The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book I. Life of Jesus.
Ernest Renan
setting of the sun he reascended either to Bethany or to the farms on the western side of the Mount of Olives, where he had many friends.
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A deep melancholy appears during these last days to have filled his soul, which was generally so gay and so serene. All the narratives agree in attributing to him before his arrest that he had a short experience of doubt and trouble; a kind of anticipated agony. According to some, he cried out suddenly, “Now is my soul troubled. O Father, save me from this hour.� It was believed that a voice from heaven was heard at this moment: others said that an angel came to console him. According to one widely-spread version this occurred to him in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus, it was said, went about a stone’s throw from his sleeping disciples, taking with him only Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, then fell on his face and prayed. His soul was sad almost to death; a terrible anguish pressed upon him; but resignation to the divine will sustained him. This scene, owing to the instinctive art which regulated the compilation of the synoptics, and often led them in the arrangement of the narrative to study adaptability and effect, has been given as occurring on the last night of the life of Jesus, and at the precise moment of his arrest. If such a version be the true one, we should scarcely understand why John, who had been the intimate witness of so touching an episode, should not mention it to his disciples, and that the compiler of the fourth Gospel should not allude to it in the very circumstantial narrative which he has furnished of the evening of the Thursday. That which is certain is that, during his last days, the enormous weight of the mission he had undertaken pressed cruelly upon Jesus. Human nature asserted itself for a time. Perhaps he began to hesitate about his work. Terror and doubt seized upon him, and threw him into a state of exhaustion worse than death. The man who sacrifices his repose, and the legitimate rewards of life, to a great idea, always experiences a moment of sad revulsion when the image of death presents itself to him for the first time, and seeks to persuade him that everything is vanity. Perhaps some of those touching reminiscences which the strongest souls retain, and which at times pierce like a sword, seized upon him at this moment. Did he recall the clear fountains of Galilee, where he might have refreshed himself; the vine and the fig-tree under which he sat down, and the young maidens who, perhaps, might have consented to love him? Did he curse the hard destiny which had denied him the joys conceded to all others? Did he regret his too lofty nature, and (a victim of his greatness) did he grieve that he had not remained a simple artizan of Nazareth? We do not know, for all these internal troubles were evidently to his disciples a sealed letter. They understood nothing of them, supplying by simple conjectures that which, in the great soul of their Master, was obscure to them. It is certain, at least, that his divine nature soon regained its supremacy. He might still have avoided death; but he would not. Love for his work prevailed. He elected to drink the cup even to the dregs. Henceforth in fact we find Jesus entirely himself, wholly unclouded. The subtleties of the polemic, the credulity of the thaumaturgist and of the exorcist, are forgotten. There remains only the incomparable hero of the Passion, the founder of the rights of free conscience, and the perfect model which all suffering souls will contemplate in order to fortify and console themselves.
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