They neglected him. He had been asking a little thing of his Father. And God seemed to neglect him.

But one hour is not long to pray to God. Jesus had often prayed all night. So he goes back and prays again: the same monotonous prayer. How his holy spirit revolted at the coming accusations against him! How his heavenly experience abhorred the earth experience! In agony he asks if "his soul must be poured out unto death, and he be numbered with transgressors." Must he "be led as a lamb to the slaughter"? Must his soul be "made an offering for sin"? Must he bear so much; must God make him suffer a burden so heavy that it seemed as if all the sinners and criminals of all mankind, for all the ages, had been combining and concentrating their malignant depravity in the coming crime to be worked on him; "the iniquity of us all"?

"Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me."

But the two beings in this case were of like nature; they were divine. Therefore the Son says, "not my will, but thine, be done."

He returns to his disciples. He is bewildered at the dullness of the ear of his Father. A third time he goes to pray. He gives it up. He fully surrenders his will to God, as he said, and as he intended if God would not yield, and

as God knew he would. And how quickly an angel comes to strengthen him for drinking the cup, to be the Lamb of God, the heavenly victim furnished by heaven in the "new covenant," made strong and mighty by his blood!

O mount of sadness, thou Mount of Olives! There Jesus had to pray and watch alone.

But Mount Calvary was hospitable; there thieves suffered along with Jesus; and there a centurion kept guard; there the citizens of Jerusalem "gaped upon" him; there the riff-raff of the city and the rabble of the country, as they passed by, reviled him; and the priests sat down "and watched him there." But on the Mount of Olives Jesus had to pray and watch alone. Elijah was "left alone" (Rom. 11:3). O mountain of sadness, thou Mount of Olives!

Does this mean that every great life is a tragedy?

No: for God is good. Unto Jesus, the Mount of Olives became the mount of ascension. Because weeks after he rose from the dead he led his disciples out to the Mount of Olives, and while he was instructing them, and reproving them, and commanding them, and loving them, and restraining them, and blessing them, he ascended from their midst to a better home than earth; and angels explained to them that he would come again. They

should see him once more, when their eyes would not be sleepy.

Thou Mount of Olives, thou art not a mountain of sadness. Thou art a mountain of explanation. During the weeks that had passed since the rising of Jesus from the dead, so near the walls of Jerusalem, surely his pierced, but healed and immortal, feet must often have been attracted to the accustomed and loved paths of the mountain where some of his joys and sorrows had been felt. And if, O Olivet, near thy lower slope on the western side, his disciple Judas betrayed him, on thy height he ascended from the midst of his faithful apostles; which made the Mount of Olives no longer a mount of sadness, but a mount of illumination.

CALVARY

CAUSE OF THE CRY, "ELOI”

No man knows the exact location of Mount Calvary. We only assume that it was a hill, because of the word Golgotha, mentioned by Matthew, Mark and John, as meaning "the place of a skull." And yet that word may refer only to some protruding rock, or to some association of thought created by executions of criminals at that place. The phrase "Mount Calvary" is not Biblical; but came into use in the sixth century.

It is not surprising that the exact location is unknown: for a generation later the city was destroyed by the Romans; and centuries later the Emperor Hadrian took care to inclose the reconstructed city with walls built along lines different from the former ones, with a view to obliterating traces of historical localities.

Therefore all that we can reasonably say as to the location of Calvary is that it was probably on the northwestern side of the city of Jerusalem, close to the city entrance, and by a highway leading in from the country.

This obscuring of the location of the material Calvary harmonizes with the administration of God concerning some other material

things. Of Jesus himself, no picture was left. No description of his person, or physical habits, was attempted by either Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Even concerning the crucifixion we are left in ignorance as to some physical points. Not one of the writers makes any attempt to describe, or comment on, the They simply relate the history as witnesses. They make no appeal for pity for Jesus. They do not even hint that the place was sacred.

scene.

Have you ever noticed how God concealed the grave of Moses, how even the mountain where he died cannot positively be identified? how, also, we are not sure of the place of Mount Hor, where Aaron died? how the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, the place of Jesus' burial and resurrection, though said to be near to Calvary, is not truly identified? Have you

ever noticed how the bread and wine of the communion, which Jesus himself made symbolic of Calvary's central event, so little resemble a dying body and flowing blood, that we naturally, and without effort to reason upon it, recognize the symbol as symbol? Have you noticed how the Mount of Beatitudes (where the Sermon on the Mount was delivered) and the Mount of Transfiguration are not geographically located by the Gospels? Have you noticed that not one of the Bible writers