ST. MARK 463
the Cyrenian to carry the cross of Christ for Him, is the same word as was borrowed from the old postal service of Persia. The Eomans, who too readily made their own any instrument of oppression which they foimd among foreign nations, were familiar with the word, which crept into their own language, and with it the custom which it represented. No more appropriate word could have been used. It is a most picturesque, and at the same time gives a most touching pathos to the occasion. It links this single act of tyranny with the whole gigantic system. The world has been familiar with forced labour from the earliest days. As far back as we can go in the sorrowful history of our race, we find the stronger tribes making slaves and beasts of burden of the weaker, and of those whom they conquered in war. The brick-making of the Israelites, under the intolerable cruelty of which they groaned and died, was not by any means the first oppression in Egypt. Ages before that, we find proofs of the reckless disregard of human life shown by the Pharaohs, com- pelling thousands, without wages or even food, to construct for them those enormous monuments, the ruins of which excite the astonishment of every traveller. Nor can any modern race lift up a stone against those ancient oppressors; for there is no nation that has not been guilty of similar practices. Our own country cannot plead guiltless to the charge. It brought upon America and upon the West Indies the curse of slavery, which could be removed only by a tremendous sacrifice of blood and treasure. Within the memory of this generation men have been carried away from their homes and pursuits, and forced into the naval service of our country by the ruthless press-gang. As the cross of Christ represented the sins of the whole world laid upon the Kedeemer, it may be said, therefore, that that cross, laid upon the unwilling shoulders of Simon the Cyrenian, represented all the oppressive burdens which man has laid upon his fellow-men. It was the Angareion of the world.^
3. We can imagine the feelings of shame and indignation and bitterness which must have filled Simon's heart. To have come all the way from Cyrene to worship in the Temple of his fathers, to refresh his faith by taking part in the great feast, to see the sights of which he might tell to his wife and children at home, to meet the friends whom he had not seen for years, and then to have come through such a bitter, degrading experience ! How could he go into the city now without feeling that every one was looking at him and saying, " There's the poor wretch
^ Hugh Macmillan.
464 THE CxREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
who carried the cross of the Nazarene ? " How could he go home with nothing to tell but this story of how he had been insulted and degraded and shamefully treated ? Such a thing could hardly have happened to him even in Cyrene, where the Jews had full Eoman rights ; and yet in Jerusalem, the joy of the whole earth, the city of the great King which he had so passionately longed to see, he had been treated like a criminal and an outcast, and branded before a crowd of fellow-countrymen with the mark of shame — the curse of the cross. If, as he read in his Bible, he was cursed of God who hung upon a tree — was not he too cursed upon whose shoulders the tree hung ? Had the soldiers branded him with a red-hot iron, as runaway slaves were treated, he could hardly have felt a deeper sense of degradation in man's sight, and in God's as well.
*|[ And yet for Simon we have no pity, we have only con- gratulation, almost envy. He who shared for a few minutes Christ's cross and its dishonour, has now an honoured name in the Church and throughout the world. His dishonour has changed into an honour which many a saint might covet. For these myrmidons of the Eoman government who knew not what they did, we have much compassion even to-day, for be they what they may, in whatsoever world, suppose them to be forgiven and redeemed in answer to the Saviour's prayer, yet they must pass for ever, as long as thought and memory last, as those who laid a sacrilegious hand upon the Saviour of the world, who spat in His face, and struck Him on the head, and bowed their knees to mock the Son of God ! ^
4. Simon had to be compelled to take up this burden for Jesus. "We might have wished this had not been neces- sary. We should have liked it to be at least one bright human touch in the otherwise dark picture of our Saviour's passion had Simon been so moved with pity, as he passed by, at the sight of Him struggling along under His heavy cross, that he had freely offered to bear it for Him. When we think of the Man of Sorrows on His dolorous way, of the brutal soldiery, with the ruthless mob hurrying Him to His awful death, and then of what He had been, and of all the good He had done — how He had borne the sins and sorrows of others, and lightened every man's burden but His own, it seems incredible that there