justice, on the one hand, to the tremendously strong statements of
Scripture on the subject and, on the other, to her own consciousness of
unique and infinite obligation to the dying Saviour. Perhaps the most
satisfactory expression of the Christian consciousness on the subject
is to be found in the hymns of the Church, from the Te Deum down
through Scotua Erigena and Fulbert of Chartres to Gerhardt and Toplady.
See Schaff's _Christ in Song_.

A third line of development might be traced--the Practical--in
martyrology, the history of missions, asceticism, and the like; and the
spokesman of this branch of the truth is a Kempis, who, as Zoeckler
says, teaches his disciples to know poverty and humility as the roots
of the tree of the Cross, labour and penitence as its bark,
righteousness and mercy as its two principal branches, truth and
doctrine as its precious leaves, chastity and obedience as its
blossoms, temperance and discipline as its fragrance, and salvation and
eternal life as its glorious fruit.

[6] When the Northern nations became Christian they transferred to the
Cross the nobler ideas embodied in the mystic tree Igdrasil; and one of
the commonest ideas of the mystical writers of the Middle Ages is the
identification of the Cross as both the true tree of life and the true
tree of knowledge.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE GROUPS ROUND THE CROSS

In the last chapter we saw the Son of Man nailed to the cursed tree.
There He hung for hours, exposed, helpless, but conscious, looking out
on the sea of faces assembled to behold His end. On the occasion of an
execution a crowd gathers outside our jails merely to see the black
flag run up which signals that the deed is done; and in the old days of
public executions such an event always attracted an enormous crowd. No
doubt it was the same in Jerusalem. When Jesus was put to death, it
was Passover time, and the city was filled with multitudes of
strangers, to whom any excitement was welcome. Besides, the case of
Jesus had stirred both the capital and the entire country.[1]

The sight which the crowd had come to see was, we now know, the
greatest ever witnessed in the universe. Angels and archangels were
absorbed in it; millions of men and women are looking back to it to-day
and every day. But what impressions did it make on those who saw it at
the time? To ascertain this, let us look at three characteristic
groups near the cross, whose feelings were shared in