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LII.

THE WOUND OF THE LANCE.

On our return to the scene of suffering on Calvary, we find a great change has taken place. Profound silence reigns on the three crosses. Death, the speechless monster, has spread his sable wings over the sufferers. The gazing crowd which surrounded the place of execution, has dispersed-in part, deeply affected and conscience-smitten. Even the little company of faithful women, almost ready to succumb with grief and sorrow, appear to have returned to the city. We therefore find only the Roman guard, and besides them the disciple whom Jesus loved, who, after he had safely lodged Mary in his peaceful cottage, could not resist the urgent impulse to seek again the place where he, that was all to him, hung on the cross. Who could we have wished as a witness to the last event on Calvary sooner than this sober-minded and sanctified disciple? He relates to us, in all simplicity, what he there beheld; but his deeply-affected heart lies wholly open before us, with all its thoughts and feelings, in his brief and unadorned narrative.

The priests and scribes, accustomed to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, think not of the heinous blood-guiltiness they had incurred, but only of the prevailing custom in Israel, to take down from the gibbets, where they had been exposed to public view, as a warning to others, the bodies of malefactors, and inter them before night. This custom was founded on an express divine command. We read in Deut. xxi. 22, 23, "If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in anywise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God) that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance." This is a strange and peculiar ordinance, which we

should scarcely have been able to account for, had not the Spirit of the Lord himself presented us with the key to it. The fact that God points out those that are hung as especially burdened with his curse, compelled the more thoughtful in Israel to infer that there was something typical in it; because a wicked man, though not thus put to death, could not really be less accursed than one whose dead body was thus publicly exhibited. Thus the divine command to inter the body, and the promise connected with it, "So shalt thou bury with it the curse that rests upon the land," unfolded the consoling prospect that a removal and blotting out of guilt was actually possible. But since it followed, of course, that it could not be affected by the mere interment of executed malefactors, the idea must have occurred to them that in the divine counsels, the removal of the curse would, at a future period, be actually accomplished by the death and burial of some prominent mysterious personage. Now, when believing Israelites hit upon such thoughts, their ideas were in accordance with God's intention, who, in the ordinance respecting malefactors that had been put to death, had no other object in view than a prophetic symbolizing of the future redemption by Christ. The latter is clearly evident from Gal. iii. 13, 14, where the apostle says, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us (for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree) that"-instead of the curse-" the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ." Here Christ is undeniably set forth as the antitype of those who were hanged in Israel. On the cross he bore the curse for us, and in doing this, died the public death of a criminal.. But after he had commended his Spirit, as a voluntary offering into the hands of his Father, the curse that lay upon the earth and its inhabitants, was actually interred with his body, since all that believe on him are freed from the curse, and become heirs of an incorruptible and heavenly blessing.

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Hence, how deeply significant does the scene on Calvary appear, which we are now contemplating! The persons that are acting there do not indeed know what they are doing. But this does not prevent them from being led, by an invisible clew, in the hand of divine Providence. Without reflecting further, they

call to mind the letter of the Mosaic law, and believe they ought to hasten with the taking down the bodies from the cross, in order to their interment, both because the day began to decline, and because it is the preparation for the great Sabbath—that of the feast of the passover, and hence peculiarly holy. They, therefore, proceed in a body to Pilate, and request him to cause the legs of the three criminals to be broken, as was customary, then to be taken down, and afterward interred.

The governor does not hesitate to grant their request, and sends, at the same time, another guard to the place of execution to break the legs of the malefactors, and to convince themselves of their being really dead. It was considered an act of mercy to those that were crucified, to hasten their death by breaking their limbs with an iron bar, and then giving them a final coup de grace on the breast. The beginning was made with the two malefactors, but when the turn came to the Lord Jesus, every sign of his being already dead was so apparent, that the breaking of his legs was thought needless, especially as one of the spearmen pierced his side with his lance, which alone would have sufficed to have caused his death, had the Divine Sufferer been still alive.

In the abstract, this occurrence appears of extremely trifling importance; but the Evangelist John, who so expressly states it, regarded it with other eyes. In the twofold fact of the Saviour's limbs not being broken, and of his side being pierced by the lance, he recognizes a divine interposition, by which two ancient prophecies were fulfilled. "These things were done," says he, "that the Scriptures should be fulfilled. A bone of him shall not be broken." This was said in reference to the paschal lamb (Exod. xii. 46), to which the evangelist here expressly attributes the significance of the type of the Lamb of God, offered up for the sins of the world. As a shadow of him tha was to come, the paschal lamb was to be a male, and in order especially to intimate the holiness of him who was prefigured, it was required to be without blemish. But that not a bone of him was to be broken, was intended to point out, that Christ would offer himself as an atonement to God, whole and undivided; and those who desired to become partakers of his sal

vation, must appropriate him to themselves entirely. The Lord also, in that appointment, aimed at the establishment of an additional sign, which, when the Messiah should appear, would contribute clearly to make him known to every one. And John seems to say to us in his narrative, "Behold here the predicted sign !" The fact, that the sacred vessel of his body remained unmutilated, impresses the confirming seal upon the illustrious deceased, as the true atoning Paschal Lamb. He is the righteous One, of whom it is said in Psalm xxxiv. 20, "He keepeth all his bones; not one of them is broken.”

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In the wound with the spear, the evangelist sees the fulfillment of another passage of Scripture. Again," continues he, "another Scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced." The word of the Lord by the prophet Zechariah, chap. xii. 10, presents itself to his mind, where it is said, “I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications, and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced." This passage was an inexplicable riddle to the Jews, on which account, in the Greek version of the Septuagint, the original word, without any ground for so doing, instead of "pierced," has been rendered "degrade" or despised." But the only true meaning of these prophetic words has, since then, been made evident to thousands, and will become so to thousands more-yea, even to the whole world, either in the day of grace or of judgment. Either they who have hitherto denied Christ the homage due to him, shall be laid hold of and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and with weeping eyes and supplicating hearts, shall look up to him, in the painful consciousness of having aided, by their sins, in crucifying the Lord of Glory; or they shall experience what the apostle announces beforehand, in the book of Revelation, "Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so. Amen."

Thus you see how the profound evangelist discovers, in all that occurs on Calvary, even in the most unimportant circumstance, a striking divine hieroglyphic, which has solely reference to the acknowledgment and glorification of Christ as the

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true and promised Messiah and Redeemer of the world. But who does not perceive, that in all these various events, the hand of a living God overrules, and causes them to occur in such a manner, that one passage of prophecy after another is fulfilled by them to the letter? How highly the evangelist estimates them as a means of strengthening our faith, he proves, very impressively, by the words, "And he that saw it, bare record, and his record is true, and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe." It is not, however, the taking down from the cross, the wound of the spear, and the preservation of the sacred body of Christ from mutilation, that John has solely in view in the words above quoted; but it is, more especially, the effusion of the water and the blood from the Saviour's wounded side, in which he recognizes nothing less than a profound and divine symbol of the saving power of the heavenly Prince of Peace.

The narrative states, that one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith there came thereout blood and water." It has been supposed that John laid so much stress upon this circumstance, because he believed it might serve to refute certain erroneous spirits of his day, who assigned to Christ an imaginary and not a real body. It is certainly possible that, in giving his account of the matter, he was partly induced by such a motive. But it is the miraculous nature of the event that chiefly excited his interest in it. In dead bodies the blood always coagulates, while from the wound above mentioned, on the contrary, it flowed clearly and abundantly, unmixed with the water which burst forth from the pierced pericardium of his heart, and ran down from the cross. It was as if the great High Priest intended to say, even in his death, "Behold, I shed my blood voluntarily, and offer it up in entire fullness for your sins." But that which most deeply affected the soul of the beloved disciple was the divine symbol he perceived beneath the wondrous event. In the water and the blood he sees represented the most essential blessings of salvation for which the world is indebted to Christ. We know that in his first epistle he points out the fact of his coming with water and blood, as well as with the Holy Spirit, as the most peculiar characteristic of the Redeemer of the world; and who does not perceive, in these words,

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