man than He entered it. His forgiveness of injuries, and thus His
splendid benevolence, had not yet come to its climax and crown till He
said on the cross, 'Father, forgive them'. And, as He was, so are we in
this world. This world's evil and ill-desert made it but the better
arena and theatre for the development and the display of His moral
character; and the same instruments that fashioned Him into the perfect
and express image He was and is, are still, happily, in full operation.
Take that divinest and noblest of all instruments for the carving out and
refining of moral character, the will of God. How our Lord made His own
unselfish and unsinful will to bow to silence and to praise before the
holy will of His Father, till that gave the finishing touch to His always
sanctified will and heart! And, happily, that awful and blessed
instrument for the formation of moral character is still active and
available to those whose ambition rises to moral character, and who are
aiming at heaven in all they do and all they suffer upon the earth.
Gethsemane has gone out till it has covered all the earth. Its cup, if
not in all the depth and strength of its first mixture, still in quite
sufficient bitterness, is put many times in life into every man's hand.
There is not a day, there is not an hour of the day, that the disciple of
the submissive and all-surrendered Son has not the opportunity to say
with his Master, If it be possible, let this cup pass: nevertheless, not
as I will, but as Thou wilt.

It is not in the great tragedies of life only that character is tested
and strengthened and consolidated. No man who is not himself under God's
moral and spiritual instruments could believe how often in the quietest,
clearest, and least tempestuous day he has the chance and the call to
say, Yea, Lord, Thy will be done. And, then, when the confessedly tragic
days and nights come, when all men admit that this is Gethsemane indeed,
the practised soul is able, with a calmness and a peace that confound and