And at noon next day when he came home from school, as he turned round the corner, and came in sight of their home, what do you think was the first thing he saw? Why, a load of wood before their door! Yes, there it was. His mother told him the overseers of the poor had sent it. He did not know them. He believed it was God who sent it. And he was right. The first lesson from Gethsemane is about prayer. _The second lesson from this hallowed spot is—ABOUT SIN._ Here, in Gethsemane, we see Jesus engaged in paying the price of our redemption: this means, what he had to suffer for us before our sins could be pardoned. The pains and sorrows through which Jesus passed, in the agony of the garden, and the death on the cross: the sighs he heaved—the groans he uttered—the tears he shed—the fears, the griefs, the unknown sufferings that he bore—all these were part of the price he had to pay, that we might be saved from our sins. When we read of all that Jesus endured in Gethsemane: when we hear him say—“my soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death:” when we see him fall to the earth, in such an agony that “his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground:” we may well ask the question—what was it which caused him all this fearful suffering? And there is only one way of answering this question; and this is by saying _that he was bearing the punishment of our sins_. There was nothing else that could have made him feel so sad and sorrowful. But _this_ explains it all. Then, as the prophet says—“He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities;—and the Lord had laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Is. liii: 5, 6. Our sins had provoked the wrath of God against us, and Jesus was bearing that wrath for us. In all the world, there is nothing that shows so clearly what a fearful thing sin is, as the awful sufferings of Jesus when he was paying the price of our sins, or making atonement for us. And it is by knowing what took place in Gethsemane, and on Calvary, and _only_ in this way, that we can learn what a terrible evil sin is, and how we are to be saved from it. Some years ago, there was a good Christian lady in England who had taken into her family a deaf and dumb boy. She was anxious to teach him the lesson of Gethsemane and Calvary; that Christ had suffered and died for our sins. Signs and pictures were the only means by which she could teach him. So she drew a picture of a great crowd of people, old and young, standing near a deep, wide pit, out of which smoke and flames were issuing, and into which they were in danger of being driven. Then she drew the figure of one who came down from heaven, representing Jesus, the Son of God. She explained to the boy that when this person came, he asked God not to throw those people into the pit, because he was willing to suffer and to die for them, that the pit might be shut up and the people saved.