The cry.

rimsly as it had come. The pent up agony of Jesus found vent. He shrieked. His ery was articulate. The biographers have preserved the very syllables. It was in his mother tongue, the Aramaan, and reminds us of an eserved fact, that men in dying frequently speak their original dialect most accurately. The words with which Jesus thrilled the end were these: a b by xs, Elohee', Elohee', karampoli schitance', "My God, n.y God, why hast Thou forsaken me!"

On any theory of the nature of Jesus and his character these words, under the circumstances, are mysterious. It must be admitted that he was not more afraid of dying than

A mystery. other men, nor more afraid of being dead. His shrinking from death, so far as we have been able to detect, was merely the instinct of life. He could have saved himself. Up to Wednesday, nay, even up to Thursday night, there do not appear to have been any insuperable obstacles to his escape from the ecclesiastical party, his return to Galilee, or his departure into another euntry until this storm should be overpast. Of all this he was plainly aware, and yet declined to avail himself of them. He had not rushed upon death. He did not flee from it. He had at other times passed through infuriated mobs and walked away as if possessing a charmed life. Now he makes no effort to escape. Ile had exhibited superordinary power in healing diseases, in controlling the elements, in raising the dead. He no more attempts to exercise that power for his own deliverance than the vulgar thief who is crucified at his side attempts a miraculous deliverance of himself. Jesus had always professed to experience in his inner consciousness an unbroken oneness with the eternal God, of whom, as related to himself, he spoke as Father, giving the word an emphasis deeper than any other man ever gave to his claim of human relationship with man or God. Now he speaks not as if he and the Father were one, as he had often as serted, but as if they were two, and not only distinct but now separated. In its form it is an intensely passionate appeal. What did it signify! He was a good man dying in martyrdom for loftiest and most precious things. He was not God-forsaken. No man ever is who does not forsake God. Is there any better explanation than that in his great spiritual agony there was a subjective, not an objective abandonment? He felt as though God

and all were lost. He was certainly enduring an agony with which the pains, the fevers, the thirsts, the misery of crucifixion, had nothing to do. It was Gethsemane's hour and power of darkness-whatever that was-once beaten down, now risen up again and rushing upon the soul of the dying Jesus. As it smote him he shrieked this articulate utterance of his sense of

Per

The light returns.

agony. The light came back to the hills, the city, and Golgotha. Men raised themselves. The cloud had rolled away, and with the clearing sky came the loud cry of Jesus. haps in that darkness the consciences of his murderers began to be painfully uneasy. They caught the first words of the cry, "Elohee, Elohee." Elijah among the Jews was the patron of the distressed. Moreover, it had been prophesied that Elijah was to precede the Messias. Some said, "He calls Elijah." The others said, "Stop! let us see if Elijah will come to save him." I cannot think, with Meyer, that this was "a blasphemous Jewish joke, by an awkward and godless pun upon Eli;" and yet almost all the strong names among the commentators hold this opinion as firmly as Meyer, or under some modification. Could even they indulge in joking then? The horror of the three hours of darkness is followed by a scream from the central cross; and that gentle, holy, low-voiced prophet, who had not cried in their streets nor been ever boisterous, who had been silent before the high-priest, and silent before the procurator, and silent amid the jeers and hisses of a mob, and silent under that pall of supernatural darkness, now thrills the multitude by a cry so fearful and so piercing that if ever human call had answer from the invisible world, and was calling for any other soul, that soul, it would seem, must come. Perhaps the power as well as the hour of darkness had passed away. Perhaps Elijah was about to come. Perhaps the tawny, terrible prophet of Carmel would in a few moments descend into Golgotha, set free the prisoner from the cross, and with superhuman power tear down, and with the fierceness of one to whose prayer fire fell from heaven, scatter priest and procurator, Church and State, Jew and Gentile, and inaugurate the splendors of the Messianic reign.

This cry continued to puzzle the materialists who stood around this extraordinary sufferer, until another saying came from Jesus. He simply said, "I thirst." Physiologically and psychologically this may indicate that his agony was closing. The spirit which

Jesus thirsts and dies.

had been so strung up that it could think of nothing which merely concerned his body, was now relaxing. He was passing from out the hour and from under the power of darkness, going out of a battle victorious but wounded. It may be noted as indicating him to be in the full possession of his faculties, in the fulness of his bodily strength, and by no means suffering death as an effect of cruci fixion, seeing that this is only the beginning of that terrible thirst which burns in those who are lingering on the cross. This cir cumstance seems quite incidentally mentioned by John (xix. 28) and by some other of the biographers, and yet it is of great importance. In response one of the Roman soldiers ran and took a branch of hyssop, a plant probably growing near, the stock of which we know was about two feet long. So low did the crucified hang that when the soldier fastened a sponge to this stock, and filled it with the sour common wine, or vinegar, which they mingled with their water, it was quite easy to lay it on the mouth of Jesus. He took it, and said, "It is finished." Then calling out with a loud voice, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit," he bowed his head and died.

The darkness which had come upon the whole land had reached its consummation in an earthquake, which rent the rocks in the neighborhood, and so moved the Temple that, at An earthquake. the very hour when worshippers were thronging into the holy place, and the priests were kindling the lamps before the veil which divided the holy from the holiest place, that strong, well-woven, annually-renewed veil split from top to bottom, and laid open before the startled attendants that sacred spot where the wings of the cherubim overshadowed the mercy-seat in the ark of the covenant, a spot no feet but those of the High-priest might tread, and a sight which no eyes but his might behold. The stone sepulchres around the city were broken by this convulsion in nature, and the stone doors were jarred off their hinges, and a few days after some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were visited by holy people whom they had seen dead and buried.

The Roman centurion who was in charge of the execution remained with his guard through all these terrifying phenomena. They had ceased to amuse themselves with dice. They stood watching the victim. When their commander saw what was done he exclaimed, "Certainly this was

The centurion.

a righteous man. Certainly this was a Son of God." He had seen men die, civilized and barbarian. He knew what Roman fortitude was. He knew what the crucifixion was. But here was something different from all he had ever witnessed. The fact is, that Jesus did not seem to come under the supreme effects of physical torture. He did not seem to die, in the sense that the soul was pressed from the body by pain, but he "gave up the ghost." It was apparently a voluntary dismissal on his own part of his soul from his body. No felon ever died so. Moreover, the mythology of his country had trained the soldier to believe that in earlier days the gods had come among men. IIe looked at Jesus.

His mind ran rapidly over the phenomena which had filled the last six hours. The conviction came upon him, that if ever any of the kith and kin of the gods had dwelt in flesh, this was one of them. The Jews had condemned a good man: that was an outrage. They had caused the crucifixion of a god: that was a horror. It was the verdict of a pagan on one of the crimes of the church. Conscience began to do its work in some of the common Jewish people. They smote their breasts and went home from this frightful scene, not knowing what form the vengeance of Jehovah might take.

Section 12.-From Three o'clock until Evening.

A ritualistic difficulty.

This was Friday, 3 o'clock P.M. That evening was to begin the Sabbath-the specially sacred Sabbath of the Passover festival. There remained only two or three hours. According to Hebrew law, if one had been stoned to death for blasphemy, and his corpse hung upon a tree, it must be removed before night (Deuteronomy xxi. 23), and this regulation would be scrupulously observed on the eve of the Paschal Sabbath. The leaders of the ecclesiastical party, who had not shrunk from conspiracy, and lying, and blasphemy, and the murder of the innocent, these ritualistic Puritans could not endure that their feast should be defiled by the sight of three crosses hanging near Jerusalem on the high Sabbath of their church. Moreover, they did not know what effect the sight of the body of the innocent Jesus might have upon the fickle populace. They might still rescue him. The Pharisees did not now know that he was dead. They had a political reason, and it

always was the manner of the hypocrite to cover a politic design with a religious profession. So they went to Pilate to ask that the death of the three crucified men might be hastened by the breaking of their legs, and that the bodies might be buried. Pilate had no care now as to what might happen. He consented.

The thieves killed.

The rade executioners did not hesitate with the two thieves. They were soon dispatched. But when the soldiers saw Jesus they were convinced that he was thoroughly dead. It were a wanton act to crush his limbs. He had been so good and gentle through it all! There may have been something in his very looks which inspired a sense of delicacy. The phenomenon attending his death may

have awed them. They forbore.

John had returned from attending Mary, the mother of Jesus, to a place of retreat in the city. He was witness to an incident. which he recorded, probably, to meet a certain The spear thrust suggestion of his day, but which throws light on question important in our own. One of the soldiers, more daring and hardened than the others, in order to make assurance doubly sure, thrust a spear into the side of Jesus, and forthwith there issued water and blood. The remarkable events of the past few hours, and the certainty of the death of the condemned, kad probably removed all restraint, and any one might approach the cross It was so low,-not lifting the body many feet above the ground, as the painters have it, that John could distinctly see what was going forward. When his account was written, it had not yet been suggested that Jesus had not died but had passed into a swoon from which he subsequently revived; but the Gnostics afterwards maintained that it was not flesh and blood that hung upon the cross, nor the real Jesus, but a resem blance of Jesus

This statement of facts John connects with two passages from the sacred Hebrew books, namely, those which provided that not a bone of the paschal lamb should be broken (as Exodus xii. 46, and Numbers ix. 12), and the passage in Zechariah (xii. 10) in which John undoubtedly understood the prophet as predicting that the people should pierce Jehovah in the person of the Messtah, and should have great grief therefor. But the phenomenon of the outdowing blood and water brings us to the question of the physical causes of the death of Jesus.