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THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY.

"And the people stood beholding."—Luke xxiii., 35.

THERE

HERE is nothing more wild and ungovernable than a mob. Some of the older people in the audience may remember the excitement in New York during the riot when the people went howling through the streets at the time Macready stood on the stage of the Astor Place Operahouse. Those of you who have read history may remember the excitement in Paris during the time of Louis XVI., and how the mob rushed up and down frantically. To this day you may see the marks of the bullets that struck the palace as the Swiss Guards stood defending it.

There is a wild mob going through the streets of Jerusalem. As it passes along, it is augmented by the multitudes that come out from the lanes and the alleys to join the shouts and the laughter and the lamentation of the rioters, who become more and more ungovernable as they get toward the gates of the city. Fishermen, vagabonds, rude women, grave officials, merchant princes, beggars, mingle in that crowd. They are passing out now through the gates of the city. They come to a hill white with the bleached skulls of victims a hill that was itself the shape of a skull, covered with skulls, and called Golgotha, which means the place of a skull. Three men are to be put to death-two for theft, one for treason, having claimed to be King of the Jews. Each one carries his own cross, but one of them is so exhausted from previous hardship that he faints under

the burden, and they compel Simon of Cyrene, who is supposed to be in sympathy with the condemned man, to take hold of one end of the cross and help him to carry it. They reach the hill. The three men are lifted in horrid crucifixion. While the mob are howling and mocking, and hurling scorn at the chief object of their hate, the darkness hovers and scowls and swoops upon the scene, and the rocks rend with terrific clang; and the choking wind, and moaning cavern, and dropping sky, and shuddering earthquake declare, in whisper, in groan, in shriek, "This is the Son of God!"

I propose to speak of the two groups of spectators around the cross-the friendly and the unfriendly. In the unfriendly group were the Roman soldiers. Now, it is a grand thing to serve one's country. There is not an Englishman's heart but thrills at the name of Havelock, brave for Christ and brave for the British Government. When there was a difficult point to take, the officers would say, "Bring out the saints of old Havelock." I think if Paul had gone into military service, he would have eclipsed the heroism of the Cæsars and the Alexanders and the Napoleons of the world by his bravery and enthusiasm. There is a time to be at peace, and there is a time when a Christian has to fight. I do not know of a graver or braver thing than for a young man, when it is demanded of him, to turn his back upon home and quiet and luxury, and in the service of his country go forth to camp and field, and carnage and martyrdom. It was no mean thing to be a Roman soldier; it was no idle thing. You know what revolutions dashed up against the walls of that empire. You know to what conquest she devoted herself, flinging her war-eagles against the proudest ensigns. But the noblest army has in it

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sneaks, and these were the men who were detailed from that army to attend to the execution of Christ. Their dastardly behavior puts out the gleam of their spears, and covers their banner with obloquy. They were cowards. They were ruffians. They were gamblers. No noble soldier would treat a fallen foe as they treated the captured Christ.

Generally there is respect paid to the garments of the departed. It may be only a hat or coat or a shoe, but it goes down in the family wardrobe from generation to generation. Now that Christ is to be disrobed, who shall have his coat? Joseph of Arimathea would have liked to have had it. Mary, the mother of Jesus, would have liked to have had it. How fondly she would have hovered over it! and when she must leave it, with what tenderness she would have bequeathed it to her best friend! It was the only covering of Christ in darkness and storm. That was the very coat that the woman touched when from it there went out virtue for her healing. That was the only wedding-garment he had in the marriage at Cana, and the storms that swept Galilee had drenched it again and again. And what did they do with it? They raffled for it. We have heard of men who gambled away their own garments, who gambled away their children's shoes, who gambled away the family Bible, who gambled away their wife's last dress; but it adds to the ghastliness of a Saviour's humiliation and the horror of the crime, when I hear Jesus in his last moments declaring, "They parted my garments among them, and for my vesture did they cast lots."

In this unfriendly group around the cross, also, were the rulers and the scribes and the chief priests. Lawyers and judges and ministers of religion in this day are expected

to have some respect for their offices. In this land, where the honors of the judiciary sometimes come to besotted politicians and men noted for drunkenness-even in this land where we live, it is an unheard-of thing that a judge comes down from the bench and strikes a prisoner in the face. No minister of religion would scoff at or mock a condemned criminal. And yet the great men of that land seemed to be equal to any ruffianism. They were vying with each other as to how much scorn and billingsgate they could cast into the teeth of the dying Christ. Why, the worst felon, when his enemy has fallen, refuses to strike him. But these men were not ashamed to strike Jesus when he was down.

So it has been in all ages of the world, that there have been men in high positions who despised Christ and his Gospel. What popes have issued their anathemas! What judgment-seats have kindled their fires! What inquisitions have sharpened their swords! "Not this man,

but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber." Against the Christian religion have been brought the historical genius of Gibbon, and the polish of Shaftesbury, and the kingly authority of Frederick of Prussia, and the brilliancy of John Earl of Rochester, and the stupendous intellect of Voltaire. Innumerable pens have stabbed it, and innumerable books have cursed it, and that mob that hounded Christ from Jerusalem to "the place of a skull" has never been dispersed, but is augmenting yet, as many of the learned men of the world and great men of the world come out from their studios and their laboratories and their palaces, and cry, "Away with this man! away with him!" The most bitter hostility which many of the learned men of this day exercise in any direction.

they exercise against Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, without whom we will die for

ever.

In this group of enemies surrounding the cross, in this unfriendly group, I also find the railing thief. It seems that he twisted himself on the spikes; he forgot his own pain in his complete antipathy to Jesus. I do not know what kind of a thief he was. I do not know whether he had been a burglar or a pickpocket or a highwayman; but our idea of his crimes is aggravated when we hear him blaspheming the Redeemer. O shame indescribable! O ignominy unsupportable! Hissed at by a thief! In that ridicule I find the fact that there is a hostility between sin and holiness. There can not be, there never has been, any sympathy between honesty and theft, between purity and lasciviousness, between zeal and indolence, between faith and unbelief, between light and darkness, between heaven and hell. And when I see a good man going out to discharge his duty, and he is enthusiastic for Christ, and I see persecution after him, and scorn after him, and contempt after him, I say, "Hark! another hiss of the dying thief!" And when I see Holiness going forth in her white robes, and Charity, with great heart and open hand, to take care of the sick and help the needy and restore the lost, and I find her lashed with hypercriticism, and jostled of the world, and pursued from point to point, and caricatured with low witticisms, I say, "Aha! another hiss of the dying thief!"

It is a sad thing to know that this malefactor died just as he had lived. People nearly always do. Have you never remarked that? There is but one instance mentioned in all the Bible of a man repenting in the last

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