CHAPTER IX.

GETHSEMANE.

"To put on clouds instead of light,
And cloath the morning-starre with dust,

Was a translation of such height,

As, but in thee, was ne'er exprest.

"Ah, my dear Lord! what couldst thou spye
In this impure rebellious clay,

That made thee thus resolve to dye
For those that kill thee every day?

"O, what strange wonders could thee move
To slight thy precious bloud and breath?
Sure it was Love, my Lord; for Love

Is only stronger far than death."

VAUGHAN.

Ir will doubtless occur to the reader, that the foregoing argument is not complete. It will not be forgotten that the Saviour was tempted in all respects as we are, and if temptation can arise only from indwelling evil, how could it occur to him who was the impersonation of Unsullied Purity?

We recur to the distinction, already, we trust, made sufficiently broad and clear, between sin and innate proclivities to sin. For the first we are guilty, - for the last, never, till they have passed into voluntary action. Those who ignore this distinction, and make "sin a nature," fixing moral guilt upon

innate proclivities, may well bring their speculations to a pause in view of the temptations of the desert and Gethsemane. In that presence we file our denial of a theology, which not only contradicts the moral sentiment of mankind, but in its last logical sequence would bring an imputation upon the Divine Sufferer himself. There can be no temptation, without inhering proclivities to wrong. If they are sin, what mean the temptations of the Son of Man?

They are not sin. But we go further than this. There may be a case, where to be tempted implies not only the absence of sin, but the highest goodness and mercy; for it may be a means of securing the weak and the fallen from moral ruin.

Suppose a fire to occur at midnight, when some helpless family wakes up and finds itself surrounded with crackling timbers. Kind neighbors assemble. They beckon to the sufferers to come forth. They speak words of encouragement and sympathy. But what does all this avail? for the distracted parents have retreated with their little ones to the last spot which is unconsumed, and while the fire begins to eat upon their flesh, they send forth in vain their cries for deliverance. At that moment the crowd, whose terrified faces reflect the glare that is flung over them, part asunder, and some being, in the calm strength of mercy, walks through the blaze, and, while the flames like the tongues of demons are darting around him, leads forth the family unharmed from their falling habitation. Which was the good man, he who stood aloof with kind words and wish

es, or he who came into the actual condition of the sufferers, that he might be their saviour and deliverer? Doubtless the latter.

An angel might have descended from heaven and proclaimed the gospel message from the tops of the mountains, and then returned and beckoned us after him to the skies. We should have gazed after him into heaven, and mused awhile upon the beautiful vision, which would have had no more effect in accomplishing our deliverance, than a remembered dream. We are not angels, and how could we follow him in his flight? This natural man we dwell in had become inflamed with every desire and passion that could destroy the soul. Then Jesus Christ assumed this very nature, with all its cumulative evil, — came down into our fleshly habitation and dwelt in it, that he might deliver us out of it unharmed. He took on him the seed of Abraham, that he might feel all the temptations which we do, and conquer them, take up all our experience into his, and place upon himself all the burdens of our humanity. "He placed his shoulder beneath the rushing ruin, that he might lift it up into its eternal rest."

And how does Christ deliver us by thus assuming our nature and being touched with the feeling of our infirmities? In two ways.

Here first comes in all the efficacy which we ascribe to the example of the Saviour. It were no example to us, no revelation of human perfection, unless it exhibited to us human nature under temptation and suffering, which have so large a place in

our earthly probation. We want a pure and perfect ideal, shining aloft like a guiding star, that we may know in what direction we are to go. We might strive ever so much after perfection, but we should strive blindly, unless the lost ideal were restored to us. We want not only strength to walk firm, but light to show the way; and hence we look to Christ that we may "follow him in the regeneration." By assuming our nature, he became conscious of all the propensities to wrong that assail us, and by resisting these in his own person till they were slain and banished, his nature was glorified till all its powers were the perfect media of the indwelling Divinity. This is a heaven-drawn picture of our regeneration. We resist the lower, or rather the outward nature, with its hereditary corruptions, till those corruptions cease to be, and then the outward man, instead of being opposed to the inward, becomes the clear medium through which its pure energies are manifested and poured abroad.

The same conflict was in him that there is in us,and when the conflict ceased he could say, "I and my Father are one"; "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him";- for then his humanity transmitted only the Holy Spirit, and was the unimpeded forth-going of the Godhead. So in his follower when regenerated, the whole outward man mirrors forth unclouded the graces of the inhabiting angel.

Again, there is no reason to doubt that these scenes of temptation and suffering prepared him for the grand work of Mediation which we have already

described. The influence which comes to us now out of his glorified nature, is adapted tenderly and effectively to our various needs, because he has risen out of this same condition, and can hold communion with us in every stage of our progress. He was not a man, but The Man. His is the all-comprehensive humanity. What but sin can come into our experience, which his experience has not embraced and taken up? Infancy with all its infolded germs, and manhood with all its conscious proclivities, are here included.

Out of a humanity, therefore, full-orbed and entire, the Comforter now comes to man. And all the Bethlehems, the deserts, the Gethsemanes, and the Calvarys of human life, are spanned by its warmth and effulgence. All conditions, from birth to death, have the Divine aid diversified and meted out to them. All experiences, from the lowest to the highest, have the Divine strength brought home to them in its tender and infinite adaptations. In that he hath "suffered, being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted"; and hence the omnipresence of a Saviour's love, that finds us from the first inspiration of our infant breath to its last expiration in the gasp of dissolution. If God were to approach us in his unveiled and awful essence, we should perish in the blinding and consuming splendors. But coming to us out of the Glorified Sufferer, we receive of his fulness, grace for his grace, virtue answering to his virtue, till the sweet image of the Crucified has copied itself into our lowly and obedient souls.