Chapter II: Part 2

Germanicus, having passed the Visurgis, learned from a deserter that Arminius had marked out the place of battle; that more tribes also had joined him at a wood sacred to Hercules, and would attempt to storm our camp by night. The deserter was believed, the enemy's fires were in view, and the scouts, having advanced toward them, reported that they heard the neighing of horses and the murmur of a mighty and tumultuous host. Being thus upon the eve of a decisive battle, Germanicus thought it behooved him to learn the sentiments of the soldiers, and deliberated with himself how to get at the truth; "the reports of the tribunes and centurions were oftener agreeable than true; the freedmen had servile spirits; friends were apt to flatter; if an assembly were called, there, too, the counsel proposed by a few was carried by the clamorous plaudits of the rest. The minds of soldiers could, then, only be thoroughly known when, by themselves, free from all restraint, and over their mess, they gave unreserved utterance to their hopes and fears."

At nightfall, taking the path leading by the place of divination,[20] he went out with a single attendant, a deerskin covering his shoulders,[21] and proceeding by a secret way where there were no sentinels, entered the avenues of the camp, stationed himself near the tents, and eagerly listened to what was said of himself, while one magnified the imperial birth of his general, another his graceful person, very many his firmness, condescension, and the evenness of his temper, whether seriously occupied or in moments of relaxation; and they confessed that their sense of his merits should be shown in battle, protesting at the same time that those traitors and violators of peace should be made a sacrifice to vengeance and to fame. In the mean time one of the enemy who understood Latin rode up to the palisades, and with a loud voice offered, in the name of Arminius, to every deserter a wife and land, and, as long as the war lasted, a hundred sesterces a day. This affront kindled the wrath of the legions. "Let day come," they cried, "battle should be given, the soldiers would themselves take the lands of the Germans, lead away wives by right of conquest; they, however, welcomed the omen, and considered the wealth and women of the enemy their destined prey." About the third watch[22] an attempt was made upon the camp, but not a dart was discharged, as they found the cohorts planted thick upon the works, and nothing neglected that was necessary for a vigorous defence.

Germanicus had the same night a cheering dream: he thought he sacrificed, and, in place of his own robe besmeared with the blood of the victim, received one fairer from the hands of his grandmother Augusta. Elated by the omen, and the auspices being favorable, he called an assembly, and laid before them what in his judgment seemed likely to be advantageous and suitable for the impending battle. He said "that to the Roman soldiers not only plains, but, with due circumspection, even woods and forests were convenient. The huge targets, the enormous spears of the barbarians, could never be wielded among trunks of trees and thickets of underwood shooting up from the ground like Roman swords and javelins, and armor fitting the body; that they should reiterate their blows, and aim at the face with their swords. The Germans had neither helmet nor coat of mail; their bucklers were not even strengthened with leather or iron, but mere contextures of twigs, and boards of no substance flourished over with paint; their first rank was armed with pikes, in some sort, the rest had only stakes burned at the end, or short darts. And now to come to their persons, as they were terrific to sight, and vigorous enough for a brief effort, so they were utterly impatient of wounds; unaffected with shame for misconduct, and destitute of respect for their generals. They would quit their posts or run away before the enemy; cowards in adversity, in prosperity despisers of all divine, of all human laws; if weary of marches and sea voyages, they wished an end of these things, by this battle it was presented to them. The Elbe was now nearer than the Rhine; there was nothing to subdue beyond this; they had only to place him, crowned with victory, in the same country which had witnessed the triumphs of his father and uncle, in whose footsteps he was treading." The ardor of the soldiers was kindled by this speech of the general, and the signal for the onset was given.

Neither did Arminius or the other chiefs neglect solemnly to assure their several bands that "these were Romans; the most desperate fugitives of the Varian army, who, to avoid the hardships of war, had put on the character of rebels; who, without any hope of success, were again braving the angry gods, and exposing to their exasperated foes, some of them backs burdened with wounds, others limbs enfeebled with the effects of storms and tempests. Their motive for having recourse to a fleet and the pathless regions of the ocean was that no one might oppose them as they approached or pursue them when repulsed; but when they engaged hand-to-hand, vain would be the help of winds and oars after a defeat. The Germans needed only remember their rapine, cruelty, and pride; was any other course left them than to maintain their liberty, and, if they could not do that, to die before they took a yoke upon them?"

The enemy thus inflamed, and calling for battle, were led into a plain called Idistavisus. It lies between the Visurgis and the hills, and winds irregularly along, as it is encroached upon by the projecting bases of the mountains or enlarged by the receding banks of the river. At their rear rose a majestic forest, the branches of the trees shooting up into the air, but the ground clear between their trunks. The army of barbarians occupied the plain and the entrances of the forest; the Cheruscans alone sat in ambush upon the mountain, in order to pour down from thence upon the Romans when engaged in the fight. Our army marched thus: the auxiliary Gauls and Germans in front, after them the foot archers, next four legions, and then Germanicus with two prætorian cohorts and the choice of the cavalry; then four legions more, and the light foot with the mounted archers, and the other cohorts of the allies; the men were on the alert and in readiness, so that the order of march might form the order of battle when they halted.

As the bands of Cheruscans who had impatiently rushed forward were now perceived, Germanicus commanded the most efficient of his horse to charge them in the flank, and Stertinius with the rest to wheel round to attack them in the rear, and promised to be ready to assist them at the proper moment. Meanwhile an omen of happiest import appeared; eight eagles, seen to fly toward the wood and to enter it, caught the eye of the general. "Advance!" he cried, "follow the Roman birds; follow the tutelar deities of the legions!"

At once the foot charged, and the cavalry sent forward attacked their flank and rear, and, strange to relate, the two divisions of their army fled opposite ways; that in the wood ran to the plain, that in the plain rushed into the wood. The Cheruscans between both were driven from the hills; among them Arminius formed a conspicuous object, while with his hand, his voice, and the exhibition of his wounds he strove to sustain the fight. He had vigorously assaulted the archers, and would have broken through them had not the cohorts of the Rhætians, the Vindelicians, and the Gauls advanced to oppose him. However, by his own personal effort and the impetus of his horse he made good his passage, his face besmeared with his own blood to avoid being known. Some have related that the Chaucians, who were among the Roman auxiliaries, knew him and let him go; the same bravery or stratagem procured Inguiomer his escape; the rest were slain on all hands; great numbers attempting to swim the Visurgis perished either by the darts showered after them or the violence of the current, or, if they escaped these, they were overwhelmed by the weight of the rushing crowd and the banks which fell upon them. Some, seeking an ignominious refuge, climbed to the tops of trees, and, concealing themselves among the branches, were shot in sport by the archers, who were brought up for the purpose; others were dashed against the ground as the trees were felled. This was a great victory, and withal achieved without loss on our side.

This slaughter of the foe, from the fifth hour[23] of the day until night, filled the country for ten miles with carcasses and arms. Among the spoils, chains were found, which, sure of conquering, they had brought to bind the Roman captives. The soldiers saluted Tiberius as "Imperator"[24] upon the field of battle, and, raising a mount, placed upon it, after the manner of trophies, the German arms, with the names of all the vanquished nations inscribed below.

This sight filled the Germans with more anguish and rage than all their wounds, afflictions, and overthrows. They, who were just now prepared to abandon their dwellings and retire beyond the Elbe, meditate war and grasp their arms; people, nobles, youth, aged, all rush suddenly upon the Roman army in its march and disorder it. Lastly, they chose a position shut in by a river and a forest, the inner space being a confined and humid plain; the forest, too, surrounded with a deep marsh, except that the Angrivarii had elevated one side by erecting a broad mound to part them and the Cheruscans. Here their foot were posted; their horse were concealed among the neighboring groves, that they might be on the rear of the legions when they had entered the wood.

Nothing of all this was a secret to Germanicus. He knew their counsels, their stations, their overt movements and their concealed measures; and turned their subtlety to the destruction of themselves. To Seius Tubero, his lieutenant, he committed the horse and the plain; the infantry he so formed that part might pass the level approaches into the wood, and the rest force their way up the rampart; whatever was arduous he reserved to himself, the rest he committed to his lieutenants. Those who had the even ground to traverse easily forced an entrance; but they who were to storm the rampart were battered from above, as if they had been assaulting a wall. The general perceived the inequality of this close encounter, and, drawing off the legions a small distance, ordered the slingers and engineers to discharge their missiles and dislodge the enemy. Immediately darts were poured from the engines, and the defenders of the barrier, the more conspicuous they were, with the more wounds were beaten down. Germanicus, having taken the rampart, first forced his way at the head of the prætorian cohorts into the wood, and there fought, foot-to-foot. Behind the enemy was the morass, behind the Romans the mountains or the river; no room for either to retreat, no hope but in valor, no safety but in victory.

The Germans were not inferior in courage, but in their method of fighting and the nature of their arms; as their vast numbers, hampered in narrow places, could not push forward, nor recover their immense spears, nor practise their usual assaults and rapid motions, being compelled by their crowded condition to adopt a stationary manner of fighting. On the contrary, our soldiers, with shields fitted to their breasts, and their hands firmly grasping their sword hilts, could gash the brawny limbs and naked faces of the barbarians, and open themselves a way with havoc to the enemy. Besides, the activity of Arminius now failed him, being either exhausted by a succession of disasters or disabled by his recent wound. Nay, Inguiomer, too, who flew from place to place throughout the battle, was abandoned by fortune rather than courage. Germanicus, to be the easier known, pulled off his helmet, and exhorted his men "to prosecute the slaughter; they wanted no captives," he said; "the extermination of the people alone would put an end to the war!" It was now late in the day and he drew off a legion to pitch a camp; the rest glutted themselves till night with the blood of the foe; the horse fought with doubtful success.

Germanicus, having in a public harangue praised his victorious troops, raised a pile of arms with this proud inscription: "That the army of Tiberius Cæsar, having subdued the nations between the Rhine and the Elbe, had consecrated these memorials to Mars, to Jupiter, and to Augustus." Of himself he made no mention; either fearful of provoking envy or that he felt satisfied with the consciousness of his own merit. He next charged Stertinius with the war among the Angrivarians, and he would have proceeded had they not made haste to submit; approaching as supplicants, and making a full confession of their guilt, they received pardon without reserve.

The summer being now far advanced, some of the legions were sent back into winter quarters by land; the greater part Cæsar put on board the fleet and conveyed them along the Amisia to the ocean. The sea, at first serene, resounded only with the oars of a thousand ships or their impulse when under sail; but presently a shower of hail poured down from a black mass of clouds; at the same time storms raging on all sides in every variety, the billows rolling now here, now there, obstructed the view and made it impossible to manage the ships. The soldiers, too, unaccustomed to the perils of the sea, in their alarm embarrassed the mariners, or, helping them awkwardly, rendered unavailing the services of the skilful. After this, the whole expanse of air and sea was swept by a southwest wind, which, deriving strength from the mountainous regions of Germany, its deep rivers, and boundless tract of clouded atmosphere, and rendered still harsher by the rigor of the neighboring north, tore away the ships, scattered and drove them into the open ocean, or upon islands, dangerous from precipitous rocks or the hidden sand-banks which beset them. Having got a little clear of these (but with great difficulty), the tide turned, and, flowing in the same direction as that in which the wind blew, they were unable to ride at anchor or bale out the water that broke in upon them. Horses, beasts of burden, baggage, even arms, were thrown overboard to lighten the holds of the vessels, which took in water at their sides and from the waves running over them. Around them were either shores inhabited by enemies or a sea so vast and unfathomable as to be supposed to be the limit of the world and unbounded by any land. Part of the fleet was swallowed up; many ships were driven upon remote islands where, without a trace of civilized humanity, the men perished through famine, or were kept alive by the carcasses of horses that were dashed upon the same shore. The galley of Germanicus alone reached the coast of the Chaucians[25] where, during the whole period of his stay, both day and night, amid the rocks and prominences of the shore, he reproached himself as being the author of such overwhelming destruction, and was hardly restrained by his friends from destroying himself in the sea. At last, with the returning tide and favoring gale, the shattered ships returned--almost all destitute of oars, or with garments spread for sails, and some towed by those which were less disabled. He repaired them hastily, and despatched them to search the islands. By this diligence the greater part were recovered; many were by the Angrivarians (our new subjects) redeemed from their more inland neighbors and restored; and some, driven into Great Britain, were sent back by the petty kings. Each according to the remoteness of the region he had returned from recounted the wonders he had witnessed: "the impetuosity of whirlwinds; strange birds; sea monsters of ambiguous form between man and beast"--things either seen or fancied from the effects of fear.

Intelligence of this wreck animated the Germans with hopes of renewing the war, which Germanicus, perceiving, resolved to check. He commanded Caius Silius, with thirty thousand foot and three thousand horse, to march into the country of the Cattians; he himself, with a greater force, invaded the Marsians, where he learned from Malovendus, their general--lately taken into our subjection--that the eagle of one of Varus' legions was hidden underground in a neighboring grove kept by a slender guard. Instantly two parties were despatched: one to face the enemy and draw him from his position, the other to march around upon the rear and open the ground. Success attended both. Hence Germanicus, advancing toward the interior with greater alacrity, laid waste the country and destroyed the effects of the late disaster. The foe, wherever they engaged, were instantly defeated; nor (as was learned from the prisoners) were they ever more dismayed. "The Romans," they exclaimed, "are invincible; no calamities can subdue them; they have wrecked their fleet, their arms are lost, our shores are covered with the bodies of their horses and men; and yet they have invaded us with their usual spirit, with the same firmness, and as if their numbers were increased."

The army was thence led back into winter quarters, full of joy to have balanced, by this prosperous expedition, their misfortunes at sea; and by the bounty of Germanicus their happiness was increased; since to each sufferer he paid as much as he declared he had lost; neither was it doubted but that the enemy was tottering and concerting measures for obtaining peace, and that the next summer would terminate the war. Tiberius, by frequent letters, pressed him "to come home to the triumph decreed him." He urged also that he had experienced enough of events and casualties; he had indeed fought great and successful battles, but he must likewise remember his losses and calamities, which (however, owing to wind and waves, and no fault of the general) were yet great and grievous. He himself had been sent nine times into Germany by Augustus, and effected much more by policy than arms. It was thus he had brought the Sygambrians into subjection, thus the Suevians, thus King Maroboduus had been obliged to submit to terms. The Cheruscans, too, and the other hostile nations--now the Roman honor was vindicated--might be left to pursue their own intestine feuds. Germanicus besought one year to accomplish his conquest, but Tiberius assailed his modesty with fresh importunity, by offering him another consulship, the duties of which would require his presence; he added "that if the war were still to be prosecuted, he should leave materials for the fame of his brother, Drusus, who, as there then remained no other enemy, could acquire the title of _Imperator_, and earn the privilege of presenting the laurel in Germany alone." Germanicus persisted no longer; though he knew that this was all hypocrisy, and that through envy he was torn away from a ripened harvest of glory.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] There were four gates to a Roman camp. Livy says so in express terms: "_Ad quatuor portas exercitum instruxit, ut, signo dato, ex omnibus portubus eruptionem facerent._" The several gates were the _prætorian_; the gate opposite to it, at the extremity of the camp, called the _decuman_; and two others, called the _right_ and _left principals_, because they stood on the right and left sides of the camp, fronting the street called _Principia_.

[20] In the camp a place was set apart for taking the auspices, on the right of the general's tent.

[21] He assumed this disguise in order to appear like a German soldier.

[22] The Romans divided the night into four watches. Each watch was on duty three hours, and then relieved by the next in turn. The third watch began about the modern twelve at night.

[23] It appears that the battle was fought in July or the beginning of August, _adulta jam æstate_. If so, the _fifth_ hour nearly agrees with our nine in the morning.

[24] In the time of the republic, the title of Imperator was given by the soldiers in the field of battle to the commander-in-chief. The custom ceased under Augustus, who annexed the title to the imperial dignity, the prince being then generalissimo of all the armies of the empire. The name of Imperator, it is true, was afterward given to the general who gained a victory; but that was not done without the special permission of the prince. The same rule was observed under the following emperors; and accordingly we find that Tiberius was saluted Imperator; but the soldiers did not presume to do that honor to Germanicus.

[25] The mouth of the Visurgis, or the Weser.

THE CRUCIFIXION

A.D. 30[26]

FREDERIC WILLIAM FARRAR

The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ took place on Friday of the
Passover week of the Jews, in the year A.D. 30. This day is known
and now generally observed by Christians as Good Friday.
Crucifixion, as a means of inflicting death in the most cruel,
lingering, and shameful way, was used by many nations of antiquity.
The Jews never executed their criminals in this way, but the Greeks
and Romans made the cross the instrument of death to malefactors.
The cross was in the shape either of the letter T or the letter X,
or was in the form familiar in such paintings of the Crucifixion as
the well-known representation of Rubens. It was the usual custom to
compel the criminal to carry his own cross to the place of
execution. The cross was then set up and the criminal was usually
tied to it by the hands and feet and left to perish of hunger and
thirst. Sometimes he was given a narcotic drink to stupefy him. In
the case of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ the victim was fastened
to the cross by nails driven through his hands and feet.

As Dr. Judson Titsworth has plainly pointed out, the men who were
crucified with Jesus Christ were not thieves, but robbers (this is
the term also used below by Farrar), or perhaps Jewish patriots, to
the Romans political rebels and outlaws. They would then be classed
with Jesus under the accusation that they were not loyal to the
sovereignty of the Roman Emperor. During the procuratorship of
Pontius Pilate there was a widely prevailing spirit of sedition and
revolt among the Jews, and many rebels were sentenced to
crucifixion. Such a rebel was the robber Barabbas, whom Pilate
wished to substitute for Jesus as the victim of popular fury. The
"robber" episode of the Crucifixion is treated by Farrar with a
picturesque effect which heightens the vivid coloring in his
account of the supreme event that marks "the central point of the
world's history."

Utterly brutal and revolting as was the punishment of crucifixion, which has now for fifteen hundred years been abolished by the common pity and abhorrence of mankind, there was one custom in Judea, and one occasionally practised by the Romans, which reveal some touch of passing humanity. The latter consisted in giving to the sufferer a blow under the armpit, which, without causing death, yet hastened its approach. Of this I need not speak, because, for whatever reason, it was not practised on this occasion. The former, which seems to have been due to the milder nature of Judaism, and which was derived from a happy piece of rabbinic exegesis on Prov. xxxi. 6, consisted in giving to the condemned, immediately before his execution, a draught of wine medicated with some powerful opiate. It had been the custom of wealthy ladies in Jerusalem to provide this stupefying potion at their own expense, and they did so quite irrespectively of their sympathy for any individual criminal. It was probably taken freely by the two malefactors, but when they offered it to Jesus he would not take it. The refusal was an act of sublimest heroism. The effect of the draught was to dull the nerves, to cloud the intellect, to provide an anæsthetic against some part at least of the lingering agonies of that dreadful death. But he, whom some modern sceptics have been base enough to accuse of feminine feebleness and cowardly despair, preferred rather "to look Death in the face"--to meet the king of terrors without striving to deaden the force of one agonizing anticipation, or to still the throbbing of one lacerated nerve.

The three crosses were laid on the ground--that of Jesus, which was doubtless taller than the other two, being placed in bitter scorn in the midst. Perhaps the cross-beam was now nailed to the upright, and certainly the title, which had either been borne by Jesus fastened round his neck or carried by one of the soldiers in front of him, was now nailed to the summit of his cross. Then he was stripped naked of all his clothes, and then followed the most awful moment of all. He was laid down upon the implement of torture. His arms were stretched along the cross-beams; and at the centre of the open palms the point of a huge iron nail was placed, which, by the blow of a mallet, was driven home into the wood. Then through either foot separately, or possibly through both together as they were placed one over the other, another huge nail tore its way through the quivering flesh. Whether the sufferer was _also_ bound to the cross we do not know; but, to prevent the hands and feet being torn away by the weight of the body, which could not "rest upon nothing but four great wounds," there was, about the centre of the cross, a wooden projection strong enough to support, at least in part, a human body which soon became a weight of agony.

It was probably at this moment of inconceivable horror that the voice of the Son of Man was heard uplifted, not in a scream of natural agony at that fearful torture, but calmly praying in divine compassion for his brutal and pitiless murderers--aye, and for all who in their sinful ignorance crucify him afresh forever: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

And then the accursed tree--with its living human burden hanging upon it in helpless agony, and suffering fresh tortures as every movement irritated the fresh rents in hands and feet--was slowly heaved up by strong arms, and the end of it fixed firmly in a hole dug deep in the ground for that purpose. The feet were but a little raised above the earth. The victim was in full reach of every hand that might choose to strike, in close proximity to every gesture of insult and hatred. He might hang for hours to be abused, outraged, even tortured by the ever-moving multitude who, with that desire to see what is horrible which always characterizes the coarsest hearts, had thronged to gaze upon a sight which should rather have made them weep tears of blood.

And there, in tortures which grew ever more insupportable, ever more maddening as time flowed on, the unhappy victims might linger in a living death so cruelly intolerable that often they were driven to entreat and implore the spectators or the executioners, for dear pity's sake, to put an end to anguish too awful for man to bear--conscious to the last, and often, with tears of abject misery, beseeching from their enemies the priceless boon of death.

For indeed a death by crucifixion seems to include all that pain and death _can_ have of horrible and ghastly--dizziness, cramp, thirst, starvation, sleeplessness, traumatic fever, tetanus, 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; and all these physical complications caused an internal excitement and anxiety which made the prospect of death itself--of death, the awful unknown enemy, at whose approach man usually shudders most--bear the aspect of a delicious and exquisite release.

Such was the death to which Christ was doomed; and though for him it was happily shortened by all that he had previously endured, yet he hung from soon after noon until nearly sunset before "he gave up his soul to death."

When the cross was uplifted the leading Jews, for the first time, prominently noticed the deadly insult in which Pilate had vented his indignation. Before, in their blind rage, they had imagined that the manner of his crucifixion was an insult aimed at _Jesus_; but now that they saw him hanging between the two robbers, on a cross yet loftier, it suddenly flashed upon them that it was a public scorn inflicted upon _them_. For on the white wooden tablet smeared with gypsum, which was to be seen so conspicuously over the head of Jesus on the cross, ran, in black letters, an inscription in the three civilized languages of the ancient world--the three languages of which _one_ at least was certain to be known by every single man in that assembled multitude--in the official Latin, in the current Greek, in the vernacular Aramaic--informing all that this Man who was thus enduring a shameful, servile death--this Man thus crucified between two _sicarii_ in the sight of the world, was "THE KING OF THE JEWS."

To him who was crucified the poor malice seemed to have in it nothing of derision. Even on his cross he reigned; even there he seemed divinely elevated above the priests who had brought about his death, and the coarse, idle, vulgar multitude who had flocked to feed their greedy eyes upon his sufferings. The malice was quite impotent against One whose spiritual and moral nobleness struck awe into dying malefactors and heathen executioners, even in the lowest abyss of his physical degradation. With the passionate ill-humor of the Roman governor there probably blended a vein of seriousness. While he was delighted to revenge himself on his detested subjects by an act of public insolence, he probably meant, or half meant, to imply that this _was_, in one sense, the King of the Jews--the greatest, the noblest, the truest of his race, whom therefore his race had crucified. The King was not unworthy of his kingdom, but the kingdom of the King. There was something loftier even than royalty in the glazing eyes which never ceased to look with sorrow on the City of Righteousness, which had now become a city of murderers. The Jews felt the intensity of the scorn with which Pilate had treated them. It so completely poisoned their hour of triumph that they sent their chief priests in deputation, begging the governor to alter the obnoxious title. "Write not," they said, "'The King of the Jews,' but that 'He _said_, I am the King of the Jews.'" But Pilate's courage, which had oozed away so rapidly at the name of Cæsar, had now revived. He was glad in any and every way to browbeat and thwart the men whose seditious clamor had forced him in the morning to act against his will. Few men had the power of giving expression to a sovereign contempt more effectually than the Romans. Without deigning any justification of what he had done, Pilate summarily dismissed these solemn hierarchs with the curt and contemptuous reply, "What I have written I have written."

In order to prevent the possibility of any rescue, even at the last moment--since instances had been known of men taken from the cross and restored to life--a quaternion of soldiers with their centurion were left on the ground to guard the cross. The clothes of the victims always fell as perquisites to the men who had to perform so weary and disagreeable an office. Little dreaming how exactly they were fulfilling the mystic intimations of olden Jewish prophecy, they proceeded, therefore, to divide between them the garments of Jesus. The _tallith_ they tore into four parts, probably ripping it down the seams; but the _cetoneth_, or undergarment, was formed of one continuous woven texture, and to tear would have been to spoil it; they therefore contented themselves with letting it become the property of any one of the four to whom it should fall by lot. When this had been decided, they sat down and watched him till the end, beguiling the weary lingering hours by eating and drinking, and gibing, and playing dice.

It was a scene of tumult. The great body of the people seem to have stood silently at gaze; but some few of them as they passed by the cross--perhaps some of the many false witnesses and other conspirators of the previous night--mocked at Jesus with insulting noises and furious taunts, especially bidding him come down from the cross and save himself, since he could destroy the Temple and build it in three days. And the chief priests, and scribes, and elders, less awe-struck, less compassionate than the mass of the people, were not ashamed to disgrace their gray-haired dignity and lofty reputation by adding 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 and unvenerable hierarchs: no wonder that, at their midday meal, they pledged in mock hilarity the Dying Man, cruelly holding up toward his burning lips their cups of sour wine, and echoing the Jewish taunts against the weakness of the King whose throne was a cross, whose crown was thorns. Nay, even the poor wretches who were crucified with him caught the hideous infection; comrades, perhaps, of the respited Barabbas, heirs of the rebellious fury of a Judas the Gaulonite, trained to recognize no Messiah but a Messiah of the sword, they reproachfully bade him, if his claims were true, to save himself and them. So _all_ the voices about him rang with blasphemy and spite, and in that long slow agony his dying ear caught no accent of gratitude, of pity, or of love. Baseness, falsehood, savagery, stupidity--such were the characteristics of the world which thrust itself into hideous prominence before the Saviour's last consciousness, such the muddy and miserable stream that rolled under the cross before his dying eyes.

But amid this chorus of infamy Jesus spoke not. He _could_ have spoken. The pains of crucifixion did not confuse the intellect or paralyze the powers of speech. We read of crucified men who, for hours together upon the cross, vented their sorrow, their rage, or their despair in the manner that best accorded with their character; of some who raved and cursed, and spat at their enemies; of others who protested to the last against the iniquity of their sentence; of others who implored compassion with abject entreaties; of one even who, from the cross, as from a tribunal, harangued the multitude of his countrymen, and upbraided them with their wickedness and vice. But, 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.

But that silence, joined to his patient majesty and the divine holiness and innocence which radiated from him like a halo, was more eloquent than any words. It told earliest on one of the crucified robbers. At first this _bonus latro_ of the Apocryphal Gospels seems to have faintly joined in the reproaches uttered by his fellow-sinner; but when those reproaches merged into deeper blasphemy, he spoke out his inmost thought. It is probable that he had met Jesus before, and heard him, and perhaps been one of those thousands who had seen his miracles. There is indeed no authority for the legend which assigns to him the name of Dysmas, or for the beautiful story of his having saved the life of the Virgin and her Child during their flight into Egypt. But on the plains of Gennesareth, perhaps from some robber's cave in the wild ravines of the Valley of the Doves, he may well have approached his presence--he may well have been one of those publicans and sinners who drew near to him for to hear him. And the words of Jesus had found some room in the good ground of his heart; they had not all fallen upon stony places. Even at this hour of shame and death, when he was suffering the just consequence of his past evil deeds, faith triumphed. As a flame sometimes leaps up among dying embers, so amid the white ashes of a sinful life which lay so thick upon his heart, the flame of love toward his God and his Saviour was not quite quenched. Under the hellish outcries which had broken loose around the cross of Jesus there had lain a deep misgiving. Half of them seem to have been instigated by doubt and fear. Even in the self-congratulations of the priests we catch an undertone of dread. Suppose that even now some imposing miracle should be wrought! Suppose that even now that martyr-form should burst indeed into messianic splendor, and the King, who seemed to be in the slow misery of death, should suddenly with a great voice summon his legions of angels, and, springing from his cross upon the rolling clouds of heaven, come in flaming fire to take vengeance upon his enemies! And the air seemed to be full of signs. There was a gloom of gathering darkness in the sky, a thrill and tremor in the solid earth, a haunting presence as of ghostly visitants who chilled the heart and hovered in awful witness above that scene. The dying robber had joined at first in the half-taunting, half-despairing appeal to a defeat and weakness which contradicted all that he had hoped; but now this defeat seemed to be greater than victory, and this weakness more irresistible than strength. As he looked, the faith in his heart dawned more and more into the perfect day. He had long ceased to utter any reproachful words; he now rebuked his comrade's blasphemies. Ought not the suffering innocence of him who hung between them to shame into silence their just punishment and flagrant guilt? And so, turning his head to Jesus, he uttered the intense appeal, "O Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom." Then he, who had been mute amid invectives, spake at once in surpassing answer to that humble prayer, "Verily, I say to thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise."

Though none spoke to comfort Jesus--though deep grief, and terror, and amazement kept them dumb--yet there were hearts amid the crowd that beat in sympathy with the awful sufferer. At a distance stood a number of women looking on, and perhaps, even at that dread hour, expecting his immediate deliverance. Many of these were women who had ministered to him in Galilee, and had come from thence in the great band of Galilean pilgrims. Conspicuous among this heart-stricken group were his mother Mary, Mary of Magdala, Mary the wife of Clopas, mother of James and Joses, and Salome the wife of Zebedee. Some of them, as the hours advanced, stole nearer and nearer to the cross, and at length the filming eye of the Saviour fell on his own mother Mary, as, with the sword piercing through and through her heart, she stood with the disciple whom he loved. His mother does not seem to have been much with him during his ministry. It may be that the duties and cares of a humble home rendered it impossible. At any rate, the only occasions on which we hear of her are occasions when she is with his brethren, and is joined with them in endeavoring to influence, apart from his own purposes and authority, his messianic course. But although at the very beginning of his ministry he had gently shown her that the earthly and filial relation was now to be transcended by one far more lofty and divine, and though this end of all her high hopes must have tried her faith with an overwhelming and unspeakable sorrow, yet she was true to him in this supreme hour of his humiliation, and would have done for him all that a mother's sympathy and love can do. Nor had he for a moment forgotten her who had bent over his infant slumbers, and with whom he had shared those thirty years in the cottage at Nazareth. Tenderly and sadly he thought of the future that awaited her during the remaining years of her life on earth, troubled as they must be by the tumults and persecutions of a struggling and nascent faith. After his resurrection her lot was wholly cast among his apostles, and the apostle whom he loved the most, 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. "Woman," he said to her, in fewest words, but in words which breathed the uttermost spirit of tenderness, "behold thy son;" and then to St. John, "Behold thy mother." He could make no gesture with those pierced hands, but he could bend his head. They listened in speechless emotion, but from that hour--perhaps from that very moment--leading her away from a spectacle which did but torture her soul with unavailing agony, that disciple took her to his own home.

It was now noon, and at the Holy City the sunshine should have been burning over that scene of horror with a power such as it has in the full depth of an English summer-time. But instead of this, the face of the heavens was black, and the noonday sun was "turned into darkness," on "this great and terrible day of the Lord." It could have been no darkness of any natural eclipse, for the Paschal moon was at the full; but it was one of those "signs from heaven" for which, during the ministry of Jesus, the Pharisees had so often clamored in vain. The early Fathers appealed to pagan authorities--the historian Phallus, the chronicler Phlegon--for such a darkness; but we have no means of testing the accuracy of these references, and it is quite possible that the darkness was a local gloom which hung densely over the guilty city and its immediate neighborhood. But whatever it was, it clearly filled the minds of all who beheld it with yet deeper misgiving. The taunts and jeers of the Jewish priests and the heathen soldiers were evidently confined to the earlier hours of the Crucifixion. Its later stages seem to have thrilled alike the guilty and the innocent with emotions of dread and horror. Of the incidents of those last three hours we are told nothing, and that awful obscuration of the noonday sun may well have overawed every heart into an inaction respecting which there was nothing to relate. What Jesus suffered _then_ for us men and our salvation we cannot know, for during those three hours he hung upon his cross in silence and darkness; or, if he spoke, there was none there to record his words. But toward the close of that time his anguish culminated, and, emptied to the very uttermost of that glory which he had since the world began, drinking to the very deepest dregs the cup of humiliation and bitterness, enduring not only to have taken upon him the form of a servant, but also to suffer the last infamy which human hatred could impose on servile helplessness, he uttered that mysterious cry, of which the full significance will never be fathomed by man: _Eli, Eli, lama Sabachthani?_ ("My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?")

In those words, quoting the psalm in which the early Fathers rightly saw a far-off prophecy of the whole passion of Christ, he borrowed from David's utter agony the expression of his own. In that hour he was alone. Sinking from depth to depth of unfathomable suffering, until, at the close approach of a death which--because he was God, and yet had been made man--was more awful to him than it could ever be to any of the sons of men, it seemed as if even his divine humanity could endure no more.

Doubtless the voice of the sufferer--though uttered loudly in that paroxysm of an emotion which, in another, would almost have touched the verge of despair--was yet rendered more uncertain and indistinct from the condition of exhaustion in which he hung; and so, amid the darkness, and confused noise, and dull footsteps of the moving multitude, there were some who did not hear what he had said. They had caught only the first syllable, and said to one another that he had called on the name of Elijah. The readiness with which they seized this false impression is another proof of the wild state of excitement and terror--the involuntary dread of something great and unforeseen and terrible--to which they had been reduced from their former savage insolence. For Elijah, the great prophet of the Old Covenant, was inextricably mingled with all the Jewish expectations of a Messiah, and these expectations were full of wrath. The coming of Elijah would be the coming of a day of fire, in which the sun should be turned into blackness and the moon into blood, and the powers of heaven should be shaken. Already the noonday sun was shrouded in unnatural eclipse; might not some awful form at any moment rend the heavens and come down, touch the mountains and they should smoke? The vague anticipation of conscious guilt was unfulfilled. Not such as yet was to be the method of God's workings. His messages to man for many ages more were not to be in the thunder and earthquake, not in rushing wind or roaring flame, but in the "still small voice" speaking always amid the apparent silences of Time in whispers intelligible to man's heart, but in which there is neither speech nor language, though the voice is heard.

But now the end was very rapidly approaching, and Jesus, who had been hanging for nearly six hours upon the cross, was suffering from that torment of thirst which is most difficult of all for the human frame to bear--perhaps the most unmitigated of the many separate sources of anguish which were combined in this worst form of death. No doubt this burning thirst was aggravated by seeing the Roman soldiers drinking so near the cross; and happily for mankind, Jesus had never sanctioned the unnatural affectation of stoic impassibility. And so he uttered the one sole word of physical suffering which had been wrung from him by all the hours in which he had endured the extreme of all that man can inflict. He cried aloud, "I thirst." Probably a few hours before, the cry would have only provoked a roar of frantic mockery; but now the lookers-on were reduced by awe to a readier humanity. Near the cross there lay on the ground the large earthen vessel containing the _posca_, which was the ordinary drink of the Roman soldiers. The mouth of it was filled with a piece of sponge, which served as a cork. Instantly some one--we know not whether he was friend or enemy, or merely one who was there out of idle curiosity--took out the sponge and dipped it in the posca to give it to Jesus. But low as was the elevation of the cross, the head of the sufferer, as it rested on the horizontal beam of the accursed tree, was just beyond the man's reach; and therefore he put the sponge at the end of a stalk of hyssop--about a foot long--and held it up to the parched and dying lips. Even this simple act of pity, which Jesus did not refuse, seemed to jar upon the condition of nervous excitement with which some of the multitude were looking on. "Let be," they said to the man, "let us see whether Elias is coming to save him." The man did not desist from his act of mercy, but when it was done he, too, seems to have echoed those uneasy words. But Elias came not, nor human comforter, nor angel deliverer. It was the will of God, it was the will of the Son of God, that he should be "perfected through sufferings"; that--for the eternal example of all his children as long as the world should last--he should "endure unto the end."

And now the end was come. Once more, in the words of the sweet Psalmist of Israel, but adding to them that title of trustful love which, through him, is permitted to the use of all mankind, "Father," he said, "into thy hands I commend my spirit." Then with one more great effort he uttered the last cry--"It is finished." It may be that that great cry ruptured some of the vessels of his heart, for no sooner had it been uttered than he bowed his head upon his breast and yielded his life, "a ransom for many"--a willing sacrifice to his Heavenly Father. "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." At that moment the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. An earthquake shook the earth and split the rocks, and as it rolled away from their places the great stones which closed and covered the cavern sepulchres of the Jews, so it seemed to the imaginations of many to have disimprisoned the spirits of the dead, and to have filled the air with ghostly visitants, who after Christ had risen appeared to linger in the Holy City. These circumstances of amazement, joined to all they had observed in the bearing of the Crucified, cowed even the cruel and gay indifference of the Roman soldiers. On the centurion who was in command of them the whole scene had exercised a yet deeper influence. As he stood opposite to the cross and saw the Saviour die, he glorified God and exclaimed, "This Man was in truth righteous"--nay, more, "This Man was a Son of God." Even the multitude, utterly sobered from their furious excitement and frantic rage, began to be weighed down with a guilty consciousness that the scene which they had witnessed had in it something more awful than they could have conceived, and as they returned to Jerusalem they wailed and beat upon their breasts. Well might they do so! This was the last drop in a full cup of wickedness: this was the beginning of the end of their city and name and race.

And in truth that scene was more awful than they, or even we, can know. The secular historian, be he ever so sceptical, cannot fail to see in it the central point of the world's history. Whether he be a believer in Christ or not, he cannot refuse to admit that this new religion grew from the smallest of all seeds to be a mighty tree, so that the birds of the air took refuge in its branches; that it was the little stone cut without hands which dashed into pieces the colossal image of heathen greatness, and grew till it became a great mountain and filled the earth. Alike to the infidel and to the believer the Crucifixion is the boundary instant between ancient and modern days. Morally and physically, no less than spiritually, the faith of Christ was the _palingenesia_ of the world. It came like the dawn of a new spring to nations "effete with the drunkenness of crime." The struggle was long and hard, but from the hour when Christ died began the death-knell to every satanic tyranny and every tolerated abomination. From that hour holiness became the universal ideal of all who name the name of Christ as their Lord, and the attainment of that ideal the common heritage of souls in which his spirit dwells.