Judging others by what he himself felt, he thought they
must be equally moved. But instead of having received the preached
Word, there was nothing, so far as he could discern, to indicate that
they had even heard it, while there was much to lead to the conclusion
that they had not. Hence he resolved to repeat the sermon through the
translation of his art. They should, if he could accomplish it,
receive through the eyes what they would not hear with the ears.

Something like this, we are told, was the genesis of this picture, with
its central Figure of the Crucified One close by an ancient altar, yet
immediately outside a modern building called a Christian church. There
He stands unregarded and silent, but so far as His anguish speaks the
eternal Passion of God, while there stream past Him the clearly-defined
types of a twentieth-century multitude--each, with one doubtful
exception, as indifferent about who, and whence, and why He is, as if
He were one of the stone pillars that support the vestibule of the
temple dedicated to His worship. Poverty sits at His very feet and it
is not even curious; fashion and vice, toil and sport, science and
ruin, culture and ignorance, want and opulence pass by, and do not so
much as despise and reject Him--for that at least would argue some form
of interest. It is the indifference which, as Confucius says, is the
"night of the mind--night without a star." I need not linger over the
types. You may see them any day in a characteristic London throng; you
may see them in a less emphasized form in a city like Glasgow. If I
may make one reference to them, let it be where the artist attempts to
represent the attitude of the Churches to the Man of Sorrows. We have,
for example, a high ecclesiastic in one of the sacerdotal communions,
and by his side there is some order of Nonconformist minister. The
latter is evidently in earnest, not to entreat the attention of the
crowd to Him whom they pass by, but to convict his companion of error
out of their commonly-received Scriptures. And the great ecclesiastic,
sleek, debonair, and well preserved, has a bored look on his capacious
face which says: "My dear good man, why excite yourself? I readily
make you a present of your contention. You take your truth and I will
keep my position. As we can settle nothing but ourselves, why not
settle ourselves as comfortably as we can?"

According to the artist, each in his own way is in the crowd