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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 3
martyrs in courage and endurance; for many of those who have died
for their faith, yielded to torture and death, rejoicing that they were
accounted worthy to suffer for Christ’s sake. Christ was the prince of
sufferers; but it was not bodily anguish that filled him with horror and
despair; it was a sense of the malignity of sin, a knowledge that man
had become so familiar with sin that he did not realize its enormity,
that it was so deeply rooted in the human heart as to be difficult to
eradicate.
As man’s substitute and surety, the iniquity of men was laid upon
Christ; he was counted a transgressor that he might redeem them from
the curse of the law. The guilt of every descendant of Adam of every
age was pressing upon his heart; and the wrath of God, and the terrible
manifestation of his displeasure because of iniquity, filled the soul of
his Son with consternation. The withdrawal of the divine countenance
from the Saviour, in this hour of supreme anguish, pierced his heart
with a sorrow that can never be fully understood by man. Every pang
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endured by the Son of God upon the cross, the blood drops that flowed
from his head, his hands, and feet, the convulsions of agony which
racked his frame, and the unutterable anguish that filled his soul at the
hiding of his Father’s face from him, speak to man, saying, It is for
love of thee that the Son of God consents to have these heinous crimes
laid upon him; for thee he spoils the domain of death, and opens the
gates of Paradise and immortal life. He who stilled the angry waves
by his word, and walked the foam-capped billows, who made devils
tremble, and disease flee from his touch, who raised the dead to life
and opened the eyes of the blind,—offers himself upon the cross as the
last sacrifice for man. He, the sin-bearer, endures judicial punishment
for iniquity, and becomes sin itself for man.
Satan, with his fierce temptations, wrung the heart of Jesus. Sin,
so hateful to his sight, was heaped upon him till he groaned beneath
its weight. No wonder that his humanity trembled in that fearful hour.
Angels witnessed with amazement the despairing agony of the Son of
God, so much greater than his physical pain that the latter was hardly
felt by him. The hosts of Heaven veiled their faces from the fearful
sight.
Inanimate nature expressed a sympathy with its insulted and dying
Author. The sun refused to look upon the awful scene. Its full, bright
rays were illuminating the earth at midday, when suddenly it seemed