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CRUCIFIXION 
 
 / 
 
 JOHN H. OSBORNE 
 
 WOLCOTT & WEST 
 
 SYRACUSE, N. Y. 
 
 1897 
 
Copyright 1897, 
 By John H. Osborne. 
 
preface* 
 
 It must be apparent to every one careftilly 
 reading the accounts of our Saviour's cruci- 
 fixion, that many of the incidents have never 
 been explained with completeness, nor in a 
 manner consistent with what we know con- 
 cerning the reasons and grounds for crucifix- 
 ion as practiced by the Romans. Among 
 other incidents, the following, viz: the three 
 different kinds of drink of which ''vinegar" 
 was the basis, the method of affixing the 
 body to the cross by three or four nails, the 
 breaking the legs of the victim, the spear- 
 thrust in the side, have all been treated by 
 many writers during these eighteen centuries, 
 who have for the greater part accepted 
 in succession, each from precursors, the 
 same explanations of them, which, from the 
 first, could have been founded only on con- 
 jecture ; therefore, if we would not now pro- 
 
ceed upon the same course of mere assump- 
 tion, we must find adequate explanation of 
 them mainly in the modes and customs of 
 Roman military punishment. 
 
 It is through reasonable inferences drawn 
 from such customs, and particularly from one 
 principle well established in Roman state and 
 military policy, that the attempt at a fairly 
 probable and consistent solution is proposed 
 in the following pages. 
 
 J. H. O. 
 
 Auburn, N. Y. 
 
It will be seen from the above table of 
 contents that the printer has made an error 
 in the page headings of the last two chap- 
 ters. 
 
Contents* 
 
 Preface, 3 
 
 The Roman Method of Crucifixion, 7 
 The Crucifixion of Jesus, . . .47 
 Reflections, 78 
 
Ube IRoman /iDetbot) ot Cructflxton. 
 
 It is singular that so little should ever have 
 been certainly and definitely known regard- 
 ing this, the most cruel and shameful punish- 
 ment inflicted by the Romans. And yet, on 
 reflection, it will not appear so very strange, 
 since we know that detailed and minute de- 
 scriptions of the modes of punishment for 
 criminals have never occupied any prominent 
 place in the popular literature of any time or 
 country. In our own day, for instance, with 
 so much activity in every field of knowledge, 
 the method and machinery used in the capital 
 punishment of hanging are known in their 
 details to very few ; even when some notable 
 criminal is put to death, the daily press (and 
 very properly) seldom gives any elaborate 
 description of the apparatus employed, and 
 the general public is content to kno^sr that 
 in accordance with the sentence pronounced 
 
 7 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 by the judge at the close of his trial, the 
 culprit ^was ''hanged by the neck until he 
 was dead." If hanging were universally 
 abolished today, it may be doubted whether, 
 in eighteen hundred or even in five hundred 
 years from now, there would be found ac- 
 counts of the apparatus and process any less 
 fragmentary or more definite than those we 
 have today in regard to crucifixion as prac- 
 ticed in the time of our Saviour. 
 
 It must be remembered that the cross was 
 not represented as an emblem of our salva- 
 tion during the first 325 years of the Chris- 
 tian era ; it was an abominable and detested 
 thing, as the gallows is now, a symbol of 
 shame and slavery; and therefore, until the 
 time of Constantine, who was the first Ro- 
 man emperor to embrace the Christian relig- 
 ion, there would be no endeavor made by 
 Roman, Jewish or Christian w^riter to pre- 
 serve any account of this dread process for 
 the infliction of death. The little we may 
 know about it is to be gathered from writ- 
 
 8 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 ings in which mention must be made of it 
 from necessity, and only by allusion and as 
 related in an illustrative way to some other 
 topic forming the principal subject of the 
 writing. 
 
 The apostle Paul frequently alludes to the 
 cross as a symbol of shame and speaks of the 
 offence {<:fcdv8a\ov) of the cross ; and it must 
 have been with great horror, loathing and 
 disgust that any unconverted man should 
 read about Paul's glorying in the cross of 
 Jesus Christ, and that he rejoiced in being 
 daily crucified with his Lord. To a Roman of 
 polished but pagan education, such declara- 
 tions would appear as the extreme aberra- 
 tions of a disordered brain, and Paul would 
 readily be reckoned as among those intellect- 
 ual cranks to any one of whom a Festus 
 might exclaim," Thou art beside thyself, much 
 learning hath made thee mad." 
 
 There were some incidents attending our 
 Saviour's crucifixion, explanations of which 
 have been offered by writers in commentaries 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 and cyclopedias, but they are not at all satis- 
 factory, because they do not account for 
 those incidents consistently and in harmony 
 with what we know of Roman policy and 
 practice in military executions. Two of these 
 incidents are: first, the offer of vinegar 
 mingled with gall to Jesus when on the 
 cross as well as before He was crucified ; and 
 secondly, the breaking the legs of the cruci- 
 fied at the time of their being taken down 
 from the cross. The very inadequate ex- 
 planation of these proceedings is, that they 
 were both acts of mercy; that the vinegar 
 and gall, or, as named in another place, the 
 wine mingled with myrrh, was given in order 
 to partly dull the senses or to stupefy the 
 victim and thus to lessen the pain ; and that 
 the legs were broken as a closing act of the 
 scene in order to hasten death and thus the 
 termination of his misery. 
 
 These explanations are not admissible, and 
 simply for the reason that thus the period of 
 suffering would be shortened, and they con- 
 
 lO 
 
OP CRVCIFIXIOn. 
 
 travene the fact that crucifixion was prac- 
 ticed in order that the sufferings of the vic- 
 tim should be as intense and prolonged as 
 possible. It was a niilitarj^ punishment as at 
 first practiced by the Romans, and had its 
 origin in military necessity. Roman policy, 
 as exercised toward the states that were to 
 be subjugated, was essentially a policy of 
 terror ; *' Vae victis ! woe to the conquered ! " 
 was the terrible cry that sounded forth be- 
 fore their armies as they entered upon the 
 bloody work of battle and destruction, and 
 the captives taken were in greater part ap- 
 pointed to death in such manner as would 
 best serve to terrify the people and make 
 them willing, through abject fear, to pass 
 under the Roman yoke. 
 
 Thus the death by crucifixion, as will appear 
 further on in this paper, was the most cruel 
 that could be devised ; but it would have been 
 most contradictory to the spirit in which that 
 punishment was inflicted, and would have re- 
 vealed a broad inconsistency in the procedure, 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 if at any stage the element of mercy had en- 
 tered to relieve, in never so slight a degree, 
 its bitter and protracted suffering. For it 
 was an infliction carefully so ordered that 
 the body of the victim should not be attached 
 at any vital point while he was kept slowly 
 dying " by inches " under the agonies of star- 
 vation and thirst. The suiferer was held for 
 days under the tortures of this living death, 
 unless at times he was fortunately rendered 
 unconscious of his pains by the delirium that 
 accompanied the hard fever and slight loss of 
 blood from the wounds in his hands and feet. 
 Men of fairly strong constitution lasted out 
 this bitter experience during from three to 
 eight days ; the instance recorded of longest 
 survival being nine days; while with the 
 case of a weak or sickly frame the wretched 
 scene might close within the first twenty-four 
 or forty -eight hours, but seldom in less than 
 the time first mentioned. 
 
 Our Lord's death came when He had been 
 on the cross but six hours, and it is one of the 
 
 12 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 objects of this and another paper to show- 
 why it should have come so soon. The ma- 
 terial contributed by the records is so scanty 
 and vague as to serve merely for a frame work 
 on which to build up our complete account, 
 such as would be furnished by the inferences 
 fairly to be drawn from the extant records of 
 military custom and state policy. That ac- 
 count should proceed upon fair and natural de- 
 ductions made legitimately from known facts 
 of history and custom ; thus may we, haply, 
 make out a rounded and complete story in 
 which there shall be place for all necessary 
 facts and incidents related in the Gospel nar- 
 rative, and each of them shall fall without 
 design into its own place as forming a con- 
 sistent and natural part in the whole sad 
 tragedy. 
 
 Nearly fifty years ago the discovery of the 
 outermost planet of our solar system was 
 made by a French mathematician, who com- 
 puted the elements of an unknown wander- 
 ing body whose influence had for a long time 
 
 13 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 been a source of perplexity to astronomers ; 
 by his advice the telescope was on a specified 
 night turned to a certain point in the heavens, 
 where his calculations had led him to believe 
 that a planet was to be found ; there, in fact, 
 it was, and then for the first time was it 
 entered on astronomers' charts as one of the 
 glorious array constituting our planetary 
 system. Ma3^ we not, therefore, somewhat 
 after the same manner, and with a fair pro- 
 portion of the essential elements at hand, 
 construct an account of a Roman crucifixion 
 that, being in harmony with all known facts, 
 and having all its parts established as true 
 by fact or true by fair inference, each of them 
 shall have such just and proper relation to 
 all other parts as shall commend the whole 
 to our understanding as an acceptable and 
 fully credible representation of a crucifixion 
 scene ? 
 
 As Agassiz, the naturalist, having the scale 
 of a fossil fish before him, might construct 
 all of its body again from tip to tail, and 
 
 14 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 from that reconstructed form make a true 
 statement of its habits and habitat; as 
 Cuvier, from the tarsal bone of a bird ages ago 
 extinct, might render a complete account of 
 its form and manner of life; so may we, 
 doubtless, from the records, few and scanty 
 though they be, construct an account that 
 will be true, because of the harmony there 
 will be between all related facts and all the in- 
 ferences ^which ''by good and necessary con- 
 sequence may be deduced therefrom." 
 
 It may be again stated, since the fact is a 
 controlling one and too important to be lost 
 sight of for a moment, that the policy and 
 usage of Rome in her treatment of every na- 
 tion and tribe subdued to her arms was un- 
 varyingly that of the utmost cruelty; and 
 that cruelty was continued in practice until 
 nation, tribe or people had become so com- 
 pletely overawed and reduced that no hope or 
 thought remained to them of opposition to 
 Roman sway. When a Roman general, upon 
 his invasion of a country, had fought a battle 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 and gained a victory, he had a large number 
 of captives, both of those taken from the de- 
 feated army and of the unarmed dwellers in 
 cities and villages near the battlefield. They 
 were all diiTerent in class and various in con- 
 dition, and at the absolute disposal of the 
 victor. 
 
 With the end of subjugation in view, 
 there was no exchange of prisoners, neither 
 could the captives be allowed to go free. 
 There thus remained for them the fate of 
 either slavery or death ; and the only problem 
 before the general was, how to so assort 
 them that those best fitted by education, by 
 trade or other adaptation, could be made 
 useful as slaves in Rome. Such were reserved 
 for the slave market there, and the remaining 
 mass of captives, and generally the far greater 
 part, were made useful to Roman policy in 
 subjugating the country by being put to the 
 slow tortures of starvation ; for after long 
 experience in various sorts of military pun- 
 ishment it had been found that this was the 
 
 i6 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 most agonizing and protracted method of 
 torment in all the repertory of cruelty. 
 
 For the purpose, therefore, of securing the 
 doomed men during the days of gnawing hun- 
 ger, when in desperation they might use any ex- 
 treme violence to escape its agonies, the most 
 simple and obvious method was to bind each 
 of them by cords or withes to a tree or post ; 
 and thus for the great herd of the condemned 
 a wide space near the camp was reserved in 
 which, in addition to the trees growing there, 
 holes were dug for countless posts ; each post 
 was set up by t^wo out of a party of four sol- 
 diers detailed to crucify a victim ; the other 
 two soldiers passed with the condemned man 
 to the nearest wood or to the ruined houses 
 of some village to obtain the cross bar to be 
 affixed at the top of the post or at a suitable 
 height on the living tree, they also provided 
 themselves with ropes or green withes with 
 which to suspend the man from the cross bar; 
 he bore the cross thus provided for his own exe- 
 cution, for the indolent and merciless soldiers 
 compelled him. 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 After they had returned in this manner 
 to the place in the field where the upright 
 post had been already set by other cap- 
 tives under direction of the other two sol- 
 diers, the cross bar was securely fixed at 
 the top and then two short stakes of equal 
 length were prepared. These were made with 
 the upper end ''square across," and with the 
 lower end sharpened, and were driven into 
 the ground close beside and nearly in front of 
 the upright post, — being separated from each 
 other by a little space. The tops of these 
 stakes were from six to eighteen inches from 
 the ground, and on these the victim was 
 forced to stand, a foot on each stake, while 
 the four at once attached the cords around 
 his body, and fastened them over the cross 
 bar close to the upright, so that when the 
 stakes had been taken from under his feet the 
 body hung suspended by the cords or withes. 
 It ivas then but a short task to drive a nail 
 through each hand and foot so that the poor 
 wretch might be thoroughly secured against 
 
 i8 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 any hope of escape ; for if left without this 
 nailing, the arms and hands might be readily 
 used for untying the cords that suspended 
 him and so escape would be easy during the 
 darkness of the night. 
 
 Let us now call attention to the absurdities 
 in the representations of crucifixion offered to 
 us by the religious artists of Christendom in 
 the hundreds of paintings and sculptures in 
 the galleries of the Old World. The cross is 
 nearly always made of such height that the 
 victim on it is elevated with his feet almost 
 or quite above the head of one standing on 
 the ground near by. For the earlier events, 
 the cross is shown laid on the ground already 
 completed, with the victim extended upon it 
 and the soldiers are driving nails through 
 hands and feet ; next after this is the scene 
 where the^^ are raising up the cross with the 
 condemned man thus attached only by the 
 nails, to set it in the hole prepared for it. 
 Now all this, while highly pathetic and poetic, 
 is wholly and absurdly improbable and it 
 
 19 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 might be said impossible. We cannot follow 
 OUT imaginative painters in these scenes nor 
 accept their presentation of them as suffi- 
 ciently authoritative in the case ; for they had 
 no more reliable accounts of the processes in 
 crucifixion than vv^e of this day have. 
 
 The stolid brutes who composed the mass of 
 a mercenary Roman army did not, v/e may be 
 quite sure, perform any of their tasks with an 
 eye to the picturesque, the pathetic or the 
 poetic. The lazy and degraded creatures 
 went through their work only to do what 
 was actually necessary for the end in view. 
 They would not make the upright post any 
 longer than would suffice to raise the victim's 
 feet a little from the ground ; and for this pur- 
 pose a height of six or twelve inches would be 
 as good as six feet. They would not first at- 
 tach the cross-bar before setting the upright 
 post because, as they had other condemned 
 men in their charge to crucify, they would 
 make use of them in setting the upright post 
 while others of their own party were looking 
 
OP CRVCIPIXION. 
 
 Up the cross-bar. The rough hewing of a 
 notch or ''revet" at the top of a post could 
 be done before it was set in the hole, and the 
 bar when brought could be quickly nailed in 
 the notch. Nor would they give themselves 
 the needless trouble and delay of completing 
 the cross and attaching the victim while it 
 lay prone on the ground and then raising it 
 all to be set and steadied in the hole till se- 
 cured by the fiUed-in earth. 
 
 A soldier of any age or country is notori- 
 ous for exercising his -wits to make himself 
 comfortable and avoid every species of labor 
 consistent with the performance of his duty, 
 and we may be confident that every crucifix- 
 ion was performed with strict regard to econ- 
 omy of labor, and not with the least reference 
 to artistic effect. A climax of absurdity is 
 reached when a modern commentator declares 
 that the soldiers raised up the cross with the 
 victim on it and then allowed it to drop into 
 the hole with a heavy thud (!) that it might 
 produce greater pain where the nails passed 
 
 21 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 through the sensitive Hmbs ! Where did our 
 wise expositor learn that ? 
 
 There is also another far greater absurdity 
 in representing the sufferer as attached to the 
 cross only by the nails through hands and 
 feet. The crucifix in art with but very few 
 exceptions has this utterly inept presentation ; 
 for a moment's consideration must suffice to 
 show how ill-fitting it must have been to the 
 actual facts of the case. It would be imprac- 
 ticable for any man to maintain the posture 
 represented by this figure on the crucifix of 
 art, stretched symmetrically upright, the 
 body in its whole length kept parallel with 
 the upright post, the shoulders at nearly a 
 level v^ith the cross-bar, the arms stretched 
 out along the bar at nearly right angles to 
 the body, and thus the whole weight made 
 to rest on the one or two nails through the 
 feet. It would be impossible for any human 
 being by the utmost exercise of muscle and 
 will to maintain such a position for even six 
 minutes, not to say for six hours or days. To 
 
 22 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 declare that he could do this is to go directly 
 against all that we know concerning the 
 limits of human endurance or persistence. 
 The legs could not be thus extended and kept 
 on the tense stretch ; they would be very soon 
 bent outward at the knees so as to let the 
 body downward and forward, and it would 
 then be held and practically supported by the 
 nails through the hands; by this a great 
 weight would be brought upon the two small 
 carpal bones of the hand where the nails 
 passed between them, and upon the fine and 
 lax ligaments uniting them at the first knuckle, 
 and it would be entirely too great for them to 
 sustain ; the delicate bones would be broken 
 and the ligaments ruptured; by this means 
 the wound would be so opened and enlarged 
 as to allow the passage of the nail-head 
 through it, the arm would then be released 
 and the victim would fall from the cross. 
 
 More than this, accounts all agree that 
 after the doomed man had been on the cross 
 for twenty-four or thirty-six hours, exposed 
 
 23 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 to a burning sun by day and to the chilling 
 damps of night, to rain or cold, there came a 
 raging fever and a violent delirium ; in the 
 unconsciousness attending these attacks the 
 body must have been subject to pitiable 
 writhiags and contortions, and unless held by 
 some securer means than nails through the 
 delicate structures of hands and feet, it would 
 surely be loosened and fall. In some cases 
 there was a wooden pin driven into the post 
 about midway to serve as a kind of seat to 
 bear up nearly all the weight of the body ; 
 but this does not relieve the difficulty, for the 
 upper part of the body would still be free to 
 writhe and sway about to a degree sufficient 
 to effect its release from the nails in the hands; 
 the wooden pin at the middle would also 
 serve as a fulcrum, by means of which the 
 arms and legs, as powerful levers, would, in 
 the convulsive throes of a delirious state, cer- 
 tainly and quickly tear the hands and feet 
 from their fastenings. From all these consid- 
 erations we are well warranted in concluding 
 
 24 
 
OP CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 that other means than the three or four nails 
 were of necessity used in keeping the body at- 
 tached to the cross. 
 
 And here it is pertinent for every one to in- 
 quire, Whence, then, did the unpractical 
 artists obtain the notion of nails as the only 
 means? The answer is not far to seek; it 
 was through a misconception of the exact 
 meaning of the passage in John xx. 25. Our 
 artists were devout men, and were, as they 
 thought, guided strictly by the words of the 
 Divine Book, and since, in the only place 
 where mention is made of any of the instru- 
 ments of crucifixion, the nails alone are allu- 
 ded to, the painters forthwith concluded that 
 these were exclusively the means used for at- 
 tachment to the cross. But Thomas' declar- 
 ation was made not for the purpose of set- 
 ting forth an exhaustive description of the 
 method of crucifixion, but for another and 
 entirely different purpose ; he was seeking for 
 evidence of the identity of the body of this 
 man, alleged to be that of Jesus, with the 
 
 25 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 body of his Master whom he knew they had 
 applied to the cross, and he sought for that 
 evidence in the marks that could be left by 
 only one class of the instruments of crucifix- 
 ion, namely, the nails. Thomas did not add, 
 '* Except I shall also see on His body the red 
 marks left b^^ the ropes that suppported Him, 
 I will not believe; " Thomas knew better than 
 to say that, for it was now the eleventh day 
 since Jesus had been suspended by the ropes, 
 and during eight days of those eleven the 
 blood had been coursing through His revived 
 body, all the functions of life were again in 
 full and vigorous exercise, and the red marks 
 made by the ropes had therefore disappeared. 
 It was a strange error for artists to adopt 
 summarily the conclusion that the sole men- 
 tion by Thomas of the nails implied the sole 
 use of them as the affixive appliances for the 
 crucifixion of our Lord. 
 
 Thus with close adherence to all elements of 
 the practical, and also of the probable, where- 
 ever statements of fact have failed in this 
 
 26 
 
OP CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 study of our subject, we find that the conclu- 
 sions of the cyclopedists need to be modified 
 by the substitution of one Httle word for 
 another Httle one; they all agree that the vic- 
 tim was affixed by ropes or nails, it needs 
 that *' and " be put in place of ^^ or," and then 
 the statement, by ropes and nails will be in 
 accord with what was the fact in every in- 
 stance. The weight of the sufferer being thus 
 wholly borne by the ropes or withes which 
 held him suspended, we may consider in what 
 manner and by what portions of the body he 
 could be hung so as best to fulfil the object 
 for which he was crucified; for it may be 
 again repeated that the purpose was to pro- 
 long life to the utmost, that he might undergo 
 the fullest measure of torment from starva- 
 tion and thirst. 
 
 During the long and frequent wars waged 
 by Rome, and with the constant practice of 
 this mode of torture in her continued and un- 
 varying course of conquest, the Roman sol- 
 diers in crucify ing their thousands of captives » 
 
 27 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 must have become adepts in the art. Con- 
 stant opportunities for observation would 
 teach them that victims suspended by certain 
 portions of the body would survive much 
 longer than when suspended by other por- 
 tions; they would find that ^where a red 
 swelling carhe in consequence of stricture by 
 the rope, there heat and fever would occur, 
 the inflammation would be followed by sup- 
 puration and mortification, and then by a gan- 
 grene which would all too quickly terminate 
 the sufferer's life. 
 
 We of this day know that if any of the 
 limbs had been bound by the ropes for sus- 
 pension, there would have been a stoppage of 
 the circulation of the blood and then would 
 have ensued the consequences just above 
 stated ; the soldiers, of course, knew nothing 
 about the circulation of the blood, but ex- 
 perience acquired from repeated observation 
 would ere long indicate to them by what 
 parts suspension could be made so as to per- 
 mit of longest duration of life; manifestly, 
 
 28 
 
OF CRUCIF^IXION. 
 
 then, the method concluded on would be, as 
 the man stood on the two stakes at the foot 
 of the post and with his back against it, to 
 pass the rope around the waist and just un- 
 der the ribs, then tie it with a hard knot mod- 
 erately tight, leaving the knot at the middle 
 of his back, then the two ends of the rope, 
 being long enough, were passed over the 
 cross-bar close to its junction with the post, 
 and a turn or two around the post would 
 make all secure ; then the nails through hands 
 and feet would prevent any violent movement 
 of the body, and particularly would keep the 
 hands from any attempt to untie the rope. 
 Held in such wise, there would be pressure ex- 
 erted by the sufferer's weight only on the soft 
 and yielding viscera of the abdomen, on the 
 ribs and other framework near to the ex- 
 terior, but no constriction could be brought 
 on any large vein or artery to cause obstruc- 
 tion or hindrance to the circulatory flow. 
 
 After such simple methods were the doomed 
 men prepared for their horrible fate ; and to 
 
 29 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 the number of hundreds, sometimes of thou- 
 sands, they were set up on crosses without 
 the camp. . Josephus relates that at the siege 
 of Jerusalem by Titus there could not be 
 found wood enough to erect crosses for all the 
 prisoners condemned to that death. The 
 crucifixions were occasions of rare sport for 
 the degraded soldiery; they gloried in the 
 mockery, the jibes and insults that could be 
 freely flung into the faces of the condemned ; 
 in the hearts of such men, unsoftened by any 
 influence of Christian civilization, were har- 
 bored no feelings of pity or mercy, their 
 words, albeit often in a language unknown 
 to those on the cross, were yet sufliciently in- 
 terpreted to the victims by glaring eyes and 
 gestures of hate, and by acts of cruelty and 
 brutality. 
 
 During the days through which the sufferers 
 survived, their torments would be the sport 
 and jest of the executioners, and when, from 
 the loss of blood at the wounds, from the 
 bitter pangs of hunger and thirst, and also 
 
 30 
 
OP CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 from exposure to the scorching heat, a raging 
 fever had come upon the victim by the second 
 or third day, then the pleasure of the hard- 
 ened brutes was greatest ; they gloated over 
 the pitiable throes and convulsions, and took 
 delight in the groans, shrieks and curses of 
 the hapless sufferers. So through the long 
 drawn hours of every day did their besotted 
 natures find interest and entertainment in 
 the hard wretchedness of the crucified; 
 through the day indeed, but not through the 
 night. For then came the soldiers' time for 
 sleep, and no sleep was possible if these awful 
 cries from the field of torment near to camp 
 came to fill their ears; for the delirium and 
 fever would not end with the day but continue 
 unrelieved through the hours of night. The 
 cries must be stopped during the night if the 
 soldier would have his rest undisturbed, there- 
 fore some means must be provided for closing 
 the mouths and hushing the voices of these 
 raging men. 
 An infernal drink was made whose corrosive 
 
 31 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 and astringent qualities admirably served 
 this purpose ; a vinegar of scarifying acidity 
 that resulted from the acetous fermentation 
 of a strong wine, received a strong admixture 
 of gall, a vegetable product; and this, when 
 administered in such scant quantity on a 
 bunch of hyssop as to just moisten the mouth 
 and throat, hotly parched and swollen to 
 great tenderness as they were, would by its 
 irritating and rasping influence corrugate and 
 constrict the throat and paralyse the vocal 
 cords. So with a pail of the mixture and 
 with hyssop tied at the end of a stick, the 
 watch specially detailed at night for this 
 duty, passed everywhere among the groves of 
 crosses, offering the vile stuff" to every one 
 they heard crying out ; and eagerly was the 
 little sop received ; for it was at least, moist- 
 ure, — a semblance of the pure drink they were 
 longing and moaning for; but the next mo- 
 ment came the hard gripe of acid and gall, in- 
 creasing their suffering, closing the throat and 
 almost stopping the breath. Thus was quiet 
 
 32 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 secured for the night by the guard furnished 
 with vessels of vinegar mingled with gall, 
 until the daybreak came and the awakening 
 of the camp, when these duties were no longer 
 required, and the victims resumed their 
 mournful cries as one by one they recovered 
 from the effects of the bitter mixture. 
 
 So through the days of suffering and nights 
 of horror when even the poor relief of a cry 
 was denied them, did the heavy hours of tor- 
 ture pass ; by the end of the second day many 
 of those with weak constitutions would be 
 relieved by death, others in greater number 
 would succumb during the third, fourth and 
 fifth days, by the sixth and seventh only those 
 of greatest vitality would survive, and by the 
 seventh or eighth day the last of them had 
 passed away, all having been kept on their 
 crosses till death. But what w^as to be done 
 with those remaining alive, if, on any day be- 
 fore the eighth, military policy or necessity re- 
 quired the removal of the army ? They must 
 not be released, nor must they be left to be 
 
 33 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 rescued by friends and relatives and in a con- 
 dition to be nursed back to life and health 
 after the army had withdrawn ; nor, on the 
 other hand, should their torment be brought 
 to a merciful end by a spear thrust in some 
 vital part, but some way must be devised for 
 rendering the short remnant of their lives still 
 a prolonged misery even after their rescue by 
 friends when the army had gone. 
 
 Such a way was found ; just before depart- 
 ure, the guard with clubs passed among the 
 crosses, and whenever the doomed one on any 
 of them gave signs of life, a blow on each leg 
 broke the bones, and so the poor wretch, even 
 if delivered and restored to freedom, was for- 
 ever a helpless cripple from the compound 
 fractures of his legs. There was little surgi- 
 cal skill among those barbarous peoples to 
 amend so great a disaster ; the victim must 
 suffer on till death, his onh^ comfort being in 
 the sympathy and alleviating cares rendered 
 at the hands of his friends. 
 
 The offering of the vinegar and gall and the 
 
 34 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 leg-breaking have both, in the absence of pos- 
 itive knowledge on the subject, been wrongly 
 interpreted as acts of mercy ; the drink, it is 
 asserted, was intended as a stupefying potion 
 to dull the pain by taking away in whole or 
 in part the consciousness of the victim ; and 
 the breaking of the legs it is said, was for the 
 purpose of hastening death and so giving 
 quicker relief to the intolerable suffering ; but 
 such theories are wholly inconsistent with the 
 policy of utmost cruelty practiced by the 
 Romans. To have rendered any one insensible 
 to pain or suffering would have been to defeat 
 the very object in view ^vhen he was attached 
 to the cross ; and if there had been any real 
 purpose to shorten the misery of the ^wretched 
 men, a spear thrust into the heart would 
 have effected that result much sooner and 
 more surely than the leg-breaking. And fur- 
 ther, no stupefying effect could be produced 
 by the vinegar and gall, indeed, it would have 
 a result entirely the opposite ; and breaking 
 the legs would not necessarily hasten death ; 
 
 35 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 it might in some case accidentally happen 
 that some small and sharp slivers from the 
 broken bone might be driven through the wall 
 of the femoral artery or femoral vein, and so 
 death would immediately result. Doubtless 
 this happened in the case of the penitent 
 thief, and so the promise of our Lord to him 
 would be fulfilled, " Today shalt thou be with 
 me in Paradise." But yet the men who gave 
 the blows knew nothing about arteries and 
 veins, so that death by loss of blood in this 
 way, being a mere contingency, we cannot 
 conclude that such an end was calculated on 
 or looked for by the executioners. 
 
 As the soldiers detailed for this leg-breaking 
 duty passed the doomed men in review, many 
 would be found with life so nearly gone as to 
 present almost the semblance of death; the 
 exhausted body was still, the heart worn out 
 by fever and pain, had nearly ceased to beat, 
 or at least its throbs were so feeble as to send 
 the blood slowly to the inner parts of the 
 body, leaving the exterior so little colored by 
 
 36 
 
OP CRVCIPIXIOM. 
 
 it as to induce belief that the pallor indicative 
 of death had already come; so there was 
 doubt whether the victim yet lived or might 
 be only in a faint; that doubt was quickly 
 and brutally solved by the thrust of a spear 
 into his side; if blood in its natural state 
 followed, the sufferer was yet living and his 
 legs were broken ; but if no blood or if blood 
 separated into white scrum and red fibrine as 
 we of this day know it, came forth, he was 
 dead, and the soldiers would not uselessly 
 waste their strength in giving the unneces- 
 sary blows with their clubs. 
 
 In conclusion, we will quote a few passages 
 from some of the ancient classics that throw 
 some light on the practice of crucifixion. 
 
 Plautus, Mostellaria, I. i. 52, etc. (Quarrel 
 
 of two slaves in the house of an absent 
 
 Athenian merchant, Grunio and Tuanio). 
 
 ** Grunio. O, riddle for the executioner, as I 
 guess it will turn out ; they will be so pinking 
 you with goads as you carry your gibbet 
 someday along the streets, as soon as the old 
 gentleman comes back. 
 
 37 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 Tuanio. How do you know that fate will 
 not happen to you sooner than to me ? 
 
 Grunio. I never deserved it; you did, and 
 do now." 
 
 Here the word ' ' gibbet ' ' is derived from a 
 Latin word meaning to spread out; it is a 
 noun, the name of the transverse beam of a 
 cross, holding fast the outstretched arms of 
 the culprits. 
 
 Cicero, Pro Rabirio, IV. 11. (On the in- 
 iquity of crucifying a man who was a Roman 
 citizen). 
 
 *' Which of us, then, Sabienus, is really the 
 friend of the people ? You, who think that 
 Roman citizens need to have the hangman at 
 hand and handcuffs ready, even at a public 
 meeting ; you, who order the cross to be fixed 
 and set up for the death penalty of Roman 
 citizens in the very Campus Martins, a spot 
 consecrated by the Auguries, where the 
 Comitia Centuriata are held? Or I, who 
 forbid the meeting to be tainted by the ex- 
 ecutioner's presence, who declare that the 
 Forum of the Roman people must be 
 cleansed from all traces of so infamous a 
 crime, who would have the assembly pre- 
 served untainted, the Campus sacred ground, 
 the body of all the citizens of Rome undefiled, 
 
 38 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 and who maintains that the right of liberty 
 must be preserved intact ? 
 
 "§12. Yes, this democratic tribune of the 
 people is the guardian, then, the defender of 
 our rights and liberties! The Porcian law 
 abolished flogging for all Roman citizens; 
 this tender-hearted creature brings the scourge 
 back again. The Porcian law destroyed the 
 power of the lictor over the liberty of a Ro- 
 man citizen; Sabienus, the people's friend, 
 hands him over to the executioner. C. Grac- 
 chus brought in a bill that no Roman citizen 
 should be indicted on a capital charge with- 
 out your consent ; yet this " democrat," with- 
 out your consent, has compelled the two 
 commissioners not (as was legal) to frame a 
 decision concerning a man who was a Roman 
 citizen, but to convict a Roman citizen on a 
 capital charge without even a hearing. 
 
 "§13. And yet you, j^ou talk to me about 
 the Porcian law, about Caius Gracchus, about 
 the people's liberties, about friends of the 
 people, forsooth ! you, v^ho have attempted, 
 not only by unwonted punishments but even 
 in speeches of unheard of ferocity, to violate 
 the liberty of this people, to make trial of 
 their endurance, to change their customs ! 
 This is the sort of thing that pleases you, 
 who call yourself a merciful and "democratic" 
 man! "Go, lictor, bind his hands," a formula 
 which not only does not belong to the present 
 state of civilization, but was not even used 
 
 39 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 by Romulus or Numa Pompilius ; the word- 
 ing belongs to the tortures devised by that 
 arrogant and cruel king, Tarquin. Doubtless 
 a kind-hearted ''democrat" like you can re- 
 member them; "Veil his head, hang him to 
 the barre-i tree," words which, gentlemen of 
 Rome, have long been lost for this state, not 
 only in the twilight of antiquity, but in the 
 light of liberty too. 
 
 "§16. Now, if we must have death, let us 
 die free men ; let there be no talk of hangmen 
 and veiling heads ; let us get rid of the very 
 name of the cross, not only from the whole 
 body of Roman citizens, but from our eyes, 
 our ears, our very thoughts. For it is not 
 only the doing and the suffering of such 
 things, but even the circumstances, the 
 thought, the open reference to them are un- 
 worthy of a Roman citizen, and a free man. 
 Shall the generosity of masters free, with a 
 single touch of the staff of manumission, 
 their slaves from the dread of all such punish- 
 ments and 3^et neither our past history, nor 
 our achievements, nor the dignified posts 
 which you fill, free us from the lash, from the 
 hook, from the terror, even, of the cross." 
 
 [The copyist who furnished the foregoing 
 
 from Cicero remarks with entire truth, that 
 
 Cicero is here guilty of special pleading for 
 
 rhetorical purpose; — his vague allusions to 
 
 40 
 
OP CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 Tarquin, the omission of the important word 
 reste, *'by a rope," in the formula, Infelici 
 arhori^ etc.] 
 
 Justiniis the historian and annalist, XXII. 
 vii. 8 and 9 (concerning Bomilcar the Carth- 
 aginian who intended to desert to Agathocles 
 the Sicilian tyrant). 
 
 **§8. For this crime he was fastened to a 
 cross-bar by the Carthaginians in the midst 
 of the Forum, that the same spot which had 
 formerly furnished a distinction for the good, 
 might be a record of his punishment. 
 
 '' §9. But Bomiclar bore the cruelty of the 
 citizens with a great heart; so that he in- 
 veighed against the crime of the Carthagin- 
 ians from the top of his cross as from a 
 tribunal. 
 
 ^'^ § And when he had shouted these 
 words to a great assembly of the people, he 
 expired." 
 
 Ansonius Idyllia VI. 54. (Crucifixion of 
 
 Cupid in the infernal world. ) 
 
 '* Trembling with fear and vainly seeking 
 a refuge, they dragged him forth into the 
 crowd in the midst of the throng. A 
 well-knov^n myrtle tree in a gloomy shade 
 is chosen, detested through the punish- 
 ment of the gods. There had Proser- 
 
 41 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 pina crucified Adonis, scorning him because 
 mindful of Venus. Amor, hanging from a 
 lofty branch of this tree, hands bound behind 
 his back, bewailing the fetters shackling his 
 soles, they torture with no mild punishment. 
 A defendant without an indictment, a pris- 
 oner condemned by no judge, — such was 
 Amor." 
 
 Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, IV. 19. (Two 
 servants, Palaestrio and Sceledrus, are talk- 
 ing scandal with the mistress of their master.) 
 
 ^^ Palaestrio. I think that in that self-same 
 position you will have to die outside the 
 gates, when with hands outstretched, you 
 will be carrying your cross. (Sceledrus, the 
 slave addressed, is standing at the moment 
 before the door v^ith arms stretched out to 
 bar entry. The allusion to the ''gate" is 
 probably to the Esquiline or Rhetian gate at 
 Rome, near the place v^here slaves were pun- 
 ished.) 
 
 Sceledrus. Don't threaten; I know the 
 cross will (as a matter of course) be my end. 
 There are all my ancestors, father, grand- 
 father, grandsire, greatgrandsire. Enough; 
 my eyes cannot be torn out by any threats of 
 yours." 
 
 Valerius Maximus, II. 7, 12. 
 
 '' Nothing could be more mild than the elder 
 Africanus. Yet for the establishment of mili- 
 
 42 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 tar3^ discipline he thought it convenient to bor- 
 row something of severit^^ from his own lenity. 
 For having taken Carthage and gotten into 
 his power all those that had fled from the Ro- 
 mans to the Carthaginians, he more severely 
 punished the Roman than the Latin fugitives. 
 For the first, as deserters of their country, he 
 nailed to the cross ; the other, as perfidious 
 allies, he only beheaded. I shall not urge this 
 act any further, both because it was Scipio's, 
 and for that it is not fitting that a servile 
 punishment should insult our Roman blood, 
 though deservedly shed ; especially when we 
 may pass to other relations not dipped in 
 domestic gore." 
 
 Seneca, Consolatio ad Marciam, xx. 3. 
 
 *'I see there crosses, not of one kind only, 
 but constructed in one fashion by some, in 
 another by others. Some have hung the vic- 
 tims head downward to the earth, others 
 have driven a stake through the entrails, 
 others have stretched out the arms on the 
 patibulum (cross-bar of the cross). I see 
 cords, I see the lash, and separate engines (of 
 torture) for the limbs and individual joints : 
 but I also see death. There are blood-thirsty 
 enemies, there are haughty citizens, but there 
 too I see death. Slavery is not grievous if a 
 man may at one step pass away into liberty 
 when his master is weary of him ; as defence 
 against the cruelties of life, I have the kind- 
 ness of death." 
 
 43 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 Lipsius de Cruce, II. 1. 
 
 ''Not without reason did Cicero call the 
 cross ' a most cruel and loathsome death ' 
 and the poet Nonnus terms it ' a most crim- 
 inal fate.' Moreover lawyers speak of it, 
 owing to its (evil) pre-eminence as the 'ex- 
 treme penalty.' " 
 
 Paulus, Julius P. (A. D. circa 200) says: 
 
 " They are all the extreme penalty, viz ; the 
 cross. Ulpian calls it supreme: 'if the ac- 
 cused are free, they are given to the wild 
 beasts ; if slaves tlie^^ suffer the supreme pen- 
 alty.'" 
 
 Certainly Paulus enumerates the three su- 
 preme penalties in this order: "the cross, 
 burning, beheading;" the cross, as you see, 
 stands first ; and with reason, if you expect 
 to find in such punishment disgrace, magni- 
 tude, and especially long duration. 
 
 Juvenal, Satire, VI. 219-223. (A slave is 
 
 to be crucified for a mere whim ; he has done 
 
 nothing to deserve it, but apparently that 
 
 does not weigh with his ow^ner.) 
 
 " Prepare a cross for the slave. 
 "What has the slave done to deserve his 
 punishment ? 
 
 44 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 "What witness is present? Who has pros- 
 ecuted ? 
 
 " You shall hear. There is never a long de- 
 lay in the case of a man's life. 
 
 "Oh, you idiot! is a slave a human being 
 then? 
 
 " He did nothing, I grant ; it is my will, and 
 I give orders accordingly; such is my com- 
 mand. 
 
 "My desire may stand for a reason (if you 
 require one)." 
 
 Horace, Satires, I. iii. 80-83. 
 
 "Were a master to crucify his slave be- 
 cause, when told to remove a dish, he licked 
 up the half-eaten fish and the half-cold sauce, 
 men in their senses would count him madder 
 than Labeo." 
 
 Horace lived nearly a century before 
 Juvenal ; he reflects the disintegration of so- 
 ciety, which had advanced with rapid strides 
 under the vicious emperors since Horace's 
 age. 
 
 Plautus, Poenulus, IV. ii. (Syncerastus, a 
 
 slave, is speaking of some treachery of his.) 
 
 " If my master learns that I have breathed 
 a word to a single mortal, he will have 
 changed me from Syncerastus into a leg- 
 broken object in double-quick time," 
 
 45 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 Livy, I. 26, §6. 
 
 " The law was worded in dire strains : ' Let 
 two commissioners decide re per dnellio.' If 
 the defendant shall have appealed from their 
 decision, the case shall be contested with 
 them on the appeal; if they shall prevail, the 
 defendant shall veil his head and be hanged 
 by a rope to a barren (that is, accursed) tree; 
 and he shall be scourged within and without 
 the city's sacred limits." 
 
 46 
 
Zbc Cructfixton ot Jesus. 
 
 From the conclusions to be drawn from 
 statements in another paper on the ''Roman 
 Method of Crucifixion," it will appear that 
 some new and interesting questions arise con- 
 cerning certain facts and incidents attending 
 the crucifixion of our Lord. The most strik- 
 ing and important of these is the fact of His 
 untimely death after He had been suspended 
 but six hours on the cross ; other facts are : 
 the unnatural darkness during the last three 
 hours of His execution ; the earthquake ; the 
 opening of the graves of many holy people 
 preparatory to the resurrection of their 
 bodies three days afterward, simultaneously 
 with, or soon after, the rising of His own 
 body. Another incident, quite singular, is, 
 that when they came to Calvary and before 
 attaching Jesus to the cross, they offered Him 
 wine mingled with gall, according to Mat- 
 
 47 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 thew, or wine mingled with myrrh, accord- 
 ing to Mark ; this was an unprecedented act, 
 and may properly first claim our attention. 
 
 It is very certain that the chief priests and 
 scribes were the ruling and directing powers 
 through all the pitiless scenes of that day 
 from the beginning at the house of Annas, 
 during all the mockery before Pilate, and at 
 Calvary till the close of the tragedy. These 
 easily swayed the wicked and abandoned 
 rabble to do v^hatever they suggested ; this 
 draught of wdne, therefore, was provided by 
 their direction, and it may be taken for grant- 
 ed that it was brought there to be offered to 
 Jesus from no kindly or merciful motive. 
 What, then, were the motives ? We may first 
 review a few facts precedent. Our Lord had 
 reached the hill of Calvary in a very faint 
 and weary condition ; He had been without 
 rest or sleep all the night, had passed through 
 an experience very exhausting to soul and 
 body in the garden of Gethsemane,had taken 
 no breakfast, and no meal the night previous 
 
 48 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 except that light one of the passover with its 
 bitter herbs ; yet with all this His mind was 
 clear, and His voice strong to utter all His 
 thought. Just now, at nine o'clock, was a 
 critical time for the chief priests and scribes ; 
 they could attach Him to the cross, but there 
 might be danger of a rescue by His country 
 friends abiding in the city just after cele- 
 bration of the Passover. These were in such 
 overwhelming numbers as to be able to over- 
 awre and overpower resistance coming from 
 any quarter that would try to prevent a 
 forcible rescue of Jesus from the cross ; and if 
 they were to come to Calvary in any great 
 numbers, but few words of appeal would be 
 needed from His mouth to induce them to 
 take such action. To close that mouth, there- 
 fore, seemed to them a most needful measure ; 
 an offer of wine with myrrh before being 
 placed on the cross might lead Him to think 
 they gave it to Him out of pity for His ex- 
 hausted state, and that they would not offer 
 Him the usual vinegar and gall after He had 
 
 49 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 been placed there ; and so, when thirst and 
 fever should come upon Him, He would, in 
 His confused state, the more willingly take 
 the latter drink, deceived by the thought that 
 it was the same pleasant wine and myrrh 
 offered Him before. 
 
 But the Divine Man knew how ''they thus 
 reasoned within their hearts," and so, "when 
 He had tasted thereof He would not drink ; " 
 not that He desired a rescue, for He knew 
 that the darkness and earthquake soon to 
 come would so bewilder all men, friends and 
 foes alike, that little or no thought would, by 
 the mass of them, be given to any one of 
 those three crucified on Calvary. 
 
 No stress is to be laid, on the diiference 
 between Matthew and Mark, the former giv- 
 ing the ante-crucifixion drink as wine and gall 
 in place of wine and myrrh ; the mixture of 
 vinegar and gall always regularly provided 
 at crucifixions to be given during the hours of 
 night to hush the cries of the crucified was 
 also at hand, and it would be natural for 
 
 50 
 
OP CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 Matthew, having written his Gospel (as it is 
 said) after Mark's was written, to have be- 
 come confused in his recollection as to the two 
 kinds of drink, and make the unimportant 
 mistake of putting gall for myrrh. 
 
 The darkness and earthquake may nowr 
 claim attention, both supernatural events. 
 The darkness was ordered in the loving coun- 
 sel of the Heavenly Father doubtless for two 
 purposes; the first, that which has been 
 already noted, to turn men's minds away 
 from thought of rescuing Jesus, and the 
 second, to cover His head in the day of battle 
 from the heat of the noon-tide sun, that so in 
 the cool darkness, no weakness or trouble of 
 the afflicted and fevered body might cloud or 
 disturb His intellect, nor any disorder of the 
 brain come in to hinder Him in the awful con- 
 flict with the powers of hell. 
 
 The earthquake was sent in order that the 
 graves of those saints appointed for this 
 miracle might be seen and proved by many 
 witnesses to have been opened by no human 
 
 51 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 hand, so that during the three days interven- 
 ing before the resurrection of Jesus, the re- 
 markable fact might be established beyond 
 doubt by those who, in that time, should 
 have examined those same riven tombs, that 
 their occupants had actually come forth after 
 Jesus himself had risen, and that they "had 
 entered into the holy city, and had appeared 
 unto many." 
 
 The recorded words of Jesus spoken while 
 on the cross, were uttered after the darkness 
 came; before that, the air was filled with 
 mockings and jibes by the chief priests and 
 the abandoned cre^w v/hom they led and in- 
 spired; and our Lord would prefer, on His 
 part, to maintain that silence which ever be- 
 comes the innocent in the face of a horde of 
 unjust and malicious, but powerful and suc- 
 cessful, accusers. But when the noonday 
 darkness came over the land, the appalled and 
 cowardly mob passed quickly off the scene, 
 and only the vengeful leaders, the near rela- 
 tives and friends, with the four soldiers and 
 
 52 
 
OP CRUClPlXTON. 
 
 centurion on duty were left as His compan- 
 ions there; these soldiers, stolid and brutal 
 as ever under their iron discipline, had been, 
 by instigation of the rulers (who all the 
 morning had been fearing a rescue), offering 
 the vinegar and gall, contrary to the usual 
 custom, during the time of broad daylight, 
 but now, in the darkness, and when Jesus had 
 sent forth the cry, *'My God, my God, why 
 hast thou forsaken me? "these soldiers, under- 
 standing none of the Aramaic language in 
 which it was uttered, conceived it to be of the 
 same sort of disordered raving they had so 
 often heard on the crucifixion field ; and so we 
 read the very natural statement that one of 
 them, without prompting from any one, did 
 according to the usual custom, ran to offer 
 Him the abominable stuff that should close 
 His throat and stifle His voice. But the cu- 
 riosity of the ignorant leaders, who knew not 
 the tenor of Jesus' words, forestalled the offer 
 of the drink, ''Let be, let us see whether 
 Elijah cometh to take Him down ; " and thus 
 
 53 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 the power of speech was, tinder the Father's 
 providence, preserved to Jesus, that He might 
 utter His last ever memorable words. The 
 chief priests and scribes had always taught 
 that Elijah must first come before the Messiah, 
 and if he were actually to come now and at 
 this call, Jesus would have furnished himself 
 the proof, to them, of the falsity of His claim 
 totheMessiahship, fornow Elijah comes after 
 Him, whereas he should come before. 
 
 Soon the appointed moment came for Him 
 to close the mournful scene; ''there was set 
 there a vessel full of vinegar; " this was the 
 common, sour, cheap wine such as the sol- 
 diers could afford to have as a regular drink ; 
 this vessel of vinegar (of course without 
 either gall or myrrh) was there as provided 
 for themselves, when, having completed the 
 task of execution, and with a long, idle day 
 before them, ''sitting down, they watched 
 Him there," as they had often done before at 
 similar scenes ; thus with the means for play- 
 ing games of chance, and with a cheap sour 
 
 54 
 
OP CRUCIPIXION. 
 
 drink each crucifixion party passed each hot, 
 monotonous day of their watch. 
 
 Our Lord now, in order that His vocal 
 organs might be for an instant clear and 
 strong, invited the drink by the words, *'I 
 thirst; " there was no delirium in His speech, 
 and the centurion, seeing it really a case of 
 thirst, doubtless bade the soldiers give Him 
 the vinegar ; he was obeyed ; and then, with 
 soul fully relieved and resigned, Jesus cried 
 with a loud voice, '^ It is finished. Father, into 
 thy hands I commit my spirit," and having 
 so said. He bowed His head and yielded up 
 His spirit. The centurion w^as amazed: 
 through all his long experience in crucifix- 
 ions, he had never known a similar case ; the 
 earthquake and the darkness might have 
 impressed him, although he had known and 
 felt such before, but here was a man pray- 
 ing for his murderers, silent under the scorn- 
 ful taunts of his enemies, innocent of crime, as 
 Pilate, his own general, had testified ; and yet 
 he had declared himself forsaken of God; after 
 
 55 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 all these mutually contradictor3^ events, came 
 the astounding climax of the man's death 
 after having been but six hours on the cross ! 
 "Truly, this man was a Son of God!" was 
 the cry of the pagan centurion, in whose 
 system of belief a Son of God was a demi- 
 god, a man endowed by the principal gods 
 with irresistible power over some particular 
 forces in the celestial or earthly realm. 
 
 But what was the cause of our Lord's death 
 at so early a period in His execution? We 
 have already seen that victims would remain 
 alive on the cross for many days, yet here 
 was one dying when but the fourth part of 
 one day had elapsed. There was no natural 
 reason for the death at the end of six hours. 
 Jesus was in the prime and vigor of full man- 
 hood, in perfect health, with constitution un- 
 impaired ; under the operation of the natural 
 laws of life. He might be kept on the cross 
 and live for three or four days at the least : 
 the recorded cases of endurance and survival 
 of the crucified leave no doubt to us on this 
 
 56 
 
OP CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 point. The death of our Lord, therefore, 
 must be considered miraculous. The most 
 notable solution of the problem hitherto 
 offered, is that which attributes His death to 
 rupture of the heart, the result of, and climax 
 to a period of intense agony of mind, and the 
 one circumstance on which this conclusion is 
 predicated is that of the final cry, ''He cried 
 with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit." 
 But before treating of this event, let us con- 
 sider some incidents connected with the post- 
 mortem conditions. Joseph of Arimathea, 
 having learned, probably from John, that 
 Jesus was really dead, went to Pilate and 
 asked for the body, his request being made 
 about the same time but possibly a little be- 
 fore that of the chief priests and Pharisees, 
 that the three bodies should be taken down 
 and not suffered to remain on the crosses over 
 night; they preferred this request in compli- 
 ance with that injunction left them by Moses, 
 and recorded in Deut. xxi. 22. 23. To Pilate 
 also, the news of Jesus' death was unexpect- 
 
 57 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 ed ; he doubted the truth of the report, but 
 when it was confirmed by the centurion , the 
 request of Joseph was granted, involving as 
 it did a compHance with that of the chief 
 priests. 
 
 Great credit must be given to Joseph of 
 Arimathea for his clear-sighted shrewdness in 
 forestalling the enemies of Jesus by his own 
 request ; for if these latter had obtained His 
 body, they assuredly would not have left it 
 unbroken and sound ; that their disappoint- 
 ment was extreme was evidenced by the fact 
 of their second request made to Pilate for a 
 watch to be kept over the body in the tomb ; 
 urging for it the very natural reason that He, 
 a deceiver, having prophesied while yet alive, 
 that he would be raised from the dead the 
 third day, his disciples, to carry out the deceit 
 and to fulfil the prophecy, would steal away 
 His body. 
 
 But under this hollow pretence was con- 
 cealed their real fear, the fear that this death, 
 occurring so early, beyond any reason or pre- 
 
 58 
 
OP CRUCIP'IXIOM. 
 
 cedent, might after all be simulated or might 
 be a fainting fit, due to a temporary exhaus- 
 tion, and that when he had been concealed in 
 a tomb which was in the care and keeping of 
 his friends, he might soon, under the influence 
 of restoratives, be brought back to conscious- 
 ness; so they ''made the sepulchre sure, the 
 guard being with them ;" that guard was 
 placed there to prevent any one from going in 
 rather than to hinder the occupant from com- 
 ing out ; for, if the former contingency were 
 to happen, then indeed as they declared, the 
 last error of leaving a body with unbroken 
 legs in the hands of its friends would have 
 been worse than the first error of not hav- 
 ing had its bones broken before being taken 
 from the cross. Indeed, it was of the ut- 
 most consequence to these powerful enemies 
 of our Lord, that he should never come down 
 from the cross in a sound condition: for 
 think, for a moment, of the cool diabolism 
 involved in all their plans : during the early 
 morning they were leading the dissolute mob 
 
 59 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 in the demand to ''crucify Him," and all 
 that while, they knew that Jesus, if cruci- 
 fied, must not remain on the cross after six 
 o'clock of the same day ; feeling therefore cer- 
 tain that He would be alive at that time, they 
 were equally certain that according to the 
 rigid and unvarying Roman practice, His 
 legs would be broken ; thus, during all the six 
 hours of the crucifixion, they were so confi- 
 dent of this result, and felt so secure of the 
 success of their conspiracy, that they still led 
 on and incited the mob in their cries, "Let 
 Christ, the King of Israel, now come down 
 from the cross, that we may see and believe ; " 
 "He saved others, Himself He cannot save; 
 let Him come down and we will believe;" 
 " Thou that destroyest the temple and build- 
 est it i n three d ays , s ave thyself. ' ' The break- 
 ing of the legs was the one result confidently 
 reckoned on in all their venemous calcula- 
 tions; for then He might be delivered alive 
 and without protest to His friends and rela- 
 tives ; if He should then die, His body would 
 
 60 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 bear the marks of dishonoring crime in the 
 broken limbs ; but if He survived, it would be 
 as a cripple maimed for life ; He would be a 
 wretched burden to Himself and friends dur- 
 ing many and helpless years of lingering pain. 
 Here would be the triumph of the priestly 
 adversaries ; no more would He pass through 
 cities and villages teaching and preaching His 
 abominable doctrines ; if ever able again to 
 w^alk, no one would ever listen to Him ; for it 
 was a law, if not written, yet sanctioned by 
 universal maxim, that any mind, to be sound 
 and entitled to teach sound precepts to others, 
 must be housed in a sound body; thus dis- 
 credited, and His person ever proclaiming its 
 own dishonor in the sight of all men, His mis- 
 sion as a teacher and leader must come to an 
 end. 
 
 They were dumbfounded at the untimely 
 and incomprehensible decease of Jesus at so 
 early a stage of the execution ; their plot was 
 by it entirely defeated, their plans altogether 
 foiled ; this impostor who had so plainly said 
 
 6i 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 to all the world that after three days in death 
 he would rise again, was now about to be 
 put in the tomb with unviolated bod^^ and 
 that too, in the charge and custody of his 
 friends ; nothing now was easier than for His 
 disciples, if the tomb w^ere left unwatched and 
 they thus unhindered, to enter at the right 
 appointed moment, bring Him forth, and de- 
 clare that He had risen from the dead ; so the 
 guard was set, and we all know with what 
 futile result. They were brave and effective 
 enough against human invaders of the tomb, 
 but fled from the presence of one of the heav- 
 enly host. 
 
 John, in his record, lays special emphasis 
 upon this omission to break the legs as posi- 
 tive evidence of the fact that Jesus was really 
 dead ; and also puts like emphasis upon the 
 other singular appearance, that of the blood 
 and water following the spear thrust in His 
 side, and he three tiines reiterates the credi- 
 bility of his own testimony — "and he that 
 hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness 
 
 62 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 is true ; and he knoweth that he saith true, 
 that ye might beHeve," That omission to 
 break the legs John regarded as proof posi- 
 tive of the actual death of Jesus and that He 
 was not in any faint or trance. And the 
 blood and water from the \vound was ad- 
 duced as proof of the unusual nature of His 
 death ; for in the body of the ordinary victim 
 dying on the cross after daj^s of exhaustion 
 from maceration and fever, the blood would 
 by slow degrees be wasted, the heart would 
 grow weaker as vitality day by day receded ; 
 and as the end drew near, it would throb ever 
 more slowly and intermittingly, until at the 
 last, its final pulsations might be hardlj^ de- 
 tected ; it is evident that with the blood being 
 daily appropriated in maintaining and repair- 
 ing the wasting tissues, little or none of it 
 would remain in any artery or vein of the 
 starved-out sufferer, and then a spear thrust 
 into the body would elicit little or no blood 
 at all. But out of the wound in Jesus' side 
 came blood and water. That decomposed 
 
 63 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 state could only exist in the case of a person 
 dying as niiraculousl}^ as did Jesus, when the 
 heart in full and regular action would in an 
 instant come to a complete stop ; so that the 
 blood in its flow would be at once arrested, 
 being kept in the arteries and veins, and in 
 the lungs also and liver. The blood, how- 
 ever, in this condition, would at once begin 
 to separate into its different parts as above 
 indicated. 
 
 In all cases of the death of ordinary mor- 
 tals the last contraction of the heart is made 
 with great force in such wise as to expel 
 all blood from the main arteries and drive 
 it into the terminal capillary vessels. But 
 no such contraction took place in our Sav- 
 iour's heart, it suddenly stopped in obedience 
 to His will, the arrested blood stood still 
 in every artery and vein ; and thus the spear 
 when soon afterward thrust into His side, 
 whether it entered the lungs or liver, would 
 find the blood just beginning to separate in- 
 to its component parts, the serum and 
 
 coagulum. 
 
 64 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 John, if he could have had the knowl- 
 edge of physiology we possess, would have 
 written it: ''There came out the decom- 
 posed blood ; that is, the thick, dark -red 
 coagulum, and the colorless white serum;" 
 and he mentions it to establish the fact 
 of the strange and unusual nature of our 
 Lord's departure; a parting from life entirely 
 inconsistent, by any possibility^, with the 
 worn-out and impoverished condition attend- 
 ant upon slow starvation. He also refers to 
 the passage contained in the thirty-fourth 
 psalm ; one like many others serving both as 
 a song of praise by its writer, and as a pro- 
 phetic condensed biography of our Saviour : 
 so also docs he quote from the twenty- 
 second psalm and from the twelfth chapter 
 of Zechariah which in like manner set forth 
 the soul experiences of their writers as well 
 as the prophecies concerning the anointed 
 and suifering Messiah. That is, without 
 doubt, a very strained interpretation which 
 would make the words of 1 John v. 6, 8, 
 
 65 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 ** water and blood," to mean the white serum 
 and red fibrine that came from Jesus' body ; 
 such symboHsm is inaccurate, inelegant and 
 irreverent; serum is not water merely, but 
 contains albumen and other elements of the 
 blood; and the red fibrine is not blood, but 
 only a portion of the blood. A much happier 
 exegesis of that passage is that which sees in 
 the water of baptism in which Jesus came, 
 the cleansing and purifying influence He exerts 
 upon the believer's heart ; which sees also in 
 the blood in which Jesus came, the life He 
 gave for us and by which, continually filling 
 our souls with it. He saves us. 
 
 The inquiry may now be resumed, that of 
 the death of our Saviour so unexpected, when 
 He had been but six hours on the cross. The 
 theory of a broken heart does not well ex- 
 plain all the circumstances. Heart rupture 
 can occur only in company with, and as 
 caused by, extreme mental distress or agony 
 of soul, continued during an extended period 
 of days ; there is no evidence in all the Gospel 
 
 66 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 records, of any such extreme trouble of mind 
 in our Lord; in all cases of this disease in 
 modem records, there has been, during some 
 days prior to death, such wandering or rath- 
 er eclipse of the intellectual powers as to put 
 the patient in a kind of stupor, or render him 
 partly incapable of mental exertion ; the cor- 
 roding sorrow has forbidden thought and 
 benumbed the faculties. But our Lord, dur- 
 ing days and weeks prior to crucifixion, was 
 of the same calm, even-minded, self-contained, 
 rational deportment as during all former 
 days of His ministry; in all His ways and 
 words and works there appears no token of 
 an unbalanced or even of an unquiet spirit, 
 not excepting even the night in Gethsemane. 
 In every scene through which during the last 
 three days he so rapidly passed, and whether 
 in an active or passive mood, His words and 
 demeanor evince the high and calm control 
 He had ever exercised over His own spirit and 
 over the minds of all v^ho saw and heard 
 Him; and during the six hours on the 
 
 67 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 cross, His words to all around indicated a 
 quiet repose of heart and self-possession, an 
 utter absence of all distress ; He spake to the 
 penitent thief the appropriate words of hope 
 and pardon ; He gave His sorrowing mother 
 into the care of the beloved disciple; there 
 was capacity in His soul for the exercise of 
 pure and gentle love, both divine and human, 
 to the penitent thief by the forgiving God, to 
 the mother by the dutiful and considerate 
 son ; no one, suffering such dire extremity of 
 distress as must end in a broken heart, could 
 ever have demeaned himself so rationally and 
 tranquilly up to and including the last 
 moment of life. In fact, if such distress ex- 
 isted, it is astonishing that the synoptists 
 give no intimation anywhere in the story, 
 that our Lord suffered any anguish of body 
 or mind while on the cross ; and John, having 
 those Gospels before him when writing his 
 own thirty or forty years after theirs, and 
 who would be certain to supply so important 
 an omission, not only makes no mention of 
 
 68 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 pain or suffering, but even omits the one sad 
 plaint offered up by our Lord to the God who 
 had forsaken Him. 
 
 Another hindrance to our trust in the theory 
 of a broken heart, is in the fact that the last 
 cry He gave forth, and which, in the view of 
 the advocates of that theory is most relied 
 on for its proof, was a cry with a loud voice; 
 but the cry of extreme distress and anguish 
 has no voice; however loud and piercing it 
 may be, it is yet inarticulate ; the culminating 
 agony is too bitter, too deep, too sudden at 
 the instant the heart is torn open, to permit 
 any form of expression more defined than a 
 shrill, terrific shriek ; but the last cry of our 
 Saviour was in clearly-spoken, intelligent 
 words, '*It is finished, Father, into Thy 
 hands I commit my spirit; " they indicate a 
 mind unincumbered by any pressure of bodily 
 or soul distress, and prove the possession of 
 all natural faculties in their normal and un- 
 troubled operation. 
 
 We have seen that the victim was, by the 
 
 69 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 Roman mode of crucifixion, put to very little 
 actual bodily pain; he was suspended by 
 ropes that allowed free circulation of blood, 
 and would aiford him all the ease consistent 
 with such a position; he was wounded by 
 nails through hands and feet, but only because 
 they were customary and actually nec- 
 essary to secure him; if the hands and feet 
 were suffered to rest quietly as attached, the 
 little of blood that flowed from the wounds 
 soon coagulated and stopped any further 
 flow. We have also seen that the care of the 
 executioners for a confinement that involved 
 little suffering from suspensory or traumatic 
 causes, was not prompted by a sentiment of 
 mercy or kindness, but solely with the intent 
 to insure the more extended and intense 
 suffering attendant on the long-drawn agonies 
 of starvation. When the appointed moment 
 drew near, for the jaelding up of His spirit, it 
 is reasonably certain that the strength and 
 vigor of Jesus were in no sensible degree 
 abated, and that His mind had been in no 
 
 70 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 wise affected by the six hours' duration of 
 the punishment; ''the sun had not burned 
 Him by day," for the cool darkness had 
 shielded Him, and arrested any ill effects from 
 thirst or fever ; we cannot, consistently with 
 any fair inference, ascribe His death at the 
 ninth hour to exhaustion produced by either 
 mental or soul torture, nor to any bodily suf- 
 fering resulting from the crucifixion. What, 
 then, caused His early death, so unexpected 
 to every one ? We are, by a broad considera- 
 tion of every view of the case, shut up to the 
 one answer, which is, that Jesus, in the ex- 
 ercise of a right and power, both specially 
 given Him, of His own will terminated His 
 own life; He was the only being of human 
 mould ever authorized and empowered to 
 effect the separation of his own soul from his 
 own body, and in John's Gospel, ch. x. vss. 
 17, 18, is to be found the clear statement of 
 that fact. ''Therefore doth my Father love 
 me, because I lay down my life that I might 
 take it again. No man taketh it from me, 
 
 71 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 but I lay it down of myself. I have pow^er 
 (efou9ta) to lay it down, and I have power to 
 take it again. This commandment received I 
 from my Father." These are statements too 
 strong and explicit to be construed in any 
 other than their most direct, positive and 
 literal meaning, and that meaning acquires 
 great emphasis by the sets of double repeti- 
 tions employed. ''I lay down my life, — no 
 man taketh it from me." '' I lay it down of 
 myself, — I have power to lay it down." ^'I 
 take my life again, — I have power to take it 
 again." *'I received this commandment (to 
 lay down and to take again) from my 
 Father." No declaration could express more 
 clearly and distinctly the original and com- 
 plete control by our dear Master over His 
 own human life, nor can they possibly imply 
 a mere passive, permissive, unresisting tolera- 
 tion of the murderous designs of His enemies; 
 they signify a deliberate act originating in 
 His own will and executed on His own re- 
 sponsibility ; every deed was done '*of him- 
 
 7a 
 
OP CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 self; " He lay down His life when He chose, 
 He took it again when He chose, and that 
 choice was made in the right way, at the 
 right time, and with a definite purpose in 
 view. These words would have recalled 
 what many of those then present had doubt- 
 less heard Him say a little while before, '' I go 
 my way, and ye shall seek me and shall die in 
 your sins; whither I go ye cannot come." 
 and then the query rose in their gross and 
 sensual minds and came from their lips, "Will 
 he kill himself? " because he saith, '* whither I 
 go ye cannot come ? ' ' Thus with the former 
 sayings coupled with these latter words, they 
 thought they had from Him the abhorrent 
 declaration, that He had been specially per- 
 mitted by heaven to commit suicide and 
 afterward to take His guilty soul back into 
 His dishonored body ; this appeared to them 
 so monstrous and fantastic that the only 
 admissible explanation seemed to be, ''He 
 hatha demon and is mad, why hear ye him? " 
 That was the scomftil accusation and depre- 
 
 73 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 cation on the one side, but the sufficient 
 rebuttal of them came from the other side, 
 ''But this demon was so good and powerful 
 as to open the eyes of the blind ; surely, no 
 insane words can come forth from the lips of 
 one so accredited from Heaven; He is from 
 God and must and does speak the truth, even 
 if we do not altogether understand it." 
 
 The final words that accompanied the 
 death of Jesus are most significant. Although 
 there are affirmations in abundance in all the 
 New Testament that Christ was put to death 
 by the Jews, and although Jesus himself had 
 declared that the chief priests and scribes 
 would conspire against and kill Him, yet His 
 last words are as far as possible from sug- 
 gesting such an effect as resulting from such 
 a cause ; the words are not such as would be 
 uttered by a human sufferer, calling on men 
 to bear witness to his innocence and protest- 
 ing against such a bitter and undeserved tak- 
 ing of his life. Throughout all the pitiful 
 scene there was no hint or suggestion offered 
 
 74 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 in expostulation against the disgrace of a 
 criminal's death ; but all is submissive acqui- 
 escence. Every statement, therefore, of the 
 Acts, the Epistles and Gospels in which the 
 enemies of Christ are named as the agents 
 and actors in causing His death, is to be 
 taken as implying and measuring their v^icked 
 and murderous intent; at heart they were 
 His murderers, and their every act was done 
 to carry into effect the guilty purposes of 
 their hearts. These last words of Jesus have 
 thus no reference to pain of body, to regret 
 over loss of His life, to the rancor and hate 
 that have brought Him blameless to an un- 
 timely end; but they are altogether as the 
 words of one who consciously had supreme 
 and kingly control over His own life, either 
 to retain or to give it up. ''Into thy hands 
 I commend, TrapaTidefiat, my spirit" (Luke). 
 This is not an expression to come forth from 
 the soul of one bitterly afflicted, laden with 
 grief and going unwillingly out of life. Far 
 from that, it indicates a rational and intelli- 
 
 75 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 gent purpose, a deliberate act proceeding in a 
 well-advised and chosen way ; under no pos- 
 sible construction could they represent Jesus 
 as going to His end in a passive or protesting 
 attitude of mind; on the contrary, they re- 
 veal an intent insistent and facile, a conclu- 
 sion reached by well-ordered thought. Our 
 blessed Lord, the Lord of both life and death, 
 consciously and by the single operation of 
 His own will, separated His own soul from 
 His own body ; and for this He had received 
 a special permission (''commandment ") from 
 His Father. The time had come for that act. 
 His work was finished, as He declared, and 
 therefore it was needless for Him to remain 
 on the cross any longer. 
 
 His enemies had placed Him upon that 
 cross for the one purpose of most cruel bodily 
 torment; but such was not by any means 
 His purpose nor that of His Heavenly Father 
 in permitting Him to be put there. No mere 
 suffering of the body, however slight, how- 
 ever severe, had any place in the economy of 
 
 76 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 redemption ; no mortal torture, whether mild 
 or excruciating, ever wrought for the least ef- 
 fect in the reconcilicition of our souls through 
 Jesus unto God. Serene and placid, our Sav- 
 iour left His body, as if it were a garment He 
 needed not for the present to wear ; He left it, 
 not by constraint, nor for relief from suffer- 
 ing, but for the purpose of demonstrating the 
 possibility of reunion with that body glori- 
 fied, and thus, after Him, of the reunion of 
 all saints with their glorified bodies. The 
 words also of the New Testament writers 
 testify to the deliberation and calmness of 
 this putting off: " He breathed forth, e^eirvev- 
 aev (Mark and Luke). '' He gave forth, a(j)rjKev, 
 the spirit " (Matt) . ''He delivered up, irapeS- 
 (Ofcev, the spirit" (John). 
 
 77 
 
IRetlecttons. 
 
 If what is thus far written may be deemed 
 valid, as founded upon legitimate reasoning, 
 then there are certain conclusions naturally 
 to be drawn. One is, that our Lord suffered 
 comparatively little pain from His confine- 
 ment to the cross ; the manner of fastening in 
 Hiscase,as in the cases of all others, was such 
 as to inflict the minimum of suffering consist- 
 ent with the retention of the body on the 
 cross ; but He was favored above all others 
 ever crucified, in escaping the unshaded heat 
 of the sun, with the mental disorder it would 
 have caused. The pain and discomfort were 
 the least He could undergo with that kind of 
 punishment and for the short time He en- 
 dured it. The very proceedings regularly 
 followed for making this kind of execution, in 
 all cases one of extremest cruelty, were those 
 
 78 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 actually conducive to the least suffering in 
 His case. The physical pain He suffered most 
 arose from the wounds in hands and feet, yet 
 if He kept them quiet the blood clots that 
 soon formed would exclude the air in great 
 measure and thus secure nearly full cessation 
 from pain. The terrors of crucifixion consist- 
 ed in its duration, its hunger-pangs, its delir- 
 ium, its slow drain upon the vital powers, its 
 exhaustion, long drawn out, of blood and 
 nerves and strength. Our Lord knew none 
 of these; at the ninth hour. His bodily condi- 
 tion, except as to His wounds, was as good 
 as at the third hour ; and it was only at that 
 last hour that the first of the symptoms due 
 to crucifixion appeared, being announced in 
 His own words, '' I thirst." He hung on that 
 cross quietly during the six hours, not for the 
 sake of any bodily pain, but for another more 
 awful and grander purpose, awfal in its ter- 
 rible experiences and inexpressibly grand in 
 its results. 
 In the growing tendencies of our time to 
 
 79 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 multiply images of the cross and of the cruci- 
 fixion, and to observe the anniversary of 
 Jesus' death with religious ceremonies more 
 or less elaborate, the liability is ever toward 
 an increasing regard of His supposed physi- 
 cal sufferings while on the cross, and toward 
 attributing to these some efficient agency in 
 the propitiation made for the sins of the 
 whole world. We must turn our backs con- 
 stantly and resolutely upon such a deadly 
 error. 
 
 Indeed, the events of Calvary have come to 
 be viewed so generally through eyes of senti- 
 ment or through feelings of sympathy for 
 mere mortal anguish, vaguely assumed as 
 having been endured by our Saviour, that 
 attention has been drawn off from, and there 
 is danger of an utter forgetting of, the fact 
 that expiation and reconciliation were made 
 on the cross through death (not annihila- 
 tion) of the SOUL of Jesus, and not through 
 any corporeal agony. There is reason for 
 believing that our popular Protestant theol- 
 
 80 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 ogy, or rather our religious practice, has 
 been deeply infected by that Roman Catholic 
 spirit and practice in which the physical suf- 
 ferings attributed to our Lord are assigned a 
 prominent, if not the larger part in the work 
 of expiation and redemption. The galleries 
 of the Old World abound in paintings and 
 statuary representing what the artists sup- 
 posed to be true of the events of the crucfix- 
 ion day. They have to do with all that 
 could be imagined always of the painful, 
 often of the horrible and revolting, and some- 
 times of the grotesque; but all of them, in 
 the light of what has here been written, are 
 grossly untrue. Copies in colors, in print or 
 photograph of these false but attractive 
 w^orks of art have been distributed in count- 
 less numbers throughout the Protestant 
 peoples of both continents, and their influ- 
 ence upon Christian thought and culture has 
 been anything but good and wholesome. On 
 this subject, nothing more appropriate could 
 be said than the following by John Ruskin : 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 ** Therefore, of all subjects that can be ad- 
 mitted to sight, the expressions of fear and 
 ferocity are the most foul and detestable; 
 and so there is in them I know not what 
 sympathetic attractiveness, for minds cow- 
 ardly and base, as the vulgar of most na- 
 tions ; and as they are easily rendered by men 
 who can render nothing else, they are often 
 trusted by the herd of painters incapable and 
 profane, as in that monstrous abortion of 
 the first room of the Louvre, called the 
 Deluge, whose subject is pure, acute, mortal 
 fear; and so generally, in the senseless hor- 
 rors of the modern French schools, spawm of 
 the guillotine And manifold in- 
 stances of the same feeling are to be found in 
 the repainting of the various representations 
 of the Inferno, so common through Italy ; 
 
 so in the Inferno of Santa Maria 
 
 Novella, and of the Arena chapel, not to 
 speak of the horrible images of the Passion, 
 by which vulgar Romanism has always striv- 
 en to excite the languid sympathies of its un- 
 
 82 
 
OF CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 taught flocks. Of which foulnesses let us 
 reason no further, the very image and mem- 
 ory of them being pollution; only noticing 
 this, that there has always been a morbid 
 tendency in Romanism toward the contem- 
 plation of bodily pain, owing to the attribu- 
 tion of saving power to it ; which, like any 
 other moral error, has been of fatal effect in 
 art, leaving not altogether without the stain 
 and blame of it even the highest of the Ro- 
 manist painters, as Fra Angelico for instance, 
 wrho, in his Passion subjects, always insists 
 v^eakly on the bodily torture and is unspar- 
 ing of blood; and Giotto, etc.," (Modern 
 Painters, Part III, Sec. I, Chap.xiv., ^29). 
 
 From such representations in art, therefore, 
 there is much of evil to be apprehended 
 through the defilement and debasement of 
 our evangelical principles, and it is to be 
 feared that this morbid sympathy for a suf- 
 fering that never was endured by our Saviour 
 may be productive of serious and wide-spread 
 error among the masses in our Protestant 
 
 churches. 
 
 83 
 
THE ROMAN METHOD 
 
 The cross did not mean for Jesus either the 
 common death of men or any severe suffering, 
 but only shame; and He endured it, despis- 
 ing, not death nor suffering, but the shame of 
 it. The moral and social status of the worst 
 criminal ever attached to a cross could not 
 have been, by law or custom, fixed lower 
 than that assigned to our pure and innocent 
 Master when Pilate delivered Him to the 
 chief priests, and bid them do with Him as 
 they desired. The rule declared by our Elder 
 Brother, that ''he that humbleth himself 
 shall be exalted " applies to Him also; for 
 since He humbled Himself and became obedi- 
 ent even to the death of the cross, therefore 
 God highly exalted Him, to give Him a name 
 that is above every name. Thus, by the cross 
 of shame, of hate, contempt and ignominy, 
 the lowest of all men may be brought close in 
 fellowship to our Master's side, and may, as 
 was the penitent thief, be assured of being 
 some day with Him in Paradise. 
 
 The death He suffered was death of the 
 
 84 
 
OP CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 SOUL, the awful second death ; and we must 
 beHeve that in order to know how to redeem 
 men from that, it was the death of a lost hu- 
 man soul He experienced during the three 
 hours of darkness on the cross ! Over such a 
 death, how glorious the triumph, how un- 
 speakably great the victory ! It was a small 
 thing for Him to return after three days to 
 the body in Joseph's tomb, but it was the 
 Mighty God of the universe whose soul was 
 brought up from that av^ful death which He 
 tasted for every man. It was for this that 
 God had ages ago given Him the assurance of 
 both kinds of resurrection; the resurrection 
 of His soul, that it should not be left in hell ; 
 the resurrection of His body, that it should 
 not see corruption. His soul, made sin for 
 us, and under the wrath of, because forsaken 
 by. His God, met and overcame all the pov^ers 
 of hell, and thereby made sure our souls' vic- 
 tory over the same death, the same hell. 
 
 But the subject now opens very widely, and 
 further discussion of it may properly be de- 
 ferred. 
 
 85 
 
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