constellations, and yet are pervaded by gleams and flashings and brightenings, as if of the Aurora Borealis! Still, nothing appears in these wonderful pages so matchless as his scepticism. It respects nothing sacred; all persons are indifferent to it; all systems and reputations go down before it. The next world is no more secure from its rage than this world. It is omnivorous. Well, I ask myself, What can this unexampled scepticism import? Turning upon myself, I ask, What does scepticism mean in me? And I find it means that men are under a disability in the acquisition of truth. The child trusts all persons and all arguments that demand his confidence. After some experience of the untrustworthiness of men and arguments, he is apt to distrust all reasonings and all persons. We readily see that great sceptics must have had unusal experience in the weakness and fallacy of human wit. An individual who had never made a mistake could not doubt the correctness of his opinions. A race of finite beings whose knowledge of all things should be as clear and self-evident as are the axioms of mathematics would never present the mental phenomenon called scepticism. It is the experience of inward uncertainty and error which, in its reaction upon character, produces the sceptic. When Socrates and Emerson unsettled everything in Athens and Boston, it is a sure sign that they groped their way in Egyptian night. Did Jesus Christ ever doubt? Again I open these fragmentary and disconnected memoirs-shapeless biographies made by untutored men-to find what they report on this head. Again the crowded story of those three eventful years passes in review, and a fact appears which no modern biographer of Christ has noticed. Read the life of Jesus by Renan, Strauss, Schleiermacher, or Pressensé and much as their learning, acumen, and genius stir your wonder, you note that not one of them has observed the fact which is nevertheless palpable on every page of the Gospel- Jesus never doubts. There is no uncertainty, no balancing of opposites in his mind. The time to speak and act arrives, and instantly the fit deed and the fit word appear. Study the biographies of great actors, thinkers, and saints: Cromwell, Napoleon, Newton, Mill, Faraday, St. Francis, Wesley, and Newman. They were often in doubt. What shall we think, say, do? Thus, or so, or otherwise, or not at all? Thus they question and ponder. Christ only never questions, never ponders, but acts as with sure constancy of a law of nature. Again, the simple writers of the gospels had no notion that such a strange peculiarity lay imbedded in their unpretending pages. The question puts itself, Why Jesus alone among men never doubts? Help toward the proper solution will come when we consider why we are so certain of some things, and yet so uncertain of others. It will be found that an intellectual being can only have absolute convictions about things which are known to him through intuition. Where reasoning begins doubt becomes possible. Where any conclusion is not perceived to repose ultimately upon intuition, doubt and conjecture ensue. A being who knew everything within the range of his faculties, as surely as we know the axioms of mathematics, could never doubt. A race of such beings would never exhibit such a thing as scepticism in all its history. If Christ never doubts, it is because all his knowledge rests on intuition. This conclusion is strengthened in another way. Bersier says Christ never reasons. He does not appear to know why. God knows all things with equal certainty; he sees at once all possible relations of all truths to each other. In reasoning we proceed from what we do know to discover what we do not know. God is never ignorant; hence he does not reason: he knows. If Christ be man only, be will grope in uncertainty, try to escape from uncertainity by reasoning, and on many questions will become sceptical. If he is God, he cannot do so. Read the gospels, and, lo! you find on every page the air and movement of God. When we know things intuitively we do not prove them, we assert them. Speaking as a teacher, Christ always asserts, never attempts to prove. Here we are entering on a field of enquiry too vast for this article. To explore it would require a volume. Let us be content to say that Emerson's theory of Christ goes to wreck upon the facts of the gospels. It is human to doubt, to err, to grow sceptical. Emerson doubts, errs, is sceptical, and, therefore, human. It is divine to know without doubting, error, or scepticism. Thus Christ knows. 'What think ye of Christ? whose son he?' ART. V. THE MYSTERIOUS CRY OF JESUS ON THE CROSS. AN EXPOSITION BY THE REV. THORNLEY SMITH, WESLEYAN MINISTER. T was the sixth hour of the day of our Lord's crucifixion, or twelve at noon, when a mysterious darkness began to overspread the land, which continued until the ninth hour, or three in the afternoon. By what means was it caused? Not by an eclipse of the sun, for the moon was now full, at which period that phenomenon can never take place. It was wholly supernatural; and when we consider who it was that was hanging on the cross, and what was the depth and poignancy of His sufferings, we are not surprised that nature should thus clothe herself in sackcloth, and the sun hide himself for a season behind a cloud. Some of the early fathers affirm that this darkness extended over the whole Roman Empire, but it is more probable that it was limited to Judea. What effect did it produce on the minds of those who witnessed it? Up to the moment it began the multitudes gazed, the mockers mocked, the soldiers reviled, and the whole scene was one which the few who sympathized with Jesus must have looked upon with the deepest grief. But now all around the cross is hushed, and a silence, deeper and more solemn than that of midnight, seized upon all classes of spectators, whilst Jerusalem is filled with consternation, its mid-day meals suspended, its simple services deranged, and, we may suppose, the consciences of thousands of its inhabitants stung with remorse and dread. The prophecy of Amos was now fulfilled : "And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in a clear day, and I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentations; and I will bring up sackcloth upon your loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.'-Chap. viii. 9, 10.* That was a fearful night in Egypt, when, because the Egyptians would not let Israel God's firstborn-depart, their firstborn were slain by the avenging angel, and there was not a house in which there was not one dead; but still more fearful was this day in which Israel himself was crucifying God's only-begotten Son; and the obscuration of the light of the sun was symbolic of the departure of the glory from the land when at length the cup of the nation's sin was filled up. But, as Lange observes, this darkness was also an external image of the condition of soul which the suffering Christ was now undergoing in silence on the cross.' For three long hours He had hung upon that cross, torn, and lacerated, and wracked with pain; and now, perhaps for the last time, the tempter approached for the purpose of driving Him to despair by suggesting the horrid thought that He was now utterly abandoned both by God and men; when at length He breaks the snare by crying, as a child who turns to his father in distress, 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' These words are reported by two of the evangelists, St. Matthew and St. Mark, both giving them in the language Christ spoke, St. Mark being the more exact in employing the Syro-Chaldaic dialect, “Eloi, Eloi, lama, sabacthani,' and both interpreting their meaning * "The correspondence of these words with the miracle at our blessed Lord's passion,' says Dr. Pusey, in that the earth was darkened in the clear day-at noon-day-was noticed by the earliest Fathers; and that the more since it took place at the Feast of the Passover, and in punishment for that sin, their feasts were turned into mourning, in the desolation of their country and the cessation of their worship.'-Commentary, in Greek. In the form given by St. Matthew they constitute the opening words of the twenty second Psalm, the authorship of which is universally ascribed to David. But it is one of the Messianic psalms, and there can be little doubt that Jesus uttered these words in conscious remembrance of the fact that they had been penned in reference to Himself. Several other expressions occur in the psalm which refer, in like manner, to the sufferings of Christ, as, 'I am a worm and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted in the Lord that He would deliver Him; let Him deliver Him, seeing He delighteth in Him.'-Ver. 6-8. And again, 'I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint, my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.'-Ver. 14. And yet again, 'They part my garments among them, and cast lots for my vesture.'-Ver. 18. Now, was this language strictly applicable to David at any time of his life? Many were the trials through which he passed, and many were the conflicts in which he engaged; but only in a very restricted sense could he make use of such expressions as the above. To whom, then, did they refer, and in whose experience were they ever fulfilled? Hengstenberg understands the psalm as referring to the ideal person of the Righteous One, a character which is introduced more frequently throughout the psalms than any other,' and observes that Every particular righteous man might appropriate to himself the consolation of this psalm; might express, in his own experience, the realization of the hopes expressed in it, in so far as the reality in him corresponded with the idea.'* But it was only in the person of Jesus that the reality corresponded with the idea, and therefore, only in Him, the truly righteous One, that the psalm meets with its complete fulfilment. Hence even the rationalist Strauss called it ‘a programme of the sufferings of Christ,' and another sceptic said, One might almost think that a Christian had written it.' It is highly probable, then, as many have supposed, that during the three hours darkness Jesus uttered mentally much of the language of this psalm, whilst the first words of it were repeated more than once, and at length with a loud voice, which every one around the cross would hear. And have we not here a proof of the inspiration of the royal psalmist? Could David by the mere force of genius have uttered words so strikingly prophetical? However lofty the flight, and however elevated the conceptions of the greatest poet, he is altogether unable to unveil the future thus; and therefore we maintain that it was the Omniscient Spirit who *Commentary, Vol. I., p. 364, com. Rosemmuller on the Messianic psalms. Introduction, Biblical Cabinet. opened to the mind of the seer the years to come, and put words into his lips the full import of which the Messiah only could explain. But what meant the Saviour by this mysterious cry? It is said of Luther that when he was meditating on this part of our Lord's sufferings he continued for a long time without food, and sat wide awake, yet motionless as a corpse; then he rose up from his chair exclaiming in amazement, God forsaken of God! Oh! who can understand it?' Who, indeed, can understand it? It is a profound mystery, the depths of which we have no line to fathom, the extent of which we have no means to explore. 6 'Forsaken! Oh! what grief and love That word expresses on Thy tongue; So high Thy state, Thy state so low, The boundless depths of such a woe.' But though we cannot fully comprehend its meaning, we may be permitted to offer some reflections on it. The question, Why? was uttered by the psalmist more than once. 'I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy.'-Ps. xlii. 9. But is it, then, for a creature, and especially for a sinful creature, to question God in reference to His dealings with him? Shall the thing formed say unto him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus ?' Yet we are often disposed, when affliction or calamity comes upon us, to put this question, and, if no answer be given us, to fret and chafe. But might not the reply be, 'Why not?' Does not God exact of us less than our iniquities deserve? Are not many of our troubles caused by our own inconsistencies and follies? If the Christian, then, ever feels disposed to put the question, Why? he will at once suppress it, and will say to himself, What, shall I, a creature of the dust, dare to ask my Maker why He places me in the furnace! No, I will bear the indignation of the Lord. I will submit to the discipline under which He places me, and though He slay me yet will I trust in Him.' 'Once,' says Dr. Tholuck, in the stormy passages of my life, when the weight of my burden of grief was too great for my shoulders to bear, I raised this why? When my own being and the being of all men appeared to me nothing more than a sad, insoluble problem, I cried out, Why, Lord! And then it was Thou, Jesus, who gavest me an answer to my question-an answer so gracious and so sweet, that all my doubtings were at rest; it was Thou who saidst to the 6 |