred stadia.'—Tichendorf.