The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 47.

MARY ON CALVARY. PART 5.

By this arrangement, which added a new and cherished interest to her life, the Virgin must have understood that it was not granted her to follow her Son to the tomb, and that she had not arrived at the termination of her pilgrimage on earth. She resigned herself to the divine decrees out of love for us, whom she adopted in the person of the holy apostle. The sacrifice of Mary almost equalled then, humanly speaking, that of Jesus Christ. He willingly consented to die; and she to live! . . . They were two mighty hearts, inflamed with love for men, and which alone fully understood each other; for their thoughts were not our thoughts, and the gold of their virtues was without alloy.

The manner in which Jesus bequeathed Mary to the young fisherman of Bethsaida was dignified and simple, like every act of his mortal life: "Woman, behold thy son;" and to the beloved disciple, "Behold thy mother."

If he did not use a more tender name when speaking to his mother, it was because he knew the power of the name which he thought proper to omit, and because he would not reopen wounds already so painful and profound.

"Afterwards, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scriptures might be fulfilled, said I thirst.

"Now there was a vessel Set there full of vinegar. And they put a sponge full of vinegar about hyssop, and put it to his mouth."

Infamous wretches to the very end !

Jesus having taken the vinegar, said, "It is consummated." Then, willing to prove to the world that he died, not by the power of death, but by a formal act of his will, he uttered a loud cry, bowed down his head, and expired ! . . . .

At that moment the idols of paganism shook upon their pedestals; the star of Moses, which had shone from only one point of the globe, and was to shine only for a time, descended to the horizon of the valleys, and the sun of the gospel, destined to give light to the world from one pole to the other, and to endure as long as the world, arose brilliantly from the side of the aurora. But God owed prodigies to the despised dignity of his Son, and they were not delayed. To the supernatural darkness, which began to clear away, succeeded the horrible convulsions of an earthquake, which overthrew twenty cities in Asia. 1 At the same time, the veil of the temple was rent, the rocks were split, and many bodies of the saints, which were in the sleep of death, arose and came into Jerusalem, where they caused fresh alarm among the people, already filled with consternation.

Then it was that a wonderful reaction was effected in favour of Jesus: the centurion and his soldiers,- who had presided at the execution, cried out with one voice that the prophet of Nazareth was certainly more than man; and that immense multitude of people, who had overwhelmed Christ in his agonies with insults, shouts, and mockery, returned down the mountain striking their breasts, and repeating with terror, " Indeed this was the Son of God !"

In the midst of the cries of distress of the people, who fled without knowing which way to direct their steps, and while Golgotha was rending her rocky sides, there was seen, by the pale light which gleamed on this scene of horror, a woman standing and completely unmoved in the midst of the convulsions and ruins of nature. This woman seemed inaccessible to the general alarm ; with her hands joined in the attitude of prayer, she was absorbed in the sorrowful contemplation of the crucified prophet.

And the daughters of Jerusalem began again to shed tears, saying with compassion, " Poor mother!"

Towards evening, the Pharisees, unwilling that the bodies should remain on the cross, lest the sanctity of the Sabbath, which would begin at nightfall, should be violated, went to request of Pilate permission to take them away. This permission being obtained, they set up ladders against the gibbets, where the two crucified thieves were still in agonies, and after rudely unfastening their feet and hands, they finished them by breaking their arms and legs. As to Jesus, as he was quite dead, 2 a soldier contented himself with piercing his side with a lance, and the divine blood which was to wash away the crimes of the world ran down in great drops upon the earth. At some distance, two women covered with veils, one of whom leaned upon the other in an attitude which betrayed the most heartrending grief, timidly beheld the proceedings of the Roman soldiers: they were Mary and Magdalen, for Magdalen too was there; and in the distance were perceived the other women from Galilee, who had left all to devote themselves to Jesus, and who had not forsaken him in the hour of punishment and ignominy. " Honour to them !" says Abeilard, " for when the disciples and apostles fled like cowards to the mountains, these weak but courageous creatures accompanied Christ even to the foot of the cross, and did not leave him till he was laid in the sepulchre !"

Then Joseph of Arimathea came up, a rich senator, who had obtained of Pontius Pilate the body of Jesus, of whom he was a disciple in secret, to pay him the honours of sepulture. He took him down from the cross, and prepared to wrap him up in a winding-sheet of fine linen from Egypt, which he had purchased at Jerusalem, when he beheld at his feet a woman pale as death, who stretched out her arms with the most affecting and sublime sorrow, to receive the crucified God. This woman, whose whole body trembled and was convulsed with shudderings of agony, had no voice left to articulate the request which seemed to move upon her lips, hut there was not, upon her face bathed in tears, a muscle which did not petition. The senator, who recognised Mary, made a sign of sympathetic compassion, and laid upon her trembling knees the divine burden with which he had respectfully laden his shoulders. Then the Blessed Virgin could give herself up to the bitter joy of pressing to her suffering and bleeding heart the disfigured body of her Son, and of applying her colourless lips to the wounds which had been made by the nails of the cross. Magdalen on her knees, bathed with her warm tears the bleeding feet of her Lord, and moaned like a wounded dove. In the background of this picture of desolation were the women of Galilee, weeping. 3 During this time, some of Joseph's servants prepared the perfumes on the stone of unction, 4 and others opened the sepulchre hewn out of the rock, which was to receive the mortal remains of the Son of God.

1 Pliny and Strabo speak of this earthquake. " It was so violent," say both these authors, " that it was felt even as far as Italy."

2 According to the Mussulmans, Jesus Christ is not dead. " The Jews did not put Jesus Christ to death," says Mahomet; " a phantom body deceived their barbarity; they did not crucify him; God assumed him to himself." (Koran, c. 4.) The Mussulman tradition says, that when the judgment trumpet shall sound, Aisa (Jesus Christ) will descend from heaven to the earth, and will announce to all its inhabitants the great day of the last judgment: then he will die, and be buried at the side of Mahomet: when the dead shall come forth from their graves, both shall arise together, and ascend into heaven. Burckhardt, who visited the great mosque of Medina, where are the tombs of Mahomet, Aboubekir, and Omar, three tombs of black stone, covered with precious stuffs and surrounded with magnificent ex voto's, says that a vacant place has been left by the side of Mahomet's tomb for the reception of Jesus after his death. Above this place and the tomb of Mahomet, was hung a magnificent brocade cloth enriched with diamonds, which was stolen by Sioud when he took Medina.

3 There are some authors who hold that these holy women picked up some of the earth quite saturated with the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and that it was by this means that some of it has been in the possession of certain churches in France, as St. Denis, and the Sainte-Chapelle, of Paris.

4 The stone of the anointing is at present in the chapel of Calvary; it has been necessary, for its preservation, to cover it with white marble and surround it with an iron balustrade.

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 46.

MARY ON CALVARY. PART 4.

" And yet for eighteen centuries the Father has not forgiven them, and they drag their punishment with them all over the earth, and all over the earth the slave is obliged to stoop down to look them in the face." 1

The Virgin had left the temporary asylum where she had taken refuge, and walked with her head cast down towards the place of execution. At a little distance from the tree of infamy, rough soldiers were casting lots for the seamless robe which she had wrought with her hands, 2 and were making a noisy partition of those sacred garments which had wrought so many miracles. 3 A slight shudder passed over the features of Mary; she thought of the time' when, rich in nothing but the love of Jesus, but free from immediate cares, she used to work in the evenings at the texture of this holiday tunic, and this thought gave her a desolating sorrow, for the lightning flash which showed her in the past the sight of her days of happiness did but deepen the darkness of her misery. She lifted up her eyes to heaven, to seek thence, as she ever did, strength to suffer, and her look met that of the crucified God. At that dreadful spectacle her languid feet were fast fixed to the ground, and she remained petrified with so great horror, with so frightful a shock, that what she had felt up to that time appeared to her no more than a sorrowful dream—a frightful, but almost effaced vision ; all was absorbed in the cross. 4

Jesus, casting on the Blessed Virgin a sweet and mysterious look, seemed to say to her, as on the previous evening to his apostles, " Mother, the hour is come ! "

The hour most memorable and fruitful in extraordinary events, of which the sun's shadow had marked the passage since man had parcelled out the duration of time to keep account of its passage; the hour when the Son of God was about to triumph over the world, over death and hell, and even the divine justice itself; the hour of the accomplishment of the oracles, the abolition of the sacrifices, the reinstatement of woman, the freedom of the slave, and our eternal redemption. And the Virgin thought she saw passing before her eyes the patriarchs, the righteous kings, the prophets inspired of God, who bowed down before Christ, like the sheaves of the sons of Jacob before the mysterious sheaf of Joseph. And she thought she saw Moses and Aaron laying at the foot of the new tree of life the ark of the covenant, the ephod, the rational, the plate of gold, and the almond rod, the symbol of the Hebrew priesthood, the mission of which was about to terminate; then David, placing there his prophetic harp by the side of the sword of Phineas, the sacred knife of Abraham, and the brazen serpent. The priests and the victims, the rites and ordinances, the types and symbols, gathered about the cross, there awaited their consummation; and the book with the seven seals of brass was laid open at the feet of the Great High Priest according to the Order of Melchisedech, who took place of the Aaronites. The old world, receding like the waves, which slowly recoil upon themselves, gave place to other images. Mary then thought she saw all the nations of the earth waiting at the foot of the cross, there to receive the gospel. Ethiopia and the islands stretched out their hands towards the Messias; the desert which began to rejoice, flourished like the rose ; the knowledge of God filled the earth, as the great waters cover the sandy bed of the oceans; and a thousand voices seemed to repeat in a thousand barbarous idioms, " Christ has overcome, blessed be his name! "

The noble and generous woman forgot for a short time the poignant sufferings which tortured her, and united herself in sympathy with the triumph of the law of grace, and the great social regeneration; but the vision of glory was not long before it vanished, and sorrow re-entered at every pore; like Rachel, Mary wept over her firstborn, and would not be comforted!

Meanwhile, all nature seemed to participate in the suffering of her God; the daylight gradually became obscured, and the decreasing light gave a mournful tint to that vast and sterile region, so well suited for the crime of which it was the theatre. Every moment the darkness thickened; the dew fell by the sudden interruption of the heat; the eagles shrieked as they resumed their nocturnal shelter; the jackals howled on the banks of the Cedron; and Calvary, in itself so melancholy, took the appearance of a huge catafalque of black marble. The people, strongly impressed by this unusual event, began to keep the silence of fear; and some few voices, insulated and disdainful, the voices of the Pharisees and chiefs of the synagogue, alone continued to utter maledictions against Christ.

The stars soon appeared through the dark crape which veiled the face of the firmament, like funeral torches burning round a coffin, and cast a fearful greenish light upon the theatre of the deicide, which gave the masses of spectators standing in groups on the sides of Gihon the air of an assembly of demons and spectres. They looked at each other and turned pale. In vain did the scribes and Pharisees—too far plunged in the waters of crime to attempt to regain the bank—strive to attribute this prodigy to natural causes; the more the absence of light was prolonged, the less did their reasons appear conclusive. The old men, shaking their grey heads, declared that they had never seen such an eclipse; and the learned men versed in the science of the Chaldeans maintained, on the other hand, that no eclipse was either foreseen or possible in the actual position of the moon. 5

This eclipse, of three hours duration, was one of the prodigies connected with the Messias, which were intended to mark the anger of Heaven when Christ should be put to death- The prophet Amos had said, " And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that the sun shall go down at midday, and I will make the earth dark in the day of light." This darkness extended to Egypt, where at that time was St. Dionysius the Areopagite, who was studying philosophy at Hermopolis. Struck with terror, the young Greek cried out, addressing himself to his preceptor Apollophanes, " Either the world is coming to an end, or the God of nature suffers." 6

Amidst the general consternation, Jesus was occupied with his faithful friends, who had rallied round his cross in the hour of his ignominy. Touched with the courage of John, and the profound sorrow which this young and ardent disciple did not attempt to conceal, he would leave him a pledge of his divine affection. He could not bequeath to him a part of his earthly goods, he who had not a stone whereon to lay his head, and who was about to owe to the charity of a disciple even the loan of a tomb; he had nothing left in the world but his mother!—his mother, who had never left him, and who was dying at his death. He solemnly bequeathed her to his favourite disciple, as a pledge of those heavenly goods which he reserved for him in the kingdom of his Father. Knowing how much he was loved by these two holy souls, he foresaw, with his adorable goodness, the dreadful isolation in which his death was about to leave them, and would strengthen these two plants, devoid of support, by intertwining their separated branches.

1 M. l'Abbe de la Mennais.

2 It is an ancient tradition that the Blessed Virgin had herself woven the tunic of her son.

3 The cathedral of Treves possesses one of these sacred garments, and on its being exhibited in the year 1845, the returns of the police certified the presence in the city of twenty-five thousand pilgrims.

4 The fathers and the doctors of the church place the sufferings of the Blessed Virgin on Calvary above those of all the martyrs. "Virgo universos martyres tantum excedit quantum sol ad reliqua astra," says St. Basil; and St. Anselm adds, " Quidquid crudelitatis inflictum est corporibus martyrum, leve fuit aut potius nihil comparatione tuæ passionis."—(De Ex. Virg., c. 5.)

5 Phlegon relates that in the 202nd Olympiad, corresponding with the year 33 of our era, there was the greatest eclipse of the sun ever seen, and that at the hour of noon the stars appeared in the heavens; but astronomy demonstrating that there was no eclipse in that year, obliges us to acknowledge that the cause of that darkness was wholly supernatural. " We observed," says St. Dionysius the Areopagite— who was at that time at Heliopolis—"that the moon came unexpectedly to interpose between the sun and the earth, although it was not the time for such a conjunction in the natural order of those laws to which the heavenly bodies are subject, &c."— ( Seventh Epistle to Polycarp.)

6 St. Dionysius, Seventh Epistle to Polycarp.

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 45.

MARY ON CALVARY. PART 3.

Crowds of spectators lined the streets and stopped up the ways: some openly showed a savage joy, and cried anathema upon the son of David ; others pitied the fate of that youthful prophet, who had done nothing but good to men, and whom men had forsaken and betrayed. But these signs of barren sympathy made hardly any impression; the good wept in silence ; all those whom he had fed with five loaves in the desert, those whom he had healed, those whom he had loved were there, lost in the crowd, and no voice protested against his punishment; 1 that one among the apostles who loved him most had cowardly denied him! the rest, with only one exception, had fled away and left him !

As he painfully passed down the long street which leads to the Judiciary Gate, a woman made her way through the crowd: this woman, remarkably beautiful, and bearing in her mild and sweet countenance the image of virtue, seemed wholly absorbed in unutterable grief; she suffered so much; she was so pale; her eyes, which had shed all their tears, cast a look so dead—a look of sorrow so holy upon the frightful wounds of our Saviour—that, when they beheld her, the daughters of Jerusalem muttered with compassion, " Poor Mother ! " She glided through the people, who made room for her by an instinctive feeling of pity and sympathy. Some of the Pharisees with hardened hearts called Jesus, bathed as he was in perspiration, and ready to die with fatigue beneath the cross, by insulting names; she did not hear them: the foreign soldiers who surrounded her Son made threatening signs to her; she did not see them: but when a number of lances, with their points directed to her breast, were thrust between her and Jesus, there came from her fixed and piercing eyes a lightning flash which revealed the blood of David, and her fine and inspired head assumed such an expression of sorrowful grandeur, and cool contempt of death, that the soldiers, overcome, slowly lowered their arms before the heroic and saintly woman. Savage as the life of the camp had made them, they remembered their own mothers. '

Mary turned her trembling steps towards our Saviour; she fixed eyes full of anguish on that humiliated form, dragging himself along, bleeding and half clothed, beneath a heavy burthen ; on that imposing, merciful, and mild countenance, which she would have feared to ruffle by the slight contact of her chaste lips, and which, now swollen, blue, covered with filth and blood, scarcely retained any longer the image of the Creator. She passed her hand in sorrow across his forehead, as if to make sure that she was not the sport of some horrible hallucination. Not a groan relieved her oppressed heart, no gesture of despair initiated the spectators in the mysteries of her agony; they only thought she was going to die : and indeed she would have died a thousand times during that solemn and heartrending pause, if He who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb had not divinely supported her. Jesus soon perceived that motionless and mute figure, a few paces from him; bending down before her, his forehead bowed beneath the burthen of the cross, he pronounced the name of " Mother ! " At that word, which sounded like a funeral knell in the ears of the holy Virgin, a sharp pain pierced through her heart; she was seen to stagger and turn pale; then, sinking down, she fell at fall length on those rough and reddened stones where Jesus had left traces of blood as he passed ! 2 ....

A young Galilean with a dark and dejected countenance, and a young woman drowned in tears, made themselves a passage to Mary; thanks to their attentions, the Virgin of sorrows recovered the use of her senses and the consciousness of that physical and moral martyrdom which no martyr, according to the Fathers, ever equalled. Doubtless John and Magdalen did everything to remove her from the scene of blood and death which was preparing on Golgotha ; but their entreaties were useless; and rising with difficulty, Mary began to climb, beneath a burning sun, the steepest side of Calvary: it was the shortest way, and that which they had made Jesus follow. 3

They had reached the fatal and hallowed place where the Lamb of God was about to satisfy the justice of incensed Heaven, by substituting himself for all other victims and loading himself with all our miseries. There was it that the great sacrifice was about to be offered, the efficacy of which goes back on the one hand to the original transgression, and reaches on the other in the night of future things, even to the consummation of ages.  This small rocky declivity was the new altar, whence the blood of Christ was to flow in streams to wash away the sins of the world, and annul for ever the compact of perdition, which delivered us over at our birth to the angels of the abyss. But what had become of the sacred victim ? Where did his executioners conceal him from the desolate eyes of his mother ? Mary cast her anxious looks all over the bare mountain: the people she saw in expectation ; the crosses laid down upon the ground, and workmen digging with perfect indifference the deep holes which were to receive the three instruments of punishment . . . . And Jesus, where was he then?

He appeared, but in what a condition !—stripped of the last of his garments, without a shred to cover his discoloured flesh and bleeding wounds,—he who was so chaste and pure I His executioners, dragging him ignominiously along, exposed him thus some time to the derision of the people; then the Just One laid himself down upon the cross,—that bed of honour offered to him by the gratitude of men as the price of his immense love! It was a spectacle too frightful to behold for those who loved him: they dragged Mary some paces off, into a sort of natural grotto, where she remained standing, white and cold as marble. 4 There came from without a confused noise, like that of the bees of Engaddi, when the Israelite shepherd drives them out of the hollow of their oak-trees. From time to time, in the midst of this gloomy recitative there arose all at once a tempest of shouts, cries of derision and frightful bursts of laughter : the populace of all nations has ever had ferocious instincts, but that of the Hebrews surpassed itself on this occasion.

In an interval of profound silence, employed, no doubt, in some new barbarity which captivated the attention .of the multitude, a stroke of the hammer was heard,—a dull stroke, falling upon the wood and the bruised flesh. Magdalen, shuddering, pressed close to Mary, and the beloved disciple leaned instinctively against the side of the grotto. A second blow, duller, more stifled, and more ill-omened, was again heard; it was followed by two or three others, falling at regular intervals, and then all was told. "See, they are nailing him to the cross," coolly observed a Roman soldier. John and Magdalen exchanged looks of desolation; they were under a sentiment like that which is felt in the midst of a nocturnal tempest, when the cries of the shipwrecked, whom it is impossible to succour, are borne on the waves, and are extinguished, one after another, at the bottom of the waters. But Mary! a cold perspiration spread over her frame, a convulsive trembling shook her limbs; she too, poor feeble woman, had just been crucified; for never did confessor, stretched upon the rack,—never did martyr in the midst of flames,—undergo in soul and body tortures so dreadful.

They soon distinguished the sharp friction of the cords on the pullies; the cross was slowly raised up in the air, and the Son of Man, with his face turned towards those western lands which had so long waited for the light, was planted like a standard in the sight of unbelieving nations: so it was written. Then the reprobate people gave a hoarse and prolonged roar of joy: " Hail, King of the Jews ! If God loves him, let him deliver him ! If thou art the Son of God, O Nazarean, come down! " And the thief crucified on his left hand cursed him also, amid the chokings of his agony; the wretch did his utmost to he a Jew to the end. Jesus, maintaining with calm and sublime dignity his great character as prophet and God Saviour, sealed in silence with his blood the exalted doctrines of the new law. No complaint, no reproach escaped him amid the infamous punishment which he underwent in the sight of a whole city; he looked down with mercy upon this people so far gone astray ; and, wishing to appease the divine justice in favour of those who crucified him, "Father" he said with his dying voice, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

1 We read in the Misnah that, in the time when the Jews were governed by their own laws, when a condemned person was conducted to the place of punishment, a herald of arms went before him, on horseback, making this proclamation,—" Such a one is condemned for such a crime; if any one can bring forward anything in his defence let him speak." If any one came forward, the criminal was taken back, and two judges, who walked one on each side of him, examined the validity of the reasons which it was attempted to substantiate; the prisoner might he led back in this manner as far as five times.—(Misnah, Tract, de Syned., c. vi. p. 233.) Jesus Christ being condemned by the Romans, could not avail himself of this national custom.

2 Tradition, fortified by the authority of St. Boniface and St. Anselm, relates that Jesus Christ saluted his mother with these words, " Salve, Mater I " As we find the Blessed Virgin again at the foot of the cross, this tradition of the Fathers is very probable. " faith is not opposed to these traditions/' says M. de Chateaubriand; "they show how deeply the marvellous and sublime history of the passion is graven in the memory of men. Eighteen centuries have rolled away; persecutions without end, revolutions without number, have been unable to efface or conceal the trace of a mother coming to weep over her son." There was built, in memory of the Blessed Virgin's swooning away, a church which was consecrated under the name of Our Lady of Spasm. "It was there," says F. de Geramb, "that Mary, repulsed by the soldiers, met her Son painfully dragging along the ignominious wood on which he was about to die."

3 This way, which formerly led to Calvary, and by which our Saviour passed, no longer exists: it is covered with houses, in the midst of which is found a large pillar which marks the ninth station. The fanaticism of the Turks has delighted in making the approach to it disagreeable by heaps of filth, in order to keep the Christians away. _sr-(F. de Geramb, t. L p. 363.)

4 Near the place where our Saviour was fastened to the cross by the hands of the executioners, is seen a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Dolours. It was into this place that the Blessed Virgin retired during the cruel preparations for the death of her Son.—(F. dt Geramb, t. i. p. 151.)

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 44.

MARY ON CALVARY. PART 2.

The next day, the chief priests and Pharisees dragged Jesus before Pontius Pilate, who was supremely odious to them since the affair of the imperial standards, which he had introduced by night into Jerusalem; 1 but as they hated the Son of God much mere, and as the Romans alone could condemn him to death, 2 they were resigned to appear at the pretorium of this idolater, after taking the most minute precautions to avoid exposing themselves to any unclean contact with his garments, his standards, and even his tribunal, which would have rendered them impure for the whole day. After doing everything, therefore, to avoid so serious an inconvenience, these scrupulous men accused Jesus of having perverted the people by his doctrine, of having opposed their paying tribute to Caesar, and, finally, of having taken the seditious title of the King of the Jews.—As many falsehoods as words.

Jesus met these false accusations only with silence. Pilate, convinced of the profound wickedness of the accusers, and the perfect innocence of the accused, would have saved Jesus: he did not succeed. The Pharisees, skilful in raising popular tumults, worked up the people, who seditiously demanded the death of the descendant of their ancient kings; and the governor, who knew well how to appease the clamours of the Jews, in a way perfectly oriental, when he chose to do so, was content tamely to defend against the madmen who wanted to force from him an unjust judgment, the innocent man whom he ought to have protected with firmness. Wearied with their clamours, overcome by their persistence, the Roman washed his hands, of the sentence which he pronounced. 3 After which,—no doubt with a view to excuse himself for his show of clemency towards Jesus Christ, and to win back the hearts of the populace of Jerusalem, whom he had recently had beaten by his lictors in a commotion, 4 on occasion of the sacred treasure, which he wanted to grasp largely, under pretence of building an aqueduct which they did not want,—he had the Son of David and Solomon scourged with rods, while the deicidal people applauded, who had dared to take upon their own heads, and those of their children, the terrible responsibility of his death. This done, he delivered him up, at the same time admiring and lamenting over him, 5 to the insults of a soldiery whom the princes of the synagogue, who had a positive horror of them, had condescended to corrupt, that their own hatred might be the better served; 6 for they knew how to hate strongly, these zealots for the law of Moses, who would kill and divide Christ " for the love of God! "

When Jesus had arrived at the court of the pretorium, they made him sit down on a broken column, 7 and the whole cohort did their utmost to disport themselves with him in the most atrocious and insolent manner. It was the season when the dangerous rhamnus 8—which long before had entangled in its thorny thickets the symbolical Jamb for the sacrifice of Abraham 9—was in fall flower ; one of the soldiers ran to gather a branch of it, and made a mock crown, the flowers of which were soon tinged with his blood, and every thorn gave him a deep and insupportable wound. After stripping him like a slave, they threw over his shoulders a purple rag, they put a reed in his hand for a sceptre, and they saluted, with bitter sarcasms and derisive genuflexions, that mockery of royalty. His whole body was but one wound, for the scourges with sharp points had made red pieces of his flesh fly off a long way in the hall of executions ; spittle disfigured his face, where clots of dark blood settled down here and there from his wounded forehead, which his fettered hands could not reach I The chief priests, the doctors, and Pharisees, looked upon this scene with secret satisfaction ; these honourable men regarded compassion as baseness of soul! 10

When the Pharisees thought that the idolatrous soldiers had degraded Jesus in the eyes of the people enough to destroy the idea of his divinity, the approach of the Sabbath obliging them to hurry, they took their victim, whom the Roman governor gave up to them with reluctance, and, after loading his bleeding and mangled shoulders with the enormous weight of the cross, they urged on, with the staves of their lances, his painful and slow march toward Calvary, where they were going to crucify him.

Crowds of spectators lined the streets and stopped up the ways: some openly showed a savage joy, and cried anathema upon the son of David ; others pitied the fate of that youthful prophet, who had done nothing but good to men, and whom men had forsaken and betrayed. But these signs of barren sympathy made hardly any impression; the good wept in silence ; all those whom he had fed with five loaves in the desert, those whom he had healed, those whom he had loved were there, lost in the crowd, and no voice protested against his punishment ; 11 that one among the apostles who loved him most had cowardly denied him! the rest, with only one exception, had fled away and left him !

As he painfully passed down the long street which leads to the Judiciary Gate, a woman made her way through the crowd: this woman, remarkably beautiful, and bearing in her mild and sweet countenance the image of virtue, seemed wholly absorbed in unutterable grief; she suffered so much; she was so pale; her eyes, which had shed all their tears, cast a look so dead—a look of sorrow so holy upon the frightful wounds of our Saviour—that, when they beheld her, the daughters of Jerusalem muttered with compassion, " Poor Mother !

1 Josephus, Ant. Jud., liv. xviii. c. 4.

2 Before Judea had become subject to the .Romans, the sanhedrim possessed the right of life and death; but those conquerors deprived them of that privilege. It was the custom of the Romans to leave the conquered nations their temples and their gods; but in civil matters they were obliged to follow the laws and orders of the republic. At the time when Jesus Christ was condemned, the Romans were absolutely masters of temporal jurisdiction, and the authority of the Jewish senate was limited to affairs purely ecclesiastical. The Talmudists recognised it, for they acknowledged that the power of judging was taken away from the senate forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem, that is, three years before the death of Jesus Christ —(Basn., liv. vii. c. 4.)

3 The decree pronounced by Pilate against our Lord is preserved at Jerusalem. We give it here, not as an authentic document, but as a local tradition:—Jesum Nazarenum, subversorem gentis, contemptorem Casaris, it falsum Messiam, ut majorum susb gentis lestimonio probatum est, ducite ad communis supplicii locum, et cum ludibrio regiæ magistatis in medio duorum latronum affigite. I, lictor, expedi cruces. "Jesus of Nazareth, the subverter of the people, the despiser of Cæsar, and the false Messias, as it has been proved by the testimony of the ancients of this nation, take ye to the common place of punishment, and crucify him in derision of his royal majesty between two thieves. Go, lictor, prepare the crosses."—(Adricom., In descript. Jesu.)

4 Pilate undertook to build an aqueduct with the money of the sacred treasure, to bring water to Jerusalem from a distance of two hundred furlongs. The people, violently irritated against the Roman governor, whose intentions they discovered, assembled in large bodies of several thousand men in the streets and the public squares of Jerusalem, which they made ring with vociferations against Pilate, and there were some even, says Josephus, who exasperated the governor by gross insults; as it always happens with people in commotion. Pilate, who was not alarmed at a little, made his own people take great bludgeons under their garments, and surround the populace; when the seditious, after taking breath, recommenced their clamours and insults, Pilate gave the signal to his men to lay on them, and they began to strike more than they were ordered to do, and without any distinction gave great blows with their cudgels as well to those who were silent as to those who made a noise. These poor people, who were unarmed, were thus inhumanly treated, adds Josephus, with compassionate sympathy for the Jewish outbreak; some were killed, others wounded, and by this means was the tumult appeased.—(Joseph. Ant. Jud., lib. xviii. c. 4.)

5 Tiberias, in consequence of the accounts which came to him from Pontius Pilate, proposed to the senate to grant divine honours to Jesus Christ; Tertullian relates it as a well-known met in his Apology, which he presented to the senate in the name of the Church, and he would not have been willing to weaken a cause so good as his by things where it would have been so easy to confound him.— (Tertull. Apolog. 6; Euseb., Hist. Eccl. ii. 2.)

6 M. Salvador would fain exculpate his co-religionists, by imputing to the Roman soldiers the unheard-of outrages which Jesus received in the pretorium; but it is clear that the Romans acted only by the instigation of the enemies of Jesus Christ. The following is the opinion of St John Chrysostom on this subject:—"It is the Jews themselves who condemn Jesus to death, although they shelter themselves under the name of Pilate. ' They desire that his blood should fall upon themselves and upon their children.' It is they alone who direct all these insults against him, who bind nim, who lead him away to Pilate, and who cause him to be dragged along so cruelly by the soldiers. Pilate had not ordered any of these things.*' —(Serin. 77, in Matt)

7 This pillar, of grey marble, being only two feet high, is at Rome, in the church of St. Praxedes.

8 Some separate thorns of this crown, in the possession of individuals, are now recognised as the rhamnus spina Christi of Linnæus.

9 St. Jerom (in Philem.) says that the ram which Abraham saw in the thorn-bush was the figure of Jesus Christ crowned with thorns.

10 Basn., liv. vi. c. 17. The punishment of the whip was of very ancient usage among the Jews, and was not considered disgraceful. According to the Talmud, kings themselves were subjected to it on certain occasions. "Tradition informs us,' says Maimonides, "that the king may not have more than eighteen wives; if he marries one above that number, let him be whipped. If he has more horses than he has need of for the service of his chariot, let him be whipped. If he amasses more gold and silver than he wants for the payment of his ministers, let him be whipped."—(Maimonid., Halach., Malach., c. 3.)

11 We read in the Misnah that, in the time when the Jews were governed by their own laws, when a condemned person was conducted to the place of punishment, a herald of arms went before him, on horseback, making this proclamation,—" Such a one is condemned for such a crime; if any one can bring forward anything in his defence let him speak." If any one came forward, the criminal was taken back, and two judges, who walked one on each side of him, examined the validity of the reasons which it was attempted to substantiate; the prisoner might he led back in this manner as far as five times.—(Misnah, Tract, de Syned., c. vi. p. 233.) Jesus Christ being condemned by the Romans, could not avail himself of this national custom.

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 43.

MARY ON CALVARY. PART 1.

The palms which the children of the Hebrews had cast beneath the feet of Christ still strewed with their green tufts the rugged road of Bethania; the echo of the valley of cedars 1 still muttered the dying sounds of those cries of triumph and joy, with which the daughters of Sion had saluted the King who came to them poor, when Jerusalem was deeply moved by a new event of great and sad importance.

The princes of the priests, the senators, and Pharisees sought to get possession, even at the price of gold, and without shrinking from domestic treason, of a great criminal, who, as they said, placed both religion and the state in danger. This man must indeed have been very dangerous, since these honourable personages had bound themselves to an extraordinary fast to lay hold of him, 2 and had indeed distributed on this occasion some alms throughout the city with sound of trumpet. The Pharisees, those conscientious Jews, who plundered none but the uncircumcised, and who would have " left their neighbour at the bottom of a pit on the sabbath-day, though they would have speedily drawn out their ox or their ass, had undertaken to spread among the people—whom it is so easy to make impression upon, and to deceive— frightful reports and vague rumours, which had thrown them into a kind of feverish anxiety, from which they could not free themselves but by a fit of ferocity. Things being thus prepared, a well-armed troop were seen, one evening, coming down from Mount Moria, in which were some senators, and which was commanded by the captain of the guards of the temple; 3 the troop of servants of the princes of the priests came after, and at the head of this battalion, which marched on with a measured step by the light of those large lanterns which the Asiatics fix upon long poles, to raise them up high, and of some resinous torches, was a man with a low forehead, an irresolute look, and an abject countenance, whose girdle was swelled out with gold robbed from the poor, 4 to which he already added in imagination the thirty pieces of silver which he was to earn, by delivering up to the princes of the synagogue—too Jewish to pay for his treason beforehand—his master, his friend, his God! For it was the son of David, the triumpher but a few days before, Jesus of Nazareth, the great prophet of Galilee, at whose voice-greedy death gave up his prey, and whose commands the winds and the waves respected, whom the ruffians of the chief priests and the Pharisees were going in search of upon the Mount of Olives, whither he retired at night after teaching in the temple, as St. Luke relates. They had not dared to arrest him in open daylight, because they feared some resistance on the part of that multitude of disciples who came to hear him early in the morning beneath the porch of Solomon.

The armed troop, headed by the Iscariot, crossed the ravine where flows the Cedron, that torrent of dark waters, 5 which witnessed the passage of King David, when he fled with a handful of faithful servants from the rebels in the pay of his son Absalom. While the soldiers of the temple followed, silent and savage, along the banks of the torrent in which their torches were reflected, in order to reach the heights of Gethsemane, and while the night wind shook the dishevelled tops of the willows, which were soon to see Judas hanging upon one of their branches,—a punishment too light for such a traitor, but which is continually increased by the undying contempt of successive generations upon the globe,—a sad and solemn scene was passing in that garden of olives where the worthless apostle went in search of his master on purpose to destroy him.

After praying a long time, on his face on the ground, and undergoing that frightful agony which covered his divine forehead with a sweat of blood, Christ had risen up with submissive resignation to the awful will of his Father, and quite prepared to drink the chalice of bitterness to the dregs. He raised up his large, soft, and piercing eyes to the starry heavens, the stars of which told that it was midnight, and high in which shone the moon, that fair lamp of the firmament, whose useful light is blessed by the children of Abraham in their prayers; 6 she was then at the full, and cast a sheet of resplendent light upon that austere passage, where the dark mountains stood out from the limpid blue of heaven. Jerusalem, half-drowned in shade, and splendidly lighted up in places, sent forth afar the aromatic perfume of the rare plants of her gardens, and waved in the breath of the breeze her clusters of palm-trees, out of which arose white towers of marble. The silence was profound on the side of the mountains, but a slight murmur arose from the bottom of the valley:—Jesus suddenly started. There they are, he thought, and he slowly moved towards the place where he had left three of his apostles, whom he had chosen from all the rest to share his solitary night-watch. Alas, fatigue, or the lulling breath of the wind which made the grey foliage of the olive-trees rustle, had gradually made these negligent sentinels fall asleep. Jesus beheld them asleep for a moment with a holy feeling of grief; he had announced to them that his death was near, that the hour of peril was come, and they were asleep—they, his kinsmen, his friends, his chosen disciples, to all appearance indifferent about his danger or his death! 0 the vanity of benefits of ties of blood and friendship! They were awake enough on Thabor at the hour of the glorious transfiguration, but they slept in the hour of trial and distress!

A confused noise was heard in the hollow path which led up to the little village of Gethsemane; and soon the glare of torches shone upon the trees. Then Jesus, leaning over his apostles, who were still asleep, said to them in a low but deep voice, " Arise, let us go! Behold, he that hetrayeth me is at hand! " He had hardly pronounced these words, when Judas and his band arrived. Coming up to Jesus, with boldness in his eyes, and the smile of hypocrisy on his lips, he pointed him out to the hostile troop who were in search of him, by giving him that sacrilegious kiss which has taken his name. It was the signal agreed upon. Jesus Christ received the traitor with kindness, and said to him with meekness which pierced to the quick, " Friend, whereto art thou come ? "

Whereto was he come ? .... He was come to earn the thirty sides of silver of the synagogue. Avarice, which is a cold and calculating passion, commits ten times more crimes than violence, and much blacker crimes.

Judas had not time to answer this embarrassing question, for all the rest advancing, fell upon Jesus and laid hold on him. Then anger arose in the heart of Ben-Cephas, 7 the prince of the apostles; he drew his sword, and struck with it one of the servants of the high priest; but Jesus, restraining that arm which was the only one raised in his defence, commanded that the sword should be returned to its scabbard. " How then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that so it must be done ? " The Lamb of God desired to be immolated for the sins of the world.

Then was heard in this enclosed spot mingled sounds of hurried footsteps, broken boughs, and cries of alarm; and a number of men were seen leaping over the low wall, scarcely three feet high, 8 which surrounded the garden: they were the disciples flying away! . . .

The hostile troop, after binding Jesus like a criminal, returned by the road to the Holy City, and went in the direction of the stone bridge which the Asmonean princes had thrown over the Cedron; but the people of Jerusalem, who had come out in crowds, already occupied it, and tradition relates that Jesus was dragged through this channel of water; which accomplished to the letter the prophecy, " He shall drink of the torrent in the way." The sacred footsteps of our Saviour, and the impression of one of his knees, are marked in the bed and on the stone margin of Cedron; at least this is asserted by the Christians of Jerusalem, who still show them. After ascending the hill of Sion, they entered Jerusalem by the Sterquilinian Gate, and repaired to Caiphas, the high priest, where the scribes and ancients were assembled. The chief priests and scribes then asked Jesus if he was the Christ. "HI shall tell you," our Saviour meekly answered, " you will not believe me." " Art thou the Son of God ? " asked Caiphas. " I am," replied Jesus. "He hath blasphemed!" cried the high priest, rending his garments. " He is guilty of death I " said the scribes and Pharisees.

" Then did they spit in his face," and they struck him with their fists, and gave him blows, while they cried out to him, in derision, "Prophesy, Christ, who is it that struck thee?"

During this time Peter, who had sworn to die rather than abandon him, denied him thrice in the court of the high priest.

1 Valley of Cedars, tho ancient name of the valley of Josaphat.

2 This anecdote is found in the Toldos, published by Huldric, p. 56 and 60.

3 This office is known by the gospel, which often speaks of these captains of the temple, who must be distinguished from the Roman commandant, who kept guard with his cohort round this great edifice to prevent crowds, and those disorderly acts to which the multitude might give occasion. These captains of the temple necessarily were Jews, and were taken from the priestly families; to them were confided the care and the keys of the temple, to provide for the safety of the treasury and the sacred vessels: by right of his birth this officer had the liberty to enter into all the counsels of the priests.— (Basn., liv. i. c. 4.)

4 "Then one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, he that was about to betray him, said, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor ? Now he said this, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and having the purbe, carried what was put therein."—(St. John xii. v. 4, 5, 6.)

5 The Cedron is a torrent which runs down the valley of Josaphat, between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. It was called Cedron^ because it has its course in deep and dark places; its Hebrew name signifies tenebroaus fuit,

6 The day of the new moon is a festival day for the Hebrews; the women abstain from work, and the devout fast the preceding day. After reciting a number of prayers in the synagogue, they take a repast, at which they are very merry. Three days after, the Jews assemble on a platform, where they look steadfastly at the moon, and bless God by a long prayer for having created it, and for renewing it, to teach the Israelites that they ought to become new creatures: " O moon! blessed be thy Creator, bleb»ed be He who made thee! " and then they jump three times, as high as they can, and say to the moon, " As we leap towards thee, without being able to touch thee, may our enemies rise up against us without reaching us! . . . ."—(Basn., liv. vii. c. 16.)

7 Peter Ben-Cephas (Peter, son of Peter); it is by this name that the prince of the apostles is known in the East.

8 The garden of Gethsemane or of Olives, at the foot of the mountain of that name, is surrounded by a wall three feet high; its length is two hundred paces, by a hundred and forty broad. There is a rock in it, forming a reddish-coloured cave, where it is said the three apostles fell asleep.—(Voyage de Jesus Christ, 44 voyage.) Its name of Gethsemane is derived from the goodness of the soil; in Hebrew Gethsemane signifies " fertile valley." * Josephus, Ant. Jud., liv. xviii. 0. 4.