Inflammation. Thirst. Crucifixion. uffering. was presented there. He was to be crucified; and crucifixion is perhaps the most ingenious and the most perfect invention for mingling torture and death which was ever contrived. It is the very masterpiece 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. - They laid the Savior down upon the cross, and extended his arms; a soldier on each side, holds the hand down in its assigned position, and then presses the point of his iron spike upon the proper place in the palm. He raises his hammer, the patient sufferer waiting calmly for the blow; But we must stop; - we are going beyond those limits in the detail of physical suffering, which we have said a writer in such a work as this, should not pass over. We leave the rest, and the reader must conceive if he can, of the first sharp piercing agony, and the excruciating pains then shooting through the frame; the ris ing inflammation, and the intolerable thirst, which goads a wounded man almost to desperation, and brings up from a field of battle, a few hours after the contest, one universal cry for water, from the thousands who lie wounded and dying. As the Savior hangs, too, by such a suspension, hour after hour, we must remember that he had been scourged. Perhaps this was in mercy, however. He died sooner than the malefactors. But it is too awful a scene to dwell upon. We may read the narrative in the gospels, without much feeling, because we have long been familiar with the words, Death. The soldiers' visit at sunset. The body taken down. But if the imagination re and they cease to affect us. ally enters into the scene, she recoils, awed and terrified with the contemplation of such sufferings. Very few men would have nerve enough to witness what the Redeemer was willing to endure. Life was slow in relinquishing its hold, attacked thus, as it was, in the remote extremities. It sunk at last, however, under the power of protracted pain. The sufferer ceased to speak; his head dropped upon his breast; and as they looked up to his face from below, the rigid fixedness of feature, and the half closed and glassy eye told them that all was over. In crucifixion, ingenious and savage cruelty maintains her ground to the very last; for when the executioner gets tired of waiting for the miserable sufferer to die, and time compels him to do something to accelerate the work, he has not the mercy to destroy the sad remnant of vitality at a blow. He keeps, still, as far as possible away from the seat of life, and by new violence inflicted on the limbs, endeavors simply to send a new pang, as a reinforcement to the assailant, in the protracted contest between life and suffering. It is the very object and aim of crucifixion to kill by pain, and with savage consistency they will employ no other agent to speed the work. Accordingly when, at sunset, the soldiers came to the place of execution to see how the fatal process was going on, they broke the malefactors' legs to quicken their dying struggles "He is dead already," said they, when they came to the Savior's cross, and looked at the body hanging passive and lifeless upon it, and one of them thrust his long iron-pointed spear up into his side, to prove that there was no sense or feeling there. The ferocious executioners then went away and left the disciples to take the body gently down, and bear it The disciples. Moral effect of the scene. away to the tomb. As they carried it to what they supposed would be its long home, the limbs hung relaxed and passive; the tongue, to whose words of kindness and instruction they had so often listened, was silent; the eye fixed,— the cheek pale,— the hand cold. The soldiers had done their work effectually; and though the disciples could not have noticed these proofs that their Master had really gone, without tears, they must still have rejoiced that the poor sufferer's agonies were over. As to themselves, all their hopes were blasted, and all their plans destroyed. They had firmly believed that their Master was to have been the Savior of his nation; instead of that, he had been himself destroyed. The day before, every thing had looked bright and promising in their prospects; but this sudden storm had come on, and in twenty-four hours, it had swept every thing away. They placed the body in the tomb, and, disappointed, broken-hearted, and overwhelmed with sorrow, they went to their homes. They knew nothing about the design and nature of these sufferings, and we know, after all, but little; but who can be so insensible as not to see, that this transaction, exhibiting on so conspicuous a stage all the forms and degrees both of holiness and sin, and especially when seen in the light in which the sacred writers subsequently exhibited it, goes very far towards making the same moral impression, as would be made by the just punishment of sin. Who can read the story, without loving purity and holiness, and abhorring and dreading guilt. 22* "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.' WERE we to follow inclination, we should not pass over those most interesting events, which occurred during the interval between the Savior's death and ascension. But it is not the design of this work, as the reader will have already perceived, to give a connected and continuous history of Jesus Christ, but to bring forward the leading principles of religious truth, as they are naturally connected with the various points of this history. Fidelity to our plan therefore seems to require, that after having considered the sufferings which our Savior endured for us, we should pass on to the consideration of the great work which he wishes us now to do for him. He assigned this work to his disciples by his last words The objects and the pursuits of human life are entirely changed, by the view which the gospel takes of the hu-' man condition and character. Without the light which Christianity sheds upon it, it is a dull and wearisome path, a routine of tiresome duties, or heartless pleasures. Every one will admit that it has been so with him, in respect to the past, though his future way seems gilded with new promises of enjoyment. These however will certainly fade away when he approaches them, as all the rest have done. The mass of mankind, never see this. They know, it is true, that they have never been contented and happy, and are not now; but just before them, in the voyage of life, they see a bright spot upon the waters, which they expect soon to reach, and where their bark will What have I to live for The work of a Christian. float, they think, in a golden sea of light and glory. That spot has been just so far before them, and has looked just as bright and alluring for years, and as they have approached it, the splendid reflection has fled, and the waters have returned to darkness and gloom, before the keel of their bark could plough them. Still they have not discovered this illusion, but they give themselves up to its influence, with their whole souls, and press forward as eagerly to the spot of imagined happiness, as if it had just this moment burst upon their view. The more thinking and serious, however, see this, and feel it deeply. It seems to them discouraging to toil on in duties, which return every day the same, and the performance of which leaves behind no permanent effects; or to seek for pleasures, which the experience of years has proved can seldom be attained, and which, when they are attained, do not satisfy. These feelings have oppressed many a sensitive and reflecting spirit, as it has looked forward to the years of life that remain, and thought how soon they would be gone, and has asked with a desponding sigh, "What have I to live for?" The true followers of Jesus Christ are raised at once above the vacuity and inanity which characterize a life spent without God. Their Master did not leave the world, without giving them something to do. Something, at once pleasant, and useful, and ennobling. It is pleasant, because it interests all the feelings of the heart, and carries the soul on to peaceful, but rich enjoyments, of the very highest character. It is useful; it seeks directly the highest good, aiming at happiness present and future, and attaching its own proper share of importance to every means of attaining it. It is ennobling; for it sinks all the base passions of selfishness and sin, it breaks over the barriers and limits of time and sense, and expands the views and widens the field of effort and by |