shadow of the cross so long darkening
His path is now closing in and enveloping Jesus. The big trees cast black
shadows against the brilliance of the full moon. Yet they are as bright
lights beside this other shadow, this inky shadow cast by the tree up
yonder, just outside the Jerusalem wall, with the huge limb sitting
sharply astride the trunk.

The scene under these trees has been spoken of by almost all, if not by
all, as a strange struggle. With a great variety of explanations men have
wondered why He agonized so. It _was_ a strange struggle, and ever will
be, not understood, strange to angels and to men and to demons. It is
strange to angels of the upper world, for they do not know, and cannot,
the terrific meaning of sin as did Jesus. It is strange to all other men
except Jesus, for we do not know the meaning of purity as Jesus did. And
it was strange to demons, for in the event of the morrow sin was working
out a new degree of itself, a new superlative, in its final attack on
Jesus. Sin was trying to strangle God. Even demons stared.

Purity refined beyond what angels knew, and sin coarsened beyond what
demons knew were coming together. Purity's finest and sin's coarsest were
coming together in the closest touch thus far, in this Man under those old
brown-barked gray-leaved, gnarly trees. The shock of such extremes meeting
would be terrific. It _was_ terrific here under the trees. It was yet more
so on the morrow. Here was the cross in anticipation. Calvary was in
Gethsemane.

Man never will understand the depth of Gethsemane. We are incapable of
sympathizing with Jesus here. Yet it is true that as the Holy Spirit
within a man increases the purity, and the horror of sin, there comes an
increasing sense of sympathy with Him, and an increasing appreciation that
we cannot go into the depths of what He knew here. In the best of us sin
is ingrained. Jesus was wholly free from taint or twist of sin. He knew it
only in others. Now He, the pure One, purity personified, was coming into
_closest_ contact with sin, and sin at its worst. He had been in contact
with sin in _others_. He had seen its cruel ravages and been indignant
against it.

Now, on the morrow, He is to know sin by a horrid intimacy of contact, and
sin at a new worst. He was yielding to its tightest hold. Sin at its
ugliest would stretch out its long, bony arms and gaunt hands, and fold
Him to itself in closest embrace and hold Him there. And He was all