The exact relation of the Saviour’s sufferings to the penalty incurred we need not dwell on here. Whether it is a relation of diversity (aliud pro quo), as Grotius maintained ; or of equivalence (tantundem), according to others; or of sdentity (idem), in accordance with the view of a third class, we shall not attempt to determine further than to reject the first, and express our preference for the second rather than for the third. Further, as his life had been stainless, his death must be sinless. Holy and harmless as that life had been, his death must be equally free from sin and separate from sinners. But now came the severest test and sorest trial. If the awful sufferings in near prospect should weaken his purpose; if, foreseeing the shame and pain and torture, his resolu- tion should give way; or if, what would equally defeat his undertaking, his heart should conceive or cherish any, feeling of revenge; or if the burning sense of wrong should provoke complaint, or any word of impatient murmuring should escape his lips; if, in a word, any sin were to mingle with thought or feeling, or find utterance in speech, his life-work would miscarry and the whole would end in irreparable failure. No wonder, then, that, in view of all this mighty burden which he bore— in view of the dread responsibility laid upon him, in view of that mountain-load of sin he was to transfer to himself and bear away, in view of that great sacrifice which he was to offer, in view of the great satisfaction he was to make, in view of that great salvation he was to effect, the Saviour’s humanity began to shrink. If we turn to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, a passage written more than seven hundred years before the time of our Lord’s agony, we find at once a comment on that agony and a key to its cause: “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all,” or, more literally rendered, “The Lord hath made the iniquities of us all to meet or fall on him,” or, more strictly still, “The Lord hath made the iniquities of us all to rush on him.” In those words thus understood our sins are figuratively represented as beasts of prey, and Jesus is their Victim; or as cruel enemies, and Jesus is the Object on which their vengeance vents itself. Like bulls of Bashan, they beset him round. Like ravening and roaring lions, they gaped upon him with their mouths. Other adversaries, less powerful but more vexing, compassed him like dogs. It was as though fiercest foes of every kind and on every hand assailed him.
IV. THE SUPPLICATION AND THE STRENGTH THEREBY SECURED. 1. The meaning of this cup. No wonder he prayed, “ Let this cup pass from me.” The meaning of “cup” here is obviously suffering and sorrow—a bitter mixture to be drunk. Thus Isaiah (li. 17) says, “O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out;” while in the seventy-fifth Psalm we read that “in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.” A similar figure is found in Homeric poetry (‘ Iliad,’ xxiv. 528)—
“Two urns by Jove’s high throne have ever stood; The source of evil one, and one of good. From thence the cup of mortal man he fills; Blessings to these, to those distributes ills. To most he mingles both: the wretch decreed To taste the bad unmix’d, is cursed indeed.”
But while the figure itself i» clear, the fact underlying it is not so clearly o7 easily understood. 2. The mixture in this cup, What elements mingled in this cup? What were the bitter ingredients in the mixture it contained? It was not, as already seen, the mere shrinking of our Lord’s humanity from death, however painful and shameful, though we do not by any means exclude this element. Neither wax it an apparition of
ou. xiv. 1—72.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. 293