r, _Syria and Palestine_,
p. 82.]

[Footnote 7: Jos., _B.J._, II. xiv. 3, VI. ix. 3.]

[Footnote 8: John xii. 20, and following.]

[Footnote 9: Matt. xxi. 17; Mark xi. 11.]

[Footnote 10: Matt. xxi. 17, 18; Mark xi. 11, 12, 19; Luke xxi. 37,
38.]

A deep melancholy appears, during these last days, to have filled the
soul of Jesus, who was generally so joyous and serene. All the
narratives agree in relating that, before his arrest, he underwent a
short experience of doubt and trouble; a kind of anticipated agony.
According to some, he suddenly exclaimed, "Now is my soul troubled. O
Father, save me from this hour."[1] It was believed that a voice from
heaven was heard at this moment: others said that an angel came to
console him.[2] According to one widely spread version, the incident
took place in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus, it was said, went about
a stone's throw from his sleeping disciples, taking with him only
Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and fell on his face and prayed.
His soul was sad even unto death; a terrible anguish weighed upon him;
but resignation to the divine will sustained him.[3] This scene, owing
to the instinctive art which regulated the compilation of the
synoptics, and often led them in the arrangement of the narrative to
study adaptability and effect, has been given as occurring on the last
night of the life of Jesus, and at the precise moment of his arrest.
If this version were the true one, we should scarcely understand why
John, who had been the intimate witness of so touching an episode,
should not mention it in the very circumstantial narrative which he
has furnished of the evening of the Thursday.[4] All that we can
safely say is, that, during his last days, the enormous weight of the
mission he had accepted pressed cruelly upon Jesus. Human nature
asserted itself for a time. Perhaps he began to hesitate about his
work. Terror and doubt took possession of him, and threw him into a
state of exhaustion worse than death. He who has sacrificed his
repose, and the legitimate rewards of life, to a great idea, always
experiences a feeling of revulsion when the image of death presents
itself to him for the first time, and seeks to persuade him that all
has been in vain. Perhaps some of those touching reminiscences which
the strongest souls preserve, and which at times pierce like a sword,
came upon him at this moment. Did he remember the clear fountains of
Galilee where he was wont to