By accepting the physical refreshment offered Him, the Lord once more indicated the completion of the work of His Passion. For, as He would not enter on it with His senses and physical consciousness lulled by narcotised wine, so He would not pass out of it with senses and physical consciousness dulled by the absolute failure of life-power. Hence He took what for the moment restored the physical balance, needful for thought and word. And so He immediately passed on to taste death for every man.' For, the two last sayings' of the Saviour now followed in rapid succession: first, that with a loud voice, which expressed it, that the work given Him to do, as far as concerned His Passion, was finished;' [6156] and then, that in the words of Psalm xxxi. 5, in which He commended His Spirit into the Hands of the Father. [6157] Attempts at comment could only weaken the solemn thoughts which the words awaken. Yet some points should be noted for our teaching. His last cry with a loud voice' was not like that of one dying. St. Mark notes, that this made such deep impression on the Centurion. [6158] In the language of the early Christian hymn, it was not Death which approached Christ, but Christ Death: He died without death. [6159] Christ encountered Death, not as conquered, but as the Conqueror. And this also was part of His work, and for us: now the beginning of His Triumph. And with this agrees the peculiar language of St. John, that He bowed the Head, and gave up the Spirit' (t pnema).
Nor should we fail to mark the peculiarities of His last Utterance. The My God' of the fourth Utterance had again passed into the Father' of conscious fellowship. And yet neither in the Hebrew original of this Psalm, nor in its Greek rendering by the LXX., does the word Father' occur. Again, in the LXX. translation of the Hebrew text this word expressive of entrustment - the commending - is in the future tense; on the lips of our Lord it is in the present tense. [6160] And the word, in its New Testament sense, means not merely commending: it is to deposit, to commit for safe keeping. [6161] That in dying - or rather meeting and overcoming Death - He chose and adapted these words, is matter for deepest thankfulness to the Church. He spoke them for His people in a twofold sense: on their behalf, that they might be able to speak them; and for them,' that henceforth they might speak them after Him. How many thousands have pillowed their heads on them when going to rest! They were the last words of a Polycarp, a Bernard, Huss, Luther, and Melanchthon. And to us also they may be the fittest and the softest lullaby. And in the Spirit' which He had committed to God did He now descend into Hades, and preached unto the spirits in prison.' [6162] But behind this great mystery have closed the two-leaved gates of brass, which only the Hand of the Conqueror could burst open.
And now a shudder ran through Nature, as its Sun had set. We dare not do more than follow the rapid outlines of the Evangelic narrative. As the first token, it records the rending of the Temple-Veil in two from the top downward to the bottom; as the second, the quaking of the earth, the rending of the rocks and the opening of the graves. Although most writers have regarded this as indicating the strictly chronological succession, there is nothing in the text to bind us to such a conclusion. Thus, while the rending of the Veil is recorded first, as being the most significant token to Israel, it may have been connected with the earthquake, although this alone might scarcely account for the tearing of so heavy a Veil from the top to the bottom. Even the latter circumstance has its significance. That some great catastrophe, betokening the impending destruction of the Temple, had occurred in the Sanctuary about this very time, is confirmed by not less than four mutually independent testimonies: those of Tacitus, [6163] of Josephus, [6164] of the Talmud, [6165] and of earliest Christian tradition [6166] . The most important of these are, of course, the Talmud and Josephus. The latter speaks of the mysterious extinction of the middle and chief light in the Golden Candlestick, forty years before the destruction of the Temple; and both he and the Talmud refer to a supernatural opening by themselves of the great Temple-gates that had been previously closed, which was regarded as a portent of the coming destruction of the Temple. We can scarcely doubt, that some historical fact must underlie so peculiar and widespread a tradition, and we cannot help feeling that it may be a distorted version of the occurrence of the rending of the Temple-Veil (or of its report) at the Crucifixion of Christ. [6167]