from the Mount of Transfiguration;12 the last, on preparing to make His triumphal
Messianic Entry into Jerusalem.13 The darker hints and Parabolic sayings might have
been misunderstood. Even as regarded the clear prediction of His Death, preconceived
ideas could find no room for such a fact. Deep veneration, which could not associate it
with His Person, and love which could not bear the thought of it, might, after the first
shock of the words was past, and their immediate fulfilment did not follow, suggest
some other possible explanation of the prediction. But on that Wednesday it was
impossible to misunderstand; it could scarcely have been possible to doubt what Jesus
said of His near Crucifixion.14 If illusions had still existed, the last two days must have
rudely dispelled them. The triumphal Hosannas of His Entry into the City, and the
acclamations in the Temple, had given place to the cavils of Pharisees, Sadducees, and
Scribes, and with a 'Woe' upon it Jesus had taken His last d eparture from Israel's
sanctuary. And better far than those rulers, whom conscience made cowards, did the
disciples know how little reliance could be placed on the adherence of the 'multitude.'
And now the Master was telling it to them in plain words; was calmly contemplating it,
and that not as in the dim future, but in the immediate present - at that very Passover,
from which scarcely two days separated them. Much as we wonder at their brief
scattering on His arrest and condemnation, those humble disciple s must have loved
Him much to sit around Him in mournful silence as He thus spake, and to follow Him
unto His Dying.
3. St. John ii. 19.
4. iii. 14.
5. St. Matt. ix. 15.
6. x. 38.
7. St. Matt. xii. 40.
8. St. John vi. 51.
9. St. John x. 11, 15.
10. St. Matt. xxi. 38.
11. St. Matt. xvi. 21.
12. St. Matt. xvii. 22.
13. St. Matt. xx. 17-19.
14. On the evidential force of the narrative of the Crucifixion, I must refer to the singularly
lucid and powerful reasoning of Dr. Wace, in his work on 'The Gospel and its Witnesses'
(London, 1883, Lecture VI.). He first refers to the circumstance, that in the narratives of
the Crucifixion, written by Apostle, or by friends of Apostles, 'the writers do not shrink
from describing their own conduct, or that of their Master,' with a truthfulness which
terribly reflects on their constancy, courage, and even manliness. Dr. Wace's second
argument is so clearly put, that I must take leave to transfer his language to these pages.
'Christ crucified was, we are told by St. Paul, "unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto
the Greeks foolishness." It was a constant reproach to Christians, that they worshipped a
man who had been crucified as a malefactor. The main fact, of course, could not be
disguised. But that the Evangelical writers should have so diligently preserved what might
otherwise have been forgotten - all the minute circumstances of their Master's
humiliation, the very weakness of His flesh, and His shrinking, in the garden, from the cup
He had to drink - all those marks, in fact, of His human weakness which were obliterated
by His Resurrection - this is an instance of truthfulness which seems at least incompatible
with any legendary origin of the narratives, at a time when our Lord was contemplated in
the glory of His Ascension, and of His session at the right hand of God. But whatsoever
impression of truthfulness, and of intense reality in detail, is thus created by the history of
the Passion, must in justice be allowed to reflect back over the whole preceding history.'
The argument is then further carried out as to the truthfulness of writers who could so
speak of themselves, and concerning the fate of the Christ. But the whole subject should
be studied in the connection in which Dr. Wace has presented it.