But all that faith and revelation tell us of His divinity rises up
against the idea that He can ever have been subjected to temptation. If
the torture and the end of His body had really terrified Him, was there
not yet time to save Himself? For many days He had known that they were
trying to take Him captive, and even on that night there were ways of
escaping the pack of hounds ready to fall upon Him. He would have been
safe if, either alone or with His most faithful friends, He had taken
the road back to the Jordan, and thence by hidden paths have passed
across Perea into the Tetrarchy of Philip, where He had already taken
refuge to escape the ill-will of Antipas. The Jewish police were so few
and primitive that they could scarcely have found Him. The fact that He
did not do this, did not flee, shows that He did not try to escape death
and the horrors that were to accompany it. From the point of view of our
coarse human logic His death was a suicide—a divine suicide by the hand
of others, not unlike that of the heroes of antiquity who fell upon the
sword of a friend or a slave. What sort of a life would He have had
after such a flight? To grow old obscurely, the timorous master of a
hidden sect, to die at the last, worn out, the death-rattle in His
throat like any other man! Better, infinitely better to finish the
sowing of the Gospel on the Cross and to water it with His blood. He had
spoken out His truths and now, that those truths should be everlastingly
remembered He must needs link with them the horror of His unforgettable
death. Perhaps this blood, like a stinging drink, would arouse His
disciples forever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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