Travel
Diary of Mrs. R.P. Eaton:
Europe,
Egypt, and Palestine, ca. 1857
A few roads to the south east brings us to another corner of the enclosure of Gethsemmane, on the lower slope of Olivet. A stone wall, roughly stuccoed, and about seven feet high, surrounds the Garden. The space enclosed contains perhaps a third of an acre. We pass along the north wall, turn the corner, and find, near the south and of the east wall, a low door on gate, the only entrance. This is locked, but a few raps thereon brings a monk. Who lives in a little apartment in the Garden, and he politely gives us admission.
We are now in the Garden, and the scenes of our Saviour’s agony and betrayal throng upon the mind with indescribable solemnity and power. Jesus praying, Jesus suffering, the cup of anguish, and the traitor’s kiss— how vividly they reappear! We can scarcely think of anything else. We care not for the tradition that points out the precise spot or grotto where Jesus prayed, the rocky bank where the tree apostles slept, and the place of the betrayal. We know they were all near, and we give ourselves up to the great and awful realities they witnessed.
--------------------------------After we had been nearly two hours in the Garden, our little party got together in a retired place, near the western wall where we might renew more minutely the Solemn memories of this hallowed spot. We sat alone, affected with its powerful and tender associations— our tearful interest all the while profoundly increasing as I read aloud, one after another, the several accents in the Gospel of our dear Saviour’s agony here, and concluded by reading the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. Our tears flowed more freely. So overpowering were our emotions, that I could hardly read audibly. I never had such a near view of Christ before— of His majestic holiness and Devine glory— of His infinite-pity-tenderness and love— of the unspeakable intensity of His sufferings and sorrows— of the importance and greatness of His atoning work— of the terrible guiltiness and ill desert of sin in the sight of God— of my own unutterable unworthiness and sinfulness, and the sweet, glorious preciousness of Jesus as a Saviour. I never before felt such a personal nearness to Him, or had such a vivid sense of His enduring all that unsearchable agony for me. If I had not then been concious of a sweet hope in that suffering Saviour, a loving reliance upon Him, and a personal interest in