h my Father hath given me to drink shall
I not drink it?" (John xviii. 11^b); and all the gospels exhibit the
marvellous quietness of spirit and dignity of self-surrender which
characterized Jesus throughout his trial and execution. In Gethsemane,
however, we see the struggle in which that calmness and self-mastery were
won.

197. It is unbecoming to consider that scene with any vulgar curiosity to
know what it was that made Jesus so draw back from the drinking of his
"cup." It is not unfitting, however, to recognize that in his cry, "Abba,
Father, all things are possible unto thee; remove this cup from me" (Mark
xiv. 36), an intense longing of his own soul's life had expression. There
was something in the fate which he saw before him from which his whole
being shrank. But stronger than this was his fixed desire to do his
Father's will. Here was supremely illustrated the truth that "he came down
from heaven, not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him"
(John vi. 38). The fullest allowance for the shrinking of the most
delicately constituted nature from pain and death completely fails to
account for this dread of Jesus. He was no coward, drawing back from
sufferings which for simple physical pain were over and again more than
matched by many of the martyrs to truth who preceded and followed him. He
himself declared to the sons of Zebedee that they should share a cup in
kind like unto his, suffering for the kingdom of God, for the salvation
of the world. Yet there is a difference evident between what others have
had to bear and the cup from which Jesus shrank. The death which now stood
before him in the path of obedience had in it a bitterness quite
unexplained by the pain and disappointment it entailed. That excess of
bitterness can probably never be understood by us. A hint of its nature
may be found in the "shame of the cross" which the author of Hebrews (xii.
2; xiii. 13) emphasizes, and in the "curse" of the cross which made it a
stumbling block to Paul and his Jewish brethren (Gal. iii. 13; I. Cor. i.
23). Jesus came from the garden ready to endure the cross in obedience to
his Father's will; but it was a costly obedience, a complete emptying of
himself (Phil. ii. 7, 8).

198. The loneliness of Jesus in his struggle is emphasized in the gospels
of Mark and Matthew. In search of sympathy he had confessed to the
disciples his trouble of heart, and had taken his three intimates with him
when he withdrew