. But we need not shrink
from the thought. It is no more irreverent, surely, than to accept the
evidence of the Gospels to His perfect human capacity to be weary, to be
surprised, to be specially moved to compassion by _the sight_ of
suffering. In His sinless conformity "in all things to His brethren"
there was never for one moment room in Him--of this we may be amply
sure--for error of thought or of word, as He acted as the supreme and
absolute Prophet of His Church. But there was room, so we are expressly
told, on one tremendous occasion at least (Matt. xxvi. 37), for a
mysterious "bewilderment" ([Greek: ademonein]) of His blessed human
soul. Can we doubt that the victory won in the Garden, after which He
went with profound calmness to the unjust priest, and Pilate, and the
Cross, was of the nature of a victory of faith? Did He not then treat
the coming "joy" as a reality although, in so awful a sense and measure
He did not "feel" it then? The "bewilderment" did not drive Him back
from our redemption; and why? Because "He TRUSTED in GOD that He would
deliver Him" (Ps. xxii. 9; Matt. xxvii. 42), whatever should be the
contents of "the cup" from which His whole humanity turned away as
_almost_ impossible to drink.

And may we not be sure that on many a previous occasion of minor and yet
bitter trial, when evil men gathered round Him with cynical objections
and ruthless denials of His claims, the victory was akin to the victory
of Gethsemane? Often, surely, a strange "bewilderment" must have beset
the Redeemer's soul, of which the external token was the sigh, the
groan, the tears, which shewed Him to be so truly Man.

We all hold, in full doctrinal orthodoxy, that the Lord's sufferings,
both of soul and body, were no "docetic" semblance but a deep and
infinitely pathetic reality. But we need at times to think somewhat
deliberately in order to receive the full impression of that truth upon
the heart. And then surely we are constrained to see in Him, who thus
really suffered and really "endured," the supreme Exemplar of the
victory of faith, the perfect Sympathizer with the tried believer.

From this pregnant thought, of the faith exercised by JESUS, the
disciple is directly led in the remainder of our passage to the
practical inferences for himself. The days, for those first readers of
the Epistle, were indeed evil. Though not yet called to martyrdom (ver.
4), they were hard beset, not only by importunate reasonings and