they could not see, of something supernatural behind the natural, of something superfinite behind the finite and that led them farther still, that at first God was not a Father, then that he was like a Father, then lastly we find God as a Father in the Veda at an early time. The Veda has a deity that is called Aditi. Immortality is taught in one of the Vedas. The hymn telling of the departed being given back to Aditi teaches immortality. Thus religion has grown, first wide finite ideas in regard to religion, then polytheism, and from that step by step the perception, higher and better of an Infinite One who holds the world in His power and upon whom all should depend. Elfreda L. Shaffer.

ARTICLE VII.

Causes of the Saviour's Passion.

Doubtless there is mystery about the passion of our Lord. There is mystery about everything. It is not strange, therefore, that there is mystery about the Saviour's sufferings. We do not know all about the simplest thing, and it may be, therefore, that we do not know all about the agony in the garden and the death on the cross. We may be comforted, however, with the assurance that, whatever is mysterious about these sufferings is no object of faith. Where mystery begins faith ends. We believe what is revealed, not what is concealed. Whatever of mystery, therefore, there may be about the Saviour's sufferings, we are not called on to believe. So much of them as we can understand, is within the realm of faith; beyond this, faith is not asked to go. Let us see, then, how much of the Saviour's sufferings we can understand. Let us see if we can ascertain the causes of these sufferings, that we may the better appreciate their real significance and feel their saving power.

In the first place it is very clear that these sufferings were real. They were not simulated, they were actual sufferings.

That agony iu the garden was real agony. That torture of the cross was absolute torture. In the sufferings of those last hours the Saviour was not acting a part. He was not some superior being seeming to suffer for the good of man, seeming to die in order to complete the drama of redemption, but he was a human being suffering as a human being and dying as such.

Again it is clear that there was no effort on his part to conceal his sufferings, to make light of them, or to steel himself against them. He did not attempt to play the stoic. He did not try to be indifferent to the sufferings he was enduring. There was no stoicism about him. On the other hand he accepted his sufferings as terrible realities. He felt all their pain and submitted to them heroically, but not in any spirit of indifference. He would not have experienced that agony in the garden if he had been fortifying himself for the hour of crucifixion, for no hand had, as yet, touched him. He would not have cried out on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" if he had cultivated a stoical indifference to human suffering. Indeed, the whole history of his sufferings shows that he was as far removed from making light of them as he was from simulating them.

His sufferings were not only real, but he endured them in a natural way. Stoicism is unnatural. To be indifferent to suffering is not in keeping with human nature. It is not manly to make light of pain. The manly thing is to feel and acknowledge its reality and yet endure it heroically. Thus did Christ. He felt and realized all the sufferings of his crucifixion and endured them with heroic fortitude. He went through them in a way that was natural, not only to him, but that is natural to man, in a way that any man of exalted spirit would be likely to go through them.

Let us see, then, if we can ascertain some of the causes of his sufferings. His sufferings were real, they were intense beyond anything we can imagine. What caused them? Why did the Son of man suffer so? What caused his great agony in the garden and on the cross? We put aside, at the outset,

all the old theories of his sufferings. We will take no time to discuss the notion that in these last hours Jesus was given over to be tormented of Satan, that he was put into the hands of this great enemy of our race and that his sufferings were caused by the torture to which he was subjected by the devil. This notion belongs to an age of superstition, which, happily, we have outgrown.

Neither will we attempt to refute the notion that his sufferings were caused by the wrath of God, that his great agony during all these last hours was caused by the fact that his Father had not only forsaken him but had poured out upon him all the vials of His Almighty wrath. This thought is too horrible for contemplation. To represent God as so treating His "beloved son" is to blacken His character past all redemption. From the character of God, as well as from the record itself, we know that this notion has no foundation in fact.

Equally without foundation is the notion that Christ's sufferings were caused by the fact that he endured on the cross all the punishments due human sin, bore the penalty of all human transgression. This cannot be true, for there is no transferring of punishment. Guilt is inseparable from punishment, and where there is no guilt, there can be no punishment. Christ was without sin, therefore without guilt; hence, as incapable of suffering punishment as the whitest angel in heaven. He could and did suffer, but he could not and did not suffer punishment. He could and did suffer for man, but he could not and did not suffer the punishment due man's sin.

Besides, this notion violates all of our ideas of justice. What a thing Heaven's justice must be if it punishes the innocent in place of the guilty! Man has been very sinful, but he has never been so low as to advocate such an idea of justice as that. It is purely the invention of a theology born of superstition. God's laws never interfere with each other. What cannot be true in the nature of things, cannot be sanctioned by any justice in heaven or on earth. Justice utterly revolts at any punishing of the innocent in place of the guilty.

Christ could not, therefore, not only in the very nature of things, but by the inexorable demands of justice, have suffered the punishment due man's sin. Dismissing, then, all these notions as to the causes of Christ's sufferings, let us see if we cannot ascertain in a rational way what those causes were. Let us begin with the physical side and examine his sufferings on this side first.

One thing is certain. The Saviour had a very delicate and sensitive physical organization. His body was a temple meet for his soul. We cannot conceive of such a spirit inhabiting a coarse, brutal body. The incongruity of the thing is so great as to make it impossible even of thought. We cannot think of our Saviour as dwelling in cold, hard, dry, insensible flesh. His spirit could not brook such an abode. It must have an organism suited to its high spiritual needs. It must have a body through which the refined soul could act out its true life. The flesh must respond to the movements of the spirit. Unless this were so, the spirit would be imprisoned in its own body.

We know, therefore, from the nature of the case, that the Saviour's body was most delicately and sensitively organized. The nervous system that could correlate with such a refined and exalted spirit must have been of the most refined and delicate structure. The record goes to confirm this conclusion. The figure that comes before us as we read the New Testament is that of a finely organized and sensitive soul in the prime of early manhood. Not a sense is dulled, not a nerve is deadened, but every one is keenly alive and capable of ministering the most intense pain or pleasure. Such a soul, evidently, can suffer vastly more than dull, coarse, brutal flesh. Such a body can drink in pain at every pore. Just as it can enjoy vastly more, so can it suffer vastly more than the coarse, unsympathetic organism. Many a savage seems indifferent to torture because his dull, stupid flesh gives him little consciousness of his own suffering. He is not really alive to his own torture. But Christ was alive in every sense and every nerve, and so was capable of the most excruciating torment.

Go with him, then, through all the last hours of his life, and note carefully what he passed through, and see if you do not understand the reason of his great physical pain. Begin with him in the garden when his mind tortures his body until it sweats "as it were great drops of blood." Here in anticipation he suffers all the agony of crucifixion. As with joy, so with sorrow, there is often more in the anticipation than in the realization. In that garden hour Jesus anticipated all the sufferings of the coming hours even unto the end. The whole scene was before him. Every thing was distinct, clear, lifelike. All the shame and every pain were anticipated. The betrayal, the arrest, the examination before the High Priest, the trial before the Sanhedrin, the trial before Pilate, the taunts, the jeers, the cruel buffetings, the awful scourging, the march to Calvary, the terrible agony, the long drawn-out death of the cross, all, all was before him, enlarged and intensified by a vivid imagination. No wonder that his physical frame shook under the fearful strain! No wonder that his body was thrown down by his mental anguish! No wonder if his sensitive form was convulsed through and through and even a bloody sweat exuded from his pores. To the agony of the spirit such a delicate and refined organization must have responded with an equal agony of the flesh.

Leaving the garden, let us follow him to the close of the great tragedy. Judas betrays him with a kiss and he is seized and bound and led away and arraigned before the High Priest. Here he is subjected to an unjust and bitter examination, false witnesses are brought in to testify against him, and his beautiful face is smitten by the hand of cruelty. Then he is dragged before the Sanhedrin to have the findings of the High Priest sanctioned. Here he is subjected to every indignity. They spit in his face, they knock him about with their clenched hands, and some strike him with their open palms. He has now an hour or two of rest, until the morning dawns, and then he is led, bound, with a cord around his neck, before Pontius Pilate. Here he goes through the mockery of a trial, and is finally sentenced to be crucified by the Roman governor,