since he could destroy the Temple and build it in three days.
And the chief priests, and scribes, and elders, less awe-struck, less
compassionate than the mass of the people, were not ashamed to disgrace
their gray-haired dignity and lofty reputation by adding their heartless
reproaches to those of the evil few. Unrestrained by the noble patience
of the sufferer, unsated by the accomplishment of their wicked
vengeance, unmoved by the sight of helpless anguish and the look of eyes
that began to glaze in death, they congratulated one another under his
cross with scornful insolence: "He saved others, himself he cannot
save;" "Let this Christ, this King of Israel, descend now from the
cross, that we may see and believe." No wonder then that the ignorant
soldiers took their share of mockery with these shameless and
unvenerable hierarchs: no wonder that, at their midday meal, they
pledged in mock hilarity the Dying Man, cruelly holding up toward his
burning lips their cups of sour wine, and echoing the Jewish taunts
against the weakness of the King whose throne was a cross, whose crown
was thorns. Nay, even the poor wretches who were crucified with him
caught the hideous infection; comrades, perhaps, of the respited
Barabbas, heirs of the rebellious fury of a Judas the Gaulonite, trained
to recognize no Messiah but a Messiah of the sword, they reproachfully
bade him, if his claims were true, to save himself and them. So _all_
the voices about him rang with blasphemy and spite, and in that long
slow agony his dying ear caught no accent of gratitude, of pity, or of
love. Baseness, falsehood, savagery, stupidity--such were the
characteristics of the world which thrust itself into hideous prominence
before the Saviour's last consciousness, such the muddy and miserable
stream that rolled under the cross before his dying eyes.

But amid this chorus of infamy Jesus spoke not. He _could_ have spoken.
The pains of crucifixion did not confuse the intellect or paralyze the
powers of speech. We read of crucified men who, for hours together upon
the cross, vented their sorrow, their rage, or their despair in the
manner that best accorded with their character; of some who raved and
cursed, and spat at their enemies; of others who protested to the last
against the iniquity of their sentence; of others who implored
compassion with abject entreaties; of one even who, from the cross, as
from a tribunal, harangued the multitude of his countryme