NOT in cruelty, perhaps, but only in mockery and scorn did the rough soldiers of the Roman Guard cast a purple robe on the bleeding shoulders of Christ, plat a crown for His head, put a reed in His hand, and feign to do Him homage as a king. All this was but a rude burlesque of the ceremonies with which they honoured the general whom they raised by acclamation to the throne, and was no doubt suggested by our Lord's claim to be the king of the Jews,-a claim which to them must have seemed simply preposterous in the gentle unarmed peasant of Nazareth. To us, indeed, the last hours of any man, even the most debased and criminal, have a certain sanctity. Death gives him an interest and dignity wholly new. We treat him with respect, and should hold it simply brutal to embitter his dying moments with blows and insults. So much humanity at least we have all learned from Christ. But to the Roman legionaries such feelings were utterly unknown. To them it would seem a very proper jest that this soft-voiced Peasant-poor, unfriended, abandoned-should assert a claim against Cæsar. No reve

VOL. LXXII.-NEW SERIES, No. 2.

rence for death, no humane sympathy with a fellow-man about to be cast from the world, would restrain their full enjoyment of the jest; and probably it was in a rough goodhumoured way, not with any studied malignity, but with broad laughter and mirth, many a word of loud coarse merriment on their lips, that they placed the crown of thorns on that Sacred Head, and cringed and bowed in affected deference before it. But if they did not mean to be cruel, nevertheless they were cruel. It was only in insult and derision, not to inflict bodily pain, that they imposed the crown of thorns! Only! But to a gentle sensitive heart to be mocked in its agony is incalculably harder than to bear physical pain. Insults are sharper than thorns; derision is more cruel than a blow. The very excuse we make for the rough thoughtless soldiers simply renders the sufferings of their Victim more keen and profound.

Naturalists have spent much labour on determining the name of the plant from which the Guard broke the twigs they platted into a crown-no easy task since at least a score of prickly shrubs were common

The school at Moulton is not to be despised, for it was while teaching geography to his pupils that Carey was led to think of the wretched state of the heathen, and to cherish the design of sending the gospel to them. When he gave up the school the idea still haunted him. He could think or speak of little else. He had a large map hung on the wall of his workshop, on which he had entered every particular he could glean as to the different countries and peoples of the earth. Often when making or mending shoes did his eye look up from the last to the map, and ponder over means for the evangelization of the heathen.

He did not meet with much encouragement from his own brethren. At a ministers' meeting at Northampton, Mr. Ryland, senr., called on the young men present to propose a subject for discussion. Mr. Carey suggested one-"The duty of christians to attempt the spread of the gospel among heathen nations.' The old man was taken aback. sprang to his feet, and thundered out, "Young man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine." Even Mr. Fuller, the future indefatigable secretary of the Mission, was startled at the

He

novelty and boldness of the proposal, and acknowledged that his feelings much resembled those of the unbelieving nobleman-"If the Lord should open windows in heaven, might this thing be!"

In 1789, when twenty-eight years of age, Mr. Carey removed to Leicester. Here he laboured diligently for four years. I have not been able to find much information about Carey as a preacher. It is pretty certain that he made no attempt at eloquence. It was the truth in its own native simplicity that he preached. Mr. Hall, of Arnsby, when criticising one of his sermons, said, "Brother Carey, you have no likes in your sermons. Christ taught that the kingdom of heaven was like to leaven hid in meal-like to a grain of mustard seed, &c. You tell us what things are, but never what they are like." Still his preaching was not tedious, but refreshing and profitable in proportion to the seriousness of the hearer.

The Harvey Lane church was sunk in Antinomian errors. Unable to root them out, he dissolved the old church, and formed a new one, into which only those were admitted who were willing to subscribe a declaration that they would faithfully adhere to the doctrines and discipline of the New Testament. This was followed by an improved state of things; while the zealous labours of the pastor, both in the town and surrounding villages, greatly endeared him to the friends of religion.

(To be continued.)

CALCUTTA-W. Brooks, Nov. 20.

CUTTACK-J. Buckley, Oct. 28.

Nor in cruelty, perhaps, but only in mockery and scorn did the rough soldiers of the Roman Guard cast purple robe on the bleeding shoulders of Christ, plat a crown for His head, put a reed in His hand, and feign to do Him homage as a king. All this was but a rude burlesque of the ceremonies with which they honoured the general whom they raised by acclamation to the throne, and was no doubt suggested by our Lord's claim to be the king of the Jews,-a claim which to them must have seemed simply preposterous in the gentle unarmed peasant of Nazareth. To us, indeed, the last hours of any man, even the most debased and criminal, have a certain sanctity. Death gives him an interest and dignity wholly new. We treat him with respect, and should hold it simply brutal to embitter his dying moments with blows and insults. So much humanity at least we have all learned from Christ. But to the Roman legionaries such feelings were utterly unknown. To them it would seem a very proper jest that this soft-voiced Peasant - poor, friended, abandoned-should assert a claim against Cæsar. No reve

VOL. LXXII.-NEW SERIES, No. 2.

un

rence for death, no humane sympathy with a fellow-man about to be cast from the world, would restrain their full enjoyment of the jest; and probably it was in a rough goodhumoured way, not with any studied malignity, but with broad laughter and mirth, many a word of loud coarse merriment on their lips, that they placed the crown of thorns on that Sacred Head, and cringed and bowed in affected deference before it. But if they did not mean to be cruel, nevertheless they were cruel. It was only in insult and derision, not to inflict bodily pain, that they imposed the crown of thorns! Only! But to a gentle sensitive heart to be mocked in its agony is incalculably harder than to bear physical pain. Insults are sharper than thorns; derision is more cruel than a blow. The very excuse we make for the rough thoughtless soldiers simply renders the sufferings of their Victim more keen and profound.

Naturalists have spent much labour on determining the name of the plant from which the Guard broke the twigs they platted into a crown-no easy task since at least a score of prickly shrubs were common

in Palestine. Years ago, however, they named one plant, and that perhaps the most likely of all, Zizyphus Spina Christi, on the assumption that it was this which furnished the crown of thorns. Modern naturalists are pretty well agreed that it was this zizyphus, a low growing shrub which the Arabs call Nabk; it is as common in all the warmer parts of Syria as gorse is with us; the valley of the Jordan is absolutely overrun with it, and converted into an impenetrable thicket: and it was very suitable for the purpose, both because it has many sharp thorns, and because its flexible pliant branches may easily be twisted into a crown. In the deep green of its leaves, moreover, it closely resembled the ivy from which crowns were woven for imperators and victorious generals. A crown which looked like the imperial wreath, but which, instead of being cool and pleasant to the brow, inflicted a multitude of minute irritating pains, this was the crown of thorns, the only crown which the world conferred on Him who came to save the world, and who gat Him the victory over death and sin.

Of this sacred relic Tradition babbles with even more than its usual folly. We are told that Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, guided by a vision, discovered the site of the holy sepulchre under a temple dedicated to Venus; and found in it, not only the Cross with its tri-lingual inscription, but also the crosses of the two thieves, the nails, the crown of thorns, and other relics to which men do homage to the present day. A superstitious fable this beyond all question; but there are historic facts connected with it which read us once more a lesson we often need to learn, viz., that so soon as we begin to hold the Christian faith in letter and form, instead of in spirit and life, we degrade toward ritualism, and willworship, and spiritual death. For

this crown of thorns discovered, or invented, to please the Empress Helena, was treasured for the adoration of the faithful in the great church at Constantinople. It descended as a precious heirloom from Emperor to Emperor till, in the thirteenth century, it came into possession of Baldwin II. Baldwin, being hard pressed by Turk and Tatar, first pawned the crown of thorns as security for a loan from the Venetians, and then sold it to Lewis, the King of France, for a sum amounting to about £54,000 of our money. A relic that has been pawned and sold must have lost much of its sanctity one should think, and therefore we need follow the history of this crown no further. But I may mention that there are now several crowns of thorns in the possession of the Roman Church, each claiming to be the very wreath worn by Christ: and I have somewhere read a pretty legend of one of these crowns to the effect that, on every Easter Sunday, it breaks into flower, and fills the church with its sweet odours-a charming theme for a poem had one a faculty that way.

We have now before us all that is known of the Crown of Thorns, and a great deal more than is known in any strict sense of the word: we may therefore pass, from the fact that our Lord was thus crowned, to the spiritual suggestions of the fact.

1. And, first of all, let us mark how the wisdom of God penetrates and overrules the folly of man. The pagan soldiers meant only coarse derision when they platted a crown of thorns and put it on the head of Christ. But had they been a conclave of Hebrew sages bent on framing a sacred symbol which should speak heavenly truths to men through all ages, they could hardly have hit on a symbolism more instructive or more pathetic. For, according to the Hebrew Bible, thorns, as they

are a consequence, so also they are an express type, of sin. Whether we read the story of our first parents as spiritual parable or as authentic history does not matter for our present purpose. In either case it affirms that thorns and briers sprung up to rebuke Adam's transgression. When he fell from his innocence, the gracious serviceable earth grew hard and stubborn. Instead of nourishing only trees and plants that were pleasant to the eye and good for food, it threw up a swarm of noxious briers whose thorns plagued men's hands and feet when they tilled the ground, and whose greedy roots sucked the soil's fertility from wholesome flowers and trees. There may be parable here; nay, there is parable. For these painful thorns were an outward and visible sign of the inward disastrous change which had passed on men. They, too, had become barren of wholesome growths, fertile in all noxious growths. And these noxious growths of the soul were pregnant with pain and misery and death; the sins men committed wounded and pierced them with many pangs. Hence all through the Bible thorns are used as symbols of sin, or of sinful men, or of the painful consequences in which sin issues. The heathen nations were to be as thorns in the sides (Numb. xxxiii. 35), and in the eyes (Joshua xxiii. 13) of Israel for their sins. The sons of Belial were as thorns to holy David (2 Sam. xxiii. 6). Solomon speaks of thorns and snares in the way of the froward (Prov. xxii. 5), meaning, of course, to warn them against the moral hindrances, temptations, pains, to which their frowardness would

expose them. Ezekiel promises the captives of his day that, when they have repented and turned unto the Lord, there shall no more be a pricking brier among them, nor any grievous thorn (Ezek. xxviii. 24); and Isaiah describes the peace and

bounty of the regenerated earth in the familiar words, "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and the myrtle instead of the brier" (Isaiah lv. 13).

Thus, throughout Scripture, the punitive and painful results of human sin, all the infirmities and languors and pangs it breeds in us, and all the miserable degradations it brings into our lot, are figuratively described as thorns sprung from the thorns which avenged the transgression of Adam, just as all our sins, in some sense, have their root in his sin. When, therefore, by the ordinance of God, no less than through the crime of man, a crown of thorns was placed on the head of Christ, we are simply tracing out a pervading symbolism of Scripture if we say: "In this crown of thorns we have an illustration of the truth, that Christ came to suffer for our sins, to carry our sicknesses, to become the second Adam, to undo the work of the first Adam, and to take away the sin of the entire race. As in the Adam all die, so in the Christ shall all be made alive."

Nay, more it is hardly fanciful it is still in accordance with the symbolism of Scripture, if we mark how, while the thorns pierce our feet and hands, they pierced the very head of Christ; and find in this fact a hint that, while we all suffer for our sins, Christ suffered most of all in that He, who knew no sin, became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. It is not fanciful, but in accordance with the Bible symbolism, if we note that the thorns, which speak of our shame, were woven into a crown for Christ; for while our sins are our ignominy, it is Christ's glory that He bare and took away our sins. It is not fanciful if, from the fact that Christ wore as a crown the sins which are our shame and punishment, we infer the hope that, as we become one with Him, our thorns