We cannot assert with confidence that Simon and his family were saved by this event. The coercion put upon him, the fact that he was seized and “impressed” into the service, already seems to indicate sympathy with Jesus. And we are fain to believe that he who received the honour, so strange and sad and sacred, the unique privilege of lifting some little of the crushing burden of the Saviour, was not utterly ignorant of what he did. We know at least that the names of his children, Alexander and Rufus, were familiar in the Church for which St. Mark was writing, and that in Rome a Rufus was chosen in the Lord, and his mother was like a mother to St. Paul (Rom. xvi. 13). With what feelings may they have recalled the story, “him they compelled to bear His cross.”
They led Him to a place where the rounded summit of a knoll had its grim name from some resemblance to a human skull, and prepared the crosses there.
It was the custom of the daughters of Jerusalem, who lamented Him as He went, to provide a stupefying [pg 427] draught for the sufferers of this atrocious cruelty. “And they offered Him wine mixed with myrrh, but He received it not,” although that dreadful thirst, which was part of the suffering of crucifixion, had already begun, for He only refused when He had tasted it.
In so doing He rebuked all who seek to drown sorrows or benumb the soul in wine, all who degrade and dull their sensibilities by physical excess or indulgence, all who would rather blind their intelligence than pay the sharp cost of its exercise. He did not condemn the use of anodynes, but the abuse of them. It is one thing to suspend the senses during an operation, and quite another thing by one's own choice to pass into eternity without consciousness enough to commit the soul into its Father's hands.
“And they crucify Him.” Let the words remain as the Evangelist left them, to tell their own story of human sin, and of Divine love which many waters could not quench, neither could the depths drown it.
Only let us think in silence of all that those words convey.
In the first sharpness of mortal anguish, Jesus saw His executioners sit down at ease, all unconscious of the dread meaning of what was passing by their side, to part His garments among them, and cast lots for the raiment which they had stripped from His sacred form. The Gospels are content thus to abandon those relics about which so many legends have been woven. But indeed all through these four wonderful narratives the self-restraint is perfect. When the Epistles touch upon the subject of the crucifixion they kindle into flame. When St. Peter soon afterwards referred to it, his indignation is beyond question, and Stephen called the rulers betrayers and murderers (Acts ii. 23, 24; [pg 428] iii. 13, 14; vii. 51-53) but not one single syllable of complaint or comment mingles with the clear flow of narrative in the four Gospels. The truth is that the subject was too great, too fresh and vivid in their minds, to be adorned or enlarged upon. What comment of St. Mark, what mortal comment, could add to the weight of the words “they crucify Him”? Men use no figures of speech when telling how their own beloved one died. But it was differently that the next age wrote about the crucifixion; and perhaps the lofty self-restraint of the Evangelists has never been attained again.
St. Mark tells us that He was crucified at the third hour, whereas we read in St. John that it was “about the sixth hour” when Pilate ascended the seat of judgment (xix. 14). It seems likely that St. John used the Roman reckoning, and his computation does not pretend to be exact; while we must remember that mental agitation conspired with the darkening of the sky, to render such an estimate as he offers even more than usually vague.
It has been supposed that St. Mark's “third hour” goes back to the scourging, which, as being a regular part of Roman crucifixion, he includes, although inflicted in this case before the sentence. But it will prove quite as hard to reconcile this distribution of time with “the sixth hour” in St. John, while it is at variance with the context in which St. Mark asserts it.
The small and bitter heart of Pilate keenly resented his defeat and the victory of the priests. Perhaps it was when his soldiers offered the scornful homage of Rome to Israel and her monarch, that he saw the way to a petty revenge. And all Jerusalem was scandalized by reading the inscription over a crucified malefactor's head, The King of the Jews.