deserves no more attention than the many pretended pieces of the true cross, which are exhibited in Romish churches as sa- cred relics.
Ambrose says, quaintly enough, that the form of the cross is that of a sword with the point downward ; above is the hilt toward heaven, as if in the hand of God ; below is the point toward earth, as if thrust through the head of the old serpent the devil.
One thing only is very certain. Whatever was the shape of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, it could not have been the huge, tall, heavy thing which painters and sculptors have continually represented it to be. To suppose that any man could carry such an enormous weight of timber, as the cross is made to be in Rubens' famous picture of the " Descent from the Cross," is preposterous and absurd. A cross was mani- festly not a larger thing than could be lifted and borne on the shoulders of one person. Some get over the difficulty by main- tainiug the theory that the trsnsverse piece was the only part of the cross which the criminal carried. But there is no suifi- cient evidence that this was the case.
It is noteworthy that John is the only Evangelist who says that our Lord bore His own cross. Matthew, Mark and Luke, all say that Simon the Cyrenian was compelled to bear it. The explanation is probably this. Our Lord bore the cross for a short part of the way from the judgment-seat to Golgotha. Weakness and physical exhaustion, after all the mental and bodily suffering of the last night, rendered it impossible for Him to carry it all the way. Just at the moment when His strength failed, perhaps at the city gate, the soldiers saw Si- mon coming into the city, and pressed him into the service. As on other occasions, John records a fact which the other Evangelists for wise reasons passed over. It is interesting to remember that the circumstance is one which John must have Been in ail probability with his own eyes.
That our blessed Lord, who had a body like our own, and not a body of superhuman vigor, should have been unable to carry the cross more than a little way, need not surprise us at all, if we consider all that He had gone through to try His physical strength, and tax His nervous system to the utter- most, in the eighteen hours preceding His crucifixion.
It is hardly necessary to remark that the type of Isaac bear- ing the wood for the sacrifice on Moriah, in which he himself was to be the victim, was here fulfilled by our Lord. It is moreover a c&rious circumstance, mentioned by Bishop Pear- son, that a Jewish commentator on Gen. xxii. 6, speaks of Isaac carrying the wood for the burnt oflering, " as a man carries his cross upon his shoulders."
iWent forth.] That expression shows clearly that our Lord