The death of Christ, of which all the evangelists treat so particularly, is the most awful and the most momentous event in the history of the world.  He, no doubt, fell a victim to the malice of the rulers of the Jews; but He was delivered into their hands “by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God;” [28:1] and if we discard the idea that He was offered up as a vicarious sacrifice, we must find it impossible to give anything like a satisfactory account of what occurred in Gethsemane and at Calvary.  The amount of physical suffering He sustained from man did not exceed that endured by either of the malefactors with whom He was associated; and such was His magnanimity and fortitude, that, had He been an ordinary martyr, the prospect of crucifixion would not have been sufficient to make Him “exceeding sorrowful” and “sore amazed.” [28:2] His holy soul must have been wrung with no common agony, when “His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground,” [28:3] and when He was forced to cry out—­“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” [28:4] In that hour of “the power of darkness” He was “smitten of God and afflicted,” and there was never sorrow like unto His sorrow, for upon Him were laid “the iniquities of us all.”

The incidents which accompanied the death of Jesus were even more impressive than those which signalised His birth.  When He was in the garden of Gethsemane there appeared unto Him an angel from Heaven strengthening Him. [28:5] During the three concluding hours of His intense anguish on the cross, there was darkness overall the land, [28:6] as if nature mourned along with the illustrious sufferer.  When He bowed His head on Calvary and gave up the ghost, the event was marked by notifications such as never announced the demise of any of this world’s great potentates, for “the veil of the temple was rent in twain,” and the rocks were cleft asunder, and the graves were opened, and the earth trembled. [29:1] “The centurion and they that were with him,” in attendance at the execution, seem to have been Gentiles; and though, doubtless, they had heard that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah of the Jews, they perhaps very imperfectly comprehended the import of the designation; but they were forthwith overwhelmed with the conviction, that He, whose death they had just witnessed, must have given a true account of His mission and His dignity, for “when they saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying—­Truly this was the Son of God” [29:2]

The body of our Lord was committed to the grave on the evening of Friday, and, early on the morning of the following Sunday, He issued from the tomb.  An ordinary individual has no control over the duration of his existence, but Jesus demonstrated that He had power to lay down His life, and that He had power to take it again. [29:3] Had He been a deceiver His delusions must have terminated with His death, so that His resurrection must be regarded as His crowning miracle, or rather, as the affixing of the broad seal of heaven to the truth of His mission as the Messiah.  It was, besides, the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy; [29:4] a proof of His fore-knowledge; [29:5] and a pledge of the resurrection of His disciples. [29:6] Hence, in the New Testament, [29:7] it is so often mentioned with marked emphasis.