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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 die, but which none of His friends admitted, and none of the
authorities and skilled interpreters in His country admitted? Was it