disciples of His approaching sufferings, he took Him and began to rebuke Him: "Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee." Christ's reply is memorable: "Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offence unto me for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men."

If we accept the narrative of Gethsemane, the difficulty of the problem of "life on earth," which Christ in His own casc had to solve, exceeds conception. His life was comprehended by God. All along its line must have run the echoes of the voice which was heard at baptism: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." But as He was "seen by angels," great even to them must have appeared "the mystery of godliness." To the world, with blinded mind and hardened heart, His life could not fail to be inexplicable. "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not."

Even had it been possible for Jesus to appear simply as God, with the splendours of divinity

sufficiently veiled for mortal eyes, He would not have been received by the world. If He had been only a man, though perfect, He would not have commanded the universal homage of His fellow-men. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not."

When the Divine and human natures were combined, when He who tabernacled among us was the Word made flesh, the difficulty of His life on the earth became immeasurably increased. There was continual danger either of His divinity seeming to narrow and discolour His humanity, or of His humanity appearing to contract and distort His divinity.

The difficulty rose to its highest pitch when, as Mediator, He became our Surety. A Being so composite necessarily subjects His character to the greatest possible strain.

Let us try to set before us some of the more prominent necessities imposed on Jesus Christ.

He must not for a moment cease to be God, and yet He must at all times be "found in fashion as a man." He must not for a moment

resign one jewel in His crown, and yet He must descend into depths of humiliation lower than man ever trod. At one and the same time Hc must be possessed of Divine and human attributes. He must be in possession of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence as God, and of their contraries as man. His Divine attributes must act in unison with His human, and His human with His Divine; and both must act in concert with the conditions of the great mission which He had come to fulfil. In Him there must be no sin, though "on him the Lord laid the iniquity of us all." At one and the same time He must be the Son and the servant of the Father; the worshipped and the worshipper ; King of kings, and yet Cæsar's subject; ruler of His enemies, and yet a captive in their hands.

Through the endless perilous mazes, which such necessities every instant imposed on Him, Jesus Christ threaded His wondrous way, and came forth crowned with victory. Every step He took in the garden of Gethsemane is a proof of this.

How grandly He solved the problem of the life which was set before Him, and bore the strain that was put upon His character, we may learn from the opinions formed regarding Him in His own and succeeding generations.

So thoroughly were His two natures, the Divine and human, united, and so harmoniously did they work together, that, for the most part, it is unsafe or even impossible for us to distinguish between their actings. So completely has He satisfied men of His humanity, that multitudes of keenest intellect have insisted that He was only man. So fully has He impressed men with the conviction that Hc was more than man, that from hosts of reluctant minds He has wrung the confession that He was "a Son of God." So entirely has Hc satisfied men of His Godhead, that the well-nigh universal voice of Christendom in all ages has been, "This is the Son of God." So lovingly did He carry men's sorrows, that, in His own time and ever since, He has been charged with human infirmitics out of harmony with perfec

tion. And yet so unspotted was His life, that, unrebuked He could give, and still gives, this challenge to the world: "Which of you convinceth" ("convicteth," R. V.) "me of sin?" So truly did He bear the sins of men, that, though God, as well as man, He groaned under the load of suffering which these sins entailed. And yet, so triumphantly did He bear them, that the multitude which no man can number, now in heaven, though He was man as well as God, staked their eternal destiny on washing their robes, and making them white in the blood of the Lamb.

On the supposition that Jesus was what the narrative of Gethsemane represents Him to be, what one thing should He, or could He, have done different from what He did? It is easy to say that during His agony the glory of His Godhead might have shone out more than it did. But how, then, could the Scripture have been fulfilled: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us"? When a child, forsaking the path of virtue, takes