66 This wheel, as if filled with gunpowder, when once it takes fire, shall burn to all eternity. A fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell." (Deut. xxxii. 22.) There is another circle which is likewise eternal,-a continual changing from the extremes of heat and cold. "Drought and heat consume the snow-waters, and so does the grave those which have sinned." (Job xxiv. 19.) This is more expressly intimated to us by the weeping and gnashing of teeth," which are mentioned by St. Matthew. Upon the above passage the Rev. H. P. Dunster, the editor of D. Dunster's translation of the Reflections on Eternity of Jeremiah Drexelius, notes: "That a continual changing from the extremes of heat and cold forms a portion of the punishment of the damned is a very common notion among the old writers, and is founded upon one or two passages in holy writ." The idea has been beautifully embodied by Milton, in Paradise Lost, b. ii. : Thither by harpy-footed fairies hal'd At certain revolutions, all the damn'd Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immoveable, in fix'd and frozen round, Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire. Shakspeare also describes the same, in Measure for Measure, Act iii.: Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; THE FALLEN ANGEL. With admirable union of pathos and sublimity has Milton represented the fallen angel exclaiming, The Crucifixion of Our Lord. CRUCIFIXION was the common mode of punishment among the Persians, Carthaginians, and Romans; and the latter, at the urgent and tumultuous solicitations of the Jews, were the executioners in the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The cross was the punishment inflicted by the Romans—on servants who had perpetrated crimes; on robbers; assassins; and rebels; among which last Jesus was reckoned, on the ground of his making himself King or Messiah (Luke xxiii. 1—5, 13—15). The words in which the sentence was given, were as follows: "Thou shalt go to the cross." The person to be punished, was deprived of all his clothes, excepting something around the loins. In this state of nudity, he was beaten, sometimes with rods, but more generally with whips. Such was the severity of this flagellation that numbers died under it. Jesus was crowned with thorns, and made the subject of mockery; but nothing of this kind could be legally done, or, in other words, insults of this kind were not among the ordinary attendants of crucifixion. They were owing in this case, solely to the petulant spirit of the Roman soldiers. The criminal having been beaten, was subjected to the further suffering of being obliged to carry the cross himself to the place of punishment, which was commonly a hill near the public way, and out of the city. The place of crucifixion at Jerusalem was a hill to the north-west of the city. The cross, a post, otherwise called the unpropitious or infamous tree, consisted of a piece of wood erected perpendicularly, and intersected by another at right angles near the top, so as to resemble the letter T. The crime for which the person suffered, was inscribed on the transverse piece near the top of the perpendicular one. There is no mention made in ancient writers of anything on which the feet of the person crucified rested. Near the middle, however, of the perpendicular beam, there projected a piece of wood, on which he sat, and which served as a support to the body; the weight of which might otherwise have torn away the hands from the nails driven through them. Here we see the ground of certain phrases-as "To ride upon the cross; to be borne upon the cross; "to rest upon the sharp cross," &c. The cross, which was erected at the place of punishment, and دو firmly fixed in the ground, rarely exceeded 10 feet in height. The nearly naked victim was elevated to the small projection in the middle; the hands were then bound by a rope round the transverse beam, and nailed through the palms. Hence the expressions: "to mount upon the cross;' "to leap upon the cross; “to bring one upon the cross," &c. The Jews, in the times of which we are speaking, viz. whilst they were under the jurisdiction of the Romans, were in the habit of giving the criminal, before the commencement of his sufferings, a medicated drink of wine and myrrh. (Prov. xxxi. 6.) The object of this was to produce intoxication, and thereby render the pains of crucifixion less sensible to the sufferer. This beverage was refused by the Saviour, for the obvious reason that he chose to die with the faculties of his mind undisturbed and unclouded. It should be remarked that this sort of drink, which was, probably, offered out of kindness, was different from the vinegar, which was subsequently offered to the Saviour, by the Roman soldiers. The latter was a mixture of vinegar and water, denominated posca, and was a common drink for soldiers in the Roman army. The degree of anguish was gradual in its increase, and the crucified person was able to live under it, commonly till the third, and sometimes till the seventh day. Pilate, therefore, being surprised at the speedy termination of the Saviour's life, inquired in respect to the truth of it of the centurion himself, who commanded the soldiers. In order to bring their life to a more speedy termination, so that they might be buried on the same day, the bones of the two thieves were broken with mallets; and in order to ascertain whether Jesus was really dead, or whether he had merely fallen into a swoon, a soldier thrust his lance into his side, (undoubtedly his left side,) but no signs of life appeared. If he had not been previously dead, a wound of this kind in his side would have put a period to his life, as has been shown, both by the physician Eschenbach, and by Gruner. The part pierced was the pericardium: hence lymph and blood flowed out. There is sufficient proof that the physical cause of the death of our blessed Saviour was the rupture of His sacred heart, caused by mental agony. Dr. Macbride, in his Lectures on the Diatessaron, quotes from the Evangelical Register of 1829 some observations of a physician, who considers the record concerning the blood and water as explaining (at least to a mere scientific age) that the real cause of the death of Jesus was rupture of the heart, occasioned by mental agony. Such rupture, it is stated, is usually attended by instant death, without previous exhaustion, and by the effusion into the pericardium of blood, which, in this particular case, though scarcely in any other, separates into its two constituent parts, so as to present the appearance commonly termed blood and water. Thus the prophecy, "Reproach hath broken my heart The Crucifixion of Our Lord. 185 (Psalm lxix. 20), was fulfilled, as were so many others, in the momentous circumstances of the Crucifixion, to the very letter. Dr. Stroud, by the publication, in 1847, of his Treatise on the Physical Cause of the Death of Christ, is considered to have thrown a new light upon this solemn inquiry. In this work, the doctor's application of the science of physiology is brought into juxtaposition with the light of revelation; and the two establish the conclusion, that the bursting of the heart from mental agony was the physical cause of the death of Christ. (Selected and condensed from three communications to Notes and Queries, 2d Series, No. 25.) The Head, the Hope, the Supporter of those who gave their bodies to be burnt drank Himself of a bitter cup. Of all the devices of cruel imaginations, Crucifixion is the master-piece. Other pains are sharper for a time, but none are at once so agonising and so long. One aggravation, however, was wanting, which, owing to the want of knowledge in painters, is still, we believe, commonly supposed to have belonged to the punishment. The weight of the body was borne by a ledge which projected from the middle of the upright beam, and not by the hands and feet, which were probably found unequal to the strain. The frailty of man's frame comes at last to be its own defence; but enough remained to preserve the pre-eminence of torture to the cross. The process of nailing was exquisite torment, and yet worse in what ensued than in the actual infliction. The spikes rankled, the wounds inflamed, the local injury produced a general fever, the fever a most intolerable thirst; but the misery of miseries to the sufferer was, while racked with agony, to be fastened in a position which did not permit him even to writhe. Every attempt to relieve the muscles, every instinctive movement of anguish, only served to drag the lacerated flesh, and wake up new and acuter pangs; and this torture, which must have been continually aggravated until advancing death began to lay it to sleep, lasted on an average two or three days.-Quarterly Review. With these harrowing details in the mind's eye, a painting of the Crucifixion is sometimes viewed by unthinking persons, who ill appreciate the painter's art, and least of all, Christian art, -such persons, we say, look upon this sublime work merely as a representation of physical suffering. We have heard Ålbert Durer's grand picture of the Crucifixion, in one of the churches of Nurenberg, and made familiar to us by the finely executed German prints, objected to, on the above account; but the mind of the devout Christian regards it not as a scene on earth, but "as the universal frame of Nature giving testimony to Christ's divinity." (See Things not generally Known, First Series, page 98.) The Socrates of Plato blessing the executioner who in tears administered to him the cup of poison, is a noble conception: but how poor compared with Jesus, the Son of God, "in the midst of excruciating tortures praying for his merciless tormentors!" How touchingly are these sufferings described in the following stanzas from "Christ's Passion," by Cowley, "taken out of a Greek Ode, written by Mr. Masters, of New College, in Oxford: Methinks I hear of murther'd men the voice, My greedy eyes fly up the hill, and see Who 'tis hangs there the midmost of the three: Oh how unlike the others He! Look how he bends his gentle head with blessings from the tree ! His gracious hands ne'er stretch'd but to do good, Are nail'd to the infamous wood; And sinful man does fondly bind The arms, which he extends t'embrace all human kind. Unhappy man, canst thou stand by, and see All this, as patient as he? Since he thy sins does bear, Make thou his sufferings thine own, And weep, and sigh, and groan, And beat thy breast, and tear Thy garments, and thy hair, And let thy grief, and let thy love Through all thy bleeding bowels move. Dost thou not see thy Prince in purple clad all o'er, Of thorns and scourges in thy heart, Look on his hands, look on his feet, look on his side. Open, oh! open wide the fountains of thine eyes, Their stock of moisture forth, where it lyes, For this will ask it all. 'Twould all (alas !) too little be Though thy salt tears came from a sea: Canst thou deny Him this, when He Has open'd all his vital springs for thee? Take heed; for by his side's mysterious flood May well be understood That He will still require some waters to his blood. We add two commemorations in meditative verse: LOQUITUR CRUCIFIXUS. O man, look what shame for thee Willingly I take on me: See my bodie scourged round, |