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.