_Jerusalem--Third Morning after the Crucifixion._
My Dear Father:
As I resume my pen by the faint light of the dawn, to continue the
particulars of the crucifixion of the unhappy son of Mary, who, widowed
and childless, still remains with us, mourning over her dead son, my
heart involuntarily shrinks from the painful subject and bleeds afresh.
But there is a fascination associated with all that concerns him, even
now that he is dead and has proved himself as weak a mortal as other
men, which urges me to write of him and which fills my thoughts only
with him.
I have just alluded to his grief-smitten mother. Alas, there is no
consolation for her! Her loss is not like that of other mothers.
Her son has not only been taken from her by death, but has died
ignominiously on a Roman cross, executed between two vile malefactors,
as if he himself were the greatest criminal of the three; and not only
this, but executed as a false prophet--as a deceiver of Israel.
Yet her love for her son--that deathless, maternal love, which seems
immortal in its nature--is not buried with him. She, with dearest Mary
and Martha, has just gone out secretly, before the Jews are astir, to
pay the last duties to his dead body, ere we all depart for an asylum
in Bethany. Until they return from this sad mission of love I will
continue my subject--the crucifixion.
When the centurion to whom was committed by Pilate the charge of
conducting the crucifixion of Jesus, gave orders to bind him also to
the cross, which lay upon the ground like an altar awaiting its victim,
the four Parthian soldiers, his brutal crucifiers, laid hold upon him
and began to strip him of his garments, for his enemies had put again
on him his own clothes when they led him out of the hall of Pilate. He
wore a mantle woven without seam by Mary and Martha, and which had been
a present to him by the sisters, as a token of their gratitude, for
raising from the dead their brother Lazarus.
His mother, supported by John, could no longer gaze upon her son, and
was borne afar off, crying thrillingly:
"Oh, let me not hear the crashing of the nails into his feet and hands!
My son! My son! Oh, that thou wouldst now prove to thy mother that thou
art a true Prophet!"
"What means this wailing?" cried the fierce Abner. "Who is this woman?"
"The mother of Jesus," I answered, indignantly.
"The mother of the blasphemer! Let her be accursed!" he cried, in a
savage tone. "Thou seest, woman, what is the end of bringing up an
impostor, to blaspheme Jehovah and the Temple. Thy hopes and his, O
wretched woman, have this day miserably perished! So die all false
Christs and false prophets!"
Mary buried her face in her hands and wept on my shoulder. I could not
look towards the place where Jesus stood. I dreaded to hear the first
blow upon the dreadful nails, and as she stopped her ears I would have
closed mine also, but that my hands supported her. I could hear the
awful preparations--the rattling of the hard cord, as they bound him
to the cross, and the low, eager voices of the four busy Parthians,
and then the ringing of the spikes, and then silence like that of the
grave! Suddenly a blow of a hammer broke the moment of suspense! A
shriek burst from the soul of the mother that echoed far and wide among
the tombs of Golgotha!