DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

As we review the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus, I hope you will bear in mind that I am not arguing either for or against the question of the resurrection or the future life of the human soul, but am only treating certain alleged historical facts.

In the legendary story of Jesus, we are told that it grew dark at noon on the day of his crucifixion. If we may not accept this as literal fact, we may at least take it as a beautiful and appropriate poetic setting-forth of that which was real in his life. His life grew dark before it was noon: before the sun was at its zenith, it was suddenly eclipsed.

"This star

Rose... through a little arc

Of heaven, nor having wandered far,

Shot on a sudden into dark."

Last Sunday we noticed the gathering of the clouds of suspicion, hatred, and jealousy around him; and now we are to see him passing under the fringes of this tempest that is so soon to burst with fatal stroke upon his head.

The Jews were accustomed to keep the Passover on Thursday evening, on the fourteenth day of their month Nisan. This festival seems to have been made up of mingled elements, some of the customs and practices being drawn from an original nature-worship, and a part from the later worship

of Jehovah. In any case, at the time we are considering, a family or a group of friends was accustomed to gather on this evening, and to eat a lamb roasted whole, with dried fruits and bitter herbs, in celebration of their deliverance from the bondage of Egypt. Whether they were originally attached to them or not, they had come to look upon each one of the particular parts of the ceremony as having some special and peculiar significance. Jesus, then, and his disciples,- being a Jew as he was,- were gathered in an upper chamber in Jerusalem, in the house of some secret or open friend; and he sat down with them to keep this Jewish feast of the Passover. He seems to have been shadowed already with a premonition of the coming disaster; for we find him talking in mysterious sentences concerning the death which he was to suffer. It is hardly possible for us to tell now, with the records we have at hand, as to whether Jesus really felt certain that he was to die, or whether he did not expect some supernatural deliverance, even at the last moment; for one of our authorities tells us that he spoke of his being able, if he would, to command more than twelve legions of angels to come to his defence and rescue. And then that last pathetic cry of his upon the cross My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!"— will at least bear an interpretation of disappointment, as though he expected a deliverance that, at the last moment, did not come. We will not dogmatically decide that this is the meaning, for it may have another. And yet there are some serious difficulties in believing that Jesus told his disciples, in plain terms, that he was coming again; for we find, after his death, that they are utterly crushed, broken, and scattered. They either did not understand that he was to die, or else they did not believe his word,— that he would reappear once more.

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So much, at any rate, seems plain. Jesus, then, sits with his

disciples, and eats the Jewish feast of the Passover. And, when the supper is ended,—that is, the formal part of the supper, he takes a loaf of bread and breaks it, and distributes it to the disciples, and says, "Take, eat: this is my body." And he takes a cup of red wine, such as they were always accustomed to drink, and passes it to them, saying: "This is my blood which is shed for many. Do this in remembrance of me; for I will not drink with you again until I do it anew in the coming kingdom of God." This naturally symbolic way of asking them to remember him is beautiful and pathetic. And yet to what a cruel engine of oppression and outrage has it grown in the history of the Church. All through medieval Christianity it was made the engine of excominunication and torture, so that men feared it more than they did death itself; because the Church had built up the fable that the priests who were able to turn the bread and wine into the veritable body and blood of God had also the power, by preventing the communicant from partaking of these mysterious emblems, to ensure his everlasting torture in the future world. We cannot believe that Jesus had the slightest idea that this was to become an established rite or sacrament in perpetuity in the Church. For does not Jesus himself say over and over again that this coming kingdom is to appear miraculously in the heavens before the people that were about him were all dead? He had no idea then of any unrolling future of the Church, such as we have seen during the last 1800 years, and of this being wrought into a perpetual and elaborate ritual.

Either while he is at this supper or very soon after, Judas, one of the twelve, mysteriously disappears from their number, and leaves only the eleven disciples. After singing together a hymn,—as the translation has it, or the Psalms from the one hundred and fifteenth to the one hundred and eigh

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teenth, as was customary at the close of this supper,- Jesus and his disciples leave the upper chamber toward midnight, go out of the city in the darkness across the little brook Kedron, which ran through the valley that separated the mountain on which Jerusalem stood from the Mount of Olives, and here seek seclusion, a place for meditation and prayer, in an olive grove near the foot of the mountain, in a place called, from an oil-press" which was near by, Gethsemane. Here his soul was weighted and troubled, and he passes through an agony of conflict. Divining without any doubt the purpose of the absence of Judas, his soul for the last time goes through that tremendous struggle as to whether he shall face his fate manfully or save his life by flight. It must be decided at once, for now the crisis hastens on apace. Are we to think for a moment that there was any less bravery in the soul of Jesus because he shrank and flushed with life and power as he was from a speedy and ignominious death? Rather, to my mind, does his courage seem to tower above many of those who have met death without one sign of flinching or reluctance. Insensibility is not bravery. The highest courage is that which feels what death means, which shrinks from it in every quivering fibre of the thrilling life, and which yet, for principle, dares to walk on and meet it. Are you not afraid?" said a young and boastful officer to an older companion whose face was blanched and pale as they stood in the midst of the thick falling shot of the battle-field. “Yes,” was the reply, “I am afraid; and, if you were one-half as fearful as I, you would flee." Courage does not mean any lack of shrinking: it means standing the ground bravely in spite of the shrinking.

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- young, and filled

While Jesus, then, was passing through this conflict, Judas is leading a part of the temple guard, which was under the control of the priests; and they come with their lanterns and

torches and weapons, enter the garden, and at a signal from Judas arrest the Nazarene. There is a momentary struggle, the drawing of a sword on the part of one of the disciples; but Jesus, whose weapons were “not of this world,” bids him put it up again, and quietly submits to his fate. Now, then, he is led away alone. One of the disciples has betrayed him, one of them is soon stoutly to deny him with an oath, and all have deserted him in his hour of trial. He is led away at midnight to the palace of Caiaphas, the high priest; and the fragments of the Sanhedrin, such as they could gather at this unseasonable hour, are summoned for the purpose of condemning him. For his condemnation was a foregone conclusion; and whether they had witnesses and evidence or not was of slight account. For, when an ecclesiastical court has decided to put a disturber out of the way, it does not look very far for witnesses or evidence. But they are not able to put him to death without the consent of the Roman power; for Cæsar had taken away from them this prerogative. So they must wait until morning; and then they go to the Pretorium, the great palace of Herod, now occupied by Pilate. For Pilate, although he lived at Cesarea a great part of the time, was accustomed to come to Jerusalem with his Roman soldiers during the feast, to keep the people quiet; lest there should be a popular uprising. They took him then to Pilate; and here, in an open court, on a pavement called in the Hebrew, Gabbatha, Jesus the culprit is brought before the man on whose word hangs his life or his death. Pilate seems disposed to let him go. He would naturally look with a sort of contempt upon these religious quarrels among people with whom he had no sympathy, and he evidently regarded Jesus only as a simple, good-natured enthusiast; and he proposes to the people that, as it was the custom on this day of the feast to set free some one who was