suffering, which thousands of men and women have voluntarily and
calmly faced, is simply impossible to believe. Neither was it
entirely His perception of the spiritual significance of death which
made it to Him a far more painful prospect than to any other.
Certainly this clear perception of the meaning of death did add
immensely to its terrors; but if we are even to begin to understand
His trial, and begin is all we can do--we must bear in mind what
Peter had just confessed, and what Jesus Himself knew--that He was
the Christ. It was this which made the difference. Socrates could
toss off the poison as unmoved as if it had been a sleeping-draught,
because he was dying for himself alone. Jesus could only with
trembling take into His hand the fatal cup, because He knew that He
was standing for all men. If He failed, all failed. Everything hung
upon Him. The general who spends the whole night pacing his tent,
debating the chances of battle on the morrow, is not tormented with
the thought of his own private fate, but with the possibilities of
disaster to his men and to his country, if his design or his skill
should at any moment of the battle fail. Jesus was human; and we deny
His humanity, and fail to give Him the honour due to it, if we do not
recognise the difficulty which He must always have felt in believing
that His single act could save the world, and the burden of
responsibility which must have weighed upon Him when He realised that
it was by the Spirit He maintained in life and in death, that God
meant to bless all men. It was because He knew Himself to be the
Christ, and because every man depended upon Him as the Christ, and
because, therefore, the whole blessing God meant for the world
depended upon His maintaining faith in God through the most trying
circumstances--it was because of this that He trembled lest all
should end in failure. It was this which drove Him, again, and again,
and again to the hills to spend all night in prayer, in laying His