Windows in Calvary.
"_And they crucified Him . . . And sitting down they watched Him
there_."--MATT, xxvii. 35, 36.
Passing words spoken in times of deep emotion often reveal human character
more vividly than a lifetime of talk under ordinary circumstances. Conduct
which at other times is of the most trifling significance, reveals in the
hour of fiery trial, the very inwards of the soul, even making manifest
that which has been hidden, perhaps, for a generation. Thus, while
watching a man with the opportunity and the temptation to deceive or
oppress those who are in his power, you may see into the very thoughts of
his heart; you may learn what he really is. Or you may measure the depths
of a mother's love in observing her when, after violating every principle
she has valued and lived for, her prodigal boy comes to ask her to take
him in once more.
In the same way, words spoken by the dying are often like windows suddenly
uncovered, through which one may catch a glimpse of the ruling passion of
life, in the light of which their life-witness and life-labour alike look
different. It is this fact which often gives the dying hour of the
meanest, importance as well as solemnity. The veriest trifler that ever
trifled through this vale of tears has, in that last solemn hour something
to teach of the secrets of mortality.
And this revelation of the real facts of human experience is of the
highest value to the world. It is one of God's witnesses to truth, _that
truth will out_. Sooner or later, selfishness and sin will
_appear_ in their naked deformity, to horrify those who behold them;
and in the end, justice and truth and love are certain to be made manifest
in their natural beauty, to convince and to charm and to attract their
beholders.
It is not only one of the uses of trial to bring this about, but it is one
of the means by which God converts to His own high purposes, the miseries
and sorrows the Devil has brought in. The one burns the martyrs; the other
brings out of that cruel and frightful wrong the glorious testimony which
is the very seed of His Church. The one casts us into fiery dispensations
of suffering and loss; the other takes these moments of human anguish and
desolation, and makes of them open windows through which a doubting or
scoffing world may see what love can do. Thus He makes us to triumph In
the midst of our foes, while working in us a likeness to Himself, the
All-patient and All-perfect God.
Nor is it the good and true alone who are thus made object-lessons to
others, and to themselves, by these ordeals of pain. By them, many a bad
man also is forced to appear bad to himself. Many a hypocrite, anxious
about the opinions and the traditions of men, is at last stripped of his
lies to see himself the wretched fraud he really is. Many a
heart-backslider, whose religion has long ceased to be anything but a
memory, awakes to the shame of it and to the danger; and often, thank God,
awakes in time.
Now, the words of the dying Christ on His cross are, in the same way, a
true and wonderful revelation of His character and His spirit. As it is
only by the light of the sun that we see the sun, so it is by Jesus that
Jesus is best revealed. Never one spake like He spake; and yet in this
respect, so real was His humanity, He spake like us all--He spake out what
was in Him. _The Truth_ must, above all, and before all, make
manifest what is true of Himself.
To whom, then, did our Lord speak on the tree, and what spake He? What
special thoughts and beauties of His soul do His words reveal?
Jesus, so far as His words have been recorded for us, spoke from the cross
to Mary His mother, to one of the thieves who was crucified with Him, to
God His Father, and to Himself.