Plautus and Gregory also state," two nails were inserted in the palms and two in the soles." It was not, however, a uniform practice to perforate the palm of the hand; sometimes the wrist, because thought stronger, was perforated in its stead. Nor was the number of nails in the upper members limited by rule to two; occasionally for the purpose of giving the body a more tenacious hold on the wood, or of increasing pain, several irons were driven through the arms, and, in cases like that of Philomenus, through the head. The right hand was usually perforated first. Lucian, in one of his dialogues, describes Vulcan as saying to Mercury, "Let Prometheus be crucified. Well, says Mercury to Prometheus, extend your right arm; you, Vulcan, bind it, make it fast, keep it still, and bravely apply the hammer. Give also the other arm, Prometheus, and let that be rightly bound." This quotation suggests the practice of binding the limbs before nailing them; a precautionary movement which could not be dispensed with, unless the prisoner would sit still on the middle seat, or unless a ladder was erected for him against the tree, or, as was sometimes done, he was held in the arms of two or three attending soldiers.

No one, acquainted with the physiology of the human system, can fail to perceive that the cross, thus formed and applied, was adapted to produce intense pain. The sufferer's back, lacerated by the scourge, and therefore not bearing to be touched, was made to graze upon the tree. The arms were unnaturally distended and stretched behind, and so the least movement caused the sharpest pain. The hands, being provided with an unusual number of nerves, and the nerves being the organs of sensation, being also more sensitive in the hands than in other parts, it must have been indescribably distressing to have these excitable members transfixed by the large, rough, and ragged spike; to have the bulk of the body rest upon them, while they are grated by the iron, and grated still more poignantly by every struggle for relief. The restorative principle in the system could not operate in their favor; for the nervous restlessness of the agonized man would be constantly renewing the sore, and the exposure of the raw wounds to the air would be constantly increasing the inflammation, and causing the maimed parts to swell with more and more exquisite distress. The veins, by the pressure upon them, could not allow passage for the blood which had flown through the arteries; the vessels of the head,

therefore, were swollen with an unusual and undue amount of the fluid; the face was deeply flushed; the organs of it were strained; all the cerebral system disordered and laboring. The stomach became overcharged with blood, and thereby imminently exposed to mortification. As the crowded arteries could find no sure outlet, they could no longer serve as a channel for the vital fluid which the heart endeavored to propel, and so the heart itself was obstructed in its movements. It had been wont to send a regular supply of blood into the lungs, for purification; it now sent but a meagre supply, and that at irregular intervals. Thus the respiratory functions, as well as the circulating and cerebral, were confused, and not an organ of the system could play with its usual freedom. This pressing and crowding of the fluid in the arteries and in all the large vessels about the heart, this irksome, inconstant palpitation of the central organ, this heaving and gasping of the lungs, created an excitement, an uneasiness, an anxiety, which are said to be "far more intolerable than even death itself." Sometimes the rain poured down in torrents upon the naked body; at night, the dew, as cold, and well nigh copious as rain, covered and chilled it; sometimes the heat of a powerful sun dried and scorched it; sometimes the keen winds of winter were piercing the fresh wounds, and filling the unfed system. And there was no hiding from the inclemencies of the sky; there was no turning of the body for ease; every attempt to move was rebuked by a keener pain from the spikes. Hunger set in, and gnawed upon the vitals; thirst was parching up the mouth and throat; the Saviour's only cry from pain was, "I thirst," and it was the customary cry, for no pain was so intense, or would sue so quickly for relief; the external, the internal parts were alike in distress, and the distress was of that kind which increases by continuance. The hope that the severest had been endured, would of itself have mitigated severity. But now there was no hope, save in death, and this was "long in coming." The thought, not less than the thing itself, of being fixed to all these growing agonies, added intensity to them all. The thought of the divine curse against "every one who hangeth on a tree," added still more. It was generally a condemning conscience which, like the soldier's spear upon Jesus, pierced the side of the malefactor. No hope for this world, less for the world to come. Might some priest of religion but breathe.

comfort into his harrowed spirit, death, his last, haggard hope, would be divested of half its stings. But he was regarded an outlaw; the priests, above all men, feared his defilement,* and left him to sigh and moan to the winds. A licentious rabble often surrounded him, laughed at the grimaces and contortions which indicated his anguish, and returned raillery to his "groanings which could not be uttered." The man was lifted up between heaven and earth, deserted by all that was consoling in either, and pierced through and through by arrows from both. Such was his exit. Just so was the iron gate of eternity opened upon him.†

As the extremities of the system, and not the seat of life, were directly touched by the instruments, the victim died, as might be expected, a fearfully lingering death. The crucifixion of an Algerine, is thus described by one of its spectators, (Edinburgh Encyclopædia, vol. vii. part i. p. 211.) "The criminal was nailed to a ladder, by iron spikes through his wrists and ankles, in a posture resembling St. Andrew's cross, (X) and, as if apprehensive that the spikes would not hold, from failure of his flesh, the executioners had bound his wrists and ankles with small cords to the ladder. Two days I saw him alive in this torture, and how much longer he lived I cannot tell." Lipsius says, (p. 1188, vol. iii.) that Victorinus, when hung with his head downwards, lived two days; that Timotheus and Maura completed their martyrdom in triumph, after having hung nine days. The apostle Andrew is said to have lived three days, while bound, not nailed to the deadly machine, and to have spent a great part of the three in religious exhortation. The amount of strength which sometimes remained in the mangled subject, is evidenced by Bomilcar, upbraiding his subjects for a long time, and with a stentorian voice, for their barbarity; and also by the agonized wretches mentioned by Seneca, qui ex patibulo spectatores suos conspuerunt.' Sometimes the victim, when taken down, recovered his health.

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* The Edinburgh Encyclopedists say, that probably, at Rome, either a bell was attached to the cross, or else a crier went before the victim with a bell in his hand, for the purpose of forewarning priests and magistrates of their exposedness to be polluted, if they should come near the procession. This, however, seems to be rather conjectural.

Consult, on the subject of the pains of crucifixion, the extracts from the medical testimony of Richter, in Jahn's Arch. p. 262; also Horne's Introduction, vol. iii. pp. 149-159.

"I returned from a certain street in the city," says Josephus, "and saw many of the Jews crucified, and knowing three of them, with whom I was once intimate, I grieved very much in mind, and with tears went out, and spoke to Titus. He immediately ordered them to be taken down, and to be attended very carefully. Two of them died under the care; one survived."

So tardy, indeed, was death on the cross, that many have ascribed it not so much to the wounds, as to the slow workings of famine. Eusebius details an account of some martyrs crucified in Egypt, whose appearance unequivocally indicated starvation, as the principal cause of their death. Doubtless, in all cases, the want of aliment was an effective aid to the various other agents, conspiring to wear down the body. "The victims," says Salmasius, "were finished on the cross, not altogether by it." The blood fell drop by drop, so cautiously and gradually, that no part of the system could give way, without its appropriate and distinctly recognised pang.

"And Pilate marvelled if Jesus were already dead," for he had been suspended only three hours, and it was almost unprecedented for one to die so soon. Why indeed was it, that he could not survive longer? Why was it, that he did not, while hanging on the cross, exhort to repentance as zealously, and boldly, and manfully as some of his disciples? Why say so little, and that little in tones so low, so much unlike a conqueror? And when he did swell his voice to a louder note, why was it to exclaim Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani? What! shall a slothful servant confide in God, and burst out, with triumphant assurance, "When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up," and shall a faithful son be left to wailing, and to cry, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful?" Had not God promised a thousand times, that he would never forsake a friend in trouble? Why then shall this best-beloved friend distrust the promise, and bewail a desertion? Be it ever remembered, that hundreds of penitent sinners, in our own day, have died more triumphantly than Christ; hundreds who were to be saved. "scarcely," "so as by fire," have feared less, recoiled less. Be it ever remembered, that multitudes even of the more delicate sex, that many children of both sexes have suffered

tortures externally as intense as those of Jesus, perhaps more so, and have felt none of his dejection. While bound to the rack and the wheel, while tied to the stake and consumed by slow fires, while lingering whole days and nights. on the cross, pelted there with vollies of stones, attacked by rapacious beasts, bereft of the consciousness which Christ enjoyed of entire sinlessness; in fine, thousands of transgressors, while enduring every combination of distress which could be contrived by the maddened genius of persecuting tyrants, have triumphed; have triumphed in the very man who was so severely depressed in his sufferings; triumphed in the very depression of that man; and while their own feelings at death were so different from his, have venerated him as a model in all their duties, and yet have triumphed in the difference between his death and theirs. How can these things be? saith Nicodemus, a ruler in modern Israel. Is it right, to clap our hands at sight of the cross and its bleeding victim? So we are commanded to do. See 1 Thess. v. 16; Gal. vi. 14, etc. But is it not strange, to glory in the weakness rather than the strength of a champion; in the blood rather than the brilliancy and heroism of a conqueror? Herein is the enigma of Christianity. Here is the faith of the saints.

The prescribed custom was to leave the crucified man to the operation, however prolonged, of his torture. The Romans, however, often deviated from this custom, and adopted various means of expediting the criminal's death. They suspended him sometimes in an oblique posture, sometimes in the reversed perpendicular, with his head downwards. "And Peter," Abdias relates, "approaching the cross, asked that he might be fixed upon it, with his feet turned upward." "Rejoice," exclaims Chrysostom, in view of it, "rejoice, oh Peter! for you have tasted the privilege of the cross, and desired to taste it in imitation of your Master; not, however, as he hung in an upright posture, Lut with your head downwards, and feet aloft, as if you were preparing to journey from earth to heaven." The martr Calliopius, and several Egyptian martyrs, suffered the same inverted crucifixion. The suspended wretches were often 'doomed to be surrounded with slow fires, to be suffocated by the smoke of green wood, sometimes to be consumed on and with their gibbet. Not unfrequently were they exposed