Bible Commentaries

Chapter15.
The Civil Trial

"And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried Him away, and delivered Him to Pilate. And Pilate asked Him, Art Thou the King of the Jews? And He answering said unto him, Thou sayest it. And the chief priests accused Him of many things: but He answered nothing. And Pilate asked Him again, saying, Answerest Thou nothing? behold how many things they witness against Thee. But Jesus yet answered nothing; so that Pilate marvelled."— Mark 15:1-5.

The Sport of the Persecutors.

The assembly of the Sanhedrin at which Jesus had been examined and sentenced, the account of which Mark has given us in the previous chapter, was really an informal, not to say illegal, assembly. For this meeting was obviously held in the early hours after midnight, and the Sanhedrin could not hold a legal sitting until daybreak. Mark 14:65. "And some began to spit on Him, and to cover His face and to buffet Him and to say unto Him, Prophesy; and the officers received Him with blows of their hands." Priests and elders began the sickening sport and then the servants joined in. Here is an abyss of horror into which we shudder even to look. Do you remember the story Froude tells about the preaching of Newman at Oxford? Froude says that Newman was once describing closely some of the incidents of our Lord's Passion, the insults and coarse indignities that were heaped upon Him. He then paused. For a few moments there was a breathless silence. Then in a low, clear voice, of which the faintest vibration was audible in the farthest corner of St Mary"s, he said, "Now, I bid you recollect that He to Whom these things were done was Almighty God." "It was," says Froude, "as if an electric stroke had gone through the building, as if every person present understood for the first time the meaning of what he had all his life been saying." And if we, too, would realise the shame and horror of that Mark 14:65, which says how some began to spit on Him, and to cover His face and to buffet Him, and how the officers received Him with blows of their hands, we too must recollect that He to Whom these brutal things were done was Almighty God.

The Resort to Pilate.

But daybreak brought the cruel sport to an end. "Straightway in the morning the chief priests with the elders and scribes and the whole council held a consultation, and bound Jesus and carried Him away and delivered Him up to Pilate." The formal session of the Sanhedrin was held; the solemn farce was soon over, and a few minutes after daybreak Jesus with arms bound behind Him was on His way, attended by priests and elders en masse, to the palace of Pilate the Governor. The priests and elders would fain have dispensed with the necessity of submitting the case to Pilate at all. They had pronounced Jesus guilty of blasphemy and therefore worthy of death, and they would like to have put an end to Him off-hand. But to Pilate the Governor, much against their will, they had to make their appeal. So with Mark 15:2 in this chapter begins Mark's account of what we may call the civil trial of Jesus.

The Civil Trial.

Like his account of the ecclesiastical trial, Mark's account of the civil trial is incomplete. When we compare Gospel with Gospel, we find that in the civil trial, as in the ecclesiastical trial, there were three distinct stages. (1) First of all Christ was taken to Pilate and briefly examined by him, the result being a declaration on Pilate's part of Christ's innocence. (2) Then, He seems to have been taken to Herod and tried before him, on the ground that being a Galilean, He belonged to Herod's jurisdiction. (3) Then, finally, He was brought back to Pilate for another examination. The upshot of it all was that He was condemned to death, not because He was guilty, but to appease the murderous hate of the Jews. Now of these three stages in Christ's trial, Mark says nothing at all about the second. He satisfies himself with an epitomised account of the two trials before Pilate. It is with the first of these trials the paragraph of the text deals. And even this account Mark 15:6-15.

The Final Stage of the Trial.

The third and final stage in our Lord's trial was the most protracted of the three. Mark does not tell the whole story here. Pilate tried one device after another to escape from the necessity of condemning an innocent Mark 15:15.

Having traced the trial of Christ to its end, we are now in a position to form some kind of judgment upon the character and conduct of Pilate himself. His is a pitiful story. He was an unwilling participator in this deed of blood. Left to himself, he would have liberated Christ. He struggled to secure His release. But at length he was coerced into committing the wickedness which his soul abhorred. He is not the man on whom the chief guilt of the crime of history rests. Christ Himself said, "He that delivered Me unto thee hath greater sin." Caiaphas, the chief priest, is the one on whom the greater guilt principally rests. But every man must bear his own burden, and Pilate must bear his.

Pilate as Procurator.

Now in coming to discuss Pilate's character and his conduct, something must be said about his antecedent career, for that antecedent career of his had a mighty influence upon his action in connection with our Lord's trial. Nothing is known about his family or his origin. He appears upon the pages of history when he assumes office as procurator of Judaea. The Roman procurator was a kind of subordinate governor. He occupied the same kind of relationship to the Governor of the Roman province of Syria, as, say, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bombay or Madras does to the Viceroy of India. But within the limits of his province, which included Judaea, Samaria, and Galilee, the Procurator exercised practically unlimited and almost despotic power. Pilate held this office for about ten years. He came to Judaea just about the time when John the Baptist began to preach, and so his rule covered the period of our Lord's ministry, and of the first establishment of Christianity in Judaea.

—His Blunders.

What sort of a man was this Pontius Pilate? Philo, the Jewish author, describes him as "inflexible, merciless, and obstinate." No doubt, as Dr Purves says, this is a one-sided representation. But it has this value for us; it shows the kind of esteem in which Pilate was held amongst the people over whom he ruled. His administration in Judaea had been marked by a series of calamitous mistakes. Rome, as I have already said in one of my previous studies, was generous and liberal in her treatment of subject nations. She allowed them as large a measure of home rule as was consistent with the maintenance of her own imperial supremacy. And she was especially considerate and tolerant in matters of religion. She had followed her usual policy in Judaea. She had allowed the Jewish court or Sanhedrin to retain a large measure of power. And she had respected the religious prejudices of the Jews. Out of regard, e.g. for their feelings, the display of images on the part of the Roman soldiers had been forbidden in Jerusalem. But Pilate either through ignorance, or more probably out of contempt for the Jews, had wilfully offended their prejudices. Josephus tells us of two or three actions of his which irritated the Jews to something like madness.

The Figures on the Standards.

Here is one. His predecessors, as I have said, had respected the Jewish prejudice against images. It seems that the standards of the legions were adorned with an image of the Emperor. Previous procurators had taken care, when marching their soldiers into Jerusalem, to remove these images. But Pilate disdained to humour what, no doubt, he regarded as a contemptible prejudice. So he ordered the troops to enter the Holy City with the Emperor's effigy in its usual place upon the standard. The troops entered by night, but in the morning the standards were seen upon the citadel crowned by what, to the Jews, were idolatrous images. Forthwith multitudes hastened to Caesarea to beg Pilate to remove the figures. For five days Pilate scorned to listen to them. On the sixth day he bade them gather on the racecourse, and when they again renewed their appeal, a band of soldiers, placed in ambush, suddenly rushed out and with drawn swords threatened to kill them if they did not desist from their clamour and return home. But Pilate had not reckoned with the fanaticism and obstinacy of the Jewish character. To his amazement, instead of ceasing their cries, they flung themselves on the ground, bared their necks, and declared they would rather die than endure the violation of their laws. Pilate had met his match in this stubborn people. Sorely against his will, he had to order the images to be removed.

The Raid on the Temple Treasury.

Another story Josephus tells about him is this. He took in hand the business of building an aqueduct in order to provide Jerusalem with a water supply. And he seized the money paid in to the Temple treasury to help in the payment for the work. Once again the Jews were up in arms. It was perverting sacred money to profane and secular purposes. When Pilate visited Jerusalem, an abusive and threatening mob—tens of thousands of them, says Josephus—came clamouring that he should not persist in his design. Pilate who seems to have foreseen trouble had introduced some of his legionaries disguised into the crowd. When the Jews refused to go away, he gave these disguised soldiers the signal, and they at once attacked the crowd with their bludgeons. They used more force than Pilate had intended, with the result that they scattered the crowd indeed and quelled the disturbance, but not without wounding many and beating some even to death.

The Case of the Galileans.

We have a reference to another unfortunate incident in Pilate's career in the Gospels. He mingled the blood of some unhappy Galileans with their sacrifices. No doubt, they had been concerned in some riot or tumult, but so little regard had Pilate for any of the Jewish notions of sacredness, that he slaughtered them in one of the Temple courts. Incidents like these reveal something of Pilate's character. He was a typical Roman in his contempt and scorn for the Jews—"the horde of the circumcised," as one Latin writer calls them. But they are still more illuminating as to the relationship between Pilate and the people over whom he ruled. They cordially detested one another. Pilate detested the Jews because more than once they had foiled him and beaten him. And the Jews detested Pilate because he had deliberately offended them, insulted them, and outraged them.

The Burden of the Past.

Now, notice how Pilate's conduct at the trial of Christ was affected by his past career. What was the consideration that most powerfully influenced Pilate in his conduct of the trial of Jesus? Not regard for justice. Had that been the case, he would instantaneously have acquitted Him. With trained mind he saw through the farce from the first moment. He knew that "for envy" they had delivered Him unto him. But justice really counted for nothing in the trial of Jesus. What, really did count, what dictated all Pilate's actions, was fear of the people. That was why he resorted to the various tricks and stratagems of which the evangelists tell us. He wanted to release Jesus and retain the favour of the mob at the same time. When he found he could not do both, he elected to retain the favour of the mob. Mark tracks the crime to its real and ultimate root in this Mark 15:15, in which he describes the issue of the trial, "Pilate, wishing to content the multitude, delivered Jesus to be crucified." That is why Pilate became the legal executioner of Jesus; he sought to curry favour with the crowd. Why? Because of the mistakes and crimes which marked his past administration.

Caesar's Way.

The master of the Roman empire at this time was that cruel and suspicious tyrant, Tiberius. There were two things, apparently, that Tiberius cared about, the due receipt of the taxes and the maintenance of peace. So long as his Governors in various parts of the world saw to these two things, Tiberius was well content. But a Governor who failed to exact the necessary tribute, one who by blundering actions created unrest and disaffection, fell under Tiberius" displeasure. Now one complaint with reference to Pilate's administration had already been made to Tiberius and had brought forth a sharp reprimand from him. A second complaint might prove his ruin. These crimes of his were just weapons in his opponents" hands. And that was the threat that finally brought Pilate to his knees. Philo, speaking of another occasion on which the Jews threatened to report him to Tiberius, says, "The threat exasperated Pilate to the greatest possible degree, as he feared lest they might go on an embassy to the Emperor, and might impeach with respect to other particulars of his government, his corruption, his acts of insolence, his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never-ending, gratuitous and most grievous inhumanity." Thus Pilate knew that he had given only too much ground for complaint, and that he could not afford to let these priests and elders complain to Caesar. Here was a man burdened by his own past.

The Past and the Present.

A past of sin is a terrific hindrance to a present of virtue. This is a commonplace that scarcely needs enforcement. Peter's first lie to the maid, for instance, almost drove him to the blasphemous denial before the officers round the fire. When the men challenged him, Peter's courage might have come back and he might have bravely owned his Lord. But he had already given himself away by lying to the maid, and he had to keep up the deception. A young fellow away from home accompanies foolish and wicked companions to some evil haunt of pleasure. By so doing he delivers himself into their hands. Later, he may want to turn over a new leaf. He may want to live pure and speak true. But evil companions can always quote against him his own past. "Why," they will say to him, "you saw no wrong in it on such and such a time." And so the sin of yesterday becomes a hindrance in the way of uprightness today. All this teaches the old and familiar lesson—beware of the first beginnings of sin. For sin is not done with when it is committed. Do you remember that tragic confession of Sir Percivale in Tennyson's Idylls? With other knights he had been inspired to engage in the quest of the Holy Grail, which is only a mystical way of saying that he was moved to give himself to the holy and dedicated life. But his past proved an insuperable obstacle:

"Then every evil word I had spoken once,

And every evil thought I had thought of old,

And every evil deed I ever did,

Awoke and cried, "This quest is not for thee."

And lifting up mine eyes I found myself

Alone and in a land of sand and thorns,

And I was thirsty even unto death;

And I too cried, "This quest is not for thee.""

Pilate was like Percivale. He was crippled for the duty of today by the wrong of yesterday.

Scepticism and Weakness.

That was one cause of Pilate's breakdown. The second main cause of his failure was his scepticism. When Jesus talked about every one "who was of the truth," hearing His voice, Pilate asked in reply, "What is truth?" Now there are all sorts of ways of saying, "What is truth?" A man may say it with desperate and almost heartbroken earnestness. He may be lost in the mazes of perplexity and doubt, and he may feel that his very happiness and life depend on knowing what is truth. "O that I knew where I might find Him that I might come even to His seat," cries one of the patriarchs. His heart was in the cry; for the truth about God was a matter of life and death to him. A man may ask, "What is truth?" in the spirit of intellectual curiosity. He may be interested in the truth as a problem. That perhaps is the prevailing temper of our own day. But Pilate did not ask the question, "What is truth?" in the spirit of the man who is intellectually interested in the search for truth. Still less did he ask it with the passionate eagerness of the man who feels he must know the truth or die. He asked it in the sneering temper of the sceptic. "Jesting Pilate!" Bacon calls him. But "jesting" is not the right adjective. Jesting carries with it a suggestion of geniality and sunshine. But there was nothing genial about this question of Pilate. It was bitter, scornful, cynical. It was sceptical, unbelieving Pilate who asked that question. Pilate did not believe there was such a thing as truth. You remember Gibbon's epigrammatic description of the Roman attitude towards religion. "The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrates as equally useful." Pilate as an educated Roman reproduced the sceptical temper of his day.

Pilate, Weak, Unprincipled.

Now the main criticisms passed upon Pilate in his conduct of Christ's trial are these: (1) He showed himself a weakling. He allowed himself to be driven into the crime of sentencing to death a person who was not only innocent, but who impressed him as the noblest and holiest person in whose presence he had ever stood. "I find no fault in Him," that was Pilate's verdict. He delivered Him to be crucified, that was Pilate's sentence. For all his Roman pride, Pilate showed himself a moral weakling. (2) And the second criticism is this, he tried to secure by policy and stratagem what he ought to have stood out for on principle. Christ was innocent and he knew it. But instead of acquitting Him as a matter of justice, he tried to secure His acquittal by policy.

—Because Without Faith.

These criticisms are amply justified, but they only deal with surface symptoms and not with the real disease. His weakness and his stratagem are the evidences of a deeper mischief. And that deeper mischief was this: he was a man without faith, without any outlook to the spiritual and the eternal. Pilate's scepticism was the secret of his moral collapse. Pilate's universe was bounded by the world he could touch and hear and see. The factors he had to deal with, were Tiberius away in Rome, and these menacing priests and the howling mob before his eyes. God never entered into his calculations. That is why Pilate proved a weakling. For to be courageous a man must have faith in God. If there is no God vindicating right and punishing wrong, if there is no judgment beyond the human judgment, then to the clamorous demands of the people, to the will of society men will inevitably bow. It is only in the fear of God men can brave the wrath of their fellows.

The Lesson for Us.

The lesson of it all is obvious. Scepticism in the long run spells weakness and disaster. A great deal has been written and said in praise of "honest doubt." I frankly admit there may be "honest doubt"; with the honest doubter I have every sympathy. But the state of doubt even when honest is not a state to be cultivated. According to our faith it shall be unto us. Faith is the positive quality in life. Without faith, morality is not safe. The ethical life stands but a poor chance apart from religion. The man who has no fixed stars in his sky, in the shape of faith in God, and in right, and in a judgment to come, makes shipwreck. If we are to do right at all costs, to live pure, to speak true, we must have faith in God.

Here is a prayer for us, living as we do in a world crowded with temptation, lest we sin as Pilate sinned and fall as Pilate fell, "Lord, increase our faith."

Chapter18.
The Scourging and the Crowning

"And the soldiers led Him away into the hall, called Pretorium; and they call together the whole band. And they clothed Him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns, and put it about His head, And began to salute Him, Hail, King of the Jews! And they smote Him on the head with a reed, and did spit upon Him, and bowing their knees worshipped Him. And when they had mocked Him, they took off the purple from Him, and put His own clothes on Him, and led Him out to crucify Him."— Mark 15:16-20.

This is a terrible paragraph, one of the most awful paragraphs in the whole of Holy Writ. Dr Stalker points out a great change that has come over the feelings of Christian people with reference to the physical sufferings of Christ. A century or two ago, Christian folk almost revelled in the contemplation of these sufferings. The German mystic, Tauler, for example (as he points out) enlarges and exaggerates every detail until his pages seem to reek with blood, and the mind of the reader grows almost sick with horror. We incline, on the contrary, to fling a veil of reserve over the details of our Lord's death and passion. The reaction, while in some cases it is carried to an extreme, is on the whole a healthy one. It argues a certain coarseness and almost brutality of mind to be able to peer into and discuss the details of the outrages inflicted upon our Lord's sensitive flesh. I confess to having that feeling strong within me as I approach this paragraph which tells the sickening story of the scourging and the crowning. With the briefest possible word, by way of explanation, I pass on to the lessons the paragraph has to teach.

The Scourging.

It seems it was the practice amongst the Romans to scourge a criminal before they crucified him. Pilate did not depart from the usual custom in the case of Christ. On the other hand, he had a definite object in view in ordering the scourging to take place as usual. He intended when the scourging was over, to make one final appeal to the people; he meant to show them the Christ after the soldiers had done their brutal work upon Him—pale, exhausted, bleeding—in the hope that the sight of Him in that condition might appeal to their pity. As a matter of fact, he did Isaiah 53:7). It was all fulfilled in the Praetorium that morning. "When reviled," says Peter, "He reviled not again, when He suffered He threatened not" ( 1 Peter 2:23). He might have summoned legions of angels to His aid. Instead of that, He submits to these accumulated indignities without a murmur or a protest. Here is meekness more than human! It would have been human to flare up into indignation and wrath, but meekly and silently to bear it all was nothing less than divine.

The Crown.

I pass from the consideration of the majesty and dignity of the Lord to speak a word or two about the crown and sceptre the soldiers gave Him. It seemed absurd to these Roman soldiers that one so poor and friendless and weak as Jesus was should aspire to kingship. And their brutal sport was meant from first to last to be a mockery of that claim. And yet God in His Providence made the wrath of these men to praise Him. More than once, things that were meant for insults to our Lord were transfigured into testimonies. When they called him "friend of publicans and sinners," they meant it for derision and contempt, but time has transfigured it into the Lord's most splendid title. And so exactly these rude soldiers meaning to mock Christ, unconsciously and involuntarily bore witness to Him. They could not more perfectly have expressed the nature of His kingship than by putting a crown of thorns upon His head, and a reed for sceptre in His hand. For think, first, of the crown they put upon His head and all that it-implies. His crown is a crown of thorns, for His kingship is based upon His sufferings. "He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the Cross," says St Paul, "wherefore God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name which is above every name." Wherefore! His sufferings were the cause of His exaltation. His disciples thought that all was over with Christ when they saw Him beaten, bound, scourged, crucified. As a matter of fact, these unspeakable sufferings of His have given Him His power over the hearts of men. And why have our Lord's sufferings done all this for Him? Because they stand for love. That is why the thorn-crown is the most fitting crown that Christ could wear. A crown of gold stands for pomp and power—a crown of thorns stands for love—for strong, uttermost, self-sacrificing love. And love after all is the mightiest power on earth.

The Sceptre.

I think, now, of the sceptre they placed in our Lord's hand. It was a reed, says St Mark 15:21.

We come now to the touching and beautiful story of how Simon of Cyrene carried the Lord's cross. I have noticed, in consulting my authorities, that this incident stirs even the most prosaic of them to something like poetry. Of course, one expects poetry from a man like Dr John Watson, and the chapter in which he treats of Simon in his Companions of the Sorrowful Way, is idyllic in its simple and moving pathos. But Dr Stalker is a severely sober and restrained writer, and yet even his pages glow with imagination and throb with feeling as he speaks of this Mark 10:29-30).

Chapter20.
The Crucifixion

"And they bring Him unto the place Golgotha, which Mark 15:22-32.

The Cross and its Significance.

Zophar, one of the friends of Job 11:8). That verse can be applied with perfect fitness to the dying of our Lord. Who can hope to find out its meaning to perfection? It is as high as heaven; it is deeper than hell. It is as high as heaven, for all the grace of God is in it. It is as deep as hell, for all the hate and fury of wickedness is in it. It is a subduing revelation of love; it is a shuddering exhibition of sin. It is at once glorious and shameful, humbling and exalting, radiant with the light of heaven, and dark with all the darkness of the pit. The Cross of Christ is the meeting-place of the ages. It is the great watershed of history. To it all preceding ages pointed; from it all subsequent history takes its trend and shape. Back to that Cross millions of men and women look back today as the ground of all their hopes and the source of all their joys.

Golgotha.

Golgotha has become the most sacred place in the world because Christ died upon it. Before Christ died there it was a place of shame and contempt—just the place where criminals died. If people thought of it at all, it was with shuddering and loathing. But Christ died upon it, and the place has become holy ground. With what tenderness of heart Christian people think of the "green hill far away!" How the flood gates of the heart are opened when they think that "He hung and suffered there!" Most nations have some spot invested with special interest for them because of its association with some event of national importance. But Calvary is of interest not to a nation but to a world. On it the mightiest deliverance was wrought. On it the greatest emancipation of all was accomplished. On it, the Lord, by dying, won for all who believe in Him the forgiveness of their sins. And, just as Christ by His dying on Golgotha has converted that awful place into a veritable gate of heaven, so has He converted the Cross, that instrument of insult and of shame, into a thing of glory.

The Cross Itself.

I have no mind to dwell upon the horrors of the crucifixion; and yet we must follow Christ to Golgotha, and with awed and humbled hearts listen to what they did to Him when He hung and suffered there. And, first of all, of the Cross itself. There were three types of cross. One was shaped like an X and is popularly known as St Andrew's Cross, from the tradition that the Apostle was put to death on a cross of that kind. Another was shaped exactly like a T, that 1 Peter 2:23). I sometimes fancy that we are still inclined to look for proofs of the Lord's divinity in the wrong place. We are in danger today of the error of which these priests and scribes were guilty long ago. Power is our proof of Deity. If Christ would only display His power in some striking way so that we might see it, we would believe. But to me the meekness of the Lord seems always more impressive even than His mighty works. Here is meekness nothing less than divine, amid all the tortures of the Crucifixion, overwhelmed as He was with insult and abuse "no ungentle murmuring word escaped His silent tongue." The only reply He made to His tormentors was to pray for them. Surely this was the Son of God.

The Self-Sacrifice of Christ

Finally, what an illustration we have here of the self-sacrifice of Christ. "He saved others," they jeered at Him, "Himself He cannot save." The taunt has been converted into a tribute. It is quite true. Just because he wanted to save others, He could not save Himself. Only the cannot was not the cannot of physical impossibility. The chief priests and scribes thought He could not come down because the executioners had done their work too well, because of the nails driven through His hands and His feet, and the ropes around His arms. But not all the nails and ropes in Jerusalem could have held Christ there had he wished to come down. What were nails and ropes to One Who could still the tempest with a word, Who had legions of angels at His command? No, it was not the nails and ropes that held Him there—but His own mighty and sacrificial love. No one took His life from Him, He laid it down of Himself. And He laid it down because that was the only way of gaining redemption for the world.

He could not save Himself because He was intent upon saving others. I was in Salisbury Cathedral recently, and I saw there a tablet to a doctor who in a visitation of cholera had given himself with unstinted devotion to the task of ministering to the stricken and especially the poor; who as a result caught the deadly sickness himself, and died at thirty-two. It reminded me of my Master. There was great and self-sacrificing love in both cases. Only the love of the Lord was infinitely nobler and more beautiful. The young doctor perhaps hoped that he might escape. Jesus knew that He must die. And He died willingly. To save others He sacrificed Himself; "Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God ( Hebrews 12:2).

Chapter21.
The Death

"And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which Mark 15:33-39.

Mark remains faithful to his habit of conciseness and brevity even in his account of the Lord's dying. There were several things of moving and pathetic interest which happened in the interval between the third hour when they nailed Jesus to the Cross, and the sixth hour with which this paragraph begins. But Mark passes them over in silence. The one thing he is concerned about is that men should contemplate the actual dying of the Lord, and that in that death they should see not a martyrdom, but the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God's love. And so without staying to notice the events that happened by the way, he passes swiftly to that tremendous hour of crisis when having borne our sin and the curse of it, the Lord gave up the ghost.

The Darkness.

"When the sixth hour was come," he says, that is when it was broad noon by the time of day, instead of being broad noon, it was more like midnight, for "there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour." It was not the darkness of eclipse. It may have been nothing more than the darkness of a brooding storm, as Dr David Smith suggests. There is nothing in the narrative to suggest it was miraculous or supernatural. The evangelists make no suggestion as to how the darkness was caused, they simply record the fact, that for three long hours Jerusalem and the whole land as far as eye could see was enveloped in murky gloom. But the fact that they record the darkness at all shows this, that they felt there was some relation between the darkness of nature and the dark deed that was being perpetrated upon the Cross. It was as if nature went into mourning for the death of Christ. Milton giving the reins to his poetic fancy pictures the earth as hushed and still and expectant when Jesus was born. That is mere imagination. But it is simple historic fact that nature dressed herself in habiliments of woe when Jesus died. The people mocked at the victim, the priests taunted Him and jeered at Him, but nature hid her very face for shame. Nature sympathised with God; shared in the sorrow of God, "There was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour."

Darkness and the Man of Sorrows.

The darkness was not only in nature. There was darkness also in the soul of Christ. For at the ninth hour the Lord cried with a loud voice saying, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which is being interpreted, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Now this darkness that overwhelmed the soul of Christ is an infinitely more amazing and awful thing than the darkness which covered the face of the land. For usually our Lord lived in the sunshine. Outwardly it is true Jesus" life was hard and rough and troubled enough. He had few of what we call the comforts of life. He was born into a poor home. At an early age He had to address Himself to the hard and wearing toil of the carpenter's shop. He earned His bread in the sweat of His face. As a man His poverty clung to Him. He had not where to lay His head; He was dependent upon the kindness of friends for His support. And He had other trials to bear beside those which are incidental to poverty. He was a lonely man because He was a misunderstood man. The people at large misunderstood Him, at one time in mistaken enthusiasm wanting to take Him and make Him King, and at another in their fury wanting to kill Him out of hand. His disciples misinterpreted Him, and with the deeper purposes of His soul showed scanty sympathy; His own kinsfolk thought Him mad; while as for the leaders of the nation—the priests, the scribes, the elders—they had pursued Him almost from the first with malignant and relentless hatred.

—Who was also the Man of Joy.

I agree that, as far as its external conditions went, it is hard to conceive a stormier and more troubled life than that of Jesus. And yet, to say that Christ's was an unhappy life would be to give an entirely false impression. He was not simply the Man of Sorrows. He was also the Man of Joy. He lived in the sunshine. He rarely or never talked of His sorrow. What He talked about was His joy. "His joy" was the bequest He wished to leave to His disciples. When "His joy" was in them there would be nothing left to wish for; perfect satisfaction and content would be theirs, their joy would be fulfilled. And the secret of our Lord's happiness, the source of this deep and abiding joy was His consciousness of the Father's presence and smile. Between Him and the Father there was constant and unbroken communion. You remember how the sense of this uninterrupted fellowship finds expression again and again in His speech. "I am not alone, the Father is with Me." "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me." "I and My Father are one." No matter what our Lord's outward circumstances might be, He knew that the Father's smile was resting upon Him. No matter though the priests and people reviled Him, He could always hear His Father say, "Thou art My beloved Son."

"Why hast Thou?"

But now, on the Cross, at this sixth hour, His soul was overwhelmed with deep night. He felt Himself bereft of His Father's fellowship. He missed the shining of His Father's face. He bore the pain of the nails, and the mockery of the people, and the taunts of the priests without a murmur. But when for a moment God's face was hidden from Him He broke out into this lamentable and heartbroken cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

The Cry on the Cross.

Now, this brokenhearted cry of our dying Lord is almost too sacred a thing to discuss and analyse. And discuss and analyse it as we may we shall never perhaps fully understand the desolation of soul that called it forth. The mystery of the Cross is in this cry. And while we may get glimpses into the meaning of the Cross, we are constrained to confess that there are heights and depths in it that still out-top our knowledge. If I dwell on our Lord's bitter cry, it is not because I think I can completely explain it. It will suffice to point out some of the elements of the deep and measureless sorrow which evoked it, and to repudiate some false and cruel theories which have been built on the foundation of this cry.

—Not a Cry of Bodily Weakness.

The words themselves, as you all know, are quoted from the first verse of the twenty-second Psalm. On the lips of the Psalmist they form little more than the complaint of a lonely and deserted man. But there is a depth of meaning in them as Christ used them, that the Psalmist who first uttered them knew nothing about. What did they mean on the lips of Christ? First of all, we can dismiss absolutely the idea that the cry was wrung from Him by fear of death. Christ never feared the physical fact of death. As a matter of history, the victims of this cruel punishment of crucifixion longed and cried and prayed for death. Death to them was not a foe but a friend, bringing them relief from intolerable agony and pain. Nor was it a case of a soul clouded by bodily weakness. In the extremity of weakness and pain faith sometimes faints and fails. But Christ was not in the extremity of bodily weakness. His mind was not clouded. He was in the possession not only of all His faculties but of a large amount of physical strength when He actually died. Christ's death was not the death of one whose vitality was exhausted. He cried with "a loud voice" just before He gave up the ghost. The people could not believe that He really was dead. Pilate could not believe it when they told him. The fact 2 Corinthians 5:19). Christ was His beloved Son at the Baptism when He took up His redeeming mission, He was His beloved Son at the Transfiguration when He faced and accepted the Cross, but He was most truly God's beloved Son when He actually hung upon the Cross and in obedience to the Father's will, and to further His Father's redeeming purpose, made that last and final and uttermost sacrifice of Himself. "For this," He said Himself, "doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life."

—But as the Cry of the Sin-Bearer.

What then is the explanation of this exceeding bitter cry? I find my clue to its meaning in the way in which Christ identified Himself with men. He became bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. He took hold upon the seed of Abraham. He was made in all things like unto His brethren. He entered our family and became our Elder Brother. But it was a sinful family He entered, and 2 Corinthians 5:21). Now one bitter and inevitable result of sin is this, it separates between a man and God. The sinner feels like Cain, "cast out from the presence of the Lord." Sin like a black and threatening cloud hides from man the shining of God's face.

Now, Christ so realised our sin that for the time He shared in that awful doom of sin and His fellowship with the Father was arrested. So long as He had His Father, nothing mattered. But to be robbed of His Father's fellowship was very death to Christ. And yet He submitted to it, because it was thus that redemption was to be won. It was not that God had withdrawn His face or was angry with the Son Who was doing His will. It was that these crowding sins of ours hid the vision of God's face. "It needed not," as Dr David Smith says, "the Father's displeasure that He might lose the sense of the Father's presence."

But God is near in the Darkness.

I find a blessed and helpful truth suggested in this. God may be near to us when we seem to have lost sight of Him. We have our occasional bright and sunny days when we can say, "The Lord is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." But there come to us also days of darkness when our enemies mock at us and say, "Where is now thy God?" when we ourselves are tempted to think that God has clean cast us off, and to cry with our Lord, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Our prayers seem to go unanswered, and the heavens are as brass to our appeal. At such times it will comfort us to remember our Lord on the Cross. He too felt homeless and forsaken, and yet the Father knew and was at hand. It may be just like that with us. In the darkest hour He may be near. When we fear that He has forgotten us, He may be thinking upon us for our good. He can never forsake those that trust in Him.

After the Anguish the Triumph.

But note that though apparently forsaken, though enveloped in darkness, Christ says, "My God, My God." Here is superb and subduing trust. He trusted God in the deep night. When He could not see Him, He still clung to Him. He was "my God" through it all. Here is the veritable triumph and climax of faith, to believe in God when we cannot see Him: to trust where we cannot trace. No soul is ever lost that out of its darkness and despair can still cry, "my God." Follow our Lord's story. Anguish gave place to triumph. "It is finished," is the Lord's cry. "Father," He said, "into Thy hands I commend My spirit." And so it will be with us. If in the night we still cling to Him and say, "My God," the joy of assurance and recovered vision will come in the morning. Only a short time elapsed, when Jesus "crying with a loud voice" (showing that death was not due to exhausted vitality) gave up the ghost.

No death like this.

Other men die because their hour is come and they cannot help it. But Jesus, while life still beat strongly within Him, gave up the ghost. He of His own free will laid His life down. There was never dying in the world's history like this. "Truly," said the Centurion, "this Man was the Son of God." It was not the mere suddenness of the dying at the last that impressed him, but the whole circumstances of it—His answer to the dying thief, His prayer for His enemies, His meekness, His moral majesty. This pagan soldier had seen nothing like it. "If the death of Socrates was that of a sage," Rousseau said, "that of Jesus was the death of a God." Can we say less than that? At the foot of the Cross, let us make our confession, "Truly this was the Son of God." And believing that Jesus was none other than the Son of God, let us rejoicingly believe that He offered for sin the "one full perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world."

Chapter22.
The Faithful Women

"There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome; (Who also, when He was in Galilee, followed Him, and ministered unto Him;) and many other women which came up with Him unto Jerusalem."— Mark 15:40, Mark 15:41.

The Sorrow. Stricken Group.

Hate and scorn and furious and savage contempt surged up to the very Cross of Christ, but sympathy and love were not wholly lacking. "There were also women beholding from afar." "There were also women." Your picture of the people gathered round the Cross is not complete unless you see this little group of Borrowing women. They hung upon the outskirts of the crowd. They dared not venture near. Perhaps it was that they did not care to venture into the thick of that mocking, brutal crowd. Perhaps it was that they were afraid; it was scarcely safe for anyone to identify himself or herself with Christ that day. But there they were beholding! And there was a tumult of sorrow in their hearts. For like the rest of the Lord's disciples these women had trusted that it was He Who should redeem Israel. And here He was dying before their very eyes in defeat and shame. They did not know what to think. Their hopes were all in ruins about them. Their faith was broken and shattered. But, amid the ruins of their faith, love still survived. Though He was dying there, the despised and rejected of men, their hearts still clung to Him, they still loved Him, He was to them still the chiefest among ten thousand and the altogether lovely. It was that love of theirs that brought them to that dreadful place. It was torture to them to gaze at Christ suffering, and to listen to the insults heaped upon His sacred head, but love kept them rooted to the spot. Love gave them boldness. Love lent them courage. Their perfect love cast out fear.

The Women.

The disciples all forsook Him and fled. Peter, Thomas, Ephesians 4:12). Now that is an ambiguous rendering. Although this view is not accepted by most scholars, I prefer to follow the rendering given in the Twentieth Century Testament, "He gave His Church Apostles, evangelists, pastors and teachers, to fit His people for the work of the ministry." It Mark 15:42-46.

An Unsuspected Friend.

All His life through Christ had more friends than the world dreamed of. Had you asked one of the leaders of His day, what friends and followers Jesus had, he might have replied scornfully and contemptuously, "Just a handful of ignorant Galileans of no account." The Jerusalem Pharisees noted the fact, that none of the rulers or the Pharisees believed on Him. They tried to create prejudice against Christ by making it out that no person of intelligence or standing accepted His claims; that it was only amongst the ignorant, uncultivated, credulous people of the North that He found followers. Yet all the time Christ had His followers even in Jerusalem, and numbered friends amongst people of culture and station. In the days of Christ's popularity they did not obtrude themselves very much. They kept modestly, or, if you prefer so to put it, timidly, in the background. But when troubles came and the day of the Lord's distress dawned, they came out of their hiding places, stood by His side and comforted Him with their devotion and love. They were like the stars, they only revealed themselves when the darkness fell. Here in the paragraph we read of an "unknown friend" who charged himself with the care of the last tender offices of respect and love; it was Joseph of Arimathea, an honourable councillor, but a secret disciple, who provided the Lord with a grave. But before we concentrate our attention on Joseph, let us run through the story.

The Death of the Crucified.

It was a Friday on which our Lord was sacrificed, that Mark 8:38).

Joseph, the Brave Confessor.

But happily for Joseph, if, at the beginning, his fear overcame his love, in the end his love cast out his fear. And strangely enough it was in the day of our Lord's shame and defeat that Joseph declared himself. It was when the disciples forsook Him and fled that Joseph came and stood by His side. Upon fine natures danger acts like a call to courage and high resolve. Men who on ordinary days seem hesitant and timid, in days of crisis get nerved to a pitch of daring that knows no shred of fear. When Christ hung on the Cross scorned and dead, Joseph went in boldly unto Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. "He ventured to go in," for it took courage to do what Joseph did. It took courage to face Pilate, sore as he was after his defeat in the morning. It took courage to concern himself with a dead body at that particular time, for it meant that Joseph would incur defilement and would, therefore, be allowed no participation in the great Paschal celebration. And above everything, it took courage to declare to his fellow-countrymen, to all the members of the council with whom he had been accustomed to associate, in the very hour of their insolence and triumph, that he was a follower and a friend of the Jesus Whom they had crucified.

The Call for Courage.

And still it requires courage to become a disciple of Jesus. Not courage of the sort Joseph showed. It is not the opposition and hate of the outside world we have to fear. Our difficulty comes in dealing with our own appetites and lusts and passions, in crucifying our flesh, in deliberately laying self upon the altar. But even this difficulty can be overcome. We shall have courage even to lay self on the altar if we have Joseph's passionate and whole-hearted love.