or

limpid serum, 99 "blood and water -as is seen in blood when collected out of the body in a cup or basin in the operation of common bloodletting.

V. No medical jurist would, in a court of law, venture to assert, from the mere symptoms preceding death, that a person had certainly died of rupture of the heart. To obtain positive proof that rupture of the heart was the cause of death, a post-mortem examination of the chest would be necessary. In ancient times, such dissections were not practised. But the details left regarding Christ's death are most strikingly peculiar in this respect, that they offer us the result of a very rude dissection, as it were, by the gash* made in His side after death by the thrust of the Roman soldier's spear. The effect of that wounding or piercing of the side was an escape of "blood and water,” visible to the Apostle John, standing some distance off; and I do not believe that any thing could possibly account for this appearance, as described by that Apostle, except a collection of blood effused into the distended sac of the pericardium in consequence of rupture of the heart, and afterward separated, as is usual with extravasated blood into those two parts, viz. (1), crassamentum, or red clot, and (2) watery serum. The subsequent puncture from below of the distended pericardial sac would most certainly, under such circumstances, lead to the immediate ejection and escape of its sanguineous contents in the form of red clots of blood and a stream of watery serum, exactly corresponding to that description given in the sacred narrative, "and forthwith came there out blood and water"—an appearance which no other natural event or mode of death can explain or account for.

VI. Mental emotions and passions are well known by all to affect the actions of the heart in the way of palpita

Its size may be inferred from the Apostle Thomas being asked to thrust not his "finger," but his "hand" into it.—John xx.

tion, fainting, etc. That these emotions and passions, when in overwhelming excess, occasionally, though rarely, produce laceration or rupture of the walls of the heart, is stated by most medical authorities, who have written on the affections of this organ; and our poets even allude to this effect as an established fact

"The grief that does not speak

Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break."

But if ever a human heart was riven and ruptured by the mere amount of mental agony that was endured, it would surely—we might even argue a priori—be that of our Redeemer, when, during these dark and dreadful hours on the cross, He, being made a curse for us,' """ bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows," and suffered for sin, the malediction of God and man, "full of anguish," and now 66 exceeding sorrowful even unto death."

There are theological as well as medical arguments in favor of the opinion that Christ in reality died from a ruptured or broken heart. You know them infinitely better than I do. But let me merely observe that—

VII. If the various wondrous prophecies and minute predictions in Psalms xxii. and lxix., regarding the circumstances connected with Christ's death, be justly held as literally true, such as, "They pierced my hands and my feet," "They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture," etc., why should we regard as merely metaphorical, and not as literally true also, the declarations in the same Psalms, "Reproach hath broken my heart," "My heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels?" And

VIII. Death by mere crucifixion was not a form of death in which there was much, if indeed any, shedding of blood. Punctured wounds do not generally bleed; and the nails, besides being driven through parts that were not provided with large blood-vessels, necessarily remain plugging up

the openings made by their passage. The whole language and types of Scriptures, however, involve the idea that the atonement for our sins was obtained by the blood of Christ shed for us during His death on the cross. "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." This shedding, however, was assuredly done in the fullest possible sense, under the view that the immediate cause of His dissolution was rupture of the heart, and the consequent fatal escape of His heart and life-blood from the central cistern of the circulation.

It has always appeared-to my medical mind at leastthat this view of the mode by which death was produced in the human body of Christ intensifies all our thoughts and ideas regarding the immensity of the astounding sacrifice which He made for our sinful race upon the cross. Nothing can possibly be more striking and startling than the appalling and terrible passiveness. with which God as man submitted, for our sakes, His incarnate body to all the horrors and tortures of the crucifixion. But our wonderment at the stupendous sacrifice only increases when we reflect that, while thus enduring for our sins the most cruel and agonizing form of corporeal death, He was ultimately "slain," not by the effects of the anguish of His corporeal frame, but by the effects of the mightier anguish of His mind; the fleshy walls of His heart-like the veil, as it were, in the temple of His human body-becoming rent. and riven, as for us "He poured out His soul unto death;" -"the travail of His soul" in that awful hour thus standing out as unspeakably bitterer and more dreadful than even the travail of His body.

Believe me, my dear Dr. Hanna,

Ever sincerely yours,

J. Y. SIMPSON, M. D.

EDINBURGH, May 1 1862.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

WHATEVER faults may justly be attributed to the following treatise, crudeness and precipitation will scarcely be among their number; for, since its original conception first occurred to the author, more than a quarter of a century has elapsed, during the greater part of which period it has often been the subject of his thoughts, and not unfrequently of his conversation and correspondence.

Its chief object is to demonstrate an important physical fact connected with the death of Christ, and to point out its relation to the principles and practice of Christianity; but, although the subjects discussed and the conclusions deduced from them are, it is hoped, of no inconsiderable value in a devotional point of view, the treatise itself is rather argumentative than sentimental, and more concerned with the foundation of evangelical religion than with its superstructure. The fact is not indeed now announced for the first time, having been more or less correctly anticipated by several pious and excellent writers during the last century; but, as, in matters of such solemn import, conjecture and probability are not a sufficient ground for conviction, the author has labored to supply a