himself from the secret dagger, and compelled the Jews to deliver Him to the Romans to be crucified. He was crucified, and died in a shorter time than usual, as testified in each of the four accounts. He thus escaped having his legs broken, a circumstance particularly to be noted in connection with his speedy return to life. As I read the Gospel of John I cannot resist the conclusion that Jesus deliberately chose crucifixion in preference to assassination; that, in order to bring it about, He waited beyond Jordan until Lazarus had died; that He then went and called him back to life in the presence of many witnesses, thus rousing the enthusiasm of his followers; but, in order that the enthusiasm might spread to wider circles, and the more crowded days of the Passover week arrive, He retired a short time to Ephraim; that He then returned to Bethany, and allowed the Supper to be given to himself and Lazarus, in order to revive and increase the interest which the case of Lazarus had awakened; that He made the arrangement to borrow the ass's colt and ride into town the next morning, because He knew that would make the enthusiasm break out into a public recognition of Him as the King of Israel, and thus force the chief men through fear of the mob to give up the plan of the dagger, and through fear of a charge of treason to send Him to Pilate to be crucified. But it is sometimes asked, "If He thus chose death by crucifixion, why did He feel such a horror of death in the garden? And why did He feel on the Cross that God had forsaken Him?" I reply, that it appears to me an unfounded assumption to suppose that the agony in the garden was caused by the fear of the Cross. We must certainly admit that his spiritual perceptions were deep, pure, and tender; that his sympathy with his disciples was real and strong; that He understood, as no other man could, the need of his death, the terrible realities of sin, the glories of redemption, the unfathomable mysteries of the Allwise Father's purposes in creation and Providence. It is a small and petty view of the character of Jesus which insists that his agony in the garden was from fear of suffering and death. And in regard to the cry, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani," the more I consider all the circumstances, so much the more firmly I am persuaded that Andrews Norton is right. So far from being a cry of pain and distress, it was the most sublime announcement of his Messianic dignity that He ever made. In the first place, forsaken is, in its connotations, a stronger word than necessary for a translation of or even for eyкатαλeiπw. "My God, why hast thou left me?" in the hands of my enemies is all that the words necessarily mean. In the second place, the cry is a quotation, and quotation implies some self-possession,— it is not a probable utterance for great agony. In the third place, the words quoted are the first words of a psalm. But among the Hebrews, as among all other people, ancient or modern, the first words of a lyrical piece are used as the title of the piece. That quotation by the sufferer on the Cross must, therefore, inevitably have had to every hearer of Hebrew birth, whether friend or foe, precisely the effect of saying, "Remember the Twenty-second Psalm." Jesus, himself of Hebrew birth, knew that such would be the effect, and I believe that He meant to recall that psalm to their attention. It had long been considered a Messianic prophecy, and here it was being literally fulfilled before their eyes. He may himself have cared nothing for the literal fulfillment; but the spiritual fulfillment was all-important. The psalm begins with a recital of sorrow, but then suddenly breaks out into praise; declares that God has not forsaken Him, and never forsakes the righteous; that God has heard his prayers, and that all future generations shall praise God for his deliverance. By this reference to the psalm, Jesus said emphatically and effectually to his friends: "Do not let your faith fail because my enemies pierce my hands and my feet, and mocking shake their heads at me; God has not forsaken me; now is the Son of Man being glorified." And this same quotation of the first line said to his foes, in a way that they could not fail to understand, "That Twenty-second Psalm which you call Messianic describes sufferings just such as mine; the triumph which it goes on to describe shall be mine also," Seeing that the cry, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani," is the first line of a familiar psalm, known to his Jewish hearers by that line, interpreted by them as referring to the Messiah, and seeing that the very charge against Jesus was that He claimed to be the Messiah, I do not see how those words, from the lips of the sufferer, could possibly have failed of the effect of openly declaring himself to be the suffering Messiah. So far from seeming to his hearers to be a complaint that God had forsaken Him, it must have seemed to every Jew within hearing to have been a direct assertion to the contrary. There are other considerations, and some of them have decided weight, that go to confirm the conclusions which I have already drawn from the narrative of the Evangelists. The accounts of the crucifixion (Matthew xxvii. 34, 48; Mark xv. 23, 36; Luke xxiii. 34, 43, 46; John xix. 26, 27, 28-30) indicate that Jesus was perfectly self-possessed, declining to take an opiate, but accepting the wine without drugs, and thinking more of others than of himself. He had deliberately chosen that manner of death, and He had not miscalculated his own strength to bear it; but, in the midst of the cruel agonies of the Cross, He with calm dignity referred his foes, and with courageous consolation his friends, to the Twenty-second Psalm. The mode of his death certainly gives great emphasis to Paul's remarkable statement that Him who knew no sin God made to be sin on our behalf, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus is the only great teacher ever represented as sinless; and not only do the Apostles call Him so, but, which is far more wonderful, the Evangelists never put one word in his mouth that betrays any consciousness of having ever sinned. On the contrary, they report sayings of his which unconsciously betray his ever present consciousness of being perfectly obedient to God. But Him who thus knew no sin, men condemned to the most disgraceful and the most cruelly painful death that the perverted ingenuity of man ever invented. He was, at least in that sense, emphatically made sin for us. Another remarkable doctrine of the New Testament is that Christ is our life, a claim never made for other teacher. He himself declared, "I am the resurrecany tion and the life;" and it was by a public crucifixion, and the thrusting of a spear in his side as He hung upon the Cross, that the fact of his death was made certain, and thus the fact of his resurrection. And upon this reappearance after death, as Paul, with wonderful earnestness asserts, the living church is founded. Unless He had been crucified, He could not have become the life of his followers in the full sense and manner in which He did. Of course, it is not for us to know all the reasons which made Him prefer public crucifixion to private assassination. But when we observe the great emphasis with which the Apostles speak of his redeeming us from sin by being himself "made sin," treated as accursed, for us, and when we see the triumphant career of the church, under the banner of the Cross, we get a partial light upon his choice. Again, when we observe how strongly not only the Apostles, but our Lord himself, dwell upon the resurrection, — his laying down his life that He might take it again, his being delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification,— we see another reason why He wished a publicly attested death, a prerequisite to a publicly attested resurrection. as The results to which this inquiry has led me are, I will confess, satisfactory and agreeable to me. I confess it, although I am aware that with some critics the confession will weaken the value of my arguments. Dr. James Freeman Clarke, in a little pamphlet about the fourth Gospel, expressed pleasure at the results to which he had been led, and was thereupon assured by a writer in the leading review of his denomination that until a man becomes perfectly indifferent to the results of his inquiry, he is not in a fit state of mind to investigate truth. Now this doctrine of the reviewer seems to me to amount to saying that no one but a fool is competent to conduct any important inquiry. Certainly none but a fool can be perfectly indifferent to the results of the inquiry. But a geologist and mineralogist is not rendered incompetent to decide whether a given locality conceals mineral treasure simply because he hopes it does. The canon is evidently absurd in regard to worldly things, and it is equally absurd in reference to spiritual. The investigation of the causes which forced the Pharisees to so sudden and so complete a change in their plans has given me a new and, to my mind, exceedingly strong argument for the genuineness and authenticity of John's Gospel. Similar arguments have been adduced by other writers; as, for example, Edward Everett Hale has pointed out that Matthew xxiii. 37 is utterly unintelligible, except for the light poured upon it by the writer of the fourth Gospel. I cannot conceive it possible that anything except truth in his narrative should have made it furnish the key to so many and such curiously differing difficulties in the other more traditional Gospels. And this inquiry has also given me a more vivid, and, so to speak, a more human sense of the greatness and majesty of Jesus' character. It gives me a sense of the highest pleasure, mingled with reverence and awe (I would humbly add with love), to see Him thus moulding and controlling the feelings and actions alike of friend and foe; without display, without word of command, without taking counsel of others; simply using and controlling men and events to the fulfillment of his own purposes. Never man spake like that man; never was Hebrew prophet or heathen sage thus able like a Divine Providence to control the raging fury of foes, and guide the zeal of friends, at his own will, without either friend or foe recognizing that The passive [actors] lent [their] hand Portland, Maine. Thomas Hill. UNIVERSITY EXTENSION IN ENGLAND.1 UNDER the system of compulsory education, the English are fast becoming a nation of readers. But those who receive only an elementary education are likely to give all the time they have for reading to sensational newspapers and useless books. The demand that the people should be supplied with good books is being met by a remarkable increase in the number of public libraries. Yet there is a strong feeling that public libraries by themselves do not meet the case. The least improving books are most often chosen. People need to be taught to select good books. An interest in the right kind of reading must be aroused and fostered. For this purpose, the general resources of literature and science must be opened and explained. Thus compulsory elementary education soon makes it necessary to provide for more advanced education. Schools for secondary education and for technical and agricultural training are rapidly increasing. The government made a large grant last summer to aid schools of this kind. But for the more general education of the people, the hope of the future seems to lie with the University Extension movement. The old English universities are practically limited to the rich. There has long been a feeling among the best men of Oxford and Cambridge that the privileges of the universities ought to be much more widely shared. But there has been very little effort toward bringing students from the working classes into the life of the universities. Almost the only improvement in this respect has been that of granting to students the freedom of living outside the colleges, and thus avoiding a number of special charges. There is a strong opinion among the cultured class that to reduce the expense of education at the preparatory schools and universities would involve too great a lowering of their dignity and social standing. So the change has come almost entirely in the way of carrying university teaching to the working people. As early as 1860, a system of local examinations was begun by both universities, designed to direct and improve the education given in schools in the cities. This plan gradually developed, 1 The best account of University Extension is given in a little book entitled University Extension: Has It a Future? by H. J. Mackinder, M. A., and M. E. Sadler, M. A., of Oxford University. London: Henry Frowde. 1890. A good part of the data for the article has been obtained from this book. |