[Illustration:  CHRIST BEARING HIS CROSS H.  Hofmann Page 185]

It is John who uses the one phrase in the Gospels which furnishes a tragic subject for artists, and poets and preachers, on which imagination dwells, and excites our sympathies as does no other save the crucifixion itself.  His phrase is this,—­“Jesus ... bearing the cross for Himself.”  We notice this all the more because of the silence of the other Evangelists, all of whom tell of one named Simon who was compelled to bear the cross.  As John read their story, there was another picture in his mind, too fresh and vivid not to be painted also.  He recalled the short distance that Christ carried the cross alone, weakened by the agonies of the garden and the scourging of the palace, until, exhausted, He fell beneath the burden.  We are not told that the crown of thorns had been removed, though the purple robe of mockery had been.  So this added to His continued pain.  As John looked upon those instruments of suffering he heard the banter and derision of shame that always accompanied them.

There followed Jesus “a great multitude of the people,” whose morbid curiosity would be gratified by the coming tragedy.  But there were others—­“women who bewailed and lamented Him.”

It is surmised that at the moment when Jesus could bear His cross no longer, and was relieved by Simon, He turned to the weeping “Daughters of Jerusalem” following Him, and in tenderest sympathy told of the coming days of sorrow for them and their city, of which He had told John and his companions on Olivet.

John says that Jesus “went out ... unto the place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha.”  The place was also called Calvary.  We do not certainly know the sacred spot, though careful students think it is north of the city, near the Damascus gate, near the gardens of the ancient city, and tombs that still remain.  We think of John revisiting it again and again while he remained in Jerusalem, and then in thought in his distant home where he wrote of it.  “There,” says John, “they crucified Jesus, and with Him two others, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.”  How few his words, but how full of meaning.  We long to know more of John’s memories of that day—­of all that he saw and felt and did.  They were such in kind and number as none other than he did or could have.

There were two contrasted groups of four each around the cross, to which John calls special attention.  One, the nearest to it, was composed of Roman soldiers, to whom were committed the details of the crucifixion—­the arrangement of the cross, the driving of the nails, and the elevation of the victim upon it.