The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ Part 9

In Roman Catholic churches there may generally be seen round the walls a series of about a dozen pictures, taken from this part of our Lord's life. They are denominated the Stations of the Cross, because the wors.h.i.+ppers, going round, stop to look and meditate on the different scenes. In Catholic countries the same idea is sometimes carried out on a more imposing scale. On a knoll or hill in the neighbourhood of a town three lofty crosses stand; the road to them through the town is called _Via Calvarii_, and at intervals along the way the scenes of our Lord's sad journey are represented by large frescoes or bas-reliefs.

But we really know for certain of only two incidents of the _Via Dolorosa_--that in which our Lord was relieved of His cross by Simon the Cyrenian and that, which we are now to consider, of the sympathetic daughters of Jerusalem.

I.

The reader of the history of our Lord in its last stages is sated with horrors. In some of the scenes through which we have recently accompanied Him we have seemed to be among demons rather than men. The mind longs for something to relieve the monstrous spectacles of fanatic hate and cold-blooded cruelty. Hence this scene is most welcome, in which a blink of suns.h.i.+ne falls on the path of woe, and we are a.s.sured that we need not lose faith in the human heart.

It was, indeed, a surprising demonstration. It would hardly have been credited, had it not there been made manifest, that Jesus had so strong a hold upon any section of the population of Jerusalem. In the capital He had always found the soil very unreceptive. Jerusalem was the headquarters of rabbinic learning and priestly arrogance--the home of the Pharisee and the Sadducee, who guided public opinion; and there, from first to last, He had made few adherents. It was in the provinces, especially in Galilee, that He had been the idol of the populace. It was by the Galilean pilgrims to the Pa.s.sover that He was convoyed into the capital with shouts of Hosanna; but the inhabitants of the city stood coldly aloof, and before Pilate's judgment-seat they cried out, "Crucify Him, crucify Him!"

Yet now it turns out that He has touched the heart of one section at least even of this community: "There followed Him a great company of people and of women, which[1] also bewailed and lamented Him." Some have considered this so extraordinary that they have held these women to be Galileans; but Jesus addressed them as "daughters of Jerusalem."

The Galilean men who had surrounded Him in His hour of triumph put in no appearance now in His hour of despair; but the women of Jerusalem broke away from the example of the men and paid the tribute of tears to His youth, character and sufferings. It is said that there was a Jewish law forbidding the showing of any sympathy to a condemned man; but, if so, this demonstration was all the more creditable to those who took part in it. The upwelling of their emotion was too sincere to be dammed back by barriers of law and custom.

It is said there is no instance in the Gospels of a woman being an enemy of Jesus. No woman deserted or betrayed, persecuted or opposed Him. But women followed Him, they ministered to Him of their substance, they washed His feet with tears, they anointed His head with spikenard; and now, when their husbands and brothers were hounding Him to death, they accompanied Him with weeping and wailing to the scene of martyrdom.[2]

It is a great testimony to the character of Christ on the one hand and to that of woman on the other. Woman's instinct told her, however dimly she at first apprehended the truth, that this was the Deliverer for her. Because, while Christ is the Saviour of all, He has been specially the Saviour of woman. At His advent, her degradation being far deeper than that of men, she needed Him more; and, wherever His gospel has travelled since then, it has been the signal for her emanc.i.p.ation and redemption. His presence evokes all the tender and beautiful qualities which are latent in her nature; and under His influence her character experiences a transfiguration.[3]

It has, indeed, been contended that there was no great depth in the emotion of the daughters of Jerusalem; and we need not deny the fact.

Their emotion was no outburst of faith and repentance, carrying with it revolutionary effects, as tears may sometimes be. It was an overflow of natural feeling, such as might have been caused by any pathetic instance of misfortune. It was not unlike the tears which may be still made to flow from the eyes of the tender-hearted by a moving account of the sufferings of Christ; and we know that such emotions are sometimes far from lasting. Our nature consists of several strata, of which emotion is the most superficial; and it is not enough that religion should operate in this uppermost region; it must be thrust down, through emotion, into the deeper regions, such as the conscience and the will, and catch hold and kindle there, before it can achieve the mastery of the entire being.

But this response of womanhood to Christ was a beginning; and therein lay its significance. It was to Him a foretaste of the splendid devotion which He was yet to receive from the womanhood of the world.

It was as welcome to Him in that hour of desertion and reproach as is the sight of a tuft of gra.s.s to the thirsty traveller in the desert.

The sounds of sympathy flowed over His soul as gratefully as the gift of Mary's love enveloped His senses when the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.

Thus in the _Via Dolorosa_ Jesus experienced two alleviations of His suffering: the strength of a man relieved His body of the burden of the cross, and the pain of His soul was cooled by the sympathy of women.

Is it not a parable--a parable of what men and women can do for Him still? Christ needs the strength of men--the strong arm, the vigorous hand, the shoulders that can bear the burden of His cause; He seeks from men the mind whose originality can plan what needs to be done, the resolute will that pushes the work on in spite of opposition, the liberal hand that gives ungrudgingly what is required for the progress and success of the Christian enterprise. From women he seeks sympathy and tears. They can give the sensibility which keeps the heart of the world from hardening; the secret knowledge which finds out the objects of Christian compa.s.sion and wins their confidence; the enthusiasm which burns like a fire at the heart of religious work. The influence of women is subtle and remote; but it is on this account all the more powerful; for they sit at the very fountains, where the river of human life is springing, and where a touch may determine its entire subsequent course.

II.

It has been allowed to condemned men in all ages to speak to the crowds a.s.sembled to witness their death. The dying speech used in this country to be a regular feature of executions. Even in ages of persecution the martyrs were usually allowed, as they ascended the ladder, to address the mult.i.tude; and these testimonies, some of which were of singular power and beauty, were treasured by the religious section of the community. It is nothing surprising, therefore, that Jesus should have addressed those who followed Him or should have been permitted to do so. No doubt He was at the last point of exhaustion, but, when He was relieved of the weight of the cross, He was able to rally strength sufficient for this effort. Pausing in the road and turning to the women, whose weeping and wailing were filling His ears, He addressed Himself to them.

His words are, in the first place, a revelation of Himself. They show what was demonstrated again and again during the crucifixion--how completely He could forget His own sufferings in care and anxiety for others. His sufferings had already been extreme; His soul had been filled with injustice and insult; at this very moment His body was quivering with pain and His mind darkened with the approach of still more atrocious agonies. Yet, when He heard behind Him the sobs of the daughters of Jerusalem, there rushed over His soul a wave of compa.s.sion in which for the moment His own troubles were submerged.

We see in His words, too, the depth and fervour of His patriotism.

When He saw the tears of the women, the spectacle raised in His mind an image of the doom impending over the city whose daughters they were.

Jerusalem, as has been already said, had always been extremely unresponsive to Him; she had played to Him an unmotherly part. None the less, however, did He feel for her the love of a loyal son. He had shown this a few days before, when, in the midst of His triumph, He paused on the brow of Olivet, where the city came into view, and burst into a flood of tears, accompanied with such a lyric cry of affection as has never been addressed to any other city on earth. Subsequently, sitting with His disciples over against the temple, He showed how well He foreknew the terrible fate which hung over the capital of His country, and how poignantly He felt it. The city's doom was nigh at hand: less than half a century distant: and it was to be unparalleled in its horror. The secular historian of it, himself a Jew, says in his narrative: "There has never been a race on earth, and there never will be one, whose sufferings can be matched with those of Jerusalem in the days of the siege." It was the foresight of this which made Jesus now say, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children."

His words, still further, reveal His consideration for women and children. The tears of the women displayed an appreciation and sympathy for Him such as the men were incapable of; but well did He deserve them, for His words show that He had a comprehension of women and a sympathy with them such as had never before existed in the world.

With the force of the imagination and the heart He realised how, in the approaching siege, the heaviest end of the misery would fall on the female portion of the population, and how the mothers would be wounded through their children. In that country, where children were regarded as the crown and glory of womanhood, the currents of nature would be so completely reversed by the madness of hunger and pain that barrenness would be esteemed fortunate; and in a country where length of days had been considered the supreme blessing of life they would long and cry for sudden and early death.

So it actually turned out. An outstanding feature of the siege of Jerusalem, according to the secular historian, was the suffering of the women and children. Besides using every other device of warfare, the Romans deliberately resorted to starvation, and the inhabitants endured the uttermost extremities of hunger. So frenzied did the men become at last that every extra mouth requiring to be filled became an object of delirious suspicion, and the last morsels were s.n.a.t.c.hed from the lips of the women and children. One is tempted to quote some of the stories of Josephus about this, but they are so awful that it would be scarcely decent to repeat them.

This was what the quick sympathy of Jesus enabled Him to divine; and His compa.s.sion gushed forth towards those who were to be the chief sufferers. Women and children--how irreverently they have been thought of, how callously and brutally treated, since history began! Yet they are always the majority of the human race. Praise be to Him who lifted them, and is still lifting them, out of the dust of degradation and ill-usage, and who put in on their behalf the plea of justice and mercy!

Finally, there was in the words addressed to the daughters of Jerusalem an exhortation to repentance. When Jesus said, "Weep for yourselves and for your children," He was referring not merely to the approaching calamities of the city, but to its guilt. This was indicated most clearly in the closing words of His address to them--"For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?"

He could speak of Himself as a green tree. He was young and He was innocent; to this the tears of the women testified; there was no reason why He should die; yet G.o.d permitted all these things to happen to Him.

The Jewish nation ought also to have been a green tree. G.o.d had planted and tended it; it had enjoyed every advantage; but, when He came seeking fruit on it, He found none. It was withered; the sap of virtue and G.o.dliness had gone out of it; it was dry and ready for the burning; and, when the enemy came to apply the firebrand, why should G.o.d interpose? Thus did Jesus attempt once more to awaken repentance.

He wished to thrust the impressions of the daughters of Jerusalem down from the region of feeling into a deeper place. They had given Him tears of emotion; He desired, besides these, tears of contrition; for in religion nothing is accomplished till impression touches the conscience.

Whether any of them responded in earnest we cannot tell. Not many, it is to be feared. Nor can we tell whether by repentance the destruction of the Jewish state might still have been averted. At all events, the fire of invasion soon fell on the dry tree, and it was burnt up. And since then those who would not weep for their sins before the stroke of punishment fell have had to weep without ceasing. Visitors to Jerusalem at the present day are conducted to a spot called the Place of Wailing, where every Friday representatives of the race weep for the destruction of their city and temple.[4] This has gone on for centuries; and it is only a symbol of the cup of astonishment, filled to the brim, which has during many centuries been held to the lips of Israel. Sin must be wept for some time--if not before punishment has fallen, then after; if not in time, then in eternity. This is a lesson for all. And has not that final word of Jesus a meaning for us even more solemn than it had for those to whom it was first addressed--"If these things be done in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?"

If woe and anguish fell, as they did, even on the Son of G.o.d, when He was bearing the sins of the world, what will be the portion of those who have to bear their own?

[1] The participle refers to the women alone.

[2] "How slow we have been to ask our _sister_ members to help us!--although we read of deaconesses in the early Church, and although we do not read of a single woman who was unkind and unfaithful to the Saviour while here upon earth. Men were diabolic in their cruelty to Him, but never did a woman betray Him, mock Him, desert Him, nor spit in His face. Many of them cheered Him on His way to the Cross, was.h.i.+ng His feet with tears before men pierced them with nails, anointing His head with precious perfume in antic.i.p.ation of the thorns with which men crowned Him. They wept with Him on the way to Calvary, and were true to Him to the very end. And are they not devoted and true to Him still? Why, then, have we been so long in calling for their services?"--E. HERBERT EVANS, D.D.

[3] Brace, _Gesta Christi_.

[4] Striking description in Baring-Gould, _The Pa.s.sion of Jesus_, p. 75.

CHAPTER XII.

CALVARY

Anyone writing on the life of our Lord must many a time pause in secret and exclaim to himself, "It is high as heaven, what canst thou do?

deeper than h.e.l.l, what canst thou know?" But we have now arrived at the point where this sense of inadequacy falls most oppressively on the heart. To-day we are to see Christ crucified. But who is worthy to look at this sight? Who is able to speak of it? "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain unto it." In the presence of such a subject one feels one's mind to be like some tiny creature at the bottom of the sea--as incapable of comprehending it all as is the crustacean of scooping up the Atlantic in its sh.e.l.l.

This spot to which we have come is the centre of all things. Here two eternities meet. The streams of ancient history converge here, and here the river of modern history takes its rise. The eyes of patriarchs and prophets strained forward to Calvary, and now the eyes of all generations and of all races look back to it. This is the end of all roads. The seeker after truth, who has explored the realms of knowledge, comes to Calvary and finds at last that he has reached the centre. The weary heart of man, that has wandered the world over in search of perfect sympathy and love, at last arrives here and finds rest. Think how many souls every Lord's Day, a.s.sembled in church and chapel and meeting-house, are thinking of Golgotha! how many eyes are turned thither every day from beds of sickness and chambers of death!

"Lord, to whom can we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

Though, therefore, the theme is too high for us, yet we will venture forward. It is too high for human thought; yet nowhere else is the mind so exalted and enn.o.bled. At Calvary poets have sung their sweetest strains, and artists seen their sublimest visions, and thinkers excogitated their n.o.blest ideas. The crustacean lies at the bottom of the ocean, and the world of waters rolls above it; it cannot in its tiny sh.e.l.l comprehend these leagues upon leagues of solid translucent vastness; and yet the ocean fills its sh.e.l.l and causes its little body to throb with perfect happiness. And so, though we cannot take in all the meaning of the scene before which we stand, yet we can fill mind and heart with it to the brim, and, as it sends through our being the pulsations of a life divine, rejoice that it has a breadth and length, a height and depth, which pa.s.s understanding.

I.

The long journey through the streets to the place of execution was at length ended, and thereby the weary journeyings of the Sufferer came to a close. The soldiers set about their preparations for the last act.

But meanwhile a little incident occurred which the behaviour of Jesus filled with significance.

The wealthy ladies of Jerusalem had the practice of providing for those condemned to the awful punishment of crucifixion a soporific draught, composed of wine mixed with some narcotic like gall or myrrh,[1] to dull the senses and deaden the pain. It was a benevolent custom; and the cup was offered to all criminals, irrespective of their crimes. It was administered immediately before the frightful work of nailing the culprit to the tree commenced. This draught was handed to Jesus on His arrival at Golgotha. Exhausted with fatigue and burning with thirst, He grasped the cup eagerly and lifted it without suspicion to His lips.

But, as soon as He tasted it and felt the fumes of the stupefying ingredient, He laid it down and would not drink.

It was a simple act, yet full of heroism. He was in that extremity of thirst when a person will drink almost anything; and He was face to face with outrageous torture. In subsequent times many of His own faithful martyrs, on their way to execution, gladly availed themselves of this merciful provision. But He would not allow His intellect to be clouded. His obedience was not yet complete; His plan was not fully wrought out; He would keep His taste for death pure. I have heard of a woman dying of a frightful malady, who, when she was pressed by those witnessing her agony to take an intoxicating draught, refused, saying, "No, I want to die sober." She had caught, I think, the spirit of Christ.

This is a very strange place in which to alight on the problem of the use and abuse of those products of nature or art which induce intoxication or stupefaction. Roots or juices with such properties have been known to nearly all races, the savage as well as the civilised; and they have played a great part in the life of mankind.

Their history is one of the most curious. They are a.s.sociated with the mysteries of false religions and with the phenomena of heathen prophecy and witchcraft; acting on the mind through the senses, they open up in it a region of mystery, horror and gloomy magnificence of which the normal man is unconscious. They have always been a favourite resource of the medical art, and in modern times, in such forms as opium and other better-known intoxicants, they have created some of the gravest moral problems.

On the wide question of the use of such substances as stimulants we need not at present enter; it is to their use for the opposite purpose of lowering consciousness that this incident draws attention. That in some cases this use is both merciful and permissible will not be denied. The discovery in our own day, by one of our own countrymen, of the use of chloroform is justly regarded as among the greatest benefits ever conferred on the human race. When the unconsciousness thus produced enables the surgeon to perform an operation which might not be possible at all without it, or when in the crisis of a fever the sleep induced by a narcotic gives the exhausted system power to continue the combat and saves the life, we can only be thankful that the science of to-day has such resources in its treasury.

On the other hand, however, there are grave offsets to these advantages. Millions of men and women resort to such substances in order to dull the nerves and cloud the brain during pain and sorrow which G.o.d intended them to face and bear with sober courage, as Jesus endured His on the cross. On the medical profession rests the responsibility of so using the power placed in their hands as not to destroy the dignity of the most solemn pa.s.sages of life.[2] It will for ever remain true that pain and trial are the discipline of the soul; but to reel through these crises in the drowsy forgetfulness of intoxication is to miss the best chances of moral and spiritual development. Men and women are made perfect through suffering; but that suffering may do its work it must be felt. There is no greater misfortune than to bear too easily the strokes of G.o.d. A bereavement, for example, is sent to sanctify a home; but it may fail of its mission because the household is too busy, or because too many are coming and going, or because tongues, mistakenly kind and garrulous, chatter G.o.d's messenger out of doors. It is natural that physicians and kind friends should try to make sufferers forget their grief. But they may be too successful. Though the practice of the ladies of Jerusalem was a benevolent one, the gift mixed by their charitable hands appeared to our Lord a cup of temptation, and He resolutely put it aside.

II