ick and easy.
Jesus after shame and torture died a lingering death. The dysthanasia
of Jesus should, one would opine, make a stronger appeal to men's
sympathies than does the euthanasia of Socrates. Yet on the whole the
reverse is the case. The difference in the respective styles of the
two narratives does not give the whole explanation. It is true that
the Phaedo is a work of fine art while the gospel story is a plain
statement of fact. The reason, however, for the difference in appeal
goes deeper than literary style. The reader of the Phaedo puts himself
into the place of Socrates and suffers with him. As we read the
Passion of Christ there rises a barrier between us and the divine
sufferer. Unconsciously we say to ourselves, "Christ suffered, of
course, but He did not suffer as we should have suffered in His place.
His were not the real sufferings of a real man."

If the passion of Christ and that of Socrates were weighed in the same
balances, there would be less indifference to-day to the gospel story.
Were Christ the Man realised as such, visualised, as other great men of
history are visualised, among his followers, the hero worship that
inspired the early church would revive. What makes Christians
indifferent to Christ's sufferings is not the lapse of centuries nor
weakness of imagination but a subconscious monophysitism. There is to
most minds a haze of unreality overhanging the accounts of His life and
death. They forget that He shared human experience to the full. They
think of Him as doing things _rheidios_ like the Homeric gods. In
point of fact, His great results were achieved only after long
laborious exertion. His was a life of strenuous human activity,
physical and mental. Even His miracles were accompanied by a physical
throb of sympathy; virtue went out of Him. Redemption made it
necessary. Enthusiastic devotion to a person must be grounded in
community of experience. It is the human touches in the drama of
Christ's life that make the most powerful appeal to mankind. Yet the
human element is obscured, as a rule, in modern presentations of the
gospel. For spiritual minds it is comparatively easy to apprehend a
divine Christ. To apprehend a human Christ makes a larger call on
their imagination and their sympathy. Spiritual men are naturally
monophysite in their thinking. They shrink from the mental effort that
diphysitism demands. Their attention is focussed on Christ's
superiorit