Here, where, if the Saviour did not actually sink under His burden, it yet required to be transferred to the Cyrenian, while Himself henceforth needed bodily support, we place the next incident in this history. [6063] While the Cross was laid on the unwilling Simon, the women who had followed with the populace closed around the Sufferer, raising their lamentations. [6064] At His Entrance into Jerusalem, [6065] Jesus had wept over the daughters of Jerusalem; as He left it for the last time, they wept over Him. But far different were the reasons for His tears from theirs of mere pity. And, if proof were required of His Divine strength, even in the utmost depth of His Human weakness - how, conquered, He was Conqueror - it would surely be found in the words in which He bade them turn their thoughts of pity where pity would be called for, even to themselves and their children in the near judgment upon Jerusalem. The time would come, when the Old Testament curse of barrenness [6066] would be coveted as a blessing. To show the fulfilment of this prophetic lament of Jesus, it is not necessary to recall the harrowing details recorded by Josephus, [6067] when a frenzied mother roasted her own child, and in the mockery of desperateness reserved the half of the horrible meal for those murderers who daily broke in upon her to rob her of what scanty food had been left her; nor yet other of those incidents, too revolting for needless repetition, which the historian of the last siege of Jerusalem chronicles. But how often, these many centuries, must Israel's women have felt that terrible longing for childlessness, and how often must the prayer of despair for the quick death of falling mountains and burying hills rather than prolonged torture [6068] have risen to the lips of Israel's sufferers! And yet, even so, these words were also prophetic of a still more terrible future! [6069] For, if Israel had put such flame to its green tree' how terribly would the Divine judgment burn among the dry wood of an apostate and rebellious people, that had so delivered up its Divine King, and pronounced sentence upon itself by pronouncing it upon Him!
And yet natural, and, in some respects, genuine, as were the tears of the daughters of Jerusalem,' mere sympathy with Christ almost involves guilt, since it implies a view of Him which is essentially the opposite of that which His claims demand. These tears were the emblem of that modern sentiment about the Christ which, in its effusiveness, offers insult rather than homage, and implies rejection rather than acknowledgment of Him. We shrink with horror from the assumption of a higher standpoint, implied in so much of the modern so-called criticism about the Christ. But even beyond this, all mere sentimentalism is here the outcome of unconsciousness of our real condition. When a sense of sin has been awakened in us, we shall mourn, not for what Christ has suffered, but for what He suffered for us. The effusiveness of mere sentiment is impertinence or folly: impertinence, if He was the Son of God; folly, if He was merely Man. And, even from quite another point of view, there is here a lesson to learn. It is the peculiarity of Romanism ever to present the Christ in His Human weakness. It is that of an extreme section on the opposite side, to view Him only in His Divinity. Be it ours ever to keep before us, and to worship as we remember it, that the Christ is the Saviour God-Man.
It was nine of the clock when the melancholy procession reached Golgotha, and the yet more melancholy preparations for the Crucifixion commenced. Avowedly, the punishment was invented to make death as painful and as lingering as the power of human endurance. First, the upright wood was planted in the ground. It was not high, and probably the Feet of the Sufferer were not above one or two feet from the ground. Thus could the communication described in the Gospels take place between Him and others; thus, also, might His Sacred Lips be moistened with the sponge attached to a short stalk of hyssop. Next, the transverse wood (antenna) was placed on the ground, and the Sufferer laid on it, when His Arms were extended, drawn up, and bound to it. Then (this not in Egypt, but in Carthage and in Rome) a strong, sharp nail was driven, first into the Right, then into the Left Hand (the clavi trabales). Next, the Sufferer was drawn up by means of ropes, perhaps ladders; [6070] the transverse either bound or nailed to the upright, and a rest or support for the Body (the cornu or sedile) fastened on it. Lastly, the Feet were extended, and either one nail hammered into each, or a larger piece of iron through the two. We have already expressed our belief that the indignity of exposure was not offered at such a Jewish execution. And so might the crucified hang for hours, even days, in the unutterable anguish of suffering, till consciousness at last failed.