m us the
exclamation, "Surely this is the Son of God." _Man's_ voice is breathing
vulgar taunt and jeer: "He saved others; himself he cannot save." "He
trusted in God; let him deliver him if he will have him." And _man's_,
also, clear, sweet, unearthly, pierces that stormy mob, saying, "Father,
forgive them; they know not what they do."

But we draw the veil in reverence. It is not ours to picture what the
sun refused to shine upon, and earth shook to behold.

Little thought those weeping women, that stricken disciple, that
heart-broken mother, how on some future day that cross--emblem to them
of deepest infamy--should blaze in the eye of all nations, symbol of
triumph and hope, glittering on gorgeous fanes, embroidered on regal
banners, associated with all that is revered and powerful on earth. The
Roman ensign that waved on that mournful day, symbol of highest earthly
power, is a thing mouldered and forgotten; and over all the high places
of old Rome, herself stands that mystical cross, no longer speaking of
earthly anguish and despair, but of heavenly glory, honor, and
immortality.

Theologians have endlessly disputed and philosophized on this great fact
of _atonement_. The Bible tells only that this tragic event was the
essential point without which our salvation could never have been
secured. But where lay the necessity they do not say. What was that
dread strait that either the divine One must thus suffer, or man be
lost, who knoweth?

To this question answer a thousand voices, with each a different
solution, urged with equal confidence--each solution to its framer as
certain and sacred as the dread fact it explains--yet every one,
perhaps, unsatisfactory to the deep-questioning soul. The Bible, as it
always does, gives on this point not definitions or distinct outlines,
but images--images which lose all their glory and beauty if seized by
the harsh hands of metaphysical analysis, but inexpressibly affecting to
the unlettered human heart, which softens in gazing on their mournful
and mysterious beauty. Christ is called our sacrifice, our passover, our
atoning high priest; and he himself, while holding in his hands the
emblem cup, says, "It is my blood, shed for _many_, for the _remission
of sins_." Let us reason on it as we will, this story of the cross,
presented without explanation in the simple metaphor of the Bible, has
produced an effect on human nature wholly unaccountable. In every age
and clime, with