cohort passed by before Him, each one kneeling as he passed, and mingling some word or act of insult with his mock obeisance.

No sooner was this derisive exhibition concluded than Pilate led Jesus forth, wearing the mimic insignia of royalty, for his last appeal to the people. We have seen with what result.5 He was brought back only to be stripped of the scarlet cloak, and led forth to die.

Stanley,

Where the Via Dolorosa or "Way of the Cross " began we may conjecture with confidence, for the site of the Prætorium, from which it led, has been fixed; but where it ended, is wrapped in obscurity. Tradition, however, has not hesitated to mark out Joseph. the whole route. Particular spots connected with Wars, v. 5.8. certain events—some recorded in Scripture, some Sin. and not-are pointed out to the traveller; and many a 459, 460. pilgrim, believing that he was literally treading in the footsteps of our Blessed Lord, has gone barefoot from the beginning to the end. But the path which those holy feet really trod on that terrible day is buried, and everything associated with it, deep beneath that which now meets the eye.

The scene of the Crucifixion was called by the Evangelists, in Aramaic, Golgotha, in Latin, Calvary, and, as interpreted, the "place of a skull." Familiar

Palest.

illustrations, in which skulls and bones lie whitening on the ground, have led us to look upon it as especially associated with the dead. But we would notice that it is not called the place of skulls, but of a skull. It was not the custom of the Jews to leave bodies unburied; and we may be quite sure that a wealthy man, like Joseph of Arimathæa, would not have fixed his garden or pleasure-ground in close proximity to any spot ceremonially unclean. Golgotha was simply a rounded knoll, bare perhaps of Heb. xiii. 12. trees and grass, in shape like a skull, lying beyond S. John the gate in the suburbs of the city.

xix. 20.

But whatever the road may have been by which Jesus went to the scene of His death, we know that those who led Him out compelled Him to carry the instrument of His execution on His Own shoulders. Christian Art has misled us in its representation of what it was that He carried. It was then the usual custom in cases of crucifixion to make the condemned criminal bear to the place of execution, not the whole cross-this in the majority of cases after the exhaustion produced by the scourging which preceded, would have been physically impossible-but only the two transverse beams. They were tied or Plautus, lightly nailed together in the shape of the letter V, Casina, ii. vi. 37, viii. 2. and placed like a yoke on the criminal's neck.

Crucifixion was borrowed, we must remember, from the Romans, and the Roman convict certainly so carried them, as we may gather from the name which he received in consequence, furcifer-"fork- Plautus, bearer "7-the most contemptible designation which passim. a Roman could receive.

8

vi. 9.

Now we are told that for some reason or other, the soldiers "pressed into the service one Simon, to help to bear the burden. He who was thus honoured above all men-who alone was permitted to lend any human aid to the Great Sufferer in that awful hour-was one of the African Jews, of whom Acts ii. 10; there were sufficient in Jerusalem to have a synagogue of their own. He was returning from his work in the field with his two boys, Alexander and Rufus, when he was rudely seized and compelled to aid in bearing the Cross. In all probability he manifested some sympathy for Jesus, which drew attention to him; and there is a most touching representation of this feeling in one of a series of well-known pictures in Antwerp Cathedral. sooner have they arrived at the place of execution than Simon, having done all that lay in his power, and seeing that they are about to nail Jesus to the Cross, unable any longer to endure the sight, takes his frightened boys by the hand and hurries them

No

from the spot; and theirs are the only faces which, in that vast crowd on Golgotha, are turned away from the Cross.

And now we come to the point where, we think, the teaching of Christian Art is at fault. Knowing how much sacred painting has done in bringing the Life of our Lord home to the hearts of men, remembering too out of our own experience the lasting, the ineffaceable impression which certain pictures have made upon the mind, we almost hesitate to say a word in disparagement; but it does seem that in one important point the great painters who have treated the subject have missed the truth. It all turns upon the reason why Simon was compelled to bear the Cross. Was it because our Lord was unable to bear it Himself, because, in short, He fell, as a late tradition says, three times prostrate beneath its weight? or was it only because the soldiers were impatient, and though Jesus was Himself equal to the burden they had laid upon Him, they thought it would expedite matters to call in the assistance of another? Men have learned to believe the first, but, in our judgment, erroneously.9 Christ taught mankind by example almost more than by precept. Many of His great acts were, so to speak, typical, and the way in which He bore

His Cross was to be an example and encouragement to those whom He told again and again to take up their cross and follow Him.

Now if He had succumbed to the burden and sunk helpless to the ground, the example would have lost more than half its force.

Christian Art, though probably it would have excited less compassion for the Sufferer, would have taught a truer and deeper lesson, if it had embodied the sentiment which prevailed in the earliest ages of the Church, when, under a profound sense of His all-sufficient power, men held that from the moment that the Cross was laid upon His shoulders till it was removed by other hands, He never proved unequal to the burden He was called on to bear.

xiv. 27.

But though the lesson we ought to draw from this is that the faithful Christian must never lay down his cross, too many of us need to be reminded that it is incumbent upon us all to take it up. "Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after Me, cannot be My S. Luke disciple." He does not say will not, but cannot be. It is as much an impossibility that we should be recognised as Christ's servants without discipline and self-denial, as that any man shall be able without holiness to gaze upon the Beatific Vision hereafter. We are all from our very birth apt and prone to sin;