From base to summit, the Mount of Olives is garnished over with olive trees. Now, as through past ages, the olives are gathered and poured into a rock-hewn vat in the mountain side. The vat before me is well filled. In it are an old, gray-bearded man and a sprightly young maiden, walking round and round, side by side, treading the olives with their bare feet, pressing out the oil. This is rather a homely sight, but it suggests a holy name. A name around which cluster many tender and sacred associations. The word, Gethsemane, means _oil-press_. Lifting my eyes from the vat, I behold, about half way up the mountain side, and a hundred yards to the right of the road, the garden of Gethsemane, or the garden of the oil-press. This garden of prayer is at present surrounded by a substantial rock wall ten or twelve feet high. The entrance is through the upper or eastern wall. The door, or gate, is scarcely three feet high; but one is willing to bow and humble himself on entering a garden so filled with holy memories. Here Christ suffered and agonized and prayed until “his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground.” Here Judas betrayed the Master with a kiss. This garden, which is 150 by 160 feet, is laid out in six large flower beds, beautifully designed and well kept. There are a dozen, or more of fir and olive trees enclosed within these walls. The superstitious monks, keeping the garden, assure us that these are the identical trees under which the Lord knelt and prayed. But my incredulous mind entertains serious doubts on this subject. In the first place, we are not sure that the present garden is identical with the one that our Lord frequented. We know, however, if the two are not identical, they certainly are not far removed from each other. Ever since the days of Constantine (330, A. D.), the present garden has been recognized as the place of agony and betrayal. [Illustration: OLD OLIVE TREES IN GETHSEMANE.] I grant that our Lord was betrayed in this garden, or another, probably not a stone’s throw from it. I grant, also, that the olive trees are remarkably long-lived, and that these within this enclosure stand like patriarchs of their race, like sentinels of the centuries past and gone. But Josephus tells us that during the siege of Jerusalem by Titus (A. D. 70), the Roman soldiers cut down all of the trees around about Jerusalem. Josephus was present during this siege. He wrote from personal knowledge. And we can not accept his statements without discrediting those of the papal priests. But what care I? I pin my faith to no rock, nor hang it upon the bough of any olive tree. Somewhere on this mountain side, probably near where I stand, the blessed Lord drank the bitter cup. That is enough for me.