"Now to sorrow must I tune my song,
And set my harp to notes of saddest woe,
Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere long,
Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than so,
Which He for us did freely undergo:
Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest plight
Of labors huge and hard, too hard for human wight."
--_Milton.--The Passion._

Even careful students of the life of John are not together in their
attempts to follow him on the day of crucifixion. Some think they find
evidence, chiefly in his silence concerning certain events, that after
hearing the final sentence of Pilate condemning Christ to be crucified,
he left the palace and joined the other disciples and faithful women and
the mother of Jesus, and reported what he had seen and heard during the
night; and at some hour during the day visited Calvary, and returning to
the city brought the women who stood with him at the cross: and
witnessed only what he minutely or only describes. Other students think
he followed Jesus from the palace to the cross, remaining near Him and
witnessing all that transpired. This is certainly in keeping with what
we should expect from his peculiar relation to Christ. It is in harmony
with what we do know of his movements that day. So we are inclined to
follow him as a constant though silent companion of Jesus, feeling that
in keeping near him we are near to his Lord and ours. This we now do in
the "Dolorous Way," along which Jesus is hurried from the judgment-seat
of Pilate to the place of execution.

[Illustration: CHRIST BEARING HIS CROSS _H. Hofmann_ Page 185]

It is John who uses the one phrase in the Gospels which furnishes a
tragic subject for artists, and poets and preachers, on which
imagination dwells, and excites our sympathies as does no other save the
crucifixion itself. His phrase is this,--"Jesus ... bearing the cross
for Himself." We notice this all the more because of the silence of the
other Evangelists, all of whom tell of one named Simon who was compelled
to bear the cross. As John read their story, there was another picture
in his mind, too fresh and vivid not to be painted also. He recalled the
short distance that Christ carried the cross alone, weakened by the
agonies of the garden and the scourging of the palace, until, exhausted,
He fell beneath the burden. We are not told that the crown of thorns
had been remove