Third Thought.-"The spirit is ready, but the flesh is weak." What did the ready spirit of the Apostles avail them when Peter denied and all fled? It brought Peter to compunction, and all of them back to loyalty. We never fail to discover, as we go on in the Christian life, how weak the flesh is. Is the ready spirit, the ecstasy of devotion, the rapture of praise, the rigour of self-denial, the zeal of good works, within us, all in vain? The ready spirit is only not in vain when it is waging good battle with the weak flesh. Persistence in penitence; systematic effort to bind ever more and more securely our recalcitrant desires and appetites, that their weakness be not taken advantage of by the enemy; stedfast building up of the whole natural man in ways of obedience and selfrestraint in things lawful, as well as those unlawful-such striving wins. The battle must be life-long, nevertheless the victory always remains with the ready spirit if it fail not to persevere.

CIX.

"And when He returned, He found them asleep again (for their eyes were heavy), neither wist they what to answer Him. And He cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough, the hour is come: behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand."-St. Mark xiv. 40-42.

Exposition.-Swete says: "The time for watchfulness and prayer had gone by, and the injunction is not repeated: in place of it comes a permission to sleep. The permission is surely ironical; sleep then, since it is your will to do

so; rest if you can. . . His irony has produced the desired effect, the Apostles are aroused, and the Lord at once reverts to His customary tone of serious direction. . . The call to go cannot be intended to suggest flight, for the Lord had always reserved Himself for this hour, and had now finally embraced the divine will concerning it. On the arrival of Judas, the

Lord went forth to meet him, and called the three to accompany Him."

And St. Chrysostom: "Wherefore came He the second time? In order to reprove them, for that they were so drowned in despondency, as not to have any sense even of His presence. He did not however reprove them, but stood apart from them a little, showing their unspeakable weakness, that not even when they had been rebuked, they were able to endure. But He doth not awake and rebuke them again, lest He should smite them that were already smitten, but He went away and prayed, and when He is come back again, He saith, Sleep on now, and take your rest. And yet then there was need to be wakeful, but to show that they will not bear so much as the sight of the dangers, but will be put to flight and desert Him from their terror, and that He hath no need of their succour, and that He must by all means be delivered up, Sleep on now, He saith, and take your rest; behold the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. He shows again that what is done belongs to a divine dispensation: but He doth not this only, but also, by saying, into the hands of sinners, He cheers up their minds, showing that it was the effect of their wickedness, not of His being liable to any charge. Rise, let us

be going; behold he is at hand that doth betray me. For by all means He taught them that the matter was not of necessity, nor of weakness, but of some secret dispensation. For, as we see, He foreknew that Judas would come, and so far from flying, He even went to meet him.”

Isaac Williams says: "There is an apparent discrepancy in our Lord's words, for He first tells them to sleep on, and afterwards to arise. St. Augustine suggests that our Lord was silent after speaking the first words, and, after a short interval, added the latter sentence. But the more obvious way of understanding it seems to be to suppose our Lord's first words are meant as a gentle reproof, and, as Theophylact expresses it, are spoken ironically, if we may venture to apply such a term to our Lord's words. And this is confirmed by finding that our Lord does so speak by His prophets, when something else is implied besides that which the words, taken literally, would signify."

And Stier: "It is certainly a rebuking word, so Lange says, taking it as a question, Do ye thus sleep through the time and take your rest? meaning, Are ye then thus full of sleep throughout to the end? But a rebuking word in the most rigorous sense, this final, and sorrowfully-gentle, condemnation of the Lord cannot be called. It is sorrow and His gentleness

which dictate the ironical form; and only in this latter is the reproving element, which cannot be evaded. In Bengel's, 'with tenderness and severity', the former must have the emphasis; there is no anger to be thought of, now when immediately after His own sharp conflict the Lord's heart has no room for anything but the deepest sympathy and feeling for our infirmities. The Saviour in Gethsemane knows only of sinners in simple contrast with His own holiness; so that He here, as everywhere else, places Himself as the one Son of man in contradistinction to all sinners. If it had been said, the Messiah, we might have been justified in thinking of the heathen. Those to whom He was immediately betrayed were rather the Jews, the high priests and rulers, to whom He Himself ascribed the greater sin. The keenest point of the sin which was permitted thus to come upon Him was the fact of His being betrayed by the traitor, the worst of all sinners of him He thinks especially; he was in His mind when He said, The Son of man is betrayed, before He directly mentions him as he draws near at the head of the multitude. To utter this with deepest grief and yet with the calmest resignation, to go forth and meet this traitor, and these sinners' hands-this was the point to which He had strengthened His