CHAPTER XIII.

Dismay and Perturbation of Christ before and during last Passion—His Apprehensions and Conduct contrasted with Human Martyrs, and Persons not Martyrs—Phenomenon not explicable on Supposition that Humanity alone suffered—Reasons commonly assigned for his Dismay and Perturbation, and FallacyFalacy of such Reasons.

THE dismay with which Christ beheld his coming sufferings, and the perturbation which their endurance caused him, can be explained only on the supposition that the sufferings were not confined to his human nature. Had the primitive Christian martyrs exhibited the same dismay and perturbation at the approach of death, one of the chief arguments in favour of the truth of our holy religion would have been lost to the world. The patience, fortitude, and triumph with which they met and endured the excruciating agonies of martyrdom ranked high among the miracles by which early Christianity was propagated. “ See how a Christian can die!” is an appeal to infidelity not of modern origin. Its thrilling- effect was well known and felt in the early Chuorch. The triumphant death of the first martyrs was among the most eloquent of the --addresses ever made by Christianity to the pagan world. It was a miracle, perhaps, more touchiiing to the heart than the healing of the sick or the raising,, of the dead.

The corporeal sufferings of many of the early martyrs were, doubtless, greater than the corporeal sufferings of their Master. His was the case, so far as the body was concerned, of simple crucifixion. They were stoned to death with stones; they were consumed by slow fires; their flesh was torn off with red hot pincers; they were sawed asunder with saws; they were drawn to pieces by wild beasts; the cross was, indeed, often the instrument of their death, but to them was not allowed the comparative repose of simple crucifixion. Its abhorrence of the rising and hated sect of the Nazarenes had sharpened the devices of heathen cruelty; new discoveries were made in the art of tormenting; new and more agonizing positions of the suffering body were contrived ; the process of torture was rendered more slow, and the welcomed approach of death more lingering. To all this variety of agonies, the timid frailty of woman, as well as the bolder hardihood of man, was almost daily subjected. But nothing could disturb the patience, the fortitude, the serenity of the primitive martyrs. Whether belonging to the more robust or the more tender sex, they yielded not for a moment to the recoilings or misgivings of human frailty; they rejoiced in the midst of their dying spasms, and their last faltering accents whispered joy.

The difference between these martyrs and their Master in meeting and enduring the agonies of a violent death is an historic fact not to be passed over unnoticed. It is not a point of literary curiosity alone; it deeply concerns our faith. It indicates that his suffering must have differed from theirs, not only in its degree, but in its very element. Contrast, for instance, the death of Stephen with that of his Lord; look at the face of the former, shining “ as it had been the face of an angel,” and then turn your melting eye to the “ marred visage” of the latter ; listen to the joyous exclamation of the finite martyr, when he saw through the opening heavens the gloryy of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of the Highest; and then lend your sympathizing ear to the wailing of Him who hung on the cross, and belief will ripen into conviction that, while the sufferer whose clothes were laid down at the feet of Saul sustained the pains of a man, the Sufferer on Calvary endured pangs pertaining only to infinitude.

In farther proof of the correctness of this conclusion, let us direct our attention to the, enthusiastic exclamations of this same, Saul, baptized of the ,,Mtlze@ a@of Holy Ghost by the name of Paul, approaching his own martyrdom. “ For,” says he, “ I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good OA fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge shall give me at that day.”—-2 Timothy, 4iv. 6-8. And with these eloquent bursts of exulting faith pealing in our ears, -, ,let our souls kneel down beside our prostrate Lord, on the cold, hard, earth of Gethsemane, and become the astounded .auditors of his piteous cry, “ , my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”—-Matthew, 26.xxvi. 39.

Even without the sustaining power of religion, the resolved mind has often met and endured, without dismay, the utmost suffering of which humanity can be made the heir. The Roman Regulus returned of his own free choice to Carthage, though he well knew that, to the violent death which awaited him there, Punic cruelty and Punic cunning would superadd the severest tortures that history had ever suggested or fiction shadowed forth. And when the Africans had cut off his eyelids, and exposed his naked and lacerated eyes to their scorching sgands and burning sun until their patience was exhausted; when they had rolled about his naked person in a barrel filled with sharp spikes, pointed inward, to pierce and tear his quivering flesh, until tardy death came at last to his relief, they could no more disturb the fortitude of the hero than they could have shaken Atlas from its everlasting base. @ Yet was Regulus but a heathen patriot. Nor is g”the Western Indian chief, tied by his captors to a tree in his native forests, and encompassed round with dry materials, just lighted by the fires which are to consume him, less firm and “immoveable. The taunts of his tormentors and the searching flames, are alike impotent to disturb his serenity. Not a groan is uttered; not a sigh is breathed. The last, the only sound that escapes hilam is his shout of triumph.

The dismay with which the Son of God anticipated his sufferings, and the perturbation which their endurance caused him, have been, for more than eighteen centuries, the wonder of Christendom. On this phenomenon the eyes of all beholders have been riveted by their own spontaneous and irrepressible reflections. For where is the man to be found with “soul so dead” that, with the full assurance of the “joy set before,” and the influences sustaining the man Christ Jesus—-an assurance made doubly sure by successive miracles, by audible and repeated voices from heaven, by the upholding consciousness of in-dwelling Omnipotence—-would not himself willingly endure all the human suffering of which the incarnate God could have been the recipient? Even for the bawble of an earthly crown, what privations, what toils, what scorching sands, what snow-capped he “ ights, what “,”most disastrous chances,” what “hair-breadth ‘scapes in the imminent, deadly breach,” have not been joyously encountered! 1 Comparedl@U, then with a celestial diadem, a rank above the cherubim and the seraphim, a seat at the ri@ight hand of the Highest, made sure and everlasting by the guarantee of the Godhead, how slight and evanescent would seem all the ills that, in the brief span of a single life, could be poured into the cup of humanity, even if unceasingly filled to overflowing!

But one solution can be given of the stran ge phenomenon of Christ’s”s dismay and perturbation. His sufferings were not the, mere sufferings of humanity. They must have had their chief seat within the hitherto unapproachable pavilion of hiMs divinity. The brightest intellects, deeply schooled in the science of logic, and armed with the trea-sures of profane and sacred lore, have laboured for centuries to explain the mysterious indications on principles familiar to human nature. They have utterly failed; and the failure is a farther confirmation of the justness of our supposition, that the sufferings of Christ penetrated the sanctuary of his divine nature. A brief review of the causes to which human ingenuity has attributed the dismay and perturbation of the incarnate God, will best evince their utter insufficiency to produce the stupendous effects attributed to them.

First. The advocates of the prevalent theory have assigned, as one cause of his dismay and pertubation, the new and more vivid views of the deformity of sin suddenly impressed on him at the time of his last passion ; representing that the almighty arm then lifted the covering pall from the hitherto disguised features of moral evil and presented them in all their native hideousness. This suggestion is sustained by the high authority of Bishop Bu I rnett. Doctor South, a preacher of the English church in the reign of Charles II., justly distinguished for his piety, learning, and eloquence, speaks —-of Christ’s”s last passion in the following terms. He says:

“What thought can reach or tongue express what our Saviour then felt within his own breast! The image of all the sins of the world, for which he was to suffer, then appeared clear, and lively, and express to his mind. All the vile and horrid circumstances of them stood (as it were) particularly ranged before his eyes, in all their dismal colours. He saw how much the honour of the great God was abused by them, and how many millions of poor souls they must inevitably have cast under the pressure of a wrath infinite and intolerable, should he not have turned the blow upon himself, the horror of which then filled and amazed his vast apprehensive soul; and those apprehensions could not but affect his tender heart, then brimfui of the highest zeal for God’s”s glory and the most relenting compassion for the souls of men, till it fermented and boiled over with transport and agony, and even forced its way through all his body in those strange ebullitions of blood not to be paralleled by the sufferings of any person recorded in any history whatsoever.”*

* South’s Sermons. vol iii pp. 348, 349

We might dismiss this assigned cause of Christ’sCbrist”s dismay and perturbation with the passing remark, that it is nowhere intimated in the Bible; but other materials for its refutation, ample and conclusive, are at hand. The God Christ Jesus, before be left his heavenly home, had been fully conscious of the heinousness of sin. He was the being sinned against. He had come down from heaven to offer himself a sacrifice for sin. His omniscience could learn nothing new on earth of its frightful nature. The man Christ Jesus had been early taught the heinousness of sin by his own holy reflections. He hbad learned it from the audible discourses and the secret monitions of the indwelling God. And if he saw its heinousness more clearly at the time of his last passion, he must then also have felt more strongly the necessity of that atonement of which his humanity was the vehicle, to rescue from the pollution and penalty of sin the host of the redeemed. It is the extremity of his country’s”s da;inger, forcibly presented to the mental vision of the patriot, that best sustains his exulting resolution to die in its behalf.

There is no reason for supposing that a near view of sin, to which the beholder is himself a stranger, can disturb the felicity of a holy being. Gabriel has, doubtless, a sense of sin more vivid than humanity ever attained. And yet Gabriel, with his joyous harp, still stands “in the presence of God.” The humanity of Christ is glorified and blissful in heaven. Its sense of sin acquired on earth, however clear, must have grown clearer in the light of eternity. Yet this sense of sin, in- stead of impairing its bliss, opens wider and more enrapturing views of the grace and glory of its kindred God, and swells louder its pealing anthem of praise and thanksgiving for his redeeming love.

Secondly. It has been said that more affecting views of the countless multitudes who would reject his salvation, and of their consequent and eternal perdition, must have pressed upon the mind of Christ at the time of his last passion, and that these views enhanced the agonies of the garden and the cross. This cause of dismay and perturbation seems to be countenanced by Doctor South. It is sanctioned by the still higher name of Archbishop Secker, once primate of all England. But it is utterly destitute of scriptural authority. The God Christ Jesus kl@new, from the beginning, who would reject his proffered salvation. He always knew that he himself would one day pronounce their final doom with an unfaltering tongue and an unyielding heart.

The man Christ Jesus had been early taught by the indwelling God that “strait is the gate and narrow the way which leads to life, and few there are who find it.” And as the fate of the finally impenitent caught his pitying eye, he might well repose on the consoling reflection, that the Judge of -all the earth would do right. It is a blessed provision of the Father of mercies, that the sufferings of the incorrigibly wicked are not permitted to impair the felicity of holy beings. If this were not so, the songs of heaven might be saddened by the wailingo,s of the pit. If this were not so, the bliss of the sainted Abraham might have been disturbed, at least for the time, by the pathetic appeal of his luxurious and lost descendant for a drop of water to cool his burning tongue.

Thirdly. It has been said that the agony which Christ foresaw with such dismay, and met with such perturbation, was caused, in a great measure, by the privation of the light of his FPather’s”s countenance. If it were understood that this privation reached the God Christ Jesus, it would indeed go far to explain the mysteries of Gethsemane and of Calvary. But our opponents cannot for a moment admit that it was the divinity of Christ that was thus forsaken octf the Father; for that would at once concede that his divinity suffered; it would be giving up the point at issue between them and us. Upon the prevalent theory, the God Christ Jesus, in the garden and on the cross, beheld his Father’s”s countenance lit up with the same benignant smile which had been wont to greet him in the courts of paradise.

But even to the man Christ Jesus it was no slight privation that he underwent, though but for a few brief hours, the hidings of his Father’es face. The pious soul, accustomed to bask in the sunshine of heavenly love, experiences, from the sensation of its temporary loss, an anguish, of which the world cannot judge. But the sting of the suffering is the sufferer’s”s consciousness that his own sins have interposed the cloud between him and heaven. David felt this calamity, and its terrible cause, rankling in the central recesses of his heart.

Christ suffered, the “just for the unjust.” He well knew his own spotless innocence. When his heavenly Father seemed to forsake him, he knew that it was for the sins of others, not for any demerits of his own. He doubted not that he was in the plain path of duty, however arduous and rugged. He knew that, if the light of his FPather’s”s countenance was for a brief space withdrawn, it was only the temporary absence of a beloved friend, who was sure to love him the better for being absent. And yet his fortitude seemed about to forsake himn with his God! 1 An eclipse has no terrors to him who knows that it is caused only by the intervention of an opaque body between him and the central luminary, that is ever ready to shed on him anew its enlightening, warming, and cheering rays the moment the obstruction has passed away. Christ indeed suffered under a temporary eclipse of the light of his Father’s”s face; but he well knew that it was the opaque body of others’” sins which alone caused the brief obstruction that a few short hours would remove forever.

Besides his consciousness of perfect innocence, Christ had other supports never before or since known in the history of suffering. He knew that he must conquer in the struggle ; that the utinited Godhbead stood pledged for his triumph. To him victory was a matter, not of faith, but of knowledge. He knew, too, that the contest would be short; that he should speedily rise from the dead. He was conscious that the reward of his sufferings would be an everlasting crown ; that his place between the two thieves would be exchanged for the right hand of God; that hlie would leave the tomb of Joseph for the throne of heaven. He knew that he should “ see of the travail of his soul,” and “ be satisfied;” that his blood would save fromui perdition countless millions of fallen immortals; that his sufferings would fill the kingdom of righteousness with the joyous sons and daughters of salvation, evermore raising the song of thanksgiving to him their Saviour King. It was a cherished axiom of ancient patriotism, that it was sweet to die for one’s”s country. How much more self-sustaining the Godlike thought of dying for a world! This was the “joy set before him.” For this he might well have “ endured the cross, despising the shame.” —-HebrewWs, x12ii. 2.

Fourthly. The pouring out of the wrath of God against sin on the human soul of Christ, as the substitute for sinners, is assigned as another, and the principal cause of his dismay and perturbation. This outpouring on his human soul, and its loss of the light of the divine countenance, and its views of the heinousness of sin, and its sympathy in the fate of the finally impenitent, added to the corporeal pangs of Christ, are deemed, by the advocates of the prevalent theory, sufficient, when taken collectively, to explain the phenomena of his last passion. We admit, indeed, that the humanity of Christ participated in his sufferings to the extent of its very limited capacity. But besides the plain scriptural indications that his divinity also suffered, we lay it down as a principle, based on the inflexible laws of our nature, that the body and human soul of Christ had not physical capabilities to become the recipient of the amount of sufferings demonstrated by the dismay with which he beheld their approach, and the perturbation which their endurance caused him. Before, however, we enter into the development of this principle, it is necessary that we should review the indications of his dismay and perturbation a little more in detail than we have hitherto done. We shall then be, the better able to pursue the development of the principle. which we have laid down.