who wert to be Death’s Conqueror, is so great at its approach?
But be thou blessed for ever, my Jesus, because it was for the consolation of thy weak members that thou didst take upon thee those marks of weakness, that the weakness of the flesh may not cast us into despair, when the spirit is willing to suffer and to die.
Ah, Lord! remember that vehement sorrow, that fear, that dread, that terrible anguish, which, on the very eve of thy most bitter Passion, rushed in like floods of water upon thy soul, so that, falling prostrate on the ground, thou besoughtest of thy Father that this chalice might pass from thee!
Remember that most cruel agony, and that, alas! most bitter conflict, with which thou hadst to struggle with death, on that most woful night, which wrung, oh, how forcibly! from thy whole Body thy Bloody Sweat.
Remember, O Lord, what all this was for. Assuredly it was for us men, and for our salvation. Time indeed shall be when I too shall come to that hour; when I too shall enter into that garden, that field of battle, and have to combat with death. Alas! O Lord, what will become of me then? Without thy aid I shall not be able to hold out; unless thou, who invitest all who labour and are heavy burdened to come to thee for refreshment, be with me, and fight for me, I must fail and yield my ground.
I too, indeed, am ready to drink of thy chalice: for how shall I, that am a sinner, refuse it, when thou, the innocent Lamb, hast been the first to drink it? I dare not, then, pray to escape it: but I do earnestly pray thee, O Lord, to temper for me this cup, and so to assuage its bitterness from the fountain of thy grace and consolation, that I may neither dread it nor shrink from it: for by thy grace I can do all things, if thou strengthen me. But oh, how goodly is the inebriating chalice of thy glory! Oh, the plenty with which the Elect shall be inebriated with the House of God! Oh, the torrent of the pleasure of which thou shalt give thy friends to drink! What is there that this hope and expectation will not make easy, pleasant, and sweet? Surely all that is hard and heavy in our tribulation is made light by that eternal weight of glory!
But in this, O Lord, not my will, but thine be done. I ask not for a gentle and easy death; but for one which thou wiliest and knowest will be for thy greater glory and my own salvation. All this I commit to thy love and
