shade of his favourite retreat in the garden of Gethsemane, with slow and faltering steps. We hear his heavy complaint, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." With Peter, James, and John he withdraws from the rest of the disciples. He would pray alone, and he retires still farther into the dark recesses of the garden that he may do so; but full well he knows how likely he is to be disturbed and attacked in his retirement; and he, therefore, entreats his companions to watch while he prays. See him kneeling down, and then falling on his face to the ground; but alas! too restless in the agony of his mind to continue praying, from time to time he rises up, and returns to his three disciples, to know if they had given heed to his entreaties, and kept watch. Again and again he retires to pray, but his prayer is the same short form of words, so expressive of the emotions of his agonized spirit. And ah! see the sweat falling from his body, as he prays, in large drops of blood, to the ground; and behold an angel supporting his exhausted frame, and lifting up his languid head: all here is weakness, the utter weakness of a mere man, and that man is Jesus; but his weakness is the helplessness of a man of prayer: of one who has been graciously pleased to appear as our example in seasons of trial and suffering, while as God the Son, he is revealed as travelling in the greatness of his strength, and treading the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God alone.

See also in the example of our blessed Lord on this occasion, the effect of prayer. The calm and perfect self-possession with which Jesus went forth from the garden to confront his enemies, was so commanding, that when they saw him, they fell back even to the ground; and the bold, bad men to whom the pale, exhausted Sufferer gave himself up, shrunk awe-struck and speechless from the presence of their own prisoner, strong in the strength of answered prayer, "strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might." My thoughtful reader, would you learn the way of wisdom? You have in this little volume set before you the way of the wisest, the very Wisdom of God incarnate; for Christ was, and is, the Wisdom of God. Would you know the best, the holiest, in a word, the prevailing way? Here you shall study, and from hence you shall rise up" strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might;" you shall drink in from these meditations on his sufferings, his humiliation, and his death; his deep abhorrence of sin, his helpless and child-like dependence upon the strength of the Mightiest, made perfect in the weakness of the manhood, and at the same time that quiet, but unflinching resoluteness by which he set his face like a flint, and went forward till he stood up more than a conqueror over all the vaunted powers of death and hell. Alas! they little know how much they lose who are not men of prayer. Who is there that does not know that there are

seasons in this mortal pilgrimage when the spirit of man must mourn alone, would suffer even to agony alone, if no help but human help were to be found? There are troubles which no friend could understand, peculiar, doubtless, to every human being, with which He who made the heart alone can sympathize. Blessed be God! we have a compassionate Saviour, one who has been tempted in all points like as we are, and who is still touched with the feeling of our infirmities. The man that really knows himself, oh, how often will he feel with righteous Job,-the more I become acquainted with my own heart, the more do "I loathe and abhor myself;" and not only does this knowledge of what I am, fill me with a hatred and a horror of myself, but the more knowledge and acquaintance I have with myself, myself alone, the more disordered my mind becomes, the less I know of peace and rest! Those who have brooded much over their own thoughts, will probably agree with me as to the truth of this observation. Blessed and happy are those who can also agree with me, in saying, O God, my God, the more I know of thee, the more I know of peace; thou hast said, and I have found it true, "Acquaint thyself with me, and be at peace."

To those who have read the life of the Rev. F. A. A. Gonthier, the following pages will possess a peculiar interest. There have been few such sufferers as that gentle and devoted minister of our

blessed Lord. The following pages were his last work; they are introduced to his readers by his nephew and editor, in these few and simple words :"This small volume, is but an imperfect sketch. He who worked at it was removed from among us, and received into the courts above, before he could finish it. He died in peace, the eye of faith fixed upon the cross of Christ, and pointing it out to all around him. The following pages are intended to cast a few rays of light on the path of those who are journeying towards that same object;-they are a few glimpses of a boundless landscape ;-a few more words addressed by the Rev. F. A. A. Gonthier to those who seek with all their soul, as he did, to increase in that knowledge which is alone worth acquiring the knowledge of the love of God."

In the words of an old writer, the celebrated Miles Coverdale, when writing on the same subject, I would conclude by saying, "God graunt that all they which reade this little booke, and consider this matter, may so burne in love and fervent devotion, that they may continue and live in Christ, and He in them for ever. Amen."

ST. PETER'S, CHESTER,

Sept. 1839.

CHARLES B. TAYLER.

THE

SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST.

I.

JESUS ON HIS WAY TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES.

JESUS was about to accomplish the great work of our redemption. Full of the thought of it, "He went forth," as St. John tells us, over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which he entered, and his disciples," John xviii. 1.

The brook Cedron, celebrated in Scripture, flowed through a valley which separated Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, which was on the east side of the city. It was the same brook which David had crossed when he fled from his capital, followed by the most faithful of his servants, to avoid falling into the hands of his son

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