' R. F. Horton.
ST. MARK 465
should have been no one to befriend Him in His day of sorest need, no one to spare Him a single indignity, no one to bear His cross for Him, even for a little, but this Simon who had to be compelled.
^ Where was that other Simon ? Had he not said, " I will go with thee both into prison and to death " ? This man's name was Simon. What a silent and yet strong rebuke this must have been to him, " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me ? " Another Simon took thy place at the last hour I Where was the beloved disciple ? Where were they all ? Holy women were gathering round, but where were the men ? Sometimes the Lord's servants are backward where they are expected to be forward, and He finds others to take their place. If this has ever happened to us it ought gently to rebuke us as long as we live. We learn this lesson from the Cyrenian, Keep your place, and let not another Simon occupy it. It is said of Judas, " his bishopric shall another take," but a true disciple will retain his own office.^
IL
Cheist the Sin-beaeer.
i. The Way of the Cross.
1. "Jesus went out, bearing the cross for himself" (John xix. 17). One special indignity connected with the punishment of crucifixion was that the condemned man had to carry on his back through the streets the cross upon which he was about to suffer. In pictures the cross of Jesus is generally represented as a lofty structure, such as a number of men would have been needed to carry ; but the reality was something totally different. A soldier was able to reach up to the lips of Christ on the cross with a sponge on a reed. It was not much above the height of a man, and there was just enough wood to support the body. But the weight was considerable, and to carry it on the back which had been torn with scourging must have been excessively painful. Another source of intense pain was the crown of thorns, if, indeed. He still wore it. We are told that before the procession set out towards Golgotha the robes of mockery were taken off and His own garments put on ; but it is not said
' 0. H, Spurgeon. ST. MARK — 30
466 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
that the crown of thorns was removed. Most cruel of all, how- ever, was the shame. There was a kind of savage irony in making the man carry the implement on which he was to suffer ; and, in point of fact, throughout classical literature this mode of punishment is a constant theme of savage banter and derision.
2. There is evidence that the imagination of Jesus had occupied itself specially beforehand with this portion of His sufferings. Long before the end He had predicted the kind of death He should die ; but even before these predictions had commenced He had described the sacrifices which would have to be made by those who became His disciples as cross-bearing — as if this were the last extreme of suffering and indignity. Did He so call it simply because His knowledge of the world informed Him of this as one of the greatest indignities of human life ? Or was it the foreknowledge that He Himself was to be one day in this position that coloured His language ? We can hardly doubt that the latter was the case. And now the hour on which His imagination had dwelt was come, and in weakness and help- lessness He had to bear the cross in the sight of thousands who regarded Him with scorn.
^ To a noble spirit there is no trial more severe than shame — to be the object of cruel mirth and insolent triumph. Jesus had the lofty and refined self-consciousness of one who never once had needed to cringe or stoop. He loved and honoured men too much not to wish to be loved and honoured by them ; He had enjoyed days of unbounded popularity, but now His soul was filled with reproach to the uttermost ; and He could have appropriated the words of the Psalm, " I am a worm and no man ; a reproach of men and despised of the people." The reproach of Christ is all turned into glory now ; and it is very difficult to realise how abject the reality was. Nothing perhaps brings this out so well as the fact that two robbers were sent away to be executed with Him. This has been regarded as a special insult offered to the Jews by Pilate, who wished to show how contemptuously he could treat One whom he affected to believe their king. But more likely it is an indication of how little more Christ was to the Eoman officials than any one of the prisoners whom they put through their hands day by day.^ And so Jesus, in company with the two robbers, issued from the gates of the palace and passed along the Via Dolorosa.
» J. Stalker.
ST. MARK 467
% The traditional scene of Christ's death, over which the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is built, is inside the present walls, but it seems to have been ascertained that the present Church is beyond the second of the ancient walls. The whole question is still sub jvdice. It is quite uncertain outside which gate of the city the execution took place. The name Calvary, or Golgotha, possibly indicates that the spot was a skull-like knoll ; but there is no reason to think that it was a hill of the size supposed by designating it Mount Calvary. Indeed, there is no hill near any gate corresponding to the image in the popular imagination. In modern Jerusalem there is a street pointed out as the veritable Via Dolorosa along which the procession passed; but this also is more than doubtful. Like ancient Eome, ancient Jerusalem is buried beneath the rubbish of centuries. From the scene of the trial to the supposed site of the execution is nearly a mile. And it is quite possible that Jesus may have had to travel as far or farther, while an ever-increasing multitude of spectators gathered round the advancing procession.^