As ancient writers admitted, crucifixion was the cruelest and blackest of punishments. It gave the greatest torture for the longest time. If tetanus set in, a merciful torpor hastened death; but there were men who held out, suffering always more and more, until the second day after crucifixion, and even longer. The thirst of their fever, the congestion of their hearts, the rigidity of their veins, their cramped muscles, the dizziness and terrible pains in the head, the ever-greater agony—all these were not enough to make an end of them. But most men died at the end of twelve hours. The blood from the four wounds of Jesus had clotted about the nail-heads, but every movement made fresh blood gush out, which fell slowly along the cross and dripped upon the ground. His head drooped on His weary neck; His eyes, those mortal eyes, whence God had looked out upon the earth, were glazing over in the death stupor; and His livid lips, parched with suffering and thirst, drawn by His painful breathing, were withered by that last kiss, the poisonous kiss of Judas. Thus died a God, who had cooled the blood of the feverish, had given the water of life to the thirsty, who had raised up the dead from their tombs, who had quickened the paralyzed, cast out demons from obsessed souls, who had wept with the weeping, who, instead of punishing the wicked, had made them to be born again into a new life, who had taught with poetic words and proved by miracles that glorious aspiration—the life of perfect love—which raging beasts sunk in stupor and in blood would never have been capable of discovering for themselves. He had healed wounds and they wounded all His perfect body; He had pardoned evildoers, and evildoers nailed Him, an innocent man, between two criminals; He had infinitely loved all men, even those unworthy of His love, and hatred had nailed Him there where hatred punished and was punished; He had been more righteous than righteousness and they had wreaked upon Him the most iniquitous unrighteousness; He had called mean souls to holiness and He had fallen into the hands of vilifiers and demons. He had brought life, and in return they gave Him the most ignominious death. All this was necessary that men should learn again the road to the earthly Paradise; that they should mount above drunken bestiality and attain the exaltation of the saints; that they should be resurrected from their sluggish folly which seems life and is death, to the magnificence of the Kingdom of Heaven. The mind may bow before the dreadful mystery of this necessity, but the heart of men can never forget the price exacted as payment of our debts. For nineteen hundred years, men born again in Christ, worthy to know Christ, to love Christ, and to be loved by Him, have wept, at least once in their lives, at the memory of that day and of that suffering. But all our tears gathered together like a bitter sea do not compensate for one of the drops which fell, red and heavy, on Golgotha.