XX. THE SIXTH AND NINTH HOURS OF THE CRUCIFIXION

Mark 15:20.—“And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.”

33.—“And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.”

It has been observed to me by an intelligent friend, who has turned his attention to the internal evidence of the Gospels, that it will be found, on examination, that the scoffs and insults which were levelled at our Saviour on the cross, were all during the early part of the Crucifixion, and that a manifest change of feeling towards Him, arising, as it should seem, from a certain misgiving as to his character, is discoverable in the bystanders as the scene drew nearer to its close: I think the remark just and valuable. It is at the first that we read of those “who passed by railing on him and wagging their heads,” Mark 15:29; of “the chief priests and scribes mocking him,” 31; of “those that were crucified with him reviling him,” 32; of the “soldiers mocking him and offering him vinegar,” Luke 23:36, pointing out to Him, most likely, the “vessel of vinegar which was set,” or holding a portion of it beyond his reach, by way of aggravating the pains of intense thirst, which must have attended this lingering mode of death:—that all this occurred at the beginning of the Passion is the natural conclusion to be drawn from the narratives of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke.

But, during the latter part of it, we hear nothing of this kind; on the contrary, when Jesus cried, “I thirst,” there was no mockery offered, but a sponge was filled with vinegar, and put on a reed and applied to his lips, with remarkable alacrity; “one ran” and did it, Mark 15:36: and, from the misunderstanding of the words “Eli, Eli,” it is clear that the spectators had some suspicion that Elias might come to take Him down. Do not, then, these circumstances accord remarkably well with the alleged fact, that “there was darkness over all the land from the sixth to the ninth hour?” Matth. 27:45; Mark 15:33. Is not this change of conduct in the merciless crew that surrounded the cross very naturally explained, by the awe with which they contemplated the gloom as it took effect? and does it not strongly, though undesignedly, confirm the assertion, that such a fearful darkness there actually was?