LXXVI.

"He gave up the Ghost."

S. MARK XV. 33-38.

33. And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI? which is, being interpreted, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? 35. And some of them that stood by, when they heard it,

said, Behold, He calleth Elias. 36. And one ran and filled a spunge full of vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave Him to drink, saying, Let alone; let us see whether Elias will come to take Him down.

37. And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. 38. And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.

AT this point a manifest change seems to pass over the scene of the Crucifixion. Up to this hour Jesus has borne all that was laid upon Him without a murmur or complaint of any kind; His only thoughts have been for others-for His murderers, for the penitent robber, for His desolate mother; and so far not a word of sympathy has been uttered. Cyril. Alex. But now the climax of the Agony is reached, and where the voice of man is silent, Nature speaks.

in Luc.

Serm. cliii.

Darkness fell upon the whole land1 of Judæa.

It was doubtless limited in its area, not widely dissimilar from that which happened at the Exodus,

Euseb.

Chronic.

S. Chrysos.

Matt.

when there was a darkness in all the land of Ex. x. 22, 23. Egypt three days," while all "the children of Israel had light in their dwellings." It is true that a great earthquake and noonday eclipse 2 did occur in loco. Pliny, Nat. in this year, as we learn from the testimony of more Hist. ii. 30. than one ancient writer, but the extinction of light Hom. in of which the Evangelists write cannot be scienti- lxxxviii. fically accounted for on natural principles. And Bayle'sDict., surely if a miraculous brightness had illumined the night to signalise the birth of God Incarnate, we S. Luke ii. 9. need not wonder that the heavens should have gathered a supernatural blackness in token of His death.

"Phlegon."

Now it was out of this thick gloom, or perhaps just as the light broke out again to symbolise that His struggle with the powers of darkness was over, that He uttered that most mysterious cry, "My God, My God, why didst Thou forsake Me?" A cloud had passed between His human soul and His Father's face: He had been driven like the scape- Lev. xvi. goat bearing the people's sins into the very wilderness of desolation. It was a cry of immeasurable alienation, but in its very accents it implied that union had been restored. "Even from the remotest

21, 22.

Mal. iv. 5.

S. John

xix. 28.

bound of a nature thus traversed in all the measures of its infirmity for man's salvation, the Saviour cried unto God as His God, yea and He was heard in that He feared.'"

Whether the language He used was the Hebrew "Eli" or the Aramaic "Eloi,"3 there was something in the cry that recalled to the spectators the name of Elijah. If they were Jews, it may have been that in their bewilderment they caught only the first syllable, and with their superstitious fears quickened by the preternatural darkness, thought that "the great and dreadful day" was at hand.

If, on the other hand, they were Romans, they must have seen how the people regarded Elijah, the patron saint of the distressed, and lived in expectation that he would appear in every crisis of difficulty and danger. It was not unnatural then that they hastened to the conclusion that the Crucified was calling for His deliverer.

While they were waiting another cry was heard, "I thirst;" and, moved to pity, one of the soldiers took the sponge from the neck of the earthen jar, and, dipping it in the wine, which they had provided for the sentry, held it on a reed or stalk of hyssop to His dying lips. The penalty of sin had been fully paid, its curse had been borne in all its

intolerable weight, death was imminent, and He accepted the draught.

Then followed the loud voice-an unwonted precursor of death, for Jesus died as none other died, and that cry was the last proof He could give of His power-the fulfilment of His Own declaration,

no man taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down S. John of Myself."

X. 17, 18.

Symbolik,

Exod. xxv.

Heb. vii. 8.

At that moment "the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom." The significance of this occurrence is full of interest, and worthy of the closest consideration. The whole. structure of the Tabernacle, upon which the Temple Bähr's was modelled, was one of a complex and profound passim. symbolism, such as befitted a plan drawn by no; xxvi. 30. human architect, but revealed by God. It was divided into three parts,-an Outer Court, the Holy Place, the Holy of Holies. The whole congregation of Israel were admitted into the first, the priests into the second, the High Priest alone into the third; and they represented in type respectively the World, the Church, and Heaven. Both the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies were entered through a veil or curtain called the outer and the inner, or sometimes the first and the second. Which of the two veils was it which was rent in twain, when Jesus gave

Orig. in
Matt. in loc.

S. Hieron.
ad Hedi-
biam.

Isa. xxv. 7.
Eph. ii. 14.
Gal. iii. 28.
S. Matt.
xxviii. 19.
S. Leo xvii.
Serm. de
Pass.

up the ghost? The early Fathers, with the exceptions of two of the greatest, Origen and S. Jerome, and nearly every modern commentator, have conIcluded that it was the inner or second veil. From this view we dissent 5 upon the following grounds: It is commonly assumed that the rent signified that henceforward heaven was opened to all believers through the death of Christ. But is this true? Was not the effect of the Passion the unsealing of mysteries confined before to the Jewish nation ? Was it not the breaking down of "the middle wall of partition" which excluded the Gentiles ? Was it not, in short, the throwing open of the gates of the Church, so that there should no longer be any distinction between circumcision and uncircumcision, bond and free, male and female? "In Christ Jesus," says the Apostle, "ye who were sometime afar off were made nigh by the blood of Christ." The Church was henceforward to be composed not of one but of all nations; it was necessary therefore that this should be foreshadowed in type. It could only be done by destroying the curtain which concealed the chamber that represented the Church, i.e. the Holy Place, not the Holy of Holies.

But if the second or inner veil was not rent at the Crucifixion, what change was effected in respect