Then follows the teaching which St. John preserves for us in chapters 14-16 of his Gospel. The comment tary they are so slow to understand upon the institution of the Lord's Supper. They leave the Upper Room and go-into the Temple, spending some time in the Temple court now almost deserted. And there Jesus Pours aut the wonderful prayer which St. John has recorded for us in the 17th chapter of his Gospel. And then the hour grows late. Like thousands of others who have come up for the Passover, since sleeping accommodation is not available in the city, they have planned to sleep in the open in the olive grove of one of the wealthier disciples, a favourite haunt of Jesus and the twelve, when at Jerusalem. They wend their way-across the brook Kedron to the Mount of Olives, "where there was a garden." The traditional spot is well known to visitors to Palestine. It is a walled garden, on the western slope of the Mount of Olives, its Cypress trees and eight venerable olive trees, and trim flower beds, all carefully tended by a community of Monks. Tradition says that are the very olive trees which were there at the time of Christ. Whether that be so or not, they are known to be at least 1300 years old, and probably date form the fixing of the location in the year 326. But if the visitor would visualize the setting of our Lord's Vigil in the garden, probably a truer idea would be gained from one of the Olive plated the death of agony upon the cross, and it was this cup which he begged his Father to take away.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.