In the upper end of the garden is a naked ledge of rocks[329], where Peter, James, and John slept. The exact limits of this, the most interesting and hallowed of all gardens, are not known, nor is it necessary to know them; but as we read that "Christ went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where there was a garden" (John xviii. 1), and that this garden was in the Mount of Olives, "we felt satisfied," says Mr. Robinson, "that we stood on the ground whereon the Saviour had stood before; and that the aged trees, which now afforded us shade, were the lineal descendants of those under which he often reposed; but more particularly on the night of his ascent. The grot, to which he retired on this occasion, and where, "falling down to the ground," in the agony of his soul, and "sweating," as it were, "great drops of blood," he was comforted by an angel (Luke xxii. 43, 44), is still shown, and venerated as such. It is excavated in the live rock, and the descent to it is by a flight of rudely cut steps; the form of the interior is circular, about fifteen feet in diameter, and the roof, which is supported by pilasters, perforated in the middle to admit light: there are some remains of sepulchres in the sides. The cave of Gethsemane is in the valley of Jehoshaphat:--"It was to this cavern," says La Martine, "at the foot of the Mount of Olives, that Christ retired, according to tradition, to escape sometimes from the persecution of his enemies and the importunities of his disciples; it was here he communed with his own divine reflections, and that he implored his Father, that the bitter cup that he had filled for himself, and which we fill for ourselves, should pass from his lips. It was here that he enjoined his three disciples to watch and pray, the evening before his death, and not to sleep--and that three times he returned and awakened them, so prone is human zeal and charity to slumber. It was here he passed the terrible hours of his agony--the ineffable struggle between life and death--between instinct and will--between the soul that wishes to be free, and matter, which resists because of its blindness. It was here he sweated blood and water, and that, weary of combating with himself, without obtaining that victory of his intellect, which would give peace to his thoughts, he uttered those words, which sum up all human godliness; those words which are become the wisdom of the wise, and which ought to be the epitaph of every life, and the sole aspiration of every created being; 'My father, not my will, but thine, be done!'"