M. 3 THEN Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, 4 saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What

5 is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. 6 And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them 7 into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought 8 with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, 9 The field of blood, unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that 10 was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; and gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord appointed me. 1 And straightway, when the morning was come, all the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, against Jesus to put him to 2 death. And the whole multitude of them arose, and when they had bound Jesus, they led him away from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment, and delivered him to Pontius J. 28 Pilate the governor. And it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover. 29 Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man? 30 They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee. Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put 32 any man to death: that the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die. And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Cesar, saying, that he himself is Christ a King. J. 33 Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus. And Jesus stood before the governor; and the governor asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the 34 Jews? Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee 35 of me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation, and the chief priests, have 36 delivered thee unto me. What hast thou done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. 37 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth my 38 voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all. Mk. 3 And the chief priests and elders accused him of many things: but he answered nothing. And Pilate asked him again, saying, Answerest thou nothing? hearest thou not 5 how many things they witness against thee? But Jesus yet answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly. L. 4 Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man. 5 And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.

WHAT human heart can be untouched by the demeanor of Jesus toward Judas when sin had begun to do its work? On the one hand, there is that divine earnestness with which, from time to time, he uttered the voice of prophetic warning in his ear. And on the other hand, that considerate love with which, in these warnings, he ever spared him before the disciples, never mentioning his name, just as if he was addressing a secret word to his heart alone, by which he constantly and unweariedly wooed his heart—ever up to that majestic close, when he washed the traitor’s feet! And by all that, Judas was untouched; to all he was insensible. For he that has himself ceased to love, can no longer understand the love of others. In his dead heart all is voiceless and mute. But he awoke at last. Then the pent-up storm burst within the conscience of the traitor. And as he heard a voice cry out against him from every fold of that conscience, the feeling that awoke within him was—“Once I loved; once I was loved by him!” But alas! he had then no longer power to believe or love! A. T.

As the death of Jesus was designed to atone for all guilt, nearly all guilt combined to accomplish it. It was covetousness that betrayed him; it was perjury that bore false witness against him; it was envy that delivered him up. Cruelty scourged and crowned him with thorns. Popular fickleness chose Barabbas, and rejected Him; while, in the soldiers, coarse brutality buffeted and mocked him. If we look beneath the outward acts of human conduct to the hidden principles from which they spring, it will be found that the guilt of crucifying the Lord is oft repeated—by avowed disciples, who desert and deny, and would even sell him, and with him every principle of conscience; by those who would aid his cause, but that to identify themselves too closely with Christ might compromise them with the world; by those who believe but do not confess; whose admiration ends when they feel the pressure of the morality of his gospel, and the self-denying character of the Christian life; and by those who in every age have preferred the specious to the real, or who have mocked with empty lip-service that divine King who is satisfied with nothing less than the homage of the heart! J. A.

M. 3. Judas stands alone in sacred history as a man devoted by name, by the voice of the Lord himself, to perdition. He is the most marked type of those false disciples who joined Christ in the expectation of an earthly kingdom; and when our Lord’s repeated announcements of his sufferings and death showed this to be a vain hope, he prepared to sell himself and his Master to the rulers. S.

Judas had made ready his own nature for the tempter. He, and none but he, could have rendered himself capable of yielding. And now that he has yielded, the power at work becomes apparent in the disenchantment which follows. After sin has made a man so that he cannot look steadily into his own soul, it ends by destroying his enjoyment in that fictitious pleasure for which it has induced him to sell all that is divine and real. It cheats him of the substance for a shadow, and of that shadow it robs him, or changes it into a frightful phantom, from which he would escape if he could—as Judas from the hire of his treachery. The remorse of Judas at this moment can be perfectly explained by the full consequences of his act now looking him in the face. It is the murderer’s horror when the deed is committed and cannot be undone—that awful revulsion which, among all calculations, is never reckoned on. For now, not only Christ’s guiltlessness of the charge, but his spotless and loving character—the good he had received at his hands, and never evil—the gentle considerateness—the unwearied patience—the pitying tenderness he had shown him and his fellow-disciples—rose up before the soul of his betrayer, and smote him with unutterable remorse. No one word, no one act, could he call up that would help his own thoughts to justify his treachery. Ker.

Judas repented himself. There are two Greek words used in the N. T., both of which are rendered repent. The one signifies literally to know after, and hence indicates a change of mind or purpose; the other signifies literally to care after, and so to carry a burden of sorrow for the past. The latter is the word used here. The distinction is well stated by Trench: “He who has changed his mind about the past is in the way to change everything; he who has an after-care may have little or nothing more than a selfish dread of the consequences of what he has done.” This appears to have been the state of mind of Judas. It is manifested in remorse for the past, not in any new purpose for the future; and it leads not to a new life in Christ Jesus, but to a despairing death. Repentance inspires to a new life, remorse leads to despair and death; repentance seeks forgiveness, remorse oblivion; repentance conducts Peter to Christ, remorse drives Judas from him. L. A.

4. I have sinned . . . innocent blood.** What a testimony this to Jesus! Judas had been with him in all circumstances for three years; his post as treasurer to him and the twelve gave him peculiar opportunity of watching the spirit, disposition, and habits of his Master; while his covetous nature would incline him to dark and suspicious, rather than frank and generous, interpretations of all that he said and did. If, then, he could have fastened on one questionable feature in all that he had so long witnessed, no such speech as this would ever have escaped his lips, nor would he have been so stung with remorse as not to be able to keep the money and survive his crime. B.

What is that to us? This answer of the chief priests was perfectly natural for men of their character. Men who had any feeling, any sentiments of common humanity, or even of common justice, would naturally have paused under these circumstances; would have examined Judas, and investigated the grounds of his repentance. But with the guilt or innocence of Jesus they did not concern themselves. All they wanted was the destruction of a man whom they hated and feared, and whose life and doctrine were a standing reproach to them. This was their sole object; as to the justice of the case, they were utterly indifferent. P.

If Christ is innocent it is not their concern. The traitor who knew him so well should have thought of this when he surrendered him. And in this they touch the very point which stung Judas to the quick, the one thing which made his guilt blacker than theirs. He knew Christ better, and sinned more against the purity and love of his nature. See thou to that. Even Judas himself could not complain. They had kept their share of the contract, and he must abide by his. This is the remorseless logic which belongs to these cases, and among such men it is all-powerful. And this is the natural end of all alliances that are made for mutual aid in the pursuit of revenge or unhallowed ambition, of unjust gain or sinful pleasure. Ker.

5. Terribly soon did the Nemesis fall on the main actor in the lower stages of this iniquity. When the morning dawned upon that chilly night, and he knew the decision of the priests and of the Sanhedrim, and saw that Jesus was now given over for crucifixion to the Roman governor, then he began fully to realize all that he had done. In Judas, as in so many thousands since, this opening of the eyes which follows the consummation of an awful sin to which many other sins have led, drove him from remorse to despair, from despair to madness, from madness to suicide. F.—We only see in his fearful end the most dread instance of the regular development and enhancement of sin in the individual that is contained in the history of man, and with awe we behold in him the only one who received his sentence in person before the last day. E.

6. Not lawful to put them into the treasury. These very men, who had no scruple at all in murdering an innocent person, yet had wonderful qualms of conscience about putting into the treasury the money which they themselves had given as “the price of blood.” P.

7. Pontius Pilate the governor. The Roman provinces were of two kinds, senatorial and imperial. The latter were governed by military officers, who held their office and power at the pleasure of the emperor. They looked after the taxes, paid the troops, preserved order, and administered a rude sort of justice; from their decisions there was ordinarily no appeal, except in the case of a Roman citizen. Judea was an imperial province; Pontius Pilate was its governor or procurator, and was directly amenable to the emperor, Tiberius Cesar, for his administration. L. A.—Pilate had arrived from Cesarea, to secure in person the preservation of order in the dangerous days of the feast. His quarters were in the new palace, built by Herod the Great on Zion. It was the pride of Jerusalem. G.

It was probably about seven in the morning that, thinking to overawe the procurator by their numbers and dignity, the imposing procession of the Sanhedrists and priests, headed, no doubt, by Caiaphas himself, conducted Jesus from their hall of meeting over the lofty bridge which spanned the valley of the Tyropæon, in presence of all the city, with the bound hands of a sentenced criminal, a spectacle to angels and to men.

“SUFFERED under Pontius Pilate”—so, in every creed of Christendom, is the name of the Roman procurator handed down to eternal execration. Yet of all the civil and ecclesiastical rulers before whom Jesus was brought to judgment, Pilate was the least guilty of malice and hatred, the most anxious, if not to spare his agony, at least to save his life. F.

J. 28. The Pretorium, translated “hall of judgment,” was the headquarters of the Roman military governor, wherever he happened to be. S.—One of the ground apartments of Herod’s palace on Zion appears to have been the procurators’ Pretorium, mentioned here; as Josephus informs us that the Roman governors took up their quarters in the palace, and set up their tribunal in front (i. e., at the eastern entrance) of it, namely, on the “Pavement” (of John 19 : 13). Strong.

Lest they should be defiled. Jewish authorities on defilement inform us that going into the house of a Gentile made a Jew unclean for one day. Notice how sanctimoniousness and crime consort together in the same bosoms—the spirit of murder firing their hearts, yet afraid to defile their hallowed garments or soil their holy feet by going into Pilate’s judgment-hall! H. C.

Eat the passover. The word passover is employed in the New Testament in three different and specific acceptations, viz.: 1. The paschal lamb. 2. The paschal meal. 3. The paschal festival. The last may be taken in its literal and widest sense. Then, to eat may be understood to keep or celebrate the passover. Or, the paschal festival may be taken in the sense of paschal sacrifices; that is, the voluntary peace-offerings and thank-offerings, made more especially on the 15th day of Nisan. There is nothing in the language of John, nor in the attendant circumstances, which, upon fair interpretation, requires or permits us to believe that he intended to correct the unquestionable teaching of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The language of these three evangelists is full, explicit, and decisive, to the effect that our Lord’s last meal with his disciples, as recorded by them all, was the regular and ordinary paschal supper of the Jews, introducing the festival of unleavened bread, on the evening of the 14th day of Nisan. R. (Section 155, J. 14.)

31. Take ye him, and judge him. Pilate’s Roman knowledge of law, his Roman instinct of justice, his Roman contempt for their murderous fanaticism, made him not choose to act upon a charge so entirely vague. F.—As he had heard of no disturbance produced by Jesus, the statement made by the Sanhedrim appeared by no means credible; and, suspecting that religious disputes were at the bottom, he wished to get rid of the whole affair, and told them “to take him, and judge him according to their law.” N.

It is not lawful for us to put to death. Judea was now under the Roman yoke; one badge of its servitude being this, that while the old Jewish courts were permitted to try and to punish minor offences, the final judgment of all capital offences was reserved for the Roman tribunals. A Roman judge must pass the sentence, or, at least, must sign the warrant that consigns the criminal to execution. At Jerusalem, these reserved cases were brought up for adjudication at the time of the great festivals, when the Roman procurator, who resided ordinarily at Cesarea, visited the capital. For the last six years, Pontius Pilate had held this office in Judea, and he was now in the city on occasion of this Passover. H.

32. Signifying what death he should die. It stood written in the eternal councils that Christ was to die by that Roman form of execution which inspired the Jews with a nameless horror, even by crucifixion; that he was to reign from his cross—to die by that most fearfully significant and typical of deaths—public, slow, conscious, accursed, agonizing—worse even than burning—the worst type of all possible deaths, and the worst result of that curse which he was to remove forever. F.

The Lord was not to be stoned, according to the Jewish custom; for his holy body must be preserved from all mutilation. R. B.—This remark John makes for the strengthening of our faith, and to show us how wisely everything was ordered by the counsel of God under such complicated circumstances. His enemies dared not do what they would, but throughout the whole trial of Christ everything was ordered by God’s decree, determined long before. But this very Providence, which watched over our blessed Saviour from his birth to his death, will watch over us in our hours of life and death, if only we yield ourselves wholly up to it, and commit all our ways to God alone. Rambach.

L. 2. They here bring three different accusations against him, not one of which—in the sense they desire Pilate to understand them—is true; and one of which, the second, they know is absolutely false. But it suits their object to represent the accused to Pilate as stirring up sedition, refusing to pay custom, claiming to be king of the country in his own right. H.

The grounds on which the Sanhedrim condemned Christ were not sufficient to induce Pilate, the Roman procurator, to inflict capital punishment upon him. To serve the purpose, recourse was had to his claim of Messiahship, on which they had professed to found their own decision, with the addition of a political element: “He has claimed to be a king;” and hence “he perverts the nation (contests the Roman authority), and forbids to give tribute to Cesar.” An accusation of this sort could be the more readily admitted, as the Roman authorities were well aware that the Jews felt themselves degraded and disgraced by paying taxes to a heathen power. N.

J. 33. Jesus stood before the governor. The future Judge of quick and dead stood before this earthly judge. He stood there, a King in bonds. Pilate beheld him, and his impression that this was no malefactor was legible on his countenance. Then began the Lord’s accusers to bring forward the accusations upon which they had previously agreed. He had confessed that he was Christ; therefore they represent him to the governor as a rebel, who had called himself an anointed king; and thereto add that he seduced the people and refused to pay tribute to the emperor. They make out the Lord to be just the kind of Messiah which they were hoping for; and in this character they deliver him up to the heathen Pilate. R. B.—The hypocrites! They were hunting Jesus to death simply because he would not identify himself with them, and use his supernatural power to drive out the Romans, and set them on the vacant throne. They were demanding his death on the pretext that he had threatened to use force to establish his kingdom, when the truth was—his real offence, in their eyes, was that he would not use force! G.

36,37. My kingdom is not of this world. He does not say “not over,” but “not of this world”—i. e., in its origin and nature; therefore “no such kingdom as need give thee or thy master the least alarm.” Our Lord only says whence his kingdom is not—first simply affirming it, next giving proof of it, then reaffirming it. This was all that Pilate had to do with. The positive nature of his kingdom he would not obtrude upon one who was as little able to comprehend it, as entitled officially to information about it. B.

As the Lord owned himself the Son of God before the most exalted theocratic council, so he confessed his regal dignity in presence of the representative of the highest political authority on earth. O.—The words implied that in another sense he certainly claimed to be both a king and the founder of a kingdom. He then defined more exactly the sense in which he was both. N.

“Thou art a king, then!” said Pilate to him, in astonishment. Yes! but a king not in this region of falsities and shadows, but one born to bear witness unto the truth, and one whom all who were of the truth should hear. F.—For my kingdom is an empire of truth. “Every one that is of the truth,” whose heart receives and loves the truth, hears my voice and is one of my subjects; a member of my kingdom. In the sense in which he is a king, his claim to be one is no crime. H. C.

The only weapon of which he made use was spiritual truth. His life, his words, all the manifestations of his character, are consistent only with the design to achieve, not a material, but a moral conquest, and to effect not a political, but a spiritual revolution in the world. He had the conception of a purely spiritual reign, the conception of a palace and a throne for God in the soul of man, the conception of the regeneration of man’s inward nature. Y.

After he had disclaimed any purpose of setting up an earthly kingdom, affirming at the same time that he was King in a certain sense, he added that he came into the world to testify of the truth. These three propositions, taken together, set forth his purpose to found his kingdom, not by worldly means, but by the testimony of the truth. But he testified of the truth by his whole life, by his words and works, comprising the entire self-revelation of him who could say, “I am the Truth.” N.

Then Christ is a King of Truth. Should not Pilate have desired to behold a King of Truth, a witness whose possession the truth is, in the midst of the fruitless search which the heathen world was making after the true God? To a Jew he might perhaps have said, salvation; to the heathen Pilate he holds out salvation as an object of attraction under the form of the truth. To reveal in his own person this saving truth, that God’s holy love desires the redemption of sinners—for this purpose it was that Christ was born and became man, a born King of Truth; for this cause did he come into the world, of which he is not; to this end did he live in the world, and preach, and work, and suffer. Jesus, the friend of souls, bears witness to that which our soul is seeking for; and his word would fain sound to us like the sweet accents of home. R. B.

Our Lord’s reply was particularly adapted to the position, acquirements, experience, of him before whom he stood—a Roman official of high rank, educated, cultivated; a man of large experience of men—men in different countries and of different creeds; not given much to thought about religious matters, yet sufficiently acquainted with the rival schools of philosophy and religion by which the Roman commonwealth was distracted. Truth, moral and religious truth, was the proclaimed object of research, of which some were saying, Lo, here it is, and others, Lo, there it is; but of which he, Pilate, in pursuit of quite a different object, had learned to think that neither here nor there nor anywhere was it to be found. “Here,” thinks Pilate, “is a new rival of those old Stoics, who were ever teaching that every wise man was a king—the setter-up of a new system. One thing at least is clear enough, that it is a quite empty charge these Jews are urging against him. He may sit as long as he likes upon that ideal throne of his, without the throne of Tiberius being endangered; he may get as many subjects as he can to enter that ideal kingdom, and my master, the emperor, have not a loyal subject the less.”

38. And so with that passing question to Jesus, “What is truth?”—a question he does not stay to get answered, as he has no faith that any answer to it can be given; a question not uttered sneeringly or scoffingly, but rather sadly and bitterly, he himself having come to regard all truth as a phantom; and with a tolerant, half-pitying feeling toward Jesus—with that question put to Jesus by the way, Pilate goes out to the Jews. H.

It was the half-pitying question of the practical man of the world, who felt that truth was a phantom, a word that had no political import, and regarded the attempt to connect it with a kingdom and matters of real life as a delusion of harmless though pitiable enthusiasm. E.—He wholly set aside the idea of an unearthly royalty; he saw in the prisoner before his tribunal an innocent and high-souled dreamer, nothing more. F.

That the peace of a nation or the life of an individual should be endangered on account of the truth or falsehood of any system of speculative opinions, was so opposite to the opinion and feeling of the Roman world, that Pilate inquired what he meant by truth; what truth had to do with a question of life and death. Apparently despairing, on one hand, of bringing this blameless enthusiast to his senses; on the other, unwilling to attach importance to what appeared to him in so different a light, he wished at once to put an end to the whole affair. He abruptly left Jesus and went out to the Jewish deputation at the gate. H. M.—To them he pronounced his first emphatic and unhesitating acquittal: “I find in him no fault at all.” F.

Mk. 3 5. He answered nothing. The silence of Jesus was the most dignified and speaking reply to such charges as they had to bring. B.—One observes an almost exact parallel as to his silences and his speakings in our Lord’s conduct before the Jewish and the Gentile courts of justice. So far as we can understand the principle determining the time to speak and the time to be silent, it was this: that when the matter directly concerned his divine Sonship and Kingship, he will help his judges in every way he can; nay, he will himself supply the evidence they want. Upon that count he will coöperate with his enemies in bringing about his condemnation; but will leave the attempts to fasten on him any other charge to break down of themselves, that it might be solely as the Son of God, the King of Israel, that he should be convicted, condemned, and crucified. H.

WITH what meek majesty did Jesus confront the representative of the greatest empire of the world, declaring himself a king in that higher realm of spiritual powers where truth rules over all! Even the temporizing truckling governor was awed by this strange assertion of a kingdom which his power could not touch, and to which every soul must bow. Yet the Roman empire long ago crumbled away, while Christ’s kingdom lives and grows. J. P. T.

The Kingship of Christ rests on a foundation which forms part of the very throne of God. His dominion is established in human hearts. It is founded in willing submission. It is maintained by spiritual authority. It is established in righteousness. It will ultimately unite heaven and earth. It begins in individual conversion. Its grandest earthly manifestation will be seen in the general extension of truth; the richest and noblest manifestation of all will be seen in heaven. Christ’s death founds it; Christ’s Spirit forms it; Christ’s will, ever in harmony with the will of the Father, rules it; Christ’s glory (which is also the glory of the Father, and comprehends the full blessedness of the redeemed) is its end. J. A.

Section 154.—Before Herod, and Pilate again. Barabbas preferred.

L. 6, 7 WHEN Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man were a Galilean. And as soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time.

8. And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: for he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things of him; and he hoped to have seen 9 some miracle done by him. Then he questioned with him in many words; but he answered him nothing. And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused 11 him. And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed 12 him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate. And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together; for before they were at enmity between themselves. 13 And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests, and the rulers, and the 14 people, said unto them, Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and, behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this 15 man, touching those things whereof ye accuse him: no, nor yet Herod: for I sent you 16 to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him. I will therefore chastise him, and release him.

M. 15 Now at that feast, the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner, whom-

16 soever they desired. And they had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas, a robber, who, for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison with them that had made insurrection with him. And the multitude crying aloud, began to desire him to do as he had ever done unto them. (For of necessity he must release one unto 17 them at the feast.) Therefore when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, Ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the passover: whom will ye therefore that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus, which is called Christ? will ye 18 that I release unto you the king of the Jews? For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy. 19 When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream, because of him. 20 But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? And they cried out all at once, Away with this L. 20 man, and release unto us Barabbas. Pilate therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them, saying, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? him 21 whom ye call the king of the Jews? And they all cried out again, saying, Crucify him, 22 crucify him. Then Pilate said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him; I will therefore chastise him, and let him go. 23 And they cried out the more exceedingly, they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed. M. 24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the 25 blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His 26 blood be on us, and on our children. Then Pilate, willing to content the people, gave sentence that it should be as they required. And he released Barabbas unto them, that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will.

DECISIVE, great, and strong, Christ is yet all this, even the more sublimely, that he is invested in the lovely but humanly feeble garb of innocence. And that this is the true conception is clear, in the fact that no one ever thinks of him as weak, and no one fails to be somehow impressed with a sense of inno- cence by his life. When his enemies are called to show what evil or harm he hath done, they can specify nothing, save that he has offended their bigotry. Even Pilate, when he gives him up, confesses that he finds nothing in him to blame, and shuddering with apprehensions he cannot subdue, washes his hands to be clear of the innocent blood! Thus he dies, a being holy, harmless, undefiled. And when he hangs, a bruised flower, drooping on his cross, and the sun above is dark, and the earth beneath shudders with pain, what have we in this funeral grief of the worlds, but a fit honor paid to the sad majesty of his divine innocence? H. B.

L. 7. Pilate sent Jesus to Herod, hoping thus to escape the dilemma of an unjust condemnation or of an unpopular release. B.

8,9. Herod hoped to see some miracle. Nothing but the craving of an empty curiosity, the thirst for some showy exhibition of knowledge or of power. Herod asks and asks again that some sign may be shown, some token of his alleged power exhibited. Jesus makes not a single move- ment to comply. Herod is the only one of all his judges before whom Jesus preserves an unbroken silence. H.

10,11. Though the chief priests and scribes stood about his throne, instigating him to a fresh and more heinous act of murder by their intense ac- cusations, he practically showed that he thought their accusations frivolous, by treating them as a jest. F.—Greatly galled, yet in no way softened, when he could make nothing of this mysterious man, he and his men of war found nothing else to do than to set Christ at naught, and mock him, and array him in a white robe, and send him back to Pilate.

12. For some fancied interference with his ju- risdiction, Herod had taken offence at Pilate. The recognition of his jurisdiction, then, by sending to him for trial such a notorious person as Jesus, would be the very kind of compliment most soothing to his kingly vanity. Herod appreciated the compli- ment; and Pilate got the quarrel between himself and Herod healed.

15. Jesus was sent back to him by Herod; sent back in such a way as to indicate that Herod made light of this poor Galilean’s pretensions to be a king—thought it, in fact, more a matter for mock- ery and ridicule than for serious judicial entertain- ment. H.—Is done unto him. Rather, hath been done by him. P. S.

16. Will chastise and release him. Pi- late wanted to release the Lord to satisfy his con- science; he wanted to chastise him to satisfy his fear of man. He imagined that a king who had been disgraced by scourging would no longer be an object of envy to the chief priests. He has already gone thus far in deciding against the Lord. He will scourge him. R. B.

It was a weak and unworthy concession, the first faltering of Pilate’s footstep. He cannot but say that he has found nothing worthy of death in this man; he is himself thoroughly satisfied that there is nothing in him worthy of any punishment; but it will please his accusers, it will conciliate the people, it may open the way to their readier acquiescence in his after-dismissal, to inflict on him some punishment, a proposal springing rather from the wish to protect Jesus from the greater penalty by inflicting on him the less, yet one that weakened his position, that made those sharp-sighted Jews at once perceive that he could be moved, that he was not ready to stand firmly and fixedly upon the ground of Christ’s innocence. H.

M. 16. Barabbas was plainly a ringleader in one of those fierce and fanatic outbreaks against the Roman domination, which fast succeeded one another in the latter days of the Jewish commonwealth. This at once explains how it was possible for the chief priests, with their religious pretensions, to show the interest on his behalf which they did, and explains no less the enthusiasm with which the Jewish populace demanded his liberation. Whether, indeed, Barabbas had actually played the part of a false Christ, setting himself up as the true, we have no means of knowing. It is far from unlikely. Keeping in mind the significance of names in Scripture, we can hardly fail to recognize a fearful mockery in his name, Barabbas, or “son of the Father;” as though in the very name which he bore, not to speak of the work which he wrought, he should be the devil’s counterfeit and caricature of the true Holy One of God. He had wrought, we may well believe, in that false Messias spirit, which was filling with wild and insane hopes the whole nation, and rapidly hurrying it to that final conflict with the Roman power, in which, as a nation, it should be forever broken in pieces. T.

18. For envy. Pilate knew very well that no such sedition as they charged could have existed without his knowledge, or would have disturbed these restless, seditious Jews if it had been never so serious. He knew they were ready enough to throw off the Roman yoke if only some leader powerful enough might appear, to be their head. Hence he saw that they were pushing this prosecution “for envy.” H. C.—From all he had learned, Jesus was only a well-meaning enthusiast, and he could easily see how such a man might well be dangerous to the vested interests and mock-holiness of the Jewish magnates, but not at all so to Roman authority. G.

19. His own wife—Claudia Procula—ventured to send him a public message, even as he sat there on his tribunal, that in the morning hours she had had a troubled and painful dream about that just man; and, bolder than her husband, she bade him beware how he molested him. F.—That she should have learned so much of Jesus as to think and speak of him as “that just man”—that she should have been so much concerned when she heard that her husband had been asked to try him, as to take this uncommon step of sending a warning to him on the judgment-seat—may be regarded as a proof how wide-spread and deep the impression Christ had made. H.

20. Cried out. While Pilate was receiving this message from his wife, and waiting the answer to his question, “Whom will ye that I release?” the chief priests and elders were busy in the crowd, persuading them what answer to give. L. A.

The people, persuaded by their priests, clamored for the liberation of the man who not only was what they falsely said of Christ, a leader of sedition, but also a robber and a murderer. To him every hand was pointed; for him every voice was raised. For the holy, the harmless, the undefiled—for him whom a thousand hosannas had greeted but five days before—no word of pity or of pleading found an utterance. “He was despised and rejected of men.” F.—Thus they committed the great sin which Peter charges upon them not long after: “Ye denied Jesus in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. Ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you.” J. C. R.

The same moral state of the people now led them to reject Jesus and demand the release of Barabbas, which, forty years later, provoked the unrelenting vengeance of Titus. It was the brooding hope of sovereignty, at least of political independence, moulded up with religious enthusiasm, which rendered it impossible that the pure, humane, unworldly, and comprehensive doctrines of Jesus should be received, or his character appreciated. And the nation which could thus incur the guilt of his death was prepared to precipitate themselves to such a fate as at length it suffered. H. M.

L. 20. What shall we do with Jesus, if we make him not our Mediator, our Saviour, our life, our refuge in all our evils, and the object of our adoration, love, and confidence; since God has made him our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption? Q.

21,22. Crucify! It is the first time the word has been named in Pilate’s hearing, the first time they tell him articulately what it is they desire to have done with Jesus. Crucify him—give up to that most ignominious of all deaths this meek and gentle man, who he is sure has done no wrong; whom he sees well enough that the chief priests seek to get rid of from some religious antipathy that they have taken against him: can the people mean it? Why, what evil hath he done? H.

Crucifixion, entirely foreign to the Jewish code, had been introduced into Jerusalem by the proconsuls. Crosses had been planted at the same time as the Roman eagles on the soil of Judea, and were the tokens of a detested rule. But enmity against

Jesus overmastered hatred of the foreigner in the hearts of the Pharisees. Thus they did not hesitate to demand for the Galilean a sentence of death, the very thought of which, on other occasions, would have roused all their indignation. De P.

23. The very mention of letting him go stirs the crowd to a tenfold frenzy, and now the voices of the chief priests themselves are heard swelling and intensifying the cry, “Crucify him! crucify him!” Before a storm like this who can stand? He has done—so Pilate thinks—the most he can. If he go further, he will raise another city tumult which it will cost many lives to quell, and the quelling of which by force may expose him to the very same charges of tyranny and cruelty which, upon more than one occasion of the kind before, had actually been transmitted to Rome against him, and drawn down upon him the rebuke and displeasure of the emperor. The yielding is but the sacrifice of a single life, which may be made without involving the governor in any danger. But the resisting—who can tell in what that might land? Still, however, he is not at ease. H.

M. 24, 25. The dream of Pilate’s wife, and the symbolic purification of the governor himself, express the influence which the righteousness of the Saviour exercised upon their imagination and judgment. B. F. W.—First a ceremony was enacted between the governor and the Jews, vain on his part, but of awful significance on theirs! Pilate washed his hands before the people, protesting, “I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it;” and they accepted the tremendous responsibility: “His blood be on us and on our children.” The providence of God took them at their word, when their last efforts for freedom ended in their dispersion over all the world. No less signal was the retribution which befell the other actors in this greatest crime of the world’s history. S.

Before the dread sacrifice was consummated, Judas died in the horrors of a loathsome suicide. Caiaphas was deposed the year following. Herod died in infamy and exile. Stripped of his procuratorship very shortly afterward, on the very charges he had tried by a wicked concession to avoid, Pilate, wearied out with misfortunes, died in suicide and banishment, leaving behind him an execrated name. The house of Annas was destroyed a generation later by an infuriated mob, and his son was dragged through the streets, and scourged and beaten to his place of murder. Some of those who shared in and witnessed the scenes of that day—and thousands of their children—also shared in and witnessed the long horrors of that siege of Jerusalem which stands unparalleled in history for its unutterable fearfulness. They had forced the Romans to crucify their Christ, and they and their children were themselves crucified in myriads by the Romans. They had given thirty pieces of silver for their Saviour’s blood, and they were themselves sold in thousands for yet smaller sums. He must be blind indeed who does not see that when the murder of Christ was consummated, the ax was laid at the root of the barren tree of Jewish nationality. Since that day Jerusalem and its environs, with their “ever-extending miles of gravestones and ever-lengthening pavement of tombs and sepulchres,” have become little more than one vast cemetery—an Acel-dama, a field of blood, a potter’s field to bury strangers in. F.

They put Jesus to death, when the nation was assembled to celebrate the Passover; and when the nation too was assembled to celebrate the Passover, Titus shut them up within the walls of Jerusalem. The rejection of the true Messiah was their crime: and the following of false Messiahs to their destruction was their punishment. They preferred a robber and murderer to Jesus, whom they crucified between two thieves: and they themselves were afterward infested with bands of thieves and robbers. They put Jesus to death, lest the Romans should come and take away their place and nation: and the Romans did come and take away their place and nation. They crucified Jesus before the walls of Jerusalem: and before the walls of Jerusalem they themselves were crucified, in such numbers, that it is said room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses for the bodies. Bp. Newton.

PILATE’S CHARACTER.—The fair statement seems to be that Pilate was a thorough type of the later Roman man of the world. Stern but not relentless, shrewd and world-worn, prompt and practical, haughtily just, and yet self-seeking and cowardly, able to perceive what was right, but without moral strength to follow it out, he stands forth a sad instance of a man whom the fear of endangered self-interest drove to act against the deliberate conviction of his conscience, to commit an act of the utmost cruelty and injustice, even after his convictions had been deepened by warnings, and strengthened by presentiment. E.—Agrippa the elder speaks of the iniquity of his government in the strongest terms: “He feared lest they should examine and expose the misdeeds of his former procuratorship, the taking of bribes, the acts of violence, the extortions, the tortures, the menaces, the repeated murders without any form of trial, the harsh and incessant cruelty.” G. R.

The secular history shows that the state of the public mind in Judea, as well as the character of Pilate, harmonize in the most remarkable manner with the narrative of the Evangelists. The general expectation of the Messiah, the impatience of the Roman sovereignty, the extraordinary excitement of the more fanatical part of the people, the rigid prudence of the chief priests, lest the slightest indication of revolt should compromise the safety of the city and the temple—these circumstances of the times sufficiently account for the reception of such a teacher as Jesus at Jerusalem. Appearing with doctrines so alarming to the authority of the priesthood, so full of disappointment to the fanatic populace, so repugnant to the national pride, and, above all, openly assuming the mysterious title, the Son of God—it excites less astonishment than sorrow that the passions of such a people should at once proceed to the most awful violence against a Teacher whose tenets were too pure and spiritual for their comprehension, and whose character was so remote from their preconceived notions of the expected Messiah. H. M.

Section 155.—Jesus scourged, mocked, and delivered up.

M. 26 THEN Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him. And when he had scourged 27 Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, called Pretorium, and gathered unto him the whole band of sol- 28, 29 diers. And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, worshipped and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of 30 the Jews! And they spit upon him, and smote him with their hands, and took the reed and smote him on the head. J. 4 Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring him forth to 5 you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man! 6 When the chief priests therefore and officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him: for I find no 7 fault in him. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God. 8, 9 When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid; and went again into the judgment hall and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no 10 answer. Then saith Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? Knowest thou not 11 that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin. 12 And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release him. But the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Cesar’s friend: whosoever maketh himself a king, 13 speaketh against Cesar. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat, in a place that is called the Pavement, but in 14 the Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth 15 hour. And he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! But they cried out, Away with him! Away with him! crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your 16 King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Cesar. Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified.

“BEHOLD the man!” Pilate unwittingly spoke a word in which is contained the secret of our redemption, our deepest disgrace, and our highest glory. In the man Christ Jesus, the only Mediator, we see at once our sin and our righteousness, our curse and our blessing, our shame and our glory; both what we deserved and what he deserved. “Therefore (so Luther exhorts) do thou learn Christ, the crucified

Christ, till, having lost all trust in thyself, thou canst extol him, and say: Thou, my Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, while I am thy sin. Thou hast taken upon thee what is mine, and thou hast given me what is thine. Thou hast taken to thyself that which thou wast not, and thou hast given to me that which I was not!”

When, in the hour of temptation, the devil shall cast our sins in our teeth, and whisper to us: Behold the man thou art! then may we also answer him: Behold the man! while we point the accuser to our surety, who, in the crown of thorns and the purple robe, expiated our sins, and through his blood so abundantly shed, has obtained for us abundant forgiveness.

Under suffering and the cross, if we hear such whispers as these: Behold the man thou art! by God and man forsaken—where is now thy God? and if we are ready to lose patience, and utterly despair, let us make answer to the tempter: Behold the man! and let us flee to our dear Lord, who, for our sakes, has suffered far greater and more heavy woes than we, and has sanctified our every burden. He opened not his mouth, no cry of impatience escaped his holy lips; and should we murmur and fret over the sufferings which are made so precious by his sympathy with us as his members? We should rather rejoice in any conformity to the likeness of his suffering; for then in glory too we shall be like him; “because as he is, so are we in this world.”

Behold the man! The sight will not weary us. It will continue to refresh us until we shall behold our King in his beauty, and recognize him by the marks of his passion, as the “Lamb that hath been slain.” R. B.

26. Scourged him.** The word used for the scourging implies that it was done, not with rods, for Pilate had no lictors, but with what Horace calls the “horribile flagellum,” of which the Russian knout is the only modern representative. F.—According to the Roman custom, his hands are bound fast to a low pillar, and his breast and back are bared. The soldiers then approach. They hold in their hands whips plaited with thongs, tipped with iron wire. Therewith they strike, heaping lash upon lash. Consentingly and patiently does the Lord submit his body to these painful lashes, that sacred body, intended and prepared for sacrifice. “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The punishment lay upon him, that we might have peace, and with his stripes we are healed.” R. B.

Behold affronts and indignities which the world thinks it right never to pardon, which the Son of God endures with a divine meekness! Let us cast at the feet of Jesus Christ, thus unworthily treated by his creatures, that false honor, that quick sense of affronts, that mischievous refinement which is punctilious about a trifle, which exaggerates everything and pardons nothing, and, above all, that devilish determination in resenting injuries. Q.

27-30. After the scourging, fresh scorn and shame were heaped upon the suffering Jesus. He had said: “I am a King;” therefore the soldiers of the governor now began to mock his royalty, just as the servants of Caiaphas had before derided him as Prophet. And the governor allows it all. He even desires that Jesus should be thus pitifully treated, hoping that thereby he might perhaps even yet escape the guilt of his death. R. B.

They went through the whole heartless ceremony of a mock coronation, a mock investiture, a mock homage. Around the brows of Jesus, in wanton mimicry of the emperor’s laurel, they twisted a green wreath of thorny leaves; in his tied and trembling hands they placed a reed for sceptre; from his torn and bleeding shoulders they stripped the white robe with which Herod had mocked him—which must now have been all soaked with blood—and flung on him an old scarlet war-cloak. F.

29. They platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head. This they did to deride and torture him. To torture him, for with their harnessed fists they press the sharp thorns into his brow; to deride him, for they placed on his head the crown of thorns, in order to adorn his mock royalty. And, yet, what crown could have been imagined for our King Jesus which should have so exactly suited him as this crown of thorns? He who came to obtain for us the blessing, bears what the curse-laden earth brings forth, being made a curse for us. The thorns might with justice have been turned into instruments of our torture, for they are emblems of our earthly lusts and cares, growing and flourishing in our heart, and choking there so many noble grains of seed; but now they torture him—and to us the crown of glory is given, the crown of life and righteousness. R. B.

30. Then, when they have got him robed, and crowned, and sceptred thus, they bow the knee, and hail him as a king. But they tire even of that mock homage; the demon spirit that is in them inspires the merriment with a savage cruelty; and so they snatch the reed out of his hand, and smite with it the crown of thorns, and drive it down upon his pierced and bleeding brow, and spit upon him, and smite him with their hands. H.

Not one member of the Lord’s only, but his whole body, had to suffer the most cruel torture; his head was wounded by the crown of thorns, by smiting with the reed; his face suffered spitting and cuffs with the hand; his whole body was mangled with scourging, it was stripped, it was covered with a cloak of scorn; his hands held the reed; and afterward his tongue was forced to taste vinegar and gall. Because in all our members sin dwells and works, therefore has Christ willed for our sins to suffer in all his members. Chrys.—And so, amid the conflict of human passions and the advancing tide of crime, the Scripture was fulfilled which said, in Messiah’s name, many hundred years before he came into the world, “I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting.” (Is. 50 : 6.) B.

J. 4-6. All this is done in an inner court or guard-room, out of sight of the crowd that is still waiting without. Pilate sees it all; makes no attempt to mitigate the suffering or the mockery; is absorbed in wonder as he gazes upon Jesus—such a picture of silent, meek, unmurmuring, uncomplaining patience! standing there, and taking all that treatment as though no strange thing were happening, as if he had expected all, were prepared for all. There is no weakness in that patience; but a strength, a power, a dignity. The sight moves Pilate’s heart: may it not move even the hearts of those people without? may it not satisfy their thirst for vengeance to see the suffering Jesus reduced to such a pitiable plight as this? He will try at least what the sight can do in the way of stirring such sympathy. He goes forth, with Jesus following, and says to the multitude, “Behold, I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him;” then, turning and pointing to Jesus, as he stood wearing still the purple robe and the crown of thorns, bearing on his face and person the marks of all the sufferings and indignities of the guard-house, Pilate says, “Behold the man!” “behold and pity, behold and be satisfied—behold, and suffer me, now that I have thus chastised him, to let him go!” H.

I find no fault in him. It was meet that he who had the chief hand in slaying the Lamb of God, should three times publicly declare that he found no spot or blemish in him. Three times he vainly tried to evade condemning our Lord, or to make the Jews desist from their bloody design: once by asking the Jews to choose between Christ and Barabbas—once by sending him to Herod—and once by scourging him. J. C. R.

6. But his appeal only woke a fierce outbreak of the scream, “Crucify! crucify!” The mere sight of him, even in this his unspeakable shame and sorrow, seemed to add fresh fuel to their hate. In vain the heathen soldier appeals for humanity to the Jewish priest. The Roman who had shed blood like water, on the field of battle, in open massacre, in secret assassination, might well be supposed to have an icy and a stony heart; but yet icier and stonier was the heart of those scrupulous hypocrites and worldly priests. F.—If God ever showed his long-suffering great, it was here, when this outcry for the blood of his Son rose up into his ear, and yet he held his peace.

7-9. They had failed in bringing Christ to the cross as a rebel; they therefore now brought forward the accusation upon which he had previously been found guilty of death by the Sanhedrim. “He made himself the Son of God!” R. B.—The name “Son of God,” the lofty sense evidently attached to it by his Jewish accusers, the dialogue he had already held with him, and the dream of his wife, all working together in the breast of the wretched Pilate, he went again into the palace, and saith to Jesus, Whence art thou?—beyond all doubt a question relating not to his mission but to his personal origin. B.—No answer. His silence is a judgment. By his silence he judges and by his silence he condemns a high-priest, a king, and a governor. A. T.

11. From above.** Thus did Christ declare that no human will limited his life, but that his death took place in consequence of a higher necessity ordained by God, for a higher end. N.—He that delivered me. The words appear to refer to Caiaphas as the official representative of those who formally gave over our Lord to the Roman governor, and to imply that his guilt was greater, because, when he had no power granted him from above against our Lord, he gave the Lord up to one who had, and whose power was plenary. E.

Therefore—the Lord says—because thou imaginest that it is out of thine own power that thou canst judge me, because thou knowest not what is above, nor him who is from above, therefore is thy sin less heavy than the sin of Caiaphas and the chief priests; for these wilfully refuse to know who I am, that I am Christ, the Son of the true God, and their King. R. B.—Thou art indeed committing a great crime—but Judas, Annas, Caiaphas, these priests and Jews, are more to blame than thou. Thus, with infinite dignity, and yet with infinite tenderness, did Jesus judge his judge. In the very depths of his inmost soul Pilate felt the truth of the words—silently acknowledged the superiority of his bound and lacerated victim. F.

There is something surely very impressive here; that, sunk as Jesus was beneath the weight of his own sufferings—sufferings so acute that they well might have engrossed his thoughts and feelings—he yet so calmly weighs in the judicial balance the comparative guilt of the actors in this sad scene, and excuses, as far he is able, the actings of Pilate. It had something of its proper effect upon the procurator. Instead of diminishing, it but increased the desire he already had to deliver him. H.

The extreme reluctance of Pilate to sentence Christ, considering his merciless character, is signally remarkable; and, still more, his repeated protestations of the innocence of his prisoner, although he generally made no scruple of confounding the innocent with the guilty. But he was unquestionably influenced by the overruling providence of God, to make the righteousness of his Son appear in the clearest light, by the fullest, the most authentic, and the most public evidence. Hales.

The words, and the whole bearing of Jesus, struck into the heart of the Roman. Presence of mind and self-respectful dignity, even in the most helpless victim of injustice, have an irresistible power over the oppressor. How much more such a unique grandeur as diffused itself round this mysterious man! Pilate was more than ever resolved to release him. Returning once again to the tribunal, Jesus at his side, he strove to bring the priests and the crowd to content themselves with what their victim had already suffered. G.

12. Thou art not Cesar’s friend.** That Cesar was the dark and jealous Tiberius. Up to this period the Jewish nation, when they had complained of the tyranny of their rulers, had obtained a favorable hearing at Rome. Even against Herod the Great their charges had been received. On their complaint Archelaus had been removed from his throne. Not yet had their turbulence and insubordination effaced the influence of that attachment to the Cesarean family, which had obtained for their nation distinguishing privileges. In what manner such a charge, of not being “Cesar’s friend,” might be misrepresented or aggravated, it was impossible to conjecture; but the very strangeness of the accusation was likely to work on the gloomy and suspicious mind of Tiberius. H. M.

13. If he could have dared to show his real instincts, he would have driven them from his tribunal. But Pilate was guilty, and guilt is cowardice, and cowardice is weakness. His own past cruelties, recoiling in kind on his own head, forced him now to crush the impulse of pity, and to add to his many cruelties another more heinous still. He knew that serious complaints hung over his head. Panic-stricken, the unjust judge, in obedience to his own terrors, consciously betrayed the innocent victim to the anguish of death. He who had so often prostituted justice, was now unable to achieve the one act of justice which he desired. He who had so often murdered pity, was now forbidden to taste the sweetness of a pity for which he longed. He who had so often abused authority, was now rendered impotent to exercise it, for once, on the side of right. F.

14. Preparation of the passover.** Not “the hour for preparing the Passover meal.” It means “this was the day before the great Sabbath of the Passover week, a day well known among the Jews as ’the preparation,’ or day of preparing for the Passover Sabbath, which was peculiarly a high day.” Mark (15 : 42) expressly says this. J. C. R.

—Augustus’s rescript to the governors of provinces, preserved by Josephus, shows that the whole of the day was called the preparation, consequently the Evangelist wrote accurately when he tells us it was the preparation, and about the sixth hour. He means the Roman sixth hour, or our six o’clock in the morning, answering to the first Jewish hour, when Pilate brought Jesus out on the pavement. M. (Section 153, verse 28.)

The distinction—between the eating of the paschal lamb on the first evening of the Passover week, and the festival of the week which opened fully on the day following—being recognized, we may hold, in harmony with all the statements that our Lord and his disciples ate the paschal lamb on the evening preceding his arrest; that these priests and men of the great council may have had their paschal lamb at the same time (unless they neglected it to carry out this scheme of arrest); but that they had the great festival yet in prospect. Possibly they cared more for the festival than for the paschal lamb itself with its bitter herbs. H. C.

15. We have no king but Cesar! the chief priests answer, thus pronouncing their own sentence. So far does their hatred against Jesus go, that they renounce their promised Christ, the Messiah, the Hope of Israel, and blasphemously reverse their old boast: “Israel has no king but God.” The emperor, whom at other times they mortally hated, they now desire to be their king; they will have none else. Rather the most cruel tyrant than a king for poor sinners. And so it happened to them, both now and afterward. The Lord, their God and King, left them desolate, and delivered them into the hands of the Romans. It was on a Passover feast that the Emperor Titus destroyed their city, and trod under foot the covenant-people, and scattered them abroad throughout the whole world. And to this day they have no king, but bear the oppressive yoke of foreign rule. R. B.

16. We see a Roman governor sent to dispense justice in a Roman province, and invested with full powers to save or to destroy; we see him with a prisoner before him in whom he repeatedly declared he could find no fault; and yet, after a few ineffectual struggles with his own conscience, he delivers up that prisoner, not merely to death, but to the most horrible and excruciating torments. The fact is, he was afraid of the people, he was afraid of Cesar; and, when the clamorous multitude cried out to him, “If thou let this man go, thou art not Cesar’s friend,” all his firmness at once forsook him. P.—The dread of being denounced to Tiberius for acquitting a usurper was decisive to his weak and selfish spirit. Leaving the Pretorium, and planting the Bema or judgment-seat in the open place called Gabbatha (the Pavement), Pilate passed sentence on Him whom he had so often declared innocent. S.

Thus then is Pilate fallen; fallen at last, because he prefers to have the emperor whose kingdom is of this world as his friend, rather than the King whose kingdom is not from hence. The prize for which he staked his soul never became his. Some three years afterward he was removed by the legate of Syria, and then banished by the emperor to Gaul. Meeting with still severer treatment from the succeeding emperor, he is said in consequence to have destroyed himself. It is easy to conceive that Pilate may at last have followed in the steps of Judas; for he too could never have been able to erase from his heart the flaming characters, “Jesus loved me, and

I delivered him to be crucified.” To each one there comes the Pilate’s hour, in which he must make his decision, either for or against Christ. R. B.

If any man could have escaped taking a part between Christ and his enemies, it might have been Pontius Pilate. He was a heathen, who might excuse himself from Jewish questions, and he was reared among the conflicting skepticisms of his day in such a way, that his question “What is truth?” appeared hopeless of an answer. But with all his struggles he was forced to take a side. He might wash his hands before the multitude and say, “See ye to it,” but the stain of Christ’s blood is on them yet, and he stands a miserable example of that weak and fancied neutrality which can never be sustained. If God had no claims, and sin were not already master of our nature, neutrality might be spoken of, but he who chooses it as things are, elects to remain a rebel. If the Son of God had not entered the world with his summons to return to allegiance, the case might have been, at least, more doubtful, but now we must either be among those who gather to the side of Divine Truth when it rises on the cross into the form of Love, or take our part with the chief priests and Judases who buy and sell Him, and the Pilates, who think they can stand by and harmlessly hold the scales. Ker.

Section 156.—Led away and crucified.

M. 31 And after that they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him. And he bearing his L. 26 cross went forth. And as they came out and led him away, they laid hold upon a man of Cyrene, Simon by name, the father of Alexander and Rufus, who passed by coming out of the country; and on him they laid the cross, and compelled him to bear it after Jesus.

27. And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also be- 28 wailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning unto them, said, Daughters of Jerusalem, 29 weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that 30 never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the 31 mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry? 32 And there were also two others, malefactors, led with him to be put to death. 33 And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary (in the Hebrew Golgotha, which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull), they gave him to drink vinegar, [or acid] wine, mingled with myrrh, [or] gall: but when he had tasted thereof, he would Mk.27 not drink. And it was the third hour, and there they crucified him. And with him they crucified the two thieves, the one on his right hand, and the other on his left, and 28 Jesus in the midst. And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, And he was numbered with the transgressors.

L. 34 Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.

“THEY know not what they do.” This simple, sublime petition is from a heart occupied with thought for others, and not with its own woes; out of the depths of an infinite love and pity comes forth the purest and highest petition for mercy that ever ascended to the Father of mercies in the heavens. From the lips of a Brother-Man this petition comes, yet from One who can speak to God as to his own Father. From Jesus on the cross it comes; from him who submits to all the shame and agony of crucifixion, that, as the Lamb once slain for us, he might furnish himself with a plea in praying such as none but he can employ. As a prophet, he had spoken to the daughters of Jerusalem by the way; as the great High-Priest, he intercedes for his crucifiers from the cross. And wide over the whole range of sinful humanity does that prayer of our Redeemer extend. For every sinner of our race, if it be true of him that he knew not what he did, that prayer of Jesus goes up to the throne of mercy. H.

To humble souls Jesus Christ upon the cross is fair; fair as salvation, as love, as truth, as hope, because Jesus Christ upon the cross is all salvation, all love, all truth, all hope; fair with the beauty of grace, and the beauty of the law, because upon the cross to which his love nailed him, he represents to them at once all grace and all love, so that they speak of glory in the view of this ignominy, of joy in the view of those sorrows, of life in the view of that death. And this cross on which Jesus hangs motionless, on which to appearance Jesus no longer acts, no longer teaches, and scarcely speaks, shows them Jesus free, acting, speaking, teaching, walking, coming to them in triumph and glory from the bosom of his high home. A. V.

M. 31. Led him away. The Epistle to the Hebrews (13 : 12) teaches us that in his being led forth out of the city that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, he was set forth as the sin-offering, in whom the Old Testament types had found their fulfilment (Lev. 4 : 12; 16 : 27; Numb. 19 : 3). R. B.

L. 26. As was usual with condemned criminals, Jesus himself carried the instrument of death to the place of execution. But his severe struggles and sufferings, both of body and mind, had so exhausted his strength that he sunk under the burden. Even the rude soldiers, who had so lately mocked him, were filled with compassion, and compelled a Jew, whom they met on the way, Simon of Cyrene, to take his cross and bear it to the place of death. N.

28. Daughters of Jerusalem.** Jesus does not reject the expression of their pity. The tender sympathy they show for him stirs a still deeper sympathy for them within his heart. He forgets his own impending griefs as he contemplates theirs. H.

Weep for yourselves. For Israel was to be no longer the keeper of the mysteries of God; she was to lose that ornament by means of which she had become a crown among the nations, and had come to occupy that relation to them which the heart holds to the other members of the body. More than this: Israel should be altogether erased from the roll of independent nations; should henceforward have no king, no priesthood, no temple, and no fatherland; should dwell among all other peoples, and be herself no people, scattered throughout all the earth, and yet without a home; confessing herself bound by the law of Moses, yet without priest or sacrifice to atone for her transgressions. The people of the Jews have not themselves forgotten the greatness of their fall. On the contrary, they have carried with them so strong an impression of it, that they have instituted a memorial of it in all things and for all time. Thus, whenever they build a house, they always have a portion of its walls, a yard in breadth, unplastered; on every festive occasion, room on the table for one dish is left empty; at every marriage ceremony a glass is broken; and by this they signify that sorrow for the fall of Jerusalem shall be felt along with every joy. A. T.

31. If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?** He was himself the green tree, the fresh, the vigorous vine—its stock full of sap, its branches all nourished by union with that parent, life-giving stem. Was he, then—so unlike fuel ready for the fire—cast into that great furnace of affliction? Had he to endure all its scorching though to him unconsuming flames? What shall be done with him whose heart softens not at the sight of this divine and all-enduring love? whose heart closes up and hardens against God and Christ, till it becomes like one of those dry and withered branches which men gather and cast into the fire? It was by these strange and solemn words of warning that our Lord closed the public teaching of his ministry upon earth. Quiet as our skies now look, and secure and stable as all things around us seem, the days are coming—he has told us among his latest sayings—when those who resist the approaches of his love shall see him in other guise, and when at the sight they “shall cry to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us; hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?” How wise and good a thing were it for us all, in prospect of such days coming, to hide ourselves even now in the clefts of the smitten Rock; to hide ourselves in Jesus Christ as our loving Lord and Saviour. H.

33. All that we know of Golgotha, all that God willed to be known, is that it was without the city gate. The religion of Christ is spiritual; it needs no relic; it is independent of holy places; it says to each of its children, not “Lo, here!” and “lo, there!” but, “The kingdom of God is within you.” F.—The spot on which the crosses were to be erected stood near some of the gardens of the suburbs, and was known by the Aramaic name Golgotha, of which Cranion—a skull—given as the name by Luke, writing for Gentiles, is the Greek translation, and Calvaria, Calvary, the Latin. From a fancied allusion to the shape of a skull, tradition has handed it down as a hill; but all the four gospels call it simply a place, as if it had its name only from its bare smoothness and slight convexity. G.

As to the place of the crucifixion, the following opinions may be referred to: (1) Dr. Edward Robinson (1841) thinks the spot cannot now be identified. (2) James Fergusson (1847) makes it Mount Moriah, and supposes the Mosque of Omar to be the church built by Constantine, in 335 A. D. (3) The traditional site, now marked by the Church of the Sepulchre, first seriously questioned by Korte (1738), and learnedly controverted by Dr. Robinson a hundred years later, but vigorously defended by George Williams (1845). Fergusson says the architecture of the Church of the Sepulchre is “wholly of an age subsequent to that of the Crusades, and without a trace of the style of Constantine.” Even if this spot were outside of the second wall, which has not yet been proved, it was certainly inside the line of the third wall, built twelve years after the crucifixion to inclose suburbs which must have existed long before. (4) Fisher Howe (1871) proposes the high ground just north of the Damascus gate. (5) Ewald (1854) suggests the Gareb of Jer. 31:39, northwest of Jerusalem. (6) Dr. Barclay (1858) thinks it was on the east side of the city, just south of St. Stephen’s gate, on the Goath of Jer. 31:39, a tongue or spur of land projecting southeasterly into the Kedron valley toward Gethsemane. (7) But there is another spot on the east side of the city, north of St. Stephen’s gate, which, in 1870, seemed to the writer of this note to answer all the requirements of the narrative. Even now the spot is more than fifty feet above the roadway at St. Stephen’s gate, and at the time of the crucifixion was relatively higher still. It was outside of the city, and yet easily reached from the place of trial. And, above all, close by, on a lower level, is a spot where the sepulchre may have been. The late Dr. S. H. Calhoun, long a missionary in Syria, and for a time resident in Jerusalem, concurred in this opinion. R. D. H.

Vinegar (or) wine mingled with myrrh (or) gall. As the wine used by the soldiers was a cheap, sour wine, little, if at all superior to vinegar, and as myrrh, gall, and other bitter substances are put for the whole class, there is really no difference in these words. J. A. A.

Third hour. Mark gives us the time of our Saviour’s crucifixion, the third hour (or 9 o’clock A. M.), the very time when the morning sacrifice was offered. All the first three Evangelists agree in placing his death at the ninth hour, which was the time of the evening sacrifice; the whole space of six hours being divided at noon by the beginning of the miraculous darkness. S.—The “third hour” of Mark, as the hour of the crucifixion, is sustained by the whole course of the transactions and circumstances; as also by the fact stated by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, that the darkness commenced at the sixth hour, after Jesus had already for some time hung upon the cross. The reading sixth in John is therefore probably an early error of transcription for third, arising out of the similarity of the Greek numeral letters. Indeed, this last reading is found in two of the best manuscripts, as well as several other authorities; so that its external weight is marked by Griesbach as nearly or quite equal to that of the common reading; while the internal evidence in its favor is certainly far greater. R. (See page 538, verse 14.)

Crucified him. Death by the cross was the most terrible, the most dreaded and shameful punishment of antiquity—a punishment the very name of which, Cicero tells us, should never come near the thoughts, the eyes, or ears of a Roman citizen, far less his person. It was of Eastern origin, and had been in use among the Persians and Carthaginians long before its employment in Western countries. Alexander the Great adopted it in Palestine. Crassus signalized its introduction into Roman use by lining the road from Capua to Rome with crucified slaves, captured in the revolt of Spartacus; and Augustus finally inaugurated its general use, by crucifying six thousand slaves at once in Sicily, in his suppression of the war raised by Sextus Pompeius. It was not a Jewish punishment. For Jews to crucify a Jew would have been impossible, as the national sentiment would have revolted from it. The cruelty of heathenism had to be called in by the corrupt and sunken priesthood, before such a death could be inflicted on any member of the nation, far less on one declared by the procurator himself to be innocent. It was the punishment inflicted by heathenism, which knew no compassion or reverence for man as man—on the worst criminals, on highway robbers, rebels, and slaves, or on provincials who, in the eyes of Rome, were only slaves, if they fell into crime.

The cross used at Calvary consisted of a strong post, which was carried beforehand to the place of execution, and of two cross-pieces, borne to the spot by the victim, and afterward nailed to the uprights so that they slanted forward, and let the sufferer lean on his stretched-out hands, and thus relieve the pressure of his body downward. A stout rough wooden pin, in the middle of the upright post, supplied a seat of fitting agony, for the weight of the body would otherwise have torn it from the cross. G.—The feet of the sufferer were only a foot or two above the ground—a fact of some weight, as showing that Jesus suffered in the midst of his persecutors, and not looking down from above their heads. The body was either nailed or bound by cords to the cross, or in both ways. Our Lord was nailed, both by the hands and feet, as the prophets had foretold; a method more exquisitely painful at first, though tending to shorten the torture. S.

Death by crucifixion seems to include all that pain and death can have of horrible and ghastly—dizziness, cramp, thirst, starvation, sleeplessness, publicity of shame, long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation, mortification of untended wounds—all intensified just up to the point at which they can be endured at all, but all stopping just short of the point which would give to the sufferer the relief of unconsciousness. The unnatural position made every movement painful; the lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbed with incessant anguish; the wounds, inflamed by exposure, gradually gangrened; the arteries—especially of the head and stomach—became swollen and oppressed with surcharged blood; and while each variety of misery went on gradually increasing, there was added to them the intolerable pang of a burning and raging thirst. Such was the death to which Christ was doomed. F.

Mk. 28. And he was numbered with the transgressors. This passage is from Isaiah’s great crucifixion chapter. Should it surprise us, that he who suffers for the ungodly is crucified among the ungodly? R. B.—Then the first words uttered from the cross rose from his lips—“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”—words breathing love, patience, submission, gentleness, and good-will, not only toward the soldiers who were only the blind servants of power, but even to Pilate and Caiaphas, Annas and Jerusalem! Racked by the extremest pain, and covered with every shame which men were wont to heap on the greatest criminals; forsaken and denied by his disciples; no sigh escaped his lips, no cry of agony, no bitter or faltering word; only a prayer for the forgiveness of his enemies. G.—So little are the Evangelists studious of effect, that this incident of unrivalled moral sublimity, even in the whole life of Christ, is but briefly noticed by Luke alone. H. M.

The death of Christ, which is such a revelation of human character, is a revelation still more of God’s mercy. The death rises into a sacrifice, the crime discloses an atonement, and if those who joined in the treason would have but looked on him whom they pierced, all would have been forgiven, and the abundance of sin swallowed up in the abundance of grace. Ker.

If we compare the particular predictions with the historical passages of our Lord’s sufferings; if we join the prophets and evangelists together, it will most manifestly appear that the Messiah was to suffer nothing which Christ has not suffered. Pearson.—The whole history of the Passion is woven out of prophecy and fulfilment. And the deeper that the Lord descends into the valley of humiliation, the richer and brighter—and often realized with wonderful exactness even to the smallest particular—does that light surround him: “That the Scripture might be fulfilled.” In this section, we find prophecy fulfilled in the drink of vinegar and gall which they offered the Lord, in his being lifted upon the cross, in his being nailed to the cross, in his hanging between the two thieves, in his prayer for his murderers. R. B.

He gave himself to his Father and to mankind in one great self-sacrifice up to the day of final offering. This love which shone in the mild majesty of his words, and sometimes kindled them to holy indignation, which diffused itself around in deeds of mercy, and prevented his recoiling from any fatigue, or toil, or danger—this love, infinite, inexhaustible, which gave harmony to his whole life, blending meekness with power, humility with heroism—how it shone forth on the accursed tree! De P.

Section 157.—The Parted Garments. The Title. The Two Malefactors.

J. 23 THEN the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it whose it shall be. And they parted his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take. That the scripture might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did. And sitting down they watched him there. 19 And Pilate wrote a title, a superscription of his accusation, and put it on the cross over his head. And the writing was, THIS IS JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew. Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written, I have written. M. 39 And they that passed by, reviled him, wagging their heads, and saying, Ah, thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. And the people stood beholding; and the rulers with them derided him. Likewise also the chief priests, mocking, said among themselves with the scribes and elders, He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be Christ the King of Israel, the chosen of God, let him save himself: let him now come down from the cross that we may see, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. The thieves also, which were crucified with him, reviled him. And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him and offering him vinegar, and saying, If thou be the King of the Jews, save thyself. L. 36 39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged, railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering, rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.

In obedience to the cruel taunt, “If thou be the Christ, come down from the cross”—let us see him come, and the darkness that draped the heavens at that hour, would have been typical of that still deeper darkness that would have settled on our prospects forever. They may cry, “Come down,” but methinks the myriads of redeemed souls that would have been lost had he done so, rose before him and cried, No. A universe paused, silence reigned in heaven, no music was in the spheres, every harp was stilled, every voice hushed; but amid all the sympathy that was felt by all the holy, not one would have bidden him descend. Then, at that hour was the judgment, the crisis of this world. Despair and hope were in the balance. Jesus cried, “It is finished,” and henceforth hope was victor. Jesus lifted up is the hope of a dying world. No hope is garnered elsewhere. If our faces are not to-day toward the blackness of darkness—if a fearful and eternal journey into it is not appointed to us all, it is because Jesus was lifted up. J. D.

Our Lord asserted his more than imperial prerogative, by dispensing favors when he was himself in the very depths of humiliation. He opened the kingdom of heaven when the last sands of his own life were running. When drinking the cup of divine wrath to the dregs, he offered a crown of unfading glory. When apparently of all men most miserable, he proffered gifts richer than all the treasures of earth. When bowing his agonized head, smitten of God and afflicted, he assumed a right which none but God himself can exercise. No moment of his wonderful life was so sublime as this. No event of moral grandeur like this can be imagined. The sons of genius have tried feebly to pencil almost every other great exigency of his life. None ever attempted this. The most cunning art, the most creative skill, would utterly fail to combine that meek patience, that divine compassion, that human pity, that awful consciousness of power, that intensity of anguish, that more than human philanthropy, which must at this moment have marked the countenance of the sufferer. Dying, yet giving life; nailed to a cross, yet holding the key of death and of heaven; covered with every badge of contumely and scorn, yet crowning others with immortal diadems; robbed of all things, yet giving all as his native right! Truly he was the Wonderful, joining in his own person the strangest contrasts, the most inexplicable mysteries. B. B. E.

J. 24. Let us not rend it, but cast lots. (Ps. 22 : 18.) That a prediction so specific—distinguishing one piece of dress from others, and announcing that while those should be parted among several, that should be given by lot to one person—that such a prediction should not only be fulfilled to the letter, but by a party of heathen military, without interference from either the friends or the enemies of the crucified One, is surely worthy to be ranked among the wonders of this all-wonderful scene. B.—And this the chief priests beheld! Before their very eyes was taking place that which Scripture had long ago described concerning the Messiah, and yet their eyes were closed. And with not less astonishment at the faithfulness of divine wisdom than at the rudeness of the soldiers, John exclaims: These things therefore the soldiers did. R. B.

19. Title.** The practice of attaching a small board or placard to criminals, with a notification of the nature of their offence, is mentioned by several writers, and there are many allusions to it in the poets. The technical name of this placard was in Latin “titulus.” G. R.—The title over his head was as offensive to the people as to the priests and rabbis, for it was a virtual ridicule of their impotent aspirations after universal monarchy. Beneath the cross the same mockery indulged itself, as the procurator had thought not beneath the dignity of Rome. G.

19-22. King of the Jews. Written in Hebrew,** or Syro-Chaldaic, the language of the country; and Greek, the current language; and Latin, the official language. These were the chief languages of the earth, and this secured that all spectators should be able to read it. Stung by this, the Jewish ecclesiastics entreat that it may be so altered as to express, not his real dignity, but his false claim to it. But Pilate thought he had yielded quite enough to them; and having intended expressly to spite and insult them by this title, for having got him to act against his own sense of justice, he peremptorily refused them. And thus, amid the conflicting passions of men, was proclaimed, in the chief tongues of mankind, from the cross itself and in circumstances which threw upon it a lurid yet grand light, the truth which drew the Magi to his manger, and will yet be owned by all the world! B.

The inscription contains the true cause of his death. It therefore could not be altered. In the three languages then the most widely spread, the inscription proclaims at once the royalty of God’s Anointed One, and also the name, Jesus, at which every knee shall bow; for by no other name is there salvation. “His name shall endure forever; his name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall be blessed in him; all nations shall call him blessed.” And the King whom men were slaying on the cross, on the very cross has shown that he is a King—a King of love and a King of power, who obtains his kingdom by bleeding and dying. R. B.

These three peoples—the Jews, Greeks, and Romans—stand in the closest relation to the whole human race. The Christian, when he imagines himself among those spectators who stood round the cross, and gazes in spirit upon that “superscription,” which the Jewish scribe, the Greek proselyte, and the Roman soldier could read, each in his own tongue, feels that he is among those who are the representatives of all humanity. This is true in another, and perhaps a higher sense. The Roman, powerful but not happy—the Greek, distracted with the inquiries of an unsatisfying philosophy—the Jew, bound hand and foot with the chain of a ceremonial law—all are together round the cross. CHRIST is crucified in the midst of them—crucified for all. The “superscription of his accusation” speaks to all the same language of peace, pardon, and love. In the ages which precede the crucifixion, these three languages were like threads which guided us through the labyrinth of history. And they are still among the best guides of our thought, as we travel through the ages which succeed it. As before they had been employed to express the best thoughts of unassisted humanity, so afterward they became the exponents of Christian doctrine and the channels of Christian devotion. J. S. H.

M. 41, 42. The chief priests, and scribes, and elders, less awe-struck, less compassionate than the mass of the people, were not ashamed to add their heartless reproaches to those of the evil few. Unrestrained by the noble patience of the sufferer, unsated by the accomplishment of their wicked vengeance, unmoved by the sight of helpless anguish and the look of eyes that began to glaze in death, they congratulated one another under his cross with scornful insolence—“He saved others, himself he cannot save.” “Let this Christ, this King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” No wonder then that the ignorant soldiers took their share of mockery with these shameless hierarchs. Except to bless and to encourage, and to add to the happiness and hope of others, Jesus spoke not. So far as the malice of the passers-by, and of priests and Sanhedrists, and soldiers, and of these poor robbers who suffered with him, was concerned—as before during the trial so now upon the cross—He maintained unbroken his kingly silence. F.

He who refused to come down from the cross came up from the grave; and it was a greater matter to destroy death by rising than to save life by descending. Gregory.—For this very reason we believe; because Christ did not straightway come down from the cross, but finished there his work. Beng.

L. 39. One of the malefactors. Not to be regarded as a criminal of that meaner stamp whom we designate as a thief, or even a robber. Those whom the Romans called “robbers,” were oftentimes wild and stormy zealots, maintaining in arms a hopeless protest against that yoke which God had imposed on his people for their sins.—There is every likelihood that the two malefactors crucified with Jesus belonged to the band of Barabbas. For good or for evil they knew something about the Christ; the taunt uttered by the one expresses this, no less than the prayer of the other. Barabbas, as we have seen, had been cast into prison “with them that had made insurrection with him.” Two of the chief of these Pilate may have been well pleased to send to execution on this occasion. T.

39. The three crosses which stood together on Mount Calvary are a continual emblem of our world. A dying Saviour had on one side of him an enemy and unbeliever, and on the other side a friend and believer. Thus it is to-day in every part of the globe where Christ is preached; thus it is in every Christian congregation; thus in every household. N. A.

40. Up to the moment when his fellow-malefactor joined in the railings of the multitude, he, we may suppose, had listened in silence; the work of grace, which had begun in him some time since, going rapidly forward; for all around him and about him was such as would rapidly ripen a man for heaven, or for hell. He had heard all—in silence, though with deep horror of soul; but now he can keep silence no longer. For in that plural “us,” the other is seeking to draw him into the same blasphemy with himself. T.

Dost not thou fear God? His words are more than a protest against the other’s blasphemy. His reproof is an appeal to awaken better thoughts, juster conceptions of Christ, and a sense of his own sinfulness. His faith is thus instantly proving itself by works. He is doing all in his power to save his fellow. And then, in the hearing of the other, he recognizes Christ as Lord; and so adds to the force of the direct appeal by drawing the other’s thoughts to the divine sufferer who hangs between them. J. G. B.—His back had been torn with scourges, his body hung stretched upon the cross, and blood fell from his hands and feet; still he could say, “We receive the due reward of our deeds.” This is to repent, not merely with the lips, but in the very depths of a man’s being. A. T.

The thief on the cross was wholly a Christian. Christ was to him all, the all and in all, for salvation. He had gone up to no earthly temple, had offered no bullock, had confessed his sins to no robed priest; but as the Jews of old, bitten by serpents, had turned their eyes upon the brazen serpent lifted up, and had been healed, so had he turned his eyes upon the Son of man lifted up, and had been saved—saved by him, by him only. He had found the Messiah, him who was at once the victim and the priest; the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world, and the great High-Priest who was to pass into the heavens. M. H.

Beneath the cross, among those four or five thousand souls, there is not so much as one among those hard hearts that becomes soft! But upon the cross itself there was one. A. T.—Marvellous, indeed, the faith in our Lord’s divinity which sprung up so suddenly in such an unlikely place; which shone out so brightly in the very midnight of the world’s unbelief. There were many to call him Lord when he rose triumphant from the tomb; there is but one to call him Lord as he hangs dying on the cross. H.

42. Thy kingdom.** As though the suffering, dying Jesus had a kingdom. This idea was a subject of sport and ridicule below, while on the cross it was an object of faith. Let Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, with Pilate at their head—let the whole priesthood, and all the scribes—insult at the idea of that crucified victim having a kingdom; nevertheless, this poor thief speaks to the Saviour of his “kingdom.” N. A.

The “kingdom” referred to was one beyond the grave; for it is inconceivable that he should have expected him to come down from the cross to erect any temporal kingdom. This he calls Christ’s own kingdom. As such, he sees in Christ the absolute right to dispose of that kingdom to whom he pleased. He does not presume to ask a place in that kingdom, though that is what he means, but, with a humility quite affecting, says, “Lord, remember me when,” etc. Now contrast with this bright act of faith the darkness even of the apostles’ minds, who could hardly believe that their Master would die at all, who now were almost despairing of him, and who, when dead, had almost buried their hopes in his grave. Consider too the man’s previous disadvantages and bad life. And then mark how his faith comes out, as having no shadow of doubt. Was ever faith like this exhibited upon earth? It looks as if the brightest crown had been reserved for the Saviour’s head at his darkest moment. B.

To believe that he, whose only token of royalty was the crown of thorns that still clung to his bleeding brows, was a king and had a kingdom—to believe that he, on whose own eyes the mists of death were already hanging, was indeed the Prince of life, wielding in those pierced hands, nailed so helplessly to the cross, the keys of death and of hell; that it could profit something in that mysterious world whither they both were hastening to be remembered by this crucified man—that was a faith indeed. Disciples and apostles themselves had fallen away and fled. They had trusted once, but they trusted no more, “that it was he which should have redeemed Israel.” And now, in the midst of this universal unbelief, one—all whose life unfitted him for this heroic act of faith, does homage, in heart and word, to Jesus as the King of Israel, as the Lord of the spirits of all flesh. Truly this faith was itself one of the miracles of the crucifixion. T.

In respect to external support, it outstrips the faith of all the apostles, the centurion, the distressed fathers and mothers, the blind, the deaf, the lepers, the paralytics; the faith of all martyrs on the stake, in the flames, in persecution, in caves and dens of the earth. It was pure faith, clear and free from every support from without, a work of the Holy Spirit unalloyed by any earthly ingredient. F. D. H.

Faith cannot be explained, or made more forcible, by words. If any wish to know what faith in Christ is, and whether they are not too wicked, too unworthy to hope for the favor of God, they have the answer, recorded in the most conspicuous place of all the earth—hung up by the side of the cross of Jesus. N. A.

43. Paradise.** Of Persian origin, signifying a park or garden. It is used by the Septuagint writers for the garden of Eden or delight; and thence used figuratively by the Jewish writers to designate the place of rest and peace to which the souls of the faithful are conveyed immediately on their deliverance from the burden of the flesh. W.

For him, the first-fruits of the cross, Christ has better than remembrance in store; far better than this—"thou shalt be with me." And not this only: he shall be with him on that very day. Christ’s “to-day,” besides containing an announcement of his own departure out of this world within the limits of that day, contains also a promise that this poor pardoned sinner too should find speedy release from all his agonies. T.

Christ will not do what they had so often in derision asked him that day to do; he will not come down from the cross. But on this very cross he will give a higher proof of his divinity; he will exert his almighty power by delivering a soul from death, and carrying it with him into paradise. H.—He held in his pierced hand the keys of that paradise. Behold here his majesty! He, whom they have condemned, appears as himself the arbiter of life and death. He, whom they are crucifying as a blasphemer of God, bestows as the Son of God the privileges of adoption in the kingdom of his Father. The cross has become a judgment-seat; the cross has become a throne! A. T.

See, then, in the ransomed spirit borne that day to paradise, the primal trophy of the power of the uplifted cross of Jesus! What saved this penitent thief? No water of baptism was ever sprinkled upon him; at no table of communion did he ever sit. It was a simple believing look of a dying sinner upon a dying Saviour that did it. And that sight has lost nothing of its power. Too many, alas! have passed, are still passing by that spectacle of Jesus upon the cross, not suffering it to make its due impression on their hearts; but thousands upon thousands of the human race—we bless God for this—have gazed upon it with a look kindred to that of the dying thief, and have felt it exert upon them a kindred power.

To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise. What a day to that dying man! Its morning saw him a culprit condemned before the bar of earthly judgment; before evening shadowed the hill of Zion he stood accepted at the bar of heaven. The morning saw him led out through an earthly city’s gates in company with one who was hooted at by the crowd that gathered round him; before night fell upon Jerusalem, the gates of another city, even the heavenly, were lifted up, and he went up through them in company with one around whom all the hosts of heaven were bowing down. Humblest believer in the Saviour, a like marvellous contrast is in store for you. This hour, it may be, weak and burdened, tossing on the bed of agony, in that darkened chamber of stifled sobs and drooping tears; the next hour, up and away in the paradise of God, mingling with the spirits of the just made perfect, renewing death-broken friendships, gazing on the unveiled glories of the Lamb. Be thou then but faithful unto death; struggle on for a few more of those numbered days, or years, and on that day of your departure hence, thou too shalt be with him in paradise. H.

Section 158.—“Behold thy Son!” Noonday Darkness. ‘It is finished.’

J. 25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.

Mk. 33 And when the sixth hour was come the sun was darkened, and there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? which is being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And some of them that stood by, when they heard that, said, Behold, he calleth for Elias.

J. 28 After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth, and gave him to drink. The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him, and take him down. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he cried with a loud voice, It is finished. And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

M. 51 And, behold, the vail of the temple was rent in twain, in the midst from the top to the bottom: and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

54. Now when the centurion which stood over against him, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw that he so cried out and gave up the ghost, and saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly. And the centurion glorified God,

L. 48 saying, Certainly this was a righteous man; truly this man was the Son of God. And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts and returned. And all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee ministering unto him, stood afar off, beholding these things: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome the mother of Zebedee’s children: and many other women which came up with him unto Jerusalem.

“It is finished!” is sweet gospel for the whole world. On this word of my Saviour I will lay the finger of my faith, and doubt not; on what has been done on the cross for me, I will lean and ground myself: thus have I attained unto the peace of the just. It is really finished, the work of my atonement; for Christ hung upon the cross to deliver and save even me, because I am a sinner. What do those who toil in the multitude of their own ways, and occupy themselves with works which shall help out for them the work of Christ; who instead of believing on him who justifies the ungodly, invent for themselves a Saviour who shall make the virtuous still somewhat more just, or the repentant sinner by degrees more clean—what do these but put disdain upon their own share of the word, “It is finished!” In this word will I comfort myself; because I am forced to confess that all my finishing of the will of God is still but imperfect piecemeal work, while yet the law urges upon me that not so much as one tittle of it must remain unaccomplished. “Christ is the end of the law”—what it requires Christ has performed—Christ is the end of the law for righteousness unto every one who believes. R. B.

In the dark cloud that hung over the cross, we read the bright inscription, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself!” This, then, was the great, the divine work which Christ had completed when he cried, “It is finished.” And now the cross, the memorial of his sufferings, becomes the symbol of grace, at the sight of which the weary find rest, and the heavy-laden throw away their burden. A. T.

J. 26, 27. Jesus saw his mother. Though this end of all her high hopes must have tried her faith with an overwhelming sorrow, yet she was true to him in this supreme hour of his humiliation. Nor had he forgotten her who had bent over his infant slumbers, and with whom he had shared those thirty years in the cottage at Nazareth. Tenderly he thought of the remaining years of her life on earth; and the apostle who was nearest to him in heart and life, seemed the fittest to take care of her. To him, therefore—to John whom he had loved more than his brethren—to John whose head had leaned upon his breast at the Last Supper, he consigned her as a sacred charge. F.

Woman. The Lord, through the very name women, would direct his mother into that love which knows Christ no more after the flesh (2 Cor. 5 : 16), and would also thereby declare to us that in the midst of his work of atonement he felt himself bound equally close to all sinners, that he was not nearer to his mother than to thee and me.—Behold thy Son! Christ indeed was about to go from her, but in the disciple whom he loved he would still show toward her the same devoted filial love, which for the space of three and thirty years had been his wont. R. B.

Strange, even violent, contrasts were witnessed in the last moments of the Saviour’s life. But how exquisite, amid these contrasted incidents, is the touch of humanity in the parting of Jesus from his mother! In his mortal agony, as his soul was about to fall under the sword that smote him for our sakes, as he was entering into that horror of darkness that hid his Father’s face, he turned to her that bare him, gave her a last look and word of love, and pointed her to a protector. How beautiful, too, is Mary, in strength of character and fervor of affection, as she stands beneath the cross while the sword pierces her own soul, that she may look upon that dear face to the last!—as great in fortitude and endurance under trial as she had been humble, discreet, modest, and wise under the promise of mercy. J. P. T.

Need we wonder that the beloved disciple, writing his gospel in old age, felt a sweet reward in recalling an incident so unspeakably touching? Mary henceforth had a home, for John took her to his own. His love to her divine Son made him dearer to her than the circle of Nazareth, however related. In Mary he saw a second mother; in John the widowed one saw a son. Nor was the new nearness to Jesus the only reward to John from the cross. His Master had shown, by his thoughts for others rather than himself in this time of his greatest need, that he was still what he had always been. Looking up to him, John saw the light of higher than earthly victory on his pale features, and felt his faith confirmed forever. G.

Mk. 33, 34. It was noon, but such a noon as had never been seen in Judea. The position of the Paschal full moon precluded the possibility of a solar eclipse; and yet a supernatural darkness rested upon all the land, from the sixth hour to the ninth hour, as if to veil the last agonies of the Redeemer from the eyes of men. But far deeper than that darkness was the gloom that weighed upon the Saviour’s soul, as he bore the whole burden of the divine wrath for the sins of all men. To that awful mystery our only guide is in the words, with which at the ninth hour he broke the solemn silence, “My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?” words already used prophetically by David in the great Psalm which describes the Messiah’s sufferings—words which never since have been, nor ever will be again, wrung from any human being, except through sinful despondency or final impenitent despair; for he endured his Father’s desertion that we might never have to bear it. S.

Who shall tell the amount of woe which had passed over his soul, from the time when he drank the cup commemorative of dying love, on to this moment! Gethsemane—the betrayal—the examination before Annas, before Caiaphas, Pilate, and Herod, and before Pilate a second time—the way to the cross—the six hours in which he hung between earth and heaven, his bleeding wounds exposed to the heat of the mid-day sun—the death-struggle now beginning, and the agony of his holy soul, so much more hard to bear, as it groaned beneath the load of the guilt of humanity! A. T.

The only one of the seven sayings of Christ on the cross which is recorded by the first evangelist is this from Psalm 22: “Eli! Eli! lama sabachthani?” That is distinctively the psalm of the suffering Messiah. It must have passed through his soul at that hour. Ages before the inspired psalmist had drawn the picture, and it was the one Scripture of all to bring home and explain that scene on Calvary to the Jewish soul. The agony, the forsaking by God, the scoffing of men, the exhaustion and death, the piercing of hands and feet, the casting of lots for the garments, are all there in the psalm as distinct as the reality itself. The triumph and the glory are there, too, just as distinct. So the Psalm (22: 27-31) advances from the wail of the sufferer to the triumphant shout of the Messianic Conqueror and King. D. S. G.

The truest and deepest significance of this darkness is as a type or emblem of that great darkness which enveloped the spirit of the Redeemer. We are left here without a look, a word, an act, to tell us what was going on within the Redeemer’s spirit—till the ninth hour came, the moment which preceded the rolling away of the darkness and the return of the clear shining of the day, and then the only sound that strikes the ear is the agonizing cry, “My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me?” a cry wrung from the sufferer’s lips when the severe agony of the soul has reached its culminating point; a cry which, revealing somewhat of the interior of the burdened heart from which it springs, leaves still more unrevealed; the expression of what must forever remain to us an unimaginable woe. H.

As the darkness commenced at the sixth hour, the second of the Jewish hours of prayer, so it continued till the ninth hour, the hour of the evening sacrifice, increasing, probably, in depth, and reaching its deepest gloom at the moment of this mysterious cry, when the flame of the one great “evening sacrifice” was burning fiercest. The words are the opening words of a psalm full of the last “sufferings of Christ and the following glories.” An absolute desertion is not to be thought of; but a total eclipse of the felt sense of God’s presence it certainly expresses. There was indeed a cause for it, and he knew it too—the “why” must not be pressed so far as to exclude this. He must taste this bitterest of the wages of sin “who did no sin.” B.

His soul’s delight was in his Father’s love. What, then, must it have been to Jesus to feel, even for a moment, the sense of that love withdrawn—to undergo, through human pain and weakness, an impression as if of that countenance darkening over him, whose light had been the very life of his being from all eternity! Conceive of the sun struck out of yonder heavens, and the world suddenly overwhelmed with the horror of perpetual darkness and cold. Imagine the sustaining providence of God withdrawn from the universe, and everything hurrying to desolation and ruin. But no emblem, no comparison can convey to us but the faintest conception of what it was for God’s dear Son, as if God-deserted, to die. C.

The mysteries of those hours of darkness, the struggles with sinking nature, the accumulating pressure of the burden of a world’s sin, the embittered foretastings of that which was its wages and its penalty, the desperation of the last assaults of Satan and his mustered hosts, the withdrawal and darkening of the Paternal presence—mysteries such as these, so deep and so dread, it was not meet that even the tongues of apostles should be moved to speak of, or the pens of evangelists to record. Nay, the very outward eye of man might now gaze no further. All man might know was by the hearing of the ear. One loud cry revealed all, and more than all, that it is possible for our nature to conceive—one loud cry of unfathomable woe and utmost desolation, and yet, even as its very accents imply, of achieved and consummated victory. E.

J. 28. With the arrival of the ninth hour, the outer darkness cleared away, and with it too that inner darkness from whose troubled bosom the cry came forth. The hour for which he came into the world has run its course; the cup has been drunk to its dregs; the powers of darkness have made their last assault and been repelled; the momentary darkness of his Father’s countenance has passed away. As the sun of nature sheds once more his illuminating beams upon the cross, even so the light of an answering inward joy comes to cheer in death the spirit of our Redeemer. It is not in darkness, but in full, clear, unclouded light that Jesus dies. H.

J. 30, L. 46. Now all that man could inflict had been endured; all that the Son of God could do and bear for man had been done and suffered. The end of his agony and the completion of his redeeming work are both announced by the loud cry, “Ir is FINISHED;” the soul which had animated his mortal body is yielded back to God with those words of perfect resignation, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” S.—This cry of Jesus teaches us that his death does not proceed from the decay of his strength, but from the excess of his love; that his life is not taken from him by violence, but that he gives it up by his power. It is, on the part of the Jews, a Deicide and a sacrilege; but on his own, it is a holy and voluntary sacrifice. Q.—Finished was his holy life; with his life his struggle, with his struggle his work, with his work the redemption, with the redemption the foundation of the new world. Lange.

The law is fulfilled in his “obedience unto death, even the death of the cross.” Messianic prophecy is accomplished; redemption is completed. “He hath finished the transgression, made reconciliation for iniquity, brought in everlasting righteousness, sealed up the vision and prophecy, and anointed a Holy of Holies.” B.—Completed then that glorious, attractive, subduing manifestation of the love of God for sinful men, which carried the divine Being to the extreme length of suffering and self-sacrifice, and which has ever formed the most powerful of all instruments for pacifying the conscience, melting the heart, moulding the character, renewing and sanctifying the will. H.

Gave up the ghost. “Delivered up the spirit.” He came to death, the Fathers say, not death to him. But he came also to a real and natural man’s death. God indeed is life; death touches him not. But God was in Christ, was in the Christ dying on the cross, and was reconciling the world to himself. Christ died, and through his own blood obtained eternal redemption. It was a moment of unparalleled preciousness in which he bowed his head and gave up the ghost; the hope of all the patriarchs and prophets had been fixed upon this moment, and all eternity shall extol it. . . . Praised be the Lord, that he hath given us too the certainty that our soul will be hid and safely kept against the last day. How it will be between the hour of death and the hour of resurrection, we know not, nor desire to know; the hand of the Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ is a sufficient resting-place for us: we shall be at home there; what more can we desire? R. B.

M. 51. The vail was rent in the midst from the top to the bottom. Showing that it was done from above, not by human hand from beneath. J. G. B.—Signifying that the Holy of Holies in heaven is opened to all men through the finished work of Christ; the wall of partition between the divine and the human broken down; and a spiritual worship substituted for an outward and sensible one. N.

Jesus died at the third hour after mid-day; the very hour when crowds of worshippers would be thronging into the courts of the temple, and all would be preparing for the evening sacrifice. Within the holy place, some priests would be busy before the inner vail which hung between them and the Holy of Holies; that vail, strong and thickly woven; that Holy of Holies—the secluded apartment within which lay the ark of the covenant with the cherubim above it shadowing the mercy-seat, which no mortal footstep was permitted to invade save that of the high-priest once every year. How strange, how awful to the ministering priests, to feel the earth tremble beneath their feet, and to see the strong vail torn down in the middle from top to bottom—the light of day that never for long centuries had entered there, flung into that sacred tenement, and all its mysteries laid open to vulgar gaze! H.

No less inviolable than the presence of God did that vail seem to the whole Jewish people. Now there was no more any Holy of Holies. The earthquake did not so much astound the people as this rending of the vail. N. A.—During all the long ages that preceded the death of Christ, the vail remained; the blood of bulls and of goats continued to be shed and sprinkled; and once a year access to God through an atoning sacrifice was vouchsafed in those symbolical actions—nothing more. But now, the one atoning sacrifice being provided in “the precious blood of Christ,” that thick vail, which for so many ages had been the dread symbol of separation between God and guilty men, was, without a hand touching it, mysteriously “rent in twain from top to bottom”—“the Holy Ghost thus signifying that the way into the Holiest of all was now made manifest!” How emphatic the statement “from top to bottom;” as if to say, Come boldly now to the Throne of Grace; the vail is gone; the Mercy-Seat stands open to sinners, and the way to it is sprinkled with the blood of him—“who through the eternal Spirit hath offered himself without spot to God!” Before, it was death to go in, now it is death to stay out. B.

The earth did quake. Our earth owned not Satan, but Christ, as its Prince. It felt the pressure of his foot; its waters sustained his form; its midnight sky rang with the song of his nativity; its air bore him up as he rose to the Father; its waves and winds in their wildest uproar were obedient to his command; at his bidding its water reddened into wine; its graves opened to give up their dead. It trembled with horror as it received his blood. It never gave its iron to be nails for his blessed hands; nor grew its thorns to pierce his brow. With high heaven, the earth was a mourner at Christ’s death. Guthrie.

All creatures in heaven and in earth are moved at our Saviour’s passion. The sun in heaven shrinking in his light; the earth trembling under it; the very stones cleaving in sunder, as if they had sense and sympathy in it; and shall sinful men only not be moved by it, they to whom it appertained, and for whom it procured unspeakable blessings? Andrewes.—Even this dreadful earthquake seemed to pass awhile without appalling the enemies of Jesus. But these terrific appearances were not without effect on the less prejudiced Roman soldiery; they appeared to bear the testimony of heaven to the innocence, and the divine commission of the crucified Jesus.

52. Many bodies of the saints arose. To the awe-struck and depressed minds of the followers of Jesus were confined those visionary appearances of the spirits of their deceased brethren, which are obscurely intimated in the rapid narratives of the Evangelists. H. M.—The gate was opened for them by the atoning agony; but they rose not from their stony couches till their victorious Captain had led the way. Then they also arose. R. D. H.

All about them is hid in the deepest obscurity. This, however, their presence told, that the voice which from the cross cried, “It is finished,” was heard among the dead. And when the third morning dawned, these bodies of the saints arose, to complete, as it were, the promise of the general resurrection of the dead which our Lord’s own rising carried with it, and, having done that office, silently and mysteriously withdrew. H.

54. When the centurion saw the meekness, the patience, the resignation, the firmness, with which our Lord endured the most excruciating torments; when he heard him, at one time, fervently praying for his murderers; at another, disposing with dignity and authority of a place in paradise to one of his fellow-sufferers; and at length, with that confidence which nothing but conscious virtue and dignity could at such a time inspire, recommending his spirit into the hands of his heavenly Father; he could not but conclude him to be something more than human. But when he observed the astonishing events that took place when Jesus expired; the agitation into which the whole frame of nature seemed to be thrown; the supernatural darkness, the earthquake, the rending of rocks, the opening of graves; he then burst out involuntarily into that striking exclamation, “Truly this was the Son of God.” Here, then, we have a testimony to the divine character of our Lord, in the highest degree impartial and incorrupt: the honest unsolicited testimony of a plain man, a soldier and a heathen; the testimony, not of one who was prejudiced in favor of Christ and his religion, but of one who, by habit and education, was strongly prejudiced against them. P.

The cross is early giving tokens of its power. It lays hold of the dying thief, and opens to him the gates of paradise. It lays hold of this centurion, and works in him a faith which, let us hope, deepened into a trust in Jesus as his Saviour. From such unlikely quarters came the two testimonies borne to the Lord’s divinity the day he died. H.

The more we study the conduct of Jesus during the whole scene, the more shall we be satisfied that he said enough; the more admire the mysterious composure, the wisdom, the self-possession, and the superhuman patience of the sufferer. It was visibly the death-scene of a transcendent love. He dies not as a man, but rather as some one might, who is mysteriously more and higher. So thought aloud the hard-faced soldier—“Truly this was the Son of God.” As if he had said: “I have seen men die—this is not a man. They call him Son of God—he cannot be less.” H. B.

If the life of Jesus, supposing it to have come to a natural and peaceful end, must have appeared to us the fairest of lives, how noble is the crown which it receives from its concluding scenes! Apart from all the circumstances which render it sublime, and which brightly manifest a God in a dying man, this death, formally announced, foreseen with all its bitter ingredients, all its insults and all its sorrows, yet calmly awaited and voluntarily endured, is the last and loftiest expression of obedience, fidelity, devotedness. Human nature, which always possessed within itself the ideal of spotless love, still waited for the realization of it, but no longer waits since the day of the crucifixion. How will this generous death appear if we invest it with all the circumstances which distinguish it from all other deaths; if we contemplate it in those inimitable features of majesty and tenderness, of compassion and authority, which convert this cross into a throne, a judgment-seat, an asylum, and constrain us, after eighteen centuries, to exclaim with the centurion, “Surely this was the Son of God!” A. V.

The believer sees in the cross of Christ the fulfilment of all prophecy as well as the consummation of all history; he sees in it the explanation of the mystery of birth, and the conquest over the mystery of the grave. In that life he finds a perfect example; in that death an infinite redemption. As he contemplates the incarnation and the crucifixion, he no longer feels that God is far away, that this earth is but a disregarded speck in the infinite azure, and he himself but an insignificant atom chance-thrown amid the thousand million living souls of an innumerable race, but he exclaims in faith and hope and love, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men; yea, he will be their God, and they shall be his people!” F.

Section 159.—His Side pierced. His Body laid in the Sepulchre. Watch set.

J. 31 THE Jews therefore, because it was the preparation (that is, the day before the sabbath), and the sabbath drew on, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath-day (for that sabbath-day was an high day), besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs. But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came thereout blood and water. And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe. For these things were done, that the scriptures should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced. Mk. 42 And after this, when the even was come, behold, there came a rich man of Ari-mathea, a city of the Jews, named Joseph, an honorable counsellor, a good man and a just; which also himself waited for the kingdom of God. The same had not consented to the counsel and deed of them: being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews. This man went in boldly unto Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus, that he might take it away. And Pilate marvelled if he were already dead: and calling unto him the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead. And when he knew it of the centurion, he gave him leave, and commanded the body to be delivered to Joseph. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus. And he bought fine linen, and when he had taken him down, he wrapped him in the clean linen cloth. And there came also Nicodemus (which at the first came to Jesus by night), and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pounds weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in the linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, which was hewn out in the rock, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus therefore, because of the Jews’ preparation-day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand. And he rolled a great stone unto the door of the sepulchre, and departed. L. 55 And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And there was Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, the mother of Joses, sitting over against the sepulchre, and they beheld where he was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments: and rested the sabbath-day, according to the commandment. M. 62 Now the next day that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first. Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as you can. So they went and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.

Now when they had crucified him who was his hope and secret love, Joseph was no longer able to conceal that he was a disciple of this crucified one: “He went in boldly to Pilate.” Nicodemus joined him—he was also a secret lover of Jesus, a night-disciple. But the discourse which the Lord had held with him concerning regeneration, and the brazen serpent the image of the Son of man, had germinated in his heart a living seed; and before now this seed of truth had grown to a timid witness for Jesus (John 7: 51); but now as Nicodemus sees the Son of man lifted up on the cross, it shoots vigorously out, and brings forth the lovely fruit of faith. Crucified love it was that drew forth to the light the hidden faith of these two timid ones, that they should become heroes at a time when those who, at other times heroes, had lost heart and were afraid. R. B.

This interchange is ever going on in the Church. Some are offended and fall back, and frequently the strongest become weak when tribulation arises. On the other hand, the weakest then distinguish themselves, and make their joyful confession to be heard; that so there never may be wanting those who know and confess Christ. For God, like a rich householder, chooses to have all kinds of servants in his house, not the strong and able merely, but also the small and weak. And in order that the strong may not despise any, they are forced to learn in their own case their weakness; and in order that none may judge another, the Spirit of God comes upon the weak, encouraging, comforting, strengthening them, and that to such a degree that every one is constrained to recognize and extol the divine power at work in them. Luther.

J. 31. The Jews. They witness all these wonders and remain unrelenting as at the first. Speaking of that obduracy, which stood out against all the demonstrations of the Lord’s divinity, Gregory exclaims: “The heavens knew him, and forthwith sent out a star and a company of angels to sing his birth. The sea knew him, and made itself a way to be trodden by his feet; the earth knew him, and trembled at his dying; the sun knew him, and hid the rays of his light; the rocks knew him, for they were rent in twain; Hades knew him, and gave up the dead it had received. But though the senseless elements perceived him to be their Lord, the hearts of the unbelieving Jews knew him not as God, and, harder than the very rocks, were not rent by repentance.” H.

Resought that they might be taken away. Bishop Pearson says it was a common rule of Roman law not to permit sepulture to the body of a crucified person. The burial, therefore, was entirely owing to the request of the Jews. The providence of God ordered things so that they who interceded for his crucifixion interceded for his burial. And by so doing, they actually paved the way for the crowning miracle of his resurrection. J. C. R.

34. Pierced his side. That lance-thrust was sufficient to hush all the heretical assertions that Jesus had only seemed to die; and as it assured the soldiers, so should it assure all who have doubted, that he, who on the third day rose again, had in truth been crucified, dead, and buried, and that his soul had passed into the unseen world. F.—The abundant flow of lymph and blood, due to the piercing of the pericardium, makes it probable that he died literally of “a broken heart.” S.—As an imperishable ornament does the Lord bear this spear-wound in his glorified body. And when he shall come in his glory he will still wear the marks of his slaughter (Rev. 1: 7; 5: 6), and will not be ashamed of them. We shall see him as he is: that he is King and Lord over all, and that he is the same

Jesus who died on the cross, and who through the suffering of death is crowned with glory and honor. R. B.

36. A bone of him shall not be broken. It is of the Passover lamb that Scripture says this. As the sacrificed Passover John regarded Jesus hanging on the cross; and the voice which had first called him rose up again within him: “Behold the Lamb of God!” R. B.—We see in it a remarkable divine interposition to protect the sacred body of Christ from the least indignity after he had finished the work given him to do. Every imaginable indignity had been permitted before that, up to the moment of his death. But no sooner is that over than an unseen hand is found to have provided against the clubs of the rude soldiers coming in contact with that temple of the Godhead. Very different from such violence was that spear-thrust, for which not only doubting Thomas would thank the soldier, but intelligent believers in every age, to whom the certainty of their Lord’s death and resurrection is the life of their whole Christianity. B.

35-37. John seems to say, “I saw myself that not a bone of the Lamb of God was broken, so that he fulfilled the type of the Passover. I saw myself a spear thrust into his heart, so that he was a true sacrifice, and really died. And I saw that blood and water come out of his side, and I beheld a fulfilment of the old prophecy of a fountain for sin being opened.” J. C. R.—Blood stands for remission, water for regeneration; blood for atonement, water for purification. The two must always go together. They both flowed from the pierced side of our Redeemer. Henry.

Mk. 42, 43. “They thought to make his grave with the wicked; but with the rich was he after his death.” Thus prophesies Isaiah. And behold, Jesus is “buried according to the Scriptures.” R. B.—Like his divine Master, Joseph, in the presence of Pontius Pilate, witnessed a good confession. Before the whole people of the Jews, and in the presence of that Roman governor, he took the dishonored form of Jesus from the cross and buried it. N. A.

Both Joseph and Nicodemus must have had a large amount of Jewish prejudice to contend with in accepting the Messiahship of the Nazarene; not such prejudice alone as was common to the mass of their countrymen, but such as had a peculiar hold on the educated men of their time, when raised to be guides and rulers of the people. Over all this prejudice Joseph had triumphed; there was a sincerity and integrity of judgment in him, an earnest spirit of faith and hope; he was a good man and a just; one who, like the aged Simeon, had been waiting for the kingdom of God, the better prepared to hail it in whatever guise it came. He had thus become really, though not openly or professedly, a disciple of Jesus. H.

45. Two most blessed objects were thus secured: 1. The reality of our Lord’s death was attested by the party of all others most competent to decide on it, and certainly free from all bias—the officer in attendance—in full reliance on whose testimony Pilate surrendered the body. 2. The dead Redeemer, thus delivered out of the hands of his enemies and committed by the supreme political authority to the care of his friends, was thereby protected from all further indignities; a thing most befitting indeed, now that his work was done, but impossible, so far as we can see, if his enemies had been at liberty to do with him as they pleased. B.

J. 39, 40. None of Christ’s known and professed disciples have any share in his burial, because it was requisite there should be unsuspected witnesses of the certainty of his death. Q.—The suffering Christ was indeed the test which brought to light how far the human heart is capable of obduracy, shallowness, and fickleness; but there was also manifested by the sufferings and death of Christ to what an extent the human heart is susceptible of the influences of the grace of God. Wonderfully this is exemplified in the case of Nicodemus. This man, who only by night had ventured to come to the living Christ, buries the dead Christ by day! He confesses him before the whole world, at the very time when all his hope in him appeared to be crushed! A. T.

It was to this man that, at so early a period of his ministry, our Saviour made the full disclosure of the great object of his own mission and death. It was to Nicodemus he spake of that new spiritual birth by which the kingdom was to be entered; it was to Nicodemus he said, that as Moses had lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must he be lifted up; it was to Nicodemus that the great saying was addressed, “God so loved the world,” etc. Christ must have seen some good soil in that man’s heart, to have scattered there so much of the good seed. That seed bore fruit at last. H.

However much he had held back during the life of Jesus, now, on the evening of his death, he hurried to his cross and burial with an offering of truly royal munificence. Thanks to this glow of kindling sorrow and compassion in the hearts of these two noble and wealthy disciples, he who died as a male-factor was buried as a king. The fine linen which Joseph had purchased was richly spread with the hundred litras of myrrh and perfumed aloe-wood which Nicodemus had brought, and the lacerated body—whose divinely-human spirit was now in the calm of its sabbath rest in the Paradise of God—was thus carried to its peaceful grave. F.

All the Evangelists give a particular and minute account of the Lord’s honorable burial. Twice was Jesus rich in the days of his poverty: once, immediately after his birth, when the wise men from the East offered him gold, frankincense, and myrrh; and now, after his ignominious death, when a rich man buries him, and a distinguished man anoints him with precious spices—a rich Joseph has taken the place of the poor Joseph, who stood by the manger, and costly linen must be the swathing bands in which is inwrapped his body, now ripe for glorification. R. B.

Very few even of the friends of Christ are there. The women that followed him from Galilee, ministering unto him, are there. The rest have smitten their breasts and returned. The miraculous darkness, the earthquake, the rending of the rocks, and the rumor that the graves themselves are opening, have withdrawn the multitudes from the cross. Mary Magdalene, of course, is there, and the beloved John. The body is laid on the bier, and borne in silence to a neighboring garden. Was there ever such a funeral procession? The Prince of Life is going to the tomb. The Son of God is tasting death for every man. Where are the thronged streets? where the chariots of state, and of private opulence? where the train of nobles? where is Jerusalem? A more obscure and neglected burial seldom took place. But what more could be expected in the burial of a crucified man? N. A.

41. And in the garden a new sepulchre. In the description of the sepulchre given by the Evangelists, it is particularly remarked that it was nigh to the place where he was crucified, consequently nigh to Jerusalem. By this circumstance all the cavils are prevented which might otherwise have been occasioned, in case the body had been removed farther off. Moreover, it is observed that the sepulchre was a new one, wherein never any man had been laid. This plainly proves that it could be no other than Jesus who arose. Further, the Evangelists take notice that it was a sepulchre hewn out of a rock, to show that there was no passage by which the disciples could get into it, but the one at which the guards were placed, and consequently that it was not in their power to steal away the body, while the guards remained there performing their duty. M.—The Evangelists seem to have been thus particular in the narrative of the burial to prove, beyond all possibility of doubt, those two great points of the Christian religion, the death and resurrection of Jesus. Stanhope.

The grave in which they laid Jesus was situated in a garden, near to Golgotha. In a garden it was that sin and curse sprang up with Adam’s transgression; in a garden the sufferings of Christ’s atonement first began; in a garden, sin, death, and curse were buried together with Christ. R. B.—A sepulchre in a garden. Strange mingling this of opposites, the garden of life and growth and beauty, circling the sepulchre of death, corruption, and decay. Miniature of the strange world we live in. What garden of it has not its own grave? Our path may, for a time, be through flowers and fragrance; follow it far enough, it leads ever to a grave. But this sepulchre in this garden suggests other and happier thoughts. It was in a garden once of old—in Eden—that death had his first summons given, to find there his first prey; it is in a garden here at Calvary, that the last enemy of mankind has the death-blow given to him—that the great conqueror is in his turn overcome. H.

So, too, the sepulchre of the dead in Christ has a place, not in the desert amid barren glare or cheerless gloom, but in the garden amid light and life. The sealing-stone removed, it opens out into bloom and verdure, into beauty and fruitfulness. Thence, they who share the sepulchred sleep of the Son of God, with him shall issue forth into life transfigured and immortal; into a perennial paradise, guarded by no flaming sword, of all whose blessed fruits none shall be evermore forbidden to partake; where the primal intercourse of God with man shall be restored, and among the returned ransomed multitude the Lord God himself shall forever walk as among his people. J. G. B.

42. The Lord had the power of immediately taking again the life, even of his body; for death could not retain this body in his grasp one moment longer than the soul of Christ was willing that he should. But “in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren,” that in all things he might be able to help them. Therefore he did not pass over even the grave. He has gone through it before us, and has sanctified it for us. Paul derives the power and right of Christ over the dead expressly from this cause, that he himself has died and risen again from the grave (Rom. 14:9). Therefore in him the dead also have now their head and rightful Lord, instead of him who before had the power of death, the devil. During their sleep in the grave they may comfort themselves in the fellowship of their Lord Jesus Christ. When I consider that my Jesus was laid as a corpse in the grave, corpses and graves cease to possess for me any terror. Yes, our blessings rest upon the “holy grave,” which sanctifies our graves! R. B.

Upon that stone which they rolled to the mouth of the sepulchre, let us engrave the words, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” “I heard a voice from heaven saying”—it needed a voice from heaven to assure us of the truth—“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” To such the grave is, indeed, a bed of blessed rest. Buried with Jesus, they repose till the hour of the great awakening cometh, when with him they shall arise to that newness of life over which no shadow of death shall ever pass. H.

L. 55. It is only those hearts across which the ploughshare of God has passed in which the seed of life deeply falls and quickly grows. Now the week of our Saviour’s passion was for the disciples preeminently a time in which the plough of God went over them. And that period, along with the resurrection, was for them also a time in which they were, all at once, advanced farther upon their way than they had been throughout the whole of their previous life. Doubtless many a precious seed had fallen into their soul during the period of their intercourse with the Saviour, but till then it had not sunk deep enough into the soil of the heart. Now, however, the ploughshare passed over them, the seed sank deep, and when on the day of Pentecost the rain of God came down to water it, lo! all at once the fair stalk of corn shot forth. A. T.

M. 62-64. Upon the scribes and Pharisees, the chief priests and rulers of the people, the six hours of the crucifixion had, as we have seen, none other than a hardening effect. The gentleness, the patience, the forgiving spirit, the thoughtfulness for others, the sore trouble of his own spirit, the supernatural darkness, the returning light, the sudden and sublime decease, the reeling earth, the opening graves—all these have no other influence upon their spirits than quickening their ingenuity to contrive how best, most quickly and securely, they can accomplish their design. And these are they of all that crowd, who knew the most, and made the greatest profession of religion! These are the men who would not that morning cross the threshold of Pilate’s dwelling, lest they might unfit themselves for the morrow’s duties within the temple! These are the men who cannot bear the thought that the services of their great Paschal Sabbath should be polluted by the proximity of the three crosses of Golgotha! H.

63. While yet alive.** Important testimony, from the lips of his bitterest enemies, to the reality of Christ’s death; the corner-stone of the whole Christian religion. B.—After three days. Within three days. An acknowledgment on their part that Jesus had predicted his own resurrection after three days. A commentary on this expression, verse 64, “until the third day” shows that three full days of twenty-four hours each, are not meant. J. J. O.

Peter and John and their companions forgot their Lord’s predictions, while Caiaphas and his wicked companions remembered them! J. C. R.—Here is a distinct proof of Christ’s frequent charge against the Jewish leaders, that they not only heard but understood enough of his teaching to produce conviction of his Messiahship. J. G. B.

65, 66. Make it fast, as ye know how, is the literal rendition of the original. The guard was given to them, and they were at liberty to take what measures they saw fit to secure the tomb. Thus God’s providence ordained that Christ’s enemies should furnish a part of the evidence of Christ’s resurrection. But for the priests’ precaution, their story of a robbery of the tomb might have gained a credence which is now attached to it by no one. This report is no longer current even in Jewish literature. L. A.

While they are trying to prevent the resurrection of the Prince of Life, God makes use of their precautions for his own ends. Their stone-covered, seal-secured sepulchre shall preserve the sleeping dust of the Son of God in undisturbed, sublime repose. B.—The object was not to protect the place where the lifeless body of the best Friend of all men, the greatest of all hearts that ever beat on earth, was lying, but to secure and vindicate their murder. The arm of the mightiest military empire on earth was in full play, but it was weaker than a straw. The real keepers of the tomb were angels from the right hand of another throne. But the stone was sealed, and the guards paced to and fro in the paschal moonlight, and did their best. F. D. H.

No one can tell the exact place where any one of our Lord’s miracles was wrought, or any one of his parables was spoken. You cannot err as to the ridge on which of old the temple stood, but where were the courts around it, in which Jesus so often taught; where the palace of the high-priest, the hall of Pilate, the ground on which the cross stood, the new sepulchre in which they laid his body? Is it not better that he should have passed away, leaving so little of minute local association connected with his presence in the midst of us? Does it not seem more in accordance with the dignity of his divine character, that of all the lives that were ever lived on earth, his should be the one that it is least possible to degrade by rude familiarities of conception; his the name which it is least possible to mix up with that superstition which ever seeks an earthly shrine at which to offer its incense? H.

Had it been essential to our comprehension of the Saviour’s life that we should know more exactly the times and places where the years of his public ministry were spent, the Christian at least will believe that such knowledge would not have been withheld from us. The inspiration which guided the Evangelists in narrating the life of Christ enabled them to tell all that was necessary for the peace and well-being of our souls, but very far from all which we might have yearned to know. Nor is it difficult to see herein a fresh indication that our thoughts must be fixed on the spiritual more than on the material—on Christ who liveth for evermore, and is with us always, even to the end of the world, far more than on the external incidents of that human life which, in the council of God’s will, was the appointed means of man’s redemption. F.

The religion of the letter had carried out to the bitter end its conflict with the religion of the spirit. It had slain the truth itself, when he witnessed against it. Evil had had its apparent triumph. As far as the will and hand of man could effect it, He who, alike as man and as the Messiah of Israel, knew no blemish of sin, had been crushed as an evil-doer. The one holy being of our race, having revealed himself as the true Christ expected for ages; the Hope of Israel; the highest and perfect expression, the true spirit and aim of the ancient economy—had been rejected and dishonored to the uttermost by the rulers of the people of God, and by the great bulk of the nation. He who had desired to secure the salvation of Israel and of humanity had been branded by the highest authorities, both of Judaism and heathenism, as a deceiver of the people. The blindness of the one and the indifference of the other had united in attempting to crush him whose only weapons in the assault of evil had been the highest wisdom, the divinest love, and unconquerable meekness. But their triumph was only a momentary and permitted eclipse of the Light of the world, destined presently to reappear in unveiled and henceforth unsettling glory. G.

Section 160.—The Stone rolled away. Message of the Angel to the Women. Peter and John go to the Sepulchre.