VII. in strict unison with the well-known practice of CHAP. Roman criminal jurisprudence. The execution of the two malefactors, one on each side of Jesus, is equally consonant with their ordinary administration of justice, particularly in this ill-fated province. Probably before, unquestionably at a later period, Jerusalem was doomed to behold the long line of crosses on which her sons were left by the relentless Roman authorities to struggle with slow and agonising death. malefac tors. In other circumstances, the Jewish national character is equally conspicuous. This appears even in the conduct of the malefactors. The fanatical The two Judaism of one, not improbably a follower, or infected with the doctrines of the Gaulonite, even in his last agony, has strength enough to insult the pretender to the name of a Messiah who yet has not the power to release himself and his fellowsufferers from death. The other, of milder disposition, yet in death, inclines to believe in Jesus, and when he returns to assume his kingdom, would hope to share in its blessings. To him Jesus, speaking in the current language, promises an immediate reward; he is to pass at once from life to happiness. * Besides this, how striking the triumph of his enemies, as he seemed to surrender himself without resistance to the growing pangs of death; the assemblage, not only of the rude and ferocious populace, but of many of the most distinguished rank, the members of the Sanhedrin, to behold and to insult the last moments of their once redoubted, * Luke, xxiii. 39-43. Spectators of the exe cution. VII. CHAP. but now despised, adversary. And still every indication of approaching death seemed more and more to justify their rejection! still no sign of the mighty, the all-powerful Messiah! Their taunting allusions to his royal title, to his misapprehended speech, which rankled in their hearts, about the demolition and rebuilding of the Temple*; to his power of healing others, and restoring life, a power in his own case so manifestly suspended or lost ; the offer to acknowledge him as the Messiah, if he would come down from the cross in the face of day; the still more malignant reproach, that he, who had boasted of the peculiar favour of God, was now so visibly deserted and abandoned, the Son of God, as he called himself, is left to perish despised and disregarded by God; all this as strikingly accords with, and illustrates the state of, Jewish feeling, as the former circumstances of the Roman usages. And amid the whole wild and tumultuous scene there are some quiet gleams of pure Christianity, which contrast with and relieve the general darkness and horror: not merely the superhuman patience, with which insult, and pain, and ignominy, are borne; not merely the serene self-command, which shows that the senses are not benumbed or deadened by the intensity of suffering; but the slight incidental touches of gentleness and humanity. We cannot but indicate the answer to the af * Matt. xxvii. 39–43.; Mark, xv. 31, 32.; Luke, xxiii. 35. + Luke, xxiii. 27—31. VII. flicted women, who stood by the way weeping, as he CHAP passed on to Calvary, and whom he commanded not "to weep for him," but for the deeper sorrows to Conduct of which themselves or their children were devoted; Jesus. the notice of the group of his own kindred and followers who stood by the cross; his bequest of the support of his Virgin Mother to the beloved disciple; above all, that most affecting exemplification of his own tenets, the prayer for the pardon of his enemies, the palliation of their crime from their ignorance of its real enormity," Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."+ Yet 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, we might almost say carelessly, noticed by St. Luke alone. tural dark ness. From the sixth hour (noonday), writes the Evan- Preterna gelist St. Matthew, there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. The whole earth (the phrase in the other Evangelists) is no doubt used according to Jewish phraseology, in which Palestine, the sacred land, was emphatically the earth. This supernatural gloom appears to resemble that terrific darkness which precedes an earthquake. For these three hours Jesus had borne the ex * John, xix. 25-27. + Luke, xxiii. 34. Matt. xxvii. 45-53.; Mark, xv. 33—38.; Luke, xxiii. 44, 45.; John, xix. 28-30. Gibbon has said, and truly, as regards all well-informed and sober interpreters of the sacred writings, that" the celebrated passage of Phlegon is now wisely abandoned.” VII. CHAP. cruciating anguish-his human nature begins to fail, and he complains of the burning thirst, the most painful but usual aggravation of such a death. A compassionate bystander filled a sponge with vinegar, fixed it on a long reed, and was about to lift it to his lips, when the dying Jesus uttered his last words, those of the twenty-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 Sabacthani? — 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. Death of 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 up the ghost. Even the dreadful earthquake which followed, seemed to pass away without appalling the enemies * Matt. xxvii. 46.; Mark, xv. + Luke, xxiii. 46. 34-37.; John, xix. 28–30. VII. } of Jesus. The rending of the veil of the Temple CHAP. 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 sepulchres which perforated the hills on every side of the city, and expose the dead to public view. To the awe-struck 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 seem to have been lost on the infatuated Jews, were not without effect on the less prejudiced Roman soldiery; they appeared 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. t *This is the probable and consistent view of Michaelis. Those who assert 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 + Matt. xxvii. 54.; Luke, xxiii. |