The people who were standing on Mount Calvary, looking at the dying Jesus, were filled with fear. They beat upon their breasts with their hands, and went back to the city in terror at the darkness and the earthquake. The Roman captain, who was in charge of the soldiers around the cross, said: "Surely this was a good man, a son of God!" You know that the Sabbath among the Jews was kept on the seventh day of the week and that it always began at sunset on the evening before. It was on Friday that Jesus was crucified, and three o'clock on that afternoon. The Jews did not wish to have the men upon the three crosses hanging there upon the Sabbath, for that day, the Passover Sabbath, was kept especially holy. The Jewish rulers came to Pilate and asked him that the men should not be left upon the cross over the Sabbath, but that they should be killed and their bodies taken away. They did not know at that time that Jesus was already dead. Pilate gave orders to the soldiers to have the men killed. This they did by breaking their legs, as they hung upon the crosses. As they saw that Jesus was no longer alive, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers, to be sure of his death, drove his spear into the side of Jesus, to strike his heart. John the disciple was still standing there watching beside the cross to the very last, and he wrote in his gospel many years afterward that he saw both water and blood pour forth from the side of Jesus, out of the wound made by the spear. The Tomb in the Garden CHAPTER 97 YOU REMEMBER that from the garden of Gethsemane, very early on Friday morning, Jesus was brought before the high council of the Jews for trial, and that by the council it was ordered that Jesus should be put to death as one who falsely claimed that he was Christ, the King of Israel. But not all the members of this council were enemies of Jesus. A very few of them were his friends, but in secret, not daring to speak for him or to vote for him, for fear of the rulers and the people. One of these secret friends of Jesus was Nicodemus, the ruler who had come to see Jesus at night three years before, on his first visit to Jerusalem. Another was a good man named Joseph, a rich man, who lived at a place called Arimathea, some miles out of Jerusalem, in the country. This man, Joseph of Arimathea, did a very bold thing. He went to Pilate in his palace, and asked Pilate to allow him to take down from the cross the dead body of Jesus, and to bury it. To us this may not seem a brave act, but it was, for the Roman rulers were very suspicious of anybody who appeared to be the friend of one who had been condemned to death. Some time before this, when a man asked the governor for the body of a man who had been put to death, the governor ordered that his friend should also be slain as an enemy of the Romans and the governor's enemy. It might be said that Joseph of Arimathea "took his life in his hands" when he asked Pilate for the body of Jesus.