r of speaking, a manner which it is of
the highest importance to us fully to understand. And, secondly, I take
them as a text for the general lesson which they convey to us; their
mixture of condemnation and mercy; their view, at once looking backwards
and forwards, not losing sight of irreparable evils of a neglected past,
nor yet making those evils worse by so dwelling upon them as to forget
the still available future; not concealing from us the solemn truth,
that what is done cannot be undone, yet warning us also not to undo by a
vain despair that future which may yet be done to our soul's health.

First, a difficulty has been fancied to exist in the words, as if our
Lord had bade his disciples to do two contradictory things: telling
them, first, to sleep on and take their rust, and then saying, "Rise,
let us be going." And because in St. Luke's account, when our Lord
comes to his disciples the last time, his words are given thus, "Why
sleep ye? rise and pray, that ye enter not into temptation:" therefore,
as I have said, his words in the text have been translated, "Are ye
sleeping and resting for the remainder of the time?" Now, I should not
take up your time with things of this sort, where I believe our common
translation to be most certainly right, were it not for the sake of one
or two general remarks, which I think may not be out of place. It is a
general rule, that in passages not obscure, but appearing to contain
some moral difficulty, if I may so speak; that is, something which seems
inconsistent with our notions of God's holiness, or wisdom, or justice;
something, in short, of a stumbling-block, which we fear may occasion a
triumph to unbelievers; it is a rule, I say, that in passages of this
kind the difficulty is not to be met by departing from the
common-received translation. And the reason of this is plain; that had
not the commonly received translation in such cases been clearly the
right one, it would never have come to be commonly received. Amongst the
thousands of interpreters of Scripture, all, from the earliest time,
anxious to remove grounds of cavil from the adversaries of their faith,
a passage would never have been translated so as to afford such a
ground, if the right translation of it could have been different. Such
places are especially those in which the common translation needs not to
be suspected: and it is merely leading us astray from the true
explanation of the apparent difficulty, when