be able to save even unto the uttermost all who would come
unto Him.

Not far from the cross stood a company of women wringing their hands in
helpless grief. Among them was the mother of Jesus. When her infant son
had been brought to the Jewish Temple, an old priest took him from his
mother's arms and prophesied, "This child is set for the fall and rise
of many in Israel"; then looking upon the mother, he said: "A sword
shall pass through thine own soul also." At this moment his word was
fulfilled; the iron entered her soul. Her dying Son beheld her, and,
with his eyes directing her to one who was known as his favorite
disciple, he said, "Woman, behold thy Son!" and this disciple thereupon
bore her fainting away.

It was now noon, clear, scorching, Syrian noon. But a singular mist was
gathering before the sun. Shadows fell from the heights of Moab; and as
they deepened more and more the gleam on shield and helmet faded out.
Night rose from the ravines, surging upward in dark billows,
overwhelming all. A strange pallor rested on all faces.

It was night, an Egyptian night at high noon! What meant it? Manifestly
this was no eclipse, for the paschal moon was then at its full. The
Jews had ofttimes clamored for a sign, a sign whereby they might test
this sufferer's Messianic claim. Had the sign come? Was nature now
sympathizing with her Lord? Were these shadows the trappings of a
universal woe? Was God manifesting his wrath against sin? Or was this
darkness a stupendous figure of the position in which the dying
Nazarene stood with respect to the deliverance of the race from sin?

Once in a Jewish synagogue I heard a rabbi read from the scroll of
Isaiah a prophecy concerning the Messiah; that he was to be "wounded
for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities; that by his
stripes we might be healed." It was predicted that when this Messiah
came he should, bearing the world's burden of sin, go into the outer
darkness in expiatory pain. Was it at this awful moment that he carried
that burden into the region of the lost? Did he just then descend into
hell for us?

Hark! a cry from his fever-parched lips, piercing the silence and the
darkness, "_Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?_ My God, my God, why hast Thou
forsaken me?" Save for that terrific cry of anguish the silence was
unbroken for three mortal hours.

I have known other victims of the cross to vent their rage in impotent
wrath, to spit their hate like asps, to