aac went forth
bearing the wood on which he was to be offered, he was a type of Him who
went forth from Jerusalem to Calvary bearing His cross. Had His sentence
been any other than death by crucifixion, He would not have come under
the doom which required that a prisoner should bear his cross. The
Paschal Lamb, of which not a bone was to be broken, prefigured the
Antitype in His exemption from the treatment to which the two thieves
crucified with Him were subjected. In crucifixion He was numbered with
the transgressors and associated with accursed criminals, and so
prophecy received fulfilment.

It is a standing testimony at once to the reality of Christ's suffering,
and to the power which He exercises over men's minds and consciences,
that from being associated with shame and scorn, the sign of the cross
has been elevated to the highest place of honour and dignity. Through
his reverence for Jesus, Constantine the Great, the first Christian
Emperor of Rome, abolished crucifixion. It is recognised that through
Christ's death upon the cross man obtains all that makes life precious.
Instead of being regarded with scorn, a cross is the coveted emblem now
of valour and exalted achievement. The instrument wherewith capital
punishment was inflicted on abandoned criminals has come to be an
ornament of monarchs. Such a change is to be explained only by the fact
that it is the sign of Christ's redeeming sacrifice, and that to
multitudes who glory in the Cross, He who suffered the painful death on
Calvary is the "power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation."

SECTION 3.--DEAD

The death of Jesus Christ was the result of His being crucified. When He
died, the great sacrifice for the sins of the world was accomplished.
Death was necessary for the completion of His work, and this was the
fact most prominent in Old Testament type and prophecy. "Without
shedding of blood is no remission,"[098] and it was to His death as the
procuring cause of salvation that the Apostles directed their converts.
To the Corinthians Paul wrote, "I delivered unto you first of all that
which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to
the scriptures."[099] It was necessary that the lamb which formed the
chief part of the Passover meal should be slain, and so Messiah was
brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and when John saw Him in vision it
was as a Lamb that had been slain.[100] It is the death of Jesus that we
commemorate i