Therefore it makes no difference if his own followers turn away from him in his humiliation and men are offended in him as though he were chastised of God. The Scripture does not reckon it against them as sacrilege, but has so ordained it. The moment therefore the secret of the Passion is made clear to him by the Scripture he no more says, Whosoever is ashamed of me in my humiliation, the same is condemned; but, Ye shall all be offended in me,—knowing at the same time that they all shall be gathered about him at the Resurrection. Under the influence, therefore, of the Deutero-Isaiah the idea of the general Affliction of the last times was transformed into the personal secret of Jesus’ Passion. [pg 240] 6. The “Human” Element in the Secret of the Passion. The innermost nature of the idea of suffering underwent no change in consequence of the secret of the Passion of the second epoch. For Jesus, suffering, even in this form, remained pre-eminently the moral condition of the dignity ordained to him. Now, however, the Affliction exhibits the concrete traits of a determinate event. Jesus brings it down from the vague heights of apocalyptic drama to the level of human history. Therein lies something prophetic of the future of Christianity. After Jesus’ death the whole messianic drama of the last times is dissolved in human history. This development began with the secret of the Passion. Thus it is, too, that the secret of the Passion, as compared with the idea of suffering of the first period, exhibits more human traits. There is a quality of compassionate consideration for others in the thought that he makes satisfaction in the Passion for the adherents of the Kingdom, in order that they may be exempted from the trial in which perchance they might prove weak. The petition, “Lead us not into the Temptation, but [pg 241] deliver us from the Evil,” is now fulfilled in his Passion.