He had fallen with the cross--all
this combined with the anguish of the actual crucifixion.

"The face was depicted as though still suffering; as though the body,
only just dead, was still almost quivering with agony. The picture was
one of pure nature, for the face was not beautified by the artist, but
was left as it would naturally be, whosoever the sufferer, after such
anguish.

"I know that the earliest Christian faith taught that the Saviour
suffered actually and not figuratively, and that nature was allowed her
own way even while His body was on the cross.

"It is strange to look on this dreadful picture of the mangled corpse
of the Saviour, and to put this question to oneself: 'Supposing that the
disciples, the future apostles, the women who had followed Him and stood
by the cross, all of whom believed in and worshipped Him--supposing
that they saw this tortured body, this face so mangled and bleeding and
bruised (and they MUST have so seen it)--how could they have gazed upon
the dreadful sight and yet have believed that He would rise again?'

"The thought steps in, whether one likes it or no, that death is so
terrible and so powerful, that even He who conquered it in His miracles
during life was unable to triumph over it at the last. He who called
to Lazarus, 'Lazarus, come forth!' and the dead man lived--He was now
Himself a prey to nature and death. Nature appears to one, looking at
this picture, as some huge, implacable, dumb monster; or still better--a
stranger simile--some enormous mechanical engine of modern days which
has seized and crushed and swallowed up a great and invaluable Being,
a Being worth nature and all her laws, worth the whole earth, which was
perhaps created merely for the sake of the advent of that Being.

"This blind, dumb, implacable, eternal, unreasoning force is well shown
in the picture, and the absolute subordination of all men and things to
it is so well expressed that the idea unconsciously arises in the mind
of anyone who looks at it. All those faithful people who were gazing at
the cross and its mutilated occupant must have suffered agony of mind
that evening; for they must have felt that all their hopes and almost
all their faith had been shattered at a blow. They must have separated
in terror and dread that night, though each perhaps carried away with
him one great thought which was never eradicated from his mind for ever
afterwards. If this great Teacher of theirs could ha