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!
I could see, hear no more!
John having left the stricken mother with me, he and Lazarus had gone back to where they were unrobing the Prophet in order to bind him to the wood. They caught the eyes of their Master, said Lazarus, who gazed upon them calmly and affectionately. They said they had never beheld him appear so majestic and great. He looked, as the centurion afterwards said, "Like a god surrendering himself to death for the safety of his universe!"