The Gethsemane of Life.
By Dean Farrar
For every one of us sooner or later, the Gethsemane of life must come. It may be the Gethsemane of struggle and poverty and care; it may be the Gethsemane of long and weary sickness; it may be the Gethsemane of farewells that wring the heart by the death-beds of those we love; it may be the Gethsemane of remorse and well-nigh despair for sins that we will not, but which we say we can not, overcome. Well, my brethren, in that Gethsemane—aye, even in that Gethsemane of sin—no angel merely, but Christ Himself, who bore the burden of our sins, will, if we seek Him, come to comfort us. He will if, being in an agony, we pray. He can be touched, He is touched, with the feeling of our infirmities. He, too, has trodden the wine-press of agony alone; He, too, has lain face downward in the night upon the ground, and the comfort which then came to Him, He has bequeathed to us—even the comfort, the help, the peace, the recovery, the light of hope, the faith, the sustaining arm, the healing anodyne of prayer.—Dean Farrar.