There are terrible things in man. There are some depths in human nature into which it is scarcely safe to look. It was by the very perfection of Christ that the uttermost evil of His enemies was brought out. There is a passage in "Paradise Lost," where a band of angels, sent out to scour Paradise in search of Satan, who is hidden in the garden, discover him in the shape of a toad "squat at the ear of Eve." Ithuriel, one of the band, touches him with his spear, whereat, surprised, he starts up in his own shape,--
"for no falsehood can endure Touch of celestial temper, but returns Of force to its own likeness."
But the touch of perfect goodness has often the opposite effect: it transforms the angel into the toad, which is evil's own likeness.
Christ was now getting into close grips with the enemy He had come to this world to overcome; and, as it clutched Him for the final wrestle, it exhibited all its ugliness and discharged all its venom.[9] The claw of the dragon was in His flesh, and its foul breath in His mouth. We cannot conceive what such insult and dishonour must have been to His sensitive and regal mind. But He rallied His heart to endure and not to faint; for He had come to be the death of sin, and its death was to be the salvation of the world.
[1] Here would come in the curious little notice in St. Mark: "And there followed Him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him; and he left the linen cloth and fled from them naked"; on which I have not commented, not well knowing, in truth, what to make of it. It may be designed to show the rudeness of the soldiery, and the peril in which any follower of Jesus would have been had he been caught. Some have supposed that the young man was St. Mark, and that this is the painter's signature in an obscure corner of his picture. (See Holzmann in _Handcommentar zum Neuen Testament_.) In the first volume of the _Expositor_ there is a paper on the subject by Dr. Cox, but it does not throw much light on it.
[2] On the Sanhedrim and the high priests see Schürer, _The Jewish People in the Time of Christ_, div. ii., vol. i.
[3] This, many think, is what is given in St. John.
[4] Many think that this is what is given in St. Luke.
[5] The full number was seventy-one, including the president.
[6] See Psalm cx. 1, and Dan. vii. 13.
[7] Even Jost, the Jewish historian, calls it a murder; but he does not believe that there was an actual trial; and in this Edersheim agrees with him.
[8] In allusion to His claim to be the Messianic Prophet. The Roman soldiers, on the other hand, ridiculed His claim to be a King.
[9] "The central figure is the holiest Person in history, but round Him stand or strive the most opposed and contrasted moral types. . . . The men who touch Him in this supreme hour of His history do so only to have their essential character disclosed."--FAIRBAIRN.