noonday the unearthly darkness began, so far as we can learn, "not a word of derision is heard all around the cross. All is hushed into absolute silence." The angry passions of men subside. They gaze through the darkness in fear and wonder. "Jesus is silent: the sufferings he endured at the hands of men now give place to more painful inward sufferings. The darkening of the heavens accompanies and expresses the dreadful darkness that prevails in the soul itself of the suffering Saviour," when those around are suddenly startled by the agonizing cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But why this cry as of utter desolation and despair? How could God leave his beloved Son so unsustained in the moment of his keenest anguish? It is not for us to comprehend all the wonders and mysteries of the Divine mercy in the great work of our redemption. The sufferings of the righteous at all times, but most of all the sufferings of the Son of God, in their relation to the sins of the world, are, so far as we are concerned, among the secret things of the Most High. They have indeed a most affecting significance. They show the personal sympathy of Jesus with the keenest pangs of conflict, or of pain and despair, that can ever rend our hearts, and indicate to us how we, through the victory which he has gained, may triumph over them. But we cannot tell how far his sufferings were essential to our salvation in their influence on the counsels of God. The mighty train of causes and effects in God's spiritual kingdom, reaching up through the highest heavens and down through all the depths of sin and its attendant sorrows, must be involved in mystery to us. We cannot comprehend in all the fulness of their meaning these highest moments in God's dealings with man, when in the hidings of his power he is bringing to a crisis those vast designs, which, in working out the redemption of our race, reach, we know not how far, into the infinite realms of being. Such a moment it was that heard from the cross the cry of anguish and desolation which has pierced the heart of the world, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” These words of Jesus, his fourth utterance upon the cross, were misunderstood by those around him. But there were no marks of levity or contempt. It would seem as if even those who came to scoff at his sufferings had been subdued, or at least silenced, by the solemnity of the scene. Immediately afterwards Jesus, moved by what is said to be the severest physical suffering of those who die by that painful death, said, "I thirst." A sponge filled with vinegar was raised to his mouth, and when he had received it, he said, "It is finished." The great work which he came into the world to accomplish was now done. He had drained to its dregs the cup which his Father had given him to drink. The agony was over. And with his seventh and last utter ance, 66 Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," he bowed his head and gave up the ghost. "And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain 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 "when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake and those things that were done, they feared greatly, and said, 'Truly this was a son of God"" (literally, a God's son'). Certainly, this was a righteous man." And all the multitudes who had come out with angry and revengeful feelings, demanding his life, and making a mock of his sufferings, when they saw the things which had come to pass (Luke xxiii. 48), smote. their breasts and turned sorrowfully away from what their own malice or excited passions had helped to accomplish. Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man, went hastily to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. He then, with the assistance of Nicodemus, who brought about a hundred pounds of a mixture of myrrh and aloes (John xix. 39), prepared the body for burial, and interred it in his own new sepulchre, which he had hewn out in a garden adjoining the spot where Jesus had been crucified. And the women who had come from Galilee, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, were there, over against the sepulchre, seeing the tomb and how the body was laid. "And now in the tomb lay the holiest being the earth had ever seen dead, a terrible symbol of the universal death of man, an image of utter, remediless despair, a scene to darken the earth. Then the powers of darkness seemed to have triumphed. Selfish ambition, cruelty, rage, hate, still remained on the earth; but the Holy One was gone from it. Then might the powers of darkness have looked out from the clouds, and proclaimed, 'It is the hour of our triumph; henceforth the earth is ours."" E. Peabody. 62-66. — PRECAUTIONS AGAINST HIS RESURRECTION. There is a little difficulty in this passage. If the Apostles so utterly failed to understand the words of Jesus that they had no expectation of his resurrection, how could his enemies have had any such idea in their minds? The words announcing his resurrection after three days, had been spoken by him, and repeated by his disciples. The greatness of the fact foretold prevented their understanding the plain and literal meaning of the words they had heard and reported. But when the priests and rulers saw that the body of Jesus was in the hands of his friends, they recalled to mind these words, and seeing what their obvious and literal meaning was, they, with the keenness of religious bigots, suspected some trick on the part of the disciples, and therefore applied to the governor to allow them to take the precautions which would render any such imposition as they feared impracticable. The stone, therefore, was sealed, and a guard was set. But the very precautions which they had taken turned against them. The very measures which they had adopted to expose the cheat which they suspected, served only to confirm the truth, against which they had set themselves. NOTES. WHEN the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus, to put him to death. 2 And when they had bound him, they led him away and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor. 3 Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty 4 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they 5 said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and 6 hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver came the avenger, as it seemed, of the divine justice which at no distant interval followed after him.' 4. have betrayed the innocent blood] This means, not merely that he had betrayed an innocent man, but that he had betrayed him to death. What is that to us? see thou to that.] Nothing could be more cool and contemptuous. They had used the traitor, and now had nothing more to do with him. His guilt and anguish were his concern, not theirs. The fewness of the words that they were willing to spend upon him added to the fatal poignancy of their sting. And he cast down the pieces 2. and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor] Very little is known of Pilate beyond what we find in the Gospels. He was not properly governor of Judæa, but only the Procurator or deputy-governor, and was subject to the Proconsul of Syria, who resided at Cæsarea. In the thirteenth year of Tiberius, A. D. 26, he came to Judæa as the successor of Valerius Gratus. Josephus, Ant. XVIII. 2. 2. He is barely mentioned by Tacitus as Procurator when Christ was punished. (Ann. XV. 44.) Josephus speaks of him, Ant. XVIII. 3. 1, in a way that shows the weakness of his character, and afterwards, in that and the following chapters, he speaks of him as engaged in transactions which indicate the timidity and rashness, the sensibility and cruelty, which are not unfrequently combined in the same person. After having been in Judæa ten years he was sent to Rome by Vitellius, governor of Syria, to answer for his conduct to the Emperor Tiberius, but that crafty and malignant tyrant was dead before he reached Rome. According to Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. II. 7), the tradition was that in the reign of Caligula Pilate fell into such misfortunes that he "from necessity destroyed himself, and with his own hand be 5. of silver in the temple] év Tậ went and hanged himself] pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took 7 counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury trophe related having happened, in some way, as a Divine judgment, during the suicidal attempt. Further than this, with our present knowledge, we cannot go. An accurate acquaintance with the actual circumstances would account for the discrepancy, but nothing else." Olshausen, after speaking with severity of the forced interpretations by which the two passages have been reconciled, adds: "Yet we must have struck, in his fall, upon some pointed rock, which entered the body, and caused his bowels to gush out." Lightfoot's summary method of dealing with the matter may interest rather than instruct the reader. "Interpreters," says he, "take a great deal of pains to make these words agree with his hanging himself; but, indeed, all will not do. I know the word árnyaтo is commonly applied to ἀπήγξατο a man's hanging himself, but not to exclude some other way of strangling. And I cannot but take the story (with good leave of antiquity) in this sense: After Judas had thrown down the money, the price of his treason, in the temple, and was now returning again to his mates, the devil, who dwelt in him, caught him up on high, strangled him, and threw him down headlong, so that, dashing upon the ground, he burst in the midst. This agrees very well with the deserts of the wicked wretch, and with the title of Iscariot [i. e. one who perished by strangling]. The wickedness he had committed was above all example; and the punishment he suffered was beyond all precedent." 6. into the confess that the accounts may be so connected as to permit the conjecture that Judas hanged himself, and, falling down, was so injured that his bowels gushed out." Prof. Hackett, whose learning and candor cannot easily be called in question, adopts this conjecture as not unreasonable. In his Illustrations of Scripture,' pp. 266, 267, he says: "We have no certain knowledge as to the mode in which we are to combine the two which we are to combine the two statements, so as to connect the act of suicide with what happened to the body. Interpreters have suggested that Judas may have hung himself on a tree near a precipice over the valley of Hinnom, and that, the limb or rope breaking, he fell to the bottom, and was dashed to pieces by the fall. For myself, I felt, as I stood in the valley, and looked up to the rocky terraces which hang over it, that the proposed explanation was a perfectly natural one.. I measured the precipitous, almost perpendicular walls, in different places, and found the height to be, variously, forty, thirty-six, thirty-three, thirty, and twenty-five feet. Olive-trees still grow quite near the edge of these rocks, and, no doubt, in former times they were still more numerous in the same place. A rocky pavement exists also at the bottom of the precipices; and hence, on that account, too, a person who should fall from above would be liable to be crushed and mangled, as well as killed. The traitor may Ols "The treasury] "kopẞavâs is the sacred treasure of the temple, which was kept in seven chests, called trumpets. Comp. Mark vii. 11." 7. to bury hausen. strangers in] Not foreigners, but Jews who were strangers there. the potter's field] Aceldama, or field of blood, which was purchased with his money, tradition has placed on the Hill of Evil Council. It may have been in that quarter, at least, for the field belonged originally to a potter, and argillaceous clay is still found in the neighborhood. A workman in a pottery which I visited at Jerusalem said that all their clay was obtained from the hill over the val |
