But the
thought is meaningless and inconceivable to me. If he was conscious
then of his august origin and destiny, if he knew that, to use a
material metaphor enough, he would shortly pass through lines of
kneeling angels amid triumphant pealing music to the very Throne and
Heart of God, the sufferings of his Passion can have been as nothing.
There is no touch of example or help for me in the scene. Even the
despairing cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" becomes a
piece of unworthy drama; and yet if one presses the words of Jesus, and
remembers that he had said but a few short hours before that he had but
to speak the word, and legions of angels were at hand to succour him,
it is impossible to resist the feeling that he knew who he was and
whither he was bound. I do not say that the thesis is untrue; I only
say that if he knew the truth, then there is no medicine in his
sufferings for human despair.
The preacher seemed to feel the difficulty dimly, for he fell back upon
the thought that the agony was caused by Christ's bearing the load of
the world's sin. But here again I felt that, after all, sin must have
been in a sense permitted by God. If God is omnipotent and
all-embracing, no amount of freewill in man could enable him to choose
what was not there already in the Mind of God.
And then, too, the lesson of science is that man is slowly struggling
upwards out of his bestial inheritance into purity and light; and thus
if a man can inherit evil from evil progenitors by the law of God, he
is not a free agent in the matter; and it thus becomes a piece of sad
impiety, or worse, to say that it was inconceivable agony to God to
bear the sins which his own awful law perpetuated.
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