And on the strength of that explanation, sceptics have revelled in pointing out that many ordinary and everyday men have been braver than Christ. They would have us believe that however noble his life may have been, there was something timid and craven about his death. They tell us that in the matter of courage, many of Christ's followers, those frail women for instance, who faced the beasts in the arena, or served as living torches in Nero's garden, or the great host of martyrs, who for his sake and in his name, faced rack and block and water and flame, were braver than their Master. It is manifestly absurd. It is shallow and superficial, and it fails to accord with a single fact.
Christ had faced death before, as in the wild storm on Galilee, with perfect calm. When the morrow came, and the awful sufferings of the cross had to be endured, he bore them without a murmur. The thought of death, the physical act of dying, never troubled Jesus Christ. He often talked of it—He could have avoided it—No, it was not the thought of physical pain to be endured, it was not the thought of death, it was something far more awful, more dreadful, more intoler-groves on the mount which have not been enclosed so strictl; "And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane."
Jesus has come to the dark valley of the shadow of death. He must tread its deep places alone.—The agony we cannot measure—the my-story of it we cannot fathom—we know it was in submission to his
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.