Lest any trial incident to humanity should be lacking, the torments of hope -- of suspense, anxiety -- were at the last moment loosed on Him -- the supposed possibility that, after all, He might, He just conceivably might, be spared the ultimate horror. There was precedent. Isaac had been spared: he too at the last moment, he also against all apparent probability. It was not quite impossible...and doubtless He had seen other men crucified...a sight very unlike most of our religious pictures and images.
But for this last (and erroneous) hope against hope, and the consequent tumult of the soul, the sweat of blood, perhaps He would not have been very Man. To live in a fully predictable world is not to be a man.
At the end, I know, we are told that an angel appeared ``comforting'' Him. But neither "comforting" in sixteenth-century English nor ``ennischuon'' in Greek means ``consoling''. ``Strengthening'' is more the word. May not the strengthening have consisted in the renewed certainty -- cold comfort this -- that the thing must be endured and therefore could be?
C.S. Lewis
Letters to Malcolm pp 42]
