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Updated: May 31, 2025
Star of the East, the horizon adorning, Guide where the infant Redeemer is laid." Why, tender and pitying Saviour, do we wait for the night time of sorrow to fathom the depths of thy love and compassion? Why must every fountain of earthly joy be dried up, before we bow to taste the waters of Kedron; and every blossom of love be withered, before we follow thee to the garden of Gethsemane?
Then come those long quiet talks, in which Jesus speaks out the very heart of His heart, and that marvellous prayer so simple and so bottomless. Very likely He is talking, as they move quietly along the Jerusalem streets, out of the gate leading toward the Kedron brook, and then over the brook toward the enclosed spot, full of the great old olive trees. The moon is at the full.
Meanwhile, our blessed Lord instituted the new Passover, the Communion by which all the faithful should be enabled to partake of the great Sacrifice; then He went out to the garden, among the grey olives which still stand beside the brook Kedron, and there, after His night of Agony, He was betrayed by a kiss, and dragged before the High Priest, under an accusation of blasphemy; but as the Sanhedrim had not power of life and death, and such a charge would have mattered little to a Roman, a political offence was invented to bring before Pilate.
The morning was cold and cloudy, and we hurried on over the hills to a fountain in the valley of the Brook Kedron, where we breakfasted. Before we had reached Bethany a rain came down, and the sky hung dark and lowering over Jerusalem, as we passed the crest of Mount Olivet. It still rains, and the filthy condition of the city exceeds anything I have seen, even in the Orient. The City of Christ.
In reality, opposite it rose the Mount of Olives, and between the two there was the deep gorge of the Valley of the Kedron. The Prophet smooths it all out into one great plain, and high above all towers the Temple-mount, and from it there rushes down on to the low levels the fertilising, life-giving flood.
The town on the mountain rose up dark and still; no sound was to be heard except the rippling of the brook Kedron in the valley. Jesus stood and looked up through the trees towards heaven. He breathed heavily, and drops of perspiration stood on His brow. He felt a great agony, an agony He had never before known. Had He not often thought of death, and in His mind felt quite reconciled to it?
But certainly the valley of the Kedron was desolate and mournful in the extreme, as we first saw it. Nor was Olivet less so. The echo of forfeited promises seemed to fill my ear; the shades of lost glory seemed to tenant all those ways and hillsides.
My readers will not attach a high degree of accuracy to this statement, for there does not appear in reality to have been any convulsion of the Order; there was indeed more rejoicing in Jerusalem than lamentation in the tents of Kedron.
There are moments when we must be alone, and Tancred had fixed upon this hour for visiting Gethsemane, because he felt assured that no one would be stirring. Descending Mount Sion, and crossing Kedron, he entered the sacred grove. The Lady of Bethany THE sun had been declining for some hours, the glare of the earth had subsided, the fervour of the air was allayed.
Think of the contrast between the joyous revelry of the festival-keeping city and the sadness of the little company which crossed the Kedron and passed beneath the shadow of the olive-trees into the moonlit garden. Jesus needed companions there; but He needed solitude still more.
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