There have been many who have found the reason for St. John's wonder in the fact that out of the wounded side there flowed blood and water.
From a corpse, when it is pierced--at least, if it has been some time dead--it is not usual for anything to flow. But whether St. John reflected on this or not we cannot tell. What fascinated him was simply the fact that the piercing of the body of the Saviour made it a fountain out of which sprang this double outflow. When the rock in the wilderness was smitten with the rod of Moses, there issued from it a stream which was life to the perishing multitude; but in the double stream coming from the side of Jesus St. John saw something better even than that; because to him the blood symbolized the atonement, and the water the Spirit of Christ; and in these two all our salvation lies.[5] So we sing in the most precious of all our hymns,--
Let the water and the blood From Thy living side which flowed Be of sin the double cure-- Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
Although, however, St. John did not perhaps speculate on the reason why this double outflow took place from the wounded side, others have occupied themselves with the question.
Some[6] have considered the phenomenon altogether abnormal, and endeavoured to explain it from the peculiarity of our Lord's humanity. Though He died. He was not, like other men, to see corruption; His body was to escape in a few hours, transfigured and glorious, from the grasp of death. This transforming process, which issued in His resurrection, began as soon as He was dead; and the spear-thrust, breaking in on it, so to speak, revealed something altogether unique in the constitution of His body.
Others, keeping within the limits of ascertained fact, have given a totally different yet a peculiarly interesting explanation. They have directed attention to the suddenness of Christ's death. It was usual for crucified persons to linger for days; but He did not survive more than six hours. Yet immediately before dying He again and again cried with a loud voice, as if His bodily force were by no means exhausted. Suddenly, however, with a loud cry His life terminated. To what could this be due? It is said that sometimes, under the pressure of intense mental and physical agony, the heart bursts; there is a shriek, and of course death is instantaneous. We speak of people dying of a broken heart--using the phrase only figuratively--but sometimes it can be used literally: the heart is actually ruptured with grief. Now, it is said that, when this takes place, the blood contained in the heart is poured into a sac by which it is surrounded; and there it separates into two substances--a clotty substance of the colour of blood and a pure, colourless substance like water. And, if the sac, when in this condition, were pierced by a spear or any other instrument, there would flow out a large quantity of both substances, which would by an unscientific spectator be described as blood and water.
It was by an English medical man that this theory was first propounded fifty years ago,[7] and it has been adopted by other medical men, equally famous for their scientific eminence and Christian character, such as the late Professor Begbie and Sir James Simpson. The latter well brings out the point and the pathos of this view of the Saviour's death in these words:[8] "It has always appeared--to my medical mind at least--that this view of the mode by which death was produced in the human body of Christ intensifies all our thoughts and ideas regarding the immensity of the sacrifice which He made for our sinful race upon the cross. Nothing can be more striking and startling than the passiveness with which, for our sakes, God as man submitted His incarnate body to the horrors and tortures of the crucifixion. But our wonderment at the stupendous sacrifice increases when we reflect that, whilst thus enduring for our sins the most cruel and agonising form of corporeal death, He was ultimately slain, not by the effects of the anguish of His corporeal frame, but by the effects of the mightier anguish of His mind; the fleshly walls of His heart--like the veil, as it were, in the temple of His body--becoming rent and riven, as for us He poured out His soul unto death--the travail of His soul in that awful hour thus standing out as unspeakably more bitter and dreadful than even the travail of His body."