[Footnote 4:  Matt. xxi. 1, and following; Mark xi. 1, and following; Luke xix. 29, and following; John xii. 12, and following.]

[Footnote 5:  Luke xix. 38; John xii. 13.]

[Footnote 6:  The number of 120,000, given by Hecataeus (in Josephus, Contra Apion, I. xxii.), appears exaggerated.  Cicero speaks of Jerusalem as of a paltry little town (Ad Atticum, II. ix.) The ancient boundaries, whichever calculation we adopt, do not allow of a population quadruple of that of the present time, which does not reach 15,000.  See Robinson, Bibl.  Res., i. 421, 422 (2d edition); Fergusson, Topogr. of Jerus., p. 51; Forster, Syria and Palestine, p. 82.]

[Footnote 7:  Jos., B.J., II. xiv. 3, VI. ix. 3.]

[Footnote 8:  John xii. 20, and following.]

[Footnote 9:  Matt. xxi. 17; Mark xi. 11.]

[Footnote 10:  Matt. xxi. 17, 18; Mark xi. 11, 12, 19; Luke xxi. 37, 38.]

A deep melancholy appears, during these last days, to have filled the soul of Jesus, who was generally so joyous and serene.  All the narratives agree in relating that, before his arrest, he underwent a short experience of doubt and trouble; a kind of anticipated agony.  According to some, he suddenly exclaimed, “Now is my soul troubled.  O Father, save me from this hour."[1] It was believed that a voice from heaven was heard at this moment:  others said that an angel came to console him.[2] According to one widely spread version, the incident took place in the garden of Gethsemane.  Jesus, it was said, went about a stone’s throw from his sleeping disciples, taking with him only Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and fell on his face and prayed.  His soul was sad even unto death; a terrible anguish weighed upon him; but resignation to the divine will sustained him.[3] This scene, owing to the instinctive art which regulated the compilation of the synoptics, and often led them in the arrangement of the narrative to study adaptability and effect, has been given as occurring on the last night of the life of Jesus, and at the precise moment of his arrest.  If this version were the true one, we should scarcely understand why John, who had been the intimate witness of so touching an episode, should not mention it in the very circumstantial narrative which he has furnished of the evening of the Thursday.[4] All that we can safely say is, that, during his last days, the enormous weight of the mission he had accepted pressed cruelly upon Jesus.  Human nature asserted itself for a time.  Perhaps he began to hesitate about his work.  Terror and doubt took possession of him, and threw him into a state of exhaustion worse than death.  He who has sacrificed his repose, and the legitimate rewards of life, to a great idea, always experiences a feeling of revulsion when the image of death presents itself to him for the first time, and seeks to persuade him that all has been in vain.  Perhaps some of those touching reminiscences which