e
robe and arrayed in His own apparel, was led away to be crucified. A
body of Roman soldiers had the condemned Christ in charge; and as the
procession moved out from the governor's palace, a motley crowd
comprizing priestly officials, rulers of the Jews, and people of many
nationalities, followed. Two convicted criminals, who had been sentenced
to the cross for robbery, were led forth to death at the same time;
there was to be a triple execution; and the prospective scene of horror
attracted the morbidly minded, such as delight to gloat over the
sufferings of their fellows. In the crowd, however, were some genuine
mourners, as shall be shown. It was the Roman custom to make the
execution of convicts as public as possible, under the mistaken and
anti-psychological assumption, that the spectacle of dreadful punishment
would be of deterrent effect. This misconception of human nature has not
yet become entirely obsolete.

The sentence of death by crucifixion required that the condemned person
carry the cross upon which he was to suffer. Jesus started on the way
bearing His cross. The terrible strain of the preceding hours, the agony
in Gethsemane, the barbarous treatment He had suffered in the palace of
the high priest, the humiliation and cruel usage to which He had been
subjected before Herod, the frightful scourging under Pilate's order,
the brutal treatment by the inhuman soldiery, together with the extreme
humiliation and the mental agony of it all, had so weakened His physical
organism that He moved but slowly under the burden of the cross. The
soldiers, impatient at the delay, peremptorily impressed into service a
man whom they met coming into Jerusalem from the country, and him they
compelled to carry the cross of Jesus. No Roman or Jew would have
voluntarily incurred the ignominy of bearing such a gruesome burden; for
every detail connected with the carrying out of a sentence of
crucifixion was regarded as degrading. The man so forced to walk in the
footsteps of Jesus, bearing the cross upon which the Savior of the world
was to consummate His glorious mission, was Simon, a native of Cyrene.
From Mark's statement that Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus
we infer that the two sons were known to the evangelist's readers as
members of the early Church, and there is some indication that the
household of Simon the Cyrenian came to be numbered with the
believers.[1302]

Among those who followed or stood and wat