For the view that the cup deprecated by the Saviour was death there is no direct Scriptural authority and to adopt the exegesis of Theodoret and of many others would be to place the divine humanity of the Messiah on a lower level than that not merely of many a martyr and patriot but of many men unconscious of martyr’s or patriot’s high calling, who have nevertheless faced death and pain with calm and cheerful fortitude. The bitterness of the cup which the Saviour prayed might if possible pass from Him seems rather to have lain in the culmination of the sin of the race and nation with which His love for men had identified Him; the greed, the treachery, the meanness, the cruelty, the disloyalty, shewn by the Sons of Israel to the Son of David, by the sons of men to the Son of Man.