March 9

Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane.—Matthew 26:36.

CHRIST, when he had finished his last supper, immediately went out into the Mount of Olives. Near this mount was the garden of Gethsemane; the name signifies a press for olives. It has its situation at the foot of that fruitful mountain. An excellent writer has the following interesting and beautiful observations on the subject:—"Beholding our lord retire to this garden, on this solemn night, the last he spent on earth, our minds are filled with the solemnity of the scene. The brook Kedron, over which he passed, is supposed to derive its name from the cedars that overshadowed it, though others, with more probability, derive it from the darkness of the shade created there by the surrounding vegetation. It has been said, and its situation with regard to the temple confirms the assertion, that the blood of the victims slaughtered at the foot of God's altar flowed into that brook so that, in passing it, Jesus might see the moonbeams reflected from the crimson stream, which, as it murmured along the valley, called to the Saviour's mind the blood that would shortly burst from his heart, which should be offered up a sacrifice for our sins." * The place of the Saviour's agony, being a garden, is calculated to remind us that the fall of man and the ruin of our race took place in a garden. In Eden the First Adam sinned: in Gethsemane the Second Adam made his soul an offering for that sin. By the sin of the First Adam we lost the terrestrial Eden, the paradise on earth; by the sufferings of the Second Adam, Eden is retrieved, we have paradise regained, and free access to the tree of life, which is in the midst thereof.

"In a garden man was placed,

Meet abode for innocence,

With his Master's image graced;

Sin crept in and drove him thence.

Through the world a wretch undone,

Seeking rest and finding none.

* Bennett's Lectures, vol. ii, 332

In a garden on that night,

When our Saviour was betrayed,

With what world-redeeming might

In his agony he prayed!

Till he drank the vengeance up,

And with mercy filled the cup."

J. MONTGOMERY.

While we mourn over sin which expelled us from the earthly Eden, let us exercise faith in the efficacy of Christ's suffering in Gethsemane, and joyfully hope for the final possession of the Paradise above the skies.