Then he said, “First let me give you an explanation that is not unreasonable and may have some truth in it. You know, I dare say, that the words are from the Psalms?” “Yes,” I replied, “but the Psalmist changes his mood. He goes on to say, ‘He hath not hid his face from him, but, when he cried unto him, he heard him,’ and afterwards, ‘All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord’.” “You have mentioned,” said Clemens, “the very words that seem to some of our brethren to answer your question; for they say that the Lord had in mind the whole of the Psalm when He quoted the first words, and that He meant this, ‘I cry unto thee, O Father, in the words of scripture _Why hast thou forsaken me?_ knowing that thou hast not indeed hidden thy face from me, but thou art hearing me: and all the ends of the earth shall remember my crying and thy hearing and shall turn unto thee’.” “And are not you content with this explanation?” said I. “Not quite,” said Clemens. “For, though this may be true, more may be true. I have read in another gospel, later than these three, that the Son did no work on earth and uttered no word, without looking up to the Father in heaven and listening to the Father’s voice, which told Him from time to time what to do and to say. And I have heard one of the brethren, a man full of spiritual understanding, and well read in the scriptures, interpret the question as though it were a real question, not an exclamation—the Son questioning the Father as to His will. If that were so, the Son might be conceived as saying, ‘For what reason, O Father, hast thou forsaken me for a while and hidden the light of thy countenance from me? Teach me, O Father, in order that I also may be willing to be forsaken, and may desire to be deprived of the light of thy countenance.’ And then the Father replies, ‘I forsake thee, O my Son, because thou must needs die, and in my presence is the fulness of life. The time hath come for thee to give up thy life, that is, to lose my presence for a brief space, that all men may gain for ever by thy brief loss and be saved from death by thy sacrifice of life.’ And after this, said the brother, the Lord cried out a second time. What He said then, Mark and Matthew have not recorded; but they write that He then expired or sent forth His Spirit. The brother I am speaking of believed that the Son, by crying aloud ‘Why hast thou forsaken?’ prepared Himself to be willingly forsaken, and to be under the darkness of this momentary forsaking just before He gave up His life as a sacrifice for men.”