three or four feet long. Hengstenberg gives evidence from Talmudic writers that the hyssop was among the branches used at the feast of tabernacles, and that its stalk was an ell long. Like many other questions of Bible natural history, the point must probably be left obscure. Some see deep meaning in the mention of hyssop, as the plant used in the ceremonial sprink- lings of the law of Moses. (See Heb. ix. 19.) Hyssop, more- over, was used at the passover in sprinkling the door posts with blood. (Exod. xii. 22.) Yet the allusion, to say the least, seems doubtful, nor is it quite clear how any typical meaning can be got out of the mention of the plant in this place.
It is very noteworthy that even in the roughest, hardest kind of men, like these heathen soldiers, there is sometimes a ten- der and compassionate spot in the breast. According to Mat- thew's account the cry, " I thirst," must have followed soon after the cry, " My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me." This exhibition of great mental and bodily agony combined, in my opinion, touched the feelings of the soldiers, and one of them at least ran to give our Lord vinegar. We should remem- ber this in dealing with men. Even the worst have often a soft place, if we can find it out, in their inward nature.
Cyril maintains strongly, I must admit, that the act of the soldiers in giving our Lord the sponge full of vinegar, was not an act of kindness, but of mockery and insult, I cannot how- ever, agree with him. He does not appear to distinguish be- tween the first drink which our Lord refused at the beginning of His crucifixion, and the last which He accepted ; but speaks of them as one and the same. Theophylact agrees with Cyril.
80. — [When Jesus therefore... finished.'] Our Lord having now given plain proof that He had endured intense bodily suffering, and that like any other human sufferer He could appreciate a slight relief of thirst, such as the vinegar afforded, proceeded to utter one of His last and most solemn sayings : " It is fin- ished."
This remarkable expression, in the Greek, is one single word in a perfect tense, " It has been completed." It stands here in ' majestic simplicity, without note or comment from St. John, and we are left entirely to conjecture what the full meaning of it is. For eighteen hundred years Christians have explained it as they best can, and some portion of its meaning in all likelihood has been discovered. Yet it is far from unlikely that such a word spoken on such an occasion, by such a person, at such a mo- ment, just before death, contains depths which no one has ever completely fathomed. Some meanings there are, which no one perhaps will dispute, belonging to this grand expression, which I will briefiy mention. No one single meaning, we may be sure, exhausts the whole phrase. It is rich, full, and replete with deep truths.
{a) Our Lord meant that His great work of redemption was