Certainly not by mere thinking over the glory of self-sacrifice. He
taught daily, we read, in the temple. Instead of giving up his work
for a while, he seems to have worked more earnestly than ever. As
the terrible end drew near; and his soul was troubled; and he was
straitened as he looked forward to his baptism of fire; and the
struggle in him grew fiercer (for the Bible tells us that there was
a struggle) between the Man's natural desire to save his life, and
the God's heavenly desire to lay down his life, he threw himself
more and more into the work which he had to do. We hear more,
perhaps, of our Lord's saying and doings during this week, up to the
very moment before he was betrayed to death, than we do of the whole
three years of his public life. His teaching was never, it seems,
so continual; his appeals to the nation which he was trying to save
were never so pathetic as at the very last; his warnings to the
bigots who were destroying his nation never so terrible; his
contempt for personal danger never so clear. The Bible seems to
picture him to us as gathering up all his strength for one last
effort, if by any means he might save that doomed city of Jerusalem,
and in his divine spirit, courting death the more, the more his
human flesh shrank from it.
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