the tessellated pavement, and said contemptuously to the

Jews:

"Behold, your King."

"Away, away with him. Crucify him."

"Shall I crucify your King?"

The chief priests answered:

"We have no king but Cæsar."

So when Pilate saw that he prevailed nothing, but rather that a tumult was rising, he called for water in a bason, and washed his hands before them all, saying:

"I am innocent of the blood of this just man; see ye to it."

And all the people answered and said:

"His blood be on us, and on our children."

Then Pilate, despite his fivefold exculpation, gave official sentence that what they asked for should be done. And he released unto them Barabbas, who for insurrection and murder had been cast into prison, but Jesus he delivered up to their will. 157

A Roman centurion with a detachment of the soldiers was commissioned to execute the sentence. They, after they had again mocked him, took off from him the purple robe, and put on him his own garments, and followed by the triumphant throng of adversaries, led him away to crucify him.

XXX

THE EXECUTION

RUCIFIXION was not a Jewish mode of execu

Even the first Herod, with all his cruelty

Aand aping of Rome, dared not resort to it. It

seems to have been of Phoenician origin; it was adopted by the Romans after the time of Julius Cæsar, and was abolished by Constantine. It prevailed in the provinces, where Roman rule was most severe and cruel, and its forms were ingeniously varied to prolong the life and increase the torture of the victim. Cicero pronounces it crudelissimum teterrimumque supplicium (Verr. 5: 64.) It could not be inflicted on a Roman citizen, but was a death of shame, as the gallows of to-day, reserved for slaves, robbers, rebels and outlaws. The successful appeal of the Jewish hierarchy to Roman power for the crucifixion of their King, and the invocation, His blood be on us, and on our children, came back in hundredfold echoes, forty years afterwards, at the Roman siege of Jerusalem, when so many, many thousands of Jews were crucified that the city was girdled by a forest of crosses.

Several forms of cross were in use. The principal ones were crux commissa T, or St. Anthony's cross; crux immissa, Latin +, Greek +; and crux decussata X, or St. Andrew's cross, as seen on the Labarum of Constantine. Of these the Latin cross, so familiar to-day, was doubtless the one used on the present occasion. The victim was always obliged to carry his cross himself to

the place of execution; for any other, even an executioner, to handle it dishonored him. Naked, he was bound or nailed to it; then he was lifted up, his weight being partly supported by a wooden pin, cornu, forming a seat, sedile, midway the upright beam; then amid the encouraged jeers and mockery of lookers-on, he was watched until exposure and suffering, lasting sometimes for two or three days, found relief in death. An instrument of greater disgrace and torture has hardly ever been invented. The word excruciating marks intensest pain. Christianity put an end to this hideous punishment, and the Cross has become the symbol of civilization and of progress, of peace and of love, human and divine.

"Crux fidelis, inter omnes

Arbor una nobilis !
Nulla talem sylva profert

Fronde, flore, germine;
Dulce lignum, dulces clavi,

Dulce pondus sustinens."

On that Friday morning, a little before nine o'clock, from the palace of Herod, the prætorium of Pilate, Jesus came forth bearing the cross for himself. He was attended by four Roman soldiers especially charged with the execution, and perhaps by others as a guard against rescue, or, what seemed more likely, mob violence on the way, all under command of a centurion named Longinus. He was followed by the hierarchy and people who had clamored for his death. The sad but most august procession passed beyond the first wall into the busy quarter Akra. Here the strength of Jesus failed, and he sank exhausted under his heavy burden. The Roman soldiers, disdaining a service that would have honored and ennobled the haughtiest Cæsar, arrested one Simon, a

Jew of Cyrene, who coming from the country into the city that paschal morning met the procession, and compelled him to bear the cross after Jesus. Him they assisted to rise, and partly supporting, led onward.158

As they were passing along Via Dolorosa the crowd of followers greatly increased. Among them were many women, who, grieved by the piteous sight, set up loud lamentations and wailing. To them Jesus turned, and said:

"Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For behold the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the breasts that never gave suck."

There is an early and pretty legend, that just then a woman named Veronica, moved with compassion, took off her linen kerchief from her head, and handed it to him, with which to wipe the blood and sweat from his face; and that, when he returned the kerchief, his likeness had become impressed upon it. It is added, that some years afterwards, the emperor Tiberius being sick, he sent for Veronica, touched the portrait, and was cured; that she bequeathed the kerchief to Clement, the successor of Peter; and that the precious relic is even yet in possession of the Church.

The procession moved along the Tyropcon valley northward through a gate in the second wall into the suburb Bezetha, new town, not then walled in, and reached a place directly north of the central point of the city, called The Skull, in Aramaic Golgotha, in Latin Calvary, which have the same meaning. No mount is there, no hill, only a slight knoll rounded like the upper part of a skull. It seems to have been the common place for public executions; for here, under like guard, two robbers also were brought to be likewise crucified.

It was now nine o'clock. The soldiers with their victims took possession of the rising ground, while the hierarchy and a multitude of people stood around about on the lower level, eager to see the execution. Then was offered to Jesus a cup of wine mingled with myrrh, an anesthetic to deaden pain, a stupefying draught, provided for sufferers in general by an association of women of Jerusalem.159

"Fill high the bowl, and spice it well, and pour
The dews oblivious; for the cross is sharp,

The cross is sharp, and he

Is tenderer than a lamb."

But when he had tasted it, and thus perceived what it was, he refused to drink it. Twelve hours before he had said, I shall no more, in this life, drink of the fruit of the vine. Moreover, he would not avoid nor diminish any of the sufferings in the sacrifice he was making of himself.

"Thou wilt feel all, that thou may'st pity all;

And rather wouldst thou wrestle with strong pain,
Than overcloud thy soul in agony,

Or lose one glimpse of heaven before the time."

The cross was laid upon the ground. Jesus was stripped of his garments, and required to lie down upon it, with his arms outstretched upon the cross-beam. One soldier held his hand in place, palm upward, while another hammered a nail or spike through it into the wood Then so with the other hand. Then so with the feet. Amid the sound of the hammering, the voice of Jesus was heard, praying:

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."