ried at different times from three hundred to one thousand.

28. Stripped him, i. e. took off his upper garments.—A scarlet robe. Or, military cloak, such as officers and soldiers were accustomed to wear. Mark and John call it purple, instead of scarlet. These colors were often interchanged, one for the other. Hearing something of Jesus' being a king, they take this course to ridicule his royal pretensions.

Some

29. A crown of thorns. learned men have contended that acanthus, or bear's-foot, a soft-leafed plant, is meant; but there seems to be no necessity, on the whole, of departing from the usual opinion, which supposes that the leaves of the wreath were prickly and painful. -A reed in his right hand. In imitation of a royal sceptre.-Bowed the knee, saying: Hail, king of the Jews! These were tokens of homage to a king, offered in mockery to Jesus, in derision of his assuming, as they supposed, to be a rival of Cæsar.

30, 31. Spit. The tense should be past, not present. Mat. xxvi. 67. It has been truly remarked, that the same qualities of wickedness, which, on account of peculiar circumstances, here stand out so prominently, and which meet with our detestation as exhibited in those bad characters who moved in this conspicuous scene, may exist all about us in society, or lurk in ourselves unnoticed, because we see not their awful tendencies and consequences. The

Twelve who desert, the Peter who denies, the Judas who betrays, the Pilate who condemns, the soldiers who mock, the culprit who reviles, the Son of God-are they not essentially reproduced in every age, only circumstances have not brought them out upon a world-witnessed stage? No monstrous and unheardof, but common, depravity nailed the Holy Child of God to the cross, and heaped upon him all manner of abuse. To use the words of Robert Robinson: "One only loved money more than justice, and he sold him; others only loved the praise of men more than the praise of God, and they bought him; the officers only did as their masters bade them, and they took him, and bound him, and struck him; the soldiers only made themselves merry with a stranger, and they dressed him in an officer's coat and mocked him, and crowned him with thorns, and called him king, and bent the knee, and spat in his face; Pilate only wished to be popular, and he adjudged him to die; the thieves only did as other people did, and they reviled him."

32-56. For parallel places, see Mark xv. 21-41, Luke xxiii. 2649, John xix. 17-30. The fearless honesty of the narrators is manifest from the differences in this history of the crucifixion. They write as we should suppose men would who had witnessed or heard of intensely exciting events; some relating one event, and some another;

one differing from another in slight particulars, but all preserving a broad and general harmony, full of reality and truth.

32. A man of Cyrene, Simon. Cyrene was a city of Africa, lying west of Egypt, on the Mediterranean Sea, belonging to Lybia. It was a great resort for the Jews, because they there enjoyed peculiar immunities and privileges. Whether Simon was a disciple of Jesus or not is unknown. Mark, xv. 21, speaks as if it were honorable to be known as the children of him who had aided the Great Master in his hour of faintness.-Compelled. See note on Mat. v. 41. The verb in the original bas the like force as press or impress in our language, referring to the compulsion by public authority. -To bear his cross. It was one of the refinements of cruelty and ignominy in this kind of punishment, that the sufferer must carry the instrument of his own death. The cross usually consisted of two transverse pieces resembling the letter T, and was about eight or ten feet in height. Some have supposed that only the cross-piece was borne by the doomed man, though painters have usually represented Christ as carrying the whole. It appears that Jesus, after bearing it for a time, John xix. 17, gave way under his weakness and wounds, and the burden was transferred partly or wholly to the shoulders of Simon.

As our Lord had now left the tribunal of Pilate to meet his dreadful fate, it may be instructive to review that officer's many fruitless attempts to save his prisoner. 1st, He declines entering upon the case at all.

John xviii. 31. 2d, He declares Jesus' innocence of the crime alleged. Luke xiii. 4. John xviii. 38. 3d, He tries to transfer the case to Her

od's jurisdiction. Luke xxiii. 7. 4th, He hoped to release Jesus, on the ground of a festival custom. Luke xxiii. 16, 17. 5th, He strove to touch the hearts of the Jews, by the pitiable condition of Jesus after being scourged. John xix. 1—5. But, Roman as he was, he was unequal to the occasion. He was intimidated by the threat, that, if he released Jesus, he would not be Cæsar's friend. John xix. 12. How much more pitiable does the Roman procurator in all his state appear, with a craven, vacillating, and cowed spirit, than the glorious prisoner, calm, self-possessed, dauntless, above the fear of man, but compassionate towards human weakness and sin, a true Son of God! The moral cowardice we abhor, let us shun; the moral courage we admire, let us imbibe.

33. Golgotha. A Hebrew or Syriac word, meaning a skull. The place is so called, as some suppose, from its shape; but others, with more probability, from its containing the bones or skulls of executed malefactors. It was a slight eminence, outside of the walls of the city on the north-west. Luke calls it Calvary, which means the same as Golgotha. Some interesting events which occurred on the way to the place of execution, which was a mile, or a mile and a half distant from the Prætorium, are given by Luke, xxiii. 27–31.

34. Vinegar-gall. This was designed to operate as an anodyne, to

dull the sensibility to pain, and render death easier. The observance, upon this occasion, of the various Roman customs common to trials and executions, affords an intrinsic evidence of the genuineness and fidelity of the history. Mark, xv. 23, calls the drink, "wine mingled with myrrh.” To reconcile this discrepancy, some understand the drinks to have been distinct from each other, that of Matthew being offered by the soldiers in derision, that of Mark being the medicated cup administered by friends to alleviate the pangs of crucifixion. But the far more probable view is, that the same drink is referred to under different names, vinegar standing for a kind of sour wine, and gall denoting any bitter drug, as myrrh, or wormwood. He would not drink. He resolved to endure all without mitigation, and die in the full possession of his faculties. The cup which his Father gave him he would drink without shrinking. What admirable fortitude, worthy of our initation in pain and death! He would strengthen us to bear all our sufferings without wavering. His infinitely greater agonies so submissively borne should hush every sigh of complaint under our so much lighter afflictions, and fill us with a spirit of glad submission to the wise and kind will of our God.

35. As this verse brings us to the cross, let us look back from that point and see the tissue of injustice and cruelty which was spread over the whole of the so-called trial of our Lord. 1st, He was beset with spies and informers. Luke xx. 20. 2d, His own disciple was bribed to betray him. Mat. xxvi. 15. 3d, He was seized and partially tried before the high priest by night, contrary to

the Jewish law. Mat. xxvi. 74, xxvii. 1. 4th, He was carried before Annas first, and was all along kept bound, John xviii. 12, 13, 24, which were irregular and aggravating proceedings. 5th, He was exposed, uncondemned, to the brutalities of the servants. Luke xxii. 63, 65. 6th, He was brought before a prejudiced and passionate judge, who had already given his opinion-a gross wrong. John xviii. 14. 7th, All proceedings were legally null and void, because it was the festival of the passover. 8th; He was called on by the high priest, and finally put under oath to criminate himself. John xviii. 19, Mat. xxvi. 63. 9th, John xviii. 22, He was wrongfully struck by an officer for a civil reply to the high priest. 10th, False witnesses were brought against him. Mark xiv. 56. Mat. xxvi. 59. 11th, His own words were perverted out of their true sense, to furnish ground for the charge of blasphemy, and for the sentence of death. Mat. xxvi. 65. 12th, The ground of accusation was changed before Pilate, from a religious offence, blasphemy, to a political one, treason against the state. Luke xxiii. 2. 13th, He was treated with mockery by Herod and his men of war, though he was not, in fact, under that ruler's jurisdiction. Luke xxiii. 11. 14th, A murderer was preferred to the Prince of Life. Mark xv. 11. 15th, He was condemned contrary to Pilate's repeated declaration that he found him not guilty; was scourged, mocked, and crucified, because his judge had not firmness enough to withstand the fury of the priests and populace. 16th, The injustice was done him, while on the cross, of representing, by the inscription over his head, that he aimed at political

power. Mark xv. 26. We see, therefore, that, if our Lord suffered the most cruel and ignominious punishment, it was through the grossest violations of legal forms, decency, and common justice. The cross was wet with the blood of the thrice innocent, thrice injured.-They crucified him. Abbott remarks that "crucifixion is perhaps the most ingenious and the most perfect invention for mingling torture and death which was ever contrived. It is the very master-piece of cruelty. Life is to be destroyed, but, in this way of destroying it, it is arranged, with savage ingenuity, that no vital part shall be touched; the torturer goes to the very extremities-to the hands and to the feet, and fixes his rough and rusty iron among the nerves and tendons there, and the poor sufferer hangs in a position which admits of no change, and no rest, until burning and torturing inflammation can work its way slowly to the seat of life, and extinguish it by the simple power of suffering." It was probably at the moment the iron spikes were cruelly driven into his bands and feet by the brutal executioners, and he was raised aloft on the torturing tree, that he breathed that melting prayer, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." Luke xxiii. 34. Those who were crucified were sometimes tied with thongs to the cross, but it is evident that nails were employed in this case. John xx. 25.-Parted his garments, casting lots. Those who were crucified were divested of their clothing. John, xix. 23, 24, mentions that the four soldiers, who

fastened him to the cross, divided his other garments, but cast lots for his seamless coat or tunic, the inner garment, worn next to the body. It was customary for executioners to claim the clothes of those put to death.--That it might be fulfilled. Ps. xxii. 18. The remainder of this verse, including these words, is uniformly declared by critics of all sects to be an interpolation, probably taken from John xix. 24. It is not found in most of the early manuscripts, versions, and fathers.—Tacitus, the Roman historian, confirms the Gospel narrative of the death of Christ, in these words: "Nero put those who commonly went by the name of Christians to the most exquisite tortures. The author of this name was Christ, who was capitally punished in the reign of Tiberius, by Pontius Pilate, the procurator."

36. They watched him. A guard of Roman soldiers was stationed by the cross, to prevent a rescue.

37. Set up over his head his accusation. This was in obedience to the custom of the times, verse 11. The only ground on which he was accused by the Jews to Pilate was that of a political offence against the state, by stirring up the people, forbidding to pay tribute to Cæsar, and claiming to be himself a king.

This is Jesus, the king of the Jews. This sentence was written by Pilate in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. It is given in different words by the different writers, a discrepancy which makes against the literal and verbal inspiration of the Gospels, as do many other passages. The accounts, however, agree in the main points

of the inscription. Pilate upon this occasion, see John xix. 21, 22, appears to have manifested the irritation of feeling consequent upon having been forced to condemn Jesus against his will. He would gratify them no farther, complain as they might. The writing he put up was, however, calculated to mislead the people with the idea, that the aim of Jesus was a political one.

38. Two thieves. Rather, two robbers, or persons guilty of violence, perhaps the companions of Barabbas. It was usual to execute criminals at the great festivals, for the sake of example, in terror to evil doers.

39. Reviled him, wagging their heads. A gesture of ridicule and insult.

40. Thou that destroyest the temple. This was a perversion of his words. He had said to the Jews, "Destroy this temple," referring to his own body. Chap. xxvi. 61.

42. He saved others. As Cappe has observed, "Here is a very credible testimony to the reality of his miracles, the more credible that it is incidental," and because it comes, too, from the mouth of his enemies. -Let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. It was a cutting taunt, and, as Furness has remarked, "who has ever paused over these words for the first time without feeling that they contained a bitter force-without secretly saying

to himself, O why did he not come down? If he had power to heal the sick and raise the dead, why did he not descend then from the cross, and dissipate all doubt forever?" But he used not his extraordinary gifts for his own sake. He had already given sufficient proofs to satisfy all reasonable and unprejudiced minds that he was the Messiah; and his descent from the cross would not have convinced the unreasonable and prejudiced. His object was not triumph, but truth, and a jeer or a sarcasm could not turn him aside from the cause of God, and the salvation of the world. His foes were so bound up in self themselves, that they could not comprehend that heroic self-sacrifice which would die for others. They knew so little of the human heart, that they did not see that by elevating Jesus upon the cross they had lifted him into the throne of his universal kingdom, and that he would now draw the kearts of all mankind to him with the cords of love. John xii. 32, 33. The cross! Instrument of torture; sign of ignominy! How gloriously was it now to be honored, hallowed by the unnatural burden it bore! Henceforward, its disgrace, deeper than the scaffold and halter, was to be wiped off. Henceforward, waving on the banners of nations, inscribed in the heraldry of honor, sparkling on the breast of beauty and the crowns of kings, shining