whom this is of little account, but the sensitive and sentient type, as we often observe, dreads pain.  He, with open eyes, chose physical pain, heightened to torture, not escaping any of the suffering which anticipation gives—­that physical horror of death, that instinctive fear of annihilation, which nature suggests of itself.  He took the course of action that would most severely test his disciples; one at least revolted, and we have to ask what it meant to Jesus to live with Judas, to watch his face, to recognize his influence in the little group—­yes, and to try to win him again and to be repelled.  “He learnt by the things that he suffered” that Judas would betray him; but the hour and place and method were not so evident, and when they were at last revealed—­what did it mean to be kissed by Judas?  Do we feel what he felt in the so-called trials—­or was he dull and numbed by the catastrophe?  How did he bear the beating of triumphant hatred upon a forsaken spirit?  How did the horrible cry, “Crucify him! crucify him!” break on his ears—­on his mind?  When “the Lord turned and looked upon Peter” (Luke 22:61), what did it mean?  How did he know that Peter was there, and what led him to turn at that moment?  Was there in the Passion no element of uneasiness again about the eleven on whom he had concentrated his hopes and his influence—­the eleven of whom it is recorded, that “they all forsook him, and fled” (Mark 14:50)?  No hint of dread that his work might indeed be undone?  What pain must that have involved?  What is the value of the Agony in the Garden, of the cry, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani” (Mark 15:34)?  When we have answered, each for himself, these questions, and others like them that will suggest themselves—­answered them by the most earnest efforts of which our natures are capable—­and remembered at the end how far our natures fall short of his, and told ourselves that our answers are insufficient—­then let us recall, once more, that he chose all this.

He chose the cross and all that it meant.  Our next step should be to study anew his own references to what he intends by it, to what he expects to be its results and its outcome.  First of all, then, he clearly means that the Kingdom of Heaven is something different from anything that man has yet seen.  The Kingdom of Heaven is, I understand, a Hebrew way of saying the Kingdom of God—­very much as men to-day speak of Providence, to avoid undue familiarity with the term God, so the Jews would say Heaven.  There were many who used the phrase in one or other form; but it is always bad criticism to give to the words of genius the value or the connotation they would have in the lips of ordinary people.  To a great mind words are charged with a fullness of meaning that little people do not reach.  The attempt has been made to recapture more of his thoughts by learning the value given to some of the terms he uses as they appear in the literature of the day, and of course it has been helpful.  But we have to remember