336 DEATH OF JESUS. Book L second Psalm, in which, in the bitterness of his heart, David had complained of the manifest desertion of his God, who had yielded him up to his enemies-the phrase had perhaps been in common use in extreme distress-Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ?-My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The compassionate hand of the man, raising the vinegar, was arrested by others, who, a few perhaps in trembling curiosity, but more in, bitter mockery, supposing that He called not on God (Eli) but on Elias, commanded him to wait and see, whether, even now, that great and certain sign of the Messiah, the appearance of Elijah, would at length take place. Their barbarous triumph was uninterrupted; and He, who yet (his followers were not without some lingering hope, and the more superstitious of his enemies not without some trembling apprehension) might awaken to all his terrible and prevailing majesty, had now manifestly expired. The Messiah, the imperishable, the eternal Messiah, had quietly yielded Death of Jesus. up the ghost. Even the dreadful earthquake which followed, seemed to pass away without appalling the enemies of Jesus. The rending of the veil of the Temple from the top to the bottom, so strikingly significant of the approaching abolition of the local worship, would either be concealed by the priesthood, or attributed as a natural effect to the convulsion of the earth. The same convulsion would displace the stones which covered the ancient tombs, and lay open many of the innumerable rock-hewn • Matt. xxvii. 46; Mark 34-37; John xix. 28-30. Luke xxiii. 46. XV. 9 Zelouds is the ordinary word for an earthquake. CHAP. VII. BURIAL OF JESUS. 327 sepulchres which perforated the hills on every side of the city, and expose the dead to public view. To the awestruck and depressed minds of the followers of Jesus, no doubt, were confined those visionary appearances of the spirits of their deceased brethren, which are obscurely intimated in the rapid narratives of the Evangelists." But these terrific appearances, which were altogether lost on the infatuated Jews, were not without effect on the less prejudiced Roman soldiery; they seemed to bear the testimony of Heaven to the innocence, to the divine commission, of the crucified Jesus. The centurion who guarded the spot, according to St. Luke, declared aloud his conviction that Jesus was "a just man;" according to St. Matthew, that He was "the Son of God." s Secure now, by the visible marks of dissolution, by the piercing of his side, from which blood and water flowed out, that Jesus was actually dead; and still, even in their most irreligious acts of cruelty and wickedness, punctiliously religious (since it was a sin to leave the body of that blameless being on the cross during one day, whom it had been no sin, but t Burial of • Matt. xxvii. 54; Luke xxiii. 47. Lightfoot supposes that by intercourse with the Jews he may have learned their phraseology: Grotius, that he had a general impression that Jesus was a superior being. This is the probable and consistent | sensible note of M. Guizot on the latte: view of Michaelis. Those who assert part of Gibbon's xvth chapter. a supernatural eclipse of the sun rest on the most dubious and suspicious tradition; while those who look with jealousy on the introduction of natural causes, however so timed as in fact to be no less extraordinary than events altogether contrary to the course of nature, forget or despise the difficulty of accounting for the apparently slight sensation produced on the minds of the Jews, and the total silence of all other history. Compare the very VOL. I. * Deut. xxi. 23. The Jews usually buried executed criminals ignominiously, but at the request of a family would permit a regular burial. Light foot, from Babyl. San. Z 338 APPARENT END OF CHRISTIANITY BOOK I rather an act of the highest virtue, to murder the day before), the Sanhedrin gave their consent to a wealthy adherent of Jesus, Joseph, of the town of Arimathea, to bury the body. The sanction of Pilate was easily obtained: it was taken down from the cross, and consigned to the sepulchre prepared by Joseph for his own family, but in which no body had yet been laid." The sepulchre was at no great distance from the place of execution; the customary rites were performed; the body was wrapped in fine linen and anointed with a mixture of costly spice and myrrh, with which the remains of those who were held in respect by their kindred were usually preserved. As the Sabbath was drawing on, the work was performed with the utmost despatch, and Jesus was laid to rest in the grave of his faithful adherent. all end. In that rock-hewn tomb might appear to be buried The religion for ever both the fears of his enemies and the apparently at hopes of his followers. Though some rumours of his predictions concerning his resurrection had crept abroad, sufficient to awaken the caution of the Sanhedrin, and to cause them to seal the outward covering of the sepulchre, and, with the approbation of Pilate, to station a Roman guard upon the spot; yet, as far as the popular notion of the Messiah, nothing could be more entirely and absolutely destructive of their hopes than the patient submission of Jesus to insult, to degradation, to death. However, with some of milder nature, his exquisite sufferings might excite compassion; however the savage and implacable cruelty with which the Rulers urged his fate might appear revolting to the multitude, after their first access of religious indignation had passed away, and the recollection returned to Matt. vii, 57-60; Mark xv. 42-47; Luke xxiii. 50-56; John xix, 38-42. CHAP. VII ITS REAL BEGINNING. 339 the gentle demeanour and beneficent acts of Jesus; yet the hope of REDEMPTION, whatever meaning they might attach to the term, whether deliverance from their enemies or the restoration of their theocratic government, had set in utter darkness. However vague or contradictory this notion among the different sects or classes, with the mass of the people, nothing less than an immediate instantaneous reappearance in some appalling or imposing form could have reinstated Jesus in his high place in the popular expectation. Without this, his career was finally closed, and He would pass away at once, as one of the brief wonders of the time, his temporary claims to respect or attachment refuted altogether by the shame, by the ignominy, of his death. His ostensible leading adherents were men of the humblest origin, and, as yet, of no distinguished ability; men from whom little danger could be apprehended, and who might safely be treated with contemptuous neglect. No attempt appears to have been made to secure a single person, or to prevent their peaceful retreat to their native Galilee. The whole religion centered in the person of Jesus, and in his death was apparently suppressed, crushed, extinguished for ever. After a few days, the Sanhedrin would dread nothing less than a new disturbance from the same quarter; and Pilate, as the whole affair had passed off without tumult, would soon suppress the remonstrances of his conscience at the sacrifice of an innocent life, since the public peace had been maintained, and no doubt his own popularity with the leading Jews considerably heightened, at so cheap a price. All then was at an end: yet, after the death of Christ, commences, strictly speaking, the history of Christianity. Christian doctrine of the im the soul. CHAPTER I. The Resurrection, and first Promulgation of Christianity. THE resurrection of Jesus is the basis of Christianity; it is the groundwork of the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Henceforward mortality of that great truth begins to assume a new character, and to obtain an influence over the political and social, as well as over the individual happiness of man, unknown in the former ages of the world.a It is no longer a feeble and uncertain instinct, nor a remote speculative opinion, obscured by the more pressing necessities and cares of the present life, but the universal predominant sentiment, constantly present to the thoughts, enwoven with the usages, and pervading the whole moral being of man. The dim and scattered rays, either of traditionary belief, of intuitive feeling, or of philosophic reasoning, were brought as it were to a focus, condensed and poured with an immeasurably stronger, an expanding, an all-permeating light upon the human soul." Whatever its origin, whether in Our Saviour assumes the doctrine | vations, and even expressions, anticiof another life, as the basis of his doc trines, because, in a certain sense, it was already the popular belief among the Jews; but it is very different with the Apostles, when they address the heathen, who formed far the largest part of the converts to Christianity. b I have found some of these obser pated by the striking remarks of Lessing: Und so ward Christus der erste zuverlässige praktische Lehrer der Unsterblichkeit der Seele. Der erste zuverlässige Leb er. Zuverlässig durch seine Weissagungen, den in ihm erfüllt schienen zuverlässig durch die Wunder die er verrichtete : zuverlässig durch |