training; nay, it is most certain that they never did. So much meaning has our master, when charging it upon us, again and again, without our once conceiv ing possibly what depth of meaning he would have us find in his words-Deny thyself, take up thy cross and follow me.

XI.

CHRIST'S AGONY, OR MORAL SUFFERING.

"And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood fall· ing down to the ground."-LUKE Xxii, 44.

What Christian has not many times wished that he could lay hold of the precise condition and feeling of Jesus, in this very remarkable scene or chapter, commonly called his agony? And yet a suspicion may well be indulged that we not seldom push it quite away from us, and make it unrealizable, by dogmatic solutions that rather confound than solve it. Mystery, in some sense, it certainly is, and must be; for the person itself of Christ is, internally viewed, a mystery, and the what and how, of his personal pains, in what part they affect him, under what laws of intensity, and by what internal force he is able to support them, we can never know, till we understand his psychology itselfas we certainly shall not here on earth.

Still the agony is given us, because it can somehow be seen to be for us; yielding impressions of Christ and of God, manifested in him, which it is important for us to receive. And to receive these impressions from

it is, at least so far, to understand it. All the inore to be regretted is it, if we interpose theologic constructions that make it impossible to all receptive sympathy. Thus if we conceive, or dogmatically assume, that Christ is in this hour of distress, because the sin of the world is upon him, to be punitively treated in his person; that God withdraws judicially from him, to make him suffer, and that the "cup" over which he groans is the cup of God's eternal indignations; may it not be that we ourselves so far violate the subject matter, as to make it an offense to our most inborn convictions of right, and raise up mutinous questions that even forbid the discovery of its meaning to our hearts?

A much less artificial, tenderer, and, I think I shall be able to show, truer and more affecting conception of the agony is, that it rises naturally out of the perfect feeling, and the personal relations and exigences of the sufferer. Such a being, on such a mission, meeting such objects of feeling, at such a crisis, will have just this agony, without any infliction to produce it.

The facts of the scene briefly and freely related are these. The Saviour, attended by his disciples, goes up into a dell on the slope of Olivet, and enters a certain garden or olive-yard, where he had often before communed with them apart. He requires them to sit down. But there is something peculiar in his manner. A feel. ing of depression makes him droop in his action, and gives a drooping accent to his voice. He signifies to three of their number that he wants their company

while he goes forward a little way, to pray. Heretofore he has commonly sought to be alone in prayer, going apart at dead of night, and ascending this or that high mountain top, there to be closeted with God in solitude. The depression that before appeared now be comes a crushing weight upon him. In the language of the narrative, he begins to be sorrowful and very heavy. He speaks too, unable to suppress his feeling--"My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." And then he adds what indicates even greater anguish, such as almost takes away his self-possession-" do not leave me, do not sleep, stay here and watch with me!' He goes forward a few steps, falling upon his face, which is the eastern posture of extreme sorrow and despair, and there he cries aloud-"O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." He rises and turns back to his friends, but the weight is still heavy on his heart, and he throws himself again upon his face. And he does it again, even a third time. There is also given us, in the narrative made out by Luke, the pathology of his feeling-"And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground." Which is the same as to say, that the agony of feeling he was in was so intense that, under the laws of bodily affec tion, there were forced out, through the pores of the skin, large drops resembled to blood. An ancient wri ter reports the fact of a bloody sweat, or a sweat exceeding like to blood, produced by the bite in India of a poisonous serpent, and the same thing is reported, I

believe, as a result of certain bodily diseases that pro duce very intense suffering. But the symptom is none the less peculiar here, since it is not the effect of any poison, or physical pain, but of a purely meatal anguish.

Thus far, as relates to the agony, or crisis of pain itself, reported in the narrative. Other points relating to his conduct in the scene, will come into view as we inquire into the causes of the agony, and need not be recited. Whence and why, this very strange crisis of mental anguish? According to a very common inpression, as already intimated, the suffering has a judicial character, and is to be taken as a theologic factor, in a scheme of retributive justice. The conception is that Christ has somehow come into the place of transgressors, to receive upon his person what is due to them, and that God, accepting him in that office, launches upon him the abhorrence or displeasure, that is due to them; inflicting upon him, as it were, deserved pains, by withdrawing from him and letting fall upon him the horror of darkness under which he groans. The facts of the narrative have been so frequently, or even habitually, submitted to this construction, that our first concern will be to make a revision of the facts, ascer taining how far they give it their support.

Thus it is alleged, as a striking peculiarity of the scene, that the suffering appears, on a merely human footing, to be out of place. Before the arrest, in a quiet place out of the city, at a still hour of the night,