There have been those who could see in this dead Christ,--lying rigid in a green sarcophagus that throws over the waxen flesh the ghastly threat of that decay which would follow if no miracle intervened,--there have been those, I say, who could see in it only superb technique. And others see only the negation of all idealism, if not of all faith. Illustration: PLATE 10 CHRIST IN THE GRAVE _Oils. Basel Museum_ Yet put this painting,--the acme of technical beauty as well as of ruthless realism,--at the close of the ten Passion drawings, and I venture to believe that the one coherent conception that runs through them all will legitimately find its conclusion here. Here He lies that surrendered Himself to the punishment of Sin and the penalty of Death--for all men and all time. His pale lips are set with the superhuman agony of the cry with which He paid the uttermost farthing of that bond. Man has died for man, martyrs for faith; here God has died unto Himself, for us. There has been no playing at death. All the pitiless terrors of the grave are here, with Him who for love of us has chosen to know Mortality "like at all points" with mortal men. What He bore for us, shall we shrink from so much as realising? The great eyes are fixed in a look whose penetrating, almost liquid sweetness not even the rigor of the final anguish could obliterate. Divine devotion,--devotion more than mortal,--still lingers in those sockets. The heart may well dilate before this sight; the soul fall on its knees. By each of those bloodstained steps, by the sting of this death, we have been paid for. Here, here only,--as Holbein saw it,--is the leverage the heathen philosopher vainly sighed for to move the world; God's leverage, Infinite Love. This is anything but a theological tangent. A great artist has bequeathed us his beliefs,--drawn and painted in many works, with every patient, virile, expressive power at his command. There has been enough and to spare of shrieks or scoffs. A little humility and a little study is in place, too. For the rest, let us not forget that this large painting was made for some altar; and that many a weeping penitent, many a devout heart, has been pierced with its message. On the edge of the stone coffin, which is tinted a warm green within, and lit by some opening at the foot, is the inscription in gold letters: "JESUS NAZARENUS REX JUDAEORUM." The stigmata are painted with unsparing truth. The work is dated 1521. There is in the Hampton Court Gallery a little painting which has only comparatively recently been recognised as Holbein's, but which forms the beautiful and fitting close of this set of religious pictures. As is the case with so many of his works, the critics are not unanimous upon it. But the authorities who have no doubts as to its being a genuine Holbein of this period are so weighty that I need not argue the point in support of my own convictions.