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 burden upon the only Strength that could bear it.

But in retiring in order, with deliberation, finally to dedicate Himself to death, this temptation must of necessity appear in all its strength.  It is only in presence of all that can induce Him to another course that He can resolve upon the God-appointed way.  As He prays two figures necessarily rise before Him, and intensify the temptation.  Moses and Elias were God’s greatest servants in the past, and neither of them had passed to glory through so severe an ordeal.  Moses, with eye undimmed and strength unabated, was taken from earth by a departure so easy that it was said to be “by the kiss of God.”  Elijah, instead of removal by death, ascended to his rest in a chariot of fire.  Was it not possible that as easy an exodus might befit Him?  Might not this ignominious death He looked forward to make it impossible for the people to believe in Him?  How could they rank Him with those old prophets whom God had dealt with so differently and so plainly honoured?  Would people not almost necessarily accept the death of the cross as proof that He was abandoned?  Nay, did not their sacred books justify them in considering Him accursed of God?  Was He correct in His interpretation of the Scriptures—­an interpretation which led Him to believe that the Messiah must suffer and