“‘Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives,’” said Clara, who had learned this verse in her Sunday lesson, “and it is the first verse of the eighth chapter of St. John.”

“And the verse just before it, at the end of the seventh chapter,” replied her governess, “says that ‘every man went unto his own house,’ but ‘Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.’  In another place it is said that ‘at night he went out and abode in the Mount of Olives,’ and in still another that he ‘continued all night in prayer to God,’ probably on the same mountain.”

“And can people really go and see the very same Mount of Olives now?” asked Malcolm, eagerly.

“The very same,” was the reply, “except, as I just read to you, many of the olive trees that gave it its name are no longer there.  The Garden of Gethsemane, too, the most sacred spot near the mountain, is much changed, and a traveler who saw it lately says: 

“’At the foot of the Mount of Olives is a garden enclosed by a wall.  There are paths and there are plots of flowers, the work of loving hands in recent years.  The flowers speak of to-day, but there are olive trees in the garden that testify of the history of far-away years.  Their venerable trunks, gnarled and rugged, are like the rough, marred binding of old books, shutting in a history going back to a far-off date.

“’On one side of this garden slope upward the terraces of the Mount of Olives—­terraces that are cultivated to-day even as the slopes of Olivet have been cultivated for generations and centuries.  The other side of the garden looks toward the eastern wall of Jerusalem.  Deep down in its shadowy bed, between the wall and the garden, lies the ravine of the Kedron.

[Illustration:  GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE.]

“’If you visit that garden and look upon its old olive trees, the keeper of the place will tell you that you are in Gethsemane, the spot of our Saviour’s betrayal.  He will point out the “Grotto of the Agony,” the place where the disciples slumbered, and that where Judas, before his brethren, ceased publicly to be a follower and became the betrayer of Jesus.  Some things you very naturally may question as the guardian of the enclosure tells his story.  Whether any one of the venerable olive trees ever threw its shadow across the prostrate form of Jesus is more than doubtful, but that these trees are burdened with the history of centuries all must concede.  “Gethsemane” means “oil-press,” and olive trees long ago gave Olivet its name.  That somewhere in this neighborhood the Saviour suffered cannot be doubted, and within that closed wall may have been the very spot where he bowed in his agony, and where he heard the tongue of Judas utter his treacherous “Rabbi!” and where he felt the serpent-breath of the traitor as that traitor kissed him.’”

Miss Harson read of this solemn spot in a low, reverent tone; and the little audience were very quiet, until at last Clara said,