Begbie and Sir James Simpson. The latter
well brings out the point and the pathos of this view of the Saviour's
death in these words:[8] "It has always appeared--to my medical mind at
least--that this view of the mode by which death was produced in the
human body of Christ intensifies all our thoughts and ideas regarding
the immensity of the sacrifice which He made for our sinful race upon
the cross. Nothing can be more striking and startling than the
passiveness with which, for our sakes, God as man submitted His
incarnate body to the horrors and tortures of the crucifixion. But our
wonderment at the stupendous sacrifice increases when we reflect that,
whilst thus enduring for our sins the most cruel and agonising form of
corporeal death, He was ultimately slain, not by the effects of the
anguish of His corporeal frame, but by the effects of the mightier
anguish of His mind; the fleshly walls of His heart--like the veil, as
it were, in the temple of His body--becoming rent and riven, as for us
He poured out His soul unto death--the travail of His soul in that
awful hour thus standing out as unspeakably more bitter and dreadful
than even the travail of His body."

In this chapter we have been moving somewhat in the region of
speculation and conjecture, and we have not rigidly ascertained what is
logically tenable and what is not. This is a place of mystery, where
dim yet imposing meanings peep out on us in whatever direction we turn.
We have called the scene the Dead Christ. But who does not see that
the dead Christ is so interesting and wonderful because He is also the
living Christ? He lives; He is here; He is with us now. Yet the
converse is also true--that the living Christ is to us so wonderful and
adorable because He was dead. The fact that He is alive inspires us
with strength and hope; but it is by the memory of His death that He is
commended to the trust of our burdened consciences and the love of our
sympathetic hearts.

[1] Deut. xxi. 22, 23.

[2] "_Crurifragium_, as it was called, consisted in striking the legs
of the sufferer with a heavy mallet"--FARRAR, _Life of Christ_, ii.,
423.

[3] The words that follow in this paragraph are a reminiscence of a
singularly eloquent and powerful passage in a speech of Dr. Maclaren,
of Manchester, delivered last year in Edinburgh.

[4] Weiss, however, supposes Psalm xxxiv. 20 to be the reference.

[5] On the symbolism of this phenomenon see the excursu