Cup of Suffering There are gleams in the dark ness. Jesus refers to his expert- i ence as a "cup.” He had been speaking of a cup not two hours before, in the uppe. room, the cup of his blond Was it this cup I he prayed might pass from him'' I We make a mistake when we think of this in ill' : ely physical terms. In many a hospital there are patients who ha\e already suffered longer and more severe ly than Jesus could have, physical- i ly speaking, ail of Good Friday. It was his soul that was troubled, not his nerves, in Gethsemane The cup of suffering which he dreads d w.as mori than ing and nails. He was being ..re jected . . . rejected. Not a friend would stand by him All his work would come to an end. He had fought for time, but time was running out. He had come to his own, and his own people had not received*him. He was God s last word to men. and men had no re sponse but thorns and a cross. Other men have known rejection, but none have known it as he knew it. foi not anpthei man in history came to this each svo full of heaven as lie. Cup of Sacrifice The cup which ne dreaded was also the cup of sacrifice From earliest times, the Christian church has read the story of Geth semane and Calvary in the light of the prophecy in Isaiah 5.1: "He was wounded for our transgres sions. he was bruised for our in iquities." The weight of human sin lay darkly on his so il. It was not that in Gethsemane for the first time this had occurred to i him. Long ago he had spoken of giving his life a ransom for many The rejection of love is a sore thing to bear: but to . feel the weight of the sins of the world is something of which we do not even dare to think. He had always identified himself with sinners and with sufferers; but now he was going the last mile appointed to the suffering and the sinning. All the pain and all the perverseness of mankind fell upon him, a smothering cloud which in a few hours would even hide the face of God.

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